A record number of Americans have died from opioid overdoses in recent years. But how did we get here? And is this the first time Americans have faced this crisis? The short answer: no. Three stories of opioids that have plagued Americans for more than 150 years.
The discouraging news on record-high CO2 emissions in 2018 should be a reminder to go back and look at the most talked-about climate science paper of the past year—“Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene“, which was the subject of 460 news stories in 326 news outlets. Using existing results from climate models but no new modeling of their own, the researchers’ analysis found that a warming threshold likely exists beyond which we would set in motion a series of vicious cycles (feedbacks) in the climate system that would catapult us into a “Hothouse Earth” climate extremely dangerous to the existence of modern civilization--defined as having a much higher global average temperature than any period of the past 1.2 million years. This threshold might be crossed even if we manage to limit global warming to the Paris Accord target of 2.0 degreesC above pre-industrial levels, they said.
I was noticing earlier this evening, that they had three city bicycle cops, and two or three state troopers with an AR-15 rifle and German Sherpard attack dog, to observe the Mueller Report protests at the Capitol. There had to be some kind of threat against the protests, but still it seemed like an awful waste of public resources, to guard some 70-year old grandmothers holding signs at Rush Hour in front of the Alfred E Smith Building.
They crafted what’s known as “model legislation” that would allow them to continue selling recalled used cars, so long as they disclosed open recalls to customers somewhere in a stack of sales documents. They then turned to their army of lobbyists – more than 600 on call in 43 states – to help get the measure passed, one state at a time.
The effort is paying off. About this report This story was produced as part of a collaboration between USA TODAY, The Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity. More than 30 reporters across the country were involved in the two-year investigation, which identified copycat bills in every state. The team used a unique data-analysis engine built on hundreds of cloud computers to compare millions of words of legislation provided by LegiScan.
In the past five years, versions of auto dealers’ copycat bill have been introduced in at least 11 states – California, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Virginia. So far only Tennessee and Pennsylvania have adopted them, but Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey and New York still have measures under consideration.
The success of auto dealers’ effort is a case study in how special interest groups with deep pockets go from state to state with model legislation – copy-and-paste measures that can be handed to friendly lawmakers in any state – to get the policies they want, often with little public scrutiny and sometimes with tragic consequences.
Humphreys County, Mississippi, seems like an odd place for the IRS to go hunting for tax cheats. It’s a rural county in the Mississippi Delta known for its catfish farms, and more than a third of its mostly African American residents are below the poverty line. But according to a new study, it is the most heavily audited county in America. Where the IRS Audits More Income tax filings in these counties were audited at a higher rate than the nation as a whole.
As we reported last year, the IRS audits EITC recipients at higher rates than all but the richest Americans, a response to pressure from congressional Republicans to root out incorrect payments of the credit. The study estimates that Humphreys, with a median annual household income of just $26,000, is audited at a rate 51 percent higher than Loudoun County, Virginia, which boasts a median income of $130,000, the highest in the country. Kim M. Bloomquist, the author of the study, which was first published in the industry journal Tax Notes, served as a senior economist with the IRS’ research division for two decades. He decided to map the distribution of audits to illustrate the dramatic regional effects of the IRS’ emphasis on EITC audits. Because more than a third of all audits are of EITC recipients, the number of audits in each county is largely a reflection of how many taxpayers there claimed the credit, he found.