Republican governors falling down on climate change, human rights

As the risible right rants, Big Government Governor Dennis Daugaard shoves South Dakota down its slide into the depths of police state fascism.

Candidate Dennis Daugaard drew gasps from a State Fair audience in 2010 when he said: “I am skeptical about the science that suggests global warming is man-caused or can be corrected by man-made efforts."

A team of scientists at the USA National Phenology Network, which is sponsored by the U.S. Geological Survey, have published a study which shows that 2012 was the earliest spring over the 48 U.S. states since 1900 when systematic weather data began to be available for the entire area. The historical trend of spring indices suggests that the 2012 growing season advanced as much as 20-30 days in the East and Midwest from the 1900-2012 long-term mean. The beneficial effects of spring's quick start in 2012 were subsequently offset by a late spring frost and summer drought. In fact, the unusually early spring combined with late frosts in April to produce a so-called "false spring" that damaged fruit trees across the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes regions. [news release, US Geological Survey]

As political considerations trump the needs of their populations, governors in red states continue to lead voters over the climate cliff and to deny affordable access to medical care.

Years ago, Dr. Pamela Wible decided she was through with factory medicine and asked her community what they wanted from her as their family physician. She implemented their suggestions in her Eugene, Oregon, clinic and advocates for other clinicians who want to invite their communities to help design their practices. [The People's Pharmacy, WUNC.]

Republicans are cutting education while mass incarceration rates soar and prisons profit at historic levels. Snipped from a piece by JL Thomas posted at truthout:

Market-oriented education reform continues to produce evidence that it fails against its own goals and standards. But more disturbing is that current education reform also shares with the war on drugs evidence that the United States is committed to the New Jim Crow, to which Alexander quotes Martin Luther King Jr.: "Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." (p. 203)