Cadfile's Favorite Links on secular humanism from Diigo

Tesla Motors Pays Back Energy Department Loan 9 Years Early | ThinkProgress

Thu May 23 03:58:53 +0000 2013

"Electric automaker Tesla Motors just announced that it has paid back the nearly half a billion dollars the Department of Energy lent it in 2010. According to a company press release, today’s wire transfer of $451.8 million dollars follows two other payments in the last year and a half. U.S. taxpayers could see a $12 million profit, in addition to a thriving company employing thousands."

Tags: progressive secular humanism energy electric cars green energy

White People Stopped By New York Police Are More Likely To Have Guns Or Drugs Than Minorities | ThinkProgress

Wed May 22 21:11:09 +0000 2013

"It’s unlikely that the appropriate lesson to take from these findings is that stops of white people should increase because they are more likely to carry weapons and drugs. Rather, they suggest that police are excessively targeting minorities. Officers may be netting more successful stops of white New Yorkers because they are only likely to stop a white person when they actually suspect that person of committing a crime."

Tags: progressive secular humanism minorities police stop and frisk

Media Bias of a Different Color: Race, Community, and Disaster Reporting

Wed May 22 19:52:00 +0000 2013

"This is a consistent media pattern. If disaster strikes an urban community, reporters will look for, find, and report any hint of looting and disorder. And if a disaster strikes a mostly white small town or suburban community, reporters will look for, find, and report any story of neighbors coming together. Both kinds of stories are there to be told, after any disaster. But part of white privilege is knowing your town will be portrayed in a positive light if disaster hits. So of course your town should get federal disaster relief, and of course that won’t turn into a slush fund. After all, you’re “salt of the earth, hardworking people who value family, God, and community.”"

Tags: progressive secular humanism media bias disaster Moore Oklahoma

Health Care For A Family Of Four Now Costs More Than The Groceries To Feed Them For An Entire Year | ThinkProgress

Wed May 22 19:14:46 +0000 2013

"Some of that total sum ends up being covered by the family’s health insurance plan — the firm’s analysts found that employers paid about 58 percent of the total health care costs — but a big chunk of it falls onto the family itself. The average family pays more than $9,000 in payroll deductions and out-of-pocket bills for their health care, which is more than they typically spend on groceries and gas for an entire year. That’s been a consistent trend over the past several years. As the cost of health care increases, Americans’ contributions to their health plans have risen at a much faster rate than their employers’ share. Since 2003, workers in every single state have had to increase their contributions to their family health plans by nearly 75 percent. At the same time, workers’ wages have stagnated. As struggling Americans aren’t able to afford the treatment they need, they’re putting off doctor’s visits and skipping out on their medication."

Tags: progressive secular humanism health care health obamacare health care reform

9 Questions That Atheists Might Find Insulting (And the Answers) | Alternet

Tue May 21 17:18:29 +0000 2013

"Every marginalized group has some question, or questions, that are routinely asked of them -- and that drive them up a tree; questions that have insult or bigotry or dehumanization woven into the very asking. Sometimes the questions are asked sincerely, with sincere ignorance of the offensive assumptions behind them. And sometimes they are asked in a hostile, passive-aggressive, "I'm just asking questions" manner."

Tags: progressive philosophy secular humanism church and state atheism religion questions

Daniel Dennett's seven tools for thinking | Books | The Observer

Mon May 20 04:07:56 +0000 2013

"Cognitive scientist and philosopher Daniel Dennett is one of America's foremost thinkers. In this extract from his new book, he reveals some of the lessons life has taught him"

Tags: progressive thinking argument philosophy secular humanism scientific method Daniel Dennett

Policing Their Own » Greta Christina's Blog

Wed May 08 18:30:39 +0000 2013

"I have been hearing a lot of calls for unity in the atheist community. I have been hearing a lot of calls for an end to the debates, an end to the infighting. I have been hearing a lot of calls for atheists to stop focusing on our differences, and look at our common ground. I have been hearing a lot of cries about how the constant fighting among atheists makes us enemies of each other, drains our energy, weakens our movement. And I get it. I’m tired of the arguments, too. But all too often, calling for unity equals silencing dissent. All too often, calling for unity equals a de facto defense of the status quo. All too often, calling for unity equals telling people who are speaking up for themselves to shut up."

