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ALL ARTICLES, Russia Monitor August 13, 2018

Russia Monitor: Russia’s Highly Placed American Asset

  “Malcolm Nance argues Trump became a ‘witting asset’ to Russia.” — Malcolm Nance, NBC Morning Joe (6/26/18): ‘The Plot to Destroy Democracy’ book release. Dear Fellow Readers, Three former intelligence officers came forward in the last few days to explain that Trump is a ‘witting asset’ of Russia. Russia has “successfully penetrated some of Florida’s election systems ahead of the 2018 midterm elections” according to both Florida Senators, one Democrat and one Republican: “An 11 Year-old Girl Hacked A Replica Of The Florida Secretary Of State’s Website Within 10 Minutes – And Changed The (Election) Result”.  Meanwhile, House Intelligence Chair, the…

ALL ARTICLES, Economic Injustice August 13, 2018

Ralph Nader On Apple’s CEO Tim Cook— Serf Labor, Overpriced iPhones & Wasted, Burned Up Profits

  Apple’s business model rests on low wage-labor in China and gouging iPhone consumers in the U.S.  By Ralph Nader RalphNaderBlog (8/7/18) The New York Times screamed its Headline— “In 1997, Apple was 90 Days from Going Broke. On Thursday [Aug. 2, 2018], It Became the first publicly traded American company to be valued at…$1,000,000,000,000.” The first trillion dollar company! The boosters and commentators cheered, adding, “How High Could it Go?” In CEO’s Tim Cook’s announcement, we learned that there were $20 billion more of the shareholders money spent on wasteful stock buybacks. Stock buybacks enable fatter compensation metrics for Apple’s bosses (see Steven…

ALL ARTICLES, American Fascism August 13, 2018

Behind The Scenes Of ‘Documenting Hate’ — How We Identified White Supremacists After Charlottesville

By Leila Miller Frontline (8/7/18) The Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017 was the largest public gathering of white supremacists in a generation. Dozens were injured, and it ended in the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer, a counter-protester who was killed after a car crashed into demonstrators. The violence did not come out of nowhere. It followed a series of increasingly bloody rallies in California, New York City, and even Charlottesville. While city and state officials in Virginia had prepared by mobilizing 1,000 first responders, law enforcement largely stayed back while chaos unfolded. In Documenting Hate: Charlottesville, FRONTLINE and ProPublica investigate…

ALL ARTICLES, Trumpenstan August 9, 2018

Trump Playing His Trusting Followers As A Bunch Of Chumps

  A Neuroscientist Explains How Trump Supporters Are Easily Hoodwinked Because Of This One Psychological Problem By Bobby Azarian Raw Story (4/7/18) There’s no doubt that Donald Trump has said many things that would have been political suicide for any other Republican. And almost every time he made one of these shocking statements, political analysts on both the left and the right predicted that he’d lose supporters because of it. But as we have clearly seen over the past year, they were dead wrong every time. Trump appears to be almost totally bulletproof. The only thing that might be more…

ALL ARTICLES, American Fascism, Documentaries, M. Taylor Columns August 9, 2018

DOCUMENTARY — This Is No Practice Run: A Year After Charlottesville And The Nazi Threat Across America Has Grown

    “Nazism was cruel because Nazis were cruel; and the Nazis were cruel because cruel people tended to become Nazis.” — Zygmunt Bauman By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (8/9/18) If you haven’t already seen it, set aside an hour to watch the PBS Frontline/ProPublica “Documenting Hate” documentary to get up to speed on just how deeply the Nazi movement has embedded itself into modern America. Under the ever fascist-friendly leadership of Donald Trump, the nation that defeated Nazism in Europe 70 years ago now has the virus of fascism running freely in it’s veins. And that virus is…

ALL ARTICLES, American Fascism, Police State America August 9, 2018

Portland Police Aligned With Fascists In Recent Protest Melee

  Lesson 17. Watch out for the paramilitaries. When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching around with torches and pictures of a Leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-Leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the game is over. — Timothy Snyder, ‘On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century’ ***** ACLU Of Oregon Comment On The Portland Police Bureau’s Response To Protests ACLU of Oregon (8/5/18) PORTLAND, Ore. — After the violence against protesters and observers yesterday [8/4] in Portland, David Rogers, executive director of the…

