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As a voice at the megaphone of the Portland protest said, "The United States does not have a deficit problem. The United States has a revenue problem." According to a 2008 report by the Government Accountability Office, 25 percent of the biggest corporations pay no federal income tax. B of A, the recipient of $45 billion in bailout funds, shuttles its would-be tax dollars into 115 offshore tax havens. Meanwhile, budget deficits are cited as justification for pay freezes for public workers and cuts to heating assistance programs, Social Security, and other social safety nets.

If you take a job away from someone who is paid a reasonable wage because they enjoy the protections and prosperity of democratic government, move it across a border, and give it to someone living under a thugocracy, forced to work for pennies with no protections whatsoever, it should be just plain obvious that the worker on our side of the border and the worker on the other side of the border are not going to be better off. And when you do this on a massive scale it just stands to reason that most people on both sides of the border are going to be worse off. But propaganda being what it is we were somehow convinced to try a worldwide experiment in taking good jobs from democracies and turning them into bad jobs in thugocracies. Now, of course, the experiment has run its course and we can see the results.

Madison, Wisconsin - The gears of government tend to grind slowly. But in Wisconsin lately they are racing at turbocharged speed. In just the last few weeks, Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, has signed legislation to require voters to show photo identification cards at the polls and to deregulate elements of the telecommunications industry. And the Republican-dominated Legislature is now in the midst of advancing provisions to expand school vouchers, to allow people to carry concealed weapons, to cut financing for Planned Parenthood and to bar illegal immigrants from paying in-state tuition at Wisconsin's universities. Why the urgency? Republicans, who suddenly swept into control of this Capitol in last fall's elections, face a deadline of sorts. Though the lawmakers insist that their hurry-up offense is just living up to campaign promises, there is a threat looming: They are at risk of losing their newly won majority in the State Senate as early as next month. New, special elections are expected in as many as nine Senate districts (six of which are now held by Republicans) as part of the largest recall effort against state lawmakers in Wisconsin's history - an effort that grew out of yet another controversial measure Republicans pushed through this spring, a sharp reduction to collective bargaining rights for public workers.

With all due respect to Charles Dickens, it appears to be the worst of times for public and higher education in America, if not democracy itself; public schools are increasingly viewed as a business and are prized above all for customer satisfaction and efficiency, while largely judged through the narrow lens of empirical accountability measures. When not functioning as an adjunct of corporate value or a potentially lucrative for-profit investment, public schools are reduced to containment centers, holding institutions designed to largely punish young people marginalized by race and class.

The world is not, however, out of the woods if you read Peter Nolan's superb book, "Crossroads: The End of Wild Capitalism and the Future of Humanity." Nolan's thesis is that unrestrained capitalism, its extremes and its contradictions, have put China, the United States and the world of Islam on a collision course that gives the world "the choice of no choice." Either these three models of culture and capitalism will find constructive engagement, or the world as we know it is in extreme peril - either from economic instability and social reaction, military conflict, or environmental destruction, or all of the above.

It is difficult to describe this emotion. I'm used to disappointment, fairly comfortable with heartbreak, and am well acquainted with rage. Over the course of my lifetime, my presidents have been Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and now Obama…and each, in his own way, has been worse than the last.

Obama is not a flaccid Jimmy Carter, as some of his critics insist. He is instead a Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- but a Bizarro FDR. He has mustered the legislative strength of his New Deal predecessor, but he has channeled that strength into propping up the very forces of "organized money" that FDR once challenged.

On July 25th, for instance, while John Boehner raced around the Capitol desperately pressing Republican House members for votes on a debt-ceiling bill that Harry Reid was calling dead-on-arrival in the Senate, America's new ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, took his oath of office in distant Kabul.  According to the New York Times, he then gave a short speech "warning" that "Western powers needed to 'proceed carefully'" and emphasized that when it came to the war, there would "be no rush for the exits." If, in Washington, people were rushing for those exits, no chance of that in Kabul almost a decade into America's second Afghan War.  There, the air strikes, night raids, assassinations, roadside bombs, and soldier and civilian deaths, we are assured, will continue to 2014 and beyond.  In a war in which every gallon of gas used by a fuel-guzzling US military costs $400 to $800 to import, time is no object and -- despite the panic in Washington over debt payments -- neither evidently is cost.

Anyone who characterizes the deal between the President, Democratic, and Republican leaders as a victory for the American people over partisanship understands neither economics nor politics.

"So far, the Recovery Act is responsible for the jobs of about 2 million Americans who would otherwise be unemployed. ... [And] the Recovery Act is on track to save or create another 1.5 million jobs in 2010."

Project Censored has an illustrious history of drawing attention to stories that the mainstream press overtly censors or ignores through a corporate media culture that dismisses the existence of topics that threaten the status quo. The organization also promotes media literacy by educating the public about strategies that are used to disseminate misinformation and propaganda. With the forthcoming publication of the newest edition of Project Censored, Truthout interviewed long-time project Director Peter Phillips and current Director Mickey Huff to gain a sense how this project began, and how it intends to continue making an impact in a constantly transforming media landscape.

A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.

Officials' dismay at the now famed outburst was uniform. The cyberspace reaction, not so. Two words from one guy.

Ac­cord­ing to the Wall Street Journ­al: In a speech Wed­nesday, Mr. Obama will pro­pose cuts to en­tit­le­ment pro­grams, in­clud­ing Medicare and Medicaid, and chan­ges to Soci­al Secur­ity, a dis­cuss­ion he has lar­ge­ly left to De­moc­rats and Re­pub­licans in Con­gress. He also will call for tax in­creases for peo­ple mak­ing over $250,000 a year, a pro­pos­al con­tained in his 2012 bud­get, and chang­ing parts of the tax code he thinks be­nefit the wealthy. Until now, Mr. Obama has been lar­ge­ly ab­sent from the rag­ing de­bate over the long-term de­ficit. The White House has done lit­tle with the re­com­menda­tions of its own bi­par­tisan de­ficit com­miss­ion. And Mr. Obama's 2012 bud­get didn't offer many new ideas for tackl­ing en­tit­le­ment spend­ing, among the bi­ggest long-term drains on the feder­al bud­get. The White House move caught De­moc­rats in Con­gress off guard, ac­cord­ing to aides, and de­tails of the pre­sident's pro­pos­als were sketchy. Mr. Plouf­fe said the pre­sident will name a dol­lar amount for de­ficit re­duc­tion, al­though the White House would­n't pro­vide specifics. In­troduc­ing taxes into the dis­cuss­ion has the poten­ti­al to com­plicate the re­solu­tion of com­ing bud­get fights, specifical­ly the need to raise the debt ceil­ing, a move needed to pre­vent the U.S. de­fault­ing on its debt.