Wealthy Americans can expect to live 15 years longer than poor peers, studies in the Lancet find.
Credit: Ariel Skelley/Blend
You can’t buy time – except, it seems, in America.
Increasing inequality means wealthy Americans can now expect to live up to 15 years longer than their poor counterparts, reports in the British medical journal the Lancet have found.
Researchers said these disparities appear to be worsened by the American health system itself, which relies on for-profit insurance companies, and is the most expensive in the world.
Their conclusion? Treat healthcare as a human right.
“Healthcare is not a commodity,” wrote US Senator Bernie Sanders in an opinion article introducing the issue of the journal, which is devoted to inequality in American healthcare. “The goal of a healthcare system should be to keep people well, not to make stockholders rich. The USA has the most expensive, bureaucratic, wasteful, and ineffective healthcare system in the world.”
Sanders, like authors of the lead […]
Credit: C-Span
When the Obama administration launched a sweeping policy to reduce harsh prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, rave reviews came from across the political spectrum. Civil rights groups and the Koch brothers praised Obama for his efforts, saying he was making the criminal justice system more humane.
But there was one person who watched these developments with some horror. Steven H. Cook, a former street cop who became a federal prosecutor based in Knoxville, Tenn., saw nothing wrong with how the system worked — not the life sentences for drug charges, not the huge growth of the prison population. And he went everywhere — Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox News, congressional hearings, public panels — to spread a different gospel.
“The federal criminal justice system simply is not broken. In fact, it’s working exactly as designed,” Cook said at a criminal justice panel at The Washington Post last year.
The Obama administration largely ignored Cook, who was then president of the National Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys. But he won’t be overlooked anymore.
Attorney […]
Credit: CBS News
OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON — Each year, more than 100,000 marijuana plants are grown, processed and packaged in one industrial warehouse in Olympia, Washington. And it’s all legal.
“I think a lot of people would be surprised to see what a good recreational facility looks like,” said Jerry Derevyanny of Northwest Cannabis Solutions, the state’s OLYMPIA, Wash. — leading pot producer earning $21 million last year.
“I think that a lot of politicians … have realized that even if they don’t personally like marijuana, that this is the better way forward,” he said.
In 2012, Washington became one of the first of eight states and the District of Columbia to legalize recreational marijuana. It’s now a $2 billion business that has raked in $478 million in taxes.
But the federal government puts cannabis in the same category as heroin, and in a departure from the Obama administration, more aggressive enforcement may be coming.
“I reject the idea that America will be a better place if can just have more marijuana and you can go down […]
Rooftop solar in Indiana will take a big hit if the bill becomes law.
Credit: AP /Stephan Savoia
The Indiana House voted Tuesday for a bill that opponents say will cripple the state’s solar industry.
If enacted, the bill would reduce the amount solar power users are compensated for routing unused electricity back on the grid.
Over the next five years, utilities would reduce net metering — a policy that ensures homeowners are compensated for electricity they add to the grid from solar generation — before bottoming out in 2022. Solar owners will then be compensated at much-reduced level, roughly around the wholesale price for electricity. The bill would also put a legislative cap on the amount of non-utility solar in the state.
“The definite intent is to make sure that homeowners, schools, farmers, and small businesses are not going to be able to afford this in the future,” said Jodi Perras, who manages the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign in […]
Credit: Yes!
With national policy likely to compound the income and wealth gap in the coming years, states and localities are fighting back.
Across the country, local jurisdictions aren’t waiting for federal action or corporate governance reforms to close the wage gap. In December, for example, the city of Portland, Oregon, passed an ordinance to raise the business tax on companies with CEOs who earn more than 100 times the median pay of their workers. Portland officials said the ordinance is the first of its kind in the country. And now, more cities and states are poised to follow suit.
“The huge divide in income and wealth has real-world implications,” Steve Novick wrote last October in Inequality.org. Novick sponsored the ordinance when he was on the Portland City Council. “Too many Americans cannot get a leg up,” he wrote. “Income inequality undermines the American dream.”
Portland city government projects the tax will raise $2.5 million to $3.5 million a year, which city officials have said will likely help pay for the city’s homeless […]
