‘Legalizing sports gambling was a huge mistake’
Charles Fain Lehman at The Atlantic
The “rise of sports gambling has caused a wave of financial and familial misery, one that falls disproportionately on the most economically precarious households,” says Charles Fain Lehman. These issues “seem to concentrate among young men living in low-income counties — further evidence that those most hurt by sports gambling are the least well-off.” This can create “not only debt and bankruptcy but emotional instability and even violence,” and “legalization isn’t yielding many benefits, either.”
‘As the election looms, the Harris campaign juggles joy with gravity’
Osita Nwanevu at The Guardian
Kamala Harris “will have to spend the next several weeks convincing the voters who matter most in this country” to “see her as something other than the generically liberal Democratic woman of color from California,” says Osita Nwanevu. But “ridicule should remain an important part of the campaign’s playbook,” as the “more time Harris spends framing the right as bizarre and culturally alien,” the less she’ll spend “conceding that they might be right on an issue like immigration.”
‘Contrary to media myth, US urban crime rates are up’
Jeffrey H. Anderson at The Wall Street Journal
Crime “hasn’t risen equally across the nation,” says Jeffrey H. Anderson. The United States’ “recent crime spike has been concentrated in urban areas,” which are “areas in which leftist prosecutors have gained the strongest footholds, where police have been the most heavily scrutinized, and where lax enforcement and prosecution have become common.” If cities “insist on rerunning the failed social experiments of the 1960s and ’70s, we should expect similar results.”
‘Why a fossil fuel phase-out is the only way to protect future generations’
Vanessa Nakate at Time
“Protecting future generations” means a “total fossil fuel phase-out, a renewed commitment by developed countries to deliver climate finance” and a “green, just transition that puts people and jobs first,” says Vanessa Nakate. If governments “decarbonize the economy, powerful countries will have fewer reasons to send their militaries halfway around the world to secure the flow of oil.” Activists must “demand that our leaders listen,” as the “longer we delay, the worse it will be.”