Affirmative action occupies a telling place in a nation painfully aware of its racial inequities yet painfully divided over how to solve them. Great numbers of Americans support the overarching goals of assuring equal access to educational opportunity and maintaining racial diversity in the country’s institutions of higher learning. At the same time, polls show […]

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The supply-side economists of the 1980s famously emphasized how government policies (especially taxes) affect incentives. They argued that taxes act as disincentives to work, saving, and investment. Conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation repeat this, like a mantra, to the present day. The argument is basically that tax policy—by discouraging desirable economic activities—misaligns private […]

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The Pew Research Center released a comprehensive project on American working women and found that 40 percent of these women are now the breadwinners of their families. Given that most Americans are comfortable with mothers in the workforce, you might have thought this report could spark a thoughtful discussion on the needs of families. Um, […]

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Apple is synonymous with computers, smart phones, tablets, apps and iTunes. It’s record-shattering profits in recent years rely on the sale of these gadgets and services. But an increasingly big part of Apple’s business since the mid-2000s has been finding places to profitably stuff the massive piles of cash the company is sheltering in its […]

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While Darrell Issa (pictured) and Congressional Republicans parade one witness after another up onto Capitol Hill to testify about the IRS’s targeting of conservative “social welfare” groups, a far more important discussion about the function of these sorts of organizations has fallen mostly silent. Last month the Internal Revenue Service acknowledged an inappropriate imbalance in […]

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