Towns in 20 Charts” illustrates the growing crisis of rural poverty with grim findings about income, male employment, education, diversity and mortality rates in 1,800 U.S. counties that are home to one in seven Americans. What’s more, every graphic showed this trend is getting worse.

It’s often said that change starts from the top. If that’s true, can someone please tell me why corporate boardrooms seem to be the last bastion of the privileged?

America is composed of diverse individuals. Individuals of different races, genders, sexual orientations and backgrounds are part of our national fabric, and they should be part of our workplace, including the boardroom. (Full disclosure: I may be another white male in his 60s, but I am also gay and from rural America.) So why aren’t they?

In the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that passed last December, Donald Trump and the Republican Congress doubled down on deficit spending, an unpopular move that they say will grow GDP and jobs. 

While we can speculate endlessly about who will get a specific tax break next year, there is no debate over who will be the biggest beneficiary: corporations, which had their taxes reduced from 35 percent to 21 percent.