‘European democracies are running out of time to turn away from the abyss’
Rafael Behr at The Guardian
Victory for the “Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) in the region of Saxony-Anhalt over the weekend is not the biggest electoral prize won by a far-right party in Europe in recent years, but it is one of the most shocking because it is Germany,” says Rafael Behr. No “country had more to learn from history if it wanted to immunize its democracy against extremism.” This “doesn’t have to be Europe’s destiny.” Nationalists “do not form a monolithic bloc.”
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‘Medicare now covers CBD, but Congress wants to ban it’
Maddie Salamone and Caitlin Styrsky at USA Today
A new “Medicare pilot program covers hemp-derived cannabidiol (CBD) products to treat certain patients, even as Congress is moving forward with a law that will effectively wipe those same products off the market,” say Maddie Salamone and Caitlin Styrsky. The “resulting policy quagmire threatens patient access, undermines the work of entrepreneurs and highlights a deeper truth: Hemp already plays a role in American healthcare, whether federal lawmakers are ready to acknowledge it or not.”
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‘The American prison system is cruel. Maine is showing there is another way.’
Abdallah Fayyad at The Boston Globe
In a “number of states, corrections leaders are starting to experiment with more humane ways to run prisons, looking to countries like Norway and Sweden as models,” says Abdallah Fayyad. In Maine, the “entire prison system has undergone various reforms that have so far yielded promising results.” The “idea is to make prison feel as normal as possible — more akin to the outside world so that people have an easier time adjusting to society when they’re released.”
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‘Fortress Yellowstone’
Joseph Bullington at In These Times
An “influx of wealth has made Teton County, Wyoming,” the “richest and most unequal county in the United States,” says Joseph Bullington. Some of the “ultra-rich ranch owners celebrate the natural beauty of their land and are ardent conservationists when it comes to the Yellowstone ecosystem.” But “most of these landowners accumulated their wealth through industries that help drive the destruction of nature elsewhere.” Their “ranks include private equity investors, oil and gas billionaires and real estate developers.”
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