Source: Reuters
“The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday unveiled a rule extending mandatory overtime pay to an estimated 4 million salaried workers, going even further than an Obama-era rule that was struck down in court. The U.S. Department of Labor rule will require employers to pay overtime premiums to workers who earn a salary of less than $1,128 per week, or about $58,600 per year, when they work more than 40 hours in a week. The current salary threshold of about $35,500 per year was set by the Trump administration in a 2020 rule that worker advocates and many Democrats have said did not go far enough. The rule does not affect overtime requirements for workers who are paid hourly.” (04/23/24)
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-rule-grants-overtime-pay-4-million-us-workers-2024-04-23/
Source: Center for a Stateless Society
by Logan Marie Glitterbomb
“‘Tax the rich’ is an all too common refrain on the left which, thanks to left unity, has even been echoed by many self-proclaimed anarchists. ‘Taxation is theft’ on the other hand is a slogan many anarchists are hesitant to repeat due to its association with right-libertarians despite it being far more consistent with anarchist ideals. When taxation is the main funding source for the military police state with only crumbs going towards an extremely inadequate welfare plantation system, why would anarchists want any more funding to go towards that no matter who’s fronting the bill?” (04/23/24)
https://c4ss.org/content/59578
Source: Common Dreams
“The United Nations'[s] human rights chief on Tuesday called for an international investigation into mass graves discovered at two Gaza hospitals that Israeli forces recently assailed and destroyed, further imperiling the enclave’s barely functioning healthcare system. Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement that he was ‘horrified’ by the discovery of mass graves at the Nasser and al-Shifa medical complexes, which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reduced to ruins. More than 300 bodies were reportedly discovered in the mass grave near the Nasser facility in Khan Younis, Gaza, and eyewitnesses said Israeli soldiers executed civilians during their two-week-long raid of al-Shifa last month.” (04/23/24)
https://www.commondreams.org/news/un-rights-chief-mass-graves
Source: Washington Post
by Catherine Rampell
“On many dimensions, our ability to attract global talent to our shores is a blessing. But this being an election year, and demagogues being demagogues, right-wing pundits and political operatives have worked to darken these bright statistics. Fox News refers to Bidenomics as a ‘migrant job fair.’ The Republican-aligned Heritage Foundation alleges that ‘Americans have been completely left behind in this economy,’ citing as evidence that fact I just mentioned: that all the net new job growth is accounted for by immigrants. But the labor market is not zero-sum, and native-born workers happen to be doing extraordinarily well, too. … There just aren’t enough of us, in total, to fill all the jobs that employers are creating as boomers retire.” (04/23/24)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/23/immigration-jobs-economy/
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“The underbelly of New York City’s tabloid media industry was laid bare in a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday. A famous publisher outlined a secret plan he had with Donald Trump and his personal lawyer Michael Cohen, calling it an ‘agreement among friends.’ Prosecutors questioned former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker for nearly three hours. He testified that the three worked to suppress negative stories about the candidate during his 2016 campaign. ‘This could be a very big story, so I believe that it should be removed from the market,’ Mr Pecker said he would advise the former president about killing certain articles. Mr Pecker’s testimony could prove critical for prosecutors as they seek to prove that Mr Trump tried to influence the election by quelling a story of an alleged affair. Mr Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records.” (04/23/24)
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68880206
Source: The Dispatch
by Chris Stirewalt
“America has long loved its bad men, some badder than others. Some were real heroes, like the privateers who harassed enemy shipping during the Revolution and the War of 1812. Some were just thugs with good public relations, like Al Capone. And some were mostly works of fiction, like Billy the Kid. So what’s Donald Trump? I’ve thought often of my mother’s soft spot for [John] Dillinger as I watched Republicans close ranks around Trump. These are mostly people who wouldn’t tolerate Trump’s conduct in an employee or neighbor. … Yet with Trump they have found a way not just to excuse the bad behavior, but to turn it into a mark of honor.” (04/23/24)
https://thedispatch.com/article/what-kind-of-desperado-is-donald-trump/
Source: Cato Institute
by Norbert Michel
“A fully implemented CBDC gives the government complete control over the money going into and coming out of every person’s account. It’s not difficult to see that this level of government control is incompatible with both economic and political freedom.” (04/23/24)
https://www.cato.org/commentary/there-no-good-version-central-bank-digital-currency
Source: ABC News
“A legal challenge over the British government’s role in allowing weapons to be sent to Israel can be heard at the High Court later this year, a judge said Tuesday. Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq and the U.K.-based Global Legal Action Network filed the challenge in December, calling for the U.K. to stop granting licenses for arms exports to Israel. They said they acted after Britain’s government ignored their written requests to suspend arms sales to Israel following the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attack that triggered the Israeli-Hamas war. The case had been dismissed in February, but a High Court judge on Tuesday granted a judicial review hearing for it in October.” (04/23/24)
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/legal-challenge-uks-role-arms-sales-israel-ahead-109536097
Source: The Dispatch
“Lady Law and Homeless Encampments.” (04/23/24)
https://thedispatch.com/podcast/advisoryopinions/lady-law-and-homeless-encampments/
Source: EconLog
by Kevin Corcoran
“Thomas Sowell frequently emphasizes the importance of thinking beyond the immediate and obvious impact of some economic policy and thinking through the larger implications. He actually wrote an entire book dedicated to this idea – Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One. A similar and useful exercise to evaluate an idea is to really try to work out not what will unfold next, but what that idea, if true, should imply for the present situation. Here are two common examples where this would come in handy.” (04/23/24)
https://www.econlib.org/ideas-and-implications/
