America is Falling Behind in Social Progress
This is going to be an article about an article, as usual, since I mostly just review the news here; but this time I read it in a printed magazine.
The first thing about the article is the graphic on the first page: it shows relative levels, by country, of “Access to Basic Knowledge” and “Health and Wellness” and shows the United States relative to other countries. For Access to Basic Knowledge, Japan is #1, and the US is #45; for Health and Wellness, Peru is #1 and the US is #68.
The title of the article is Putting Social Progress on Par with Prosperity. The man interviewed in the article is Lawrence University Professor Micheal E. Porter, who has developed a Social Progress Index or SPI, which measures social and environmental progress on multiple dimensions, all independent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and designed to evaluate how well a country takes care of and provides liberty for all of its citizens. 133 countries were ranked on this multidimensional scale, and the US came out sixteenth overall; by comparison, the US has the sixth highest gross domestic product per capita. Basic needs, including food, water, shelter, safety; basic education, health, and sustainable environment; freedom of choice, freedom from discrimination, access to higher education: these are the three dimensions rated on the main scale.
Porter says, “We had a lot of firsts in social progress over the years in America, but we kind of lost our rhythm and momentum.” The article continues, “About 20-30 years ago for reasons Porter says he cannot completely explain, the rate of progress in America began to slow down. As a society, he points out, Americans slowly became more divided, and important priorities such as healthcare, education, and politics suffered.”
The mechanism behind society’s downfall starts with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. For the last thirty-five years, Republicans in particular and rich people in general have been chipping away at the wealth of the “middle class” and below and creating more ways to prevent poor people from voting. The top 1% had 10% of the pre-tax income in 1979 and, in 2007 reached a high of 23.5% pre-tax and 16.7% post-tax, among the most lightly taxed top 1% in the world.
The amounts of money that could be reaped by a reasonable increase in taxes have been minimized by Republican critics of Democratic tax policy, but in fact considerable sums can be raised by small increases: for example, if the top rate went from 33% to 40%, $156 billion a year would be had, a long ways towards eliminating the current deficit of $400 billion a year.
Porter says that a long history of “anti-progressive politics” and “bad economic policy” has caused the fragmentation of society and prevents reform of the justice and policing systems (that has the highest rate of imprisonment in the world) and the educational system(which is not doing well), not to mention our infrastructure, and most importantly, our tax system. At the same time, the US is more threatened now, economically and militarily, than it has been in many years.
Ironically, Russia has returned as a military threat after being defeated by Reagan’s military posturing and heavy spending on military threats like the “Peacekeeper” multiple-reentry vehicle nuclear missile.
Eventually, a demographic shift towards Mexicans will overwhelm Republican gerrymandering of the House and obstructionism in the Senate; by then, conditions may be so bad that radical measures will be needed to restore the country towards normalcy.
Porter says that he is working with “leaders on the national level” in several countries, including Brazil, Colombia, and Paraguay, where the SPI is a central part of their “national development plan.” He says, “We’re encouraged– but we’ve got a long way to go.”
The article can be reached here: http://harvardmagazine.com/2015/11/putting-social-progress-on-par-with-prosperity
Accelerated dryland expansion under climate change : Nature Climate Change : Nature Publishing Group
Drylands are home to more than 38% of the total global population and are one of the most sensitive areas to climate change and human activities1, 2. Projecting the areal change in drylands is essential for taking early action to prevent the aggravation of global desertification3, 4. However, dryland expansion has been underestimated in the Fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) simulations5 considering the past 58 years (1948–2005). Here, using historical data to bias-correct CMIP5 projections, we show an increase in dryland expansion rate resulting in the drylands covering half of the global land surface by the end of this century. Dryland area, projected under representative concentration pathways (RCPs) RCP8.5 and RCP4.5, will increase by 23% and 11%, respectively, relative to 1961–1990 baseline, equalling 56% and 50%, respectively, of total land surface. Such an expansion of drylands would lead to reduced carbon sequestration and enhanced regional warming6, 7, resulting in warming trends over the present drylands that are double those over humid regions. The increasing aridity, enhanced warming and rapidly growing human population will exacerbate the risk of land degradation and desertification in the near future in the drylands of developing countries, where 78% of dryland expansion and 50% of the population growth will occur under RCP8.5.
via Accelerated dryland expansion under climate change : Nature Climate Change : Nature Publishing Group.
