You may think the "liberal" media generally does a better job In These Interesting Times, but Adam Johnson at FAIR reminds us that the "liberal" media still falls all over itself trying to tell you that runaway CEO pay isn't really a big problem. Amidst the pile of hair-splitting and cherry-picked data you'll find one truly astounding nugget: the New York Times analyst who says Rep. Kennedy's statement that the best-paid CEOs make 300 times what average workers make is "true, but misleading." That really ranks down there with "alternative facts."
Hey, how's that tax cut working out for you? Here's how it's working for Kimberly-Clark workers: around 12% of them are going to be losing their jobs. And the corporation's own CFO says they're going to use those tax cuts "for capital investments and to allocate capital to shareholders," apparently unaware of how that sounds to people who work for a living. Oh, and they're also going to shut down 10 manufacturing plants, which fact will no doubt not make Mr. Trump's next State of the Union address.
Neuroscience News asks whether we'd better consider our social media interactions not as an anti-social addiction, but a hyper-social one. And given that our natural need for food can easily turn into an addiction to junk food, we ought to set boundaries on our social media use. That all sounds pretty sane to me -- why think there's something really wrong with you if you spend too much time on your phone, when a fairly simple solution would be to check your phone only at certain times?
Ho hum, Puerto Rico's Governor announces plans to use charter schools and vouchers in response to Hurricane Maria's destruction of the island's schools. Why is disaster always an opportunity for bad right-wing ideas to flourish? I guess I should look forward to the day when much better ideas will get slammed as similarly "opportunistic," as opposed to simply being ignored. (As an aside, I did not know that former Education Secretary Arne Duncan called Hurricane Katrina "the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans." Really, that should have been a career-ending utterance.)
Finally, Dave Zirin at The Nation explains "Why So Many Philadelphia Eagles Are Rejecting This White House." As if you needed another reason to love our new Super Bowl champions! The anti-racist activism of Malcolm Jenkins and Chris Long you probably knew about, but wideout/pass interference penalty-drawing machine Torrey Smith explains it best: "If I told you that I was invited to a party by an individual I believe is sexist or has no respect for women or I told you that this individual has said offensive things towards many minority groups...this individual also called my peers and my friends SOBs, you would understand why I wouldn’t want to go to that party. Why is it any different when the person has title of President of the United States?" This isn't a country founded on the idea that we should treat the President with kid gloves, after all.
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