webodec3ARCHIVEPreview
Open in TheBrain

CIVIL SOC BAK

8 25

primary 11 24 resistance 2

NO BAK

---

lewis black comic, annual survey vote?

Write to us at info@corporateaccountability.org or call us at +1-800-688-8797 (U.S.).

Corporate Accountability

10 Milk St, Suite 610, Boston, MA 02108

---

---

---

an 8 25

Donald Trump is constitutionally prohibited from being elected to a third term in office, but that's not stopping his super political action committee from raising eye-popping sums of money.

A report from the Brennan Center for Justice released on Tuesday found that MAGA Inc., the main super PAC supporting Trump's political campaigns, raised an "unprecedented" sum of $200 million between last November's presidential election and the end of June 2025. This massive war chest is more than six times the amount that former President Joe Biden's super PAC raised between the November 2020 election and the end of June 2021.

The Brennan Center also said that MAGA Inc. has become "almost exclusively a game for the richest of the rich," with 96% of the money it's received over the last seven-plus months coming "from donors who gave more than $1 million each." This massive fundraising haul raises serious questions about where this money is going, presuming that Trump isn't going to try to run for an unconstitutional third term.

The biggest donors to the super PAC have been entities that might benefit from regulatory or policy changes that the government could enact: Energy Transfer, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, donated $25 million; investor Jeffrey Yass, whose company Susquehanna International Group owns a large stake in the parent company of Chinese social media app TikTok, donated $16 million; and Foris Dax Inc., the firm behind Crypto.com, donated $10 million.

Advocacy group Public Citizen on Monday took a look at the donations pouring into MAGA Inc. and found that cryptocurrency companies, executives, and investors had forked over a total of $41.7 million to the PAC, while fossil fuel companies and executives had shelled out $26.8 million.

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

Jon Golinger, democracy advocate for Public Citizen, said that the massive sums being given to the PAC should raise real questions about corruption.

"The real question this mega-donor list raises is not 'how much,' but 'who from?'" he said. "By taking contributions from wealthy individuals and industries who want something from government, Trump's super PAC has used pay-to-play to raise big money from special interests like a legalized shakedown."

The Brennan Center similarly raised corruption concerns and said the super PAC's dealings were yet another example of how the{U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission to scrap all limits on campaign donations from corporations and outsized interest groups had damaged the integrity of American politics.}:

"The degree to which wealthy donors appear to be using super PAC contributions to curry favor with the Trump administration once again illustrates how wrong the Supreme Court was... when it predicted that the 'independence' of groups like super PACs would prevent them from becoming vehicles for real or perceived corruption," the Brennan Center wrote.

A report from Politico last week suggested that the MAGA Inc. war chest could give Trump unprecedented power for an incumbent president to influence the 2026 midterm elections.

"Having millions of dollars at Trump's disposal—an unheard of amount for a sitting president who cannot run again—could allow him to become one of the biggest single players in next year's midterms, alongside long-standing GOP stalwarts like the Congressional Leadership Fund and Senate Leadership Fund," explained Politico. "Trump could boost his preferred candidates in GOP primaries, or flood the zone in competitive general election races in an effort to help Republicans keep control of Congress."

Trump has not yet ruled out running for a third term in office even though the United States Constitution's 22nd Amendment explicitly states that "no person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice."

NOW READ:The one big reason why most Republicans are acting irrationally — without consequences

---

---

it’s baaaack 525 an

House Republicans on Monday quietly revived a proposal that would grant the Trump administration broad authority to crush nonprofits it views as part of the political opposition, from environmental justice organizations to news outlets.

Fight for the Future and other advocacy groups called attention to the measure, which was buried in the final pages of the House Ways and Means Committee's draft reconciliation bill, starting on page 380.

A markup hearing for the legislation is scheduled to take place on Tuesday at 2:30 pm ET.

The proposal would empower the U.S. Treasury Department to revoke the tax-exempt status of nonprofits deemed material supporters of terrorism, with only a hollow simulacrum of due process for the accused organizations. It is already illegal for nonprofits to provide material support for terrorism.

