Progressives see local rule of law differently Fairfield Daily Republic I heard how the Progressive Democrat County Central Committee feels we need to have Sanctuary Schools here in family-friendly Vacaville. Apparently, we require progressive help to enlighten us here in our city because of the pressing need to stand up ... |
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Progressives see local rule of law differently - Fairfield Daily Republic
Do you have march fatigue yet? The left, apparently, does not, performing street theater on Saturday, Earth Day, with the so-called March for Science.
Its hard to think of a better way to undermine the publics faith in science than to stage demonstrations in Washington, D.C., and around the country modeled on the Womens March on Washington that took place in January.
The Womens March was an anti-Donald Trump festival. Fine. I found it vulgar and demeaning to women, but its a free country.
Science, however, to be respected, must be purely the search for truth. The organizers of this March for Science by acknowledging that their demonstration is modeled on the Womens March are contributing to the politicization of science, exactly what true upholders of science should be at pains to avoid.
When you read the organizers online statement, the purpose seemed so utterly vacuous as to cause heads to nod: The March for Science champions robustly funded and publicly communicated science as a pillar of human freedom and prosperity. We unite as a diverse, nonpartisan group to call for science that upholds the common good and for political leaders and policy makers to enact evidence based policies in the public interest.
Yeah. I know loads of people who oppose the common good, dont you?
So what is it really about?
As best I can make out (besides being a nice excuse to enjoy the April weather in Washington, when everything is in bloom), those who attended wanted to express dismay at President Trumps policies on a range of subjects, including climate change and the travel restriction (which they label a travel ban).
On the matter of climate change, those who present themselves as champions of science, i.e., fact-based reasoning and commitment to the scientific method, ought to be very careful not to blackball everyone who offers a dissenting view. Even among self-described environmentalists, there are differing views on how best to combat global warming. Whether temperatures are rising dangerously is a scientific question. What to do about it is a political question.
When you lump the travel ban into the march, though, you really go off the rails. As Robert Young, an ecologist, warned in The New York Times, including such matters only serves to cement the image of scientists as an interest group who might politicize their data, research, and findings for their own ends.
A true march for science might tackle problems like the replication crisis or confirmation bias.
Its a vanity of the left that they stand for science, fact-based policy and sweet reason as opposed to conservatives, who support superstition, alternative facts and denial. Jeffrey Anderson, an associate professor of radiology and bioengineering at the University of Utah, explained to The New York Times that he would fly to D.C. for the march because of what he regards as the wholesale disregard of truth and fact by the president and his close advisers. Their devaluing evidence and the scientific method, is so extreme that I cant be silent.
Admittedly, this president has been reckless and heedless of the truth or falsity of his comments on a range of subjects. His endorsements of conspiracy theories about vaccines causing autism and climate change being a Chinese ruse to harm American companies were preposterous and worrying. But he hasnt said those things lately, and the march doesnt seem to have been provoked by them.
Note to the left: The above paragraph is what sincere people who are fact-based and willing to be critical of their own side write. Now, where is the acknowledgement that there is plenty of hostility to science among progressives? Who objects to nuclear power (despite its potential to combat global warming)? Who rejects evidence of male/female brain differences? Who stands in the way of genetically modified organisms but also argues that children should be hormonally and surgically modified if they say that they are of a different gender from the sex listed on their birth certificate?
When progressives are ready to admit that they sometimes cherrypick the science they like and disregard the science that confounds their worldview, they will have taken a key first step toward the scientific method.
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Progressives ignore science in conflict with their worldview - Daily Mining Gazette
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Since Trump took office, weve heard reports of infighting between numerous White House factions, which reads like something from Game of Thrones. Currently, the trending topic is escalating tension between Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner. The players embody a set of ideals clashing at the epicenter of Western power: a media mogul who consolidated Trumps populism through Breitbart while mainstreaming fringe elements of the alt-right vs. a 36 year-old Upper West Side liberal representing nepotism. The media sensationalizes White House office politics like sports coverage; however, little is said about the lefts plans to take back any of the three branches of government they lost this past election cycle.
