IMPORTANT READS

TAX DAY - Today, as millions of Californians rush to file their tax returns and apply for tax credits, state lawmakers are returning to Sacramento from an 11-day spring recess — and preparing to resume negotiations over the best way to put money back in residents’ pockets.

MASS VIOLENCE - In just the past few years, we have witnessed mass violence directed at innocent people in many places:

WANT TO BET-Sitting at the poker table is filled with so much fraught, especially for newbies. Having a strategy is what is most desirable for any rookie’s success.

MILITARY TAX - Most of us want our tax dollars to be wisely used — especially around tax time.

GUEST COMMENTARY - I think we can now say the obvious: The Republican Party has gone bull-goose bonkers.

SCOTUS - As I have written before, the U.S. Supreme Court is facing a crisis of legitimacy driven by a growing public perception that the court is a political institution dominated by conservative activists masquerading as impartial guardians of the Constitution. 

SOCIAL MEDIA - It should come as no surprise that Facebook, alongside many big tech companies, opposes anti-monopoly regulatory efforts, expanding antitrust rules, and strengthening privacy and user rights.

OUR DEMOCRACY - Washington Post opinion columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. votes at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland.

RENT CONTROL - As corporate landlords keep setting sky-high prices in the rental housing market, tenants are getting slammed by unfair rents, more evictions, and more homelessness.

CLASS OF DISCONTENTS - Twenty-first-century America may be dominated by oligarchic elites, but arguably the biggest threat to our economic and political system might be located further down the food chain.

SCOTUS - If she is confirmed by the Senate next week, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson would arguably become the most accomplished Justice on the Supreme Court, and the first to have served as a public defender.

POLITICS & SOCIAL MEDIA - The new revelation Wednesday that Facebook hired one of the largest Republican consulting firms in the United States to carry out a public attack campaign against rival platform TikTok was seen as further evidence of the social media behemoth's growing alliance with the GOP political apparatus.

URBAN WATCH - As the centers of media and political discourse, large cities, notably New York, have a unique ability to promote themselves, asserting that dense, core urban areas own the future.

DOJ WATCH - I know you've heard this before—that accountability is coming for Donald Trump and his cronies for triggering the Jan. 6th insurrection—

NEW TAX CODE - Economic experts and progressives opposed to the outrageous levels of inequality in the United States celebrated Saturday evening

WEALTH DISTRIBUTION - During four years of Donald Trump’s high-anxiety presidency, Republicans could at least point to one goal accomplished amid the noise and two impeachments: the 2017 tax reform law.

NUCLEAR WAR - I’ve been darkly amused by the large number of people I’ve seen and heard dismissing the possibility of nuclear World War III emerging from the Ukraine War:

POLITICS 2022 - The depression-era comedian Will Rogers once famously said he did not belong to an organized political party because he was a Democrat.

ECONOMY - Inflation! Inflation! Everyone’s talking about it, but ignoring one of its biggest causes: corporate concentration.

WOMEN’S RIGHTS - For more than six months, people in Texas have been unable to access abortion in the state beyond the earliest weeks of pregnancy.

JOB MARKET - In corporate speak, there are no “job cuts.”