Skip to main content

Home/ History Readings/ Group items matching "originalism" in title, tags, annotations or url

Group items matching
in title, tags, annotations or url

Sort By: Relevance | Date Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
27More

Covid-19 Relief Bill Fulfills Biden's Promise to Expand Obamacare, for Two Years - The ... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...obamacare-biden.html
shared by anonymous on 09 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • President Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill will fulfill one of his central campaign promises, to fill the holes in the Affordable Care Act and make health insurance affordable for more than a million middle-class Americans who could not afford insurance under the original law.
  • The changes will last only for two years. But for some, they will be considerable: The Congressional Budget Office estimated that a 64-year-old earning $58,000 would see monthly payments decline from $1,075 under current law to $412 because the federal government would take up much of the cost.
  • “For people that are eligible but not buying insurance it’s a financial issue, and so upping the subsidies is going to make the price point come down,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy expert and professor at the University of Pennsylvania who advised Mr. Biden during his transition. The bill, he said, would “make a big dent in the number of the uninsured.”
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • “Obviously it’s an improvement, but I think that it is inadequate given the health care crisis that we’re in,” said Representative Ro Khanna, a progressive Democrat from California who favors the single-payer, government-run system called Medicare for All that has been embraced by Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, and the Democratic left.
  • “We’re in a national health care crisis,” Mr. Khanna said. “Fifteen million people just lost private health insurance. This would be the time for the government to say, at the very least, for those 15 million that we ought to put them on Medicare.”
  • The stimulus bill would make upper-middle-income Americans newly eligible for financial help to buy plans on the federal marketplaces, and the premiums for those plans would cost no more than 8.5 percent of an individual’s modified adjusted gross income. It would also increase subsidies for lower-income enrollees.
  • Just when Mr. Biden or Democrats would put forth such a plan remains unclear, and passage in an evenly divided Senate would be an uphill struggle. White House officials have said Mr. Biden wants to get past the coronavirus relief bill before laying out a more comprehensive domestic policy agenda.
  • The Affordable Care Act is near and dear to Mr. Biden, who memorably used an expletive to describe it as a big deal when he was vice president and President Barack Obama signed it into law in 2010. It has expanded coverage to more than 20 million Americans, cutting the uninsured rate to 10.9 percent in 2019 from 17.8 percent in 2010.
  • Even so, some 30 million Americans were uninsured between January and June 2020, according to the latest figures available from the National Health Interview Survey. The problem has only grown worse during the coronavirus pandemic, when thousands if not millions of Americans lost insurance because they lost their jobs.
  • Mr. Biden made clear when he was running for the White House that he did not favor Medicare for All, but instead wanted to strengthen and expand the Affordable Care Act. The bill that is expected to reach his desk in time for a prime-time Oval Office address on Thursday night would do that. The changes to the health law would cover 1.3 million more Americans and cost about $34 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
  • Republicans have always said that their plan was to repeal and replace the health law, but after 10 years they have yet to come up with a replacement. Mr. Ayres said his firm is working on “coming up with some alternative health care message” that does not involve “simply throwing everybody into a government-run health care problem.”
  • Yet polls show that the idea of a government-run program is gaining traction with voters. In September, the Pew Research Center reported that over the previous year, there had been an increase, especially among Democrats, in the share of Americans who say health insurance should be provided by a single national program run by the government.
  • “I would argue there is more momentum for Medicare expansion given the pandemic and the experience people are having,” said Mr. Khanna, the California congressman. “They bought time, but I think at some point there will be a debate on a permanent fix.”
  • WASHINGTON — President Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill will fulfill one of his central campaign promises, to fill the holes in the Affordable Care Act and make health insurance affordable for more than a million middle-class Americans who could not afford insurance under the original law.
  • Under the changes, the signature domestic achievement of the Obama administration will reach middle-income families who have been discouraged from buying health plans on the federal marketplace because they come with high premiums and little or no help from the government.
  • “For people that are eligible but not buying insurance it’s a financial issue, and so upping the subsidies is going to make the price point come down,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy expert and professor at the University of Pennsylvania who advised Mr. Biden during his transition.
  • But because those provisions last only two years, the relief bill almost guarantees that health care will be front and center in the 2022 midterm elections, when Republicans will attack the measure as a wasteful expansion of a health law they have long hated. Meantime, some liberal Democrats may complain that the changes only prove that a patchwork approach to health care coverage will never work.
  • The Affordable Care Act is near and dear to Mr. Biden, who memorably used an expletive to describe it as a big deal when he was vice president and President Barack Obama signed it into law in 2010. It has expanded coverage to more than 20 million Americans, cutting the uninsured rate to 10.9 percent in 2019 from 17.8 percent in 2010.
  • The poll found that 36 percent of Americans, and 54 percent of Democrats, favored a single national program. When asked if the government had a responsibility to provide health insurance, either through a single national program or a mix of public and private programs, 63 percent of Americans and 88 percent of Democrats said yes.
  • Just when Mr. Biden or Democrats would put forth such a plan remains unclear, and passage in an evenly divided Senate would be an uphill struggle. White House officials have said Mr. Biden wants to get past the coronavirus relief bill before laying out a more comprehensive domestic policy agenda.
  • Republicans have always said that their plan was to repeal and replace the health law, but after 10 years they have yet to come up with a replacement. Mr. Ayres said his firm is working on “coming up with some alternative health care message” that does not involve “simply throwing everybody into a government-run health care problem.”
  • In January, he ordered the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplaces reopened to give people throttled by the pandemic economy a new chance to obtain coverage.
  • Yet polls show that the idea of a government-run program is gaining traction with voters. In September, the Pew Research Center reported that over the previous year, there had been an increase, especially among Democrats, in the share of Americans who say health insurance should be provided by a single national program run by the government.
  • With its expanded subsidies for health plans under the Affordable Care Act, the coronavirus relief bill makes insurance more affordable, and puts health care on the ballot in 2022.
  • cludes rich new incentives to entice the few holdout states — including Texas, Georgia and Florida — to finally expand Medicaid to those with too much money to qualify for the federal health program for the poor, but too little to afford private covera
  • “Biden promised voters a public option, and it is a promise he has to keep,” said Waleed Shahid, a spokesman for Justice Democrats, the liberal group that helped elect Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive Democrats. Of the stimulus bill, he said, “I don’t think anyone thinks this is Biden’s health care plan.”
  • “I think that argument has been fought and lost,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, conceding that the repeal efforts are over, at least for now, with Democrats in charge of the White House and both houses of Congress.
4More