ALL ARTICLES August 9, 2018

ProPublica — Using The Power Of The Crowd To Document Hate

  By Rachel Glickhouse ProPublica (8/7/18) Today [8/7] we’re debuting a documentary with Frontline that chronicles some of our reporting on hate groups over the past year. Reporters A.C. Thompson and Ali Winston have been investigating the rise of white supremacist groups in the U.S. after the violent August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. Their work is part of a project at ProPublica called Documenting Hate. The project, which started shortly after Election Day in 2016, has an ambitious goal: collect as much data as we can to make up for the wholly inadequate records collected by the government. We’ve been asking people…

ALL ARTICLES August 9, 2018

Memphis Police Created Facebook Profiles To Spy On Black Activists

  TeleSur (8/7/18) The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a lawsuit against the Memphis, Tennessee Police Department, accusing them of illegally surveilling members of the Black Lives Matter movement. Following the lawsuit, the City of Memphisreleased documents detailing several tacticsused by the Memphis Police Department (MPD) to keep track of activists and their activity on social media. According to the documents, the operation was led by the department’s Office of Homeland Security. This project was designed to “deal with threats” to the Police Department or to the city of Memphis, but its focus was redirected towards groups and individuals staging local protests, The Guardian has reported….

ALL ARTICLES, FEATURE, M. Taylor Columns, Ron "Wall Street" Kind August 9, 2018

Rep. Ron ‘Wall Street’ Kind Betrays The Needs Of Wisconsin With Cowardly 0-For-5 Stance On Bills Important To Our Future

By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (8/9/18) For those who closely watch Rep. Ron ‘Wall Street’ Kind there is a clear understanding of the two Ron Kinds. The first is the upbeat, sunny, good looking, glad-handing pol with the rolled up sleeves waving to the crowds at the annual Westby Syttende Mai parade. The second is the corporate D.C. functionary casting reliable votes making things easier for Wall Street bankers and, with his recent falling into line to support the mind bending $717 billion annual War Department budget, military contractors. The democratic republican As the story below details, on…

ALL ARTICLES August 9, 2018

Retired Intel Officer Malcolm Nance: How Russia Is Methodically Destroying Western Democracy

  Commonwealth Club (7/11/18) Retired intelligence officer Malcolm Nance knows about Vladimir Putin and the threat he poses to American sovereignty. From the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in our elections to Putin’s persistent presidency, Russia has a looming presence. Nance suggests this presence isn’t benign but part of a greater plan to break down western democracy. His new book, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin’s Spies Are Winning Control of America and Dismantling the West, exposes how Russia has supported the campaigns of right-wing extremists throughout the United States and Europe. By seeking to create antidemocratic sentiment around…

ALL ARTICLES, Media Hits & Misses August 9, 2018

Oh, C’mon, Just Say It! Why Can’t Journalists State The Obvious?

  “Sometimes things are exactly as they appear.” By Mike Lofgren Common Dreams (8/2/18) According to an Annenberg survey, only a quarter of Americans can correctly name the three branches of the federal government. Is that sad fact, like the weather, something that just happens, beyond anyone’s control? Or does something make Americans resistant to the most elementary information? Could the manner in which that information is conveyed to them be so needlessly complex and hedged that people just give up and prefer blissful ignorance? We have seen this phenomenon on display in the way in which the mainstream media hem…

ALL ARTICLES, American Fascism August 9, 2018

Hush-Up! When Intolerance Is Institutionalized Bullies Win, Freedom Suffers & We Can No Longer Agree To Disagree

  “Free speech for me but not for thee.” — Nate Hentoff By John Whitehead The  Rutherford Institute (8/6/8) “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.” ― Benjamin Franklin What a mess. As America has become ever more polarized, and those polarized factions have become more militant and less inclined to listen to—or even allow for the existence of—other viewpoints, we are fast becoming a nation of people who just can’t get along. Here’s the thing: if Americans don’t learn how to get along—at the very least, agreeing to disagree and…

ALL ARTICLES August 9, 2018

Former Obama Official Timothy Geithner’s Wall Street Grift, Paydays, Bullying Of The Poor & Democratic Party Drift

Why did Geithner and Obama both declare that Wall Street bankers had committed no crimes, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary?  By Richad Eskow OurFuture.org (7/20/18) What does it mean when Timothy Geithner, Barack Obama’s bro-ish and apparently self-satisfied former Secretary of the Treasury, becomes president of a company that hoodwinks the victims of the financial system he helped rescue? If you care about economic justice, or if you want the Democratic Party to win more elections, the answer is: more than you might think. Mining the Poor Geithner made some (presumably unwelcome) news last week when it was reported that Warburg…

