NYT: Danish Welfare
While much of southern Europe has been racked by strikes and protests as its creditors force austerity measures, Denmark still has a coveted AAA bond rating. But Denmark’s long-term outlook is troubling. With little fuss or political protest — or notice abroad — Denmark has been at work overhauling entitlements, trying to prod Danes into working more or longer or both.
NYT: Stories of Creativity
The $85 billion in federal budget cuts known as sequestration are beginning to be felt far from the nation’s capital, some programs are coping, some are struggling and others appear to be out of luck. While not everyone is feeling the pain, the good-news stories are eclipsed by the bad. At issue for many programs is politics — specifically the politics of President Obama’s health care law.
NYT: Warning Behind the Numbers
The United States’ gross domestic product expanded at a 2.5 percent annual rate in the first quarter; but this figure masks disturbing signs: an economy whose recovery has failed to match the pace of past expansions may now be facing a deceleration in its own modest growth rate.
Nation of Change: Government Hollowing
Repealing laws by failing to fund their enforcement or implementation works because the public doesn’t know it’s happening. The strategy bolsters the Republican view that government is incompetent – the public doesn’t know the reason why the government isn’t doing its job is it’s being hollowed out.
NYT: Corporations and Supreme Court
The Supreme Court’s business decisions are almost always overshadowed by cases on controversial social issues. But the business docket reflects something truly distinctive about the court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. They have been, a new study finds, far friendlier to business than those of any court since at least World War II.
Pew Research Center
Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research.
The Oslo Center
The ambition of the Oslo Center is to be an independent, highly professional and politically relevant centre that provides advice, exerts influence and creates meeting places for conflict prevention, dialogue and strengthening of responsible leadership.
The Economist: American News Orgs
Nearly a third of Americans say they have abandoned a news source because they thought the quality of its information was declining. Americans who think media firms are putting out fewer original, thoughtful stories are probably right. The bulk of the $37.3 billion spent on digital advertising in 2012 went to five firms: Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft and AOL.
Pew: Excellence in Journalism
In 2012, a continued erosion of news reporting resources converged with growing opportunities for those in politics, government agencies, companies and others to take their messages directly to the public. Signs of shrinking reporting power are documented in the report.
The Economist: Role of Government
America’s 50 states are competing to find the best formula for regulation and taxes and introducing sweeping reforms to that end. These changes will become systematic only if promoted at the federal level.
Bureau of Investigative Journalism
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism is an independent not-for-profit organisation formed and funded on the assumption that investigative journalism is indispensible to democracy. As such the Bureau’s aim is to pursue and encourage journalism in the public interest.
New Yorker: Senses of Entitlement
Names make news, but names also make opinions. In politics, the naming is almost always with malice (or niceness) aforethought. “Entitlements” – or “entitlement programs” – is now the standard descriptor for what ought to be called, more accurately and less tendentiously, social insurance.
The New Yorker: The Thatcherist
Thatcher was a breaker of consensus, not a builder of it. And she did not care about everybody. She seemed not to care about the poor and the near-poor, whose misfortunes she tended to regard as failures of character. The moral high point of her tenure was a passionate speech on global warming, delivered at the United Nations in 1989.
Foreign Affairs: The Swiss Miracle?
From Ireland to Cyprus, the whole of Europe seems to be locked in economic and political crisis. But there is a small area of calm at the continent’s core: Switzerland. Switzerland’s secret is that it is part of Europe — and it isn’t. Switzerland’s middle path is likely the reason why the country is doing so well.
Joseph Stiglitz: Economist
Joseph Stiglitz is an American economist and a professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and the John Bates Clark Medal. In 2011 he was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Brookings: Marijuana Policy
Stuart Taylor, Jr. examines how the federal government and the eighteen states (plus the District of Columbia) that have partially legalized medical or recreational marijuana or both since 1996 can be true to their respective laws, and can agree on how to enforce them wisely while avoiding federal-state clashes that would increase confusion and harm communities and consumers.
Brookings: Legalized Marijuana
In November, two states, Colorado and Washington, passed ballot initiatives — by strong margins — to legalize marijuana use. Avoiding a state-federal train wreck over marijuana policy will not happen automatically. Finding a cooperative path requires creativity and energy from both levels of government. But the alternative won’t satisfy anyone, at least not for long.
Nation of Change: Margaret Thatcher
However one feels about Thatcher’s politics, there’s no question that she chose crusades and framed arguments with great care. For her pragmatism, much of today’s Republican right would have panned Thatcher as “socialist,” “statist” and, heaven forfend, “European” — though they now hail her.