Opinion | Biden's Chance to Save the Everglades - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...onment-everglades-florida.html
shared by rerobinson03 on 28 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The project in question, launched near the end of the Clinton administration, is an effort to restore the biological health of the Florida Everglades. Originally funded at $7.8 billion, the program is now more than 20 years old, and while some progress has been made, it has moved in fits and starts. It is now at a critical point, with several major plans on the cusp of success if the money can be found. Decisions taken in the next few months may well determine whether the Everglades project lives up to its promise of reviving the South Florida ecosystem.
  • Congress agreed to pay for half the project, Florida the other half. There were problems. The bill identified 68 projects, some of marginal value and all needing separate authorization, which delayed the funding. There was squabbling among the main players, including the state and the Army Corps of Engineers, which insisted on endless studies. Most important, the enthusiasm for restoration that was so palpable in President Bill Clinton’s White House and Interior Department disappeared under President George W. Bush, and it was never fully recaptured, even under President Barack Obama. One result is that Florida has spent close to $5 billion on the project, Washington only $2 billion.
  • he main force behind restoration has always been a desire to save the swamp, America’s greatest subtropical wilderness, and the bird and animal life that lives there.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Senator Rubio asked President Biden for $725 million this year to jump-start the big projects. Environmental groups like the Everglades Foundation want a four-year commitment of close to $3 billion, about equal to the Army Corps of Engineers’s estimates of what it will take to keep restoration efforts on track for the next decade. Either way, these numbers would help Washington finally honor its original pledge. They represent a low-cost but vital investment in the natural world that Mr. Biden and his environmental team should find easy to make.
7More

U.S. Officially Rejoins Paris Agreement On Climate Change : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...is-agreement-on-climate-change climate change paris agreement Politics US
shared by mimiterranova on 19 Feb 21 - No Cached
  • The United States on Friday officially rejoined the Paris Agreement on climate change designed to limit global warming and avoid its potentially catastrophic impacts.
  • "The Paris Agreement is an unprecedented framework for global action. We know because we helped design it and make it a reality," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. "Its purpose is both simple and expansive: to help us all avoid catastrophic planetary warming and to build resilience around the world to the impacts from climate change we already see."
  • The U.S. left the Paris Agreement in November after a yearlong waiting period had ended. Former President Donald Trump originally announced his intention to withdraw from the treaty in 2017 and formally notified the United Nations in 2019.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Under the terms of the agreement, the U.S. promised to reduce its emissions by about 25% by 2025 compared with 2005 levels. But according to analysts, the country is only on track to achieve about a 17% reduction.
  • In 2020, there have already been 16 climate-driven disasters that cost at least $1 billion each, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
  • mimiterranova on 12 Mar 21
     
    U.S. Officially Rejoins Paris Agreement On Climate Change
  • mimiterranova on 12 Mar 21
     
    The United States on Friday officially rejoined the Paris Agreement on climate change designed to limit global warming and avoid its potentially catastrophic impacts. '"The Paris Agreement is an unprecedented framework for global action. We know because we helped design it and make it a reality," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. "Its purpose is both simple and expansive: to help us all avoid catastrophic planetary warming and to build resilience around the world to the impacts from climate change we already see." The U.S. left the Paris Agreement in November after a yearlong waiting period had ended. Former President Donald Trump originally announced his intention to withdraw from the treaty in 2017 and formally notified the United Nations in 2019. Under the terms of the agreement, the U.S. promised to reduce its emissions by about 25% by 2025 compared with 2005 levels. But according to analysts, the country is only on track to achieve about a 17% reduction. In 2020, there have already been 16 climate-driven disasters that cost at least $1 billion each, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
14More

