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rachelramirez

Welcome to the GOP civil war - POLITICO - 0 views

www.politico.com/...il-war-2016-republicans-220209

gop politics US crisis

shared by rachelramirez on 04 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Welcome to the GOP civil war
  • “The party will not fracture but will likely splinter,” says former Minnesota Rep. Vin Weber, a senior party strategist. “The question is: How big will the piece that splinters off actually be?”
  • He tried to make that pivot this week, releasing his health care plan and defending Planned Parenthood, but was forced to battle a growing insurrection in his own ranks – led by the party’s 2012 nominee Mitt Romney, who labeled him “a fraud” and “a phony” who represented “a brand of anger that has led other nations into the abyss.”
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Several senior GOP operatives who spoke to POLITICO on condition of anonymity believe that the remaining non-Trump candidates – Cruz, Rubio and John Kasich – will start coordinating their anti-Trump attacks soon
  • They compare a Trump autumn to the no-win situation Democrats faced in 2010 and 2014, when House and Senate candidates – like Arkansas’ doomed duo Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor – tried to run away from Obama, only to lose support from the party’s base of progressives and African Americans.
  • Theory No. 1 is that two of the three remaining Trump rivals drop out and unite behind the lone surviving contender, allowing that person take on the New York businessman, mano à mano
  • Theory No. 2 is that the three Trump rivals should stay in the race to collectively rob him of delegates in upcoming primary states, while attacking him as a group.
  • The Arizona Republican endorsed a Wednesday letter, co-signed by former GOP defense officials, warning against Trump’s “vision of American influence and power in the world,” which they said “swings from isolationism to military adventurism within the space of one sentence.” Referring to the missive, McCain dinged Trump for making “uninformed and indeed dangerous statements.”
kaylynfreeman

China Wants More Babies. Some Men Choose Vasectomies. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...china-vasectomies.html

Culture politics

shared by kaylynfreeman on 01 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • “For our generation, children aren’t a necessity,” said Mr. Huang, a bachelor in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. “Now we can live without any burdens. So why not invest our spiritual and economic resources on our own lives?”
  • The government’s three-child policy announcement this week was the latest effort to reverse some of those practices, but some men are now seeking the procedure on their own.
  • The lifestyle is also in direct conflict with the Chinese government’s effort to avert a coming demographic crisis. On Monday, Beijing once again revised its family planning policy, allowing families to have three children instead of two.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • Today in China, several insurance companies market directly to “Double Income, No Kids” households. Matchmaking agencies are advertising their services to single men and women who don’t want children.
  • According to the latest census, the average household size is now 2.62, down from 3.1 in 2010.
  • “If I got married and had a child, I would still belong to the bottom class,” Mr. Huang said, referring to his background as a child of struggling factory workers. “When the time comes, I could also leave my child at home just like my parents. But I don’t want that.”
  • Choosing voluntary sterilization, especially as a young unmarried man, is still seen as culturally taboo in China’s patriarchal society. In many cities, doctors require a proof of marriage certificate and a partner’s consent.
  • “Raising a child is a high-price, low-return task,” he said. “I think having one is very troublesome.”
  • “They just refused to do it for me and said, ‘Because you’re unmarried without any children, you are openly going against the country’s birth policy,’” said Mr. Jiang, who is single.
  • For decades, Chinese people were conditioned to have children out of tradition, filial obligation and, ultimately, a fallback for retirement. But an expanding social security net and a proliferation of insurance plans have given people more options.
  • China now has the world’s largest number of single people. In 2018, the country reported 240 million of them, accounting for about 17 percent of the total population. Although the percentage is still smaller compared to the United States, the number has risen by about a third since 2010.
  • According to a 2018 study published by the Journal of Chinese Women’s Studies, the direct economic cost of raising a child from 0 to 17 years is about $30,000, seven times the annual salary of the average Chinese citizen.
  • Mr. Huang, a 24-year-old graduate student in computing in the city of Wuxi, said he met his prospective partner, a 28-year-old woman, on a DINK forum. “I constantly tell her how high and scary the costs of childbirth are to women,” he said.
  • Mr. Huang, 27, is striving for a lifestyle known as “Double Income, No Kids,” or DINK. The acronym has been around for decades, but only recently entered the mainstream in China, where rising costs and other economic woes have caused many young people to avoid parenthood.
  • “For our generation, children aren’t a necessity,” said Mr. Huang, a bachelor in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. “Now we can live without any burdens. So why not invest our spiritual and economic resources on our own lives?”
  • The announcement was meant to encourage couples to make more babies, but men like Mr. Huang say they would rather remain childless — even going under the knife to ensure it.
  • Housing agents offer apartments that cater to childless couples. Bedrooms once pitched as future nurseries are being converted into home gyms.
draneka

Pro-Lifers Are Going to the Women's March on Washington - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...513104

shared by draneka on 16 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • These Pro-Lifers Are Headed to the Women’s March on Washington
  • With roughly a week to go before the march, organizers also released a set of “unity principles,” and one of them is “open access to safe, legal, affordable abortion and birth control for all people.”
  • Some pro-lifers say they’ll protest. A delegation from Students for Life of America will be there to march against the influence of “the abortion industry” in the women’s movement
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  • Many pro-life women felt just as outraged as pro-choice women about Donald Trump’s conduct and comments, including the revelation that he once bragged about groping women without their permission.
  • the organizers say pro-lifers will be welcome to march on January 21st.
  • Perhaps the Women’s March on Washington is a sign that feminism is changing, too, ever so slightly: a first gathering of a truly “intersectional” movement which makes room for women with diverse convictions, including a moral opposition to abortion.
  • Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa, the Texas-based president of a group called New Wave Feminists. “I get that he applied this pro-life label, but I don’t know very many people who genuinely believe he’s pro-life.”
  • A small group of marchers associated with the pro-life publication Life Matters Journal will be there to support “this actual affirmation of peace and human rights, not just for women, but for all people of any or no gender, ethnicity, religion, immigration status, age, or disability,
  • Some groups seem more interested in spinning up controversy than actually participating, though. Students for Life of America has invited hundreds of women to attend on Facebook, proclaiming that “we will not sit by as Planned Parenthood, our nation’s abortion Goliath and a sponsor of this march, betrays women into thinking abortion is their only choice.”
  • The Women’s March, in all its grassroots chaos, might be a feminist space where they’re actually welcome—or, at least, where they can inconspicuously march along with everyone else
Javier E

