The better course for all of us — Republican, Democrat and independent — is to step back and take the long view, and to begin building for that.
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shared by Grace Gannon on 13 Jan 15
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Amber Alerts Come to Facebook's News Feed - 0 views
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Amber Alerts security safety abduction Facebook
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A revolutionary way of approaching child abduction cases, all thanks to social media: "We are really mobilizing an army of eyes and ears to be on the search," Mr. Ryan said. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children worked closely with Facebook on expanding the alerts, and Mr. Ryan said that the social network's involvement would enhance the scope of Amber Alerts and was a "potential game-changer."
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shared by Javier E on 29 Apr 16
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If Not Trump, What? - The New York Times - 0 views
www.nytimes.com/...if-not-trump-what.html
2016 crisis American idea American dream poor working class
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This election — not only the Trump phenomenon but the rise of Bernie Sanders, also — has reminded us how much pain there is in this country. According to a Pew Research poll, 75 percent of Trump voters say that life has gotten worse for people like them over the last half century.
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This declinism intertwines with other horrible social statistics. The suicide rate has surged to a 30-year high — a sure sign of rampant social isolation. A record number of Americans believe the American dream is out of reach. And for millennials, social trust is at historic lows.
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I was surprised by Trump’s success because I’ve slipped into a bad pattern, spending large chunks of my life in the bourgeois strata — in professional circles with people with similar status and demographics to my own. It takes an act of will to rip yourself out of that and go where you feel least comfortable. But this column is going to try to do that
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We’ll probably need a new national story. Up until now, America’s story has been some version of the rags-to-riches story, the lone individual who rises from the bottom through pluck and work. But that story isn’t working for people anymore, especially for people who think the system is rigged.
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I don’t know what the new national story will be, but maybe it will be less individualistic and more redemptive.
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We’ll probably need a new definition of masculinity, too. There are many groups in society who have lost an empire but not yet found a role. Men are the largest of those groups. The traditional masculine ideal isn’t working anymore. It leads to high dropout rates, high incarceration rates, low labor force participation rates. This is an economy that rewards emotional connection and verbal expressiveness. Everywhere you see men imprisoned by the old reticent, stoical ideal.
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We’ll also need to rebuild the sense that we’re all in this together. The author R. R. Reno has argued that what we’re really facing these days is a “crisis of solidarity.” Many people, as the writers David and Amber Lapp note, feel pervasively betrayed: by for-profit job-training outfits that left them awash in debt, by spouses and stepparents, by people who collect federal benefits but don’t work. They’ve stopped even expecting loyalty from their employers. The big flashing lights say: NO TRUST. That leads to an everyone-out-for-himself mentality and Trump’s politics of suspicion. We’ll need a communitarianism.
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Then solidarity can be rekindled nationally. Over the course of American history, national projects like the railroad legislation, the W.P.A. and the NASA project have bound this diverse nation. Of course, such projects can happen again — maybe though a national service program, or something else.
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How US leaks upset two allies in one week - CNNPolitics.com - 1 views
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With multiple high-profile intelligence leaks in recent weeks, the US has now managed to upset two of its closest allies by allowing the disclosure of sensitive information
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Trump was reported to have revealed highly sensitive, likely Israeli-shared intelligence to Russian officials in the Oval Office, the United Kingdom is voicing its frustration over leaked information coming from US sources.
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President reportedly sharing sensitive information with a foreign power in one instance and US law enforcement sources providing information to the media in the other
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UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd slammed US leaks on the investigation into the attack at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, as "irritating" on Wednesday after a string of details emerged from US law enforcement sources before they were released by British police or officials
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was greeted warmly by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who showed no indication that Trump's interaction with the Russians posed a problem between the two nations.
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the leaking of the suspect's name was more disruptive because it might have tipped off other suspects,"
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"We've got a very close intelligence and defense partnership with the UK, and that news ... suggests that we have even more close allies who are questioning whether we can be trusted with vital intelligence," Sen. Chris Coons, D-Delaware
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Aaron David Miller, a former adviser to Democratic and Republican secretaries of state, who added that the leaks may reflect a lack of structure within the Trump administration itself.
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"I will make clear to President Trump that intelligence that is shared between our law enforcement agencies must remain secure," she said following a cabinet-level security meeting.
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Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman insisted there would be no effect on the close relations between the United States and Israel due to the apparent leak
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"The intel community is probably beside themselves and worried about what they can confide now, if the President is going to be as careless as he was," Miller said
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"If we will assess that our sources of intelligence are in danger due to the way it will be handled by the United States, then we will have to keep the very sensitive information close to our chests," Yatom
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"You are not going to have the best capabilities to defend the nation if other countries aren't going to share as much with you."
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Stern words will likely be directed to the US side, he said, but "on balance, it's probably not going to change intelligence-sharing arrangements all that much."
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The plan for post-pandemic life in England includes free testing and Covid certificates... - 0 views
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Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain offered a first detailed glimpse of what a post-pandemic society in England might look like on Monday, announcing free twice-weekly coronavirus tests and Covid status certificates that would allow people with immunity into crowded nightclubs and sporting events.
