Stephan: This article was written in December 2017, I am running it today because of the Roseanne Barr story that has dominated the news today. Both are telling us something very important about American culture and its cancerous racism. Trump, who is a racist, through his endless lies and dogwhistles has given the large percentage of Americans who are racists -- it is the birth curse of America -- permission to act out out.
That's what the Roseanne Barr story is really about. ABC cynically decided to milk the racist market by putting the show on the air, and it worked, huge ratings. Lots of racists in America. What they hadn't planned on was Barr's blatant racism, and her stupidity, and the pushback that erupted. Because not all of us are racists, indeed we are the majority, we need to put this evil genii back in his bottle, and only you can do it. It's a matter of voting
Credit: Nicholas Kamm/AFP
More than a year after President Donald Trump won the election, there are still some questions about what drove him to victory: Was it genuine anxiety about the state of the economy? Or was it racism and racial resentment?
Over at the Washington Post, researchers Matthew Fowler, Vladimir Medenica, and Cathy Cohen have published the results of a new survey on these questions, with a focus on the 41 percent of white millennials who voted for Trump and the sense of “white vulnerability” that motivated them. The conclusion is very clear:
Contrary to what some have suggested, white millennial Trump voters were not in more economically precarious situations than non-Trump voters. Fully 86 percent of them reported being employed, a rate similar to non-Trump voters; and they were 14 percent less likely to be low income than white voters who did not support Trump. Employment and income were not significantly related to that sense of white vulnerability.
So what was? Racial resentment.
Even when controlling for partisanship, ideology, region […]
Stephan: And here we see some data to help us understand what has happened to the community of Republican voters.
63% of Republicans say moral leadership is very important
Down from 86% under Clinton
59% of U.S. adults say Trump provides weak moral leadership
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Republicans are much less likely now than they were during the Bill Clinton years to say it is very important for the president to provide moral leadership for the U.S. Democrats, on the other hand, are more likely to believe moral leadership is important now, with Donald Trump in office, than they were under Clinton.
Importance of President Providing Moral Leadership for the Country, by Political Party, During the Clinton and Trump Administrations
How important do you think it is for the president to provide moral leadership for the country — very important, somewhat important, only slightly important or not at all important?
Clinton administration (1994-1999)
Trump administration (2018)
Change
%
%
pct. pts.
U.S. adults
72
66
-6
Republicans
86
63
-23
Independents
69
62
-7
Democrats
64
77
+13
Figures are the percentage who say it is “very important.” Clinton data based on an average of four polls conducted between 1994 and 1999. Trump data based on May 1-10, 2018, poll.
GALLUP
Across four polls conducted during the Clinton administration, an average of 72% of U.S. adults said it was very important for the president to provide moral leadership for the country. A May 1-10 […]
Stephan: I have been following what is happening after massive weather events, and I find it an increasingly alarming trend. You have probably read that thousands more people died in Puerto Rico as a result of first Hurricane Irma and Maria, and that both Puerto Rico and the American Virgins are still deeply damaged. But no one's talking about Houston. They should be, as you will understand after you read this article.
FEMA like almost all federal agencies designed to protect and assist the American populace has been systematically degraded under the Trump administration, with the assistance of the Republican congress. As a result it is increasingly going to fall on local American communities to look after themselves. If you live in an area subject to extreme weather events I urge you to organize your community.
Lying just feet away from exposed electrical wires, 4-year-old Aaron Cervantes sleeps on a cot inside his grandparents’ hollowed-out Houston home, which was devastated by Hurricane Harvey’s floodwaters. Credit: M. Scott Mahaskey/ Politico
HOUSTON — Nine months after Hurricane Harvey dumped more than 50 inches of rain on the Gulf Coast, green grass has returned to plush Houston developments and the city’s downtown hums with millennial workers choosing a favorite food truck. But just a short drive away,Kashmere Gardens has not recovered.
Nearly every street of the 10,000-person neighborhood has homes that are gutted. Empty window panes reveal sparse interiors without walls, doors or carpets. Doors hang ajar and mold consumes living rooms and kitchens. Signs dot the lawns, promising homeowners that they can quickly sell out and avoid the messy process of rebuilding. One family lives in a tent in their driveway where mangy dogs circle around, shedding fur and leaving a rotten stench hanging in the air. Inside their wrecked home, two 4-year-old children sleep just feet […]
Stephan: I am a rural person. Although I lived in L.A. and D.C. for decades, by choice and inclination, I prefer rural communities and attractive small villages. But there is a trend afoot that is putting rural communities like the one I live in in jeopardy; I am speaking here of the collapse of rural healthcare in America.
Hospitals are closing right and left because they aren't profitable enough a trend in contrast to say Canada. We don't have a healthcare system we have an illness profit system, and the evaluation hospital corporations make is based on profit, not the wellbeing of the community.
In the small towns and villages of Canada you will find a clinic or nearby hospital, because in Canada the system actually is a healthcare system where as in the U.S. it is not. Coupled with this are Trump's immigration policies.
Many rural clinics and hospitals in the U.S. for years have depended on immigrant physicians and nurses; men and women who prefer a rural setting, and are willing to work for a lower income. But they're no longer welcome in America, and they're coming in much smaller numbers. The result is what this report describes.
BELHAVEN, NORTH CAROLINA — It makes sense to sell this old place now, but he can’t bring himself to leave her ashes.
Barry Gibbs lives alone in a single-story home among the loblollies of Hyde County in eastern North Carolina. The army veteran collects a small disability check after he tore tendons in his shoulder during a fall at his maintenance job at the local school. He winces every time he stands up. He’s 64 years old and the closest hospital is more than an hour away, a distance he came to understand too damn well on the day she needed help.
Their wedding portrait still hangs on the living room wall. It’s one of those 1980s shots with the laser beam backgrounds, her hair big and his mustache combed, his hand on her shoulder. The interior of the house is almost as she left it four years ago: white oak floors, paintings of black bears, family Christmas photos on end tables.
Outside along the driveway, a line of cypress trees shades a headstone that marks […]
Stephan: Here are the people the Koch brothers are trying to get elected. Do yourself a favor. Don't vote for any of these people, and urge your friends and family not to vote for them as well.
David Koch
At the 2018 Koch Donor Summit in January, the network of billionaires convened by Charles and David Koch announced that it plans to spend $400 million in the 2018 midterm election cycle, close to double the amount spent in the 2014 midterms and a 60 percent increase over the 2016 election cycle. The Kochs had planned to spend $900 million in the 2016 election cycle, but ended up spending less after Trump won the Republican nomination. “We will be spending more than any midterm in our network history,” Americans for Prosperity’s president Tim Phillips said.
“My challenge to all of us is to increase the scale and effectiveness of this network by an order of magnitude, by another tenfold on top of all the growth and progress we’ve already made,” Charles Koch said to more than 500 attendees, who each donated at least $100,000 in 2017.
That “progress,” detailed in documents revealed by The Intercept, includes backing out of the Paris Climate Accord, undoing the Environmental Protection […]
BELHAVEN, NORTH CAROLINA — It makes sense to sell this old place now, but he can’t bring himself to leave her ashes.
