We have seen that no one in the US government ever faces serious punishments for the torture, death, and destruction of innocent people in the many countries with which we are at war, except for those who reveal the truth about such events, as was the case with the punishment meted out to Chelsea Manning for her release of the Collateral Murder video.
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The oligarchy in the US, aided by the politicians they buy, have been waging a relentless war against worker unions. Workers who lack the collective protection of a union are highly exposed to abusive practices by employers and managers. An excerpt from a new book Bully Nation by Charles Derber and Yale R. Magrass makes the case that the bullying of vulnerable workers who try to unionize or otherwise improve their working conditions is a consequence of the inequalities generated by unchecked capitalism.
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I have not read Ayn Rand’s major work that supposedly lays out her philosophy of objectivism and that has attracted devoted followers like Speaker of the House of representatives Paul Ryan, former chair of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan, and a host of other libertarian-minded people.
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Eric Boehlert looks at how the Republican Party and especially Fox News have surrendered to Donald Trump and the widely panned softball interview that supposed tough interrogator Megyn Kelly gave him was the best indicator of it. He quotes the New Yorker magazine saying that the interview was “a useless exercise, except, perhaps, for those watching from one group: Republicans looking for a script for how to surrender to Donald Trump.”
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Donald Trump initially welcomed the idea of debating Bernie Sanders but then put in a condition saying that he would do so only if the debate sponsors would put up $10 million to be given to charity. That ploy seemed to be designed to avoid him carrying through on his promise. Then Richie Hecker, chairman and CEO of a tech company called Traction and Scale, came forward and made just such an offer.
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A little over a year ago, I was invited to lunch at a friend’s place and among the other guests were an Indian-American academic economist and his wife and mother. The discussion turned to politics (specifically the issue of net neutrality that was in the news at that time) and I found myself in disagreement with that family. At one point in the discussion, the economist said that his position was based on sound capitalist principles and he seemed to think that this clinched the argument. I replied that I was a socialist and that hence I did not have to accept the premises of his argument.
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Political campaigns draw grifters like moths to a flame. The fact that money sloshes around so freely attracts hustlers who promise to reward the candidate with access to special groups and in return get favors if the politician does win the office that is sought, and in addition use their proximity and presumed closeness to prominent political candidates to enrich themselves by peddling influence.
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Chris Hall has an excellent article on how the atheism movement has moved away from an almost exclusive focus on proudly declaring nonbelief and on debunking religion and superstitions and is now addressing social justice issues in a much more conscious way.
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I have long railed at how professional sports teams essentially blackmail cities, using the threat of moving teams to another city, into using taxpayer money to build fancy new stadiums while the wealthy team owners benefit from the profits.
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