Some 80% of those who would lose their coverage if Obamacare were repealed don’t have college degrees and 56% are non-Hispanic whites, according to an Urban Institute study. …read more
Source: Trump supporters at risk from Obamacare repeal
Some 80% of those who would lose their coverage if Obamacare were repealed don’t have college degrees and 56% are non-Hispanic whites, according to an Urban Institute study. …read more
Source: Who would lose cover under Obamacare repeal?
By Tyler Durden
It seems that Trump’s phone call with Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen as well a recent pair of tweets from the president-elect blasting China for devaluing their currency, taxing U.S. imports and military provocations in the South China Sea have served their purpose of ruffling some feathers in Beijing.
Did China ask us if it was OK to devalue their currency (making it hard for our companies to compete), heavily tax our products going into..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2016
their country (the U.S. doesn’t tax them) or to build a massive military complex in the middle of the South China Sea? I don’t think so!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2016
While the “official reaction” out of Beijing to Trump’s “provocations and falsehoods” has been muted, newspapers across China, often viewed as a mouthpiece of the Communist Party, have spent the day lashing out at the “diplomatic rookie.”. Per Yahoo News, the People’s Daily accused Trump of “provoking friction and messing up China-US relations,” a move they say will not help “make America great again.”
Donald Trump is a “diplomatic rookie” who must learn not to cross Beijing on issues like trade and Taiwan, Chinese state media said Tuesday, warning America could pay dearly for his naivety.
Trump’s protocol-shattering call with Taiwan’s president and a subsequent Twitter tirade against Beijing’s policies could risk upending the delicate balance between the world’s two largest economies, major media outlets said.
“Provoking friction and messing up China-US relations won’t help ‘make America great again'”, said a front-page opinion piece in the overseas edition of Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily.
The Global Times blasted Trump’s “inability to keep his mouth shut” adding that Trump “doesn’t have sufficient resources” to be provocative with China.
The nationalist Global Times newspaper’s Chinese edition also ran a page-one story on Trump’s “inability to keep his mouth shut”, damning his “provocation and falsehoods”.
Noting that Sino-US relations had reached a delicate equilibrium thanks to years of careful management, an editorial in the paper warned that Trump “can make a lot of noise but that does not exempt him from the rules of the major power game,” adding that he “doesn’t have sufficient resources” to be provocative with China.
“Trump’s China-bashing tweet is just a cover for his real intent, which is to treat China as a fat lamb and cut a piece of meat off it,” it said.
“He is trying to pillage other countries for US prosperity,” it warned, but instead he will unwittingly “smash the current world economic order” of which the US is the “biggest beneficiary.”
A companion commentary warned that Trump “will in time learn not to cross China”, threatening “a fierce competition” with Beijing if the US increases arm sales to Taiwan.
Meanwhile, the China Daily noted that Beijing would likely remain somewhat muted in their response so long as Trump is “shooting from the hip” but warned that a failure to “moderate his behavior” after …read more
Source: China Newspapers Blast "Diplomatic Rookie" Trump For "Inability To Keep His Mouth Shut"
By Tyler Durden
A Virginia school has temporarily banned “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain and “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee,after a parent complained that her high school-age son was negatively impacted by racial slurs contained in the books.
As The Independent reports, both To Kill a Mockingbird and Mark Twain?'s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn were temporarily banned pending a committee review, with the parent – Marie Rothstein-Williams, the mother of a mixed race child – suggesting a board made up of other parents and teachers from diverse cultural backgrounds determines a list of books that are inclusive for all students.
“I keep hearing, ‘This is a classic, This is a classic’,” the mother said at a school board meeting on 15 November, according to WPXI. “I understand this is a literature classic. But at some point, I feel that children will not – or do not – truly get the classic part – the literature part, which I’m not disputing.
“This is great literature. But there [are so many] racial slurs in there and offensive wording that you can’t get past that.”
She claimed her son couldn’t get past a page of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that includes the N-word seven times.
“So what are we teaching our children? We’re validating that these words are acceptable, and they are not acceptable by (any) means,” the parent said, perhaps overlooking the role of the teacher in instructing pupils what words are right and wrong to employ. “There is other literature they can use.”
The suspension of the books is a part of the standard procedure outlined in the district’s policy manual which says that after a formal complaint is filed, the principal, the library media specialist, complainant and teacher should gather to discuss the materials.
But as The LA Times reports, the suspension of the books didn't sit will with some residents of Accomack County, dozens of whom protested outside the county courthouse in the town of Accomac, reports Delmarva Now.
Charles Knitter, who helped organize the protest, read a chapter of “To Kill a Mockingbird” at the rally.
