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Do We Have Any Idea How to Deal with North Korea? | According to the tenets of current American military thought and practicethat is, wars amongst the people fought to win the hearts and minds of local populationsthe capacity to have three cups of tea with a local sheik equals the ability to counter and coordinate artillery fires. Indeed, Americas conventional war-fighting capacity has atrophied to the point that a recent internal Army report termed artillery Americas dead branch walking. And, yet, here we are, watching the two Koreas exchange artillery fire and sit on the precipice of wara war in which the United States Army would be deeply involved, fully equipped, and presumably trained for a cup of tea. The vogue that counterinsurgency has enjoyed over the past three years stifled arguments to the contrary; the prospect that future wars might involve something other than fighting insurgents who set off IEDs and then scamper away elicited nothing but derision. Suggesting that perhaps the United States military may soon have to fight a war where actual armies square off against each other labels one as a member of the old school, a pea-brained dinosaur in the doesnt get it club. Never mind that the mantra after Operation Desert Storm was that there would never be another Desert Storm. Never mind, too, that after the next Desert Storm blew upthe drive to Baghdad in 2003the only (and unlikely) scenario that planners could envision for conventional war involved conflict on the Korean peninsula: We now have a conflict on the Korean peninsula. There is an irony in the North Korean bombardment of Yeonpyeong. It was this very same island that General Douglas MacArthur used in the early months of the Korean War in 1950 from which to launch his massive amphibious invasion at Inchon. The notion that war would one dayrevisit Yeonpyeong simply did not compute. American Army General William Caldwell noted in a published article in a professional journal just a few years ago: The future is not one of major battles and engagements fought by armies on battlefields devoid of population; instead, the course of conflict will be decided by forces operating among the people of the world. Here, the margin of victory will be measured in far different terms than the wars of our past. The allegiance, trust, and confidence of populations will be the final arbiters of success. Of course, wars in recent history, even when fought by armies on fields of battles, never unfolded far from populations and routinely tore through the center of them. Apparently the North Koreans havent read the U.S. Armys new counterinsurgency manual. | https://newrepublic.com/article/79444/does-the-us-army-have-any-idea-how-deal-north-korea |
Is the Republican Comeback Just a Flash in the Pan? | If half the 41 percent of the electorate that is conservative is marching in the street, crowding local political meetings, and raising money for their candidates, and only a tenth of the moderate and liberal electoral is similarly agitating for their causes and candidates, the conservatives influence over election outcomes and over the political debate in the country will be much greater. And thats a lot of what happened in 2010. Outside of a few Washington organizations, the liberal electorate that took to the streets in 2006 and 2008 was demoralized and demobilized. And the results showed not just in the election, but in the political questions that are currently being debated in the press and in Congress. Its not whether to have a single-payer health care system, but whether to have a national system at all. Its not whether social spending should be increased, but whether it should be frozen or cut. Has the rightward shift laid the groundwork for a new Republican majority?If the conservative trend among the electorate endures for a decade, yes, then Republicans will be back in the driving seat in American politics. But the conservative trend after 2008 was not the result of the gradual erosion of the liberal-moderate majority, but of the failure of the Obama administration to stem the downturn that began in 2008. If the economy revives, or if it doesnt, and if a Republican president and Congress take office in 2012 and fail to revive it, then the trend toward conservatism will halt, and you may even see the kind of shift leftward that took place in 2006 and 2008. Of course, Cost could argue that the kind of programs that Republicans are proposing will revive the economy and enjoy the same kind of popularity as social security. I have my doubts that these programs, which mostly consist of turning back the Keynesian clock, will do the trick. Cost argues that redistricting, which will be under Republican control in many states, could help to ensure a GOP majority in Congress. Certainly itll help, but the Democratic redistricting as a result of the 1990 elections didnt prevent Republicans from capturing the House and the Senate in 1994. As I suggested in my post-election piece, the Obama administrations failure to seize the political opportunity afforded by the Great Recession has not necessarily opened the way to a new Republican majority. More likely, it will lead to a period where the two parties exchange power, and where neither can establish a long-lasting majority. | https://newrepublic.com/article/79437/the-republican-comeback-just-flash-in-the-pan |
Could Tom Tancredo Become the Governor of Colorado? | Colorado's election keeps defying expectations. At first, it seemed that Republicans would make a clean sweep: In a rightward-leaning year, the state has an open gubernatorial seat, an appointed Democratic senator who barely survived a primary challenge, and three vulnerable Democratic House seats all in play. Since Colorado was the classic Democratic surge state in 2006 and 2008, it would take relatively little in the way of a rightward swing to return it to deep-purple status. Then, Democrats seemed to catch a break in the August 10 primaries, when a lightly regarded and financially troubled Tea Party candidate, Dan Maes, won the gubernatorial nomination over ethically challenged frontrunner Scott McInnis; and another Tea Party favorite, District Attorney Ken Buck, won the Senate primary over early frontrunner Jane Norton. Maes was quickly beset with demands from Republican leaders that he withdraw from the race to allow the party to choose a more seemly nomineeand then the nations preeminent immigrant-basher, former Congressman Tom Tancredo, jumped into the race on the ticket of the far-right Constitution Party, apparently guaranteeing the Democrat, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, a victory. Now, the playing field seems to be tilting again. With Maes reeling from yet another revelation of his spotty personal finances (a personal bankruptcy in 1989), a new Rasmussen poll has Tancredo zooming up to within four points of Hickenlooper as Maess support collapses. At the same time, Rasmussen shows Senator Michael Bennet actually gaining ground against Buck, whos led most polls the last few weeks, creating a virtual dead heat. Coloradansand Americans generallygot a fresh opportunity to compare the two Senate candidates today on "Meet the Press." There were no real fireworks; host David Gregory spent a good chunk of the debate asking the candidates to respond to disparaging comments made about both in a Denver Post editorial (which ultimately endorsed Bennet). Predictably, Bennet spent much of his time on the show denying that hes a stooge of the Obama administration, while Buck sought to appear as not-crazy as possible, half-conceding Gregorys assertion that hes moving to the center during the general election. Still, the most jarring moment was Bucks blunt agreement with the proposition that being gay is a choice: He compared the influence of biology on sexual orientation to the predisposition to alcoholism. This is pretty standard stuff in right-wing circles, but isnt the best positioning in Colorado, at least outside of Colorado Springs. | https://newrepublic.com/article/78455/could-tom-tancredo-become-the-governor-colorado |
What Should We Do About North Korea? | After decades of dealing with North Korea, we still have almost zero understanding of the regime or its motivations, beyond a desire for self-preservation at all costs. Perhaps what we ought to focus on, then, is the larger narrative of which this attack counts as but the latest installment. What is indisputably clear is that North Korea has been acting more and more aggressively, especially over the past year. Last summer the country again set off an atomic explosion and launched a fusillade of missiles. In March of this year, it plainly sunk a South Korean naval vessel, killing 46 sailors without consequence. Now it has launched its first attack on South Korean territory since the Korean war. To rational observers, this should be an alarming trend. Eventually, the North may miscalculate, spiraling off into uncontrolled conflict with the South and probably the United States military. Or perhaps its continued attacks on South Korean civilians will culminate in such pressure on the South Korean government that Seoul itself responds in a militarily significant way. Even if that doesn't happen, the North has clearly ratcheted up the stakes, and we ought to expect it to become all the more aggressive if the international community exacts no price. Here, the likelihood of significant action ranges from slim to none. That, in turn, means more attacks and more casualties. The United States would prefer talking to fighting--or, truthfully, mounting a response of any kind. That's a laudable notion, but not one appropriate for dealing with a regime as heedless, infantile, and aggressive as Pyongyang's. It views, not without reason, diplomacy as pure charade. Without any appreciable pressure from China on the regime, the United States and its allies have no other leverage theyre willing to use. We don't know, but we do know what doesn't work. At some point, democratic governments have a responsibility to uphold some very basic norms of international behavior. Advertising our fears as if they were virtues, we have so far failed, blatantly and even ostentatiously, to do so in response to almost any North Korean provocation. | https://newrepublic.com/article/79436/obama-north-korea |
Why Are Republican-Hating Voters Voting Republican? | Polls have shown that the public trusts President Obama and Congressional Democrats more than Congressional Republicans. Yet the public is prepared to give the Republicans a huge victory. Shankar Vedantum says it's something called "action bias": When we are stuck in a bad place, whether that bad place is a marriage, a traffic jam, or a weak economy, it is very tempting to try something new. Psychologists call this the action biasand it turns out to have surprisingly broad ramifications. When a company starts losing money, or a whole industry starts losing ground because of a new technology, most of us follow leaders who call for revolutionary changeeven if no one really knows what change is needed. Leaders who advocate the status quo look like dinosaurs. This is why tough times produce radical measures, radical leaders, and radical change. The call for revolution sounds weird in good times, but when things are bad, upending the status quo feels irresistible. We rarely think about selling stocks when their value is rising (when we could lock in our gains) but are enormously tempted to sell, sell, sell when their value starts to fall. Goalies facing penalty kicksa bad place to be if you are a goalieare heavily predisposed to dive to one side or another to save a goal, even though their best odds of saving a goal are when they stay in the center. In one analysis of 293 penalty kicks in elite championship soccer, researchers Michael Bar-Eli, Ofer H. Azar, Ilana Ritov, Yael Keidar-Levin, and Galit Schein found that goalies had a 14 percent chance of stopping a goal when they dived to the left and a 13 percent chance when they dived to the right. The chance of stopping a goal when they stayed in the center was 33 percent. But, like voters and people stuck in traffic jams, goalies facing penalty kicks are drawn to action, not inaction. The analysis of the championship penalty kicks found that goalies stayed in the center only 6 percent of the time. The intuitive answer is that action promises to get us out of the mess we're in. But that intuition turns out to be wrong. The action bias is driven less by the fear of failure than by the fear of regret. I think there's something to this, and it helps explain the almost monotonic pattern in which voters turn against incumbents when the economy is bad. In fact, voters who disapprove of both President Obama and the Republicans are voting overwhelmingly for the Republicans. But it's worth recalling that the main factor in this election is not that Republicans have won over disaffected Obama voters. It's that Republicans are planning to vote at higher rates than Democrats. Here's a PPP analysis from August: The Democrats' big win in 2006 was not driven by the enthusiasm gap, but because a lot of people who had voted for George W. Bush in 2004 switched over to supporting Democratic candidates. According to the 2006 exit poll the electorate that year was actually more heavy on Bush voters than the 2004 electorate that reelected Bush. 49% were Bush voters to only 43% who were Kerry voters, compared to Bush's 51-48 popular vote victory in 2004. The reason Democrats won even though the electorate disproportionately consisted of Bush voters was that 15% of those Bush voters cast their ballots for a Democrat, a pretty large amount of crossover. There aren't nearly that many Obama voters leaning toward the Republicans this year. Our last national generic ballot survey found only 8% of people who voted for the President in 2008 were planning to support the GOP this year. But those surveyed represented an electorate that favored Barack Obama by only a point, 46-45, and because of that the generic ballot was tied despite the small number of voters crossing over. | https://newrepublic.com/article/78561/why-are-republican-hating-voters-voting-republican |
Do We Actually Want Everyone To Vote? | Thats really the question that Kevin Drum is tackling in his posts on voter fraud (first one, second one). Look, its not as if theres no history to this. There have always been Americans who believed that everyone should vote...and there have always been Americans who want a better electorate. In my experience, those attitudes (as opposed to the way theyre deployed politically) are not partisan. Get in a discussion with a decent-sized group, liberals or conservatives, ask the right questions, and youll soon reveal that several people dont really think that its right that the ignorant have the same voice on Election Day as the well educated. Its not a crazy position! Reading through the comments on my voting stories posts, youll find people who clearly have spent a good deal of time and energy figuring out how to vote for a bunch of obscure offices. But we know that theyre in the extreme minority; most of the people who vote on Tuesday will be taking wild guesses on many items, certainly on non-partisan offices and ballot questions. I can understand those who believe its somehow unfair or unjust. But they are wrong. In a democracy, the people rule. All of them. Not just the well-educated. Not just the well-informed. Not just the intelligent. Everyone. At various times within any democratic political system, all sorts of people have outsized influence, but on Election Day, in casting our ballots, were all supposed to be equal. One person, one vote. So I support a system that makes voting a lot easier than it is. Thats why I think our long ballot should be shorter. Thats one of the reasons I dont like ballot measures, or non-partisan elections. Its also why I think formal barriers to voting should be eliminated -- all citizens, including felons, should be on the rolls, as should at least teenagers, if not younger children. Its a national disgrace that theyre barred in many places. When there are trade-offs, I would always choose easier participation, even if it risks hanky-panky. Id like to see registration eliminated as a barrier to voting. Voter registration should be automatic, and it should follow people around so they dont have to re-register every time they move. Yup. Nope. To be as clear as I can...if automatic registration would mean, say, an extra million citizens voting, but ten of those are dead people who get voted by some devious corrupt pol...yes, thats a good deal for democracy. When it comes to voting, Im going to choose lower hurdles every time. | https://newrepublic.com/article/78743/do-we-actually-want-everyone-vote |
Will Pelosi Pay the Price? | House Speaker Nancy Pelosi held a conference call with some bloggers and reporters on Wednesday. She spent a great deal of time exuding confidence and predicting that Democrats would fare well on Election Day. I think the word momentum came up more than once. I dont know whether she is really that optimistic. I'm certainly not. Id like very much to see the Democrats maintain control of Congress and, I agree, there have been a few encouraging signs lately, particularly on the Senate side. (Christine ODonnell is the gift that keeps on giving.) But the odds are still against the Democrats, particularly in the House. Then again, the last time Pelosi defied conventional wisdom so brazenly was in late January and early February, when she kept insisting health care reform would pass. Maybe she knows something the rest of us don't. In any event, it was something else Pelosi said that really got my attentionand got me thinking. She pointed out, correctly, that this Congress has accomplished an enormous amount, from the stimulus to health care reform to financial regulation. But the record of the House, in particular, is even stronger. Its easy to forget now, but the House did pass a climate change bill. It also passed a health care bill stronger than the final package, in the sense that it guaranteed more generous coverage and included a public option. The House wanted a bigger stimulus, too. But the House had to give ground on all of these because the Senate couldnt, or wouldnt, go along. The House obviously has certain institutional advantages over the Senate: Membership more closely reflects public opinion, since small states arent over-represented, and theres no filibuster to block majority rule. But its not as if corralling House Democrats has been easy easy. On climate change, in particular, Democrats were far from united. Members with ties to oil, gas, auto, and other carbon-producing industries had serious reservations. Blue Dogs and others representing conservative districts were nervous about the appearance of raising taxes. Passing a bill despite those divisions was no small feat. Pelosi deserves a lot of credit for that--just as she deserves a lot of credit for saving health care reform. | https://newrepublic.com/article/78383/speaker-pelosi-liberal-disillusionment-election |
Can William and Kates Wedding Really Save the British Economy? | But, across a choppy Irish Sea, Britain's biggest trading partner might be forgiven if last week it looked toward its former colonizer with a momentary pang of wistful regret: Republicanism is no match for an aging constitutional monarchy that can still, when backed against the wall, inject a heady dose of economic adrenaline and patriotism into a troubled economy just by tolling royal wedding bells. Ireland's economy is in a major crisishouse prices in Dublin have fallen by half this year, and the country is now brokering an unprecedented multi-billion-euro bailout from the E.U. Things are not quite so bad in Britain, which has promised to help out its neighbor. Nonetheless, the news about William and Kate is being framed in the UK almost wholly in terms of the severe economic situation here, and, so far, the government, most of the news media, and Buckingham Palace itself seem to be cooperating in a harmonious convergence of interests. The day after the wedding was announced, newspapers calculated that the British economy would see a boost of some 620 million pounds just from the wedding itself, by way of increased tourism and souvenir sales. Marks & Spencer is promising that a cut-price copy of the blue dress worn by Kate on the day of the announcement will be in their high street shops next week, and we can only imagine what knock-off wedding dress sales worldwide will bring. By weeks end, The Sun newspaper was headlined THANKS A BILLION, WILLIAM, reporting another 400 million pounds of good retail news to come. (One letter to the Daily Telegraph this week even suggested that the royal couple, in the interest of national marketing synergy, forego Westminster Abbey in favor of Britain 's new 2012 Olympic stadium as the backdrop for their nuptials.) As important, palace press officers told reporters how eager the royal couple and the government are to strike a balance between a wedding that is fiscally responsiblei.e. not as lavish as Charles and Diana's 1981 St. Paul's extravaganzaand, to paraphrase most newspaper versions, sufficiently swank and impressive to insure that the world knows Britain can still put on a good show. The BBC and other news outlets dutifully reminded the country that royal weddings have taken place in hard times before: The current Queen saved her clothing rationing stamps to put towards the cost of her own wedding dress in 1952, and service men and women lining the royal procession route then wore battle dress rather than ceremonial uniform in a money-saving effort. Royal correspondents in every paper reported that the cost of the wedding would be shared, with Prince Charles paying for some of it out of his own, really quite deep pocket, to ensure the taxpayer did not have to foot the whole bill. There are many different estimates, some as high as 80 million pounds and most dependent on how one quantifies the security personnel needed to protect a wedding party of some 3,000 guests and statesmenthe Obamas will be invitedin the heart of London. | https://newrepublic.com/article/79403/prince-william-kate-wedding-british-economy |
What Lessons Have Republicans Learned From The Last Shutdown? | One thing I expect out of the Republican House is a government shutdown. The House leadership, which remembers 1995, may not want another shutdown. But the only alternative to shutting down the government is to immediately compromise with the Obama administration, and pass a series of policies Republicans consider unacceptable (if not tyrannical.) That's not how Republicans remember the episode. Politico has a story headlined, "Freshmen Vow Not To Repeat 1994." No, it means don't cheat on your wife or start getting earmarks: The last big class of GOP outsiders intent on setting off a stink bomb in the clubby capital city is now remembered more as a ripped-from-the-headlines compilation of Republicans laid low. There are Mark Souder, Mark Sanford and John Ensign, all adulterers of recent vintage. But whats remarkable is how many other, less notorious, members of the Class of 94 also carried on affairs or were caught in sex scandals. Then there was Bob Ney, the Ohioan who served 17 months in federal prison on corruption-related charges stemming from the Jack Abramoff scandal. And this is to say nothing of the other Republican Revolutionaries who ran against business as usual and went native when they saw the easiest way to reelection was to crack the Appropriations piggy bank. Take former Arizona Rep. J.D. Hayworth, for example, whose fondness for earmarks caught up with him in his Senate primary this year against John McCain, during which he was tailed by a heckler in a pig costume. | https://newrepublic.com/article/79198/what-lessons-have-republicans-learned-the-last-shutdown |
Is Joe Manchin As Conservative As He Seems? | While it's still too early to pick the most surreal ad of the political cycle, the one where West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin grabs a rifle and starts shooting a cap-and-trade bill must rank pretty high. But hey, maybe this little authenticity twofer worked! Previous polls, after all, showed Manchin losing the WV Senate race to GOP businessman John Raese. Whereas today, a new Marshall University survey gives Manchin a ten-point lead. Maybe more struggling candidates should try blasting away at thick reams of legislative text. But that brings up another question. Consider the record: pro-gun, anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage. He won praise from the Cato Institute for cutting taxes and shrinking West Virginia's budget during his tenure as governor. He hearts the coal industry and has sued the EPA over regulations on mountaintop mining. And he's even vowed to help Republicans repeal Obamacareor at least "the bad parts." Sure, he's technically a Democrat, because you have to be to run for office in West Virginia, but from all outward appearances, we're talking about a more right-wing version of Ben Nelson. Plenty of commentators have chalked this up to West Virginia being a conservative state, a place where Obama's popularity is clocking in the low 30s. But that's not a fully satisfying explanation. The state's Democratic senators have often been quirky and willing to adopt surprisingly strong liberal positions. Robert Byrd, after all, was a huge fan of New Deal-style federal spending and was one of the most vocal opponents of the Iraq war. The state's other senator, Jay Rockefeller spent most of his time during the health care debate staking out territory to the left of Obama. I asked Robert Rupp, a historian at West Virginia Wesleyan College, about this disparity. His take was that West Virginia tends to strangely forgiving of its incumbents: Given that the state receives $1.76 in federal money for every $1 it pays in taxes, West Virginians understand the power of having representatives with senioritythey watched Byrd, after all, direct millions and millions of dollars worth of earmarks their way each year from his perch at the head of the appropriations committee. "That means once you're in, if you're fighting for the state, if you're in tune with us on eighty percent of the issues, then we're going to cut you some slack," says Rupp. | https://newrepublic.com/article/78424/joe-manchin-conservative-he-seems |
Who Killed Cap And Trade? | This is going to sound a little weird, but I think my friend and former colleague Ryan Lizza's long New Yorker piece on the failure of cap and trade is both a phenomenal tour de force of reporting while also fundamentally wrong. As an argument, the article makes two basic claims. First, the failure of cap and trade means "perhaps the last best chance to deal with global warming in the Obama era, was officially dead." And second, the legislation's death can be largely, or perhaps even principally, attributed to the Obama administration's bungling and lack of commitment. Of course, the article is not primarily about those claims so much as it is walking readers through the story of how the bill died. And the piece is filled with so much compelling detail that almost any section picked at random is worth excerpting. I thought this section was both especially interesting, and worth highlighting because of what it says about Ryan's larger point: By late January, 2009, the details of the Lieberman-McCain bill had been almost entirely worked out, and Lieberman began showing it to other Senate offices in anticipation of a February press conference. The goal was to be the centrist alternative to a separate effort, initiated by Barbara Boxer, a liberal from California and the chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee. But the negotiations stalled as the bill moved forward. In Arizona, a right-wing radio host and former congressman, J. D. Hayworth, announced that he was considering challenging McCain in the primary. McCain had never faced a serious primary opponent for his Senate seat, and now he was going to have to defend his position on global warming to hard-core conservative voters. The Republican Party had grown increasingly hostile to the science of global warming and to cap-and-trade, associating the latter with a tax on energy and more government regulation. Sponsoring the bill wasnt going to help McCain defeat an opponent to his right. By the end of February, McCain was starting to back away from his commitment to Lieberman. At first, he insisted that he and Lieberman announce a set of climate-change principles instead of a bill. Then, three days before a scheduled press conference to announce those principles, the two senators had a heated conversation on the Senate floor. Lieberman turned and walked away. Thats it, he told an aide. He cant do it this year." I think this anecdote is significant, and I want to return to it momentarily. But first consider Ryan's indictment of the administration. He shows that the sponsors of the climate change bill, Lindsey Graham, Lieberman, and John Kerry, had plenty of legitimate greivances with the White House. Obama was not showing a determination to pass a bill. At key junctures, he made unilateral concessions that the threesome had hoped to trade for GOP support. And someone in his administration needlessly antagonized Graham. The detail is fantastic and damning of Obama, but the conclusion that these events were decisive seems questionable. | https://newrepublic.com/article/78186/who-killed-cap-and-trade |
Is Murkowski The Next Lieberman? | One fascinating angle on Lisa Murkowski's write-in campaign for Senate is the question of what kind of Senator she'll be if she wins. I was interested in her interview with the New York Times magazine this weekend, both for the very fact of it -- she's obviously targetting a different constituency by going to the Times -- and with this line: But now youve decided to try and keep your Senate seat with a write-in campaign, which threatens to split the Republican vote and hand a victory to the Democrats, as Republican leaders like Mitch McConnell are bemoaning. I have to separate myself from that. I am working for Alaskas best interests. I am not working for Mitch or for anybody else in my conference. Im working for my state first. Now, she does refer to the GOP as "my conference." But she also distances herself from the national party. Part of what's going on is that national Republicans are lining up to endorse Joe Miller, the Tea Party candidate who knocked off Murkowski in the primary. There's also significant conservative pressure on Senate Republicans to punish Murkowski in other ways. Substantively, I don't blame Republicans for feeling anger at Murkowski. She ran in a primary, which is a fundamental promise to support your party's nominee in the general election, and then broke that promise when it no longer suited her. They have a right to desire vengeance. | https://newrepublic.com/article/78128/murkowski-the-next-lieberman |
What's Behind The Obama-U.S. Chamber of Commerce Detente? | President Obama is offering an olive branch to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the right-wing business lobby that spent millions of dollars opposing his agenda and helping elect Republicans. Meanwhile, the Chamber has said it won't be working to unseat Obama in 2012, though this promise actually means it won't be working quite so openly to unseat Obama in 2012: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which spent more than $32 million to boost GOP candidates in 2010, announced Wednesday that it won't campaign against Obama in the upcoming presidential campaign. But in his speech to the group's membership, Chamber President Tom Donahue appeared to leave his high-powered lobbying group a little wiggle room. While he said the group won't campaign against Obama, Donahue also said it won't back down from its opposition to Obama's policies, likening them to a "regulatory tsunami." Translated from D.C. campaign code, that probably means the group won't run ads specifically calling for Obama's defeat or talking up potential rivals -- but will leave the door open to running spots critical of the president's policies , as it did in scores of House and Senate races in 2010. Possibly because the White House is encouraging some competition to the Chamber's pro-Republican line: The White House has been working behind the scenes to boost an outside group of corporate executives, known as Business Forward, to help set it up as a kind of rival organization to the Chamber of Commerce. The idea is, according to senior Democratic strategists, that the executives who make up Business Forward can stand up and support the president's agenda -- serving as a counterweight to Chamber opposition in order to show that the business community is not unilaterally anti-Obama. In fact, Jim Messina, deputy chief of staff at the White House, briefed leaders of Business Forward on Obama's agenda at a meeting in Washington on Monday. The group is made up of executives from several major corporations, including AT&T, Ford, Facebook, Microsoft, Fidelity, Hilton Worldwide, Visa, Wal-Mart, McDonald's and Time Warner (the parent company of CNN). Documents from the event obtained by CNN noted that "17 of America's most respected companies are working with Business Forward to encourage thousands of business executives, small business owners, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to get engaged in the policymaking process." The documents added that over the next three months, the group plans to "host panels in Washington and around the country on consumer financial protection, trade and exports, cybersecurity and IP, health care and childhood obesity," all of which could be an opportunity to drum up support for some of Obama's signature issues. If you recall, several companies pulled out of the Chamber in 2009 over its hard-line opposition to cap and trade. The Chamber is run mainly by Republicans who are committed to a classic class-solidarity brand of pro-business advocacy, in which business executives emphasize their shared interests in opposing regulation and protecting low tax rates for wealthy individuals. But there are a lot of executives who want to do something about carbon emissions and other national problems that can't be solved simply by concentrating more wealth and power in the hands of business owners and managers, and the Chamber doesn't want competition. So the apparent detente between the Chamber and Obama may be less friendly than it appears. | https://newrepublic.com/article/79341/torture-chamber |
How Many Americans Favor Repeal? | Just now, at the White House press conference, a journalist asked President Obama about the one in two voters who say they favor repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Obama noted that one in two don't want repeal, which is true. But Obama actually understated the case. The proportion that oppose repeal is actually larger than one in two. A lot larger. For the last few weeks, polls have consistently shown that between 40 and 50 percent of Americans answer "yes" when pollsters ask about repeal. But the numbers change when the pollsters ask follow-up questions. The individual features of reform, like prohibitions on denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions or helping seniors pay for prescription drugs, remain wildly popular. When you tell people that repeal would mean giving up these features, as it necessarily would, support for repeal falls. In a recent CBS/New York Times poll, the proportion of respondents favoring repeal fell from 41 to 25 percent. Forty-one percent is lower than the percentage who said they favored repeal in last night's exit polls. But, again, that's a telling fact. Last night's sample included a disproportionate number of senior citizens, who have always eyed Obama more warily and whose opposition to reform likely reflects not a principled opposition to government health care but a reaction to news that the Affordable Care Act takes $400 billion out of Medicare. (I'll have more to say about that contradiction later on.) Younger people are far more likely to support the Affordable Care Act. And their votes will count more, relatively speaking, in the next election. | https://newrepublic.com/article/78902/how-many-americans-favor-repeal |
Is the Devil to Blame for American Foreign Policy? | Theres no doubt that the right way to understand American foreign policy, past or present, is to try to disentangle the debates between those who push for more and those who push for less. But its not right to think that, when the latter lose out, its because dark forces from another world have put their thumb on the scales. Take a couple of the figures who always loom large in these discussions, George Kennan and Colin Powell. Theyre familiar heroes of prudence and moderationKennan, because he helped devise the strategy of containment and yet was still able to see that the war in Vietnam was a bad idea; Powell, because he was chairman of the joint chiefs in the first Iraq war but could tell that the second one was bound to be a mess. Not really. Their differences with prevailing policy were much more fundamental. Having coined the term containment, Kennan then opposed the policies that were part of turning it from a strategic concept into a political realitythe formation of NATO, the creation of West Germany, the peace treaty with Japan, and so on. He wasnt listened to on Vietnam because he was seencorrectly, I would argueas having been wrong on almost every major issue of American foreign policy since the Marshall Plan. As for Powell, it was not easy to exercise much influence in the internal debates over the second Iraq war when all your colleagues in the Administration knew that you had opposed the first one too. These heroes, in short, were not just opposed to failure. They were, in a real sense, opposed to success. Theres a lesson here that the supernaturalist books ignore. They are clearly right that its hard to be an advocate of doing less in American foreign policy. But theyre not right about the reasons. Its not, as Senator Arthur Vandenberg advised Truman, that policymakers are so good at scaring hell out of the American people. Nor is it that Americans cannot accept compromise, prefer self-delusion to self-awareness, are absolutist in their faith, and may not have heard of the Enlightenment. The main reason is different. A strategy that systematically chooses to do less rather than more may well avoid big mistakes. But it will alsoinevitably, in factsacrifice some of the most significant achievements of American foreign policy. Given the large global role that the United States has played for decades, it may alsoat least until other countries learn to adjustsacrifice some elements of international order. Some people will like that kind of change, others wont. Its a debate we need to have. But lets not pretend that there are only two sides, normal people and the possessed. Stephen Sestanovich is Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of International Diplomacy at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as ambassador-at-large for the former Soviet Union from 1997 to 2001. | https://newrepublic.com/article/78764/the-devil-blame-american-foreign-policy |
Why No Geithner Greenbacks Yet? | [Guest post by Noam Scheiber:] Interesting bit of trivia from a blogger named "madhedgefundtrader," posted on the iconoclastic finance site Zero Hedge (via Politico's Morning Money): Before he left, I pulled out all the cash in my wallet and pointed out to Geithner that while I had bills signed by previous Treasury Secretaries Larry Summers, Paul ONeil, and Robert Rubin, I lacked one with his illegible scrawl. He sheepishly admitted that while such bills existed, they we[re] being held back from circulation until the Treasurys existing stockpile of Hank Paulson bills ran out, in order to deliver taxpayers good value for money. I would only see his bills once the economy recovers and the growth of M1 starts to accelerate. It's actually kind of a telling characterological detail... Also, if you're wondering why I'm burying the lede by not explaining why Geithner was meeting with some dude called "madhedgefundtrader"--it turns out he's a longtime financial journalist-cum-money manager who knows Geithner dating back to his days as an assistant Treasury attache in Tokyo. | https://newrepublic.com/article/78622/why-no-geithner-greenbacks-yet |
Does Suu Kyi Still Matter? | The Nobel Peace Prize winner is just one womanbut Burma is much more. Read the full text of Suu Kyis speech after her release here . Apart from her freedom, the best thing about Aung San Suu Kyi's release from house arrest in Burma is being able to hear her again. If one feels as if her message of peaceful, democratic progress has been expressed before, its because it has. Suu Kyi has been remarkably consistent for 22 years, calling for a dialogue between her party (the National League for Democracy) and the military junta that rules Burmawhile simultaneously criticizing the regime for denying the countrys citizens their most basic human and political rights. Whats more, she wants to engage with the country's diverse ethnic nationalities and their bewildering array of political groups, armed militias, and struggling communities. And yet, despite her calls for people to recognize Burmas many challenges and the myriad parties that influence them, the world tends to view Burmas prospects for reform through a prism dominated overwhelmingly by Suu Kyi. The international communitys heralding of her release as a crucial marker of the military regimes supposed commitment to reform has obscured the countrys complex interplay of ethnic conflict and economic malaiseand it has simplified the reality of a vibrant and diverse opposition movement. There are 2,200 political prisoners still held by the junta, including student activists, ethnic leaders, civil society activists, artists, and Buddhist monks, who can attest to that. The obsession with one woman as the answer to all of Burma's ills suits peripatetic policymakers, human rights activists, and media outlets throughout the world, who focus their attentions on Burma only rarely. To them, Suu Kyi is still the key acolyte of reformthe face of Burmas democratic future. But a lot has changed in Burma since 2003, when Suu Kyi was last placed under house arrest, and far more has changed since 1988, when she first rose to prominence. She knows this and has talked in recent days of her desire to understand the changes better. She said, for instance, she could revise her stance on sanctions; her previous support for them led some disgruntled diplomats, Western academics, and business interests to say she was impeding Burmas access to the outside world. Suu Kyi also wants to talk to all sides that have contributed to Burmas present stateincluding those the West often forgets. | https://newrepublic.com/article/79310/does-suu-kyi-still-matter |
Do Krugman And I Disagree On The Debt Commission? | My take on the debt commission is provisionally favorable, while Paul Krugman's take is unremittingly hostile. That's kind of interesting, because I generally agree with Krugman about economic policy. Let me go through a couple points in his column. And why is a commission charged with finding every possible route to a balanced budget setting an upper (but not lower) limit on revenue?... it becomes clear, once you spend a little time trying to figure out whats going on, that the main driver of those pretty charts is the assumption that the rate of growth in health-care costs will slow dramatically. I have no idea. I find these two provisions vague, bordering on meaningless. Very little. In theory, the commission could add some kind of triggering mechanism to make the cap powerful, at which point you have to vote the thing down. That seems unlikely anyway. Second, Krugman sees the tax provisions as a sop to the rich: | https://newrepublic.com/article/79133/do-krugman-and-i-disagree-the-debt-commission |
Will Republicans Shut Down The Government? | I think a lot of people are underrating the potential for a government shutdown. Here is the dynamic. Republican leaders in the House recall the 1995 government shutdown as a disaster and do not want to repeat it. They want to avoid exposing the party to charges of overreach, prevent any economic recovery measures, and put themselves in position to win the 2012 election, at which point they can move their agenda forward. On the other hand, shutting down the government is the only alternative to passing legislation that conservatives find totally unacceptable, and indeed would keep in place policies that they have been railing against in apocalyptic terms. You can't convince your base that the president is destroying freedom, undermining capitalism, and threatening 1920s Germany-style inflation, and then turn around and tell them to just wait things out for two years. What's more, it's worth delving a bit deeper into the GOP's historical understanding of the government shutdown. The Republican view of this episode -- and I remember this at the time, from my GOP staffer housemate -- was that the whole idea that Republicans shut down the government was a big lie concocted by the Clinton administration and abetted by the liberal media. Clinton, they believe, is the one who shut down the government. After all, if he had agreed to the Republican terms, there would have been no shutdown. | https://newrepublic.com/article/79293/will-republicans-shut-down-the-government |
