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The Wisconsin recall election was the first major test of the new era in American politics. That new era began in January of 2010 when the US Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. FEC that the political voice of We The People was no longer as important as the voices of billionaires and transnational corporations. Now we know the result, and it bodes ill for both 2012 and for the tattered future of small-d democracy in our republic. A few of America's most notorious oligarchs - including the Koch and the DeVos (Amway fortune) billionaires - as well as untraceable millions from donors who could as easily be Chinese government-run corporations as giant "American" companies who do most of their business and keep most of their profits outside the US - apparently played big in this election. I say "apparently" because the Supreme Court has ruled that we no longer have the right to know who is really funding our election commercials, or even our candidates themselves. Thanks to an irrational and likely illegal Supreme Court ruling, we have moved into an era of oligarch-run politics. As much as $40 million of our oligarch's money was spent in Wisconsin in a handful of local races - a testing laboratory for strategies that will now be used against Democrats nationwide in 2012. And so now we enter the battle of the oligarchs over the next fifteen or so months. As the old saying goes, when the elephants fight, the mice get trampled. In this case, the mice aren't just the voters. It's democracy itself. America is now - demonstrably, as proven by Wisconsin - just a few years away from the possibility of a totally corrupted, totally billionaire- and corporate-controlled political system. Political scientists call it oligarchy. The Citizens United election experiment is over, and the oligarchs won. Long live the oligarchy.

I've written before about the crisis of inequality in the United States and about the quasi-religious abhorrence of "wealth redistribution" that causes many Americans to oppose tax increases, even on the ultra rich. The conviction that taxation is intrinsically evil has achieved a sadomasochistic fervor in conservative circles-producing the Tea Party, their Republican zombies, and increasingly terrifying failures of governance. Happily, not all billionaires are content to hoard their money in silence. Earlier this week, Warren Buffett published an op-ed in the New York Times in which he criticized our current approach to raising revenue. As he has lamented many times before, he is taxed at a lower rate than his secretary is. Many conservatives pretend not to find this embarrassing. Conservatives view taxation as a species of theft-and to raise taxes, on anyone for any reason, is simply to steal more. Conservatives also believe that people become rich by creating value for others. Once rich, they cannot help but create more value by investing their wealth and spawning new jobs in the process. We should not punish our best and brightest for their success, and stealing their money is a form of punishment. Of course, this is just an economic cartoon. We don't have perfectly efficient markets, and many wealthy people don't create much in the way of value for others. In fact, as our recent financial crisis has shown, it is possible for a few people to become extraordinarily rich by wrecking the global economy. Nevertheless, the basic argument often holds: Many people have amassed fortunes because they (or their parent's, parent's, parents) created value. Steve Jobs resurrected Apple Computer and has since produced one gorgeous product after another. It isn't an accident that millions of us are happy to give him our money. But even in the ideal case, where obvious value has been created, how much wealth can one person be allowed to keep? A trillion doll

"In January, Mr. Obama signed a food safety law that provides broad new authority to the Food and Drug Administration," wrote Robert Pear in Friday's Times, in an article about the Congressional appropriations mess. But House Republicans, he added, had voted "to cut the agency's budget." Well, yes, in a nutshell, that is the sad story of the food safety law - the first major change in how the government regulates food safety in over 70 years. But the way the Republicans have dealt with its funding represents more than appropriations problems. It also represents the way they've allowed their unyielding antitax, antispend ideology to get in the way of common sense - and the common good.

In a disturbing scene from today's "Occupy Wall Street" protests, a group of peaceful female protesters were rounded up in an orange-colored mesh pen by police and subsequently sprayed with mace without any provocation. In spite of multiple reported incidents of possible police violence, major media outlets seem to be content to let the protests go by completely unreported, following the same "who-cares" attitude they have taken toward recent revelations that the NYPD has violated the Constitutional rights of American citizens by spying on them as possible terrorists and enemies of the state despite a complete absence of evidence of any crimes.

Among other items, Republicans are demanding major cuts in a nutrition program for low-income women and children. The appropriation bill the House passed June 16 would deny benefits to more than 700,000 eligible low-income women and young children next year. What kind of country are we living in?