The Great Trump Reshuffle - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...the-great-trump-reshuffle.html

demagogue 2016 gop conservatism politics crisis

shared by Javier E on 04 May 16 - No Cached
  • In 2012, President Obama lost college-educated voters by 4 points; this year, according to Public Opinion Strategies’ analysis, Clinton will win them by 29 points.
  • Clinton should make substantial gains among voters from households earning in excess of $100,000. While Obama lost these affluent voters in 2012 by 10 points, the NBC/WSJ survey shows Clinton carrying them by 12 points.
  • There are two groups among whom Trump will gain and Clinton will lose: voters making less than $30,000 and voters with high school degrees. Both less affluent groups are expected to increase their level of support for the Republican nominee over their 2012 margins, by 13 and by 17 points.
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  • The Republican coalition of 2016, in fact, will look increasingly like the Democratic Party of the 1930s.
  • A Trump versus Clinton contest will deepen the partisan divisions that for the past five decades have set those who support the social and cultural revolutions of the past five decades on race, immigration, women’s rights, gender equality and gay rights — as well as the broader right to sexual privacy — against those who remain in opposition.
  • Tesler’s findings are illustrated in the accompanying chart. There was a dose effect: the higher you scored on racial resentment, the more likely you were to support Trump; the more you resented immigrants or professed your white ethnocentrism, the likelier you were to plan to vote for Trump.
  • Tesler and Sides ranked white respondents by their level of “white racial identity” — determined by asking white respondents questions like “How Important is being white to your identity?”; “How important is it that whites work together to change laws that are unfair to whites?”; and “How likely is it that many whites are unable to find a job because employers are hiring minorities instead?”
  • In each case, Trump’s level of support in the survey rose in direct proportion to your level of agreement with each of these statements.
  • “The Second Demographic Transition: A concise overview of its development,” by Lesthaeghe, summarizes this concept:The SDT starts in the 1960s with a series of multifaceted revolutions. First, there was the contraceptive revolution, with the introduction of hormonal contraception and far more efficient IUDs; second, there was the sexual revolution, with declining ages at first sexual intercourse; and third, there was the gender revolution, questioning the sole breadwinner household model and the gendered division of labor that accompanied it.
  • These revolutions have reordered much of society. Lesthaeghe continues:These three "revolutions” fit within the framework of an overall rejection of authority, the assertion of individual freedom of choice (autonomy), and an overhaul of the normative structure. The overall outcome of these shifts with respect to fertility was the postponement of childbearing: mean ages at first parenthood rise again, opportunities for childbearing are lost due to higher divorce rates, the share of childless ever-partnered women increases, and higher parity births (four or more) become rare.
  • Measured by these criteria, the top-ranked counties were cosmopolitan centers, with a larger percentage of affluent, highly educated residents: New York City, the District of Columbia, Pitkin County, Colo. (where Aspen is), San Francisco and Marin County, Calif
  • The counties at the bottom tended to be small, white, rural, poor and less educated and they were located in the South and the mountain West:
  • the lower the S.D.T. ranking, the higher Trump’s votes compared to his statewide average; the higher the S.D.T. level, the lower Trump’s vote
  • The nomination of Donald Trump will sharpen and deepen the Republican Party’s core problems. Trump gains the party ground among declining segments of the population — less well educated, less well off whites — and loses ground with the growing constituencies: single women, well-educated men and women, minorities, the affluent and professionals.
  • Not only are more and more Americans adopting the practices and values described by Lesthaeghe and Neidert — self-expressiveness, gender equality, cohabitation, same-sex couples, postponed marriage and childbearing — but so too is much of the developed world.
  • This transition has effectively become the norm in much of Europe, and, as Lesthaeghe points out, it is gaining ground in regions as diverse as East Asia and Latin America.
  • For decades now, the Republican Party has been conducting a racial and cultural counterrevolution. It proved a successful strategy from 1966 to 1992.
  • Since then, as the percentage of Americans on the liberal side of the culture wars has grown steadily, the counterrevolutionary approach has become more and more divisive.
  • In this respect, Trump is not, as many charge, violating core Republican tenets. Instead, he represents the culmination of the rear-guard action that has characterized the party for decades
  • There is a chance that Trump will bring new blood into a revitalized Republican coalition. It’s also possible that he will accelerate the Republican Party’s downward spiral into irrelevance.
Javier E

How to Beat Trump - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...515736

