Daily Archives: August 20, 2017

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. Randall Woodfin is not going to talk about change. The 36-year old Democrat, a candidate for mayor of Birmingham, is running to unseat a two-term incumbent and he is selling a vision of how his city, which had lost one-third of its population since the 1960s, could be economically transformed.

It just feels dangerous to boil that down to change.

That word will trip you up, said Woodfin, sitting in a campaign office covered in maps and volunteer walk lists. This is not about that. Change for changes sake is what got us Trump. This is about progress for everybody.

Woodfin, a soft-spoken attorney and former school board member, has spent a whole year on his bid for mayor. In that time, Democrats have been locked out of national power, further diminished in state legislatures and wiped out in rural America. That has left the increasingly blue cities and suburbs as the obvious places for Democrats to attempt to rebuild.

In May, Philadelphias progressives helped civil rights attorney Larry Klasner win the Democratic primary for district attorney; if he wins a full term this November, the citys top legal job will be held by a lawyer who defended members of Black Lives Matter and will refuse to seek the death penalty. In Jackson, Miss., progressive-backed candidate Chokwe Antar Lumumba won the mayors office, promising to make Mississippis capital the most radical city on the planet.

The trend is continuing. Birminghams August 22 primary is one of dozens of 2017 races where progressive candidates are trying to climb into power, knitting together community organizers, new activists and the remnants of Sen. Bernie Sanderss (I-Vt.) presidential bid to form new left-wing majorities.

I think Donald Trumps win changed the way we thought about elections, Woodfin said. I tell people, Listen: Whatever you want in 2020, from a new president, youre not going to get it if you just think about 2020. We know people who work two jobs, and have to take two buses to get to them. We know people who just finished high school and dont have jobs. Were talking to them right now, about a decision they can make right now.

In recent years, the off-year municipal races that follow presidential elections have seen turnout plummet to the teens or single digits. Just 11.5 percent of eligible voters in Los Angeles voted this past March to re-elect Mayor Eric Garcetti; fewer than 65,000 Detroiters voted in this months mayoral primary, which incumbent Mike Duggan won in a landslide.

That low level of voter interest has given progressives an opportunity. In both Philadelphia and Jackson, turnout was low but higher than in elections four years earlier. Some of the boost came from Our Revolution, the group Sanders founded after his primary campaign ended, which has made under-the-radar endorsements in urban elections, directing money and clout toward left-wing candidates.

The folks at Our Revolution had not done as good a job as they should at touting these things, Sanders said in an interview. I believe when we talk about revitalizing American democracy, we start with local offices and grass roots campaigns. The media will talk about congressional races, sure; but I think what we are seeing is a revolution at the local level, in the cities.

Sanderss focus on municipal races comes from experience. In the 1970s, he waged four quixotic bids for statewide office in Vermont. In 1981, supporters in Burlington realized that, while losing everywhere else, he had been over-performing in the citys working class wards a revelation that led to his first mayoral run, which he won.

The paths for the new progressive urban candidates are not quite as clear. In 2016, most cities went solidly for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries; Woodfin himself was a Clinton supporter. Democrats, firmly in control of most big and diverse cities before the election, gained ground with Clinton on the ballot.

But the new progressive campaigns aim to replace the current Democratic regimes, with their comfortable business community relations, with progressives who want to use what powers they have to redistribute wealth. In Atlanta, State Sen. Vincent Fort (D-Ga.) is running to replace Mayor Kasim Reed by energizing the left. His platform is Sanders on a local scale a $15 minimum wage, marijuana decriminalization and two years of free tuition at college within the city.

In an interview at this months Netroots Nation conference, where May the Fort Be With You merchandise was more visible than anything pitching a national candidate, Fort emphasized that he was one of the only black politicians in the South who backed Sanders, and was doing best where Sanders had performed well against Clinton. He was adding to that support with a campaign about redirecting the citys growth, to the people who needed it.

Twenty years ago, Atlanta, depending on what study you look at, was 20 percent gentrified, said Fort. Now were 70 percent gentrified. If we dont start talking about income inequality and affordable housing in a real honest way, were going to have a city thats made of the very wealthy and the very poor, and the middle class is going to get screwed.

Woodfins campaign platform is not quite so radical, but it shares a narrative that downtown has gobbled up money and attention while most of the citys black and poor residents have suffered or jogged in place. Free community college is packaged with a school-to-startup pipeline. The plan for combating crime would divert high-risk, repeat offenders into a different court than one-time offenders who could be rehabilitated.

Woodfin has been more responsive than his rivals including the incumbent mayor, William Bell to a growing community of activists. Richard Rice, 35, who wore a Woodfin for Mayor shirt to the citys August 13 vigil in solidarity with anti-racism protesters, said he got on board after his group, the Grassroots Coalition of Birmingham, submitted a Black Agenda to every candidate. Woodfin was the first to sign on, committing to everything from rehabilitation of ex-convicts to the end of food deserts in poor neighborhoods.

