I think that we can agree that there are no depths to which Donald Trump will not sink so we should no longer be really surprised when he does something that is appalling. But one thing really grates on me and that is when he, on issues that we can be sure that he does not really care that much about, goes out of his way to harm people purely because he now realizes that it will please his slowly shrinking core of supporters, the ones he needs to attend his rallies and feed his ego, and anger his opponents, which pleases his base even more.

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Vice News has produced an excellent documentary that gives voice to the people in the antifa movement to explain who they are and what they are doing and why. Given that so much of media coverage has been from the authoritarian establishment that condemns antifa, this is a much-needed and welcome alternative perspective that anyone who is concerned about understanding recent political developments should watch.
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On election day on Tuesday, there will be two constitutional amendments on Ohio’s ballot that voters will have to decide on. This business of voting on changes to the state constitution is inherently problematic because a constitution should be changed only after careful deliberation. Off-off-year elections, like this one, tend to produce very low turnout. Highest turnouts tend to be when a presidential election is on with around 70%, next highest is on other even years when Congressional elections are on where you see 40-50%, and odd-years are the worst, with rates dipping down to as low at 26% in 2013. So you can have a small fraction of the voting public deciding the fate of major issues that affect everyone.
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Republicans in Congress have released their tax proposals and to no one’s surprise, it is a massive redistribution of wealth from the have-nots to the oligarchy. Ed Burmila breaks down the awful details.

What does a massive tax-cutting bill so bad that even Republicans balk at it look like? Start with a staggering $1.5 trillion in tax cuts over ten years.

Sounds great, right? Well, you’re not getting any of it. It consists largely of corporate tax rate cuts – more on that in a second – and repealing the estate tax.
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For some time now, I have been reading reports that after hurricane Irma devastated that island nearly two months ago, only 30% of the island’s population have had power restored to them. That itself was scandalous and one can imagine the outrage if we were talking about (say) Florida or New Jersey or any other place where ‘real Merkins’ (i.e., white Christians) were the affected population, not Hispanic people.
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I mentioned that I was surprised that the avalanche of sexual harassment charges against powerful men in the film and news media industries had not spread to political figures such as sitting members of Congress. But it turns out that in the UK it has, with various MPs being accused and now the secretary of defense Michael Fallon has resigned.
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Like many urban elites, I have little or no understanding of the people of central Appalachia, a rural mountainous region that spans southwestern Pennsylvania, southeastern Ohio, eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, and western Virginia. News media accounts (especially during election season which seems to be the only time we pay attention to that region), passing through the occasional town on the way to somewhere else, and seeing films like Deliverance can give a highly misleading picture of the people there as not only poverty-stricken and poorly educated, but even willfully obtuse in acting against their own interests, and being easily seduced by Donald Trump’s bogus promises to bring back coal jobs and rejuvenate the region.
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The killing of eight people and the injuring of eleven on the streets of New York City by a man driving a truck has once again shown that in an open society, there is no lack of soft targets that can be attacked by anybody at all. We have to ask ourselves what purpose such attacks on ordinary people serve. One is of course to create fear among the population. But that has no strategic benefit and indeed has negative blowback.
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