Author: Victor Allis

This week the case Epic Games v. Apple has started in the US District Court for Northern California. Apple forces all smartphone apps to be installed on Apple devices through their AppStore. It also forces app-makers to channel all revenue of in-app purchases through their platform, so that Apple can take a 30% cut. Epic Games…
Read more

Last week, the House of Representatives, on a purely partisan basis, passed H.R. 51, “An act to provide for the admission of the State of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth into the Union”. Some of the arguments for statehood are about the merits of the case:  taxation without representation with DC residents paying more taxes than residents…
Read more

As part of President Biden’s American Job’s Plan, which is an over $2 trillion investment in infrastructure and more, he also launched the “Made in America Tax Plan”. That plan focuses on the taxes paid by large corporations and specifically proposes to raise the corporate tax rate up to 28%. The corporate tax rate had…
Read more

On Wednesday March 31st, President Joe Biden unveiled his $2 trillion infrastructure plan. The single largest component of the plan is $621 billion for transportation infrastructure, such as roads & bridges, public transit, ports, airports and electric vehicle infrastructure. It contains another $300 billion for water, electricity and broadband infrastructure, and $300 billion for building…
Read more

On March 24th, 2021, Virginia abolished the death penalty. While it joins almost half of states (23 in total now), this is particularly significant for the role Virginia has played in the history of the death penalty.  The first execution in the United States took place in Virginia in 1608. The largest number of executions…
Read more

The American Rescue Plan Act, a $1.9 Trillion economic stimulus package that is making its way through Congress, includes in the House version (H.R. 1319) an increase of the Federal Minimum Wage from $7.25 to $15. That increase was scrapped from the Senate version, as it was opposed by all Republicans and eight moderate Democratic…
Read more

The “DACA” executive order signed by President Obama in 2014 has always been controversial, as it was a response to the inability of Congress to pass immigration reform. In 2017 President Trump rescinded DACA which was subsequently challenged in court and in June 2020 the Supreme Court ruled against the Trump Administration. As one of…
Read more

With the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the new President and Vice President behind us as well as the certification of the two new senators of Georgia completed, the tumultuous 2020 election season has finally come to an end.  There are some states and cities with important elections this year (Virgina, New…
Read more

There have long been fierce debates on how many votes were suppressed and how many fraudulent votes were cast. Some believe that voter suppression is rampant around the US and that millions of people do not vote because of the barriers presented to them. They believe that we should make voting easier to reduce voter…
Read more

One of the differences between candidates Trump and Biden was their opinion on the Paris Climate Accord: under Trump’s presidency the US left the accord, while under a Biden presidency, the US will re-enter the accord.  We conducted a survey to learn what our users think of the Paris Climate Accord. The answers that our…
Read more