Stephan: As I have said dozens if not hundreds of times, I really don't care about partisan politics, I only care about social outcomes. My view is that the function of the state is to produce wellness. So my evaluations are always based on this question: Does this policy or person produce increased wellness, or does it or they degrade wellness?
In the last few years something has happened to our politics and one party, its policies and its members, overwhelmingly degrade wellness and reduce the wellbeing of Americans, and I make this assessment based not on political arguments but objectively measurable facts. Nowhere is this more clearly made evident then in the drive to control the autonomy and rights of women; it has become an obsession for the Republicans and it has reached levels that make us absurd in the rest of the developed world. Here is an example of what I mean. The only thing that is going to change this is Americans voting to change it. Unfortunately in Red value states like Oklahoma Americans don't seem to want to.
An Oklahoma lawmaker pushing a bill that would more-or-less ban abortion in the state dismissed concerns that the legislation would drag the cash-strapped state into a costly legal battle by suggesting God would take care of the state’s financial issues.
“Everybody talks about this $1.3 billion deficit,” state Rep. David Brumbaugh (R) said during Thursday evening’s deliberations of the bill, before invoking a saying he said a friend told him.
“If we take care of the morality, God will take care of the economy,” he said.
The Oklahoma state House ultimately passed the legislation, which had already been approved by the state Senate. The bill would revoke the medical licenses of any abortion provider that conducted an abortion unless the woman’s health was in danger or she had suffered a miscarriage. Abortion providers could also face felony charges that could carry a sentence of up to three years in prison.
The legislation will return to the Oklahoma Senate one more time for lawmakers to approve the House’s amendments before it heads to the desk of Gov. Mary Fallin (R), who has not yet indicated […]
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Saturday, April 23rd, 2016
Amanda Marcotte, Politics Writer - Salon
Stephan: Those of us old enough to remember the Cold War era will also remember the derisive comments you used to see in American media about how Soviet media was all about propaganda, was filled with lies, and could not be trusted. What goes around comes around.
We live in troubling times, what many have dubbed a “post-truth” era, where there’s little, if any, political penalty for conservatives to tell outright lies about everything from health care to climate change, an environment that has led directly to the situation we face now, where the Republican primary is a race between two stunningly belligerent and shameless liars.
Ari Rabin-Havt and Media Matters have come together to chronicle how things got this bad in a new book, “Lies, Incorporated: The World of Post-Truth Politics.” I interviewed Rabin-Havt about the industry that’s grown up to create and spread the lies that are the basis of much of modern right wing propaganda.
Your book is titled “Lies, Incorporated,” which you say is more than a snazzy title, but a reference to “this industry made of lobbyists, PR companies, media lackeys, unethical experts and unscrupulous think tanks.” And it’s all for the purpose of spreading and ingraining lies into the public consciousness, usually from the right. Why do you think this deserves a designation as its own industry?
When I started digging in, I found it to be something different than your day-to-day run-of-the-mill D.C. lobbying and corruption. I found it […]
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Saturday, April 23rd, 2016
Amy Julia Harris, - The Center for Investigative Reporting
Stephan: This is what happens when you breach the wall the Founders built between church and state and allow religious exemptions. This is what results when you put religious zealots on the Supreme Court.
The God Loophole: Thousands of religious day cares across America legally are allowed to run their facilities with little government oversight. But freedom from regulation can come at a high price for children. And when things go wrong, parents have little recourse.
Like many parents, when Juan Cardenas began looking for a day care for his 1-year-old son, Carlos, he relied on word-of-mouth. A friend recommended Praise Fellowship Assembly of God in Indianapolis.
Cardenas never had planned to put his baby in day care, so he didn’t know the questions to ask. He just knew Praise Fellowship was a church. He is devoutly Catholic, so he trusted that.
“I thought they were going to do a good job because they served God,” he said.
Almost immediately, Cardenas noticed things were amiss. One day, he arrived to pick up Carlos and found the children waiting in the dark. When he asked why, someone at the day care threw the question back at him: “Do you want to pay for the lights?”
That’s when Cardenas decided Praise Fellowship wasn’t going to work out after all. He found another day care in the area, and Carlos was set to start the next week.
He never made it.
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Sophia Tesfaye, Deputy Politics Editor - Salon
Stephan: I confess to having very strong feelings about Planned Parenthood. Four women I know personally, and cared for a lot, had their lives saved thanks to Planned Parenthood. Only one involved an abortion, and it was absolutely the right thing to do, and the mother never regretted it -- and no, I was not the father. In a country with as poor reproductive health statistics as we have in the U.S., organizations like Planned Parenthood constitute an oasis in a brutal desert.
That this evil farce is being led by a woman, Representative and committee chair, Marsha Blackburn, just makes the whole thing that much more morally slimy. Come on voters in the 7th District Tennessee, you're the only ones who can do it, get rid of this woman. Do I have to mention she is a Republican?
Republican Represesntative Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee
Credit: RealClearpolitics
When Republicans fall for a lie, boy do they fall hard.
House Republicans have already
admitted that their months long investigation into Planned Parenthood’s use of federal funding turned up nothing. Utah Republican and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Jason Chaffetz admitted last fall that his fruitless crusade against the women’s health organization despised by conservatives turned up
no wrongdoing.
Still, chasing a hoax perpetuated by conservative anti-abortion activist David Daleiden’s deceptively edited undercover videos which falsely claimed that Planned Parenthood illegally trafficked in the sale of fetal tissue, House Republicans insisted on creating yet a whole new tax-payer funded committee tasked exclusively with investigating the organization. This, despite the fact that Republican governors in 12 states have ordered investigations into the women’s health organization that have resulted in no charges or findings of wrongdoing. And, of course, a Texas grand jury has cleared Planned Parenthood of any wrongdoing, criminally charging Daleiden instead for tampering […]
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Stephan: Food theft is a growing trend, and it is going to get worse. Here is a good primer on the subject; we will be hearing more about it I am sure.
Pistachios
Credit: Reuters/Karen Firouz
Some of the hottest items on the black market these days are nuts.
More than 30 truckloads of almonds, pistachios, cashews, pecans, and walnuts have been stolen from nut growers and processors in central California in the last six months. Thieves infiltrating the long and complicated chain that link farms to retailers have made off with an estimated $10 million in product, on a scale that has stunned farmers and law enforcement alike.
“All we’ve seen in the past is in orchard theft, where guys take a bucket and go sell them at the farmers’ market. We’ve never seen anything like this,” said Roger Isom, president of the Western Agricultural Processors Association (WAPA).
Food and beverages have replaced electronics as the most-stolen good in the US. Criminals are concentrating their efforts on fewer heists of larger value, and as stolen goods go, nuts have a lot of appeal. They’re expensive. They have a long shelf life. […]
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