IMPORTANT READS

SPORTS BETTING - In California, you can bet on a horse race, buy a lottery ticket, put money on poker in a card room and play slots at a tribal casino all in the same – potentially expensive – day.

A VIEW FROM HERE - While finding stupid things on the internet generally falls into the non-news category of dog bites man, sometimes the stupidity is so prevalent and so seemingly obvious that it is like successive pacts of wild dogs rampaging through Manhattan.

GUEST COMMENTARY - President Joe Biden faces what he calls two possibly existential conflicts. 

TEACHER PAY RAISES - Today marks the start of the school year for many public schools.

AT HOME WORKERS - Working from home has become the norm in 2022. 

WORKERS’ HEALTH - In late August, as temperatures soared around the United States, a driver for United Parcel Service (UPS) took before-and-after photos of chocolate chip cookies on a baking sheet.

THE DOCTOR IS IN - Contrary to those forever glued to CNN, MSNBC, and the Huffington Post, those who believe in the concepts of MAGA (Make America Great Again) go far, far, and very far beyond anything Donald Trump started.

COST OF EDUCATION - We're told that higher education is one of the best ways to overcome poverty. But for many indebted borrowers, it's been just the opposite.

JOB MARKET - What a strange Labor Day we are approaching in 2022.

NUCLEAR DISASTER - As one of the world’s largest, and most troubled, nuclear power facilities has become a radioactive pawn in an increasingly savage and internecine war, the atomic clock is about as close to ringing Midnight as it can get.

SPORTS BETTING - Successful NBA betting is a combination of luck and skill.

DEMOCRACY IN JEOPARDY - "At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government since the founding,

FIBER OPTICS WATCH - Like many municipalities across the country, Los Angeles is in the throes of trying to figure out the best way to close the digital divide and provide unserved and underserved communities in the County with high-speed broadband connections to internet.

WOMEN’S RIGHTS - Progressives are sounding the alarm about the lengths to which GOP officials appear willing to go to advance their deeply unpopular and reactionary agenda after Louisiana's State Bond Commission,

BUYING ELECTIONS - Shareholders are pressuring some of the largest American corporations to account for political spending that may be aiding voter suppression or election interference.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH - For a good while one could blame Trump for the prosecutorial monstrosity perpetrated on journalist Julian Assange.

GUEST COMMENTARY - Your partners in crime hit me up for nickels and dimes, The man you were loving couldn’t never get clean, It felt out of place, my foot in his face, But he should’ve stayed where his money was green…  – Bob Dylan, Where Are You Tonight?

GUEST COMMENTARY - Liberals and moderates complain endlessly about the awfulness of Trumpian Republifascists in their families, workplaces, and communities and of course in United States politics.

ACCORDING TO LIZ - The self-aware global defense platform from 1984’s The Terminator did not start exterminating mankind in 1997. 

FLORIDA POLITICS - Leaders in the African American community in Florida are speaking out after Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) replaced a pro-trans state attorney with a lawyer who wants to bring back what has been called the “Biking while Black” policy.

OUR TAXES - Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner Charles Rettig vowed in a recent letter that the agency would “absolutely not” use the 87,000 new employees funded by the Inflation Reduction Act to target middle-class Americans.