On Thursday, May 1, the Institute for Global Ethics will be presenting an Ethical Fitness® Seminar in Seattle, Washington. Facilitated by Institute founder Rushworth M. Kidder, this daylong seminar is an interactive, small-group immersion course, based on his seminal book, How Good People Make Tough Choices. The course helps participants resolve the ethics issues they face daily, both at work and at home. At the end of the course, participants will learn to:

• Become ethically aware by first exploring and evaluating the current ethical climate in the United States and the world

• Define values important to themselves and their group members by identifying, testing, and ranking a set of global values

• Analyze ethics using real-life, right-versus-right stories

• Resolve dilemmas using practical principles that can be applied to all areas of everyday life

The total cost for the course, including a continental breakfast and lunch, is $425. To register or for more information, please contact John Ragozzine or call 1-800-729-2615.

For more information, see this week’s Research Report.

by Rushworth M. Kidder

Presidential contender Barack Obama’s March 18 speech on race was widely applauded as one of the most compelling speeches of our time. But why? What made it so?

True, he spoke with authority on a much-avoided topic. He dignified his audience’s intelligence, addressing their thinking rather than manipulating their emotions. He confronted a serious challenge without ducking or spinning. And he lifted the discourse from the merely defensive to the genuinely philosophical. But lots of politicians do that, at least from time to time. Obama’s speech seemed a cut above the rest. Why?

The answer, I think, lies in a kind of coherence that was musical in its impact. In an almost symphonic way, he interwove three strands of oratorical skill — a rhetorical structure, a moral theme, and a narrative conviction — into an integrated whole.

Rhetorical structure. This speech moved through three broad topics: an exposition of his own story and his relationship to Rev. Jeremiah Wright, an analysis of that relationship as an illustration of a racial divisiveness that “this nation cannot afford to ignore,” and a proposal for addressing that divisiveness by finding the “common stake we all have in one another.” Throughout this architecture ran a motif of balanced, two-part statements and counterstatements that included:

• A condemnation of Rev. Wright’s “distorted view of this country,” followed by an explanation of why he cannot utterly disown him
• A discussion of the buried anger in the black community, matched by a discussion of white anger
• His call for blacks to “squarely [face] our own complicity in our condition,” balanced by a call for some whites to stop “dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice … as mere political correctness”
• A choice between an old “politics that breeds division” and a new politics of hope

This duality also showed up in numerous well-balanced sentences, as when he spoke of the gap between “the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time,” the fact that we have “different stories, but we hold common hopes,” and the need to “embrace the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past.” These doublets may be nearly invisible, but they build verbal intensity just as surely as symphonic structure intensifies musical notes until, without quite knowing why, we feel moved.

Moral theme. Within this architecture, two related themes laced themselves together. The first centered on the word perfect, a note he struck eleven times from his very first sentence (”a more perfect union”) to his penultimate word (”that is where perfection begins”). But perfection is a daring theme in an age of ethical relativism. It opens him to the sneers of cynics, who contemptuously dismiss perfection as a silly impossibility. Yet for Obama to have called for anything less would have undercut the idealism of his campaign. His solution? Invoke the powerful but grammatically suspect constitutional phrase “more perfect.” Setting aside the problem of how anything perfect can become even more so, Obama used that phrase to focus on progress toward perfection rather than on demands for its absolute state. His variations on this theme touched on Rev. Wright (”as imperfect as he may be”) and included a seemingly casual but artfully self-deprecating comment on himself (”a candidacy as imperfect as my own.”)

The second theme, expressed as hope, began early and built to a crescendo. As with perfection, this word also risked the cynics’ wrath. Yet a focus on a hopeful future was crucial to his message. In a moment of real insight, he noted that Rev. Wright’s “profound mistake” was that “he spoke as if our society was static,” without any progress upon which to found a sense of hope. Without hope — Obama’s signature word — nothing can be made “more perfect.” Yet while “this union may never be perfect,” he declared, “generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected.” Again, the thematic interplay of perfection and hope was all the more powerful for being only semi-recognized by his listeners.

