Stephan: Unions were instrumental in creating the American middle class. Along with Franklin Roosevelt's policies designed to foster wellbeing they transformed the peasants of America, into doctors, professors, and entrepreneurs whose small businesses transformed the U.S. landscape. But now workers don't seem to understand the role of unions, and the Republican Party from the beginnings of unions, financed by the growing class of uber-rich has opposed them. The question for American workers is: Do you organize and speak collectively as one, or do you have your individual lives defined by your corporate masters to their benefit?
People hold pro-worker signs and rally outside a Whole Foods Market after marching from Amazon headquarters in solidarity with Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama on March 26, 2021. Credit: Jason Redmond/AFP/Getty
The decades-long assault on organized labor by corporations and their allies in government resulted in a dramatic erosion of union membership that cost the median U.S. worker $3,250 per year between 1979 and 2017, according to a new report released Thursday morning by the Economic Policy Institute.
The report estimates that the percentage of workers covered by collective bargaining agreements fell from 27% in 1979 to just 11.6% in 2019, a drop that had a direct impact on the wages of unionized workers and “spillover” consequences for non-unionized workers, who benefit from strong union density.
“Rebuilding collective bargaining is a necessary component of any policy agenda to reestablish robust wage growth for the vast majority of workers in the United States.” —Lawrence Mishel, Economic Policy Institute
EPI distinguished fellow Lawrence Mishel, the lead author of the new report, estimates that “for the ‘typical’ or median worker, declining unionization translates to a loss of […]
Stephan: One of the most powerful negative social trends we are experiencing in the U.S. is the transformation of Christianity into White supremacy christofascism. People self-righteously posturing and judging others, quoting Jesus, and then supporting and participating in things in direct opposition to his teachings. Here is an example of what I mean.
When I ask Heather Wilson and Jacob Wells, the founders of GiveSendGo, the “#1 Free Christian Crowdfunding Site,” whether they would host a fundraising campaign for the Ku Klux Klan, the call goes dead for a few seconds.
“Some of these campaigns are situational,” Wells finally offered.
“It would depend on what they were raising money for,” Wilson said.
The pair are siblings in their 40s, just two in a family of 12 children who grew up in Salem, N.H. Along with their sister Emmalie, they founded GiveSendGo in 2014 because, as a 2017 blog post put it, “Gofundme has taken a stance against Christians and has been taking down campaigns that they did not agree with.” The idea, Wells said, was not just to run a profitable business but to create a community where both givers and receivers could be inspired by the hope of Jesus. On the site’s clean, spare interface, the “Share Now” button is supplemented with a “Pray Now” button, allowing users to offer their devotions with a click.
On GiveSendGo, where “the most valuable currency is God’s love,” Kyle […]
Stephan: The disinformation trend is one of the greatest corruptors of American democracy. Mostly it gets discussed and analyzed from the perspective of how disinformation operations like Fox and InfoWars manipulate Americans as if they were passive ignorant easily manipulated children. The reality, however, is that as our society changes there is a large percentage of White Americans who motivated by hate and resentment brought on by these changes actively seek out purveyors of such disinformation because it confirms and supports their biases.
The way to deal with this is to foster wellbeing at every level so that those biases are marginalized and become irrelevant.
President Donald J. Trump participates in a town hall interview taping with Sean Hannity of Fox News Thursday, June 25, 2020, at Green Bay-Austin Struble International Airport in Green Bay, Wis. Credit: Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour
Perhaps it was inevitable, but now it’s certain: Three months out from the violent insurrection Donald Trump incited at the U.S. Capitol, the majority of Republican voters have settled on a story that they can use to justify supporting what Trump and the rioters did. According to a poll released this week by Reuters and Ipsos, belief in conspiracy theories about the insurrection is widespread among Republican voters, with 55% claiming to “agree” or “somewhat agree” that the rioters were really “antifa” in disguise. Another 51% of Republican respondents agree or somewhat agree that the rioters — who look to have killed one police officer, violently assaulted hundreds of others, and were chanting “hang Mike Pence” as they ransacked the Capitol — “were mostly peaceful, law-abiding Americans.” And a full 60% agree or somewhat agree […]
Stephan: Finally, someone in authority telling the truth about America's gun psychosis and offering a path to dealing with this addiction. In 2020, 19,379 men, women, and children died of gun deaths. It's hard to remember when the flag was not flying at half staff. Biden is correct, it is, and should be, an embarrassment.
Biden speaking out about guns and the Second Amendment on 8 April 2021. Credit:Kevin Lemarque | Reuters
President Biden announced a series of executive actions aimed at reducing gun violence, while urging Congress to pass broader gun-control legislation.
The actions were unveiled in the wake of a recent spate of mass shootings across the country, including a deadly attack Thursday in South Carolina.
The actions direct the Justice Department to craft a rule addressing untraceable “ghost guns” and to publish example “red flag” legislation for states.
Biden also called for a national red-flag law.
President Joe Biden announced a series of executive actions on Thursday to reduce gun violence and urged Congress to pass broader gun-control legislation.
The bundle of actions, Biden’s first attempt as president to tackle the fraught politics surrounding guns in America, was unveiled in the wake of a recent spate of mass shootings across the country, including Thursday in South Carolina, where five people were gunned down. In the past three weeks, other deadly mass shootings occurred in Georgia, Colorado and California.
Stephan: To show you how bad the gun death epidemic has become, as horrible as this article is, it is only current to 1 April. We have had three more killings since this article was published, three just today.
Two weeks have passed since the three Atlanta-area spa shootings claimed the lives of eight people, and in that time at least 20 other mass shootings have taken place.
The incidents have stretched from California to Washington, DC, and many have left multiple victims dead, CNN reported.
At least seven mass shootings occurred in the week between the attacks in Atlanta and in a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado. In the week that followed, that number more than doubled.
CNN defines a mass shooting as a shooting incident that results in four or more casualties (dead or wounded), excluding the shooter(s).
Five people were shot in Washington, the DC Police Department said. The incident started as a dispute and ended with two people dead and three injured.
March 28: Cleveland, Ohio
Seven people were shot at a Cleveland nightclub, according to CNN affiliate WOIO. The victims, four men and three women, were all between 20 and 30 years old, and police believe several shooters fired inside the nightclub, the station […]
