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Will 2021 be public banking’s watershed moment?
Faced with the dire Covid-19 crisis, some lawmakers are starting to see publicly-owned banks as the key to ensuring an equitable economic recovery. Continue reading
How a guaranteed income can actually solve inequality
Poverty in America disproportionately affects women and people of color, and that is precisely what hinders political action to address it—even when solutions abound.
An ongoing study conducted in Stockton, California, examines how the lives of low-income Americans can improve if they are simply given money—a modest, but reliable source of income with no strings attached. The Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED) randomly chose 125 participants from poverty-stricken residential areas and gave them $500 per month to simply use for whatever they wanted over the last two years. A majority of the participants were women (69 percent) and people of color (53 percent). Preliminary results from the first year are tantalizing for anyone interested in solutions to address rising inequality in the United States, especially as they manifest along racial and gender lines. Within the first year, the study’s participants obtained jobs at twice the rate of the control group. At the beginning of the study, 28 percent of the participants had full-time employment, and after the first year, that number rose to 40 percent. Continue reading
Beware fascist marches: they are the hatcheries for fascist coups
There are some key facts about the events of January 6, 2021, that must be made crystal clear as the fascist Republican Party embarks on a campaign of gaslighting America about the Donald Trump coup attempt against the government of the United States. Fascists are anathema to the historical record and attempts by Trump operatives and propagandists, particularly Steve Bannon, Dinesh D’Souza, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and others, to revise history are in full swing. On the eve of the annual neo-fascist love fest, the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conference, held this year in Orlando, irrefutable facts must be laid on the table. Continue reading
Here’s something you can do to protect your family from coronavirus
And how we may be doomed to an eternal pandemic if we don’t follow science
Our hearts go out to all the families who’ve lost a loved one to the COVID-19 pandemic. We are well over 500,000 dead and more than a thousand continue to die daily in the USA. Continue reading
Sanction the axis of mercenary and terrorist evil: Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Georgia
Azerbaijan deployed thousands of mercenaries in last year’s 44-day war that it and Turkey waged against Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabagh and Armenia. Continue reading
Machinery of death: When the government acts as judge, jury and executioner
The government should not be in the business of killing its citizens. Continue reading
Freedom Rider: No human rights in Texas
The people of Texas suffer unnecessarily from bad weather because their state puts oligarchs first and does not recognize the human right to health and safety. Continue reading
The freedom to freeze
Texas’s prevailing social Darwinism was expressed most succinctly last week by the mayor of Colorado City, who accused his constituents—trapped in near sub-zero temperatures and complaining about lack of heat, electricity, and drinkable water—of being the “lazy” products of a “socialist government,” adding “I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn handout!” and predicting “only the strong will survive and the weak will perish.” Continue reading
Congress must pass the For the People Act
Republicans and Democratic voters agree: We need to make sure leaders actually represent “we the people.”
More than 230 years ago, the founders of the United States enshrined their vision for our democracy in the preamble to the Constitution. Its opening line begins with a powerful aspiration and mandate for our government to serve “we, the people.” Continue reading
Joe Biden and “open borders”: As if
On February 9, more than 50 Republican members of the US House of Representatives sent President Joe Biden a letter decrying his “open border” policies. Of all the hyberbolic claims I’ve read regarding the Biden administration since Inauguration Day, that one takes the cake. In neither word nor action has the new president come within a country mile of supporting “open borders” in principle or in policy. Continue reading
Computer security breaches and Trojan Horse backdoors
Who is at fault for the succession of major hacking events in the United States? “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
The U.S. Congress wants answers on what has been apparent foot-dragging by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) in answering congressional questions about NSA forcing the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) into incorporating a NSA-engineered back door into the Dual_EC_DRBG encryption algorithm standard developed for use in federal government computer systems and networks. On January 28, Democratic Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Cory Booker of New Jersey, along with eight of their Democratic colleagues in the House of Representatives—Tom Malinowski of New Jersey, Ted Lieu of California, Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts, Bill Foster of Illinois, Suzan DelBene of Washington, Yvette Clarke of New York, and Anna Eshoo of California—sent a letter to NSA director General Paul Nakasone requesting information on the forced introduction by NSA of the Dual_EC_DRBG algorithm into the products of Juniper Networks that permitted a massive breach of its customers’ systems in 2015, five years before a similar breach occurred with the products of SolarWinds, another vendor reliant on the same NSA-manipulated encryption algorithm. Continue reading