Opinion | Americans Don't Want to Return to Lousy Low Wage Jobs - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...shortage-jobs-biden-covid.html low wage jobs unemployment politics policy Economics
shared by Javier E on 02 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • When Congress passed the CARES Act last May and the American Rescue Plan Act this March, it was hard, even impossible, for policymakers to forecast the demand for labor or the pace of the economic recovery. The pandemic was still stubbornly lurking. The economic (and humanitarian) risk of doing too little far exceeded the risk of being generous
  • the entire point of the enhanced unemployment checks, at least originally, was to tide Americans over until it was safe for more people to work again.
  • Republican-controlled states, as well as some more politically mixed states, are doing this because they presume there is a macroeconomic upside to millions of workers returning to lower-income jobs. They shouldn’t be so sure.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Either there won’t be enough jobs for the people eventually looking for work because so many businesses closed during the pandemic, or the jobs left over will be, frankly, lousier jobs. This latter possibility would leave a large share of Americans underemployed, which would cause a wide reduction in household income among the country’s less wealthy half.
  • Just imagine seeing millions of new jobs added over the next few months and unemployment falling, all accompanied by a decline in household spending by workers who are then only able to access the low-wage, low-hours jobs they had before the pandemic
  • The majority of the jobs that aren’t back to prepandemic work force levels are very low-income jobs; they are what the U.S. Private Sector Job Quality Index, which I cocreated, calls low-quality jobs.
  • Through March of this year, most of the private sector jobs eliminated during the pandemic that haven’t been restored are production and “nonsupervisory” jobs that offered weekly pay averaging less than $750 prepandemic. There are more than 45 million low-paying jobs like these, constituting roughly 43 percent of all production and nonsupervisory jobs in the country. This is not about a mere, unfortunate corner of the jobs market.
  • here’s the rub: When you add normal state unemployment benefits and the federal supplements together, $750 per week from the government is a fairly typical benefit for an unemployed American.
  • 23 million of these jobs paid under $500 per week prepandemic: That’s $26,000 per year. Not only are the wages low: Many of these jobs offer well below 30 hours of work per week.
  • And it is safe to assume that someone getting $750 per week for not working is not eagerly jumping up to go back to work for potentially hundreds of dollars a week less.
  • The chronic problem we face as we put Covid-19 in the rearview mirror is that the U.S. economy before the pandemic was incredibly dependent on an abundance of low-wage, low-hours jobs. It was a combo that yielded low prices for comfortably middle-class and wealthier customers and low labor costs for bosses, but spectacularly low incomes for tens of millions of others.
  • If, in this summer interim, the remaining federal benefits for those without jobs pressures some employers to increase wages and offer a more full-time hours to their employees, then that is all to the good for them and the sturdiness of our economy
  • Instead, why not absorb the lesson being taught?
  • It’s pretty simple and one that, normally, progressives fight to have heard: businesses are paying tens of millions of workers too little money relative to the cost of living in this country.
8More

Opinion | Were My Criticisms of Israel Fair? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...israel-gaza-conflict.html Culture Economics opinion global
shared by aleija on 05 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • When I wrote a couple of columns criticizing Israel as well as Hamas over the recent Gaza war, I had pushback from readers who asked: So what would you have Israel do?
  • “How should, in fact, Israel respond when Hamas launches thousands of rockets?” Ryan asked. On my Facebook page, Joel put it this way: “Mr. Kristof, what do you recommend that Israel do in response to rocket attacks? What would the American response be to repeated rocket attacks from Mexico or Canada on American cities?”
  • We probably would not turn the other cheek: When the Mexican revolutionary leader Pancho Villa attacked a New Mexico town in 1916, the United States sent 6,000 troops into Mexico (albeit after getting Mexico’s permission). And in response to the 9/11 attacks, America invaded both Afghanistan and Iraq.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • More to the point, though, the question of how the U.S. would respond reflects a myopia about the origins of Hamas shelling.
  • Israeli officials did not wake up one bright morning to find thousands of rockets raining down,” notes Sari Bashi, an Israeli human rights lawyer. “Israeli security forces, led by a prime minister desperate to stay in power to avoid jail on corruption charges, created a provocation by using violence and the threat of violence against Palestinians in Jerusalem. They stormed a sensitive religious site, used excessive force against demonstrators and threatened to forcibly transfer Palestinian families from their homes as part of an official policy to ‘Judaize’ occupied East Jerusalem, which is a war crime.”
  • So the question of how the United States would respond if Canada started shelling Seattle seems misplaced. After all, Israel deliberately nurtured Hamas in the first place (to create a rival to existing Palestinian groups), and the United Nations and most experts consider Israel to be occupying Gaza (because Israel controls it, even though it withdrew in 2005).
  • Similarly, the Irish Republican Army, with support from some in Ireland and the United States, bombed Britain’s Parliament, Harrods department store and the Conservative Party Conference, along with innumerable other targets. Yet Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher did not bomb Dublin or Boston, nor did she bulldoze the offices of Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.’s political wing.
  • In 2018, ETA announced it was disbanding, adding “we are truly sorry” for violence that claimed 800 lives. In Northern Ireland, where the conflict initially seemed even more intractable than the disputes in the Middle East do today, a negotiated peace was reached with the Good Friday accords of 1998.
10More

