How Racism Carried Trump to Victory

Trump supporters at Macomb Community College in Warren, Michigan

In some ways the ongoing Virginia 2017 statewide campaigns are a mirror of what happened in the 2016 presidential election with Republicans pandering to racists, religious extremists and aging, reactionary rural white populations, especially in Southwest Virginia and the southern tier of the state exclusive of the Hampton Roads region.  Meanwhile the Democrats are running inclusive forward looking campaigns.  Hopefully, Virginia's demographics will prevent GOP victories and hopefully Democrats will recognize the fact that ultimately the outcome of the 2016 presidential contest ultimately hinged on rural white racism and animosity toward non-whites.  It is far past time that the false meme that "economic uncertainty" is what flipped prior Obama voters to Trump in key states like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.  True, many in the mainstream media do not want to call these voters out for what they are: racist bigots who are outraged over their declining white privilege and by extension the fact that their backwardness is increasingly causing younger generations to migrate to liberal urban areas where employment opportunities exist and accepting communities abound.  But reluctance to speak the truth does not change the facts.  A column in the New York Times looks at the data that confirms racism and hatred towards immigrants were the key motivation for these Trump voters.  Here are excerpts:

What Democrats missed was the profound political impact recent immigration trends were having on the more rural parts of the once homogeneous Midwest — that the region had unexpectedly become a flash point in the nation’s partisan immigration wars.

In a Brookings essay published last month, John C. Austin, director of the Michigan Economic Center, a local think tank, writes that the region is experiencing a “steady stream of immigrants from Mexico, Central America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.”
As a result, Austin continues,

Immigration has become an unambiguous factor in this racially charged Midwestern landscape. While immigrant-rich states like Arizona, California, and Florida are often at the center of immigration policy discussions, the political debate about the role of immigrants burns hottest in the heartland.

Austin went on, in an email, to provide more detail about the power of immigration to move white voters into the Trump column:

The "rural” voters here are some farmers, but more likely, as in the hinterlands outside Flint, Monroe, Toledo, Erie, or Janesville, Wisconsin, they are mostly white, working class blue collar workers or retirees, many, sadly, who fled their small cities to escape blacks. They are anxious about the economic prospects for their future, their aging communities (the kids have fled), making folks mad. And now all these immigrants come and are changing the society!! Just as Macomb County, where working class white voters fled Detroit in advance of blacks, now sees nearby communities like Hamtramck becoming (in their view) a Bangladeshi bazaar — and they don’t like that. And they are easily fanned to blame those folks.

In February 2017, Stanley Greenberg, a Democratic pollster and strategist, conducted four postelection focus groups with white voters who had cast ballots for Trump in Macomb County, Michigan, an area he has been studying since 1985. The participants were not Republicans. They were whites without college degrees who identified themselves as independents, as Democratic-leaning independents, or as Democrats who voted for Obama in 2008, 2012 or both.

Three developments are taking place in the rust belt simultaneously.

First, as recently as 2000, many of the key Midwestern counties that moved from blue to red in 2016 had very few minority residents. Since then, their immigrant populations began to increase at a rapid rate well above the national average. Second, at the same time that immigrants are moving in, younger native-born residents are leaving in droves to seek employment elsewhere, while the remaining white population is aging and is often hostile to change. It is the perfect formula for cultural conflict, and Trump proved to be the perfect candidate to exploit it. Finally, these changes are taking place in a region that Austin points out is home to “15 of the nation’s 25 major metro areas with the sharpest black-white segregation,” making it even more unreceptive to nonwhites than other sections of the country.

Arrayed on a diversity index, Michigan with an index of 42, Wisconsin at 35, Ohio at 36, and Pennsylvania at 41, all rank in the bottom twenty — i.e., the least diverse — of the fifty states. The diversity index for the entire country is substantially higher at 63. Examples of states with very high diversity indexes include California at 79; Nevada at 73; Texas at 70; and New York at 70.

A rapid rate of growth in the percentage of immigrants in communities that have in the past experienced little diversity is particularly explosive.

In other words, communities that are close to 100 percent white will react intensely to a modest increase in foreign-born residents, while highly diverse communities will shrug it off.

Exit poll data from 2016 shows how critical opposition to immigration in the Midwest was to Trump’s victory.

In Michigan, for instance, exit poll data showed that those who believe immigrants to the United States “hurt the county” voted three to one for Trump. Those who said illegal immigrants should be deported voted for Trump by better than five to one. The same pattern can be seen in exit poll data from Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania, which, while not part of the Midwest geographically, resembles it politically.

At the same time, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and, to a lesser extent, Pennsylvania, have each experienced a net out-migration of native-born residents. The effect of this exodus is twofold.

