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."