The CDC's Anne Schuchat Says The U.S. Isn't Ready For Another Pandemic : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...cdcs-principal-deputy-director
shared by anonymous on 07 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • The United States was unprepared for the coronavirus, the response "wasn't a good performance," and there's still "a lot of work to do" to get ready for the next pandemic when it comes. That's the assessment of Dr. Anne Schuchat, the No. 2 official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who is retiring this summer after 33 years at the agency.
  • Schuchat also says she supports further investigations into the origins of the pandemic. "There's a lot we really do need to know here," she says. "So understanding where this came from and how it spread so easily, I think is important."
  • Schuchat does not quite have the public profile of Dr. Anthony Fauci, but her work as a disease detective tracing outbreaks is a part of American popular culture. Kate Winslet's character in the movie Contagion was modeled in part on Schuchat. Schuchat's career as a doctor began in the 1980s in New York City, which was a challenging time and place.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • She emerged from that time as an internist looking for something new.As she finished her residency, she remembered hearing about the Epidemic Intelligence Service, the CDC's disease detective program.
  • She thought: "Maybe that would be a fun thing to do. Maybe just spending two years learning how to investigate outbreaks would be interesting and a little less intense than what I had just been through before I spend my life in practice."
  • But instead of returning to a medical practice, she stayed with the CDC. "I just fell in love with what we do, how we do it, the people that we work with and the impact that we can have," Schuchat says.
  • This virus is really difficult. I think that a severe toll was going to happen, but we have seen such variation in countries and in communities' ability to counter it. And so I wish that we had not had as much loss of life and ongoing loss of life as we've had around the world. But this virus was going to be difficult under the best circumstances of response. And of course, we've had very variable response to this.
  • We were not ready for that, OK. There are many things that our colleagues in Korea did that allowed them to have a very effective initial response.
  • If it were to happen again next year, five years from now, which is plausible, would we be ready then?We have a lot of work to do. So I think I am really encouraged by the investments and the seriousness that we're seeing in the administration, in the agencies, in the communities. You know, this has been really bad and I just hope people continue to feel that commitment to do better.
  • As a disease detective, with the experience that you have, what have you thought about as people have raised more questions about the origins of the virus?I want all the questions to be answered. There's so much we need to learn about this virus and this pandemic so that we do better next time and prevent where we can. ... Sometimes scientists have questions because they're kind of curious, and more is better. But I think there's a lot we really do need to know here. So understanding where this came from and how it spread so easily I think is important.
12More

'Clear and present danger': Republicans fret about Greitens' comeback - POLITICO - 0 views

www.politico.com/...-eric-greitens-comeback-475737 Politics us
shared by edencottone on 17 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • isgraced former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens is moving closer to a 2022 Senate bid, alarming top Republicans who worry he will jeopardize the party’s grip on the seat and imperil their prospects of seizing the majority.
  • The maneuvering, which follows Republican Sen. Roy Blunt’s surprise retirement announcement last week, is giving Republicans nightmarish flashbacks to 2012, when they nominated a problematic Missouri Senate candidate, Todd Akin, who went on to lose the election.
  • ranging from members of the Missouri congressional delegation to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s political operation — have been united in their worry about the former governor and spent the week having conversations about the situation, according to people familiar with the discussions.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Missouri Republicans, meanwhile, have begun to contemplate how to prevent a splintered field of candidates from developing that could give Greitens a path. Top Republicans say they’ve yet to devise a plan for dealing with the former governor given that the primary isn’t until August 2022 but stress they’re keeping an eye on him.
  • Senate GOP leaders have confronted similar battles against potentially problematic primary candidates. In the 2017 Alabama special election, they failed to stop accused child molester Roy Moore, who won the GOP nomination before losing to a Democrat. They fared better in 2020, when they thwarted controversial Kansas Republican Kris Kobach in the primary, paving the way for a general election win.
  • Greitens is also benefiting from what is expected to be a wide-open field of Republican candidates, leading to concerns they will divvy up the vote and give the ex-governor a plurality. Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft — the son of John Ashcroft, the former governor, senator and Bush-era attorney general — was regarded as someone who could have consolidated the party behind him but has opted against running.
  • “In official Washington, there’s a lot of concern because this was originally a seat that would be in Republican hands to stop the left,” said Gregg Keller, a longtime Missouri-based Republican strategist. “The easiest way to give this seat to a Biden acolyte is to have a divisive Republican primary, followed by someone incredibly damaged like Eric Greitens being the candidate in the general election.”
  • Greitens has also lost some of his biggest contributors, including wealthy business executive David Humphreys, who gave more than $2 million to his 2016 campaign. Humphreys said there was “not a chance” he’d back a Greitens Senate bid, adding that he stood by his 2018 statement calling on the former governor to resign.
  • It was a stunning downfall for an up-and-coming politician who was once regarded as a potential future White House contender. But Greitens, a 46-year old, Oxford-educated Rhodes Scholar and Navy SEAL veteran, is now attempting a comeback.
  • Those who’ve spoken to Greitens say it’s apparent that Greitens is seeking redemption and is convinced he can win.
  • Greitens has an even bigger impediment to winning Trump’s support: Republican Sen. Josh Hawley. As state attorney general, Hawley was among the prominent Republicans who called on Greitens to step down, and the former governor was widely known to have despised Hawley for investigating him.
  • “We’re talking about a man in Eric Greitens who we have every reason to believe is a woman-beater running for Senate in Missouri,” said Keller, a charge Greitens has denied. “It’s very concerning.”
7More

