Thanks, gocomics.com
Tag: conscience
Bye-bye, Republican Party
Lyle Darrah outside his home in Mead, Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2021
Lyle Darrah was on a conference call at work when the riot at the U.S. Capitol started on Jan. 6. When his boss mentioned what was happening, he turned on news coverage — and immediately felt his last allegiance to the Republican Party slipping away…
Later, Darrah, age 49, sat in his living room and pulled up the state’s voter registration website. And then, like thousands of other Coloradans in the wake of the insurrection, he left the Republican Party…
In the week from Jan. 6 through Jan. 12, about 4,600 Republicans changed their party status in Colorado…There was no comparable effect with any other party…
The number of people changing parties spiked immediately after the Capitol breach, though their motivations varied widely. About 200 made the same dramatic leap as Darrah, choosing to join the Democratic Party. Hundreds more went to conservative third parties…
…Interviews and data analysis show how the tumultuous post-election period, driven by the former president’s false claims of a stolen election and culminating in the Capitol riot and the current impeachment effort, has created a new split within the Republican Party.
Presuming Republicans Have a Conscience?
Thanks, gocomics.org
In the tradition of Connecticut Yankees – with conscience and bravery
Melissa Schlag, Selectman in Haddam, Connecticut
❝ Melissa Schlag won’t stand for President Trump. And since last month, she won’t stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, either.
Around the country, people have used kneeling as a form of silent protest. But in the small town of Haddam, Connecticut, where Schlag is a local official, her refusal to stand during the pledge at town meetings has been met with backlash of its own…
❝ What started as a small gesture quickly garnered a lot of attention…But the criticism isn’t stopping her. As long as Trump’s in office, she says she’ll keep kneeling.
“I don’t see anything changing,” she told CNN. “I don’t see me standing up anytime soon.”
Haddam’s in one of the prettier parts of the state. Dunno if the schools there teach anything about Connecticut history; but, Connecticut Yankees were always ready to fight for justice, honesty – fight against tyranny and bigotry. If I still lived back in New England it would be worth driving to Haddam to support her courage.
Bravo, Melissa Schlag
Pollution’s Annual Cost? $4.6 Trillion and 9 Million Dead
❝ And that was just in 2015, according to a new global report on the consequences of humanity’s actions.
Delhi — Udit Kulshrestha/Bloomberg
❝ Pollution in all its forms killed 9 million people in 2015 and, by one measure, led to economic damage of $4.6 trillion, according to a new estimate by researchers who hope to put the health costs of toxic air, water and soil higher on the global agenda.
In less-developed nations, pollution-linked illness and death drag down productivity, reducing economic output by 1 percent to 2 percent annually, according to the tally by the Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health, published Thursday by the U.K. medical journal. The report is intended to illuminate the hidden health and economic consequences of harmful substances introduced into the environment by human activity…
❝ The report represents an “extremely comprehensive and rigorous quantification” of pollution costs, said Francesca Dominici, a professor of biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who wasn’t involved in the study.
“In the scientific community, I don’t think there is any disagreement about the cost-benefit analysis of controlling pollution,” Dominici said. Reducing air pollution from vehicles and power plants, for example, would simultaneously improve human health and reduce planet-warming carbon emissions, she said. “The major barrier has been political, but not scientific.”
❝ As large as that figure is, it may even underestimate the full cost of pollution. Because the amount is derived from death rates, it doesn’t include the price of medical expenditures or lost productivity from those sickened but not killed by pollution-related disease. And it doesn’t measure some forms of pollution that are likely to have health effects, such as soil tainted with heavy metals or industrial toxins, because data to calculate its influence on health are insufficient.
No surprise when Bloomberg offers articles like this one. Folks selling services to investors realize that folks in all walks of life can develop a conscience about principled profit-making versus scumbags who don’t care how their profits are acquired.
Obama replaces religious “conscience” regulations – finally!
Any teabaggers ever join an anti-war demonstration?
After two years of struggling to balance the rights of patients against the beliefs of health-care workers, the Obama administration on Friday finally rescinded most of a federal regulation designed to protect those who refuse to provide care they find objectionable on moral or religious grounds.
The decision guts one of President George W. Bush’s most controversial legacies: a rule that was widely interpreted as shielding workers who refuse to participate in a range of medical services, such as providing birth control pills, caring for gay men with AIDS and performing in-vitro fertilization for lesbians or single women.
Friday’s move was seen as an important step in countering that trend, which in recent years had led pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for the emergency contraceptive Plan B, doctors in California to reject a lesbian’s request for infertility treatment, and an ambulance driver in Chicago to turn away a woman who needed transportation for an abortion.
“Without the rescission of this regulation, we would see tremendous discrimination against patients based on their behavior and based just on who they are,” said Susan Berke Fogel of the National Health Law Program, an advocacy group based in the District. “We would see real people suffer, and more women could die.”
The new rule leaves intact only long-standing “conscience” protections for doctors and nurses who do not want to perform abortions or sterilizations. It also retains the process for allowing health workers whose rights are violated to file complaints.
You wouldn’t ask Republicans, teabaggers and other hypocrites to give up on the Death Panels they already support, would you?
Eideard 