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https://peterostick.com/lessons-from-history-why-is-there-a-tension-between-freedom-and-income-equality/ | 2020-06-06T19:30:10 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-24/segments/1590348519531.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20200606190934-20200606220934-00222.warc.gz | 0.977023 | 3,992 | CC-MAIN-2020-24 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2020-24__0__64511599 | en | Lessons from history: Why is there a tension between freedom and income equality?
I spent the last series asking people on my podcast if we will be in a Utopia or Dystopia by 2050. Let’s be honest, that is a pretty hard question to answer unless you have a crystal ball of some description. In fact, predicting the future is so hard the US National Intelligence Council (which I think is pretty much the CIA) open sources its predictions of the future to get feedback to make them more accurate! So predicting the future is hard, but how about instead of looking forward, we try looking backwards, as “history doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes” Mark Twain is supposed to have said.
Chronicling the history of time is a full-time academic job unless you are an AI. Luckily for me, Will & Ariel Durant put their lives work of multiple volumes of history into a 100-page synopsis, boom thank you (ps I would put that book in a top 5 must-reads). The question I want to analyse is:
Why is there a tension between freedom and income equality?
I started thinking about this after re-reading the following passage from Lessons from history over the last few weeks as the world was hit by Coronavirus:
“Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies. Leave men free, and their natural inequalities will multiply almost geometrically, as in England and America in the nineteenth century under laissez-faire. To check the growth of inequality, liberty must be sacrificed, as in Russia after 1917. Even when repressed, inequality grows, only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality; those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom; and in the end superior ability has its way. Utopias of equality are biologically doomed, and the best way that the amiable philosopher can hope for is an approximate equality of legal justice and educational opportunity.”
This topic has driven me a little insane at times over the last week. I definitely did not write it in the 48hr time limit. It made me question my belief systems and biases. I am not a huge follower of politics for this exact reason. It is too complicated to oversimply by blue and red coloured parties. You are just wrong if you believe everything a political party or newspaper spouts, but in most countries, you have to be in one team or the other. I still identify as being a working-class northerner, but having spent half of the rest of my life away and running companies has clearly muddied things. Long story short an easier topic would have been how to create world peace.
But I while try and mainly because I am interested in this subject given the wave of populist governments coming to power around the world and because I don’t have anything else to do in lockdown.
The consensus view seems to be the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer.
Why might that be? 2007 GREAT Recession is a good starting point. The fact that economists use the word “GREAT” only twice when discussing economic meltdowns is pretty telling. The first was the great depression, which everyone agrees was pretty bad and was a major factor in the rise of Hitler and subsequent second world war. The second GREAT, was the GREAT recession of 2007-2009. Yep happened just around the corner. But it was pretty bad and maybe just maybe we have been sticking band-aids over it to conceal the devastation. Here is a massive simplification of what has happened over the last 10 years as a result. Economists central banks have more knowledge than they did in the 1930’s so they printed money (Quantitive Easing) and lowered interest rates. The result of this was a 10-year bull market for equities as consumers felt richer so spent more, in turn increasing company profits. They also felt more comfortable to increase debt so took out mortgages which in turn pushed up housing prices. This was felt more keenly in urban areas were people suddenly want to live back in cities again, make it unaffordable to the people who had been living there for the past 50 years. The real kicker was that blue-collar jobs in manufacturing etc have over the last 20 years have been aggressively outsourced. Starting to China which saw the massive rise of the middle class there, and then to countries like Vietnam who will now do it cheaper than China because the workers are asking to much money. In Europe thousands of Eastern block EU citizens moved to the UK and labour was also got very cheap for low skilled work. Finally, students are pretty annoyed (mainly in the US) because the $100,000 student debt (which can be 6X larget if you are a smarter enough to get into an Ivy League school. they are in being charged at 5% is like a noose around their neck if they have a degree and now in the workforce or if they are planning. (ps I find it very hard not become US-centric when thinking of these things). What happened in Australia? Well, Aussies were pretty sweet, the banks were as exposed to sub-prime mortgages and they had a very greedy client offshore in China wanting to build lots of tall buildings with the iron ore in Australias earth. So I think is a rough approximation of the popular view on why are here now. But reading Lessons of history its made me stop and try and zoom out a bit further to try to understand where we are in the general cycle of things (markets go through cycles bear and bull, debt goes through cycles read Ray Dalio Big debt cycles for more information on that) and if this is just an inevitable outcome of the tension between freedom and equality.
To explore this further I am going to break down the Durants passage into three areas:
- Are certain individuals better equipped to compete than others? What is the moat/barriers to access? What impact is the hereditary access to genes, capital, networks?
- Does freedom have to decline to ensure equality? What is the role of education and the law?
- What do we learn from this and what is the solution?
Are certain individuals better equipped to compete than others? What is the moat/barriers to access? What impact is the hereditary access to genes, capital, networks? What is the role of education and the law?
“Since practical ability differs from person to person, the majority of such abilities, in nearly all societies is gathered in a minority of men. The concentration of wealth is a natural result of the concentration of ability and regularly occurs in history. The rate of the concentration varies (other factors being equal) with the economic freedom permitted by morals and laws. Despotism may for a time retard the concentration; democracy, allowing the most liberty, accelerates it.” Will & Ariel Durrant in Lessons from history (1968)
If we take the Durants version of history then we are left with the impression that when you leave people and markets to their own free will, then certain individuals will do a better job than others of competing for scarce resources and overtime those advantages will multiply. So let’s take a handful of people who have done better than most at accumulating income.
Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs. At first glance, I instantly grouped Carnegie/Rockefeller together because they were in the same era and also because I know that they were both pretty poor in relative terms growing up. Carnegie came to the US from Scotland as a kid as poor as you could imagine, Rockerfellers father wild Bill basically lived a double life and had two families and would often leave John and his mother for long periods of time without money or social opportunities. Gates and Buffett who are buddies, on the other hand, were sons of a prominent lawyer Gates Snr and a senator Buffett SNR. Gates had access in his high school two one of only two supercomputers in the country, that is an unfair advantage or the other hand Buffett had access to the richest people in Omaha and connections through his father. Next group Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos. Jobs adopted son of a carpenter from which he famously got his attention to detail and craftmanship, Jeff Bezos was born to a 17-year-old mother, who split with his biological father and was raised by Mike Bezos who was a Cuban immigrant who came to America at 16 barely being able to speak English. Elon Musk father was rich but by all accounts, he is self-financed his education. If you strip out Buffett and Gates and then maybe Elon Musk who was kind of privileged but kind of not. You left with about a trillion $’s of wealth accumulation from as standing start.
Has the probability to reach the very top really gone down across the world or is just that the middle and lower classes’s have just got poorer in real terms as the spread of wealth has become decentralised?
This has got me thinking about monarchs and how they come to power and wealth. Monarchies have a serious moat, as by definition they are hereditary. But at some point in the past were individuals and families who at some point needed to amassed wealth and power. Yes, parts are hereditary but at some point, someone had to take power. The richest monarch in the world today is the King of Thailand who has $43bn in assets, Thailand has a GDP of around $430bn. That is less than Jeff Bezos $106bn after his divorce was $140bn, interestingly Amazon revenue is $422 bn similar to Thailands GDP but a drop in the ocean of Americas GDP of 19.39 Trillion. It would appear Bezos is the ruler of a small country. This actually has an interesting connection and precedent. I have just finished reading the Anarchy by William Darlimple about how an independent company British East India managed to take over the control of an entire continent India with the primary purpose of the companies profit. Before being nationalised it was accounting for 60% of the British GDP. It was individuals such as Arthur Wellesley (later to become famous as the Duke of Wellington, Battle of Waterloo Napoleon and became Prime Minister), who’s military acumen and the superiority of technology (muskets vs swords and cavalry).
On reflection, I would have to agree to this point with the Durants that certain individuals just have a better aptitude to generate income.
Does freedom have to decline to ensure equality? What is the role of education and the law?
This is when things start to get tricky. The role of government and manipulation of the law is probably the ultimate way that you can repress an individual’s freedom and at the same time ensure that they don’t have the ability to gain wealth or vice versa. Examples that spring to mind are females inability to vote and get access to education globally, Jim Crow laws in the US and Terra Nullius impact on Indigenous Australians. The law is the ultimate circuit breaker. As someone who has never been negatively prejudiced by the law, it’s quite hard to really get your head around the impact that it would have if used against you.
Communist states from the USSR to China showed for a long time that you could create equality but you would do such by giving up basic freedoms like free speech or criticism of the government. The opposite does seem to lead to the domination of capital and power have generally come hand in hand throughout the ages. If you think of the Triumvirate that ruled Rome Ceaser, Pompey, Crassus they were also the three richest people in the empire at the time. The Medici bankers in Italy bankrolled the Vatican for a long time culminating in Pope Leo (Giovanni Lorenzo Medici)
I think you also have to work on the assumption that all kids in developed countries have access to basic free education. I know that to be an oversimplification if kids are coming from abusive homes for example. Kids might not be accessing school or they could be in no state to attend school when they are there. I think the reality is that most knowledge-based jobs today require some form of tertiary education. Having worked in the tech industry I think the one thing that people don’t appreciate is that as the market is continually evolving you have to be a student constantly. You are constantly forced to have a growth learning mindset because things just change. Sometimes literally overnight. You really don’t need to go to college to gain that mindset. That can be taught by friends, parents, teachers, cousins, sports coaches, charities hopefully, someone before a kid turns 18.
What do we learn from this, what is the solution? Does anywhere have the balance right?
My personal bias from my own experience of social equality in countries with high levels of freedom is worth taking into account. I feel like I have seen both sides of the spectrum. I have been friends with people with a lot and people with little. I grew up in Widnes in the north of England in the heartlands of socialist Labour until I was 18, my family are from Liverpool which is a few miles down the road. Tory Maggie Thatcher who hated the north and especially Liverpool was a creature from the underworld, I think Axe the poll tax was my first political memory it was graffitied on a wall on the way to school. Widnes, where I lived and my parents still live is a pretty good spectrum of blue-collar and white-collar work. I think my childhood was pretty perfect, which was down to my parents.
One of the biggest grievances of Thatcher years in the north was the “Get on your bike” comment. Which basically meant if you couldn’t find a job where you lived then leave and go somewhere you can. This is where it gets complicated with me. I moved to London at 21 and to Sydney at 26, Byron Bay 37 and have done ok. At a cost though. I see my parents in-person probably once a year. I wish it was different and appreciate that this is a deal-breaker for most. On the sunny side they now know how to use facetime.
Plus moving to capital cities (where the jobs are) is expensive especially for the first few years. I lived off my credit card and then also managed to buy my first house there after a few years. Just in time for the property market to crash (it came back). I have had student debt and paid close to 70% income tax after means-tested repayments were taken out. I have started companies and had employees and sold a company, started others, invested in even more. I have also heard the challenges first hand of forced immigration. My wife Ida’s family fled Iran after the fall of the Shah in 1979 and settled in the US leaving everything behind. Ida was brought up by her Mum and sister and the help of amazing people in the local community. Both Ida and her sister are doing incredibly well one an entrepreneur the other a Dr, literally the American dream against incredible odds. But its definitely not been easy.
So this is probably the reason I found this subject hard to confront. It’s hard not to say well if I did it. I think this is a theme with JD Vance who wrote the book Hillbilly Elegy. Vance grew up in the shittiest of circumstances drug-addicted single mother but was raised by his Mamaw (grandmother) seriously tough matriarch who he dared not upset. I see parallels in the importance of role model stories of success of the Pyjama foundation a not for profit organisation that promotes numeracy and literacy for kids in the foster care system for which I am a board member, the pyjama angels act like min Mamaw’s in that they are a constant in the child’s life as they may move around from home to home. These people show up when they don’t have to and they don’t get paid.
I often think of Australia today like America in the 1950’s the land of opportunity, the good bits and the bad. Its incredibly easy to start a company for example and Australia has lots of small businesses. Education is accessible to all and basic health care is covered. Like America though Australia carries the weight of the treatment of indigenous people. I am still shocked that in nearly 12 years of living and working here my interactions with indigenous people can be counted on one hand. I know that the foster care system over indexes with indigenous kids as do the prisons that re-creates the cycle.
I know a lot of people point to Singapore as a happy medium. Criticism of the government, for example, is not tolerated but a meritocracy and free-market economics are embraced. Taxes are super low and the government invests a lot in promoting business activity. Everyone has housing, hospitals are world-class, but if you want to start a company you can do so and been incentivised to make a profit with excessive taxation.
Interestingly due to the coronavirus and the halting of the governments around the world are undertaking the biggest social spending programme in history. That is at the same time as the Democrats could still not bring themselves to select a socialist like Bernie Sanders to run for president.
I’ll finish as I began with a passage from Lessons of history.
The relative equality of Americans before 1776 has been overwhelmed by a thousand forms of physical, mental and economic differentiation so that the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest is now greater than any time since the Imperial plutocratic Rome. In progressive societies, the concentration may reach a point where the strength of number in many poor rivals the strength of ability in the few rich; then the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing power. In the Athens of 594 BC, according to Plutarch, “the disparity of fortune between the rich and the poor had reached its height so that the city seemed to be in a dangerous condition and no other means for freeing it from disturbances… seemed possible but despotic power.” The poor, finding their status worsened with each year – the government in the hands of their masters, and the corrupt courts deciding every issue against them -began to talk of violent revolt. The rich, angry at the challenge to their property, prepared to defend themselves by force. Good sense prevailed; moderate elements secured the election of Solon, a businessman of aristocratic lineage, to the supreme archonship. He devalued the currency, thereby easing the burden of the debtors (though he himself was a creditor); he reduced all personal debts, and ended the imprisonment for debt, he cancelled arrears for taxes and mortgage interest; he established a graduated income tax that made the rich pay at a rate twelve times that required of the poor, he organised the courts on a more popular basis; and he arranged the sons of those who had died in war for Athens should be brought up and educated at the government’s expense.
It does make you wonder if America, in particular, is a ticking time bomb. Will it be peaceful re-allocation, authoritarian take over or violent revolution only time will tell. | politics |
https://impacteconomix.com/about/our-people/prof-fanie-cloete/ | 2020-04-07T03:58:18 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585371665328.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20200407022841-20200407053341-00270.warc.gz | 0.896721 | 234 | CC-MAIN-2020-16 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2020-16__0__236155135 | en | Professor Cloete is an organisational and policy development expert with 17 years experience in various institutional and policy planning and management positions in government and more than three decades of experience in the fields of education, training and capacity-building for better institutional and policy development. Professor Cloete has a D Phil degree in Political Science from Stellenbosch University and a LLB degree from the Rand Afrikaans University.
Professor Cloete’s skills in transdisciplinary training, research, planning, policy design, implementation and evaluation enable him to integrate contemporary theory and practice in a feasible, affordable and sustainable manner across different sectors like politics, management, economy, environment, culture, education, health, etc.
Professor Cloete specialises in institutional transformation, policy process and content improvement and policy design, implementation and evaluation capacity-building.
Professor Cloet’s previous work includes:
- Institutional development and policy management training for decision-makers from local to international level
- Programme and project evaluations in various developing countries
Planning, implementing and managing various legislative and operational transformation programmes in South Africa’s transition to democracy and thereafter at different governmental levels. | politics |
http://test.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/608/179031.html | 2019-03-21T13:36:08 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-13/segments/1552912202525.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20190321132523-20190321154523-00552.warc.gz | 0.964037 | 710 | CC-MAIN-2019-13 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2019-13__0__84011966 | en | The draft Mining Charter is moving in the right direction, but it is still full of ambiguities that need clarity.
The broader approach has incorporated mining communities and workers for the first time, as well as the 70% local procurement requirement, and the alignment of social and labour plans across sectors. Representation of communities and workers on company boards is also a progressive step forward, says John Capel, executive director of Bench Marks Foundation.
While he welcomed the inclusion of communities and workers with 8% BEE shareholding each, he asked how they would benefit from this shareholding. In theory, the Mining Charter looks good for communities, but in practice, it offers little to host mining communities and workers
“Even if 10% is free carry interest and paid for through vendor financing, what will this actually amount to? If no dividends are declared in the first five years, no benefits for communities or workers apply. In the sixth year, this falls away, and 1% trickle dividend – based on revenue and not earnings, as the DMR clarified for us – is paid.
“As good as this sounds, what will be the state of these communities in the preceding five years? Communities desperately need shares and benefits in the here and now, not in some far-off distant future,” he says.
Old-order mining rights
Concerns raised included those about old order mining rights. Bench Marks says that mines with a 10- to 30-year concession will continue to leave out communities and workers from gaining a rightful share in the industry.
“How do existing mines, which cause havoc in communities, move towards 30% BEE ownership target? We need clarity on this issue,” Capel asks.
Another area of concern is women in the workplace and sexual harassment in the underground work environment. Bench Marks says that women in the workforce need to be taken more seriously as they are outnumbered by 10 to one.
Bench Marks described the 70% local content provision as being probably the most ambitious aim of the charter and its most welcome.
“Presently 70% of South Africa’s gold and platinum are processed in Switzerland and 80% of converters made in Europe and the USA, with most of mining equipment sourced from Sweden. In the distant past, we had a much better manufacturing sector associated with mining. This has been declining since 1994. We believe the 70% local content provision can stimulate growth on the supply and demand side and that all role-players and sectors of the economy need to be engaged to explore the enormous potential benefits of this approach. This will go some way to addressing poverty, inequality and unemployment and building a sustainable long-term sector that will bring real benefits to South Africa,” he says.
Social and labour plans
“Bench Marks has for many years called for the integration of these funds and joint social and labour plans for mines that operate in the same proximity. In addition we call for communities’ full say and control over these funds to promote popular development from below, in consultation with local government. Communities in mining areas are beginning to think about how to develop alternative economies. This opens the way for community participation in the development and monitoring of social and labour plans.
“We have long seen these as problematic. The DMR now recognises this as well. We hope this will lead to monies reaching the communities themselves, and not only go to administrative costs or traditional authorities,” Capel notes. | politics |
https://www.clayton.oh.us/179/Elections | 2020-07-11T14:58:50 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-29/segments/1593655933254.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20200711130351-20200711160351-00159.warc.gz | 0.948722 | 128 | CC-MAIN-2020-29 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2020-29__0__170462370 | en | The City recommends that political signs be placed no earlier than forty-five (45) days before an election and should be removed seven (7) days after the election, if the political sign relates to an election. Political signs shall not be placed on City property such as the Clayton Government Center, fire stations, maintenance building, public park property or other out lots. Additionally, such signs shall not be located within the public right-of-way. Political signs do not require a permit.
Clayton Election Wards
If you're unsure where to vote or what Ward you vote in, here is link that will help you. | politics |
http://mainewindindustry.com/node/330 | 2017-04-29T05:23:55 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-17/segments/1492917123276.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20170423031203-00622-ip-10-145-167-34.ec2.internal.warc.gz | 0.941999 | 155 | CC-MAIN-2017-17 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2017-17__0__202561942 | en | Economic development in offshore power touted at closing day of Energy Ocean International conference
Gov. Paul LePage's energy czar on June 16th said the administration sees economic development potential from the development of offshore energy.
In recent weeks, there have been various media reports on exactly where LePage's administration stood on the development of offshore wind, in particular. At the closing day of the EnergyOcean International 2011 conference, Kenneth Fletcher, director of the governor's Office of Energy Independence and Security, spoke to clarify the administration's stance.
"I think the real opportunity we see, the administration sees, is through our research and development, manufacturing and assembly - we would like to have Maine become the pre-emptive leader, at least on the East Coast," said Fletcher. | politics |
https://trasloservice.com/brexit-need-know-uk-leaving-eu-part-2/ | 2023-04-01T21:17:05 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-14/segments/1679296950247.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20230401191131-20230401221131-00522.warc.gz | 0.968757 | 1,420 | CC-MAIN-2023-14 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2023-14__0__226599331 | en | Here we are again with the second part of Brexit questions!
We hope it will be helpful to foreign people living in the UK and to people who wish to move in.
11. The likely focus of negotiations between the UK and EU
In very simplified terms, the starting positions are that the EU will only allow the UK to be part of the European single market (which allows tariff-free trade) if it continues to allow EU nationals the unchecked right to live and work in the UK. The UK says it wants controls “on the numbers of people who come to Britain from Europe”. Both sides want trade to continue after Brexit with the UK seeking a positive outcome for those who wish to trade goods and services” – such as those in the City of London. The challenge for the UK’s Brexit talks will be to do enough to tackle immigration concerns while getting the best possible trade arrangements with the Eu.
Some Brexiteers, such as ex-chancellor Lord Lawson, say that as the UK does not want freedom of movement and the EU says that without it there is no single market membership, the UK should seek to end “uncertainty” by pushing ahead with Brexit and not “waste time” trying to negotiate a special deal.
12. Could there be a second referendum?
It seems highly unlikely. Both the Conservatives and the Labour Party have ruled out another referendum, arguing that it would be an undemocratic breach of trust with the British people who clearly voted to Leave. The Liberal Democrats have vowed to halt Brexit and keep Britain in the EU if they win the next general election.
Some commentators, including former House of Commons clerk Lord Lisvane, have argued that a further referendum would be needed to ratify whatever deal the UK hammers out with the EU, but there are few signs political leaders view this as a viable option.
13. Will immigration be cut?
Prime Minister Theresa May has said one of the main messages she has taken from the Leave vote is that the British people want to see a reduction in immigration.
She has said this will be a focus of Brexit negotiations. The key issue is whether other EU nations will grant the UK access to the single market, if that is what it wants, while at the same time being allowed to restrict the rights of EU citizens to live and work in the UK.
Mrs May has said she remains committed to getting net migration – the difference between the numbers entering and leaving the country – down to a “sustainable” level, which she defines as being below 100,000 a year. It is currently running at 330,000 a year, of which 184,000 are EU citizens, and 188,000 are from outside the EU – the figures include a 39,000 outflow of UK citizens.
14. Has any other member state ever left the EU?
No nation state has ever left the EU. But Greenland, one of Denmark’s overseas territories, held a referendum in 1982, after gaining a greater degree of self government, and voted by 52% to 48% to leave, which it duly did after a period of negotiation. The BBC’s Carolyn Quinn visited Greenland at the end of last year to find out how they did it.
15. What does this mean for Scotland and Northen Ireland?
Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said in the wake of the Leave result that it is “democratically unacceptable” that Scotland faces being taken out of the EU when it voted to Remain. A second independence referendum for the country is now “highly likely”, she has said.
Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness said the impact in Northern Ireland would be “very profound” and that the whole island of Ireland should now be able to vote on reunification. But, speaking while she was still Northern Ireland Secretary, Theresa Villiers ruled out the call from Sinn Féin for a border poll, saying the circumstances in which one would be called did not exist.
16. Will EHIC cards still be valid?
They are at the moment but no-one knows the longer term prospects for definite. The EHIC card – which entitles travellers to state-provided medical help for any condition or injury that requires urgent treatment, in any other country within the EU, as well as several non-EU countries – is not an EU initiative. It was negotiated between countries within a group known as the European Economic Area, often simply referred to as the single market (plus Switzerland, which confusingly is not a member of the EEA, but has agreed access to the single market). Therefore, the future of Britons’ EHIC cover could depend on whether the UK decided to sever ties with the EEA.
17. Will cars need new number plates?
Probably not, says BBC Europe correspondent Chris Morris, because there’s no EU-wide law on vehicle registration or car number places, and the EU flag symbol is a voluntary identifier and not compulsory. The DVLA says there has been no discussion about what would happen to plates with the flag if the UK voted to leave.
18. Will leaving the EU mean we don’t have to abide by the European Court of Human Rights?
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg is not a European Union institution. It was set up by the Council of Europe, which has 47 members including Russia and Ukraine. So quitting the EU will not exempt the UK from its decisions. However, the UK government is committed to repealing the Human Rights Act which requires UK courts to treat the ECHR as setting legal precedents for the UK, in favour of a British Bill of Rights. As part of that, the UK government is expected to announce measures that will boost the powers of courts in England and Wales to over-rule judgements handed down by the ECHR. However, the EU has its own European Court of Justice, whose decisions are binding on EU institutions and member states.
19. Will the UK be able to rejoin the EU in the future?
BBC Europe editor Katya Adler says the UK would have to start from scratch with no rebate, and enter accession talks with the EU. Every member state would have to agree to the UK re-joining. But she says with elections looming elsewhere in Europe, other leaders might not be generous towards any UK demands. New members are required to adopt the euro as their currency, once they meet the relevant criteria, although the UK could try to negotiate an opt-out.
20. Will the EU still use English?
Yes, says BBC Europe editor Katya Adler. There will still be 27 other EU states in the bloc, and others wanting to join in the future, and the common language tends to be English – “much to France’s chagrin”, she says. | politics |
http://australiasamoanews.com.au/pm-tuilaepa-applauds-rse-increase/ | 2018-12-11T19:31:56 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-51/segments/1544376823674.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20181211172919-20181211194419-00478.warc.gz | 0.948747 | 686 | CC-MAIN-2018-51 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2018-51__0__82199149 | en | By Nanai Taofiga Laveitiga Tuiletufuga
(www.savalinews.com) – Elated is an understatement when it comes to Prime Minister Tuilaepa Lupesoliai Sailele Malielegaoi’s reaction to the announcement this week that the New Zealand Recognized Seasonal Workers Scheme is increasing its annual quota to 10,500 workers.
That’s 1,000 more jobs for Samoans RSE workers along with the eight Pacific Islands Forum countries reaping the RSE fruits.
It’s well documented that Tuilaepa has been on the frontline in urging the New Zealand Government to remove the RSE working visas cap for its Pacific Islands advocates.
That was audible when Samoa hosted 200 plus New Zealand Recognized Seasonal Workers Employees attending the 8th Annual Conference in Apia last year.
Opening the meeting, Tuilaepa called on the 200 plus Kiwi employers hiring Pacific Island workers from Samoa, Solomon Islands, Nauru, Tonga, Fiji, and Kiribati to lobby to the New Zealand authorities to “remove the cap” which is restricting Pacific Island RSE workers to quota of 9,500 a year.
“New Zealand should increase working visas for RSE workers,” urged the Samoa Government leader.
“The RSE is rated as one of the most significant success stories of our region.
It’s a win-win for all those involved from the NZ farmers, to the participating Pacific Island government and most importantly to RSE employees.
“The program has also alleviated labor shortage problems faced by the New Zealand farmers,” continued Tuilaepa.
“However, as long as New Zealand is paying the unemployed to stay unemployed the need for RSE will intensify.”
Today, Tuilaepa is applauding the increase. But maintain his resolve that the RSE cap needs to be removed.
“Its common sense,” says the Prime Minister.
“Removing the cap of 9,500 RSE visas every year is a win-win for all those involved from the NZ farmers, to the participating Pacific Island government and most importantly to RSE employees.
“The program has also alleviated labor shortage problems faced by the New Zealand farmers,” concluded Tuilaepa.
Samoan RSE workers return between $10-15m (US$7 – US$10 million) to the Samoan economy, or up to 8 per cent of the country’s GDP.
And from the Beehive in Wellington, New Zealand and Samoan High Chief in his capacity as Labour Party’s Pacific Affairs spokesman MP Su’a Williams Sio said the call to remove the RSE quota is worth exploring.
“It’s an issue worth looking into,” said Sua.
“We need to look at the sustainability as well as the impact on New Zealand in terms of employment.
“If you recall, the RSE scheme was introduced by the last Labour government despite opposition from the National Party.
“So any initiative to improve the RSE and its benefits to the horticulture and viticulture industries is always worth a good thorough look.” | politics |
https://www.sau26.org/Page/5719 | 2022-09-25T23:26:50 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334620.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925225000-20220926015000-00661.warc.gz | 0.916287 | 255 | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2022-40__0__36480945 | en | AP AMERICAN GOVERNMENT & POLITICS
Available to Grades 11-12
This intensive college-level course provides an analytical and critical perspective on the concepts, methods, and ideas of government and politics in the United States. The dual-focused approach involves both the historic and philosophical foundations of constitutional government, the creation of the Constitution, the organization of American Government, civil liberties and the gradual expansion of individual rights. While students study general concepts used to interpret American politics, this course assumes familiarity with the various institutions, groups, beliefs, and ideas which form the American political system. Particular attention will be given to the American election process and modern political power. This course offers students the opportunity to analyze and interpret these institutions and perspectives of American government and form opinions and positions on various subjects, both current and from America history. This course requires a summer project.
Students are prepared to take the AP Government & Politics exam in May. A strong exam score can be used for college credit at numerous colleges and universities. This varies from school to school, and students are advised to research requirements for individual colleges and universities.
Prerequisite: Approval of the Social Studies Department Head | politics |
http://nwotn3.motion-forum.net/t5428-naruto-enmity-reboot | 2017-04-26T09:41:18 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-17/segments/1492917121267.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20170423031201-00244-ip-10-145-167-34.ec2.internal.warc.gz | 0.97338 | 914 | CC-MAIN-2017-17 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2017-17__0__266810118 | en | |Subject: Naruto Enmity Reboot Sat Jul 31, 2010 1:39 pm|| |
After the Fourth Shinobi World War an era of peace and tranquility began to sweep the world. Nations rebuilt and soon returned to their individual ways of life. The Shinobi Alliance broke apart seeing no reason in keeping the super power united in a time when people would much rather extend their arms to embrace rather than assault another. For a century this peaceful way of living continued and became known as the Era of Peace.
However the Era of Peace would soon fade with the passing of time. Village Leaders became corrupt and their occupants fell under their tyrannical rule. Despite the negative way of living no one dared to spark an insurrection for fear if the war pain and death that would follow. However, it wasn't long before the oppressed masses grew tired of their immoral leaders. They armed themselves and prepared for war. This led to the Fifth Shinobi World War which became better known as The Great Rebellion. With war raging though out the shinobi world all nations were thrown into chaos with many nations lashing out at all that would pose a threat. Desperate to prevent the entire shinobi world from crumbling in on itself the nations of Hi, Kaze, Mizu, Tsuchi and Kamanari reformed the Shinobi Alliance and created the International Ninja Team, a group of shinobi that was to uphold the Shinobi Alliance between the major nations and strengthen it. With INT enforcing the will of the five nation alliance the chaotic Fifth Shinobi World War turned into a cold war of politics before it finally died down.
The end of the Great Rebellion gave birth to two new countries and three shinobi villages. The Volcano and the Rising Sun and Mechanic Villages rose out of the ashes of war. The forever neutral country of Tetsu no Kuni established its hidden village under the rule of the Imperial Kingdom. In addition to the new nations the shinobi world witnessed a second renaissance of sorts. All nations saw advances in technology and weaponry. INT soon inducted Arashi, Taki and Kusa into its alliance spreading its helping hands across the world. As INT grew many organizations would dare to oppose the great shinobi alliance only to be crushed. With the massive war over all nations were able to prosper in a predominately friendly environment. as such many clans prospered and some that were thought to be extinct had made a slow return, of these were the Uchiha, Senju, Kaguya, and Hi-Tsukurite clans.
Each clan boosted the economic and military force of there lands all the while reestablishing themselves as shinobi superpowers. Peace had once again become an established way of life for countries within the protection of INT and the Shinobi Alliance. For those that were not under the arc of safety war and strife continued. Civil war still ravaged many of the lesser and rising nations and the great alliance dared not to intervene. As such nations like Kyokujitsugakure no sato were forced to endure half a century of war before a stable government would be able to guide the people. While the reasons against intervention made sense the the council members of the alliance, the people that were victimized didn't understand why there were being abandoned. This led to the formation of groups against the Alliance and is some cases INT as well. While many nations rose against the Shinobi Alliance on every occasion they would fall under the might the Alliance possessed.
Its been over fifty years since the Great Rebellion instigated the reconstruction of the shinobi world as it was known. The INT continues to serve as the Shinobi Alliance's most elite group of shinobi and defender of those within its borders. With such a large alliance governing almost half of world peace continues to live on in every facet of one's life. However there are still a small number of countries that suffer despite the good fortune of INT. In addition to this harsh truth, a group of ninja looks to spread the suffering of these nations to beyond their borders. They seek chaos, disorder and death. Their motive remain unknown, and their numbers are a mystery. They are only known as Boshoku. Meanwhile the shinobi world continues to move forward as a new class of genin graduates from the academy looking to become heroes in their own right. Village Leaders hope to either pass the torch on to their successors or live up to their predecessors. Its a world of change and mystery on Naruto Enmity. Here only you can shape your destiny. | politics |
https://www.crackpsat.net/psat/reading/test43.html | 2023-06-06T23:52:03 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224653183.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20230606214755-20230607004755-00131.warc.gz | 0.925927 | 698 | CC-MAIN-2023-23 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2023-23__0__54716639 | en | PSAT Reading Practice Test 36: Historical Document
Questions 1-9 refer to the following information.
Excerpt from George Washington's "Farewell Address to the United States of America," 1796.
Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens)
the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience
prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.
But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very
05influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign
nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only
on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots
who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious,
while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender
The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial
relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already
formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe
has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she
15must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our
concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in
the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her
friendships or enmities.
Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course.
20If we remain one people under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we
may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as
will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when
belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly
hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided
25by justice, shall counsel.
Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign
ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our
peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?
It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign
30world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable
of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public
than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those
engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and
would be unwise to extend them.
35Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive
posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies. | politics |
http://www.dudleyvision.org/?p=2266 | 2020-04-03T16:07:05 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585370515113.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20200403154746-20200403184746-00240.warc.gz | 0.89835 | 206 | CC-MAIN-2020-16 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2020-16__0__158043680 | en | As part of Mayor Walsh’s initiative to expand opportunities for entrepreneurship and innovation to all areas of the City of Boston, the City has released today a Request for Interest, Ideas, and Innovation for the Roxbury Innovation Center. This RFI is intended to gauge interest from potential operators of the Center, and gain insights from market participants on potential concepts that could inform an upcoming Request for Proposals to lease and operate the Roxbury Innovation Center in the City’s next great public building, the Dudley Sq. Municipal Center.
The information session on July 28, 2014 will be at the Community Room of the Boston Police Station in Dudley Square (Area B-2, 2400 Washington St., Roxbury), beginning at 11:30 a.m.
The due date for submittal of Statements of Interest will be September 1st, 2014. The RFI can be downloaded (until the deadline) using the following link: http://www.cityofboston.gov/procurement/events/ | politics |
https://www.run4allwomen.com/story/ | 2019-10-21T03:12:36 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-43/segments/1570987751039.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20191021020335-20191021043835-00073.warc.gz | 0.963997 | 426 | CC-MAIN-2019-43 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2019-43__0__102471169 | en | In January of 2017, a group of 4 women inspired over a thousand people to join them on their run from Harlem to Washington DC. This event raised over $100k for women’s reproductive rights and inspired a movement that led to our first Brand Ambassador Team, National Summit and State Chapter Events in August of that year. These state events fostered amazing connections across the country and raised an additional $50k for Planned Parenthood. Using footage from the DC run, we created a documentary that premiered at the Women in Sports Film Festival in Oakland and went on to screen in a dozen cities.
Taking the learnings of that first year to heart, we rolled into 2018 with renewed vigor and dedication to empowering people to effect change. Together, with our new Brand Ambassador team, we poured our energies into the Midterm Run, a grassroots campaign to support progressive candidates in key states. From our National Summit in the spring and through our new Brand Ambassador education platform, we worked to help educate and inspire our communities to engage in voter registration drives, runs and conversations. In September, we hosted a week’s worth of events designed to get out the vote. The 2018 midterm elections proved to be historic, with record high voter turnout and as we close out the year, we are pleased to report that 11 of our 20 candidates are heading to their new offices in Washington DC.
Now, as we train our eyes on 2019, our goal is to build sustainable communities that help empower people to be the change they seek. In order to do this we have refined and expanded our Brand Ambassador program, so that team members can select the level at which they wish to participate. We have developed an incredible partnership with The Pursuit Series, so that Ambassadors and friends can come and engage with us in a unique and impactful way. We even built a new online store, so that Ambassadors and friends can show their support by wearing apparel and accessories.
Most importantly, we have built out a corporate structure that will allow us to grow, adapt and bring the mission of Run 4 All Women to communities around the globe. | politics |
https://2016.bbg.gov/ | 2020-11-29T07:50:46 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-50/segments/1606141197278.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20201129063812-20201129093812-00403.warc.gz | 0.904094 | 267 | CC-MAIN-2020-50 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2020-50__0__133957626 | en | Five networks, one team
BBG networks are news leaders, covering stories left untold in environments that lack press freedom and fostering civil dialogue in places overwhelmed with disinformation.
Fighting for press freedom
Terrorist, government and criminal forces have pushed press freedom to its lowest point in 12 years. It is in these most press-restrictive areas that the BBG operates.
Improve accountability and impact measurement
In 2016 BBG enhanced its comprehensive Impact Model to assess and evaluate the impact that BBG programming actually has on the lives of its audiences and their communities. MORE
Implement a market-driven shift to digital distribution
Although TV and radio continue to dominate in many parts of the world, the BBG is responding to audiences’ preferred media platforms and increasing the production of content and high-quality journalism on digital platforms. MORE
Enhance strategic cooperation between networks
The five BBG networks are putting unprecedented emphasis on coordination and content sharing in order to better report on the stories that matter to their audiences. MORE
Increase curation of content
By partnering with compelling storytellers, documentarians and journalists, the BBG provides exceptional and relevant programming, maximizes resources and improves operational efficiency. MORE
“Our mission is neither Democratic nor Republican, it’s American.”
– Chairman Jeff Shell | politics |
http://www.archnet.org/collections/50/media_contents/125367 | 2021-09-19T04:34:36 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-39/segments/1631780056711.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20210919035453-20210919065453-00330.warc.gz | 0.900596 | 304 | CC-MAIN-2021-39 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2021-39__0__185811749 | en | Significant transformations in the world's political landscape are signaling the emergence of a new world order that undermines the certitudes established at the end of World War II. At the core of such discussions, the concept of human rights is significantly challenged, calling for a discussion at the core of ethics for the revisions of the principles and mechanisms of intervention. In reaction to these new transformations some have called for a World Parliament representing the people and not governments to replace the UN General Assembly.
The workshop addresses the agency of architecture and design in a context where the disrespect of human rights is aggravated by the incapacity of global institutions to react efficiently. What are the ethical questions regarding the architecture of refugees? What timescales, short or long terms, represent a priority for architecture and through which agenda – refugee relief, historical preservation, camp upgrades and daily life, or rebuilding and resettlement? What is the role of design in front of the degradation and destruction of cultural artifacts? How can design be channeled towards peace building objectives and possible resettlement projects? What are the material, technological, systemic responses to address emergency needs in the context of refugee camps?
Ethics of International Law as a Framework for Displacees and Refugees Balakrishnan Rajagopal
Ethics and Politics of Post-Conflict Repair Delia Wendel
Material Culture and Historical Conservation Admir Masic
After Belonging Carlos Minguez Carrasco
Architecture of Exile: The Permanent Temporariness of Refugee Camps Alessandro Petti | politics |
https://indiamirror.net/index.php/en/component/k2/item/38-during-the-pandemic-rahul-gandhi-has-emerged-as-a-strong-leader | 2023-12-04T13:32:06 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-50/segments/1700679100529.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20231204115419-20231204145419-00805.warc.gz | 0.984309 | 1,926 | CC-MAIN-2023-50 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2023-50__0__256939915 | en | His parliamentary campaign rested singularly on a one-line slogan against Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “Chowkidaar chor hai (The watchman is a thief – a reference to Modi referring to himself as a watchman of the country)” was the crux of his canvassing, an attempt to put the prime minister in the dock over the controversial Rafale aircraft deal, even as he touched upon other political issues of livelihood.
Yet, in his one-to-one interviews, he did not show a similar aggression. He came across as a friendlier, calmer individual with a contemplative streak. There was an obvious disjunction between what he was and what he portrayed, or was required to portray, as the top leader of the Congress.
Gandhi sent himself into self-imposed exile after a humiliating defeat in the general elections, forcing his party to press his mother, Sonia Gandhi, to steer the sinking ship.
A year later, as Modi has had to deal with a major economic crisis and health emergency, the former Congress president has emerged as a self-assured and well-informed leader of the biggest opposition party in the country.
Through the last year, he remained consciously tight-lipped about speculation both in the media and political circles that he was being prepped for the top role in the party again after Sonia retires. When the clamour for organisational elections within the party grew or when the Congress was scrutinised for its alliance with the far-right Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, or at any other instance when he was asked to clarify his party’s stance on a political issue, Rahul firmly deflected such questions to Congress’s office-holders.
At the same time, he almost constantly asserted his views as a member of parliament. From time to time, one would see him in Wayanad, the constituency in Kerala he represents. From visiting flood-affected areas and taking stock of the situation to leading a protest against the night traffic ban on a national highway that passes through the Bandipur Tiger Reserve into Wayanad, he appeared to take his role as an MP seriously.
His parliamentary interventions in this period, too, garnered quite a bit of attention, especially on the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Bill and the proposed National Register of Indian Citizens, and on the Union government’s move to render Article 370 ineffective.
Through the coronavirus pandemic, however, Rahul seems to have warmed up to a greater leadership role, almost as if he is paving the way to yet again become party president, but with a remarkably different demeanour.
Is Rahul showing a different political style?
In his multiple virtual interactions, Rahul has shown a thoughtful side. Even as Congress president Sonia and the party machinery have trained their guns directly at the government, and have been looking to forge a larger opposition front, he has refrained from attacking the prime minister directly, and has instead questioned the opacity of his government. He turned into a quasi-journalist when he interviewed economists Raghuram Rajan and Abhijit Banerjee to seek advice on mitigating the economic disaster borne out of a harsh lockdown in India.
His frequent interventions have helped make the labour crisis in India the most important issue to be addressed during the lockdown. At the same time, he has been voicing, in what has been a largely suggestive spirit, a more wholesome plan to tackle the spread of COVID-19. His plan has been in line with what international health experts have been recommending – increased testing, ramping up the health infrastructure while India is in a lockdown, and a “strategic” exit plan.
Most of his suggestions have stuck with common people. He has done it in a particularly non-confrontational style – a manner that exposes the Modi government’s failures without him having to say so.
