Washington – Trouble ahead on taxes and other priorities for President Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan from the Republican right-wing Freedom Caucus which successfully “Gerry-rolled” the supposed Powers-That-Be on health care. The president has warned the gang of GOP right-wing rebels that he’ll be gunning for them in 2018, if they don’t toe the party […]
In his short White House tenure, Donald J. Trump has set some kind of record for histrionic temper tantrums against the media — whether CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times or, most recently, MSNBC for revealing his 2005 tax return. He’s actually pursuing a well-worn path of American presidents blaming the press for […]
Washington – Okay, let’s keep score. He’s thrown down the gauntlet. After taking the oath of office, President Trump used his Inaugural address to tar his presidential predecessors and most of Congress, whose members sat around him, as failures – “politicians who are all talk and no action.” So that’s Trump’s standard – action, not […]
Washington – With his cabinet of billionaires and trickle-down CEOs, President-elect Donald Trump has set the stage for the second “Revolt of the Bosses,” ignoring that the first “Revolt of the Bosses” starting in the late 1970s fueled the gaping inequalities of income and wealth that now plague America and that infuriated Trump’s working class […]
If you’re still puzzling or in shock over the 2016 election, this is a must-watch video. I dig into the roots of the populist mutiny that caused this year’s populist earthquake – a mutiny that has been brewing for three decades in Middle America and that finally exploded, firing the astonishing candidacy of Bernie Sanders […]
Sioux Falls –Time and again, opinion polls tell us that 70%, 80% and even 90% of Americans believe our political system is broken but think there’s nothing We the People can do about it. Perhaps a progressive state like California or Massachusetts might pass an isolated reform, but the political cognoscenti regard the rest of […]
Washington – From its raw beginnings to its stunning finale, the presidential campaign of 2016 has been a political earthquake, a broad populist rebellion that has shattered the landscape of power within both major political parties. The entire narrative of this campaign has been driven by a revolt from the bottom up, by two candidates […]
Washington – SuperPACs in 2016 were breaking records once again – close to $1.6 billion raised – but there was a new twist. Instead of putting top priority on the presidential race, SuperPACs, political parties and independent donors poured more money into the battle for control of the Senate – $616 million, plus millions more to be […]
Washington – What got lost in the mudslinging of the second presidential debate and the political uproar over Donald Trump’s bragging about predatory sexism was an important watershed in U.S. political history – the political reforms that a majority of Americans back in opinion polls gained a first tier advocate moving closer to the White […]
OLGA,WA – If you care about American democracy and you’re sick of politicians’ clinging to power by concocting political monopolies in their home districts, then take heart – and take a cue – from the recent Supreme Court decision that casts a shadow on partisan gerrymandering. Take note, too, that in Florida the state supreme […]
Hedrick Smith, who conceived this website and is its principal writer and architect, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times reporter and Emmy award-winning documentary producer for PBS and PBS FRONTLINE. more »
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