national

CHARLOTTESVILLE (Rutherford) –– I have never known any government to put the best interests of its people first, and this COVID-19 pandemic is no exception.
Now this isn’t intended to be a debate over whether COVID-19 is a legitimate health crisis or a manufactured threat. Such crises can—and are— manipulated by governments in order to expand their powers. As such, it is possible for the virus to be both a genuine menace to public health and a menace to freedom.

(DavidSwanson.org) — I know it’s stiff competition, but hear me out. The threat of nuclear apocalypse is higher than ever. The threat of irreversible climate collapse is higher than ever and massively contributed to by militarism.

WASHINGTON DC (The Last American Vagabond) — Last year, a U.S.

Ramsey Orta, the man who filmed the police murder of Eric Garner in July 2014, has been transferred to the medical wing of the Midstate Correctional Facility prison in Marcy, New York.

Woken in the middle of the night and marched out of a crowded, quarantined group cell by prison guards to be deported. That is the story of one D.C.-area man on Wednesday, inside of an ICA Farmville for-profit prison full of hundreds of undocumented immigrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The Great Gray Hope has bowed out of the presidential primary race, leaving tottering Joe Biden as the last Democrat standing. What Bernie Sanders accomplished electorally was remarkable, revealing both how far a progressive can venture and the limits proscribing further advancement to the left within the Democratic Party.
 

(DavidSwanson.org) — What’s the matter with science? By that, do I mean, why don’t we turn away from corrupt politics and religion and follow the way of science? Or do I mean, why have we allowed science to so corrupt our politics and our culture? I mean, of course, both.

Hidden away in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act is a series of Republican tax cuts that will save the ultra-wealthy $90 billion in 2020 alone. According to a report from the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), a nonpartisan congressional body, almost 82 percent of the benefits of the tax breaks will go to just 43,000 Americans who make over $1 million annually.

Hospitals overflowing with sick and dying patients. Overworked staff risking their lives wearing garbage bags as makeshift protective equipment against an invisible but deadly virus. Refrigerated containers left outside medical facilities, filling with the dead. Mass graves being dug in the city. It is like something out of a horror movie. But it is very real and is happening right now in America.

At least 10,000 cars line up in an orderly fashion in San Antonio, all full of hungry, increasingly desperate people. Thousands already arrived the night before just to get a chance to eat. “We just can’t feed this many,” said the CEO of the local food bank that Texans have descended upon.