Fighting words for young workers from a radical elder: You Will Have Social Security Just Like Your Parents and Grandparents — If You Fight to Keep It!

By Dave Lindorff

I was explaining to my 26-year-old son recently that while I’m continuing to work as a writer, because I waited until age 70 to begin collecting my Social Security benefits, I am now collecting almost $29,000 on top of what I earn doing my freelance journalism thing.

He said, matter-of-factly, “Well, I and most of my millennial friends don’t expect Social Security to be around when we reach your age…if we ever do.”

If that gloomy sentiment is widespread, and read more

Talk Nation Radio: Lindsay Koshgarian on How-Ya-Gonna-Pay-For-It

Lindsay Koshgarian is the Program Director of the National Priorities Project, where she oversees NationalPriorities.org. Lindsay’s work on the federal budget includes analysis of the federal budget process and politics, military spending, and specifically how federal budget choices for different spending priorities and taxation interact.

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

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Pacifica read more

Tomgram: Nick Turse, Bases, Bases, Everywhere, and Not a Base in Sight

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

In January 2004, Chalmers Johnson wrote this about what he called America’s “empire of bases” or its “Baseworld”:

“As distinct from other peoples, most Americans do not recognize — or do not want to recognize — that the United States dominates the world through its military power. Due to government secrecy, our citizens are often ignorant of the fact read more

Democrats Make a Huge Mistake If They Just Focus Impeachment on the Ukraine Scandal

By Dave Lindorff

The impeachment theater on display today in the House, bracketed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s maudlin reading of Article I of the Constitution, and by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s ludicrous evocation of the Stalin purge trials to characterize the full House vote to establish impeachment rules and procedures, is increasingly looking like the first act of an almost certain impeachment of President Trump.

Unfortunately, if Democrats impeaching Trump on just the effort read more

Tomgram: Andrew Bacevich, Why Those “Endless Wars” Must Never End

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

Here’s the strange thing for the self-proclaimed greatest power in history, the very one that, in this century, has been fighting a series of unending wars across significant parts of the planet: if you exclude Operation Urgent Fury, the triumphant invasion of the island Grenada in 1983, and read more

Life Without Parole Sentences Rob Taxpayers and Pervert Justice

By Linn Washington, Jr.

Hundreds from across Pennsylvania rallied inside the Rotunda of the Capitol in Harrisburg recently to offer a solution for resolving an enormously expensive problem in state law that plagues the state’s prison system

That expensive problem arises from Pennsylvania’s Life Without Parole (LWOP) sentences that keep inmates in prison until they die.

Every year Pennsylvania’s prison system spends “roughly $460 million” to incarcerate LWOP inmates, stated a report released read more

Talk Nation Radio: Mark Isaacs on Peace Activism in Afghanistan

Mark Isaacs is the author, among other books, of the new book, The Kabul Peace House, which we discuss, and which describes a community of peace activists in Afghanistan. Mark is president of Sydney PEN, an affiliate of PEN International, a worldwide association of writers which defends freedom of expression and campaigns on behalf of writers who have been silenced by persecution or imprisonment. He speaks with us from Australia. His website is markjisaacs.com

Total run time: 29:00
Host: read more

On Bragging About Murdering People You Turned into Terrorists

You cannot promote the rule of law by loudly bragging about committing murder. You cannot end terrorism by committing terrorism. Here is a U.S. president openly proclaiming that he has committed murder in order to let people be afraid they’ll be next. If anything fits the definition of terrorism, that does. The U.S. public cannot see it because (1) whatever the U.S. does is good, (2) Trump’s fans support anything he does, (3) loyalists of the Democratic Party believe that any crimes read more