How to succeed by failing forward

  The best way to teach our children to succeed is to teach them to fail.

  After all, if getting everything you want on the first try is success and everything else is failure, we all fail much more often than we succeed.

Joe Cain returned Mardi Gras to Mobile

  Though Mardi Gras had been celebrated for nearly a century and a half in both New Orleans, Louisiana and Mobile, Alabama, as with many things, the Civil War had nearly ended this celebration permanently. Though no one ever gets to know what might have been, one thing is certain, Mardi Gras was no longer being celebrated once the long and gruesome war had come to end.

Taxpayers should expect serious delays from the IRS this year – a tax scholar offers tips but says only Congress can fix the underlying problem

  No one likes tax season. It’s complicated, it’s stressful, and it’s getting worse.

  Last year was already the “most challenging year taxpayers and tax professionals have ever experienced,” according to the Taxpayer Advocate Service, an independent part of the Internal Revenue Service. According to the agency’s annual report, taxpayers had trouble reaching the IRS, tax returns took months to process, almost a quarter of refunds didn’t go out until 2022, and collection notices were sent out even after the tax owed was paid.

What’s insider trading and why it’s a big problem

  There’s a growing bipartisan push to prohibit members of Congress from buying or selling stocks. The shift follows news reports that several senators sold stocks shortly after receiving coronavirus briefings in early 2020 and that at least 57 lawmakers have failed to disclose financial transactions since 2012 as required by law.

  Congress passed that law – the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, also known as the STOCK Act – in 2012 to fight insider trading among lawmakers with increased transparency. But a chorus of legislators and governance watchdogs argue that it didn’t go far enough and isn’t working.

Calling the coronavirus the ‘Chinese virus’ matters – research connects the label with racist bias

  No one wants their geographic region to be associated with a deadly disease. Unfortunately, this has happened in the past with diseases such as “German measles,” “Spanish flu,” and “Asiatic cholera.”

  It happens today, too, even though the World Health Organization advises against naming pathogens for places to “minimize unnecessary negative effects on nations, economies and people.” By Feb. 11, 2020, the WHO had announced that the official name for the novel coronavirus just starting its spread around the world would be severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 – or SARS-CoV-2. The illness it caused would be called COVID-19, short for Coronavirus Disease of 2019.

Canadian trucker protests show how the loudest voices in the room distort democracy

  After Canadian truckers upset with vaccination mandates made their way to Ottawa, they parked their vehicles near Parliament and started making noise – lots of it – blasting their air horns day and night, disturbing the repose of citizens at home, work and in school.

  The local reaction was swift. Hundreds of noise complaints prompted Ottawan police to issue tickets and declare a state of emergency.

Old statues of Confederate generals are slowly disappearing – will monuments honoring people of color replace them?

  With most of the legal challenges resolved after the violent Unite the Right rally, and the statue of Robert E. Lee removed from its lofty pedestal in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, local lawmakers in December 2021 voted to do the unimaginable – donate the statue to the local Jefferson School African American Heritage Center.

  In turn, the nonprofit cultural group quickly announced its plan to melt down the bronze statue and use it as raw material for a new public artwork. What the group plans to build is still an open question, but it clearly will not be another statue honoring the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, the idea that slavery was a benevolent institution and the Confederate cause was just.

We expect more of adults

  Although 11-year-old Mark wasn’t much of an athlete, his dad urged him to play youth baseball. Mark liked to play, but he was hurt by the remarks of teammates and spectators whenever he struck out or dropped a ball. Just before the fourth game of the season, Mark told his dad he didn’t want to go. “I’m no good,” he said, “and everyone knows it.”

The official enemies racket

  An essential element in any national-security state is the need to keep the citizenry afraid. If people aren’t afraid, they won’t be so eager and willing to continue flooding large amounts of taxpayer largess into the coffers of the national-security establishment. Therefore, central to any national-security state is the need for official enemies, rivals, and opponents.

The Jan. 6 Capitol attacks offer a reminder – distrust in government has long been part of Republicans’ playbook

  The Republican National Committee has legitimized the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attacks. The RNC declared on Feb. 4, 2022 that the insurrection and preceding events were “legitimate political discourse” — an assertion that Sen. Mitch McConnell soon after countered, saying that it was a “violent insurrection.”

  The Justice Department is investigating former President Donald Trump’s involvement on Jan. 6, when several thousand rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol. The attacks resulted in the deaths of at least seven people and the injury of 150 police officers.