Mediaboss Marketing

Do you have march fatigue yet? The left, apparently, does not, performing street theater on Saturday, Earth Day, with the so-called March for Science.

Its hard to think of a better way to undermine the publics faith in science than to stage demonstrations in Washington, D.C., and around the country modeled on the Womens March on Washington that took place in January.

The Womens March was an anti-Donald Trump festival. Fine. I found it vulgar and demeaning to women, but its a free country.

Science, however, to be respected, must be purely the search for truth. The organizers of this March for Science by acknowledging that their demonstration is modeled on the Womens March are contributing to the politicization of science, exactly what true upholders of science should be at pains to avoid.

When you read the organizers online statement, the purpose seemed so utterly vacuous as to cause heads to nod: The March for Science champions robustly funded and publicly communicated science as a pillar of human freedom and prosperity. We unite as a diverse, nonpartisan group to call for science that upholds the common good and for political leaders and policy makers to enact evidence based policies in the public interest.

Yeah. I know loads of people who oppose the common good, dont you?

So what is it really about?

As best I can make out (besides being a nice excuse to enjoy the April weather in Washington, when everything is in bloom), those who attended wanted to express dismay at President Trumps policies on a range of subjects, including climate change and the travel restriction (which they label a travel ban).

On the matter of climate change, those who present themselves as champions of science, i.e., fact-based reasoning and commitment to the scientific method, ought to be very careful not to blackball everyone who offers a dissenting view. Even among self-described environmentalists, there are differing views on how best to combat global warming. Whether temperatures are rising dangerously is a scientific question. What to do about it is a political question.

When you lump the travel ban into the march, though, you really go off the rails. As Robert Young, an ecologist, warned in The New York Times, including such matters only serves to cement the image of scientists as an interest group who might politicize their data, research, and findings for their own ends.

A true march for science might tackle problems like the replication crisis or confirmation bias.

Its a vanity of the left that they stand for science, fact-based policy and sweet reason as opposed to conservatives, who support superstition, alternative facts and denial. Jeffrey Anderson, an associate professor of radiology and bioengineering at the University of Utah, explained to The New York Times that he would fly to D.C. for the march because of what he regards as the wholesale disregard of truth and fact by the president and his close advisers. Their devaluing evidence and the scientific method, is so extreme that I cant be silent.

Admittedly, this president has been reckless and heedless of the truth or falsity of his comments on a range of subjects. His endorsements of conspiracy theories about vaccines causing autism and climate change being a Chinese ruse to harm American companies were preposterous and worrying. But he hasnt said those things lately, and the march doesnt seem to have been provoked by them.

Note to the left: The above paragraph is what sincere people who are fact-based and willing to be critical of their own side write. Now, where is the acknowledgement that there is plenty of hostility to science among progressives? Who objects to nuclear power (despite its potential to combat global warming)? Who rejects evidence of male/female brain differences? Who stands in the way of genetically modified organisms but also argues that children should be hormonally and surgically modified if they say that they are of a different gender from the sex listed on their birth certificate?

When progressives are ready to admit that they sometimes cherrypick the science they like and disregard the science that confounds their worldview, they will have taken a key first step toward the scientific method.

There are many complicated theories on what to do about North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Hes that crazy ...

This spring, the schools will be sending their graduating seniors out into the real world. Some may be sad to see ...

What to make of the results of the first two of this springs special House elections? Start off by putting them ...

Whats the Trump Doctrine of foreign policy? At first glance, foreign policy under Trump seems ...

Weve all heard the tiresome and discouraging refrain: Washington, our beautiful capital city, is broken. ...

WASHINGTON The Facebook video of a homicide was surely inevitable. This isnt the same as saying that ...

Go here to read the rest:
Progressives ignore science in conflict with their worldview - Daily Mining Gazette

5608930

Since Trump took office, weve heard reports of infighting between numerous White House factions, which reads like something from Game of Thrones. Currently, the trending topic is escalating tension between Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner. The players embody a set of ideals clashing at the epicenter of Western power: a media mogul who consolidated Trumps populism through Breitbart while mainstreaming fringe elements of the alt-right vs. a 36 year-old Upper West Side liberal representing nepotism. The media sensationalizes White House office politics like sports coverage; however, little is said about the lefts plans to take back any of the three branches of government they lost this past election cycle.