New Yorker: The Dark Ages
In 2001, George W. Bush signed a military order concerning the “Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism.” Suspected terrorists could be imprisoned without charge, denied knowledge of the evidence against them, and, if tried, sentenced by courts following no previously established rules.
New Yorker: Justice Ginsburg
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg turns eighty this month. There is some irony in Ginsburg’s reputation for reserve, because she is, by far, the current Court’s most accomplished litigator. Ginsburg, during the 1970s, argued several of the most important women’s-rights cases in the Court’s history.
Economist: US, and Europe’s Dysfunction
Republicans and Democrats’ fibs rest on ill-concealed contempt for an undeserving other: the feckless poor, the immoral rich, those who live in states of the wrong partisan hue. Mutual dislike is the dirty secret that best explains European paralysis. American politicians have no business stoking it in their far more ambitious union.
Economist: Marijuana Legislation
FREE-THE-WEED campaigners speak not of “legalising” marijuana but of “taxing and regulating” it. The ballot measure they placed before Colorado’s voters last November, which won the support of 55% of them, was called the Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol Act and contained provisions for a 15% excise tax.
Economist: Green Steps
Mr Obama named the officials charged with fulfilling his climate policy: Gina McCarthy, his choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency, and Ernest Moniz, the prospective new secretary of energy. Their selection suggests that Mr Obama is indeed serious about tackling climate change, but not doctrinaire in his approach.
New Yorker: New Deal
Discusses how government, and the Democratic Party, changed after the New Deal, with the onset of the Cold War and the disenchantment of Southern Democrats. Discusses the history of worries about the emergence of a new ruling class composed of bureaucrats and technocrats.
Reuters: Political Clout of Superrich
Study shows that in the United States, voting rights do not translate into much actual political power. You could predict what the government would do based on the preferences of the top 10% income level. When the preferences of middle class and poor income levels diverged from the affluent, there was no impact at all on the policies that were adopted.
NYT: Curious Grade for Teachers
Across the country, education reformers and their allies in both parties have revamped the way teachers are graded. But in Michigan, 98 percent of teachers were rated effective or better. Advocates of education reform concede that such rosy numbers, after all the development and training, are worrisome.
Secure World Foundation
Secure World Foundation envisions the secure, sustainable and peaceful uses of outer space contributing to global stability on Earth. SWF works with governments, industry, international organizations and civil society to develop and promote ideas and actions that achieve the secure, sustainable, and peaceful uses of outer space.
NYT: Broader US Eavesdropping
The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned back a challenge to a federal law that broadened the government’s power to eavesdrop on international phone calls and e-mails. The ruling illustrated how hard it is to mount court challenges to a wide array of antiterrorism measures, including renditions of terrorism suspects to foreign countries and targeted killings using drones.
NYT: Our Second Adolescence
A dream Obama would point out that the issue is not size but sclerosis of government. The future has no lobby, so there are inexorable pressures favoring present consumption over future investment. The crucial point is not whether a dollar is spent publicly or privately, it’s whether it is spent on the present or future.
Brookings: Making Defense Affordable
The U.S. government faces a tough fiscal future. Absent significant changes to current taxation and spending policies, debt held by the public will mount within two decades to levels never before experienced by this country. The consequences for the American economy and for the nation’s place in the world could be severe.
Foreign Affairs: Lean Forward
Now, more than ever, the United States might be tempted to pull back from the world. That would be a mistake, since an engaged grand strategy has served the country exceptionally well for the past six decades — helping prevent the outbreak of conflict in the world’s most important regions, keeping the global economy humming, and facilitating international cooperation.
Foreign Affairs: Pull Back
The United States has consistently spent hundreds of billions of dollars per year on its military. This undisciplined, expensive, and bloody strategy has done untold harm to U.S. national security. This undisciplined strategy has done untold harm to U.S. national security. It is time to abandon the United States’ hegemonic strategy and replace it with one of restraint.
Foreign Affairs: Capitalism/Inequality
Recent political debate in the United States and other advanced capitalist democracies has been dominated by two issues: the rise of economic inequality and the scale of government intervention to address it. Inequality is increasing almost everywhere in the postindustrial capitalist world. The problem is more deeply rooted and intractable than generally recognized.
Foreign Affairs: Post-Democracy in China
In November 2012, the Chinese Communist Party held its 18th National Congress. Some in China and the West have gone so far as to predict the demise of the one-party state, which they allege cannot survive if leading politicians stop delivering economic miracles. Such pessimism is misplaced; in the next decade, China will continue to rise, not fade.
Foreign Affairs: It’s Hard in America
One of the United States’ major successes in the last half century has been its progress toward ensuring that its citizens get roughly the same basic chances in life, regardless of gender or race. Yet this achievement has been double edged. Today, people who were born worse off tend to have fewer opportunities in life.