As Trump Clashes With Big Tech, China's Censored Internet Takes His Side - The New York... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-china-censorship.html
shared by rerobinson03 on 15 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • After Twitter and Facebook kicked President Trump off their platforms, and his supporters began comparing his social media muzzling to Chinese censorship, the president won support from an unexpected source: China.
  • Mr. Trump’s expulsion from American social media for spurring the violent crowd at the Capitol last week has consumed the Chinese internet, one of the most harshly censored forums on earth. Overwhelmingly, people who face prison for what they write are condemning what they regard as censorship elsewhere.
  • Much of the condemnation is being driven by China’s propaganda arms. By highlighting the decisions by Twitter and Facebook, they believe they are reinforcing their message to the Chinese people that nobody in the world truly enjoys freedom of speech. That gives the party greater moral authority to crack down on Chinese speech.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Chinese internet companies conduct their own censorship, but they do so out of fear of what Beijing officials might do to them. Last February, ifeng.com, a news portal, was punished for running original content about the coronavirus outbreak. Under the Chinese regulations, these websites can’t produce original news content.
  • For those reasons, many Chinese are dumbfounded by the idea that private companies such as Twitter and Facebook have the power to reject a sitting American president.
  • But when Mr. Kuang created two cartoons to express his displeasure at Mr. Trump’s bans, China’s censors did nothing. In one of them, President Trump’s mouth was brutally sewn up. In another, the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is portrayed as Qin Shi Huang, China’s first emperor, a brutal tyrant who burned books and executed scholars more than 2,000 years ago.
  • The journalist Zhao Jing, who goes by the name Michael Anti, is puzzled why Chinese Trump supporters so zealously defend his freedom of speech. Mr. Trump has the White House, executive orders and Fox News, he wrote: “What else do you want for him to have freedom of speech?”
4More

The Origins of Trump's Slapdash, Last-Second '1776 Report' - The Bulwark - 0 views

thebulwark.com/apdash-last-second-1776-report trump history Culture propaganda
shared by Javier E on 23 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • he 1776 Report can be understood as the other side of the coin to Anton’s rage. It’s the positive vision that justifies Trumpian cruelty. By conjuring an idealized and imaginary past, West Coast Straussians—and too many on the right—transform current conflicts into a satanic fall from an American Eden.
  • The American past is rich, complicated, beautiful, and powerful, but also wicked and painful. It needs to be reckoned with. The 1776 Report is the Trumpian and West Coast Straussian response to a prominent recent attempt to reckon with part of that history, the New York Times’s hotly debated 1619 Project.
  • Princeton historian Sean Wilentz, a prominent critic of the 1619 Project, dismissed the 1776 Report as “the flip side of those polemics, presented as history, that charge the nation was founded as a slavocracy, and that slavery and white supremacy are the essential themes of American history. It’s basically a political document, not history.”
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • In the 1980s, an East Coast Straussian, Thomas Pangle, criticized Jaffa and his allies of espousing a “new mythic Americanism” that blurred the line between scholarship and poetry. To Pangle, Jaffa’s sacred vision of America hurt authentic patriotism by failing to engage with a real country and its real past.
7More

The History of Trick-or-Treating - HISTORY - 0 views

www.history.com/...ween-trick-or-treating-origins halloween origins history
shared by johnsonel7 on 23 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • Why do children dress in costume and knock on strangers' doors to ask for treats on Halloween? The practice can be traced to the ancient Celts, early Roman Catholics and 17th-century British politics.
  • During some Celtic celebrations of Samhain, villagers disguised themselves in costumes made of animal skins to drive away phantom visitors; banquet tables were prepared and food was left out to placate unwelcome spirits. 
  • In later centuries, people began dressing as ghosts, demons and other malevolent creatures, performing antics in exchange for food and drink.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Poor people would visit the houses of wealthier families and receive pastries called soul cakes in exchange for a promise to pray for the souls
  • homeowners
  • Modern-day trick-or-treating also has elements akin to annual celebrations of Guy Fawkes Night (also known as Bonfire Night). On this night, which commemorates the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, British children wore masks and carry effigies while begging for pennies.
  • One theory suggests that excessive pranks on Halloween led to the widespread adoption of an organized, community-based trick-or-treating tradition in the 1930s.
19More

