Japanese Internment, Somalian Patriotism, and Etc.

I. Japanese Internment
Nikiko Massamoto, "My Grandfather's Shovel," Sierran, March/April 2020.
"In 1942, with  no evidence of criminal espionage or proof that the Japanese-American community posed a threat, the US government imprisoned my jiichen [grandfather] and his family without trial in Arizona. The concentration camp was built on the Gila River reservation of the Pima Indians, and that they had been forced onto -- two histories of confinement. "When the removal orders came, Japanese-Americans could take only what they could carry and all other property was sold for dirt cheap. Families hat owned farms were forced to  sell  everything."

II. Somalian Patriotism
Julia Harte, "Minority Report," The Nation, March 16/23, 2020.
"In 2014, the refugee center at Boston Children's Hospital surveyed 120 young people of Somalian descent and found that more than a quarter experienced some kind of contact with police in the past year." Although the Somalian youth were widely feared to be "potential terrorists," only two Somalians were convicted of plotting or committing terrorist attacks on U.S. soil from 1975 to 2015, according to a study by the libertarian Cato Institute.

"As long as marginalized minorities are the targets of counter-extremism programs, their mistrust of the government will persist. And as long as they mistrust the government, the authorities will continue to see in them the potential for violent extremism."

III. The Rape of the Tongass
Michael Brune, "Vandals in the Chapel," Sierran, March/April 2020.
"Every hour, human activities destroy 6,000 acres of rain forest around the globe." "Since 2001, many of the Tongass's old-growth trees have been spared from logging by the federal Roadless Rule, which limits road construction and reconstruction, as well as timber harvesting in national forests. Now, the Trump administration wants to repeal that rule for the Tongass."

"According to the Taxpayers for Common Sense, it costs US Forest Service more money to administer timber sales in the Tongass than the agency receives in revenue from the sales, meaning that we are spending at least $30 million a year to cut  down trees that shouldn't be cut down in the first place."

IV. "Black Book" Jingoism
Hilton Als, "Seeing Things," The New Yorker, February 3, 2020.
" 'The Black Book' was intended, like 'The Bluest Eye,' to combat the 'Black is beautiful'  jingoism of the time, and to show real lives from the ghastly slave ship of the sixteen-hundreds to America in the twentieth-century." "The point is not to soak in some warm bath of nostalgia about the good old days -- there were none! -- but to recognize those qualities of resistance, excellence and integrity that were such a part of our past, and so useful to us and to the generation of blacks now growing up...To create something that might last, that would be witness to the quality and variety of black life before it became the topic of every PH.D dissertation, and the focal point of all the mindlessness that seems to have joined the smog of California's movie world."

ADDENDUMS:
*New Mexico became the 18th state to approve a red flag law that allows firearms to be temporarily seized.

*According to Chad Boin of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the average tariff on imports from China will be 19.3%, up from about 3% when Trump took office. The first phase of the agreement says nothing about government subsidies to Chinese firms,and the operation of state-owned enterprises.

*Attorney General William Barr is using a process known as "certification," a historically little-used power of the attorney general's office, that allows him to overrule decisions made by the Board of Immigration Appeals and set binding precedent. He is using it as a check on immigration.

*ICE is targeting "sanctuary cities" with increased surveillance.

A Variety of Items Ripped From My Writer's Notebook

#Tana Ganeva, "The Trump Voter Conundrum," The Nation, February 17, 2020.
"Between 5 and 15 percent of the voting electorate, or as many as 9.2 million people (the estimates depend on the data sources,of which there are many), took a similarly puzzling path, voting for Obama in 2012, only to opt for Trump in 2016." "According to one analysis of Obama-Trump voters who voted in the 2008 election,three-quarters opted for the Republicans." "One-third of the white working-class women interviewed, who voted for Trump, said they'd consider voting for someone else this year."

"Enthusiasm for Trump has lagged in areas suffering from economic instability." "Focus groups suggest that one of Trump's biggest weaknesses going into 2020 is his failure to deliver on a truly populist policy." "Democrats could tap into Trump fatigue while  broadcasting the message that  he has failed to deliver on health care, well-paid jobs, or the opioid epidemic. They can expose the faux populism that propelled his campaign as a sham and offer a progressive alternative."

#A national survey published on March 5 by the Pew Research Center showed that 73% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents believe "self-centered" describes Trump either very or fairly will. Overall, 8 in 10 U.S. adults agree with that assessment. The same group of Republicans and Republican-leaners show 80% agreeing with Trump on many or nearly all of the important issues facing the country; the same percentage of these two groupings approves of his job performance. Only 31% say they like the way Trump conducts himself. Of the same group: 35% say he's prejudiced; 49% say he's even-tempered; 62% say he's morally upstanding;  71% say he's honest, and 89% say he fights for what he believes.

Although polling shows that Trump has sky-high ratings among Republicans on his job performance, substantial chunks rate him much lower when it comes to individual qualities that are associated with desirable presidential behavior. Thus, sightly over one-third say he's prejudiced, and a little under a third don't like the way he conducts himself. Only about half say he is even-tempered, and about 6 in 10 say he's morally upstanding. Although 71% expressing a belief in his honesty is high for one who lies so constantly, it is still a high percentage of those who approve of him,but don't believe he is honest.   

#Anna Case and Angus Deator, "The sickness of our system," TIME, March 2-9, 2020.
"The percentage of national income that is absorbed by health care has grown over the past  half-century, from 5% in 1960 to 18% in 2017, reducing what is available for anything else from 95% to 82% today."

"American doctors get paid almost twice as much as the average doctor in other wealthy countries."

#Eliana Dockterman, "Boy Scouts," TIME, March 2/9, 2020.
"Since the 2019 revelation that 254 children had reported experiencing sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts from 1944 to 2016,the organization has faced a deluge of lawsuits -- so many that their insurance companies have refused to continue making payments, arguing that the Boy Scouts could have reasonably prevented the widespread sexual abuse."

#Bryan Stevenon, "Q & A," TIME, March 2/9, 2020.
"First of all, the First Step Act impacts less than 1% of the people who are incarcerated in this country. It applies only to federal prisons. It's not even a scratch." "We are the most punitive country in the world. It's so important to eliminate mandatory sentences." "Every President has felt the need to move away from any talk of rehabilitation."

#While 30 percent say they own a gun, only 4  percent actually hunt. In a landmark 2016 survey, researchers at Harvard and Northeastern universities found that 63 percent of gun owners identified  "protection against people" as their primary reason for packing heat. The percentage of armed American households may be dropping but existing gun owners are buying more and more firearms. Fear seems to be selling more than anything else.

