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.
Rwanda weaponizes the Rwandan Genocide to justify its violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), just as Israel weaponizes the Holocaust to justify its violence in Gaza and the West Bank.
The visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the United States highlights the role of imperialism in the genocide in Gaza.
"Psy-Op Satan’s Speech on Capitalist Hill" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
If Biden wins, Kamala Harris will be put forward as a kind of “co-president,” as a palliative for the lack of substantive relief from the forces that are plaguing Black lives.
The election interference and subsequent US backed protests in Venezuela are another attempt to destabilize the nation and stop the ongoing Bolivarian Revolution. But the masses will remain strong.