First, the people leaving tend to be younger and more open-minded, willing to risk moving to a faster growing section of the country. Second, those left behind tend to be older, more closed-minded and more set in their ways.

William Frey, a demographer at Brookings, emailed me:

These “left-behind” populations tend to be older and more backward rather than future oriented — less likely to embrace the nation’s new diversity and the emerging global economy. This was surely the case among 2016 voters in rural parts of swing states that helped to elect Trump as president.

Further compounding the rightward movement of these white voters is their animosity to nonwhites. . . . The task for Democrats is how to come up with a non-xenophobic, non-racist answer to this problem.

Many of these Trump voters pack the pews of their churches every Sunday and regularly feign piety and give lip service to "family values."  But do not be fooled.  They are not nice or moral people and their most certainly do not follow the Gospel of Christ.   Structuring a means to reach out to foul and morally deficient voters will not be an easy task for the Democrats.  One obvious effort that is needed is to educate minority voters that they MUST turn out and vote every Election Day because those who hate them will be turning out.

P.S., yes, I may be biased since many of these same voters hold animus towards LGBT citizens. 

How Trump Will Betray the Coal Industry and Miners

Perhaps no one well for Der Trumpenführer's lies more completely than those dependent on the coal industry, especially in areas like Kentucky, West Virginia and parts of Southwest Virginia.  Between appeals to racism, white nationalism and toxic right wing religion, voters in these areas voted for Trump and Republicans that now push budget cuts that will hit these regions harder than many others.  Meanwhile, promises to bring the coal industry back to its glory days - which in truth, were not all that good for average coal industry workers - will likely turn out to be nothing more than promises of a carnival barker.  Between Trump's broken promises (assuming he meant anything he said) and a reactionary culture that makes these regions unattractive for modern progressive businesses, the economic future remains bleak with further pain to come from the policies of politicians that these regions put into office.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the coming betrayal of those who voted out of hatred and an unwillingness to move toward the future and who continue to look backwards.  Here are highlights:

[T]he prognosis for Big Coal remains dim. . . . . President Trump has vowed to roll back environmental regulations that the industry says are part of a “war on coal.”

The stocks of coal companies have enjoyed a “Trump bump,” thanks to the president’s pledges to “bring the coal industry back” and “put our great miners and steelworkers back to work.” Half a dozen big companies have seized the moment to issue stock or sell bonds to raise money from investors willing to wager on the effects of a friendlier Trump administration. Peabody Energy, the nation’s biggest coal behemoth, hopes to win court approval to come out of bankruptcy in April.

But the obstacles on the other side of the ledger remain daunting: Coal-fired power plants continue to shut their doors. Bountiful supplies of U.S. shale gas are keeping natural gas prices low and competitive, and renewable sources of power generation are growing rapidly. Though most experts expect U.S. coal sales and output to top last year’s levels, they also expect the decline to resume in 2018.

“The coal industry is saying it’s back. It’s not back,” said Tom Sanzillo, director of finance at the Institute for Energy Economics & Financial Analysis. “This is a fool’s errand.” . . . . . Some coal companies will survive, and some could thrive. Metallurgical coal will be needed to make steel in India and China and in the United States, especially if there is a boost in infrastructure spending. And thermal coal will still be used to generate electricity for years, even if at lower rates.

But to show profits, coal operators will have to trim output from the oldest, least-efficient mines in Appalachia (where Trump garnered crucial votes in the election) and shift their focus to the Illinois Basin and the Powder River Basin in Wyoming.

“A lot of people conflate two primary things: the coal industry and coal jobs,” said Chiza B. Vitta, a coal analyst at Standard & Poor’s. “Even if the coal industry were to do better, that doesn’t translate into coal jobs. Over time the process has become more and more efficient, and they’re able to mine with fewer and fewer people working.”  Some analysts don’t even expect the industry to do better.

“The regulatory environment for coal should improve under Trump’s presidency,” the bank [CitiBank] said. But, it added, “comparative economics for coal, renewables and gas place clean coal firmly at the bottom of the stack in the U.S.”

[I]t will be hard for Trump to deliver. “To bring jobs back in Kentucky is a tough proposition unless there’s a subsidy, because it doesn’t make economic sense,” Vitta said.  That’s been true for years, notwithstanding some of the political rhetoric.

In Arizona, the Navajo Generating Station could also provide an early test for the president. Its owners have decided to close the massive coal plant. . . . . . the Navajo station produces electricity at rates about 50 percent higher than market rates.

