"James Gustave Speth"-Toward a Post-Growth Society

"The good news is that more and more people sense at some level that there’s a great misdirection of life’s energy. We know we’re slighting the things that truly make life worthwhile. One survey found that 81 percent of Americans think the country is too focused on shopping and spending; 88 percent say American society is too materialistic."

Today, the reigning policy orientation holds that the path to greater well-being is to grow and expand the economy. Productivity, profits, the stock market, and consumption: all must go continually up. This growth imperative trumps all else. It is widely believed that growth is always worth the price that must be paid for it—even when it undermines families, jobs, communities, the environment, and our sense of place and continuity.

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"Leslie Savan"-Has Roger Ailes Hacked Americans' Phones for Fox News?

The following article first appeared on the Web site of The Nation. For more great content from the Nation, sign up for their e-mail newsletters here.

 “Has Roger Ailes been keeping tabs on your phone calls?”

That’s how Portfolio.com began a post back in 2008, when a former Fox News executive charged that Ailes had outfitted a highly secured “brain room” in Fox’s New York headquarters for “counterintelligence” and may have used it to hack into private phone records.

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"Joe Conason" -Will Obama Finally Play Hardball In Debt Ceiling Standoff?

At long last, President Obama seems to have run out of patience with the truculent Republicans who have rejected all of his overtures for a budget deal -- just as Moody's and other economic authorities again warned of the potentially catastrophic consequences of a debt default.

On Wednesday afternoon, Obama finally stood up at the bargaining table and walked out of the stalemated budget talks, telling House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., that he will "take this to the American people" unless the Republicans showed a real inclination to compromise. Exactly what the president meant by that remark is not yet clear, but some leading Republicans have now realized that pandering to their party's hard-line base could have serious consequences for them as well as for the country.

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"Danny Schechter"- The Legacy of Nelson Mandela

At 94, Nelson Mandela is still kicking, inspiring an international day of community service on Juy 18^th in his name. This seems to be an idea that Barack Obama borrowed for similar events in the USA. 

While activists and athletes and entertainers, are honoring him by responding to his call for engagement, journalists in the obit departments of the world’s news networks are quietly, even secretly, combing their archives for footage and tributes that will air when he moves on to the next world.  They are getting ready and seem to think it will happen sooner rather than later.

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"John T Bennett"-Pentagon Declares the Internet a Domain of War

The Pentagon released a long-promised cybersecurity plan Thursday that declares the Internet a domain of war.

The plan notably does not spell out how the U.S. military would use the Web for offensive strikes.

The Defense Department’s first-ever plan for cyberspace calls on the DoD to expand its ability to thwart attacks from other nations and groups, beef up its cyber workforce and expand collaboration with the private sector.

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"Matt Taibbi" - Greed, Excess and America's Gaping Class Divide

Some of the moments on the list are easily recalled – Berkshire Hathaway gazillionaire Charlie Munger's famous "suck it up and cope" quote, coming from a guy whose company was heavily invested in bailed-out banks, was an obvious inclusion – but others are quite shocking.

For instance, I was completely floored by the New York Times' pseudo-ironic take on the government's response to the financial crisis, a piece entitled "You Try to Live on $500K in This Town."

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"Lisa Graves"-Explaining the 'ALEC Exposed' Project

The Center for Media and Democracy has obtained copies of more than 800 model bills approved by corporations through ALEC meetings, after one of the thousands of people with access shared them, and a whistleblower provided a copy to the Center. We have analyzed and marked-up those bills and made them available at ALEC Exposed. 

In April 2011, some of the biggest corporations in the U.S. met behind closed doors in Cincinnati about their wish lists for changing state laws.  This exchange was part of a series of corporate meetings nurtured and fueled by the Koch Industries family fortune and other corporate funding.

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"David Swanson"- Murdoch Has Blood on His Hands

Nailing Rupert Murdoch for his employees' phone tapping or bribery would be a little like bringing down Al Capone for tax fraud, or George W. Bush for torture. I'd be glad to see it happen but there'd still be something perverse about it.

I remember how outraged Americans were in 2005 learning about our government's warrantless spying, or for that matter how furious some of my compatriots become when a census form expects them to reveal how many bathrooms are in their home.

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"Dennis Kucinich"- Debt Political Theater Diverts Attention While Americans' Wealth Is Stolen

The rancorous debate over the debt belies a fundamental truth of our economy -- that it is run for the few at the expense of the many, that our entire government has been turned into a machine which takes the wealth of a mass of Americans and accelerates it into the hands of the few. Let me give you some examples.

Take war. War takes the money from the American people and puts it into the hands of arms manufacturers, war profiteers, and private armies. The war in Iraq, based on lies: $3 trillion will be the cost of that war. The war in Afghanistan; based on a misreading of history; half a trillion dollars in expenses already. The war against Libya will be $1 billion by September.

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"Roger Bybee"- Why Won’t Obama and Democrats Defend the Public Sector?

“Government has to start living within its means, just like families do. We have to cut the spending we can’t afford so we can put the economy on sounder footing, and give our businesses the confidence they need to grow and create jobs.” —President Obama's recent presidential address

For the moment, it appears the Republicans have tossed aside what conservative columnist David Brooks called the “deal of the century” on the debt ceiling. Under this deal, President Obama would have agreed to a package of spending cuts (83 precent of deal) and revenue increases (17 percent) from closing some of the tax code’s most outrageous loopholes, like tax breaks for corporate jets.

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