“We're not going to be censored, because banning literature is, well, stupid — I don't have another way to say that,” he said.
Sadye Saunders, a 16-year-old high school junior, agreed with Knitter, and noted that a petition she had started to have the books returned to schools was confiscated by her principal.
“This is important, because censorship blinds us,” Sadye said. “These books are important, because they are not condoning this word, this racial slur … They're showing the ignorance of using that word and having this bigotry.”
Huckleberry Finn” and “Mockingbird” aren't the only books to face challenges in schools recently. Some parents in the Chicago suburb of Lemont have criticized the local high school's use of Arundhati Roy's “The God of Small Things” and Maya Angelou's “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” citing the books' sexual content, the Cook County Chronicle reports.
As The National Review's Katherine Timpf concludes, of …read more
Source: Virginia Schools Ban ‘To Kill A Mockingbird,’ ‘Huck Finn’ Over Racial Slurs
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by Daniel Cloud
“Donald Trump is either too incompetent to understand that his foolish phone call threatens our national security, or he’s doing it deliberately because he reportedly wants to build hotels in Taiwan to pad his own pockets.”
– (Democratic National Committee Spokesperson)
Is that true? Did “incompetent” President-Elect Donald Trump’s “foolish” telephone conversation with Taiwan’s President Cai Yingwen actually “threaten American’s national security”? Is Trump genuinely revealed, by this development, to be a bull in a China shop? If so, we should all be very alarmed.
But in fact… All that seems rather unlikely. Really, it’s more probable that Trump’s phone call has made us all, Americans and Chinese people and everyone else, slightly safer.
How? Carl Von Clausewitz argued that wars, at their beginning, always involve some sort of misperception. One or both sides must have a false belief that victory will be easy to achieve. If both parties shared the same, accurate estimate of the likely outcome of the war, then the only rational course of action for the inevitable loser would be to make whatever concessions were necessary to avoid an actual fight. Defeat without all the death and destruction of the war may not be a wonderful alternative, but it’s still better than the exact same thing, except with all the death and destruction.
So for a war to start, someone, one side or the other or both, has to make a mistake. How does this sort of huge, consequential blunder ever occur? Estimating an opposing force’s capabilities isn’t easy, but it’s within the range of things humans are capable of, at least on a good day. What seems to be much harder is estimating a potential opponent’s level of commitment to securing a particular outcome.
The Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor which brought America into the Second World War is a familiar example of this common sort of miscalculation. The Japanese knew that if the Americans actually fought back with everything they had, they would win. But they supposed that we wouldn’t see the things at stake as worth fighting an ugly war for. As it turned out, they were fatally wrong.
The wars in Vietnam and Iraq seem to have been examples of similar mistakes on the part of American politicians, who gravely underestimated their opponents’ willingness to carry on an endless fight. This is, in fact, a very typical kind of mistake. Imagining the enemy in some way that would make even rather reckless actions on your part work out well, basically because of some universal human tendency to not take very seriously foreigners who don’t closely resemble your culture’s ideal of an admirable person.
So there’s nothing more likely to cause an unnecessary war than a false appearance of lack of commitment to securing some particular outcome. Because it invites a kind of misperception that people are very prone to anyway. If you would, in the end, when the crunch really came, actually feel compelled …read more
Source: Trump’s Shot Across China’s Bow
Taiwan-based Foxconn, a giant contract manufacturer that plays a key role in assembling iPhones for Apple, employs hundreds of thousands of workers in mainland China. …read more
Source: Apple supplier Foxconn is in talks to invest in the U.S.
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rurtherford Institute,
“You gotta remember, establishment, it’s just a name for evil. The monster doesn’t care whether it kills all the students or whether there’s a revolution. It’s not thinking logically, it’s out of control.”—John Lennon (1969)
Militant nonviolent resistance works.
Peaceful, prolonged protests work.
Mass movements with huge numbers of participants work.
Yes, America, it is possible to use occupations and civil disobedience to oppose government policies, counter injustice and bring about change outside the confines of the ballot box.
It has been done before. It is being done now. It can be done again.
For example, in May of 1932, more than 43,000 people, dubbed the Bonus Army—World War I veterans and their families—marched on Washington, set up tent cities in the nation's capital, and refused to leave until the government agreed to pay the bonuses they had been promised as a reward for their services. Eventually their efforts not only succeeded in securing payment of the bonuses but contributed to the passage of the G.I. Bill of Rights.
Similarly, the Civil Rights Movement mobilized hundreds of thousands of people to strike at the core of an unjust and discriminatory society. Likewise, while the 1960s anti-war movement began with a few thousand perceived radicals, it ended with hundreds of thousands of protesters, spanning all walks of life, demanding the end of American military aggression abroad.