#Amelia Pang, "Field Schemes," Mother Jones, March/April 2020.
"Lax federal control means that exporters can hire organic certifiers that will help them boost profits by  looking the other way." "We import 70 percent of our organic soybeans and 40 percent of our organic corn, which are fed to organic livestock. The Cornveopia Institute, an industry watchdog group, suspects that the USDA, which is supposed to regulate,but also promote US agriculture, is not strictly monitoring these imports -- because if it did, it could undercut the entire organic food chain." "But American officials are taking a less stringent approach. Although the USDA suspended [a license] to certify products from Turkey, the department still allows the company to accredit organic products in Russia, Ukraine, and Bulgaria."

Dissecting Coronavirus, and the Rise of Mental Illness

I.Cutting the Epidemic Prevention Budget
Sarah Abramsky. "Going Viral," The Nation, February 17, 2020.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cut global prevention efforts by 80 percent, radically shrinking its operations in 39 of the 49 countries where it had a presence, including China and Congo, currently in the epicenter of an Ebola outbreak. Last year, President Trump proposed slashing the Department of Health and Human Services' budget by 12 percent and the CDC's by 10 percent.

"As the world stands on the verge of a new epidemic, the United States has 50,000 fewer public heath employees than it  did in 2008."

II. Containing a Crisis
Alice Park and Charlie Campbell, "Containing a crisis," TIME, February 10, 2020.
"Only recently have they [Coronaviruses] become more threatening, causing two deadly global pandemics in the past two decades." "Coronaviruses are not rare. In fact, you might  have one right now. Depending on the year, anywhere from 10% to 20% of the annual burdens of colds can be blamed one of four coronaviruses."

III. The Pandemic of Habitat Destruction
Sonia Shah, "The Other Pandemic: Habitat Destruction," The Nation, March 16/23, 2020.
"Since 1940, hundreds of microbial pathogens have emerged, either for the first time or in territory where they had never been detected before. They include HIV, Ebola, and a bevy of new coronavirueses. Sixty percent of them originate in the bodies of animals." "Mosquito-borne disease outbreaks have been similarly linked to the felling of forests, although less because of the loss of habitat than its transformation." "Tick-borne disease first emerged in the United States in 1975; in the past 20 years, seven new tick-borne pathogens have followed."

"For ten years, scientists funded by the US Agency for International Development's Predict program did just that by pinpointing more than 900 viruses." "The Trump administration's deregulation of extractive industries will likely speed up the habitat destruction that brings animal microbes into contact with humans." "In October [last year], the White House decided to end Predict, and, in February proposed cutting funds to the World Health Organization."

IV. Biden's Virus-Killing Plan
Joe Biden's plan to respond to the coronavirus epidemic: ramp up the production of medical supplies in both public and private sectors; have mobile test facilities; deploy military medical personnel and equipment; accelerate training and development of treatments and vaccines.

V. The Coronavirus's Globalization Effect
Ian Bremmer, "The coronavirus's blow to globalization," TIME, March 16-23, 2020.
"In coming years,the coronavirus outbreak may be remembered as a milestone moment on the road toward the end of the first phase of globalization" "The result has been tightened immigration rules,new barriers to  trade and investment, a shortening of  supply chains, a technological decoupling and a new emphasis on country-first policies. Coronavirus has already forced travel restrictions, accusations between governments, and a series of xenophobic attacks in multiple countries. depending on the level of human and economic damage this virus inflicts around the world. Coronavirus may  one day be considered an important turning point for the entire global economy."

VI. Rising Mental Illness
Mandy Oaklander, "When every day is  a mental health day, TIME, February 3, 2020.
"Mental illness is rising in every country in the world. Depression is so common and debilitating that it's one of the leading causes of disability worldwide, and, coupled with  anxiety, costs the global economy about $1 trillion a year in lost productivity (according to the World Health Organization.) Among millennials, who are ages 24 to 39 in 2020, depression is the fastest-growing health condition, the Blue Cross, Blue Shield Association recently found." "A 2019 poll by the American Psychiatric Association found 62% of people who are ages 20 to 37, feel comfortable discussing their mental health at work,compared with about half as many people ages 54 to 72."

VII. "Depression, Anxiety, and Suicide as Leading Causes
Greg Adams, "Shedding new light," TIME, February 3, 2020.
 Greg Adams agrees with  Mandy Oaklander that depression is a leading cause of illness among young people; also, he agrees that anxiety is on the rise. He says that "suicide ranks third as a leading cause of death for 15-to-19-year--olds, and is increasingly becoming a health-equity issue: African American girls in grades nine to twelve were 70% more likely to attempt suicide in [a recent study] in 2017, compared to non-Hispanic white girls of the same age."

ADDENDUMS:
*President Trump blamed Obama for the delay in distributing virus test kits; however, he replied to Fox news anchor, Bret Baier: "Well, I don't blame anybody."

*"We already know some other deadly members of the coronavirus family don't seem to be      seasonal," says Thomas Ballyky, director of the Global Health Program at the Council on Foreign Relations.

*When President Trump said that health insurance companies have agreed to waive all co-payments for coronavirus treatments,he lied, as they will only cover testing. not treatment.

     

#Casey Cep, "Rescue Work," The New Yorker, February 3, 2020.
"In the three decades before the Civil War, more than three hundred thousand men,women and children were sold in Richmond, the second-largest  slave market in the United States. "The struggle  over the physical record of slavery and uprising in Richmond is part of a larger, long-overdue national movement to reserve African American history. Of the more than ninety-five thousand        entries on the National Register of Historic Places -- the list of sites deemed worthy of preservation by the federal  government -- only three per cent focus on the experience of black Americans."

"Since its founding,the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), signed in 1966, has identified nearly two million locations worthy of preservation,and has engaged tens of millions of Americans in the work of doing so."

"African Americans constitute less than six per cent of the more than twenty thousand employees of the National Park Service, and they are under-represented in most other careers related to historic preservation, accounting for not quite four per cent of academic archeologists, five per cent of licensed architects and engineers, and less than one per cent of professional preservationists."

#Danille Carr, "Docs vs. the AMA," TIME, February 10, 2020.
"Since its rise in the early 20th century,the American Medical Association (AMA) has served as the most powerful umbrella organization for physician advocacy, and lobbying has proved instrumental in defeating every campaign for national health insurance in US history."

"Pressure from within has forced the AMA to withdraw from the Partnership for America's Health Care Future, an industry of insurance and hospital lobbies opposed to single-payer." "The AMA has long framed its opposition to nationalized health care as a defense of the individual freedom afforded by the free market. The irony, of course, is that its founding mission was to limit the depredations of the unregulated market by  halting the 'free trade in doctoring' that characterized the United States until the latter half of the 19th century. It has consistently subjected  health care reform to maintain the profitability of the care physicians provide."

"Private insurers  will ways offload those requiring the most expensive care unto the government payer." "Universal coverage can be achieved only through Medicare for All. The question is not     whether these doctors will succeed in demanding reform but whether the AMA will finally join them."

