This story is so absolutely typical of MAGAt public officials, who from Trump on down don’t give a damn about the wellbeing of families or children. It made me very angry just to read it. How could any honorable public official not want to see children fed properly? Yet the MAGAts do it over and over; it is one of the reasons the quality of life in the States they control is always inferior to the quality of life in states controlled by Democrats. But, at the end of the day, the people of those states vote these wretches into office again and again. We are culturally two countries.
Mother Jones illustration; Joshua Oluwagbemiga; Jonathan Greenaway; Thomas Park / Unsplash
When I spoke to Mandi Remington in late January, she had $7 in her bank account and had run out of milk. At times like these, which happen toward the end of most months, she cobbles together “stone soup” from what’s in the house, she said, or feeds her three children and then makes her own meal from whatever is left on their plates.
So when she found out that Iowa, where she lives in Iowa City, is among the 15 states that decided not to participate in Summer EBT, a new federal food program that would have sent her $40 a month per child while they were out of school, “it was extremely frustrating,” she said. As a single parent who doesn’t receive child support, Remington struggles to make ends meet. Her $55,000 annual salary as a medical records clerk at the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics “does not leave much leftover for gas in the car […]
I keep telling you that we are culturally two countries. Here is the CNBC assessment and it confirms what I have been saying. These are the worse states for quality of life in the United States. And what do you notice? They are all MAGAt Republican controlled states, and that means, because we are a democracy, that those states are the way they are because the people of those states voted again and again for the MAGAt Republican politicians who make up the government of those states. Although these states have some strengths, overall the voters literally choose and vote for an inferior overall quality of life for themselves and their families. Fundamentally, this is not a political issue, it is a cultural issue.
Worker shortages have eased a bit, but companies still look closely at quality of life when choosing a location that will attract skilled employees.
CNBC’s annual ranking of state business climates considers quality of life among ten categories of competitiveness.
Quality of Life metrics include Crime, Child Care, Health Care, Environmental Quality, and Inclusiveness.
The job market may have cooled a bit, but there are still far more job openings nationwide than there are people available to fill them. That means qualified workers are still a precious commodity.
So, companies seeking to attract great employees like to set up shop in states that offer a great quality of life. While some states are more than happy to oblige, these are not those states. They are America’s worst states to live and work in.
Amy Hawkins, Senior China Correspondent - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan:
Almost no one in the general media or Congress seems to understand how China is governed. Everyone says it is communist. In actuality, it is not. What China has done is recreate the Mandarian system that consolidated China and governed it from about 1115 CE to about 1911/12. The Mandarin system was a central bureaucracy of highly educated civil servants. I can tell you from personal experience having been to China and having met and talked with high-ranking Chinese government officials, as well as having been senior staff in two U.S. Administrations, that the Chinese officials are smarter, better educated, and far more capable of long-term planning than anybody but a very few members of the U.S. Congress. And nothing is making this clearer than how quickly the Chinese are leaving the carbon era. Meanwhile, in stark contrast, criminal Trump is speaking out against non-carbon energy technologies and screaming “drill bay drill.” I think he is just to stupid and self-centered to think long-term. Biden has certainly tried to do better but the corruption of the Congress by the carbon industries has sabotaged much of what his administration has tried to do. As a result as this article describes we are woefully behind the Chinese, and we are going to pay a big price for that.
The amount of wind and solar power under construction in China is now nearly twice as much as the rest of the world combined, a report has found.
Research published on Thursday by Global Energy Monitor (GEM), an NGO, found that China has 180 gigawatts (GW) of utility-scale solar power under construction and 159GW of wind power. That brings the total of wind and solar power under construction to 339GW, well ahead of the 40GW under construction in the US.
The researchers only looked at solar farms with a capacity of 20MW or more, which feed directly into the grid. That means that the total volume of solar power in China could be much higher, as small scale solar farms account for about 40% of China’s solar capacity.
The findings underscore China’s leading position in global renewable energy production at a time when the US is increasingly worried about Chinese overcapacity and dumping, particularly in the solar industry.
China has experienced a boom in renewables in recent years, encouraged by strong government support. Xi Jinping, China’s president, has stressed the need for “new quality productive forces”, a slogan […]
MICHAEL HIRSH, former Foreign Editor and Chief Diplomatic Correspondent for Newsweek, and the Former National Editor for POLITICO Magazine. - Politico Magazine
Stephan:
If Trump were to be elected to President again, not only would he destroy the American economy reversing all the good things Biden has achieved, he will also diminish the influence of the United States in the world. In almost every way imaginable our world would change in a negative way. I just don’t think a large percentage of Americans realize this.
Criminal Trump has consistently expressed pique that NATO allies “rip us off” by not meeting the 2 percent spending target. Credit: Nicholas Kamm / AFP / Getty
Donald Trump has threatened to leave NATO so many times — or has appeared to, anyway — that for many of his critics, it’s a question of when, not whether, he’d ditch the 75-year-old alliance if he’s reelected president in November.
In truth, Trump would be unlikely to quit NATO outright, according to interviews with former Trump national security officials and defense experts who are likely to serve in a second Trump term. But even if he doesn’t formally leave the organization, that doesn’t mean NATO would survive a second Trump term intact.
In return for continued U.S. participation, Trump would not only expect that European countries drastically increase their spending on NATO — his main complaint when he was president — but also undertake what one defense expert familiar with the thinking inside […]
In the MAGAt media they are talking about alternatives to IVF. As this medical publication reports there are none. That means that there are couples, women, seeking to have a child who, if the MAGAts are in power and outlaw IVF, will simply not be able to do so.
IVF Lab Credit: MedPage Today
While new Republican-led proposed legislation is trying to direct federal funds to “restorative reproductive medicine” — a so-called “alternative” to fertility treatments like in vitro fertilization (IVF) — fertility physicians said there is no alternative to IVF and standard infertility care already involves a holistic assessment of a couple’s health.
The Reproductive Empowerment and Support through Optimal Restoration (RESTOREopens in a new tab or window) Act was introduced by Senate Republicans last month, including Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), chair of the Senate Pro-Life Caucus. In a press releaseopens in a new tab or window, Hyde-Smith said she supports IVF, but families need options to treat the underlying factors of infertility.
The bill defines restorative reproductive medicine as “any scientific approach to reproductive medicine that seeks to cooperate with, or restore the normal physiology and anatomy of, the human reproductive system, without the use of methods that are inherently suppressive, circumventive, or destructive to natural human functions.”
