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boltwrites · 4 years ago

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Warm Hands, Warm Heart

Fandom: The Legend of Korra Pairing: Bolin / Reader (feminine firebender) Rating: T Tags: Massage, Pre-relationship

fakelavish requested: first of all, i speak for all of the Bolin Lovers when i say we ✨live✨ for your account and writing, our mans deserves sm, THANK YOU! 🥺 i have a request for when you have the time for our 1# Himbo, something maybe borderline nwsf but really tender for a female reader who’s a firebender and gives really nice massages? 👉👈 like, heated hands w/ massage oils? anyways, our King needs to relax, he’s carrying the whole ass show on his shoulders 😌 just have fun with it, can’t wait for more content!

A/N: this was very fun to write! I decided to make Bolin a pro-bending personal trainer and reader a masseur that works at the arena sometimes! I hope you enjoy!

A/N 2: I saw this post get removed from the tag with my own eyes, so I’m posting again :/ tumblr! why!!!

You stretched, taking a deep breath as you loosened the muscles in your shoulders.

As a massage therapist, you traveled all across the city for different clients. However, your rotations at the pro bending arena were always eventful. Usually you were tasked with relieving factory workers of their pain – Future Industries treated their workers well, enlisting your services to assist with their work. But you also saw your fair share of rich families and hard working professionals, all whom carried stress in different ways.

But the arena was a different beast entirely. The patients you saw there were always stressed, and more than that, sometimes they needed serious physical therapy and extensive healing that their hectic schedule didn’t allow for. Your coworkers at the arena in particular all had their own horror stories – Raye, specifically. She was a water healer you coordinated with often, and whenever you saw her, she looked exhausted.

However, not all your coworkers at the arena were such downers. There was a specific personal trainer who always had a smile on his face, even when he referred patients to you. He would guide them into your workspace with a hand on their shoulder, giving them a hearty pat before telling them how you were the best that Republic City had to offer, and that you’d get them fixed up in no time.

You shook your head, trying not to blush as you thought of Bolin. You knew that catching feelings for a coworker wasn’t the smartest thing in the world, but he was just so charming. Whenever he passed by your small massage room and you weren’t with a client he would poke his head in and ask if you needed anything, sometimes bringing you an extra cup of tea from the concessions stand that he “ordered on accident” for you. He always greeted you with a beaming smile, and you had to admit, his work certainly kept him in shape.

You slapped both of your cheeks, shaking your head. You were here to work! You didn’t have time to be worrying about-

“Hey, Y/n!”

You jumped at the sudden introduction, clutching at your heart as you turned, only to be faced with the object of your desires. Your cheeks flushed, but luckily, you could explain it away through shock.

“Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you,” Bolin apologized, shuffling his feet as he stood in the doorway. He held a small bag in his hands, still in the loose clothing he wore to train his clients.

“It’s alright, I just wasn’t expecting you,” you assured him, crossing your arms and holding them close to your chest. Bolin only smiled, a small, gentle smile that made your heart skip. You wondered if he knew how handsome he was, especially when he directed all of his attention at one person in particular. He made you feel like the center of the world when he smiled at you like that.

“I just wanted to stop by and give you this,” Bolin placed the bag on the high table near the door, and you picked it up, peeking inside. “Haru – you know, from the concession stand – said he made extra, and I didn’t think I saw you get dinner tonight…”

The bag was filled with at least four dumplings, and you knew they weren’t the cheapest thing at the concessions stand, especially tonight, when there had been a double-header match. It was why you hadn’t gotten dinner – you didn’t feel comfortable spending that much money on yourself. But Bolin had gone out of his way to get you something nice.

You blushed, closing the bag and shaking your head at him in wonder.

“Oh – is that OK? Are you allergic? Aw, I should have known-“

You giggled, and Bolin’s eyes widened at the noise.

“I’m not allergic,” you laughed, covering your mouth with your hand, “I just feel like such a burden – you bring me tea, and dumplings, and water, and I haven’t done anything for you.”

Bolin waved his hands back and forth, denying your insinuation. “Oh, don’t worry about it! I just get worried about you all the way over here, since you’re so far away from all the other stuff. You don’t have to do anything for me, I swear.”

“I know I don’t have to,” you replied, tucking a stand of your hair behind your ear. Your cheeks reddened and you looked downwards. “I want to. What about this – I’ll take your dumplings, which I know weren’t just extra, by the way, if you’ll let me give you a massage.”

When you looked at him again, Bolin was as red as a beet, shaking his head as he wrung his hands.

“Oh, no, I couldn’t – “

“You spend all day training others, lifting weights, and trying to coach pro benders, and you’ve never once asked for my services,” you continued, frowning at him. “You’re probably just as tense as any patient you’ve referred to me – if not more. You need to take care of yourself!”

“I do take care of myself! I floss every day!” Bolin countered, and you had to stifle a laugh. What a dork.

“I’m sure you try your best, Bolin, but we all need some help every now and then. Let me help you,” you offered, gesturing to the massage table.

Bolin swallowed, tugging at the neck of his undershirt, unsure of the whole situation. You wondered if the reason why he had never asked for a massage was because of this – because he was so embarrassed at the thought of you touching him. The concept warmed you as you unpacked a few of the oils you thought he would benefit from, laying a blanket across your table. Bolin still stood in the doorway, pressing the tips of his fingers together.

“Uh, do I have to do that thing where I take all my clothes off and you put a towel over my butt? Because I don’t know if I’m comfortable with butt towel stuff-”

You snorted, shaking your head at him.

“No, don’t worry. I usually don’t ask patients to undress fully unless they need specific work – like a pulled muscle in the thigh,” you explained, rolling your sleeves up. You lit a stick of incense with the tips of your fingers, because the routine of it helped calm you as you worked, even as the thought of touching Bolin sent shivers through you.

“You’ll only need to remove your shirt. Please,” you gestured to the table again, and this time Bolin took a step forwards, undoing the clasps of his outer tunic.

“Once you’re ready, please lay face down on the table,” you instructed, as you turned back to your oils. It was typical procedure for you not to watch your patients as they undressed for you, but you made a conscious effort not to look as Bolin shed his tunic and undershirt. You needed to at least remain professional until he was on the table, then he wouldn’t be able to see your blush as you worked over his body.

You truly did just want him to take some time to unwind for himself. He was always so concerned about the young men and women he trained, so kind to you and the rest of the staff he worked with. He spent so much time thinking of others that you knew he didn’t take care of himself. The other trainers had stopped by your room before, had taken advantage of your service, even if they didn’t refer as many of their trainees to you. But Bolin had never graced your door except to give you food or drink, or refer a patient to you. It was actually a bit concerning, considering the amount of work he did. He was always in the arena, always helping someone, or training – he needed to take a moment to relax. And if you could get your hands on his broad shoulders while you helped him with that, well, that was just a nice bonus for you.

You rifled through your collection of oils before you found one that you thought would be soothing, and picked up the bottle, turning to the table. You took a deep breath before you finally looked up.

Bolin was laying face down on the table, his head snug in the headrest. You had to bite your lip when your eyes grazed over his shoulders and back – you knew he had to be muscular, what with his job, but you had never seen the source of his strength up close.

“Have you ever seen a firebending masseur before?” you asked, trying to start a pleasant conversation. Hopefully it would help Bolin calm down if he realized this was normal, for people to get massages.

“No, I’ve never had any kind of massage before,” he admitted, his voice a little muffled by the headrest. You smiled at that. Then he was in for a treat.

“The benefit of a firebending masseur, is that we can heat our hands,” you continued, rubbing the oil between your palms. “A trained firebender can regulate their own body heat, and that adds an extra layer of healing to our treatments. So, don’t be shocked.”

You took a breath, and placed your hands on Bolin’s shoulders, near his neck. You knew this was where a lot of men carried stress, especially those that did a lot of weight lifting. As you pressed your hands into the muscle there, Bolin gasped at your touch, tensing for a split second before you saw all the nerves seep out of his frame.

“Oh, that’s – that is nice,” he hummed. You grinned at him, working your fingers slow and gentle to loosen the tense muscle there. You were right – he was very tight here, and you would need to spend some time there to help him relax.

“Feels even better than water healing,” Bolin mumbled, wiggling a little as he relaxed into the table. You quirked a brow at him.

“Oh, you’ve been healed before?”

“Yeah,” Bolin groaned as you pressed your thumb into a particularly sensitive area, but continued, his voice only shaking a little bit. “I messed up my shoulder pretty bad in a match once.”

“It’s a completely difference experience when you’re not injured,” you agreed with him, taking a detour to work at his shoulder muscles, digging your fingers into the thick muscle there. He was built like a tank, but when you pressed into the muscle, he purred like a kitten, the tension leaving him in waves.

“Maybe you’re just good with your hands,” Bolin offered in rebuttal, and you were very, very happy that he couldn’t see your face as you pressed your fingers into his back. It was also a good thing that you could regulate your temperature under pressure, or else you were sure you would have burned him on accident.

“That’s very sweet,” you replied instead, your voice soft. He was very sweet, in general. But, at your words, he tensed again, his shoulder blades stiff and pressed closer together.

“I- unless that’s a rude thing to say!” You giggled at him, pinching at the back of his neck in jest. He was such a sweetheart.

“No, it really is sweet,” you assured him. “You’re too nice, Bolin, you know that?”

His skin felt hotter under your fingers as you worked down his back, over his ribs and to his waist. He was so strong – his muscles were firm under your hands, his chest broad and solid. His breath hitched in a few places where he was tense and sore, but other than that, you two settled into a comfortable silence.

It was awkward, in a way, because now you were alone with your thoughts. The only thing within your field of vision was an expanse of smooth skin, and you wondered what you would be able to do if you and Bolin were dating and you were to give him a massage. Would he let you press kisses between his shoulder blades, would he let your hands dip below his waistband?

Your cheeks flushed as your massage reached said waistband, fingers digging in above his hips.

Bolin moaned, his hips twitching at the attention, and you gasped, stilling. You both froze, before Bolin spoke up, trying to explain himself.

“Sorry! I- uh- I’m ticklish!”

The explanation was an obvious lie, and you could tell even if Bolin’s head didn’t thwack back into the headrest with such force. You turned away, doing your best not to laugh.

“It’s alright,” you assured him, chuckling a little. You lowered your voice, almost to a whisper, as you pressed your fingers against his hips again, this time softer, deliberate in a different manner. “You’re allowed to enjoy yourself.”

Bolin’s breath hitched, and you bit your lip, paying special attention to the muscles just above his hips. He shivered as you kneaded his sore muscles, and you grinned. Usually you wouldn’t focus so much on such a spot, but you had to admit that teasing Bolin was very fun. He was such a sweet boy – you wished he would stop by more often.

“That should just about do it,” you stated, wiping your hands on a small towel you kept tucked into your waistband. Bolin’s back shone with oil in the low light, and he had all but sunk completely into the table, completely relaxed. He tilted his head to the side to look at you, a little bashful.

“I feel like I should have bought you dinner first,” he admitted, with a dorky laugh. You replied with your own giggle, covering your mouth.

“You did, remember?” you gestured to the dumplings still sitting on the high table, and Bolin shook his head, sitting up, rolling his neck as he adjusted to his loosened muscles.

“No, I mean, like, properly,” he elaborated, scratching the back of his head. You smiled, looking up at him shyly.

“You mean, like a date?” you pressed. You wanted him to ask you out – you wanted to get to know him.

“If you’d want?” he replied, shrugging. You smiled bright at him, nodding.

“I would like that, very much.”

#bolin x reader #bolin x you #lok bolin #bolin #mine

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katblu42 · 4 years ago

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The End?

This is something I wrote for a creative writing competition. The challenge was to write something (within a week) starting at the end and working back to the beginning. For some reason the prompt/challenge sparked this little piece, which is pretty much non-fiction. I guess it came at a time when the subject matter was on my mind. I wanted to post it now because a related anniversary is coming up.

There are warnings!!! Please heed the tags. Death, Sickness, Hospitals, Cancer. (If more warnings/tags are needed please let me know so I can make appropriate edits!)

Below the cut for length and warnings.

This was not how their story was supposed to end. There were still so many chapters they had hoped to write together, so many journeys toward possible futures that they had imagined spending side by side. She never anticipated being a childless widow before she had even turned forty-two. She’d never considered being faced with a hopeless situation, or the unenviable decision to allow them to stop treatment and let him slip away. Treatments that could prolong his life a little, but not fix him. Their plans had never included his hand desperately clinging to hers as she tearfully told him it was okay for him to let go and leave her behind.

He had wanted to fight. It broke her heart that there was nothing the combined efforts of all the medical staff could do to support his fight. It was a losing battle. His body was giving up on him, organs shutting down even though his mind was not ready to give up. The three weeks he lasted in the ICU had left him battle-scarred and exhausted, but he had still not wanted to give in, or let her down.

His Forty-second birthday was less than a week before the end. It was spent with family, visiting two by two according to ICU visitor limits. He was barely able to communicate by then, his lips scabbed and bloody, and a ventilator tube in his throat inserted by tracheostomy. The medical team had not wanted the tube to remain in his mouth any longer, but he was too weak to breathe on his own.

He had been off the ventilator for a while, during one of the hopeful moments. They’d been able to remove the breathing tube, and they had been able to reduce the blood pressure medication for a while. His temperature had stabilised and she’d focused on the improvements, encouraging him to think positive. Facing the alternative had been unthinkable.

She had put such hope in the drug she’d had to sign permission for them to administer – one that had to be shipped urgently from interstate, that had approval for use in the US, but not here. They had told her it was possible too much time had passed for the reversal drug to be fully effective. It had been more than five days since the chemo treatment which now needed reversing had ended.

Hope was all she’d had at that point. Seeing him finally settled in Intensive Care with all the monitors and their beeps and alarms, the ventilator with its click and hiss, the hum of the heat pump regulating his temperature, the blood transfusion and IV lines all keeping her unconscious husband alive, she had to cling to every scrap of hope she could. His immune system was so compromised she had to wear the gown and gloves and mask just to sit in the corner of the room and let the silent tears fall.

The ICU waiting room was deserted during the wee hours. She and her Mum stayed until dawn before buzzing the door intercom to enquire about seeing him. His Dad had left after the surgeon had spoken to them all some hours before, explaining that in his current state surgery was not a viable option for the infection in his gut. The previous wait in Emergency had been shorter, and the waiting room slightly more comfortable, but the constant worry and the lack of information had been excruciating.