#Steve Coll, "After Impeachment," The New Yorker,"  February 17 & 24, 2020.
In describing Sen. Mitt Romney' impeachment speech, Steve Coll wrote: "In eloquent remarks, he described the President's conduct as a 'flagrant assault on our electoral rights, our national security,and our fundamental values.' He went on: 'Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one's oath of office that I can imagine.' 'By now, any dispassionate reading of the Mueller report, the impeachment investigation, and the accumulating record of journalism can lead to but one conclusion: we have been warned.' "

ADDENDUMS:
*While defending his since-canceled plan to hold this year's G-7 Summit at his Doral, Florida resort, Trump referred to the "phony emoluments clause" in the Constitution.
*Reporter Yanriche asked the question about the disbanded Pandemic Group. Trump answered: "You say me. I didn't do it. You say we did that. I don't know anything about it." He called her question "nasty."

Environmental Matters of Note

#Justin Worland, "Tapped Out," TIME, March 2-9, 2020.
"More that 30 million Americans lived in areas where water systems violated safety rules at the beginning of last year, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency." "In the Navajo Nation where more than 300,000 people reside in a territory that stretches across parts of Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona, residents unknowingly drank and played in water that uranium mining had made extremely hazardous." "A striking number of people,including babies,show traces of uranium in their blood. Infections develop in those who dare to shower in it."

"A 2017 report from the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the nation's drinking-water infrastructure a rating of D, and assessed that the U.S. needs to invest $1 trillion in the next 25 years for upgrades."

#Isadur M. Goklany, a long-time Department of Agriculture employee, put misleading climate change language in at least nine reports. Goklany instructed department scientists to add in their reports that rising carbon dioxide levels are beneficial because it "may increase plant water use efficiency," and lengthen the agriculture growing season." The language claiming there's a lack of consensus among scientists that the earth is warming have become known as "Gok's uncertainty language."

#Sam Knight, "Betting the Farm," The New Yorker," February 17 & 24, 2020.
"Between 1990 and 2010, the area of crops treated with pesticides in the United Kingdom increased by fifty per cent." "Researchers studied more than three thousand species and found that sixty per cent were in decline."

"An estimated two hundred and fifty thousand miles of the U.K.'s hedges were destroyed in the second half of the twentieth century." "Between 1967 and 2010, the population of the gray partridge, the country's traditional quarry, fell by ninety-one per cent."

#Chloe Zilliac, Goldman Sachs Says No to Arctic Oil," Sierran, March/April 2020.
"In December, Goldman Sachs became the first US bank to announce it would no longer finance oil projects in the Arctic, citing concerns about how drilling would affect the indigenous peoples of Alaska ad endangered species, and how it would contribute to the climate crisis. The bank's new policy is a milestone in the fight to preserve the 5 million-acre coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which Congress opened for drilling in 2017."

#Belinda Luscombe, "Forgotten Country." TIME, February 3, 2020.
"More than eight times as much land was burned in Australia, as in the California fires in 2018, but Australia has lost fewer than one-seventh s many homes." "Normally a reliable carbon absorber, the [trees/bush] instead has pumped hundreds of millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere, along with enough smoke to briefly make Australian cities the most polluted in the world."

#"Legal battle over the Endangered Species Act," The Week, August 30, 2019.
"Officials will be barred from protecting habitats of threatened species unless they can 'reasonably determine that the effects of climate change is likely,' phrasing meant to prevent regulators from anticipating the effects of climate change. And for the first time, officials will be allowed to calculate impacts of protecting a species, a move by some business groups."

"An estimated 99 percent of listed species have avoided elimination, which is the only metric that matters."

Some Outside-Our-Borders Tidbits

#Ian Bremmer, "Trump's Middle East plan..." TIME, February 10, 2020.
"This new deal aims to contain, rather than reduce, Israeli settlements, giving Palestinians a smaller plot of land for their state, about 70% of the West Bank." "To entice the Palestinians, the Trump administration has pledged to  drum up investments of $28 billion over 10 years to support Palestine, with $22 billion of additional funding going to Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon."

"The Trump administration's Israel-Palestinian peace plan tears up the playbook of prior U.S.policy. Rather than fairness, it is built upon the recognition of Israel's power on the ground and shifts in the region's geopolitics."

#Joshua Seifer, "A Tense Relationship," The Nation, February 24, 2020.
"Victory in the Six-Day War, as Amos Oz later recalled, unleashed 'a mood of nationalistic intoxication, of infatuation with the tools of statehood,with the rituals of militarism. Rather than subsiding, this mood became part of the general attitude of a country engaged in perpetual occupation and war.' "

"Cloaking false equivalences and ideology in the language of realism has long been a hallmark of liberal Zionist argument. Liberal Zionists often insist that one cannot condemn Israeli militarism and occupation without an equivalent condemnation of Palestinian separatism and irredentism, and they generally maintain that the two-state solution is the only realistic and desirable outcome for Israel-Palestine." "The emergence of a Jewish state, however, marked the failure of the early Zionist's very proposition; instead of solving the Jewish question once and for all, Israel [enclosed] it in the realm of geopolitics."

"Writing shortly after the 1967 war,[I.F.] Stone lamented the rising militarism and 'Lilliputian nationalism' of Israel's culture,which he believed were at odds with his universalist Jewish leftism."

#Robin Wright, "Consequences," The New Yorker,  January 20, 2020.
The Trump administration's top goal in Iran has been undermined: Iran is much closer to building a nuclear weapon. "For decades, successive presidents have sought to prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon. By 2013,the regime was within weeks to being able to build a bomb -- the so-called breakout time." "Iran's breakout time has begun to tick down, and 'maximum pressure' from sanctions and isolation hasn't worked."

#"We are historic interlopers. We come and go," Robert Malley, the president of the International Crisis-Group, said. "The notion that we could sustain our forces in an unpredictable struggle in the Middle East --given the politics in this country, and the fact that most Americans don't think this is a  vital interest -- is illusory." "The  United States has figured out how to react to a militia or kill a commander, it still hasn't figured out,creatively or proactively, to deal with the nation of Iran."

#Michael T. Clare, "Twin Threats," TIME, January 27, 2020.
"One particularly worrisome scenario is if extreme drought and abnormal monsoon rains devastated agriculture and unleashed social chaos in Pakistan, potentially creating a opening for radical Islamists aligned with elements of the armed forces to seize some of the country's 150 or so nuclear weapons." "A potential US military incursion in nuclear-armed Pakistan is just one example of a crucial but little-discussed aspect of climate change and nuclear war planning may make those threats to human survival harder to defuse."

"Although Obama initiated the nuclearization of the nuclear triad,the Trump administration has sought funds to proceed with their full-scale production, at an estimated initial installment of $500 billion over 10 years," "Trump's decision to acquire a whole new suite of ICBMs, nuclear-armed submarines,and bombers has added  momentum to these efforts."

