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The Weaknesses of a Popular Primary System - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...484415

voting politics US democracy system weaknesses

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  • James Ceaser, a University of Virginia professor, outlined the history and potential weaknesses of various nomination processes, including one that largely relies on popular primaries.
  • Starting in the early 1970s, Democrats and Republicans began reforming their primary-election processes, transferring influence over nominations away from party leaders to voters.
  • The ideas [for reform] were laid in the Progressive era: to take control over the nomination process from the party leaders and transfer it to a popular following within the party or even outside, in a primary.
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  • I spoke with Ceaser about Trump and the unintended effects of trying to make democracy more democratic.
  • You lay out four goals that a selection system should ideally be able to achieve:(1) It should promote candidates with presidential character,(2) the accession to power should be seen as legitimate,(3) the executive should have qualifications for the office, and(4) “highly ambitious” people should be prevented from taking office.
  • When Woodrow Wilson proposed [a popular-vote nomination system], the idea was that the types of appeals made to the public would be high-minded, and we would have these very deliberative debates by great statesmen. The minute this got underway, though, people started believing more in propaganda, public relations, and advertising.
  • When you look at recent races, you notice something in play: people for whom running for the presidency is their entry into politics rather than the capstone of a career
  • The difficulty of really walking it back substantially would be to ask the American people to have a different conception of what’s legitimate in the nomination.
  • There are disadvantages to a limited system, too—no system is perfect. It can become stale; it can protect too much of the status quo; it can fail to hear messages that are surging up.
  • They have other reasons, too—political reasons. They fear the opposite party more. They’re united in their distaste for Hillary Clinton. But it’s powerful—look, Trump is the winner. He won, fair and square.
  • For example, in the period of the Progressive Era up until the 1970s, you had some primaries—so you got to taste a little of what the people wanted—but the party still held control. You had a little bit of both. And that’s the superdelegate idea—you try to mix.
  • They don’t have a basis even of limiting who the candidates are to their own party. Bernie Sanders is not a Democratic. He was a socialist. And Trump was really not a Republican. But they came in and rented a party because that’s the way the rules are set up.
  • A party was a private organization that worked by its own rules and had its own purposes. It wasn’t obliged to run things according to popular majority rule of all the people, but maybe majority rule of all the party members—people who have been important in the party.
  • That was the idea—you’d have a high-minded debate, and the people would decide, it would be highly legitimate because there’s no stronger principal in a democracy than that the people should rule. Instead of forcing people to make deals behind the scenes and all that used to go on at conventions, they would articulate a program and the best person would win.
  • The Libertarian Party has been around—they’ve been trying to build up an actual party over the long term, and the better they do, the more that would be a conceivable strategy. I just don’t think they’re anywhere near a majority of the American people.
maddieireland334

Near-record UK immigration figures fuel raging EU debate - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...6-b944-52f7b1793dae_story.html

UK Immigration Crisis EU Policy Cameron

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  • Britain gained 333,000 people through immigration in 2015 — a near-historic high — in figures that will fan the debate in Britain about newcomers ahead of a vote next month on whether the country should remain in the European Union.
  • Prime Minister David Cameron has long promised to reduce net migration below 100,000. His failure to do so gives ammunition to EU “leave” campaigners.
  • With less than a month to go before the vote, the figures also give the “leave” camp ample opportunity to attempt a change in the terms of the debate, which so far has revolved around dire warnings of the shock such an exit would have on the economy.
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  • Economists at the International Monetary Fund, the Bank of England, and several respected think tanks have uniformly warned that the leaving the single market could lead hit people hard and may lead to a recession.
  • The “leave” camp have thus far responded by attempting to turn the debate toward the more populist theme of sovereignty.
  • The government, meanwhile, urged people to be realistic. James Brokenshire, the immigration minister, stressed that there are no easy solutions — regardless of whether Britain stays or goes.
  • The statistics office says the U.K. had 630,000 immigrants in 2015, while 297,000 people left. The net figure of 333,000 is 20,000 higher than in 2014 — a statistically insignificant change — and the second-highest on record.
maddieireland334

In France, government vows 'no retreat' from labor reforms amid growing unrest - The Wa... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...8-b2a3-0929b622f1d2_story.html

