Did You Know
Did You Know
Report: Donald Trump Campaign Visit Preceded Rise in Hate Crimes
Ibn Safir: According to the Washington Post, counties that hosted Donald Trump rallies saw a 226 percent increase in hate crimes in the months following Trump’s stop in town. ... Using the Anti-Defamation League’s Hate Extremism Anti-Semitism and Terrorism map, the Post checked for a correlation between the counties that hosted one of Trump’s presidential rallies in 2016 and upticks in hate crime activity. ... Controlling for crime rates, active hate groups, minority population, college education, and location in the country, the HEAT map showed the jump in hate crimes over comparable counties that did not host Trump ... While the Post took its time to spell out that correlation is not causation, it is worth noting that the 2017 FBI Universal Crime Report reported a 17 percent increase in over the year prior...
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Mar 25, 2019, 12:27pm
Did You Know
The face of American socialism before Bernie Sanders? Eugene Debs
Paul Buhle and Mari Jo Buhle: With the hype around a resurgent American left, it might feel like socialism is a newcomer to political discourse in the United States. But only if you don’t know your US history. Long before Bernie Sanders came along, there was Eugene Debs ... Like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, his platform focused on social inequalities, including income inequality. He also fought for better transportation systems; health and safety regulations; unemployment compensation; the minimum wage; the limiting of so-called military budgets and women’s reproductive rights, including access to birth control. ... The Socialist party, founded in 1901, came together around Debs. Among his most dogged followers were “Abe’s Boys,” surviving Union army veterans of the civil war, invoking Debs as successor to martyred President Lincoln. ... As Debs was fond of saying, “I am for socialism because I am for humanity."...
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Mar 23, 2019, 4:48pm
Did You Know
Picky Brits Won’t Eat US Chicken — Should You?
Kirsty Vitarelli: A political storm is brewing between the United Kingdom (UK) and the US with regard to food safety. As a result, some unsavory, ineffective US agricultural practices are being uncovered. ... At the heart of the disagreement is the way chicken meat is disinfected with chlorinated water once it has been slaughtered, and the practise of injecting cattle with hormones. The sale of hormonally-treated beef is banned in the UK, and chlorine is not used to clean chicken. ... But if the meat was treated better in the first place it wouldn’t need to be treated with chemicals at the end of the process, according to a British scientist. ... if animals weren’t kept in such crowded conditions in the first place, the opportunity for infection to pass between animals would be reduced, and with it the need for hormone injections ... “Over the last 10 years the use of antibiotics in livestock in the US has approximately doubled, where in the European Union it has approximately halved,”...
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Mar 9, 2019, 11:14am
Did You Know
What States Can Do to Reduce Poverty and Inequality Through Tax Policy
Sarah Anderson and Chuck Collins: States have an opportunity to act to close the loopholes that hide and protect the wealth of the top 1%, remedy the impact of the new federal tax law that lowers taxes on the wealthy, and make critical investments in infrastructure, energy systems, and programs that create broader opportunity and shared prosperity. ... TAXES ON HIGH-INCOME EARNERS - The strong majority of Americans support progressive taxes on the rich. ... STATE ESTATE TAXATION - The estate tax is a levy on large fortunes when they are transferred from one generation to the next, with exemption thresholds that shield middle and working-class families. ... TAX ON CORPORATIONS WITH EXTREME GAPS BETWEEN CEO AND WORKER PAY - In 2016, the city of Portland, Oregon, adopted the world’s first tax penalty on corporations with extreme gaps between their CEO and worker pay....
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Mar 4, 2019, 2:36pm
Did You Know
One Observed Effect of Unconditional Basic Income: Better More Reliable Transportation
Scott Santens: Unconditional basic income means many things to many people, being that cash offers total freedom of choice on what good or service to exchange it for, but one particularly common thing it allows people to newly obtain, who feel they need the most help in obtaining it, is transportation. ... Thomas Klemm in an interview with the Basic Income Podcast: So the biggest thing that everyone said that I talked to is they have better more reliable transportation. It's hard to overstate how important reliable transportation is in rural areas. It's the difference between having a job, getting to doctor's appointments. It's everything. There's no public transportation out where I'm from so that was the biggest one that everyone mentioned up front when I asked them what has been the positive effect. Almost, everyone, the first thing they said was ‘I had better transportation.’ ...
