Religiosity Inversely Related to Upward Mobility

It seems that increasingly religiosity - certainly of the Christian fundamentalist variety - correlates with an embracing of ignorance and a rejection of science and modernity in general.  This does have real world consequences if one seeks to move upward economically both for individuals and states.  Not surprisingly, a new Pew study and analysis by Richard Florida find that the lowest economic upward mobility is in the Bible belt states (Note: the results for Georgia and Tennessee are likely skewed by Atlanta and Nashville) .  Likewise median incomes are higher in states where there is less extreme religious fervor.  The message: innovative individuals and companies are attracted to more tolerant and diverse states.  It's a message that Virginia ought to get as the Republican Party of Virginia works to drag the state backwards in time and to establish a quasi-theocracy run by The Family Foundation and its Christianist extremist allies.  Here are highlights from Richard Florida's article on the phenomenon:

Economic mobility - the quintessentially American idea (ideal, really) that any one, no matter how humble their origins, can become wealthy - has taken some terrible hits in the last few years. Writing in The New Republic, Timothy Noah notes that. . . .  “Mobility in the United States has fallen dramatically behind mobility in other comparably developed democracies," . . . we can now add Switzerland, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, and Pakistan to the list of societies that are more mobile than the United States.

[E]conomic mobility varies by geography within the United States as well. The map above shows that economic mobility is highest in the New England and the mid-atlantic states, especially New York, New Jersey, and Maryland. The states where residents experience the least economic mobility are all in the south, with Louisiana, Oklahoma, and South Carolina scoring at the bottom.

I enlisted my Martin Prosperity Institute colleague Charlotta Mellander to help me examine the possible effects on economic mobility at the state level of factors like economic output and income, poverty, inequality, knowledge/ high-tech economies versus working class structures, college grads, religion, openness to immigrants, artistic creative and gays, and political affiliation. 

Education is a key driver of economic development. Incomes and wages are higher in states with more highly educated people. So it stands to reason that mobility would favor states with more highly educated populations.  .  .  .  .  absolute national mobility to be positively associated with public education spending per student . . . .

Openness matters to mobility. Places that are more open to outsiders appear to have more mobility. Immigrants, for example, signal openness. And there are positive correlations between immigrants and national relative upward mobility (.57) and regional relative upward mobility. . . .

Despite President Obama’s embrace of same sex marriage, gays and lesbian remain among the most discriminated-against groups in society. Recent successful moves to ban same-sex marriage in a number of states reflect this. We found positive correlations between the Gay Index and national relative upward mobility (.37) and regional relative upward mobility (.21).

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Religion factors in as well. The percentage of adults who say they are "very religious” according to Gallup polls is negatively associated with national relative upward mobility (-.51)—a pattern that is graphically represented on the above scatter graph.

Much has been made of America’s sorting across political lines, into the proverbial “red” versus “blue” states. Economic mobility maps onto this divide. Mobility is higher in blue states and lower in red ones.  .  .  .  .  There is a positive correlation between national relative downward mobility (.46) and whether or not a state voted for McCain.

In its slavish obedience to The Family Foundation and its support for religious extremism, the Republican Party of Virginia may well be killing Virginia's future.  Ignorance and bigotry carry a high economic price.

The Fall Out from Walker's Recall Win in Wisconsin

Yesterday's disastrous victory by Scott Walker in the Wisconsin recall election holds many bad omens for Democrats and average Americans who don't drink heavily from the GOP's Kool-Aid cauldron.  The first omen is that money can buy elections via a constant media barrage (some estimates are that Walker out spent Democrats 7 to 1).  Another is that many voters remain with their heads in the sand until the last moment and can be easily duped to vote against their own long term best interests.   The third is that much more effort needs to be focused on winning the votes of moderates and independents.  No doubt Walker's survival will embolden the extremists in the GOP to take the Wisconsin game plan national - something that doesn't bode well for the country in the long term.  Here in Virginia one can only cringe at what the Virginia GOP will try to do during the 2013 legislative session. When will all of this end?  Only when (i) more of the elderly voter portion of the population that voes for the GOP dies off and (ii) younger voters wake up to the poisonous consequences of the GOP economic agenda and vote in full strength.  A column in the Washington Post looks at how Walker pulled out victory yesterday.  Here are highlights:

Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s victory in the Wisconsin recall offers a number of lessons for American politics more broadly.

