Inequality

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On Labor Day, American workers have little to celebrate. That’s alright. The September Labor Day, while initially proposed by some workers in the 1880s, was backed by conservative President Grover Cleveland over May 1, which he associated with radicalism (i.e. with workers who would demand their rights). So it really […]

Donald Trump

Racist Billionaires, Patriotic Socialists, Climate Emergency and the Fate of America

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com ) – As I turn 75, there’s no simpler way to put it than this: I’m an old man on a new planet — and, in case it isn’t instantly obvious, that’s not good news on either score. I still have a memory of being a camp counselor in upstate New York more […]

Climate Change

Why We Can’t Address the Climate Emergency without confronting Plutocracy

Inequality.org

By Tom Athanasiou Something has changed, as most everyone in the climate movement agrees, and we have plenty of signposts that track the shift, from David Wallace-Well’s 2017 New York Magazine piece, The Uninhabitable Earth, to last year’s Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy, a paper downloaded by the hundreds of thousands. The […]

Inequality

Is Bernie Sanders Right that 3 Billionaires Have more Wealth than Half of America?

Institute for Policy Studies

By Chuck Collins | – And in addition to the 3 billionaires Bernie mentioned, we should also be worried about the expanding fortunes of multi-generational wealth dynasties. The wealthiest 3 billionaires in the U.S. –Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett — now have as much wealth as the bottom half of the U.S. population […]

Donald Trump

Trump’s Dismantling of our Government: Deregulating our Way to Disaster

John Buell

(Informed Comment) – While Trump’s xenophobic and protectionist agenda, thankfully often blocked by the courts, has received the lion’s share of media attention, his henchmen have enacted a whole series of game changing initiatives in the area of federal regulation. Deregulating such domestic concerns as transportation, occupational health and safety, the environment is hardly new. […]

Inequality

The Reality for the Middle Classes behind the supposedly “Surging” U.S. Economy

Inequality.org

By Sarah Anderson | – A tiny uptick in wages won’t do much to help Americans squeezed by debt and facing rising prices for medicine, child care, housing, and other essentials. Recent economic reports have President Donald Trump crowing. The big headline numbers do sound encouraging. The unemployment rate is down to 3.6%, the lowest […]

Democratic Socialism

The GOP is Demonizing the Left in New Red Scare, but US Public wants . . . Socialism

Jim Hightower

(Otherwords) – The policies Republicans smear as Stalinist are a good deal more popular than their own. By Jim Hightower | May 1, 2019 “Socialism,” snarled Donald Trump at a recent pep rally of far-right Republicans. The obedient crowd of Trumpistas snarled back in unison: So-sh’ll-izz-ummm! There you have the entire intellectual content of the […]

Democratic Socialism

Bring Back Eisenhower Socialism

OtherWords

By Chuck Collins | – Conservatives want you to believe that not having to choose between paying for rent or medicine is Soviet-style tyranny. By Chuck Collins | March 12, 2019 Beware of the specter of socialism! Anytime a politician proposes a wildly popular idea that helps ordinary people, a few grumpy conservatives will call […]

Inequality

The Survival of the Richest: The Real Wall

Nomi Prins

( Tomdispatch.com) – Like a gilded coating that makes the dullest things glitter, today’s thin veneer of political populism covers a grotesque underbelly of growing inequality that’s hiding in plain sight. And this phenomenon of ever more concentrated wealth and power has both Newtonian and Darwinian components to it. In terms of Newton’s first law […]