politics Trump protest engagement crisis

shared by Javier E on 08 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • I was one of the many who admired the orderly commitment and resolution of the women’s march on Washington the day after President Trump’s inauguration.
  • Yet my admiration is mixed with worry. As I step through the police lines, I bring a message with me: Your demonstrations are engineered to fail. They didn’t stop the Iraq war. They won’t stop Donald Trump.
  • With the rarest exceptions—and perhaps the January 21 demonstration will prove to be one—left-liberal demonstrations are exercises in catharsis, the release of emotions. Their operating principle is self-expression, not persuasion. They lack the means, and often the desire, to police their radical fringes, with the result that it’s the most obnoxious and even violent behavior that produces the most widely shared and memorable images of the event.
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  • Again and again, their most lasting effect has been to polarize opinion against them—and to empower the targets of their outrage. And this time, that target is a president hungering for any excuse to repress his opponents
  • Protesters may be up against something never before seen in American life: a president and an administration determined to seize on unrest to legitimate repression.
  • here’s what I have to offer from the right, amid the storms of the Trump era.
  • The more conservative protests are, the more radical they are.You want to scare Trump? Be orderly, polite, and visibly patriotic.
  • It’s beyond audacious that a candidate who publicly requested help from Russian espionage services against his opponent would claim the flag as his own. But Trump is trying. Don’t let him get away with it. Carry the flag. Open with the Pledge of Allegiance. Close by singing the Star Spangled Banner
  • Trump’s presidency is itself one long flag-burning, an attack on the principles and institutions of the American republic. That republic’s symbols are your symbols. You should cherish them and brandish them.
  • Don’t get sucked into the futile squabbling cul-de-sac of intersectionality and grievance politics. Look at this roster of speakers from the January 21 march. What is Angela Davis doing there? Where are the military women, the women police officers, the officeholders? If Planned Parenthood is on the stage, pro-life women should stand there, too. If you want somebody to speak for immigrants, invite somebody who’s in the country lawfully.
  • Here are a few useful tests:a) Could this demand be achieved by a law passed through Congress?b) Can I imagine my Rush Limbaugh listening brother-in-law agreeing with it?c) Can I tweet it?If so … good.
  • “Tone policing” has entered the left-of-center vocabulary as one of the worst possible things you can do or think. In fact, all effective political communication must carefully consider both tone and content
  • Donald Trump has made clear that he wants to wage a Nixon-style culture war: cops against criminals, soldiers against pacifists, hard hats against hippies. Don’t be complicit. If you want to beat him, you have to reject his categories.
  • Successful movements are built upon concrete single demands that can readily be translated into practical action: “Votes for women.” “End the draft.” “Overturn Roe v. Wade.” “Tougher punishments for drunk driving.
  • People can say “yes” to such specific demands for many different reasons.
  • So it should be for critics of President Trump. “Pass a law requiring the Treasury to release the President’s tax returns.” “An independent commission to investigate Russian meddling in the US election.” “Divest from the companies.” These are limited asks with broad appeal.
  • On the other hand, if you build a movement that lists those specific and limited goals along a vast and endlessly unfolding roster of others from “preserve Dodd Frank” to “save the oceans”—if you indulge the puckish anti-politics of “not usually a sign guy, but geez”—you will collapse into factionalism and futility.
  • if you are building a movement to protect American democracy from the authoritarianism of the Trump administration, you should remember that the goal is to gain allies among people who would not normally agree with you
  • the core demand of your movement should likewise be easy to explain and plausibly acceptable to that mainstream, stretching from Bernie voters to Romney donors.
  • The classic military formula for success: concentrate superior force at a single point
  • bodies in the street represent only potential power, not actual power. Even the largest rally must sooner or later disassemble and return home. What happens after that? The difference between Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party was that only the second movement translated the energy and excitement of its early mass meetings into steady organizational work aimed at winning elections.
  • it is the steady and often tedious work of organization that sustains democracy—and can change the world. Protests are useful mostly to the extent that they mobilize people to participate in the follow-up meetings to realize the protest’s goals. Collect names and addresses. Form Facebook groups. Keep in touch. Don’t argue: recruit. Meet in real space as well as online. Serve cake. Make your presence felt on your local elected officials not just once, but day after day, week in, week out.
  • to succeed, you should be equally focused and persistent. And that requires above all: be motivated by hope, not outrage.
  • The outrage may get you started, but only hope keeps you going. Hope, as Vaclav Havel insisted, is an expression of the state of our minds, not a description of the state of the world. It powers you to undertake the daunting but essential mission: unlimited efforts for limited goals.
  • ou’re not trying to save the world. Just to pass one law. It doesn’t sound like much. It could be everything.
Javier E

Can Megyn Kelly Escape Her Fox News Past? - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...513842

fox news media propaganda politics obama

shared by Javier E on 06 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • The TV producer in Ailes saw a marketing niche, and the political operative in him saw a direct way of courting voters. Rupert Murdoch owned the network, but Ailes was its intellectual author. In the two decades since, the network has thrived without legitimate competition of any kind. It has proved to be a big tent, sheltering beneath it some excellent reporters but also a collection of blowhards, performance artists, cornballs, and Republican operatives in rehab from political failures and personal embarrassments. With the help of this antic cast, the Fox audience has come to understand something important that it did not know before: The people who make “mainstream” news and entertainment don’t just look down on conservatives and their values—they despise them.
  • Her understanding of the legal aspects of news stories and her tendency to conduct interviews as hostile cross-examinations (“Stay in bounds!” “I’ve already ceded the point!” “Don’t deflect!”) made her a riveting journalist-entertainer
  • Almost as soon as the election ended, Fox News went back to work on the mission, emphasizing a variety of themes, each intended to demonize the left. At the top of the list was the regular suggestion that Barack Obama was an America-hating radical, an elaboration of Glenn Beck’s observation (on Fox) that the president had “a deep-seated hatred for white people.” Other themes included the idea that straight white men were under ever-present threat from progressive policies and attitudes; that Planned Parenthood was a kind of front operation for baby murder; that political correctness had made the utterance of even the most obvious factual statements dangerous; and that the concerns of black America—including, especially, those of the Black Lives Matter movement—were so illogical, and so emotionally expressed, that they revealed millions of Americans to be beyond the reach of reason.
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  • We will never know to what extent Fox created or merely reported on the factor that turned out to be so decisive in the election: that to be white and conscious in America was to be in a constant state of rage.
  • In the middle of all this, feeding clips of ammo into the hot Fox News machine, was Megyn Kelly. To watch her, during one of her interviews on the subject of race and policing, interrupt a black guest to ask her whether she’d ever called white people “crackers” was to see Kelly in action, fired up and ready to go. In some respects, she was an independent actor at Fox, with her own show and ultimate control of its editorial content. But she was also a cog in something turning, and what the great machine ultimately produced was President Donald Trump.
  • As she tells it, one of the first questions Ailes asked her was “how the daughter of a nurse and a college professor understood anything other than left wing dogma.” She replied that although she’d been raised in a Democratic household, she had always been apolitical. She got the job.
  • he wanted people who hadn’t been tainted by the left-wing media machine, so they could be trained in the attitudes and opinions the network had been founded to advance.
  • Kelly is an unbelievably talented broadcaster—smart, funny, quick-witted, and able to handle a bit of fluff with as much zeal as she tackles a serious story. There can’t have been anyone more telegenic in the history of the business.
  • By 2010, the network had become so popular that—according to Gabriel Sherman’s biography, The Loudest Voice in the Room—Ailes added a new goal to the mission: the election of the next president.
  • she evinced her signature political stance: free-market enthusiasm combined with Nixonian law-and-order conservatism. “Enjoy prison!” she would call out after showing a video of an especially inept criminal enterprise.
  • She popped off the screen—fun, sexy, tough—and became popular not just with conservatives but also (in the mode of a guilty pleasure) with many progressives, including her sometime nemesis Jon Stewart, who once said she was his favorite Fox personality.
  • to see her segments on Black Lives Matter—which first aired as the primaries were getting under way and continued until the general election itself—was to see how Fox often stirred up racial anger among its viewers, a kind of anger that was crucial fuel for the Republican outcome Roger Ailes so desired.
  • hen Kelly was a litigator in high-stakes lawsuits, she learned a skill of the trade: taunting her adversaries until they snapped. “I might say something passive-aggressive just to get opposing counsel mad,” she writes. “And then when he got worked up about it, I would say calmly, ‘You seem upset. Do you need a break? We can take a moment if you’d like to step outside and get yourself together.’ ” She became “an expert in making them lose their cool.”
  • n her regular application of it to black activists, she contributed to an ugly mood that was the hallmark of Fox all last year: one of white aggrievement at a country gone mad, led by a radical black president supported by irrational black protesters who were gaining power.
  • , she introduced her TV audience to Malik Shabazz, the president of Black Lawyers for Justice and a former president of the New Black Panthers Party. Shabazz is a radical—an anti-Zionist who believes that Jews dominated the Atlantic slave trade and were involved in the 9/11 attacks, he is in a sense far more radical than Bill Ayers—but Kelly did not tell the audience that. Nor did she tell them that she had had Shabazz on her show in the past. The two proved useful to each other; he got to go deep behind enemy lines to spread his theories, while she got to show her audience members a black man who really does hate them. But to the casual viewer, he seemed like merely another Black Lives Matter supporter, no more or less extreme in his views than D. L. Hughley.
  • This was Fox News last spring and summer and into the fall: a place where black guests were always a few prodding questions away from telling the audience what they really felt about whites, and a place where white hosts were quick to defend other members of their race from unfair accusations of bias. These tactics were integral to the network’s mission: to get conservative ideas out there, to help elect a Republican president, and to make exciting television while doing it. Kelly proved adept on all fronts.
Brian Zittlau

