Is press neutrality about GOP authoritarianism really neutral, or is it incompetent or sloppy reporting?

It appears that a few people are starting to wake up to the threat the Republican Party poses to democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties. Dick Polman, a national political columnist in Philadelphia and writer in residence at the University of Pennsylvania (dickpolman7@gmail.com), wrote:

On a podcast the other day, national political reporter Thomas Edsall analyzed the mounting threat of Republican authoritarianism and posed a great question:

“Trump and the Republican party have created a real dilemma for the media… A party of sedition is trying to (enact) rules that even when it loses, it wins… We have a different animal in the ballgame now. One side is dominated by a party that is willing to accept lies, that is delusional… a party that is on the verge of becoming something unseen in America, beyond the point of no return…When you have a party that is moving in this extreme fashion, how do we in the media describe it?”

Easy answer: Describe reality.

The old days of both sides false-balance journalism, the old days of writing “on the one hand, on the other hand,” the old days when both parties honored democracy by accepting the election results – those days are over. When one party openly declares that it no longer believes in democracy, when indeed it is working non-stop to destroy it, journalists can no longer take refuge in “neutrality.”

Richard Tofel, founder of the investigative journalism website ProPublica, wrote recently that neutrality is an “attractive value” only “if you view public life as an endless series of fights between two sides distinguishable most importantly by the primary colors of their uniforms.” But all too often – and especially now – neutrality is merely “an appropriate pose for the uninformed.”

Any journalist who’s remotely informed about what’s going on in 2021 should be compelled to point it out in plain language. If arsonists are torching a house, and it’s burning in front of your eyes, you report it and identify the arsonists. It’s not enough to say “Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell hopes to win the chamber in 2022.” It’s factually accurate to simply say, “Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, after voting to exonerate a president who inspired an anti-democratic coup attempt, hopes to win the chamber in 2022 and strengthen Republican vote-suppression efforts in 2024.”

In a national civic emergency, the mainstream media needs to be pro-democracy and pro-truth. That is not “bias.” That is patriotism.

The problem, however, is that too many journalists (especially the older, more seasoned ones) are stuck in the old paradigm. Jay Rosen, a media critic at New York University, said it well last week: The press is still too invested in “the game – ‘who are the winners and losers, who’s ahead, what’s the strategy?’ You can keep doing that right up until the point when democracy disintegrates.”

I agree. So does Tom Edsall: “In times of big change, reporters have a harder time finding ways to describe it and to deal with it. Reporters are usually fixed in a language that they’ve (long) been using to describe political competition.” Nevertheless, “you have to look at the truth…The press has been reluctant to look at the truth adequately… That is what the press is supposed to do. I’m personally against mincing words,” whereas, at too many mainstream outlets, “the pressure is to mince words.”

Granted, the word authoritarian upsets a lot of people. But what more empirical evidence do we need that the GOP wants to turn America into Turkey, Hungary, or worse? In plain sight, its state-level lawmakers are working to sabotage future free elections – ensuring that Republican state legislatures have the power to invalidate Democratic wins, installing local election officials who can refuse to certify Democratic wins, enacting a string of new voter suppression laws that are designed to protect their white minorities.

Meanwhile, the GOP’s national leaders remain in thrall to the loser who thinks the 2020 election was stolen, and they continue to pretend that the insurrectionist coup attempt was a mirage. As Edsall says, “stuffing things down the memory hole is precisely what authoritarianism does.” If we journalists don’t point that out, we’re not doing our jobs.

James Madison, who championed the Bill of Rights, warned more than two centuries ago that a free country starved of accurate knowledge “is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or perhaps both.”

Both indeed. The clock is ticking. (emphasis added)

 

Question: Does Polman make good points, or is he just a hyperbolic alarmist?

Corporate money slithers quietly back to feed hungry swamp creatures

A New York Times opinion piece describes the quiet, ongoing return of lobbyists and corporate cash into the coffers of Republicans who supported the 1/6 coup attempt. The swamp is refilling with sleazy, self-serving intentions backed by money. Pay-to-play politics, a/k/a/ legalized bribery, is coming back. The NYT writes:

The swamp is healing.

The early months of 2021 were rough for many members of Congress, as they confronted every politician’s worst nightmare: a major disruption to the usually reliable gusher of corporate campaign cash.

Following the Jan. 6 sacking of the U.S. Capitol by MAGA zealots high on Donald Trump’s lies about election fraud, a host of corporate PACs and industry groups announced reviews of their policies on political giving. From Bank of America to Disney, from Microsoft to Raytheon to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, many of the nation’s big donors hit the pause button. Some suspended all contributions to congressional races. Others drew up a more targeted “no-fly” list featuring members of the so-called Sedition Caucus, the 147 Republicans who voted on Jan. 6 to overturn the election results.

