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A Tip for Parents as the School Year Begins: You’re Not Totally in Control, and That’s Okay

by WendyWWQHcs Posted on September 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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For more than a quarter century, psychologist and author Ross Greene specialized in the most challenging children. Last year, I wrote about how his collaborative approach to discipline is diverting the school-to-prison pipeline. Schools trained in his method reported suspensions falling by as much as 80 percent. And after implementing his model, youth prisons and an adolescent psychiatric ward saw recidivism, injuries, and the need for restraints drop by more than half.

Greene’s new book, Raising Human Beings: Creating a Collaborative Partnership With Your Child, addresses a broader audience and articulates a discipline and parenting framework for all children. One day, after he dropped his oldest child off at college, he spoke to me about the biggest parenting challenges, raising kids in a scary world, what parents should know as they face the back-to-school season, and what truly builds grit in children.

Mother Jones: This is your first book for a general parenting audience, as opposed to focusing on behaviorally challenging kids. What is different here?

Ross Greene: For a very long time, people have been saying to me, “What if you want to do this approach with every kid?” For a behaviorally challenging kid, you’re parenting this way just to help bring the kid’s behavior under control and to greatly reduce conflict. But you want to teach all kids the skills that are on the better side of human nature: empathy, appreciating how one’s behavior is affecting other people, resolving disagreements in ways that do not involve conflict, taking another’s perspective, honesty.

READ: What If Everything You Knew About Disciplining Kids Was Wrong? Tristan Spinski/GRAIN

MJ: What are the most common mistakes you see parents make?

RG: The biggest mistake is overdoing it on the unilateral approach. Thinking you have more control than you really do. Losing sight of the fact that you’re your kid’s partner, not the person who’s pulling all the strings. Not letting them struggle. Swooping in and fixing everything and being way too punitive when punitive really doesn’t accomplish very much.

MJ: You write that modern parents are rejecting both authoritarian and permissive parenting—you call the approaches the “Dictatorial Kingdom” and the “Pushover Provinces.” But parents report feeling lost. Why is it so hard for parents to find a new path?

RG: Reason No. 1 is because of how they themselves were raised. Reason No. 2 is we’ve been lacking the technology. A lot of parents aren’t exactly sure how to go about solving a problem with a kid in a way that’s mutually satisfactory—doing that with their child feels very foreign to a lot of people. It probably explains why so many parents tell me their kids don’t listen to them and why so many kids tell me that they don’t feel heard.

MJ: Your discipline model has three specific steps. First, reflective listening to gather information from a child about the problem; second, sharing your concerns with the kid; third, working toward mutually satisfactory solutions. This can appear complicated and time-consuming, but when we wrote about it, some readers said it seemed intuitive and plain common sense. Which is it?

RG: I like to call it uncommon common sense. There is still quite the vibe out there that as a parent you have to be completely in control and in charge. This model acknowledges that being completely in control is a fantasy. This kid was someone the minute he or she popped out, and the idea that we can take this lump of clay and mold it into a form of our choosing is absolutely ludicrous. People still look askance at a kid in the supermarket who’s pitching a fit and think the parent is not sufficiently in control or not being sufficiently punitive. That’s an issue for a lot of parents as well.

MJ: Your chapter on “Parental Angst” resonated with me. It’s one thing to read a book and decide to change your parenting—it’s another thing to stick with it. What gets in the way of parents implementing your model?

RG: It does take practice. It’s not something you do well the first time. Another huge challenge is that most parents are accustomed to dealing with problems in the heat of the moment. When people are rushed, they’re stressed and you greatly increase the likelihood of being punitive and unilateral just because you’re trying to grasp control. The vast majority of things parents and kids get in conflict over are highly predictable. We’re disagreeing about the same expectations the kid is having difficulty meeting every hour, every day, every week. Because it’s predictable, we can have these conversations proactively. That is very hard for people.

MJ: Why is it useful to shift one’s view from “this child is misbehaving” to “the child is having difficulty meeting expectations”?

