The elephant in the room at the presidential debates was climate change. According to a piece in Slate, this year the candidates spent a total of five minutes and 27 seconds on the subject. That’s better than 2012 when candidates didn’t mention it at all.
Thirty miles south of Bismarck, North Dakota, where eroded buttes rise from grassland and corn fields, the Oceti Sakowin camp appears along the winding girth of the Missouri River. Here, a story of protection, protest and cultural conflict unfolds against the desolate prairie.
The future is coming into view. Donald Trump’s victory strengthened the decades-long attack on the role of government. But we’ve got the tools to fight back, and we’re not alone.
Last Wednesday the Drug Policy Alliance, a New York-based drug-reform nonprofit, held a media conference call meant to celebrate a successful election night. Voters in eight states had legalized cannabis for recreational purposes; in several more states ballot measures cleared the way for marijuana’s medical use.
On his recently released final collection of new music, Cohen blamed God for His benighted creatures’ refusal of light: “You want it darker — we put out the flame.” Like, we’re only following orders, Boss. But in another song, Cohen shifted perspective: “Only one of us was real — and that was me.”
Playwright Rebecca Stahl’s Everything in Between may be a message play, but as such it’s a fundamentally sound one. One of its virtues is the clear picture it furnishes of the kinds of behavior exhibited by sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder when their illness goes untreated,
One clear winner to emerge from Tuesday’s statewide election was California education. Proposition 55, the wealth-tax initiative, swept to victory with a 62 percent approval margin. Its passage will extend until 2030 Proposition 30’s emergency stabilization funding passed by voters in 2012.
Proposition 60’s decisive, 54-46 percent loss was equal parts surprising and depressing to its backers, particularly the Hollywood-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which had put the initiative on the ballot.
California voters on Tuesday approved state Proposition 56 by an overwhelming 63-37 percent margin to create a new excise tax of $2 per pack on cigarettes and other tobacco products. The margin of victory was a shock: Similar ballot initiatives failed in 2012 and 2006, and tobacco companies spent $71 million to blitz the state with dramatic advertising urging a No vote.
With financial backing from law enforcement groups, the California death penalty is not only preserved, but will be sped up for inmates awaiting execution.