Year: 2017

Brazil is the newest scene of massive marketing campaigns to replace local food and local diets with ultra-processed industrial foods. This is beginning to repeat the mass experiment in bad eating habits that the US has already experienced for two generations. —>> read more –>>

More evidence that today’s segregated America didn’t just happen out of individual choices and preferences. The 1930s redlining of neighborhoods by the Home Owners’ Loan Corp, a New Deal housing agency, has had long term effects of segregating people. —>> read more –>>

The 8/24/2017 New York Times featured a lengthy well researched study, “Even With Affirmative Action, Blacks
and Hispanics Are More Underrepresented at Top Colleges Than 35 Years Ago”  demonstrates that affirmative action for whites that began during the Jim Crow era and continued during the post-WWII boom in education persists to this day. —>> read more –>>

Pete Seeger wrote a song “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” in 1967 that became closely associated with President Johnson and the Vietnam War. Does Trump remember it? —>> read more –>>

The US has the worst maternal mortality rate by far of any developed country in the world. —>> read more –>>

Viewed from a bit longer lens of history this reaction to white supremacist terrorism fits in very well with the lengthy history of Presidents, Congress, and the judicial branch turning a blind eye to white terrorism used as a tool to oppress African Americans during the so-called Jim Crow era. —>> read more –>>

Ira Katznelson (see my earlier post “Affirmative Action for Whites – began in the 1930s”) wrote a brief opinion piece in the 8/13/2017 NYTimes, “Making Affirmative Action White Again” that encapsulates the real history of affirmative action for whites. —>> read more –>>

An American Sickness by Elisabeth Rosenthal is important and disappointing. Despite all of the information about the failings of our market-based healthcare system Rosenthal abandons her analysis when it comes to treatment. —>> read more –>>

New Trump focus on race reminds us, “All of the liberal praise for civil rights has produced no results over these six decades excepting the ritualized celebration of African American History Month. This is so embedded in our calendar that even Trump issued another executive order announcing it.” —>> read more –>>

So, despite the apparent legal victories for civil rights of this year, America remains as segregated in housing, education, and jobs as ever. The preferential treatment of whites that became embedded in the government and private sector in the 1930s continues on to this day. —>> read more –>>

Recent NYTimes article broadly acknowledges what every other developed country has recognized for decades, healthcare is not a good candidate for market control. —>> read more –>>

A report about an amendment to the defense budget that would end the 2001 AUMF (Authorization for the Use of Military Force) that has provided legal cover for more than forty military actions around the world without Congressional oversight, just the decisions of three Presidents. —>> read more –>>

The American Society of Civil Engineers has released another of their series of infrastructure report cards. The 2017 report card shows a “D+”……. —>> read more –>>

Certainly if all of these countries, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Australia (and others not included in this study) have figured out how to deliver much better healthcare at half the cost we need to demand that our government do at least as well. Obamacare is not the solution to our healthcare problems of access and cost. —>> read more –>>

In the context of ceaseless angst and drum beating by politicians and experts over the threat of Iran to us and the rest of the world there is new evidence that the Iraq War has redounded to the benefit of Iran. In the July 15, 2017 NYTimes Tim Arango wrote an article about Iran’s quite comprehensive penetration of Iraqi society and government and the pipeline that exists between Iraq and the fighting in Syria. “Iran Dominates in Iraq After U.S. ‘Handed the Country Over'” appears to be Part 1 so presumably there will be more to follow.  —>> read more –>>

Segregated America didn’t happen by chance nor by choice of the victims. Consistent white supremacist government action supported by private institutions created the segregation that persists and flourishes in the 21st century. —>> read more –>>

Mirror, Mirror 2017:International Comparison Reflects Flaws and Opportunities for Better U.S. Health Care from Commonwealth Fund. —>> read more –>>

Capitalism is driven by a single internal logic that requires the transformation of people and nature into commodities to produce profits. This logic is amoral and the system, excepting for external controls by government and social institutions, just churns on. —>> read more –>>

On Friday 5/19/17 Mayor Mitch Landrieu gave a powerful speech about the need to deny the falsifications of history that are those statues and to embrace the phrase, e pluribus unum, from many we are one. The speech is well worth listening to. —>> read more –>>

Government, Federal, state and local took affirmative actions to set up and sustain segregation that is clearly unconstitutional and illegal. The de jure nature of the history then puts the burden on the government, our government, to remedy the situation.  —>> read more –>>

For all of the chest beating about the bold risks taken by capitalists, the capitalist time horizon is very short when compared to the many years of work that have gone into almost every significant scientific and technological advance. Without extensive government investment in activities that deliver longer term success, the capitalist system will simply eat its seed corn until it is gone. —>> read more –>>

The reality is that legal representation for the indigent is worse than a charade. According to the ACLU 80% of those arrested for a crime can not afford a lawyer. But, no where in the country is a robust system of legal representation for these people in place. And as widely known, legal aid attorneys all too frequently meet their clients for a few moments before a court appearance and have no real resources to represent the client in a meaningful way. A result of this is that local, state and Federal prosecutors have enormous, compelling power to manipulate the alleged criminal into pleading guilty to a crime. —>> read more –>>