Plutocracy

( Gainesville Sun ) – There are no easy answers to financing U.S. health insurance, mental health care, social services, public health and other services for nearly 330 million individuals. The USA is a very large country and financing services must be tailored to this reality. Accordingly, funding government programs requires us to muster the […]

Donald Trump

How we gave up our Health, Environment and Diplomacy for Wars, Walls and Plutocracy

H. Patricia Hynes

Greenfield, MA (Special to Informed Comment) -Budgets are moral documents (or immoral, depending on priorities). So also is tax policy. Consider Trump’s proposed $1.3 trillion discretionary budget for 2021. In snapshot, the Pentagon gets 55% and every other need of 331 million people–from health, education, agriculture, transportation, environmental protection to housing–is left with 45%. As […]

Employment

Pandemic will cause another Housing Crisis, and Without Strong Long-Term Gov’t Policy it Will hit Workers Hardest

The Conversation

By Roshanak Mehdipanah and Gregory Sallabank | – Millions of Americans are suddenly out of work as the financial and economic crisis sparked by the coronavirus pandemic deepens. Without an income, most of these people will have a hard time covering their expenses, including keeping a roof over their heads. But even before the current […]

Epidemics

Coronavirus: Corporate Media ignores how Privatization of Hospitals explains Lack of Beds, Ventilators

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – The escalating total Covid 19 deaths in New York City and the frantic quest to obtain life saving medical gear has rightly captured media attention. New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s impassioned plea for more federal assistance and a need-based system for allocating aid among the states was […]

Epidemics

Italy Coronavirus Deaths Pass 10,000: How Austerity and Anti-Immigrant Politics Created Europe’s Worst Crisis

Conn M. Hallinan

( Foreign Policy in Focus) As the viral blitzkrieg rolls across one European border after another, it seems to have a particular enmity for Italy. The country’s death toll has passed China’s, and scenes from its hospitals look like something out of Dante’s imagination. Why? Italy has the fourth largest economy in the European Union, […]

Campaign Finance

A Civil Rights Issue: Less than 1% of Americans Provide most Money for Political Campaigns

OtherWords

By By Chiraag Bains | – ( Otherwords.org) – Less than 1 percent of the population provides most of America’s campaign funds. It looks nothing like the rest of us. By Chiraag Bains | March 17, 2020 Ten years after Citizens United, our elections are awash with money from mega-donors and corporations. They drown out […]

Banking

What’s the Point of Bailing out Hurting CEOs if they Just use Funds to Buy Back Stock & Feather their Nests?

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Occasionally President Trump likes to play defender of the common man. The frequent attacks on NAFTA and the promise to replace it with a better trade deal are one instance. Recently the effort to build a bipartisan stimulus response to the deepening economic losses occasioned by the […]

Epidemics

Coronavirus and the ‘Shock Doctrine’: Does Even this Disaster have to Make Rich Richer and Poor Poorer?

Sam Pizzigati

By Sam Pizzigati and Sarah Anderson | – ( Otherwords.org) – Powerful interests used the Great Recession to hardwire more inequality into our system. This time, let’s do the opposite. By Sarah Anderson, Sam Pizzigati | March 17, 2020 We all have to come together. We need to help each other. We don’t have time […]

Epidemics

Disaster Capitalism and the Real Culprit in the Italian Covid-19 Catastrophe

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein worries that the Coronavirus pandemic will provide another opportunity for neoliberal elites to impose more of their right wing agenda on a citizenry scared and confused by this mysterious and dangerous disease. Klein of course is expanding on her award winning […]