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Javier E

In No One We Trust - NYTimes.com - 0 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...in-no-one-we-trust

trust inequality banking economics history theory

shared by Javier E on 21 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • that doesn’t mean we should stop striving for a bit more trust in our society and our economy. Trust is what makes contracts, plans and everyday transactions possible; it facilitates the democratic process, from voting to law creation, and is necessary for social stability. It is essential for our lives. It is trust, more than money, that makes the world go round.
  • , as more and more people lose faith in a system that seems inexorably stacked against them, and the 1 percent ascend to ever more distant heights, this vital element of our institutions and our way of life is eroding.
  • Adam Smith argued forcefully that we would do better to trust in the pursuit of self-interest than in the good intentions of those who pursue the general interest. If everyone looked out for just himself, we would reach an equilibrium that was not just comfortable but also productive, in which the economy was fully efficient. To the morally uninspired, it’s an appealing idea: selfishness as the ultimate form of selflessness. (Elsewhere, in particular in his “Theory of Moral Sentiments,” Smith took a much more balanced view, though most of his latter-day adherents have not followed suit.)
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • But events — and economic research — over the past 30 years have shown not only that we cannot rely on self-interest, but also that no economy, not even a modern, market-based economy like America’s, can function well without a modicum of trust — and that unmitigated selfishness inevitably diminishes trust.
  • THE banking industry is only one example of what amounts to a broad agenda, promoted by some politicians and theoreticians on the right, to undermine the role of trust in our economy. This movement promotes policies based on the view that trust should never be relied on as motivation, for any kind of behavior, in any context. Incentives, in this scheme, are all that matter.
  • This cascade of trust destruction was unrelenting. One of the reasons that the bubble’s bursting in 2007 led to such an enormous crisis was that no bank could trust another. Each bank knew the shenanigans it had been engaged in — the movement of liabilities off its balance sheets, the predatory and reckless lending — and so knew that it could not trust any other bank
  • bankers used their political influence to eviscerate regulations and install regulators who didn’t believe in them. Officials and academics assured lawmakers and the public that banks could self-regulate. But it all turned out to be a scam. We had created a system of rewards that encouraged shortsighted behavior and excessive risk-taking. In fact, we had entered an era in which moral values were given short shrift and trust itself was discounted.
  • Things didn’t turn out well for our economy or our society. As millions lost their homes during and after the crisis, median wealth declined nearly 40 percent in three years. Banks would have done badly, too, were it not for the Bush-Obama mega-bailouts.
  • So C.E.O.’s must be given stock options to induce them to work hard. I find this puzzling: If a firm pays someone $10 million to run a company, he should give his all to ensure its success. He shouldn’t do so only if he is promised a big chunk of any increase in the company’s stock market value
  • Similarly, teachers must be given incentive pay to induce them to exert themselves. But teachers already work hard for low wages because they are dedicated to improving the lives of their students. Do we really believe that giving them $50 more, or even $500 more, as incentive pay will induce them to work harder? What we should do is increase teacher salaries generally because we recognize the value of their contributions and trust in their professionalism. According to the advocates of an incentive-based culture, though, this would be akin to giving something for nothing.
  • Of course, incentives are an important component of human behavior. But the incentive movement has made them into a sort of religion, blind to all the other factors — social ties, moral impulses, compassion — that influence our conduct.
  • This is not just a coldhearted vision of human nature. It is also implausible. It is simply impossible to pay for trust every time it is required. Without trust, life would be absurdly expensive; good information would be nearly unobtainable; fraud would be even more rampant than it is; and transaction and litigation costs would soar.
  • When 1 percent of the population takes home more than 22 percent of the country’s income — and 95 percent of the increase in income in the post-crisis recovery — some pretty basic things are at stake. Reasonable people, even those ignorant of the maze of unfair policies that created this reality, can look at this absurd distribution and be pretty certain that the game is rigged.
  • Trust between individuals is usually reciprocal. But if I think that you are cheating me, it is more likely that I will retaliate, and try to cheat you. (These notions have been well developed in a branch of economics called the “theory of repeated games.”) When Americans see a tax system that taxes the wealthiest at a fraction of what they pay, they feel that they are fools to play along.
  • a deeper rot takes hold: Attitudes and norms begin to change. When no one is trustworthy, it will be only fools who trust. The concept of fairness itself is eroded. A study published last year by the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the upper classes are more likely to engage in what has traditionally been considered unethical behavior. Perhaps this is the only way for some to reconcile their worldview with their outlandish financial success, often achieved through actions that reveal a kind of moral deprivation.
  • As always, it is the poor and the unconnected who suffer most from this, and who are the most repeatedly deceived. Nowhere was this more evident than in the foreclosure crisis.
  • The banks figured out how to get court affidavits signed by the thousands (in what came to be called robo-signing), certifying that they had examined their records and that these particular individuals owed money — and so should be booted out of their homes. The banks were lying on a grand scale, but they knew that if they didn’t get caught, they would walk off with huge profits, their officials’ pockets stuffed with bonuses. And if they did get caught, their shareholders would be left paying the tab
  • But perhaps even more than opportunity, Americans cherish equality before the law. Here, inequality has infected the heart of our ideals.
  • I suspect there is only one way to really get trust back. We need to pass strong regulations, embodying norms of good behavior, and appoint bold regulators to enforce them.
leilamulveny