RG: Parents are much more likely to be attuned to what they don’t like than they are to the expectations that the kid is having difficulty meeting. Challenging behavior is just a signal, the fever, the means by which the kid is communicating that he or she is having difficulty meeting an expectation. Everybody is talking about the behavior. Behaviors float downstream to us. We need to paddle upstream. The problems that are causing the behaviors, that’s what’s waiting for us. It’s a crucial paradigm shift. We’re moving away from carrots and sticks, and time-outs and privileges gained and lost, and suspensions and detentions in schools, none of which will actually solve the problems that are actually causing the behaviors. It’s a whole lot more productive to be in problem-solving mode than it is to be in behavior modification mode. We’re focused on what’s causing the fever.

MJ: Can you explain how compatibility informs parents’ actions?

RG: When there’s a good fit between skills and expectations, there’s what we call compatibility, and we would expect a good outcome. When there’s a poor fit between expectations and the capacity of the kid, there is incompatibility, and that’s when we see people exhibit challenging behavior. People don’t scream or swear or pout or sulk when there’s compatibility. But most growth occurs when there’s incompatibility. When it comes to resilience, when it comes to pulling yourself up when you’ve fallen down, you don’t learn those things when things are going well. You learn those things when you’re struggling. So that’s when parents have to decide: “Am I going to swoop in and take control here to make sure that things go really well for my kid? Or am I going to do this in a collaborative fashion so that the problem ultimately does get solved but I’m involving my kid in the process so he learns how to do it for himself?” How I conduct myself when I get involved goes a long way to determining whether my kid is going to have the skills to solve the problem themselves in the long run.

MJ: What are the most common conflict areas between parents and kids?

RG: Homework. It’s so crucial to really get a good handle on what’s getting in the way of the kid completing a homework assignment. It can be so many things. Kids are overprogrammed these days. School is very demanding these days. No kid should be getting three or four hours of homework a night. There’s no breathing time, there’s no family time, there are just extracurriculars and homework and then go to bed. That’s a solution that has to involve the school as well.

Screen time is another very common one. It’s become a really important way for people to communicate with each other these days. But if we’re sitting at dinner and there’s no conversation going on because everybody’s got their head someplace else in their iPhone, that’s a family problem that needs to be solved. Solutions can’t be imposed. That just fosters resentment. If a solution isn’t mutually satisfactory, it’s not going to stick.

MJ: You write about kids who become suicidal, cut themselves, struggle to succeed in life. Parental fear is behind a lot of the controlling behavior. What can parents do to let go a bit and follow your advice to raise human beings?

RG: I just dropped my 18-year-old daughter off at college. I have fears about how she’s going to do academically. I have fears about how she’s going to do socially. I’m worried. I also have faith. Over 18 years of us solving problems together, my daughter has shown me that she’s got a good head on her shoulders, that she is pretty good at solving the problems that affect her life. If she wants my input, she gets it. If we’re being unilateral, then communication does not happen, the relationship does not happen. We never get to see that our kid is capable of solving problems on her own. We never start to build up the faith that they can actually do it.

We have forgotten that those skills on the more positive side of human nature have to be taught, have to be modeled, have to be practiced. The method of parenting described in Raising Human Beings is a perfect mechanism for teaching those skills. This is not me in sales mode, I fervently believe there’s never been a more important time for this book. It’s a scary world out there.

MJ: As we go into a new school year, what’s the one takeaway you want parents to have from your book?

RG: Be your kid’s collaborative partner, but also be a collaborative partner with the folks at school. Schools can be pretty unilateral too. Show them you know how to collaborate. Show them this is not about power. Let them know detentions and suspensions and paddling don’t solve the problems that are affecting kids’ lives. Those problems can be identified and solved but not by being punitive. My advice to educators is collaborate with parents; they know a lot about their kids.

