Tag Archives: Equality

After $16 Billion Election, Nonprofit Tracking Money in Politics Lays Off 1/3 of Staff

“This is an absolutely devastating development on the precipice of the next administration,” said one journalist.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 11-8-2024 by Common Dreams

Image: OpenSecrets

Journalists and other critics of how money influences U.S. politics expressed alarm and disappointment in response to Friday reporting that shortly after the nation’s latest election, the research nonprofit OpenSecrets had to lay off a third of its staff.

Citing a current staffer, Politico‘s Daniel Lippman revealed that OpenSecrets “laid off 10 employees yesterday due to financial difficulties” and “much of the research team were among the casualties, which constituted around a third of the group’s total headcount.”

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Trump’s Project 2025 is already underway in Argentina, and it’s terrifying

If you can bear to see how Trump would implement Project 2025, look to Argentina – a lab for the global far right

By Diana Cariboni. Published 11-7-2024 by openDemocracy

Argentine president Javier Milei. Photo: Mídia NINJA/CC

As the world absorbs the shockwave of Donald Trump’s win in the US presidential election, the playbook for his second term, designed by a handful of right-wing extremists, is already underway in Argentina.

Project 2025 is set out in a nearly 900-page ‘Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise’, produced by the Heritage Foundation, a rightwing US think tank, as a ready reckoner for the incoming Trump administration. It details authoritarian tactics that exist in various parts of the world, from attacking public education to dismantling policies to tackle climate change to restricting the rights of women, LGBTIQ+ people, migrants, workers and Black people. But if there is one country already trying some of Project 2025’s most extreme policies to weaken the state and render the enjoyment of rights obsolete, it is Argentina.

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In Tiny State of Maine, a Big Election Day Win Against Dark Money in Politics

“Our greatest hope is to restore people’s faith in our democracy and increase participation across the board,” said the chair of the campaign behind the measure likely bound for the U.S. Supreme Court.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 11-6-2024 by Common Dreams

A sign in Maine promotes Question 1, which aims to get big money out of politics. (Photo: Maine Citizens to End Super PACs/Facebook)

As billionaire-backed Republicans dominated U.S. elections on Tuesday, voters in Maine—among the top 10 states in terms of smallest populations—overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure to limit political spending, an initiative that could reach the country’s top court.

Maine Question 1 targets super political action committees (PACs), dark money groups that, for the most part, are barred from directly contributing or coordinating with a candidate but can raise and spend unlimited amounts of funds.

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What poll watchers can − and can’t − do on Election Day

By Mollie J. Cohen and Geoffrey D. Sheagley. Published 11-4-2024 by The Conversation

Screenshot: WOWT

When most people think of their experience of voting in person, they may remember other voters at the polls, or the hardworking election officials checking people in and helping people submit their ballots. But in many elections, a third group is often present: poll watchers.

Poll watchers are ordinary citizens who volunteer to observe elections on behalf of an organization. Many of them do so on behalf of a specific political party. Other volunteers are nonpartisan poll watchers; they observe the action at polling places on behalf of nonpartisan organizations, including domestic groups and international election watchdogs such as the Carter Center or the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

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For one survivor, the 1920 Election Day massacre in Florida was ‘the night the devil got loose’

By Jerald Podair, Lawrence University. Published 11-1-2024 by The Conversation

A historical marker memorializing July Perry’s lynching Screenshot: YouTube

Mose Norman, a Black registered voter, was ready to cast his ballot for presidential candidate Warren G. Harding.

But when he arrived at his polling place on Election Day, Nov. 2, 1920, in the orange grove town of Ocoee, Florida, near Orlando, Norman was turned away by white election officials because of supposed unpaid poll taxes. His name and the names of hundreds of other registered Black voters had been removed from the rolls by white poll workers.

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‘BIG Victory for PA Voters’: US Supreme Court Denies GOP Bid to Block Thousands of Ballots

“This is a win for democracy and the rule of law,” said one ACLU attorney. “The bottom line is that voters deserve to have their voices heard.”

By Jessica Corbett. Published 11-1-2024 by Common Dreams

Photo: i_am_curiouskiwi/flickr/CC

After allowing Virginia Republicans’ voter registration purge earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday rejected a GOP effort to block thousands of ballots for the November 5 election from being counted in the key swing state of Pennsylvania.

Democratic elections lawyer and Democracy Docket founder Mark Elias called the decision “a BIG victory for PA voters.”

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‘This Is Just the Traceable Money’: $2 Billion Pumped Into 2024 Election by Billionaire Families

“It’s no secret that political spending is a huge way for billionaires to rig the system to their liking,” said Americans for Tax Fairness. “Enough is enough.”

By Julia Conley. Published 10-29-2024 by Common Dreams

Miriam Adelson at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s 2023 Annual Leadership Summit at the Venetian Convention & Expo Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. Photo: Gage Skidmore/flickr/CC

A new analysis out Tuesday shows that 150 of the nation’s wealthiest families have poured nearly $2 billion into this year’s U.S. election—the latest evidence bolstering calls for new taxes on the super rich and an end to unlimited campaign spending.

The new report from Americans for Tax Fairness, published Tuesday, shows how spending by 150 of the richest families in the U.S. has smashed campaign spending records, with $700 million more spent than the $1.2 billion that wealthy donors poured into the 2020 campaign.

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Threatening ‘the enemy within’ with force: Military ethicists explain the danger to important American traditions

National Guard at the George Floyd protests in Washington, DC Photo: Ted Eytan/flickr/CC

By Marcus Hedahl and Bradley Jay Strawser Published 10-25-2024 by The Conversation

On the campaign trail, former President Donald Trump has declared there are serious threats to the United States. First, he said, there is “the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within, and the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous,” as he told Fox News in an Oct. 13, 2024, interview.

He went on to say that “the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think. And it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military.”

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Foreign countries are helping autocracies repress exiled dissidents in return for economic gain

By Rebecca Cordell and Kashmiri Medhi Published 10-25-2024 by The Conversation

Demonstrators for Tibetan and Uyghur self-determination in front of China’s embassy in Washington DC. in 2008 Photo: futureatlas.com/flickr/CC

Governments, even democratic ones, are willing to aid autocracies in silencing exiled dissidents if the host nation thinks it’s in its economic interest.

That is what we found when looking into cases of transnational repression – the act of governments reaching across their national border to repress diasporas and exiles – from 2014 to 2020.

Since 2014, international watchdog Freedom House recorded 1,034 cases of governments reaching across borders to illegally deport, abduct, intimidate or assassinate their citizens.

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This US election marks a fork in world history

Both Trump and Harris are products of 1960s American politics – and that matters for what they stand for

By Anthony Barnett. Published 10-24-2024 by openDemocracy

Image: Public Policy Institute of California

With the recent deployment of the US’s most advanced anti-missile system to Israel, manned by American troops, it looks ever more likely that the US is preparing for war with Iran. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu may be planning an ‘October surprise’ in order to sway the upcoming presidential election in favour of Donald Trump. In such circumstances it seems sensible to hold off speculating on the future of America and the world until after the November election.

But this is also a special moment of high anxiety. We face what may be a definitive turning point in modern history. Personally, I feel my entire political life is on the block. It’s a strange sensation; one that combines a feeling of vindication that I’ve been right all along even as I sense the axe blade of modern fascism above my neck about to sever any hope for a progressive future.

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