Where the Economy, and the World, Are Headed
Where the Economy, and the World, Are Headed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfL0ZpYBLrw
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A JD Vance-aligned think tank is stirring the pot with conservatives
“American Compass makes the case that adherence to tax cuts, deregulation and free trade have been disastrous economic policy and that government can make capitalism work better for workers and families. It calls for more restrictions on trade with China, using public capital to stoke investments in critical industries, supporting organized labor and banning corporate share buybacks. (A spokesperson for Republicans on the House select committee on China said the group has been “a strong and effective advocate for common-sense policies to stop enabling our foremost adversary.”)
Cass wrote last month that the 2017 Trump tax cuts were “an expensive failure.” American Compass argues that tax increases as well as spending cuts are needed to tame the deficit, and it released a survey showing Republican support.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/25/gop-economics-american-compass-00171010
Opinion | JD Vance Has a Bunch of Weird Views on Gender
“Like Carlson, Vance had once opposed Donald Trump, and like Carlson, he had transformed into a prominent Trump supporter and a rabid participant in the culture wars. “We are effectively run in the country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs,” he told Carlson, “by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” He went on to name Kamala Harris (and Pete Buttigieg, and AOC) as his prime examples of the childless leaders who should be excluded from positions of power.”
…
“Vance appears to be a decent family man — someone who supports traditional conservative values, and is even willing to buck conventional GOP norms by supporting strong pro-family policies. But a quick perusal of his thoughts on women and gender reveal some unusual opinions that lie outside the American mainstream, beyond a stray comment about cat ladies.
Vance is staunchly opposed to abortion, and has suggested that it is wrong even in cases of rape and incest. He has compared the evil of abortion to that of slavery, and opposed the Ohio ballot measure ensuring the right to abortion in 2023. He also was one of only 28 members of Congress who opposed a new HIPAA rule that would limit law enforcement’s access to women’s medical records. He has promoted Viktor Orban’s pro-natalist policies in Hungary, which offer paybacks to married couples that scale up along with the number of children (a new Hungarian Constitution that banned gay marriage went into effect in 2012, so these benefits only serve “traditional” couples). Vance opposes same-sex marriage. During his 2022 Senate campaign, he suggested the sexual revolution had made divorce too easy (people nowadays “shift spouses like they change their underwear”), arguing that people in unhappy marriages, and maybe even those in violent ones, should stay together for their children. His campaign said such an insinuation was “preposterous,” but you can watch the video yourself and be the judge.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/07/24/jd-vance-gender-views-00170673
‘Gun, gun, gun! Run, run, run!’ Grocery store witnesses describe the deadly rampage in Colorado
“The shooter entered the store the afternoon ofMarch 22, 2021, and opened fire, killing 10 people – including the first Boulder police officer to arrive on the scene.
While families agonized for hours waiting to learn the fate of their missing loved ones, several survivors described the surreal attack.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/gun-gun-gun-run-run-123722538.html
The crime wave is over but Republicans can’t let go
“The theme of the Republican National Convention’s second night was “Make America Safe Again,” and the roster of speakers repeatedly criticized Biden’s record on crime and immigration: Randy Sutton, a retired police officer, said there was a “war on cops.” Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird said that Biden treats “police like criminals, and criminals like victims.” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz declared that “your family is less safe, your children are less safe, the country is less safe,” as a result of Biden’s presidency.
But the Republican speakers’ rhetoric on crime spiraling out of control was out of touch with reality.
While there was indeed a rise in crime during the pandemic, recent data has shown that crime is declining nationwide. According to the FBI, murder is down 26 percent and robberies have declined by 18 percent in the first three months of 2024 compared to the same time last year. That didn’t stop Republican speakers throughout the night from singling out incidents of heinous crimes and drug overdoses to conjure up an image of lawlessness and disorder.
So why are Republicans plowing ahead with their “Make America Safe Again” messaging despite data that shows America is already getting safer? The answer is simple: Most Americans believe that crime is getting worse, so it’s not a particularly tough message to sell.”
https://www.vox.com/politics/361165/rnc-2024-make-america-safe-again-trump-gop-false-crime-wave
Why the far right is surging all over the world
“The refugee crisis heightened the stakes for culturally conservative voters, forcing them to choose between centrist parties that were more welcoming to migrants and potentially antidemocratic extremists who opposed it. Many of them chose the latter, prioritizing preserving the traditional white-dominant society over protecting their democracy.
Across Europe, far-right parties started to reap electoral dividends. In Hungary in particular, the surge in power of anti-immigrant politics allowed a government that had already moved in an authoritarian direction to push a new and potent propaganda line, harnessing the reactionary spirit to consolidate its hold on power.
