By NICHOLAS FANDOS from NYT U.S. http://ift.tt/2Fdx6cB
Wednesday, 28 February 2018
Hope Hicks Acknowledges She Sometimes Tells White Lies for Trump
By NICHOLAS FANDOS from NYT U.S. http://ift.tt/2Fdx6cB
11 Sickened by Hazardous Envelope Opened on Military Base
By THOMAS GIBBONS-NEFF from NYT U.S. http://ift.tt/2F9Q0AL
Judge Orders Tarps Removed From Confederate Statues in Charlottesville
By MATTHEW HAAG from NYT U.S. http://ift.tt/2BWXLs5
Quotation of the Day: N.R.A. Battle Pits Business Against G.O.P.
By Unknown Author from NYT Today’s Paper http://ift.tt/2EYl6MG
Review: ‘The Amateurs’ Takes On God, Noah’s Ark and the Plague. For Laughs.
By JESSE GREEN from NYT Theater http://ift.tt/2F86dXk
Flying Taxis May Be Years Away, but the Groundwork Is Accelerating
By DAISUKE WAKABAYASHI from NYT Technology http://ift.tt/2F7jbVj
Steve Wynn Is Accused of Rape and Coercion in Police Reports
By ASSOCIATED PRESS from NYT Business Day http://ift.tt/2CMHqmz
UK weather: Snowy scenes across the UK
Bitterly cold weather and heavy snow sweep in from the east, causing disruption and delight.
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UK weather: How to stay fashionable in the freeze
London College of Fashion students and staff tell us how they look cool in the cold.
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Boris Johnson's Irish border remarks lampooned
The foreign secretary is ridiculed for comparing the border to London's congestion charge zone.
from BBC News - Home http://ift.tt/2FCodae
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Nando's confirms it uses McCain chips
The chicken chain confirms it uses frozen chips - but says they're not the ones sold in shops.
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Is there a problem with unregistered schools?
Inspectors say there are more than 350 unregistered schools but they have few powers to investigate.
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Blackburn: The town that fails to elect Asian women
Areas with a similar demographic have managed it, so why hasn't Blackburn?
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Superorganism interview: 'We're a non-stop pop production house'
At home with Superorganism - the eight-piece pop group who made a hit single before they'd even met.
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Oscars 2018: What's up for best foreign language film?
What you need to know about the five movies competing for the best foreign language film Oscar.
from BBC News - Home http://ift.tt/2GORxcL
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Beast from the East: How the weather got a Hollywood makeover
No longer is it enough to simple refer to the weather as "winter". So what's changed?
from BBC News - Home http://ift.tt/2HMMbA1
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Winter Olympics: Is window for US-N Korea peace closing?
A small window for diplomacy emerged during the "peace Olympics" in Pyeongchang, but it's closing fast.
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Girls' soccer: City semifinal results and championship pairings
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Boys' soccer: City semifinal results and championship pairings
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Woman arrested outside Las Vegas school wielding a pickax
A 33-year-old woman was arrested Tuesday by North Las Vegas police after neighbors reported her attempting to climb the fence of an elementary school while yelling threats and wielding a pickax.
Police identified the woman as Kisstal Killough and said she never made it onto the grounds of Tom Williams...
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Wednesday's TV highlights: 'The Goldbergs' on ABC
SERIES
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Survivor The unscripted-competition series launches its 36th season. Jeff Probst is back as host. 8 p.m. CBS
The Blacklist Red (James Spader) and the Task Force target a nemesis who helps murderers come up with alibis to cover their crimes. Megan Boone also stars and Martha Plimpton guest...
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Empresas y trabajadores de California, asustados por las visitas de agentes federales de inmigración
Cuando, en las últimas semanas, agentes federales de inmigración visitaron tiendas 7-Eleven de Los Ángeles y compañías de transporte por carretera cerca de los puertos, para realizar auditorías de los registros de empleados, el tema causó escalofríos tanto en esas empresas como en otras de la...
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Boys' soccer: Southern Section semifinal results and championship pairings
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Girls' soccer: Southern Section semifinal results and championship pairings
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Pedestrian deaths surge in L.A., overall traffic fatalities down slightly
Pedestrian deaths in Los Angeles have surged more than 80% in the first two years of a high-profile initiative launched by Mayor Eric Garcetti to eliminate traffic fatalities, new data show.
In 2015, 74 people on foot were killed by drivers in Los Angeles. That figure rose to 134 in 2017, the highest...
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Owen Sharts debuts with 11 strikeouts in six innings for Simi Valley
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N Korea 'providing materials to Syria chemical weapons factories'
Pyongyang has been sending equipment to the country, a UN report finds.
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Sridevi Kapoor: India fans gather to pay tribute to Bollywood star
India fans are gathering near the residence of the Bollywood star who died in Dubai on Saturday.
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Jared Kushner loses access to top-level security briefings
President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser will no longer receive top-level briefings.
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2FAI5ua
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Jan Kuciak murder: Slovak PM makes cash reward appeal
Posing next to a million euros in cash, Robert Fico asked for information about Jan Kuciak's murder.
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2HO74L8
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EU to publish first draft of Brexit treaty
It is expected to say Northern Ireland may have to follow EU single market rules to avoid a hard border.
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Levi Strauss to use lasers instead of people to finish jeans
The company has developed new software that works with lasers to speed up its jean-making process.
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2HMVyQp
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2HMVyQp
Amazon buys 'smart' doorbell firm Ring
Ring makes doorbells that stream videos of people approaching or ringing the front door to phones.
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2CNYfxf
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2CNYfxf
Jerusalem: Christianity's 'holiest site' Holy Sepulchre reopens after protest
Israel shelves tax plans that prompted Church leaders to close doors of Christianity's holiest site.
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2ovc27v
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BBC charity sacked six over sexual misconduct
International development charity BBC Media Action reveals six people were dismissed over 10 years.
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US-Mexico wall: Judge throws out legal challenge
Donald Trump's plans receive a boost from a judge he once berated for being of "Mexican heritage".
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Apple is under fire for moving iCloud data to China
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Why New Zealand is releasing a rabbit-killing virus
The government says the population needs controlling but animal activists say it's a cruel approach.
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Egypt's Sherine sentenced to prison over Nile joke
Two female singers are sentenced to prison: one for inciting debauchery, and one for a joke.
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2HRzaFu
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2HRzaFu
Oxfam: What's gone wrong with the foreign aid sector?
After Oxfam's handling of a sex scandal in Haiti, the foreign aid sector faces tough questions.
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2HTj12q
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2HTj12q
Meet the woman teaching others how to fight off sex attackers
Emily Moser was beaten up in an attempted rape. Now she teaches women self-defence.
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2Coq8QH
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2Coq8QH
Police dog catches carjacker after wild chase in LA
Puskas, an eight-year-old police dog, needed jaw surgery after tackling the fugitive.
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2FbZrjc
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2FbZrjc
Homeless students: Finding shelter outside the classroom
One in five students in Los Angeles face housing insecurity - so where are they living?
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2GNXC9s
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Anthony Wong: Hong Kong actor on looking for his father
Hong Kong actor Anthony Wong considers his mixed-race heritage - and how it has shaped him.
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2HQNHRZ
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Skins: The TV show with an A-list alumni
How one hit E4 show of the 2000's has produced the Oscar nominees of today.
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'I prayed to die' after FGM aged six, says victim
Hibo Wadere was a victim of female genital mutilation and talks about her experience.
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How humans echolocate 'like bats'
Blind people who use sound to navigate their environment adjust their clicks very similarly to bats, research reveals.
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2GQzt21
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2GQzt21
Amelia Earhart's stolen car found in Los Angeles
The 1932 vehicle once belonged to the pilot who mysteriously disappeared over the Pacific Ocean
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China warns parents after boy filmed peeing in lift
A video of a Chinese boy urinating in a lift prompts calls for better education in the home.
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from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2F9xhFO
Georgian boy runs away to the zoo, finds it closed
A lucky 10-year-old gets an annual pass to Tbilisi's zoo after travelling 130km on his own to get there.