Two ambulances had attended their tiny unit in answer to her call, such was the seriousness of his condition. Despite having four uniformed people fussing over her husband, she had not been given much information about what was happening. She’d been instructed to get all his medication together to bring with her to the hospital, then left to change out of her pyjamas while they loaded him into an ambulance. All this happened in a blur of action and confusion. Less than 20 minutes before they all headed to the hospital she had been performing chest compressions on him on the tiled floor of their cramped bathroom.

The Emergency Services operator on the other end of the phone had talked her through the CPR procedure. She’d learned it years before in first aid training, but having to actually perform the chest compressions on someone she loved was still horrifyingly daunting. He hadn’t stopped breathing, but the ES operator had assured her CPR was necessary because his gasping breaths had been so far apart.

She had never had to call an ambulance for anyone before, but it didn’t take a genius to see she needed help. His level of responsiveness had decreased so rapidly after she’d found him slumped forward sitting on the toilet, unable to sit up unaided. The yellow tinge to his skin had startled her. He had cried out to her in such a way that instinct had brought her rushing from the loungeroom without taking a moment to process anything more than the feeling that something was very wrong.

He had just wanted to sleep, so she tried to give him space to do that, sitting quietly in the loungeroom while he stayed in the darkened bedroom. He had refused to let her bring him something to eat, which had concerned her. She’d offered to call the hospital for advice, knowing he was uncomfortable and wanting to make sure he was okay, but he had refused to let her, insisting that there was no need to make a fuss. She’d arrived home from work around five, and suspected he had been in bed all day, “just feeling a bit yuck.” Later she would feel so much guilt for not trusting her instinct to get help for him then.

For the first couple of days after his chemo treatment ended he had seemed okay, feeling upbeat, acting normal. He had been in high spirits despite the prospect of months of treatment still ahead. There had been a little grumbling about feeling a little bit off, but that was to be expected, right?

His first (and only) round of chemo had been a five day affair. Three medications, two of which had been administered within a day at the clinic and the third he had carried around in a little pack while it slowly released over the five days. The plan had been laid out by the oncology team, with lots of consultations and discussions during the preceding weeks. He was to have two or three rounds of the chemo drugs, then radiation treatment would begin. Combination therapy to treat the cancers in his mouth and throat.

There had been months of discomfort, reducing his ability to eat properly, or enjoy food. He had lost a considerable amount of weight before she had been able to convince him to finally go and see a doctor and find out what was wrong. He’d always been the type to avoid going to a doctor unless he was literally at death’s door. She knew that part of what had held him back for so long was the fear that it could be something serious.

He didn’t want to ruin their holiday, but he promised he would see someone about the sore throat when they got back from the Gold Coast. It was only a week spent away, but they had visited all their favourite haunts. This was one of their regular holiday spots during their ten year marriage. They always felt like big kids, visiting the theme parks and the beaches, playing mini golf, messing about in the resort pool.

The two of them had been lucky to share many little trips away over the years. They’d had many more days of laughter and smiles than they’d had of tears and troubles. There had been precious gifts exchanged between them – but not many in a physical form she could lay her hands on. Each of them had broadened the other’s horizons, sparking interest in new experiences, sharing the activities and pass-times they loved.

Their wedding day had been filled with fun and friends and family. She had seen then how many people his bright and generous personality drew to him. So many people had wanted to share in their joy, and had told her she would never find a more loyal and loving mate. All the elegance and finery, the colour and music, the celebration of their union had been a wonderful way to begin their journey hand in hand to the future.

His proposal on the beach, early in the morning in a place he had been holidaying with his family every year since he was tiny, had taken her by surprise. He had asked her to come with him for a walk. They had travelled quite a long way up the beach, just watching the waves crash on the shore, listening to the shrieks of the gulls and making small talk. Then he had dropped to one knee and asked the question. She needed a moment to take in what was happening. His heart just about stopped, thinking she was hesitating. She had said yes, and put him out of his nervous agony.

Their first “proper” date was a walk to the local McDonalds for burgers and sundaes. Neither of them had much money, so neither had wanted to go anywhere fancy. She had been happy with the little things – like the way he always walked beside her on the footpath placing himself between her and the busy road. He was not rich, nor did he have impressive style or a brainiac’s intelligence, but he was open and funny and kind and she wanted to spend time with him.

She hadn’t ever been to the trivia night at the local bowling club, so she wasn’t sure what to expect, or how it all worked. The lady who hosted the quiz gave her an answer sheet and steered her towards a table, telling her the young man with the twinkle in his blue eyes, and the dimpled smile would look after her. That was the moment their story had begun.

#creative writing #tw death #tw hospital #tw cancer #tw sickness #two years without him come Sunday

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woah-were-halfway-there · 5 years ago

Note

You wrote something about being separated from Auston during quarantine, what about finally being reunited with him after all of this?

You know I had to make sure this extremely soft, right? 😉 Here’s the oriiginal piece :)

Word Count: 1.7k

It wasn't easy living in a pandemic for anyone. Life as everyone knew it changed drastically, and it was hard to say when things would entirely go back to the way they once were. It was hard staying positive sometimes.

When everything started going downhill back in mid-March, you got stuck in Toronto. Although you mainly worked from home, you were needed in the office for a few days to help figure things out with the upcoming closure as a precaution for the pandemic.

This happened just after all NHL players were given the ok to go home as opposed to staying in their team cities. You knew that it didn't make sense for Auston to stay in Toronto if he didn't need to and although he did offer to wait for you to be done work so you could fly to Scottsdale together, you insisted that he go be with his family as soon as possible and that you'd join later that same week. Simple as that.

But then the Canada-U.S. border closed and a travel ban was put in place. After that, you got stuck alone at yours and Auston's condo without a single clue of when you'd get to see your boyfriend in person again. And it sucked.

The first month was a lot of adjusting. Many people, including yourself and Auston, were sure this would blow over fairly quickly. You both followed the guidelines of social distancing and didn't go out unless you had to; being very considerate of your own safety and the safety of others. However, it didn't take long to realize that not everyone had the same mindset, which is why things remained so strict.

Although the thought of getting sick with the virus was terrifying, so was the unknown of what was going to happen next, or when society would finally function the way it used to. It was honestly really depressing, and the fact that you couldn't see any of your loved ones in person also made it so much worse.

You and Auston developed a bit of a routine, though. The two of you would FaceTime every day, usually multiple times, so that you would have some company. Seeing as he was in Arizona with Freddie and another friend, your FaceTime calls with the boys, and sometimes Auston's family were always entertaining, but you also loved the ones where it'd just be you and your boyfriend as well.

You still kept in contact with your friends and family too. Some were either still in or not far from the city, like Mitch and Steph, and you hated not being able to just go hang out with them to help keep your mind off things, but there wasn't much you could do. You were quite literally stuck, and damn did you miss your people.

You missed Auston the most, easily. It was ridiculously hard adjusting to him just not being with you for months on end. Sure, during the hockey season, the two of you were separated quite a bit when the Leafs had away games, but you always knew when he'd be back and had that to look forward to. During quarantine, you didn't have that.

Auston missed you too, more than anything, and constantly beat himself over the fact that he left without you even though it was not his fault. And you made sure to remind him of the fact that he had no control over anything that happened and needed to not be so hard on himself.

There were just so many things about the situation that made it seem like nothing could go right. It was a really tough time and felt like it was never-ending, but then something in the news instantly made you feel more hopeful.

Shortly after you had woken up one day, it was announced that the border between Canada and the States had finally reopened. Slowly, flights out of the country were becoming available but still extremely regulated to prevent further spread of the virus.

Whether or not the NHL season was going to resume was still unknown, so the game plan was for you to get to Arizona as soon as you could if the opportunity became available, and then it finally did.

You booked a flight to Phoenix, and just waited for the email saying that it was cancelled to avoid the spread of the virus, but it never did. So, with a day left before your flight, you packed up a bunch of your clothes and prepared yourself to be reunited with your boyfriend finally.

The flight from Toronto to Phoenix was a little long, but you've made it many times before, so it was no big deal. However, for some reason, you felt extremely anxious this time around.

Maybe it was the eerie feeling of an almost empty aircraft or just the fact that not everything was back to normal quite yet, and here you were leaving the country anyways. You weren't doing anything wrong, but it felt like you were.

Regardless though, you were on your way to see your man, and that was all that mattered to you at that moment.

Once you touched down in Phoenix, it took you a bit of time to get through customs. Again, with all the new procedures, and with you arriving from Canada, some other precautions had to be taken before you could get your luggage.

As soon as you were done doing everything you had to and grabbed your suitcase, you started heading towards the arrivals area of the airport and called Auston as you did so as a way to find out where he was.

The phone rang twice as you walked through the doors, but then you quickly hung up as your gaze fell on your boyfriend standing a few feet away with Freddie; and watched his face light right up as soon as he laid eyes on you.

Now, you never pictured yourself to be in one of those cliche movie scenes of an emotional reunion in an airport, but time seemed to slow right down as you rushed towards Auston, and that's exactly what it felt like. Luckily there weren't too many people arriving when you did, so it didn't take long for the space between the two of you to shrink, and you were soon launching yourself into his embrace.

You collided with him and held on for dear life as you were suddenly overwhelmed by the familiar scent of that cologne he always liked to use. It was really him, in person, and soon the waterworks started as he held onto you even tighter and placed a soft kiss to the top of your head.

"God, I missed you so much," he stated as he continued holding on to you and refused to let go.

It was then you finally pulled away a little bit just so you could look up at him, sniffling a bit as you did so. "I missed you more than I can even explain."

"Then it's a good thing you're here now because you are not leaving my side."

"Well, it's suggested that I self-quarantine for two weeks since I'm arriving from out of the country, so I really don't get a choice."

"Nope, you're stuck with me," he said while finally letting you go just so he could grab your suitcase, but made sure to hold your hand as the two of you started walking over to Freddie. "And big red."

"Hey Y/N," Fred greeted and pulled you in for a hug as well. "Glad you're here, now Auston can stop sulking and quit forcing me to binge-watch his stupid Netflix shows with him."

"Hey!" Auston said and glared at his teammate. "Rude much?"

"It's likely that I've already seen them," you told the two and shook your head. "There was literally nothing else to do back in Toronto."

"Yeah, I'm still not over the fact that you went ahead in watching Ozark without me," your boyfriend replied as the three of you walked out of the airport towards parking.

"Well, excuse me, someone has been too busy playing video games with Mitch. The other day I could barely get a conversation in with Steph because of Mitch yelling in the background over a goal that you scored on chel."

"It was a beauty of a goal, though."

"No, it wasn't," Fred chuckled before taking your suitcase from Auston and putting it in the backseat with him so that you and Aus could sit up front together. "At least with you here now, he won't bug me as much to hang out with him."

"Again, rude much," Auston grumbled as he climbed into the driver's seat and looked at Freddie through the rearview mirror.

"All I know is that I'm already looking forward to these two weeks to be up so I can at least see Ema, Brian and the girls. My sanity will need it after being stuck with you boys for 14 days," you replied.

"Wow," both scoffed defensively, making you chuckle again.

"Hey, but I'd take being stuck with you guys over being alone any day."

At that, Auston smiled and reached over to grab your hand and squeeze it, giving you a knowing look. "Good, cause I'm really glad you're here."

"Me too," you said and looked over at him, wanting nothing more to lean over and kiss him before he started driving. But for Freddie's sake, you decided to wait until you were home.

"God, enough with the sappy looks already," he groaned as you laughed, and Auston rolled his eyes. "I'm just messing, glad to have you here too, Y/N. And not just because Matt's will finally shut up about it now."

"Thanks, Fred," you told him with a smile before looking back to Auston. "Ready to go?"

"More than ready," your boyfriend replied casually, trying to play down just how excited he was to have you back, but you knew as soon as the two of you were home, he wouldn't be leaving your side. And you couldn't have asked for anything more.

#nhl imagines #nhl fanfiction #auston matthews #auston matthews imagine #auston matthews fanfiction #auston matthews imagines #nhl imagine #nhl writing #hockey imagine #hockey fanfiction #nhl rpf #nhl headcanon #toronto maple leafs imagine #hockey rpf

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furrycowboypeach · 4 years ago

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1.How does classic car insurance differ from conventional car insurance ?Classic car insurance will give you what the car is actually worth and or what you feel the car is worth. Conventional insurance will not. Let’s say you have a beautiful 1965 split window corvette. Maybe it’s worth a $100,000. Collection insurance will want photos of the car and maybe an inspection of the vehicle. Once they agree on the value your good to go. However there are rules, like limited miles you can drive, garage kept, they can be very picky. Regular insurance last I heard will give you blue book value. Do the research. There are some very good collection companies around.

Insurance companies and having fun with this.

The UK MOT test now has public information data about current and historical mileage.

Thus now we can see/prove/audit that there are many tens of thousands of old cherished cars - that literally do not move for years on end. (Less than 500 miles every 5 years).

Big data analysis will show clearly to insurance companies which classic cars are massively profitable to insure.

A mainstream loved semi-classic car has a market value of £4,000 or less. (eg. 18 year old Mercedes convertible) driven by a busy,, employed, 50 year old with 2+ cars

On fully comprehensive insurance - the risk held by the insurance company is £3.5K for total write off of the car and any 3rd party claims (on a vehicle that hardly moves). The risk to the policy owner is loss of 4 years no claims bonus and a 10+ year claim free profile.

Big data will show to the insurance companies that these are very profitable policies

2.Does the wrong address invalidate car insurance ?

That depends on why it is wrong. If you move, while you should notify your insurance company, but don’t you are more likely to get cancelled because you didn’t pay your mailed bill (assuming that is the option that you selected).

But if say that you live in Miami, Florida (the most expensive place in the state to get auto insurance, and you claim that you live just outside of DeFuniak Springs, Florida and then have an accident in Miami, Florida, the insurance company could say FRAUD and VOID your policy as if it never existed. Because you had an uninsured accident, you would probably lose your driver’s license until you made the other driver whole again! Short of that, it usually wouldn’t be considered Material, and they would back bill you for premium OR give you a refund.