France Government Policy Hollande Reforms

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  • France’s government vowed “no retreat” from planned labor law reforms Thursday even as unions called for wider strikes that have choked off fuel supplies and created chaos on highways blocked by barricades of burning tires.
  • Union members overwhelmingly oppose President François Hollande’s new labor law, which would relax some of France’s famous worker protections — among the strictest in the world — in order to curb unemployment and stimulate economic growth.
  • The government has offered no hint of compromise as the country struggles with unemployment over 10 percent and near historical highs.
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  • Similar waves of protests in the past successfully halted a government plan to cut the French pension system in an effort to curb its spending deficit.
  • In addition to fuel shortages, which that have created huge lines at gas stations, the unions have also called for nationwide strikes in the public transportation sector, including air traffic controllers and at many of the 19 nuclear plants that provide electricity for much of the country.
  • With approval ratings below 20 percent, Hollande is the least popular president in modern French history.
  • The tumult raises the possibility that Hollande may not be chosen to run for re-election in 2017, which would be the first time in more than 50 years that a first-term incumbent was not tapped to pursue a second term.
  • Protests could grow until then, when France will have already begun hosting the Euro 2016 soccer tournament.
  • Many are concerned that the disruptions to fuel supplies — and possibly even electricity — could affect the tournament, a major sporting event with millions of viewers that will place France, yet again, in the international spotlight.
maddieireland334

Muslim mob attacked Christian homes in Egyptian province - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...6-b944-52f7b1793dae_story.html

Attacks Egypt Muslims Christians Crisis

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  • A Muslim mob ransacked and torched seven Christian homes last week in a province south of the Egyptian capital, Cairo, after rumors spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman, according to a statement by the local Orthodox Coptic church.
  • The statement was signed by Anba Makarios, Minya’s top Christian cleric, who on Wednesday night told a talks show host on the private Dream TV network that the elderly woman was dragged out of her home by the mob who beat her and insulted her before they stripped her of her clothes and paraded her naked on the streets while chanting Allahu Akbar, or “God is great.”
  • Christians, who make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s population of more than 90 million people, have long complained of discrimination in the mostly Muslim nation.
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  • . The family of the Christian man had notified the police of threats against them by Muslim villagers the day before the attack, he said.
  • Extramarital affairs or sex between unmarried couples are taboo among both Muslims and Christians in conservative Egypt. They often attract violent reactions in rural areas, where questions of honor can lead to deadly family feuds that endure for years or result in ostracizing of the perpetrators.
  • Criminal gangs have often targeted wealthy Christian families south of Cairo in recent years, kidnapping their children for ransom. There have also been scores of cases in recent years of underage Christian girls lured away from their families by Muslim men who force them to convert and keep them in hiding until they reach adulthood
  • At least 35 percent of Minya’s population is Christian, the largest in any of Egypt’s 27 provinces.
  • If the case were different, and a Muslim man was having an affair with a Christian woman, the reaction would have hardly been so violent, he added.
maddieireland334

Europe's migrant deal with Turkey may be unraveling. But it was flawed from the start. ... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...6-82c2-a7dcb313287d_story.html

Migrant Crisis Europe Turkey Refugees

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  • Growing tensions between Europe and Turkey over elements of a deal to end the refugee crisis are raising fears that the accord, signed by the two sides in March, may already be on the verge of collapse.
  • The latest sign of trouble came this week when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned European leaders that he would block the deal if the European Union refused to lift visa restrictions for Turks
  • steps
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  • The agreement is based on the premise that Turkey, which hosts more than 2 million Syrian refugees, is safe for asylum seekers and that returning migrants to Turkish territory does not violate European or international law.
  • Last week, a Greek tribunal ruled that a Syrian national who had appealed his deportation from Europe could stay on the island of Lesbos. The court said there is no guarantee refugees will be provided full protection in Turkey.
  • More than 1 million refugees and migrants reached European shores in 2015 in one of the largest mass migration movements since World War II.
  • Most of the refugees had crossed the sea from Turkey to Greece to get to Europe, and E.U. leaders needed to strike a deal with the Turkish government.
  • The E.U. offered more than $6 billion in funds to help Turkey, a member of the NATO military alliance, cope with its refugee population.
  • And policymakers agreed that for every Syrian returned to Turkey under the E.U. deal, another Syrian refugee already residing in Turkey would be resettled to Europe.
  • “The management of the deal is inadequate . . . and the Greek government is reluctant to send anyone back who might have vulnerability,” Collett said. “The challenge now is predicting whether or not [the deal] will unravel.”
  • Collett’s concerns were echoed in a report released this month by a European parliamentary delegation that visited detention facilities in Turkey.
  • In Turkey, pro-government newspapers churn out anti-E.U. columns on a near-daily basis, calling on Erdogan to spurn a “hypocritical” Europe.
  • “The deal isn’t on hold,” a senior Turkish official said this week. He spoke on the condition of anonymity in accordance with government protocol. “Turkey maintains an open-door policy” toward refugees, he said.
maddieireland334