Why Is Obama So Calm Right Now? | To be sure, we've seen Obama act this way before. He didnt panic when Hillary Clinton surprised him in New Hampshire and kept fighting until the final primaries. He didnt panic when John McCain tapped Sarah Palin and jumped ahead in the polls. He didnt panic when the financial system collapsed, the auto industry was near liquidation, or his health care bill was about to die. In every one of those cases, Obama or the causes he supported prevailed. And there are some good reasons not to panic. Obama and his allies have accomplished an entire term's worth of legislation in just two years. Financial regulation, direct student lending, the Recovery Act, and health care reform--that's a record of accomplishment unmatched in recent history. Losses were inevitable at the midterms. But if it's reassuring to see Obama in his familiar posture, it's also a little unsettling--because, well, maybe this time is different. If you believe, as I do, that the primary factor in determining election outcomes is the economy, then tomorrows results have been a foregone conclusion for some time now. The midterms were more or less out of Obamas control the day he signed off on a stimulus too small to create robust job growth. But whats true of this election will be true of the election two years from now. And with a Republican Congress blocking new economic initiatives, Obama wont have much ability to create jobs--or even help those who cant find any. If the economy continues to recover this slowly, the Republicans wont merely solidify their hold on Congress in two years. Theyll also be in a position to win the White House. Yes, its possible the Republicans will overreach, particularly if their gains on Tuesday are of historic proportions. In fact, Obama may be counting upon the GOP leadership to go too far--to assume a mandate for conservative governing that doesnt exist. And he may be counting upon the American people to rally behind him once that happens. One constant in Obamas record is his assumption that American people will act like political grown-upsthat, when presented with a choice between a party that takes governing seriously and one that does not, they will choose the former. | https://newrepublic.com/article/78825/why-obama-so-calm-right-now |
Should President Obama Have Taught Econ 101? | Excellent post over the weekend from Matt Yglesias, one that I hope doesnt get lost because it was over the weekend, and because theres a lot going on in just a few paragraphs. Youre most definitely going to want to Read The Whole Thing, but I want to talk a bit about the really startling point he makes at the end. Yglesias starts by talking about two different models of the economy, one in which stimulus during a recession makes sense and one in which it doesnt. He doesnt quite say it, but in fact the former is the one that is shared by virtually all economists, regardless of partisanship. But then he notes that quite a few politicians of all persuasions, as well as many influential journalists and other opinion leaders, appear to believe in the latter, which he says corresponds with common sense. He concludes: I think that progressives have tended to focus too much on crazy person misinformation (Obama is a secret Muslim, Obama spent nine trillion dollars on a trip to India, Obama is from Kenya) and not enough on common sense misinformation of the sort Bayh is expressing. The widespread nature of common sense misinformation about the nature of recessionsnot just among low-information voters but even among political professionals and policy elites has been a huge drag on macroeconomic performance and that in turn has dragged down the entire progressive agenda. Interesting. Hes right that liberal outlets have spent quite a bit of time and effort on debunking the crazy -- not just the stuff he mentions, but death panels, and czars, and on and on and on. The thing is that the target audience for that debunking has always been a little hazy. I doubt that very many political elites of any stripe believe a lot of the crazy...at any rate, few outside hard-core conservatives believe any of that. I suspect not. I certainly dont think that anyone who writes editorials for major newspapers, or any White House correspondent, believes it. They listen to the (Republican) partisan press, and the partisan press have no reason to try to educate them. Neither do GOP pols. So uncovering the truth wont change the minds of political elites (who already dont believe the crazy), and it wont affect the rank and file. Now, consider what Yglesias calls common sense misinformation. I do think its probably true that a lot of Members of Congress, and a lot of people within the elite press, and a lot of top lobbyists, have very little training in basic economics. What's more, while many of them are probably in principle willing to get educated, it would take some work. It would take some work...there are an enormous number of people who just reject systematic analysis of this type when it goes against what they see as common sense (sabermetrically inclined baseball fans, or anyone who has read Moneyball, will agree). | https://newrepublic.com/article/79005/should-president-obama-have-taught-econ-101 |
Does Education Policy Stand a Chance in a Republican Congress? | A Republican takeover of the House is a recipe for inaction, says Kevin Carey, policy director for Education Sector. Or, as Jack Jennings of the Center for Education Policy puts it, It will mean deadlock. I think theyre right. The reasons are simple. First and foremost, Republicans have gained political ground by almost totally opposing Obamas domestic agenda. I doubt they want to give [Obama] an education bill that he would sign at the White House just before a presidential election, says Jennings. Moreover, the Tea Party movements vigorous focus on shrinking all aspects of the federal governmentincluding the Department of Education, which many Tea Partiers simply want to abolishis already pressuring more mainstream Republicans to reevaluate where they stand on education. Anybody who thinks 2010 Republicans or incumbent senators looking over shoulders are interested in substantial legislation around education just havent been paying attention to sentiment on that side of the aisle, says Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. (Republicans are so uninterested in cooperating on federal school policy that the Pledge to America, the partys new agenda, doesnt even contain the word education.) Practically speaking, this means the administrations blueprint for NCLB, which is already several years overdue for reauthorization and desperately needs restructuring, probably wont pass, maybe not even in pared-down form. Congressman John Kline, the top House Republican on the Education and Labor Committee, told Education Week in September that, while he supports reauthorization in principle, teachers and superintendents in his Minnesota district are frankly not real thrilled with the blueprint. He added, One of the things that we've been insisting on is that we have to make [NCLB] simpler, easier to comply with and more flexible, therefore putting some meaning back into local control. Similarly, dont expect new money for Race to the Top (RTTT), Obamas signature program for competitive education grants, because that, too, violates the small-government ethos. After all, it was authorized in the 2009 stimulus package, which Republicans are denouncing every chance they get, and it involves the Obama administration handing out billions of dollars to states that it deems most committed to reform. Kline has already said he wont support giving Obama the additional $1.35 billion hes requested for RTTT in the 2011 budget. This is the U.S. Department of Education, putting [out its] view of what needs to be done. ... It's not the states deciding. It's not local control, Kline told Education Week. | https://newrepublic.com/article/78661/does-education-policy-stand-chance-in-republican-congress |
Should Rush Limbaugh Moderate the Republican Presidential Debates? | Fascinating exchange today between Andrew Sullivan and Alex Massie about Republican presidential debates, which are coming way sooner than you think -- just a few months from now, in fact. In response to Hugh Hewitts suggestion that conservative talk show hosts act as moderators for the first debate, Sullivan was unimpressed: Its like Stalin being grilled by the Politburo. Massie, however, thought it might be fun, besides that it would be a good chance to see candidates fail to stand up to Rush or Hannity, and the resulting obsequiousfest would mean that Hewitts notion could produce a debate that might actually reveal something useful and even important about the field. Just not, perhaps, in quite the way he imagines. I think they both have decent points. On the one hand, theres really no shortage of chances to have Republican candidates play up to the world view of Republican talk show hosts -- theyre all going to go on Rush, Beck, Hannity, and Hewitt, and we all know in advance that none of them is going to dare contradict any goofy thing that those hosts ask them. On the other hand, thats a good reason for Republicans to avoid that sort of debate, because its not clear what it would accomplish that normal interviews wouldnt also produce. Surely not to amuse bloggers, as much as I hope that theyll do so. No, for the parties, the point of debates is, in part, to test whether the candidates are up one aspect of the fall campaign; and, in part, to pressure candidates to go on record on issues that matter to important party groups or factions. The party also wants partisans, rank-and-file voters and activists, to learn about its candidates In addition, the debates are, at least potentially, a general advertisement for the party to those who are not serious partisans. The debates certainly are not a competitive event in which the party seeks to crown a winner. Nor are they, from the point of view of the party, an opportunity to subject their leading candidates to tough grilling and its sad but common cousin, gotcha questioning. The latter might be costs the party is willing to pay, but they arent goals the party holds. For passing information along to party activists and voters, it doesnt matter who the moderators are; you want to maximize ratings among those groups, so the question becomes a pragmatic one of whether partisans are more interested in watching Rush and Hannity or Brian Williams. For advertising the party to independent or marginal voters, I assume that the best plan is partisan moderators serving up softball questions -- although, again, if that drives away marginal voters, a party might have to think of the tradeoffs involved. For getting candidates on record, reliably partisan moderators have the advantage of (perhaps) having a better sense of what key party groups care about. If I were a GOP leader, however, Id be careful to limit this to solid hacks; you dont want to further empower rogue conservative hosts who have their own agendas which may not match that of the party in general -- or give the moderators a platform for whatever idiosyncratic issues boost ratings, whether or not key party groups care about them. Of course, that can be a problem with the neutral press, as well. For showing the candidates ability to deal with questions from the neutral press and to handle the general election debates, its pretty obvious that moderators with no partisan affiliation are best. I can say that were I a Republican leader thinking about which candidate(s) to support, I would want some reassurance that Sarah Palin is now capable of dealing with a Wolf Blitzer type without sounding like a complete idiot. On that last point: Massie says that Lord knows, there will be plenty of opportunities for Wolf Blitzer and Brian Williams and the rest to ask dumb questions, but thats just Sullivans point: its not at all clear that GOP presidential candidates in 2012 will give what were once standard interviews with the nonpartisan press. Once upon a time, the nonpartisan press controlled such a large share of the information market that candidates had no choice but to submit to whatever interviews those outlets demanded. Thats no longer true. Party leaders would be well advised, I think, to take steps to avoid the partys tendency towards closed information loops, and the debates offer an opportunity for that. Looking at the various party goals, it seems to me that there are advantages for both approaches -- and since there are typically quite a few debates, theres plenty of room for variety. The truth is that its just historical happenstance that outside reporters moderate these things and not, say, formal party officials (its not unusual for local party organizations to host candidate fairs before local election primaries, nor does anyone think that strange). So sign me up for Hannity on the Republican side, and Maddow the next time the Democrats have to do it, at least as part of the mix. | https://newrepublic.com/article/79250/should-rush-limbaugh-moderate-the-republican-presidential-debates |
Where Are the 'Recovery Summer' Stimulus Projects? | The Washington Post reported on a recent White House analysis of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. That assessment found strikingly few claims of fraud or abuse, according to the article. Well, good! Weve complained before that ARRAs welcome emphasis on transparency tilts too much toward curbing this kind of waste and too little on establishing a clear, sensible focus on measuring outcomes, irrespective of the multiplier effects of speedy spending Jon Cohn points out. (Though, ironically, the report does not yet appear to be available on Recovery.gov.) But thanks to the ongoing oversight by the Houses Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, we are provided with clear and rich information on those projects in the committees jurisdiction along with a locational identifier for each. This data is reported by the states individually but kudos to the staff and committee leadership for pulling this together and making it available. Our analysis shows that, just looking at the transportation agencies, 43 percent of all the projects and 67 percent of the spending occurs within the 100 largest metro areas, the geographic building blocks of Americas economy and society. While this may seem low given that these places are home to two-thirds of our population and generate 75 percent of our gross domestic product, its actually an increase from earlier this year when those figures where 41 and 59 percent, respectively. | https://newrepublic.com/article/78157/where-are-the-recovery-summer-stimulus-projects |
Was It Worth It? | I don't think that the decision to pursue health care reform was a bad one. Obama ran on health care reform. This was the holy grail of Democratic policy for 60 years, and if Douthat wants to imagine the base's response to Obama deciding not to do it with huge majorities in each house, he should imagine a Republican president appointing an openly pro-Roe v. Wade Supreme Court justice when they are 4 votes to overturn the decision. And the public as a whole demanded it as well. In February of 2009, the public by 59%-12% favored health care reform. They may have turned against the bill as it dragged through Congress, but they always insisted that some kind of reform happen. (That's why Republicans had to disingenuously couch their opposition as a plea to "start over.") But let's accept Douthat's premise for a moment that the decision to pursue comprehensive health reform hurt Democrats. Yes, I would. Chances like this simply don't come along very often. | https://newrepublic.com/article/78910/was-it-worth-it |
Is Yemen the New Pakistan? | The recent attempted cargo-plane bombing certainly gives credence to those who fear that Yemen is the Al Qaeda hub most likely to kill us. Yet even though Yemen has many of the component parts that make for an ideal holy warrior laboratory, Pakistan still has a clear jihadist edgephilosophically and operationallyover whats developing in the land once called Arabia Felix. But let us not belittle Yemens possibilities. First and foremost, Yemens been an intellectual mess for several decades. Religious tribal Shiites have warred against pan-Arab secular tribal Shiites (Yemen is the historic home of the Zaydi, or Fiver, Shiites, who had ruling dynastiesthe Zaydi Imamatein the country more or less continuously from 897 to 1962); Sunni and Shia Yemenis have, of course, disliked each other through the centuries; many Sunni and Shia Yemenis, especially in the south of the country, once zealously fell in love with Communism. Outsiders, especially Gamal Abdel Nassers Egypt and the Soviet Union, threw troops and materiel into the northern Yemeni civil war, further accelerating the crack-up of traditional institutions and ethics that always work against modern bloody mayhem. As the British travel writer Tim Macintosh-Smith pleasantly put it: Curiously, the doctrine of Scientific Socialism pursued in the south, making use of all that is positive and fighting all deviations, was not unlike that of the Zaydi imamate, which enjoyed commanding all that is suitable and prohibiting that which is disapproved. To determine what constituted strayings from the Straight Path of Islam, or leftist/rightist swervings from the Socialist path, the northern sayyids studied the Book of God, while the books of Marx and Lenin became the major reference for the Socialist Politburo. Chief Politburo exegete was Abdulfattah Ismail, an expert on Socialist doctrine who was known, wryly, as al-Faqih (literally, the scholar of the holy writ). Under his guidance, the early caliphs of Islam were classified according to their rightist or leftist tendencies. The British presence in Aden (18371967) added another layer of cultural Westernization, as well as a foreign imperial presence that many Yemenis loathed. And in an always tense, sometimes violent embrace, Yemenis have increasingly intertwined themselves with their northern neighbor, as Saudi wealth and Wahhabi ideology have become magnets for Sunni Yemenis. And then there is the corrupt, weak, but not hopelessly inept government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a | https://newrepublic.com/article/78942/yemen-the-new-pakistan |
Could Florida Actually Elect Rick Scott? | Maybe President Obama has some regrets about decisions he's made this campaign season and maybe he doesn't. Me, I have at least one very big one. I never got around to writing about the gubernatorial race in Florida. Not only is it the state where I grew up and where most of my family still lives. * It's also the state where the Republican candidate is former health care executive Rick Scott. Fortunately for me and for any Florida voters who may be reading this blog before they head to the polls, Andy Kroll of Mother Jones has published a nice primer on Scott's career. Here are some of the high, er, lowlights: $1.7 Billion That's how much the federal government fined Columbia/HCA for Medicare and Medicaid fraud that took place under Rick Scott's watch as CEO. That sum, which ultimately led to Scott's ouster, set a record for the largest fine of its kind in history. To this day, he has yet to fully answer for his inability to spot and stop Columbia/HCA's systemic overbilling. In a recent debate, Scott said only, "I made sure patients were taken care of. I really could have done a better job to hire more internal and external auditors." And while Scott has previously blamed underlings, former Columbia/HCA accountant and FBI informant John Schilling doesn't buy it: "I cant say what he knew or didnt know, but he should have known what was making up the majority of the revenues of the company," he told the Palm Beach Post. Just weeks before Florida's GOP gubernatorial primary, pitting Scott against attorney general Bill McCollum, a pair of former doctors who worked for a chain of health clinics founded by Scott alleged improper Medicare billing by the company. One of the former doctors also claimed Solantic, in which Scott is a majority investor, used the their names and medical licenses without telling them to stay within Florida law, according to theFlorida Independent, which broke the story in August. Scott's campaign and Solantic bothdismissed the allegations by the former doctors, saying they were merely a last-gasp effort by McCollum to boost his primary chances. Scott ended up winning the primary by 3 percentage points. And here's what the Miami Herald's Scott Hiassen and John Dorschner wrote about Scott a few months ago: | https://newrepublic.com/article/78834/could-florida-actually-elect-rick-scott |
Is David Cameron Too "Progressivist" For The GOP? | Matthew Yglesias points to the massive spending cuts in the U.K. budget as a reason conservatives should support majority rule: I do hope that American conservatives will look at the UK and recognize that even though they may have enjoyed the filibuster in 2009-2010, the extremely cumbersome nature of the American political process will make it forever impossible to enact these kind of sweeping cuts in the United States. From where I sit, the system they have in the UK where you can simply sweep opposition objections aside is actually the right way to do bipartisanship. Call it bipartisanship by alternation. When Labour wins the election, Labour has the chance to implement a bold agenda creating and expanding programs in a way that they think will make Britain a better place to live. Then when the Tories come in, theyre able to be brutal in their efforts to pare back or eliminate things that they think arent working. Over the long term, you get a trajectory where programs survive if and only if theyre so widely regarded as successful that no mainstream party would dare abolish them. Leave aside the fact that it preserves a system of true socialized medicine -- not just single-payer, which means government paying for private health care but actual doctors and hospitals working for the government. The Tories impose a lot of pain upon the rich: But eight million higher earners will be hit hardest through higher taxes and the loss both of access to public services valued at more than 500 every year and welfare payments. ... Once other changes to the tax and benefit system are included, the wealthiest group loses more than five per cent of annual earnings over the next four years. The poorest group loses between three and four per cent. Overall, the average household loses about four per cent. ... He defended his decision to target high earners by saying: A fair government makes sure that those with the broadest shoulders bear the greatest burden. And sure enough, establishment Republican voices like the Wall Street Journal editorial page are warning that Cameron's radical government shrinking budget is an unacceptable model because it doesn't have that good old voodoo" But if a government is going to move people from welfare to work, it's also going to have to offer a pro-growth agenda that permits businesses to create jobs. And here is where Mr. Cameron's austerity blueprint falls short. Mr. Osborne this week has promised that he would soon introduce the "maximum sustainable" tax on banks, calling into question the future attractiveness of London as a global financial capital. The government had already announced a 2.5-percentage-point rise in the VAT, to 20%, an increase in capital gains tax to 28% from 18%, and it has no plans to bring the top marginal income tax rate down from its current 50%. Nor does it help for the government to continue to fund fashionable environmental boondoggles, such as 1 billion "commercial scale carbon capture and storage demonstration project," or the 200 million it means to spend for wind-power generation. If Mr. Cameron's government wants economic growth, it will have to move in the opposite direction, especially on taxes; a diet of budget cuts alone won't do it. It's true that you can find Republicans willing to defend reductions in spending for upper-income beneficiaries. But no tax hikes whatsoever, and nothing that really bites into the income of the very rich (who, after all, barely notice Social Security.) | https://newrepublic.com/article/78595/david-cameron-too-progressivist-the-gop |
Will Republicans Impeach Obama? | National Review's Jonah Goldberg is skeptical: Jonathan Chait insists that the GOP will impeach Obama if they take back the House. I think hes nuts. Ill bet him $500 to the charity of the winners choice it doesnt happen. I don't have $500 to throw around on the legal defense fund for people charged with vandalizing Woodrow Wilson's grave, or whatever his favorite charity is, but consider the challenge accepted. If Obama wins a second term, and a GOP-controlled House has not impeached him by 2017, I will let Goldberg write an item on my blog explaining why I was wrong. I'd hope he'll let me do the same on his blog if I'm right. Oh, I also predict that said impeachment will be endorsed by Goldberg. | https://newrepublic.com/article/78378/will-republicans-impeach-obama |
What Are Democrats Thinking On Taxes? Seriously, What? | In the face of yet another spate of signs that Democrats plan to capitulate on taxes, the full insanity of this moment cannot be processed without recalling how we got to this point. In 2001, Republicans decided to pass big top-rate marginal tax cuts. These had little public support, so in order to make them palatable, they included them in a package of middle-class tax cuts and sold the whole thing largely as a Keynesian response to the mild 2001 recession. When Barack Obama ran for president, he had to decide how to handle the issue. The best policy, Democratic wonks understood, was to cancel out all the tax cuts. Clinton-level tax rates are really what you need to to realistically fund the government, under either party's spending plans. But that would have given Republicans a strong political issue -- Democrats want to raise your taxes! So instead they decided to phase out just the part of the Bush tax cuts on income over $250,000. It's a politically-minded compromise. It stinks, but I would have done the same thing. Now, the tax cuts are expiring, and Republicans say you have to address the whole package together. You can make it permanent or temporary, but the line in the sand for them is that you can't decouple the tax cut for income over $250,000 from the rest. The Democrats think this is some kind of dilemma. It's not. It's a get out of jail free card. It's the perfect excuse to let the whole Bush tax cut package expire. You can say, hey, we tried to extend those tax cuts but the Republicans blocked us. It has the virtue of being completely true. | https://newrepublic.com/article/79141/what-are-democrats-thinking-taxes-seriously-what |
Is The Bipartisan Debt Commission... Bipartisan? | There are some pretty interesting reactions to the draft blueprint of the debt commission. On the right, National Review is cautiously supportive: We are both pleasantly surprised and modestly encouraged by the program outlined by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the co-chairmen of the presidents deficit-reduction task force. Theres no VAT in sight, nor is there unrealistic happy-talk about balancing the budget through a federal Taylorism campaign or symbolic assaults on the unholy trinity of waste, fraud, and abuse. Instead, there is a serious series of concrete proposals for constraining entitlement costs, simplifying the tax code, and putting a leash on future federal expenditures. Whereas the Obama-Reid-Pelosi triumvirate had put the country on the road toward a national debt topping 200 percent of GDP with $1 trillion a year in interest payments alone the Bowles-Simpson program would stabilize the debt and begin reducing it. The program would keep the debt to 40 percent of GDP in 2037 and would bring annual deficits down to a more manageable 2.2 percent of GDP by 2015, and 1 percent in the following years. As is the New York Times editorial page: As we read the chairmens proposal, we had one very strong reaction: We hoped the Republicans would pause long enough in their gleeful planning of President Obamas final defeat, and the Democrats would stop wringing their hands, long enough to read this important document and then act on it. Michale Linden at the Center for American Progress Action Fund isn't totally dismissive. Surprisingly, the deficit-reduction-uber-alles Washington Post editorial page strikes a cautious note: | https://newrepublic.com/article/79099/the-bipartisan-debt-commission-bipartisan |
Why Are American Conservatives The Only Climate Science Skeptics? | Ron Brownstein points out the truly unique nature of the Republican Party's climate change skepticism: Not only William Hague but such other prominent European conservatives as French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have embraced that widespread scientific conviction and supported vigorous action. Indeed, it is difficult to identify another major political party in any democracy as thoroughly dismissive of climate science as is the GOP here. Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, says that although other parties may contain pockets of climate skepticism, there is "no party-wide view like this anywhere in the world that I am aware of." I suppose the Republican explanation for this anomaly would be that their party has discovered flaws in the climate science model that have escaped every other conservative party in the world. I would say that the real explanation is the unique power of libertarian economic dogma in the United States. Compared with conservative parties in other countries, Republicans aren't especially racist or nationalistic. They're nominally committed to a higher level of religious-inspired regulation of personal freedom, but not in a way that dramatically diverges from international conservative-party norms. The main difference is that its commitment to anti-government ideology is so strong that it gives rise to crackpot pseudo-science doctrines like supply-side economics and climate science denial, because such doctrines are needed to justify anti-government stances that otherwise would be seen as wildly irresponsible. Some of the difference is attributable to profit-seeking behavior by elites. But it can't be completely divorced from ideology -- even the Koch brothers' pattern of massive right-wing donations mixes pure self-interest with broader libertarian ideology. | https://newrepublic.com/article/78288/why-are-american-conservatives-the-only-climate-science-skeptics |
What Is The Journalistic Value Of Publishing Uncorrected Rove Lies? | I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Karl Rove is practicing the technique of repeating a lie until people stop questioning it. Rove: Sure. There have been movements like this before -- the Civil Rights movement, the anti-war movement, the pro-life movement, the Second Amendment rights movement. All of them popped up, insistent, loud, and relatively unsophisticated. They wanted everything now and for politicians to be with them 100 percent of the time. And after an election or two, people wake up saying, our system produces mostly incremental progress and takes time and compromise. That's exactly what's going to happen here. I meet a lot of Tea Partiers as I go around the country, and they are amazing people. Most have never been involved in politics before. This is their first experience, and they have the enthusiasm of people who have never done it before. Rove: It's a little bit different because the Reagan Revolution was driven a lot by the persona of one man, Ronald Reagan, who had an optimistic and sunny view of what the nation could be. It was also a well-organized, coherent, ideologically motivated and conservative revolution. If you look underneath the surface of the Tea Party movement, on the other hand, you will find that it is not sophisticated. It's not like these people have read the economist Friedrich August von Hayek. Rather, these are people who are deeply concerned about what they see happening to their country, particularly when it comes to spending, deficits, debt and health care. He is clearly not using "sophisticated" to mean pretentious. In the first use, "unsophisticated" means an unrealistic expectation that political change happens immediately and without compromise. In the second, it means a lack of familiarity with Hayek. The first reference was clearly not praise, because Rove immediately proceeds to define the "unsophisticated" belief as something that he understands is incorrect. The second reference to "unsophisticated" is only praise if Rove was trying to say that only pretentious snobs read Hayek. | https://newrepublic.com/article/78708/what-the-journalistic-value-publishing-uncorrected-rove-lies |
Why is Politico Reporting that Sarah Palin is a Pain in the Butt? | There's also a believable (which doesn't mean it's true!) theory of why she runs things the way that she does: she's obsessed with loyalty, and would rather sacrifice efficiency in her camp than risk letting in someone who will sell her out. Given her experience with McCain-supplied campaign professionals, that's not all that surprising; given her experiences over the last couple years, it's easy to imagine that from her perspective everything seems to be running exceptionally well, reinforcing her impulse to trust her own judgment rather than that of Washingtonians who dismissed her in 2008 and since. So at face value, it's an interesting and plausible story, reinforcing the idea that there's quite some question as to whether the Sage of Wasilla will be willing and able to do the sort of things that candidates for major party nominations have always had to do. Now, take a step back. I certainly don't know, but that's my first reaction when I read the story. Could be. Could be. I don't know. I thought it was certainly very interesting that Chuck Grassley's campaign was identified by name; Grassley has an easy reelection bid right now and doesn't have to face a primary for six years, so he's pretty safe from retribution, and he may be reminding not just Palin but all prospective candidates to pay proper fealty to him as the caucuses approach. Don't forget the obvious possibility that perhaps it's just straightforward: she really does have an incompetent operation, which has repeatedly burned and angered so many people that it's produced a subset willing to talk to a good, aggressive, reporter. Again, could be. The point is that when reading these stories, always think about why people talk to reporters, and why these particular sources talked to this reporter about this particular topic. Another step back. Well, that's an easy one: Palin, we all know, sells. I don't really know why, but I do know it's true. | https://newrepublic.com/article/78582/why-politico-reporting-sarah-palin-pain-in-the-butt |
Are Neocons Serious About National Security? | Steve Benen argues: I continue to believe in a simple litmus test -- if you claim to believe in fiscal responsibility and want to cut the deficit, you cant insist that the Pentagon budget is untouchable. Its an immediate credibility killer, reflecting a fundamental lack of seriousness about the subject. I understand his point, and its a good post, but Im going to disagree with it. Put Peter Orszag, Mitch Daniels, Stan Collender, Keith Hennessey, and Robert Greenstein in a room, tell them each to produce three honest proposals for a balanced budget over 2020-2030 without touching the Pentagon, and hand them a sufficient supply of envelope backs, and in a couple of hours at most youll be looking at fifteen balanced budget proposals, ranging from conservative to liberal. Yes, national security is a huge chunk of discretionary spending, but raise taxes, slash Medicare, eliminate federal involvement in education and the environment...there are lots of ways to get there. No, I understand what Benen is saying, but Id go in a different direction. If you declare the Pentagon budget off limits but dont support either higher taxes or draconian cuts in major programs, then you are not serious about national security. The United States is a fabulously wealthy nation; there are very few things that this country cannot afford. But if youre not willing to pay for it, if youre saying -- as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney said for eight years, with the approval of almost every Republican in Congress and most conservative pundits -- that taxes should be lower and the other major functions of the government should be preserved -- then whatever you say, its just lip service. And of course that goes double for anyone trying to whip up the country into a frenzy about budget deficits without proposing a real budget that reduces the deficit without touching the Pentagon. Wanting it, in any serious way, means wanting to pay for it. For once, the household budget analogies do hold here. Claiming to want some level of national defense but that youre not willing to pay for it is exactly the same as my wanting to fly to Philadelphia to attend NLCS Game Six -- if Im not willing to open my wallet, its a nice thought, but it has nothing to do with reality. And on national security, there are a whole lot of people, including some of the most blustery neocons, who are living in Fantasyland. | https://newrepublic.com/article/78619/are-neocons-serious-about-national-security |
Which Party Loves Deficits? | Well, first she dwells at length upon the 1990 deficit deal as a rebuke to the notion that Republicans don't care about the deficit. It's a valid account if you choose, as McArdle does, to ignore the overwhelmingly negative Republican reaction to the agreement before and since. The more fair way to account for this episode is to conclude that it represents a strand of moderate Republicanism that has since been driven out of the Republican Party and taken up residence in the moderate wing of the Democratic Party. Next, she ignores several of the episodes described above, nearly all of which demonstrate the degree to which, post-1990, Republicans abandoned and Democrats embraced the cause of deficit reduction. She further complicates the story by including as evidence the level of the deficit experienced by George W. Bush at the end of his term, which dropped to 1% of GDP at its ebb, and the high deficit experienced under Obama. Obviously this is an extremely flawed metric by which to judge a president's commitment to fiscal responsibility. In the short term, the effects of the business cycle overwhelm the effects of fiscal policy. So indeed, it is true that the deficit briefly dropped at the peak of the 2000s business cycle, and it skyrocketed at the start of 2009, but neither of these reflects any policy change. It's so clear cut that Democrats care more about reducing deficit than Republicans that the more interesting question is why this is even a matter of debate. We don't, after all, debate which party cares more about regulating greenhouse gasses or keeping low marginal tax rates -- and the evidence on those issues is no more ambiguous than the evidence on the question of who cares more about deficits. One answer is that Republicans are rhetorically committed to deficit reduction, perhaps even moreso than Democrats, and news reporters are hesitant to frame the issue in such a way as to take sides on a contested value. A second answer is that what you'd call the anti-deficit lobby -- interest groups like the Concord Coaliion and various mainstream pundit reporters -- are also committed to bipartisanship and the belief that both parties are to blame for national problems. | https://newrepublic.com/article/78845/which-party-loves-deficits |
Are Liberals To Blame For Europe's Far Right? | My former colleague Jamie Kirchick, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, surveys the rise of Islamophobic far-right parties in Europe, and flays American liberals: Anyone who has traveled throughout Europe knows that its image as an exemplar of progressivism, and ethnic and religious diversity, is a fabrication of the American liberal mind. American liberals who ignore European bigotry while considering opposition to the Ground Zero mosque inexcusable bring to mind the mocking suggestion of German communist playwright Bertolt Brecht: "Would it not be easier in that case for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?" I'm really having a hard time seeing how liberals should take the heat for the rise of the European far right. Now, it's true that Islamophobia is more potent in Europe than in the U.S. But Muslims now account for 5.2% of the population in Europe, dwarfing the 0.6% share in the U.S. You could likewise make the case that Europe is more tolerant than the U.S, because the anti-Latino backlash is much stronger here than there. It's also true that you have some scary radical parties getting a fifth of the vote or so in Europe. That's not a very good apples-to-apples comparison with American politics, though. Our electoral system makes small parties non-viable. Anti-immigration sentiment in the U.S. has to exist within the confines of a two-party system, and within the GOP it's restrained by the business class's support for higher immigration along with the interest of party elites in wooing the growing Latino voter base. This has a dampening effect on anti-immigrant fervor, but it doesn't necessarily reflect something fundamental to the character of the people. All that said, I agree that Europe is more xenophobic than the United States. European states tend to define identity in ethnic terms, while one of the great qualities of American has always been its inherently polyglot character. U-S-A! U-S-A! | https://newrepublic.com/article/78332/are-liberals-blame-europes-far-right |
How Many Blue Dogs Will Voters Boot? | The inevitable loss-induced "struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party" has already begun. In a New York Times op-ed, The Nations Ari Berman has written that liberals should Boot the Blue Dogs, suggesting a smaller but more ideologically homogeneous Democratic congressional caucus would be happier, more effective, and more progressive. After all, Republicans are poised to do the job themselves, seizing so many seats that they'll drastically shrink the size of the Congressional Blue Dog Caucus. Currently, there are 54 members of the Blue Dog Coalition in the House. Four of them are retiring, and two othersBrad Ellsworth of Indiana and Charlie Melancon of Lousianaare running for the Senate. All six of these open seats are very likely to flip to the GOP. Looking at Nate Silvers very precise projections of House races, there are 47 incumbent Democrats that he rates as having a better-than-even chance of losing. Of those, 21 are Blue Dogs. If you assume they all do lose, then add in the six open seats, and acknowledge there are likely to be no reinforcements from the tiny Democratic class of 2010, this leaves you with a Blue Dog Coalition of 27 members, exactly half the current number. | https://newrepublic.com/article/78800/how-many-blue-dogs-will-voters-boot |