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A Tip for Parents as the School Year Begins: You’re Not Totally in Control, and That’s Okay

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Guilty No More: Flossing Doesn’t Work

by cazatrovat Posted on August 2, 2016

Mother Jones

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After years of judgment from dentists and abandoned New Year’s resolutions, we may now say without shame: “No, I don’t floss.”

Despite dentists and federal health agencies recommending flossing for decades, the Associated Press looked at research from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture, and found little evidence that flossing actually helps keep your mouth clean.

Incredibly, reviewing studies that compared the effectiveness of using floss and brushing teeth to only brushing, the AP found most evidence was “weak” or “very low” that floss helps get rid of plaque.

The American Dental Association has already responded, saying it continues to recommend flossing once a day.

“Interdental cleaners such as floss are an essential part of taking care of your teeth and gums,” an ADA press release said. “Cleaning between teeth removes plaque that can lead to cavities or gum disease from the areas where a toothbrush can’t reach.”

The ADA provides a “seal of approval” to floss products that meet their safety and effectiveness standards, and charges manufacturers $14,500 for the initial evaluation, according to the AP. The ADA tells the AP it doesn’t profit from the evaluations, but the AP notes that companies are allowed to design their studies.

Many of the studies that best supported flossing, the AP found, didn’t test enough people, used outdated methods, or were too short to be conclusive. Notably, last year’s edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans removed flossing from its recommendations.

As one review of the literature on flossing put it: “The majority of available studies fail to demonstrate that flossing is generally effective in plaque removal.”

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Guilty No More: Flossing Doesn’t Work

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The world’s biggest rainforest might be on fire soon

by cazare099f8 Posted on July 13, 2016

Amazon Fire

The world’s biggest rainforest might be on fire soon

By on Jul 13, 2016Share

This summer, wildfires have decimated Alberta’s boreal forests, grown fat off California’s millions of dead trees, and basically set up shop in more than 40 separate places all over the U.S..

But in steamier parts of the world, scientists are warily eyeing a sleeping giant: the Amazon.

Reduced rainfall in the region earlier this year (seriously, good riddance, El Niño) has dried out the rainforest, setting it up for epic burning this summer, researchers from NASA and UC Irvine report.

“It’s the driest we’ve seen it at the onset of a fire season,” said Jim Randerson, one of UC Irvine’s researchers. The rainforest is much more parched today than in 2005 and 2010, when previous droughts led to raging fires.

The Amazon is a huge carbon sink — it stores 120 billion tons of the stuff — and is crucial in regulating much of South America’s rainfall cycle. Apart from potentially releasing untold amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and smothering the region in noxious fumes, a massive Amazonian wildfire could potentially tip the region into a new state — one where the forest can never recover its carbon-sucking, rain-producing superpowers.  (The official term for this, bandied about for a few years now by scientists, is the “Amazon dieback.”)

As the Washington Post reports, we have something to do with it, as usual. Human activity such as chopping trees leads to weakened, fragmented forests that are more likely to dry out and burn. Other research shows that post-drought forest regrowth is less dense and more flammable, leading to a potentially dangerous feedback cycle.

But it’s always important to note that these are projections. The apocalypse hasn’t descended (yet). Hopefully, the study will light a fire under authorities’ derrieres in the Amazon region to prevent foolhardy fire-causing behaviors. El Smokey Bear, anyone?

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The world’s biggest rainforest might be on fire soon

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Wind turbines are powering nature’s paradise (and haven’t killed a single bird)

by JanetNewcombe Posted on June 1, 2016

Wind turbines are powering nature’s paradise (and haven’t killed a single bird)

By on Jun 1, 2016 2:33 pmShare

This story was originally published by Newsweek and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Charles Darwin made the Galápagos Islands synonymous with the idea of change as a means of survival. In the 19th century, the scientist marveled at how similar endemic finches, mockingbirds, and giant tortoises across the 19-island archipelago were uniquely adapted to individual islands and later theorized that this ability to adapt determines whether a species will survive long term. Today, one of the world’s largest wind-diesel hybrid systems, built on San Cristóbal Island, suggests the human population in the region is capable of the bold adaptive strategies it will need to survive in a post-climate-change world.

