Portside

“Some in Congress want to underfund the VA so they can say that government doesn’t work,” says Dusten Retcher, a 29-year old Air Force veteran, who processes veterans’ benefit claims in Minneapolis. “Then they want to turn it over to the private market.”

Labor leaders in the U.S. have made it clear they are supportive of a NAFTA overhaul — but only if it helps eliminate the wage gap with Mexico and includes Canada’s long-shot demands for labor reform.

A whole new genre of food videos, focusing on specific intense sounds like crinkling, chopping, sautéing and stirring, is becoming popular. These eating sounds trigger pleasing tingling sensations in the brains of viewers who experience ASMR, which stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response.

Here are two articles about the Wall. An Israeli arms maker has been picked by the US Department of Homeland Security to build a prototype of the wall President Donald Trump has vowed to build along the full length of the US-Mexico border. After delays — due in part to contractor battles — preliminary work on construction has begun in California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas, leading to concerns ranging from states’ rights to environmental destruction.

The military is one of the country’s largest polluters, with an inventory of toxic sites on American soil that once topped 39,000. At many locations, the Pentagon has relied on contractors like U.S. Technology to assist in cleaning and restoring land, removing waste, clearing unexploded bombs, and decontaminating buildings, streams and soil.

Union members step up to provide assistance to Puerto Rico.

September's #RenterWeekOfAction made clear that the new 21st century renter movement is organized, coordinated & visionary. As renters from small rural towns to large urban centers continue to be squeezed by rising rents and low wages as resurgent renter-led movement is uniting around a city and state strategy to build power from below, win universal rent control, and advance a vision of community control over land, housing and development.

While Flint battles a water crisis, just two hours away the beverage giant pumps almost 100,000 times what an average Michigan resident uses into plastic bottles.

This is not the history of a climate refugee family. It is the history of capitalism in America—disaster capitalism-- with an alliance of police force and wealth, where machinery is supreme, where honest labor is not enough, and where the family is secondary--a worthy reread in modern American times.

Beyond film-industry stakeholders, lawmakers need to act. Stronger laws and punishments are needed to curb sexual impropriety.