Tags: progressive secular humanism bigotry women's rights sexism secularism social justice atheism

Daily Kos: It's completely true that PolitiFact is full of crap on anti-gay discrimination

Tue May 07 19:21:52 +0000 2013

"Yup. According to PolitiFact, because some employers, including the government, don't discriminate, it's somehow less true that those 29 states lack protections for LGBT workers. Here's the thing about workplace protections, including discrimination: You shouldn't have to be lucky to be treated fairly. Equal rights should not be dependent on your employer's personal views. In 29 states, though, that's the situation, and PolitiFact is so invested in pretending that doesn't matter that it's challenging a statement that it acknowledges is correct if framed "in the context of blanket protections by states"—which is exactly how Navratilova framed it."

Tags: progressive gop lies discrimination lgbtq secular humanism church and state bigotry civil rights

How Do You Get Conservatives to Buy Energy Efficient Products? - Tim McDonnell - The Atlantic Cities

Tue Apr 30 20:11:55 +0000 2013

"The study then presented participants with a real-world choice: With a fixed amount of money in their wallet, respondents had to "buy" either an old-school light bulb or an efficient compact florescent bulb, the same kind Bachmann railed against. Both bulbs were labeled with basic hard data on their energy use, but without a translation of that into climate pros and cons. When the bulbs cost the same, and even when the CFL cost more, conservatives and liberals were equally likely to buy the efficient bulb. But slap a message on the CFL’s packaging that says "Protect the Environment," and "we saw a significant drop-off in more politically moderates and conservatives choosing that option," said study author Dena Gromet, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business."

Tags: progressive secular humanism economics conservatives energy independence

The 1 Percent’s Solution - NYTimes.com

Sat Apr 27 21:31:07 +0000 2013

"Part of the answer surely lies in the widespread desire to see economics as a morality play, to make it a tale of excess and its consequences. We lived beyond our means, the story goes, and now we’re paying the inevitable price. Economists can explain ad nauseam that this is wrong, that the reason we have mass unemployment isn’t that we spent too much in the past but that we’re spending too little now, and that this problem can and should be solved. No matter; many people have a visceral sense that we sinned and must seek redemption through suffering — and neither economic argument nor the observation that the people now suffering aren’t at all the same people who sinned during the bubble years makes much of a dent. "

Tags: progressive secular humanism income inequality economics religion austerity budget cuts

What Went Wrong in West, Texas — and Where Were the Regulators? | Occupy America

Sat Apr 27 04:40:34 +0000 2013

"A week after a blast at a Texas fertilizer plant killed at least 15 people and hurt more than 200, authorities still don't know exactly why the West Chemical and Fertilizer Company plant exploded. Here's what we do know: The fertilizer plant hadn't been inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration since 1985. Its owners do not seem to have told the Department of Homeland Security that they were storing large quantities of potentially explosive fertilizer, as regulations require. And the most recent partial safety inspection of the facility in 2011 led to $5,250 in fines. We've laid out which agencies were in charge of regulating the plant and who's investigating the explosion now"

Tags: progressive secular humanism regulations disaster west texas fertilizer plant explosion

12 Programs Congress Refuses To Save From Automatic Spending Cuts | ThinkProgress

Fri Apr 26 19:02:43 +0000 2013

"That means lawmakers will be able to fly home for recess this weekend without any delays — and tourists and people who travel for business won’t have to experience the delays either. Unfortunately, though, Congress has shown no willingness to provide similar relief for the families that are being hammered by sequestration in other ways. Here are 12 programs that have experienced devastating cuts because Congress insists on cutting spending when it doesn’t need to — and that have been ignored by the same lawmakers who leaped to action as soon as their trips home were going to take a little longer"

Tags: progressive secular humanism congress sequester gop fail welfare social safety net

Right-Wingers Use Boston Bombing to Paper Over Their Own Extremist Terror | Crooks and Liars

Wed Apr 24 18:25:27 +0000 2013

"The fact, however, is that the speculation about right-wing extremism's potential role was entirely rational, considering that in the past four years, there have been nearly 70 acts of domestic terrorism committed by right-wing extremists in the United States, compared to just over 30 such acts committed by Islamist extremists here. (I have prepared a report on this that Mother Jones will be publishing soon.) And let's not overlook the OTHER terrorist attack that occurred in the same week -- namely, the ricin attacks on the White House and Senate, a case that is still officially unsolved, now that the original suspect has been released. However, considering both the targets and the fact that ricin has long been a favorite weapon of right-wing extremists, there is a high likelihood that one or more of them will eventually prove to be the source of these attacks."