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Russian TV airs video game as Syria war footage
TV news tribute to Russia's armed forces uses a clip from a computer game.
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Winter Olympics: Is window for US-N Korea peace closing?
A small window for diplomacy emerged during the "peace Olympics" in Pyeongchang, but it's closing fast.
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2ou8WR8
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2ou8WR8
How France hopes to help radicals escape jihadist net
A new strategy aims to tackle the influence of violent Islamist groups - but will it stop attacks?
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2CqJvsr
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2CqJvsr
Five films compete for the best foreign language Oscar
What you need to know about the five movies competing for the best foreign language film Oscar.
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2GORxcL
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2GORxcL
Reality Check: Is Chinese an official language in Pakistan?
Media outlets in Pakistan said parliament had declared it to be one, but that's not quite what happened.
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2EY1EeR
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2EY1EeR
'Euphoria killing' women jailed in Australia
The Briton and Australian murdered a teenager after plotting to become serial killers, a jury heard.
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2CpOcCH
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Fury over India's reporting of Sridevi death
India's news media face backlash over graphics showing Sridevi in bathrooms to illustrate how she died
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Moon to get 4G mobile network
Vodafone and Nokia lay out plans to put a 4G mobile network on the Moon in 2019.
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Haier smartwatch has a built-in projector at MWC 2018
China's Haier reveals a smartwatch that turns the back of the wearer's hand into a display.
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Porn checks deadline looms amid uncertainty
A new regulation set to be enforced in April 2018 will mean UK viewers have to prove their age to access porn sites.
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Amazon buys 'smart' doorbell firm Ring
Ring makes doorbells that stream videos of people approaching or ringing the front door to phones.
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US e-passports haven't been verified in over a decade
US senators say US border control hasn't been using the right software to verify e-passports.
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School video footage appears online
The breach prompts a warning from privacy watchdog to secure CCTV cameras across UK.
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Morse code shoes send toe tapping texts at MWC 2018
A pair of smart shoes has been designed to let workers keep in touch via toe-tapped codes.
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MPs grill data boss on election influence
A firm which used big data to profile US voters has been questioned by MPs as part of fake news inquiry.
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Huawei: US scared we are too competitive
Huawei says the US wants to keep the Chinese firm out of the country because it is "too strong".
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Melania Trump mocked for 'positive social media' speech
US First Lady Melania Trump has been mocked online for her speech about 'positive' social media habits
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Handbag drones light up Milan catwalk
A parade of drones has carried jewel-encrusted handbags down a catwalk in Milan.
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Vero: The 'new Instagram' everyone's talking about
The story behind the photo-sharing app that has suddenly reached the top of the App Store.
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Android phone for children on show at MWC 2018
A phone with a modified version of Android designed to keep children safe has been revealed.
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Facebook Messenger used to fight extremism
People posting extreme far-right and Islamist views were contacted in a bid to challenge their views.
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Sony phone adds rumble to games and films
The Xperia XZ2 vibrates in its user's hand in time with action in videos games and movies.
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Intel did not inform US before chip flaws were made public
US officials were not informed about Spectre and Meltdown flaws before details leaked to the press.
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The app that helps feeds kids
Marie Farmer came up with the idea during her maternity leave, and it has now led to her quitting her job.
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War for the Planet of the Apes: Visual effects revealed
Click meets the Oscar nominated visual effects team behind War for the Planet of the Apes.
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The end of asking for the bill
Diners can leave a restaurant and their bill is paid automatically via an app, in a Barclaycard trial.
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Retina scan could predict health risks and other news
BBC Click's Kat Hawkins looks at some of the best technology stories of the week.
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US judge blocks weed-killer warning label in California
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So That Baby Definitely Wasn't Crying On 'Walking Dead,' Right?
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New Yorker arrested in Japan over severed head in suitcase
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Papua New Guinea Quake Killed at Least 15, Governor Says
A powerful earthquake two days ago killed at least 15 people, injured dozens and brought work to a halt at four oil and gas fields in a remote Papua New Guinea region, the local governor said Wednesday.
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Tuesday, 27 February 2018
NBA: Anthony Davis scores 53 as Pelicans win again
Anthony Davis scored a season-high 53 points, grabbed 18 rebounds and blocked five shots, and the host New Orleans Pelicans extended their winning streak to six with a 125-116 victory over the hapless Phoenix Suns on Monday night.
Jrue Holiday scored 20 points for the Pelicans, whose season-best...
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Deadline deals deliver stars to contenders, mostly for picks, in pursuit of postseason
A day after the Boston Bruins landed power forward Rick Nash from the Rangers, the Tampa Bay Lightning followed suit by acquiring New York captain Ryan McDonagh in a multiplayer trade before Monday’s deadline.
New York also sent forward J.T. Miller to Tampa Bay in a deal that netted the Rangers...
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Santa Ana River homeless camp cleared after more than 700 people relocated
The gates were locked and the Santa Ana River trail was quiet Monday night after a massive push, spanning six days, to relocate more than 700 people to motels and shelters across Orange County.
“This was a landmark process with so many different groups combining forces,” said Brooke Weitzman, an...
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Lakers topple the Hawks 123-104 to match win total from last season
ATLANTA — To see how far the Lakers have come one only needs to observe the indifference they showed collectively at a note about the significance of Monday’s 26th win of the season.
It was Feb. 26. It took the Lakers until April 11 last year to win their 26th game, and that was their last win...
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Lakers' Lonzo Ball and rapper Quavo hit it off
Lonzo Ball made a three-point basket and trotted back down the court as the rapper Quavo, from the group Migos, reached out to congratulate him.
Ball’s celebrity is such that this wasn’t a random encounter. Earlier in the day, Ball had listed Quavo among his top five rappers of today. Before Quavo...
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Report: NFL is seeking $2 million from Jerry Jones
The NFL is exploring options to get more than $2 million in reimbursement for legal fees from Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones over his threat to derail Commissioner Roger Goodell's contract extension and his support of running back Ezekiel Elliott's fight to avoid a six-game suspension, according...
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Anti-Semitism in U.S. surged in 2017, a new report finds
Harassment, threats and vandalism cases targeting Jews in the United States surged to near-record levels in 2017, jumping 57% over the previous year, according to a new report by a prominent civil rights organization.
The Anti-Defamation League counted 1,986 anti-Semitic incidents — the second-highest...
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Carjacking suspect arrested after wild chase and second carjacking
A carjacking suspect has been arrested in Irvine after a wild chase during which the man stole another car and was finally tackled by a police dog, authorities say.
Police say the man was wanted for a Garden Grove carjacking last week and tried to ram police who spotted his pickup Monday in neighboring...
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Boys' basketball: Monday's City semifinal score
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Trump expected to visit California to view border wall prototypes
President Trump is finally expected to go to California.
The president, who has rarely crossed the Mississippi River during his first 13 months in office, is scheduled to visit California in mid-March to see prototypes for a potential border wall and learn more about the construction, according...
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Malibu bans restaurants from giving out plastic straws, stirrers and utensils
During every visit to the beach, Sheila Morovati, her husband and their two kids each pick up at least 10 pieces of trash. Almost always, every item is made of plastic: straws, bottle caps, lids, forks.
So last year, Morovati helped lead a campaign to get rid of plastic straws in the city of Malibu....
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College basketball: Virginia Tech putback downs Duke
Chris Clarke tipped in a missed shot with 4 seconds remaining Monday night, and Virginia Tech stunned No. 5 Duke 64-63.
The Hokies (21-9, 10-7 Atlantic Coast Conference) had trailed almost the entire game before Nickeil Alexander-Walker's jumper sailed over the rim and Clarke grabbed it and laid...
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Tuesday's TV highlights: 'The Middle' on ABC
SERIES
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NCIS McGee (Sean Murray) has a new houseguest, a convicted murderer (guest star French Stewart, “3rd Rock From the Sun”) who was given a 48-hour furlough in exchange for information about his former cellmate (guest star Graham Hamilton), a killer fugitive pursued by Gibbs and Fornell (Mark...
