#it tracks that voting in a General Election would only serve to further increase that sex appeal

[sugarsnappeases]

guys it’s basically scientifically proven that voting makes you at least ten times sexier !! don’t miss out on a free sex-appeal upgrade today !! (unless you’re voting for the tories which will probs have the opposite effect on ur sexiness… and also fuck you)

[justsomeantifas]

The five U.S. attorneys along the border with Mexico, including three appointed by President Trump, recoiled in May 2018 against an order to prosecute all illegal immigrants even if it meant separating children from their parents. They told top Justice Department officials they were “deeply concerned” about the children’s welfare.

But the attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions, made it clear what Mr. Trump wanted on a conference call later that afternoon, according to a two-year inquiry by the Justice Department’s inspector general into Mr. Trump’s “zero tolerance” family separation policy.

“We need to take away children,” Mr. Sessions told the prosecutors, according to participants’ notes. One added in shorthand: “If care about kids, don’t bring them in. Won’t give amnesty to people with kids.”

Rod J. Rosenstein, then the deputy attorney general, went even further in a second call about a week later, telling the five prosecutors that it did not matter how young the children were. He said that government lawyers should not have refused to prosecute two cases simply because the children were barely more than infants.

“Those two cases should not have been declined,” John Bash, the departing U.S. attorney in western Texas, wrote to his staff immediately after the call. Mr. Rosenstein “instructed that, per the A.G.’s policy, we should NOT be categorically declining immigration prosecutions of adults in family units because of the age of a child.”

The Justice Department’s top officials were “a driving force” behind the policy that spurred the separation of thousands of families, many of them fleeing violence in Central America and seeking asylum in the United States, before Mr. Trump abandoned it amid global outrage, according to a draft report of the results of the investigation by Michael E. Horowitz, the department’s inspector general.

The separation of migrant children from their parents, sometimes for months, was at the heart of the Trump administration’s assault on immigration. But the fierce backlash when the administration struggled to reunite the children turned it into one of the biggest policy debacles of the president’s term.

Though Mr. Sessions sought to distance himself from the policy, allowing Mr. Trump and Homeland Security Department officials to largely be blamed, he and other top law enforcement officials understood that “zero tolerance” meant that migrant families would be separated and wanted that to happen because they believed it would deter future illegal immigration, Mr. Horowitz wrote.

“The department’s single-minded focus on increasing prosecutions came at the expense of careful and effective implementation of the policy, especially with regard to prosecution of family-unit adults and the resulting child separations,” the draft report said.

The draft report, citing more than 45 interviews with key officials, emails and other documents, provides the most complete look at the discussions inside the Justice Department as the family separation policy was developed, pushed and ultimately carried out with little concern for children.

This article is based on a review of the 86-page draft report and interviews with three government officials who read it in recent months and described its conclusions and many of the details in it. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to discuss it publicly, cautioned that the final report could change.

Before publishing the findings of its investigations, the inspector general’s office typically provides draft copies to Justice Department leaders and others mentioned in the reports to ensure that they are accurate.

Mr. Horowitz had been preparing to release his report since late summer, according to a person familiar with the investigation, though the process allowing for responses from current and former department officials whose conduct is under scrutiny is likely to delay its release until after the presidential election.

Mr. Sessions refused to be interviewed, the report noted. Mr. Rosenstein, who is now a lawyer in private practice, defended himself in his interview with investigators in response to questioning about his role, according to two of the officials. Mr. Rosenstein’s former office submitted a 64-page response to the report.

“If any United States attorney ever charged a defendant they did not personally believe warranted prosecution, they violated their oath of office,” Mr. Rosenstein said in a statement. “I never ordered anyone to prosecute a case.”

Gene Hamilton, a top lawyer and ally of Stephen Miller, the architect of the president’s assault on immigration, argued in a 32-page response that Justice Department officials merely took direction from the president. Mr. Hamilton cited an April 3, 2018, meeting with Mr. Sessions; the homeland security secretary at the time, Kirstjen Nielsen; and others in which the president “ranted” and was on “a tirade,” demanding as many prosecutions as possible.

Mr. Hamilton declined to comment for this article, as did Mr. Horowitz’s office. Mr. Sessions did not respond to requests for comment. Alexa Vance, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, disputed the draft report and said the Homeland Security Department referred cases for prosecution.

“The draft report relied on for this article contains numerous factual errors and inaccuracies,” she said. “While D.O.J. is responsible for the prosecutions of defendants, it had no role in tracking or providing custodial care to the children of defendants. Finally, both the timing and misleading content of this leak raise troubling questions about the motivations of those responsible for it.”

The draft report also documented other revelations that had not previously been known:

Government prosecutors reacted with alarm at the separation of children from their parents during a secret 2017 pilot program along the Mexican border in Texas. “We have now heard of us taking breastfeeding defendant moms away from their infants,” one government prosecutor wrote to his superiors. “I did not believe this until I looked at the duty log.”

Border Patrol officers missed serious felony cases because they were stretched too thin by the zero-tolerance policy requiring them to detain and prosecute all of the misdemeanor illegal entry cases. One Texas prosecutor warned top Justice Department officials in 2018 that “sex offenders were released” as a result.

Senior Justice Department officials viewed the welfare of the children as the responsibility of other agencies and their duty as tracking the parents. “I just don’t see that as a D.O.J. equity,” Mr. Rosenstein told the inspector general.

The failure to inform the U.S. Marshals Service before announcing the zero-tolerance policy led to serious overcrowding and budget overruns. The marshals were forced to cut back on serving warrants in other cases, saying that “when you take away manpower, you can’t make a safe arrest.”

For two years, Ms. Nielsen has taken the brunt of the public criticism for separating migrant families because of her decision to refer adults crossing the border illegally with children for prosecution. A day after the president’s retreat, Mr. Sessions distanced his department from the decision, telling CBN News that “we never really intended” to separate children.

That was false, according to the draft report. It made clear that from the policy’s earliest days in a five-month test along the border in Texas, Justice Department officials understood — and encouraged — the separation of children as an expected part of the desire to prosecute all illegal border crossers.

“It is the hope that this separation will act as a deterrent to parents bringing their children into the harsh circumstances that are present when trying to enter the United States illegally,” a Border Patrol official wrote on Oct. 28, 2017, to the U.S. attorney in New Mexico, according to the draft report.

After the pilot program in Texas ended, the report asserted, Mr. Sessions, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Rosenstein pushed aggressively to expand the practice across the entire southwestern border, with help from prosecutors.

In a briefing two days after Christmas in 2017, top Justice Department officials asked Mr. Bash for statistics from the pilot program, conducted by his predecessor, that could be used to develop “nationwide prosecution guidelines.” Mr. Bash, a former White House adviser, did not receive a follow-up request for the information. Thinking that the idea had been abandoned, he did not provide it.

By April 2018, Mr. Sessions nevertheless moved to enact the zero-tolerance policy across the entire border with Mexico. Mr. Rosenstein told the inspector general that Mr. Sessions “understood what the consequences were.”

“The A.G.’s goal,” he said, “was to create a more effective deterrent so that everybody would believe that they had a risk of being prosecuted.”

But the Justice Department still needed to persuade Ms. Nielsen to refer all families for prosecution, which she had been resisting. The draft report says a pressure campaign culminated in a May 3 meeting in which Mr. Sessions insisted that Customs and Border Protection begin referring all of those cases to prosecutors.

A note from Mr. Hamilton to Mr. Sessions before the meeting indicated: “You should lead this discussion.”

“We must vigorously enforce our criminal immigration laws to ensure that there are consequences for illegal actions and to deter future illegal immigration,” Mr. Sessions planned to say, according to the draft report. “That means that an illegal alien should not get a free pass just because he or she crosses the border illegally with a child.”

When the group voted by a show of hands to proceed, Ms. Nielsen was the only one who kept her hand down, according to two people familiar with the vote, which was reported earlier by NBC News. The next day, Ms. Nielsen backed down, signing a memo referring all adults for prosecution and clearing the way for the children to be separated.

The decision roiled the prosecutors along the border. In Arizona, Elizabeth Strange, the acting U.S. attorney, led a minor rebellion, temporarily declining six cases, citing concern about the children. That prompted a rebuke from top Justice Department officials, who demanded to know “why would they be declining these cases?”

Justice Department officials have repeatedly claimed that they thought the adults would be prosecuted and reunited with their children within hours of being separated. But the inspector general found a memo informing top officials that sentences for adults ranged from three to 14 days, making it all but certain that children would be sent to the custody of officials at the Health and Human Services Department for long periods of time.

“We found no evidence, before or after receipt of the memorandum, that D.O.J. leaders sought to expedite the process for completing sentencing in order to facilitate reunification of separated families,” the inspector general wrote.

Over all, Mr. Horowitz concluded in the draft, Mr. Sessions and other senior department officials “were aware that full implementation of the zero-tolerance policy would result in criminal referrals by D.H.S. of adults who enter the country illegally with children and that the prosecution of these family-unit adults would result in children being separated from families.”

[burmaassociatedpress]

Myanmar’s junta switch to PR system beneficial only to them

March 11.

The Myanmar military regime’s plan to switch to a proportional representation system for their planned election next year will not bring more representation due to the existence of the 2008 Constitution and a move to increase their winning chance, experts said.

After detaining dozens of leaders and members of the National League for Democracy party including Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1, 2021, the Myanmar military announced a state of emergency and poised themselves as the “caretaker government” with allegations of electoral frauds in the 2020 general elections where the NLD won a majority.

Although there were controversies in the 2020 election with disenfranchisement of Rohingya voters and holding the election during the COVID-19 pandemic, several election observers said there were no irregularities on election day.

"As far as we can tell, the Tatmadaw's claims of election fraud are entirely baseless. Unfortunately, we do not have access to the 2020 voter lists and thus cannot conclusively disprove the claims, but a year has passed since the coup and we still have not seen concrete evidence that would support the vague claims of widespread voter fraud by the junta," said Amael Vier from Asian Network for Free Elections, which monitored the polls in Myanmar in 2015 and 2020 as well as the by-elections.

ANFREL only witnessed "minor irregularities" on voting day and nothing related to voter fraud. “What we observed was a participatory and transparent process whose results can be trusted,” he added.

Many of the ousted lawmakers and those who fled the arrest after the coup have formed a parallel government called the National Unity Government, which represents the will of the voters in 2020.

The military, calling themselves the State Administration Council (SAC), initially said the fresh elections were to be held within a year’s time. However, the generals decided to extend its initial one-year state of emergency to two years, with elections planned in August 2023 during a televised speech by Min Aung Hlaing, the junta chief, last August.

“Depending on the state stability and peace we are making our utmost effort to hold a multiparty general election in August 2023,” he said on state-run media while also labelling the NLD party as “terrorists”.

And on eve of the anniversary of the coup, on January 31, 2022, Min Aung Hlaing during the National Defense Security Council meeting said that the state of emergency will be further extended to another six months due to instability in the country.  (link: https://myanmaritv.com/news/ndsc-announcement-declaration-state-emergency-extended-further-6-months)

He also added that the extension was “to set the right track for a genuine, disciplined multi-party democracy and to continue preparations for the multi-party democracy general election” in 2023.

One of the first things the junta did after the coup was to replace the chair of Union Election Commission, Myanmar’s national poll body, and its members favourable to them. The current chair who is also a former military general, Thein Soe, served as chair in the 2010 election.

Min Aung Hlaing also pushed for the change to the PR system for more inclusivity and to allow better representation.

According to the military-drafted 2008 Constitution, Myanmar is currently adopting the plurality system where the candidate who wins the most votes is ultimately the winner of the parliamentary seat. This also resulted in two parties namely the National League for Democracy led by Aung San Suu Kyi and the military proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party taking the dominant seats in parliament and popularity.

“It is necessary to consider PR with all participants. It is necessary to amend the way representatives are elected and the election system,” Min Aung Hlaing said on state-run media last August.

Proportional Representation is one of the most commonly used electoral systems in the world where the parliament seats reflect the proportional of the total votes cast for each party. The advantage of the PR is to prevent one party from holding a majority but also has the disadvantage on representation of ethnic parties in the case of Myanmar as the seats are shared according to the percentage of total votes.

Myanmar’s two parliaments are the Upper House (Amyotha Hluttaw) and the Lower House (Pyithu Hluttaw), but under the constitution the military holds 25% of the seats, appointed by the army chief, in both houses. Both houses make up the union parliament (Pyidaungsu Hluttaw).

Expert Aung Htoo, in a piece on BNI Online, was quoted after the results of the 2020 elections, that PR is a better fit for a country as politically diverse as Myanmar. In the same article, author Nai Banya Mon of Federal Affairs and Policy Centre, wrote that the key for ethnic people to build a genuine federal union is to draft a new federal and democratic constitution or make amendments to the military-drafted one and adopt a voting system which is free, fair and inclusive.

Aung Htoo’s points on the constitution drafted by the military being the biggest obstacle is echoed by others. Furthermore, analysts have expressed doubt on the move for “all-inclusivity” and the benefits of the PR system. Some see the election as a justification for the coup.

A PR system in theory allows for more representation but the limitations put by the 2008 Constitution already presents a challenge even before the take over as the military makes up 25% of the parliament.

Experts say that the adopting a PR system would weaken the forces of democracy in the parliament due to military-appointed MPs as well as the military proxy parties such as the USDP and political parties who are displaying pro-military attitude as they are calling for the change to PR and engaging with the regime and military-appointed election commission.

During the commission’s initial meeting calling parties to discuss about PR, 51 political parties attended and 38 parties including NLD boycotted.

“People are not ready to exercise PR. As long as the military is in the Parliament and the Constitution remains unchanged, we don’t support switching to PR,” Daw Khin San Hlaing, an NLD central executive committee member, was quoted by exile media Irrawaddy in March 2021.

Back in 2014, the Upper House approved the change to PR but the Lower House Speaker Shwe Mann, a former general and protege of military strongman Than Shwe, quietly dropped the change to PR as it was “unconstitutional”. And for Min Aung Hlaing to bring back this system after NLD won a landslide again in 2020, signals that the military wants to win an election and have “legitimacy”.

“The military know about the possibility of PR for a long time but they’ve never been in the position of power to push it directly until now. I believe the military regrets that they went with the first past the post system in the Constitution and wanted to change that,” said a Myanmar-focused analyst who requested anonymity due to security reasons. “The military wants the legitimacy and they want to be able to hide behind it. So, they’re going to move forward (with the election) in however way they can.”

“The question on why they are bringing back the PR system is that because the military think they have a better chance of winning the election but it’s unfair because they took power in a coup and then changed the rules of the game,” the analyst added.

“There can never be a free and fair election under a military-drafted constitution that fails to respect the principles of federal democracy—one of the goals we held most dearly for a time after our independence. Myanmar's nation-building process must not lose sight of this noble endeavor, and in this regard, the 2008 constitution diverted us onto a dangerous detour. Bereft of legitimacy, competence, or public support, Myanmar’s military has disgraced itself as a serious political body, let alone one capable of organizing an election,” said activist Thinzar Shun Lei Yi. Another factor experts and analysts point to is the junta’s annulment of the 2020 election results, where NLD won a majority of 396 seats of the union parliament and candidates from 10 political parties also won several seats.

“Citizens across Myanmar and people around the world already knew that the election fraud accusations were just a lame excuse to make way for the military coup,” NLD lawmaker Phyu Phyu Thin, who’s also secretary of the NUG’s parliament Committee Represent Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, told RFA Myanmar in July 2021.

A Myanmar expert Ko Paing, using a pseudonym due to security reasons, agreed with the lawmaker saying that “[The military] needed something to justify their take over so they’re doing it…it’s formality and reason for the coup.”

However, details of how the PR system will be adopted remains unclear as the election commission is still holding talks. The latest development was back in December when the commission held meetings with political parties to discuss which PR to adopt. ( https://www.gnlm.com.mm/uec-continues-third-day-meeting-of-electoral-reforms-with-political-parties/)

Likelihood of an election?

The likelihood of an election is a question many experts are raising as the junta’s coup has crippled the country’s economy and brought instability for the citizens.

After a year of the takeover, the junta failed to establish control over the civil service and business community. Both sectors faced the civil disobedience movement, the people’s response against the military and coup by not going to work to cripple the country’s mechanism.

Although businesses saw return of employees, companies cozying up or in cahoots with the generals face boycotting by the consumers. Recent examples include the boycott of Myanmar Plaza, a shopping mall in Yangon, which to this day sees little to no customers after the mall’s security members brutally assaulted and stopped youths protesting the military inside. Military-linked products and items are also targets of the boycott movement.

Due to nationwide strike CDM, many positions are vacant in the public sector as many job offerings can be seen posted by the government ministries in the state-run newspaper Global New Light of Myanmar and on social media.

The Myanmar currency is experiencing stagflation and cash shortage still continues with people losing confidence in the system.

The major highlight of the instability caused by the junta is the arrests and killings of citizens. According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, more than 1400 people have been killed and over 11,000 arrested by the junta.

The junta’s brutality has led to the rise of armed resistance where many youths and pro-democracy activists including celebrities from around the country have left their homes to ethnic armed forces controlled area to receive training and formed the People’s Defence Force (PDF), an armed wing of the NUG back in May. The armed resistance include bombings of military-affiliated structures and telecom towers, assassination of military informants and explosive attacks of military convoys and fighting in the jungles.

