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Biden Trip to Saudi Arabia: “Blatant Hypocrisy”
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A Dearth of Covid Storytelling
Theater historian Debra Caplan argues that we “urgently need to tell the story of what happened––and what’s still happening––in this pandemic. We need to publicly grieve the [one] million Americans we lost, and make plans to try to prevent any more casualties. We need to tell the stories of Long Haulers and survivors.”
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Fed’s Fix is Wrong: Inflation Caused by “Skyrocketing” Corporate Profits More Than Wages
Senior Economist at “Institute for New Economic Thinking” Pia Malaney says, “Work by Servaas Storm for the Institute for New Economic Thinking and other analysts suggest that very little of the rise in inflation can be traced to wages. As most Americans know from their own experience, wages are running well behind inflation and have been for many months. What is skyrocketing is corporate profits.”
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Insurers Collected Full Premiums But Paid Less for Care During the Pandemic
A recent opinion article published by MedPage Today points out that in 2020, private insurer profits––largely from Medicare Advantage and Medicaid managed care––jumped 20-30%. At the time, private insurers were collecting full premiums even as claims from health care providers fell due to decreases in elective care. Meanwhile, the government was bailing out providers by compensating them for revenue shortfalls. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler write that “taxpayers paid two-fold for the care dip” during that time.
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Protesters Block Major Weapons Bazaar
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Assessing Threat of Inflation and Slowing Wage Growth
With the monthly Employment Situation scheduled for release by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday, June 3, Dean Baker, senior economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, writes: “In its latest report on the budget and the economy, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) sided clearly with those arguing the case for inflation being temporary. The report projected that inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, would fall to 2.7 percent next year and 2.3 percent in 2024. That is somewhat higher than in the pre-pandemic period, but certainly not spiraling inflation.”
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Racist Origins of Policing and the Second Amendment
A chapter in Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s book “Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment” titled “Slave Patrols” explains the racist foundations of policing and gun laws in the United States. An excerpt published by Truthout on the chapter says, “Dunbar-Ortiz provides the historical context for how militias that killed and oppressed slaves and Indigenous persons became the precedent for the militia cited in the Second Amendment.”
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Apologist for Tucker Carlson’s Racism: Glenn Greenwald
Journalist Eoin Higgins writes, “There’s no plausible way to dispute that Fox News host Tucker Carlson is spreading racist conspiracy theories, but Glenn Greenwald has been trying anyway.”
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Power of the NRA: Mass Organization, JROTC
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of “Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment,” said today that the NRA is a powerful, independent organization able to nullify any election candidate in the country who advocates for gun control
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Assessing Vaccine Authorization for Children Under 5
The Food and Drug Administration has set a June date to review emergency use authorization requests for Covid-19 vaccines for children under 5. Researchers caution that although many parents have eagerly awaited vaccines for this age group, vaccination rates may be quite low.
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“With a tiny staff, it has managed to place on the air and in newspapers, points of view otherwise excluded from the national debate.”
Howard Zinn