Electricity demand on San Cristóbal and the three other inhabited Galápagos islands is on the rise, driven by the growth of population (currently at 30,000 residents) and supported by thriving tourism. A plan to replace diesel electricity generation with renewable energy was already set in motion when, in January 2001, an oil tanker struck a reef and spilled more than 150,000 gallons of diesel near San Cristóbal, threatening the irreplaceable plants, birds, and marine life that had evolved there.

Workers clean the blades on a wind turbine on San Cristóbal Island in the Galapagos. The turbine provides 30 percent of the electricity consumed on San Cristóbal, replacing 2.3 million gallons of diesel fuel and avoiding 21,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.Eolisca

Ecuador, with the help of the United Nations, quickly enlisted the help of the Global Sustainable Electricity Partnership, made up of 11 of the world’s largest electricity companies, to reduce the risk of another oil spill at this UNESCO World Heritage Site. Between 2007 and 2015, three 157-foot wind turbines have supplied, on average, 30 percent of the electricity consumed on San Cristóbal, replacing 2.3 million gallons of diesel fuel and avoiding 21,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

San Cristóbal’s energy is now in the hands of Elecgalapagos S.A., the local utility tasked with expanding the project to convert the Galápagos to zero-fossil-fuels territory. They think they can get to 70 percent renewable-energy use in the not-so-distant future. “You have to remember that none of our personnel on the Galápagos had ever seen a wind turbine before we started,” says Luis Vintimilla, an Ecuadorian who has been the project’s local general manager since its inception.

One unexpected problem: Wind turbine blades require regular cleaning, and Vintimilla couldn’t find any locals comfortable in high-altitude conditions. So he hired mountain climbers from the mainland to scrub down the blades. Also new was the job of making sure the turbines had not killed or injured any of the critically endangered endemic Galápagos petrels: large, long-winged seabirds.

The monitoring program’s results have been surprisingly good, considering the common criticism of wind farms as bird killers: Not a single petrel has been identified as hurt or killed. The wind turbines, it seems, are not only keeping the Galápagos green — they’re also making sure the archipelago’s most precarious creatures have a chance to keep on evolving.

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Wind turbines are powering nature’s paradise (and haven’t killed a single bird)

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North Carolina’s anti-trans governor is cozy with major polluter

by Panchito Zirman Posted on May 17, 2016

North Carolina’s anti-trans governor is cozy with major polluter

By on May 17, 2016Share

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) has been in the news lately thanks to HB2, a bill he signed into law in March that forces transgender folks to use the bathroom of the gender on their birth certificates. The backlash for McCrory — who is up for reelection this year — was swift. Along with a myriad of businesses who have threatened to pull out of the state, North Carolina residents themselves are protesting in creative ways: An “air horn orchestra” regularly performs outside the governor’s mansion in Raleigh, a Durham-based advertising firm is giving away toilet paper printed with the text of HB2, and activists delivered a porta-potty to McCrory’s lawn.

But HB2 isn’t the only issue that has North Carolina media outlets asking questions about McCrory, who is up for re-election this November. There’s also the governor’s cozy ties to Duke Energy and allegations that his administration let the company off easy after serious pollution violations.

A fine reduced

The story goes back to 2014, when Duke Energy — McCrory’s employer for nearly three decades — was responsible for a spill that dumped 40,000 tons of toxic coal ash and 27 million gallons of wastewater into the Dan River, one of the largest coal ash spills in the nation’s history.

Initially, Duke was fined $25 million by the state, but in a retreat that many residents found disappointing — and fishy — the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) later privately negotiated the fine down to just $7 million. When the deal was announced in September 2015, an attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center called it “a total surrender and collapse by DEQ.”

An investigation by TV station WRAL later found that McCrory and DEQ officials secretly met with Duke Energy leaders, including company CEO Lynn Good, at the governor’s mansion in Raleigh a few months before the fine was lowered.

