Stephan: The MAGAT Party recognizing what the Census Bureau has just announced is doing everything it can to dismantle our democracy. This is going to get down to what each one of us does. Every single person eligible to vote must vote for democracy and against the MAGATs in the upcoming election.
States with a score of eight or higher were labeled “green,” meaning “least restrictive” in terms of vote-by-mail and early voting access. A score of six or seven earned a “yellow” label for “restrictive,” and any state with five or fewer points was dubbed “red” for “most restrictive.” While none of the states received no points, only two—Illinois and Washington—got perfect scores.
As Texas Republicans sought the arrest of Democrats blocking voter suppression legislation and U.S. senators left Washington, D.C. without passing a major pro-democracy bill on Wednesday, a new state-by-state report detailed the GOP’s ongoing assault on ballot access.
“Voting rights legislation must be passed urgently by Congress when they return from recess before more damage is done.” —Caleb Jackson, CLC
The Campaign Legal Center (CLC) released a scorecard (pdf) grading the 39 states whose legislative sessions ended on or before June 30, focusing on vote-by-mail and early voting laws.
The report also examines proposed federal legislation: the For the People Act—which the Senate GOP blocked again Wednesday—and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
Stephan: Wealth inequality is one of the cancers eating away at American society. The Trump/Republican tax cut was a deliberate law to benefit the rich, and screw the middle class and poor.
Trump and his orcs. Credit: Lisa Larson-Walker/ProPublica
In November 2017, with the administration of President Donald Trump rushing to get a massive tax overhaul through Congress, Sen. Ron Johnson stunned his colleagues by announcing he would vote “no.”
Making the rounds on cable TV, the Wisconsin Republican became the first GOP senator to declare his opposition, spooking Senate leaders who were pushing to quickly pass the tax bill with their thin majority. “If they can pass it without me, let them,” Johnson declared.
Johnson’s demand was simple: In exchange for his vote, the bill must sweeten the tax break for a class of companies that are known as pass-throughs, since profits pass through to their owners. Johnson praised such companies as “engines of innovation.” Behind the scenes, the senator pressed top Treasury Department officials on the issue, emails and the officials’ calendars show.
Within two weeks, Johnson’s ultimatum produced results. Trump personally called the senator to beg for his support, and the bill’s authors fattened the tax cut for these businesses. Johnson flipped to a “yes” and claimed credit for the change. The bill passed.
Stephan: Here is another hard data report on the growing wealth inequality in the United States. You hear almost nothing in the media about this, but it is creating a massive crisis that is going to lead to social disorder. There is something fundamentally wrong with a country in which one small group can run their own space program, while 40% of families can't comfortably write a $400 check in an emergency and 1 in 7 children are not getting enough to eat.
A new analysis released Tuesday by the Economic Policy Institute finds that CEO pay in the United States rose by a staggering 1,322% between 1978 and 2020 — a sharp contrast to the pay increase of the typical worker, which was just 18% during that same period.
In 2020, a year of pandemic and widespread economic dislocation, the top executives at the largest public firms in the U.S. were paid 351 times as much as the typical worker, with CEO pay measured by salary, bonuses, long-term incentive payouts, and exercised stock options. According toBloomberg, Tesla’s billionaire CEO Elon Musk was the highest-paid corporate executive in the U.S. in 2020.
Highlighting the extent to which inequality has soared in recent decades, EPI observes in its report that the CEO-to-worker-pay ratio was 61-to-1 in 1989.
CEOs saw their compensation increase by 18.9% between 2019 and 2020 while the pay of typical workers — those who were able to hold on to their jobs amid mass layoffs stemming from the pandemic — rose just 3.9% over that time, EPI shows.
“Even that wage growth is overstated,” notes EPI, which has been tracking and documenting executive pay trends for years. “Perversely, high job loss […]
Stephan: American children compared to the children of other developed nations have a simply awful diet, and this has all kinds of long-term health implications -- like Type II diabetes. If you have ever been in Europe or Japan and seen what a school lunch there looks like compared to what a typical American public school lunch looks like you would be appalled. As with everything else in the U.S., of course, this all traces back to profit over any other priority like good health.
Ultra-processed foods include frozen pizza, microwave meals, packaged snacks and dessertsand opening a frozen pizza. Credit: CNN
Children and teens in the United States now get more than two-thirds of their calories from ultra-processed foods, an analysis of almost two decades worth of data has found.Ultra-processed foods — such as frozen pizza, microwave meals, packaged snacks and desserts — accounted for 67% of calories consumed in 2018, up from 61% in 1999, according to research published in the medical journal JAMA Tuesday. The study analyzed the diet of 33,795 children and adolescents nationwide.
While industrial processing can keep food fresher longer and allow some foods to be fortified with vitamins, it modifies food to change its consistency, taste and color to make it more palatable, cheap and convenient — using processes that aren’t used in home-cooked meals. They are also aggressively marketed by the food industry.
“Some whole grain breads and dairy foods are ultra-processed, and they’re healthier than other ultra-processed foods,” said senior author Fang Fang Zhang, a nutrition and cancer epidemiologist at the Friedman School […]
Stephan: Want to eat a healthy diet that will let you live a longer and healthier life, based on actual data not fantasy, speculation, and theory? Well, here is some excellent guidance. The main thing I would add is buy only organic produce, and proteins. Yes, they may be slightly more expensive, but so much cheaper than diabetes or cancer.
Everyone thinks about the fountain of youth now and again. How do we make life last longer, and, more importantly, how do we make sure that life is quality throughout the years?
People in the Blue Zones may have the answer — and some of it has to do with their diet. It’s not just what they eat, but how much and when. They stop eating when their stomachs feel about 80 percent full, which helps to avoid weight gain. They eat their smallest meal of the day in the late afternoon or early evening, and don’t eat again after that. They eat a lot of beans and other plants. They don’t avoid meat, they just eat it sparingly, as part of their lifestyle. They even drink wine in moderation, up to a couple of glasses a day.
The Blue Zones are five disparate areas identified by researcher Dan Buettner where people live to 100 or more in much higher concentrations than anywhere else: Ikaria, Greece; Okinawa, Japan; Ogliastra Region, Sardinia; Loma Linda, California.; and Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica.
People in these regions not only live longer, they enjoy enjoy their life to its fullest, and what […]