This is a “preview” or abstract of a letter to Nature Climate Change which predicts a 23% increase in arid lands by 2100 under the “business as usual” scenario (RCP8.5) The increase in dry lands is primarily at the southern border of the Sahara Desert and at the northern borders of the Middle East, as well as eastern Siberia. There are also large increases in dry lands in Northern Canada and Newfoundland. Oddly, western Australia will become more moist, while eastern Australia will dry out further.
Marked limitation of greenhouse gas emissions would reduce the dry land increases from 23% to 11%, which would be a dramatic improvement if it were possible.
A Nature Climate Change letter posted online today (and reported in the New York Times) predicts that, under a business-as-usual scenario, temperatures will increase in the area around the Arabian Gulf to the point that human habitation will be impossible. The combination of temperature and humidity known as the wet-bulb temperature will exceed 35 degrees Celsius in places such as Doha, Qatar around the Arabian Gulf by 2100. Previous predictions did not have the temperature increasing so rapidly; intolerable temperatures were not predicted until 2200. The letter reports a new, more detailed analysis of future weather conditions. The temperature increase is not as great a consequence in the affluent parts of the Gulf as it is in poorer areas like Aden and coastal Yemen; more well-to-do inhabitants will at least have air conditioning. Those who cannot retreat to air-conditioned houses during the heat of the day will probably be driven out of these areas in the summer.
It is already hot in this part of the world; temperatures sometimes exceed 55 degrees Celsius. In the coastal areas of the Arabian Gulf, humid air makes the heat even more stressful. The Muslim pilgrimage, or hajj, frequently occurs in the summertime in this area and higher temperatures are expected to cause severe heat stress for pilgrims who are obligated to perform outdoor rituals during daylight hours. There are over two million people participating in the hajj every year, and a 2 degrees Celsius increase in average maximum temperature is likely to cause additional distress.
Ironically, this area is also the site of some of the largest and easiest to reach oil deposits in the world. Burning this oil has helped to bring on the climate change which is threatening to make the area uninhabitable.
Earlier this week, Jeb Bush attempted to capitalize on the recent email controversy by tweeting “Transparency matters. Unclassified @HillaryClinton emails should be released. You can see mine, here jebbushemails.com.” Bush’s attempt to score quick political points exposes him to a powerful hypocrisy attack. As governor, Bush used private emails; thus far he has not disclosed them all. There is even early media speculation that Bush’s actions may have skirted Florida law.
via MEMO: Jeb Bush Hypocrisy on Email Disclosure | American Bridge PAC.
During his tenure as governor of Florida, Jeb Bush used a private email server for all of his public and private emails– over three million of them. He has released some 250,000 private emails, less than ten percent of the total. Yet his Republican cronies have castigated Hillary Clinton for using a private email account when she was Secretary of State, as if she was doing something unheard-of, dangerously insecure, and possibly illegal.
Well, that’s not so. It wasn’t illegal, it wasn’t against policy, and it wasn’t even that unusual. Colin Powell did it. Ex-Governor of Wisconsin Scott Walker did it, and he’s “at the center of a Wisconsin controversy” over his use of a private email address. Florida Senator Marco Rubio deleted emails from his private account that he deemed unsuitable for release. Governors Bobby Jindal and Rick Perry did it too. Mitt Romney destroyed the hard drives from his government-owned computer when he left office as Governor of Massachusetts.
There’s plenty of suspicion to go around: high government officials from both parties have deleted or decided not to release millions of emails that may have revealed inconvenient aspects of their governing behavior while in office. The Bush Administration lost millions of emails, a story which was largely ignored by the “Beltway media.” As many as 22 million emails were sent using a private email server, possibly a violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978. This damaging information didn’t come to light until after Bush had left office.
See these stories in the blogs for MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and Wikipedia for more information.
Mark Regev, the prime minister’s spokesman, referred reporters to Mr. Netanyahu’s 1993 book, “A Place Among the Nations,” which details the mufti’s close ties to Nazis and uses Nuremberg testimony to buttress the argument that the mufti protested plans to expel Jews from Europe and promoted the Final Solution.
“The mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser” in the “execution of this plan,” the book quotes Adolf Eichmann’s deputy, Dieter Wisliceny, as having testified. “He was one of Eichmann’s best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures.”
But the book says that the mufti “met Hitler in person for the first time” on Nov. 28, 1941 — two months before the Final Solution was formalized and the construction of extermination camps accelerated, according to historians, but after the mass murder of Jews had begun, and roughly one million had perished.
Professor Zimmermann, the Hebrew University historian, said on Israel Radio that Mr. Netanyahu was “doing something he must not do,” and that in “the protocol” of the 1941 meeting between the mufti and Hitler, “the text that Netanyahu speaks of does not appear.”