Roe V. Wade Turns 41 Next Week | News | Philadelphia Magazine - 0 views

www.phillymag.com/...wade-anniversary-abortion-talk

shared by Brian Zittlau on 21 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • In the first decades since Wade, the typical abortion patient was young and white; according to The American Prospect, “the typical abortion patient these days is a 20-something single mother of color.” The reasons for this are largely driven by greater socioeconomic barriers to contraception, and therefore, to abortion as well. “Women in the middle class continued to see unplanned pregnancies decline” in the 1990s when things began to change, according to The American Prospect.
  • Roe v. Wade decision was a landmark occasion for reproductive rights advocates and for women (though, as I noted above, women are not the only people affected.) Abortion, like birth control, is an issue that is framed as a “women’s rights issue,” when in reality, it affects women and their partners. Of course, a woman’s right to have autonomy over her body is at the heart of the debate on the pro-choice side, but intelligent conversations about sexual health and reproductive rights should be include men’s voices as well. By framing these discussions as “women’s issues,” it becomes a niche, special-interest concern, making the general public dismissive of the issues at hand at the expense of people who are most affected.
  • Both sides of the debate can agree that abortion is a divisive issue. It’s both personal and widespread in its nature — a basic question of how much ownership women have over their bodies, and what responsibility, if any, the government bears for the unborn — something that’s not so “one size fits all.” I’d say if you don’t believe in abortions, don’t have one; but the very option is universally unacceptable to some. As an all-or-nothing proposition, it’s impossible to find common ground.
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  • Through careful strategy from anti-abortionist groups, “abortion” and “Planned Parenthood” have a close word association. Because of this, people often forget that the non-profit organization, now over 100 years old, does more than just terminate pregnancies.
Javier E

Biker Gangs, Tamir Rice, And The Rise Of White Fragility - 0 views

talkingpointsmemo.com/...the-rise-of-white-fragility

white supremacy white privilege reaction fear racism white inequality conservativism epistemic

shared by Javier E on 24 May 15 - No Cached
  • The most dangerous uprising that's threatening America's stability isn't black protests in places like Ferguson or Baltimore. It's taking place among an aging white majority that is losing its bearing on reality and destroying the gears of government, media and public welfare. At its center is an inexplicable, illogical and dangerous fear that some sociologists are now defining as white fragility.
  • In her 2011 academic pedagogical analysis titled “White Fragility,” DiAngelo goes into a detailed explanation of how white people in North America live in insulated social and media spaces that protect them from any race-based stress. This privileged fragility leaves them unable to tolerate any schism or challenge to a universally accepted belief system. Any shift away from that (like a biracial African-American president) triggers a deep and sustaining panic. Racial segregation, disproportionate representation in the media, and many other factors serve as the columns that support white fragility
  • misunderstanding was caused by misidentification of what white privilege and power means. Privilege doesn’t mean automatic wealth and health. What “white privilege” means is that society is rooting for one particular segment of the population to succeed over all others, and has installed a disproportionately high amount of institutional and psychological helpers every step of the way.
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  • “Part of white fragility is to assume that when we talk about racism, we are calling someone out as being individually a racist,” he said. “So if you say we're going to talk about racism, white people think you're going to call them a name. But for most people of color it's a system. And we're talking about dealing with a structure so the real problem is the system.”
  • When separate groups of people are using the same word with different implied meanings then problems will persist.
  • These are not rational decisions. These are fear-based politics that create avoidable disasters in which all suffer. This new wave of segregation fear is surging across the country. In response to the continued white fragility panic of 2008, conservative political movements are set to capitalize on the cycles of manufactured hysteria. “We are watching the repeal of the 20th century,” Wise said.
  • The fear is that if someone seeks to define and fix racism, many white people feel like they’re being directly attacked. So instead of waiting for the attack, white fragility promotes protection by putting punitive restrictions on “the others.”
  • The Obama era has been an interesting petri dish of white fragility. On the heels of a moderate economic recovery, we’ve seen sweeping new state laws aimed at social issues: voting rights restrictions, defunding of Planned Parenthood, anti-gay legislation, Stand Your Ground bills, and restrictive union laws to weaken their bargaining power. These laws have resulted in a rollback of rights for minorities, women, the LGBT movement, and the working class.
  • The strangest thing about white fragility politics is that the detrimental policy results are spread out across race and class. Yet, the political results for the conservative movement priming the pump of white fragility and rage is election victories. And why should they change when they can get large sections of an aging white population to consistently vote for policies proven to statistically hurt their economic chances, personal health, their children’s education, and their very safety?
  • When it comes to racism and increased segregation, both Wise and DiAngelo noted that there seems to be this rigid unwillingness to address any inequality, because it would upset the very people who are both benefiting from the injustice and refusing to acknowledge its existence.
  • When I asked Wise and DiAngelo to give me something hopeful for the future, they both gave me a bleak picture. When I suggested that more facts and evidence could sway people, they disagreed. “People who are deeply committed to a world view don’t change their opinions when confronted with new facts,” Wise said. “Oddly enough, new facts cause them to dig in more deeply.”
Javier E