Democrats efforts to block Supreme Court nominee, now justice, Neil Gorsuch began with hullabaloos from the likes of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders but ended in a whimper. Media outlets like Slate and The New York Times pushed a hostile agenda towards all of Trumps nominees, with particular emphasis on Betsy DeVos in what could be surmised as a total double standard when it comes to women in the Republican Party, but did little to deter Trump from bulldozing the opposition and establishing his administration. Meanwhile, media fervor surrounding Jon Ossoffs upstart candidacy to take Georgias sixth congressional district is fizzling. Despite an eight-million-dollar DNC war-chest and a front-page New York magazine feature written by Olivia Nuzzi, Ossoff failed to avoid a runoff and will now face Karen Handel with consolidated Republican support behind her.
Most of Trumps resistance comes from grassroots movements, but these have yet to translate into a singular political movement or coherent policy. Although the number of anti-Trump protestors is staggering, the #resistance faces considerable obstacles in aligning their values with a political party that sold them out to Clinton. Whereas the Koch Brothers and a handful of Big Tobacco/Big Oil firms financed the Tea Party, which successfully staked out Congressional representation through the Tea Party Caucus and the Freedom Party, theres little to suggest the anti-Trump movement wont dissolve like its Occupy predecessor, turning instead to slacktivism and lethargy. Theres a fundamental disconnect between the Liberal political elite, so consumed by the world of D.C. politics, and the masses marching on Capitol Hill theyre making decisions for, tension exacerbated by progressive rhetoric against Washington still reverberating from Bernie Sanders camp. Although progressives and establishment Democrats are united in their hatred for Trump, a clear strategy has yet to emerge for how they can reconcile their political differences into a collected agency.
Davis Richardson is a writer whose work has appeared in Vice, Nylon Magazine, and Capitol File. Follow him on Twitter @davisoliverr
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Progressives And Establishment Dems At Odds Over The Future Of Liberalism - Daily Caller
Bernie Sanders traveled to Nebraska this week to throw his support behind Omaha Democratic mayoral candidate, Heath Mello, who is running against the incumbent Republican mayor,Jean Stothert. A Mello win, Sanders has said, would give hope to other progressive Democrats in conservative states.
But Mellos progressive credentials are questionable at best.As a state senator, he co-sponsored a bill requiring that abortion providers tell women they can have an ultrasound first, and mandating that providers who use ultrasound display the image in a way women can see if they choose. He said it represented a positive first step to reducing the number of abortions in Nebraska.
As a populist, Sanders has built a political career protesting economic inequality and yet by campaigning for Mello, he has demonstrated a willingness to separate economic justice from reproductive justice. (So has Democratic National Committee Chair, Tom Perez, who is also helping to campaign for Mello and who has defended that decision, saying the job of the DNC is to help Democratic candidates win.) But abortion access is not just a medical issue, or even a social one; it is, at its core, also an economic concern. Heres why.
Raising children in the United States is expensive. Like, more than $230,000 per child(from birth to age 17) expensive. That includes food, transportation, housing, education (but not college), health care and child care. Oh, and daycare for babies is now more expensive than college tuition in most states.
Women in this country already face a well-documented motherhood financial penalty. Research shows, for example, that mothers are less likely to be hired for jobs and they are offered lower starting salaries when they are hired. (Men dont appear to be similarly disadvantaged by becoming dads, and might actually benefit from it, career-wise.)
Having a baby is the most expensive health event that families face during their childbearing years. At the same time, a lack of workplace supports for many women during this critical time means a woman may not have paid sick days for prenatal appointments or well-baby care, or paid family and medical leave to use after giving birth. Addressing all of these issues is central to achieving economic justice for women and families, said Sarah Lipton-Lubet, vice president of the National Partnership for Women & Families.
