Donald Trump now says he'll likely raise taxes on the rich, contra his stated proposal cutting the top tax bracket from 39.6% to 25%. This is a flip-flop I would welcome, if I believed anything Donald Trump says. If you really, really want to believe it -- and I don't blame you! -- consider that he suggests that his original proposal was just a starting point in negotiation. So how does a tax hike on the rich seem like the likely end result of that negotiation, given that these are scaredy-cat politicians he'd be negotiating with? Nah, just kidding -- he's not that stupid; he just hopes you are.
Airline passenger gets a UPenn economist in trouble with the feds after watching him "scribble furiously" on a piece of paper. Turns out he was doing a differential equation, and not planning the destruction of the aircraft, since people always do that right before the plane takes off! After all, it's not at all like people would plan such a thing in secret, with lots of time to spare to work out the plan's kinks! Also, he's Italian, not Middle Eastern, in case you thought Italians had fully integrated into whitehood.
NFL players got a lot of ink with regard to traumatic brain injuries, but Reagan Jackson, writing at Yes! magazine, reminds us of a forgotten face of the traumatic brain injury: the domestic abuse survivor. Nearly one out of every four American women suffers abuse at the hands of an intimate partner, and that abuse often results in a TBI, but hardly anyone has studied the matter -- until now, as a domestic violence shelter in Phoenix has partnered with a local medical research institution to research that the research center's CEO says could result in 20 million TBI diagnoses resulting from domestic abuse every year. I shudder to think that not very many men will be moved to action by that prospect.
Ellen Rand, writing at New American Media, talks about a time when elderly gay couples sometimes go back into the closet: when one partner is receiving substantial nursing care. A 2011 study found just over one in five gay folks feeling they could be "out" in a nursing home, with half reporting that staff would refuse to provide very basic care, like feeding or toileting. So, in case you thought our work on LGBT rights was done, it's not.
Finally, Sarah Zhang, writing at Wired, reminds us that "No, Harvard's Mumps Outbreak Doesn't Mean Vaccines Are Bunk." Long story short: before the MMR vaccine (which covers mumps, measles, and rubella), we had around 186,000 cases of mumps annually, and now we have no more than 2,000, which says that the vaccines work. Too many people act like science is evil because its results aren't as absolute as all those '50s B movies they watched as kids taught them it should be.
UPDATE. Now Mr. Trump says he was really saying that the rich would pay more than his proposed tax rate, but less than they're paying now. You could be excused for thinking his statement that "I am willing to pay more, and you know what, the wealthy are willing to pay more" meant that he and other wealthy folk are willing to pay more now.
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