How Ted Cruz Gave Away The GOP's Muslim Strategy - 0 views

talkingpointsmemo.com/...d-cruz-ben-carson-muslim-obama

politics obama muslim election 2016

shared by Javier E on 23 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • both Carson and now Cruz are referencing the widespread belief amongst conservatives that Obama is secretly a Muslim but is concealing his true beliefs for nefarious reasons, possibly to impose sharia law on the nation. (Any day now.) The last public poll on this belief showed that 86 percent of Republicans are warm to it, with 54 percent believing that Obama is a Muslim and 32 percent saying they are unsure. Only 14 percent of Republicans correctly describe Obama’s religion as Christian.
  • In other words, the belief that Obama is a Muslim is an entrenched “fact” on the right, much like the belief that global warming is a hoax or Planned Parenthood is a for-profit company that makes its money selling fetal parts. Carson and Cruz aren’t really talking about a hypothetical Muslim president in some future world. This is all a coded way to talk about Obama.
  • No one is going to come right out and accuse Obama of being a foreign invader—or maybe just a secret Muslim—who comes to ruin Mom and apple pie, because they want to be taken seriously by the mainstream media. So they just talk in coded language
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  • This sort of thing also happens to send liberals spinning, since there’s no good way to respond. If you point out that this is just a new way to propagate the lie that Obama is a secret Muslim, you fear giving credence to the idea that there’s anything wrong with being a Muslim in the first place. But if you start by arguing that the anti-Muslim-in-office position is bigoted and unconstitutional, you fear reinforcing the idea that Obama is, indeed, a secret Muslim. After all, why are we debating this thing if it’s not an imminent issue in the real world?
Javier E

Trump-ward, Christian Soldiers? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...p-ward-christian-soldiers.html

religion moralizing politician politics Christian virtue role model

shared by Javier E on 27 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • Let me get this straight. If I want the admiration and blessings of the most flamboyant, judgmental Christians in America, I should marry three times, do a queasy-making amount of sexual boasting, verbally degrade women, talk trash about pretty much everyone else while I’m at it, encourage gamblers to hemorrhage their savings in casinos bearing my name and crow incessantly about how much money I’ve amassed?
  • No matter. The holy rollers are smiling upon the high roller. And they’re proving, yet again, how selective and incoherent the religiosity of many in the party’s God squad is.
  • What’s different and fascinating about the Trump worship is that he doesn’t even try that hard for a righteous facade — for Potemkin piety. Sure, he speaks of enthusiastic churchgoing, and he’s careful to curse Planned Parenthood and to insist that matrimony be reserved for heterosexuals as demonstrably inept at it as he is
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • But beyond that? He just about runs the table on the seven deadly sins. He personifies greed, embodies pride, radiates lust. Wrath is covered by his anti-immigrant, anti-“losers” rants, and if we interpret gluttony to include big buildings and not just Big Macs, he’s a glutton through and through. That leaves envy and sloth. I’m betting that he harbors plenty of the former, though I’ll concede that he exhibits none of the latter.
  • there’s no sense in the fact that many of the people who most frequently espouse the Christian spirit then proceed to vilify immigrants, demonize minorities and line up behind a candidate who’s a one-man master class in such misanthropy.
  • From Trump’s Twitter account gushes an endless stream of un-Christian rudeness, and he was at it again on Monday night, retweeting someone else’s denigration of Kelly as a “bimbo.” Shouldn’t he be turning the other cheek?
jlessner

At Debate, Republicans Talk the Talk - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...republicans-talk-the-talk.html

debate republicans politics US

shared by jlessner on 17 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • if you throw in the earlier loser debate, it was the longest ever.
  • The Lincoln-Douglas debates would go on for three hours. But that was back when in many towns, the most exciting public activity of the year was pole-raising.
  • And then there was the completely, unbelievably irresponsible Trump of the finale who claimed he knew people whose daughter got autism from a vaccine shot. (This happened, he said, to “people that work for me just the other day.”)
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Nobody wanted to deal with the global warming issue. Virtually everybody made up a Planned Parenthood scenario that never existed.
rachelramirez

Carly Fiorina's Mystery Foundation - The Daily Beast - 0 views

www.thedailybeast.com/...rina-s-mystery-foundation.html

foundation politics US culture

shared by rachelramirez on 05 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Carly Fiorina’s Mystery Foundation
  • But she doesn’t oppose Planned Parenthood enough, it seems, to care if the organization that controls the Fiorina Foundation, her mysterious charity outfit, also distributes funds to the group—nearly half a million dollars since 2011.
  • It wasn’t registered with the IRS, either. Meaning that, were it really a foundation, it would be violating the law, which demands that private foundations file annual 990 forms.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • foundation is defined as a “nongovernmental, nonprofit organization having a principal fund managed by its own trustees or directors.”
katyshannon

The Supreme Court Will Review Texas' Law Restricting Abortion Access - 0 views

mic.com/...aw-restricting-abortion-access

supreme court review texas law abortion access politics US

shared by katyshannon on 16 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • If upheld, Planned Parenthood says the decision would leave 5.4 million Texan women of reproductive age with only 10 abortion providers in their state.
  • This decreased access would be especially detrimental to already marginalized groups and those with limited economic resources. Forty-two percent of the women who have abortions fall below the federal poverty line, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Denying women abortion access only increases the risk of falling into poverty, ThinkProgress reported in 2012.
  • providers disproportionately affects Latina women, according to Jessica González-Rojas, executive director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health. "While this politically-motivated attack threatens all Texas women, it's particularly harmful for the 40% of Texas women who are Latina," González-Rojas said in an emailed statement. "Latinas are twice as likely to experience unintended pregnancies as non-Latina white women and are more likely to be of reproductive age.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • In Texas, lack of
  • This particular case has implications for women across the United States, according to Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.
  • "This case represents the greatest threat to women's reproductive freedom since the Supreme Court decided Roe vs. Wade over 40 years ago."
  • The Guttmacher Institute estimates that 1 in 3 women will have an abortion in her lifetime. Lawmakers have passed a record-breaking 231 abortion restriction laws in the last four years, and more than 100 anti-abortion bills have been introduced in 28 state legislatures so far this year.
Javier E