3.Is rental car insurance a rip-off ?

yes and no.

if you are using your insurance and crash the rental car, you can be liable for the complete cost of repairs AND lost revenue while it is being repaired. this can be full price of the rental all the time it is being repaired. this can be a ton of cash. also if you chip the windshield the rental co can charge you for a complete new windshield or repair the that one. your insurance may or may not cover any or all of this. needless to say you will have to deal with it one way or another.

if you buy the EXPENSIVE rental car insurance you are covered for all damages including all the “little scratches”

i was 21 and rented a car to go to a job interview 2 day rental. well i put almost 1600 miles on the car. when i returned the rental agent was mad i had put that many miles on an unlimited rental. so she went out and nitpicked everything …. i just watched as she pointed bugs out as dents and everything else. when we went in she disappeared a returned with a 2400.00 repair dollar bill. and demanded how i was going to pay. i just said i paid the 15.00 for the full insurance and that would cover it , she grabbed the rental agreement and read it, her face turned red. and i left….

4.Is it okay to not have car insurance for a few months ?

Probably expecting a bit of heat for this one but here goes.. lol.

I live in Spain and about 14 years ago or so I was forced under pressure to get rid of the Suzuki jeep… which looked a fair bit like this I suppose. No power steering and the uncanny ability to just spin right around on itself in slightly greasy roads….

which had the widest back tyres I think I have ever seen on a car.., anyway, it had to go, saw an ad for a Mitsubishi Shogun , a lot like this

UK plates and only came with an export certificate from UK. Seems the guy who brought it over was intending to change it over to Spanish plates but never got round to it. Swapped the Suzuki plus 3 grand and off we went. First time I had driven an automatic, was a joy and no mistake…proper built like a tank too.. awesome car.

Drove that car for almost 8 years on that export certificate, no MOT and insurance papers I made my self on the computer by copying a mates documents and changing the pertinent details. Spanish cops had at that time.. and possibly still now, no way of actually checking the veracity of insurance papers, if they looked legit, they were accepted.

I understand that in the last few years DVLA having softened a little and offer a yes or no answer to Spanish enquiries as to whether a UK registered car has a valid MOT or not… no other info is given. I assume thats data protection at work or some such. Its that yes or no that has gotten rid of a load of UK plated cars from Spanish roads, now you actually have to have one, so either you know someone who has an MOT garage and can produce one for you or you drive back to get it done, which isnt usually viable.

So ye, its ok to not have insurance for a few months or even a few years, as long as you can get away with it.

5.Can realtors write off car insurance ?

It depends on the method they choose to use to write off their car expenses. If their car is used less than 50% for business, they must use the mileage method which includes all operating expenses including insurance. If they use it more than 50% they may choose to use the actual expense method or the mileage method. If they use the actual expense method they can deduct the business % of gas, repairs, interest, insurance, depreciation, etc. Either method requires them to keep a mileage log.

6.Does my car insurance cover my friend when they borrow my car for a day?

In the UK read your certifcate of motor insurance.

If it says

“Any person driving on the policyholder’s behalf or with their permission” or WTTE then they will be covered. (There may be age limits in the schedule of insurance but these cannot appear on the certificate). (Also cover will be for pleasure use only unless the wording on the certificate specifically includes business use by your friend).

If it does not say that then, unless your friend is named on the certificate of insurance, they are not covered under your policy.

This does not necessarily mean that they are uninsured when they drive your car, since they may have an insurance policy covereing their own car with the “driving other cars” extension. “The policyholder may drive, with the owner’s permission a car not belonging to the policyholder nor hired to him under a hire-purchase agreement”. If this clause is in effect it only covers their Road Traffic Act Liability and does not cover loss or damage to the car whilst in their control. Note that it is your duty to check this. If your friend doesn’t have such cover then you are ‘aiding and abetting’ a motor offence of driving without insurance - offence code IN12 - which will substantially increase your car insurance premium - despite the FCA announcements today.

7.Can a 19-year-old afford car insurance ?

Driving a car is a privilige, not a right.

Unless you are in gainful employment and living at home, I suspect you will have to rely on the bank of mum and dad. But if you think getting insurance at 19 is hard - imagine trying to get it at 17 and 18.

Many teenagers go with a company that assesses the premium based on information sent to them by a ‘black box’ added to the car. People who drive sensibly and only durting the day pay a lot less than those who drive recklessley and at night - even if the latter have no accidents.

The first year is by far the worst. If you go claim free for a year then no only will you be 20 rather than 19 - but you will have one years no claims discount - which will knock about a third off your premium.

(Oh and don’t try and pretend the car you drive is owned and registered with your parents and that your mother is the main user. Insurance companies are not stupid. People who own a vehicle one or two years old don’t normally decide to buy a second vehcile that is 10 years old for their own use.)

8.What are the worst car insurance companies in America ?

As others have alluded to, the whole insurance cabal and racket is on par with a level or two less integrity than the drug cartels run in Mexico and South America.

Still, some insurance companies make an effort to comply with law and regulation, while others just have a standard operating procedure to act like bad-faith criminals.

One company stands out as the worst of the worst:

Bristol West

If you bought insurance from these scoundrel's, do yourself a favor, and immediately change. But don’t change early, or you’ll pay outrageous cancellation.

If you get hit by someone with this insurance, put in your claim with your own insurance, or you’ll just be wasting your own time.

9.How much do I need to pay for car insurance ?

Without knowing where in the world that you live, nor your age, sex marital status, other drivers in your household, driving records, and car or cars you trying to insure.

You can't save time or money by asking an ambiguous non informational question here. You will have to do it the old fashioned way, calling around to agents or companies. You can also go online to the companies and agents but NOT TO THOSE SITES THAT PROMISE TO TELL YOU THAT THEY'LL TELL YOU EVERY COMPANY'S RATES. That is a LIE plus you are putting yourself at risk for identity theft, and here are the reasons:

None of these sites has ALL of the companies. They only show those companies paying them to be there.

Even if they show an Allstate, a Progressive and/or Geico, these companies all have multiple rating levels for different types of drivers from preferred for the very best risks down to theworst risks out there. Those kinds companies might only have one or two of their rating levels on each of these sites, so if you don't qualify for those that rating tiers you won't be given a rate from those companies. Likewise if the company that truly is cheapest for you didn't pay for that website to show their rates, you won't see them.

They will sell your personal information to multiple agents and/or companies. This means that you will be bombarded by people trying to sell you auto insurance.

And since they don't check that the person indeed buying the leads are insurance agents all of your personal information could end up in the hands of identity thieves.

NOTE: IDENTITY THEFT DOES NOT HAPPEN FROM INSURANCE COMPANY OR AGENT'S WEBSITES!

10.What do

sports

car

lovers need to know about car insurance ?

Find out how buying a sports car impacts on your car insurance, from cost to cover. There’s nothing specific you need to look for in an insurance policy on a sports car, per se, but it’s always a good idea to read the policy wording in advance if you have anything specific you want covered.

Some of us love football. Some of us love cricket. And some of us love motorsport. The sports we like are part of our identity, and if you’re a motorsport fan you might want to express that through your choice of car.

We’ve put together this short guide to help you better understand the implications of owning a sports car from an insurance point of view.

Find out how buying a sports car impacts on your car insurance, from cost to cover.

What to look for in an insurance policy on a sports car

There’s nothing specific you need to look for in an insurance policy on a sports car, per se, but it’s always a good idea to read the policy wording in advance if you have anything specific you want covered.

For instance, you might want to be sure you’re covered against vandalism or other such malicious damage to the tyres, paintwork or (on a cabriolet) the fabric roof.

Even if you’ve found a policy that covers every scenario you can imagine, you must fully disclose all details of the car to avoid having an insurance claim refused. This includes any optional extras or other modifications that have been made by you or a previous owner.

What qualifies as a sports car ?

For the purposes of insurance underwriting, Admiral defines sports cars as cars designed as performance vehicles ‘from the get-go’: things like coupes, roadsters and GTs.

Having said that, your car may be considered a sports car even if it doesn’t fall into one of these categories.

Car manufacturers recognised years ago the demand for high-performance cars which were practical and spacious enough for the real world – cars for people with children and hobbies, essentially.

Traditional sports cars are designed to be lightweight, compact and aerodynamic, but this usually means a cramped interior and little or no luggage space.

So, over the years, and with changing attitudes towards what ‘sporty’ means, we’ve seen the arrival of the hot hatchback (as defined by the iconic VW Golf GTI), the sports saloon (think BMW M5) and, more recently, the performance SUV (such as the Porsche Cayenne).

Why is insurance on sports cars more expensive ?

Every new car is placed into an insurance group based on the risk associated with it, and risk is calculated using statistics about past claims on similar cars. Risk takes into account both how likely you are to make a claim, and how much it could cost to put right if you do.

When it comes to sports cars, the first (and perhaps most obvious) thing insurers look at is their performance. Many sports cars are fitted with engines that provide rapid acceleration and high top speeds.

And they’re engineered to mimic the driving characteristics of racing cars, with responsive handling and potent brakes – all designed to help you carry as much speed into, through, and out of corners as possible. All of which increases your likelihood of being involved in an accident.

They are also, often, more expensive to repair or replace, because of their high sale prices or because parts are more specialised. And they may present a more irresistible temptation to thieves, making a theft claim more likely.

What are the cheapest sports cars to insure ?

We've compiled a list of the 10 sports cars with the cheapest average premium between January and March 2021.

Of course, the car itself is only one of the factors used in calculating premiums, so the characteristics of the average owner of these cars (including age, driving history and No Claims Bonus) could explain why the premiums are so affordable.

The models listed combine cars of all ages and values, including both hard-top and roadster equivalents sharing the same name.

Porsche Boxster - £404.04

BMW Z4 - £437.52

Polestar 2 - £446.07

Mazda MX-5 - £451.80

Porsche Cayman - £488.42

Porsche 911 - £509.19

Porsche Macan - £518.03

Nissan GT-R - £582.02

Toyota MR2 - £586.39

Ford Mustang - £586.77

After you've finished reading, we hope you've benefited. And we invite you to comment in your opinion. And we're happy with that, and we love reading it.

#home #car #book blog #insurance

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ramiedragon3 · 4 years ago

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The Benefits Of Mediation Services.

Kent & London Family Members Mediation Solutions

Content

Mediation Solutions Uk.

Court.

When an agreement that matches all events has been reached, our moderator can formulate the required records as well as check the on-going scenario, if needed. In either instance, our employment regulation consultants can moderate as well as bring consistency to your workplace. This includes disputes that a worker may have versus their employer or a disagreement amongst co-workers that has been brought to the employer because it is impacting business. Workplace conflicts can have an enormous negative impact on your organization, so settling them as swiftly and also agreeably as feasible is essential.

How many hours a week do mediators work?

Mediators don't often work irregular hours. A dispute may arise at any time, but unless there is a pending deadline, mediators tend to work eight-hour days.

Anything said during the mediation can not be revealed to the outdoors without the consent of both parties as well as the conciliator. Among the underpinning concepts of mediation is confidentiality. This encourages events to be honest and also truthful, as well as assists to 'unclog' the dispute. The federal government's action was the Work Act 2008, which withdrawed the legal corrective and also grievance processes and also replaced them with the new Advisory, Conciliation and also Arbitration Service code as well as connected assistance. While mediation has not been imposed on employers, in keeping with its vital principles of voluntariness and discretion, the code and assistance do motivate the use of mediation. This is underpinned by the duty of ACAS in offering pre-claim conciliation as well as the offer of judicial mediation in certain cases procedures in the Employment Tribunal.

Mediation Solutions Uk.

It was said that while mediation could settle relational matters between company and also staff member, troubles with ability would inevitably resurface at a later factor. From an employee perspective, there was a risk that using mediation could cover unjust therapy and shift obligation for this far from the organisation. Nevertheless, this usually did not lead to any type of essential adjustment in practices and/or perspective, as well as in about half of cases within the example change was not inevitably continual. Part of the reason for this was that some events that had actually been reluctant to go through mediation in the first place were prepared to consent to a course of action with little or no purpose of adhering to it.

This was compounded by a lack of follow-up, specifically in cases that were externally moderated. As a full-service company, we are able to provide customized options to all the legal as well as business concerns you have in your life-- both in business as well as for you and your family members. Arbitrators prevent taking sides, making judgments, figuring out outcomes or offering assistance. They are simply in charge of creating reliable communications as well as structure consensus between the celebrations-- they ask questions that help to aid the parties to recognize the issues as well as make clear the choices for fixing the conflict.

Court.

Mediation can be a reliable and affordable means of handling work problems. A proficient moderator will quickly recognize the crucial issues in a situation as well as develop what outcome both sides wish to achieve.

The process is not binding unless an arrangement is gotten to, and also can be made to be confidential of the company, so producing trust for staff members to use. Virtually 50% of companies are currently utilizing workplace mediation according to ACAS. When collaborating with team, it's generally enough to frame a spoken arrangement. The celebrations can drink hands and also accept go forward to make the needed modifications. This is often done with a pre-mediation conference with everyone to seek his or her commitment. TimelessTime specialists have trained to the highest degree as well as have years experience in HR as well as people-management.

If you would certainly like us to provide you a call to talk about workplace mediation in even more information click on this link to ask for a call back. Discussions that are carried out throughout mediation are not binding and the entire process is entirely confidential.

https://workplacemediations.co.uk/conflict-resolution/portsmouth/ ='border: grey dotted 1px;padding: 10px;'>

Digital divorces: How splitting up online could save money and pain - This is Money

Digital divorces: How splitting up online could save money and pain.

Posted: Sat, 09 Jan 2021 08:02:00 GMT [source]

Mediation needs some facilities and assistance for the celebrations involved. HR is well put to offer suitable support with preparation, the logistics as well as aiding the celebrations get involved fully at the same time. A "mediation friend" can give unbiased, private listening support to make it possible for both events to realistically use mediation. In some cases, however, also where there was no considerable adjustment in attitude and also behavior, mediation paved the way for a degree of pragmatism permitting the events to continue to work together in some form. Moreover, for employees that had actually complained of unfair therapy, the chance to broadcast their sights can be cathartic and also empowering, also if mediation did not supply the justice that they looked for. Significantly, nearly all participants would certainly either suggest mediation to others or think about participating once more in the appropriate situations. Some supervisors within the sample wondered about, specifically, the sustainability of negotiations in cases that involved performance problems.

example of mediation services bolton can explore all alternatives that they really feel has actually enhanced the dispute. This makes sure that they have control of the option, that all concerns and also alternatives are gone over, equipping events to produce lasting services. Workplace Mediation allows everyone in the workplace to have efficient discussions to settle the dispute, repair work damaged partnerships and also produce a healthy workplace for the entire group. Set price mediation provides the solutions of a ProMediate Panel Conciliator for a set price that covers all pre-mediation preparation and also mediation time on the day itself as much as a maximum of 7 hours. Fixed price mediation offers the solutions of a ProMediate Panel Arbitrator for a fixed price that covers all pre-mediation prep work as well as mediation time on the day itself as much as a maximum of 7.5 hrs.

