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Gilens examines the extent to which different social groups find their policy preferences reflected in actual government policy and the variation in these patterns across time and policy domains. For example, when Americans with low and high incomes disagree on policy, are policy outcomes more likely to reflect the preferences of affluent Americans? If so, does the advantage of more affluent Americans differ over time (e.g., depending on which party controls the congress and presidency) or across policy domains? Similarly, are Republicans or Democrats in the population more likely to get the policies they prefer when their party is in control of national political institutions? Because his database contains policy preferences broken down by income, education, partisanship, sex, race, region, religion, and union/non-union status, Gilens will be able to address a multitude of questions concerning government responsiveness to public preferences. For this study, Gilens uses data on public preferences and policy outcomes based on 754 national survey questions from 1992 through 1998 and restrict his attention to divergent policy preferences of low- and high-income Americans. Each of these survey questions asks respondents whether they support or oppose some proposed change in U.S. national policy, and he has used historical information sources to determine whether each proposed change occurred or not (within a four-year coding window from the date of the survey question). When Gilens looks separately at respondents with different incomes, he finds that the higher an individual's income, the more likely it is that government policy will reflect his or her preferences. This relationship, however, does not increase in a linear fashion: the difference between poor and middle-income Americans is modest compared with the difference between those with middle and high incomes. In other words, it is not that the poor are especially less likely than middle-income Americans to get

Zionism is one of the Middle East Crisis which has been increasingly vital for imperialist powers for strategic positions. In 1918, the majority of area that was a part of Turkish Empire was sided along Germany in 1st World War. This area was defeated from Arab armies and by British. During 1920, French and British imperialism further divided Middle East to hand over the pieces of land to the rulers. Lebanon was called as another state which was dominated by the Christian bourgeoisie through a compromise that was taken by the leaders of Moslem peasantry and Druze.

The clearest explanation yet of the forces that converged over the past three decades or so to undermine the economic well-being of ordinary Americans is contained in the new book, "Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer - and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class." The authors, political scientists Jacob Hacker of Yale and Paul Pierson of the University of California, Berkeley, argue persuasively that the economic struggles of the middle and working classes in the U.S. since the late-1970s were not primarily the result of globalization and technological changes but rather a long series of policy changes in government that overwhelmingly favored the very rich. Those changes were the result of increasingly sophisticated, well-financed and well-organized efforts by the corporate and financial sectors to tilt government policies in their favor, and thus in favor of the very wealthy. From tax laws to deregulation to corporate governance to safety net issues, government action was deliberately shaped to allow those who were already very wealthy to amass an ever increasing share of the nation's economic benefits. "Over the last generation," the authors write, "more and more of the rewards of growth have gone to the rich and superrich. The rest of America, from the poor through the upper middle class, has fallen further and further behind."

Elizabeth Warren discusses how the dreams of the middle class american family are being depleted by the dramatic increase in bankruptcies and foreclosures. Warren discusses the role that credit card companies and ballooning interests rates have played in rapidly increasing mortgage rates as well as the how the over consumption myth is clouding our understanding of the average middle class family, who is in fact experiencing a lower standard of living than their parents and still finding themselves one payment away from losing their home. Elizabeth Warren is the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and chaired the Congressional Oversight Panel created to investigate the U.S. banking bailout . This program originally aired in April 2004. it is being re-aired because Professor Warren's predictions of economic disasters and the reasons for them have proven correct, and she is a candidate to head a commission to guard against recurrence. The Massachusetts School of Law also presents information on important current affairs to the general public in television and radio broadcasts, an intellectual journal, conferences, author appearances, blogs and books. For more information visit http://www.mslaw.edu

With demonstrations and protests spreading around the Middle East, staying on top of the events can be difficult. This interactive map that dynamically updates will allow you to do it.

From time to time, someone under 30 will ask me, "When did this all begin, America's downward slide?" They say they've heard of a time when working people could raise a family and send the kids to college on just one parent's income (and that college in states like California and New York was almost free). That anyone who wanted a decent paying job could get one. That people only worked five days a week, eight hours a day, got the whole weekend off and had a paid vacation every summer. That many jobs were union jobs, from baggers at the grocery store to the guy painting your house, and this meant that no matter how "lowly" your job was you had guarantees of a pension, occasional raises, health insurance and someone to stick up for you if you were unfairly treated. Young people have heard of this mythical time - but it was no myth, it was real. And when they ask, "When did this all end?", I say, "It ended on this day: August 5th, 1981." Beginning on this date, 30 years ago, Big Business and the Right Wing decided to "go for it" - to see if they could actually destroy the middle class so that they could become richer themselves. And they've succeeded. On August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired every member of the air traffic controllers union (PATCO) who'd defied his order to return to work and declared their union illegal. They had been on strike for just two days.

No matter what, Ryan's gambit, ultimately, is all about trying to get middle-class voters to swallow paying for tax cuts for rich people. It takes chutzpah to try such a thing, but having a lot of balls is not the same as having courage.

It's time most Americans recognized that there is a war going on in this country. Not Iraq or Afghanistan. No. The war is being waged by some of the wealthiest and most powerful people against working families, against the disappearing and shrinking middle class of our country. The billionaires and filthy rich corporate execs of America are on the warpath.