Narrative conviction. In a rich and many-layered moment, Obama didn’t just tell the story of his formative experience in Rev. Wright’s church. Instead, he quoted a paragraph from his earlier book about how the church used Biblical stories to explain the moral story of the black experience. If that story-within-story-within-story seems complex, the result was a powerfully simple statement of how “our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal” as “the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, [and] Ezekiel’s field of dry bones.” In the end, this was a story about the importance of stories in helping us make meaning out of moral complexity. Not accidentally, then, his speech ended with a story. It was about Ashley, a young white campaign organizer, and an elderly black man in Florence, South Carolina, whose simple comment — “I’m here because of Ashley” — was layered with multiple meanings.

For most politicians, such stories are for adornment, amplifying the logic of the speech. For Obama, by contrast, logic is the setting for gem-like narratives. Like the Biblical stories in black churches, his stories don’t simply illustrate his point. They are his point. And that, I think, helps explain Obama’s appeal. Most politicians, relying on the principles of sociology and political science, start with facts or polling data and, if needed, round out their talks with what they sometimes see as “mere” anecdotes. Obama, relying on the traditions of literature and the humanities, understands that symbolic narrative can often convey a moral message better than data-driven discourse.

Which explains why the Democratic primary features two such different candidates. On one side of the party’s individual-versus-community divide are those who, seeing sociologically, build science-like constructs in which the community trumps the individual. On the other side are those who, seeing narratively, use the literary imagination to focus more on the lives of real people — flawed, imperfect, but authentic — than the group. If Obama’s speech had an unfamiliar but welcome resonance, it was because he spoke to an almost-forgotten hunger in us all for the symphonic, elevating, and deeply moral stories of real, recognizable people. Will that win nominations? Who knows. But it certainly makes good speeches.

©2008 Institute for Global Ethics

Questions or comments? Write to newsline@globalethics.org.

Rushworth Kidder’s commentary on the fall of former New York governor Eliot Spitzer prompted several responses from readers. Among the comments:

Thank you so much for your piece on Spitzer. It has done much to calm the storm of emotions that has gripped me since these awful revelations.

In my professional life, I knew this man and some of his best and most ethically minded colleagues as we worked together on matters of legal and ethical abuse in the insurance industry on both sides of the border.

The revelation of his duplicity was like a blow to the ethical foundations on which I thought we had all been basing our work all those years ago, several times to our personal danger. Despite being long retired, I felt vulnerable and sick at the thought that the man whom I looked on as the rock and guardian of our efforts might well have been as useless as a wet sheet in a storm.

Reading and re-reading your piece has helped me to regain some sense of hope….

– Antony Cunningham
Toronto, Canada

* * *

The commentary on Eliot Spitzer was 100 percent on target, concise, and well written. Having recently moved into the DC area, I have become increasing aware of the phony image that politicians veneer themselves with, including the abuse of the word “friend,” until such terms have no real meaning in the political environment. We tend to elect the veneer, without knowing what is really behind it.

– Erick Reynolds
Frederick, MD

– Compiled by Ethics Newsline® editor Carl Hausman

“Under reasonable scenarios, assuming we don’t pull out rapidly, we may only be halfway through. Even in direct budgetary costs, it’s quite easy to get up on the order of $1 trillion for Iraq alone.”

– Steven Koziak, of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, a nonpartisan research group, speaking to the New York Times about the cost of the Iraq war. As the U.S. engagement in Iraq marks its five-year anniversary, the Times examines a range of views on why most estimates of the war’s cost were vastly wrong, how much the entanglement ultimately may cost, and the motives of those providing the estimates.

Source: New York Times, Mar. 19.

Increasingly, sites with global reach find themselves in a profit-versus-responsibility dilemma

BEIJING
Events involving China last week raised ethics issues involving not only the nation’s treatment of Tibetan separatist protestors, but also its policies toward new-media outlets that may spread information about the actions of dissidents.

The BBC reports that after several days of denials, China admitted that anti-Beijing protests have spread beyond the Tibetan Autonomous Region, with heavy damage to government buildings during riots in Sichuan province.

BBC reports indicate that hundreds of troop carriers have been seen pouring into Tibetan areas, and that Tibetan exiles claim shots have been fired at monks and other protestors.

State media has blamed the dissidents and labeled some of the protestors as “mobsters,” according to the BBC.

