Inequality

( Tomdispatch.com ) – One thing our government doesn’t like doing is challenging the greed of health insurance companies. I can speak with some authority about holes in the ever-fraying safety net of our healthcare system, including Tricare, the military health insurance plan used by most troops, veterans, and their families, other employer-sponsored health insurance, […]

Inequality

SCOTUS to Homeless: Stay Awake or be Arrested

The Conversation

By Clare Pastore, University of Southern California | – (The Conversation) – The Supreme Court has ruled that the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not prohibit cities from criminalizing sleeping outdoors. City of Grants Pass v. Johnson began when a small city in Oregon with just one homeless shelter began enforcing a local […]

Climate Crisis

Human-Caused Climate Change will cut your Paycheck by a Fifth over the next 26 Years

Clean Energy Wire

By Julian Wettengel | – Clean Energy Wire ) – The damaging effects of climate change are set to hit economic growth severely across most countries, said researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). With the climate change that is already locked-in through past and “plausible” future emissions, income will be 19 […]

Inequality

Tax Day: The America I wish my Taxes paid for

H. Patricia Hynes

Greenfield, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment) – In June 2023 Amanda Jones, an African American who had recently given birth to her second daughter Miranda, died from pregnancy-related causes. Her state, Georgia, ranks among the least safe states in the country for women to give birth; and the vast majority of women who die during […]

Corporations

Republicans Plan to wage Class Warfare on Working People

Rebecca Gordon

( Tomdispatch.com) – Recently, you may have noticed that the hot weather is getting ever hotter. Every year the United States swelters under warmer temperatures and longer periods of sustained heat. In fact, each of the last nine months — May 2023 through February 2024 — set a world record for heat. As I’m writing […]

Inequality

Erdoğan’s streak came to a screeching Halt as Turkey’s economy pays the price for Years of Policy Mistakes

The Conversation

By Gulcin Ozkan, King’s College London | – (The Conversation) – For many years, it wasn’t the economy that determined voting behaviour in Turkey. The country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, won almost every election he contested despite a deteriorating economic outlook. This is commonly explained by the importance of identity politics in a country that […]

Inequality

Total U.S. Billionaire Wealth is Up 88 Percent over Four Years

Inequality.org

By Chuck Collins and Omar Ocampo | – ( Inequality.org ) – Four years ago, the United States entered the Covid-19 pandemic. Forbes published its 34th annual billionaire survey shortly after with data keyed to March 18, 2020. On that day, the United States had 614 billionaires who owned a combined wealth of $2.947 trillion. Four […]

Conspiracy Theories

Could Trump win again? Roots of MAGA Paranoia and the Politics of Fear

Arthur Goldwag

Brooklyn, NY (Special to Informed Comment; featured) – The cover of my The Politics of Fear: The Peculiar Persistence of American Paranoia features a photograph of a bearded, fur-clad man with a horned helmet, tattoos and face paint. On January 6, 2021, Jacob Anthony Chansley, aka the Q Shaman, stood at the House Speakers’ dais […]

Climate Crisis

We Need to Phase out Fossil Fuels Immediately, but Equitably

Tom Athanasiou

By Tom Athanasiou | – This essay was originally published in Foreign Policy in Focus Just before the recent climate summit in Dubai, COP28 president Sultan Al-Jaber, with some exasperation, came out with the following rather amazing statement: “Please help me, show me the roadmap for a phase out of fossil fuel that will allow […]