The Pentagon recently asked Congress for an astronomical $27 billion budget increase to support a massive military buildup in Asia  as part of its new Indo-Pacific plan, which calls for a substantially more aggressive military stance against China.  With the US already ranking first in military spending worldwide and holding more than 290 military bases in the Asia-Pacific region alone, this aggressive buildup is being proposed at the most financially precarious moment in US history. More

A new poll by Morning Consult and Politico finds that a majority of Americans—55 percent—support Medicare for All. Strangely, the pollsters headlined their results by saying, “Medicare for All Remains Polarizing.” Nearly 80 percent of all Democrats support it, and even among Republicans, more than a quarter back the idea of a government-run health plan for all. More

In light of the tragic violence that has unfolded once again in the form of mass shootings in Boulder, Colorado and Atlanta, Georgia, it becomes clear that another pandemic defines the United States–a pandemic of violence. The figures speak for themselves. Since the Columbine shooting in 1999, there have been 114 mass shootings with 1300 victims. Moreover, as one national report notes “Every day, more than 100 Americans are killed with guns and more than 230 are shot and wounded.”  All of this happening in a country in which there are more guns than people and where laws are enacted that make it easier to buy a gun than to vote. More

Hundreds of thousands of Central Americans wouldn’t flood the U.S. border if things weren’t pretty bad back home. Destitution, gangs, rampant murder, death squads – that’s what people leave behind in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, countries that have all been laboratories for U.S. anti-communist counterinsurgency and economic neo-liberalism. Those U.S. efforts have been a complete and utter bust. More