It will take more than dumping Trump to stop the neo-fascists
At the end of World War II, we saw a worldwide defeat of fascism. Millions in countries around the planet rejected what their fascist overlords had to offer—racism, genocide, economic austerity, and war. U.S. and Soviet soldiers marched for the same cause as they defeated fascism in one country after another. Continue reading
Texas deep freeze points out the absurdity of libertarianism
As Texas was plunged into a fourth day of Arctic temperatures, the cries went out from the uber-wealthy suburbs of Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. “Where’s my power?” “I have no water!” “I can’t buy gas and food!” As Texans looked to their Republican libertarian governor, Greg Abbott, they only received a lesson on the evils of green energy. Blaming the power failures caused by the deep freeze—another warning indicator about the increasingly dire effects of global climate change—Abbott, backed by Republican U.S. Representative Dan Crenshaw from Houston, cited frozen wind generators as the main culprit. In reality, a place where libertarians have never existed and never will, the wind turbines failed because Texas’s toothless regulators refused to ensure that they were winterized. Similar temperatures do not affect wind turbines in northern climes or even Antarctica because they have been engineered to withstand sub-freezing temperatures. Texas resorted to using helicopters to “de-ice” wind turbines. Continue reading
They don’t work to kill all dissent; they just keep it from going mainstream
One of the most consequential collective delusions circulating in our society is the belief that our society is free. Our society is exactly free enough to create the illusion that we have freedom; from that line onwards it’s just totalitarianism veiled in propaganda. Continue reading
Look at pharma’s recent record before bestowing a crown
The vaccine “halo” that drug makers are currently wearing obscures their track record of selling addictive drugs, overpriced drugs and drugs with dangerous side effects hidden from the public. Continue reading
The ‘pre-existing condition’ that doomed the U.S. COVID response?
The answer from a blue-ribbon medical commission on the Trump years: decades of rising inequality.
Back in April 2017, only a few months after Donald Trump’s inauguration, one of world’s most prestigious medical journals, the London-based Lancet, established a special commission to keep tabs on “Public Policy and Health in the Trump Era.” Continue reading
‘Blood is on Abbott’s hands’: Anger at GOP leaders surges as food, water shortages compound Texas power crisis
"Abbott has failed and passed off blame to somebody else. Texas is in dire straits. Texans are dying. Homes are being destroyed, people are cold and hungry, and we have no idea when things will begin to return to normal."
Texans who have been without power for days in the aftermath of Winter Storm Uri are now also facing food and water crises as frigid temperatures and ongoing blackouts disrupt supply chains and wreak havoc on the state’s infrastructure—compounding emergencies that have spurred intensifying backlash against GOP leaders. Continue reading
Techno-censorship: The slippery slope from censoring ‘disinformation’ to silencing truth
This is the slippery slope that leads to the end of free speech as we once knew it. Continue reading
Freedom Rider: Impeachment theater
Democracy is hanging on by a thread—not due to marauding Trumpsters—but because of bipartisan support for neoliberal policies. Continue reading
Is Biden committing diplomatic suicide over the Iran nuclear agreement?
As Congress still struggles to pass a COVID relief bill, the rest of the world is nervously reserving judgment on America’s new president and his foreign policy, after successive U.S. administrations have delivered unexpected and damaging shocks to the world and the international system. Continue reading
Tyranny by propaganda is tyranny by force
For most of recorded history, domination by brute force has been the norm for human civilization. Someone claws their way into a position of power over the other humans, and you obey and respect him or he’ll have his goons attack you. Continue reading
Why I’m still not worried about Biden’s “gun control” proposals
In a column last November, I dismissed worries that the incoming Biden/Harris administration would—or, rather, could—successfully implement a more aggressive victim disarmament (English for the euphemism “gun control”) agenda than previous administrations. Continue reading
On January 5 and 6, democracy won, fascism lost
The United States of America was redefined on January 5 and 6, 2021. Never underestimate the pivotal power of these two dates in our nation’s history. And do not believe that a Senate failure to convict Donald Trump will change any of it. Continue reading
Trump is history. It’s Joe Biden who’s changing America
While most of official Washington has been consumed with the Senate impeachment trial, another part of Washington is preparing the most far-ranging changes in American social policy in a generation. Continue reading
Them, then and now
We’ve already rejected the servant state once. We certainly can once again.
