Robert Reich, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies - Common Dreams
Stephan: The Republican Party is trying to dismantle American democracy by maintaining the forms, but controlling the outcomes, so its minions can stay in power and serve their uber-rich masters. It is happening under our noses and we, as voters, meekly acquiesce to it by continuing to elect Republicans to state houses and the congress. Here is some actual data.
Poll workers during mid-term elections in 2014. Credit Scott Anderson/The Journal Times
Hundreds of thousands of Americans are being denied the right to vote because they are poor.
In nine states, Republican legislators have enacted laws that disenfranchise anyone with outstanding legal fees or court fines. For example, in Alabama more than 100,000 people who owe money – roughly 3 percent of the state’s voting-age population – have been struck from voting rolls.
This is unconstitutional. In 1964, the 24th amendment abolished the poll tax, a Jim Crow tactic used to bar poor blacks from voting.
These new laws are a modern reincarnation of that unconstitutional system, disproportionately disenfranchising people of color.
Income and wealth should have no bearing on the right to vote. Many Americans are struggling to make ends meet. But they still have a constitutional right to make their voices heard.
Preventing people from voting because they owe legal fees or court fines muzzle low-income Americans at a time in our nation’s history when the rich have more political power than ever.
Charles Ornstein and Lee Zurik,, Reporters - ProPublica and Fox 8 WVUE-New Orleans - ProPublica
Stephan: In a health care system what is described in this article would be considered immoral and unethical. American donated organs should be going to Americans who need them. In an illness profit system it makes perfect sense to give transplant organs to the highest bidder no matter where they come from. If Americans die, well it's just business, nothing personal.
Dr. Gabriel Danovitch, medical director of the kidney and pancreas transplant program at UCLA, said the issue of foreigners coming to the U.S. for transplants deserves scrutiny. Credit: Fox 8 New Orleans
Earlier this fall, a leader of the busiest hospital for organ transplants in New York state — where livers are particularly scarce — pleaded for fairer treatment for ailing New Yorkers.
“Patients in equal need of a liver transplant should not have to wait and suffer differently because of the U.S. state where they reside,” wrote Dr. Herbert Pardes, former chief executive and now executive vice president of the board at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.
But Pardes left out his hospital’s own contribution to the shortage: From 2013 to 2016, it gave 20 livers to foreign nationals who came to the United States solely for a transplant — essentially exporting the organs and removing them from the pool available to New Yorkers.
That represented 5.2 percent of the hospital’s liver transplants during that time, one of the highest ratios in the country.
Stephan: As I wrote in my Impressions of Shanghai series during my weeks in Shanghai I never saw a single fat person. Recently I had dinner with two friends who had been in other parts of China at the same time I was in the country. They told me they had not seen a fat person either.
In the U.S.we are getting fatter and fatter and have reached a point where fat is normal in some parts of the country, particularly in the Southern and Central states.
But note that amidst this fatness is a very revealing gender difference. With men the wealthier the the fatter. With women it is just the reverse. Here are some facts.
Comparing 2003-2007 with 2013-2017, the average weight is up 3 pounds
Over same period, average “ideal” weight increased 4 pounds
Fewer Americans now view themselves as overweight
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans have become slightly heavier in recent years, but they also seem to have grown more comfortable with it. Between 2003-2007 and 2013-2017, Americans’ self-reported weight edged up along with the number of pounds they offer as their “ideal” weight, yet the percentage who consider themselves overweight has declined.
As Average Weight Goes Up, Concerns About Weight Go Down
2003-2007
2008-2012
2013-2017
Average weight in pounds*
174 lbs.
176 lbs.
177 lbs.
Ideal weight in pounds*
157 lbs.
160 lbs.
161 lbs.
Percent who say they are overweight
41%
38%
38%
Percent who want to lose weight
60%
56%
52%
Percent trying to lose weight
28%
28%
25%
Gallup polls aggregated for years 2003-2007, 2008-2012 and 2013-2017. *Self-reported
GALLUP
Much of the change since 2003 occurred in the middle of that period, from 2008-2012. However, Americans’ actual weight and ideal weight have crept up slightly since then. While Americans are heavier, they are less likely to see themselves as overweight compared with 2003-2007, which aligns with the finding that they are also less likely to want to lose weight or to be seriously trying to cut pounds.
Stephan: For years I have been telling my readers that four major meta-trends that are almost never discussed as such are shaping our future:
Being born White will no longer confer privilege;
Being born male will no longer bestow dominance;
Western European and North American culture values will not define how the world operates;
The Rise of Neo-feudalism and the tansfer of real power from nation states to multinational virtual corporate states
Those trends, particularly the first two are, in my opinion, why an utterly incompetent compulsive liar, molester and psychopath like Donald Trump and his minion Mike Pence are the President and Vice President of the United States.
This piece in the Atlantic addresses these issues head on. Must reading, I believe.
Thirty years ago, nearly half of Louisiana voted for a Klansman, and the media struggled to explain why.
It was 1990 and David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, astonished political observers when he came within striking distance of defeating incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator J. Bennett Johnston, earning 43 percent of the vote. If Johnston’s Republican rival hadn’t dropped out of the race and endorsed him at the last minute, the outcome might have been different.
Was it economic anxiety? The Washington Post reported that the state had “a large working class that has suffered through a long recession.” Was it a blow against the state’s hated political establishment? An editorial from United Press International explained, “Louisianans showed the nation by voting for Duke that they were mad as hell and not going to take it any more.” Was it anti-Washington rage? A Loyola University pollster argued, “There were the voters who liked Duke, those who hated J. Bennett Johnston, and those who just wanted to send a message to Washington.”
Stephan: For over 30 years, the Republicans, who lack any sense of integrity, have been actively trying to subvert America's democracy through gerrymandering and voter suppression, so that they can attain and sustain control of the U.S. government. And they have been largely successful. We have a President who won with 3 million less votes than his opponent, and Representatives and Senators who are in office in spite of the fact that overall their opponents got more votes then they did.
Now the Republicans are trying to rig the census to the same end. Here's the story.
The Trump administration is leaning toward naming Thomas Brunell, a Texas professor with no government experience, to the top operational job at the U.S. Census Bureau, according to two people who have been briefed on the bureau’s plans.
Brunell, a political science professor, has testified more than half a dozen times on behalf of Republican efforts to redraw congressional districts, and is the author of a 2008 book titled “Redistricting and Representation: Why Competitive Elections Are Bad for America.”
The choice would mark the administration’s first major effort to shape the 2020 census, the nationwide count that determines which states lose and gain electoral votes and seats in the House of Representatives.
The fate of the census under President Donald Trump has been closely watched by voting-rights advocates worried that the administration — which has already made unsupported claims about voter fraud — might nudge it in directions that over- or undercount some Americans. Subtle bureaucratic choices in the wording and administration of the census can have huge consequences for who is counted, and how it shifts American […]
Thirty years ago, nearly half of Louisiana voted for a Klansman, and the media struggled to explain why.
The Trump administration is leaning toward naming Thomas Brunell, a Texas professor with no government experience, to the top operational job at the U.S. Census Bureau, according to two people who have been briefed on the bureau’s plans.