The state-run Chinese Xinhua news service on Saturday ran a story characterizing the protests as “sabotage” led by the “Dalai Lama clique” and said that various Chinese communities in foreign nations have condemned the protests.

Authorities have placed limits on Western reporters, with a German journalist telling the BBC that he was the last foreign reporter forced out of the city of Lhasa.

But the technological evolution of the media has changed the parameters of old-style press controls, according to an analysis from the Agence France-Presse. China has had mixed results from its dictum that websites must stop posting audio-visual content, a move believed to be largely an effort to censor news about the unrest in Tibet.

The Chinese government initially imposed the audio-visual ban on all websites, but after harsh criticism from abroad, backed off and said private firms that were in business before the imposition of the rule and “in good standing” with the government could continue to offer such content, subject to censorship, according to reports from the AFP and the London-based Guardian.

According to the Wall Street Journal, access to the video site YouTube was shut down inside China after the site was flooded with graphic images from the Tibet demonstrations.

The Journal piece notes that the China confrontation is the latest in a string of incidents that is forcing YouTube, which is owned by Google, to balance ethical and economic considerations that are the inevitable consequences of its increasingly global reach.

“This is a situation that the company and all Internet companies will be facing in many countries with all types of political systems as the Internet matures and millions more people log on,” Robert Boorstin, Google’s director of policy communications in Washington, told the Journal. “At all times, our goal is to maximize the amount of information available to citizens around the world.”

Google faced its own censorship dilemma when it opened a search engine in China, reports the Journal, eventually agreeing to government censorship under the theory that some information flow was better than none at all.

Congress held hearings last year into the subject, examining how U.S. firms have helped the Chinese government censor content and identify pro-democracy Web users it wants to arrest.

Sources: Xinhua, Mar. 22 — Wall Street Journal, Mar. 21 — Guardian, Mar. 21 — BBC, Mar. 21 — AFP, Mar. 21.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Mar. 17 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 25 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 4 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 22 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 13, 2007.

In wake of departure of predecessor amid prostitution scandal, David Paterson puts his past on display, but says it will not affect his ability to lead

ALBANY
New York State’s increasingly bizarre political scene again featured high moral drama last week, as new governor David Paterson, giving a speech one day after taking over the office vacated by the disgraced Eliot Spitzer, admitted that he had affairs with several women.

But Paterson said the affairs did not affect his ability to lead, the Associated Press reports.

Newsday notes that Paterson’s surprise announcement about his infidelities was a strategic attempt to seize control of a narrative that otherwise might spin out of control and hurt him.

“The core reason for coming forward is you are able to define what the story is,” Dan Keeny, a public relations consultant who specializes in damage control, told Newsday. “You put the frame around the picture.”

Both Paterson and his wife acknowledged having extramarital affairs during their 15-year marriage.

While Paterson’s poll numbers dipped after the revelation, he has retained his overall popularity, according to the New York Post. Seventy-five percent of voters surveyed by Quinnipiac University said the incoming governor will lead effectively, with 67 percent saying he will restore trust in government.

According to the New York Daily News, poll numbers remained solidly in condemnation of Spitzer, who resigned after being linked to a high-priced prostitution ring: 81 percent said resignation was the correct option, with 48 percent saying Spitzer should be charged with a crime.

In related news, the U.S. Department of Justice, which nailed Spitzer via some of its most intrusive investigative tactics, last week defended its aggressiveness.

The scale of the probe, which involved monitoring phone calls, tailing the now-ex-governor, and sifting through his financial records, was an apparent departure for Justice, which rarely pursues prostitution rings unless there are extraordinary circumstances involved, such as child exploitation or vast amounts of money, notes the New York Times.

Government investigators told the Times that their pursuit of the case was justified because it involved the possibility of wrongdoing by New York’s highest elected official, who also had served the former top prosecutor for the state.

Justice officials who spoke to the Times anonymously said they had no choice but to investigate Spitzer after reports of suspicious bank activity had been filed with the Treasury Department. The unidentified investigators said the banking reports suggested that various machinations had been used to try to keep anyone from noticing transfers of his own money, which could have been symptomatic of bribery or extortion.