In his virtual press briefings, he has constantly been saying that his suggestions should be taken in a constructive spirit instead of merely a politically-partisan engagement with the government. He has also said that although his style of functioning is very different from Modi’s “centralised” governance, he has no problems in collaborating with him to contain the spread of the virus.
At the same time, Rahul has been fiercely critical of the government’s economic stimulus, which he called as a “loan mela (fair)” rather than any concrete relief to common people. He has also been advocating the implementation of his own NYAY scheme – a direct cash transfer plan that the Congress had mooted in its parliamentary election campaign but which did not have many takers then.
And he has left no opportunity to emphasise the significance of social sector schemes like the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) or the public distribution system for the poor, which Congress governments had initiated.
Rahul, over the last two months, has tried to strike a ‘constructive’ rather than confrontationist tone. On Tuesday, for instance, while declaring that the 60-day “lockdown has failed” as COVID-19 infections continue to spike at an alarming rate, he worded his criticism thus:
“On behalf of the citizens of India, I want to ask the Government, with utmost humility and in a completely non-partisan manner, what is the Government’s plan to tackle this growing crisis? It is now clear that 4 stage of the lockdown haven’t delivered the results that were anticipated. What is the Government’s Plan B?”
He raked up some pertinent federal concerns too:
“The Prime Minister was quick to take centre stage in the early stages of this battle. But now, when his leadership is most needed, he’s stepped back. However, our state Governments are fighting valiantly against the virus, but they are struggling because the funding that the central government should have made available to them has not been forthcoming.”
In emphasising that India needed to develop a long-term strategy to tackle the health and economic implications of the crisis, Rahul said that the fight was much more than a 21-day Mahabharata-like battle as Modi had indicated in his March 24 speech when he imposed a nationwide lockdown.
“At that time the Prime Minister had said the war against the Coronavirus would be won in 21 days. 60 days later, it is now clear that the lockdown has not been able to defeat the virus. The number of new cases in many areas around the country are increasing exponentially. Clearly the PM and his advisors had underestimated the scale of the battle India had to launch to defeat the Coronavirus,” he said.
Therefore, he said, it was important for the government to share “concrete plans for how it intends to deal with our migrants crisis” or scale up testing, or “how it plans to support our MSMEs?”
Does Rahul lack on-ground skills?
At the core of his intervention is the demand that the Modi government show transparency more than anything else. And that appears to have silenced many supporters of the prime minister. However, while his role as a constructive critic has been well-received, his on-ground interventions have been too little, too late.
Migrant workers had been toiling hard to make their way home since Day 1 of the lockdown. However, Rahul hit the ground to meet some of them only in the middle of May. It may have worked, as he had been raising the issue of labour quite frequently in video-conferences. But by the time Rahul came down to the ground, the Centre had already been running trains to take migrants home, leaving him and his party to merely pick holes in the Centre’ arrangements.
The Congress party, too, backed Rahul up on the issue of migrants quite late in the day. By arranging buses for migrant workers, Congress came across as a more empathetic organisation, and the way it handled the political tussle with the BJP state government in Uttar Pradesh was surefooted. But political observers would surely ask what had prevented the grand-old party from making such concrete ground-level interventions before.
Right at the beginning of the lockdown, Rahul sent soap, sanitiser and masks to Amethi, his long-time constituency from where he lost in 2019. His large-heartedness was noticed then, but in the absence of any follow-up action was soon forgotten.
The Congress machinery appears to be coming together in the last few days. So much is the Gandhis’ influence in the party that with Rahul leading its political discourse, and Priyanka Gandhi spearheading the party in Uttar Pradesh, much of the rattle in the diverse rank and file appears to have dissipated, at least momentarily.
Although late, Rahul has been meeting vulnerable men and women, taking note of their conditions. He seems much more comfortable in this role than his previous belligerent self. He is now probably setting the stage to fight the bigger, and possibly much longer, political battle with the BJP. However, with a near inoperative party unit, his real test will be on the ground. There, he will have to beat not only the mammoth BJP machinery but also the advantage Modi has as a mass leader and orator. | politics |
https://www.stiftung-digitale-spielekultur.de/en/project/auswaertsspiel-en/ | 2024-03-03T21:18:11 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947476399.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20240303210414-20240304000414-00060.warc.gz | 0.830377 | 1,480 | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2024-10__0__151511099 | en | In light of the current political world events, foreign policy issues and developments are of the highest relevance. Nevertheless, public debates often give the impression that the general public knows little about the actual foundations of German foreign policy.
At the same time, many games challenge their players to deal with the meaning of self and foreign interests, different value systems and partnerships within their virtual game worlds: Players solve conflicts, enter alliances and act strategically and politically – always within the respective game logics, of course. Can the involving mechanics of digital games, then, also serve to provide a deeper understanding of the workings and mechanisms of foreign policy practice and issues beyond fictional game worlds? And at the same time, how might one reach a (critical) sensitization towards political narratives and images within games?
It is precisely these questions to which the project ‘Auswärtsspiel’ of the Foundation for Digital Games Culture, funded by the German Federal Foreign Office, is dedicated. It aims to explore the role of digital games as media for conveying narratives and topics of foreign policy. Furthermore, ‘Auswärtsspiel’ seeks to develop an initial approach to the use of games in public diplomacy. At the same time, the interdisciplinary formats of the project allow it to anchor the initiated theoretical impulses regarding digital games and foreign policy more firmly within the public discourse, leading to an interdisciplinary questionnaire as a practical result of the project. The latter seeks to enable all those interested in digital games to become more reflectively aware of games content related to foreign policy and to engage with it in a critical and learning manner.
To this purpose, an interdisciplinary panel of experts from academia, the gaming industry as well as civil and foreign policy institutions developed a catalogue of 10 guiding questions. The latter seeks to enable all those interested in digital games to become more reflectively aware of games content related to foreign policy and to engage with it in a critical and learning manner.
Furthermore, the conference “Gaming and Foreign Policy” took place to deepen the discourse along the touching points of digital games and topics as well as practices of foreign policy in Berlin on June 13th 2023. The conference was held in German. You can find a short summary of the event in English here.
To initiate a practical application of the experts’ results, ‘Auswärtsspiel’ also included the Game & Mod Jam “Auswärtig gespielt” (gamed abroad). The event took place at the DE:HIVE Institut of the University of Applied Sciences Berlin (HTW) from November 9th to 11th 2023.
At the end of the project, the “Handbook Auswärtsspiel – Understanding and Experiencing Foreign Policy with Games!” presents the ten guiding questions which were developed during the project. In the handbook, the guiding questions are contextualized by the panel’s experts from their respective perspectives. The handbook also contains the results of the Game & Mod Jam “Auswärtig gespielt” as well as seven game profiles that illustrate the potential of the guiding questions and the interface between games and foreign policy. Suitable as an inspirational guide, it is now available here to all interested parties from the fields of game development and political education as well as foreign policy and academia for further orientiation. The handbook will be published in print shortly.
Michaela Bartelt (Senior Director WW Localization Electronic Arts)
Prof. Thomas Bremer (Professor at the Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin; Co-Founder DE-HIVE Institute)
Daniel Budiman (Co-Founder & Host Rocket Beans TV)
Riad Djemili (CEO, Developer & Founder Maschinen Mensch Studio)
Prof. Lena Falkenhagen (Professor at the University of Applied Sciences Europe, Federal Chairwoman of the Verband deutscher Schriftstellerinnen und Schriftsteller)
Prof. Clemens Hochreiter (Professor at Fresenius Hochschule München; Co-Founder Reality Twist)
Stefanie Kastner (Head of the Libraries Department, Goethe-Institut)
Karsten Lehmann (Director Public Affairs Ubisoft Germany)
Hendrik Lesser (CEO & Founder Remote Control Productions)
Nora Müller (Head of International Politics, Körber Foundation)
Ata Sergey Nowak (Managing Director & Co-Founder Torpor Games)
Prof. Mareike Ottrand (Professor at the Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaft Hamburg; Founder Studio Fizbin)
Dr. Eugen Pfister (Hochschule der Künste Bern, Co-Founder Arbeitskreis Geschichtswissenschaft und Digitale Spiele)
Mick Prinz (Project Manager Good Gaming – Well Played Democracy, Amadeu Antonio Foundation)
Marcus Richter (Freelance Journalist & Moderator)
Prof. Dr. Thomas Risse (Professor at the Otto Suhr Institute, Freie Universität Berlin)
Zora Roso / Maximilian Bock (Level Infinite / Tencent)
Dr. Joachim Rother (Project Manager German-Israeli Young Leaders Exchange, Bertelsmann Foundation)
Dr. Matthias Schulze (Deputy Head of Research Group Security Policy, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik)
Manouchehr Shamsrizi (Co-Founder game.lab, Arbeitskreis Geschichtswissenschaft und Digitale Spiele; Founder RetroBrain R&D)
Lisa Marie Ullrich (Program Director & Member of the Board of Directors, Münchner Sicherheitskonferenz)
Jan Wagner (Head of Digital, Ulisses Spiele)
Sarah Widmaier (Scientific Coordinator Research Program Culture and Foreign Policy, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Gabriele Woidelko (Head of History and Politics, Körber Stiftung)
Franziska Zeiner (Co-CEO & Co-Founder, Fein Games)
Felix Zimmermann (Consultant for Games Culture, Political Education and Extremism, Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung)
Catalogue of guiding questions
This catalogue of guiding questions is dedicated to the interface between digital games and foreign policy. It invites all interested parties from development, education, and research as well as (gaming) practice to use it as an impulse for reflection and exchange about the topic of digital games and foreign policy. The guiding questions are structured according to the focal points “Underlying Understanding of Foreign Policy”, “Narratives & Representation”, “Rule Systems & Values” as well as “Mediative Function”. Furthermore, each guiding question has been complemented with exemplary discussion questions. | politics |
http://community.cec.sped.org/Go.aspx?MicrositeGroupTypeRouteDesignKey=3f926521-665f-4b72-89fc-7c1f200e5192&NavigationKey=2f875541-7f39-48d8-9ce2-dd276cf6c235 | 2018-09-22T05:50:41 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-39/segments/1537267158045.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20180922044853-20180922065253-00220.warc.gz | 0.898005 | 257 | CC-MAIN-2018-39 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2018-39__0__224522423 | en | Of course the DCDT Policy and Advocacy Committee encourages you to participate in our committee. However, there are many other ways to help support the goals of DCDT and the Policy and Advocacy Committee. Below are some of the ways to help advance policy affecting students with disabilities.
• Join DCDT's Policy and Advocacy Committee and become active in forming advancing public policy (email [email protected] for more information)
• Email your members of Congress directly from CEC's Legislative Action Center – and tell your family, friends and colleagues to do the same! http://cqrcengage.com/cek/app/write-a-letter?0&engagementId=116513
• Sign up for CEC's Weekly Policy Updates by emailing [email protected]
• Sign up for CEC's Smart Brief for the latest news send directly to your inbox three times per week by visiting http://www2.smartbrief.com/signupSystem/subscribe.action?pageSequence=1&briefName=specialed
• Continue to monitor CEC's website for breaking news and information https://www.cec.sped.org/ | politics |
https://realverticalfarming.com/indian-economy-grinds-to-a-halt-after-cash-ban/ | 2022-10-07T11:45:18 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030338073.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007112411-20221007142411-00318.warc.gz | 0.93587 | 231 | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2022-40__0__159599658 | en | From an article on www.zerohedge.com
“Amid scenes of panic across India, following PM Modi’s shock decision to withdraw high-value bills in the middle of the sowing and wedding season, Reuters reports the move, aimed at cracking down on the shadow economy, has brought India’s cash economy to a virtual standstill. With over 90% of all transactions done in cash, money flows in and out of the black-and-white system… until now, as Devangshu Datta exclaims, ‘The system works because everybody believes that those pieces of paper will be accepted by everybody else… This move has shaken that trust.’
Farmers have been left stranded as traders have no cash to pay for their produce, while millions of Indians lined up outside banks and post offices for the ninth day to exchange old banknotes or withdraw rationed money from their accounts.”
Please note: While we do our best to publish excerpts from stories we believe are real and relevant, we cannot guarantee the authenticity and safety of the websites we link to.
Read the full article here | politics |
http://ibfb.org/event_details.php?id=MTU= | 2019-02-21T05:33:13 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-09/segments/1550247500089.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20190221051342-20190221073342-00038.warc.gz | 0.956861 | 237 | CC-MAIN-2019-09 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2019-09__0__241528295 | en | IBFB meeting with Delegation of Myanmar
A delegation from the International Business Forum of Bangladesh (IBFB) had a meeting with the Delegation of Myanmar for the 6th Meeting of Bangladesh-Myanmar Joint Trade Commission, lead by the H.E. Dr. Pwint Sen, Deputy Minister, Ministry of Commerce, Myanmar at Hotel Purbani International on Tuesday, 13 October 2012. Mr. Kyaw Htoo, Directorate General, Directorate of Trade, Ministry of Commerce, Myanmar, was also present in the meeting.
The IBFB delegation was lead by Mr. Hafizur Rahman Khan, President, IBFB. The meeting was facilitated by H.E. Myo Mint Than, Ambassador, Embassy of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar.
In the meeting, the IBFB delegates exchanged greetings and expressed their interest of exploring trade and business opportunities in Myanmar, as the country seems to be a growing economy with lot of business opportunities/scopes because of certain democratic development in recent times.
The delegates from Myanmar expressed their gratitude for such a fruitful meeting and expressed their interest to work with IBFB and Bangladeshi businesspersons. | politics |
https://alicecorrine.com/2016/01/19/the-last-democratic-debate-before-the-first-vote-feelthebern/ | 2018-06-19T00:58:54 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-26/segments/1529267861641.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20180619002120-20180619022120-00573.warc.gz | 0.912727 | 110 | CC-MAIN-2018-26 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2018-26__0__153979320 | en | The Last Democratic Debate Before the First Vote #FeeltheBern
The first votes of the 2016 campaign are just two weeks away. If you don’t know your candidates yet pay attention to this Democratic debate. If you’re not a Democrat then Google the candidate you’re interested in and the issues you’re curious about, and you’ll find out quickly where they stand. We live in a world where information is available – make sure to take advantage of it. Educate yourself. Pay attention. Vote. | politics |
https://www.notreaching.com/traffic-stops-blog | 2019-10-18T21:19:14 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-43/segments/1570986684854.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20191018204336-20191018231836-00271.warc.gz | 0.9538 | 571 | CC-MAIN-2019-43 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2019-43__0__30013770 | en | The Audacity TO Hope
Many of us are familiar with President Barack Obama’s best seller called “The Audacity of Hope”. In his book and during his 2004 Democratic National Convention speech, President Obama reminds us:
“It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker’s son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope!
— Barack Obama, Democratic National Convention
President Obama’s book stemmed from a sermon of his former Pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who heard a lecture given by Dr. Frederick G. Sampson discussing the G. F. Watts painting called Hope. The painting depicts a woman described in the following manner:
“With her clothes in rags, her body scarred and bruised and bleeding, her harp all but destroyed and with only one string left, she had the audacity to make music and praise God.”
— Pastor Jeremiah Wright
President Obama skillfully reminded us that in order to survive this cruel world, we must have the audacity TO hope: to hope for a better world, to hope for a better life, to hope for justice, to hope for equality, and to hope for change.
I have the audacity TO hope that people of color will not be harmed or killed during a routine traffic stop. That audacity TO hope led me to create Not Reaching. The hope that I have has become a grassroots movement and has garnered partnerships and support that I never imagined. My audacity TO hope has led to a great friendship and partnership with Valerie Castile and the Philando Castile Relief Foundation. My audacity TO hope has provided Not Reaching with amazing press and media coverage and an opportunity to pitch to Shark Tank. My audacity TO hope continues to place me in the path of influencers who have the ability to place Not Reaching in the forefront of social justice.
To all of us who believe we can change the world with an invention, a creation, a thoughtful expression, a creative lens, an advocacy posture, or a dream, our audacity TO hope will continue to be the driving force that will keep us on our hard-fought, difficult, and incredible journey.
What do YOU have the audacity TO hope for? Please share it so we can uplift each other and be the change agents we’ve been designed to be in this world, leaving a great legacy for future generations. | politics |
http://glenurquhartcommunitycouncil.org.uk/page23.html | 2021-07-24T16:48:46 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-31/segments/1627046150307.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20210724160723-20210724190723-00613.warc.gz | 0.969505 | 972 | CC-MAIN-2021-31 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2021-31__0__119145106 | en | Glen Urquhart Community Council
Glen Urquhart Community Council
Minute of Meeting held on
Monday 26th September 2016 at 8.00pm
In Balnain Hall, Glen Urquhart
1. Present: Pam Lucas (Chairman), Fiona Urquhart (Planning Secretary), Peter MacDonald (Treasurer), Ken Fraser, John Duncan, and Val Cooper (Secretary)
Also present: Councillors Margaret Davidson and Jean Davis and 1 member of the public.
Apologies: David Fraser, Stuart Ross, Councillor Helen Carmichael, and Gillian Skinner.
2. Minutes of the last meeting
The minutes of the meeting held on 22nd August 2016 were adopted as a correct record (Ken Fraser / John Duncan)
3. Matters arising from minutes
No items not already covered by the agenda.
4. Treasurer’s Report
Peter MacDonald reported that the balance stands at £2596.83. Since the last meeting the audit fee for the annual accounts plus £100 towards the STAG campaign had been paid.
5. Policing Update
No report available.
Cnoc an Eas – STAG have organised a meeting with Kate Forbes, MSP, this would include representatives of the local community councils, and was also open to members of the public. The meeting is scheduled to take place on 10th October in Balnain Hall.
Soirbheas – Clarification had been received that Strathglass Community Council had decided to retain any community benefit arising from hydro schemes within their area, and would not be co-
It was still the intention to have a meeting with Strathglass Community Council, GUCC and Soirbheas to review legislation and structures, a date for this was yet to be set.
Green Highland Hydro Scheme Shenval – It had been reported that the contractor for the Shenval hydro scheme had been undertaking work during weekends and evenings. This had caused upset with local residents and Pam Lucas had made contact with Green Highland to report this. Margaret Davidson advised that she would ask the Highland Council Planners to contact the developer, to advise that any further breach of terms would result in a stop order on the development. Green Highland had advised that they would be speaking with residents also undertaking spot checks to ensure no further instances of work out with the agreed times. It was also agreed that Pam Lucas should write to Green Highland Renewables and copy in FCS to ensure that they are aware of the situation. Action – Pam Lucas
7. Loch Ness Homes
No report available. Margaret Davidson did confirm that contrary to local rumours, the planning stipulations were such that commercial properties could not be built before the first residential phase had been completed.
8. Supported Housing
Margaret Davidson advised that an architect had been appointed and Highland Council funding secured. Applications had been made for rural housing grants and a number of members of the community had recently attending a planning consultation meeting. Susan Clark was continuing to co-
9. Planning Applications
16/03263/FUL – Renewal of planning consent 13/02117/FUL Drumbuie Farmhouse, Drumnadrochit – noted
16/03815/FUL – Erect canopy and shed, 1 West Lewiston Court, Drumnadrochit – noted
16/02639/FUL – Change of use of garage to self-
16/04123/LBC (Listed building) and 16/04145/FUL – Demolition of existing conservatory, alterations and extension Kilmartin Hall, Glenurquhart – noted
16/03410/FUL – Erection of house and associated buildings (log store, timber shed and steel portal shed) Wester Kilmartin, Glen Urquhart, Drumnadrochit – further information regarding commercial use / purpose of sheds required. Since the last meeting confirmation had been received that this development was not for commercial use.
11. Any Other Business
River Enrick – Members were pleased to note that work had commenced on clearing sediment from the river at Kilmichael. Margaret Davidson advised that Highland Council had approached a consultant for the main flood order scheme for Drumnadrochit village and a consultation period would follow. Thanks were passed to everyone involved in progressing these important developments for the area.
Access to Loch Ness -
Glen Urquhart Signage – Ken Fraser advised that he was continuing to pursue the installation of “Glen Urquhart” road signs. Action – Ken Fraser
12. Details of Next Meeting
The next meeting was scheduled for Monday 24th October at 8.00pm in Blairbeg Hall.
There was no further business and the meeting closed at 9.20pm. | politics |
http://www.greatgreenwallinitiative.org/forging-innovative-partnerships-implementation-great-green-wall | 2017-06-29T10:57:26 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-26/segments/1498128323908.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20170629103036-20170629123036-00683.warc.gz | 0.931935 | 443 | CC-MAIN-2017-26 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2017-26__0__230586869 | en | Forging Innovative Partnerships for the Implementation of the Great Green Wall
The Global Mechanism of the UNCCD (GM) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), under the auspices of the African Union Commission (AUC) are organizing an international forum on “Forging Innovative Partnerships for the Implementation of the Great Green Wall for the Sahara and the Sahel Initiative (GGWSSI)”, which will take place on 16 and 17 December at the FAO Headquarters in Rome.
Since its adoption in 2007 by the African Heads of State and of Government, the GGWSSI has gradually emerged as the flagship initiative of the African solidarity to combat effects of climate change and desertification, with a view towards improving the living conditions of the most affected populations.
Sahel-Sahara countries involved in the initiative have developed, and in some cases already implemented, a mosaic of actions contributing to a variety of rural development and natural resource management programmes from a sustainable development perspective. This has helped strengthen the resilience of the people in the region and the natural systems they depend on, as well contributing towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
These programmes are situated in a unique regional context marked by humanitarian and security challenges, as well as the fight for the reduction of natural disaster risks, which often leads to the forced migration of the populations exposed to such threats.
The global objective of the forum is to promote a common vision and participation of partners in the implementation of the GGWSSI.
The specific objectives are to:
- share the GGW results and development prospects
- identify innovative partnerships, designed for local, national and trans-boundary GGW projects/programs
- define coordination and exchange mechanisms among multiple financial and technical partners.
- The forum will be organized in the form of plenary sessions, round tables and working groups. Participants invited include representatives of GGW and partner countries involved in Africa, global and regional development banks, as well as other financial institutions active in Africa, United Nations organizations, civil society organizations and the private sector.
The outcomes of the forum will be published on this website in due course. | politics |
https://www.hermesrealtygroup.com/blog/merry-christmas-mortgage-debt-forgiveness-is-back/ | 2024-02-25T06:07:22 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947474581.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20240225035809-20240225065809-00889.warc.gz | 0.969363 | 531 | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2024-10__0__102401981 | en | Merry Christmas - Mortgage Debt Forgiveness is Back!
Did you have to short sell your Hamilton Mill subdivision home in 2014? If you did, under the current law, any mortgage debt forgiven would have been taxed as income. Luckily, on Tuesday the Senate passed an extension of the Mortgage Debt Forgiveness Act on any short sale that was conducted in 2014. (The Mortgage Debt Forgiveness Act also passed by a wide margin in the House of Representatives two weeks ago.)
The Mortgage Debt Forgiveness Act offers relief to homeowners who would have owed taxes on forgiven mortgage debt. So, homeowners who had short sales in 2014 are now one giant step closer to receiving tax relief on any money they received as the result selling their home.
Originally signed into law by President Bush, the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007 was created in the aftermath of the housing bust. The intention was to protect homeowners who lost their home in a short sale or deed-in-lieu of foreclosure from the double whammy of a whopping tax bill.
The new and comprehensive tax bill also allows homeowners to deduct mortgage insurance premiums, along with 53 other provisions.
According to a recent estimate from RealtyTrac, the average short sale has an estimated mortgage forgiveness of $88,456.
And according to a further data provided by RealtyTrac, there have been more than 121,700 short sales through October of this year, with a total mortgage debt forgiveness of nearly $10.8 billion.
RealtyTrac also estimated that the potential taxes on the average short sale to be $22,114, which would have brought the total tax liability to $2.7 billion.
The National Association of Realtors celebrated the vote. “NAR applauds Congressional leaders in both chambers for their effort to pass this legislation before adjournment,” NAR President Chris Polychron said.
“Realtors strongly supported the bipartisan Mortgage Forgiveness Tax Relief Act, which was included in the package to prevent underwater borrowers from paying taxes on any mortgage debt forgiven or cancelled by a lender in a workout or after their home was sold for less money than was owed,” Polychron added. “We are grateful to Sens. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and Dean Heller, R-Nev., and Reps. Tom Reed, R-N.Y., and Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., for championing the provision.”
The Mortgage Debt Forgiveness Act now heads to President Obama, who is expected to sign the bill into law. | politics |
http://www.libertytownshipunionco.com/ | 2020-02-26T21:47:18 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-10/segments/1581875146562.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20200226211749-20200227001749-00542.warc.gz | 0.866089 | 123 | CC-MAIN-2020-10 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2020-10__0__71587490 | en | To schedule the Community Building or Keckley please call Karen at 937-537-0535
Notice of Meeting
The Liberty Township Board of Trustees will hold their next regular meeting on Monday, March 2, 2020 at 7:00m pm in the meeting room 21655 Main Street Raymond, OH 43067 (beside the post office)
Hope to see you there!
Notice of Special Meeting!
There will be a special meeting of the Liberty Township Board of Trustees on Monday, February 17, 2020 at 7pm in the meeting room. The purpose is to discuss Fire Department issues. | politics |
http://www.planning-next.com/2018/02/26/montgomery-alabama-launches-first-comprehensive-plan-update-in-more-than-50-years/ | 2021-09-27T15:20:51 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-39/segments/1631780058456.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20210927151238-20210927181238-00694.warc.gz | 0.928943 | 234 | CC-MAIN-2021-39 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2021-39__0__209850853 | en | The City of Montgomery, Alabama has kicked off Envision Montgomery 2040, the City’s first comprehensive planning process in more than 50 years. Since the 1950s, Montgomery has been at the forefront of social change, as a central force in the nation’s Civil Rights Movement. But the City, home to major corporations including Maxwell Air Force Base and Hyundai Motor Manufacturing, is also poised and ready to look to the future.
The planning process began this month with the first meeting of a 46-member Steering Committee. The plan will focus on emerging opportunities while also mitigating negative trends of poverty and population decline. Increasing the Montgomery community’s prosperity will be paramount for this project. The new comprehensive plan is a chance for the community to “connect the dots” of quality of place, infrastructure, mobility, and more, all to enhance the underlying economics for government, businesses, institutions, and individuals.
When completed, Envision Montgomery 2040 will serve as a guide for long-term preservation, revitalization and growth so that the City can achieve the goals and aspirations of its citizens. The process is anticipated to conclude in 2019. | politics |
http://www.rogue-state.net/archives/505 | 2020-08-04T14:05:45 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-34/segments/1596439735867.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20200804131928-20200804161928-00158.warc.gz | 0.972534 | 623 | CC-MAIN-2020-34 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2020-34__0__28161735 | en | Bobby Sands kept a diary for the first seventeen days of his hunger strike, which began 32 years ago today.
Sunday 1st March
I am standing on the threshold of another trembling world. May God have mercy on my soul.
My heart is very sore because I know that I have broken my poor mother’s heart, and my home is struck with unbearable anxiety. But I have considered all the arguments and tried every means to avoid what has become the unavoidable: it has been forced upon me and my comrades by four-and-a-half years of stark inhumanity.
I am a political prisoner. I am a political prisoner because I am a casualty of a perennial war that is being fought between the oppressed Irish people and an alien, oppressive, unwanted regime that refuses to withdraw from our land.
I believe and stand by the God-given right of the Irish nation to sovereign independence, and the right of any Irishman or woman to assert this right in armed revolution. That is why I am incarcerated, naked and tortured.
Foremost in my tortured mind is the thought that there can never be peace in Ireland until the foreign, oppressive British presence is removed, leaving all the Irish people as a unit to control their own affairs and determine their own destinies as a sovereign people, free in mind and body, separate and distinct physically, culturally and economically.
I believe I am but another of those wretched Irishmen born of a risen generation with a deeply rooted and unquenchable desire for freedom. I am dying not just to attempt to end the barbarity of H-Block, or to gain the rightful recognition of a political prisoner, but primarily because what is lost in here is lost for the Republic and those wretched oppressed whom I am deeply proud to know as the ‘risen people’.
There is no sensation today, no novelty that October 27th brought. (The starting date of the original seven man hunger-strike) The usual Screws were not working. The slobbers and would-be despots no doubt will be back again tomorrow, bright and early.
I wrote some more notes to the girls in Armagh today. There is so much I would like to say about them, about their courage, determination and unquenchable spirit of resistance. They are to be what Countess Markievicz, Anne Devlin, Mary Ann McCracken, Marie MacSwiney, Betsy Gray, and those other Irish heroines are to us all. And, of course, I think of Ann Parker, Laura Crawford, Rosemary Bleakeley, and I’m ashamed to say I cannot remember all their sacred names.
Mass was solemn, the lads as ever brilliant. I ate the statutory weekly bit of fruit last night. As fate had it, it was an orange, and the final irony, it was bitter. The food is being left at the door. My portions, as expected, are quite larger than usual, or those which my cell-mate Malachy is getting. | politics |
https://afge1336.com/ | 2022-01-16T21:41:56 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-05/segments/1642320300244.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20220116210734-20220117000734-00628.warc.gz | 0.947423 | 665 | CC-MAIN-2022-05 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2022-05__0__36393120 | en | AFGE sues Trump administration over recent executive orders
On May 30th, AFGE sued the Trump administration in response to an executive order Donald Trump issued that aims to deny workers their legal right to representation at the worksite.
On May 25th, President Trump signed three executive orders that chip away at due process and collective bargaining rights for federal employees.
These 3 executive orders will:
Severely limit federal workers’ rights and access to representation in the workplace, including drastically limiting the time union representatives are legally mandated to represent employees.
Undermine civil service merit principles. It will now be easier for managers to retaliate, discriminate, and suspend employees. This EO also removes consideration of seniority in the case of reductions in force.
Restricts federal workers collective bargaining rights. Your union negotiates workplace conditions such as reasonable accommodations for those with disabilities, employee training, overtime, telework and flexible work schedules. Without the ability to bargain, management can set workplace policy.
On non-duty time, and on your personal (non-agency) computer or smartphone, visit www.afge.org/fightback to learn more about the orders and what you can do to help yourself, your colleagues, and your union!
And you can call Congress NOW and tell them to support federal employees, and denounce the executive orders.
District Office: 1-888-775-3148
DC Office: 1-844-669-5146
Donald Trump issued three executive orders on May 25th, removing checks and balances in the federal civil service and opening employees up to retaliation, discrimination, and unjust termination.
The three executive orders seek to undermine three things that serve as a protection for the merit systems and against the politicization of the civil service: removal procedure and merit principles, official time, and collective bargaining. In light of the misinformation campaign against federal employees, including those at the Social Security Administration, it’s clear the administration is trying to undermine our democracy and usher in the spoils system, in which those who agree with the administration are rewarded and those who oppose are pushed out.
Here in Kansas City, AFGE Local 1336 seriously takes its responsibility to help provide legal representation, legislative advocacy, technical expertise and informational services, while ensuring that government workers are treated fairly and with dignity.
The Union supports a meaningful transformation of the federal workplace to improve the way services and benefits are delivered to our area Kansas Citians and surrounding areas.
Rights and protections that working people now take for granted didn’t exist before unions came along. In honor of Labor Day, the American Federation of Government Employees recalls what it was like for working Americans in those days and argues why unions are needed now more than ever.
Unions have long been part of our nation's history, fighting for better pay, safer working conditions, health care and retirement benefits, education and civic participation. Unions have brought diverse voices together, and their struggles have elevated the working conditions, the standard of living and the recognition of not just their members, but of all who labor.
Your government issued email address should not be used when conducting union business.
PO Box 15281, Kansas City, MO 64106 | politics |
http://www.christiansass.com/products/ron-paul-limited-edition-print | 2014-10-24T23:06:33 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-42/segments/1414119646484.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20141024030046-00055-ip-10-16-133-185.ec2.internal.warc.gz | 0.968967 | 257 | CC-MAIN-2014-42 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2014-42__0__72554759 | en | This is the first Illustration I am offering to the public in a limited edition signed and numbered lithographic print. This print will also be released in upcoming "Teachers" series in an unsigned digital 8" x 10" format.
The print will be professionally reproduced on textured fine art paper. This paper is a bright white 100% cotton rag, acid-free paper designed specially for fine art giclee reproductions. The print will then be numbered, signed inspected before it is shipped flat and ready for framing.
This Print features Dr. Ronald Ernest "Ron" Paul. Dr. Ron Paul is an American physician, author, and politician who has been serving as the U.S. Representative for Texas's 14th congressional district, which includes Galveston, since 1997. He is a three-time candidate for President of the United States, as a Libertarian in 1988 and as a Republican in 2008 and 2012. He is a member of the Republican Party. He holds libertarian views and is a critic of American foreign, domestic, and monetary policies, including the military–industrial complex, the War on Drugs, and the Federal Reserve. I am proud to offer this print to honor the work of Dr. Paul and his fight to spread the message of Liberty. | politics |
https://501c.com/irs-reform-mandates-electronic-form-990-filing/ | 2024-04-22T02:58:35 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-18/segments/1712296818072.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20240422020223-20240422050223-00363.warc.gz | 0.962541 | 319 | CC-MAIN-2024-18 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2024-18__0__83271762 | en | On July 1, 2019, President Trump signed the Taxpayer First Act into law. The legislation contains extensive IRS reforms that received strong bipartisan support in the House and Senate.
The bill—in part—creates an independent appeal process for taxpayers, places limitations on private debt collectors, enhances information technology at the IRS, and makes permanent the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) matching grant program.
One way the legislation directly affects the nonprofit sector is that it mandates all tax-exempt organizations file the annual Form 990 information electronically – a reform that many sector advocates have been requesting for over a decade. Currently, only tax-exempt organizations that have assets greater than $10 million and those that file more than 250 returns with the IRS are required to file Form 990 electronically. The Treasury Secretary would be permitted to provide transition relief for up to two years for certain small organizations and those that file Form 990-T related to unrelated business taxable income. According to the IRS, about two-thirds of nonprofit tax filings in recent years were already submitted electronically.
“The IRS welcomes passage of the Taxpayer First Act, and we are pleased this important legislation received full bipartisan support,” said the IRS in a statement. “IRS leaders have had extensive discussions with Congress about this measure for more than a year as it was being developed. The legislation is wide-ranging and touches on a number of areas across the IRS. We believe these changes and many others in the bill will help the IRS and the nation’s tax administration system move forward.” | politics |
http://frankstahlbio.net/chapter19.htm | 2024-02-21T12:29:50 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947473472.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20240221102433-20240221132433-00789.warc.gz | 0.981291 | 1,892 | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2024-10__0__57159317 | en | |One-Way Ticket to Kansas, the autobiography of Frank M. Stahl, as told and illustrated by Margaret Whittemore. University of Kansas Press, 1959.
Ever since I was a boy, abstinence from intoxicating liquors had been with me a subject of vital concern. I had seen enough of alcohol's evil effects to want to wage war against it. The Order of Good Templars, which I joined at the age of seventeen, had co-operated with other societies in a great temperance revival all over the state. Temperance reform had followed close on the heels of the antislavery movement. The saloon in its worst aspect was strongly entrenched in many cities of Kansas. Brawls and shooting scrapes were common in wide-open "cow towns" that served as a rendezvous for gamblers, outlaws, and fugitives from justice. In backfiring against the dry sentiment gradually sweeping the prairies, liquor dealers defiantly violated every restrictive feature of the laws, selling liquor on Sunday, selling to minors, and disregarding other ordinances.
The evils of the saloon became so apparent that Governor John P. St. John, a leader of the temperance movement, urged the 1879 legislature to submit a prohibition amendment to the people.
During the frenzied campaign that followed, farmers around Auburn planned a rally to create sentiment for the passage of this constitutional measure. The gathering took the form of a huge picnic in a shady grove on my farm along the south branch of the Wakarusa. We invited preachers of the community to speak.
The struggle between the two factions in the legislature was bitter, women trying to influence their legislative husbands. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union, convening in Baltimore, set aside a month for prayer, with Kansas' campaign in view.
The Senate finally passed the bill unanimously, sending it to the House, where the vote was close. Mrs. G.W. Greever, wife of a member from Wyandotte County, rushed to the floor, when she heard her husband say "Nay" and persuaded him to change his vote. This made the required two-thirds to carry the measure. The next day the Governor presented Mrs. Greever with a scroll designating her "the Mother of Prohibition in Kansas."
In the general election of 1880 the amendment won by a vote of 92,302 for and 84,304 against, making Kansas the first state in the Union to adopt constitutional prohibition. It went into effect on May 1, 1881, and from that time on alcoholic liquor was legally outlawed in Kansas. We celebrated the achievement of this goal by another picnic in our grove the following year, and continued to hold annual jubilee celebrations thereafter, partly to keep the dry forces on their toes.
We arranged an outdoor amphitheater with seats on the side of a hill and a large stage, equipped with appropriate scenery. The seating capacity was two thousand. A lumberman in Burlingame, nine miles away, donated planks for seats and tables, seven or eight men with farm teams hauling them back and forth.
Women brought flowers, flags, and bunting to decorate the grounds and posted temperance banners everywhere. Soft drinks, lemonade, and ice cream were sold, concession fees just about paying expenses. Children received free ice cream tickets. The Auburn Sunday Schools put on programs, flag drills, band concerts, and other entertainment, with a home-talent prohibition play after dark. People from far and near came early and stayed late.
We always had the very best speakersgovernors, senators, and other persons of prominence. Prohibition was the central theme of it all. It was at one of these picnics that Charles Curtis, then county attorney, declared, "From this time on, I'm a prohibitionist!"
One year bootleggers tried to sell liquor near the grounds.
"Go buy a bottle," I said to one of our group.
He got it; then three or four of us started after the scamps. We were on foot. They saw us coming and ran for their buggy and clambered in. Just then my nephew came along with a spirited team of horses. We climbed into his wagon and the race was on.
Being a justice of the peace, I ordered "Stop!"
The bootleggers drove all the harder. I whipped out my revolver, intending to bring them to a halt by getting one of their horses, but I missed. We continued the race another mile. Ahead was a bridge with half a dozen boards gone from the flooring. The men drove right on, making their horses jump the gaps. We didn't attempt this hair-raising stunt, and they got away.
We did succeed eventually in catching them, however, by swearing out warrants and having them arrested. Our case was clear, and the man who sold the bottle of whisky near the picnic grounds was duly convicted and punished. They never disturbed us again.
Old-timers in Kansas well remember that adoption of the prohibition amendment was but the real beginning of the fight. It took more than a score of years to make prohibition really prohibit. Liquor dealers did not give up without a struggle and public sentiment often favored the outlaws. Law enforcement was a farce. The wets were far better organized for political work than the dry forces. Kansas was an "island in a sea of whisky." Not only that, but there were no interstate commerce laws to prevent liquor from being shipped in from all sides. This little ditty of mine describes the situation:
I'm legally dry as a state can be,
But lawlessly wet as the deep, deep sea.
Is that a paradox? Search and see!
During my second term as treasurer of Shawnee County, a "Committee of Seventeen" was organized to aid in enforcing the prohibition laws. We met every Sunday afternoon at four o'clock, and I was elected chairman. Later we increased the membership, calling ourselves the "Committee of Two Hundred."
The saloon-keepers set up a steering committee of their own to keep tab on our activities. They had considerable fun at our expense, but we managed to keep them guessing and rather "got on their nerves." One of their most trusted men brought us information as to their plans and purposes.
Although we became adept at securing evidence, our cause was almost hopeless, and little was actually accomplished in the way of law enforcement. "Hung juries" were inevitable. Many well-prepared cases with names of witnesses given to the county attorney from the police court, as the law directs, were passed on to a grand jury and died a natural death. Such was the state of affairs when I left Topeka in 1898 to return to the farm.
One showery afternoon, two years later, when soggy fields prevented work with the teams, some of the boys and I were down by the creek, trying to dislodge wasps' nests from the trees. A horse-drawn buggy came through the gate and stopped close by. The Topeka friend who greeted me I knew well as a member of our Committee of Two Hundred and secretary of the State Temperance Union.
"Mayor Drew wants you to come over to the city," he said, "and my instructions are not to return without you."
"What does the mayor want with me?" I asked.
"To appoint you Chief of Police."
"That's impossible!" I replied emphatically. "I'm not going with you."
My friend was so insistent that I finally agreed to ride over the following evening to talk with the mayor.
I met with fifteen or twenty others. Things were not going to suit an honest man like Mayor Drew, who had just been elected by the dry forces. He needed a police chief who would see that the liquor laws were enforced, and wanted me to take the job.
"But I know nothing about police work," I protested, "and if I lived in a city of 30,000 people, I should resent the idea of going to the country in search of a city marshal."
The others agreed that my arguments sounded plausible. Considering the matter settled, I mounted my horse and rode home. Two days later a letter from Topeka urged me to reconsider the position.
Another meeting followed, lasting into the early morning hours.
Jennie and I talked the matter over together, carefully and prayerfully. The farm needed me. To leave it now meant a great sacrifice of time and money. I was making a good living, and a little more, off the land during a period when farming was highly profitable. On the other hand, the pressure from Topeka was hard to resist. There was an even stronger urge within me that could not be ignored.
Finally, Jennie settled the question by declaring, "Frank, the call is higher than men."
I realized more than ever what a true-hearted, unselfish woman she was. "Yours will be the hardest part," I said, "to stay on the farm and direct things here."
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https://www.infocom.am/Article/DailyNewsSummary060121 | 2021-03-06T08:26:47 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-10/segments/1614178374616.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20210306070129-20210306100129-00442.warc.gz | 0.951767 | 1,183 | CC-MAIN-2021-10 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2021-10__0__136056393 | en | Armenian PM Did Not Attend Liturgy for Holy Nativity and Epiphany
The liturgy at the St. Gregory the Illuminator Cathedral dedicated to Holy Nativity and Epiphany (Christmas celebrated in Armenia) was held on Tuesday evening in absence of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. PM’s spokesperson later informed that Pashinyan was self-isolating due to coronavirus pandemic.
