Category: Money, Class, and Poverty,

Could Someone Like John Edwards Have Saved the Democrats?

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Money, Class, and Poverty,, Race,Leave a comment

It is fair to assume that if Democrats can consistently take professionals by about 10 percent, working women by about 20 percent, keep 75 percent of the minority vote, and get close to an even split of white working-class voters, they will have achieved a new Democratic majority.”

…Generally Republicans have performed well with [.white working-class voters]:  Bill Clinton was the only Democrat in the time period covered to win them, and typically the Republican candidate prevailed with this group by double digits regardless of whether he prevailed in the general election.

…Obama didn’t lead Democrats into the era of dominance described by the “Emerging Democratic Majority” authors. He led the party to a different majority by relying more heavily on the “ascendant” pieces of his coalition (minorities, women and well-educated voters) while losing strength with the white working class.

…Edwards (sans the moral failures) seems like the sort of politician who could weld together Judis and Teixeira’s majority. Edwards was an economic progressive. His memorable “Two Americas” speeches focused on economic inequality between the wealthiest set of Americans and the rest of the country, and his campaign often emphasized increasing access to health care, improving education and hammering predatory lenders. He was liberal on abortion and LGBT issues (in the context of his time), but he was for the death penalty and at least tried to appear deferential to gun owners. Maybe most importantly, Edwards was able to take liberal policy positions without projecting cultural cosmopolitanism.

…Trump aimed much of his platform and personal appeal at working-class white voters – he emphasized building a border wall, renegotiating trade agreements and giving voice to a group of people who felt they had lost cultural standing as well as economic opportunity. If the national Democratic Party had more cultural appeal to working-class whites, they might have been able to stop the bleeding enough to hold states like Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin or North Carolina.

Could Someone Like John Edwards Have Saved the Democrats? | RealClearPolitics

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Maine Voices: Lobstermen threatened with the extinction of their way of life

On By peanutgallerynhIn Environment,, Local Interest,, Money, Class, and Poverty,, Science and Stuff,Leave a comment

In response to the threat of lawsuits, the National Marine Fisheries Service has pressured Maine into a proposal to reduce, by 50 percent, the number of vertical lines Maine fishermen use to haul their lobster traps. The only problem with this is that there is not one instance where a right whale entanglement and/or death was proven to have been caused by a Maine vertical fishing line.

Most Maine lobster gear is tended much closer to the coast than right whales would normally traverse. There are rare exceptions, but the vast majority of whales travel far offshore through the Gulf of Maine. Most Maine fishermen have never seen a right whale, including fishermen offshore, who already fish long trawls to reduce the number of vertical lines as much as can be safely done.

Maine Voices: Lobstermen threatened with the extinction of their way of life – CentralMaine.com

sigh….

Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains

On By peanutgallerynhIn Environment,, Europe,, Infrastructure and Transportation,, Money, Class, and Poverty,Leave a comment

While changes in the travel industry have tended to pressure night trains off the market, it’s clear that there is still some appetite for them among travelers. When Germany’s Deutsche Bahn halted its night services in 2017, Austrian Federal Railways took over some of the key routes. The takeover has proved to be a success, with passenger numbers on the services …rising from 1.4 million to 1.6 million between 2017 and 2018, a rise in profits, and talk of expansion. Meanwhile, well-established leisure services such as the London-to-Scotland Caledonian Sleeper continue to thrive.

The overnight train services remain popular because many people actually like them. The duration of travel, of course, is usually far longer than by plane, even when layovers and security are factored in, but there are other compensations. Generally scheduled to leave late evening and arrive before the working day begins, night trains offer the possibility of sleep and more leisurely travel compared to an early-morning rush to the airport. They can also be reasonably priced: On the Vienna-to-Berlin night service, for example, a one-way ticket with a reclining sleeper seat starts at €29 ($32.50), a couchette (a four- or six-person compartment whose bunks fold down into comfortable seating during the day) at €49 ($55), and a single-berth sleeper with private toilet and shower at €139 ($159). If the trip saves you the cost of a hotel room, many people seem to be noting, that’s not a bad deal.