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Southern Californians invited to the NFL scouting combine
Area prospects who have been invited to the NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis, which begins Tuesday:
Keishawn Bierria, LB, Washington — Former Narbonne High standout led the Huskies with 11 tackles versus Penn State in the Fiesta Bowl.
Deontay Burnett, WR, USC — Had a huge game in the Rose Bowl,...
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L.A. Unified rushed to rebuild cafeterias, then fought for years to recoup excess costs
The Los Angeles Unified School District’s $37-million Cafe L.A. project at first seemed like a stunning success.
In 18 months, 64 school cafeterias were gutted and transformed so that students could be served faster — and with healthier options.
Then the district’s auditors looked at the books....
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Oakland mayor faces backlash after notifying residents of possible immigration enforcement
On Saturday night, residents of Oakland received an urgent message from Mayor Libby Schaaf.
Schaaf said she had heard from multiple sources that immigration agents would be conducting enforcement operations “starting as soon as within the next 24 hours” and urged those here illegally to take precautions.
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Weinstein Co. bankruptcy could hurt victims' chances for compensation, legal experts say
Former Obama administration official Maria Contreras-Sweet’s surprise bid to buy Weinstein Co. came with a basic promise: remake the tarnished studio as a female-friendly workplace and fairly compensate women who’d accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual abuse.
But those hopes were quashed Sunday night...
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Clippers prepare for back-to-back games against playoff contenders
This is a week in which the Clippers can make a stand in their quest to qualify for the Western Conference playoffs.
They will face two formidable foes in back-to-back games against the Nuggets at Denver on Tuesday night and the Houston Rockets at Staples Center on Wednesday night, two combatants...
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For Asian Americans, the 2018 Winter Olympics brought unexpected joy and familiar anger
For any Asian American person who faces the constant, clumsy question of “Where are you really from?,” the just-completed Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, offered us a few days of relief.
The iconography answered the question for us: the American flag stitched on snowboarder Chloe Kim’s...
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Ten things you should know about teen sexting
Nearly 14% of teens has sent a sexually explicit text message, and 27% have received one, according to a study that included data on more than 110,000 teens. In addition, 12% of teens forwarded a sext message without consent, and 8% have had a sext of them forwarded without their consent.
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HBO program examines what it calls the NHL's inaction on concussions in hockey
The next edition of HBO’s “Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel,” set to air Tuesday, takes a look at what it calls the NHL’s inaction on concussions in hockey.
The program shows clips of Gary Bettman where the NHL commissioner says there is no connection between playing hockey and chronic traumatic...
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How SoftBank, World's Biggest Tech Investor, Throws Around Its Cash
SoftBank is on a shopping spree, investing billions in firms such as Uber and WeWork, both directly and through an affiliated tech fund. People who know SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son describe his style as alternating between methodical and haphazard.
from WSJ.com: What's News US http://ift.tt/2orHyDl
from WSJ.com: What's News US http://ift.tt/2orHyDl
Powerful Quake Rattles Homes, Gold Mine in Papua New Guinea
A powerful earthquake rattled forest villages and a large gold mine in central Papua New Guinea early Monday, but there were no immediate reports of injuries.
from CBNNews.com http://ift.tt/2F1htVv
from CBNNews.com http://ift.tt/2F1htVv
Avant-garde Mosque Angers Hard-Liners in Iran
A newly built avant-garde mosque in the heart of Iran’s capital would have hard-liners shouting from the minarets — if there were any.
from CBNNews.com http://ift.tt/2CkNF5f
from CBNNews.com http://ift.tt/2CkNF5f
The Kashmir villagers fleeing bullets from two nations
Villagers along the border are fleeing from their homes amid shelling between India and Pakistan.
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2FzNUbr
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2FzNUbr
Playing Pig in Appalachia - a card game keeping a town alive
Every year, on the last Saturday in February at high noon, World Pig commences in Forbus.
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2FAOK7S
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2FAOK7S
How realistic are Libya's election plans?
Libyan politicians, the UN, and the EU are pushing for elections despite the country's chaos.
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2oz4gZO
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2oz4gZO
Nigeria's 'new Chibok' - what we know
How did suspected Boko Haram militants manage to kidnap more than 100 girls from a school in Nigeria?
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2GNwlUK
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2GNwlUK
China censorship after Xi Jinping presidency extension proposal
Terms like "don't agree" and "re-election" are also banned after a proposal to keep Xi Jinping in office.
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2oBbBaW
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2oBbBaW
Ng On-yee: Snooker's new world number one
Hong Kong's Ng On-yee is the first Asian to top the World Ladies Billiards and Snooker rankings.
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2BQO4Lu
from BBC News - World http://ift.tt/2BQO4Lu
Xi's Road to Indefinite Rule Through Rule-Making
China’s Communist Party instituted term limits after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, to ensure that a future Chinese leader wouldn’t rule for life and cement the kind of cult of personality Mao had. Those term limits—up to two consecutive five-year terms—have endured through the reigns of Hua Guofeng, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao. But now, in the reign of Xi Jinping, they may be on their way out.
The party proposed Sunday a change to the constitution that would abolish term limits, essentially giving Xi the authority to rule for life. Xi, who completes his first term in office next month, emerged as China’s most powerful leader since Deng, who ushered China’s economic reforms, at the Communist Party Congress last October. The party enshrined his “thought” into its constitution, an honor previously accorded only Mao; and it did not, as is custom, reveal a successor to Xi, who under rules in effect at the time of the congress would have to step down in 2022. Xi was widely seen to have consolidated his power at the end of the congress—just how much became apparent Sunday.
If China does indeed remove term limits for Xi, he will not be the first world leader to use constitutional rules for authoritarian purposes. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and Russian President Vladimir Putin have all made similar moves. It’s a form of power grab by procedure rather than by coup. In Africa alone, 17 leaders have tried to change the constitution since 2000 in order to prolong their rule—most recently Ugandan President Yoweri Musaveni, 73, who enacted a law ending a presidential age limit of 75.
Thomas Carothers, who directs the democracy and rule-of-law program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told me that the use of such tactics doesn’t always go smoothly. He noted, for instance, that China’s announcement came on Sunday. The country then stifled online dissent about it. “If they proud of doing this, and it was an easy thing to do, or if there was a good rationale for it, why not do it in the full light of the day?” Carothers asked.
Jerome Cohen, a professor at NYU who is an expert in Chinese law, wrote Sunday that the proposed rule change means the Communist Party “has forgotten one of the main lessons of Mao’s long despotism.” The term limit, Cohen wrote, “reflected a widespread desire to prevent the return of one-man dictatorship.” But Xi is now tightening his hold at the peak of his powers and on the eve of his second term. And he’s doing it in a way that seems to respect rather than break the rules, with the Communist Party giving the move an official imprimatur—one that might be more palatable for the larger Chinese public, who already are said to broadly support Xi’s governing style (though, given China’ limits on freedom of expression, it is impossible to measure the true level of dissent).
Carothers said the trend Xi represents is a reversal from the 1990s, when many leaders were taking steps to become more democratic. “They went through a liberalizing phase, a rule-oriented phase, but now ... in the past 10 years, they’re pushing back against their own self-imposed limitation,” he said in an interview. “It’s a re-hardening against constitutional limitations, elections, and things like that were accepted in the 1990s.”
Take Turkey. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had served three terms as prime minister, moved into what was then the ceremonial role of the presidency in 2014. But from that perch he has wielded power not typically associated with the role, and last April set about to formalize it. Erdogan, who is widely popular and who until relatively recently was lauded as a champion of democracy and the rule of law in Turkey, organized a nationwide referendum to move Turkey from a parliamentary system to a presidential one. That would give the winner of next year’s presidential election, widely expected to be Erdogan himself, the position of head of state, with few checks on his power. Last April’s vote passed narrowly, but the victory all but ensured that Erdogan, 64, will tighten his hold on power for the foreseeable future.
