Tuesday, October 28th, 2014
Richard (RJ) Eskow, Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America's Future - Salon/Alternet
Stephan: Here in one article are what I consider to be the dispositive trends shaping America. The only way this is going to change is if we can get people to vote, and to vote based on facts not fear -- which of course is why the Right is hysterical about Ebola. Research shows that when people are afraid they tend to become more conservative and to vote for the right.
Credit: Shutterstock
A recent poll showed that more than half of all people in this country don’t believe that the American dream is real. Fifty-nine percent of those polled in June agreed that “the American dream has become impossible for most people to achieve.” More and more Americans believe there is “not much opportunity” to get ahead.
The public has reached this conclusion for a very simple reason: It’s true. The key elements of the American dream—a living wage, retirement security, the opportunity for one’s children to get ahead in life—are now unreachable for all but the wealthiest among us. And it’s getting worse. As inequality increases, the fundamental elements of the American dream are becoming increasingly unaffordable for the majority.
Here are seven ways the American dream is dying.
1. Most people can’t get ahead financially.
If the American dream means a reasonable rate of income growth for working people, most people can’t expect to achieve it.
As Ben Casselman observes at fivethirtyeight.com, the middle class hasn’t seen its wage rise in 15 years. In fact, the percentage of […]
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Monday, October 27th, 2014
Michael Brune, - Reader Supported News/Eco Watch
Stephan: This may be Exxon Mobil's biggest scam. When ExxonMobil’s vice president of public and government affairs published a critique of divestment that concluded by saying that destroying our planet’s climate by recklessly extracting and burning fossil fuel reserves is necessary to relieve global poverty he was lying. Poverty will be much better addressed through the hundreds of thousands of new jobs that will be created as the world exits the carbon age and builds a new system based on non-polluting energy.
Credit: environmentalleader.com
The fossil-fuel divestment movement has been on a roll lately to the tune of $50 billion, but one of its biggest successes happened last month: The world’s most profitable oil company squirmed. ExxonMobil’s vice president of public and government affairs published a critique of divestment that concluded by saying that destroying our planet’s climate by recklessly extracting and burning fossil fuel reserves is necessary to relieve global poverty. (emphasis added)
This sudden concern is interesting from a company that holds the record for the highest corporate profits ever posted in the U.S. and whose CEO made more than $100,000 a day in 2012 (including Sundays). ExxonMobil hasn’t earned those kinds of profits by worrying overmuch about the poor of the world. As the Sierra Student Coalition‘s Anastasia Schemkes put it: “This is the oil industry saying ‘please don’t be mean to me’ after bullying vulnerable communities around the globe for decades.”
The real message of ExxonMobil’s blog post was unintentional. The fossil fuel divestment movement, which started on college campuses but has since spread to […]
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Monday, October 27th, 2014
tara culp-ressler, Health Editor - Think Progress
Stephan: The evidence just keeps rolling in. Children who get good sex education not only postpone intercourse they have less STDs, less out of wedlock pregnancies, less divorce, and longer marriages. In the Red value states where sex is "dirty" and hemmed in by fundamentalist religious obsessions it is just the opposite and their is more use of "kinky" porn as well. But so great is the conflict in Red states over sex that data doesn't matter.
Credit: Shutterstock
Comprehensive sex ed classes that emphasize healthy relationships and family involvement can encourage more middle school students to put off having sex, according to the results from a new study published in the Journal of School Health. The results have big implications for school districts that are trying to decide what type of health classes to offer to kids in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades.
The three-year study was conducted by researchers at the Wellesley Centers for Women, who wanted to figure out whether
Get Real — a
comprehensive sex ed program developed by Planned Parenthood — has an impact on middle schoolers’ sexual behavior. In order to do that, the researchers tracked a group of racially and economically diverse kids at 24 different schools in the Boston area, half of which implemented
Get Real and half of which continued with their existing sex ed programs. Kids were periodically surveyed about their sexual activity.
The results were “quite strong,” according to the lead researchers on the project. The study […]
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Monday, October 27th, 2014
SHAILA DEWAN, - The New York Times
Stephan: Here is yet another aspect of government confiscating property on grounds that don't even stand up to common sense. The IRS confiscations, and police confiscations are a major problem receiving almost no attention. We are becoming a very strange country that the Founders would hardly recognize
The I.R.S. seized almost $33,000 from Ms. Hinders. Credit: Angela Jimenez for The New York Times
ARNOLDS PARK, IOWA — For almost 40 years, Carole Hinders has dished out Mexican specialties at her modest cash-only restaurant. For just as long, she deposited the earnings at a small bank branch a block away — until last year, when two tax agents knocked on her door and informed her that they had seized her checking account, almost $33,000.
The Internal Revenue Service agents did not accuse Ms. Hinders of money laundering or cheating on her taxes — in fact, she has not been charged with any crime. Instead, the money was seized solely because she had deposited less than $10,000 at a time, which they viewed as an attempt to avoid triggering a required government report.
“How can this happen?” […]
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Sunday, October 26th, 2014
Sean McElwee, - Alternet (U.S.)
Stephan: While the media and, apparently, a large percentage of the country are obsessing about Ebola -- I just read a wonderful statistic, more people have been married to Kim Khardashian than have died of Ebola -- American democracy is being stolen right out from under our noses with virtually no discussion. This report spells it out.
Credit: sportsblogs.star-telegram.com
Last week, the Supreme Court upheld [2] a law that could disenfranchise 600,000 Texans. But the effects [2] of the law won’t fall equally: African-Americans and Latinos are 305 percent and 195 percent less likely (respectively) to have the necessary forms of identification than whites. The Republican party is increasingly unpopular, and relies almost exclusively on white voters. The charts below show the 2008 if only white men voted and if only people of color voted (source [3]).
Since 2008, people of color become a growing share of the voting population while the GOP has, if anything, moved further to the right. It has further alienated voters of color with racist attacks and laws. But as they say: if you can’t beat ‘em, make sure they don’t vote. Over the last four years the Republicans have gone through elaborate attempts to make sure populations that don’t support them don’t get a chance to vote.
Since 2006, Republicans have pushed through [4] voter ID laws in 34 states. Such laws did not exist before 2006, when […]
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