Government & Politics

Those who want to undermine or deep-six Social Security spread the false message that it won't be around, particularly for future generations. That's been a strategy of those who want to destroy social insurance programs for decades. But it's simply not true, since Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are essential -- and successful -- in reducing poverty.

John Wasik, Forbes

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Jun 8, 2018 | One of the ugliest tropes in American politics is to say "Social Security is going broke." Although there are structural funding problems with the system, to say that the nation's most successful annuity program is going bust is a lie. It can be fixed and only politics blocks a reasonable remedy.

But that didn't stop dozens of Fox News outlets from proclaiming otherwise. They got their facts wrong and wanted to scare people without providing context.

 / John Wasik, Contributor, Forbes, is the author of  "Lightning Strikes," "Keynes's Way to Wealth"and 15 other books on innovation, money and life.

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Help enlighten others. Be sure to pass this on to friends and kin. We must break the system's  ability to lie with impunity.

• A redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report of the investigation into Russian election interference was released to Congress and the public by Attorney General William Barr on Thursday. Intercept journalists have been updating our site throughout the day with their analyses of the report.
• Mehdi Hasan argues that the report’s section on obstruction of justice is actually a roadmap to impeachment, and that it is time for Democrats in Congress to follow it. And Glenn Greenwald says that the Mueller report obliterates the idea that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia during the election.

James Risen, Robert Mackey, Trevor Aaronson, the Intercept

April 18, 2019 | A redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s “Report on the Investigation Into Russian Interference in the 2016 Election,” was released to Congress and the public by Attorney General William Barr on Thursday. The text of the report appears below, with redactions Barr said were made mainly “to prevent harm to ongoing matters and to comply with court orders prohibiting the public disclosure of information bearing upon ongoing investigations and criminal cases.”

Intercept reporters are annotating the report in updates here throughout the day. Their summaries so far:

• Mueller Investigated the Infamous 2016 Trump Tower Meeting as a Violation of Election Law, but Declined to File Charges
• Trump Asked Aides to Undermine the Mueller Probe — and They Refused
• William Barr Massively Distorted Robert Mueller’s Opinion on Obstruction
• Mueller Report Puts to Rest One of the More Bizarre Russiagate Storylines
• Paul Manafort Shared Trump Polling Data With Alleged Russian Spy and Sought to “Monetize” His Ties to the President
• Russia’s Use of WikiLeaks Allowed Trump and his Advisers toAvoidCollusion
• Mueller’s Large Team of Investigators Was at Work Through March
• Before WikiLeaks Published Hacked Emails, George Papadopoulos Told Diplomat of Russian Offer to Aid Trump
• Mueller Concluded Russia Did Want to Help Trump Win
• Before Releasing Mueller’s Report, Barr Defended Trump to the Press

James Risen, a best-selling author and former New York Times reporter, is the Intercept’s Senior National Security Correspondent, based in Washington, D.C.  
Robert Mackey writes about national and international news through the prism of social media. Before joining the Intercept as a Senior Writer, he was a reporter and columnist for the New York Times, where he anchored the newspaper’s breaking news blog, The Lede, for five years, and wrote a news analysis column, Open Source, from 2014 to 2016.
Trevor Aaronson is a contributing writer for the Intercept and executive director of the nonprofit Florida Center for Investigative Reporting. He is also the author of "The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism," which was first published in 2013 and re-released as an updated edition in 2018.

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Help enlighten others. Be sure to pass this on to friends and kin. We must break the system's  ability to lie with impunity.

/ "The Evil Spirits of the Modern Daily Press," a cartoon from Puck magazine in 1888. (Wikimedia)

• Some suggest it will take a war to create an antiwar movement that demands change. But the wars are already ongoing. Our attempt to police the world has already proved too costly. Where is the Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren of foreign policy? Many Democrats are positioning themselves to take on Trump four years from now. They’d be wise to seek leadership by demonstrating it.
• Series, Universal Empire | Part 2: How Neocons Push for War by Cooking the Books
• Related: Series, Universal Empire | Part 1: American Imperialism Leads the World Into Dante's Vision of Hell
• Related: The Price of Empire ~ umber haque

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, Truthdig

Journalism with real independence and integrity is a rare thing. All reader supported Evergreene Digest relies - exclusively!- on reader donations. Click on the donation button - at the right - to make a contribution and support our work.