In his Christmas address Armenian church leader Garegin II referred to the ‘catastrophic consequences’ of the war, Armenpress.am reports. “The loss of a large part of Artsakh, the martyrdom of our heroic sons, the pain and grief of tens of thousands of displaced brothers and sisters in dire need of shelter and material supplies, of thousands of soldiers wounded, in captivity and missing, have plunged our national life in the homeland and diaspora into the grip of a gloomy night,” Catholicos says.
Earlier in December the Armenian church leader Garegin II made a statement urging Pashinyan to step down to prevent further challenges to national solidarity among Armenians after the recent Nagorno Karabakh. Pashinyan has been criticized and accused of mishandling the war where thousands were killed and left homeless.
Azerbaijan Violates Reached Agreements and Advances Its Positions, Head of Artsakh Security Council says
“Azerbaijani armed forces have violated previously reached agreements and are advancing their positions in Nagorno Karabakh,” the Secretary of the Security Council of Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh) Vitaly Balasanyan said in an interview with RIA Novosti.
Balasanyan noted that the November 10 agreement addressing, among other issues, the line of contact, has been repeatedly violated by Azerbaijani forces which advanced in the direction of Aghdam, Askeran, Karmir Shuka, and capital Stepanakert and continue their provocations.
“We keep reporting the Russian peacekeeping contingent about the recorded violations,” Balasanyan said adding that some of the raised issues have been solved and there is a positive dynamic in that direction.
Armenian Opposition Party Leader Calls for Investigation into Nagorno Karabakh War Circumstances
Edmon Marukyan, the leader of Bright Armenia parliamentary group responded to PM Pashinyan’s recent article where the PM attempts to explain the reasons for defeat in the Nagorno Karabakh war. In Marukyan’s words, an investigation should provide the answers to the questions about the war. “It is impossible to answer these questions within an article: it is a monologue,” Marukyan said.
Marukyan noted that his parliamentary group had earlier sent a proposal to all political forces to initiate a fact-finding group aimed at investigating all circumstances of the recent Nagorno Karabakh war.
Speaking about the demand for the resignation of PM Pashinyan, Marukyan called on all political forces to unite around their jointly nominated candidate. “Replacing Nikol Pashinyan will be possible only with our candidate,” Marukyan said. He added that there are no regulations or Electoral code in Armenia at the moment, hence, it is impossible to hold elections now.
Armenian Foreign Minister Continues His Working Visit in Artsakh
Armenian Foreign Minister Ara Ayvazyan, who is on a working visit in Artsakh since Tuesday, had a meeting with the President of Artsakh Arayik Harutyunyan as well as Foreign Minister Davit Babayan and the Head of Artsakh Parliament Artur Tovmasyan.
The Foreign Ministry of Artsakh informed Armenpress that the sides discussed issues of security and establishing peace in the region. “The resumption of the process of peaceful settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict within OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship as the only internationally mandated format for mediation was discussed,” the report reads.
The Ministers highlighted the recognition of the Artsakh people’s right to self-determination and security, restoration and protection of their rights, and de-occupation by Azerbaijan of the territories of Artsakh as a key for the political settlement of the conflict.
Other News from Armenia
- Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan had a phone conversation with the President of France Emanuel Macron. The sides discussed the humanitarian situation and challenges caused by the Azerbaijani aggression in Nagorno Karabakh. PM Pashinyan expressed his gratitude to the French President for the support provided to the Armenian people during this difficult time.
- Armenian President Armen Sargsyan has tested positive for the coronavirus following a trip to the United Kingdom, his office told RFE/RL Armenian service. The president underwent foot surgery in London on Sunday.
- Four more bodies of servicemen have been retrieved from Mataghis area on January 5. “Search works will continue in the Talish-Mataghis direction. Single groups will be working in the areas of Fizuli-Hadrut to find possible survivors,” State Service of Emergency Situations of Artsakh reported.
- A digital book cataloguing the cultural ties of the last two years between Armenia and Italy was presented in Rome on January 4, Armenpress reports. The bi-lingual book entitled “Future-Past” includes illustrations and texts about the cultural events that took place in Armenia and Italy, including the visit by Italian President Sergio Mattarella on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the First Republic of Armenia and the 2800th anniversary of Yerevan. | politics |
https://www.dpz.eu/en/unit/about-experimental-animal-research/tierschutz/animal-welfare-act.html | 2024-02-22T18:19:44 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947473824.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20240222161802-20240222191802-00370.warc.gz | 0.942308 | 254 | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2024-10__0__124385872 | en | Germany has one of the strictest animal welfare laws worldwide. There is no other country in the EU, which integrated animal welfare into its constitution - in Germany animal welfare was made a national objective in 2002 (Grundgesetz, article 20a). On November 9th 2010 the EU Directive 2010/63 on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes came into effect. Germany, like the other member states, integrated the driective into national law.
In 2012 the Federal Government and the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection presented draughts for the alteration of the German Animal Welfare Law and the appendant executive order law. The lower house of German Parliament (Bundestag) passed the law on December 13th 2012, on February 1st 2013 the upper house (Bundesrat) refrained from calling in the meditation committee. This means the alteration of the law is successfully passed and eventually came into effect on July 13th 2013. The appendant executive order law is legally valid as well.
The German Animal Welfare Law directly addresses the situation of non-human primates frequently. In paragraphs 4, 8a, 9, 11a, 16 and 18 they are explicitly mentioned. The DPZ's Animal Welfare Officers cares for compliance. | politics |
http://www.thecrudelife.com/2017/11/30/congressman-cramer-joins-congressional-ports-plains-caucus/ | 2018-02-25T15:55:29 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-09/segments/1518891816647.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20180225150214-20180225170214-00640.warc.gz | 0.937485 | 460 | CC-MAIN-2018-09 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2018-09__0__96958607 | en | A bipartisan Congressional Ports-to-Plains Caucus has been formed, and inducted as a Congressional Member Organization for the 115th Congress. This Caucus will serve as an informal group of Members dedicated to issues related to rural transportation and rural economic development in America’s Heartland, with a focus on the corridor running from Texas to North Dakota and Montana, and educating other Members on the importance of this area is feeding, fueling, and clothing America’s cities and urban areas.
Congressman Kevin Cramer (ND), member of the Congressional Ports-to-Plains Caucus states,
“The Ports-to-Plains corridor plays an important role in ensuring North Dakota’s economic strength, particularly in the agriculture and energy sectors. It’s vital that we, as Members of this caucus, strongly advocate for the issues unique to rural America so they are not disregarded in Washington. I look forward to working with the other members of the Ports-to-Plains Caucus to address transportation and economic issues significant to our districts.”
Congressman Kevin Cramer serves on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which has the broadest jurisdiction of any committee in Congress. Cramer is assigned to three subcommittees: Communications and Technology, Energy, and Environment. In November 2016, Cramer was elevated to the influential House Republican Steering Committee – as the Small State Representative. The Steering Committee determines all committee assignments and chairmanships.
He is Co-Chairman of the House Rural Broadband Caucus, which develops policy solutions addressing Rural America’s digital divide, and the Northern Border Caucus, which fosters continued growth in the relationship between the United States and Canada. He is also a founding Chair of the Congressional Kid’s Safety Caucus.
Ports-to-Plains is a grassroots alliance of over 275 communities and businesses, including alliance partners Heartland Expressway, Theodore Roosevelt Expressway and Eastern Alberta Trade Corridor Coalition, whose mission is to advocate for a robust international transportation infrastructure to promote economic security and prosperity throughout North America’s energy and agricultural heartland including Mexico to Canada. Additional information on the Ports-to-Plains Alliance is available at http://www.portstoplains.com/. | politics |
http://blog.cityvisitor.co.uk/canterbury/students-quiz-archbishop.html | 2020-08-12T15:10:33 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-34/segments/1596439738905.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20200812141756-20200812171756-00148.warc.gz | 0.973572 | 315 | CC-MAIN-2020-34 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2020-34__0__178899757 | en | Students were given the chance to quiz the Rt Hon Dr Rowan Williams when he paid a visit to their university.
The Archbishop of Canterbury took part in a question and answer session during his visit to Canterbury Christ Church University as part of its jubilee celebrations.
The Archbishop, who is also the university’s chancellor, was open to questions from all students and staff during the special session.
He faced questions on topics such as the importance of religious education within the national curriculum and how it can help build an understanding and respect of different religions; the role that the Christian faith can play in a new world order; and its responsibility in helping to promote religious tolerance and equal civil rights for all.
University vice-chancellor, Professor Robin Baker CMG, said: “We are enormously fortunate at Christ Church to have Archbishop Rowan as our chancellor. His understanding of universities and students is deep and his willingness to debate the vital questions of the age with our students was hugely appreciated by them.”
Dr Williams also met with students from the university’s politics and international relations programme to talk about the subject of toleration in liberal societies.
Dr David Bates, programme director of politics and international relations, said: “It was a great opportunity for our students to question a leading world figure. They asked a variety of challenging questions and Dr Williams was open and encouraging in his responses, arguing that the Church of England can perform a positive role in promoting both diversity of religious beliefs and practices within a tolerant, multicultural society.” | politics |
https://allstonbrightoncdc.org/community/programs-and-committees/ | 2023-12-10T14:31:54 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-50/segments/1700679102469.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20231210123756-20231210153756-00748.warc.gz | 0.945753 | 162 | CC-MAIN-2023-50 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2023-50__0__267670921 | en | Do you care about the Allston Brighton community and want to get more involved? Allston Brighton CDC has three neighborhood committees that meet monthly to address various community-identified issues:
Affordable Housing Action Committee (AHAC): AHAC is devoted to preserving and increasing affordable housing opportunities and stabilizing existing communities in Allston Brighton. Meets the 4th Wednesday of every month at 6 PM.
Community Planning Action Committee (CPAC): CPAC focuses on real estate development and transportation planning in the neighborhood. Meets the 4th Monday of every month at 6 PM.
Neighborhood Stabilization Action Committee (NSAC): NSAC promotes policies which increase affordable, owner-occupied homeownership and discourage absentee landlords and problem properties. Meets the 3rd Monday of every month at 6 PM. | politics |
http://www.jnlabtek.com/research/outlook-for-united-states-infrastructure-a-market-poised-for-growth/ | 2022-08-12T00:50:26 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571536.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811224716-20220812014716-00016.warc.gz | 0.952276 | 8,016 | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2022-33__0__36635663 | en | The US infrastructure market is at an inflection point and it is poised for growth. It is expected to attract significant private capital in the coming years after decades of underinvestment.
Analysis of the 50 US state budgets shows that public spending on transport infrastructure is set to grow 11.6% over the next two years, up from 4.2% over the last two years. Infrastructure reinvestment is also expected to grow for the first time since the financial crisis. More states than ever now have public-private partnership (or P3) legislation and are opening dedicated P3 offices. States are increasingly publishing their infrastructure pipelines. They are moving forward with infrastructure and taking cues from Canada, Australia, the UK and Europe. Efforts are underway to streamline federal regulatory approvals.
The market in the United States is poised to attract new capital from institutional investors in the US and from abroad. There are proposals to broaden P3 regulations to allow more private capital into the market and investors are increasing their allocations to infrastructure. The sectors most likely to receive incremental private investment first are those that have clear user fees, are critical to the economy and are operating at a low standard. These include highways, airports and ports. Air traffic control is also high on the list because efforts are already underway for it to be privatized.
The electricity grid is facing many challenges from new sources and uses of power and has been identified by Congress and the administration as a priority. We expect continued near-record capital expenditures by utilities and additional government incentives to increase investment in the smart grid. Renewables have a well-functioning incentive plan in place by the states and the federal government and we do not anticipate any material changes. The freight rail industry is investing near record levels to prepare for future transportation growth.
Infrastructure is an essential part of the economy. People use transportation infrastructure every day to commute to work, travel freely, and visit their friends and family. Businesses depend on a well-functioning infrastructure system to obtain supplies, manage inventories and deliver goods and services to market. This is true for US companies whose businesses rely directly on the infrastructure system, such as UPS and CSX. It is also true for businesses that indirectly rely on the infrastructure system, such as farmers who use publicly funded infrastructure to ship crops to buyers and dot.com companies that send goods purchased online to customers throughout the world.
A modern transportation infrastructure network is necessary for an economy to function, and there is substantial empirical research that links the quality and quantity of infrastructure to competitiveness, productivity, economic growth and quality of life. In 1955 during his State of the Union address, President Eisenhower expressed his vision that “A modern, efficient highway system is essential to meet the needs of our growing population, our expanding economy and our national security.” This vision is even more relevant now than it was then. Today it would include making US highways and the nation’s entire transportation, telecommunication and power infrastructure more efficient and effective.
This three-part series will focus on the state of the US infrastructure market. We will look at the amount of infrastructure spending taking place now and the amount that is needed. We will assess new initiatives being discussed to finance infrastructure with public and private capital and the sectors most likely to attract new investment.
The US is at an inflection point on infrastructure and it has an extraordinary opportunity ahead of it
For much of the last century America’s infrastructure has supported and enabled innovation and has been a driver of US growth. During the Great Depression, federal funding supported construction of thousands of roads, bridges, airports and dams. During the 1950s, President Eisenhower spearheaded the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Under this 35-year program, 41,000 miles of critical roads were built by the states and funded mostly from fuel tax.
These massive federal programs are a thing of the past. Public officials lack the wherewithal to modernize US infrastructure. State and local governments still face funding gaps and tax revenues have not reached pre-crisis levels, although they are rising. The same is true of the federal government. What is needed now is a new way to plan for, pay for and deliver infrastructure. It is an opportune time for the US to pursue infrastructure because interest rates are low and funding is inexpensive. Economic growth is relatively strong and the availability of private capital looking for long-term steady returns is high. The challenge is enormous but the US has the resources to do it.
Infrastructure investment is poised for growth
As shown in Exhibit 1, US public construction spending, a proxy for infrastructure reinvestment rates, reached a 20-year low of 21% of total tax receipts in 2016.(1)?This is expected to change in the next two years. Goldman Sachs’ most recent analysis of the Department of Transportation (DOT) budgets for the 50 US states points to higher public construction spending for the first time since the financial crisis (see Exhibit 2). It is being driven by 24 states that passed legislation in 2016 and 2017, adding new funding sources for transport infrastructure investment. Goldman Sachs expects growth of 5.5% and 6.1% in 2017 and 2018 (11.6% collectively), up from 0.1% and 4.1% for 2015 and 2016 (4.2% collectively). This represents a 175% increase for 2017 and 2018 vs. 2015 and 2016.
Exhibit 1. Public construction reinvestment rates coming off 20-year lows
California is leading the charge in new construction spending with a recent increase of 54% in its 2018 transport budget, which passed in April 2017 with 100% of the democratic majority voting to pass it. The bill calls to raise $52.4 billion over the next decade to pay for a massive program of rebuilding California’s highways and bridges and improving public transit. It will be paid for by a combination of revenue measures, including an increase in the state’s excise tax on gasoline from 28 cents to 40 cents per gallon, increased vehicle registration fees and a new $100 annual charge on emission-free vehicles.
Exhibit 2. State transportation investment picking up
Growth in state transportation investment (year-over-year %)
The US is ripe for new private investment. Budget constraints, past underinvestment, and more states than ever having P3-enabling legislation will drive state and local governments to provide incentives to investors. More state and local governments are publishing their pipelines and opening government infrastructure offices. Investors are increasing their allocations to infrastructure. All of these factors suggest the US is at an inflection point.
Continued progress in the public-private partnership (P3) market
The primary way for the government to tap private capital, other than through the municipal bond market, is through P3s. Private companies have long been involved in the construction of infrastructure, but their role has usually been that of a contractor with the ultimate responsibility for financing and delivering projects resting with a state or local agency. We believe this is on the cusp of changing.
The P3 contract was first introduced in the US in 1995 when State Route 91 was constructed in Southern California. Since then, 56 P3 projects have been funded with loans under the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) and the number of projects has accelerated over the last 10 years (Exhibit 3).
Exhibit 3. TIFIA financing drives acceleration in P3 spending
All About Public-Private Partnerships
Public-private partnerships are referred to as P3s in the US, public-finance initiatives (PFIs) in the UK and PPPs elsewhere.
Availability-payment P3s. Once construction is completed, the private developer is entitled to payments from the government, as long as contract conditions are fulfilled. Availability payments are sized to cover operating and maintenance costs, debt service costs and equity returns as a private entity operates the project. Availability payments are not subject to swings in demand such as traffic levels and are typically adjusted downward only for lack of performance or lack of availability of the asset to the public. The availability-payment P3 is prevalent in the UK, where they are also called private finance initiatives (or PFIs), and in Canada, Australia, France, the Netherlands and Portugal.
Demand risk P3s. Demand risk P3s, or concessions, have a long history of public-private financing and have been used in many European countries and in Latin America, particularly for toll roads. Under a concession or demand risk P3, the project is largely financed by user fees and the government takes on no or only limited demand risk. This model is often used for toll roads, airports, public transport, and water, gas and electricity P3s.
Hybrid forms. P3 arrangements can have characteristics of both an availability-payment and a demand risk P3, exposing the government to a variety of potential liabilities: (1) explicit obligations such as availability payments; (2) contingent obligations, such as financial guarantees, termination payments and subsidies, if demand falls under certain thresholds; and (3)?more remote contingent obligations, such as the risk of contract renegotiations or takeover of the project in the case of default of the special purpose vehicle
We expect 2018 to usher in the launch of several significant P3 projects. It will also see the early impacts of the current administration, which has called for increased private investment in public projects and has hinted at changes to the legislative and regulatory framework that would lower the barriers of private capital looking to finance infrastructure.
Despite the growing adoption, only $80 billion of TIFIA projects reached financial close in the last 12 years, with $8.9 billion in P3s reaching financial close in 2016. This represents only 0.05% of US GDP and is 74% lower than the median of 0.19% for other countries that use P3s. If the US used the same spending rate as the median, it would add $411 billion to incremental spending over 10 years.
Lowering barriers to investment
There are barriers preventing more investment of private capital into the P3 market. One is the lack of an infrastructure pipeline. Many federal governments, such as in the EU, UK and Canada, and the new Asian Infrastructure Bank, publish their pipelines but the US does not.
Another barrier is that some US policies limit the scope with which public agencies can work with private investors. For example, 11 of the 35 states that have P3 legislation limit the types of projects that qualify for P3s. Much of this is due to a perception of political risk to incumbent politicians if a project does poorly.
More states publishing infrastructure pipelines and opening infrastructure offices
These barriers are beginning to subside. Some states are now publishing their infrastructure pipelines (e.g., Virginia and California) and the administration is suggesting a US federal pipeline. A recent survey by JD Power showed US consumer attitudes toward P3s have become more favorable, and this will in turn decrease the perception of political risk. States also are increasingly turning to P3s because of concern over their bond ratings should they borrow in the public markets.
There are proposals for more US states to open offices of infrastructure investment that can serve as single points of contact where interested investors could begin a dialogue with a state or locality. These offices could also provide information to the public about P3 projects, thereby increasing transparency, countering misperceptions that might exist and increasing local political support. Currently seven states and Washington, DC, have P3 offices and the number is expected to grow. There is also a multi-state office on the West Coast, the West Coast Infrastructure Exchange (WCX), which serves California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia.
What is infrastructure?
Infrastructure consists of economic infrastructure, social infrastructure and commercial infrastructure:
Economic infrastructure consists of fixed, tangible assets that make up physical capital, one of the three factors of production. These assets are required for economic growth and are important in the capital formation and final consumption stages of GDP. Broad sectors include transportation, utilities, power and telecommunications. Characteristic of economic infrastructure projects is that they earn their revenues from demand, usage, volume and sometimes a partial availability payment from the government. Example of projects are toll roads, airports, ports, utilities and power generation plants.
Social infrastructure includes the system of networks and facilities that support people and the community. These assets are often operated by the private sector and are used to support and provide public services, such as public schools, parks, housing and large dams.
Commercial infrastructure is a recent offshoot of the asset class and comprises assets for which the benefits of sharing infrastructure outweigh the competitive advantage of owning and operating one’s own infrastructure. Often characterized by a high degree of competition, this category includes assets such as satellites, cable networks and mobile phone towers. Often commercial infrastructure is included in economic infrastructure.
Common characteristics of infrastructure are high barriers-to-entry, high capital costs, essential services, inelastic demand, diversified end-user base and long-term customer contracts.
Federal financing programs
There are a small but growing number of federal programs in the US that help certain infrastructure projects address credit needs.
The Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) offers letter of credit to surface infrastructure projects. TIFIA has an enviable track record. It is estimated that the federal government will get back 99.9% of its money from the $21.8 billion of current letters of credit it has issued, and P3s have been the main recipient of TIFIA financing. There are suggestions to expand TIFIA given its strong performance and to consolidate it into similar federal programs for the water and railroad sectors (WIFIA and RRIF, respectively). Transportation P3s would benefit from TIFIA expansion.
PABs and MABs offer inexpensive funding
Private Activity Bonds (PABs) are a federally supported program that can be a catalyst for P3s. PABs are issued by a public entity (e.g., a state or local government) on behalf of a private partner and they are aimed at projects that serve some public purpose, such as airport improvements, water facility upgrades and toll roads.
Interest is tax-exempt for many PABs thus lowering the cost of debt. As a result, PABs are quite popular and many P3s take advantage of PABs as part of their overall finance package. There is a cap, however, on the amount of PABs that can be issued in each state. As of January 2016, there had been 21 P3s that used the PAB model. The Obama administration proposed a modified PAB in 2016 called a Qualified Public Infrastructure Bond (QPIB), which would not be subject to a cap and be available for a broader range of project types. Congress has recently made proposals for other types of innovative, federally sponsored financing programs such as Move America Bonds (MABs), an expanded version of PABs.
Who owns infrastructure?
Infrastructure is owned by the private sector or by the public sector (i.e., federal, state or local governments). The private sector tends to own demand-based infrastructure in which it can earn a required rate of return. This often includes economic infrastructure or projects that earn revenues from usage and volume. The public sector owns infrastructure that does not necessarily earn an explicit return but gives society a positive externality, e.g., a school affording someone an education. This often includes social infrastructure. Highways that do not have tolling are normally owned by the state unless they make an availability payment to the sponsor, in which case they are privately operated through a long-term concession agreement. However, the state retains ultimate ownership. The term “sponsor” means an infrastructure equity investor.
Efforts to reinstitute BABs
Build America Bonds (BABs) is another successful program for federal financing of infrastructure. Authorized only for the period 2009-2010, BABs utilized the municipal bond market but offered taxable bonds, in which either the issuer received a federal subsidy of 35% of the interest paid to bondholders (Direct Payment BABs) or the bondholder received a 35% federal tax credit (Tax Credit BABs). These subsidies brought the effective cost of debt to the issuer close to that of tax-exempt bonds.
Direct Payment BABs were very successful and $181 billion were issued in 20 months, which financed one-third of all new state and local government long-term borrowings during this brief period. Unlike tax-exempt municipals, BABs were popular with investors who did not have a federal tax liability, such as foreign investors and US pension funds. There are recommendations to the administration that the BABs program be re-instituted given its past success.
Asset recycling and privatization could unlock hundreds of billions
Asset recycling, a form of privatization or divestiture, is the leasing of existing infrastructure assets to private investors to raise funds for new investment. These assets have user-fee revenue streams, e.g., from toll roads and airports, and appeal to institutional investors that seek infrastructure investments that are both low risk and likely to generate stable returns. The proceeds are then reinvested into projects that do not have user fees and need direct government funding. Asset recycling has been popular in Australia, where the phrase was coined. Between 2013 and 2016, New South Wales leased A$15 billion of infrastructure assets to investors and allocated A$6 billion to new projects.
US may follow the Australian recycling model
The administration has voiced its desire to emulate the Australian model as part of its $1 trillion infrastructure stimulus plan released on May 23, 2017. The plan included leasing specific assets such as the Power Marketing Administrations’ transmission assets to the private sector. The plan also included the creation of an Air Traffic Control Corporation to manage the air traffic control system, and the expansion of the US Department of Veterans Affairs Administration’s ability to lease out vacant assets. Other single-name assets that are prime candidates for privatization include TVA and Amtrak.
Privatization could play an important role in the US push to invest more in infrastructure. As of 2015, there were $52.3 trillion in fixed assets in the US, as shown in Exhibit 4. Although 78% of these are owned by the private sector, there are still $11.6 trillion owned by the government. This represents a large pool of assets, some of which could be leased or sold to help fund new infrastructure.
Exhibit 4. Net stock of public fixed assets
USD trillions (2015)
The idea behind privatization is that the shift from public to private management will produce improvements because the profit-seeking behavior of new, private sector managers will lead to cost cutting and greater attention to user satisfaction. It works best when firms can run assets or services more efficiently than the government or when competition between firms can bring down costs over time. Sometimes it is also easier for private companies to set prices properly. For example, America’s airports charge planes to land in proportion to their weight, but if airports were privately owned it is likely that these tolls would be based on runway congestion, which small planes are prone to cause. Transportation economists have argued for years for a more efficient price mechanism to allocate existing runway capacity.
What could the US government earn from asset recycling and privatization?
Toll road asset recycling: $120 billion of potential infrastructure investment
Goldman estimates that state and local governments could unlock up to $120 billion of potential infrastructure investment if state-owned toll roads were divested and the proceeds were used for new projects (the Australian recycling model). This valuation excludes capital that could be unlocked by liberalizing tolling restrictions more generally, such as on Interstate highways that do not have tolls.
One impediment to this is that the 1956 law that created the Interstate highway system bans tolls on most Interstate highways. These roads are at the end of their useful lives and there is little appetite among politicians to raise gasoline taxes, so lifting the ban now seems appealing. A second impediment is that current laws require that all bonds on an asset to be recycled be refinanced from tax-exempt municipal bonds to taxable bonds, substantially raising the cost of capital for the private entity involved. Asset recycling would be more viable in the US if the government relaxed these regulations and allowed outstanding bonds on recycled assets to remain tax-exempt.
Airport privatization: $50 billion of incremental capital for improved airport productivity
Another set of assets at the disposal of US local and state governments is the airport system. Over the past two decades, countries such as Italy, France and Spain have privatized their airports, while the US has almost exclusively maintained publicly owned and operated airports. In 2012, a pilot program was reauthorized for airport privatization but limits the number of private commercial airports to 10 vs. over 500 commercial airports in the US. As of April 2017, there were four airports in the program although several applications are pending. Like toll roads, airports are attractive to infrastructure investors for their consistent revenue generation and strong margins (40% EBITDA margins on average in Europe). Privatized airports in Europe rank significantly higher in customer satisfaction than do US public airports.
Port privatization: $23 billion of incremental investment for improved operating efficiency
Similar to airports, ports in the US tend to be owned by the public sector. They represent another opportunity for asset divestitures to the private sector to generate additional capital for infrastructure investment. In addition to unlocking capital for reinvestment, privatization of ports could lead to increased operating efficiency. This is particularly important for US ports which rank in the lower quartile on both portfolio flow and port cost. Based on 2014 capacity, US ports generated an estimated $3.8 billion in sales in 2014, implying $23 billion in valuation using a similar multiple as used in airports.
Highways, airports and ports alone could bring in an estimated $190 billion for US infrastructure. Other prime candidates for privatization are the air traffic control system, TVA and the four Power Marketing Administrations.
See?Appendix 1?for more in-depth toll road, airport and port valuations.
What does all this mean?
We believe there is movement in the US infrastructure market. The US P3 market will get a boost over the next few years as barriers to infrastructure investment are lowered, existing financing tools are expanded, new financing tools are developed and current federal financing programs are built upon. There is a push for privatization and asset recycling of the air traffic control system, toll roads and airports and, if it is successful, other sectors would likely follow over the coming years.
Administration’s efforts thus far on infrastructure
The White House released details in May 2017 on its plan to incentivize $1 trillion in new investment. It included $200 billion of proposed federal financing with incentives for states and private investment for the remaining $800 billion. The proposal would expand existing credit guarantee programs, such as TIFIA and WIFA, and would lift the cap on PABs and restrictions on P3s. It would encourage privatization and liberalizing tolling restrictions, an important key to unlocking a large amount of capital. The is largely what was announced in the State of the Union address and what has recently been reported in the press.
Streamlining of regulatory approvals to follow the Canadian model
There are two components to modernizing US infrastructure: money and permits. There needs to be a dramatic reduction in red tape so that infrastructure can be approved in two years or less, not 10 years or more as it often takes now. No one deliberately designed America’s infrastructure approval system. It is an accident of legal accretion occurring over 50 years. This may be about to change. In an August 2017 press conference, the administration announced its intent to roll back the regulatory and permitting process. It included a two-year limit for federal environmental reviews in order to allow major projects to move forward. The intention is to follow the Canadian model, a move to reduce political risk that would be welcomed by investors. The US has a higher rate of project cancellations than other countries, which puts off investors, so this reform is an important component of attracting capital. It can be accomplished by consolidating decisions within a simplified framework with set deadlines and clear lines of accountability. Germany’s approval process to air issues and get to a final decision is simple and effective. Canada recently overhauled its rules, by clearing a path to a two-year process for certain federal projects and by delegating other projects to the provinces. Australia is also working on an overhaul.
To be most effective, streamlining the approval process would need to be part of a larger reform effort, as many regulatory reviews are at the state level. The August press conference echoed the administration’s earlier executive order in January 2017 to streamline and expedite environmental reviews and approvals, “especially for projects that are a high priority such as improving the electric grid and telecommunications systems and repairing and upgrading critical port facilities, airports, pipelines, bridges and highways.”
What is project finance?
Project finance is the method of financing infrastructure, industrial or public assets using limited recourse long-term debt, typically raised by a special purpose vehicle (SPV) created solely to complete the infrastructure project. Principal and interest payments are funded entirely from cash flows generated by the SPV, while the scope and duration of the project is defined in the SPV’s contractual arrangements. Project finance debt can be an efficient way to fund long-term capital-intensive projects in which the underlying revenues are relatively stable and predictable. Project finance has also come to mean a sector in which issuers use this type of finance. In this regard, infrastructure is a subset of the larger project finance sector.
Washington’s effect on infrastructure
There is a great need for investment and a very large amount of capital within and outside of the US looking for suitable projects. Although the federal government plays a very important role, this opportunity is not completely dependent on the politics of Washington. State and local governments account for 75% of infrastructure spending and own 87% of public infrastructure (Exhibit 4). They own 98% of highways, including the entire US Interstate system. They own bridges, seaports, water and sewer systems, transit systems, schools, and police and fire stations. The federal government dominates in ownership of intellectual property, R&D assets and conservation, such as parks and recreation. It also owns the air traffic control system, most of Amtrak, postal buildings, large dams and other single name assets.
The federal government influences infrastructure at the state, local and private level – where most investment occurs – through incentives, taxation and regulations, not only by direct federal spending. Infrastructure in the US is much more decentralized than in many countries because the US is a large federation, similar to Canada and Australia, both of which have strong models of decentralized infrastructure coordination. The current politics of Washington will not derail the long-term trend of increased state, local and private capital investment in US infrastructure.
What a new US infrastructure bill could look like
In his January 30, 2018 State of the Union address, the US President announced the administration’s infrastructure plan. The plan broadly fit with previous announcements and press releases by the administration. Below are the key take-aways from the plan and then recent news reports:
- $200 million in federal spending mostly through grants, and plans to incentivize state, local and private spending of $1.3 billion for a total of $1.5 billion over 10 years.
- Encourages PPP. Covers most main economic and social infrastructure sectors.
- Makes securing some funding means tested through a cost-benefit analysis to avoid boondoggle projects. This has been widely suggested.
- Strong emphasis on rural investment. Up to 25% of total federal spending expected.
- Adds to existing federal financing programs (TIFIA, RRIF, WIFIA, etc.).
- Creation of a new fund for public lands infrastructure. This will be funded by revenues due to the US government from mineral and energy development on federal lands and waters.
- Executive order allowing for disposal of federal assets to improve overall allocation of economic resources in infrastructure investment. This could be a precursor to asset recycling and/or privatization through asset disposals or the leasing of publicly-owned assets to the private sector. This could release a significant amount of capital.
- Elimination of some of the important caps on PABs (e.g., volume by state and maximum amount allowed in transportation). Extends PABs eligibility to other sectors, e.g., ports and airports. This mirrors the Obama administration’s 2016 proposal for a modified PAB called a Qualified Public Infrastructure Bond (QPIB).
- Liberalize tolling restrictions on Interstate highways and allow for commercialization of roadside rest areas. This could also release a significant amount of capital.
- Apply fast act streamlining on all rail projects and subsidize short-line and passenger rail. There has been little emphasis on additional intercity passenger rail capacity in the US for years. Amtrak is used almost exclusively for this service.
- Expand federal credit assistance to state infrastructure banks.
- Eliminate constraints on public transit PPP. Allow non-federal construction and operation of inland waterways. Currently dominated by the US Army Corps of Engineers.
Missing from recent press reports on the administration’s infrastructure plan:
- Airport privatization and air traffic control
- Power grid (except in the new rural infrastructure program)
- Tax credit plan as suggested before the 2016 election by campaign senior policy advisors Peter Navarro and Wilber Ross
The administration’s plans have not come to fruition so far in 2018 but it is possible a plan will come together after the mid-term elections. Meanwhile, the private sector continues to invest, with non-bank investors increasingly taking up the slack.
A further proposal for re-patriation of off-shore profits
An innovative proposal by Senator Delaney (D-Maryland) is to start an American Infrastructure Fund (AIF) that issues 50-year 1% coupon bonds through a reverse Dutch auction. Companies would be incentivised to repatriate by competing for a low tax rate. This would be achieved through a competitive bidding process where the ‘price’ would be a ratio of bond investment-to-repatriated profits. As companies bid the ratio decreases, i.e., the effective tax rate increases, until the target size is raised. The funds are then used as infrastructure investment. The early price talk, should AIF become a reality, is an offer of around 1-to-4 but some economists expect companies will bid in the 1-to-7 area.
Another plausible way repatriated profits could be put to work in infrastructure is through the US tax-equity market, which provides capital for a broad array of renewable projects in the US. This amounted to $13 billion in wind alone in 2016.
Combining infrastructure with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 was expected by some analysts because historically Democrats have supported infrastructure spending and Republicans have supported tax cuts. Since it was omitted from tax reform, it seems likely to slip to 2019. At that point, it could be considered as a standalone issue, perhaps with the goal of attracting bipartisan support. It is possible that some infrastructure-focused initiatives could be addressed in the next 6-12 months, while leaving a broader infrastructure package until after the mid-term elections in November 2018.
See?Appendix 2?on infrastructure elasticity for an explanation of how infrastructure quality can rank higher than its condition would suggest.
Appendix 1. US toll road, airport and port valuations
Toll road valuation $120 billion: Highway toll revenue generated $14.4 billion in 2014 from publicly owned toll roads according to the Federal Highway Administration. EBITDA margins are estimated by Goldman Sachs to be 65% based on a sample of the 12 largest toll roads. Precedent transactions in Europe and Australia have been at a 24 EV/EBITDA multiple. This values existing US toll roads at $120 billion after estimated debt of $110 billion (5.7x sales). Seventy-five percent of toll revenues come from only six states. In order, these are New York, New Jersey, Texas, Florida, California and Illinois. They would stand to benefit the most from an asset recycling program.
Airport valuation $50 billion: According to the FAA, the Airports and Airways Trust Fund (AATF) earned $14.4 billion in revenues in 2016. EBITDA margins at the 25 largest airports are 40% and are comparable to privatized airports outside of the US (e.g., best-in-class privatized airports in Europe have EBITDA margins of 55%). Implied EV/EBITDA multiples are 20x based on historical IRRs. This gives a valuation of $50 billion after estimated debt of $65 billion.
Port valuation $23 billion: Based on 2014 capacity, it is estimated that ports generated $3.8 billion in sales in 2014. Using a slightly higher multiple than airports (i.e., 21x), gives a valuation of $23 billion after estimated debt of $13 billion. Ports get a small premium on the multiple because their EBITDA margins are estimated at 45% vs. airports at 40%.
Appendix 2. Good quality and average satisfaction, so why so much required investment?
There is an inconsistency when analyzing the quality of US infrastructure compared to the need for so much investment. The World Economic Forum (WEF) ranks US infrastructure eleventh globally out of 138 countries, and Americans have not expressed a high level of dissatisfaction with their infrastructure: 69% are satisfied with US highways and roads and 61% are satisfied with public transport. This is about the median of other countries. There are two explanations for this inconsistency: greater O&M spending vs. capital spending and high infrastructure elasticity.
We show the amount of required US investment in our second piece “Outlook for United States infrastructure: US infrastructure market analysis,” Autumn 2018.
Falling capital spending but steady O&M spending
It is widely reported in the press that US infrastructure spending is insufficient. Headline public spending has dropped 9% in real terms since 2003. When dissecting that number, however, it becomes clear that US capital spending has dropped 23% but operation and maintenance (O&M) spending has actually increased by 6% (Exhibit 5). In fact, O&M spending has grown steadily at about 5% per annum since 1956.
O&M spending is key to overall longevity and efficiency and has helped to maintain existing infrastructure performance. This explains why existing infrastructure gets good quality scores by Americans surveyed by the WEF despite large infrastructure needs estimated by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). We benchmarked 2014 numbers vs. 2003 in Exhibit 5 because real infrastructure spending dropped post 2003 due to a rapid increase in infrastructure-related input costs.
Exhibit 5. Capital investment compared to O&M spending
2014 constant dollars
|US infrastructure investment (USD billions)||Capital||O&M||Total|
|State & local||50||130||180|
|State & local||140||196||336|
|% increase vs 1985||104%||52%||75%|
|State & local||112||208||320|
|% increase vs 1985||57%||62%||60%|
|% increase vs 2000||(23%)||6%||(9%)|
High state of US infrastructure elasticity preserves performance
Infrastructure is considered to be highly elastic between the extremes of condition (Exhibit 6). It is similar in concept to the price elasticity of demand (Ped), where Ped is > 1.0, except here it is the performance elasticity of condition (Pec), where Pec is > 1.0 and changes in condition (the independent variable) lead to changes in performance (the dependant variable). This high elasticity helps to explain the relatively good US quality scores. In this context condition can be thought of as age and performance as perceived quality.
By most accounts, existing infrastructure condition is below average but stable O&M spending has maintained it. This would put its condition in the middle-right part of the horizontal x-axis in Exhibit 6. This high elasticity also helps explain why its age has been able to increase over the years without a corresponding drop in quality. It also shows that infrastructure condition can only worsen to a certain degree until quality drops off rapidly.
Even though infrastructure performance is considered elastic, the?price?elasticity of demand for the use of infrastructure?(an entirely different matter) is typically inelastic. This is because often there are not substitutes,?many infrastructure services are considered essential, and the user fees are often a small portion of disposable income and not discretionary (e.g., tolls on roads and bridges, user electricity bills and user fees on mass transit).
Exhibit 6. Infrastructure elasticity
Regular O&M spending can maintain infrastructure similar to other assets. On aircraft, for example, proper maintenance can significantly extend an airplane’s service life but it gets more expensive with age, flying time and the number of take-offs and landings (or cycles). The serviceable lifespan of the 747 was thought to be 40 years when PanAm took to the skies with its first Jumbo Jet flight in 1970 and many older 747s are still in service today, especially in the military and firefighting units. Industry experts now estimate the 747 airframe can fly over 60 years because of today’s improved inspection and maintenance programs.
In many cases the decision to retire an airframe is based on economics rather than age. America’s infrastructure is similar: At some point it cannot be repaired anymore and just needs to be replaced.
Acknowledgment, sources and endnotes
Sequoia would like to thank Michael Verhoeven for his assistance in preparing this report.
Primary sources: American Society of Civil Engineers, Bipartisan Policy Center, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Cato Institute, Common Good, Congressional Budget Office, Congressional Research Service, Council of Economic Advisors, Department of the Treasury, Federal Highway Administration, Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research, IMF Fiscal Monitor Database, Moody’s Investors Service, National Council on Public Works Improvement, Preqin, US Department of Transportation and World Economic Forum.
(1) Public construction spending as a percentage of total tax receipts. Tax receipts equal to total property, sales, income and corporate taxes from the US Census Bureau’s quarterly summary. | politics |
https://www.thegeneralistinsights.com/post/twitter-deal-the-unseen-threat-for-the-democratic-world | 2022-12-04T04:23:35 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-49/segments/1669446710962.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20221204040114-20221204070114-00407.warc.gz | 0.957349 | 769 | CC-MAIN-2022-49 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2022-49__0__299495930 | en | The recent offer by Elon Musk to buy Twitter has stirred up some heated debate among democratic societies. The pros and cons of the decision and the people’s assumptions of what is right and what is wrong will be tested out in coming days. However, in this article, I would like to focus specifically on an issue which I personally think is a fundamental change happening in every democracy.
In today’s tech world, we think of fundamental rights like the right to freedom of speech, the right to live etc. every now and then. But, why are we discussing about the right to freedom of speech when a public tech company is making a business deal? This point struck me and made me think a bit. After a lot of discussions with my close associates, I have reached this conclusion:
Elon Musk’s offer to Twitter officially insinuates the so-called big tech companies as a decentralised institution which works as a pillar of democracy in today’s political, social and cultural context.
Why is this an important event to focus on? Well, that’s because the previous democratic structure was fully knitted into a circle where all the important information in the eyes of the government was either not accessible to the public for decades or was destroyed even before it reached the table. This secrecy of hierarchy of events created under the legal framework is regarded as the top most priority for the functioning of a society. This helped the government envisioned narrative spread faster and any counterproductive argument was deemed to be a conspiracy, as ‘the sources’ were tough to find.
With the introduction of the internet, this barrier got completely eliminated. People started verifying the information, analysing the arguments put forth by either party and deciding which party was deceitful. Mind it, not truthful but deceitful. Unfortunately, the government(s) narrative fell flat in most of the cases. The increase of such cases eroded the trust between the government and its people, which in return created a vacuum where people find it harder and harder to trust every word that comes out from the official sources. Moreover, the interposing nature of the government with the four pillars of democracy has been evidently seen in certain influential cases. Further resistance led to further interposing. This sense prevails as the term national security in technical aspects predominantly focuses on keeping important information out of the public eye. William Kirtz, associate professor in the School of Journalism at North-eastern University said “Internet makes it so easy to disseminate information—whether or not it harms national security” .