Is There Any Reason to Be Optimistic About Economic Policy in a GOP Congress? | Taxes: Republicans do like to cut taxes. And with the Bush tax cuts set to expire, Obama and the Democrats want to cut some taxes too. But President Obama favors extending the so-called middle-class tax cuts (which actually still deliver the greatest benefit to the wealthy) and letting the tax cuts for the wealthy expire. This approach would cost about $3 trillion over 10 years. Most Republicans favor extending them all, at a cost of around $3.7 trillion over 10 years. Theoretically, Democrats hold the trump card here. If Congress doesnt act, taxes for everyone go up next year. Thats leverage that should be able to force Republicans to give in. But the Democrats themselves are divided; Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman and other centrists support at least a temporary extension of all tax cuts. And among the few new Democrats who are likely to enter Congress, there is substantial support for a full extension. Republicans, meanwhile, look like theyre ready to dig their heels in. Boehner backpedaled after the caucus he nominally leads hammered him in early September for having the temerity to suggest he might accept the cuts for high-earners being scrapped. Now hes back on-message, echoing others in Republican leadership by saying, This is not a time for compromise.Democrats worry that theyll take the blame if taxes rise next year, even if its Republicans who block an agreement. And when Democrats worry, they tend to retreat. Dont be surprised if thats what happens on taxesperhaps with both sides agreeing on a one- or two-year extension of all the tax breaks. Deficit reduction: Republicans have hammered President Obama for the growth of the national debt during his presidency. The Pledge to America, for example, describes spending as out-of-control, runaway and growing at a breathtaking rate. And in his August speech, Boehner declared Obama should submit to Congress for its immediate consideration an aggressive spending reduction package to pare back deficits that threaten our economy. The messaging has workedin a recent Gallup poll, 87 percent of respondents who said their greatest concern the size and power of the federal government intended to vote Republican. But the Republicans so far seem unserious about actually living up to their slogans. Both the Concord Coalition and the Center for American Progress, for example, note that the Pledge to America would likely make the budget picture worse, not better. As a recent New York Times article noted: Republicans ranks will almost certainly be strengthened by a wave of conservatives, including Tea Party loyalists, who are opposed to raising any taxes and to compromising with Democrats generally a stand Congressional Republican leaders have adopted. And incumbents otherwise inclined to make deals are now wary, Republicans say privately, mindful of colleagues who lost primary challenges from Tea Party candidates. Common ground: Thats not to say Democrats and Republicans cant find common ground at all. Noam Scheiber outlined a few possibilities last week. Another one would be corporate tax reform. Both Democrats and Republicans agree the current system is broken. Democrats lament that many companies dont pay federal income tax; Republicans object to a system that has one of the highest statutory rates in the developed world. Obama has signaled an interest in lowering the tax rate in return for a simplified system with fewer deductions. Republicans will likely be willing to negotiate. Then there is trade. Most Republicans are still strong advocates of treaties liberalizing trade. Obama has given mixed signals, and he must navigate his relationship with labor unions carefully, but according to the Wall Street Journal, the White House appears willing to back accords with South Korea and Colombia. And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell also said trade is a subject where theres room for bipartisan cooperation. Oh, and then theres the other tax cutsnot the Bush tax cuts, but the Obama ones. The Making Work Pay tax cut was part of the stimulus, and for the past two years meant an extra $30 or so a month in low- and middle-earners wallets. Obama included a one-year extension in his budget, but Congress has made no move on the issue yet. However, it seems like a natural area for cooperationto paint with a broad brush, Democrats like helping the poor, and Republicans like tax cuts, so theres something for everyone. Or so youd think. It is an expensive tax cut ($600 billion over 10 years), but Democrats seem interested in extending it, even if they havent acted. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Baucus is open to extending the Making Work Pay tax credit and is working with Leader Reid and his colleagues to determine how best to address all of the expiring tax provisions, including the Making Work Pay credit, when Congress reconvenes next month, wrote a Democratic committee aide in an e-mail. Republicans, on the other hand, seem more suspicious. Of the three Republican leadership aides I asked about the subject, two didnt return my e-mails, and the third promised to ask his boss, but never answered definitively. And no Republican has publicly called for the specific extension of the Making Work Pay tax cuts. | https://newrepublic.com/article/78779/economic-policy-gop-congress-no-optimism |
Is Ballet Over? | The twentieth-century masters also remain the cornerstone of the companies they helped found. The ballets of Balanchine and Robbins dominate the NYCB repertory, Tudor has a strong presence at Ballet Theatre, and, after years of unforgiveable neglect, the Royal Ballet now dotes on Ashton. Celebrations of their work abound. Balanchine technique has even been codified and enshrined: there are books and DVDs by his dancers detailing its principles and practices. Here too there are problems, however. Balanchines style never stood stillit was an expansive and open-ended way of thinking that changed over time and with each dancer. The more the steps (and the ways to do them) have become fixed, the less they recall the era. Consequently, at NYCB the understandable desire to preserve its masters legacy has led instead to a stifling orthodoxy. These old ballets are now housed in stately new theaters, steel and stone monuments to a fragile and ephemeral past. In the years following Balanchines death, the New York City Ballet and the School of American Ballet acquired shiny new facilities as Lincoln Center. In 1989 Paris got the Bastille Opera House, a charmlessly modern tribute to the cultural ambitions of the French state; Londons Covent Garden, home to the Royal Ballet, reopened ten years later after a $360 million renovation; and in 2005 Copenhagen and the Royal Danish Ballet outdid them all with a palatial new $442 million state-of-the-art opera house built by a local businessman (the ceiling is studded with 105,000 sheets of 24-karat gold leaf). Not to be left behind, Moscows crumbling Bolshoi Theater is undergoing a major face-lift. Ironically, however, the great national traditionsEnglish, Russian, French, and Americanthese memory palaces are meant to house have all but ceased to exist. The Cold War is over: the us and them thinking that shaped Soviet and Western ballet styles no longer matters. Dancers from Russia and the former Soviet bloc, but also from Cuba and South America, are flocking to the West. Europe has no borders. Thus, to take the most obvious example, Englands Royal Ballet is not so very English anymore: Romanian, Danish, Spanish, Cuban, and French dancers fill its ranks. Indeed, by 2005 only two of its sixteen principle dancers were British. This has provoked hand-wringing and a halfhearted backlash: the recently established Fonteyn-Nureyev Ballet Competition, for example, was explicitly designed to encourage British children to take up the art. But nobody really believes this will happen. If anything, the Royal Ballet has been saved by its willingness to open its ranks to the world: what vitality the company now possesses comes from its international breadth, not its English depth. Everywhere national distinctions have been flattened into a common international style. Dancers from St. Petersburg and New York, London, Paris, and Madrid are practically interchangeable. More than that, they want to be like each other, to absorb whatever they did not have before. The Russians want Balanchines speed and precision, the Americans want Russian grace, and everyone wants French chic and allure. It is not that all dancers look alike: the vestiges of national training remainespecially in Russia, which is still relatively isolated (the flow of talent is one way: out). But the lines have been visibly blurred. Rather than perfecting a native tongue, they speak a mellifluous hybrid language. Living in an age of retrospective does not necessarily mean that dancers have an accurate grasp of the past. Consider the fate of Vaslav Nijinskys Rite of Spring, to Stravinskys celebrated score. After its original performance in 1913, Nijinskys choreography was completely forgotten. But this in no way diminished the ballets iconic stature, which only grew with time. In the 1970s Millicent Hodson, an American scholar and dancer from Berkeley, California, set out to bring the ballet back to life. Working with the designer Kenneth Archer, she meticulously reconstructed the dances. Since there was no record of the choreography, Hodson used Stravinskys annotated score, interviews, reviews, and contemporary sketches and rechoreographed the ballet, following Nijinskys ideas as she understood them. Her version was first performed by the Joffrey Ballet in 1987 and has since become a calling card of modernism: Hodsons ballet has entered the repertory of the Paris Opera Ballet, the Royal Ballet in London, and the Kirov Ballet. There is no reason to believe, however, that Hodsons choreography has anything to do with Nijinskys. Her new Rite consists of ritualized stomping, sharply angled elbows, and flinging, free-form movements: it is American postmodern dance masquerading as a seminal modernist work. What was by all accounts a radical and shocking dance is thus rendered tame and kitschy, a souvenir from an exotic past. It is a sign of our times that some of the worlds most prestigious ballet companies rushed to embrace this travesty as a way to regain a past they had lostor, in the case of the Kirov, never had. Rite was originally created by Poles and Russians in Paris; what the Kirov brought home was instead a ready-made pieced together from found historical objects by an American from Berkeley. Other periods in ballets history have been more fortunate. Since the 1970s Renaissance and baroque dances have returned to the stage, reconstructed by scholars and performers working across Europe and America. Here the ground is more solid. Although the dances are older, the notation systems developed at the time (and Feuillets in particular) remain legible today. Some of those involved have also found a foothold in American and European universities, where they have joined musicians interested in early music to spark a lively debate over interpretation and style. This is important, for the academy has traditionally focused rather narrowly on modern dance. The growing presence of scholarship on other periods represents a welcome expansion. Never before, then, has the history of dance been so fully on display. If we cast an eye across the landscape of ballet today, that is what we will see. Through the frame of the proscenium arch, we can glimpse Renaissance or Baroque dance, Danish Romantic ballet, or the Russian Imperial tradition. There are, of course, vast gaps; we know little of the seminal ballets of Jean-Georges Novarre, and we have nothing from Pierre Gardel. Missing too are the danced dramas of Salvatore Vigano and the Russian ballets of Jules Perrot, among many others. Closer to our own time, we know little of Massine and less of Nijinsky. Even Balanchine is only partially representedhe created more than four hundred works, of which only a fraction remain today. None of this is really surprising: dances have always had a short half-life. The gaps are part of the tradition too. However, thanks to technology, the gaps themselves may be a thing of the past. Film, video, and computers are changing the way dances are remembered. For the first time, we have a body of texts: many of the great works of the postwar era have been recorded on film, and today dances are routinely taped. The electronic dissemination of ballets, foreshadowed by grainy bootlegged videotapes of American dances pirated by the Soviets and used to mount ballets they had barely seen in the flesh, has accelerated dramatically. But film, video, and computer imaging may also be part of the problem. The dull, flat-screen look of todays dances and dancers surely owes something to the media revolution. Learning a ballet from a screen, or even using film or video as a memory aid, can be disorienting and misleading. First, the dancer sees the balleta live three-dimensional formas a two-dimensional image. Then she must transpose the flat, already diminished steps in mirror image, thus adding another layer of distance between the dancer and the dance. Moreover, the assumption that the film is true can be its own nemesisrather like seeing the movie before reading the book: once the image of a performance is fixed in the minds eye, it is harder to imagine the ballet performed differently. Nor does video distinguish accidents and mistakes, idiosyncrasies and departures. Not surprisingly, some directors are using screens more sparingly, wary of closing off possibilities and encouraging the idea that the dance text is inflexible or fixed. We are left with a paradox. We revere great ballets; we knowwe rememberthat ballet can be, as the critic Arlene Croce once put it, our civilization. Yet inside todays brand-new theaters, a tradition is in crisis, unfocused and uncertain. We all know it; we talk reassuringly of patience and waiting, of safeguarding the past until the next genius comes along and lifts ballets fallen angels back into the sky. But the problem may run deeper. The old ballets look flat and depressed because the new ones do. If todays ballets are mere shells, the reason may be that we no longer fully believe in them. We linger and hark back, shrouding ourselves in tradition and the past for good reason. Something important really is over. We are in mourning. Classical ballet has always been an art of belief. It does not fare well in cynical times. It is an art of high ideals and self-control in which proportion and grace stand for an inner truth and elevated state of being. Ballet, moreover, is an etiquette as much as an art, layered with centuries of courtly conventions and codes of civility and politeness. This does not mean, however, that it is static. To the contrary, we have seen that when societies that nourished ballet changed or collapsedas they did in the years around the French and Russian Revolutionsmarks of the struggle were registered in the art. That ballet could change from an aristocratic court art to one which captured a new bourgeois ethic; from pomp and ceremony to the inner world of dreams; and from Louis XIV to Taglioni, from Nijinsky to Fonteyn: this is a sign of its flexibility and malleability, and of its innovative character. Ballet has always and above all contained the idea of human transformation, the conviction that human beings could remake themselves in another, more perfect or divine image. It is this mixture of established social forms and radical human potential which has given the art such range, and which accounts for its prominence in otherwise divergent political cultures. Today we no longer believe in ballets ideals. We are skeptical of elitism and skill, which seem to us exclusionary and divisive. Those privileged enough to obtain specialized training, so this thinking goes, should not be elevated above those with limited access to knowledge or art. We want to expand and include: we are all dancers now. Ballets fine manners and implicitly aristocratic airs, its white swans, regal splendor, and beautiful women on pointe (pedestals), seem woefully outmoded, the province of dead white men and society ladies in long-ago places. Even the idea of a high art for the people and the twentieth-century ambition, lived out in different ways across Russia and the West, to open the gates of elite culture to a larger society has now stalled. Once again, as under Louis XIV, ballet is a privilege or private right largely reserved for connoisseurs and the wealthy. Tickets everywhere are costly; queues rarely form around the theater. In a small but telling departure, the New York State Theater, named for the people it served, was recently rechristened: it is now the David H. Koch Theater, for the millionaire whose ego and resources substitute for the public good. Balanchine had seen it coming: aprs moi, le board. This is of course not a new story: Balanchine also played lavishly to patrons. But then the tone was ironic and the dances superlative; now they are not. As for the people, they have been forgotten. Not only in boardrooms preoccupied with the next gala, but by scholars, critics, and writers. Dance today has shrunk into a recondite world of hyperspecialists and balletomanes, insiders who talk to each other (often in impenetrable theory-laden prose) and ignore the public. The result is a regrettable disconnect: most people today do not feel they know enough to judge a dance. The fragmentation and compartmentalization of culture do not help. We have grown accustomed to living in multiple private dimensions, virtual worlds sealed in ether: Myspace, Mymusic, Mylife. These worlds may be global and simultaneous, but they are by nature disembodied and detached. They are also fractured, niche environments and virtual communities based on narrow personal affinities rather than broad common values. Nothing could be further from the public, physically concrete, and sensual world of dance. I grew up with ballet and have devoted my life to studying, dancing, seeing, and understanding it. I have always loved watching it. When I first began work on this book, I imagined it would end on a positive note. But in recent years I have found going to the ballet increasingly dispiriting. With depressingly few exceptions, performances are dull and lack vitality; theaters feel haunted and audiences seem blas. After years of trying to convince myself otherwise, I now feel sure that ballet is dying. The occasional glimmer of a good performance or a fine dancer is not a ray of future hope but the last glow of a dying ember, and our intense preoccupation with re-creating history is more than a momentary diversion: we are watching ballet go, documenting its past and its passing before it fades altogether. It is hard to see how. In western Europe and America ballet no longer holds a prominent place. The world of dance, moreover, is increasingly polarized: ballet is becoming ever more conservative and conventional, while contemporary experimental dance is retreating to the fringes of inaccessible avante-garde. The middle ground, where I first encountered ballet, is small and shrinking. In Russia and the former Soviet bloc ballet has greater stature: it still matters there more than anywhere else in the world. But there too, for different reasons, dance is polarized. Ballet represents the memory of a repressive and conformist Soviet state, and as a result, artists eager to embrace newfound freedoms have embraced the Western dance avant-garde (prohibited under the Soviets). Once again, the middle ground lies vacant. For classical ballet to recover its standing as a major art would thus require more than resources and talent (the next genius). Honor and decorum, civility and taste would have to make a comeback. We would have to admire ballet again, not only as an impressive athletic display but as a set of ethical principles. Our contemporary infatuation with instability and fragmentation, with false pomp and sentiment, would have to give way to more confident beliefs. If that sounds conservative, perhaps it is; ballet has always been an art of order, hierarchy and tradition. But rigor and discipline are the basis for all truly radical art, and the rules, limits, and rituals of ballet have been the point of departure for its most liberating and iconoclastic achievements. If we are lucky, I am wrong and classical ballet is not dying but falling instead into a deep sleep to be reawakenedlike the Sleeping Beautyby a new generation. The history of ballet, after all, abounds in spirits and ghosts, in hundred-year silences and half-remembered dreams, and The Sleeping Beauty has been its most constant companion and metaphor. At every important juncture, Beauty has been there: in the court of Louis XIV where ballet formally began; in late nineteenth-century St. Petersburg where Petipa, Tchaikovsky, and Vsevolozhsky awakened and elevated it to new heights; in the imaginations of Diaghilev and Stravinsky in 1921 as they clung to their own fast-receding past; and in the mind of Maynard Keynes as he sought to usher Britain back from war to civilization. The Soviets leaned on Beauty too, and George Balanchine began and ended his life with the ballet: Beauty was his debut performance as a child in Imperial St. Petersburg and his final dream at the New York City Ballet. If artists do find a way to reawaken this sleeping art, history suggests that the kiss may not come from one of ballets own princes but from an unexpected guest from the outsidefrom popular culture or from theater, music, or art; from artists or places foreign to the tradition who find new reasons to believe in ballet. But Beauty is not only about sleep and awakening, the court and classical ballet; it also tells of fragility and breaks in traditionof sleep that may not wake. Over the past two decades ballet has come to resemble a dying language. Apollo and his angels are understood and appreciated by a shrinking circle of old believers in a closed corner of culture. The storyour storymay be coming to a close. Jennifer Homans is The New Republic's dance critic. The following is an excerpt from her new book, Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet, which has just been published by Random House. | https://newrepublic.com/article/78263/ballet-over |
Is The Environment Doomed Once Republicans Take Congress? | This is the third in an occasional series examining how Republican control of Congress might affect policy debates in the next two years. It depends how you look at it. There was that debacle in the Gulf, which obviously wasn't handled well. Then the Senate failed to pass a climate bill, and the Copenhagen talks dragged along without much resolution. But it hasn't been all grime and tar: Obama's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is ratcheting up fuel-economy standards and knuckling down on air pollutants from coal-fired plantsincluding greenhouse gases. And the stimulus kicked in $80 billion for clean-energy and efficiency projects, which was a hefty sum by historical standards. So when Republicans take over the House and expand their Senate numbers this fall, there's plenty of room for major shifts on the eco-front. Things can always get worse. That's especially true when you consider that, by and large, the new crop of conservative candidates doesn't believe in global warming (quite a few of them even believe that climate scientists are engaged in a sinister conspiracy). So here's a rundown of what to expect from a GOP Congress in the next two years: Cap-and-trade is dead. Okay, a cap on carbon emissions fizzled out this year, too. But it at least passed the House and had a decent base of support in the Senate. Next year, cap-and-trade certainly won't go anywhere in a Republican-controlled House. In the upper chamber, meanwhile, John Kerry has said he'd like to keep toiling away on the issue, but the Senate's not getting any greener. (That's true on both sides of the aisle, by the way. Just look at West Virginia: Robert Byrd may have had a deathbed conversion on coal, but the Democrat hoping to replace him, Joe Manchin, recently cut an ad where he was blasting away at cap-and-trade legislation with a rifle.) | https://newrepublic.com/article/78587/the-environment-doomed-once-republicans-take-congress |
What If Democrats "Steal" The Election? | Aside from the general enthusiasm gap, I've noticed two major differences in the way Republicans and Democrats are approaching the prospects of the 2010 election. The first is that Republicans are far more concerned about the prospect that Democrats will steal the election. Sharron Angle's campaign manager, in a fundraising letter: "Two days ago, the Democratic Secretary of State announced that voters can be provided "free food" at "voter turnout events." Harry Reid has been offering free food and, according to other reports, some Democratic allies such as teachers' unions are offering gift cards in return for a vote for Reid. Before we were even able to document the reported infractions to report to the authorities, the Democrat Secretary of State slammed the door shut on preventing this behavior and issued a public statement permitting these ACORN-style tactics. THESE are the kinds of shenanigans that can turn this race. Harry Reid intends to steal this election if he can't win it outright." Dick Armey called the news that more Democrats were voting early "an aberration that's borne out of the fact that in early voting there's less ballot security. The Democrats are always more active in areas where the ballot security is reduced, and if you start focusing on this, it's pinpointed to the major urban areas, the inner cities." David Norcross, chairman of the Republican National Lawyers Association: "It's an epidemic," Norcross tells Newsmax. "It's laughable that the left calls voter fraud nonexistent. It's very much existent." Norm Coleman, fundraising letter to RNLA members: "Who wins elections should be determined by who got the most legal votes, period! Unfortunately, the far left is trying to politicize even the counting of votes through George Soros' Secretary of State project, which seeks to have elections run by hyper-partisan liberal election officials." And the second difference is that Republicans seem to be far more prone to offering election predictions that are dramatically more optimistic than those of mainstream forecasters. I don't see a lot of Democratic equivalents of this: Pete Sessions: "Within the margin of error, I would say there are easily 95 to 100 seats." Dick Morris: "100 Democrats are vulnerable" John Boehner: "At least 100 seats, Boehner told NPRs Steve Inskeep, when asked how many House districts are up for grabs. You think there are 100 seats in the United States that could change hands? Inskeep asked. | https://newrepublic.com/article/78758/what-if-democrats-steal-the-election |
Do Republicans Need To Spell Out Their Policies? | A Wall Street Journal editorial today laments the failure of Republicans to openly run on repealing the Affordable Care Act: Republicans haven't fit ObamaCare into their guiding political and economic narrative, which is built around the recovery and jobs (or lack thereof) and the GOP perennials of taxes and spending. The "repeal and replace" catch-phrase did earn a mention in the House campaign manifesto, details to come, but it is clearly a subsidiary theme. A National Journal survey of 91 leading Republican strategists in late September found that only 2% ranked ObamaCare as the party's top electoral priority, and 7% as the second choice. The danger is that if the party doesn't use the campaign to create a mandate, it won't be strategically positioned to repeal, let alone replace. Right -- this isn't very complicated. Repealing health care reform is unpopular. That's why Republicans won't do it. They're sticking to their popular position of opposing the unpopular parts of the Affordable Care Act while favoring the popular parts, and/or supporting some fantasy alternative that they can't define because it can't be created. I'm taking bets. Meanwhile, Fred Barnes explicitly defends Republicans for declining to advocate specific alternative policies: | https://newrepublic.com/article/78248/do-republicans-need-spell-out-their-policies |
Did The White House Kill The Climate Bill? | The long and brutal health-care fight had caused a rift in the White House over legislative strategy. One camp, led by Phil Schiliro, Obamas top congressional liaison, was composed of former congressional aides who argued that Obama needed to insert himself in the legislative process if he was going to pass the ambitious agenda that he had campaigned on. The other group, led by David Axelrod, believed that being closely associated with the messiness of congressional horse-trading was destroying Obamas reputation. Granted, it's hard to say whether more White House involvement would have gotten the bill passed. My own sense is that Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman had a decent legislative strategy, but one that relied on a whole bunch of long-shot events going their way. And that's always a dubious prospect. Cap-and-trade, for instance, needed support from Olympia Snowe, who comes across in the piece as someone enamored of her own role as a Senate swing vote who can extract lots of concessions but who doesn't have much interest in actually passing worthwhile legislation. More broadly, there's a case to be made that major climate policy will never pass so long as it hinges on this or that senator or legislative tactic. Instead, there has to be a major sea change in public opinion before anything will pass. As Dave Roberts noted a few weeks ago, global warming has long been seen as a mere environmental concern: "It needs to take its place alongside the economy and national security as a priority concern of American elites across ideological and organizational lines. It needs to become a shared concern of every American citizen regardless of ideological orientation or level of political engagement. That is the only way we can ever hope to bring about the urgent necessary changes." Maybe so. Though it's worth adding that the White Houseand Democrats in generalrarely fought a public battle for the climate bill. Polling showed that the phrase "cap-and-trade" was unpopular (or confused voters), so liberals stopped saying it. In the end, Republicans owned the phrase, and were able to convince a decent portion of the public that "cap-and-trade" is this horrible device that will leave you lampless surrounded by piles of dead puppies. There was a strange reluctance by Obama to even try to make the public case that a) global warming is an enormous problem and b) tackling it will be a lot easier than we think, and will bring associated benefits like cleaner air. Now, in its defense, the Obama administration has taken what unilateral steps it can on energy and climate: The EPA has been drawing up greenhouse-gas regulations and setting sweeping new fuel-economy standards, while the stimulus bill had billions of dollars for clean energy projects. There's still a good case that those EPA regulations could be more impactful than commonly thoughtonce the agency starts cracking down on polluters, the coal and utility industries are going to demand congressional action. Of course, it remains to be seen whether that entails a more flexible cap on carbon pollution or just a repeal of EPA regulations, in which case we're back at square one. (Flickr photo credit: Sean Posey) | https://newrepublic.com/article/78147/did-the-white-house-kill-the-climate-bill |
Do Bad Teachers Exist At All? | Diane Ravitch, the converted anti-education reform apostle, rages against teacher-bashing: For the past week, the national media has launched an attack on American public education that is unprecedented in our history. NBC devoted countless hours to panels stacked with "experts" who believe that public education is horrible because it has so many "bad" teachers and "bad" principals. The same "experts" appeared again and again to call for privatization, breaking teachers' unions, and mass firings of "bad" educators. The scare quotes seem to imply, do they not, that there is no such thing as bad teachers. If so, that would make teaching the only profession in the world exempt from incompetence. Ravitch proceeds to argue that it really is easy to fire teachers: The claim that "tenure" is a guarantee of lifetime employment is a canard. Professors in higher education get lifetime tenure, but teachers in K-12 schools do not have lifetime employment: they have the right to due process if the principal wants to fire them. Teachers get due process rights only after a principal agrees that they have earned it. The reason for due-process rights is that teachers have been fired because of their race, their religion, their sexual orientation, or because a supervisor didn't like them. Teachers with due process can be fired, but only after a hearing by an impartial hearing officer. Ravitch's portrait of a system that smoothly processes teacher terminations, weeding out only clear bias, is hard to square with cases like, oh, this: | https://newrepublic.com/article/78113/do-bad-teachers-exist-all |
Why Can't Republicans Figure Out How to Reduce Government? | That was when George H.W. Bush made a deal with Congressional Democrats to hike taxes and restrain spending. Conservatives fiercely denounced it and swore they would never permit such a betrayal again, a pledge they have kept. Look at the slope of outlays that followed after that. Down, down down. In 1993, Bill Clinton passed another deficit reduction measure containing a mix of tax hikes and spending cuts. Republicans denounced it as incipient socialism at worst, and a job-killing piece of class warfare with phony spending cuts at best. Spending continued to drop as a share of the economy. I think this counts as evidence that making deals to increase taxes and reduce spending can work. Indeed, since nearly all actual government programs are popular, securing bipartisan agreement is the only way Republicans have ever successfully reduced spending. And yet, in the Republican mind, it is anathema. In the conservative media, the 1990 budget deal was memorialized as a domestic Yalta, a sellout that must never be repeated. And they conservatives have never bothered to revisit their hysterical denunciations of Clinton's 1993 deficit reduction. (Sometimes they credit his results, but only in the context of defining them as conservative.) The thing is, I don't support their goal of reducing government, so I shouldn't care. But I do care about long-run fiscal solvency, so it would be nice if you could find some anti-government Republican, somewhere, who was capable of recognizing the intersection of his own ideological self-interest and the interest of fiscal responsibility. Instead they will continue on in their belief that flinty resolve will win the day. Update: Bruce Bartlett wrote recently about how the 1990 budget deal reduced the deficit. | https://newrepublic.com/article/78511/why-cant-republicans-figure-out-how-reduce-government |
Who's to Blame for the Superweed Invasion? | On Thursday, the House oversight committee held the second of two hearings on a critical question: Are Superweeds an Outgrowth of USDA Biotech Policy? Evidently, farmers are up against a Superweed invasion, and its not pretty. These mutant, herbicide-resistant plants are choking up to 10 million acresand growingof U.S. farmland, and farms have struggled to adapt. A key suspect is Monsantos Roundup, one of the most widely used weed-killers in the country. In the 1990s, Monsanto developed genetically engineered seedssuch as soybean and cornthat were resistant to Roundup. Farmers started buying the seeds and herbicide en masse and spraying with abandon. A new wave of weeds evolved that were resistant to glyphosate, the key ingredient in Roundup. As the congressional hearing explored, the problem may have lay with a glitch in regulatory oversight. USDA regulates the Roundup-resistant crop, while the EPA regulates the herbicide itself. But no one was looking at the unintended effects of the combo becoming so widespreadnamely, superweeds. Back in a July hearing, the USDA got hammered by scientists and watchdog groups for being too quick to approve biotech products. Agribusiness representatives proposed at least two solutions to the superweed crisis. Theres the low-tech road: Farmers could go back older tillage techniques to remove weeds. These techniques were replaced by herbicide because they produced a lot of run-offin hindsight, though, that tradeoff doesnt seem so bad. But, on the other hand, the industry could develop crops that are resistant to even stronger chemical pesticides than Round-upchemicals like dicamba and 2,4-D. In other words, create new biotech crops that are essentially resistant to Agent Orange. | https://newrepublic.com/article/78114/whos-blame-the-superweed-invasion |
Why, Murdoch? Why? | Ben Smith reports that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, after having donated $1 million to the Republican Governors Association, has also donated to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a pro-Republican business lobby. This makes zero sense to me. The value of News Corp to the Republican party is massive. It's worth hundreds of millions of dollars. By openly donating to the party, you help tear away the mask of objectivity, thereby reducing your own value as a propaganda outlet. It seems like a bad move both for Fox and the GOP. (If I'm the Republicans, I'd rather have Fox retain a more plausible claim of objectivity.) And if you're Fox, you're obviously making a joke out of your "Fair and Balanced" mantra. | https://newrepublic.com/article/78090/why-murdoch-why |
Is It Time To Reconsider The Light Bulb Ban? | Back in 2007, if you'll recall, George W. Bush signed an energy bill that tightened efficiency standards for lighting. It wasn't a big deal at the time. The bill just meant that manufacturers would slowly have to phase out their old, power-hogging incandescent bulbs in favor of something sleeker, like compact fluorescent lamps, or CFLs, starting in 2012. (This wasn't technically a ban on incandescentsmore on that in a sec.) A few disgruntled libertarians complained, but life went on. Alas, that was then. Nowadays, it's cause for bloodshed. Consider: Three Republicans are jockeying to chair the House energy and commerce committee. At a broad level, it shouldn't matter whether Fred Upton, Joe Barton, or John Shimkus chairs the committee. All three of them want to stop the EPA from curbing carbon emissions, repeal Obamacare, and prevent the FCC from regulating broadband. Which means that each of the contenders has had to dig deep for denunciations. Recently, Barton's allies have accused the front-runner, Fred Upton, of committing a grievous sinUpton, you see, sponsored that 2007 light bulb bill. (Mind you, Barton didn't object to the bill at the time, but no matter.) The charge has spurred Glenn Beck to call Upton "all socialist" and led Rush Limbaugh to say, "No Republican complicit in nannyism, statism, can be rewarded this way." In the days since, Upton has had to backtrack and promise to "reexamine" the bulb law if he becomes chairman. Not really. The case for the law is still straightforward: CFLs and other more-efficeint bulbs help reduce power-plant emissions and, over the long run, save consumers moneythe EPA estimates that if every household in America swapped out one incandescent for a more efficient bulb, it'd be the same as taking 800,000 cars off the road. True, there are more economically elegant ways to reduce emissions, but Republicans are opposed to carbon taxes and the like, which means that clumsy regulations are the only things that attract political support. Conservative think tanks like Heritage have tried to drum up a variety of objections to the bulb law, but none of them are persuasive. Yes, CFLs contain trace amounts of mercury, but it's not hard to sweep up a broken bulb safely (and the electricity savings help reduce mercury pollution from coal plants by an even greater amount). And yes, the glare from CFLs is annoying for some people. At the same time, the looming standards have spurred new advances in light-bulb technology: Some companies are developing mercury- and glare-free CFLs; others are tinkering with new hyperefficient incandescent bulbs; and still others are nudging down the cost of long-lasting LED bulbs. The market seems to be adjusting nicely, just as markets do. | https://newrepublic.com/article/79311/it-time-reconsider-the-light-bulb-ban |
Can the intelligent, principled, populism of Tom Perriello defeat the Tea Party opposition in Virginia? | If a willingness to take politically difficult votes is one Perriello characteristic, a defiant eclecticism is another. On Wednesday morning, several generations of veterans gathered at the Dan Daniel Memorial Park to announce that Perriello had won the endorsement of the political arm of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Perriello is especially proud of his work on vets' issues, and he uses his record (which also won him an endorsement from the National Rifle Association) as a shield against charges by his Republican opponent, state Sen. Robert Hurt, that he is a conventional liberal. "The Republican playbook this year has been to stand for nothing, learn nothing from their mistakes, and then use labels and scare tactics," he said after the VFW news conference. "When you've got a guy endorsed by the NRA and the VFW, their attempt to say I'm a rubber stamp for a leftist agenda becomes ridiculous. First and foremost, I'm a populist." That's what conservative business groups recognize, and they are pouring money into the district to help Hurt. But this week Perriello tried to transform their opposition into a badge of honor. He trumpeted a Center for American Progress report that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was mixing foreign money into its multimillion-dollar fund paying for advertisements against him and other Democrats. The chamber denies this, though it's hard to know what's happening because the organization doesn't have to disclose the sources of its political money. Perriello called the blitz "unethical and unpatriotic" as well as "fundamentally undemocratic." His focus on rebuilding American manufacturing and using clean energy investments to jump-start new industries in his district makes the appeal to economic patriotism a natural extension of his campaign. He distinguishes between concentrated corporate power, which he's against, and innovation and entrepreneurship, which he's for. Thus has Virginia's 5th District become a laboratory test of many propositions. A lot rides on this one-term underdog who turns 36 on Saturday. E.J. Dionne, Jr. is is a Washington Post columnist, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a professor at Georgetown University. He is the author of, most recently, Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right. (c) 2010, Washington Post Writers Group | https://newrepublic.com/article/78214/atlas-slugged-tom-perriello-virginia-midterm-elections-populist |
Why Did McConnell Fight The Earmark Ban? | Now that Mitch McConnell has caved on the earmark ban, it's worth revisiting the question of why he so vigorously opposed it in the first place, given that he was clearly doomed to fail. Yes, he likes to bring home the pork, but he doesn't need to bring home pork to safely win re-election as long as he desires. I previously suggested that opposition to earmarks represents a species of good government reform that strikes at the core of McConnell's essence. Another reason is that President Obama supports the earmark ban. And McConnell's strategy is to deny Obama Republican support for any element of his agenda, thereby rendering Obama a partisan figure and reducing his chances for reelection. Indeed, supporting the earmark ban is a cheap, nearly symbolic move that carries disproportionate weight with the voters. Obama is going to be able to boast that joined with Republicans to ban on the historic practice, and that boast will help his reelection prospects. No wonder McConnell tried to stop it. | https://newrepublic.com/article/79200/why-did-mcconnell-fight-the-earmark-ban |
Does Process Matter? | Paul Krugman watched the presidential press conference on Wednesday, but had to turn it off when Obama started talking about the congressional process and how it turned off voters: Nobody cares about this stuff--they care about results. If Obama had used fancy footwork and 2 AM sessions to pass a big public works program, and this program had brought unemployment down, Republicans would be screaming about the process--and Democrats would have comfortably held control of Congress. Neither do I. Oh, by the way--nobody cares about the deficit, either. I think that's basically right. If Obama had engineered a strong recovery, nobody would care that he used the reconciliation process or made unpleasant legislative deals along the way. They'd be too busy working to listen to complaints from the Republicans or anybody else. As for the deficit, I would argue a lot of people really do care about it; many conservatives, in particular, see it as a sign of irresponsible government. But, as Krugman says, they care about jobs a great deal more. | https://newrepublic.com/article/78947/does-process-matter |
What to do when my boyfriend belittles me? | Hi, Carolyn: I have been with my boyfriend for a year now but lately I feel like he is losing interest in me and the relationship. Hes making unnecessary rude comments and belittling me. He also is constantly commenting about other girls and wanting to be with them. I know its natural for people to look, but he does it a lot and he knows it bothers me. When I try to tell him to not make the comments, he laughs and says hes joking and that I get offended too easily or Im too sensitive. Ill admit Im not the most confident person and I may be taking some of his comments to heart, but it makes me feel like Im not good enough or that he no longer wants to be in the relationship. He also makes comments about my appearance or the way I dress. When I ask him if he wants to be in this relationship or if he loves me, he says he does. But I fear hes not being honest. - Not Taken Seriously You are not being too anything. You are you, and you are fine as you are. I hope it hasnt been a long time since you reminded yourself of that, but I suspect it has. What arent fine here are your relationship and the way your boyfriend is treating you. Just, no. These are abuse. These are all easy to fix, though, by ending the relationship or, if not easy, then at least straightforward: I dont like how you treat me. I said nothing about how he feels about you, whether he loves you, whether he wants you. Because those are his to manage, theyre ultimately unknowable for you anyway, and theyre exactly where youre stuck: I feel like he is losing interest in me; it makes me feel like he no longer wants to be in the relationship; I ask him if he loves me. You have handed your power over to him, entirely. And hes abusing that power. So stop. Deep breath. That is all your business, and its all knowable. (At least as much as anything is in ones own mind, but thats not important right now.) So claim your own power. Take direction from your own experience, please: Hes unkind to you, hes dismissive of your feelings, and his behavior has hurt your confidence. Again, this is abuse. End this and any relationship with someone who isnt kind to you. Shore yourself up with counseling if needed. Any pressure he applies for you to stay expect it - is about his needs, not yours. Meaning, forget about his taking you seriously take yourself seriously. Being good to yourself is how you learn to recognize the sensation of someone being good to you. Email Carolyn at [email protected], follow her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/carolyn.hax or chat with her online at noon Eastern time each Friday at www.washingtonpost.com. Read or Share this story: https://www.freep.com/story/life/advice/2019/05/08/boyfriend-relationship-dating/3632234002/ | https://www.freep.com/story/life/advice/2019/05/08/boyfriend-relationship-dating/3632234002/ |
