Just so everyone is clear: these books aren’t part of any curriculum. Kids aren’t forced to read them or listen to them being read. They’re just in the classroom. These people are freaking out just having their kids in a room near these books. If your “expression of religious freedom” is to prevent your child ever being exposed to ideas that might conflict with what you are telling them at home, then you should take them out of public school and lock them in a closet. But your faith must be pretty fragile if those are the sort of measures you have to take to sustain it.

You forgot childcare. Tack on another 2-3K per month in expenses for that.

It is, indeed, a whole truckload of crazy.

Fine, here are several things they could be doing that would actually be productive right now:

• Start campaigning hard, now, for the upcoming midterms, telling voters exactly what the Trump administration has done that is hurting them, and how they can fix it. Look at Bernie and AOC for a good example.
• Identify districts where they can help campaign and inject funding to tip the scales.
• Join protests in their districts. Show up and support the people on the ground.
• Keep pushing to get access to ICE detention centers as much as possible. Tell the stories of the people being detained. Show the world that this has nothing to do with rounding up criminals. If ICE agents try to stop them or assault/arrest them, so much the better. That shit is getting people riled up.
• Stand with state governors that are defying executive orders from the president.

I could list stuff here all day. None of it changes the fact that articles of impeachment aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on right now. Republicans control congress and are colluding with a corrupt executive branch. The Democrats in congress have zero power to effect change through their offices right now. They need to do the work to get some power back first. At best, they can do something like this to grab a few headlines and maybe get a few republicans on record saying they explicitly support what Trump is doing. Sadly, a good chunk of the population agrees still, and this isn’t going to change that.

Do you think the only options are “do nothing” or “do something pointless”?

Balls has nothing to do with it. At this point it’s just a token effort. It won’t pass a single vote.

You very clearly didn’t read the story. Most households are paying LESS than they were when they were allowed to discard unlimited trash for a flat rate. Hopefully because they are being encouraged to recycle more and produce less waste, rather than just dumping it on the side of the road. It’s a simple case of demand elasticity in response to a pricing-structure change. If people can save money by throwing away less stuff, they throw away less stuff.

I agree that corporations should pay their share to handle their own cleanup, but I don’t see any direct link between that and household waste disposal, or any indication from this story that corporations are getting any breaks. It’s a very small township in rural Massachusetts. They don’t even have municipal trash collection. People have to take their own trash to the transfer station/landfill.

How is a corporation responsible for my household trash?

Just insert “allegedly” next time ;)

In the video from last weekend of the Australian reporter being shot in the back, you can clearly see the police officer behind her raise and aim straight at her. Clearly there’s no repercussions for misusing these weapons.