"The House is about to hand the Trump administration the ability to strip nonprofits of their 501(c)3 status without any reason or recourse. This is a five-alarm fire for nonprofits nationwide," said Lia Holland, campaigns and communications director at Fight for the Future. "If the text of last autumn's H.R. 9495 is passed in the budget, any organization with goals that do not line up with MAGA can be destroyed with a wink from Trump to the Treasury."

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

The measure passed the Republican-controlled House late last year with the support of more than a dozen Democrats, but it never received a vote in the Senate.

"This terribly thought-out legislation means that under the current administration, every environmental, racial justice, LGBTQ+, gender justice, immigration justice, and—particularly—any anti-genocide organization throughout the country may be on the chopping block," said Holland. "If Democrats capitulate to the wanton destruction of crucial civil society institutions, they had better expect civil society to burn them to the ground for that betrayal."

The GOP's renewed push for what opponents have called the "nonprofit killer bill" comes as the Trump administration wages war on nonprofit organizations, threatening to strip them of their tax-exempt status as part of a sweeping attack on the president's political opponents.

"In the months since inauguration, Trump and his Cabinet have found other means of cracking down on political speech—particularly speech in favor of Palestinians—by deporting student activists andrevokinghundreds of student visas. He has already threatened to attempt to revoke the tax-exempt status of Harvard University, part of his larger quest to discipline and punish colleges," journalist Noah Hurowitz wrote for The Intercept late Monday.

"But the nonprofit clause of the tax bill would give the president wider power to go after organizations that stand in his way," Hurowitz added.

Robert McCaw, government affairs director at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Monday that "this provision is the latest in a growing wave of legislative attacks on constitutional rights."

"CAIR is urging every member of the Ways and Means Committee to VOTE NO on the inclusion of this provision and to support an expected amendment to strike the language," the group said in a statement. "Three Democratic members of the committee—Reps. Brad Schneider (Ill.), Tom Suozzi (N.Y.), and Jimmy Panetta (Calif.)—previously voted in favor of the Nonprofit Killer Bill on the House floor last year. They must reverse course and vote to oppose it in committee."

NOW READ:This single Trump Order scares me the most

---

---

ymail 11 24

At People For the American Way, we’re leading the charge for a better future. This is a pivotal moment, and it demands bold action. That’s why we’ve launched a nationwide campaign to Resist Project 2025, protect our progress, and empower communities to fight back.

None of what we have planned will be possible without your support – please chip in today. >>

Federal Resistance Efforts: Resist Project 2025

Resist Project 2025 will combat the threats posed by the Trump administration and his subservient House and Senate. The campaign lays the foundation for local, state and federal-level resistance and envisions an America where democracy thrives, every vote counts equally, and courts deliver justice for all – not just the wealthy and powerful.

Our work through Resist Project 2025 focuses on three critical areas:

This initiative is about more than just resisting – it’s about building a vision for a better future and empowering Americans to take action in the face of authoritarianism.

Join us by supporting our Resist Project 2025 campaign! >>

Advocating at the State and Local Levels

Resistance doesn’t just happen in Washington – it’s built in communities across the country. That’s why we’re expanding our focus to include advocacy and activism at the state and local levels, where so many decisions that affect our daily lives are made. With your support, we’ll:

Help us mobilize activists in your community! >>

How We’re Taking Action

This is just the beginning. With your support, we’ll also:

Your Role in This Movement

This fight is urgent, and it requires all of us. Your donation powers the tools, training, and advocacy needed to stand up to Trump and his authoritarian allies.

With Your Help, We Can:

---

---

---

campbell endorse slightly diff wording, Simitian out 6 24

---

i mean primarily 1) organization for good governance, fair elections, protection of the commons, eg public citizen pirgs

but also 2) opposite of putman bowling alone? SEE CIVIC VIRTUE / TRUST

in terms of latter, scam pacs are "corrosive" because when (elderly) find they have been defrauded by cash extraction scheme, it makes them less likely to want to participate in democracy/ the work of civil society. that's a kind of commons?

in a related  matter, Putin active measures are designed to degrade out faith in institutions (and rw gop libtards work on degrading trust in gov't in particular) and in each other; polarization --> polarysis.