Hillary Clinton's email problems just got much worse - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...l-problems-just-got-much-worse

Clinton Policy Election Emails

shared by maddieireland334 on 26 May 16 - No Cached
  • The State Department’s inspector general released its report on the email practices of Clinton and a number of other past secretaries of state.
  • The report, which you can read in its entirety here, badly complicates Clinton’s past explanations about the server and whether she complied fully with the laws in place governing electronic communication. And it virtually ensures that Clinton’s email practices will be front and center in Donald Trump’s fusillade of attacks against her credibility and honesty between now and Nov. 8.
  • The inspector general, in a long-awaited review obtained Wednesday by The Washington Post in advance of its publication, found that Clinton’s use of private email for public business was “not an appropriate method” of preserving documents and that her practices failed to comply with department policies meant to ensure that federal record laws are followed.
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  • The report says Clinton, who is the Democratic presidential front-runner, should have printed and saved her emails during her four years in office or surrendered her work-related correspondence immediately upon stepping down in February 2013.
  • Clinton’s team has spent months casting the State Department inspector general’s office as overly aggressive and working hand in hand with congressional Republicans to cast the former secretary of state in the worst possible light.
  • It was particularly critical of former secretary of state Colin Powell — who has acknowledged publicly that he used a personal email account to conduct business — concluding that he too failed to follow department policy designed to comply with public-record laws.
  • For a candidate already struggling to overcome a perception that she is neither honest nor trustworthy, the IG report makes that task significantly harder.
  • Clinton remains blessed that Republicans are on the verge of nominating Donald Trump, a candidate whose numbers on honesty, trustworthiness and even readiness to lead are worse — and in some cases, far worse — than hers. But Trump’s task of casting her as “Crooked Hillary” just got easier.
maddieireland334

Paul Ryan is in another fight he doesn't want - this time over LGBT rights - The Washin... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...ant-this-time-over-lgbt-rights

Ryan Policy Fight LGBT US

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  • House Speaker Paul D. Ryan finds himself in the middle of yet another Republican civil war as the battle over LGBT rights has come to Congress, threatening to divide an already fractured GOP.
  • Democrats won an opening salvo late Wednesday night, when the House approved on a vote of 223 to 195, a measure by Rep. Sean Maloney (D-N.Y.) to deny payment to federal contractors who discriminate against LGBT employees.
  • Maloney’s victory does not mean that House conservatives — angry over what they view as overreaching by President Obama — will not continue to wage the fight.
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  • Conservatives are mainly taking aim at a pair of Obama directives to ensure protections for LGBT employees of federal contractors and to direct public schools to provide access to locker rooms and bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity. 
  • Also on Wednesday, a measure by Alabama GOP Rep. Bradley Byrne passed to exempt religious groups from complying with the directives.
  • Republican leaders have tried to steer lawmakers away from wading into the hot-button debate on the House floor.
  • The speaker this week cautioned GOP members at a closed-door session that Democrats were likely to keep trying to force them into uncomfortable votes on LGBT discrimination, according to aides and members who were present.
  • He floated the idea of modifying House rules in a move that would likely restrict the number of amendments that could be offered on the floor, which would allow leaders to get out ahead of controversial votes and avoid any potentially embarrassing floor fights.
  • The GOP leadership is trying to “thread the needle,” according to aides, between conservatives itching for another chance to challenge Obama and those who don’t want to tackle on an issue they think is best left for the states to resolve. 
  • For their part, Democrats are exploiting the rift, looking to draw attention to the GOP infighting after a measure that would have banned federal contractors from discriminating against LGBT employees failed in the House last week.
  • Democrats see LGBT rights as a prime opportunity to prove that House Republicans are intolerant of minorities. 
  • The vote on Maloney’s original measure turned heated last week when it appeared that seven Republicans switched their votes after the bill seemed to have passed.
  • Ryan told reporters on Wednesday that the breakdown — which involved Democrats shouting “shame, shame” across the aisle at their GOP colleagues —  was just a misunderstanding.
  • Then, Democrats successfully rallied support from moderate Republicans to ban the flag on federal property. Southern Republicans were enraged and threatened to vote against the overall bill, forcing former House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) to give up on the entire appropriations process to avoid an embarrassing failure.
  • The stakes are much higher this year for Ryan who has vowed to return the House to working order, starting with passing spending bills and allowing any member to offer amendments.
maddieireland334

