How Republican Patriots Saved America During Watergate

Stephan:  I was in government in Washington, and a Special Assistant on a senior staff throughout the Watergate crisis, and knew and had worked with most of the people involved in this discreditable epoch in American history. I left government and walked away from a career because of the dishonesty and lack of integrity I saw in government.  One of my strongest memories of that time is the integrity of the Republican Senators and Representatives and leaders in the Department of Justice who stood against their Republican president and placed country above party. They were true heroes. Perhaps that is why I find the present day Republican congressional leadership such a mingy pusillanimous and corrupt group of little orcs. And why the few who are standing up deserve to be noted. Just to refresh your memory a bit read this. It was written a year ago, and the issues it raises are even more pressing than they were then

Republican President and unindicted co-conspirator Richard Nixon

In November 1972, Richard Nixon won a blowout victory, with 60.7% of the popular vote and a 520-to-17 Electoral College landslide.

But Nixon’s term ended prematurely, a mere 19 months after inauguration. In August 1974, he resigned to avoid impeachment for his role in supporting and then covering up a break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters.

Profiles in Cowardice and Profiles in Courage

American democracy barely survived. By September 1973, the consensus was that Nixon would withstand the Watergate controversy. Put bluntly, Nixon almost got away with crimes that included FBI collusion and electoral tampering and that, in hindsight, were far worse than the […]

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You won’t believe what American high schools are teaching their students about slavery

Stephan:  I thought everyone except a few willfully ignorant Southern racists knew that the Civil War was not about states rights, it was about slavery. So I was disgusted and appalled when I read the Southern Poverty Law Center’s full report., that is the basis for this short piece. We fail ourselves, and we fail our children when we do not tell ourselves the truth.

Just eight percent of American high school seniors can identify the cause of the Civil War; less than a third (32 percent) know which amendment abolished slavery in the U.S.; and fewer than half (46 percent) know that the “Middle Passage” refers to the harrowing voyage across the Atlantic undertaken by Africans kidnapped for the slave trade. (emphasis added)  These are only a few of the more unnerving findings from the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance project, which concludes that in classrooms across the country, the subject of slavery is as mistaught as it is misunderstood.

Drawing from online surveys of 1,000 12th-graders and more than 1,700 social studies teachers, along with an exhaustive analysis of the 10 most widely read U.S. history textbooks, the SPLC’s latest report attempts to assess how well the country understands its original sin. In a word, the results are “abysmal.”

“[Students’ misconceptions] extend beyond factual errors to a failure to grasp key concepts underpinning the nature and legacy of slavery,” writes Melinda D. Anderson of the Atlantic. “Fewer than one-quarter (22 percent) of participating high-school seniors knew […]

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Trump Administration Wants to Arrest Mayors of ‘Sanctuary Cities’

Stephan:  Say goodbye to democracy, we didn't care enough to fight for it.

ICE raid and capture Credit: AP/Richard Drew

The Department of Justice is considering subjecting state and local officials to criminal charges if they implement or enforce so-called sanctuary policies that bar jurisdictions from cooperating with immigration authorities. Immigration advocates argue such a move would be illegal.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen made the disclosure Tuesday during a Senate committee hearing on the department’s operations.

“The Department of Justice is reviewing what avenues might be available,” Nielsen said. “The context of this is of course not only putting my [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] officers at risk, but also finding an efficient and effective way to enforce our immigration laws.”

She said it’s safer for immigration agents to do their jobs if they have the assistance of local and state jurisdictions.

The Justice Department’s review follows a chilling warning earlier this month from the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Thomas Homan, who said California would feel the wrath of his agency because of its decision to become a sanctuary state. Homan also called […]

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Unnecessary Medical Care: More Common Than You Might Imagine

Stephan:  Yet another symptom of the Illness Profit System. How many will it take before America wakes up to the fact that healthcare is about wellbeing, and individual healthcare is what creates social healthcare. It is not about profit. When it is about only profit this is what you get.

Drawn Ideas/Ikon Images/Getty Images

It’s one of the intractable financial boondoggles of the U.S. health care system: Lots and lots of patients get lots and lots of tests and procedures that they don’t need.

Women still get annual cervical cancer testing even when it’s recommended every three to five years for most women. Healthy patients are subjected to slates of unnecessary lab work before elective procedures. Doctors routinely order annual electrocardiograms and other heart tests for people who don’t need them.

That all adds up to substantial expense that drives up the cost of care for all of us. Just how much, though, is seldom tallied. So, the Washington Health Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to making care safer and more affordable, decided to find out.

CALLOUT:

Have you worked in the health insurance industry? You have expertise that could help ProPublica’s reporting. Please share your insightswith Marshall Allen to help him learn about the industry.

The group scoured the insurance claims from 1.3 million patients in Washington state who received one […]

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More adults now share their living space, driven in part by parents living with their adult children

Stephan:  This is real social outcome data the kind of thing I track because, I think,  it tells us much more about the quality of life in the U.S. than the NASDAQ or DOW.

American adults are increasingly sharing a home with other adults with whom they are not romantically involved. This arrangement, known as “doubling up” or shared living, gained notice in the wake of the Great Recession, and nearly a decade later, the prevalence of shared living has continued to grow.

While the rise in shared living during and immediately after the recession was attributed in large part to a growing number of Millennials moving back in with their parents, the longer-term increase has been partially driven by a different phenomenon: parents moving in with their adult children.

In 2017, nearly 79 million adults (31.9% of the adult population) lived in a shared household – that is, a household with at least one “extra adult” who is not the household head, the spouse or unmarried partner of the head, or an 18- to 24-year-old student. In 1995, the earliest year with comparable data, 55 million adults (28.8%) lived in a shared household. In 2004, at the peak of homeownership and before the onset of the home foreclosure crisis, 27.4% of adults shared a household.

A shared household […]

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