Could the Trump administration prevent Mueller from testifying to Congress? | President Trump says he doesn't want Special Counsel Robert Mueller to testify before Congress. But that doesn't necessarily mean he can stop Mueller from doing so. The Democrat-run House Judiciary Committee formally invited Mueller to testify last month, although no date has been officially set. Mr. Trump's stated in a Sunday tweet that "Bob Mueller should not testify," a position White House officials have subsequently backed up. He's not going to say that. There is no criminal referral," top Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway told reporters outside the White House Tuesday. Mr. Trump had previously said that he would defer to Attorney General William Barr on whether Mueller should testify. But the president's latest position is more in line with his administration's general stance on top officials testifying and turning over documents, with Mr. Trump saying they're fighting "all the subpoenas." Still, it's unclear how the administration might attempt to stop Mueller from testifying, what it can do if it decides to try. That is highly unlikely, according to legal experts, particularly since the special counsel's office is winding down. Andrew Napolitano, a former judge and top Fox News judicial analyst, said there is nothing the White House can do if Mueller quits and decides to testify. "Bob Mueller can negate all of this by resigning from the [Department of Justice], saying my job is over," Napolitano said on Fox Business Monday. "Then he's a private citizen and nobody can stop him." Napolitano suggested the president can stop a government employee from testifying, but not a private citizen. "The report is 99 percent public," Napolitano said. "The author of the report has helped make it public. He certainly lawfully can testify about it." Even with Mueller being a current Justice Department employee, it's not completely clear whether the president or attorney general could keep him from testifying, said Frank Bowman III, a law professor at the University of Missouri who once served as special counsel to the U.S. Sentencing Commission in D.C. But the question becomes much clearer when Mueller is inevitably a private citizen. "On what ground would they do so?" Bowman said of the possibility of the administration stopping Mueller from testifying. "I can't even conceive on what ground any serious lawyer would even file such a suit," Bowman said. Chris Traux, a legal adviser with Republicans for the Rule of Law, a nonprofit group of longtime Republicans that fought to make the Mueller report public, also doesn't see a way for the Trump administration to stop Mueller from testifying. "There is no way to compel legally compel a witness to not speak especially one who is no longer like an employee," Traux said. The executive privilege option The matter becomes more complicated when it's question of whether the president can stop Mueller from testifying about certain topics. "I think there's a distinction between having him come and testify and whether or not there may be questions he can or cannot answer," Traux said, adding, "That's where it starts to get tricky." In theory, the White House could invoke executive privilege, which allows the administration to resist revealing some information to the other branches of government, in trying to prevent Mueller from testifying about what it deems to be sensitive matters. "If the claim being made is that Mueller can't testify because the president is exerting executive privilegethat's the president's call to make," Bowman said. But claiming executive privilege over Mueller's testimony isn't as straightforward as it would be for other executive branch officials. For example, executive privilege claims are often strongest when they involve direct conversations with the president and his advisers. But the Trump administration could still try to invoke privilege about interagency communications, said Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University Law professor and CBS News legal analyst. "The Mueller report is a 400-page waiver of executive privilege," Turley said. "However, the White House can argue that communications with Mueller is like the executive branch speaking with itself. Under this theory, any documents or evidence not disclosed in the actual report could still be claimed as privileged." The White House could argue that if Mueller wants to say anything not explicitly in the report, that would "likely stray into privileged areas," Turley suggested. "Thus, if Mueller is asked about evidence not contained in the report, it would trigger a privilege fight," Turley said. Bowman, however, insisted the executive privilege claim would be a hard one back up. "The claim of executive privilege can really only be extended to advice that's given to the president or perhaps communications that were sort of under-girded advice given to the president," Bowman said. "It's hard to imagine that any serious claim on that basis could prevent Mueller from testifying." | https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mueller-testify-could-the-trump-administration-prevent-mueller-from-testifying-to-congress/ |
What Does It Mean to Be Ready for a Relationship? | People have different definitions of readiness, like, I have to wait until I move out, or having a stable career, but sometimes those people will also feel later in life like, Now I dont have any experience or mental capacity to know how to date, because they waited so long, says Richard Luo, a 31-year-old paralegal who lives in Chicago. Luo says he doesnt think the idea of getting ready for relationships is practical, because life will bring opportunities whether youre ready or not. This social stunting came up in my colleague Kate Julians Atlantic cover story on t he sex recession, as one potential reason why intimacy has decreased among younger generations. Many students, Julian writes, have absorbed the idea that love is secondary to academic and professional successor, at any rate, is best delayed until those other things have been secured. But when other aspects of your life line up, when the timing feels right, you might not feel equipped to deal with something you havent experienced before. Putting off relationships, it turns out, is a lot like putting off going to the dentistit becomes more daunting the longer you wait. Read: Why college students need a class in dating Most of the time when I hear people say, Nows not a great time, its been a way to avoid a tough situation or something scary emotionally, by putting it off, Natalia Burt, a 30-year-old graphic designer who lives in British Columbia, told me in an email. After all, there may never be a great timeromantic relationships always have to fit in around other life obligations. It may be that these external factors are an easier thing to cite than a more subjective internal sensation that a person just doesnt feel ready. Burt said shes definitely told people she wasnt ready for a relationship at times when she perhaps couldnt have defined what she meant. Analyzing readiness now, she described it as: Mentally, you really have to be on the ball, ready to resolve both personal issues and relationship issues. You cant be someone that shuts down or lashes out during arguments or when confronted. You need to be ready to be vulnerable. Theres no doubt that these sorts of skills are helpful in relationships, but Schwartz Gottman isnt convinced they should be prerequisites, qualities people need to bring to relationships, rather than developing within a relationship. After all, its only through practice that people will get better at communicating, for example. If we all waited until we were perfectly well adjusted before entering a relationship, the human race would die out. And yet, what is perhaps the most commonly cited advice about relationship readiness counsels the opposite: You have to love yourself before you can love someone else. RuPaul says it. Memes on social media say it (usually on a floral background). I feel as if Ive had it in my mind all my life, and yet its origins are impossible to trace. It seems to have sprung fully formed from the head of the god of misguided empowerment. Thats one of those all-American mythsthat you have to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, that you have to be really strong, healthy, and independent in order to be capable of a successful relationshipand its absolutely not true, Schwartz-Gottman says. In some cases, relationships can help with coping with things like depression or PTSD. People are never in perfect condition for a relationship. People are always bringing in old baggage and past experiences that are painful, that are part of the beauty and truth of their nature. With all of that, relationships can be even deeper and more meaningful. | https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/05/how-do-you-know-if-youre-ready-for-a-relationship/588871/?utm_source=feed |
What Will Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Do With Their Baby Gifts? | Even before the duchess of sussex gave birth to her first child, a baby boy born on Monday, friends of Meghan Markle and the Duke of Sussex, Prince Harry, were already going out of their way to shower the popular royal pair with gifts. But giving to royals is more complicated than wrapping up a baby rattle and posting it to the palace address. A grassroots global baby shower movement, spearheaded on social media by Markles fans, urged followers to give to charities on March 31 in the couples name. That spurred an April 5 Instagram update from the Sussexes, thanking participants and echoing the request that they not be sent physical presents. They have long planned to encourage members of the public to make donations to select charities, the post reminded followers, directing them to a number of organizations that support families in need. While its nothing new for the charity-minded to request donations in lieu of gifts, this particular request had good reason for being underlined: as CNN royals commentator Victoria Arbiter explains, the royals cannot accept any unsolicited gifts. So if theres a return address on a package sent to the palace, the mail-room staff will promptly send it back with a notealthough it probably wont come from Harry and Meghan directly, Arbiter clarifies, but from the royal office. The gift will get donated to local hospitals or charities; Kate Middleton followed the same protocol since her children were born. The royal mail room, you can imagine, is pretty intense, Arbiter says; security is paramount. The Brief Newsletter Sign up to receive the top stories you need to know right now. View Sample Sign Up Now Brands should also forget about sending free products. If theyre sent from a company, they will definitely be sent back [or donated], because the royals dont want to be walking billboards, Arbiter says. That doesnt mean the new baby will go gift-free. Theres no official royal prohibition against members of the royal family receiving gifts from their friends or family members, says royals expert Leslie Carroll. Tennis star Serena Williams and lawyer Amal Clooney, for example, reportedly arranged for the penthouse location of Markles Manhattan baby shower in February. While it has not been made public exactly what was bestowed on Markle at that time, experts guess there were plenty of sweet and sentimental presents to unwrap. If Serena or Amal want to give Meghan a cute little onesie for the baby, Carroll says, thats not a crime. But for those who arent part of Markles inner circle, its best to hold off on sending gifts their way. That said, there is one thing the royals always accept: regular mail. If people send cards congratulating them on the baby, they will get a reply at some stage. It may take some time, but they will get a reply, Arbiter says, and its a nice way to show their appreciation. RAISA BRUNER Write to Raisa Bruner at [email protected]. This appears in the April 22, 2019 issue of TIME. | http://time.com/5568298/what-will-prince-harry-and-meghan-markle-do-with-their-baby-gifts/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+time%2Ftopstories+%28TIME%3A+Top+Stories%29 |
What are Pakistan's blasphemy laws? | Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Protesters call for the death penalty against Asia Bibi to be upheld Pakistan's blasphemy laws carry a potential death sentence for anyone who insults Islam. Critics say they have been used to persecute minority faiths and unfairly target minorities. The offences relating to religion were first codified by India's British rulers in 1860, and were expanded in 1927. Pakistan inherited these laws when it came into existence after the partition of India in 1947. Between 1980 and 1986, a number of clauses were added to the laws by the military government of General Zia-ul Haq. He wanted to "Islamicise" them and also legally to separate the Ahmadi community, declared non-Muslim in 1973, from the main body of Pakistan's overwhelmingly Muslim population. The law enacted by the British made it a crime to disturb a religious assembly, trespass on burial grounds, insult religious beliefs or intentionally destroy or defile a place or an object of worship. The maximum punishment under these laws ranges from one year to 10 years in jail, with or without a fine. During the 1980s the blasphemy laws were created and expanded in several instalments. In 1980, making derogatory remarks against Islamic personages was made an offence, carrying a maximum punishment of three years in jail. In 1982, another clause prescribed life imprisonment for "wilful" desecration of the Koran, the Muslim holy book. In 1986, a separate clause was inserted to punish blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad and the penalty recommended was "death, or imprisonment for life", in that order. Image copyright AFP/Getty Image caption Christians Shama (L) and Shehzad (R) were accused of desecrating the Koran and killed by a mob The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) - a voluntary organisation - has been documenting blasphemy cases for decades. It says that Muslims constitute the majority of those booked under these laws, closely followed by the Ahmadi community. Data provided by National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCJP) shows a total of 776 Muslims, 505 Ahmedis, 229 Christians and 30 Hindus have been accused under various clauses of the blasphemy law from 1987 until 2018. The vast majority of these cases were lodged for desecration of the Koran - far fewer for blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad. Critics say the fact that minorities figure so prominently in the cases shows how the laws are unfairly applied. Often the laws are used to settle personal scores and have little or nothing to do with religion. Correspondents say the mere accusation of blasphemy is enough to make someone a target for hardliners, as is defending those accused of blasphemy or calling for the laws to be reformed. A large majority of Pakistani people support the idea that blasphemers should be punished, but there is little understanding of what the religious scripture says as opposed to how the modern-day law is codified. Many believe the law, as codified by the military regime of General Zia-ul Haq back in the 1980s, is in fact straight out of the Koran and therefore is not man-made. When Punjab Governor Salman Taseer - a prominent critic of the law - was assassinated by his bodyguard in 2011, Pakistan was divided, with some hailing his killer as a hero. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Salman Taseer, the Punjab governor who tried to reform the laws, was assassinated in 2011 A month after Taseer was killed, Religious Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti, a Christian who spoke out against the laws, was shot dead in Islamabad, underlining the threat faced by critics of the law. When the bodyguard who killed Taseer, Mumtaz Qadri, was executed in 2016, thousands turned out for the funeral. Amending the blasphemy laws has been on the agenda of many popular secular parties. None has made much progress - principally because of the sensitivities over the issue, but also because no major party wants to antagonise the religious parties. In 2010, a member of the ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP), Sherry Rehman, introduced a private bill to amend the blasphemy law. Her bill sought to change procedures of religious offences so that they would be reported to a higher police official and the cases heard directly by the higher courts. The bill was passed on to a parliamentary committee for vetting. It was withdrawn in February 2011 under pressure from religious forces as well as some opposition political groups. Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan vowed to defend the country's strict blasphemy laws in the run-up to his general election win last year. The status quo is still in place. Qibla Ayaz, who heads Pakistan's top advisory body on religious affairs, the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), told BBC in February that no government was ready to make changes to the blasphemy law due to fears of a backlash. He said he had advised Pakistan's Ministry of Law and Justice to suggest penalties for misuse of this law. The law department is yet to make any recommendations public. | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-48204815 |
Whats the last day to eat fresh stone crab in Florida? | This is how your favorite seafood has sex Dr. Theresa Bert explains during a dock talk at the Cortez Commercial Fishing Festival how stone crabs, a local delicacy, have sex. She said the partners both need claws to cradle one another before they link together to reproduce. A female crab Up Next SHARE COPY LINK Dr. Theresa Bert explains during a dock talk at the Cortez Commercial Fishing Festival how stone crabs, a local delicacy, have sex. She said the partners both need claws to cradle one another before they link together to reproduce. A female crab Its the saddest day of the year, even sadder than the day Knaus Berry Farm shutters until fall and forces us to remember a life without cinnamon rolls. Thats always tough. And now its worse - stone crab season is coming to an end. We suppose this is not at all sad for the stone crabs. Were bereft. Theres still time for one last crab orgy. The last day of the harvest is May 15, which means thats the last day you can order them. The season ends May 16. After that, if youre eating stone crab in a restaurant or buying it in a seafood market, its frozen and not fresh. The final day of the season is May 15. No more fresh stone crabs from May 16 onward. But the restaurant stays open for a few months with summer hours. The last lunch of the season takes place Saturday, May 11, then no lunch hours until mid October. On May 12, you can still take your mom there for Mothers Day and show her you love her by buying her all the stone crabs she can eat. Joes is closed May 13 and from May 14 through Aug. 4 only serves dinner from 6-10 p.m. Sunday and Tuesday-Thursday and 6-11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Those hours last through Aug. 4, after which Joes shuts down entirely until mid-October. Takeaway at Joes is open until May 19, then closes until Aug. 6th. | https://www.miamiherald.com/miami-com/restaurants/article230137154.html |
What is VE Day? | Getty Images VE Day marked the end of fighting in Europe towards the end of World War II VE Day - or 'Victory in Europe Day' - marks the day towards the end of World War Two (WW2) when fighting against Nazi Germany in Europe came to an end. On 8 May 1845, Prime Minister Winston Churchill made an announcement on the radio at 3pm that the war in Europe had come to an end, following Germany's surrender the day before. Read on to find out more about what happened on VE Day and how World War Two came to an end. By the beginning of 1945, the German army had been weakened and defeat looked likely. Tuesday 8 May, 1945, was an emotional day that millions of people had been waiting for. Many people were extremely happy that the fighting had stopped and there were big celebrations and street parties. Getty Images Huge crowds - with lots of people dressed in red, white and blue - gathered outside Buckingham Palace in London. They cheered as King George VI and his family, including Princess Elizabeth (the current queen) and Princess Margaret, came out onto the balcony to greet everybody. Princess Elizabeth and her sister were allowed to leave the palace and celebrate with crowds outside, although they had to do it secretly. The future Queen described it as "one of the most memorable nights of my life". Many people also attended church services to thank God for the victory. Getty Images This photo shows Winston Churchill on the balcony of Buckingham Palace alongside the Royal Family (Princess Elizabeth, who is currently the Queen, is seen on the left) London's St Paul's Cathedral held 10 services, which were attended by thousands of people. But VE Day was also a moment of great sadness and reflection, as millions of people had lost their lives or loved ones in the conflict. Many had to continue fighting in other battles and lots of people were being kept as prisoners of war abroad. Even though VE Day marked victory for Europe over Germany, it did not mark the end of World War Two. In his VE Day announcement, Winston Churchill said: "We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing, but let us not forget for a moment the toil and efforts that lie ahead." Even after 8 May, many soldiers, sailors and pilots were sent to the east to fight against the Japanese, who had not yet surrendered. Getty Images Even though Churchill had announced victory over Nazi Germany, VE Day did not mark the end of World War Two This came on 14 August 1945, after two atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (6 August) and Nagasaki (9 August). On 15 August 1945, the allies had officially defeated Japan. This date is known as VJ Day. World War Two was finally over. 2 September is also known as VJ Day, as this is the day in 1945 when Japanese leaders signed a document to officially surrender. While the war was over, it was not the end of hardship. Millions of people had lost loved ones and their lives had been turned upside down by the fighting. The nation had to rebuild as the war had been so expensive. Clothing and food rationing remained in place. Getty Images The end of the war did not mean the end of food rations, which is when people were only allowed to buy a certain amount of food each week By the end of WW2, the foundations had also been laid for something called the Cold War, which would last until December 1991. You can read more about the Cold War here. | https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/48201749 |
Wheres the line between a campaign and super PAC? | Editor's Note: This edition of Morning Score is published weekdays at 10 a.m. POLITICO Pro Campaign subscribers hold exclusive early access to the newsletter each morning at 6 a.m. To learn more about POLITICO Pro's comprehensive policy intelligence coverage, policy tools and services, click here. QUICK FIX A statement from President Donald Trumps campaign called a super PAC an approved group. Campaign finance experts agreed that while the wording was unusual, legal lines likely were not crossed. Story Continued Below Trumps campaign did not respond to multiple requests from POLITICO on how it would handle any foreign interference in the 2020 elections. Any respite you felt from political ads is coming to an end: A Democratic group is slamming a presidential candidate in New Hampshire, while the Club for Growth goes up for next weeks NC-09 GOP primary. Good Wednesday morning. Email me at [email protected] or DM me at @ZachMontellaro. Email the Campaign Pro team at [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected]. Follow them on Twitter: @POLITICO_Steve, @DanielStrauss4, @JamesArkin and @lbarronlopez. The Trump campaign lit up an outside group run by the presidents former deputy campaign manager, David Bossie, whose group collected millions in donations from donors by playing up an appearance of a connection to the president (make sure you read Axios Alayna Treene, Jonathan Swan and Harry Stevens reporting on Bossies group and POLITICOs Gabby Orr and Daniel Lippman on the reaction from Trumpworld on Bossie). But what caught Scores eye came at the end of the statement. There are only four official fundraising organizations authorized by President Trump or the RNC, the unsigned statement from the campaign read, listing the campaign, the RNC and two joint fundraising committees. In addition, there is one approved outside non-campaign group, America First Action, which is run by allies of the President and is a trusted supporter of President Trumps policies and agendas. America First Action is a super PAC that supports the president. Most campaign finance experts contacted by Score agree that, while the wording is interesting, it doesnt run afoul of campaign finance laws (the Trump campaign did not return a request for comment on what it meant by approved), and it isnt coordination or a solicitation. It pains me to say it, but I dont think [the statement itself] is a legal problem, Common Causes Paul Ryan told Score (Ryan repeatedly argued that he believed the creation of America First Policies and America First Action was illegal because of their ties to Trumps orbit while he was a federal candidate). Pointing to a super PAC and saying, Thats the one I approve of doesnt break the law. That type of language sends an unambiguous signal to potential donors, but it seems to be falling short of an actual solicitation for a super PAC by the president, even as his campaign is giving more than a wink and a nod that this super PAC has its blessing, Issue Ones Michael Beckel emailed. More agreed: I would have a hard time believing this alone would be counted by the FEC as coordination, Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California-Irvine and author of the popular Election Law Blog, emailed Score. I am not sure that what the Trump campaign said publicly is all that different from what campaigns privately tell wealthy donors. But rarely do campaigns put this kind of language into a press release, the Campaign Legal Centers Brendan Fischer told Score, pointing to a memo from Hillary Clintons 2016 campaign. However, Fischer flagged one major difference in the Trump statement, noting his campaign did not conspicuously note that the solicitation is limited to federal funds, a maximum of $5,000. In a statement, America First Action emphasized its independence. While America First is an independent organization, we are honored to have the trust and confidence, of Trump, President Brian O. Walsh said, writing that Trump and other senior officials will be welcomed as specially invited guests at our events. Nevertheless, it could still be coming to a filing near you. It is an interesting statement, and Im sure that so-called reformers will file complaints, Jason Torchinsky, a Republican campaign finance lawyer, told Score. IN THE TRENCHES PRESIDENTIAL BIG BOARD Former Vice President Joe Biden is leaning in to his deep political network. Those relationships both here and elsewhere have greased Biden's relatively seamless entry into the race, glossing over the flaws of his candidacy as he powers to a lead in national and state polls that has only grown since he joined the crowded field, POLITICOs David Siders reported from Nevada. Black leaders and strategists are divided over whether that backing will endure over the next year, The New York Times Astead Herndon reported. One camp believes his experience and appeal to older voters will make him an electoral juggernaut among the black community, while another sees him as a paper tiger whose appeal is generational and who may be overly reliant on his ties to former President Barack Obama. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) campaign rolled out a plan to fight sexual misconduct and discrimination on his campaign. Part diagnosis and part prescription, the document lays out guiding principles as well as policies and key learnings from inside and outside political campaign work and from conversations with former staff who have shared often painful personal experiences and ideas to keep them from happening again, The Guardians Lauren Gambino wrote. It addresses issues including a lack of diversity among staff and leadership, pay disparity and sexual misconduct. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) pledged she would only nominate judges that would back Roe v. Wade if she was president, per POLITICOs Elena Schneider. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) launched a national training program for volunteers, POLITICOs Chris Cadelago reported. Rob Flaherty, the former creative director at Priorities USA and deputy digital communications director for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential bid, is set to join former Rep. Beto ORourkes campaign, POLITICOs Alex Thompson and David Siders reported. HANDLING FOREIGN INTERFERENCE The presidents campaign wont say how itll handle foreign meddling in 2020. The Trump campaign did not respond to numerous inquiries about whether it has implemented a policy about foreign interference including the use of information stolen or hacked by a foreign power and whether aides must formally report outreach from foreigners, POLITICOs Eliana Johnson reported. Several Democratic campaigns, by contrast, have announced policies on the subject. THE AD WARS Demand Justice, a progressive outside group, launched an ad in New Hampshire targeting Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) that shows Trump morphing into Bennet. It criticizes Bennet for voting for Trumps judicial picks. WMURs John DiStaso reported that the buy on the station will be a five-figure buy, with an additional digital buy of about $10,000. Some related reading: National Journals Zach Cohen reported last week that Bennet voted to confirm Trumps judicial nominees more than any other 2020 hopeful in the Senate. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) voted for the least. Club for Growth launched an ad in NC-09, criticizing Republican Leigh Brown for not supporting Trump (Advertising Analytics tracked $41,000 in spending from the Club in the district). The ad criticizes her for her past work as a fundraiser for the Realtor PAC, saying she worked for an organization that supported Democrats. (The Realtor PAC has gone in big backing Brown in the district.) The Club for Growth had previously endorsed Republican Dan Bishop in the primary and has also spent $80,000 to oppose another GOP candidate, Union County Commissioner Stony Rushing, who has been endorsed by Mark Harris, the 2018 nominee whose apparent victory was nullified by the state elections board. MAYORAL WATCH Denver Mayor Michael Hancock is headed to a runoff with challenger Jamie Giellis after Tuesday night's elections, KUSA's Allison Sylte reported. The runoff will be in early June. THE HOUSE MAP Harrison Floyd, a Republican military veteran, announced he was running in GA-07, per The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Greg Bluestein. He centered his announcement around fight[ing] socalists. CASH DASH Many House Democrats have sworn off money from corporate PACs. But the DCCC has made no such promise. The committee "raised about $1.93 million from 143 corporate political action committees in the first quarter of 2019, according to a Daily Beast review of campaign finance records. Thats up substantially from the past two election cycles, The Daily Beasts Jackie Kucinich and Lachlan Markay reported. Lobbyist fundraisers are also ponying up for the DCCC. In the first three months of the year, eight registered federal lobbyists bundled more than $1.2 million in contributions for the committee. THE SENATE MAP Progressives are pushing environmental groups to abandon Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) in 2020. The League of Conservation Voters' and Environmental Defense Fund's campaign arms backed Collins in 2014, but it is an open question whether they will be able to again, as her race may determine control of the Senate after 2020, POLITICOs Anthony Adragna reported. CODA QUOTE OF THE DAY: On election night 2018, I didn't hear anybody go, 'Oh jeez, we won! ' Mark Riddle, the executive director of Future Majority, on Democrats use of dark money to NPR. | https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-score/2019/05/08/wheres-the-line-between-a-campaign-and-super-pac-614412 |
Will greens call it quits on Collins? | With help from Alex Guilln Editor's Note: This edition of Morning Energy is published weekdays at 10 a.m. POLITICO Pro Energy subscribers hold exclusive early access to the newsletter each morning at 6 a.m. To learn more about POLITICO Pro's comprehensive policy intelligence coverage, policy tools and services, click here. QUICK FIX Story Continued Below Prominent environmental groups are facing pressure to abandon their previous support of Republican Sen. Susan Collins an example of the increasing polarization of environmental issues ahead of the 2020 elections. President Donald Trump travels to Florida today where he'll visit a hurricane-ravaged Air Force base that's in the middle of Congress' debate over disaster aid. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt disputed a report that he had "indefinitely" shelved work on an offshore oil and gas leasing plan that could expand the coastal areas open for exploration, though work on a proposal could stretch out for years. **A message from Biodiesel America's Advanced Biofuel: Biodiesel An American Innovation Driving More than 60,000 US Jobs Americas biodiesel producers turn the nations surplus soybean oil, used cooking oil, and recycled fats into an $11.4 billion economic opportunity. Biodiesel is an American-made, cleaner-burning fuel that keeps transportation moving, drives our economy forward, and supports jobs across the country. Biodiesel: Americas Advanced Biofuel ** IT'S WEDNESDAY! I'm your host, Kelsey Tamborrino. Holland & Hart's Kelly Johnson gets the trivia win for knowing the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park is the largest U.S. national park. Send your tips, energy gossip and comments to [email protected]. Follow us on Twitter @kelseytam, @Morning_Energy and @POLITICOPro. Republican endorsements from green groups used to be routine. Now, groups like the League of Conservation Voters and Environmental Defense Fund whose campaign arms backed Susan Collins in 2014 will have to reckon with whether to back moderate Republicans again, Pro's Anthony Adragna reports, especially since Collins' race could determine control of the Senate after 2020. It remains an open question whether LCV or EDF will support Collins. Keith Gaby, a spokesman for EDF Action, said his group hasn't "started looking at 2020" so far, while Tiernan Sittenfeld, the senior vice president of government affairs for LCV, said "[s]ome of Collins' recent votes have been extremely disappointing." The Maine Republican is one of the last few tempting targets for environmental groups seeking to endorse both Democrats and Republicans. But Democrats in Maine and liberal environmental activists say the senator has betrayed her moderate reputation with votes to confirm Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court and in favor of the Republican tax law, H.R. 1 (115), that opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. Ian Koski, a south Portland-based Democratic strategist, told Anthony it would be an "all hands on deck" effort to beat Collins and activists would aggressively push groups like LCV not to back the Republican again. "Susan Collins can't be trusted anymore and doesn't deserve to be offered another fig leaf," he said. Read more. THE WHITE HOUSE TRUMP VISITS BASE HIT BY HURRICANE: President Donald Trump will travel to Florida today for a rally, and while there will visit the Tyndall Air Force Base planting himself in the center of the debate over disaster aid and climate change's effect on national security. Trump is expected to receive an update on hurricane recovery efforts at the base, the Panama City News Herald reports. The Air Force base was struck by Hurricane Michael last year, damaging hundreds of structures. Lawmakers' disagreement over how much aid Puerto Rico should receive in a disaster aid package has stalled the flow of money for hurricane repairs at the Tyndall base. Under the House's latest disaster aid package, H.R. 2157 (116), the Air Force would receive $700 million for military construction projects related to Hurricane Michael at Tyndall. Trump's appearance comes days after the Air Force sent Congress a revised list of the service's 10 most vulnerable installations to the effects of climate change. That list, obtained by POLITICO, ranks Tyndall as the No. 9 most vulnerable to "the consequences of severe weather events," including flooding, wildfires and drought. AROUND THE AGENCIES EPA PLANS TO REJECT NEW YORK PETITION ON UPWIND POLLUTION: EPA will propose denying a March 2018 petition from New York seeking more pollution controls on over 350 sources in nine upwind states that New York says are preventing it from meeting ozone air quality standards, according to a pre-publication notice. The proposal follows New York's April lawsuit seeking to force EPA to act on its petition. EPA on Tuesday said the state failed to prove that the 350 sources emit pollution that violates the Clean Air Act's "good neighbor" provisions. The agency pointed to its December "CSAPR close-out" rule that found upwind states have done enough to clean up their ozone-related pollution that floats downwind. EPA's proposed denial will be open for public comment for 60 days upon publication in the Federal Register and the agency will hold a public hearing on June 11 in Washington. EPA previously rejected similar "Section 126" petitions from Maryland and Delaware, prompting legal challenges from those states. DEFINITELY NOT INDEFINITELY: Bernhardt said Tuesday he wasn't rushing to publish the five-year offshore drilling plan that former Secretary Ryan Zinke aimed to release last year, Pro's Ben Lefebvre reports. The secretary appeared before a House Appropriations subcommittee where he disputed the characterization from an interview he gave to The Wall Street Journal that he had "indefinitely" shelved the plan. "I don't think that article quotes me as saying 'sidelined indefinitely,'" Bernhardt said. "Those are not words I would have used." But he added lawmakers should not expect to see any new proposal soon: "I'll promise you that a plan isn't imminent at this time." ARCTIC TALKS STUMBLE OVER CLIMATE: Talks among the eight nations of the Arctic Council in Finland failed to yield a joint declaration on the future of the Arctic because of the United States' opposition to goals on climate change, The Wall Street Journal reports. Instead of a customary joint declaration, the nations issued a short "joint statement" noting a commitment to maintaining peace and stability in the Arctic, but omitted mentions of climate change. ON THE HILL E&C PANEL LOOKS AT ASBESTOS: The House Energy and Commerce Committee's environment and climate change subcommittee holds a hearing today on asbestos. The hearing will examine H.R. 1603 (116), a bill to amend the Toxic Substances Control Act to prohibit the manufacture, processing and distribution of asbestos and asbestos-containing mixtures. On the roster: Assistant EPA Administrator for Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention Alexandra Dapolito Dunn is among those testifying. EPA last month announced it would prohibit companies from importing or selling any new asbestos products that have not been reviewed and approved by the agency. But panel Democrats have been critical of the agency's slow timeline for banning the substance. "We understand that many stakeholders want the EPA to ban all remaining asbestos products now," Dunn will say in her opening statement. But under TSCA, the agency can't "move directly to risk management actions such as a ban which is indeed an option in certain cases or to any other restrictions without first completing the risk evaluation and making an unreasonable risk determination," she'll say. FED HAS CLIMATE PLANS: The Federal Reserve has risk management procedures in place to prepare the central bank and its institutions for severe weather events that could stem from climate change, Chairman Jerome Powell told Sen. Brian Schatz in an April 18 letter obtained by POLITICO. Powell wrote that severe weather events over the short term "have the potential to inflict serious damage on the lives of individuals and families, devastate local economies (including financial institutions), and even temporarily affect national economic output and employment." Pro's Victoria Guida has more. STATE NEWS INSLEE SIGNS CLEAN ELECTRICITY BILL: Democratic presidential hopeful and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed into law Tuesday a suite of clean energy bills, including a 100 percent clean electricity mandate by 2045, making Washington the fifth state to adopt a 100 percent clean energy target. The bill sets three key targets a phase-out of coal power by 2025, a 2030 deadline for utilities to become carbon neutral, and100 percent clean electricity by 2045, including renewables and non-emitting sources. "The standards alone are the most aggressive in the nation, but I think what makes the bill truly unique is the other provisions," said Lauren McCloy, Inslee's senior policy adviser for energy, on a call with reporters Tuesday. Some of the wonkier aspects of the bill include having utilities use the social cost of carbon to evaluate resources, as well as a tiered incentive system for developers seeking a tax exemption for certain renewable energy machinery and equipment. The Washington bill is being held up by some as a model for the federal level to set energy targets with the support of labor unions and utilities. "Washington is showing the rest of the country what it looks like to lead on climate," Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in a statement. The Grid "Coalition of unlikely allies calls on state to break up utilities, deregulate energy," The Washington Post. "We'll soon know the exact air pollution from every power plant in the world. That's huge," Vox. "Iraq close to signing $53 billion deal with Exxon, PetroChina; denies Iran link," Reuters. "Occidental CEO on verge of outmuscling a rival five times as big," Bloomberg. THAT'S ALL FOR ME! **A message from Biodiesel America's Advanced Biofuel: Biodiesel is Fueling $2.54 Billion in Wages for American Workers Americas biodiesel producers turn surplus soybean oil, used cooking oil, and recycled fats into an $11.4 billion economic opportunity for the United States. This homegrown industry drives more than 60,000 American jobs and fuels $2.54 billion in wages. Biodiesel is Americas first commercially available advanced biofuel, keeping transportation moving, heating homes, and driving our economy forward. Its a solution for more jobs, higher wages, and cleaner air. Biodiesel: Americas Advanced Biofuel ** | https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-energy/2019/05/08/will-greens-call-it-quits-on-collins-433722 |
Are these the worst supermarket substitutions ever? | An ill-judged supermarket substitution can derail major life events. This week, Sheree Scanlon ordered a birthday cake candle for her daughter, in the shape of a five. Tesco was out of fives, so sent two twos and a one instead. However, Scanlon didnt want to top her childs unicorn cake with a maths lesson. When supermarket substitutions miss the mark, there is often some fragment of the right item caught up in the wrong one, as when Kim Petchy ordered lemon juice and Asda sent her a lemon cake, or Theo Jordan wanted guacamole but Tesco delivered avocados. Sometimes, the packer focuses on the wrong word of the original item. Ben Elliot Lee ordered petits pois for a shepherds pie and got a 12-pack of Petits Filous. Instead of a bunch of spring flowers, Suzanne Bradish got a bunch of spring onions. (After her tweet went viral, the manager of her local Sainsburys dropped by with a bouquet and a refund.) But some substitutions make no sense at all. Sasha Brendon opened her Sainsburys delivery on Christmas eve, only to find the free range Black Norfolk turkey for 12-14 people had been replaced with a chicken big enough to feed only two to three. (Her mum found a frozen turkey in Morrisons instead and they defrosted it in the bath.) Helen Bryant got popcorn instead of potatoes from Woolworths in Australia, and Anne Schulthess bought three boxes of macaroni cheese from Tesco and received 13 sachets of Carribbean-style cock-flavour soup mix. Richard Lundy ordered an ab wheel and got a 12-pack of Monster Munch. Substitutions are a problem for all supermarkets. found that Asda was the worst one for substitutions, with 48% of shoppers receiving alternative items, while Iceland implemented the fewest substitutions (12%). A packer for Tesco, who wishes to remain anonymous, says: A scanner tells you what to pick. If you get to an item that is out of stock, you tell the scanner and the scanner suggests an alternative. Often this is perfectly reasonable, but other times, the automated system comes up with something really stupid. The person picking has the option to override the systems suggestion. When they go along with it without thinking is where the problems start. Such as the time a colleague obeyed the system and packed printer paper instead of napkins. | https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2019/may/08/are-these-the-worst-supermarket-substitutions-ever |
