A Neuroscientist Explains How Trump Supporters Are Easily Hoodwinked Because of This One Psychological Problem

Stephan:  It is always important to bear in mind that the average IQ in the U.S. is 98 with roughly 50% below that. Add Dunning-Kruger effect syndrome and you have the profile of the Trump "base."

Aging female Trumper

In the past, some prominent psychologists have explained President Donald Trump’s unwavering support by alluding to a well-established psychological phenomenon known as the “Dunning-Kruger effect.” The effect is a type of cognitive bias, where people with little expertise or ability assume they have superior expertise or ability. This overestimation occurs as a result of the fact that they don’t have enough knowledge to know they don’t have enough knowledge. Or, stated more harshly, they are “too dumb to know they are dumb.” This simple but loopy concept has been demonstrated dozens of times in well-controlled psychology studies and in a variety of contexts. However, until now, the effect had not been studied in one of the most obvious and important realms—political knowledge.

new study published in the journal Political Psychology, carried out by the political scientist Ian Anson at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, not only found that the Dunning-Kruger effect applies to politics, […]

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U.S. Is Unprepared for the Health Challenges of Climate Change, Experts Warn

Stephan:  Since the U.S. doesn't have a real healthcare system anyway, having instead an illness profit system, perhaps it should not surprise us that the country is utterly unprepared for the healthcare implications of climate change. Here are some facts.

San Juan, Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017.
Credit: Ricardo Arduengo Getty

The United States isn’t ready for the public health problems climate change will bring, experts warned Congress last week.

From the spread of insect-borne disease to the risks to public health centers and outpatient facilities from environmental disasters, public health professionals on Capitol Hill told congressional staffers there is much work to be done to prepare for potential health risks to the American public at the federal, state and local levels.

“Climate change isn’t the singular cause of catastrophe, but it has widened the expanse of social vulnerability to disasters,” said Marccus Hendricks, an assistant professor in the urban studies and planning program at the University of Maryland.

Hendricks outlined how the series of Western wildfires, intense rainfall in Houston, and wind and storm surge events in South Florida and Puerto Rico in 2017 were all devastating illustrations of the “collision of climate-related risk and the human built environment.”

He and the other speakers stressed the need for advance investment in […]

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Trump Administration Says Hundreds of Parents Separated From Their Children May Have Already Been Deported Without Their Kids

Stephan:  Let's be very clear. Donald Trump, in his capacity as the President of the United States, authorized government authorities to kidnap children and throw their parents out of the country. Why? Ostensibly to deter Brown people from coming to the United States, as disgusting as that is. But beneath that is an even more evil predicate that no one in the government will say openly:  Brown people aren't humans and need not be accorded the respect and care to which White humans are entitled.
Yerlin Yessehia, 11, of Honduras waits with her family along the border bridge after being denied entry into the U.S. from Mexico on June 25, 2018 in Brownsville, Texas.
Yerlin Yessehia, 11, of Honduras waits with her family along the border bridge after being denied entry into the U.S. from Mexico on June 25, 2018 in Brownsville, Texas.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images

We still don’t know the full extent of the damage done to thousands of undocumented families by the Trump administration’s separation policy, but we are getting a clearer picture of the absolute menace and sheer incompetence driving the White House’s immigration policy. The latest twist, revealed in a court filing Monday, is that the U.S. government believes that potentially hundreds of parents that were forcibly separated from their children have already been deported without their children.

“The Trump administration said [-] that 463 parents of migrant children are no longer present in the United States, indicating that the number of mothers and fathers potentially deported without their children during the ‘zero tolerance’ border crackdown could be far larger […]

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Voter purges are on the rise in states with a history of racial discrimination

Stephan:  If you live in a state controlled by Republicans, and you are a person of color, you had better check to see if you are still registered. The Republican Party of Lincoln has morphed into a racist nativist party of aging Whites, who choose personal interest over democracy, and the Party is doing everything it can think of to make it difficult or impossible for young people and people of color to vote. It's shameful and disgusting but this is America in the second decade of the twenty-first century, and that's where we are.

Credit: Sean Rayford/Getty

States are kicking a growing number of voters off their rolls in the wake of a 2013 Supreme Court decision that invalidated a key part of the Voting Rights Act.

The rate of voter purges — a sometimes faulty process that states use to clean their voter rolls — is significantly higher than it was a decade ago, according to a new report from NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice.

This increase coincides with a 2013 Supreme Court decision, which struck down a part of the Voting Rights Act that required nine states with a history of racial discrimination to obtain federal approval when altering their election laws.

The spike is notable. Between 2006 and 2008, 12 million voters were purged from voter rolls. Between 2014 and 2016, that number rose to 16 million — a roughly 33 percent increase.

Brennan Center researchers also found a major surge in voter purges in the places that had previously been subject to federal preclearance under the Voting Rights Act. Several states — […]

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Trump’s Tax Cut Hasn’t Done Anything for Workers

Stephan:  All those ignorant voters who chose racism and genderism over social wellbeing are now picking up the tab for their mistake. Here are the facts. Will this make them turn away from Trump? I doubt it.

But what about YOUR pay raise?
Credit: Cherise May/NurPhoto

A few months ago, I cautioned that Americans should be patient before deciding what effect President Donald Trump’s tax cuts have had on the economy. It takes a while for companies to make investment decisions, more time for those decisions to be implemented and even more time for the resulting changes in labor demand to bid up workers’ wages. It therefore takes months or even years before the full impact of the tax bill will be known.

But it’s also important to evaluate policies like Trump’s tax reform as quickly as possible. Not only is this critical for deciding whether to change course, but as more time goes on, the effects of a policy can become harder to assess. Two years from now, plenty of other things will have had time to affect the economy, including Trump’s trade war and natural economic forces. And now that the tax cut has been in effect for a half-year, the results are starting to trickle in.

First, […]

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