Twitter Permanently Suspends Trump's Account, Pelosi Threatens Impeachment: Live Update... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-biden

crisis trump US politics pelosi new york times

shared by leilamulveny on 09 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Mr. Trump, they noted, is still the commander in chief, and unless he is removed, the military is bound to follow his lawful orders. While military officials can refuse to carry out orders they view as illegal, they cannot proactively remove the president from the chain of command. That would be a military coup, these officials said.
  • Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California threatened on Friday that the House could move to impeach President Trump over his role in inciting a violent mob attack on the Capitol if he did not resign “immediately,” appealing to Republicans to join the push to force him from office.
  • Ms. Pelosi said she had instructed the Rules Committee to be prepared to move forward with either a motion for impeachment or legislation sponsored by Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, to establish a body under the 25th Amendment that can declare a president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • “The violent insurrection was an attack on the caucus, the Congress, the country and the Constitution that was incited and facilitated by Donald Trump,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the caucus chairman, said on the call. “He must be held accountable for his actions.”
  • But some Defense Department officials have privately expressed anger that political leaders seemed to be trying to get the Pentagon to do the work of Congress and Cabinet secretaries, who have legal options to remove a president.
  • Mr. Trump, they noted, is still the commander in chief, and unless he is removed, the military is bound to follow his lawful orders. While military officials can refuse to carry out orders they view as illegal, they cannot proactively remove the president from the chain of command. That would be a military coup, these officials said.
  • in of command. That would be a military coup, these officials said.
  • During an appearance in Wilmington, Del., on Friday, Mr. Biden did not weigh in on plans to impeach Mr. Trump, saying, “What the Congress decides to do is for them to decide.”
  • Mr. Pence was said to be opposed to doing so
  • Democrats were rushing to begin the expedited proceeding two days after the president rallied his supporters near the White House, urging them to go to the Capitol to protest his election defeat, then continuing to stoke their grievances as they stormed the edifice — with Mr. Pence and the entire Congress meeting inside to formalize Mr. Biden’s victory — in a rampage that left an officer and a member of the mob dead. (Three others died, including one woman who was crushed in the crowd, and two men who had medical emergencies on the Capitol grounds.)
  • Just a day after he voted twice to overturn Mr. Biden’s legitimate victory in key swing states, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, urged both parties to “lower the temperature” and said he would reach out to Mr. Biden about uniting the country. Though he did not defend Mr. Trump, he argued that seeking to remove him would not help.
  • At least some Republicans appeared newly open to the possibility, which could also disqualify Mr. Trump from holding political office in the future.
  • “He swore an oath to the American people to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution — he acted against that,” Mr. Sasse said on CBS. “What he did was wicked.”
aidenborst

Trump impeachment: Democrats promise quick move to impeachment if 25th Amendment push f... - 0 views

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

Politics US crisis Culture policy history trump gop constitution removal impeachment Biden

shared by aidenborst on 11 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Pelosi said the House will attempt to pass a resolution by unanimous consent Monday morning calling for Pence and Trump's Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump from office.
  • The resolution will call on Pence to respond within 24 hours and, if not, the House would move to impeach the President.
  • "In protecting our Constitution and our Democracy, we will act with urgency, because this President represents an imminent threat to both. As the days go by, the horror of the ongoing assault on our democracy perpetrated by this President is intensified and so is the immediate need for action," Pelosi said.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • House Democrats are still discussing whether a vote to impeach Trump could be Tuesday or Wednesday, per aides.
  • "We'll take the vote that we should take in the House, and (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi) will make the determination as to when is the best time to get that vote and get the managers appointed and move that legislation over to the Senate," Clyburn told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union."
  • "It just so happens that if it didn't go over there for 100 days, it could -- let's give President-elect Biden the 100 days he needs to get his agenda off and running, and maybe we'll send the articles sometime after that," the South Carolina Democrat added.
  • By impeaching and removing Trump, even at this late stage of his term, the Senate could subsequently vote to disqualify him from ever holding federal office again, taking an extraordinary action against a former president.
  • The comments from Clyburn come as Democrats grapple with how impeaching Trump for a second time could impact Biden's early days in office, when he is working to get administration appointments approved in the Senate and tackling legislative priorities, like another coronavirus relief package.
  • Democrats plan to introduce their impeachment resolution, which already has more than 190 co-sponsors, on Monday and sources tell CNN that the party is looking at having votes no sooner than Wednesday but they are still sorting out their plans.
  • "There's strong support in the Congress for impeaching the President a second time," she said.
  • Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell previously made clear in a memo that even if the House moved in the coming days to impeach Trump, the Senate would not return to session before January 19. That would place the start of the trial on January 20 -- the date of Biden's inauguration.
  • Pelosi said in a interview on CBS' "60 Minutes" set to air Sunday evening that she liked the idea of invoking the 25th Amendment "because it gets rid of him," but explained, "one of the motivations people have for advocating for impeachment" is to prevent Trump from holding office again.
  • "The train has left the station on impeachment," an official close to Biden told CNN. "Trying to stop it would not only fail, but put Biden on the wrong foot with progressives and most Democrats across the party."
  • Already, several congressional Republicans have joined Democrats in making clear they want Trump to leave office, though not all agree that impeachment is the right option.
  • Sen. Pat Toomey told Tapper Sunday that he thinks Trump should resign. The Pennsylvania Republican -- now the second Republican US senator to call for Trump's resignation -- had previously said he thinks Trump "committed impeachable offenses," but that he wasn't sure removing him this close to the end of his term was the right course of action.
  • Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski said Friday that the President should step down from office, telling the Anchorage Daily News of Trump, "I want him out. He has caused enough damage."
  • Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, meanwhile, has endorsed invoking the 25th Amendment, which would force Trump's removal.
katherineharron

Inauguration: DC Mayor asks White House for emergency declaration funding for security ... - 0 views