#Colin Jones, "After the Uprising," The Nation, March 16/23, 2020.
"Today, it is really only in Okinawa that the U.S. military in Japan is contested. American bases take about 15 percent of the island, and although Okinawa accounts for just one-third of 1 percent of Japan's total territory, it houses roughly half of the 50,000 U.S. personnel in the country."

"Under the terms of the treaty, the United States could deploy its forces in Japan to anywhere in Asia without consulting the Japanese government."

#David Petreus and Vance Serchuk,"Don't trust the Taliban's promises," The Week, August 30, 2019.
"If President Trump pulls all U.S. troops from Afghanistan as he says he wants to, the Taliban will seek to overthrow the Afghan government and impose medieval rule."

Education Is the Focus, and Picking Up Impeachment Debris

#Kevin Carey, "Invisible lines, TIME, March 2-9, 2020.
"American education remains highly segregated by race and class, perpetuated in part by a patchwork of school districts --invisible lines that carve up the country, carefully separating the rich from the poor. EdBuild calculates that, annually, $23 billion more goes to districts serving at least 75% white students than those with 25% or fewer, even though the total numbers of students are about equal."

##Nelson Luna and Whitney Stephenson, TIME, March 2-9, 2020.
"Nearly 66 years after the U.S.Supreme Court ruled racial segregation in public education unconstitutional, more than half the nation's students still attend largely segregated school districts."

#William C. Bell, TIME, March 2-9, 2020.
"The roughly 437,000 U.S. children in foster care are more likely to drop out of high school, compared with peers who live with family, and children who age out of the system are more likely to face homelessness, unemployment and incarceration."

#Michael K. Honey, "Economic Inequality Through King's Eyes," TIME, March 2-9, 2020.
"Today, nearly 40 million Americans remain poor, and a majority of students in  many schools do not have enough to eat." "One-third of African Americans there (in Memphis) lived in poverty in 2018, the year for which the most recent data is available."

#A Southern Poverty Law Center survey found that only 8% of high school students could identify slavery as the main cause of the Civil War. The organization also produced a 2014 "report card" on state standards and resources for  teaching the civil rights movement; 30 states got a failing grade.

In 2005, Philadelphia became the first major city to require students to take a class in black history to graduate.

#More than 1.5 million U.S. public school students were homeless at some point over the past 3 years, according to data from the National Center for Homeless Education.

                                                                    - - -
Jelani Cobb, "Imbalance of Power," The New Yorker," February 3, 2020.
"At the start of the [Trump impeachment] trial, in eleven roll-call votes, the Republican majority voted down measures to request relevant documents or to hear from new witnesses regarding the Ukraine scheme." "The significance of the votes is twofold: not only did the Senate Republicans co-sign the White House's efforts to turn the impeachment into a show trial: they reduced the power of the legislative branch  to which they themselves belong."

"The GOP that has come to support Trump's inflammatory nativism is failing to consider the demographic trend, and it faces alienating rapidly growing numbers of immigrants and minority voters."

"An acquittal would set a precedent for  subsequent elections and [allow the president to] remain in power nevertheless."

#Steve Coll, "After Impeachment," The New Yorker, February 17 & 24, 2020.
In describing Sen. Mitt Romney's (R-UT) impeachment speech, Steve Coll wrote: "In eloquent remarks, he described the President's conduct as 'a flagrant assault on our electoral rights, our national security, and our fundamental values.' He went on: 'Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one's oath of office that I can imagine.' 'By now, any dispassionate reading of the Mueller report, the impeachment investigation,and the accumulating record of journalism can lead to but one conclusion: we have been warned.' "

#Stephanie McCurry, "Political in Nature," The Nation, February 17, 2020.
"The nation's 17th president [Andrew Johnson] rivaled its current one in his penchant for race-baiting and his shockingly coarse expressions and views." "The Republican's determination to impeach and remove Johnson turned an irreconcilable ethical and political difference about the terms of freedom and citizenship in the reunited nation more than it did on any difference in temperament and personality."

"They (congressional Republicans) identified impeachment as the only remedy for a chief executive, who, by repeated violent speech (itemized in Article 10), sought to deny Congress their exercise of its 'rightful authorities and powers' and in the process, through behavior 'peculiarly indecent and  unbecoming in the Chief Magistrate of the United States...brought the high office of the President...into contempt, ridicule and disgrace."

"The real issue was Reconstruction and the succor Johnson had given to rebels still unwilling to create  a free and fair country for black citizens as well as whites." "But as a tool to constrain executive abuse of power,and as a way publicize dissent on matters of policy and principle, it suggests that impeachment itself is the measure of success, however remote the likelihood of conviction."

#Deb Riechmann, Colleen Long and Nancy Benac, "Payback: Trump ousts officials..." The Albuquerque Journal, February 8, 2020.
"Exacting swift punishment against those who crossed him, an emboldened President Donald Trump...ousted the government officials who have delivered damaging testimony against him during the impeachment hearings."

Overturning Roe, and More

"Overturning Roe: The GOP sees an opening," The Week, January 17, 2020.
"The [Supreme Court] struck down an 'indistinguishable' Texas law just four years ago,' said Mark Stern in Slate.com. " ' In a remarkable act of chutzpah,' Republicans are saying the Texas ruling left states confused how to define an 'undue burden' on abortion rights, so the court should simply overturn its precedent and remove the right to abortion altogether." "In most red states, Roe 'has long been more concept than reality,' said Katie McDonough in NewRepublic.com. "Although 77 percent of Americans say they support Roe, abortion rights have been under assault for decades, as states made it 'more expensive, more time consuming, and more humiliating to access.' "

Gabriel Winent, "No Going Back," The Nation, February 3, 2020.
"He [Matt Stoller, the author of "The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy"] insists that almost all of American history can be understood in terms of the struggle between the forces of monopoly on the one hand, and democracy on the other." "Unshackled from regulatory restraints, big-box retail spread across  small-town America while banks and more exotic financial firms began to reassert themselves, growing in size and power."

"Stoller is, of course, correct that the Democrats failed utterly to channel the miseries of neoliberalism into a political challenge and instead have served as handmaidens to increasing inequality." "The idea [is] that our economy has acquired a predatory, parasitic stratum at its top than needs to be stripped off, allowing the underlying system to work as intended."

Jennie Wilson, "Undercover," The Nation,February 3, 2020.
"For as long as it operated, the CIA made itself abundantly clear where it stood on questions of racial equality and black self-determination, trying to undermine the Black Panther Party and Martin Luther King's Poor Peoples' Campaign, and having a hand in Nelson Mandela's arrest." "The failure of his [Obama's] administration to push for bold agendas on issues like the racial wage gap, and mass incarceration spurred conversations about the limits of representation and neoliberal uses of identity."

Robert L. Borosage, "The Way Out," The Week, February 3, 2020.
"He [Trump] exhibits all the hallmarks of petulant adolescence: revolt against authority, juvenile posturing, thoughtless risk-taking, and trying to cover his crack-ups by lying, blaming others, and tweeting tantrums."

