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Young female soldier in camouflage uniform strides along a gravel road carrying a heavy duffel bag, focused and determined on mission

When Sexual Assault Becomes An Occupational Hazard

Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX)

Texas Republicans’ Effort To Make a Safe House Seat May Backfire

aerial view of an AI data center.

Why Communities Nationwide Are Halting AI Data Centers

US Supreme Court

If You Can’t Win, Disrupt

United States Capitol building

Do Six Political Factions Cause Congressional Gridlock?

Video: Polarization past and present: What’s changed? What’s possible?

Video: Polarization past and present: What’s changed? What’s possible?play icon
The Fulcrum
By The FulcrumSep 09, 2022
The Fulcrum
The Fulcrum staff.
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A successful Democracy is messy. People are diverse in countless ways and have individual, cultural, and group identities and points of view. That people came together through most of US history to bridge differences has been America’s achievement since its independence. Today seems different.

Americans are deeply divided, despite sharing common hopes. What, then, is at the root of our current divide manifesting itself in life and death issues (Covid) and even an Insurrection? Is American democracy at the abyss? Can we bridge again to restore and foster Democracy, as messy as it may be?


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Elections

Democracy Needs the Option to Vote NO

A man walks with a ship behind him
Governance & Legislation

Americans should be concerned about the fine print on Trump’s new oil deal

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​Teal shoes are displayed outside Naval Medical Center Portsmouth

Teal shoes are displayed outside Naval Medical Center Portsmouth in April 2018 as part of Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month.

Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Kris R. Lindstrom/U.S. Navy

Military Sexual Trauma Survivors Can’t Sue the Government. A New Bill Could Change That.

When Mayra Diaz opened the door of her Army barracks room in 2022, she didn’t realize it was the beginning of the end of her military career.

She had never met the soldier standing in front of her, Sgt. Greville Clarke. She didn’t know he had sexually assaulted three other women on base over the past 15 months, including one he threatened at knifepoint.

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​Horizontal photo of a DEMOCRATIC PARTY FLAG

Horizontal photo of a DEMOCRATIC PARTY FLAG with a stylized DONKEY with 3 white stars on blue top of donkey and two red feet. Flag is laying on top of a red, white, and blue American Flag.

Getty Images

How to Define the Democratic Party - Left or Centrist?

Labels can be misleading and misused. The label "Centrist" is empowering because it signifies you are mainstream, not extreme, a place where all people can come together. To be labeled "Left" is to place you outside the mainstream, extreme; left connotes a kind of kookiness as well as—horror of horrors—Socialism.

But are the labels accurate? For most of the 20th century, the Democratic Party was, without question, the party that championed the working man, the average person—the people. But they were nevertheless firm capitalists—they were not Socialists.

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US $1 dollar bill in mid air melting, red gradated background

From $215B to $7.14T: how outbound investment, falling labor share, and rising corporate profits reveal trickle-down economics' core flaw.

PM Images/Getty Images

Trickle-Down-Economics was Doomed from Day-One; yet Defended to Present-Day

By 1972, U.S. direct investments abroad amounted to $94.0 billion. This was two years prior to the development of the Laffer Curve in 1974 by American economist Arthur Laffer, famously sketched on a restaurant napkin during a dinner meeting in Washington, D.C. Therefore, the writing was on the wall regarding the vulnerability of Trickle-down economics, years prior to Reagan’s Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA) of 1981.

Trickle-down economics fails primarily because outbound foreign direct investment (FDI) allows corporations and wealthy individuals to invest tax-cut windfall profits globally rather than domestically. The theory of Trickle-down economics predicted that lowering taxes on businesses and high earners will stimulate local capital accumulation, leading to domestic business expansion, job creation, and wage growth for everyone. However, in a highly globalized economy, capital is hyper-mobile. Instead of filtering downward into the domestic economy, these untaxed or low-tax profits frequently exit the country entirely.

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