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Report: Incarceration Destabilizes Neighborhood Economies, Doesn’t Increase Safety
Hannah Gaskill: A report released by the Maryland Center for Economic Policy suggests decreasing the state’s prison budget will lead to a healthier economy and increased public safety. ... Maryland has the highest rate of incarceration for Black men among the 50 states. ... The Maryland Center for Economic Policy recommends legalizing jobs in the underground economy, abolishing policies in the criminal justice system that criminalize poverty, and implementing comprehensive sentencing reform to decrease the state’s prison population. ... investment in public schools, public spaces and adequate drug treatment is the pathway towards a healthy economy and public safety...
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Nov 24, 2020, 1:10pm
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Ways You Can Help Eliminate Global Poverty
Beau Peters: the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that “approximately 1.2 billion people in the world live in extreme poverty” and earn less than a single dollar per day. ... Global poverty isn’t only about money. In fact, for many poverty-stricken areas, there’s an overall shortage of resources. Water is one of the most critical. ... “844 million people — approximately 10% of the global population — lack access to basic drinking water.” ... A bleak statistic highlights how global hunger could be avoided with more efficient food supply and distribution systems. ... The poorest locations in the world also struggle with the unavailability of energy sources...
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Nov 20, 2020, 2:42pm
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Restoring American Democracy: A Silver Lining Playbook
James McGowan: Ten steps toward reform following the Trump presidency. ... 1. Nip corruption in the bud ... 2. Stop social media from corrupting elections ... Social media has proven to be the greatest propaganda machine in history ... 3. Require presidential candidates to disclose potential conflicts ... directed untold millions of dollars into his own bank accounts from wealthy individuals seeking favors ... 4. Give equal weight to every vote ... 5. Enforce emoluments violations ... Trump’s decision to retain ownership and control of his sprawling business empire placed him in violation of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause ... 6. Reaffirm that no one is above the law...
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Nov 10, 2020, 10:46am
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THE REAL SCANDAL: U.S. MEDIA USES FALSEHOODS TO DEFEND JOE BIDEN FROM HUNTER’S EMAILS
Glenn Greenwald: Ed Note: This is the article that "The Intercept" refused to publish and which prompted the author to separate from the site that he co-founded. It is long but interesting both for the information about the main actors but also for the view of the media. ... Publication by the New York Post two weeks ago of emails from Hunter Biden's laptop, relating to Vice President Joe Biden's work in Ukraine, and subsequent articles from other outlets concerning the Biden family's pursuit of business opportunities in China, provoked extraordinary efforts by a de facto union of media outlets, Silicon Valley giants and the intelligence community to suppress these stories...
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Oct 31, 2020, 1:38pm
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Why Amy Coney Barrett Should Not Be On The Supreme Court
Nathan J. Robinson: Her rulings reveal a judge who serves the interests of Trump, telemarketers, debt collectors, bureaucrats, and cops. ... On the Court, she is likely to issue rulings that cause significant needless harm to innocent people and make the country a more unjust place, with rulings that erode the rights of workers, immigrants, criminal defendants, and, of course, those who need abortions. Sometimes her opinions have been downright cruel. ... There is ample evidence Amy Coney Barrett will act in ways contrary to basic principles that ought to be universally held...
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Sep 28, 2020, 3:15pm
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Finland Is Rallying Around a Six-Hour Workday — And So Should We
Annina Claesson: Finland’s social-democratic prime minister, Sanna Marin, has called for a six-hour workday without loss of pay, allowing Finns more free time and a fairer distribution of employment. As the pandemic forces us to reassess how working life is organized, we should take up labor’s historic call for a shorter workday. ... A looming economic crisis combined with the complete overhaul of working habits — along with a general reprioritization of health concerns — has revitalized the discussion on reduced working hours in Finland. With Marin’s initiative, there is a clear signal that galvanizing political will around a six-hour day is possible not only in the far-off future, but here and now...
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Sep 1, 2020, 12:09pm
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A message from the most bombed nation on earth
Ian Zabarte: More than 900 nuclear tests were conducted on Shoshone territory in the US. Residents still live with the consequences. ... In 1951, in violation of the treaty, the US established the Nevada Proving Grounds (what would later become known as the Nevada Test Site and is now known as the Nevada National Security Site) on Shoshone territory and began testing nuclear weapons - without our consent or knowledge. ... Over the next 40 years, it became the premier testing location for American nuclear weapons. Approximately 928 nuclear tests took place on the Shoshone territory - 100 in the atmosphere and more than 800 underground. ... The fallout from these tests covered a wide area, but it was Native American communities living downwind from the site who were most exposed ... For more than 50 years, we have been suffering from this silent killer and the US government's culture of secrecy keeps it silent...
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Aug 30, 2020, 2:26pm
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The Basic Case for a Wealth Tax
Bob Lord – Lee Price: Changes in tax policy since 1980 have been driving U.S. inequality to levels not seen since the original Gilded Age. Reversing that trajectory — and restoring a more egalitarian society — will require a complete overhaul of the changes in tax policy we’ve seen over the past four decades. ... A tax on wealth would be the most direct and rational way to address America’s obscene level of wealth concentration. ... Senator Elizabeth Warren last year proposed a 2 percent tax on wealth above $50 million and a 3 percent tax above $1 billion. ... Let’s add a third tier to Senator Warren’s proposal. On wealth in excess of $5 billion, let’s now impose a 10 percent tax...