The More Trump Defies His Party, the More His Supporters Cheer - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...more-his-supporters-cheer.html

populism gop 2016 demagogues crisis politics

shared by Javier E on 17 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • “The people who are supporting Trump represent a significant portion of the Republican base, which has always been less ideological and more about trust of the person,” Mr. Domenech said. “It is something both the Republican leadership in Washington and conservative ideological elites have underestimated.”
  • many people at his rallies agreed with Mr. Trump on the issue. “I oppose abortion, but I think Planned Parenthood does a lot of good for people who can’t afford birth control,” said Kim Wells, a schoolteacher and Trump supporter in North Augusta.
  • Mr. Trump rejected attacks from Jeb Bush and other candidates that he was not a conservative. He dismissed ideological labels altogether, a sentiment endorsed by the 10,000 people in the arena, who thundered their approval over and over. Instead of calling himself conservative, Mr. Trump said, “I’m a guy with common sense that’s going to make us a fortune.”
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Mr. Trump’s populism, a combination of economic nationalism that favors protectionism and a strongman approach to foreign countries that is also noninterventionist, defies almost everything Republicans in Washington have stood for
  • While Republican business leaders and their lobbying groups push for free trade, Mr. Trump has rallied thousands by promising to slap 35 percent tariffs on imported goods made by American companies that move factories abroad.
  • Mr. Trump’s call to deport more than 11 million undocumented people in the country, denounced as impossible and inhumane, has substantial support. One in four voters in a New York Times poll last year said illegal immigrants should be required to leave the country.
  • Exit polls from the New Hampshire primary, which Mr. Trump won decisively, showed 65 percent of Republicans supported his call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States.
  • Keith Hutto, a plumbing contractor who attended the rally with Mr. Moody, blamed George W. Bush for the housing bust and financial crisis that occurred during his second term. “My business in 2006, halfway through, it got bad, Mr. Hutto said. “We kept the doors open and all, but right into 2008 and even into 2010, it was tough.”
  • Mr. Trump led Mr. Cruz by 20 percentage points among evangelical voters, whose support Mr. Cruz rallied to win the Iowa caucuses this month.
  • The poll showed Mr. Trump losing supporters after the debate on Saturday, with 40 percent supporting him before and 31 percent afterward.
  • Another pollster, David Woodard of Clemson University, said his survey of Republicans showed Mr. Trump’s support holding steady after the debate.
  • the Republican base was angry about sending politicians with impeccable conservative credentials to Washington, but seeing nothing change there.
zachcutler

Marco Rubio defends Donald Trump attacks - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

politics US economics marco donald trump attacks

shared by zachcutler on 06 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Florida Sen. Marco Rubio defended his position in the Republican presidential race, insisting his campaign doesn't ride on whether he wins his home state's March 15 winner-take-all primary.
  • "I don't want us to have a president that we constantly have to be explaining to our kids, 'Look, I know that's what the president did, but you shouldn't do that.' I don't want that," Rubio said.
  • "I didn't get into this to beat up on other candidates, I really didn't," Rubio said. He ticked off Trump's positions on Planned Parenthood, Israel and health care -- and added that a year ago, he'd have wondered, "on what planet would that be the Republican front-runner?"
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The Florida senator wouldn't say whether he has asked former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush -- a one-time presidential rival -- for his endorsement ahead of Florida's 99-delegate, winner-take-all primary.
  • During the interview, Rubio also pledged he wouldn't nominate anyone for the Supreme Court in the last year of his tenure in the Oval Office if he's elected -- saying that President Barack Obama shouldn't fill deceased Justice Antonin Scalia's seat.
jongardner04

US election 2016: How Donald Trump compares to Ronald Reagan - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...election-us-2016-35703300

election donald trump

shared by jongardner04 on 05 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Donald Trump has been condemned by many on the left and some on the right as being beyond the pale, a toxic virus that exists on the fringes of the political mainstream. But where do his policy views actually fit when compared to his fellow presidential candidates - and past Republican commanders-in-chief?
  • Tax-cutting has been a much-loved tune in the Republican hymnal for decades, and this year's crop of candidates are humming along. John Kasich, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio all promise various combinations of capital gains tax cuts, income bracket simplification and lower marginal rates. Mr Rubio's proposal also includes a significant boost to the tax credit given to those with children.
  • Meanwhile, Donald Trump touts increased spending on national defence as a key part of his "make America great again" programme and generally supports broad government surveillance powers. Marco Rubio does as well, and stakes out the far-right position, promising to boost military spending by $1tn (£710bn) over 10 years.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Donald Trump likes to boast that he put the topic of immigration on the map in the Republican campaign. While that may be a bit of an exaggeration, he has certainly owned the issue, with his condemnation of undocumented Mexican migrants and calls to build a wall on the US-Mexican border and temporarily prevent all Muslims from entering the US.
  • In what can only be considered a significant break with Republican orthodoxy, Donald Trump has repeatedly defended Planned Parenthood, saying that the organisation performs important medical services (although he agrees with his competitors that they shouldn't get US government funding). He says he's now anti-abortion, although he backed legalisation for many years.
  • maddieireland334 on 05 Mar 16
     
    Donald Trump has been condemned by many on the left and some on the right as being beyond the pale, a toxic virus that exists on the fringes of the political mainstream. But where do his policy views actually fit when compared to his fellow presidential candidates - and past Republican commanders-in-chief?
redavistinnell

Senate rejects gun control amendments offered following San Bernardino shooting - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...of-the-san-bernardino-shooting

senate gun control offered following san bernardino shooting washington post

shared by redavistinnell on 10 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Senate rejects gun control amendments offered following San Bernardino shooting
  • The Senate on Thursday voted down two gun control proposals put forward by Democrats in response to this week’s deadly shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., in a series of votes that highlighted the intractable party divide over how to respond to gun violence.
  • Feinstein’s amendment was identical to legislation she previously filed on the same topic, while the expansion of background checks for gun purchases mirrored language championed by Sens. Manchin and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) in 2013, following the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School three years ago this month.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • “We have an opportunity to do it now with the height of  everything happening,” Manchin said. “For us not to do anything, just sit here and be mum would be just as bad.”
  • “We need to renew the assault weapons ban. We need to end the sale of high capacity magazines. We need to make gun trafficking a federal crime and give law enforcement the tools they need to get illegal guns off of the streets. We need to close the gun show loophole as well as loopholes that allow gun purchasers to buy a gun after the waiting period expires without a completed background check.”
  • That episode remains the closest the Senate has come to a consensus on gun control and will likely remain a big part of the debate.
  • “The problem with these mass shootings, which seem to be happening with increasing frequency, is too often we propose either more restrictions on gun ownership or more background checks for gun purchasers, versus mental health reform — when in fact we need both. That’s what I would like to see.”
  • To counter Feinstein’s amendment, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) proposed a measure that would give the attorney general the power to impose a 72-hour delay for individuals on the terror watch list seeking to purchase a gun and it could become a permanent ban if a judge determines there is probable cause during that time window.
  • “To use Sen. Kennedy – let him be on the watch list, he’s not going to go buy a gun and hurt anybody,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) argued, calling Cornyn’s alternative “dangerous” and “ridiculous.”
  • Democratic leaders said Grassley’s proposal would roll back gun laws, not improve them
  • Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Collins and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) also voted in favor of Manchin’s amendment to expand background checks. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), who is facing a tough reelection campaign in 2016, abstained from the vote on Manchin’s proposal, though he voted with Republican Party on the other gun control amendments Thursday.
  • Pelosi said she believes there are sufficient votes in the House to expand background checks to Internet sales and gun shows and to block individuals on the terrorist watch list from purchasing weapons.
  • Senate Democratic Policy Committee Chair Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) pledged Democrats won’t give up the battle.
  • With the San Bernardino rampage marking the 355th mass shooting this year, Congress has repeatedly talked about action but hasn’t taken it. Senate Democrats recently tried unsuccessfully to jump-start a campaign to pass gun control legislation in the wake of a deadly shooting at a college campus in Roseburg, Ore.
  • “To be honest with you, I don’t see it moving now,” said Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), who noted he has been sponsoring the bill for the last nine years.
  • Overall, Democrats do not support the budget reconciliation package, which would repeal large portions of Obamacare and defund Planned Parenthood.
mcginnisca

