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Contents contributed and discussions participated by jlessner

jlessner

America's Stacked Deck - The New York Times - 0 views

  • A dumb rich kid is now more likely to graduate from college than a smart poor kid, according to Robert Putnam of Harvard University.
  • Forbes’s wealthiest 100 are worth as much as all 42 million African-Americans, the report says.
  • So it’s healthy for American voters to be demanding change. But when societies face economic pain, they sometimes turn to reforms, and other times to scapegoats (like refugees this year
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  • It seems to me to make more sense to target solutions than scapegoats, but sense is often in short supply in politics.
  • The rise of inequality has complex roots, and some aren’t easily solved. For example, the empowerment of women, coupled with the tendency of people to marry those like themselves, means that high-earning men increasingly pair with high-earning women to form super-high-earning families.
  • So American voters are right to feel angry. Yet the challenge is not just to diagnose the problem but also to prescribe the right fixes and achieve them in this political environment.
  • So may the insurrection gain ground but be channeled not by punishing scapegoats, but by pursuing reforms that make the system work better for ordinary Americans.
jlessner

Who Are We? - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Cruz wraps himself in an American flag and spits on all the institutions that it represents.
  • America didn’t become the richest country in the world by practicing socialism, or the strongest country by denigrating its governing institutions, or the most talent-filled country by stoking fear of immigrants.
  • It got here via the motto “E Pluribus Unum” — Out of Many, One.
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  • Our forefathers so cherished that motto they didn’t put it on a hat. They put it on coins and then on the dollar bill. For a guy with so many of those, Trump should have noticed by now.
jlessner

Why a 'Virtual Tie' in Iowa Is Better for Clinton Than Sanders - The New York Times - 0 views

  • The Iowa Democratic caucuses were a “virtual tie,” especially after you consider that the results aren’t even actual vote tallies, but state delegate equivalents subject to all kinds of messy rounding rules and potential geographic biases.
  • he official tally, for now, is Hillary Clinton at 49.9 percent, and Mr. Sanders at 49.6 percent with 97 percent of precincts reporting early Tuesday morning.
  • But in the end, a virtual tie in Iowa is an acceptable, if not ideal, result for Mrs. Clinton and an ominous one for Mr. Sanders. He failed to win a state tailor made to his strengths.
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  • He fares best among white voters. The electorate was 91 percent white, per the entrance polls. He does well with less affluent voters. The caucus electorate was far less affluent than the national primary electorate in 2008. He’s heavily dependent on turnout from young voters, and he had months to build a robust field operation. As the primaries quickly unfold, he won’t have that luxury.
  • Iowa is not just a white state, but also a relatively liberal one
  • But these strengths were neatly canceled by Mrs. Clinton’s strengths. She won older voters, more affluent voters, along with “somewhat liberal” and “moderate” Democrats.
  • He has nearly no chance to do as well among nonwhite voters as Mr. Obama did in 2008
  • The polls say that her supporters are more likely to be firmly decided than Mr. Sanders’s voters.
  • Mr. Sanders will have another opportunity to gain momentum after the New Hampshire primary. He might not get as much credit for a victory there as he would have in Iowa, since New Hampshire borders his home state of Vermont. But it could nonetheless give him another opportunity to overcome his weaknesses among nonwhite voters.
  • As a general rule, though, momentum is overrated in primary politics. In 2008, for instance, momentum never really changed the contours of the race. Mr. Obama’s victory in Iowa allowed him to make huge gains among black voters, but not much more — the sort of exception that would seem to prove the rule. Mr. Obama couldn’t even put Mrs. Clinton away after winning a string of states in early February.
  • ick Santorum, Pat Buchanan or Mike Huckabee, who failed to turn early-state victories into broader coalitions.
  • Mrs. Clinton holds more than 50 percent of the vote in national surveys; her share of the vote never declined in 2008.
  • In the end, Mr. Sanders failed to score a clear win in a state where Mr. Obama easily defeated Mrs. Clinton among white voters.
  • Why a ‘Virtual Tie’ in Iowa Is Better for Clinton Than Sanders
jlessner