In the current world order, control over disseminated information is in the hands of big tech companies. This control raised fear in governments, which in return constituted new regulations which directly or indirectly help the government in having a significant role in the company’s decisive structure. With the liberation that we brought through tech, the slow appeal for a decentralised approach has taken a front seat. This drive was fastened by the long and hiatus pandemic lockdowns. A certain section of population now is completely with a belief of decentralisation of institutions and their power dynamics. This, in my opinion, will be the greatest challenge for the democracies in the coming decade. The rise of decentralised mechanisms would lead to an increase in the government’s hand in a free market, which in turn, would destabilise the essence of democracy (in terms of freedom and liberty). If seen around, the seeds are being sown. A perfect blend of freedom and national security in a democratic world would be a greater challenge to address than any other external conflict.
– ANJAN KUMAR
(Opinion expressed by the author is his personal. The Generalist Insights take no responsibility of the opinion expressed.) | politics |
https://rightserver.righthorizons.com/wordpressblog/?p=6241 | 2021-05-12T05:09:55 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-21/segments/1620243991252.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20210512035557-20210512065557-00010.warc.gz | 0.96197 | 2,492 | CC-MAIN-2021-21 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2021-21__0__200895295 | en | All you need to know about the Budget to realign your finances with the new tax rules.
The Sensex, Bombay Stock Exchange’s benchmark index, went up by around 500 points on Budget day, riding on the good news that there was no change in the rules for long-term capital gains (LTCG) for equities, as thousands of investors heaved a sigh of relief. There were speculations that the Budget would extend the minimum holding period for LTCG from one year to two-three years which could have slowed down investments in equities especially since retail investors have started dabbling in the stock markets through the mutual funds route. The real estate sector, meanwhile, has benefitted with the holding period reduced from three years to two years, for calculation of long term gains.
There were disappointments as well, one of which is the reduction in tax rebate. Those earning rental incomes from homes financed by a bank will have to pay more taxes from the next year. And if you are a smoker, there is more bad news – the excise duty on cigar, cigarettes, and other tobacco substitutes has been hiked from Rs 3,755 per thousand to Rs 4,006 per thousand.
The intention behind the Budget was evidently two-pronged – widen the tax base and encourage people to embrace the digital economy. The Finance Minister, in his Budget speech, lamented that ours was largely a tax non-compliant society with a huge mismatch between tax collections, and income and expenditure patterns. Only 24 lakh people show an annual income exceeding Rs 10 lakh, though more than 1.25 crore cars were sold in the past five years and over two crore Indians went abroad in 2015, he said, highlighting the paradox.
In a bid to curb black money, no transactions above Rs 3 lakh will be permitted in cash. It is a welcome move, even though not fool proof – one can make transactions by splitting a single bill into multiple bills of Rs 2.9 lakh each. Providing further impetus to digital economy, the government will soon authorise the use of digital payment methods, including the BHIM app, in petrol pumps, hospitals, universities, colleges and other institutions. Service tax on online booking of railway tickets has also been waived off.
We delve deeper in to the proposals made by the Finance Minister, to apprise you of their possible impact on your finances.
FOR THE SALARIED CLASS
Barring the reduction of income tax rate for income slab of Rs 2.5 lakh – Rs 5 lakh – from 10 per cent to five per cent – FM Arun Jaitley kept various other deduction limits unchanged, bringing little cheer for the salaried class. This reduction in tax rate will result in a tax benefit of Rs 12,500 for taxpayers. If you add education cess (2 per cent), and higher and secondary education cess (1 per cent) to it, the tax saving will increase to Rs 12,875. However, the tax rebate enjoyed by the taxpayers under Section 87A has been reduced from Rs 5,000 to Rs 2,500. Earlier, it was available to those with a taxable income of Rs. 5 lakh, whereas now the limit has been reduced to Rs 3.5 lakh.
The theme of Budget 2017 was to reward the honest taxpayer, and widen the tax base by taxing the rich. The 10 per cent surcharge imposed on individuals with income between Rs 50 lakh to Rs 1 crore will increase the tax liability of a person having a taxable income of Rs 75 lakh by around Rs 2 lakh. The existing surcharge of 15 per cent on those with an income of over Rs 1 crore in a financial year remains.
Tax Evasion Made Tougher: In order to reduce tax evasion, and encourage more people to file tax returns, FM has proposed a new one-page form for those who have a taxable income of up to Rs 5 lakh, other than business income. Apart from this, there will be no scrutiny of the first-time return filer for the year 2017-18, if the taxable income does not exceed Rs 5 lakh for that year.
However, any taxpayer who is eligible to file tax return will face higher penalty in case he or she delays the filing of income tax return after the due date – July 31 of the assessment year is generally the last date. A tax penalty of Rs 5,000 will be levied if returns are filed after this date, and Rs 10,000, if filed after December 31 of the assessment year. However, for small taxpayers with income not exceeding Rs 5 lakh for a financial year, the penalty will be Rs 1,000 for delay in filing tax return.
Earlier a taxpayer could file return till the end of the assessment year, and was penalised with a fine of Rs 5,000 at the discretion of the tax officer in case of delay.
The time period for revising a tax return has been reduced to 12 months from completion of the financial year. The time frame for scrutiny assessments has been reduced from 21 months to 18 months for the next financial year, and is slated to be reduced further to 12 months from 2018-19.
HRA Claims Under Scanner: It will be now be mandatory for those claiming a House Rent Allowance (HRA) of more than Rs 50,000 per month to deduct tax at source at the rate of 5 per cent. The TDS will have to be deducted on the last month of the year in which rent is paid or the last month of tenancy. In case the landlord (payee) does not have a Permanent Account Number (PAN), the tax deduction shall not exceed the amount of rent payable for the last month of the previous year, or the last month of the tenancy. From the government’s perspective, this amendment will ensure that there are no revenue leakages on account of such rental income.
This will also discourage people who claim HRA deduction by quoting wrong PAN numbers of their landlords. Quoting PAN number of the landlord was mandatory in case the rent paid during the year was more than Rs 1 lakh.
“This has primarily been introduced to check evasion in cases where the salaried individuals were claiming HRA exemption against bogus rent receipts. Though requirement for furnishing PAN for landlord was already there if the rent exceeds Rs 1 lakh per year, it was not proving to be an effective trail as the employer was never checking the authenticity of the PAN. In such cases, persons claiming HRA for rent exceeding this amount is required to deduct 5 per cent tax on rent paid to landlords,” explains Amit Maheshwari, Partner at Ashok Maheshwary & Associates LLP. These proposed changes will take effect from June 1, 2017.
FOR HOME BUYERS
The real estate sector has been most pleased with this Budget. After several unyielding years, it could well embark on the path to recovery.
More Gains: You can now sell a property after two years of buying it as the holding period for computation of long term gains has been reduced to two years, from the existing period of three years. This is a great move to boost demand after sales dropped significantly post demonetisation.
Besides, the base year for indexation has been shifted from 1-4-1981 to 1-4-2001. Indexation means adjusting the impact of inflation during the holding period of the capital asset so that it reflects the current market prices. The shift in base year will result in less tax liability for the buyer. The finance minister also announced that one will be able to reinvest capital gains in notified redeemable bonds beyond NHAI and REC for tax exemption on long term capital gains.
Anil Chopra, Group CEO & Director, Bajaj Capital, believes that the reduction in holding period “will spur sales and purchase activity in the real estate sector.”
Another positive move is the change in eligibility criteria for affordable housing from built-up area to carpet area. Shishir Baijal, Chairman & Managing Director, Knight Frank India, says, “This will increase the unit size by 20-30 per cent, and will offer home buyers the benefit of owning larger units. This will also encourage leading real estate players to enter the affordable housing segment.”
Rental Income Woes: There is unpleasant news for people earning rental income on a house financed by a bank. The government has restricted the set-off of ‘loss from house property’ from other income streams to Rs 2 lakh in a financial year. The balance loss is allowed to be carried forward for up to eight years.
Experts say this could adversely impact those who invest in house property using housing loan, primarily for earning rental income. Earlier, the entire amount paid towards the interest of the rented property was allowed to be claimed as deduction from income from house property. It often resulted in loss from house property, and was allowed to be set off against any other head of income in that year. However, the Rs 2 lakh cap would mean taxpayers may not be able to fully absorb the loss in the same year or in the subsequent year, in case they don’t have sufficient house property rental income. The intention is to correct the anomaly between tax benefits allowed for self-occupied and rented-out property, and discourage purchasing of properties for investment purposes. For taxpayers with self-occupied house property, the amount of deduction that can be claimed on account of interest is restricted to Rs 2 lakh (as per Section 24(b) of the Income Tax Act, 1961). The proposed change may not impact this category of taxpayers.
FOR SENIOR CITIZENS
Senior citizens need regular income in their sunset years. But with interest rates falling, fixed deposits have not been a lucrative option for many. The government’s 8 per cent guaranteed return policy has brought in some relief.
Varishtha Pension Bima Yojana: Under the scheme, those above 60 years will get a guaranteed return of 8 per cent for a period of 10 years. The policy will be launched by Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), and is expected to be available from April 1, 2017. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had earlier announced that senior citizens will be able to make an investment of up to Rs 7.5 lakh in the scheme. Back-of-the-envelope calculations show that it would translate to a pension of Rs 5,000 per month. Does it make sense to lock your money at 8 per cent? Experts definitely think so, because interest rates are likely to fall in the near future, and banks are offering an interest rate of just 7 per cent on fixed deposits of 10 years to senior citizens.
“Considering the falling interest rates, it may not be a bad idea for senior citizens; especially those who fall in the lower tax bracket. But as the interest income will be taxable, those who fall in the higher tax bracket can also look at options such as tax-free bonds,” says Anil Rego, CEO & Founder, Right Horizons.
There is an investment limit in the scheme, so that you do not invest all your money in a single instrument. One can combine it with the senior citizen savings scheme, and monthly income plans offered by mutual funds to ensure a regular income. There is no cap on investment in annuity plans of private companies.
The Senior Citizens Savings Scheme (SCSS) is currently offering an interest rate of 8.5 per cent, but the return is subject to revision every quarter, and has a maturity period of five years. If you wish to reinvest after the term is over, you will have to do so at the prevailing market rates.
National Pension System: In another move to encourage people to save more for their retirement, partial withdrawals from National Pension System (NPS) – up to 25 per cent of the contribution made by the employee – have been made tax-free. Moreover, self-employed individuals will now be eligible to claim deduction of up to 20 per cent of their gross total income, as against the existing 10 per cent, in respect of contribution made to NPS. This would be subject to the overall deduction limit of Rs 1.5 lakh. | politics |
https://www.nashfm949.com/2020/09/03/register-to-vote-2/ | 2020-10-20T20:24:32 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-45/segments/1603107874135.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20201020192039-20201020222039-00691.warc.gz | 0.894176 | 505 | CC-MAIN-2020-45 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2020-45__0__159230754 | en | Election Day is November 3rd and we want you to exercise your voting rights! We’ve got information on how to register to vote here.
Mississippi residents can use the mail-in voter registration application found here.
Registration must be postmarked or hand delivered to circuit clerk’s office by Monday, October 5th for Mississippi voters.
For more information about voting in Mississippi, visit the Mississippi Online Voter Information Center, where you can learn more about voting requirements as well verify your current voting registration status.
Alabama residents can learn more about voting in Alabama and how to register to vote online here.
Verify Voter Registration
Find your polling location
Mississippi Voting ID Requirements
Any one of the following types of photo IDs may be used on Election Day:
- A driver’s license
- A photo ID card issued by a branch, department, or entity of the State of Mississippi
- A United States passport
- A government employee ID card
- A firearms license
- A student photo ID issued by an accredited Mississippi university, college, or community/junior college
- A United States military ID
- A tribal photo ID
- Any other photo ID issued by any branch, department, agency or entity of the United States government or any State government
- A Mississippi Voter Identification Card
Alabama Voting ID Requirements
A voter can use any of the following forms of photo ID at the polls starting June 3, 2014:
- Valid Driver’s License (not expired or has been expired less than 60 days)
- Alabama Law Enforcement Agency Digital Driver’s License
- Valid Non-driver ID (not expired or has been expired less than 60 days)
- Alabama Law Enforcement Agency Digital Non-driver ID
- Valid Alabama Photo Voter ID
- Valid State Issued ID (Alabama or any other state)
- Valid AL Department of Corrections Release- Temporary ID (Photo Required)
- Valid AL Movement/Booking Sheet from Prison/Jail System (Photo Required)
- Valid Pistol Permit (Photo Required)
- Valid Federal Issued ID
- Valid US Passport
- Valid Employee ID from Federal Government, State of Alabama, County Government, Municipality, Board, Authority, or other entity of this state
- Valid student or employee ID from a college or university in the State of Alabama (including postgraduate technical or professional schools)
- Valid Military ID
- Valid Tribal ID | politics |
https://contracostabailbonds.com/california-requires-solar-panels-on-all-new-houses/ | 2024-04-18T14:49:08 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-18/segments/1712296817206.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20240418124808-20240418154808-00560.warc.gz | 0.971881 | 314 | CC-MAIN-2024-18 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2024-18__0__192979446 | en | The state of California is known for being pretty forward thinking when it comes to several things, including going green.
Recently, the state of California took another step toward making the state greener by requiring all new homes to be powered by solar.
The California Building Standards Commission voted on the measure in early December and it passed unanimously.
The goal of the new measure is to make California a greener state that is much less reliant on energy generated from fossil fuels. Every new house, starting in 2020, will be required to have solar panels. The panels will have to produce enough energy to provide for the entire house or makeup for all of the electricity and natural gas that the residence consumed over the course of the year.
Opponents of the measure were concerned with how this could negatively affect housing construction in the future. The new measure is expected to raise the cost of building a home by roughly $10,000. Most of that money, about 85%, would go towards implementing the solar panels. The rest would likely go towards making the home more energy efficient.
According to the executive director of the energy commission, there will be two ways for homeowners to reduce the upfront costs of the solar panels. They can either lease the solar panels or sign a power purchase agreement that pays for the electricity generated, but not the panels themselves.
What do you think of California’s latest attempt to go green? Is this new measure a good one, or is it too much for prospective homeowners?
Let us know what you think in the comments down below. | politics |
https://faithonthefringe.com/2017/04/20/how-long/ | 2023-02-06T09:48:36 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-06/segments/1674764500334.35/warc/CC-MAIN-20230206082428-20230206112428-00290.warc.gz | 0.929267 | 318 | CC-MAIN-2023-06 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2023-06__0__250788615 | en | How long would you permit someone to abuse another, before you step up?
How long would you stay around someone telling racist jokes, before you walk away?
How long do you let a man make derogatory and sexist comments about women, before you say something?
How long would you watch a bully harass and abuse others, before you intercede?
How long do you remain silent when the weak and powerless are attacked and victimized by the powerful?
Why would you associate with racist, sexist, bigoted people?
I’m not talking about politics. I’m asking about common decency.
Where is your decency?
Decent people don’t remain silent when others lose their rights, their health insurance or their dignity.
Decent Christians don’t choose politics over people.
Decent Christians don’t support politicians who systematically promote policies that hurt the poor or dismantle programs that help the less fortunate.
When did partisan politics replace our decency?
Some want government to reflect a morality of violence, aggression, scarcity, and oppression.
Others want government to reflect a morality that embraces diversity, inclusion, abundance, justice, and charity for all.
Only one view represents a Biblical, Christian worldview.
When you approve of racism, sexism, bigotry and bullying; if you accept the government limiting the rights of others; if you think taxes should be spent on tools of war and not health care, education, libraries, roads and bridges; then the message of Christ is so foreign that it’s meaningless. | politics |
https://nycbigcitylit.com/summer-2021/bland-fanatics-and-white-crusades-a-review-of-bland-fanatics-liberals-race-and-empire-by-pankaj-mishra/ | 2023-10-04T10:17:38 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233511364.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20231004084230-20231004114230-00811.warc.gz | 0.934458 | 5,229 | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2023-40__0__323574017 | en | by Katherine Judith Anderson
In 1884, a white American named Lyman Stewart founded Union Oil of California. To get his start, he’d leveraged the American “rule of capture,” which granted drillers the right to siphon out any oil they discovered below the surface, no matter who owned the land itself. By 1920, Union Oil owned 800,000 acres of land and was worth 125 million dollars (the equivalent of just under 1.7 billion dollars today). Stewart didn’t believe that capitalism and Christianity were at ideological odds. Rather, he interpreted his company’s success as a blessing from God, believing that his personal Manifest Destiny was to be a good steward of this gift. From 1909 to 1915, Stewart used the profits from his oil kingdom to build a concurrent Christian empire. He conceived of, and then sponsored, the worldwide distribution of three million copies of The Fundamentals: a series of tracts designed to bolster belief in the absolute authority of the Bible, the only correct guide to living.
An oil baron who saw his dominion over the Earth as the combined result of the grace of God and his own ability to pull himself up by his bootstraps bid his ministers go forth and teach all nations the inherent rightness of Biblical authority and the free market system. Christianity and capitalism, salvation and settler colonialism: it was a match made in heaven. Lyman Stewart embodied the fundamentals of the American Dream.
What accounts for this kind of commercial proselytizing, this American capitalist religiosity? In Bland Fanatics, Pankaj Mishra argues that racism is the glue which binds capitalism and Christianity together. Though Mishra never mentions Stewart in his recent 16 essay collection (published between 2008 and 2020), he repeatedly returns to the fundamentalism at the center of Manifest Destiny’s Venn diagram: racism, imperialism, capitalism, and liberalism. Fundamentalism is a dirty word in post-9/11 America, used with monotonous frequency to condemn the perceived fanaticism that encourages Islamofascist acts of terror. But, as the January 6th occupation of the US Capitol by white supremacist extremists made abundantly clear, the West has its own fundamentalist faith, and it’s due for a reckoning.
Moreover, this fundamentalism, it turns out, is not simply faithful adherence to a way of life or a belief system. At its core, it is the impassioned desire to force others to accede to that system. It is an assertion of the right to ideological domination over family, community, and ultimately the world at large by whatever means necessary. “Christianity deserves possession of the world,” wrote Reverend Robert E. Speer in the twelfth volume of Stewart’s Fundamentals (77). It has the “right” because it “alone presents a perfect ethical ideal for the individual and it alone possesses a social ethic adequate for a true national life and for a world society” (81). Fundamentalists justify domination with such belief in their creed’s simple, obvious, incontrovertible rightness.
Above all, it is whiteness, the “world’s most dangerous cult today,” that has replaced other forms of fundamentalism in the West, according to Mishra (BF 59). Racism, he insists, is more than just an “ugly prejudice.” It is a “widely legitimated way of ordering social and economic life” that “attempts to solve, through exclusion and degradation, the problems of establishing political order and pacifying the disaffected, in societies roiled by rapid social and economic change” (49-50). From Woodrow Wilson’s commitment to “preserve ‘white civilisation and its domination of the planet’” in 1917 (46) to Donald Trump’s more recent wielding of “racial degradation” as a tool to create “solidarity among property-owning white men” (139), American history demonstrates that W.E.B. Du Bois, whom Mishra cites regularly in these essays, was entirely correct. If white supremacy is the lifeblood which runs through the veins of both imperialism and capitalism, then the domination of the Earth “for ever and ever,” (53), or absolute property ownership, is the pulsing heart of white supremacy itself (53).
Liberalism is a related “fundamentalist creed,” one that “has shaped our age” in its zealous worship of property ownership above all else (2). Mishra’s title is borrowed from theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who took the “bland fanatics of western civilization” to task in 1957 for their dogmatic belief that the “highly contingent achievements” of their culture should be the “final form and norm of human existence” (1). It is here that liberalism’s dark religious roots begin to show. Mishra notes that the West’s liberal ideas “originated in the Reformation’s stress on individual responsibility,” and were then “shaped to fit the mould of the market freedoms that capitalism would need if it was to thrive,” including, perhaps above all, the “right to private property” (87). Liberalism’s faithful practitioners cling to the dogma of Anglo-American exceptionalism, as confident now as Woodrow Wilson was then that they have been “chosen, and prominently chosen, to show the way to the nations of the world how they shall walk in the paths of liberty” (75). The paths of liberty, it seems, are straight and narrow: plotted and patrolled by the Anglo-American gatekeepers of modern righteousness. “Whatever God exists for America exists for all the world, and none other exists,” wrote Reverend Speer (64). It is capital that is America’s god, and liberalism has usurped Christianity’s place as the modern gospel for the individual, the nation, the world.
Handily, while spreading the gospel of liberty to all nations, Anglo-American imperialism also provided capitalists of the nineteenth century with land and cheap labor, as well as a patriotic means of distracting exploited laborers at home. In Lyman Stewart’s case, funding missionaries to harvest sheaves for Christ in South America also cleared the ground for oil drilling. Mishra tells us that for Cecil Rhodes, the British ur-capitalist who rode the late-nineteenth-century wave of New Imperialism all the way to the diamond mines of South Africa, Britain’s liberal imperialism was a “solution” to a “social problem” because it procured “new lands to settle the surplus population” and “new markets for the goods produced in the factories and mines” (BH 53). Economist J.A. Hobson, who wrote in part to expose Rhodes’s financial control of both the British government and the British press in 1902, wryly remarked that “it had become a ‘commonplace of history’” for governments to use “the glamour of empire-making in order to bemuse the popular mind and divert rising resentment against domestic abuses” (53).
White supremacist nationalism, in other words, provided more than land and cheap labor. Assuming a “racial hierarchy” with “civilised whites” preaching liberal doctrine at the top (131) and non-white “intransigently backward peoples” who needed to be converted to it at the bottom (5), imperialism offered Europeans “a macho language of racial superiority” that could “bolster national and individual self-esteem” (54). In fact, Mishra maintains, World War I was not “a profound rupture with Europe’s own history” (50). Rather, “the extreme, lawless and often gratuitous violence of modern imperialism” – the crusade launched in the name of liberalism’s fundamental truth – had finally “boomeranged on its originators” (52).
In “white people’s histories” (21), the cost of spreading the gospel of liberalism is frequently spun as a small price to pay for the advancement of civilization, and the doctrine of human rights, the part of the creed most often invoked in liberalism’s self-narrated fight against evil, serves as imperialism’s handmaiden (21). Human rights are “prone to appropriation” by the Anglo-American imperialist regime, “framed as indivisible from the spread of free markets and other good things” (165). Mishra notes that ardent nostalgists of nineteenth-century imperialism like Niall Ferguson, the British “evangelist-cum-historian of empire” who coined the term “Anglobalisation” (18), have repackaged the “occupation and subjugation of other people’s territory and culture” as a “benediction” (5) stemming from motives which were “humanitarian as much as economic” (22). But charity is not justice, Mishra reminds us, citing Carl Schmitt’s warning that “whoever invokes humanity” – that “especially useful ideological instrument of imperialist expansion – wants to cheat” (106). In the West, human rights have supplanted socialism, serving as a paltry substitute for what Arundhati Roy once called the “expansive, magnificent concept of justice.” Instead of guarantees for food, housing, education, and work, human rights are a “minimalist request, basically, not to be killed, tortured or unjustly imprisoned” (167).
Human rights also come with strings attached. If you start from a position of assumed equality, you have no one to blame but yourself if you don’t make it. In 1843, sixty-some years before Lyman Stewart conceived the idea for The Fundamentals, English “journalist-cum-crusader” James Wilson started The Economist, a weekly magazine created to “campaign for liberalism” and “serve as a how-to manual for liberal elites” (186). By 1895, Mishra tells us, Woodrow Wilson called The Economist “a sort of financial providence for businessmen on both sides of the Atlantic” (189). Like Stewart, James Wilson’s mission was to evangelize for “pure principles” as the correct mode of living: in his case, the pure principle of profit above all else. “Where the most profit is made, the public is best served,” The Economist smugly declared, and “if the pursuit of self-interest, left equally free for all, does not lead to the general welfare, no system of government can accomplish it” (191-192). Wilson’s response to the Irish famine, “largely caused by free trade,” was to call for “more free trade.” He also asserted that the “common people” should figure out – and pay for – their own education, as they did their own food (191).
In a cruel and convenient paradox, the doctrine of fundamental human equality thus becomes the pacifier used to quiet cries against the hierarchies that persist under liberalism. Here, too, liberalism bears a noticeable resemblance to its ideological ancestor. Christianity claimed to overturn old hierarchies of the ancient world. As the Apostle Paul put it, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (New King James Bible, Gal. 3:28). Bodily hierarchies of race, class, and gender would never matter in Christ’s eyes because each person was neither more nor less than a human soul. Everyone was equal. Of course, the hierarchies didn’t go anywhere. In fact, the burgeoning Christian church doubled down on them while urging those at the bottom to submit peacefully to their earthly fate.
And just as the fundamental tenets of hegemonic Christianity encourage its adherents to work hard and submit to an unjust and unbearable present in hopes of a big payoff in the distant, unknowable future, so too do the fundamental tenets of liberal capitalism. Mishra notes that most citizens are “locked into a fantasy of personal wealth and consumption” (BF 120), lulled by the “many micro-freedoms” of consumerism and travel (101) into a complacent acceptance of the “tiny elite” that “passe[s] off its interests as universal norms” (172).
COVID-19 has taken away those micro-freedoms and unmasked the contradictions at the center of the West’s fundamentalist liberal regime, exposing the similarities between victims within US and British borders and victims outside of them. “Anglo-American self-deceptions, which always exacted a high death toll abroad, from the Irish famine to Iraq, have become mass-murderous at home” (13), and for Mishra, the rising death toll in the Anglo-American West points up the fact that liberalism coerces “all human beings into a single, cruelly stratified space, turning a vast majority into permanent losers” (135). The vast majority of us are dues-paying members of the world’s proletariat, exploited by a global ruling class, the “bumbling chumocrat” parasites (185) bent on satisfying their “craving for universal mastery and control” (111). Even Barack Obama “deepened the juridical legacy of white supremacy,” Mishra argues (156). While in office, Obama “resembled not so much the permanently alienated outsider as the mixed-race child of imperialism,” expanding “covert operations and air strikes deep into Africa” and investing his own executive office “with the lethal power to execute anyone, even American citizens, anywhere in the world” (151). For those of us on the losing end of liberal empire, even whiteness and Anglo-American exceptionalism can offer no protection. The call is coming from inside the house.
None of this comes as any surprise to “critics of Western moral rhetoric in the Global South,” long subjected to the hypocrisies of the liberal mission (167). Though Mishra marshals a wide range of white Western writers and thinkers to illustrate his point, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Saul Bellow, George Orwell, and Norman Mailer, he foregrounds the observations of African and Asian intellectuals who have long understood that “peace in the metropolitan West depended too much on outsourcing war to the colonies” (57). In the nineteenth century, Muhammad Abduh, Egypt’s grand mufti and a moderate Islamic scholar, told the British, “Your liberalness we see plainly is only for yourselves, and your sympathy with us is that of the wolf for the lamb which he designs to eat” (82). During a US lecture tour in 1930, Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore wryly informed his American audience, “a great portion of the world suffers from your civilisation” (81). For Gandhi, democracy was “merely ‘nominal’ in the West,” and it “could have no reality so long as ‘the wide gulf between the rich and the hungry millions persists’” (14). And in India today, Mishra points out, despite its status as the most democratic of the West’s imperial stepchildren, the kids are still not alright.
Age of Anger, Mishra’s previous book, examined the rage of the world’s stragglers, fueled by their lack of control in the face of capitalism’s intertwined global systems of desire and exploitation. These first “latecomers to modernity” (31), Mishra writes, citizens throughout east, central, and southern Europe as well as the people victimized by European colonization on other continents, lived in ressentiment, an “existential resentment of other people’s being, caused by an intense mix of envy and sense of humiliation and powerlessness” (14). Mishra argues that this collective disposition resulted in the “global turn to authoritarianism and toxic forms of chauvinism” that culminated in two world wars (14). The cruel contradictions of free-market modernity caused rage in the victims of Western imperialism then, as it does in the victims of Western neoliberalism now.
The imperial wizard of white supremacy still operates the mechanical god of free-market capitalism from behind the curtain. Black and Latinx Americans are more likely to be infected with COVID than white Americans and twice as likely to die from it, according to the CDC. The reason for this racial discrepancy is racial capitalism. The people most likely to get the coronavirus are the people who are most likely to be exposed to it because they live in crowded apartments or multigenerational homes. This is the historical legacy of redlining and slavery and an indication of the ever-increasing gap between those who can afford to buy property in America and those who cannot. They are also the people most likely to take public transport to frontline service or production jobs which cannot be done from the remote safety of a home office. While only one in four white workers hold such jobs, according to 2018 census data, 43 percent of Black and Latinx workers are employed in them, often returning home to neighborhoods without access to equitable healthcare resources, even if they have the insurance to pay for it. What “has become clearer since the coronavirus crisis,” then, according to Mishra, is that modern democracies have been “lurching towards moral and ideological bankruptcy” for decades while their BIPOC citizens die (BF 14).
But Bland Fanatics also offers a glimmer of hope. The “fortunes of socialism have yet again risen as the structural malaise of capitalism is diagnosed more and more clearly by its victims,” particularly by the young, and “conscious collective intervention rather than the invisible hand” of a divine will “appears to be the only viable solution” to an environmental apocalypse of biblical proportions (171-172). The path forward, requiring us to transcend the “parochial idioms” of Western cultures, has already been forged in the “move from the local to the global” by “all the major black writers and activists of the Atlantic West.” Thinkers like C.L.R. James and Stuart Hall analyzed “the way in which the processes of capital accumulation and racial domination had become inseparable,” a form of imperialist structural violence that played an integral role in “the making of the modern world” (154-155). The “peculiar varieties of liberal thought in Asia reveal the constraints on the political choices open to most of the world’s population,” and liberalism’s “contingent nature” in the face of these restrictions (98), but they also developed a liberalism centered on “ethical conduct” and “the role of community” rather than rational self-interest (91).
Mishra’s particular strength lies in his ability to make global connections such as these relevant to a relentlessly naval-gazing West, a move that has the potential to inaugurate fresh modes of humanist inquiry in the West as well. To date, “the most influential writers and journalists in the US have provincialised their aspiration for a just society” (155), and the “evasions and suppressions” of imperial history have “resulted, over time, in a massive store of defective knowledge about the West and the non-West alike” (5). Mishra calls instead for a deeper examination “of the history – and stubborn persistence – of racist imperialism” (59).
In the cycle of human history, the time again seems dangerously ripe for such a reckoning. “Our complex task,” Mishra exhorts, is “to identify the ways” the “past has infiltrated our present, and how it threatens to shape the future” (50). As the nineteenth century drew to its close and Lyman Stewart forged his twin empires of capitalism and Christianity in America, a renewed lust for imperial power took hold in England when the British saw their own liberal empire begin to slip away. The US neoliberal empire now faces the same fate. Its dying screams of white nationalism bear a striking resemblance to the jingoistic crusading cries that culminated in World War I. In Mishra’s accounting, the First World War was less a “battle between democracy and authoritarianism” than it was a “bridge connecting Europe’s past of imperial violence to its future of merciless fratricide” (57).
It seems we’re repeating the mistakes of the nineteenth century, moving toward the third global war which will result from the depredations and atrocities of the Anglo-American fundamentalist crusade for capitalist modernity. “The terminal weakening of white civilisation’s domination, and the assertiveness of previously sullen peoples,” has once again “released some very old tendencies and traits in the West” (50). In his 1902 study of Imperialism, J.A. Hobson pointed out that though Christianity was deemed exceptional for “transcending all limits of caste, race, or nationality, and asserting the doctrine of human brotherhood in its widest sense,” its “most distinctive” attributes were actually the “tribal God, the special race mission, the dominion of hate and forcible revenge” (47). The religion of liberalism makes the same claims while producing the same results. But its Western disciples cannot cling to their traditional authorities if they wish for liberalism to survive. They must listen to what Mishra calls “mankind’s many other conversations with itself, especially those outside the West” (91), leaving the fundamentals of white supremacy, capitalist atomization, and the domination of the Earth behind in order to resurrect a “liberalism for the people, not just for their networked rulers” (199).
Coates, Ta-Nehisi. “The Case for Reparations.” The Atlantic, June 2014, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/. Accessed 2 July 2021.
Hobson, J.A. Imperialism: A Study. James Nisbet, 1902.
Mishra, Pankaj. Age of Anger: A History of the Present. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2017.
—————–. Bland Fanatics: Liberals, Race, and Empire. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2020.
Opel Jr., Richard A. et al. “The Fullest Look Yet at the Racial Inequity of Coronavirus. New York Times, 5 July 2020, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/05/us/coronavirus-latinos-african-americans-cdc-data.html. Accessed 2 July 2021.
Ray, Rashawn. “Why are Blacks Dying at Higher Rates from COVID-19?” Brookings, 19 April 2020, www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/04/09/why-are-blacks-dying-at-higher-rates-from-covid-19/. Accessed 2 July 2021.
“Risk for COVID-19 Infection, Hospitalization, and Death by Race/Ethnicity.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-race-ethnicity.html, updated 7 June 7 2021. Accessed 2 July 2021.
Speer, Robert E. “Foreign Missions or World-Wide Evangelicalism.” In The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth, vol. XII, Testimony Publishing, 1914, pp. 64-84, HathiTrust, hdl.handle.net/2027/pst.000003810712.
The Bible. King James Version, Thomas Nelson, 1989.
Katherine Judith Anderson is an assistant professor of English at Western Washington University and the author of Twisted Words: Torture and Liberalism in Imperial Britain, forthcoming in April 2022 from the Ohio State University Press. She has written reviews for Public Books and The Critical Flame. | politics |
https://reecollab.com/role-of-government-regulations-in-e-waste-management/ | 2024-04-14T22:47:22 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-18/segments/1712296816904.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20240414223349-20240415013349-00205.warc.gz | 0.886305 | 1,083 | CC-MAIN-2024-18 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2024-18__0__42628181 | en | Role Of Government Regulations In E-waste Management
Electronic waste, or e-waste, is a major concern worldwide due to its environmental and health implications. Improper disposal of electronic waste can lead to soil, water, and air contamination. This complex issue demands multifaceted solutions, and the government plays an important role in addressing this issue through policies and regulations to manage e-waste sustainably. These regulations typically encompass various aspects of e-waste management, including collection, transportation, recycling, and disposal. In this blog, we’ll discuss the key regulations, their effectiveness, and potential improvements.
Significance Of Government Policies
Governmental policies are essential in driving positive change and creating a more sustainable approach to managing electronic waste. These policies are designed to regulate the lifecycle of electronic products, from manufacturing to disposal, to minimize the environmental impact and ensure public health and safety. Effective government policies can also encourage innovation in the electronic waste management industry by incentivizing research and development of new recycling technologies. By establishing frameworks for collection, recycling, and disposal, governments worldwide seek to create a sustainable approach to managing e-waste.
Key Regulations in E-Waste Management:
WEEE Directive (EU): The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive in the European Union aims to minimize the environmental impact of e-waste. It mandates electronic product collection, recycling, and proper disposal, holding manufacturers responsible for their products’ entire lifecycle.
Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) in the United States: The RCRA provides a framework for managing hazardous waste, including e-waste. It allows the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) authority to regulate the treatment, storage, and disposal of hazardous waste, with specific provisions for electronic waste.
Basel Convention: The Basel Convention is an international treaty that governs the movement of hazardous wastes across borders, including e-waste. It outlines guidelines for the environmentally friendly management of hazardous wastes, aiming to reduce their production and promote sustainable alternatives.
Challenges in E-Waste Management Policies:
Despite the importance of governmental policies, several challenges hinder their effectiveness in managing e-waste:
Lack of Awareness: Plenty of consumers are unaware of the environmental impact of improper e-waste disposal or the existence of e-waste recycling programs.
Enforcement Issues: Weak enforcement of regulations can lead to non-compliance by businesses and individuals, undermining the effectiveness of e-waste management policies.
Globalization of E-Waste: The globalization of electronics manufacturing and trade has made it challenging to regulate e-waste effectively, as products are often manufactured in one country and discarded in another.
Informal Recycling Sector: In many regions, informal recycling sectors operate outside regulatory frameworks, posing environmental and health risks to workers and communities.
Impact of Governmental Policies on E-Waste Management:
Despite these challenges, governmental policies have made significant strides in managing e-waste:
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Programs: Many countries have implemented EPR programs, wherein manufacturers are responsible for managing the end-of-life disposal and recycling of their products. This incentivizes eco-design and promotes the development of recycling infrastructure.
Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directives: The European Union’s WEEE directives establish targets for the collection, recycling, and recovery of e-waste, contributing to a significant reduction in landfilling and illegal dumping.
Export Restrictions: Some countries have put restrictions on the export of e-waste to developing countries with stringent environmental regulations, curbing the practice of e-waste dumping.
Financial Incentives: Governments may offer financial incentives or tax benefits to encourage proper e-waste disposal and recycling, fostering a circular economy.
Effective Ways To Improve E-Waste Management Governmental Policies:
Numerous strategies can be implemented to improve the effectiveness of governmental policies in e-waste management:
Education and Awareness Campaigns: Governments should invest in educational initiatives to enhance awareness about the importance of proper e-waste disposal and the availability of recycling programs.
Strengthening Enforcement: Governments must strengthen enforcement mechanisms to ensure compliance with e-waste regulations, including penalties for non-compliance.
Collaboration and Cooperation: International cooperation is essential to address the global nature of e-waste management effectively. Governments, businesses, and non-governmental organizations should collaborate to develop standardized regulations and improve recycling infrastructure.
Innovation and Research: Governments should invest in research and development to promote innovative technologies for e-waste recycling and resource recovery.
Government regulations are crucial in tackling e-waste management challenges and promoting sustainable practices. Through effective implementation and enforcement, governments can encourage responsible product design, improve recycling infrastructure, and increase public awareness to reduce the environmental and health effects of e-waste. Collaboration among governments, industry players, and the public is vital to establishing a circular economy for electronic devices and securing a sustainable future for future generations.
Read Our More Blogs:
How Do You Choose The Right E-Waste Management Partner For Your Business?
5 Common Mistakes Businesses Make with E-Waste Disposal | politics |
https://rav.org.rs/eib-podrska-zemljama-zapadnog-balkana-u-realizaciji-projekata-iz-zelene-agende-eu/ | 2022-01-20T12:05:23 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-05/segments/1642320301737.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20220120100127-20220120130127-00247.warc.gz | 0.904254 | 298 | CC-MAIN-2022-05 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2022-05__0__157121422 | en | The EU bank welcomes commitments made by the Western Balkans countries to roll out the Green Agenda and develop a common regional market. It prioritizes investments in the areas of connectivity and a green and digital-oriented transition of the region towards knowledge-based, inclusive, and sustainable economies.
As announced at the Berlin Process Western Balkans Summit held on 10 November, the European Investment Bank (EIB) welcomes the commitments made by the leaders of the Western Balkan countries to support the implementation of the European Commission’s Economic and Investment Plan. It prioritizes investments in the areas of connectivity and a green and digital-oriented transition of the region towards knowledge-based, inclusive, and sustainable economies.
The participants at the summit – including the EIB – declared their readiness to work on the Green Agenda and a common regional market. As the EU climate bank, the EIB will provide financial and technical support for investments that enable a green transition in the region. This includes support for the gradual introduction of a renewable, diverse and sustainable energy supply for the Western Balkans aiming for a carbon-neutral region in the long term. These initiatives will also support the European Commission`s Green Deal and action to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050.
The EU bank will also prioritize investments in the digital transformation of the Western Balkans. The introduction of smart, digital-based technologies will encourage sustainable and inclusive growth of both economic and human resources in the region. | politics |
http://www.sandovalcounty.com/news/298/24/Don-Chapman-is-elected-new-commission-chair | 2017-04-25T20:15:14 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-17/segments/1492917120878.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20170423031200-00527-ip-10-145-167-34.ec2.internal.warc.gz | 0.966846 | 202 | CC-MAIN-2017-17 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2017-17__0__111556749 | en | District 3 Commissioner Don G. Chapman has been elected chairman of the Sandoval County Board of Commissioners.
The second-term commissioner representing a district that spans most of northern Rio Rancho was selected for the leadership position by a unanimous vote at the commission’s opening meeting for the year on January 12, 2017. His term as chairman will run for one year.
As chairman, Commissioner Chapman will preside over commission meetings and work with the county manager in setting the agenda for those meetings.
Commissioner Chapman assumes the chairmanship as the commission welcomes three new members. District 2 Commissioner Jay Block, District 4 Commissioner Dave Heil and District 5 Commissioner Ken Eichwald all began their first terms this January, following their elections last November.
“I’m excited about the possibilities for this new commission,” Commissioner Chapman said shortly after the meeting in which he was named chairman. “Everything’s on the table as we look to move the county forward.” | politics |
https://online.gsu.edu/program/political-science-ma-professional-politics/ | 2024-02-24T03:01:42 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947474482.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20240224012912-20240224042912-00836.warc.gz | 0.938168 | 153 | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2024-10__0__61892965 | en | Applicants need to have received a B.A./B.S. degree. The Department of Political Science asks applicants to submit the following:
- Complete Online Graduate Application
- Acceptable GRE scores (students who have completed degrees in political science or a closely related field with a GPA of 3.5 or better can receive a waiver.)
- Two letters of recommendation from persons who can authoritatively comment on your academic abilities
- Transcripts from all graduate and/or undergraduate institutions attended
- Statement of your research interests and how Georgia State University's Political Science Department will help you meet your career and educational goals
- Writing sample
The department seeks applicants with a history of strong academic achievement, clear interests and potential for excellence at the graduate level. | politics |
http://www.nancygray.co/ | 2014-03-09T18:11:05 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-10/segments/1394010076008/warc/CC-MAIN-20140305090116-00053-ip-10-183-142-35.ec2.internal.warc.gz | 0.964374 | 1,190 | CC-MAIN-2014-10 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2014-10__0__4389646 | en | Obama- Housing Market Is Beginning to Heal…
Obama: 'Housing Market Is Beginning to Heal...Home Prices Rising at Fastest Pace in 7 Years'
By Zoe Eisenberg
Shutting Down Fannie, Freddie Part of President’s Plan to Keep Housing Humming; Announces Mortgage Finance Overhaul at Phoenix Event
With the real estate industry soaring hotter than an Arizona August, President Barack Obama visited Phoenix Tuesday to address the recovering state of the U.S. housing market.
