Jessica Corbett, Senior Editor and Staff Writer - Common Dreams
Stephan:
I get quite a number of emails from people who say I am too partisan and too hard on the Republicans. Let me say it again. I do not care about political partisanship except anthropologically. What I care about is fostering wellbeing. If the Republicans bear the brunt of my criticism it is because what they seek to do does not foster wellbeing, and will cause much misery, and death. Here, in contrast to the Republicans is what the Democrats seek. What they are saying. Make the contrast for yourself.
Democratic Washington Governor. Jay Inslee Credit: Karen Ducey / Getty
As record-shattering heat persists from Phoenix, Arizona to southern Europe, Democratic Washington Gov. Jay Inslee highlighted on Sunday that humanity already knows how to combat climate chaos: ditch planet-warming fossil fuels.
With tens of millions of Americans under heat alerts, Inslee—who ran a climate-focused 2020 presidential campaign—appeared on ABC‘s “This Week” to discuss current conditions and solutions with co-anchor Martha Raddatz.
“Look, the climate change problem, the fuse has been burning for decades, and now the climate change bomb has gone off,” Inslee said. “The scientists are telling us that this is the new age. This is the age of consequences because whatever we thought of climate change last year, we now understand that the beast is at the door. We knew this beast of climate change was coming for us, but now, it’s pounding on the door.”
“What the scientific community is telling us now, is that the Earth is screaming at us, and that is […]
I believe the Republicans in their culture war have made what I think is going to prove to be a fatal mistake. They have alienated the students and faculty of colleges and universities across the country, who will now vote overwhelmingly Democratic. A shrinking minority of whites, a minority within a minority out of their fear, resentment, racism, and hate have created this culture war, and they are going to lose. To me, the only question is how much needless violence, pain, and death it will cause. A massive loss in the 2024 elections would help reduce their damage. For one thing our news programs would finally stop talking 24/7 about Trump.
MADISON, WISCONSIN— Spring elections in Wisconsin are typically low turnout affairs, but in April, with the nation watching the state’s bitterly contested Supreme Court race, voters turned out in record-breaking numbers.
No place was more energized to vote than Dane County, the state’s second-most populous county after Milwaukee. It’s long been a progressive stronghold thanks to the double influence of Madison, the state capital, and the University of Wisconsin, but this was something else. Turnout in Dane was higher than anywhere else in the state. And the Democratic margin of victory that delivered control of the nonpartisan court to liberals was even more lopsided than usual — and bigger than in any of the state’s other 71 counties.
The margin was so big that it changed the state’s electoral formula. Under the state’s traditional political math, Milwaukee and Dane — Wisconsin’s two Democratic strongholds — are counterbalanced by the populous Republican suburbs surrounding Milwaukee. The rest of the state typically delivers the decisive margin in statewide races. The Supreme […]
Republicans “have historically thought of education as a training ground for employment,” said Beth Akers, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. This in contrast to the view of George Washington Carver: “Education is the key that unlocks the golden door to freedom.” In any case that’s the story Republicans tell. But that is not what, I think, is really going on. This is the culture war; this is what an attempt to change the culture is producing. This is why college professors, just like OB/Gyns, are walking away from assured employment practicing the specialty upon which they have based their lives, to practice it elsewhere. As George Washington Carver said,
Former President Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the two GOP presidential frontrunners, have both promised a crackdown on colleges should they occupy the White House — a stark reflection of the right’s growing skepticism of higher education.
Between the lines: Some Republican complaints about colleges are related to broader concern about “wokeness” and free speech. But others hint at deeper questions about the value of college, and how to ensure a degree comes with an appropriate economic return.
Driving the news: In a video posted on his website last week, Trump pledged to “fire the radical Left accreditors” and hire new ones “who will impose real standards on colleges.”
Some of those standards would include “protecting free speech,” “removing all Marxist diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucrats,” and “implementing college entrance and exit exams to prove that students are actually learning and getting their money’s worth.”
Last month, DeSantis sued the Biden administration over the college accreditation system, alleging it’s unconstitutional, Inside Higher Ed reports. Students who receive federal aid must […]
All over, in the Republican controlled Red states, there is an aggressive attack on on both public primary and secondary education as well as university curriculum. The Republicans do not seek to foster wellbeing. They do not want a fact-based educated population. They wanted indoctrinated serfs. Children trained in racist christofascist nonsense, where heterosexuality is the only God give form of sexuality, White people are the superior face, women are subordinate to men. Students trained in a history showing that slavery was beneficial for the slaves. But there is resistance to this and, as Ohio shows those interested in educational integrity can prevail. And in Ohio here is how they did it. If you live in a Red state perhaps this is something you should get involved with.
Illustration by: Andre Hunter, Charles Deloye / Unsplash / Truthout
Ohioans invested in the integrity and well-being of public universities across the state breathed a sigh of relief in late June after Ohio Senate Bill 83 — Republicans’ big push to overhaul higher education across the state — failed in its bid to become law before the summer recess began.
A few of the bill’s lowlights — in its original and revised forms — include:
banning and regulating how educators teach topics or use concepts that the GOP specifies as “controversial” or “ideological,” including climate change, structural racism, allyship, gender identity, diversity, foreign policy, abortion, immigration policy, marriage, and concepts like oppressor/oppressed;
conducting surveillance (including “post-tenure review”) of faculty deemed to be “indoctrinating” students;
banning strikes at universities and restricting faculty voices;
banning mandatory diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) trainings and programs; and
imposing some boycotts on universities (banning relations with Chinese institutions) while forbidding others (no “boycotts, divestment, sanctions” campaigns, clearly referring to the Palestine solidarity movement, BDS).
SB 83 teems with contradictions. Universities are told not to take positions on matters […]
I see stories like this one almost every day now, and it makes me wonder what are these White male Republican politicians, and the women who subordinate themselves to them, thinking. OB/GYN physicians, as this story about Idaho describes, are leaving Republican controlled Red states in droves. This has become one of the defining trends shaping the culture of the United States. It has reached a point where it is dangerous for a woman to be pregnant in a Republican controlled Red state, like Idaho, Texas, Mississippi, or Missouri because it is highly likely that woman may not be able to get the treatment she needs if she suddenly faces a problem in her pregnancy. According to Karyn Morse, MD, OB-GYN at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles it is estimated that as many as 26 percent of all pregnancies end in miscarriage and up to 10 percent are clinically recognized early on by an ultrasound exam as potentially dangerous.
Dr Kylie Cooper at her new home in Minnesota after leaving her job as an OB-GYN in Idaho this year. ‘Not being able to do your job … it just breaks my heart.’ Credit: Abbie Parr / AP
Most mornings Dr Stacy Seyb is awake by 6am. He begins his day with meetings before a packed schedule seeing 18-20 patients going through high-risk pregnancies in Boise, Idaho. He has had a long career of treating people with all sorts of obstetrical complications so he’s used to stress. But it’s never been like this.
Now that federal protections for abortion have been gone for more than a year and Idaho is approaching the anniversary of its near-total abortion ban, the state has seen an exodus of OB-GYNs and other medical providers, leaving Seyb as one of the last remaining maternal-fetal medicine physicians in his state.
He estimates his patient load has already increased 20-30% since last year, and there’s a constant fear gnawing at him and his colleagues.
After growing up along Kansas’s border with Colorado, Seyb knew he […]