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

biden

shared by katherineharron on 11 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser on Sunday sent a letter to President Donald Trump asking for an emergency declaration in order to get additional funding for President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration as safety concerns mount following the US Capitol breach.
  • "I have determined that the plans and resources previously assigned to the Inauguration are insufficient to establish a safe and secure environment as a direct result of the insurrectionist actions that occurred on January 6. Based on recent events and intelligence assessments, we must prepare for large groups of trained and armed extremists to come to Washington, DC."
  • "We are seeing ... chatter from these white supremacists, from these far-right extremists -- they feel emboldened in this moment," said Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks and counters hate. "We fully expect that this violence could actually get worse before it gets better."
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  • Biden has indicated he intends to proceed with the inaugural -- already curtailed by the coronavirus pandemic -- as planned despite the violence at the Capitol last week.
  • Bowser told CBS' "Face the Nation" earlier Sunday that she will also ask the Department of Homeland Security to begin their "national special security event" timeline sooner than planned, as well as include the US Capitol in their coverage area for the inauguration.
  • Bowser ultimately assessed in her letter to Trump that despite the security assets the city has in place, "significant preparedness gaps remain that cannot be remedied without this emergency declaration and direct federal assistance."
katherineharron

Exit polls 2020: What they are and how they'll work in a pandemic - CNNPolitics - 0 views

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

election

shared by katherineharron on 02 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Exit polling traditionally involves interviews with a randomly selected sample of voters conducted as those voters leave their polling places. Unlike pre-election polling, where voters can only be identified using screening questions or a history of voting on a voter file, meeting voters where they are ensures that those included in the survey have actually cast their ballots.
  • carrying out a poll exclusively that way during a pandemic, when more than 90 million have already cast their ballots, would not be a representative measure of the full electorate.
  • To make the 2020 survey more representative, Edison Research has made modifications to the methodology it uses to carry out the exit poll for the National Election Pool, a news consortium made up of CNN, ABC News, CBS News and NBC News.
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  • This year's exit poll will still include in-person interviews with voters who cast their ballots on Tuesday.
  • interviews will be contactless. Voters will pick up paper questionnaires and single-use pencils from a table rather than taking them directly from the interviewer, and disinfecting wipes and hand sanitizer will be available for use by both voters and the interviewers manning the table
  • Those interviews are only one piece of the puzzle this year. The share of voters who cast their ballots before Election Day has been growing for two decades, and will rapidly accelerate in this year's election. In 2000, absentee and early voting represented about 16% of the total votes cast. In 2016, that figure was over 40%; this year, it is expected to top 60%.
  • To account for the large share of early in-person voters in critical states such as North Carolina, Florida and Texas, Edison Research has spent the past month conducting the same type of in-person interviewing that it does on Election Day at a random selection of early voting locations around eight states.
  • To account for the large number of by-mail voters, as well as early voters in states where in-person early voter interviewing is not possible, the exit polls will also include the results of telephone polls targeted at these voters. Edison Research has conducted such polling for use in exit polls in states with significant shares of absentee and early voters since 2004.
  • When all of these pieces are combined, the exit poll results presented on election night will reflect a complete picture of voters all across the country.
kaylynfreeman

Trump Backers Block Highways as Election Tensions Play Out in the Streets - The New Yor... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...p-biden-election-campaign.html

politics trump US crisis

shared by kaylynfreeman on 02 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Law enforcement authorities are increasingly worried, not just about what they have already seen, but also about what has been threatened, especially online.
  • Vehicles with Trump flags halted traffic on Sunday on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey and jammed the Mario M. Cuomo Bridge between Tarrytown and Nyack, N.Y. Another pro-Trump convoy in Virginia ended in a tense shouting match with protesters as it approached a statue of Robert E. Lee in Richmond.
  • In Graham, N.C., a get-out-the vote rally on Saturday ended with police using pepper spray on some participants, including young children, and making numerous arrests. Organizers of the rally called it flagrant voter suppression.
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  • In Graham, N.C., a city of roughly 15,000 people between Greensboro and Durham, the police said protest organizers had failed to coordinate with city officials in planning their rally, and that it became “unsafe and unlawful.”
  • “I’m encouraged that more than 90 million Americans have already cast their ballots, which, if you do the math, is the equivalent of the entire 1996 presidential election,” Jeh C. Johnson, who served as secretary of homeland security during the Obama administration, said Sunday on the CBS program “Face the Nation.”
  • Officials in New Jersey told a local newspaper that the motorcade stopped near the Cheesequake Service Area — about 30 miles outside New York City — and “backed traffic up for about five miles.”
  • In Graham, N.C., a get-out-the vote rally on Saturday ended with police using pepper spray on some participants, including young children, and making numerous arrests. Organizers of the rally called it flagrant voter suppression.
    • kaylynfreeman
      kaylynfreeman on 02 Nov 20
       
      That is completely unecessary.
  • “large militia presence” drawn by President Trump’s own event nearby.
  • Mr. Trump has not committed to a peaceful transfer of power.
  • Sunday’s incidents came a day after a group of Trump supporters in Texas, driving trucks and waving Trump flags, surrounded and slowed a Biden-Harris campaign bus as it drove on Interstate 35, leading to the cancellation of two planned rallies. The F.B.I. confirmed on Sunday that it was investigating the incident.
  • On Saturday, President Trump tweeted a video of the incident with a message, “I love Texas!” After the F.B.I. announced it was investigating, he tweeted again, saying, “In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong,” and instead “the FBI & Justice should be investigating the terrorists, anarchists, and agitators of ANTIFA.”
  • Vehicles with Trump flags halted traffic on Sunday on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey and jammed the Mario M. Cuomo Bridge between Tarrytown and Nyack, N.Y. Another pro-Trump convoy in Virginia ended in a tense shouting match with protesters as it approached a statue of Robert E. Lee in Richmond.
  • The group settled a lawsuit last month against officials in Graham who they accused of violating the First Amendment rights of protesters.
  • “We are very concerned about groups lurking and trying to intimidate voters in particular communities,” Ms. Clarke said. Her group’s election protection hotline received calls from nearly a dozen counties in Florida just over the past week, she said, reporting individuals or groups harassing voters at the polls.
    • kaylynfreeman
      kaylynfreeman on 02 Nov 20
       