Most of our elected officials are black, but were still falling behind, said Rice. We had 120 homicides this year. The poverty rate is 30 percent. And hes talking about the issues we put in front of him.

That, for activists, was the difference between change and progress. Woodfin would not be the only change candidate on the ballot. Bells bid for a third term, after decades in city government, was being challenged by an array of candidates. In pure name recognition, the strongest challenger was a former Auburn University wide receiver named Chris Woods, whod plowed his own money into the race. At an August 14 candidate forum attended by only Woods and Woodfin, Woods frequently answered questions about urban policy with anecdotes about his football career; Woodfin gave low-key, multipart answers quoting from his agenda.

But by the final days of the race, the forums have almost become a distraction from the on-the-ground organizing. Just 27,435 ballots were cast in 2013, the last time Birmingham elected its city government; over the long campaign, Woodfins volunteers have talked to thousands more voters than that.

On Saturday, they got one more boost from the national progressive network when Nina Turner, the new president of Our Revolution, flew in for a get-out-the-vote rally. The former Ohio state senator cast Woodfin as the public servant of public servants, the savior of his city, if people put sweat equity into electing him.

We cant ask other folks to do more for us than we will do for ourselves, she said.

Woodfin took the microphone, apologizing for having to follow a tub-thumping speech from Turner. Quietly, he ran his volunteers back through his platform, pointing to the neighborhood around them to give it some grounding.

We want to be able to walk down a walkable sidewalk, he said. We want the swings to work in the playgrounds our kids play in. People want to feel safe on their own porch, yall.

He paused to tie it all together.

This is not about change for changes sake, he said. This is about progress.

Read more at PowerPost

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Even in red states, liberal candidates are climbing into power in the nation's cities - Washington Post

PSNI and Garda officers in the Belfast Gay Pride parade on August 5. Irelands gay prime minister, Leo Varadkar, said it was only a matter of time before same-sex marriage is legal in the north. Photograph: Charles McQuillan/Getty Images

The 60th anniversary of the Wolfenden report, which recommended an end to the ban on male homosexuality, will fall on 4 September. Although it was groundbreaking and led to subsequent gay law reform in 1967, it was also flawed.

John Wolfenden, who chaired the committee that produced the report, is often hailed as a great liberal reformer. But he opposed homosexual equality and obstructed fellow committee members who proposed a more far-reaching decriminalisation. A cautious conservative, he described homosexuality as morally repugnant on a BBC TV programme and wanted only small changes in the law.

His opinions dominated the committees deliberations, which suggested that homosexuality was partly a matter of self-control, comparable to the extent to which coughing can be controlled. Such attitudes contributed to the subsequent half-baked, partial decriminalisation of sex between men 10 years later.

Gay rights veterans Antony Grey and Allan Horsfall, who campaigned in the 1960s for the implementation of the report, believed it was more restrictive than it could have been but that it gave the gay community a valuable springboard from which to campaign for law reform.

Wolfenden argued, commendably, that what is deemed by many people to be immoral (homosexuality) should not necessarily be criminal; that the law should not dictate private morality. He proposed that homosexual behaviour should not be prosecuted, providing it took place in private, with consent and involved no more than two men, both aged 21 or over. There was never any question of legalising same-sex acts.

The report did not urge the repeal of anti-gay laws, merely a policy of non-prosecution in certain circumstances. The existing, often centuries-old laws were to remain on the statute book under the heading unnatural offences.

This advocacy of limited decriminalisation was a de facto reiteration of support for anti-gay discrimination in law.

As well as proposing a gay age of consent five years higher than the heterosexual limit of 16, Wolfenden recommended that in the case of a man aged 21 or over who was convicted of consenting oral sex or masturbation with a 16- to 21 year-old male the maximum penalty should be increased from two to five years. These homophobic proposals were incorporated into the subsequent law reform, the 1967 Sexual Offences Act.

Home Office transcripts of the internal deliberations of the Wolfenden committee provide an insight into the thinking of Wolfenden and other members, revealing a battle between those like him who wanted little change in the law and others who were more critical of the way the criminal justice system treated gay and bisexual men.

Wolfenden was often an obstacle to progressive recommendations. On three key issues, he played a negative role. When committee members discussed the age of consent, Wolfenden was aghast to discover that seven wanted 18, one advocated 17 and only three supported his proposal of 21. In a committee session in 1955, Wolfenden indicated his belief that young men could be seduced and corrupted into homosexuality. He was adamant that he would never put his name to a report recommending anything other than 21 as the age of consent. He overrode the majority who favoured a lower age limit.

Equally shocking, Wolfenden wanted to keep anal sex illegal in all circumstances, even between consenting adults in private. He also supported retaining the option of punishing serious cases of anal sex with life imprisonment. Wolfenden watered down criticism of the police by fellow committee members, exonerating officers over their use of agents provocateurs in parks and lavatories. Defending the police, his report insisted the committee was on the whole favourably impressed by the way officers carried out their unpleasant task.

