'…a major destabilizing influence'
Note: This article is being co-published with Tarbell.org, an investigative news site founded by Wendell Potter that focuses on healthcare, military spending and climate change issues. The new corporate media and conservative Democratic argument against front-runner Bernie Sanders’ eminently logical proposal for creating a single-payer government health insurance program that he calls “Medicare …
Over the last few months I have written a couple of pieces, one aimed at Baby Boomers (my demographic cohort, as I’m 70), and one aimed at the Millennials (a group which includes both my kids, aged 26 and 35). Now I want to talk to those of you who are older than even myself — let’s call …
By Allen Baker Benjamin Franklin was a prolific inventor and a brilliant thinker. But even he would be amazed at the vast profits that arise simply from printing his portrait on the U.S. hundred-dollar bill. Here’s how it works: Each year, the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing rolls out roughly a billion crisp …
President Trump’s actions in the Middle East are becoming increasingly unhinged. A week ago, he nearly triggered a catastrophic war between Iran and the US when, acting seemingly on a whim or in response to the advice of two of his nuttier advisors, fundamentalist Christian “Rapture” believers Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo, he ordered …
I was explaining to my 26-year-old son recently that while I’m continuing to work as a writer, because I waited until age 70 to begin collecting my Social Security benefits, I am now collecting almost $29,000 a year on top of what I earn doing my freelance journalism thing. He said, matter-of-factly, “Well, I …
Here’s Dave Lindorff being interviewed on Sputnik radio about the implications of the deadly Boeing 737 Max 8 avionics software flaw, the questionable delay in US regulators ordering grounding of the planes, and what it means that the man who oversaw Boeing’s civilian aircraft unit, Patrick Shanahan, has been undersecretary of defense and is now …
Continue reading “The Boeing 737 Max 8 Scandal May Be the Tip of a Bloody Iceberg of Corruption”
Probably the most important single legacy of what happened in the period of the Great Depression and the New Deal was the establishment of Social Security, the federal program that today pays benefits to 63 million US elderly, disabled adults and dependent children left by a deceased bread-winner. That’s one-in-six of all people in this …
Continue reading “Social Security is the Key to Progressive Change in America”
Listening to President Trump, you’d think the socialist barbarians were at the gates of America preparing to overrun the US with a Soviet-style state-run economy where every car would be the same make and color, everyone would be wearing Mao suits and freedom and social mobility, those great mythical assets that we supposedly have in …
When Larry Krasner, Philadelphia’s new purportedly progressive district attorney, took office last January, he vowed to unflinchingly make the office’s goal “seeking justice,” instead of just seeking convictions, as a string of DAs going back to at least Ed Rendell had done. Last week, faced with a decision calling for real courage, Krasner flinched. …
The ugly hand of the federal government is becoming increasingly suspected behind what appears to be a nationwide attempt to repress and evict the Occupation Movement.
Across the country in recent days, ultimatums have been issues to groups occupying Portland, OR, Chicago, IL, San Francisco, Dallas, TX, Atlanta, GA, and most recently New York, NY, where the Occupation Movement began on September 17. The two most recent eviction efforts, in Oakland and New York, have been the worst.
The police attacks have had a lot in common. They have been “justified” based upon trumped up pre-textural claims that the occupiers are creating a health hazard, or a fire hazard, or a crime problem, generally on little or no evidence, or there has been a digging up of obscure and constitutionally questionable statutes, for example laws outlawing the homeless. Then the police come in, usually in dead of night, dressed in riot gear and heavily armed with mace weapons, batons, plastic cuffs and tear gas, or even assault rifles in some cases and so-called flash-bang stun grenades–all weapons to be used against peaceful demonstrators.
So violent has been the response that some returned veterans have condemned the police for using weapons and tactics that are not even permitted by occupying troops in war-torn countries.
“We definitely feel, especially in a movement like this that has arisen so quickly in a number of cities, that there will be a coordinated national effort to try and shut it down,” says Heidi Boghosian, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, which has been playing a key role providing legal services to the new movement.
“We see the scapegoating of these movements, the attacks at night, and in general tactics designed to terrorize and to scare protesters away. I can’t see this as anything other than centrally coordinated.”
One indication of that coordination may have been a conference call among 18 city mayors which was confirmed by Oakland Mayor Jean Quan in a radio interview on San Francisco station KALW. Dan Siegel, an Oakland attorney who worked as an advisor to Quan, but who resigned in disgust after Oakland police and law enforcement personnel from a number of surrounding jurisdictions brutally drove occupiers there out of their park using tear gas, supposedly non-lethal ammunition (bean bags and rubber bullets) and flash-bang grenades in a night-time raid in the early hours of November 14, says that phone conference call took place, significantly, while Quan was in Washington, DC.
Remember this image: it's the national police state on the march