“There’s no good economic reason to keep NGS on life support, and indeed the time for closure has come,” Sanzillo’s group said in a blog post. “The plant is emblematic of a core challenge facing the traditionally hidebound U.S. electricity-generation industry, as the market for coal-fired electricity is shrinking.”  And, he added, “that’s regardless of recent political events.”

 The take away?  Coal jobs will not return in these regions and the Trump/GOP budget will be savage to the residents of these areas who were basically played for fools and stupidly aided their own long term economic destruction.  Meanwhile, do not expect any progressive changes that will bring new, forward thinking businesses ot that will stop the flight of the most able younger generations to places that are the opposite of their home regions. The embrace of ignorance - think conservative Christianity - and bigotry carry a high price.

The Brain Afflicting Many Southern States

My son is visiting this week from Washington State where he is attending college and taking a heavy math and science curriculum.  Today in talking about changes taking place in Virginia, albeit far too slowly, he commented on the large number of students and young people he knew living in the Seattle-Olympia corridor who had moved there to escape backward, bigoted states in the South.  It is symptomatic to what is happening across many states in the South where the best and the brightest leave for college and never return except for an occasional family visit.  Opportunity, better wages and progressive businesses shun reactionary states and to pursue careers, many of the younger generation are no longer satisfied to remain in backwaters where the embrace of ignorance (which is synonymous with conservative Christianity) is celebrated.   Even the Hampton Roads region  -which, all things being relative, is liberal in comparison to many regions of The South - is experiencing a brain drain.  Bright students go off to college and never return, preferring to settle in Washington, D.C. , New York City and other progressive cities.   Ironically, even know nothings of the Southern Baptist Convention are waking up to the fact that not only is this bad for the local economies of these back waters, but it is also bad for fundamentalist denominations (especially their finances) that are experiences membership losses.  A writer at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary not surprisingly argues that the solution is to confine college students at "Christian colleges" where they can be brainwashed and held captive in ignorance.   Here's a sampling of the batshitery:

Students who attend public universities are four times more likely to stop attending church than those who attend authentic Christian colleges. Students who attend public universities are seven times more likely to stop praying consistently than students who attend authentic Christian colleges. Churches that do not encourage their youth to attend Christian colleges will likely suffer the heartbreak of seeing a sharp decline in the numbers of educated young adults that participate in church ministries.

Even if such young adults remain in the church, they may ultimately have a negative impact on the church’s health. A March 29, 2005 Washington Post article revealed that 72% of college professors view themselves as “liberal,” 84% support abortion, and 67% view homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle.

Students who attend authentic Christian colleges typically grow in their Christian commitment at five times the rate of students who attend other schools. They have a Christian worldview and a good foundation of biblical knowledge.

One of the great concerns related to the future of several of our Southern states is the notorious “brain drain” on our population. Bright educated young professionals are abandoning struggling states in unprecedented numbers as they seek higher salaries and greater potential for advancement in other states. However, the feared brain drain can also have a devastating effect on local churches. If Christian parents and churches entrust our best and brightest students to secular universities and they are schooled in unbiblical ideologies, the church risks losing its rich intellectual tradition.

The author, in short, argues that parents need to give their children the educational equivalent of a lobotomy to help the charlatans and hate merchants in the pulpits keep a captive audience in the pews.   With more and more pressing issues in the world demanding that we have a better educated and science accepting citizenry, the Southern Baptist Convention, instead argues in favor of abject ignorance - the real meaning of a "biblical worldview" in my view.  For the sake of the nation, we can only hope the exodus and brain drain accelerates.

Hampton Roads Cities Score Poorly on HRC's Municipal Equality Index

Low scoring Norfolk

With all the talk by local city leaders wanting to diversify the Hampton Roads economy and to attract innovators and entrepreneurs, they are missing one of the easiest methods to send a message of being "open for business" and "all are welcome": adopt LGBT friendly policies and programs.  Richard Florida has time and time again found that a vibrant and welcomed gay community is the "canary in the coal mine" for signalling open and welcoming communities and that gays even provide a "gay index" in determining which cities are leaders in technological innovation.   The Human Rights Campaign describes it's Municipal Equality Index report:

HRC's Municipal Equality Index (MEI) demonstrates the ways that many cities can—and do— support the LGBT people who live and work there, even where states and the federal government have failed to do so.

This year's report rates a total of 291 cities from every state in the nation, representing a total population total of 77,851,822. Search below to find your city's 2013 MEI scorecard. You can also download the full 2013 MEI report here or flip through a digital version below. Click here to see how your city scored on the 2012 MEI report.

So how did the three Hampton Roads cities considered fair?  Not well at all.  Inside Business describes the scores of Newport News, Norfolk and Virginia Beach this way:

Virginia Beach scored the highest in Hampton Roads with a score of 32 out of a possible 100. The city has a non-discrimination employment clause and a human rights commission. The city also reported its 2011 hate crime statistics to the FBI, has a positive public position on LGBT equality and has made positive efforts regarding LGBT equality, the report said.