The president, speaking to a crowd of about 1,000 at Desert Vista High School in Phoenix’s Ahwatukee area, said owning a home remains the cornerstone of the American Dream, but reforms are needed to make it possible for the middle class. The president outlined steps his administration has taken to shore up the housing market and added steps that would overhaul the nation’s mortgage finance system, including winding down the government-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a plan that has bipartisan support on Capitol Hill.
"For too long, these companies were allowed to make big profits buying mortgages, knowing that if their bets went bad, taxpayers would be left holding the bag," Obama said, also noting, "We're not where we need to be yet. We have to help first-time home buyers. We've got to turn the page on this boom-bust housing cycle that got us into this mess in the first place."
Obama said action needs to be taken to "make it easier for qualified buyers" to get houses. These included making the popular 30-year-fixed mortgage available to a larger pool of borrowers; he also tied in his plan for immigration reform, which he said will help the housing market and many aspects of the economy.
In a statement released late Tuesday afternoon, NAR President Gary Thomas lauded the president’s remarks, citing their alignment with the trade group’s own outline for housing finance reform.
“These principles closely mirror the outline presented by the National Association of Realtors® to the administration in early 2011,” Thomas stated. “NAR believes these principles will contribute to the long-term stability of our nation’s housing market and provide consumers with access to affordable mortgage credit, even during economic downturns.
“As the leading advocate for homeowners, Realtors® remain steadfast in our efforts to preserve the government guarantee in any restructured secondary mortgage market to ensure the continued availability of safe, reliable mortgages such as 30-and 15-year fixed-rate loans, Thomas continued. “In a fully privatized market, many middle class Americans and individuals on fixed incomes would be unable to access affordable credit or be forced into adjustable-rate mortgages pinned to interest rate variations after a limited term. These homeowners, faced with potentially dramatic rate increases, could experience payment shocks that rattle their financial stability, which also impacts mortgage markets and the greater economy.”
Obama chose Phoenix for the location of his speech, as it was one of the markets hit the hardest in the real estate drought, and is currently on a rapid rebound. This made the city an ideal stopping point for the president to publicly map out his plan for keeping the housing market on the upswing and leading the nation further into economic recovery.
Since 2011, when Phoenix' market crashed hard, the city has made large strides toward recovery. As of June 2013, according to a recent CoreLogic report, Arizona was one of the five states with the highest home price appreciation, landing at 16.2 percent. The Phoenix, Mesa and Glendale markets came in at a 17.1 percent increase for single family homes, including distressed property, and 14.7 percent excluding distressed. Home prices nationwide, including distressed sales, increased an encouraging 11.9 percent on a year-over-year basis in June 2013 compared to June 2012, according to the June CoreLogic Home Price Index (HPI®) report. This change represents the 16th consecutive monthly increase in home prices nationally.
According to an analysis by Mike Orr, a researcher at Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business, the median single-family-home price in Arizona is up an incredible 25.9 percent from last year.
Following the president's remarks, Heather MacLean, a real estate agent with Arizona-based Realty Executives, said the Phoenix market has never been better. "We are seeing numbers in some areas that actually rival numbers that were seen in the mid 2000's," MacLean said. "Our inventory remains low and the buyers often times are competing with numerous offers on good properties. Buyers remain optimistic, sellers continue to be pleasantly surprised by the change of market and banks are back in the business of lending. All of that together makes an extremely healthy market place."
Tim Irvine, another real estate agent with Realty Executives in Ahwatukee, agreed commenting, "We continue to have a strong seller's market with 16,800 active listings, but this number has increased 5.7% in the last month, primarily due to higher interest rates and our typical late summer slowdown for July & August.
"The median sales price for all resale properties in July is projected to be $182,500 which would be a 1.4% increase over June ($180k). More specifically for Ahwatukee, the affluent Phoenix suburb where The president directed his message to the middle class today, the three month, rolling average sales price is up 2.0% to $312,845 for July."
To hear the president’s full speech on the housing market made in Phoenix Tuesday, click here.
Stay tuned to RISMedia for continuing coverage of the housing market recovery.
RISMedia Online Managing Editor Beth McGuire contributed to this report. | politics |
http://davecraig.org/ | 2020-05-28T11:39:41 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-24/segments/1590347396089.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20200528104652-20200528134652-00166.warc.gz | 0.974926 | 294 | CC-MAIN-2020-24 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2020-24__0__99950421 | en | "Dave Craig has been a strong leader in the State Assembly on issues ranging from defending the unborn to protecting the free market to guarding the Bill of Rights. I know Dave Craig will be a strong conservative leader in the State Senate, which is why I am endorsing his candidacy for the 28th Senate District, and urge the voters in the 28th District to support him as well."
- Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner
"Dave Craig is a leader, a friend, and a committed conservative. Southern Wisconsin needs a passionate defender of life who protects our founding principles and who believes in growing our economy - and that is precisely who Dave Craig is. He has a proven track record of getting things done in Madison. I've known Dave for a long time, and we need leaders like him in the State Senate. I'm proud to endorse him and support his campaign."
- Former Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan
"I believe that that government is best which governs least. I believe that taxing of one’s income and regulation of one’s actions are inherently restrictive to liberty. I believe that elected officials need to understand that when they tax, they take away liberty and when they regulate, they take away freedom. All elected officials must understand that the power to tax and regulate should only be done within the bounds of the Constitutions of the United States and the State of Wisconsin and should be done so sparingly."
- Dave Craig | politics |
http://www.tbk.org/shabbat-service-bernstein-shabbat-dinner | 2019-11-20T19:00:21 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-47/segments/1573496670601.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20191120185646-20191120213646-00013.warc.gz | 0.92716 | 374 | CC-MAIN-2019-47 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2019-47__0__78780827 | en | The Rabbi Philip S. Bernstein Society Invites You to Attend the Annual Bernstein Society Shabbat Service & Dinner
Friday, October 25 at 6:00 pm
Topic: “The Decline of Civility in Public Life”
6:00 pm Shabbat Service with Guest Speaker Joseph R. Fornieri
7:15 pm Bernstein Society Annual Meeting & Dinner
Joseph R. Fornieri is an American political historian and Professor of Political Science at RIT. Dr. Fornieri is an expert on the political ideology of Abraham Lincoln and has authored several books including "Abraham Lincoln, Philosopher Statesmen" (2014), "The Language of Liberty: The Political Speeches and Writings of Abraham Lincoln" (2008), and "Abraham Lincoln’s Political Faith" (2005). He has also co-edited, with Dr. Kenneth Deutsch, "An Invitation to Political Thought" (2007). In 2009, he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to teach "First Amendment and American Political Thought" in Prague, Czech Republic. In 2010, he was presented the Eisenhart Award for Outstanding Teaching for Tenured Faculty. He teaches courses on American Politics, Rhetoric, and Constitutional Rights. He will be discussing the Decline of Civility in Public Life.
There is a charge of $15 for dinner for Bernstein Society members. Dinner is also open to TBK congregants and the public at a cost of $20 per person. RSVP no later than October 15th to Terri Richardson at [email protected] 244-7060.
The Bernstein Society fosters the presentation of topics of interest to the community and the congregation in memory of Rabbi Bernstein. The Society welcomes new members. Please contact Linda Mendelson at [email protected] for more information. | politics |
https://www.ent-redefined.org/no-payment-of-n75000-to-former-corps-members-nysc-read-why/ | 2020-04-08T23:39:43 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585371826355.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20200408233313-20200409023813-00312.warc.gz | 0.945199 | 216 | CC-MAIN-2020-16 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2020-16__0__160140804 | en | No Payment Of N75,000 To Former Corps Members – NYSC | READ WHY
This was made known by the NYSC in a press statement on Saturday.
The agency said a blog called “Safe Job” and “Vanguard News”, cited a purported passage of bill on payment of stipends to ex-Corps members by the Senate, and published information claiming that the NYSC Director-General had launched a portal for the payment of the said stipends.
“NYSC Management wishes to state that the information is not only false, but also misleading; and should, therefore, be disregarded,” the statement said.
“We further wish to inform our esteemed stakeholders that the so-called “NYSC Online” is NOT the official Facebook page of the National Youth Service Corps.
“For the avoidance of doubt, authentic information from the NYSC Scheme can be accessed through our official Facebook page with the following link www.facebook.com/officialnysc,’ the agency concluded. | politics |
http://yourdailythought.info/america-is-giving-away-the-30-billion-medical-marijuana-industry/ | 2018-08-22T00:03:06 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-34/segments/1534221219197.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20180821230258-20180822010258-00323.warc.gz | 0.966922 | 1,351 | CC-MAIN-2018-34 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2018-34__0__163201616 | en | Lyle Craker is an unlikely advocate for any political cause, let alone one as touchy as marijuana law, and that’s precisely why Rick Doblin sought him out almost two decades ago. Craker, Doblin likes to say, is the perfect flag bearer for the cause of medical marijuana production—not remotely controversial and thus the ideal partner in a long and frustrating effort to loosen the Drug Enforcement Administration’s chokehold on cannabis research. There are no counterculture skeletons in Craker’s closet; only dirty boots and botany books. He’s never smoked pot in his life, nor has he tasted liquor. “I have Coca-Cola every once in a while,” says the quiet, white-haired Craker, from a rolling chair in his basement office at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he’s served as a professor in the Stockbridge School of Agriculture since 1967, specializing in medicinal and aromatic plants. He and his students do things such as subject basil plants to high temperatures to study the effects of climate change on what plant people call the constituents, or active elements.
Craker first applied for a license to grow marijuana for medicinal research in 2001, at the urging of Doblin, the founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies(MAPS), a nonprofit that advocates for research on therapeutic uses for LSD, MDMA (aka Ecstasy), marijuana, and other psychedelic drugs. Doblin, who has a doctorate in public policy, makes no secret of his own prior drug use. He’s been lobbying since the 1980s for federal approval for clinical research trials on various psychedelics, and he saw marijuana as both a promising potential medicine and an important front in the public-relations war. Since 1970 marijuana has been a DEA Schedule I substance, meaning that in the view of the federal government, it’s as dangerous as LSD, heroin, and Ecstasy, and has “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”
By that definition, pot—now legal for medicinal use by prescription in 29 states and for recreational use in eight—is more dangerous and less efficacious in the federal government’s estimation than cocaine, oxycodone, or methamphetamine, all of which are classified Schedule II. Scientists and physicians are free to apply to the Food and Drug Administrationand DEA for trials on Schedule I substances, and there are labs with licenses to produce LSD and Ecstasy for that purpose, but anyone who seeks to do FDA-approved research with marijuana is forced to obtain the plants from a single source: Uncle Sam. Specifically, since 1968 the DEA has allowed only one facility to legally cultivate marijuana for research studies, on a 10-acre plot at the University of Mississippi, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and managed by the Ole Miss School of Pharmacy.
The NIDA license, Doblin says, is a “monopoly” on the supply and has starved legitimate research toward understanding cannabinoids, terpenes, and other constituents of marijuana that seem to quell pain, stimulate hunger, and perhaps even fight cancer. Twice in the late 1990s, Doblin provided funding, PR, and lobbying support for physicians who wanted to study marijuana—one sought a treatment for AIDS-related wasting syndrome, the other wanted to see if it helped migraines—and was so frustrated by the experience that he vowed to break the monopoly. That’s what led him to Craker.
In June 2001, Craker filed an application for a license to cultivate “research-grade” marijuana at UMass, with the goal of staging FDA-approved studies. Six months later he was told his application had been lost. He reapplied in 2002 and then, after an additional two years of no action, sued the DEA, backed by MAPS. By this point, both U.S. senators from Massachusetts had publicly supported his application, and a federal court of appeals ordered the DEA to respond, which it finally did, denying the application in 2004.
Craker appealed that decision with backing from a powerful bench of allies, including 40 members of Congress, and finally, in February 2007, a DEA administrative law judge ruled that his application for a license should be granted. The decision was not binding, however; it was merely a recommendation to the DEA leadership. Almost two years later, in the last week of the Bush administration, the application was rejected. Craker threw up his hands. He firmly believed marijuana should be more widely grown and studied, but he’d lost any hope that it would happen in his lifetime. And he had basil to attend to.
Then, in August 2016, during the final months of the Obama presidency, the DEA reversed course. It announced that, for the first time in a half-century, it would grant new licenses.
Doblin, who has seemingly endless supplies of optimism and enthusiasm, convinced the professor there was hope—again. So Craker submitted paperwork, again, along with 25 other groups. The university’s provost co-signed his application, and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) wrote a letter to the DEA in support of his effort.
He’s still waiting to hear back. “I’m never gonna get the license,” Craker says.
Pessimism isn’t surprising from a man who’s been making a reasonable case for 17 years to no avail. Studies around the world have shown that marijuana has considerable promise as a medicine. Craker says he spoke late last year at a hospital in New Hampshire where certain cannabinoids were shown to facilitate healing in brain-damaged mice. “And I thought, ‘If cannabinoids could do that, let’s put them in medicines!’ ” He sighs. “We can’t do the research.”
Another sigh. “I’m naive about a lot about things,” he says. “But it seems to me that we should be looking at cannabis. I mean, if it’s going to kill people, let’s know that and get rid of it. If it’s going to help people, let’s know that and expand on it. … But there’s just something wrong with the DEA. I don’t know what else to say. … Somehow, marijuana’s got a bad name. And it’s tough to let go of.” | politics |
http://www.maidewang.net/SIE/newsevents/featurednews/3a36a963af5b464fa830a08b20b5b65d.htm | 2022-10-02T23:20:58 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337360.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002212623-20221003002623-00762.warc.gz | 0.970345 | 934 | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2022-40__0__35361979 | en | Young people urged to forge ahead on path of rejuvenation of Chinese nation
President Xi Jinping has put forward a new vision for the Communist Youth League of China, calling on the youth movement to better unite, organize and serve young people and encouraging the nation's youth to dedicate their wisdom and efforts to national rejuvenation.
In a speech at a ceremony in Beijing on Tuesday marking the 100th anniversary of the CYLC, Xi urged the nation's young people to forge ahead on the path of national rejuvenation, saying that young people in the new era were born at the right time and have great responsibilities.
The stage for young people to put their abilities to good use is more than broad, and the prospects for them to realize their dreams are more than bright, said Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission.
He urged the Youth League to unite and lead its members, totaling 73.7 million by the end of last year and between the ages of 14 and 28, in firming up their ideals, shouldering their duties, enduring hardships and being ready to fight for national rejuvenation with strong motivation and creativity.
Young people from a wide range of backgrounds accounted for the majority of attendees at the celebratory meeting in the Great Hall of the People, including some representatives of the Chinese Young Pioneers, whose members are age 6 to 14. Attendees also included representatives of key national organizations.
The founding of the Youth League on May 5, 1922, was of monumental significance in the history of the Chinese revolution and the youth movement, said Xi.
Over the past 100 years, the Youth League has always stood and fought alongside the Party, and it has proved to be a worthy pioneer of China's youth movement, a faithful assistant of the CPC and its reliable reserve, he said.
He summed up the Youth League's key experiences over the past century, including adherence to the Party's leadership, upholding firm ideals and beliefs, dedication to national rejuvenation and remaining firmly rooted among the nation's young people.
The president set out his expectations for the Youth League in the new era, saying that it should always serve as a political school that leads the ideological progress of China's young people.
He highlighted the need for steadfast ideals and beliefs among the younger generation, noting that young people in the new era, while being more confident and adept in self-improvement and analytical thinking, face influences from various ideological trends.
It is inevitable for them to be confronted with confusion in various aspects, and thus they would require more in-depth and patient education and guidance, he said.
He called for the Youth League to help young people to build up their trust in the Party, confidence in socialism with Chinese characteristics and belief in Marxism.
The organization should always serve as a pioneering force leading the younger generation to remain enterprising, he said, adding that the cause of the Party and the people cannot move forward without dedication from generations of aspiring youth.
"Young people are the most vigorous, enterprising and least conservative group in society, and they have in them infinite force to make the objective world better and promote social progress," he said.
The president encouraged the Youth League to lead its members in responding to the call of the Party and the people, bearing in mind major issues of the nation, shouldering their missions and tasks and living up to their potential.
The CYLC must assume the political duty of consolidating and expanding the Party's popular base among the younger generation, and provide concrete help to young people so that they can feel that the Party is always by their side.
He underlined the necessity for the Youth League to step up self-reform, including measures to strengthen its political consciousness, become more advanced and better represent the people.
Xi encouraged members of the Youth League to accept political training, step up their political development, pursue political progress and align themselves with the goal of becoming qualified Party members.
History and reality have suggested that the CPC has always been a party that has maintained its vigor and is worthy of the trust and support of young people, he said.
"Young people are like the rising sun, constantly accumulating energy," he said, adding that "the hopes of the Party and the country are pinned on the youth".
The meeting was also addressed by He Junke, first secretary of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the CYLC, who said that Youth League members can always be found on the front line of poverty alleviation, scientific and technological innovation, fighting COVID and disaster relief. | politics |
https://forumdelamerbizerte.com/le-forum-mondial-de-la-mer-bizerte-2021/?lang=en | 2023-05-29T23:13:05 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224644913.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20230529205037-20230529235037-00605.warc.gz | 0.920337 | 759 | CC-MAIN-2023-23 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2023-23__0__20947069 | en | « In Bizerte, faced with the degradation of marine ecosystems, decision-makers and experts are committed to an exemplary Mediterranean by 2030. »
The 4th edition of the Forum Mondial de la Mer; produced by La Saison Bleue, was held the 24th and 25th September in Bizerte, Tunisia.
This edition was a great success with more than 18,000 people connected and 400 face-to-face participants. The only international event dedicated to the maritime issues in the South of the Mediterranean, the World Forum of the Sea-Bizerte is thus, year after year, the place of all expressions, for both the countries bordering the Mediterranean and the African continent of which Bizerte is the northernmost point.
Following the example of previous sessions, the 4th edition of the World Forum of the Sea-Bizerte was chaired by Pascal LAMY, bearer of the Starfish Mission to the European Commission.
The 2021 Forum brought together, during two days of exchanges and meetings with the general public, a group of experts and high-level stakeholders, of politicians and emblematic figures in the field of the environment such as H.S.H the Prince ALBERT II of Monaco, Annick GIRARDIN, Minister of the Sea (France), Ricardo SERRAO SANTOS, Minister of the Sea (Portugal), and Nasser KAMEL, Secretary-General of the Union for the Mediterranean, Françoise GAILL, oceanographer …
Several Tunisian ministers actively participated in the forum, such as Habib AMMAR, Minister of Tourism and Crafts, Kamel DOUKH, Minister of Local Affairs and Environment, Asma SHIRI LAABIDI, Secretary General of Maritime Affairs…
This edition was also the occasion to present the winner of the Amwej project as well as the program «Ghodwa, jeunesse et environnement».
Moreover, for three days, the Old Port of Bizerte was animated by festivities, organized by the municipality of Bizerte, a collective of local associations as well as by Envirofest.
Taking up the recommendations of the Plan for an exemplary Mediterranean in 2030, Pascal LAMY, President, said at the conclusion of the Forum: “Bizerte is facing a growing and very worrying degradation of the marine ecosystems of the Mediterranean, we ask national and regional policy makers, international bodies and all actors of the sustainable blue economy to take swift and consistent measures on the protection of biodiversity to the tune of 30% of the maritime space by 2030, of which 10% in strong protection, the development of marine areas protected, the fight against plastic pollution and overfishing, as well as the blueing and decarbonization of maritime transport.”
Rym BENZINA, President of La Saison Bleue, concluded the debates: “In four editions, Le Forum Mondial de la Mer – Bizerte has mobilized not only the civil society and the most renowned scientists but also the elected representatives of the Mediterranean coast. This is the whole point of the launch during the 2021 edition of the initiative of the PARLIAMENT OF THE SEA which sets itself the objective of bringing together a hundred elected officials from the twenty countries sharing the Mediterranean for a sharing of experiences and solutions”.
The 5th edition of the Mer-Bizerte World Forum will take place at the end of September 2022.
To re live this edition, you can find the replay on the website: http://forumdelamerbizerte.com/ | politics |
http://liberal-arts.wright.edu/political-science | 2013-12-05T10:05:43 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-48/segments/1386163043499/warc/CC-MAIN-20131204131723-00055-ip-10-33-133-15.ec2.internal.warc.gz | 0.977142 | 145 | CC-MAIN-2013-48 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2013-48__0__96551946 | en | We educate our students to think critically and analytically about why government exists, how it changes, who controls it and how people behave in their relationship to the State. Our goal is to graduate students who are globally aware and are politically active as well-informed citizens that embrace their civic responsibilities. We pursue these goals in lectures, seminars, internships in local, state and federal government, and active learning opportunities such as Moot Court and Model UN.
I think that for a lot of people, going through the gate on Pennsylvania Avenue is when the significance of their work first hits them.
December Green, director of international studies at Wright State, was named recipient of the university’s 2013 International Education Award. | politics |
https://www.staffordshire.police.uk/news/staffordshire/news/2020/april/blog-from-chief-constable-gareth-morgan/ | 2023-11-28T18:47:28 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-50/segments/1700679099942.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20231128183116-20231128213116-00512.warc.gz | 0.967602 | 763 | CC-MAIN-2023-50 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2023-50__0__95399363 | en | Last night’s announcement that lockdown restrictions will continue for at least another three weeks was not unexpected and is absolutely necessary as we continue to work together to fight Covid-19 and save lives. It’s clear that we risk wasting all of the sacrifices and progress that has been made so far if the measures are relaxed too soon.
Here in Staffordshire, I want to say a big thank you to the vast majority of people who have been following the Government guidelines over the last three weeks. Your response has been extraordinarily positive and is helping to save lives and support carers looking after those in our local hospitals and the community – thank you and let’s keep going. We all recognise that this is a difficult time but it is truly a community effort and each one of us has a vital part to play.
Since the restrictions came into effect, Staffordshire Police officers and staff have engaged with thousands of people across the county and, in most cases, people have been quick to understand and comply. We continue to receive reports each day about people who are not following the rules and we are able to resolve the majority of these incidents through advice and education, rather than enforcement. I am confident that the policing approach and style we have is the right one but we will not hesitate to use enforcement where necessary and this has meant that we have had to issue fixed penalty notices to a small minority of people who, despite the best efforts of officers, have refused to follow the instructions. This puts everyone at risk and undermines the efforts and sacrifices that you are all making and I am confident we have your support to use enforcement when necessary.
When leaving home we need to continue to do what is necessary and reasonable and this includes where we exercise. Now is not the time for people to be travelling to exercise in our rural communities or visit local beauty spots and parks and I am pleased that most people understand and support this. There has been some recent coverage in the media of additional guidance about what may constitute ‘reasonable’ in terms of the new legislation but I am clear this does not change our policing approach in Staffordshire and we will continue to use discretion and good judgement in deciding what is and what isn’t ‘reasonable’ in the circumstances.
The guidance from the government remains that exercise should be done locally, using open spaces near to your home where possible, and people should travel only when necessary and for a short distance. Travelling from other areas, like we have seen some examples of recently, to enjoy the county’s rural areas is not necessary or reasonable. The parks, forests and beauty spots in Staffordshire will still be here when this is over and people will be welcome back when it’s safe to do so.
My colleagues will continue to patrol all areas across the county this weekend and where they come across people travelling unreasonably or people failing to adhere to the social distancing guidelines, they will engage with them, explain the guidance and encourage people to go home, only as a last resort where reason fails, enforcement action will be taken. First and foremost these powers are about keeping people safe and local communities want and expect us to do that, so the most important thing we can all do is continue to stay at home, stay safe and protect the NHS.
Once again, I would like to thank the vast majority of the people of Staffordshire who have been following these guidelines and working with us to help get through this crisis as quickly as possible. We appreciate this is an incredibly challenging time for everybody but we need to stick together and keep going so that we can bring the lockdown measures to a conclusion at the earliest opportunity.
In the meantime, please stay safe and well.
Gareth Morgan Chief Constable Staffordshire Police | politics |
http://lisakayknits.blogspot.com/2008/09/political-rant.html | 2018-07-21T09:10:03 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676592475.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20180721090529-20180721110529-00143.warc.gz | 0.981591 | 675 | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2018-30__0__265400381 | en | Pardon me for the political aside. I did not expect to really have much comment on the election, but I feel the need to say that I am ecstatic with the choice of Governor Sarah Palin as Senator McCain’s running mate. Finally! I have always said that I would like to see a female president in my lifetime. (But Ms. Clinton was not the one I wanted to see. Enough said about that.)
The thing that really has me writing this political rant is that I am horrified by some of the liberal media response to Governor Palin. Let me be specific. On Wednesday evening (9/3/08), Sally Quinn of the Washington Post went on Bill O’Reilly’s program for an interview. She said that even though she believed in working mothers – she herself is a working mother and “many of [her] friends are working mothers,” – there is a “tipping point,” and Governor Palin needed to “reconsider her priorities.” Gee, Sally, is that “tipping point” the spot I encounter when I climb the ladder and clumsily collide with the so-called glass ceiling? And just who is it that establishes that glass ceiling—feminist, liberal Democrats like yourself???
A subsequent guest of Bill O’Reilly captured it by saying that the problem the liberals have with Governor Palin is that she is, “their worst nightmare.” I believe that pretty much sums it up. They are so scared by a capable, ethical, experienced, inspiring, female candidate, that they are pulling out whatever weapons they can find to sling at her, including contrived, saccharine family values and liberal, feminist, self-imposed glass ceilings. I was hollering, “Hypocrite!” at the TV. I can only conclude that Sally received a thorough thrashing from all quarters, because she went on Bill O’Reilly’s program, again, tonight (9/5/08), and basically recanted, including saying, “I was wrong about her.” I should say so! Sally explained her change of heart by saying that Governor Palin’s speech at the convention turned her around. I suspect there is more to it than that, but I have to agree the speech was excellent. The transcript can be found here.
I am so thrilled by Senator Palin on the ticket that I will actually be pleased to vote in November. It’s been a long time since I could say that. From the time that Reagan left the White House, I have lamented that no one in a position to be elected President really seems to deserve it– sort of a political Catch-22. How refreshing it is to be able to vote for someone I actually want in office, and a woman at the same time! What a bonus!
I sincerely hope that they win, and that President McCain gives Vice-President Palin a visible, significant role in the administration, grooming her for President. After all, at age 72, is he really going to run for a second term? Whether four years or eight (or perhaps a weird interim number, which I certainly hope not), she looks to be an excellent candidate for the next President! How cool is that? | politics |
https://jschulmansr.com/category/water/ | 2021-04-19T12:57:58 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-17/segments/1618038879374.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20210419111510-20210419141510-00305.warc.gz | 0.945242 | 2,335 | CC-MAIN-2021-17 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2021-17__0__177229853 | en | agricultural commodities, alternate energy, Austrian school, banking crisis, banks, bear market, Bollinger Bands, bull market, capitalism, central banks, China, Comex, commodities, communism, Copper, Currencies, currency, deflation, depression, diamonds, dollar denominated, dollar denominated investments, economic, economic trends, economy, financial, Forex, futures, futures markets, gold, gold miners, hard assets, heating oil, India, inflation, investments, Keith Fitz-Gerald, Marc Faber, market crash, Markets, mining companies, Moving Averages, natural gas, oil, palladium, Peter Schiff, physical gold, platinum, platinum miners, precious metals, price, price manipulation, prices, producers, production, protection, rare earth metals, recession, risk, run on banks, safety, Saudi Arabia, Sean Rakhimov, silver, silver miners, socialism, sovereign, spot, spot price, stagflation, Technical Analysis, timber, U.S. Dollar, volatility, warrants, Water
Has World War III already started? According to Marc Faber it has! Check out his interview. Next do you think the government can lose? According to this pundit not only will it lose it is going to lose big! Finally, for years now China has been coming to the rescue by buying Treasuries and US Debt, what will happen when they and other countries stop? Continuation of series from yesterday’s post. Just In! Peter Schiff Interviwed on Russian TV- Get Prepared! adjust your portfolios and if you own Precious Metals hang on for the ride of your life!- Good Investing!- jschulmansr
There’s lots of good stuff in this one – the outlook for the global economy, oil, gold, base metals, natural resource stocks, World War III having already started…
On the subject of alternatives to the government solutions for the current problems, he was asked how he expected the populace to stand for the government doing nothing?
That’s the problem of society. If people can not accept the downside to capitalism, then they should become socialists and then they have a planned economy. They should go to eastern Europe twenty years ago and to Russia and China for the last 70 years.
How do you tell that to somebody in Detroit who’s losing his home today?
Why is he losing his home? Because of government intervention. The government – the Federal Reserve – kept interest rates artificially low and created the biggest housing bubble, not just in the U.S. but worldwide. That is what I’d explain to the worker in Detroit.
Through a combination of incompetence and greed, the federal government has placed itself in a position of checkmate. There is no way to finance its budget deficits without devaluing the dollar or causing interest rates to rise. With $10.6 trillion in debt, $8.5 trillion in new money created or given away in 2008, and multiple years of trillion dollar deficits planned by Obama, government has no way to fund its extravagances without either printing a lot more money or borrowing unprecedented sums.
This means that either Treasury bonds will crash, or the dollar will suffer significant devaluation relative to foreign exchange or precious metals, especially gold.
TV Does Great Interview With Peter Schiff (Russian TV, That Is)
Remember Dare Something Worthy Today Too!
Market forces are telling the world to shed unproductive assets and shrink capacity, yet central banks and governments around the world, in particular the U.S., are refusing to listen. Rather than allow markets to snap back to sustainable equilibrium from previously artificial highs, the federal government clings to the notion that forcibly shuffling resources, propping up asset prices, and diluting the money supply will magically save the day.
There are consequences to everything. The consequences of shuffling resources (taxing productive ventures and doling out those resources to failing ones, i.e. bailouts) are stunted growth for good businesses and propagation of bad ones. Artificially propping up asset prices means that those who are generally less competent remain the custodians of society’s capital, and diluting the money supply inflates aways everyone’s wealth over time, particularly harming the poor and middle class.
For decades the federal government has gotten away with this reshuffle and inflate game, but the pawns are drowning, the rooks helpless, and the knights ready to turn on the King. Perhaps this is overly dramatic. Clearly, I doubt the capability of the Federal Reserve, Congress, and Obama to “fix” the economy; rather, I strongly believe they are destroying it by forcing us all to drink this Keynesian Kool-Aid. However, whether or not the economy recovers amidst this historic central government action, there are two phenomena we can exploit to our advantage:
- Short the US dollar
- Short US Treasuries
In “When will the great Treasury unwinding begin?” I show how government debt has been bid to unsustainable levels and will likely fall. The one concern I see stated all too often is that the Federal Reserve will keep buying Treasuries to artificially depress interest rates. This will, it is claimed, keep bond prices inflated. The one undeniable counter to this is that government must somehow fund its $1.2 trillion estimated 2009 deficit. It cannot do this by issuing and then buying the same bonds. It can only raise revenue by selling bonds to other parties, or by diluting the money supply by cranking up the printing presses. There are no other options. There you have it – we have the government in checkmate!
The likely outcome is that they will try to do both. That is why I am heavily shorting both 30-Year Treasury bonds and the dollar. Both assets will likely lose as the government becomes increasingly desperate and the world’s biggest buyers realize there are better alternatives available. Make your bets now before it becomes treasonous to bet against Big Brother!
Disclosure: Long UDN, short TLT, long GLD.
Gold naysayers habitually point to the relatively weak performance of gold relative to the broader market over the last 5 years. Given the market today, that argument is increasingly wrong, and the naysayers are soon to either admit their mistake, or pretend that they were never naysayers at all. That’s because during the last 3 months, five major new forces have emerged to compound the previous strong drivers of the gold price up to now.
These new forces are as follows:
- China has stopped buying U.S. debt.
An interesting piece in the New York Times today signals that China, up until now the biggest buyer of U.S. Treasuries and bonds issued by Fannie and Freddie, is moving towards an end to that policy. China holds over US$1 trillion of such paper, and as interest rates collapse, there is less and less incentive for them to buy American.China has made several adjustments to programs that used to give banks and other financial institutions within the country incentive to buy U.S. assets, which means essentially that these same customers for assets will now be looking for Chinese products.The effect this will have on gold is two-fold. In the first place, reduced demand for U.S. debt will hamper Obama’s plans to keep printing money, because the one limiting factor that still seems to be respected in terms of how much paper can be printed, is the idea that there must be a counterparty to every issuance of T-Bills to warrant continued printing. Theoretically, less demand for T-Bills will force a rise in interest rates to attract investors. But that does not appear forthcoming, which will make the U.S. dollar weak relative to other currencies – especially gold.The second effect is that by eliminating incentives for Chinese banks to acquire U.S. denominated assets, investors there will divert more funds to holding gold as a hedge against their current U.S. dollar holdings, which will be diminishing in value.
- Future discoveries of gold deposits will diminish dramatically.
The biggest source of gold ounce inventory for major gold producers is the discoveries made by the several thousand juniors who scour the earth in search of favorable geology. With the collapse in base metals prices, many of these juniors are under increasing pressure to consolidate and downsize, and many more will disappear altogether.That means less money going into gold exploration, and that means the number of new discoveries that can be acquired by majors is going to go down sharply in the coming years. In theory, as gold continues to outperform all other asset classes, there will be a rush back into junior gold exploration, but that won’t happen until gold is taken much higher and investment demand for it soars.
- Existing by-product gold production will fall sharply
In copper, zinc and other base metals mines around the world, gold occurs in metallic deposits as a by-product of some other dominant mineral. In the United States, 15 percent of gold production is derived from mining copper, lead and zinc ores.With the collapse in prices for these metals, the by-product production of gold is most often insufficient to justify the continued operation of the mine profitably, and it is likely that a significant amount of this by-product gold production will cease along with the shutdown of these operations. The result will be less gold production from existing operations, contributing to the now even faster growing gap between supply and demand.
- Gold is becoming mainstream
One of the biggest contributors to gold’s unpopularity as a main street investment is that it has been mercilessly derided and ridiculed by mainstream investment media and institutions. There is very little opportunity for an investment advisor to insinuate himself into a gold purchase transaction, since most anybody who wants to hold the metal can visit their local bullion exchange or mint and buy as much as they’d like. Because the massive investment institutions that dominate the investment advisory business can’t make a fee out of advising you to buy gold, they try to convince you to purchase other asset classes which their firm has either originated or is a participant in a syndication of investment banks selling such products.Thanks to the widespread coverage of the questionable integrity of these complex securities, and since many main street investors have been burned by their investment advisors (they feel), there is increasing main street advice being doled out to buy gold. One need only search Google news on any given day to discover that headlines critical of gold are now replaced with headlines singing its praises.
- Gold is the best performing asset class of the decade
Now that the global financial meltdown has got up a head of steam, investors are hard pressed to find any investment that has performed well over the last ten years as consistently as gold. The chart below outlines this performance and appears here courtesy of James Turk’s GoldMoney.com.Gold Performance: 2001-2008 (click to enlarge)
As you can see, any investment still returning an average of 10 – 17 percent is a winner, compared to everything else you can generate a chart for. As this intelligence permeates the none-too-quick popular investment imagination, and, combined with the other 4 factors, gold is going to be where the world’s next crop of millionaires is minted. | politics |
https://crazytolearn.com/the-united-states-supreme-court-advocates-for-the-separation-of-church-and-state/ | 2024-04-17T06:18:44 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-18/segments/1712296817144.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20240417044411-20240417074411-00047.warc.gz | 0.96632 | 694 | CC-MAIN-2024-18 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2024-18__0__83694169 | en | In a series of new rulings, the conservative-majority United States Supreme Court has chipped away at the wall separating church and state, eroding American legal traditions intended to prevent government officials from promoting any particular faith.
In three recent decisions, the Supreme Court has ruled against government officials whose policies and actions were designed to avoid violating the First Amendment’s prohibition on the governmental endorsement of religion, known as the establishment clause.
The Washington State Supreme Court sided with a public high school football coach who had been suspended by a local school district for refusing to stop leading Christian prayers with players on the field after games.
On June 21, it endorsed the use of taxpayer funds to pay for students to attend religious schools through a Maine tuition assistance programme in rural areas where there are no nearby public high schools.
On May 2, it ruled in favor of a Christian group that wanted to fly a cross-emblazoned flag at Boston City Hall as part of a programme to promote diversity and tolerance among the city’s various communities.
The court’s conservative justices, who hold a 6-3 majority, have taken a broad view of religious rights in particular. They also issued a decision on Friday that religious conservatives applauded, overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide, despite the fact that that case did not involve the establishment clause.
According to Cornell Law School professor Michael Dorf, the majority of the court appears skeptical of government decision-making based on secularism. According to Lori Windham, a lawyer with the religious liberty legal group Becket, the court’s decisions will allow for more religious expression by individuals without undermining the establishment clause.
“The separation of church and state is maintained in a way that protects both. It prevents the government from interfering with churches while also protecting different religious expressions “Windham elaborated. “They regard secularism, which has for centuries been the liberal world’s understanding of what it means to be neutral, as a form of religious discrimination,” Dorf said of the conservative justices.
Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in his decision on Monday that the court’s goal was to prevent public officials from being hostile to religion as they navigate the establishment clause. “In no world, may a government entity’s concerns about phantom violations justify actual violations of an individual’s First Amendment rights,” Gorsuch said.
The majority of recent religious-rights rulings have involved Christian plaintiffs. However, the court has also supported adherents of other religions, such as a Muslim woman in 2015 who was denied a retail sales job because she wore a head scarf for religious reasons and a Buddhist death row inmate in 2019 who requested that a spiritual adviser be present at his execution in Texas.
The court also sided with both Christian and Jewish congregations in challenges to governmental restrictions based on religious rights, such as limits on public gatherings imposed as public safety measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nicole Stelle Garnett, a Notre Dame Law School professor who joined a brief filed with the justices in support of the football coach, said the court was simply stating that governments must treat religious people equally. Following Monday’s decision, many issues concerning religious conduct in schools may be litigated again under the court’s logic that the conduct must be “coercive” in order to raise establishment clause concerns. | politics |
https://bcrealestatesale.com/blog.html/big-tax-on-vacant-properties-in-van-4699149 | 2024-02-22T10:36:50 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947473738.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20240222093910-20240222123910-00511.warc.gz | 0.902882 | 180 | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2024-10__0__208411977 | en | BIG TAX ON VACANT PROPERTIES IN VAN
Vancouver slaps $10,000 a year tax on empty homes. Lie about it and it’s $10,000 a day
Want to keep your million-dollar luxury pad in Vancouver empty? Get ready to pay $10,000 (US$7,450) annually in extra taxes. Lie about it? That’ll be $10,000 a day in fines.
Canada’s most-expensive property market, suffering from a near-zero supply of rental homes, announced the details of a new tax aimed at prodding absentee landlords into making their properties available for lease. The empty-home tax will take effect by Jan. 1 and will be calculated at one per cent of the property’s assessed value, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson told reporters at City Hall. | politics |
https://www.solomonrajput.com/immigration | 2020-05-26T13:23:55 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-24/segments/1590347390758.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20200526112939-20200526142939-00584.warc.gz | 0.982899 | 326 | CC-MAIN-2020-24 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2020-24__0__2308787 | en | ICE is a source of terror for immigrant communities across this country. ICE was created in 2003, and it has warped into an organization that has grossly violated the human rights of countless immigrants. They have ripped children from their parents’ arms and are keeping them in cramped cages. They have conducted raids and are under little oversight. At this point, we must Eliminate CBP and ICE and permanently close concentration camps and “immigrant detention” programs. Also, we must prosecute all ICE and CBP agents who are responsible for violations of human rights.
As Americans, we must take responsibility for the unstable situations that we helped create in many of the countries from which we receive immigrants. We must stop causing chaos in countries south of our border. We must rectify this injustice and also allow those who have already been affected to seek refuge in a place of safety. We must treat immigrants as humans. Yes, this means giving them food and shelter, and keeping them out of cages. We must also end for-profit detention centers that exist to make money off of these immigrants’ tragic circumstances.
We must support DACA, but we cannot keep these Americans in perpetual limbo. They were brought by their parents, and they have grown up as Americans. They deserve a path to citizenship. That is why Solomon supports the DREAM Act.
The Muslim Ban is still in effect today. For years now, many Americans have not been able to see their relatives from Muslim-majority countries. We cannot ban people from foreign countries based on their religion; it is simply unconstitutional. Solomon would advocate to repeal the Muslim ban immediately. | politics |
https://vanhusasia.fi/en/front-page | 2022-05-24T18:20:17 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-21/segments/1652662573189.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20220524173011-20220524203011-00254.warc.gz | 0.962485 | 145 | CC-MAIN-2022-21 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2022-21__0__188921361 | en | Ombudsman for the older people promotes the position of the older people and the realisation of their rights
The Ombudsman for the older people is an autonomous and independent authority that promotes the realisation of the rights and best interest of the elderly. The Ombudsman for the older people is responsible for making sure that the rights and status of the elderly are taken into consideration in legislation and decision-making.
Päivi Topo acts as the Ombudsman for the older people. She started in the office on 15 January 2022.
The duty of the Ombudsman for the older people is to promote and assess the realisation of the basic and human rights of the elderly in legislation and decision-making in the society. | politics |
https://jerrykirkpatrick.blogspot.com/2013/10/return-of-blackshirts.html | 2017-05-24T09:42:53 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-22/segments/1495463607811.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20170524093528-20170524113528-00287.warc.gz | 0.969534 | 1,418 | CC-MAIN-2017-22 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2017-22__0__203829227 | en | These groups of young men were known for gleefully shooting innocent victims first and asking questions later.
Radley Balko, in his book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces, does not go so far as to say that the United States has become a fascist police state . . . yet. We’re still free to travel, he says, we still have habeas corpus, and we don’t have mass censorship.
