In August 2015, contractors working for the EPA were attempting to clean up the Gold King mine near Silverton, Colorado. Acidic water, laden with harmful metals like lead and arsenic, was backing up inside the abandoned mine. The entrance to the mine had been plugged on the cheap, and the force of the backup of
The Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA) was signed into law by President Gerald Ford in 1975. Renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1990, with amendments added in 1997, this law included provisions that required schools to provide appropriate, individually tailored special education programs for children with disabilities at no (direct)
It’s been a particularly vicious election season, and it’s not over yet. Dangerous rhetoric, including Trump goading his supporters to violence, has produced an environment of rancor that seems designed to bring out the worst in people. Yet among each day’s new stories of political grandstanding and admissions of sexual assault, two stories of people
Don’t get up, gentlemen, I’m only passing through. —”Times Have Changed” The news that Bob Dylan has been awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature brings with it, appropriately enough, a conundrum: Does Dylan deserve the Nobel, and does the Nobel deserve Dylan? The answer is that, like a pair of lovers from one of
I was wandering down the internet rabbit hole the other day when I came across one of those jokes that can be found in various versions in several places around the web. One version goes like this: A man is convinced he is dead. His wife and kids are exasperated. They keep telling him he’s not
Externalities are everywhere, once you start looking for them. These are the costs (or, sometimes, the benefits) that accrue to those outside of an economic transaction who likely didn’t consent to pay for them. I’ve written about them before, such as how WalMart profits by not having to pay for security services that are provided
United States Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) has written a letter urging the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to reject the proposed $465 million settlement reached between the government and Mylan, Inc. after it was discovered the beleaguered corporation, responsible for increasing the price of the life-saving EpiPen to $600 per 2-pak in August of this
After reports of former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson’s $20 million settlement with the network over allegations of sexual harassment by then CEO Roger Ailes, several more allegations against Ailes began to surface, with a number of female employees claiming they, too, had been harassed by him. Some chose to remain anonymous, while others chose
On Friday, October 14, Connecticut Superior Court Judge Barbara N. Bellis dismissed a lawsuit brought by nine surviving family members of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary school massacre against the gun company who manufactured the gun used by Adam Lanza to carry out the shooting. The lawsuit alleged both the manufacturers of the
Imagine receiving a diagnosis of cancer, complete with a treatment protocol that included grueling chemotherapy treatments, radiation and a surgically-placed port in your chest, only to learn a year later you never actually had the disease and were the victim of a misdiagnosis. I think in most cases, patients would not only want answers, but