Donald Trump Field Organizer Accuses Campaign of Sex Discrimination - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Ms. Davidson’s complaint states that men with the same job title — district representatives — were quoted in news accounts without being fired. It says she was the only woman with that title and that men with the same title were paid more.In an interview, Ms. Davidson said she was paid $2,000 a month and was classified as part-time because she also had a job as a paralegal. But she said another district representative, Marc Elcock, was paid more though he, too, has a day job, as a lawyer.
  • According to public filings, several men who held the same title, including Mr. Elcock, were paid $3,500 to $4,000 a month.
  • The complaint says Mr. Trump’s suggestion that Ms. Davidson and a female volunteer could “do a lot of damage” occurred when they were introduced to him last summer. It included no other details about the exchange.
jlessner

Compassionate Conservatives, Hello? - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Yet now, amid the Republican Party’s civil war, there are intriguing initiatives by the House speaker, Paul Ryan, and some other conservatives to revive an interest in the needy.
  • hether Medicaid is expanded, whether we get high-quality pre-K, whether we tackle addiction, family planning and job training, whether lead continues to poison American children — all these will depend mostly on Republicans who control Congress and most states.
  • A real debate would also elevate issues that now are largely neglected, and it would create an opening to hold politicians’ feet to the fire: If Ryan cares, then why did he try to slash budgets for evidence-based programs that help children?
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  • Instead of increasing public funds for higher education, it suggests taking financial assistance that now goes to higher-income families and redirecting it to the neediest.
  • We now have robust results showing that vocational programs like career academies help disadvantaged young people get jobs and raise their marriage rates. Parent-coaching programs improve disadvantaged children’s outcomes so much that they save public money.
  • The sad truth is that neither party has done enough to address the shame of deep-rooted poverty in America. So let’s hope for a real contest in this area, because everybody loses — above all, America’s neediest — when most of the time one party doesn’t even bother to show up.
jlessner

A Woman on the $10 Bill, and Everyone Has 2 Cents to Put In - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Several million people have responded since Mr. Lew issued an invitation to the public last June to help redesign the nation’s cash. His question: Which woman from American history should be chosen as the first on paper currency since Martha Washington briefly graced the $1 silver certificate in the late 19th century?
  • The bigger issue, however, turned out to be Hamilton versus Jackson. Many respondents asked: Why displace Hamilton, the first Treasury secretary and the architect of the American financial system, rather than eject Jackson from the $20 bill given his record of violence against Native Americans and opposition to national banking?
  • A rollout in 2020, not coincidentally, would be just in time for the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.
jlessner

Barack Obama: Guns Are Our Shared Responsibility - The New York Times - 0 views

  • If a child can’t open a bottle of aspirin, we should also make sure she can’t pull the trigger of a gun.
  • Yet today, the gun industry is almost entirely unaccountable. Thanks to the gun lobby’s decades of efforts, Congress has blocked our consumer products safety experts from being able to require that firearms have even the most basic safety measures. They’ve made it harder for the government’s public health experts to conduct research on gun violence. They’ve guaranteed that manufacturers enjoy virtual immunity from lawsuits, which means that they can sell lethal products and rarely face consequences. As parents, we wouldn’t put up with this if we were talking about faulty car seats. Why should we tolerate it for products — guns — that kill so many children each year?
  • Change will be hard. It won’t happen overnight. But securing a woman’s right to vote didn’t happen overnight. The liberation of African-Americans didn’t happen overnight. Advancing the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans has taken decades’ worth of work.
jlessner

Do Muslims and Christians worship the same God? College suspends professor who said yes... - 0 views

  • Wheaton College, a prominent evangelical school in Illinois, has placed a professor on administrative leave after she posted on Facebook that Muslims and Christians “worship the same God.”
  • The official school statement Tuesday about associate professor of political science Larycia Hawkins’s suspension said Wheaton professors should “engage in and speak about public issues in ways that faithfully represent the College’s evangelical Statement of Faith.”
jlessner

Long-Hidden Details Reveal Cruelty of 1972 Munich Attackers - The New York Times - 0 views

  • The attack at the Olympic Village stands as one of sports’ most horrifying episodes. The eight terrorists, representing a branch of the Palestine Liberation Organization, breached the apartments where the Israeli athletes were staying before dawn on Sept. 5, 1972. That began an international nightmare that lasted more than 20 hours and ended with a disastrous failed rescue attempt.
  • The treatment of the hostages has long been a subject of speculation, but a more vivid — and disturbing — account of the attack is emerging. For the first time, Ms. Romano, Ms. Spitzer and other victims’ family members are choosing to speak openly about documentation previously unknown to the public in an effort to get their loved ones the recognition they believe is deserved.
  • Among the most jarring details are these: The Israeli Olympic team members were beaten and, in at least one case, castrated.
jlessner

