Trump’s Budget Proposal Reveals His Values

It is often said that government budgets are “an expression of values.”  Those values are clear in the Trump administration’s $4.8 trillion budget proposal for fiscal 2021, unveiled early this February.

The budget calls for deep cuts in major U.S. government programs, especially those protecting public health.  The Department of Health and Human Services would be slashed by 10 read more

Saudi Warships “Keep America Safe”?

an invitation from Voices for Creative Nonviolence to walk from Green Bay to Marinette, Wisconsin, September 9-15, for peace, in defense of the earth, and against Saudi war crimes and human rights violations.

Last December, the U.S. Navy awarded a Lockheed Martin-led team a multi-billion dollar contract to construct four warships for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The four Multi-Mission Surface Combatant (MMSC) ships will be constructed at the Fincantieri Marinette Marine shipyard in Marinette, read more

Locked down in Montgomery County, PA: We Have Met the Enemy, But It May Turn Out to Be Not a Virus But Us

Dave Lindorff

Maple Glen, PA — I’m writing this article from my home in Montgomery County, PA, a large suburban, exurban and rural county of 900,000 people which is kind of wrapped around three sides of the city of Philadelphia. At the moment, we are in “lock down,” after PA Gov. Tom Wolf announced that MontCo is the “epicenter of the pandemic.”

Gov. Wolf yesterday ordered all elementary and secondary schools in the county closed effective today for at least the next several weeks, read more

Bernie Goes Full FDR in National Address on the Coronavirus Pandemic and Suddenly, All Too Briefly, He’s the President We Need

By David Lindorff

Bernie Sanders just gave the speech of his life — one that everyone planning to vote in the Democratic primaries ahead should watch before making an decision between Sanders and Joe Biden. In fact, look at the Sanders video, and then read about the press conference Biden held and his anemic proposed response Biden offered to the coronavirus pandemic.

Sanders in this video looks like a president, and sounds like FDR addressing the savage Great read more

Action’s needed on testing and care for all: Eyes Wide Shut is Not Intelligent Policy or Personal Behavior in the Face of a Deadly Pandemic

In a country with such poor health care access, poor labor laws and poor national leadership, hoping for the best is a recipe for disaster

By Dave Lindorff

The World Health Organization on Wednesday announced that the spread of the COVID-10 coronavirus had reached a point of global spread that it is now officially a pandemic.

Meanwhile, as the deadly virus spreads rapidly to state after state across the US (41 states so far are reporting cases), and as the number of infected Americans rises read more

Tomgram: Nan Levinson, What Difference Does It Make Who Fights Our Wars?

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

And here’s a little story from the Neolithic age we now call “the Sixties” about that moment when the U.S. military was still a citizen’s army with a draft (even if plenty of people figured out how to get exemptions). At a large demonstration, I turned in my draft card to protest the war. Not long after, my draft board summoned me. I knew when I got there that I had read more

Talk Nation Radio: Norman Solomon on Bernie v Biden

Norman Solomon is cofounder and coordinator of RootsAction.org as well as founder and director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of a dozen books including War Made Easy and Made Love, Got War. He has written op-ed pieces for almost every large daily U.S. newspaper and appears often on a wide range of radio and TV outlets. We discuss the U.S. presidential election.

Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.

Download from LetsTryDemocracy, read more

Ban Parades Now

As I proposed before the CPAC meeting and will again now, there is a danger in large gatherings and a precedent of ignoring that danger to great detriment.

The steps China has taken against the coronavirus (rapidly building new hospitals, testing huge numbers of people, quarantining people swiftly and effectively) are clearly things that the U.S. government will never do as longs as issuing a press release is seen as preferable.

Plans for St. Patrick’s Day parades and other large gatherings should read more