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Lori Borgman: People names have gone to the dogs

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We’ve been encountering confusion with people names and dog names lately.

Holy Cow! History: Space on your plate

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Things were supposed to be so different by now. Futurists predicted that by the 21st century, we’d travel in helicopter cars, vacation on Mars, and all would be wearing those nifty space jumpsuits.

Robert B. Reich: This is how Biden shows whose side he’s on

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Let me begin today’s column with a question: Why isn’t Joe Biden calling out Starbucks, along with its billionaire founder and recent CEO Howard Schultz, for its fierce union-busting campaign?

Christine Flowers: Conservative moms show grace amid vicious treatment

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Hannah Arendt, who observed the trial of Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann many decades ago in Israel, coined the phrase “the banality of evil” to describe crimes that were anything but banal. She was actually referring to what kind of person was capable of committing these horrific acts, not the acts themselves.

Lane Montz: Check-washing a dirty trick

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Summer is in full swing, and I hope you are reading this on a well-deserved summer vacation. I don’t want to ruin your vibe, but I’m writing to warn you - check-washing is back with a vengeance and you ARE at risk if you still mail paper checks to pay bills. If you don’t already know, check-washing is when thieves steal paper checks, chemically erase the payee’s name, replace it with a fake name, and electronically deposit the newly forged check into their own (fake) account. They also usually rewrite the amount to be much larger. This crime has always been around, but it’s exploded in the past 18 months as a favorite of large crime rings. The FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Report and the U.S. Postmaster have both issued warnings, and the U.S Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network wants people to stop mailing paper checks entirely. I predict check-washing will be the top scam of 2023.

Legal-Ease: Decreasing and managing business risk

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To be in business is to accept risk in order to secure rewards. Generally, the most successful businesses minimize risk and manage risk.

Mark Figley: One gaffe after another for Biden

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As the 2024 presidential election season grows near, Joe Biden, the first man to win the White House while hiding in his basement, maintains that he intends to run for re-election. This is despite the fact that he is a literal human gaffe machine who continues to mentally deteriorate on a daily basis.

Dr. Jessica Johnson: A different perspective on affirmative action

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When the Supreme Court overturned affirmative action at the end of June, I immediately thought about how the University of California system had to end its “race-conscious” admissions policy when voters in the state approved Proposition 209 in 1996. I remember how discussions in higher education regarding this ruling at the time centered on worry about the lack of diversity in California schools in the future and how other states might follow suit. Eight states did follow suit, including Michigan, Florida and Nebraska, and the most recent ban came in 2020 when Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed a law barring state contractors, state agencies and public education from using affirmative action mandates. That same year, research published by the Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education documented that Black and Latino enrollment among institutions in the University of California system declined by more than 40% the year Prop 209 went into effect.

John Grindrod: A first boss’ most valuable lesson

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Last month, I opened a discussion about first bosses, specifically my own from my earliest days. While I had worked shoveling snow and mowing lawns before my days thinning corn on an experimental farm run by Northrup-King when I was fifteen and beginning my job peddling ladies’ and children’s shoes at Butler Shoes in the Lima Mall at seventeen, I consider my first jobs to the latter two, when I received payroll checks.