Expiration Date by Marcela Valdes

Writing for The New York Times Magazine, Marcela Valdes details just how extensively U.S. dairy farms rely on migrant workers to remain not just competitive but actually viable under the cemented system that sets market costs for milk. Because right-wing demonization of immigrants is treated by most of the news media as just another benign policy difference between the Democratic Party, there’s a dearth of actual analysis of how the many facets of the nation’s economy are utterly dependent on — and indeed boosted by — people who were born outside the country and come to work in hopes of reaching a level of safety not available to them in their home country. If the hate-mongers of the GOP get their way and enact mass deportations, the cruelty against the targeted people will be abhorrent and unforgivable. That is the main reason to oppose such actions, but this article offers the reminder that the repercussions will also be more far-reaching with the likelihood of devastating effects on the entire economic system.

The Staggering Cost of America’s Nuclear Gamble by W.J. Hennigan

The “How do we pay for that?” question that is lobbed at every political proposal for a social program that might benefit average citizens doesn’t get uttered all that often when obscene amounts of money are allocated for military boondoggles. In The New York Times, W.J. Hennigan writes about the mind-boggling expenditures connected with projects meant to update and strengthen the nuclear arsenal of the U.S. Under ideal circumstances, it would be appalling to see this prioritization of government cash distribution for massive endeavors of questionable merit while children go hungry at school and veterans get inadequate treatment for mental health issues (and dozens more examples). As the projects waste money due to poor thinking and inadequate planning, we are far from ideal circumstances.

Treasury recovers $1.3 billion in unpaid taxes from high-wealth tax dodgers by Fatima Hussein

Well, this should probably be a more prominent story in the news. Due to the concerted efforts of the Biden administration, the U.S. has pulled in well over a billion dollars in taxes that were illegally withheld by wealthy residents. Let’s express that as a numeral to help illustrate exactly how much we’re talking abut here: $1,300,000,000. Included in that tally is a chunk of money from over twenty thousand rich fiends who just haven’t bothered to file a tax return since 2017. It feels like jail time is appropriate for those individuals, but I guess that’s not in the mix. This article is written by Fatima Hussein for the Associated Press.