By Alexi Jenkins/Common Dreams

On August 20th, in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests around the country, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey donated $10 million to Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research. On its face, Dorsey’s donation looks like a demonstration of his commitment to social justice. But Dorsey’s company spent nearly 15 years profiting off of hate speech. And the racist tweets that Twitter peddles have real world consequences; a 2019 NYU study found a connection between hateful tweets and real-life hate crimes. It was only last month that Twitter finally took real action on hate speech – after Dorsey accumulated $8.3 billion in wealth from the platform. Dorsey’s antiracism donation is only one hundredth of a percent of the money that he made by monetizing hateful content.
Donations by the one percent to nonprofit causes have always held a place of reverence in American society. The nonprofit sector is seen as something like the angel on the shoulder of the American body politic, while the for-profit sector is the devil on the other shoulder. American philanthropy is seen as a countervailing force that makes us feel like we live in a generous society.
The reality of the nonprofit sector is nowhere near angelic. The purpose of the nonprofit sector writ large is not to solve social problems, but to perpetuate them. Nonprofits provide political cover for the rich to exploit people as much as possible while minimizing what they are required to invest back into social welfare. Jack Dorsey is allowed to make billions promoting hateful content, so long as he makes a high-profile donation every once in a while.

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Posted on August 30, 2020

By Carl Rhodes/Common Dreams

This month Larry Fink, the chairman and CEO of the asset management firm BlackRock, was heralded in the financial press as the highest-paid boss in his industry. Already a billionaire, Fink’s annual remuneration rose to $25.3 million. That’s more than 500 times the median salary of workers in the United States.
This is the same Larry Fink who is one the most outspoken advocates of “corporate purpose” – the idea that corporations should create value for all “stakeholders.” In Fink’s own words, it is the responsibility of the corporate world to “address pressing social and economic issues.”
President Donald Trump greets BlackRock CEO Larry Fink at the beginning of a policy forum in the State Dining Room at the White House in 2017/Chip Somodevilla, Getty
Massive personal financial gain might on the surface seem at odds with an espoused social justice agenda. After all, inequality is the political problem of our age. Look a little deeper and there is no contradiction. This is all part of a new corporate political populism that appeals to progressive politics while benefiting from widening economic inequality.

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Posted on August 27, 2020

By John Logan/The Conversation

American companies have been very successful at preventing their workers from organizing into unions in recent decades, one of the reasons unionization in the private sector is at a record low.
What you may not realize is that a handful of little-known law and consulting firms do much of the dirty work that keeps companies and other organizations union-free.
IKEA, for example, turned to Ogletree Deakins, one of the largest law firms that specialize in so-called union avoidance activities, to help it crush unionization efforts in Stoughton, Massachusetts, in 2016.
Google hired IRI Consultants, a firm known for its anti-union activities, for advice on how to deal with growing worker unrest.
And just this summer, two liberal-leaning organizations – the Scholars Strategy Network and ACLU Kansas – recruited the services of Ogletree when their employees tried to form unions.

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Posted on August 24, 2020

By Lauren Weber, Hannah Recht and Laura Ungar/Kaiser Health News with Michelle R. Smith/AP

As the coronavirus began to spread through Minneapolis this spring, Health Commissioner Gretchen Musicant tore up her budget to find funds to combat the crisis. Money for test kits. Money to administer tests. Money to hire contact tracers. Yet even more money for a service that helps tracers communicate with residents in dozens of languages.
While Musicant diverted workers from violence prevention and other core programs to the COVID-19 response, state officials debated how to distribute $1.87 billion Minnesota received in federal aid.
As she waited for federal help, the Minnesota Zoo got $6 million in federal money to continue operations, and a debt collection company outside Minneapolis received at least $5 million from the federal Paycheck Protection Program, according to federal data.
It was not until Aug. 5 – months after Congress approved aid for the pandemic – that Musicant’s department finally received $1.7 million, the equivalent of $4 per Minneapolis resident.

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Posted on August 20, 2020

By Steve Rhodes

Upon the death of Jim Thompson on Friday, I decided to dig out the profile I wrote about him and his post-governship for Chicago magazine in 2000. Because it’s not online, I had to retype it here and take camera photos of the art. (Original photography by Tom Maday.) Enjoy!

