That’s despite President Donald Trump’s promise to revive the beleaguered coal industry. Trump declared the end of the […]
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Tuesday, March 26th, 2019
Stephan: Rex Weyler is one of the founders of Greenpeace, and a very thoughtful and insightful writer. This essay makes the assessment that I think is the correct one. Neoliberal economics is destroying every society in which it is practiced and nowhere more than the United States, and we are at the social equivalent of 4th stage cancer. Weyler makes the case very well, and makes the crucial addition, which SR readers know, of adding the environment, so often overlooked or ignored, into the calculation.
This willful ignorance, which Weyler has corrected, arises because the economic posture of profit as the only priority and value to be considered, has linked with the Abrahamic dominionist world view that we have dominion over the earth and all its creatures, and can do with them as we like without consequences. The preceding two stories make it clear that is a lie.
“The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer,” is an ancient maxim that dates back thousands of years. In our era, we must add: “And wild nature gets trampled.”
A recently cleared area inside PT Damai Agro Sejahtera concession oil palm concession, part of the Bumitama group, in Muara Kayong hamlet, Nanga Tayap sub-district, Ketapang Regency, West Kalimantan.
At the end of 2018, Credit Suisse published its updated report on global wealth. Forty-two-million millionaires and billionaires comprise the richest 0.5% of the world’s population. That translates to 0.8% of adults in the report, possessing 44.8% of the world’s economic wealth. A decade ago, researchers commonly reported that the wealthy 15% of humanity owned 85% of the resources. Today, 6.2% (9.5% of adults) now claim 85% of the wealth. The rich got richer.
The super-elites, the 2,208 billionaires — those who attend Global Economic Summits, own banks, buy off governments, pollute with impunity, and hold political influence in virtually every nation in the world — comprise not the “1%” but only […]
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Tuesday, March 26th, 2019
Stephan: Another Trump high office appointee, this time the Acting Secretary of Defense, Patrick Shanahan, is under investigation for criminal behavior. I find this one of the most amazing stories about Trump and his administration, and am always surprised that few people seem to see it.
In the whole of American history there has never been an administration with this percentage of people under either investigation, driven from office, or already convicted of criminal behavior. There are more new scandals every day in the Trump administration than the Obama administration over its eight years.
Patrick Shanahan, Acting Secretary of Defense
On Wednesday, POLITICO reported that Patrick Shanahan, President Donald Trump’s acting Secretary of Defense, is under investigation by the inspector general of the Pentagon for allegedly using his office to enrich aerospace giant Boeing, his former employer of 31 years:
“The Department of Defense Office of Inspector General has decided to investigate complaints we recently received that Acting Secretary Patrick Shanahan allegedly took actions to promote his former employer, Boeing, and disparage its competitors, allegedly in violation of ethics rules,” DoD IG spokesperson Dwrena Allen said.
“In his recent Senate Armed Services Committee testimony, Acting Secretary Shanahan stated that he supported an investigation into these allegations,” she said. “We have informed him that we have initiated this investigation.”
The investigation follows a complaint submitted last week by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), in response to a January POLITICO report revealing that Shanahan, when he was Deputy Defense Secretary, promoted Boeing in Pentagon meetings and criticized Lockheed Martin, the developer of […]
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KIM PARKER, RICH MORIN AND JULIANA MENASCE HOROWITZ, - Pew Research Center
Stephan: This is what a majority of Americans think when they think about the future.
Credit: Rachel Black/EyeEm/Getty
When Americans peer 30 years into the future, they see a country in decline economically, politically and on the world stage. While a narrow majority of the public (56%) say they are at least somewhat optimistic about America’s future, hope gives way to doubt when the focus turns to specific issues.
A new Pew Research Center survey focused on what Americans think the United States will be like in 2050 finds that majorities of Americans foresee a country with a burgeoning national debt, a wider gap between the rich and the poor and a workforce threatened by automation.
Majorities predict that the economy will be weaker, health care will be less affordable, the condition of the environment will be worse and older Americans will have a harder time making ends meet than they do now. Also predicted: a terrorist attack as bad as or worse than 9/11 sometime over the next 30 years.
These grim predictions mirror, in part, the public’s sour mood about the current state of the country. The share of Americans […]
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The social democracy of Finland was once again ranked number one on the United Nations’ World Happiness Report, released on Wednesday, while the corporate-dominated United States fell one place to rank at 19th.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK — The simple laws of economics threaten to doom America’s remaining coal power plants.
