News & Features

Apparently Bernie Sanders, Bill Clinton and President Barack Obama; but not Hillary Clinton. In an admission that was both refreshingly candid and intentionally vague, Hillary Clinton said that the reason only 37 percent of Americans find her “honest and trustworthy” is that she’s not a “natural politician.” Clinton essentially said: People don’t trust me because I don’t know how to suck up and lie like real politicians do. Which begs the question: Who is a “natural politician”?

By the year 2020, humans are expected to lose a net of 5.1 millions of jobs to robots and artificial intelligence, according to a report from the World Economic Forum (WEF). In the report, 15 economies that make up 65 percent – about 1.9 billion workers – of the total global workforce were surveyed. About 7 million jobs will be lost while 2 million will be gained due to technological change in these developed and emerging nations.

The GOP would cut its throat if it denounced its racists and racism, and really meant it. The shouts, taunts, spitting, catcalls, Obama as Joker posters, n-word slurs, Confederate and Texas Lone Star flag waving by some Tea Party activists, and the deafening silence from GOP leaders during Obama’s early years in office, was and still very much is an indispensable political necessity for the party.

They fear that he will actually be the party’s nominee. And if so, what will that do to the party? GOP leaders from House Majority leader Paul Ryan to Arizona Senator John McCain sweat that Trump could not only cost the GOP any shot at the White House but blow their majority hold on the Senate as well. The one thing that would almost certainly insure that is if the sentiment voiced by the conservative activist about Trump is not just a bad case of momentary blowing smoke.

The most recent version of the report, released Monday, Feb. 22, by the Council of Economic Advisers, also noted the nation’s economy also extended the longest streak of job growth on record, and that wage growth in the last 12 months was the strongest it has been since the Great Recession. The combination of increased jobs and wages helped boost consumer confidence about the economy to its highest level since 2004, according to the report.

Trump has now emerged as the likely Republican nominee come this fall’s election. The Republican establishment — through Super PAC's supporting Jeb Bush — burned through more than $130 million in an effort to stop Trump, yet he continues to surge in the polls. Donald Trump’s appeal, however, should not come as a surprise if it is seen in sociological terms.

At the St. Louis airport, the Back 40 isn't part of a ranch. It's the nickname taxi drivers give to a big parking lot just up the road. There they wait for the call to go pick up a fare at the terminal. Spotless white vans sit bumper to bumper in long rows, while the cabbies mill around and talk, or play chess in a small shelter. Waiting can get a little boring. It wasn't hard to get four of them to talk about the ups and downs of making a living in a cab. 

In “World Report 2016: Events of 2015,” experts criticize U.S. police practices and become yet another international body bringing the plight of Blacks in America onto the international stage. Once again, high-profile police killings of unarmed African Americans gained media attention in 2015, including the deaths of Freddy Gray in Baltimore and Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina,” the report said.