George Lakoff: Professor
George Lakoff is Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, where he has taught since 1972. He is known for his ideas about the centrality of metaphor to human thinking, political behavior and society.
NYT: When ‘Super PACs’ Become Lobbyists
The “super PACs” and secret-money groups that polluted this year’s election with hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of largely ineffective attack ads are not slinking away in shame. Many are regrouping and raising more money to lobby Congress and the White House on behalf of their special-interest donors.
The Economist: For Richer, For Poorer
The democratisation of living standards has masked a dramatic concentration of incomes over the past 30 years, on a scale that matches, or even exceeds, the first Gilded Age. Including capital gains, the share of national income going to the richest 1% of Americans has doubled since 1980, from 10% to 20%, roughly where it was a century ago.
David Lyon: Professor
David Lyon is the Principal Investigator of The New Transparency Project and Director of the Surveillance Studies Centre. He is also Queen’s Research Chair in Surveillance Studies and Professor of Sociology and of Law.
The Culture of Surveillance
In the late 20th century the language of “surveillance society” was popularized but now the outlines of “surveillance cultures” are emerging.
Wired: NSA Spy Center
Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. The heavily fortified $2 billion center will store all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.
CNN – Will Michelle Obama’s Speech Change History?
If Barack Obama is re-elected on November 6, he will owe more to his first lady than any president ever to win a second term. Michelle Obama gave one of the finest speeches ever delivered at a national political convention. More important, it could have more impact on the immediate future of the country than her husband’s celebrated 2004 keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in Boston.
Higher Education in the US
“The [University of Virginia] Board of Visitors is an archaic body, a vestige of [US President Thomas] Jefferson’s original conception of his university as an “academical village,” governing itself without executive authority. It was not until the early 20th century that the university bowed to practicality and hired a president. Though the board’s influence over the school has waned since then, a seat on it remains one of the most prestigious gifts a governor can bestow on a Virginian. Democrats and Republicans alike tend to allot the seats to major campaign contributors. The board that was judging [University President Teresa] Sullivan’s performance included lawyers, developers, a coal-mining executive and a beer distributor, but no voting member had an education background.”
CIEL
The Center for International Environmental Law works to strengthen and use international law and institutions to protect the environment, promote human health, and ensure a just and sustainable society. CIEL provides legal counsel and advocacy, policy research and capacity building services.
NYT: Johnson discusses Kaufman
To break the grip Wall Street has over political power would take a broad citizens’ movement, a groundswell of educated opinion focused on breaking that power, but the biggest Wall Street firms are larger and probably now more powerful than they were in the run-up to 2008.
CEPR
The Center for Economic and Policy Research promotes democratic debate on the most important economic and social issues that affect people’s lives through presenting issues understandable manner, so that the public is better prepared to choose among various policy options.
Center for Constitutional Rights
The Center for Constitutional Rights, non-profit legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change, is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is one of the world’s leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. By focusing international attention where human rights are violated, we give voice to the oppressed and hold oppressors accountable for their crimes.
Amnesty International
Amnesty International works to protect people wherever justice, freedom, truth and dignity are denied. As the world’s largest grassroots human rights organization, it investigates and exposes abuses, educates the public, and helps transform societies to create a safer, more just world.
Center for Progressive Reform
The CPR believes sensible safeguards in the areas of health, safety, and the environment, serve important values including doing the best we can to prevent harm to people and the environment, distributing environmental harms and benefits fairly, and protecting the earth for future generations.
American Constitution Society
ACS works for positive change by shaping debate on vitally important legal and constitutional issues through development and promotion of high-impact ideas to opinion leaders and the media, and by building networks of lawyers, law students, judges and policymakers dedicated to those ideas.
The National Security Archive
The National Security Archive is an investigative journalism center, a research institute, an archive of U.S. documents, a public interest law firm defending and expanding public access to government information, a global advocate of open government, and an indexer and publisher of former secrets.
Sunlight Foundation
The Sunlight Foundation is a non-profit, nonpartisan organization that uses the internet to catalyze greater government openness and transparency, and engages individual citizens and communities to demand policies that will enable the public to hold government accountable.
Center for Responsive Politics
The Center for Responsive Politics is the nation’s premier research group tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy. The organization aims to create a more educated voter, an involved citizenry and a more transparent and responsive government.
Common Cause
Common Cause, as an independent watchdog against corruption and abuse of power, seeks to restore the core values of American democracy, reinvent an open, honest and accountable government, and empower ordinary people to make their voices heard in the political process.