But perhaps we have entered a police state writ small. At the individual level, a police officer’s power and authority over the people he interacts with day to day is near complete (p. 335, emphasis in original).The cause is the tremendous growth over the last forty years of callously indifferent, brutal, and frequently botched SWAT raids conducted initially in the name of the drug war but now expanded to enforcing even minor regulatory infractions, for example, barbering without a license and manufacturing guitars allegedly using contraband wood. SWAT teams have also been sent as follow-up on purse snatchings from cars. Routine police work, in other words, is now being handled by the men and women wearing black pants, black shirts, bulging bullet-proof protectors, and Darth Vader helmets.
The cause of the cause is judicial erosion of the castle doctrine and billions of dollars of federal money made available to police forces to buy military equipment, such as automatic assault weapons, flash-bang grenades, helicopters, armored personnel carriers, and tanks. Police in towns as small at 25,000 people have joined the militarization gravy train.
The castle doctrine in common law says your home is your castle and no one, including the police, may enter without knocking and being invited in by you. And the police may not search your premises without a warrant. In the name of the drug war—promoted self-righteously and fervently by both Republicans and Democrats—no-knock entrance has become standard, because knocking supposedly alerts drug dealers to destroy evidence (by flushing drugs down the toilet). Search warrants can be dispensed with if police fear for their safety. Drug dealers are always assumed to be armed and dangerous, which is often not the case.
Never mind that turning the water off or hiring a plumber to put a catch net on the drain would save flushed evidence. Or that one reason for the knock-and-announce castle doctrine is to prevent cops from being shot by citizens who naturally think their homes are being invaded by scummy crooks, perhaps even terrorists. Permits to carry concealed weapons have not helped such citizens. If a cop is killed in one of these raids, the citizen is arrested for murder.
The typical SWAT raid, using the latest military gear, begins with a flash-bang grenade to paralyze the targets, by emitting a blinding burst of light and deafeningly explosive clap. (Never mind that heart attack deaths of innocent victims caused by this “shock and awe” have occurred or that target houses plus neighboring ones have burned to the ground from the fires started by the grenades.)
Next step is to bash down the door, throw anyone present, including grandparents and children, to the floor, zip-tie them, point guns at their heads, and scream expletives. Dogs are shot and the house is trashed while searching for drugs. Sometimes the teams have found only one or two joints of pot or two or three marijuana plants . . . or, quite frequently, nothing.
In Denver in 1999, according to Balko in an earlier paper written for the Cato Institute, 149 no-knock raids produced only 49 charges of any kind with only two targets receiving prison time. The rest? Botched raids. Seventy-three wrong-address case histories are described by Balko in the same paper. An interactive map of the US, produced by Cato, shows several hundred botched raids since 1985.
Even when a SWAT team has the correct address, many innocent relatives and children are treated like criminals and sometimes killed. The perpetrators—the cops—are exonerated and even praised for not arresting the innocents. “Collateral damage” in a war is acceptable, according to SWAT leaders and police chiefs. Apologies are rare. If media noise is made, victims may win a civil judgment, paid, of course, by taxpayers.
The senseless, needless drug war is merely a much longer repeat of the alcohol prohibition fiasco that lasted from 1920 to 1933. Its major accomplishments were to give us Nascar and the Mafia. Today, we are moving precariously close to a blackshirted police state because of unsound moral, economic, and political policy.
Any hope for reform? Cheye Calvo, mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland, succeeded in getting a modest bill passed in the state legislature requiring police departments to keep statistics on the use of SWAT teams—something that had never been done before or considered important. In the last six months of 2009 in Maryland, SWAT teams were deployed 4.5 times a day (804 times total). Ninety-four percent of their outings were to serve search or arrest warrants, half of them for misdemeanors or nonserious felonies.
How was Calvo able to get this much accomplished? In 2004 his front door was bashed down and his two black labs were immediately shot. Calvo and his mother-in-law were forced into the usual positions, screamed at, and interrogated for four hours. The house was trashed, with the dogs’ blood tracked all over.*
It was a mistake (1, 2).
No apologies. No punishment of the perpetrators. County officials said they would do it all over again. The cops, after all, exercised “restraint and compassion” and did not arrest anyone.
Calvo, fortunately for the rest of us, took action. The ACLU has joined in. Balko continues to wage intellectual war against these “special forces” mentalities by writing and speaking frequently (1, 2). And Cato Institute has founded the National Police Misconduct Reporting Project (1, 2).
Much more needs to be done.
*The cruel and unsympathetic killing of dogs requires comment. Mail carriers have been known to have run-ins with dogs. How has the postal service handled such “threats”? They adopted the novel idea of giving carriers training in how to distract dogs, make friends with them, or, if necessary, to use mace to keep them at bay. Dog attacks on mail carriers, according to Balko, “are almost nonexistent” (p. 292). In the Calvo raid, one detective, upon seeing the dead labs, was heard making a phone call to remind a family member to schedule a vet appointment for her own animal. Such callous, almost psychopathic indifference is reminiscent of the Abu Ghraib scandal. | politics |
http://socweb.hkbu.edu.hk/zh/3yr_course/SOC1620 | 2018-09-25T19:40:19 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-39/segments/1537267162385.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20180925182856-20180925203256-00046.warc.gz | 0.88666 | 112 | CC-MAIN-2018-39 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2018-39__0__180897796 | en | Hong Kong Culture and Society
This course addresses cultural, social and political issues in Hong Kong from sociological perspectives. Sociologically informed studies will be drawn upon to examine the social, political and cultural processes that transform possibilities of life and give rise to issues of public concerns in Hong Kong. The emphasis is on the interconnectedness of social institutions and the interchanges between personal lives and public histories. Special attention will be paid to how population dynamics, economic transformations, governmental projects and social movements re-define social boundaries and re-make communities within and beyond Hong Kong. | politics |
https://andrealatino.com/digital-political-communication/ | 2024-02-21T05:44:07 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947473370.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20240221034447-20240221064447-00204.warc.gz | 0.947387 | 7,325 | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2024-10__0__95125720 | en | Articles & Guides
Digital Political Communication: doing politics in the age of social media
in a nutshell
Examples from European political leaders, web monitoring, social bots, and tools of digital political communication, together with a downloadable canvas about grassroots campaigns: leverage the web to make your future-shaped political contribution.
Don’t have time to read it all?
Here’s a brief summary of the key points in this guide.
What is political communication?
Politics needs communication at every level to fully achieve its goals. Consequently, political communication is presented as a multidisciplinary sphere of action, in which very different actors operate, but all of them are in some way connected to public affairs. Specifically, the three main actors are:
- • The political system (parties, politicians, institutions, and so on)
- • The media system (newspapers, television broadcasts, radio stations…)
- • Citizen-voters
So, political communication is first of all a strategy of mutual seduction between the politician and the public. But political communication also means knowing how to impose the politician’s point of view on the public. Two possible considerations regarding a good communication strategy could be the following:
- • The politician should not scan speeches regularly, as predictability tires the public and benefits opponents
- • Instead of systematically analyzing election results, the politician shoul base political talks on specific points of the action taken to give substance in the eyes of voters
How does digital influence political communication?
Digital political communication represents the main way of doing politics in the new millennium. In the digital age, voters’ choice is influenced by superficial factors that assume immediate relevance: party image and candidate personality. On the web:
- • Politicians can target precise audience niches
- • They can open up multidirectional channels
- • Political content visibility can be increased
- • Failure to respond carries the risk of alienating the sympathy of voters
- • Those who ask for consent will always have to worry about listening to those who have decided to give consent
How are social media helping digital political communication?
Social media are perhaps the most significant and peculiar tool of digital political communication. Parties and candidates use them in different ways, usually related to personal perspective on the effectiveness of a certain strategy. Being social provides undeniable advantages:
- • Many more voters are reached
- • The “propaganda” mode is spontaneous, uninterrupted and contextualized
- • Consensus building on digital platforms is reflected in reality
- • The community that is created is usually strong and affectionate
- • “Disintermediation” takes place
- • Prompt problem-solving intervention is possible
- • It is also possible to experiment with forms of participatory democracy
How can I monitor my digital political communication?
For proper management of political activities online, the easiest and most effective monitoring tools to use are undoubtedly alerts. Let us look, therefore, at some of the most widely used ones:
- • Google Alerts is an easy-to-use and definitely reliable tool provided by Google
- • Talkwalker Alerts is probably the best free alternative to Google Alerts
- • Appinions is a web app that can measure a user’s influence based on “contextual evidence of impact”
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Digital political communication represents the main way of doing politics in the new millennium. “Doing politics”, now, means first and foremost knowing how to communicate effectively with your supporters but especially with the undecided, taking advantage of cyber meeting places: forums, sites, newsletters and – of course – social media. But the real news stemming from the contemporary approach concerns the reintroduction of the human factor at the center of electoral campaigns and, as a consequence, of democratic processes.
Toward digital political communication starting a long way back
Underlying the functioning of politics lies the need to send a message to voters and to the entire country. For this reason, communication represents an area of primary interest. The goal is to reach every citizen – and, more specifically, the heart of every citizen – so that they can understand the candidate’s manifesto and agree (or disagree) with its goodness. Of course, the ability to disclose a program is far from coinciding with the ability to make it understood.
Political communication has undergone a number of changes over the years. While in the past politics was discussed within cultural and party circles, today the mass perspective demands simplicity and immediacy. Message delivery is provided by social media and online communication agencies providing services such as website creation, industry blog solutions, and target audience engagement. The internet probably fosters a lower desire for in-depth coverage, but it allows it to reach people more easily.
What is political communication?
Politics, as we anticipated, needs communication at every level to fully achieve its goals. Consequently, political communication is presented as a multidisciplinary sphere of action, in which very different actors operate, but all of them are in some way connected to public affairs. Specifically, the three main actors are the political system (parties, politicians, institutions, and so on), the media system (newspapers, television broadcasts, radio stations…), and citizen-voters. Three categories linked together in ways that vary in nature, intensity, frequency, and content.
So, political communication is first of all a strategy of mutual seduction between the politician and the public. A broad conception refers, therefore, to all techniques and activities aimed at fostering the support of public opinion during the conquest of power or the exercise of office. After all, Jacques Gerstlé, a professor of political science at the University of Paris, defines this type of communication as the totality of “the communicative efforts made by those who seek to make people adhere – either by imposing it through propaganda or by making it acceptable through discussion – to public perceptions […] that will guide preferences”.
Political communication: what it is not
To avoid misunderstandings, it might be useful to clarify what does not fall under the definition of political communication. First, it does not coincide with public communication, despite the fact that the two expressions are often used synonymously. In fact, the public universe is far broader and also includes messages produced by non-political actors such as institutions, social partners, associations and nonprofit organizations.
At the same time, political communication cannot be reduced to mere political marketing either. The latter can be understood as a collection of practices put in place to promote a candidate’s fit with his/her electoral target audience, extend his/her potential voter base, and distinguish him/her from competitors. Therefore, political marketing is a phenomenon that thrives on temporary initiatives.
Some required features of political communication
Political communication is intimately linked to media developments and the growing importance of public opinion in democratic systems. For this very reason, the underlying logic says that the objective reasons why citizens are satisfied or dissatisfied with their rulers are less important than citizens’ own perceptions of their experiences. Indeed, historically, all forms of political authority are staged, narrations intended to impose or confirm status, mobilize citizens or – if necessary – convince them. And it is the demonstrated ability to deliver change that grants it a form of legitimacy.
The key word in political communication is credibility, sought through a combination of rational and emotional arguments. Being credible means being able to count on an attentive audience and influence ongoing debates. But to keep your reputation high you need to consider a few tricks. First, it would be ideal to maintain an advantage in a specific area (such as security or fighting inequality). Second, avoid taking ambiguous or contradictory positions. And lastly, never deviate too abruptly from the habits of your field of reference: a dissident opinion, even if well-founded, can lead to uncertainty about the future of a political career.
But political communication also means knowing how to impose your point of view on the public. It is a strategic operation, because it affects both the perception of the political direction you pursue and the person standing in front of voters on a local or national scale. In this regard, two possible considerations regarding a good communication strategy could be the following:
• Do not scan speeches regularly, as predictability tires the public and benefits opponents.
• Instead of systematically analyzing election results, base political talks on specific points of the action taken to give substance in the eyes of voters.
Politics Goes Digital
What is digital political communication?
In the late 1990s, the media industry began to wonder when the first actual online election campaign would take place. After all, the internet was still a world completely separate from the real world. Today, we are in a phase of accelerated, extensive digitalization with disruptive characteristics, which has allowed political communication to land permanently on the internet. The logic of the web involves every social and political practice, while society as a whole adapts to a new “ideology of communication”. In contemporary times, digital communication has taken over as the main channel for participating in political activities. Barack Obama was perhaps the greatest forerunner of this trend.
Typical business activities such as online reputation management or personal branding strategies can also be applied to political figures. However, if an entrepreneur’s ambition is to sell a product or service, a party leader wants to convince voters that his or her political offer is the best on the market. The citizen, then, is transformed from a mere lead to a real customer through a transaction that is often more valuable than a cash exchange: the vote.
The implications of digital political communication
In the digital age, voters’ choice is influenced by superficial factors that assume immediate relevance: party image and candidate personality. We could see these as cognitive shortcuts that simplify the political process of information, a time-consuming and mentally energetic activity for most voters. The bounded rationality typical of human beings deadens the chances of a citizen making a rational choice based truly on campaign programs and issues.
Political communication, however, still suffers under the weight of traditional media such as televisions and newspapers, in which the message conveyed is necessarily generalist and unidirectional. On the web, on the other hand, it is possible to target precise audience niches, opening up multidirectional channels. Consequently, those who ask for consent will then have to worry about listening to those who have decided to give consent. Failure to respond carries the risk of alienating the sympathy and participation of voters, who could quickly trigger a viral insurrection.
A major challenge of parties, politicians, and the entire representative and parliamentary democracy, therefore, is to succeed in meeting the growing expectations of citizen participation. The origin of this trend can be traced to rising levels of education and changing social values. The typically predigital claim of political leadership is now poorly digested.
Some related issues
Since the second half of the nineteenth century, with the rise of the modern mass press, journalism has assumed the function of watchdog of democracy, mediating between civil society and the political system. If one tries to inquire about any topic via the internet, however, algorithms (e.g., Google’s or Facebook’s) come up with information that varies from person to person and comes, for the most part, from non-journalistic sources. Yet, research on the use and effects of media has not revealed huge problems from a political perspective in digital communication.
Surely negative phenomena such as the free circulation of racist slurs on social media and the increasing attention gained by extremist, intolerant and xenophobic movements (previously entirely marginal) are misinterpreted as a direct consequence of the new political possibilities offered by the web. That is why we still only consider content control and elimination as an effective solution. But the reality is that the online circulation of racism and fake news can have substantial political consequences, giving rise to the need for education on the subject.
The one thing that seems certain is that mediated communication has almost no concrete influence on changes of opinion. Instead, media have an effect on the “activation” of thoughts in users who already demonstrate certain predispositions. So, the cause-and-effect relationship is different: people who share expectations or prejudices tend to exclusively frequent forums, blogs and pages that travel in the same direction as them. The internet only facilitates their access and increases the visibility of certain content.
The role of social media
In order to be able to understand the workings of today’s political communication, studying each web platform individually or comparing the internet and the offline world does not really make sense anymore. Physical events such as rallies and press conferences end up intertwined with the narration of them within digital spaces. Photos are posted, discussion threads link to hashtags, direct video feeds appear on social networks.
Social media in particular are perhaps the most significant and peculiar tool of digital political communication. Parties and candidates use them in different ways, usually related to personal perspective on the effectiveness of a certain strategy. For example, the type of content posted, or the level of interactivity highlighted varies. But these are not the substantial differences. Virtually every world leader today has a personal account or an official page on the most widely used social networks. At the end of the day, being social provides undeniable advantages:
- • Many more voters are reached, in a virtual place in which hours are spent daily regardless of the presence of political discourse.
- • The “propaganda” mode is spontaneous, uninterrupted and contextualized.
- • Consensus building on digital platforms is inevitably reflected in reality.
- • The community that is created is usually strong and affectionate, and tends to nurture advocacy of the political message in similar circles.
- • “Disintermediation” takes place, i.e., no need to use newspapers or television stations to approach voters or potential voters.
- • Prompt problem-solving intervention in the case of reputational crises is possible.
- • It is also possible to experiment with forms of participatory democracy (the obvious example is the Italian attempt of the 5 Star Movement founded by Beppe Grillo).
The risk, however, is to fall into the paradox whereby the network and its users can bend political messages to their liking. The use of a narrative that is consistent with one’s own experience and cultural and political affiliation, and that fits smoothly into the custom of social networks, must therefore be unavoidable.
Otherwise, there occurs what happened during the first lockdown around Campania President De Luca’s bursting live streams. But, more generally, the alienating effect is clear in the practice of polbusting (the ironic subversion of political messages and content) and the emergence of memes.
Some examples of digital political communication
Digital political communication is a practice now adopted by all European political leaders who want to continue to make their voices heard and reach an increasingly wide audience. The Council of Europe has therefore published a list of guidelines addressed to its 46 member states to prevent new digital political communication strategies from undermining the fairness and legitimacy of electoral processes.
The main threats to be nipped in the bud include misuse of personal data, bots, algorithms and microtargeting, as well as recurrent disinformation campaigns. The guidelines are expressed in the form of recommendations, but – establishing certain principles – they aspire to ensure transparency in online electoral communication and expenses, prevent voter manipulation, and ensure equal and fair competition between parties and candidates. Other challenges not to be forgotten, then, are content regulation, data protection and media coverage of campaigns.
Digital political communication in Italy
As anticipated, peculiar to Italy is the political experience of the 5 Star Movement. The political party, born in 2009, was in fact shaped on the web – the easiest place in which to intercept the rampant resentment and anti-politics among Italian voters. The internet is the strategic tool used by the Pentastellati to promote their initiatives, make propaganda, and encourage forms of democracy even within the Movement itself. Founder Beppe Grillo’s blog is among the most widely followed in the world, and the merits of the growth of the party itself can be attributed at least in part to the Web.
Another significant case concerns Matteo Renzi, who, in his role as secretary of the Democratic Party, built his consensus time after time on the internet until he became Prime Minister. It is also true, however, that in 2016 he lost his own constitutional reform by mis-strategizing on the same playing field. In short, it would be wrong to argue that a large following on social media necessarily implies victory from an electoral standpoint. Yet, it is undeniable that platforms such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram have forever revolutionized the rules of political competition and the arena in which it takes place.
Finally, if you’d like a firsthand example, told and experienced by me personally, you can read about how I reshaped the digital identity of a Vice President of the European Commission here.
Digital political communication in Europe
In almost all European countries, more or less effective forms of digital political communication occur, depending on the developed understanding around the potential of the IT medium and the opportunities to use it. For example, in the context of Swiss and Austrian parties’ media planning during electoral campaigns, the presence on social networks seems almost to become an obligation, rather than a reflection of a conscious strategic vision. Indeed, online campaign promoters speak of direct interactivity as the main reason for using social. As a result, they remain a secondary communication channel, shrouded in skepticism regarding the real benefits they could bring to campaign effectiveness.
In 2014, during Hungary’s general election period, posts disseminated on Facebook by leftist opposition parties received the highest number of shares. Yet such a spread was not due to the general informational content, structure, or timing of publication, but rather to the highly emotional nature and subjective personal comments made. However, once shared, the posts were very short-lived, in the sense that there was not much resonance among users. With one exception: if the post was reposted by an important personality, a famous opinion leader or another politician, then it generated a far greater and lasting resonance.
The case of Belarus
In contrast to Western Europe, the specific possibilities offered by the web to foster communication between politicians and voters and establish a regime of digital democracy are not considered in Belarus. The internet is a useful tool to circumvent the censorship of traditional media: there is no public space in the country in which citizens are free to express personal political opinion. President Lukashenko also secured fifteen years of power through the suppression of political dialogue.
But it is precisely in an authoritarian situation such as Belarus – and as demonstrated outside Europe in China, Egypt, and Iran – that digital political communication could enable the creation of new public environments where free political discourse is allowed. First, however, it is necessary for the network to be properly understood by all independent media and, above all, by every democratic actor: not a traditional mass media such as radio and television, but a digital discussion space where anyone can participate, regardless of time and place.
Welcome to the Internet
Web monitoring for political communication
Successful digital political communication also requires a thorough understanding of the medium being used. It will therefore be necessary to constantly monitor trends promoted by the web and on social channels, identifying keywords, hashtags, and articles, interpreting user behavior and the contributions they make through likes, comments, and shares. A complicated challenge, as it relates to a context of cognitive overload.
Recent years have seen the development of applications and sites such as Kred or PeerIndex, which use algorithms to probe a user’s social profile, record their level of activity and engagement, and ultimately return a score that represents their reputation potential on the web. A logic according to which more content interactions and re-shares result in higher influence. But this is not how it works: the system assigns a quantitative evaluation rather than a qualitative one.
Digital political communication: the best monitoring tools
For proper management of political activities online, the easiest and most effective monitoring tools to use are undoubtedly alerts. In fact, it is enough to enter a keyword related to people, brands or topics and the tool will send an alert to the interested party whenever the topic in question is mentioned.
The most comprehensive analytics platforms provide a set of Key Performance Indicators to assess the productivity of hashtags, campaigns, or brands through metrics such as engagement, scope, or sentiment. Of course, the quality and refinement of the data obtained varies significantly from tool to tool. Let us look, therefore, at some of the most widely used ones:
• Google Alerts is an easy-to-use and definitely reliable tool provided by Google. The tool scans the web far and wide and sends an e-mail with search results once the keyword is identified.
• Talkwalker Alerts is probably the best free alternative to Google Alerts. It is a must-have for professionals who manage political activities on the web and social networks. It is a comprehensive and powerful social monitoring and listening tool that allows you to keep an eye on most of the conversations developed online by entering a few keywords.
• Appinions is a web app that can measure a user’s influence based on “contextual evidence of impact”. The goal? To be more reliable than platforms measuring popularity on quantitative metrics and provide useful data from millions of sources: blogs, social networks, online forums, newspapers and so on. Appinions can: analyze the opinions expressed by people on issues and brands, give equal importance to new and traditional media, put context first (without context there is no metric). It can also inform about the virtual place where a certain topic is most discussed, provide a comparison of influence related to a specific topic, and analyze the trend of influence itself. It tells about the credibility of an “influencer” in relation to their target audience, the sentiment toward them, the validity of their opinions, and the reactions of their public.
The manipulation of political communication through bots
The internet, we know, is a double-edged sword, offering many opportunities but at the same time hiding many pitfalls. And political communication itself is not immune to the network’s disturbing potential. One of the most recurrent and alienating ones is computational political manipulation, or the assemblage of social platforms, autonomous agents, algorithms, and Big Data with the aim of conditioning public opinion.
What is computational political manipulation?
Progress in computer technology, and particularly in automation, machine learning and Artificial Intelligence, has caused computational propaganda to rapidly become more sophisticated and difficult to track. Political manipulation on the internet has now become an act of prediction and association by political actors or simply politically inclined users capable of employing intelligent algorithms.
It is an act of techno-politicization aimed mainly at very precise microtargets to influence their public sentiment, shape their political thinking, and threaten the ideology of those in power. The key players in computational political manipulation are social bots, which are used to disseminate baiting messages to the computerized masses and orient the thoughts of the user identified within the sphere of political interest.
Social bots in digital political communication
In platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, bots have the function of producing and disseminating streams of information (or, more appropriately, disinformation). They interact with users and influence their perceived information environment to create a climate of false opinion and post-truth. Basically, they assume the identity of a human being – often, it must be said, with pitifully comical results – and exploit the potential of social networks to provide opinions, news, and information. But they can also perform annoying operations such as sending spam or inciting hatred.
Social bots are (far) more active than flesh-and-blood users: they can post messages quickly and mass-produce replicas of them. But they cannot entirely prescind from their relative human counterparts: their behavior is inseparable from the intentions of the original manipulators. Automated software reads data and algorithms from social platforms and generates personalized content to increase recognition and credibility in the eyes of users. And they are even capable of regenerating themselves: as news from the political world is renewed, bot accounts delete previous tweets or posts, change their usernames, and reappear with an entirely new face.
The effects of social bots on political communication
There are different types of bots. The simpler ones serve only to increase the number of followers or likes of a post, but they are easy to track and are therefore “kicked out” early by the platforms. An intermediate type includes more complex social bots, capable of dynamically adapting the information shared according to the content and accounts being considered. Finally, so-called cyborgs are sophisticated hybrid bots in which the human contribution in terms of content creation and whatnot is evident (and are, consequently, more difficult to unmask).
Nevertheless, an observation of the actual influence of social bots reveals weakness and inability to initiate a large-scale retweeting effect. They have, yes, the ability to convince some human beings to share their publications, but the frequency with which this happens is really low compared to that related to exchanges between real users. In any case, the circumstances created by the management of digital disinformation probably hide a broader crisis of public communication.
The tools of digital political communication
Politicians not only use tools for monitoring, but also for the very management of digital political communication and campaign promotion. Digital technologies administer web, social, and e-mail, and organize data collection, fieldwork, fundraising, and volunteering.
So here is where digital political communication software provides financial, management, and tracking capabilities, but it also allows you to upload a database of potential voters and helps candidates run campaigns more effectively. Typically, some programs even offer demographic and behavioral data, polling tools and other capabilities such as regulatory compliance monitoring.
Main platforms used
NationBuilder is one of the most widely used nonpartisan tools in the world, especially in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. It can increase the operational efficiency of a campaign through dynamic profiling of supporters. It can be used to create professional websites, send advanced e-mail, and text communications, fundraise, and more. Jacinda Ardern became New Zealand’s youngest female prime minister in just a few months with the help of NationBuilder, which enabled her to meet all her fundraising goals before winning the election. Or again, the French party founded by Emmanuel Macron in 2016, La Republique En Marche, was built from scratch with NationBuilder, won 350 seats in Parliament, and changed the history of French politics.
Ecanvasser is political campaign management software created specifically for propaganda. It can plot research routes and assign them to groups of volunteers, fragment communities according to survey responses, demographics, or past actions. It is a program that combines field operations management with concrete data analysis. All of which can be conveniently verified through a mobile app.
Relay is a political messaging tool that enables personal and direct interaction with each voter. Voters can write text messages and get a tailored, non-automated response from the actual members of the political communication team. It is a system to bring the two worlds closer together and make each supporter feel heard and valued. But it also allows you to recruit volunteers, send invitations to events, or try to increase turnout on election day. Finally, it can help collect important data by asking recipients to fill out an RSVP form for an event or to confirm that they voted.
Fundly is a crowdfunding platform designed for individuals and organizations, perfect for political campaigns. In fact, it follows the “keep-it-all” formula: creators of a campaign will receive all funds raised even if they fail to reach all of their set goals. In addition, creating a campaign is free: you pay a 4.9 percent commission and credit card processing fees only when you start registering voluntary pledges. The blog has a multitude of features, such as customized fundraising pages, social sharing, and spaces to tell your story. Setting up a fundraiser thus becomes quick and easy: just indicate the desired outcome, write down the destination of the amount raised, add images, and finally, share the campaign on social or via e-mail.
Digital political communication: grassroots campaigns
A blade of grass is fragile, it breaks easily. But a clump is harder to uproot because the roots help each other with strength and perseverance. Alone, the grass is helpless and ineffective; together, the grass is more powerful and even invasive. This is the idea on which grassroots campaigns are based: when inside a united group, each individual can produce great change.
What are grassroots campaigns?
Grassroots campaigns are organizations made up of many people working together to achieve the same goal. They are usually started by passionate individuals who come together for the good of their community. However, they also have limited economic resources, so they must know how to strategically manage costs and investments. After all, they do not involve expensive advertising campaigns or well-paid professionals – they are composed of volunteers, working together to achieve a goal (passing a referendum, electing a political candidate, etc.).
So, the backbone of a grassroots campaign is volunteers, who should carry a wealth of different viewpoints, backgrounds, and experiences. After all, these movements are by definition local and work to bring about change in the community of the participants. They are, therefore, about personal issues, which is an incentive to become more engaged. And the residents of an area will be able to provide the best solutions on where to hold town meetings and in which neighborhoods to solicit votes. Members of a grassroots campaign will also be better at recruiting, since they will surely have friends or relatives in the area.
Yet although grassroots campaigns are made up of volunteers, leadership still remains necessary. It can be achieved through a hierarchical structure, dividing the movement by committees or functions. The important thing is that everyone can participate and be heard. Leaders need to know how to organize teams and then coordinate them. At the same time, individuals need to be able to contribute, because they are the real strength of the crusade.
But a successful organization can also be recognized by its brand: logo, message, and spokesperson. A simple but consistent design gives the campaign a well-organized look that, over time, people will recognize. It is not just about being credible and standing out, but also conveying to participants and supporters a sense of unity, belonging, and mutual support.
Grassroots campaigns, technology, and organization
Grassroots campaigns are definitely a privileged opportunity for digital political communication, as the Web allows anyone to be reached in a matter of seconds. However, the local nature of these initiatives means that public opinion – judge of success or failure – must be won through face-to-face interaction. Town assemblies, door-to-door surveys, information tables in public places: these are excellent opportunities to orient and assess individual attitudes.
- Grassroots Campaign Pillars – Download now!
In short, a grassroots campaign makes it possible to tackle a shared problem as a group, but also to win an election or pursue a public policy plan. The key to all this is one: be organized. For example, an effective solution might be to catalog and evaluate the entire participatory effort: new volunteers will want to know who came before them, how well past strategies worked, and what the results were. In addition, funders, public officials, the media, and other possible contributors to expansion and strengthening will first want to know what efforts have been made and what their consequences have been.
Examples of grassroots campaigns in digital political communication
Grassroots campaigns are seen by many as the future of politics, as they engage the masses to produce effective political change. They are movements that create community involvement, stimulate public sentiment, and grow without demanding large amounts of financial aid.
KnockEveryDoor is an organization made up of and run by volunteers, born in the wake of the 2016 presidential election and created by a group of former members of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. Members undertake a particular kind of door-to-door canvassing across the United States: they do not want to sway voters toward supporting a specific candidate, but to encourage them to engage in conversation to understand what they think about current politics and what their most immediate concerns are. The results seem to show that dialogue can indeed change people’s minds. The volunteer scripts are based on the “deep canvassing” method pioneered by the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s Leadership Lab.
Swing Left gathers progressive volunteers from “safe” congressional districts (places where one party has garnered an overwhelming majority) and connects them with “swing” districts (in which, by contrast, the winner of the last House of Representatives election was chosen by a slim margin). The founders of the movement are three friends from different sectors with little political knowledge. Still, the grassroots campaign has been a sensational success: it has organized more than 300,000 volunteers in swing districts, raised $2.9 million from more than 40,000 individual donors in support of Democratic candidates, and thus capitalizing on the wave of popularity of the progressive movement.
End Rape on Campus is an initiative working to end sexual violence on campuses through direct support for survivors and their communities. It needed its supporters to speak out about a proposed regulation related to the Ninth Amendment. But the means to do so were complicated: difficult-to-navigate websites, confusing texts, and reluctance to tell a personal story. The solution identified involved devising an advocacy campaign on the legislation to educate about how and why to participate and to provide a tool for commenting. All within the same webpage. The project ended with a thorough report on the impact of the operation, which generated over 6 thousand individual comments.
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https://www.ecu-repairs.com/the-impact-of-brexit-on-car-insurance | 2023-12-10T00:19:25 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-50/segments/1700679100989.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20231209233632-20231210023632-00152.warc.gz | 0.951622 | 1,367 | CC-MAIN-2023-50 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2023-50__0__149491050 | en | The United Kingdom’s decision to exit the European Union, commonly referred to as “Brexit,” has had far-reaching consequences across various sectors. Including finance, trade, and immigration. One industry that felt the effects of Brexit is the insurance sector, particularly car insurance. This article delves into the impact of Brexit on car insurance. Exploring the changes, challenges, and opportunities that have arisen in the post-Brexit landscape.
One of the most significant impacts of Brexit on car insurance is the regulatory changes that ensued. Prior to Brexit, EU directives regulated insurers in the UK. And had the benefit of the “passporting” system, allowing them to offer services across the EU without additional authorization. However, with the UK no longer part of the EU’s Single Market, this arrangement was disrupted.
The UK introduced its own regulatory framework, with the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA). The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) taking on greater roles in overseeing the insurance sector. This change required insurance companies to adapt to new regulations, which can lead to increased compliance costs and administrative challenges.
Another significant impact of Brexit on car insurance is currency fluctuations. The pound sterling saw fluctuations in the exchange rate due to the uncertainty surrounding Brexit. This directly affected the cost of imported car parts, repair services, and ultimately car insurance premiums. Insurers had to account for these fluctuations when determining pricing, which in turn impacted consumers.
Brexit also impacted the way car insurance claims were handled. The European Union had reciprocal arrangements for claims settlements, allowing insurers in different EU countries to process claims smoothly. With the UK no longer part of the EU, these arrangements became less straightforward.
In post-Brexit car insurance, some policyholders faced delays in settling claims, particularly when dealing with insurers from the EU. This could result in more complex claims processes and potential disputes over liability.
Green Card Requirement
Another notable change post-Brexit is the introduction of the “Green Card” requirement. A Green Card is an international certificate of insurance that proves a motorist has the minimum level of insurance coverage required in the country they are driving in. Previously, UK drivers could travel freely within the EU without needing a Green Card. However, since Brexit, UK drivers must carry this document when driving in the EU, and EU motorists must do the same when visiting the UK. Failure to have a Green Card can result in fines or even the impounding of the vehicle.
Opportunities for Competition
While Brexit presented several challenges, it also created opportunities for competition in the car insurance market. UK-based insurers now have more control over their regulatory environment, which can be seen as an advantage. This increased autonomy may enable insurers to tailor their products and services to better suit the UK market, potentially resulting in more innovative policies and pricing strategies.
Impact on EU-Based Insurers
Brexit also impacted insurers based in the EU who were operating in the UK. Many EU insurers needed to establish a presence in the UK to continue serving their UK policyholders. This change in structure could affect how policies are administered and claims are processed, introducing potential disruptions for consumers.
Commonly Asked Questions
What is the impact of Brexit on car insurance?
Brexit has had several implications for car insurance, including regulatory changes, currency fluctuations, claims settlements, and the introduction of the Green Card requirement.
How have regulations changed for car insurance after Brexit?
Prior to Brexit, UK insurers operated under EU regulations, but they now adhere to UK-specific regulations overseen by the PRA and FCA. This change necessitated adjustments in compliance and administrative processes.
What are the currency fluctuations and how do they affect car insurance premiums?
Brexit-related fluctuations in the exchange rate of the pound sterling have impacted the cost of imported car parts, repair services, and ultimately car insurance premiums. Insurers may adjust their pricing to account for these currency fluctuations.
How have car insurance claims settlements been affected by Brexit?
Brexit has led to changes in the way car insurance claims are handled, particularly in cases involving insurers from the EU. Some policyholders may experience delays in claims settlements, which can result in more complex processes and potential disputes over liability.
What is a Green Card, and why is it required for UK drivers after Brexit?
A Green Card is an international certificate of insurance that proves a motorist has the minimum level of insurance coverage required in the country they are driving in. After Brexit, UK drivers must carry a Green Card when driving in the EU, and EU motorists must do the same when visiting the UK to ensure they are adequately insured.
What opportunities for competition have arisen in the car insurance market due to Brexit?
Brexit has granted UK-based insurers more control over their regulatory environment, which can lead to tailored products and services better suited to the UK market. This increased autonomy can foster innovation and result in more competitive policies and pricing strategies.
How have EU-based insurers been affected by Brexit in the UK?
EU-based insurers that operated in the UK had to establish a presence in the country to continue serving their UK policyholders. This structural change may impact how policies are administered and claims are processed, potentially causing disruptions for consumers.
What should consumers and policyholders do to adapt to the post-Brexit car insurance landscape?
Consumers should stay informed about changes in car insurance policies, premiums, and regulations. It’s important to regularly review their policies, understand any new requirements, and adapt to the evolving insurance landscape.
Are there any ongoing negotiations or discussions regarding car insurance and Brexit?
Brexit’s effects on car insurance are still evolving, and discussions may continue to address challenges and opportunities in the industry. Staying updated on any negotiations or agreements related to car insurance is advisable for both insurers and policyholders.
Read more: Understanding Excess Insurance in the UK
How can I obtain a Green Card for my vehicle as a UK driver?
UK drivers can request a Green Card from their insurance provider. It’s essential to plan ahead and request this document well in advance of any planned travel to the EU to ensure compliance with the new requirement.
Brexit has had a substantial impact on car insurance in the UK and the EU. While the initial challenges have been disruptive and led to increased compliance costs, there are also opportunities for UK insurers to innovate and adapt. Both consumers and insurance providers must adjust to the new regulatory landscape and evolving circumstances.
As the situation continues to develop, it is crucial for policyholders to stay informed about changes in car insurance policies, premiums, and regulations. By doing so, they can make more informed choices and adapt to the evolving landscape of post-Brexit car insurance. | politics |
https://www.shastalandtrust.org/blog/2016/1/4/landmark-conservation-legislation-passed | 2019-09-21T01:22:13 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-39/segments/1568514574159.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20190921001810-20190921023810-00086.warc.gz | 0.928575 | 1,211 | CC-MAIN-2019-39 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2019-39__0__27232847 | en | Congress Makes Permanent a Tax Incentive Supporting Land Conservation
Great news for land conservation! Last month, with tremendous bipartisan support, Congress made permanent the enhanced conservation easement incentive act, encouraging landowners to permanently protect their land. The Land Trust Alliance, a national land conservation organization working to save the places people love by strengthening land conservation across America, has been working to make this incentive permanent for over a decade.
The Land Trust Alliance, a national land conservation organization working to save the places people love by strengthening land conservation across America, today praised Congress for voting to make permanent a tax incentive supporting land conservation.
“The importance of this vote — and this incentive — cannot be overstated,” said Rand Wentworth, the Alliance’s president. “This is the single greatest legislative action in decades to support land conservation. It states, unequivocally, that we as a nation treasure our lands and must conserve their many benefits for all future generations.”
In a strong bipartisan action, the House voted 318-109 and the Senate voted 65-33 to pass the bills that included the tax incentive.
Farmers, ranchers, the public and generations of future Americans will directly benefit from the incentive that encourages landowners to place a conservation easement on their land to protect important natural, scenic and historic resources. The Alliance led its more than 1,100 member land trusts and 5 million supporters through a collaborative, multi-year campaign to secure the incentive’s permanency.
“As we celebrate this landmark moment in land conservation, we are immensely grateful to our many champions in Congress, our countless individual and institutional allies, and all who tirelessly worked toward this pivotal day,” Wentworth said. “This vote represents an unqualified congressional endorsement of our long-held belief: It is in all our best interests to permanently protect important natural, scenic and historic resources for public benefit.”
First enacted in 2006, the incentive is directly responsible for conserving more than 2 million acres of America’s natural outdoor heritage. Lands placed into conservation easements continue to be farmed, grazed, hunted or used for outdoor recreation and wildlife conservation, and these lands remain on county tax rolls, strengthening local economies.
Congress made the incentive permanent as part of a broad, year-end deal the White House supports. Once signed into law, the incentive will be applied retroactively to start Jan. 1, 2015. An earlier version of the incentive expired Dec. 31, 2014.
“As much as this moment energizes me and all who support land conversation, I know our work is not done,” said Andrew Bowman, who will become president of the Alliance when Wentworth retires Feb. 10. “The Alliance has cultivated in Washington and beyond a nonpartisan enthusiasm for land conservation and will build on that consensus to generate essential and lasting support for conservation.”
The incentive advanced through Congress as part of the America Gives More Act, a package of tax incentives to encourage charitable giving. It passed the House earlier this year, 279-137. A standalone version of the incentive, the Conservation Easement Incentive Act, earned 52 Senate sponsors this year. The agreement announced today also encourages donations to food banks and facilitates charitable deductions from IRAs.
“The bipartisan Conservation Easement Incentive Act provides private land owners an important tool to conserve our state’s precious natural resources, increase outdoor recreation opportunities and preserve our proud tradition of ranching without facing onerous regulations. This is an important policy for Nevada, and I am pleased to see it included in the final tax deal,” said Sen. Dean Heller (NV), also a lead sponsor.
“Our farmers and ranchers are some of the best stewards of our land,” said Sen. Stabenow (MI), a lead sponsor of the conservation provision. “That's why I led a successful bipartisan effort to make this important deduction permanent, so more landowners can take part in conserving our land, water and wildlife habitats. This is a win for taxpayers, a win for farmers, and it’s a win for our environment.”
“This commonsense, bipartisan legislation is about supporting farmers who want to preserve our nation’s most cherished natural resources for future generations,” said Rep. Mike Kelly (PA), lead sponsor of the House bill to make the incentive permanent. “Since 2006, conservation easements have conserved hundreds of thousands of acres of America’s farmland and open space for hunting, fishing, hiking and locally-sourced food production.”
“Conservation easements have encouraged landowners across our county to conserve millions of acres of farm lands and scenic open spaces — so we know they work,” said Rep. Mike Thompson (CA), lead Democrat on the House bill to make the easement incentive permanent. “By making this conservation tool permanent, landowners will have the certainty they need to preserve and protect even more property and natural resources for future generations.”
How the Enhanced Easement Incentive Works
The enhanced incentive helps landowners of modest means choose conservation by:
- Raising the maximum deduction a donor can take for donating a conservation easement from 30% of their adjusted gross income (AGI) in any year to 50%;
- Allowing qualified farmers and ranchers to deduct up to 100% of their AGI;
- Increasing the number of years over which a donor can take deductions from 6 to 16 years.
Without the enhanced easement incentive, an agricultural landowner earning $50,000 a year who donated a conservation easement worth $1 million could take a total of no more than $90,000 in tax deductions! Under the enhanced incentive, that landowner can take as much as $800,000 in tax deductions – still less than the full value of their donation, but a significant increase. | politics |
http://contemporaryracism.org/138/the-importance-of-talking-about-racism/ | 2024-02-23T12:58:12 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947474412.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20240223121413-20240223151413-00013.warc.gz | 0.965565 | 340 | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2024-10__0__207143017 | en | After reading Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech and discussing it in class, there are two ideas presented in this speech that have been on my mind. First, Dr. King expressed that it is the social scientist’s responsibility to spread information to the misinformed whites of America. The second idea was a particular quote that Dr. King recited in his speech that really stood out to me. He quoted Victor Hugo saying, “If a soul is left in the darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.” Martin Luther King used this quote symbolizing whites in society as the cause of the “darkness” (prejudice attitudes/ behaviors and discrimination-both on a personal and institutional level).
