The belly flop is the signature move of this government. “Phase two of my government starts today,” Keir Starmer intoned on 1 September, signalling little more, it turned out, than his own hubris. A portrait of a PM in his final throes, by @joecguinan.bsky.social novaramedia.com/2025/09/15/a...

The first event of @pelledragsted.bsky.social's U.S. tour for his book, Nordic Socialism: The Path Toward a Democratic Economy, is coming up August 1: @politicsprose.bsky.social will host Dragsted and @joecguinan.bsky.social @democracycollab.bsky.social. Details: politics-prose.com/pelle-dragsted

Everywhere we look there are new tripwires being laid, actions by the Trump Administration that could easily serve as the proximate cause or trigger of a financial crisis that could cause a chain reaction ending in a great crash. www.democracycollaborative.org/blogs/a-grea...

Check out this recent episode of @redneckgonegreen.bsky.social with @joecguinan.bsky.social of @democracycollab.bsky.social #democracyatwork #educate #agitate #organize #redneckgonegreen @democracyatwork.bsky.social

Trump’s “cover story, and perhaps even his belief, is that tariffs by themselves can revive American industry. But he has no plans to deal with the problems that caused America’s deindustrialization in the first place.” —Michael Hudson www.democracycollaborative.org/whatwethink/...

Return of the Robber Barons: read Michael Hudson’s @democracycollab.bsky.social paper on Trump’s tariffs and his inverted understanding of what drove the success of America’s nineteenth-century industrial takeoff. www.democracycollaborative.org/whatwethink/...

“With all this activity the principles of another, very different economy begins to come into view. Finance in this economy would be put back in the service of people, communities, & the planet.” Community Wealth Building - @joecguinan.bsky.social www.democracycollaborative.org/blogs/creati...

Don't Miss today's New @redneckgonegreen.bsky.social with @joecguinan.bsky.social of @democracycollab.bsky.social at 6PM ET LIVE on the @democracyatwork.bsky.social #youtube channel here: youtube.com/@democracyat...

We are pleased to launch “Tracking the Crisis,” our news aggregator and once-weekly round-up, which tracks the Trump Administration’s administrative, legislative and other actions, as well as an array of movement responses. The link for subscribing is www.democracycollaborative.org/tracking-the...

📝 NEW TRAINING: Introduction to Community Wealth Building Join us to learn about Community Wealth Building as an approach to local economic system change starting in your place and/or community. Register here ⤵️ www.democracycollaborative.org/events/intro...

Last week Minister Tom Arthur told the Scottish Parliament about the irrefutable advantages of Community Wealth Building TDC’s CWB Global Lead @neilmcinroy.bsky.social continues to promote, develop and advise on the model across Scotland Scottish CWB legislation is due later this year

Join Northern Virginians for the Democratizing NOVA Summit 2025 at George Mason University! #NorthernVirginia #nextsystem #systemchange @democracycollab.bsky.social #NoVA @georgemasonu.bsky.social

The Third Way formulation—neoliberal economics plus status quo establishmentarianism, with tokenistic faux social liberalism ineffectually triangulated away to right-wing authoritarianism—is among the least popular politics there is in this Age of Anger. www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...

Teddy Roosevelt established the U.S. Forest Service. Trump and Musk are taking their buzzsaw not just to the New Deal and Great Society but to the gains of the Progressive Era when the modern state was established. The Gilded Age Robber Barons are back! www.sfgate.com/california/a...

Super late to this, I know, but the second book is, if anything, even more terrifying and prophetic than the first, with its far right president promising to make America great again—written in 1998. Perhaps dystopian fiction really is serving as a how-to guide for fascists!

Teddy Roosevelt established the U.S. Forest Service. Trump and Musk are taking their buzzsaw not just to the New Deal and Great Society but to the gains of the Progressive Era when the modern state was established. The Gilded Age Robber Barons are back! www.sfgate.com/california/a...

Nice piece for @democracycollab.bsky.social by Joana Ramiro.

The energy sector’s ‘Wind Rush’ risks replicating existing patterns of financialized extraction. www.democracycollaborative.org/whatwethink/...

If Community Wealth Building approaches are to continue to grow and become the foundations of a more sustainable economy, they’ll inevitably come into conflict with existing models of financialization and extraction. A look at offshore wind in Shetland: www.democracycollaborative.org/whatwethink/...

The opposite of the canary in the coal mine, the very last person for whom the penny drops!

The last time a foreign president tried to seize European territory, European governments responded by confiscating the assets of his billionaire cronies.

Only a few days in, and already we can see the broad shape of what Trump’s Second Term will bring — a radical effort to reshape and repurpose the administrative state. www.democracycollaborative.org/blogs/shock-...

