Good news: the Department of Justice has joined with nine states to block two proposed health insurance corporation mergers, the Anthem/Cigna merger and the Aetna/Humana merger. Attorney General Lynch may be a bit sanguine about how competitive the private health insurance market can be -- health insurance being pretty much a necessity, private corporations will always have some hostage-taking power in re pricing -- but she's certainly right to say the aforementioned mergers will make that matter worse.
A FAIR survey finds the "liberal" media gives a lot more coverage to European terror deaths than Middle Eastern terror deaths -- like, 19 times more coverage. We could always use a reminder that ISIS kills plenty of Middle Easterners -- as ISIS kills anyone who doesn't march in jackboot lockstep with their reactionary agenda -- because, after all, Middle Easterners are people too. I say this out loud because a huge chunk of Americans (not a majority, but still too many) think Middle Easterners are animals.
Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times notes that even as right-wing groups call California "bad for business," California has a pretty "smoking hot" economy. California has gained more jobs over the last 12 months than any state bar Florida, and leads the nation in GDP growth. Mr. Hiltzik goes on, with hilariously understated results, but just remember that the state where the Arthur Laffer Clown Car has the most influence -- Kansas -- remains a slow-motion train wreck.
Speaking of "too many Americans," the AP suggests that the white supremacy movement has a more "clean-cut" face now, and they get to cheer Donald Trump from inside the convention hall. Of course, cleaning up well has always been essential for hard-right assholes -- I'm old enough to remember how much plastic surgery David Duke got once he decided to run for state office. And I still think what really makes the Republican establishment mad is that white supremacists get to say out loud what they can only say to their friends. But, really, white supremacists want to be called "Europeanists" now? So how do they get to say liberals are politically correct?
Finally, Jack Shuler at TruthOut profiles the Newark Think Tank on Poverty, a community organization largely made up of folks suffering from poverty. Newark, Ohio -- "a red city in a red county" -- is "a microcosm of the American economy" in that it had its manufacturing base stripped away in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but no jobs in any other field ever came back. But the Think Tank organizes the poor into a fighting force that has already gotten the state of Ohio to "ban the box" asking about job applicants' criminal records for public jobs and has also gotten the city of Newark to "ban the box" entirely -- which is certainly a better use of their time than figuring out how to deliver their members' votes to Democrats. The best part is when members testify how the Think Tank has kept them out of jaii, away from drugs -- and filled with purpose. I wish them luck as they evolve.
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