#obviously this in response to all of the current us election cycle posting that is happening currently

[mollypaup]

i do not talk about politics online for a variety of reasons, top amongst them being that i think the most effective way to make an impact on someone's views is to have a one-on-one conversation with them. And i am personally most well versed in local politics because living in a conservative area means that i am fighting an uphill battle both ways trying to convince someone that actually the more liberal candidate is the one who is advocating for policies that will positively effect you, i promise, and i have to have specific instances i can cite as proof for these conversations to be really meaningful. but because of this specific way i engage with politics, sometimes i see posts on this webbed site that makes me go "why are you even talking. what are you aiming for. what do you Want."

[itsclydebitches]

3 topics this time!

1.) I was watching Sarcastic Chorus’ video on Star Vs The Forces of Evil, and near the end there was a comment that stuck with me. “These ideas are present, but not fully explored. I like to call them the window shopping of ideas.”

And that was just such a perfect way of describing it. When I first heard it, I immediately thought of My Hero Academia and RWBY. And while both have this problem in spades, RWBY is much more obvious about it. Every single time RWBY introduces a concept they’ll look at it, try it on for a bit, and then dump it on the floor for other people to deal with, and then leave without buying into anything.

Raven? Dumped. Beacon? Dumped. Has anyone seen Tai? Glynda? Sun? Are the grimm still roaming around? Are we sure that Salem hasn’t yet retrieved the relic from Beacon? Wasn’t Nora supposed to get development? Are she and Ren still having problems? Shouldn’t Jaune be learning how to control his semblance better? Especially since it’s something so helpful? Didn’t Robyn need immediate medical attention? But she somehow survived? And is perfectly okay? How? Wasn’t she in a serious medical condition? Is Haven still in chaos? Where is Watts? Is he locked up? Or did he escape while the mains were throwing their temper tantrums? Where’s Tyrian? Where are all of the other students? All dumped. Little to no explanation, and off to the next shop.

2.) I disappeared for a bit after your recap because I was so purely infuriated with the last two episodes. Ironwood shooting Oscar feels ignorable to me in a way because it’s such an out of left field, ooc moment, that my brain is just refusing to acknowledge it. It’s horrible, terrible writing. And it feels a lot like shark jumping.

But as someone who started writing fanfiction in middle school, I get where they were coming from. They wanted a fall from grace story. Cool. Got it. But that takes time. If they wanted to do this properly, it should have been given much more time. Hit the topic episode 1 of the season and devote little time to anything else. The election? Scrap it. Overall it was barely relevant. Robyn. Skip it. Again, barely relevant. Don’t have Ruby&Co hiding info. That takes up time and attention. Have them put all of their cards on the table immediately. (It also serves to not make them hypocrites.) Give the teams another solution to save everyone. (At least a reasonably feasible one.)

Have the kids argue it out. Have Ironwood refuse to budge because they’ve already put too much time into the plan before Ruby and friends came along. Have Weiss go to her mother ask her to set up a meeting with the council to protest what Ironwood is doing. And have her gain their trust by revealing what her father has been doing. If you really want to do this in such little time, it’s possible, but you have to dedicate the time that you do have to it. If you don’t want to do that, and you don’t want to pace it out for another season, then scrap it. In the overall story for the show Ironwood being evil is wholly unnecessary. It adds nothing  to the show. Especially since they’ve already done this twist.

You could also make it so that the Ace Ops were going behind Ironwood’s back to betray him to Salem. Have the ace ops getting along with the mains to gather information. You could also have had Ironwood going down a dark path since his reintroduction. Have him plant spyware on them. Have him in shadows. Have him looking menacing in scenes. Alluding to terrible things that he might be doing. Looking at secret files. Messing with the relic. But for the love of god, don’t do what you’ve done. It was messy and lazy. If you can’t (or don’t want to) devote the time and effort to make this work, then remove it from your story.

3.) There was an article about the fan backlash regarding Clover’s death. In it, it talked about how anyone upset was just a whiny woman who was upset that she can’t fantasize about two gay men. And that it wasn’t queerbaiting or burying your gays because Clover wasn’t officially canonized as such. And that the show has Bumblebee, so it can’t be doing either of those things. And I was so disgusted by it and the comments that followed that I had to get off the internet for awhile. There’s just so much wrong with that.

No, Clover was not said to be anything other than straight in canon. (He wasn’t said to be straight either, so…) However, if we are only going with what has explicitly been stated in the show; then I will not be accepting Bumblebee as a legitimate point for the show from the same people any longer.

Do they seem to be headed into a relationship? Sure. And I hope that it gets proper time and follow through. But if we’re only accepting relationships and sexualities by being told in universe, then you can’t use that as a shield. Because nothing has been said. The writers could change their minds, place them in relationships with male characters, say that they’re straight (you better not RT, do not take this as a legitimate idea to do) and act like nothing ever happened. But it wouldn’t matter, according to this logic, because they never technically canonized it. And I know that it’s a little different, given that we’re shown Blake and Yang having signs of romance feelings for each other, but by this argument, nothing matters unless we’re spoon fed information. And  that brings me to my next point.

In the history of media wlw pairings have always been more ‘acceptable’ than mlm ones. Because there’s a history of denial and fetishizing them. It it’s women, then of course they’re all over each other! They’re women! With all those emotions and need for physical contact! If they’re in a relationship with another woman? That’s fine! It’s not a real relationship! They’re just playing! They need a man! And just imagine! Two attractive women being attracted to you, good sir! And imagine being such a studly man that these women change their sexualities just for you! Women are fickle after all! They change their minds all the time! 

A man in a relationship with another man? Is seen as unnatural. Because straight men can’t fantasize about it. They can’t fetishize it. And therefore, there’s no need for it in media. They don’t want it there. And I don’t want to accuse the writers at RWBY of specifically thinking this way, but it is the way media tends to go. And while the lead characters are women, and a good amount of the fandom are women, there’s still room to question if this is what’s happening. The main leads are all young, thin, and conventionally attractive. Even when in a place that marked by how cold it is, the clothes are more for style and having the girls look attractive over function. The only one of them that looks even remotely clothed appropriately for the weather is Weiss. And when you get to the male characters, they’re either evil, dead, or given so little character that half the time they’re easy to forget. Because the story nor the writing is interested in men.

Also, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend of the writing suddenly getting rid of characters that fans pair with Qrow. First Ozpin, then Ironwood, then Clover. You could probably make an argument for Tai being shunted off once that started to gain traction in fandom as well. It’s creepy. 

(Sorry if anything is phrased badly. One of the problems I have with social things is that I never know if I’ve phrased something well enough to get my point across without being offensive. Still working on it, so let me know!)

***

Response under the cut! 

1. absolutely love that phrase: “Window shopping ideas.” I feel like I may have heard it before, but not enough for it to stick. It really is perfect though. The story looks at something, seems to consider it seriously, maybe even tries it on… but in the end doesn’t commit. We move onto the next piece of clothing—or even the next store—without, ultimately, having achieved anything other than introducing the possibility of buying a new outfit (telling a cohesive story). One of the most common compliments I hear RWBY get, and one I agree with, is that it has so many cool ideas. The problem is this isn’t a tumblr post going, “Here are all my fun headcanons, random concepts, and nifty details vaguely held together by a broad plot.” Cool ideas alone isn’t enough to carry a mainstream story a lot of people are paying for, certainly not one as long and complex as RWBY has become. Granted, every story has window shopping to a certain extent. We can acknowledge that there are different levels: 

Dropping Glynda is super understandable largely due to the issues surrounding her voice actress. Finding someone new for Qrow is one thing because he’s still actively a part of the plot, but if you’ve lost an actress for a character currently off screen, it’s tempting to just keep her off screen. I get that. It’s an arguably smart sacrifice. 

Dropping Jaune’s development is somewhat understandable because we acknowledge that change within a cast this size has to cycle. Jaune got to improve last volume through figuring out how to heal that guy’s arm and amplify Ren’s semblance. So his development takes a backseat the next volume to make room for others’. Problem is… 

Dropping something like Nora and Ren’s development is both Not Good and actively hurting the justification behind dropping other things (like Jaune). What did we learn about Ren and Nora this volume? Nothing. There was no insight into Nora like we were led to believe there would be. Ren obviously has a lot of stuff he’s trying to work through, but the story actively kept him from working through it by silencing him with a kiss. And the kiss itself? Great in regards to moving forward with their romantic relationship, but we already knew that relationship existed. We were clear about Ren and Nora being a couple up until Ren voiced hesitation… which, as said, was then ignored. The kiss achieved little in the grand scheme of things and, unlike something like Blake/Yang, doesn’t function to provide absolutely needed proof. Again, it’s good we got it, it just wasn’t done particularly well and was done in place of much more important development. I don’t need them to kiss this second because their moments in Volume 4-6 firmly established that they’re a couple. I do need to know more about who Nora is, whether Ren agrees with Ironwood, and why he’s so torn about this relationship that just the concept of hitting a fake version of Nora in battle makes him cry. (Because seriously, don’t they spar? That was clearly something much bigger than just not wanting to his his girlfriend.) 

So… yeah. A lot of window shopping. Which connects to: 

2. The fact that yeah, there was too much going on this volume which resulted in none of it getting the time it needed. We keep coming back to the question of “What is the point?” What was the point of resurrecting Penny if she wasn’t going to grow as a person, or help Ruby do the same? What’s the point of spending so much time on Robyn learning to trust Ironwood only for her to immediately reject him on the airship? What’s the point of devoting time to Qrow and Clover’s friendship if Qrow thinks so little of it he’ll team up with Tyrian instead? What was the point of framing Penny? What’s the point of spending SO much time showing justified and sympathetic scenes of Ironwood if you’re going to take a sharp right and randomly make him shoot a kid in the finale? What’s the point of the group being devastated by Ozpin lying to them if they’re just going to turn around and tell the same lies? Nothing amounted to anything. All the time we spent developing Thing A was dropped for Thing B. Continuing the analogy, the characters spent a whole volume admiring the red dress, checking the price, talking about reasons why this was the perfect purchase for them to make… only to turn around and buy a pair of pants instead, something we haven’t even seen them look at, let alone try on. The journey these characters took is entirely disconnected from where they ended up. 

3. Oof yeah. All of that is a complex af topic that deserves more than my quick response… but suffice to say, anyone who believes that “wasn’t queerbaiting or burying your gays because Clover wasn’t officially canonized as such” fundamentally doesn’t understand what queerbaiting is. The whole point is that it’s NOT canonized. Like Blake/Yang remain. I admit 100% that Clover and Qrow were not teased in the same way that other potential queer couples have been (such as Dean/Cas in Supernatural), but there were a lot of hints and coding that encouraged a queer reading regardless and fans are right to point that out, regardless of what RT’s intentions may have been. Even if you don’t want to go that route, this volume still—quite obviously—encouraged a close friendship, something that in and of itself is chock-full of implications given the history of the buddy duo/opposites attract trope. Whether you read Qrow and Clover as platonic or potentially romantic, the end result is the same: two men embodied an intimate and gentle relationship (something rare for two “straight” guys) and then one was horrifically murdered off in order to “justify” the destruction of the one other friendship Qrow still has going. There’s a lot in there for fans to be upset with, especially when it was all set up so poorly. And frankly, until RT actually canonizes Blake/Yang, I’m not going to make any blanket statements about how they would never queerbait, not matter how lightly. Because you’re right. We don’t know what we’ll get in the future and no matter how seemingly obvious it is that they will enter a relationship at some point…we can’t swear that it will actually make it on screen. In which case everything we’ve seen—romantic hand-holding, intense blushes, going out on presumed dates—would enter the realm of really intense queerbaiting, which in turn would drastically color how viewers read Clover and Qrow. You proved with one couple that you’re willing to string viewers along… so why would we claim you weren’t doing the same here, even though it was a lot more subtle? As an on-going series it’s hard to make any definite statements about RWBY’s representation, but given how long it’s taking for their presumed, primary queer couple to get together (no matter how little time has passed in-world the writers are still making the fanbase wait years) and the history surrounding Clover and Qrow’s character types as well as the ending they got… I’m more than a little uncomfortable. Just like I was uncomfortable with the decision to make the first queer character a villain who blames her crush for those feelings, her abusive relationship, all while trying to murder her parents. That stuff hurts in a world where queer media is still both rare and often badly done. Even if next volume Blake/Yang becomes canon and RT has A+ rep moving forward, we’re still left for the next year with one queer coded character denouncing all his male friendships, one close male friend dead, and two women dancing around each other. Volume 7 has a lot of things that on their own aren’t necessarily that bad, but pull them all together and it paints a far worse picture. 

(Also yeah, another anon mentioned how RWBY is popular because it’s not fanservice and I’m like, “Yes… but also no lol. I have things to say about how ‘We don’t do giant breasts or pantie shots!’ shouldn’t be the only bar we strive to meet.) 

[qqueenofhades]

So, it’s Friday evening, and it turns out I have more thoughts about things that happened this week. I almost never do Discourse on this blog, on whatever subject, but sometimes even your friendly local depressed historian gotta say things. If you’re not in the mood for a long-ass meta-y text post, just keep on scrolling, no hard feelings.

In the wake of the Notre Dame fire, which obviously a lot of us were upset about, and profoundly relieved that it did not end up being completely catastrophic, the usual spate of posts began to pop up, alleging that people only cared about Notre Dame because of the loss to Western/European/Christian history, that nobody had been this upset about the National Museum of Brazil or the outbreak of arson at three black churches in Louisiana in the same week, and so on. I don’t blame anyone for making those posts, because I know they cared about those issues and wanted to ensure that their importance was communicated, especially when something major like Notre Dame was getting all the airtime. However, I couldn’t help but notice how that followed the same pattern as all Woke Tumblr Discourse (tm). An event happens, people express reactions to it, and are then attacked or indirectly shamed for not expressing reactions to another event. Or there’s the usual cycle of “nobody will care about this because it’s not happening in America”-style posts, or passive-aggressive insinuations that “you don’t care if you don’t reblog this.” And -- I say this with the greatest kindness possible, because I know, I know you guys care -- it’s... not helpful.

The culture of Tumblr and other left-wing sections of social media often rests on enacting performative wokeness, on showing that you care about the most Progressive (tm) issues, or that you have thoroughly scrutinized your fandom tastes or political beliefs for anything Problematic and/or can prove yourself to an imagined moral standard (and there have been some great metas written on how this essentially replicates conservative evangelical purity culture, with the goalposts switched). This is why we keep having to circulate (and doubtless will have to do so with increasing frequency) those posts reminding the left not to eat its young and flame all prospective Democratic challengers to Trump in 2020 to a crisp before the right wing, which is only too happy to let us do the work of sabotaging ourselves, even gets a chance. This is also why you see the posts responding to said angry “nobody cares about this!” posts, in which people mention the fact that not visibly reacting to all the (vast and terrible) injustice in the world does not mean they don’t care. The world is a big place. So is the internet. I can guarantee you that people do care, and just because you didn’t see immediate evidence and response to it when you opened up your Tumblr dash is not proof of a collective nefarious conspiracy.

Take me, for example. I am a thirty-ish academic and historian who considers myself well-informed and literate in current events. I read national and international news every day to find out what’s going on (because I live in England, the answer is Brexit, and the status is Failed). And yet, there are plenty of things that I only hear about for the first time on Tumblr, often attached to one of those “nobody cares about this!” posts. And you know what? I do care. I care a lot. And I’m guessing that most other people do as well, because no matter how it may feel, the majority of individuals are fundamentally decent people with basic empathy for others, even if our whole system is a nightmare. But the urge to demand why nobody is Discoursing about this issue (again, among a vast and exhausting sea of them) needs to take a few fundamental things into account. 

