In a cover story of The Nation magazine, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig writes, “At the center of our government lies a bankrupt institution: Congress. Not financially bankrupt, at least not yet, but politically bankrupt.” He goes on to argue that, “Congress is the core of the problem with American democracy today. In a single line: There will be no change until we change Congress.”
Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Harvard Law School. Co-founder of the nonprofit Change Congress. His cover story in The Nation is titled, How to Get Our Democracy Back
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JUAN GONZALEZ: President Obama issued a rare rebuke to the Supreme Court during his State of the Union address last month over its decision in the Citizens United case. The Court’s landmark ruling allows corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money to elect and defeat candidates.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections. I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people. And I’d urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps correct some of these problems.
February 10th, 2010 | Posted in Web-Only Content | Read More »
hat tip: Democracy Now!
John Perkins calls himself a former economic hit man. He has seen the signs of today’s financial meltdown before. The subprime mortgage fiasco, the collapse of the banking industry, the rising unemployment rate—these are all familiar to him. Perkins was on the front lines of monitoring and helping create these very events that were once just confined to the Third World. From 1971 to 1981, he worked for the international consulting firm of Chas T. Main, where he was a self-described “economic hit man.” He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Confessions of An Economic Hit Man and The Secret History of the American Empire.
John Perkins, from 1971 to 1981, he worked for the international consulting firm of Chas T. Main, where he was a self-described “economic hit man.” He is the author of the bestselling Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. His latest book is called Hoodwinked: An Economic Hit Man Reveals Why the World Financial Markets Imploded and What We Need to Do to Remake Them.
AMY GOODMAN: The film is The End of Poverty? And we’re going to go to a clip of the film, where our next guest interviews the vice president of Bolivia. Yes, I’m talking about John Perkins, the bestselling author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. He is back with a new book. It’s called Hoodwinked: An Economic Hit Man Reveals Why the World Financial Markets Imploded—and What We Need to Do to Remake Them. We go now to John Perkins, in this clip from The End of Poverty?, interviewing Bolivia’s vice president, Alvaro Garcia Linera, for the film The End of Poverty?
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November 14th, 2009 | Posted in Web-Only Content | Read More »
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