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ALL ARTICLES January 28, 2019

Warren Forces Issue Of Massive Economic Injustice Into 2020 Debate With ‘Ultra-Millionaire Tax’

  By Julia Conley Common Dreams (1/24/19) Weeks into a national conversation over the possibility of taxing the wealthiest Americans at far higher rates in order to correct severe income inequality in the U.S., Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) made clear that the issue will be addressed in the 2020 presidential election, unveiling a plan to tax assets over $50 million. Two economists who are advising Warren, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman of University of California at Berkeley, announced to the Washington Post that the senator is proposing an annual tax of two percent for assets over $50 million, as well as a three percent…

ALL ARTICLES, Democrats, Economic Injustice January 28, 2019

At Cushy Oligarch Gala With Ex-Bush Official, Obama Brags Up Oil Production & Implores Wall Street To Thank Him For Making Them So Much Money

  By Ben Norton Gray Zone (11/30/19) Barack Obama urged bankers to thank him for helping make them so much money during his tenure as president. He also boasted of turning the US into the world’s largest oil producer, while surrounded by wealthy Republicans in tuxedos. Obama made these appeals for elite adulation at a lavish gala hosted by former Secretary of State James Baker. His comments came just a few hours after he met with former Republican President George H. W. Bush at his home in Texas. If there was any single event that captured Obama’s centrist, neoliberal capitalist…

ALL ARTICLES January 28, 2019

Glenn Greenwald On The Dramatic Scandal Swallowing The New Bolsonaro Presidency

  By Glenn Greenwald The Intercept (1/24/19) A DRAMATIC, MULTI-LEVEL AND INCREASINGLY DARK scandal has been engulfing the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro for the last month. It began just weeks after his stunning November victory but before he was inaugurated on January 1, and has completely paralyzed his presidency. The scandal most centrally involves President Bolsonaro’s eldest son, Flavio, who has long been a State Deputy from Rio de Janeiro but was just elected to the Federal Senate with a massive vote total in the last election. The scandal began with the discovery of highly suspicious payments into and out…

ALL ARTICLES, Russia Monitor January 28, 2019

Russia Monitor: Turn Over The Stone & Watch The Crawlies

  “Ray Harding, then chairman of New York’s Liberal Party, once told me in the late 1990s, “The only two people who believe Roger Stone’s bullshit are Roger Stone and that fucking moron Trump.”” — GOP strategist and never-Trumper Rick Wilson. By Dan Peak The Commoner Call (1/28/19) Dear Fellow Readers, The other competing quote for the cycle is, “FBI, WARRANT! OPEN THE DOOR!” The quote came Esquire magazine: “…the FBI busted into his (Roger Stone) Fort Lauderdale, Florida, home in a predawn raid, arresting him on seven counts including “obstruction of an official proceeding, making false statements, and witness tampering.” The…

ALL ARTICLES, Media Hits & Misses January 28, 2019

NY Times’ Reporter Covered For Dem Architects Of A “false flag” Election Campaign In Alabama

  By Dan Cohen Grayzone Project (1/23/19) In September 2017, New York Times national security reporter Scott Shane attended an off-the-record event in Washington, DC held by American Engagement Technologies, a data firm run by Obama administration veteran Mikey Dickerson. Shane was not there simply as an observer – he was invited to speak on his supposed subject of expertise: “Soviet and Russian disinformation.” It was at that meeting where Shane learned of “Project Birmingham,” an online disinformation campaign waged against voters in the 2017 Alabama senate race between Republican Roy Moore and its eventual winner, Democrat Doug Jones. The…

ALL ARTICLES, Worker Notes by Tom Crofton January 28, 2019

Tom Crofton: Time To Draw The Best From The Past And Forge A New Vision For The Future

A new understanding, organically grown from the best of our American values that makes peace with our past errors, and joins the rest of world in being stewards of our planet is needed now. By Tom Crofton The Commoner Call (1/28/19) The era of new frontiers to claim for an expanding American Manifest Destiny are long over. We live in a time where the exploitation of the eco-system is blowing back in a climate crisis teetering past the tipping points of repair. The Military Industrial Complex we were so clearly warned about 50 years ago has run amok, and placed…

ALL ARTICLES, Health Care January 28, 2019

Advisory Panel Head Says FDA Inaction On Opioid Crisis ‘Borders On Criminal’