Sources: New York Times, Mar. 21 — New York Post, Mar. 21 — Daily News, Mar. 20 — AP, Mar. 19 — Newsday, Mar. 18.

For more information, see: Related Newsline Commentary, Mar. 17 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 17 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 4, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 16, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 1, 2005.

U.S. State Department probes computer breach of presidential candidates’ passport files; a story on a French website leads that nation’s first lady to castigate the media; and a New York State assemblyman makes waves in the online advertising industry with a bill requiring explicit consent before a surfer’s habits are tracked

VARIOUS DATELINES
Privacy issues were raised in several stories dealing with the intersection of technology, media, and public figures last week. Among the items:

• The U.S. Department of State is investigating who snooped into the passport files of the three leading presidential candidates. Newsweek reports that sources close to the probe say two private contracting firms were involved in a series of breaches — three unauthorized peeks at Barack Obama’s file, and one each at Hillary Clinton’s and John McCain’s. Electronic passport files typically contain a scan of the paper application form as well as birth dates, Social Security numbers, family information, and in some cases information on travel destinations, according to Newsweek. It is unclear whether such confidential information could have any value in the realm of political dirty tricks, and investigators say misguided curiosity could have triggered the unauthorized entries into the databases, which were detected by security software.
• The website of a popular French magazine was the focus of an ethical and legal controversy involving a gossipy story about French president Nicolas Sarkozy. UPI reports that Sarkozy last week finally dropped a lawsuit against the publication Nouvel Observateur, which claimed that Sarkozy had sent his former wife a text message offering to take her back. The legal action was dropped after the reporter recanted and apologized, but Sarkozy’s new wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy was not appeased, unleashing a blistering critique of the media, reports the Reuters news agency. The current French first lady blasted the media in an editorial in a national newspaper: “What is dishonest and worrying about this whole incident is that at no moment was the ‘information’ checked, corroborated, or confirmed…. If rumor now serves as information, if fantasy fuels a scoop, where will we end up? If major newspapers fail to sift out the gossip from the facts, who will?”
• In a measure that many industry observers say could have national implications, a New York State assemblyman is sponsoring a bill that would ban online advertisers from tracking a user’s surfing history in order to serve up targeted ads. PC World reports that assemblyman Richard Brodksy’s proposal would require companies such as AOL, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo to get a surfer’s explicit permission before tracking Web movements. According to PC World, the measure, if enacted, would have a broad impact on all online advertisers because there would be no other way to avoid the wrath of New York authorities than to comply with the state’s laws, regardless of the origin of the ad.

Sources: Newsweek, Mar. 21 — Reuters, Mar. 21 — UPI, Mar. 19 — PC World, Mar. 19.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Mar. 10 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 10 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 3 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 25 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 28.

In other medical-ethics news, a London paper reports on drug trials involving the terminally ill, and a contaminant believed to be responsible for 19 deaths apparently was introduced into a drug component manufactured in China

VARIOUS DATELINES
Wrenching ethics issues were the subjects of medical reports from the world press last week. Among the top stories:

• Euthanasia became a page-one moral issue in France after the death of a woman suffering from a rare, painful, and horribly disfiguring facial tumor. Chantal Sébire ignited a fierce debate over French laws prohibiting assisted suicide when she fought to overturn the prohibition during the final days of her life, reports TIME magazine. She was featured on national television pleading for a painless death rather than the prolonged coma into which she was destined to fall. She was found dead last Thursday night, reports TIME. As this issue of Newsline went to press, the exact cause of her death was not known.
• Drug trials on terminally ill patients in Britain have raised a series of complex legal and ethical issues, reports the London Daily Telegraph. Such testing now involves several steps, including approval for human testing by the government-run Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, which evaluates basic safety criteria, and then approval by another body, the Medical Research Ethics Committee, which evaluates whether the drug’s potential benefits outweigh the risks. But in the case of terminally ill patients, the ethics committee also must be satisfied that the patients are not given unduly high hopes of a “miracle cure,” reports the Telegraph.
• Problems linked to the global reach of the pharmaceutical industry again were in the ethics spotlight as it was confirmed that a blood-thinning drug was contaminated by an ingredient from China. Bloomberg reports that tests showed the contaminant was similar to one of the standard ingredients used in formulating the drug, but had been made from cheaper ingredients and was not approved in the United States for medical use. The drug, called heparin, was withdrawn from the market by the Illinois manufacturer Baxter International. A spokesperson for Baxter said the contaminant was likely introduced “at the workshop or consolidator level” in China, according to the Bloomberg report. As many as 19 people are believed to have died because of the contaminant, according to press reports.

