United states

Political biases are omnipresent, but what we don’t fully understand yet is how they come about in the first place. In 2014, Michele J. Gelfand , a professor of psychology at the Stanford Graduate School of Business formerly at the University of Maryland, and Jesse R. Harrington , then a PhD. candidate , conducted a study designed to rank the 50 states on a scale of “tightness” and “looseness.” Appropriately titled “ Tightness-Looseness Across the 50 United States ,” the study calculated a catalog of measures for each state, including the incidence of natural disasters, disease prevalence, residents’ levels of openness and conscientiousness, drug and alcohol use, homelessness and incarceration rates. Gelfand and Harrington predicted that “‘tight’ states would exhibit a higher incidence of natural disasters, greater environmental vulnerability, fewer natural resources, greater incidence of disease and higher mortality rates, higher population density, and greater degrees … [Read more...] about Do You Live in a ‘Tight’ State or a ‘Loose’ One? Turns Out It Matters Quite a Bit.

HOUSTON (AP) — A United Airlines flight bound from Houston to Rio de Janeiro has returned to Bush Intercontinental Airport for an emergency landing shortly after takeoff, the airline said. Flight 129 returned to the airport Tuesday night because of “a mechanical issue,” according to a statement from United Airlines. The airline did not describe the nature of the problem and an airport spokesperson did not immediately return messages for comment Wednesday morning. The airline said the plane landed safely, passengers got off and United Airlines made arrangements to get them to their destination. The flight tracking website FlightAware reported the aircraft was a Boeing 767 flying to Rio de Janeiro that departed Houston at 8:52 p.m. and returned to the airport, landing at 10:50 p.m. … [Read more...] about United Airlines flight makes emergency landing in Houston

How much further will the Supreme Court go to assist in the arming of America? That has been the question since last June, when the court ruled that New York’s century-old gun licensing law violated the Second Amendment. Sooner than expected, we are likely to find out the answer. On March 17, the Biden administration asked the justices to overturn an appeals court decision that can charitably be described as nuts, and accurately as pernicious. The decision by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit invalidated a federal law that for almost 30 years has prohibited gun ownership by people who are subject to restraining orders for domestic violence. The Fifth Circuit upheld the identical law less than three years ago. But that was before President Donald Trump put a Mississippi state court judge named Cory Wilson on the appeals court. (As a candidate for political office in 2015, Wilson said in a National Rifle Association questionnaire … [Read more...] about We’re About to Find Out How Far the Supreme Court Will Go to Arm America

Oscar Health was going to be a new kind of insurance company. Started in 2012, just in time to offer plans to people buying insurance under the new federal health care law, the business promised to use technology to push less costly care and more consumer-friendly coverage. “We’re trying to build something that’s going to turn the industry on its head,” Joshua Kushner, one of the company’s founders, said in 2014, as Oscar began to enroll its first customers. These days, though, Oscar is more of a case study in how brutally tough it is to keep a business above water in the state marketplaces created under the Affordable Care Act. And its struggles highlight a critical question about the act: Can insurance companies run a viable business in the individual market? Oscar has attracted 135,000 customers, about half of them in New York State. And some of its efforts with technology have been successful. But for every dollar of premium Oscar collects in New York, the company is losing … [Read more...] about Health Insurer Hoped to Disrupt the Industry, but Struggles in State Marketplaces

RESTLESS GIANT The United States From Watergate to Bush v. Gore. By James T. Patterson. Illustrated. 448 pp. Oxford University Press. $35. THIS is first-rate history by a first-rate historian. Unlike many of his brethren, James T. Patterson can write, and he understands the value of vivid detail, using "Annie Hall," "Norma Rae" and "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" to help explain the women's movement. What's more, he can think, and he offers analysis and interpretation that is consistently sensible, if sometimes a trifle Panglossian. The events he describes make up the history -- social, economic and political -- of the United States during the final quarter of the 20th century, from Richard Nixon's departure from the White House and America's departure from Vietnam to the bitter partisanship of Bill Clinton's impeachment and Bush v. Gore. In between, he recalls the Ford and Carter administrations and the Iranian hostage crisis, the rise of Ronald Reagan and the resurgence of … [Read more...] about ‘Restless Giant’: The Rich and the Rest

