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Javier E

Opinion | 'If You've Built a Chaos Factory, You Can't Dodge Responsibility for the Chao... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...azon-rekognition-tim-cook.html

chaos responsibility tech complicity ethics tyranny policy crisis

shared by Javier E on 19 Jun 19 - No Cached
  • “Too many seem to think that good intentions excuse away harmful outcomes,” Mr. Cook told the assembled graduates of a school from which much of the modern internet has sprung. “If you’ve built a chaos factory, you can’t dodge responsibility for the chaos. Taking responsibility means having the courage to think things through.”
  • he made the case that possible abuses of the technology weren’t necessarily Amazon’s responsibility, because any tech tool can be turned into a weapon — even one as benign as email, which was used in the Sony hack a few years ago. “You could use a knife in a surreptitious way,” he said.
  • Tech’s ploy to assuage its growing chorus of detractors has been to beg for forgiveness over and over for making a mess, promise to follow laws once someone else figures out a way to manage the madness, and then hire an army of lobbyists to make sure those rules are not too onerous.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Which is to say: We make, we break, you fix.
  • the release of this offering right in the midst of punishing scrutiny of how the company has bollixed its main platform is what one might call a gangster move. Not literally, fingers crossed.
  • Pointing out that companies like Amazon, Salesforce, Microsoft, Palantir and others have been supplying the immigration agencies with all kinds of software, devices and services, some of which may have been used to help separate children from their families, Mr. Ryan said he was perplexed as to why tech companies did not have more of an ethical conscience.
  • “I think that what the companies right now that are holding the power need to recognize is that the government could not do what it is doing now without them,” he said. The tech companies’ tools are making it possible, he suggested, to track immigrants with increasing expertise: “What we’ve seen is a scaling up and a quickening of the efficiency of this tyrannical operation.”
  • “If tech wants to walk hand in hand with our government in this experiment in tyranny,” Mr. Ryan told the crowd, “then go for it.”
johnsonel7

Democratic Debate Analysis: Winners, Takeaways From Feb. 7 | Time - 0 views

time.com/...mocratic-debate-analysis-feb-7

Democratic debate 2020 Iowa New Hampshire Biden Sanders Warren Buttigieg politics

shared by johnsonel7 on 09 Feb 20 - No Cached
  • There’s no frontrunner, the president has just been acquitted for impeachment and voters still don’t know who won the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses. With rank-and-file Democrats desperate for a solid standard-bearer, the candidates rushed to argue they were the best bet to beat President Donald Trump, setting off a surreal meta-debate about that most ineffable of political qualities, “electability.”
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden, coming off a dismal fourth-place Iowa showing, practically conceded New Hampshire right off the bat, arguing that the first four nominating contests should be regarded as a group. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who appears to have won the most Iowa raw votes, argued that his movement could realign American politics by increasing voter turnout. And Pete Buttigieg, who’s receiving a surge of new attention since his unexpectedly strong Iowa result, positioned himself as a Washington outsider.
  • At first, everything was going great for Buttigieg. Fresh off a strong showing in the muddled Iowa Caucuses and surging in the polls in New Hampshire, Buttigieg started the debate in a virtuous cycle: he is a favorite punching bag of his rivals, but nearly every time his opponents attacked him, he was able to parry the response into another opportunity to push his message of unity, belonging and futurism. He talked about a “style of politics” and the need to “turn the page” from “the politics of the past.”
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  • Biden has always had it in him. In 2012, he reset the trajectory of a sinking Obama re-election bid with an aggressive if occasionally smug performance in his vice presidential debate against the GOP pick of Paul Ryan. The Obama team had prepared exhaustive research into every piece of legislation Ryan — the Republican Party’s self-anointed ideas guy — touched.
  • “The politics of the past, I think, were not all that bad,” Biden responded
  • Buttigieg’s aptitude for talking his way out of tough spots has taken him from being a no-name mayor of South Bend, Indiana, to a top-tier presidential contender. But when confronted with the racial disparity in marijuana arrests in South Bend, Buttigieg’s eloquence hit its limit. “There is no question that systemic racism has penetrated every level of our system, and my city was not immune,” he said,
  • Warren finished third in Iowa, caught in the no-man’s land between Sanders’ liberal warriors and Buttigieg’s appeal to moderates and suburbanites. Her fate in the debate was similar: Always articulate, always prepared, she still seemed not to have a way to distinguish herself from the rest of the field
  • Warren gave sharp and persuasive articulations of her positions, but didn’t necessarily make the case that voters should prefer her over the other candidates. She did stand out on the question of race: asked if Buttigieg’s answer was “substantial,” she replied, flatly, “No,” and went on to make a passionate argument that racial justice must go beyond the criminal-justice system
Javier E