Similar events took place outside Europe. Post-Cold War Israel went through multidecade struggles over its ethnoreligious identity and occupation of Palestinian land, ultimately creating conditions for the reactionary spirit to spread from a small handful of extremists to a significant portion of the population. In India, the reactionary right’s rise began with a staged crisis designed to bring out the Hindu majority’s unease with India’s vision of equality.”
https://www.vox.com/politics/361136/far-right-authoritarianism-germany-reactionary-spirit
What so many high-profile shootings have in common
“We do know that he was 20 years old, and male.
Those two facts — and his role in Saturday’s shocking crimes — put him in a small but frightening group: He’s now among a handful of young American men who, driven by psychological distress, hatred, or something else, commit highly public acts of violence with powerful guns.
He joins a list of young men that includes the two high school seniors who killed 13 people at Columbine High School in 1999; the 24-year-old who killed 12 people at a movie theater in Colorado in 2012; the 19-year-old who killed 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Florida, in 2018; the 18-year-old who killed 10 people at a Buffalo supermarket the same year; and, unfortunately, many more.
“Across the board, young men are responsible for the vast majority of gun violence in this country,” said Jillian Peterson, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Hamline University and executive director of the Violence Prevention Project Research Center. That’s especially true for public mass shooters, 98 percent of whom are male and a growing number of whom are in their late teens or early 20s.
The reasons young men turn to public violence are many and complicated, but experts say that common factors include access to guns that has grown even easier in recent years and a sense of social isolation deepened by the pandemic. That isolation can lead young men to seek out community in dangerous places, including a growing number of online communities that glorify violence.”
https://www.vox.com/politics/361133/trump-assassination-attempt-rnc-men-guns
The US is confident in its cease-fire proposal. Hamas has issues with it.
“U.S. officials have in the past said that Israel and Hamas were in disagreement over just a handful of implementation issues, including the timing of a swap of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody and Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
Another flashpoint in the negotiations includes the status of the Philadelphi corridor, a buffer zone between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Israel has pushed to control the area in recent weeks as a security measure to deter future attacks into its territory from Hamas. The senior administration official said that the issue has been discussed with Egypt as part of recent talks and said it is “moving in the right way.”
Some Middle East analysts argued that Hamas’ reaction may not be a large setback in the grand scheme of peace talks. Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. negotiator on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said in an interview that “nobody expected” a deal or anything remotely close to it coming out of this week’s cease-fire talks in Doha.
A bit more time, he added, might even be helpful, as neither side in his view is ready to close on a permanent cease-fire.
“At best, you’re talking about phase one, six weeks, because no one is prepared to go beyond that,” said Miller, who is now a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The region is still bracing for greater conflict, including a potential attack from Iran. And Israel ordered civilians today to evacuate areas in Gaza that had previously been considered to be “civilian safe zones,” alleging that Hamas militants were firing rockets from the civilian areas to fire rockets.
Trita Parsi, executive vice president at the Quincy Institute think tank in Washington, said pressure is likely to build inside Iran to take action “if it takes too long and it becomes increasingly clear that this is an exercise to hold off attacks and retaliation, rather than actually securing a cease-fire.””
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/16/us-cease-fire-proposal-israel-hamas-00174460
Judge blocks Biden administration from granting legal status to spouses of U.S. citizens
“Immigrants, including those living in the U.S. illegally, can get a green card if they marry an American citizen. But U.S. law generally requires those who entered the U.S. illegally to leave the country and re-enter legally to be eligible for a green card. Doing so, however, can trigger a 3- or 10-year ban from the U.S., prompting many mixed-status families not to pursue that option.
While the Biden administration has argued its initiative promotes family unity in households that include U.S. citizens, Texas and the other Republican-controlled states said in a lawsuit filed Friday that the policy rewards illegal immigration. The red states, which have challenged nearly every major Biden administration immigration move, said the policy misused the immigration parole authority.
On Monday, Barker, the federal judge in Texas appointed by former President Donald Trump, issued an administrative order prohibiting the Department of Homeland Security from granting parole to those applying for the Keeping Families Together policy.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/judge-blocks-biden-administration-granting-000817351.html
Climate change is literally making our days longer
“The climate crisis is causing the length of each day to get longer, analysis shows, as the mass melting of polar ice reshapes the planet.
The phenomenon is a striking demonstration of how humanity’s actions are transforming the Earth, scientists said, rivalling natural processes that have existed for billions of years.
The change in the length of the day is on the scale of milliseconds but this is enough to potentially disrupt internet traffic, financial transactions, and GPS navigation, all of which rely on precise timekeeping.
The length of the Earth’s day has been steadily increasing over geological time due to the gravitational drag of the moon on the planet’s oceans and land. However, the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets due to human-caused global heating has been redistributing water stored at high latitudes into the world’s oceans, leading to more water in the seas nearer the equator. This makes the Earth more oblate — or fatter — slowing the rotation of the planet and lengthening the day still further.”
https://www.vox.com/climate/361213/climate-change-is-literally-making-our-days-longer