ALL ARTICLES, War State America August 6, 2018

The US War Machine Is Ramping Up & Spreading Across Africa

“Peace does not define U.S. foreign policy. Everything is geared toward intimidation and war.” By Vijay Prashad Independent Media Institute (8/1/18) Last week, on July 26, the United States House of Representatives passed the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, which will then go on to the U.S. Senate and finally to the U.S. president. It is worthwhile to note that 139 Democrats, including the entire Democratic Party leadership, voted for this bill. This Act provides the U.S. government with $717 billion for a year’s military spending. This is $100 billion more than was spent last year (which is itself more than…

ALL ARTICLES August 6, 2018

A Slaughter In Silence: How Trump’s “America First” Policy Enabled Ethnic Cleansing In The DRC

  Democracy Now! (8/3/18) The Democratic Republic of Congo is facing one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world as a wave of extreme violence sweeps the country. Some 2 million Congolese fled their homes last year, nearly 7 million Congolese are now internally displaced, and another 500,000 have fled to other parts of Africa. According to the United Nations, 13 million Congolese are in urgent need of humanitarian aid. The international media has largely ignored what’s happening, but this week Vice News published a shocking investigation into a recent case of ethnic cleansing. Hundreds of machete-wielding militiamen swept…

ALL ARTICLES, Health Care August 6, 2018

Health Care: The Cost — And Savings — Of Bernie Sanders’ ‘Medicare For All’ Plan

  On Point / WBUR (8/2/18) Did a conservative think tank just give Bernie Sanders the evidence for his “Medicare for All” plan? We’ll ask them and Sanders. Guests Dylan Scott, heath care policy reporter for Vox. (@dylanlscott) Sen. Bernie Sanders, independent senator from Vermont. Introduced the Medicare for All Act of 2017. (@SenSanders) Charles Blahous, senior research strategist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Former senior economic adviser to President George W. Bush. Carmen Heredia Rodriguez, reporter at Kaiser Health News. (@caheredia21) Link to 47-Minute Audio Vox: “Bernie Sanders’s $32 trillion Medicare-for-all plan is actually kind of a bargain”…

ALL ARTICLES August 6, 2018

Denouncing ‘Centrist, Corporate Democrats,’ Cynthia Nixon Declares: ‘This Is a Time to Fight’

“We need to elect better Democrats.” By Andrea Germanos Common Dreams (8/4/18) New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon on Friday called for a transformation of the Democratic Party, and said “we have to turn the system upside down” in order for the party to be “a vehicle for all working people in this country.” The actress and activist, who’s hoping to beat Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York’s Democratic primary next month, made the remarks at the Netroots Nation annual conference taking place in New Orleans. “The Democratic establishment doesn’t like primaries,” she argued, because it sees a challenge to incumbents as hurting the…

ALL ARTICLES, American Fascism, Police State America August 6, 2018

Records Reveal “Lax” Supervision, Sexual Activity At Chicago-Area Shelters Housing Immigrant Children

  By Duaa Eldeib, Jodi S. Cohen & Melissa Sanchez ProPublica (8/2/18) Soon after Christmas 2015, three boys were left unattended in the TV room of a Des Plaines shelter that houses immigrant children and is operated by Heartland Human Care Services. One boy performed oral sex on an older boy, state child welfare records show. The older boy then tried to penetrate him from behind. When that was unsuccessful, the younger boy performed oral sex on the older boy a second time. The third boy in the room, the youngest, had been playing video games. He then walked to the door to…

ALL ARTICLES, Gun Cult August 6, 2018

In Court Papers, NRA Stresses Financial Pressures & Says It May Have To Shut Down NRA-TV

  By Alex Yablon The Trace (8/1/18) The National Rifle Association typically portrays itself as an indomitable force. But an ongoing court case has the gun group taking inventory of its wounds. In a new legal filing, it contends that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s campaign to pressure insurers and financial services companies to cut ties with the NRA could deeply harm its financial health and ability to “fulfill its advocacy objectives.” In the complaint, entered July 20 and first reported by the New York Law Journal, the NRA claims it has lost income and access to banking services as a…

ALL ARTICLES, Gun Cult August 6, 2018

Did Alleged Russian Spy Maria Butina Trigger NRA Leadership Shake-Up?

