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The Truth About Paul Ryan

Source: The Progressive

When REPUBLICAN LEADERS chose Representative Paul Ryan to give the response to President Obama’s State of the Union speech, they bestowed their blessing on this fast-rising star from Wisconsin’s First District.

His is the boyishly handsome face and cheery demeanor of free market fundamentalism—a philosophy that has devastated his own district with particularly acute suffering. And now, as the new chair of the House Budget Committee, Ryan promises more devastation for the rest of the nation. read more

The Last Circle in Libya

While the People’s Revolution in Tunisia and Egypt was largely non-violent, the revolution in Libya may turn more violent as the last of the palace guard circle around Colonel Qaddafi, his family and a small number of people with tribal ties to him.

Dancing with Dynamite in Latin America: Toward Freedom Editor West Coast Book Tour

Toward Freedom editor Ben Dangl will be on a west coast book tour in March with his new book, Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America.

“Ben Dangl breaks the sound barrier, exploding many myths about Latin America that are all-too-often amplified by the corporate media in the United States.  Read this much-needed book.”—Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!

In the past decade, grassroots social movements played major roles in electing left-leaning governments throughout Latin America, but subsequent relations between the streets and the states remain uneasy. In Dancing with Dynamite, award-winning journalist Benjamin Dangl explores the complex ways these movements have worked with, against, and independently of national governments. From dynamite-wielding miners in Bolivia to the struggles of landless farmers in Brazil and Paraguay, Dangl discusses the dance between movements and states in seven different Latin American countries. Using original research, lively prose, and extensive interviews with workers, farmers, and politicians, he suggests how Latin American social movement strategies could be applied internationally to build a better world now. read more

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How the Rich Soaked the Rest of Us

Source: Truthout

How the rich soaked the rest of us: The astonishing story of the last few decades is a massive redistribution of wealth, as the rich have shifted the tax burden.

Over the last half-century, the richest Americans have shifted the burden of the federal individual income tax off themselves and onto everybody else. The three convenient and accurate Wikipedia graphs below show the details. The first graph compares the official tax rates paid by the top and bottom income earners. Note especially that from the end of the Second World War into the early 1960s, the highest income earners paid a tax rate over 90 percent for many years. Today, the top earners pay a rate of only 35 percent. Note, also, how the gap between the rates paid by the richest and the poorest has narrowed. If we take into account the many loopholes the rich can and do use far more than the poor, the gap narrows even more. read more

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Climate: Putting people over money

Source: Al Jazeera

While debate about whether climate change is real or not continues in the US, the world’s leading producer of CO2 emissions per capita, those already living with the effects, like Jose Domingo Cruz in El Salvador, don’t have time to debate.

“Our storms are increasing in number and intensity,” Cruz, a member of his community Civil Protection Committee that responds to community needs during natural disasters, told Al Jazeera while standing on a levy that ruptured during Tropical Storm Agatha last year. “All of us attribute this to climate change.” read more