Senator Bernie Sanders is one of the few people in Congress who tells the truth about what has happened not only in the UNited States, but around the world. Most of the world’s economy is controlled by a handful of uber-rich, and they don’t give a damn about you or your family. You are the equivalent of cattle, to be herded in the direction the oligarchs want you to go, and to be maintained as cheaply as they can. I completely agree with what Sanders is saying. Instead of the tax cuts the MAGAt Republicans are trying pass, I think there should be a massive increase, back to the pre-Reagan era, on the tax rate of theses oligarchs. These Republicans are terrified of Musk because he could put $10-20 million into any Congress member’s election in 2026 to fund their opponent. I think it should also be noted that the oligarchs are no longer pay allegiance to any country. They have international wealth, and are funding and supporting organizations and movements that serve their interests all over the world. Musk, for instance, is supporting neo-Nazis in Germany.
Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders Credit: Joe Maher / Getty
“My friends, you don’t have to be a PhD in political science to understand that this is not democracy. This is not one person, one vote. This is not all of us coming together to decide our future. This is oligarchy.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is escalating his fight against the U.S. oligarchy with a new campaign directed at the nation’s wealthiest individuals—including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg—who he says are key culprits in a global race to the bottom that is stripping people worldwide of political agency while impoverishing billions so that the rich can amass increasingly obscene levels of wealth.
Announcing a new series that will detail how “billionaire oligarchs” in the U.S. “manipulate the global economy, purchase our elections, avoid paying taxes, and increasingly control our government,” Sanders said in a Friday night video address that it makes him laugh when mainstream pundits talk openly about the nefarious oligarchic structures in other places, but refuse to acknowledge the issue in domestic terms.
Here are the four things I think citizens should be demanding, with tens of millions going into the streets across the nation to demonstrate for them. First, the Supreme Court Citizens United decision has to be rendered meaningless by the Congress passing legislation that can overcome Trump’s veto. Second, Congress should pass legislation that creates publicly funded elections where it is illegal, with major penalties, for anyone to donate to election candidates. Third, the tax rate on the rich should go back to what it was between 1951 and 1964 (look at the graph heading this story). Fourth, Congress needs to create universal birthright single-payer healthcare. Are you prepared to do this? This is the nonviolent way Gandhi got independence for India without a war, Nelson Mandela ended apartheid in South Africa, and Martin Luther King got the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act passed and signed during the President Johnson administration.
In 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt created Social Security, an insurance contract between Americans and the federal government that pays out on certain life events. As a financial safety net, social security protects Americans from what Roosevelt called the “hazards and vicissitudes of life.”
Roosevelt’s plan has been vital to the American people, and has delivered payments on time, for generations. Today, 180 million employees are paying in, and 87 million people are receiving retirement and disability benefits under the program.
Due to fluctuating demographics and other factors, payouts under Social Security now exceed pay-ins, and most analysts agree adjustments are needed to keep the program afloat. With the help of Elon Musk, Republican lawmakers, who will soon hold majorities in the House and Senate, will try to cut guaranteed benefits instead of increasing the program’s revenue.
When billionaires slash programs to fund their own tax cuts
GOP legislators are toying with reducing payouts under the system, including raising the retirement age and other benefit cuts. As one […]
Literacy is essential to maintain a healthy democracy, and literacy is declining. Consider this: 54% of Americans can’t read and comprehend anything above 6th grade reading, and 43% can’t read and comprehend about 5th grade level. Even more alarming, as this report lays out, Gen Alpha, kids 2 to 12, aren’t even very interested in learning to read anything more complicated than their smartphones, and that is leading to a limited vocabulary and new contracted spellings of words. I see this as another factor in the neo-medievalist society that is emerging in the United States.
Illustration for Business Insider by Keith Negley
Joshua McGoun, a K-12 public-school teacher in Frederick, Maryland, first noticed a change in his students about 10 years ago. They began to struggle with focus.
Increasingly, younger kids were not nailing basic reading skills before third grade — a crucial window. Those who miss it have a tough road ahead in middle and high school. Even adept readers in their tweens and teens have become afraid of complex or extended reading tasks and more comfortable with short texts or bite-size summaries.
McGoun, who has a doctorate in education, shared one stark example. With struggling readers, he hands each child a book upside down and backward. “They should be able to turn the book the right way up and open it at the first page,” he said. These days, “some students aren’t able to do that.”
This is not unusual. Across the US, kids are struggling to read. Last year, reading performance for fourth graders hit its lowest level since 2005, and teachers expect that number to […]
Here is a first report on a new fusion technology that may become a very significant power technology to help us leave the carbon era.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems’s tokamak, a donut-shaped machine used to create nuclear fusion, in Devens, Massachusetts. Credit: Steven Senne / AP
If all goes to plan, Virginia will be the site of the world’s first grid-scale nuclear fusion power plant, able to harness this futuristic clean power and generate electricity from it by the early 2030s, according to an announcement Tuesday by the startup Commonwealth Fusion Systems.
CFS, one of the largest and most-hyped nuclear fusion companies, will make a multibillion-dollar investment into building the facility near Richmond. When operational, the plant will be able to plug into the grid and produce 400 megawatts, enough to power around 150,000 homes, said its CEO Bob Mumgaard.
“This will mark the first time fusion power will be made available in the world at grid scale,” Mumgaard said. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin welcomed the announcement, calling it “an historic moment for Virginia and the world at large.”
The plant would represent a new stage in the quest to commercialize nuclear fusion, the process which powers […]
Adam Brown, Emergency Care Physician, Entrepreneur, and Healthcare Executive. - MedPage Today
Stephan:
In order to create change in any culture it requires 10% or more of the community, state, culture to change its consciousness about something. It can be good or bad. Trump got elected because there was a critical coherence of consciousness centered on fear, genderism, racism, and resentment. To change that the American population has to develop a counter-coherence, one that fosters wellbeing. I think this article from the medical literature is good news because it is beginning to become clear to the professionals who provide the actual care in the illness profit system, which is controlled by non-medically trained millionaires and billionaires, that the system simply is not working for them or their patients.
Credit: MedPage Today
The killing of UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson sent shockwaves through the medical community, Wall Street, and social media. The motive behind the killing appears to be obvious: the bullets were reportedly inscribed with the words “deny,” “defend,” and “depose,” phrases that refer to insurers’ common practices of denying care, defending their positions in court, and deposing those who challenge them.
Some social media commentators embraced the murderer’s rallying cry. I was sickened by those comments suggesting Thompson deserved his fate. Let me be clear: this killing was abominable. No one deserves to lose their life because of a business decision.
That said, many of the decisions insurers like UnitedHealthcare have made are, themselves, abominable. They do deserve our outrage. We can simultaneously be outraged at both Thompson’s killing and the immoral actions of insurance companies.
Take, for example, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield’s recent decision to limit payment for anesthesia serviceswindow. This policy would have limited payments based on CMS’ “physician work time values,” determination of how long a surgical case should take to perform. […]
