I've been remiss in noting that a London School of Economics study found that a half-century of tax-cuts-for-the-rich haven't "trickled down" to the poor, but have mainly benefited the rich, which will seem obvious to anyone who understands human nature even a little, but still, it's nice to have some science behind it. Of course, right-wingers will say and you're surprised? to avoid serious argument over the matter, when these would be the same right-wingers who have uncritically repeated trickle-down pablum for the last half-century. (Hey, it's shameless product plug time: here's a bumper sticker I made that's relevant to this topic.)
I've also been remiss to realize that yes, you can put a minimum wage hike in a budget bill subject to reconciliation, and therefore avoid Yet Another Senate Filibuster. President Biden expressed skepticism that the minimum wage hike would survive such scrutiny, but he should have known better, too, having successfully shepherded the Affordable Care Act through budget reconciliation in 2010. Sen. Sanders (I-VT), now Senate Budget Committee Chair, suggests that when our Congressional Budget Office (or CBO) declared that the minimum wage hike would affect federal deficits, they essentially made the minimum wage hike a budgetary matter. (As an aside, a $54 billion increase in the deficit over 10 years isn't very big. Remember those Trump tax cuts? $1.7 trillion over 10 years. So tell your Trumphole friends to take a seat.)
Don't breathe too easily over the news that only 2% of Americans have a positive view of the QAnon madness, because those 2% will all vote, and in a close election between a cowardly Democrat and an insane Republican, they could very easily be the difference. I'm a little more annoyed that some 11% are neutral toward QAnon, which I suppose means they haven't heard of it (meaning they live under a rock), want to keep an open mind (meaning their brains are about to fall out), or don't want to form an opinion until they know everything (how much of this pile of elephant dung does anyone need to see?). A proper conspiracy theorist would target that 11% hard, and if they get to them before we do, we're going to lose them.
I'm not impressed that the Arizona "shaman"/horn-wearer/Capitol seditionist has apologized for his wrongdoing, and not just because folks will say lots of things once they find their ass in a sling -- dude displays absolutely no understanding of why he was wrong. "I was wrong, period" doesn't actually explain much; in fact, one could easily view it as an attempt to forestall any analysis, from you or him, of why he's wrong. It's a long journey from "I want to change America" to "I'm going to overthrow our government," and if you ask forgiveness by saying "I was wrong, period" without elaborating on any part of that journey, then I'm going to suspect you're bullshitting. Do you want the people who would forgive you to think you're bullshitting? (Hate to pile on, but saying Mr. Trump "let a lot of peaceful people down" should help you remember that Mr. Angeli, or Chansley, or whatever, was most decidedly not peaceful on January 6.)
Finally, Kenyan engineer Nzambi Matee creates a brick made of plastic waste and sand that can hold twice as much weight as concrete blocks. And her corporation gets a lot of the unrecyclable plastic it uses for free (at least until packaging plants figure out they're sitting on a gold mine!). They use it for paving stones, and I would wonder whether her bricks are too light for, say, building a house, but still, any time you turn trash into something useful, you win. I wish her the best.
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