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20 votes
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This building nearly broke Taipei. The Taipei Performing Arts Center; Over budget, a decade under construction, and one of Asia's most important cultural buildings.
18 votes -
Hackers exploited a zero-day flaw in Ivanti's software undetected for at least three months, US and Norwegian cybersecurity agencies warn
14 votes -
How Big Tech rewrote the USA's first cellphone repair law
11 votes -
Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of July 24
This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate...
This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.
This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.
13 votes -
US District Judge blocks Arkansas law allowing librarians to be criminally charged over ‘harmful’ materials
50 votes -
Mastercard move at cannabis shops intensifies call for US decriminalization
42 votes -
US tax code blamed as wealthy see major retirement account gains
44 votes -
Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon says US President Biden must stop approving new fossil fuel projects
28 votes -
Could we get a formal megathread for the US President Donald Trump cases, to include both upcoming and ongoing legal action?
The legal discussion is not exactly the same as US politics. I would imagine that we have people who would like to follow it and people who prefer strongly to avoid it. For example, today we had...
The legal discussion is not exactly the same as US politics. I would imagine that we have people who would like to follow it and people who prefer strongly to avoid it.
For example, today we had these two events and I didn't even look hard.
Superceding indictment filed in Florida documents case
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653.85.0_1.pdf38 votes -
"Gen Z for Change" leader interrupts US President Biden's press secretary to demand climate action
40 votes -
A political gap in excess deaths in the USA widened after COVID-19 vaccines arrived, study says
36 votes -
US workers are dying in heat wave but Joe Biden administration is still working on federal standards for working in extreme heat
29 votes -
Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of July 17
This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate...
This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.
This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.
16 votes -
New Jersey files federal lawsuit to block NYC’s congestion pricing plan; Staten Island sets up legal action
25 votes -
Michigan charges sixteen in false elector scheme to overturn former US President Donald Trump’s 2020 loss
58 votes -
Transit groups in New York call for congestion toll to be passed on to for-hire vehicle riders
19 votes -
A new bill would force internet companies in the USA to spy on their users for the Drug Enforcement Administration
45 votes -
The best way to find out if someone is a Donald Trump voter? Ask them what they think about manhood.
29 votes -
Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of July 10
This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate...
This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.
This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.
19 votes -
2022 guidance from President Biden's administration assures doctors they’ll be protected by US federal law for providing emergency abortion care even if their state bans the procedure
40 votes -
The trillion-dollar grift: Inside the greatest scam of all time
26 votes -
US states scrutinize the amount of charity spending from nonprofit hospitals in light of high salaries and large tax breaks
https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/nonprofit-hospitals-tax-breaks-community-benefit/ POTTSTOWN, Pa. — The public school system here had to scramble in 2018 when the local hospital, newly...
https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/nonprofit-hospitals-tax-breaks-community-benefit/
POTTSTOWN, Pa. — The public school system here had to scramble in 2018 when the local hospital, newly purchased, was converted to a tax-exempt nonprofit entity.
The takeover by Tower Health meant the 219-bed Pottstown Hospital no longer had to pay federal and state taxes. It also no longer had to pay local property taxes, taking away more than $900,000 a year from the already underfunded Pottstown School District, school officials said.
The district, about an hour’s drive from Philadelphia, had no choice but to trim expenses. It cut teacher aide positions and eliminated middle school foreign language classes.
“We have less curriculum, less coaches, less transportation,” said Superintendent Stephen Rodriguez.
The school system appealed Pottstown Hospital’s new nonprofit status, and earlier this year a state court struck down the facility’s property tax break. It cited the “eye-popping” compensation for multiple Tower Health executives as contrary to how Pennsylvania law defines a charity.
The court decision, which Tower Health is appealing, stunned the nonprofit hospital industry, which includes roughly 3,000 nongovernment tax-exempt hospitals nationwide.
“The ruling sent a warning shot to all nonprofit hospitals, highlighting that their state and local tax exemptions, which are often greater than their federal income tax exemptions, can be challenged by state and local courts,” said Ge Bai, a health policy expert at Johns Hopkins University.
The Pottstown case reflects the growing scrutiny of how much the nation’s nonprofit hospitals spend — and on what — to justify billions in state and federal tax breaks. In exchange for these savings, hospitals are supposed to provide community benefits, like care for those who can’t afford it and free health screenings.
