Plutocracy

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Martin Luther King, Jr., offered this all-too-relevant comment on his moment in his 1967 speech “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?”: “The contemporary tendency in our society is to base our distribution on scarcity, which has vanished, and to compress our abundance into the overfed mouths of the […]

Inequality

McConnell was holding up Stimulus over Shielding Businesses from Coronavirus Liability — A Very Bad Idea

The Conversation

By Timothy D. Lytton | – Congress may be close to a deal on another coronavirus bailout, but Senate Republican demands for liability protections for businesses remain a major obstacle. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has long warned of an “avalanche” of lawsuits that will stymie economic recovery efforts if Congress does not grant companies […]

Donald Trump

Where’s the Second Relief Act? The US Safety Net is working, but there are Capitalists who don’t Want it to

John Buell

Why can’t our political leaders learn to live with success? In an era marked by cynicism about politics both parties managed to enact an initial COVID-19 relief package that if anything exceeded expectations. Last June Jason DeParle, summarized academic research on this act by quoting Columbia University’s Zachary Parolin: “Right now, the safety net is […]

Donald Trump

From Salmonella to Workers’ Injuries: Trump Races to Weaken Environmental and Worker Protections on Way Out

ProPublica

By Isaac Arnsdorf ( ProPublica) – Six days after President Donald Trump lost his bid for reelection, the U.S. Department of Agriculture notified food safety groups that it was proposing a regulatory change to speed up chicken factory processing lines, a change that would allow companies to sell more birds. An earlier USDA effort had […]

Employment

Facing Holiday Rush, Frontlines Retail Workers Urge Billionaire Bosses to Share the Wealth

Inequality.org

By Chuck Collins | – ( Inequality.org) – This essential workforce is hustling to help holiday shoppers while also organizing hazard pay and other COVID-19 protections. This Cyber Monday, frontline essential workers will be hustling to help holiday shoppers — while also fighting for dignity, hazard pay, and other protections as COVID-19 infection rates spike […]

Debt

The Pentagon couldn’t Protect us from the Pandemic: Will Biden dare Cut its Budget?

Tomdispatch

By William D. Hartung and Mandy Smithberger | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Now that Joe Biden is slated to take office as the 46th president of the United States, advice on how he should address a wide range of daunting problems is flooding in. Nowhere is there more at stake than when it comes […]

Democracy

America’s not-so-Model Elections: So much for Exceptionalism

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Following weeks of speculation and worry about the possibility of violence and/or crasing technical systems the United States executed a largely flawless presidential election. At least that was how the major media portrayed the events of early November. Once again American exceptionalism provided the opportunity to sing […]

Epidemics

Who will be vaccinated first — and in what country? The upcoming fights over COVID vaccine

Reese Erlich

( 48hills.org) – In recent days, two US pharmaceutical companies announced that their COVID-19 vaccines could be available by December. US-based Pfizer, which partnered with the German-based BioNTech, said it has a 95 percent success rate during clinical trials. Biotechnology company Moderna also reported a vaccine with a 94.5 percent efficacy rate. CDC image Neither […]

Donald Trump

Is it the Trump-Monster or capitalist Plutocracy? With 250,000 Dead, why is the US Virus Response so Particularly Bad?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Holly Yan, Christina Maxouris and Theresa Waldrop at CNN report that the United States has passed the grim milestone of 250,000 deaths. Trump had predicted a worst case of 50,000 deaths last spring, but then Donald Trump could not find his ass with both hands. Nor is the worrisome death […]