Stephan: When most nonrural Americans think about bankruptcies they think about shops they go to, or restaurants where they eat. But there is another set of bankruptcies that are going to have a very personal impact on how they live at home -- farm bankruptcies. The people who grow our food between Trump's ghastly tariff food wars and the Covid pandemic are going bankrupt at a rate not seen in decades. Even when they are not going bankrupt, because of Trump's racist immigration policies, they are having a hard time hiring the men and women they need to work in their fields.
My wife grows most of the non-protein foods we eat, but when I go into the market for something I notice that lettuce is $3-4 a head, with Romaine being most expensive. It will probably be $5-6 a head this winter. If you make $15 to $25 an hour, how do you spend $30-40 a week on lettuce so your kids can eat salads? And if they don't how do they stay healthy?
Bankrupt farmMore farmers are declaring bankruptcy despite record levels of federal aid, reported The Wall Street Journal (Aug. 6).
About 580 farmers filed for Chapter 12 bankruptcy protection in the 12-month period ended June 30, according to federal data—8% more than a year earlier.
In 2019, farm bankruptcies were up, reported FB.org. Chapter 12 family farm bankruptcies increased by nearly 20% from the previous year, according to data from U.S. courts. Looking at figures from over the past decade, the 20% increase follows only 2010, the year following the Great Recession when Chapter 12 bankruptcies rose 33%.
With slightly more than 2 million farms in the U.S., the 2019 bankruptcy data reveals a bankruptcy rate of approximately 2.95 bankruptcies per 10,000 farms, just below the rate of 2.99 filings per 10,000 farms in 2011.
However, bankruptcies slowed slightly in the first half of 2020, partly due to an infusion of federal aid and hurdles to filing during the pandemic, according to agricultural economists and attorneys. In April, The Wall Street Journal reported that President Trump announced a $19 billion […]
Stephan: Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama are part of a secret satanic international pedophile ring trading in child sex slaves. How sick do you have to be to take something like that seriously? I read a lot of rightwing websites because I think it is important to know what Trump world is thinking. It is a chore because it is so crazy it doesn't even work as satire and the fact that millions of people believe it I find astonishing. It isn't just that it is fact-free. It is the racism, the nastiness, the ugliness, and the very weird sexuality of these people. It is a kind of religious political S&M. Their obsessions tell more about them, than the people they talk about. Here is a little background on that world and what is going on in it.
Trump supporters, notice they are all White. Credit: Shutterstock
Remember the “Left Behind” series, about how the Rapture would whisk away all devout right-wing Christians before Jesus Christ unleashed the apocalypse on the unbelievers? Purity rings? Jesus Camp? Breathless stories about “girls gone mild,” giving up sex and tank tops for the Lord? A federal health official who believed that women who had premarital sex couldn’t feel love? Jerry Falwell Sr. and Pat Robertson blaming 9/11 on the “pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way”?There can be no doubt that the heyday of Christian fundamentalism in America was the George W. Bush administration. Conservatives craved reassurance that they were defenders of “morality”, despite supporting an indefensible invasion of Iraq that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands. These claims to moral superiority over liberals mainly came in the form of policing hymen […]
Stephan: By any measure I can find, with the exception of the rich, who are getting much richer, America is coming apart. In three and a half years Trump, his orcs, and the Congressional Republicans and Red-state governors have taken a country that was thriving, when Trump came into office, into a nose dive that has left us in a medical crisis and an economic christofascist mire. Every social outcome measurement reports pain, suffering, fear, and anger. Pew Research Center lays it all out, with real facts, not conspiracy theories and fantasies.
With less than five months until the 2020 elections, Americans are deeply unhappy with the state of the nation. As the United States simultaneously struggles with a pandemic, an economic recession and protests about police violence and racial justice, the share of the public saying they are satisfied with the way things are going in the country has plummeted from 31% in April, during the early weeks of the coronavirus outbreak, to just 12% today.
Anger and fear are widespread. Majorities of Democrats and Republicans say they feel both sentiments when thinking about the country, though these feelings are more prevalent among Democrats. And just 17% of Americans – including 25% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents and 10% of Democrats and Democratic leaners – say they feel proud when thinking about the state of the country.
However, nearly half of adults (46%) say they feel hopeful about the state of the country, although a 53% majority says they are not hopeful.
In the presidential contest, Donald Trump faces a 10 percentage point deficit in his race against Joe Biden: 54% of registered voters […]
Stephan: It is a measure of what the United States has become that, as this report describes, 25% of young adults have considered killing themselves rather than going forward with their lives. Think about that for a moment, and consider what that is telling you about America today.
If you or someone you know is feeling suicidal call or suggest they call The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-8255.
Credit: Adobe Stock
“Symptoms of anxiety disorder and depressive disorder increased considerably in the United States during April–June of 2020, compared with the same period in 2019,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report released Friday. Just over 40 percent of respondents in a June 24-30 survey reported at least one adverse mental or behavioral health condition, ranging from anxiety disorder to increased substance use to cope with the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic.
And 10.7 percent of respondents reported having seriously considered suicide over the previous 30 days because of the pandemic. That’s a high number, but it was especially prevalent among certain groups.
For example, 25.5 percent of young adults age 18 to 24 said they had considered suicide in June, versus 16 percent of respondents age 25-44 and 3.8 percent of those 45 to 64. Other groups with high rates of suicidal ideation included essential workers (21.7 percent), people with less than a high school diploma (30 percent), Black (15.1 percent) and Hispanic (18.6 percent) respondents — 7.9 percent of […]
Stephan: How ironic it is that Trump who brought shame to America by his nasty immigration policies to keep Brown and Black people out, through his incompetence with the pandemic, has ended up making it almost impossible for Americans to be welcomed anywhere.
The Atlantic/Getty
Becoming a United States citizen was meaningful to me for a great number of reasons. German by birth, I had come to feel at home in America, and to love it. For all the deep injustices that shape this country, I remained convinced that the United States was more likely than just about any other place in the world to build a thriving, diverse democracy. And when I wrote about the danger that right-wing populists like Donald Trump pose to the American republic, I cherished being able to speak about his assault on our, as opposed to your, values and institutions.
Alongside all these serious reasons, I also had a very practical one: the power of the U.S. passport. It granted access to just about everywhere, and escape from just about anywhere. Which country—Germany or the United States—would be more likely to rescue me if I got stuck in some foreign country in the middle of a perilous political crisis? Would the last plane to evacuate foreigners from Chad or Chile or Canada before that country devolved into civil war be […]
