Year: 2017

The Coal Industry Employs Fewer People than Arby’s

Buck Banks

76,572

Number of people employed in the coal industry in 2014, the latest year for which data is available, reports the Washington Post. “Although 76,000 might seem like a large number, consider that similar numbers of people are employed by, say, the bowling (69,088) and skiing (75,036) industries… Looking at the level of individual businesses, the coal industry in 2014 (76,572) employed about as many as Whole Foods (72,650), and fewer workers than Arby’s (close to 80,000), Dollar General (105,000) or J.C. Penney (114,000). The country’s largest private employer, Walmart (2.2 million employees) provides roughly 28 times as many jobs as coal.”

Since 2007 the DEA Has Stolen $3.2 Billion from People Not Charged with a Crime

Buck Banks

$32 billion

Washington Post:“The Drug Enforcement Administration takes billions of dollars in cash from people who are never charged with criminal activity, according to a report issued today by the Justice Department’s Inspector General. … Since 2007, the report found, the DEA has seized more than $4 billion in cash from people suspected of involvement with the drug trade. But 81 percent of those seizures, totaling $3.2 billion, were conducted administratively, meaning no civil or criminal charges were brought against the owners of the cash and no judicial review of the seizures ever occurred.”

Most Americans Favor a Trump-Russia Investigation

Buck Banks

52%

A new Associated Press-NORC Center poll finds 52% of Americans favor an independent investigation into Donald Trump’s Russian ties while just 23% are opposed. Another 22% say they neither favor nor oppose an investigation. Broken down along party lines, more than three-quarters of Democrats favor an investigation while only one-quarter of Republicans do.