Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Image via Getty The political tell-all has become a lucrative option for former politicians, hacks, and hangers-on who wish to turn onetime proximity to power into a big payday. In just the last year, Barack and Michelle Obama inked a post-White House joint memoir deal that included a reported $65 million advance, and Hillary Clinton…
Welcome to Space the Nation, a weekly column where we’ll use the back catalog of genre fiction to makes sense of what’s happening today. My goal is to be as specific as possible. I’m interested in works that engage with immediate questions, ripped from the headlines: What happens when a news environment allows consumers to…
Many U.S. charities are worried the tax overhaul bill signed by President Trump on Friday could spur a landmark shift in philanthropy, speeding along the decline of middle-class donors and transforming charitable gift-giving into a pursuit largely left to the wealthy. The source of concern is how the tax bill is expected to sharply reduce…
The US government has announced significant cuts in its United Nations budget obligations for 2018-2019 in what will be interpreted as a further ratcheting up of pressure from the Trump administration looking to bend decision-making at the international body to its will. In a statement released over the holiday, the US Mission to the United…
The Israeli intelligence service asked the great psychologist Daniel Kahneman for help in the 1970s, and Kahneman came back with a suggestion: Get rid of the classic intelligence report. It allows leaders to justify any conclusion they want, Kahneman said. In its place, he suggested giving the leaders estimated probabilities of events. The intelligence service…
Credit Nicolas Ortega To hear the Christian right tell it, President Trump should be a candidate for sainthood — that is, if evangelicals believed in saints. “Never in my lifetime have we had a Potus willing to take such a strong outspoken stand for the Christian faith like Donald Trump,” tweeted Franklin Graham, the son…
PlayJonathan Ernst/Reuters WATCH The House passes the biggest tax overhaul in 3 decades President Donald Trump on Wednesday hailed congressional Republicans’ ambitious $1.5 trillion rewrite of the tax code as a win for middle class Americans. Interested in Taxes? Add Taxes as an interest to stay up to date on the latest Taxes news, video,…
The Trump administration is prohibiting officials at the nation’s top public health agency from using a list of seven words or phrases — including “fetus” and “transgender” — in official documents being prepared for next year’s budget. Policy analysts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta were told of the list of…
Getty In an age of unprecedented inequality, Senate Republicans still found the gall to pass a tax plan in the early hours of Saturday morning that constitutes an enormous transfer of wealth from the poor to the very wealthy. As The New York Times reported on Friday: “By 2027, people making $40,000 to $50,000 would…
CNN Despite a last ditch effort by protesters to appeal to any vestige of shame or dignity from within the GOP, House Republicans on Tuesday voted in favor of a tax overhaul that will give a giant boost to the ultra-rich while dramatically screwing over most ordinary citizens. The final vote was 227-203, with 12…