Most recently, after months of protests over the construction of a pipeline that members of the Sioux tribe insisted would harm their water supply, the Army Corp of Engineers has agreed to look for an alternate route for the Dakota Access Pipeline to cross under Lake Oahe in North Dakota.
This kind of “power to the people” activism—grassroots, populist and potent—is exactly the brand of civic engagement John Lennon advocated throughout his career as a musician and anti-war activist.
It’s been 36 years since Lennon was gunned down by an assassin’s bullet on December 8, 1980, but his legacy and the lessons he imparted in his music and his activism have not diminished over the years.
All of the many complaints we have about government today – surveillance, militarism, corruption, harassment, SWAT team raids, political persecution, spying, overcriminalization, etc. – were present in Lennon’s day and formed the basis of his call for social justice, peace and a populist revolution.
Little wonder, then, that the U.S. government saw him as enemy number one.
Because he never refrained from speaking truth to power, Lennon became a prime example of the lengths to which the U.S. government will go to persecute those who dare to challenge its authority.
Lennon was the subject of a four-year campaign of surveillance and harassment by the U.S. government (spearheaded by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover), an attempt by President Richard Nixon to have him “neutralized” and deported. As Adam Cohen of the New York Times points out, “The F.B.I.’s surveillance of Lennon is a reminder of how easily domestic spying can become unmoored from any legitimate law enforcement purpose. What is more surprising, …read more
Source: Power To The People: John Lennon’s Legacy Lives On
By Tyler Durden
After failing miserably in their effort to elect Hillary on November 8th, Google has decided it’s time to hire a “Conservative Outreach Manager.” You know your bias is deeply ingrained when you have to create a brand new “outreach” position just to figure out how to speak to people on the other side of the aisle.
Per the job listing posted to the Google Careers website, the new “Conservative Outreach Manager” would act as a “liaison to conservative, libertarian and
free market groups.”
As a member of Google’s Public Policy team, you help shape various product and issue agendas with policy makers inside and outside government. In addition, you will help advise our internal teams on the public policy implications of their products, working with a closely coordinated and cross-functional global team. The role requires significant experience either working with or in government, politics or a regulatory agency as well as an ability to grasp complex technical and policy issues.
As a member of Google’s Public Policy outreach team, you will act as Google’s liaison to conservative, libertarian and free market groups. You are part organizer, part advocate and part policy wonk as you understand the world of third-party non-governmental advocacy organizations. You are eager to represent Google among those organizations. You can work a room, tell Google’s story in an elevator or from a podium and work with partner organizations on shared projects to advance Google’s public policy goals.
Of course, it’s not terribly surprising that Google was ill-prepared to work with a Trump administration since WikiLeaks revealed the company was all-in with the Hillary campaign…a revelation which was subsequently confirmed when Google Chairman, Eric Schmidt, was spotted at Hillary’s Election Night “party” wearing a staff badge.
Somehow we suspect the “Conservative Outreach Manager” won’t be as effective at pushing Google’s policies with the Trump administration as Schmidt would have been with Hillary…Oh well, time to start building a relationship with Joe Biden.
* * *
For those who missed it, here is what we previously wrote about Schmidt’s “secret strategic plan” to get Hillary elected.
Among the latest set of Podesta releases, was the following email sent on April 15, 2014 by Google’s Eric Schmidt titled “Notes for a 2016 Democratic Campaign” in which the Google/Alphabet Chairman tells Cheryl Mills that “I have put together my thoughts on the campaign ideas and I have scheduled some meetings in the next few weeks for veterans of the campaign to tell me how to make these ideas better. This is simply a draft but do let me know if this is a helpful process for you all.“
Google head Eric Schmidt’s secret strategic plan for the US election #PodestaEmails https://t.co/LskJODXyXn
More: https://t.co/ZUfh7WDAT5 pic.twitter.com/llq5G9kp5V
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 31, 2016
While there are numerous curious nuances in the plan, presented below in its entirety, the one section that caught our – and Wikileaks’ attention – is the following which implicitly suggests Google planned the creation …read more
Source: Google Searches For "Conservative Outreach Manager" After Failing To Elect Hillary
By Tyler Durden
As the talking heads of the mainstream media endlessly cogitate over the propriety of Trump negotiating one-off deals with companies like Carrier, the voters have seemingly made up their mind and are overwhelmingly supportive. Per a new Politico poll, 60% of the overall electorate is supportive of the Carrier deal that saved 1,000 jobs from moving to Mexico in return for tax savings.
