Over the first two years of Trump's presidency, enforcement activity at the nation's top three consumer protection agencies that resulted in fines of at least $5,000 plummeted 37 percent from the last two years under former President Barack Obama, according to Consumer Carnage (pdf), the watchdog group's new report.
"Trump, who once asserted that he was 'not going to let Wall Street get away with murder,' now is allowing industry after industry to get away with just about anything," said Alan Zibel, the report's lead author and research director for Public Citizen's Corporate Presidency Project.
"Trump's appointees' apparent belief that enforcement of consumer protection laws should be a last resort," Zibel noted, "represents a dramatic about-face from Trump's claim of populism during his campaign."

In a direct rebuke to laws designed to take away a woman's right to control her own body, Democratic Georgia state Rep. Dar'shun Kendrick has proposed new "Testicular Bill of Rights" legislation that would, among other things, require men to get permission from their sexual partners before obtaining erectile dysfunction medication and institute a 24-hour "waiting period" for men who want to buy porn or sex toys.

In a tweet on Monday, Kendrick shared an email she wrote to her staff that outlines key elements of the legislation, which would also make men having sex without a condom an "aggravated assault" crime and force men to immediately start paying child support to their partners after six weeks and one day of pregnancy.

A new report from the Public Religion Research Institute finds that strong majorities within all religious groups, including white evangelicals and Jehovah’s Witnesses, show sustained support for LGBT nondiscrimination policies.
The newly released data from PRRI’s 2018 American Values Atlas, an annual survey of more than 40,000 Americans, showed that 69 percent of all Americans are in favor of enacting laws shielding LGBT people from discrimination in jobs, public accommodations and housing.

Note: This article is the third in a series of articles exploring the influence of the great Sufi poets on Leonard Cohen. The first two articles are:
“Making Love: Leonard Cohen and the Sufis (Part 1)”
“Guests of Love: Leonard Cohen and the Sufis (Part 2)”
Much of Cohen’s music, especially in his later years, was about grace. How we don’t deserve it, but it makes its way into our lives anyway. “There is a crack in everything” he sang, “That’s how the light gets in.”....

(Cohen wrote
In streams of light I clearly saw
The dust you seldom see,
Out of which the nameless makes
A name for one like me....


Rumi, too, identifies with dust when confronted with this “indescribable One”:
Dust settles upon my head and upon my metaphors,
for You are beyond anything we can either think or say

In early March, more than 30 atheist, humanist and secular leaders gathered at a residence overlooking Southern Californian vineyards to discuss politics, social issues and how to draw in more people at a first-ever SoCal Secular Leadership Summit.

The event was the first of three summits planned by Secular Coalition for America, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. Later this month, similar gatherings will be held in Greenville, S.C., and Nashville, Tenn. Like Temecula, Greenville is outside of an urban hub, and all three cities’ event atmospheres are more seminar than corporate convention. The organizers of the summit wanted their attendees to be able to see each other.

Sarah Levin, director of grass roots and community programs at Secular Coalition for America, said that her organization recently found that nonbelievers felt well-connected to national secular organizations but disconnected from others like them locally.

“We realized we need to help strengthen these networks of local groups so that they can be mobilized for political advocacy,” Levin said.

The history of music begins in 17th-century Germany with Bach.
Or at least that’s how Ronnie Malley remembers it being taught in school.
“Something that was embedded in my mind from schooling was that Western music was the pinnacle of all music,” said Malley, a Palestinian-American Muslim living in Chicago. “And that was difficult for me to digest. Because, well, music has been around for a very long time.”

But as the actor and music teacher studied the history of European music in his spare time, he became interested in the influence of Muslim rule in Spain on classical music. This led to his reading about the African predecessors of some modern Western instruments. Then, one day about five years ago, Malley stumbled across some research that traced the roots of American blues music back to West African Muslim slaves.
His discovery led Malley to imagine a musical play that explored the shared history of Islam, Africa, slavery and blues music through the eyes of Mamadou, a fictional 18th-century Muslim “griot,” or storyteller musician, who has been sold into slavery....

In her 1998 book “Servants of Allah,” historian Sylviane Diouf, whose work inspired Malley, introduced the now-popular idea that the style of the field holler, an early building block of the blues, evolved from West African Muslims’ melodic recitation of the Quran and, particularly, the vocal call to prayer.

Democrats on Tuesday proposed a tax on Wall Street transactions which could stop another financial crash and bring in $777 billion over the next decade.
"The Wall Street Tax Act would tax the sale of stocks, bonds, and derivatives at 0.1 percent," said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hi.), who introduced the bill (pdf) with U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) as lead co-sponsor.
"A stock trade of $1,000 would incur a tax of just one dollar," Schatz added.
The bill was also cosponsored in the Senate by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president, and Sen. Jeff Merkeley (D-Ore.).