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Aug 18, 2020, 11:36am
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How Billionaires Took Over Liberalism and Destroyed It
Eric Zuesse: They’ve done it via the ‘news’-media — their propaganda-operations. So, this is about how billionaires do that; how they’ve done it. ... Ever since at least the time of Thucydides in the 5th century BC, the wealthiest have ruled, and did it by conquest and plunder. ... The acquisition of exceptional wealth was by theft: it was coercion, which could be either physical against the body (violence), or mental against the mind (deception). ... Just as for at least the past 2,500 years, conquest is the aristocracy’s chief goal. All aristocrats support imperialism. ... This journalistic transformation at the Guardian, from anti-imperialist, to becoming a champion of the Military-Industrial Complex (which is owned and controlled by the billionaires), is typical...
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Aug 15, 2020, 3:40pm
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Unsung heroes of Los Alamos: Rethinking Manhattan Project Spies and the Cold War...
Dave LIndorff: At the end of WWII, the US was the world’s unchallenged superpower. It had emerged from war with its industrial base undamaged ... The US also had a monopoly on a new super weapon — the atom bomb ... it had no moral compunction about using its terrible new weapon of mass destruction ... Washington balked at the idea of sharing the bombs’ secrets ... the US was planning to launch a devastating nuclear first strike blitz on the Soviet Union ... ??? ... we have to thank the spies who, for whatever their individual motives, successfully obtained and delivered the secrets of the atomic bomb and its construction to the scientists in the Soviet Union ... they forced the US to have to consider the unacceptable risk of retaliation...
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Aug 4, 2020, 2:06pm
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Paying Attention to Nature—Urgently
Eric Holthaus: There’s the octopus in the parking garage, and 26,500 other signs that climate change is here. ... The simultaneous disturbance of nearly every ecosystem on Earth is helping opportunistic, weedy species flourish while specialized plants and animals race to adapt. There’s no better example of this than the worldwide boom in jellyfish, which have become a danger to swimming and power plants, and are newly dominating ecosystems all over the planet. ... A new era of urgently paying attention to nature has arrived. Lately, the behavior scientists are seeing is so unusual that it’s starting to seem more like tipping points are here...
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Jul 28, 2020, 3:11pm
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The case for unschooling
Tyshia Ingram: Why the hands off alternative to homeschooling might get parents through the Covid-19 pandemic. ... the challenge — for children to explore their own interests rather than adhere to the criteria and curricula predetermined by school boards or other entities. Unlike the traditional homeschool model which often seeks to mimic the classroom or follow a defined curriculum usually with parents acting as teachers, with unschooling, children take the lead. ... Adults, sometimes parents, but not always, typically offer support, assistance, and guidance when needed. ... The term emerged in the ’70s, popularized by author and educator John Holt ... (who) realized the motivating factor for many of his students wasn’t a love of learning, but a fear of failure and criticism...
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Jul 17, 2020, 5:00pm
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Your White Neighbor’s “Black Lives Matter” Yard Sign Is Not Enough
Shayla Lawson: Being anti-racist means making places safe for Black people to inhabit. Without that, BLM yard signs are just performative allyship. ... We’ve migrated into a time in which it is more important for people to feel not-racist than it is for them to act not-racist. ... “We’re clearly not in a post-racial America” ... Cities across America are carving liberal, predominantly white, enclaves out of what used to be socially and culturally mixed, or predominantly black, neighborhoods. ... In the summer of 2017, the FBI marked Black Lives Matter as a terrorist organization, a “Black Identity Extremist” group...
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Jul 6, 2020, 2:58pm
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Freedom Rider: Russia, Afghanistan, and the Big Lie
Margaret Kimberley: Far from being an enemy, Russia assisted the U.S. and its coalition in their fight against the Taliban. ... In the late 1990s and early 2000s, jihadists nearly tore Russia apart. Separatists from the Chechnya region terrorized the entire country which was weakened and divided after the collapse of the Soviet Union. ... “The charge is ludicrous on its face but the story is quite useful to people who want to hide their own criminality.” ... “The imperialist newspapers play an important role in creating propaganda tropes for public consumption.”...
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Jul 1, 2020, 4:45pm
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The FBI has a history of targeting black activists. That's still true today
Mike German: Throughout its history, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has viewed Black activism as a potential national security threat. It has used its ample investigative powers not to suppress violence, but to inhibit the speech and association rights of Black activists. ... 1919, a young J Edgar Hoover, director of the Bureau of Investigation’s general intelligence division, targeted “Black Moses” Marcus Garvey for investigation and harassment ... The FBI’s Cointelpro program targeting civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Stokely Carmichael ... By 2017, the FBI had invented a new domestic terrorism program category it called the “Black Identity Extremism movement..
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Jun 26, 2020, 3:17pm
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