May 2013
Student Debt and the Crushing of the American... →
Some wonder how the American ideal of equality of opportunity has eroded so much. The way we finance higher education provides part of the answer. Student debt has become an integral part of the story of American inequality. Robust higher education, with healthy public support, was once the linchpin in a system that promised opportunity for dedicated students of any means. We now have a...
The Volokh Conspiracy » Supreme Court Agrees to... →
What happened to the respondents? Well, for starters, they apparently never got a lawyer. This is probably because of the procedural posture of the case, which relates to the question presented by the case: Under the federal “in forma pauperis” statute (the one that allows people who can’t afford filing fees to have those fees waived), as amended in 1995, federal courts act as gatekeepers for in...
“So the scandal—the real scandal—is that 501(c)(4) groups have been engaged in...”
– Tea Partiers and Tax Exemption: The Real I.R.S. Scandal : The New Yorker
The systemic plight of labor | Felix Salmon →
In reality, however, a 401(k) plan is an icon of futility and the way in which the owners of capital extract rents from the owners of labor. Yves Smith is good on this, as is Matt Yglesias, although the real expert is Helaine Olen: the 401(k) is a way for both your government and your employer to disown you, and to leave your life savings to be raided by the financial-services industry and its...
“But making high-pitched noises won’t solve your problem if your problem is...”
– Hyperbole and a Half: Dogs Don’t Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving
Allie’s on her way back!
Soapbox Envy: CSS is not an amoral monster. →
undercaffeinated:
Quit thinking of pages as static, box-like things.
Hell, if you can, stop thinking in terms of pages, and instead think in terms of content. Unlike a memo or a broadcast, web media allow you to present things in whatever context you damned well please. If you want to split one page into twenty as circumstances might dictate, you can make something that does that.
Via
...
Prenda Law Is The Tip of the Iceberg | Electronic... →
We can rightly celebrate that Prenda Law has been rebuked and its practices exposed. Prenda (under various names) has filed hundreds of suits against thousands of Internet users, and their fall should discourage others from pursuing this business model. But the problem remains. Copyright is a broken system, biased in favor of copyright owners at the public’s expense, prone to harsh...
How Social Networks Drive Black Unemployment -... →
Help is not given to just anyone, nor is it available from everyone. Inequality reproduces itself because help is typically reserved for people who are “like me”: the people who live in my neighborhood, those who attend my church or school or those with whom I have worked in the past. It is only natural that when there are jobs to be had, people who know about them will tell the people who are...
“Porn Studies is the first dedicated, international, peer-reviewed journal to...”
– Announcement from England’s Routledge Publishing, an academic publisher of books, journals and online reference materials. In the announcement (PDF), the editors make a call for papers and say the first issue of Porn Studies will come out in Spring 2014. (via futurejournalismproject)
Credit Reports More Accurately Reflect Debts... →
Credit reporting bureaus have gotten better at updating their records in part because of developments related to a class-action lawsuit.
Yet Another Proposal To Raise My Own Taxes | The... →
April 2013
“In effect, what Democrats said Friday was that in any case where the political...”
– Ezra Klein, per Ta-Nehisi Coates (via politicalprof)
Personal Finance 101 | Crossing Wall Street →
Granted, the Fed is making the satirist’s job pretty easy [with their child-targeted comic books about the basics of personal finance]. You don’t need to be super-hip to take campy delight in the books’ stodgy, unconsciously-patronizing-to-the-kids tone and cheesy graphics, which are pretty much what you’d expect from educational materials mandated by bureaucratic fiat. (Reading through them,...
“Let’s imagine that instead of sending a handful of investigators from the ATF...”
– Richard Kim, “Boston, West, Newtown: For Whom the Bells Toll, For Whom the Alarms Ring” (via thenationmagazine)
“Yet psychologically, we all — all of us – have this dramatically different...”
– The Single Most Stunning Fact About the Boston Bombing (via timoni)
“A twenty-year-old man who had been watching the Boston Marathon had his body...”
– The New Yorker, “The Saudi Marathon Man” (via inothernews)
How to turn people into radicals.
(via kenyatta)
“What kind of world do we live in when young men are so proud of violating...”
– “In Rape Tragedies, the Shame Is Ours,” my latest at The Nation (via jessicavalenti)
When Dickens met Dostoevsky →
Late in 2011, Michiko Kakutani opened her New York Times review of Claire Tomalin’s biography of Charles Dickens with “a remarkable account” she had found in its pages. In London for a few days in 1862, Fyodor Dostoevsky had dropped in on Dickens’s editorial offices and found the writer in an expansive mood.
“In still other words, what if we chose to accept the fact that every few years,...”
– Just Asking - David Foster Wallace - The Atlantic
This essay has become more and more valuable to me since it first appeared.
U.S. Practiced Torture After 9/11, Nonpartisan... →
Debate over the coercive interrogation methods used by the administration of President George W. Bush has often broken down on largely partisan lines. The Constitution Project’s task force on detainee treatment, led by two former members of Congress with experience in the executive branch — a Republican, Asa Hutchinson, and a Democrat, James R. Jones — seeks to produce a stronger national...
Kermit Gosnell and Abortion - NYTimes.com →
…[T]he effort to use [Dr. Gosnell’s] case to “prove” that abortion is wrong, is wrongheaded. If anything, the case highlights the need for safe, affordable and available women’s reproductive health care.
Dr. Gosnell preyed on poor women, who — due to the above-mentioned riders — could not use Medicaid money to pay for abortions and did not have easy access to better care. The...
“Remove all the deductions and exemptions, and you’d be able to reduce top tax...”
– The Economic Case Against Tax Deductions - Businessweek (via felixsalmon)
“The trade-off here is that as virtual value is created, real-world value is used...”
– Virtual Bitcoin Mining Is a Real-World Environmental Disaster - Bloomberg (via iamdanw)
Inequality in the Pursuit of Feminism -... →
While feminist advances are often measured by counting the number of women in senior public positions, the shrinking power of women at the other end of the income spectrum is too often ignored, according to the report published by the Institute for Public Policy Research, a left-leaning organization based in London.
“Gender justice at the top is not enough. Mainstream debates on gender must...
