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Dear Progressive Reader,
Our Hidden History of the United States ([link removed]) calendar, updated and augmented each year by the staff at The Progressive, reminds me that Friday, July 23 was the forty-eighth anniversary of the day then-President Richard Nixon refused to turn over his secret White House tape recordings relevant to the Watergate investigation. It would be a full year later ([link removed]) before the House Judiciary Committee would vote to impeach Nixon. Donald Trump has already faced impeachment twice, but it is the upcoming investigation by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol that will look at the most serious charges against the former President. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said ([link removed]) in a press release this week, “The future of our democracy is on the line. This assault was an
attempt to overthrow the government.” While Republicans continue to obstruct and discredit ([link removed]) this effort, the results of these investigations will undoubtedly provide new, additional, and shocking information about the extent of Trump’s efforts to subvert the peaceful transition of power following his November electoral defeat.
Meanwhile, in a grand distraction, Amazon executive chair Jeff Bezos flew briefly into space. Following the trip, I saw one friend joke online that the amount of time (around eleven minutes) Bezos spent reaching and returning from the edge of the atmosphere (351,210 feet) was equivalent to one-half the time it takes an average Amazon worker to walk to the distant on-site bathrooms ([link removed]) at a typical warehouse. As Michael Makowski writes ([link removed]) this week, “While [billionaires like Bezos, Virgin Atlantic founder Richard Branson, and Tesla’s Elon Musk] continue their privatized space race, the rest of humanity is imperiled. The planet will continue to burn, and inequality will worsen until massive action and investment is taken, which means billionaires finally paying their fair share.” Award-winning journalist David
Helvarg highlights this crisis in a new article this week, noting ([link removed]) , “We’ve reached the point where the catastrophic impacts of climate change that have loomed for decades (largely ignored, scoffed at, and mocked by industry-backed skeptics) have finally begun to threaten human civilization as we know it.”
And while these billionaires exercise the luxury of their accumulated wealth in showy space displays, writer Mike Kuhlenbeck reminds us ([link removed]) that “In a culture that views poverty as a personal failure, pet ownership is yet another ‘luxury’ that poor people get shamed for.” Many people took in new pets for companionship during pandemic lockdowns, but now, as the programs preventing evictions, and those that added to unemployment compensation are being threatened by Republican lawmakers, the livelihood of those pets, and their owners, is under threat. “Approximately 19.2 million dogs and cats live in households that are behind on their rent or mortgage payments, according to pets-in-housing estimates released by the ASPCA last December,” he reports.
Mike Ervin also looks at the way differently abled people are being newly exploited as the economy emerges from lockdowns. “With the pandemic causing millions of workers to forgo crappy, low-wage jobs, employers are now scrambling to find people to exploit,” he says ([link removed]) . “The pandemic has hit us like a collective near-death experience. It’s prompted many people to realize that there’s a whole lot more to life than burning up all of their time and energy slogging away at low-wage jobs. If they can avoid getting sucked up in that undertow again, they will. This poses a serious threat to the capitalist system, which feeds on a bottomless supply of powerless wretches.”
Finally, eighth-grade student Shreya Prabhu shares her thoughts this week on why young people should be reading newspapers [and magazines like The Progressive]. In an op-ed for our Progressive Perspectives ([link removed]) project she opines ([link removed]) , “Much to my astonishment, only 5% of U.S. citizens aged 9-24 are regular consumers of news from newspapers or digital publications. Meanwhile, 54% of Generation Z members get their daily news from social media sites such as TikTok, Instagram and the like. . . . How can we be sure that teenagers are grasping what’s going on in the news if their only news intake is a short video that can be made by anyone, not even a qualified reporter or journalist?”
So, like Shreya Prabhu says, please keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.
Sincerely,
Norman Stockwell
Publisher
P.S. –If you don’t already subscribe to The Progressive in print or digital form, please consider doing so today ([link removed]) . Also, if you have a friend or relative that you feel should hear from the many voices for progressive change within our pages, please consider giving a gift subscription ([link removed]) .
P.P.S. –We need you now more than ever. Please take a moment to support hard-hitting, independent reporting on issues that matter to you. Your donation today will keep us on solid ground and will help us continue to grow in the coming years. You can use the wallet envelope in the current issue of the magazine, or click on the “Donate” button below to join your fellow progressives in sustaining The Progressive as a voice for peace, social justice, and the common good.
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