Opinion | The Era of Small Government Is Over - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...navirus-bailouts-stimulus.html

government state intervention activism socialism New Deal crisis

shared by Javier E on 18 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • To stop the spread of the coronavirus, state and local governments have shut down as much of communal life as possible. People are also social distancing, staying out of public spaces to slow transmission of the disease. But this has destroyed demand for goods and services, putting the United States on the path to a recession that could easily become an outright depression.
  • policymakers have to go beyond stimulus or bailouts for select industries. They have to take responsibility for economic life on a scale not seen since the New Deal.
  • Bailouts are more controversial, but they could be worthwhile if the government offers cash with strings attached. To receive assistance, in Senator Elizabeth Warren’s view, companies would be forced to maintain their payrolls, provide a $15 minimum wage, bring worker representatives onto corporate boards and end share buybacks, among other requirements.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Most restaurants, for example, can probably survive a week or two of social distancing. Some can survive a month. But if self-quarantine lasts for months, then hundreds of thousands of businesses, including suppliers and distributors, will fail
  • The outbreak threatens entire industries with destruction
  • It’s even worse for travel and tourism.
  • If lawmakers are going to save the economy from destruction, they need to think along the lines of the economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman of the University of California, Berkley, who, in a brief paper, call for the government to act as a “payer of last result” to “stanch the flow of mass layoffs and business destruction.”
  • In the program they envision, workers would remain formally employed but receive unemployment benefits. Businesses would report their costs to the government and receive payment in return. If businesses report too much, or get too much in return, then the payments could be “transformed into an interest-free loan that the government could recoup over several years.”
  • Representatives Ro Khanna of California and Tim Ryan of Ohio have introduced legislation to establish an emergency Earned-income tax credit that would provide a check between $1,000 and $6,000 to every American who earned less than $65,000 last year, which is more than three-quarters of the work force
  • The important point is that right now there’s nothing on the table that is too big for the crisis at hand.
  • In forcing people to stay away from each other, the outbreak has made our mutual interdependence clear. This, in turn, has made it a powerful, real-life argument for the broadest forms of social insurance.
  • it’s an opportunity to once again embrace direct state action as a powerful tool for preserving and promoting prosperity. If the era of small government is over, and it is, then it’s well past time for Democrats to seize a moment that belongs to them.
leilamulveny

In Trump's Final Days, Lines Are Drawn for a Republican Civil War - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...publican-civil-war-11609772298

Trump Politics policy crisis

shared by leilamulveny on 10 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Less than two years from now, after this week’s attempt to overturn the results of the presidential election has long since played out, here is a plausible scenario:
  • But that outcome will be challenged by Republican rebels, who, taking a cue from what is happening right now, will charge that the election was “rigged” by the establishment, and go to court to try to overturn it.
  • The irony is that Republicans might instead be uniting in celebration over what actually was a good outcome for them in the 2020 vote, and allowing attention to focus on Democrats’ own considerable internal ideological schisms. Instead, the party is being pulled apart in the last days of the Trump term.
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  • Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas, who aspire to lead the Trump army whenever Mr. Trump isn’t there to do so himself, have engineered a scenario in which each of their colleagues will have to go on record either favoring or opposing the president’s effort to reverse the election.
  • They have done so in defiance of Mr. McConnell, creating in the process a no-win scenario for a series of their colleagues up for re-election in 2022— Roy Blunt of Missouri, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rob Portman of Ohio, Marco Rubio of Florida, John Thune of South Dakota—in which they have to take a stand that either infuriates Trump loyalists back home or energizes Democrats and many independents against them.
  • Former House Speaker Paul Ryan released over the weekend a blunt statement urging his former colleagues not to attempt what many are about to try: overturn the election results. “Under our system, voters determine the president, and this self-governance cannot sustain itself if the whims of Congress replace the will of the people,” Mr. Ryan wrote. “I urge members to consider the precedent that it would set.”
  • As that tweet shows, there is an important ideological struggle lying beneath the skirmishing. Mr. Trump essentially ran for president in 2016 as an independent populist, with no use for a Republican establishment that largely opposed him. Upon prevailing, he turned the party away from traditional conservative principles of free trade, lower government spending and limited executive authority and toward more of a working-class agenda.
  • The unanswerable question is whether Mr. Trump can maintain his hold on the party once he is out of office. Scott Reed, a longtime GOP strategist, argues that “Trump wannabes need a new paradigm, for there will never be another Trump.” He predicts Mr. McConnell, a traditional conservative, will emerge as the party’s clear leader.
  • “The election showed us that GOP policies and ideas worked up and down the ticket, but it was the personality that cost us the White House.”
anonymous