First, the gender gap can work both ways. Women voted for Democrat Tom Barrett while men voted for Walker. Indeed, Walker’s share of the vote among women was 12 points lower than his share among men. But he carried males by a landslide: 59 percent to 40 percent. Walker lost women much more narrowly, 52 percent to 47 percent. The lesson is that Republicans can survive a rather big gender gap as long as they win men overwhelmingly.

Second, Walker’s heavy early spending clearly helped him. The pre-election polls suggested that Barrett was closing in on Walker in the final days, and he clearly was. The exit poll found that eight percent of the voters said they decided how to vote in the last few days, and they went overwhelmingly for Barrett, 69 percent to 27 percent. The rest of the electorate that decided earlier went for Walker . . . . Money matters.

Third, to win, Democrats need to overwhelm Republicans among moderates. Looking at the vote by ideology, you might imagine Barrett won: he carried liberals by 86 percent to 13 percent, and moderates by 54 percent to 46 percent. Walker carried only conservatives, by 86 percent to 14 percent. But the math added up for Walker

Democrats don’t just need to win moderates; they need to win them by very large margins. Victorious Democratic coalitions are inevitably an alliance of the center with the left. . . . . . Turning out your own supporters is essential. But so is fighting for the pure swing voters.

As a gay American, I continue to wonder at times if simply leaving the USA isn't perhaps the best strategy.   I find the GOP down right frightening and a threat to my well being.

Former Spokesperson for Anti-Gay Lutheran Group Sentenced on Child Porn Charges

Time and time again the hypocrisy of the homophobes - especially those in anti-gay religious organizations - is mind boggling.  The latest example of this truth is Joel W. Hochmuth (pictured at left) , a former spokesman for the anti-gay Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (not to be confused with the gay accepting Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, a/k/a the ELCA).  It seems that the homophobic Hochmuth had a penchant for child pornography involving young boys.  One can only assume that Hochmuth projected his own perversity and perhaps self-loathing onto normal gays who live their lives as God made us.  I may seem cold hearted, but I find it very difficult to have much sympathy for Hochmuth who used his synod position to denigrate and malign others who were far more virtuous than himself and worthy of of civil equality.  The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has details on Hochmuth's criminal sentencing.  Here are highlights:

A former Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod official was placed on probation for 10 years Monday and ordered to serve one year in jail with work-release privileges as a condition of probation for possession of child pornography.

Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Kathryn W. Foster withheld imposing a prison term on Joel W. Hochmuth, 52, of Waukesha, who had faced up to 15 years behind bars followed by 10 years of extended supervision for the crime.

But she warned Hochmuth that if there was any hint of him "going back to any kind of behavior like this," his probation would be revoked and the full "25-year prison sentence will be staring you in the face."  Hochmuth used the Internet to download hundreds of images of boys engaged in sexual acts with other youths and men.

"I appear before you today guilty of an abhorrent and violent crime. I have offended my god, betrayed my wife, shamed our son and dishonored my church. To all of them I apologize. I also apologize to the victims portrayed in the images I viewed and downloaded. That I could have been so drawn to what I was looking at today disgusts me," Hochmuth told Foster.  He said he is in a treatment plan that he began after his arrest.

According to the criminal complaint, investigators found several hundred images on his home computer and 310 photographs and 38 videos on a thumb drive at his WELS office in Wauwatosa. Hochmuth denied downloading any explicit material while at work, or creating his own pornography, the complaint states.

