The Biden-Harris Administration should be congratulated for changing and expanding the rules about the Child Tax Credit (CTC): eligible parents will now receive actual payments to support their children, as opposed to claiming a one-time credit on their taxes during tax season. This change has come about as part of the COVID-19 relief bill, which […]
Earlier posts have looked at quality-of-life statistics of the United States compared to other advanced democracies, especially in the European Union. As we have noted, a number of European nations have far higher standards of living than the US. By many measures, Finland consistently ranks as having one of the best education systems in the […]
Millions of us in the United States are deflated, demoralized and even scared after the 2024 presidential election has been called for Donald Trump. How do those of us who not only voted for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz but also may have supported them financially cope with this tremendous loss? How do we move […]
Tiny Vermont (population 647,000) has taken a big step: to use legislation to make giant oil companies accountable for a significant amount of damage that has been done to the earth’s environment by climate change. According to VTDigger, Republican Governor Phil Scott let the legislation, S.259, the “Climate Superfund Act,” go into effect without his […]
Donald Trump – twice impeached, once defeated for the presidency, four-times indicted in four different jurisdictions, facing 91 felony counts, and found liable in several civil cases – is on his way to becoming the presidential nominee of one of our two major parties. He has spoken openly, and often, about his desire to be […]
After the 2016 presidential election, when candidate Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but Donald Trump became President because of the Electoral College (EC), the issue of the EC was thrust again into the forefront. Recent polls show that 63-65 percent of American adults want the EC abolished. As we have noted before, no other […]
We have commented earlier on the World Happiness Reports, published since 2012 by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network. In the 2022 report, the US ranks 15th, just ahead of Germany and behind eight European Union nations, Australia, Canada, Iceland, Israel, New Zealand, and Switzerland. In March 2023, NPR reported that life expectancy in the US […]
The site VERIFYthis.com, whose mission is to “provide trustworthy, transparent information to prove or disprove” stories or claims, gives us the bad news for American families regarding the Child Tax Credit: “The American Rescue Plan only expanded the child tax credit for the 2021 tax year. That means the credit has returned to its pre-pandemic […]
The issue of family values has been a theme of American conservatism and the Republican Party since at least the 1970s. Generally speaking, those values as articulated by the right have come in the form of attacks on LGBTQ rights, the Equal Rights Amendment, sex education in schools, abortion rights, certain government programs, supposed “socialist” […]
Americans should know about the Democracy Index if we do not know about it already. In the latest report published by the Economist Intelligence Unit (The EIU), the US is described as a “flawed democracy” – for the fifth straight year, and lower than the 2020 score. The Economist Intelligence Unit (The EIU) is a […]