A Black Nonprofit Got A 6-Figure Payment From Someone Whose Family Enslaved People : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...ations-payment-from-a-white-he

shared by anonymous on 06 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • A nonprofit group that helps Black and marginalized communities in Kentucky has received a six-figure donation from a white donor who says they recently inherited family wealth — and then learned that their great-grandfather owned enslaved people.
  • As they received their windfall, the inheritor grew curious about the origins of the family's money."They investigated their family history to find out their great-grandfather had enslaved six individuals in Bourbon [County], Ky.," Croney said as the nonprofit announced the donation this week.
  • Because the great-grandfather did not record the enslaved persons' names, the donor couldn't track down the descendants of the people the ancestor had owned. Croney said that because the donor was "aware of how hoarding wealth is a huge contributing factor of inequity in this country, they decided that they should give most of it away."
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  • The donation is the latest in a string of high-value reparations payments from white people who have unearthed ties to racism and slavery in their family history — finding details such as the value assigned to enslaved people in a ledger, and notes identifying a grandmother as a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
  • The money brings a significant boost for Change Today, Change Tomorrow, which has grown remarkably since Ryan first started the organization as a way to secure school supplies for teachers. Its programs now range from providing hot meals and snacks for students to public health outreach for new parents and menstruation products for those who need them, as well as making food deliveries — including fresh produce from a Black-owned farm.
  • The donor's identity has not been revealed, but the nonprofit said the person lives in the South.
  • Among those receiving reparations is Soul2Soul Sisters, a Colorado group co-founded by the Rev. Dawn Riley Duval. The money helped her organization grow — and like Ryan, Riley Duval says reparations are absolutely necessary, given the ties that have long bound racism and economic inequality in the United States
  • The donor who wired money to Change Today, Change Tomorrow is calling for other white people to pay reparations, even if their ancestors didn't own enslaved people.
  • The leaders of Change Today, Change Tomorrow echoed that sentiment. And they acknowledged that, given the sum heading their way, it wasn't until a wire transfer had taken place that it seemed real. Now, they added, they have more work to do.
  • Referring to the reparations payment, she added, "We don't have the luxury to kind of just sit on it, so it's literally money that's going to go right back into the community."The donor has never lived in Kentucky, Croney said, adding that the person found the organization by searching around on the internet. Louisville has played a prominent role in the national discussion on racism and police violence since last year when police officers shot and killed Breonna Taylor in her home. Activists are still calling for accountability in that case.
katherineharron

This California city has a history of police using deadly force. Its first Black police... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

police reform

shared by katherineharron on 03 May 21 - No Cached
  • When Shawny Williams joined the Vallejo, California, police department in the fall of 2019, he was taking the reins of a police force known for its use of deadly force.
  • McMahon was one of six officers who opened fire on Willie McCoy, the 20-year-old who'd appeared to fall asleep in a fast food drive-through.
  • "Vallejo is like a distillation of the problems that a lot of places, I think, are facing,"
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  • "There was a 2016 research survey by Pew of something like 7,800 law enforcement personnel all over the country," King continued. "They found that 73% of law enforcement officers have never fired their weapon, ever. Forty percent of the Vallejo police department had been in at least one shooting [according to Open Vallejo research], and about a third of those had been in two or more."
  • That includes now-fired Vallejo officer Ryan McMahon, who was involved in two fatal shootings, CNN affiliate KGO reports
  • McMahon shot 33-year-old Ronell Foster during a confrontation over a missing headlamp on Foster's bike
  • Vallejo officers had fatally shot 18 people in less than a decade, according to KTVU. Between 2005 and 2017, the Bay Area community of 122,000 people had the third-highest rate of police killings per capita in the state,
  • The string of fatal shootings by Vallejo officers, including the killing of 21-year-old Angel Ramos in 2017, led to protests as families of the deceased demanded answers and accountability
  • Williams, who is the city's first Black police chief, seemed to acknowledge this history at his swearing-in as he pledged to rebuild trust with a skeptical community, according to KGO. "Today," Williams said, "we chart a new direction."
  • On June 2, amid nationwide protests in response to George Floyd's death at the hands of police, 22-year-old Sean Monterrosa was shot and killed by a Vallejo officer in a Walgreens parking lot. Police, who were investigating reports of looting, said a hammer in Monterrosa's pocket was mistaken for a gun.
  • In July, the troubling news continued: a report from Open Vallejo alleged that some Vallejo officers were bending the tips of their police badges to mark fatal shootings while on the job.
  • "It's important to me that we approach these community concerns with empathy and compassion," he continued. "Change takes time. I can't change the past, but I can impact the future -- and that's what we're focused on."
katherineharron

Opinion: Capitol riot a stunning reminder of America's policing crisis - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

