Justin Guest, Associate Professor of Policy and Government at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government. - The New York Times
Stephan: My readers know I have been writing about this transition of America becoming a majority-minority nation for years. And others clearly are beginning to think about this as well. On the whole, I see this trend as heading in the wellbeing fostering direction. White supremacists are having nightmares about it but they, increasingly, are a shrinking minority within the White race. By 2050 I think this will be a nonissue. Notice how many television ads you see now with mixed-race couples and their children. Notice how many television series have racial equality. It's not going to be an easy transition, and the White supremacists, I think, will become increasingly violent. But the trend is in the right direction.
Credit: Joseph Prezioso/Agence France-Presse/Getty
In 2015, the Census Bureau published a report projecting that by 2044, the United States’ white majority would become merely a white plurality: immigration and fertility trends would lead to America’s ethnic and racial minorities outnumbering its white population.
Since then, for a certain subset of Americans, each annual release by the bureau — neutral, nonpartisan researchers who produce deliberately staid reports — has become a sort of countdown to the white apocalypse. Worse, we now talk about cross-racial fertility rates Darwinistically, as if the census were monitoring a population of elephant seals in competition for a rookery.
In a country whose history has been shaped by the boundaries among racial groups, this projected demographic shift is undoubtedly important. Given the racialized nature of our political parties, it also has electoral consequences. However, if we are to overcome the division that defined our past, we must stop reinforcing the salience of those boundaries in the future.
I am not arguing that the Census Bureau should stop collecting this valuable data, à […]
Stephan: I have written frequently about the fact that America does not like its children, nor does it care for them (see SR archives, "Why doesn't America like It's Children?") Oh, of course, you love your children, but do you care about American children in general? Certainly, the anti-choice crowd who don't want women to have control of their bodies, have made it clear they care not a whit about children once they are born, particularly if they are Black or Brown. Our children are poorly educated, unhealthy, and as this report makes clear, often hungry. It is a national shame that few will even discuss.
Demand at food banks and food pantries has dipped, but only slightly, as the job market rebounds and government stimulus programs put money in Americans’ pockets, but the frayed safety net that is the emergency food system remains a lifeline for many still struggling families.
Last week the Biden administration revised the thrifty food plan definition of basic food needs, which will increase benefits for the 42 million Americans enrolled in SNAP when the changes are officially implemented in October.
Tens of thousands of food pantries scattered throughout the heartland and concentrated in cities along the coasts buckled under a surge in pandemic-driven demand last year from families. Many living paycheck-to-paycheck sought help for the first time when they lost the jobs that sustained them.
A significant source of the rise in demand has been from households that never previously experienced food insecurity.
Stephan: Like everything else done by Trump, the wall that Mexico was going to pay for was a grift, and an incompetent scam, just like his university, and faux-philanthropy, We haven't heard much about the Trump wall for months now, so here is an updated fact-based report. The Trump wall is just as sleazy and incompetently constructed as I predicted.
An activist paints the border wall near Ciudad Juarez in 2017, when Trump was already deemed the least popular US leader in modern history. Credit: Herika Martinez/AFP/Getty
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, a malevolent clown promised a country that didn’t want it a “perfect” and “beautiful” wall on our southern border to keep out scary brown families – aka “drugs, crime and rapists” – daring to seek a better life, and also Mexico would pay for it, “Mark my words,” which, too bad for him, many did, after which they quickly realized it was a crock. So was the sordid, chimerical rest: In the end, instead of his much-touted, 2,000-mile wallapalooza, we got a pointless, shoddy, racist, laughably partial, “not engineered to last,” frequently sued and constantly besieged “environmental catastrophe” funded by a deeply resistant we the people after its bloated budget soared from $8 billion to over $25 billion, in part thanks to 200 sketchy “contract modifications” – aka bribes – granted to a small group of pre-selected, fat-cat GOP donors, thus rendering […]
Stephan: I have been warning about civil violence involving guns for years as I have watched this trend develop. And I think it is going to get worse. This is a direct assault on our democracy.
A Proud Boys rally descended into violence on Sunday in Portland, Oregon. Photograph: Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/AFP/Getty
A gunfight in Portland, Oregon, last week is intensifying concerns over escalating violence during contentious rallies in the city, as far-right demonstrators and anti-fascist counter-protesters have repeatedly faced off.
The Portland police bureau charged a 65-year-old man from Gresham, Oregon, over a gunfight in the city’s downtown during violent clashes on Sunday. Authorities say Dennis Anderson drew a concealed handgun and shot at a group of anti-fascists who were trying to expel him from the area. At least one of the anti-fascists shot back, according to authorities, with seven shots exchanged between the two sides.
Proud Boys and members of other far-right groups regularly open-carry handguns during protest, and the shootout fueled the growing concern about the presence of firearms at rallies taking place across the US.
But other violent incidents in Portland on Sunday showed how participants have also increasingly adopted less lethal, but still dangerous, technologies as weapons for political street fighting.
Thom Hartmann, - Independent Media Institute/AlterNet
Stephan: Thom Hartmann, and I, apparently, share the same view. We don't have a universal healthcare system, we have an illness-profit system, and the pandemic has brought its failures into focus. Here is his take on that.
Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis
It has to be a scurrilous lie. Seriously: nobody is that evil.
Although it is the sort of thing that we’ve come to expect because our unique-in-the-world, for-profit health insurance system leaves Americans financially vulnerable to sickness but offers huge profits to companies and CEOs in the system.
Some cynical people are suggesting that the reason Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis is forcing teachers and children to sit for hours every day in classrooms with unmasked children is because he wants them all to get infected with Covid…to make money for a friend of his.
Seriously. There’s that theory out there, and it’s almost too evil to believe it could be true.
That DeSantis is intentionally trying to expose children, families and public-school teachers to a deadly disease simply because it’ll make a few million extra dollars for his largest donor, billionaire Ken Griffin, whose fund is one of the biggest stockholders in the company that makes the only available monoclonal antibody drug approved to treat Covid.
And, of course, it might also take out a few hundred unionized teachers, […]
![Far-right extremists and anti-fascist counter protesters clash on Sunday [...]
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