5 results for "Public Policy"

The silenced majority: stories of uprisings, occupations, resistance, and hope

Goodman, Amy
""Amy Goodman has taken investigative journalism to new heights of exciting, informative, and probing analysis."-Noam Chomsky Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan began writing a weekly column, "Breaking the Sound Barrier," for King Features Syndicate in 2006. This timely new sequel to Goodman's New York Times bestseller of the same name gives voice to the many ordinary people standing up to corporate and government power-and refusing to be silent. The Silenced Majority pulls back the veil of corporate media reporting to dig deep into the politics of "climate apartheid," the implications of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the movement to halt the execution of Troy Anthony Davis, and the globalization of dissent "From Tahrir Square to Liberty Plaza." Throughout Goodman and Moynihan show the power of ordinary people to change their media-and change the world. Amy Goodman is a multiple New York Times best-selling author and the host and executive producer of Democracy Now! a daily independent news program airing on more than one thousand television and radio stations. Time named Democracy Now! its "Pick of the Podcasts," along with NBC's Meet the Press. Goodman is the first journalist to receive the Right Livelihood Award, widely known as the "Alternative Nobel Prize." Denis Moynihan, since helping co-found Democracy Now! as an independent production company in 2002, has participated in the organization's growth, focusing primarily on distribution, infrastructure development, and coordinating complex live broadcasts from all continents (save Antarctica). He lives in Denver, Colorado. "--
Haymarket Books 2012 345 pages

#Republic: divided democracy in the age of social media

Sunstein, Cass R.
"As the Internet grows more sophisticated, it is creating new threats to democracy. Social media companies such as Facebook can sort us ever more efficiently into groups of the like-minded, creating echo chambers that amplify our views. It's no accident that on some occasions, people of different political views cannot even understand each other. It's also no surprise that terrorist groups have been able to exploit social media to deadly effect. Welcome to the age of #Republic. In this revealing book, Cass Sunstein, the New York Times bestselling author of Nudge and The World According to Star Wars, shows how today's Internet is driving political fragmentation, polarization, and even extremism--and what can be done about it. Thoroughly rethinking the critical relationship between democracy and the Internet, Sunstein describes how the online world creates "cybercascades," exploits "confirmation bias," and assists "polarization entrepreneurs." And he explains why online fragmentation endangers the shared conversations, experiences, and understandings that are the lifeblood of democracy. In response, Sunstein proposes practical and legal changes to make the Internet friendlier to democratic deliberation. These changes would get us out of our information cocoons by increasing the frequency of unchosen, unplanned encounters and exposing us to people, places, things, and ideas that we would never have picked for our Twitter feed. #Republic need not be an ironic term. As Sunstein shows, it can be a rallying cry for the kind of democracy that citizens of diverse societies most need. "--
Princeton University Press 2017-03-14 310 pages

Tailspin: the people and forces behind America's fifty-year fall--and those fighting to reverse it

Brill, Steven
"From the award-winning journalist and best-selling author of America's Bitter Pill: a tour de force examination of 1) how and why major American institutions no longer serve us as they should, causing a deep rift between the vulnerable majority and the protected few, and 2) how some individuals and organizations are laying the foundation for real, lasting change. In this revelatory narrative covering the years 1967 to 2017, Steven Brill gives us a stunningly cogent picture of the broken system at the heart of our society. He shows us how, over the last half-century, America's core values--meritocracy, innovation, due process, free speech, and even democracy itself--have somehow managed to power its decline into dysfunction. They have isolated our best and brightest, whose positions at the top have never been more secure or more remote. The result has been an erosion of responsibility and accountability, an epidemic of shortsightedness, an increasingly hollow economic and political center, and millions of Americans gripped by apathy and hopelessness. By examining the people and forces behind the rise of big-money lobbying, legal and financial engineering, the demise of private-sector unions, and a hamstrung bureaucracy, Brill answers the question on everyone's mind: How did we end up this way? Finally, he introduces us to those working quietly and effectively to repair the damages. At once a diagnosis of our national ills, a history of their development, and a prescription for a brighter future, Tailspin is a work of riveting journalism--and a welcome antidote to political despair"--
Alfred A. Knopf 2018-05-29 441 pages

Foreign policy begins at home: the case for putting America's house in order

Haass, Richard
"A rising China, climate change, terrorism, a nuclear Iran, a turbulent Middle East, and a reckless North Korea present serious challenges to our national security. But the biggest threat to the United States comes not from abroad-but from within. Burgeoning deficit and debt, crumbling infrastructure, second class schools, and an outdated immigration system have resulted in a country less competitive and far more vulnerable than it should be. In Foreign Policy Begins at Home, Council on Foreign Relations President Richard N. Haass describes a twenty-first century in which power is widely diffused. Globalization, revolutionary technologies, and power shifts have created a "nonpolar" world of American primacy but not domination. Still, it is a relatively forgiving world, one with no great power rival. How long this strategic respite will last, though, depends entirely on whether the United States puts its own house in order. Haass outlines a process of Restoration that will ensure the United States has the resources it needs to lead the world, set examples other societies will want to emulate, reduce the country's vulnerability to hostile forces and fickle markets, and discourage would-be adversaries from mounting aggression. Provocative and bold, Foreign Policy Begins at Home lays out a new vision for American Restoration. It will require hard choices, but hard choices are called for. At stake is nothing less than America's future and the character of the coming era of history. "--
Basic Books 2013-04-30 195 pages

Disaster capitalism: making a killing out of catastrophe

Loewenstein, Antony
"Crisis? What crisis? How powerful corporations make a killing out of disaster Award-winning journalist Antony Loewenstein travels across the US, Britain, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Haiti, Papua New Guinea and Australia to witness the reality of Disaster Capitalism--the hidden world of privatized detention centers and militarized private security, formed to protect corporations as they profit from war zones. He visits Britain's immigration detention centers, tours the prison system in the United States, and digs into the underbelly of the companies making a fortune from them. Loewenstein reveals the dark history of how large multinational corporations have become more powerful than governments, supported by media and political elites"--
Verso Books 2015-09-15 376 pages