One of the outcomes of the grotesque wealth inequality in the United States has been the massive increase in homeless people. In many American cities, if you walk the streets of the city or look in the parks or along the highways you see thousands of men and women who have been reduced to living in a tent or a wooden box. It has become something that defines American cities and that visitors from Europe, the Nordic countries, or Asia find so appalling it is one of the major memories they take away from a visit to this country. I just got an email from a reader who lives in Norway telling me he had read about this, but found it hard to believe how bad it actually was, asking me, “Why are your city, state, and federal governments doing so little to help theses desperate people?” The answer, of course, is that to politicians, especially MAGAt politicians, financed by the uber-rich the poor are nothing but peasants whose wellbeing is of little interest to them.
Frank, a homeless man, sits in his tent with a river view on June 5, 2021, in Portland, Oregon. Credit: Paula Bronstein / AP
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA — The Supreme Court has granted mayors broad powers to combat the homelessness crisis, including by jailing people for sleeping outside. Now, leaders along the West Coast must decide how far they’re willing to go.
The Grants Pass v. Johnson ruling last month will have major ramifications everywhere from Northeast cities struggling with a deluge of migrants to Sun Belt boom towns facing huge shortages of affordable housing. But the effect is most dramatic along the West Coast, where lower court rulings had severely limited city officials’ authority to clear encampments even as the region became the epicenter of a national homelessness crisis.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed captured the frustration among many Democratic mayors when she praised the conservative-majority Supreme Court’s ruling.
“Those who refuse our help or those who already have shelter will not […]
Studies show the the largest population of gun killers are lonely isolated White men. I have thought a lot about why this is the case. One obvious part of an answer is the laxity of gun laws. But there is more to it than that. When I was young men there was a draft and a large percentage of young men went into the armed forces. Where you both hung out and were part of a group with a purpose. And society as whole recognized this, because fathers, uncles, cousins, even mothers and aunts were veterans. All that is gone now. Only about one percent of Americans today are involved with the military. Then you have the trends toward racial and gender equality which frightens and creates resentment in psychologically unstable White men. The Incel movement reflects this aspect of the epidemic of gun violence. All of it is a manifestation of America’s growing social disorder.
Credit:Kriston Jae Bethel / AFP / Getty
Six months into the year, more than 21,000 people have died because of gun-related injuries in the United States.
Doctors and public health officials have a word to describe the rising number of people killed or hurt by guns in recent years: epidemic.
“I would certainly consider the problem of firearm injuries and firearm violence as an epidemic in the United States,” said Patrick Carter, director of the University of Michigan Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention, whose research is partly funded by the National Institutes of Health.
“When we think about what the term epidemic means, it means a sudden increase in the numbers, or incidents, of an event over what would be considered a baseline level,” Carter told Morning Edition.
Since the mid-2000s, the United States has seen year-after-year increases in the number of deaths and injuries from guns “that would mirror what we would consider to be a sudden increase consistent with an epidemic,” Carter said.
The “epidemic” label and what it means
For those charged with protecting public health in the […]
Emily Hutto, Associate Video Producer - MedPage Today
Stephan:
Social media with its torrent of misinformation and lies, AI generated fake audio, and fake porn, its use to make classmates and fellow workers humiliated and hurt is, as the Surgeon General of the United States spells out, causing great social damage. Through it all the Congress sits on its hands and does nothing. Social media is a major factor in the creation of two countries in a single nation.
MedPage Today’s editor-in-chief Jeremy Faust, MD, (left) sits down with U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD, MBA,
In this exclusive video interview, MedPage Today‘s editor-in-chief Jeremy Faust, MD, sits down with U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD, MBA, to talk about his advisoryopens in a new tab or window on social media and youth mental health.
The following is a transcript of their remarks:
Faust: Hello, I’m Jeremy Faust, Editor-in-Chief of MedPage Today. I’m so glad to be joined today by Dr. Vivek Murthy.
Dr. Murthy is the 19th and 21st Surgeon General of the United States, and he has issued a number of very important public health advisories, which we will discuss today. Dr. Vivek Murthy, thank you so much for joining us.
Murthy: Of course. I’m glad to join you, Jeremy.
Faust: Recently, I think there’s been a lot of talk about social media and your advisory regarding social media use. I’ve heard you speak in a very nuanced way about this, and my initial take is that the dose makes the poison or that certain forms are less harmful than others. And right there on page […]
Here you see an excellent analysis of why so many countries in the world are being so slow to prepare for climate change. Simple answer: Because profit is the only priority that matters. As this piece describes to exit the carbon era, the electrical systems cannot be principally petroleum fueled as they are in the United States. As the author says, “The idea that markets are the best way to solve social problems or distribute scarce resources must be one of the most thoroughly exploded propositions in the history of social thought.” Markets have only one priority, profit. Read, and weep for our children’s future.
A figure looks at the dynamic map board showing power distribution through California’s electrical grids in the control center of the California Independent System Operator, 2004. Credit: David McNew / Getty
The idea that markets are the best way to solve social problems or distribute scarce resources must be one of the most thoroughly exploded propositions in the history of social thought. Proponents of this notion have accumulated quite a list of qualifiers and exceptions: asymmetric information, market failures, natural monopolies, externalities, imperfect competition, irrationality, public goods, time inconsistency, and principal-agent problems, just to name a few. The empirical record is even worse. We are now more than 40 years into a global process of generating more markets in more things, including healthcare, childcare, education, housing, energy, and retirement. The results are unambiguous: The great expansion of the marketplace, and the long process of privatization and liberalization needed to achieve it, has led to a world that is more […]
Throughout the day I have watched different channels cover the Trump Republican Party convention. It is astonishing. Every person speaking at the convention does nothing but lie and spread misinformation. I have never seen anything like it. Meanwhile Biden is diagnosed with Covid and we have only 110 days until the election. And then there are the polls. If you haven’t realized that our democracy hangs by a fraying thread, now is the time to wake up. This election is not about political partisanship. It is about democracy vs Project 2025.
A memorial sign near the site of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, Butler, Pennsylvania, 16 July 2024. Credit: Carlos Osorio / Reuters
Has the US entered its late Soviet phase? The country is a gerontocracy led by ailing leaders and with a crisis of confidence in its dominant ideology; it is a flailing superpower suffering foreign humiliation (not least in Afghanistan); and its economic system struggles to meet the needs of many of its people. The similarities are a little uncanny.
There are, of course, clear differences too. The US is a democracy, albeit one severely compromised by wealthy vested interests and concerted rightwing efforts to weaken voting rights, and it is a racially diverse union of states, rather than an unstable federation of nations. But, crucially, if Joe Biden is a Leonid Brezhnev or one of his two short-lived elderly successors, then Donald Trump is no Mikhail Gorbachev: he is more of an American Vladimir Putin.
The attempted assassination of Trump marks a further descent into the darkness. Earlier this year, a poll found that more than a third of Americans believe