Usually, you should attempt mediation if you are involved in a little insurance claim as there is no charge to you.

The courts can not compel the celebrations to a small case to use the service however they urge the events to benefit from it.

Under the court guidelines, Juries are needed to actively manage how cases advance consisting of encouraging the celebrations to utilize an alternative disagreement resolution treatment, such as mediation

The court ought to however, put the process on hold or resist setting a trial day up until the mediation has actually taken place.

There's little in workplace disagreements that they have not experienced. TimelessTime experts have actually helped numerous managers settle problem in lots of varied work environments. Tranquil Mediation is a registered charity and not-for-profit organisation. Our pricing policy reflects our commitment to motivating using mediation and restorative approaches.

The process begins with a short evaluation call with the referrer, followed by private sessions with each celebration prior to the mediation session. The court likewise held that mediation proceedings were covered by without prejudice benefit in between the parties, that can forgo that privilege. If an additional benefit is attached to papers that are created by a celebration as well as shown to the conciliator, that event kept the opportunity and also it was not forgoed by disclosure to the moderator or by waiver of the without prejudice benefit. A settlement arrangement had been become part of as a result of mediation. The claimant firm applied to reserve the settlement agreement on the grounds that it had been participated in under economic pressure. workplacemediations.co.uk for business mediation services bournemouth was served with a witness summons by the offender, seeking their participation at the trial to provide proof regarding the mediation, consisting of personal conversations. The claimant company did not object in concept to calling the moderator to offer evidence but stated that the demand to call the arbitrator had actually not been shown.

Mediation Confidentiality in Federal Court - Mediate.com

Mediation Confidentiality in Federal Court.

Posted: Tue, 05 Jan 2021 03:47:26 GMT [source]

Our competitive prices begin with as little as ₤ 950+ BARREL for a workplace mediation. We offer a Mediation Information pack that aids events and also referrers prepare for and get one of the most out of the mediation process.

Sign up to receive regulation updates, concise informed lawful expertise and understandings from our professional organization lawyers. Marks & Spencer has been using mediation because 2011 as well as staff members locate dealing with grievances informally much less difficult, a lot more efficient and also a quicker solution than elevating an official complaint. In 2011 CIPD undertook a Dispute Administration Survey in which 57% of respondents reported utilizing workplace mediation effectively. " All of our workplace & employment mediation testimonies with just one click." Most of our time will certainly be invested at work it would certainly be preferable to have it as trouble cost-free as possible. Possible customers as well as recommendation events need to know which issues are essentially ideal for mediation, and also do not make use of mediation to stay clear of taking a solid strategy to unfairness, conduct or capacity. This is a lengthy procedure accomplished by constant drip-drip awareness increasing, securing ring-fenced resolution budget plans and also creating plans that motivate mediation as a first resort when suitable.

youtube

A couple of peaceful, personal spaces will be discovered, normally at your workplace, at our offices or in a hassle-free, neutral location. If you have any type of concerns concerning the choice of location you should raise this either with the individual who has actually referred you to mediation, or the Consilia arbitrator at least three days before the mediation meeting. Generally there are just two individuals involved, though sometimes there are several, you will understand that you are consulting with. The process does not enable legal representatives, union agents or any type of other agents to be existing during the individual or joint conferences. Mediation is a voluntary process, if you are unclear about whether or not you will certainly attend, please speak to the person who has actually referred you for mediation. If you would like, you can additionally speak to a mediator from Consilia Mediation that will be able to answer any kind of questions you have and with any luck allay any type of fears.

#mediation services eu #mediation services europe #workplace mediation eu #workplace mediation europe #business mediation services eu #business mediation services europe

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thedigitalhuman · 5 years ago

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Some bioethicists have said that Facebook’s recent study of user behaviour is “scandalous”, “violates accepted research ethics” and “should never have been performed”.

I write with 5 co-authors, on behalf of 27 other ethicists, to disagree with these sweeping condemnations (see go.nature.com/XI7szI).

We are making this stand because the vitriolic criticism of this study could have a chilling effect on valuable research. Worse, it perpetuates the presumption that research is dangerous.

When the average user logs on, Facebook automatically chooses 300 status updates from a possible 1,500 to display in his or her feed. Such manipulation, which often determines how likely people are to view emotionally charged content, aims to optimize user engagement and activity and is how Facebook is able to offer a free service but still make a profit. But how does this affect users’ moods?

No one knows whether exposure to a stream of baby announcements, job promotions and humble brags makes Facebook’s one billion users sadder or happier. The exposure is a social experiment in which users become guinea pigs, but the effects will not be known unless they are studied.

For a week in January 2012, a data scientist from Facebook, along with two researchers from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, tried to do just that. Of the many millions of users who log on every day, they randomly selected 310,000. Automated software — not researchers who read users’ feeds, as some have suggested — coded a post as ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ if it contained a single such word.

Facebook then adjusted its algorithm to filter from half of these feeds 10–90% of the positive content, and from the other half a similar amount of negative content (A. D. I. Kramer, J. E. Guillory and J. T. Hancock Proc. Natl Acad. Sci USA 111, 8788–8790; 2014). This had the effect of concentrating the feeds with negative and positive content, respectively.

Some have said that Facebook “purposefully messed with people’s minds”. Maybe; but no more so than usual. The study did not violate anyone’s privacy, and attempting to improve users’ experience is consistent with Facebook’s relationship with its consumers.

It is true that Facebook altered its algorithm for the study, but it does that all the time, and this alteration was not known at the time to increase risk to anyone involved. Academic studies have suggested that users are made unhappy by exposure to positive posts (E. Kross et al. PLoS ONE 8, e69841; 2013). The results of Facebook’s study pointed in the opposite direction: users who were exposed to less positive content very slightly decreased their own use of positive words and increased their use of negative words.

“The extreme response to this study could result in such research being done in secret.”

We do not know whether that is because negativity is ‘contagious’ or because the complaints of others give us permission to chime in with the negative emotions we already feel. The first explanation hints at a public-health concern. The second reinforces our knowledge that human behaviour is shaped by social norms. To determine which hypothesis is more likely, Facebook and academic collaborators should do more studies. But the extreme response to this study, some of which seems to have been made without full understanding of what it entailed or what legal and ethical standards require, could result in such research being done in secret or not at all.

Let us be clear. If critics think that the manipulation of emotional content in this research is sufficiently concerning to merit regulation or charges of unethical behaviour, then the same concern must apply to Facebook’s standard practice — and many similar practices by companies, non-profit organizations and governments.

But if it is ethically permissible for Facebook to offer a service that carries unknown emotional risks, and to alter that service to improve user experience, then it should be allowed — and encouraged — to try to quantify those risks and publish the results.

Much has been made of the issue of informed consent, which the researchers did not obtain. Here, there is some disagreement even among the six of us. Some think that the procedures were consistent with users’ reasonable expectations of Facebook and that no explicit consent was required. Others argue that the research imposed little or no incremental risk and that informed consent might have biased the results; in those circumstances, ethical guidelines, such as the US regulations for research involving humans, permits researchers to forgo or at least substantially alter the elements of informed consent.

Although approval by an institutional review board was not legally required for this study, it would have been better for everyone involved had the researchers sought ethics review and debriefed participants afterwards.

The Facebook experiment was controversial, but it was not an egregious breach of either ethics or law. Rigorous science helps to generate information that we need to understand our world, how it affects us and how our activities affect others. Permitting Facebook and other companies to mine our data and study our behaviour for personal profit, but penalizing it for making its data available for others to see and to learn from makes no one better off.

Digital Human, Series 19 Episode 3 - Lab Rats

#research management #digital human #digihuman #the digital human #aleks krotoski #michelle meyer #emotional contagion #facebook #AB testing #open letter #nature #tech #technology #psychology #science #social media #backlash #fear #mental health

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graymanbriefing · 2 years ago

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1st Amendment Brief: Texas Bill Upheld BLUF: A bill that claims to "protect free speech online" that was blocked by a lower court has been upheld by a court of appeals and is now poised for a SCOTUS ruling. In 2021, Texas passed House Bill 20. Opponents of the bill said "it tramples the First Amendment by allowing the government to force private businesses to host speech they don’t want to." Opponents were against the law that would block social media outlets (SMOs) from censoring content. Supporters of the bill said that without the law's measures; SMOs, banks, and cellular companies could censor/cancel the accounts of people who "express views or spend money in support of political parties or views such corporations oppose." HB-20 imposes monetary damages when a SMO (and other online service providers such as those that offer emailing) "impede the transmission of another person's electronic [mail, post, photo, etc] message based on the content of the message unless the provider is authorized to block the transmission". The law authorizes SMOs/providers to block threats of violence, criminal conduct, and other content not protected by the 1st Amendment. The bill's language makes it unlawful for these providers and outlets to "edit, alter, block, ban, delete, remove, deplatform, demonetize, de-boost, regulate, restrict, inhibit" free speech content. The bill also requires SMOs to produce regular reports on removed content, create a complaint system, and disclose their content regulation procedures. The case has seen a number of legal hurdles and was blocked when a District Court ruled against the state and gave opponents an injunction. A Supreme Court "Shadow Docket" also opposed the law. Last week the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled against opponents of the bill and SMOs. This sets up the bill to be heard by SCOTUS for a final ruling on its constitutio...(CLASSIFIED, stop what you're doing and go join our Telegram and Signal news/intel service. It's $5/mo. You'll get all of our coverage unredacted and in real-time.)

#News #Intel #Situational Awareness #Prepping

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sunbd · 2 years ago

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anthonybialy · 3 years ago

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Intermittent Bossiness

Some fetishes are intermittent. Take how submissiveness is beloved by twisted statists depending on the partner. Those into degradation as policy only like being told what to do in certain situations. In fact, they demand it. Political freaks are such sickos that they want others to be forced to compliance. Deeply committed to force, the application just has to be a kind they prefer. Dress in a suit, not a cop uniform.

Panic about a virus most victims don't know they have is a trend amongst the pushy that doesn't seem to be fading. Semipermanent fear is ideal for fans of authority. Discussing dictatorships in terms of pure calculation leads to figuring how to force genuflecting instead of whether or not it's good for the knees and soul. Making humans feel less so is the best way to maintain control. It's twisted but kind of effective if you're not into letting others have decadent freedoms like options.

The longest two weeks in history is merely a good example of their bad fears. Masks are a superstition that reflect devotion to a peculiar faith. If you mock Christians for falling short of ideals, make sure you're not worshiping science while distorting it.

Damnation-taunters who opine that there's nothing sillier than eating a cracker to feel holy sure think breathing through cloth preserves humanity. There are equal amounts of evidence. It's much more mortifying to think every scary part of life can be controlled by a caring politician that trust there's an invisible all-powerful and -loving being watching over everything, as we can see the latter is untrue.

Enforcing mandates with gentle suggestions may not create as much compliance as hoped, although it'll be just as effective. It turns out cops may not be the bad guys. In fact, they may be arresting those who are in a high percentage of instances. Next, feel shocked that many trials justly end in convictions.

You'd think those who love government more than anything would appreciate the compliance wing. Punishing those who don't want to participate in pernicious daftness that can only be enforced by threat of, well, force. Making people buy crummy insurance then assailing those responsible for ensuring compliance is one of liberalism's many delights.

Don't ask just how law enforcement's enemies plan on enforcing their schemes, as the answers will be as vague as how said schemes themselves will function. Bail and immigration plans based on the honor system haven't quite created high participation levels. They're effective at everything but stopping the behaviors. Whether they're that gullible or were on the side of nefariousness the whole time is a fun debate regarding an astounding misunderstanding of human nature.

Central planners crave regulating everything but killing the inconvenient. Abortion really shows the baby who's boss. The particular rabid zeal for the right to choose murder displays a profound misapplication of free will. Pretending opposition is about control of women's bodies remains a very openminded understanding of just what the ghastly procedure entails.

Horrifically ditching consequences of reckless fun shouldn't feel empowering. Contemporary believers of the Earth's central spot in the universe dodge sonograms like the unborn wish they could dodge the abortionist's tools.

Humans are permitted choice if it means disposing of the human byproduct of special hugs. There's no constitutional right for, say, patronizing the insurer of one's preference like there is for vacuuming out a being who's been conceived. And you certainly can't decide to patronize a concert venue unless you got the same shot as every other attendee. All the cool kids are doing it.

Admiring statist paradises sure is popular amongst those who hate their hometown police force. It takes unconscionable levels of brute power to make others obey.

The mechanism involved to create compliance with legal demands should offer a lesson on how welcome their rather aggressive planning is. Instead, our very consistent progressive friends oppose law enforcement arresting criminals while cheering cops ensuring compliance with restaurant hosts checking a paper that says the hopeful diner got a shot.

Liberals used to pretend to be against the establishment. The shtick undoubtedly wore out the performers. They lusted for state control the entire time. Toadying to those who dispense the dole is worth the humiliation. Begging beats working. Let someone else take care of unpleasant indelicacies like money.

It takes effort to get this personally incongruous. The modern sophisticated adorer of unabated power despises companies who rely on voluntary patronization while adoring a government which isn't quite renowned for permitting opting out.

Similarly, those with fascinating ideas of just who commits felonies don't know how they'll punish dissent. Victims wish Democrats would be concerned about genuine lawbreaking instead of fighting crime by getting legal gun owners to fill out more paperwork. Those planning to commit felonies may not bother.

Seeing criminals as innocent and innocents as criminals sums up how we're ruled no matter how much we wish it didn't. Banning cash bail while targeting the smallest transactions for IRS scrutiny shows a gross misunderstanding of who to target. But your elected bosses consistent in a sick way. Liberals love thieving so much that they worship a government that specializes in it. There's no crime if a politician takes what's yours. Why, that'd be unlawful.