When are Uber and Lyft drivers on strike? | Lyft driver Lauren Swigler holds a banner that says "Give Drivers A Fair Share" during a protest against Lyft's paycuts and the company's announcement that they were going public, outside the Omni Hotel in San Francisco , California, on Monday, March 25, 2019. Drivers argue that their share has been cut significantly and that they are the backbone of the company. 1 / 5 Back to Gallery Uber and Lyft drivers worldwide are logging off the ride-hailing apps in protest Wednesday, as they strike for better wages and working conditions. Here's what you need to know: In San Francisco, the strike is planned to start at noon Wednesday and will go on for 12 hours. Around the country, times differ. For example, the strike was only two hours in New York City, from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. In San Diego and Los Angeles, the strike will be 24-hours long, according to CNN. In addition to the work stoppage, a protest is also planned for Uber's headquarters on Market Street between 10th and 11th streets. The drivers are demanding clearer policies, livable hourly wages, and other benefits that full-time employees at traditional companies might earn. Read more about the reasons behind the drivers' strike from The Chronicle. On the East Coast, some drivers went offline in New York between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m., though it was still easy to locate a driver during rush hour near Wall Street in lower Manhattan, according to the Associated Press. The Independent Drivers' Guild also organized a caravan of Uber drivers across the Brooklyn Bridge Wednesday. SFGATE will update this story as the strike in San Francisco starts at noon. Read Alix Martichoux's latest stories and send her news tips at [email protected]. Start receiving breaking news emails on wildfires, civil emergencies, riots, national breaking news, Amber Alerts, weather emergencies, and other critical events with the SFGATE breaking news email. Click here to make sure you get the news. | https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/When-are-Uber-and-Lyft-on-strike-why-san-francisco-13828909.php |
Why is Maxime Bernier so obsessed with tampons? | Maxime Bernier: political leader, provocateur, enemy of white pants. Its not the epitaph Id want on my tombstone, but it might someday be inscribed on Berniers: a man fundamentally and obsessively opposed to the idea of free tampons. Peoples Party Leader Maxime Bernier says its not the governments role to subsidize menstrual products. ( Adrian Wyld / The Canadina Press ) If you dont believe me, take a look at Berniers Twitter page, home to various screeds about a recent federal government proposal to make menstrual products free and accessible in federally regulated Canadian workplaces. The reason for this proposal is simple. There still exists around the world and, yes, even in Canada, stigma around menstruation, not to mention a disturbing lack of access to the typically expensive products women use when they are on their periods. Article Continued Below Period Poverty is a real problem in this country. A study published last year by Plan International Canada, determined that one third of women under 25 had a hard time coming up with money for menstrual products. Of course Bernier doesnt appear to care about this public health crisis, because in his mind, a government handout, no matter how humane, is still a handout. The leader of the Peoples Party of Canada tweeted several frenzied objections to the proposal this month. Here are a few of them. So many people have become so used to get freebies, and to have the government hold their hands throughout their lives, that its become normal for a political party to campaign on free tampons. Not for me. Time to bring back COMMON SENSE and PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. Hurrah! Our caring and generous government is removing another major social inequity by solving the Great Menstrual Products Unavailability Crisis of the early 21st century. Article Continued Below I used to think Bernier was fixated on a host of issues, from the alleged threat of mass immigration to political correctness. But these days, at least where his social media presence is concerned, its menstruation all the time. Perhaps he isnt a political leader; perhaps he is a plant hired by Tampax competitor Diva Cup to advocate against the use of disposable menstrual products. Or more likely, he lacks the empathy required to understand the governments policy and why it would make this country a better place. According to the Canada Gazette, the government publication where the proposal was announced earlier this month: Lack of access to menstrual products can create barriers for employees to participate fully in society, including in the labour force. For employees in remote locations, the negative impact to their physical and psychological health may be heightened due to greater barriers. The governments making these products free and accessible would not only chip away at the stigma around menstruation, it would make international news and spark debate about a topic wrongly deemed awkward and unclean. It would set a precedent that menstrual products are essential to the health, happiness, and productivity of Canadians who get their periods. In April, the B.C. government announced that by the end of the year, all schools are required to provide free menstrual products to students. This isnt the policy of a people that shirk common sense and personal responsibility, but a people, rather, that champion human decency. That believe it is contrary to Canadian values to allow teenagers to bleed through their pants because they cant afford a box of Tampax. This should be the policy in schools everywhere, in Canada and abroad. But its not. In the same vein, some version of this policy should exist in most modern workplaces too, but it doesnt. Womens stuff is still widely considered to be superfluous stuff. Its not essential stuff. A government policy normalizing menstruation might change that. Unfortunately it wont change Maxime Bernier. If life were a movie on the Womens Channel, Bernier would wake up tomorrow morning a menstruating woman and by end of week, after befriending a generous ladies room attendant who slipped him a Tampax Pearl in his time of need, learn the error of his ways. But life is just life. And Bernier is Bernier. He will keep on doing what he does best: waging war on white pants. Stock your handbags accordingly. Emma Teitel is a columnist based in Toronto covering current affairs. Follow her on Twitter: @emmaroseteitel | https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2019/05/08/why-is-maxime-bernier-so-obsessed-with-tampons.html |
Who knew Mountbatten-Windsor is kind of the British royal family's last name? | Spectators eagerly awaiting news about the royal baby got a bit of a surprise Wednesday as his name was revealed. While bookmakers put the best odds on Prince Harry and Meghan naming a son Alexander, Spencer or Arthur, the couple went with Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor instead. The last name left many people scratching their heads. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced the name in a brief statement Wednesday, shortly after making their first public appearance with their newborn son at Windsor Castle. Perhaps more intriguing than the polarizing first name "Archie" is the last name "Mountbatten-Windsor." The royals rarely go by their surname and most people don't even know what it is. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex with their baby son, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, who was born on Monday morning. POOL Even the royals know it's all a bit mystifying. "People often ask whether members of the Royal Family have a surname, and, if so, what it is," their official website reads. "Members of the Royal Family can be known both by the name of the Royal house, and by a surname, which are not always the same. And often they do not use a surname at all." Up until 1917, British royals didn't really have last names. Monarchs have typically been known by their first name and the country where they ruled. British kings and queens in history have been associated with dynasties with different names, such as Henry IV and the Lancastrians; Edward IV and the Yorkists; and Henry VII and the Tudors, the site explains. It wasn't until Queen Elizabeth's great-grandfather, George V, settled on Windsor as his dynasty's name that the royals started using it as their official surname. However, in 1960, Queen Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, decided to distinguish themselves from past royals. So they started using a hyphenated surname: Mountbatten-Windsor. Prince Phillip, who was the prince of Greece and Denmark before marrying Queen Elizabeth, abandoned those titles and adopted the surname Mountbatten from his maternal grandparents. Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, changed their official surname to Mountbatten-Windsor in 1960. Previously, the family was just "Windsor" if anything. Getty So the queen's children and grandchildren may use Mountbatten-Windsor as a surname when they need to. Royals don't really have much use for last names; they already have long enough titles, like Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and his big brother Prince William, Duke of Cambridge. However, if Prince Charles or later Prince William wanted to change the surname from Mountbatten-Windsor when they become king, they could. Their children and grandchildren would use whatever surname they chose, the royal family's website explains. To complicate things even more, members of the royal family may go by completely different last names in certain public situations, such as when Prince Harry was in the army. At the time, he was known as Prince Harry of Wales. (He didn't get the title Duke of Sussex until his wedding day.) In the military, he went by Officer Cadet Wales, with Wales effectively serving as his last name when he needed one. When Prince Harry joined the Army and needed to go by a surname, he was known as Officer Cadet Wales. At the time, he was the Prince of Wales. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite Now that Harry is Duke of Sussex, his son would presumably go by Officer Cadet Sussex if he followed in his father's footsteps and joined the army. Other royals have adopted this method of creating a surname when they're in public situations that require one. For example, Prince George of Cambridge the oldest son of Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge (the former Kate Middleton) is known as George Cambridge at school, The Guardian reports. Prince George was not given any last name when his birth was announced. As for baby Archie's middle name Harrison it is not after his father, Harry. Prince Harry's real first name is actually Henry, to make things even more complicated. For now, the mystery of Archie's first and middle name still remains. | https://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-knew-mountbatten-windsor-is-kind-of-the-british-royal-familys-last-name/ |
Can Amber Guyger get a fair murder trial in Dallas for the shooting of Botham Jean? | State District Judge Tammy Kemp issued a gag order to stop the attorneys involved in the criminal case from speaking about the case outside the courtroom. But news coverage has persisted ever since Guyger shot Jean on Sept. 6. Guyger, who was off-duty but still in uniform, said she confused his apartment for her own and thought he was a burglar. As the trial approaches, Dallas attorneys say, the defense will likely file a motion asking the judge for a change of venue, saying Guyger cant have a fair trial in Dallas. Its not about whether potential jurors have heard details of the case. Its whether they already have an opinion about her guilt or innocence. There's been no shortage of news this year to sway potential jurors one way or the other: | https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2019/05/08/can-amber-guyger-get-fair-murder-trial-dallas-shooting-botham-jean |
Can Tony Romo Make Good on His PGA Tour Dreams? | Tony Romo is a terrific golfer. That much is beyond debate. According to the USGA, his reported index of +0.4 is better than roughly 99% of golfers with an official handicap. He can hit 300+ yard drives and he can pull off flop shots. On his day, he is good enough to shoot around par on any course in the world. Hes a stick, the guy everyone at the club loves to play with. But being a terrific golfer does not mean you are good enough to be a PGA Tour player. Or a European Tour player. Or a Web.com Tour player, for that matter. Romo has learned this the hard way. Hes played in the PGA Toursdeep breathCorales Puntacana Resort & Club Championship each of the past two years. That event, played opposite the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, year-after-year features one of the weakest fields of any Tour event. The first go round, he shot 77-82 (+15), missed the cut by 16 and finished dead last. Then, in March, he shot 79-80 (+15), missed the cut by 17 shots and beat exactly one person. In four PGA Tour rounds, his average score is 79.5. Last September, he attempted to play his way onto the Web.com Tour through qualifying school. After getting through pre-qualifying, Romo shot a four-day total of +13 at the first stage, 24 shots back of the number needed to advance to the next round. Those who make it past second stage move on to the third and final stage, and only in that tournament are Web.com starts up for grabs. All that to say: if his previous play is any indication, Romo is a long, long way off from being able to compete with even journeyman touring pros. Thanks to his illustrious non-golf rsuma four-time Pro Bowl quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys, with movie-star good looks, who is also a preposterously good broadcasterhe will get another chance to prove himself this week. Romo has received a sponsors invitation to play in the AT&T Byron Nelson at his home course, Trinity Forest Golf Club in Dallas. Im the undrafted rookie trying to make it, Romo told ESPN.com. Since the Super Bowlwhich he called alongside Jim Nantz, who will be on the call for CBS this weekendhes had a solid three months to work on his game. He says hes working on it harder than ever and improving steadily. Hes switched to a new, funky putting style in an attempt to improve on a putrid 2.3 putts per hole at this years Corales. A shocking number of people are convinced of his progress. Either that, or they enjoy hemorrhaging money. According to golf oddsmaker Jeff Sherman, Romo (10,000-1) has received more bets to win the Byron Nelsonnot just make the cut, but winthan any other player. Of course, he has no chance to win the event. Absolutely none. His odds of making the cut are well under 50%lets remember, this is a big-boy tournament that Brooks Koepka, Patrick Reed and Jordan Spieth are playing in. Still, this feels like Romos best chance ever to make the weekend at a PGA Tour event and silence those who feel hes taking a spot from a more deserving player. Hes been practicing like a professional for months. Hes playing his home course. Hes 39 and not getting any younger. If he cant muster a respectable showingfinishing within six shots of the cut feels about rightperhaps Romo should accept that he is a terrific golfer, but not quite good enough to be a professional golfer. | https://www.si.com/golf/2019/05/08/tony-romo-pga-tour-career-byron-nelson-trinity-forest-golf-club |
Is Joe Biden as Electable as He Says? | Joe Biden has been campaigning like hes already won the Democratic nomination. In his first few forays in early-voting states, the former vice president has talked past his Democratic primary opponents and aimed squarely at the up-for-grabs voters in swing state communities about President Donald Trump. Folks, the fact is, we cannot let this administration win again in 2020, he told cheering supporters on Tuesday in Henderson, Nevada. We have to restore the American creed of decency honor and dignity, leaving no one behind, friendship. Implicit in the frontrunners message on economic fairness, workers rights and presidential temperament is an argument that he is the strongest Democrat to challenge Trump on his record. In fact, hes been treating his first few weeks as a declared candidate doing just that, attempting to spark voters imaginations about how a Trump v. Biden general election looks like. The Brief Newsletter Sign up to receive the top stories you need to know right now. More than anything else, Democrats want to defeat Trump. In polls of likely Democratic voters, that dominates everything else, including ideological purity. One poll, conducted by CNN after Biden joined the race, said 92% of Democrats said having the ability to beat Trump was very or extremely important, while roughly two-thirds ranked having progressive policies or being the future of the party mattered. A separate poll from Quinnipiac University seemed to anoint Biden as the best suited to the task of making Trump a one-termer. In that survey, 56% of Democrats said Biden was strongest to defeat Trump, while Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders came in second, with 12% of Democrats thinking he was capable of beating the President. But there is a disconnect in these numbers. Even as more than half of Democrats saw Biden as the strongest, he drew only 38% support. In other words, a double-digit percentage of Democrats were willing to go with less of a sure thing rather than Biden. Biden advisers are hardly coy about making electability and a return to pre-Trump politics central to their strategy. They are strategically trying to provoke Trump a clown, Biden mused recently and Trump has been taking the bait. Bidens team is also betting that Obama-era nostalgia will set in among the Democratic electorate. Read More: Trump Attacks Biden More Than Other 2020 Candidates. Rival Democrats arent exactly eager to start attacking a beloved party elder who served as a loyal lieutenant to the nations first black President. But theyre also starting to see risk in Biden running away with the nomination without any real pressure testing. After all, Biden isnt the only Democrat who stands strongly in a hypothetical head-to-head with Trump. Given the margin of sampling error inherent with polling, most of the Democrats are essentially tied with Trump and no one is a statistical slam dunk. In fact, CNNs latest polling shows, Biden joins South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, California Sen. Kamala Harris and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren running about even with Trump. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Texas Rep. Beto ORourke are slightly ahead of Trump. Not one of them can be considered a definite leader over Trump. So Biden is not uniquely positioned in the polls to coast to a win. Which is why Biden is trying to sand off some of Trumps support. Bidens message of unity and comity is one likely to assuage weary voters, but hes also tossing a bone to those voters who sent Trump to Washington to send a message that business-as-usual wasnt working. The political system is so broken, Biden said Tuesday. Its so mean and its ugly that its difficult to get anything done. Trump, Biden said, is to blame. The President has deliberately attempted to divide this nation and hes decided to be President for his base. Ill be President for all Americans, Biden said to cheers. Its still very early in the process. The Iowa caucuses are 271 days away. And voters are still shopping. CNNs poll indicated 23% of voters want to know more about Harris, 20% want to hear more about Warren and 17% want to see more Buttigieg. Nothing at this point is set. Activists are starting to separate candidates into buckets but are hardly ready to pick just one. The debates, which start at the end of June, could change all of that. And theres warning in the example of then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who had a meltdown during a 2012 campaign debate. He was seen as the strongest challenger to defeat Barack Obama in polls that fall. Then, he had his oops moment and support vanished. The same could happen with any number of mini-meltdowns or stumbles. Voters, after all, a fickle lot. Still, with Biden so firmly planted atop the pack, and with voters so explicitly looking for someone to beat Trump, and with Biden seemingly the favorite, its worth remembering that it comes with a giant target on his back. Democratic rivals will need to erode that lead, and it could get messy. One only need remember Bidens love of improvising his responses to voters, his long legislative record and even the number of voters who say hes best positioned to beat Trump and yet still arent with him. His support may not be cemented just yet, but rival Democrats are risking a lot by hoping Biden gaffes his way from his advantages. Write to Philip Elliott at [email protected]. | http://time.com/5585358/joe-biden-electability/ |
Why are we celebrating Red Army conquests in the streets of Toronto? | Twenty-two Hoeringstrasse. Its not been burned, just looted, rifled. A moaning by the walls, half muffled: the mothers wounded, half alive. The little daughters on the mattress, dead. A girls been turned into a woman, a woman turned into a corpse The mother begs, Soldier, kill me! The late Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote this profoundly disturbing narrative in a poem called Prussian Nights in 1945, as he witnessed his fellow soldiers in the communist Soviet Red Army engaging in mass looting and raping in Eastern Germany as they advanced on Adolf Hitlers Berlin. It is a well-known historical fact that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.), for most of its dark reign covering half the planet from 1917 to 1991, represented an evil force that committed well-documented atrocities including, but not limited to, the genocide of millions of Ukrainians in the 1932-33 Holodomor, mass imprisonment and unspeakable tortures visited upon political prisoners in the Gulag Archipelago, enslavement of most of Eastern Europe under the leadership of complicit and brutal puppet regimes, and countless other crimes against humanity perpetrated all over the globe for the greater good of communism. Imagine my surprise then, having arrived a year ago at Torontos Nathan Phillips Square to attend an event ostensibly organized to celebrate Victory in Europe Day (VE Day May 8, 1945), the date Western allied countries commemorate the surrender of Nazi Germany, spotting a small contingent of former Soviet Red Army soldiers, numerous Soviet display booths and even a participant waving the Hammer and Sickle flag. They were celebrating Victory Day, the Soviet version of VE Day. The Soviets fought the Nazis on the Eastern Front, and for four years endured some of the harshest fighting in the war. Thats historical fact. But for those of us with a properly aligned moral compass and an understanding of that history, we rightly view the inclusion of Soviet forces in a ceremony celebrating our Western troops who fought for democracy and freedom, as an offensive attempt to create a false moral equivalency between the two societies. Having signed a pact of non-aggression with the U.S.S.R. in 1939, Hitler felt secure enough to launch his blitzkrieg in Western Europe while the Soviet Union busied itself invading Eastern European countries, including Poland, where amongst other crimes it murdered 22,000 military officers and intellectuals in the Katyn Forest that same year. It was not until June 1941, when Hitler attacked Russia, that the Soviets joined in the battle with the Western allies. At the time Winston Churchill, in agreeing to support the tyrant Joseph Stalin, famously stated If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons. There was no mistaking who the devil (Stalin) was in that statement; Churchill, and indeed all Western leaders, were under no delusions as to the evils of communism. Upon the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945, the U.S.S.R. quickly returned to its never-ending mission of imposing communism worldwide, through five decades of threatening nuclear war, invading susceptible countries, crushing rebellion in nations it oppressed (such as Hungary in 1956, and Czechoslovakia in 1968) and providing logistical or moral support to murderous communist regimes in Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia to name but a few. Torontos combined VE Day and Soviet Victory Day ceremony was orchestrated in 2015 by Coun. James Pasternak in conjunction with a Toronto-based Soviet Committee formed to celebrate their victory in the Great Patriotic War (the name the Russians give to the Second World War), and once again, on Wednesday, Nathan Phillips Square was host to this disingenuous joint venture. A review of the Soviet Victory Day website contains pictures of soldiers or actors marching down Toronto streets with Red Army uniforms, Soviet flags and banners flying, and an interesting description about how people of all nationalities and religions selflessly stood shoulder to shoulder in fighting the enemy of Civilization as we know it. It was this union of all Civilized Nations that led to the historic victory over fascism. Of all the phrases one could accurately employ to describe the former Soviet Union, Civilized Nation is not one of them. For all right thinking Canadians, especially those who are descendants of the millions whom the Communist Soviets oppressed and murdered, the participation of Soviet Red Army forces in a VE Day celebration is an abhorrent charade and a gross insult to our Canadian veterans, and those from our allied democracies. The Swastika and the Hammer and Sickle both represent pure evil, the latter just had a longer run on flag poles. There ought to be no place for it on Torontos streets. Paul Philip Willis is a freelance writer living in Toronto | https://nationalpost.com/opinion/why-are-we-celebrating-red-army-conquests-in-the-streets-of-toronto |
Could Hooters Be Next In Line to Serve Beyond Meat? | It may be a bit early in the trend, but faux meat may be the next fintech, or even marijuana. Hooters operator Chanticleer Holdings Inc., which also owns and runs restaurants under the American Burger Company, BGR Burgers Grilled Right, Little Big Burger and Just Fresh brands, announced Wednesday that over 50 individual store locations would partner with Beyond Meat Inc. offering, designing and testing their own unique burgers. While Hooters, the sports bar known to cater to a male-dominated audience, isnt among the brands listed in the launch, Chanticleers tests may lead to wider adoption as alternative proteins find favor with diners. But one thing is for certain investors in the micro-cap stock like what they see thus far, as Chanticleer shares soared as much as 94% Wednesday. That was its largest intraday gain since Jan. 2, 2018, when the stock spiked on the companys plans for a crytpocurrency-based customer rewards program. Shares in Beyond Meat, however, have continued their streak of volatility since its IPO last week. The stock gained 1.2% on Wednesday and has gained in each of the five trading sessions since going public last week. The stock has seen a total return of 222% since trading began, while the S&P 500 notched losses of nearly 1.5%. More must-read stories from Fortune: In Silicon Valley, it (still) aint easy being green From 2017: Silicon Valley and the Search for Meatless Meat The 9 biggest IPOs of all time The uncomfortable truth about going public with a money-losing business How the Kleiner Perkins empire fell Follow us on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis | http://fortune.com/2019/05/08/hooters-beyond-meat/ |
Why did Sugar Land flood water stay high? | Water still filled some Sugar Land streets Wednesday morning, prompting residents to wonder why it hadn't receded long after the rain subsided. The reason, as noted by Sugar Land Mayor Joe Zimmerman in a video update, was twofold. The Brazos River was running high, and the neighborhood got a heck of a lot of rain. A patchwork of levee systems protect roughly 20 percent of those who live in Fort Bend County. Their purpose is to keep water from the Brazos River out of neighborhoods when the river gets high. When the river rises, often because rainfall upriver is making its way down, gates in the levees close, and the neighborhoods become like bowls. If it rains, water in the neighborhoods with nowhere to go must then be pumped out. The officials managing these systems plan for this, to some degree. But some homes flooded during Harvey when too much rain fell too fast while the levee gates were closed. HARVEY LEVEES: "If they're not working, we are dead." Take, for example, what happened with Levee Improvement District 2, or LID 2, one of 20 such entities managing levees in the county, and one of nine in Sugar Land. Its jurisdiction includes hard-hit Colony Bend. LID 2 gates had closed automatically because of the rising river, a result of heavy rain last week upstream near Waco, spokesman Mike Stone said. Then the district received a staggering amount of rain in a short period of time Tuesday. When levees aren't enough Sources: Fort Bend Central Appraisal District, Fort Bend County Drainage District, LID and MUD attorneys Reporting by Emily Foxhall | Graphic by Emily L. Mahoney *Represents total number of homes in both Sienna Plantation levee systems combined, even though they are separated on map Officials were pumping 250,000 gallons per minute from one of two pump stations, which, coincidentally, they had planned to expand after Harvey. That expansion is still underway. On Wednesday, with roadways still waterlogged, they were looking to bring in temporary pumps. "We're doing the best we can," Stone said. "We're pumping like crazy." All levee districts in Sugar Land had their gates closed, city spokesman Doug Adolph said. Pumps were activated in other communities, including in Greatwood, Pecan Grove and Riverstone. In LID 2, water in the streets was expected to clear overnight. As far as Stone knew, no homes had flooded. But the river in the next few days was still forecast to remain high. And more rain was expected. | https://www.houstonchronicle.com/neighborhood/fortbend/article/Why-did-Sugar-Land-flood-water-stay-high-13829452.php |
Will Displaying Drug List Prices In Ads Help Lower Costs? | Enlarge this image toggle caption Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images The Trump administration moved forward on Wednesday with its plan to lower prescription drug prices by requiring drugmakers to display the list price "in a legible textual statement at the end of the advertisement." Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar said today that when it comes to changing prescription drug prices, "putting prices in TV ads may be the most significant single step any administration has ever taken." But patient advocates are not convinced it will have an immediate impact on drug pricing. The rule would apply to prescriptions that cost more than $35 per month or courses of treatment, which are covered by Medicare. The rule is very specific, requiring that the price be displayed, "for sufficient duration and in a size and style of font that allows the information to be read easily." Industry groups have fought this move since it was announced in October. They adopted voluntary rules, that would have directed ad viewers to a website with more detailed cost information. Today, in a statement, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) wrote that the list price is confusing since that's not what most people pay. The rule addresses that by requiring an additional statement that reads, "If you have health insurance that covers drugs, your cost may be different." PhRMA also said that the rule raises "First Amendment and statutory concerns." Court challenges may be coming. The legal authority given by the White House is based on the laws that require Medicare and Medicaid to be run in a cost-effective manner, according to the rule. Rachel Sachs, an associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis and an expert in drug-pricing regulation, told NPR and Kaiser Health News in October that could be a weak legal argument since most drugs are marketed to the broader public, not just Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. Consumer and patient advocates generally hailed the move as a step towards greater price transparency, but questioned whether it would do much to lower high prices. "We don't believe that disclosing list prices will shame drug corporations into lowering list prices," says Ben Wakana, executive director of Patients for Affordable Drug Prices. "Drug companies have been shamed about their price increases for years. They appear to be completely comfortable with the shame as long as it is bringing them in the billions of dollars a year that they make from their outrageous prices." He gives the government credit for trying to do something on health prices, noting "taking action on this issue is hard." But he thinks some of the administration's other ideas to lower prices announced in a plan released last May might have a bigger impact. Critics have pointed out the government's plan for enforcing the rule is weak, as NPR reported last fall. The plan for enforcement involves competitors policing each other by bringing legal action against competitors who aren't compliant, Azar said in Wednesday's press briefing. He calls it "a quite effective mechanism of enforcement." Azar defended the government's authority to issue the new rule. "This is not without precedent," he told reporters. "We have for over 50 years required that car manufacturers and car dealers post the sticker price of cars on the windows of their cars and be transparent about even though there are negotiations and everything else because it's a starting point that's an important part of consumer fairness." The car-buying analogy doesn't work very well for drugs, notes Adrienne Faerber, a lecturer at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. "When you go to the car dealer and you see that sticker price and you can negotiate a better price that can fit your budget directly with the car dealership," she explains. But, she says, drug prices are negotiated through layers of middlemen: "So you don't get to negotiate based on these prices like you would with a car." In other words, car shoppers have a lot more choices that sick patients do, and a lot more bargaining power. Faerber says certainly displaying the list price won't "magically flip a switch and cut a percentage or two off of the total drug costs." But she says it will be interesting to see how patients react to high list prices on their TV screens. "Consumers are going to start wondering what are people getting for that money," she says. | https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/05/08/721574626/will-displaying-drug-list-prices-in-ads-help-lower-costs?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=storiesfromnpr |
When does birthright citizenship become citizenship for sale? | Kerry Starchuks activism begins with homemade granola cookies specifically, when she took a plate to her new neighbors. Except the man and a toddler boy who she heard bouncing a basketball outside, and the two pregnant women with them, hadnt moved into the house next door to hers, where she has lived since 1988. Visitors from China, they were residing in her neighborhood only temporarily and didnt respond to her greeting. After they awkwardly accepted her cookies, she never saw the group again. It wasnt the first time shed seen pregnant women coming and going in her neighborhood or heard about why they were there. But the meeting began her personal battle against birth tourism, where wealthy mothers like the ones she encountered next door pay to give birth, get citizenship for their babies, and return home. Recommended: Art of the steal: European museums wrestle with returning African art It is an issue gaining prominence across North America, where jus soli, or rules by which citizenship is determined by birthplace, is the standard practice (yet otherwise rare among developed countries, as in Europe where citizenship is more restricted and often granted along bloodlines). An online petition that Ms. Starchuk started against the practice last year, garnering some 11,000 signatures, was supported by a federal Liberal lawmaker representing Richmond. Meanwhile, the federal Conservatives, in opposition during an election year, voted on a motion last summer to tighten laws around birthright citizenship. In the United States, President Donald Trump has said he will end it by executive order. Mr. Trumps threat drew widespread criticism by critics who call it anti-immigrant pandering. But concerns about citizenship rules span partisan lines. In Canada, a poll from the Angus Reid Institute in March showed that while more believe birthright citizenship is a good policy than a bad one (40% versus 33%), 60% believed rules needed to be tightened to counter abuse of the system. Ms. Starchuk, a part-time housecleaner, insists her position is not anti-Chinese or anti-immigrant but is about rules and values, especially in a region where foreign wealth and capital have changed the face of communities. In Richmond, the mothers hail mostly from China, lured by advertisements that sell all-inclusive packages including a stay at a birth hotel. Other hospitals in Toronto and Montreal have seen increases in mothers from Eastern Europe or Africa. A recent data analysis showed Richmonds local hospital with the highest percentage of births to mothers residing outside Canada. It does undermine me, because Im trying to build community and welcome my neighbors to the neighborhood, she says. And then I find out its not a single-family home where theres going to be a new family but an international, underground birth-tourism hotel. The issue under debate in Canada, which established citizenship rules under the 1947 Canadian Citizenship Act, is largely about the power of foreign money and how it devalues citizenship. The debate in the U.S., on the other hand, sometimes targets so-called anchor babies but revolves around undocumented migration. It was rekindled last fall with Mr. Trumps threat, which has been highly polarizing. The national conversations converge around questions of fairness and the changes people fear and perceive around them. Martha Jones, who wrote Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America, says that citizenship is always an evolving political question. In the U.S., questions about birthright citizenship arose in the early 19th century around the status of former slaves, which culminated in the 14th Amendment in 1868. But that didnt settle the issue, and in some ways the debate today is analogous to the one around former slaves because it leaves an entire class of people in a legal limbo. It is a tragic example of the ways in which American lawmakers have failed in my view to fulfill their obligation to extend to people some basic sense of who they are, Ms. Jones says. In Canada, the Conservatives last summer voted that the party should support the position that a baby born in Canada should receive citizenship only if one parent is a Canadian or permanent resident. | https://news.yahoo.com/does-birthright-citizenship-become-citizenship-sale-204101217.html |
Is pet insurance a good bet? | Most dog owners don't have thousands of dollars sitting around to cover surgery or cancer treatment. That is where pet insurance comes in. Policies typically reimburse 70% to 90% of covered costs related to illness and injury. Having that coverage allows you to make decisions about your pet's care based on its well-being, not your wallet. "In my experience, when pet owners say they're covered by insurance, it takes the emotional angst out of the equation," said Barry Kipperman, a veterinary specialist in internal medicine. Here is what you need to know when shopping for a pet policy. You still pay out of pocket. Unlike human health insurance, most pet insurance policies reimburse you rather than pay the bill upfront. So you pay for the treatment, submit the claim and receive a check for the covered portion. Vaccinations, flea and tick treatments and annual exams are all expected parts of pet ownership. But this type of routine care is not covered by most pet insurance policies. Some providers offer it as an upgrade or add-on. Do the math to make sure it's worth the added cost. Office-visit charges usually aren't included. If your dog is sick or injured, your policy will likely cover diagnostic tests, such as blood work and X-rays, and any prescribed medication. But most policies don't cover the visit itself. A handful of providers, including Figo and Pets Best, include exam fees in some or all of their policies. Most policies have a waiting period, so your pup typically isn't covered the day you enroll. And there may be different gaps for different types of coverage or conditions. There are a few things you want to make sure you are covered for, said Nicole Ellis, a certified professional dog trainer with Rover, a pet-care app. Cancer. Arthritis. Allergies. Kidney disease. These are not short-term conditions, and treatment can last for the life of your pet. You want to ensure you are covered for the duration of the condition. Some breeds are prone to certain issues Great Danes and boxers are prone to heart disease, for example, and pugs, Shih Tzus and other smushed-faced dogs often have breathing issues. Research any breed-specific ailments and make sure they are covered by your policy before you enroll. The medical care available for dogs now rivals that of humans, including services like acupuncture and chiropractic care. If you want the full range of options, make sure these alternative treatments are covered by your plan. Annual deductibles are standard for human health insurance, but the same isn't true for pet policies. With some companies, the deductible is per incident or condition. So if your dog sprains a knee, you pay one deductible and any subsequent care related to that issue is covered. But if your pup has a different issue you have to pay another deductible. There are benefits to incident deductibles, though, noted Carol Edwards, executive director of Early Alert Canines, which trains medical alert dogs for insulin-dependent diabetics. Insurance covered 90% of the costs, minus a $1,000 deductible, when Edwards' black Lab went through cancer treatment. "Years later, his cancer came back," Edwards said. "Since the deductible was already paid, his follow-up care was covered." Kelsey Sheehy is a writer at NerdWallet. E-mail: [email protected]. | http://www.startribune.com/is-pet-insurance-a-good-bet/509659782/ |
Where Does Shadowhunters Rank Among TV's Best and Worst Series Finales? | Shadowhunters has officially come to an end. The Freeform series ended after three seasons and 55 episodes on Monday with everything a good series finale truly needs: a wedding, a first kiss, a major death, a battle win, a time jump, a sacrifice, and a bit of hope. Clary's shadowhunter memories had been erased, but clearly not completely, because she could see and recognize Jace, who had been looking after her. It was a bittersweet conclusion to the series after a devastating cancellation, but it was also basically a two and a half-hour movie that wrapped up the series in what felt like a pretty satisfying way. (That Malec wedding though...just a delight.) But that's just us. It's time to find out what you thought. | https://www.eonline.com/news/1039868/where-does-shadowhunters-rank-among-tv-s-best-and-worst-series-finales |
