Middleboro Review and so on

  As we commemorate the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. today, let us remember that he once said: “ There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we have the resources to get rid of it…   In the final analysis, the rich must not ignore the poor because both rich and poor are tied in a single garment of destiny.” 1 The United States is the richest country in the world, and yet we’re seeing more people struggle to afford food, housing, and health care during this administration. We’ve seen this administration weaponize SNAP nutrition benefits during the government shutdown, seeking to punish more than 41 million people who rely on food assistance. This administration is fine with millions of people and families going hungry and going without health care in order to pay for tax cuts for the rich and corporations. 2 But we are not staying silent.   We are resisting, we are raising our voices, and we are peacefully fighting back through mas...

  During Trump’s presidential campaign, he talked a big game about helping working people. He spoke to the economic pains that families were feeling. He said that the system is “rigged” every day. Now that he’s president, has he done anything to actually make that problem better? Nope – Trump has further rigged the economy in favor of the wealthy and well-connected. In reality, he has surrounded himself with lobbyists, billionaires, and grifters who feed off government favors. In many cases, these special interests even run the government themselves — abusing their power and the public’s trust to scratch each other’s backs and turn their billions into hundreds of billions more. In reality, Republicans passed a bill that takes meals away from hungry children and seniors, strips health care from millions, and marks the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in our history. They smiled, clapped, and cheered when it was signed into law. In reality, Trump has done everythi...

  The Cruelty Is the Policy The destruction of USAID, the loss of America’s soft power, and genocide Mary L Trump Nov 23 “Let’s kill poor people.” Regarding the United States Agency for International Development (U.S.A.I.D), Atul Gawande writes in  The New Yorker : On a budget of just twenty-four dollars per American—out of the fifteen thousand dollars in taxes paid per person last year—they had saved lives at an almost unimaginable scale. An independent, peer-reviewed analysis in  The Lancet  estimated that U.S.A.I.D. assistance had saved ninety-two million lives over two decades. Despite that, when Donald came into office, he almost immediately defunded the organization. There are many reasons that defunding an agency like U.S.A.I.D. was a horrific idea. Doing so hobbled America’s ability to deploy soft power which is a vital tool it has used in the past to create alliances, spread democracy, and expand its global influence. Leaving a soft power void for our advers...

    The rubble of the White House East Wing has become a powerful symbol of Donald Trump’s presidency, a literal dismantling of American institutions to make room for personal excess.    In his latest project, Trump is building the “ Golden Ballroom, ” a  roughly   $300 million , 90,000-square-foot expansion that doubles the size of the White House and mirrors the design of Mar-a-Lago’s famed ballroom.   A Place for Donors, Not the Public Although Trump promised to preserve the East Wing’s structure, the entire building has been demolished. The project  bypassed  both  Congressional and federal review  by the National Capital Planning Commission.   Funding for the ballroom comes not from taxpayers, but from the people most likely to be invited to it — a r oster of corporate giants and major donors   including Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Google, Lockheed Martin, Palantir, T-Mobile, Comcast, Caterpillar, the Adelson Family...