Democrats efforts to block Supreme Court nominee, now justice, Neil Gorsuch began with hullabaloos from the likes of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders but ended in a whimper. Media outlets like Slate and The New York Times pushed a hostile agenda towards all of Trumps nominees, with particular emphasis on Betsy DeVos in what could be surmised as a total double standard when it comes to women in the Republican Party, but did little to deter Trump from bulldozing the opposition and establishing his administration. Meanwhile, media fervor surrounding Jon Ossoffs upstart candidacy to take Georgias sixth congressional district is fizzling. Despite an eight-million-dollar DNC war-chest and a front-page New York magazine feature written by Olivia Nuzzi, Ossoff failed to avoid a runoff and will now face Karen Handel with consolidated Republican support behind her.

Most of Trumps resistance comes from grassroots movements, but these have yet to translate into a singular political movement or coherent policy. Although the number of anti-Trump protestors is staggering, the #resistance faces considerable obstacles in aligning their values with a political party that sold them out to Clinton. Whereas the Koch Brothers and a handful of Big Tobacco/Big Oil firms financed the Tea Party, which successfully staked out Congressional representation through the Tea Party Caucus and the Freedom Party, theres little to suggest the anti-Trump movement wont dissolve like its Occupy predecessor, turning instead to slacktivism and lethargy. Theres a fundamental disconnect between the Liberal political elite, so consumed by the world of D.C. politics, and the masses marching on Capitol Hill theyre making decisions for, tension exacerbated by progressive rhetoric against Washington still reverberating from Bernie Sanders camp. Although progressives and establishment Democrats are united in their hatred for Trump, a clear strategy has yet to emerge for how they can reconcile their political differences into a collected agency.

Davis Richardson is a writer whose work has appeared in Vice, Nylon Magazine, and Capitol File. Follow him on Twitter @davisoliverr

Read the original post:
Progressives And Establishment Dems At Odds Over The Future Of Liberalism - Daily Caller

Bernie Sanders traveled to Nebraska this week to throw his support behind Omaha Democratic mayoral candidate, Heath Mello, who is running against the incumbent Republican mayor,Jean Stothert. A Mello win, Sanders has said, would give hope to other progressive Democrats in conservative states.

But Mellos progressive credentials are questionable at best.As a state senator, he co-sponsored a bill requiring that abortion providers tell women they can have an ultrasound first, and mandating that providers who use ultrasound display the image in a way women can see if they choose. He said it represented a positive first step to reducing the number of abortions in Nebraska.

As a populist, Sanders has built a political career protesting economic inequality and yet by campaigning for Mello, he has demonstrated a willingness to separate economic justice from reproductive justice. (So has Democratic National Committee Chair, Tom Perez, who is also helping to campaign for Mello and who has defended that decision, saying the job of the DNC is to help Democratic candidates win.) But abortion access is not just a medical issue, or even a social one; it is, at its core, also an economic concern. Heres why.

Raising children in the United States is expensive. Like, more than $230,000 per child(from birth to age 17) expensive. That includes food, transportation, housing, education (but not college), health care and child care. Oh, and daycare for babies is now more expensive than college tuition in most states.

Women in this country already face a well-documented motherhood financial penalty. Research shows, for example, that mothers are less likely to be hired for jobs and they are offered lower starting salaries when they are hired. (Men dont appear to be similarly disadvantaged by becoming dads, and might actually benefit from it, career-wise.)

Having a baby is the most expensive health event that families face during their childbearing years. At the same time, a lack of workplace supports for many women during this critical time means a woman may not have paid sick days for prenatal appointments or well-baby care, or paid family and medical leave to use after giving birth. Addressing all of these issues is central to achieving economic justice for women and families, said Sarah Lipton-Lubet, vice president of the National Partnership for Women & Families.

Roughly 60 percent of women who have abortions are already mothers, which means they understand these factors not in some abstract way, but both deeply and personally. In fact, economic concerns are a major reason why women chose to end pregnancies. Estimates suggest that between 40 and 75 percent of women seeking abortions do so for financial reasons.

The most common reason women give for wanting to terminate a pregnancy is that they feel that they cannot afford to have a baby or to have another baby, Diana Greene Foster, director of research with the University of California San Franciscos Advancing New Standards In Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) told The Huffington Post.

In the United States, roughly 5 percent of reproductive-age women have an unintended pregnancy each year, and those pregnancies disproportionately occur among low-income and poor women. In 2011, the unintended pregnancy rate among women living well below the federal poverty level around $18,000 for a family of three was five times higher than women living well above the federal poverty line.

Low-income women also struggle to afford abortion, particularly because the Hyde Amendment has long restricted Medicaid coverage for abortion care. Research shows that in order to come up with the money necessary for the procedure, women are forced to forgo food for themselves and their children, to miss rent payments and to sell off personal items.

