The majority of voters did not vote for Donald Trump for president; the majority of voters did not vote for Republican candidates for the Senate; and fewer than 51% of voters cast their ballots for Republican candidates for the House of Representatives. The Republican Party now controls the White House, both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court, no matter how that came to be. I believe it is worth bearing in mind that a majority of U.S. citizens did not support the Republican winners.   read more

Among the provisions advocated by the Campaign to Fix the Debt is a territorial tax system, which would allow corporations to bring home overseas profits and pay little or no tax on them. In all, the savings could amount to $134 billion for the 63 publicly-held companies that have joined the Bowles-Simpson group. The biggest winners would be General Electric ($35.7 billion), Microsoft ($19.4 billion), Merck ($15.5 billion) and Cisco Systems ($14.5 billion).   read more

A Washington Post review of the 73 NEMJ articles on new drugs published over one year (August 2011 to August 2012) found that “60 were funded by a pharmaceutical company, 50 were co-written by drug company employees and 37 had a lead author, typically an academic, who had previously accepted outside compensation from the sponsoring drug company in the form of consultant pay, grants or speaker fees.”   read more

On Election Day, voters in Longmont—both Republicans and Democrats—approved a local measure (Ballot Question 300) that prohibits the use of hydraulic fracturing (aka fracking) to extract natural gas from beneath the earth. The new law also bans the storage and disposal of fracking-created waste. Support for the ban was indeed bipartisan, with about 63% of precincts that voted for Mitt Romney endorsing it, as well as 96% of pro-Obama precincts.   read more

Tolkien’s estate claims the studio and the film’s producers, Saul Zaentz Co., exceeded their merchandising rights in using the movies’ character for a gambling enterprise. The Tolkiens also contend that their father, who was a devout Catholic, never would have approved using his creations in slot machines.   read more

Among the sprinkling of paper bits were long narrow strips containing information from local police reports. The strips were large enough for parade attendees to spot social security numbers, dates of birth and other details of detectives, as well as the emblem for the Nassau County police department.   read more

The key income tax reforms in 1986 raised the maximum tax rate on long-term capital gains to 28% from 20% while reducing the maximum rate on ordinary income to 28% from 50%. Capital gains are income arising from investments, while ordinary income arises from work. Thus the 1986 reform taxed income from work and from investment equally, ending the discrimination against work and in favor of investments that had favored the wealthy.   read more

Vice Admiral David “Jack” Dorsett, the director of naval intelligence, retired on August 1, 2011, and immediately took a job as vice president of cybersecurity with defense contractor Northrop Grumman. Seven months later, Northrop Grumman won a $16.3 million contract to provide cybersecurity and information operations support for the Navy.   read more

“You might park a UAV over a house, waiting for someone to come in or come out, and that’s where the boredom comes in,” explains Mary “Missy” Cummings, associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems at MIT. “It turns out it’s a much bigger problem in any system where a human is effectively babysitting the automation.”   read more

The law states that the Kentucky Legislature has decided that, “The safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God.” The statute further requires the state Office of Homeland Security (OHS) to “publicize the findings of the General Assembly stressing the dependence on Almighty God” by including the quote above in agency training and educational materials and on a plaque at Kentucky’s Emergency Operations Center.   read more

Prop. 36 made a major change in the original 1994 three-strikes law. It allows reduction of previously mandatory 25-to-life prison sentences for third-strikers who commit non-serious, non-violent felonies, and applied the change retroactively to those already in prison. Approximately 3,000 of the state’s 9,000 third-strikers, out of a total prison population of around 135,000, qualify for re-sentencing.   read more

For corn growers, the vast majority of their yields don’t even go to feeding Americans. About 40% of the corn crop gets turned into ethanol, and another 40% is used as animal feed, leaving only 20% for people to eat. But with so many farmers exporting their crops this year, nonprofits have experienced a significant drop in food stocks.   read more

Described as a parallel universe consisting of hedge funds, money market funds, finance companies and securities lenders, “shadow banking” continues to grow in the United States and beyond. What distinguishes shadow banking from regular investment banking is that it is unregulated. This shady aspect of the financial industry now controls $23 trillion in U.S. assets, giving the United States the distinction of having the largest shadow banking system in the world.   read more

The state legislature currently is considering two bills that would create a tax credit for unborn fetuses that are 12 weeks or older. If the proposal becomes law, it would make Michigan the first state in the country to grant such status to the unborn. The proposal runs contrary to legislation adopted last year that eliminated a child tax credit deduction that affected 2.35 million children in Michigan.   read more

Alred, 17, pled guilty to manslaughter after he drove his vehicle into a tree, killing a 16-year-old passenger, John Luke Dum. Alred had been drinking, but was not legally drunk. The judge gave Alred a choice: he could avoid prison as long as he was willing to attend church for ten years, as well as complete high school, train as a welder, and give up alcohol, drugs and tobacco for one year. Alred says he was happy to take church over prison.   read more

Building on an effort that began in 2006, the King County Sheriff’s Office started a cold-case squad in 2009 with a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice that funded two full-time detectives and a crime analyst. The grant was renewed for 2012, but not for 2013, forcing King County to supplement the unit’s budget so it could keep its doors open until the end of December. Many cold cases remain, but police admit that without funding they will have no time to investigate them properly.   read more

Last year, 15,890 Americans became victims of violent crime each day. The rate of violent victimization increased 17% in urban areas from 2010 to 2011. According to Justice Department statistics, aggravated and simple assault accounted for the entire rise in total violence. There was also an 11% jump in property crimes during the same period.   read more