He was investigated by the FBI Cyber Crimes Task Force after an undercover agent identified a residence in Waukesha that was distributing child pornography, according to the complaint. Hochmuth was using a software program that allows individuals to connect to one another's computers and browse and download files as well as chat online, according to the complaint.

The complaint also states that the agent engaged Hochmuth in chats and that in one Hochmuth told the agent that he liked pictures of males who were 10 years old or older, the complaint states.

Yes, Hochmuth is a sick individual.  But his synod is equally sick given the anti-gay hate and bigotry that it disseminates.  Not surprisingly, WELS has in the past supported the "ex-gay" myth and reparative therapy. 

9th Circuit Rejects Petition for Rehearing Enbanc

As noted this morning, one possiblity was that the 9th Circuit would tell the Christianist defenders of Proposition 8 to basically go pound sand.  And that's what happened.  Here's what was released on the Court's website:

Filed Order for PUBLICATION (STEPHEN R. REINHARDT, MICHAEL DALY HAWKINS and N. RANDY SMITH) (Dissent by Judge O'Scannlain, Concurrence by Judge Reinhardt) A majority of the panel has voted to deny the petition for rehearing en banc. Judge N.R. Smith would grant the petition. The full court was advised of the petition for rehearing en banc. A judge requested a vote on whether to rehear the matter en banc. The matter failed to receive a majority of the votes of the non-recused active judges in favor of en banc consideration. Fed. R. App. P. 35. The petition for rehearing en banc is DENIED. The mandate is stayed for ninety days pending the filing of a petition for writ of certiorari in the Supreme Court. If such a petition is filed, the stay shall continue until final disposition by the Supreme Court. [8202067] [10-16696, 11-16577] (RP)

The bad news is that new same sex marriages are barred in California pending an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and, if an appeal is filed, through the time that the Supreme Court renders a ruling.  It's a pretty safe bet the Christofascists will appeal and spend tons of money that might be better spent following the Gospel message: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and providing housing for the homeless.  Things that would be important if the gay-haters were truly followers of Christ.

How Long Before the One Million Shrews Go Berserk?

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Chevrolet has joined the ranks of corporations actively marketing to the LGBT consumer.  Any bets as to how long it will be before the far right whack jobs and Christian bitches go off the rails?  I suspect that "whatever revs your engine" will launch them into apoplexy.

Tuesday Morning Male Beauty

Plagued by Scandal, Vatican Focuses Instead on Attacking American Nun

Apparently in the minds of the bitter old men in dresses at the Vatican the way to counter a steady drip of scandals is to attack women or at least American nuns who seemingly have stopped drinking the Vatican's Kool-Aid, accept modern knowledge and see sexuality as something more than a nasty means to produce more children that can be subjected to religious brainwashing by the bitter old men.  In the upside down world of the Nazi Pope and his fellow child rapist enablers and protectors in Rome things like masturbation, homosexuality, gay marriage and divorce are the greatest evils facing the world - or at least Roman Catholicism.  Would that the legions of predator priests had pleasured themselves via masturbation rather than raping and molesting tens, if not hundreds of thousand of children and youth around the world while the Vatican sought to sweep it all under the rug.  But to the bitter, power mad cardinals at the Vatican (who at times  strike me as a modern version of the power hungry court eunuchs of the ancient Persian Empire) anything that strikes as sexual pleasure is an abomination.  First, these highlights from Reuters and the ongoing infighting in the Vatican:

Pope Benedict got no rest on Sunday from a leaks scandal when an Italian newspaper published documents showing that his butler was not the only person in possession of confidential correspondence indicating a Vatican in disarray.  

[I]n its Sunday edition, the Rome newspaper La Repubblica published documents it said it had received anonymously after the arrest of the pope's butler on May 23.  A note received by the newspaper said there were "hundreds more" documents and that the butler, Paolo Gabriele, was just a scapegoat.  The furor over the leaked correspondence, which shows power-hungry cardinals and scheming within the walls of the city state, has gripped the Vatican .  .  .  .  