Roughly 60 percent of women who have abortions are already mothers, which means they understand these factors not in some abstract way, but both deeply and personally. In fact, economic concerns are a major reason why women chose to end pregnancies. Estimates suggest that between 40 and 75 percent of women seeking abortions do so for financial reasons.
The most common reason women give for wanting to terminate a pregnancy is that they feel that they cannot afford to have a baby or to have another baby, Diana Greene Foster, director of research with the University of California San Franciscos Advancing New Standards In Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) told The Huffington Post.
In the United States, roughly 5 percent of reproductive-age women have an unintended pregnancy each year, and those pregnancies disproportionately occur among low-income and poor women. In 2011, the unintended pregnancy rate among women living well below the federal poverty level around $18,000 for a family of three was five times higher than women living well above the federal poverty line.
Low-income women also struggle to afford abortion, particularly because the Hyde Amendment has long restricted Medicaid coverage for abortion care. Research shows that in order to come up with the money necessary for the procedure, women are forced to forgo food for themselves and their children, to miss rent payments and to sell off personal items.
When women are unable to get an abortion, they are more likely to be poor, less likely to work full time and more likely to receive public assistance, Foster said. And this has important consequences for their existing children and their ability to care for a new child.
Also, because two-thirds of the unplanned births in this country are paid for by public insurance programs, namely Medicaid, unintended pregnancies weigh on the economy as well.
That means that any line separating reproductive rights from economic concerns is an imaginary one. True progressives would do well to remember that.
CORRECTION:An earlier version of this story mischaracterized the bill Mello co-sponsored. It did not require women to have ultrasounds before abortions.
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Reminder To Progressives: Abortion Is An Economic Issue - Huffington Post
I dont recall ever nodding my head in agreement with anything Ive read in one of Mona Charens columns. Until today. Shes right that the left isnt supportive of science across the board (March for Science threatens our faith in science April 20). They are guilty of championing some science and disregarding or disputing other science, just as the right does.
Fortunately, I was able to regain my composure when she made this claim: Whether temperatures are rising dangerously is a scientific question. What to do about it is a political question. This is not exactly true. Very often, prior to getting into the politics of something like addressing global warming, we need science to help us figure out which solution will be most effective, not just to identify the problem. That was an unsettling moment, agreeing with Ms. Charen. I trust it wont happen again.
Jim Morris, Evanston
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Standing up for progressives
Wedont have march fatigue, and science does deserve all the interest and publicity that it can get. According to Mona Charen, Science must be purely the search for truth, and she is right. What is also true is that the Trump administration has politicized science by voicing alternative facts that suit their political agenda and donors.
They deny climate change and promote coal and other greenhouse gases. They cut the EPA budget so the agency can no longer function as a guardian of air and water quality. They are frightening people by touting vaccines as the cause of autism. They are slashing NIH budgets, which will limit basic scientific research and cause a brain drain in this country.
Charen charges that progressives cherry pick science, but that is the antithesis of the progressive ethos. That is why millions will be marching to honor science as purely the search for truth.
Carol Kraines, Deerfield
Check with Congress onmilitary actions
Im a Vietnam era Navy veteran; my brothers name is on the Vietnam Memorial Wall in D.C. and my son is currently an Army Sergeant with multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. We all volunteered and fully believe in the oath we took when we did to support and defend the constitution against all enemies foreignand domestic.We have engaged in four undeclared wars in my lifetime, sacrificing thousands of lives and untold wealth.
With the current militarization of the White House and the inflammatory talk, Congress has remained silent. I truly fear for my country with this current atmosphere. Please no more! Follow the Constitution. Military action must have prior Congressional approval.
Greg Marshall, Oak Forest
No cash for kids, plenty for lights
Sorry, kids. Chicago does not have money for you, your teachers or your schools. But Chicago does have money for new lights and the countless other pet projects that our politicians want completed. One day, maybe the children really will make it on the priority list in this city.
Justin Nowak, Dunning
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Progressives dismiss science when it doesn't suit them - Chicago Sun-Times