trump

shared by katherineharron on 17 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • When DC Metropolitan Police officer Michael Fanone collapsed on the ground after he was repeatedly Tasered by Trump supporters who had stormed the US Capitol on January 6, his attackers started stripping him of his ammunition, police radio and badge.
  • "Kill him with his own gun." That was one of many, many incriminating comments the insurgent mob shouted for the world to hear that day. Another was: "We were invited here. We were invited by the President of the United States."
  • Jacob Chansley, the so-called "QAnon Shaman" who was arrested and charged in connection with the riot, later told the FBI, according to a complaint, that "he came as a part of a group effort, with other 'patriots' from Arizona, at the request of the President that all 'patriots' come to D.C. on January 6, 2021."
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  • Clearly, the rioters of January 6 believed they had been "invited" to the Capitol to stop Congress from the constitutionally mandated counting of electoral ballots in a desperate attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
  • two Capitol Police officers have been suspended and at least 10 others are under investigation for their behavior during the riot.
  • In 2017, Trump endorsed police brutality, telling officers on Long Island, "When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just seen them thrown in, rough. I said: 'Please don't be too nice.'
  • In a March 13, 2019 interview, Trump told Breitbart News, "I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump — I have the tough people..."
  • Throughout the last five years, President Donald Trump has embraced the police and repeatedly called himself the "president of law and order," even though he consistently defied this both through his words and actions.
  • Trump supporters said so themselves when they chanted "Traitors!" at the police. One woman in a Trump 2020 sweatshirt said, "You should be on our side."
  • Despite the "Blue Lives Matter" flags many carried, they turned on Fanone, attacked Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who died from his injuries, and injured more than 50 other officers.
  • Sworn police officers are beholden to no president or other official. They get their authority from the Constitution.
  • they need more than legal authority. They need legitimacy
  • Even though the government may give police officers the legal rights to carry out their duties to enforce the law, they lose their credibility when the community no longer see them as trustworthy.
  • Those police officers, police leaders and police unions who have reciprocated the corrupt embrace of a lawless president have betrayed not only the public trust but the trust of their brothers and sisters in uniform.
  • The killings of George Floyd and too many other unarmed, Black Americans, have already created a crisis in policing. This has been exacerbated by Trump, who has politicized his support for the police while chipping away at our institutions and undermining our faith in government as a whole.
  • For many people, police officers are the government. When you are in enough trouble to dial 911, it isn't the president, Congress or the Supreme Court that comes running. It is a cop.
  • Any attempts to fix this crisis will require reestablishing trust between the police and the community they serve.
  • We in law enforcement must work to repair our reputation, both in the eyes of the public and among ourselves
  • President Biden must have the courage to go beyond police reforms, and push for a reimagining of law enforcement. He must task government and the nation with answering this radical yet basic question: What do we want from our police?
  • President Barack Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing, on which I served, has given Biden much to build on. It painted a picture of policing, in which officers should be professional, accountable, transparent and self-monitoring in order to learn from any mistakes.
mariedhorne

'I Answered the Call of My President': Rioters Say Trump Urged Them On - The New York T... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ters-blaming-trump-pardon.html

trump terrorism

shared by mariedhorne on 18 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • In the two weeks since a raging mob stormed the Capitol, President Trump has shown no sign that he believes he shares responsibility for the worst incursion on the halls of Congress in more than two centuries. Shielding him further, his loyalists have started shifting blame for the attack to an array of distracting bogeymen: far-left anti-fascists, Black Lives Matter activists, even vague conspiracies of a setup involving Vice President Mike Pence.
  • “Does our president bear responsibility?” the lawyer, Al Watkins, told The New York Times. “Hell, yes, he does.”
  • the accounts they give about Mr. Trump could end up not only as fodder in criminal proceedings but also at an impeachment trial to bolster charges that the president incited the assault.
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  • At the very least, the emergence of a “Trump-made-me-do-it” defense could serve to undercut the baseless narrative by some of the president’s congressional allies and his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, who have sought to push the story that outside agitators or disloyal servants were responsible for the Capitol attack.
  • Mr. Trump began promoting his Washington event well before it happened, urging his allies to join him for a speech outside the White House. During the address, attended by thousands, he told the crowd “to walk down to the Capitol” where Congress, overseen by Mr. Pence, was certifying the final count of the election results.
  • When Jennifer L. Ryan flew from Texas to Washington on a private plane with friends, she did so, as she later told a reporter, because Mr. Trump “asked us to go.”“He said, ‘Be there,’” Ms. Ryan explained. “So I went and I answered the call of my president.”
  • Mr. Watkins did not deny that Mr. Chansley was inside the Capitol that day, but suggested he had gone there because he, like others, “hung on the words of the president” for comfort and guidance. “What you’ve got here are people like my client who take the president seriously,” Mr. Watkins added, “and look to him to make them feel relevant in a system that has made them feel neglected.”
annabelteague02

Disney Is New to Streaming, but Its Marketing Is Unmatched - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...disney-plus-marketing.html

disney streaming marketing

shared by annabelteague02 on 28 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • Anything for a corporate sibling: ABC, which is owned by Disney, has been blowing trumpets for Disney Plus as part of a kingdom-wide advertising offensive — one that Ricky Strauss, president for content and marketing at Disney Plus, has described as “a synergy campaign of a magnitude that is unprecedented in the history of the Walt Disney Company.”
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 28 Oct 19
       
      Disney has partnered with ABC, which is also owns, to market its new streaming service. It's like Disney is building a monopoly on the entertainment field.
  • Walt Disney World in Florida has more buses (many of which are being wrapped in Disney Plus ads) than the city of St. Louis. Disney Cruise Line carries more than 12,000 passengers at any given moment, and sneak-peek screenings of the Disney Plus show “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series” are being offered onboard. Disney Store locations, which still number in the hundreds, will host “pep rallies” for the series. Starting on Nov. 12, more than 7,000 of Disney’s retail employees will be wearing lanyards emblazoned with a QR code; shoppers can scan the code with their smartphones and connect directly to a Disney Plus sign-up page.
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 28 Oct 19
       