Donald Trump keeps attacking fellow Republicans - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...6-aa84-42391ba52c91_story.html

Trump Republicans Attacks Policy US

shared by maddieireland334 on 26 May 16 - No Cached
  • A fresh string of attacks by Donald Trump this week on rivals in the GOP establishment — including one delivered against a prominent Latina governor in her home state — raised new doubts about his ability or desire to unite the party’s badly fractured leadership.
  • The intraparty skirmishing began with an attack on New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R) during a campaign rally in Albuquerque, where Trump blamed her for mismanaging the state’s economy and suggested that she was shirking her responsibilities to her constituents
  • He knocked South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s decision to endorse Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), mocked former Florida governor Jeb Bush for his energy level and blasted 2012 ­Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney as a “choker.” None of the three have endorsed him.
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  • They could also further undercut his standing among women and minorities, who are strongly opposed to him in public-opinion polls.
  • Before Trump, she was also widely considered to be a leading pick as a potential 2016 vice-presidential candidate.
  • Martinez has criticized the way Trump describes illegal immigrants and decided not to attend his Albuquerque rally.
  • In a Wednesday news conference on Capitol Hill, Ryan declined to specifically address Trump’s attacks on Martinez but defended her record.
  • Trump and Ryan, for example, remain divided on one of the central pillars of the mogul’s campaign: immigration reform, specifically Trump’s call for mass deportation of an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country.
  • Ryan’s six-part House agenda for next year — which he previewed during the news conference — also does not mention trade, another area where Trump holds positions dramatically different from the party’s pro-free-trade leadership.
  • Even so, Trump’s negatives are nearly matched with Clinton’s, and the poll showed that the two are caught in a statistical dead heat, with Trump at 46 percent and Clinton at 44 percent.
  • The poll also showed that Republican voters overall are warming to the mogul, with 85 percent now backing Trump.
maddieireland334

President Obama: World Leaders Are 'Rattled' By Trump - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...484454

Trump Election Obama Policy

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  • President Obama continued Thursday his criticism of Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, saying in Japan that other world leaders were nervous about the prospect of a Trump presidency.
  • They’re rattled by him and for good reason. Because a lot of the proposals that he’s made display either ignorance of world affairs or a cavalier attitude or an interest in getting tweets and headlines instead of actually thinking through what is required to keep America safe
  • This isn’t the first time Obama has criticized Trump. Earlier this month, the president said of the Republican’s candidacy: “This is not a reality show.”
maddieireland334

Obama in Hiroshima: Why It's So Hard for Countries to Apologize - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...483617