First, the American media (as a large portion of readers are relying on) simply does not report this stuff. Look at what’s happening in that godforsaken country right now; does it really seem like the kind of place that’s eager to tell you about Brazilian museum fires or black-church arson? I’m someone who makes a conscious effort to read the news no matter how depressed it makes me, and I still miss tons of stuff, because it’s not there. The Western media reported on Notre Dame, people knew about it, and were upset. But when those of them who did not know about the National Museum of Brazil learned about it, they were also upset. We can definitively say now that the National Museum was a bigger and more irreplaceable tragedy in terms of what burned. But we were also apparently 15-30 minutes away from losing all of Notre Dame. You can be upset about both these things. You can express empathy for the history lost in both cases. There is not a greater moral value attached, and you’re not racist for caring about Notre Dame if you heard about it first (unless you’re only upset about Notre Dame for reasons related to race or perceived cultural superiority and are peddling vile conspiracy theories about Jews and Muslims intentionally burning it down, in which case you are a racist). Almost everyone who learned about the National Museum fire was just as horrified.

2019 is a hard and monstrously unfair and tremendously difficult place to live. The internet has made exposure to both all the information and no real information at all simultaneously possible. Not everyone can display active engagement and empathy with every tragedy everywhere. People have jobs, lives, kids, work, school, other commitments, mental and physical health to look after and even when they read the damn news, there’s no guarantee whatsoever the news is going to report it. If they haven’t made the conscious effort to search out every scrap of terribleness that exists in this hellworld, they.... really should not be shamed for that. If they don’t care even after they learn, that’s another debate. But again, in my experience, most people do. But if they are first exposed to it by someone claiming they won’t care, that makes them less likely to engage with it, and to want to enact meaningful change. Firing wittily sarcastic takedowns at easy targets on echo-chamber liberal Twitter is one thing. We all enjoy a good roast and venting our frustration at times. But as a long-term engagement strategy, it’s going to actively backfire.

I talk a lot about being a teacher, and my experiences with my students, but it’s relevant again, so here goes. The kids in my classes come in believing some pretty strange things, or they flat out don’t have a clue even about what I consider basic historical knowledge. If my reaction was to shame them for not knowing, when they have expressly come to me to learn better, I’m pretty sure I’d be a bad teacher. My strategy, whenever a student can actually be nudged to answer a question, is to pick out whatever correct thing they said. Even if the rest of the answer is wrong and we need to work through it, I start by highlighting the part of it that was right, and to build their confidence that I’m not just going to tear them down when they respond. Freshmen are scared of not knowing things and to be made to look like an idiot, so I try to assure them that I’m not going to do that and I will constructively engage with their contribution and treat it seriously. You can then move to dealing with the other parts of it that may not be right, or even Mmm Whatcha Say side-eye. It is a long and often frustrating process and sometimes after reading their essays, you wonder how much of an impression you made. But if you actually want to get people to care about things, you can’t mistake Ultimate Wokeness or Look How Progressive/Anti-establishment/Enlightened I Personally Am for the simple requirement of being a decent person. You can have the greatest and most necessary beliefs or value systems in the world, but if your response to people is to lash out at them even before they begin the conversation, you’re setting yourself back. And I know that’s not really what you want to do.

This should not be interpreted as some wishy-washy “everyone just needs to be nice to each other!!!” kindergarten-playground-rule. I frankly think the whole system could use a good nefarious dismantle, and you sure as hell don’t get there by mistaking insipid moral equivalence for necessary action. But accepting the existence of people different from you, and considering how you want to engage with them, and understanding that issues are complicated and people are flawed, is a fundamental part of being a mature adult (and this has nothing to do with chronological age; there are 15-year-olds who are plenty more mature adults than 50-year-olds). I honestly do love the desperate desire to make people care, and that, for the most part, is why people who identify as liberal or left-wing do so, because they want to (and they do) care. But it’s also why they can be bad at winning elections and getting into meaningful positions to enact this change. The right wing stays on message and sticks together. Even if they absolutely hated Trump, plenty of Republicans held their noses and voted for him anyway. The left did not do that. The greatest virtue of liberal thought, i.e. its determination to include multiple perspectives, has increasingly reduced it to smaller and smaller camps where only the purest survive, like some kind of ideological Hunger Games. It might be great for making yourself look good to your hall of mirrors, but.... not so good for actually doing something long-term.

Once again, this is not to blame anyone for being upset and worried about things, for wanting people to know about them, and so forth. But I am gently-but-firmly suggesting, in my capacity as old, salty, queer spinster academic aunt, that perhaps you consider how you start the conversation. Once again, it’s my experience that most people want to know and want to care, but there are countless factors that mean not every bad thing in the world will be acknowledged everywhere by everyone at all times. You can care about different things for different reasons. That is okay. You can care about something because you have a personal connection to it. That is also okay. You can not care about something because you just don’t have the capacity and are emotionally exhausted and there’s so much shit in this world that you have to compartmentalize and set boundaries. That is also okay.

For example, I was obviously very upset about Notre Dame, and still am, though I’m relieved it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Am I happy it’s going to be restored? Yes. Am I unbelievably angry that a half-dozen of the elite uber-rich could just suddenly throw billions of euros at it for its restoration, when it had to struggle for years to get funding for crucial renovations? Yes. Do I feel as if that if the vaults have suddenly been opened to restore one major European Christian landmark, it’s incredibly heartbreaking that that level of instant capital just won’t be addressed to actual endemic, long-term issues like global warming and social inequality and the Flint water crisis and whatever else, and that this is a sad and troubling message for our society in many ways? Yes.  All of these things exist together. And I imagine most people feel the same way.

In short: I realize this is the internet, and therefore just is not designed to do that, but maybe we can give each other a little bit more of the benefit of the doubt, and think about how we would like to educate and engage those we come in contact with, whether virtually or in reality. We can do it wherever and whoever we are, with anyone that we meet, and I wonder what it would be like if we did.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to a special edition of FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): Just what is going on in Nevada? On Wednesday, we had maybe our most spirited debate of the primary cycle yet, but what isn’t clear is how it did — or didn’t — affect the race. (Remember, despite capturing many, many headlines, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg isn’t actually on the ballot there.)

To some extent, the polling picture in Nevada is actually quite clear. Of the few recent polls we do have, Sen. Bernie Sanders sits atop nearly all of them, and according to our primary forecast, he has a 75 percent chance of winning the most votes there. Our model still gives former Vice President Joe Biden a 1 in 9 chance of pulling off an upset victory, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg a 1 in 15 shot and Sen. Elizabeth Warren a 1 in 20 shot. (Philanthropist Tom Steyer and Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s odds are a bit more underdog-ish, at 1 in 50 and 1 in 100, respectively.)

But as we know from New Hampshire, debates can matter. And Nevada is just a really hard state to poll, so what should we be keeping an eye on heading into the caucuses on Saturday?

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): I’m reticent to say that the Nevada polls give us a clear picture of the race. I feel like it’s perhaps better to come with a more collective open mind, while acknowledging that Sanders is the front-runner numerically.

micah (Micah Cohen, managing editor): Yeah, I’d be very cautious with our Nevada forecast at the moment. It can only work with the polls it has, and there obviously haven’t been any post-debate polls yet. It’s always hard to predict these things but I’d bet that debate could swing the polls by a lot.

sarahf: Right, there are only five polls of Nevada for all of February. I hear you.

That said, Sanders has consistently done pretty well.

micah: But would anyone be surprised by a last-minute Warren surge in Nevada? Akin to Klobuchar’s in New Hampshire?

clare.malone: That’s one thing I’ve been turning over in my head, Micah. Is Warren a really good cultural fit for Nevada?

And by cultural fit I mean: She’s originally from Oklahoma and her professional work is inextricably linked with the housing crisis, which hit Nevada hard. She’s got the kind of working class background that could potentially resonate in a state whose caucuses are union-dominated. So maybe Nevada is a potential comeback state for her?

sarahf: I could definitely see a Warren comeback. One wild card, though is that this the first time Nevada has offered early voting, and so that means there were already nearly 75,000 votes cast before the debate last night.

It’s an important reminder that this is already happening in a number of Super Tuesday states, too — including California, which is the biggest delegate prize. I’m not sure it’ll matter, but I am intrigued by how it factors in.

clare.malone: Yes, I mean, I think the big roadblock for a potential Warren surge is what you say, Sarah — her poor showing in the first two states and a ream of voters who have already made up their minds.

And I will say, the fact that Nevada is union-dominated could DEFINITELY work against her in the sense that the unions seem to prefer Biden, or at least seem to prefer a more traditionally Democratic mainstream choice.

micah: Agreed. But, and Nate pointed this out on the podcast, most people who vote early are people who already have their minds made up. That is, there are still plenty of voters who haven’t voted, and those voters are more likely to be ones who Warren would presumably have a chance to win over because they’re undecided.

But going back to the “Is Warren a good fit for Nevada?” question, all the shared characteristics/experiences Clare highlights are dead on. But also … hmmm, how do I say this … I wonder how voters in Nevada will react to a forceful debate strategy by a female candidate.

That is, do voters consciously or subconsciously view Warren’s performance through a sexist/gendered lens? Most likely, right?

sarahf: Why Nevada more so than any other state?

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): Right, that might apply to all 50 states.

micah: True. But Nevada’s population also has a smaller share of college-educated adults than the average state.

clare.malone: I think Nevada is a state that’s got a lot of Democratic primary voters who haven’t been as tuned-in to the primary process as those in Iowa or New Hampshire, which makes it a more useful barometer.

And I think Micah’s point is perhaps that some of those people might be more likely to have an unvarnished response to Warren and won’t have seen their response to her filtered through a months-long primary process lens.

The smart thing I think she did in her closing remarks at the debate was to say, I’ve been in politics for the least amount of time of anyone up here.

micah: Actually, I take some of this back: It looks like Nevada has a decent record of electing women …

clare.malone: I’m always skeptical of how people react to female presidential candidates, though … But point well taken.

micah: Totally agree — is the presidency different? (I think yes, but we don’t know that in a research sense.)

perry: I tend to think that Warren’s performance increased her chances of being one of the candidates who gets to 15 percent in several Super Tuesday states. She will get more media coverage out of this debate — I am still fairly bearish on that prospect.

sarahf: That certainly seems reasonable to me. She did have a strong debate performance, and as we saw with Klobuchar in New Hampshire, it really could impact voters who are still deciding. That said … I’m not sure I agree with this take from journalist Peter Hamby, but it did give me pause about Bloomberg’s performance and what that could mean for how Warren is perceived.

The Bloomberg commentary tonight reminds me of this from the second Trump/Hillary debate in 2016 https://t.co/0llnmwf4Bu

— Peter Hamby (@PeterHamby) February 20, 2020

Which brings us to the million dollar question of Wednesday’s debate: Did Bloomberg’s performance shake things up?

micah: I think that Hamby take is wrong (and he’s super smart). The key difference: This is a primary. That was a general. A bad debate performance in a general election is typically mollified, in terms of its impact on the vote, by partisanship. In a primary, voters are much more likely to switch between candidates. See Marco Rubio, New Hampshire, 2016.

clare.malone: I think Bloomberg’s performance definitely helped Biden.

sarahf: More than say, Warren, Clare?

clare.malone: Well, I think Bloomberg and Biden are inextricably linked. Bloomberg’s entire rise is premised on Biden’s fall. When Bloomberg falls, Biden rises.

Bloomberg was meant to be seen as the more effective moderate option, given Biden’s mediocre showing … and then Bloomberg had a mediocre showing.

micah: Yeah, I agree with that. If Bloomberg falls, it both directly and indirectly helps Biden. It helps him in terms of actual voters available, it helps Biden seem more liberal, it does a lot! The question on Warren feels somewhat more separate, although she’s certainly competing with Bloomberg for press attention.

perry: If Bloomberg had been great, that would have hurt basically everyone. There are a lot of Democrats who are going to just vote for someone and aren’t that moderate or liberal or ideologically committed.

So Bloomberg’s lackluster debate performance was good for Biden but also Buttigieg, Klobuchar — really, all of them.

But there’s another debate on Tuesday and Bloomberg’s ads run everywhere all of the time. I don’t think this precludes him from doing well on Super Tuesday.

clare.malone: I agree with that. I’m not entirely sure nervous Democratic voters will be ready to count him out.

One thing I take from that series of Pete Hamby tweets is: Sometimes it’s hard to tell what voters will tolerate!

sarahf: 2016 shook my confidence in understanding what voters want.

clare.malone: Lol

LOT GOING ON THERE.

micah: It doesn’t preclude Bloomberg from doing well on Super Tuesday, but it weirdly complicates the path for Sanders before then. Sanders is sitting atop national polls, atop Nevada polls and in a close second in South Carolina polls. As long as the Biden-Bloomberg-Buttigieg-Klobuchar lane was muddled, Sanders’s position is extra safe. Basically, he can win states with 25 to 30 percent of the vote.

But if Biden can get some momentum off of a Bloomberg decline (and maybe also Buttigieg and Klobuchar as they didn’t do much to help themselves), maybe Biden can … win Nevada?!?! Or crush it in South Carolina?

sarahf: Speaking of Biden … he really needs to finish second (or first!) in Nevada, right? Granted, it’s still only the third state to vote, but it’s the first one that isn’t 90 percent white, so it’s also sort of an important litmus test for candidates who have struggled to build diverse coalitions. (Warren, Buttigieg, Klobuchar — really everyone except Biden and Sanders, right?)

What should we be looking for there on Saturday? Currently, Sanders seems to hold an edge among Latino voters, but it’s not insurmountable as Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux and Nathaniel Rakich wrote on Thursday:

Sanders is highly favored by Latino voters in Nevada

Top Democratic candidates’ support among poll respondents who identified as Hispanic or Latino (depending on the poll), in six polls conducted since Feb. 9

Pollster Sanders Biden Steyer Warren Buttigieg Klobuchar Data for Progress 66% 7% 8% 5% 4% 7% WPA Intelligence 50 13 9 11 9 0 Beacon Research* 33 16 18 14 7 3 Univision 33 22 12 6 8 1 Mason-Dixon 31 34 3 6 7 5 Point Blank Political 20 8 29 8 12 4

*Internal poll for the Steyer campaign.

Source: Polls

clare.malone: Yeah, I think that Biden needs to make up a lot of ground in Nevada and South Carolina in order to save face (and save his campaign).

micah: Totally. My hunch is that Biden could have sold the media on “Iowa and New Hampshire aren’t representative — wait for Nevada and South Carolina.” But his campaign seemed to be selling “Iowa and New Hampshire aren’t representative — wait for South Carolina. (Nevada? Oh, don’t worry about that.)” And Nevada is actually more representative of the party, as Perry has written. So that was a hard sell.

clare.malone: If he makes a weak showing in Nevada, I think that could have them worried about his gold-standard state, South Carolina.

micah: I think he needs to do “well” in Nevada.

“Well” = “whatever the media decides ‘well’ equals”

clare.malone: Win/place/show?

Or just win/place?

sarahf: No more fourth-place finishes.

micah: Maybe he needs to finish above all the other candidates in the moderate lane?

