The mythology of American farming believed by most Americans not involved with it, is that it is a world of family owned farms happily living a quintessential American life. Unfortunately, that fantasy is, as I said, a myth. As this article makes clear, “we essentially do ag policy like it’s one large casino run by agribusiness, giving farmers just enough chips so they can play and keep betting but never win.” That is why the average age of an American farmer is nearly 60, and the average Farmer salary as of May 2023 is $32,133 to $45,835 as of May 01, 2023, and that is for a seven day a week job that has nothing to do with 40 hours. That’s why so few of their children want that life. Agriculture in the United States is Big Ag as it is called, where the farmers are basically indentured servants.
Illustration by Peter and Maria Hoey
A classic premise in American cinema is the buddy comedy, epitomized by films like Tommy Boy or Midnight Run. Two characters who can’t stand each other are thrown together by circumstance, forced to make a screwball pilgrimage across the country to finish a job. Hilarity ensues.
This same storyline infects our politics every five years when the farm bill comes up for reauthorization. Two parties at the brink of civil war are pressured to cooperate in order to deliver for their respective constituents. Congress’s version of this tumultuous road trip runs through both rural and urban America, uniting liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans. But the ultimate winner of this madcap romp is one of the country’s most infamous heels: Big Agriculture.
Despite its title, the farm bill, which is due for reauthorization this September, impacts more than just farmers. Over 80 percent of the allocated funds supports the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, one of the largest welfare programs and arguably the United States’ closest imitation of a Scandinavian social […]
Miriam Berger, Foreign News Staff Writer - The Washington Post
Stephan:
You think slavery has ended in the United States; it has not. Individuals can’t own people but the government can, and does. This story lays out the American truth that dare not speak its name.
California inmates clean newly installed headstones at the Mormon Island Relocation Cemetery, near Folsom, California Credit: Rich Pedroncelli / AP
The 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States in 1865, with one exception: compulsory labor in prisons.
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States,” it reads.
Nearly 160 years later, the United States is one of only 17 countries that still impose compulsory work, according to a report released this week by Walk Free, an Australian human rights organization, in collaboration with the United Nations’ International Labor Organization and International Organization for Migration.
The category encompasses state-sanctioned forced labor in militaries, fields, factories and prisons. In many U.S. prisons, inmates are compelled to work for far below minimum wage and without other legal protections.
Types of state-imposed labor vary — from prisons, both state and federal, public and private, as in the United States, to the widespread use of work camps and abuse of conscripts in highly repressive countries […]
Two recent exposés about child labor in the United States highlight how prevalent the once-outlawed practice has become. In February, the New York Times published an extensive investigative report by Hannah Dreier about scores of undocumented Central American children who were found to be working in food processing plants, construction projects, big farms, garment factories, and other job sites in 20 states around the country. Some were working 12 hours a day and many were not attending school.
A second story, revealed in a press release in early May by the U.S. Department of Labor, found more than 300 children working for three McDonald’s franchises operating dozens of restaurants in Kentucky. The children were working longer hours than legally permitted and tasked with jobs that were prohibited. Some were as young as 10 years old.
If such stories are becoming increasingly common, it is not because there is more attention being paid. An Economic Policy Institute (EPI) analysis found a nearly fourfold increase in labor violations involving children from 2015 to 2022.
While this says volumes about existing loopholes in labor […]
Few politicians seem to realize that when they oppose immigration and, if they are Republicans, want to go back a century to permit child labor, they do not understand how many educated immigrants comprise a significant percentage of highly trained work forces, like say nurses.The American healthcare system already the worst, yet most expensive, in the developed world depends, particularly in rural areas, on immigrant nurses. There is already a massive shortage in this country of trained nurses and because of our crazy immigrant system, as this article describes, it is about to get worse. We are going to see, particularly in Reed states a growing number of what are called medical deserts. The effect is oing to be even poorer healthcare for Republican voters. I wonder if they realize that?
The U.S. is now facing a projected shortage of more than 200,000 nurses in the next few years. Credit: Jens Schlueter / Getty
The stream of international nurses coming to work in the United States could soon slow to a trickle because of a backlog of green card petitions at the State Department.
The department announced in its May bulletin it moved the cut-off date for visa eligibility to June 1, 2022 — meaning only those who filed petitions before that date will be able to continue with their applications this fiscal year — because of soaring demand. Anyone who filed a green card petition in the past year, which could include thousands of nurses, won’t be able to proceed with their applications.
Health groups say the move could devastate a nursing workforce that is plagued by staffing shortages in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.
And emergency room doctors say not having enough nurses is a top concern coming out of the pandemic.
“If that pipeline stops, it ain’t gonna be good — and I’m […]
The American economy is being held hostage by MAGAt christofascists serving the interests of their leader criminal Trump, and the oligarchs who rent them as needed. We are so close to becoming a christofascist anocracy.
Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy along with Senate and House Republicans speak to the press outside the U.S. Capitol Building on May 17, 2023, in Washington, D.C. Credit: Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times / Getty
On Friday afternoon, with negotiations on legislation to raise the debt ceiling reportedly stalled, 66 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) sent a letter to the president urging him to invoke the 14th Amendment, one clause of which mandates the federal government to pay its bills, as an end-run around GOP obstructionism. Meanwhile, Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), along with high-profile House members such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), have kept up a drumbeat of social media criticism accusing the GOP of wanting to eviscerate social protections for the poor in order to satiate the tax-cutting demands of the super-wealthy.
But Joe Biden being Joe Biden, however, he’s unlikely to fully call the GOP’s bluff, hoping for a negotiated outcome to the standoff rather than a constitutionally untested reliance on the 14th Amendment. Given the […]
