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Move to Trim Military Budget by Ten Percent Thwarted
“Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, two leading contenders for the 2020 Democratic vice presidential nomination, voted opposite ways Wednesday on an amendment” to reduce the Pentagon budget by 10 percent and “invest the savings in healthcare, housing, and education in impoverished U.S. communities. The amendment, led by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.), was defeated by a margin of 23-77, with 24 Democratic senators voting no.” A similar vote in the House was defeated 93-324.
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The Coronavirus-Air Conditioning Nexus
“With heat waves like the one that much of the country is getting hit with this week, we gather almost entirely in enclosed, air-conditioned spaces, and that’s going to further raise the risk of coronavirus infection. A recent article signed by more than 240 scientists warned that in spaces that aren’t ventilated with outside air, airborne ‘microdroplets’ exhaled by a person infected with coronavirus can easily travel the full length of a room and be inhaled by another person. In that case, the six-foot social distancing rule doesn’t help. The scientists wrote that there’s an easy remedy for this: keep windows and…
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Ten Years After Dodd-Frank, Another Crisis, Same Pattern: Big Banks First
The overwrought praise that Wall Street and the media subsequently heaped on Treasury and Federal Reserve leaders for being willing to punish lower-income households to get the rich through the Great Financial Crisis established a nasty precedent that is guiding monetary policy today.
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Trump’s “Illegal Use of Paramilitary Force” in Portland
Unidentified federal agents in unmarked vehicles are snatching peaceful protesters off the streets, transporting them to unknown locations, without informing them of why they’re being arrested, and later releasing them with no record of their arrest. These actions are reminiscent of dictatorships’ secret police who kidnap and ‘disappear’ opponents of the regime.
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“Epidemic” of Uniform Violence at Home
Police violence does not stop on the streets. There is a black-and-blue line of domestic violence in the households of policemen… Domestic violence and sexual assault by military, particularly combat veterans with PTSD, is a serious problem, but these are problems among police, too.
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The Billionaire Behind Efforts to Kill the U.S. Postal Service
“The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed the already-struggling U.S. Postal Service to the brink of financial collapse. But the most trusted and popular institution in America hasn’t been struggling by accident… Since the 1970s, a concerted effort to popularize the fringe idea of privatizing the Postal Service has been advanced for nearly five decades with the support of one man: the billionaire and libertarian ideologue, Charles Koch, chairman and chief executive officer of Koch Industries.”
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Democratic Platform Committee Members’ Conflicts of Interest
Several of the [platform drafting] committee’s members, announced last month by DNC Chair Tom Perez, have corporate ties.
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Are False Stories About Russia/Afghanistan Pushing for War?
The Doomsday Clock is now at 100 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to midnight since its inception in 1947. The people of the world are trapped in-between the 6,000 active and armed nuclear weapons of the United States and Russia, and further surrounded by climate change, pandemic, and exploitative neo-liberal economic policies.
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Biden Advisor an “Apologist for Torture,” an Architect of “Kill Lists”
Avril Haines is presented as a humane, intelligent and compassionate alternative to the typical white male elite that run the CIA and other such agencies. But her record is clear. She is an apologist for torture operations.
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Mount Rushmore: Tip of Iceberg
“Mount Rushmore is named after a gold prospector who had illegally entered into Lakota treaty territory to begin prospecting. … The Black Hills [where Mount Rushmore is located] were also a place of origin and a place of cultural and spiritual significance for over 50 Indigenous nations.
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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