United States

Alongside Rising Top Incomes, The Level Of Living Of America’s Poorest Has Fallen

June 27, 2018 Martin Ravallion, Dean Jolliffe, and Juan Margitic, Voxeu.org Educate! Income, Poverty, United States

When the poorest gain, the lower bound, or ‘floor’, of the distribution of living standards rises. Using microdata spanning the last 30 years, this column argues that the floor in the US has been sinking, alongside rising top incomes. The floor would have fallen further without public spending on food stamps, which helped protect the poorest in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. As is well known, the US is experiencing a marked rise in top incomes (e.g. Piketty and Saez 2017), with relative stagnation of middle household incomes. But what is happening at the other extreme of the distribution? Are America’s poorest families seeing some progress? That is the question this column tries to answer. Some terminology first. “Top incomes” refers to the incomes of the richest 1%. We refer to the lower bound of the distribution of levels of living as “the floor”.

US Citizens Own 40% Of All Guns In World – More Than Next 25 Top-Ranked Countries Combined

June 27, 2018 By Carol Schaeffer, Independent.co.uk Educate! Guns, United States

'The biggest force pushing up gun ownership around the world is civilian ownership in the United States,' says author of new report. American citizens now own 40 per cent of all guns in the world - more than the next 25 top-ranked gun ownership countries combined - with the number only set to grow, according to new research. According to a decade-long survey released by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, not only do Americans own the highest number of guns per capita, but also between 2006 and 2017, US gun owners acquired some 122 million new guns. That represented more than half of the 207 million new civilian-owned firearms around the world during that time.

UN Rejects Plan To Demand Immediate Ceasefire In Yemen Port

June 15, 2018 By Patrick Wintour, The Guardian Educate! United States, Wars and Militarism, Yemen

The UN security council rejected a move to demand an immediate end to the fighting around the strategic port. The 15-strong body failed to agree to a statement calling on forces led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to implement a ceasefire, with the US and UK both voicing opposition to the text introduced by Sweden. The council instead called for restraint and “urged all sides to uphold their obligations under international humanitarian law” in fighting for the city currently held by rebel Houthi forces. The International Committee of the Red Cross warned on Friday that “more and more fighters” were arriving in Hodeidah, a city with a population of around 600,000 people.

The US Is At War With Itself

June 8, 2018 By Lawrence Davidson, Counterpunch.org Educate! Racism, United States, Wars and Militarism

The United States is at war with itself. It is actually a function of the nation’s heritage—the past contesting specific aspects of a modern present. This results in traditions in flux. Some examples of this are the racism, the pseudo-frontier mentality, and the religious fundamentalism that persist into the present moment. These are traditions that characterized the first half of the nation’s history, and while some of these may have retreated into latency over the past fifty years, they are back with us now. As a result, Americans are in the midst of an ongoing culture war that in many ways is as old as the nation itself. Let’s take look at the issue of racism, the latest display of which is the infamous Roseanne Barr tweet.

We Need Better Answers On Trade, America’s Economy

June 1, 2018 Stan Sorscher, Thestand.org Create! New Economy, Trade, United States

(May 24, 2018) — In 2016, President Trump prevailed over 17 establishment opponents. He is a disrupter. In particular, he disrupted establishment trade policies that have failed millions of Americans. Too many workers and communities have been left behind. Too much mistrust has grown regarding the way we’ve managed globalization. Wages have fallen far behind the growth trends of previous generations. The neoliberal free-market free-trade trickle-down orthodoxy, which we have followed for decades, is exhausted — socially, politically, and economically. We don’t really understand Trump’s tariffs, or bluster, or impulsive negotiating tactics, but we do understand that we need a change in direction.

