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The 10 Most Important Lines From Pope Francis’ Historic Speech to Congress

by MaryannR68 Posted on September 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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In a powerful speech to a joint session of Congress Thursday morning, Pope Francis pushed the United States to confront several political issues that tend to divide Republicans and Democrats, including immigration, climate change, the Iran deal, Cuba, poverty, and the death penalty. His speech noted that politics “cannot be a slave to the economy and finance.” He didn’t chastise any political party, and he, not surprisingly, had a clear but brief reference to opposing abortion. But overall, his address had a progressive cast.

Here are the most powerful quotes, according to the prepared text:

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The 10 Most Important Lines From Pope Francis’ Historic Speech to Congress

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For Blue-Collar Men, Life Looks Increasingly Dismal

by AugustuHague Posted on September 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Here’s a merger of two charts that have made the rounds recently. The first, from Brookings, shows a familiar pattern: the median pay of a man employed full-time has dropped substantially since 2010. The second, from the Kaiser Family Foundation, shows that health care deductibles have risen substantially since 2010.

Put them together and you get the chart on the right. The light red line is bad enough: blue-collar men earn about $3,000 less than they did five years ago. The dark red line is even worse: if you factor in rising deductibles, they’re earning $3,500 less than they did five years ago.

This explains a lot of the discontent of the past five years, especially among working and middle-class white workers. In theory, health care is getting better every year, and if you take that into account then wages start to look a little better. Technically, this is true. But think about it from the average worker’s point of view:

His cash wages have gone down.
Health care may be getting better, but that’s mostly invisible. It doesn’t seem any different than usual.
But high deductibles provide an incentive not to see the doctor when something minor is bothering you. So, in practice, health care actually seems not merely the same as always, but actually a bit worse and a bit more of a hassle. Either you ignore the minor stuff or else you go in and, thanks to higher deductibles, end up paying an infuriatingly high bill.

For your average blue-collar man, here’s what life seems like: wages are down, health care is more expensive, and you have to spend a lot more time worrying about whether it’s worth it to see your doctor. There’s not much to like in this picture.

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For Blue-Collar Men, Life Looks Increasingly Dismal

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The Average Family Pays a Federal Income Tax Rate of 5%

by KentonFilson Posted on September 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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Ross Douthat writes today about the split on taxes between the Republican donor class and the average Republican voter:

The donorist vision, in my experience, has its own distinctives: It’s less interested in the specifics of the Laffer curve or any other economic theory, and more inclined to take a vaguely Randian view of high taxes as an unjust punishment for success….

Then the average Republican voter has a different perspective still….This prototypical Republican voter, who might be pulling in $45,000 working a trade or $95,000 running a small business (or vice versa), isn’t necessarily being soaked by the federal income tax, but he or she remains an anti-tax voter because even small tax fluctuations year to year feel like an immediate threats to the ability to save, to plan, to expand or preserve a business, to buy a home and put money away for college and think about retirement and generally preserve their peace of mind.

Douthat’s post was inspired by Donald Trump’s heresies on taxes, but I wouldn’t read too much into that. As I noted yesterday, it looks to me as if Trump is slowly but steadily moving in the direction of Republican orthodoxy with only a few minor populist concessions.

But I was happy to see Douthat acknowledge that the average Republican voter is not exactly being soaked by taxes. As it happens, that’s putting it mildly. The median family in America earns about $65,000. That family, on average, pays a federal income tax rate of about 5 percent.

In other words, for the average voter this isn’t about money. Even the hardest core tea partiers can’t possibly be outraged at the prospect of paying 5 percent of their income to Uncle Sam. The plain truth is that middle-class tax cuts are becoming all but impossible these days: the average family no longer pays enough in taxes to even notice a small change up or down. And the trend over the past few decades has been nothing but down anyway.

And yet, taxes continue to be a potent message. Why? It’s not because of payroll taxes. Numerous polls have shown that most voters consider these fair because they pay for Social Security and Medicare benefits down the road. Nor do state income taxes change the overall picture much.

Republicans have been in this quandary for a while. Cutting taxes is pretty much all they’ve got on the economic front, but there’s not a whole lot left to cut for the average Joe. And yet, the anti-tax message really does continue to resonate. Why? I’d suggest two things.

First, most people are bad at math. They may be paying about 5 percent of their income in federal taxes, but if you ask them, they’d probably guess it’s more like 20 or 30 percent. Republicans have long complained that weekly withholding makes taxes invisible, and they have a point. But right now, that works in their favor.

Second, a lot of people are afraid that Democrats will raise their taxes. This prospect carries more punch than the prospect of a cut from Republicans.