Tags: progressive secular humanism church and state terrorism Boston marathon bombing anti-government right wing

'Family' Group Co-Opts Tragedy To Oppose 'Sexual Liberalism' | ThinkProgress

Fri Apr 19 20:54:05 +0000 2013

"In an email sent to supporters before Thursday night’s manhunt began in Massachusetts, the Family Research Council attempted to appropriate recent tragedies as arguments that support their social conservative positions. Referring to the Republicans’ Senate filibuster of the gun safety bill, FRC’s Tony Perkins claimed that tragedies like Newtown and Boston — as well as the shooting at its headquarters last summer — are the result of “sexual liberalism” and the lack of Christian influence on society:"

Tags: progressive secular humanism church and state Family Research Council Boston marathon bombing co-opt

New Research Undermines The GOP's Austerity Agenda | ThinkProgress

Tue Apr 16 20:33:29 +0000 2013

"First, Reinhart and Rogoff excluded the post-war years for certain countries that enjoyed robust economic growth despite debt levels well over 90 percent. They also chose a skewed method of weighting the data: for example, New Zealand’s single year of terrible growth while over the 90 percent threshold wound up counting just as much as Britain’s 19 years of healthy growth. And they even incorrectly input at least one Excel spreadsheet formula, wrongly excluding several countries form their calculations. In short, the central argument in support of austerity — cited by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, the New York Times’ David Brooks, and multiple times by House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) — is now defunct. "

Tags: progressive secular humanism austerity gop fail budget cuts income inequality

Jon Stewart on Rand Paul’s Howard speech | TPMDC

Fri Apr 12 16:01:12 +0000 2013

"“You can’t just yada yada yada the last 60 Republican years,” Stewart said. “A Republican freed the slaves, gave black people the vote, yada yada yada, and now all blacks vote Democratic, I mean, what the hell?” Stewart mocked."

Tags: progressive secular humanism civil rights rand paul history

What Actually Happened To That Same-Sex Couple In The Missouri Hospital | ThinkProgress

Fri Apr 12 15:50:35 +0000 2013

"With these details, both the hospital’s and police’s actions seem more suspect, not less. At the foundation of the story remains the fact that Roger and Allen’s relationship was treated as inferior. Because they did not have a state-recognized marriage, they were regarded as legal strangers despite even having set up the available legal protections for each other. Roger, in turn, was subjected not just to discrimination but police brutality and legal consequences. This tragic story speaks volumes about the consequences of continuing to deny same-sex couples the right to marry and how they continue to be treated as second-class citizens. Notably, not one conservative organization has mentioned this story since it broke."

Tags: progressive secular humanism church and state lgbt civil rights Same-Sex marriage missouri

Maddow Calls Out Axelrod for Support of President's Social Security Cuts | Video Cafe

Thu Apr 11 03:12:38 +0000 2013

"Former campaign advisor to President Obama turned MSNBC analyst, David Axelrod may not have been too happy with Rachel Maddow for saying what she did tonight in response to President Obama putting Social Security cuts on the table with his budget proposal, but the she was exactly right here. The White House seems to want a fight with the left, because if what they were really worried was solvency of the system, they'd put raising the income cap on the table."

Tags: progressive secular humanism president obama social security austerity

Former Reagan Official Links Atlanta Cheating Scandal to Higher Taxes, Defense Cuts | Video Cafe

Mon Apr 08 21:21:37 +0000 2013

""Cheating is symptomatic of a huge cultural problem we have," Stockman opined. "The cheating that's going on in Washington today, in terms of not being honest about the real choices: higher taxes for you, Social Security cuts for the affluent, big declines in defense not there. The cheating that's going on in terms of the financial system that's totally out of kilter and really needs to be fixed in Wall Street is not even being addressed.""

Tags: progressive secular humanism public schools cheating cheap labor conservative

The NRA Myth of Gun-Free Zones | Mother Jones

Mon Apr 01 18:37:32 +0000 2013

"Among the 62 mass shootings over the last 30 years that we studied, not a single case includes evidence that the killer chose to target a place because it banned guns. To the contrary, in many of the cases there was clearly another motive for the choice of location."

Tags: progressive secular humanism gun control gun free zones good guy with a gun