obama hiroshima war politics History atlantic

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  • When Barack Obama goes to Hiroshima on May 27, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to visit the site of the world’s first nuclear attack, he will not apologize on behalf of his country for carrying out that strike 71 years ago.
  • But he will affirm America’s “moral responsibility,” as the only nation to have used nuclear weapons, to prevent their future use. He will recognize the painful past, but he won’t revisit it. When it’s all over, we still won’t know whether or not he thinks there’s something about the atomic bombings to be sorry for.
  • This is especially true with the Hiroshima bombing, where the competing stories about what happened are so morally complex. Nevertheless, political apologies do occur.
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  • Lind compared Trudeau’s statement to President Bill Clinton’s apology for America’s failure to intervene in the Rwandan Genocide. Clinton was saying sorry for inaction rather than action, she said, and there was no American constituency to be offended by his expression of regret.
  • Germany’s various apologies for the crimes of the Nazis, Lind added, are the shining exception in international affairs, not the rule: “The world we live in is one in which countries routinely whitewash their past violence. They routinely even lie about their past violence. They sometimes glorify their past violence.”
  • ut Lind has found that apologies and reparations for those wrongs can be damaging as well, since such actions are likely to polarize people within those countries. The best approach, she says, is recognizing and remembering wrongs in ways that unify rather than divide—that emphasize shared suffering, not perpetrators and victims.
  • “Liberals have this idea that the way to be a strong nation is to be transparent about the past, and to be self-critical, and to constantly question your leaders, and constantly ask, ‘Are we living up to our own values?’ And so this kind of historical reckoning with the past [that Obama is undertaking in Hiroshima]—they love that
  • Conservatives, meanwhile, “say that national strength comes from national unity, and national unity is best served by instilling pride in people, and pride comes from remembering the really great things that we’ve done, and remembering what’s different and great about America. … And so they would say, ‘What are you doing talking about all the people we killed? Why aren’t you celebrating that we brought democracy to Japan?
  • Politics. Everyone has their own story.
  • The vast majority of Japanese don’t think the atomic bombings were justified, and that belief has only become more widespread over time. But Japanese leaders have not demanded that the U.S. government apologize for the attacks, in part because they don’t want to jeopardize the flourishing U.S.-Japanese alliance or encourage calls for Japan to apologize for its own wartime aggression.
  • This lack of a demand from the Japanese, Lind argues, has created the friendly space in which a visit like Obama’s can take place—and in which the two countries can adopt a common narrative about the atomic bombings.
  • Lind compared the situation to the way in which American and European leaders, including German leaders, now gather in Normandy to commemorate the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France
  • “For most Japanese, Obama’s visit actually fits with the Japanese story about the bomb—that the atomic bomb gave Japan its postwar mission for peace,”
  • that the atomic bomb ended the war and saved American lives. So the Japanese bomb story begins in 1945 and goes forward in the mission for peace. The American bomb story ends in ’45. Those are two separate stories. They will not cross. And the president’s position that the lesson of the past is for a non-nuclear future, it’s almost like a third story.”
maddieireland334

Bernie Sanders's Political Revolution Nears Its End - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...484439

revolution bernie atlantic

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  • This is Sanders’s last stand, according to the official narrative of the corrupt corporate media, and if there is anything we have learned in the past year, it is the awesome power of the official narrative—the self-reinforcing drumbeat that dictates everything.
  • Sanders continued: “I believe that if we win here in California, and if we win the other five states that are voting on June 7, we’re going to go marching to the Democratic convention with a hell of a lot of momentum. I believe that if we do well here in California, we’ll march in with momentum and we’ll march out with the Democratic nomination!”
  • Sanders and his people have their own sets of rules. All you have to do is unskew the delegate counts, they explain, take out the superdelegates, imagine they all vote for Sanders, imagine certain primaries had been conducted according to different rules.
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  • The Bernie-or-Bust-ers tend to be young, male, and white; few describe themselves as Democrats, and many are new to voting. Women, people of color, and Democrats seem more open to Clinton.
  • They’re both challenging the system. We are people who don’t believe in the system! We want to make a new system where people take care of each other.”
  • The Sanders movement has become impervious to reality. Some have even called into question the nature of reality itself: “Bernie Sanders’ ‘political revolution’ is political only inasmuch as thought is political,” a self-described “metamodernist creative writer”
  • A spate of recent polls have shown Clinton tied with or slightly trailing Trump in November matchups, the apparent effect of a Republican Party that has unified and a Democratic Party that remains fractured.
  • Sanders has repeatedly said he will not play the spoiler—by running as an independent or backing a third-party candidate such as Stein. He says he will do everything in his power to defeat Trump.
  • Many Sanders supporters told me they had once liked Clinton, but over the course of the primary they have come to dislike and distrust her.
  • It seems fitting that this potentially final battle royale should take place in California, a big, liberal state populated by all the various Democratic tribes: the kombucha-sipping hipsters of San Francisco; the techno-utopians of Silicon Valley; the limousine liberals of Hollywood; the large black and Latino populations.
  • A poll of the state conducted earlier this month gave Clinton an 18-point lead over Sanders, but in a new poll released Thursday, that had narrowed to just two points.
  • This week, he was given five slots on the Democratic platform committee, which will allow him to influence what the party stands for—presumably an important goal.
  • “I was very loving toward Bernie Sanders until about a week ago, but now he’s working to elect Trump,” said Kathy Katz, 73, of Temecula. “We’re all way more liberal than the Democratic Party, but some of us realize you can’t win an election that way!”
  • Clinton, for her part, has taken to pretending Sanders does not exist. In her speech, she referred only to Trump, whose candidacy, she said, “may have started out as entertaining, but now it’s really, really concerning.” She added, “We have a bully pulpit in the White House—that doesn’t mean we want a bully in the White House!”
  • Sanders was introduced by a blind Filipino delegate and a gay actress who spoke passionately in favor of transgender rights and compared Sanders to a unicorn, because “he seems too good to be true.”
maddieireland334

