US companies use severance pay to coerce employees to train their own replacements and to shut up about it after they are fired.

I think it should be a felony for managers or executives to participate in such schemes (either of the two kinds), and employees that testify publicly about such felonies should be given a large reward.

Obama ordered US troops in Afghanistan to increase their direct participation in combat.

The corrupt Afghan government can't inspire soldiers to fight hard to defeat the Taliban. The US can keep propping it up, but the Taliban will remain, so the US will have to prop it up ad infinitem, or else stop at some point and let the Taliban win. Sooner or later, the US will have to do that.

I think Clinton would not feel bad about keeping this war going for 4 or 8 more years. But this achieves nothing except to continue the deaths.

If the US allows offshore drilling, the monetary costs for the public could be as much as 180 billion dollars.

Nearly all oil companies have abandoned their leases for drilling in the Chukchi Sea.

So why not put an end to it?

A woman who left two children safely in a parked car for 10 minutes was arrested and charged with an absurd "crime" and made to post $25,000 bail.

Theoretically, when you post bail, you eventually get it back. However, she probably did not have $25,000 on hand for this. So she probably had to pay $2,500 to a bail bonds company, and she will never get that back.

For a typical American family, an unexpected expense of $2,500 can mean bankruptcy and homelessness. Arresting struggling parents is therefore far more dangerous than leaving kids in a car.