“He moves the responsibility of the Holocaust, for the destruction of the Jews, to the mufti and the Arab world,” Professor Zimmermann said. “This is a trick intended to stain the Arabs of today because of the Arabs of the past. To pile on the Arabs of the past by easing up on the Germans of the past.”
via Netanyahu Denounced for Saying Palestinian Inspired Holocaust – The New York Times.
What’s the argument? Adolf Hitler wanted to exterminate the Jews. The “Palestinian” Grand Mufti of Jerusalem wanted to exterminate the Jews. The Grand Mufti worked with Adolf Eichman. The Grand Mufti influenced Adolf Hitler to exterminate rather than expel the Jews? Maybe.
If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.
via Stephen Hawking Says We Should Really Be Scared Of Capitalism, Not Robots.
Yes, it’s true, the smartest man in the world thinks that capitalism is bad. Therefore, we should follow his advice, or he’s not the smartest man in the world– take your pick.
The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for September 2015 was the highest for September in the 136-year period of record, at 0.90°C (1.62°F) above the 20th century average of 15.0°C (59.0°F), surpassing the previous record set last year in 2014 by 0.12°C (0.19°F).
via Global Analysis – September 2015 | National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).
In addition, the New York Times claims that “Scientists say it is now all but certain that the full year will be the hottest on record, too.” So there cannot be any doubt that global warming is occurring, at least over the last 136 years that temperatures have been recorded. In addition, there is strong evidence that temperatures have been rising since about 1750 and are the highest that they have been in about 800,000 years, coinciding with a peak in global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. Human processes have been pouring carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, by burning first wood, then coal, then operating internal combustion engines, and not least by production of concrete and cement. At the same time, human processes have been impairing the extraction of carbon dioxide by cutting down the world’s forests; so far, about half of all forests have been eliminated. The net effect of these human activities has been a 3-4% imbalance of carbon dioxide production over removal, resulting in a 1 to 1-1/2 part per million per year increase in carbon dioxide concentrations.
The train of cause and effect that connects carbon dioxide concentrations to rising average temperatures operates very slowly. Industrial processes will continue for many years and carbon dioxide levels will continue to increase for many years. Unless action is taken by all countries and emissions are reduced, carbon dioxide will increase from the current 400 ppm to 800-1200 ppm by the year 2100. Even if emissions are dramatically eliminated, carbon dioxide levels will remain the same for a long time because of its long half life of 100-300 years. Temperatures will continue to increase for a long time as well because the effects of high carbon dioxide take a long time to manifest themselves.
The only way to prevent continuing temperature increases and worsening ill effects is to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere directly by sequestering it on a massive scale or finding some other method to remove it from the atmosphere. An example would be abiotic photosynthesis by chemical methods. Planting enormous numbers of rapidly growing trees is another possibility: reforestation on a massive scale with genetically enhanced trees is potentially feasible. There are deficiencies in the degree of carbon dioxide sequestration in most species of trees that can be remedied by judicious genetic engineering. Planting trees that fix carbon dioxide more efficiently would multiply the effects of afforestation.
There is an argument that afforestation causes net warming because a forest has lower albedo than a non-forest. This argument seems specious because the relative effects of sunlight absorption are different in a living versus a nonliving absorbing surface. Absorbing sunlight leads to photosynthesis in one case, whereas in the other, it merely increases temperature.
In any case, the relative contributions of lowered albedo and lowered carbon dioxide concentration can be measured. Whether afforestation can reduce global average atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations enough to ameliorate the environment is academic, however; the policy will never be pursued because governments are not effective enough. The only organizations with enough power to affect climate change are transnational corporations. It is unlikely that such corporations will find it in their interest.
How many constitutional violations will it take before the New Orleans district attorney’s office is held to account for the culture of negligence and outright dishonesty that has pervaded it for decades?
Source: Justice Gone Wrong in New Orleans – The New York Times
Former District Attorney Harry Connick, Sr. was responsible for systematic flouting of the Brady rule, which requires prosecutors to turn over potentially exculpatory evidence to the defense. At least 36 convictions have been overturned as a result of such violations. Only in September 2015 was a crucial memo revealed that in 1996 supported the defense against a life sentence imposed on an innocent man by the New Orleans prosecutors. Yet the Supreme Court denied that this evidence of systematic wrongdoing existed in their 2011 case in which they overturned a $14 million judgement against the New Orleans District Attorney’s Office. By a 5-4 margin the Supreme Court denied the obvious and consistent evidence showing that the New Orleans District Attorney ignored his responsibilities towards innocent citizens and repeatedly failed to turn over exculpatory evidence.