Or does he also need to finish above Warren?

perry: I think I have in my head something like this for Nevada: Sanders, Biden, Warren, Buttigieg, Steyer, Klobuchar, with the last four kind of bunched up in high single digits and low teens. That’s just my assumption from seeing the various polls. If Biden is below second, I think there will be more super-negative coverage of him. And that can make South Carolina harder to win too.

sarahf: I agree that anything other than a second-place finish for Biden in Nevada is hard to spin if part of your explanation for doing poorly in New Hampshire and Nevada is that they aren’t representative. Plus, and as Micah said, Nevada is actually more representative of the Democratic Party than South Carolina. And 13 percent of the 2016 caucus electorate was black, according to the entrance polls, so if Biden’s pitch is I can win over black voters and build a diverse coalition, a lot is on the line for him there.

micah: Yeah, and as Geoffrey Skelley has written, Biden has lost a lot of support since Iowa and New Hampshire — among people of all races but also black voters. In other words, black voters aren’t some kind of special firewall for Biden.

So if Biden claws some of that back, it would help him in Nevada as well as South Carolina.

IDK, I just feel like this is a moment in the campaign when we might see a ton of volatility.

clare.malone: And if he loses South Carolina he might have to drop out.

Just sayin’

perry: I think Super Tuesday is so close now that I don’t think any candidate should drop out.

Early voting is already happening in some of those states. I’m not predicting what Biden will do, but he should not drop out after South Carolina if Super Tuesday is three days later.

micah: Biden could finish fourth in Nevada and lose in South Carolina and drop out and that would not at all surprise me.

Biden could win Nevada (or finish in a strong second), run away with South Carolina and be leading in national polls by the time we reach Super Tuesday, and that would not surprise me.

clare.malone: But I think if Biden can’t prove viability in South Carolina, it would be pretty humiliating.

perry: So in most of these states and the Democratic primary overall, I think the plurality of voters are white voters who do not support Sanders. So I think Micah is right — that speaks to the potential volatility of the race.

Super Tuesday has a lot of states with black/Latino populations larger than Iowa and New Hampshire, but still some states where it’s not that high. That’s why I think a Buttigieg or Klobuchar can win, say, Virginia if they perform well among college-educated white voters in particular and white voters overall.

sarahf: But if, as you say, Perry, there is a plurality of white voters who are on Team Anyone But Sanders, wouldn’t it behoove someone from the moderate lane who had disappointing finishes in Nevada and South Carolina to drop out? I wouldn’t put it past at least someone dropping out after Nevada.

Is that misguided?

perry: I don’t know what you get from dropping out.

micah: This isn’t based on anything in particular, but I would expect a couple dropouts before Super Tuesday.

You get to avoid humiliation.

sarahf: Also, potentially you avoid a messy contested convention, which I think has to factor into some of this? Or, if the storyline that many party insiders oppose his nomination is to be believed, I can imagine some members of the party pressuring candidates to drop out so there can be an alternative to Sanders.

micah: I think that’s right.

perry: If the moderate lane was coordinating to avoid Sanders winning, yes, one or two of them should drop out. Bloomberg’s campaign sent out a memo yesterday saying exactly that. It would be smart for some moderate bigwig (like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi) to encourage this.

micah: This is why I think the Nevada debate wasn’t great for Sanders. I thought Sanders had a fine debate on Wednesday night. Certainly we would expect his support to at the very least not go down. But he was leading in Nevada and rising in South Carolina and leading in a lot of Super Tuesday states.

The BLOOMBERG BOMBS storyline just introduces a ton of potential volatility — particularly in terms of how the moderate lane does or does not consolidate — and because the status quo was pretty great for Bernie. Volatility is potentially bad for him.

But maybe the party won’t actually move to fight a Sanders nomination.

perry: At this point, I just don’t see a lot of evidence that the moderate lane candidates are being realistic about their chances or are focused on boosting one member of that group, as opposed to themselves.

micah: It’s certainly hard to imagine Buttigieg and Klobuchar and Bloomberg cooperating with each other at the moment!

perry: The big question is whether that has to happen before Super Tuesday.

What the Bloomberg people were saying is that the coordination needs to happen now.

micah: Mathematically it kinda does, right?

sarahf: What is it, 38 percent of delegates are awarded by then?

perry: Like of course Klobuchar drops out after Super Tuesday, but they need her to drop out now.

sarahf: I think there is an incentive for moderate Democrats who are hand wringing over Sanders to consolidate ASAP.

micah: Yeah. This is why our forecast has such a high chance of no one winning a majority of pledged delegates:

sarahf: To bring it home … does this mean Nevada might actually be really important this year? It feels as if the media often kind of skips over Nevada in preparation for South Carolina.

perry: If Nevada results in one of these candidates packing it in, then yes, it matters.

clare.malone: It matters more because of the failures of the earlier states.

The field is just muddled in this way that feels unusual.

micah: It is unusual!

perry: Sanders winning three states in a row will be big no matter what. And another candidate winning Nevada would be huge. So I think Nevada matters hugely.

[protytwo]

You Too Can Join an APA by Jay Zilber

They've been around for over a hundred years, long before organized comics fans (or science-fiction fans) were around to adopt them. So it's a little odd that amateur press associations—apas for short—are still so little known. They survive to this day almost solely on the strength of word-of-mouth publicity, for in all this time there have been few serious attempts to bring this unique form of communication to the attention of mainstream fandom.

Apas have always had a difficult time getting publicity, partly because they are, indeed, so little known. They're not commercial endeavors, so they are never advertised. And though some apas may get an occasional short plug in a fanzine column here or there, these plugs don't tend to generate much interest because apas just can't be explained in a kernel of information 25 words or less. Apas can fulfill different purposes for different people, and at least seven definitions come to mind:

1.         Apas are limited-circulation fanzines; in order to receive a copy, one must also be an active contributor to the apa.

2.         Apas are the next-best thing to a comics convention, a fannish social get-together on paper.

3.         Apas are the underground fan press, free of the "commercial" restraints and limitations of mainstream, high-circulation slick fanzines.

4.         Apas are a system of centralizing correspondence which makes it possible to keep in touch with a large number of other fans at the same time.

5.         Apas are an outlet for creativity and self-indulgence. They are an invaluable learning tool, through which one can develop writing, drawing and editing skills. They provide built-in feedback and constructive criticism on such creative endeavors.

6.         Apas are where the old, tired fans go as an alternative to total gafiation.* And often, they are where the old, tired pros go for relaxation from their professional writing.

7.         Apas defy clear-cut categorization in technical terms. Communication studies break down all media into two categories: mass media and interpersonal media. A mass medium—such as television, film, books, or this magazine—is a one-way system in which the Communicator sends a message to a group of Receivers, a large mass audience. If that audience wishes to relay their comments or reactions about this article to its author, they're met with various obstacles; they usually can't go back through the original medium and write their own article (or publish their own magazine) in order to make their reaction known. The obstacles are not insurmountable—hence, letters columns—but the original Communicator can get no direct or immediate feedback from his mass audience. That would require the use of a two-way system, an interpersonal medium (such as the telephone or, in the case of face-to-face dialogue, air), with which both parties have the opportunity to be both Communicators and Receivers in turn.

 INSIDE THE APA

 Obviously, there are many reasons for the appeal of apas; each member has his or her own individual attraction for being an active "apan," and the contents of an apa mailing is a mixed bag that reflects this diversity. CAPA-alpha was the first—and still one of the best—comics apas, and any recent mailing of CAPA-alpha showcases the full spectrum of what apas are all about:

Some members of CAPA-alpha (abbreviated K-a for esoteric reasons) are accomplished fan artists; they contribute superb illustrations and clever graphics, including a good deal of spectacular work that gives new life to the downtrodden "ditto" medium, imaginatively taking advantage of the so-called limitations of spirit duplicating. Other members are still learning the techniques of the craft; their inexperience betrays their enthusiasm and their work pales in comparison.

There is considerable discussion in K-a of all aspects of comics and comics fandom: behind-the-scenes news, reviews, indexes, speculations and such. Much of this discussion is insightful and well-informed, and some of it is insubstantial and short-sighted at best.

But comics are only a starting point—the discussion and commentary naturally spills over into related areas of science fiction, movies, television and home video recording, personal computers, and all areas of popular arts and culture. Personal trials, traumas and tribulations are also given much attention; some members use K-a as a sort of diary in order to sort out their thoughts and feelings about current events in their lives, and their hopes for the future.

Occasionally, there is original fiction or comic strips that range from brilliant on down. A good deal of purely self-indulgent or experimental material is run through the apa, for, should a member want to try out some new creative ideas, there may be nowhere else to put it on display. While self-indulgence is not necessarily encouraged, it is certainly tolerated for the most part—at least until someone's material becomes completely unintelligible and he is no longer communicating but talking to himself.

For some, the bylaws and politics of K-a itself take an overwhelming prominence in their apazines, and new meaning is given to the concept, "the medium is the message."

There is fannish news, rumor and gossip, there are special group projects and collaborative one-shots, there are comics convention reports that alternate between truthful accounting of fact and wildly exaggerated nonsense. There are in-jokes of the sort that simply aren't the least bit funny outside of the apa's membership (and even among the membership they aren't funny except at four in the morning).

This is the stuff that apas are made of—all this and more. There is no pay or compensation except in terms of personal fulfillment. Apas reflect every stage of fannishness, from the wide-eyed neophyte to the burnt-out gafiate. Apas are networks of communication and life-long friendships that never have developed in any other way. They are an integral part of the universe of fandom… but to truly understand the attraction of belonging to an apa, one must experience it first-hand.

The mechanics of apas are fairly simple, though they may at first seem confusing to the uninitiated. Since each apa has slightly different policies, I will continue to use CAPA-alpha as a useful prototype.

In order to join K-a, a would-be member starts by sending an initial fee of $3.00 to the current Central Mailer. Some apas require new members to be sponsored or voted into membership; this is not the case with K-a, but full membership still does not come right away. As a matter of practical logistics, K-a has a size limit of 40 members and presently has a modest waitlist. A new would-be member is sent a sample copy of the current K-a mailing and his name is placed at the bottom of the waitlist. Membership turnover may be slow; it may be several months, possibly a year or more, before a slot opens up for him. In the meantime, waitlisters may contribute to the apa as though they were already members, but can only purchase copies of mailings when they are at least three months old—and then, only if sufficient extra copies remain available.

At length, the patient waitlister is invited to join the apa. In order to attain membership, he must now produce an apazine; K-a requires that members contribute at least four pages of original material to every third mailing. (This is the minimum required activity, or "minac," to use the inside jargon; of course, one may contribute more often and in greater volume, as in fact most CAPA-alphans do.) The new member is responsible for printing his apazine, or arranging for its printing; he must deliver 50 collated and stapled copies of his zine to the Central Mailer by the stated deadline (usually the first day of each month) and keep his postage account in the black. If he fails to meet minac, copycount, finances or deadline, he risks being dropped from membership, though extensions are sometimes granted under extraordinary circumstances.

The Central Mailer is elected annually; he is a member of K-a who, in return for only the real or imagined glamor or ego-boosting the post has to offer, has opted to take on the tremendous responsibility of seeing that the mechanics of the apa remain well-oiled and that the mailings come out on time. He manages the apa's business and finances; he organizes the apazines as they arrive in the mail from the 40-odd members and waitlisters around the country, collates their stacks of apazines into 50 identical volumes that contain one copy of each zine, publishes the apa's Official Organ, and mails the bound copies of the mailing to the entire membership.

All this is much more work than can be suggested in the time it takes to describe it, and it's why most apas have a membership size limit; otherwise, the work of managing K-a would increase to the point where it would have to be a salaried full-time job.

After its long, torturous trek through the Postal Service, the member finally receives his copy of the mailing and reads it with all due enthusiasm. Perhaps he jots down some notes as he reacts to someone else's comments that he wants to discuss in his next apazine. The cycle continues every month, as it has with only one interruption since K-a's first mailing in October, 1964.

WHERE IT ALL STARTED

 Actually, the concept of the amateur press association goes as far back as the late 19th Century—long before comics or SF fandom existed—with the formation of the National Amateur Press Association (NAPA) and other "mundane" amateur journalism spas. NAPA was founded in 1876 and was originally seen as a sort of training ground for professional journalists. Indeed, many early amateurs did "graduate" to become professionals, and the Association saw this as the most defensible role for NAPA.

At the outset, the inner workings of the original apa were worlds away from the present-day fannish version. In this early concept of NAPA, members were loosely organized by a constitution drawn up at a national NAPA convention, but the gist of it was that members were simply instructed to send copies of their amateur journals and publications to one another.

NAPA only began to evolve into the more modern concept of apas because of the lack of cooperation from the United States Post Office. NAPA's organizers had tried to get their individual amateur journals declared eligible for Second Class mailing privileges without success. As an alternative, they established a centralized mailing bureau; any interested publisher could send their journals to the bureau manager, who would in turn distribute them in bundles to the Association members. Some took advantage of this service, while others continued as before to send their publications directly to one another. As a result, these "private" mailings were not always fully distributed to the entire membership, and only the most active members could expect to receive both the privately-mailed, limited-circulation magazines and the centrally-distributed bundles. NAPA did not even actually require members to publish anything at all, so that an interested but inactive member might receive only the bundles.

This separation of active and non-active members brought about a bizarre class separation of amateur publishers. NAPA also encountered a number of other problems during its formative years; its members rarely used their journals to communicate with one another, and many would-be publishers experienced difficulty in purchasing or gaining access to a handset letterpress, the most commonly-accepted method for printing member-journals at the time. It was this stumbling block that made it impossible to establish a "minac" requirement that all members be active publishers. Yet the notion of a new kind of apa persisted, an apa in which every member was a participant.

Oddly enough, the link between mundane and fannish Amateur Press Associations was provided by no less a personage than H.P. Lovecraft himself. Lovecraft became involved in amateur journalism as a youth, and joined one of NAPA's rivals, the United Amateur Press Association (UAPA) in 1914, and then NAPA itself three years later (for both of which he served several terms as president). SF (then-)fan Donald Wollheim learned of the mundane apas through Lovecraft in the mid-1930s, shortly before Lovecraft's untimely death in 1937. By most recountings, Wollheim saw apas as a useful solution to the problem of keeping up with fanzine trading and a method of reducing postage as well, and promptly joined the National and United Apas. With help from some of the other major SF fans of the time, he then founded FAPA, the Fantasy Amateur Press Association. July 1937 saw the first tiny, 42-page bundle of fanzines, still bearing little resemblance to any modern-day apa. But it was only three months later, in FAPA's second mailing, that two of its members introduced what later became the life-blood of contemporary apas: mailing comments.

Quite simply, mailing comments are the inclusion in members' apazines of comments on the previous mailing. It was the solution to the noted lack of communication within mundane apas; prior to the mailing comments in FAPA, discussion of topics raised in one another's publications was almost nonexistent. Mailing comments provided a sense of continuity from mailing to mailing, and brought about a degree of group spirit and camaraderie among members never before conceived. More than merely exchanging fanzines, apa members now exchanged ideas; rather than just absorbing information, they were now encouraged to think about and react to what their fellow members had to say.

Additionally, FAPA promoted the notion of substance over style; inexpensively mimeographed or spirit-duplicated contributions were not discouraged but actually taken for granted to be the most sensible printing method for a low-circulation apazine, and this made it practical and affordable for every member to contribute. Unique, innovative and successful in everything it set out to achieve, FAPA became the model for most of its followers and imitators in SF fandom, and eventually for its second cousin, comics fandom.

*Gafiation (n), a common fannish buzzword from the root "gafia," an acronym for "Getting Away From It All."

  Mark Evanier contributed the left cover to Capa-Alpha's 200th mailing, while in 1971, Wendy Fletcher was an active apa fan. She now concentrates on Elfquest as Wendy Pini.

A young Frank Miller contributed to apas and this sample page shows, even then, a sense of design and drama that has since matured into some the finest comics work done today.