What should be done with the women and children of Isis? | Many of them were barely school age when their parents took them to the Islamic State group's so-called caliphate in Iraq and Syria. Thousands of others were born there. The children of the group's followers are the most vulnerable of the Islamic State's human leftovers the remainders of the more than 40,000 foreign fighters and their families who came from 80 countries to help build the caliphate. Many are now detained in camps and prisons across eastern Syria, Iraq and Libya. "What have these kids done?" said Fabrizio Carboni, a Red Cross official, after witnessing the misery surrounding him on a recent visit to Al Hol camp in Syria. "Nothing." Yet even when it comes to the children, the foreign governments whose citizens are marooned in the camps and prisons have struggled with what to do with them. Advertisement The Islamic State group, researchers say, employed children as scouts, spies, cooks and bomb-planters, and sometimes as fighters and suicide bombers. Propaganda videos showed young children beheading and shooting prisoners. Some have had years of Isis indoctrination and, in the case of older boys, military training. "They're victims of the situation because they went against their will," said Peter Neumann, director of the International Center for the Study of Radicalisation at King's College London, "but that doesn't mean that they're not, in some cases at least, a risk." If figuring out what to do with the children is that complicated, deciding what to do with the women and men is even more difficult. There are at least 13,000 foreign Isis followers being held in Syria, including 12,000 women and children. That number does not include the estimated 31,000 Iraqi women and children detained there. Another 1,400 are detained in Iraq. But only a handful of countries including Russia, Kosovo, Kazakhstan, Indonesia and France have intervened to bring back some of their citizens. The debate is more pressing than ever. In overflowing camps in eastern Syria, the wives and children of Isis fighters who fled the last shreds of Isis territory are dying of exposure, malnutrition and sickness. Children are too spent to speak. Women who have renounced the group live in dread of attacks from those who have not. The local militias running the camps say they cannot detain other countries' citizens forever. Across the border in Iraq, government authorities are administering hasty justice to people accused of being Islamic State members, sentencing hundreds to death in trials that often last no longer than five minutes. Women and children wait to be screened after escaping from the last Islamic State-held area in eastern Syria. Photo / Ivor Prickett, The New York Times But most foreign governments are reluctant to take them back, leaving them international pariahs wanted by no one not their home countries, not their jailers. "Who wants to be the politician who decides to repatriate Individual A who, two years down the road, blows himself up?" said Lorenzo Vidino, director of the George Washington University Program on Extremism. The fact is, Vidino said, few extremists return to stage attacks in their home countries. But the exceptional cases including the 2015 Paris attacks that killed 130 people and two of Tunisia's deadliest terrorist attacks have made the idea of repatriation politically toxic in many countries. At least one of the bombers who carried out the attack in Sri Lanka on Easter was a Sri Lankan who had trained with the Islamic State group in Syria. Some countries, like Britain and Australia, have revoked the citizenships of their nationals suspected of joining the Islamic State abroad, effectively abandoning them and their children to indefinite detention without charge and potential statelessness. Britain alone has cancelled the passports of more than 150 people, the home secretary, Sajid Javid, has said. While bringing them home could pose an obvious danger, so could leaving them in the camps, desperate and disenfranchised. Historically, fighters who gained experience with one extremist group have been the ones who seed new ones, said Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the George Washington program. "Do we ignore the problem because it's easier in the short term?" he said. "If so, it's going to become a problem in the long term." But bringing them home requires foreign governments to answer virtually impossible questions, like how to separate those who committed crimes from those who did not, and those who still pose a threat from those who do not. The puzzle has been hardest to solve when it comes to the tens of thousands of women and children affiliated with the Islamic State group. The once common view that Isis women were passive prey, "jihadi brides" seduced into joining the caliphate and marrying its fighters, crumbled as evidence emerged that women had served as enforcers for the caliphate's morality brigade or, in some cases, taken up arms in battle. A bus packed with those fleeing the last Islamic State-held area in eastern Syria, headed for camps in northern Syria. Photo / Ivor Prickett, The New York Times "The rhetoric from the media and politicians is they're brainwashed, they're deceived, they're lovestruck, they don't know what they're doing," said Meredith Loken, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst who has studied women who join violent extremist groups. "But even if they didn't pick up guns," she said, many were "actively contributing to this group." Some were reluctant accessories while others were violent zealots. Some were both victims and perpetrators, experts say. Women like Shamima Begum, a British teenager, and Hoda Muthana, a young American-born woman, have drawn headlines in recent weeks partly because it is so difficult to size up their roles and the risk they pose. Begum was unrepentant when a journalist found her in a Syrian camp in February, asking to return to Britain for her unborn child's sake while insisting that the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing, in which 22 were killed, was justified. Muthana later said she regretted joining the Islamic State group, insisting that she had been "brainwashed." Experts contend that bringing Isis members home to be prosecuted or monitored is smarter, safer and, in most countries, more humane than leaving them stranded in the desert or outsourcing their prosecution to the Iraqi justice system. The Trump administration has called for foreign governments to repatriate their citizens, though officials have suggested that some detainees who cannot be repatriated could be sent to the military prison at Guantnamo Bay. "They are your citizens, and, for better or for worse, you're responsible for the mess they're creating," said Tanya Mehra, a researcher at the International Center for Counter-Terrorism at The Hague. Some countries say that Iraq should be able to prosecute foreign Isis members for crimes against Iraqis committed on Iraqi soil. The US-backed forces in Syria have handed over at least 150 Iraqis and foreigners to be tried in Iraq. Yet Iraqi due process standards fall glaringly short of Western ones. Many defendants have been convicted on the basis of confessions extracted through torture, including, according to Human Rights Watch, teenagers who said that they were beaten until they confessed. Iraq's Supreme Judicial Council has said that at least 185 foreign children had been convicted on terrorism charges and sentenced to prison by the end of 2018. Iraq is also negotiating with the Kurdish-led militias who oversee the camps in Syria for the return of the 31,000 Iraqi women and children but Iraq's government has been unable to decide what to do with them. Abandoning Isis followers to the camps or to Iraqi justice, experts argue, may only postpone a reckoning later on. "If you leave them there and you lose track of them, sooner or later they'll try to come back and you have no clue what's happened with them," Mehra said. "At least it's a controlled risk if you bring them back." Kimberly Gwen Polman, who possesses dual US and Canadian citizenship, joined Isis in 2015. She's now one of thousands at the al-Hol camp in Syria. Photo / Ivor Prickett, The New York Times Several countries have proposed an international tribunal to try Isis suspects. While the idea has gained some traction among countries eager to avoid handling the problem themselves, other international tribunals which have generally tried only top officials have proved unwieldy, expensive and of limited effectiveness. Experts view the prospect as unrealistic. Prosecution at home is also complicated. Many countries were so unprepared to deal with returnees that they did not have laws to prosecute them until a few years ago; even now, those laws generally carry sentences of only a few years. Successful prosecution often requires resources that are hard to scrape up and evidence that has long since disappeared on the battlefield. Countries have also struggled with imprisoning former Isis fighters in a way that prevents them from radicalising other prisoners, and then reintegrating them into society once they are released. While no nation has yet developed a large-scale, tried-and-true model for detention to say nothing of deradicalisation, which remains an elusive goal Neumann, the radicalisation expert, said that those that have developed a more sophisticated approach have found that it often requires labour-intensive, case-by-case tailoring. Some governments have appeared more willing to repatriate children than their parents, though few seem ready to send people to Syria and Iraq to collect them. Several countries require children born in the caliphate to undergo DNA testing to prove their parentage, and therefore their citizenship, before repatriation. Kosovo, Russia and Kazakhstan are among the few countries that have retrieved children on a large scale, with the Chechen ruler, Ramzan Kadyrov, organising the return of dozens of Russian-speaking children and, in some cases, their mothers. In the largest one-time repatriation to Europe so far, Kosovo flew 110 of its citizens back from Syria last month, including 32 women and 74 children. To help reintegrate them into society, some countries have favoured separating children from radicalised parents and placing them with relatives or in foster or adoptive homes. While this approach may be the fastest way to rescue innocent children, it also means tearing them away from their mothers, many of whom refuse to part with them. Tunisia, which had one of the largest contingents of foreigners to join Isis, has balked at repatriating its citizens, leaving at least 200 Tunisian children and 100 women marooned in Syria and Libya, according to Human Rights Watch. It has taken months of urging by activists and families for Tunisia to repatriate three children, including a 4-year-old who was orphaned when his parents were killed in airstrikes and two children whose mother remains detained in a camp, the rights group said. "Every day they spend in the camp is one more day outside of school and their fundamental rights," said Khawla Ben Aicha, a member of Tunisia's Parliament who has pushed the government to retrieve the rest of the children. "They didn't choose where they were born, or to have a jihadist parent." But the fragile Tunisian government has stalled, despite calls from Ben Aicha and others for it to take responsibility. "We're in an election year," Ben Aicha said. "It's not something people want to deal with." | https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12229224 |
Why Would Anyone Pay $1,300 for Birds New Scooter? | Scooters have taken the world by storm, and Bird, Lime, and their competitors are capitalizing on a growing market that would rather scoot around a city than drive or ride public transportation. And, the argument goes, scooters also help the environment by reducing carbon emissions, so its a win-win. But so far, neither Bird nor Lime have found a way to win big. Last year, The Information published a presentation that Bird reportedly gave to investors that revealed the company had a gross profit margin of 19% on its rides. But when operational costs are factored inlike employee costs, rent, and other expensesthe company was hemorrhaging cash, according to a Crunchbase report from last year. Thats some eye-opening context to the companys Wednesday announcement that it will sell its newest scooter directly to the public. When its released this summer, the Bird One scooter will cost an eye-popping $1,300 and come in a choice of Jet Black, Dove White, and Electric Rose. And, of course, Bird noted, preorders are available immediately. The company has not only built its business on scooter sharing, but its customers have been conditioned to sharenot buyscooters. And though a ride costs less than a latte, for scooter companies, the opportunities are clear. In an interview with Inc. earlier this year, mobility analyst Horace Dediu said the market opportunity for scooter companies is huge. Were talking trillions of dollars, he said. But, that price. At $1,300, Bird is asking consumers to drop a considerable amount of cash to buy an electric scooter that they could otherwise rentjust down the street, from Bird, no lessfor $1. (They then pay a nominal fee15 centsfor every minute theyre rolling around town.) According to the presentation published in The Information, Bird users average ride came to $3.65, so theyd need to be a serious scooter user to come anywhere close to spending $1,300 in rental fees. Yet heavy Bird users already have a way to subsidize their two-wheeled addiction. Just last week, the company unveiled a new rental program that lets customers ditch the per-ride charge and pay a flat, $25-per-month fee to ride its shared scooters. The program, which will be tested in San Francisco and Barcelona before it rolls out globally, allows for unlimited rides. Renting a Bird for an entire month of unlimited use will cost less than just a couple of ride hail trips or parking garage days in most cities, Bird CEO Travis VanderZanden said at the time. At an annual cost of $300 per year, Birds personal rental program would require four years of monthly participation before it would be smarter to shell out $1,300 for a Bird One to call your own. But the move to sell scooters also brings Bird new competition, now coming from the retail scooter market. For example, Chinese electronics maker Xiaomi sells a long-range, high-end scooter called the Mi Electric Scooter for $448 on Amazon. Meanwhile, the top-of-the-line Swagtron 5 Elite, a scooter designed for heavy city use, will set riders back $350. The Swagtron Swagger 2 Classic, meanwhile, is designed for both adults and children and goes for $200. Yet its likely that Bird isnt thinking of consumers pockets, as much as its thinking of its own. (Bird did not respond to Fortunes request for comment.) Until now, the company hasnt had much trouble funding its business. According to Crunchbase, its raised $415 million across five investment rounds and most recently secured a $2 billion valuation. But eventually, investors want to see a game plan for actually generating profits. And the more of its own cash that Bird can use to fund its business, the less itll need to raise next time around. Making more money, in other words, is critical. Bird ostensibly believes that selling a wildly expensive scooter is the path to that. The company told investors last year, according to The Information, that it pays $551 for each scooter. Assuming a similar cost on the Bird One, the company could stand to make hundreds of dollars on each sale and boost margins. In an interview with The Verge, Birds CEO Travis VanderZanden said the move makes sense. He said his companys goal is to not just do sharing, but to do sharing, rent, and own. Hes now gotten his wish. | http://fortune.com/2019/05/08/bird-one-scooter-sale/ |
How much blood will it take to fire Charles Ryan, Arizona's prison director? | Opinion: A correctional officer was stabbed at Lewis Prison - the place with broken locks that Ryan said was 'under control.' Department of Corrections Director Charles Ryan conducts a media tour of the Lewis Prison Complex in Buckeye in 2014. (Photo: Nick Oza/The Republic) How much blood will it take for Gov. Apparently, a lot. On Wednesday, an inmate armed with an 8-inch piece of metal stabbed a correctional officer at Lewis Prison west of Phoenix the same prison that Ryan has said was "under control." The stabbing that sent the officer to the hospital is just the latest in a series of problems plaguing the state's prison system. But that isnt enough to fire Ryan. Prisons don't adequately provide basic care A federal judge recently threatened to slap a $1.7 million fine over the states systematic failure to provide adequate health care to inmates. The judges ruling, which gave Department of Corrections until July 1 to comply, comes months after an inmate sent a letter to the court complaining of poor medical treatment. The inmate, Richard Washington, later died, though it's not clear how. The state already owes $1.4 million for not complying in 2018 with medical care, as outlined in a lawsuit settlement, and is switching to a new provider at a higher cost to taxpayers. But that wasn't enough to fire Ryan. Nor are they keeping guards or inmates safe CLOSE A decade-long wage freeze has led many corrections officers to leave jobs in Arizona's prisons. Now, Gov. Doug Ducey wants to give officers a pay raise. Nick Oza, The Republic | azcentral.com The state's 10-prison system has had a decade-long wage freeze that has led to huge correctional officer turnover and prisons like Lewis that are dangerously understaffed. That has created safety concerns for officers who must often work overtime to help fill the gap. Democrats and activists have been sounding the alarm for years over poor medical care for inmates, understaffing and other mismanagement that turned the prisons into dangerous places. Most recently, ABC 15 highlighted that Ryan knew of broken locks on cell doors at Lewis Prison, which compromised the safety of inmates and officers. The department reportedly ordered about 1,000 cells to be padlocked. And yet, Ryan remains on the job. Luckily, Wednesday's stabbing didn't involve one of the steel pins from the dysfunctional locks that had reportedly gone missing. The weapon was fashioned out of a portable immersion heater coil. And the unit where the inmate was housed was fully staffed at the time, according to department spokesman Andrew Wilder. But ABC 15 also reported that tensions have been high at the prison since the story about the locks broke, and that inmates unhappy about being padlocked had begun threatening guards. No matter what Ryan does to "fix" conditions at Lewis, he only seems to make them worse. NEWSLETTERS Get the Opinions Newsletter newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Our best and latest in commentary in daily digest form. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-800-332-6733. Delivery: Mon-Fri Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Opinions Newsletter Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. Ducey has a special team of law enforcement and management leaders to ensure immediate action is being taken by the Department of Corrections, spokesman Patrick Ptak has said. At this point, firing Ryan should only be the first step. The governor must not wait for more bloodshed to act. He must take a serious look at the conditions within the prison system and fix them. Elvia Daz is an editorial columnist for The Republic and azcentral. Reach her at 602-444-8606 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter, @elviadiaz1. Read or Share this story: https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/elviadiaz/2019/05/08/correctional-officer-stabbed-fire-charles-ryan-arizona-prison-director/1144753001/ | https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/elviadiaz/2019/05/08/correctional-officer-stabbed-fire-charles-ryan-arizona-prison-director/1144753001/ |
Will Guyana soon be the richest country in the world? | Image caption The discovery of huge oil reserves in Guyana could change the future of the nation South America's second poorest nation is bracing for an oil boom that could catapult it to the top of the continent's rich list - and beyond. "Many people still do not get how big this is," then-US Ambassador to Guyana Perry Holloway told a reception in the capital, Georgetown, last November. "Come 2020, GDP will go up by 300% to 1,000%. This is gigantic. You will be the richest country in the hemisphere and potentially the richest country in the world." It may sound far-fetched, but with a population of around 750,000, in per capita terms, Guyana's wealth is set to skyrocket. ExxonMobil, the main operator in Guyana, says it has discovered more than 5.5 billion barrels' worth of oil beneath the country's waters in the Atlantic Ocean. 'Oil curse' The money would certainly be welcome. This former British colony - the only English-speaking country in South America - has high rates of unemployment and poverty. But history carries a warning for Guyana. The discovery of big oil in other developing nations has exacerbated existing corruption, leading to the new oil wealth being squandered and stolen. It has become known as the oil curse. You may also be interested in: In Guyana, "corruption is rampant," says Troy Thomas, the head of the local chapter of global anti-corruption NGO Transparency International. He says he is "very worried" about the oil curse. A political crisis in recent months has been seen by some as an early sign of the curse's effects. Image caption Troy Thomas is one of those worried about the possible effect of the "oil curse" After the governing coalition lost a no-confidence vote in December, rather than call elections it challenged the vote in the courts. That has led to protests. "All we're asking for is for the government to respect our constitution," a demonstrator tells me, standing on the road outside Guyana's ministry of the presidency. "They just want to remain in power and control the oil money," she adds. The legal battle has continued and this week the Caribbean Court of Justice is hearing the latest appeal in the case. Betting on education "We've seen the experiences in other countries," says Vincent Adams, the new head of Guyana's Environmental Protection Agency, who worked for three decades at the US Department of Energy. "They got all this oil wealth and a lot of those countries are now worse off than before oil." Image caption Vincent Adams says education is key to avoid falling into the trap others before them have For Mr Adams, there is one key to avoiding that trap: "Education, education, education is the foundation. It's the best investment that this country or any country can make." He is leading a push to revamp the faculty of engineering at the University of Guyana, the country's biggest higher education provider. But preparing young Guyanese for the lucrative new industry has not been straightforward. "Unfortunately for us, we don't have right now labs for a petroleum engineering programme," says Elena Trim, the dean of the faculty. It has also been a challenge attracting academic talent with the relevant expertise. "Our salaries are not that high," she says with an ironic chuckle. "So people are applying to the University of Guyana and when we tell them our salary level, they actually don't want to take the offer." Nonetheless, even at this early stage, Guyana's oil industry has already been taking on the faculty's graduates from other engineering specialisms. Two years ago, 10 were given jobs. Last year, the same company asked for 20 more. "Now they [are] taking our students like hotcakes," says Ms Trim. Scepticism abounds In Sophia, one of Georgetown's poorest neighbourhoods, there is less optimism. Some of the self-built houses and shacks only got access to electricity and running water this century. "Quite frankly, in this community, it's close to 10% of the city's population who live here, but 10% of the city's resources are not being spent in here," Colin Marks tells me at the youth centre he set up. Image caption Colin Marks fears the potential new riches will not benefit the community That helps to explain the scepticism about how far the benefits of oil will spread. "Most people are sensitive to it. Because there's more negativity on what it could do for Guyana than positivity. And that's happening because what is happening at the political level. I mean, you're hearing about what happened in Guinea, what happened in Nigeria - Venezuela's next door, you know. So people are very, very sensitive, and not too sure." "In a grassroots community like this, people just want know that if there is money in oil, we want a share of it. We want to benefit from it." Listen to Simon Maybin's report, Guyana - bracing for the oil boom, on Assignment on the BBC World Service or on the BBC Sounds app. | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-48185246 |
What do drivers think of Uber? | Image copyright Getty Images Uber, the firm behind the taxi-hailing app, will list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday. The company plans to raise $10bn by selling shares, which could mean a valuation of $90bn for the company. But ahead of the sale, drivers in the UK and US are striking over pay and conditions. They want more money to go to them, rather than investors. The BBC spoke to two drivers who describe what it is like to work for the firm. Garry Barone Image copyright Garry Barone Image caption Garry Barone says Uber provided him with an opportunity Garry Barone started driving for Uber in London in September 2015, after being made redundant from a career in the travel and leisure industry. "I really needed an opportunity," he says. "I'm 60 next week, so it was an opportunity where I could make money and support my family." He says he never intended to do it for long, "but I realised I liked it and I was wasting a large amount of time applying for other jobs". He is doing about 45 hours of driving for Uber a week, in order to earn what he needs to replace the income he lost, he says. Missed camaraderie He pays Uber 20% of his fares. The terms for new drivers changed in London in 2016. They now pay 25%. "Nothing has changed since when I read the terms, and I thought yes, this is fair. "The sacrifice you make for the freedom is you don't get holiday pay. A lot of drivers have other jobs. They can fit Uber around other things in their life." He starts work at about 15:00 and drives until midnight or 01:00. "When I was an employee I was doing more than that in the office and commuting 10 hours a week," he says. With his new job, there's "no commuting, no homework. I can be totally relaxed on holiday". However, one thing he misses is the camaraderie of being part of an office, he says. 'A godsend' The company's set-up also makes things less stressful, he says. Customers can't haggle about the price of the trip or dodge the fare and there's no risk of being robbed, since Uber takes care of payments. And ratings keep passengers on the straight and narrow, he says. He estimates he's had six bad fares in his 16,000 trips so far. "A lot of people criticise it," he says. "But what an amazing opportunity." Drivers who are "hungry" and prepared to do long hours and days can make 50,000 a year, he estimates, before costs. And while other zero-hours jobs can mean being under-employed, Uber drivers can switch on the app if they want to work. "I don't really know what I would have done" without working for Uber, he says. "It's been a godsend." Muhumed Ali Image copyright Muhamed Ali Image caption Muhumed Ali is striking for better pay from Uber Muhumed Ali has worked for Uber in east London for four years and is a member of the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain which went on strike on Wednesday over drivers' pay and conditions. He has been driving cabs since 2011. "It is getting harder to work for Uber because the cost of driving is very high and the fare is very low. We want Uber to increase the fare and reduce the commission because it gets a fixed proportion of the fare." Minicab drivers get between 1.80 and 2 per mile, while Uber drivers receive 1.25, he says. People he knows who used to be minicab drivers have had to become Uber drivers as the platform has undercut the competition, he says. 'Happy drivers' "You are forced to go to Uber," he says. "I think so," he says. Things are better "when the driver is happy, when you are working for pennies, you don't care about customers". To make ends meet, he has to drive 60 hours a week. "That's the minimum I have to do to make a living," he says. Part of the problem is the costs he must pay in London, he says. Driving into central London on a weekday he must pay the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) charge of 12.50 and the congestion charge of 11.50 - something black cabs don't pay. Paying the costs He must pay this even if only one of his fares requests a stop in the centre of London, he says. On top of this, fuel, insurance, car maintenance and buying a car in the first place, are all costs he must bear. Speaking on World Business Report on World Service radio he says: "I don't know how to feel about [Uber's stock market flotation]." He expects they will try to eke more money from the company which could lead to more of a squeeze for drivers, he adds. His union would like to cut the commission going to the companies. The IWGB says it would like commissions to be reduced to 15% and for fares to be increased to 2 a mile from about 1.25. Uber's float may benefit US drivers, who will be permitted to use bonus money to buy shares. UK drivers will not be offered this perk. | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48198386 |
Is Eritrea coming in from the cold? | Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Last year Eritrea's leader, Isaias Afewerqi, and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed signed a historic peace deal For decades the Eritrean economy has struggled due to a combination of war, dictatorship and the impact of United Nations sanctions. But the East African country's recent rapprochement with its southern neighbour, Ethiopia, and the end of the embargoes, means that its economy now has a chance to grow substantially. The hope is that the nation will export more to the world than people fleeing the country. But as Eritrea continues to be an authoritarian one-party state, with a heavily militarised society, substantial hurdles remain. It is also one of the poorest countries in Africa, with a mostly agriculture-based economy. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Goods have been flowing across the Eritrea-Ethiopia border since last summer Yemane, an Eritrean expat living in Europe, is part of the country's vast diaspora. An estimated 1.5 million Eritreans now live overseas, more often after escaping poverty, or the country's indefinite military service. This is more than one in five of all Eritreans. Yemane was recently back in Eritrea on holiday, in the city of Massawa on the country's Red Sea coast. He also used the visit to do some business research. His company imports Ethiopian beer into Europe, and he hopes to start being able to export it via Massawa. "This would be much easier for my business," he says. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Most of Eritrea's active labour force is employed in defence Presently the entrepreneurial ex-pat has to ship the bottles via the the small coastal country of Djibouti, to Eritrea's south east. This had been the case for all of land-locked Ethiopia's ground and sea exports ever since its 1998 to 2000 border war with Eritrea meant the country could no longer access Eritrean ports. It led to a Cold War-style standoff between the two countries for the next 18 years. But in July 2018, Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia's new Prime Minister, signed a historic peace deal with Eritrea's longstanding President Isaias Afwerki, and the border between the two country's re-opened. It means that Ethiopian merchandise has once again started flowing into Eritrea, while Eritreans have been heading south to shop in northern Ethiopian towns. Then, in November of last year, the UN lifted its sanctions against Eritrea that had been in place for nine years. These included an arms embargo, an asset freeze, and a travel ban. They had been put in place after Eritrea was accused of supporting Islamist militants in Somalia - something it denied. While the four border crossings between Eritrea and Ethiopia are currently officially closed again, this is said to be a short-term move only. "It appears a temporary closure until they regulate tax, customs and visa issues," says Associated Press journalist Elias Meseret, who covers the two countries. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Many Eritreans have left the country to find work It comes as the Ethiopian Ministry of Transport says it is moving ahead with plans for bus services across the border. And another reporter, freelancer Elias Gebreselassie, says that "people and goods are still crossing informally" between the two countries. Eritrea - which gained its independence from Ethiopia in 1993 - used to be famous for its entrepreneurialism and trade ties. This owed much to outside influence - the country has seen influxes of Arabs, Turks and Yemenis throughout its history. Not to forget Italian and British rule. The Italians were in charge from 1890 to 1941, and the British from 1941 to 1950. Eritrea then became part of Ethiopia. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Gold, copper and zinc are mined in Eritrea's western Bisha area "There is a popular saying in Eritrea - 'let the farmers farm, and the traders trade'," says Tekle Woldemikael, a sociology professor at Chapman University in California, who was born in Eritrea. "It means that Eritreans value the possibility to do trade in open and unrestricted markets." Sadly, in recent decades the Eritrean economy has been gutted, first by the country's 30-year fight for independence, then by the 1998-2000 border war. And the economy is still being profoundly affected by the government's far left economics. "Eritrea's economic stagnation is rooted in the communist government's profound antipathy to free trade and capitalism, not the war, and that's not going to end because of the truce," says Michela Wrong, who wrote a book on Eritrea's fight for independence. Currently, the government limits each person to withdrawing 5,000 Nakfa (about $330; 250) a month from banks, ostensibly to tackle the currency black market, but this hinders private initiatives and entrepreneurialism. This is compounded by continued mandatory national service, which leaves most young people "serving the nation" in the military or in government ministries for extremely limited salaries. Nicole Hirt of the GIGA Institute of African Affairs, in Hamburg, is also pessimistic about the possibility of an economic renaissance in Eritrea. "The problem is the infrastructure has been completely neglected," she says. "I would warn against being over optimistic, because the ruling elite has always tried to control the economy, and has left very little space for private investors." Global Trade More from the BBC's series taking an international perspective on trade: Currently, the country's only significant export is gold mined in the western Bisha area and sent to China and South Korea. However, there is growing interest in doing business with Eritrea around the world. At the end of 2018, a group of about 80 Italian investors representing sectors such as energy, construction and agriculture, visited Eritrea with the Italian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Emanuela Del Re. Image caption The disputed border town of Badme was at the heart of the war between the two countries, whose capitals as Asmara and Addis Ababa "Of course, Eritrea has huge potential to export," says Ms Hirt. "After World War Two, it was one of the most industrialised areas in Africa. "[Today] fish could be exported in large quantities, as well as marble, potash, gold, copper, zinc, textiles, processed food, hides, meat, wine and beer." A spokesman for the Eritrean government said that the country's large diaspora could help boost the economy. Most already send back cash to their families, and, officially, ex-pats have to pay a 2% tax on income earned abroad. In fact, some estimate that about 30% of Eritrea's gross domestic product is derived from money sent back to the country. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Italy's Deputy Foreign Minister, Emanuela Del Re, is keen to build trade ties with Eritrea But while ex-pats like Yemane are looking at renewing their ties, other commentators warn against any expectation of rapid change in the country. "Eritrea needs to develop its own basic food security before thinking about exports," says Victoria Bernal, an anthropology professor at the University of California, and an expert on the country. "They also cannot do international business without strengthening their ICT [information and communications] infrastructure." Ms Hirt adds that most potential international investors are also likely to hold back until they see real political reform in the country. | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47934398 |
Could a 2,400 basic income eradicate extreme poverty in Scotland? | Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Universal basic income would put money in people's pockets to be spent however they choose, with the aim of lifting people from poverty Scrapping the current benefits system and replacing it with a basic income could eradicate destitution, according to a new report. The RSA charity wants to see every adult in Scotland given a basic annual income of 2,400, rising to 4,800. Children would be paid 1,500. It claims the move would improve health and wellbeing while removing the stigma of receiving benefits. But some critics say it would encourage fecklessness. The Scottish government supports proposed trials of the system by councils in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Fife and North Ayrshire. And it says it is interested in any ideas which could reduce poverty and tackle inequality. The report supporting the idea of a universal basic income has been compiled by the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA). Image caption Jamie Cook is head of the RSA which produced the report into universal basic income It highlights trials in Canada and Finland which have suggested basic income could increase health and well-being without denting labour market participation. Jamie Cook, head of the RSA, said: "It's an old idea. It is the idea that every person receives a regular, unconditional and secure payment from the state. It is money to give people the chance to make decisions in their life, to know that they have that money coming in on a regular basis. "And particularly in contrast to the systems we have now, it doesn't place conditions, sanctions and punishments on how they use that money." Image caption Canadian photographer Jess Golem took shots of people holding cards explaining what they spent the money on But social commentator Rory Scothorne felt the move would not scratch the surface. He said: "Universal basic income can't take on the system as a whole. "It is designed as a policy fix for something that is in a deeper crisis. "The idea we need policies to fix destitution in a rich country like Scotland suggests a need for a much broader and more ambitious approach." Image caption Social commentator Rory Scothorne thinks the problem is bigger than a one-policy fix The SNP backed the idea of a basic income in 2016. Communities Secretary Aileen Campbell said: "In addition to delivering a better social security system built on dignity and respect, the Scottish government is committed to reducing poverty and tackling inequality. Therefore, we are interested in any proposal that would help us achieve this, including lessons learned through international basic income pilots. "That is why we committed to explore a Citizen's Basic Income (CBI) study and four local authorities have begun research into the feasibility of a CBI pilot. "We welcome the engagement done by RSA on this, but any decision to proceed with a pilot is subject to the findings of the feasibility study which will set out full details of the ethical, legislative, financial and practical implementation of the pilot on the ground." Earlier this week the shadow chancellor John McDonnell said the Labour Party would explore the idea. Every adult in Scotland would receive a basic income of 2,400 per year later rising to 4,800. Children get slightly less. Out would go the personal tax allowance and universal credit. Staying in would be other benefits including payments for housing, disability and the state pension. Paying everyone the full 4,800 a year, would cost 3.5% of Scottish GDP, that's 1.9bn per year. Image caption With basic income, some additional benefits would remain Anthony Painter, director of action and research at the RSA, outlined the advantages of the system: "Under austerity, we have seen the state stepping back in terms of the cash support it offers people, while increasingly stepping in to police the behaviour of the people needing cash support. "Basic income has been tested and shown to have a positive impact on wellbeing and trust without reducing participation in the labour market overall. "Meanwhile Universal Credit - relying on sanctions to control individuals - has been shown to have damaging effects on health, wellbeing and trust, and creates greater economic insecurity. "This means we must consider a basic income to promote economic security and freedom, as an alternative to today's unpopular, threadbare and hostile welfare state." Image caption In Ontario, basic income recipients spent the payments on food, medicine, on living costs to allow them to attend college and on local travel "Basic income changed our lives" By James Cook, Chief News Correspondent, The Nine Hamilton is a Canadian city with a Caledonian heritage and the two nations still have plenty in common. Where heavy industry once brought work and wealth, now the future is far less certain. Tens of thousands of people used to toil in Ontario's steel mills. In recent decades the number has dwindled dramatically, partly because of automation. That is one reason why this city was picked as a trial zone for a basic income pilot. Image caption Jodi Dean was part of a basic income scheme in Ontario, Canada and said it was a "life changer" The level chosen here, the equivalent of around 10,000 per year, is much higher than that being proposed in Scotland. At first it had support from all sides of the political spectrum but it's hard to say whether it worked effectively because it was scrapped two years into a three year pilot when an incoming conservative government declared abruptly that it was unaffordable. Some recipients say they were left high and dry, arguing that their plight only highlighted the need for the benefit in the first place. "Basic income basically changed our lives," says Jodi Dean who was picked to participate in the study. Jodi's daughter has special needs. She spends a small fortune on hospital parking and her husband has been off work with a serious injury. "This is the first month that we've had without our basic income and it's already been stressful," she told BBC Scotland's The Nine. "It was a life changer. It kept the bills paid and it kept the groceries coming and without it I don't know how we would have survived" "Helping someone out of poverty is not a handout," Jodie insists. "Try and find a job when you can't afford a hair cut or clean clothes or transportation to an interview. Basic income gave people those opportunities," she says. Whether or not basic income is the solution, people in Canada and Scotland are facing potentially profound economic challenges which may yet lead to a radically redesigned state. | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-48207818 |
Who is looking into the Boeing 737 MAX? | Government investigations and reviews The Department of Justices Fraud Section has opened a criminal investigation into the development and certification of the Boeing 737 MAX by the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing. The Department of Transportations Inspector General and the FBI are participating in the investigation. Federal attorneys are gathering evidence through a federal grand jury seated in Washington, D.C. Grand jury proceedings are conducted in secret and the Justice Department has declined to comment on the investigation. The FAA and Boeing have also declined to comment. The Transportation Departments Inspector General is conducting a separate administrative audit into the certification of the MAX. At a Senate subcommittee hearing in March, Inspector General Calvin L. Scovel III said such audits generally take about seven months, but could take longer given the complexity of the issue. The U.S Senates Aviation and Space subcommittee held a public hearing March 27, where Daniel Elwell, the FAAs acting administrator, defended the agencys oversight of the jet. A second hearing, where Boeing officials might testify, is pending without a date. In early April, the FAA announced the formation of a review panel headed by former National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) chairman Christopher Hart, comprising a team of experts from the FAA, NASA and international aviation authorities. The group will conduct a comprehensive review of the certification of the automated flight-control system on the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, as well as its design and how pilots interact with it, the FAA said. A U.S. House subcommittee has scheduled a May 15 hearing on the Boeing 737 MAX airliner. The Aviation Subcommittee of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will hold the hearing at 10 a.m. The committees website says the hearing will be on the status of the Boeing 737 MAX. Elwell and NTSB chair Robert Sumwalt are scheduled to testify, but no Boeing officials. Information from The Washington Post and The Associated Press is included in this summary. | https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/who-is-looking-into-the-boeing-737-max/?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=Referral&utm_campaign=RSS_business |