Duke, as it happens, donated $3 million to the Republican Governors Association soon after the 2014 coal ash spill. The association, which contributed to McCrory’s campaign in 2012, is expected to be a big backer of his reelection effort this year.

Dirty drinking water

But the low fine wasn’t the only favor that the McCrory administration appears to have done for Duke Energy.

After the Dan River spill, investigations found that Duke had more than a dozen coal ash storage sites across the state, many of which were leaching a carcinogen called hexavalent chromium into the water table. After this was discovered, 240 households located near coal ash sites were told not to drink from their wells. Duke Energy started supplying bottled water to those households in April 2015, as WBTV reports.

But a year later, the DEQ and the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services reversed the do-not-drink order. Residents were told their water was just as safe as water coming from public utilities.

That wasn’t true, WBTV reports. Some of the wells near Duke’s facilities were found to have levels of hexavalent chromium hundreds of times higher than the average level in the state’s public water systems.

So why the about-face by the state agencies? Duke Energy, it turns out, lobbied the state to reverse the do-not-drink order, according to the TV station. When state epidemiologist Megan Davies was deposed by a lawyer for the Southern Environmental Law Center, she said that she and her boss questioned the reversal. She also said that McCrory’s office intervened in the wording of initial do-not-drink letters sent out in April 2015.

Still, the Department of Health and Human Services insists that the water contamination is nothing to worry about. “The water in these wells meets the standards of the Safe Drinking Water Act,” Kendra Gerlach, communications director for the agency, said in a statement. “Allowing the affected residents to return to drinking their water is within federal and state guidelines and is consistent with safe drinking water practices across the country.”

For those who live near Duke’s coal ash sites, however, the state’s position doesn’t bring much comfort. In the year between the do-not-drink order and its reversal, nothing has changed. The coal ash sites weren’t cleaned up and the carcinogen didn’t go away. In fact, one thing has arguably gotten worse: In March, McCrory shut down the commission charged with overseeing the cleanup of Duke’s coal ash sites across the state.

“The water isn’t any different,” said Tad Helmstettler, an environmental health supervisor in Rowan County, one of the areas affected by the order. “If you were worried about the water before, you should be worried about it now.”

If polls are to be believed, McCrory has his own reasons to be worried: His approval rating is at an all-time low, and he’s in a tight race with Democratic challenger Roy Cooper. And as the spotlight shines brighter on HB2, as well as the governor’s ties to Duke Energy, McCrory’s prospects may only get darker.

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Charles Koch finds a lot of things scary — except climate change

by DerickJWCV Posted on May 2, 2016

Politics

Charles Koch finds a lot of things scary — except climate change

By on May 2, 2016Share

Charles Koch finds plenty of things scary. He’s alarmed by “rampant cronyism” in government (a phrase he’s used to veil his jabs at renewable energy) and by what President Obama’s reelection did to the American Dream. He is afraid for what the 2016 election holds in store and believes collectivist thinking will doom us. What the Koch Industries CEO doesn’t find alarming, however, is that humans are causing the planet to burn up.

In a recent interview with ABC News’ Powerhouse Politics podcast, Koch diminishes the impacts of our warming planet. He muses about our fate in a segment flagged by the liberal super PAC American Bridge:

Is the climate changing due to CO2 in a way that’s going to be catastrophic and unmanageable? Or is it changing in a mild and manageable way? I believe the evidence is overwhelming that it’s changing in a mild and manageable way.

These policies that are being introduced in the United States, as a matter of fact, under their own models would have virtually zero impact on the future temperature or other aspects of the climate. And in fact I think they make matters worse, because they get people going after the subsidies rather than innovating.

If this line of thinking sounds familiar, it’s because climate-denying politicians and others in the Koch-funded universe have all used similar talking points. It’s more clever than outright denying that carbon pollution is warming the planet – a fact Koch admits is true.