NOTE: This article was first published in the March 1983 Comics Scene magazine. Comics APAs were very big back in the Seventies and Eighties. These days, surviving APAs are very unlikely to have a full membership and there isn’t any waiting period before a fan is invited to participate and join the membership roster.

[orbemnews]

Arizona Republican lawmakers join GOP efforts to target voting, with nearly two dozen restrictive voting measures A handful of the bills — including two that would impose new restrictions on Arizona’s popular vote-by-mail system and one that would limit its narrow voting window — have gained momentum and could pass. They are part of a push by Republican-controlled legislatures in several states to advocate for strict new voting laws in response to Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. There are more than 250 bills in circulation nationwide, according to the most recent tally by the Brennan Center, an unprecedented nationwide effort to roll back voter access. The list of states includes Georgia and Texas, two other states with increasingly diverse electorates where Democrats have made recent gains, and Iowa, where Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a new law that makes it harder to vote early. Nearly two dozen bills that would restrict voting were introduced in Arizona this year, and several have advanced in recent weeks. The latest came Wednesday, when a state House committee approved a bill that would turn the state’s permanent early voting list into one that drops those who skip consecutive election cycles. The list, created with bipartisan support in 2007, now features 3.2 million people who use it to receive their ballots by mail for each election and has helped spur a shift that resulted in about 80% of the state’s votes being cast by mail. And on Monday, the state Senate approved a bill that would require voters to submit identification paperwork with their mailed-in ballots. Instead of the state’s current system of matching signatures on ballot envelopes with voters’ signatures on file, those voting by mail would need to provide affidavits with their date of birth and driver’s license, state ID or tribal ID card number — or would need to include their voter registration number and a copy of a utility bill. The same forms of identification are already required for in-person votes in Arizona. That bill hasn’t yet been scheduled for a House committee vote. The Senate could also vote soon on a bill that would narrow Arizona’s early voting window, starting it five days later and ending it early by requiring ballots to be postmarked by the Thursday before Election Day. Under current law, ballots just have to arrive at the post office on Election Day. Those measures are part of a raft of new voting restrictions introduced at the start of this year’s legislative session in Phoenix. Other proposals, including one that would allow the legislature to overturn election results, have not advanced — but in statehouses, bills can sometimes be revived before legislatures adjourn for the year. In Arizona, the session will end by April 24. Taken together, Democrats and pro-voting rights groups say, the bills that Arizona Republicans are advancing have the effect of restricting the franchise, particularly for marginalized communities. “They are trying to make it harder for everyone to vote based on the hope and desire that the people who it harms more and who it disenfranchises more are the people less likely to vote Republican,” said state Rep. Athena Salman, a Tempe Democrat and member of the Arizona House Government and Elections Committee. Pointing to Republicans’ losses in Arizona’s last two Senate races, the 2020 presidential election and the GOP’s narrow state legislative majorities, Salman said: “The only way that they can hold onto control is if they make it harder for people to vote so that they can get an unfair and potentially unconstitutional competitive advantage.” The bill that would remove some voters from the state’s list of those who are automatically sent mail-in ballots each election was the subject of a contentious committee hearing Wednesday. SB 1485, which has already passed the state Senate and now heads to the full House, would have the state send notices to people who are on the permanent early voting list but have not participated in the last four elections — so, the 2018 primaries and midterm election and the 2020 primaries and election — asking if they want to continue to receive ballots. Those who do not respond would be removed. Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, the Scottsdale Republican who sponsored the measure, said it is a “clean-up bill” to ensure ballots are not being created for and mailed to those who have moved, died or don’t want them. “On its face, it would make sense that you would want to reduce opportunities for fraud, undo influence, manipulation. That should be something that we all agree on, right?” she said. “Allowing voters to sign up in perpetuity does increase the opportunity for things to go wrong.” Rep. John Kavanagh, a Fountain Hills Republican who chairs the Government and Elections Committee that advanced Ugenti-Rita’s measure on a party-line vote Wednesday, said GOP lawmakers are concerned about what happens to ballots automatically sent to people who have moved or have died. He acknowledged that the concerns about those ballots being cast fraudulently are “anecdotal, because obviously if nobody’s there and they throw it away, you wouldn’t know. And if nobody’s there and they vote it and do a good duplicate of the signature, you wouldn’t know.” “There’s a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans,” Kavanagh said. “Democrats value as many people as possible voting, and they’re willing to risk fraud. Republicans are more concerned about fraud, so we don’t mind putting security measures in that won’t let everybody vote — but everybody shouldn’t be voting.” He pointed to Democrats’ emphasis on registering voters and pursuing those who have not returned ballots — tactics that Republicans have successfully implemented in other swing states — and said doing so means that “you can greatly influence the outcome of the election if one side pays people to actively and aggressively go out and retrieve those ballots.” “Not everybody wants to vote, and if somebody is uninterested in voting, that probably means that they’re totally uninformed on the issues,” Kavanagh said. “Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes, as well.” The Arizona bills are only a fraction of the more than 250 pieces of legislation that would restrict voting that were introduced in state legislatures this year, according to a tally from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. Arizona is second only to Georgia in the number of bills to implement new voting restrictions introduced this year, said Eliza Sweren-Becker, voting rights and elections counsel at the Brennan Center. “It is at the top of the heap of states that are trying to restrict voting access,” she said. “The magnitude of restrictive voting bills that we’re seeing in both of those states is a reflection of the anxiety around the browning of America.” Alex Gulotta, the Arizona state director of All Voting is Local, said hearings like Wednesday’s reveal the “privilege of the suburban legislators” who assume everyone has easy access to the documents proposals advancing this year would make necessary, and fail to take into account the limited internet access rural areas and some of the state’s Native American communities face. Pointing to the bill that would require voters to submit ID with their mail-in ballots, he said some people will have their votes invalidated if they forget or are unable to send a printed form with their driver’s license. Those who don’t have licenses would need to know how to find their voter identification number, and then overcome anxiety about sending a copy of a utility bill or bank statement with their ballots. “To expect that people will be able to get these documents, print them out or make a copy of them and then include and feel comfortable including them in with their ballot envelope and still expect that their ballot is secret — that’s a real challenge,” Gulotta said. “And it really undermines vote by mail in a really meaningful way.” Source link Orbem News #Arizona #Arizonaatcenterofvoting-rightsfightasRepublicanlawmakersadvancerestrictivenewmeasures-CNNPolitics #dozen #efforts #GOP #join #lawmakers #measures #Politics #Republican #restrictive #Target #Voting

[dipulb3]

Arizona Republican lawmakers join GOP efforts to target voting, with nearly two dozen restrictive voting measures

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/arizona-republican-lawmakers-join-gop-efforts-to-target-voting-with-nearly-two-dozen-restrictive-voting-measures/

Arizona Republican lawmakers join GOP efforts to target voting, with nearly two dozen restrictive voting measures

A handful of the bills — including two that would impose new restrictions on Arizona’s popular vote-by-mail system and one that would limit its narrow voting window — have gained momentum and could pass.

They are part of a push by Republican-controlled legislatures in several states to advocate for strict new voting laws in response to Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. There are more than 250 bills in circulation nationwide, according to the most recent tally by the Brennan Center, an unprecedented nationwide effort to roll back voter access. The list of states includes Georgia and Texas, two other states with increasingly diverse electorates where Democrats have made recent gains, and Iowa, where Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a new law that makes it harder to vote early.

Nearly two dozen bills that would restrict voting were introduced in Arizona this year, and several have advanced in recent weeks.

The latest came Wednesday, when a state House committee approved a bill that would turn the state’s permanent early voting list into one that drops those who skip consecutive election cycles. The list, created with bipartisan support in 2007, now features 3.2 million people who use it to receive their ballots by mail for each election and has helped spur a shift that resulted in about 80% of the state’s votes being cast by mail.

And on Monday, the state Senate approved a bill that would require voters to submit identification paperwork with their mailed-in ballots. Instead of the state’s current system of matching signatures on ballot envelopes with voters’ signatures on file, those voting by mail would need to provide affidavits with their date of birth and driver’s license, state ID or tribal ID card number — or would need to include their voter registration number and a copy of a utility bill. The same forms of identification are already required for in-person votes in Arizona. That bill hasn’t yet been scheduled for a House committee vote.

The Senate could also vote soon on a bill that would narrow Arizona’s early voting window, starting it five days later and ending it early by requiring ballots to be postmarked by the Thursday before Election Day. Under current law, ballots just have to arrive at the post office on Election Day.

Those measures are part of a raft of new voting restrictions introduced at the start of this year’s legislative session in Phoenix. Other proposals, including one that would allow the legislature to overturn election results, have not advanced — but in statehouses, bills can sometimes be revived before legislatures adjourn for the year. In Arizona, the session will end by April 24.

Taken together, Democrats and pro-voting rights groups say, the bills that Arizona Republicans are advancing have the effect of restricting the franchise, particularly for marginalized communities.

“They are trying to make it harder for everyone to vote based on the hope and desire that the people who it harms more and who it disenfranchises more are the people less likely to vote Republican,” said state Rep. Athena Salman, a Tempe Democrat and member of the Arizona House Government and Elections Committee.

Pointing to Republicans’ losses in Arizona’s last two Senate races, the 2020 presidential election and the GOP’s narrow state legislative majorities, Salman said: “The only way that they can hold onto control is if they make it harder for people to vote so that they can get an unfair and potentially unconstitutional competitive advantage.”

The bill that would remove some voters from the state’s list of those who are automatically sent mail-in ballots each election was the subject of a contentious committee hearing Wednesday.

SB 1485, which has already passed the state Senate and now heads to the full House, would have the state send notices to people who are on the permanent early voting list but have not participated in the last four elections — so, the 2018 primaries and midterm election and the 2020 primaries and election — asking if they want to continue to receive ballots. Those who do not respond would be removed.

Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, the Scottsdale Republican who sponsored the measure, said it is a “clean-up bill” to ensure ballots are not being created for and mailed to those who have moved, died or don’t want them.

“On its face, it would make sense that you would want to reduce opportunities for fraud, undo influence, manipulation. That should be something that we all agree on, right?” she said. “Allowing voters to sign up in perpetuity does increase the opportunity for things to go wrong.”

Rep. John Kavanagh, a Fountain Hills Republican who chairs the Government and Elections Committee that advanced Ugenti-Rita’s measure on a party-line vote Wednesday, said GOP lawmakers are concerned about what happens to ballots automatically sent to people who have moved or have died.

He acknowledged that the concerns about those ballots being cast fraudulently are “anecdotal, because obviously if nobody’s there and they throw it away, you wouldn’t know. And if nobody’s there and they vote it and do a good duplicate of the signature, you wouldn’t know.”

“There’s a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans,” Kavanagh said. “Democrats value as many people as possible voting, and they’re willing to risk fraud. Republicans are more concerned about fraud, so we don’t mind putting security measures in that won’t let everybody vote — but everybody shouldn’t be voting.”

He pointed to Democrats’ emphasis on registering voters and pursuing those who have not returned ballots — tactics that Republicans have successfully implemented in other swing states — and said doing so means that “you can greatly influence the outcome of the election if one side pays people to actively and aggressively go out and retrieve those ballots.”

“Not everybody wants to vote, and if somebody is uninterested in voting, that probably means that they’re totally uninformed on the issues,” Kavanagh said. “Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes, as well.”

The Arizona bills are only a fraction of the more than 250 pieces of legislation that would restrict voting that were introduced in state legislatures this year, according to a tally from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

Arizona is second only to Georgia in the number of bills to implement new voting restrictions introduced this year, said Eliza Sweren-Becker, voting rights and elections counsel at the Brennan Center.

“It is at the top of the heap of states that are trying to restrict voting access,” she said. “The magnitude of restrictive voting bills that we’re seeing in both of those states is a reflection of the anxiety around the browning of America.”

Alex Gulotta, the Arizona state director of All Voting is Local, said hearings like Wednesday’s reveal the “privilege of the suburban legislators” who assume everyone has easy access to the documents proposals advancing this year would make necessary, and fail to take into account the limited internet access rural areas and some of the state’s Native American communities face.

Pointing to the bill that would require voters to submit ID with their mail-in ballots, he said some people will have their votes invalidated if they forget or are unable to send a printed form with their driver’s license. Those who don’t have licenses would need to know how to find their voter identification number, and then overcome anxiety about sending a copy of a utility bill or bank statement with their ballots.

“To expect that people will be able to get these documents, print them out or make a copy of them and then include and feel comfortable including them in with their ballot envelope and still expect that their ballot is secret — that’s a real challenge,” Gulotta said. “And it really undermines vote by mail in a really meaningful way.”

[techcrunchappcom]

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/how-republican-senators-account-for-the-trump-presidency-the-new-yorker/

How Republican Senators Account for the Trump Presidency - The New Yorker

If you’re interested in how Republican politicians are talking about Donald Trump in the end phase of his first term and perhaps his Presidency, one good place to look is to the campaigns of the ten Republican senators who are least likely to be reëlected—most of whom represent states that the President won comfortably four years ago. Judging from current polling in those politicians’ races, the Democrats may well gain control of the Senate: they need to pick up only two or three of the vulnerable Republican seats, in Arizona, Colorado, Maine, North Carolina, South Carolina, Iowa, Montana, Alaska, and Georgia (where two Republican seats are being tightly contested). In the past week, I watched eight of those senators’ debates, which had a throwback tinge to them: the television graphics were boxy and dated, the questions excellent, and the candidates nimbler than you might expect. Politicians are charming people who have been operating under a spell of charmlessness for a decade, roughly since Mitch McConnell made it obvious that he was on a mission to thwart the Obama Administration and a mood of wartime enmity suffused the capital. But the more consequential anachronism of those Senate debates came from the Republican senators themselves, who generally acted as if Donald Trump were not the President and his policies were not the bedrocks of their party—as if, once he leaves office, the dials could be turned back to their 2011 settings and the decade could begin again.

The 2020 drumbeat, for Republicans, has been to warn of an ascendent socialism. “You put Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Joe Biden in charge of Washington, you’ll see a federal takeover of the health-care system,” Steve Daines, of Montana, said, in a recent debate against his Democratic opponent, Governor Steve Bullock. But you don’t hear much about immigration, or trade, or any of the other issues that have defined Trump’s Presidency. The longer I watched the Senate debates, the more I found myself rewinding the footage to scan through the Republican candidates’ responses. Surely they’d mentioned the President, and somehow I’d missed it? But often they just hadn’t. In late September, Joni Ernst, the Republican senator from Iowa, made it through an hour-long debate with her Democratic challenger, a real-estate executive named Theresa Greenfield, without mentioning Trump by name. When asked directly about the Times revelations that the President, while living a billionaire’s life, had paid just seven hundred and fifty dollars to the federal government in annual income taxes, Ernst redirected. “Many years ago, I echoed the call for the President to release his tax returns,” she said. “But, bottom line, we would love to see lower taxes for everybody, including all of our hardworking Americans.”

I was watching on YouTube, and in the comments alongside the debate I could see the essentially erratic character of 2020 politics unfolding: viewers were talking about Hunter Biden or “Putin’s puppet” (Hillary Clinton’s most lasting epithet for the President), or exclaiming “TRUMP TRAIN!” On Twitter the Ernst-Greenfield debate didn’t register, which has fit the pattern; the Senate debates have been noticed only when someone declared them a rout. But what I saw in the sedate PBS studio where the Ernst-Greenfield debate was held, with Iowa’s veteran political columnist David Yepsen at the helm, was two capable candidates calmly advancing the basic positions of their parties: taxes should be higher, or lower; billionaires should get a smaller share of the spoils, or about the same amount; the Supreme Court was bound to dissolve Roe v. Wade, or it wasn’t. No one owned anyone. Beneath the madness of Presidential politics, the parties were moving at their usual rate, that of tectonic plates, and the only reasonable posture was to sit at your listening station like a geologist, headphones securely over your ears, waiting for the infinitesimal movement of a needle.