      They can't even see who you vote for anyway. They are being so extra. It's one thing to just be a trump supporter but an extremely different thing to act like a white suppremists group trying to force people to vote for Trump.
  • A separate set of anti-Trump protesters marched in New York City to counter the pro-Trump caravans, leading to some scuffles and arrests.
  • Groups that monitor voting have been preparing for intimidation at the polls at least since September, when protesters disrupted voters at a polling location in Fairfax, Va.
  • Of particular concern are militia groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, whose members have lurked on internet chat boards like 4Chan. “We are keeping an eye on them,” said Joanna Lydgate, national director of the Voter Protection Program which works closely with law enforcement on voting issues.
    • kaylynfreeman
      kaylynfreeman on 02 Nov 20
       
      The Proud Boys is a far-right and neo-fascist male-only organization that promotes and engages in political violence in the United States and Canada.
zarinastone

How Trump officials used COVID-19 to shut U.S. borders to migrant children - CBS News - 0 views

www.cbsnews.com/...ders-migrant-children-covid-19

Trump Politics US pandemic children crisis policy

shared by zarinastone on 02 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • But their rapid expulsions from the U.S. are part of the Trump administration's unprecedented efforts to use the COVID-19 pandemic as justification to sidestep legal protections for minors who arrive at America's borders without documents.
  • By designating them public health threats who could spread the virus, the Trump administration has expelled at least 8,800 unaccompanied migrant children, some as young as 10, without a court hearing or asylum screening, circumventing safeguards Congress created to shield them from trafficking, exploitation and persecution.
  • For the first time, Joe Biden's campaign on Sunday said the former vice president would order a review of the policy if elected.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Children who set foot on U.S. soil without authorization have long been afforded additional legal protections
  • Under that law, Mexican children can be transferred to Mexican authorities after being screened to ensure they are not victims of trafficking or persecution.
  • The Trump administration has denounced this patchwork of legal safeguards, arguing the protections encourage children from poor and often violence-plagued areas of Central America to journey north with the help of smugglers.
  • Citing the pandemic, the Trump administration has argued that migrant children are not entitled to these safeguards, and that the laws that created them are effectively inoperative as long as the CDC's orders remain in place.
  • Citing the CDC order, U.S. authorities have pushed 6,500 unaccompanied children back into Mexico.
  • They are the migrant children found by an "underground railroad" network of immigration lawyers, human rights activists and child advocates who support humanitarian-centered border policies.
anonymous

President Trump Threatens Legal Action To Stop Counting Of Pennsylvania Ballots Arrivin... - 1 views

philadelphia.cbslocal.com/...ts-arriving-after-election-day

shared by anonymous on 03 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • President Donald Trump and his reelection campaign are signaling they will pursue an aggressive legal strategy to try to prevent Pennsylvania from counting mailed ballots that are received in the three days after the election.
  • Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat, already has told local elections officials to keep the late-arriving ballots separate, but also to count them.
  • The president has made a flurry of last-minute campaign stops trying to hold onto states he won in 2016, including Pennsylvania, Florida and North Carolina.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Trump said the high court’s pre-election refusal to rule out the extension was a “terrible decision.
  • The legal issue is whether the extension ordered by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, relying on voter protections in the Pennsylvania constitution, violated the U.S. Constitution.
  • Roughly 20 states allow for late-arriving ballots, but Pennsylvania’s Republican-controlled legislature did not authorize an extension
  • But Democrats were alarmed by Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s reference to the court’s 2000 Bush v. Gore decision that effectively decided the presidential election in favor of George W. Bush.
  • The Supreme Court has never cited Bush v. Gore as the basis for a decision of the court.
  • Despite Trump’s recent criticism of the court, he has said that one reason he pushed for Barrett’s quick confirmation as a justice was to have her on the court for any post-election disputes.
anonymous

Texas Drive-Through Ballots To Be Counted After Federal Court's Ruling : NPR - 1 views

www.npr.org/...-embrace-of-conservative-media

oann sinclair broadcast group fox news

shared by anonymous on 03 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • a president who burst into public consciousness as a media sensation has returned to the warm embrace of conservative media outlets and their stars.
  • "Why don't the Republicans start preemptive impeachment on Joe Biden, in case he wins?"
  • "Some GOP lawmakers say time is running out to get to the bottom of what they call corruption at the highest levels of government."
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Over the past few weeks, as many polls have shown Trump losing to Biden, many conservative outlets have recycled groundless claims about election fraud and unverified claims of unethical or illegal behavior by the Democratic nominee — claims circulated by the president's friends.
  • Since Sept. 1, Trump has given about 30 interviews to the media, according to a rolling tally by CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller. A clear majority have been with Fox News and other media outfits controlled by media magnate Rupert Murdoch, an ally of the president.
  • But when Trump is taken unfiltered or live, his distortions and untruths are often unchecked — or, if corrected, gently done so well after his misleading remarks.
  • Last week, his spokesman trashed Fox News' respected polling unit for its findings that voters were turning against him in previously supporting states.
  • Trump has denounced Fox's Chris Wallace, perhaps its most straight-ahead news host, and tweeted twice against the network after it broadcast remarks by former President Barack Obama live, mocking him.
  • His non-Fox News interviews have been largely granted to media outlets or figures who have equally sympathetic records:
  • When Trump contracted COVID-19, he couldn't stage rallies under public health rules. Columbia University historian Nicole Hemmer, who studies conservative media, noted that Limbaugh mused aloud on how he could help Trump by turning over his microphone to the president to do what he called a virtual rally.
  • Limbaugh almost never invites big-name guests on his show, arguing he's the expert. That conversation with Trump lasted two hours.
kaylynfreeman