The violence and killing by the military have only escalated since the coup. In December, a military vehicle rammed into a group of protesters killing at least five and injuring others. Local media reported that some have been arrested by security forces. On Christmas Eve, over 30 people including two staff from INGO Save the Children, were killed and burned by military forces in Mo So village, Kayah State. In Karen State and Sagaing Region, located in upper Myanmar, the military has been using heavy weaponry as well as attacks from helicopters and even fighter jets on villages.

“Polling stations set up by the junta will definitely become targets for the PDFs and resistance groups. You’ll be like sitting ducks. No one will go out and vote if their lives are on the line,” a Yangon-based journalist said.

Myanmar expert Ko Paing said that “The people - voters who have their livelihoods and financial status disrupted and destroyed by the junta will not be going out to vote. It doesn’t matter whether the electoral system is changed or not because the voters want to see the generals gone and they have already voted fairly in the 2020 elections.”

The credibility of the 2023 elections are questionable as the current poll body chair Thein Soe is notorious for allowing vote-stealing by the military’s proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party in 2010 where it emerged as the winner. He also barred international observers and reporters from entering Myanmar.

“The 2023 Myanmar election will not be like the elections in Turkmenistan where everyone votes for one guy. There will be a few parties but they will either be pro-military or crippled democratic parties. It will be like the illusion of choice,” the Myanmar analyst commented.

A decade ago, in a press conference in October 2010, a month before the elections, Thein Soe said “there’s no need for foreign journalists” to cover the 2010 election and that the country also has journalists and the Ministry of Information for the job.

If the possibility arrives that threats might be used to get people to vote, they say they are thinking of ways to make sure ballot paper is wasted.

One voter who cast his ballot in the 2020 election said “If I am forced to vote and when I get the ballot sheet I will write “Ma Aye Loe” on it.” “Ma Aye Loe” is a wordplay of Min Aung Hlaing’s name in Burmese which is also used as a profanity translated as “motherf****er”.

Another voter had a similar idea: “I will write “military dogs” and draw a bone on the ballot paper.”

(This article was produced under the Asian Network for Free Elections (Anfrel) Southeast Asia Media Fellowship on Election Reporting.)

[southeastasianists]

When Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) triumphed at Myanmar’s 2015 general election she was riding high, supported by millions of hopeful citizens eager for change. Her party swept away its opponents from the former military regime and also garnered much approval from the country’s many minority groups. This groundswell of electoral support pulled together old-style socialists, ethnic subnationalists, tech-savvy youngsters, and millions of people simply fed up with government mismanagement.

For the first time in two generations, the Myanmar people could proudly claim a government as their own. Their votes, tallied up from tens of thousands of booths around the nation, would shape the next government in Naypyitaw. Pragmatists cautioned that the armed forces would still drive the overall agenda and that they would prove reluctant to share decisions about hefty matters of defence, security or strategy. The 2008 constitution, many warned, anticipated a democratically elected government that needed tutelage from uniformed military men.

Foreign commentators and analysts often overlooked such hesitations, preferring an optimistic model of democratic consolidation, which, they seemingly forgot, had failed almost everywhere else in Southeast Asia. In capitals around the world, the NLD victory was overwhelmingly understood as a positive development and one that would unleash Myanmar’s immense potential, in economic, cultural and political terms. Foreign leaders, including some who had been reluctant to endorse the semi-civilian government that ruled from 2011 to 2015, offered warm words of praise and recognition.

Even back then, however, analysts made regular warnings about the NLD’s capacity to manage a fractious society and sputtering economy. One prominent area of concern was the lack of administrative talent within its ranks and the overbearing demeanour and lack of government experience of Aung San Suu Kyi. It was also abundantly clear that her government would struggle to find space for the country’s most vulnerable minority, the Muslim Rohingya.

Muslim-Buddhist faultline

Nobody knows for sure how many Muslims live in Myanmar, a consequence of generations of purposeful neglect of this sensitive number. Official estimates drawn from the 2014 census put the total at 2.3%, roughly 1.2 million people, down from 3.9% at the 1983 census. The reason the number is so sensitive is simple: if the government announced that, for instance, 6% of the population is Muslim then long decades of fiction-making about the official numbers of Muslims would need to be re-done. Of course, the Rohingya were not counted in 2014. If they were, the question—regardless of how big a proper count revealed the Muslim population to be—would quickly become: how has Myanmar become so Islamic and how can this trend be reversed.

Assertive and well-resourced organisations in Myanmar are already committed to defending their Buddhist civilisation against those they consider foreign invaders. Muslim groups, under current conditions, are an easy target for hate, with a wide-ranging consensus now among Myanmar people that the government needs to enforce hard-line policies towards them. The hardest responses have been focused, since mid-2017, on the borderlands where Myanmar rubs against Bangladesh. Since mid-year, almost 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh to escape a vicious campaign of communal and state-sanctioned violence. The Myanmar government presents its actions as a justified response to increasing Rohingya militancy, including attacks on government security outposts. Myanmar has also sought to obstruct independent investigations.

Yet what has emerged has shocked even hardened humanitarian agencies, with allegations of horrifying inhumanity. A senior United Nations representative, Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein, has called it a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” while the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, has labelled the Myanmar government’s action “genocide”. In the aftermath, Bangladesh and international agencies are struggling to provide adequate food, sanitation and shelter to the newly displaced people. They seek refuge among earlier waves of Rohingya, who have left their homes in Myanmar since the 1970s. With the 2018 monsoon bearing down on Bangladesh’s coastal areas, further woe and hardship is a near certainty.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s tragedy

International condemnation, meanwhile, has only served to bolster the resolve of the Myanmar side, with outpourings of support for the government. At protests, in Myanmar and around the world, thousands of people have pledged their loyalty to Aung San Suu Kyi and their support for her policies. Some Myanmar democrats also seek common cause with dictators like Russia’s Vladimir Putin or China’s Xi Jinping. It is a peculiar turn of events. Aung San Suu Kyi’s most ardent boosters caution against attributing responsibility for the violence to the NLD. They quietly blame the armed forces—which, under the 2008 constitution, control the Ministries of Defence, Home Affairs and Border Affairs—for all operational indiscretions.

What this analysis ignores are the positions that Aung San Suu Kyi holds, as State Counsellor and Foreign Minister, and the potential for influence these offices afford her on important aspects of policy in Rakhine State. For instance, she could have set a very different tone in terms of international access, humanitarian response, journalistic reporting and military impunity. Among her supporters, Aung San Suu Kyi’s emphatic unwillingness to publicly engage on the subject matter is excused as a strategic calculation to maintain the current coalition government in power. They argue that without careful phrasing, and fancy footwork, she could provoke the military into decisive action that ends any hope of democratic progress. But Aung San Suu Kyi, they tend to forget, has already toppled from her perch as an icon for democratic principles and human rights. The main question remaining is how far she will fall.

It is a tragedy. Aung San Suu Kyi has the unenviable job of managing Myanmar’s sad legacy of communal, ethnic and religious conflicts. There is no denying the scope or intensity of the problems: even an experienced and well-functioning administration would struggle with the confluence of Buddhist chauvinism, Rohingya militancy and long-term strategic predicaments, including handling Chinese assertiveness.

By any measure, however, the NLD has endorsed some bad decisions that made it more likely the festering wound of Rohingya grievances would explode into full-blown humanitarian disaster. For a start, the NLD high command decided to endorse no Muslims as candidates at the 2015 election. The decision was based, as such cowardly ones usually are, on a determination of short-term electoral need. They were worried that looking cosy with even one Muslim politician would alienate Buddhist voters. The same set of concerns emerged after the assassination of Ko Ni, a long-time activist lawyer and occasional NLD advisor, killed at Yangon airport in early 2017. Aung San Suu Kyi took a month before she spoke publicly about his death.

Apologists seek explanations for these decisions in the rough-and-tumble of Myanmar political deal-making. But by prioritising short term political expediency over the longer term goal of intercommunal cohesion, the NLD has helped shape both the social conditions leading to the dehumanisation of the Rohingya, and the widespread support for military action that has purged them from long-term residence on Myanmar soil. In practice, and much to the dismay of some former supporters, Aung San Suu Kyi and her team of key advisors have found themselves in alignment, on the key questions, with the military and with Buddhist chauvinists. While the world still proclaims that such crimes will “never again” tear at our shared humanity, the further tragedy for Myanmar is that a democratic transition has ended in the sprawling misery of the world’s newest refugee camps.

International responses

While the government and Aung San Suu Kyi have announced their willingness to accept investigations, these were slow to start and will take much time to gather the appropriate evidence.

Testimonials from the Rohingya now sheltering in Bangladesh will take time to evaluate. In some places, the Myanmar army and police and local Buddhist vigilantes have enjoyed plenty of opportunities to cover their tracks. Sadly, by the time comprehensive assessments are available, the world’s attention will have moved on. The possibility of high-level prosecutions, potentially through an international tribunal, are for now only theoretical. Experience elsewhere in Southeast Asia, whether in Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge regime, or Indonesia since the 1965 anti-Communist pogrom, indicates that it may take many decades before any reckoning begins. It is most likely, on recent trends, and given the geopolitical landscape, that perpetrators of human rights outrages will never be held accountable. Foreign governments, therefore, may need to accept that engaging with Myanmar in years to come requires dealing with decision makers whom they regard to be individually or collectively culpable for the atrocities witnessed in Rakhine State.

International actors are confronted with little opportunity to avoid such a scenario. Boycotts and sanctions offer a further avenue for international pressure, but it will take significant shifts in existing practice for these to have any real effect. The primary outcome of sanctions, if applied, would see China reinforce its dominant position in the Myanmar economy. Geopolitics is, therefore, a primary consideration.

ASEAN also finds itself unable to respond cohesively. Its authoritarian governments, in places like Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Brunei, have too many vulnerabilities of their own to allow countries like Malaysia and Indonesia to push an active agenda on accountability in Myanmar. Instead, ASEAN will take the predictable path of least resistance, at least in public. Such lacklustre responses will frustrate progressive voices concerned that ASEAN’s impotence undermines its standing around the world.

Within the Muslim-majority societies of ASEAN, there is a further complication in domestic political terms. Both Indonesia and Malaysia have large and vocal Islamic political movements that seek justice for the Rohingya—typically marked by appeals to religious solidarity rather than universal rights norms. Protests in Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur could build, under the right political conditions, to exert pressure on national governments, and therefore on ASEAN.

ASEAN solidarity is a fragile concept at the best of times, and further stresses will emerge from the Bangladesh–Myanmar borderlands before long. Whether such stresses come in the form of additional violent outbreaks or irregular people movements, ASEAN would struggle to build collaborative and meaningful initiatives. One of the grouping’s relatively recent successes, the response to Myanmar’s 2008 Cyclone Nargis, was made possible by the astute brokering of a pan-regional alliance, which saw the military allow international humanitarian aid into the country. No comparable diplomatic coalition has emerged to help the Rohingya, and Myanmar has no appetite whatsoever for any ASEAN “intervention”. The “ASEAN Way” of diplomacy, often held up as a more effective alternative to the so-called megaphone diplomacy of some western actors, has not borne fruit, with the “five plus one” plan proposed by Indonesia gaining no traction. The gentle pressure brought to bear on Aung San Suu Kyi at the Australia-ASEAN Special Summit in March 2018 also had no discernible effect.

By stonewalling in the face of quiet, good-faith diplomatic appeals, Myanmar’s leaders have ensured that over the years ahead their country’s position on the global stage will weaken further. Already, Myanmar has been forced back into the embrace of China’s Communist leaders, who will seek to maximise their own advantage form this latest crisis. Beijing’s self-declared disinterest in the human rights dimensions of Rohingya suffering help to keep the conversation with Naypyitaw on topics of comfortable, mutual concern, like economic development and countering Islamic violence. The Chinese will, no doubt, offer up “lessons” from battling Uighur militants in their restive Xinjiang province. Other dictatorial regimes, such as Russia and North Korea, will also huddle around, eager to make sure that Myanmar is not left alone.

While western democracies, including Japan, will continue to offer a range of responses, some robust and others quite meek, it makes sense that the general tone of these relationships will cool in the years ahead. Even without formal sanctions and boycotts, many people will think twice before committing significant resources to Myanmar. In part, this is a pragmatic response to instability and uncertainty, and to the broader recognition that the NLD government remains ill-equipped to handle major issues and to steward positive social and economic development.

Such a response will also be informed by wariness and anxiety, of a much less precise form, around doing business with a government and people that have accepted or quietly endorsed such suffering. Shareholder activism against companies involved with Myanmar could return as a factor for investors. Within democratic societies there are many different ways that pressure on Myanmar can be exerted, and governments in liberal systems often have only modest influence over the direction taken by society at-large.

Humanitarian priorities

With so much hardship, providing support for the Rohingya in Bangladesh will need to be a global priority for the very long term. Making sense of the scale of the dislocation, trauma and damage has been difficult to do as the numbers of people involved swelled so quickly. Naturally enough, most of the initial attention and effort has dealt with the near-term humanitarian crisis.

Of all the possible outcomes of the refugee crisis sparked by the Rakhine violence, the most likely is that most of the people who fled Myanmar in 2017 will end up stuck on the Bangladesh side of the border for years to come. Reports suggest the Bangladesh government is hastily constructing an off-shore residential facility. The only likely effect of this plan would be to reinforce the vulnerability of the Rohingya, and to cut them off from what sources of social and economic support and sustenance they have in Bangladesh.

In this dire situation, the refugees themselves have no good options. As recently as 2015, tens of thousands of Rohingya set out by sea for sanctuary elsewhere in Southeast Asia, mostly in Thai- land, Malaysia and Indonesia. Australia’s unflinching responses to that crisis, encapsulated in then prime minister Tony Abbott’s blunt rejection of resettlement pathways, means that large numbers of people are currently waiting, especially in Indonesia, for opportunities to move elsewhere.

In the aftermath of the 2017 crisis, secondary movement has been much more limited. It may be that the recently displaced simply have no energy and few resources to invest in ambitious and costly sea journeys. For all the rhetorical displays of solidarity made by Malaysian and Indonesian politicians, there seems to be little serious consideration in Southeast Asia’s two large Muslim-majority countries of allowing Rohingya to access legal, long-term sanctuary there.

The possibility of further violence also preoccupies security planners in Myanmar and across the region. Attacks on Myanmar interests, especially from Muslim fighters from outside the country, could spark significant re-escalation within Myanmar. The Rohingya have become a lightning rod for dissent across the Muslim world, with groups like Al-Qaeda reportedly pledging future support.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s end-game

Under these conditions, and whatever happens next, the NLD-led coalition government has exhausted the tolerance of many former friends. Harsh criticism will now punctuate its interactions with overseas actors, as it seeks to manage what was an avoidable conflict and a dreadful waste of Myanmar’s enormous potential. Those wasted opportunities are most apparent in Aung San Suu Kyi’s personal failures and missteps. When she was still under house arrest, many activists, in Myanmar and abroad, could not have conceived of how comprehensively the pro-democracy leader has endorsed and re-fortified the ideology of national races. She may have once imagined that she could escape the limitations of Myanmar’s ideology around belonging and exclusion, and yet her performance as State Counsellor has only re-entrenched the sharpest delineation—between the Rohingya and the rest. It is one reason that progressive supporters have abandoned Aung San Suu Kyi; they feel betrayed.

Where she once appeared brave, principled and dignified, she now hides away in Naypyitaw, the custom-built dictators’ capital. The physical separation also implies an intellectual and informational one; drawing on an increasingly exclusive and insular circle of close confidants, she is exposed to little of the robust and public discussion of the issues that will define her legacy.

We also should not forget that Aung San Suu Kyi is, at the same time, the leader the Myanmar public want and voted for. In crude electoral terms Aung San Suu Kyi’s team cannot afford to look cosy with Islamic interests, not least, ironically, because of the atmosphere of anti-Islamic hysteria the administration has allowed to develop.

With every recent step, the National League for Democracy has sought to stomp on any suggestion that it welcomes Muslims or is soft on national security. Under these conditions, the execution in good faith of plans to repatriate any significant number of Rohingya look unlikely. With a deteriorating security situation in Rakhine State between government forces and the Arakan Army, a Buddhist ethnic militia whose bloody insurgency has generated little international media coverage, there is little appetite for re-introducing complicating factors, such as the Rohingya.

Perhaps Myanmar will surprise the doubters by making the most of the support it could receive if it opens up to international investigators and helps to facilitate a wide-ranging reconciliation process. Yet such an outcome remains improbable while the coalition government uses the suffering of the Rohingya as a point of unity and temporary strength. Aung San Suu Kyi needs the army to stay in power, and has sought to compromise all of her reputed values in the interests of staying in charge.

Despite the understandable preoccupation by many observers with questions of Aung San Suu Kyi’s culpability, our analysis needs to move past the heavy emphasis on her personal and political ambitions. It has become clear that she will not offer a timely or satisfactory response to the Rohingya crisis. Myanmar will, one day, need to adjust to government after her long shadow has receded.

What will end up replacing Aung San Suu Kyi’s fragile coalition will draw its strength from the groups that have prospered during the recent crisis: the military, Buddhist chauvinists, and the conservative bureaucratic elite. These groups are all well-positioned ahead of the expected 2020 election. Aung San Suu Kyi’s team may still end up victorious at future polls, but the NLD will never again be considered a substantial alternative to the worst aspects of Myanmar governance. It has now become an active contributor to a series of desperately sad political and social outcomes. The terrible conclusion is that, for all the recent suffering in Myanmar, things could still get worse.

