Cronies: "Texas has always had a substandard educational system. That lack of quality education contributes to the increasing stratification of Texas society. And that disparity wil continue. In 1958, the economist John Kenneth Galbraith wrote about the dangers of the United States' becoming a nation dedicated to 'private affluence and public squalor'. That's a perfect description of Texas, a state in which the poor are wretchedly poor and the rich are wretchedly rich and getting richer. And the state's politicians have little apparent desire to deal with either extreme. The state's inequitable tax system assures that the poorest citizens will continue to pay state and local taxes at rates four times those paid by the state's wealthiest citizens. And with no state income tax, there is no way for the state to wring more tax dollars out of the Big Rich.
The inequities of Texas' tax structure and crumbling social services system have yet to hurt the state's political and business elite. And it's doubtful that they will. Texas will continue dominating America - and the world - and now it's exporting its low-tax, low-service model to the rest of America."
2:40:45 PM
Electablog: "Between W's often garbled sentences and Cheney's occasional expletives, it may seem a bit hard to believe that much of the language and messaging that has been powering the Bush campaign has been built up over the last three decades. Millions of the dollars and years of strategic development have led to the recent GOP ascension. At the core of this movement is the framing of issues and the use of language.
One of the experts on how this strategy was developed is George Lakoff, Professor of Linguistics and Cognitive Science. In the video piece How Progressives and Democrats Can Win, Lakoff describes how the Right has used language and the framing of issues to their advantage and offers some thoughts about how Progressives can respond."
(Via CultureKitchen)
Start-Page for the Progressive Movement.
10:51:56 AM