"He [Trump] seeks credit for ending the wars in the Middle East,while dispatching an additional 17,000 troops to the region." "Indeed, rather than seek negotiations, he promised even more punishing sanctions, ratcheting up the tensions in the region."

Eric Alterman, Where Power Lies," The Nation, February 3, 2020.
"This willingness to play Republican patsy has turned America's most important news sources into willing participants in Trump's war on truth."Too few outlets have pointed out that, in reparation for his Senate trial, Trump has showered cash contributions on the same Republican senators who will be on his jury."

Richard Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush, has said: "Any senator who accepts cash from a real Donald Trump before the impeachment trial is guilty of accepting a bribe and should go to the slammer."

John Nichols, "Economic Warfare," The Nation, February 3, 2020."
"As we continue to evaluate options to Iranian aggression, the United States will immediately impose additional sanctions to the Iranian regime. 'These powerful sanctions will remain until Iran changes its behavior, Trump says." Rep. Ilha Omer (D-Minn.) replied: "This makes no sense. Sanctions are economic warfare.. They have already caused medical shortages and sanctions. This is not a measured response."

Rachal Nolan, "Language Barrier," The New Yorker, January 6, 2020.
"Guatemala has a population of fifteen million people, forty per cent of them indigenous, according to the most recent census. In the past year, two hundred and fifty thousand Guatemalan immigrants have been apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border. At least some of them are Mayans, and many speak little or no Spanish."

"Credibility is a official factor in a judge's assessment of an asylum claim. And much can be lost on the phone. The  U.S. government claims to provide proper translation at all point in the immigration process, but in practice, rarely offers Mayan-language translation at the border or in holding cells." "The indigenous population is likely the least able to understand their rights and may therefore have been susceptible to losing their children, and waiving away their asylum rights."

"Briefly Noted," The New Yorker, January 13, 2020.
The week before Ruth Marcus published her account of the confirmation battle over Bret Kavanaugh, President Trump took to Twitter, calling her book "a badly written & and researched disaster." "In fact, with meticulous reporting, Marcus reveals the high-level plotting that preceded Trump's politically fraught pick and probes the drama that followed it."

ADDENDUM:
* Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the A.C.L.U., reported in mid-January that six children had died in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security since Donald Trump took office.

Short Subjects From My Writer's Notebook

#Joe Kira, "Ageism in the Workplace, AARP Bulletin, January/February 2020.
76 percent of workers see age discrimination as a hurdle to finding a job. Another report found that half of older workers are prematurely pushed out of jobs, and 90 percent never earn as much again.

#Edward Cavanaugh, "Burning Apathy," The Nation, January 27, 2020.
[President Scot Morrison's] "complacency is rooted in an ideology that we might call Australian exceptionalism, that comforting fallacy that Australia is exempt from  globalism on climate because it isn't big enough to make a difference. A reasonable Australian would aspire to limitless  energy, powering industry, and creating high-wage jobs."

#"Australia: a lack of leadership as a nation burns," The Week, January 17, 2020.
" 'What's unfolding right now is really just a taste of the 'new normal,' ' said Australian climate scientist Joelle Gerges in The New Guardian.com. 'I fear that we've reached a tipping point in human-caused climate change and that weather conditions considered extreme by today's standards will seem sedate in the future.' "

#Anne Applebaum, " Admiring a fantasy Russia," The Atlantic. com, in The Week, January 17, 2020.
"Disgusted by multiculturalism, the  decline of religion, and what they believe is the 'degeneracy' of American society, some conservatives and evangelicals now see Russia as 'the shimmering lure' of a unified, homogeneous nation that has resisted change, and political correctness."

#Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ordered a NPR reporter off his plane on a foreign trip. The reporter was Michele Kelemen. He claims she abused him. He asked her to identify Ukraine on a map, and she was able to.

#A section of Trump's border wall was blown down by a 37 mph wind. The panels were found leaning against trees adjacent to a Mexicali, Mexico street.

#The GOP floated 29 defenses of Trump during the impeachment hearings.

#Kenneth Star testifying in the Trump impeachment hearings, said we are living in 'The Age of Impeachment.' He also said: "A presidential impeachment is tantamount to domestic war." "It's filled with acrimony and it divides the country, like nothing else." He didn't acknowledge his own role in the acrimony.

#Alan Dershowitz said in the impeachment trial of President Trump that: "If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment."

#"Anti-Semitism: America's growing crisis," The Week. January 17, 2020.
"America is in the midst of the 'worst wave of sustained anti-Semitism violence in our nation's history,' said Marc Baker, Jeremy Buertin, and Robert Treston, in the Boston Globe. " 'We'd better take the problem seriously,' said Frita Ghtis in CNN.com. 'Throughout history, anti-Semitism has served as the 'canary in the coal mine' for societies that are unraveling. When the benefits and ideals that held a society together crumble, people in different groups start viewing one another not as countrymen, but as rivals traitors, and the other.' "

#"Permafrost in meltdown," The Week, January 17, 2020.
"Permafrost is a layer of frozen soil that encompasses about 25 percent of the land in the Northern Hemisphere. It acts as a massive freezer, locking away up to 1,760 billion tons of organic carbon from dead plants and animals." NOAA estimates that melting permafrost now releases up to 2.2 billion net tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year -- the equivalent of Russia's annual emissions.

Down Memory Lane With the GOP Follies

#Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) said that Trump was being impeached due to one phone call. No, Sen. Graham, he is a serial law-breaker.

#Sen. Lindsay Graham told Axios in October: "If you could tell me that you know Trump actually was engaging in a quid pro quo outside the phone call, that would be very troubling."

#Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) said on October 23: "It would be troubling if any president did a quid pro quo with tax dollars." Asked about John Bolton's book, Cramer told a reporter: "I think it sounds like a lot of the other witnesses, frankly, I don't know that his got a lot new to add to it."

#Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said that "even if the president asked for the aid to be delivered that's not an impeachable offense."

#Sen. John Coryn (R-TX) has said: "Presidents always leverage foreign aid, particularly here where there's concerns about corruption. He basically knows what the facts are. That's what the House managers said: They said the acts are uncontested."

Sen. John Coryn shared a tweet in which right-wing talk show host Hugh Hewitt called the impeachment trial "close to criminal assault."

#Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said: "In my view, additional witnesses are not necessary. The president was entirely justified in asking for an investigation of corruption concerning Ukraine, and, potentially, Hunter Biden and Joe Biden."

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said the Senate would "not resort to the petty politics of the House." but would "give President Trump the fair trial trial he deserves." She called the House impeachment inquiry "a hoax," saying that the senators could "not trust anything in the House Democrat" report.