We don’t know exactly why Uma Subramanian wanted to become an engineer. Did she believe her fascination with how things work could help make the world better place? We’ll never know for sure. What we do know: Subramanian, the aerospace engineer turned CEO of the luxury private-jet company Aero, now believes she has truly made humanity an awesome contribution. Continue reading
Impeachment: 57-43 Senate majority—but not enough—votes to convict Trump
WASHINGTON—A bipartisan 57-43 margin, the biggest bipartisan majority ever, voted to convict the impeached former president, Donald Trump, of inciting insurrection. But conviction needed 67 votes, so the former president escaped conviction on that sole impeachment count. Continue reading
Same as the old boss, Julian Assange edition
On February 9, the US Justice Department announced that US President Joe Biden, as in so many other areas, intends to serve Donald Trump’s second term when it comes to persecuting heroes guilty of exposing US war crimes and embarrassing American politicians. Continue reading
Ignoring pleas of press freedom defenders, Biden DOJ files appeal to extradite Julian Assange
"The Assange case represents the gravest threat to press freedom in a generation."
The Biden Justice Department on Friday formally appealed a British judge’s rejection of the U.S. request to extradite Julian Assange, confirming the new administration’s intention to run with its predecessor’s espionage charges against the WikiLeaks publisher despite warnings that the case endangers press freedoms around the world. Continue reading
The gamers’ uprising against Wall Street has deep populist roots
Wall Street may own the country, as Kansas populist leader Mary Elizabeth Lease once declared, but a new generation of “retail” stock market traders is fighting back.
A short squeeze frenzy driven by a new generation of gamers captured financial headlines in recent weeks, centered on a struggling strip mall video game store called GameStop. The Internet and a year off in this shut down to study up have given a younger generation of investors the tools to compete in the market. Gerald Celente calls it the “Youth Revolution.” A group of New York Young Republicans who protested in the snow on January 31 called it “Re-occupy Wall Street.” Others have called it Occupy Wall Street 2.0. Continue reading
The new guardrails for Biden’s Obama interventionists
The devastation left by the Trump administration makes it nearly impossible for the Biden State Department to achieve a pre-Trump status quo ante.
It might have come as a shock to the old Obama administration global interventionists who have landed top foreign policy positions in the Biden administration that the world has moved on from 2016. Whether it likes it or not, the Biden foreign policy team is dealing with a world that no longer reacts to every move made in Washington, DC. In fact, the U.S. capital city is now viewed as a place where a far-right insurrection nearly toppled constitutional rule and imposed a dictatorial regime rife with neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, private militias, and other societal nasties. So much for lectures from U.S. ambassadors about the need to maintain a civil society. Continue reading
Medicare for All the ‘only way forward,’ concludes Lancet panel in study detailing death and misery inflicted by Trump
"Trump's disastrous actions compounded longstanding failures in health policy in the USA. We know what it will take to create a healthy society. We just need the political will to do it."
A panel of policy experts and medical professionals convened to examine the healthcare legacy of Donald Trump concluded in a detailed report released Thursday morning that the former president’s sweeping regulatory rollbacks and full-scale assault on America’s already decimated public health infrastructure severely undermined the nation’s fight against Covid-19 and caused tens of thousands of preventable deaths. Continue reading
Freedom Rider: The minimal minimum wage
Posted on April 12, 2021 by Margaret Kimberley
Most Democrats either don’t want a minimum wage increase or are too afraid of bucking their party’s donor class. Continue reading →