By Steve Balkin

In my view, during the Trump administration, the U.S. has become too isolationist and this is hurting our long-term economy and military security. Our long-run economic prospects are harmed by increasing uncertainty in trade flows and supply chains, and reducing global economic growth. Our military security is harmed by dropping out of international agreements and disrupting ally relationships. A better-informed electorate and government can make better choices.
I do not share Trump’s racist intent behind the words he chose to criticize the four freshmen minority congresswomen, known as The Squad. I admire and respect each member of The Squad. On July 14, Trump said, “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done.”
Telling minority legislators to leave the country is bigotry but asking them to visit their ancestral places of origin to bring back ideas to help the U.S. is a positive suggestion. The racist intent of a chunk of that Trump hyperbole can be removed and reinterpreted as useful public policy that should be implemented.

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Posted on July 28, 2019

By Jessica Corbett/Common Dreams

A new Public Citizen analysis shows that over the last five years – as rising global temperatures repeatedly set records – national television news networks and the 50 most widely circulated newspapers in the United States increased their coverage of right-wing think tanks denying the climate emergency or that the global crisis is the result of unsustainable human activity.

“Amazingly, coverage of the deniers’ messages has risen over the past five years as the climate crisis has worsened, with much of it being uncritical,” said Allison Fisher, outreach program director for Public Citizen’s climate program. “The media should not give these organizations a platform, and if they must cover them, do a better job of alerting readers and viewers who is funding them.”

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Posted on July 26, 2019

By Arise Chicago

Local worker centers, unions and elected officials are gathering to denounce the recent mailing of so called “no match” letters as a direct attack on working families.
The group will provide information in the recent chaos experienced by both workers and employers in the current “no match” crisis, including informing workers of their rights and alerting employers on proper action to take or not take.
While there has been widespread fear created by the announced immigration raids that did not materialize, “silent workplace raids” have been devastating workers through the sending of “no match” letters.

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Posted on July 25, 2019

By Neighbors For Environmental Justice

The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency is allowing controversial polluter MAT Asphalt to keep operating despite the expiration of their permit on July 2nd.
The temporary “construction permit” issued to the company in 2017 explicitly limited their operations to “one year from the date of initial startup.”
Furious residents say the agency is ignoring its own rules and dozens of air quality complaints filed in the first year of the plant’s operation.

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Posted on July 24, 2019

By Christopher Brauchli/Common Dreams

What one Christian does is his own responsibility. What one Jew [Muslim] does is thrown back at all Jews [Muslims]. – Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl (1944)
Being a person of neither creative nor mental ability, he mindlessly finds himself inspired by the actions of a man who, many years ago, like Trump, was driven by a fierce hatred for a group of people he considered threatening to his way of life. In Trump, this hatred manifests itself in Islamophobia.
Both before and after becoming president, Trump’s anti-Muslim sentiments were well-known. During the presidency of Barack Obama, Trump repeatedly insinuated in public comments that the president was secretly a Muslim. At a campaign rally in 2015, one of the attendees said to Trump, without being contradicted by Trump, that Obama is “not even an American.”
The attendee went on to say to the candidate: “We have a problem in this country; it’s called Muslims.” As the man spoke, Trump interjected: “We need this question.” The questioner then asked the candidate: “When can we get rid of them?”
Trump responded: “We’re going to be looking at that and plenty of other things.”

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Posted on July 22, 2019

By Nathan Jensen/The Conversation

U.S. states and cities hand out tens of billions in taxpayer dollars every year to companies as economic incentives.
These businesses are supposed to use the money, typically distributed through economic development programs, to open new facilities, create jobs and generate tax revenue.
But all too often that’s not what happens, as I’ve learned after doing research on the use of tax incentives to spur economic development in cities and states across the country.

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Posted on July 13, 2019

By Robert Tuttle and Ira Lupu/TakeCare

In The American Legion vs. American Humanist Association, the U.S. Supreme Court considered whether the Establishment Clause barred a government-sponsored display of a 40-foot cross, known as the Bladensburg Cross, on public land, as a memorial to men of Prince George’s County, Maryland, who had died in World War I.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, applying the well-known and long-derided three-part test from Lemon v. Kurtzman, had held in 2017 that the display unconstitutionally endorsed Christianity and ordered its removal from public land.
Seven Supreme Court justices just voted to reverse, so the Bladensburg Cross will remain in place.
But the case produced six separate opinions, and demonstrated that the court remains starkly divided on fundamental questions about the meaning of the Establishment Clause. Some aspects of the legal discourse of non-establishment will change, but the standards that will emerge to govern particular questions remain up for grabs.

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Posted on July 10, 2019

By Fran Quigley/Common Dreams

Frances Leath no longer works in management for pharmaceutical industry giant Eli Lilly, but she keeps tabs on the company where she spent the first 15 years of her career. She still lives in Indianapolis, home of the company headquarters. She has watched as Lilly’s dramatic increases in the price of insulin have triggered regular protests by angry patients, class-action lawsuits, and congressional criticism.
Yet the company has continued to ratchet up the price. The same vial of Lilly’s Humalog insulin that was priced at $21 in 1996 can cost as much as $275 today. Especially when research shows that the same vial is manufactured for about $5, and that Americans are suffering and even dying because they can’t afford their insulin, this approach can seem shocking.
Not to Frances Leath. “I’m not surprised a bit,” she says.

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Posted on July 9, 2019

By Mark Lopez, Richard Rothstein and Silkworm Studio/Aeon

The majority African-American enclaves found in every major U.S. city are no accident of history.
And, although societal racism certainly played its part, de facto segregation isn’t the prime culprit for the urban divide.
In this animation, adapted from his book The Color of Law (2017), historian Richard Rothstein explains with devastating precision how decades of brazenly intentional racist local, state and federal government housing policies led to the current status quo.

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Posted on July 5, 2019

By Eoin Higgins/Common Dreams

Just hours after appearing at Monday’s Poor Peoples Campaign event in Washington, D.C. and promising to work for the less fortunate, 2020 Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden went straight to a Wall Street fundraiser in New York City where he solicited donations from, among others, a pro-Trump billionaire.
The fundraiser was held at the Manhattan penthouse apartment of investor Jim Chanos. Biden told wealthy attendees “You guys are great” and “You guys are incredibly important” before singing the praises of working class Americans, according to CNBC.

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Posted on June 19, 2019