So while the outlook seemed bleak just a few years ago, Sweden’s plan arrives at a time when the sector’s fortunes seem to be brightening once more.

…Getting more people on the rails can only have a positive effect in reducing the carbon footprint of international mobility.

Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains – CityLab

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Andrew Yang is out to save the American mall

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Infrastructure and Transportation,, Money, Class, and Poverty,Leave a comment

 At one time the US was home to  …2,000 [malls:] climate-controlled, multi-level, windowless and flanked on each end by well-lit department stores. There are just over 1,000 indoor American malls alive today, with analysts putting the number of mall closures within the next five years at between 20 and 25 percent.

,,,Yang’s policy would fund struggling malls with matching grants and tax incentives to the tune of $6 billion. Investing in and revitalizing dead malls doesn’t just mean bringing retail back; he’s also a big believer in transforming and repurposing malls into “[o]ffices, churches, indoor recreation spaces, anything we can do to keep these spaces vital and positive is an enormous win for the surrounding community,” reads his campaign site. Mall closures, Yang tweeted last month, “have a disastrous effect on local property values.”

…Abandoned malls are what the Congress for the New Urbanism coined “greyfields,” as reported by CityLab, for the seas of parking lots that surround them. Yang’s campaign pledge to transform vacant malls into multi-purpose spaces is right in line with New Urbanism’s architectural and urban planning movement to create mixed-use, “live, work, shop, play” centers, …(ICSC) found that 78 percent of US adults would consider living in such a center.

Democratic debates 2020: Andrew Yang on universal basic income and saving malls – Vox

A more flexible version of this plan, one that doesn’t necessarily envision “high-end” mixed use, would be very interesting.

Rep. Cheney Accuses Tribes of “Destroying our Western Way of Life” Over Grizzly Protections

On By peanutgallerynhIn Environment,, Media and Culture,, Money, Class, and Poverty,, The Americas,Leave a comment

Removing protections from the bear, revered as sacred to a multitude of tribes, would have left the grizzly vulnerable to high-dollar trophy hunts and lifted leasing restrictions on some 34,375 square miles. Extractive industry, livestock and logging interests are among those desirous of capitalizing on the area, a region comprised of tribal treaty, reserved rights and ceded lands.

…“I would remind the Congresswoman that at the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition an estimated 100,000 grizzly bears roamed from the Missouri River to the Pacific Coast. That was all Indian Country. Now there are fewer than 2,000 grizzly bears and our people live in Third World conditions on meager reservations in the poorest counties in the US. Does she really want to talk about ‘destroying’ a ‘way of life’?” asked Rodgers.

…Tribal Nations, including the Oglala Sioux Tribe which petitioned for a Congressional inquiry into the influence of multi-national fossil-fuel corporations on FWS’s grizzly delisting decision, previously exposed the role of extractive industry in the process. USFWS engaged multinational oil and gas services group, Amec Foster Wheeler, for the peer review of its grizzly delisting rule that tribes and environmental groups deconstructed in court. Amec Foster Wheeler appointed Halliburton executive Jonathan Lewis as CEO in the same timeframe as USFWS contracted the company.

“That puts ‘harmful to the ecosystem’ into its true context,” responded Rodgers. “The Cheney family’s connections to Halliburton hardly needs elaborating upon,” added Chief Stan Grier, President of the Blackfoot Confederacy Chiefs. 

…“There’s more chance of her father receiving the Nobel Peace Prize than her “Grizzly Bear State Management Act” reaching the House floor,” said Rodgers of Cheney’s bill.

Rep. Cheney Accuses Tribes of “Destroying our Western Way of Life” Over Sacred Grizzly Protections — Native News Online

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Peter Thiel slams Silicon Valley’s ‘extreme strain of parochialism’

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,, Money, Class, and Poverty,Leave a comment

Thiel, a billionaire tech investor who co-founded Paypal, cast his eyes around at his peers and branded them “incurious” to the issues beyond their own bubble.

…”The Silicon Valley attitude sometimes called ‘cosmopolitanism’ is probably better understood as an extreme strain of parochialism, that of fortunate enclaves isolated from the problems of other places — and incurious about them,” he wrote.

