Stephan: The Supreme Court, in contrast to every other court in the United States, has no ethical standards of conduct, as the behavior of justices like Clarence Thomas has illustrated. That plus Citizens United which legalized what amounts to bribery of government officials has combined to produce the situation described in this article. We desperately need a) formal ethical standards for Supreme Court justices and b) reversal of Citizens United.
U.S. Supreme CourtCredit: Samuel Corum / AFP / Getty
Conservative donors poured tens of millions of dollars of anonymous “dark money” into groups supporting Republican lawmakers in a supreme court case that could upend American election law.
The donors backed several groups that have filed supreme court amicus briefs in support of North Carolina legislators in Moore v Harper, according to a recent analysis. They are pushing for a ruling that would take ultimate decisions about voting rights and congressional gerrymandering away from state courts and hand those powers to state legislatures, of which Republicans now control the majority.
Eight conservative groups that submitted amicus briefs in the supreme court case have received close to $90m from dark money donors since 2016, according to Accountable.US, a liberal leaning watchdog group that tracks government corruption.
Several of these conservative bastions are also champions of restrictive voting laws.
Conservatives want the supreme court to adopt the independent state legislature theory, a once fringe idea now promoted by a coterie of conservative groups that filed amicus briefs, including the Honest Elections Project, […]
Stephan: As I wrote in my book, The 8 Laws of Change, small groups of people holding a common intention who work with the 8 Laws can and have changed the course of history for the better. And there are people doing that now. Here is an example. I see this as good news.
Global warming has increased the number of extreme weather events around the world by 400% since the 1980s. Countries know how to stop the damage from worsening: stop burning fossil fuels and shift to renewable energy, electrify transportation and industry, and reduce the carbon intensity of agriculture.
In my new book, “The Climate Crisis,” I lay out the mechanisms and impacts of the climate crisis and the reasons behind the lack of serious effort to combat it. One powerful reason is the influence that the fossil fuel industry, electric utilities and others with a vested interest in fossil fuels have over policymakers.
But there’s another reason for this inaction that everyone has the ability to change: response skepticism – the public doesn’t believe in its own political power enough or use it.
When people speak up and work together, they can spur powerful changes. You can see this in university students demanding that their chancellor retire the campus fossil fuel power plant and switch to renewable electricity. […]
Stephan: I completely agree with Raskin. The Electoral College, should be eliminated. It was created as a scheme put together originally to satisfy the slave states with smaller populations, just as Blacks were counted as 3/5s of a White person. The college is distorting our democracy, skewing it in favor of the smaller states, which is to say the Republicans. We should, as a matter of principle, as Raskin asserts, elect the President and Vice President on the basis of how many votes each candidate gets.
‘We should elect the president the way we elect governors, senators, mayors, representatives, everybody else – whoever gets the most votes wins.’ Credit: Michael Reynolds / EPA
Recent reforms to the laws governing the counting of electoral college votes for presidential races are “not remotely sufficient” to prevent another attack like the one carried out by Donald Trump supporters at the Capitol on January 6, a member of the congressional committee which investigated the uprising has warned.
In an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation, the Maryland House representative Jamie Raskin on Sunday renewed calls echoed by others – especially in the Democratic party to which he belongs – to let a popular vote determine the holder of the Oval Office.
“We should elect the president the way we elect governors, senators, mayors, representatives, everybody else – whoever gets the most votes wins,” Raskin said. “We spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year exporting American democracy to other countries, […]
Stephan: As we come to the end of the year, here is some good news, that hasn't really gotten appropriate attention.
Credit: Vox
2022 wasn’t as defined by the coronavirus pandemic as 2020 or 2021, but it was still marred by its fallout. War, a tightening economy, and major shifts in the global world order contributed to a sense of continued tough times ahead. Perhaps not coincidentally, a recent poll found that about 4 in 10 Americans believe we’re currently living in the “end times.”
That said, 2022 did have its silver linings, those moments where hope for the future shined through. Something we like to do here at Future Perfect is reflect back on the wins that might have gotten lost in the (very understandable!) noise. From knocking asteroids out of the sky to becoming one step closer to having cell-cultivated meat on the table, 2022 saw progress in scientific research and policy that could define — and improve — the trajectory of human development for years to come.
It’s hard to feel optimistic, especially as the uncertainty of 2023 approaches. But if our capacity for discovery, collaboration, and altruism can prove anything, it’s that progress […]
MICHAEL LIPKA AND PATRICIA TEVINGTON, Editorial Manager of Religion Research | Research Associate on Religion Research - Pew Research Center
Stephan: Personally, I have never understood the negative obsession over transgenders. Why is it anybody's business how a human being defines themselves. But millions do make this an issue, particularly as this survey makes clear, religious people. I think the trans issue is one reason young people are leaving religious affiliation and, at the same time, becoming more interested in consciousness practices such as meditation.
Growing shares of Americans believe that a person’s gender is determined by their sex assigned at birth, according to a new Pew Research Center survey, which finds major differences by religion on this question and others about transgender issues.
For example, a majority of White evangelical Protestants say society has gone too far in accepting people who are transgender, while religiously unaffiliated Americans are far more likely to say society has not gone far enough.
How we did this
Among U.S. adults overall, six-in-ten now say that whether a person is a man or a woman is determined by their sex assigned at birth. This figure is even higher among White evangelicals (87%) and Black Protestants (70%). Among Catholics, the share who say a person’s gender cannot differ from sex at birth has risen from 52% in 2021 to 62% this year.
By contrast, a majority of religiously unaffiliated Americans (58%) say a person’s gender can be different from their sex assigned at birth, with atheists (76%) and agnostics (67%) especially likely to hold this view. The survey […]
