Sunday, November 3rd, 2013
Stephan: I have written about this several times (See: Social Values, Social Wellness: Can We Know What Works? http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307%2811%2900346-6/fulltext.). Here's what we look like to those in other countries looking in. Think about how the food support cutbacks are going to look. Consider the substance: Is this how you want people to think about your country? Is this how you like it to be?
Why is the problem of violence against children so much more acute in the US than anywhere else in the industrialised world, asks Michael Petit, President of Every Child Matters.
Over the past 10 years, more than 20,000 American children are believed to have been killed in their own homes by family members. That is nearly four times the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The child maltreatment death rate in the US is triple Canada’s and 11 times that of Italy. Millions of children are reported as abused and neglected every year. Why is that?
Downward spiral
Part of the answer is that teen pregnancy, high-school dropout, violent crime, imprisonment, and poverty – factors associated with abuse and neglect – are generally much higher in the US.
Michael Petit
The sharp differences between the states raises the question of an expanded federal role
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Sunday, November 3rd, 2013
Stephan: The cutting of food assistance is shameful. We look like one of those authoritarian countries you hear talked about on television. 'Taking food out of the mouths of babes,' once an exaggeration of speech to make a point, has become our reality.
Millions of American food stamp recipients saw their benefits cut on Friday as a scheduled across-the-board reduction was allowed to go into effect.
Both the House and Senate were out of town as the nation went over the so-called ‘food stamp cliff.
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Sunday, November 3rd, 2013
KATE SHEPPARD, - The Huffington Post
Stephan: This is good news. It is late; it is not adequate to the task but, at least, it is major movement in the right direction. Note who did, and did not sign on to this.
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration quietly unveiled a new executive order on Friday laying out plans to deal with the impacts of climate change and directing federal agencies to revise programs and policies that might serve as barriers to climate adaptation.
The order builds out the Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience that President Obama called for in his June climate change speech. The task force will bring together local, state and tribal officials to collaborate on approaches for dealing with climate impacts and advise the federal government. Those impacts include heat waves, extreme storm events, droughts, ocean acidification, sea-level rise and the melting of the permafrost.
The task force includes the Democratic governors of Hawaii, California, Washington, Delaware, Maryland, Illinois and Vermont. There is only one Republican governor who signed on to the task force — Eddie Calvo, the governor of the small Pacific Island territory of Guam. The task force also includes 16 mayors and two tribal leaders.
The executive order also creates a second group — the Council on Climate Preparedness and Resilience — made up of senior officials from all of the federal agencies and led by the head of the Council on Environmental Quality, Obama’s top national […]
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Sunday, November 3rd, 2013
JUSTIN GILLIS, - The New York Times
Stephan: This is what's coming. The price of food is going up, and some who study this issue expect food costs will double or even treble during the next decade, which will price millions of Americans out of the market. Forty six million are already too poor to buy adequate food without support. And in poorer nations the problem will be much, much worse.
Climate change will pose sharp risks to the world’s food supply in coming decades, potentially undermining crop production and driving up prices at a time when the demand for food is expected to soar, scientists have found.
In a departure from an earlier assessment, the scientists concluded that rising temperatures will have some beneficial effects on crops in some places, but that globally they will make it harder for crops to thrive – perhaps reducing production over all by as much as 2 percent each decade for the rest of this century, compared with what it would be without climate change.
And, the scientists say, they are already seeing the harmful effects in some regions.
The warnings come in a leaked draft of a report under development by a United Nations panel, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The document is not final and could change before it is released in March.
The report also finds other sweeping impacts from climate change already occurring across the planet, and warns that these are likely to intensify as human emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise. The scientists describe a natural world in turmoil as plants and animals colonize new areas to escape rising temperatures, […]
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Saturday, November 2nd, 2013
KARA BRANDEISKY and MIKE TIGAS, - ProPublica
Stephan: Citizens United I believe will rank, along with the Dred Scott decision as one of the most egregiously obtuse and stupidest decisions ever made by the Supreme Court. Even the original judge who first ruled on it before it went to the Supreme Court has repudiated it. And it was followed by another truly awful decision by the conservative bloc on the Court, the gutting of the Voting Rights Act.
The 1858 Dred Scott decision played a role in the lead up to the Civil War. The two modern decisions have fundamentally changed American democracy -- for the worse. It should have been obvious how bad these decisions were, so obvious in fact that one can only wonder whether these conservative activist justices don't have a political agenda. Here is an excellent assessment of what the Voting Rights Act decision has led to. The flood of money that preceded it, with Citiziens is already well-known.
The racial implications of the Voting Rights Act decision have gotten a lot of coverage. Much less discussed is the suppression of women voters, with Texas leading the way in ignominy.
Click through to see the useful map that accompanies this report.
Last year, we wrote extensively about photo ID laws and the Supreme Court’s decision to strike a key section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Now, with gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, and the debt ceiling and healthcare debates already shaping the 2014 midterms, we’re revisiting voting policies to see which states have enacted tougher restrictions since the Supreme Court ruling in June.
Remind me – what is Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act?
Under the Voting Rights Act, states and localities with a history of racial discrimination needed to get permission from the federal government to enact any changes to their voting laws, in a process called ‘preclearance.
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