The Rohingya Know International Law's Failures Better Than Anyone - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...600169 culture crisis politics
shared by anniina03 on 22 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • And on the second anniversary of the genocide, it fell upon Ullah to tell his fellow Rohingya that they were fast running out of options.
  • he spoke into a microphone, telling the assembled spectators that they had two choices: to resign themselves to life here—by some measures the world’s densest refugee camp—and rely on global compassion that was eroding, or demand that their rights be upheld in Myanmar (by a government whose army has sought to slaughter them) and then return home.
  • These are now the only real possibilities on offer for the Rohingya, a community that is, by and large, on its own, with dwindling numbers of supporters on the international stage
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • In the reams that have been written about the plight of the Rohingya, chronic and utter disenfranchisement is the most consistent thread. The origins of their bottom-tier status are colonial, but were codified in 1982 when the Burmese government passed a law that restricted their movement and access to education, and allowed for arbitrary confiscation of property.
  • With repatriation stalled, Bangladesh is now exploring relocation. The country has thus far been patient and welcoming, but its willingness to host such a large refugee population is wearing thin.
  • The atrocities continue to this day, deepening the humanitarian catastrophe in the province of Rakhine. (Myanmar has repeatedly denied carrying out any ethnic cleansing or genocide.)
  • Myanmar government signed a memorandum of understanding with two UN agencies as a first step toward the Rohingya’s repatriation, they were not consulted. So when 3,450 Rohingya families were offered voluntary return to Rakhine, not a single one took up the offer.
  • Wave after wave of extreme violence against them culminated in August 2017 with a crackdown that forcibly displaced nearly a million people. At least 9,000 members of their community died in just the first month of the onslaught
  • Staying here in the camps carries its own risks. Children have had no access to formal education, creating what UNICEF has called a “lost generation,” while human traffickers prey on young girls and boys.
  • the storm surge during the monsoon often triggers landslides, and the mud, water, and sewage from makeshift toilets in the camps combine to form a deadly cocktail of infectious and waterborne diseases.
  • Yet somehow, when faced with repatriation to Rakhine or relocation to Bhasan Char, the squalid camps appear the safest option.
  • For one thing, donor support is in doubt. Bangladesh, itself a poor nation, is struggling to cope with the economic and environmental impact of hosting so many refugees.
  • At the same time, the conditions in the camps are worsening. Bangladesh directed local telecom operators at the beginning of September to shut down networks in the camps
  • Last week, the government took the clampdown a step further, announcing that refugees were now expected to stop using Bangladeshi cellphone SIM cards or face potential fines and jail time. Rohingya families rely on internet connectivity to stay in touch with loved ones still in Rakhine
  • On September 7, a parliamentary committee on defense recommended that a barbed-wire fence be built around the camps, restricting the free movement that refugees are afforded under international law. The decision has essentially created an open-air prison.
  • This relative unwillingness to criticize either the Myanmar or Bangladesh government—seen by UN agencies as necessary to preserve relationships with the two countries so that they continue to allow them to carry out relief work—has rankled Rohingya leaders such as Ullah, who argue that the language of international politics and humanitarianism is instead being used to mask inaction.
  • official UN Security Council designation of genocide is critical to activating the 1948 Genocide Convention, allowing perpetrators to be punished and peacekeeping forces to be deployed.
  • China and Russia, veto-wielding members of the body, are likely to block any action against Myanmar
  • Two years ago, when foreigners rushed in with aid, the Rohingya expected their plight to improve. They thought they would get a seat at the negotiating tables where their fates are being sealed, so that the human rights enshrined in international law might be extended to them.Instead, Ullah and his fellow Rohingya here are reduced to holding out hope that their children will receive a better education, to at least offer the prospect that their community’s lot will improve in the future.
6More

human evolution | Stages & Timeline | Britannica.com - 0 views

www.britannica.com/...human-evolution history
shared by magnanma on 26 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • Viewed zoologically, we humans are Homo sapiens, a culture-bearing upright-walking species that lives on the ground and very likely first evolved in Africa about 315,000 years ago.
  • the exact nature of our evolutionary relationships has been the subject of debate and investigation since the great British naturalist Charles Darwin published his monumental books On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871).
  • In fact, the human “family tree” may be better described as a “family bush,” within which it is impossible to connect a full chronological series of species, leading to Homo sapiens, that experts can agree upon.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The primary resource for detailing the path of human evolution will always be fossil specimens.
  • In devising such scenarios and filling in the human family bush, researchers must consult a large and diverse array of fossils, and they must also employ refined excavation methods and records, geochemical dating techniques, and data from other specialized fields such as genetics, ecology and paleoecology, and ethology (animal behaviour)—in short, all the tools of the multidisciplinary science of paleoanthropology.
  • It is generally agreed that the taproot of the human family shrub is to be found among apelike species of the Middle Miocene Epoch (roughly 16–11.6 mya) or Late Miocene Epoch (11.6–5.3 mya). Genetic data based on molecular clock estimates support a Late Miocene ancestry. Various Eurasian and African Miocene primates have been advocated as possible ancestors to the early hominins, which came on the scene during the Pliocene Epoch (5.3–2.6 mya)
10More