Now and then, there was some movement. I’d been particularly interested to watch John Cornyn, the three-term senator from Texas. A sixty-eight-year-old former judge with a long face and a formal manner, Cornyn is Mitch McConnell’s No. 2 and arguably the closest thing the Republican Party has to a tectonic plate. He had seemed to luck out when Beto O’Rourke declined to challenge him, leaving him with a little-known opponent, a former military-helicopter pilot named M. J. Hegar. But Hegar turned out to be effective. When, in an October 9th debate, Cornyn accused Hegar of “tacitly” endorsing police defunding, she spat out, “I never do anything tacitly—I’m not a tacit person,” and then kept muttering about it under her breath. She’s charming! Cornyn can be charming, too, in a courtly way, but he couldn’t quite get around to it because of all the time he had to spend furrowing his brow and reassuring Texans that things were not quite as bad as they appeared.

Midway through the debate, Cornyn got a simple, telling question from the moderator, the excellent Gromer Jeffers, of the Dallas Morning News: Could he name a single way in which he had positively affected the lives of ordinary Texans, in his eighteen years in the Senate? Cornyn nodded his long face, and told a story about the aftermath of a mass shooting, in Sutherland Springs, Texas, in 2017, when an Air Force veteran, who should have been prohibited from owning firearms because of a domestic-violence-related bad-conduct discharge, entered a church and killed twenty-six people. Cornyn said, “It occurred because someone who should never have been able to get their hands on a firearm, a convicted felon, was able to bypass the background-check system because the Air Force had not uploaded those names.” Cornyn recounted that, four days after the shooting, he introduced a bill that passed with bipartisan majorities, which closed a loophole in gun background checks. Cornyn said that “the Attorney General has now made the point in just six months; six million more people’s names are on the background-check system” to keep arms out of the hands of “dangerous criminals.” A bell rang, signalling that Cornyn’s time had expired; it had the feeling of a record scratch. Wait, what? One of the half-dozen most powerful Republicans in the country, a staunch ally of the National Rifle Association, was being asked to describe how he had improved the lives of ordinary people in the most powerful conservative state in the country, and his best case was that he had strengthened background checks? What had he been doing all this time? Maybe that was the trouble. The Senate’s agenda, focussed on mollifying Trump and confirming judges and cutting taxes for the highest earners, didn’t offer much to, as Jeffers had put it, “ordinary Texans.”

For five years, Republicans have been wearily answering (or, more often, dodging) the question of whether they support President Trump. But in this election they are being asked a deeper question, too, about what they have actually delivered during this decade of steady conservative ascendance. Across the debates, I could hear the backbeat of “Montana values” and “Arizona values” and the regular cymbal crash of “conservative judges,” but there was no melody. After watching Cornyn and Hegar’s debate, I clicked over to a recent Cornyn ad on YouTube. It features a middle-aged schoolteacher, with blond hair and caring eyes, passing out papers to students while praising the senator for having helped to deliver federal funds to public schools so that they could reopen safely. Cornyn then appears, nodding thoughtfully, with a mask emblazoned with the Texas state flag covering the lower half of his face. Texas is changing, in ways that Cornyn is wise to genuflect toward, and this election has the look of a blue wave. But, at the end of four years of largely unchecked conservative political power, Cornyn has neither a Trumpian case to make for his own reëlection nor a more traditional conservative one. The background checks, the money for schools—he was simply arguing for the reliability of a longtime incumbent.

The most touted contest right now, and among the best-funded, is taking place in South Carolina, where the Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is in a close race with Jaime Harrison, the forty-four-year-old associate chairman of the Democratic National Committee. In the last quarter, Harrison raised fifty-seven million dollars, mostly from liberals outside the state; with Kelly and Sara Gideon, in Maine, he is one of three Democratic candidates this cycle to raise more money in a quarter than anyone running for the Senate ever had before. Like Graham, Harrison is an obviously talented politician—he is especially good at concisely telling the stories of ordinary South Carolinians, some from his own family, and using them to point out how little Republican representatives have done to help them. But the candidates’ lone debate, on October 3rd, was most interesting because Graham, unlike most other members of his party, did not run from the President. “I think President Trump has done a good job. He rebuilt our military, he’s cut our taxes, he’s getting trade deals, he’s securing our border,” Graham said, and then tacked on the Party line. “This race is about capitalism versus socialism, conservative judges versus liberal judges, law and order versus chaos.”

The trouble for Graham was that Harrison kept also making the debate about South Carolina, and about how little Republicans had done to help alleviate suffering there, from the disastrous response to the coronavirus to the ideological refusal to accept the Obama Administration’s offer to expand Medicaid in the state. Graham countered by insisting that he knew suffering: his relatives, he kept emphasizing, worked in the textile mills. “I get it. We’re all one car wreck away from needing help,” Graham said. Many Republican incumbents have expressed worry about lockdowns suppressing the economy; Graham mentioned other side effects of the pandemic, too: “Alcoholism is up. Domestic violence.” He did not win the debate, but he also sounded like he wasn’t pretending.

Graham is in many ways a signal figure of the Republican Party, because, rather than represent a single faction, he has, at different times, represented all of them. From shortly after his election to the Senate, in 2002, he was mainly known as John McCain’s plainspoken sidekick, and joined McCain as part of the Gang of Eight pushing for immigration reform in 2012, telling his party’s Convention that year that “we’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.” But, after Trump’s election, Graham became a prominent backer of the President’s agenda, a transformation that culminated in a fiery partisan display during Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings. As Jess Bidgood put it recently in a sharp profile of Graham in the Boston Globe, “the story of Graham’s vulnerability in a state he has represented in Congress since 1995 begins not with the left but with his persistent problems on the right—which he attempted to tamp down once and for all through his alliance with Trump.”

Even if you could somehow exclude Trump, and the complications of making alliances with him, the Party’s future no longer looks much like its past. Those Republicans who seem most likely to run for President in 2024—among them Tom Cotton, Nikki Haley, Josh Hawley, and Marco Rubio—have all oriented themselves to a party that is now dominated by white voters without college degrees, and by what Hawley has described as anti-cosmopolitanism. If one of these politicians does end up leading the Party, then it will have something to do with how establishment conservatives used their power during the Trump era: to impose tax cuts that exacerbated inequality and weakened the economy, and to undermine a health-care policy that Americans increasingly support and rely on. That has left the Republicans—even the Party’s central politicians—without much to brag about after years in charge. Once again, Gromer Jeffers, the journalist who moderated the Texas debate, saw it clearly. He put up a graphic from a recent poll of the state in which a strikingly large proportion of respondents had no opinion about Cornyn whatsoever. Jeffers asked the senator, “Why is it that nearly a quarter of Texans don’t know your name?”

Read More About the 2020 Election

[elamansworld]

IT'S A FAKE NEWS, BEWARE !

Advancement in technology has a great impact to journalism and it made possible to convey not only correct and important details but also spread deceitful, inaccurate and misleading information. It also pushes propaganda, sways elections, distort truth and worst is ruins lives. It is disheartening to think that we Filipinos are also creating fake news. To my fellow netizens, before even liking or sharing any news feed that pops up your social media, please think again because it spur unending cycle that makes it go viral which leads ofcourse in letting more people to be deceived with such information. Fake news are being spread through facebook (most often) which is the leading social media app that is being used by billions of people around the world. These fake news are designed to mislead and it is purposely created to persuade hence providing misinformation to all of us. And it may seem difficult to grasp that people can believe it despite how absurd or unrealistic the claims may be.

Fake news is a present threat not only to our country but to the whole world. It hacks the foundation of safety, security and justice with each day it is allowed to be spread. The more it is being shared and liked, the harder to tell fact from fiction and are liable for false beliefs and is more likely they are to believe that it is true. This becomes so disturbing since we are obviously influenced by what we read, and the fact that we lived in democratic country means that whatever we read influences how our nation is very run by the government.

With the current environment that we are right now, it is time for us to help one another not only to stop the spread of disease but to stop spreading fake news. It is difficult to admit but reality speaks for itself. Fake news spread like fire and majority can ascertain what is true from what is not . It appears that it is the most alarming disease- a type of cancer that is difficult to treat.

Indeed , it cannot be treated in an instant but if we take action then it can be prevented I encourage everyone to start being responsible in posting, liking and sharing news without verifying the legitimacy or the validity of information provided on your news feed. As a consumer, it is important to recognize our own inclination and to read or ponder news consciously. We can prevent ourselves from falling prey. Social media was the very caused of why fake news is growing and spreading so fast so we should also use thesame tool to stop it all at once.

How I say so? Remember that education is already being done online , students can be equipped as early as primary levels (elemantary) to look for truth and be cautious about being delude.

We tend , as culture to shield our youngest generation form the truth but it is also good for them to learn even at a very young age that not everyone they may encounter on their way is going to be honest or upright.

Lets stop fake news from conquering ou generation! Everyone should unite to fight fake news , our youth,our elders our present people not later, not tomorrow but starting TODAY

[ms-m-astrologer]

Pluto Pt 3 - Ouch, Dammit

“Life’s catastrophic experiences and the evil aspects of human nature weave together to produce a complex Plutonian whole. Where Pluto lies in the birth chart, we will be confronted with those difficult truths. And when Pluto passes through sensitive zones of the chart, they will rise up in our hearts and in our circumstances.” - Steven Forrest, The Book of Pluto, p. 3 (2nd Edition, 2012)

Indeed. Back in 2001, Pluto transitioning into my 2nd House coincided with my then-husband being fired (as an indirect consequence of 9/11), his subsequent refusal to find another job, and the financial effect it had on our family. And as I mentioned previously, Pluto moving from my 2nd to my 3rd House commenced with the deaths of two of my six siblings, eleven months apart to the day.

On a global scale: Pluto transitioned from Sagittarius to Capricorn in 2008. The US presidential election that year is obviously one of the headline events, but - there’s always a “but” - this year was also the beginning of the global Great Recession. And keep  in mind that the majority of people in the US hadn’t yet recovered from the post-9/11 recession.

It isn’t fashionable to criticize the US between 2008-2016, especially in light of the catastrophic evil that followed. Nevertheless, it’s interesting to realize how low the status quo has become. One-sixth of all US households with children in 2016, for example, live in what is called food insecurity - “these households were uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food,” per the USDA web site. How is this possible in “the greatest country in the world”?

And health insurance. People in the US (raises hand) have to set up GoFundMe pages to cover health care costs.

It’s easy to see the overall global tendency to “austerity” as a factor of Pluto/Capricorn. The oligarchs are gaining power (or being unmasked), and it’s “austerity” for the rest of us. (If current trends continue, my theory about Pluto/Aquarius is that robotics will become much more prevalent. After all, robots don’t call in sick or ask for a raise.)

Just lately, we’ve also seen light shone on the uglier side of the patriarchy, “thanks” to the exposure (Pluto!) of sexual predators in positions of power (Capricorn). I think Juno’s presence in Capricorn, conjunct Pluto, has been a factor in the exposure of that particular ugly underbelly. My hope is that people will begin to realize how racism and sexism, xenophobia, homophobia - ALL OF IT - is intrinsic to capitalism and patriarchy; and to take steps accordingly.

Something I have not seen written or talked about, is that at this particular juncture of time/space, transiting Pluto is travelling over the exact degrees of 1993’s Uranus-Neptune conjunctions. The whole cycle of Globalization has a couple of important prongs - the internet, and biotechnology. (Here’s a really amazing read about this.) Pluto going over these points shows that those two topics are undergoing an overhaul. With the internet in particular we’re faced with issues of privacy (Pluto) and government control (Capricorn).

I hear your plaintive cries of, “What’s all that got to do with little old me?” There are plenty of cliches I can call upon to answer that:

“As above, so below”

“Think globally, act locally”

“If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem”

Structure is important in our lives. The ruler of Capricorn, Saturn, has an astrological association with our skeleton and our skin - no one, I hope, would argue that skin and bones aren’t necessary! Pluto going through Capricorn, then, can be seen as some remedial surgery and physical therapy to the current structures. Where Pluto is transiting in your chart shows where these worldly goings-on affect you personally.

Remember, too, that Plutonian activity via transit is based on its natal position. That is: its place in your natal chart is the cause; where it transits is the action taken (or not) in response to that cause; the Scorpio house(s) arenas are where the results show up.

[djatoon]

I’m All Out of Love With Social Media

I’m all out of love with social media.

Nearly eleven years on Twitter, and even longer on Facebook, the whole experience now mostly saps my energy and erodes my empathy.

Firstly, Facebook is an utter mess. The timeline falls apart before your very eyes and you can’t track anything anyone says unless you go to their profile. The old(er) friends I have barely post anything these days, few engage in any discussion, and the only reason I still use it is to keep track on what’s happening amongst my local cycling crew and to occasionally enjoy the anniversary posts that pop-up. To make my use of the platform tolerable, I’ll be deleting the app from my iPad and iPhone, and will use the desktop version sparingly. I’m also going to withdraw from groups that are no longer of interest and now just create ‘noise’.

Twitter is the focus of this blog, though.

I’ve had enough.

I joined Twitter late in 2009, and slowly built-up my list of people to follow, and my own follower list also grew organically. Very soon, a decent number of people reached-out and we were having online conversations, and perhaps we learned a little about what sort of people we were, in addition to our shared interests. There was Stuart in Shropshire, Ken in the south-west, Chris in London, and Philip in the States. Old friends Peter, Robin, and Mark peppered my timeline with news and articles of mutual interest.

Twitter enabled (and still does enable) super-quick commentary on major events like football and politics, and just as quickly responses could be shared; some insightful, others controversial, funny and sarcastic too. I was part of a small network and, to me, it felt like a small community interested in learning more and contributing more to a whole series of debates. It was refreshing to ‘meet’ intelligent people online and regularly learning something new, and often an alternative viewpoint.

Then I began following the major (and also the not so established) news sources. A whole world of perspectives opened up. No longer was I just reading my go-to paper of the time The Guardian, but I was able to read alternative perspectives that I believe has made me a bit smarter (or at least made me understand issues better, and more dispassionately). Amongst my friends, I might also be considered a bit more ‘up to date’ (not surprising when you consider how many hours I spend (waste) on the platform).

Scott Adams talks often about ‘dopamine hits’, and I was getting them from constructing a smart tweet, getting into interesting debates, and basking in the approval suggested by ‘likes’ and ‘retweets’ of my own tweets. But almost all of that has now gone.

I follow too many sources, so much so that my timeline is over-full of opinions, mostly from people who clearly have little knowledge of the subject on which they’re opining, and don’t give a damn about their shortcomings. They’re usually hostile to any pushback, not only from me, but from anybody. The ‘debate’ component of twitter has all but disappeared. Everyone is seemingly in transmit mode.

Moreover, it has brought out some of the worst aspects of peoples’ personalities. I have witnessed the disappointing spectacle of a good friend becoming toxic on the platform. For that person, nuance has seemingly evaporated, and his timeline is full of bile towards his most-hated political ‘opponents’ and random strangers who do not share his political viewpoint. I know this person is intelligent, thoughtful, and mostly kind, but on Twitter he is a tiresome malcontent. He presumably doesn’t know I muted him ages ago.

But Twitter hasn’t always brought the best out of me either. Although I strenuously avoid outright hostility, I do use sarcasm more often than I should, and it’s unpleasant when I do so. It brings me no satisfaction. Nor that dopamine hit.