---

related to norms?

--=

---

:{:{May 13, 2024 rww}:

Just as they prophesied Trump’s victory and collaborated in the 2020 attempted coup, the Trump wing of the New Apostolic Reformation is on the offensive once again, waging a campaign in counties they think will swing the 2024 presidential election.

True the Vote is enlisting private citizens to help it overwhelm under-staffed and under-resourced election offices with voter roll challenges ahead of election day.

Rep. David Zimmerman’s bill is the latest carefully spun attempt to inject a right-wing brand of Christianity into schools in hopes of bringing more children to Jesus. It has already happened in Texas and Florida.

The freshman member from Georgia doesn’t have much of a legislative record, but he sure can stir up trouble online.

Johnny McEntee, the former White House Trump aide closely linked to plans for radical federal government reform should Donald Trump win re-election, stoked outrage with a TikTok video in which he claimed to give unhoused people fake money, thereby to ensure their arrest.

As Donald Trump remarks on “the late, great Hannibal Lecter,” perhaps the former president ought to just give up on pop culture references altogether.

---

---

see stop the steAL, ~ult norm

Donie O'Sullivan is a reporter for CNN. His beat appears to be American conspiracy theories. He was on Anderson Cooper's show last night with reporting on a QAnon conference last weekend during which former Donald Trump adviser and pardoned traitor Michael Flynn said a Myanmar-style military coup "should happen" in America.

That some people in this country long for purifying violence to "reinstate" Donald Trump to his "rightful place" is not what got my attention, though. What did was Donie O'Sullivan's editorial remark at the end of his report. This is what he said:

I spend a lot of time reading these pro-Trump forums, reading these QAnon forums online, and speaking to Trump supporters, and I will say of all the conspiracy theories we hear, this talk from Americans about a coup, cheering a coup, and hoping for a coup, in the United States is one of the most chilling things I hear.

Before I go on, I should say O'Sullivan appears to be an immigrant. (I think he's Irish, given his accent.) As such, I don't expect him to be as attuned to American political culture as I'd expect a native-born American to be. Indeed, as a non-native, I'd expect him to be more attuned to the American civic religion than native-born Americans generally are, because fealty to the civic religion is so often demanded of immigrants....

==

aha: civil society moderating protects norms eg CLC: Comm Cause in news 10/20

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/transparent-political-ploy-florida-attorney-general-asks-fbi-to-investigate-bloombergs-efforts-to-restore-felon-voting-rights/

florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, a Republican, has asked the FBI and the state’s Department of Law Enforcement to investigate former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg‘s efforts to help felons in the state regain their voting rights by paying their court fees, citing “potential violations of election laws.”

Bloomberg has over the last week raised more than $16 million from individuals and private organizations, which he said would go towards paying down fines and fees for nearly 32,000 Black and Latinx Florida voters with felony records. A controversial Florida law forbids former felons from voting unless and until they pay off all money they owe the courts or other legal parties. Critics have called it a “modern day poll tax.”

Florida attorney general Ashley Moody said in the letter that the office of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis had asked her to look into the issue, CNN reported Wednesday.

“After preliminarily reviewing this limited public information and law, it appears further investigation is warranted,” Moody wrote in a letter to the agencies....

---

---

doh i had seen as escalator/echo source of hype fear

an 7 22

The internet and the digital revolution have changed journalism dramatically in the United States and other countries. What were once strictly weeklies (Time, Newsweek) now function as dailies on their websites, and daily newspapers like the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune aim for a national audience. Moreover, something that would have been treated like strictly local news 25 or 30 years ago — for example, two people getting into an angry political argument in a local convenience store in Nevada — can easily become a national story in online journalism.

In the high-tech journalism landscape of 2022, according to Axios reporter Sara Fischer, one of the things that is suffering the most is local journalism. And Fischer, in an article published by Axios on July 4, points out that this “local news crisis” is aggravating the United States’ political divisions.

