America

A US Court of Appeals has upheld a decision to ban a man from becoming a police officer because his intelligence test (IQ) was deemed “too high” for the police force.  The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upheld a lower court’s decision that the city did not discriminate against Robert Jordan because the very same standards were applied to everybody who took the test. ABC News reports: “This kind of puts an official face on discrimination in America against people of a certain class,” Jordan said today from his Waterford home.

Actor Malcolm McDowell has said the film he starred in over 44 years ago -“A Clockwork Orange” – is becoming a reality in today’s world.  The film by Stanley Kubrick depicts “a world in which all older people stayed indoors with their televisions on,” McDowell says. “And that’s basically what happened“. Nydailynews.com reports: “It’s just the young people out there doing drugs — and he foretold all this before the drug explosion.” The film, like the book, depicts a dystopian future filled with “ultra-violence,” gangs of “droogs” and depravity at every turn.

Agricultural policy may be one of the least talked about issues in the 2016 presidential race, at least when it comes to the debate stage. Though not as glamorous as discussions of immigration reform or fighting ISIS, it’s still a vitally important issue with significant ramifications for the federal budget and the broader economy. Thus far, it has gained some air time in Iowa, largely because of the state’s significant farming demographic.

Authored by Eric Zuesse,

America’s military budget is roughly 7.2 times that of Russia ($610 billion compared to $84.5 billion), but even Western news-accounts are saying that the weaponry produced in Russia is superior overall to the weaponry produced in the United States.

We have previously shown just how bad the situation in the US heavy trucking space - trucks with a gross weight over 33K pounds - was most recently in "US Trucking Has Not Been This Bad Since The Financial Crisis" in which we looked at November data and found, that "Class 8 truck net orders at 16,475, were 59% below a year ago and the lowest level since September 2012.  This was the weakest November order activity since 2009 and was a major disappointment, coming in significantly below expectations.  All of the OEMs, except one, experienced unusually low orders for the mont