Conspiracy Emerges To Push Julian Assange Into British And US Hands

May 18, 2018 Mike Head, Wsws.org Educate! Julian Assange, United Kingdom (UK), United States

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who provided the world’s people with the truth about US war crimes in the Middle East and many of Washington’s coups and regime-change intrigues around the globe, is in escalating danger. Moves are afoot to force Assange out of Ecuador’s London embassy, where he sought political asylum close to six years ago and has been forced to live as an effective prisoner. If he is taken into custody by British authorities, he faces being handed over to the US government, which has long sought to place him on trial on espionage charges that potentially carry the death sentence. The British newspaper, the Guardian, originally published some of WikiLeaks’ devastating exposures in 2010. It then turned viciously against him, along with other international news outlets.

Worst Possible Pick For U.S. Ambassador To South Korea

April 26, 2018 David Swanson, Davidswanson.org Educate! Foreign Relations, South Korea, United States

In Joseph Hickman’s book Murder at Camp Delta, he describes a hideous death camp in which guards were trained to view the prisoners as sub-human and much greater care was taken to protect the well-being of iguanas than homo sapiens. Chaos was the norm, and physical abuse of the prisoners was standard. Col. Mike Bumgarner made it a top priority that everyone stand in formation when he entered his office in the morning to the sounds of Beethoven’s Fifth or “Bad Boys.” Hickman relates that certain vans were permitted to drive in and out of the camp uninspected, making a mockery of elaborate attempts at security. He didn’t know the reasoning behind this until he happened to discover a secret camp not included on any maps, a place he called Camp No but the CIA called Penny Lane.

Seven Surprising Tax Facts For 2018

April 18, 2018 Staff, Nationalpriorities.org Educate! Taxes, United States

In 2017, individuals and corporations were still paying taxes under the old system. The Trump tax plan that Congress passed in December 2017 hadn’t yet taken effect. In 2018, the rules have changed. The new tax plan favors billionaires and corporations, while leaving poor and middle income Americans essentially where they are. The richest one percent of Americans will receive a total of $85 billion in tax cuts in 2019, while the poorest twenty percent – one in five Americans – will receive tax cuts totaling just $3 billion. Foreign investors will benefit more from the tax cuts ($48 billion) than the bottom sixty percent (or 3 in 5) American earners ($41 billion, combined).

America Once Fought A War Against Poverty – Now It Wages A War On The Poor

April 17, 2018 William Barber and Liz Theoharis, Theguardian.com Resist! History, New Economy, Poverty, United States

In 2013, Callie Greer’s daughter Venus died in her arms after a battle with breast cancer. If caught early, the five-year survival rate for women diagnosed with breast cancer is close to 100%. But Venus’s cancer went undiagnosed for months because she couldn’t afford health insurance. She lived in Alabama, a state that refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Venus’s death is not an isolated incident – more than 250,000 people like her die in the United States from poverty and related issues every year. Access to healthcare is just one of the issues facing the 140 million people who live in poverty in the US today. Over the past two years, the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival has carried out a listening tour in dozens of states across this nation.

These Maps Show All The Cities And States Now Defending Net Neutrality

March 20, 2018 By Kevin Litman-Navarro, Inverse.com Resist! FCC, Internet, Net Neutrality, United States

As seen in the map above, 28 different states have proposed legislation to adopt net neutrality regulations. Only one state — Washington — has already passed a law in the state legislature protecting net neutrality statewide. Its legislation basically reinstates the Obama-era regulations repealed by the FCC, meaning that ISPs won’t be able to block content or establish fast and slow internet lanes once it goes into effect in June. Some believe that Washington’s legislation might provoke a lawsuit from the FCC, because the December repeal of net neutrality stipulated that city and state governments were prohibited from drafting their own rules. Because the FCC’s new plan isn’t set to go into effect until April 23, we might have to wait to see if the FCC pursues action against Washington.

