Author: nick

[ad_1] Washington has spent years debating money in American politics while ignoring a simpler question: Should voters have the right to know who is spending that money to influence their elections? Today, the answer is too often no. Billions of dollars flow through an ecosystem of wealthy donors, corporations, special interests, nonprofits, and super PACs. Much of it is perfectly legal. But legal and ethical are not the same thing. The system has become so complex and intentionally opaque that voters can be bombarded with millions of dollars in political advertising without knowing who ultimately supplied the money. Both parties use the…

[ad_1] Austin Sarat ScheerPost While the Trump Administration has suffered numerous defeats in its effort to punish America’s leading universities, it has succeeded in many ways in changing the prevailing culture of American higher education.  This fall, students, faculty, and staff will be returning to colleges that are coping with the new realities of American higher education  And if we look back to the fall of 2020, when colleges began their work in the wake of the summer of George Floyd, the changes are even more dramatic. Some of them are obvious; some are more subtle.  Here, I am…

[ad_1] Bot farms, social media and a House committee letter reveal how Beijing is stoking Americans’ AI fears to slow down a race it’s losing on innovation. [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] A Review By STEVE WASSERMAN Last things first: Eve Babitz is a major minor L.A. writer who died five years ago at age 78. She spent nearly a quarter-century as a recluse, having suffered in 1997 a shocking and disfiguring accident while striking a match to light her Tiparillo. Her thin Indian skirt caught fire, searing her pantyhose into her flesh, leaving her with third-degree burns over more than half her body. She was lucky to survive. She had no health insurance. But she had famous boyfriends and a devoted sister who raised funds to save her. She…

[ad_1] Photograph Source: Sobsz – Public Domain When was the last time you watched a porn flick?  It doesn’t matter whether you are a woman or man, whether straight or gay, whether you watched it alone or with another, or whether it is a romantic, feminist or “gonzo” video.  Want to bet you saw it in the privacy of your home, on a digital TV, computer or mobile device like a smartphone or tablet, and that you accessed it via an internet connection? Over the last half-century, pornography has been increasingly “democratized” and, in the process, transformed.   Once upon a time men (and…

[ad_1] The Islamic Republic plans to criminalise even the exchange of ideas with non-Iranian institutions. [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] Lincoln Breaks the Interest Trap Ellen Brown In August 2026, the U.S. debt reached a gravity-defying $40 trillion, with an estimated fiscal year 2026 deficit of $2.1 trillion. Interest on the debt hit a record $1.4 trillion over the last 12 months and now consumes more than any federal program except Social Security and Medicare, eclipsing defense spending for the first time in U.S. history. Paid with borrowed money, interest compounds exponentially, making it the fastest-growing part of the budget, far outpacing economic growth. By 2036, the Congressional Budget Office projects interest costs will double to $2.1 trillion,…

[ad_1] The Paradox of Rich College, Poor Town [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] Nolan Higdon Substack How the Establishment Neutralizes Economic Populism “Democratic Socialists Occupy Wall Street 2011 Shankbone” by david_shankbone is licensed under CC BY 2.0. “I’ll just make it clear, there’s no way I’m ever coming out for El-Sayed right now. And like, until—you know, this is a guy who has made it very clear his views toward—and has refused to back off his views toward Jewish Americans. And I hope he comes out and clarifies where he is. I also hope that he does the right thing and condemns Hasan Piker clearly and the language very clearly.” This statement, made by Representative…

[ad_1] Photo by Thierry K Another bleak warning, another round of Cassandra calls about humanity’s immaculate sense of destructive self.  This month, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres and the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (ICRC) Mirjana Spoljaric Egger issued a joint appeal stating that, “We are now dangerously close to crossing a moral red line: the autonomous targeting of humans by machines.”  Both insist that two types of autonomous weapons – unpredictable autonomous weapons and anti-personnel weapons – be prohibited. In Geneva, the chief of disarmament affairs at UN Geneva, Mélanie Régimbal, held up the fort by reiterating the…