  By Mary Papenfuss HuffPost (1/26/19) The head of a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel on opioids has accused the federal agency of looking out for pharmaceutical company income at the tragic cost of public lives, saying the behavior “borders on the criminal.” “As I sit and listen to them in meetings, all I can think about is the clock ticking and how many people are dying every moment that they’re not doing anything,” Dr. Raeford Brown told The Guardian earlier this week. “The lack of insight that continues to be exhibited by the agency is in many ways…

ALL ARTICLES, M. Taylor Columns January 28, 2019

Trump’s Presidency: The View From Canada Reveals Two Possible Ways Trump Stays In Office & Even Wins A Second Term

How the 25th Amendment and the democrats could grease the way to a second Trump term. By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (1/28/19) A recent broadcast of the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) news show Fifth Estate with host Bob McKeown gives a view of the American political crisis much like someone witnessing a domestic squabble in the next-door neighbor’s kitchen. It is a good summary of the past two years but the last three minutes should give us all pause. McKeown explores the issue of the 25th Amendment by which members of the cabinet can remove a president if…

ALL ARTICLES, Democrats, Resist!, Rethuglicans January 24, 2019

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Panics The Sacred Cash Cows & Rattles Potemkin Politicians

Corporate Dems Tell AOC To Sit Down, Zip The Lip & Learn From The Real ‘Experts’… A group of GOP House members booed her on the floor, to which she replied, “Don’t hate me cause you ain’t me, fellas.” By Matt Taibbi Rolling Stone (1/22/19) One of the first things you learn covering American politicians is that they’re not terribly bright. The notion that Hill denizens are brilliant 4-D chess players is pure myth, the product of too many press hagiographies of the Game Change variety and too many Hollywood fantasies like House of Cards and West Wing. The average American politician would lose at…

ALL ARTICLES, Economic Injustice, Health Care, One Percenters January 24, 2019

SIN: 26 Billionaires Own as Much Wealth As The World’s Poorest 3.8 Billion People Combined

“Inequality is not inevitable, it’s a political choice.”  By Laura Paddison HuffPost (1/21/19) The gap between rich and poor is fracturing society, poisoning politics and fueling public anger, according to a new report from anti-poverty nonprofit Oxfam, which found that last year just 26 people owned the same amount of wealth as the poorest 3.8 billion people. This figure is down from 43 the year before. The Public Good or Private Wealth? report, published Sunday, found that the wealth of billionaires has increased by $900 billion in the last year, or $2.5 billion a day. This bonanza has not been felt by…

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ALL ARTICLES, Economic Injustice, History They Don't Want You To Know, One Percenters January 24, 2019

The Ruling Class Phoney Crusade To Save The World – Without Changing A Thing That Leads To Injustice

  By Anand Giridharadas The Guardian (1/22/19) A successful society is a progress machine. It takes in the raw material of innovations and produces broad human advancement. America’s machine is broken. The same could be said of others around the world. And now many of the people who broke the progress machine are trying to sell us their services as repairmen. When the fruits of change have fallen on the US in recent decades, the very fortunate have basketed almost all of them. For instance, the average pretax income of the top 10th of Americans has doubled since 1980, that of…

ALL ARTICLES, History They Don't Want You To Know, Resist! January 24, 2019

Teachings From A Political Prisoner: The Crisis Of The Interregnum

“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” ― Antonio Gramsci (1881-1937), Prison Notebooks. Italian neo-Marxist theorist and politician. Eventually imprisoned by Mussolini. ***** From Wikipedia: The Prison Notebooks (Italian: Quaderni del carcere [kwaˈdɛrni del ˈkartʃere]) were a series of essays written by the Italian neo-Marxist Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci was imprisoned by the Italian Fascist regime in 1926. The notebooks were written between 1929 and 1935, when Gramsci was released from prison on grounds of ill-health. He died in April 1937. He wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3,000 pages of history and…

ALL ARTICLES, American Fascism, Police State America January 24, 2019

‘We Have Monsters Leading America’: Trump’s DHS Locked Up More Children Than Previously Known

By Julia Conley Common Dreams (1/17/19) Confirming the fears of human rights groups, the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reported on Thursday that thousands more children were separated from their parents at the southern U.S. border by the Trump administration, long before it first publicly unveiled the family separation policy last spring. “The total number of children separated from a parent or guardian by immigration authorities is unknown,” reads the report, and the inspector general found that children were separated over a longer period of time as officials “observed a steep increase in the number…

ALL ARTICLES, Putin & Donnie, Russia Monitor January 24, 2019

Russia Monitor: Who Ya’ Gonna Believe, Your Lyin’ Eyes Or Putin’s Grin?