Celebrities who said they'd leave America in 2016 if Trump was elected -- and didn't | ... - 0 views

www.foxnews.com/...in-2016-if-trump-elected-didnt

US politics trump

shared by kaylynfreeman on 03 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • "I did buy a house in another country just in case, so all of these people that threaten to leave the country and then don't; I will leave the country," she said.
  • Whoopi Golberg cast doubt on “The View” that Trump would win. "I don't think that's America. I don't want it to be America. Maybe it's time for me to move, you know,” she said.Raven-Symone also said on “The View” that she would move to Canada. "My confession for this election is if any Republican gets nominated, I'm going to move to Canada with my entire family. I already have my ticket,” she said.
  • “If that motherf---er becomes president, I’m moving my Black a-- to South Africa,” he said on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”  per CBS.
    • kaylynfreeman
      kaylynfreeman on 03 Nov 20
       
      lol
leilamulveny

13 questions that the US election may start to answer - CNN - 0 views

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

election questions politics

shared by leilamulveny on 04 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Anchors and reporters have been communicating all of the uncertainty that comes with a high turnout election and a huge increase in mail-in balloting.
  • "What is critical is a transparency with the audience — letting viewers know this is what we know and how we know it, but that this is information right now and could change," CBS News president Susan Zirinsky said on Tuesday. "It's like being at a baseball game: You're in the 3rd inning, they give you the score, but you know there are other dynamics that could change the game. We want to be careful, not timid."
  • Did the American people set a modern-day record for registered voter turnout?
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Did journalists and local election officials sufficiently prepare the public for red shifts, blue shifts and potential delays?
  • Were the major networks and The Associated Press able to practice what they preached, a/k/a patience?
  • Did the pollsters and forecasters get it right? If not, is the polling industry dead for good?
  • Did "shy Trump" voters materialize?
  • Can this election help the American media restore a little bit of the trust that's been eroded in recent years?
  • Did the press overcorrect from 2016, and if so in what ways?
  • Will QAnon adherents realize they were fooled when Trump does not win all 50 states, as a recent Q world narrative has claimed?
  • Will Fox News viewers feel misled if Biden wins?
  • Will Trump make a premature claim of victory, and if so how will the major networks handle it?
  • What will the election results mean for the future of the right-wing media economy?
  • If Biden wins, for how long after the election will the media uncover more wrongdoing from the Trump admin?
  • Will the Trump presidency go down in history as a one-term, one-off fluke or a fundamental realignment of American politics? (Or maybe both?)
  • My impression, as a reporter who covers the media industry every day, is that some journalists feel like they are limping to the finish line.
Javier E

Opinion | As the Trump disaster gets worse, a new political theory helps explain it - T... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...itical-theory-helps-explain-it

trump disaster theory authoritarian incompetence

shared by Javier E on 15 Jul 20 - No Cached
  • Law professors David Pozen and Kim Lane Scheppele present “executive underreach” as a species of leadership failure that’s as destructive as executive overreach, defining it as:ADa national executive branch’s willful failure to address a significant public problem that the executive is legally and functionally equipped (though not necessarily legally required) to address.
  • But crucially, the paper links this phenomenon to fundamentally illiberal and anti-democratic tendencies: Hostility to science and expertise; and the leader’s abiding faith in his ability to confuse the public with disinformation as a substitute for acting in the national interest, all typical of “demagogic populists” like Trump and Bolsonaro.
  • all this can be understood as a manifestation of illiberal, anti-democratic impulses.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Defining executive underreach isn’t easy, since the executive is endowed with the discretion to opt for inaction. So the paper suggests this:Underreach occurs when domestic and international legal sources are widely seen to authorize, if not also encourage or oblige, an executive to tackle a particular sort of problem with particular sorts of tools and yet the executive declines to do so.
  • the paper notes that it occurs when the rationale for inaction is offered in naked and destructive bad faith, as Trump has been doing for months.
  • Authoritarian and autocratic impulses perhaps belong in a separate category from illiberal and anti-democratic ones. But there’s plenty of overlap: Wielding disinformation to supplant solutions in the public interest and prodding friendly governors into putting untold constituents at risk — all to serve the leader’s cultish political needs — surely partake from both.
  • In the leadership context, when incompetence and the distraction of narcissism do appear, they don’t necessarily hamper the realization of illiberal and anti-democratic tendencies. They are rooted in the same tangle of impulses, and mutually reinforce each other in a uniquely toxic way that compounds the wreckage.
Javier E

