WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans are now less likely to see U.S. society as divided into the "haves" and "have nots" than they were in 2008, returning to their views prior to that point. A clear majority, 58%, say they do not think of America in this way, after Americans were divided 49% to 49% in the summer of 2008.
Read the whole thing. Pretty interesting.
Sometimes the "live free or die" crowd takes its motto a little too seriously. When it comes to driving and cellphone use, though, that motto accurately sums up the choices.
Should drivers be free to kill two people and injure 38 others? That's what happened in Missouri in August 2010, when a pickup truck rear-ended a big rig, which slammed into a school bus, which rammed another school bus. The NTSB's investigation showed the pickup driver had sent 11 messages in the 11 minutes leading to the accident -- the last message coming "moments" before the tragedy.
Should a tractor-trailer driver be free to kill 11 other people? That happened the same year in Kentucky, where a cell phone-using driver crossed the center lane and slammed into a 15-passenger van.
Should bus drivers be free to be careless with their passengers? In 2004, such a driver was too busy talking on his phone to avoid slamming into the underside of a Virginia stone bridge -- injuring 11 of the 27 high school students on board.
Anti-nanny-state conservatives will argue such tragedies don't justify federal intrusion into state laws. But the NTSB's recommendation is just that -- right now, there is no federal requirement that states ban drivers from cellphone use. And many federal, state and even local roads are built using federal tax dollars. The emergency personnel and police that respond to disastrous events are paid for from your pocket. The NTSB isn't overstepping its proper bounds, nor are governments that adopt its recommendations.
Distracted drivers are deadly menaces that consume public resources.
There are reasons to worry about a rampant nanny state run amok. The NTSB's recommendation isn't even close to the top of the list. In this case, Americans don't have to choose: Live free. Don't die.
WASHINGTON — Type “download movies for free” into Google, and up pops links to sites like the Pirate Bay, directing users to free copies of just about any entertainment — the latest “Twilight” installment, this week’s episode of “Whitney,” the complete recordings of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
When I read this piece I was immediately called back, as I so often am, to my days at Howard and the courses I took looking at slavery. Whenever we discussed the back-breaking conditions, the labor, the sale of family members etc., there was always someone who asserted, roughly, "I couldn't been no slave. They'd a had to kill me!" I occasionally see a similar response here where someone will assert, with less ego, "Why didn't the slaves rebel?" More commonly you get people presiding from on high insisting that if they had lived in the antebellum South, they would have freed all of their slaves.What all these responses have in common is a kind benevolent, and admittedly unintentional, self-aggrandizement. These are not bad people (much as I am sure Mr. Marks isn't a bad person), but they are people speaking from a gut feeling, a kind of revulsion at a situation which offends our modern morals. In the case of the observer of slavery, it is the chaining and marketing of human flesh. In the case of Mr. Marks, it's the astonishingly high levels of black poverty.It is comforting to believe that we, through our sheer will, could transcend these bindings--to believe that if we were slaves, our indomitable courage would have made us Frederick Douglass, if we were slave masters our keen morality would have made us Bobby Carter, that were we poor and black our sense of Protestant industry would be a mighty power sending gang leaders, gang members, hunger, depression and sickle cell into flight. We flatter ourselves, not out of malice, but out of instinct.Still, we are, in the main, ordinary people living in plush times. We are smart enough to get by, responsible enough to raise a couple of kids, thrifty to sock away for a vacation, and industrious enough to keep the lights on. We like our cars. We love a good cheeseburger. We'd die without air-conditioning. In the great mass of humanity that's ever lived, we are distinguished only by our creature comforts, but on the whole, mediocre.That mediocrity is oft-exemplified by the claim that though we are unremarkable in this easy world, something about enslavement, degradation and poverty would make us exemplary. We can barely throw a left hook--but surely we would have beaten Mike Tyson.
Read the whole thing.
Claims that unemployment insurance benefits dissuade the jobless from looking for work are untrue, as the accompanying chart shows. Research by Carl Van Horn and the Heldrich Center at Rutgers University shows that unemployed workers who receive unemployment compensation do more to find a job than those who never receive benefits. They do more online job searching, are more likely to look at newspaper classified ads, and are more likely to send email inquiries and applications to prospective employers.
The reason unemployed Americans can’t find jobs isn’t a failure to look. As EPI economist Heidi Shierholz points out, they can’t find jobs because there are 10.6 million more unemployed workers than there are available jobs.