We Talked to One of the World Trade Center Bombers About ISIS and Mass Shootings | VICE | United States - 1 views

www.vice.com/...lamic-state-and-mass-shootings

world trade center US politics history ISIS terrorism

shared by mcginnisca on 08 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Eyad Ismoil is one of the half-dozen men convicted for carrying out the World Trade Center bombings in 1993
  • sentenced to 240 years in prison for driving a rental van packed with a bomb into a garage, killing six and injuring about 1000 more
  • for someone who's supposed to "hate the infidels," he shows no signs of loathing towards the many prisoners and staff who openly despise him.
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  • when I first asked Ismoil about ISIS after the Paris attacks, he asked me one question back: "Why do you think they did it?" I responded with the only thing I knew: "They hate us."
  • He said that to resolve the conflicts between extremists in the Middle East and the West, it was important to talk "human to human," but he also made it clear that he empathizes at least somewhat with the Islamic State. Unsurprisingly, many of his views would be considered appalling to the vast majority of Americans, but our conversation gave me a window into the worldview of people who think the US is to blame for terrorism.
  • So, the question should be who is the first to be blamed? Tell both sides of the story.
  • You don't have to recruit people for ISIS. They're Muslims from all over the world that have seen an injustice after 25 years and want to help their brothers. What you have to understand is the Iraqi people are the most stubborn of the Muslim world. They won't accept occupation or humiliation.
  • People over in America ask why ISIS did this. [But] people in the Middle East ask, "Why is the US doing this to us?" Put yourself in their shoes—France is dropping bombs for a year in Iraq and [more recently] Syria, destroying everything, women, children, buildings... A bomb doesn't discriminate between ISIS or women and children—it just destroys.
  • Imagine the Iraq and Syrian people. After a year of bombing, you see your people killed, land destroyed, children scared to do anything more than hide in the corners all day. All this coming from bombs in the sky and you can't stop it. What would you do?
  • ISIS is not jihadists recruited from all over to fight. They are the Sunni Muslims that have lived through 25 years of wars, torture, and rapes. They are the Iraqi and Syrian people that have suffered from unjust wars started by the US government. And when the US government [mostly pulled out of] Iraq in 2010, the Shia and Maliki government started killing the Sunni day and night under the watch of the Americans.
  • My religion prohibits attacks on civilians. Unfortunately, many Muslims don't know much about Islam
  • What about the Planned Parenthood attack?What this man did is worse then what the doctors do. If this is what he's angry at, taking life, he did worse. Islam doesn't believe in abortion—all life is precious....[But] what he did was kill adult people who are grown. How is he trying to solve the issue?
  • For every action, there's a reaction. If you throw a ball against a wall, it's going to come back at you. If you throw a ball hard, it's going to come back at you hard. This is the problem with all sides in these wars. We hit you, you hit back. We hit you hard, you hit back harder. Back and forth, back and forth. Nobody wins. Both sides end up with death and destruction.
  • To solve the problem from the root, everyone has to become human. They need to talk, human to human. Let the people decide what they want. Leave them alone. Everyone can come together and say enough is enough. How long are we going to keep this action up? For the rest of our lives?It's the law of the jungle that we're living in right now. We were given more sense than this. We walk on two legs, with our heads high. But right now, we are walking with our heads down. We need to lift our heads up, and use the brains God created for us.
  • The only thing that keeps us just is Islam. Because in Islam, the peace, the justice, comes from the sky. The one who created earth and man, he knows best.
  • The Arabs are not radicalizing themselves. Your government action is radicalizing the Arabs
  • "hate the infidels,"
Javier E

The Brutalism of Ted Cruz - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...the-brutalism-of-ted-cruz.html

conservativism nationalism candidate 2016 presidency election politics evangelical culture

shared by Javier E on 12 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • in his career and public presentation Cruz is a stranger to most of what would generally be considered the Christian virtues: humility, mercy, compassion and grace.
  • Cruz’s behavior in the Haley case is almost the dictionary definition of pharisaism: an overzealous application of the letter of the law in a way that violates the spirit of the law, as well as fairness and mercy.
  • Cruz’s speeches are marked by what you might call pagan brutalism. There is not a hint of compassion, gentleness and mercy. Instead, his speeches are marked by a long list of enemies, and vows to crush, shred, destroy, bomb them
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Cruz lays down an atmosphere of apocalyptic fear. America is heading off “the cliff to oblivion.” After one Democratic debate he said, “We’re seeing our freedoms taken away every day, and last night was an audition for who would wear the jackboot most vigorously.”
  • everything is described as a maximum existential threat.
  • The fact is this apocalyptic diagnosis is ridiculous. The Obama administration has done things people like me strongly disagree with. But America is in better economic shape than any other major nation on earth. Crime is down. Abortion rates are down. Fourteen million new jobs have been created in five years.
  • Obama has championed a liberal agenda, but he hasn’t made the country unrecognizable. In 2008, federal spending accounted for about 20.3 percent of gross domestic product. In 2015, it accounted for about 20.9 percent.
  • But Cruz manufactures an atmosphere of menace in which there is no room for compassion, for moderation, for anything but dismantling and counterattack. And that is what he offers
  • the lack of any positive emphasis, any hint of reform conservatism, any aid for the working class, or even any humane gesture toward cooperation is striking.
  • Cruz’s programmatic agenda, to the extent that it exists in his speeches, is to destroy things: destroy the I.R.S., crush the “jackals” of the E.P.A., end funding for Planned Parenthood, reverse Obama’s executive orders, make the desert glow in Syria, destroy the Iran nuclear accord.
  • Ted Cruz didn’t come up with this hard, combative and gladiatorial campaign approach in isolation. He’s always demonstrated a tendency to bend his position — whether immigration or trade — to what suits him politically
  • This approach works because in the wake of the Obergefell v. Hodges court decision on same-sex marriage, many evangelicals feel they are being turned into pariahs in their own nation
  • Evangelicals and other conservatives have had their best influence on American politics when they have proceeded in a spirit of personalism — when they have answered hostility with service and emphasized the infinite dignity of each person. They have won elections as happy and hopeful warriors. Ted Cruz’s brutal, fear-driven, apocalypse-based approach is the antithesis of that.
Javier E

