Local and state governments spend $1 billion annually to market the lottery, and in return Americans spend $70 billion each year on lottery tickets alone, 6 times what they spend going to movies. Almost all of it comes from people with low incomes, and the lower their incomes are, the more people play the lottery. When unemployment goes up, so do lottery sales. Lotteries marketed to the poor have taken the place of tax revenue extracted in more egalitarian ways.
Hosts Nina Shirazi and Adam Johnson talk to John Balzarini, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Delaware State University and Les Bernal National Director of Stop Predatory Gambling.
Thomas Wolf, Director of Democracy Initiatives at the Brennan Center, joins us to discuss the implications of Trump’s executive order, which denies citizenship to children of undocumented people and…
Fifteen grueling months of bombing and military assault have finally come to a pause as the ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel has come into effect.
Though party leadership called it inhumane, 48 democratic members of Congress voted for the bill to deport immigrants accused, not convicted, of petty theft.
Trump begins his term delivering on promises, but compromised and colluding democrats have ready excuses for betraying their voters.
The late Stuart Hall cautions us to be wary of turning to historical precedent without understanding the specific conjunctures of power that characterize the rise of the right.