Opinion | The Great American Crackup is underway - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...t-american-crackup-is-underway

paranoia trump culture politics conspiracy theory

shared by Javier E on 18 Jul 20 - No Cached
  • The difference, Uscinski says, is “we have a president who has built a coalition by reaching out to conspiracy-minded people.”
  • Joseph Uscinski, a University of Miami political scientist who studies conspiracy theories, notes that psychological measures of paranoia have been “entirely stable.” Conservatives are inherently no more conspiratorial than liberals; only low education (and, relatedly, income) predict such tendencies
  • The bad news: For the first time in our history, a president and a major political party have weaponized paranoia, to destabilizing effect.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • chological context.ADThe good news: Americans are no “crazier” — that is, no more paranoid or predisposed to conspiracy thinking — than in the past
  • “our political elites are amplifying the fringe more than we’ve seen” in modern times, while a president mounts a “grinding attack on factual evidence.” The result, he says, is “conspiracy theories and misinformation become yoked to partisanship in increasingly powerful ways.”
  • There has always been what the late historian Richard Hofstadter called the “paranoid style” in U.S. politics: witch hunts, Illuminati, Red Scares. William Jennings Bryan promoted conspiracy theories. Richard Nixon believed in them. But Trump is unique in promoting conspiracy thinking from the bully pulpit, and in building a system in which elites — Republican Party leaders — validate the paranoia.
  • Americans, by nature, are more distrustful of authority than citizens of other advanced democracies. “You always hear Americans say, ‘I know my rights,’ but you never hear an American say, ‘I know my responsibilities and obligations,’
  • The distrust is compounded by polarization of the political system: the collapse of local media (replaced by coastal national media); the growing tendency to live, work and worship among people of similar beliefs; the divisive effect of social media; and increased “sorting” of political parties into ideologically homogeneous blocs.
  • This has encouraged what Eitan Hersh of Tufts University describes as “political hobbyism,” in which partisans embrace political parties as they do hometown sports teams
  • Hersh explains the thinking: “I care about truth, but I care less about truth than about supporting the Patriots because the stakes are really low. … It’s a catharsis, camaraderie with our partisan peers.
  • “The science is very clear: People take cues from political leaders,” Nyhan says. Leaders typically rejected conspiracy theories, and the public followed. Now, Trump embraces them, and his followers concur — some out of partisan solidarity, others out of genuine belief.
  • “Human psychology has not changed,” Nyhan says. What’s changed is we’re discovering that “democratic systems don’t work well when political elites don’t deal in factual information.”
katherineharron

Despite progress since July, most states are going backward with Covid-19 as doctors wo... - 0 views

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

covid

shared by katherineharron on 21 Sep 20 - No Cached
  • "We may be in for a very apocalyptic fall, I'm sorry to say," said Dr. Peter Hotez,
  • "And it's happening because we're forcing schools to reopen in areas of high transmission. We're forcing colleges to reopen, and we don't have the leadership nationally,
  • Despite slow, steady progress after an abysmal July, daily new cases have once again soared above 40,000, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The US is on the cusp of 200,000 Covid-19 deaths.
anonymous

How to Watch The Debate: Time, Moderator and Streaming - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...what-time-is-the-debate.html

politics trump

shared by anonymous on 22 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • 9 p.m. Eastern on Thursday
  • The second and final debate between President Trump and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. takes place on Thursday from 9 to 10:30 p.m. Eastern. Here are some of the many ways you can watch it:
  • The debate will be televised on channels including
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, C-SPAN, PBS, Fox News and MSNBC.
leilamulveny

Inside the Week That Shook the Trump Campaign - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...the-trump-campaign-11603320724

campaign politics

shared by leilamulveny on 22 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • Polls would soon show the performance had cost the president support.
  • The other was the fallout from the Supreme Court nomination ceremony for Judge Amy Coney Barrett he had held the previous weekend at the White House. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, would soon describe the event as a “superspreader” of Covid-19 and within days, Mr. Trump would test positive for the disease.
  • Some advisers have urged him to rethink his debate-preparation strategy, but, as of Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Trump hadn’t attended any prep sessions for Thursday’s debate, formally or informally, people familiar with the matter said.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • “Trump is still the political outsider, while Biden is the ultimate insider,” Mr. Murtaugh said.
  • Mr. Trump is publicly optimistic, but privately appears aware that he is trailing in the race, people familiar with the matter said.
  • A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll taken in the days after the first debate, but before Mr. Trump tested positive, found that Mr. Biden’s lead over the president had grown to 14 points from 8 in September, with voters by a 2-to-1 margin saying Mr. Biden had outperformed Mr. Trump in the debate.
  • “We had a superspreader event in the White House, and it was in a situation where people were crowded together and were not wearing masks,” Dr. Fauci said in an Oct. 9 CBS News Radio interview.
  • Mr. Trump eschewed traditional practice debate sessions in favor of more informal discussions with his team, advisers said. At one point during practice, he asked the group, “Why are you guys in here? Why aren’t you out there defending me on TV?”
  • Mr. Trump told aides afterwards that he blamed Mr. Wallace for his own interruptions. His performance stunned advisers, one of whom later described the president’s performance as “one of the most incredible self-inflicted wounds of all time.”
katherineharron

Trump advisers say he hasn't shown remorse for the insurrection - CNNPolitics - 0 views

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

trump

shared by katherineharron on 11 Feb 21 - No Cached
  • Advisers to former President Donald Trump say he still has not expressed remorse for the siege at the US Capitol, which could end up being important for Senate jurors to consider after House impeachment managers on Wednesday released new video of the violent mob's assault on January 6.
  • One of the new clips show then-Vice President Mike Pence and his family being hustled away by Secret Service as the siege was under way.
  • Pence, who plans to keep laying low during the impeachment trial, has not quite patched up his relationship with Trump after what happened, according to a source familiar with the situation.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Another clip showed by the Democratic House managers depicted a Capitol Police officer directing Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, away from the mob. A former Romney adviser noted it is likely the officer saved the senator from serious injury or worse.
  • "Trump likes force," one adviser said. "He saw people forcefully fighting for him," the adviser added.
  • Whataboutism appears to be at the heart of the Trump team response to the case made by the House impeachment managers. Aides to the former President have spent much of the day posting old clips of some of the impeachment managers using phrases such as "fight like hell."The only problem is there was no insurrection that followed when those Democrats engaged in that kind of rhetoric.
  • When asked if Trump has any remorse, the source laughed and said that to Trump there's no greater offense than saying "sorry." The source added that Democrats realize they may not be able to convict Trump and prevent him from running again, so they are doing the next best thing: swaying public opinion to the point where he can't run again.
katherineharron