Sen. Inhofe (R-OK) said the president is not going to be removed from office -- period." He revealed how hollow was his oath to be impartial.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) said that "impeachment is just a circus," telling Fox News that impeachment was the result of Democrats' hatred of Trump." He claimed that Democrats were "trying to change the 2020 election. That's all this is."

ADDENDUMS:
*Trump campaign promises based on the Washington 'Post' "Promise Tracker:" He made 280 promises during the 2016 campaign, many contradictory or made in a singe campaign event. On October 22, 2016,he issued his "Contract with the American Voter, which included 60 promises. He has broken 43% of the 60, and settled for a compromise on 12%. His broken promises include: building the Wall; have Mexico pay for it; expand the economy 4% a year; fully repeal and replace Obamacare; and get an infrastructure deal.

*The House of Representatives voted to overturn a 1995 law that gave the Education Department the authority to cancel the federal debt of students whose colleges lied to them about graduation or job placement. What the House did was vote to scrap the Trump administration's overhaul of the 1995 law.

*Based on an audio recording obtained by CNN and the Washington 'Post' in the weeks after the killing of Major General Qassim Soleimani (in the evening of January 17), Trump told GOP donors that Soleimani had been a "noted terrorist," who was on our list," and was "saying bad things about our country." Trump added: "How much are we going to listen to? How much are we going to listen to?" He told the donors that we got "two for the price of one."

A Varied Look at the International Scene

I. Trump's Distaste for International Institutions
"Declaring a policy of nationalism, Trump launched  verbal attacks on international institutions, threatening to pull out of them, including the more recent Paris Climate Agreement. Underlying the postwar international order was a widespread belief that the spread of democratic institutions was the best way to prevent the recurrence of war, dictatorship, and genocide that caused so much destruction between 1914 and 1945, and Trump had attacked these too. The liberal values that had held sway over the internal and external policies of many countries can no longer be taken for granted." [1]

"Democracy isn't necessarily Western, as the state democratic political systems outside the West -- from Indonesia to Tunisia -- surely indicate. The decline of democracy in Europe and America, and the economic crisis that lies at its heart are part of a general crisis of democratic and economic institutions worldwide."

II. Uighurs Endangered
"Human rights groups estimate that more than 1 million Uighurs and other minorities have been arbitrarily interned in facilities that the Chinese Communist Party terms 'vocational training centers,' but, in reality, more resemble concentration camps, with torture, sexual assault, and death all documented as taking place. inside." [2]

"According to to Patrick Poar, a China researcher at Amnesty International, Pakistan is one of the several countries (including Muslim ones) that not only tolerate the abuses in Xijany but in some cases actively support Beijing's efforts."

"It's a dangerous time for Uighurs in the world, despite international pressure, China's crackdown -- which the government insists is necessary to curb extremism -- has only shown signs of expanding." "Under the UN Convention Against Torture, no nation is required to deport someone to a country where that person has a reasonable fear of torture or abuse."

III. Haiti in a Corner
"Haitians continue to face what Pierce-Esperance, executive director of the Haitian National Human Rights Defense [Organization] has called 'the ongoing gangsterization of the state's armed gangs -- estimated to number in the dozens -- regularly receive funding, automatic weapons and ammunition, although as Esperance points out, Haiti doesn't make weapons or ammo, and the country has been under an on-and-off arms embargo for many years." [3]

President Jovenel Moise's position remains precarious."On one side, he faces an angry, organized, and militant population trying to push him out. On the other, his friends need him to remain in power so the plunder can continue."

"Haiti is the second-largest importer of rice, after Mexico. The country's fertile Artibonite Valley once provided more than enough rice to feed Haiti."

IV. Iran Stands Down
"After the Embassy attack, Pentagon officials presented Trump with a  menu of options, and they were 'stunned' when he chose the most severe one -- killing Solemiani -- White House sources told the New York Times. Sources also told the newspaper that Trump feared the storming of the Baghdad embassy --which critics called Trump's Benghazi." "No one disputes Solemiani's 'blood-drenched legacy' said the Los Angeles Times. The question is whether America is safer and more secure now that he's  dead. The price for his killing is already steep: Iran has resumed its nuclear program; the Iraqi parliament called for U.S. troops to leave the nation; and the Trump administration undermined its credibility in Baghdad by sending a Pentagon draft memo to the Iraqis that said we were, in fact, withdrawing all our troops. In addition, the U.S. and NATO have suspended operations against ISIS in order to protect troops from possible attacks by Shiite militias and Iran." [4]

V. Stop This War
TIME magazine apparently believes that the U.S. is  already at war with Iran, as it states that  when "historians debate the cause of this war, it will surely be relevant to note the hollowness of the Trump administration's claim that the Iranian general --whose killing was considered and rejected by both George W. Bush and Barack Obama -- posed an imminent threat to American lives or interests." "We are already deep in the bloody jaws of disaster. What matters now is getting out -- as quickly as possible." "However, with Iran now suspending its commitment to the JSPOA and both sides poised to escalate, the current situation is far too dangerous to rely on Congress alone. We need fresh thinking and bold action." [5]

VI. Will Europe Support U.S. on Iran?
'With his threats to destroy Iranian cultural treasures should Tehran retaliate, Trump has shown his willingness to violate international law and adopt the barbarism of the Taliban, which demolished Afghanistan's famed Barmiyan Buddha in 2001." [6]

"The U.S. has continued to back Kurdish militants in Syria, claiming they are allies in the fight against ISIS, despite our protests that these fighters support separatist terrorists inside Turkey."

Footnotes
[1] Richard J. Evans, "The Breakup," The Nation, December 30/January 6, 2020.

[2] Andrew McCormick, "One Uighur's Odyssey," TIME, January 27, 2020.

[3] Amy Wilentz, "Haiti in a Corner, TIME, January 27, 2020.

[4] "Iran Stands Down..." The Week, January 17, 2020.

[5] "Stop This War," TIME, January 27, 2020.

[6] "How they see us: Will Europe support U.S. on Iran?" The Week, January 17, 2020.

Death of Human Rights, Free College Try, and More

I. Rafia Zakaria, "The Death of Human Rights,," The Nation, January 13/20, 2020.
"The reason for their almost certain failure is that the legal edifice of human rights is relying on state compliance, which has crumbled." "Refusing to follow Security Council solutions is not the only way the United States is throttling what meager enforcement mechanisms exist for human rights -- but the document released by the Congressional Research Service revealed that the Trump administration is seeking budget cuts in 2020 that would decrease UN peacekeeping funding by 27 percent." "With the substance of the human rights consensus eviscerated, the women I met this year will 'have nothing to appeal to but an empty shell, a husk no longer supported by international agreement.' "

II. Bryce Covert, "The Free College Try," The Nation, January 13/20, 2020.
"In 2017, the most recent year for which we have data, all of the tuition and fees charged by public colleges came to $75.8 billion." "Right now,the government's money flows largely to well-off students. After students loans, the biggest chunk of student aid is delivered through the tax code,  excluding loans."