In any case, even though Donald Trump is coming around to Republican orthodoxy on taxes, I do think he’s highlighting a real dilemma for Republicans. Raising taxes on hedge fund managers is no big deal. They can be thrown under the bus if necessary. But the other half of Trump’s message is about reducing taxes on average middle-class families. That may still be a potent message, but even now it’s not as potent as it was 30 years ago. And going forward, Democrats are eventually going to figure out a way to make it clear that federal income taxes really aren’t very onerous anymore.1 When that happens, it’s bye bye tax cuts for the rich—because the only way you can sell tax cuts for the rich is to hide them behind tax cuts for the middle class. For simple mathematical reasons, that particular con is coming to an end.

1Of course, they haven’t figured this out yet, so maybe I’m being too optimistic.

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The Average Family Pays a Federal Income Tax Rate of 5%

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10 Tips For Using Less Plastic

by ROWDarcisvg Posted on August 27, 2015

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10 Tips For Using Less Plastic

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You Need to Read This Former NFL Lineman’s Heartbreaking Message About Race and Bullying

by CoyFruehauf9 Posted on August 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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Jonathan Martin, the ex-professional football player known best for being at the center of a major NFL bullying investigation, retired earlier this summer. At the time, reports indicated that the 26-year-old Pittsburgh native was quitting due to a back injury that would have kept him off the field for the entire upcoming season. But many thought that the bullying scandal—according to an NFL investigation, some of his Miami Dolphins teammates constantly taunted him with jokes about his sexuality and race—had much more to do with it.

Martin posted a candid, raw note to Twitter on Wednesday, revealing that he’d attempted suicide on “multiple occasions” and writing that he hoped telling his side of the story might “help some other chubby, goofy, socially-isolated, sensitive kid getting bullied in America who feels like no one in the world cares about them.” Read more of his note below (the actual tweet is embedded at the bottom):

You move to Los Angeles at 10 & attend JTD, then Harvard Westlake, both environments that are completely new to you. You’re one of just a handful of minorities in elite private schools. You learn to tone down your size & blackness by becoming shy, introverted, friendly, so you won’t scare the little rich white kids or their parents. Neither black nor white people accept you because they don’t understand you. It takes away your self-confidence, your self-worth, your sanity.

You’ve been told you’re not “black enough” your entire life. It nearly destroys you, many times, not fitting in. Your talent & accomplishments on the field never seem to be able to overcome the demons that you carry with you from your middle school and high school experience. You’re always inadequate, always the “pussy,” the “weird kid who acts white.”

You overcompensate, create a persona separate from who you really are, use it as motivation to gain respect from playing a game. Make a fool of yourself at times. Anything in the quest to one day to feel “cool.” You see football as the only thing that you are good at, your only avenue to make the shy, depressed, weird kid from high school “cool.” To the outside world, many assume you to be somewhat egotistical, womanizing, over-the-top; a typical football player.

Years later, your time in the NFL is a wake up call. In all likelihood, anyone else in your shitty locker room situation probably wouldn’t take everything so personally, would’ve been able to brush it off and say “fuck it, you’re making millions. You’re starting as a rookie. You’re living your dream.” But you’re different. Have always been different. Have always been more sensitive.

You thought your same work ethic that had made you a two-time All-American, a 2nd Rd NFL draft pick, would earn you respect. After all, you have achieved what only a select few other first-year players achieved: starting all 16 games, barely missing a snap.

You are very wrong. You realize years later, reflecting on your experiences, that sometimes you need to take what you want, what you earned, from people who refuse to give it to you. You need to demand respect, and be willing to fight for it every day. The whitewashed, hermetically-sealed bubble you grew up in and were educated in did not provide any of those lessons.

You were raised in a good household. You know that you are a flawed person. Have done stupid, regrettable things. But you know right from wrong. And consider integrity to be incredibly important. The worst thing of all, in your mind, is being called a liar.

Your job leads you to attempt to kill yourself on multiple occasions. Your self-perceived social inadequacy dominates your every waking moment & thought. You’re petrified of going to work. You either sleep 12, 14, 16, hours a day when you can, or not at all. You drink too much, smoke weed constantly, have trouble focusing on doing your job, playing the sport that you grew up obsessed with.

But one day, you realize how absurd your current mindset is, that this shit doesn’t matter. People don’t matter. Money doesn’t matter. Fame and notoriety sure as hell don’t matter. Nothing matters besides your family, a few close friends, and your own personal happiness.

