Our laws governing lobbying and campaign contributions have struck the right balance between the wishes of the people and those of private industry, so why are we so quick to doubt that the same great results can be achieved by putting the government's justice-dealing branch on the same market-based course?
Thomas FrankThe revival of the Right is as extraordinary as it would be if the public had demanded dozens of new nuclear plants in the days after the Three Mile Island disaster; if we had reacted to Watergate by making Richard Nixon a national hero.
Thomas FrankThere is something uniquely depressing about the fact that the National Portrait Galleryโs version of the Barack Obama โHopeโ poster previously belonged to a pair of lobbyists. Depressing because Mr. Obamaโs Washington was not supposed to be the lobbyistsโ Washington, the place we learned to despise during the last administration.
Thomas FrankI think there's great potential for autonomy, but we have to remember that we live in a world where people may have free will but have not invented their circumstances.
Thomas FrankThese days, of course, the focus of talk about popular liberation through products is mostly associated with the Internet. I've been collecting computer ads and ads dealing with Internet industries.
Thomas FrankMaybe that first, gigantic deficit the Reaganites piled up was an accident, just a combination of deluded 'supply side' tax cuts and a huge bag of good stuff for the Pentagon. But pretty quickly conservatives discovered that deficits, when done correctly, did something really cool: deficits defunded the Left.
Thomas Frank