Politics
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Lobbying for Loans
Desperate to save their businesses, the private companies who sell loans to college students have been heavily lobbying the government to keep subsidizing their loan programs. A bill that will overhaul the private loan industry recently passed in Congress with…
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Zinn On Anarchism, Majority Rule and The Nation State
“Rousseau once said, if I am part of a group of 100 people, do 99 people have the right to sentence me to death, just because they are majority? No, majorities can be wrong, majorities can overrule rights of minorities.…
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Morning Coffee
So many things we meant to mean to say. NYC’s edible schoolyard. Wired on why mold is as efficient as Japanese urban planners. Instead of changing the electoral college or senate systems, let’s just remake the states! Look, everyone, I’m…
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Rebecca Solnit On Looting
“And in disaster after disaster, at least since the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, those in power, those with guns and the force of law behind them, are too often more concerned for property than human life. In an emergency,…
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What Buildings Would You Ban?
“Fear, on one side, of watching Europe turn into “Eurabia” —even if the demographics don’t justify such worries—and, on the other, of seeing centuries’ worth of social liberalization—including women’s suffrage and gay rights—fall apart in the face of religious conservatism,…
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Water Causes Cancer And Other Truths
Time Magazine has already called it “The Decade From Hell.” (Couldn’t have been worse than the 1940’s?! Could it? I mean the 40’s had Hitler AND Stalin.) And if you have survived the “aughts” reasonably intact as we caterwaul our…
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If We Try, We Can All Push California Into The Ocean
I have a terrible admission to make. I used to work for a bunch of politicians. And not only that. Part of me enjoyed it. I didn’t enjoy the way my various state, federal and local bosses would fly off…
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The Rumpus Interview with Craig Walzer
“We need to be able to digest and give people who are very far away the time and space to tell their story in their own words
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Why Writers Should Not Run for Office
In this article about the political fortunes of writer, country singer and gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman, The Guardian reminds us that if history is any indication, writers should be wary of entering politics. “Consider the case of George Bernard Shaw,…
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Berlusconi in Tehran
In his piece for the London Review of Books, “Berlusconi in Tehran,” about the danger of authoritarian power within democracies, Slavoj Zizek examines the possible similarities between the victorious Iranian Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. In light of the…
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Politico Profiles HuffPo
From Michael Calderone at Politico’s recent profile of The Huffington Post: “While (The Huffington Post) wants to be taken seriously, much of its traffic is driven by entertainment and sex. While it ridicules mainstream media, it relies on it for much…
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Women Resexualized? Is Meat Sexist?
Since so many of us live in this paradoxical nation that is both obviously obsessed with women’s bodies, yet has a morbid fear of wardrobe malfunctions, there is no shortage of fascinating discussions online about the interconnections of women and…