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“I will be going to the pub myself and cautiously but irreversibly raising a pint of beer to my lips,” Mr. Johnson said at a news conference at 10 Downing Street, as he listed the next round of relaxed restrictions.
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Trying to strike a balance between public health and personal liberties, he said Britain would design a system to certify the Covid status of anyone seeking to enter higher-risk settings.
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Britain has long resisted the idea of requiring people to carry identity documents, and for some in the country, this issue carries authoritarian overtones.
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Mr. Johnson acknowledged the sensitivities and pointed out that the certification plan would not be rolled out for a few months. The government plans to test the program in pilot locations, from a comedy club and nightclub in Liverpool to the FA Cup soccer final at Wembley Stadium.
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Britain plans to classify countries according to a traffic light system, with visitors from green countries not required to isolate themselves, visitors from amber countries required to isolate at home for several days, and those from red countries required to continue quarantining in hotels.
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With more than 31 million people having gotten at least one vaccine “jab,” and the country still largely in lockdown, Britain has dramatically driven down its new cases, hospital admissions and deaths from the virus.
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A Roman Feast… of Death! | JSTOR Daily - 0 views
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The banquet hall was painted black from ceiling to floor. By the pale flicker of grave lamps, the invited senators were able to make out a row of tombstones set before the dining couches—each inscribed with one of their names. Slave boys dressed as phantoms brought in courses on gleaming black dishes. They were piled with food, but not the lavish delicacies of an emperor’s table. Rather, Domitian served his guests the plain offerings traditionally given to the dead. The senators began to wonder if soon they would be dead themselves.
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After the dinner ended, the guests spent the whole night expecting summons for an execution to appear at any moment. Finally, in the morning, Domitian sent messengers to inform them that the gravestones (now revealed to be made of solid silver), the costly dishware, and the slave boys were being given to them as gifts.
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At least on the surface, it was all a harmless prank. The fact was, Domitian could easily have had his guests killed. Anyone could fall from imperial grace; Domitian had even executed his nephew and exiled his niece. Even after Domitian revealed that the gravestones were solid-silver treasures, their unspoken threat lingered in the air.
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Then there’s Elagabulus, whose biography is a veritable catalog of extreme pranks. He taunted his guests by serving them platters of faux food made from wax or wood or marble, while he feasted on real delicacies. Sometimes he served his guests paintings of meals, or napkins embroidered with pictures of the food he was eating. (Imagine walking away from a dinner with an empty stomach but loaded down with paintings of a Roman feast: flamingo tongues, peacock brains, combs cut from the heads of living roosters, etc.) Even when he served actual food, he delighted in mixing the edible and inedible, seasoning peas with gold nuggets, rice with pearls, and beans with glowing chips of amber.
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Under Roman law, a slave was not considered to be properly a human being. But the “masters” must have known on some level that their “property” was not really theirs, that subservience and subordination were acts put on under duress. In theory, absolute power is invulnerable; in practice, the emperor is always looking over his shoulder for the assassins in the shadows
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shared by Javier E on 16 Jun 20
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Why America's Institutions Are Failing - The Atlantic - 0 views
www.theatlantic.com/...613078
institutions history crisis response pandemic CDC federal reserve FDA police
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“The government agencies we thought were keeping us safe and secure—the CDC, the FDA, the Police—have either failed or, worse, have been revealed to be active creators of danger and insecurity,” Alex Tabarrok, an economics professor at George Mason University, wrote on Twitter.
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We are prepared for wars against states and militant groups, but not against stateless forces such as pandemics and climate change.
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We’re arming and empowering the police like it’s 1990, when urban crime had reached historic highs. But violent-crime rates have fallen by more than 50 percent in almost every major American city in the past generation, while police still drape themselves in military gear and kill more than 1,000 people annually.
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Between the 1960s and the early 1990s, the violent-crime rate in many U.S. cities rose “to levels seen only in the most violent, war-torn nations of the developing world,”
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As American cities became perceived as war zones, police responded by adopting a “warrior” mentality.
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Then violent crime plunged by more than 70 percent from 1993 to 2018, according to data maintained by the Department of Justice. Although officers routinely face threats that most white-collar workers never will, cops are safer now than at any point in nearly 50 years.
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The U.S. has about the same number of police officers per capita as, say, Australia; but adjusted for population, U.S. law enforcement kills 10 times more people.
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The warrior mentality encourages an adversarial approach in which officers needlessly escalate encounters.
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the CDC had waited “its entire existence for this moment,” but it was so unprepared to deal with COVID-19 that the group initially in charge of the response, the Division of Viral Diseases, had to cede responsibilities to the Influenza Division, despite the fact that COVID-19 is not caused by any kind of influenza virus
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Over time, SWAT itself served as a gateway drug for police militarization, as equipment once reserved for special teams, such as AR-15 rifles, were made available to ordinary officers.
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the War on Drugs has been roundly discredited as a trillion-dollar failure that incurs thousands of unnecessary deaths. But it has bequeathed us a world where police bearing semiautomatics are armed with the wrong tools for the actual job
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“The world has changed dramatically since the most violent years of the 1990s, but police training trails lived experience,”
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the U.S. mental-health crisis has been effectively outsourced to the streets, where police who aren’t trained as social workers or behavioral therapists must perform the ad hoc duties of both.
