Today General Motors announced that it has fired 15 employees and disciplined five others in the wake of an internal investigation into the company’s handling of defective ignition switches, which lead to at least 13 fatalities.
“What GM did was break the law … They failed to meet their public safety obligations,” scolded Sec of Transportation Anthony Foxx a few weeks ago after imposing the largest possible penalty on the giant automaker.
Attorney General Eric Holder was even more adamant recently when he announced the guilty plea of giant bank Credit Suisse to criminal charges for aiding rich Americans avoid paying taxes. “This case shows that no financial institution, no matter its size or global reach, is above the law.”
Category Archives: Readings from around the webs…
Preview: @JosephEStiglitz: How Tax Reform Can Save the Middle Class | Moyers & Company | BillMoyers.com
In this preview, Joseph E. Stiglitz says corporate abuse of our tax system has helped make America unequal and undemocratic. But the Nobel Prize-winning economist has a plan to change that.
In America right now inequality is too great, unemployment too high, public investments too meager, corporations too greedy and the tax code too biased toward the very rich.
But the Nobel Laureate economist Joseph E. Stiglitz says it doesn’t have to be this way. He has a new plan for overhauling America’s current tax system, which he says contributes to making America the most unequal society of the advanced countries.
Dropout Rates for Black Males Are Misleading and Wrong – The Root
On Bladensburg Road along the border of Prince George’s County, Md., and Washington, D.C., a billboard reads, “57% of District of Columbia students drop out.” The billboard is large and imposing, with an orange backdrop and bold diagonal dashes on each side to mimic a road-hazard sign. Many would find the content of the sign to be consistent with the frequently cited report “The Urgency of Now: The Schott 50 State Report on Public Education and Black Males,” by the Schott Foundation, which states that Washington, D.C., has a graduation rate of 38 percent for black males.
To be blunt, the message on the billboard is a lie, and technically, the percentage of students who drop out has only a little to do with the percentage that graduates. Yes, this is counterintuitive, but I will explain more later.
The high school dropout rate in D.C. is less than 10 percent for all students, and 14 percent for black males (pdf). The Schott Foundation’s observation that the graduation rate for black males is 38 percent is accurate. However, since most people do not know the difference between the graduation rate and the dropout rate, the report is misrepresented far more than it is accurately presented. Anyone doing an analysis of demographic trends in the D.C. metro area understands that any measure of cohort graduation rates will be influenced by the outmigration of black people from the city core.
Continue reading Dropout Rates for Black Males Are Misleading and Wrong – The Root
The American Dream Is Alive—and It’s Really, Really Tiny – The Atlantic
By Chris Heller
How did this Portland couple go from $30,000 of debt to homeownership? They ditched many of their material possessions, quit the jobs they hated, and settled down in a 128-square-foot cottage. “Part of the reason we moved into a tiny house,” they explain, “was to get rid of all this stuff and the trappings of daily life.”
To watch the video clip on The Atlantic site, click here:
Curated from www.theatlantic.com
The Endless Civil War, Continued – The Atlantic
James Fallows
Over the past few weeks, my wife Deb and I have been reporting on Mississippi’s efforts to move itself up from the bottom in rankings of educational achievement, and similarly to move itself up from being overall the poorest state in the nation.
Question for the day, from readers: whether any success it achieves will necessarily come at the expense of other places, especially in the North. Of course movement in rankings is by definition zero-sum. The real question is whether greater prosperity for Mississippi has to mean less somewhere else.
Continue reading The Endless Civil War, Continued – The Atlantic
The Two Kinds of Bowe Bergdahl Backlash – The Atlantic
No sooner had the yellow ribbons started to come down from the trees than the backlash started up. Not everyone is delighted about the Obama administration’s deal to free American POW Bowe Bergdahl by exchanging him for five Guantanamo Bay prisoners.
It’s pretty easy to view this cynically, as a sign that in these times, everything is political and the country can’t come together over anything. And to a certain extent that’s true: If dueling, pro-forma charges of politicization from official Democratic and Republican spokesmen don’t instill pessimism, what will? But while there are plenty of controversies that seem far from producing any meaningful revelations, despite extensive inquiry—Benghazi comes to mind—there are important constitutional and policy issues at stake in this case.
Continue reading The Two Kinds of Bowe Bergdahl Backlash – The Atlantic