Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), - The Boston Globe
Stephan: Here is the naked and ugly truth about how TPP is being created. Elizabeth Warren and Rosa DeLauro shame most of their colleagues by their integrity and their passion for espousing the most compassionate and life-affirming of the options available. It is people like these two women, Bernie Sanders and a few others that give me hope democracy can be preserved, not just in form, but in substance. But it is a near thing.
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)
Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)
Credit: frontpagemag.com
Congress is in an intense debate over trade bills that will shape the course of the US economy for decades. Much of this debate has been characterized as a fight over whether international trade itself creates or destroys American jobs. There is, however, another major concern — that modern “trade” agreements are often less about trade and more about giant multinational corporations finding new ways to rig the economic system to benefit themselves. Hillary Clinton has said that the “United States should be advocating a level and fair playing field, not special favors” for big business, in our trade deals. We agree with this blunt assessment – and believe every member of Congress should consider this carefully before voting to help advance these agreements.
Advocates of the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive 12-country agreement, sell this proposal as a free trade deal […]
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Xinran Xue, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: If you read SR regularly you know I have been following the social outcomes arising from China's 30 year on-child-per-family program. China is on track to be the most powerful country in the world. And its leadership will come entirely from men and women, who had no siblings. Think of that psychology at a mass level. This is why I place so much attention into the equation of social policies and their social outcomes.
Here is the latest on the one-child trend, written by such a child, now an adult. This trend is going to have enormous consequences for the world, and yet is happening almost unremarked by American media.
Credit: Xinran Xue/Guardian
One day in October 2001, I made my way to Heathrow airport to pick up the son of a family friend. This was in the days before Chinese students had started coming in numbers to the UK and a tall, skinny Chinese youth standing at the airport exit was quite noticeable.
Du Zhuang, frail and as insubstantial as plasterboard, was pushing his suitcase with one hand, and holding his phone with the other. He was not looking around, but listening to the person on the other end with single-minded devotion. On his face was the serious, almost devout, expression of someone receiving an edict from the emperor.
It was only when I was standing right in front of him that he finally looked at me, and smiled. In those days, Chinese people did not hug or exchange pecks on the cheek, while shaking hands was for grownups only.Instead, Du Zhuang passed me his mobile phone, saying, “My mother’s been waiting to speak to you!”
Hearing her shout down the phone it was […]
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Adrian Shirk , - The Atlantic
Stephan: Just as non-carbon innovation is pushing carbon energy out of the picture, so new forms of agriculture, such as those described in this article, are going to change agriculture. A significant segment of society now understands that locally grown organic produce is the most life-affirming option. Note also the list of unanticipated benefits to these systems.
The Sky Greens vertical farm in Singapore.
Credit: Edgar Su/Reuters
A couple of Octobers ago, I found myself standing on a 5,000-acre cotton crop in the outskirts of Lubbock, Texas, shoulder-to-shoulder with a third-generation cotton farmer. He swept his arm across the flat, brown horizon of his field, which was at that moment being plowed by an industrial-sized picker—a toothy machine as tall as a house and operated by one man. The picker’s yields were being dropped into a giant pod to be delivered late that night to the local gin. And far beneath our feet, the Ogallala aquifer dwindled away at its frighteningly swift pace. When asked about this, the farmer spoke of reverse osmosis—the process of desalinating water—which he seemed to put his faith in, and which kept him unafraid of famine and permanent drought.
Beyond his crop were others, belonging to other farmers, so that as far as the eye could see were brown stretches of newly harvested cotton plants.
When I […]
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Amien Essif, - Alternet (U.S.)
Stephan: This is a really important commentary and report on libraries. Please take the time to read it. Libraries are essential to democracy. They will thrive or wither on the basis of citizen action.
If we are going to preserve our culture for all the reasons given here, we must have libraries. Can you help?
The Interior of Eagle Rock Library in Botetourt County, Virginia. A typical public library in the United States. Credit: www.botetourt.org
If you were airdropped, blindfolded, into a strange town and given nothing but a bus ticket, to where would you ride that bus? You might be surprised to learn that there’s only one good answer, and that’s the public library. The library is the public living room, and if ever you are stripped of everything private—money, friends and orientation—you can go there and become a human again.
Of course, you don’t have to be homeless to use a library, but that’s the point. You don’t have to be anyone in particular to go inside and stay as long as you want, sit in its armchairs, read the news, write your dissertation, charge your phone, use the bathroom, check your email, find the address of a hotel or homeless shelter. Of all the institutions we have, both public and private, […]
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Walter Einenkel, - Daily Kos
Stephan: Several readers have written me to chastise me that I am picking on Republicans, and there isn't any difference between the parties anyway. Well let me take the last point first. Anyone who does 30 minutes worth of research on Google can quickly establish that while the entire election system of the United States is a swamp of corruption, nonetheless on the basis of social outcomes there is a massive difference between Red value policies and Blue value policies.
And I am not picking on Republicans. SR is about facts, actual data, not polemics, not policy bloviation, not promises. Instead I focus on what actually happens when different policies are implemented. Anyone with a grain of discernment can easily see that the Republican party on the basis of its social outcomes is a toxic and dangerous force in America. Here is just one of hundreds of examples of why I say this.
Maryland Republican Governor Larry Hogan
It would be irresponsible to not spend money on the prisons we want to send our children to
Governor Larry Hogan made the tough choice to use the
$68 million Maryland’s legislators earmarked for education, not for education! Over $11 million of that money would have gone to Baltimore schools. Governor Hogan called that money “extra money” and put it into the state’s underfunded pensions, saying it would be irresponsible not to.
The money at issue was part of about $200 million that lawmakers set aside for their top priorities — extra school funding, preventing a pay cut for state workers and paying for a range of health-care initiatives that include Medicaid coverage for more pregnant women and funding for heroin addiction.
Governor Larry Hogan made the tough choice to spend $30 million on a 60-bed jail for Baltimore teenagers who have been charged as adults!
The issue was a bigger problem before the rate […]
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