Supreme Court allows release of Trump tax returns to NY Prosecutor - CNNPolitics - 0 views

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

trump

shared by katherineharron on 22 Feb 21 - No Cached
  • The Supreme Court cleared the way for a New York prosecutor to obtain former President Donald Trump's tax returns, dealing a massive loss to Trump who has fiercely fought to shield his financial papers from prosecutors.
  • It means that the grand jury investigation into alleged hush money payments and other issues will no longer be hampered by Trump's fight to keep the documents secret.
  • Although Trump's personal lawyers may continue to fight their appeal in the case, the fact that the documents will be released by Trump's accounting firm, Mazars, effectively ends the dispute.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The subpoenas span documents from January 2011 to August 2019, including his tax returns, from Mazars
  • He added: "The Supreme Court never should have let this 'fishing expedition' happen, but they did."Mazars, in a statement, says it is "committed to fulfilling all of our professional and legal obligations."
  • Last July, the Supreme Court, voting 7-2, rejected the Trump's broad claims of immunity from a state criminal subpoena seeking his tax returns and said that as president he was not entitled to any kind of heightened standard unavailable to ordinary citizens. The justices sent the case back to the lower court so that the president could make more targeted objections regarding the scope of the subpoena.
  • In October, a federal appeals court said "there is nothing to suggest that these are anything but run-of-the-mill documents typically relevant to a grand jury investigation into possible financial or corporate misconduct."
  • "The subpoena is geographically sprawling, temporally expansive, and topically unlimited --all attributes that raise suspicions of an unlawful fishing expedition," William Consovoy wrote. "Even if disclosure is confined to the grand jury and prosecutors," he said "once the documents are surrendered" confidentially "will be lost for all time."
katherineharron

US coronavirus: America is at a crossroads in this pandemic as Covid-19 deaths near 500... - 0 views

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

covid

shared by katherineharron on 22 Feb 21 - No Cached
  • On the brink of a devastating milestone -- 500,000 US Covid-19 deaths -- the US is at a crossroads in the course of this pandemic.
  • And while vaccinations slowly increase, some Americans say they won't get a Covid-19 vaccine -- hurting the chances of herd immunity and hindering a return to normal life.
  • More than 43.6 million Americans have received at least one dose of their two-dose vaccines, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. close dialogCovid-19Your local resource.Set your location and log in to find local resources and information on Covid-19 in your area.Please enter aboveSet Locationclose dialog/* effects for .bx-campaign-1191325 *//* custom css .bx-campaign-1191325 *//* custom css from creative 50769 */.bx-custom.bx-campaign-1191325 .bx-row-validation .bx-input {border-color: white !important;border-width: 1px !important;background-color: white !important;box-shadow: 0px 2px 8px 1px rgba(0,0,0,0.12) !important;}.bx-custom.bx-campaign-1191325 .bx-row-validation .bx-vtext { color: #e53841 !important; font-size: 11px !important; position: absolute !important; bottom: -1.8em !important;} @media screen and (max-width:736px) { .bx-custom.bx-campaign-1191325 .bx-row-validation .bx-vtext {font-size: 10px !important; }}.bx-custom.bx-campaign-1191325 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  • ...15 more annotations...
  • About 18.8 million have been fully vaccinated. That's about 5.7% of the US population -- far less than the estimated 70% to 85% of Americans who would need to be immune to reach herd immunity.
  • To speed up vaccinations, some experts have suggested delaying second vaccine doses to get more first doses into people's arms.
  • Both vaccines on the US market -- developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna -- require two doses, the second of which are intended to be administered 21 days and 28 days after the first, respectively.
  • Nationwide, the rates of new Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths are declining.The number of patients hospitalized with Covid-19 has fallen for the 40th day in a row, according to the COVID Tracking Project.
  • Fauci hopes that doesn't happen, he said, adding it's "possible" people may be wearing masks in 2022.
  • And daily new cases have dropped 23% over the same time period, according to Johns Hopkins. (But testing is also down by 17%, according to the COVID Tracking Project.)
  • Daily deaths have declined 24% this past week compared to the previous week
  • Experts with the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation said over the weekend that while the B.1.1.7 strain likely accounts for less than 20% of current infections in the US, that number will likely soar to 80% by late April.
  • "Managing the epidemic in the next four months depends critically on scaling up vaccination, trying to increase the fraction of adults willing to be vaccinated above three-quarters, and strongly encouraging continued mask use and avoiding situations where transmission is likely, such as indoor dining, going to bars, or indoor gatherings with individuals outside the household," the team wrote.
  • "With new, more contagious variants of the virus circulating throughout the U.S., now is not the time to let your guard down and scale back on the measures that we know will work to prevent further illness and deaths -- wearing masks, practicing physical distancing, and washing hands," a joint statement said.
  • About 1,700 cases of variant strains first spotted in the UK, South Africa and Brazil have been reported in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
  • "I do think we're looking at some new normals. I think the handshake, for example, is probably going away," she said."I do think masks in the cough/cold/flu season in the winter months would make a lot of sense. That clearly, really insulated the Southeast Asian countries from some of the worst of this, understanding the importance of wearing masks."
  • "It's estimated that about 70% of Americans must be vaccinated before we get to herd immunity through vaccination," CNN medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen said. "That's the point where enough people have the immune protection that the virus won't spread anymore."
  • "The evidence was pretty compelling by last March or April that uniform wearing of masks would reduce transmission of this disease," National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins told Axios on HBO on Sunday.
  • "A mask is nothing more than a life-saving medical device, and yet it got categorized in all sorts of other ways that were not factual, not scientific and frankly, dangerous," he added. "And I think you can make a case that tens of thousands of people died as a result."
Javier E