Mike Koncjal, Bryce Covert's writing partner for The Nation, "recently crunched the numbers and found that just 1 percent of students at public institutions hail from the wealthiest 1 percent."

III. Eric Alterman, Philo-Anti-Semitism," The Nation, January 13/20, 2020.
"True, there is no consensus on whether 'Jewish' is a religious, cultural,ethnic, or national identify. More often, it is framed as a combination of at least three, but not always and certainly not in the views of all the various demoninations and sects that accept the appellation." "He [Trump], his party, and his highest-profile supporters have repeatedly demonized Jews in political advertisements, deploying age-old anti-Semitic tropes that have been used to stir up violence against vulnerable, Jewish communities in Europe and elsewhere." "But the issue of [Trump's] executive order is complicated by the fact that it is understood by all to be a means for the federal government to step in and quash the intensifying criticism of Israel on college campuses -- most notably, criticism that takes the form of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, or BDS."

Title VI of the Civil Rights covers discrimination on the basis of a "group's actual or perceived citizenship residency in a country whose residents share a dominant religion of a distinct religious identity."

IV. Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wuilurns, ""Go Back for Those Left Behind," TIME, January 27, 2020.
"It should be a scandal that just slightly more than 1 in ten Americans with substance-abuse disorders get  treatment. Every dollar invested in treatment can save $12 dollars in reduced crime, court costs and health care savings.

If the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation and productivity since 1968, it would now be more than $22 an hour, not $7.25. That's the reason 76% of adults expect their children's lives to be worse than their own."

V. Justin Worland, "Shell's Rude Awakening," TIME, January 27, 2020.
"Projections from energy companies show demand for oil could peak and fall in the coming decades, some outside analyses suggest demand for oil could plateau as soon as 2025." "The shift away from oil looms so large that Moody's warned in 2018 that the energy transition represents 'significant business and credit risk  for oil companies." "And plastic production is a significant driver of climate change.The chemical sector is responsible for 18% of industrial carbon-dioxide emissions, according to a 2018 report from the International Energy Agency. Emissions are expected to grow 30% by 2050."

"To keep average global temperatures from warming more than 1.5 C above the preindustrial levels,oil companies would have to agree to keep trillions of dollars of oil assets in the ground. In 2014, Shell and other major global oil companies convened to form the Oil and Gas Climate Initiatives  to fund clean-energy ventures." "Globally, fossil fuels receive roughly $5 trillion annuallyin government subsidies, a figure that includes the cost of environmental damage caused by an industry that's left to everyone else to clean up,according to a 2017 International Monetary Fund paper." "Analysts predict oil will continue to dominate the global economy into the early 2030s."

VI. Ada Calhoun, "The Sleeper Generation," TIME, January 27, 2020.
"Members of Generation X like me -- those born from 1965 to 1980 -- report sleeping fewer hours per night than members of the Silent Generation, boomers, millennials and Generation Z. Sleeplessness  is particularly common among Gen X women,a third of whom get less than seven hours a night on average."

"A 2017 national report fond that premenopausal women were most likely to sleep less than seven hours a night, followed by postmenopausal women." "Nearly 60% of those born from 1965 to 1979 describe themselves as stressed about subjects like their finances and caring for loved ones." "According to a 2916 Gallup poll, 16% of Gen X-ers were single when they were 18 to 30 years old, compared with 10% of boomers and just 4% of the Silent Generation when they were the same age. The ages that which Americans marry and have children are now at new highs. The median age of first marriage, which hovered between 20 and 22 from 1890 to 1980, has risen in recent years to almost 28 for women and 30 for men." "And the supply of possible care givers is declining. In 2010, the ratio of those care givers to people needing care was 7 to 1. By 2030, it's predicted to be 4 to 1; by 2050, just 3 to 1."

Varied Subjects, Starting With China's Belt and Road Initiative

Mike Ives, "The Train and the Swamp,"  Sierra, January/February 2020.
"The multi-billion dollar project, known as the East Coast Rail Link, one of the many that fall within China's Belt and Road Initiative, a colonial-style endeavor that links infrastructure loans with geostrategic diplomacy. The BRI is part of China's larger effort to project its own institutions as alternatives to the Western-led order represented by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund."

"It would be difficult to overestimate the BRI's scale. The project, which launched in 2013, would end up involving as many as 125 countries and costing $8 trillion by 2049. Top Chinese officials have described it as a vast network of roads, rail line, and maritime shipping routes that will radiate outward from China's land and sea borders like a spiderweb. Yet while China has made strides recently to flatten its greenhouse gas emissions, some climate experts fear that the BRI's sheer size will inevitably boost resource extraction and fossil fuel consumption. Yet a recent study in 'Conservative Biology' found that proposed BRI road and rail routes would overlap with biodiversity hot spots for over 4,138 animal and 7,371 plant species across Asia and Africa."

Diane Dimond, "We must find, free the innocent people in prison," The Albuquerque Journal, December 7, 2019.
"The National Registry of Exonerations keeps track of those who have been set free, and reports that since 1989 there have been  at least 2,522 convicts officially exonerated. The duration of their unwarranted imprisonment totals more than 22,300 years."

Philadelphia's District Attorney Larry Kramer won election in 2018, and "since then his CIU (Conviction Integrity Unit) has enabled 10 wrongly convicted murder defendants to walk free and have their records erased." "In Detroit, Michigan the prosecutor's Conviction Integrity Unit, set up two years ago, has helped secure the release of 11 former prisoners. But now, Texas, New York, Illinois, and California lead the way in ferreting out and overturning inaccurate convictions."

New York Times reporter Rukamine Callimachi says that according to two U.S. officials, the evidence for Solemaine's assassination is "razor-thin." Three discrete facts: 1. his pattern of travel; 2. his request for the Iranian Supreme Leader's approach for an unspecified "operation;"  and 3. Iran's supposed "increasingly bellicose position towards American interests in Iraq." In Trump's menu of options, killing Solemaine was the "far-out option." CNN's legal analyst says that "if this thread is accurate than both the policy and legal justifications for the strike are about to crumble."

The Hill-Harris X survey funds 58% of respondents said Trump acted improperly, compared to 42% who said he acted properly. 62% of Independents disapproved of Trump's action.

Barry Yeoman, "Raising a Stink," The Nation, January 13/20, 2020.
North Carolina's "2,300 swine operations are responsible for most of the 10 billion gallons of wet livestock waste generated in North Carolina, according to a 2016 analysis by the Environmental    Working Group and Waterkeeper Alliance, an international clean water group. There are roughly 3,300 waste lagoons."

"A 2014 study concluded that African Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos are more likely than whites to live within three miles of a large swine operation. Those farms quintupled the state's hog populations over four decades, to 9 million today."