NOTE: It is important to separate hunting down terrorists who attack our country and deserve justice (which Ron Paul is 100% for), and not confuse justice with occupying entire countries for a decade under the guise of the "War on Terror" or "Spreading Democracy". Terrorists are individuals and small groups, so why are we picking fights with entire nations? BILLIONS for Defense, NOT A PENNY for Empire. This speech is called "Imagine" and it was given by Ron Paul on March 11, 2009. The original text of the talk is below: Imagine for a moment that somewhere in the middle of Texas there was a large foreign military base, say Chinese or Russian. Imagine that thousands of armed foreign troops were constantly patrolling American streets in military vehicles. Imagine they were here under the auspices of "keeping us safe" or "promoting democracy" or "protecting their strategic interests." Imagine that they operated outside of US law, and that the Constitution did not apply to them. Imagine that every now and then they made mistakes or acted on bad information and accidentally killed or terrorized innocent Americans, including women and children, most of the time with little to no repercussions or consequences. Imagine that they set up checkpoints on our soil and routinely searched and ransacked entire neighborhoods of homes. Imagine if Americans were fearful of these foreign troops, and overwhelmingly thought America would be better off without their presence. Imagine if some Americans were so angry about them being in Texas that they actually joined together to fight them off, in defense of our soil and sovereignty, because leadership in government refused or were unable to do so. Imagine that those Americans were labeled terrorists or insurgents for their defensive actions, and routinely killed, or captured and tortured by the foreign troops on our land. Imagine that the occupiers' attitude was that if they just killed enough Americans, the resistance would stop, but inst

Can you imagine an America without a strong middle class? If you can, would it still be America as we know it?

One aspect of "American exceptionalism" was always economic. US workers, so the story went, enjoyed a rising level of real wages that afforded their families a rising standard of living. Ever harder work paid off in rising consumption. The rich got richer faster than the middle and poor, but almost no one got poorer. Nearly all citizens felt "middle class". A profitable US capitalism kept running ahead of labor supply. So, it kept raising wages to attract waves of immigration and to retain employees, across the 19th century until the 1970s.

Speaking at the 25th anniversary celebration of the national media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, world-renowned political dissident and linguist Noam Chomsky analyzes the U.S. response to the popular uprisings sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. "Across the [Middle East], an overwhelming majority of the population regards the United States as the main threat to their interests," Chomsky says. "The reason is very simple... Plainly, the U.S. and its allies are not going to want governments which are responsive to the will of the people. If that happens, not only will the U.S. not control the region, but it will be thrown out." [includes rush transcript]

To the GOP everything can be solved by lower taxes and more corporate incentives. And yes, the upper middle class and the elite wealthy all benefit nicely… but it DOES NOT TRICKLE DOWN! The poor are still getting poorer, the lower middle class is still struggling along with the poor to hold jobs and keep health insurance.

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

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren for a discussion of the economic pressures confronting the two income middle class family as it struggles to pay mortgages, health care, and education costs. Professor Warren offers surprising answers to "Who goes bankrupt and why?" and explores the role of banks and credit card companies in tightening the squeeze on the average American family. The interface between politics and the law in addressing these problems is explored. Series: "Conversations with History" [5/2007] [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 12490]

Obama is neither liberal nor conservative, he's a middle of the roader. It sure would've been nice if voters had noticed that before they elected him.

I'd sure like to see Obama "kick some ass", instead of allowing the Repubs to do the same thing they've been doing for the past eight or nine years. Mainly bully and intimidate, and use scare tactics to get what they and big business want.

Frank: The democrats have a 60 vote majority and Obama doesn't need them at all for anything. He pretty much has let them know "We Won!" He also has pretty much let them know he doesn't need them. This is a Liberal controlled White House, Senate and House. Stop the blame game. Let's put the focus exactly where everyone who is truthful, here, understands: On the Democratic controlled Administration and Congress. They have all the marbles and they don't need the Republicans' vote. The problem Obama has is that he realizes that there is going to be a bloodbath. Please, don't say otherwise - even his own people are starting to prepare the party. Why do you suppose four Democrats announced that they are retiring - they aren't even running over the next 10 1/2 months. More will reitre before election day. He has the same problem that Clinton had - he could possibly lose the House and he would then be somewhat in the same position of Clinton - who was forced to the middle because he would not be able to get anything else approved. I may be wrong, history will decide, but I think the American people no longer trust either party. Are you happy with the Democrats? We now have senators selling their vote for $300,000,000 in one instance and Sen. Nelson just got a permanent exemption for Medicaid cost that States have to pay - Forever! All 49 other states must pick up this states cost - all for one vote! Do you believe this is what the Democrats, Republicans or Independents expect or want from their government. I don't. Getting back to my point, the people of America don't trust either party, now, and want them closely divided so they don't do too much harm. Independents have swung away from Obama in a very big way. He ran more as a centrist and now people fill lied to. Seven days before he took office he said he was fundamentally going to change America. No one had heard this before - not "Fundamentally". They expected a far more bipartisan