Similarly in Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro has achieved a power grab impressive even by the standards of Latin American strongmen of the past—despite having accelerated the dismantling of what was once one of Latin America’s wealthiest and most stable countries. With the legislature dominated by his opposition, he opted to essentially create a new one—calling for elections last July to create a new constituent assembly that would, among other things, have the power to rewrite the constitution. Turnout was poor, but Maduro claimed victory in a vote that was widely seen as flawed.
In Putin’s case, the issue isn’t quite what the Russian leader has done to stay in power, but what he might do following next month’s election. He is virtually certain to be re-elected to another six-year term. Putin was president from 2000 to 2008 before stepping down because of term limits that forbid more than two consecutive terms in office. To get around that, he traded jobs with his prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, before returning to the presidency in 2012. Putin is now 65, and by the time his next term ends, he will be in his 70s. And what then? He could, in theory, do what he previously did with Medvedev, a practice the Russians describe as “castling,” for the chess move, or he could rework the constitution so he doesn’t have to bother. He has said he won’t do the latter, but who would hold him accountable?
Carothers pointed out that while to the outside world, and indeed many Russians, Putin might seem like a strong leader, such moves are a sign not of strength, but also insecurity—of Putin’s concern about what would happen to him if he’s no longer in power.
“Once you personalize the system to such a degree that he has … you have very few protections” against allegations of corruption and other malfeasance, Carothers said. “It’s a reflection of the personalization of rule and the concentration of rule in a person so that there’s the feeling that if you’re not that person anymore, the system will not protect you.”
All these leaders have used a combination of populist politics and muscular nationalism to force through political changes that consolidate their personal positions—some are even popular. In times of growth and prosperity, as China is seeing now, the changes could be welcomed.
Carothers said the constitutional limits on authoritarian leaders “were fairly weak checks on their power.” “What we’re seeing now is greater self-confidence on the part of many authoritarian leaders,” he said. “There’s a feeling that ‘we can do this. We want to stay in power. We don’t give up power. And we have the win of history at our backs.’”
But because every economic upturn is followed by a downturn, any long-term failures will also be tied to them, as they remake their countries in their image. “Xi Jinping is susceptible to making big mistakes because there are now almost no checks or balances,” Willy Lam, an adjunct professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, told The New York Times. “Essentially, he has become emperor for life.”
But even emperors have to face unpleasant realities. As Cohen, the NYU professor put it: Xi’s move will “enable him to move more boldly and increases the risk of his acting arbitrarily and perhaps mistakenly in international relations.”
“There is big risk for Xi at home since, as it becomes more obvious that China’s problems are catching up with its achievements, the government will look less impressive and the masses will begin to lose their enthusiasm and hold the great leader responsible,” he wrote. “The elite will be less surprised but less forgiving.”
from The Atlantic http://ift.tt/2EVYV5y
Why Are Corporations Finally Turning Against the NRA?
After the most recent high-school massacre in Parkland, Florida, left 17 students and teachers dead, the National Rifle Association (NRA), the nonprofit gun-rights advocacy group, was rebuked by a surprising group of liberal activists: American corporations. Pressured by Parkland high-school students and others to boycott the NRA, more than 20 companies have cut ties with the pro-gun group.
The NRA exodus includes major airlines like United, six rental-car firms including Hertz and Avis Budget Group, and MetLife, the insurance giant. These companies are not rescinding NRA donations, nor are they refusing service to NRA members. Rather, they’re ending discount programs, which companies routinely offer to groups and companies, like the NRA or the AARP. For example, United Airlines offered discounts on flights to the NRA annual meeting, and MetLife auto insurance offered a $50 benefit to members for each year of claim-free driving.
It would be easy to write off this moment by saying these companies are simply reacting to an online mob, or following each other like lemmings. But the fact that companies, rather than Congress or the courts, are shifting in response to political activism in the United States says something profound—about American tribalism, the demise of political cooperation, and the rise of a sort of liberal corporatocracy.
Why have the Parkland shootings forced corporate action in a way that previous school shootings could not? To put it another way: United and Delta both serve more than 100 million domestic passengers each year, while the NRA only has a few million members. So, why has it taken so long for these companies to distance themselves from one of America’s most controversial associations, despite 30,000 annual firearms deaths and so many mass shootings?
In this case, there has been a perfect storm of articulate student outrage and savvy online activism, merging with a rising tide of resentment against Trump and Trump-affiliated organizations. The students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, have shown poise and passion before the camera—and laconic brilliance on Twitter—that has galvanized the gun-control movement. On social media, they have joined other activists in naming and shaming companies (“Hey @LifeLock why do you support the NRA? #NeverForget”) and even encouraging people to contact NRA-sponsoring firms. One message, with more than 33,000 retweets, sent people to an Amazon webpage where they could submit a prewritten request for the company to stop hosting the NRA’s digital-video channel, NRATV. As more companies canceled their NRA affiliations, it put additional pressure on other companies that had initially resisted doing the same. Within a 12-hour period, Delta Airlines went from defending its relationship with the NRA as “routine” to requesting that the association “remove our information from their website.”
This avalanche of companies abandoning the NRA is just the latest chapter in the gradual politicization of every square inch of the public sphere, which has compelled traditionally nonpartisan companies to take one partisan stand after another. One year ago, in the fallout over the president’s proposed travel ban, Uber’s CEO, Travis Kalanick, left the White House advisory council. Four months later, the tech entrepreneur Elon Musk and Disney’s CEO, Bob Iger, left the same forum after the president withdrew from the Paris climate agreement. When Trump refused to explicitly condemn the far-right protesters in Charlottesville, more business leaders, including Merck’s CEO, Kenneth Frazier, exited en masse from his manufacturing council.
Uber is not an immigration firm. Disney is not a climate-advocacy organization. Merck is not a civil-rights group. But under Trump, they have completed their development into activists on the issues of migration, carbon emissions, and white racism anyway. Trump’s language often forces companies to take sides in political debates, and his unpopularity makes it safe—even necessary—to side against him.
Many business leaders are getting political because they have determined that, in this environment, the noisiest position is often to remain silent in the face of national condemnation. But in politics, responding to one group of consumers invariably means angering another. Several conservative writers tweeted that they would boycott United, Hertz, and other companies that eliminated their discount policies with the NRA. “Corporations boycotting NRA should be boycotted,” the conservative commentator Mark R. Levin wrote. The choice for companies is simple and stark: Suffer the slings and arrows of liberal activism, or endure the rage and resentment of spurned conservatives. In today’s culture wars, for-profits are the new nonprofits.
One important question raised by all this is if there is a deeper force at work. Have America’s corporations shifted to the left, even as national government has moved toward the Republican Party? Or are companies just more sensitive to protests than a divided government is?
In many cases, America’s corporate community has become a quiet defender of socially liberal causes. Nearly 400 companies filed an amicus brief in 2015 urging the Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage, including Amazon, Aetna, Apple, American Airlines, American Express, and AT&T (and those are just the ones starting with the first letter of the alphabet). Hundreds of executives, many from tech companies, signed a 2017 letter urging the president to protect immigrants brought to the U.S. as children by saving the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. When North Carolina passed a law against transgender-friendly bathrooms, the NCAA announced in 2016 that it would pull its college-basketball tournament from the state (and other companies withdrew their business, too).
It would be strange to call these corporations “liberal.” By and large, they support the GOP’s economic policies, which in just the last year have eased regulations and slashed corporate taxes by several trillion dollars. But on social issues, national and multinational companies have moved left of the GOP, even as many Republican figures (particularly the president) have found it useful, or at least tantalizing, to play up cultural flash points, like trans rights and undocumented labor. This has created a bizarre dynamic, where many companies feel public pressure to assert their values by rebuking Republican politics, even as many of them directly benefit from the GOP’s economic platform.
