Group items tagged

"Canadian utility redirects $2.3B away from expensive 730MW coal to natural gas conversion, Investment will now fund 3.5 GW of affordable wind and solar." This is a positive move towards a "collective conscientiousness for social and environmental factors," by using renewable energy with new construction aimed for completion in 2025 (H1).

Article talks about the general increase in anger/unhappiness in the country today. More people seem to be upset with the way things are going and letting it be known. A lot of it seems resistance to change or feeling of helplessness as things change to from what was once familiar.

One-in-ten eligible voters in the 2020 electorate was part of a new generation of Americans - Generation Z. Members of Gen Z are more racially and ethnically diverse than any previous generation, and they are on track to be the most well-educated generation yet. But when it comes to their views on key social and policy issues, they look very much like Millennials.

When the National Election Study began asking about trust in government in 1958, about three-quarters of Americans trusted the federal government to do the right thing almost always or most of the time. Public trust reached a three-decade high shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but declined quickly thereafter. Since 2007, the share saying they can trust the government always or most of the time has not surpassed 30%. Currently, 36% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say they can trust government, compared with 9% of Republicans and Republican-leaners. Throughout Trump's tenure, more Republicans than Democrats reported trusting the government, though that has flipped since Biden's election.

A majority of Americans continue to say they see the effects of climate change in their own communities and believe that the federal government falls short in its efforts to reduce the impacts of climate change. At a time when partisanship colors most views of policy, broad majorities of the public - including more than half of Republicans and overwhelming shares of Democrats - say they would favor a range of initiatives to reduce the impacts of climate change

A summary of the 2020 election and what issues are important to the voters that participated. "Underlying the many policy disagreements between Biden and Trump voters is a more personal feeling of distrust and disillusionment that could make compromise all the more difficult."

A discussion of the impact the Trump presidency had on the future of politics in America, including 4 brief go-forward scenario discussions.

A survey based on projections for the year 2050. "Majorities predict a weaker economy, a growing income divide, a degraded environment and a broken political system"

Satellite images show China has built mock-ups of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier and destroyer in its northwestern desert, possibly for practice for a future naval clash as tensions rise between the nations. Provocation involving superpowers is typically a bad idea. It's hard to understand the value in an action like this, given that China likely knows a bit about our satellite reconnaissance technology. It's a strange mentality and makes one wonder what sort of response they are hoping for.

"Americans desperately want less fighting in politics and more cooperation carried out with a sense of shared purpose that is focused on the building blocks of national economic improvement and the well-being of all people." I continue to struggle with why the 'will of the people' continues to be difficult to make happen. I'll temper that with the comment that just because a 'random' poll reflects something, that doesn't necessarily mean that it is a true representation of 'the people.'

"In Gallup polling throughout the first quarter of 2021, an average of 49% of U.S. adults identified with the Democratic Party or said they are independents who lean toward the Democratic Party. That compares with 40% who identified as Republicans or Republican leaners. The nine-percentage-point Democratic advantage is the largest Gallup has measured since the fourth quarter of 2012." What I found to be more significant was the following: "The 44% of Americans who identify as political independents, whether they subsequently express a party leaning or not, is up from 38% in the fourth quarter of 2020 and is above 40% for the first time since 2019. This is consistent with the historical pattern whereby independent identification typically declines in presidential election years and increases in odd-numbered years. However, the percentages identifying as independent in 2020 and thus far in 2021 have been unusually high compared with prior presidential election and odd-numbered years. Thus, the current level of independent identification ranks among the highest Gallup has measured in any quarter since 1988" More people relate to neither party than to one, so why do they both continue on a trajectory of not satisfying the public? Is the message never heard that the Center is where most of America lives?

An overview of the Brookings 'States of Change' report. "In this 2020 report, we update our electoral scenarios in several important ways. First, we have produced a new set of underlying demographic projections for the nation and all 50 states plus the District of Columbia based on the latest census data. These projections trace the probable path of demographic change across the country-both for the population as a whole and, importantly, for eligible voters."

In recent years, there has emerged a broadly shared sense that political moderation is dying. Joe Biden's victory in the Democratic primary has been widely interpreted as the last gasp of an exhausted tradition, after which he will hand over the reins to the party's left. Meanwhile, moderates have been an endangered species in the Republican Party for going on two decades now. The decline of political moderates lies at the root of many of our fundamental governing problems. As American political parties have become increasingly captured by their ideological extremes in recent decades, the space for cross-party coalition-building has shrunk. Where moderates were once critical to establishing coalitions across party lines, both parties' leaders today have established a hammerlock over the agenda in Congress, allowing only single-party alliances to form except under very unusual conditions.

CSIS's Risk and Foresight Group created four plausible, differentiated scenarios to explore the changing geopolitical landscape of 2025-2030, including the potential lasting first- and second-order effects of Covid-19. The scenarios center on the relative power and influence of the United States and China and the interaction between them, along with detailed consideration of other major U.S. allies and adversaries within each of four worlds. Each scenario narrative was informed by deep trends analysis and subject-matter-expert interviews. CSIS's Dracopoulos iDeas Lab brought to life the scenarios in four engaging videos designed to test policymakers' preconceived notions about the defense and security challenges facing the United States and its allies in the second half of this decade. This research was sponsored by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency's Strategic Trends Division

This paper uses a scenario-based approach to understand how Congress might function in 2050. At present, Congress appears to be underperforming due to high levels of polarization, hyperpartisanship, and gridlock. Notwithstanding these challenges, Congress will need to address several big and complex issues over the next three decades, including the demographic transformation of the United States into a majority-minority nation, the looming fiscal challenges facing the federal government, widespread automation in the economy, climate change, more diffuse and dangerous patterns of global conflict, and the rapidly evolving media and communications technology environment.

Eighty-one percent of U.S. adults say the future of U.S. democracy is under threat, a sentiment shared by most Republicans, Democrats and independents. But when they were asked which party poses the bigger risk, it was a statistical tie between people who said the Democratic Party (42 percent) and the Republican Party (41 percent). An additional 8 percent of Americans blame both parties for playing a role. "We have one point of bipartisan agreement that the ship is sinking," said Edward Foley, who directs the election law program at Ohio State University. "But the problem is that each side blames the other for the ship sinking."

A brief opinion piece by an educator discussing the challenges of the virtual learning period that was abruptly brought on by COVID. He also has suggestions of changes to be made to fast-track students back into the in-person learning experience, full knowing that not all students progressed as they should have during this period.