But Koch adds a key qualifier: Human activity, he says, has “contributed to much less than what [scientific] models projecting catastrophe show.” It’s foolish, he continues, to push policies that “are making people’s lives worse. They’re raising the cost of energy for no benefit and guess who suffers the most – the poorest people used three times the energy as a percentage of income than the average American.”

Never mind that utilities, corporations, and households are increasingly turning toward renewables in order to shave energy costs — alternative energy meets Koch’s criteria of “making people’s lives worse.”

It’s a modification of Koch’s past arguments on climate change, which have ranged from doubting scientific consensus to suggesting the warming will be good for us. With awareness of climate change back on the rise in the United States, it only makes sense that Koch is trying out another message.

The talking points might shuffle, but they serve the same purpose: delay. And like many arguments that came before it, this one is full of problems. Koch ignores that the poor in the United States and around the world are on the front lines of climate change, and are likely to be hardest hit by even the slightest changes in global averages. Indeed, they have already started to feel some dramatic consequences at an average 1-degree warming. Left unchecked, the planet is in for well over 4-degree C warming by the end of the century.

From his corporate headquarters in Wichita, Kansas, the 80-year-old billionaire has little reason to be fearful of climate change.

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Bruce Springsteen to North Carolina: No Rock for You

by ThaliaMercado Posted on April 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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Add Bruce Springsteen to the growing list of people who are not fans of North Carolina’s new anti-LGBT law. On Friday, just two days before a scheduled show in Greensboro, North Carolina, the Boss announced that he was canceling his appearance in a gesture of protest against the legislation.

“Some things are more important than a rock show and the fight against prejudice and bigotry—which is happening as I write—is one of them,” the rock star wrote in a short statement on his website. “Canceling the show is the strongest means I have for raising my voice in opposition to those who continue to push us backwards instead of forwards.”

Springsteen described the law as “an attempt by people who cannot stand the progress our country has made in recognizing the human rights of all of our citizens to overturn that progress.”

North Carolina’s Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, known as HB-2, sailed into law two weeks ago. It is best known for striking down all LGBT nondiscrimination statutes across the state and for requiring transgender people to use public restrooms according to the gender listed on their birth certificate. But as ProPublica‘s Nina Martin has reported, the bill’s language also bars workers in the state from suing under a key North Carolina anti-discrimination law, meaning its impact could be even broader than expected.

Here is Springsteen’s statement in full:

“As you, my fans, know I’m scheduled to play in Greensboro, North Carolina this Sunday. As we also know, North Carolina has just passed HB2, which the media are referring to as the “bathroom” law. HB2—known officially as the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act—dictates which bathrooms transgender people are permitted to use. Just as important, the law also attacks the rights of LGBT citizens to sue when their human rights are violated in the workplace. No other group of North Carolinians faces such a burden. To my mind, it’s an attempt by people who cannot stand the progress our country has made in recognizing the human rights of all of our citizens to overturn that progress. Right now, there are many groups, businesses, and individuals in North Carolina working to oppose and overcome these negative developments. Taking all of this into account, I feel that this is a time for me and the band to show solidarity for those freedom fighters. As a result, and with deepest apologies to our dedicated fans in Greensboro, we have canceled our show scheduled for Sunday, April 10th. Some things are more important than a rock show and this fight against prejudice and bigotry — which is happening as I write — is one of them. It is the strongest means I have for raising my voice in opposition to those who continue to push us backwards instead of forwards.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s Sunday April 10th show is canceled. Tickets will be refunded at point of purchase.”

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Bruce Springsteen to North Carolina: No Rock for You

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Tax Plan Showdown: Now We Have Bernie Sanders Too

by WinnieHeim2 Posted on March 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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And now we are five. The Tax Policy Center has analyzed Bernie Sanders’ tax plan, and we now have data for everyone still running except John Kasich, who hasn’t produced any tax proposals yet. The full reports are here: Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton, and Sanders. Click the links for details. Or just look at the charts below for the nickel summary.

