Tim Arango and Giulia Heyward, - The New York Times
Stephan: Let's start with some facts. By objectively verifiable data American police and sheriffs constitute the worst, most violent, least trained, most racist, and least educated law enforcement institutions amongst the developed democracy nations. So bad it constitutes what in mathematics would be called an outlier. And as this report lays out despite a few convictions of police murderers it's not really getting any better.
A memorial in Minneapolis for victims of police violence. Credit: Joshua Rashaad McFadden for The New York Times
For the second time this year, a jury in Minneapolis has ruled against a former police officer for killing a Black man.
Like the conviction of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd, the verdict on Thursday against Kimberly Potter on two counts of manslaughter for the shooting death of Daunte Wright during a traffic stop represented an unusual decision to send a police officer to prison.
And yet, despite the two high-profile convictions in Minneapolis, a review of the data a year and a half after America’s summer of protest shows that accountability for officers who kill remains elusive and that the sheer numbers of people killed in encounters with police have remained steady at an alarming level.
The murder of Mr. Floyd on a Minneapolis street corner drew millions to the streets in protest and set off a national reassessment on race that touched almost every aspect of American life, from corporate boardrooms to sports nicknames. But on the core […]
Stephan: As I have told you many times culture is defined by an aggregate of individual choices. Pew Research Center, looking at a wide range of social outcome data, in this report outlines 15 trends that stood out for them in 2021. You may be surprised by some of them.
As 2021 draws to a close, here are some of Pew Research Center’s most striking research findings from the past year. These 15 findings cover subjects ranging from extreme weather to the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing demographic shifts in the United States. And they represent just a small slice of the year’s full list of research publications.
A growing share of childless Americans say it is unlikely they will ever have children, an October survey found. Some 44% of non-parents ages 18 to 49 say it is not too or not at all likely that they will have children someday, an increase from the 37% who said the same in 2018. Meanwhile, 74% of adults younger than 50 who are already parents say they are unlikely to have more kids, virtually unchanged since 2018.
What’s behind the growing share of non-parents younger than 50 who expect not […]
Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate, Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center, Columnist - The New York Times
Stephan: As usual Paul Krugman cuts through the partisan nonsense to address the actual facts. What he outlines in this essay about the Build Back Better legislation is, in my view, a very accurate analysis. I suggest you write or call your senators and your representative and let them know your feelings about this legislation.
Credit: Emil Lippe/The New York Times
I’ll leave the savvy political analysis to others. I don’t know why Senator Joe Manchin apparently decided to go back on an explicit promise he made to President Biden. Naïvely, I thought that even in this era of norm-breaking, honoring a deal you’ve just made would be one of the last norms to go, since a reputation for keeping your word once given is useful even to highly cynical politicians. I also don’t know what, if anything, can be saved from the Build Back Better framework.
What I do know is that there will be huge human and, yes, economic costs if Biden’s moderate but crucial spending plans fall by the wayside.
Failure to enact a decent social agenda would condemn millions of American children to poor health and low earnings in adulthood — because that’s what growing up in poverty does. It would condemn millions more to inadequate medical care and financial ruin if they got ill, because that’s what happens when people lack adequate health insurance. […]
Stephan: Here is further confirmation of what Paul Krugman was saying in the previous story. I find Joe Manchin despicable, particularly because he is a senator representing a state in desperate need of what the Build Back Better legislation offers. But equally despicable not a single Republican senator has the integrity to vote affirmatively for this bill, especially Southern Republican senators who represent states that are little more than third world countries that would benefit substantially from Build Back Better.
Manchin urges more time for slimmer budget bill
After Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) revealed that he would not support President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan, which is known as the “human infrastructure” bill, Dow Futures tumbled. Now, a major world bank is warning that they’re readjusting predictions about American GDP.
Sunday evening Investors.com revealed that the stock market is predicted to tumble on Monday. Due to Manchin’s interview with Fox News Sunday morning, the big bank Goldman Sachs gives the Biden bill a less than 50-50 chance of passing Congress. The company then lowered its 2022 GDP forecasts for the United States.
It puts Manchin in a difficult position to single-handedly hurt the U.S. economy, tweeted CNBC Contributor James Pethokoukis.
As Goldman said in the statement, “There is also still a chance that Congress retroactively extends the expanded child tax credit, with some modifications, though we think the odds of this occurring are less than even.”
There is also a concern that anti-vaxxers are also causing COVID-19 to spread and evolve […]
Stephan: Here is some good news about the transition out of the carbon era. You will note, of course, that with the exception of North Carolina, which is a sort of purple state, all of the other states that have made good progress are Blue states. What is happening in the United States is that the inferior quality of Republican governance is leaving the Red states further and further behind the Blue states in terms of everything from exiting carbon to healthcare, education, and infrastructure. This has major long-term implications for the lack of wellbeing in the Red states.
It’s understandable if people are feeling dour during this unseasonably warm December when, once again, the U.S. Congress has failed to pass major climate legislation.
But while the federal government might have failed in pushing through the Build Back Better bill, with its many climate provisions, 2021 has seen some long-awaited successes in the states.
Five states (Illinois, Massachusetts, Oregon, North Carolina and Rhode Island) passed laws requiring a shift to 100 percent carbon-free electricity or net-zero emissions. And Washington State passed a law that takes steps to implement its 2019 and 2020 climate and clean energy laws.
Several other states moved forward, even if they didn’t pass their own versions of “100 percent” laws. Colorado and Maryland are examples of states that are making progress on climate and clean energy through a series of smaller, targeted actions, rather than swinging for the fences on single pieces of legislation.
Sarah Steinberg, a principal at the trade group Advanced Energy Economy, told me that 2021 might be the biggest year she’s seen for significant clean energy legislation at the state level.
“A lot of these states have been gearing up to pass something for a long […]