  “According to the poll, 57 percent believe it’s likely that Russia “has compromising information“ on Trump, compared to 31 percent who don’t think it’s likely.” — Poll: Shutdown, Russia drive Trump to all-time high disapproval. By Dan Peak The Commoner Call (1/24/19) Dear Fellow Readers, The poll referenced above is worth a quick read. We, the American public, do not support Trump’s government shutdown as a strong-arm tactic to build a monument to himself. Aside from the tactic, we, the majority, do not support his Wall … period. The guy who self-promoted as master of the  ‘Art of the Deal’ may…

ALL ARTICLES, Your Brain On Politics January 24, 2019

Suckered: Why Did So Many Americans Fall For Russian Hackers’ Election Lies & Propaganda?

    By Shankar Vedantam Morning Edition / NPR (1/22/19) Investigations of Russian influence on the 2016 election have tended to focus on the role of social media. Researchers are also exploring the psychological vulnerability that hackers exploited. Link to 3-Minute Audio (Commoner Call cartoon by Mark L. Taylor, 2018. Open source and free to use with link to www.thecommonercall.org )  

ALL ARTICLES, Democrats, FEATURE, Worker Notes by Tom Crofton January 24, 2019

It’s Really Quite Simple: Two Questions To Quickly Sift The Growing Gaggle Of Dem Presidential Candidates

By Tom Crofton The Commoner Call (1/24/19) The large and growing field of Democratic candidates for President offer a wide range of personal histories, beliefs, and issues to run on. This is good for the country. There seems to me to be a very simple way to narrow the field quickly. My two simple, straightforward questions to each and every one: Do you support single payer health care for all instead of any plan based on insurance, and do you see that the enormity of the climate crisis requires a massive federal response? All other issues are really quite dependent on these…

ALL ARTICLES, Democrats, Health Care January 24, 2019

Beware Betrayal: Progressives Warn Of Corporate Dems Pushing ‘Diluted’ Half-Measures As Alternative To Medicare For All

Corporate democrats’ alternative to Medicare for All. By Jake Johnson Common Dreams (1/22/19) A Medicare buy-in. A Medicaid buy-in. Medicare for retiring police officers and firefighters under the age of 65. Defend and strengthen Obamacare. With Medicare for All polling at an unprecedented 70 percent support among the American public and headed toward its first-ever congressional hearing, Politico on Tuesday reported that there is a growing effort among congressional Democrats—including some 2020 presidential hopefuls—to “water down” the grassroots push for a transformative single-payer program by offering up more incremental approaches to solving America’s for-profit healthcare crisis. The proposals listed above, which Politicoencapsulated with the term “Medicare for More,” are just a handful…

ALL ARTICLES, American Fascism, Media Hits & Misses, Right Wing Religion January 24, 2019

“I Was Absolutely Afraid”: Indigenous Elder On “Mob Mentality” Of MAGA Hat-Wearing Students In D.C.

  Democracy Now! (1/22/19) On Friday [2/22], thousands took part in the Indigenous Peoples March in Washington, D.C. The next day, video went viral of an interaction that took place soon after the march ended between an indigenous elder and a group of Catholic high school students from Kentucky who had attended a March for Life protest the same day. In the video, Omaha elder Nathan Phillips is seen peacefully playing his drum and singing while being encircled by the students—some of whom were wearing red “Make America Great Again” hats. The video appears to show the students taunting and…

ALL ARTICLES January 24, 2019

New Zealand Academic & China Critic Living In Fear Of Beijing: ‘I’m being watched’:

  By Eleanor Ainge Roy The Guardian (1/22/19) It’s just gone midday at Canterbury University and Professor Anne-Marie Brady is rock-hopping across a crystal clear stream. The life-long academic takes an overgrown bush track to reach the Okeover community gardens, her eyes scanning the sky for native birds. It’s the height of summer in Christchurch and the garden is filled with rhubarb plants, clumps of chewy spinach and spring onions whose tips have turned white in the sun. “I used to spend a lot of time here,” says Brady, 52, examining the beds, ploughed by academic staff and students wanting to…

ALL ARTICLES, Democrats, Health Care January 21, 2019

New Analysis Shows Why Timid Democrats Are Wrong To Fear Bold Embrace Of Medicare For All