      Again, it seems like Disney has such a large enterprise that they will likely continue to be successful in every campaign or new aspect they introduce, due to the fact that they have so many good resources to market
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • “Live With Kelly and Ryan” and “The View.” Guests at Disney World will see it everywhere — on billboards, on parking lot trams, on the info-channel in more than 22,000 Disney-owned hotel rooms.Disney will also push out information about Disney Plus on almost all of the company’s social media accounts, which combined have more than a billion followers. (Tinker Bell has 9.3 million friends on Facebook alone.)
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 28 Oct 19
       
      it is a little strange to see how much power disney has! they are getting on all the live shows, and are even using their characters instagrams and facebook to spread knowledge about Disney Plus
  • its traditional cable businesses are in decline — and compete with the tech giants that are aggressively moving into Hollywood.
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 28 Oct 19
       
      a counterclaim to what i have been saying. while disney is still powerful, their businesses are declining, so they need to change their methods to keep up with modern streaming services
  • So marketing materials need to make it clear that there will be something for everyone, even A.W.O.C.s, which is how some people at Disney refer to Adults Without Children.“We need to educate consumers and explain that this is not the Disney Channel app,” Mr. Earley said. “People also may or may not know that Disney owns Marvel and Lucasfilm and National Geographic. So we are having to do a lot of positioning in a very short amount of time.”
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 28 Oct 19
       
      disney will need to figure out how to appeal to people without children, and it might have been a bad choice to call their service: "Disney Plus," because that implies that only disney films and shows will be available, which is not accurate
  • “The Mandalorian,” a live-action “Star Wars” series (the first ever) that follows a gunfighter on the edge of the galaxy. The series, created by Jon Favreau (“Iron Man”), cost an estimated $15 million an episode to make and stars Pedro Pascal, perhaps best known for his role as Oberyn Martell on HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 28 Oct 19
       
      disney is investing a ton into this project, so i hope it works out for them. it could be disastrous if their efforts fail
  • The finished video, posted on YouTube on Oct. 14, is more than three hours long.
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 28 Oct 19
       
      was this really a good marketing idea? Who would sit for 3 hours to see all the movies available
  • “It’s available for you to pre-enroll right now!”
blythewallick

New Energy Secretary Fits Trend: Cabinet Dominated by Lobbyists - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-cabinet-lobbyists.html

politics trump crisis culture policy US history

shared by blythewallick on 19 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • Mr. Trump, who campaigned for president on the oft-repeated pledge to “drain the swamp,” initially favored charismatic former politicians with a flair for the dramatic, like Mr. Perry; or former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, a former member of the Navy SEALs who arrived to work on horseback; his first Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Scott Pruitt, a bellicose Oklahoma attorney general; or his first defense secretary, Jim Mattis, a former Marine Corps general whom Mr. Trump introduced as “Mad Dog.”
  • A ProPublica and Columbia Journalism Investigations analysis this week found Mr. Trump brought in 281 former lobbyists since the start of the administration. His cabinet now includes a former coal lobbyist running the Environmental Protection Agency, a former oil and gas lobbyist in charge of the Department of Interior, a top lobbyist for the defense contractor Raytheon leading the Defense Department — and, if he is confirmed, an automobile lobbyist at the Energy Department.
  • That might seem like business as usual for Americans who accepted candidate Trump’s description of Washington as rife with influence peddlers and profiteers. But it might actually be worse than usual. Because of the extraordinarily high rate of turnover that is a hallmark of the Trump administration, the White House’s human resources professionals have had little time to come up with outside-the-Beltway replacements for the constant stream of openings, Mr. LaPira said.
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  • Elevating officials working as deputies or in the agency’s trenches is nothing new. But Mr. Trump’s penchant for simply promoting No. 2 officials to cabinet posts appears to be more a matter of expediency than a reward for hard work. Deputy secretaries have already been through grueling Senate confirmations, thus mostly eliminating the element of surprise in an administration not known for employing a stringent vetting process.
  • “The desirability of working for this president and working in these high profile jobs gets riskier and riskier over time, so I suspect the pool of applicants has also declined,” said Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Elevating a No. 2, she added, is “the path of least resistance.”
  • Charles Untermeyer, who served as director of presidential personnel under the first President George Bush, said the average tenure of a presidential appointment was about two years, so the departure of Mr. Perry at this point in the administration is not unusual. And, he said, the promotion of seconds-in-command who have knowledge and experience is commendable.
Javier E

