I link. You decide.

Charts That Will Restore Your Faith in Humanity.  Charts from Business Insider.

Dear America: You Should Be Mad As Hell About This.  Charts from Business Insider.

What I take away from these two sets of charts is that the world has made a lot of progress in the past century, but the USA has regressed in many ways in the past 20 or so years.   You’ll notice that many of the graphs in the top set of charts end before they reach the year 2000.   What I get from these two sets of charts is that change is necessary, but progress is possible.

The story of my life

via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

Milestone

Mark Kleiman on The Reality-Based Community blog pointed out an interesting fact.

The nomination of Paul Ryan marks a milestone in American history: for the first time, there is no white Protestant running for President or Vice President on a major-party ticket.

Better yet, no one seems to mind. Perhaps the arc of history does bend in the right direction after all.

via The Reality-Based Community.

And, as somebody pointed out in the discussion thread, this is the first time since before World War Two that none of the major-party candidates for President or Vice President has done any military service.

Democrats, demographics and political destiny

Gary Segura, writing in Democracy Journal, looks to demographic changes, especially the growth in the U.S. Hispanic population, to save the Democratic Party.

When Barack Obama is almost certainly re-elected this November, Latinos will have played a decisive role in crucial swing states like Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, and Florida, and even in states where their population share is smaller.  Latinos should comprise just under 10 percent of the national electorate this year, compared with just 5.4 percent in 2000 and 3.7 percent in 1992.  At 15 percent of the national electorate by 2024 (a conservative estimate), and concentrated in several large-population states, Latino political power will have moved Arizona firmly into the Democratic column in the next decade and will eventually have created a chance for Democrats to carry Texas.

Republicans nationally receive 85 percent of their votes from white voters by capturing between 55 and 60 percent of their ballots in each election.  This margin, coupled with just enough votes from minorities, may be sufficient to eke out victories in the near term. But with the demographic decline of white voters, even 60 percent of that cohort will be a poor start when it comprises just two-thirds of the electorate in 2024; 60 percent of two-thirds would net the GOP just 39.6 percent of the national vote. Republicans must improve their standing with minority voters to remain competitive over the next century.

Can the GOP respond?  In the short run, I don’t think so.  Race played a critical role in the formation of the GOP coalition and is the principal reason that working-class white males, particularly in the South, have been so willing to embrace the party despite its economic policies.  To remove race and its rhetoric from Republican politics would serve to make the party more welcoming to minority voters but would also eliminate the primary claim the party makes in attracting those working-class whites.

via Gary Segura for Democracy Journal.

Actually, Hispanic voters are becoming disillusioned with President Obama.  That is why he is trying to appease them with his executive order forbidding deportation of certain categories of unauthorized immigrants who were brought to this country as a child.

The larger problem is that the reason that neither the Democratic nor the Republican leaders have policies that would move the nation from war and recession to peace and prosperity.  That is why Democrats and Republicans rely on group loyalty to appeal, respectively, to Hispanics and working-class non-Hispanic whites.

Click on The Browning of America for Gary Segura’s complete article.

Click on The Democrats’ Demographic Dreams for a critique.  [Added 6/20/12]

Click on President Obama bristles when he is the target of activist tactics he once used for details about how discontented Hispanic leaders pressured Obama on immigration policy.

Click on Yes, Barack Obama Thinks We’re Stupid (Immigration Edition) for more on the politics of President Obama’s new immigration policy.  [Added 6/20/12]

Complaining about life

Click on Abstruse Goose for more cartoons.

Rush Limbaugh defends traditional marriage

Hat tip for the link to Rod Dreher, a thoughtful Christian conservative who does not believe in gay marriage, but is embarrassed by Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich setting themselves up as defenders of family values and traditional morality.

The Big Change

Reblogged from MADE IN AMERICA:

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What’s the biggest change in the American way of life in the last 50-60 years? There are a lot of candidates: the coming of new technologies, especially the computer and internet; the end of the post-war boom and the start of economic stagnation for average Americans; much more liberal and open sexual mores; the dismantling of the racial caste system capped by the election of a black president; and so on.

Read more… 1,135 more words

The Big Change, which occurred during my own lifetime, is how it has become normal for mothers of children to work outside the home.  Some 50 or 60 years ago, a majority of middle-class American mothers devoted themselves full-time to housekeeping and children.  My own mother, who worked full-time as a school teacher all her working life, was unusual.  Now a mother who stays at home and devotes full time to children is either rich or making a great economic sacrifice.   Hat tip for the link to Sociological Images.

Mothers at a disadvantage

Mothers are at a disadvantage in the U.S. economy.

The difference in average pay between childless women and mothers is greater than the gender gap between men  and women, according to Prof. Shelley Correll, associate professor of sociology at Stanford University and the new director of its Clayman Institute for Gender Research.

Click to enlarge.

She said mothers not only earn lower wages on average than childless women, but they face discrimination in hiring and are viewed as not only less committed to work outside the home, but less competent.  The last surprises me.  I would find it an extreme challenge to have to a household while taking care of children and, ideally, helping to shape them into responsible adults.  Somebody who could do that could do a lot of other things well.

Mothers face other problems besides the attitude of employers.  The United States is one of the few countries. and the only advanced industrial country, that does not guarantee a legal right to paid maternity leave.  A recent Save the Children Federation report, as reported in the Los Angeles Times, said that the United States has a higher rate of child mortality than 40 other industrial nations.  There is a 1 in 200 risk of pregnancy-related death, one of the worst rates in the industrial world.

