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."