WHO warns Covid-19 pandemic is 'not necessarily the big one' | Coronavirus | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...is-not-necessarily-the-big-one

pandemic vaccine response 2021 policy

shared by Javier E on 29 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • The “destiny” of the virus is to become endemic, even as vaccines begin to be rolled out in the US and UK, says Professor David Heymann, the chair of the WHO’s strategic and technical advisory group for infectious hazards.
  • “The world has hoped for herd immunity, that somehow transmission would be decreased if enough persons were immune,”
  • Ryan warned that the next pandemic may be more severe. “This pandemic has been very severe … it has affected every corner of this planet. But this is not necessarily the big one,”
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • it will continue to mutate as it reproduces in human cells, especially in areas of more intense admission.
  • “Fortunately, we have tools to save lives, and these in combination with good public health will permit us to learn to live with Covid-19.”
  • “The likely scenario is the virus will become another endemic virus that will remain somewhat of a threat, but a very low-level threat in the context of an effective global vaccination program.
  • “The existence of a vaccine, even at high efficacy, is no guarantee of eliminating or eradicating an infectious disease. That is a very high bar for us to be able to get over.”
  • That was why the first goal of the vaccine was to save lives and protect the vulnerable, Ryan said. “And then we will deal with the moonshot of potentially being able to eliminate or eradicate this virus.”
  • said the concept of herd immunity was misunderstood.
  • “This is a wake-up call. We are learning, now, how to do things better: science, logistics, training and governance, how to communicate better. But the planet is fragile.
  • “We live in an increasingly complex global society. These threats will continue. If there is one thing we need to take from this pandemic, with all of the tragedy and loss, is we need to get our act together. We need to honour those we’ve lost by getting better at what we do every day.”
  • being vaccinated against the virus did not mean public health measures such as social distancing would be able to be stopped in future.
  • The first role of the vaccine would be to prevent symptomatic disease, severe disease and deaths, she said. But whether the vaccines would also reduce the number of infections or prevent people from passing on the virus remains to be seen.
  • “I don’t believe we have the evidence on any of the vaccines to be confident that it’s going to prevent people from actually getting the infection and therefore being able to pass it on,”
  • “So I think we need to assume that people who have been vaccinated also need to take the same precautions.”
  • He said the year ahead would see new setbacks and new challenges.
  • “For example, new variants of Covid-19, and helping people who are tired of the pandemic continue to combat it,”
kaylynfreeman

Congress Will Investigate Capitol Police Failures, Selfies - 0 views

www.buzzfeednews.com/...l-police-riot-failures-selfies

politics crisis trump

shared by kaylynfreeman on 07 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Lawmakers are planning a “minute-by-minute” investigation into law enforcement failures during the attempted coup at the Capitol on Wednesday, Rep. Tim Ryan, the chair of the subcommittee that funds the Capitol Police, said Thursday.
  • “I’m livid about the whole thing because I had conversations with the sergeant-at-arms and the chief of the Capitol Police [and got] assurances that every precaution was being taken and we had enough manpower, that we were going to keep people completely away from the Capitol,” Ryan, an Ohio Democrat, said during a press call.
leilamulveny

Trump Call to Georgia Official Might Violate State and Federal Law - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-call-georgia.html

trump georgia federal law new york times

shared by leilamulveny on 04 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • The call by President Trump on Saturday to Georgia’s secretary of state raised the prospect that Mr. Trump may have violated laws that prohibit interference in federal or state elections, but lawyers said on Sunday that it would be difficult to pursue such a charge.
  • by pressuring Mr. Raffensperger to “find” the votes he would need to reverse the election outcome in the state, Mr. Trump either broke the law or came close to it.
  • clearly violates Georgia statutes
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  • At the federal level, anyone who “knowingly and willfully deprives, defrauds or attempts to deprive or defraud the residents of a state of a fair and impartially conducted election process” is breaking the law.
  • That is because while Mr. Trump clearly implied that Mr. Raffensperger might suffer legal consequences if he did not find additional votes for the president in Georgia, Mr. Trump stopped short of saying he would deliver on the threat himself against Mr. Raffensperger and his legal counsel, Ryan Germany, Mr. Sanderson said.
  • “You know what they did and you’re not reporting it,” the president said during the call, referring to his baseless assertions of widespread election fraud. “You know, that’s a criminal — that’s a criminal offense. And you know, you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. That’s a big risk.”
  • Mr. Sanderson said, “Ultimately, I doubt this is behavior that would be prosecuted.”
  • “It is unlikely federal prosecutors would bring such a case,” Mr. Bromwich said. “But it certainly was god awful and unbelievable. But prosecuting a federal crime is obviously a very different thing.”
  • Trevor Potter, a Republican former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, said the question would largely be up to the Justice Department in the Biden administration.
  • That is a policy decision.
  • “In threatening these officials with vague ‘criminal’ consequences, and in encouraging them to ‘find’ additional votes and hire investigators who ‘want to find answers,’ the president may have also subjected himself to additional criminal liability,” Mr. Nadler said in a statement.
delgadool

