Not long ago, a New York City data analyst who had been laid off shortly after the pandemic hit told me she had filed for unemployment-insurance payments and then spent the next six months calling, emailing, and using social media to try to figure out why the state’s Labor Department would not send her the money she was owed. A mother in Philadelphia living below the poverty line told me about her struggle to maintain government aid. Disabled herself and caring for a disabled daughter, she had not gotten all of her stimulus checks and, because she does not regularly file taxes or use a computer, needed help from a legal-aid group to make sure she would get the newly expanded child-tax-credit payments. A Colorado systems administrator with a chronic medical condition told me that switching jobs had caused an accidental lapse in his health coverage, which led to a cascade of paperwork over responsibility for a medical bill. He estimated that he had spent 100 hours resolving the issue. Many Americans have stories like these. To make sure that the safety net catches us, to make sure that our social-insurance programs insure us, to make sure that we get what we pay Uncle Sam for, we work as our own health-care administrators. Our own tax professionals. Our own social workers. Our own disability-law experts. Our own child-support advocates, long-term-care reps, and public-housing officials. In my decade-plus of social-policy reporting, I have mostly understood these stories as facts of life. Government programs exist. People have to navigate those programs. That is how it goes. But at some point, I started thinking about these kinds of administrative burdens as the “time tax”—a levy of paperwork, aggravation, and mental effort imposed on citizens in exchange for benefits that putatively exist to help them. This time tax is a public-policy cancer, mediating every American’s relationship with the government and wasting countless precious hours of people’s time. The issue is not that modern life comes with paperwork hassles. The issue is that American benefit programs are, as a whole, difficult and sometimes impossible for everyday citizens to use. Our public policy is crafted from red tape, entangling millions of people who are struggling to find a job, failing to feed their kids, sliding into poverty, or managing a disabling health condition. The United States government—whether controlled by Democrats, with their love of too-complicated-by-half, means-tested policy solutions; or Republicans, with their love of paperwork-as-punishment; or both, with their collective neglect of the implementation and maintenance of government programs—has not just given up on making benefits easy to understand and easy to receive. It has in many cases purposefully made the system difficult, shifting the burden of public administration onto individuals and discouraging millions of Americans from seeking aid. The government rations public services through perplexing, unfair bureaucratic friction. And when people do not get help designed for them, well, that is their own fault.

Sovereign states have been mythologized as the natural unit of political order. History shows how new they are—and how we can think beyond them.

The series will be based around McMahon fighting allegations of steroid use in the WWE in the '90s

Last fall, it seemed that Apache Corp., the giant Houston oil company, had hit a dead end in a long-running legal battle. A paralegal named Cathryn Davis claimed the company fired her in 2013 for complaining about age and gender discrimination. A jury agreed, awarding $900,000 to her and her attorneys; an appeals court upheld the judgment. The company asked the Texas Supreme Court to review the case; but on Oct. 2, it declined. Litigants can ask the state’s highest civil court to reconsider such decisions, but it’s a long shot; nearly 98 percent of the time, it refuses, according to research by the Texas Bar. Nevertheless, Apache notified the Supreme Court it intended to ask for a so-called rehearing. After the company contributed $250,000 in political support to justices seeking re-election, the court changed its mind. Texas is one of only four states with partisan Supreme Court elections, and Apache’s appeal occurred while two of the nine Republican justices were simultaneously campaigning and making decisions about the company’s case. (In all, four were up for election but two recused themselves from the case because they had worked on Apache v. Davis before it reached the high court.)

An oral history of Clifford, the 1994 cult comedy about a deranged little boy played by Martin Short.

“Steam players see the achievement, but cannot obtain it. They are the most damned, and the most human. PlayStation and Xbox players can 100% the game and are dully content. Switch players don’t have achievements, and thus dwell in God’s light,” Nordhagen said in a tweet thread.

CDC says Delta variant is more aggressive and spreading with incredible efficiency.

Found in hospitals and long-term care facilities, the cases indicate what may be the first known transmissions in the U.S.

Plague is caused by bacteria and usually is transmitted by bites from infected fleas. Prairie dogs, squirrels, chipmunks and other rodents many carry the fleas and become infected themselves.

Police all over America are regularly asking Shotspotter, the AI-powered microphones that "detect gunshots" to fabricate gunshots from thin air for court proceedings, according to court records we obtained. Prosecutors in Chicago are being forced to withdraw evidence generated by the technology, which led to the police killing of 13-year-old Adam Toledo earlier this year.

SAN DIEGO (KUSI) – All state employees and all workers at hospitals and health care facilities across California will be required to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination under a state policy announced Monday, and those who are unable or refuse to do so will have to be tested at least once a week. The vaccine-verification program for state employees is...

When you take your car to the repair shop, you expect to pick it up in better shape, not worse. One Tomball woman called KPRC 2 Investigator Amy Davis after she said a car dealership mechanic wrecked her vehicle and is refusing to take responsibility.

Scientists just discovered that the rock is really the brain of a Roman cult member that was shocked solid by high heat.

From cannabis buffets to choppering in caviar, posh charter life can be a rough ride for the crew. [Hell is real. - Ed.]

Seattle Children's hospital successfully eliminated opioids from the operating room at their outpatient surgery center in Bellevue. At first, the plan was to reduce opioid use during surgery. The anesthesiology team had another idea, however — cut them out completely.

"The silverback was really throwing some of the chimps in the air, so he was really trying to protect himself and his group," study co-author Simone Pika, a cognitive biologist at Osnabrück University, told Live Science. Despite injuring three chimpanzees, the silverback was overwhelmed and the chimps ultimately captured the group's infant and beat it to death.

The labor movement’s iconic inflatable rat has survived a pathetic judicial attempt at extermination. But though Scabby is free, unions remain hamstrung by the oppressive federal prohibition on secondary boycotts encoded in the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act.

Mr. Moses developed a reputation for extraordinary calm in the face of violence as he helped to register thousands of voters and trained a generation of activists in Mississippi in the early 1960s.

Critics of the agency’s intelligence programs called the letter ‘patronizing’ and ‘offensive,’ and raised continued concerns about civil rights

"I've been a fan of 'Jeopardy!' all my life. When this opportunity came up, I could not pass it up," LeVar Burton said.