Stephan: By almost any calculation one chooses, the illness-profit system of American healthcare is failing to meet the needs of Americans, including the men and women who provide the care. Why? Because it is a system entirely based on profit not fostering wellbeing.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK —A new survey of 1,000 American nurses finds that nine in 10 believe the quality of patient care often suffers due to nursing shortages (90%). In fact, the majority add that they feel guilty about taking a break because they think they must always be on call (55%). Almost six in 10 nurses have even noticed their patients have suffered because they have too much on their plate (56%).
Additionally, half of the nurses polled admit they have considered leaving the nursing profession (50%).
According to the survey conducted by OnePoll and connectRN, the top reason why nurses plan to leave their careers is the nursing shortages (61%), followed by having a better work/life balance (58%), feeling their mental health is at risk because of burnout (56%), and a lack of appreciation (51%).
In fact, six in 10 blame staff shortages when it comes to why they feel they don’t have control over their careers (60%). That may also be why 58 percent of nurses don’t think their employers are doing enough […]
Stephan: The Murdochs represent, to me at least, everything that has gone wrong with journalism. A billionaire and his children by careful design run a propaganda disinformation operation through multiple outlets print and electronic whose purpose is to masquerade as a journalism business and manipulate the political systems in the countries in which they operate -- Australia, UK, and US. They can exist only because of the freedom of speech laws in the countries where they have operations. In a sense the Murdochs are the cancer afflicting journalism. That said they are publicly saying they are dumping Trump and, to MAGAt world, that is going to be a big deal. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Criminal Trump talking to his worshippers
The powerful media empire of conservative billionaire Rupert Murdoch appeared to turn its back Thursday on Donald Trump, labeling the former US president a “loser” who shows “increasingly poor judgement” after the midterm elections.
Just days before he is expected to announce his 2024 White House candidacy, the Wall Street Journal, the flagship of Murdoch’s News Corp, declared in an editorial that “Trump Is the Republican Party’s Biggest Loser,” pointing to the party’s disappointing performance in Tuesday’s midterms.
Trump later Friday hit back at Murdoch, appearing to relish a scuffle, accusing News Corp media of falling in line to back a potential Republican rival of Trump for the 2024 presidential nomination, a choice he said News Corp would rue.
The cover of News Corp’s tabloid New York Post depicted Trump on a precarious wall as “Trumpty Dumpty” who “had a great fall” in the vote, blaming him for the failure of Republicans to sweep past Democratic rivals in the battle for control of Congress and governors’ mansions.
And at the hugely influential Fox News television […]
Mark Berman, National Reporter - The Washington Post
Stephan: in the early 1990s, I was on the board of directors of a children's foundation with the Deputy Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. One night over dinner, when earlier in the day I had read about an act of racist violence against a Black man by the L.A. Sheriff's Department, I asked the Deputy Chief how these acts seemed to occur so frequently. He said that in law enforcement, "Fifteen percent are heroes, everything you could ever want in a sworn officer whether sheriff or police. Another fifteen percent are thugs and bullies who become officers because it gives them power. The other seventy percent just go along with whomever their leader is. We need to do a better job weeding out the corrupt thugs and bullies." I have never forgotten his words.
Public outrage over how police use force has fueled protests in the streets, spurred calls to cut their funding and ignited broad debates over how to reform law enforcement.
Despite this intense focus on the present and future of policing, one key component has remained woefully inadequate, according to a report from a prominent policing think tank: how new officers are trained.
Training for recruits “presents an immediate crisis for policing,” according to the report from the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post before its scheduled release Monday.
The report describes a system that, even after years of push and pull over change, is “built to train officers quickly and cheaply.” That system then hurries the new officers onto streets across the United States without helping them develop vital skills, including crisis intervention and communication, that they will need on the job, according to the report.
Stephan: I don't know how it could be made any clearer than what this article reports, MAGAt world fundamentally believes women are not the equals of men. It is preposterous, it is one of the reasons there was no "red wave" in the election, but it is the MAGAt reality.
MAGAt RepublicanSenator Josh Hawley (R-MO) questions Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary of Homeland Security, during a Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee hearing May 13, 2021 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Credit: Graeme Jennings-Pool/ Getty
After the heavily predicted “red wave” in the 2022 midterm elections turned out to be an illusion, it was really no mystery why Republicans failed to capitalize on the political tailwinds that — according to conventional wisdom and political history — should have given them much bigger wins. Blame Donald Trump and Justice Samuel Alito, for the one-two punch of inciting an insurrection (which was wildly unpopular) and overturning the right to abortion (which was highly popular). Americans, it turns out, are protective of democracy and their basic human rights and turned out in huge numbers to vote for Democrats or, more precisely, to vote against Republicans, who are a threat to both. The smart thing for Republicans to do is clear enough: Stop stoking Trump’s election […]
Stephan: One of the central failings of the Republican Party is that they simply do not accept that all life is interdependent and interconnected in a matrix of life. If you understand that and actually care about facts -- the Republicans do not -- you would know that wolves and grizzlies as essential players in ecological wellbeing. That may sound like a philosophical abstraction but, in fact, it is a worldview that is the source of most of humanity's misery. It is why Republicans think profit is, and should be, the most important social priority. It is the root of racism, and genderism. It is why Republicans not only don't support social policies that foster wellbeing, but don't even understand why such policies are important.
The most iconic predators in the American West are under attack, and top government officials and agencies are failing to uphold the law to protect them. Those are the allegations in a pair of lawsuits filed in federal and state court recently.
Though filed separately, the two claims share a common concern: that wolf and grizzly bear populations in the Northern Rocky Mountains will be decimated.
In the past year, leading wildlife biologists have spoken out with rising alarm about the fate of the predators in Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, where Republican lawmakers have advanced some of the most aggressive laws and proposals targeting the two species in recent history.
“There’s urgency to this. You really can’t reverse the consequences of a dead animal.”
“I feel that our public officials at the federal and state levels do not care anywhere near enough about fish and wildlife,” Robert Aland, a retired attorney and longtime environmental activist who brought the federal case, told The Intercept. “There’s urgency to this,” he added. “You really can’t reverse the consequences of a dead animal.”
By law, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should protect against threats to endangered species at the federal level. State wildlife […]
