“The socialist experiment in America is no longer confined to Washington or deep-blue national politics. It is coming to city halls and school boards across the country, where low-turnout elections can transform ambitious ideology into binding budgets and classroom policy. Local government often affects Americans’ everyday lives more directly than Washington, shaping taxes, municipal services, schools, policing and housing. Americans should therefore pay close attention to the DSA’s steady advance into local government, where ideological commitments can collide with fiscal limits, practical administration and community preferences.” [editor’s note: The MAGA version isn’t as quiet, but it’s just as socialist – TLK] (09/03/26)
“Congress and the Trump administration are not at blame for investing too little in America’s military; they are at fault for taking on too many national security projects. To quote a favorite line from the Rolling Stones, ‘You can’t always get what you want.'” (09/03/26)
“Brendan Greeley’s new book ‘The Almighty Dollar’ traces the dollar’s 500-year journey from a European silver coin to the shaky foundation of American financial power.” (09/03/26)
“When did saving a life start to feel like breaking the rules? When did the doctor at the bedside become less trusted than the people making decisions from far away, such as administrators, regulators, or distant experts who have never met the patient? And how did a profession built on judgment, uncertainty, and moral responsibility end up rewarding people for just following orders? These aren’t just abstract questions. They decide who can act when someone is dying, and who gets blamed if the official plan fails.” (09/03/26)
Source: Liberal Currents
by Shaily Patel & Matthew Gabriele
“The right wing’s assault on Religion and Humanities programs is an assault on our ability to understand the world, from Hindutva abroad to Christian Nationalism at home.” (09/03/26)
“The headlines this week wrote themselves: Meta, humbled at last, agrees to pay up to $17.1 billion and accept the strictest limits ever imposed on teenage social media use. A combined two-hour daily cap across Instagram and Facebook. A midnight-to-6 a.m. blackout. Age assurance. Attorneys general from 47 states, the District of Columbia, and three territories took a victory lap. But amid all this, Meta’s stock went up. Wall Street understood something the headlines missed. Meta did not simply buy peace. It bought a government-backed campaign to press the same restraints on its rivals — restraints that, by design, might cost rivals far more than they cost Meta, thus serving Meta’s interests.” (09/03/26)
“For many, Labor Day signifies a time of transition, the end of summer and the return to business as usual, whether it be school or work. But the holiday weekend was born out of a more radical past, and at a place charged with a history of protest and free expression. On September 5, 1882, more than 10,000 workers sacrificed a day’s pay to march on Union Square and demand an eight-hour workday and an end to child labor. The success of their protest paved the way for Labor Day to become a federal holiday in 1894. Initially a gated garden enclave for New York’s wealthiest, architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux redesigned Union Square in 1872 as an open plaza for public assembly and patriotic demonstration. By the beginning of the 20th century, Union Square became the epicenter of radical American politics, a setting for protests by anarchists and socialists.” (09/03/26)
“During the 2024 campaign Donald Trump promised to cut energy prices in half. He has, instead, presided over soaring prices at the pump, which have played an important role in his collapse in the polls. Some might attribute this disaster to Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran, ignoring what appear to have been near-unanimous warnings by experienced military and intelligence officials that such a war would, in addition to disrupting oil supplies, overstretch the U.S. military and dangerously deplete stocks of munitions — which is exactly what happened. But Scott Bessent, Trump’s Treasury secretary, has found someone else to blame: Ukraine.” (09/03/26)
“Mismatching students and institutions can hurt the very students such policies intend to help — while squandering scarce faculty talent on remedial math.” (09/02/26)
