“Euthanasia is the last taboo. We can change gender, two men can have a baby, two women can have a baby, and abortion is legal (just!). But a person with an incurable disease who wants to end her or his life cannot do so in most countries.” (Letter to the Guardian Weekly from Elizabeth Keating, …
Fewer than 1 percent of the population currently serve in uniform, and 7 percent are military veterans. The number of Gold Star families — the term for those who lost a family member to combat — is about 7,000 from Iraq and Afghanistan. There is a discussion among military families, veterans and scholars that begins …
Continue reading ‘Would the military support the Constitution?’ »
Not only do billionaires pay lower tax rates than working Americans, they also get to pick and choose when to pay taxes at all. Because they only pay taxes when they sell assets, if they don’t sell their assets, they don’t pay any taxes. That’s how many billionaires ended up with so little annual earnings …
Drivers drove their vehicles into protestors at least 139 times between late May 2020 and the end of September 2021, killing three people and injuring at least 100. A nationwide analysis indicates that only 75 of the ramming cases led to any charges, with only 4 drivers convicted of felonies. (The Boston Globe). My comment: …
In 2020 Netflix paid £5million in taxes on a turnover of £1.15 billion. Last year saw its subscription base jump to 13 million. (The Week 22 Oct, 2021) My comment: I love Netflix, but I love equity and fairness more. Netflix should pay a fair rate of tax, and that means much, much more, not …
So the 18 year old, armed with an automatic weapon suited best for military use, is fully acquitted of murder. So be it. I respect jury verdicts. But there are people who question why a teenager would be allowed to possess such a weapon of war and intervene with it in public, apparently with the …
Continue reading ‘A curse on guns in the hands of amateurs’ »
The University of Florida has barred three professors from providing expert testimony in a lawsuit that restricts voting rights. The university said in a statement that testimony by professors Dan Smith, Michael McDonald, and Sharon Austin, as paid experts for the plaintiffs, would be “adverse to the university’s interests as a state of Florida institution.” …
Continue reading ‘If you can’t win on policy and care for fellow humans…….’ »
Oil delegates dominate Cop26 There were more delegates at Cop26 associated with the fossil fuel industry than from any single country, the BBC reported. It said 503 people with links to fossil fuel interests had been accredited for the climate summit, compared with 479 from Brazil, which has the largest official team of negotiators. A …
In 2001, America’s homicide rate jumped 20% from the previous year, the highest increase in modern history, elevated by the body count of the 9/11 terror attacks. This week that sombre record was broken. Provisional data from the National Center for Health Statistics showed that the homicide rate in the US rose 30% between 2019 …
Border Patrol arrests along the Mexico border reached their highest levels since 1986. Historical data shows fiscal year 2021’s figure was the highest total ever recorded. U.S. authorities detained more than 1.7 million migrants along the Mexico border during the 2021 fiscal year that ended in September, and arrests by the Border Patrol soared to …
A school administrator in Southlake, Texas, advised teachers last week that if they have a book about the Holocaust in their classroom, they should also have a book with an “opposing” perspective. The only “diverse perspective” on the Holocaust is Holocaust denial: the odious contention that Hitler didn’t arrange the murder of 6 million Jews …
The US Supreme Court has been hearing the first in-person arguments since the March 2020 coronavirus lockdown. The high court, with a newly expanded 6-3 conservative majority, has a politically charged docket. The court will consider: – trimming or eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion, established in the landmark Roe v. Wade case. -cases …
Continue reading ‘Supreme Court starts new term with abortion, guns on the docket’ »
The single-most significant problem millions of American workers face on a daily basis is the simple fact that they’re not paid enough. The federal minimum wage is only $7.25 an hour, which leaves millions of full-time workers in poverty while dragging down the wages of the rest of the workforce in turn. $7.25/hour, or just …
It was only a matter of time before the more extreme elements of the GOP tried to undermine the bipartisan infrastructure. And right on cue as the bipartisan working group is attempting to finalize the bill’s details, some conservative groups are now demanding that the deal not include increased funding for IRS enforcement. This demand …
To The Times The Chancellor of the Exchequer’s modest housing measures deserve modest support, but most of this discussion misses the point. Of course supply must be increased, not least to deal with the backlog. The underlying problem, though, is uncontrolled demand. Most household growth comes from immigration, not from the domestic population: in recent …