Every day, 200,000 domestic workers in New York, mostly women of color, make it possible for others to work. But these nannies, elderly caregivers, and housekeepers are excluded from the most basic labor laws (including the National Labor Relations Act), and isolated with no power or leverage to negotiate. They endure long hours, low wages and sometimes emotional and physical abuse. New York State is considering historic legislation that would provide protections to domestic workers for the first time! The New York Domestic Workers Bill of Rights is the first of its kind nationally and will set a precedent for labor standards for domestic workers around the country Stand with domestic workers by calling Albany legislators to help pass the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights! Call Speaker of the Assembly Sheldon Silver at (518)-455-3791 and Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith at (518)-455-2701 and say: "My name is __________, and I live in ___________ New York. I'm calling to urge you to help pass the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Bill numbers A1470/S2311 this legislative session. Tomorrow, hundreds of domestic workers and their supporters will come to Albany for a day of action and education. Please work with them to move the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights to the floor for a vote." Then find your own representatives and let them know you want them to support the Bill of Rights: http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/ http://www.senate.state.ny.us/senateh... In the wake of the economic crisis, the conditions facing domestic workers have worsened. Facing alarming rates of lay-offs, cut wages and extended hours, without notice, severance pay or any safety net, now more than ever - domestic workers need the Bill of Rights. For 5 years, domestic workers have come together across communities to organize for dignity and respect, and demand the passage of a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in New York State, which would include: * Notice of termination * Severance pay, sick

A Must Watch with thrilling revelations by Major (r)Nadeem Dar exposing Army Elite.!!... Ahsan Iqbal PML-N, Fouzia Wahab PPP, Wasim Akhtar MQM, Brig. (R) Imtiaz Ahmed (ex-IB), Maj (r) Nadeem Dar (ex-ISI) and Lt. Gen. (R) Asad Durrani (ex-ISI) in an explosive Capital Talk on past Army Operations with Hamid Mir.

Major (R) M. Tahir Sadiq, Sardar Mehtab Ahmed Khan PML-N and Masood Abbas ANP in fresh episode of Kal Tak & discusses current issue with Javed Choudhry.

The people for the ethical treatment of animals have decided that if they get people to start calling fish "sea kittens", people will have trouble telling the difference between their pet cats and the alewives washing up on the beach. Yeah, that will work. They wrote a children's book for this campaign. One of the characters in it, "Tony the Trout", is said to have pursued a double major in neuroscience and environmental studies. Pity he didn't augment the neuroscience with a little psychiatry. Maybe he'd be able to diagnose the problem ailing the person who came up with this campaign.

I think voting on rights is ridiculous to begin with, but when I think of the people who fought for this discrimination - organizations like NOM who are not even IN Maine... it makes my blood boil! What right does the majority have to tell another adult citizens who they can marry.

Are you tired of big banks making record profits, paying giant executive salaries and bonuses and then cooking the books so they avoid paying taxes?  We are.  And, we are responding.  Join us.On April 15 in Union Square Park in New York City at 11:00 AM we are holding a "Sounds of Resistance Concert" and protest against the big corporate banks that have undermined the U.S. economy and displaced families from their homes. Big Finance has taken more than a trillion from the Department of Treasury and Federal Reserve to pay for their casino gambling on Wall Street but they are still forcing people out of their homes, not lending to small businesses and choking the economy.The concert will feature political hip-hop/rock powerhouse Junkyard Empire with special guests Broadcast Live and Sketch the Cataclysm. Chris Hedges will speak about the growing culture of resistance. Other performers and speakers are invited.The protest will include a picket of the Union Square Bank of America - a major culprit in the great rip off of the American taxpayer.This concert and protest are part of the effort to build the urgently needed movement to shift power to the people and away from concentrated capital interests.                                        

In December, President Obama signed legislation to extend hundreds of billions of dollars in Bush tax cuts, benefiting the wealthiest Americans. Last week, Obama agreed to billions of dollars in cuts that will impose the greatest burden on the poorest Americans. And now, virtually everyone in Washington believes, the President is about to embark on a path that will ultimately lead to some type of reductions in Social Security, Medicare and/or Medicaid benefits under the banner of "reform." Tax cuts for the rich -- budget cuts for the poor -- "reform" of the Democratic Party's signature safety net programs -- a continuation of Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies and a new Middle East war launched without Congressional approval. That's quite a legacy combination for a Democratic President. All of that has led to a spate of negotiation advice from the liberal punditocracy advising the President how he can better defend progressive policy aims -- as though the Obama White House deeply wishes for different results but just can't figure out how to achieve them. Jon Chait, Josh Marshall, and Matt Yglesias all insist that the President is "losing" on these battles because of bad negotiating strategy, and will continue to lose unless it improves. Ezra Klein says "it makes absolutely no sense" that Democrats didn't just raise the debt ceiling in December, when they had the majority and could have done it with no budget cuts. Once it became clear that the White House was not following their recommended action of demanding a "clean" vote on raising the debt ceiling -- thus ensuring there will be another, probably larger round of budget cuts -- Yglesias lamented that the White House had "flunked bargaining 101." Their assumption is that Obama loathes these outcomes but is the victim of his own weak negotiating strategy. I don't understand that assumption at all. Does anyone believe that Obama and his army of veteran Washington advisers are incapable of discovering these tactics on th

