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Passage of $1.2T bipartisan infrastructure bill and a recovering economy dispels rightwing fearmongering

In February 2021, the month after President Joe Biden took office, unemployment was 6.3%, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected that it would take until the end of 2023 for the nation to reach 4.6% unemployment. In March 2021, Congress passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan to stimulate the economy, which had withered during the coronavirus pandemic. The plan extended unemployment benefits and provided stimulus payments to individuals. It increased food stamp benefits and significantly expanded the Child Tax Credit, putting money in parents’ pockets. It provided grants to small business and local, state, and tribal governments....

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What if Tom Brady took a knee? And why Colin Kaepernick is still out of a job after five years

By Jonathan Finn, Professor of Communication Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University The 2021-22 NFL season is underway and Colin Kaepernick is still out of a job. It has been more than five years since he took a knee during the national anthem and in so doing further exposed issues of systemic racism in the NFL. I have been researching and writing about sport and media for several years and I frequently use Kaepernick’s case in my classes. To illuminate the gendered and racialized nature of that case and of the NFL, I ask a hypothetical question: what if Tom Brady...

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Racine’s partisan ploy: Why proposed criminal charges against election officials is a political smear tactic

Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling’s recommendation of criminal charges against five Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) officials, stemming from sensationalized allegations about “possible” voting fraud in a Racine County nursing home and “possible” widespread, statewide fraud in the 2020 elections, are little more than a baseless, hyper-partisan attack on legal and approved election procedures made by a highly partisan elected official. Further, the Republican politicians who have rushed to judgment and embraced these questionable allegations and called for resignations of WEC staff and commissioners are highly irresponsible. Their inflammatory statements only serve to further sow seeds of distrust in democracy...

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The Facebook Papers: New documents expose tech giant’s greed that put profits before people

“Facebook wants you to believe that the problems we’re talking about are unsolvable. They want you to believe in false choices. They want you to believe that you must choose between a Facebook full of divisive and extreme content or losing one of the most important values our country was founded upon: free speech. That you must choose between public oversight of Facebook’s choices and your personal privacy. That to be able to share fun photos of your kids with old friends, you must also be inundated with anger-driven virality. They want you to believe that this is just...

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A Cancer on Democracy: How the Supreme Court poisoned America with its Citizens United decision

If President Biden’s Build Back Better plan goes down in flames, you can blame the U.S. Supreme Court. Their Citizens United decision, in fact, is destroying both American politics and the planet. Case in point: Oil industry executives testified before Congress this week, suffering a barrage of questions, including particularly intense ones from Reps. Ro Khanna, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Katie Porter. The CEOs exhibited the same sort of arrogant insolence Mark Zuckerberg displayed in July of last year when he was hauled before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law. It was, basically, a smug,...

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Archaic and often racist Supreme Court cases dating back to 1901 still rule over millions of Americans

By Eric Bellone, Associate Professor of Political Science and Legal Studies, Suffolk University The 4 million inhabitants of five United States territories, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Northern Marianas Islands, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands, do not have the full protection of the Constitution, because of a series of Supreme Court cases dating back to 1901 that are based on archaic, often racist language and reasoning. No U.S. citizen living in any of those places can vote for president. They do not have a voting representative in Congress, either. But this inferiority is inconsistent. Puerto Ricans are American citizens...

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