Will Pavelski play for the Sharks in Game 7? | San Jose Sharks' Joe Pavelski lays injured in 3rd period during Game 7 of NHL Western Conference 1st round playoff game at SAP Center in San Jose, Calif., on Tuesday, April 23, 2019. The Sharks would score 4 goals on the ensuing 5 minute major penalty on Vegas Golden Knights' Cody Eakin. less San Jose Sharks' Joe Pavelski lays injured in 3rd period during Game 7 of NHL Western Conference 1st round playoff game at SAP Center in San Jose, Calif., on Tuesday, April 23, 2019. The Sharks have been without captain Joe Pavelski throughout this series with Colorado, after Pavelski suffered a head injury in Game 7 against the Vegas Knights 15 days ago. On Wednesday, Pavelskis wife Sarah told the San Jose Mercury News that her husband was 75 percent. Im 75 percent sure he will play, Sarah Pavelski was quoted as saying. Hes hoping to, but wants to see the doctors one more time this morning to be sure. Joe is feeling good... It would sure make a good story." The official word from coach Peter DeBoer pregame was that Pavelski will go through warmups. And then well make a decision, DeBoer said. We didnt have a pregame skate. So well see how he feels after warmups and make that call. Pavelski had eight staples in his head and clearly suffered a concussion, though hockey culture prevents anyone from coming out and admitting that. I think as gruesome as it was,and hes a tough guy, the nature of the injury is that no one is going to rush that, DeBoer said. Those things are so unprecitable. You can have an injury like that and miss months or be back in a week. His symptoms werent as bad as the it looked, coming off the ice. Clearly, Pavelskis presence would give a boost to the team and to the crowd. I dont know whats going to be happenin, Evander Kane said. Whether hes in or not, whoevers dressing has to step up and bring their A game. If we do that I think we win this hockey game. Ann Killion is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @annkillion | https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Will-Pavelski-play-for-the-Sharks-in-Game-7-13830539.php |
Can bill raising age to buy tobacco, e-cigarettes stay 'clean' enough to pass? | (CNN) A bipartisan group of senators said Wednesday that they believe their bill to raise the age to buy tobacco and e-cigarettes can pass Congress and be signed into law -- but only if they can keep it free of loopholes and fend off efforts to water it down or load it up with controversial provisions. It's a challenge, they warned, made even greater by the complex and shifting legislative battlefield over tobacco. Sen. Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat, said major anti-smoking organizations, like the American Lung Association, are backing their bill for one major simple reason: "It has no loopholes, it has no exceptions, there are no tricks. It is a clean piece of legislation." The Tobacco to 21 Act -- which aims only to raise the purchasing age from 18 to 21 -- is sponsored by Schatz, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Republican Sens. Todd Young of Indiana and Mitt Romney of Utah. It is also backed by the tobacco industry, which has heavily promoted its support for raising the age limit, including in a full-page ad in The Washington Post on Wednesday. Schatz acknowledged that he is skeptical of the industry's support. "As long as we have our lawyers scouring the language for loopholes or problems, and as long as we hold the pen, I'm confident this is a good public health measure, despite the support of the tobacco industry," he said. Schatz said he didn't know exactly how opponents of the legislation might try to change it but that they would be on guard. "We don't know if there will be an attempt to water it down," he said. "I think we ought to expect it, but we don't know what tactically they will try to do." After a Capitol news conference to promote the bill, Schatz explained that when they drafted the legislation they were looking for the surest way to get it enacted, and that meant leaving lots of other controversial anti-tobacco proposals -- such as banning kid-friendly flavors for e-cigarettes -- out of the legislation. "It's as clean as clean can be, which is not to say it's a comprehensive tobacco strategy. It's just the most important one thing that can be done quickly," he said. The Kentucky Republican, who is up for reelection in 2020, has announced that he will soon introduce his own legislation to raise the buying age to 21. While the details of his bill haven't been released, he did say it would have an exemption for members of the military who are under 21, something Schatz said was an unacceptable loophole. Perhaps. McConnell's role is key because he controls the floor and can decide which legislation will get there. He comes from a state that has a rich tobacco history but has suffered economically as tobacco has become less popular because of its health risks. Steve Callahan, a spokesman for the tobacco giant Altria, told CNN his company supports both bills. "We support these clean bills that will raise of age of purchase to 21," Callahan said, although he said his company has not weighed in on the military exception. At the news conference, Matthew Myers, who heads the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, urged lawmakers to pass "this strong legislation and to reject any efforts whatsoever by special interests to either water down this law or add provisions to this law that would provide more protection for the tobacco companies than for our nation's youths." Anti-smoking activists worry that any changes could prevent a bill from getting 60 votes and that some of those changes might be disguised as positive proposals but actually be designed to keep the bill from passing. "Sometimes what happens is a good piece of legislation has people who add things to it that also sound really good -- where there is a lot of support for it -- but they know that there is not enough support for it to get to 60 votes," Romney said. "So they kill something by making it sound better, even knowing it can't get across the line. " In explaining his support for the bill, Young lamented that Indiana ranks 45th in the country for tobacco use and said revising the law is the quickest way to change that. "The most achievable, the most consequential and the most impactful step we can take at the federal level to bring down health care costs and improve health outcomes is to pass this bill. To increase the tobacco purchase to 21," Young said at the news conference. Durbin made clear he wants to ban vaping flavors -- such as "fruit medley, gummy worms, cotton candy" -- that he said are aimed at young users but he said that fight would come separately. None of the senators knew firsthand whether President Donald Trump would sign their bill. But Young said he was confident that their legislation would get at least 60 votes in the Senate, pass the House and go to Trump's desk "as drafted" -- without any changes. | https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/08/politics/tobacco-vaping-bill-age-to-buy-senate/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_allpolitics+%28RSS%3A+CNN+-+Politics%29 |
Was sentence fair for woman who burned down boyfriend's house, stabbed neighbor? | EDGEWATER, Fla. A Florida woman who set her boyfriends house on fire and stabbed a sheriffs captain was sentenced this week to a year in prison, but will only serve 52 days in a state facility, court records show. That is because Brittany Bonin, 27, of Edgewater, spent 314 days in the Volusia County Branch Jail when she was arrested Oct. 21, 2017. Those days were credited to Bonin, her Orlando attorney Richard Hornsby said. Fifty-two days. Thats one way of looking at it but she really did more than a year, Hornsby said in a telephone interview Tuesday afternoon. Bonins no contest plea resulted in her being adjudicated guilty on two felonies, first-degree arson and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, and misdemeanor domestic battery. The sentence did not please the family of Michael DeMalia, whose house was destroyed by the fire, his mother, Donna DeMalia, said Tuesday. Get the news delivered to your inbox: Sign up for our morning and afternoon newsletters Bonins prison time will be followed by two years house arrest and five years probation, court records show. Come on! I guess thats the Florida justice system for you, Donna DeMalia said by phone Tuesday. Edgewater police said they arrived at 4:17 p.m. Oct. 21, 2017 at 3319 Pine Tree Drive to find black smoke coming from the home. In a neighboring driveway, police found sheriffs Capt. Clifford Williams restraining Bonin. Williams told officers and was heard in a 9-1-1 call saying Bonin had stabbed him in the lower back, reports state. Bonin pleaded no contest in open court March 29 to domestic battery, aggravated battery on a person with a deadly weapon and first-degree arson. She faced a minimum of four years and 10 months in prison but Hornsby filed a motion asking the court to impose a downward departure sentence. On Monday, Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols sentenced Bonin to 366 days, of which 52 days will be served in state prison followed by the supervised probation. Bonin will also have to complete mental health treatment and 100 hours of community service, court documents state. In Bonins arrest report, Edgewater police said the woman went to the Pine Tree Drive home, where her boyfriend Michael DeMalia lived, to get her belongings and end their relationship. The pair got into a physical confrontation. When Michael DeMalia left the home, Bonin broke a fish tank and started setting clothes and a shower curtain on fire, police reports state. Michael DeMalia had gone to a neighbor, Williams, to call 9-1-1, investigators said. Bonin planned to commit suicide by crashing her car into a tree but couldnt get the car started to leave the scene, police said. Instead, when she saw Michael DeMalia in Williams driveway, she grabbed a knife and went after the boyfriend, police said. Bonin swung at Michael DeMalia and thats when Williams got in between them to stop the fight. The sheriffs captain said he was unaware Bonin had a knife until he punched her in the face to bring her down to the ground and felt a sharp object go into his back, reports state. In his motion asking the court to impose a lower sentence, Hornsby argued that Bonin had no prior criminal history and that Michael DeMalia was physically and emotionally abusive to her. Bonin wanted a monogamous relationship with Michael DeMalia but he manipulated Bonins emotions and used her for sexual purposes, the attorney said in his motion. Hornsby argued that the deputy was injured while Bonin was flailing wildly toward Michael DeMalia and in response Williams punched her in the face. Williams injury did not require any treatment beyond cleaning and a small bandage, Hornsby said to the court. The judge found that (Bonin) needed specialized mental treatment, that the offense was unsophisticated, isolated and that she is remorseful, Hornsby said Tuesday. Donna DeMalia said her son is not talking to the media about the case but she wanted people to know that her family is not pleased with the courts decision. Her son is slowly recovering from the 2017 incident. Hes got a lot of help rebuilding but he lost a lot of sentimental things he wont get back, Donna DeMalia said. I hope that every night she closes her eyes, she remembers what she took from him. | https://www.dispatch.com/news/20190508/was-sentence-fair-for-woman-who-burned-down-boyfriends-house-stabbed-neighbor |
What can we do as citizens to help reduce the provincial debt? | So lets stop grumbling and start offering construction suggestions. 1. It must cost a bundle to run that ugly pink pile called Queens Park. Shutter it. There are large private-sector venues in Toronto that would be delighted to host daytime legislature sessions for a fee. Move MPPs and their staff out of offices and into private-sector coffee shops. Give them a budget for coffee so they can keep drinking and not get kicked out before 5 p.m. That leaves us with a huge empty building in downtown Toronto; lease it to the city for housing or sell it to developers for luxury condos. Talk about a win-win-win situation. 2. PC MPPs want to share the pain as they go about chopping, but they dont have children with autism or hungry kids, and they dont use municipal water supplies or libraries. So lets institute a kind of reverse BOGO system: For every one dollar removed from public goods and services by the PCs, the PC MPPs will contribute matching debt-reduction funds out of their own (healthy) salaries. Citizens, lets get the ideas rolling in. Margaret Kerr, Toronto | https://www.thestar.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editors/2019/05/09/what-can-we-do-as-citizens-to-help-reduce-the-provincial-debt.html |
What's the best compact camera for travelling? | Im looking for a compact travel camera. I presently have a Canon S100 and realise it is old and out of date. On the other hand, a US camera reviewer suggests buying the best quality smartphone possible, not a camera Dave in Canada The Canon S100 was announced in November 2011, and it was one of the best digital compacts of its day. Enthusiasts liked its ability to shoot RAW images, its full manual controls and its 5x zoom lens. It also offered HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography, in-camera GPS, auto-focus tracking with face detection, and could shoot 1080p videos. It wasnt bad value at 429/$429.95 (US dollars). Amusingly enough, I recommended the Canon S95 in Ask Jack, before your S100 replaced it. At the time, cameras were developing in several different directions. These included the rise of enthusiast cameras with bigger sensors, and a boom in the new category of travel zooms, which I looked at in 2011 and 2017. Travel zooms have small sensors but their lenses have much larger zoom ratios, typically from 10x to 30x. With a travel zoom, you can capture the wide expanse of the Old Town Square in Prague then zoom in for a close-up of the astronomical clock. Or you can capture a panorama of Florence from the Piazzale Michelangelo then zoom in on the dome of the distant cathedral. Good luck doing that with a smartphone. Your S100 should still be perfectly serviceable despite its age. However, its a 12 megapixel camera with a too-small 1/1.7in CMOS sensor that has fallen behind todays standards. And while it has a very respectable 5x zoom lens, every travel camera can now go longer. Unfortunately, not many small compacts can provide both high quality and big zooms, and theyre usually not cheap. However, there are a couple within your budget. Quality matters Digital cameras use sensors to capture light, so the bigger the sensor, the more light it captures. This leads directly to better image quality and less noise, particularly in low-light conditions. The problem is that a bigger sensor needs a bigger lens, which makes it harder to provide a bigger zoom range. (Zooms for full-frame DSLRs can be enormous.) Typical smartphones have had 1/2.3in sensors that measured 6.3 x 4.7mm while compacts like your S100 usually have slightly bigger 1/1.7in sensors measuring 7.6 x 5.7mm. Quality compacts such as the Sony RX100 brought us 1in or 13.2 x 8.8mm sensors, and a few have even gone beyond that to 4/3in or 17.3 x 13mm sensors, marketed as Micro Four Thirds. Either way, a one-inch sensor is now an affordable target. See: Compare digital camera sensor sizes. Dont forget that lens quality is also very important, just as it was with film cameras. In fact, DxOMark which tests smartphones, cameras and lenses introduced a metric it calls the Perceptual MegaPixel to show how much the lens quality reduces the effective sensor quality. You can lose up to half the resolution youve paid for because the lens isnt good enough. Compact choices Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sony RX100 line of cameras are some of the best. Photograph: Sony If you want a compact with smartphone-beating image quality, the 20MP Sony RX100 VA is one of the best of the bunch, but it only has a 3x zoom (24-70mm equivalent). Its also beyond your budget at CDN$1,1179.95 (or 799 in the UK), though you might be able to find one for less. The strongest challenger is Panasonics Lumix LX100 II, which has a bigger 4/3in sensor and a Leica 24-75mm zoom lens for around the same price (CDN$1,199 or 786.60). If this is the kind of camera you want, there may be older and cheaper models available. Last year, both Sony and Panasonic introduced versions with big sensors and long zoom lenses. Sony launched the RX100 VI with an 8x 24-200mm zoom, albeit it at a very high price (CDN$1,599.97 or 1,084.60). Panasonic upgraded the superb Lumix DC-ZS100 (TZ100 outside North America) to the ZS200 (TZ200 outside North America), giving it an even bigger zoom. Where the ZS100 had a 10x 25-250mm lens, the ZS200 pushed that to a 15x 24-360mm zoom. At the moment, the DC-ZS200 is my top recommendation at CDN$969 (623), just within your budget, though the DC-ZS100 looks like a bargain at CDN$749 (431). You decide. Theres a side-by-side comparison of the main cameras mentioned here at DP Review. As you can see, they all have electronic viewfinders (essential), RAW support, wifi and so on. Both Sony and Panasonic make professional video equipment, and all these compacts produce excellent video, with Panasonic perhaps having the edge. However, shooting video eats batteries very quickly, and can cause small cameras to get hot. Compacts cant really compete with DSLRs or the legendary Panasonic GH5 (CDN$2,800 or 1,749). Ive linked to Amazon prices for convenience because Im not familiar with the Canadian retail scene, but Photoprice.ca could help you to shop around. The smartphone option Facebook Twitter Pinterest Smartphones such as the Huawei P30 Pro have multiple cameras on the back that allow you to switch between zoom, standard and wide-angle shots. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian Theres no doubt that smartphones can take most of the pictures that most people want to take most of the time. That much is obvious from the steep fall in sales of compact cameras. I also know from experience that decent smartphone cameras produce far better results than the cheap fixed-lens cameras that consumers used for decades, from Kodak Box Brownies to 110 and 126-format Instamatic cameras to 35mm compacts such as the popular Olympus Trip. Smartphones also have the advantage that theyre almost always available. Most people carry their smartphones everywhere, which is something that even the keenest pocket camera users find hard to match. Further, smartphones are better at doing what people want, which is to edit photos immediately then share them online via Facebook, Instagram or whatever. In these cases, convenience trumps absolute image quality. Facebook reduces images to 2048 pixels wide or tall, and Instagram to 1080px, so shooting 5216 x 3472 pixels on a proper camera is overkill. But smartphones also have their drawbacks. In particular, there are trillions of pictures you just cant take with a smartphone. Apart from a rare few expensive models, you usually cant swap the built-in lenses for wide-angles or zooms, which means they cant really handle wildlife or sports photography, and they may struggle with architecture and landscapes. Most dont handle low-light situations well, and none of them have powerful flashes. You cant frame and shoot subjects as quickly or as accurately as you can with cameras that have zoom lenses and proper viewfinders. And while you may always have your smartphone camera with you, its probably running out of battery. Todays smartphones have powerful processors so they can use lots of computational tricks to make their results look good, such as stitching together sections from sequences of images and/or multiple lenses. But ultimately, they dont deliver the image quality you can get from the best digital cameras, even if most people either cant see or dont care about the differences. In the end, it depends what youre shooting, and why. Youd be perfectly happy to Instagram your lunch with a smartphone. But I hope you wouldnt want your wedding album shot on one, because its an unrepeatable and, ideally, once-in-a-lifetime event. If youre making that once-in-a-lifetime trip to Kansas, Kyoto or Kathmandu, then you can get better results with a good camera. Any pixels you dont capture at the time are lost forever. Email it to [email protected] This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that third-party cookies will be set. More information. | https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2019/may/09/whats-the-best-compact-camera-for-travelling |
Has Kyrie played his last game for Celtics? | Michael Dwyer / AP It begins. It's very possible. Welcome to free agency, Kyrie. He's now in the place that other big names like Kevin Durant, Jimmy Butler, Kawhi Leonard and Klay Thompson all will be whenever their respective seasons end, whether that happens with a playoff defeat, or with an injury Durant left Game 5 of Golden State's Western Conference semifinal series against Houston on Wednesday night with a right calf strain or with their fingerprints smudging the golden surface of the Larry O'Brien Trophy. They will all hear some version of the question that Irving got. Free agency doesn't technically start until July 1, but in actuality it began for the superstar point guard with 8:40 left in the fourth quarter of Game 5 when he checked out for the last time in what capped Boston's ousting from the Eastern Conference semifinals by the Milwaukee Bucks. He has a player option for next season, one that would pay him about $21 million. No one expects him to pick up that option. Irving got the question a number of different ways Wednesday night, and his defense was stellar. No hints, whatsoever. "I'm just trying to make it back to Boston first, safely," Irving said. "Get to see my family. Decompress. Do what human beings do." This will be a seismic free-agent summer in the NBA and everyone has known this was coming for some time. Durant, Butler, Leonard, Thompson, Irving and Kemba Walker all may sign deals worth well over $100 million apiece. Combined, the total value of those six looming contracts could flirt with $1 billion if everyone involved decides to max-out and not take shorter-term deals. The New York Knicks might have close to $75 million in salary-cap space, more than enough to potentially land Irving and Durant. The Los Angeles Clippers could have close to $60 million. Brooklyn, Dallas, Atlanta and Indiana might have about $50 million apiece. The Los Angeles Lakers even with LeBron James' big contract and a coaching search that has gone from slow to stuck have more than enough to add some major names. It will be wild, starting with lots of eyes on Golden State. Questions about Durant leaving have percolated all season and will only pick up between now and July 1. Thompson's future has been the source of much debate. Imagine: The Warriors could win their third straight title and fourth in five years, and they might break up anyway. Butler will take a long look at signing elsewhere, and he might start hearing 'the question' as soon as Thursday when Philadelphia now on the ropes against Toronto. Leonard's future with the Raptors may be tied to how deep they go in the playoffs. Walker's situation in Charlotte hinges on the size of the offer the Hornets make to keep him. Irving tried to make all the chatter about his future go away in early October, when he stole the show at a preseason event for Celtics fans at the team's arena in Boston. He grabbed the microphone, walked toward midcourt and delivered a sentence that is going to get replayed a lot over the next eight weeks. "If you guys will have me back, I plan on re-signing here," Irving said. Sounded great then. Doesn't seem so iron-clad now. And truth be told, the Celtics might be thinking they're better off without Irving anyway given how they went deeper in the playoffs with him sidelined last season and his struggles over the last four games of the Milwaukee series. They were 35-19 at one point. They went 19-18 the rest of the way. They went 14-17 in Irving's last 31 appearances. They were 12-3 when he didn't play this season. Irving won't be taking a whole lot of questions if any over the next few weeks about his future. He knows what would be asked. All that matters now is his answer. | https://lasvegassun.com/news/2019/may/09/has-kyrie-played-his-last-game-for-celtics/ |
Is it huge news that Trump once lost money and took tax writeoffs? | The dense and lengthy New York Times report says a great many things about Donald Trump's finances, but it does not say one potentially damaging thing: that he broke the law. Instead, it is a portrait of a high-flying developer who lost a whole lot of money at times mostly other people's money while at times also making money. It is a portrait of a businessman who often avoided paying taxes legally just like most entrepreneurs in the loophole-ridden real estate business. JOY BEHAR ASKS TRUMP VOTERS: 'WOULD YOU LET HIM INVEST YOUR MONEY?' I'm not defending his conduct. I think he should have released his tax returns as a presidential candidate, just like every other nominee of the past 40 years. Trump's refusal to do so has opened the door to endless speculation and leaked material as journalists and others ask what he's got to hide. But I don't think the Times opus is going to cost him political support. For one thing, his backers will continue to view him as a successful mogul, and his detractors will continue to see him as a scam artist. What's more, we generally knew that Trump used a mountain of debt and lots of tax writeoffs in building his empire and that he lost zillions on such ventures as the bankrupt casinos and an airline shuttle. Even the Times says the disclosures do not "offer a fundamentally new narrative of his picaresque career." And while anchors and pundits keep pronouncing Trump "the biggest loser," he's still got a plane, Trump Tower, Mar-a-Lago and, oh right, the presidency. SUBSCRIBE TO HOWIE'S MEDIA BUZZMETER PODCAST, A RIFF OF THE DAY'S HOTTEST STORIES The Times obtained printouts from Trump's IRS transcripts for the tax years 1985 to 1994, when he surged to national prominence. These are not the most recent returns that the Democratic House is demanding from the Treasury. The red-ink revelation: "The numbers show that in 1985, Mr. Trump reported losses of $46.1 million from his core businesses largely casinos, hotels and retail space in apartment buildings. They continued to lose money every year, totaling $1.17 billion in losses for the decade. In fact, year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer." And something no politician wants to advertise: "Overall, Mr. Trump lost so much money that he was able to avoid paying income taxes for eight of the 10 years." Trump bragged about using depreciation to cut his taxes in his 1987 book "The Art of the Deal." And the Times acknowledges that "the tax code also lets business owners like Mr. Trump use losses to avoid paying tax on future income a lucrative deduction intended to help troubled businesses get back on their feet." (Ordinary taxpayers can also write off property depreciation and losses, but this is a pittance compared to what big-time developers do.) The Times quoted Trump lawyer Charles Harder as calling the story "demonstrably false," and saying the papers assertions "about the president's tax returns and business from 30 years ago are highly inaccurate." Then came the inevitable Trump tweets: TRUMP BLASTS 'HIT JOB' NY TIMES REPORT ON LOSSES IN TAX RETURNS "Real estate developers in the 1980s & 1990swere entitled to massive write offs [sic] and depreciation which would, if one was actively building, show losses and tax losses in almost all cases. Much was non monetary. [sic] Sometimes considered 'tax shelter,' you would get it by building, or even buying. You always wanted to show losses for tax purposes....almost all real estate developers did - and often re-negotiate with banks, it was sport. Additionally, the very old information put out is a highly inaccurate Fake News hit job!" So he acknowledges and justifies the practices all true and then calls it "fake news." By the way, candidate Trump bragged about his big writeoffs in a 2016 fall debate, declaring, "I love depreciation!" One side note is Trump's brief moonlighting as a corporate raider. From 1986 through 1988, Trump "made millions of dollars in the stock market by suggesting that he was about to take over companies. But the figures show that he lost most, if not all, of those gains after investors stopped taking his takeover talk seriously." CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP It may well be that Donald Trump lost far more money than he wanted us to know, paid far less in taxes than he wanted us to know, and was far more aggressive in exploiting the tax system than he wanted us to know. But there's no requirement that a businessman not take every available deduction to avoid paying taxes. And we've known that Trump went through boom-and-bust cycles, including the Atlantic City casinos that went belly-up, in the past. A report that he was doing these things 30 years ago, without any evidence of improper conduct, isn't going to change many minds. | https://www.foxnews.com/politics/is-it-huge-news-that-trump-once-lost-money-and-took-tax-writeoffs |
Will Donald Trump honor Denver STEM School shooting hero Kendrick Castillo? | Opinion: Kendrick Castillo gave his life lunging at a gunman in his classroom. He deserves more than prayers and condolences. As do all victims of gun violence. This undated photo provided by Rachel Short shows Kendrick Castillo, who was killed during a shooting at the STEM School Highlands Ranch on May 7, 2019, in Highlands Ranch, Colo. (Photo: Rachel Short, AP) A few weeks back, President Donald Trump awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Tiger Woods, who is very good at golf and also has a business relationship with Trump. So far, Kendrick Castillo has yet even to receive a presidential tweet. Not one that mentions his name, anyway. Castillo lunged at one of two young gunmen at STEM School Highlands Ranch outside of Denver on Tuesday. He was shot and killed. Two other students also went after the shooter. Dying days before graduation A classmate named Nui Giasolli told NBCs Today that Castillo didnt hesitate after spotting the weapon. She said, "Thats when Kendrick lunged at him, and he shot Kendrick, giving all of us enough time to get underneath our desks, to get ourselves safe, and to run across the room to escape." Quick response from students, a school security guard and first responders limited what could have been a bigger tragedy. As it was, in addition to Castillos death there were eight injuries. Two gunmen are in custody, one 18, one 16. A pathetic political routine Afterward, politicians followed a much-practiced routine. They condemned the shooting. They mourned the loss. They offered prayers and condolences. They moved on. Trump tweeted: Our Nation grieves at the unspeakable violence that took a precious young life and badly injured others in Colorado. God be with the families and thank you to the First Responders for bravely intervening. We are in close contact with Law Enforcement. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 8, 2019 Then he went back to trashing Democrats and praising his self-perceived accomplishments. It shouldn't surprise us. Whenever there is a violent incident that should spur action on the gun violence problem, all we ever get from politicians like Trump are words. They rely too heavily on the deep pockets of the National Rifle Association and the rest of the gun lobby to do anything else. And because of it, great young people like Kendrick Castillo are made to die as heroes. Something we SHOULD talk about Unspeakable violence, Trump said. We're only in May and already the Gun Violence Archive reports there have been nearly 5,000 firearms deaths and more than 9,000 injuries in the U.S. (The website notes that it does not include the nearly 22,000 suicides by gun each year.) Loudly. Pointing out that it can, in many ways, be preventable violence. Following mass shootings at places ranging from Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut to the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, the victims, survivors and their advocates have asked elected officials to legislate a few commonsense regulations. A ban on assault weapons. A ban on high-capacity magazines. Universal background checks on every gun sale. Some others. NEWSLETTERS Get the Opinions Newsletter newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Our best and latest in commentary in daily digest form. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-800-332-6733. Delivery: Mon-Fri Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Opinions Newsletter Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters What we get instead are words. Prayers and condolences. Or, in the case of Kendrick Castillo, who actually deserves a Presidential Medal of Freedom, not even a tweet. Reach Montini at [email protected] Read or Share this story: https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/ej-montini/2019/05/09/donald-trump-kendrick-castillo/1150069001/ | https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/ej-montini/2019/05/09/donald-trump-kendrick-castillo/1150069001/ |
Why are we so obsessed with telling the time? | In partnership with Written by Jean-Michel Johnston Jean-Michel Johnston is a researcher on the 'Diseases of Modern Life: Nineteenth Century Perspectives' project at the University of Oxford. The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer. CNN is showcasing the work of The Conversation, a collaboration between journalists and academics to provide news analysis and commentary. There is something unnerving about "The Clock", Christian Marclay's acclaimed installation, which was recently on display at the Tate Modern in London before moving to Australia where it has appeared in Melbourne to sell-out crowds. This remarkable piece of contemporary art, which has traveled the world gathering awards and critical acclaim, is a montage of scenes drawn from thousands of films, from Orson Welles' "The Stranger" to James Bond in "Live and Let Die," which feature a clock or timepiece of some kind. The installation itself also functions as a 24-hour clock, the time displayed in each segment corresponding to that in the "real world" -- at 12 pm, for instance, viewers are treated to the ringing of bells in High Noon. Rarely does the action in one film clip lead logically to the next -- the narrative arc of "The Clock" is simply the passage of time itself. And yet, throughout, viewers remain transfixed, eagerly anticipating the next scene, the next moment in time. Our incapacity to live in the present is hardly a modern phenomenon. As St Augustine wrote in around 400 AD: "No time is wholly present ... all time past is forced on by the future." What Marclay's installation foregrounds, however, is the degree to which our experience of time has become associated with the means to measure and quantify it -- in a word, with clocks. Few public or private spaces remain today which have not been infiltrated by some kind of time-reckoning device, whether a clock, watch, computer screen or smart phone. Throughout history and across cultures, of course, humans have developed diverse means of dividing the natural cycles of day into segments to help track the passage of time. Water clocks, sundials, sand-glasses and bells have all been used in various ways to identify, measure and announce the time. And "knowing" the time has obvious advantages -- it allows the members of a given community to coordinate their activities, to pursue their own individual goals while congregating or interacting at particular moments. Much emphasis has been placed , for example, on the importance Benedictine monks attributed to the strict regulation of time, the division of the day into "hours" of prayer, sleep and work. During the Middle Ages in Europe, the repeated, at times cacophonous, ringing of church and town bells served to structure the daily life of local inhabitants. Clock-watching With the emergence of mechanical clocks in the 1300s, the time was increasingly displayed in public spaces, providing a focal point for the organization of social life. But the 18th century witnessed an explosion in the manufacture of a different, more personalized device -- the watch. By the late 1700s, it has been estimated , the annual world production of watches stood at between 300,000 and 400,000. Henceforth, time was portable and wealthy individuals could adjust their own personal watches to public clocks, bringing home a more accurate knowledge of the time. The habit of clock-watching had emerged. The Clock face on the Queen Elizabeth Tower, commonly referred to as Big Ben. Credit: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Europe/Getty Images During the 19th century, however, this practice turned into a veritable obsession. A number of factors stimulated this phenomenon, among which were the development of industry and new means of transport and communication. Railway timetables, time-stamped telegrams and factory discipline all called for stricter conformity to the time of the clock. And it was during the 19th century that time was standardized across countries and, with the International Meridian Conference of 1884, the globe. Time was no longer determined locally, in each town or village, according to the position of the sun, but "transmitted" by electric wires, from a specified location -- in Britain, of course, this was Greenwich, which then became the reference point for the world's time zones. The Greenwich meridian in London, England. Credit: Oli Scarff/Getty Images Europe/Getty Images By 1900, Switzerland alone was exporting more than 7 million watches and watch movements every year, suggesting the extent to which individuals were adjusting their personal lives to the structures of public time. By the turn of the 20th century, punctuality had become the hallmark of modern society. Resistance to the imposition of standard clock time, whether in rural communities or Western colonies, was considered a sign of backwardness, and "keeping up" with time had become a new source of anxiety. In 1881, the American neurologist George Beard listed "clocks and watches" among the causes of what he described as an epidemic of "nervousness" : "They compel us to be on time", he wrote, "and excite the habit of looking to see the exact moment, so as not to be late for trains or appointments." Looking to the future In the early 20th century, the German historian Karl Lamprecht similarly detected a link between the contemporary concern for punctuality and a widespread, pathological "excitability". Modern society, it seemed, as it does today, had come to depend on a universal effort to be on time. "If all the watches in Berlin suddenly went wrong in different ways," the sociologist Georg Simmel wrote in 1903 , "... its entire economic and commercial life would be derailed for some time." The Greenwich Shepherd Gate Clock at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Credit: Oli Scarff/Getty Images Europe/Getty Images Beard, Lamprecht and Simmel had recognized the Janus-faced quality of the clock as a cornerstone of social life. A well-adjusted clock only ever indicates the present moment in time. But it also situates us in a continuum of events and interactions, inviting us to look ahead, whether with excitement, apathy or anxiety, to our future engagements. It is this modern paradox that Christian Marclay's installation illustrates so well. Incessantly reminded of the time, the viewer sits in anticipation of the future, experiencing what the French writer Jean D'Ormesson described as a "static precipitation [which] transits as briefly as possible through this paradoxical state which is its aim and its heart, and which we call the present". For a moment, groups of visitors are invited to experience together the temporally structured present which they share, a present which dissolves when they, as individuals, decide it is time to leave. | https://www.cnn.com/style/article/why-are-we-obsessed-with-telling-the-time-conversation/index.html |
How Big A Problem Is Religious Objection In Health Care? | About once a year for the last decade, a health care provider would file a complaint of conscience through Health and Human Services. Last year, complaints skyrocketed to 343. AILSA CHANG, HOST: When a health care provider feels they have been forced to do something they disagree with on moral or religious grounds, they can file a complaint with the Department of Health and Human Services. Some high-profile cases have involved nurses who objected to abortion. For the last decade, HHS has gotten an average of one of those complaints per year. Last year, though, that number jumped to 343. NPR's Selena Simmons-Duffin wanted to find out why. SELENA SIMMONS-DUFFIN, BYLINE: Roger Severino runs the HHS Office for Civil Rights. And last week, he unveiled a new rule titled Protecting Statutory Conscience Rights In Health Care. He says this will cost $312 million to implement in the first year. And he says that increase in complaints demonstrates the need for this rule. His office declined to provide details about the 343 complaints or an explanation for the sudden jump, but public outreach is certainly part of it. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) ROGER SEVERINO: In January of 2018, we launched a new Conscience and Religious Freedom Division to make sure our existing conscience and religious freedom laws get the focused attention that they deserve. SIMMONS-DUFFIN: He even made a video last year. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) SEVERINO: If you believe that a covered entity has violated your civil rights, conscience and religious freedom or health information privacy, you may file a complaint through our website. SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Dr. David Stevens thinks health care workers got Severino's message. DAVID STEVENS: Now that it's well-publicized and it's available, people are contacting them. SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Stevens is the CEO of the Christian Medical Associations based in Bristol, Tenn., which represents 19,000 members. STEVENS: We're happy to provide compassionate and quality care for anybody that walks in the door as long as we don't become morally complicit in something that violates our conscience. That might be, for a transgender patient, being involved in a transition. SIMMONS-DUFFIN: He also points to abortion and physician-assisted suicide as examples. Stevens thinks complaints are rising because there's more antagonism now against people of faith. And he says there are pent-up complaints from before the Trump administration when providers felt like they had nowhere to go. STEVENS: The big issue in the past has not been having laws. The big issue is having them enforced. JOCELYN SAMUELS: It is wholly inaccurate to say that we in any way abdicated our responsibility to enforce these laws. SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Jocelyn Samuels was Severino's predecessor as director of the Office for Civil Rights under President Obama. She agrees Severino's public outrage is probably part of the increase in conscience complaints. But she's concerned that that publicity will make providers think that there's blanket protection to refuse care based on religious or moral beliefs. In reality, she says, the laws are quite narrow. SAMUELS: So for example, a orthopedist cannot refuse to set the leg of an LGBT patient because the orthopedist disapproves of that person's sexual orientation or gender identity. SIMMONS-DUFFIN: She says, of course, the number of complaints aren't a perfect metric for the scope of an issue. But... SAMUELS: For at least a decade, before this administration, there were not very many allegations that this was a problem and even now is dwarfed by the number of complaints filed under other laws. SIMMONS-DUFFIN: When she was in charge, she says they got around 20,000 complaints a year about privacy of health information and several more thousand complaints of civil rights violations. That puts 343 complaints of conscience rights violations into context. Selena Simmons-Duffin, NPR News. Copyright 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. | https://www.npr.org/2019/05/08/721552511/how-big-a-problem-is-religious-objection-in-health-care?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=healthcare |
