"I've Seen Goldman Sachs From the Inside," writes Nomi Prins at Truthout. "We Need Public Banks." There's a Mack truck-sized opening for the "fiscally responsible" "moderate" to point out that relying on banksters for infrastructure funding is far more expensive than relying on public banks. And it's no use complaining that public banks would be corrupt too, because as a citizen you can do more about public bank corruption. When they say don't let the perfect murder the good, this is kinda what they mean.
Misha Hill and Lorena Roque at the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy ask the right question about the "opportunity zones" created by the 2017 tax "reform": "Opportunity for Whom?". The answer: "opportunity" for big developers to get even more corporate welfare from the taxpayer, as they push folks of color out of historically black and brown neighborhoods. And I'll bet more than a few of them are keeping buildings empty to get even more corporate welfare from the taxpayer, too. (Stick around for the last five paragraphs, though, to learn that there really are solutions to urban poverty, and that they even go beyond "stop handing out corporate welfare.")
Daily Yonder publisher Dee Davis explains how her area of East Kentucky became a "news desert." If you're thinking "but now you can get any viewpoint on social media at the click of a button," think again -- the Clinton/Bush the Lesser era saw the mushrooming of religious broadcast stations at the low end of the FM dial, stations now "weaponized by conservative think tanks and by Evangelical church networks," and if you've watched Fox News for any length of time you'll recognize how "the emotional button-pushing remains constant" on these stations. Wishing for a time when you could read two real local newspapers in almost any area of the country may sound like a conservative dream, and maybe it is, but it's also a democratic one.
Bryce Covert at The Nation describes the works of Rise Up Retail, a group of retail workers who have agitated for better treatment under the law, many of them after losing their jobs at retail chains owned by hedge-fund managers. You know hedge-fund managers are vampires, redistributing the wealth of their workers upward to themselves and hollowing out the corporations they run, but you may not know that Rise Up Retail is getting good bills a hearing, like S. 3170 in New Jersey, the so-called "Toys 'R' Us" bill that would mandate more severance and notice for workers at corporations about to go under. What hedge fund managers did to Sears and Toys 'R' Us (and Ms. Covert goes into great detail about that) ain't illegal, but it should be.
Finally, I know you all had a good laugh when former Clinton impeacher Kenneth Starr said that impeaching our current President would be "so bad for the country," but let's not let pass his explanation, such as it is, of why impeaching our current President would be "so bad": "(t)he American people want stability." "Stability"? What about this Administration has ever evinced stability? Someone tell Mr. Starr that a rhetorical hostage situation only works in America if we're not already spitting laughter.
Comments