Once thought to be Presidential timber, former Illinois Governor Jim Thompson instead has struck it rich as a power lawyer, ubiquitous board members, and big-gun-for-hire lobbyist. Although he hasn’t held public office since 1991, he now wields more clout than any other Chicagoan not named Daley.
One day last December, 31 Chicago power brokers gathered in the grand oval lobby of the Old Courthouse Building in River North. It was a uniquely broad coalition of politicians and legal luminaries – a prime selection of clout rallying to the cause of Cook County Criminal Courts judge Thomas Fitzgerald, who was running for the Illinois Supreme Court. Among those standing behind Fitzgerald on a three-tiered riser were former Cook County assessor Thomas Hynes, civil rights lawyer James Montgomery, Democratic grand dame Dawn Clark Netsch, and author Scott Turow. It was a formidable cast for any occasion.
But one man, planted in front and just a shade off center – visible behind the left shoulder of each person who stepped up to speak – towered above the rest, and not just because of his six-foot-six frame. Big Jim Thompson, the swashbuckling four-term Republican governor who left office in 1991, was mentioned in the official remarks that day almost as often as Fitzgerald.
Netsch, who had known Thompson for three decades, drew the honor of introducing him. She pretended she didn’t know who he was. Reading from note cards, she joked, “Let’s see, it says here he was governor. U.S. Attorney. Statesman. Statesman?
The crowd laughed, but in fact she had a point. Once talked about seriously as Presidential material, Thompson had not exactly spent his post-government years on statecraft, something he seemed to acknowledge. “C’mon, say it, say it,” Thompson good-naturedly pleaded. “In my next campaign, I’m going to say, ‘Dawn Clark Netsch called me a statesman.”
Thompson can afford to roll with the joke. Sure, he hasn’t become President. And he hasn’t ascended to the role of political wise elder, like former U.S. senator Paul Simon, or even Thompson’s successor, Jim Edgar. Both of those men hold dignified academic post. Instead, Thompson has gotten rich.

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Posted on August 18, 2020

By Michelle R. Smith/AP and Lauren Weber/Kaiser Health News

Vilified, threatened with violence, or in some cases suffering from burnout, dozens of state and local public health officials around the U.S. have resigned or have been fired amid the coronavirus outbreak, a testament to how politically combustible masks, lockdowns and infection data have become.
One of the latest departures came Sunday, when California’s public health director, Dr. Sonia Angell, was ousted following a technical glitch that caused a delay in reporting virus test results – information used to make decisions about reopening businesses and schools.
Last week, New York City’s health commissioner was replaced after months of friction with the police department and City Hall.
A review by KHN and AP finds at least 49 state and local public health leaders have resigned, retired or been fired since April across 23 states. The list has grown by more than 20 people since the AP and KHN started keeping track in June.

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Posted on August 14, 2020

By David Rutter

John Buncich only seemed a burly, powerfully connected Indiana sheriff. That’s who he seemed for 16 of the past 20 years.
He officially ran the Democratic Party in Lake County. He was a Big Shark who wore expensive suits.
But events have shown he was only a small fish in a barrel.
Mr. Fish, meet Mr. Guy with a shotgun.

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Posted on August 13, 2020

By David Rutter

The Steve Easterbrook Story should be a movie soon on Hallmark, as soon as Hallmark develops an X-rated romance channel.
The movie? Call it “The Hamburglar of Passion.”
In the meantime, we must console ourselves with unintended real-life comedy taken to the heights – or maybe lowest depths – of American capitalism.

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Posted on August 10, 2020

By Andre Perry/The Hechinger Report

Soaring unemployment and underemployment, a result of the coronavirus pandemic, are forcing college borrowers to defer loan payments to make room for things like food and rent.
Back in March, student loan borrowers received a reprieve with the passage of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, which included provisions that suspended loan payments.
But those provisions are set to expire next month.
The effects of the pandemic on economic activity will last well beyond the end of the social distancing, as my Brookings colleagues have pointed out. Many economists predict a long, drawn out recovery, spanning years. Even if borrowers defer their loans for an extended period of time, the albatross of debt, which weighs heavier for borrowers of color, will continue to be a drag on the overall economy.

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Posted on August 10, 2020

By Ralph Nader/Common Dreams

The combination of greed and power often spin out of control and challenge the enforceable rule of law and the countervailing force of the organized civic community.
When greed and power are exercised by giant multinational corporations that escape the discipline of the nation-state, the potential for evil becomes infinite in nature. Enough is never enough.

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Posted on August 8, 2020