America’s self-reliance obsession makes it more acceptable to applaud working yourself to death than to argue that doing so points to a flawed economic system.
The Gig Economy Celebrates Working Yourself to Death
President Trump is expected to sign into law a decision by Congress to overturn new privacy rules for Internet service providers.
Passed by the Federal Communications Commission in October, the rules never went into effect. If they had, it would have given consumers more control over how ISPs use the data they collect.
One of my favorite filmmakers turns 54 today! Here is a list of his 7 best scenes as a director. I don’t know that I entirely agree with this list (where was the adrenaline shot scene from Pulp Fiction? Or the ear scene in Reservoir Dogs?). But you read this and decide for yourself.
Gutting Obamacare might be the least controversial part of Tom Price’s health care agenda.
By tapping the tea party Republican as his top health care official, President-elect Donald Trump sends a strong signal he may look beyond repealing and replacing Obamacare to try to scale back Medicare and Medicaid, popular entitlements that cover roughly 130 million people, many of whom are sick, poor and vulnerable. And that’s a turnabout from Trump’s campaign pledge — still on his campaign website — that he would leave Medicare untouched.
Price, a former orthopedic surgeon and six-term House member from suburban Atlanta, has proposed polices that are more conservative than those of many House Republican colleagues. His vision for health reform hinges on eliminating much of the federal government’s role in favor of a free-market framework built on privatization, state flexibility and changes to the tax code. The vast majority of the 20 million people now covered under Obamacare would have far less robust coverage — if they got anything at all.
“Young, healthy and wealthy people may do quite well under this vision of health care reform,” said Larry Levitt, a senior vice president at the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. “But the people who are older and poorer and sicker could do a lot worse.”
MOSCOW—In living rooms and kitchens across Russia and Ukraine, the U.S. presidential election is as riveting to TV viewers as “Game of Thrones” is to their American counterparts. Every time Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump speak of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Crimea, Russian hackers or the Donbas (the disputed region of eastern Ukraine)—and it’s rebroadcast here, which it usually is—people in both countries sit up as if some crazy American reality show has just come on. Almost every day, television channels in both countries highlight America’s new scandals and intrigues involving Trump’s connections with post-Soviet oligarchs, or leaked DNC emails, or the endless hurling of insults and the constant debate over America’s supposedly disappearing greatness.
But the main reason the U.S. election has become must-see TV is not because it’s a great reality show, or because Putin and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine come up as issues in the campaign as often as Mexican immigrants, ISIS and Benghazi. It’s because the political rhetoric across the Atlantic is actually starting to change facts on the ground in Russia and Ukraine. In both countries, coverage of the political chaos in the United States—the north star of politics for both anti-American and pro-American figures in this part of the world—is stirring public discontent and doubt about the future in Ukraine, and a sense of confidence, even arrogance, in Russia.
In short, the rhetoric in the U.S. election campaign—especially Trump’s—is already altering policy in the region, hardening Moscow’s attitude toward Ukraine and at the same time frustrating and confusing the Ukrainians who want to stand up to Putin.
On Wednesday evening, President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama danced the tango at a state dinner in Argentina. By the next morning, a bipartisan chorus of disapproval of the optics was bursting out on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Obama should not have canceled his trip to Argentina after the attacks in Brussels, said Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, but his recent photo op at a baseball game in Cuba and his tango left much to be desired.
“Argentina is actually one of the very rare good news stories in the world,” Haass said, referring to the government’s transition from former President Cristina Kirchner. “You have a new democratic government. They’re doing the right things economically, they’re doing the right things politically. It’s a good story.”
“However, the advance person who let him do the tango, that person ought to be looking for work on somebody’s — in somebody’s campaign very, very far away,” Haass remarked. “That was a tremendous mistake. It’s fine to go to Argentina, you want to do the work, but you’ve got to be careful of these little photo ops and optics. Baseball games and tangos, that’s inconsistent with the seriousness of the day.”
Obama should not have canceled his trip to Argentina after the attacks in Brussels, said Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, but his recent photo op at a baseball game in Cuba and his tango left much to be desired.
As chief judge of the nation’s most important appellate court, Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland has sided with President Barack Obama’s environmental regulators against mercury-spewing power plants, supported the administration’s crackdown on for-profit colleges and issued multiple rulings that pleased organized labor.
Those decisions might suggest Garland is a doctrinaire liberal — the left’s answer to Antonin Scalia. But in fact, the appellate court judge blends a penchant for judicial restraint more frequently associated with conservatives with a deference to executive power more typical of liberals.
“He has a reputation for being a judge’s judge rather than a liberal’s liberal,” according to Yale law professor Akhil Amar, who said his “very best students every year all apply to him” for clerkships, regardless of whether they’re liberal or conservative.
The Bensleygram 