0 notes

patriotsnet · 3 years ago

Text

How Many Electoral Votes Do Republicans Have

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/how-many-electoral-votes-do-republicans-have/

How Many Electoral Votes Do Republicans Have

Has A Candidate Lost The Public Vote But Become President

How many electoral votes does Iowa have?

Yes. In fact, two out of the last five elections were won by candidates who had fewer votes from the general public than their rivals.

It is possible for candidates to be the most popular candidate among voters nationally, but still fail to win enough states to gain 270 electoral votes.

In 2016, Donald Trump had almost three million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, but won the presidency because the electoral college gave him a majority.

In 2000, George W Bush won with 271 electoral votes, although Democrat candidate Al Gore won the popular vote by more than half a million.

Only three other presidents have been elected without winning the popular vote, all of them in the 19th Century: John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B Hayes and Benjamin Harrison.

How Many Electoral College Votes Does Arizona Have

4.1/5

Year

The state of Arizona has 11 electoral votes in the Electoral College. As of February 2020, Donald Trump and Bill Weld are among the declared Republican candidates.

Secondly, how are Electoral College votes determined? Electoral votes are allocated among the States based on the Census. Every State is allocated a number of votes equal to the number of senators and representatives in its U.S. Congressional delegationtwo votes for its senators in the U.S. Senate plus a number of votes equal to the number of its Congressional districts.

One may also ask, how many electoral votes does each state have?

The Electoral College consists of 538 electors, and an absolute majority of at least 270 electoral votes is required to win the election. According to Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution, each state legislature determines the manner by which its state’s electors are chosen.

How many votes did Trump get in Arizona?

2016 United States presidential election in Arizona

Nominee

Map 2 And Table 1: Current Party Control Of Us House Delegations By State

Notes: Table 1 is sorted from largest delegation to smallest . *Assumes Republicans hold the now-vacant but very heavily Republican PA-12 in a special election later this year. **North Carolina has a House vacancy stemming from the disputed and unresolved race in NC-9.

One could argue that the GOP edge largely comes from the smallest states, as the GOP holds a 5-2 edge among the seven states that only have a single, at-large House member. However, that edge disappears if one looks instead at the dozen states that have either one or two House members. Delegation control is split 6-6 among those states. That said, the GOP definitely benefits from a broader small-state advantage. Its four-delegation national edge comes entirely from the bare majority of states, 26, that have six House members or less. Republicans hold a 15-11 advantage in these states; the 24 largest states, those that have seven House members or more, are split 11-11 apiece, not including the two tied states of Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Who knows? Such a situation would be unprecedented in modern times. Realistically, though, its hard to imagine the Democrats taking a majority of the House delegations in the next election unless the overall election was a Democratic runaway, in which case there wouldnt be a tie in the Electoral College to worry about anyway.

Kyle Kondik is a Political Analyst at the;Center for Politics;at the University of Virginia and the Managing Editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball.

Also Check: Are There More Democrats Or Republicans In Us

Benjamin Harrison V Grover Cleveland

1888 was another election in which the winner of the popular vote did not become president.

Democratic incumbent Grover Cleveland had won the popular vote by a margin of 0.8% . Despite this slim popular victory, Republican Benjamin Harrison won the Electoral College majority .

Harrison won the Electoral College without the popular vote by winning slim majorities in his winning states and suffering considerable losses in his losing states. Six southern states favored Cleveland by more than 65%.

The reason for this split was the issue of tariffs. The South strongly favored lowering of the tariff. The Republicans approved of high tariffs and were unpopular in the South. Tariff reform gave Cleveland immense support in the southern states, but the South alone was not enough to win the election.

When elected in 1884, Cleveland was the first Democrat elected since before the Civil War. He came back to challenge and defeat Harrison in 1892.

The Popular Vote On Election Day

Under the United States Constitution, the manner of choosing electors for the Electoral College is determined by each state’s legislature. Although each state designates electors by popular vote, other methods are allowed. For instance, instead of having a popular vote, a number of states used to select presidential electors by a direct vote of the state legislature itself.

However, federal law does specify that all electors must be selected on the same day, which is “the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November,” i.e., a Tuesday no earlier than November;2 and no later than November;8. Today, the states and the District of Columbia each conduct their own popular elections on Election Day to help determine their respective slate of electors.

Generally, voters are required to vote on a ballot where they select the candidate of their choice. The presidential ballot is a vote “for the electors of a candidate” meaning the voter is not voting for the candidate, but endorsing a slate of electors pledged to vote for a specific presidential and vice presidential candidate.

Because U.S. territories are not represented in the Electoral College, U.S. citizens in those areas do not vote in the general election for president. Guam has held straw polls for president since the 1980 election to draw attention to this fact.

Also Check: How Many Seats Do The Republicans Control In The Senate

Who Are These Electors

While the U.S. constitution offers little guidance on who can be an elector, it does contain strict regulations as to who does not qualify for the position. Article II, section 1, clause 2 provides that âno Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector.â;

Choosing of the electors is a two-part process.;

The first part of the process, which varies from state to state, consists of statewide political parties selecting a slate of possible electors by either a nomination at a party convention or by a procedural vote from the partyâs central committee.;

Electors are often high-ranking members of either political party, chosen to honor their service to the government.

The second part of the process occurs during the statesâ general elections; when voters cast their ballots for president, they are also selecting the stateâs electors to represent their vote in the Electoral College.

Since electors are allocated to states based on the total population and amount of congressional districts, states have widely varying amounts of electoral voters.;

For example, the states with smaller populations such as Wyoming â the least populous state with just over half a million people, per 2019 estimates â have three electors each. California, the most heavily populated state with over 39 million people, also has the most electors in the country at 55.;

Third Parties And Independent Candidates

Third- parties and independent candidates, despite the obstacles discussed previously, have been a periodic feature of American politics. Often they have brought societal problems that the major parties had failed to confront to the forefront of public discourse and onto the governmental agenda. But most third parties have tended to flourish for a single election and then die, fade away or be absorbed into one of the major parties. Since the 1850s, only one new party, the Republican Party, has emerged to achieve major party status. In that instance, there was a compelling moral issue slavery dividing the nation. It provided the basis for candidate recruitment and voter mobilization.

There is evidence that third parties can have a major impact on election outcomes. For example, Theodore Roosevelts third-party candidacy in 1912 split the normal Republican vote and enabled Democrat Woodrow Wilson to be elected with less than a majority of the popular vote. In 1992, H. Ross Perots independent candidacy attracted voters who, in the main, had been voting Republican in the 1980s, and thereby contributed to the defeat of the incumbent Republican president, George H.W. Bush. In the extremely close 2000 contest between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore, it is possible that had Green Party candidate Ralph Nader not been on the ballot in Florida, Gore might have won that states electoral votes and thereby the presidency.

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Appointment By State Legislature

In the earliest presidential elections, state legislative choice was the most common method of choosing electors. A majority of the state legislatures selected presidential electors in both 1792 and 1800 , and half of them did so in 1812. Even in the 1824 election, a quarter of state legislatures chose electors. Some state legislatures simply chose electors, while other states used a hybrid method in which state legislatures chose from a group of electors elected by popular vote. By 1828, with the rise of Jacksonian democracy, only Delaware and South Carolina used legislative choice. Delaware ended its practice the following election , while South Carolina continued using the method until it seceded from the Union in December 1860. South Carolina used the popular vote for the first time in the 1868 election.

Excluding South Carolina, legislative appointment was used in only four situations after 1832:

Legislative appointment was brandished as a possibility in the 2000 election. Had the recount continued, the Florida legislature was prepared to appoint the Republican slate of electors to avoid missing the federal safe-harbor deadline for choosing electors.

What Are The Battlegrounds For The 2020 Election

How the Electoral College works | VERIFY

Its widely agreed that the key swing states are as follows; but there is some variation between commentators and pollsters.

Florida

Electoral College votes: 29

Latest poll: 3.3pp in favour of Democrats

Florida could go either way this year, in 2008 and 2012 it voted Obama and the Democrats in, but in 2016 Trump won Florida by 1.2pp. It has a diverse population with a conservative stronghold, and is difficult to predict but possibly the most important barometer of the whole country.

Pennsylvania

Electoral College votes: 20

Latest poll: 6.4pp in favour of Democrats

In 2016 Trump won by 0.7pp, and it has been a key pawn this year relating to the argument on fracking in particular.If Biden can boost turnout in the liberal cities to balance Trumps rural base, he could swing the state this year.

Ohio

Electoral College votes: 18

Latest poll: 2.0pp in favour of Republicans

Trump won Ohio in 2016 by a landslide of 8.1pp, and Bidens only chance this year is to seriously motivate black voters.

Michigan

Electoral College votes: 16

Latest poll: 7.9pp in favour of Democrats

In 2016 Trump won Michigan by the thinnest hairs breadth. But, having voted for Obama twice, Biden is hopeful he can claw the rust belt state back to blue.

North Carolina

Electoral College votes: 15

Latest poll: 4.1pp in favour of Democrats

Arizona

Electoral College votes: 11

Latest poll: 3.3pp in favour of Democrats

Wisconsin

Electoral College votes: 10

Latest poll: 7.3pp in favour of Democrats

Iowa

Georgia

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Current Electoral Vote Distribution

Electoral votes allocations for the 2024 and 2028 presidential elections.Triangular markers (

H Hybrid system

Before the advent of the “short ballot” in the early 20th century the most common means of electing the presidential electors was through the general ticket. The general ticket is quite similar to the current system and is often confused with it. In the general ticket, voters cast ballots for individuals running for presidential elector . In the general ticket, the state canvass would report the number of votes cast for each candidate for elector, a complicated process in states like New York with multiple positions to fill. Both the general ticket and the short ballot are often considered at-large or winner-takes-all voting. The short ballot was adopted by the various states at different times; it was adopted for use by North Carolina and Ohio in 1932. Alabama was still using the general ticket as late as 1960 and was one of the last states to switch to the short ballot.

So Who Are Americans Voting For

When Americans go to the polls in presidential elections they’re actually voting for a group of officials who make up the electoral college.

The word “college” here simply refers to a group of people with a shared task. These people are electors and their job is to choose the president and vice-president.

The electoral college meets every four years, a few weeks after election day, to carry out that task.

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Four Features Of Our Anti

Broadly speaking, there are fourfeatures of our system of government that make our democracy less democratic, many of them working in interlocking ways. These features also happen to give the GOP a structural advantage.

1) The Senate is deeply unrepresentative of the country

According to 2018 Census Bureau estimates, more than half of the US population lives in just nine states. That means that much of the nation is represented by only 18 senators. Less than half of the population controls about 82 percent of the Senate.

Its going to get worse. By 2040, according to a University of Virginia analysis of census projections, half the population will live in eight states. About 70 percent of people will live in 16 states which means that 30 percent of the population will control 68 percent of the Senate.

Once all of its members are sworn in, Democrats and Republicans will each control an equal number of seats in the Senate, but the Democratic half will represent nearly 42 million more people than the Republican half. The 25 most populous states contain about 84 percent of the population, and Democrat senators have a 29-21 majority in those states. Republicans, meanwhile, have an identical 29-21 majority in the 25 least populous states.

There are over 20,000 more farms in California than there are in Nebraska. There are rural regions in large states. And there are some urbancenters in small states.

Hamiltons argument is refuted by three words: President Donald Trump.

How Many Electoral Votes Does It Take To Win

The important number is 270. A total of 538 electoral votes are in play across all 50 states and Washington, D.C. The total number of electoral votes assigned to each state varies depending on population, but each state has at least three, and the District of Columbia has had three electors since 1961.

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Which Objections Are Recognized

For an objection to a state’s vote to be considered, it has to be a signed by at least one member of the House and one from the Senate.

An objection to a state’s entire slate of electors has been raised only once since the Electoral Count Act was enacted in 1887. That’s expected to happen again Wednesday a dozen Republican House members have said they plan to object to votes from swing states won by Biden, and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., announced last week that he planned to join at least some of the challenges.

On Saturday, 11 more GOP senators said they would vote to sustain objections in six swing states unless there’s a 10-day audit to review votes that have already been certified after canvasses, audits and/or recounts. There’s been no movement toward such an audit.

Samuel Tilden V Rutherford B Hayes

One of the most controversial presidential elections was between Samuel Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes.

Tilden, a Democrat, won the popular vote by nearly 250,000 votes, over 3%. On the night of the election, both candidates, as well as most of the national media, assumed Tilden was the winner. However, some Republicans were not willing to give up so easily.

The candidate’s electoral votes were close and the Republicans contested 20 of them, including 4 from Florida, 8 from Louisiana, 7 from South Carolina, and 1 from Oregon.

Out of these 20 electoral votes, Tilden only needed 1 to win the election. Hayes needed all 20.

Without any precedent for the many contested electoral votes, both parties agreed to set up a 15-person commission to study the contested votes and to impartially decide whom each vote should go to.

The commission was made up of five senators, five members of Congress, and five Supreme Court Justices. It was originally set up to include seven Democrats, seven Republicans, and one independent who was expected to be unbiased and nonpartisan.

At this time, the Republicans controlled the Senate and the Democrats controlled the House. Both parties agreed that the findings of the commission would be upheld unless overruled by both the House and the Senate.

The Democrats threatened to filibuster but eventually agreed to a resolution that Hayes would withdraw federal troops from the South, ending reconstruction and the enforcement of equal voting rights for blacks.

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Barry Bonds Hits 715th Home Run To Pass Babe Ruth On Mlb List

So Congress created a bipartisan Federal Electoral Commission composed of House representatives, senators and Supreme Court justices. The Commission voted to give all 20 disputed electoral votes to Hayes, who won the election by the thinnest of margins: 185 to 184.

Why did the Commission decide to hand the election to Hayes, who had lost both the popular and electoral vote? Most historians believe there was a deal brokered between the two parties. The Democrats, whose stronghold was the South, agreed to let Hayes be president in return for the Republicans promising to pull all federal troops from former Confederate states. Thats one of the main reasons why Reconstruction was abandoned in 1877.

A portrait of President Benjamin Harrison, 1888. Courtesy Library of Congress.;

The 1888 race between incumbent Democratic President Grover Cleveland and Republican challenger Benjamin Harrison was riddled with corruption. Both parties accused the other of paying citizens to vote for their candidate. So-called floaters were voters with no party loyalty who could be sold to the highest bidder.

