"However, the real counterattack against the regulatory state began in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Capitalizing on the social and economic upheavals of the time, the business community and economic elite, along with their ​“free market” allies in academia, sprang into action. In 1971, just a few months before he was nominated to serve on the Supreme Court, Lewis F. Powell Jr. — a corporate lawyer who sat on the board of the tobacco company Philip Morris — wrote a letter to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce castigating the business community for its supposed inattention to (and complicity in) the ​“attack on the American free enterprise system.”

The business elite responded, and soon vast sums of money began flowing to an array of new and existing right-wing organizations — including the American Enterprise Institute (founded in 1938), the Reason Foundation (founded 1968), the Heritage Foundation (founded in 1973), the Cato Institute (founded in 1977), the Manhattan Institute (founded in 1977), the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC; founded in 1973), and the Federalist Society (founded 1982). The effort was so successful that by Ronald Reagan’s first term, these organizations provided more than half of his high-level presidential appointments."

"Conservatives have spent decades deliberately undermining the social democratic and regulatory state in an attempt to reset the social, economic and cultural clock, culminating in the recent series of disastrous Supreme Court rulings. Rather that succumb to our own version of nostalgia, progressives should use this opportunity to recognize the limitations of trying to simply regulate private corporations and mitigate the abuses of capitalism, and embark down a different path — an equitable, democratic and ecologically sustainable political economic system based on various forms of broad-based, collective ownership."

https://inthesetimes.com/article/supreme-court-regulatory-state-environmental-protection-agency-climate-change

China's National People's Congress (NPC) made strides in transparency over the past decade but has recently shown a preference for secrecy. While initially seeking public input on major bills and promoting legislative openness, the NPC has increased the withholding of legislative drafts and concealed certain bills until shortly before or after their adoption. This departure from transparency norms contradicts China's official rhetoric and legal reform agenda. The NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) is now considering making this secretive practice a law, highlighting the conflicting desires for legal predictability and flexibility within the party-state.

https://npcobserver.com/2022/02/10/the-chinese-legislatures-hidden-agenda/

Quanto sono forti le disuguaglianze di reddito e ricchezza in Italia

I dati più recenti mostrano un quadro variegato: negli ultimi anni la distanza tra i redditi dei più abbienti e quelli dei meno abbienti è rimasto piuttosto stabile, mentre è cresciuta quella tra chi ha più ricchezza e chi meno.

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Research on the environmental impact of socialist countries challenges the belief that they caused extreme ecological damage. While the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 reinforced this perception, recent studies suggest that socialist states' environmental record resembled that of capitalist nations. Ecosocialist thinkers are reassessing non-capitalist environmental efforts, and Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro's book examines examples from socialist states as models for future ecosocialism. It compares the environmental performance of socialism and capitalism, finding that capitalist countries had worse instances of environmental destruction. While acknowledging some negative impacts, particularly during the Stalinist period, the research challenges the notion of communist ecocide and highlights the Soviet Union's role in creating ecological consciousness. However, caution is necessary in fully embracing a positive view of the Soviet Union's environmental legacy.

https://monthlyreview.org/2022/09/01/a-new-environmental-history-of-socialist-states/