Daily Clips: November 5th, 2015
DEA chief: medical marijuana is a “a joke.” Science: No, it’s not: By now, you should know that the US government classifies marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug, right up there with heroin. Our government is f***** up like that. The current DEA chief believes pot has no medical value, yet as Ezra Klein highlights, positions “like his increasingly fly in the face of science – and may actually put people’s lives at risk when adopted as the government policy.”
Red states get redder, blue states get bluer: EJ Dionne takes a big picture look at the 2015 elections, noting the good and bad takeaways for Democrats. He reminds progressives that, “Democrats swept to victory in three open seats on Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court” while also winning mayoral contests in Indiana and North Carolina. According to Dionne, the “one large lesson from Tuesday is that the red parts of the country are getting even redder while the blue and some of the purple parts get bluer. We are still two Americas.”
US jobless claims rise; third-quarter productivity posts surprise gain: The US Labor Department said that productivity increased only at 1.6 percent this last quarter, while manufacturing productivity grew at its quickest pace in over four years. Reuters claims that “economists blame softer productivity on a lack of investment, which they say has led to an unprecedented fall in capital intensity.”
Swing states are swinging left: Bloomberg provides a nice set of graphics which show that six battleground states are trending liberal and Democratic. The future appears bright(er) for progressives.