Trump, in Taped Call, Pressured Georgia Official to 'Find' Votes to Overturn Election -... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...affensperger-call-georgia.html

election trump

shared by delgadool on 03 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • President Trump demanded that Georgia’s Republican secretary of state “find” him enough votes to overturn the presidential election, and vaguely threatened him with “a criminal offense,”
  • “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,”
  • The president confirmed the call in a tweet Sunday morning, claiming that Mr. Raffensperger “was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the ‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘voters’, dead voters, and more. He has no clue!”
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  • “Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong,”
  • The president, who will be in charge of the Justice Department for the 17 days left in his administration, hinted that Mr. Raffensperger and Ryan Germany, the chief lawyer for secretary of state’s office, could be prosecuted criminally if they did not do his bidding.
  • “You know what they did and you’re not reporting it,” the president said during the call. “You know, that’s a criminal — that’s a criminal offense. And you know, you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. That’s a big risk.”
  • Mr. Trump said he hoped Mr. Raffensperger’s office could address his claimed discrepancies before Tuesday’s Senate runoff election in Georgia, one that will decide the balance of power in the Senate.
  • Vice President-elect Kamala Harris — at a drive-in rally for Georgia’s Democratic Senate candidates in Garden City, Ga. — referred on Sunday to Mr. Trump’s call, saying it was “the voice of desperation — most certainly that.”“And it was a bald, baldfaced, bold abuse of power by the president of the United States,” she added.
  • Mr. Trump’s accusation that ballots were scanned three times was incorrect.
  • “You even see it by rally size, frankly,” Mr. Trump said, adding that he wanted to go over some of the numbers. He alleged that 250,000 to 300,000 ballots were “dropped mysteriously into the rolls,” a problem he said occurred in Fulton County.
cartergramiak

Taking a Cue From Trump, House Republicans Offer Narrow Agenda - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...house-republicans-agenda.html

GOP trump Policy

shared by cartergramiak on 16 Sep 20 - No Cached
  • In a year when the Republican National Committee skipped writing a party platform and President Trump has offered little in the way of a plan for his second term should he win re-election, the agenda unveiled by House Republicans outside the Capitol on Tuesday was arguably the closest the party has come this year to presenting a road map for governing.
  • “The Republican Commitment to America,” offered relatively few answers.
  • Though they called for ambitious new testing and vaccine deployment, it was far from the kind of forward-looking conservative vision that leading Republicans once insisted they needed to offer voters, and that past party leaders have rolled out every two years almost like clockwork.
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  • But the thin agenda also underscored how thoroughly congressional Republicans have transformed themselves in the age of Mr. Trump even from the recent days when, under Speaker Paul D. Ryan, they prided themselves on being the intellectual engine of their party.
  • Four years into his presidency, the party has followed his lead and shied away from stances on the nation’s biggest, most intractable problems, like how to fix a broken health care system or address the ballooning national debt, that were once considered Republican orthodoxy.
  • Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming — the party’s highest-ranking woman, who has made a point of separating herself from some of Mr. Trump’s policies and is widely considered to be jockeying for a top leadership position beyond his presidency — spent most of her time blaming Democrats for forest fires raging across the West and the fires set by mobs in America’s cities.
  • “Every day you see the damage of years of Democrat policies,” Ms. Cheney said. She had little to say about Republican alternatives.
  • “A lot of this document can be summarized by saying, ‘Let’s delete the last seven months in our country,’ because Republicans were certainly, at least from an economic perspective, feeling bullish about their chances this year,”
  • The fact that Republicans in the House felt a need to produce their own platform at all, in a presidential election year when the top of the ticket typically sets the agenda, underscores the party’s unique predicament under Mr. Trump, a leader who has never been guided by much of a policy vision.
  • “Trump is talking about fake news, rigged elections, players kneeling, ‘Sleepy Joe,’ Antifa invasions and whether dead soldiers are losers,” said Brendan Buck, a former top aide to Mr. Ryan. “Whatever policy he’s ostensibly for, he’s not running on an agenda. And for House members in marginal districts, you need more than the stream of consciousness that he’s offering every day.”
Javier E