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Rather than respond to the drastically changing nature of American life, our cities and counties use police as a civic Swiss Army knife to solve problems such as homelessness and mental-health emergencies that have little to do with police training.
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the failures of American police are not unique, but rather a symptom of a broader breakdown in high-quality governance.
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Before it stood for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC was founded as the Communicable Disease Center in the 1940s. Its original mission was to stop an epidemic. The organization’s first 400, Atlanta-based employees were tasked with arresting an outbreak of malaria in the Southeast
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Today, the center’s 14,000 employees work “at the speed of science”—that is, slowly and deliberately—to understand an array of health issues, including cancer, obesity, and vaping.
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its mission creep has transformed what was once a narrowly focused agency into a kaleidoscopic bureaucracy with no fast-twitch instinct for achieving its founding mission to protect Americans from an epidemic.
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The CDC’s recent failures are well known, but worth repeating. It failed to keep track of early COVID-19 cases in part because of a leaden-footed reliance on fax machines and other outdated record-keeping technology. It failed to compile accurate case counts, forcing private actors—such as The Atlantic’s COVID Tracking Project—to fill the void. It failed its most basic coordination functions as an agency
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Violent crime plays a minuscule role in the day of a modern officer, who spends most of his or her time driving around, taking ho-hum radio calls, and performing the tertiary duties of traffic patroller and mental-health counselor.
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Most important, the CDC failed to manufacture basic testing equipment. Its initial test kits were contaminated and unusable, which allowed the disease to spread undetected throughout the U.S. for weeks.
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Compare the situation in the U.S. with the one in East Asia, where several countries have navigated the pandemic far more deftly. China, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Vietnam all updated their infectious-disease protocols based on what they learned from 21st-century epidemics: SARS in 2003, H1N1 in 2009, and MERS in 2012. These countries quickly understood what artillery would be necessary to take on COVID-19, including masks, tests, tracing, and quarantine spaces. Yet the CDC—armed with an $8 billion budget and a global team of scientists and officials—was somehow unprepared to read from the playbook.
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The FDA fumbled just as tragically. In January, Alex Greninger, a virologist at the University of Washington, was prepared to build an in-house coronavirus test
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By the time Greninger was ready to set up his lab, the calendar had turned to March. Hundreds of thousands of Americans were sick, and the outbreak was uncontrollable.
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the White House cannot be entirely blamed for the ponderous incompetence of what ought to be the greatest public-health system in the world.
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Not every American institution is trapped in amber. For a perhaps surprising example of one that has adapted to 21st-century needs, take the Federal Reserve.
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Ben Bernanke, the Fed chair during the Great Recession, used his expertise about the 1930s economy to avoid a similar collapse in financial markets in 2008. Today’s Fed chair, Jerome Powell, has gone even further, urging Congress and the Treasury to “think big” and add to our already-historic deficits.
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the Federal Reserve has junked old shibboleths about inflation and deficit spending and embraced a policy that might have scandalized mainstream economists in the 1990s. Rejecting the status-quo bias that plagues so many institutions, this 106-year-old is still changing with the world.
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what strikes me is that America’s safekeeping institutions have forgotten how to properly see the threats of the 21st century and move quickly to respond to them. Those who deny history may be doomed to repeat it. But those who deny the present are just doomed
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Biden Seeks More Control Over USPS With New Appointments - The New York Times - 0 views
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President Biden on Wednesday announced three nominees to fill vacant seats on the Postal Service’s board of governors, a move to increase Democratic influence on the future of the beleaguered agency.
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Mr. Biden’s announcement was his most direct action to date to address the service’s problems. The president’s nominees are Anton Hajjar, the former general counsel of the American Postal Workers Union; Amber McReynolds, the chief executive of the National Vote at Home Institute; and Ron Stroman, who resigned last year as deputy postmaster general and later served on Mr. Biden’s transition as the leader of the agency review team for the Postal Service.
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In his opening statement on Wednesday, Mr. DeJoy offered an apology for the service’s slow delivery times during the 2020 holiday season.“We must acknowledge that during this peak season, we fell far short of meeting our service targets,” he said. “Too many Americans were left waiting for weeks for important deliveries of mail and packages. This is unacceptable, and I apologize to those customers who felt the impact of our delays.”
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If the nominees are confirmed by the Senate, Democrats and Democratic appointees would gain a majority on the nine-member board.
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The delays last year prompted a slew of lawsuits that forced the Postal Service to temporarily postpone the operational changes.
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Representative Bill Pascrell Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, praised the president’s announcement on Wednesday, saying in a statement that it was an “important step, and I hope only the beginning.” But Mr. Pascrell added that Mr. Biden should remove the existing board members, whom he said had “been silent and complicit to the DeJoy sabotage.”
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On Tuesday, the Postal Service chose Oshkosh Defense, a manufacturer of military vehicles, for a $482 million deal to provide the next generation of postal delivery trucks, over an electric-vehicle maker.