When women are unable to get an abortion, they are more likely to be poor, less likely to work full time and more likely to receive public assistance, Foster said. And this has important consequences for their existing children and their ability to care for a new child.

Also, because two-thirds of the unplanned births in this country are paid for by public insurance programs, namely Medicaid, unintended pregnancies weigh on the economy as well.

That means that any line separating reproductive rights from economic concerns is an imaginary one. True progressives would do well to remember that.

CORRECTION:An earlier version of this story mischaracterized the bill Mello co-sponsored. It did not require women to have ultrasounds before abortions.

View original post here:
Reminder To Progressives: Abortion Is An Economic Issue - Huffington Post

I dont recall ever nodding my head in agreement with anything Ive read in one of Mona Charens columns. Until today. Shes right that the left isnt supportive of science across the board (March for Science threatens our faith in science April 20). They are guilty of championing some science and disregarding or disputing other science, just as the right does.

Fortunately, I was able to regain my composure when she made this claim: Whether temperatures are rising dangerously is a scientific question. What to do about it is a political question. This is not exactly true. Very often, prior to getting into the politics of something like addressing global warming, we need science to help us figure out which solution will be most effective, not just to identify the problem. That was an unsettling moment, agreeing with Ms. Charen. I trust it wont happen again.

Jim Morris, Evanston

SEND LETTERS TO: letters@suntimes.com. Please include your neighborhood or hometown and a phone number for verification purposes.

Standing up for progressives

Wedont have march fatigue, and science does deserve all the interest and publicity that it can get. According to Mona Charen, Science must be purely the search for truth, and she is right. What is also true is that the Trump administration has politicized science by voicing alternative facts that suit their political agenda and donors.

They deny climate change and promote coal and other greenhouse gases. They cut the EPA budget so the agency can no longer function as a guardian of air and water quality. They are frightening people by touting vaccines as the cause of autism. They are slashing NIH budgets, which will limit basic scientific research and cause a brain drain in this country.

Charen charges that progressives cherry pick science, but that is the antithesis of the progressive ethos. That is why millions will be marching to honor science as purely the search for truth.

Carol Kraines, Deerfield

Check with Congress onmilitary actions

Im a Vietnam era Navy veteran; my brothers name is on the Vietnam Memorial Wall in D.C. and my son is currently an Army Sergeant with multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. We all volunteered and fully believe in the oath we took when we did to support and defend the constitution against all enemies foreignand domestic.We have engaged in four undeclared wars in my lifetime, sacrificing thousands of lives and untold wealth.

With the current militarization of the White House and the inflammatory talk, Congress has remained silent. I truly fear for my country with this current atmosphere. Please no more! Follow the Constitution. Military action must have prior Congressional approval.

Greg Marshall, Oak Forest

No cash for kids, plenty for lights

Sorry, kids. Chicago does not have money for you, your teachers or your schools. But Chicago does have money for new lights and the countless other pet projects that our politicians want completed. One day, maybe the children really will make it on the priority list in this city.

Justin Nowak, Dunning

More here:
Progressives dismiss science when it doesn't suit them - Chicago Sun-Times

It was Easter weekend and the sun was shining, so Brandon Wick, co-organizer of the Camas Progressives political group, wasnt going to count his eggs before they hatched.

Sure, his political group had been gaining members over the past few months and had a good track record when it came to people showing up for events, rallies and demonstrations. But the rally in question was taking place the Saturday before Easter Sunday and the sun had finally broken through the clouds, so Wick wasnt 100 percent certain that his groups Tax Day rally would win out over things like family gatherings, yard work and just plain fun-in-the sun.

We may get 10, maybe 15 people, Wick said Friday afternoon, one day before the Camas Progressives planned Tax Day demonstration in east Vancouver where local activists would call on President Donald Trump to meet his campaign promise and make his taxes available to the public.

But Wick was in for a pleasant surprise instead of the 10 or so activists he expected, about two dozen people turned out for the demonstration at the 192nd Avenue and Mill Plain Boulevard intersection, and held their Show Your Taxes signs held high.

Its a good turnout, Wick said. Better than I expected.

Some people at the rally like David McDevitt, a political candidate with aspirations of unseating U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Republican, in the 2018 general election are well steeped in the political arena, but most of the folks who turned out for the Camas Progressives April 15 Tax Day rally, described themselves as political newcomers. Several said Trumps unexpected victory in November had pushed them out of their comfort zones.

I was not active before at all, said longtime Camas resident Adriana Vela. But after the election, there was this shock and realization that the American people are asleep at the wheel.

