Author: Common Dreams

The annual defense budget, passed recently by both the House and Senate, came in at $738 billion for 2020, up from last year a sweet $22 billion. War hits the motherlode every year. “The money just isn’t there” for virtually anything that matters — like healthcare for all, free college tuition, clean water, eco-sustainable energy production — but we’ve sold the national soul to the war god so long ago that the perfunctory, bipartisan passage of the National Defense Authorization Act comes and goes every year with a few marginal cries of outrage and a big shrug from the...

Lawmakers in Kаnsаs Cіty, Mіssоurі took a “visionary step” on Thursday by unanimously voting to make public transportation in the city free of charge, setting the stage for it to be the first major U.S. city to have free public transit. The Kаnsаs Cіty Council voted to direct the city manager to set aside $8 million to eliminate the $1.50 per ride fare that currently applies to the city’s bus system. Some frequent riders could save about $1,000 per year under the new plan. “It’d help me out a lot,” said college student Michael Mumford, who rides the city’s...

In waging endless war, Americans are also, in effect, mutinying against the planet. In the process, we are spoiling the last, best hope of earth: a concerted and pacific effort to meet the shared challenges of a rapidly warming and changing planet. It is no surprise that American blood is still being spilled in war after war across the Greater Middle East and Africa, even as foreign peoples pay a far higher price in lives lost and cities ruined. And I keep asking myself: Why, in this century, is the distinctive feature of America’s wars that they never end?...

At more than 500 rallies planned for the evening of December 17, hundreds of thousands of Americans are expected to call on the U.S. House to vote to impeach President Donald Trump, including residents of Milwaukee. The rallies will take place at congressional offices and other public spaces the night before the House is expected to vote on two articles of impeachment. Trump stands accused of abusing his power when he pressured the Ukrainian president to investigate his political rival former Vice President Joe Biden, and obstructed Congress by stonewalling its investigation. “The facts are uncontested,” organizers said. “An...

A Wisconsin judge ordered on December 13 that the registration of up to 234,000 voters be tossed out because they may have moved, a victory for conservatives that could make it more difficult for people to vote next year in the key swing state. The judge sided with three voters represented by a conservative law firm who argued the state elections commission should have immediately deactivated any of the roughly 234,000 voters who didn’t respond to an October mailing within 30 days. The voters were flagged as having potentially moved. Ozaukee County Judge Paul Malloy denied a request by...

Research on the economic effectiveness of government subsidies found that Wisconsin’s $4 Billion Foxconn deal will not work and could be a significant detriment to the regional economy. The data continues a factual stream of information that has unraveled the “Big Foxconn Lie,” and indirectly supported by a comparable situation in New York with Amazon.com U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggested on December 7 that the Trump administration “focus more on cutting public assistance to billionaires instead of poor families” after news broke Friday that Amazon was expanding its presence in New York City without the state giving the company...