With comprehensive immigration reform afoot in Congress, and measures to grant undocumented immigrant students in-state tuition status spreading across the country, a galvanized movement in Georgia is ramping up its effort to end the state's extraordinary ban for undocumented immigrant students at the top five state colleges.
The pro-corporate, anti-majority political class is sustaining itself with a lot of self-serving myths these days. Guess you need to do that when you’re dismantling the social contract. In the closed society that is Insider Washington, rites and mythologies are used to promote the otherwise-indefensible: the cruel irrationality of Austerity Economics.
Imagine a labyrinthine government department so bloated that few have any clear idea of just what its countless pieces do. Imagine that tens of billions of tax dollars are disappearing into it annually, black hole-style, since it can’t pass a congressionally mandated audit.
In his recent Time magazine article, Steven Brill paints a vivid and rather depressing picture of the perverse malfunctioning of our health care system – overpriced and technology-addicted – and he acknowledges some of the advantages of Medicare.
It's an obvious question, with an easy answer. Our nation's bipartisan political elite have decided to privatize public education. They know the only way they can execute this deeply unpopular policy is to do it on the down-low, with a minimum of coverage, and no mention of the p-word, especially of growing civic resistance to it.
The Washington Post's Bob Woodward. (Photograph: Brad Barket/AFP)Earlier this month, the Pentagon announced that it would deploy "only" one aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, rather than the customary two.
Albert Woodfox has been in solitary confinement for 40 years, most of that time locked up in the notorious maximum-security Louisiana State Penitentiary known as “Angola.” This week, after his lawyers spent six years arguing that racial bias tainted the grand-jury selection in Woodfox’s prosecution, federal Judge James Brady, presiding in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana, agreed. “Accordingly, Woodfox’s habeas relief is GRANTED,” ordered Brady, compelling the state of Louisiana to release Woodfox.
Sometimes what I fear most is that the disintegration of public life — indeed, the very idea of the public good — is complete. The vultures and profiteers swarm around the carcass and make a profit and that’s all that matters.
Remember the 1950s horror movie "The Bad Seed"? Any remake should cast Monsanto in the title role, because whenever something scary is being done to our food, you can usually find Monsanto lurking in the shadows.
