Surprise, surprise, economists are starting to find that cheap Chinese exports to the U.S. are killing American factory jobs after all. That's not a surprise to you, no doubt, but it is a surprise to economists who've adhered strictly to the rising-tide-lifts-all-boats supply-side school of economics for decades now. I'm not being sarcastic when I say that perhaps the tide is really turning against supply-side.
Digitalsmiths survey asks folks to pick their dream a la carte cable bundle, and the results may not surprise you: big three over-the-air networks occupy three of top four slots (with Fox coming in seventh), while PBS, Discovery, History, NatGeo, AMC (home of Walking Dead), Animal Planet, and Comedy Central (home of The Daily Show) also finish in the top 20, joined by only one "premium" channel, HBO. The Consumerist suggests this bodes well for Verizon's plan to offer "skinny" TV bundles (a basic set of channels plus two packs of ten similarly-themed channels), but I've looked at these bundles, and they're not really in the spirit of a la carte, the idea that folks would necessarily want to watch both Fox News and al-Jazeera America being more than a little absurd.
Justice Department charges over 240 people with over $700 million in Medicare and Medicaid fraud. Remember that we could catch more of these jerks if Congress would properly fund Medicare and Medicaid fraud efforts, and when Congressfolk say ZOMG TEH MEDICAREZ DOEZN'TZ WORKZ BECUZ FRAUDZ!!!!!, it really means they don't want to do the hard work of citizenship in a democracy.
Buried in this piece about Bernie Sanders wanting to "bring back the 40-hour work week" is Mr. Sanders's announcement that he wants to take back "family values" talk from Republicans. I'm really of two minds about that announcement. I'm not sure you announce you're going to do that so much as you just go ahead and do it, but then the "liberal" media never seems to notice when liberals do that, so perhaps he has to tell everyone he's going to do it so that the nth iteration of Bernie Sanders can just take the language back.
NRA board member claims that if the now-deceased pastor of the Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston, SC, had allowed church members to carry guns while in church, he and the eight other victims might still be alive. But what is the likelihood that anyone who happened to be carrying a gun could have gotten off a clear shot in the chaos? People need to stop pretending their lives are action-adventure movies. And I really think living for something other than making yourself rich would make that pretense a lot less attractive.
Finally, in the wake of the many PR hits the Red Cross has taken over failing to deliver good services to Hurricane Sandy sufferers, ProPublica offers "Five Tips for Donating after Disasters." Long story short: do research before giving, use your right as a donor to demand spending disclosure, consider more local groups, consider alternatives to traditional charities, and "think beyond the next disaster" by giving to alleviate the constant problems, like poverty, that make disasters much worse. As we all know, the urge to help fix things can stamp out the urge to help fix things right, but once we admit that, we can work to overcome it.
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