Further squelching the money flow, the coronavirus pandemic halted most in-person fund-raisers and other opportunities for lawmakers and favor seekers to hang out. Even if everyone puts on their best smiles — and pants — Zoom cocktail parties are a sad and sorry substitute for the usual parade of steak dinners, fishing trips, golf outings and other face-to-face schmooze fests. In the first quarter of 2021, corporate giving plummeted to individual members and campaign committees alike.

But as the election and pandemic traumas fade, corporate America is easing, quietly, back into the giving game. Lobbyists are suiting up. Fund-raising events are on the calendar. Wallets are reopening. It will take a while yet for the giving to return to its normal, obscene levels, but the trajectory is once more headed up — with the trend expected to accelerate in the coming months.

The editorial asserts that companies now think that the public outrage over the attack has subsided, making it safe to resume “currying favor” with Republicans, i.e., bribing, threatening, etc., without much shareholder and customer blowback. As the NYT writes: “After all, the Capitol was sacked more than five months ago. That’s an eternity in political time.” 

An analysis by Roll Call comments: “the top business and industry PACs contributing to the 147 G.O.P. lawmakers [who voted against certifying the election] were major defense contractors such as General Dynamics, as well as Duke Energy, American Crystal Sugar Company and PACs connected with the Associated Builders and Contractors and the National Association of Realtors.” 

Questions: Is it true that people are forgetting the horror of the 1/6 coup attempt? If so, is it now safe for quiet corporate money to quietly start flowing again to Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 election? Do corporations care more about profit and power than democracy and elections?

Radical Christian nationalism is dividing the Southern Baptist Convention

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is the largest Protestant denomination in the US. At its annual convention, the delegates elected a moderate pastor as its president by 556 votes out of about 14,000. The split in the SBC is deep and increasingly bitter. The moderate, Ed Litton, defeated ultraconservative Mike Stone in a runoff after a first round of voting failed to elect a candidate. Unlike Stone, Litton tries to avoid culture wars. The radical conservatives are aggressive about culture war. Some delegates on either side may leave the SBC depending on how the conference plays out.

The New York Times writes: 

In Nashville, tempers were running high. Irate messengers [convention delegates] confronted at least two high-profile leaders in the halls of the convention center, accusing them of fomenting liberalism. Some leaders were provided with extra security.

“We are at a defining moment for our convention,” J.D. Greear, the departing president, told the assembly in a fiery speech hours before they would elect his successor. He excoriated the “Pharisees” within the denomination who placed ideological purity over its evangelistic mission, alienating Black and Latino pastors, sexual abuse survivors and others in their zeal.

“Are we primarily a cultural and political affinity group, or do we see our primary calling as being a gospel witness?” Mr. Greear asked. “What’s the more important part of our name: Southern or Baptist?”

Tuesday’s vote capped months of angry debate over race, gender and other cultural divides, as the denomination’s leaders and insurgents wrestled over whether their future hinged on wrenching the church even further to the right or broadening its reach.

The same plague of far right radicalism that has rotted the Republican Party and converted it to a fascist cult is now rotting Evangelical Christianity. 

The delegates passed a resolution to reaffirm the SBC 1995 apology for systemic racism. The SBC was founded before the Civil War to defend slavery. The convention rejected “any theory or worldview” claiming that racial discrimination is not sinful. At its 2019 meeting, delegates affirmed that critical race theory could be cited by faithful Baptists. That was seen by ultraconservatives as polarizing and alienating. Race is still dividing many Americans. 

In the months leading up to the convention there has been high-profile departures from the SBC and poisonous clashes. That comes despite a culture that used to be united about the essentials of Southern Baptist faith. It is not yet clear what the effects of this convention will be on the SBC.

Even with the election of a moderate, the SBC still sees liberalism as a threat. Outgoing president Greear warned of twin threats to Southern Baptists as the danger of liberalism and the danger of Phariseeism.

The ultraconservatives make clear that they are not going away. At a breakfast meeting hosted by the Conservative Baptist Network, an ultraconservative SBC executive committee member told attendees to not be discouraged if their candidate lost. “If we do not prevail today, we will come back next year and the next year and the next year. .... We are here to the death. We will not stop.” 

That sounds about like the apocalyptic political and religious far right radicalism that drives the fascist GOP today. 

Bye, bye, baby? Birthrates are declining globally – here's why it matters

 

• Birthrates are falling globally.
• In many countries, COVID-19 has suppressed population growth by causing a decline in births, migration and life expectancy.
• Even before the pandemic, urbanization was driving population decline.

At the end of May, the Chinese Government announced that parents in China would now be permitted to have up to three children. This announcement came only five years after the stunning reversal of the 1980 one-child policy.

Something is clearly going on.

