Did You Know
Did You Know
Republicans Have Made It Harder To Vote In 11 States So Far
Nathaniel Rakich and Elena Mejía: Republican lawmakers have now enacted new voting restrictions in a total of 11 states — Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, Utah and Wyoming. ... The highest-profile voting restriction that has been enacted since Georgia’s is Senate Bill 90 in Florida. ... In less than five months, 25 new voting restrictions have already been enacted in 2021. ... Republicans are expected to add even more laws restricting voting access to the books in the coming months — with an omnibus bill in Texas...
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May 11, 2021, 3:38pm
Did You Know
Humanity Does Not Need Bill Gates
Rob Larson & Nathan J. Robinson: On everything from climate change to global health, the billionaire tycoon is a study in shamelessness. ... Bill Gates’ career has two parts: the part in which he was monopolizing industries and destroying competitors’ (often better) products and the part where he became a jet-setting billionaire philanthropist whose work is hard to hold accountable and who sometimes directly undermines the public good. ... he is part of a small class of elites who are able to bypass democracy, and does embody many aspects of contemporary society that need to change. ... but ultimately billionaires should not exist in the first place. ... This is too much concentrated wealth and power and it makes a farce of democracy...
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May 4, 2021, 3:28pm
Did You Know
The Politicization of Intelligence, Revisited
Melvin Goodman: The politicization of intelligence typically involves pressure from policymakers on the intelligence process. ... Example: Pressure from the Bush administration on director George Tenet and deputy director John McLaughlin to support the war against Iraq produced phony intelligence on non-existent weapons of mass destruction. ... The reverse can also be true, however. The military and intelligence communities are fully capable of pressuring presidential administrations with the use of worst-case or slanted intelligence. ... The militarization of our international security policy, moreover, has contributed to a worsening of the international situation, which is not mentioned in the global threat assessment...
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Apr 27, 2021, 2:52pm
Did You Know
The Pattern of Over-Policing Drivers
Samantha Schuyler: According to a report from the ACLU released this week, ...the policing of minor infractions, including nonpayment of fines or fees, is considered a significant source of revenue for local governments. The criminal legal system, the authors write, “relies heavily on collecting money from the very people targeted by the system,” in the process incentivizing police to punish as many people as possible. ... For the victims of such police activity, however, the fines and fees extracted from these kinds of stops themselves can create an unmanageable burden, and the failure to pay often results in a cycle of increased fees or warrants. ... For instance, the authors of the report found that each year, over 100,000 Coloradans lose their licenses because of unpaid traffic debt or failure to appear in court...
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Apr 22, 2021, 2:36pm
Did You Know
A lucrative border-industrial complex keeps the US border in constant ‘crisis’
Todd Miller, The Guardian, UK: In 1994, the US’s annual border and immigration budget was $1.5bn. In 2020, the budget exceeded $25bn - a 16-fold increase... Northrop Grumman, General Atomics, G4S, Deloitte and CoreCivic, among others – to develop the border and immigration enforcement apparatus. ... Perhaps the answer lies not in the impossible task of building a humane border, but rather a more humane world in which concepts such as borders and prisons are seen as outmoded, unjust ways of relating to one another...
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Apr 19, 2021, 2:45pm
Did You Know
What We Should Talk About When We Talk About Root Causes of Migration
Isabela Dias: Let’s start with the history of US meddling... The causes of migration that everybody talks about 99.9% of the time are poverty and violence. ... the United States has played a key role in sustaining those conditions through the strategies that it has more strongly favored—including militarization over social policies—to sustain its position of economic, political, and cultural power in the region. ... Sending money to governments hasn’t been a solution. ... A lot of that foreign aid also goes to military interventions and the creation of more enforcement agencies...
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Apr 9, 2021, 1:51pm
Did You Know
The Assassination and Resurrection of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Edward Curtin: The spirit of all the prophets and martyrs is about now, not then; about us, not them; it confronts us with the challenge to interrogate ourselves. ... Very few Americans are aware of the truth behind the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ... For more than fifty years there has been a media blackout supported by government disinformation to hide the truth. ... William Pepper’s decades-long investigation not only refutes the flimsy case against James Earl Ray, but definitively proves that King was killed by a government conspiracy led by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, Army Intelligence, and Memphis Police, assisted by southern Mafia figures...
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Apr 5, 2021, 2:20pm
Did You Know
‘Criminalization Makes the Situation Worse’: Victoria Law on Incarceration
Eleanor J. Bader: Victoria Law, author of “Prisons Make Us Safer” and 20 Other Myths About Mass Incarceration ... “a beginners guide for people who are starting to think about mass incarceration and the reasons behind it.” ... Interview: Incarceration typically fails to address the root causes of crime—poverty, racism, sexism, transphobia, and lack of educational or job opportunities. ... As it stands today, the United States places the onus for crime and violence on the individual. ... Restorative justice attempts to make the perpetrator accountable, but transformative justice attempts to integrate personal responsibility and more broad-scale social change into the healing process...
