RFK Jr. Is Headlining the Rx and Illicit Drug Summit. This Doesn’t Bode Well.
On April 21, the first day of the 14th annual Rx and Illicit Drug Summit, organizers announced a surprise presenter for the closing plenary on April 24: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., newly minted Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and vocal proponent of building labor camps for people who use drugs.
Read More »
Abundance is a new book that has been attracting attention and debate among mainstream economists and politicians. It aims to explain to Democrat members in the US why their party lost the election to Trump (narrow as that result was). The authors, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, writers at very liberal mainstream The New York Times and The Atlantic, respectively, argue that it was because the Democrats and supporters of ‘liberal democracy’ have lost their ability in government to carry out great projects that could deliver the things and services that working people (called the ‘middle class’ in America) need.
US vice president JD Vance has reportedly told the UK government that it must roll back its LGBTQ+ hate speech laws to get a trade deal over the line.
‘Roll back LGBTQ+ hate speech laws to secure a US trade deal’, UK government reportedly told
The Trump administration’s push to cast pro-Palestinian protesters as Hamas supporters — and then use anti-terror and immigration laws to quiet campus demonstrations — was forecast in a little-known plan last year from the creators of Project 2025.
How “Project Esther” forecast Trump’s plan to silence protests, boost deportations
Related:
Read More »The background to the article reprinted here is the “long boom” of western capitalism during the 1950s and 1960s. It first appeared in International Socialism journal in Spring 1967. On the surface it appeared that the capitalist system had stabilised itself, had broken out of the boom-slump cycle and was now able to offer the workers of Western Europe and North America a steady increase in living standards.
This was a frustrating world for Marxists, who found themselves subject to two temptations. One was to surrender to the claims poured out by the system’s apologists that capitalism had solved its problems and that the path of gradual reform offered a sure road to socialism. The other was to deny the obvious signs of stability and prosperity and assert that capitalism was on the verge of imminent, catastrophic collapse. If these temptations were to be avoided, and Marx’s analysis of capitalism’s contradictions was to hold, then the long boom must be explained.
The Social Security Administration is rushing cuts to phone services at the White House’s request, the agency’s acting commissioner told Social Security advocates in a meeting on Monday, two sources who attended tell Axios.
Social Security rushing service cuts at White House request, sources say
Previously:
No, 150-Year-Olds Aren’t Collecting Social Security Benefits
Trump’s Medicaid reversal should worry Social Security recipients.
Trump aides circulate plan for complete revamp of foreign aid programs
— Placing the Millennium Challenge Corporation and the U.S. Trade and Development Agency under the auspices of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation. The combined entity would focus on promoting private sector investment, especially in areas such as infrastructure, energy and technology. The document says the new approach would be a powerful counterweight to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which Beijing has used to gain economic and diplomatic footholds in many countries.
Read More »
When it comes to combat casualty care, “without urgent intervention, the Military Health System will continue to slide into medical obsolescence,” a retired Air Force trauma surgeon told senators Tuesday.
Military medical system unprepared for future conflict, experts say
Related:
Pentagon’s Top Doc Defends Military Health System Budget, Lays Out Plans for Improvements
Trump’s Pick for Top Pentagon Health Care Job Was Fired by CIA
How to DOGE USAID: The Wall Street Consensus under Trump
We often hear that the new Trump administration inaugurates the age of technofeudalism. Just look at Elon Musk, pontificating about so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) democracy from the Oval Office while undemocratically occupying the US Treasury payment system. But is the administration simply using bullying as a mode of power, as Adam Tooze recently diagnosed it, destroying institutions without measure or plan?
Read More »
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
You must be logged in to post a comment.