INCOME INEQUALITY

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*1. INCOME INEQUALITY

Hmmm...Interesting statistics from Bernie Sanders. "Incredibly, the wealthiest 62 people on this planet own as much wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population — around 3.6 billion people. The top 1 percent now owns more wealth than the whole of the bottom 99 percent. Meanwhile, in our country the top one-tenth of 1 percent now owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. Fifty-eight percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent. Wall Street and billionaires, through their “super PACs,” are able to buy elections." From NYT - Bernie Sanders: Democrats Need to Wake Up

+ "It's not a question of my [Bernie Sanders] endorsement. It's a question of the American people understanding that Secretary Clinton is prepared to stand with them as they work longer hours for low wages, as they cannot afford health care, as their kids can't afford to go to college. Make it clear that she is on their side, that she is prepared to take on Wall Street, the drug companies, fossil fuel industry. Deal with the global crisis of climate change. I have no doubt that if Secretary Clinton makes that position, those positions clear, she will defeat Trump and defeat him by a very wide margin." From WaPo - Bernie Sanders just gave an amazingly condescending interview about Hillary Clinton

*2. THE SCALIA (UN)FACTOR

"For the second term in a row, the court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. delivered liberal decisions at a rate not seen since the famously liberal court led by Chief Justice Earl Warren in the 1950s and 1960s. [Recently deceased] Justice Scalia was a dominant presence on the court, and his influence could exceed the power of his single vote. But it is also possible that Justice Scalia played a role in pushing Justice Kennedy to the left. The silencing of Justice Scalia’s voice seemed to help other justices find theirs. Two weeks after Justice Scalia died, Justice Clarence Thomas broke a decade-long silence by asking questions from the bench. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, already a major presence at arguments, took on an even larger role. This month, she wrote a lashing dissent, rooted in the concerns of the Black Lives Matter movement, in a case on police stops." From NYT - The Right-Wing Supreme Court That Wasn’t and WaPo - For conservatives, high court’s term was a letdown

*3. TINY HOUSE BILLIONAIRE

"With a net worth of $840 million, Tony Hsieh could have a Caribbean island or a palatial estate overlooking an ocean vista all to himself. Instead, the Zappos.com chief executive has set down roots in a less exclusive locale: a dusty Las Vegas trailer park." From WaPo - Why this CEO is worth almost $1 billion but lives in a trailer park

*4. FATTY FATTY 2x4

"The evidence is now clear: Exercise is excellent for health; it’s just not that important for weight loss. So don't expect to lose a lot of weight by ramping up physical activity alone." That's disappointing... From Vox - The science is in: exercise won’t help you lose much weight

*5. HE WHO CONTROLS THE MESSAGE...

"Should we be thinking of Facebook as a news site? Is that how Facebook thinks of itself?" I guess not. "As if to underscore the point, the company is making a tweak to its news feed ranking system to increase the prominence of content from your friends and family over posts by news companies and other organizations. It is also warning news companies that their traffic might decline as a result of the change. Publishers have little choice but to deal with the changes that Facebook makes, given the dependent relationship news media companies have with the social network." This is interesting considering "social sharing" (posting updates about yourself) is declining on the site. From NYT - Facebook, a News Giant That Would Rather Show Us Baby Pictures and Facebook to Change News Feed to Focus on Friends and Family

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