THE HEADLINES

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In what would be a severe and unprecedented escalation of America’s ongoing drone war around the globe, the CIA may be given the authority to dramatically escalate its persistent campaign of drone strikes against militant fighters in Yemen. U.S. intelligence agencies have been involved for years in the conflict that has wracked Yemen, where the U.S. government insists al Qaeda militants are based. Drone strikes have been used there repeatedly, but the new protocol sought by the CIA would allow them to launch “signature strikes” on supposed terrorist targets without confirming the identity of the individuals or groups targeted for assassination. The Washington Post reports that such a strategy – essentially the blind killing of “terrorist” suspects — has already been used extensively in Pakistan, where U.S. drone strikes are daily occurrences. The pace of civilian deaths due to drone strikes has been increasing in both Pakistan and Yemen, where the incidents have stoked deep rage and resentment against America,. Critics of the CIA’s request for enhanced  authority to carry out drone attacks worry it will lead to both greater civilian casualties and the eventual intervention of the U.S. military in Yemen.

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Are you aiding tax cheats every time you buy a book online, conduct an internet search, or purchase the latest hot tech gadget? You could e if you routinely do business or use the services provided by Amazon, Google, Apple or dozens of other huge — and hugely profitable — tech companies that data shows are barely paying half of their official federal tax rates. As the debate over tax fairness and corporate tax rates escalates, companies simply continue to take advantage of the loopholes and breaks in America’s broken corporate tax code to pay virtually nothing to Uncle Sam while they rake in literally billions of dollars in profits each and every year. Amazon, the popular online retailer of just about anything, was the champion of the race to the smallest tax bill, having paid a stunning 3.5 percent on its massive income in 2011. Google and Apple, both highly successful corporations with staggering profits, also paid at or below an 11 percent rate. A total of 30 big tech companis in the Fortune 500 paid a collective tax rate of just 16 percent, well below the advertised rate of 35 percent that critics complain is too high.

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The gender pay gap is as wide and as discomfiting as ever before in the United States, with 2012 America still a place where equal work does not merit equal pay if you happen to be a woman. This week marked “Equal Pay Day,” a commemoration of how long it takes women to match what their male counterparts earned all of the previous year. That gap persists even in our modern world, where women are working more than ever before and most people would rather not believe that gender-based discrimination is still so prevalent that women still earn only 77 percent of what men receive in their paychecks. Even in fields dominated by women, equal pay has not been attained, with women comprising  the majority of secretaries and housekeepers in the country yet earning as little as 83 percent of what men take home for identical jobs.

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With new studies reaffirming the persistence of a pay gap between the genders and the 2012 presidential campaign already charged with various debates about policies affecting women, women’s issues and the female vote could be as important in November as it ever has in American history. But while the White House likes to castigate the opposing party for a “war on women,” an examination of President Obama’s record on the most egregious form of gender discrimination in the United States — the gender pay gap — yields mixed results. The president made a highly public splash by making the signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act — legislation that makes it easier to legally dispute unfair pay practices based on gender — one of his first actions in the White House. But the enforcement mechanism provided for in the Ledbetter Act to combat pay discrimination has been largely ignored by the Obama administration, who critics argue has not been “particularly aggressive” in pursuing cases of equal pay violations under the new law.

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