The assumption was that the system's maintenance and improvements would be paid for by users: Those who drove on the roads and highways. The fairest way to assess that was through a gasoline tax. Drive more or bigger vehicles, you pay more. Seems rather logical.
Fast-forward a half-century.
The gas tax has been stuck in a time warp. It was last raised in 1993, to 18.4 cents a gallon. Despite the passage of more than 20 years, with both ensuing inflation and an aging system that needs ever-more maintenance, there it has stayed. The Highway Trust Fund has been starved of cash, and is the process of going broke.
Why Poor People Stay Poor: Saving money costs money. Period. →
Because our lives seem so unstable, poor people are often seen as being basically incompetent at managing their lives. That is, it’s assumed that we’re not unstable because we’re poor, we’re poor because we’re unstable. So let’s just talk about how impossible it is to keep your life from spiraling out of control when you have no financial cushion whatsoever. And let’s also talk about the ways in which money advice is geared only toward people who actually have money in the first place.
The Vanishing Male Worker: How America Fell Behind →
Working, in America, is in decline. The share of prime-age men — those 25 to 54 years old — who are not working has more than tripled since the late 1960s, to 16 percent. More recently, since the turn of the century, the share of women without paying jobs has been rising, too. The United States, which had one of the highest employment rates among developed nations as recently as 2000, has fallen toward the bottom of the list.
The Real Reason Richer People Marry →
By now it is common knowledge that professionals are more likely to marry and less likely to divorce than are less educated workers. Among 20- to 49-year-old men in 2013, 56 percent of professional, managerial and technical workers were married, compared with 31 percent of service workers, according to the American Community Survey of the Census Bureau. Some people argue that the gap is largely a result of a decline in traditional values among working-class men, particularly whites who constitute the majority of them. Supposedly they are not as industrious in seeking employment as were their fathers and grandfathers and so fail to secure the steady jobs needed for marriage.
But some digging into historical census records shows that social class differences in marriage have been tied to the extent of income inequality among white Americans for at least 130 years. They also suggest that commentators who insist that the marriage gap is wholly a matter of values are almost surely wrong.
I.e., "It's the economy, stupid"
Everything Is Connected →
I can hear you muttering already: he’s completely lost it this time. He’s written a 2,000-word article on whale poo...
In truth it’s not just about whale poo, though that’s an important component. It’s about the remarkable connectivity, on this small and spherical planet, of living processes. Nothing human beings do, and nothing that takes place in the natural world, occurs in isolation.
Down and Out →
Some Inside Baseball on US Democrat strategy:
With that said, there are more costs to Democratic weakness in the states than just House elections. States are where parties build talent and try new ideas. Here, the GOP is instructive. Its brightest stars are either governors (Scott Walker, John Kasich, and Chris Christie) or former state officeholders (Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Joni Ernst). And Republican-controlled statehouses have been incubators for conservative ideas...
...Only a few places stand as incubators for progressive strategies and ideas, and nationwide, Democrats have close to nothing in the way of a bench for federal and statewide office. The liberal counterparts to Walker, Christie, Brownback, and Mike Pence—ideologically motivated governors with national profiles—don’t exist. And as a result, liberals can’t point to a forward-looking agenda that exists outside the bounds of the presidency.
Did the Senate just open the U.S. up to ICC prosecution? →
With the release of the torture report, it will become increasingly difficult for the ICC not to press forward. Expectations that the court confront allegations of international crimes by Western states have never been higher and, as Eugene Kontorovich observes, the torture report “gives significant impetus and ammunition to the ICC’s investigation.” With the CIA’s dirty laundry now airing in the political winds, it will be nearly impossible for the court to reverse course and avoid confronting U.S. abuses in Afghanistan.
Still, advocates of accountability should not get too far ahead of themselves. The gears of justice at the ICC grind notoriously slowly. Moreover, the court’s endgame is not to prosecute U.S. officials. Instead, it is to galvanize domestic accountability for any alleged crimes committed by Western officials. Indeed, it is not within the ICC’s institutional interests to pick a fight it can’t win with the United States or incur the wrath of Washington’s resultant hostility. The prosecutor’s report on Afghanistan is thus not so much a threat to the United States as a signal to take justice for alleged torture seriously. Doing so would require going high up the political food chain, to those in the Bush administration “most responsible” for deploying torture as a means of war. The question is: Will the United States take the opportunity to finally pursue accountability for alleged international crimes committed by its citizens in Afghanistan or not? The world – and the ICC – is watching.
Why it’s necessary — for now — to debate the efficacy of torture →
Now I get why Greenwald wants the debate to be about the inherent immorality of torture. The trouble with debating torture’s efficacy is that if it turns out that information extracted from torture can be tactically useful, then advocates will be able to make their case more effectively in public discourse. On the other hand, if the debate takes place strictly on the moral and ethical plane, anti-torture advocates will feel on firmer ground.
I wholeheartedly agree with Greenwald et al that torture is inherently wrong. I’m embarrassed and ashamed as an American by the CIA actions documented in the Senate report. But I also want to partially defend debating its efficacy. Because I don’t think the development of taboos is as simple as Greenwald wants it to be...