You play another year and a half and get badly injured. You want to keep playing, but having broken free of the addiction that football had been, you know inside that risking permanent debilitating injury isn’t worth it. So you retire.

You realize that your experiences have taught you that you need to leave the baggage behind. “Friends” who you played high school football with saying whatever to get their name in an article. Former coaches blowing up your phone trying to be your financial advisor. Your god father suddenly appearing your senior year of college out of thin air bearing gifts, trying to get tickets to your games & slyly asking your parents to manage your money.

You realize who truly has had your back. Who the people are who you need to embrace. And cherish every moment you have had with them. You let your demons go, knowing that, perhaps, sharing your story can help some other chubby, goofy, socially-isolated, sensitive kid getting bullied in America who feels like no one in the world cares about them.

And let them know that they aren’t alone.

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You Need to Read This Former NFL Lineman’s Heartbreaking Message About Race and Bullying

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Scott Walker’s Abortion Flimflam Explained! (Maybe.)

by JuliannDiggs Posted on August 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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I had almost given up on anyone helping me understand what Scott Walker meant when he explained why he opposed abortion exceptions not just for rape and incest, but also to save the life of the mother. “There are many other alternatives that can also protect the life of that mother,” Walker said during Thursday’s debate. “That’s been consistently proven.”

But then a reader came to my rescue, and it turns out that Jonathan Allen had it right in the first place. It really does derive from the Catholic doctrine of intent in medical care. Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association provides the nickel explanation:

The reality [] is that an abortion is never necessary to save the life of the mother. This is, quite simply, a choice that a mother and her doctor never have to make, and Ms. Kelly has contributed to the already widespread ignorance on this subject.

The nearest circumstance would be what are called ectopic pregnancies, the anomaly in which the fertilized egg attaches to the Fallopian tube and never implants in the womb of the mother. Removal of the Fallopian tube is necessary to preserve the mother’s life and thus is a procedure that indirectly — not directly — causes the death of an unborn child. This technically is not even an abortion, because the procedure is done for the purpose of removing the Fallopian tube, not killing the baby.

As Lauren Enriquez writes, “The abortion procedure is not — ever — necessary to save the life of a mother…A true abortion — in which the direct intention is to end the life of a human being — is not a treatment for any type of maternal health risk.”

Now this explanation I understand. The key step in this tap dance is to declare that some procedures that terminate a pregnancy aren’t “true” abortions. Even if you know ahead of time that a procedure will abort the fetus, it’s not really an abortion as long as abortion isn’t your intent.

In other words, I just didn’t have my cynicism meter turned up high enough. When Walker said there are always “alternatives” that can protect the life of the mother, he was only talking about true abortions. He wasn’t talking about medical procedures that kill the fetus only as a side effect. Those aren’t true abortions, so they’re not part of the class of procedures for which there are alternatives.

Yeesh. If this is really the explanation, it takes political misdirection to a new level. All that’s left now is to explain what Walker meant by “This has been consistently proven.” That makes it sound very science-y, but this has nothing to do with science. It has to do with the meaning of the word “abortion.” Walker has chosen a specific term-of-art definition that’s quite different from how most people understand the word. This allows him to say something that seems to mean one thing but actually means another.

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Scott Walker’s Abortion Flimflam Explained! (Maybe.)

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The View From the Top

by JanisUnaipon Posted on August 8, 2015

Mother Jones

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The down-trodden and marginalized have long been fodder for documentary photo projects. A new photo exhibit curated by Myles Little explores the other side of economic inequality. The photos in 1%: Privilege in a Time of Global Inequality provide a rarified though nuanced glimpse into a world inhabited by a few. The collection of photos, cut from an initial round of 2,000 images, does not just present ostentatiousness but includes subtler signifiers of wealth along with a few quiet glances at poverty.

The collection is currently appearing in galleries in China, Dubai, Nigeria, and other international locations and will be coming to Chicago next spring. A book is being funded on Kickstarter campaign. I spoke with Little, the associate photo editor at Time, about how the exhibit came about and what he hoped it would accomplish.

A man floats in the 57th floor swimming pool of the Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands Hotel Paolo Woods & Gabriele Galimberti/INSTITUTE

Mother Jones: You’ve been working on putting this exhibit together for two years. How did it come about?

Myles Lyttle: I was on vacation in Oaxaca, Mexico, and I introduced myself to a gallerist there named Daniel Brena. We went out for lunch and talked about things that interested us. Out of that conversation came this idea to focus on wealth photographically. Since then, the image choices, organizational framework, and logistics of the show have been my own. But that’s the original seed of the project.

