Portside

By now the botched, indifferent response of the Trump administration to Hurricane Maria’s devastation in Puerto Rico has been well-documented. Puerto Ricans, however, are not the only US citizens whose lack of democratic rights has affected its quality of life, and for the worse. The same can be said for the residents of Washington, DC, the nation’s capital.

Ending the medical tax break could be a ‘gut punch’ to the majority of the country. Eliminating the medical-expense deduction would end a source of relief that has helped millions of people cope with steep medical costs in a country without comprehensive, universal health coverage.

One day after the Revolution, the Soviet government issued a Decree of Peace -- a signal of the centrality of the struggle against war to the building of socialism.

Jesmyn Ward is best known for her novel Salvage the Bones (2011). In this new book, says reviewer Ibrahim, "she traces an American highway odyssey, from the Mississippi Gulf Coast to Parchman Farm, the notorious state penitentiary."

Apparently, the victimization of young black girls is not newsworthy enough for the mass media or the court of public opinion to be engrossed or enraged at Weinstein levels. Both treat the sexual assault of black girls as if it were hardly news at all. The predatory sexualization of young black girls is so ubiquitous, it is damn near an accepted social and cultural norm.

Rural rout; High school fallout; Muslims rock vote; Kelly's krazy kommentary; Pageant protest; Rahm's rough night

US senator warns that documents exposing offshore tax havens show ‘rapid movement’ toward a group of billionaires controlling the global economy

A Review of China Mieville's book, The Story of the Russian Revolution, Verso Books, 2017, 384 pages, $26.95 hardcover. China Mieville, the award-winning science fiction/speculative fiction writer, accurately describes his history of the Russian Revolution “for everyone.” This is a well-paced, detailed but readily readable account of the Russian Revolution,

What do we celebrate, then, when we look back at 1917? What have we learned?

After getting his start in Republican presidential politics working for President Gerald Ford, former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort (right) went on to work for the Reagan campaign where he deployed the so-called "Southern Strategy" of building white support for the GOP through dog-whistle appeals to racism against African Americans.