The Future of Sex - The European - 0 views

www.theeuropean-magazine.com/...6576-the-future-of-sex

sex trends mechanistic reproduction intimacy

shared by Javier E on 17 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Consider the most likely scenario for how human sexual behavior will develop over the next hundred years or so in the absence of cataclysm. Here’s what I see if we continue on our current path:
  • Like every other aspect of human life, our sexuality will become increasingly mediated by technology. The technology of pornography will become ever more sophisticated—even if the subject matter of porn itself will remain as primal as ever.
  • As the technology improves, society continues to grow ever more fragmented, and hundreds of millions of Chinese men with no hope of marrying a bona-fide, flesh-and-blood woman come of age, sex robots will become as common and acceptable as dildos and vibrators are today. After all, the safest sex is that which involves no other living things…
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  • As our sexuality becomes ever more divorced from emotion and intimacy, a process already well underway, sex will increasingly be seen as simply a matter of provoking orgasm in the most efficient, reliable ways possible.
  • Human sexuality will continue to be subjected to the same commodification and mechanization as other aspects of our lives. Just as the 21st century saw friends replaced by Facebook friends, nature replaced by parks, ocean fisheries replaced by commercially farmed seafood, and sunshine largely supplanted by tanning salons, we’ll see sexual interaction reduced to mechanically provoked orgasm as human beings become ever more dominated by the machines and mechanistic thought processes that developed in our brains and societies like bacteria in a petri dish.
  • Gender identity will fade away as sexual interaction becomes less “human” and we grow less dependent upon binary interactions with other people. As more and more of our interactions take place with non-human partners, others’ expectations and judgments will become less relevant to the development of sexual identity, leading to greater fluidity and far less urgency and passion concerning sexual expression.
  • the collapse of western civilization may well be the best thing that could happen for human sexuality. Following the collapse of the consumerist, competitive mind-set that now dominates so much of human thought, we’d possibly be free to rebuild a social world more in keeping with our preagricultural origins, characterized by economies built upon sharing rather than hoarding, a politics of respect rather than of power, and a sexuality of intimacy rather than alienation.
zachcutler

Congress may flip -- but dysfunction is here to stay - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

politics US economics

shared by zachcutler on 25 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • Congress may flip -- but dysfunction is here to stay
  • The Republican majority in the Senate -- and maybe even the House -- could be gone after this year's election.
  • With Donald Trump trailing in the polls, Hillary Clinton is increasingly turning her attention to down-ballot races -- particularly for the Senate, where Democrats are hoping to pick up at least the four seats they'd need to claim the majority if Clinton wins the White House.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • The evolution in Republican candidates' messaging was on display Monday in New Hampshire, where Clinton sought to latch GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte to Trump -- and tout Ayotte's Democratic challenger, Maggie Hassan, as someone who "unlike her opponent," stands up to the GOP nominee
  • And if the party sheds some House seats, what's left would be a House GOP even smaller and more conservative -- with less room for Speaker Paul Ryan to cut deals with Democrats that cost him conservative votes.
  • "Unlike Katie McGinty, I am not a hyper-partisan, reflexive ideologue who thinks he has to give blind obedience to his party's nominee," Toomey said.
  • But Republicans are discovering that a checks-and-balance message cannot solve down-ballot woes in every state. One GOP operative who tested an advertising campaign in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that called for a counterweight to Clinton found that the Democratic nominee was simply too popular there for that strategy to succeed.
  • If Trump were to totally collapse, Democrats hope to be within striking distance of Arizona Sen. John McCain and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as well -- though both currently appear safe.
  • "Now their excuse for why they should be elected is, 'Maybe we did support Trump -- now we're kind of quiet about it -- but you should vote anyway because we'll check Hillary's power. We'll be a counterweight,'" Obama said. "No no no no. No."
  • GOP likely favored in 2018
  • Democrats also could face tough races in a swath of competitive states: Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.
  • So Democrats aren't eager to talk 2018 just yet.
  • "Republicans are still hoping to hold onto the majority this year, and it is still within the realm of possibility. However, even if the Senate were to go 50-50 or even 49-51 or 48-52, the playing field in 2018 is so favorable to the Republican Party that I would anticipate taking the majority back," said Scott Jennings, a GOP operative who ran a pro-Mitch McConnell super PAC in 2014.
zachcutler

Hillary Clinton can't sit out rest of campaign (Opinion) - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

politics economics US clinton hillary campaign opinion policy

shared by zachcutler on 25 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • Why Clinton can't sit out home stretch of campaign
  • During the third debate, Clinton once again demonstrated just how masterful she could be at the art of political combat, goading Trump into sharing his most provocative thoughts and mocking some of his most outlandish statements. There were moments when he seemed to be barely holding on as she went after his policies and personalit
  • At other moments Clinton has gone silent. During key parts of the debates and even on the campaign trail, she has stepped back, most likely just to let Trump be Trump. When your opponent's campaign is imploding, some experts believe, the best thing to do is watch.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Clinton's ability to deliver a power message in the next few weeks might also help to push the scales toward a Democratic Senate and even a Democratic House. Right now, by most accounts, control of Congress could go either way, though Trump's performance in the last few weeks has opened the door to the possibility of a Democratic takeover
  • If Democrats regain control of the Congress, it might very well only last for two years. During that time, Republicans will use all the power of minority obstruction to block her initiatives. If Republicans keep control of Congress, they will have little interest in handing her any victory. Many experts expect that House Speaker Paul Ryan would face a narrower majority -- which makes every vote count -- and an expanded Freedom Caucus
  • Why does it matter that Clinton spends more time in the next two weeks articulating her agenda and campaigning around the kind of president that she aspires to be in the next four years? Why change course if the current strategy seems to be succeeding so well?
  • In one of the most famous scenes, McKay and Lucas duck into a room as a horde of journalists try to get inside. As the journalists pry open the door and flood in to interview the victor, McKay asks: "What do we do now?" Lucas can't hear him, and he never gets an answer.
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