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In Washington, DC a bi-partisan effort is underway to chip away at the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law, which is supposed to prevent the type of economic meltdown that brought the world to the brink in 2008.
Wall Street banks are lobbying to de-fang sections of the law related to derivatives — the complex financial contracts at the core of the meltdown. One deregulation bill, the “London Whale Loophole Act,” would allow American banks to skip Dodd-Frank’s trading rules on derivatives if they are traded in countries that have similar regulatory structures. Continue reading @BillMoyersHQ Preview: #TooBigtoFail and Getting Bigger→
Marcus Samuelsson seems at ease just about anywhere. Born in Ethiopia, adopted by a Swedish family and now based in New York, the famed chef has thrived both at home and abroad. But there’s only one place where he finds total comfort: the kitchen at his restaurant Red Rooster Harlem.
Today, the Senate votes on Elizabeth Warren’s bill to refinance previously issued student loans to current rates, which would save borrowers $55 billion over 10 years. The bill is designed to play up a contrast between the two parties on student aid; it’s not going to pass. And ultimately we need to give young people a free or near-free public option for higher education, rather than modestly subsidize the indebtedness that causes delays in major purchases and harm to the economy. But you could certainly do worse than reducing the massive amount of money the government makes off student borrowers (and I don’t think you have to pay for it; an investment in higher ed pays off itself in the long run). Continue reading Elizabeth Warren faces right-wing stooge: Here’s who’s quietly funding her top critic – Salon→
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A group of eight current and former employees of United Parcel Service in Kentucky have sued the company saying they faced racial discrimination, poor treatment based on race and retaliation after they complained.
The men say they were punished more severely than white employees for “alleged workplace infractions.” Two of the employees were fired; two others resigned, which the lawsuit says constitutes “constructive discharge.”
The employees, William Barber, Jeffrey D. Goree, John J. Hughes, David W. Young, Curtis A. Weathers, Lamont Brown, Glenn D. Jackson and Donald L. Ragland, said they “endured severe and pervasive comments, intimidation, ridicule and insults while working at UPS.” Continue reading 8 UPS employees claim racial discrimination→
On Tuesday, a California superior-court judge ruled that the state’s teacher tenure system discriminates against kids from low-income families. Based on testimony that one to three percent of California teachers are likely “grossly ineffective”—thousands of people, who mostly teach at low-income schools—he reasoned that current tenure policies “impose a disproportionate burden on poor and minority students.” The ruling, in Vergara v. California, has the potential to overturn five state laws governing how long it takes for a teacher to earn tenure; the legal maneuvers necessary to remove a tenured teacher; and which teachers are laid off first in the event of budget cuts or school closings. Continue reading @DanaGoldstein: Will California’s Ruling Against Teacher Tenure Change Schools? – The Atlantic→
Wow — Eric Cantor lost his primary, by a large margin. Amazing.
Obviously I know nothing about his district, or what exactly happened. Fivethirtyeight does have something interesting, pointing out that Tea Party upsets seem correlated with the second dimension of DW-nominate, the Poole-Rosenthal system that maps roll call votes into an implied position space. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, I might come back to this, but basically I’m telling you that I remain a serious nerd. Continue reading #NYTOpinion: @NYTimesKrugman: Fall of an Apparatchik→
With the bursting of the tech bubble at the start of the 21st century, two decades of growth at the high end of the job market — once the province of college graduates with strong cognitive abilities — came to an abrupt halt, according to detailed studies of employment and investment patterns by three Canadian economists. We are still feeling the ramifications.
But new evidence produced by Paul Beaudry and David A. Green of the University of British Columbia, and Ben Sand of York University, demonstrates that the collapse, between 1980 and 2000, of mid-level, mid-pay jobs — gutted by automation or foreign competition (and often both) — has now spread to the high-skill labor market. Continue reading #NYTOpinion: Thomas B. @Edsall: The Downward Ramp→
How did America come to have the highest rate of incarceration in the world? In this video, lawyer and activist Michelle Alexander says that unfortunate fact is not simply a response to crime but deeply connected to racial attitudes, fears and anxieties exploited by politicians over the decades. Continue reading @BillMoyersHQ: Race, the War on Drugs and Mass Incarceration→
If I ask you what constitutes “bad” eating, the kind that leads to obesity and a variety of connected diseases, you’re likely to answer, “Salt, fat and sugar.” This trilogy of evil has been drilled into us for decades, yet that’s not an adequate answer.
We don’t know everything about the dietary links to chronic disease, but the best-qualified people argue that real food is more likely to promote health and less likely to cause disease than hyperprocessed food. And we can further refine that message: Minimally processed plants should dominate our diets. (This isn’t just me saying this; the Institute of Medicine and the Department of Agriculture agree.) Continue reading #NYTOpinion: Mark @Bittman: What Causes Weight Gain→
Here’s a look at some stats on guns — the deaths and school shootings, America’s public opinion and the failed Congressional attempt to take action — in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 27 people, including 20 children and the shooter.
Slate editors note in the introduction to their crowdsourced map that attempts to visualize gun deaths in the US (pictured below), determining the actual number of gun deaths each year is “surprisingly hard.” That’s because as many as 60 percent of gun deaths are suicides that usually go unreported by the press. Continue reading @BillMoyersHQ: #Guns in America After #Newtown→
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