Peter Thiel slams Silicon Valley’s ‘extreme strain of parochialism’ – Business Insider

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ThinkProgress: Steve Bannon knows how often you go to church

On By peanutgallerynhIn Media and Culture,, Money, Class, and Poverty,, Privacy,, Religion,Leave a comment

Steve Bannon and the conservative group CatholicVote used cell-phone location data for people who had been inside Roman Catholic churches in Dubuque, Iowa, in 2018 to target them with get-out-the-vote ads, ThinkProgress has learned.

…“If your phone’s ever been in a Catholic church, it’s amazing, they got this data,” Bannon told director Alison Klayman as they sat in his Washington, D.C., home on the eve of the 2018 midterm elections.

“Literally, they can tell who’s been in a Catholic church and how frequently,” Bannon added. “And they got it triaged.”

…CatholicVote planned to use the data to send targeted get-out-the-vote ads on election day telling Catholics that it was their duty “to support President Trump,” according to Bannon.

…CatholicVote would not say more about how the group collected and used data in 2018.

The technology Bannon was alluding to is called “geofencing” or “ring-fencing.” It’s become popular over the last several years with advertisers, campaigns, and advocacy groups that want to find people who may be receptive to their message.

When Klayman asked Bannon, on-camera, where he got his data from, he answered, simply, “the phone companies.”

“And the data guys sell it,” Bannon added.

…Geofencing creates a virtual fence around a geographic location, allowing data brokers and digital marketing firms to either serve ads to people while they are inside the fence or capture their phones’ unique IDs for later use. The ads themselves appear in apps or on websites as the person uses their phone, whether they’re served up while the user is in the geofenced area or at a later date.

…Here’s how geofencing information is collected: Our phones constantly give up our locations. Experts who spoke with ThinkProgress said there are several ways that brokers can collect that data. One method estimates the location of a phone based on the cell towers it pings as it looks for a signal. In other methods, some of a smart phone’s apps collect location data from its GPS chip or the wifi networks it connects to. Many of the biggest app makers then monetize that data, selling it to brokers and digital ad firms.

…In 2017, Copley Advertising settled with the Massachusetts attorney general’s office after it used geofencing to help anti-abortion groups target ads to women who visited Planned Parenthood clinics.

…The New York Times reviewed some of the location data that app makers sold to a broker, the paper was able to identify individual users and track them to a Planned Parenthood clinic, a middle school, an emergency room, and to their homes and offices.

The technology news site Motherboard went a step further, paying a bounty hunter to locate a specific phone in Queens, New York, after T-Mobile sold the user’s location data, gleaned from cell towers, to a broker who then re-sold it to third-party dealers.

Exclusive: Steve Bannon knows how often you go to church

sigh…

Facebook’s privacy agreement with the FTC does little to constrain it

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,, Money, Class, and Poverty,, Privacy,Leave a comment

The $5 billion penalty is all-but-inconsequential to a company as profitable as Facebook. The new oversight structure has some major flaws and weaknesses. The settlement does little to limit Zuckerberg’s power and doesn’t hold him personally accountable for the actions of a company that he alone controls. And the agreement does almost nothing to stop the collection and sharing of data — or the use of it for targeted advertising — that was at the heart of the company’s privacy violations.

Facebook’s privacy agreement with the FTC does little to constrain it – Business Insider

Jeezus…

House passes sweeping budget and debt limit deal

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Money, Class, and Poverty,Leave a comment

The deal suspends the debt limit through July 2021 and sets top-line levels for defense and nondefense spending for the next two fiscal years. It establishes a $1.37 trillion budget agreement in the first year, with $738 billion for defense spending and $632 billion in nondefense spending for fiscal year 2020.

House passes sweeping budget and debt limit deal – CNNPolitics

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Philadelphia CEO’s offer to wipe out $22k in lunch debt rejected by district that threatened to send children to foster care over money owed

On By peanutgallerynhIn Modern Parenting,, Money, Class, and Poverty,, Schools,Leave a comment

A Philadelphia businessman said the head of a Pennsylvania school board rejected his offers to wipe out lunch debt for all students in a district that warned parents behind on their lunch bills that it could land their children in foster care.

