Sitting in the audience at the Unrig the System Summit in New Orleans two weeks ago, I couldn’t help but feel that a tide was turning. Speaker after speaker at this high energy and well-attended event made one central point: America cannot engage its massive social and economic problems under the present system. It is too corrupt.

A Stanford political scientist is stating what IVN has reported for a long time now: Americans are not more polarized, despite what the media says.

US voters are not being driven further to one corner or another in the ongoing political struggle between two private political corporations -- the Republican and Democratic Parties.

The people, largely, fall all over the political spectrum.

“It would be hard to find a more unlikely candidate than Charlie Hardy, a 75-year-old penniless former Catholic priest who spent nearly a decade serving the poor while living in a cardboard shack in a Venezuelan slum. In 2011, Charlie returns to his hometown of Cheyenne, Wyoming, and is shocked to see poverty, hunger, and homelessness.”

A measure proposed by Republican State Rep. Drew Dennert to open all primaries in the state to independent voters died in the State House Monday.

South Dakota currently has a semi-closed partisan primary system where the parties get to decide whether or not to allow independent voters to participate in their taxpayer-funded primary elections.

Opening our electoral process to more voices than just those from the two national parties is the goal of Open Primaries.

The efforts by the RNC and DNC to rig the system and engage in gerrymandering and closed partisan primaries have created a mess between Congress and the American people.

And it's a partisan problem that's growing every day.

But will Republicans listen?

If there was an annual award ceremony like the Emmys for politicians, but called the Indys and awarded to a politician for exemplifying reason, principle, and independence instead of the typically irrational, unprincipled, cult-like partisan loyalism that has made absolute hypocrites of most party politicians in Congress...

Well Rand Paul would definitely be nominated for 2018's Indy Awards.

Just when you thought that the health care system in America can't get any more convoluted or maddening, a new wrinkle emerges.

Seventy-seven percent of Americans think that the price of prescription drugs is unreasonable, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, and that same percentage of Americans think that pharmaceutical profits are a major factor contributing to drug prices.

Read about what really matters from the news last week. We provide you the least-biased news about current events so you can go about your day informed, not brainwashed.

“Yes” or “No”?

Should it be the patient's right (by law) to have their surgery recorded by audio and video?

https://youtu.be/xkFy8VJWP4I

Do doctors found guilty of medical malpractice need to be held criminally responsible if someone is injured or killed in their care? Do hospitals and doctors need to be held more accountable for medical malpractice?

Longtime Democratic FEC Commissioner Ellen L. Weintraub is the force behind new rules aimed at making online political advertising more transparent.

After Russian state agents used social media platforms to blast out misinformation from bot farms meant to foment domestic discord during the 2016 presidential election, it changed what we thought to expect from online communities.

Twitter, Facebook, and Google seemed caught off guard as well and received a sound spanking by congressional committees for lax oversight.