Category: Equality
U.S. Budget Deficit Swells to $898 Billion, Topping Forecast
The U.S. fiscal gap has continued to balloon under President Donald Trump, raising concerns the country’s debt load, now at $21.5 trillion, is growing out of control. A combination of Republican tax cuts enacted this year — that will add up to about $1.5 trillion over a decade — and increased government spending are adding to budget strains.
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Whose pipeline is it anyway?
Native American Tribes suing to invalidate Keystone XL pipeline permit.
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RACE, DISCIPLINE, AND SAFETY AT U.S. PUBLIC SCHOOLS
There are more than 96,000 public schools in America. The U.S. Department of Education recently released data that was collected from all of them. The data, based on the 2015-2016 school year, reveals the extent of police presence in schools, the lack of basic services, and the growing racial disparities in public school systems serving 50 million students. In many communities, all of these conditions are worsening.
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Unite for Justice—Attend an August 26 Event!
On August 26, all across the country, Americans will stand united in commitment to our freedom and our future to demand that the U.S. Senate stop Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination for a lifelong appointment to the Supreme Court.
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New Charlottesville Doc Exposes Neo-Nazi Leaders & Their Ties to U.S. Military & Weapons Contractors
I actually talked to him. I emailed him first at his email, which included the numbers 88, which is a code for “Heil Hitler” among white supremacists. And he gave me a bunch of different stories. You know, he gave me—he said, “Look, I have ‘alt-right’ beliefs.” He suggested like, “Yes, I am a white supremacist.”
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Trump Will Have Blood on His Hands
Donald Trump’s more sophisticated defenders have long since mastered the art of pretending that the only thing that matters with his presidency is what it does, not what he says. But not all of the president’s defenders are quite as sophisticated. Some of them didn’t get the memo about taking Trump seriously but not literally. A few hear the phrase “enemy of the people” and are prepared to take the words to their logical conclusion. We are approaching a day when blood on the newsroom floor will be blood on the president’s hands.
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Arrested, Jailed and Charged With a Felony. For Voting. A Conviction will Prevent them from Voting Again.
The case against the 12 voters in Alamance County — a patchwork of small towns about an hour west of the state’s booming Research Triangle — is unusual for the sheer number of people charged at once. And because nine of the defendants are black, the case has touched a nerve in a state with a history of suppressing African-American votes.
Local civil-rights groups and black leaders have urged the district attorney to drop the prosecution, saying that black voters were being disproportionately punished for an unwitting mistake. African-Americans in North Carolina are more likely to be disqualified from voting because of felony convictions; their rate of incarceration is more than four times that of white residents, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit organization.
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Trump Administration Mulls a Unilateral Tax Cut for the Rich- New York Times
The tax cut being considered by the President is intended to reduce capital gains taxes for those who sell capital assets (property or investments). Income inequality, already at record levels, will increase yet again since they are considering only tax cuts for the wealthy. For those of us who work for a paycheck and do not have (much less sell) capital assets there is no benefit.
US tax revenue will be reduced by $100 billion dollars, adding to the budget deficit, which was increased to $1.5 trillion by the 2017 tax cuts. You and your children will pay for this gift to the wealthy. These additional tax cuts can only be balanced by cuts in Federal spending on the favorite Republican whipping boys: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Proponents argue that this tax cut will generate a sell-off and drive the stock market up, so wage earners and the middle class will benefit. The same argument was used in selling the 2017 Republican tax cut for businesses from 35% to 20%. A boon for corporations, that windfall resulted increased profitability which was used for stock buy-backs, not wage increases. In 2017 average wages increased about 1.75%.
This tax cut is deliberately targeted and timed to please the donor class as we go into the midterm elections.
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Trump leaves Obama out in the cold in SA
The Mandela 100 commemoration became a mini battlefield in the ongoing US political war this week, as the Trump administration ordered that Barack Obama not be given any assistance other than security arrangements by the American embassy in South Africa.
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THE LOCALIST REVOLUTION
Change in a localist world often looks like a renewal of old forms, which were often more intimate and personalistic than the technocratic structures of the past 50 years. Localism stands for the idea that there is no one set of solutions to diverse national problems. Instead, it brings conservatives and liberals together around the thought that people are happiest when their lives are enmeshed in caring face-to-face relationships, building their communities together.
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US House Activity Excerpt
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US Senate Activity Excerpt
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NAACP’s Transylvania Together Podcast
- The Opposite of Addiction, with Jim Hardy
- Meals on Wheels of Brevard, NC, with Board Member Sasha Jones
- The Community Side of Recidivism - Meet Peter McKinney
- Meet Mark Burrows, Director of Transylvania County Planning and Community Development
- Meet Nicola Karesh, a Writer, Poet, Community Activist and a Playful Spirit
- Meet Kyle Tinsley, Graduate of Brevard High School and former leader of the Acceptance Club
- Meet Bobby Jones of Cedar Mountain, NC. His grandfather was Solomon Jones of Solomon Jones Road, the road to Pretty Place.
- Meet the founder of Transylvania Indivisible. David Williams.
- How the Affordable Care Act (ACA) helped Cedar Mountain, NC get a new cafe
- Meet Dal Davis, a student at Brevard College.