Reminder of some facts about student loan debt:
56% of all student loan debt is held by people who went to grad school and the highest income households in America hold 60% of outstanding debt and make 75% of student loan payments.
Keep in mind only 13% of Americans have graduate degrees and only 37% have undergrad degrees.
Transgender man with an erect penis waits in line to use a cubicle in a women’s restroom in Burlington, Massachusetts.
In the video he glances at the women (who are heard in the background) and turns his camera, appearing to prepare to take a discreet photo of the women.
In medical school I paid out of state tuition ($59,000 a year). If I had been a real minority (Black, Hispanic, Native American), I would have paid in state tuition ($17,000 a year). I was the wrong brown. It didn’t matter that my immigrant parents faced a lot of adversity and I didn’t grow up with money or privilege. So of course I was saddled with debt. I paid it off working in Compton and Watts. I loved my patients and am blessed. But I had to work extra hard because I was born the wrong ethnicity. Now we won’t have these regressive policies. We are one step closer to being judged by the content of our character, our ability, not the “candy coated shell” we live in.
Scientists, on the basis of early testing, were saying aspartame was a carcinogen in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but Donald Rumsfeld, who was CEO of the company that owned Aspartame, became part of the Reagan transition team and got to appoint the new head of the FDA, who then went on to cast the deciding vote in favour of allowing Aspartame into the American food supply. When Monsanto acquired the company that owned Aspartame soon after, Rumsfeld was paid $12 million by Monsanto as a golden handshake, almost certainly for his direct intervention to get Aspartame past the safety board.
This isn't an isolated story of corruption, of corporate profits being put before the health of the nation. This is how the system works. It's why the American food supply is loaded with ingredients whose effects on human health are totally unknown. It's why we regularly discover that common food ingredients are extremely harmful.
Take propionic acid (PPA), for instance. This common antifungal, used to extend the shelf life of processed food, is found in highly elevated levels in the stool of autistic children. Many cases of autism appear to be linked to gut dysfunction and microbial overgrowth, which PPA probably encourages by "nuking" the good microbes in the gut, allowing aggressive strains to invade and take hold.
The whole system needs to change. We need an independent system which doesn't allow corporate influence to override the basic rights of the people to eat food that really is safe.
How insane did Harvard's affirmative action policies get?
An African American student in the 40th percentile of their academic index is more likely to get it than an Asian student in the 100th percentile.
Black students in the 50th percentile are more likely to get in that white students at the top.
Clarence Thomas is a national treasure and a great American:
“While I am painfully aware of the social and economic ravages which have befallen my race and all who suffer discrimination, I hold out enduring hope that this country will live up to its principles so clearly enunciated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States: that all men are created equal, are equal citizens, and must be treated equally before the law."