  By David Corn Mother Jones (8/3/18) On May 7, the National Rifle Association released a curious press release declaring that Oliver North, the key player in the Iran-contra scandal and an NRA board member, was “poised to become” the group’s president. Earlier that day, Peter Brownell, then finishing his first term as NRA president, had announced that he would not seek a second annual term in order to devote more time to his family business, a firearms retail company. This changing of the guard—and how it happened—was odd. For fifteen years, the NRA leadership had followed a specific pattern: an officer…

ALL ARTICLES August 6, 2018

RED ALERT! GOP Could Use Claims Of Russian Hacking To Deny Midterm Election Results

The Commoner Call (8/6/18) Authoritarian expert Sarah Kendzior warned that the November midterm elections may play out in an unexpected and beyond disturbing direction. Speaking with AM Joy host Joy Reid this past Saturday, Kendzior outlined how Donald Trump and the Republicans could quickly spin a Democratic Party “blue wave” into claims of election fraud and justification for refusal to concede. Kendzior is the author of The View From Flyover Country: Dispatches From The Forgotten America”. “People are not worried enough,” Kendzior explained. “They haven’t been all along. Russia has been attacking our infrastructure for a number of years. They…

ALL ARTICLES August 6, 2018

Right Wing Online Conspiracy Theory QAnon Riles Trumpsters

  The Daily / New York Times (8/2/18) How did an outlandish conspiracy theory born on the fringes of the internet end up in the spotlight at a rally for President Trump? Guest: Kevin Roose, who writes about technology for The New York Times. Link to 19-Minute Audio ***** 6 Facts About Odd ‘white rabbit’ Conspiracy Theory Energizing Some Trump Fans We are living in very, very strange times indeed. By Rob Waugh Yahoo News UK (11/24/17) If you want proof we’re living in a golden age of conspiracy theories, the latest offering of fake news doing the rounds among hard-right…

ALL ARTICLES August 6, 2018

The Hate Report: How Survivors Tell The Story Of Hate In America

  By Aaron Sankin The Hate Report / The Center for Investigative Center (8/3/18) During the 2016 presidential election, Arjun Singh Sethi became worried about the state of hate in America. There was a wave of assaults, vandalism and attacks on places of worship. People across the country, he saw, were being targeted on the basis of who they were and what they believed. Something important, and deeply disturbing, was happening, yet he felt the issue wasn’t getting the attention it deserved. That realization drove Sethi, a professor of human rights law at the Georgetown University Law Center, to spend the…

ALL ARTICLES, Media Hits & Misses August 6, 2018

There Is Far More At Stake In Wikileaks Showdown Than Julian Assange’s Fate

  The issues transcend whether you like Assange or not. [Editor’s Note: Julian Assange is a prickly, controversial and not all that nice of a guy. Putting aside one’s personal feelings about him, the Assange case raises huge issues for the future of a free press. This is a much-needed discussion of the issues involved. — Mark L. Taylor] By Peter B. Collins Who.What.Why (6/24/18) As Ecuador’s president, Lenin Moreno, visits London, reports indicate he is about to withdraw asylum for Julian Assange, exposing the WikiLeaks founder to eventual extradition to the United States to face charges under the Espionage…

ALL ARTICLES, Democrats August 2, 2018

Memo To Liberals: Please Figure Out How To Truly Help & Win Back The Working Class

  By Thomas Frank The Guardian (7/27/18) The other day I noticed, with something of a shock, that Brett Kavanaugh, the supreme court nominee, is almost exactly the same age as me. I have always scoffed at those of my generation who cynically hitched their star to the conservative movement but now, as I take my leave from this space, it occurs to me that maybe they played the game right after all. I started out in journalism in the orange-fingered sunset of the Reagan era. The rise of the right, I felt back then, was the most consequential development of…

ALL ARTICLES, Economic Injustice, Rethuglicans August 2, 2018

Russpublican Tax Scam: With Workers’ Wages Falling, CEOs Enjoy ‘Eye-Popping’ Payouts From GOP Tax Scam

