Sarah Boseley, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: Here we see the power of Christofascism in shaping American foreign policy to the detriment of millions of women. I think this is disgusting., and I urge you to do what you can to resist such policies. Complacency is no longer an option.
Donald Trump signs an executive order reintroducing the Mexico City policy as Reince Preibus, Peter Navarro, Jared Kushner, Steven Miller, and Steve Bannon look on.
Credit: Ron Sachs/EPA
Six months ago, one powerful white man in the White House, watched by seven more, signed a piece of paper that will prevent millions of women around the world from deciding what they can and can’t do with their own bodies.
In that moment, on his very first Monday morning in office, Donald Trump effectively signed the death warrants of thousands of women. He reversed global progress on contraception, family planning, unsustainable population growth and reproductive rights. His executive order even has implications for the battle against HIV, tuberculosis and malaria.
Rarely can the presidential pen have been flourished to such devastating effect. The policy it reintroduced will shut health clinics in Uganda and HIV programmes in Mozambique; it will compel women from Nepal to […]
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PATRICK TEMPLE-WEST, - Politico
Stephan: As predicted, in spite of decades of London being Europe's banking center, financial institutions are actively planning to relocate in anticipation of BREXIT, a transition that holds significant geopolitical implications. Here's the latest.
Bankers are increasingly anxious that Brexit will end badly and force them to carry out their costly relocation plans.
Credit: AP
Nord Anglia International School Dublin is not even scheduled to open until September 2018, but its slots are already going fast thanks to some of the wealthiest foreigners in the region: American bankers.
Three U.S. banks operating in London have contacted the school in Ireland about the prospect of enrolling their employees’ children. One bank this month asked for 50 slots — which go for an average of 20,000 euros, or $23,000, a pop, said project manager David Quigley.
Britain’s decision to leave the European Union has left American banks in London scrambling to implement contingency plans to relocate to the continent so they can continue to serve clients there. Trouble is, many bankers are reluctant to leave what has long been Europe’s uncontested financial capital.
While the Brexit negotiations between the U.K. and EU only began last month, the banks are initiating plans to move thousands of jobs out of London […]
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Jordan Yadoo, - Bloomberg
Stephan: One the consequences of the growing wealth inequality in the U.S., now the greatest disparity in Europe or North America, is that rich children increasingly live in a world mostly cut off from interaction with young people whose families while affluent are of lesser wealth and, of course, they have essentially no contact at all with children of the poor.
The effect that has on their early years is that they lack empathy or understanding of the world in which most Americans live, and this has a very negative effect on the health of our democracy. Here is a report on this educational effect; it is a very sad story.
These days, private school really is just for rich kids.
While the enrollment rate for children from middle-income families in U.S. private elementary schools has declined significantly over the last five decades, the level for high-income families has been relatively steady, according to a National Bureau of Economic Research study released this month ― a trend that could come to perpetuate the nation’s growing wealth divide.
The shift is most apparent in urban areas, where the enrollment gap between kids from high- and median-income families increased from 5 percentage points in 1968 to 19 points in 2013, according to the study, which used national survey data on private elementary-school enrollment by family income over the last half century.
Part of the decline in middle-class enrollment coincided with the closing of many Catholic schools, though it’s unclear how much of that that was due to changes in the religious makeup of cities and how much stemmed from the Catholic Church’s struggle to maintain schools with the same relatively low tuition rates that parishes had historically offered.
But it’s not just Catholic-school closures causing the fall in middle-class enrollment. Soaring tuition has kept private-school education out of […]
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MICHELE GORMAN, - Newsweek
Stephan: America's gun psychosis exacts a severe price, 33,000 people a year, and there is an overwhelming gender bias affecting women. Here's the story.
I think the evidence is clear: there are a very large number of people in the United States who are simply not emotionally competent to own a firearm. And they, of course, are exactly the people who want to own guns because having a gun makes them feel powerful.
A selection of Glock pistols for sale at the Pony Express Firearms shop in Parker, Colorado, on December 7, 2015. An analysis published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week found that guns are used in more than half of the murders of women.
Credit: Rick Wilking/Reuters
Guns are used in more than half of murders of women, and the highest frequency is among non-Hispanic black victims, according to a new analysisby the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Domestic violence is a big factor: Firearms were used in nearly 54 percent of female homicides, and in 55 percent of those cases the perpetrator is someone with whom the victim has been intimately involved, the CDC found after reviewing homicide data from the National Violent Death Reporting System. Past studies have demonstrated that a woman’s risk of homicide increases greatly if her male abuser owns a gun.
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“There is an overwhelming body […]
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Rebecca Burns, - Reader Supported News
Stephan: If the Republicans continue to control American government we will continue to become a nation of three classes, a tiny uber-rich class, a small middle class, and a majority class of economic peasants. The economic structure of that society will be, as it was in Medieval times, a vast milking operation transferring wealth paid by nickels and dimes to the uber-rich, in a process managed by the middle class. Exactly what the Founders did not want.
Building Trades Union members protest Trump’s presence at their annual conference in April.
Credit: Oliver Douliery
Nostalgia for the New Deal is not typically the provenance of the Right, but in a November interview with the Hollywood Reporter, right-wing news exec-turned-Trump strategist Steve Bannon suggested the new president’s trillion-dollar infrastructure plan would recreate the heady days of the Works Progress Administration:
“With negative interest rates throughout the world, it’s the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up. We’re just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution—conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement.”
One might be tempted to dismiss this bizarre pitch as, say, the product of a late-night game of ideological Mad Libs. But Trump and Bannon’s apparent rejection of neoliberal orthodoxies, including fiscal austerity and free trade, inspired hope that progressives might actually be able to negotiate with Trump on a small number of economic issues—if they could avoid collaborating in an otherwise racist, reactionary agenda. Infrastructure, […]
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