Stephan: Two important political trends are going on: one, the linkage between the Republican Party and White evangelical protestants. It has been a powerful trend. But now a countervailing trend is emerging. Fewer and fewer young people are affiliating with religious communities of any kind, older people are dying off, and more and more older people are falling away. This demographic, so important to the Republican Party as reliable votes, is shrinking. This report lays out the issues in this trend.
Donald Trump attends a worship service in Las Vegas when he was a presidential candidate in 2016. Trump won over many white conservative Christians by wrapping their traditional priorities in with his own particular cultural fixations. Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty
When Ronald Reagan accepted the 1980 Republican presidential nomination, he ended his speech with a piousrequest.
“I’ll confess that I’ve been a little afraid to suggest what I’m going to suggest — I’m more afraid not to — that we begin our crusade joined together in a moment of silent prayer,” he said.
It was the preface to a presidency that would help make white evangelicals the staunchly Republican voting bloc they are today.
Fast-forward to a 2015 campaign event, when Republican consultant Frank Luntz worked to pin down soon-to-be-President Donald Trump on a simple question of faith:
“Have you ever asked God for forgiveness?” Luntz asked Trump twice, before getting this answer: “I’m not sure I have. I just go and try and do a better job from there. I don’t think so.”https://www.youtube.com/embed/NyDbOHvfdiE?rel=0
Trump benefited from the white evangelical support that Reagan helped solidify, but he also presided over […]
Stephan: The general belief amongst researchers has been that police kill about 1,000 people a year, an astonishing number. As this report says, "This extraordinary number far exceeds that of any other wealthy country in the world. For instance, police in the United States kill 10 times the number of people per capita as those in France, 30 times those in Germany, and 60 times more than those killed in the UK. Since 2000, it is estimated that tens of thousands of people, including at least 8,000 Black people, were killed by U.S. police and more are killed almost every day. In fact, since the beginning of 2021, there have been only six days in which the police did not shoot, asphyxiate, beat to death, or otherwise kill someone."
But as appalling as that 1,000 annual number is, a new report says it is too small, the real number is over 2,000. That is a number so large it puts the United States in a category all by itself. And it tells us the thuggery of American law enforcement is unmatched in the democratic world and out of control. Particularly if you are a Black or Brown person if you are stopped for a traffic stop your life is at risk. Black friends have told me they teach their children, especially sons, that they could be killed by some law enforcement thug, and how they should behave. If you are a White person did your parents tell you anything like that? Of course not.
Black Lives Matter protesters hold placards and shout slogans during a march on the anniversary of the death of George Floyd, in Brooklyn, New York, on May 25, 2021. Credit: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty
According to The Guardian newspaper, 1,093 people were killed by police in the United States in 2020. Meanwhile, the website Mapping Police Violence, another well-respected source for such information, puts that number slightly higher at 1,127, and Statista claims it is 1,021. These figures reflect a consensus that has existed since around 2015 that, in general, police in the United States kill about 1,000 people per year.
This extraordinary number far exceeds that of any other wealthy country in the world. For instance, police in the United States kill 10 times the number of people per capita as those in France, 30 times those in Germany, and 60 times more than those killed in the UK. Since 2000, it is estimated that tens of thousands of people, including at least 8,000 Black people, were killed by U.S. police and more are killed almost every day. In fact, since the beginning of […]
Stephan: My sister lives on her property in rural France surrounded by forest about 2 miles from a picturesque village. She has full high-speed internet and excellent cell phone service. My wife and I live on our property on a rural island off the coast of Washington state surrounded by forest about 2 miles from a picturesque village. We have good internet service only because the family that owns the internet company is headed by a geek who values the internet. We have no reliable cell phone service and have to maintain a landline. Americans live in the delusion that they have the best healthcare and the best internet and cell service in the world. Just like Donald Trump lies, it is a delusion. As this article describes if you are a person of modest means living in a rural area, the quality of your cell and internet service does not even rank in the top 10 nations in the developed democratic world. But of course, even though the quality of the service is poor compared with other parts of the world, like everything else in the U.S. we pay the highest fees in the world for what we do have.
Home broadband is more important than ever. It’s also seemingly a luxury good.
Just over half of Americans making less than $30,000 a year have home broadband, a service that’s increasingly important for numerous aspects of life, from school to work to socializing. A much higher 92 percent of households bringing in $75,000 or more per year have home broadband, according to a new survey by Pew Research Center.
“That gap has been persistent even as the number of people who live in poor households has gone up over the years,” according to Lee Rainie, director of internet and technology research at Pew, which has been surveying broadband access for two decades.
Broadband access varies by other demographic factors as well. People without college degrees were less likely to have broadband than people with more education. Black and Hispanic people were less likely to have it than their white counterparts. But income was one of the most important determinators as to whether or not people had broadband.
Stephan: The Sackler family, principals in Purdue Pharma Corporation, through their drug Oxycotin were responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people, and the destruction of the lives and families of many multiples more. When it all blew up into the Oxycontin scandal they were careful to get billions of dollars of their money out of the company and, now, it appears they will get personal immunity from being held criminally liable.
Have you noticed that in the United States wealthy and well-connected people rarely seem to be held responsible for anything, whereas a Black teenage boy with a joint in his pocket may end up being murdered by the police? The American legal system is a deck stacked in favor of those who are White, rich, and well-connected. I find that disgusting.
Members of the Sackler family who own Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, moved a step closer to winning immunity from opioid lawsuits. Erik McGregor/LightRocket/Getty
After more than a year of high-stakes negotiations with billions of dollars on the line, a bankruptcy plan for Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, cleared a major hurdle late Wednesday.
Federal Judge Robert Drain in White Plains, N.Y., moved the controversial deal forward despite objections from dozens of state attorneys general, setting the stage for a final vote by the company’s creditors expected this summer.
The drugmaker filed for Chapter 11 protection in 2019 facing an avalanche of lawsuits tied to its aggressive opioid sales practices.
Public health experts and many government officials say the introduction of OxyContin fueled the nation’s deadly opioid epidemic.
This development brings members of the Sackler family, some of whom own Purdue Pharma and served on the company’s board of directors, a step closer to winning immunity from future opioid lawsuits.
Stephan: I confess I have never really understood the obsessive gender and sexual hysteria of the "Christian" evangelical community. For one thing, their intolerance is a direct violation of Jesus' teachings: "Judge not, that you be not judged" (Matthew 2:1; "Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned" (Luke 6:37). This community is a cult to be sure, but not Christian, and they suffer from a deep psychopathology.
Hardline Christian billionaires are pumping millions of dollars into a national push to block legislation that would make discrimination against LGBTQ+ people illegal in most contexts, in one of “the most sophisticated dark money operations” movement leaders have ever seen, according to the Daily Beast.
At the center of the operation lies the National Christian Foundation (NCF), the sixth-largest charity in America, which has used its wide web of influences to lead an attack against the Equality Act, a landmark civil rights bill that passed the House in February and would impose a federal ban on most forms of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Over the past several years, the National Christian Foundation has taken in millions from wealthy people on the Christian right, including the family of former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, the Anschutz oil network, Chick-fil-A CE) Dan Cathy and the late billionaire investment manager Foster Friess.
Since the early 1980s, around 63,000 nonprofits have received money from the NCF, which has endowed this network with over $11 billion in total.
Back in 2019, Sludge found that from 2015 to 2017, the NCF funneled $56.1 […]