The stark contrast between the job market and the election, and why it matters - The Wa... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...he-election-and-why-it-matters

economy job market election US relationship

shared by maddieireland334 on 06 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • I believe I can say, without partisan challenge, that what’s going on in the Republican presidential campaign is an embarrassment to the United States.
  • Since the Great Recession, the rate fell from around 83 percent down to around 81 percent or so. Over the six-plus years of economic expansion, the best you could say is “at least it didn’t fall further.”
  • the tight job market is providing workers with a bit more bargaining power.
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  • At 2.2 percent, average hourly wage growth is beating (very low) inflation, meaning paychecks have more buying power.
  • The underemployment rate, at 9.7 percent, remains elevated by 6 million part-time workers who would rather be full-timers but still can’t find the work.
  • the underemployment rate needs to fall another point before you can call the job market really tight
  • The underlying trend of job gains is over 200,000 per month, a strong enough clip to nudge the jobless rate even lower than its current eight-year low of 4.9 percent.
  • As you can see in the recent data, the better job market is giving people a reason to come back in and see what they can find.
  • It matters a great deal who they appoint in positions that directly affect fiscal policy. They appoint governors to the Federal Reserve. They set trade policy and deal with international competitors.
  • Unless the next president is smart and persuasive enough to get Congress to apply countercyclical policy to the next downturn, whatever gains folks have seen may be short-lived.
  • Many in the electorate are mad about the inequality embedded in the economy in a way that means they’ve only recently seen some gains (and that’s an average result — there are places that are still facing depressed conditions).
  • People are justifiably angry about an economy in which reckless finance brought us the recession, got bailed out and recovered way before the rest of us.
maddieireland334

In an unusual allusion to Bill Clinton's sexual affair, Hillary Clinton speaks of forgi... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...-clinton-speaks-of-forgiveness

Clinton Election speech Bill Clinton

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  • Taking her cue from a minister who praised her public grace "in the face of adversity," an apparent reference to former president Bill Clinton's dalliance with an intern, Hillary Clinton likened her husband to the prodigal son in the often-cited Bible story.
  • "And in those difficult times in my life, I have often been struck by a particular passage from scripture," Clinton said, before recounting the story of the son who abandons and disrespects his father but is forgiven and welcomed home.
  • Clinton said she took from that parable the need to “practice the discipline of gratitude every day. There is much to be grateful for even when it doesn’t feel or look like it.”
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  • She did not elaborate or speak directly about the details of her husband's acknowledged infidelity, but the context was clear.
  • noted that the prodigal son parable “is also about Our Father in heaven who is always ready to take us back …who gave His only begotten son for us. So practicing the discipline of gratitude is one of the ways we understand more what is expected of us.”
  • Clinton visited three black churches Sunday, before a debate in Flint, Mich., that will highlight a poisoned-water crisis in the majority-black city.
maddieireland334

Just because Russians like Putin doesn't mean they're happy about the economy - The Was... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...theyre-happy-about-the-economy

policy economy Russia Putin

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  • Polls show that Russians overwhelmingly support Putin, but that they’re far more negative about the politicians and bureaucrats underneath him.
  • More than 16 years into Putin’s rule, many Russians see him as having transcended politics, not someone who can be voted in or out of office.
  • 20-year-old man told the pollster, Lyubov Kostyrya, that he strongly approved of Putin. But when she asked him an open-ended question about which politicians in Russia he supported, he couldn’t name a single one
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  • Many spoke of newly constrained lives: vacations not taken, medicines not purchased, small comforts forsaken because prices are quickly rising even as salaries shrink.
  • But some Putin critics speculate that polls overestimate the degree of support for the Russian leader because those who dislike him simply refuse to take part in the polling.
  • “The central bank is worst of all.” She said she was worried about rising prices and thought the economy will get even worse. And she said she didn’t plan to vote in upcoming parliamentary elections, because she didn’t think it would make a difference.
maddieireland334

Canada's Trudeau says Americans should know more about the world - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...ould-know-more-about-the-world