Unable to keep their own house in order, much less protect children and youth from sexual predators, the Vatican nonetheless lashed out at the book, “Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics” by Sister Margaret Farley.  Priestly sexual abuse of children and youth is apparently okay with the Vatican so long as the media doesn't get wind of it.  But healthy, normal sexuality - both gay and straight - is something abhorrent.  Indeed "intrinsically and gravely disordered actions."  Here are excerpts from the Toronto Star:

The Vatican on Monday sharply criticized a book on sexuality written by a prominent American nun, saying it contradicted church teaching on issues like masturbation, homosexuality and marriage and that its author had a “defective understanding” of Catholic theology.

The Vatican’s orthodoxy office said the book, “Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics” by Sister Margaret Farley, a member of the Sisters of Mercy religious order and emeritus professor of Christian ethics at Yale Divinity School, posed “grave harm” to the faithful.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [formerly known as The Inquisition] said that in the 2006 book, Farley either ignored church teaching on core issues of human sexuality or treated it as merely one opinion among many.

The Farley critique, signed by the American head of the congregation, Cardinal William Levada, comes amid the Vatican’s recent crackdown on the largest umbrella group of American sisters. The Vatican last month essentially imposed martial law on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, accusing it of undermining church teaching and imposing certain “radical feminist themes” that were incompatible with Catholicism.

It ordered a full-scale overhaul of the group and appointed three bishops to carry it out.
The crackdown on Farley, a top American theologian, will likely fuel greater resentment at Rome among more liberal-minded American sisters.

The Vatican examination of the book began in 2010 and involved seeking Farley’s responses to its concerns. After her replies failed to satisfy the Congregation, it moved to a full-fledged “examination in cases of urgency” that concluded Dec. 14.

 Farley, for example, writes that masturbation doesn’t raise any moral problems and can actually help relationships rather than hinder them. The Vatican asserted that according to church teaching “masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action.”

Farley wrote that homosexual people as well as their activities should be respected. Church teaching holds that gays should be respected but that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered.”

On gay marriage, Farley said legal recognition of gay marriage can help transform the stigmatization of gays. Levada wrote back that approving gay marriage would not only signal approval of “deviant behaviour” but would obscure the value of traditional marriage between man and woman in society.

Farley has received 11 honorary degrees over her lifetime, is a past president of the Society of Christian Ethics and the Catholic Theological Society of America, and won an award in 2008 for “Just Love.”  That said, Farley doesn’t identify herself as a member of the Sisters of Mercy on either her official Yale biography or on the book’s cover.

Mitt Romney's Real Record in Massachusetts

With the recent discouraging jobs numbers the Romney campaign - or fiction writers if one is honest - are seeking to market their boss as a wonderful "job creator" during his tenure as Governor of Massachusetts.  In truth, that isn't how thinks really came down, but then, like its Christianist puppeteers, the GOP in general and Romney's camp in particular isn't very good when it comes to truth and veracity.  The truth becomes whatever they want it to be and objective facts be damned.  A piece in Think Progress looks at the real Romney record in Massachusetts and it's not pretty.  In fact, it's down right frightening.  Worse yet, Romney wants to now take his failed approach nationwide.  Here are some story excerpts:

Republican Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign whipped out a new number over the weekend to dispute federal government data that ranked Massachusetts 47th in job creation during Romney’s time as governor there. Three campaign surrogates used the Sunday morning news circuit to claim that the state was actually 30th in job growth in Romney’s final year in office.

Of course, moving the state to 30th would still mean it was in the bottom half of the nation, a fact that would seem to fit assertions from local experts that the state’s economy was “below average and often near the bottom” while Romney was governor. Here are five facts about the Massachusetts economy from Romney’s 2003-2007 tenure:

1. Ranked 47th in job growth: Despite Romney’s professed expertise in creating jobs, Massachusetts ranked 47th in job growth during his time as governor. The state’s total job growth was just 0.9 percent, well behind other high-wage, high-skill economies in New York (2.7), California (4.7), and North Carolina (7.6). The national average, meanwhile, was better than 5 percent. 