More than a dozen states have considered or passed legislation to better define charity care, to increase transparency about the benefits hospitals provide, or, in some cases, to set minimum financial thresholds for charitable help to their communities.
The growing interest in how tax-exempt hospitals operate — from lawmakers, the public, and the media — has coincided with a stubborn increase in consumers’ medical debt. KFF Health News reported last year that more than 100 million Americans are saddled with medical bills they can’t pay, and has documented aggressive bill-collection practices by hospitals, many of them nonprofits.
(article continues)
15 votes -
Some major cities in the US are getting rid of bus fares
71 votes -
Who are the real "groomers"?
22 votes -
The manufacturing backlash: No factory in my backyard
15 votes -
California needs real math education: an essay
16 votes -
More than 1,500 US fossil fuel lobbyists serve as “double agents”
23 votes -
Pentagon to filmmakers: We won’t help you if you kowtow to China
46 votes -
US truckers flooded the market during Covid. Now they struggle to pay their bills.
24 votes -
The status quo coalition
7 votes -
Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of July 3
This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate...
This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.
This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.
19 votes -
Report - The increasing return of legal child labor to the US economy
Child labor is making a comeback with a vengeance. A striking number of lawmakers are undertaking concerted efforts to weaken or repeal statutes that have long prevented (or at least seriously...
Child labor is making a comeback with a vengeance. A striking number of lawmakers are undertaking concerted efforts to weaken or repeal statutes that have long prevented (or at least seriously inhibited) the possibility of exploiting children.
Take a breath and consider this: the number of kids at work in the U.S. increased by 37% between 2015 and 2022. During the last two years, 14 states have either introduced or enacted legislation rolling back regulations that governed the number of hours children can be employed, lowered the restrictions on dangerous work, and legalized subminimum wages for youths.
Iowa now allows those as young as 14 to work in industrial laundries. At age 16, they can take jobs in roofing, construction, excavation, and demolition and can operate power-driven machinery. Fourteen-year-olds can now even work night shifts and once they hit 15 can join assembly lines. All of this was, of course, prohibited not so long ago.
Legislators offer fatuous justifications for such incursions into long-settled practice. Working, they tell us, will get kids off their computers or video games or away from the TV. Or it will strip the government of the power to dictate what children can and can’t do, leaving parents in control — a claim already transformed into fantasy by efforts to strip away protective legislation and permit 14-year-old kids to work without formal parental permission.
In 2014, the Cato Institute, a right-wing think tank, published “A Case Against Child Labor Prohibitions,” arguing that such laws stifled opportunity for poor — and especially Black — children. The Foundation for Government Accountability, a think tank funded by a range of wealthy conservative donors including the DeVos family, has spearheaded efforts to weaken child-labor laws, and Americans for Prosperity, the billionaire Koch brothers’ foundation, has joined in.
Here is a Robert Frost poem related to the subject of the article. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53087/out-out
I'm GenX and I worked as a teen, but my earliest jobs were babysitting, not industrial labor.
54 votes -
Barriers to US transgender health care lead some to embrace a do-it-yourself approach
22 votes -
Vote to block Georgia spaceport upheld by state’s high court
17 votes -
Exclusive: CNN obtains the tape of former US President Donald Trump’s 2021 conversation about classified documents
99 votes -
Florida bill allowing radioactive roads made of potentially cancer-causing mining waste signed by Ron DeSantis
43 votes -
Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of June 26
This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate...
This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.
This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.
33 votes -
US Supreme Court strikes down President Biden's student loan forgiveness: Now what?
117 votes -
How a megachurch wields power in a regional California city and influence in the music industry
7 votes -
Controversy over lack of renewable in plans to rebuild electrical grid in Puerto Rico
10 votes -
New York City is cleared for first-in-US congestion tolls as soon as April
45 votes -
New report from US National Transportation Safety Board says engineer at Norfolk Southern objected to the train weight distribution before catastrophic derailment
22 votes -
A Delaware city is set to give corporations the right to vote in elections
28 votes -
What the hell happened to the California of the ’50s and ’60s?
12 votes -
Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of June 19
This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate...
This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.
This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.
28 votes -
Oklahoma City continues planning for bus rapid transit
26 votes -
Typography 2024: For America! For America’s best
7 votes -
Philadelphia politician proposes more local options for mass-transit funding
11 votes -
How a dose of MDMA transformed a white supremacist
27 votes