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Mike Lofgren
Mike Lofgren is an American author and a former Republican U.S. Congressional aide. He retired in May 2011 after 28 years as a Congressional staff member. His writings, critical of politics in the United States, particularly the Republican Party, were published after his retirement and garnered widespread attention. Personal life Lofgren has a B.A. and M.A. in history from the University of Akron. He was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study European history at the University of Bern and the University of Basel in Switzerland. He also completed the strategy and policy curriculum at the Naval War College. Political career Lofgren began his legislative career as a military legislative assistant to then-Representative John Kasich in 1983. In 1994, he was a professional staff member of the Readiness Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee. From 1995 to 2004, he was budget analyst for national security on the majority staff of the House Budget Committee. From 2005 u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party, also known as the Grand Old Party (GOP), is a Right-wing politics, right-wing political parties in the United States, political party in the United States. One of the Two-party system, two major parties, it emerged as the main rival of the then-dominant Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party in the 1850s, and the two parties have dominated American politics since then. The Republican Party was founded in 1854 by anti-slavery activists opposing the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the expansion of slavery in the United States, slavery into U.S. territories. It rapidly gained support in the Northern United States, North, drawing in former Whig Party (United States), Whigs and Free Soil Party, Free Soilers. Abraham Lincoln's 1860 United States presidential election, election in 1860 led to the secession of Southern states and the outbreak of the American Civil War. Under Lincoln and a Republican-controlled Congress, the party led efforts to preserve th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Senate Budget Committee
The United States Senate Committee on the Budget was established by the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974. It is responsible for drafting Congress's annual budget plan and monitoring action on the budget for the Federal Government. The committee has jurisdiction over the Congressional Budget Office. The committee briefly operated as a special committee from 1919 to 1920 during the 66th Congress, before being made a standing committee in 1974. The current Chair is South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, and the Ranking Member is Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley. Contrasted with other committees The Budget Committee should not be confused with the Finance Committee and the Appropriations Committee, both of which have different jurisdictions: The Finance Committee is analogous to the Ways and Means Committee in the House of Representatives; it has legislative jurisdiction in the areas of taxes, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and some other entitleme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Civil Servant
The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil service personnel hired rather than elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leadership. A civil service official, also known as a public servant or public employee, is a person employed in the public sector by a government department or agency for public sector undertakings. Civil servants work for central and local governments, and answer to the government, not a political party. The extent of civil servants of a state as part of the "civil service" varies from country to country. In the United Kingdom (UK), for instance, only Crown (national government) employees are referred to as "civil servants" whereas employees of local authorities (counties, cities and similar administrations) are generally referred to as "local government officers", who are considered public servants but not civil servants. Thus, in the UK, a civil servant is a public ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many nations mobilising all resources in pursuit of total war. Tanks in World War II, Tanks and Air warfare of World War II, aircraft played major roles, enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, first and only nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II is the List of wars by death toll, deadliest conflict in history, causing World War II casualties, the death of 70 to 85 million people, more than half of whom were civilians. Millions died in genocides, including the Holocaust, and by massacres, starvation, and disease. After the Allied victory, Allied-occupied Germany, Germany, Allied-occupied Austria, Austria, Occupation of Japan, Japan, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Debt Ceiling
In the United States, the debt ceiling is a law limiting the National debt of the United States, total amount of money the federal government can borrow. Since the federal government has consistently run a Deficit spending, budget deficit since 2002, it must borrow to finance the spending that has been legally authorized in United States federal budget, the federal budget. The ceiling does not directly limit the size of the budget deficit; rather, it limits the amount the United States Department of the Treasury, Treasury can borrow to pay this already-authorized spending. When the ceiling is reached without an increase in the limit having been enacted, the Treasury must resort to "extraordinary measures" to temporarily finance government expenditures and obligations until a resolution can be reached. The Treasury has never reached the point of exhausting extraordinary measures, resulting in a Default (finance), default, although, on some occasions, it appeared that Congress mig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tea Party Movement
The Tea Party movement was an American fiscally conservative political movement within the Republican Party that began in 2007, catapulted into the mainstream by Congressman Ron Paul's presidential campaign. The movement expanded in response to the policies of Democratic President Barack Obama and was a major factor in the 2010 wave election in which Republicans gained 63 House seats and took control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Participants in the movement called for lower taxes and for a reduction of the national debt and federal budget deficit through decreased government spending. It urges the return of government as intended by some of the Founding Fathers. It also seeks to teach its view of the Constitution and other founding documents. Scholars have described its interpretation variously as originalist, popular, or a unique combination of the two. Reliance on the Constitution is selective and inconsistent. Adherents cite it, yet do so more as a cultur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Counterculture
