David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist - Alternet/D.C. Report
Stephan: In order to create a three-class peasant based economic society, ordered and run for the benefit of the uber-rich, a nation has to create militarized law enforcement to suppress resistance. And that is just where we are headed. Here's the story by a journalist whose track record for accurate data, and analysis is amongst the best in the country.
Get ready America, this is what you are voting for, or passively acquiescing to.
Donald Trump plans to turn the federal government into a much more militaristic and paramilitary policing organization while making drastic cuts in the civilian workforce, including non-uniformed law enforcement, a July 7 budget memo shows.
The memo says that the budget for our government’s 2019 fiscal year, which begins on Oct.1, 2018, “will build on the ambitious plans laid out in the president’s first budget” especially through “reducing the federal civilian workforce.”
No major news organization has reported on the three-page directive from Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
Mulvaney is a Tea Party Republican from South Carolina who opposes any restrictions on guns and opposes any federal spending on Planned Parenthood. In 2015, the former Congressman was willing to shut down our federal government to block all funding for Planned Parenthood.
The memo refers to increasing spending only on militarism and enforcing immigration laws as part of “broader efforts to streamline government by ensuring that the federal government spends precious taxpayer dollars only on worthwhile policies, and in the most efficient, effective manner.”
Mulvaney instructed civilian agencies to not even ask for more money. His memo requires agencies to identify programs for reduction or elimination. He suggests significant […]
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Saturday, July 22nd, 2017
JONATHAN KAY, - The Atlantic
Stephan: It's not sexy, it doesn't lead the news, it's rarely discussed in Congressional hearings, but the collapse of American infrastructure, both physical things, and the social policies that create and oversees those physical things I see as a very big deal.
For much of the 20th century America led the world technologically, and in terms of infrastructure. Our bridges were a marvel, our railroads a system to be envied, you could drink the water right out of the tap anywhere, and on and on.
Let's tell the truth; those days are gone. There are large parts of the U.S. that would be considered second or even third world today. Here's the view from Canada.
Credit: Quora
When I was a young kid growing up in Montreal, our annual family trips to my grandparents’ Florida condo in the 1970s and ‘80s offered glimpses of a better life. Not just Bubbie and Zadie’s miniature, sun-bronzed world of Del Boca Vista, but the whole sprawling infrastructural colossus of Cold War America itself, with its famed interstate highway system and suburban sprawl. Many Canadians then saw themselves as America’s poor cousins, and our inferiority complex asserted itself the moment we got off the plane.
Decades later, the United States presents visitors from the north with a different impression. There hasn’t been a new major airport constructed in the United States since 1995. And the existing stock of terminals is badly in need of upgrades. Much of the surrounding road and rail infrastructure is in even worse shape (the trip from LaGuardia Airport to midtown Manhattan being particularly appalling). Washington, D.C.’s semi-functional subway system feels like a World’s Fair exhibit that someone forgot to close down. Detroit’s 90-year-old Ambassador Bridge—which carries close to […]
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Saturday, July 22nd, 2017
Fran Quigley, Director Health and Human Rights Clinic at Indiana University McKinney School of Law - The New York Times
Stephan: Here is a story both encouraging and horrifying about the reality of America's pharmaceutical industry. It gives you a snapshot as to how corrupt this sector of our economy has become -- it's really breathtaking -- and what a small group of real healers have done in response.
A demonstration of a new malaria treatment at Fundacao Oswaldo Cruz, in Rio de Janeiro in 2008.
Credit Ricardo Moraes/AP
How’s this for a great deal? The United States government funded research and development of a new vaccine against Zika. But the Army, which paid a French pharmaceutical manufacturer for its development, is planning to grant exclusive rights to the vaccine to the manufacturer, Sanofi Pasteur, along with paying Sanofi up to $173 million.
Sanofi will be free to charge the United States American health care providers and patients any price it wishes. Although American tax dollars funded the vaccine, and the United States took the economic risks, history suggests that many Americans would not be able to afford it.
This is a negotiating strategy of unconditional surrender. Although President Trump said before taking office that drug companies were “getting away with murder” and had campaigned on lowering drug prices, his administration is doing the opposite. A draft order on drug pricing that became public in […]
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Saturday, July 22nd, 2017
, - The Guardian (U.K.)/Reuters
Stephan: Yet another Roman Catholic pedophilic nightmare has emerged in Germany. My own view is that this molestation of children is not a new phenomenon; it has been going on for millennia involving large numbers of priests, and much larger numbers of children, mostly boys.
Enforced celibacy in any institution produces distorted and dysfunctional sexuality and pedophilia is always going to be present in such an institution, because children are easy targets. After all how can a 12 year old say no to a man his parents tell him speaks for God?
Regensburger Domspatzen choir
Credit: Regensburger Domspatzen choir
MUNICH, GERMANY — Five-hundred-and-forty-seven pupils at one of Germany’s most famous Roman Catholic choir schools were physically or sexually abused between 1945 and 2015, an independent report has found, with some boys likening the institution to “prison, hell or a concentration camp”.
The 440-page report chronicles teachers at the school in Regensburg doling out physical violence including slapping boys in the face so hard the marks could be seen the next day, whipping them with wooden sticks and violin bows and subjecting them to severe beatings.
Boys who tried to escape the Regensburger Domspatzen choir were hauled back to the school and beaten and humiliated in front of other boys, it said.
Allegations of abuse at the institution, which traces its history back 1,000 years and tours the world to perform choral music, surfaced in 2010.
After criticism of the ensuing investigation, the diocese, which acknowledged on Tuesday it had “made mistakes”, commissioned the […]
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Saturday, July 22nd, 2017
Anne C. Mulkern, - Scientific American/Climate Wire
Stephan: The climate change deniers both in and out of government continue to babble on, their willful ignorance proudly on display.
For people who live in the real world, however, they are now being faced with some hard choices, as this report demonstrates. We are going to see more and more stories like this; the trend has taken off.
Del Mar Beach, California
DEL MAR, CALIFORNIA —Kim and Marilyn Fletcher stood on the deck of their beachfront home watching waves crash onto the shore. They savored the view from behind a 22-foot-high sea wall, a common sight along this eroding stretch of coast.
The sandy beach in front of homes in this north San Diego County town is shrinking, and the high tide is edging closer.
Kim Fletcher, 89, witnessed the transformation. His maternal grandfather bought more than 10 acres of beachfront property in 1946. He built homes and sold lots. Fletcher visited his grandfather’s home two doors away. Dry sand was abundant.
“We had swing sets. We had trampolines. We had our Hobie Cats right out on the beach in front of the house,” he said, referring to beach catamarans. “Now you couldn’t do that. There’s not enough sand. If you did put it down there, every time you got a reasonable high tide you’d be washed out.”
It’s a different beach now. Today, there’s roughly 30 feet of sand before the water, depending on the […]
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