Economic Injustice

ALL ARTICLES, Economic Injustice, One Percenters June 29, 2017

Budget-Cutting Austerity Is Not Frugality, It Is Brutality. It Is Violence. It Is Domestic Terrorism By The Ruling Class

Detail from a poster for ‘Russell Brand: Messiah Complex,’ a live recording. By Russell Brand Russell Brand’s Facebook Page (6/16/17) Sometimes there is a news story that has a power that reaches beyond the material facts, even if those facts are in themselves potent. Hillsborough was one. The drowned Syrian toddler another. The discernible reality alludes to a deeper truth and invites us to consider the real meaning. Glenfell is such a story. The image of a burning tower is loaded with significance both modern and ancient. The facts, the deaths, the suffering are in themselves appalling yet the meaning…

ALL ARTICLES, Economic Injustice June 22, 2017

Local Volunteer Finds Out What Life Is Like Flirting With Poverty

By Kate Crofton The Commoner Call (6/22/17) (The ideas expressed here are mine alone and do not represent City Year or AmeriCorps.) What do you get when you make $4.61 an hour working fifty hours a week? One biweekly AmeriCorps stipend post-taxes An income at the Federal poverty line Enough money to live frugally but comfortably *most* of the time An inside view of the broken systems meant to serve the poor All of the above ***** Case Study Number 1: Food Stamps I pace back and forth along the perimeter of the Rosa Parks K-8 parking lot listening to…

ALL ARTICLES, Economic Injustice June 22, 2017

Attempt To Get Walmart To Offset Their Taxpayer Funded Corporate Welfare

By Zaid Jilan The Intercept (6/13/17) When Walmart and other low-wage employers fail to pay their employees enough to live decent lives, taxpayers often end up picking the tab for public assistance. Freshman California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna and nine House co-sponsors are introducing legislation to put an end to the free ride. The Corporate Responsibility and Taxpayer Protection Act would levy a fee equivalent to the public assistance that a company’s employees are eligible to receive, with the intent to incentivize businesses to pay their employees enough so they don’t need public assistance. In 2013, Walmart alone cost taxpayers $6.2…

ALL ARTICLES, American Fascism, Deep State, Economic Injustice, One Percenters June 19, 2017

Our Rights On The Edge: A Billionaire-Bankrolled ‘Movement’ Close To Calling A Constitutional Convention

By Simon Davis-Cohen   AlterNet (6/14/17) A billionaire-backed “movement” is dangerously close to calling a constitutional convention of states under Article V of the U.S. Constitution. If realized, it would be the first constitutional convention since the 1787 Philadelphia Convention, which replaced the Articles of Confederation with the U.S. Constitution. After an active start to 2017, proponents are now allegedly seven states away from reaching the needed 34 states (two-thirds) to convene a convention. According to Article V, which lays out all the ways the constitution can be amended, any amendments proposed by the convention would then need to be ratified by 38…

ALL ARTICLES, Economic Injustice, One Percenters June 8, 2017

The Politics Of Race, Division & The Real Reason Working-Class Whites Support For Trump Doesn’t Waver

TheCommonerCall.org By Jonathan Capehart The Washington Post (6/6/17) Unlike anyone I’ve read or talked to since the November election, Justin Gest has helped me to really understand why President Trump won white working-class voters and hasn’t thus far lost their support. In the latest episode of “Cape Up,” we discuss the George Mason University professor’s new book, “The New Minority: White Working Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality” “So much of Donald Trump’s politics is symbolic,” Gest explained. “They’re symbolic in the sense that this is what people want to hear and if it doesn’t get done, it’s…

'Just-Us' System, ALL ARTICLES, Economic Injustice, One Percenters, Worker Notes by Tom Crofton May 1, 2017

A May Day Call: When Corporations Don’t Take Precautions To Avert Workplace Deaths Executives Must Go To Prison

  By Leo Gerard, President of United Steel Workers AlterNet (4/24/17) Every 12 days, a member of my union, the United Steelworkers (USW), or one of their non-union co-workers, is killed on the job. Every 12 days. And it’s been that way for years. These are horrible deaths. Workers are crushed by massive machinery. They drown in vats of chemicals. They’re poisoned by toxic gas, burned by molten metal. The company pays a meaningless fine. Nothing changes. And another worker is killed 11 days later. Of course, it’s not just members of the USW. Nationally, at all workplaces, one employee…

ALL ARTICLES, American Socialist Tradition, Economic Injustice April 17, 2017

While The Poor Lose Basic Benefits Upper Middle Class Whites Benefit From ‘White Socialism’

  By Chris Ladd Forbes (3/13/17) Election 2016 has prompted a wave of head-scratching on the left. Counties Trump won by staggering margins will be among the hardest hit by the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Millions of white voters who supported Donald Trump stand to lose their access to health coverage because of their vote. Individual profiles of Trump voters feed this baffling narrative. A Washington Post story described the experience of Clyde Graham, a long-unemployed coal worker who depends on the ACA for access to health care. He voted for Trump knowing it might cost him his health…

ALL ARTICLES, Economic Injustice, Health Care, One Percenters April 3, 2017

16th Richest Family In America: The Family Making Billions From The Opioid Epidemic

  Brasscheck TV (4/1/17) Deaths by opioid overdose have surpassed AIDS deaths at the peak of that epidemic. There’s one family that’s made billions from this disaster. The US news media has done a good job of keeping their names out of the news. But Brasscheck is not a member of the mainstream news media. Meet the Sackler family… Richard Sackler, 71, moves among elite circles of scientists, researchers, and investors and rarely speaks at public events. Even photographs of him are difficult to find. The Sackler family, in general, has avoided public discussion of OxyContin or the drug’s role…

ALL ARTICLES, Economic Injustice, Health Care March 27, 2017

The Forces Driving Middle-Aged White People’s ‘Deaths Of Despair’

  By Jessica Boddy NPR (3/23/17) In 2015, when researchers Ann Case and Angus Deaton discovered that death rates had been rising dramatically since 1999 among middle-aged white Americans, they weren’t sure why people were dying younger, reversing decades of longer life expectancy. Now the husband-and-wife economists say they have a better understanding of what’s causing these “deaths of despair” by suicide, drugs and alcohol. In a follow-up to their groundbreaking 2015 work, they say that a lack of steady, well-paying jobs for whites without college degrees has caused pain, distress and social dysfunction to build up over time. The…