Newport News came in second, with a score of 20. The report cited the city's human rights commission, the school system's anti-bullying policies and the police department's policy of reporting hate crime statistics to the FBI.

Chesapeake came in third with a score of 15. The report cited the city's non-discrimination employment policy and the police department's reporting of hate crime statistics.

Norfolk came in last, with a score of 12. The report cited the police department's practice of reporting hate crimes and the city's domestic partner registry, which the city was "forced to stop providing as a result of a restrictive state law."

Not a stellar showing by any means.  Norfolk in particular ought to be deeply embarrassed.  How did other parts of Virginia score? Here are some localities and their scores:

Alexandria --- 70

Arlington ---- 76

Fairfax County --- 40

Richmond ---- 36

What's really scary is that compared to Southwest Virginia, Hampton Roads is progressive and down right liberal.  It's small wonder that with the closure of the textile mills and furniture factories that few businesses have wanted to relocate to Danville or Martinsville.  Anti-gay bigotry carries a high economic price.  

Sequestration Cuts Causing Scientists to Contemplate Moving Overseas

While the Republican Party has become the anti-knowledge party as a result of it having been hijacked by the Christofascists and moronic members of the Tea Party crowd, it nevertheless does not bode well for America's future that the sequestration cuts caused by GOP intransigence are cause nearly 20% of U.S. scientists to consider moving overseas in pursuit of better funding.  America has long been a leader in scientific research and development, but a mass exodus of research scientists could leave the country in a non-competitive position.  This may be fine with those who choose to leader their lives according to the anonymous writings of Bronze Age herders, but sentient individuals should be deeply concerned.   Here are excerpts from a Huffington Post piece that looks at this worrisome development:

New data compiled by a coalition of top scientific and medical research groups show that a large majority of scientists are receiving less federal help than they were three years ago, despite spending far more time writing grants in search of it. Nearly one-fifth of scientists are considering going overseas to continue their research because of the poor funding climate in America.

The study, which was spearheaded by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) and will be formally released next week, is the latest to highlight the extent to which years of stagnant or declining budgets, made worse by sequestration, have damaged the world of science.

More than 3,700 scientists from all 50 states participated in the study, offering online responses in June and July 2013. They offered sobering assessments of the state of their profession. Eighty percent said they were spending more of their time writing grants now than in 2010, while 67 percent said they were receiving less grant money now than they were back then. Only two percent of respondents said they had received money from their employers -- predominantly academic institutions -- to make up for the loss of federal funds.

The drying up of resources has had a damaging effect on the research being conducted, forcing scientists to curtail their projects or trim their staffs.

According to the survey, 68 percent of respondents said they do not have the funds to expand their research operations; 55 percent said they have a colleague who has lost a job or expects to soon; and 18 percent of respondents said they were considering continuing their careers in another country. 

Sequestration is responsible for much of the damage being done to scientific research. The sweeping federal budget cuts have decreased funding for research and development projects across a wide swath of government agencies by $9.3 billion. The $1.7 billion budget cut to the National Institutes of Health alone has meant more than 700 fewer grants were funded this year, NIH Director Francis Collins told The Huffington Post. 

[I]n terms of percentage of gross domestic product, the United States is reducing its investment in scientific research. In fact, of the 10 countries investing the most money in scientific research, the United States is the only country that has reduced its investment in scientific research as a percentage of GDP since 2011."

The Brain Drain at Virginia Colleges and Universities

Backwardness and bigotry do have their price.  And it is often an economic price but it can also involve the less tangible loss of talent to more progressive areas.  Here in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia there is an ongoing loss of young college educated individuals.  They go off to college and never come back because the area is lacking in progressive ideas and opportunities.  Instead, they flock to Washington, D.C., New York and other progressive meccas which also offer more job opportunity.  And in Southwest Virginia, companies do not want to relocate to that backward region that makes even Hampton Roads look progressive in comparison.  Now, Virginia's backwardness and anti-gay fixation is harming the state's flagship public colleges and universities which are seeing top academics leave for institutions of learning in more progressive, gay friendly states.  The Washington Post condemns what is happening and calls on Virginia to drag itself out of the 19th century and provide domestic partner benefits to same sex couples (gay marriage is, of course, the real solution).  Here are editorial highlights:

NOT LONG AGO, a tenured professor at the University of Virginia’s College of Arts and Sciences moved to a university in New York because her same-sex partner, diagnosed with cancer, couldn’t get covered by her health insurance in Virginia. A physician at U-Va.’s medical school decamped for an Ivy League school because state law doesn’t recognize her relationship with her partner or their children, so she couldn’t get them coverage.