Discussing a new report from Northwestern University in the Chicago area, Fischer explains, “Around two newspapers in the U.S. are closing every week, according to a new report, suggesting the local news crisis spurred by the pandemic will worsen in coming years. Why it matters: Hyperlocal communities are being disproportionately impacted by the fall of local newspapers compared to bigger cities.”

READ MORE: [Ford Foundation president calls for Americans to overcome a ‘toxic culture of absolutism’

Penelope Muse Abernathy, a visiting professor at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing Communications and the report’s primary author, described theshortage of local journalism as “a crisis for our democracy and our society” in an official statement on the report. And she elaborated during an interview with Axios.

Abernathy told Axios, “While the economic decline in many communities was occurring prior to the rise of news deserts, the loss of a local news organization will leave local residents without the critical information to begin to address those problems.At a minimum, the loss of local news worsens the political, cultural and economic divisions in this country."

Fischer notes that “news deserts” in the U.S. tend to have more poverty and less education than areas that aren’t news deserts.

“The average median annual income of a home in a news desert is $15,000 less than the average U.S. household,” Fischer observes. “Only 20% of adults living in news deserts have bachelor’s degrees compared to 38% in the U.S. The lack of reliable local news compounds governance issues that make communities less efficient and prosperous.”

Fischer describes the “local newspaper sector” as being “in in a state of terminal decline.”

“More than 360 newspapers shuttered between late 2019 and May 2022, according to the report,” Fischer explains. “The vast majority of those papers were printed weekly. At this rate, the country is on track to lose more than one-third of its total newspapers by 2025. It's already lost more than a quarter, 2500, since 2005.”

---

---

see civil virtue/ responsibility

aha2 bowling alone (globalization/ outsourcing, corporatization walmarting of rural rust belt] led to kids leaving, all sorts of other problems, rw talk radio proposed enemy/scapegoat solution ol time religion --> echo/escalator polarization that just made problems worse which called for trump i lone can fix it --> nazis on florida overpass /cda truckers....

aha:  echo is isolation from Earth1, legit press info (ie ideas/info you do not want b/c does not fit your POV) and escalator= AMPLIFY/ BOOST/ PROPAGATE TO MORE PPL AND MORE INFLUENTIAL/INFECTIOUS PPL/ SOURCES; boost is boosted by algorithm and hype hate anger fear is monetized which is both an incentive and an extra further boost --> runaway mode

an 2 22 edit bd

On February 15, Bloomberg ran a story about the “freedom convoy” that seemed to illustrate Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theory of stupidity.

Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran minister who was part of the German resistance to the Nazi Party and to Adolf Hitler’s rise. His book, The Cost of Discipleship, is a meditation on “The Sermon on the Mount” in which Bonhoeffer splits the Christian concept of grace in two.

On the one hand is “cheap grace,” which is “without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”

On the other hand, Bonhoeffer said, is “costly grace.” It “confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him.”

Indeed, resisting fascism by submitting “to the yoke of Christ” and following him cost him dearly. At age 39, the Nazis hanged him.

His theory of stupidity is featured in a letter written to friends a few years earlier. The letter, which is now known as “After Ten Years,” argues that evil like the Nazis isn’t the worst thing. Stupidity is.

“One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force,” he wrote. “Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless.”

Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.

Bloomberg reporters Jen Skerritt and Robert Tuttle were covering protests of the Canadian government’s requirement that truck drivers delivering freight across the US-Canadian border must be vaccinated.

Protests in Alberta and Manitoba, dubbed the “freedom convoy,” took the form of blockades of bridges and trucking routes, at odds with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s declaration of emergency powers.

Skerritt and Tuttle interviewed one trucker. His name is Jake Klassen. His two campers and semi were in the blockade. He said Trudeau’s emergency powers were an attempt to “take everything from us.”

Then there is this part:

Klassen said he hasn’t been able to visit his nine-year-old daughter in months. She is receiving palliative care at St. Amant, a care residence in Winnipeg, but due to restrictions that require visitors to be fully vaccinated, Klassen and his wife can’t see her.

“Yes, that's absolutely stunning and sad,” said Victoria Barnett.