The Republican Party's 50-State Solution - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-partys-50-state-solution.html

gop conservatism organization success politics

shared by Javier E on 13 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • The sustained determination on the part of the conservative movement has paid off in an unprecedented realignment of power in state governments.Seven years ago, Democrats had a commanding lead in state legislatures, controlling both legislative chambers in 27 states, nearly double the 14 controlled by Republicans. They held 4082 state senate and house seats, compared to the Republicans’ 3223.Sweeping Republican victories at the state level in 2010 and 2014 transformed the political landscape
  • By 2015, there were Republican majorities in 70 percent — 68 of 98 — of the nation’s partisan state houses and senates, the highest number in the party’s history. (Nebraska isn’t counted in because it has a non-partisan, unicameral legislature.) Republicans controlled the legislature and governorship in 23 states, more than triple the seven under full Democratic control.
  • “How the Right Trounced Liberals in the States,” by Alexander Hertel-Fernandez and Theda Skocpol, in the Winter edition of the journal Democracy, documents the failure of the left to keep pace with the substantial investments by the right in building local organizations.
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • Away from the national level, the commitment of conservative donors to support a power shift in state government illustrates the determination of the right to eliminate regulatory and legal constraints on markets where their money has proven most productive.
  • Attempts to control the White House have become far more risky with the rise of a strong Democratic presidential coalition. In 2012, conservative groups put $700 million in a bid to win the presidency, two and a half times as much as liberal groups, but Obama still won decisively.
  • The willingness of conservatives to weather difficulty and to endure prolonged delay has been demonstrated repeatedly over the past decades.
  • the result for conservatives is thatyour volunteers and paid activists come out of a values-based institution, which is essentially not a political institution. People are there because of their values. If you come to politics from a club or church or veterans hall, it reinforces the stickiness of your work, your willingness to keep at it even if you are tired.
  • When the State Policy Network was founded in 1986, it had 12 affiliated state-based groups and a goal of creating an “interstate freedom network” to spread “the growth of freedom across America until a permanent freedom majority is built.” Today, there are one or more affiliated organizations in every state.
  • An examination of IRS reports from all of these conservative groups shows total spending in just one year, 2013, of $142.2 million, with the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s $8.9 million the largest expenditure.
  • The complex transactions between the foundations in the Koch Brothers network obscure the dollar amount of their investments in state and local organizations. But the Koch Companies’ June Quarterly Newsletter notes that the Koch brothers “hope to raise $889 million by the end of 2016, about two-thirds of which will help support research and education programs, scholarships and other efforts designed to change policies and promote a culture of freedom in the United States.”
  • the right can tap into an embeddedstructure of community-based cultural, religious, social organizations — churches, Elks, veterans halls, gun groups, local business organizations, etc. — that are gathering places with offices, meeting halls, phones and computers that can be used by activist troops for logistical and operational support.
  • In 1973, as the Watergate scandal was closing in on the Nixon administration, conservatives financed the creation of two institutions: the Heritage Foundation to counter the left on national policy, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to foster state-based conservative lobbies, interest groups and foundations.
  • “progressives don’t have these community based, indigenous resources to educate, organize and mobilize troops anymore.” With the exception of unions, “we have fewer local places to gather and belong.”
  • In 2004, major liberal donors financed two new national groups created specifically for the 2004 presidential election — Americans Coming Together ($79,795,487) and the Joint Victory Committee ($71,811,666).
  • Despite the investment, the Democratic nominee, John Kerry, lost. At that point, the liberal donor community came to general agreement that the left needed a secure a permanent infrastructure at the national level to compete with such conservative institutions as the Chamber of Commerce, the American Enterprise Institute, Americans for Tax Reform and Heritage.
  • A year later, Democracy Alliance established its goal of building a “progressive infrastructure that could help counter the well-funded and sophisticated conservative apparatus in the areas of civic engagement, leadership, media, and ideas.”At a national level, the alliance has played a significant role in the development of such groups as the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank; Catalist, which builds and maintains voter lists; and Media Matters, which seeks to document and discredit “conservative misinformation throughout the media.”
  • It has begun to appear that the twenty-first century progressive brain is not as interested in clubs, communities and cultural sharing as the conservative brain is.
  • How, Stein asked, “could we have lost that? How does a communitarian world view lose its communitarian sense of self?”
  • the nature of political liberalism has changed.
  • The liberalism of the 1930s and 1940s was shaped by the Great Depression, and the response was, in many respects, communitarian: the strengthening of unions, the provision of jobs and government benefits to the poor and unemployed and the creation of a safety net to provide a modicum of security.
  • The left has, in part, shifted focus, with more stress on the values of self-expression and self-fulfillment, on individual liberation from the constraints of traditional morality, especially sexual morality — what my colleague Ross Douthat calls “The Liberalism of Adult Autonomy” or “the morality of rights.” Economic liberalism – despite progress on the minimum wage - has lost salience.
  • Instead of communitarian principles, the contemporary progressive movement — despite its advocacy of local issues like community policing — has produced a counterpart to conservative advocacy of free markets: the advocacy of personal freedom.
  • Insofar as liberals continue to leave the state-level organization to conservatives, they are conceding the most productive policy arenas in the country.
  • As left interests are being cut out of this process, the groundbreaking work is being done on the right. The losses for the Democratic Party and its allies include broken unions, defunded Planned Parenthood, lost wetlands and forests, restrictive abortion regulations and the proliferation of open-carry gun laws.
  • conservatives have overseen the drawing of legislative and congressional districts that will keep Republicans in power over the next decade. In this way, through the most effective gerrymandering of legislative and congressional districts in the nation’s history, the right has institutionalized a dangerous power vacuum on the left.
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