The Nation

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@thenation.com Shades of Whitewashing The unique power of public art stems from its very nature: creative expression paid for by the people to be viewed not by a limited few in a sterile museum room but by anyone in a public space in the real world. Public art can beautify, decorate, or bring sunshine to a dreary day. It can also spark new ideas, generate passionate debate, and force us to consider the world from a perspective other than our own. The insightful article “Don’t Look Now!” by Robin D.G. Kelley [Sept. 23] demonstrated this power of public art by illuminating a host of ways the 13 New Deal–funded frescoes by Victor Arnautoff at George Washington High School in San Francisco have brought complex conversations about representation, history, and artistic freedom to life…

all the president’s henchmen

After weeks of ever-worsening news about how Donald Trump, according to multiple accounts, held up military aid to Ukraine until the country promised to investigate Joe Biden’s (fabricated) corruption and Trump’s nutty conspiracy theories about the origins of the Russia probe, it remains remarkable how this godless New York grifter so thoroughly took over a political party that pretended to be about sober conservatism, Christian piety, and balanced budgets. Let’s look at four administration stalwarts up to their necks in this mess: Vice President Mike Pence, Attorney General William Barr, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. Together they represent the four tent poles of the modern GOP circus: the extreme Christian right, the stolid GOP establishment, the corporate Koch brothers wing, and…

by the numbers

88M Number of people in the United States over the age of 65 by the year 2050 50% Percentage of those who will have significant long-term service needs $266K Projected average annual cost for those with significant long-term service needs $11.57 Median hourly wage for a home care worker in the United States 87% Percentage of home care workers who are women—more than half of them women of color 1 Number of Democratic presidential candidates (Julián Castro) who have endorsed establishing a universal family care fund to make child care, elder care, support services for people with disabilities, and paid leave more affordable as of October 8…

trump trashes ca

On October 4, the Bureau of Land Management announced that it was ending a five-year moratorium on the selling of oil and gas drilling leases on public lands on California’s Central Coast. The bureau will soon be seeking bids for drilling on 725,000 acres of land across 11 of California’s most beautiful counties. This is just the latest in a series of extraordinary efforts by the Trump administration to slap down California, the front line of states’ resistance to Trumpism, and to use federal powers to dilute the state’s environmental protections, arguably its proudest political achievement of recent decades. Donald Trump has been stewing about the Golden State ever since it voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in 2016, helping ensure that he lost the popular vote nationwide by more than 3 million…

tax the filthy rich!

The vast inequality in wealth among Americans is one of the most serious economic problems facing the country, but there is a very simple solution: a wealth tax. The top 1 percent of Americans have more wealth than the bottom 95 percent, and that gulf is growing. Those in the top 0.1 percent have doubled their share of the country’s wealth over the past four decades, from about 10 to 20 percent of all wealth. A wealth tax could blunt this inequality and fund a more just and humane society. In the eyes of the government, the wealthy are not like us. The vast majority of Americans earn their income by slogging through jobs. According to tax law experts Lily Batchelder and David Kamin, the bottom 95 percent of income earners make…

going broke?

Eight major banks have said they will divest from the private prison and immigrant detention industry. Together these banks have provided Geo Group and CoreCivic, the industry’s two largest companies, with $2.35 billion, or about 87 percent of their financing. In an August conference call CoreCivic’s chief executive, Damon Hininger, blamed organizers for the banks’ decisions to pull out. “Clearly,” he said, the banks “had bowed down to a small group of activists.” But the fight isn’t over. The private prison industry incarcerates 75 percent of immigrant detainees, a share that could grow as Geo plans to make 5,700 detention beds available by the end of this year. Government funding is not likely to disappear, as Geo and CoreCivic have poured nearly $10 million into candidates’ coffers and more than $25 million into…