Barnett was director of programs on ethics, religion and the Holocaust at the National Holocaust Museum. She’s the author of many books on interfaith history. She edited a 2017 translation of “After Ten Years.” I asked if Jake Klassen exemplifies Bonhoeffer’s theory of stupidity.

Maybe, but as part of a bigger phenomenon. “After Ten Years” was his attempt to understand the first 10 years of National Socialism and what had happened to his compatriots, his church, his country.

He's trying to figure out why most Germans caved to Nazi ideology and why they became integral to what happened. The historian Klemens von Klemperer (himself a refugee) called the Third Reich a "consensual dictatorship" -- which is a pretty good description.

Go into that a bit more please. How was it consensual?

His main point is that stupidity is a moral failure, not an intellectual one. He's reflecting on the process by which people willfully become part of a larger movement or political group, etc. As they become increasingly involved, two things tend to happen:

  1. They become isolated(or they isolate themselves) from those who disagree with them or challenge them (and I would say also from news sources that would challenge their worldview) and
  2. They get a lot of reinforcement. One of the things that happened in 1933 after Hitler came to power was that Nazi Party organizations were founded for every demographic group – teachers, housewives, kids, etc. Everyone suddenly had a badge, a uniform, meetings to go to, new friends to meet etc. — and that was a big factor in creating a new sense of a larger German community serving a "grander" purpose (in the Nazi mindset).

A big part of that, of course, was identifying enemies and those who needed to be excluded -- Jewish citizens, political opponents, critical journalists, etc. But that early formation of consensus made life much harder, even by the end of 1933, for people who didn't agree with it.

What you're describing is collectivism, no?

The self-understanding of the German Volk was a collective concept personified by the "Fuhrer.” That's a big part of authoritarian or fascist regimes. Authoritarian leaders can do things without parliamentary approval, because they represent the "true" will of "the people."

But that also created a dynamic in Nazi Germany in which there was this mass adoration – almost a mass hysteria – for the person of Adolf Hitler. There are paintings portraying him as a messianic figure.

Bonhoeffer said there is no defense against stupidity. But if it's a moral failing, wouldn't a defense be private and public morality?

Ideally, yes.

Bonhoeffer's essay is an exploration of why that didn't happen. (Elsewhere, he explores the lack of civil courage) But Nazi Germany is a disturbing case study in the failure of leaders, institutions (such as the church), etc., to stand up in an effective way to National Socialism.

The best and bravest people were either arrested early on or got out. But he's pondering (and I think this is autobiographical) the failure of good decent people critical of the regime to be more effective.

That didn't happen. (Along the way, one must acknowledge that many of them became complicit). But by staying in and working from inside the regime, they also failed to offer a clearer example of resistance.

That's why by 1942 Bonhoeffer believes (as he writes here) that "only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity."

The trucker above says he's seeking liberation, too. Liberation from responsibility. How would Bonhoeffer persuade a man that he has agency and can visit his dying daughter by making the right choice?

One thing DB ignores is the psychology of all this. (He describes stupidity as a sociological problem). In Nazi Germany, we're also looking at the pressures and dynamics within a fascist police state.

In other circumstances, however (eg, the truckers' protests), this gets back to the peer pressures within a group that’s getting its information only from certain sources, in which there is a lot of pressure to conform to the will of the group (and a reward for doing so).

I've studied this in terms of the psychology of group behavior in Nazi Germany, but the literature on personality cults, mob behavior, etc., shows that the longer and more deeply a person gets involved in something like this, the less individual agency they perceive they have.

For Bonhoeffer personally -- he wrote as a theologian and person of deep faith -- that faith has the capacity to make someone see more clearly. But “After Ten Years” is a rather bleak assessment.

I'm reminded of something Michael Josephson said in 1989:

Success can be defined so many different ways but right now it is defined in a kind of how high is your position, how many people work for you, how high is your salary. When you get into that kind of yuppie version of success,you’re going to sacrifice things along the way.There’s not enough commitment to the ground rules of civil virtue.

