Economy

By Chuck Collins, Omar Ocampo and Sophia Paslaskiis | – Billionaire Wealth and the Pandemic ( Inequality.org) – In its 34th annual list of global billionaires, published on April 7, 2020, Forbes reports a modest decline in the total number of billionaires from 2,153 in 2019 to 2,095in 2020. “The world’s richest are not immune […]

Donald Trump

How the Tiny ‘Reopen’ protest movement was Astroturfed and boosted by Fake Grassroots Tactics

The Conversation

By Marc Ambinder | – Many Americans have been under strict stay-at-home orders, or at least advisories, for more than a month. People are frustrated and depressed, but have complied with what they’ve been asked to endure because they trust that state and local public health officials are telling the truth about the coronavirus pandemic. […]

Corruption

Trump, Inc.: How Jared Kushner is Tackling White House Coronavirus Response — Without Any Evident Experience

ProPublica

by Andrea Bernstein, WNYC | – This story was co-published with WNYC. (ProPublica) – On April 2, Jared Kushner uncharacteristically took to the podium to speak at the White House’s daily coronavirus briefing. He’d been given the task, he said, of assisting Vice President Mike Pence’s Coronavirus Task Force with supply chain issues. “The president,” […]

Donald Trump

The Scum of all Fears: America declines the Trump Administration’s Invitation to Die

David Faris

Chicago (Special to Informed Comment) – President Trump, facing the prospect of possibly the worst electoral environment ever to face an incumbent president, is borrowing a page from the last Republican administration, the one that ended with a sitting president so universally reviled that he decided to skip his own party’s nominating convention. America’s 45th […]

Epidemics

Inequality and the Coronavirus: Or How to Destroy American Society From the Top Down

Tomdispatch

By Liz Theoharis | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – My mom contracted polio when she was 14. She survived and learned to walk again, but my life was deeply affected by that virus. Today, as our larger society attempts to self-distance and self-isolate, my family has texted about the polio quarantine my mom was put under: […]

Epidemics

Unprotected Nurses of the World, Unite; You have nothing to Lose but your Corporate Chains

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Many pundits have correctly recognized Covis19’s role in exposing extreme class, race, and gender inequalities in this society and the vulnerabilities they foster. This virus also exposes the grave injustices that characterize many American workplaces, where many Americans spend nearly a third of the prime years of […]

Democratic Socialism

The Rich wanted to Strangle a Tiny Gov’t in a Bathtub to avoid Taxes; Now it Turns out We need a Competent State

Jim Hightower

( Otherwords.org) – Amazingly, America has become a nation of socialists, asking in dismay: “Where’s the government?” These are not born-again Bernie Sanders activists, but people of all political stripes (including previously apolitical multitudes) who are now clamoring for big government intervention in their lives. Nothing like a spreading coronavirus pandemic to bring home the […]

Donald Trump

Trump is Using Saudi Arabia to Prop up his Big Oil Donors, and that should Worry Us

Thembisa Fakude

( Middle East Monitor ) – When Saudi Arabia approached members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its affiliates recently to cut oil production in an attempt to cushion the impact of the falling oil prices as a result of Covid-19, Russia rejected the proposal. The subsequent spat between Moscow and Riyadh […]

Donald Trump

With Trump gross Incompetence, Bookstores moving Post-Apocalyptic Fiction into Current Events Section

John Feffer

(Tomdispatch.com) – In retrospect, it’s no surprise that, after the election of Donald Trump in 2016, dystopian fiction enjoyed a spike in popularity. However, novels like George Orwell’s 1984 and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which soared on Amazon, would prove more horror stories than roadmaps. Like so many ominous sounds from a dark basement, […]