…“You can be sent to Dependency Court for neglecting your child’s right to food,” he wrote. “The result may be your child being taken from your home and placed in foster care.”

When Todd Carmichael, chief executive and co-founder of Philadelphia-based La Colombe Coffee, caught wind of the issue he offered to pay off every cent – but he was rejected by school board President Joseph Mazur earlier this week.

Philadelphia CEO’s offer to wipe out $22k in lunch debt rejected by district that threatened to send children to foster care over money owed – New York Daily News

Whoa….

Bernie Sanders campaign workers unionize, demand his promised $15-an-hour

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Money, Class, and Poverty,Leave a comment

Sanders has made standing up for workers a central theme of his presidential campaigns – this year marching with McDonald’s employees seeking higher wages, pressing Walmart shareholders to pay workers more and showing solidarity with university personnel on strike. The independent from Vermont has proudly touted his campaign as the first presidential effort to unionize its employees.

…Unionized campaign organizers working for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential effort are battling with its management, arguing that the compensation and treatment they are receiving does not meet the standards Sanders espouses in his rhetoric, according to internal communications.

Campaign field hires have demanded an annual salary they say would be equivalent to a $15-an-hour wage, which Sanders for years has said should be the federal minimum.

…In a draft letter the union earlier had prepared to send Shakir as soon as this week, the union said that the field organizers “cannot be expected to build the largest grassroots organizing program in American history while making poverty wages. Given our campaign’s commitment to fighting for a living wage of at least $15.00 an hour, we believe it is only fair that the campaign would carry through this commitment to its own field team.”

…Field organizers are the lowest caste in politics apart from unpaid volunteers – often people in their 20s who uproot themselves and move to far-flung parts of the country to work long hours and gain campaign experience in high-stress environments.

…A review of emails, instant messages and other documents obtained by The Washington Post show that the conflict dates back to at least May and remains unresolved.

Bernie Sanders campaign workers unionize, demand his promised $15-an-hour – al.com

Jeezus Krrreyest….

SNAP Benefits: 3 Million Could Lose Food Stamp Benefits

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Modern Parenting,, Money, Class, and Poverty,, Schools,Leave a comment

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said in announcing the proposed rule, published in the Federal Register. His agency estimates the change would likely save $2.5 billion a year.

But proponents of the current system say it helps low-income families who work but have huge child care, housing and other expenses that leave them with insufficient money to buy food. States now have the flexibility to not cut off benefits as soon as a family’s gross income exceeds a certain level, but to more slowly phase out the food aid. The current program also automatically qualifies 265,000 schoolchildren for free lunches. Under the administration’s proposal, those children would have to apply separately to continue to get those meals.

SNAP Benefits: Trump Administration Wants To Change Who Qualifies : NPR

There is no amount of spin about saving money and so-called integrity that can change cold, stark facts. The facts are that Trump wants to pull the rug out from under people struggling to feed their families and put obstacles in the way of feeding hungry school children.

Winners and losers in the Trump-Pelosi budget deal

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Money, Class, and Poverty,Leave a comment

Pelosi maneuvered deftly through the negotiations to secure a deal that won Democrats one of their top priorities: a significant increase in domestic spending.

…Pelosi also managed to break the “parity” principle that has defined budget negotiations for the better part of a decade. Under the principle, defense and nondefense spending is supposed to match dollar for dollar.

But in this deal, the increase in defense spending is $5 billion less than the increase in nondefense spending. That’s important for Pelosi, whose caucus includes progressives balking at greater and greater defense spending.

…If Mnuchin emerged as a winner, Trump’s acting chief of staff was the loser.

Mulvaney saw himself sidelined in the budget negotiations after calling for deep cuts to nondefense spending. Even congressional Republicans balked at Mulvaney’s proposal, which would have brought back automatic spending cuts known as the sequester.

Winners and losers in the Trump-Pelosi budget deal | TheHill

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