How many more talented minds have to leave before Virginia takes concrete action to protect publicly employed academics and thus the quality of their universities? 

In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling earlier this summer that the federal government must treat same-sex marriages the same as heterosexual ones, gay and lesbian academics are weighing a new set of incentives to leave public universities and colleges in the commonwealth.

“We already have lost valued gay and lesbian faculty to our competitors who do not discriminate,” Mr. Trammell told The Post’s Nick Anderson in an interview. “With changes in federal benefits soon available to legally married gay couples, we will lose more.”

A number of Virginia’s public university presidents pushed for the state to address this very problem in 2009. They have been ignored by Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) and the outspoken anti-gay rights attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli II (R).

U-Va., an academic powerhouse, is one of eight so-called “public Ivies.” It tied for second place in this year’s U.S. News & World Report rankings of the nation’s public universities. Unless the university fixes this situation quickly, its standing and prestige may suffer.  

[T]here is troubling evidence that the state may face an accelerating brain drain of gay academics. And when they leave, in many cases they take their grant funding with them. For example, he detailed how a tenured professor in Virginia Commonwealth University’s pharmacology and toxicology department moved to a private nonprofit research institution in North Carolina that offered full benefits to her partner of 20 years. When she left, she took along her grant of more than $1 million — a loss for Virginia and a win for North Carolina.

Even in states that, like Virginia, don’t recognize same-sex marriage, some public universities have expanded health-care benefits to include same-sex couples. The University of Missouri, for instance, recently adopted a more inclusive plan. There’s no reason that Virginia shouldn’t be able to do the same — especially at Thomas Jefferson’s university.

Naturally, the closeted Ken Cuccinelli vehemently opposes any recognition of same sex couples and has claimed that Virginia's public colleges and universities cannot provide non-discrimination protections to LGBT employees.  Should Cuccinelli win in November, expect the exodus from Virginia to accelerate.

GOP Obstructionism is an Economic Time Bomb For Hampton Roads

As the Congressional Republicans, especially those in the House of Representatives, continue to play games with the nation's economic future and refuse any meaningful budget compromises, many in Hampton Roads who work in the defense industry or who work as civilian employees for the region's many military bases face an uncertain future.  If sequestration cuts kick in, defense contracts may dry up and up to 39,000 civilian employees could face furloughs.  All be cause the Congressional Republicans place kissing the asses of extremists and lunatics in the party base ahead of the nation's well being.  It is a sad state of affairs when the biggest threat to the nation is now from the equivalent of domestic terrorists who wear the the GOP mantle.  A piece in the Virginian Pilot looks at possible local impacts thanks to folks like Scott Rigell, Randy Forbes and Rob Wittman.  Here are excerpts:

Tom Epley's schedule for maintaining and repairing Navy ships on Norfolk's waterfront was supposed to be steady through all of 2013.  But as of this week, he doesn't have any Navy work beyond April.  The budget stalemate in Washington is forcing the Navy to delay approving new work for businesses like Epley's company, MHI Ship Repair & Services, which employs 450 people and uses 750 subcontracted workers.

If the budget issues are left unresolved, spending cuts will reverberate throughout the local economy, which gets almost half its income from defense-related work.

With little time left to prepare, the Department of Defense is imposing a civilian hiring freeze, getting rid of temporary workers and holding off on contracts for future ship maintenance - like the work done by Epley's firm. It's also delaying ship decommissionings, cutting back base remodeling and maintenance, and canceling demolition projects.

Pay and benefits for military personnel wouldn't be affected, but the military's civilian workforce - including many of the Defense Department's 39,000 civilian employees in Hampton Roads - could be ordered to stay home for up to a month. The furloughs wouldn't apply to jobs critical to national security that can't be done by military personnel.

The automatic cuts, known as sequestration, were set in motion by legislators in 2011 as a doomsday threat to provoke them to find a more acceptable way to reduce deficit spending. The government borrows about $1 trillion every year. If no deal is struck, the cuts are to begin on March 1.

Separately, lawmakers have been unable to agree on a budget for federal fiscal year 2013, which runs from Oct. 1, 2012, to Sept. 30. Instead, they approved a continuing resolution that pays for government operations until March 27 - but at the same level as 2012. The military had been anticipating billions of dollars more in 2013 to cover planned projects and operations.

If Congress doesn't approve a new budget - or another continuing resolution - by March 27, the government will run out of money and be forced to shut down all but essential operations. If lawmakers approve a short-term resolution that keeps funding the government at last year's level, cuts will be necessary, defense officials say.