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Feb 27, 2019, 2:17pm
Did You Know
Philly DA Larry Krasner Stopped Seeking Bail for Low-Level Crimes. Here's What Happened Next.
Samantha Melamed: “What we had a year ago was not fair. We do not, we should not, imprison people for poverty,” Krasner said. By the district attorney’s count, 1,750 additional defendants were released without bail during 2018, with no increase in recidivism. ... “The big thing that it did was that it changed the conditions of release for defendants in Philadelphia. Concretely, more defendants were out of jail not owing any money,” ... Krasner announced one year ago that his office would no longer request money bail for defendants charged with certain misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies — a list of 25 charges that included prostitution, intoxicated driving, and some burglaries. Instead, the office is encouraging trial commissioners to release such defendants on nonmonetary conditions or on their own recognizance...
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Feb 22, 2019, 3:05pm
Did You Know
How a 70 Percent Marginal Tax Rate on Top Earners Can Reduce Inequality
Eileen Appelbaum: In recent weeks and in quick succession Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez promoted a top marginal tax rate of 70 percent on the part of incomes of the super-rich over $10 million, Elizabeth Warren proposed a wealth tax on ultra-millionaires and billionaires ... they provide the basis for meaningful tax reform whose twin goals are reducing extreme income and wealth inequality and protecting American democracy from the predations of wealthy plutocrats. ... If Congress does not close the loopholes in the tax code to rule out opportunities for those with extraordinarily high incomes to engage in tax avoidance, there is little point in enacting a 70 percent marginal tax rate...
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Feb 12, 2019, 12:05pm
Did You Know
Leaked Wikileaks Doc Reveals US Military Use of IMF, World Bank as “Unconventional” Weapons
Whitney Webb: WASHINGTON – In a leaked military manual on “unconventional warfare” recently highlighted by WikiLeaks, the U.S. Army states that major global financial institutions — such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) — are used as unconventional, financial “weapons in times of conflict up to and including large-scale general war,” as well as in leveraging “the policies and cooperation of state governments.” ... As a consequence of the lopsided influence of the U.S. on these institutions’ behavior, these organizations have used their loans and grants to “trap” nations in debt and have imposed “structural adjustment” programs on these debt-saddled governments that result in the mass privatization of state assets, deregulation, and austerity that routinely benefit foreign corporations over local economies...
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Feb 8, 2019, 2:51pm
Did You Know
The Vast Impact of Legalizing Hemp
Jim Prues: The Empire doesn’t understand yet what has happened. Legalizing hemp farming and hemp industries will have a profound impact on our local communities, our soil, our ecosystems and our culture at large. They don’t understand that legalizing hemp, part of the new Farm Bill enacted in December, is a tremendous catalyst for change. But we do. ... With legal hemp we begin to reverse ... corporate globalism, we start strengthening local production and hence our local communities. This will be tightly coupled with the local food movement, which is already gaining influence in many areas. ... With hemp we gain a valuable resource for reducing the destruction of our already degraded home planet, Earth. We immediately reduce logging and its destructive footprint....
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Feb 4, 2019, 12:48pm
Did You Know
Venezuela Crisis: Former UN Rapporteur Says US Sanctions Are Killing Citizens
Michael Selby-Green: ‘Modern-day economic sanctions and blockades are comparable with medieval sieges of towns’ ... The first UN rapporteur to visit Venezuela for 21 years has told The Independent the US sanctions on the country are illegal and could amount to “crimes against humanity” under international law. ... “Sanctions kill,” ... adding that they fall most heavily on the poorest people in society, demonstrably cause death through food and medicine shortages, lead to violations of human rights and are aimed at coercing economic change in a “sister democracy”. ... “It is insufficient to see only the errors or deficiencies that the government may have, without seeing the environment of international pressure under which this population lives.”...