During these years of the Brexit vote, the election of Trump in the USA, and then of Boris Johnson in the UK, Twitter has descended into a shouting match of partisan certainties. You have to dig harder to find intelligent contributions that acknowledge complexity and the long path towards sustainable fixes to the problem de jour.

Twitter has been overtaken by activists, far too many of them employed in the ‘mainstream’ media. Of course, one positive is that Twitter has lifted the lid on what were once thought to be even-handed journalists. Using the influence that comes with their news platforms, they have become amongst the least-reliable and worst voices in any debate. I’m looking at you Beth Rigby, Robert Peston, Nick Robinson, Adam Bouton, and everyone at The Guardian. The newspapers are in financial trouble, people no longer rely on Sky News, the BBC, ITV, CNN, and others. They have become campaigners, and the problem with campaigners is that they are so sure of their righteous superioirty, they feel they don’t need to evaluate and present competing points of view. I blocked most of them some time ago.

Another group that have been found-out are politicians. The superficiality of their pronouncements, their lack of understanding of the fundamentals on which they offer their opinions (e.g. business, international trade), and their tweets that have so obviously gone through the Whips office before posting. And some of them are truly unhinged and stupid. There are barely any worth following, and so they’ve been added to the long list of people I’ve dumped in recent years. Still, the fools keep popping-up in my timeline as others share their asinine and vomit-inducing, virtue-signalling, drivel.

Despite all this, I still get an occasional dopamine hit – but almost exclusively from blocking idiots and advertisers. I’ve always hated ‘promoted tweets’ and, over the years, have amassed a blocked list of around 6,000 accounts who have spent money with Twitter. It’s not great, though. It really just shows I spend far too much time on the platform.

Twitter as a surrogate journal

It wasn’t long after I joined Twitter than I began to realise that it could potentially perform the function of a diary, or journal. Instead of regularly pausing to reflect and record my unfolding life, I could simply go back to any time in my Twitter timeline and see what had been going on, and what I’d been commenting on. Not a bad way to retain some interesting memories. But after a while, it became obvious that going back to old periods of activity to relive some experiences was all but impossible, and that Twitter is a ‘here and now’ platform, and deliberately designed that way. So, the idea of Twitter as journal appeared to bite the dust.

So, here I am in 2020, with 30,000 tweets, all of which are now worthless. Getting rid of them has become a priority, to cleanse my Twitter experience. And I’ve found a solution: I’ve downloaded my twitter data, and I can sort by time, search by topic, and retain my twitter content to be viewed later and offline. So, I’ve managed to do it. I have that journal. Those simpler times of ten years ago are now clearly visible. Now to refresh Twitter.

I’m going to delete my Twitter account completely and start again. I’ll use my record of who I’m following to select a much fewer number to follow again when I open a new account. My current habit (and it IS a habit) of going to Twitter for news morning, noon, and night is going to end. Instead I’m subscribing to a couple of reliable and non (or at least less) partisan sources, and I’m going for the ‘long-read’ experience again. I expect my book consumption will rise accordingly.

Well that’s it. I’m going to pop-up on Twitter again, but this time for the low-calorie experience. If anyone reads this and wants to reconnect via my new (yet to be set-up) account, then DM me. Otherwise, we might trip over each other online in due course. The people who know the real me, they know where else they can find me.

[claremal-one]

Is Nevada More Wide-Open Than We Realize?

Welcome to a special edition of FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): Just what is going on in Nevada? On Wednesday, we had maybe our most spirited debate of the primary cycle yet, but what isn’t clear is how it did — or didn’t — affect the race. (Remember, despite capturing many, many headlines, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg isn’t actually on the ballot there.)

To some extent, the polling picture in Nevada is actually quite clear. Of the few recent polls we do have, Sen. Bernie Sanders sits atop nearly all of them, and according to our primary forecast, he has a 75 percent chance of winning the most votes there. Our model still gives former Vice President Joe Biden a 1 in 9 chance of pulling off an upset victory, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg a 1 in 15 shot and Sen. Elizabeth Warren a 1 in 20 shot. (Philanthropist Tom Steyer and Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s odds are a bit more underdog-ish, at 1 in 50 and 1 in 100, respectively.)

But as we know from New Hampshire, debates can matter. And Nevada is just a really hard state to poll, so what should we be keeping an eye on heading into the caucuses on Saturday?

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): I’m reticent to say that the Nevada polls give us a clear picture of the race. I feel like it’s perhaps better to come with a more collective open mind, while acknowledging that Sanders is the front-runner numerically.

micah (Micah Cohen, managing editor): Yeah, I’d be very cautious with our Nevada forecast at the moment. It can only work with the polls it has, and there obviously haven’t been any post-debate polls yet. It’s always hard to predict these things but I’d bet that debate could swing the polls by a lot.

sarahf: Right, there are only five polls of Nevada for all of February. I hear you.

That said, Sanders has consistently done pretty well.

micah: But would anyone be surprised by a last-minute Warren surge in Nevada? Akin to Klobuchar’s in New Hampshire?

clare.malone: That’s one thing I’ve been turning over in my head, Micah. Is Warren a really good cultural fit for Nevada?

And by cultural fit I mean: She’s originally from Oklahoma and her professional work is inextricably linked with the housing crisis, which hit Nevada hard. She’s got the kind of working class background that could potentially resonate in a state whose caucuses are union-dominated. So maybe Nevada is a potential comeback state for her?

sarahf: I could definitely see a Warren comeback. One wild card, though is that this the first time Nevada has offered early voting, and so that means there were already nearly 75,000 votes cast before the debate last night.

It’s an important reminder that this is already happening in a number of Super Tuesday states, too — including California, which is the biggest delegate prize. I’m not sure it’ll matter, but I am intrigued by how it factors in.

clare.malone: Yes, I mean, I think the big roadblock for a potential Warren surge is what you say, Sarah — her poor showing in the first two states and a ream of voters who have already made up their minds.

And I will say, the fact that Nevada is union-dominated could DEFINITELY work against her in the sense that the unions seem to prefer Biden, or at least seem to prefer a more traditionally Democratic mainstream choice.

micah: Agreed. But, and Nate pointed this out on the podcast, most people who vote early are people who already have their minds made up. That is, there are still plenty of voters who haven’t voted, and those voters are more likely to be ones who Warren would presumably have a chance to win over because they’re undecided.

But going back to the “Is Warren a good fit for Nevada?” question, all the shared characteristics/experiences Clare highlights are dead on. But also … hmmm, how do I say this … I wonder how voters in Nevada will react to a forceful debate strategy by a female candidate.

That is, do voters consciously or subconsciously view Warren’s performance through a sexist/gendered lens? Most likely, right?

sarahf: Why Nevada more so than any other state?

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): Right, that might apply to all 50 states.

micah: True. But Nevada’s population also has a smaller share of college-educated adults than the average state.

clare.malone: I think Nevada is a state that’s got a lot of Democratic primary voters who haven’t been as tuned-in to the primary process as those in Iowa or New Hampshire, which makes it a more useful barometer.

And I think Micah’s point is perhaps that some of those people might be more likely to have an unvarnished response to Warren and won’t have seen their response to her filtered through a months-long primary process lens.

The smart thing I think she did in her closing remarks at the debate was to say, I’ve been in politics for the least amount of time of anyone up here.

micah: Actually, I take some of this back: It looks like Nevada has a decent record of electing women …

clare.malone: I’m always skeptical of how people react to female presidential candidates, though … But point well taken.

micah: Totally agree — is the presidency different? (I think yes, but we don’t know that in a research sense.)

perry: I tend to think that Warren’s performance increased her chances of being one of the candidates who gets to 15 percent in several Super Tuesday states. She will get more media coverage out of this debate — I am still fairly bearish on that prospect.

sarahf: That certainly seems reasonable to me. She did have a strong debate performance, and as we saw with Klobuchar in New Hampshire, it really could impact voters who are still deciding. That said … I’m not sure I agree with this take from journalist Peter Hamby, but it did give me pause about Bloomberg’s performance and what that could mean for how Warren is perceived.

The Bloomberg commentary tonight reminds me of this from the second Trump/Hillary debate in 2016

https://t.co/0llnmwf4Bu

— Peter Hamby (@PeterHamby) February 20, 2020

Which brings us to the million dollar question of Wednesday’s debate: Did Bloomberg’s performance shake things up?

micah: I think that Hamby take is wrong (and he’s super smart). The key difference: This is a primary. That was a general. A bad debate performance in a general election is typically mollified, in terms of its impact on the vote, by partisanship. In a primary, voters are much more likely to switch between candidates. See Marco Rubio, New Hampshire, 2016.

clare.malone: I think Bloomberg’s performance definitely helped Biden.

sarahf: More than say, Warren, Clare?

clare.malone: Well, I think Bloomberg and Biden are inextricably linked. Bloomberg’s entire rise is premised on Biden’s fall. When Bloomberg falls, Biden rises.

Bloomberg was meant to be seen as the more effective moderate option, given Biden’s mediocre showing … and then Bloomberg had a mediocre showing.

micah: Yeah, I agree with that. If Bloomberg falls, it both directly and indirectly helps Biden. It helps him in terms of actual voters available, it helps Biden seem more liberal, it does a lot! The question on Warren feels somewhat more separate, although she’s certainly competing with Bloomberg for press attention.

perry: If Bloomberg had been great, that would have hurt basically everyone. There are a lot of Democrats who are going to just vote for someone and aren’t that moderate or liberal or ideologically committed.

So Bloomberg’s lackluster debate performance was good for Biden but also Buttigieg, Klobuchar — really, all of them.

But there’s another debate on Tuesday and Bloomberg’s ads run everywhere all of the time. I don’t think this precludes him from doing well on Super Tuesday.

clare.malone: I agree with that. I’m not entirely sure nervous Democratic voters will be ready to count him out.

One thing I take from that series of Pete Hamby tweets is: Sometimes it’s hard to tell what voters will tolerate!

sarahf: 2016 shook my confidence in understanding what voters want.

clare.malone: Lol

LOT GOING ON THERE.

micah: It doesn’t preclude Bloomberg from doing well on Super Tuesday, but it weirdly complicates the path for Sanders before then. Sanders is sitting atop national polls, atop Nevada polls and in a close second in South Carolina polls. As long as the Biden-Bloomberg-Buttigieg-Klobuchar lane was muddled, Sanders’s position is extra safe. Basically, he can win states with 25 to 30 percent of the vote.

But if Biden can get some momentum off of a Bloomberg decline (and maybe also Buttigieg and Klobuchar as they didn’t do much to help themselves), maybe Biden can … win Nevada?!?! Or crush it in South Carolina?

sarahf: Speaking of Biden … he really needs to finish second (or first!) in Nevada, right? Granted, it’s still only the third state to vote, but it’s the first one that isn’t 90 percent white, so it’s also sort of an important litmus test for candidates who have struggled to build diverse coalitions. (Warren, Buttigieg, Klobuchar — really everyone except Biden and Sanders, right?)

What should we be looking for there on Saturday? Currently, Sanders seems to hold an edge among Latino voters, but it’s not insurmountable as Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux and Nathaniel Rakich wrote on Thursday:

Sanders is highly favored by Latino voters in Nevada

Top Democratic candidates’ support among poll respondents who identified as Hispanic or Latino (depending on the poll), in six polls conducted since Feb. 9

Pollster Sanders Biden Steyer Warren Buttigieg Klobuchar Data for Progress 66% 7% 8% 5% 4% 7% WPA Intelligence 50 13 9 11 9 0 Beacon Research* 33 16 18 14 7 3 Univision 33 22 12 6 8 1 Mason-Dixon 31 34 3 6 7 5 Point Blank Political 20 8 29 8 12 4

*Internal poll for the Steyer campaign.

Source: Polls

clare.malone: Yeah, I think that Biden needs to make up a lot of ground in Nevada and South Carolina in order to save face (and save his campaign).

micah: Totally. My hunch is that Biden could have sold the media on “Iowa and New Hampshire aren’t representative — wait for Nevada and South Carolina.” But his campaign seemed to be selling “Iowa and New Hampshire aren’t representative — wait for South Carolina. (Nevada? Oh, don’t worry about that.)” And Nevada is actually more representative of the party, as Perry has written. So that was a hard sell.

clare.malone: If he makes a weak showing in Nevada, I think that could have them worried about his gold-standard state, South Carolina.

micah: I think he needs to do “well” in Nevada.

“Well” = “whatever the media decides ‘well’ equals”

clare.malone: Win/place/show?

Or just win/place?

sarahf: No more fourth-place finishes.

micah: Maybe he needs to finish above all the other candidates in the moderate lane?

Or does he also need to finish above Warren?

perry: I think I have in my head something like this for Nevada: Sanders, Biden, Warren, Buttigieg, Steyer, Klobuchar, with the last four kind of bunched up in high single digits and low teens. That’s just my assumption from seeing the various polls. If Biden is below second, I think there will be more super-negative coverage of him. And that can make South Carolina harder to win too.

sarahf: I agree that anything other than a second-place finish for Biden in Nevada is hard to spin if part of your explanation for doing poorly in New Hampshire and Nevada is that they aren’t representative. Plus, and as Micah said, Nevada is actually more representative of the Democratic Party than South Carolina. And 13 percent of the 2016 caucus electorate was black, according to the entrance polls, so if Biden’s pitch is I can win over black voters and build a diverse coalition, a lot is on the line for him there.

micah: Yeah, and as Geoffrey Skelley has written, Biden has lost a lot of support since Iowa and New Hampshire — among people of all races but also black voters. In other words, black voters aren’t some kind of special firewall for Biden.

So if Biden claws some of that back, it would help him in Nevada as well as South Carolina.

IDK, I just feel like this is a moment in the campaign when we might see a ton of volatility.

clare.malone: And if he loses South Carolina he might have to drop out.

Just sayin’

perry: I think Super Tuesday is so close now that I don’t think any candidate should drop out.

Early voting is already happening in some of those states. I’m not predicting what Biden will do, but he should not drop out after South Carolina if Super Tuesday is three days later.

micah: Biden could finish fourth in Nevada and lose in South Carolina and drop out and that would not at all surprise me.

Biden could win Nevada (or finish in a strong second), run away with South Carolina and be leading in national polls by the time we reach Super Tuesday, and that would not surprise me.

clare.malone: But I think if Biden can’t prove viability in South Carolina, it would be pretty humiliating.

perry: So in most of these states and the Democratic primary overall, I think the plurality of voters are white voters who do not support Sanders. So I think Micah is right — that speaks to the potential volatility of the race.

Super Tuesday has a lot of states with black/Latino populations larger than Iowa and New Hampshire, but still some states where it’s not that high. That’s why I think a Buttigieg or Klobuchar can win, say, Virginia if they perform well among college-educated white voters in particular and white voters overall.

sarahf: But if, as you say, Perry, there is a plurality of white voters who are on Team Anyone But Sanders, wouldn’t it behoove someone from the moderate lane who had disappointing finishes in Nevada and South Carolina to drop out? I wouldn’t put it past at least someone dropping out after Nevada.

Is that misguided?

perry: I don’t know what you get from dropping out.

micah: This isn’t based on anything in particular, but I would expect a couple dropouts before Super Tuesday.