[gravitascivics]

PRIME REASON

While the challenge of promoting civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions is an ever present one, there currently seems to be an increased need to address this challenge.  For years, there has been an ongoing release of studies documenting the lack of these attributes or abilities that one associates with good citizenship among not only young people but citizens in general.

This has only magnified with the currently, often-cited polarization one finds in the American political landscape.  Surely, this reflects less than stellar accomplishments by the nation’s civics education programs.  And one can say, with the exception of recent reports in some segments of young people around the country, that things are not getting better.[1]  Here is what the journalist, Rebecca Winthrop, wrote in 2020,

Americans’ participation in civic life is essential to sustaining our democratic form of government.  Without it, a government of the people, by the people, and for the people will not last.  Of increasing concern to many is the declining levels of civic engagement across the country, a trend that started several decades ago.  Today, we see evidence of this in the limited civic knowledge of the American public, 1 in 4 whom, according to a 2016 survey led by Annenberg Public Policy Center, are unable to name the three branches of government.  It is not only knowledge about how the government works that is lacking – confidence in our leadership is also extremely low.  According to the Pew Research Center, which tracks public trust in government, as of March 2019, only an unnerving 17 percent trust the government in Washington to do the right thing.  We also see this lack of engagement in civic behaviors, with Americans’ reduced participation in community organizations and lackluster participation in elections, especially among young voters.[2]

This sort of concern and findings by a variety of academic and journalistic sources have been often cited in this blog.

         So, from less civic engagement in community efforts to acquiring political knowledge, both of the nation’s founding principles and of the civic challenges of the day, to voting and performing other civic activities, the level of engagement is wanting.  Within this context of how civics education efforts should be conducted, this blogger’s task – as he sees it – is to argue for those in charge to institute various elements of a reform effort in civics education.  

Naturally, besides what goes on in the classroom, that focus would include what the preparation of teachers should include to meet the challenges that civics education confronts today.  To meet the aims of imparting civic knowledge and skills and encouraging a disposition prone toward civic engagement, how teachers should approach these educational aims, what they should be able to do, and how they should be prepared to do their jobs need to be considered.  

In order to meet the above concerns, one is apt, in typical business style, to collectively find the components of the teacher preparation process, narrow one’s focus to those portions of the process dedicated to preparing teachers to handle relevant civic factors, identify what’s wrong, and go about devising plans and allocate resources to fix the problem(s).  Sounds logical enough, but is it enough?

In addressing this topic, this posting does not count on its writer’s academic credentials but instead on his being a veteran classroom teacher of twenty-five years. While the years of his service are a bit dated (1972-2000 – with some of those years having him do some other things), he feels they still provide relevant insights as to what is happening today – the reader will be the judge as to whether he is right.  

What he learned from that teaching experience – the constructed beliefs he developed – allows him to feel he can add to the discourse about what is ailing civics education.  No doubt the challenges facing civics are daunting, not only due to a lack of resources, but also due to a multitude of factors affecting the general situation. With that in mind, what follows is his take on what should constitute an ideal teacher preparation program which emphasizes civics education.  

That is, what should such a program include as its elements?  Warning:  transcending all of these factors and elements is a holistic aspect that defies systemic linear thinking and planning as just described.  He hopes his presentation over several postings captures that sense and communicates it to the reader.  His goal in describing and explaining his specific plan is to convey an element, provide a rationale for it, and then speculate and react to what the reader might respond to the given element.  

This general order of presentation will be followed as the individual elements are addressed.  When all of the elements are “covered,” he will then make some general comments as to the holistic nature of the concern.  But before starting, the reader should also be advised that the elements will not be divided by postings.  For example, this posting begins its comments on element one and will continue with element one in the next posting.  How the whole presentation will appear or be divided is still being considered.

So, here is the first element,

Element One: A viable teacher preparation program needs to make clear that civic preparation is not only a foundation of civics education or even social studies, but of all public education and of responsible private educational programs as well.[3]

         In terms of this element, it is helpful for one to step back a moment and ask why one supports public education.  What serves as the ultimate or trump value justifying all the expense that public education represents?  Different perspectives would probably elicit different answers to this question.

         One way to address this question is to look at the origins of public education; that is, what was the original intent of having public education?  According to the educational historian, R. Freeman Butts,[4] it was to support the development of a civic minded citizenry to meet the inherent needs of a functioning republic.  And supporting this notion are the thoughts of the historians Allen Nevins and Henry Steele Commager.  

They state: “The Founding Fathers knew that their experiment in self-government was without precedent, and they took it for granted that it could not succeed without an enlightened electorate.”[5]  They go on to cite the efforts of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Rush, Noah Webster, George and his son DeWitt Clinton to establish an accessible school system in their respective states.  

And another historian, Samuel E. Morrison, more explicitly states the original purpose of public schools in the following way:

 Opposition to free public education came from the people of property, who thought it intolerable that they should be taxed to support the common schools to which they would not dream of sending their children. To this argument the poor replied with votes, and reformers with the tempting argument that education was insurance against radicalism.[6]

 All other reasons than that of preparing responsible, civic minded citizens (such as preparing an educated workforce, keeping youngsters from competing for jobs and off the streets, advancing the career ambitions of individual citizens, etc.), while not necessarily exclusive of the main goal, are at best secondary.

         Yes, the expense of public schooling needed to be justified to others besides the rich and these practical and utilitarian reasons were advanced by the likes of Horace Mann[7] and others, but the main justification was the promotion of civic education.  Butts further writes,

In re-examining the stated purposes used to justify the development and spread of the common public school in the mid-nineteenth century, I believe that the citizenship argument is still valid.  The highest priority for a genuinely public school is to serve the public purposes of a democratic political community. Those in favor of “excellence” or “back to the basics” [cries one commonly heard at the time Butts wrote these words] should be reminded that citizenship is the basic purpose for universal literacy. If the fundamental purposes of schooling are to be confined to preparing for a job or developing individual talents, these might well be achieved in private schools that select students for particular destinies.  But the faith of the common school reformers, as of the founders, that the civic tasks can best be performed by public schools that are characterized primarily by a public purpose, public control, public support, public access, and public commitment to civic unity was soundly based.[8]

 So, the first element is for involved and interested parties to see the main function of public and even private education is to promote good citizenship – all else follows from this fundamental aim.

And with that general support for a civic foundation, this posting stops and gives the reader an opportunity to mull over this role of civics or for this central rationale for public schools.  The next posting will pick up this first element, elaborate on it and, given the space remaining, continue with the others.  In all there are five elements.

[1] There have been reports of an uptick in young people becoming more politically engaged.  For example, see David Lauder, “Essential Politics: Young People’s Political Engagement Is Surging.  That’s a Problem for Republicans,”  The Los Angeles Times (April 23, 2021), accessed September 27, 2021, https://www.latimes.com/politics/newsletter/2021-04-23/surge-political-engagement-youth-problem-for-gop-essential-politics .

[2] Rebecca Winthrop, “The Need for Civic Education in the 21st – Century Schools,” 2020 Brookings Policy (June 4, 2020), accessed September 26, 2021, https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/bigideas/the-need-for-civic-education-in-21st-century-schools/ .

[3] These comments will directly address public education, but a lot of what will be stated will also apply to private or sectarian educational efforts.

[4] R. Freeman Butts, The Civic Mission in Educational Reform:  Perspectives for the Public and the Profession (Stanford, CA:  Hoover Institution Press, 1989).

[5] Allen Nevins and Henry Steele Commager, A Pocket History of the United States (New York, NY: Washington Square Press, 1986).

[6] Samuel E. Morrison, The Oxford History of the American People (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press, 1965).

[7] Allen C. Ornstein and Francis P. Hunkins, Curriculum:  Foundations, Principles, and Issues (Boston, MA:  Pearson, 2004).

[8] Butts, The Civic Mission in Educational Reform, 130.

[patriotsnet]

Why Are There Democrats And Republicans

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-are-there-democrats-and-republicans/

Why Are There Democrats And Republicans

What Republican And Democrats Believe

Why Democrats and Republicans Are Claiming A Midterm Win

Lets start with this example. There are one or more reasons why you chose that person to be your friend. It could be because of how he or she talks, sense of humor, intelligence, educational background, ideology, or other factors.

The bottom line is you made the individual your friend because of one or more factors you discovered in that person that pleases you. This explains why most people would prefer joining republicans than Democrats and vice versa.

Republicans and Democrats have diverse ideologies and beliefs. These beliefs or ideology is part of what draws people to join either political party.

Lets start with Republicans. What do Republicans believe in?

Republicans boast libertarian and centrist factions. But they primarily believe in social conservative policies. They abide by laws that help conserve their traditional values. These include opposition to abortion, marijuana use, and same-sex marriage.

So the Republican Partys platform is generally centered on American conservatism. It comprises establishment conservatives, Freedom Caucus, or Tea Party members, described as right-wing, populist, and far-right.

The Republican Partys position has changed over time. They now transcend beyond traditional values, which often includes Christian background. The Republicans evolved position now includes fiscal conservatism and foreign policy.

Heres a quick summary of what the Republican Party believes in:

Heres a quick look at what Democrats believe in:

Virginia State Legislator And Governor

At the start of the Revolution, Jefferson was a and was named commander of the Militia on September 26, 1775. He was then elected to the for Albemarle County in September 1776, when finalizing a state constitution was a priority.For nearly three years, he assisted with the constitution and was especially proud of his Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, which forbade state support of religious institutions or enforcement of religious doctrine. The bill failed to pass, as did his legislation to disestablish the , but both were later revived by .

Jefferson was elected for one-year terms in 1779 and 1780. He transferred the state capital from Williamsburg to , and introduced measures for public education, religious freedom, and revision of inheritance laws.

In April of the same year, his daughter Lucy died at age one. A second daughter of that name was born the following year, but she died at age three.

Red States Outnumber Blue States

In February 2016, Gallup reported that for the first time since Gallup started tracking, red states now outnumber blue states.

In 2008, 35 states leaned Democratic and this number is down to only 14 now. In the same time, the number of Republican leaning states rose from 5 to 20. Gallup determined 16 states to be competitive, i.e., they leaned toward neither party. Wyoming, Idaho and Utah were the most Republican states, while states that leaned the most Democratic were Vermont, Hawaii and Rhode Island.

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Political Coalitions Are About More Than Just Income Redistribution

Posted December 8, 2014

In his 2004 book, journalist Thomas Frank asked: Whats the matter with Kansas? Ever since, many liberals have taken it as an article of faith that if working-class whites only knew what was good for them then theyd vote for Democrats.

The usual rebuttal from political science is to point out that many poorer whites in fact do vote for Democrats. Or, at least, poorer whites are much more likely to vote Democratic than are richer whites. Its just not the case — even in Kansas — that working-class whites are ignoring their redistributive interests in their voting choices. Still, it makes sense to wonder why Democrats win the poorest whites by a nose rather than a mile.

Many conservatives similarly ask: Whats the matter with Harvard? Ive studied the Harvard/Radcliffe Class of 1977 . On the whole, its a fantastically wealth group, with family incomes typically in the top 1% or 2% of the country. Yet for every Republican there are around six Democrats.

With Harvard as well, though, its still not the case that people are ignoring their redistributive interests. In the Class of 77, the richest members are less likely to favor Democrats than are the merely well-off or poorer. Still, it makes sense to wonder why Republicans are in such short supply among Ivy League alumni.

Income and Education

Parties are Coalitions

Kansas and Harvard

Jason Weeden is author of The Hidden Agenda of the Political Mind .

Related articles:

The Philosophy Behind Republican Economic Policy

Republicans advocate supply-side economics that primarily benefits businesses and investors. This theory states that tax cuts on businesses allow them to hire more workers, in turn increasing demand and growth. In theory, the increased revenue from a stronger economy offsets the initial revenue loss over time.

Republicans advocate the right to pursue prosperity without government interference. They argue this is achieved by self-discipline, enterprise, saving, and investing.

Republicans business-friendly approach leads most people to believe that they are better for the economy. A closer look reveals that Democrats are, in many respects, actually better.

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Secretary Of State And Secretary Of War

Monroe returned to the Virginia House of Burgesses and was elected to another term as governor in 1811, but served only four months. In April 1811, Madison appointed Monroe as Secretary of State in hopes of shoring up the support of the more radical factions of the Democratic-Republicans. Madison also hoped that Monroe, an experienced diplomat with whom he had once been close friends, would improve upon the performance of the previous Secretary of State, . Madison assured Monroe that their differences regarding the Monroe-Pinkney Treaty had been a misunderstanding, and the two resumed their friendship. On taking office, Monroe hoped to negotiate treaties with the British and French to end the attacks on American merchant ships. While the French agreed to reduce the attacks and release seized American ships, the British were less receptive to Monroe’s demands. Monroe had long worked for peace with the British, but he came to favor war with Britain, joining with “war hawks” such as Speaker of the House . With the support of Monroe and Clay, Madison asked Congress to declare war upon the British, and Congress complied on June 18, 1812, thus beginning the .

Past Jumps In Party Affiliations

The bump in Democratic affiliation following Biden’s inauguration mirrors that of former President Barack Obama’s first term, Jones said.

“That was really the high point that we’ve seen; kind of the 2006-2009 period, when really the majority of Americans either identified as Democrats outright or were independents but they leaned toward the party,” he said.;”Our data on this only goes back to the ’90s, but it’s pretty much the only time we consistently had one party with the majority of Americans on their side.”

Republican advantages, though rarer and more short-lived, followed the Gulf War in 1991 when George H.W. Bush was in office and the 9/11 terrorist attacks during President George W. Bush’s term, according to Gallup. More people also reported GOP affiliation after the 1994, 2010 and 2014 midterm elections.

Whether the Republican Party can regain advantage during the 2022 midterm elections may rely on the successes of the Biden administration, according to Jones.

“A lot of it is going to depend on how things go over the course of the year. If things get better with the coronavirus and the economy bounces back and a lot of people expect Biden can keep relatively strong approval ratings, then that will be better for the Democrats,” Jones said.;”But if things start to get worse unemployment goes up or coronavirus gets worse; then his approval is going to go down. It’s going to make things a lot better for the Republican Party for the midterm next year.”

Also Check: Who Is Right Republicans Or Democrats

Lewis And Clark Expedition

Jefferson anticipated further westward settlements due to the Louisiana Purchase and arranged for the exploration and mapping of the uncharted territory. He sought to establish a U.S. claim ahead of competing European interests and to find the rumored . Jefferson and others were influenced by exploration accounts of in Louisiana and Captain in the Pacific , and they persuaded Congress in 1804 to fund an expedition to explore and the newly acquired territory to the Pacific Ocean.

Jefferson appointed and to be leaders of the . In the months leading up to the expedition, Jefferson tutored Lewis in the sciences of mapping, botany, natural history, mineralogy, and astronomy and navigation, giving him unlimited access to his library at Monticello, which included the largest collection of books in the world on the subject of the geography and natural history of the North American continent, along with an impressive collection of maps.

The expedition lasted from May 1804 to September 1806 and obtained a wealth of scientific and geographic knowledge, including knowledge of many Indian tribes.

Other expeditions

In addition to the Corps of Discovery, Jefferson organized three other western expeditions: the and George Hunter expedition on the , the on the , and the into the Rocky Mountains and the Southwest. All three produced valuable information about the American frontier.

How Did John Quincy Adams Become President

Democrats Vs Republicans | What is the difference between Democrats and Republicans?

In the U.S. presidential election of 1824, Andrew Jackson received 99 electoral votes, Adams 84, William Crawford 41, and Henry Clay 37. Because no one had a majority, the;House of Representatives chose between the three top candidates. Clay supported Adams, ensuring his victory and the bitter opposition of the Jacksonians to all his initiatives.

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The Parties Change Course

After the war, the Republican Party became more and more oriented towards economic growth, industry, and big business in Northern states, and in the beginning of the 20th;century it had reached a general status as a party for the more wealthy classes in society. Many Republicans therefore gained financial success in the prosperous 1920s until the stock market crashed in 1929 initiating the era of the Great Depression.

Now, many Americans blamed Republican President Herbert Hoover for the financial damages brought by the crisis. In 1932 the country therefore instead elected Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt to be president.

The Democratic Party largely stayed in power until 1980, when Republican Ronald Reagan was elected as president. Reagans social conservative politics and emphasis on cutting taxes, preserving family values, and increasing military funding were important steps in defining the modern Republican Party platform.

Energy Issues And The Environment

There have always been clashes between the parties on the issues of energy and the environment. Democrats believe in restricting drilling for oil or other avenues of fossil fuels to protect the environment while Republicans favor expanded drilling to produce more energy at a lower cost to consumers. Democrats will push and support with tax dollars alternative energy solutions while the Republicans favor allowing the market to decide which forms of energy are practical.

Also Check: What National Policies Did Republicans Pursue During The Civil War

Which Party Is Better For The Economy

Princeton University economists Alan Binder and Mark Watson argue the U.S. economy has grown faster when the president is a Democrat rather than a Republican. “The U.S. economy not only grows faster, according to real GDP and other measures, during Democratic versus Republican presidencies, it also produces more jobs, lowers the unemployment rate, generates higher corporate profits and investment, and turns in higher stock market returns,” they write.

However, rather than chalking up the performance difference to how each party manages monetary or fiscal policy, Binder and Watson said Democratic presidencies had benefitted from “more benign oil shocks, superior performance, a more favorable international environment, and perhaps more optimistic consumer expectations about the near-term future.”

