*When a British politician discusses “tough choices”, [person] invariably [reveals] whose side [perse is] really on. A tough choice tends to involve emptying the pockets of those with little, or slashing a service ordinary citizens depend on.*

In any country, the plutocratist politicians are the ones that do this. Labour's string of "tough choices" shows it has become a plutocratist party. The Tories, formerly the reasonable-sounding plutocratist party, has become the incompetent nutso party, and Starmer has moved Labour into the Tories' old spot. Now Labour is competing with the Tories for breaking promises to correct horrible problems. The most recent Labour pledge to be dropped is the wealth tax.

In the US, plutocratist politicians since Reagan have allowed dooH niboR to transfer ever more of the working people's previous share of national income to the rich. Progressive proposals to return some of that to the non-rich always provoke squeals of exaggerated pain from the rich, claiming that that would be unfair and intolerable. The politicians who heed them do so because they are plutocratist. Clinton, the first plutocratist Democratic president since a century ago, continued on that path, and so did Dubya and Obama.

Biden has made efforts to help the non-rich. I expected another Obama but I was favorably surprised. He would have done more but plutocratists in Congress (including some Democrats) blocked him.

*Biden says white supremacy has no place in US after Florida killings.* That shows some moral leadership.

Nonetheless, he is no Bernie Sanders.

However, one difference between political parties in the US and political parties in Britain is that a US party does not have veto power over candidates for federal office. The voters choose them. That is why we see increasing numbers of progressive Democrats elected to Congress. We can, by supporting them, convert the Democratic Party step by step into a progressive party again.

Britons can't do that any more in the Labour Party. Starmer's strict measures to exclude non-plutocratists from running as Labour candidates block that completely, so there is no hope down the Labour path any more.

Compare today's Labour leadership with the leaders that set up the National Health Service and made it work. What a shame.

*Environmentalists Owe an Enormous Debt to Julian Assange.* Wikileaks revealed how the US twisted many countries' arms to legalize the farming of patented GMOs which promote pesticides that can wipe out all insects in the neighborhood, and to allow foreign corporations to buy their farmland.

Wikileaks also published the secret text of the Pacific Partnership Trance (official name, Trans-Pacific Partnership), which helped the US to refuse to sign it. (How sad that countries such as New Zealand signed it. And recently the UK as well — one last act of lasting Tory sabotage.)

Environmentalists should demand that the US drop charges against Julian Assange. And don't waste time — he may be extradited in October.

The charges against him are meant to establish a precedent for treating journalists as spies, and the US, to get its hands on Assange, used tricks dirtier than those it used to push GMOs.

Parents organized in Free Play Houston have convinced Houston public schools to bring back recess, in which children direct their own activities.

Pope Francis rebuked the conservatives in the Catholic Church for choosing right-wing ideology over the church doctrine.

I don't support Catholic doctrine any more than I do right-wing ideology, but this is a good thing.

*Ohio Republicans accused of trying to mislead voters with [misleading description of the abortion ballot question].*