A society focused on "success" (greed, selfishness) is a society in which a man won't do the right thing to see his dying daughter and as a consequence, will make sacrifices he can’t reverse along the way.

He's making an important point about what we value publicly and how that affects the individual's ethics and sense of responsibility.

I've been very disturbed by some of the very callous reactions during the pandemic – eg, the minimization of the deaths in nursing homes, the rush to get back to normal when thousands of people are still getting sick and dying (and when large sectors of the population -- children under the age of 6 -- can't yet be vaccinated).

But as I saw somewhere, the scale of the callousness has been on display for some time now in how we've dealt with school shootings, the high level of violence in our society and the much higher levels of violence experienced by people of color and the poor.

A society is measured in part by what we are willing to live with and by whether we are willing to change to make life better. Bonhoeffer, in his text, addresses this when he writes about the responsibility we are willing to take upon ourselves for the sake of a different future.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seems to be doing what Bonhoeffer wished more Germans had done. He called out conservatives in the Parliament for standing with the Swastika and the Confederate flag.

I interviewed a number of Germans back in the 1980s when I was working on my first book (a collection of oral histories from people who had been in the Confessing Church) and I recall Kurt Scharf (a very brave pastor, who would later became a bishop) saying thatif Germans had held mass demonstrations and marched in 1933 in solidarity with German Jews, they might have changed things.

Impossible to know in retrospect, that’s what’s important here (and for understanding Bonhoeffer as well) -- taking a public position not only draws a line for what can be tolerated, but it also serves as a model to others that it is possible to speak out. That's what he was writing about in the section on the lack of civil courage among Germans.

---

---

fraudit --> death threats ppl quit eg san luis obispo

https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/election-workers-2653372964/

---

---

https://billmoyers.com/story/gop-led-legal-inquest-into-bloomberg-helping-florida-felons-vote-condemned-as-attempted-voter-suppression/

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody’s call for state and federal investigations into billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s effort to raise millions to pay off court fees to help Florida felons restore their voting rights was a “gross abuse” of power, “voter suppression,” “a fear-mongering tactic used before” and based on a “fundamental misconception” of anti-corruption laws, according to experienced campaign lawyers and former federal election regulators.

“It’s not just that an investigative process and grand jury proceedings would likely extend past Election Day, but also that we’ve seen this fearmongering tactic used before,” said Jonathan Diaz, legal counsel at the Campaign Legal Center in Washington, D.C., founded by Trevor Potter, a Republican and ex-Federal Election Commission (FEC) chair. “There are countless examples of elected officials or law enforcement announcing ‘bombshell’ investigations like this with no evidence of actual wrongdoing (for example, recentlyin Texas and Georgia) and indeed, no actual conclusions that any misconduct has taken place.”

It’s “outrageous and likely an extortionate threat designed to suppress the vote and deny citizens their constitutional right to vote,” said Benedict Kuehne, the Miami attorney whose team recently won a settlement to save digital images of ballots if there’s a presidential election recount. “Not at all unexpected. But still an abuse of power.”

---

see state of exemption margiALization

intercept 320

iCE’s New York Office Uses a Rigged Algorithm to Keep Virtually All Arrestees in Detention. The ACLU Says It’s Unconstitutional.

Sam Biddle

ICE is using an algorithm to determine whether detainees should be released or not, but eliminated options for both release and bond.

READ MORE →

==

---

damage eg:

Election integrity experts have warned that alleged scam PACs are siphoning tens of millions of dollars in political donations into the coffers of fundraisers each year, while misleading donors.

Lynne Archer, 72, gave the Conservative Majority Fund $3,800 between 2012 and 2018. Archer said she tries to be wary of potential scams, but the Conservative Majority Fund had always sounded “like a legitimate group” when it solicited money.

“Damn, I gave a lot to them,” said Archer, who lives in Sugar Land, Texas, and works for her husband at an automobile dealership. “I don’t like that at all.”

Noti, who used to work at the FEC, called the proliferation of scam PACs “incredibly corrosive to American democracy” because of the impact on donors like Archer — many of them elderly — who give money in good faith to political causes.