But there is something else happening: Corporations are becoming more democratic than democratic governance itself. Or, at least, they have proven to be far more responsive to political outcries and scandals than political parties. In the #MeToo movement, many corporate boards quickly dismissed their credibly accused executives, while Republicans (and some Democrats) wavered over how to punish accused officials and candidates, like Representative Patrick Meehan, the Alabama Senate contender Roy Moore, and, well, the president of the United States. In the gun debate, too, many companies moved to distance themselves from the NRA before the state of Florida or the federal government could propose or act on new legislation to limit gun violence.
National government in an age of Republican control is mostly unresponsive to liberal protests. So, many activists are focusing their ire on the business community. A corporation is a knot of products, services, and policies, and activists have seen that any one string can be grabbed, pulled, and scrutinized, until the company agrees to cut it away.
Businesses have to respond to political crises even faster than political parties do, says William Klepper, a professor of corporate leadership at the Columbia Business School. Politics is competitive, but the competition is constrained—by time (e.g., elections only happen every two, four, or six years), by geography (e.g., the gerrymandering of districts), and by partisanship, in which every issue often boils down to “the other side is worse.” Many companies cannot rely on time, geography, or negative advertising to save them. Every week is a primary for a consumer brand; the global nature of business exposes companies to more rivals; and no company can thrive by making nothing and investing exclusively in hostile marketing. “Politicians assume they can wait out the outrage, but national companies have to respond to the immediacy of demand,” Klepper told me.
Social media, and its capacity to foment outrage, has helped create this dynamic, contributing to both the virulence of partisanship and the concurrent rise of the activist corporation. Angry tweets and Facebook memes help political groups rally around anger and perceived villainy; but also, they create unavoidable choices for multinational companies that have to respond to political crises by picking a side.
American democracy is not a free market. It is, at best, a two-party duopoly, in which vilification of the opposition often passes for a party platform. As a result, many liberal activists are asking corporations to express the values that they cannot impress upon a Republican-dominated government. Corporations are no longer bystanders in the culture wars. They are on the front lines.
from The Atlantic http://ift.tt/2BONnT7
Pyeongchang 2018: Photos From the Final Week
After two weeks of competition, Norway topped the Olympic medals chart with 39 total medals, followed by Germany, Canada, and the United States. Here, a look at some of the events of the last days of the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, from ski cross and bobsleigh to hockey, speed skating, the Closing Ceremony, and more.
from The Atlantic http://ift.tt/2Cp2Ry0
A Gun-Holdup Victim on Whether He Wishes He Had Been Armed
Previously in this series:
- “White Male Privilege”
- “A Case Against Gun Control”
- “The Cultural Roots of a Gun-Massacre Society”
- “A Veteran on the Need to Control Civilian Arms”
- “‘Show Us the Carnage,’ Continued”
- “Only in America”
- “Show Us the Carnage”
- “The Empty Rituals of an American Massacre”
and before that: - “Why the AR-15 Is So Lethal”
- “The Nature of the AR-15”
- “Why the AR-15 Was Never Meant to be in Civilian Hands”
- “More on the Military and Civilian History of the AR-15”
and - “The Certainty of More Shootings,” from back after the Aurora massacre
- “Two Dark American Truths from Las Vegas,” with included video.
Today, Eric Kingsbury, of San Francisco, on what he has thought, and felt, about guns after being robbed at gunpoint a year and a half ago. I should note that all the links in his dispatch are ones he added himself:
I’ve faced down a loaded gun once in my life. It was 10 PM on the night before the Fourth of July in 2016 and I was walking to the train from a friend’s house in Berkeley. Almost as soon as I walked out of my friend’s driveway, a kid ran across to the street to ask me if I had a phone. I told him I didn’t and asked that he leave me alone. That’s when he began to ask more forcefully. Within seconds I felt a hand over my mouth, as two other kids ran out from the shadows. I was completely helpless and, for the first time in my adult life, I wasn’t in control of my body or my fate.
The kid to my right showed me his gun. He told me he would, “pop a cap in you if you scream or tell anyone,” which would have been darkly funny—the sort of thing someone thinks they should say to sound hard—in almost any other circumstance. He then put the gun back in his sweatshirt pocket and pushed it up against my stomach. Meanwhile, his other two friends went to work grabbing my phone, peeling off my backpack, and checking all my pockets. Once they had everything, they let me go. It didn’t last more than 30 seconds, tops.
The aftermath of the whole situation was a bit of a blur. There was talking to the cops, a very restless night, and the conversations with all my friends and family the following morning. All of it was difficult, especially learning the truth that many of my most liberal-minded friends and family actually held quite retrograde views on race—the assailants were black, and I am white—that they felt freed to share now that something that they’d heard about so many times in the media had happened to “one of us.” But there was one question I got over and over again, one that really surprised me: Would it have been different if you had a gun?
from The Atlantic http://ift.tt/2GIU48w
Martin Luther King Jr. Mourns Trayvon Martin
For you, son,
I dreamed a childhood
unburdened by hate;
a boyhood of adventure—
skinned knees and hoops,
first loves and small rebellions;
I dreamed you whole
and growing into your own
manhood, writing its definitions
with your daily being.
I dreamed you alive, living.
For you, America’s African heir,
I dreamed a future
of open doors, of opportunity
without oppression,
of affirmation and action,
I dreamed Oprah and Obama
I dreamed Colin and Condoleezza
I dreamed doctors and dancers,
lawyers and linebackers, models,
musicians, mechanics, preachers
and professors and police, authors,
activists, astronauts, even,
all black as Jesus is.
I dreamed you dapper—
the black skin of you
polished to glow; your curls,
your kinks, your locs,
your bald, your wild,
your freshly barbered—
all beautiful.
I dreamed you wearing whatever the hell you want
and not dying for it.
For you, brother,
I dreamed a world softened
by love, free from the fear
that makes too-early ancestors of our men;
turns our boys into targets,
headlines, and ghosts.
I had a dream
that my children will one day live
in a nation where they will not be judged
by the color of their skin
but by the content of their character.
Sweet song of my sorrow.
Sweet dream, deferred.
For you, gone one, I dreamed
justice—her scales tipped
away from your extinction,
her eyes and arms unbound
and open to you
at last.
from The Atlantic http://ift.tt/2F378bB
The Dark Arts of Foreign Influence-Peddling
These days, it’s never good news for Paul Manafort. On Friday, Special Counsel Robert Mueller released his latest indictment against President Donald Trump’s onetime campaign chairman. It charged that Manafort “secretly retained” a small group of former European leaders to “act informally and without any visible relationship with the Government of Ukraine.” Called the Hapsburg Group, this coterie of paid lobbyists allegedly worked to advance the interests of the corrupt regime of former President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych in both Europe and the United States.
The group as a whole reportedly received at least $2 million for its services. It was led by “a former European chancellor,” a person the indictment doesn’t name but who has since been identified in numerous press reports as Alfred Gusenbauer. Gusenbauer, a former chancellor of Austria, has confirmed that he lobbied not on behalf of Yanukovych, but only for the cause of bringing Ukraine closer to the rest of Europe. He has not denied that he was paid for his services by a U.S. company. Reports have also alleged that another of Manafort’s secretly paid lobbyists was Romano Prodi, the former prime minister of Italy and European Union Commission president. In a statement, Prodi acknowledged working to bring the EU closer to Ukraine, an effort that involved “numerous meetings and public speeches (some of them regularly paid), which took place in a variety of European capitals.” In his statement, he denied “both to have played a role in any lobbying effort and to be part of a secret lobby,” and added that he “did not receive any money for these activities.”
If this latest indictment’s allegations are proved true, what they reveal is just a tiny sample of how nondemocratic powers buy the services of former Western officials to advance their agendas. In the process, many of these retired politicians become enablers of kleptocratic and authoritarian individuals. Even worse, they put their credibility on the line to assist regimes antithetical to the democracies they once served.
Examples are now legion. Former Prime Minister of Britain Tony Blair sold his services to Central Asian dictators. China is moving to enlist former Western leaders. Late last year HNA, a Chinese conglomerate with close ties to the Chinese government, hired former German Vice Chancellor Philipp Rösler to run its foundation in New York. One Chinese billionaire with close connections to the Chinese Communist Party has secured the services of an ex–trade minister of Australia, who took a $680,000-a-year consulting job with him not long after leaving parliament.
