IMPORTANT READS

PERSPECTIVE-Bill Gates wants you to know he pays taxes. “I’ve paid more than $10 billion in taxes. I’ve paid more than anyone in taxes,” Gates told journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin. “But when you say I should pay $100 billion, OK, then I’m starting to do a little math about what I have left over.” 

WORLD WATCH-Trump’s inviting of Turkey’s President Erdogan to Washington comes at a peculiar time when the House of Representatives is pursuing the impeachment inquiry against Trump and when Erdogan is preoccupied with his invasion of Syria and the growing frustration of the Turkish public with his ruthless domestic and adventurous foreign policy.

HIGHTOWER ON POLITICS-Jesse Jackson ran a strong populist campaign for president in 1988, advocating bold new policies and programs to address inequality.

PERSPECTIVE--Intrigued by the controversy that erupted over Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s speech before the American Association of Christian Counselors last week in Nashville — it was titled “Being a Christian Leader” and was eventually removed from the State Department website — I wound up reading the whole speech. And I actually found one paragraph that I liked.

OTHER WORDS-We caught a glimpse of humanity recently when Amber Guyger, a former Dallas police officer convicted of murdering Botham Jean, was embraced with compassion by the victim’s brother. 

ONE MAN’S OPINION-As many now believe or suspect, Trump did not plan on becoming President. 

ANOTHER TRUMP FIRST, SELF IMPEACHMENT-Jesus H. Christ on work-release, this is what they thought they could put out there? What's next? Digging up John Stennis and having him "review" the actual transcript? 

CLIMATE POLITCS-The Republicans are on the sidelines on the climate crisis. Government scientists are muzzled.

ESSAY--How are you with numbers? I can deal with $1.5 million. I think I can even imagine $1.5 billion, a sum a thousand times greater.

CLIMATE POLITICS-There are misanthropes who understandably and regrettably express grim satisfaction with the prospects of climate chaos affecting everyone so at least predatory rich exploitive elites pay the same serious prices as poor people and people of color. 

NEW RESISTANCE-- “Yes, I had sex with a free thinking and physically attractive man and I don’t feel ashamed,” she declared in a recent Facebook post entitled “I Had Sex.” 

DEBUNKING THE ‘S’ WORD-From single-payer health care to climate change, the 2020 Democrats have ambitious plans.

CORRUPTION CAPITAL--Democratic presidential primary candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Monday unveiled a wide-ranging plan to combat corruption in U.S. politics with "big, structural change to fundamentally transform our government."

MY TURN-The following article pertains to an LAUSD teacher named Edward Carter. 

CLIMATE POLITICS--For years, scientists have struggled to figure out exactly how much methane is trapped under the ice at the north and south poles and what it would mean for global temperatures if climate change melted enough ice to release that methane into the atmosphere.

POLITICS--With the increasing occurrences of mass shootings, America is turning into the killing fields, literally.

ESSAY--The ruling elites, who grasp that the reigning ideology of global corporate capitalism and imperial expansion no longer has moral or intellectual credibility, have mounted a campaign to shut down the platforms given to their critics.

LABOR 2019--When workers can’t organize or speak out, their lives — and ours — may be at risk.

EMPLOYMENT POLITICS-For more than fifty years, Peter Cove, (photo above with colleague and wife Lee Bowes) the founder of America Works, has dedicated himself to finding jobs for welfare recipients, ex-offenders and other low-income Americans.

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-With the mainstream news media attracting eyeballs through endless stories about Jeffrey Epstein, Roger Ailes, R. Kelley, and other lowlifes, it is getting harder to be outraged.

PERSPECTIVE--David Koch, one of the two infamous billionaire Koch brothers, died Friday at the age of 79.