{"id":15628,"date":"2015-12-24T09:02:29","date_gmt":"2015-12-24T14:02:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=15628"},"modified":"2015-12-24T09:04:39","modified_gmt":"2015-12-24T14:04:39","slug":"americas-dying-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=15628","title":{"rendered":"America\u2019s Dying Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

America\u2019s Dying Democracy<\/a><\/h3>\n

Democracy, as a noble principle of self-governance, is fading away in big ways and small, with special interests seizing control of both media and politicians and with the people increasingly manipulated and misinformed. In this impassioned appeal, Bill Moyers calls it \u201cthe fight of our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/header>\n

\n
\n

In the fall of 2001, in the aftermath of 9\/11, as families grieved and the nation mourned, Washington swarmed with locusts of the human kind: wartime opportunists, lobbyists, lawyers, ex-members of Congress, bagmen for big donors: all of them determined to grab what they could for their corporate clients and rich donors while no one was looking.<\/p>\n

Across the land, the faces of Americans of every stripe were stained with tears. Here in New York, we still were attending memorial services for our firemen and police. But in the nation\u2019s capital, within sight of a smoldering Pentagon that had been struck by one of the hijacked planes, the predator class was hard at work pursuing private plunder at public expense, gold-diggers in the ashes of tragedy exploiting our fear, sorrow, and loss.<\/p>\n

\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

The World Trade Center\u2019s Twin Towers burning on 9\/11. (Photo credit: National Park Service)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

What did they want? The usual: tax cuts for the wealthy and big breaks for corporations. They even made an effort to repeal the alternative minimum tax that for 15 years had prevented companies from taking so many credits and deductions that they owed little if any taxes. And it wasn\u2019t only repeal the mercenaries sought; they wanted those corporations to get back all the minimum tax they had ever been assessed.<\/p>\n

They sought a special tax break for mighty General Electric, although you would never have heard about it if you were watching GE\u2019s news divisions \u2014 NBC News, CNBC, or MSNBC, all made sure to look the other way.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

America\u2019s Dying Democracy Democracy, as a noble principle of self-governance, is fading away in big ways and small, with special interests seizing control of both media and politicians and with the people increasingly manipulated and misinformed. In this impassioned appeal, Bill Moyers calls it \u201cthe fight of our lives.\u201d In the fall of 2001, in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[6963,171,204,927,512,1426,1882,11225,827,1796],"class_list":["post-15628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-consortium-news","tag-corporations","tag-democracy","tag-manipulation","tag-media","tag-misinformation","tag-self-governance","tag-special-interests","tag-united-states","tag-us-congress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15628"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15630,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15628\/revisions\/15630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}