You get to avoid humiliation.

sarahf: Also, potentially you avoid a messy contested convention, which I think has to factor into some of this? Or, if the storyline that many party insiders oppose his nomination is to be believed, I can imagine some members of the party pressuring candidates to drop out so there can be an alternative to Sanders.

micah: I think that’s right.

perry: If the moderate lane was coordinating to avoid Sanders winning, yes, one or two of them should drop out. Bloomberg’s campaign sent out a memo yesterday saying exactly that. It would be smart for some moderate bigwig (like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi) to encourage this.

micah: This is why I think the Nevada debate wasn’t great for Sanders. I thought Sanders had a fine debate on Wednesday night. Certainly we would expect his support to at the very least not go down. But he was leading in Nevada and rising in South Carolina and leading in a lot of Super Tuesday states.

The BLOOMBERG BOMBS storyline just introduces a ton of potential volatility — particularly in terms of how the moderate lane does or does not consolidate — and because the status quo was pretty great for Bernie. Volatility is potentially bad for him.

But maybe the party won’t actually move to fight a Sanders nomination.

perry: At this point, I just don’t see a lot of evidence that the moderate lane candidates are being realistic about their chances or are focused on boosting one member of that group, as opposed to themselves.

micah: It’s certainly hard to imagine Buttigieg and Klobuchar and Bloomberg cooperating with each other at the moment!

perry: The big question is whether that has to happen before Super Tuesday.

What the Bloomberg people were saying is that the coordination needs to happen now.

micah: Mathematically it kinda does, right?

sarahf: What is it, 38 percent of delegates are awarded by then?

perry: Like of course Klobuchar drops out after Super Tuesday, but they need her to drop out now.

sarahf: I think there is an incentive for moderate Democrats who are hand wringing over Sanders to consolidate ASAP.

micah: Yeah. This is why our forecast has such a high chance of no one winning a majority of pledged delegates:

sarahf: To bring it home … does this mean Nevada might actually be really important this year? It feels as if the media often kind of skips over Nevada in preparation for South Carolina.

perry: If Nevada results in one of these candidates packing it in, then yes, it matters.

clare.malone: It matters more because of the failures of the earlier states.

The field is just muddled in this way that feels unusual.

micah: It is unusual!

perry: Sanders winning three states in a row will be big no matter what. And another candidate winning Nevada would be huge. So I think Nevada matters hugely.

from Clare Malone – FiveThirtyEight https://ift.tt/38IE58G

via https://ift.tt/1B8lJZR

[cringeynews]

New Post has been published on

New Post has been published on http://cringeynews.com/featured/the-womens-march-on-washington-explained/

The "Women’s March on Washington," explained

Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton came as a shock to many — and for many women who opposed Trump in particular, Clinton’s loss was personally devastating. But in the days since the election, desperation and fear have swelled into a plan for action: a “Women’s March on Washington” on January 21, the day after Trump’s inauguration and the first full day of his administration.

What started as a viral idea on social media has snowballed into a potentially massive event, with more than 100,000 people already saying on Facebook that they plan to attend. It has the potential to be the biggest mass mobilization yet that America has seen in response to a presidential inauguration — about 60,000 people protested Richard Nixon’s 1973 inauguration at the height of the Vietnam War, and thousands protested George W. Bush’s 2001 inauguration.

But while the Women’s March has been an organic, grassroots effort, it has also been a chaotic one at times. For a while, it seemed doubtful that the march would actually come together in a successful or safe way.

Sure, lots of people didn’t want to waste the plane tickets they bought in hopes of seeing the first woman president sworn in — but would it really be worth it? Could the necessary permits be obtained in time? Would it just be too much to handle logistically, given how chaotic DC tends to be during inauguration weekend? Would it be safe, given the current political climate and given how often large Trump events incite violence? And even if it all worked out, what would it actually accomplish?

Now that professional organizers have taken the reins, it looks like the logistics will come together, although it may not be able to take place on the National Mall as originally planned. And the broader impact remains to be seen.

But the huge, spontaneous groundswell behind the march says a lot about this moment in American politics. It’s another sign that Trump could spark a new golden age of activism on the left. And it’s a sobering reminder of why that might be the case: People are genuinely afraid for their civil rights under Trump, and women in particular could have a lot to lose.

Why a women’s march?

The march “represents women and people who identify as women, of all backgrounds, races, religions, ages and abilities,” according a press statement from organizers.

Men are also encouraged to participate, though. “We welcome our male allies,” Bob Bland, one of the first women to organize the march on social media, told the Washington Post. “We want this to be as inclusive as possible while acknowledging that it’s okay to have a women-centered march.”

The event is being promoted as a “march” or a “rally,” but emphatically not a “protest.” Organizers say that the march isn’t anti-Trump — rather, it’s an affirmative message to the new administration that “women’s rights are human rights.”

“Women’s rights are human rights” really shouldn’t be a controversial or politically polarizing statement. But it’s also a famous line from Hillary Clinton’s 1995 speech on women’s issues in Beijing, and it’s pretty obvious that the march is motivated by worries about how women and their rights will be treated under Trump.

Many women were horrified that America chose Trump, an alleged sexual predator, over Clinton, who could have been its first woman president, and that an obviously unqualified man beat out an obviously qualified woman.

Especially for women of color, queer and trans women, and women who belong to other marginalized groups, a Trump presidency could present an existential threat: from a Justice Department that could roll back major civil rights gains, to families being torn apart through mass deportation, to Muslim women feeling too afraid of hateful acts and violence to wear the hijab and freely express their religion, to drastic reductions in access to reproductive health care that would disproportionately harm poor women and women of color.

“The rhetoric of the past election cycle has insulted, demonized, and threatened many of us — immigrants of all statuses, Muslims and those of diverse religious faiths, people who identify as LGBTQIA, Native people, Black and Brown people, people with disabilities, survivors of sexual assault,” a statement from organizers reads. “The Women’s March on Washington will send a bold message to our new administration on their first day in office, and to the world that women’s rights are human rights.”

How the march began, and how the organizing effort evolved

According to organizers, it all started with one Hawaiian grandmother who invited 40 of her friends to march on Washington with her. Then those friends invited their friends. Then the idea went viral after it spread to the huge, secret, pro-Hillary Clinton Facebook group Pantsuit Nation.

Several different Facebook pages popped up to coordinate plans to descend upon DC. “It’s the most organic thing you’ve ever heard of,” Bland, a New York-based entrepreneur, fashion designer, and activist, told DCist.

Soon, Bland joined with other activists to consolidate their Facebook pages and unite their efforts. A loose organizing structure emerged — one big Facebook page for the national event, plus a page each for all 50 states for locals to coordinate transportation and lodging.

The march quickly faced some pushback over issues of diversity and inclusion. For one thing, Bland and all of the other original organizers were white women. And the original proposed name, the “Million Women March,” was scrapped because there was already a “Million Woman March,” attended by hundreds of thousands of black women, in Philadelphia in 1997.

Now, though, three prominent women of color who are experienced activists and organizers have joined Bland as national co-chairs of the event: Tamika D. Mallory, Carmen Perez, and Linda Sarsour. Together, the three led a march from New York City to Washington, DC, in 2015 to demand changes in America’s criminal justice system.

Mallory has worked closely with the Obama administration on civil rights and criminal justice issues, and served as the youngest executive director of National Action Network. Perez works on juvenile and criminal justice issues in California and New York and is the executive director of The Gathering for Justice. Sarsour is a Brooklyn-born Palestinian-American Muslim racial justice and civil rights activist, and is the executive director of the Arab American Association of New York.

There was also some diversity-related pushback against the current name, the “Women’s March on Washington,” due to concerns that it appropriated the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom where Martin Luther King Jr. made his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

In response to those objections, organizers released a statement calling the march’s current name a “tribute” to the 1963 march — which, they said, “set a precedent” for similar massive marches to demand human rights, including other historic events like the 1965 March on Washington for Peace in Vietnam and the four Marches on Washington for the rights of LGBTQ people in 1979, 1987, 1993 and 2000.

Organizers also say they are committed to the six principles of Kingian nonviolence.

What began as a viral outcry on Facebook now has an official coordinating committee, complete with press contacts, working with the national co-chairs to pull everything together.

What comes next

There are still plenty of details to be worked out, including the exact time and location, route, and program.

The original plan was to march from the Lincoln Memorial to the White House — but that route looks unlikely to be approved, WTOP’s Megan Cloherty reported, because the National Mall is already overbooked with permit requests for that date.

But Women’s March organizer Janaye Ingram told WTOP that marchers shouldn’t change their travel plans. The march and rally “are happening” on January 21, Ingram said, even if the starting location might have to change.

National Park Service spokesman Mike Litterst told WTOP that the permit has not been denied. “We will make every effort to accommodate their request though it may be at a different time and location,” he said.

Fundraising and organizing for travel and other logistics are being handled at the state and local level, organizers said, so anyone who wants to learn more about joining the march should check out the Facebook pages for both the national march and for their individual state.

Organizers promised in a press statement that a program “featuring nationally recognized artists, entertainers, advocates, entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and others will be announced in the coming weeks.” They’re also working on recruiting larger organizations to join the effort as coalition partners.

As far as safety is concerned, the Women’s March “has a team of experienced and professional national organizers working to ensure that every safety protocol is followed.” More details on safety will be released as the date draws closer.

And the four national co-chairs say they hope that the work of the march will reach far beyond January 21. “The work of this march is not only to stand together in sisterhood and solidarity for the protection of our rights, our safety, our families and our environment — but it is also to build relationships and mend the divides between our communities,” the co-chairs said in a statement. “It’s hard work, and it will be ongoing.”

Via

[thisdaynews]

Buttigieg absorbs a pummeling, and there's more where that came from

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/buttigieg-absorbs-a-pummeling-and-theres-more-where-that-came-from/

Buttigieg absorbs a pummeling, and there's more where that came from

Every few months a new candidate is discovered by voters, often by a big debate moment or a surge of media appearances. Interest spikes. Polls shift. In no time, the bright and shiny new candidate is roughed up by his or her opponents. Democratic voters, who have consistently told pollsters all year that they are searching for the most electable Democrat, start to have misgivings and they soon abandon the candidate.

The political scientists Lynn Vavreck and John Sides looked at this dynamic in the 2012 Republican presidential primary. That contest had a series of short-lived frontrunners who briefly overtook Mitt Romney before GOP voters returned to him and gave him the nomination. Vavreck and Sides have described that cycle as “discovery, scrutiny and decline”: An interesting new candidate is discovered, followed by an intense phase of scrutiny by the press and his or her opponents. If they don’t survive the vetting, the decline begins.

Buttigieg has clearly been discovered. Thursday night he moved more obviously into the scrutiny phase, with withering criticism from Elizabeth Warren, who is looking to be rediscovered, and Amy Klobuchar, who is looking for a shot at entering the cycle herself.

Before the Pete pile-on occurred, the PBS NewsHour/POLITICO debate at Loyola Marymount University was characterized by a policy-heavy first half devoted to a series of issues that hadn’t received much attention in the previous five Democratic debates.

A lively discussion about whether the existential threat of climate change meant that Democrats should embrace the expanded use of nuclear power, as is common among our European allies, revealed some telling divides. Elizabeth Warren, despite proposing aggressive carbon reduction targets that some scientists do not believe are possible without a full range of alternative energy options, said she wouldn’t shutter currently operating nuclear plants but that she doesn’t favor expansion. Andrew Yang, who wore, as he often does, a pin that said “MATH”, argued that nuclear expansion was essential to solving the climate crisis.

On foreign policy, we learned that Bernie Sanders thinks Bibi Netanyahu is “a racist,” that Warren would recommit to closing the American prison at Guantanamo Bay (though she didn’t say how), that Biden would seek United Nations approval of international sanctions against China, and that Buttigieg would consider a boycott of the 2022 Olympics in Beijing over China’s widespread mistreatment of Muslim Uighurs in western China.

For the first time in a debate, Biden also made a forceful case for how he was right and Barack Obama was wrong on a big policy issue — the surge in Afghanistan — though he didn’t mention the former president by name.

Just when things seemed a tad slow, moderator Tim Alberta, POLITICO’s chief political correspondent, kicked off the highly charged second half of the debate with a provocation.

“Candidates,” Alberta said, “let’s make things interesting.”

There were a series of clashes between candidate pairs vying for similar slices of the Democratic electorate. Sanders and Biden, who both draw heavily from white working class voters, had another round of arguing over health care.

Inside the hall, there was a notable dynamic that is not seen on television. Several candidates shoot their hands in the air and stare at the moderators in order to get noticed. Biden had a less-is-more strategy. He rarely raised his hand. Sometimes he stood a step back from the podium with his arms folded, staring around and seeming a bit disengaged and looking for opportunities to speak only when it really mattered.

Warren, on the other hand, gestured toward the moderators almost continuously.

After a long period when candidates frequently didn’t respect the agreed upon rules about interruptions, Biden suddenly exploded at the chance to discuss Medicare for All, the issue that has vexed Warren.

“My name was mentioned,” he roared after Sanders spoke about saving middle class Americans the money they now spend on premiums. “I’m the only guy who has not interrupted. I’m going to interrupt now. It cost $30 trillion. Let’s get that straight: $30 trillion over 10 years. Some say it costs $20 trillion.” He pointed towards Warren.

“Some say it costs 40,” he went on. “The idea that you’re going to be able to save that person making $60,000 a year on Medicare for All is absolutely preposterous.”

But the two sharpest attacks of the night were reserved for Buttigieg.

Elizabeth Warren mocked the young mayor for his recent fundraiser held in northern California.

“So the mayor just recently had a fundraiser that was held in a wine cave full of crystals and served $900 a bottle wine,” she said, accurately. “Think about who comes to that. He had promised that every fundraiser he would do would be open door, but this one was closed door. We made the decision many years ago that rich people in smoke-filled rooms would not pick the next president of the United States. Billionaires in wine caves should not pick the next president of the United States.”

Klobuchar soon jumped into with her own wine cave dig. “I have never even been to a wine cave,” she said, perhaps speaking for most viewers. Even Yang, who has never to my recollection attacked an opponent on stage at a debate, threw a wine cave elbow, pointing out that his Freedom Dividend would give voters extra money they could use to support candidates, “because they don’t have to shake the money tree in the wine cave.”

Buttigieg’s response to Warren was well prepared. He accused her of enacting “purity tests you cannot yourself pass,” noting that she was wealthier than Buttigieg and in fact that it wasn’t long ago that she was holding the same kind of high dollar fundraisers — and even transferred millions of dollars raised that way into her presidential campaign account.

Buttigieg cleverly framed taking money from his wine cave patrons as necessary because Democrats need everything to defeat Trump.

Klobuchar, who had one of the finest and most confident performances of the night, practically rolled her eyes at Buttigieg as she dryly went through his thin resume.

“I know you ran to be chair of the Democratic National Committee,” she said. “That’s not something I wanted to do. I want to be president of the United States. And the point is, we should have someone heading up this ticket that has actually won.”

Buttigieg responded with a slightly weak plea about how he won his mayor’s race with 80% of the vote, though he didn’t point out that that represented a total of 8,515 votes in South Bend.

Klobuchar was unimpressed.

“Again,” she said dryly, referring to his failed bid for state treasurer, “If you had won in Indiana, that would be one thing. You tried and you lost by 20 points.”

Read More

[jutetower8-blog]

Corey Johnson Just Exposed NYC’s Leadership Gap on Transportation

City Council Speaker Corey Johnson just showed a lame duck mayor how to fly.

Johnson’s all-transportation “State of the City” speech on Tuesday hit all the right notes. Yes, he mapped out a pie-in-the-sky plan for city control over the subways, which is unlikely to happen in the immediate future, as Streetsblog reported today. But even discussing such an idea — not to mention the eminently doable sweeteners like safer street redesigns, more plazas, better bike lanes, improved bus service and even removing part of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway — shows just what can be accomplished by a New York City leader with persistent concern for, and consistent interest in, improving the city’s transportation system.