Republicans Claim That Raising The Minimum Wage Would Kill Jobs And Hurt The Economy

There is far more evidence to the contrary. Cities and states that have higher minimum wages tend to have better rates of job creation and economic growth.

Detailed analyses show that job losses due to increases in the minimum wage are almost negligible compared to the economic benefits of higher wages. Previous increases in the minimum wage have never resulted in the dire consequences that Republicans have predicted.

Republicans have accused President Obama of cutting defense spending to the bone. This chart of 2014 discretionary spending firmly disproves that argument.

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What Is Thomas Jefferson Remembered For

Thomas Jefferson is remembered for being the primary writer of the Declaration of Independence and the third president of the United States. The fact that he owned over 600 enslaved people during his life while forcefully advocating for human freedom and equality made Jefferson one of Americas most problematic and paradoxical heroes.

Thomas Jefferson, , draftsman of the of the United States and the nations first secretary of state and second vice president and, as the third president , the statesman responsible for the Louisiana Purchase. An early advocate of total separation of church and state, he also was the founder and architect of the University of Virginia and the most eloquent American proponent of individual freedom as the core meaning of the American Revolution.

Presidential Election Of 1808

Speculation regarding Madisons potential succession of Jefferson commenced early in Jeffersons first term. Madisons status in the party was damaged by his association with the embargo, which was unpopular throughout the country and especially in the Northeast. With the Federalists collapsing as a national party after 1800, the chief opposition to Madisons candidacy came from other members of the Democratic-Republican Party. Madison became the target of attacks from Congressman , a leader of a faction of the party known as the . Randolph recruited James Monroe, who had felt betrayed by the administrations rejection of the proposed with Britain, to challenge Madison for leadership of the party. Many Northerners, meanwhile, hoped that Vice President could unseat Madison as Jeffersons successor. Despite this opposition, Madison won his partys presidential nomination at the January 1808 . The Federalist Party mustered little strength outside New England, and Madison easily defeated Federalist candidate . At a height of only five feet, four inches , and never weighing more than 100 pounds , Madison became the most diminutive president.

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Early Life And Education

James Madison, Jr. was born on March 16, 1751 ) at near in the , to and Nelly Conway Madison. His family had lived in Virginia since the mid-1600s. Madison grew up as the oldest of twelve children, with seven brothers and four sisters, though only six lived to adulthood. His father was a who grew up on a , then called , which he had inherited upon reaching adulthood. With an estimated 100 and a 5,000 acres plantation, Madison’s father was the largest landowner and a leading citizen in the . Madison’s maternal grandfather was a prominent planter and tobacco merchant. In the early 1760s, the Madison family moved into a newly built house that they named .

From age 11 to 16, Madison studied under Donald Robertson, a Scottish instructor who served as a tutor for several prominent planter families in the South. Madison learned , , and modern and classical languageshe became exceptionally proficient in . At age 16, Madison returned to Montpelier, where he studied under the Reverend Thomas Martin to prepare for college. Unlike most college-bound Virginians of his day, Madison did not attend the , where the lowland climate thought to be more likely to harbor infectious disease might have strained his delicate health. Instead, in 1769, he enrolled as an undergraduate at .

Where Do Democrats And Republicans Stand On The Issue Of Healthcare

Why there’s no Republican primary in South Carolina

The chasm between the parties approach to providing healthcare to Americans couldnt be more vast. Simply put, Democrats have had some form of healthcare reform on their agenda for nearly a century. Republicans not so much. They feel that the status quo is just fine. At the core is a philosophical disagreement about the role of government. Democrats believe that government should be responsible for the people in some ways, and Republicans believe that the less government, the better. In the current climate, this boils down to Democrats wanting to retain, improve, and expand the ACA, and Republicans working overtime to repeal it with no replacement.

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Republicans And Democrats Have Different Views About Compromising With The Other Party

Overall, Republicans are divided over whether Donald Trump should focus on finding common ground with Democrats, even if that means giving up some things Republicans want, or pushing hard for GOP policies, even if it means less gets done. While 53% of Republicans say Trump should push hard for the partys policies, 45% say its more important for the president to find common ground with Democrats.

However, politically attentive Republicans broadly oppose Trump seeking compromise with Democrats even if it means giving up some things Republicans want. Just 39% of Republicans who follow government and public affairs most of the time say it is more important for Trump to find common ground with Democrats; 61% say he should push hard for GOP policies. Opinion is more evenly divided among less politically attentive Republicans.

Democrats, who were asked a hypothetical version of the question about the partys 2020 presidential candidates, are more open to potential compromise with Republicans. About six-in-ten Democrats say it is more important for a candidate, if elected, to find common ground with Republicans even if it means giving up things Democrats want.

There are no differences in these views among Democrats based on political attentiveness. But liberal Democrats are less likely than conservative and moderate Democrats to say it is more important for a candidate to seek compromises with Republicans.

[americanconstitutionalpatriot]

.

Borrowed:

You like President Trump? Many do appreciate what he has done for us so far. Don't like him? After being constantly bombarded with propaganda it may be difficult to see how he is the only president to serve ALL American citizens.

How sinnical of you to wish death upon him and his family when it was learned they were infected with the Chinese-virus. If you think of yourself as part of any religion organization, a patriot, and American, you should be ashamed of yourself.

I remember demokkkRATs saying “He was unfit for office”, yet he’s brokered four Middle East Peace Accords, something that 71 years of political intervention and endless war failed to produce.

I remember Pelosi saying “He is a danger to our country, Joy Behar saying “He has mental issues and can start World War III, yet he is the first president that has not engaged us in a foreign war since Eisenhower.

I remember demokkkRATs saying our economy will crash, we’ll suffer a Great Depression. Barry O referenced Trump's promise to bring back jobs to the United States when talking about manufacturing "Well, how exactly are you going to do that? What exactly are you going to do? There's no answer to it," He called Trump's pledge to roll back Wall Street regulations "crazy." Obama said “What magic wand do you have? Well, President Trump has had the greatest impact on the economy, bringing jobs, and lowering unemployment to the Black and Latino population of ANY other president. Ever, EVER !! Woman, people with high school diplomas and teenagers all have the most employment ever.

The reason SOME Republicans and ALL rinos and demokkkRATs hate President Trump is because he has exposed the deep, widespread, and long-standing corruption in the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the "deep state".

The orange-man in the White House turned NATO around and had member countries start paying their dues, now everyone is held accountable.

The unstable minded man in the White House has single handedly neutralized the North Koreans, and stopped them from developing a further nuclear capability, sending missiles toward Japan, and threatening the West Coast of the US.

The unfit man in the White House has turned the tied with China, and now America, and Americans are in the greatest financial position ever in trading with China. Through tax breaks, he has brought hundreds of business back to the US, and revived the economy.

The uneducated orange-man in the White House has accomplished the appointing of 3 Supreme Court Justices and close to 300 Federal Judges. He has given clemency to Americans who have been wrongfully incarcerated for long periods of time by the Obama - Biden klan. The very Crime Bill Joe Biden is so proud of.

This reality star, privileged, white business man, is the person in the White House that has lowered your taxes, increased the standard deduction on your IRS return from $12,500 for married filling joint to $24,400 and caused your stock market to move to record levels over 100 times, positively impacting the retirements of tens of millions of citizens.

This lunatic as Pelosi refers to President Trump, saved hundreds of thousands of lives by shutting down international flights, to stop the spread of the China-Virus. All while DemokkkRATs called him every name in their agenda racist dictionary. He has fast tracked the vaccine for Covid and it should be available by the end of the year. Remember, DemokkkRATs have every state they control shut down because of Covid, but they’ve never done it for anything else and we still don't have a vaccine for SARS, Bird Flu, Ebola, or a host of diseases that arose during previous administrations.

The crazy-unfit for President thats currently in the White House has totally rebuilt our military which the Obama administration had crippled and had fired 214 key generals and admirals in his first year of office. The military were using parts from broken down aircrafts to fix the ones that were operational. How pathetic is that for this country, to have a Muslim president step on the men and women who are willing to die for this country and supply them with junk equipment to protect themselves with. Biden and Obama made sure the military funds were going to welfare, to keep the poor content for their votes in the next election.

He also fixed the VA system that was killing our vets and gave them the ability to see a private doctor. He gave us all "right to try" experimental medical treatments.

The unfit orange-man in the White House put his daughter in charge of human trafficking, and has uncovered widespread pedophilia in the government and in Hollywood, and is exposing world wide sex trafficking of minors and bringing children home to their families by the hundreds, weekly.

This evil President in the White House works for free and has lost well over 2 billion dollars of his own money to serve our country and yet they bitch about phantom taxes. Even before the campaign started he and his team were targeted and spayed onby Clinton, Obama, Biden, CIA, FBI, DOJ, and others. Haven’t you experienced that if you’re doing everything right, all those that are dirty will do whatever it takes to bring you down ? President Trump is a threat, because he is the only one that’s protecting us and this country.

And please educate me again as to what Biden has accomplished for America in his 47 years in office?

I’ll take a ‘mentally unfit, orange-man’ any day versus a fork tongued, smooth talking hypocritical corrupt liar DemokkkRAT, at any level of politics. Would you hire a guy to run your company as the top CEO, that’s been working for you for over 47 years and has accomplished NOTHING ?

God bless Donald Trump, his family, and all those who vote for him. Thank you for saving America, and Americans. He sure is the most unappreciated human in history.

Please share, thank you. God bless. 🇺🇸

.

[easyfoodnetwork]

They Tried to Start a Union During a Pandemic, But They Were Fired. What’s Next?

A group of union members picketing circa 1938 | Photo by MPI/Getty Images

Some food industry workers say companies are using the pandemic as an excuse to halt efforts to unionize 

Abismael Colon, a server at an Outback Steakhouse in the Orlando International Airport, was ready to unionize his workplace. For almost nine years, Colon had served countless Bloomin’ Onions and trained new hires despite what he describes as verbal insults and a daily fear that he’d be fired without cause by his superiors. This particular Outback Steakhouse was operated by HMSHost, an airport and highway food service company. Together with the hospitality-industry union Unite Here, the veteran employee and his colleagues helped garner majority support of about 800 workers at the airport’s other HMSHost-operated restaurants, such as Chili’s and Starbucks, with an election slated for late March to determine whether the union would officially represent the staff.

But Colon’s hopes for union representation took a heavy blow once the novel coronavirus hit Florida. The National Labor Relations Board delayed all elections a week before the HMSHost vote due to the pandemic. Once the Tampa regional branch reopened and announced it was accepting mail-in ballots, the company successfully moved to block the option and pushed for in-person voting, further dragging out the union campaign. More than three months later, Colon, like many of his now-furloughed colleagues, is without a paycheck, without health insurance, and without any job security.

“By them delaying the union and getting ourselves into a contract or negotiating, right now, we don’t have a guarantee to go back to work,” Colon says. “So employees are angry. They’re like, ‘Hey, when are we gonna get this vote?’ because they want their jobs back.”

Amid a growing wave of worker activism across the food industry, employees and contractors at restaurant chains and delivery apps alike have found themselves banding together to improve workplace conditions. In 2012, the Fight for $15 movement began to push nationally for a $15 minimum wage and union representation for fast-food workers, and in the years since, Gimme Coffee baristas in upstate New York have voted in favor of unionization, followed by employees at Portland branches of the fast-food chain Burgerville and Tartine locations in the Bay Area, as well as a group of Instacart workers in Skokie, Illinois.

“Employers feel they have a real friend in the Trump National Labor Relations Board.”

More recently, as the coronavirus spurred citywide business shutdowns, grocery store and restaurant workers were deemed “essential” in ensuring communities’ access to food and supplies. This led to some crisis-born benefits like pay raises and improved sick leave options at chains like Starbucks, where employees were given a temporary $3 per hour pay bump along with extended catastrophe pay. Other workers, however, saw their temporary wage increases and new workplace safety measures only through strikes and sickouts: After hundreds of workers at Kroger’s Delta Distribution Center in Memphis briefly stopped fulfilling orders in late March, the company granted all its employees temporary $2 per hour hazard pay and increased protections, like plexiglass protecting workers at the cash register.

But even as low-wage workers across the industry have gained these handfuls of new financial and health perks, some say companies have wielded the ongoing public health crisis as a tool for cracking down on union and worker organizing. On July 5, California-based Augie’s Coffee laid off its baristas and closed its retail operations indefinitely so as not “to risk the health and safety of our staff.” The timing was roughly a week and a half after employees informed management of their intent to unionize and asked for recognition, according the Augie’s Union; many of the company’s stores had continued service throughout the pandemic, even after Los Angeles County reported its first death. Whole Foods, which, according to a Business Insider report, has been using a heat map to monitor potential unionization activity, fired an employee who had been tracking the number of COVID-19 cases at Whole Foods locations; the company told Motherboard that the employee’s firing was not retaliatory and that she had violated company policies. And after Trader Joe’s workers began organizing earlier this year, in March, an employee who helped start a non-management-staff Facebook group to discuss coronavirus safety and health concerns was similarly fired. A Trader Joe’s spokesperson also said the firing was not retaliatory.

“The Trump [National Labor Relations] Board has made some changes to the rules, and employers feel they have a real friend in the Trump Board,” says Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University. “So they’re acting with even more impunity.”

On March 20, employees at the downtown Portland, Oregon, location of the nationally expanding chain Voodoo Doughnut delivered a letter to management announcing that they had formed a union with the International Workers of the World. Even before holding an official union election, the newly formed Voodoo Doughnut Workers Union demanded higher wages and increased safety protections for staff, and severance packages for the branch’s roughly 30 employees laid off because of the pandemic.

Workers said they were told their unemployment would be temporary, and that the company would rehire workers once the social and economic climates stabilized. But this past June, the workers’ union accused the company of using the layoffs to “clean house” and hire new, non-unionized employees through Snagajob. Under overcast skies and the watch of pastry-hungry customers, workers picketed outside of the chain’s Old Town location, holding signs that read “Stop Union Busting” and “Don’t Throw Us Out Like Day Old Donuts.”

“It absolutely was a shock to many of us how the company has treated us,” says Samantha Bryce, a Voodoo Doughnut Workers Union representative. “Really what we want is recognition and we want our jobs back.” The workers’ union said that it had filed 29 charges against the company with the NLRB.

In response to questions regarding the allegations of discriminating against union workers in rehiring, Audrey Lincoff, a Voodoo Doughnut spokesperson, said in a statement to Eater: “Like all affected businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, Voodoo Doughnut continues to rehire and hire as the business needs dictate.”

Since the establishment of the Wagner Act in 1935, private-sector workers have been legally guaranteed the right to organize workplace unions and collectively bargain. But according to a 2019 report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-leaning think tank, more than 41 percent of employers were found to have violated the federal law in union election campaigns. According to Celine McNicholas, labor counsel for the EPI and co-author of the report, part of the reason companies feel secure in breaking the law by firing workers or threatening to discipline them for organizing a union is that the enforcement of the law is lax, cases brought by unfairly discharged workers can drag on for years, and the penalties to many employers — rehiring the employee plus back pay, which deducts any income they earned from another job — are a slap on the wrist compared to having to deal with a more expensive and protected workforce.

“Even if it’s patently illegal under the NLRB, with the particular way it’s being enforced in this administration, employers are able to bend and break the law with relative impunity in really egregious cases,” McNicholas says, adding that there are “not adequate remedies and enforcement methods to make it scary enough for employers not to do it.”

Employees at HMSHost-operated restaurants at Orlando International Airport have been campaigning for a union since last year, and the company has taken steps in an apparent aim to stifle the union drive — and use the coronavirus as pretext to ensure its success. (HMSHost did not respond to a request for comment.)

According to restaurant workers, HMSHost hired a labor relations consulting firm and hosted captive audience meetings starting in February. In a tiny room at the airport, consultants lectured groups of employees with anti-union talking points, even when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began to recommend early social-distancing methods. As staff members began to face furloughs, Colon says an assistant manager informed him and other workers that the general manager was planning to bring back only non-union workers. And the company stymied election proceedings by arguing against a mail-in-ballot election to the National Labor Relations Board, as employees wanted to avoid congregating for in-person voting while coronavirus cases surged in Florida.

With a successful vote in favor of a union, HMSHost would be legally required to bargain with employees’ union representatives and sign a contract. Along with higher wages, health benefits, and workplace safety provisions, union representatives could also push for an agreement that includes recall guarantees and a fair recall system. But as of now, there is no election date in sight: According to emails between company and union lawyers, HMSHost’s latest holdup is arguing to the National Labor Relations Board that furloughed workers — roughly 90 percent of the company’s airport restaurant staff — shouldn’t be allowed to vote in the union election. And lately, some workers are worrying that their campaign could lose steam.

“I have coworkers who have kids,” says Rosanny Tejeda, a furloughed barista at an HMSHost-operated Starbucks. “The unemployment benefits aren’t going to last forever, and for a big family it might not be enough. They might give up on waiting and find themselves another job.”

“They don’t want to lose control of the dynamic.”

American companies have exploited chaotic climates to undermine workers’ organizing efforts before. In an interview with the New York Times, the Georgetown University labor historian Joseph McCartin said that during the 1918 flu pandemic, steel plants and industrial companies managed to sway local officials to ban union meetings and frustrate organizing campaigns, the rationale being that they were breeding grounds for disease transmission. During the Great Depression, he added, employers often targeted union workers for layoffs.