Cheshire, Ohio, 2009 Daniel Shea

MJ: How did you decide on the specific photographers you chose for the exhibit?

ML: It took a lot of work and tons of online research. It really was going down the rabbit hole. I wound up with 2,000 images, a huge variety of aesthetics, moods, and topics within the world of wealth. I wanted the form of the show to mirror its content as far as its spirit. I wanted the show to feel posh, well-crafted, quiet. So I decided to only use medium format photography, which tends to feel a little more considered, a little less spontaneous—maybe a little more stately. I just set these very strict rules whereby I had to cut a lot of strong work.

You could say it’s my response to the famous Edward Steichen exhibit at the MoMA called The Family of Man. It’s this huge, sprawling, very inclusive, democratic, curated show of photos from all over the world that argues, “We’re all in this together,” no matter where you’re from, no matter who you are—rich, poor, old, young. I had tremendous respect for that show and the ambitiousness of it. But I do feel that its thesis is not so accurate, at least these days. I feel that the social fabric is tearing. A quick look at statistics proves this. Do you know the six members of the Walton family who inherited the Wal-Mart fortune? They own more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of America. Given that, it’s very hard to argue that we’re all in one boat together. I think the privileged these days speak a different language, live in different part of the world, play by different rules, have different opportunities and live in a different legal universe than the rest of us.

A 25-year-old British man undergoes surgery to reduce the size of his nose Zed Nelson

MJ: What kind of response you hope to generate, especially given that most people who go to photo galleries and exhibits tend to be at least upper middle class or people of wealth?

ML: All I hope to do is start a conversation about fairness, about our priorities in society, what we value, the values that we celebrate. Are we celebrating a segment of the population that we largely don’t understand and have very little chance of joining in our lifetime? Or do we celebrate something else, a segment of the population that works hard and contributes but finds themselves barely holding on or slowly slipping backwards?

Untitled #5, from “Hedge” Nina Berman/NOOR

MJ: Joseph Stieglitz wrote the forward to the book you’re publishing via Kickstarter. How’d you get him on board?

ML: I found his email and I said, “Hi, I’m Myles.” From everything I’ve heard, Dr. Stieglitz is a very warm and gracious person. I haven’t met him in person. He agreed almost immediately. He’s a Nobel Prize-winning inequality expert with a book called The Great Divide. The other essay in the project is written by Geoff Dyer, the British essayist and photography expert. He’s just a marvelous writer.

Paradise Now Nr. 18. 2008 Peter Bialobrzeski

Shanghai Falling (Fuxing Lu Demolition), 2002 Greg Girard

Gated homes in Henderson, Nevada Michael Light, from Lake Las Vegas/Black Mountain, Radius Books

Scrapper, Packard Motor Car Company plant, Detroit, 2009 Andrew Moore, courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery

Legless star cleaner on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, 2005 Juliana Sohn

A street preacher in New York City appeals to Wall Street to repent, 2011 Christopher Anderson/Magnum Photos

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The View From the Top

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Today’s Assignment: A Definition of Family That Everyone Can Love

by MariSepulveda Posted on July 8, 2015

Mother Jones

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Will Saletan tweets unhappily that his son was “marked down 5 percent on a high school health test because he chose this ‘incorrect’ definition of family.” David French is unhappy too:

How reassuring that our educators — in their infinite wisdom — have expanded the definition of “family” to “a collection of individuals who care for and about each other.” But to paraphrase The Incredibles — If everyone is family, then no one is. I’ve “cared for and about” my classmates in high school, college, and law school. I’ve “cared for and about” my colleagues at every job I’ve held. I guess we’re all family now.

Look, this is probably just a lousy question. Even Saletan and French, I assume, would agree that answer C is obviously incorrect. Adopted children are family. In-laws are family. Stepfathers are family. “Related by blood” just flatly doesn’t work.

On the other hand, yes, answer E seems mighty broad—though I’m not sure if there’s any decent way to succinctly define family at all. I’ll note that my dictionary needs four separate definitions just to encompass the usage we’re talking about here (i.e., not including crime syndicates, taxonomic classifications, etc.).

But there’s no need to get too outraged about this. There’s certainly value in teaching our kids that sharing DNA isn’t the exclusive definition of family. And while we should probably be able to do better than answer E, the more I think about it, the harder it gets. Anyone want to take a stab? We all promise not to laugh.

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Today’s Assignment: A Definition of Family That Everyone Can Love

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Change Your Shopping Habits to Reduce Food Waste

by DBNTimothy Posted on July 6, 2015

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Change Your Shopping Habits to Reduce Food Waste

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