Most of us Americans individually honor motherhood and family values.   We ought to affirm those values as a society.

Click on Class Privileges and Parental Leave on the Sociological Images web site for more about maternity leave.

Click on U.S. ranks 25th of best places for mothers for the Los Angeles Times article.  Hat tip to The Deliberate Observer for the link.

Some more cartoons are below.

Gay marriage, money power and state’s rights

President Barack Obama said he believes that same-sex couples have a right to be married.  There are two things to remember about this.

• His statement comes after gay rights organizations throttled back on contributions to Democratic candidates.  Donations in the 2010 mid-term elections fell by 50 percent from the 2006 mid-term elections.  Evidently the Democratic leaders got the message.  The military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy was repealed in the 2010 lame-duck session of Congress.  In 2011, the Obama administration stopped defending the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, a1996  law that forbid any federal government recognition of gay marriage.  And now, with the 2012 Presidential elections coming up, the President endorses gay marriage.
• President Obama did not propose to support any federal law or Constitutional amendment in support of gay marriage.  He would leave the issue to state governments, which is how things were before he issued his statement.   I happen to think that is the correct position.  I don’t believe in federalizing laws of marriage and divorce either.   But it makes Obama’s statement a mere expression of personal opinion.  It doesn’t change anything.

Mitt Romney for his part has signed a pledge to the National Organization for Marriage to support a Constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman, and said he would defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act.  While Barack Obama has done little to advance gay rights, he isn’t trying to turn the clock back.

Click on Don’t Ask, Don’t Give and Gay Rights Political Donations Plummet for the story of the gay fund-raising boycott.  Hat tip for the links to Making Light.

Click on Obama and Gay Marriage for Radley Balko’s comment on The Agitator.

Click on Obama’s historic affirmation of same-sex marriage for Glenn Greenwald’s comment in The Guardian newspaper.  [Added 5/11/12]

Click on Mitt Romney reiterates opposition to gay marriage for Huffington Post’s comparison of Obama’s and Romney’s positions.

Click on Christian marriage and civil unions for my argument as to why government should not have the authority to say who’s married and who isn’t.

[Afterthought 5/11/12]   Barack Obama’s statement on gay marriage is historically significant, because no previous President has declared himself so clearly.  So maybe my comment above was a little mean-spirited.   It is not consistent to criticize somebody for being equivocal, and then belittle him when he takes a clear stand.  As Glenn Greenwald wrote, we can’t know people’s motives, all we can judge is their actions, good or bad.

Now you may disagree as to whether his statement was the right thing.  That is a different matter.

[Another afterthought 5/12/12]   As my friend Josh said, this shifts the focus of the Presidential election campaign toward the question of gay marriage (even through President Obama has declared it an issue for the states to decide) and away from the bipartisan consensus on creeping totalitarianism – detention without trial, torture, assassinations, universal surveillance, undeclared wars and governmental impunity.

The attack on universal service

Most of us Americans, down through history, have felt that there should be no upper limit on what an individual can achieve nor (which is different) what an individual can honestly acquire.

Along with that, we have had another idea–that there are certain things that everybody should have, regardless of who they are.   We Americans were pioneers in the idea of free, universal public education.   We have public library in which everybody, regardless of ability to pay, can borrow and read a book.   We have public highways which anybody can use.  The U.S. Postal Service provides affordable mail delivery to all Americans, no matter where they live or hard they are to get to.    Historically our regulated utilities – telephone, electric and gas – were expected to provide a basic affordable service to all customers in their area.  For a time all or almost all states provided affordable or even free college education to everybody who was able to do college work.

In short, there is no ceiling in American society over how high you can rise, but there is a floor under certain things, so that everybody has access to certain basic resources.

I was talking recently with my letter carrier about how the idea of universal service is under attack.   The U.S. Postal Service is burdened with a requirement that it fund its retirement system 75 years ahead–something no other organization of which I know has to do.   Without this requirement, the U.S. Postal Service would be self-sustaining.  Now it is being operated as if it were a corporation in decline, like Eastman Kodak Co. in its last days.

The requirement was imposed by people in Congress who do not believe in the ideal of universal service.   They think that what you get should depend on your ability to pay or, if you are a child, on the ability of your parents to pay.  The same impulse, in my opinion, is behind the current attack on the public school system.  If the move to privatize public education is carried to its logical extreme, then the quality of your education would depend on the economic class into which your parents are born (even more than it is now).

The deregulation of public utilities in the late 1970s and early 1980s was based on the theory that the benefits of competition outweighed the benefits of guaranteeing everyone access to energy and communication.   The problem with that is that investment in public utilities requires planning on a much longer-term basis than the average individual investor is likely to entertain.   In the old days, electric and gas utilities were required to have enough reserve capacity to provide for the maximum foreseeable demand plus a substantial margin for error.  This is no longer required, and incentives for short-term profit are not a substitute for this requirement, in my opinion.

I remember reading in my local newspaper, the Democrat and Chronicle, that when a public water supply was first proposed for Rochester, N.Y., many wealthy people, who could afford potable water for themselves, objected to being taxed to provide a universal service.  Only when it became clear that impure water was a source of infectious disease, and that infectious disease did not respect income levels, did they agree to support a public system.

I think the objections to universal service are often based on that kind of attitude.  Of course there are limits to what can be provided.  Reasonable people can differ as to what these limits are.  But I think I am individually better off, not worse off, when others have access to  knowledge, communication and necessities of life.