Stephan: The United States economy shows we are the richest nation in the world, but that is highly misleading. We have the worst wealth inequality amongst the developed nations of the world. Forty percent of American families could not write a $400 check without significant stress. Six percent, 20 million, Americans don't even have enough to eat, as this article details. And I could go on and on listing these awful social outcome realities. I will just add one more, average income by nation; we're not the leaders of even close; we're number 6.
The countries with the highest median incomes are:
Luxembourg - $52,493
Norway - $51,489
Sweden - $50,514
Australia- $46,555
Denmark - $44,360
United States - $43,585
Canada - $41,280
South Korea - $40,861
Kuwait - $40,854
Netherlands - $39,584
The ongoing problem, which I see every day, is that Americans seem to be incapable of telling themselves the truth about themselves, and if you can't tell yourself the truth about yourself, how can you fix the problems?
A Mama-Tee refrigerator in Philadelphia. Credit: Heather Long/The Washington Post
PHILADELPHIA — Darrell Brokenborough opened the bright yellow refrigerator that stood onthe sidewalk outside a row home at 308 N. 39th St., smiled and said, “It’s full.” He balanced on his cane so he could take a closer look at the apples, yogurt, greens, pasta, cheese and chicken inside. On the front of the fridge was written: “Free food” and “Take what you need. Leave what you don’t.”
Brokenborough grabbed several bags of apple slices to slip in his slim over-the-shoulder bag. He tried to stuff some applesauce containers in his pouch but returned the applesauce for someone else. His favorite groceries are fresh bagels and cream cheese, which weren’t there this time.
“I always recommend the fridge to my friends with kids. There’s always something healthy here,” he said, calling the free food he gets at the fridge on his way to and from a nearby medical facility a “blessing.”
Philadelphia now has more than 20 of these refrigerators sitting outside homes and restaurants, offering free food to anyone passing by. […]
Stephan: As this report says, "More than half of all renter households lost employment income between March 2020 and March of this year, causing one in five of those households to fall behind on rent. For black renter households, fully 29 percent owe past-due rent." Unless something is done we are about to see tens of thousands of families evicted and rendered homeless.
PHOENIX, ARIZONA – OCTOBER 05: Maricopa County constable Lenny McCloskey evicts an apartment resident for non-payment of rent on October 5, 2020 in Phoenix, Arizona. Thousands of court-ordered evictions continue nationwide despite a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) moratorium for renters impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. Although state and county officials say they have tried to educate the public on the protections, many renters remain unaware and fail to complete the necessary forms to remain in their homes. In many cases landlords have worked out more flexible payment plans with vulnerable tenants, although these temporary solutions have become fraught as the pandemic drags on. With millions of Americans still unemployed due to the pandemic, federal rental assistance proposals remain gridlocked in Congress. The expiry of the CDC moratorium at year’s end looms large, as renters and landlord face a potential tsunami of evictions and foreclosures nationwide. Credit: John Moore/Getty
The United States is on the precipice of a post-pandemic eviction crisis. More than half of all renter households lost employment income between March 2020 and March of this year, […]
Stephan: I had two readers write me this morning admonishing me "that no one would want a civil war." Sorry, but that is not correct. There are hundreds of thousands, perhaps several million, Americans apparently who would relish it. Because we have not had civil mass violence on our soil in living memory -- something that makes America unique -- such people have no concept of what civil war would create.
Civil War Advocate Credit: CNN
CNN reporter Donie O’Sullivan traveled to former President Donald Trump’s weekend rally in Ohio and spoke to some of his supporters who warned of more violence like that witnessed at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
In a CNN clip posted to his Twitter page, O’Sullivan interviewed one Trump supporter who was convinced the former president would be reinstated by August. He espoused a fictional conspiracy theory holding that the “military” already knows Trump won the 2020 election by “over 80 percent.”
“He’s coming back,” the supporter said.
“And what if that doesn’t happen?” asked O’Sullivan, pointing out that the Constitution doesn’t have a mechanism to “reinstate” a defeated president.
“We’re gonna be in a civil war,” the supporter said. “Because the militia will be taking over.”
Another man, a self-proclaimed member of the militant right-wing group the Three Percenters, wasn’t quite as definitive, but also offered warnings of violence. He said he went to the protests at the Capitol on Jan. 6, but claimed not to have joined the rioters and insurrectionists who violently stormed the building itself. […]
Stephan: I come from a rural county in Tidewater Virginia and grew up listening to neo-confederate crap, and watching people stand whenever Dixie was played in a bar or at a party. I am sure I must have forebearers who were confederates, and Robert E. Lee's dinner table has come down to me and is in my dining room. The fascination with "the lost cause" has ebbed and flowed throughout the south all my life. It was White supremacy then, and it is White supremacy now.
Neo-confederates
Leaked membership data from the neo-Confederate Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) organization has revealed that the organization’s members include serving military officers, elected officials, public employees, and a national security expert whose CV boasts of “Department of Defense Secret Security Clearance”.
But alongside these members are others who participated in and committed acts of violence at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and others who hold overlapping membership in violent neo-Confederate groups such as the League of the South (LoS).
The group, organized as a federation of state chapters, has recently made news for increasingly aggressive campaigns against the removal of Confederate monuments. This has included legal action against states and cities, the flying of giant Confederate battle flags near public roadways, and Confederate flag flyovers at Nascar races.
Last Monday, the Georgia division of SCV commenced legal action against the city of Decatur with the aim of restoring a Confederate memorial obelisk which was removed in June 2020, and later replaced with a statue of the late congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis.
Somini Sengupta, International Climate Correspondent - The New York Times
Stephan: Water is destiny, and it is going to radically change the culture of America. Here you get a sense of what it is going to mean for industrial chemical monoculture agriculture. And this is just the beginning.
Fritz Durst, a rice farmer, pumped groundwater in the Central Valley this month. Credit: Mike Kai Chen for The New York Times
ORDBEND, Calif. — A California farmer decides it makes better business sense to sell his water than to grow rice. An almond farmer considers uprooting his trees to put up solar panels. Drought is transforming the state, with broad consequences for the food supply.
In America’s fruit and nut basket, water is now the most precious crop of all.
It explains why, amid a historic drought parching much of the American West, a grower of premium sushi rice has concluded that it makes better business sense to sell the water he would have used to grow rice than to actually grow rice. Or why a melon farmer has left a third of his fields fallow. Or why a large landholder farther south is thinking of planting a solar array on his fields rather than the thirsty almonds that delivered steady profit for years.
“You want to sit there and say, ‘We want to monetize the water?’ No, we don’t,” said Seth Fiack, a rice grower here […]