One of the most high-profile cases is that of former Chancellor of Germany Gerhard Schröder. Last year, he became chairman of the board of Rosneft, Russia’s state-backed oil company, supplementing his generous government retirement package handsomely. He also serves on the board of the Nordstream 2 pipeline, a venture owned by Gazprom, another Russian state-backed energy giant. Documents obtained by the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel last December showed how Schröder recently brokered a meeting between Gazprom chairman Alexei Miller and Germany’s economics minister.
There’s nothing inherently illegal about providing such services. But whether it’s wise to do so is another question. Schröder’s role with Rosneft has arguably helped legitimize what amounts to the crown jewel of authoritarian state capitalism, and a key vehicle for Putin’s exercise of power. For Putin, Schröder must be a handy mascot. Having him in the Kremlin’s service could send a signal to European democracies: Your leaders are no more virtuous than the titans of kleptocracy in Russia that you despise. Putin thrives on such moral equivalence. When former leaders like Schröder and Blair promote the beneficiaries of authoritarianism and kleptocracy, they do real damage to liberal democracy.
To prevent such damage, open societies need clear, enforceable rules that their officials to commit to before taking the oath of office. The formal grace periods between the end of an official’s public service and a career in the private sector that some countries have adopted are not sufficient. Democracies should require that officials sign legal declarations pledging never to work or to lobby in any capacity for a foreign nondemocratic government, or for a company headquartered in an authoritarian system. If they do work in the private sector, it’s not asking too much for them to decline positions that amount to them simply selling access to their rolodex.
But the effort can’t stop there. The new Manafort indictment alleges that his operation relied on a network of lobbyists, attorneys, offshore banks, and think tanks. This is a common pattern. Many law firms and bankers provide similar services well within the boundaries of the law. Think tanks such the Dialogue of Civilizations Institute, in Berlin, which is bankrolled by a close Putin ally and where Gusenbauer sits on the board, receive funding through legal channels. (The institute denies any direct connection to the Kremlin.)
Mandatory transparency and awareness-building help leverage one of the key assets of open societies: the power of public debate. Exposing the tools that authoritarian influence-peddlers use could very well curb their freedom. One way to do this would be to compel consultants, along with public-relations and accounting firms and other companies competing for public tenders and government contracts in the EU and the United States, to disclose any business relationship, past or present, with clients working on behalf of authoritarian states. Under such a system, lobbyists would also have to disclose such relationships, as would nonprofits, sports clubs, faith groups, universities, and political parties.
In this context, law firms pose a particularly thorny challenge because of client confidentiality rules. The latest Manafort indictment alleged that a U.S. law firm received $4 million to write a report on the trial of Yanukovych’s rival Yulia Tymoshenko, among other things. Other cases have surfaced wherein former officials used their role as attorneys to lobby on behalf of clients representing authoritarian systems. As Der Spiegel detailed, Otto Schily, a former interior minister of Germany who now works as an attorney, represented the interests of the Kazakh regime, channeling his payment through a Kazakh foundation that an Austrian court found to be a front group for the Kazakh intelligence service. Der Spiegel’s report alleged his tasks mostly involved lobbying, not legal work in the strict sense.
Transparency rules can help raise the costs for western enablers who currently have little to fear from the court of public opinion. But not all manners of influencing would be exposed through these transparency measures, especially influence-peddling operations run through clandestine political and financial channels (as was the case with Manafort). To expose all this, the public needs more cooperation “across the boundaries of journalism, academic and policy research,” as the researchers Alexander Cooley and John Heathershaw have written. And where there are legal breaches, investigative authorities need to step in. The Mueller probe has shown what a well-resourced investigation can bring to light. “If one sends a team of 30 top-level prosecutors to any big lobbying or political consulting firm with international clients, there could be a lot of surprises,” a person familiar with Manafort’s operations told the Financial Times last year.
A key aim of the Mueller investigation is to shed light on the influence operations that tainted America’s 2016 presidential election. But the importance of what he’s now alleging goes much broader than that. Getting to the bottom of the morass of authoritarian enablers like Manafort is now an essential front in the defense of liberal democracy worldwide.
from The Atlantic http://ift.tt/2F06LP5
'White Male Privilege' and Other Themes of Gun Culture
Previously in this series:
- “A Case Against Gun Control”
- “The Cultural Roots of a Gun-Massacre Society”
- “A Veteran on the Need to Control Civilian Arms”
- “‘Show Us the Carnage,’ Continued”
- “Only in America”
- “Show Us the Carnage”
- “The Empty Rituals of an American Massacre”
and before that: - “Why the AR-15 Is So Lethal”
- “The Nature of the AR-15”
- “Why the AR-15 Was Never Meant to be in Civilian Hands”
- “More on the Military and Civilian History of the AR-15”
and - “The Certainty of More Shootings,” from back after the Aurora massacre
- “Two Dark American Truths from Las Vegas,” with included video.
Today, readers on the culture, psychology, and politics of regulating guns.
Really, pay attention to Australia—white-male privilege and all. Several previous messages have referred to Australia’s modern experience with guns. In short: After the mass-casualty “Port Arthur massacre” of 1996, a conservative government (technically, the Liberal party) changed gun policy, and since then Australia has had its share of gun violence but no remotely comparable massacres. By contrast, the five deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history, and 7 of the 10 worst, have all happened since 1996.
Earlier a reader in Melbourne described the experience of living with the normal range of urban concerns but not the fear of being shot. Another reader who emigrated to Australia writes:
I read your Melbourne reader's comment with intense empathy, because it exactly describes my experience.
I lived in the USA for almost five decades. From the age of 14 to 49, I owned my own guns. There was never a period in which I did not own a gun. I even put one to good use at the age of 15, throwing my mother's boyfriend out of the house after they argued. The gun in my hands made him leave. At various times in my adult life I would carry a pistol, when I deemed it appropriate.
When I immigrated to Australia of course I had to sell off my arsenal. By that point it was down to two pistols (my assault rifle had been stolen years ago).
After my first year here, I noticed there was something different. I felt odd, as if something were missing. It took a road-rage incident to realize it was the absence of fear. No matter how mad someone got at me, no one was going to shoot me. My three decades of martial-arts training would not be trumped by a drunk with three minutes of target practice. My choice to be engaged with the people around me, even when they seemed angry, would not put my life at undue risk.
The irony is that I know almost as many people here (2) that own guns as I did in the USA (3). Hunters and sport shooters can and do have guns. It does involve a fair amount of paperwork and some expense, but not materially worse than owning a car. But the guns are different: single-shot, small caliber rifles or shotguns, not assault rifles and automatic pistols.
from The Atlantic http://ift.tt/2oxrake
How the Supreme Court Could Reshape Employment Law
During Neil Gorsuch’s Supreme Court nomination hearing last year, then-Senator Al Franken asked the nominee whether he had read a recent New York Times series about the use of arbitration to thwart consumer complaints against corporations.
Gorsuch said he had. “It made me think about a little bit of history,” he added. “It used to be back at common law that arbitration was disfavored because it was thought that everyone should go to trial, trials were the norm, Seventh Amendment and all that. And then in [1925] Congress passed a law called the Federal Arbitration Act … Congress expressed a judgment that people should arbitrate their disputes. It made a judgment, policy judgment in favor of arbitration, because it’s quicker, cheaper, easier for people.”
Gorsuch’s reading of history is, as we shall see, doubtful; but he was echoing orthodox conservative legal thought. The Federal Arbitration Act, many conservatives believe, is a kind of super-statute, a legal big bang that was intended to transform the court system, changing the very meaning of “Seventh Amendment and all that.” When originally enacted, the FAA was applied mostly to enforce agreements among businesses to settle their disputes out of court. But with the appointment of Justice Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court’s view of the FAA has expanded. Over the past 30 years, the Court has interpreted the FAA to encompass consumer and financial-services contracts. Those decisions have deprived many small litigants—the kinds of people who buy cellphones, run restaurants, or pay home mortgages—of their day in court against giant corporations.