‘This Was the Plan All Along.” — First Congressional District candidate Randy “Ironstache” Bryce By Jessica Corbett Common Dreams (7/30/18) While workers’ wages have steadily declined since congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump pushed through massive tax cuts for corporations and wealthy Americans in December, a new Politico analysis finds that rather than using their savings to raise employee pay or create jobs, companies are generating “eye-popping payouts” for executives with a record-breaking stock buyback “bonanza.” When a public company buys back stock, the value of shares spikes, enabling corporate executives “who often receive most of their compensation in stock” to sell their shares at higher…

ALL ARTICLES, American Socialist Tradition, FEATURE August 2, 2018

Socialism On The Rise As Americans Seek Out Bold, Humane Alternatives To The Failed Brutality Of Trump & Capitalism

If you want to learn about the central role of socialism in American history then read this book! By Jake Johnson Common Dreams (7/31/18) The thousands of democratic socialists in the United States who have been organizing and fighting for justice in political obscurity for years likely never thought their ideas would be the subject of heated debates on prominent talk-shows like “The View” or feature pieces in such establishment mainstays as PBS and NPR. But—driven in large part by the persistent popularity of Bernie Sanders’ brand of politics and the recent landslide victory of self-described democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York’s congressional primary—the past several weeks have…

ALL ARTICLES, Climate Change August 2, 2018

‘Climate Change…In Real Time’: California’s Frightening Fires Are The Nightmare Scientists Long Predicted

  By Jessica Corbett Common Dreams (7/31/18) As deadly wildfires continue to rage in California—destroying hundreds of homes, threatening thousands more, and forcing tens of thousands of residents to evacuate—experts believe the blazes are part of “the new reality” that climate scientists have warned about for decades. “This past month shows climate change for real and in real time,” The Fresno Bee declared in an editorial published Monday. The ferocious California fires, the Guardian reports, have “spawned bizarre pyrotechnics, from firenados to towering pyrocumulus clouds that evoke a nuclear detonation. These events are not aberrations, say experts. They are California’s future.” “More acres are burning,” Michael Wehner, a…

ALL ARTICLES, Bomb Trains, Climate Change August 2, 2018

The Empire Files: The History Of Worldwide Tyranny Of Big Oil

“The oil industry is our government. There is no difference.” — Greg Palast, Investigative reporter. By Abby Martin The Empire Files / teleSur (1/15/16) The oil industry is a powerhouse with control over land, resources, politics and more. In this episode of The Empire Files, Abby Martin uncovers big oil’s strong-arm reach–its growth, its crimes, its power and its impunity. Featuring interviews with two investigative journalists who have covered oil disasters on-the-ground–Antonia Juhasz, author of “Black Tide: The Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill”, and Greg Palast, author of “Vulture’s Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pig, Power Pirates, and…

ALL ARTICLES August 2, 2018

Podcast: How Is The U.S. Dealing With Growing Cybersecurity Threat … Without A Cybersecurity Czar?

Marketplace Tech (7/31/18) Hackers, probably Russian, successfully broke into electric utilities last summer. Homeland security officials revealed those intrusions for the first time last week. There were also reports last week of attempted cyberattacks on various members of Congress, and this week, the Senate is likely to have a showdown over funding for election security. There had been a White House cybersecurity coordinator who organized the national response to cyberattacks, but the Trump administration eliminated the job back in May. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood talks with Daniel Castro, vice president at the nonprofit Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, about…

ALL ARTICLES, Resist! August 2, 2018

Young Patriot Alerted America That Russia Hacked Our Voting Rolls So Why Is She In Jail?

  By Will Bunch The Philadelphia Inquirer (7/30/18) Last week’s news that special counsel Robert Mueller had the goods on 12 high-level Russian spieswhose job was to hack computers and muck up America’s 2016 presidential election was a political bombshell — but also a resounding vindication for a 26-year-old Georgia woman with the wonderfully poetic name of Reality Winner. In the spring of 2017, with public concern mounting about the extent of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, federal officials still sought to assure people that there’d been no major success in penetrating electronic voting systems. But Winner, a commended Air…

ALL ARTICLES, Russia Monitor August 2, 2018

Russia Monitor: The Number One, Most Important Bigly Question For All Of Us

 “My client didn’t do it, and even if he did it, it’s not a crime.” — Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, FOX News (7/30/18″ By Dan Peak The Commoner Call (8/2/18) Dear Fellow Readers, Let’s put Giuliani’s comment in context. We’ll make use of a tweet by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA; minority leader House Intelligence Committee) from this week: The evolution of Trump on Russia: No meetings with any Russians. Ok, lots of low level meetings. Ok, high level meetings too, but about adoptions. Ok, not about adoptions, but Trump didn’t know. Ok, maybe he did, but no crime. Next? Ok,…

