Neoliberalism

( Tomdispatch.com) – The costs and consequences of America’s twenty-first-century wars have by now been well-documented — a staggering $8 trillion in expenditures and more than 380,000 civilian deaths, as calculated by Brown University’s Costs of War project. The question of who has benefited most from such an orgy of military spending has, unfortunately, received […]

Epidemics

Public Citizen: It Turns out Pfizer-BioNTech Vaccine depends Heavily on Publicly-Financed Research

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Public Citizen recently uncovered “an agreement that the European Commission reached with Pfizer and BioNTech last November to purchase 100 million doses of the companies’ mRNA vaccine, which was developed with the support of https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-09/pfizer-vaccine-s-funding-came-from-berlin-not-washington”> government funding and U.S. taxpayer-financed technology. In the 104-page contract, Public Citizen […]

Homelessness

The Land of the Free, Where So Many of the Brave Are Homeless: Resisting Evictions Amid a Pandemic

Liz Theoharis

( Tomdispatch.com) – Over the past weeks, multiple crises have merged: a crisis of democracy with the most significant attack on voting rights since Reconstruction; a climate crisis with lives and livelihoods upended in the Gulf Coast and the Northeast by extreme weather events and in the West by a stunning fire season; and an […]

Climate Crisis

Climate change: why government failure to act isn’t the problem

The Conversation

By Nick Bernards | – ( The Conversation) – The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report underscored the dire state of the climate crisis, concluding that “immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions” are needed to limit global warming even to 1.5°C or 2°C. The report renewed calls for urgent action […]

Climate Crisis

How Can US Corporations address the Climate Emergency if their Stock Buy-backs even Interfere with their Ordinary Business?

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – The international panel of climate science experts presents the challenge in the starkest terms. A panel of leading scientists convened by the United Nations issued a comprehensive report Monday that contains a stark warning for humanity: The climate crisis is here, some of its most destructive consequences […]

Debt

Debt and Disillusionment: Neoliberalism’s Unfair burden on this Generation of College Students

Rebecca Gordon

( Tomdispatch.com ) – For the last decade and a half, I’ve been teaching ethics to undergraduates. Now — admittedly, a little late to the party — I’ve started seriously questioning my own ethics. I’ve begun to wonder just what it means to be a participant, however minor, in the pyramid scheme that higher education […]

Feminism

Neoliberal Hierarchies and Cuomo’s Toxic Workplace

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – “Toxic workplace” is the phrase of the day. You do not have to be the male offspring of a famous political family to foster your own toxic workplace. Even US citizenship is not required. CBC did an indepth report on Canada’s Governor General, and plausible accusations that […]

Inequality

Jeff Bezos Should Have Thanked American Taxpayers for Paying for His Space Ride

Inequality.org

By Scott Klinger | – ( Inequality.org ) – Shortly after emerging from his 10-minute space flight last week, Jeff Bezos thanked Amazon customers and employees for their primary role in paying for his Blue Origin joyride to the edge of space. The Amazon founder’s comments quickly elicited scorn from many employees who toil in […]

Anti-Vaccination

Anti-Vaxxer Trumpian Pols are Killing their own Constituents for Profit — and Endangering us All

H. Scott Prosterman

Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment) – Tennessee Governor Bill Lee is killing his constituents by pandering to Donald Trump. He’s following the leads of Texas’ Greg Abbott and Florida’s Ron DeSantis, as state executives, reading the tea leaves of the Tea Party and blowing in the political wind – lives of their citizens be […]