That something is that China has experienced a fertility collapse. According to the latest census released in May, China is losing roughly 400,000 people every year. China still claims its population is growing, but even if these projections are taken at face value, the population decline previously projected to start by midcentury may now begin as early as 2030. This means China could lose between 600 and 700 million people from its population by 2100.

That’s right: 600 and 700 million people, or about half of its total population today.

China’s population changes are not unique among the superpowers. According to the United States’ most recent census, the US birthrate has declined for six straight years and 19% since 2007 in total. Like China, the US birthrate is now well below replacement rate at 1.6. (China is now at 1.3.) For a country to naturally replace its population, its birthrate needs to be at least 2.1.

You can also add the world’s second-most populous country, India, to the list of low-fertility countries, with a birthrate at replacement rate (2.1). Also include Japan (1.3), Russia (1.6), Brazil (1.8), Bangladesh (1.7) and Indonesia (2.0).

There are still big countries with high birthrates, such as Pakistan (3.4) and Nigeria (5.1). But even these numbers are lower than they were in 1960 – when Pakistan was at 6.6 and Nigeria at 6.4 – and declining every year.

The role of COVID-19 in declining birthrates

The COVID-19 pandemic is serving as a modifier – but not in the way commentators and comedians suggested when lockdowns began.

Remember all the jokes about people being stuck at home leading to a baby boom? As the data rolls in, its clear that in many countries, the opposite has occurred. Most children these days are wanted or planned children, especially in the developed world. Deciding to have a baby is contingent on being optimistic about the future – and optimism is difficult to muster during a global pandemic. In fact, the Brookings Institute estimates that 300,000 babies were not born in the US as a result of economic insecurity related to the pandemic.

Could this be a short-term phenomenon ready for correction? Possibly. Some analysts are anticipating a mini baby boom once vaccines are widely available and restrictions are lifted. But even a mini baby boom is unlikely to fully compensate for the decline. Experience shows that when a couple defers having a child, for whatever reason, they typically don’t make it up later. The unborn baby remains unborn.

A decline in fertility is just one way the pandemic is suppressing population growth in many developed nations. The other: closed borders. In 2020, Australia recorded its first population decline since World War I, due to stricter COVID-related border controls. Canada granted permanent-resident status to 180,000 applicants in 2020, far short of the target of 381,000 – and most of the new permanent residents were already in the country on student or work visas.

A third, grim factor is also at work: the death toll of the disease itself. Researchers predict that life expectancy in the United States has declined by a full year as a result of COVID deaths. Racial minorities were particularly hard hit, with African American life expectancy suppressed by two years and Latino life expectancy by three years. Officially, the pandemic is responsible for more than 3 million deaths – but that figure could be far higher, since some countries may be under-reporting deaths. This is probable, for example, in India, where the pandemic is claiming 4,000 lives a day; many authorities believe the real count is far higher.

But it's not only the pandemic...

As John Ibbitson and I wrote in Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline, the forces driving population decline have been in place since at least the turn of the century.

The biggest force is urbanization. The largest migration in human history has happened over the last century and it continues today as people move from the country to the city. In 1960, one-third of humanity lived in a city. Today, it’s almost 60%. Moving from the country to the city changes the economic rewards and penalties for having large families. Many children on the farm means lots of free hands to do the work. Many children in the city means lots of mouths to feed. That’s why we do the economically rational thing when we move to the city: we have fewer kids.

Moving to the city also changes the lives of women, exposing them to a different version of life than their mothers and grandmothers lived in the country. Urban women are much more likely to have an education and a career, as well as easier access to contraception. Lower birthrates are the inevitable result. That’s why first-time mothers today are older and have fewer children, and teenage pregnancies have dramatically declined. In most developed countries, the birthrate of women over 40 has surpassed the rate of women age 20 and younger.

We can expect that a great defining moment of the 21st century will occur in three decades or so when the global population starts to decline. COVID might have even pushed the start of this decline forward – but it certainly didn’t cause it.

Why population decline matters

Why should you care about population decline? Fewer people are good for the climate, but the economic consequences are severe. In the 1960s, there were six people of working age for every retired person. Today, the ratio is three-to-one. By 2035, it will be two-to-one.

Some say we must learn to curb our obsession with growth, to become less consumer-obsessed, to learn to manage with a smaller population. That sounds very attractive. But who will buy the stuff you sell? Who will pay for your healthcare and pension when you get old?

Because soon, humanity will be a lot smaller and older than it is today.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/birthrates-declining-global-fertility-decline-empty-planet-covid-19-urbanization-migration-population/

Democracy failure update: GOP voter suppression laws are still in progress

In states where the Republican Party is in control, the New York Times reports about a slew of new voter suppression laws are aiming at suppressing disabled voters from voting. This is a big deal because there are about 38 million voters who are disabled. That is a big voting block. The GOP aims to make voting for as many of the disabled as hard as they can. Some of the proposed laws are rather creative in the barriers that are being put in place. 