As the article notes, not all are complete doomsayers:

But while Navy leaders are sounding alarms, some observers say that after a decade of continuous rise in defense spending, the cuts are long overdue.  Putting the war budget aside and accounting for inflation, defense spending is at its highest rate since World War II said Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. He said Pentagon officials have gotten used to an open spigot.

The automatic, across-the-board cuts, he said, would be disastrous for the armed forces. But intelligent budget cuts make sense, said Korb, who served as director of national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and was an assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan, managing much of the Pentagon's budget.  "They don't have a money problem, they have a management problem," Korb said. "And any of these claims about a hollow force and all that are completely exaggerated across the board."

Obviously, one quick interim fix is to have America get the hell out of Afghanistan NOW.  But nonetheless, regardless of what happens in Congress, Hampton Roads will likely feel financial pain because for far too long it has relied on military spending to support the economy.  And the blame extends across the leadership of almost all of the region's cities which have failed to adopt more progressive policies and make demands that the GOP controlled General Assembly cease pushing a religious extremist social agenda that makes Virginia as a whole toxic to progressive and innovative businesses that don't want to move to a state where social policies and employment non-discrimination laws are set by the Christian Taliban. Aggravating the situation locally is the fact that Hampton Roads has a brain drain of young college educated individuals who leave the area for more progressive parts of the country.  Meanwhile, the Virginia GOP and its puppet masters at The Family Foundation seem hell bent on making matters even worse.

The Correlation Between Religiosity and Lower Citizen Well-Being

Click image to enlarge

Time and time again I've looked at the link between the lower economic performance of U.S. states deemed "conservative" and where religion is deemed "important."   The more religious and conservative a state's citizenry, the worse off economically the state is and the less competitive it is in recruiting new and lucrative business.  Now some new analysis shows that this tie between the level of religiosity also correlates to lowers societal well being.  The question is which came first? High levels of religiosity that have caused lower social well being or vice versa.  The authors of the studies put the blame on religion.  Just like some of Richard Florida's analysis that indicates the liberal states are winning out over the conservative sister states for increased business development and improved standards of living.  The map above looks at the levels of religiosity by state.  The map below looks at the so-called "Human Development Index" that considers things such as life expectancy, education, and income corruption, income disparity, child mortality, access to medical care, suicide rates, and so on:

Click image to enlarge

The South and the Bible Belt over all score the highest and also score the lowest when it comes to life expectancy, access to health care and over 20 other categories.  Texas, Georgis and North Carolina manage to dodge a dead last finish on the Human Development Index most likely because the large cities in those states counteract the abysmal results for the remainder of the state.  Mississippi and Alabama in contrast have no such major progressive cities and not surprisingly they land in the lowest category.

The author of the piece reaches a kinder conclusion toward religion than I do.  I would argue that the author has it backwards and that religiosity leads to low human development and regressive social well being.  Yes, the Christianists talk a good game about helping other and caring for their "neighbor," but in truth they don't follow through.  Meanwhile the best and brightest flee from the area - as is happening in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia - because of the backwardness of their surroundings and the depressed opportunity for advancement.   Here is the author's wrap up:

As you see, we have the same negative relationship between well-being and religiosity that we saw for different countries of the West. The correlation here is r= – 0.66897, and the probability (“p”) that this correlation would arise by chance is p = 0.00000012. (A value of p less than 0.05 is conventionally used to show a significant relationship.) This relationship, then, is not only striking but very highly significant in a statistical sense. Harry put a least-squares regression line through the data; its slope is also highly significant.

Why the correlation? Again, it could mean—but I am not pushing this interpretation as dogma—that people tend to either become more religious or retain a historical religiosity in areas where they are not very well off. There may also be ethnic differences that contribute to this (the population of blacks in America is concentrated in the south, for instance, and educational attainment is lower in general), but education itself is likely negatively correlated with indices of well being, and poverty is a component of both the HDI and SSS. Although I’m not a Marxist, Marx may have gotten it right when he said, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”

The problem, in my view is that until regions throw off religiosity, they are NOT attractive to would be businesses and employers  who want to be able to attract the most able and innovative personnel.  That simply will not happen when regions and states are primary known for the knuckle dragging Christian extremist and bigoted social views.  It's a concept that has yet to be grasp by the Republican Party of Virginia and The Family Foundation.