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Jan 28, 2019, 11:29am
Did You Know
2018 Saw Most Killings Linked to US Far Right Since 1995: ADL
Al Jazeera: Watchdog says 2018 saw most far-right-linked killings since 1995, with 42 of 50 murders carried out by firearm. ... The report adds that 2018 was the fourth-deadliest year on record since the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) started tracking such murders in 1970. ... "It's time for our nation's leaders to appropriately recognise the severity of the threat and to devote the necessary resources to address the scourge of right-wing extremism." ... The ADL partly attributes the comparably high number of deaths to a series of mass shootings, including 17 incidents involving "shooting sprees that caused 38 deaths and injured 33 people"...
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Jan 24, 2019, 4:00pm
Did You Know
The Vice President's Men
Seymour M. Hersh When George H.W. Bush arrived in Washington as vice president in January 1981 he seemed little more than a sideshow to Ronald Reagan ... There was another view of Bush: the one held by the military men and civilian professionals who worked for him on national security issues. Unlike the president, he knew what was going on and how to get things done. For them, Reagan was ‘a dimwit’ who didn’t get it, or even try to get it. ... Bush was different: he got it. At his direction, a team of military operatives was set up that bypassed the national security establishment – including the CIA – and wasn’t answerable to congressional oversight. It was led by Vice-Admiral Arthur Moreau, a brilliant navy officer who would be known to those on the inside as ‘M’. ... he oversaw a secret team – operating in part out of the office of Daniel Murphy, Bush’s chief of staff – which quietly conducted at least 35 covert operations against drug trafficking, terrorism and, most important, perceived Soviet expansionism in more than twenty countries...
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Jan 18, 2019, 3:06pm
Did You Know
Portland Now Generates Electricity From Turbines Installed In City Water Pipes
Rafi Schwartz: Portland has replaced a section of its existing water supply network with Lucid Energy pipes containing four forty-two inch turbines. As water flows through the pipes, the turbines spin and power attached generators, which then feed energy back into the city’s electrical grid. Known as the “Conduit 3 Hydroelectric Project” ... Lucid Energy’s system isn’t affected by the sort of external conditions (namely: the weather) upon which other renewable energy sources–like solar and wind power– are reliant ... the system does more than simply provide electricity: It can monitor both the overall condition of a city’s water supply network as well as assess the drinking quality of the water flowing through it. ...
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Jan 4, 2019, 3:23pm
Did You Know
Bergen County Ended Chronic Homelessness, So Can Every Other Community
James Abro: Bergan County is located directly across the Hudson River from Manhattan, it is the most populous county in New Jersey (948,406); and its population is as diverse economically and racially as any similar American urban center. ... Here are Ms. Orlando’s main ingredients for her winning recipe for ending homelessness: ... 1) Provide one-stop housing health and employment services in a welcoming environment ... 2) Adopt the Housing First Model; Change the focus from fixing people to finding them housing. ... 3) Create a government, faith-based and non-profit collaborative model where everyone is bought into the same philosophy and goal ... 4) Provide low—to no—barrier housing focused sheltering. (For example, no intake process that involves extensive questioning or identification requirements.) ... 5) Adopt a County Homeless Trust Fund...
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Dec 29, 2018, 3:36pm
Did You Know
Ignored and Infuriated, Pawnee Stop Illegal Fracking Plans on Tribal Lands
Jessica A. Knoblauch, Earthjustice: The government admits it failed to follow its own rules when approving new oil and gas leases on Pawnee land, part of a broader pattern of agency misconduct. ... In addition to water contamination, geologists have linked fracking to a surge in earthquakes, both in Oklahoma and across the country. ... Despite this threat, government regulators didn’t bother to address the earthquake risk when approving the leases. Nor did they address the impacts of drilling near the Cimarron River, a 698-mile cinnamon- and paprika-colored ribbon of water that supports a native fishery protected under Pawnee tribal law. The government authorized the oil and gas company to suck millions of gallons of water from the Cimarron for fracking. ... the Pawnee situation illustrates a larger pattern where the federal government violates the law by approving oil and gas projects on tribal lands without telling the affected tribes...
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Dec 18, 2018, 4:12pm
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