...On October 5th Mr Brown signed the bill—a strong expression of his support, since for it to pass into law the minimum that he needed to do was to decline to veto it. Next year California will thus join Oregon, Vermont, Washington and Montana in allowing doctors, with appropriate safeguards, to prescribe lethal drugs that terminally ill patients can use to end their own lives, if they so choose.
The Decline of ‘Big Soda’ →
Even as anti-obesity campaigners like Mr. Nutter have failed to pass taxes, they have accomplished something larger. In the course of the fight, they have reminded people that soda is not a very healthy product. They have echoed similar messages coming from public health researchers and others — and fundamentally changed the way Americans think about soda.
Over the last 20 years, sales of full-calorie soda in the United States have plummeted by more than 25 percent. Soda consumption, which rocketed from the 1960s through 1990s, is now experiencing a serious and sustained decline.
That Massive TPP →
This doesn't mean that the TPP can't have an impact. It will lock in a regulatory structure, the exact parameters of which are yet to be seen. We do know that the folks at the table came from places like General Electric and Monsanto, not the AFL-CIO and the Sierra Club. We also know that it will mean paying more for drugs and other patent and copyright protected material (forms of protection, whose negative impact is never included in growth projections), but we don't yet know how much.
We also know that the Obama administration gave up an opportunity to include currency rules. This means that the trade deficit is likely to persist long into the future. This deficit has been a persistent source of gap in demand, leading to millions of lost jobs. We filled this demand in the 1990s with the stock bubble and in the last decade with the housing bubble. It seems the latest plan from the Fed is that we simply won't fill the gap in this decade.
European Court of Justice Rules Against Safe Harbor →
This is a big deal, because it directly affects all the large American Internet companies. If this stands, expect much more pressure on the NSA to stop their indiscriminate spying on everyone.
The Trans-Pacific Free-Trade Charade →
As negotiators and ministers from the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim countries meet in Atlanta in an effort to finalize the details of the sweeping new Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), some sober analysis is warranted. The biggest regional trade and investment agreement in history is not what it seems.
You will hear much about the importance of the TPP for “free trade.” The reality is that this is an agreement to manage its members’ trade and investment relations – and to do so on behalf of each country’s most powerful business lobbies. Make no mistake: It is evident from the main outstanding issues, over which negotiators are still haggling, that the TPP is not about “free” trade.
New Zealand has threatened to walk away from the agreement over the way Canada and the US manage trade in dairy products. Australia is not happy with how the US and Mexico manage trade in sugar. And the US is not happy with how Japan manages trade in rice. These industries are backed by significant voting blocs in their respective countries. And they represent just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how the TPP would advance an agenda that actually runs counter to free trade.
The Radically Changing Story of the U.S. Airstrike on Afghan Hospital: From Mistake to Justification →
In particular, MSF quickly publicized numerous facts that cast serious doubt on the original U.S. claim that the strike on the hospital was just an accident. To begin with, the organization had repeatedly advised the U.S. military of the exact GPS coordinates of the hospital. They did so most recently on September 29, just five days before the strike. Beyond that, MSF personnel at the facility “frantically” called U.S. military officials during the strike to advise them that the hospital was being hit and to plead with them to stop, but the strikes continued in a “sustained” manner for 30 more minutes...
It’s not about mental illness: The big lie that always follows mass shootings by white males →
I get really really tired of hearing the phrase “mental illness” thrown around as a way to avoid saying other terms like “toxic masculinity,” “white supremacy,” “misogyny” or “racism.”
We barely know anything about the suspect in the Charleston, South Carolina, atrocity. We certainly don’t have testimony from a mental health professional responsible for his care that he suffered from any specific mental illness, or that he suffered from a mental illness at all.
We do have statistics showing that the vast majority of people who commit acts of violence do not have a diagnosis of mental illness and, conversely, people who have mental illness are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators.
The American Gun Problem - And How a Master Wizard of Persuasion Could Fix it. →
The reasoning behind his proposal isn't nuanced or particularly fact-based, but it's politically deft.
So how do we balance the legitimate safety interests of citizens who find themselves in wildly different risk situations? Some need more guns to feel safe and some need fewer.
The approach least-likely to work is the one we are trying now, in which the President pushes for gun restrictions while responsible gun owners resist. I don’t see that changing, no matter how many mass killings happen.
So here’s one suggestion, based on the rules of persuasion that I have been blogging about lately. The idea is for President Obama (or our next president) to do the following:...