Sources: Guardian, Mar. 23 — Telegraph, Mar. 22 — TIME, Mar. 21 — Bloomberg, Mar. 21 — Reuters, Mar. 20.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Mar. 10 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 4 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 20, 2006 — Related Newsline Commentary, July 24, 2006 — Related Newsline story, June 12, 2006.

Among top teams, the graduation rate of student-athletes is very low

ORLANDO
As the United States becomes engrossed in the NCAA basketball playoffs, a new report casts a different light on college basketball, noting that the top teams fail to graduate the majority of their players.

ABC News reports that a study from the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport claims that North Carolina was the only school among the four number-one seeds in the NCAA men’s tournament to graduate at least 50 percent of its players — with 86 percent receiving their diplomas. The other top teams were far behind: 45 percent of players actually graduated from Kansas and 40 percent from UCLA and Memphis.

Of the 64 schools that received an invitation to the tourney, only 41 teams graduated at least half their basketball student-athletes, reports the Charlotte Observer. But of those 64 schools, some had very high rates, with Western Kentucky averaging 100 percent, and Davidson, Notre Dame, and Purdue at 91 percent, according to the paper.

According to a summary of the study from the San Diego Union-Tribune, women’s teams in the tourney performed much better, with almost all of the 64 invited teams graduating at least 60 percent of their players.

The study was based on data from a recent six-year period.

Sources: ABC, Mar. 21 — Charlotte Observer, Mar. 20 — San Diego Union-Tribune, Mar. 19 — University of Central Florida College of Business Administration, Mar. 18 — New York Times, Mar. 11.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Aug. 6, 2007 — Related Newsline story, May 21, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 21, 2006 — Related Newsline story, June 14, 2004 — Related Newsline story, May 3, 2004.

In news from the other end of the economic scale, Starbucks baristas win a victory over tips, and British merchants report brisk trade in ethical Easter Eggs

VARIOUS DATELINES
Business-ethics news last week ranged from the implications of executive pay on roiling world markets to the ethical redesign of the Easter Egg. Among the stories:

• U.S. Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who heads the powerful House Financial Services Committee, told the Boston Globe that he will be calling for more scrutiny of executive compensation following upheavals in world financial markets. Frank claims that companies often reward executives who take extraordinary risk and that those risks are now imperiling financial systems worldwide. “It’s time to revisit the issue of top executive compensation,” Frank told the Globe. “We’re not just talking about the large amounts of money, but the perverse incentives they have” to take risks that can vastly increase their payouts. Frank contended that last week’s bargain-priced purchase of beleaguered Bear Stearns wiped out shareholder value but left many top executives — who had wiped out the company because of their bad judgment — with a fat profit.
• A dispute over tips at Starbucks evolved into a big deal last week. A San Diego court ordered Starbucks to reimburse $100 million to baristas — coffee-bar waiters — who sued, claiming their bosses unfairly and illegally co-opted part of their tips. The Superior Court judge ruled that the practice of splitting tips with shift supervisors was a violation of a state law prohibiting managers and supervisors from sharing in workers’ tips, BusinessWeek reports. Starbucks said its system was fair and planned to appeal the suit, which had achieved class-action status in California.
• The holiday weekend prompted sale of a new ethical product, reports the London Daily Mail: Eco Easter Eggs. Sales of organic and fair-trade eggs soared to record numbers, according to the Daily Mail, as did eggs confected from ethically sourced chocolate. In addition, consumer pressure has prompted many retailers to reduce waste in their packaging, with the big department-store chain Marks and Spencer reducing the wrapping on its Easter eggs by 75 percent, notes the paper.

Sources: Financial Times, Mar. 24 — Boston Globe, Mar. 19 — BusinessWeek, Mar. 21 — London Daily Mail, Mar. 21.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Mar. 10 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 5, 2007 — Related Newsline story, June 18, 2007 — Related Newsline story, May 29, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 12, 2007.

