Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday signed into law a bill that civil rights groups warn is designed to crack down on peaceful demonstrations and criminalize dissent by redefining “rioting” in an overbroad way and creating draconian new felonies for protest-related offenses. Continue reading
Following one of the most high-profile union votes in history, workers at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama—led by Black organizers—ultimately rejected efforts to form a union by 71 percent, according to the National Labor Relations Board. Continue reading
An Afghan taxi-driver in Vancouver told one of us a decade ago that this day would come. “We defeated the Persian Empire in the eighteenth century, the British in the nineteenth, the Soviets in the twentieth. Now, with NATO, we’re fighting twenty-eight countries, but we’ll defeat them, too,” said the taxi-driver, surely not a member of the Taliban, but quietly proud of his country’s empire-killing credentials. Continue reading
Americans are not safe in their homes. Continue reading
The non-vaccinated can be smeared and equated with MAGA hat wearing Trumpers, regardless of their religious or political affiliations. Continue reading
In a recent report, the United Nations Mission in Mali, known as MINUSMA, concluded that, on January 3, French warplanes had struck a crowd attending a wedding in the remote village of Bounti, killing 22 of the guests. Continue reading
When I met a seven-year-old girl named Guljumma at a refugee camp in Kabul a dozen years ago, she told me that bombs fell early one morning while she slept at home in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand Valley. With a soft, matter-of-fact voice, Guljumma described what happened. Some people in her family died. She lost an arm. Continue reading
The United States is awash in hate. From the shootings at three Atlanta-area spas to the avalanche of voter-suppression bills sponsored by Republican lawmakers in 43 states in the aftermath of the November election, racial minorities and historically oppressed communities find themselves, once again, the objects and victims of hate. Continue reading
A federal appeals court on Tuesday dealt the final blow to former President Donald Trump’s attempt to open nearly 130 million acres of territory in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans to oil and gas drilling. Continue reading
After looking into one of their main issues, I have to agree with Republicans: Our elections are being rigged. Continue reading
Joe Biden is thinking about the complexities of racial and social justice in America, vaccinating the population against COVID-19, combatting domestic terrorism, rebuilding the country’s infrastructure, bringing back jobs and climate change. Donald Trump is thinking about money and revenge—and maybe about why his pal Vladimir Putin has all the luck. Continue reading
A March 9 Twitter post by Secretary of State Tony Blinken reads as follows: “We will never hesitate to use force when American lives and vital interests are at stake, but we will do so only when the objectives are clear and achievable, consistent with our values and laws, and with the American people’s informed consent – together with diplomacy.” Continue reading
A new report, published on 14 March 2021 in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ journal Ambio, points out that humanity is hurtling towards destruction unless we have the collective wisdom to change course quickly. Continue reading
The Idaho legislature just cracked down on colleges teaching “social justice ideology.” They cut $409,000 from Boise State University’s budget and forced a number of “social justice”-related classes to move online and “asynchronous,” without any more live discussion. Continue reading
It’s a given that the government is corrupt, unaccountable, and has exceeded its authority. Continue reading
I write about humanity’s problems as a species in all sorts of ways in this space, but really if you want to get straightforward about things all we’re ever actually talking about here is a lack of awareness of what’s true and the need to eliminate that lack. Continue reading
Joe Biden is embarking on the biggest government initiative in more than a half century, “unlike anything we have seen or done since we built the interstate highway system and the space race decades go,” he says. Continue reading
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to wreak havoc on people’s lives, President Joe Biden has been on a victory tour to promote the American Rescue Plan, a hefty $1.9 trillion spending package that not only sends direct stimulus payments to struggling Americans, but also greatly expands health care options through the Affordable Care Act (ACA). “We’re becoming a nation where health care is a right and not for the privileged few,” said Biden in his remarks at a hospital on the campus of Ohio State University. Eleven years after the ACA was first passed into law as President Barack Obama’s signature health care reform, it has survived relentless Republican attacks in the form of legal challenges and defunding attempts. Preserving and expanding it under Democratic leadership certainly constitutes a win against Republican obstructionism and a refusal to offer better alternatives. But this latest strengthening of the ACA is first and foremost a victory for the health insurance industry. Continue reading
France-based transnational corporation Veolia agreed in principle to acquire Suez, its main rival, for $15.5 billion on Monday, setting the stage for the creation of a water and waste management juggernaut that critics warn would be a “dangerous corporate monopoly” destined to “hurt consumers and enrich shareholders.” Continue reading
The past year proves that a lot of conventional economic wisdom is neither true nor wise. Continue reading
Slow-witted Joe Biden appears to think that we’re still in the age of the sole superpower, when in fact that era has come and gone. Continue reading
If nations had a referendum, asking the public if they want their taxes to go to military weapons that are more efficient in killing than the ones we currently have, or if they would prefer the money to be invested in medical care, social services, education and other critical public needs, what would the response be? Continue reading
With the financial support of Mercer Family Foundation far-right heiress financier Rebekah Mercer, exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, U.S.-based Falun Gong cult leader Li Hongzhi, and the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, which is associated with the fascist Opus Dei Roman Catholic sect, Donald Trump’s sporadic political adviser, Steve Bannon, has implemented a multi-pronged approach to enabling fascist control of governments around the world. Bannon’s ideological approach to furthering fascism globally can be called “Bannonism.” Continue reading
Recent statements made by US officials suggest that Washington will continue to pursue a hardline policy on Venezuela. The new Biden administration, however, needs to urgently rethink its approach. Continue reading
Do you remember the promises made by the Democratic Party’s presidential and Congressional candidates on universal health insurance? You can forget their pledges and somber convictions now that your votes put the Democrats in charge of the House and the Senate. The Democrats’ leaders are abandoning their promises and retreating into a cowardly corporatist future. Continue reading
While our sacred democracy was allegedly being served by a stupid attempt to unsuccessfully impeach an ex-president for the second time and essentially tell more than 70 million Americans that they might as well vote for Pavlov, FDR, Hitler or Oprah Winfrey since any alleged exercise of supposed freedom on their part would be meaningless in the rape of language we call a democracy. You know, the one with a billionaire class getting richer by the second and Americans across the board sinking lower by the minute. But enough good news, let’s move on to the even better signs of our political economic progress against logic, morality and majority rule, something that vanished in practice the moment our euro ancestors arrived and the people who’d lived here for millennia were brutally forced out of their homelands. Continue reading
There is a weasel word that politicians use whenever something goes wrong on their watch: “unacceptable.” Continue reading
At last, we are back to publishing Intrepid Report. With any luck, the last six weeks of pain is behind me. Continue reading
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
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
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
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Biden’s industrial policy
Posted on April 20, 2021 by Robert Reich
America is about to revive an idea that was left for dead decades ago. It’s called industrial policy, and it’s at the heart of Joe Biden’s plans to restructure the U.S. economy. Continue reading →