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Doris O'Brien is a retired college Speech teacher and banker. She has published two books of humor (Up or Down With Women's Liberation and Humor Me a Little) and for many years contributed light verse to the Pepper 'n Salt column of the Wall Street Journal. She is an avid writer of letters to the editors.
Doris celebrated her 50th wedding anniversary in the same year she welcomed her first grandchild. She now lives in Pasadena with a great view of the San Gabriel mountains — and the annual Tournament of Roses Parade.
She can be reached by e-mail: witsendob at (@) gmail.com
Estate tax. The clearest benefit for the Trump family would be the tax bills' changes to the estate tax, which falls on estates worth more than $5.49 million (nearly $11 million for a couple). The House bill would repeal the estate tax entirely in 2024. As we’ve written before, that would save Trump’s estate $564 million, according to a Bloomberg estimate, based on a net worth of $3 billion. Trump has said his net worth is $10 billion, and if so, the savings to his estate from a repeal of the tax would be $1.9 billion. more »
While Paris was known as a cosmopolitan city, Parisian society was still very restrictive for women. They were not allowed to attend the École des Beaux-Arts, the country’s most important art academy until 1897, and it was not socially acceptable to frequent public spaces, such as cafes, to work on their art and mingle with their peers without a male companion. The exhibition traces how women embraced their artistic aspirations and helped create an alternative system that included attending private academies, exhibiting independently and forming their own organizations. more »
Janet Yellen before the Joint Economic Committee, US Congress "With the job gains this year, 17 million more Americans are employed now than eight years ago. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate, which stood at 4.1 percent in October, has fallen 0.6 percentage point since the turn of the year and is nearly 6 percentage points below its peak in 2010. In addition, the labor force participation rate has changed little, on net, in recent years, which is another indication of improving conditions in the labor market, given the downward pressure on the participation rate associated with an aging population." more »
Since the epidemic began, a few cities and states have begun collecting data on drug seizures, arrests, overdose deaths and other collateral effects of the opioid epidemic. Indiana, for example, is working on a statewide, multi-agency database that includes information on pharmacy robberies, overdose-related ambulance calls and the use of the opioid overdose antidote naloxone. Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Virginia have declared the opioid epidemic a state of emergency, in part to enable better information sharing among agencies. more »
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