But there’s a catch: It works only if you give it away

TORONTO and BOSTON
Various press reports last week highlighted a study with interesting ethics implications: research suggesting that happiness indeed can be bought with money, but only if you give it away.

Researchers at the University of British Columbia and Harvard Business School report that people who give money to other individuals and to charity are happier than their peers, notes Scientific American.

University of British Columbia psychology professor Elizabeth Dunn, the lead author of the study, told CTV that one component of her research involved surveying 630 participants about their income and spending habits.

“Regardless of how much income each person made,” Dunn told CTV, “those who spent money on others reported greater happiness, while those who spent more on themselves did not.”

A second component of the study involved surveying employees at a Boston firm before and after they received their annual bonuses, which ranged from $3,000 to $8,000. According to reports from the Toronto Star and the Globe & Mail, investigators found that the recipients’ level of happiness was not pegged to the amount of their bonus, but rather to how they spent it. Again, those who spent on others reported a greater level of happiness.

In the third segment of the study, researchers gave subjects a $5 bill and a $20 bill, instructing them to spend the money either on themselves or on others. Once again, reports CBS News, the givers were happier than the self-spenders when asked to rate their level of happiness at the end of the day.

Sources: Scientific American, Mar. 21 — Globe & Mail, Mar. 21 — Toronto Star, Mar. 21 — CBS, Mar. 20.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Dec. 10, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 3, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 1, 2007 — Related Newsline story, June 25, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 2, 2007.

“Ethanol research loses ground, continued division on ANWR,” Pew poll finds

From the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press:

“At a time of rising energy prices, the public continues to be conflicted in its overall approach toward energy and the environment. A majority of Americans say that developing new sources of energy, rather than protecting the environment, is the more important priority for the country. However, when asked specifically about energy policy priorities, 55% favor more conservation and regulation of energy, compared with 35% who support expanded energy exploration.

“As in recent years, specific policies that address both energy and the environment draw overwhelming support. Nine-in-ten Americans favor requiring better auto fuel efficiency standards, while substantial majorities also support increased federal funding for alternative energy (81%) and mass transportation (72%).

“By contrast, there is greater division over other energy policies. A majority (57%) favors increased federal funding on ethanol research, but support has fallen over the past two years (from 67% in February 2006).

“The public continues to be almost evenly split over the idea of promoting more nuclear power (48% oppose vs. 44% favor). And a majority (53%) opposes giving tax cuts to energy companies to do more oil exploration.

“With gas prices already high and expected to increase, the public overwhelmingly rejects boosting gas taxes to encourage carpooling and energy conservation. By greater than three-to-one (75% to 22%), Americans oppose raising gas taxes.

“The latest nationwide survey … finds continued public divisions over drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Currently, 50% oppose drilling in the Alaska refuge while 42% are in favor. As recently as September of 2005, 50% of Americans favored allowing drilling in ANWR, while 42% were opposed….

“Roughly 90% of Republicans, Democrats and independents support tougher auto fuel standards, and about 80% in each group favor more federal funding for research into alternative energy sources, such as wind, solar and hydrogen technology….

“Other energy policies are more divisive. Somewhat more independents (76%) and Democrats (73%) than Republicans (65%) favor increased funding for mass transit, including subway, rail and bus systems. Increased funding for mass transit also wins greater support from people living in urban (73%) and suburban areas (74%) than among those living in rural areas (62%).

“Roughly six-in-ten Republicans (59%), but just 46% of independents and 34% of Democrats, support promoting the increased use of nuclear power. Notably, there also is a substantial gender gap in views on the use of nuclear power: many more men than women support increased use of nuclear energy (58% vs. 31%, respectively).

“In addition, far more Republicans (52%) than Democrats (39%) favor giving tax cuts to energy companies to spur oil exploration….”

For the full press release from Pew, Mar. 6, click here.

"In parts of the world — so called educated, so-called Western society — we’ve learned that it is not polite to be racist, and so often we don’t express racist views, but… racism is one of the big issues in the world today. Racism is the big social problem in the United States."

– Jared Diamond U.S. evolutionary biologist, physiologist, professor of geography and physiology, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, (b. 1937)