Inequality

( Otherwords.org ) – Health care giants are taking COVID-19 relief money while cutting jobs and paying CEOs millions. By Jim Hightower | July 29, 2020 The holy mantra of health professionals was coined about 2,500 years ago by the Greek physician Hippocrates: “Do no harm.” Of course, that was before corporate healthcare took charge […]

Inequality

A Jubilee Moment? Time to Stop Bankrolling War and the Wealthy

Liz Theoharis

( Tomdispatch.com) – The word jubilee comes from the Hebrew “yovel,” meaning a “trumpet blast of liberty.” It was said that, on the day of liberation, the sound of a ram’s horn would ring through the land. These days, I hear the sound of that horn while walking with my kids through the streets of […]

Epidemics

America’s Plague of Inequality and Homelessness meets the Coronavirus Plague

Rajan Menon

(Tomdispatch.com ) – The novel SARS-CoV-2 has roared through the American landscape leaving physical, emotional, and economic devastation in its wake. By early July, known infections in this country exceeded three million, while deaths topped 135,000. Home to just over 4% of the global population, the United States accounts for more than a quarter of […]

Climate Crisis

Baghdad Bob on the Potomac: Trump’s Hoaxes, from “Disappearing” Covid-19 to Climate to Russiagate

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Authoritarian regimes breed lies like rotting meat breeds maggots, and as Trump marches the United States into an imperial presidency beyond accountability, his rate of lying has become astronomical. If I just read ten a day, it would take me five and a half years just to read all 20,000 […]

Employment

Amid Pandemic and BLM Protests, Why Minimum Wage Must be Defended and Expanded

John Buell

You can’t fault them for lack of effort. Having lost a series of political, legislative, and legal battles to defeat minimum wage increases in cities and states all across the nation, business lobbies are turning to an innovative strategy.. Covid-19 leaves businesses so burdened as to be unable to meet the costs entailed by a […]

Banking

Also, Defund the CEOs

Sam Pizzigati

(Inequality.org) – America’s dirtiest three-letter word may now be “CEO,” and our ongoing economic meltdown is only making that tag even dirtier. Chef executives the nation over have spent this past spring scheming to keep their pockets stuffed while their workers suffer wage cuts, layoffs, and even death by Covid-19. Not all CEOs, of course. […]

Employment

To address Systemic Racism, we Must Focus on the Economy

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Hate crimes are still too prevalent, but there is a widespread consensus behind efforts to root them out. More recently the concept of systemic racism has come to the fore. Though definitions have not been universally accepted, I take it to mean any set of widely held […]

Inequality

Bailouts for Weapons Firms, Tent Cities for Vets: Covid Reveals U.S. Military Priorities

H. Patricia Hynes

Greenfield, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment) – On May 18, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) launched a Salvation Army-like charity drive asking the public for donations of money, food, and mobile phones to help an estimated 40,000 homeless veterans during the pandemic. More than one-half of all homeless veterans are African American and Hispanic, […]

Banking

Once the “Paris of the Middle East,” Lebanon’s Financial and Health Crises are Tearing it Apart

Jamal Dillman-Hasso

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Lebanon may have survived its bubbles and wars decades ago, but the combination of economic crisis and the coronavirus may have put it in a serious position once again. During the pandemic, Lebanon’s once-vibrant tourist industry is moribund (some two million visited the country of four million in 2019), and […]