As before, the Republican plans are all the same: a tiny tax cut for the middle class as a sop to distract them from the enormous payday they give to the rich, and a massive hole in the deficit.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton’s plan is fairly modest. It leaves the middle class alone and taxes the rich a little more. Once her domestic proposals are paid for, it’s probably deficit neutral. Bernie Sanders is far more extreme. He’s basically the mirror image of the Republicans: he’d tax the middle class moderately more and soak the hell out of the rich. This would raise a tremendous amount of money, which he’d use to pay for his health care plan and his other domestic proposals. It’s impossible to say for sure how this would affect the deficit, but the evidence suggests that it would blow a pretty big hole since he plans to spend quite a bit more money than he’d raise.

So that’s that. Quite a choice we have this year.

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Tax Plan Showdown: Now We Have Bernie Sanders Too

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Top Ten List of Things That Are Going Great in America

by HalPXOcxgddti Posted on March 4, 2016

Mother Jones

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I get requests from time to time:

I can do better than that. How about a top ten list of all the things going well in America right now?

  1. Unemployment = 4.9 percent. By virtually every measure, more people are re-entering the labor force and more people are finding work.
  2. Inflation = 1.4 percent. The annual inflation rate for food is 0.8 percent.
  3. Economic growth = 2.4 percent. This could be better, but it’s not bad: the US economy is stronger than China, Japan, or Mexico. We’re not losing, we’re winning.
  4. The average price of a gallon of gas is $1.81, its lowest price in a decade.
  5. 20 million people have gained health insurance since 2013, and health care costs are rising at the most moderate rate in decades.
  6. The abortion rate has been declining for 30 years and is now lower than at any time since the early 70s.
  7. Among teens, alcohol use is down, crime is down, violent behavior is down, illicit drug use is down, sexual intercourse is down, condom use is up, pregnancy is down, and cigarette smoking is down.
  8. High school test scores and graduation rates are up.
  9. There were only 22 US military fatalities in the Middle East in 2015, the lowest number since 9/11.
  10. Net illegal immigration has been negative for seven straight years. Since 2008, the population of undocumented workers in the US has fallen from 12 million to 11 million.

Unfortunately, there is also one big thing that’s not going so well:

  1. Despite a reasonably strong economy, wages have declined since 2000 and have rebounded only slightly over the past couple of years.

It’s quite possible that this one thing is more important than all the others put together. And needless to say, anyone can put together their own list of ten things that are going badly: police shootings, ISIS, income inequality, etc. Nonetheless, when you look at the big picture, there’s an awful lot going right at the moment.

From:

Top Ten List of Things That Are Going Great in America

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Tax Plan Showdown: Hillary Clinton vs. the Republicans

by jatsawdxmrzdw8 Posted on March 4, 2016

Mother Jones

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The Tax Policy Center has analyzed Hillary Clinton’s various tax proposals, which means we now have data for the top three Republican candidates and the top Democractic candidate: Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Clinton. Click the links for details. Or just look at the charts below for the nickel summary.

You don’t need to look very hard, do you? One of these things is not like the others. The Republicans all give middle-income taxpayers a tiny benefit as a sop to distract them from the humongous payday they give to the rich. Clinton basically leaves middle-income taxpayers alone and makes the rich pay a little more.

On the cost side, all of the supposedly fiscally conservative Republicans would blow a massive hole in the deficit. Clinton would actually make the deficit smaller.

Republicans will claim that their tax plans are designed to supercharge the economy and pay for themselves blah blah blah. This is BS, and they know it. They also claim they’ll slash spending. This is mostly BS too. On the other hand, Clinton says she’ll use the money from her tax plan to fund additional programs, which is entirely believable. This makes her plan deficit neutral. Basically, we have three fantasy plans and one realistic plan. The difference in fiscal responsibility is kind of mind-boggling, isn’t it?

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Tax Plan Showdown: Hillary Clinton vs. the Republicans

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