September 5, 2017—The dueling nuclear threats of Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump have brought the threat of atomic annihilation, well known to Americans of the boomer generation, back into play. This Guardian article reminds us that way back in 1970, 191 nations signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. By the terms of the accord, non-nuclear states agreed not to acquire nuclear arms, while those states already possessing these instruments of civilian massacre agreed to eliminate them from their arsenals. Since that time, only four additional states have acquired nuclear weapons, but the then-exiting nuclear powers have not taken steps to disarm. Citizens of all nuclear powers must demand their governments work aggressively to remove this scourge from the earth.

August 27, 2017—A lack of housing affordable for citizens of modest incomes plagues cities across the country. Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel and two Chicago alderman Friday announced a new plan to bring more affordable dwellings to Chicago neighborhoods.

August 25, 2017—Though he has so far failed to move any piece of his legislative agenda in Congress, the Accidental President has undone scores of Obama-era policies through executive orders. This Washington Post piece neatly sums up the damage done.

August 24, 2017—Nine northeast and mid-Atlantic states have for eight years participated in a regional cap-and-trade program aimed at curbing greenhouse emissions. The inititiative, whose members' combined economies would constitute the world's sixth largest if they were a separate nation, has agreed on more ambitious reduction targets: 30% by 2030.

August 23, 2017—Germany, the world's largest mature social democracy, will go to the polls to choose a new national government on September 24. This Deutsche Welle (DW) article neatly explains how the German election system works, with voters choosing both a particular candidate for their district as well as a political party.

August 22, 2017—The Social Democrat finds nearly inconceivable, in 21st-Century America, the continuing existence of Georgia's Mount Rushmore–like Stone Mountain, which commemorates Confederate leaders who dragged our nation into five years of bloody civil war to insure that race-based slavery might forever endure in North America. The much-visited sight in suburban Atlanta, developed by 1960s racists upset over desegregation, saw the founding of the "second KKK" in 1915 and continues to be a rallying point for the psychically diseased.

August 8, 2017—Scientists from 13 agencies have delivered to the White House the quadrennial National Climate Assessment mandated by federal law. An inconvenient truth for the Trump administration's climate-deniers: the report roundly confirms human-caused global warming and its increasingly deleterious impact on the U.S.

July 17, 2017 — Right-wing critics would like to use safety problems at Job Corps residential centers as a pretext to defund the program. For many young Americans, residential Job Corps centers provide "a safer environment" and are "transformational for the overwhelming number of students who finish the program," according to Virginia Democrat Bobby Scott. The Social Democrat supports yet greater investment in bringing otherwise marginalized youth into the nation's economic mainstream.

July 17, 2017 — A current plank of the right's propaganda machine is that Obamacare is "exploding" in a "death spiral." The program's problems are largely limited to states whose right-wing governments have made little effort to make the program work, writes economist Dean Baker in this L.A. Times op-ed.

July 11, 2017 — A newly issued report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that the impact of increasingly damaging human activity on other animal populations is even more severe than previously thought and warns that "humanity will eventually pay a very high price for the decimation of the only assemblage of life that we know of in the universe."

July 11, 2017 — Seattle's City Council unanimously passed a measure Monday which will levy a 2.25% income tax on incomes over $250,000. With no state-level income tax, this legislation creates the first income tax in Washington. As multiple economic forces contribute to a widening gap between high earners and all other citizens, The Social Democrat supports higher taxes on the highly paid to support needed social democratic priorities.

July 6, 2017 — Swedish automaker Volov has announced that, beginning in 2019, it will discontinue all models powered solely by gasoline engines in favor of electric and hibrid.