In Indiana, a letter surfaced that allegedly showed Republicans plotting to buy up voters and to disrupt the oppositions own bribery efforts. Meanwhile, Southern Democrats did everything in their power to suppress the Black vote, most of whom aligned with the Republicans, the party of Lincoln.

0 notes

statetalks · 3 years ago

Text

How Many Electoral Votes Do Republicans Have

Has A Candidate Lost The Public Vote But Become President

How many electoral votes does Iowa have?

Yes. In fact, two out of the last five elections were won by candidates who had fewer votes from the general public than their rivals.

It is possible for candidates to be the most popular candidate among voters nationally, but still fail to win enough states to gain 270 electoral votes.

In 2016, Donald Trump had almost three million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, but won the presidency because the electoral college gave him a majority.

In 2000, George W Bush won with 271 electoral votes, although Democrat candidate Al Gore won the popular vote by more than half a million.

Only three other presidents have been elected without winning the popular vote, all of them in the 19th Century: John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B Hayes and Benjamin Harrison.

How Many Electoral College Votes Does Arizona Have

4.1/5

Year

The state of Arizona has 11 electoral votes in the Electoral College. As of February 2020, Donald Trump and Bill Weld are among the declared Republican candidates.

One may also ask, how many electoral votes does each state have?

How many votes did Trump get in Arizona?

2016 United States presidential election in Arizona

Nominee

Map 2 And Table 1: Current Party Control Of Us House Delegations By State

Kyle Kondik is a Political Analyst at the;Center for Politics;at the University of Virginia and the Managing Editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball.

Also Check: Are There More Democrats Or Republicans In Us

Benjamin Harrison V Grover Cleveland

1888 was another election in which the winner of the popular vote did not become president.

Democratic incumbent Grover Cleveland had won the popular vote by a margin of 0.8% . Despite this slim popular victory, Republican Benjamin Harrison won the Electoral College majority .

When elected in 1884, Cleveland was the first Democrat elected since before the Civil War. He came back to challenge and defeat Harrison in 1892.

The Popular Vote On Election Day

Also Check: How Many Seats Do The Republicans Control In The Senate

Who Are These Electors

Choosing of the electors is a two-part process.;

Electors are often high-ranking members of either political party, chosen to honor their service to the government.

Since electors are allocated to states based on the total population and amount of congressional districts, states have widely varying amounts of electoral voters.;

Third Parties And Independent Candidates

You May Like: How Many Republicans Are Against Trump

Appointment By State Legislature

Excluding South Carolina, legislative appointment was used in only four situations after 1832:

What Are The Battlegrounds For The 2020 Election

How the Electoral College works | VERIFY

Its widely agreed that the key swing states are as follows; but there is some variation between commentators and pollsters.

Florida

Electoral College votes: 29

Latest poll: 3.3pp in favour of Democrats

Pennsylvania

Electoral College votes: 20

Latest poll: 6.4pp in favour of Democrats

Ohio

Electoral College votes: 18

Latest poll: 2.0pp in favour of Republicans

Trump won Ohio in 2016 by a landslide of 8.1pp, and Bidens only chance this year is to seriously motivate black voters.

Michigan

Electoral College votes: 16

Latest poll: 7.9pp in favour of Democrats

In 2016 Trump won Michigan by the thinnest hairs breadth. But, having voted for Obama twice, Biden is hopeful he can claw the rust belt state back to blue.

North Carolina

Electoral College votes: 15

Latest poll: 4.1pp in favour of Democrats

Arizona

Electoral College votes: 11

Latest poll: 3.3pp in favour of Democrats

Wisconsin

Electoral College votes: 10

Latest poll: 7.3pp in favour of Democrats

Iowa

Georgia

Don’t Miss: Which Region In General Supported The Democratic Republicans

Current Electoral Vote Distribution

H Hybrid system

So Who Are Americans Voting For

When Americans go to the polls in presidential elections they’re actually voting for a group of officials who make up the electoral college.

The word “college” here simply refers to a group of people with a shared task. These people are electors and their job is to choose the president and vice-president.

The electoral college meets every four years, a few weeks after election day, to carry out that task.

You May Like: Which Republicans Voted Against The Tax Bill

Four Features Of Our Anti

1) The Senate is deeply unrepresentative of the country

There are over 20,000 more farms in California than there are in Nebraska. There are rural regions in large states. And there are some urbancenters in small states.

Hamiltons argument is refuted by three words: President Donald Trump.

How Many Electoral Votes Does It Take To Win

Don’t Miss: Did Any Republicans Vote For Trump Impeachment

Which Objections Are Recognized

For an objection to a state’s vote to be considered, it has to be a signed by at least one member of the House and one from the Senate.

Samuel Tilden V Rutherford B Hayes

One of the most controversial presidential elections was between Samuel Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes.

The candidate’s electoral votes were close and the Republicans contested 20 of them, including 4 from Florida, 8 from Louisiana, 7 from South Carolina, and 1 from Oregon.

Out of these 20 electoral votes, Tilden only needed 1 to win the election. Hayes needed all 20.

Without any precedent for the many contested electoral votes, both parties agreed to set up a 15-person commission to study the contested votes and to impartially decide whom each vote should go to.

Recommended Reading: Are Republicans Or Democrats More Educated

Barry Bonds Hits 715th Home Run To Pass Babe Ruth On Mlb List

A portrait of President Benjamin Harrison, 1888. Courtesy Library of Congress.;

source https://www.patriotsnet.com/how-many-electoral-votes-do-republicans-have/

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gordonwilliamsweb · 4 years ago

Text

Long Drives, Air Travel, Exhausting Waits: What Abortion Requires in the South

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Just a quick walk through the parking lot of Choices-Memphis Center for Reproductive Health in this legendary music mecca speaks volumes about access to abortion in the American South. Parked alongside the polished SUVs and weathered sedans with Tennessee license plates are cars from Mississippi, Arkansas, Florida and, on many days, Alabama, Georgia and Texas.

Choices is one of two abortion clinics in the Memphis metro area, with a population of 1.3 million. While that might seem a surprisingly limited number of options for women seeking a commonplace medical procedure, it represents a wealth of access compared with Mississippi, which has one abortion clinic for the entire state of 3 million people.

A tsunami of restrictive abortion regulations enacted by Republican-led legislatures and governors across the South have sent women who want or need an early end to a pregnancy fleeing in all directions, making long drives or plane trips across state lines to find safe, professional services. For many women, that also requires taking time off work, arranging child care and finding transportation and lodging, sharply increasing the anxiety, expense and logistical complications of what is often a profoundly difficult moment in a woman’s life.

“Especially for women coming from long distances, child care is the biggest thing,” said Sue Burbano, a patient educator and financial assistance coordinator at Choices. “They’re coming all the way from Oxford, Mississippi, or Jackson. This is a three-day ordeal. I can just see how exhausted they are.”

The long drives and wait times could soon spread to other states, as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares this fall to consider a Mississippi ban on nearly all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with no allowances for cases of rape or incest. Under a law enacted in 2018 by the Republican-led legislature, a woman could obtain a legal abortion only if the pregnancy threatens her life or would cause an “irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.”

Mississippi’s ban was promptly challenged by abortion rights activists and put on hold as a series of lower courts have deemed it unconstitutional under the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision. That 1973 ruling, in concert with subsequent federal case law, forbids states from banning abortions before “fetal viability,” the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb, or about 24 weeks into pregnancy.

Tennessee, Texas, Mississippi and several other states have since passed laws that would ban abortions after six weeks. That legislation is also on hold pending legal review.

Groups opposed to abortion rights have cheered the court’s decision to hear the Mississippi case, believing the addition of Justice Amy Coney Barrett gives the court’s conservative bloc enough votes to overturn Roe, or at least vastly expand the authority of individual states to restrict abortion.

But, for supporters of reproductive rights, anything but a firm rejection of the Mississippi ban raises the specter of an even larger expanse of abortion service deserts. Abortion could quickly become illegal in 21 states — including nearly the entire South, the Dakotas and other stretches of the Midwest — should the court rescind the principle that a woman’s right to privacy protects pregnancy decisions.

“If we end up with any kind of decision that goes back to being a states’ rights issue, the entire South is in a very bad way,” said Jennifer Pepper, executive director of Choices in Memphis.

The decades-long strategy by conservative white evangelical Christians to chip away at abortion access state by state has flourished in the South, where hard-right Republicans hold a decisive advantage in state legislatures and nearly all executive chambers.

Though details vary by state, the rules governing abortion providers tend to hit similar notes. Among them are requirements that women seeking abortions, even via an abortion pill, submit to invasive vaginal ultrasounds; mandatory waiting periods of 48 hours between the initial consultation with a provider and the abortion; and complex rules for licensing physicians and technicians and disposing of fetal remains. Some states insist that abortion providers require women to listen to a fetal heartbeat; other providers have been unable to obtain admitting privileges at local hospitals.

“Everything is hard down here,” said Pepper.

The rules also have made some doctors reluctant to perform the procedure. While obstetricians and gynecologists in California, New York, Illinois and elsewhere routinely perform abortions at their medical offices — the same practices where they care for women through pregnancy and delivery — their peers in many Southern states who perform more than a small number of abortions a year must register their practices as abortion clinics. None has done so.

Texas offers an example of how targeted legislation can disrupt a patient’s search for medical care. In 2012, 762 Texans went out of state for abortions, according to researchers at the University of Texas-Austin. Two years later, after then-Gov. Rick Perry signed into law the nation’s most restrictive abortion bill, shuttering about half the state’s abortion facilities, 1,673 women left Texas to seek services. In 2016, 1,800 did so.

Similarly, in March 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic took hold, Gov. Greg Abbott issued an order prohibiting all abortions unless the woman’s life was in danger, deeming the procedure “not medically necessary.” The month before the order, about 150 Texans went out of state to seek abortion services. In March and April, with the order in effect, nearly 950 women sought care outside Texas.

There can also be an unsettling stigma in some parts of the South.

Vikki Brown, 33, who works in education in New Orleans, said she initially tried to end her pregnancy in Louisiana, calling her gynecologist for advice, and was told by a receptionist that she was “disgusted” by the request.

She sought out the lone abortion clinic operating in New Orleans but found it besieged with both protesters and patients. “I knew but didn’t understand how difficult it was to get care,” said Brown, who moved to Louisiana in 2010 from New York City. “The clinic was absolutely full. People were sitting on the floor. It was swamped.” It took her six hours to get an ultrasound, which cost $150, she said.

A friend in Washington, D.C., counseled Brown that “it didn’t have to be like that” and the pair researched clinics in the nation’s capital. She flew to Washington, where she was able to get an abortion the same day and for less than it would have cost her in New Orleans, even including airfare.

“No protesters, no waiting period,” she said. “It was a wildly different experience.”

Atlanta, a Southern transportation hub, has also become a key piece in the frayed quilt of abortion care in the region.

Kwajelyn Jackson, executive director of Feminist Women’s Health Center in Atlanta, said the clinic regularly sees patients from other states, including Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky and the Carolinas.

These visits often involve long drives or flights, but rarely overnight stays because the state-mandated 24-hour waiting period can begin with a phone consultation rather than an in-person visit. Georgia has many of the same laws other states employ to make clinical operations more burdensome — requirements to cremate fetal remains, for instance, and that abortion providers adhere to the onerous building standards set for outpatient surgical centers — but its urban clinics so far have weathered the strategies.

Jackson said staffers at her clinic are aware of its role as a refuge. “We’ve had patients who were able to get a ride from Alabama, but they weren’t able to get a ride home,” she said. “We had to help them find a ride home. It is so much simpler to go 3 or 4 miles from your home and sleep in your bed at night. That is a luxury that so many of our patients can’t enjoy.”

Many women embarking on a search for a safe abortion are also confronting serious expenses. State Medicaid programs in the South do not pay for abortions, and many private insurers refuse to cover the procedure. In addition, the longer a woman’s abortion is delayed, the more expensive the procedure becomes.

Becca Turchanik, a 32-year-old account manager for a robotics company in Nashville, Tennessee, drove four hours to Atlanta for her abortion in 2019. “We got an appointment in Georgia because that was the only place that had appointments,” she said.

Turchanik said her employer’s health insurance would not cover abortion, and the cost of gas, food, medications and the procedure itself totaled $1,100. Her solution? Take on debt. “I took out a Speedy Cash loan,” she said.

Turchanik had a contraceptive implant when she learned she was six weeks pregnant. She said she was in an unhealthy relationship with a man she discovered to be dishonest, and she decided to end her pregnancy.

“I wish I had a child, but I’m glad it wasn’t his child,” she said. “I have accomplished so much since my abortion. I’m going to make my life better.”

But the emotions of the ordeal have stayed with her. She’s angry that she had to call around from state to state in a panic, and that she was unable to have her abortion close to home, with friends to comfort her.

Others turn to nonprofit groups for financial and logistical support for bus and plane tickets, hotels, child care and medical bills, including the National Abortion Federation, which operates a hotline to help women find providers. Last year, the federation received 100,000 calls from women seeking information, said its president, the Very Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale.

Access Reproductive Care-Southeast, an abortion fund based in Atlanta, has trained over 130 volunteers who pick women up at bus stations, host them at their homes and provide child care. A study published this year in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health examined 10,000 cases of women seeking assistance from ARC-Southeast: 81% were Black, 77% were uninsured or publicly insured, 77% had at least one child, and 58% identified as Christian.

“It’s amazing to see the scope of the people we work with,” said Oriaku Njoku, ARC-Southeast’s co-founder. “The post-Roe reality that y’all are afraid of is the lived reality for folks today in the South.”

A Texas law targets precisely this kind of help, allowing such organizations or individuals to be sued by anyone in the state for helping a woman get an abortion. It could go into effect Sept. 1, though abortion rights advocates are suing to stop the new law.

Despite the controversy surrounding abortion, Choices makes no effort to hide its mission. The modern lime-green building announces itself to its Memphis neighborhood, and the waiting room is artfully decorated, offering services beyond abortion, including delivery of babies and midwifery.

Like other clinics in the South, Choices has to abide by state laws that many abortion supporters find onerous and intrusive, including performing transvaginal ultrasounds and showing the women seeking abortions images from those ultrasounds.