But now, even employees who are simply organizing for safe working conditions and hazard pay during the pandemic are coming under fire from their superiors. Louisville, Kentucky, Trader Joe’s employee Kris King was among those fired after starting a Facebook group to discuss workplace health and safety concerns. On March 31, shortly after King was fired, Trader Joe’s chairman and CEO, Dan Bane, sent a letter to company employees, writing that “a host of union campaigns have been launched that seek to capitalize on the current unstable environment in America.”

“I think they’re just afraid of a larger voice and losing control of their employees,” King says. He adds that although the company manages to keep most of its employees content during normal times, “when more is at stake and people want to step up and be vocal together, they don’t want to lose control of the dynamic.”

In April, Kenya Friend-Daniel, a spokesperson for Trader Joe’s, wrote in an email to Eater regarding King’s firing: “I can tell you we did not end his employment due to a desire to unionize, set up a social media page or express concerns, nor would we do so with any other Crew Member.”

For McNicholas, the labor counsel at the EPI, there is a potential silver lining in this moment. Food industry workers who have continued to supply everyone from the newly unemployed to people working from home with basic necessities and comforts are shedding light on their treatment by companies, whether it’s by demanding union recognition or the extension of hazard pay and more hand sanitizing stations. In turn, they’re gaining community support, and more importantly, an increased desire to hold companies accountable.

“There has been a backlash, and the more these stories are told, that comes together for the perfect storm where you have a new administration with demands put on it by working people,” she says, “and those become priority for new administration, changes for the way we work, and then growth for the union movement.”

Matthew Sedacca is a writer living in Brooklyn.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/30cd1f5 https://ift.tt/32dgcG1

A group of union members picketing circa 1938 | Photo by MPI/Getty Images

Some food industry workers say companies are using the pandemic as an excuse to halt efforts to unionize 

Abismael Colon, a server at an Outback Steakhouse in the Orlando International Airport, was ready to unionize his workplace. For almost nine years, Colon had served countless Bloomin’ Onions and trained new hires despite what he describes as verbal insults and a daily fear that he’d be fired without cause by his superiors. This particular Outback Steakhouse was operated by HMSHost, an airport and highway food service company. Together with the hospitality-industry union Unite Here, the veteran employee and his colleagues helped garner majority support of about 800 workers at the airport’s other HMSHost-operated restaurants, such as Chili’s and Starbucks, with an election slated for late March to determine whether the union would officially represent the staff.

But Colon’s hopes for union representation took a heavy blow once the novel coronavirus hit Florida. The National Labor Relations Board delayed all elections a week before the HMSHost vote due to the pandemic. Once the Tampa regional branch reopened and announced it was accepting mail-in ballots, the company successfully moved to block the option and pushed for in-person voting, further dragging out the union campaign. More than three months later, Colon, like many of his now-furloughed colleagues, is without a paycheck, without health insurance, and without any job security.

“By them delaying the union and getting ourselves into a contract or negotiating, right now, we don’t have a guarantee to go back to work,” Colon says. “So employees are angry. They’re like, ‘Hey, when are we gonna get this vote?’ because they want their jobs back.”

Amid a growing wave of worker activism across the food industry, employees and contractors at restaurant chains and delivery apps alike have found themselves banding together to improve workplace conditions. In 2012, the Fight for $15 movement began to push nationally for a $15 minimum wage and union representation for fast-food workers, and in the years since, Gimme Coffee baristas in upstate New York have voted in favor of unionization, followed by employees at Portland branches of the fast-food chain Burgerville and Tartine locations in the Bay Area, as well as a group of Instacart workers in Skokie, Illinois.

“Employers feel they have a real friend in the Trump National Labor Relations Board.”

More recently, as the coronavirus spurred citywide business shutdowns, grocery store and restaurant workers were deemed “essential” in ensuring communities’ access to food and supplies. This led to some crisis-born benefits like pay raises and improved sick leave options at chains like Starbucks, where employees were given a temporary $3 per hour pay bump along with extended catastrophe pay. Other workers, however, saw their temporary wage increases and new workplace safety measures only through strikes and sickouts: After hundreds of workers at Kroger’s Delta Distribution Center in Memphis briefly stopped fulfilling orders in late March, the company granted all its employees temporary $2 per hour hazard pay and increased protections, like plexiglass protecting workers at the cash register.

But even as low-wage workers across the industry have gained these handfuls of new financial and health perks, some say companies have wielded the ongoing public health crisis as a tool for cracking down on union and worker organizing. On July 5, California-based Augie’s Coffee laid off its baristas and closed its retail operations indefinitely so as not “to risk the health and safety of our staff.” The timing was roughly a week and a half after employees informed management of their intent to unionize and asked for recognition, according the Augie’s Union; many of the company’s stores had continued service throughout the pandemic, even after Los Angeles County reported its first death. Whole Foods, which, according to a Business Insider report, has been using a heat map to monitor potential unionization activity, fired an employee who had been tracking the number of COVID-19 cases at Whole Foods locations; the company told Motherboard that the employee’s firing was not retaliatory and that she had violated company policies. And after Trader Joe’s workers began organizing earlier this year, in March, an employee who helped start a non-management-staff Facebook group to discuss coronavirus safety and health concerns was similarly fired. A Trader Joe’s spokesperson also said the firing was not retaliatory.

“The Trump [National Labor Relations] Board has made some changes to the rules, and employers feel they have a real friend in the Trump Board,” says Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University. “So they’re acting with even more impunity.”

On March 20, employees at the downtown Portland, Oregon, location of the nationally expanding chain Voodoo Doughnut delivered a letter to management announcing that they had formed a union with the International Workers of the World. Even before holding an official union election, the newly formed Voodoo Doughnut Workers Union demanded higher wages and increased safety protections for staff, and severance packages for the branch’s roughly 30 employees laid off because of the pandemic.

Workers said they were told their unemployment would be temporary, and that the company would rehire workers once the social and economic climates stabilized. But this past June, the workers’ union accused the company of using the layoffs to “clean house” and hire new, non-unionized employees through Snagajob. Under overcast skies and the watch of pastry-hungry customers, workers picketed outside of the chain’s Old Town location, holding signs that read “Stop Union Busting” and “Don’t Throw Us Out Like Day Old Donuts.”

“It absolutely was a shock to many of us how the company has treated us,” says Samantha Bryce, a Voodoo Doughnut Workers Union representative. “Really what we want is recognition and we want our jobs back.” The workers’ union said that it had filed 29 charges against the company with the NLRB.

In response to questions regarding the allegations of discriminating against union workers in rehiring, Audrey Lincoff, a Voodoo Doughnut spokesperson, said in a statement to Eater: “Like all affected businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, Voodoo Doughnut continues to rehire and hire as the business needs dictate.”

Since the establishment of the Wagner Act in 1935, private-sector workers have been legally guaranteed the right to organize workplace unions and collectively bargain. But according to a 2019 report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-leaning think tank, more than 41 percent of employers were found to have violated the federal law in union election campaigns. According to Celine McNicholas, labor counsel for the EPI and co-author of the report, part of the reason companies feel secure in breaking the law by firing workers or threatening to discipline them for organizing a union is that the enforcement of the law is lax, cases brought by unfairly discharged workers can drag on for years, and the penalties to many employers — rehiring the employee plus back pay, which deducts any income they earned from another job — are a slap on the wrist compared to having to deal with a more expensive and protected workforce.

“Even if it’s patently illegal under the NLRB, with the particular way it’s being enforced in this administration, employers are able to bend and break the law with relative impunity in really egregious cases,” McNicholas says, adding that there are “not adequate remedies and enforcement methods to make it scary enough for employers not to do it.”

Employees at HMSHost-operated restaurants at Orlando International Airport have been campaigning for a union since last year, and the company has taken steps in an apparent aim to stifle the union drive — and use the coronavirus as pretext to ensure its success. (HMSHost did not respond to a request for comment.)

According to restaurant workers, HMSHost hired a labor relations consulting firm and hosted captive audience meetings starting in February. In a tiny room at the airport, consultants lectured groups of employees with anti-union talking points, even when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began to recommend early social-distancing methods. As staff members began to face furloughs, Colon says an assistant manager informed him and other workers that the general manager was planning to bring back only non-union workers. And the company stymied election proceedings by arguing against a mail-in-ballot election to the National Labor Relations Board, as employees wanted to avoid congregating for in-person voting while coronavirus cases surged in Florida.

With a successful vote in favor of a union, HMSHost would be legally required to bargain with employees’ union representatives and sign a contract. Along with higher wages, health benefits, and workplace safety provisions, union representatives could also push for an agreement that includes recall guarantees and a fair recall system. But as of now, there is no election date in sight: According to emails between company and union lawyers, HMSHost’s latest holdup is arguing to the National Labor Relations Board that furloughed workers — roughly 90 percent of the company’s airport restaurant staff — shouldn’t be allowed to vote in the union election. And lately, some workers are worrying that their campaign could lose steam.

“I have coworkers who have kids,” says Rosanny Tejeda, a furloughed barista at an HMSHost-operated Starbucks. “The unemployment benefits aren’t going to last forever, and for a big family it might not be enough. They might give up on waiting and find themselves another job.”

“They don’t want to lose control of the dynamic.”

American companies have exploited chaotic climates to undermine workers’ organizing efforts before. In an interview with the New York Times, the Georgetown University labor historian Joseph McCartin said that during the 1918 flu pandemic, steel plants and industrial companies managed to sway local officials to ban union meetings and frustrate organizing campaigns, the rationale being that they were breeding grounds for disease transmission. During the Great Depression, he added, employers often targeted union workers for layoffs.

But now, even employees who are simply organizing for safe working conditions and hazard pay during the pandemic are coming under fire from their superiors. Louisville, Kentucky, Trader Joe’s employee Kris King was among those fired after starting a Facebook group to discuss workplace health and safety concerns. On March 31, shortly after King was fired, Trader Joe’s chairman and CEO, Dan Bane, sent a letter to company employees, writing that “a host of union campaigns have been launched that seek to capitalize on the current unstable environment in America.”

“I think they’re just afraid of a larger voice and losing control of their employees,” King says. He adds that although the company manages to keep most of its employees content during normal times, “when more is at stake and people want to step up and be vocal together, they don’t want to lose control of the dynamic.”

In April, Kenya Friend-Daniel, a spokesperson for Trader Joe’s, wrote in an email to Eater regarding King’s firing: “I can tell you we did not end his employment due to a desire to unionize, set up a social media page or express concerns, nor would we do so with any other Crew Member.”

For McNicholas, the labor counsel at the EPI, there is a potential silver lining in this moment. Food industry workers who have continued to supply everyone from the newly unemployed to people working from home with basic necessities and comforts are shedding light on their treatment by companies, whether it’s by demanding union recognition or the extension of hazard pay and more hand sanitizing stations. In turn, they’re gaining community support, and more importantly, an increased desire to hold companies accountable.

“There has been a backlash, and the more these stories are told, that comes together for the perfect storm where you have a new administration with demands put on it by working people,” she says, “and those become priority for new administration, changes for the way we work, and then growth for the union movement.”

Matthew Sedacca is a writer living in Brooklyn.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/30cd1f5 via Blogger https://ift.tt/2OqEowh

[kerahlekung]

Sidang Parlimen sehari yang dilarang bersuara...

Sidang Parlimen sehari yang dilarang bersuara....

Story di sini...

Sidang Dewan Rakyat sehari telan belanja besar. MP Bandar Kuching memberitahu, tiket penerbangannya saja melebihi RM2,000 - utk klas ekonomi, elaun makan RM100 sehari, elaun mesyuarat RM300, manakala utk hotel pula, beliau boleh menuntut shingga RM400 semalam. Ahli2 diarah duduk dan dengar Titah DiRaja,lepas tu bersurai no question asked...Sila duduk jangan lari!!!.. Kalu cam ni aku mau jadi MP.... 

Kenapa Mahyuddin takut pada undi tidak percaya? kerana dia sendiri tidak percaya pada kelompok PN itu sendiri. Peluang VoNC dlm setiap Persidangan Parlimen dari 2020 sehingga 2023. Takkan tak lekat SATU kot? Tu yg PM Yiddin ketaq. - f/bk

Hangpa nilailah sendiri aku tukang lapoq saja...

Story kat sini...

Takda Sport Toto...takda Magnum, Bani Melayu di Kelantan tetap Berjudi.. Tidak ada Kelab malam dan pusat hiburan pun, Bani Melayu Kelantan tetap bergelek dangdut kampung.. itulah reality Kelantan..Dalam tempoh PKP..dalam bulan Ramadhan pun galak lagi..Berjudi, Maksiat dan Arak ada dimana mana.. - f/bk

What has happened to Bersatu's 

original objective to replace UMNO...

A Chinese proverb says: "A mountain cannot have two tigers." (一山 不容 二虎) Bersatu had entered the political battlefield in the GE14 (2018) as a component party of Pakatan Harapan (PH) to contest in 52 seats in the Peninsula using the Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) logo. In general, Bersatu was tasked to contest in UMNO constituencies, in line with Bersatu’s principle of existence (raison d'etre) and foundation as a party of bumiputera Malays, as well as the alternative, the challenger and the replacement of the damaged UMNO in the country's new political landscape. Except for Tapah which was the traditional seat for the MIC, Tg. Piai (MCA) and Simpang Renggam (Gerakan), all the other 49 seats were majority Malays hence the traditional seats for UMNO or PAS. Of the 52 contested seats, Bersatu had won 13 seats, equivalent to 25% of the party's success rate. In terms of votes, the total number of votes cast for all 52 candidates was 718,648, equivalent to 28% of the total voter turnout of 2,573,505. Who exactly are these Bersatu voters? As a new party, a new political brand which (through borrowing and riding on its political allies’ brands, symbols and platforms) had entered the electoral field for the first time, without a basic voter track record, it is important for us to see and understand the profile of the typical Bersatu voters. For this purpose, we use a sample of 13 seats won by Bersatu. Overall, it comprised a total of 760,925 voters with the ethnic demographic numbers of 74.0% Malays, 21.3% Chinese and 5.2% Indians and Others. The total number of Voter Turnout was 625,199 (equivalent to 82%). This means, out of 100 Malays, 37 people voted for Bersatu. Out of 100 Chinese, 83 voted for Bersatu. And out of 100 Indians, 58 voted for Bersatu. The total number of votes garnered by the 13 Bersatu candidates was 301,681 (equivalent to 48.2% of the total Voter Turnout). This generally means that, for every 100 voters who voted Bersatu, 57 were Malays, 37 were Chinese and 6 were Indian and Others. If we scrutinise this further, we can identify the profile of the voters based on the party they had voted for in the past. That would be the origin of the Bersatu voters.

The overwhelming majority of votes garnered by Bersatu came from 3 important sources, the original Pakatan Rakyat (PR) voters (excluding PAS voters), and the rest were UMNO-BN voters who had decided that they wished for a better country. By logic, in the last GE13, all the voters (except for some who had voted in favour of Berjasa or Bebas) who rejected BN (and UMNO)) had voted for PR. We must remember that, in GE13, PAS was in the PR coalition, so in GE14, PAS's staunch voters would still vote for PAS in GE14. Logically, with the three-way battle, a number of PR votes were taken away to be in PAS’s favour. In conclusion, out of 100 Bersatu voters, 54 of them were the original existing voters of PR and 7 of them were first-time voters, and the remaining 39 were UMNO-BN voters (the majority were Malay UMNO voters, with the exception in Simpang Renggam, Tg. Piai and Elephant Alor Gajah). This ratio demonstrates that 35% of Bersatu voters in the last GE14 were originally BN voters in GE13.

As for the rest, 54 voters were original PR supporters, of whom 30 were Malays, who highly likely already have their own party of choice before Bersatu came into being, and therefore would remain with that party, in any given situation. Bersatu's real challenge is how to retain the 39 former BN voters. It is these people whom Bersatu should build upon and expand. However, this would generally depend on the ‘mood’ of the voters. The existence of Bersatu, being a new party, is essentially to become the alternative replacement to UMNO by offering more transparent and clean Malay political culture. We can reflect on the 'mood' of the electorate by observing the Semenyih and Tg Piai by-elections. Semenyih and Tg. Piai are two typical examples of BN traditional seats (UMNO in Semenyih, MCA in Tg. Piai) which were seized by Bersatu in the GE14. As mentioned above, the seat was won by a factor of 35% from the GE13 BN voters who had decided for a change and voted Bersatu instead. However, it is evident from these by-elections that BN had successfully recaptured the two seats and we witnessed the severe defeat of Bersatu due to various reasons. And as we all are aware, the main reason for this is that UMNO-BN voters have returned to their original party. Bersatu was only getting the votes from existing PR voters there.

