Obama talks about helping small areas in the US with lots of poverty, but part of the "help" is cutting taxes for business.

Once a tax cut gets applied to a part of the US, businesses will push to spread it to more parts. Then businesses elsewhere say that "fairness" means they should get a tax cut too. Eventually it spreads into a general tax cut for business.

Business pays too little taxes in general. If we want to put specific zones at an advantage, let's raise taxes for business everywhere except those zones.

Former Merck employees claim in a lawsuit that Merck falsified data about the effectiveness of its vaccine against mumps, and used incorrect test procedures designed to make the vaccine look more effective than it really was.

I found out about this through a site called nvic.org, but that site exaggerated and distorted this issue by presenting the vaccine as unsafe. Another page claimed that a tiny amount of formaldehyde in a vaccine was dangerous on principle, though it is much less formaldehyde than is normally found in the human body. While that site is not 100% false, it is not reliable either.

Unfounded rumors claiming vaccines are dangerous has led people to refuse vaccination for their children, which ironically has resulted in disease outbreaks that really damage children. The most glaring instance is the opposition to polio vaccination in Pakistan and Syria, which results in permanent palsy for some children.

Hrant Dink, martyr for freedom of speech, was tried in Turkey for the "crime" of affirming the genocide of the Armenians. Then, when France first considered a law to make it a "crime" to deny the genocide of the Armenians, Dink said he would go to France and deny it as a protest.

Turkey now plans to increase internet censorship and make it harder to evade.

Banning "hate speech" is an excuse for dangerous policies. No matter what we think of views, we must not ban their expression.

The Australian government's plan to reduce CO₂ emissions is to give money to the companies that produce it, then let them do whatever they wish.

It also endorses cap-and-trade, which pretends to reduce emissions but really promotes pretend reductions.

That government will say anything whatever, but its actions are in service to fossil fuel companies.

The UK's "lobbying" bill threatens to restrict civil society, while business lobbying will simply adapt.