The Reverse Underground Railroad

I keep learning more and more about the horrors of slavery. I had of course heard about the Underground Railroad by which a network of people, most famously Harriet Tubman, helped runaway slaves from the slave states in the south escape. But I have not been aware that that there was also a Reverse Underground Railroad that kidnapped free black people, mostly young boys in the north, and sold them as slaves in the south. The 2013 film 12 Years a Slave tells the story of Solomon Northrup, a free man who was captured and sold into slavery this way, but that case was unusual in that he was well-educated and middle-aged.
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The greedy rich don’t care about their image anymore

Readers may recall my earlier post back in July about an abortive effort by the extremely rich residents of a tiny suburb of Cleveland called Hunting Valley who tried to sneak in a late-night provision into the Ohio state budget that would have exempted the residents of that town, and them only, from paying their fair share of the property taxes that fund public schools by setting a cap on the taxes they pay. The plot was discovered at the 11th hour and governor Mike DeWine eliminated that provision.
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How to do reporting when people won’t cooperate

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared before a congressional hearing this past week and was subjected to questioning by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who asked him about his “ongoing dinner parties with far-right figures.” As Jon Schwarz and Sam Biddle report, Zuckerbergs feelings must have been hurt by the impression being given that someone like him from the supposedly liberal tech industry was hobnobbing with notorious right wingers like “Tucker Carlson of Fox News; talk show host Hugh Hewitt; Ben Shapiro; former Free Beacon editor Matt Continetti; and Brent Bozell, founder of the Media Research Center”, as odious a group of media personalities as you are likely to encounter.
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US politicians would not last five minutes under these ethical standards

Japan’s trade minister has resigned because of violating election laws. What he did will shock you.

Media reports said Isshu Sugawara gave his Tokyo constituents expensive melons, oranges, roe and royal jelly.

He is also said to have offered “condolence money” of 20,000 Japanese yen ($185; £145) to the family of a supporter.

Japan’s election law bans politicians from sending donations to voters in their home constituency.
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The magazine also printed lists of gifts that had been sent by his office, including cod roe and oranges, as well as the thank you letters he allegedly received from the recipients.

My attention was caught by the mention of melons. I read in Dave Barry Does Japan that melons are highly valued as gifts in Japan and can be incredibly pricey. If you are invited to someone’s home, giving them a melon as a gift means that you hold them in great regard. Of course, Barry is a wacky humorist so one is never quite sure whether he is being serious but it turns out that he was not kidding.

[A] peek inside the sparkling glass display cases at any of Sembikiya’s Tokyo outlets reveals expensive treasures of a surprising kind.

From heart-shaped watermelons to “Ruby Roman” grapes, which are the size of a ping pong ball, this retailer specializes in selling mouth-watering produce at eye-watering prices.

Expensive, carefully-cultivated fruit, however, is not unique to Sembikiya’s stores.

Across Japan, such products regularly sell for tens of thousands of dollars at auction. In 2016, a pair of premium Hokkaido cantaloupe sold for a record $27,240 (3 million yen).

“Fruits are treated differently in Asian culture and in Japanese society especially,” Soyeon Shim, dean of the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, tells CNN. “Fruit purchase and consumption are tied to social and cultural practices.

“It is not only an important part of their diet, but, perhaps more importantly, fruit is considered a luxury item and plays an important and elaborate ritual part in Japan’s extensive gift-giving practices.”

So my question is why growers in countries like the US, where fruits are cheap, are not exporting a lot of them to Japan to take advantage of the price differential.

Meet Katie Porter, yet another sharp progressive congresswoman

Much attention has been focused on four new first-teerm progressive congresswomen who have really shaken things up in the establishment-friendly Congress: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley. But there is another first term congresswoman whose well-prepared, sharp questioning of witnesses before congressional committees has drawn a great deal of admiration but not as much publicity, perhaps because she has not been singled out for criticism by Donald Trump. She is Katie Porter from the state of California.
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Debating the wealth tax

To understand why the oligarchy in the US absolutely hates the idea of Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren becoming president, one need look no further than their proposals for a tax on wealth to serve two goals: provide income to fund their progressive agendas and to reduce the staggering levels of inequality in the US.

Sen. Bernie Sanders has unveiled his plan to directly tax the wealth of millionaires and billionaires — and it goes substantially further than Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s plan to do the same.

The proposal would cut the wealth of billionaires in the United States in half in 15 years and entirely close the gap in wealth growth between billionaires and the average American family, according to University of California Berkeley economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez, who advised Sanders on his plan. Hitting the richest 180,000 American households, Saez and Zucman estimate the tax would raise $4.35 trillion over the next decade, which Sanders says would go toward paying for his biggest policies, including Medicare-for-all, affordable housing, and universal childcare.
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Cultured meat

Some of the arguments against eating meat are that it is morally wrong to kill animals, that the factory farming practices that it leads to create conditions for the animals that are repugnant and ethically indefensible, and that growing animals for meat is a waste of resources and is economically wasteful and environmentally damaging, since it takes a lot of land and plant products to produce animals for meat. And yet people seem to have a taste for meat.
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Warren joins Sanders in fighting the undermining of public schools

Rachel M. Cohen writes that the two most progressive candidates in the Democratic primary race have both called for reining in the charter school movement and the relentless undermining of the public school system

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN RELEASED a wide-ranging education plan Monday, pledging to invest hundreds of billions of dollars into public schools if she wins the presidency, paid in part through her proposed two-cent tax on wealth over $50 million. Warren’s plan is infused with her broader campaign themes of reducing corruption and fraud; she backs measures like new taxes on education lobbying, limiting the profiteering of tech companies that sell digital products to schools, and curbing self-dealing within charter schools.
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Power protects power

In an interview, investigative journalist Ronan Farrow says that the resistance he faced from his former bosses at NBC about his investigations into the sexual abuse allegations against powerful media mogul Harvey Weinstein and their own star Matt Lauer are examples of how ‘power protects power’, even though some of the people proclaim themselves to be liberals and even progressives.
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