In summary, Bersatu which was initially established as an alternative party to UMNO had failed to retain its position and was not able to compete with UMNO-BN in their traditional strongholds. Bersatu had existed (and won) because UMNO had faced a crisis of deficit in confidence amongst the Malays. However, if UMNO rises once again, and UMNO-BN voters start to turn back to their traditional party, then Bersatu will be in big trouble. This problem is further evident through the failure of Bersatu in increasing its membership and divisions after winning the GE14. In Semenyih, Bersatu has only one division, while in Tg. Piai Bersatu has only 5 divisions compared to UMNO. How can Bersatu as a Malay party survive without membership at the grassroots level? One thing that needs to be recognised and understood, any Malay party that wishes to remain in the local political scene needs to have substantial membership at the grassroot level. The very basis of Malay politics is politics based on grassroot support and membership. That is the secret behind UMNO’s and PAS's strength. And, the sooner UMNO-BN rises, the more it will rebuild its strengths and regain the confidence of its traditional voters; which translates into more trouble for Bersatu, and would even spell the doom for Bersatu. In fact, we must admit that those who had voted for Bersatu were clear in their desire to see the new Malay political culture which promises more transparency and integrity. Now, we fear their regret because in the end Bersatu is, without much guilt or remorse, conspiring with the faction that they had earlier voted against and brought down. Looking at the current situation, having commanded the dominant presence in the federal government under the unofficial coalition called Perikatan Nasional, as well as receiving the gifts of two states with Menteri Besars who are its party members (Johor and Melaka), and as a state which is dominated by them (Perak), plus the share of holding the nation's leading GLCs; UMNO now appears to be a phoenix rising from the ashes. Not only this serves as a lifeline, it is a re-energisation of UMNO at the highest level. In this state of affairs, as we move towards GE15, Bersatu seems to be presenting their necks to be slaughtered by UMNO. Expecting UMNO to compromise by maintaining the status quo of the existing Bersatu seats would essentially mean Bersatu is giving way to UMNO to return to power and ultimately appoint Zahid Hamidi as the 9th PM based on their current composition of seats. In both scenarios, maintaining the status quo would mean a loss to Bersatu in the next GE15! To the members and leaders of Bersatu, for the love of this sacred party, I call upon all of you to look beyond this moment and see the bigger picture of the future, not just for the personal gain of today! - Dr Maszlee Malik

cheers.

Sumber asal: Sidang Parlimen sehari yang dilarang bersuara... Baca selebihnya di Sidang Parlimen sehari yang dilarang bersuara...

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

In his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, Brett Kavanaugh dropped the demeanor of a neutral jurist and launched into a deeply partisan speech. The use of such nakedly political rhetoric during a Supreme Court confirmation hearing is highly unusual. Of course, they were unusual circumstances. Would-be justices typically present themselves as politically disinterested arbiters of law, and strenuously avoid saying anything that would pigeonhole them on hot-button issues. Now, if Kavanaugh is confirmed to the bench — and perhaps even if he isn’t — some commentators are questioning whether the Supreme Court is heading towards a crisis of faith. If confirmed, will Kavanaugh be forever marked as a political operative? And if he’s not, has his confirmation process shattered the notion that the court is truly independent from politics?

I can’t say for sure whether the Supreme Court is on the edge of a legitimacy crisis, of course — it has recovered from moments of potential partisan taint before. But it’s in a weaker position now than at nearly any point in modern history.

Americans, in general, have more trust in the Supreme Court than in other political institutions. But confidence in the court has been declining over the past 30 years.

Polling from Gallup, which tracks Americans’ confidence in a wide range of institutions, shows that the public has slowly become more disillusioned with the Supreme Court over the past few decades. In the 1980s, majorities routinely reported that they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the court. Gallup’s latest polling from earlier this year, though, found that only 37 percent had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence.1

Meanwhile, the same fault lines that are dividing American politics also appear in perceptions of the court. A Gallup poll released last week shows that women’s approval of the Supreme Court has dropped 6 percentage points in the past year, resulting in a 17-point gender gap.

It’s possible, of course, that the decline in support for the court is just a symptom of the country’s growing distrust of institutions overall. But independent of that broader trend, it’s clear that partisan tensions around the court have increased significantly as well. In the 1970s and 1980s, Supreme Court nominees were routinely confirmed with the votes of the vast majority of senators. As recently as 2005, 78 senators voted to confirm Chief Justice John Roberts.

Supreme Court confirmation votes in the U.S. Senate

Year Nominee Yes No 2017 Neil M. Gorsuch 54 45 2010 Elena Kagan 63 37 2009 Sonia Sotomayor 68 31 2005 Samuel A. Alito, Jr. 58 42 2005 John G. Roberts, Jr.* 78 22 1994 Stephen G. Breyer 87 9 1993 Ruth Bader Ginsburg 96 3 1991 Clarence Thomas 52 48 1990 David H. Souter 90 9 1987 Anthony M. Kennedy 97 0 1987 Robert H. Bork 42 58 1986 Antonin Scalia 98 0 1986 William H. Rehnquist* 65 33 1981 Sandra Day O’Connor 99 0 1975 John Paul Stevens 98 0

* Confirmed as chief justice

Source: Senate.gov

Since then, though, the nominees have grown significantly more divisive, culminating with the narrow confirmation of Justice Neil Gorsuch, who received only 54 votes last year. The rancor around Gorsuch’s nomination was, of course, amplified by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s decision to block the confirmation of Merrick Garland, then-President Barack Obama’s selection to fill the seat vacated by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, leaving Democrats deeply embittered about the process. It’s difficult to say that these rising tensions have caused the decline in the Supreme Court’s favorability, but they have certainly stripped the nomination process of any pretense that potential Supreme Court justices’ political views are secondary to their qualifications as judges or legal scholars. Meanwhile, the court itself has moved right under Roberts even without having a strong conservative majority, which means the addition of Kavanaugh or another Trump appointee could result in opinions that are significantly to the right of mainstream public opinion.

That being said, the Supreme Court has weathered serious controversies before — including episodes that are quite similar to what we’ve seen with Kavanaugh. In 1991, Clarence Thomas’s nomination process was brought to a screeching halt by sexual harassment allegations from law professor Anita Hill, who was called before the Senate to testify. Thomas was eventually confirmed to the court, where he continues to serve as an associate justice. The country was deeply divided about the hearings and the outcome, and the percentage of Americans who said they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the court slipped from 48 percent in February 1991 to 39 percent in October 1991. It took several years for public opinion to recover, but it was back at 50 percent in 1997.

Surprisingly, there was no dip in confidence after the court’s ruling in Bush v. Gore in 2000, when the justices voted to end a recount in Florida, effectively deciding the presidential election in favor of George W. Bush. At the time, it seemed possible that the vote — which pitted five conservative-leaning justices against four liberals — would create an indelible impression of the court as a partisan body. But 50 percent of Americans still said they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the court in 2001 — an increase of 2 percentage points over the year before.

These episodes might suggest that the court is fully capable of recovering from the unfolding political firestorm over Kavanaugh, even if he is eventually confirmed and takes his seat as the ninth justice. But they also may have helped drive its long-term decline. The reality is that today, Americans’ confidence in the Supreme Court is weaker than it was 20 years ago. Americans may no longer be willing to give the court the benefit of the doubt.

And because Kavanaugh’s appointment to the court (or that of any other Trump nominee) would cement a five-justice conservative majority for the first time in decades, the stakes of this fight are extremely high. If Kavanaugh joins the court’s other four conservatives and begins issuing right-leaning rulings — as we have every reason to believe they would do — it’s not hard to imagine that confidence, particularly on the left, slipping even further.

[kansascityhappenings]

Trump signs $2.2 trillion stimulus after swift, bipartisan congressional votes

WASHINGTON D.C. — President Donald Trump signed an unprecedented $2.2 trillion economic rescue package into law Friday, after swift and near-unanimous action by Congress this week to support businesses, rush resources to overburdened health care providers and help struggling families during the deepening coronavirus epidemic.

Acting with unity and resolve unseen since the 9/11 attacks, Washington moved urgently to stem an economic free fall caused by widespread restrictions meant to slow the spread of the virus that have shuttered schools, closed businesses and brought American life in many places to a virtual standstill.

“This will deliver urgently needed relief,” Trump said as he signed the bill in the Oval Office, flanked only by Republican lawmakers. He thanked members of both parties for putting Americans “first.”

Earlier Friday, the House of Representatives gave near-unanimous approval by voice vote after an impassioned session conducted along the social distancing guidelines imposed by the crisis. Many lawmakers sped to Washington to participate — their numbers swollen after a maverick Republican signaled he’d try to force a roll call vote — though dozens of others remained safely in their home districts.

The Senate passed the bill unanimously late Wednesday.

“The American people deserve a government-wide, visionary, evidence-based response to address these threats to their lives and their livelihood and they need it now,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

The $2.2 trillion legislation will speed government payments of $1,200 to most Americans and increase jobless benefits for millions of people thrown out of work. Businesses big and small will get loans, grants and tax breaks. It will send unprecedented billions to states and local governments, and the nation’s all but overwhelmed health care system.

“This pathogen does not recognize party lines, and no partisan solution will defeat it. Neither will the government acting alone,” said GOP Whip Liz Cheney of Wyoming. “This is not a time for cynicism or invective or second-guessing. This is a time to remember that we are citizens of the greatest nation on Earth, that we have overcome every challenge we have faced, and we will overcome this one.”

Despite reservations, arch conservatives joined with progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., to back the bill, which moved quickly through a Congress that’s been battered by partisanship and is itself not immune to the suffering the virus has caused. Rep. Joe Cunningham, D-S.C., announced Friday that he has tested positive, just the latest infection in Congress.

Tea party Republicans said government orders to shutter businesses merited actions that conflict with small-government ideology. Liberals accepted generous corporate rescues that accompany larger unemployment benefits, deferrals of student loans, and an enormous surge of funding for health care and other agencies responding to the crisis.

“I’m going to have to vote for something that has things in it that break my heart,” said conservative Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz.

Many lawmakers summoned the bipartisan spirit of 9/11 and efforts to fight terrorism. Others praised the roles low-income workers play in keeping the country going and the heroism of health care workers. Some, like Iowa Democrat Abby Finkenauer, who had just learned of two additional coronavirus-related deaths in her district, came close to tears.

Others couldn’t restrain their partisan impulses. Republicans chided Democratic leaders for delays and provisions they see as extraneous, such as funding for public broadcasting and the arts; Democrats said too many elements are a bailout for corporations that may not need it.

Still, in a chamber increasingly dominated by lawmakers whose chief skill often seems to be partisan attacks, Friday’s debate was a noteworthy break.

“We have no time to dither,” said Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va. “We have no time to engage in ideological or petty partisan fights. Our country needs us as one.”

The run-up to the vote contained an element of drama because libertarian conservative Thomas Massie, R-Ky., announced plans to seek a vote. The leaders of both parties united to prevent that because it would have forced lawmakers back to the Capitol or blemished their voting records if they stayed home. Instead, they made sure enough lawmakers would attend Friday’s session to block Massie’s move under the rules, and lawmakers took the unprecedented step of sitting in the visitors galleries to establish the necessary quorum.

The House promptly adjourned for a weeks-long recess but will return later in the spring to consider further legislation.

“This bill is not only a rescue package, it’s a commitment — a commitment that your government, and the people whom you elected to serve you, will do everything we can to limit the harm and hardship you face, both now and in the foreseeable future,” said Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

The legislation will give $1,200 direct payments to individuals and make way for a flood of subsidized loans, grants and tax breaks to businesses facing extinction in an economic shutdown caused as Americans self-isolate by the tens of millions. It dwarfs prior Washington responses to crises like 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis, and natural disasters.

The massive CARES Act started as a draft plan among Republicans controlling the Senate who were seeking a greater voice in the coronavirus response efforts — especially after Pelosi was a dominant force in earlier legislation imposing a sick leave mandate on businesses.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., welcomed Democratic participation a week ago, and signed off on a major expansion of unemployment insurance, but his efforts to freeze out Pelosi and force a quick agreement were met with Democratic demands for large infusions of aid to states and hospitals, as well as an assortment of smaller items. McConnell and top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer of New York wrestled for days, along with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and other administration officials.

Negotiations finally produced a deal early Wednesday morning, and the Senate passed the measure by a 96-0 vote.

Key elements are untested, such as grants to small businesses to keep workers on payroll and complex lending programs to larger businesses. Rebate payments will go to people who have retained their jobs. Agencies like the Small Business Administration and state unemployment systems will be severely taxed, and conservatives fear that a new, generous unemployment benefit will dissuade jobless people from returning to the workforce.

The bill amounts to a bridge loan for much of the economy and carries a price tag that equals half the size of the entire $4 trillion-plus annual federal budget.

The legislation also establishes a $454 billion program for guaranteed, subsidized loans to larger industries in hopes of leveraging up to $4.5 trillion in lending to distressed businesses, states, and municipalities.

There is also $150 billion devoted to the health care system, including $100 billion for grants to hospitals and other health care providers buckling under the strain of COVID-19 caseloads.

It also seeks to strengthen the safety net for the poor and homeless. Schools and students would get relief, small business loans payments would be deferred. Evictions from public housing would be put on pause.

Republicans successfully pressed for an employee retention tax credit designed to help companies keep workers on payroll. Companies would also be able to defer payment of the 6.2% Social Security payroll tax. A huge tax break for interest costs and operating losses limited by the 2017 tax overhaul was restored at a $200 billion cost in a boon for the real estate sector.

Most people who contract the new coronavirus have mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, or death.

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/tracking-coronavirus/trump-signs-2-2-trillion-stimulus-after-swift-bipartisan-congressional-votes/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2020/03/27/trump-signs-2-2-trillion-stimulus-after-swift-bipartisan-congressional-votes/

[d2kvirus]

Dickheads of the Month: December 2019

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of December 2019 to make sure that they are never forgotten.

There’s something wrong with the British electorate when they look at nine years of austerity, massive layoffs in police and NHS staff, outright persecution of the disabled, the country’s economy and standing being completely tanked and housing safety reports being sat on until Grenfell went up and their thought is “I want five more years of that!”

...although nobody should overlook how Liberal Democrat supporters refused to accept any responsibility for the result, in spite their party being directly responsible in handing control of Kensington to the Tories by 150 votes, as well as splitting the votes in Tory marginals Cities of London & Westminster and Finchley & Golders Green

...while Blue Labour crawled out of the woodwork to say the reason why Labour lost was because they weren’t indistinguishable enough from the Tories (which makes so much sense...) while saying the party should have listened to Caroline Flint - the same Caroline Flint who said that Labour should shut up and fall in line with the Tories...and lost her seat as a result

Nothing sums up Laura Kuenssberg better than how, the day before the General Election, she appeared on Politics Live to either blatantly lie about seeing postal votes or casually break electoral law by discussing postal vote results she claims to have seen - which is a direct violation of the The Representation of the People Act 1983

...although with Laura Kuenssberg being Laura Kuenssberg it wasn’t long before yet another example of gross unprofessionalism reared its head when she forgot her job is to report the news and not create it according to her own personal bias when she said history would condemn all Remainers who tried to undo Britait, which not only happens to be a direct violation of the BBC’s editorial guidelines but also betrays a remarkable failure to understand history

...and she was hardly the only example of this, not when Suraj Sharma was putting up anti-Corbyn posters outside polling stations across Merseyside on election day in spite doing so being illegal

It shouldn't surprise anyone that proven liar Boris Johnson broke his election promises within a week of duping the electorate, with him binning off pledges on workers rights, raising minimum wage and taking No Deal off the table - yet somehow the ignorant foghorns defend this by saying something about four legs being good

...soon afterwards proven liar Boris Johnson also reneged on the campaign pledge to raise the national living wage to £10.50 and instead raised it to £8.72 - and of course the BBC tried to spin that as a good thing, crowing about the percentage that it had increased by instead of how the Tories have been pledging that figure since the 2015 election

Smirking halfwit Priti Patel decided she too wanted to exploit the London Bridge attack for political gain and was quick to claim that the laws that saw the attacker released were implemented by a Labour government...in spite the obvious issue that he was released due to laws passed in 2012, i.e. when the Tories were in government and Theresa May was serving as Home Secretary, but that’s not important right now...

...soon afterwards Godfrey Bloom also decided the best course of action was to go on the offensive against the deceased’s family, going so far as to say that as the deceased believed Jihadists should be released early he reaped what he sowed and, by the way, could the deceased’s father pipe down and stop saying nasty things about the Tories

Australians were happy when their Prime Minister Scott Morrison responded to the widespread wildfires torching the country by...not being there as he’d rather bugger off to Hawaii on holiday, and having begrudgingly cut his holiday short his next suggestion was to try and withhold compensation for the volunteer firefighters that were combating what had become the most widespread wildfires in decades

Tory donors Alan Howard and Jeremy Isaacs showed how committed the two are to the party and to Britait by...paying millions of their own money to buy Cypriot passports so they don’t have to leave the EU like the plebs who voted to Leave will have to

It’s not even a surprise that the BBC somehow mutated a story of fact-checkers revealing that 88% of Tory Facebook ads contained lies compared to 0% of Labour’s into a headline saying both parties had been warned about publishing untruths during the campaign as opposed to just one of them

...although ITV were not far behind with their reimagining of Stormzy saying “Yes, 100%” as an answer to the question “Do you think Britain is racist?” into the headline “Stormzy says Britain is ‘100% racist’” which (predictably) got those who get far more riled up by the suggestion that they’re racist than they ever are by the existence of racism to kick off on social media

Nobody was surprised that Allison Pearson responded to the photos of the four year-old boy sleeping on the floor of Leeds General Infirmary was to claim the photos were staged...and being the coward that she is, she played the usual “I was hacked” card as if she doesn’t have a track record for shit like this

Among the wave of inept tactical voting guides The Guardian published the most inept of them all, telling their readers to vote Lib Dem in seats held by pro-Remain Labour MPs - which worked out marvelously in Kensington, didn’t it?

...and right before the year ended Jeremy Gilbert further aided The Guardian’s credentials of not having a clue by writing a hit piece saying that if Labour want to win elections they need to not be Labour, as if Clement Atlee or Harold Wilson didn’t exist - or, more likely with the usual centrist idiocy, the belief that Labour didn’t exist until Tony Blair came along and made them Labour In Name Only

Of course the dogwhistling boneheads would find some excuse to foam at the mouth about Diane Abbott during the election campaign, and this time it was her wearing two different shoes, which begs just one question: “...and?”

