Despite a clear lack of evidence of significant drug use among welfare recipients, lawmakers in at least two states are moving forward with plans to require drug screening for individuals seeking assistance. State legislators in Illinois and Iowa have introduced bills that would make drug testing a prerequisite for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), […]
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Posted inTAP
Even a Stopped Clock Is Right Twice a Day
President Trump gets almost everything wrong. But once in a while he does something approximately right. Exhibit A: Trump and his trade team have re-aligned U.S. trade policy, from pursuit of a wishful fantasy called universal “free trade” to a realistic recognition that other nations use protectionism to their advantage. The real task is to […]
Posted inEconomic Policy
A Failed Fight for $8.50 Energizes the Fight for $15 in Louisiana
When a bill to raise the Louisiana minimum wage by just $1.25 failed, advocates didn’t reduce their demands—in fact, they did the opposite. On Tuesday, the Louisiana Senate voted against a bill that would have raised Louisiana’s minimum wage to $8.50 an hour by 2020. “Not advancing this legislation is a step backwards for our […]
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Senate Democrats Warn Mitch McConnell: Don’t Try to Weaken the ADA
On Thursday, 42 Senate Democrats joined Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois to pledge to block a vote on the ADA Education and Reform Act (H.R. 620), a House bill that would gut the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act by weakening enforcement provisions that ensure accessibility in public accommodations. In a signed letter to Senate Majority […]
Posted inTAP
Amazon, President Trump says, isn’t paying enough in taxes
Here’s one of his tweets from earlier today: I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of […]
Posted inTAP
When Trump Does Something Right.
The trade deal with South Korea is a model for future trade agreements. What a pity that it fell to a lunatic like Donald Trump to bring it about. Credit mainly goes to Trump’s trade advisers, especially Peter Navarro and Robert Lighthizer. The deal exempts South Korea from the steel tariffs, in exchange for an […]
Posted inTAP
The Commerce Departments’ dead-of-night announcement …
The Commerce Departments’ dead-of-night announcement yesterday that the 2020 Census would ask people if they were American citizens is perhaps the most purely partisan ploy we’ve yet seen in this age of Republican hyper-partisanship. The sole purpose of the question is to intimidate immigrants, the foreign-born, and the undocumented from participating in the census at […]
Posted inTAP
Saturday Night Massacre—or Saturday Night Live?
Let’s review the bidding. The pundits keep warning that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s firing is imminent. Trump obviously seethes and keeps fantasizing about telling Mueller he’s fired. What next? If Trump does move to fire Mueller, he has to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein first. More precisely, he’d have to order Rosenstein to fire […]
Posted inTAP
How the Globalists Brought Us Trump
The headlines today are filled with alarmist language about how Trump’s retaliatory tariffs against China risk setting off a trade war. He’s imposing up to $60 billion worth of tariffs against an array of goods to compensate for a range of Chinese predatory tactics, including theft of intellectual property, subsidy of production below cost, and […]
Posted inTAP
Today, Wisconsin Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin is introducing a bill…
…that, if enacted, would make the American economy a damn sight better, fairer, and more productive. The Reward Work Act would curtail stock buybacks and require corporations to have their employees elect one-third of their boards of directors. This year (and it’s only March!), Baldwin notes, corporations have spent $225 billion on buying back their […]
