IS AMERICA DEALING WITH THE NEEDS OF ITS GROWING HOMELESS POPULATION? NOT EVEN CLOSE, SAYS DIANE NILAN. Ever since the War on Poverty became the War on the Poor and the federal government opened its boondoggling agenda of “10 year plans” to “eradicate” homelessness, most U.S. communities have managed to ignore the immediate needs [...]
STOCK MARKET RECORD HIGHS: THE RICH GET RICHER, EVERYONE ELSE GETS POORER… Last week saw the Dow Jones stock index shatter its all-time record highs, an occurrence trumpeted by the press and the Obama administration as a clear sign of a full turnaround from the depths of the Great Recession and proof of a [...]
CUBA IN A TIME OF CHOLERA. The Raul Castro government tends to deny the scope of the outbreak of the disease and resist some of the public health measures required to deal with it. This denial seems to be based on a desire not to hurt Cuba’s “reputation” as a desirable tourist destination, but [...]
THE UNITED CASTES OF AMERICA. Upward economic mobility and the basic premise of the “American Dream” have been been eradicated, argues economist Joseph Stiglitz. Decades of regressive economic and social policies — policies wholly accepted and perpetuated by the current presidential administration — have severed a large and growing segment of the country from [...]
THERE BE GIANTS IN THE EARTH. So says the book of Genesis, but a new report on the world ecosystem shows that giant trees, some as much as 300 years old, are rapidly disappearing from this earth. The causes, all involving “human intervention” in that ecosystem, are summarized by one of the authors [...]
AMERICAN PRIORITIES: MORE MONEY FOR PRISONS, LESS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION. An alarming trend that has taken hold in the United States is a startling divergence in the amount of public money earmarked for the sustenance of the nation”s system of higher education versus that spent on incarceration. America is now a place where [...]
` THE END OF EURO AUSTERITY: NEW FRENCH GOVERNMENT ORDERS UP HIGHER TAXES ON THE RICH AND POWERFUL (Business Week) ` The program of mass fiscal austerity imposed by Germany and Eurozone financial leaders on European nations struggling through the continent’s crippling debt crisis and recession appears to be dead, with policy changes from the new French government taking aim at the core [...]
` SUPREME COURT REAFFIRMS “CITIZENS UNITED” RULING BY REMINDING MONTANA THAT “CORPORATIONS ARE PEOPLE, TOO.” (The Nation) ` Lost in the excitement over the ruling the gutted three-quarters of Arizona’s controversial immigration law was the Supreme Court’s resounding 5-4 decision to strike down the state of Montana’s ban on corporate contributions in state and local elections. Montana’s regulations had [...]
TSUNAMI PREPAREDNESS IN THE COUNTRIES AROUND THE INDIAN OCEAN?—NOT SO MUCH. (IPS News) Countries including some island nations along the continents of Australia, Asia and Africa are mostly ill-prepared to protect their people from recurring tsumanis in the Ocean. In some places, governments do not bother to warn people in certain areas of impending disaster, [...]
POWERFUL MULTI-NATIONAL AGRIBUSINESS CORPORATIONS AND A COMPLIANT AND CORRUPT LOCAL GOVERNMENT: RECIPE FOR WORLD LAND GRABS. (Foreign Policy in Focus) Recent protests in African country of Sierra Leone highlight a world pattern: the acquisition for mono-culture cultivation of tracts of land removed from the control of local farmers. Around 20% of the country’s arable land [...]
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