Tim Fernholz – Here’s one really obvious way to boost the US economy

If you’re confused about why American economic growth has been so disappointing, consider this: US government investment in capital, research and development, and education and training is at its lowest point in 45 years. In 2014, federal investment turned negative for the first time since 2001, meaning that government capital is depreciating or becoming obsolete faster than it is being replaced Harvard …

Kanya Bennett – One Year Later: We Still Don’t Know How Many Shot by Police

One year ago today, the White House released The Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing — 116 pages of recommendations meant to address the epidemic of killings of unarmed Black and brown people by the police officers sworn to protect them. The report was supposed to be a blueprint for reforms in policing this country has needed for …

DAVID ROSEN – The Privatization of the Public Sphere

The Republican Party is consolidating behind Donald Trump and, on May 12th, House Speaker Paul Ryan kissed the ring of the party’s presumptive presidential candidate, thus sending a signal to other party hacks to get in line.  And the line is getting longer every day. Remarkably missing from the Trump-Ryan powwow was any mention of potentially contentious issues of Social …

Sarah van Gelder – Choosing a President in a Time of Climate Crisis

The burning of Fort McMurray in the Canadian province of Alberta is a terrifying glimpse of what a climate crisis looks like. While scientists are cautious about attributing any one event to global warming, the months without rain followed by unusually high temperatures are exactly the sort of conditions associated with a warming planet—and they set the conditions for big …

Dahlia Lithwick – Pseudoscience in the Witness Box

The Washington Post published a story so horrifying this weekend that it would stop your breath: “The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.” What went wrong? The Post continues: “Of 28 examiners …

Evaggelos Vallianatos – Why Is the USDA Silencing Its Own Scientists’ Warnings About the Dangerous Effects of Pesticides?

[Editor’s note: Evidence has been mounting that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been silencing its own bee scientists who have raised the alarm about the deadly impact that pesticides, particularly neonicotinoids, have on bees. Last month, for example, the Washington Post reported[3] the story of Jonathan Lindgren, a USDA bee scientist, who filed a whistleblower suit alleging that he was disciplined …

KLAUS MARRE – DOD: CLIMATE CHANGE IS AN URGENT THREAT. GOP DENIES

A T-45C Goshawk takes off from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Paul Ryan. Photo credits: airplane, U.S. Navy; Trump, Cruz, and Ryan, Gage Skidmore / Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0) When Donald Trump was asked about climate change in his meeting with theWashington Post this week, he first gave the standard Republican responses. He noted that …

Giant holes found in Siberia could be signs of a ticking climate ‘time bomb’

When a helicopter pilot spotted the first crater in summer 2014, everyone was baffled. The 100-foot-wide hole appeared on the Yamal Peninsula seemingly out of nowhere, during a tense season of Russian military action in Ukraine and international sanctions. And then more appeared. Lacking a better explanation, aliens and underground missiles were floated as possible theories, according The Washington Post. …

Joseph Mercola – Is the USDA Just a Corporate Lobbyist Group?

Many, if not most, of our regulatory agencies have a long history of protecting industry interests over public and environmental health. Most recently, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has come under increasing scrutiny following mounting charges of harassment and censorship. In the first week of November 2015, Jonathan Lundgren, who spent the last 11 years working as an entomologist …

Chris Arnade – I worked on Wall Street. I am skeptical Hillary Clinton will rein it in

I owe almost my entire Wall Street career to the Clintons. I am not alone; most bankers owe their careers, and their wealth, to them. Over the last 25 years they – with the Clintons it is never just Bill or Hillary – implemented policies that placed Wall Street at the center of the Democratic economic agenda, turning it from …