Trump Taps Palantir to Compile Data on Americans - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/technology/trump-palantir-data-americans.html

Trump appears to be building an unprecedented spy machine that could track Americans
https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/trump-palantir-surveillance-americans-rcna210017

I fallimenti della coalizione liberale sono stati molteplici. La squadra di Tusk aveva condotto una campagna per il ripristino della democrazia e dello stato di diritto, eppure, a pochi mesi dalla presa del potere nell’ottobre 2023, la sua amministrazione è stata coinvolta in scandali – poco commentati dalla stampa anglofona ma noti in Polonia. Giornalisti investigativi come Szymon Jadczak (di Wirtualna Polska , uno dei principali siti di notizie del paese) hanno riferito che la procura stava nascondendo fascicoli relativi a figure chiave come il politico pro-Tusk (ed ex attivista politico fascista) Roman Giertych. Le fondazioni statali (o collegate allo stato, come Akcja Demokracja) hanno eluso le domande sulle modalità di distribuzione di denaro pubblico. I resoconti sulle interferenze elettorali sono stati omessi per cavilli legali. Persino la nuova emittente pubblica, creata per sostituire la macchina propagandistica del precedente governo PiS, ha promosso fake news di parte invece di giornalismo indipendente.

https://jacobinitalia.it/il-fallimento-liberale-in-polonia/

During America’s century-long rise as a capitalist superpower, such market rules fit together to form an increasingly sophisticated and pervasive system that the political scientist and economic historian Gerald Berk has dubbed “regulated competition.” It was a uniquely American system for governing industrial capitalism, and it delivered broad prosperity for decades. It did so first by catalyzing a virtuous cycle of innovation. Firms in key industry sectors like transportation and electricity were guaranteed modest but predictable profits that allowed them to attract more capital, and to take greater risks, than they otherwise could. In exchange, companies were obliged to serve all market segments, rather than cherry-pick the most profitable. This enabled smaller cities, towns, and rural areas to compete on a more equal footing with large cities on the coasts, thus spreading economic development and wealth creation more equitably across the country while also serving as a check on the growth of financiers and oligarchy. But then, beginning in the 1970s, policy makers from both parties largely dismantled this well-calibrated system of political economy in a rush to “deregulate” the economy and unleash “the market.”

A huge factor behind the explosive growth in air travel in this era was continuing dramatic advancement in aviation technology, much of it developed by the military and defense contractors during the war years. Aircraft manufacturers introduced a succession of new, increasingly larger, safer, and more efficient four-engine airliners, including the Douglas DC-4, Lockheed’s Constellation, the Douglas DC-6, the Douglas DC-7, and the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser. Starting in the late 1950s, these were followed by a series of still-faster jets offering still-greater capacity and lower operating costs per passenger. By 1968, a single DC-8 could produce more annual seat miles than the entire industry did 30 years before. By 1970, the first “jumbo jet,” the Boeing 747, went into service.

This technological revolution did not occur, however, independent of the political economy governing aviation during this period. The other huge, and often overlooked, factor was the system of regulated competition overseen by the CAB. Because of CAB market regulation, airlines escaped the self-destructive rate wars and negative margins that had previously prevailed and instead earned consistent, modest rates of return throughout the next three decades. This in turn allowed the aviation sector to attract the capital it needed to develop and deploy rapidly improving but highly expensive new generations of aircraft.

In short, technology and regulation combined to create a virtuous cycle. Airlines under CAB regulation still faced considerable competition with each other and so were incentivized to invest in faster, safer planes. But because of the carefully balanced limits the CAB placed on competition, aircraft manufacturers in turn understood that if they developed new and better planes, airlines would have both the incentive to buy them and enough capital to afford them. CAB regulation led to airlines investing heavily in more and better planes, and as they did so, the industry grew and became more efficient, allowing more and more Americans to enjoy the benefits of air travel.

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2025/06/01/the-secret-to-reindustrializing-america-is-not-tax-cuts-and-tariffs-its-regulated-competition/

By the late twentieth century, however, political parties in the United States, Europe, and beyond had undergone a profound transformation. Where parties once operated as mass-membership organizations embedded in civil society, they have increasingly become professionalized, elite-driven, and disconnected from the everyday lives of most citizens.

This transformation involved the outsourcing of core party functions — such as voter mobilization, organizing, and issue framing — to networks of advocacy groups and consultants. As a result, what we call “parties” today are often little more than loosely affiliated constellations of interest groups, think tanks, donors, and media operations. As a result, parties have increasingly prioritized short-term electoral tactics, branding, and media messaging over sustained engagement with voters.

Rather than maintaining a durable, year-round presence in voters’ lives, modern parties typically appear shortly before elections — if at all — and deploy highly targeted outreach strategies to small and potentially decisive slices of the electorate. In this model, politics becomes episodic and transactional: voters are contacted when needed, segmented by demographic or behavioral traits, and urged to vote — but, beyond a small activist core, are rarely invited to engage in sustained, year-round party activities. Parties may still coordinate electoral coalitions, but they no longer serve as the primary site where political identities are forged or collective interests developed.

Kuo argues that the transformation of political parties was neither natural nor inevitable. It was the result of strategic choices and institutional shifts — many of them driven by center-left parties themselves. As neoliberalism took hold in the 1980s and 1990s, center-left leaders increasingly embraced market-oriented governance, turning to deregulation, privatization, and austerity as tools of statecraft.

research on Uruguay’s Frente Amplio shows that offering activists a real voice in decision-making helps sustain support and mobilization. In Mexico, the Morena party has taken a more radical approach, randomly selecting candidates from lists of party activists — dramatically increasing representativeness and deepening voter identification with the party. But while these measures may encourage involvement at the margins, they are unlikely to reestablish the kind of social embeddedness that once sustained mass parties.

"While this is just one small example, it reflects a broader strategic orientation: progressives must think less in terms of electoral cycles and more in terms of the long-term rebuilding of hollowed-out institutions."

That means rejecting the model of campaigns as large ad buys and last-minute voter-turnout efforts, and instead investing in long-term organizing strategies that build relationships, trust, and shared purpose in politically neglected communities.

One promising example comes from the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative (RUBI), whose Community Works program operates in low-income rural counties in Virginia and Georgia. These programs — food drives, safety equipment distribution, neighborhood cleanups — are nonpartisan in tone but backed quietly by local Democrats. They aim to reestablish a positive, sustained presence in communities often written off by the party.

. Redirecting even a modest share of that spending to year-round, community-rooted organizing could build meaningful ties in areas long abandoned by Democrats, and without significantly affecting the resources needed to compete effectively in the next election.

https://jacobin.com/2025/06/mass-political-parties-democracy-neoliberalism/