Common Dreams:
"New research published Monday found that the top 1% of U.S. income earners have taken $50 trillion from the bottom 90% over the past several decades, and that the median worker salary would be around twice as high today as it was in 1945 if pay had kept pace with economic output over that period.
The study's authors, Carter C. Price and Kathryn Edwards of the RAND Corporation, examined income distribution and economic growth in the United States from 1945 to the present. The researchers found stark differences between income distribution from 1945 to 1974 and 1975 to 2018. ...
The researchers' findings, which come amid a deadly coronavirus/Covid-19 pandemic, shine light on the injustice of an economy—by far the wealthiest in the history of civilization—in which essential workers struggle mightily, and often in vain, to survive while the richest people grow ever richer at their expense."
-->This report is so condemning of the very richest in America, that the NYT didn't get around to publishing it.
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Samidoun:
"On September 23, a series of major Silicon Valley corporations – Zoom, Facebook and YouTube (Google) – joined hands with racist, right-wing, Zionist campaigns in an attempt to silence an academic event, “Whose Narratives? Gender, Justice, & Resistance: A conversation with Leila Khaled.” ...
Zoom’s cancellation of the event in response to Zionist pressure and dubious legal threats raises very serious concerns about the corporatization of the university, academic freedom and any and all expression, especially as thousands of universities and academic institutions have outsourced remote learning and classrooms to the Silicon Valley corporation.
This effort was led by an array of repressive legal organizations like the “Lawfare Project,” so named for their efforts to engage in “legal warfare” against the Palestinian people and cause. These entities demand corporations like Zoom silenced Palestinians based on scare tactics based on U.S. “anti-terror” laws and unilateral coercive measures (sanctions), themselves an unjust foundation for dubious threats."
-->Free speech, accept for Palestinians. Sort of like PEP, progressive except for Palestine. No American media covered this story.
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Common Dreams:
"Instead of adhering to congressional intent by building up the nation's inadequate supply of N95 masks and other equipment to combat the Covid-19 crisis, the Pentagon has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars in appropriated taxpayer funds to private defense contractors for drone technology, jet engine parts, Army uniform material, body armor, and other purposes not directly related to the pandemic.
As the Washington Post reported Tuesday morning, the Department of Defense—headed by former Raytheon lobbyist Mark Esper—'began reshaping how it would award the money' just weeks after Congress in March approved a $1 billion fund under the Defense Production Act to help the nation 'prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus.' ...
Mandy Smithberger, a weapons industry analyst at the Project on Government Oversight, told the Post, 'This is part and parcel of whether we have budget priorities that actually serve our public safety or whether we have a government that is captured by special interests.' "
-->We all know the answer to this question. It is less clear why the NYT didn't run this story. In some cases, our "newspaper of record" leaves out stories that are just too damning about our corrupt political system, a system that the NYT has traditionally defended. Doing a quick search of the NYT's use of the word "kleptocracy" over the past year, we find 15 instances. There are several articles about Russia under Putin, a few about Irai, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Kenya, Malaysia, and finally one mention of ancient Athens. No articles about the world's richest and most powerful kleptocracy of all.