In a remarkable act of cowardice Arsenal responded to the Chinese state broadcaster pulling a broadcast of their match of their match against Manchester City due to Mesut Ozil’s criticism of the country’s treatment of Uighur Muslims by...throwing Ozil under the bus and claiming he doesn’t represent the club

In the mind of Patrice Désilets the reason why Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey got remarkably average Metacritic reviews isn’t because the game has a boring gameplay loop and unintuitive controls, but because a couple of reviewers spoke about features that weren’t in the game (although he neglected to say who those reviewers were, as they don’t appear to be on Metacritic) that obviously mean that all reviewers didn’t play the game and just decided to be negative for the sake of it

As if going full Pravda wasn’t reason enough to doubt anything the BBC say ever again, the fact that they ran a story about Cats receiving glowing reviews further showed just how uninterested they are in reporting an actual story compared to their own interpretation of it

When it emerged that Caroline Flack had assaulted her partner by cracking him in the head with a lamp while he was sleeping her response was to come out swinging with a bullish attitude that she wouldn't leave Love Island really worked in her favour...for about a day, until ITV announced she’d been replaced, and it wasn’t as if they had to look too hard for a replacement

It’s the time of year where Kevin Spacey posts a video of him totally in character as Frank Underwood from House of Cards...which was the creepy side of weird last year, but this year weird’s gone out the window

Somebody opened the crypt in which Michael Howard sleeps his eternal slumber, meaning we had to hear him venture his opinion about how judges should not be allowed to use their knowledge or judgment and instead shut up and fall in line with what the government tells them to do

Somehow a story about how Jo Maugham killed a fox in his back garden with a baseball bat while wearing his wife’s silk kimono on Boxing Day morning wasn’t a headline from Guido Blog designed to whip up their readers into indignant and/or ignorant rage, instead something that Jo Maugham himself tweeted on Boxing Day morning having done just that

Of course Tom Watson crawled out the woodwork to say it;s terrible how Labour members hated him...while at no point mentioning his years of backstabbing or how he tried to disqualify Labour members from voting in a leadership election so he could install the centrist option that nobody wanted

Nobody was surprised to see Darren Grimes taking to Twitter to bemoan the lack of funding in public infrastructure in the north...just as nobody was surprised to see the penny clearly hadn’t dropped with him that he was campaigning on behalf of the people who slashed public service infrastructure funding in the north for the past nine years

Hard centre extremist Andrew Adonis thought it was a smart idea to say that Corbynism needs to be “eradicated” from the Labour party.  Just a hint: that’s what Tom Watson thought was a bright idea

It’s one thing for Youtube to play it safe with this year’s Youtube Rewind after last year’s downvote prison romance, but making the 2019 Rewind little more than a WatchMojo list video without the commentary goes beyond playing it safe and into being downright lazy

For a brief moment Giles Coren thought he was Rod Liddle, judging by his Times column where he spoke about Owen Jones getting a peerage and preying on the anal virginity of young researchers

There’s something pathetic about various WWE wrestlers taking to Twitter to mouth off about a badly-performed spot on an episode of AEW Dynamite that can either be explained by them being ordered to tweet that crap out by Vince McMahon or by their suddenly feeling threatened, which only served to make them look like the pro-WWE trolls that howl about everything AEW-related in a manner which stopped being amusing and started being concerning a couple of months ago

And finally, because of course, is Thanos wannabe Donald Trump and his belief that Justin Trudeau is “two-faced” because he said nasty things about the Orange Overlord - but of course, there’s no record of Trump ever saying nasty things about any nation’s leader after pretending to be all buddy-buddy with them

[easyfoodnetwork]

A group of union members picketing circa 1938 | Photo by MPI/Getty Images Some food industry workers say companies are using the pandemic as an excuse to halt efforts to unionize  Abismael Colon, a server at an Outback Steakhouse in the Orlando International Airport, was ready to unionize his workplace. For almost nine years, Colon had served countless Bloomin’ Onions and trained new hires despite what he describes as verbal insults and a daily fear that he’d be fired without cause by his superiors. This particular Outback Steakhouse was operated by HMSHost, an airport and highway food service company. Together with the hospitality-industry union Unite Here, the veteran employee and his colleagues helped garner majority support of about 800 workers at the airport’s other HMSHost-operated restaurants, such as Chili’s and Starbucks, with an election slated for late March to determine whether the union would officially represent the staff. But Colon’s hopes for union representation took a heavy blow once the novel coronavirus hit Florida. The National Labor Relations Board delayed all elections a week before the HMSHost vote due to the pandemic. Once the Tampa regional branch reopened and announced it was accepting mail-in ballots, the company successfully moved to block the option and pushed for in-person voting, further dragging out the union campaign. More than three months later, Colon, like many of his now-furloughed colleagues, is without a paycheck, without health insurance, and without any job security. “By them delaying the union and getting ourselves into a contract or negotiating, right now, we don’t have a guarantee to go back to work,” Colon says. “So employees are angry. They’re like, ‘Hey, when are we gonna get this vote?’ because they want their jobs back.” Amid a growing wave of worker activism across the food industry, employees and contractors at restaurant chains and delivery apps alike have found themselves banding together to improve workplace conditions. In 2012, the Fight for $15 movement began to push nationally for a $15 minimum wage and union representation for fast-food workers, and in the years since, Gimme Coffee baristas in upstate New York have voted in favor of unionization, followed by employees at Portland branches of the fast-food chain Burgerville and Tartine locations in the Bay Area, as well as a group of Instacart workers in Skokie, Illinois. “Employers feel they have a real friend in the Trump National Labor Relations Board.” More recently, as the coronavirus spurred citywide business shutdowns, grocery store and restaurant workers were deemed “essential” in ensuring communities’ access to food and supplies. This led to some crisis-born benefits like pay raises and improved sick leave options at chains like Starbucks, where employees were given a temporary $3 per hour pay bump along with extended catastrophe pay. Other workers, however, saw their temporary wage increases and new workplace safety measures only through strikes and sickouts: After hundreds of workers at Kroger’s Delta Distribution Center in Memphis briefly stopped fulfilling orders in late March, the company granted all its employees temporary $2 per hour hazard pay and increased protections, like plexiglass protecting workers at the cash register. But even as low-wage workers across the industry have gained these handfuls of new financial and health perks, some say companies have wielded the ongoing public health crisis as a tool for cracking down on union and worker organizing. On July 5, California-based Augie’s Coffee laid off its baristas and closed its retail operations indefinitely so as not “to risk the health and safety of our staff.” The timing was roughly a week and a half after employees informed management of their intent to unionize and asked for recognition, according the Augie’s Union; many of the company’s stores had continued service throughout the pandemic, even after Los Angeles County reported its first death. Whole Foods, which, according to a Business Insider report, has been using a heat map to monitor potential unionization activity, fired an employee who had been tracking the number of COVID-19 cases at Whole Foods locations; the company told Motherboard that the employee’s firing was not retaliatory and that she had violated company policies. And after Trader Joe’s workers began organizing earlier this year, in March, an employee who helped start a non-management-staff Facebook group to discuss coronavirus safety and health concerns was similarly fired. A Trader Joe’s spokesperson also said the firing was not retaliatory. “The Trump [National Labor Relations] Board has made some changes to the rules, and employers feel they have a real friend in the Trump Board,” says Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University. “So they’re acting with even more impunity.” On March 20, employees at the downtown Portland, Oregon, location of the nationally expanding chain Voodoo Doughnut delivered a letter to management announcing that they had formed a union with the International Workers of the World. Even before holding an official union election, the newly formed Voodoo Doughnut Workers Union demanded higher wages and increased safety protections for staff, and severance packages for the branch’s roughly 30 employees laid off because of the pandemic. Workers said they were told their unemployment would be temporary, and that the company would rehire workers once the social and economic climates stabilized. But this past June, the workers’ union accused the company of using the layoffs to “clean house” and hire new, non-unionized employees through Snagajob. Under overcast skies and the watch of pastry-hungry customers, workers picketed outside of the chain’s Old Town location, holding signs that read “Stop Union Busting” and “Don’t Throw Us Out Like Day Old Donuts.” “It absolutely was a shock to many of us how the company has treated us,” says Samantha Bryce, a Voodoo Doughnut Workers Union representative. “Really what we want is recognition and we want our jobs back.” The workers’ union said that it had filed 29 charges against the company with the NLRB. In response to questions regarding the allegations of discriminating against union workers in rehiring, Audrey Lincoff, a Voodoo Doughnut spokesperson, said in a statement to Eater: “Like all affected businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, Voodoo Doughnut continues to rehire and hire as the business needs dictate.” Since the establishment of the Wagner Act in 1935, private-sector workers have been legally guaranteed the right to organize workplace unions and collectively bargain. But according to a 2019 report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-leaning think tank, more than 41 percent of employers were found to have violated the federal law in union election campaigns. According to Celine McNicholas, labor counsel for the EPI and co-author of the report, part of the reason companies feel secure in breaking the law by firing workers or threatening to discipline them for organizing a union is that the enforcement of the law is lax, cases brought by unfairly discharged workers can drag on for years, and the penalties to many employers — rehiring the employee plus back pay, which deducts any income they earned from another job — are a slap on the wrist compared to having to deal with a more expensive and protected workforce. “Even if it’s patently illegal under the NLRB, with the particular way it’s being enforced in this administration, employers are able to bend and break the law with relative impunity in really egregious cases,” McNicholas says, adding that there are “not adequate remedies and enforcement methods to make it scary enough for employers not to do it.” Employees at HMSHost-operated restaurants at Orlando International Airport have been campaigning for a union since last year, and the company has taken steps in an apparent aim to stifle the union drive — and use the coronavirus as pretext to ensure its success. (HMSHost did not respond to a request for comment.) According to restaurant workers, HMSHost hired a labor relations consulting firm and hosted captive audience meetings starting in February. In a tiny room at the airport, consultants lectured groups of employees with anti-union talking points, even when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began to recommend early social-distancing methods. As staff members began to face furloughs, Colon says an assistant manager informed him and other workers that the general manager was planning to bring back only non-union workers. And the company stymied election proceedings by arguing against a mail-in-ballot election to the National Labor Relations Board, as employees wanted to avoid congregating for in-person voting while coronavirus cases surged in Florida. With a successful vote in favor of a union, HMSHost would be legally required to bargain with employees’ union representatives and sign a contract. Along with higher wages, health benefits, and workplace safety provisions, union representatives could also push for an agreement that includes recall guarantees and a fair recall system. But as of now, there is no election date in sight: According to emails between company and union lawyers, HMSHost’s latest holdup is arguing to the National Labor Relations Board that furloughed workers — roughly 90 percent of the company’s airport restaurant staff — shouldn’t be allowed to vote in the union election. And lately, some workers are worrying that their campaign could lose steam. “I have coworkers who have kids,” says Rosanny Tejeda, a furloughed barista at an HMSHost-operated Starbucks. “The unemployment benefits aren’t going to last forever, and for a big family it might not be enough. They might give up on waiting and find themselves another job.” “They don’t want to lose control of the dynamic.” American companies have exploited chaotic climates to undermine workers’ organizing efforts before. In an interview with the New York Times, the Georgetown University labor historian Joseph McCartin said that during the 1918 flu pandemic, steel plants and industrial companies managed to sway local officials to ban union meetings and frustrate organizing campaigns, the rationale being that they were breeding grounds for disease transmission. During the Great Depression, he added, employers often targeted union workers for layoffs. But now, even employees who are simply organizing for safe working conditions and hazard pay during the pandemic are coming under fire from their superiors. Louisville, Kentucky, Trader Joe’s employee Kris King was among those fired after starting a Facebook group to discuss workplace health and safety concerns. On March 31, shortly after King was fired, Trader Joe’s chairman and CEO, Dan Bane, sent a letter to company employees, writing that “a host of union campaigns have been launched that seek to capitalize on the current unstable environment in America.” “I think they’re just afraid of a larger voice and losing control of their employees,” King says. He adds that although the company manages to keep most of its employees content during normal times, “when more is at stake and people want to step up and be vocal together, they don’t want to lose control of the dynamic.” In April, Kenya Friend-Daniel, a spokesperson for Trader Joe’s, wrote in an email to Eater regarding King’s firing: “I can tell you we did not end his employment due to a desire to unionize, set up a social media page or express concerns, nor would we do so with any other Crew Member.” For McNicholas, the labor counsel at the EPI, there is a potential silver lining in this moment. Food industry workers who have continued to supply everyone from the newly unemployed to people working from home with basic necessities and comforts are shedding light on their treatment by companies, whether it’s by demanding union recognition or the extension of hazard pay and more hand sanitizing stations. In turn, they’re gaining community support, and more importantly, an increased desire to hold companies accountable. “There has been a backlash, and the more these stories are told, that comes together for the perfect storm where you have a new administration with demands put on it by working people,” she says, “and those become priority for new administration, changes for the way we work, and then growth for the union movement.” Matthew Sedacca is a writer living in Brooklyn. from Eater - All https://ift.tt/30cd1f5

http://easyfoodnetwork.blogspot.com/2020/07/they-tried-to-start-union-during.html

[thisdaynews]

Republicans in turmoil as redistricting looms

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/republicans-in-turmoil-as-redistricting-looms/

Republicans in turmoil as redistricting looms

Republicans are reeling after major 2019 losses in Virginia, Kentucky and Louisiana — as Democrats are organizing and fundraising at a record-breaking clip. Led by former President Barack Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder, they are working to prioritize state-level races after getting clobbered in the post-2010 redistricting.

Now, some elected GOP officials, donors and party strategists are questioning the RSLC’s leadership. Complaints grew loud enough that committee officials convened a conference call the Tuesday before Thanksgiving in which Chambers and Bill McCollum, the chairman of the RSLC board, took questions from state lawmakers perturbed by Chambers’ outside work, which many were unaware of until after the Louisiana elections.

“Viewed in the most favorable light, these actions create terrible optics at a crucial point in the redistricting cycle,” said a Republican operative close to the committee. “Not only do RSLC employees not have time for moonlighting — moonlighting undermines the confidence of the legislators involved in the organization and potentially some of its donors, too.”

Chambers, a 24-year-old rising star in GOP circles, insists his work for Rispone did not distract from his RSLC duties. And in a further sign of internal drama, he suggested critiques of his leadership come from those who preferred candidates he beat out for the position when he was hired in April, as well as the candidates themselves.

“Peddling lies and insider gossip doesn’t help advance RSLC’s objective,” he said in a statement. “I’m going to stay focused on the main thing: winning elections. The RSLC had one of its best years it’s ever had, and we look forward to building on that in 2020.”

The conferencecall was billed as an opportunity for Chambers to address several posts written by a conservative blogger in Louisiana that skewered his work for Rispone, according to an invitation obtained by POLITICO. At least three major RSLC donors have expressed concern about Chambers after reading the blog posts, which cast him as an inexperienced, out-of-town hired gun, according to three people who have spoken with them.

This account is based off interviews with over a dozen operatives and elected officials close to the committee, nearly all of whom were granted anonymity to speak candidly and avoid repercussions.

State lawmakers advocated for a clear policy that prohibits top staffers from taking on outside work, according to sources familiar with the call. RSLC’s outside counsel, Mark Braden, is conducting a review of the matter, with recommendations expected to be presented in time for the RSLC meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyo., this month.

In an interview, McCollum declined to elaborate on the full scope of the review. He offered Chambers a vote of confidence but — when asked directly — refused to rule out the possibility that the review could result in a change in RSLC leadership.

“From what I see right now, I doubt seriously that the board members are going to think about removing Austin,” he said. “He’s been doing a really good job.”

The policy on outside contracting will likely be changed in the future, McCollum said, but he noted that Chambers had not violated the current RSLC rules. McCollum also said he knew in advance about Chambers’ work with the Rispone campaign.

RSLC sources described the call as an attempt to clarify expectations before 2020 and dispel rumors created by the blog posts. And they insist there are few tangible signs that the committee isn’t prepared for the cycle. The RSLC helped win a supermajority in the Louisiana state Senate. In Kentucky, they swept down-ballot races, including a highly contested secretary of state race. In New Jersey, Republicans flipped several state legislative seats, though they are still in the minority.

Outgoing Virginia state House Speaker Kirk Cox, who is leaving party leadership following the GOP’s defeat last month, stillpraised Chambers and his efforts in the state on the call, describing an unprecedented commitment.

“We could not have asked for more,” Cox told POLITICO in a statement for this article. “All of that stems from Austin’s leadership, and I can easily say he worked harder than anyone in the country to help us.”

Still, the presence of so many high-level RSLC stakeholders on the call underscores the extent to which his conduct spooked party power players at a tenuous moment.

The GOP suffered a string of defeats in November that will certainly cost them legislative and congressional seats in redistricting. Despite over $3 million in RSLC spending, the party lost control of both chambers of Virginia’s General Assembly and will be boxed out of the map-making process there entirely. Meanwhile, Rispone’s defeat keeps Democrats in control of the governorship in Louisiana, while Republicans fell short of a supermajority in the state House.

Far more legislatures are up for grabs next year — including in places such as Texas, Pennsylvania and Florida — whichwill determine which party draws the maps that will shape state and federal politics for a decade to come.

Chambers was hired in April to replace the outgoing RSLC president after beating out several other candidates, including a state legislator, for the position. Part of his appeal, according to sources close to the RSLC, was his connections to the current administration and a vast fundraising network. Chambers has close ties to Nick Ayers, the former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence.