Simply put, in one short speech, Johnson closed the leadership gap that is plaguing the city in the waning years of an administration of a man who obviously has his eyes on his next job. More important, Johnson pushed the conversation about transportation policy further and more comprehensively than de Blasio has since his early and still-underappreciated Vision Zero days. Johnson didn’t pass the buck to the state — he pointedly argued that if the state won’t lead to make New York City more transit, bike and pedestrian-oriented, the city must.

Here’s where Johnson just served dessert on this lame duck administration:

Break the Car Culture

Johnson is far from the first City Council member to suggest the city needs to “break” its “car culture.” That distinction goes to his colleague, Antonio Reynoso.

But as speaker, Johnson has used the term, “break the car culture,” over and over again. He did again on Tuesday — and backed it up with proposals to make it happen: 50 new miles of protected bike lanes per year (up from Mayor de Blasio’s average of nearly 16 miles per year), 30 miles of new bus lanes per year, transit-signal priority on every bus route by 2030, increasing the number of “shared streets” in the city four-fold, reducing the size of the city’s vehicle fleet by 20 percent by 2025 — the list goes on and on.

He also called for pedestrianizing many areas of the city — something de Blasio has long resisted.

The City Council can do all of that through funding negotiations with the mayor — or through its discretionary funds.

Meanwhile, Mayor de Blasio continues to utter nonsense about how working New Yorkers get around and where their priorities are.

“We’re New Yorkers, we’re always concerned about parking,” he said last month. “It’s part of who we are.”

Johnson, who’s lived in the city for half as long as the mayor, showed what is possible when a mayor understands that New York is not, and should not be, a car-first city.

He’ll take matters into his own hands

With congestion pricing facing murky chances in Albany, Johnson re-upped his threat create a tolling system himself if the state fails to create what Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio have both called an essential funding stream for public transit, yet seem powerless to actually get done.

“If Albany doesn’t pass congestion pricing this session, the City Council will,” he said. “We did it with speed cameras, and if we have to, we’ll do it again with congestion pricing.”

Johnson was referencing the council’s passage of its own speed camera program, which remains in place to this day. For years, common wisdom held that the city could not enact money-collecting speed cameras without state approval. Johnson and nearly every single council member rejected that argument, opting to exercise home rule authority to impose their own camera program.

Prominent legal scholar Frederick A.O. Schwarz Jr. has argued that the city can do the same with congestion pricing.

Compare that to de Blasio, who until last week refused to even back congestion pricing, deferring to the needs of a small number of people who drive into or through Manhattan’s central business zone. Given his long opposition, it’s unsurprising de Blasio proposed an alternative — a millionaire’s tax. But that alternative also passed the buck to Albany — where most observers agreed it was dead-on-arrival.

“This makes it a lot harder for [Albany] not to do [congestion pricing],” Council Member Brad Lander told Streetsblog after Johnson’s speech.

Since my post 20 months ago, 4 political changes point to passing c.p. in Albany: 1, @NYGovCuomo now a champion; 2, pro-c.p. insurgent Dems take Senate; 3, @NYCSpeakerCoJo brilliantly on board; 4, transit advocates are fierce and on-board. Fence-sitters: please take heed!

— Charles Komanoff (@Komanoff) March 5, 2019

Calling out the MTA’s broken oversight

Mayor de Blasio has said little to nothing about the MTA’s ineffectual board and excessive capital construction costs.

Johnson hit them head-on, calling attention to the organization’s structure, which he said was “designed to deflect accountability.”

“The MTA is an authority that’s controlled by the governor,” Johnson said. “But has its own budget, which is approved by a 17-member board with four mayoral appointee and seven suburban county appointees, but four of them only get a quarter of a vote, so technically it’s a 17-member board with 14 votes. And I’m not counting the six non-voting members, but if I did there would actually be 23 members. And the Mayor gets a veto, but not on everything — just capital projects, and only ones in the City.”

In place of that mess of supposed accountability, Johnson proposed a city takeover of the subways and buses — called Big Apple Transit — with a board made up of appointees of the mayor, borough presidents, and public advocate.

“All Big Apple Transit board members will be New Yorkers,” he said. “They will be required to use the system.”

The Johnson takeover acknowledges that the vast majority of the revenue for the subway system’s operation already comes from city riders, drivers and taxpayers. Yet the current MTA structure siphons off a disproportionate share of the money to other regional needs.

Questioning Cuomo’s commitment to NYC

Here’s how Johnson perfectly summed up the goal of his Big Apple Transit proposal: “It will never be in the best interests of any governor to put the needs of New York City above the needs of the rest of the state.”

Sadly, he’s probably right. Statewide elected officials can’t be bothered with meeting the narrow needs of the city’s whopping eight million residents when they also have to answer to voters in the suburbs and upstate.

For some reason, de Blasio never called that out. Until recently, de Blasio’s boilerplate response to questions about the city’s ailing transit system was that it wasn’t his problem or responsibility, since the MTA is a state agency. That was his response early in the L-train shutdown planning process. It was his response over and over again to pleas from advocates that the city fund the Fair Fares program. And it was his response to concerns about his cops blocking bus lanes and bike lanes all over the city.

Tackling the bike-lash monster

Streetsblog readers know the sequence well: Community members call attention to the need for better pedestrian and bike lane infrastructure. The city Department of Transportation proposes a street redesign providing it. Opponents come out of the woodwork. A few months later, neighbors are at each other’s throats. The bike lane gets installed — though sometimes if does not. And residents move on, resentful of their neighbors and the city, while the city has wasted valuable time and effort on something live-saving road safety strategies that should not even be debatable.

Johnson’s five-year master plan for city streets aims to disrupt that cycle of pain. As he sees it, the city’s street redesign efforts suffer from a lack of comprehensive planning.

“The master plan won’t eliminate all arguments over how we share our streets,” he said, “but it will allow us to understand how some neighborhood-specific changes fit into a larger plan for the greater good.”

Bike New York Advocacy Director Jon Orcutt, no stranger to bike lane and pedestrian plaza fights from his time as DOT policy director under Mayor Bloomberg, told Streetsblog that the master plan could help “take the temperature down” on the major spats that come up over relatively minor reallocations of parking spots for bike lanes.

“He’s right that we need to change that, and just change the conversation,” Orcutt said. “If you’re city DOT and you want to build a protected bike lane in a residential neighborhood, if you don’t have that kind of leadership backing you, it’s a million times worse.”

Needless to say, Orcutt thinks that leadership is severely lacking under Mayor de Blasio.

Taking on Robert Moses

On this particular topic, Johnson actually showed up Governor Cuomo, who often invokes Moses’s legacy as his inspiration for his desire to do big things like build a new Tappan Zee Bridge or renovate LaGuardia Airport.

But any student of urban history could tell you the dark side of Moses’s “master builder” legacy: destroyed neighborhoods, smog-filled highways cutting through the densest parts of the city, and the hundreds of miles of roads that created our present car-dependent mess.

“We have been living in Robert Moses’s New York for almost a century, and it is time to move on,” Johnson said.

He then proceeded to go where no NYC politician has gone before: He demanded a review of the de Blasio administration’s imagination-free plan to rebuild and replace the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in hopes of coming up with something on a human scale — or no superhighway at all.

How’s that for leadership?

Corey Johnson ‘Let’s Go’ Transit Plan by Gersh Kuntzman on Scribd

Source: https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/03/05/corey-johnson-just-exposed-nycs-leadership-gap-on-transportation/

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Bank Of America Is An All-American Bargain

New Post has been published on http://rentts.org/bank-of-america-is-an-all-american-bargain/

Bank Of America Is An All-American Bargain

It has been about two and a half years since I have written up a research report on Bank of America (BAC), and six and half years since I wrote up my first one. After the election rally, we were able to lock-in profits on some very large positions for our firm, including Bank of America; as the valuation finally came close to approximating the intrinsic value of the business, and we were able to utilize that capital in other places. Now, in this winter market maelstrom, it feels good to be back and once again Bank of America has become an extremely compelling buying opportunity. It is my contention that market participants are fighting the last battle once again, thinking the next recession will look the same as the Great Recession. They will be wrong and Bank of America’s stock will grind materially higher over the next 3-5 years.

It is amazing to see just how far Bank of America has come. Obviously, the company completed one of the worst acquisitions in business history when it made its distressed purchase of Countrywide Financial. Far worse than the actual economic losses that the portfolio of mortgages brought on, was the tens of billions of dollars of legal costs and penalties that hammered shareholders in the years following the Crisis. BAC made a good call when it hired Brian Moynihan to run the show. Moynihan implemented one of the best handled cost-cutting exercises I’ve seen, while continuing to invest in responsible growth. Merrill Lynch and U.S. Trust are blue-chip assets, capable of generating returns on invested capital far higher than traditional banking operations and growing these franchises has been a priority. BAC hasn’t tired to hit homeruns in investment banking and instead has been trying to hit for contact. Arguably they have been overly conservative there and we have now seen some management changes, but I’d argue that Bank of America has taken the right approach to prepare itself for the next crisis, whatever and whenever that may be.

As stocks fell in October and the S&P was down by roughly 10%, I attended an event with roughly 100 business owners and executives talking about the market and the economy. There was a speaker from Merrill Lynch that asked if they thought the correction meant the end of the 9-and-a-half-year bull market, and not one person raised their hand. That worried me quite a bit because I tend to feel more confident when there is far less of a consensus and it was clear that fear hadn’t set in. I am not surprised to see that markets have continued to selloff, but I do think that fear has started to become more prominent. Many of the fin twits etc., that have been advocating being 100% long ETFs and index funds for the last 2-3 years, have already started talking about their tactical strategies to handle downturns. This to me is as a good sign as there has been that a lot of really stupid money has been pouring into stocks with zero regard to valuations. If those people want to sell their high-beta names such as Bank of America to me at silly valuations I’m glad to accept the offer.

Today’s paranoia revolves around a few different areas. Firstly, you have the trade negotiations with China. I’d say that it is pretty clear that both countries are willing to make some sacrifices and resuming more friendly relations would be a clear positive. China is likely trying to wait out American politics to change its focus on fair trade with a new party taking over, while the U.S. is trying to make its inroads via brute force. Secondly, the yield curve has become very flat, leading to concerns about economic growth. This compresses margins, but net interest income is so strong, this shouldn’t be a huge deal for the big banks as long as credit stays strong. Italy was a major concern, but they are starting to talk down their budget deficit agenda and there appears to be room for negotiation. Brexit is a mess but there is the possibility that we could see another referendum or vote on it as nobody seems satisfied. Higher interest rates and SALT tax changes are most certainly impacting the housing market, causing a slowdown in sales and price reductions. Affordability is an issue, but there isn’t the silly credit underwriting or excess supply that would likely lead to a major downturn there.

Credit is phenomenal for the big banks, and while it can only really get worse from here, there is nothing that I see that in any way would jeopardize these companies being incredibly profitable, including a mild to medium recession. If you look at consumers, leverage appears to be benign. Student loans are a disaster, which taxpayers are mostly on the hook for. Mortgages aren’t much of a concern, as underwriting has been night and day different from the past. Credit cards have been a very competitive space, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see losses pick up there. Corporate leverage is high but a lot of that is due to the benefits a levered capital structure gave companies under the prior tax regime, in combination with low interest rates. I’d expect companies to aggressively reduce their leverage over the next few years.

The fact that the Federal Reserve might end up pausing rate hikes is very good for just about everyone, including the banks. While many analysts tend to focus on myopic issues such as net interest margins, the biggest risk to banks is a large credit bubble, like that which existed in the last recession. Now the big banks have double the capital and double the liquidity, so they can still thrive in just about any environment. They have gobbled up market share and have access to the lowest cost of capital in the sector. Mortgage rates are starting to come down, and I believe if that continues the housing market should stabilize.

On October 15th, Bank of America reported 3rd quarter financial results that were exceptional. Diluted earnings per share of $0.66, were up 43%. Net income of $7.2 billion was a record and was up 32% YoY. Pretax income of $9 billion was up 18% YoY. Total revenue of $22.8 billion was up 4%. Net interest income was up 6%. Noninterest income was up 2%. Despite all this revenue growth, noninterest expenses of $13.1 billion was down 2% YoY. The net charge-off ratio was up 1 paltry basis point to 0.4%.

BAC’s return on average assets of 1.23% was up 28bps, and its return on average common shareholders’ equity of 11% was up 310 bps. BAC has made dramatic improvements towards increasing its return on average tangible common shareholders’ equity to 15.5%, up 450 bps YoY. The efficiency ratio of 57% has improved by 396 bps. These were numbers that 4-5 years ago many analysts said were virtually impossible for the big banks to achieve once again.

BAC’s loans and leases grew by 3% overall, with consumer up 5% and commercial up 2%. Average deposits continued to increase by 4%. Merrill brokerage assets increased by 22% to over $200 billion. Client balances within Global Wealth & Investment Management increase to $2.8 trillion. The bank’s capital and liquidity position is stronger than it has ever been with $164 billion of Common Equity Tier 1 Capital (CET1) and a CET1 ratio of 11.4%. Bank of America has a staggering $537 billion of average Global Liquidity Sources. Year-to-date, BAC has repurchased $14.9 billion of common shares and paid $4 billion in common dividends, returning 96% of net income available to common shareholders.

In years past when I wrote about Bank of America, I found myself extremely frustrated at times. I saw what the future could be and the returns the company should be able to generate, which were being ignored by the market, which was focused on the short-term issues plaguing the firm. Now as we sit going into 2019, we have a bank generating a 15% plus return on tangible equity, without taking the excessive risks as in prior cycles. The balance sheet has never been stronger. The company has multiple business platforms such as Merrill and U.S. Trust that delineate it versus many of its competitors and warrant a higher valuation. The worst part about past selloffs in the stock though was that management couldn’t fully take advantage with a massive buyback. Instead they had to horde capital to raise their capital ratios. Finally, we have a major selloff that management can capitalize on by using most of its profits to buy back stock at a considerable discount to intrinsic value, thereby enhancing intrinsic value per share.

At a recent price of around $24.50, BAC trades right around its book value per share of $24.33. Tangible book value stands at $17.23 per share and it is important to note that these numbers would be meaningfully higher if it weren’t for the tax changes that caused the company to reduce the value of its DTA, but ultimately the company should realize the benefits of those lost DTAs via a reduced tax rate into the future. BAC’s normalized earnings power is around $2.50 per share and should grow at a faster rate than the overall economy. While management should certainly continue to devote the majority of capital returns to stock buybacks, BAC will offer a rapid growth rate on its dividend payments over the next 5-10 years.

While BAC may not be priced for bankruptcy like it has been in the past, it is priced as though it won’t be able to grow intrinsic value whatsoever and that will not be the case. The company is a well-oiled machine, with several of the most enviable business franchises in the world. For the patient investor that is willing to look past current fears and realistically assess the soundness of the enterprise, BAC offers a great opportunity to average double-digit returns in a market that is highly unlikely to do anything close to that. At T&T Capital Management, we believe BAC is worth between $32-$35. The big banks are not going to be nearly as cyclical as they were in the past, but they are still cyclical. Paying 10 times earnings for a business like this is an absolute steal and I don’t believe that the next recession, whenever it comes, will be anything like the last one. It appears that Warren Buffett feels a similar way about the big banks, as he dramatically increased his positions in them at much higher prices than what they are trading at today. Last I checked, BAC is actually a larger position than WFC in dollar size and I can see why when you look at the outlook and valuations for both firms.

Disclosure: I am/we are long BAC. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.