Portland, Or. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – In the run-up to the 2024 Presidential election, the concept of the American Dream has become more central than ever to our national discourse. Many Americans simply ask, “What happened to it?” In my new book, The Hidden History of the American Dream: The Demise of the […]
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Neoliberalism
Why Are Any of Us Paying for the Scam That is Medicare Advantage?
By Thom Hartmann | – ( Commondreams.org) – They’re competing unfairly with Medicare, and you and I are paying for it. It’s obscene. When former U.S. President George W. Bush and congressional Republicans (and a handful of bought-off Democrats) created Medicare Advantage in 2003, it was the fulfillment of half of Bush’s goal of privatizing […]
Who will Tell the Story of Regional Climate Disasters when the News Desert Swallows all Local Newspapers?
By Jane Braxton Little ( Tomdispatch.com When wildfires began erupting in the Texas Panhandle in February, Laurie Ezzell Brown, the editor and publisher of the Canadian Record, was in Houston on a panel discussing ways in which losing local newspapers represents a danger to democracy. Running the once-a-week Record from the Panhandle town of Canadian, […]
Tax Day: The America I wish my Taxes paid for
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 […]
Republicans Plan to wage Class Warfare on Working People
( 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 […]
Could Trump win again? Roots of MAGA Paranoia and the Politics of Fear
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 […]
‘Hell No!’: Trump Allies’ Plan to Privatize Medicare Draws Alarm and Outrage
Jake Johnson A right-wing coalition that’s been laying the policy groundwork for another Trump presidency has developed a plan to further privatize Medicare by making fraud-riddled Medicare Advantage “the default enrollment option” for newly eligible beneficiaries. The plan, highlighted Monday by Rolling Stone‘s Andrew Perez, is outlined about halfway through Project 2025’s 920-page playbook for […]
We Deserve Medicare for All, But What We Get Is Medicare for Wall Street
By Les Leopold | – ( Commondreams.org ) – The United States health care system—more costly than any on earth—will become ever more so as Wall Street increasingly extracts money from it. Private equity funds own approximately 9% of all private hospitals and 30% of all proprietary for-profit hospitals, including 34% that serve rural populations. […]
How a Big Pharma Company Stalled a Potentially Lifesaving Vaccine in Pursuit of Bigger Profits
By Anna Maria Barry-Jester | – ( ProPublica) – Ever since he was a medical student, Dr. Neil Martinson has confronted the horrors of tuberculosis, the world’s oldest and deadliest pandemic. For more than 30 years, patients have streamed into the South African clinics where he has worked — migrant workers, malnourished children and pregnant […]