“Unless the policy inconsistencies are resolved and routine monitoring is undertaken to ensure adherence, the risk increases that service members may be inappropriately […]
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Steven Rosenfeld, - Salon/Alternet
Stephan: Here is a confirmation of the trend I have been describing for several years, the psychophysical aspect of politics. (see
The Psychophysiology of Politics) Although little covered in general media, this research has enormous implications in manipulating the political process. Here is the latest outcome data in the context of the Trump election.
Note also this report is a demonstration of the four meta-trends that I see shaping human societies. 1) Being born White will no longer confer privilege; 2) being born male will not bestow dominance; 3) European- Australian-North American cultural value will not longer unqestioningly be the values upon which the world operates; 4) the transfer of real power from nation states to virtual corporate states, and the rise of Neo-feudalism.
Trump supporters
Credit: AP/Evan Vucci
Looking to the past, not the future. Feeling lost, resenting immigrants. Feeling broke, picked on. Self-medicating, rejecting education. Wanting a rule-breaking leader to end the misery.
These are some of the characteristics of white working-class voters who were three times more likely to support Donald Trump in the 2016 election, according to an expanded analysis of more than 3,000 people surveyed before and after the election by PRRI/The Atlantic of white Americans who are marked by “cultural dislocation.”
“These new results show that feelings of cultural displacement and a desire for cultural protection, more than economic hardship, drove white working-class voters to support Trump in 2016,” says PRRI CEO Robert P. Jones. “The findings cast new light on how Trump’s ‘Make American Great Again!’ slogan tapped these fears and anxieties and a deep sense of nostalgia for a previous time in the country when white conservative Christians perceived that they had more power and influence.”
The PRRI survey is remarkable in ways its press release doesn’t quite say. […]
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Emma Brown, Valerie Strauss and Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, - The Washington Post
Stephan: While we are lost in the impeachment fog, the zombies of the Trump administration continue their ritual sacrifice of the nation's wellbeing in the service of profit. Charter schools and vouchers are basically a way to privatize public education, and allow a small group of people to make great profit.
Students essentially become valves that tap into the public treasury. While there are some excellent charter schools; it all depends on the ethics of the corporate owner, and in general they are very poor, because profit is the first priority. Charter schools are a negative proof of the Theorem of Wellbeing.
Here is what Trump has in mind.
Funding for college work-study programs would be cut in half, public-service loan forgiveness would end and hundreds of millions of dollars that public schools could use for mental health, advanced coursework and other services would vanish under a Trump administration plan to cut $10.6 billion from federal education initiatives, according to budget documents obtained by The Washington Post.
The administration would channel part of the savings into its top priority: school choice. It seeks to spend about $400 million to expand charter schools and vouchers for private and religious schools, and another $1 billion to push public schools to adopt choice-friendly policies.
President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have repeatedly said they want to shrink the federal role in education and give parents more opportunity to choose their children’s schools.
The documents — described by an Education Department employee as a near-final version of the budget expected to be released next week — offer the clearest picture yet of how the administration intends to accomplish that goal.
Though Trump and DeVos are proponents of local control, their proposal to use federal dollars to entice districts to adopt school-choice policies is reminiscent of the way the Obama administration offered federal money to states that agreed […]
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James Temple, Senior Editor - MIT Technology Review
Stephan: Here is another example of what is going on even as the impeachment drama plays out. The Trump environmental policies are seriously harming America's ability to deal with climate change. It is astonishing how quickly we are being degraded. Only vast citizen outcry is going to overcome this trend, and it has to be done at the Congressional level. Things would be no better under a President Pence or, the next step, President Ryan. Next up Republican Senator Orrin Hatch.
This is one of the reasons flipping both the House and the Senate is so urgently important. At the same time, control of the Democratic Party must shift to the more wellness oriented Sanders' view. That is the only way they can win.
Our lives depend on this. Think about it, and decide what you are prepared to do.
Collapsed houses lie on the beach after a storm surge in Hemsby, eastern England, 6 December 2013. Parts of England’s east coast, from Yorkshire to Essex are vulnerable to stronger storms and rising sea levels due to climate change.
Credit: Darren Staples/Reuters
The Trump administration faces likely legal challenges as it looks to exploit a crucial tool for evaluating the economic cost of climate change in an effort to justify plans to unravel environmental rules.
The idea behind the so-called “social cost of carbon” is that estimating the economic damages from every additional ton of greenhouse gas emissions allows regulators to more accurately assess the costs and benefits of public policies. Michael Greenstone, previously a chief economist for Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, has called it “the most important number that you’ve never heard of.”
But in late March, President Trump issued an executive order that called for disbanding President Obama’s social cost of carbon working group, withdrawing the documents underpinning the current estimates, and directing agencies to consult […]
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