  By Julia Conley Common Dreams (1/14/19) On the same day a new poll showed an overwhelming majority of Americans think the nation’s healthcare system is “in state of crisis,” a new analysis shows that Democrats should listen to those Americans—and end their reluctance to run on the promise of a bold solution like Medicare for All while propping up the for-profit system. A new Gallup survey released Monday showed that 70 percent of respondents saw the U.S. healthcare system as having “major problems” or being in a “state of crisis.” Eighty-four percent of Democrats expressed these concerns about the system in…

ALL ARTICLES, Democrats, Ron "Wall Street" Kind January 21, 2019

Hooked: Meet The Most Corporate PAC-Addicted Reps In Congress. Guess Who Is No. 4 On The List…

Rep. Ron kind doing his best to ignore the needs and desires of his constituents for universal Medicare For All health care at the 2018 Third Congressional District Democratic Convention.   By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (1/21/19) Wisconsin’s Rep. Ron Kind ranks as Number 4 Top Corporate PAC Sell-Out in the House of Representatives!!! Want to have health care coverage for your kids? Well don’t bother talking to “Bottom Dollar” Ron Kind, the Wisconsin rep financed and funded by the corrupt industrial ‘health’ complex. The photo is from the Third CD 2018 convention, where “Bottom Dollar” jumped away…

ALL ARTICLES, Mike McCabe for Gov January 21, 2019

Blue Jean Nation – It Ain’t Euchre, Tony: Gov. Evers Needs To Hold On To His Trump Card

    By Mike McCabe Blue Jean Nation (1/16/19) Wisconsin Democrats entered a euchre player in a high-stakes poker game. We’ll see how that goes. Early signs are worrying, though. I don’t know much about euchre. Played it a couple of times as a kid. Seemed like a nice, friendly game. But I couldn’t wait to get back outside to play ball. When I was willing to sit long enough to play cards, it was usually poker. It took no time to learn it’s generally a good idea to hold on to aces. The euchre player just discarded one, making an early concession to…

ALL ARTICLES January 21, 2019

STRIKE! Barbara Ehrenreich Calls On TSA Workers To Stand Tall & Walk Off Job In Protest Of Government Shutdown

“I come from a tradition of union people who did not take certain kinds of crap. They just said, “That’s it.” You know, at a certain point, you go on strike and assert your dignity and make your demands and your problems known to the general public in every way you can. So, I think this would be the moment.” Democracy Now! (1/17/19) The longest government shutdown in U.S. history is now on Day 27. As 800,000 workers continue to go without pay, federal employees around the country are rising up to demand an end to the shutdown, which has…

ALL ARTICLES January 21, 2019

Heroes: Four Women Convicted By Feds After Leaving Food & Water In Desert For Migrants

  (Editor’s Note: What a sad and miserable facade our government has become. — Mark L. Taylor] The Associated Press (1/19/19) A federal judge has found four women guilty of entering a national wildlife refuge without a permit as they sought to place food and water in the Arizona desert for migrants. US magistrate Judge Bernardo Velasco’s ruling on Friday marked the first conviction against humanitarian aid volunteers in a decade. The four found guilty of misdemeanours in the recent case were volunteers for No More Deaths, which said in a statement the group had been providing life-saving aid to migrants. ……

ALL ARTICLES, Climate Change, FEATURE, Worker Notes by Tom Crofton January 21, 2019

The Climate Crisis: We Already Have What We Need To Begin The Transition To Sustainability Now

  We need to grow inward and find value in what we have been ignoring. By Tom Crofton The Commoner Call (1/21/19) Combating climate change will definitely mean changing some of our regular activities. We need to start making different choices. Our society has been based on carving up a new frontier, draining the resources and moving on to virgin territory. That era of outward growth is over. We need to grow inward and find value in what we have been ignoring. A new sustainable society needs to be fashioned from where we are and what we have been wasting….

ALL ARTICLES, Democrats, FEATURE January 21, 2019

These 2020 Dem Hopefuls Are Begging On Wall Street. Don’t Be Fooled By Their Fake Progressive Veneer

The American ruling class has a nice hustle going with elections.  By Bhaskar Sunkara The Guardian (1/15/19) It’s a framing that’s been everywhere over the past two years: the Resistance v Donald Trump. By some definitions that “resistance” even includes people like Mitt Romney and George W Bush. By almost all definitions it encompasses mainstream Democrats, such as the likely presidential hopefuls Cory Booker, Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand. In their rhetoric and policy advocacy, this trio has been steadily moving to the left to keep pace with a leftward-moving Democratic party. Booker, Harris and Gillibrand know that voters demand action and are more supportive than ever of…

ALL ARTICLES, Russia Monitor January 21, 2019

Russia Monitor: Story Runs Into A Buzz-Saw, But What Exactly Has Been Denied?

