How honest are we with ourselves and with others? How important to you is truth and honesty? How do we learn to trust others if they betray us? Does it concern you that Dr. Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and others are blatantly lying to us about parts of their history? Or do we care that Bernie Sanders doesn’t kiss babies? Beatty asks you to consider these important questions, which invariably affect all of our relationships.
Chris Hedges – The Most Brazen Corporate Power Grab in American History
The release Thursday of the 5,544-page text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership—a trade and investment agreement involving 12 countries comprising nearly 40 percent of global output—confirms what even its most apocalyptic critics feared. “The TPP, along with the WTO [World Trade Organization] and NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement], is the most brazen corporate power grab in American history,” Ralph Nader …
Cole Mellino – Climate Change Could Ruin Your Sex Life, Economists Warn
Climate change threatens so many things Americans love: maple syrup, avocados and lately even pumpkins. Now, climate change is even threatening our ability to reproduce. According to a new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, warmer weather means less “coital frequency.” “Extreme heat leads to a sizable fall in births,” the study says. “Temperature extremes could affect coital frequency. It could affect …
Lawrence S. Wittner – Why Tuition-Free College Makes Sense
The issue of making college tuition-free has recently come to the fore in American politics, largely because the two leading contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, have each championed it. Sanders has called for free undergraduate tuition at public colleges and universities, to be financed by a tax on Wall Street speculation, while Clinton has done the same, although …
Ask Beatty – 11.02.15
What would our society look like if we developed a kinder and gentler attitude toward one another? Listen to what research has found when the most violent of prisoners in the United States are given the opportunity to receive an education and treatment. What do we need to do to get our politicians to care?
Are you OK with hook-up sex? Are you and your partner on the same page? Listen to what Beatty is asking you to consider in order to keep you emotionally and physically safe.
Greg Guma – Is a Progressive -Libertarian Movement Possible in the USA?
When was the last time a politician came across like the lone voice of principle railing against the dangers of an imperial presidency? That’s what it looked in Spring 2011 when Ron Paul, the Texas libertarian running for the Republican presidential nomination, wrote candidly about the War Powers Resolution, the Patriot Act and mission creep after 9/11. The column was …
Chris Hedges – Sheldon Wolin and Inverted Totalitarianism
Sheldon Wolin, our most important contemporary political theorist, died Oct. 21 at the age of 93. In his books “Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism” and “Politics and Vision,” a massive survey of Western political thought that his former student Cornel West calls “magisterial,” Wolin lays bare the realities of our bankrupt democracy, the causes behind …
GARY LEGUM – Bernie Sanders is in big trouble: You don’t have to be a neoliberal shill to see the cold, hard facts
Bernie Sanders’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination is in serious trouble. Yes, I know we still have almost three months to go before voting gets underway. Yes, I’m aware that all those unscientific click-bait Internet polls showed he “won” the Democratic debate two weeks ago. Yes, I have read all the stories about the size of the crowds he …
MEL GOODMAN – The “War Scare” in the Kremlin, Revisited: Is History Repeating Itself?
The Washington Post on October 25 published an important story based on a recently-published U.S. intelligence review from 1990 that confirmed Soviet leaders in 1983 believed the Reagan administration was using a mobilization exercise to prepare a nuclear surprise attack. The KGB instituted a sensitive collection effort, Operation RYAN, to determine if the United States was planning a surprise nuclear attack. I was …
Jim Quinn – Confusion, Delusions, & Illusions
Two recent surveys, along with numerous other studies and data, reveal most American households to be living on the brink of catastrophe, but continuing to act in a reckless and delusionary manner. There have certainly been economic factors beyond the control of average Americans that have resulted in real median household incomes remaining stagnant for the last 36 years. The …