Portside

The billionaire conservatives join the ranks of business interests trying to rein in the GOP's base, but it has turned into an unstoppable force.

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There is a growing impatience with austerity among public-sector workers, as the government prepares a budget for 2014 that will inflict a seventh year of spending cuts and tax increases. Irish governments have sought to control costs in response to the country's worst-ever property and banking crisis that started over five years ago. The country is obliged by its bailout with the European Union and International Monetary Fund to public sector spending and jobs cuts.

There's a growing movement in Europe against pay inequality and the right for a basic income.

March draws biggest turnout since wave of protests during Confederations Cup in June, and anarchist groups clash with police.

The privatization of social services has in the past resulted in some spectacular failures.

Stopping the rightwing, anti-immigrant, poor-bashing Republican juggernaut won’t be easy.

The middle class, once the backbone of a strong American society, has been broken, beaten down, pushed further and further toward poverty levels. Here are five well-documented ways that this has happened.

“American exceptionalism” and “isolationism” are generally understood to be tactical variants of a secular religion, with a grip that is quite extraordinary, going beyond normal religious orthodoxy in that it can barely even be perceived. Since no alternative is thinkable, this faith is adopted reflexively.

Alex Lawson: “In this case,” he says, “it would be trying to substitute out the Obamacare cuts or delays, and substitute in some of these grand bargain approaches. These are ones that are non-controversial, that are seemingly agreed-upon. We think it’s really important to get out in front of any attempts to do that and show that no, these are highly controversial and there will not be support.”