“The Fruits of Empire: The American People at the End of their Ropes”

The Surveillance State

Welcome to the U.S. police state where talk of war, threat of war, and actual war takes center stage. Which country will feel the heavy hand of the American colossus next? Venezuela, Iran, or the long shot North Korea? War abroad means massive surveillance and repression at home and bankrupt social programs. While the U.S. blows over $1 trillion dollars on defense and the costs of maintaining 800 bases (that we know about) in over 70 countries and troops in 150 countries, the people suffer under a privatized healthcare system that has big business written all over it, 44 million young people stagger under a student debt load of $1.5 trillion, and “deaths of despair” claim 150,000 U.S. lives every year. Where but in the U.S. police state is suicide the second leading cause of death among children (ages 10-18)? What happens to today’s middle-aged Americans, 25% of whom have no retirement savings, when the government makes good on its threat to cut social security. The paradox is inescapable— the richest country in the history of the world yet its citizens have run up a collective debt of $13.5 trillion, 80% of U.S. households live paycheck to paycheck, 20% can’t pay their monthly bills and the U.S. booming economy has left 54% of Americans feeling no appreciable upswing in their personal financial situation. When the drive to colonize the world is the major objective, what happens to the people? We try to answer that question in “The Fruits of Empire: The American People at the End of their Ropes

1,007 total views, 1 views today

Read More

It Took Forty-Two Years for the Democrats to Figure Out that Millions of Poor Women Can’t Get an Abortion

Rosie Jiminez

From the halls of congress to the Oval Office to the Supreme Court, the 1973 decision legalizing abortion is the talk of the town. Will a new conservative majority on the Court declare Roe unconstitutional? Will the twelve states that have already passed laws restricting abortions or the fourteen others preparing to succeed in making legal abortions extinct? Lots of questions, few answers. But there’s a huge part of the abortion debate that flies under the radar. Did you know that for a certain class of women (poor) of a certain ethnicity (women of color) abortion has not been on the table since 1977? These are the women who depend on Medicaid, the federal insurance program, to cover their healthcare. Every year enough senators and representatives vote to extend a rider prohibiting federal insurance from paying for abortions and every president since Reagan agrees and Supreme Court Justices sit on their hands. In the U.S. where freedom is supposed to be a constitutional right, millions of women of childbearing age are not free to end an unwanted pregnancy. To find out how we got here and why the 2020 presidential election will probably not change the outlook for women, especially poor women read “It Took Forty-Two Years for the Democrats to Figure Out that Millions of Poor Women Can’t Get An Abortion

944 total views, no views today

Read More