Some of you may have seen this news report where a resident of a small rural town in southwestern Ohio near Cincinnati had some blatantly racist lawn and porch ornaments plus confederate flags flying. When questioned by the reporter, he and his friend denied that they were in any way being racist and gave other reasons for their actions that defy belief.
[Read more…]
It happens all the time. You agree to meet with someone at a coffee shop but for some reason you arrive early or the other person is late. You think it would be rude to order before the other person arrives because that might look like a rebuke for lateness so you wait, perhaps for some time. While waiting, you may use the bathroom. Then the person arrives and life goes on. One thing that you probably don’t worry about is that the police are going to be called by the store manager and have you arrested for not ordering something.
[Read more…]
The wait staff at restaurants have much lower mandated minimum wages than other workers, based on the argument that tips supplement their income. Whenever the issue of raising their wages comes up, the argument frequently given by the restaurant industry is that doing so would increase prices and drive customers away and thus actually harm the workers, though it is clear that the real reason is that it might affect profits.
[Read more…]
The answer to that question may be revealed on May 8th in North Carolina. Lee Fang writes about an interesting Republican primary race in a congressional district where Walter Jones, the Republican incumbent who has bucked his party and Donald Trump on several issues, is being challenged by a lobbyist who accuses him of being disloyal to Trump.
[Read more…]
India seems to breed a constant stream of so-called ‘holy men’. These are people who preach some kind of religious mish-mash that followers find appealing enough to give them lots of money. They are not unlike the pastors of the megachurches in the US in fleecing the believers. The main difference is that these Indian mystics tend to run residential programs at places called ashrams where people live 24/7 while the megachurch followers live in their own homes.
[Read more…]
UK prime minister Theresa May has apologized for the laws criminalizing homosexual acts that were passed by the British during colonial times in the countries they occupied, saying that they were wrong then and wrong now. But the damage done has been, and continues to be, great. Removing those laws after achieving independence has been difficult, with many countries choosing to just avoid the controversy involved with repealing them. 37 of the 53 members of the Commonwealth still have those laws on the books and some, like Nigeria and Uganda, have made them even more severe. Only a few countries, such as South Africa, have made same-sex relationships legal.
[Read more…]
I am neither the first nor the only person to compare the Trump administration to a soap opera. The resemblance screams at you practically each day. The soap opera elements would be enjoyable as sheer entertainment if the other aspects did not have such serious consequences. But this week comes another comedic turn when a relatively minor character suddenly becomes a major player.
[Read more…]
I just returned from the post office after mailing my tax returns. Yes, I am an old fashioned guy who still does our own taxes and mails in paper returns, much to the delight of the post office that gets money from my doing so and to the chagrin of the tax preparation companies that would like me to pay for their services, and the Internal Revenue Service for whom it would be much easier to process electronic returns than paper ones.
[Read more…]
David Buckel, a lawyer who was prominent for his work on behalf of LGBTQ groups, died after setting himself on fire in a New York City park.
In a suicide note left near his body, Buckel said he had used “fossil fuel” to ignite the fire and wanted his death to symbolize what humans are doing to Earth, the New York Daily News reported. Buckel emailed copies of the note to several news organizations, including the New York Times.
[Read more…]