While some conservatives and conservative groups — including The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board and former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin — have decried the Carrier deal as “crony capitalism,” the Politico/Morning Consult poll shows it’s a political winner for Trump. Sixty percent of voters say Carrier’s decision to keep some manufacturing jobs in Indiana, where Pence is still serving as governor, gives them a more favorable view of Trump. That includes not only 87 percent of self-identified Republicans, but also 54 percent of independents and 40 percent of Democrats.
“The Carrier announcement was big for Trump,” said Kyle Dropp, Morning Consult co-founder and chief research officer. “Rarely do we see numbers that high when looking at how specific messages and events shape public opinion.”
Meanwhile, despite Sarah Palin blasting the Carrier deal as “crony capitalism” and “corporate welfare”, voters also seem to be overwhelmingly supportive of launching direct negotiations with private companies and/or offering tax breaks in return for keeping jobs in the United States.
Similarly, Republican voters say they are more likely to support one-off interventions with private companies like the Carrier deal than are Democratic voters. Asked whether it is acceptable for the president and vice president to negotiate directly with private businesses, a 51 percent majority of voters say that is appropriate, including 69 percent of Republicans. Just 27 percent say it is unacceptable, including 41 percent of Democrats.
A larger, 62 percent majority — 78 percent of Republicans, 46 percent of Democrats and 63 percent of independents — say it is acceptable for the president and vice president to offer tax breaks or incentives to individual companies to keep jobs in the U.S., while only 2 in 10 voters say it’s inappropriate.
And 56 percent of voters say it’s acceptable for the president and vice president to “negotiate with individual private companies on a case-by-case basis,” including three-quarters of Republicans.
But the poll wasn’t all positive for Trump as 56% of respondents said the President-elect uses Twitter too much while nearly 80% of Hillary supporters admitted to being “triggered” by his tweets.
Source: New Poll Reveals Carrier Deal Wildly Popular With Voters – "Rarely Do We See Numbers That High"
By Tyler Durden
Last week, Dallas Mayor Michael Rawlings sent a scathing letter to the Dallas Police and Fire Pension (DPFP) Board demanded that withdrawals be halted immediately until the “solvency and actuarial soundness of the Pension System is restored.” That said, the Mayor’s request was seemingly ignored as he has now filed a lawsuit with the Dallas District Court to force the pension board to halt withdrawals amid a “run on the bank.”
Within the suit, Rawlings notes that $500 million in lump-sum withdrawals have been made from the DPFP since August 2016 with $80 million of that amount being withdrawn in the first 2 weeks of November alone. The suit continues on to allege that “this mass exodus of DROP funds amounts to a “run on the bank” and is exacerbating the financial peril of the Pension System as a whole.”
In performing these ministerial duties, the Board has a duty to ensure that programs, such as the Pension System’s optional Deferred Retirement Option Plan (“DROP”), which is not a constitutionally protected benefit (or “benefit” at all), do not impair or reduce the Pension System’s core constitutionally protected benefits, e.g., service retirement benefits. The Board is willfully failing to perform these ministerial duties.
The Pension System, which the Board oversees, is in the midst of a financial crisis. In early 2016, the Board was warned by its own actuary that absent radical change,the Pension System would become insolvent within 15 years—irrevocably eradicating the constitutionally protected service retirement benefits (and other constitutionally protected benefits) of police and firefighter personnel of the City and their beneficiaries.
Critically, this 15-year projection of insolvency was based upon two overly optimistic assumptions that the Board has now known to be incorrect for several months. First, the actuary assumed that the Pension System’s $2.7 billion in assets would remain stable, even though approximately 56% of these assets were composed of optional DROP funds, which have historically been permitted to be withdrawn in lump-sums upon demand (even though this option was used infrequently before this year). Second, the actuary assumed that the Pension System would achieve its targeted 7.25% return or more on itsinvestments for the next 15 years.
Publication of this looming insolvency scenario prompted some DROP Participants to withdraw their DROP funds in lump-sum, which created a “snowball”effect, leading a staggering number of other DROP Participants to withdraw nearly $500 million in optional lump-sum DROP funds from the Pension System from August 13, 2016 to present. Over $80 million of these lump-sum DROP withdrawals have occurred within the first two weeks of November 2016 alone. Over this three-month time period, the Board has knowingly allowed DROP funds to continue to be withdrawn at record levels even though it is aware that doing so is irreparably harming the Pension System’s solvency and liquidity.
Lump-sum DROP withdrawals for 2016 are now on pace to be over 15 times higher than their historical average. This mass exodus of DROP funds amounts to a “run on the bank” and …read more
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