Now, the court is poised to apply the FAA to employment contracts in a way that may cripple employee challenges to wage, hour, working-conditions, and job-status disputes.
News coverage of labor matters at the Court has mostly focused on Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, a challenge to public-employee unions that the Court will hear Monday. But the FAA case, Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis—the very first case the Court heard this term—is also a potential blockbuster. While Janus will affect one set of unions, Epic Systems may harm millions of Americans who work for wages, whether they belong to unions or not.
The issue in Epic Systems is whether employers can, as a condition of employment, require their employees to submit all work-related disputes to arbitration—and not simply to arbitration, but to individual arbitration, with no class or collective actions allowed. Indications are that the court will say that such employment contracts are allowed.
It will be a curious holding.
First, the FAA doesn’t actually announce a “policy judgment in favor of arbitration”—or any policy statement at all. The act says only that contracts requiring arbitration of disputes “shall be valid, irrevocable, and enforceable, save up such grounds as exist at law or in equity for the revocation of any contract.” In other words, if two parties agree to settle contract disputes by arbitration, one party can’t later back out—as long as the original contract was valid.
It will also be curious because such a decision would apply the FAA, passed in 1924, to override the National Labor Relations Act, passed in 1935. Usually, in statutory cases, the later statute prevails over the earlier. Finally, the FAA’s text doesn’t contain a “policy judgment”—but the NLRA’s does: in 29 U.S. Code § 151 (“Findings and declaration of policy”) “[i]t is hereby declared to be the policy of the United States to eliminate the causes of certain substantial obstructions of the free flow of commerce [by which the drafters meant labor disputes leading to strikes and lockouts] … by encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining … ”
The use of arbitration clauses in employment contracts has exploded. A September report by the Economic Policy Institute estimated that mandatory arbitration clauses now cover 60.1 million workers nationwide, and 24.7 million of them are covered by “class action waivers” like the ones at stake in Epic Systems. Until last year, the federal government opposed “class action waiver” arbitration provisions in employment contracts. The National Labor Relations Board is a party to Epic Systems, and a government brief last year asked the Supreme Court to hold the waiver clauses illegal.
But then came Trump; in June, the Solicitor General’s office filed a new government brief taking the employers’ side. In other words, the government filed a brief specifically arguing against its own earlier brief, and refused to argue on behalf of the NLRB before the court. The government’s new brief proposed a new, narrow reading of the NLRA. Its protection of employee collective action extends only to “self-organization, association with labor unions, and collective bargaining,” the government argued.
If adopted, this interpretation would narrow the scope of the NLRA almost to the vanishing point. The language of the act, in fact, goes far beyond union-related matters. Section 7, the heart of the act, says, “Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection … ” One such “concerted activity” would be collective arbitration; another would be use of the courts to pursue “collective actions.”
The tenor of oral argument suggests that a majority of the justices think the FAA sweeps aside the language of the NLRA. Why? I suspect it is a failure of historical memory. Judges in general tend to think they know a lot of history; judges in general, alas, usually know little and understand less. When the subject is American labor history, judges are at least as ignorant as the average American.
The Federal Arbitration Act was passed and signed in 1925, during the Coolidge Administration—a time hailed by many conservatives as a golden era of small government, big business, and an expanding economy. The National Labor Relations Act was a New Deal measure—product of a time conservatives regard as dark, disastrous, and illegitimate.
The two statutes thus arose from very different historical moments—but both have their roots in Manhattan’s strike-torn Garment District. Beginning in 1909, New York’s garment workers—many of them first-generation immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe—rebelled against the industry’s sweatshop conditions. The workers’ embrace of socialism terrified owners and also worried Progressive reformers, who saw an urgent need to teach them “American” ways of thought.
Under the leadership of future Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, Progressive reformers created the “Protocol of Peace,” which designated expert private commissions to resolve labor disputes and also to regulate the industry as a whole. By adjusting prices, pay, and conditions in the “public interest,” the “protocol” structure would, these reformers thought, prevent “destructive” competition among owners—and dangerous militancy among workers. “To many outside of the rank and file,” historian Richard Greenwald wrote in his book The Triangle Fire, the Protocols of Peace, and Industrial Democracy in Progressive Era New York, “the Protocol was a magic bullet, an inoculation against class disruption and an ‘uncivilized’ economy.”
One of the most important leaders of the “protocol” movement was a prominent lawyer named Julius Henry Cohen, who represented the owners; he would later be a major force behind adoption of the FAA—along with another management lawyer in the “protocol” period, Charles Bernheimer.
But many ordinary workers chafed under the paternal rule of the labor “experts”; and some major sweatshop operators refused to join in the “protocol” system. On March 25, 1911, one of those unorganized shops—the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, occupying three upper floors of a building on Washington Place in Greenwich Village—burst into flames when a stray match ignited poorly stored cotton scraps.
Workers on the ninth floor had been locked in by owners, as an “anti-theft” measure. They suffocated, burned to death, fell to the street from a collapsing fire escape, or jumped to their deaths to avoid the flames.
The death toll was 146, 123 of them women.
After the fire, historian Greenwald explained, the Progressive vision that birthed “protocolism” underwent a fundamental change. Voluntarism, private ordering, and harmony hadn’t worked. It was time for reformers to invoke the coercive power of the state. The state of New York announced a State Factory Investigating Commission, which exposed the callous indifference to worker safety common in the unorganized factories.
The commission’s chair and co-chair were state legislators Robert Wagner and his co-chair, Al Smith. The two, Greenwald wrote, were “obscure Tammany Hall hacks” when named to the commission. The commission’s work, however, transformed both: Smith would be the Democratic presidential nominee in 1928, while Wagner, a labor champion in the U.S. Senate for two decades, sponsored the National Labor Relations Act, known also as the Wagner Act.
The FAA can be seen as a remnant of pre-Triangle fire “protocolism”—born out of the needs of merchant capitalists for a private, voluntary way of resolving disputes over contracts to manufacture, buy, and sell goods. As one proponent explained at the time it was considered, the “fundamental conception is to enable business men to compose their disputes expeditiously and economically … “
During the early ‘20s, the bill’s sponsors repeatedly explained that the act would not cover labor matters. Stanford Law School legal historian Amalia Kessler told me, “It’s pretty clear that [Charles Bernheimer, chief lobbyist for the Act and a ‘protocol’ veteran] was not eager to have his organization involved in labor arbitration.” In Outsourcing Justice: The Rise of Modern Arbitration Laws in America, a comprehensive history of the FAA’s drafting, Loyola University law professor Imre Szalai wrote, “The intentions behind the Federal Arbitration Act are clear with respect to labor disputes,” he wrote. Arbitration clauses in employment contracts, he concluded, were not to be covered by the act.
Ten years later, the New Deal 75th Congress passed the Wagner Act. The decade between the two measures was a dark one: Coolidge-era prosperity collapsed into the Great Depression. Unemployment, about 4 percent in 1925, soared to nearly 25 percent in 1933, then subsided only to about 20 percent in 1935. Wages fell and working conditions deteriorated. Workers still on the job demanded union representation, better job security, and higher wages—and representation was often the hardest-fought issue. Electrical workers shed blood in the streets of Toledo, Ohio; longshoremen on the San Francisco waterfront paralyzed the nation’s Pacific ports; and a Teamsters strike in Minneapolis-St. Paul was so turbulent that the state’s governor placed the cities under martial law. Some sober observers worried that the United States was swirling into revolution or dictatorship.
