Stephan: In contrast to what Democratic governor Newsom is doing in California in Arizona we can see clearly what Republican MAGAt Governor Ducey are doing. The Republicans are trying to gut public education because study after study has shown that the more educated you become the more likely it is you will vote Democratic. So if you want to keep poeple voting Republican you don't want them to be educated. The Republican base is made up of low IQ, low education Whites manipulated by oligarchs and their political whores.
Last week, just days after the Arizona legislature passed the most expansive school voucher law anywhere in the nation, Gov. Doug Ducey signed into law another education measure decreeing that public school teachers are no longer required to have a college degree of any kind before being hired. Instead of requiring a masters degree — which has long been the norm in the profession — Arizona teachers will only have to be enrolled in college in order to begin teaching the state’s public school students.
The law, SB 1159, was pushed by conservatives on the grounds that Arizona has faced a severe teacher shortage for the last six years, which, by this winter, left 26% of teacher vacancies unfilled and nearly 2,000 classrooms without an official teacher of record. That shortage has led supporters of the bill, including business interests such as the Arizona Chamber of Commerce, to claim that loosening teacher credential requirements will help fill those staffing gaps. Opponents of the bill, however, point to the fact that Arizona has the lowest […]
Paul Kiel and Mick Dumke, Business and Consumer Finance Reporter | Politics and Government Reporter - ProPublica
Stephan: The Republican Party beginning with the Reagan administration has rewritten and rigged the American tax code so it favors the very rich, and makes life more difficult for middle class and poor Americans. They bought this restructuring by hiring, in every Republican administration, Congressional whores to do their bidding. Here are the facts.
For billionaire Ken Griffin, it was well worth spending $54 million to ensure he and other rich Illinoisans wouldn’t have to pay more tax.
By the time Illinois voters streamed into voting booths on Election Day in 2020, Griffin, then Illinois’ wealthiest resident, had made sure they’d heard plenty about why they should not vote to raise taxes on him and the state’s other rich people. His tens of millions paid for an unrelenting stream of ads and flyers against an initiative on that year’s ballot, which would have allowed Illinois lawmakers to join 32 other states in setting higher tax rates for the wealthy than for everyone else.
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In the end, Griffin spent about $18 for every one of the 3.1 million votes against the initiative. After initial optimism about its prospects, the measure came up hundreds of thousands of votes short and went down to defeat.
Rarely does the public get a clear view of the payoff for wealthy Americans who put their money down to achieve a […]
Stephan: Here is some excellent good news. It describes the change that is occurring in the labor market between carbon energy and non-carbon energy.
At least in terms of the job market, 2021 was a good year for renewable energy. A report released earlier this week by the Department of Energy found that nearly every part of the renewable energy sector added jobs last year. And despite a rise in fossil fuel production, the number of oil and gas-related jobs actually declined — with some industry workforces shrinking by as much as 12 percent.
Overall, jobs in the energy sector grew by about 4 percent, or about 300,000 jobs. But job gains in renewable energy markets were so strong that they effectively masked losses from several fossil fuel industries; the solar industry added tens of thousands of workers while fossil fuel industries specializing in petroleum and coal hemorrhaged nearly 40,000 workers.
Last year’s uptick in renewable energy job growth was dominated by the electric vehicle and hybrid vehicle markets; electric vehicle manufacturers saw their workforces swell by over 26 percent in 2021. Hybrid vehicle companies followed closely behind, with job increases at about […]
Stephan: What kind of country finds it acceptable and normal that tens of thousands of children and teens are murdered by guns, and decides that guns are more important than the country's children. Only one country, The United States of America.
The lives of roughly 26,000 children could have been saved since 2010 if gun deaths in the United States occurred at rates seen in Canada, according to a new analysis published Friday by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
While firearms recently became the leading cause of death among children in the U.S., KFF found that they rank no higher than fifth in 11 similarly large and wealthy nations—behind motor vehicles, cancer, congenital diseases, and other injuries, and often trailing other conditions such as heart disease.
Guns—including accidental deaths, suicides, and homicides—killed 4,357 kids between the ages of 1 and 19 in the U.S. in 2020, or 5.6 per 100,000 children.
Canada had the next highest child and teen firearm mortality rate among high-income countries, at 0.8 gun deaths per 100,000 kids—seven times lower than its heavily armed southern neighbor.
According to KFF:
Combining all child firearm deaths in the U.S. with those in other OECD countries with above median GDP and GDP per capita, the U.S. accounts for 97% of gun-related child deaths, despite representing 46% of the total population in these similarly large and […]
Stephan: Amongst the nations of the European Union fostering wellbeing is part of the purpose of governance. In contrast, in the United States the purpose of social policies is to produce the largest possible profit for the corporations affected by those social policies. And nowhere is this clearer than in matters involving food and climate. It is shameful, but this is the reality of America.
As a result, it is up to you to protect yourself from the toxins the food, farming, and climate industries use to protect their profits. Here is some good data you can use in making food choices for yourself and your family.
There’s a hidden ingredient used as a whitener in an array of foods, from candies and pastries to cheeses and gum. It’s called titanium dioxide, and while commonly used in the US, it’s being banned in the EU as a possible carcinogen.
The additive, also known as E171, joins a host of other chemicals that are banned in foods in the European Union but allowed in the US.
These include Azodicarbonamide, a whitening agent found in food such as breads, bagels, pizza, and pastries in the US, which has been banned in the EU for more than a decade. Known as the “yoga mat’’ chemical because it is often found in foamed plastic, the additive has been linked to asthma and respiratory issues in exposed workers and, when baked, to cancer in mice studies.
Potassium bromate, an oxidizing agent often found in bread and dough and linked in animal studies to kidney and thyroid cancers, has been banned in the EU since 1990 but is still commonly used in the US. Brominated vegetable oil is also banned in the […]