Here is a quote from a judge’s scathing opinion about this systematic misconduct by prosecutors:
When a public official behaves with such casual disregard for his constitutional obligations and the rights of the accused, it erodes the public’s trust in our justice system, and chips away at the foundational premises of the rule of law. When such transgressions are acknowledged yet forgiven by the courts, we endorse and invite their repetition.
It’s not just the District Attorney’s Office of every jurisdiction either. The investigators and forensic experts who examine the evidence and compile reports are often sloppy or incompetent. From the next paragraph of the same judge’s opinion:
Olsen’s case points to another important problem—that of rogue investigators and forensic experts. Melinkoff’s long history of misconduct, resulting in the wrongful conviction of numerous innocent people, is hardly unique. Just last month, Annie Dookhan, a Massachusetts crime-lab technician, was sentenced to 3–5 years imprisonment after spending several years filing positive results for samples she had not properly tested. Her misconduct tainted over 40,000 drug samples, implicating several thousand defendants (hundreds of whom have already been released).
The judge goes on to recount dozens of other cases in which forensic evidence has been found to be mishandled or falsified, resulting in wrongful convictions for hundreds or thousands of defendants. Finally, from the same judge’s report:
Because modern criminal trials frequently turn on forensic reports, these incidents of misconduct raise the frightening prospect that many of the over 1.5 million people now populating state and federal prisons might, in fact, be innocent. See E. Ann Carson & Daniela Golinelli, Prisoners in 2012—Advance Counts, Bureau of Justice Statistics (July 2013). How do rogue forensic scientists and other bad cops thrive in our criminal justice system? The simple answer is that some prosecutors turn a blind eye to such misconduct because they’re more interested in gaining a conviction than achieving a just result.
These stinging accusations are part of a dissent filed December 10, 2013, in the case of US v. Olsen, which can be found here. It seems that there is no crime venal enough to be punished if it is committed by a United States District Attorney. It is very likely that a significant proportion of the record number of prisoners we have behind bars are innocent. Another, unknowable, number are guilty, and there is no reliable method of distinguishing guilt from innocence except to review every case in excruciating detail. Even then, many cases must be concluded as uncertain because of doubtful methods and unreliable informants.
With all of these uncertainties, I think it is likely that the disproportion in criminal offenses between black and white citizens is more notional than real. Despite the fact that blacks, being more economically challenged, are more likely to violate the law for economic reasons, there is reason to doubt some of the convictions for other reasons.
There remains the disproportion in black victims of homicidal violence, usually mediated with firearms. These victims demonstrate less economic motive and more anger and violent impulses. Are the perpetrators of these black on black homicides impelled by anger to take out their frustration on the most proximate victims?
The concept of black on black homicide as a form of racial suicide has not been adequately explored. There is deep, personal violence imposed on blacks every day, in countless social encounters with whites who represent an oppressive system. Having no available outlet, his resentment turns inward and flails at the only target, himself. This suicidal violence has no explanation except as internalized anger.
Comment of the Day: A Dismal Prediction
John F. McBride
is a trusted commenter Seattle [10/16/2015]
Over $300,000,000 has been donated so far to buy the White House in 2016 and over $176,000,000 came from just 158 households of 20,000,000 households in the U.S.
138 families, 87%, were giving to Republicans.
Bernie is right; taking down Glass-Steagall was a huge mistake, Shadow Banking not withstanding. The destruction of it was a decades long process that warned us with the failure of the Savings & Loans in the Reagan area what was in store.
Not even the failure in 1998 of Long Term Capital could scare the financial world. Why would it be afraid? The Fed arranged LTC’s rescue.
The U.S. is a Democracy only in name. We live in an era in which for the first time in history the majority of Congress is seated with millionaires. When a Jaime Dimon worth over $1 billion and a family living under a freeway come calling on Congress who is most likely to be listened to and favored?
The Koch brothers alone are alleged to have slated over $1 billion to invest in elections.
Yet, survey the damage of financial regulation and anti-labor legislation and what do you see? Of the states hurt worst by The Great Crash most voters favor Republicans; they choose elected officials most likely to hurt them.
Paul’s right; regardless of whether a Democrat gets elected, Bernie or Hillary, the best we can hope for is to keep a thumb in the dike. If Republicans win control of the White House in addition to the Senate, House and Supreme Court this Oligarchy will be cemented in place.
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