2. Suffered the second-largest labor force decline in the nation: Only Louisiana, which was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, saw a bigger decline in its labor force than Massachusetts during Romney’s tenure as governor. The US Census Bureau estimated that between July 2002 and July 2006, 222,000 more residents left Massachusetts for other states than came to it.

3. Lost 14 percent of its manufacturing jobs: Massachusetts lost 14 percent of its manufacturing jobs during Romney’s time in office, according to [Northeastern University economics professor Andrew] Sum. The loss was double the rate that the nation as a whole lost manufacturing jobs. In 2004, Romney vetoed legislation that would have banned companies doing business with the state from outsourcing jobs to other countries.

4. Experienced “below average” economic growth and was “often near the bottom”: “There was not one measure where the state did well under his term in office.  .  .  .  the state was more comparable to Rust Belt states like Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio than it was to other high-tech economies it typically competes with.

 5. Piled on more debt than any other state: Romney left Massachusetts residents with $10,504 in per capita bond debt, the highest of any state in the nation when he left office in 2007. The state ranked second in debt as a percentage of personal income.

Very inconvenient facts, but facts nonetheless.  Hence why the image at the top of this post seems all too appropriate.

9th Circuit to Release Opinion Today on Request for Enbanc Hearing

Despite going down in flames so far on almost every front, the Christianists - perhaps Christian Taliban is a more fitting label - supporting California's Proposition 8 have continued to do all they can to delay the likely demise of Proposition 8 as an unconstitutional law.  There latest effort has been to request a so-called hearing enbanc by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit affirmed the district court ruling striking down the anti-gay measure passed thanks to the efforts of NOM, the Mormon Church and the Catholic Church hierarchy.  Today the 9th Circuit will release an opinion either denying the Christianists request and affirming the district court or allowing for an enbanc hearing.  Prop 8 Trial Tracker looks at what may happen in today's ruling.  Here are highlights:

Here’s where things stand right now: the Ninth Circuit, in a decision by a three-judge panel has affirmed Judge Walker’s decision striking down Proposition 8 as unconstitutional, albeit on narrower grounds than he did. Then, the proponents of Proposition 8 asked the Ninth Circuit for an en banc rehearing, to vacate their decision and put the case before a larger panel of judges on the Ninth Circuit. We have been waiting for the judges to decide whether they will grant the en banc rehearing and start the whole process over, or let the three-judge panel’s decision written by Judge Reinhardt stand.

Tomorrow, we will likely find out what the judges decided regarding the en banc hearing. If they voted to rehear the case, the current narrowly-written decision by Judge Reinhardt goes away and a new panel will convene, featuring a random selection of ten judges with the addition of Chief Judge Kozinski overseeing the proceedings. There would be new briefings and oral arguments in the case at that point, so the process would be long and drawn out.

After new briefing and new argument and new deliberations over the decision, they would issue a new and final decision in the case that could then result in a petition for certiorari (or ‘review’) at the Supreme Court. Depending on what the final decision ruled, it’s unclear whether the Supreme Court would take up the case or not.

Alternatively, tomorrow the Ninth Circuit could issue an order saying that en banc rehearing was denied. If that happens, Judge Reinhardt’s narrow opinion stands, and the proponents of Proposition 8 can then petition for certiorari at the Supreme Court. If the Supreme Court were to deny review, the Ninth Circuit’s decision would stand, and Proposition 8 would be struck down. Gay and lesbian couples would be allowed to marry in California. If the Supreme Court grants review, there will be briefing and oral argument and a decision next year.

While a more broadly worded ruling striking down Prop 8 would be nice, I'll settle for a narrow affirming of the district court order.   A resumption of same sex marriages would go a long way to disprove the lies and predictions of the sky falling that were prevalent in the district court trial where in the final analysis the Christofascists had nothing to support their case other than religious belief - something that has no place in the civil laws.

Monday Morning Male Beauty

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