"In 2017, lawmakers [in North Carolina] voted to limit future nuisance damages, leaving the industry on the book only for the diminished sale or rental value of a  plaintiff's home." Elizabeth Haddix, a managing attorney at the North  Carolina regional office of the lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, has said: 'The right to use and enjoy your property without unreasonable interference -- that's been common law since before we were the United States.' "

Paying to Lie to Children, and More

I. James A. Haught, "Your Tax Dollars Are Paying to Lie to Children," peaceworkers.org, January 20, 2020.
"In violation of the separation of church and state, American tax dollars are funneled to fundamentalist private schools  teaching crackpot absurdities -- such as a claim that Noah probably took two baby dinosaurs onto the ark."

"Under the banner of 'school choice,' vouchers are a device to pour taxpayer money into religion, despite the First Amendment's prohibition of it. Pious parents who don't want their children exposed to public schools obtain government vouchers to pay for religious schooling -- some of it Catholic but more of it evangelical. The born-again schools provide shabby education.

The 'Orlando Sentinel' examined 151 private schools with 140,000 students -- most of them funded with tax dollars through  voucher plan passed by Republican legislators, The 'Sentinel's' report began:
   *Some private schools in Florida that rely on public funding teach students that dinosaurs and               humans lived together, that God's intervention prevented Catholics from dominating North                  America, and that slaves who 'knew Christ' were better off than free men who did not.

It says some evangelical schools use texts from three fundamentalist publishers -- Abeka, Bob Jones University Press, and Accelerated Christian Education -- adding:

   *The books  denounce evolution as untrue, for example, and one shows a cartoon of men and               dinosaurs together, telling students the Biblical Noah likely brought baby dinosaurs onto his ark."

 "The books teach Religious Right politics, saying the historic civil rights movement occurred because 'power-hungry individuals stirred up the people' -- and that the Endangered Species Act is part of a 'radical social agenda' -- and they hint that gays are evil, and European  whites are superior.

The 'Sentinel' said some evangelical schools 'hire teachers without degrees and with criminal records, and forge fire and health inspection forms, and... hold classes in aging strip malls where some face eviction for nonpayment of rent.

The 'Huffington Post' likewise studied fundamentalist private schools and concluded that they 'teach lies. These schools teach creationism, racism and sexism. They're also taking your tax dollars. It says one teacher called  environmentalists 'hippie witches.' "

"Regardless, the GOP and DeVos [Secretary of Education] want to increase tax money for religious schools, despite the separation of church and state. Here's an ominous court case: Conservative Montana legislators passed a 2015 law letting religious parents donate to private church schools and write it off their taxes. In 2017, Montana's Supreme Court struck down this taxpayer funding of faith. Right-wingers appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is to hear 'Espinoza v. Montana' soon, on January 22.

Secular groups filed briefs against the Montana travesty. But Republican appointees on the highest bench may ignore the First Amendment's command that government must stay out of religion."

II. Statelessness
70K - Children born into Statelessness each year.
12M - Potentially stateless people in the world,according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
218K - US residents who are 'potentially stateless or potentially at risk of statelessness,' according to a new estimate from the Center for Migration Studies.
45% - Percentage of potentially stateless people or those potentially at risk of statelessness who have come to the US in the last five years -- many from Nepal, Bhutan, Thailand, and Myanmar.
$17.6K - Average annual income of a potentially stateless person in the United States. (Source: Emily Berch, "By the Numbers," The Nation, February 17, 2020.)

III. High Costs, Low Returns
The U.S. health care spending per person is $10,739. The nations of Switzerland, France, Canada, Australia, and the U.K. spend from $4,000 (the U.K.), to $7,000+ (Switzerland). The U.S. life expectancy  at birth is 78.5 years. All the other nations listed have life expectancies of more than 80 years. ( Spending in 2017 U.S. Dollars. Sources: Authors' Calculations Based on Data From Max Roser at the University of Oxford, World Bank, OECD.)

IV. Who Deserves Government Help?
Trump's cash bailout of the farm industry dwarfs the money he wants to take away from the poor. 2019 Farm Payouts -- $19 billion. Net Annual Savings From Proposed Cuts: Pushing people off Social Security disability insurance: $80 million --- Stricter food stamp work requirements: $1.3 billion --- More difficult food stamp enrollment: $2.5 billion.

Portion of the bailout that went to: White farmers - 99% --- Wealthiest 10% of farmers - 54%.

Refugees, Wellness Industry, Kid's Lunches, and Heirs' Property

J. Weston Phippen, "Hold the Line," Mother Jones, September/October 2019.
"The 1980 Refugee Act allows people who have been prosecuted based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion, membership in a particular social group to remain in the United States as long as they can prove they have a well-founded fear of returning to their home countries." "To this day, 83 percent of Chinese asylum seekers win their cases. But just 16 percent of Central Americans convince judges to let them stay. For Mexicans, it's 11 percent.

Since January, border agents have turned back more than 11,000 asylum seekers to wait on their cases in Mexico, according to Reuters."

Maddie Oatman "Doctor Woo," Mother Jones, September/October 2019.
"As the global wellness industry tops $4.2 trillion, [Dr. Jen Gunter] is on a mission to arm women with science-based advice in hopes of stanching the spread of health misinformation." "As she sees it, the wellness industry is using pseudoscience against women to take their money and the anti-abortion restrictions that conflict with scientific evidence." "According to Chris Bobel, a professor of women's and sexuality studies at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, women are viewed as dirty and impure from the day they first get their periods. 'We begin with very early messages about how your body is a problem to be solved,' Bobel says, 'and that sets up a constant quest to fix it.' "

Tom Philpott, "Failure to Lunch," Mother Jones, September/October 2019.
Altogether, " kids rely on school meals for nearly half their daily calories, and 40 percent of their      vegetable intake, making the program 'a safety net for low-income children,' a 2016 study from Baylor University researchers found." "It turns out that serving healthier food did not result in significantly higher costs for cafeterias or mean more food going into the garbage. The reforms did, however, result in healthier lunches -- more whole grains, greens and beans, as well as fewer 'empty calories' (added sugar and solid fats, and less sodium.)"

Lizzir Presser, "The Dispossessed." The New Yorker, July 2, 2019.
"Heirs property is estimated to make up more than a third of Southern black-owned land -- 3.5 million acres,worth more than twenty-eight billion dollars." "Between 1910 and 1997, African-Americans lost about ninety per cent of their farmlands. This problem is a major contributor to America's racist wealth gap; the median wealth among black families is about a tenth that of white families."

"In 1876, near the end of Reconstruction, only about five per cent of Black (sic) families in the Deep South owned land." Ray Orinbash, the director of the Institute for Urban research, at Morgan State University has said: 'There is this idea that most  blacks were lynched between 1890 and 1920 because whites wanted their land.' "

"In 1992, the N.A.A.C.P. accused officials of intentionally inflating taxes to push out black families on Daufuskin, a South Carolina sea island that has become one of the hottest real-estate buys."