Canada US world education knowledge

shared by maddieireland334 on 06 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has suggested his counterparts south of the border would do well to know more about the rest of the world.
  • He answered in stereotypical Canadian fashion, suggesting "it might be nice" if Americans "paid a little more attention to the world."
  • n myriad polls and surveys, Americans are often found to be among the most "ignorant" populations in the developed world. Contrary to trends elsewhere, the rate of foreign language study by college students in the United States is declining, not increasing.
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  • Trudeau and his Liberal party came to power after elections in October, ousting the once-entrenched conservative government of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
  • Trudeau's cabinet is the most diverse in the country's history; he has reasserted Canada's role at the forefront of climate change policy; his government has brought in more some 25,000 Syrian refugees in the space of just a few months.
  • As WorldViews has cataloged over the past few months, the Republican debates have been a showcase for crude, simplistic discussions about foreign policy and global challenges, heavy on sound and fury, light on substance.
  • A lack of understanding of the strictures of the U.S. refugee vetting process led many in the United States to see Syria's destitute refugees as terror threats rather than people desperately fleeing a hideous, brutal war.
  • he prime minister will always state his values," said a Canadian government official, quoted anonymously in an article by the Canadian Press news agency. "But he’s not interested in stirring up domestic politics."
maddieireland334

There's nothing wrong with grade inflation - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...ing-wrong-with-grade-inflation

Education US college grades inflation opinion

shared by maddieireland334 on 06 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • By the early ’90s, so long as one had the good sense to major in the humanities — all bets were off in the STEM fields — it was nearly impossible to get a final grade below a B-minus at an elite college.
  • According to a 2012 study, the average college GPA, which in the 1930s was a C-plus, had risen to a B at public universities and a B-plus at private schools. At Duke, Pomona and Harvard, D’s and F’s combine for just 2 percent of all grades
  • Some blame students’ consumer mentality, a few see a correlation with small class sizes (departments with falling enrollments want to keep students happy), and many cite a general loss of rigor in a touchy-feely age. 
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  • According to one study, enrollment fell by one-fifth, and students were 30 percent less likely to major in one of these subjects. Yale and Harvard, while making noises about grade inflation, have never instituted tough rules to stem it.
  • Overall, graded students are less interested in the topic at hand and — and, for obvious, common-sense reasons — more inclined to pick the easiest possible task when given the chance.
  • Grades should motivate certain students: those afraid of the stigma of a bad grade or those ambitious, by temperament or conditioning, to succeed in measurable ways.
  • Although recent research on the effects of grades is limited, several studies in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s measured how students related to a task or a class when it was graded compared to when it was ungraded.
  • Our goal should be ending the centrality of grades altogether. For years, I feared that a world of only A’s would mean the end of meaningful grades; today, I’m certain of it. But what’s so bad about that?
  • To top humanities PhD programs, letters of reference and writing samples matter more than overall GPA (although students are surely expected to have received good grades in their intended areas of study).
  • We need to move to a post-grading world. Maybe that means a world where there are no grades — or one where, if they remain, we rely more on better kinds of evaluation.
  • According to a 2012 study by the Chronicle of Higher Education, GPA was seventh out of eight factors employers considered in hiring, behind internships, extracurricular activities and previous employment.
  • Yes, the student who gets a 100 on a calculus exam probably grasps the material better than the student with a 60 — but only if she retains the knowledge, which grades can’t show.
  • Right now, students end up being evaluated twice: once with an inflated and meaningless letter grade, then again by teachers asked to write letters of recommendation.
  • They said employers want a GPA of 3.0 or even 3.5. But again, that standard would include almost every Harvard student — which suggests that GPAs serve not to validate students from elite schools but to keep out those from less-prestigious schools and large public universities, where grades are less inflated. Grades at community colleges “have actually dropped” over the years, according to Stuart Rojstaczer, a co-author of the 2012 grade-inflation study.
  • That means we have two systems: one for students at elite schools, who get jobs based on references, prestige and connections, and another for students everywhere else, who had better maintain a 3.0.
  • Students can compare evaluations from different classes, too, “read across all of them, see what they need improvement on.” And when they graduate, they — and employers or grad-school admission offices — get far more than a printed page of grades.
  • The trouble is that, while it’s relatively easy for smaller colleges to go grade-free, with their low student-to-teacher ratios, it’s tough for professors at larger schools, who must evaluate more students, more quickly, with fewer resources.
  • teaching five classes for poverty wages can’t write substantial term-end comments, so grades are a necessity if they want to give any feedback at all.
  • perhaps the small, progressive colleges can inspire other schools to follow, as they have in, say, abolishing the SAT as an admissions requirement
  • It would mean hiring more teachers and paying them better (which schools should do anyway). And if transcripts become more textured, graduate-school admission offices and employers will have to devote more resources to reading them, and to getting to know applicants through interviews and letters of reference
  • When I think about getting rid of grades, I think of happier students, with whom I have more open, democratic relationships.
  • Even in my Yale classrooms filled with overachievers, most of whom want to learn for the sake of learning, some respond well to the clarity of a grade.
maddieireland334