Nonetheless, the clinic is booked full most days with patients from almost all of the eight states that touch Tennessee, a slender handsaw-shaped state that stretches across much of the Deep South. And Katy Deaton, a nurse at the facility, said few women change their minds.

“They’ve put a lot of thought into this hard decision already,” she said. “I don’t think it changes the fact that they’re getting an abortion. But it definitely makes their life harder.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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stephenmccull · 4 years ago

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Long Drives, Air Travel, Exhausting Waits: What Abortion Requires in the South

Tennessee, Texas, Mississippi and several other states have since passed laws that would ban abortions after six weeks. That legislation is also on hold pending legal review.

“If we end up with any kind of decision that goes back to being a states’ rights issue, the entire South is in a very bad way,” said Jennifer Pepper, executive director of Choices in Memphis.

“Everything is hard down here,” said Pepper.

There can also be an unsettling stigma in some parts of the South.

“No protesters, no waiting period,” she said. “It was a wildly different experience.”

Atlanta, a Southern transportation hub, has also become a key piece in the frayed quilt of abortion care in the region.

“I wish I had a child, but I’m glad it wasn’t his child,” she said. “I have accomplished so much since my abortion. I’m going to make my life better.”

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footmantravelagency · 4 years ago

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Cruising is back—here’s what to expect, from ‘vaccinated only’ zones to a revamped buffet

Published Fri, Jun 25 20219:00 AM EDTUpdated Fri, Jun 25 20211:42 PM EDT

Laura Begley Bloom, special to CNBC

Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas cruise shipCourtesy of Royal Caribbean

Celebrity Cruises’ Celebrity Edge is set to depart from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on June 26 to sail through the Caribbean with beefed-up health and safety measures, including the crew and all guests ages 16 and older fully vaccinated. Cruises from Royal Caribbean, Carnival and other lines will soon follow.

“Cruise lines have gone to great lengths to make sure there will never be a significant outbreak of Covid-19 on a ship again,” says Gene Sloan, senior reporter for cruise and travel at The Points Guy.

Some have added protocols including social distancing, reduced capacity, face mask policies, temperature screenings, medical facilities designed for Covid-19 testing and more.

“Every major line also now has a plan should even one or two passengers start feeling sick with Covid-like systems,” says Sloan.

Of course, nothing is foolproof: Royal Caribbean recently canceled the first sailings of its newest ship, Odyssey of the Seas, after eight crew members tested positive for Covid; six were asymptomatic and two had mild symptoms, according to NBC 6 in Miami. The ship’s inaugural cruise, scheduled to leave from Fort Lauderdale on July 3, has been pushed back to July 31.

Royal Caribbean CEO Michael Bayley said in a statement that “the positive cases were identified after the vaccination was given and before they were fully effective,” and that the company delayed the cruise out of an “abundance of caution.”

Still, travelers are ready to hit the high seas. World cruises are selling out, the maiden voyage for the new Disney Wish, launching next year, is already booked solid, and cabins this summer are hard to come by, partly due to fewer ships in the water and reduced capacity, as well as people rebooking trips that were canceled over the past year.

“There’s been a lot of pent-up demand,” says Chris Gray Faust, managing editor at Cruise Critic.

Here’s what travelers can expect as they start cruising again.

Less crowded ships and ports

If you can find a cabin on a ship, it could be a great time to sail due to the current capacity reductions required by the CDC, says Lisa McGregor, owner of Passport Pleasures Luxury Travel, a Florida-based agency that specializes in cruise voyages.

“Just like when we were flying last year and the planes were empty, now you have an opportunity to sail with fewer people and have a lot more breathing room,” says McGregor.

A socially distanced cruise activity on Royal Caribbean's Odyssey of the Seas

A socially distanced cruise activity on Royal Caribbean’s Odyssey of the Seas

Another perk, according to Sloan: “The ports that cruises visit also are less crowded than usual, so you’ll be welcomed with open arms. Many of the places cruise ships go rely heavily on tourism to survive, and they haven’t had much business in more than a year. They are thrilled that cruise ships are coming back.”

Some money-saving deals

Even though there’s reduced capacity and high demand, cruise lines are enticing people with sales and promotions. For instance, Carnival is offering 40% off sailings, Royal Caribbean is giving 60% off a second passenger, Princess is throwing in shipboard credits, and even Crystal — a super luxury line with butlers — is extending discounts.

But according to Anne Scully, a partner at Embark Beyond, she’s seeing waitlists for popular cruises and demand extending into 2022 and 2023. “Things are pretty tight right now,” she says.

Showing proof of a vaccination

Vaccination requirements vary by cruise line and port of departure, but some ships require proof of vaccination or have perks for vaccinated travelers. Cruise lines will have a way to indicate vaccinated and unvaccinated passengers, whether it’s with a wristband or a mark on your seacard.

Gray Faust says that when she recently traveled on Royal Caribbean’s Adventure of the Seas, which departed from the Bahamas, she had to show her original vaccination card when checking in on the ship and had to upload it online to get in and out of the Bahamas.

The vaccine card was also useful on land. “The Bahamas will not let people eat indoors unless they’re vaccinated,” says Faust. “So we had to show our vaccine card to eat inside a restaurant.”

Vaccination and mask zones

Cruises won’t only be available to people who have been vaccinated — but you’ll have a much more enjoyable time if you are.

According to CDC rules, ships that have at least 95% of crew and passengers fully vaccinated can use their discretion when it comes to mask rules. Ships that don’t meet those numbers can have designated areas for fully vaccinated passengers where masks and physical distancing are optional.

Royal Caribbean, for example, just released its new health and safety protocols for the July and August sailings from Miami on Freedom of the Seas. The line will designate some bars, lounges, restaurants, and events for vaccinated guests only, with no masks required. In the Main Dining Room, there will be areas for vaccinated guests to dine separately.

Unvaccinated guests will also need to pay for additional Covid testing.

“It’s expected these sentiments will be mirrored for the line’s other ships, particularly the ones sailing from Florida and Texas,” says travel expert Pauline Frommer.

A different kind of buffet

Despite early reports that the legendary cruise ship buffets would fall victim to Covid, it looks like they are here to stay. They’re just going to be different, and the rules will change from line to line.

A buffet on Royal Caribbean's Odyssey of the Seas ship

A buffet on Royal Caribbean’s Odyssey of the Seas shipCourtesy of Royal Caribbean

The big takeaway: Many buffets will no longer be self-service, and many will require reservations or reduced numbers in the dining room.

“You go through the line and you point at something and the crew will serve it to you,” says Faust, of the revamped buffet she experienced on Adventure of the Seas. “They’ll give you as much as you want and you still have all the choices that you’re used to.”

Cleaner ships

CDC guidelines require enhanced cleaning procedures, but some cruise lines are going even further. “They’ve implemented all sorts of new safety protocols on ships, many behind the scenes,” says Sloan. “Some lines have spent millions revamping air handling systems on ships, for instance, so that no cabin shares the same air.”

Reservations needed

A socially distanced show on Royal Caribbean's Adventure of the Seas

A socially distanced show on Royal Caribbean’s Adventure of the SeasCourtesy Gene Sloan

Gone are the days when you can show up on a ship and wing it — in the post-pandemic era, you’ll need to make a lot of reservations, from shows to a spot at the gym. Faust points out that this is a way for cruise lines to discreetly do contact tracing, should something go wrong.

New technologies

The cruise experience is also going high-tech to help keep passengers safe. Besides the ubiquitous QR code menus you see at many restaurants these days, you can expect contactless payment systems, virtual reservations and virtual lines, thermal temperature checks, UV sanitization and more.

New ships

While it’s not pandemic-related, a lot of new ships will set sail.

Over the next 18 months, look for new ships from: Disney, the company’s first launch in more than a decade; Carnival, with a groundbreaking deck-top roller coaster on the Mardi Gras; Royal Caribbean, including what will be the world’s largest ship; Crystal Cruises, Lindblad Expeditions, Seabourn, Viking, Regent and more.

“New ships are going to have more amenities; they’re going to be more modern,” says Faust. “It’s like staying in a tired hotel room versus a new hotel room.”

Small-ship expedition cruising will be hot

According to Bob Simpson, vice president of expedition cruising at Abercrombie & Kent, twice as many guests booked the company’s small-ship expedition cruises in Q2 of this year compared with the same time in 2019.

“The very elements that define [small-ship cruising] — remote destinations, small ships, outdoor adventures and a focus on learning — closely align with what travelers value most right now,” he says.

Flexibility will be key

According to McGregor, the cruise lines want to make sure you’re comfortable booking a trip — and are willing to work with you if you need to make a change. “There are flexible cancellation policies throughout the industry.”

But check the fine print. “Make sure you understand what the lines are requiring,” says McGregor. “What’s the cancellation policy? Is it cash back or a future cruise?”

Evolving rules and regulations

Getting to this point where cruises are embarking hasn’t been easy, and regulations are changing by the minute.

For instance, in October 2020, the CDC issued a “framework for conditional sailing order” saying that cruise lines could resume voyages if they follow health and safety rules, including a mandate that a cruise ship must have 98% of its crew and 95% of its passengers fully vaccinated, as well as protocols and policies for social distancing, reduced capacity, face masks, temperature screenings, Covid-19 testing and more.

But on June 18, a federal Florida judge ruled that the CDC’s orders were an overreach of power and issued a preliminary injunction that prevents the CDC from enforcing its guidelines in Florida. In April, the state had sued the CDC, demanding that it allow cruise lines to immediately resume sailing from U.S. ports.

Meanwhile, a new Texas state law says that businesses can’t require vaccines. It hasn’t been determined if this will apply to cruise lines, but Carnival Cruise Line is still planning to start fully vaccinated voyages out of Galveston on July 3.

A slow return to normal

Sloan, who predicts that things might not return to normal until well into 2022, has witnessed the gradual resumption of cruising firsthand. In November 2020, he was on the high-profile SeaDream 1 — the first Caribbean cruise since the start of the pandemic — when Covid broke out on the ship. Last week, he sailed in the Caribbean on Royal Caribbean’s Adventure of the Seas.

“The development of Covid-19 vaccines has been a game-changer,” says Sloan. “When the outbreak occurred on SeaDream 1, nobody on the ship was vaccinated for Covid-19. They tested every passenger for Covid-19 before boarding, and every passenger was negative. But without a vaccine, there wasn’t a second layer of defense to stop Covid-19 from spreading should a passenger later test positive.”

And that’s what happened according to Sloan — a passenger who initially tested negative started feeling ill, subsequently tested positive and began spreading to others.

“Now, with so many passengers vaccinated — on Adventure of the Seas, it was 94% of all passengers — it is unlikely that Covid-19 would spread if a passenger fell ill,” says Sloan.

Faust was surprised by how normal things already seemed on her cruise: “I played a ton of trivia. I heard live bands. I went to different restaurants. I sat by the pool,” she says.

Checking in with your doctor

If you are deciding whether or not to sail, discuss your health risks with your doctor, stay up to date on where Americans can travel and seek guidance from the CDC, the World Health Organization and other health authorities.

According to Dr. Robert L. Quigley, senior vice president and global medical director of International SOS, the best way to protect yourself and others is to get fully vaccinated at least two weeks prior to your trip.

“On the ship itself, the CDC recommends maintaining six feet of social distance from anyone who is not traveling with you, both indoors and outdoors,” says Quigley. “And when engaging in activities with other passengers, be sure to also wear a mask, avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth, and wash your hands frequently, particularly after touching any surface.”

Choosing your destination wisely is also important, says Quigley. “Places with low Covid-19 infection rates and/or high vaccination rates should represent the lowest risk to you in your travels. Clearly multiple port stops, as part of the cruise, only increases your chance of exposure,” says Quigley. “So do some research ahead of time.”

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endenogatai · 4 years ago

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Perspectives on tackling Big Tech’s market power

The need for markets-focused competition watchdogs and consumer-centric privacy regulators to think outside their respective ‘legal silos’ and find creative ways to work together to tackle the challenge of big tech market power was the impetus for a couple of fascinating panel discussions organized by the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), which were livestreamed yesterday but are available to view on-demand here.

The conversations brought together key regulatory leaders from Europe and the US — giving a glimpse of what the future shape of digital markets oversight might look like at a time when fresh blood has just been injected to chair the FTC so regulatory change is very much in the air (at least around tech antitrust).

CEPR’s discussion premise is that integration, not merely intersection, of competition and privacy/data protection law is needed to get a proper handle on platform giants that have, in many cases, leveraged their market power to force consumers to accept an abusive ‘fee’ of ongoing surveillance.

That fee both strips consumers of their privacy and helps tech giants perpetuate market dominance by locking out interesting new competition (which can’t get the same access to people’s data so operates at a baked in disadvantage).

Biden elevates tech antitrust crusader Lina Khan to FTC chair

A running theme in Europe for a number of years now, since a 2018 flagship update to the bloc’s data protection framework (GDPR), has been the ongoing under-enforcement around the EU’s ‘on-paper’ privacy rights — which, in certain markets, means regional competition authorities are now actively grappling with exactly how and where the issue of ‘data abuse’ fits into their antitrust legal frameworks.

The regulators assembled for CEPR’s discussion included, from the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority’s CEO Andrea Coscelli and the information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham; from Germany, the FCO’s Andreas Mundt; from France, Henri Piffaut, VP of the French competition authority; and from the EU, the European Data Protection Supervisor himself, Wojciech Wiewiórowski, who advises the EU’s executive body on data protection legislation (and is the watchdog for EU institutions’ own data use).

The UK’s CMA now sits outside the EU, of course — giving the national authority a higher profile role in global mergers & acquisition decisions (vs pre-brexit), and the chance to help shape key standards in the digital sphere via the investigations and procedures it chooses to pursue (and it has been moving very quickly on that front).

The CMA has a number of major antitrust probes open into tech giants — including looking into complaints against Apple’s App Store and others targeting Google’s plan to depreciate support for third party tracking cookies (aka the so-called ‘Privacy Sandbox’) — the latter being an investigation where the CMA has actively engaged the UK’s privacy watchdog (the ICO) to work with it.

Only last week the competition watchdog said it was minded to accept a set of legally binding commitments that Google has offered which could see a quasi ‘co-design’ process taking place, between the CMA, the ICO and Google, over the shape of the key technology infrastructure that ultimately replaces tracking cookies. So a pretty major development.