High-Profile Activists Slam U.S., Canadian Sanctions On Venezuela

March 10, 2018 Staff, Reuters.com Resist! Canada, Sanctions, United States, Venezuela

CARACAS (Reuters) - U.S. philosopher Noam Chomsky and Hollywood star Danny Glover joined other activists on Friday in condemning U.S. and Canadian sanctions on Venezuela’s socialist government, saying they hurt the poor and torpedoed political reconciliation. The two high-profile activists were among 154 signatories of an open letter to the Washington and Ottawa governments urging them to reconsider recent measures to pressure President Nicolas Maduro’s administration. The United States and Canada have slapped individual sanctions on a handful of Venezuelan officials, including Maduro, over accusations of corruption, democratic abuses and human rights violations. The measures include freezing assets and preventing U.S. and Canadian nationals from dealing with them.

Despite Record US Oil Production, Peak Oil Still The Reality

March 8, 2018 By Richard Heinberg, Resilience.org Educate! Oil, United States

My message: as went the U.S., so would go the world at some point in the fairly near future. Peak oil—the inevitable moment when global oil supplies started drying up—would be a watershed for industrial societies, leading to economic contraction, geopolitical crisis, and social upheaval. So is it time for a retraction? The optics are certainly unfavorable for peak oil theorists like me. Our forecasts obviously failed, in that none of us expected the current surge in U.S. output. But permit me to offer some context. Everyone agrees that the surge is almost entirely due to tight oil (globally, there has also been growth in bitumen from Canada, deepwater oil, and other unconventional sources). The application of hydrofracturing and horizontal drilling to low-permeability source rocks in the United States represents an amazing success story for the oil industry—at least in terms of raw petroleum output.

Why Are Mass Killings So Common In The US?

February 26, 2018 By Eric London, Wsws.org Educate! Mass Shootings, United States, Violence

On February 14, an American horror story played out in southeastern Florida when 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz opened fire at Stoneman Douglas High School, killing 17 people, including 14 students. In April 1999, the country was stunned by the mass killing of 13 students and teachers at Columbine High School in Colorado by two students, who then committed suicide. In the course of the past 20 years, eruptions of homicidal violence have become almost commonplace, and the death tolls resulting from such incidents have in many cases far exceeded the terrible loss of life at Columbine. The 2017 attack in Las Vegas resulted in 58 deaths. The 2016 attack at the Pulse nightclub in Florida left 49 dead. The 2014 shooting in San Bernardino cost the lives of 14 people.

The Occupied Territory Of The United States Of America

February 19, 2018 Rivera Sun, Riverasun.com Educate! Land, Occupation, United States

It happened so subtly, we missed the corporate coup. Like shadows, corporations surrounded our country and slowly strangled it. They crept into Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, the FDA, the military, the Department of the Interior: everywhere you look, a corporation controls the decisions of this nation. We have become the occupied territory of brand names, corporate logos, monopolistic power, and corporate greed. It would be easier to understand what has happened if they wore red armbands and goose-stepped. But no, the minions of corporate power wear false smiles, carry empty promises, and fly in private jets. The less-powerful rank-and-file of the corporate state look like our neighbors, relatives, friends. They are not our enemy. It is the destructive behaviors of the corporate state, and its occupation of our government, culture, and society that we must rebel against.

The Bankruptcy Of The American Left

February 7, 2018 Chris Hedges, Truthdig.com Educate! Identity Politics, Left Politics, United States

There will be no economic or political justice for the poor, people of color, women or workers within the framework of global, corporate capitalism. Corporate capitalism, which uses identity politics, multiculturalism and racial justice to masquerade as politics, will never halt the rising social inequality, unchecked militarism, evisceration of civil liberties and omnipotence of the organs of security and surveillance. Corporate capitalism cannot be reformed, despite its continually rebranding itself. The longer the self-identified left and liberal class seek to work within a system that the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls “inverted totalitarianism,” the more the noose will be tightened around our necks. If we do not rise up to bring government and financial systems under public control—which includes nationalizing banks, the fossil fuel industry and the arms industry—we will continue to be victims.

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