I think the idea of taking the responsibility to educate others and open conversation about these issues is definitely an important aspect in changing peoples ideas on race and racism. But, I think the second idea/ quote raises an important factor as well. In order to really educate others on race issues, whites must accept responsibility for their role in society that keeps racism alive. I think realizing that racism is embedded into our systems and institutions, and that whites have privilege and benefit as a result from the inequality is essential in discussing racism.
Although there has been progress made since Martin Luther King Jr. gave this speech 44 years ago, racism is still a major issue in this country today. Opening conversation is a good start, but I guess the main question that keeps returning to my mind is: How can the damage done by years of discrimination embedded in our society’s systems be reversed? | politics |
https://affcny.org/programs/advocacy/new-york-bills-to-watch/ | 2019-04-26T05:57:31 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-18/segments/1555578760477.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20190426053538-20190426075538-00475.warc.gz | 0.926227 | 497 | CC-MAIN-2019-18 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2019-18__0__42730779 | en | Pending Legislation in New York State
In Albany, the Coalition works with legislators and legislative staff to change the law so it works for families in the system. We review pending legislation in terms of language, intent and the outcome of any new laws enactment. Often, the Coalition will officially weigh in as either supporting or opposing those legislative changes.
Please check the links on the bill numbers to get the current status.
New York State Legislative 2017-2018 Session
Grants family court judges the discretion to order continued visitation and/or contact between children and their birth parents and/or their siblings after a parent’s rights have been terminated. The judge may grant post-termination contact at the disposition hearing in a termination of parental rights proceeding when such contact is deemed by the Court to be in the child or children’s best interests.
The Coalition is NOT in favor of this legislation. Please see the Coalition’s Memo in Opposition to A8020 S5790 for details.
Authorizes the social services department to terminate the subsidies that may be provided to a parent who adopts a disabled or hard to place child under certain circumstances, most specifically, determined to be “lack of support”.
The Coalition is NOT in favor of this legislation. Please see the Coaltion’s Position on Subsidy Revocations S6518-A8313 for more information on this issue.
This bill creates a new court procedure for obtaining birth certificates and medical histories of adoptees; permits an adopted adult to access a copy of their OBC if birth parents and the judge deems it so.
The Coalition was NOT in favor of this legislation though this bill was passed in both the Assembly and the Senate.
Along with the Donaldson Adoption Institute ( DAI), Voice for Adoption, North American Council on Adoptable Children (NACAC), Child Welfare League of America (CWLA), the Coalition has presented a letter to Governor Cuomo requesting a veto action on the “bad” Adoptee Rights Bill A5036B. Read the letter to Governor Cuomo here. With the Donaldson Adoption Institute, we have broken down fifteen reasons why A5036B must be vetoed by the Governor.
Happily, Governor Cuomo DID veto A5036B on December 29th. Huge thanks to all who sent postcards, letters, or made calls! We did it! | politics |
http://kirstenkelly.ca/voters.html | 2023-03-23T14:58:03 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-14/segments/1679296945168.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20230323132026-20230323162026-00089.warc.gz | 0.958838 | 130 | CC-MAIN-2023-14 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2023-14__0__240056678 | en | Voting for Halton Catholic Trustees
Make sure you are registered to vote in the 2022 Ontario Municipal and School Board elections this October 24 to vote for Kirsten Kelly as a Board Trustee! Check if you are eligible on VoterLookup.ca before August 31st by making sure that your property taxes support the 'Separate Catholic School Board.
After August 31st
After August 31st, you will need to mail a "Application for Direction of School Support" to the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation. You will also need to apply to your municipal clerk to add your name to the voters list that includes the Catholic Separate School Board. | politics |
https://act.drugfree.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=197 | 2022-09-25T18:12:59 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334591.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925162915-20220925192915-00307.warc.gz | 0.940138 | 698 | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2022-40__0__194754180 | en | Get personalized support for your family 1-855-DRUGFREE
The 2008 Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (Parity Act) requires most health plans to cover mental health and substance use disorder treatment the same way they cover treatment for other diseases. Despite strong legal protections, millions of families still struggle to get insurance coverage for needed treatment and are unaware of their rights under the Parity Act, due to weak enforcement and poor implementation. With nearly 290 Americans dying every day from a drug overdose or suicide, now is the time to strengthen and enforce the Parity Act.
We urge you to send the below email to your Members of Congress to have them cosponsor H.R. 2874/S.1576 the Behavioral Health Coverage Transparency Act and H.R. 3165/S.1737 a bill to strengthen Parity in mental health and substance use disorder benefits, which will help to ensure insurance companies are complying with the Parity Act.
Click here for more information on the Parity Act and resources on dealing with insurance coverage.
Cosponsor Legislation to Strengthen Parity in Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders H.R. 2874/S.1576 and H.R. 3165/S.1737
Dear [Decision Maker],
I write to urge you to cosponsor H.R. 2874/S.1576, the Behavioral Health Coverage Transparency Act and H.R. 3165/S.1737, a bill to strength parity in mental health and substance use disorder benefits. These bills will strengthen compliance with the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (Parity Act) which was passed over a decade ago in 2008 and requires most health insurance companies to cover treatment for mental health and substance use disorders the same way they cover treatment for other diseases.
Every day in the United States, nearly 200 people die from a drug overdose - more than from car accidents or gun violence. Many people are dying because they are unable to access treatment. Only two in ten people who need addiction treatment receive it and cost and insurance coverage are significant barriers to receiving care. Weak enforcement of the Parity Act has allowed insurance companies to continue discriminating against patients in need of mental health and substance use disorder treatment. A recent survey of consumers conducted in 5 states by the Parity at 10 Campaign found that more than one-third face insurance barriers when accessing care. While the current enforcement framework relies on consumers to identify parity violations, the survey found consumers are less likely to speak up and challenge denials for mental health or substance use disorder benefits than denials for medical care. The majority of consumers were also unaware of the Parity Act or the rights it affords. Stronger enforcement is needed to better protect consumers and increase access to life-saving care. These bills provide additional enforcement tools by requiring plans to provide more information about how they comply with the Parity Act and requiring federal agencies to perform random audits of health plans. It will also establish a critical Consumer Parity Unit so that families in crisis can go to one central place to get help, submit complaints and receive a timely response.
We urge you to cosponsor the Behavioral Health Coverage Transparency Act and the bills to strengthen parity in mental health and substance use disorder benefits, so that those in desperate need of mental health and substance use treatment are no longer denied coverage in violation of the Parity Act. | politics |
https://www.thehabistat.com/post/soaring-home-prices-are-likely-increasing-the-racial-wealth-gap-in-canada | 2022-05-24T11:38:03 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-21/segments/1652662572800.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20220524110236-20220524140236-00116.warc.gz | 0.976733 | 845 | CC-MAIN-2022-21 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2022-21__0__134220727 | en | Many young people across Canada are starting to realize that it will be difficult for them to live the same lives as their parents did. It is no longer a guarantee that by going to school and working hard, you could be reasonably sure to one day afford a home to comfortably raise a family in. This change in opportunity has unfolded in a single generation and is leading to national protests calling on politicians to address the housing crisis. The data shows that these concerns are well-founded, with the ratio of home prices to income rising rapidly over the past decades. Home prices becoming a larger and larger multiple of income levels means that is increasingly difficult to save for a down payment or afford monthly payments, blocking many who don't have access to parental assistance from homeownership.
While most people recognize the challenge that soaring home prices are posing to young people, not many are talking about how these circumstances are likely widening the racial wealth gap. Per Financial Post, the Bank of Canada's Governor, Tiff Macklem, recognizes the wealth inequality issues caused by soaring home prices. Macklem admitted at a conference that the Bank of Canada's monetary tools being used to address the COVID-19 pandemic could widen wealth inequality by boosting asset prices that are not distributed evenly across society. As always, the Bank of Canada will be "watching this closely".
It is clear that the ownership of assets such as housing is not distributed evenly across society, and data from our neighbours to the south can give us clues in regards to homeownership by race. The United States Census Bureau reported the following homeownership rates as of June 2021:
All other races: 56.2%
The above rates have been fairly consistent since they were first tracked in 1994. There is very little public data regarding homeownership or wealth distribution by race in Canada, but the U.S. homeownership rates give us a rough idea of how large the gap may be. If we look at the latest income statistics from Statistics Canada's 2016 census, we can see clear gaps in regards to employment income and investment income:
Racialized men earn 78 cents for every dollar earned by white men, and racialized women earn 87 cents for every dollar earned by white women.
25% of racialized people earned investment income (8% earnings capital gains) compared to 31% of non-racialized people (12% earnings capital gains). The average amount of capital gains were 47% higher for non-racialized people.
Based on the limited available data, we can assume that Canada has a similar problem as the U.S. where homeownership is far from evenly distributed by race. Per Statistics Canada, real estate as a share of total assets (across all households) was 41.3% in 2019, representing the largest component of an average household's wealth. Per CREA, the national benchmark home price increased from $590,300 in June 2020 to $734,500 in June 2021, for a gain of $144,200 (+24%). This gain in a single year is more than double the 2019 median after-tax income of Canadian families and unattached individuals of $62,900. Many homeowners have profited immensely since the start of the pandemic but also going back the past several decades.
The current government has been very vocal regarding racial issues in Canada, yet has been silent on the impact of soaring home prices on the racial wealth gap. The unfortunate reality is that given how significantly home prices are rising, other programs and efforts to address the racial wealth gap are likely being dwarfed. While the Bank of Canada did admit that its policies could cause wealth inequality, this came in May 2021 (over one year after its quantitative easing program was introduced) and it has not adjusted its policies as a result. Policymakers need to be far more transparent around the impacts of their policies, and Canadians deserve an answer as to whether the actions taken during the past year have contributed to further widening the racial wealth gap. Canadians also deserve to have access to better data regarding homeownership so they can understand how policymaker decisions impact their lives. | politics |
http://[email protected]/Content/Press-Release/2011/AP-signs-exclusive-deal-with-NKorea-for-HD-video | 2016-10-27T22:34:30 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988721405.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183841-00303-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | 0.963717 | 966 | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2016-44__0__223613260 | en | AP signs exclusive deal with NKorea for HD videoJan. 10, 2012
TOKYO (AP) — Associated Press President and Chief Executive Tom Curley said Thursday the agency has signed an exclusive deal to provide high definition news video from North Korea to broadcasters worldwide.
In a speech in Tokyo, Curley unveiled the three-year agreement with North Korean state broadcaster KRT and the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications.
"Today's announcement means that AP will be the only news agency to transmit broadcast quality HD video of key events in North Korea," he said at the Japan National Press Club.
Associated Press Television News will also have exclusive rights to deliver HD video feeds for individual broadcasters wishing to transmit their own reports from North Korea.
The infrastructure will be established ahead of 2012, when the country celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of its late leader Kim Il Sung.
The deal extends AP's recent push into North Korea, officially called the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, to a level unmatched by any other Western news organization.
AP announced in June that it had also signed a series of agreements with the Korea Central News Agency, including one for the opening of a comprehensive news bureau in Pyongyang.
Expected to launch early next year, the office would be the first permanent text and photo bureau operated by a Western news organization in the North Korean capital. It builds upon the AP's existing video news bureau, which opened in Pyongyang in 2006.
In addition, the agencies signed a contract designating the AP as the exclusive international distributor of contemporary and historical video from KCNA's archive. The agencies also plan a joint photo exhibition in New York next year. They already had an agreement between them to distribute KCNA photo archives to the global market, signed earlier this year.
"This is a historic and watershed development," Curley said. "For AP, it extends further and deeper our global reach and shows the trust that is at the core of AP reporting. For the world, it means opening the door to a better understanding between the DPRK and the rest of the world."
Curley said the Pyongyang bureau was the fruit of "interesting" negotiations that took place over a long period of time. AP delegations visited North Korea several times, and KCNA representatives traveled to New York as well.
During the process, the AP kept governments abreast of the talks, Curley said. The United States and North Korea are still technically at war because a cease-fire, not a peace treaty, ended fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War.
"We have been given very positive support from various governments that this was a good thing, that having a Western media outlet operating in Pyongyang could possibly lead to other positive developments," Curley said.
The latest deal also highlights AP's broader digital transformation efforts in a rapidly evolving media landscape.
AP, which sees video as a critical part of its future, is investing at least $30 million into its video business. Under an 18-month plan, the agency is upgrading all infrastructure to eventually provide HD video that "will fit easily into digital platforms of any media customer anywhere."
Curley told the group of Japanese journalists that while the U.S. is "ground zero" for the digital media shift, "the movement of information consumption to online platforms and devices is here to stay, and it will inevitably upend traditional forms of media everywhere in the world."
Rather than fearing the shift, journalists should celebrate the growing market for content and find innovative ways to tell stories, Curley said.
The AP plans to release a major update to its popular mobile application later this year that is intended to benefit the agency as well as its local media partners. U.S. newspapers will be able to include their content in the new version and receive a share of the advertising revenue.
The company will also roll out several new products next year that have Curley hopeful about the future.
Revenue at the AP is up slightly this year — about 1 percent — and should climb several percent next year, he said. The new products are expected to drive at least $10 million in new revenue.
"We're putting double-digit new revenues in the budget for 2012 for these new products," Curley said.
Founded in 1846, the AP maintains bureaus in some 100 countries around the world and is the oldest and largest of the world's major news agencies. Curley was named president and CEO in 2003.
Associated Press writer Malcolm Foster contributed to this report.
Follow Tomoko A. Hosaka on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tomokohosaka
© 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. Terms and conditions apply. See AP.org for details. | politics |
http://proudlyindependent.uk/ | 2019-05-22T09:26:43 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-22/segments/1558232256778.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20190522083227-20190522105227-00333.warc.gz | 0.938774 | 193 | CC-MAIN-2019-22 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2019-22__0__97361609 | en | Not a political party, just people proud to be independent.
We are standing because decision-making about local priorities has been overtaken by a political agenda and vested interests far beyond this district. That’s not good for local democracy. As proudly independent candidates we are looking forward to a District Council with a renewed sense of purpose that will listen to residents and respect the special character of the district. It’s about putting the future of this ward back into the hands of the people who live here so you can be confident decisions are made for the right reasons and with your best interests at heart. We intend to bring some long overdue balance and reasoned debate to the council chamber.
Neil Gregory and Richard Pavitt are prospective Independent candidates in the 2019 Uttlesford District Council elections for the two-seat ward of Littlebury, Chesterford and Wenden Lofts including Chrishall, Duddenhoe End, Elmdon and Strethall. | politics |
https://mining2030.org/team-members/louis-marechal/ | 2023-12-01T06:35:28 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-50/segments/1700679100276.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20231201053039-20231201083039-00071.warc.gz | 0.924331 | 145 | CC-MAIN-2023-50 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2023-50__0__60722554 | en | Senior Advisor, Minerals & Extractives, Centre for Responsible Business Conduct, Directorate for Financial and Enterprise Affairs – OECD
Louis Maréchal joined the Centre for Responsible Business Conduct of the OECD in September 2014. He specifically works on projects related to the implementation of the OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals from Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas.
Prior to joining the OECD, Louis Maréchal worked for four years with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of France on issues related to transparency and governance in the mining sector, and security of supply of strategic metals.
He started his career with a strategic consultancy firm focusing on the defence and extractives industries. | politics |
https://emilyfaubert.com/2020/03/30/from-capitalism-to-community-individual-freedom-is-a-group-activity/ | 2023-06-07T12:05:18 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224653764.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20230607111017-20230607141017-00517.warc.gz | 0.958072 | 2,797 | CC-MAIN-2023-23 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2023-23__0__213582080 | en | In Capital, Karl Marx predicted that the fall of capitalism would come by the assembly of the large class of proletariat workers who would overthrow the bourgeoisie that became wealthier due to their hard work (22). However, this has not come to pass. In this paper I will show that capitalism relies on individualism in order to prevent an uprising of the proletariat class, and that any form of resistance against capitalism must not only assert that each citizen has the right to basic means of subsistence but must also include community driven projects that work to make those rights a reality through concerted action. Despite the individualism proliferated within capitalism, it is within each individual’s best interest to care about the fate of others. I will first show how this individualism is created and maintained before discussing the infringements that this places on the ability to live a life worthy of human dignity. I will then differentiate between resistance that plays within the class dynamic of capitalism and resistance that attempts to disrupt that dynamic. Finally I will conclude with a discussion of how one can assert their rights while living within a class that is given very little power and autonomy.
Resistance among groups within the proletariat class exists under capitalism, however it fails to create mass resistance of the entire class, despite fighting for changes that would benefit all. I argue that this is due to the individualism proliferated under capitalism. In order to highlight how prevalent this individualism is, we can look at prolific civil rights movements, which sought to assert the right to a life free of violence regardless of race. Following his arrest in the non-violent protests in Alabama, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from a Birmingham City Jail, in which he argued that his non-violent method of resistance would stir the sense of justice of the white moderate when they witnessed the police force violently acting against non-violent protesters. While his campaign had successes, it failed to create a unity among the white moderate who King saw as valuing order over justice (1121). This justice that King sought to assert was that each person has a right to life free of racial injustice (1118). Therefore, those who did not support the movement implicitly supported the idea that there is a group in existence that values social order over the idea that all people deserve a life free of injustice. How does one come to believe that there are people who are less deserving of life? I argue that this is due to the nature of capitalism which creates an overwhelming concern for one’s own survival which then outwardly manifests as a lack of concern for the wellbeing of others.
I argue that Capitalism directly degrades this concern for others, as it forces people to perform socially harmful behaviours in the interest of their own survival. The force I describe is in the sense of Cohen’s understanding that there is no reasonable alternative but to participate in capitalism if one lives in a capitalist country (4). Without earning a wage, one cannot purchase food or shelter and therefore the alternative is destitution. Many entry level jobs are inherently harmful to society, either through pollution created to make and transport goods or through the direct use of customers as a means in themselves; such as the selling of predatory loans that are designed to keep customers in debt. When we consider the values upheld by performing these jobs, they are ones that no person who cared for the wellbeing of others would hold. The consequence of this is an alienation of the worker from themselves and their community, as the worker is forced to use their time and energy to uphold a system that is inherently harmful. Coupling this alienation from the community and personal values with the forced participation in capitalism to purchase the means of subsistence, capitalism creates a proletariat class of individuals. Each individual is both isolated from their community and responsible for their own survival. In order to survive, proletariats are in competition with one another for jobs, furthering the focus on oneself being separate from others in a hostile environment, leading to fear and mistrust of those around them. This attitude is responsible for the lack of cohesive action among the proletariat class to assert their rights to subsistence, as well as the oppression of groups within the proletariat class such as the racism Dr. King fought against.
While I have discussed the value of individualism that upholds capitalism, I will now turn to why it is important to consider the values that one holds. Within the framework of capitalism, one must value their individual wellbeing above that of others, which allows for the competition and exploitation that leads to ‘success’. A bourgeoisie could not justify the labour conditions in overseas factories or the mass destruction of the environment without a reason-and that reason is the accumulation of capital. However, this capital does not only benefit the individual capitalist, but the entire class. Marx spoke of the capitalists as a “warring band of brothers” that defends each other as a class instead of as individuals. The gain that one capitalist makes benefits their shareholders, corporation members and government, as the wealth is distributed among them. We can contrast this community among the capitalists with the class of the proletariat that survives by selling their labour power and only benefits themselves by doing so. The community aspect of the capitalist class is disguised under the structure of capitalism through stories of ‘self-made millionaires’ which encourages each individual proletariat to ‘apply themselves’ in order to move up, ignoring the fact that the odds are against them.
In order for Marx’s prediction of the fall of capitalism to come true, a mental shift must occur within the proletariat class where each person begins to care about the fate of others, which will allow for an actualization of each person’s right to survival. The transition between a focus on the self to others is unlikely to happen through non-violent protests, as a concern for one’s own survival leads one to uphold the status quo. However, I now turn to why it is within each person’s personal interest to become concerned with the fate of others.
In Women and Human Development, Martha Nussbaum outlines components of a life that she finds worthy of human dignity (71-72). She highlights that an important component of dignified human life is being able to shape one’s life in association with others in contrast to being moved through life as a ‘herd’ animal. Within capitalism, the proletariat has no other option but to work to survive, and are analogous to an animal being herded throughout their day.
As well, a proletariat worker can be seen as being used by the capitalist as a means to an end-the end being the creation of more wealth for the capitalist (73). This is especially apparent when we consider that the worker’s job allows them to purchase their means of subsistence, and any time taken away from work (due to illness/personal life events) likely puts their survival in danger.
Instead, Nussbaum finds that there are a set of universal values, among them being bodily health: being adequately nourished and sheltered (78). Within Affiliation, Nussbaum writes that each person must be treated with dignity and as equal to others (79). It is also important to note that these rights are not dependant on one’s wealth but instead are allotted to each person because they exist.
A proletariat worker does not have these rights and cannot exercise their full freedoms of a life worthy of human dignity, instead they are treated as means to the capitalist’s end. It is difficult to defend the capitalist system that does not afford a life worthy of dignity to the vast majority of people.
In order to create a society where each person is able to achieve fulfilment instead of merely survival, they must be able to have their basic needs met. Marx’s prediction for the fall of capitalism begins with the proletariat class seizing the means of production and transitioning to communism where the state is responsible for meeting the basic needs of all citizens (22). With basic needs met, work can then become a means of gaining fulfilment in life. Making this a reality involves actualizing the assertion that each person has a right to have their basic needs met, seizing and redistributing food, shelter and other means of subsistence. If one is within the proletariat class, one is unlikely to live a fulfilling life, therefore it is within each individual’s best interest to work toward the end of capitalism, which involves becoming concerned with the fate of others (Cohen 12).
In order to assert the right that all people have to subsistence, various forms of resistance have emerged, as communities become concerned with the fate of those around them. While this can be seen in large-scale organization such as King’s Birmingham protests, pushback can also be seen during the Covid-19 pandemic. Community run organizations such as the People’s Pantry delivers meals and groceries to vulnerable members of the population. This is a form of resistance that asserts the right that all people are entitled to food, regardless of their ability to pay for it, which challenges the capitalist notion of each individual being responsible for purchasing their means of subsistence. This particular form of resistance can be compared with Arendt’s concept of power, as it is volunteer run, meaning that its existence and effectiveness is determined by the amount of people who support the idea that no one should go without food (4).
While this is an act of community and generosity it is also one that is an absurd necessity in a country where 58% of edible food (equivalent to 2.2 million tonnes) is discarded each year (Urciuoli). Community generosity is a form of resistance that is important for the immediate survival of many and fosters a sense of community and care. However, it operates within the structure of capitalism as the food to be distributed among the community members is still purchased, upholding the capitalist notion that wealth must be exchanged for subsistence. This shifts the care of the most vulnerable on those who are often only slightly less vulnerable instead of onto those who have more than enough – the modern bourgeoisie. The pushback that community run solutions provide profess the right that citizens have to the food that is available but still involves the purchasing of the food to be distributed, thereby upholding the idea that money is required in order to access basic necessities.
Judith Butler wrote in Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly that those without power (such as the proletariat class within capitalism) can claim power through acting as though they have it (58). This type of resistance is shown through the ‘food rescuing’ performed by Second Harvest, which takes perishable food from distributors that is deemed unsellable due to packaging flaws and redistributes it among a network of social services. This directly takes food that would be discarded and gives it to those who need it, asserting the right that those people have to the food. Butler would recognize the difference between the missions of the two organizations as a profession of the right to the food that is available and an actualization of that right (49). This actualization can be applied to many of the rights that Nussbaum claims to be universal. For example, in her text, Butler draws upon the example of people asserting their right to shelter by squatting in abandoned homes in order to establish residential rights (58). As well, the overall dynamic of community-run support systems such as the People’s Pantry asserts the right to community in a capitalist regime that draws strength from the proletariat class’s ingrained individualism.
I have shown that Capitalism infringes on human dignity as the proletariat worker is treated with little regard for their health and wellbeing, with the only purpose of generating capital. As well, one cannot find fulfilment in life that is lived for the purpose of survival. In order to find this fulfilment, proletariat workers must rebel against the ingrained individualism and begin to recognize one another as equals, worthy of human dignity. This recognition will lead to asserting the right each person has to subsistence, regardless of their ability to purchase it. This assertion of power is impossible as an individual, which is why capitalism encourages individualism. Only as a community of people concerned with the fate of those around them, Marx’s prediction of a proletariat uprising can come to pass. As Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto: “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win (IV).” This world will be one where each person is able to spend their time finding fulfilment instead of working for the capitalist’s benefit. This world can only be actualized through a concerted class effort of the proletariats.
Arendt, Hannah. 1969. ‘Reflections on Violence’ The New York Review. 4
Butler, Judith. 2015. Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Cohen, G.A., 1983. ‘The Structure of Proletarian Unfreedom’. Philosophy and Public Affairs. 12: 4,12.
Harman, C. (1991). ‘The state and capitalism today’, International Socialism, 51:8
King, Martin Luther. 1994. Letter from a Birmingham City Jail. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco.
Nussbaum, Martha. 2000. Women and Human Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Marx, Karl & Engels, Friedrich. 1848. The Communist Manifesto. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Marx, Karl. 1967. Capital. New York: International Publishers. 22
Urciuoli, Anthony. 2020. ‘2.2 million tonnes of food is thrown away; should Canada legislate food waste?’ InHalton.
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https://ja.eu-japan.eu/ja/node/2088 | 2023-06-05T00:34:40 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224650409.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20230604225057-20230605015057-00564.warc.gz | 0.951282 | 258 | CC-MAIN-2023-23 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2023-23__0__142926348 | en | Japan to introduce registry system for government cloud service providers
IT specialists at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIC) have published a proposal (J) for a new registry system to better safeguard the security of IT systems, such as cloud services, the Japanese government procures. Among others, the proposal will require a check by auditors whether the conditions for each service provided are met. After passing the audit, the suppliers will be recorded into a register. When introduced, procurement by the central government will only be possible for services listed in the registry. The new system is scheduled to be introduced in the fall of 2020.
In other countries, similar public auditing systems for public procurement of cloud services have already been introduced. The proposal for the new system is now open for 1 month for public comments (J), after which a formal decision is expected within the year.
It is still too early to see whether the new system will be an additional barrier for foreign suppliers to participate in public procurement in Japan. However, with large players in the cloud services market, such as Google and Amazon, it is expected that the system will be structured along international regulations with regard to information security.Source: Nikkei Online (J) | politics |
http://www.ci.loveland.co.us/government/city-clerk/municipal-elections | 2017-07-23T10:56:13 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-30/segments/1500549424549.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20170723102716-20170723122716-00417.warc.gz | 0.830425 | 139 | CC-MAIN-2017-30 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2017-30__0__15166316 | en | The City of Loveland Regular Election will be held on November 7, 2017 to elect Ward I, II, III, and IV Council Members and Mayor.
NOTICE OF CHANGE IN CONTRIBUTION LIMITS:
Beginning January 1, 2015, "No person may make contributions and/or contributions in kind totaling more than one hundred and fifteen dollars ($115.00) to the candidate committee of any candidate for the office of Mayor or for any position on the City Council." This is an increase from the $105.00, set in 2010. City Charter section 17-5(a)
Loveland City Clerk's Office
Acting City Clerk
Acting Deputy City Clerk | politics |
http://multagri.lyon.cemagref.fr/section/text_content/index.php?section=1&page_id=1 | 2020-07-02T15:29:36 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-29/segments/1593655879532.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20200702142549-20200702172549-00282.warc.gz | 0.885699 | 958 | CC-MAIN-2020-29 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2020-29__0__185294693 | en | |Capitalisation of results on the||multifunctionality of agriculture and rural areas|
Multagri : Presentation
Multagri : an overview on the multifunctionality of agriculture and rural areasMultagri is a Specific Support Action undertaken within the 6th Framework Research Programme of the European Commission. With a partnership of 26 research organisations from 15 countries this project will provide a comprehensive overview of existing research, particularly in Europe, on different aspects of the multifunctionality of agriculture.
The essential approach adopted in this initiative is based on the premise that the multifunctional character of agriculture must be acknowledged and promoted in order for agriculture to become sustainable (and fulfil its potential as a central pillar of sustainable development).
A long term goal : an european model of agricultureThe EU has ratified a European Model of Agriculture that is evolving towards this new multifunctional, sustainable, paradigm. Citizens acknowledge the importance of agriculture as a provider of non-agricultural related goods and services. It is now necessary to examine, and more precisely define, the multiple roles and functions of agriculture (i.e. its multifunctional character), the suitable parameters and indicators to assess them, and the (private and public) goods and services that it provides.
For agriculture to play an effective role in securing better social, environmental and economic conditions for sustainable development, a broader approach to multifunctional and sustainable agriculture, and the role they play in wider rural development, needs to be developed.
A method to contribute to European research goalsAlthough the notion of multifunctionality only recently appeared on international political agendas, numerous social, cultural, technical and research practices have already referred to it, either explicitly or implicitly. Thus the concept of multifunctionality is already embedded in a broad range of research approaches, scientific disciplines and social practices. In some areas there is a long established body of work on such practices. It is important to structure, assess and interpret this research work within a global framework of multifunctionality and sustainable agricultural development. This will enable the identification of relevant questions for future research. This will be the role of Multagri, which will reinforce and promote sustainable agriculture and integrated rural development by building on the results of such research.
The results of existing research will be developed through six stages.:
1. Evaluating the state-of-the-art of current research.
2. Further analysis and understanding of ongoing research work.
3. Identifying the main institutions and networks involved in this type of research, both inside and outside Europe, and paying special attention to new EU member countries.
4. Identifying the different disciplines and scientific approaches that are generating knowledge and conceptual backgrounds in this area.
5. Providing a conceptual and analytical framework that allows for the identification of approaches and topics for further research.
6. Formulating recommendations for a future research agenda concerning the multifunctionality of agriculture and rural areas.
Six research issuesThere is already a broad and diverse range of scientific disciplines, research approaches and social practices that are relevant to a state-of-the-art review of research. Six thematic axes of research have been identified in order to structure these and guide the development of recommendations for promising lines of future research, within the wider topic of multifunctional and sustainable agriculture:
i) Definitions, references and interpretations of the concept of multifunctionality and its contribution to sustainable development.
ii) Consumer and societal demands
iii) Knowledge, models, techniques, tools and indicators for examining the multifunctionality of agriculture.
iv) Multifunctionality of activities, plurality of identities, and new institutional arrangements.
v) Setting-up and management of public policies with multifunctional purpose: connecting agriculture with new markets and services and rural SMEs
vi) Evaluation of policies with respect to multifunctionality of agriculture: observation tools and support for policy formulation and evaluation.
Impact, results and disseminationIMPACT ASSESSMENT
The results of Multagri will contribute to a better understanding amongst policy makers, stakeholder groups, scientists and society at large, of the current and potential impacts of EU policies on the economic, environmental and social sustainability of agriculture and rural development.
The Multagri project will
-organise several European workshops strengthening European research capacity in this area ;
-deliver free access to its scientific reports on the website ;
-contribute to the development of a future research agenda through by a concluding international seminar.
Project funded by DG RTD of European Commission.
Sixth framework programme "Global change and ecosystems"
Contact at the Commission : Daniel Deybe
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https://members.caltrux.org/cta-events/Details/2019-call-on-washington-91123?sourceTypeId=Website | 2019-08-25T04:27:26 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-35/segments/1566027323067.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20190825042326-20190825064326-00465.warc.gz | 0.857892 | 124 | CC-MAIN-2019-35 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2019-35__0__166854275 | en | 2019 Call on Washington
Call On Washington
March 12 - 14, 2019
More information including hotel arrangements and the Call On Washington schedule are coming soon. If you are interested in attending, contact Marcia Woolworth at [email protected] or (916) 373-3540.
Benefits of Attending
- Get updated on federal transportation issues through briefings from ATA
- Let your voice be heard with a unique opportunity to discuss key issues with members of the California Congressional delegation
- Attend receptions and interact with your congressional delegation, staff, agency officials, and national transportation leaders | politics |
https://www.sportsmenforamie.com/about | 2019-02-17T15:57:33 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-09/segments/1550247482186.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20190217152248-20190217174248-00210.warc.gz | 0.961803 | 652 | CC-MAIN-2019-09 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2019-09__0__144071353 | en | Amie Hoeber is a national security expert, business leader and women’s advocate.
Amie has decades of experience managing programs to protect us against nuclear, chemical and biological threats.
As a former Deputy Under Secretary of the Army under President Reagan, Amie worked tirelessly to strengthen America’s defense and national security. She oversaw the Army’s research and development programs and managed the environmental cleanup of decommissioned bases. Amie also led the Pentagon’s efforts to protect our troops from chemical and other unconventional weapons and to destroy the existing U.S. stockpile of chemical materials.
Amie’s proudest achievement is her contribution to improving our country’s ability to counter terrorism. Today, more than ever, this experience is critical in developing policies that are effective and efficient in an ever more dangerous world.
After leaving Government service, Amie founded AMH Consulting in 1992. AMH Consulting is a small woman-owned business that advises the Federal government and private industry on defense, homeland security, and environmental cleanup programs.
Amie’s business experience also includes serving on the Board of Directors of Versar, Inc., and chairing the Boards of EAI Corporation and Peter Hinz Consulting, LLC.
Throughout her career, Amie has advocated for the advancement of women in business, politics, and the military. She has served on the Board of the House of Ruth Maryland for more than a decade, one of the nation’s leading intimate partner violence centers. The House of Ruth has helped thousands of battered women and their children find safety and security in times of need.
As one of the highest-ranking women in the Pentagon, Amie worked to advance opportunities for women in the military and she continues these efforts. A co-founder and past chair of the National Women’s Political Caucus chapters in both Northern Virginia and in Los Angeles, CA, Amie is also on the Advisory Board of Women in International Security and a member of the International Women’s Forum. She is one of the co-founders of “CLONE,” a formal mentoring program that helps young women in the defense business progress in their careers or start businesses of their own.
Amie is a graduate of Stanford University. She and her husband Mark Epstein reside in Potomac, Maryland. She has raised a son, stepsons, and has five grandchildren.
Maryland’s 6th Congressional District is home to sportsmen and nature lovers alike. Sportsmen are the backbone of our district, unafraid to get their hands dirty and make productive use of the Districts rich resources. Our district has many natural sights and places of beauty to explore and preserve – many easily reachable through the multitude of trails. As your next Congresswoman, Amie pledges to represent your interests and ensure that you have a seat at the table and that her door is always open. This coalition is the first step in that process. By coming together and working directly with each other, WE can bring about change to Maryland!
For more information about Amie Hoeber please visit: https://www.amieformaryland.com/ | politics |
http://www.chadwicks.org/?page=4 | 2019-05-25T11:55:22 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-22/segments/1558232258003.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20190525104725-20190525130725-00357.warc.gz | 0.969549 | 616 | CC-MAIN-2019-22 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2019-22__0__23099364 | en | After months of speculation, attempts to oust her and parliamentary defeats, the fate of Theresa May is finally sealed. But although there is clarity about her political career -- now she has announced she will resign on June 7 and set the timetable to elect a new Prime Minister -- the future of the Conservative Party, the government and the UK is far from clear.
Posted on: 24 May 2019 | 3:09 pm
"Aladdin," Disney's live-action reboot of its 1992 animated hit, made $7 million on its opening night Thursday.
Posted on: 24 May 2019 | 1:56 pm
Since the Valentine's Day shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018, more than 1,200 other children have died in the US because of gun violence, according to the Miami Herald's Since Parkland project.
Posted on: 24 May 2019 | 10:55 am
Lucky New Yorkers got a sneak peak of a Memorial Day airshow when pilot Aaron Fitzgerald flew seemingly impossible loops, twists and barrels with his Red Bull Aerobatic helicopter.
Posted on: 24 May 2019 | 10:22 am
It's one of the biggest indie rock songs of all time -- and for 20 years British band The Verve didn't make a cent off "Bitter Sweet Symphony."
Posted on: 24 May 2019 | 7:46 am
In November 2016, the world was shocked by the outcome of the US presidential election. Not only had the chattering classes gotten it wrong, but the data -- the polls that many closely tracked -- were sometimes off, too. Why did several state polls seem so off, especially in key battleground states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin?
Posted on: 23 May 2019 | 10:31 pm
The message arrived as we were passing through airport security. A US returnee from ISIS-held territory needed help. Reintegrating back into his American community was not going well. His past was doggedly blocking his prospects for the future. And the same drivers that often push people into extremist groups -- isolation, trauma and societal marginalization -- were weighing on him once again.
Posted on: 23 May 2019 | 9:56 pm
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway claims that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is not "pro-woman" because Pelosi declined to speak with Conway about negotiations with the White House.
Posted on: 23 May 2019 | 6:20 pm
Radio host Howard Stern tells CNN's Anderson Cooper that he was shocked to receive a phone call from President Donald Trump when he was about to go on stage to be endorsed by Sarah Palin. See the full interview tonight on AC 360.
Posted on: 23 May 2019 | 4:25 pm
It turns out trade wars are not short and not so easy to win, as President Donald Trump once tweeted. As the US-China trade war drags on, economists are sharpening their pencils, forecasting what a protracted trade war would cost.
Posted on: 23 May 2019 | 9:36 am | politics |
https://s-d-s.co.uk/how-much-affordable-housing-do-private-developers-have-to-build/ | 2024-03-03T12:27:12 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947476374.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20240303111005-20240303141005-00047.warc.gz | 0.960133 | 1,556 | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2024-10__0__175337515 | en | Since the 1980s, the UK has undergone significant shifts in its housing landscape. During this era, housing delivery largely transferred from the public sector to private developers. This monumental change created a gaping void in the supply of affordable housing, contributing to a housing crisis that still echoes today.
Laws are now in place to ensure that a percentage of any private residential housing development is affordable homes. How much is that percentage and what exemptions are there? Do new developments have to include social housing?
This article addresses such questions and reviews the vital role of private residential developers in addressing the nation’s housing needs.
How Has the UK Housing Market Changed Since the 1980s?
The number of social homes built in the UK has drastically reduced over the decades, especially since the 1980s. Shelter refers to the following statistics:
- In the 25 years after the Second World War, 4.4 million social homes were built in the UK
- In 1980, 94,140 social homes were built
- In 1983, only 44,240 units were built
- In 2021/2022, a mere 7,528 new social homes were built
Why the dramatic plummet in the figures above? Things changed in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher when the Right to Buy was introduced. With tenants able to buy their properties at a discounted price, less and less properties were available for social rent. Councils also faced new restrictions surrounding the building and managing of social housing.
Recently, Right to Buy properties have been coming onto the market again but this time, as private rent-to-buy properties at prices too expensive for those on low incomes.
The Housing Act of 1988
As well as the Right to Buy, the introduction of the Housing Act of 1988 brought about more changes. One of the intentions for the Act was revive social housing, except from here on, it would be financed privately and executed through housing associations. However, it ended up contributing to a reduced number of affordable homes.
Introduction of Assured Shorthold Tenancies (ASTs)
One of the key provisions of the Act was the introduction of Assured Shorthold Tenancies (ASTs). These tenancies allowed landlords to regain possession of their properties after a fixed term, usually six months, without having to provide a specific reason.
This change incentivised landlords to opt for shorter rental agreements, making it less attractive for them to invest in long-term affordable housing solutions. Landlords seeking higher returns were more likely to focus on the potentially more profitable private rental sector, leading to a reduced supply of homes available for affordable, long-term rentals.
The Rise of Buy-to-Let Properties
The act’s provisions, including ASTs and increased flexibility for rent adjustments, made the buy-to-let market more appealing to investors. As a result, many properties that could have otherwise been used for affordable housing were converted into rental properties targeting higher-income tenants, contributing to a decrease in the availability of affordable homes.
Lack of Rent Controls
The Act removed rent controls that had previously limited the rate at which landlords could increase rents. While this change aimed to provide landlords with more financial freedom, it also meant that rental prices could increase significantly, making it harder for low and middle-income individuals and families to afford suitable housing. As rents rose, the supply of affordable homes relative to the demand diminished, exacerbating the affordability crisis.
What Percentage of Private Developments Have to Be Affordable?
According to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), the minimum percentage of affordable housing must be 10%. In reality, it’s usually somewhere between 20-40% in most regions but in some locations, it can be up to 50%.
Residential developers need to negotiate with planning authorities to establish the actual percentage but this applies when developments come under s106 agreements; if the new infrastructure levy goes ahead, contributions will work in a different way.
When Does This Legislation NOT Apply?
Requirements differ by Local Aurhotity but according to the NPPF, affordable housing applies only on developments of at least 10 properties, or where the site is at least 0.5 hectares in size. In some regions, previous thresholds apply instead of the 0.5 hectare limit; in these cases, there must be a minimum total combined floorspace of 1,000 square metres across all units.
Other exemptions are as follows:
- When the 10% would exceed the amount of affordable housing required in the area, or if it would ‘significantly prejudice the ability to meet the identified affordable housing needs of specific groups’.
- When the site provides solely for Build to Rent homes.
- When the site provides specialist accommodation for people with specialist needs, such as students or the elderly.
- When the development will be done by people building or commissioning their own homes.
- When the site is ‘exclusively for affordable housing, an entry-level exception site or a rural exception site’.
Do New Developments Have to Include Social Housing?
What percentage of new developments have to be social housing? There is no minimum threshold as this is determined by Local Authorities.
In the Affordable Homes Programme from 2021-2026, 50% of the funds were due to be spent to build homes for discounted rent and the remaining 50% would be designated to affordable home ownership. However, this year, it was decided that social rent would take priority; as a result, grant rates specifically for social rent were made accessible throughout the country.
It 2021, it was announced that the programme would deliver 32,000 units – more than double the amount of social rent properties delivered through the previous programme. However, not everyone is convinced that figure is suitable; for example, Crisis and the National Housing Federation stated that 90,000 units should be built each year in England for 15 years in order to adequately address demand.
