Chicago Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. plead guilty this to spending $750,000 of campaign funds on luxury items for personal use, including furs, jewelry, and celebrity memorabilia. Jackson, 47, represented Illinois’s 2nd Congressional District for 17 years before taking a medical leave for bipolar disorder. He allegedly used campaign funds to buy such items as a $43,350 gold-plated Rolex watch, a […]
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Henry Thoreau was languishing in jail after he had refused to pay the Massachusetts poll tax in 1843 [to protest the Mexican-American War], Ralph Waldo Emerson came to visit him and asked him why he was there. “Waldo, why are you not here?” said Thoreau. – Bartlett’s Book of Anecdotes
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For many Americans, collecting disability has become a career, said Michael Barone. Over the past 50 years, the number of people receiving benefits from the Social Security disability program created to help Americans who are too sick to work—has rocketed from 455,000 to 8.6 million. An incredible 5.6 percent of adults are now getting disability checks, with a cost to […]
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A Bit of News Not Fake An article in the paper reports something one doesn’t see happen in America very often. Eighty billionaires, millionaires and others close to that level in New York have written to their lawmakers and governor asking to have their taxes raised. They want to support schools, build roads and bridges, and help the poor […]
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A notice appeared in the paper recently with the names and faces of eight men who have a combined wealth of $426 billion. According to Oxfam International, in 2015 this would have equaled the amount of wealth held by half the world’s population, the poorest half. Oxfam International is a confederation of charitable organizations in 90 countries seeking to stop the injustices that […]
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How did the U.S. debt get so high? The crucial turning point came back in 2001, said Lori Montgomery. At the time, Uncle Sam was actually running surpluses, and “the outlook was so rosy” that forecasters were predicting the U.S. could pay back every dime it had ever borrowed. That’s when President George W. Bush made a pivotal decision: Rather […]
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A California man has paid off a $14,000 property-tax bill using only dollar bills and loose change. Larry Gasper says he wasn’t deliberately trying to inconvenience county officials with the unorthodox payment, which he transported to county offices in a wheelbarrow—causing the clerks’ jaws to drop. It’s just that he’s very short of money, and had to scrape up the […]
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