The History of the Computer Keyboard - 1 views

www.thoughtco.com/-the-computer-keyboard-1991402 history culture
shared by magnanma on 26 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • The history of the modern computer keyboard begins with a direct inheritance from the invention of the typewriter. It was Christopher Latham Sholes who, in 1868, patented the first practical modern typewriter. Soon after, in 1877, the Remington Company began mass marketing the first typewriters.
  • In 1948, another computer called the Binac computer used an electro-mechanically controlled typewriter to input data directly onto magnetic tape in order to feed in computer data and print results
  • the original QWERTY layout, which remains the most popular keyboard layout on devices of many types throughout the English-speaking world. QWERTY's current acceptance has been attributed to the layout being "efficient enough" and "familiar enough" to hinder the commercial viability of competitors.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • One of the first breakthroughs in keyboard technology was the invention of the teletype machine. Also referred to as the teleprinter, the technology has been around since the mid-1800s and was improved by inventors such as Royal Earl House, David Edward Hughes, Emile Baudot, Donald Murray, Charles L. Krum, Edward Kleinschmidt, and Frederick G. Creed.
  • In the 1930s, new keyboard models were introduced that combined the input and printing technology of typewriters with the communications technology of the telegraph. Punch-card systems were also combined with typewriters to create what were known as keypunches. These systems became the basis of early adding machines (early calculators), which were hugely commercially successful. By 1931, IBM had registered more than $1 million in adding machine sales.
  • The most compelling explanation is that Sholes developed the layout to overcome the physical limitations of mechanical technology at the time. Early typists pressed a key which would, in turn, push a metal hammer that rose up in an arc, striking an inked ribbon to make a mark on a paper before returning to its original position. Separating common pairs of letters minimized the jamming of the mechanism.
  • The system encouraged the development of a new user interface called the video display terminal (VDT), which incorporated the technology of the cathode ray tube used in televisions into the design of the electric typewriter. This allowed computer users to see what text characters they were typing on their display screens for the first time, which made text assets easier to create, edit, and delete.
  • The first of handheld devices was the HP95LX, released in 1991 by Hewlett-Packard. It had a hinged clamshell format that was small enough to fit in the hand. Although not yet classified as such, the HP95LX was the first of the Personal Data Assistants (PDA). It had a small QWERTY keyboard for text entry, although touch typing was practically impossible due to its small size.
  • As PDAs began to add web and email access, word processing, spreadsheets, personal schedules, and other desktop applications, pen input was introduced. The first pen input devices were made in the early 1990s, but the technology to recognize handwriting was not robust enough to be effective.
  • One fairly popular method was the "soft keyboard." A soft keyboard is one that has a visual display with built-in touchscreen technology. Text entry is performed by tapping on keys with a stylus or finger. The soft keyboard disappears when not in use.
8More

Florida Voting Rights Law Has Rocky Rollout For Felons : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...ights-after-felony-convictions US politics economics Policy
shared by liamhudgings on 10 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • Florida passed an amendment in 2018, promising to restore voting rights for over a million Floridians with felony convictions. But that hope turned to confusion soon after.
  • in order to get their voting rights back, felons needed to pay off all fines and fees related to their convictions.
  • But the same law also offers a way out.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • It allows the courts to modify the original criminal sentences to "no longer require completion" of things that were originally required. Under that law, money owed can be waived or lowered, and other requirements like community service hours can be reduced.
  • In counties under Democratic control, more people are getting their voting rights back. And in counties under Republican control, many potential voters are missing out.
  • "You can't have two classes of voters — people who can afford their right to vote and people who can't," Warren said. "At this point it's really just a determination that once someone has an inability to pay off their fines and fees, then they're eligible to have their right to vote restored."
  • The lack of participation in Republican-leaning Florida could be a political liability later this year, especially if local Republicans don't take efforts to help restore voting rights for white and Latino voters, said DePalo-Gould, the FIU professor.
  • "If they're missing out on those votes, you know — we have very close elections in the state of Florida," she said. "This could mean a huge difference going into 2020."
8More

Where Did the Terms 'Left Wing' and 'Right Wing' Come From? - HISTORY - 0 views

www.history.com/...-wing-and-right-wing-originate history culture politics
shared by brookegoodman on 15 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • originally coined in reference to the physical seating arrangements of politicians during the French Revolution. 
  • The split dates to the summer of 1789, when members of the French National Assembly met to begin drafting a constitution.
  • The anti-royalist revolutionaries seated themselves to the presiding officer’s left, while the more conservative, aristocratic supporters of the monarchy gathered to the right. 
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The divisions only continued during the 1790s, when newspapers began making reference to the progressive “left” and traditionalist “right” of the French assembly.
  • with the Bourbon Restoration and the beginning of a constitutional monarchy in 1814, liberal and conservative representatives once again took up their respective posts on the left and right of the legislative chamber.
  • “center left,” “center right,” “extreme left” and “extreme right.”
  • France’s “left” and “right” labels filtered out to the rest of the world during the 1800s, but they weren’t common in English-speaking countries until the early 20th century.
  • Democrats and Republicans traditionally sit on opposite sides of the House and Senate chambers.
11More

The National Guard's Role, Origins Explained - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...-origins-explained-11610139895 national guard wsj history politics
shared by leilamulveny on 09 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Excluding the District of Columbia force, each National Guard group is under the control of its respective state or territorial governor. The D.C. National Guard operates under federal control at all times.
  • Last year, in June, roughly 3,300 National Guard troops from 10 states deployed to Washington, D.C., during racial-justice protests. The National Guard dates back to before the declaration of U.S. independence, and its troops have deployed to locations as far flung as Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the Mexican border.
  • The National Guard was conceived at first as a citizen force to protect families and towns from hostile attacks, and its mission has since grown to encompass domestic emergencies, overseas combat missions, counternarcotics operations, and other duties.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Excluding the District of Columbia force, each National Guard group is under the control of its respective state or territorial governor. The D.C. National Guard operates under federal control at all times.
  • Excluding the District of Columbia force, each National Guard group is under the control of its respective state or territorial governor. The D.C. National Guard operates under federal control at all times
  • National Guard units can be ordered into federal service, in which case control of the mobilized units passes from the respective governors to the president
  • tate governors can call branches of the National Guard into action during local or statewide emergencies, including natural disasters and civil disturbances. The president can activate the National Guard for participation in federal missions in the U.S. and abroad.
  • “homeland defense activities”
  • Presidents Trump, Obama and Bush deployed National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.
  • ore than 250,000 people from the National Guard served in the U.S. wars in Afghanistan or Iraq
  • The National Guard has long participated in disaster-relief operations such as those following hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and its troops provided security at airports around the country after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
12More

