Year: 2018

The nearly continuous puffing up of Silicon Valley, the construction of an enormous bio-pharma complex in Cambridge, and other examples of high tech ebullience are offered up by the mass media and the business press as evidence of a dynamic economy. The actual facts show a different story that should --->> read more -->>

The recent movie The Post (about the Washington Post newspaper and its involvement with the Pentagon Papers – see below) poses interesting reminders of the power of the US government to rain death on countries that fall under our imperial domain and simultaneously keep the American people in the dark --->> read more -->>

“We therefore estimate that Medicare for All could reduce U.S. Health Consumption Expenditures by about 9.6 percent while also providing decent health care coverage for all U.S. residents” The Medicare for All movement gained some new support from a study released last week. The research report, “Economic Analysis of Medicare --->> read more -->>

The term “white supremacy” has come into widespread usage to identify racist organizations and adherents, especially so in the wake of the Charlottesville incident (8/12/2017) and the ongoing dog-whistle politics of Trump and the Republican Party. “White supremacy or white supremacism is the racist belief that white people are superior --->> read more -->>

Adam Smith discussed the harms caused by monopolies in the frequently, ritualistically cited book, The Wealth of Nations. The progressive politics of the end of the 19th century and into the beginning of the 20th was marked by a deep reaction to the monopolistic practices of large companies then. This --->> read more -->>

We have written earlier about the fact that effective legal representation and trial by jury is a rarity making one of our cultural icons a complete sham. As Jed Rakoff has noted: In actuality, our criminal justice system is almost exclusively a system of plea bargaining, negotiated behind closed doors --->> read more -->>

Hudson NY and Its SWAT Team Even here in our little city of Hudson NY (population ~ 7,000) we have a police SWAT team, benignly referred to officially as the Columbia County Shared Services Team. There has been plenty of concern over its use here in the last couple of years, --->> read more -->>

The Oklahoma land rush of 1889 is the subject of much lore including paintings, photographs, movies, and more. The background of how this hord of white people came to acquire stakes in what had been Indian Territory under the removal acts of the pre-Civil War era is an example of --->> read more -->>

It is always useful to put a face to trends. The grotesque yawning extent of inequality is one of those trends that begs for the concrete. Knowing that a million seconds is 12 days while a billion seconds is 31 years gives some shape to the dimensions of inequality, it --->> read more -->>

Plastic packaging is swamping the world with refuse that never degrades and flows into mountains of trash in land dumps and pollutes the oceans. For example, the bottled water industry produces over 50 billion bottles per year for the American market alone. Roughly 38 billion are not recycled and end --->> read more -->>

Intervention in Iran – 65th Anniversary On August 19, 1953 President Eisenhower authorized the CIA to support British efforts to launch a coup against the popularly elected government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in favor of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. At immediate issue were plans by Mossadegh to nationalize --->> read more -->>

Countering White Male Top 10% Affirmative Action The continuing advances of elite white males requires action. They live and procreate in a closed loop of social, educational, and political advantages and protections. Wealth flows to them behind the uniformed doormen of the Upper East Side and the hedges of the --->> read more -->>

In the August 21, 2017 edition of The New Yorker Nathan Heller writes about the efficacy of protest as a method for social and political change. “Out of Action – do protests work?” raises many interesting questions about protest movements as a means to achieving change. Protected by the First Amendment --->> read more -->>

White Affirmative Action – Martin Luther King in 1968 In recent years scholars and activists have begun to point out how white privilege is supported by many decades of government action that affirmatively transfers money and resources to whites while explicitly denying the same support to African-Americans. To my knowledge --->> read more -->>

Gun Regulation, the 2nd Amendment, and Scalia’s Majority Opinion Fire arms proponents make much of the  2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller in which the Supreme Court absolutely affirmed the right to bear arms as a constitutionally guaranteed right. Lost in this rhetoric is the fact that no rights --->> read more -->>

Mass Incarceration – The New Jim Crow – Michelle Alexander (download a PDF of this article here) It is well known and frequently cited that the US leads the world in jailing its citizens. In this case we win this standing not by a nose but by a mile. Within --->> read more -->>

Heart Stents, Tricycles, and an Argument for Consumer Protections (Regulations) A staple of Republican and many Democratic politicians is to bemoan government regulations. These intrusions on individual liberty and free markets are claimed to be part of the giant regulatory state that chokes off innovation, initiative, and competition. The need --->> read more -->>

Corporate concentration of income and wealth are core features of capitalism. From its earliest chroniclers and cheerleaders like Adam Smith, the drive for corporations to get ever larger and in the doing drive their competitors out of the market was noted and warned against. In the US, the late 19th --->> read more -->>

The New Digital Monopoly Capitalism Capitalism has always been marked by relentless growth, the destruction of smaller businesses by larger, and ultimately the creation of oligopoly and monopoly corporations. From the earliest descriptions of capitalism, even by proponents like Adam Smith, this tendency towards concentration was warned against. In the --->> read more -->>

How to Spot Fake News – libraries get in the game….. On a recent road trip I stopped in the main library in New Orleans. Wandering about I noticed this poster about fake news: The poster is based on work by FactCheck.org here. Spread the word: share this on Facebook, --->> read more -->>

We have argued here repeatedly that the US healthcare system is not about healthcare all. No one anywhere here gets paid for keeping you healthy. The system is designed from top to bottom to produce as many prescriptions, tests and procedures as possible. And the prices for these are completely --->> read more -->>

Stagnant Wages, New York Times, and Unions The 1/10/18 NYTimes article, Where Did Your Pay Raise Go? It May Have Become a Bonus by Patricia Cohen takes note of the long term trend of corporations awarding employees bonuses instead of pay raises. Here is the story in one chart: The --->> read more -->>