They Are Us - The New York Times - 0 views

  • et in January 1939, Americans polled said by a two-to-one majority that the United States should not accept 10,000 mostly Jewish refugee children from Germany.
  • If the Islamic State wanted to dispatch a terrorist to America, it wouldn’t ask a mole to apply for refugee status, but rather to apply for a student visa to study at, say, Indiana University. Hey, governors, are you going to keep out foreign university students?
  • Or the Islamic State could simply send fighters who are French or Belgian citizens (like some of those behind the Paris attacks) to the U.S. as tourists, no visa required. Governors, are you planning to ban foreign tourists, too?
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  • Refugee vetting has an excellent record. Of 785,000 refugees admitted to the United States since 9/11, just three have been arrested for terrorism-related charges, according to the Migration Policy Institute in Washington.
  • If Republican governors are concerned about security risks, maybe they should vet who can buy guns. People on terrorism watch lists are legally allowed to buy guns in the United States, and more than 2,000 have done so since 2004. The National Rifle Association has opposed legislation to rectify this.
jlessner

Two Children Among Migrants Killed After Boat Sinks Off Greece - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Another 53 people made it ashore after the dinghy sank shortly before dawn on Sunday in choppy waters, according to an official at the Greek Shipping Ministry. “It was very windy, about 6 or 7 Beaufort,” the official said, describing near gale force conditions.
  • The dead children were aged 2 and 7, she said, adding that the ethnic origin of the migrants was not known.
jlessner

France's Wrinkle in Time - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Well, in the spring the United States begins daylight saving time several weeks before most of Europe, while in the autumn — this week, in fact — most of Europe ends daylight saving time a week before the United States. Admittedly, some might find this revelation irrelevant, but let me assure you: For airline pilots, trans-Atlantic travelers and the significant number of American expatriates in Europe, these glorious weeks are God’s time.
  • There is actually a group in France dedicated to the cause. The French Association Against Double Summer Time is made up of about 500 members who — in their spare time, naturally — do what they can to let people know that it’s time for a change.
  • Ms. Gabarain and her colleagues point out that, geographically, France is clearly in the wrong time zone. Based on its location, it ought to be on Greenwich Mean Time (like England) instead of Central European Time (like Poland). That fact explains why it has been pitch-black outside until 8 a.m. here this month — Freezing Time, as my daughter Hannah calls it — and also why we basically have to hang thick black vinyl sheets on our curtain rods in July if we want the children to go to sleep before 11 p.m.
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  • The French were actually on Greenwich Mean Time (now called Coordinated Universal Time) as recently as 1940. There were a series of time-zone switches during World War II as Germany occupied part of France, but after the war was over, France was supposed to return to Greenwich Mean Time in 1945. Alas, for reasons that are not altogether clear, the French government canceled that decision at the last moment and has remained on Central European Time ever since.
jlessner

Jimmy Carter: A Five-Nation Plan to End the Syrian Crisis - The New York Times - 0 views

  • They pointed out the longstanding partnership between Russia and the Assad regime and the great threat of the Islamic State to Russia, where an estimated 14 percent of its population are Sunni Muslims. Later, I questioned President Putin about his support for Mr. Assad, and about his two sessions that year with representatives of factions from Syria.
  • Iran outlined a general four-point sequence several months ago, consisting of a cease-fire, formation of a unity government, constitutional reforms and elections. Working through the United Nations Security Council and utilizing a five-nation proposal, some mechanism could be found to implement these goals.
  • The needed concessions are not from the combatants in Syria, but from the proud nations that claim to want peace but refuse to cooperate with one another.
jlessner

Meet a 21st-Century Slave - The New York Times - 0 views

  • And if you think, as Amnesty International suggested recently, that the solution is to decriminalize the commercial sex trade around the world, then pay special heed.
  • Poonam thus became one of 20.9 million people worldwide — a quarter of them children — subjected to forced labor, according to the U.N.’s International Labor Organization. In the United States, tens of thousands of children are trafficked into the sex trade each year.
  • and Koirala says that Maiti Nepal has helped prosecute 800 people for involvement in trafficking. In America as well, we need to prosecute traffickers rather than their victims.
jlessner