Google won’t end support for tracking cookies unless UK’s competition watchdog agrees

Germany’s FCO has also been very active against big tech this year — making full use of an update to the national competition law which gives it the power to take proactive inventions around large digital platforms with major competitive significance — with open procedures now against Amazon, Facebook and Google.

The Bundeskartellamt was already a pioneer in pushing to loop EU data protection rules into competition enforcement in digital markets in a strategic case against Facebook, as we’ve reported before. That closely watched (and long running) case — which targets Facebook’s ‘superprofiling’ of users, based on its ability to combine user data from multiple sources to flesh out a single high dimension per-user profile — is now headed to Europe’s top court (so likely has more years to run).

But during yesterday’s discussion Mundt confirmed that the FCO’s experience litigating that case helped shape key amendments to the national law that’s given him beefier powers to tackle big tech. (And he suggested it’ll be a lot easier to regulate tech giants going forward, using these new national powers.)

“Once we have designated a company to be of ‘paramount significance’ we can prohibit certain conduct much more easily than we could in the past,” he said. “We can prohibit, for example, that a company impedes other undertaking by data processing that is relevant for competition. We can prohibit that a use of service depends on the agreement to data collection with no choice — this is the Facebook case, indeed… When this law was negotiated in parliament parliament very much referred to the Facebook case and in a certain sense this entwinement of competition law and data protection law is written in a theory of harm in the German competition law.

“This makes a lot of sense. If we talk about dominance and if we assess that this dominance has come into place because of data collection and data possession and data processing you need a parameter in how far a company is allowed to gather the data to process it.”

“The past is also the future because this Facebook case… has always been a big case. And now it is up to the European Court of Justice to say something on that,” he added. “If everything works well we might get a very clear ruling saying… as far as the ECN [European Competition Network] is concerned how far we can integrate GDPR in assessing competition matters.

“So Facebook has always been a big case — it might get even bigger in a certain sense.”

Competition challenge to Facebook’s ‘superprofiling’ of users sparks referral to Europe’s top court

France’s competition authority and its national privacy regulator (the CNIL), meanwhile, have also been joint working in recent years.

Including over a competition complaint against Apple’s pro-user privacy App Tracking Transparency feature (which last month the antitrust watchdog declined to block) — so there’s evidence there too of respective oversight bodies seeking to bridge legal silos in order to crack the code of how to effectively regulate tech giants whose market power, panellists agreed, is predicated on earlier failures of competition law enforcement that allowed tech platforms to buy up rivals and sew up access to user data, entrenching advantage at the expense of user privacy and locking out the possibility of future competitive challenge.

The contention is that monopoly power predicated upon data access also locks consumers into an abusive relationship with platform giants which can then, in the case of ad giants like Google and Facebook, extract huge costs (paid not in monetary fees but in user privacy) for continued access to services that have also become digital staples — amping up the ‘winner takes all’ characteristic seen in digital markets (which is obviously bad for competition too).

Yet, traditionally at least, Europe’s competition authorities and data protection regulators have been focused on separate workstreams.

The consensus from the CEPR panels was very much that that is both changing and must change if civil society is to get a grip on digital markets — and wrest control back from tech giants to that ensure consumers and competitors aren’t both left trampled into the dust by data-mining giants.

Denham said her motivation to dial up collaboration with other digital regulators was the UK government entertaining the idea of creating a one-stop-shop ‘Internet’ super regulator. “What scared the hell out of me was the policymakers the legislators floating the idea of one regulator for the Internet. I mean what does that mean?” she said. “So I think what the regulators did is we got to work, we got busy, we become creative, got our of our silos to try to tackle these companies — the likes of which we have never seen before.

“And I really think what we have done in the UK — and I’m excited if others think it will work in their jurisdictions — but I think that what really pushed us is that we needed to show policymakers and the public that we had our act together. I think consumers and citizens don’t really care if the solution they’re looking for comes from the CMA, the ICO, Ofcom… they just want somebody to have their back when it comes to protection of privacy and protection of markets.

“We’re trying to use our regulatory levers in the most creative way possible to make the digital markets work and protect fundamental rights.”

During the earlier panel, the CMA’s Simeon Thornton, a director at the authority, made some interesting remarks vis-a-vis its (ongoing) Google ‘Privacy Sandbox’ investigation — and the joint working it’s doing with the ICO on that case — asserting that “data protection and respecting users’ rights to privacy are very much at the heart of the commitments upon which we are currently consulting”.

“If we accept the commitments Google will be required to develop the proposals according to a number of criteria including impacts on privacy outcomes and compliance with data protection principles, and impacts on user experience and user control over the use of their personal data — alongside the overriding objective of the commitments which is to address our competition concerns,” he went on, adding: “We have worked closely with the ICO in seeking to understand the proposals and if we do accept the commitments then we will continue to work closely with the ICO in influencing the future development of those proposals.”

“If we accept the commitments that’s not the end of the CMA’s work — on the contrary that’s when, in many respects, the real work begins. Under the commitments the CMA will be closely involved in the development, implementation and monitoring of the proposals, including through the design of trials for example. It’s a substantial investment from the CMA and we will be dedicating the right people — including data scientists, for example, to the job,” he added. “The commitments ensure that Google addresses any concerns that the CMA has. And if outstanding concerns cannot be resolved with Google they explicitly provide for the CMA to reopen the case and — if necessary — impose any interim measures necessary to avoid harm to competition.

“So there’s no doubt this is a big undertaking. And it’s going to be challenging for the CMA, I’m sure of that. But personally I think this is the sort of approach that is required if we are really to tackle the sort of concerns we’re seeing in digital markets today.”

Thornton also said: “I think as regulators we do need to step up. We need to get involved before the harm materializes — rather than waiting after the event to stop it from materializing, rather than waiting until that harm is irrevocable… I think it’s a big move and it’s a challenging one but personally I think it’s a sign of the future direction of travel in a number of these sorts of cases.”

Also speaking during the regulatory panel session was FTC commissioner Rebecca Slaughter — a dissenter on the $5BN fine it hit Facebook with back in 2019 for violating an earlier consent order (as she argued the settlement provided no deterrent to address underlying privacy abuse, leaving Facebook free to continue exploiting users’ data) — as well as Chris D’Angelo, the chief deputy AG of the New York Attorney General, which is leading a major states antitrust case against Facebook.

Slaughter pointed out that the FTC already combines a consumer focus with attention on competition but said that historically there has been separation of divisions and investigations — and she agreed on the need for more joined-up working.

She also advocated for US regulators to get out of a pattern of ineffective enforcement in digital markets on issues like privacy and competition where companies have, historically, been given — at best — what amounts to wrist slaps that don’t address root causes of market abuse, perpetuating both consumer abuse and market failure. And be prepared to litigate more.

As regulators toughen up their stipulations they will need to be prepared for tech giants to push back — and therefore be prepared to sue instead of accepting a weak settlement.

“That is what is most galling to me that even where we take action, in our best faith good public servants working hard to take action, we keep coming back to the same questions, again and again,” she said. “Which means that the actions we are taking isn’t working. We need different action to keep us from having the same conversation again and again.”

Slaughter also argued that it’s important for regulators not to pile all the burden of avoiding data abuses on consumers themselves.

“I want to sound a note of caution around approaches that are centered around user control,” she said. “I think transparency and control are important. I think it is really problematic to put the burden on consumers to work through the markets and the use of data, figure out who has their data, how it’s being used, make decisions… I think you end up with notice fatigue; I think you end up with decision fatigue; you get very abusive manipulation of dark patterns to push people into decisions.

“So I really worry about a framework that is built at all around the idea of control as the central tenant or the way we solve the problem. I’ll keep coming back to the notion of what instead we need to be focusing on is where is the burden on the firms to limit their collection in the first instance, prohibit their sharing, prohibit abusive use of data and I think that that’s where we need to be focused from a policy perspective.

“I think there will be ongoing debates about privacy legislation in the US and while I’m actually a very strong advocate for a better federal framework with more tools that facilitate aggressive enforcement but I think if we had done it ten years ago we probably would have ended up with a notice and consent privacy law and I think that that would have not been a great outcome for consumers at the end of the day. So I think the debate and discussion has evolved in an important way. I also think we don’t have to wait for Congress to act.”

As regards more radical solutions to the problem of market-denting tech giants — such as breaking up sprawling and (self-servingly) interlocking services empires — the message from Europe’s most ‘digitally switched on’ regulators seemed to be don’t look to us for that; we are going to have to stay in our lanes.

So tl;dr — if antitrust and privacy regulators’ joint working just sums to more intelligent fiddling round the edges of digital market failure, and it’s break-ups of US tech giants that’s what’s really needed to reboot digital markets, then it’s going to be up to US agencies to wield the hammers. (Or, as Coscelli elegantly phrased it: “It’s probably more realistic for the US agencies to be in the lead in terms of structural separation if and when it’s appropriate — rather than an agency like ours [working from inside a mid-sized economy such as the UK’s].”)

The lack of any representative from the European Commission on the panel was an interesting omission in that regard — perhaps hinting at ongoing ‘structural separation’ between DG Comp and DG Justice where digital policymaking streams are concerned.

The current competition chief, Margrethe Vestager — who also heads up digital strategy for the bloc, as an EVP — has repeatedly expressed reluctance to impose radical ‘break up’ remedies on tech giants. She also recently preferred to waive through another Google digital merger (its acquisition of fitness wearable Fitbit) — agreeing to accept a number of ‘concessions’ and ignoring major mobilization by civil society (and indeed EU data protection agencies) urging her to block it.

Yet in an earlier CEPR discussion session, another panellist — Yale University’s Dina Srinivasan — pointed to the challenges of trying to regulate the behavior of companies when there are clear conflicts of interest, unless and until you impose structural separation as she said has been necessary in other markets (like financial services).

“In advertising we have an electronically traded market with exchanges and we have brokers on both sides. In a competitive market — when competition was working — you saw that those brokers were acting in the best interest of buyers and sellers. And as part of carrying out that function they were sort of protecting the data that belonged to buyers and sellers in that market, and not playing with the data in other ways — not trading on it, not doing conduct similar to insider trading or even front running,” she said, giving an example of how that changed as Google gained market power.

“So Google acquired DoubleClick, made promises to continue operating in that manner, the promises were not binding and on the record — the enforcement agencies or the agencies that cleared the merger didn’t make Google promise that they would abide by that moving forward and so as Google gained market power in that market there’s no regulatory requirement to continue to act in the best interests of your clients, so now it becomes a market power issue, and after they gain enough market power they can flip data ownership and say ‘okay, you know what before you owned this data and we weren’t allowed to do anything with it but now we’re going to use that data to for example sell our own advertising on exchanges’.

“But what we know from other markets — and from financial markets — is when you flip data ownership and you engage in conduct like that that allows the firm to now build market power in yet another market.”

The CMA’s Coscelli picked up on Srinivasan’s point — saying it was a “powerful” one, and that the challenges of policing “very complicated” situations involving conflicts of interests is something that regulators with merger control powers should be bearing in mind as they consider whether or not to green light tech acquisitions.

(Just one example of a merger in the digital space that the CMA is still scrutizing is Facebook’s acquisition of animated GIF platform Giphy. And it’s interesting to speculate whether, had brexit happened a little faster, the CMA might have stepped in to block Google’s Fitibit merger where the EU wouldn’t.)

Coscelli also flagged the issue of regulatory under-enforcement in digital markets as a key one, saying: “One of the reasons we are today where we are is partially historic under-enforcement by competition authorities on merger control — and that’s a theme that is extremely interesting and relevant to us because after the exit from the EU we now have a bigger role in merger control on global mergers. So it’s very important to us that we take the right decisions going forward.”

“Quite often we intervene in areas where there is under-enforcement by regulators in specific areas… If you think about it when you design systems where you have vertical regulators in specific sectors and horizontal regulators like us or the ICO we are more successful if the vertical regulators do their job and I’m sure they are more success if we do our job properly.

“I think we systematically underestimate… the ability of companies to work through whatever behavior or commitments or arrangement are offered to us, so I think these are very important points,” he added, signalling that a higher degree of attention is likely to be applied to tech mergers in Europe as a result of the CMA stepping out from the EU’s competition regulation umbrella.

Also speaking during the same panel, the EDPS warned that across Europe more broadly — i.e. beyond the small but engaged gathering of regulators brought together by CEPR — data protection and competition regulators are far from where they need to be on joint working, implying that the challenge of effectively regulating big tech across the EU is still a pretty Sisyphean one.

It’s true that the Commission is not sitting on hands in the face of tech giant market power.

At the end of last year it proposed a regime of ex ante regulations for so-called ‘gatekeeper’ platforms, under the Digital Markets Act. But the problem of how to effectively enforce pan-EU laws — when the various agencies involved in oversight are typically decentralized across Member States — is one key complication for the bloc. (The Commission’s answer with the DMA was to suggest putting itself in charge of overseeing gatekeepers but it remains to be seen what enforcement structure EU institutions will agree on.)

Clearly, the need for careful and coordinated joint working across multiple agencies with different legal competencies — if, indeed, that’s really what’s needed to properly address captured digital markets vs structural separation of Google’s search and adtech, for example, and Facebook’s various social products — steps up the EU’s regulatory challenge in digital markets.

“We can say that no effective competition nor protection of the rights in the digital economy can be ensured when the different regulators do not talk to each other and understand each other,” Wiewiórowski warned. “While we are still thinking about the cooperation it looks a little bit like everybody is afraid they will have to trade a little bit of its own possibility to assess.”

“If you think about the classical regulators isn’t it true that at some point we are reaching this border where we know how to work, we know how to behave, we need a little bit of help and a little bit of understanding of the other regulator’s work… What is interesting for me is there is — at the same time — the discussion about splitting of the task of the American regulators joining the ones on the European side. But even the statements of some of the commissioners in the European Union saying about the bigger role the Commission will play in the data protection and solving the enforcement problems of the GDPR show there is no clear understanding what are the differences between these fields.”

One thing is clear: Big tech’s dominance of digital markets won’t be unpicked overnight. But, on both sides of the Atlantic, there are now a bunch of theories on how to do it — and growing appetite to wade in.

Understanding Europe’s big push to rewrite the digital rulebook

UK’s CMA opens market study into Apple, Google’s mobile ‘duopoly’

The Justice Department has filed its antitrust lawsuit against Google

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