But his hire triggered some skepticism among RSLC staff. They raised questions about Chambers’ prominent role in the campaign of former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, who was embroiled in legal and ethical scandals and resigned in 2018.

As board president, McCollum, the former congressman and Florida state attorney general,told staff in a meeting around the time of Chambers’ hiring that there would be no major personnel changes, according to people in the room. But the RSLC still saw significant staff turnover in the following months, including some who were pressured to leave and some who had recently been promoted.

Among the notable departures: Melanie Pfeiffenberger, the executive director of the Republican Legislative Campaign Committee, which falls under the RSLC umbrella; David Kanevsky, a vice president for political affairs; Neri Martinez, who led efforts to recruit women and minority candidates; Devon Gallagher, the events director; and David James, the communications director.

McCollum said he did not recall making any statement ruling out staffing changes, noting that it’s Chambers’ prerogative as president to choose his team.

It was Republicans’ organizational dominance in the 2010 cycle that brought them great success in the last redistricting, when they racked up a slew of legislative wins and crafted maps that ushered them into sometimes impenetrable majorities.

The RSLC outspent its Democratic counterpart nearly 3-to-1 that cycle, but that advantage has disappeared this cycle. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee raised $8.5 million in the first half of 2019, beating the RSLC by $370,000.

Chambers brought in Ron Weiser, a former ambassador and major GOP fundraiser, to serve as the RSLC finance chairman. Weiser said the committee is on track to surpass the $16.7 million it raised in the last off year, in 2017.

Still, Chambers and others in the party have been sounding the alarm on Democrats’ organization for months, warning that they are more focused than ever on state-level races and that the GOP needs to increase its efforts.

Daniel Strauss contributed to this report.

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[biofunmy]

Why Markets Are Not Panicking About Italy (Yet)

A country with one of the scariest debt loads on the planet slips into political chaos. The market reaction: a shrug.

At first glance, it makes no sense that Italian bond yields edged lower after Matteo Salvini, the leader of the populist, right-wing League party, provoked the collapse of the Italian government Tuesday.

Investors and economists have viewed Italy as a crisis waiting to happen because of its toxic combination of astronomical government debt, chaotic politics and dysfunctional economy. You wouldn’t think that a political meltdown would make market players more eager to lend Italy money.

But at least on Wednesday, with Italy still in an uproar, they continued to bid down the interest rate on Italian bonds, albeit by only a few hundredths of a percentage point. It was sign of mild confidence, that lending to the government was now less of a risky proposition.

Could the next government be more pro-business?

Investors seem to think that any government will be better than the mash-up that fell apart this week, a mismatched coalition of Mr. Salvini’s League and the anti-establishment Five Star Movement. The previous government threatened to break European Union budget rules, cozied up to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and has been unable to budge Italy’s growth rate above zero.

Some investors may be betting that the Five Star Movement will ditch Mr. Salvini’s partisans and instead join the center-left Democratic Party. At the very least, the argument goes, such a government would be less likely to lead Italy out of the euro and back to the lira.

Other investors may be wagering on new elections, which polls show that Mr. Salvini would win. He would form a government that would be populist in its rhetoric but — so investors hope — pro-business in its policies.

That may be wishful thinking.

“Many people perceive that anything is better than the current government, even one led by a far-right leader,” said Lorenzo Codogno, former director general of the Italian Treasury and now an independent consultant. He noted, though, “I think the risks are underestimated.”

It’s also possible that investors are so inured to drama in Rome that they simply shrugged off recent events as the latest episode in Mr. Salvini’s reality show. Instead, they are focusing on the likelihood that the European Central Bank will announce new stimulus measures next month that will further push down interest rates across the board, even for Italian debt.

“This type of uncertainty and breakup of governments is not unknown to Italy,” Maria Demertzis, deputy director at Bruegel, a Brussels think tank, said with a degree of understatement. “It was an uneasy marriage to begin with, the fact that it broke up was not a surprise.”

Why should anyone outside of Italy care about Italian politics?

In a word, debt.

Italy’s government debt amounts to 134 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, one of the highest ratios in the world. If investors ever lose confidence in the government’s ability to make payments on the debt, the effect on global financial markets would be devastating.

“An Italian default would be a big tsunami in financial markets,” said Lucrezia Reichlin, a professor of economics at London Business School.

The debt would be less of a problem if the Italian economy were growing, but it’s not. Economic growth in the second quarter of this year was zero. The current government has aggravated the debt problem and further rattled markets by threatening to increase the deficit in violation of European Union rules.

Italian 10-year government bonds were trading at a yield of 1.33 percent Wednesday, down 0.035 percentage points from Tuesday. The yield is low in historical terms but is not exactly a vote of confidence in Italy. The comparable German government bond was trading Wednesday at minus 0.67 percent. Investors are in effect paying the German government to keep their money safe, while demanding a premium for more risky Italian debt.

Government bonds serve as benchmarks for bank lending. That means that Italian consumers and businesses have to pay more for a loan than people or firms in Germany or France, a dragging anchor on growth. With recession looming, the government can’t increase spending without alarming financial markets even further.

“We have very little fiscal space for economic stimulus,” Ms. Reichlin said.

What are the chances of a government able to fix the economy?

Slim. None of the political scenarios seem likely to produce a more effective team, much less one that can address Italy’s deep economic problems.

The Five Star Movement and Democratic Party have been bitter rivals, and it is hard to believe their coalition would be any less contentious than the government that just dissolved. Even relatively stable governments have recently failed to push through reforms.

When Matteo Renzi, a Democrat, was prime minister several years ago, he tried to simplify government decision-making and create a better environment for entrepreneurs. But the changes inevitably threatened established interests and the political backlash drove Mr. Renzi from power in 2016.

“Italy has lost a lot of competitiveness,” Ms. Demertzis said. “Italy has been slow to address this. They need structural reforms to address the issue of productivity, but these reforms are difficult and painful to implement in the beginning, therefore they’re very unpopular.”

If the Five Star and Democratic Parties cannot muster a majority in Parliament during coming days, there will be new elections later this year. Polls show that Mr. Salvini would get the most votes, and then form a coalition with two smaller conservative parties.

Some investors would view a Salvini government favorably, on the grounds that it might be more stable. Mr. Salvini gets support from some segments of Italian industry. Perhaps, the optimists say, his business friends would convince him to do what needs to be done to fix the Italian economy.

Mr. Salvini is popular enough that his party might even win an outright majority in Parliament, removing the need for him to compromise with his more moderate coalition partners.

Mr. Salvini’s track record suggests that, unchained, he would revert to the anti-immigrant and anti-Brussels rhetoric that have fed his popularity in the past. Rather than addressing Italy’s underlying problems, he would try to stimulate the economy by taking on even more debt, said Nicola Nobile, lead economist at Oxford Economics.

If Mr. Salvini takes power, Ms. Nobile said, “then I think he will go on some Trump-style expansionary fiscal policy. He basically believes that if you cut taxes, then economic growth is strong enough to pay these cuts by themselves, which we know as economists is not the case.”

“Salvini is perceived as a person who can do things,” said Mr. Codogno, the former Treasury director, “but I don’t think he has a view of how to address the fundamental issues of the economy.”

Sahred From Source link Business

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[sheminecrafts]

Is Europe closing in on an antitrust fix for surveillance technologists?

The German Federal Cartel Office’s decision to order Facebook to change how it processes users’ personal data this week is a sign the antitrust tide could at last be turning against platform power.

One European Commission source we spoke to, who was commenting in a personal capacity, described it as “clearly pioneering” and “a big deal”, even without Facebook being fined a dime.

The FCO’s decision instead bans the social network from linking user data across different platforms it owns, unless it gains people’s consent (nor can it make use of its services contingent on such consent). Facebook is also prohibited from gathering and linking data on users from third party websites, such as via its tracking pixels and social plugins.

The order is not yet in force, and Facebook is appealing, but should it come into force the social network faces being de facto shrunk by having its platforms siloed at the data level.

To comply with the order Facebook would have to ask users to freely consent to being data-mined — which the company does not do at present.

Yes, Facebook could still manipulate the outcome it wants from users but doing so would open it to further challenge under EU data protection law, as its current approach to consent is already being challenged.

The EU’s updated privacy framework, GDPR, requires consent to be specific, informed and freely given. That standard supports challenges to Facebook’s (still fixed) entry ‘price’ to its social services. To play you still have to agree to hand over your personal data so it can sell your attention to advertisers. But legal experts contend that’s neither privacy by design nor default.

The only ‘alternative’ Facebook offers is to tell users they can delete their account. Not that doing so would stop the company from tracking you around the rest of the mainstream web anyway. Facebook’s tracking infrastructure is also embedded across the wider Internet so it profiles non-users too.

EU data protection regulators are still investigating a very large number of consent-related GDPR complaints.

But the German FCO, which said it liaised with privacy authorities during its investigation of Facebook’s data-gathering, has dubbed this type of behavior “exploitative abuse”, having also deemed the social service to hold a monopoly position in the German market.

So there are now two lines of legal attack — antitrust and privacy law — threatening Facebook (and indeed other adtech companies’) surveillance-based business model across Europe.

A year ago the German antitrust authority also announced a probe of the online advertising sector, responding to concerns about a lack of transparency in the market. Its work here is by no means done.

Data limits

The lack of a big flashy fine attached to the German FCO’s order against Facebook makes this week’s story less of a major headline than recent European Commission antitrust fines handed to Google — such as the record-breaking $5BN penalty issued last summer for anticompetitive behaviour linked to the Android mobile platform.

But the decision is arguably just as, if not more, significant, because of the structural remedies being ordered upon Facebook. These remedies have been likened to an internal break-up of the company — with enforced internal separation of its multiple platform products at the data level.

This of course runs counter to (ad) platform giants’ preferred trajectory, which has long been to tear modesty walls down; pool user data from multiple internal (and indeed external sources), in defiance of the notion of informed consent; and mine all that personal (and sensitive) stuff to build identity-linked profiles to train algorithms that predict (and, some contend, manipulate) individual behavior.

Because if you can predict what a person is going to do you can choose which advert to serve to increase the chance they’ll click. (Or as Mark Zuckerberg puts it: ‘Senator, we run ads.’)

This means that a regulatory intervention that interferes with an ad tech giant’s ability to pool and process personal data starts to look really interesting. Because a Facebook that can’t join data dots across its sprawling social empire — or indeed across the mainstream web — wouldn’t be such a massive giant in terms of data insights. And nor, therefore, surveillance oversight.

Each of its platforms would be forced to be a more discrete (and, well, discreet) kind of business.

Competing against data-siloed platforms with a common owner — instead of a single interlinked mega-surveillance-network — also starts to sound almost possible. It suggests a playing field that’s reset, if not entirely levelled.

(Whereas, in the case of Android, the European Commission did not order any specific remedies — allowing Google to come up with ‘fixes’ itself; and so to shape the most self-serving ‘fix’ it can think of.)

Meanwhile, just look at where Facebook is now aiming to get to: A technical unification of the backend of its different social products.

Such a merger would collapse even more walls and fully enmesh platforms that started life as entirely separate products before were folded into Facebook’s empire (also, let’s not forget, via surveillance-informed acquisitions).

Seized cache of Facebook docs raise competition and consent questions

Facebook’s plan to unify its products on a single backend platform looks very much like an attempt to throw up technical barriers to antitrust hammers. It’s at least harder to imagine breaking up a company if its multiple, separate products are merged onto one unified backend which functions to cross and combine data streams.

Set against Facebook’s sudden desire to technically unify its full-flush of dominant social networks (Facebook Messenger; Instagram; WhatsApp) is a rising drum-beat of calls for competition-based scrutiny of tech giants.

This has been building for years, as the market power — and even democracy-denting potential — of surveillance capitalism’s data giants has telescoped into view.

Calls to break up tech giants no longer carry a suggestive punch. Regulators are routinely asked whether it’s time. As the European Commission’s competition chief, Margrethe Vestager, was when she handed down Google’s latest massive antitrust fine last summer.

Her response then was that she wasn’t sure breaking Google up is the right answer — preferring to try remedies that might allow competitors to have a go, while also emphasizing the importance of legislating to ensure “transparency and fairness in the business to platform relationship”.

But it’s interesting that the idea of breaking up tech giants now plays so well as political theatre, suggesting that wildly successful consumer technology companies — which have long dined out on shiny convenience-based marketing claims, made ever so saccharine sweet via the lure of ‘free’ services — have lost a big chunk of their populist pull, dogged as they have been by so many scandals.

From terrorist content and hate speech, to election interference, child exploitation, bullying, abuse. There’s also the matter of how they arrange their tax affairs.

The public perception of tech giants has matured as the ‘costs’ of their ‘free’ services have scaled into view. The upstarts have also become the establishment. People see not a new generation of ‘cuddly capitalists’ but another bunch of multinationals; highly polished but remote money-making machines that take rather more than they give back to the societies they feed off.

Google’s trick of naming each Android iteration after a different sweet treat makes for an interesting parallel to the (also now shifting) public perceptions around sugar, following closer attention to health concerns. What does its sickly sweetness mask? And after the sugar tax, we now have politicians calling for a social media levy.

Just this week the deputy leader of the main opposition party in the UK called for setting up a standalone Internet regulatory with the power to break up tech monopolies.

Talking about breaking up well-oiled, wealth-concentration machines is being seen as a populist vote winner. And companies that political leaders used to flatter and seek out for PR opportunities find themselves treated as political punchbags; Called to attend awkward grilling by hard-grafting committees, or taken to vicious task verbally at the highest profile public podia. (Though some non-democratic heads of state are still keen to press tech giant flesh.)

In Europe, Facebook’s repeat snubs of the UK parliament’s requests last year for Zuckerberg to face policymakers’ questions certainly did not go unnoticed.

Zuckerberg’s empty chair at the DCMS committee has become both a symbol of the company’s failure to accept wider societal responsibility for its products, and an indication of market failure; the CEO so powerful he doesn’t feel answerable to anyone; neither his most vulnerable users nor their elected representatives. Hence UK politicians on both sides of the aisle making political capital by talking about cutting tech giants down to size.

The political fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal looks far from done.

Quite how a UK regulator could successfully swing a regulatory hammer to break up a global Internet giant such as Facebook which is headquartered in the U.S. is another matter. But policymakers have already crossed the rubicon of public opinion and are relishing talking up having a go.

That represents a sea-change vs the neoliberal consensus that allowed competition regulators to sit on their hands for more than a decade as technology upstarts quietly hoovered up people’s data and bagged rivals, and basically went about transforming themselves from highly scalable startups into market-distorting giants with Internet-scale data-nets to snag users and buy or block competing ideas.

Zuckerberg owns or clones most of the “8 social apps” he cites as competition

The political spirit looks willing to go there, and now the mechanism for breaking platforms’ distorting hold on markets may also be shaping up.

The traditional antitrust remedy of breaking a company along its business lines still looks unwieldy when faced with the blistering pace of digital technology. The problem is delivering such a fix fast enough that the business hasn’t already reconfigured to route around the reset. 

Commission antitrust decisions on the tech beat have stepped up impressively in pace on Vestager’s watch. Yet it still feels like watching paper pushers wading through treacle to try and catch a sprinter. (And Europe hasn’t gone so far as trying to impose a platform break up.) 

But the German FCO decision against Facebook hints at an alternative way forward for regulating the dominance of digital monopolies: Structural remedies that focus on controlling access to data which can be relatively swiftly configured and applied.

Vestager, whose term as EC competition chief may be coming to its end this year (even if other Commission roles remain in potential and tantalizing contention), has championed this idea herself.

In an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today program in December she poured cold water on the stock question about breaking tech giants up — saying instead the Commission could look at how larger firms got access to data and resources as a means of limiting their power. Which is exactly what the German FCO has done in its order to Facebook. 

At the same time, Europe’s updated data protection framework has gained the most attention for the size of the financial penalties that can be issued for major compliance breaches. But the regulation also gives data watchdogs the power to limit or ban processing. And that power could similarly be used to reshape a rights-eroding business model or snuff out such business entirely.

#GDPR allows imposing a permanent ban on data processing. This is the nuclear option. Much more severe than any fine you can imagine, in most cases. https://t.co/X772NvU51S

— Lukasz Olejnik (@lukOlejnik) January 28, 2019

The merging of privacy and antitrust concerns is really just a reflection of the complexity of the challenge regulators now face trying to rein in digital monopolies. But they’re tooling up to meet that challenge.

Speaking in an interview with TechCrunch last fall, Europe’s data protection supervisor, Giovanni Buttarelli, told us the bloc’s privacy regulators are moving towards more joint working with antitrust agencies to respond to platform power. “Europe would like to speak with one voice, not only within data protection but by approaching this issue of digital dividend, monopolies in a better way — not per sectors,” he said. “But first joint enforcement and better co-operation is key.”

The German FCO’s decision represents tangible evidence of the kind of regulatory co-operation that could — finally — crack down on tech giants.

Blogging in support of the decision this week, Buttarelli asserted: “It is not necessary for competition authorities to enforce other areas of law; rather they need simply to identity where the most powerful undertakings are setting a bad example and damaging the interests of consumers.  Data protection authorities are able to assist in this assessment.”

He also had a prediction of his own for surveillance technologists, warning: “This case is the tip of the iceberg — all companies in the digital information ecosystem that rely on tracking, profiling and targeting should be on notice.”

So perhaps, at long last, the regulators have figured out how to move fast and break things.

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