Instead of letting her shock and dismay overwhelm her, Vela decided to take action. She discovered the Camas Progressives group, went to a couple of meetings and, when asked to lead the group with Wick, jumped at the chance.

I wanted to lead by example, Vela said. Ive been told by people, You lost, get over it, but this isnt about my team losing an election, its about the future of our society and I am very concerned about the policies that (Trump) is trying to enact right now policies that will hurt women, minorities, the elderly.

Meeting with like-minded people, said Vela, has helped her cope with the initial shock she felt after the November election.

I heard someone say they were no longer going to accept the things they cannot change, but, instead, change the things they cannot accept, Vela said. Thats how I feel.

Wick, who moved from North Portland to Camas last year with his wife, Summer, and their 5-year-old daughter, agreed that, like Vela, he could not sit back after the November election and be OK with federal policies that could negatively affect his country and local community.

I was watching the election with my wife and just felt shell-shocked, Wick said, recalling Trumps surprise victory. I knew that my apathy toward politics was over.

In the months since the November election, Wick has tried to keep up with the daily news coming out of the federal administration as well as familiarize himself with local and regional politicians like U.S. Rep. Herrera Beutler, who represents Washingtons Third Congressional District, which includes Camas-Washougal residents.

Its becoming clear that the majority of Americans dont approve of this president, Wick said. And people want to get involved, they just dont know how.

The Camas Progressives group wants to attract those types of people, Wick said, and help them find a level of political activism that works best for their lives. The group takes its cues from the national Indivisible Project, a nonprofit formed by two former congressional staffers a few days after the November election to guide progressive activists on the best, tried-and-true tactics for making lasting political change.

Wick said the Camas Progressives group is not about shaming Republicans or people who support Trump. Instead, he said, the groups members want to accentuate what they consider positives Rep. Herrera Beutlers recent vote to not dismantle the Affordable Care Act, for instance and exert pressure on politicians when they make a move the group considers a move in the wrong direction.

As an example of the latter, Wick pointed to Herrera Beutlers lack of in-person town halls.

She hasnt done one in person for maybe six or seven months, Wick said. She is avoiding them.

Recently, Wick and Vela were able to meet with the congresswoman via a videoconference call. They asked Herrera Beutler very specific questions about her views on education and health care, but although the congresswoman seemed like a good person who was listening, Wick said, she wasnt easy to pin down on any one issue.

I think she is a very polished politician and she can be evasive, Wick said. But I do think we can find common ground and were going to need that.

Vela was more direct: I was very disappointed by (Herrera Beutler). I asked her if she would be voting on a Trump-Devos education budget and she said she believed in people having a choice. I said, Its great if they can afford a (school) choice, but what if they cant? Thats not a choice. Then I asked her a yes-or-no question would she demand ethical transparency at all levels of government and she said she couldnt comment. It was very disappointing.

With monthly meetups and several weekend events in the works, the Camas Progressives show no sign of slowing down. If anything, the group seems to be gaining momentum, making connections with other progressive movements in Southwest Washington, attracting political newcomers and, soon, training others who want to become more involved with local, regional, statewide and national politics including progressives who may want to run for political office someday.

Because progressives in Southwest Washington and throughout the nation are largely on the defense right now, Wick said, preventing burnout is important, and his group tries to find ways to stay positive and promote self-care among the members.

For me, I feel better when Im connecting with others and taking action, Wick said. Without that, its easy to feel powerless and stressed out.

For others who want to connect with progressives in the Camas-Washougal community, Wick encourages them to give the Camas Progressives group a chance.

I think people were shocked by what happened with this past election. I know I was, Wick said. But we have the opportunity to start bringing things back and to, hopefully, bring back a government that is truly reflective of the people.

The group will take part in several events in the Vancouver-Portland area over the next few weeks, including a Science March on Saturday, April 22 in Portland; a Climate March on Saturday, April 29 in Vancouver; and a town hall with or without Jaime Herrera Beutler from 6 to 8 p.m., Thursday, April 20, in the Foster Auditorium at Clark College, 1933 Fort Vancouver Way, Vancouver. The Clark County Progressives Coalition, a group that the Camas Progressives work with on regional events, will host a table at the Democracy Speaks event from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday, April 23, in the Columbia Room at the Vancouver Community Library, 901 C St., Vancouver.

To learn more about the Camas Progressives group, visit http://www.meetup.com/Camas-Progressives or look on Facebook under Camas Progressives.

View post:
Camas progressives rally, forge ahead - Camas Washougal Post Record