Opinion | We Dared to Assemble. For That, We Were Killed. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...nigeria-protests.html
shared by aniyahbarnett on 02 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • “We the people,” begins the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Section 40 guarantees us the right to freedom of assembly. By Section 41, “we the people,” are guaranteed the right to free movement. So, we assembled. And we moved. For that, we have been killed.
  • Sitting peacefully, a few miles from where I write, the crowd of protesters had resolved to have our government face us, and cease killing us.
  • slap women trying to enter the passport office
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • they simply ask and networks organized online call volunteer lawyers, who drop what they are doing and proceed to the police station. When protesters need food, water or mobile phone data, they ask and food, water and money from an ever-growing fund of global donations is sent. And when they need ambulances or security guards to protect them from hired thugs, from the state itself, they ask, and private ambulance and security services are sent their way.
  • Don’t
  • SARS has come to resemble the armed thugs it supposedly combats
  • Hours before 9, armed soldiers began firing live rounds into the peaceful crowd of protesters, with fatal consequences.
  • These protests, which continue reinvigorated in other parts of the country, have become about challenging the legitimacy of a defunct political leadership
  • Who gave our so-called leaders the authority they think they have over us; if we are a democracy, who is really in charge?
  • imagine the brutality of the arms behind them.
  • legitimate authority finds its weight in motivating and persuading people without the need to lift a bullying finger.
  • “If we come together in love, they cannot destroy us.”
5More

The One Word That Bars Trump From Pardoning Himself - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...617170 pardon president trump politics history
shared by Javier E on 26 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Based solely on other uses of grant in the Constitution, a person could reasonably determine that a president cannot grant himself a pardon. But in evaluating the meaning of the Constitution’s words, the text of the Constitution isn’t all that counts
  • The most common interpretive method these days—championed by Justice Antonin Scalia and now broadly popular among conservatives—is to look for evidence of a term’s “original public meaning.” That, theoretically, is the meaning that ordinary English speakers of the late 18th century would have attached to a given term when coming upon it in a legal document like the Constitution.
  • to the extent that the most popular contemporaneous law dictionary is valuable in understanding what ordinary speakers of the founding era meant by “granting,” it seems clear that they probably had in mind an interpersonal transfer.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • in the time period from 1750 to 1800, essentially none of these appears. Transitive uses of the verb—“grant me,” “grant him,” “grant her,” “grant us,” “grant you,” and the like, where the person receiving the grant is different from the person doing the granting—are all common. But reflexive uses, where the person doing the granting is also the person on the receiving end? All but nonexistent
  • Can Donald Trump pardon himself? Perhaps, but that’s not the question the Constitution requires us to ask. Can Donald Trump grant himself a pardon? The evidence, at least according to the text of the Constitution and its original meaning, says no.
3More

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.
13More

Romney OKs voting on court nominee, all but assures approval - 0 views

apnews.com/4aa94786c66bd13763ea8ee30e08a6 trump romney supremecourt rbg senate
shared by anonymous on 22 Sep 20 - No Cached
  • Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah said Tuesday he supports voting to fill the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat on the Supreme Court, all but ensuring President Donald Trump has the backing to push his choice to confirmation over Democratic objections that it’s too close to the November election
  • the Democrats would need four GOP defections to block consideration. Two Republicans have said they oppose taking up a nomination at this time, but no others are in sight
  • one of the quickest confirmation processes in modern times
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Conservative senators are pushing for a swift vote before Nov. 3. The Senate Judiciary chairman who will shepherd the nomination through the chamber said Republicans have the support they need for confirmation.
  • Democrats point to hypocrisy in Republicans trying to rush through a pick so close to the election after McConnell led the GOP in refusing to vote on a nominee of President Barack Obama in February 2016, long before that year’s election.
  • The nominee is going to be supported by every Republican in the Judiciary Committee
  • We’ve got the votes to confirm the justice on the floor of the Senate before the election and that’s what’s coming.
  • But he acknowledged the court will shift to become more conservative.
  • Trump told confidants he was “saving” Barrett for Ginsburg’s seat.
  • Barrett has long expressed sympathy with a mode of interpreting the Constitution called originalism, in which justices try to decipher original meanings of texts in deciding cases
  • Biden was appealing to GOP senators to “uphold your constitutional duty, your conscience” and wait until after the election.
  • No nominee has won confirmation so quickly since Sandra Day O’Connor — with no opposition from either party — became the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court in 1981.
  • Trump criticized Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska for opposing a vote before elections. The president warned they would be “very badly hurt” by voters.
« First ‹ Previous 141 - 160 of 1214 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page