Opinion | 'The Whole of Liberal Democracy Is in Grave Danger at This Moment' - The New ... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...nservatives-trump-america.html

liberalism authoritarian conservative ideological language complexity tolerance

shared by Javier E on 22 Jul 20 - No Cached
  • a team of four Canadian psychologists studied patterns of “cognitive reflection” among Americans.
  • hey found that a willingness to change one’s convictions in the face of new evidencewas robustly associated with political liberalism, the rejection of traditional moral values, the acceptance of science, and skepticism about religious, paranormal, and conspiratorial claims.
  • Those who ranked high on a scale designed to measure the level of a respondent’s “actively open-minded thinking about evidence” were linked with the acceptance of “anthropogenic global warming and support for free speech on college campuses.”
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • an aversion to altering one’s belief on the basis of evidence was more common among conservatives and that this correlated “with beliefs about topics ranging from extrasensory perception, to respect for tradition, to abortion, to God.”
  • In their forthcoming paper, “On the belief that beliefs should change according to evidence,” the authors develop an eight-item “Actively Open-minded Thinking about Evidence Scale.”
  • People taking the test are asked their level of agreement or disagreement with a series of statements including:“A person should always consider new possibilities.”“Certain beliefs are just too important to abandon no matter how good a case can be made against them.”“One should disregard evidence that conflicts with your established beliefs.”“No one can talk me out of something I know is right.”“I believe that loyalty to one’s ideals and principles is more important than ‘open-mindedness’.”
  • One study showed thatthe speeches of liberal US presidents score higher on integrative complexity than those of conservatives, as measured by the presence of “words involved in differentiation (exclusive words, tentative words, negations) as well as integration of different perspectives (conjunctions).”
  • there is one more item to add to the constantly growing list of factors driving polarization in America: Those on the left and right appear to use substantially different cognitive processes to interpret events in the world around them, large and small.
  • Baron and Jost also cite studies suggesting that those on the right are more susceptible to authoritarian appeals:Conservatives score higher than liberals on measures of personal needs for order and structure, cognitive closure, intolerance of ambiguity, cognitive or perceptual rigidity, and dogmatism.
  • Liberals, they write, “perform better than conservatives on objective tests of cognitive ability and intelligence” while conservatives “score higher than liberals on measures of self-deception” and “are more likely than liberals to spread ‘fake news,’ political misinformation, and conspiracy theories throughout their online social networks.”
  • n a February 2019 paper, “Liberals lecture, conservatives communicate: Analyzing complexity and ideology in 381,609 political speeches,” four political scientists, Martijn Schoonvelde, Anna Brosius, Gijs Schumacher and Bert N. Bakker, argue that “speakers from culturally liberal parties use more complex language than speakers from culturally conservative parties” and that this variance in linguistic complexity isrooted in personality differences among conservative and liberal politicians. The former prefer short, unambiguous statements, and the latter prefer longer compound sentences, expressing multiple points of view.
  • Pennycook and his co-authors concluded:People who reported believing that beliefs and opinions should change according to evidence were less likely to be religious, less likely to hold paranormal and conspiratorial beliefs, more likely to believe in a variety of scientific claims, and were more politically liberal in terms of overall ideology, partisan affiliation, moral values, and a variety of specific political opinions.
  • President Trump speaks at the lowest level of all those studied, as measured on the on the Flesch-Kincaid index. As Factbase put it:By any metric to measure vocabulary, using more than a half dozen tests with different methodologies, Donald Trump has the most basic, most simplistically constructed, least diverse vocabulary of any president in the last 90 years.
  • Some scholars argue that a focus on ideological conflict masks the most salient divisions in the era of Donald Trump: authoritarians versus non-authoritarians.
  • It’s really critical to help people understand the difference between conservatives and authoritarians. Conservatives are by nature opposed to change and novelty, whereas authoritarians are averse to diversity and complexity. It’s a subtle but absolutely critical distinction.
  • “What we’re facing,” she continued,is an authoritarian revolution — not a conservative revolution, the term is inherently contradictory — which in the U.S. has been creeping up since the 1960s
  • Authoritarianism, Stenner continued, isclearly distinct from what I call “laissez faire conservatism.” In fact, in cross-national research I consistently find that these two dimensions are actually negatively related. If anything, authoritarians tend to be wary of free markets and more supportive of government intervention and redistribution, perhaps even schemes of equalization and progressive taxation.
  • Stenner argued that “non-authoritarian conservatives, opposed to change, dedicated to upholding laws, and to the defense of legitimate political and social institutions that underpin societal stability and security” are a crucial pillar of democratic governance.
  • In the real world, she continued, “it is the authoritarians who are the revolutionaries.”
  • Because of this authoritarian revolution, here and abroad, Stenner contends thatthe whole of liberal democracy is in grave danger at this moment. But the fault lies with authoritarians on both the right and the left, and the solution is in the hands of non-authoritarians on both sides.
  • Stenner makes the case that the authoritarian revolution began in the 1960s: “Once the principle of equal treatment under the law was instituted and entrenched by means of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act,” traditional conservatism — “fidelity to the laws of the land and defense of legitimate institutions” — took a back seat to authoritarianism “as a factor driving expressions of racial, moral and political intolerance.”
  • Stenner takes the analysis of contemporary conflict and polarization full circle back to the fundamental American divide over race, a subject that touches on virtually every issue facing the nation.
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