A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Houghton Mifflin. . (1993) p. 419. "Members of a cultural protest that began in the U.S. In the 1960s and Europe before fading in the 1970s... fundamentally a cultural rather than a political protest." A countercultural movement expresses the ethos and aspirations of a specific population during a well-defined era. When oppositional forces reach critical mass, countercultures can trigger dramatic cultural changes. Countercultures differ from subcultures. Prominent examples of countercultures in the Western world include the Levellers (1645–1650), Bohemianism (1850–1910), the more fragmentary counterculture of the Beat Generation (1944–1964), and the globalized counterculture of the 1960s which in the United States consisted prim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Religious Fundamentalist
Fundamentalism is a tendency among certain groups and individuals that are characterized by the application of a strict literal interpretation to scriptures, dogmas, or ideologies, along with a strong belief in the importance of distinguishing one's ingroup and outgroup, which leads to an emphasis on some conception of "purity", and a desire to return to a previous ideal from which advocates believe members have strayed. The term is usually used in the context of religion to indicate an unwavering attachment to a set of irreducible beliefs (the "fundamentals"). The term "fundamentalism" is generally regarded by scholars of religion as referring to a largely modern religious phenomenon which, while itself a reinterpretation of religion as defined by the parameters of modernism, reifies religion in reaction against modernist, secularist, liberal and ecumenical tendencies developing in religion and society in general that it perceives to be foreign to a particular religious tra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antiscience
Antiscience is a set of attitudes and a form of anti-intellectualism that involves a rejection of science and the scientific method. People holding antiscientific views do not accept science as an objective method that can generate universal knowledge. Antiscience commonly manifests through rejection of scientific ideas such as climate change and evolution and the effectiveness of vaccination. It also includes pseudoscience, methods that claim to be scientific but reject the scientific method. Antiscience leads to belief in false conspiracy theories and alternative medicine. Lack of trust in science has been linked to the promotion of political extremism and distrust in medical treatments. History In the early days of the Scientific Revolution, scientists such as Robert Boyle (1627–1691) found themselves in conflict with those such as Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), who were skeptical of whether science was a satisfactory way to obtain genuine knowledge about the world. Hobbes' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anti-intellectual
Anti-intellectualism is hostility to and mistrust of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectualism, commonly expressed as deprecation of education and philosophy and the dismissal of art, literature, history, and science as impractical, politically motivated, and even contemptible human pursuits.''A Handbook to Literature'' (1980), Fourth Edition, C. Hugh Holman, Ed. p. 27 Anti-intellectuals may present themselves and be perceived as champions of common folk— populists against political and academic elitism—and tend to see educated people as a status class that dominates political discourse and higher education while being detached from the concerns of ordinary people. Totalitarian governments have, in the past, manipulated and applied anti-intellectualism to repress political dissent. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and the following dictatorship (1939–1975) of Francisco Franco, the reactionary repression of the White Terror (1936–1945) was notably anti-inte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Democratic Party (US)
The Democratic Party is a center-left political party in the United States. One of the major parties of the U.S., it was founded in 1828, making it the world's oldest active political party. Its main rival since the 1850s has been the Republican Party, and the two have since dominated American politics. The Democratic Party was founded in 1828 from remnants of the Democratic-Republican Party. Senator Martin Van Buren played the central role in building the coalition of state organizations which formed the new party as a vehicle to help elect Andrew Jackson as president that year. It initially supported Jacksonian democracy, agrarianism, and geographical expansionism, while opposing a national bank and high tariffs. Democrats won six of the eight presidential elections from 1828 to 1856, losing twice to the Whigs. In 1860, the party split into Northern and Southern factions over slavery. The party remained dominated by agrarian interests, contrasting with Republican su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
CounterPunch
''CounterPunch'' is a left-wing online magazine. Content includes a free section published five days a week as well as a subscriber-only area called CounterPunch+, where original articles are published weekly. ''CounterPunch'' is based in the United States and covers politics in a manner its editors describe as " muckraking with a radical attitude". From 1993 to 2020, CounterPunch published a newsletter, and a magazine. History ''CounterPunch'' began as a newsletter, established in 1994 by the Washington, D.C.–based investigative reporter Ken Silverstein. Silverstein was soon joined by Alexander Cockburn (b. 1941 – d. 2012) and then Jeffrey St. Clair, who became the publication's editors in 1996 when Silverstein left. In 2007, Cockburn and St. Clair wrote that in founding ''CounterPunch'' they had "wanted it to be the best muckraking newsletter in the country", and cited as inspiration such pamphleteers as Edward Abbey, Peter Maurin, and Ammon Hennacy, as well as t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
