Neoliberalism

Covid-19 Demonstrated How This Country Fails Its Most Vulnerable: A Field Guide to Our Threadbare Social Safety Net

( Tomdispatch.com) – Economic crises shine a spotlight on a society’s inequities and hierarchies, as well as its commitment to support those who are most vulnerable in such grievous moments. The calamity created by Covid-19 is no exception. The economic fallout from that pandemic has tested the nation’s social safety net as never before. Between […]

Featured

Ted Cruz vacationing in Cancun while millions freeze is par for the Course for the US Filthy Rich and their G.O.P Lapdogs

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Sen. Ted Cruz abandoning Texas to its fate, with millions suffering without power, to go off on a vacation in Cancun, Mexico, is the perfect metaphor for America in the age of monopoly capital. After all, many American corporations have taken a prolonged tax holiday in the Caribbean. Some 18 […]

Climate Crisis

From Covid to Power outages in Ice Storms, the Texas Republican Party has created a Failed State

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Republican Party has had a lock on Texas politics for over two decades, and has reduced it to a failed state. Even Texans like Beto O’Rourke are making this observation. Millions are without electricity in the midst of one of the state’s worse winter storms ever. This massive failure […]

Development

Yes we need the $1.9 Trillion Stimulus: Real Unemployment is 3 times what they’re telling us

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – As Congress gets set to debate the Biden Pandemic relief package, one of the favorite Republican lines is the contention that an economic recovery is already well underway. Pouring more money into an accelerating economy is likely to induce seventies style inflation. It is time, they argue, […]

Donald Trump

Who were the Republican Senators afraid of when they Acquitted their own attempted murderer?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The odious Trump once smugly observed that “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” When it comes to the Republican base, he was clearly correct. The opinion polling shows that registered Republicans still overwhelmingly support Trump even after he unleashed […]

Inequality

The Gamestop Affair shows that America is over-financialized and needs a tax on speculation

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – It would be unfair to suggest that the titans of Wall Street are oblivious to poverty. One of their central themes is the role that financial literacy can play in teaching citizens how wealth is acquired and maintained. In their worldview saving and investing in the stock […]

Arab Spring

Failures of Democracy in America and the Arab Spring

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Today is ten years since Egyptian youth gathered in Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo demanding the resignation of Egypt’s brutal and corrupt Interior Minister, Habib Adly. Even those who called for the rally were surprised by the thousands of youth and workers that showed up, on Egypt’s Police Day, and […]

Donald Trump

The Other Capitol Mob: How the Billionaires funded the Insurrection

Jim Hightower

Much to the embarrassment of major corporations, their political donations were traced to the mayhem of January 6. ( Otherwords.org ) – You can’t poke into any issue in Congress without stumbling over sacks full of corporate campaign donations. The recent eruption of pro-Trump mob violence inside the U.S. Capitol exposed boodles of that special […]

Employment

Can Biden’s $15/ hr Minimum Wage begin restoring Working Class trust?

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Watch CNN almost any time lately and one is inundated with scenes of the lethal riots in the Capitol. And in an era when every man or woman is their own video journalist new and often terrifying footage is released on a continuing basis. Along with footage […]