Can the World's Largest Democracy Endure Another Five Years of a Modi Government? | Of the great democracies to fall to populism, India was the first. In 2014, Narendra Modi, then the longtime chief minister of the western state of Gujarat and leader of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was elected to power by the greatest mandate the country had seen in 30 years. India until then had been ruled primarily by one partythe Congress, the party of Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehrufor 54 of the 67 years that the country had been free. Now, India is voting to determine if Modi and the BJP will continue to control its destiny. It is a massive seven-phase exercise spread over 5 weeks in which the largest electorate on earthsome 900 milliongoes to the polls. To understand the deeper promptings of this enormous expression of franchisenot just the politics, but the underlying cultural fissureswe need to go back to the first season of the Modi story. It is only then that we can see why the advent of Modi is at once an inevitability and a calamity for India. The country offers a unique glimpse into both the validity and the fantasy of populism. It forces us to reckon with how in India, as well as in societies as far apart as Turkey and Brazil, Britain and the U.S., populism has given voice to a sense of grievance among majorities that is too widespread to be ignored, while at the same time bringing into being a world that is neither more just, nor more appealing. Illustration by Nigel Buchanan for TIME The story starts at independence. In 1947, British India was split in two. Pakistan was founded as a homeland for Indian Muslims. But India, under the leadership of its Cambridge-educated Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, chose not to be symmetrically Hindu. The country had a substantial Muslim population (then around 35 million, now more than 172 million), and the ideology Nehru bequeathed to the newly independent nation was secularism. This secularism was more than merely a separation between religion and state; in India, it means the equal treatment of all religions by the state, although to many of its critics, that could translate into Orwells maxim of some being more equal than others. Indian Muslims were allowed to keep Sharia-based family law, while Hindus were subject to the law of the land. Arcane practicessuch as the mans right to divorce a woman by repudiating her three times and paying a minuscule compensationwere allowed for Indian Muslims, while Hindus were bound by reformed family law and often found their places of worship taken over by the Indian state. (Modi made the so-called Triple Talaq instant divorce a punishable offense through an executive order in 2018.) Nehrus political heirs, who ruled India for the great majority of those post-independence years, established a feudal dynasty, while outwardly proclaiming democratic norms and principles. India, under their rule, was clubbish, anglicized and fearful of the rabble at the gates. In May 2014 those gates were breached when the BJP, under Modi, won 282 of the 543 available seats in Parliament, reducing the Congress to 44 seats, a number so small that Indias oldest party no longer even had the right to lead the opposition. Populists come in two stripes: those who are of the people they represent (Erdogan in Turkey, Bolsonaro in Brazil), and those who are merely exploiting the passions of those they are not actually part of (the champagne neo-fascists: the Brexiteers, Donald Trump, Imran Khan in Pakistan). Narendra Modi belongs very firmly to the first camp. He is the son of a tea seller, and his election was nothing short of a class revolt at the ballot box. It exposed what American historian Anne Applebaum has described as unresolvable divisions between people who had previously not known that they disagreed with one another. There had, of course, been political differences before, but what Modis election revealed was a cultural chasm. It was no longer about left, or right, but something more fundamental. The nations most basic norms, such as the character of the Indian state, its founding fathers, the place of minorities and its institutions, from universities to corporate houses to the media, were shown to be severely distrusted. The cherished achievements of independent Indiasecularism, liberalism, a free presscame to be seen in the eyes of many as part of a grand conspiracy in which a deracinated Hindu elite, in cahoots with minorities from the monotheistic faiths, such as Christianity and Islam, maintained its dominion over Indias Hindu majority. Modis victory was an expression of that distrust. He attacked once unassailable founding fathers, such as Nehru, then sacred state ideologies, such as Nehruvian secularism and socialism; he spoke of a Congress-free India; he demonstrated no desire to foster brotherly feeling between Hindus and Muslims. Most of all, his ascension showed that beneath the surface of what the elite had believed was a liberal syncretic culture, India was indeed a cauldron of religious nationalism, anti-Muslim sentiment and deep-seated caste bigotry. The country had a long history of politically instigated sectarian riots, most notably the killing of at least 2,733 Sikhs in the streets of Delhi after the 1984 assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. The Congress leadership, though hardly blameless, was able, even through the selective profession of secular ideals, to separate itself from the actions of the mob. Modi, by his deafening silences after more recent atrocities, such as the killing of more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, in his home state of Gujarat in 2002, proved himself a friend of the mob. He made one yearn for the hypocrisies of the past, for, as Aldous Huxley writes, at least the political hypocrite admits the existence of values higher than those of immediate national, party or economic interest. Modi, without offering an alternative moral compass, rubbished the standards India had, and made all moral judgment seem subject to conditions of class and culture warfare. The high ideals of the past have come under his reign to seem like nothing but the hollow affectations of an entrenched power elite. That a person born to a poor family is challenging their Sultunate [sic], he is trying to resurrect the spirit of 2014, which was the spirit of revolution. Them is Indias English-speaking elite, as represented by the Congress party; sultanate is a dog whistle to suggest that all the heirs of foreign rule in Indiathe country had centuries of Muslim rule before the British took over in 1858are working in tandem to prevent the rise of a proud Hindu nation. An Ikea customer in Hyderabad Atul LokeThe New York Times/Redux In 2014, Modi converted cultural anger into economic promise. He spoke of jobs and development. Taking a swipe at the socialist state, he famously said, Government has no business being in business. That election, though it is hard to believe now, was an election of hope. When the Delhi press tried to bait the Modi voter with questions about building a temple in Ayodhya, a place where Hindu nationalist mobs in 1992 had destroyed a 16th century mosque, said to stand at the birthplace of the Hindu epic hero Ram, they stoutly responded with: Why are you talking to us of temples, when we are telling you that were voting for him because we want development. Sabka saath, sabka vikasTogether with all, development for allwas Modis slogan in 2014. As India votes this month, the irony of those words is not lost on anyone. Not only has Modis economic miracle failed to materialize, he has also helped create an atmosphere of poisonous religious nationalism in India. One of his young party men, Tejasvi Surya, put it baldly in a speech in March 2019, If you are with Modi, you are with India. If you are not with Modi, then you are strengthening anti-India forces. Indias Muslims, who make up some 14% of the population, have been subjected to episode after violent episode, in which Hindu mobs, often with what seems to be the states tacit support, have carried out a series of public lynchings in the name of the holy cow, that ready symbol of Hindu piety. Hardly a month goes by without the nation watching agog on their smartphones as yet another enraged Hindu mob falls upon a defenseless Muslim. The most enduring image of Modis tenure is the sight of Mohammad Naeem in a blood-soaked undershirt in 2017, eyes white and enlarged, begging the mob for his life before he is beaten to death. The response of leadership in every instance is the same: virtual silence. Basic norms and civility have been so completely vitiated that Modi can no longer control the direction of the violence. Once hatred has been sanctioned, it is not always easy to isolate its target, and what the BJP has discovered to its dismay is that the same people who are willing to attack Muslims are only too willing to attack lower-caste Hindus as well. The party cannot afford to lose the lower-caste vote, but one of the ugliest incidents occurred in Modis home state of Gujarat, in July 2016, when upper-caste men stripped four lower-caste tanners, paraded them in the streets and beat them with iron rods for allegedly skinning a cow. Modis record on womens issues is spotty. On the one hand, he made opportunity for women and their safety a key election issue (a 2018 report ranked the country the most dangerous place on earth for women); on the other hand, his attitude and that of his party men feels paternalistic. He caused outrage in 2015 when he said Sheikh Hasina, Bangladeshs Prime Minister, had a good record on terrorism, despite being a woman; Modis deputy, Amit Shah, speaks of women as having the status of deities, ever the refuge of the religious chauvinist who is only too happy to revere women into silence. Yet Modi also appointed a woman Defense Minister. If these contradictions are part of the unevenness of a society assimilating Western freedoms, it must be said that under Modi minorities of every stripefrom liberals and lower castes to Muslims and Christianshave come under assault. Far from his promise of development for all, he has achieved a state in which Indians are increasingly obsessed with their differences. If in 2014 he was able to exploit difference in order to create a climate of hope, in 2019 he is asking people to stave off their desperation by living for their differences alone. The incumbent may win againthe opposition, led by Rahul Gandhi, an unteachable mediocrity and a descendant of Nehru, is in disarraybut Modi will never again represent the myriad dreams and aspirations of 2014. Then he was a messiah, ushering in a future too bright to behold, one part Hindu renaissance, one part South Koreas economic program. Now he is merely a politician who has failed to deliver, seeking re-election. Whatever else might be said about the election, hope is off the menu. I covered the 2014 election from the holy city of Varanasi, which Modi had chosen as his constituency, repurposing its power over the Hindu imagination, akin to that of Jerusalem, Rome or Mecca, to fit his politics of revival. That election split me in two: on the one hand, I knew, as someone of Muslim parentage (my father was a Pakistani Muslim) and a member of Indias English-speaking elite, that the country Modi would bring into being would have no place for me; on the other hand, I was in sympathy with Modis cultural diagnosis of what power looked and felt like in India. In the West, the charge that liberalism, or leftism, corresponds to the power of an entitled elite is relatively new and still contestable. In India, for decades to be left-wing or liberal was to belong to a monstrously privileged minority. Until recently, there was no equivalent group on the right, no New England Republicans, no old-fashioned Tories. It was easy to feel that being left-wing was the province of a privileged few who had gone to university abroad, where they had picked up the latest political and intellectual fashions. Sardar Singh Jatav recovers after an attack by higher-caste Hindu men in September 2018 Atul LokeThe New York Times/Redux Modi in 2014 was able to make the cultural isolation of the Indian elite seem politicalpart of a foreign-led conspiracy to undermine the real India. He revealed that a powerful segment of the country was living in a bubble. It was an effective political tactic, but it also obscured the fact that real India was living in a bubble of its own. Nehru had always been clear: India was not going to become a modern country by being more authentically itself. It needed the West; it needed science and technology; it needed, above all, to embrace the scientific temper and to eschew the obscurantism and magic that was at the heart of its traditional life. Modi, inadvertently or deliberately, has created a bewildering mental atmosphere in which India now believes that the road to becoming South Korea runs through the glories of ancient India. In 2014 Modi suggested at a gathering of doctors and medical professionals in Mumbai that ancient Indians knew the secrets of genetic science and plastic surgery. We worship Lord Ganesha, he said of the Hindu deity. There must have been some plastic surgeon at that time who got an elephants head on the body of a human being and began the practice of plastic surgery. He has in every field, from politics and economics to Indology itself, privileged authenticity over ability, leading India down the road to a profound anti-intellectualism. He appointed Swaminathan Gurumurthy, Hindu nationalist ideologue, to the board of the Reserve Bank of Indiaa man of whom the renowned Columbia economist Jagdish Bhagwati said, If hes an economist, Im a Bharatanatyam dancer. It was Gurumurthy who, in a quest to deal with the menace of black money, is thought to have advised Modi to put 86% of Indias banknotes out of commission overnight in 2016, causing huge economic havoc from which the country is yet to recover. Modi now finds himself seeking to hold power in a climate of febrile nationalism, with a platform whose themes have much more to do with national security and profiting from recent tensions between India and Pakistan than with economic growth. In 2017, after winning state elections in Uttar Pradesh, Indias most populous state, which happens also to have its largest Muslim population, the BJP appointed a hate-mongering priest in robes of saffron, the color of Hindu nationalism, to run that state. Yogi Adityanath had not been the face of the campaign. If he was known at all, it was for vile rhetoric, here imploring crowds to kill a hundred Muslims for every Hindu killed, there sharing the stage with a man who wanted to dig up the bodies of Muslim women and rape them. Modi has presided over a continuous assault on the grove of academe, where the unqualified and semiliterate have been encouraged to build their shanties. Academia in India was dogmatically left-wing, but rather than change its politics, Modi attacked the idea of qualification itself. From the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) to Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), which produced a roll call of politicians and intellectuals, Indias places of learning have been hollowed out, the administration and professors chosen for their political ideology rather than basic levels of proficiency. Modi is right to criticize an India in which modernity came to be synonymous with Westernization, so that all those ideas and principles that might have had universal valence became the preserve of those who were exposed to European and American culture. What Modi cannotor will notdo is tell India the hard truth that if she wishes to be a great power, and not a Hindu theocracy, the medieval Indian past, mired in superstition and magic, must go under. It is not enough to be more truly oneself. In India, as in Europe, wrote the great Sri Lankan historian A.K. Coomaraswamy, the vestiges of ancient civilization must be renounced: we are called from the past and must make our home in the future. But to understand, to endorse with passionate conviction, and to love what we have left behind us is the only possible foundation for power. The desperation that underlies Modis India is that of people clinging to the past, ill-equipped for the modern world, people in whom the zealous love of country stands in for real confidence. Cows are sacred to Hindus. Cow-protection mobs have killed at least 46 people since 2015. Most targets were Muslim Atul LokePanos/Redux The question of what is hers, and what has come from the outside, is a constant source of anxiety in India. The same process that made the Indian elite foreigners in their own landin Mahatma Gandhis phrasingis repeating, albeit unevenly, throughout the country across classes and groups never exposed to Western norms and culture in the past. Our culture is being decimated, one young member of the ABVPthe most powerful Hindu nationalist youth organization in the countrytold me in Varanasi. Many in my family have received degrees in commerce; but I chose to be nearer my culture. A great civilization, like ours, cannot be subdued without the complicity of men on the inside, working against us. SomeoneI cannot say whois controlling us, and there is but the difference of a syllable between vikas [development] and vinasha [ruin]. This young Hindu nationalist is part of a new generation of Indians, untouched by colonization, but not spared globalization. They live with a profound sense of being trifled with. They feel their culture and religion has been demeaned; they entertain fantasies of Hinduphobia and speak with contempt of sickluars, libtards and the New Yuck Times. One has the feeling they are converting their sense of cultural loss into a political ideology. It produces in them a rage for the OtherMuslims, lower castes, the Indian elitethe men on the inside, who have more generations of Westernization behind them. Last month, Amit Shah compared Muslim immigrants to termites, and the BJPs official Twitter handle no longer bothers with dog whistles: We will remove every single infiltrator from the country, except Buddha [sic], Hindus and Sikhs. If this wasnt bad enough, the BJPs candidate for the central Indian city of Bhopal, with its rich Muslim history and a Muslim population of over 25%, is a saffron-clad female saint, who stands accused of masterminding a terrorist attack in which six people were killed near a mosque. Currently out on bail, Sadhvi Pragya Thakurs candidacy marks that all-too-familiar turn when the specter of extreme nationalism and criminality become inseparable. Modis India feels like a place where the existing order of things has passed away, without any credible new order having come into being. His brand of populism has certainly served as a convincing critique of Indian society, of which there could be no better symbol than the Congress Party. They have little to offer other than the dynastic principle, yet another member of the Nehru-Gandhi family. Indias oldest party has no more political imagination than to send Priyanka GandhiRahuls sisterto join her brothers side. It would be the equivalent of the Democrats fielding Hillary Clinton again in 2020, with the added enticement of Chelsea as VP. Modi is lucky to be blessed with so weak an oppositiona ragtag coalition of parties, led by the Congress, with no agenda other than to defeat him. Even so, doubts assail him, for he must know he has not delivered on the promise of 2014. It is why he has resorted to looking for enemies within. Like other populists, he sits in his white house tweeting out his resentment against the sultanate of them. And, as India gets ready to give this willful provincial, so emblematic of her own limitations, a second term, one cannot help but tremble at what he might yet do to punish the world for his own failures. Taseer, a novelist and journalist, is the author, most recently, of The Twice-Born: Life and Death on the Ganges Contact us at [email protected]. This appears in the May 20, 2019 issue of TIME. | http://time.com/5586415/india-election-narendra-modi-2019/ |
How will the Vegas Golden Knights resolve William Karlssons situation this offseason? | William Karlsson sighs when asked the question hes grown accustomed to gettingand tired of answering. Its nice to have a long-term [contract], just to not have to deal with these kinds of questions after every year, the Vegas center jokes. This is where I want to be. Ever since I got here, Ive been very happy, both on and off the ice. Like many jokes, this one is based in truth. Karlsson wants a long-term deal. And Vegas General Manager George McPhee has repeatedly said he wants him here. Yet, Karlsson and the Golden Knights are headed for the same contract negotiations they held a year ago. Those resulted in a one-year deal worth $5.25 million. This time, its anyones guess. The issue last year was trying to determine the value of a player who rose from relative obscurity to superstardomin the form of 43 goals and 78 points in Karlssons inaugural season with the Knights. Now, its figuring out the value of a player who followed it up with a 24-goal, 56-point seasonstill respectable but, in Karlssons words, a little bit of a disappointment. The negotiations will result in one of five things. In decreasing order of likelihood, Karlsson will 1) sign a long-term deal, 2) sign a one-year deal, 3) hold out, 4) get traded or 5) receive an offer sheet. Offer sheet This is the least likely option, but worth examining in case it happens. Another team can offer Karlsson a contract, known as an offer sheet, which he can sign. The Golden Knights would then have seven days to match that contract. If they decline, Karlsson joins whichever team gave him the offer sheet, and the Golden Knights receive compensatory draft picks from his new team, depending on the value of his new contract. Its a good idea in theory, giving rights to players before they hit true free agency. And a player like Karlsson, who has elite potential but is having trouble coming to terms with Vegas, seems like a prime target for an offer sheet. But dont count on it happening. Ryan OReilly was the last NHL player to sign an offer sheet, and that happened in 2013. The last player to change teams was Dustin Penner way back in 2007, which suggests that if Karlsson winds up playing for a different organization next year, it will happen some other way. This story originally appeared in the Las Vegas Weekly. | https://lasvegassun.com/news/2019/may/09/how-will-the-vegas-golden-knights-resolve-william/ |
Is the $6M 'Full House' home the most expensive asking price ever for a famous TV home? | 1 / 19 Back to Gallery San Francisco's famed "Full House" house recently hit the market for $6 million. The 1883 Italianate with an exterior that appeared for a brief moment in the opening credits of the '80s sitcom and its Netflix reboot is located at 1709 Broderick St. on the edge of the city's tony Pacific Heights neighborhood. The price for a 2,500-square-foot home might seem high in most places in the country, but it's pretty typical in the world of sky-high S.F. real estate. We looked at more recent listings and sales of homes that starred in television shows and found it sits near the top of the list, but it's not number one. ALSO: SF's famed 'Full House' house is returning to the market In our search, we found some recent sales with dollar amounts below the home that served as the fictitious Tanner household. Take the iconic "Brady Bunch" house in North Hollywood, also 2,500 square feet. Last summer, it sold for nearly twice the asking price due to HGTV entering the bidding war. The sale of the home at 11222 Dilling St. closed in August 2018 at $3.5 million, or $1.6 million more than the listing price of $1.885 million. Another sale in the past five years is the Dunphy home, featured on ABC's "Modern Family" and located in Los Angeles. It was listed in 2014 for $2.35 million and sold for $2.15 million. There's also the Los Angeles historic mansion featured in the first season of FX's "American Horror Story." That went for $3.2 million in 2014, taking a major cut from its initial asking price of $17 million. One property that falls above the $6 million mark is Carrie Bradshaw's Manhattan pad; it sold for $9.85 million back in 2012 (leading us to wonder what it would go for now). And here's another with what's likely the highest listing price for a TV house ever: the Bel-Air mansion at 875 Nimes Rd. from the CBS sitcom "The Beverly Hillbillies." It is currently listed for $245 million. The grand estate has 11 bedrooms, 18 bathrooms and surrounding grounds worthy of a French chateau. The "Full House" house is the only home in San Francisco to gain major fame through a TV show, with dozens of people stopping by daily for Instagram photos. There are other residences with celebrity appeal because they appeared in movies, and if you scroll through the gallery above, you can see the prices of those homes. | https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/most-expensive-TV-house-Full-House-famous-13829330.php |
What even is wine anymore? | Its 2019, and the boundaries are blurring. I go into wine shops and have to squint to tell the difference between bottles of sparkling wine and bottles of cider on the shelves. At my local beer bar, at least a quarter of the draft pours have peaches or boysenberry or wine grapes in them. Things I was always trained to dislike in wine like high concentrations of brettanomyces Im reconsidering as positive attributes if present in beer or cider. Clean, which always seemed the most innocuous of fermented beverage descriptors, is suddenly a dirty word in some drinking circles. Funk is in. Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. As a reporter, Im fascinated. The tides of drinking fashion are rolling! Even more exciting, the energy behind this embrace of funk has a pseudo-political edge to it. (A reporters dream.) Anarchic is how Bon Appetits Alex Delany puts it in a recent story. Funky, boundary-blurring beverages provoke our notions of what wine, beer or cider even is. And when these drinks ferment spontaneously, rather than being inoculated with lab yeast, Delany writes, they challenge our assumptions of control. Thats what gets me out of bed in the morning, he announces. On an episode of his podcast The Grape Nation last October, Sam Benrubi asked Isabelle Legeron, who runs the natural-wine event Raw Wine Fair, what the next big thing in the natural-wine world was the next orange wine, the next pet-nat. Legeron didnt hesitate: co-fermentations of grapes with other fruits, like apple or quince. The rise of these co-fermentations, Legeron went on, is really exciting because, in a way, it harks back to you have a farm, you have a few apple trees, you have a few grapes, its what nature gives you. Even throwing in some honey from your hive. Yep, fascinating stuff. As a critic, though, I have some bones to pick. Were conflating a lot of disparate things here: Natural or spontaneously fermented beverages dont have to taste funky. Hybrids of beer/wine/cider dont have to be spontaneously fermented. This is correlation, not causation. We need to be more careful about helping consumers tell the difference between whats philosophically appealing (see: anarchic; what nature gives you) and whats physically appealing (does it taste good?). Im learning too. I dont know how to evaluate a beer thats also a cider and tastes like a wine. It defies everything I know about beer and cider and wine. Im open to engaging in a new set of standards for how we decide what to drink in fact, Im exhilarated by it. Like Delany, I usually request Give me something fun to drink when Im out at a restaurant or bar run by someone with interesting taste. Thats the ideal setting to discover something unusual: with a trustworthy guide. My hope is just that as we rewrite some of our expectations of what fermented beverages should be, we do it in a thoughtful way that doesnt dispense with standards entirely. A blanket embrace of anything funky is just as void as a blanket embrace of anything with a 100-point score. What Im watching If you read any story by me this week, its statistically likely to be about Wine Country, the gal-pal flick directed by Amy Poehler which begins streaming on Netflix on Friday. (Seriously, I wrote three separate stories about it.) I shared a glass of wine in Napa recently with two of the films stars, Rachel Dratch and Liz Cackowski (who also co-wrote the screenplay), who told me about their real-life Wine Country trip that inspired the film. I was impressed with their swirling techniques and with their use of wine descriptors like jammy. (Later, Cackowski told me, We like to say things like jammy, but we dont really know.) Cackowski also mentioned shes a wine club member at several California wineries, including Robert Sinskey in Napa, plus Tablas Creek and Linne Calodo in Paso Robles. Its always the third winery that you visit where you end up joining the wine club, she said. You think that one is the winner, but it doesnt matter youre the drunkest at that point and you sign up and buy a sh**load of wine. She clarified that she also enjoys the wines from those three wineries when shes not drunk. Check out all our coverage of Wine Country: I examine the cultural trope of the Napa Valley girlfriends getaway, and argue that its problematic. Subscribe to Drinking with Esther. Read More On The Press, I reveal which wineries the characters visit in the film and which wine bottles you might spot them drinking from. I weigh in. Finally: film critic Carla Meyer reviews Wine Country. What Im reading The word heritage gets thrown around a lot in the world of drinks, especially when it comes to cider. Olivia Maki, who owns Redfield Cider bar in Oakland, has a powerful piece about the ugly baggage that heritage brings with it, namely our countrys history of slavery. The Chronicles Washington correspondent Tal Kopan explains what the Congressional Wine Caucus does. (Hint: It has more to do with insects than with actual drinking.) If youre not really in the mood to read, Tal also explains the caucus on the Its All Political podcast. Our restaurant critic Soleil Ho reviews Verjus, the wine bar from Michael and Lindsay Tusk. (I wrote about Verjus wine program back in January.) San Francisco is best place in the country to drink but dont take it from me! On Monday, the James Beard Awards named our own Bar Agricole the winner for Outstanding Bar Program, and Benu for Outstanding Wine Program. Provocative headline alert: Weed tourism is the new wine tasting in California, says my colleague Melia Russell. Drinking with Esther is a weekly newsletter from The Chronicles wine critic. Follow along on Twitter: @Esther_Mobley and Instagram: @esthermob | https://www.sfchronicle.com/wine/article/What-even-is-wine-anymore-13829912.php |
Can Nommo be a neighborhood bar in a new San Francisco neighborhood of glass towers? | You probably have no reason to be on the corner of Harrison and Fremont streets, at the edge of the San Francisco neighborhood that were now supposed to call the East Cut. Unless youre in a car winding your way off the Bay Bridge, or you work in a nearby office tower, its not likely youll pass by Nommo, a new bar and restaurant from Chronicle Bar Star Jon Santer (the co-owner of Prizefighter) and Thad Vogler, who owns Bar Agricole, Trou Normand and Obispo. But if youre one of the few who live in one of the gleaming new glass buildings surrounding the gleaming new glass building that houses this spot, you may need a neighborhood bar, even if where you live doesnt quite feel like a neighborhood yet. Nommo is trying to be that bar, but its an uphill battle. The space itself is a hindrance, so huge at 3,800 square feet that Ive never seen it more than half full. Couples and afterwork groups wander in and pause in the doorway until a bartender explains that its open seating. Nearly every time, people gravitate to the more crowded side of the space, the way partygoers always find their way to the kitchen. The vast room, designed by Wylie Price, is pretty but not especially comfortable, more like a showroom of blond wood furniture than a place for people to unwind. Nommos square tables and metal-legged wooden chairs call to mind the classroom feeling of State Bird Provisions (also designed by Price), but theres so much space between seats here that any energy quickly dissipates. If youre having trouble conversing over the Rolling Stones album thats pounding through the speakers, you cant pull your bar stool closer to your date here the stools are neatly anchored to the floor in exact intervals. Its difficult for a space like this to ever feel warm. But while Nommos aesthetics had me yearning for a more human touch, the service almost made up for it. Bartenders here are knowledgeable and friendly, whether youre wondering about the ingredients in a drink or the cuts of charcuterie on the $36 assortment plate. On a particularly warm early evening, I was tempted by a Temescal IPA ($6), but asked for help picking a cocktail (all $14) instead. The bartender guided me to La Iguana, a chile-spiced mezcal martini, explaining: Its a good mix of things you think arent going to work together. She was right: The drinks fruity bianco vermouth helped to mellow the smoky olive oil character of the mezcal, though perhaps the cocktail should come with a warning. The heat throbbed on my tongue until my food arrived. These cocktails all feel unfussy, each one described in a succinct three-ingredient list. The most interesting flavors come in stirred drinks. The Boulevardier(ish), flavored with St. George Spirits Bruto Americano instead of Campari, is delightfully bitter with a vegetal edge. The Cold Deck, a mix of cognac, vermouth and creme de menthe, is unusually refreshing. Instead of the Mamie Taylor, a fizzy scotch-and-ginger setup, or the vodka-based Better Angels, which gets a little too sweet from its chamomile liqueur and ginger ale, I prefer a cooling whiskey highball ($10), dispensed from a Toki machine for the finest, Champagne-like carbonation. More Information To order: La Iguana ($14), Boulevardier (ish) ($14), Toki highball ($10) Where: 396 Harrison St., S.F. www.nommosf.com When: 5-11 p.m., nightly Read More Even if you sit at the bar to be close to the action and at least another human or two, you should still consider ordering a full dinner. The salads ($12) burst bountifully from their serving bowls; the burger ($18) is beefy and juicy. If youre more into just having snacks (of copious, silky pork fat), you should know that Nommos salumi is top notch, prepared by Evan Blackburn, the butcher whos also behind the cured meats served at Trou Normand and Bar Agricole. Vogler is known for his passion for craft alcohol, and Santer for building a neighborhood bar thats sneakily sophisticated. Bartenders here carry both banners, evident in Nommos Wee Dram project, which highlights a few hard-to-find spirits in 1-ounce pours. The spirits come premeasured in a miniature bottle, along with a glass (and ice if you choose), as well as the original labeled bottle so that you can see what youre drinking . While not at all cheap Van Winkle 12 will cost you $40 an ounce at Nommo, while a pour twice that volume is $30 at Junior in the Mission its nice that the bar at least offers the spirits singly here, rather than requiring you to commit to a flight with a cost that will reach triple digits. And because their offerings are edited down to just a few bottles, the staff is up to speed theyve actually tasted the stuff, which is surprisingly rare at bars selling pricey spirits around town. Each pour here arrives with helpful context: The bar crew will tell you about the family who makes that scotch or the wild, slow-growing agave that goes into that mezcal. This chat makes springing for an expensive glassful feel a bit more worthwhile, and it makes the bar feel a bit more like the kind of place where theyd remember you if you returned. Maggie Hoffman is the author of the new book Batch Cocktails. Twitter: @maggiejhoffman Email: [email protected] | https://www.sfchronicle.com/wine/article/Can-Nommo-be-a-neighborhood-bar-in-a-new-San-13830370.php |
What do Twitter employees wear to work? | Twitter may be besieged with controversies over fake news, hate speech and harassment, but its Manhattan offices on West 17th Street are a study in sunny civility. On a recent Thursday, the 400 so-called tweeps who work there were dining on Indian food in the bright cafeteria, with its Big Buck Hunter arcade game and Ping-Pong table. Others were pecking away on their sticker-covered laptops. And with the average age hovering around 30, there seems to be less and less separating street clothes from office wear. I have influences from the different places Ive lived: born and raised in Miami; went out to San Francisco for five years; then New York. You dont look so much Miami. I have the black V-neck below the sweatshirt. Also Id say my Air Force 1s are Miami. Though theyre also a bit New York. Black. Like the jeans. The sweatshirt is comfort. Its a hoodie from Outdoor Voices. I could wear it after work, at work. With an Apple Watch. Honestly, I have a watch my father gave me, a Breitling, which I love. But Ive been using my Apple Watch for the fitness aspect. Advertising You look fit. Im able to track my family and see how theyre doing. We get competitive. ______ Holyn Kanake Age: 24 Occupation: strategy and operations associate Those sleeves! Literally. Im a huge fan of an all-black look. Theres so much you can do with it. And this has a lot of personality and is sheer and very witchy. Alexander McQueen loved to design for very powerful women, who can be seen as bold or dangerous. And that defines a lot of the things that attract me. But Im not a witch. Tell me about your black jeans. Im not actually a huge jean fan. I dont own that many. But you need a pair of black jeans. It can be the foundation of a great outfit. Like the way you need a little black dress. Monochrome you can either do very well or it can be very boring. To be able to communicate your identity through a black palette is pretty incredible. ______ Joanna Geary Age: 38 Occupation: director of curation Tell me about your hair color. I like the idea that if youre going to have to be a grown-up, making grown-up decisions, you can also have some fun with things like bright pink hair. Vintage. I have a mild obsession with ouroboros the snake is eating itself but also birthing itself. The idea of self-criticism and self-improvement. Youre wearing a lot of black. I wear a lot of black. Always. I used to wear a lot of color. As the hair got brighter, the clothes got darker. Ive been trying really hard to make sure it hasnt. Im lucky that many of my clothes have the benefit of Lycra. ______ EJ Samson Age: 37 Occupation: content strategy lead So many stickers on your laptop. When I got here, I noticed a lot of tweeps like to trick out their laptops. Yes. Thats what we call Twitter employees. Your T-shirt is what I would call high visibility. The T-shirt and pants are both Polo, a nod to my previous job at Ralph Lauren. The pants I love because theyre kind of absurd. I dont think theyre absurd. Wide-leg pants are very much in style. For me, theyre pleated, theyre baggy, and theyre not hemmed, so its everything guys were told not to do to their pants. Hopefully its so wrong that its right. Youre wearing beaded bracelets like youre at summer camp. This spike is Giles and Brother. I got it for my partner on our 10th anniversary. But I just did that as a ploy. I wear it more than he does. ______ Xiomara Davila Age: 28 Occupation: account manager I like your overalls. Jeans are so stiff. I got this at a thrift shop in Cranford, New Jersey. Im hot right now. Your earring goes the length of your ear. Its actually not an extra piercing or anything, its just a hook to the top of my ear. Advertising Clearly Twitter is a tattoo-friendly office. This is the Millennium Falcon. One of my cousins passed away two years ago, and he was the biggest Star Wars nerd I can think of. When he passed, my whole family got different Star Wars tattoos. Thats a lovely story. May the force be with you. You too. ______ Stewart Cornelius Age: 32 Occupation: agency development lead Strong bracelet game. I got the black one from Curated Basics, at Artists and Fleas on 10th Avenue. My parents are from West Africa, so Im into leathers and this bracelet is an homage to my mom, with the coordinates of where we buried her. Thats really sweet. Your ring is huge. I went to Morehouse College. Im really proud that Im the second person in my family to go to a four-year college. Comme des Garons T-shirt, but with a cardigan. Its a little New Age-y, but also it gets a little cold in the office. I like Comme des aesthetic. Its a little creepy and a little fun. I dont wear a lot of colors so I really have to experiment with patterns. Mondaine. This is not super-expensive. Understated. Im a big watch person, because of my grandfather. He liked the complication of it and the statement. My mom always wore watches. I cant leave the house without a watch on my wrist. I feel lost. Im a prisoner of time. I try to make it as welcoming as possible. I try not to be a jerk. I used to have way bigger gauges. They got really gross and smelly, but Ive slimmed them down. To be totally honest, a year had gone by and I hadnt used my insurance. I got $200 off, so I went crazy. Theyre Nike. Like everyone else here, youre wearing black jeans. Every day. Theyre slimming. In fact, I just donated the rest of my bluejeans. The shoes. Youre basically a Nike commercial. I wear Adidas, too. I got these for myself for my birthday. Theyre custom Air Max. They say Game Over on the back. Im a super-gamer. ______ Mike Park Age: 42 Occupation: Vice president of publisher products Youre in shades of gray. Im graying, I have a very gray beard, and my wife wears gray and we dress our son in gray. I dont know why. Advertising You sound like the worlds most depressing family. Its just happened. Weve just adopted gray as our color. I have two pairs of jeans: black and gray. And then always a button-down, where you can actually button down the collar. Uniqlo. Its a little bit baggier than I prefer, but its comfortable. You mentioned that your doctor made you wear those shoes. I had a stress fracture. The doctor literally just wrote down the name of a shoe: Hoka One One Bondi 6. He said, Wear this for six weeks and youll get better. They looked like Yeezys or something. | https://www.seattletimes.com/explore/careers/what-do-twitter-employees-wear-to-work/?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=Referral&utm_campaign=RSS_all |
Who gets to decide grandparents nicknames, the grandparents or the parents? | Dear Carolyn Adapted from a recent online discussion. Hi, Carolyn: Were expecting our first baby (yay!). In my family, a much-anticipated rite of passage for new grandparents is to decide what they will be called by grandkids. My own grandparents supposedly did this, and I have been witness to my aunts and uncles having a great time batting around ideas while waiting for the babies to be born. I was very excited for my parents to have this opportunity, and theyre already brainstorming some sweet and hilarious ideas. But in my husbands family which is VERY nuclear-family-centric, meaning that grandparents who want to be involved are expected to in all ways bend to the needs and whims of their adult children its the parents who decide what their kids will call the grandparents. He is not against the names my parents are considering, but he is offended on principle that an important* decision affecting our kids is being made by someone other than us. *He thinks its important; I think its trivial unless they come up with something problematic, say, a term they dont realize is a slur. Expecting DEAR EXPECTING: Where there is irreconcilable disagreement: His family, his rites; your family, your rites. Thats the template. I know I have no say in this whatsoever, but his offense offends me. If I were his doctor, Id be recommending an emergency stickectomy. I hope hes not this controlling on anything else. Re: Grandparent names: Hahahahahahahahahahaha. Now that I have that out of my system, please understand neither you, nor he, nor anyones parents will decide what the grandparents are called, the kids will. Hahahahahaha DEAR HAHAHAHAHAHA: Fact. Thanks. Re: Grandparent names: Doesnt appear to bode well for future boundary issues with his familys RIGHT way, nor for future challenges that will appear with future discussions about how to raise children. Seems they grew up with very different family philosophies. Predicting DEAR PREDICTING: Right. Authoritarian on his part, it seems, and authoritative or permissive on hers. Better to navigate a path through these differences now, and the grandparent-naming issue is as good an entry point as any. Thanks. Re: Emergency stickectomy: In our home, its a corncob-ectomy. Anonymous DEAR ANONYMOUS: Ouch. DEAR CAROLYN: My son is involved with a woman who has a young child from a previous relationship. As I understand it, the kids father is still marginally and inconsistently in the picture. Also, even though my son seems to really love the kid, his relationship with his girlfriend is somewhat unstable and he says he does not see himself marrying her in the near future. I now see the child on a pretty regular basis, but it feels as though she could be out of my life any second. She already has two very loving grandparents. Not-Quite-Grandmother DEAR NOT-QUITE-GRANDMOTHER: Teacher, neighbor, baby-sitter, friends parent these are roles in so many childrens lives that can be warm and caring and, in most cases, temporary. And the kids are (in most cases) OK with that. Just know that even a cameo appearance can provide a loving boost to a child. | https://www.seattletimes.com/life/who-gets-to-decide-grandparents-nicknames-the-grandparents-or-the-parents/?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=Referral&utm_campaign=RSS_all |
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