The immediate challenge is not to be shocked and awed into confusion and debilitating paralysis but instead to formulate a counter-response commensurate with the scale of the challenges and capable of reaching the vast majority of ordinary Americans. www.democracycollaborative.org/blogs/shock-...

“IN THE LAST YEAR of his life, Martin Luther King Jr. began to move toward an ever-more-profound and radical understanding of what would be required to deal with the nation’s domestic and international problems.” From the archive, Gar Alperovitz on the MLK he knew. sojo.net/magazine/jan...

“The most unpopular incoming government of all time.” Well done to all concerned! www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...

So shall the world go on, To good malignant, to bad men benign, Under her own weight groaning, til the day Appear of respiration to the just, And vengeance to the wicked... —John Milton, ‘Paradise Lost’, XII. 537-41.

The alternative to the Volker Shock and Carter’s embrace of neoliberal economics. Consumers Opposed to Inflation in the Necessities (COIN) was backed by over 100 members of Congress, and proposed sectoral planning, price controls, and public ownership.

Privatisation unmasked. The privatised water companies have been used as ATMs for withdrawing cash by their private shareholders. Loaded up with debt to finance dividend payments, there has been no investment, and the public will now have paid three times. www.theguardian.com/money/2024/d...

The private finance engine that Labour has installed at the heart of its economics is a machine that lowers not increases growth, and concentrates the returns amongst the wealthiest asset owners, driving inequality and indebtedness. tribunemag.co.uk/2024/07/no-w...

Since we’re now being told we should have bombed Syria in 2013, a piece from the archives on our record on bombing. www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemoc...

As Israel and Turkey bomb Syria, the Starmer government suspends asylum for people fleeing Syria because they view everything through a cynical geopolitical (and domestic political) lens rather than a humanitarian one. If you are in the British Labour Party, this is your enduring shame.

Events in New York City remind me of Jack London’s The Assassination Bureau Ltd., a strange outlier in his work. As the system tanks and we all descend into Hell, it’s surprising there hasn’t been a lot more of this about. Kim Stanley Robinson picks up the thread in The Ministry for the Future.

Solidarity with our friends in South Korea and the struggle to preserve democracy, political freedoms, the rule of law, and due process. Coming soon to a post-democracy near you!

This isn’t a communications problem, though—at least, not only one. The Starmer government is actively screwing over many people and promising to do little to make things better for the majority, lest Blackrock’s profits suffer. Programmatically, they are a void. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Sinn Fein tried to triangulate like centre left parties the world over, but centre left parties the world over are in rapid secular decline. They forgot they needed to win first, and that required sweeping in with a popular and populist left programme. Instead, they bled votes right and left.

Starter pack of people and organisations who do work on policies to promote economic democracy, primarily through social ownership and democratisation of finance. I'm sure there's a lot missing here so please give suggested additions

Thanksgiving reading. The latest Quirke novel from John Banville.

So it looks like the British authorities do know how to respect and enforce a warrant.

The Wampanoag would have done better if they’d pushed the Pilgrims into the sea. #Thanksgiving

Sally Rooney in the Irish Times on the urgent need for a next system of political economy beyond capitalism. www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p...

“Either we confront the system that is threatening our civilisation – or “property will cost us the earth”. Every year, every month, the argument grows more and more difficult to refute.” Sally Rooney calls for a next system of political economy beyond capitalism. www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p...

Our Index of Systemic Trends, via Aditya Chakrabortty’s analysis, in The Nation magazine’s U.S. presidential election postmortem: www.thenation.com/article/poli... The 2024 Index of Systemic Trends: index.democracycollaborative.org

Labour promised hardly anything at the election and are not delivering on even that. Lots of complacent centrists greatly underestimating the political damage that is doing to popular faith in politics in an Age of Anger in which populist alternatives can materialize very rapidly indeed.

Time for the taxi driver meme, haha. But in my taxi to Dublin airport I was chatting to my Romanian driver, who was absolutely buzzing that in the first round of the Romanian presidential election the candidates of the two traditional parties had been beaten by outsiders.

How can there be a popular front against fascism when the liberals are not actually against fascism, and when they’d rather cooperate with fascists than with the left and social movements?

I see the trolls are arriving on here.

Great starter pack from @scpartners.bsky.social go.bsky.app/2nj5Vii

If you’re a British voter, sign the petition. Labour have the thinnest mandate of any majority government in the democratic era, they think they can do whatever they want because of their loveless landslide, and they are led by liars. Hold them to account! petition.parliament.uk/petitions/70...

Polish translation of The Case for Community Wealth Building out next year.

Radical politics in the most beautiful of settings at Lusty Beg #ScoilChoisClai2024