“It’s going to chase people out of the system once those donors realize their money’s been stolen,” Noti said. “They’re going to be disillusioned and disenchanted, and rightfully so.”

==

diversity?

mitchell the nation amazon

As a result of the economic shifts that Amazon is helping to propel, the country is being divided into a starkly unequal geography. Only a handful of metro areas are gaining significant numbers of good jobs from Big Tech. And as the formation of new businesses declines, they’re also being consolidated into fewer places: In contrast with previous recoveries, when new firms were widely dispersed, half of all businesses started between 2010 and 2014 were located in just five metro areas. Even winning cities are marked by disparity: In Seattle, where Amazon is headquartered, the median home value now exceeds $700,000, while the unsheltered homeless population doubled over 10 years. It’s not hard to imagine a future in which Amazon’s cashier-less supermarkets and nondescript bookstores populate better-off neighborhoods, while other communities become increasingly barren of commercial activity.

In the left-behind towns and neighborhoods, the despair that has set in stems from more than just economic hardship. There is a pervasive sense of powerlessness that is toxic to democracy. In 1946, the sociologist C. Wright Mills and the economist Melville J. Ulmer published a detailed study of several matched pairs of cities. The cities in each pair were similar in all respects except for one main difference: One city’s economy was composed of many locally owned firms, while the other’s was largely controlled by absentee corporations. The cities that possessed a degree of local economic power had a bigger middle class and a greater variety of jobs, Mills and Ulmer found. But their most important findings had to do with civic health. The cities with a robust local economy invested more in public infrastructure and services, and their residents were involved in community affairs in greater numbers.

==

==

Civil society is the "aggregate of non-governmental organizations and institutions that manifest interests and will of citizens."[1] Civil society includes the family and the private sphere, referred to as the "third sector" of society, distinct from government and business.[2]Dictionary.com's 21st Century Lexicon defines civil society as 1) the aggregate of non-governmental organizations and institutions that manifest interests and will of citizens or 2) individuals and organizations in a society which are independent of the government.[1]

Sometimes the term civil society is used in the more general sense of "the elements such as freedom of speech, an independent judiciary, etc, that make up a democratic society" (*Collins English Dictionary*).[3] Especially in the discussions among thinkers of Eastern and Central Europe, civil society is seen also as a concept of civic values. One widely known representative of this concept is the Polish former dissident Adam Michnik.

Volunteering is often considered a defining characteristic of the organizations that constitute civil society, which in turn are often called "NGOs", "NPOs", or CSOs. Most authorities have in mind the realm of public participation in voluntary associations, trade unions and the like,[4] but it is not necessary to belong to all of these to be a part of civil society.

Contents

  [hide] 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_society

Institutions

---

21 B (2 words) - 12:44, 2 April 2004

The '''International Parliamentary and Civil Society Mission to Investigate the Political Transition in Iraq''' is also known as

4 KB (661 words) - 20:31, 27 March 2008

...ex.php?pID=1077&PHPSESSID=4cb2912adab7970bcfef584d05b03c3d Mission],Civil Society Project, accessed January 2011. ...uilding of a 'values' society. "Although vague and often ambiguous, "civil society" advocates intend to shrink government by handing over responsibility for m

3 KB (388 words) - 05:12, 4 January 2011

...ed to the protection and expansion of democracy and to strengthening civil society." [http://www.impacs.org/]

8 KB (1,092 words) - 19:17, 10 July 2007

The '''Civil Society Development Foundation''' is part of [[Civil Society International]]

113 B (13 words) - 20:12, 2 November 2006

...e information about projects worldwide committed to the keystones of civil society: limited government, popular elections, and the rule of law; free associati ...n international front, as well as those working to defend and deepen civil society within our own democratic culture."[http://www.civilsoc.org//]

4 KB (482 words) - 20:25, 2 November 2006

...]] — New York. In 1992 it changed its name to The Foundation for a Civil Society. At the height of FCS programming in 1996-97, FCS had a staff of 42. On Jul *[[Wendy W. Luers]], President - The Foundation For A Civil Society

2 KB (290 words) - 21:19, 15 September 2008

==