Mitt Romney isn't exactly ruling out his presidential nomination - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...ut-his-presidential-nomination

Romney election US nomination

shared by maddieireland334 on 06 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • the 2012 GOP nominee is nevertheless leaving the door open — just a crack — to the possibility of being drafted by his party at a contested convention in July.
  • don't think anyone in our party should say, 'Oh no, even if the people in the party wanted me to be the president, I would say no to it,'" Romney said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."
  • If through the primary process Republican front-runner Donald Trump fails to collect the majority of delegates needed to secure the nomination, the result would be a contested convention.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • I can guarantee you this: One of the people running for president — one of the four — is going to be the Republican Party nominee," he added. "Three of the four are people I would endorse. But I'm not running, and I'm not going to be running."
maddieireland334

French Authorities Demolish Refugee Camp : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...horities-demolish-refugee-camp

French authorities Refugee crisis camp

shared by maddieireland334 on 06 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • There is chaos in the French refugee camp that has come to be known as the Jungle. In an effort to dismantle the camp, riot police in Calais have directed bulldozers and fired tear gas and water cannons at the refugees, and some aid workers have been caught in the crossfire.
  • They came in very forcefully. They told the refugees they had one hour to leave their houses or they would be arrested. And the minute the refugees were out of the houses, they stepped in and begin demolishing them with axes and hand tools and carting all the remains away with bulldozers.
  • This camp has been around since March 2015. And originally, all the refugees were just living in tents. And over the last six months, we've had a massive project with volunteers from all over Europe coming in and building little shelters.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The French interior minister said that the French government has set up over 100 shelters across the country for migrants as an alternative to this camp.
  • Nobody's even looking to see which direction the refugees are walking in. No one's checking to see they get a better home. This exercise is about dismantling the camp.
  • The legal advice we'd been given was that they have a human right to accommodation. They're in Europe, and they have human rights now, so they were advised that they should be able to stay in their homes
  • They've refused food, they're on hunger strike, and I just - I cannot even explain to you how awful it is to see people driven to these kind of desperate measures when the law has failed them, the aid workers can't help them, and there's just nothing else they can do. It's heartbreaking.
maddieireland334

Iran Sentences Billionaire Businessman To Death For Corruption : The Two-Way : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...essman-to-death-for-corruption

Iran Corruption Death Policy

shared by maddieireland334 on 06 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • An Iranian court has sentenced billionaire businessman Babak Zanjani to death on corruption charges, according to Iranian state media.
  • Zanjani is an oil trader who has blacklisted by the West for years on charges that he helped Iran evade oil sanctions.
  • "Iran's judiciary says an Islamic court convicted Zinjani and two associates of 'spreading corruption on earth,' a crime that carries the death penalty in Iran
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Zanjani's wealth has been estimated at $14 billion, The Associated Press reports, and Iran's Oil Ministry says the businessman owes more than $2.25 billion for oil sales he made on behalf of the Iranian government.
maddieireland334

Marco Rubio Wins Puerto Rico Primary : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...rubio-wins-puerto-rico-primary

Rubio Election US Primary Puerto Rico

shared by maddieireland334 on 06 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Marco Rubio is projected to win Puerto Rico's Republican primary, according to the Associated Press.
  • The Florida senator campaigned in Puerto Rico on Saturday, where he downplayed his poor showing in Saturday's slate of primaries. But delegates added on Sunday will help his total climb against Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
  • Overall, it's just the second outright win for Rubio; he also won the Minnesota caucuses on Super Tuesday.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • After Saturday's primaries, where Rubio missed the delegate threshold in two states, Trump argued it was time for the senator to drop out of the race.
  • The senator's campaign hopes his win with Hispanics in the territory will boost help boost him over Trump in the Sunshine State.
  • This is the only time Puerto Rico Republicans will be able to make their choice known, though; they're ineligible to vote in the November elections.
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