When we study Marx in my graduate social theory course, it never fails that at least one student will say (approximately), "Class struggle didn't escalate in the way Marx expected. In modern capitalist societies class struggle has disappeared. So isn't it clear that Marx was wrong and his ideas are of little value today?" I respond by challenging the premise that class struggle has disappeared. On the contrary, I say that class struggle is going on all the time in every major institution of society. One just has to learn how to recognize it. One needn't embrace the labor theory of value to understand that employers try to increase profits by keeping wages down and getting as much work as possible out of their employees. As the saying goes, every successful capitalist knows what a Marxist knows; they just apply the knowledge differently. Workers' desire for better pay and benefits, safe working conditions, and control over their own time puts them at odds with employers. Class struggle in this sense hasn't gone away. In fact, it's inherent in the relationship between capitalist employer and employee. What varies is how aggressively and overtly each side fights for its interests.

"In just a few short months, we've witnessed people power in action. From the Middle East to the Midwest, movements have risen up to overturn tired dogma and challenge entrenched power. Many of us were inspired by these events. And many of us were surprised. Perhaps we were growing skeptical that people power could still work. Maybe we had forgotten a vital fact about our world: that bold citizens, united around a common mission, can still come together to create major change against enormous odds." - 350.org (April 7, 2011) "Even when people are willing to take action in concert to redistribute the pie, whether by Gandhian mobilization or use of force, this may resonate falsely, for the pie is disintegrating. Its recipe and ingredients are obsolete. And freedom attained in harsh austerity, characterized by intense competition for food, will be doubtful or of little comfort." - Jan Lundberg ("Social Justice Activists Must Take Into Account Ecological, Cultural, and Economic Transformation")

"Never has the time been so right," Louisiana State Representative Noble Ellington told conservative legislators gathered in Washington to plan the radical remaking of policies in the states. It was one month after the 2010 midterm elections. Republicans had grabbed 680 legislative seats and secured a power trifecta-control of both legislative chambers and the governorship-in twenty-one states. Ellington was speaking for hundreds of attendees at a "States and Nation Policy Summit," featuring GOP stars like Texas Governor Rick Perry, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Convened by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)-"the nation's largest, non-partisan, individual public-private membership association of state legislators," as the spin-savvy group describes itself-the meeting did not intend to draw up an agenda for the upcoming legislative session. That had already been done by ALEC's elite task forces of lawmakers and corporate representatives. The new legislators were there to grab their weapons: carefully crafted model bills seeking to impose a one-size-fits-all agenda on the states.

We are at a pivotal moment in American history, and many Americans watching the deficit talks in Washington are confused, perplexed, angry and frustrated. This country, which has paid its debts from Day 1, must pay its debts. Anyone who says it is not a big deal for this country to default clearly does not understand what he or she is talking about. This is a nation whose faith and credit has been the gold standard of countries throughout the world. Some people simply say we're not going to pay our debt, that there's nothing to really worry about. Those are people who are wishing our economy harm for political reasons, and those are people whose attitudes will have terrible consequences for virtually every working family in this country in terms of higher interest rates, in terms of significant job loss, in terms of making a very unstable global economy even more unstable. Our right-wing friends in the House of Representatives have given us an option. What they have said is end Medicare as we know it and force elderly people, many of whom don't have the money, to pay substantially more for their health care. So when you're 70 under their plan and you get sick and you don't have a whole lot of income, we don't know what happens to you. They forget to tell us that if their plan was passed you're going to have to pay a heck of a lot more for the prescription drugs you're getting today. They we're going to throw millions of kids off health insurance. If your mom or dad is in a nursing home and that nursing home bill is paid significantly by Medicaid and Medicaid isn't paying anymore, they forgot to tell us what happens to your mom or dad in that nursing home. What happens? And what happens today if you are unemployed and you're not able to get unemployment extension? What happens if you are a middle-class family desperately trying to send their kids to college and you make savage cuts to Pell grants and you can't go to college? What does it mean for the nation if we

It's in the works. A massive Occupy Wall Street gathering with delegates from all over the country. And if these plans are carried out, Occupy Wall Street will be a major force to be reckoned with on Election Day 2012.

The opponents of Catalan independence have accused the move of racist or elitist people, and they argue that the majority of the public in Catalonia does not support the self-sufficiency

The first thing that you should know about the American political movement is that you're going to be focused on two major things