“In light of the fact that you are a pathological liar, you should not be heard to complain about inaccurate media reports.” — George Conway, lawyer and spouse of Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway, tweet (1/18/19)   By Dan Peak The Commoner Call (1/21/19) Did BuzzFeed just confirm a Trump-Russia smoking gun? Best answer: It’s not clear, but it’s worthy of consideration. Before we dive into the 48-hour kerfuffle kicked off by BuzzFeed let’s check in with Trump’s TV lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Lately Rudy is good at confirming any latest accusation of Trump-Russia corruption but in doing so he consistently raises…

ALL ARTICLES, American Fascism January 21, 2019

Weekend Racism In DC Shows The Nation Has A Long Way To Go On This MLK Day

[Editor’s Note: The following letter came from a Commoner Call reader who asked for anonymity. The letter is appropriate to what this nation should stand for on this Martin Luther King Day. — Mark L. Taylor] ***** “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I’m not going to say much but rather allow the videos below to speak for themselves. I woke up this morning to the NPR news at seven (sleeping in for me) and heard a story about boys from a Catholic school in Covington, Kentucky who were harassing some Native American singers/drummers….

ALL ARTICLES January 21, 2019

A Commoner Writes: Why The Democrats Should Acquiesce & Let Trump Build His Wall

  Trump is going to get his $5 billion anyway whether the Democrats let him or not. However, if he invokes a State of Emergency, he will have increased powers to side-step the rule of law. Very dangerous! Trump doesn’t care about the government, only about himself. By giving in to his latest tantrum, the Democrats show the country that they care more about the welfare of the people hurt by the shutdown then they do about “being right.” Then once the government is going again, they can lambast Trump for holding everyone hostage and get to work investigating Trump’s…

ALL ARTICLES, Rethuglicans January 17, 2019

Belatedly Condemning Steve King Doesn’t Mean Republicans Suddenly Care About Racism In Their Ranks

An all-too rare moment of truth. ***** By Kurt Bardella HuffPost (1/15/19) Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) issued a defiant statement Monday night after House Republican leadership decided to strip King of his committee assignments following the release of an interview where the congressman questioned why terms like “white nationalist” and “white supremacist” were “offensive.” King characterized the move as an “unprecedented assault on my freedom of speech,” and it makes sense that he would be somewhat mystified. For the better part of this decade, King has openly broadcast his racist and xenophobic views without consequence from the Republican leaders. In September of last…

ALL ARTICLES January 17, 2019

As Gov’t Shutdown Drags On, IRS Continues To Aid The Rich & Corporations While (Of Course) Targeting The Poor

  Democracy Now! (1/14/19) As 800,000 federal workers remain furloughed or working without pay in the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, we look at how the Trump administration has restarted a division of the Internal Revenue Service to help corporate lenders. The Washington Post reports that an appeal from the mortgage industry has resulted in hundreds of IRSstaffers returning to the agency to carry out income verifications for lenders. This process earns the $1.3 trillion mortgage banking industry millions of dollars in fees. We speak with Paul Kiel, a reporter for ProPublica and contributor to the series “Gutting the IRS.” His…

ALL ARTICLES, American Fascism January 17, 2019

Timothy Snyder On The Shutdown Showdown: Trump’s Next Move Is To Rule With ‘a regime in a permanent state of emergency’

If we the people choose not to be active then the institutions will slowly — or perhaps even actually more quickly than we expect — fall apart. By Chauncey Devega Salon (1/13/19) The U.S. government has now been partially shut down for three weeks, the longest such closure in our nation’s history. What began as an act of brinksmanship and political hostage-taking by Donald Trump in an effort to extort billions of dollars for his wall along the Mexican border has spiraled out of control. Trump and the Republican Party’s gambit has left almost a million federal employees without pay,…

ALL ARTICLES, Democrats, Progressive History January 17, 2019

Corporate Democrats Are Also Terrified Of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And That’s A Very Good Thing.

