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Last week, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) conducted a mass along the US-Mexico border in Nogales, Arizona. Standing in front of a 30-foot-high rusted gate that separates the US from Mexico, eight bishops, from El Paso to Atlanta, prayed in both Spanish and English. They faced a crowd of about 800 people on the American side. Behind them, on the Mexican side of the fence, a hundred or so people peeked through the slates.
The number of African Americans who lacked health insurance dropped dramatically in 2014's first quarter compared to 2013's fourth quarter thanks to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which Republicans threaten to repeal if they win control of both houses of Congress in November's national elections. The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index reported on Monday that the uninsured rate for African Americans fell from 20.9 percent in 2013's fourth quarter to 17.6 percent in 2014's first quarter, a drop of 3.3 percentage points.
Sustainability is infiltrating our national consciousness. These days, the marketing strategy of nearly every iconic American brand – promoting companies like Ford, Marriott, Microsoft and Walmart – seems to include some reference to it. Fortunately, photo-ops with employees dressed in Earth Day T-shirts as they build a garden don’t quite cut it anymore. Rather, sustainability agendas, corporate responsibility reports, corporate sponsorships, green initiatives, sustainability assessments and memberships in a variety of public-private multi-stakeholder initiatives are becoming the norm.
The populations most vulnerable to those outrages are hardly aware of the Koch brothers. I believe only a minuscule number of Democrats and Independents know of the very real threat to our country’s decency – and our base responsibility to those less advantaged – posed by Sheldon Adelson and Koch brother types out there wielding hundreds of millions of dollars in what I call “The Dark Campaign”.So the intent of the Democratic campaign organizations to shine a light on those threats and that Dark Campaign is commendable.
Problem gambling, while affecting a small percentage of total gamblers, is growing among people age 60 and older, a key customer base of the burgeoning casino gambling industry in Western New York. With bus trips from senior centers and casinos opening not just here, but across the country, gambling is easier than ever for retirees to pick up and, for a vulnerable minority, a hard habit to quit.
Modernity, that is to say, seeps in. You can see it as a river of motorcyclists rushing by while above them looms a Starbucks sign. Or take a look at the farmer standing in his bare feet on the verdant slope: Two oxen graze nearby, but he is preoccupied with chatting on his cell. Or consider the new cityscape of Saigon, my birthplace, now renamed Ho Chi Minh City, with its high-rises being constructed -- and see the once-sleepy town of villas and lycees and tree-lined boulevards transforming itself into a bona fide 21st-century metropolis.
More than 2.2 million Americans are barely getting by after most of their extended unemployment benefits were abruptly cut over the Christmas break. In fact, Congress and the president skipped town for restful, holiday vacations soon after. Hopes of a post-New Year’s Day resolution were dashed by stalls and foot-dragging in the Senate, which is finally taking a vote this week. But, a nastier, unsympathetic House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is signaling that he’s not interested in bringing it to the floor for a vote.
Ranking California Democratic State Senator Leland Yee made the news twice in recent weeks. And both times it was for the wrong thing. The first time was for his FBI bust on charges of gun running and public corruption. The second reason he was in the news potentially has far more damaging consequences. Yee had been a strong supporter of Constitutional Amendment 5 that passed the California Senate last January. The bill would have given voters another chance to consider the use of race in college admissions.