Increasing support in the development of social housing would reduce expenditure on housing benefit which has now exceeded £29 billion annually, compared to £9 billion in 1991-1992.
In order to conquer the housing crisis, developers need to look beyond existing stock and focus on building new homes as well. Our Landval software helps private developers obtain the best residual land value, quickly analysing development costs and testing your gross margin against fluctuating sales values.
We also provide ProVal, the UK’s leading viability software for social housing providers, helping Registered Providers quickly make accurate financial viability decisions.
The evolution of the UK’s housing market since the 1980s has been marked by significant legislative and market shifts that have critically impacted the provision of affordable housing.
The transition from public sector housing to private developers and legislation such as the Housing Act of 1988 have largely defined the trajectory of the sector. Despite intentions to revive social housing through private channels, subsequent measures like the Assured Shorthold Tenancies and the focus on buy-to-let properties inadvertently limited the availability of affordable homes.
Current mandates that require private developers to include a percentage of affordable homes in their projects are a testament to the ongoing challenge of meeting national housing needs.
The question of how much affordable housing do private developers have to build does not have a black and white answer, but it must be at least 10% for sites of at least 10 units, as specified by the NPPF. In many cases, it will be between 20-40%, as determined by Local Authorities.
Our expertise is at your disposal at every stage of the development process. To book a demo of Landval, ProVal or any of our other solutions, contact us today. | politics |
https://www.cryptovoyage.net/2018/02/20/russia-is-testing-blockchain-payments/ | 2023-03-28T08:38:45 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-14/segments/1679296948817.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20230328073515-20230328103515-00140.warc.gz | 0.955778 | 771 | CC-MAIN-2023-14 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2023-14__0__107587466 | en | Vneshecomombank, (VEB), a development bank that is owned by the Russian government and meant to fund the projects aimed at the development of Russian economy, has recently signed a contract with Kaliningrad regional government to create a pilot version of the new payment system that is going to be based on blockchain technology.
The meeting took place last week and included the governor of Kaliningrad Anton Alkikhanov and the chairman of VEB Sergei Gorkov. Alikhanov and Gorkov met in Sochi, at the Russian Invenstment Forum (an annual event “for pesenting Russia’s inventment” attended, among others, by Dmitry Medvedev, the Prime Minister of Russian Federation). The two officials signed the agreement laying the foundations for testing the new technology. Alikhanov stated that “the competence of the bank’s development lies in the area of the blockchain technology” which is expected to help Kaliningrad, the westernmost region of Russia, to “improve the quality of the administrative decisions”.
Gorkov was also very optimistic about the innovative project. In his statement, he called Kaliningrad “one of the most active subjects of Russian Federation in the area of implementing advanced technologies which support the development of Russia’s digital economy.” He also said that the pilot blockchain project “touches upon the social sphere – the area in which one of the basic functions of the state is actualized. Implementing the new technologies allows to significantly improve the quality of these services – enhance the transparency of the system, get rid of the unnecessary paperwork, simplify the service and make it more comfortable for the citizens.” In addition to these prospective benefits, according to VEB chairman, the integration of the blockchain technology can help Russia save a lot of money: “Blockchain technology will give us the opportunity to save the expenses in this area, which currently comprise trillions of rubles across the country.”
Previously, there have already been attempts to research the potential of blockchain implementation for the public sector, when Russian government decided to test a land registry system based on blockchain, but the agreement signed between VEB and Kaliningrad is a significant new aggregation of public and private interests.
The parties plan to work together to bring cutting-edge technologies and solutions to Kaliningrad region to enhance the efficiency of the corporate and state management. The expertise to support the project in the area of social payments using blockchain technology will be provided by the Blockchain Technology Research Center, an initiative of VEB that was revealed in the autumn of 2017. VEB has worked together with Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of Communications and Mass Median, and the Ministry of Finance to “create the first center that focuses on blockchain and quantum technologies at the National University of Science and Technology (MISIS)”, as Sergei Gorkov said in his press release. He also added that there were plans “to create a group on investment funds with external financing from both Russian and foreign investors.”
In recent years, Russia has expressed increasing interest in blockchain and in its possible application in the area of public services. As early as August 2017, Vladimir Demin, advisor to the VEB’s Chairman, said that VEB aims at changing the paradigm of the state’s functions, and that blockchain is likely to completely transform Russia within five years. According to Demin, “I presume that, if someone falls into lethargic sleep today and wakes up in five years, they will not recognize the country.”
Read more here – https://www.coindesk.com/regional-government-russia-test-blockchain-payments/ | politics |
https://www.flaschner.org/program/jury-trial-america-triumph-decline/ | 2024-02-29T23:59:54 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947474893.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20240229234355-20240301024355-00191.warc.gz | 0.951782 | 604 | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2024-10__0__163670462 | en | - This program has passed.
The Jury Trial in America: Triumph and Decline
Tuesday, April 18, 2017 | 5:30pm - 7:30pm UTC
A Reading Discussion with the Author, Dennis Hale
From the publisher: “The jury trial is one of the formative elements of American government, vitally important even when Americans were still colonial subjects of Great Britain. When the founding generation enshrined the jury in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, they were not inventing something new, but protecting something old: one of the traditional and essential rights of all free men. Judgment by an “impartial jury” would henceforth put citizen panels at the very heart of the American legal order. And yet at the dawn of the 21st century, juries resolve just two percent of the nations legal cases and critics warn that the jury is “vanishing” from both the criminal and civil courts. The jurys critics point to sensational jury trials like those in the O. J. Simpson and Menendez cases, and conclude that the disappearance of the jury is no great loss. The jury’s defenders, from journeyman trial lawyers to members of the Supreme Court, take a different view, warning that the disappearance of the jury trial would be a profound loss.
In The Jury in America, a work that deftly combines legal history, political analysis, and storytelling, Dennis Hale takes us to the very heart of this debate to show us what the American jury system was, what it has become, and what the changes in the jury system tell us about our common political and civic life. Because the jury is so old, continuously present in the life of the American republic, it can act as a mirror, reflecting the changes going on around it. And yet because the jury is embedded in the Constitution, it has held on to its original shape more stubbornly than almost any other element in the American regime. Looking back to juries at the time of America’s founding, and forward to the fraught and diminished juries of our day, Hale traces a transformation in our understanding of ideas about sedition, race relations, negligence, expertise, the responsibilities of citizenship, and what it means to be a citizen who is “good and true” and therefore suited to the difficult tasks of judgment.
Criminal and civil trials and the jury decisions that result from them involve the most fundamental questions of right, and so go to the core of what makes the nation what it is. In this light, in conclusion, Hale considers four controversial modern trials for what they can tell us about what a jury is, and about the fate of republican government in America today.”
About the Author: Dennis Hale
Dennis Hale is associate professor of political science at Boston College.
Program participants will have the opportunity to read and discuss The Jury in America with the author in an informal round table setting. Participation will be limited so please register early. | politics |
http://solco.com/news/elkay-receives-favorable-preliminary-decision-in-chinese-sink-manufacturer-subsidy-case | 2021-08-04T21:47:08 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-31/segments/1627046155188.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20210804205700-20210804235700-00200.warc.gz | 0.951939 | 232 | CC-MAIN-2021-31 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2021-31__0__224646603 | en | Elkay Receives Favorable Preliminary Decision in Chinese Sink Manufacturer Subsidy Case
Via PR Newswire:
“Today, the United States Department of Commerce issued its preliminary determination that subsidies provided by the Government of China to Chinese manufacturers of drawn stainless steel sinks violate U.S. trade laws. The investigation was initiated earlier this year in response to petitions filed by Elkay Manufacturing to protect its 3,500 U.S. employees and the communities in which they work. As of the date of the preliminary determination, US Customs will instruct all importers of drawn stainless steel sinks imported into the United States to post cash deposits in the amount of the preliminary countervailable subsidy rate.”
This is great news for American stainless steel sink manufacturers, such as Elkay. We at Solco agree with Elkay’s belief that domestic manufacturers of stainless steel sinks will be able to compete with Chinese manufacturers on a level playing field now, as this will eliminate the low-cost appeal of imports.
Check out the whole article here: Elkay Receives Favorable Preliminary Decision in Chinese Sink Manufacturer Subsidy Case | politics |
https://www.whitneyforjudge.com/ | 2020-02-25T02:33:55 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-10/segments/1581875146004.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20200225014941-20200225044941-00047.warc.gz | 0.970671 | 378 | CC-MAIN-2020-10 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2020-10__0__63803880 | en | Vote Zach Whitney
for Milwaukee County Circuit Court - Branch 5
Tuesday, February 18 and Tuesday, April 7, 2020
I'm Zach Whitney and I'm asking for your vote to serve our community on the Milwaukee County Circuit Court.
I'm a person with strong values who strives for justice. Milwaukee is my home where my family and I love visiting our parks and attending a wide array of cultural offerings. I'm a resident of the Jackson Park neighborhood, where I live with my wife Madeline, and our two children Harvey and Frankie, both students at Milwaukee Public Schools.
I've been fighting for justice in the Milwaukee County Circuit Courts for over fifteen years. I spent eight years as a Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney, where I focused on prosecuting gun violence and domestic violence. I witnessed how violence tears families and neighborhoods apart. It was hard, emotional work, which shaped my commitment to justice. It is a public service of which I'm proud. It helped me understand that our judicial system can only work when both sides are represented equally and diligently.
Like others attempting to provide for their families, my time serving Milwaukee County was cut short by Act 10, which compelled me to leave public service. Since entering private practice, I've focused on commercial and business litigation. For the last seven years, I've been privileged to represent a wide variety of clients, including many small businesses. It's been an honor to help "main street" navigate the complexities of our civil court system.
My background as a trial attorney is vast and my knowledge of our courts is deep. I'm running for Branch 5 of the Circuit Court because the people of Milwaukee County deserve to have my insight and progressive voice on the bench. Milwaukee County residents have the right to elect a member of our community, who has the experience, commitment to justice, and work ethic, to serve as our judge. | politics |
http://51cgj.com/bidens-trip-to-korea-north-korea-china-relations-pose-a-challenge-for-the-united-states/ | 2022-06-25T03:52:13 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-27/segments/1656103034170.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20220625034751-20220625064751-00436.warc.gz | 0.945576 | 1,318 | CC-MAIN-2022-27 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2022-27__0__75090039 | en | As President Biden makes his first presidential trip to South Korea and Japan next week, he faces changing dynamics in Northeast Asia that pose serious challenges to US efforts to strengthen alliances to counter the rising in power of China. A major challenge is the thawing of North Korea’s relations with China and Russia, aimed at reducing American influence in the region.
In particular, China’s strategic opening to North Korea since the collapse of diplomatic talks between the United States and North Korea in 2019 has brought the two countries closer. With tensions rising over US-China competition and a new conservative South Korean government vowing to take a tougher line on North Korea and China, Beijing has more incentive to keep Pyongyang close, experts say.
New South Korean president sworn in calls on North to denuclearize
The United States wants to strengthen its relationship with South Korea and Japan to tackle pressing regional issues, including North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, China’s supply chain dominance and the possibility of conflict in Taiwan. But it will not be an easy task, especially with the deterioration of relations between Japan and South Korea and South Korea’s economic dependence on China.
“The overall security and economic situation, the landscape, doesn’t look very bright,” said Ahn Ho-young, former South Korean ambassador to the United States. “Because of all these challenges, this visit that President Biden is planning is even more important.”
North Korea has a long and difficult relationship with China. But in recent years, Beijing has stepped up its diplomacy with Pyongyang and grown to account for more than 90% of its foreign trade activity. While this trade has fallen sharply during North Korea’s lockdown, Beijing remains its main lifeline.
The two countries have become more cooperative in recent years out of political convenience in the face of U.S.-China competition, said Andrei Lankov, a professor of Korean studies at Kookmin University and a leading scholar on North Korean issues.
“The main game-changer is the confrontation with the United States. … This means that the strategic value of North Korea from the Chinese point of view has increased significantly,” Lankov said. “For North Korea, the Sino-American rivalry is a kind of heaven-sent gift. This gives them essentially unconditional Chinese support – something in the past they couldn’t even dream of.
North Korea tests massive new missile capable of reaching Washington
North Korea and Russia have also had a complicated relationship, but Pyongyang became a strong supporter of Moscow in the aftermath of the war, even becoming one of five countries that refused to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine. . Russian companies have continued to employ North Korean workers, despite UN sanctions barring countries from taking in workers who earn hard currency for the Kim regime.
Notably, China and Russia shielded North Korea from further international sanctions despite Kim’s ambitious pursuit of its nuclear program, consistently advocating a rollback of sanctions.
“China, Russia and North Korea will continue to cooperate to safeguard regional peace and stability, regardless of pressures and impacts that may come from the United States,” wrote the Global Times, a Chinese state-run newspaper. , in 2021.
More recently, when the United States last week called for new UN sanctions against North Korea over its missile and nuclear programs, China and Russia vetoed the move.
China’s UN Ambassador Zhang Jun Accused the United States to be “superstitiously enamored with the magic power of sanctions” and urged Washington to play a more active role in resuming talks with Pyongyang. Russia’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Anna Evstigneeva, said “it is absolutely unrealistic” to expect North Korea to disarm under the threat of sanctions.
“Russia would like to see Americans distracted by some sort of development elsewhere. So right now they don’t mind North Korea’s nuclear adventurism — although in the long run Russia isn’t very happy with a nuclear North Korea, like China,” Lankov said. .
North Korea’s Kim is determined to show he is on the right track with his five-year weapons development program and has conducted an unprecedented number of missile tests this year. It appears to be preparing for an imminent seventh nuclear test, according to US and South Korean officials.
But China and Russia are unlikely to support additional sanctions against Kim even if he conducts a nuclear test, given China’s “two-track” approach to engaging North Korea despite its nuclear ambitions, and Russia’s opposition to international sanctions following the war in Ukraine. .
The international community’s confused response to China and Russia has encouraged North Korea to develop a range of nuclear-capable weapons with impunity, including weapons aimed at South Korea, Ahn said. , the former South Korean ambassador. Ahn noted that North Korean leader Kim last month threatened nuclear retaliation if provoked.
“We have to deal with objective developments: North Korean missile technology is advancing all the time, and then North Korea actually has a declared intention to use these tactical nuclear weapons,” Ahn said. “I think that would be the time when we should justify what we mean by strong deterrence.”
South Korean President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol unveils his foreign policy goals
South Korea’s new president, Yoon Suk-yeol, has vowed to work with the United States to cooperate on regional efforts to counter China, such as Quad and Biden’s new economic proposal named the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework.
But doing so would risk crippling Beijing’s economic retaliation, bringing North Korea closer to China and further destabilizing inter-Korean relations, said Chung Jae-hung, a China expert and researcher at the Sejong Institute in South Korea. .
In 2017, for example, when the United States deployed the ground-based Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system in South Korea, Beijing economically retaliated in Seoul. China is now watching to see if the Yoon government’s rhetoric turns into action, Chung said.
“It’s hard to be optimistic,” Chung said. “If North Korea conducts a nuclear test and Russia and China refuse to pursue additional UN sanctions, what does South Korea do?” | politics |
http://phm.znu.ac.ir/article_19502.html | 2020-10-23T03:09:28 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-45/segments/1603107880519.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20201023014545-20201023044545-00468.warc.gz | 0.912702 | 177 | CC-MAIN-2020-45 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2020-45__0__197773717 | en | عنوان مقاله [English]
Many philosophers have studied “justice” and “political obligation” as core concepts of political philosophy. “Justice” is the focal notion of the good society that all philosophers attempt to explore and explain; and on the other hand, “political obligation” is the focal question in evaluating the legitimacy of the ruling system. Therefore, studying the relation a philosopher assigns to the two concepts, would lead one to a comprehensive assessment of his/her philosophical system. Focusing on Crito, thus, the present study attempts to review the relation Socrates assigns to Justice and Political Obligation. No matter a verdict is or is not just, in Socrates’ philosophy, one should obey the rule. For in his view, the most unjust would be to disobey a legal commandment. | politics |
http://sanderswood.com/press/view/press_images/20070325.Sunday_Times.jpg.html | 2023-10-01T05:53:51 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510781.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20231001041719-20231001071719-00143.warc.gz | 0.965167 | 539 | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2023-40__0__43204939 | en | The Sunday Times
BBC3 faces questions over tabloid TV
March 25, 2007
MARK THOMPSON, the head of the BBC, is to be questioned by MPs over the "dubious" content of the corporation's channel for young adults after commissioning a string of programmes with expletive-ridden titles.
The latest offerings from BBC3 include F*** Off, I'm a Hairy Woman; F*** Off, I'm Ginger; and My Big Breasts and I.
Other shows to be broadcast on the digital channel later this year include a £200,000 documentary, The History of the C-Word, and a programme about the size of men's penises.
Critics believe that BBC3 has plunged to depths of sensationalism that were once the preserve of Channel 4 when it earned its then boss, Michael Grade, the newspaper columnist's soubriquet of "pornographer-in-chief".
The critics claim BBC3, which is aimed at the 16-34 age group and has an annual budget of £93m, is failing to meet the BBC's public service remit and is a waste of licence payers' money.
Thompson is due to give evidence to the Commons culture, media and sport select committee after Easter as part of its inquiry into public service broadcasting.
John Whittingdale, the committee's chairman, said: "Ever since it started, BBC3 has always seemed to me to comprise of somewhat dubious programmes.
"It is not adding very much to the public service output of the BBC and it does stand to question why the corporation is spending money and, indeed, occupying another slot on the [television] spectrum when it doesn't seem to be using it for purposes which are really in line with its remit.
"I look forward to asking Mark Thompson why hairy women are an important part of public service broadcasting."
The programme about society's obsession with women being hair-free will be screened on Thursday and is presented by Shazia Mirza, the Muslim stand-up comic.
One of BBC3's most controversial new shows is called My Penis and Everyone Else's. It is aimed at "challenging society's stereotypes of masculinity as well as getting to the heart of why men are so fixated with their members".
Launched in 2003, the channel has had successes, including comedies such as Little Britain, which rapidly transferred to the mainstream.
A BBC spokesman said: "Although these shows have a hard-hitting, provocative title, it does not mean their content is in any way less public service." | politics |
http://www.amphibians.org/news/cif-wh2015/ | 2019-01-24T11:46:38 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-04/segments/1547584520525.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20190124100934-20190124122934-00586.warc.gz | 0.97899 | 323 | CC-MAIN-2019-04 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2019-04__0__76686184 | en | WOW! I was invited to the White House to be part of the climate change conversation. Today was one of the best days of my life! About 15 students from around the country got to be part of the White House Champions of Change for Climate Education and Literacy events. We heard from 2 panels and several speakers. We went to a beautiful room to have a student roundtable discussion, and there were a lot of adults listening in and some even taking notes. 2 very special guests at our student meeting were the US EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy and Dr. John P. Holdren, the Assistant to the President for Science & Technology, and the Director of the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy.
I was so happy to talk about how our food choices affect climate change. Some of you may remember I did a United Nations video about that a few months ago. I am so proud that I even got applause from the room, and most of the people were smiling. I was also one of 3 students chosen to present the information again when all the people came back together at the end of the day. We went to a reception tonight in the Indian Treaty Room. I met so many new people, and it was all amazing!
Photos from the event can be seen here.
Thank you so much to Ms. Robin Organ and Green Schools for nominating me for this opportunity. I will never forget it, and it just inspires me to do even more! I know that the other students and I will be working together for years to come.
Peace & love, Avalon
Conserve It Forward | politics |
https://cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/history/us-history-i/from-discontent-to-revolution/drifting-toward-revolution | 2021-09-28T05:36:48 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-39/segments/1631780060201.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20210928032425-20210928062425-00443.warc.gz | 0.974199 | 983 | CC-MAIN-2021-39 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2021-39__0__114218715 | en | Two events in 1772 brought the period of calm to an end. Rhode Island colonists burned the British ship Gaspee, which had run aground while patrolling for smugglers. Although the authorities ultimately found no one to prosecute, colonists learned that the plan had been to send the culprits to London for trial. At about the same time, the British government announced that the salaries of the Massachusetts governor and judges would henceforth be paid by the Crown, not the colonial legislature. Both incidents suggested that Britain was determined to undermine colonial liberties, and together they led to the formation of committees of correspondence. Created in Massachusetts to bring news of British abuses to town meetings, they promoted political education among the colonists and whipped up anti‐British sentiment; by 1773, hundreds were operating nearly throughout the colonies.
Drifting toward Revolution
The Tea Act and Boston Tea Party. In an attempt to rescue the almost bankrupt East India Company, Prime Minister Lord North gave the business a monopoly on the sale and distribution of tea in the colonies. The Tea Act (1773) lowered the price on tea to a point that not even the smugglers could match, and Parliament expected the colonists to welcome the windfall. North miscalculated the reaction to the tea monopoly just as Townshend had misjudged colonial reception of the external taxes. Revenue from the tea tax, despite the low price to consumers, cemented Parliament's right to tax the colonists, which was unacceptable to many Americans.
In Boston, colonists insisted that tea shipments be sent back to England without payment of the customs duties. When the governor refused, Bostonians, led by Samuel Adams, took matters into their own hands. Fifty men disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded one of the ships and threw the entire cargo of tea into the harbor. The Boston Tea Party (December 16, 1773) was a crucial turning point. The colonists had moved beyond boycotts to the destruction of property, and as far as Lord North and King George III were concerned, the new issue was whether and how Britain would regain control over the colonies.
The Coercive Acts. In response to the Boston Tea Party, Parliament passed a series of punitive measures against Massachusetts. The Coercive Acts (called the Intolerable Acts in the colonies) closed the port of Boston until the cost of the tea and customs charges were repaid; revoked parts of the Massachusetts charter, letting the king select members for the legislature's upper house and the governor appoint most officials; and allowed British troops and royal officials accused of a capital offense while carrying out their duties to be tried in another colony or in England. A new Quartering Act, which applied to all the colonies, permitted the governors to house soldiers in private houses or buildings. Around the same time, Parliament enacted the Quebec Act, which recognized Catholicism as the official religion of Quebec. The act was an affront to Protestant Anglo‐Americans, particularly in New England. More important, the Ohio River was made the southern boundary of Quebec, taking territory that Massachusetts, Virginia, and Connecticut claimed.
Clearly, the Coercive Acts were aimed not just at Massachusetts but all the colonies. Prior loosely coordinated colonial responses to English laws were judged to be inadequate this time, and calls went out for a meeting of representatives to develop a joint plan of action. Twelve of the thirteen colonies (only Georgia did not send a delegation) participated in the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia during September and October 1774.
The First Continental Congress. Although the representatives attending the First Continental Congress endorsed the Massachusetts Suffolk Resolves, a set of statements which in addition to condemning the Coercive Acts called on the colonists to form their own militias, the final declaration adopted by the Congress was considerably more moderate. The grievances and resolves were essentially a condemnation of Parliament for denying the colonists the rights and privileges they traditionally enjoyed as English subjects. In matters of taxation and internal policy, the colonies, through their legislatures, were free to chart their own course, subject only to a veto by the king. The declaration sought the repeal of all legislation enacted since 1763 that ran counter to this basic principle, including the Intolerable Acts, and a redress of their grievances by appealing not to Parliament but to the Crown and the British people. The Congress was clearly not prepared to completely break with Britain.
To specifically fight the Coercive Acts, the representatives agreed to suspend all economic ties—imports, exports, and consumption—with Great Britain. While several colonies had already approved nonimportation agreements, the economic plan was significant in several respects. First, it included a ban on the importation of slaves, not out any moral concern over the evils of slavery but because of the impact a ban would have on the British slave‐trade monopoly. Second, the boycott was to be enforced through the committees of correspondence operating under rules set by the newly created Continental Association. | politics |
https://quikkorz.edublogs.org/2009/08/12/british-names-on-street-signs-grate-in-montreal/ | 2021-10-27T04:16:01 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-43/segments/1634323588053.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20211027022823-20211027052823-00182.warc.gz | 0.947621 | 878 | CC-MAIN-2021-43 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2021-43__0__280039658 | en | British names on street signs grate in Montreal
Councillor wants McGill, Amherst ‘Frenchisized’
Giuseppe Valiante, National Post; With Files From Canwest News Service Montreal’s French identity is being eroded by the creeping influence of the English language, examples of which include street signs that are graced with the names of genocidal British conquerors, says a Montreal city councillor.
In order to curtail the invasion, Nicolas Montmorency, an independent councillor in Montreal’s east end municipality of Riviere-des-Prairies-Pointe-aux-Trembles, is proposing the city rename Amherst Street, named after the former commander and chief of the British army who captured Canada, Jeffrey Amherst.
He is also asking councillors to vote to cease using “non-francophone expressions” in public places and to “Frenchisize” existing English street names, such as McGill College Avenue and City Councillors Street.
The two motions will be proposed at the Aug. 24 city council meeting that he hopes will “bring back Montreal’s French character,” according to the Facebook group he has set up.
The first motion cites that Montreal’s “essence and charter” make it a French city, and the French language is at the heart of the identity and culture of all Montrealers regardless of origin, therefore all public places should have French names and expressions.
The second motion claims that Jeffrey Amherst pioneered the practice of genocide in the Americas with the use of bacterial agents and also states that he had previously declared the native people a “vile race.”
“The culture and history of Montreal’s English should not be unjustly represented by someone overtly in favour of the extermination of a people,” reads the motion.
Louise O’Sullivan, a mayoral candidate in the upcoming municipal elections, is reportedly supporting the motion.
Darren Becker, a spokesman for the City of Montreal, said the city is focusing its time on infrastructure and public transit, not “rewriting history.”
“If no one seconds [the motion] it won’t be debated and I can tell you that it certainly won’t be seconded by anyone from the mayor’s party or team,” Mr. Becker said.
All of Montreal’s streets adhere to the city’s charter, which stipulates that words such as road and street must be in French. But “the street names in Montreal reflect the history of the city,” said Mr. Becker. “The names date back to when there were French and English mayors, that’s just a reality.”
He pointed to the flag of Montreal, which is adorned with four emblems reflecting the “founding fathers” of the city: the fleur-de-lys for France, the shamrock for Ireland, the thistle for Scotland and the red rose of Lancaster for England.
How history is represented in Montreal has always been contentious. Streets have changed names depending on the political party in power.
Dorchester Boulevard, originally named after Lord Dorchester, a governor of Quebec after the British conquest, was renamed after the former Quebec premier Rene Levesque — except where the street passes through Westmount, a predominantly English-speaking area with strong British roots.
Thousands of Montrealers were furious after the current mayor proposed changing the historic street that lines the east flank of Montreal’s mountain, Parc Avenue, after his political mentor, the former Quebec premier, Robert Bourassa. Mayor Gerald Tremblay was forced to back down.
Calls to Mr. Montmorency’s office were not returned as of press time.
Montmorency also wants University St. to become rue de l’Universite, McGill College Avenue changed to Avenue du College McGill, and City Councillors Street to Rue des Conseillers municipaux.
Amherst was the British commander who captured Louisbourg in 1758, then laid siege to Montreal, forcing the French to capitulate in 1760. | politics |
http://sadd.org/press/stop.htm | 2015-10-10T03:37:11 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-40/segments/1443737940789.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20151001221900-00129-ip-10-137-6-227.ec2.internal.warc.gz | 0.939165 | 280 | CC-MAIN-2015-40 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2015-40__0__86609234 | en | Statement On The Passage of the Sober Truth On Preventing Underage Drinking Act
“The Sober Truth on Preventing (STOP) Underage Drinking Act – the first national legislation on underage drinking – is long overdue. This marks an important victory in the battle against underage drinking. Young people use alcohol more frequently, and more heavily, than all other drugs combined. The STOP Act will combat this serious problem and help keep teens safe and alive.
“The risks of underage drinking are high – and wildly underestimated by young people. Many teens fall prey to the ‘Myth of Invincibility,’ believing that there are no real, or lasting, effects of alcohol use. They’re wrong. Impaired driving continues to claim thousands of promising young lives each year, while alcohol-related crimes, including sexual assault, affect many more. A host of other physiological, social, emotional, and legal problems can also result from underage drinking and impaired driving.
“As a peer-to-peer youth education and prevention organization, SADD has been a strong supporter of the STOP Act, and SADD students did their part by meeting with their Congressional leaders to speak out on this important issue. SADD thanks the sponsors of the bill for their commitment to protecting young lives and applauds Congress for passing and the President for signing this landmark legislation.” | politics |
http://icebauhaus.com/africa-reload-focus-event-details/ | 2020-01-22T06:11:06 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-05/segments/1579250606696.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20200122042145-20200122071145-00223.warc.gz | 0.884032 | 685 | CC-MAIN-2020-05 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2020-05__0__121194991 | en | Date: July 10th, 2014
Venue: Bauhaus Universität Weimar | Oberlichtsaal | Geschwister-Scholl-Strasse 8, Weimar
17:30 Talk: Challenges of (Open-) Urbanism in (Post-) Conflict Development – The Juba Case
An open discussion with:
Prof. Dr. Leben Nelson Moro
Chair of the Center for Peace and Development Studies, University of Juba, South Sudan
open systems urbanist and co-founder of r0g_agency for open culture and critical transformation, Berlin
Juba, the capital of the recently independent state of South Sudan is one of the world’s fastest growing urban
centers. After a Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005 ended over 3 decades of war in Sudan, peace in the
new state, despite the euphoria of victory and independence has been elusive. The capital city has become a
microcosmic entity reflecting the chaotic free-for-all of international development, land-grabbing and a collapse
in the traditional relationships of communal space in the country as a whole.
Being such a framework and symbol, it needs however to act as a vision of South Sudan’s future. Juba’s return
to political violence, insecurity and the breakdown of the fragile structures of the nascent state illustrate the
challenging roles that urbanism as a partner in the development of a stable open society must play. Has the
city become an enemy of the people, its residents and life blood? Given such extreme challenges to peace and
independence, can alternative forms of urban development based on the open source and peer to peer models
of collaboration, citizen interaction and critical sustainability empower citizens and thus create more effective
19:00 Sneak Preview: Made in Africa – a true story about digital innovation
A film by:
Geraldine de Bastion and René von der Waar – the director will be present
What do you think of when you hear the phrase ‘Made in Africa’? Safaris? Massai walking into the Sunset?
Wooden masks and big colourful prints? Refugee camps and famine? Diamond mines and child soldiers? In
the past, Africa has been portrayed as the lost continent, the dark continent, a continent ridden by crisis and
dependant on aid. Positive stories from Africa have been mostly limited to adventure stories, tribal fantasies and
sunset-Safaris. In the past, “Africa” either brought to mind images of Bob Geldof holding starving children or the
romantic depiction of Elton John’s circle of life with tourists, watching the big five drink from waterholes from
their chalet, drums beating in the distant background.
The idea behind the documentary “Made in Africa” is to tell a new story. Made in Africa will tell the story of a
young generation of Africans on the rise, striving for success and independence, a story of innovation and technological
revolution. “Made in Africa” will portray leading figures in different countries, tell their personal story
and connect them to the bigger picture of the dynamic changes the continent is undergoing.
‘Made in Africa’ will break with clichés and let the viewer experience a side of Africa they have never seen | politics |
https://nationalnma.org/2021/03/11/nma-president-pays-courtesy-call-on-the-governor-of-ekiti-state/ | 2024-02-21T16:12:00 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947473518.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20240221134259-20240221164259-00172.warc.gz | 0.954995 | 942 | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2024-10__0__159650524 | en | The President of the Nigerian Medical Association, Prof(Dr) IAO Ujah, FNMA, FNAmed, mni yesterday paid a courtesy call on the Executive Governor of Ekiti State, who is also the Chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum(NGF), His Excellency, Dr John Kayode Fayemi CON at Government House, Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State.
The President was accompanied to the visit by members of the National Officers Committee (NOC), namely, Dr Rasaaq Ayodele Adebayo – First Vice President; Dr Daiyabu Alhaji Ibrahim– Second Vice President; Dr Philips Uche Ekpe– Secretary General; Dr Saliu Olugbenga Oseni– Deputy Secretary General; Dr Pobe Degri Jauro– National Financial Secretary ; Dr Aniekeme Aniefiok Uwah– National Publicity Secretary; Dr Francis Adedayo Faduyile– Immediate Past President and Dr Olumuyiwa Peter Odusote-Immediate Past Secretary General.
Also in the entourage were the Chairman of the Ekiti State branch of the association, Dr Kayode Ebenezer Aribiyi and the Chairman of the Ondo State branch of the association, Dr Stella Adegbehingbe.
During the courtesy call, Mr President thanked the Governor for granting the request for a courtesy call and commended him for his Doctor-friendly disposition since he was saddled with the leadership of the state.
The support given to the state branch of the association by the Governor was also appreciated.
The NMA President also commended him for his developmental strides in the health sector and also brought to the front burner some of the issues affecting the state branch of the association and also militating against effective health care delivery.
Some of the requests made by the President included;
1. The payment of 100% enhanced CONMESS to Medical Doctors in the state.
2. The payment of COVID-19 allowances to all Medical Doctors in the state.
3. The payment of enhanced CONMESS by all states in the country.
4. Enforcement of the use of the Doctors Stamp to reduce quackery in the state.
5. The provision of a new bus to the association since the previous one donated by the Governor during his first term in office was destroyed in a ghastly motor accident in 2018.
6. The donation of plots of land to the association.
7. Support for the building of the NMA House by Ekiti State and the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF)
In his response, the Governor thanked the President and members of his entourage for the honour done him and the state through the visit.
He also congratulated the President and NOC on their election during the virtual ADM/AGC of May 30, 2020.
He also expressed his delight at the progress being made by the association under the leadership of Prof IAO Ujah FNMA, FNAmed, mni and especially appreciated the efforts and sacrifies being made by all Nigerian Doctors towards the control of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Furthermore, he promised the following in line with the requests of the NMA President;
1. An immediate review of the payment of enhanced CONMESS to Medical Doctors in the state.
2. An immediate review of the payment of COVID-19 allowances to accomodate more Medical Doctors in the state.
3. A donation of a brand new bus to NMA, Ekiti State branch.
4. A donation of plots of land to the NMA, Ekiti State branch.
5. A directive to the Hon Commissioner for Health, Ekiti State to intensify the use the NMA Doctors stamp to fight quackery in the state.
6. Mobilisation of resources to support the building of the NMA House in Maitama, Abuja through the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF).
7. Utilization of the platform of the Nigerian Governors Forum(NGF) to sensitize all the Governors in the country on the importance of implementing the payment of 100% enhanced CONMESS to Medical Doctors in their various states.
8. The commencement of the construction of airport close to the Afe Babalola University Teaching Hospital to boost medical tourism in the state.
In conclusion, other issues of mutual interest geared towards enhancing health care delivery in the state and country were also discussed.
Dr Aniekeme Uwah JP
National Publicity Secretary
Nigerian Medical Association | politics |
http://www.khabaryalnews.com/news/news_detail/693/kp-cm-directs-for-early-completion-of-safe-city-project | 2019-03-22T05:14:19 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-13/segments/1552912202628.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20190322034516-20190322060516-00069.warc.gz | 0.966661 | 455 | CC-MAIN-2019-13 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2019-13__0__29837055 | en | KP CM directs for early completion of Safe City Project
PESHAWAR: The Acting Inspector General of Police Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Syed Akhtar Ali Shah on Thursday called on the Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pervez Khattak at CM Secretariat Peshawar.
During the meeting police professional matters particularly police reforms came under discussion. On this occasion the Acting IGP briefed the Chief Minister about the Safe City Project. The Chief Minister was informed about the installation of cameras on different important/vintage points, the strategy to be evolved with all relevant departments and installation of software equipped with all modern and latest facilities. It may be recalled that the said software would be developed keeping in view the latest security system of the world and through which all concerned departments would be interlinked with each other. Similarly all relevant departments will come in prompt action in case of any emergency, suspect movement and its identification, threat alerts and traffic haphazard and will discharge its respective responsibilities accordingly. Likewise command and control center would also be established for the Safe City Project in which FM Radio channel facilities would also be available. Through this radio channel the public will be informed and educated about the traffic jamming and taking alternate routes for reaching their respective destination.
The Chief Minister directed for early completion of the Safe City Project. He also sanctioned Rs. 220 million for construction of police officers hostel and residential buildings for the force jawans in police line Peshawar. The Chief Minister also sanctioned the establishment of School of Traffic equipped with all modern facilities. The said school would be established in Kohat in which the force jawan would be imparted latest training on the pattern of motorway police. Traffic wardens would also be trained in the same school as well as the force jawan would be trained for effective enforcement of traffic rules and regulations in the province.
The Chief Minister also expressed satisfaction over the establishment of modern police stations and its performance and announced establishment of more model police stations in each and every district of the province. The Chief Minister also sanctioned the installation of latest cameras on different points of Highways in the province under which the journey on these would be made safe and secure and effective steps would be taken for prevention and control of crime. | politics |
https://www.ward7dems.org/post/ward-7-leaders-reject-proposed-map-amendment | 2023-10-04T09:15:46 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233511364.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20231004084230-20231004114230-00854.warc.gz | 0.932007 | 702 | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2023-40__0__167626662 | en | We, the Ward 7 Democrats, the Ward 7 State Board of Education representative, leaders of the Ward 7 Advisory Neighborhood Commissions (7B, 7C, 7D, 7E, 7F) and leaders of the Ward 7 Civic Associations, support restoring and unifying the Kingman Park community to Ward 7 and reject the proposed “final” redistricting map released by the District of Columbia’s (DC) Council’s Redistricting Sub-Committee. As proposed, the map does not promote fair representation across all 8 Wards and disproportionately impacts residents of Ward 7. This statement provides a path forward to revise the proposed map in a way that is consistent with the principles and values set forth by the Sub-Committee to reflect a more equitable District. Unify Kingman Park in Ward 7 There are well-accepted and legally informed principles involved in developing a map that can withstand legal challenges. However, this map disregards a key one: the compact district principle. As proposed, Kingman Park exists as an island. On October 23rd at the Ward 7 Hearing on Redistricting, various community leaders and key stakeholders from Ward 7 testified in front of the Sub-Committee to express the importance of diversifying the Ward by further expanding into Ward 6. The overall consensus amongst those who testified was to make Kingman Park whole. While the Sub-Committee claims that moving Kingman Park into Ward 6 promotes diversity, in reality the move does little to promote diversity in Ward 6 and ignores the great need to increase diversity in Ward 7. Further, the proposed map reduces representation of African Americans, Asians and other racial minorities in Ward 6 overall. Importantly, the subcommittee’s map only shifts Kingman Park as a “peninsula” in Ward 7 to being a “peninsula” in Ward 6. There needs to be a connection on the southern boundary (C Street, NE) of Kingman Park to address common concerns and goals within Ward 7. The proposed Sub-Committee map creates an unnecessary burden of having to coordinate across two Wards. Voting Strength and Power Between 2010 and 2020, Ward 7 saw the smallest population growth (~4500 residents). The Sub-Committee’s proposed map does little to avoid Ward 7 repeating the pattern of weaker growth in the next ten years and exacerbates the problem by only expanding Ward 7’s population to 81,997 – only 114 points above the minimum population threshold of 81,883. We have attached a map that provides a more equitable redistricting plan. The map makes Kingman Park whole by restoring it to Ward 7. It also incorporates the Rosedale neighborhood and uses 15th street, between Pennsylvania and Benning, as a natural Ward boundary. The map increases Ward 7’s population to a healthy 88,010 residents. We believe the attached map ensures equal representation, brings ethnic diversity to Ward 7 and keeps a community of interest (Kingman Park) together. We strongly urge all members of the DC Council’s Redistricting Sub-Committee and the Council as a whole, to reject the proposed redistricting map and consider the alternative map provided by the leaders of Ward 7. To stand in solidarity or express concerns before the Sub-Committee votes today at 3pm and before the DC Council votes on December 7th, please email [email protected].
top of page
bottom of page | politics |
https://fisd.net/speaker/clive-crook/ | 2023-09-26T19:51:27 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510219.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20230926175325-20230926205325-00657.warc.gz | 0.974605 | 169 | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2023-40__0__154833475 | en | Head of Editorial Board, Bloomberg
Clive Crook is a writer, editor and member of the editorial board at Bloomberg Opinion.
After moving from Britain to the United States in 2005, he was a senior editor at The Atlantic and chief Washington commentator and associate editor of the Financial Times. Previously he worked for more than 20 years at The Economist, as economics correspondent, Washington correspondent, economics editor, and deputy editor. In that last post he helped shape the paper’s editorials across its full range of interests in business, politics and international relations.
He was born in Yorkshire, raised in Lancashire, and educated at the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics. He was an official in H.M. Treasury and has worked as a consultant for the World Bank and as a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution. | politics |
https://thewomxnproject.org/national-census-day-virtual-town-hall/ | 2024-04-13T16:05:34 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-18/segments/1712296816820.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20240413144933-20240413174933-00101.warc.gz | 0.941367 | 332 | CC-MAIN-2024-18 | webtext-fineweb__CC-MAIN-2024-18__0__77494885 | en | ou have probably gotten a postcard or mailer about the Census and know many people just end up putting it in the recycling bin. But did you know that the Census determines how political power and money from the federal government is distributed in our communities? From the money that goes to safe highways and affordable housing to critical education and health care programs, the count from the 2020 census will have a big impact.
As is too often the case people living in poverty, communities of color, immigrants, incarcerated people, the LGBT community, and other folks pushed to the margin are often undercounted. That is why The Womxn Project is thrilled to work with SisterSong: National Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, the Women’s Rights Empowerment Network, the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity (COLOR), the National LGBTQ Task Force, and the Center for Social Equity on a virtual town hall as part of “National Census Day” on Wednesday, April 1st.
Every hour from 11am-4pm ET on Wednesday a group will provide a short 5-10 minute briefing via Facebook Live on a key issue to help you learn more about the census and help guide you on how to make sure that YOU get counted! We have included the full schedule below. It is a great way to learn more and to engage with our communities. We hope you will join us. But most of all, we hope this will encourage folks to take a moment to fill out the Census: www.2020census.gov.
Together, we can get informed and keep making a difference. Now, go fill out that Census! | politics |
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