 

Marcus Calabrese Announces Candidacy for Norfolk City Council

It has been ironic that even though Norfolk has perhaps the largest LGBT population of any of the cities of Hampton Roads and is the home to the artsy, trendy and LGBT-friendly Ghent neighborhood - which is the envy of many neighboring cities - other than allowing HR Pride to utilize Town Point Park for the 2011 Out in the Park celebration, the city government has in many ways been less than fully accepting of progressive ideas and a willingness to openly embrace the LGBT community. Even though according to researcher Richard Florida the LGBT community is the "canary in the coal mine" for determining whether or not a city or region is welcoming to the so-called "creative class." As reported by Bearing Drift, Marcus Calabrese, who I have come to know and value through our common membership on the board of directors of HRBOR, believes that continuing to do the same old thing and expecting different results needs to end. Hence the announcement that Marcus has thrown his hat in the ring to run for Norfolk City Council. Here are some highlights on what Marcus would like to accomplish if elected:

Economic development will be a top concern of mine. As a board member of Hampton Roads Business Outreach, a small business owner, and 2010’s youngest honoree of Inside Business’ Top 40 Under 40 I know what it takes to get people back to work. There’s a tremendous amount of talent here in Norfolk but the unemployment for young professionals is double the national average, I know their fears and I know they would rather have a future at home than having to leave Norfolk to pursue their career. I will work to bring new high paying jobs to Norfolk.

Each morning it seems like another embarrassing story about Norfolk’s government appears on the pages of the Virginian Pilot. Whether it is the dismissing of the Superintendent of public schools barely into his term, the paying of an employee for a decade without her showing up for work, Light Rail cost overruns without notice to the taxpayers, or one of the many other front page stories about Norfolk it is time for it to stop. I want to team with the new members of City Council who are making waves fighting for a more responsible and open government.

This race is about choices. The future of our great city is promising; we have much to be proud of and much to build on. But, the past choices that have impeded the future of Norfolk are real and deserve to be brought to light. The people of Norfolk deserve a choice for the future, do we want to continue down this path of missed opportunities or do we want a Norfolk that is prosperous, proud, and prime for a comeback?

Here's some more on Marcus' background:

Marcus Calabrese serves on the Board of Directors of Foodbank Southeastern Virginia, is Chairman of the Child Nutrition Council and Capital Campaign for Community Gifts. He is a member of the Board of Directors for Hampton Roads Business OutReach and is chairman of its Business & Government Relations department. He is also a public relations sponsor with Entrepreneurs Organization of SEVA. He has been awarded the “Safe Harbor” Award 2011 from Children’s Harbor and is a “Top 40 Under 40″ Honoree for 2010 from Inside Business Journal.

One Out of Four U.S. Counties Are Dying Off

The phenomenon of aging populations and an exodus of younger residents is driving populations down in many parts of western Virginia. Even Hampton Roads - cosmopolitan and dynamic by southwestern Virginia standards - is seeing a net loss of college educated young adults. The fleeing residents are seeking better job opportunities that generally concentrate around more diverse and innovation friendly regions and more liberal social climates. Yet here in Virginia, too many municipal leaders seem to think taking the same failed measures over and over again will by some miracle lead to a different result. Compounding the problem is the bigotry and intolerance that Virginia has institutionalized in its laws and the way that the ignorance and closed mindedness of the Christianists has been embraced, particularly by the Republican Party of Virginia. Its a slow form of economic suicide. The new data reported in the Virginian Pilot ought to be a wake up call, but I suspect it'll be ignored. Openness to diversity and new ideas is what is needed, yet too much of the failed leadership simply wants to cling to the past. Here are some story highlights:
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Hit by an aging population and a poor economy, a near-record number of U.S. counties are experiencing more deaths than births in their communities, a phenomenon demographers call "natural decrease." Years in the making, the problem is spreading amid a prolonged job slump and a push by Republicans in Congress to downsize government and federal spending.
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Johnson said common threads among the dying counties are older whites who are no longer having children, and an exodus of young adults who find little promise in the region and seek jobs elsewhere. The places also have fewer Hispanic immigrants, who on average are younger and tend to have more children than other groups. . . . "In some cases, the only thing that can pull an area out is an influx of young Hispanic immigrants or new economic development."
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Not all U.S. areas are declining. Most places with the fastest growth since 2000 were able to retain or attract college graduates and young professionals who came for jobs and later started families. Metro areas with diversified economies such as Austin, Texas, Raleigh, N.C., and Portland, Ore., all saw gains in college graduates; other places seeing gains or reduced losses in young adults, such as Washington, D.C., Boston and San Francisco, have burgeoning biotech industries.
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Will local leaders in Hampton Roads get the wake up call? I'm not holding my breath and frankly expect to see more stagnation as long as the GOP controls the House of Delegates and continues to block laws that would say the state is open for business for all citizens, not just white conservative Christians who place blind reliance on the Bible over education, actual thought and the acceptance of others.