Congress’s response did not envision wise “experts” and avuncular harmony between capital and labor. Instead, the NLRA sought “labor peace” by requiring owners and workers to meet at the bargaining table. The Act, Georgetown University labor historian Joseph A. McCartin told me, was born out of “20 years of struggle around this issue”—the demand of workers that owners deal with them as a unit represented by a union they chose, not one by one. Wagner and the other sponsors, he added, “had an idea of what caused the Depression. … [I]t was inequality of bargaining power” between workers and owners. For that reason, the Act itself recites that
The inequality of bargaining power between employees who do not possess full freedom of association or actual liberty of contract, and employers who are organized in the corporate or other forms of ownership association substantially burdens and affects the flow of commerce, and tends to aggravate recurrent business depressions, by depressing wage rates and the purchasing power of wage earners in industry and by preventing the stabilization of competitive wage rates and working conditions within and between industries.
It’s pretty clear that the workers in the current cases don’t have “equal bargaining power” with their employers. In the three cases consolidated as Epic Systems, the companies made clear that the employees could sign the form contract or forget their jobs. There was no “bargaining,” collective or individual.
To be clear, the employees in these cases aren’t opposed to arbitration as such. They don’t even oppose individual arbitration—if required by contract reached through collective bargaining. But, they argue, the NLRA means that employers don’t have the unilateral right impose such contracts on them. Unless validly bargained away, they argue, class or collective actions are among the “concerted activities … for mutual aid and protection” the NLRA protects.
A win for the employers will impact all workers, unionized or not. But organized labor and its advocates are taking the potential threat seriously.
“A decision adverse to the employees will cripple enforcement of all federal and state minimum standards legislation that depends on private enforcement, including the Fair Labor Standards Act, Title VII (prohibiting employment discrimination), the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, and the Americans With Disabilities Act, etc.,” Craig Becker, a former member of the National Labor Relations Board who is now general counsel of the AFL-CIO, told me in an email. “Every well-counseled employer will require that its employees sign waiver agreements.”
*A previous version of this piece stated that Amalia Kessler is a professor at UCLA; she is at Stanford. We regret the error.
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Better 'Lisa Simpson 2020' Than Four More Years of Homer
On Thursday at a conference sponsored by the American Conservative Union, Ben Domenech, the publisher of The Federalist, had an illuminating exchange with Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican who once called Donald Trump “a pathological liar,” but has since lined up behind the billionaire who spread lies about his father, insulted the appearance of his wife, and nicknamed him “Lyin’ Ted.”
Domenech and Cruz attempted to understand U.S. politics through The Simpsons, the long-running cartoon comedy that anticipated a Donald Trump presidency in 2000.
Their focus was an episode of the show about the gun debate:
Ben Domenech: You’re a big fan of The Simpsons. I know you believe that they can tell us a lot about America. And I actually believe that you can learn a lot about deep policy by using The Simpsons as a starting point. For instance, when Homer and Lisa were having a conversation about gun rights in America—look it up, it’s in “The Cartridge Family” episode—Homer points out that guns are for things like protecting your family, hunting delicious animals, and making sure that the King of England never shows up to push you around.
Ted Cruz: All good things.
Domenech: Lisa’s response to this is to say, well, Dad, it’s actually a relic, a remnant of the Revolutionary War era that doesn’t really mean anything anymore. What do you say to that?
Ted Cruz: I think the Democrats are the party of Lisa Simpson. And Republicans are happily the party of Homer, and Bart, and Maggie, and Marge.
Americans should be able to hunt or protect their family with a gun.
But without going all Comic Book Guy, they got the episode of The Simpsons somewhat wrong. Marge is extremely upset when Homer brings home his new handgun:
And an armed Homer is more a menace to his family than a protector or provider.
Still, Cruz’s partisanship analogy has a lot of truth to it. Imagine if we had to pick our leaders from the world of The Simpsons. Lisa Simpson, with her conversions to vegetarianism and Buddhism and her recurring focus on environmentalism, is definitely a Democrat. And she is often at odds with the rest of Springfield and Red America.
If she ran for office she’d fare poorly in a Republican primary.
And Lisa has real flaws that make her fall short of the ideal leader. In her worst moments, she can be a bit of a sanctimonious know-it-all, and sometimes has an over-simplistic, 8-year-old’s view of the world that causes her to be unduly harsh toward others. I wouldn’t be dismissive of Republicans if they preferred to hold up compassionate conservative Ned Flanders or innovative businessman Herbert Powell as their model (or if they were dead set against elevating the corrupt Joe Quimby, or Disco Stu, who’d just preside over throwback, 1970s-style gas lines and malaise).
But over the course of “The Cartridge Family” episode alone, Homer has a background check that turns up his history in a mental institution and his assault on a former president; points his handgun at his wife’s face; agrees to let his 10-year-old son borrow the gun; accidentally shoots up the snack bar at the firing range; brandishes the weapon at the immigrant who runs the Kwik-E-Mart; accidentally fires off three rounds at the dinner table; hides the gun in the refrigerator, where his son finds it; sends his terrified family fleeing for their lives to a motel; and then, while hosting an NRA meeting, he uses his gun as a can opener and shoots at his television, drawing gasps from his fellow NRA members, who scold, “I’ve never seen such recklessness! You could have killed someone! Are you some kind of moron!”
If Lisa falls short of perfection, her flaws aren’t exactly disqualifying, especially when one remembers her consistent honesty, integrity, good heart, and generally level head. And yet, I really do think today’s Republican base would be so bothered by her mild sanctimony that they would prefer Homer Simpson: a blundering, impulsive, self-centered, undisciplined incompetent.
Homer is a cartoonishly bad citizen and leader, even for a cartoon. A political party that acted on the attitudes that make Homer seem more appealing would become cartoonishly absurd.
It would be exactly as if the Republican Party lined up 15 or 16 possible standard-bearers, then chose to elevate a tabloid mainstay who ran multiple businesses into bankruptcy; started an online university that defrauded credulous working-class strivers; bragged that he grabs women by the genitals without asking; stood accused of sexual misconduct by 19 women; walked through the changing room of a beauty pageant for teens; flaunted an adulterous affair to humiliate his first wife; taunted a nuclear-armed tyrant on Twitter; praised multiple authoritarian human-rights abusers; called for jailing an opponent despite having invited her and her husband to his third wedding; hired a sleazy operative for foreign interests to manage his campaign; put his son-in-law in charge of achieving peace in the Middle East; gave a former contestant on his reality TV show a job in the White House; denigrated religious and ethnic minority groups to boost his support among bigots; and gave a radio shock jock explicit permission to call his daughter “a piece of ass.”
Even Homer, who is not cruel-hearted, would know better than to do much of that.
Some conservatives are resisting the turn their party has taken. “Trump is Homer Simpson,” Matt Lewis quips. “The rest of us are Frank Grimes.” (Remember that guy?)
But the GOP as a whole now aspires no higher than Homer. Trump is held up by some of his supporters as the best Red America has to offer. Lisa has never been so condescending. And if Trump’s numbers are any indication, the Republican Party is at risk of losing America’s Marge Simpsons, many of whom would find themselves agreeing with the A.V. Club:
Ted Cruz has apparently watched The Simpsons his entire adult life without once realizing that Lisa is the smartest member of the family, and the only one who routinely offers sensible suggestions about ways to improve the world.
The irony is that one can absolutely imagine Lisa Simpson graduating cum laude from Princeton, competing in debate, attending Harvard law, editing the law review, clerking for the Supreme Court, working in a private law firm, being appointed solicitor general of her home state, and eventually winning a seat to the Senate, where colleagues would think of her as brilliant but express annoyance at her know-it-all smugness and sanctimony. In a way, isn’t Ted Cruz the Lisa Simpson of the U.S. Senate?
The difference, known to viewers of “Lisa’s Wedding”: she’d have sooner stuck to her principles and lost reelection than become subservient to a rival who insulted her family. (She’d have savaged any Democrat who called them deplorable and irredeemable, too.)
Like Ted Cruz, I believe that the Constitution guarantees an individual right to bear arms, and in my perfect world, Lisa Simpson would be the jazz critic at Vox, not run the executive branch. But so long as the choice is Homer versus Lisa, then I say Lisa 2020.
After all, “Reading, Writing and Refilling the Ocean” doesn’t sound so bad:
Especially given the alternative on offer:
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