Plutocracy

( Inequality.org ) – If Dustin Hoffman should ever do a remake of The Graduate, the classic 1967 film that launched his famed cinematic career, what might be the 2020s update for that film’s most iconic exchange? A good many of us still fondly remember that poolside party scene. A 21-year-old “Benjamin” gets pulled aside […]

Climate Crisis

The Climate Case for Taxing Wealth

Basav Sen

by Basav Sen and Bob Lord | – ( Inequality.org) – On April 25, Twitter’s board of directors announced an agreement to sell the company to Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, for $44 billion. That sounds like a lot of money. But Musk can afford it. One recent estimate of the Musk fortune puts […]

Food Insecurity

How Far Right Legislators are Criminalizing Homelessness and Recreating Debtors’ Prisons to Please the Rabid Trump Base

H. Scott Prosterman

In today’s America, it is increasingly difficult to tell government officials from criminals. A case in point is the Tennessee legislature, which just criminalized homelessness as a felony , which is surely is a crime against man, nature, humanity and natural law. As of July 1, it will be a felony in Tennessee to camp […]

Employment

Why Keeping Workers Poor Is actually Bad for Business

Sam Pizzigati

( Otherwords.org) – CEOs at America’s biggest low-wage employers now take home, on average, 670 times what their typical workers make. But we don’t just get unfairness when a boss can grab more in a year than a worker could make in over six centuries. We get bungling and inefficient businesses. Management science has been […]

Climate Crisis

Oil Profiteering: High Gas Prices, Climate Change, and the War in Ukraine share a Common Cause

OtherWords

By Lindsay Owens and Hebah Kassem | – ( Afterwords.org) – Amid the ongoing atrocities in Ukraine, rising gas prices, and the existential threat of climate change, policymakers in Washington have a long list of crises to address. But there’s one step that could help mitigate all of them: reducing our dependence on oil — […]

Campaign Finance

A Republican Tried to Introduce a Commonsense Gun Law. Then the Gun Lobby Got Involved

ProPublica

By Megan O’Matz | – ( ProPublica ) – Cole Wist was a Republican state House member in Colorado with an A grade from the NRA. Then, in 2018, he supported a red flag law, sponsoring a bill to allow guns to be taken away — temporarily — from people who pose an immediate threat […]

Guns

6 Charts show key role Firearms Corporations play in America’s Gun Culture

The Conversation

By Michael Siegel, Tufts University | – Americans have blamed many culprits, from mental illness to inadequate security, for the tragic mass shootings that are occurring with increasing frequency in schools, offices and theaters across the U.S. The latest, which occurred on May 24, 2022, at a Texas elementary school and left at least 19 […]

Inequality

One-Off Demonstrations are not Enough: Progressives need Standing Mass Organizations

Tomdispatch

By Beverly Gologorsky | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – To begin, an anecdote. This past summer, a pigeon walked through my open balcony door while my attention was elsewhere. I shooed it out, but when I turned around two more pigeons walked out of my bedroom. In the 20 years I’ve lived in my apartment, […]

Guns

People Die as Weapons Industry Profits

F. Douglas Stephenson

Gainesville, Florida (Special to Informed Comment) – Citizens are waking up to the fact that so many politicians can be so easily bought by the weapons industry, an industry that doesn’t care how many people must die to protect their huge profits. SafeHome.org reports that after a record year in 2020, gun sales in the […]