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Mar 31, 2021, 3:51pm
Did You Know
We are living through a time of fear – not just of the virus, but of each other
Jonathan Cook: Welcome to the age of fear. Nothing is more corrosive of the democratic impulse than fear. ... Fear destroys solidarity. Fear forces us to turn inwards to protect ourselves and our loved ones. Fear refuses to understand or identify with the concerns of others. ... Once fear takes hold, populations risk agreeing to hand back rights, won over decades or centuries ... What the UK’s Police and Crime Bill does, like similar legislation in the US and Europe, is to declare some protests as legitimate and others as not. It leaves it to our leaders to decide...
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Mar 25, 2021, 4:22pm
Did You Know
Water is Life. Can We Protect It?
Robin Broad John Cavanagh: Americans will have to fight hard to protect their water from corporate greed. They can learn a lot from El Salvador. ... El Salvador fought back. They studied the science of mining and water, educated their neighbors, and organized farmers, priests, and international allies to speak out — even as some received death threats and four frontline water defenders were brutally assassinated. ... Against extraordinary opposition, these communities convinced their government in 2017 to become the first in the world to ban all metals mining to save their rivers. ... Today the United States faces a similar reckoning as El Salvador...
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Mar 19, 2021, 4:03pm
Did You Know
Why Public Banking Is Now Gaining Traction in the U.S.
Ellen Brown: Bills have been introduced in several states that saw the pandemic recession as a clarion call for keeping their money at home. ... The devastation caused by nationwide COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 has highlighted the inadequacies of the current financial system in serving the public, local businesses, and local governments. ... U.S. state and local governments collectively pay $160 billion annually just in interest in the bond market, which is controlled by big private banks ... Half the cost of infrastructure generally consists of financing ... For local governments, public banks offer a path to escape monopoly control by giant private financial institutions over public policies...
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Mar 17, 2021, 2:16pm
Did You Know
Forget $15 an Hour — the Minimum Wage Should Be $24
Jon Schwarz: The minimum wage once went up hand in hand with the productivity of the U.S. economy. It should again. ... From both a moral and practical perspective, the minimum wage should go up in step with the productivity of the U.S. economy — that is, our ever-increasing ability to create more wealth with the same amount of work. Morally, as a country grows richer, everyone should share in the increased wealth. Practically, companies that sell things need lots of people with the money to buy them. ... During the 30 years from the establishment of a minimum wage in 1938 to 1968, Congress repeatedly upped the minimum wage so that it did in fact go up hand in hand with U.S. productivity...
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Mar 6, 2021, 3:45pm
Did You Know
Campaigns for Reparations Are Gaining Steam Across the Country
David Lamb: As H.R. 40 gathers dust in the U.S. Congress, St. Paul, Minnesota, becomes the latest city to join the national grassroots movement to make reparations to Black communities. ... On January 13, the city of St. Paul voted unanimously to examine reparations for Black residents, acknowledging its complicity in racial discrimination, including the dismantling of the state’s largest Black cultural, religious, and business hub. ... The vote was the latest effort by a string of cities around the country to study how they have failed Black residents—and what they can do to atone. ... Evanston became the first U.S. municipality to fund its reparations initiative, voting last July to earmark $10 million from its new cannabis tax for the cause...
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Mar 3, 2021, 12:21pm
Did You Know
Europe Reduces Waste by Guaranteeing the Right to Repair
Klaus Sieg: In November, the EU Parliament called on the European Commission to make routine repair of everyday products easier, systematic, and cost-efficient ... March, the first eco-design regulation that will define standards for repair and useful life will come into force. ... Manufacturers of washing machines, dishwashers, refrigerators, and monitors will have to ensure that components are replaceable with common tools. ... Europe is one of the largest markets in the world, which means that new EU design guidelines and right-to-repair mandates could force manufacturers across the world to make more durable products...
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Feb 26, 2021, 3:51pm
Did You Know
What the vaccine debacle tells us about predatory capitalism
Ognian Kassabov: Myth one: The private sector is the best innovator ... For decades, vaccines have been de-prioritised by the industry as insufficiently profitable. ... pharmaceutical companies secured a cost-reduced development and risk-free launch of a new product. ... Myth two: The invisible hand of the market is effective ... any trade secret is a form of monopoly, and in this sense, pharmaceutical patents enable the supplier to impose a monopoly. ... Myth three: Capitalist globalisation is fair ... Immunity cannot function as the privilege of the few...
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Feb 22, 2021, 2:52pm
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