Economy

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – It all started when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) remarked at a virtual Town Hall last week regarding the recent increase in violent crime in New York, ““Do we think this has to do with the fact that there’s record unemployment in the United States right now? The fact that people […]

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

Taxpayers are Funding Coronavirus Vaccines, but Big Pharma will Profit

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – The business press is full of stories about the race for a Covid—19 vaccine. The corporations that succeed in cracking the biological mystery stand to make billions, and the success of the vaccine will likely “open up” the economy. What receives less attention, however, is the question […]

China

GOP Death Cult Forbids Mandatory Masks, Keeping US in Crisis, as China Grows 3.2%

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Georgia governor Brian Kemp, one of the worst and most corrupt people in the world, is attempting to prevent municipalities in Georgia from fining people for refusing to wear masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. He is suing Atlanta over it. The question is not whether his obstructionism […]

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 […]

Pentagon

Amid the Covid-19 Recession, you can’t Afford the Bloated Pentagon Budget but Corporations Can

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Imagine that as a member of Congress you are a strong advocate of urban public transit facilities. You have succeeded in prying from Congress funding for construction and maintenance of systems throughout midsized cities once almost exclusively dependent on the private auto for their transportation needs. You […]

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. […]