For example, in Texas the legislature is planning a special session to pass laws that would disproportionately affect people with disabilities. One Texas bill bans drive-through voting, further limits absentee voting, and it would allow poll watchers video record voters as possible evidence of wrongdoing. The intent is to give Republican poll watchers a chance to allege that legal accommodations such as a poll worker helping a disabled voter complete a ballot, or a blind voter using a screen reader, is fraud. The law makes it a felony to commit this kind of “vote fraud.” The NYT writes on this tactic:

Breaking these rules would be a felony — a characteristic of bills in several states that advocates said could discourage people from helping friends or neighbors.

“It’s made organizations like ours start questioning, ‘Should we do that?’ because a simple mistake on our end could put them in jeopardy and our organization in jeopardy,” said Chase Bearden, deputy executive director of the Coalition of Texans With Disabilities. “That’s a pretty chilling effect.”

Indeed, being accused of committing felony vote fraud just for helping someone to vote would be chilling. That is the Republican intent. In recent elections, demands from the disabled community have increasingly exerted pressure on politicians to respond. But after the 2020 election where mail-in voting helped the disabled turn out in large numbers, new GOP voter suppression laws are threatening their rights in an attempt to limit their political influence. Similar measures are being advanced in the Georgia and Wisconsin legislatures.

In Florida, new absentee ballot applications rules required that people must apply every election cycle instead of every two elections. That imposes a significant obstacle because many counties’ websites are inaccessible to people with disabilities. In addition, people who have a hard time controlling their hand writing, e.g., people with visual impairment or brain injury, can be subject to signature verification challenges at the polls.

The Republican Party is clearly not yet finished with its intense nationwide campaign of voter suppression and vote subversion. It is probably the best tactic the GOP has to keep a minority of Republicans in power against the will of all Americans who want to vote.

The big question is how effective will Republican efforts to subvert democracy work? The elections in 2022 and 2024 should shed some light.

Environment update: Maine tries to shift recycling costs from taxpayers to plastics producers

Plastic waste - mostly not recyclable 

A Washington Post article discusses an attempt by the state of Maine to shift disposal and recycling costs to waste producers. Not surprisingly, producers staunchly oppose this move. This was prompted by the refusal of China to accept plastic waste for recycling. Recycling is more mirage than reality. Only about 9% of plastic waste is recyclable. The concept of recycling plastic has always been an oil and chemical industry lie. The concept was heavily sold propaganda to get Americans to be deceived into psychological comfort with single-use plastics. WaPo writes:

“It’s good that the bottom fell out,” said Rep. Nicole Grohoski (D-Ellsworth), the bill’s Democratic sponsor, whose district includes Trenton. She doesn’t believe the old system of shipping products halfway around the world to China made sense as countries try to reduce their carbon footprints.

“We have to face this problem and use our own ingenuity to solve it,” Grohoski said.

The proposed legislation, which is vehemently opposed by representatives for Maine’s retail and food producing industries, would charge large packaging producers for collecting and recycling materials as well as for disposing of non-recyclable packaging. The income generated would be reimbursed to communities like Trenton to support their recycling efforts. EPR [extended producer responsibility] programs already exist in many states for a variety of toxic and bulky products including pharmaceuticals, batteries, paint, carpet and mattresses. At least a dozen states, from New York to California and Hawaii, have been working on similar bills for packaging.

“Ten years ago, this would have been unthinkable,” said Dylan de Thomas, vice president of external affairs at the Recycling Partnership, who said he is seeing far more openness to EPR bills from such corporate giants as Coca-Cola and Unilever than in the past.

“It’s a reflection of the pressure they are seeing from corporate investors,” said de Thomas, who anticipates there may be similar shifts in national policies.

The plastic waste problem is worsening, if what one sees in grocery stores is an indicator. Smaller amounts of product means more waste per unit or ounce of product. A vast array, dozens or hundreds, of snacks and prepared foods are now available, mostly in single use, mostly non-recyclable packaging. Thousands and thousands of plastic water and beverage bottles. Just look at all the plastics in grocery stores and snack shops. Little of it is recyclable. So, off to the landfill or onto the streets the plastic goes.

Questions: Should the cost of recycling be pushed onto producers because they are the ones who generate the waste and tricked us into getting used to it? Or are us consumers responsible for dealing with plastic waste because we buy it? 

At present, people toss glass and plastic liquid bottles out and there's not enough deposit fee incentive to recycle. Would getting rid of plastic containers for water and beverages and replacing that with glass bottles, maybe with a non-trivial deposit fee for each bottle, be too inconvenient for most Americans to accept? 

Producers argue that costs to consumers would increase as producers pass the costs through. Opponents deny that. Is it better to do nothing or try to reduce plastic waste?