Jason Linkins, - Think Progress
Stephan: Once again what isn't being done at the federal level, indeed, what is being undermined by the Trump Reich, is being taken on at the state level, and so we have some good news. The state government of Hawaii, actually considers facts. Imagine that compared to say Kansas.
Congressional members and activists call for congressional action on banning pesticides in Washington, D.C. on July 25, 2017.
CREDIT: Esther Yu Hsi Lee/ThinkProgress
More than a year after the Trump administration controversially overturned a decision to ban pesticides containing chlorpyrifos, the state of Hawaii has taken the matter into its own hands.
The Aloha State has passed a law barring the use of such chemicals, which have been linked to adverse side effects in humans, including debiltating neurological and developmental maladies.
On Wednesday, Hawaii Governor David Ige (D) put his signature to Senate Bill 3095, which will ban the use of chlorpyrifos pesticides in the Aloha State at the start of the next calendar year. The law also bars the spraying of any pesticide within 100 feet of schools during normal hours of attendance.
“Protecting the health and safety of our keiki and residents is one of my top priorities. We must protect our communities from potentially harmful chemicals. At the same time, Hawai‘i’s agriculture industry is extremely important to our state and economy. We […]
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DEREK ROBERTSON, - Politico
Stephan: What I found interesting about this and other similar pieces I am beginning to see is the growing awareness of the cowardice and lack of integrity of the congress and the nature of the kind of people who would work in such an administration as Trump's. So it's less about the insights in the article, and more about its existence at all. It is becoming recognized that at the federal level America is a country deeply disordered.
The United States Capitol – Washington DC
As Washington’s shock over winning the Stanley Cup demonstrates, the nation’s capital isn’t used to being first in anything. As a city, it’s not the oldest, nor the biggest, nor the richest, and its sports teams are notoriously snakebitten. But finally, the capital has a claim to No. 1—and unfortunately, it’s not just in hockey.
Ryan Murphy, an economist at Southern Methodist University, recently published a working paper in which he ranked each of the states by the predominance of—there’s no nice way to put it—psychopaths. The winner? Washington in a walk. In fact, the capital scored higher on Murphy’s scale than the next two runners-up combined.
“I had previously written on politicians and psychopathy, but I had no expectation D.C. would stand out as much as it does,” Murphy wrote in an email.
When Murphy matched up the “constellation of disinhibition, boldness and meanness” that marks psychopathy with a previously existing map of the states’ predominant personality traits, he found that dense, coastal areas scored highest by […]
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Mary Papenfuss, - The Huffington Post
Stephan: The opioid epidemic is a crisis of misery. People become addicted because they seek relief. What this article describes is the correlation between voting for Trump and opioid usage.
Donald J. Trump
Credit: Nicholas Kamm/AFP
A new study has reported that in those parts of the nation with the highest rates of chronic opioid prescription, Donald Trump won overwhelming support in the 2016 presidential election
In 693 counties with “significantly higher” than average rates of opioid prescriptions, Trump won about 60 percent of the vote, according to the study published Friday in the medical journal JAMA Network Open.
In 638 counties with “significantly lower” than average opioid prescription rates, Trump won only about 39 percent of the vote, according to the study.
In the election’s overall popular vote, Trump won about 46 percent compared with 48 percent Clinton. Trump claimed the presidency by winning the electoral college vote, 306-232.
The areas with the high rates of opioid use are largely […]
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John McKenna, - World Economic Forum
Stephan: Everyone will deny it but the social outcome data cannot be denied, only ignored. Here's the truth. America as a society, and as a matter of government policy, does not like or value children, and they know it. They are depressed increasingly suicidal, and rate badly by almost any measure you like. America children are not even in the top 10 compared to other developed nations. You may not like that truth but there it is.
The Dutch have high levels of happiness across all age groups.
Credit: Reuters/Cris Toala Olivares
Exam pressures, the quest for more independence, strained relationships with parents and a body full of raging hormones all add to teenage angst. Of course not all teenagers have the same experience of these formative years, and where they live has a huge influence on an important time of their lives.
If all teenagers could choose where to grow up, the Netherlands would be a good pick. Young people there are highly likely to have a positive experience of their teenage years.
They are, on average, likely to be among the happiest, healthiest, best educated and wealthiest of adolescents living in the world’s richest nations.
Earlier this year, an OECD report found that over 93% of children aged 11 to 15 years old in the Netherlands recorded above average life satisfaction.
And subsequent reports by UNICEF have listed the Netherlands as one of the best places in the world […]
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Deborah Gross, Ellen Olshansky and Sarah Oerther, professor in the school of nursing at Johns Hopkins University. Ellen Olshansky, PhD, RN is a professor and chair of the Department of Nursing of the Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work and professor emerita at University of California, Irvine Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing. - The Hill
Stephan: The creation of the minor child concentration camps is so morally bankrupt that it will stain America's reputation to a generation. For years we have run the largest gulag in the world, and now this. These children will be scared for life by what is being done to them. Get out of the 30th. Find someplace to join with others to protest Trump Reich's moral evil, and the Republican Party's acquiescence to what is being done.
All this tells me is that the 2018 election is going to determine the road taken by the United States. Do we become a fascist state or remain a democracy. It's up to you.
ICE personnel
Credit: Getty
It’s been said that you can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they have tried everything else.
We cannot think of a better example than the Trump administration’s policy to forcibly remove children from parents caught trying to enter the U.S. illegally as they are seeking asylum from violence, presumably to deter people from entering the country illegally.
Their children, including babies and toddlers, are then labeled “unaccompanied alien children” (a phrase never intended to be applied to children who could not yet walk) and placed in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).
They are then transferred to live with people they do not know, sometimes thousands of miles away from their parent(s), with their parents not even knowing where their children are being taken. Previously, most children had been allowed to stay with their parents in shelter for families while they waited for their deportation proceeding.
Attorney General
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