Corporate Dem AOC Freak Out! ***** Grassroots progressives are a direct challenge to the mutual-protection racket among corporate Dems. By Norman Soloman HuffPost (1/14/19) In the last few days, both Politico and the New York Times have reported that freshman Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [AOC] has ruffled the feathers of fellow congressional Democrats. Chief among the reasons for the tension? Ocasio-Cortez’s apparent support for progressive primary challenges against centrist Democrats. It’s one of the most significant ideas the young New York congresswoman has brought with her to Washington. That’s because turning the Democratic Party into a truly progressive force will require turning…

ALL ARTICLES January 17, 2019

Corporate Dem Drone Steny Hoyer Deploys ‘Republican-Lite Talking Points’ To Oppose 70% Tax Rate On Ultra-Rich That Most Americans Want

  [Editor’s Note: Let’s hope a bright young progressive candidate primaries corporate drone Rep. Steny Hoyer in 2020. If there is one Wall Street dem that needs to go, it is Hoyer. — Mark L. Taylor] By Julia Conley Common Dreams (1/16/19) Despite the popularity of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) proposal to raise the marginal tax rate for the wealthiest Americans to 70 percent—House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) revealed that he has no plans to serve the public interest by pushing for higher taxes for the rich. Speaking to the news outlet Cheddar, Hoyer scoffed and smirked when asked on Tuesday…

ALL ARTICLES, Russia Monitor January 17, 2019

Russia Monitor: No, Really, Nothing To Hide Here!

  By Dan Peak The Commoner Call (1/17/19) Dear Fellow Readers, It is now clear how Trump’s new Attorney General will deal with special counsel Robert Mueller and his Trump-Russia corruption investigation. William Barr promises to allow Mueller to conclude his investigation. Barr also explains any report to Congress or the public will go through him. We’ll use his words to explain his views of “transparency”. The Washington Post offers a succinct summary of remarks from the first day of hearings with Barr’s nomination: Power Up: Barr’s Testimony Sets The Stage For Future Fights Over Mueller Report. The highlights to Barr’s…

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ALL ARTICLES, American Fascism, CIA, M. Taylor Columns, Surveillance State, War State America January 17, 2019

Surveilance Capitalism: How Tracking & Selling Your Personal Data Became A Business Model

On Point / WBUR (1/15/19) There are new calls for tech companies to stop selling your location to third parties. We’ll look at the economics and perils of “surveillance capitalism.” Guest — Shoshana Zuboff, professor emerita at Harvard Business School and former faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. Author of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power,” among other titles. Excerpt from “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” by Shoshana Zuboff The Unprecedented One explanation for surveillance capitalism’s many triumphs floats above them all: it…

ALL ARTICLES January 17, 2019

“Late Night” Host Seth Meyers Checks In On “Trump Country” To See How It’s Handling “winning so much.”

  By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (1/17/19) In one of the best pieces of commentary/reporting in quite some time, comedian Seth Meyers on Tuesday (1/15) laid bare the grim truth and tragedy of what is happening to rural America under Donald Trump’s rule of ineptitude. ego and cynical manipulation. Far from being “tired of winning”, much of rural America is just plain tired — wrung out and exhausted. While support for Trump has softened a tad as the bruising reality of his shutdown of the government spreads, his hardcore true believers remain — and will remain — loyal…

ALL ARTICLES, Health Care January 17, 2019

A Disease Of Despair: Opioid Overdoses Are Now The Nation’s Most Common Preventable Cause Of Death

By Nina Golgowski TheHuffpost (1/14/19) Accidental opioid overdoses are not only on the rise but are now the most common preventable cause of death in the U.S. for the first time ever, according to a new report. The latest numbers from the National Safety Council, which analyzed 2017 data from the National Center for Health Statistics, place accidental opioid overdoses ahead of motor vehicle crashes and falls. Overall, accidental opioid overdoses accounted for more than 43,036 deaths in 2017 ― up from 37,814 deaths in 2016. Motor vehicle crashes had been the top preventable killer, claiming 40,327 lives in 2016….

ALL ARTICLES, Gun Cult January 17, 2019

Gun Cult Nation News Update

The Trace (1/16/19) Libertarian gunsmiths hope to skirt federal regulation with a 3-D printed bullet.Tennessee-based nonprofit gun research collective Atlas Arms (named after the Ayn Rand novel, which gives a sense of its ideology) is raising funds a home-printed 9mm round meant to circumvent a 1986 law banning the sale of armor-penetrating ammunition. In a promotional release, Atlas Arms argues that because government personnel can use ammo qualifying as armor-piercing, civilians should have access to it as well. The outfit says it will work with a “well respected firearms law firm” to submit prototypes to the ATF to ensure the product’s legality. At…