A Family Swept Up in the Migrant Tide - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Though Zain is only 4, this is by no means his first surreptitious border crossing, and he remembers his father’s admonition at the very start of their journey, when they slipped from their homeland of Syria into Turkey: Don’t make a sound, or the guards will beat us.
  • To one side of the railroad tracks in Idomeni, Greece, near the border with Macedonia, a group of about 20 people rest on the ground under a spreading shade tree, one day in late August. Standing in the middle, examining his cellphone, is a man in an orange shirt, at 6-foot-2 appearing unusually tall among the other refugees.
  • The reality of what they would face in Europe became apparent only after they landed on the Greek island of Lesbos. There was no shelter awaiting them or the thousands of others streaming there. They slept on the street, and had to walk more than a mile to use a bathroom in a public park.
jlessner

A Trickle of Syrian Refugees Settles Across the United States - The New York Times - 0 views

  • The United States has accepted only a small fraction ofthe four million refugees who have fled Syria. But theyare settling in new places, and more are on the way.
  • President Obama has said the UnitedStates will accept five times as manySyrian refugees this year as the totaladmitted over the last four years.
  • Syrians still account for a small share ofall refugees admitted in the United States.
jlessner

Who Qualifies for 'Asylum'? - The New York Times - 0 views

  • The Greeks allowed slaves who ran away from abusive masters and even some criminals to seek sanctuary in certain temples; ‘‘asylum’’ comes from their word for inviolable.
  • The right of asylum might seem as culturally embedded as the ruins of one of the old temples.
  • Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain invoked insects when he warned of a ‘‘swarm’’ of ‘‘illegal migrants.’
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  • The modern right to asylum has roots in the aftermath of World War I and the Russian Revolution.
jlessner

Migrants Clash With Police in Hungary, as Others Enter Croatia - The New York Times - 0 views

  • In one of the worst bursts of violence that this tense refugee summer has seen, Hungarian riot police responded on Wednesday to rocks, taunts and small fires set by agitated migrants at the border crossing here with water cannons, head-cracking batons and both tear gas and pepper spray.
  • But Hungary did not change its mind — prompting a grim demonstration of what can happen when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object.
  • But having gotten this far from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and other desperate countries, they grasped at hopes that the Hungarians would relent — just as they did when a huge migrant encampment sprouted outside the main train station in Budapest this month.
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  • Tension had been building through the afternoon. About 2,500 migrants had set up camp along the narrow, two-lane road leading to the small crossing here — nothing more than a cluster of battered buildings and two lines of fence, topped with razor wire.
  • “Open! Open!” the crowd chanted. Excited young men clambered on top of that first gate, which had been broken open, and began bouncing up and down on it, trying to knock it off its hinges.All of a sudden, an invisible, noxious gas began to pour into the crowd from the Hungarian side. In a panic, the people nearest the gate began to scramble backward, pushing people aside as they flailed, tears streaming from their eyes. Children grabbed for their parents. Some tossed oranges and apples they had been carrying back at the riot police, ineffectually. People ran into one another, tripped, fell.
  • The crowd collapsed into chaos and ran back into Serbia. Then, the crowd re-formed and slowly moved forward again. And again, there was a gas attack.
jlessner

Iran Deal Players' Report Cards - The New York Times - 0 views

  • The Iran nuclear deal is now sealed — from Washington’s end. But since this has been one of America’s most important foreign policy shifts in the last four decades, it’s worth looking back and grading the performance of the key players.
  • His prediction last week that Israel won’t be around in “25 years” was perfectly timed to complicate President Obama’s effort to get the deal through Congress.
  • Through this deal Khamenei gets Iran out from under crippling sanctions, which his people want, by pushing the breakout time for Iran to make a nuclear bomb from two months to a year — for 15 years — but getting the world to bless Iran’s “peaceful” nuclear enrichment program, even though it cheated its way there. And he’s done it all while giving his hard-line base the feeling that he’s still actually against this deal and his negotiators the feeling that he’s for it. So all his options are open, depending on how the deal goes.
jlessner

At Debate, Republicans Talk the Talk - The New York Times - 0 views

  • if you throw in the earlier loser debate, it was the longest ever.
  • The Lincoln-Douglas debates would go on for three hours. But that was back when in many towns, the most exciting public activity of the year was pole-raising.
  • And then there was the completely, unbelievably irresponsible Trump of the finale who claimed he knew people whose daughter got autism from a vaccine shot. (This happened, he said, to “people that work for me just the other day.”)
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  • Nobody wanted to deal with the global warming issue. Virtually everybody made up a Planned Parenthood scenario that never existed.
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