Isn't it rather odd that America's largest single public expenditure scheduled for the coming decades -- $1 trillion to "modernize" the U.S. nuclear weapons complex -- has received no attention in the 2015-2016 presidential debates? If Americans would like more light shed on their future president's response to this enormously expensive surge in the nuclear arms race, it looks like they are going to have to ask the candidates the trillion dollar question themselves.
During the 1940s and 1950s, I followed big league baseball fanatically. This allegiance to baseball as a spectator sport was common among my Brooklyn peers, and probably reflected a desire to exchange a depressing environment for one of excitement, heroism, and glamor.
Peace Action, the largest peace organization in the United States, recently announced its endorsement of Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination for President. His record and views on issues of war and peace indicate that he merits the endorsement.
A fight now underway over newly-designed U.S. nuclear weapons highlights how far the Obama administration has strayed from its commitment to build a nuclear weapons-free world.
When Americans think about nuclear weapons, they comfort themselves with the thought that these weapons' vast destruction of human life has not taken place since 1945--at least not yet. But, in reality, it has taken place, with shocking levels of U.S. casualties.
A recent report by the Institute for Policy Studies indicates that the richest 20 Americans own more wealth than roughly half the U.S. population combined. This startling level of economic inequality not only challenges the widely-assumed notion of the United States as an egalitarian society, but undermines democracy, social cohesion, and social mobility. The vast concentration of wealth also corrupts American politics, leading to government policies that favor the wealthy.
Roughly a century before Bernie Sanders's long-shot run for the White House, another prominent democratic socialist, Eugene V. Debs, waged his own campaigns for the presidency. Although government repression nearly destroyed what had been a vibrant Socialist Party, in 1920 Debs campaigned for the presidency from his prison cell and drew nearly a million votes. His campaigns and the popularity of democratic socialism played a key role in sparking America's major economic and social reforms of the 20th century.
The shock and disbelief with which many political pundits have responded to Bernie Sanders's description of himself as a democratic socialist provide a clear indication of how little they know about the popularity and influence of democratic socialism in American life.
As American higher education becomes increasingly unaffordable, serious proposals have emerged for tuition-free college. And it's hardly a utopian idea. Public colleges in the United States used to be tuition-free.
Despite the insistence of the nuclear powers that Iran comply with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it is pretty clear that the nuclear-armed countries do not consider themselves bound to comply with this landmark international agreement. After all, nearly a half-century after the signing of this treaty, which requires that the nuclear powers divest themselves of their nuclear weapons, they not only still possess 16,000 of them but are engaged in a vast, immensely costly buildup of their nuclear arsenals.