D.C.'s Same-Sex Marriage Proposal has Couples Contemplating Moving

Assuming Congress does not torpedo Washington, D.C.'s new same sex marriage law, marriage equality could be a boon to the District as hard working, often professional gay couples in Northern Virginia decide to make a short move into the District from anti-gay Virginia. Back when I came out, I tried to make a move to D.C., but the difficulties of moving after many years of private law practice made it unworkable. Now, with the boyfriend's successful business in Hampton, a move would be more difficult. But we do still talk about "someday" moving to a more gay friendly state or country. And many Norfolk area gays DO leave the area for more accepting cities and states (on the home tour last night, we ran into a guy from Norfolk who moved here to Key West). When Canada first allowed gay marriage, the influx of educated and successful gays from the USA was called the "gay drain." Now Washington, D.C. may benefit from Virginia's intolerance. Anti-gay legislators will not care - our leaving the state might even please them, but the state's big business ought to care because Virginia is becoming increasingly non-competitive in the recruiting world because of legalized discrimination. Here are highlights from the Washington Post on this potential movement of talent from Virginia:

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Before they had children, Zizos and her partner of 16 years, Karen Bell, chose to settle in Alexandria even though they knew their rights as a gay couple would be limited. They didn't want to create a life anywhere else. Now, just weeks before same-sex marriage becomes legal in the District -- barring congressional intercession -- Zizos, Bell and other gay couples who have settled in the District's Virginia and Maryland suburbs are asking: Is it worth moving?
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The question -- make your marriage legal, or stay in the place where you've made a home -- has forced many gay couples to weigh the battle for equal rights against quality-of-life issues, pitting a yard in Fairfax County against the chance to lock in inheritance and hospital visitation rights and the other benefits of marriage.
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"My partner just turned to me a month ago and said, 'You know, if they pass this in D.C., would you want to get married?' " said Rich Hooks Wayman, who is adopting 4-year-old twins with his partner, Aaron Hooks Wayman. "A lot of us in this community are talking about what this really looks like and whether it's important or not."
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Gay activists and experts on same-sex couples say that if the District's endorsement of gay marriage survives -- the council and mayor approved a measure last month, and Congress has 30 days to review the bill -- they do not expect a mass migration of suburban couples. What is more likely, they said, is that the tourism industry will see a spike as couples come from across the country to marry and then return to their home states. For couples in Virginia and Maryland with children, analysts said, the opportunity for legal marriage will probably be outweighed by misgivings about the District's troubled public schools.
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In fact, the boyfriend and I might be among those who travel to D.C.to get married and spend money there rather than have a ceremony that has no legal effect at all in Virginia.

Talented Workers Opting to Leave USA

There was a time when the USA enjoyed a constant influx of talented workers from around the world who sought to move to the USA and become citizens. Now, for the first time because of better opportunity elsewhere and a broken immigration system, such workers are either not coming to the USA or leaving after acquiring an education in this country. While not mentioned, I cannot help but believe that the rampant anti-immigrant hysteria of the GOP base and religious intolerance that tracks with it doesn't play some under the radar influence as well. USA Today looks at the phenomenon which ought to disturb rational thinking citizens even if not those who continue to call the GOP their political home. Here are some story highlights:

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More skilled immigrants are giving up their American dreams to pursue careers back home, raising concerns that the U.S. may lose its competitive edge in science, technology and other fields. "What was a trickle has become a flood," says Duke University's Vivek Wadhwa, who studies reverse immigration. Wadhwa projects that in the next five years, 100,000 immigrants will go back to India and 100,000 to China, countries that have had rapid economic growth. "For the first time in American history, we are experiencing the brain drain that other countries experienced," he says.

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Suren Dutia, CEO of TiE Global, a worldwide network of professionals who promote entrepreneurship, says the U.S. economy will suffer without these skilled workers. "If the country is going to maintain the kind of economic well-being that we've enjoyed for many years, that requires having these incredibly gifted individuals who have been educated and trained by us," he says. Wadhwa surveyed 1,203 Indian and Chinese immigrants who had worked or been educated here before returning to their homelands and found the exodus has less to do with the faltering U.S. economy than with other factors.

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Multinational companies that belong to the American Council on International Personnel tell Executive Director Lynn Shotwell that skilled immigrants are discouraged by the immigration process, she says. Some can wait up to a decade for permanent residency, she says. "They're frustrated with having an uncertain immigration status," she says. "They're giving up."

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Naturally, this issue either goes over the heads of the birther and teabagger crowd or, more likely, they welcome the exodus of those "foreigners." Truth be told, if I ever had the opportunity, I'd leave the USA as well for a country where gays are full citizens.