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ALL ARTICLES, American Fascism, History They Don't Want You To Know August 2, 2018

A Movie For Our Times: “The Captain,” The True Story Of A Fake Nazi’s Atrocities

  [Editor’s Note: From ICE agents along the southern border to guards at Abu Ghraib to many police actions in minority cities to the deceit of Wall Street we see repeated examples of individuals bowing to evil. This film has arrived as a warning … about ourselves. — Mark L. Taylor] By David Morgan CBS (7/27/18) In the final days of World War II, with Germany’s frontlines collapsing into chaos, Willi Herold, a German private separated from his comrades and desperate for food and warmth, comes across an abandoned car with a suitcase that contains an SS officer’s uniform. Trying…

ALL ARTICLES, American Fascism, History They Don't Want You To Know, Rethuglicans August 2, 2018

13 Quotes From George Orwell’s “1984” That Are Relevant To Today’s America

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” — George Orwell, “1984”.   By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (8/2/18) In his too-brief lifetime novelist George Orwell had seen two disastrous world wars, witnessed the rise of brutal fascist regimes in Germany and Italy and fought as a resistance fighter on the front lines in another, in Spain. He had witnessed the mechanization of industrial scale death from World War I with the advent of machine guns, tanks and gas warfare to the development of nuclear bombs….

ALL ARTICLES, American Fascism, FEATURE July 30, 2018

Immigrant Youth Detention Centers: “If You’re A Predator, It’s A Gold Mine”

  By Michael Grabell & Topher Sanders ProPublica (7/27/18) Just five days after he reached the United States, the 15-year-old Honduran boy awoke in his Tucson, Arizona, immigrant shelter one morning in 2015 to find a youth care worker in his room, tickling his chest and stomach. When he asked the man, who was 46, what he was doing, the man left. But he returned two more times, rubbing the teen’s penis through his clothing and then trying to reach under his boxers. “I know what you want, I can give you anything you need,” said the worker, who was later convicted…

ALL ARTICLES July 30, 2018

139 Weak-Kneed, Spineless, Morally Bereft, Two-Timing, Wimpy, Quisling House Democrats (Including Ron Kind) Join War Loving GOP To Approve $717 Billion In Military Spending Travesty

  “How are they going to pay for this? Oh wait, that question only gets asked when it comes to social programs that benefit the working class.” — Twitter user By Jake Johnson Common Dreams (7/26/18) With the help of 139 Democrats, the House of Representatives on Thursday easily rammed through the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which—if it passes the Senate—will hand President Donald Trump $717 billion in military spending. “Of the total $717 billion, the bill would authorize $616.9 billion for the base Pentagon budget, $21.9 billion for nuclear weapons programs under the Energy Department, and another…

ALL ARTICLES, Democrats July 30, 2018

Hey, Democrats! Take A Hint From British Labour & Ocasio-Cortez — Move Left To Help People

  The Democrats need to go much further than simply revealing a new slogan.  By Tobi Thomas In These Times (7/26/18) On July 18, House Democrats unveiled their new campaign slogan ahead of the 2018 midterm elections: For The People. At first glance, the message may appear similar to “For The Many, Not The Few,” the title of the manifesto put forward in 2017 by the UK’s Labour Party, led by Jeremy Corbyn. And while both slogans place the public as the center of political action, the Democratic Party still has much further to go in comparison to Labour, which embraced a bold, redistributive…

ALL ARTICLES, American Socialist Tradition July 30, 2018

What Socialists Wanted & Brought To Milwaukee In The Early 20th Century

  “Yes, we wanted sewers in the workers’ homes; but we wanted much more, oh, so ever much more than sewers. We wanted our workers to have pure air; we wanted them to have sunshine; we wanted planned homes; we wanted living wages; we wanted recreation for young and old; we wanted vocational education; we wanted a chance for every human being to be strong and live a life of happiness. And, we wanted everything that was necessary to give them that; playgrounds, parks, lakes, beaches, clean creeks and rivers, swimming and wading pools, social centers, reading rooms, clean fun,…