- Today's comic by Mark Fiore is Religious freedom and gay commerce:
- What's coming up on Daily Kos ...
- Sex trafficking isn't "sex work," by Denise Oliver Velez
- Windows 8: From Hell's heart I stab at thee, by DarkSyde
- The right-wing and absolutism, by Mark E Andersen
- Imagine a coalition unifying Black Lives Matter, LGBT equality, and the fight for a living wage, by Ian Reifowitz
- Why Ted Cruz could win GOP primary and possibly win it all, by Egberto Willies
- American Tragedy: A staggering 58% of police shooting victims are struggling with mental illness, by Shaun King
- French elections produce perfect gender parity but the left fails to benefit, by Taniel
- The religious right hates the Indiana RFRA compromise. That's why it needs to pass, by Dante Atkins
126,000 jobs created in March and the downward revision of 38,000 jobs in February, together make for disappointing top line numbers. While it’s important not to put too much stock in a couple months of data—especially given the unusual amount of snow that blanketed the country in the past two months—policymakers should be wary of any signs of any slowdown from the solid job growth over the previous year. Other indicators make it clear that there is still ample slack in the labor market. Private sector hourly wages are up only 2.1 percent over the year. Wages need to grow faster, and for a longer time, before we can say the economy is truly working for working people. This coupled with a few months of disappointing jobs growth mean that the Federal Reserve should not be thinking about tapping the brakes any time soon.
Looks like there will be two presidential elections next year – one in real life with potentially the likes of Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush and another on the streaming service with incumbent Frank Underwood and whoever dares to get in his way. Having launched the third season of House Of Cards on February 27, Netflix said today that the award-winning drama starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright will be back for a fourth season in 2016.
- These Daily Kos community posts were the most shared on Facebook April 2:
Antarctica hits 63.5 degrees Fahrenheit as Mitch McConnell promises to sabotage global climate pact, by Pakalolo
Secret Offshore Accounts: Companies Dodging $600 Billion In Taxes, by Tasini
Democrats, Barbra Streisand Has Made the Argument. How About You?, by NedSparks
A man reported missing at sea two months ago was rescued on the overturned hull of his sailboat off the North Carolina coast, and he walked away from a hospital hours later in good condition, with no obvious sunburn, dehydration or other signs of distress.
Louis Jordan, 37, said he got by by rationing his water and energy and praying for help.
On April 3, 1996, the news media reported that Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski had been arrested.
The Unabomber used mail bombs during the previous 17 years to kill three people and injure 29.
In 1995 he agreed to desist from terrorist activities if the Washington Post or The New York Times published a copy of his manifesto.
Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court last week to force more than 100 property owners and three corporations in 10 West Virginia counties to open their land to surveying for the Mountain Valley Pipeline. The proposed pipeline, if approved, would carry natural gas about 300 miles from northwestern West Virginia to southern Virginia. Since it’s an interstate pipeline, the approval lies with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).
In the suit, Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC—which is a joint venture of multiple energy companies including NextEra U.S. Gas Assets and EQT Midstream Partners—states that “it is necessary to enter the respondents’ properties to survey (in order to obtain) necessary rights-of-way, obtain a FERC certificate and construct the pipeline.” The pipeline company says that it contacted the residents being sued to try to get permission to survey their land, but all of them “failed or refused to permit” the company from entering their properties.
Long-term unemployment remains a significant concern. Almost three in ten (29.8 percent) of the 8.6 million people who are unemployed—2.6 million people—have been looking for work for 27 weeks or longer. These long-term unemployed represent 1.6 percent of the labor force. Long-term unemployment reached much higher levels and has persisted much longer in the Great Recession and subsequent jobs slump than in any previous period in data that go back to the late 1940s. The worst previous episode was in the early 1980s, when the long-term unemployment share peaked at 26.0 percent (compared with 45.5 percent this time) and the long-term unemployment rate peaked at 2.6 percent (compared with 4.4 percent this time). Moreover, in the earlier episode, a year after peaking at 2.6 percent, the long-term unemployment rate had dropped to 1.4 percent, compared with the current rate of 1.6 percent more than five and a half years after the end of the Great Recession.
American companies have around $2.1 trillion in untaxed profits stashed overseas, according to a new report by the Center for Effective Government and the Institute for Policy Studies. About half of that amount is held by 26 large companies like Apple, General Electric, and Microsoft. If these companies paid federal taxes on their offshored profits from 2014—and got refunds for taxes they've already paid to other countries—they would owe an estimated $364 billion.
- Team Blackness discussed the very sad case of Purvi Patel. The Indiana woman, who was convicted of illegally inducing her own abortion and then allowing the fetus to die, was sentenced to a whopping 20 years in prison. The case shows our country heading in a very scary direction. Also discussed was more on Isaiah Washington's questionable views on racial profiling and more about Indiana.
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- On today's "classic" Kagro in the Morning show, our 4/4/14 show: jobs report day shows avg. wages down while corp. profits & CEO pay break records. Greg Dworkin rounds up ACA & Gop 2016 news. Outrageous CEO pay; Blankenship's A-Hole Manifesto. More on McCutcheon.