Kim Zetter at Wired tackles the following questions: "How Does the FBI Watch List Work? And Could It Have Prevented Orlando?" Short answers: badly and no. Our government adds folks to terror watchlists based mainly on "rumor and innuendo," according to at least one ex-federal prosecutor -- hey, that sounds like how they found Guantánamo detainees! -- and our government actually dropped Mr. Mateen from the list, after an informant tried to entice him into buying weapons and/or bomb-making materials, which I'm sure has never made a would-be terrorist suspicious! Want to fight terrorism? How about pursuing real job-creation policies, instead of "free market" ones?
Christopher Alvear, writing at Inequality.org, reminds us that the recent $15/hour minimum wage hike in Washington, D.C. left out tipped workers. D.C. tipped workers make $2.77/hour, and you can't rely on good tips, since you can't work five Friday or Saturday nights a week. I suspect that a good number of folks (even those who've worked for tips) don't care much for tipped workers, because of that one time the soup was cold or the burger was late or you had to ask twice for a glass of wine. But I also suspect that such folks need to work on their empathy glands a bit.
Paul Buchheit at Nation of Change provides yet another well-linked argument, this time favoring massive tax hikes on the rich. The sentiment expressed by "(t)he richest Americans are takers of social benefits" ought to be a bumper sticker. He doesn't just tackle corporate taxes and federal investment in internet and pharmaceuticals, but also Congressional underfunding of the IRS and how saddling middle-class twenty- and thirty-somethings with debt discourages them from taking the risks that actually improve our civilization. Take that, PR hacks who constantly whine about government regulations keeping your paymasters from "innovating"!
Dean Baker at TruthOut says that "The Secret to the Incredible Wealth of Bill Gates" is basically copyright and patent protection. I'll concede that it plays a role -- history will not remember Sen. Hatch well in this regard -- and I'm always pleased to see economists use the phrase "redistribute income upward," but I think lower tax rates on millionaire income (and even lower tax rates on investment and capital gains) play a larger role. Should we lower copyright and patent protections? Of course we should -- and it'll be much harder to do so than to hike tax rates on millionaire income, which will itself be pretty hard.
Finally, Adam Johnson at FAIR explodes the "liberal" media myth that Bernie Sanders's Secret Service detail "costs taxpayers $38,000 a day." Long story short: our government isn't just going to fire the agents on Mr. Sanders's detail once he quits the race; they'll just go to work somewhere else in our government. The arguments against Bernie Sanders are getting even more desperate than they've always been; if I were more (or less?) spiritually advanced, I'd find that profoundly amusing.
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