This is how our government has been corrupted:
1) Donors give huge sums to elect politicians
2) Elected officials rewrite rules in donors' favor
3) Donors make huge profit
4) Repeat
We must get big money out of politics. It’s the root of all evil in Washington.
Dit verhaal moet je horen. Het gaat over PVV’er Madlener, maar zijn besluiten over Schiphol zijn onverkort overgenomen door kabinet Jetten. Hoe nam hij die? Door precies te doen wat Schiphol en KLM wilden. Door cijfers te tweaken tot ze onbetrouwbaar waren. Door elk tegengeluid te negeren.
Maffiastaat
Mijn eerste bijdrage voor svdj.nl! Vier interessante gesprekken over transparantie in de journalistiek.
Het belang van de VVD-achterban is het voortbestaan van ongelijkheid.
Maar ze zijn ook zo slap dat ze niet geconfronteerd willen worden met hun eigen handelen.
A glimpse into the disinformation bubble most Americans are living in.
America's most-watched news channel dealt with the scandal around Trump wearing a baseball cap for the dignified transfer of 🇺🇸soldiers killed in Iran by using old hatless footage.
With MAGA owning CBS & CNN, this is increasing.
Cornel West: "The horrors of Donald Trump’s second term didn’t come from nowhere. They’re the inevitable result of decades of neoliberal policies that built the oligarchy, which, at long last, got behind him in 2024."
Azmani’s Life's Work
Gisteren stemde het Europees parlement voor de nieuwe Return Regulation. Dit
lost niets op en kan gemakkelijk tot ICE-achtige toestanden leiden. Zie ook de bijdrage van Romy van Baarsen op Linkedin vandaag en haar opiniestuk in de Volkskrant gisteren.
youtu.be/7RsrVaYO_pE
"Trump chose to go to war and has taken explicit satisfaction in his power of life and death. War is a grave step after all other options have been exhausted. That Trump had other courses of action is well known. That he preferred this one is hard to unsee." My column. www.ft.com/content/2f3e...
Ongelooflijk.
"Ivana Trump told her lawyer that her husband reads a book of Hitler’s collected speeches, which he keeps by his bed. Hitler’s speeches reveal his extraordinary ability as a master propagandist. 'Did your cousin John give you the Hitler speeches?' I asked Trump. Trump hesitated 'Who told you that?'"
De VVD-minister zei erbij dat dit begrotingsgat natuurlijk wel gedekt dient te worden. Hoe, dat liet hij in het midden, maar als het aan zijn partij ligt gaat de voorkeur waarschijnlijk uit naar nog meer bezuinigen op sociale zekerheid en gezondheidszorg.
Die 'kleine beleggers' hoeven zich geen zorgen te maken: de rekening komt zoals gewoonlijk weer bij de zwakkeren.
From 1941 to 1952 in the UK, the top rate of income tax was 98%. A luxury goods purchase tax introduced in 1940 later rose to 100%.
Result? The share of incomes captured by the richest 0.1% fell from 7% in 1937 to just over 1% in 1975. That's what we need today. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Europe’s biggest parties trying to defuse a potential censure vote over dinner captures Brussels politics: crises negotiated over table settings while public trust erodes. Accountability cannot be managed like a seating chart; scrutiny is not optional in a democracy.
From "Newsrooms Need to Get Tougher on All That Lying" by Richard Tofel. dicktofel.substack.com/p/newsrooms-...
Journalism has to choose between political neutrality & truth. If it wants to pursue truth, it's not going to be neutral, it's going to end up on the other side from reactionaries, over & over again. That's been the basic problem for decades now & at the very least we should frame it clearly.
‘Jettens Taskforces moeten de grote problemen oplossen (stikstof en woningbouw verknoopt op nummer 1), maar zijn vicepremier Yesilgöz vindt veel regels 'onzinnig' en handhaving 'tijdrovend'.’
Marcia Luyten in de #Volkskrant.
Think back over all the things the U.S. media has completely and utterly messed up in the 21st century. - Bush stealing the election. 9/11. The war in Iraq. The Tea Party. The Clinton/Trump election.
The US political press shit the bed in every one of these incredibly significant chapters.
In terms of US politics, Bush v. Gore is the defining event of the century. It set the template: a ruthless right that instinctively seeks power & doesn't give a shit about rule of law...and a bunch of hapless, feckless octogenarian Dems worried about the good opinion of centrist opinion columnists.
To frame the problem as, "gosh, people seem to be lying more lately, and this institution we call journalism should try to stop them" just sidesteps the problem. If you try to impose social sanction on lies & liars, you come into direct conflict with the GOP & the conservative movement!
... that there's no winning this game. There is no good or satisfying way to behave in the face of a massive avalanche of bad faith, lies, & racism. If you decry it, you draw attention to it. If you try to pretend it doesn't exist, it festers. Becoming permanent, perpetually defensive ...
Yes, this is true, but on a broader level, pretty much every Republican administration in modern memory had scandals -- fraud, lies, corruption -- that were insufficiently punished, if at all.
Lack of accountability for reactionaries has been a defining feature of US politics since its founding.
Elite journalists wriggle & wriggle & try & try but they can not escape the fundamental dilemma: journalism is, by its nature, supposed to be on the side of accuracy, against lies & liars, but the GOP is lies & liars top to bottom. And for reasons of power & access, journalism can not say so.
"DOGE wasn't just a failed experiment—it was the latest chapter in a fifty-year project to dismantle state capacity. The question should have been obvious from the start: efficient at what, and for whom? New piece examining how efficiency rhetoric serves as cover for systematic value extraction."
The Great Reset
Ontmanteling van de overheid
Journalist and lifelong conservative, Peter Oborne, claims the Tories are now a 'far-right group'.
"They hate the rule of law...they want to get rid of the ECHR...it's very hostile to the civil service."
In conversation with Oli Dugmore on the @newstatesman1913.bsky.social podcast. (Dec 2025)
Israel Carpet Bombing Gaza