Amber Wang (The Jakarta Post) PREMIUM Agence France-Presse/Taipei   ● Thu, March 30 2023 China vowed on Wednesday to "fight back" should Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen meet the United States House speaker during a trip to the US. Tsai left on Wednesday for the US, from where she will head to Guatemala and Belize to shore up ties with diplomatic allies before heading to California, where US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had said he would meet her. China claims the democratic island as part of its territory to be retaken one day and, under its "One China" principle, no country may maintain official ties with both Beijing and Taipei. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium … [Read more...] about China vows to ‘fight back’ if Taiwan leader meets US speaker

The government benefits began their existence as objects of partisan rancor and harsh criticism. Eventually, though, they became so popular that politicians of both parties promised to protect them. It was true of Social Security and Medicare. And now the pattern seems to be repeating itself with Obamacare. Consider what has happened recently in North Carolina: Only a decade after the state’s Republican politicians described the law as dangerous and refused to sign up for its expansion of Medicaid, Republicans and Democrats came together to pass such an expansion . The Republican-controlled House in North Carolina passed the bill 87 to 24, while the Republican-controlled Senate passed it 44 to 2. “Wow, have things changed,” Jonathan Cohn wrote in a HuffPost piece explaining how the turnabout happened . Obamacare — the country’s largest expansion of health insurance since Medicare and Medicaid in 1965 — is still not as widely accepted as those programs. North Carolina … [Read more...] about Obamacare Keeps Winning

One of the notable dynamics of American life today is that conservatives report being personally happier than liberals but also seem more politically discontented. The political left has become more institutionalist, more invested in experts and establishments, even as progressive culture seems more shadowed by unhappiness and even mental illness. Meanwhile conservatives claim greater contentment in their private lives — and then go out and vote for paranoid outsiders and burn-it-down populists. These dynamics aren’t entirely new: As Musa al-Gharbi writes in an essay for American Affairs, the happiness gap between liberals and conservatives is a persistent social-science finding, visible across several eras and many countries. Meanwhile, the view that “my life is pretty good, but the country is going to hell,” which seems to motivate a certain kind of middle-class Donald Trump supporter, would have been unsurprising to hear in a bar or at a barbecue in 1975 or 1990, no less than … [Read more...] about How the Right Turned Radical and the Left Became Depressed

MIAMI — Dalia Carmeli, who drives a trolley in downtown Miami, voted for Donald J. Trump on Election Day. A week later, she stopped in to see the enrollment counselor who will help her sign up for another year of health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. “I hope it still stays the same,” said Ms. Carmeli, 64, who has Crohn’s disease and relies on her insurance to cover frequent doctor’s appointments and an array of medications. Mr. Trump and Republicans in Congress are vowing to repeal much or all of the health law, a target of their party’s contempt since the day it passed with only Democratic votes in 2010. If they succeed, they will set in motion an extraordinary dismantling of a major social program in the United States. But for now, with open enrollment for 2017 underway, people are steadily signing up or renewing their coverage, and in conversations last week in South Florida, many refused to believe that a benefit they count on would actually be taken away. … [Read more...] about Many in Florida Count on Obama’s Health Law, Even Amid Talk of Its Demise

One of the Republican Party’s most astute pols, Representative Tom Davis of Virginia, recently reflected on his party’s status among voters. In a 20-page memo for his colleagues, Davis wrote, “If we were a dog food, they would take us off the shelf.” Bad as things are, they may get worse. The signs of Republican trouble are everywhere. Eighty-one percent of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track, the worst number since The New York Times and CBS started asking the question in 1991. Consumer sentiment in May, as measured by the University of Michigan, was at its lowest level in 28 years. Republicans have lost three consecutive special elections for House seats in rock-ribbed Republican districts, a particularly ominous harbinger of electoral catastrophe. Yet Democratic successes right now are driven more by Republican failures than by an enthusiastic public embrace of what Democrats stand for. The Democratic-controlled Congress, after all, has a lower approval rating … [Read more...] about Back to the Center