/ Apr 26, 2017 | The odd, psychologically conflicted and politically divisive ideology referred to as neoconservatism can claim many godfathers. Irving Kristol (father of William Kristol), Albert Wohlstetter, Daniel Bell, Norman Podhoretz and Sidney Hook come to mind. And there are many others. But in both theory and practice, the title of founding father for the neoconservative agenda of endless warfare that rules the thinking of America’s defense and foreign policies today might best be applied to James Burnham.

His writings in the 1930s provided a refined Oxford intellectual’s gloss to the Socialist Workers Party, and as a close adviser to Communist revolutionary Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, he learned the tactics and strategies of infiltration and political subversion firsthand. Burnham reveled in his role as a “Trotskyist intellectual,” pulling dirty tricks on his political foes in competing Marxist movements by turning their loyalties and looting their best talent.

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, a husband and wife team, began working together in 1979 co-producing a documentary for Paul's television show.

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Related:

Series, Universal Empire | Part 2: How Neocons Push for War by Cooking the Books

Series, Universal Empire | Part 1: American Imperialism Leads the World Into Dante's Vision of Hell

The Price of Empire ~ Umair Haque, Robert Gore, Eudaimonia / Straight Line Logic

• But violence and greed and cruelty cannot lead anyone anymore to prosperity in the 21st century. There is nobody left to colonize and exploit left but yourself, your very own society, in a world which is out of easy frontiers and helpless peoples.
• The price of empire is a nation's soul.

Be sure to pass these articles to friends and kin. A lot depends on this. Please do your part.

/ An 1898 editorial cartoon by Leon Barritt. The cartoon features newspaper publishers Joseph Pulitzer, left, and William Randolph Hearst dressed as Yellow Kid, a popular cartoon character of the day. It is a satire of their papers' role in drumming up U.S. public opinion to go to war with Spain. (Wikimedia)

• From the outset of the Cold War in the late 1940s, an odd coalition of ex-Trotskyist radicals and right-wing business associations had lobbied heavily for big military budgets, advanced weapons systems and aggressive action to confront Soviet Communism.
• Related: Series, Universal Empire | Part 1: American Imperialism Leads the World Into Dante's Vision of Hell
• Related: The Price of Empire ~ umber haque

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, Truthdig

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Apr 25, 2017 | Most Americans outside Washington policy circles don’t know about Team B, where it came from or what it did, nor are they aware of its roots in the Fourth International, the Trotskyist branch of the Communist International. Lawrence J. Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and assistant secretary of defense from 1981 to 1985, attributed the intelligence failure represented by 9/11 to Team B and had this to say about it in a 2004 article for the Los Angeles Times.

The roots of the problem go back to May 6, 1976, when the director of Central Intelligence, George H.W. Bush, created the first Team B to assess a report his agency had done on Soviet strategic objectives. The report — a National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE, completed the previous year — did not endorse a worst-case scenario of Soviet capabilities and, as a result, some outsiders demanded access to the same classified intelligence used by the CIA in preparing it so that they could come to their own conclusions.

Full story …

Related:

Series, Universal Empire | Part 1: American Imperialism Leads the World Into Dante's Vision of Hell

The Price of Empire ~ umair haque, Robert Gore, Eudaimonia / Straight Line Logic

But violence and greed and cruelty cannot lead anyone anymore to prosperity in the 21st century. There is nobody left to colonize and exploit left but yourself, your very own society, in a world which is out of easy frontiers and helpless peoples.
The price of empire is a nation's soul.

Be sure to pass these articles to friends and kin. A lot depends on this. Please do your part.