Wolfendens sanction of undercover operations as legitimate gave them the nod of approval. If he had exposed and condemned such tactics instead, police entrapment may have declined (rather than subsequently increasing) and thousands of gay and bisexual men might have been spared arrest.

There were omissions too. He did not recommend the decriminalisation of the invitation and facilitation of homosexual acts, nor of the crime of men chatting each other up in public.

But though Wolfendens proposals were flawed, he set Britain on the path to gay law reform. That was progress.

The author is director of the Peter Tatchell Foundation http://www.petertatchellfoundation.org

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Wolfenden: not so liberal on homosexuality after all - The Guardian

Gallup, the polling and research organization, published an essay this week urging colleges and universities to give the liberal arts a new name or no name at all in order to turn the tide on waning public support for higher education.

The word liberal is politically charged, the polling groups essay says, and arts has a negative connotation regarding improving graduates job prospects.

The words liberal and arts just dont resonate in the minds of far too many Americans, especially those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.

In support of its claim, Gallup cites data indicating that a majority of Republicans believe higher education is detrimental to the nation. Specifically, a majority of Republicans voters and those voters who lean toward the GOP say they are apprehensive about the value of a college education because they believe the campus environment is too liberal. (Majorities of GOP voters do not cite cost or career prospects as reasons for apprehension.)

Also, Gallup notes, a recent poll shows that a large percentage of U.S. parents who have children currently in middle school or high school say they believe no college at all is more likely to lead to a good job than a liberal arts degree.

The crafty, high-risk, high-reward name-change strategy suggested by Gallup could have originated in Coming to America, a 1988 comedy in which Eddie Murphy plays a wealthy African prince who works at a fast food restaurant in Queens, New York called McDowells.

As the owner, Cleo McDowell, tells Murphy, McDowells is not to be confused with McDonalds.

Yes, the logos are strikingly similar. McDonalds has the Golden Arches. McDowells has the Golden Arcs. Similarly, says Cleo, McDonalds has the Big Mac. McDowells has the Big Mic.

They both got two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions. But they use a sesame seed bun, Cleo explains. My buns have no seeds.

Gallup suggests that the new name for liberal arts could be 21st century skills because branding the exact same coursework as 21st century skills fares better among participants in Gallup marketing tests.

The polling group also observes that Republican voters may believe college campuses are overly liberal because of the perceived liberal bias of professors, limitations on free speech on campus and the rejection of controversial speakers the last two of which have been prominently in the news the past two years. (RELATED: College Cancels Debate Between Conservative And Liberal BECAUSE CONSERVATIVE WAS PARTICIPATING)

Putting the words liberal and arts together is a branding disaster, Gallup says. Note, the problem isnt with the substance of a liberal arts education but with the words we use to describe it.

McDowells restaurant Coming to America YouTube screenshot/Daniele Alessandra

The liberal arts curriculum is as important today as it was in ancient times, Gallup argues, because the degree provides graduates with indispensable skills such as critical thinking, effective communication and being able to confront and resolve differences and problems.

Follow Eric on Twitter.Like Eric on Facebook. Send story tips to[emailprotected].

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Prestigious Polling Firm: Let's Call 'Liberal Arts' Something Else To Totally Fool Everybody - The Daily Caller

With the study of liberal arts picking up steam around the country, and the sheer variety of options open to those who pursue these disciplines, it pays to understand the nuances of IIT Madras flagship humanities programme, the integrated M.A. in Development Studies (DS) or English Studies (ES).

The current head of the department, Dr. Umakant Dash, has been with the department since 2004. Though the M.A. was initially conceptualised to prepare students for the Civil Services Examination (CSE) and careers in academic and policy research, it has also successfully sent students for higher studies abroad, to IIMs, consulting firms such as KPMG, investment banks, and NGOs. While other IITs at Kanpur, Kharagpur and Mumbai offer economics programmes, the entry-point for these is JEE. IIT-M is the only one to have a dedicated examination for their M.A. programme. Umakant says, The moment you make students take the JEE, youre restricting the programme to science students. Students from arts and commerce wouldnt be eligible there are lots of deserving students from these branches. We wanted to include any Class XII graduate, so we dont miss out on good students, and can give them the best platform possible.

Since its first year in 2007, the number of HSEE examinees has been steadily increasing, with coaching centres emerging for to prepare for this selective entrance test. According to Umakant, around 2,300 students wrote the exam last year but only 46 students are selected for each intake. Ashraya Maria M.P., III, Development Studies urges, It is good to read the papers every day and stay updated with whats going on. If you have a strong base in English and mathematics, up to Class X, that helps. Sannihit, V, Development Studies adds, I strongly recommend reading the opinion and editorial columns in newspapers. Also, you need to have basic knowledge about almost any topic.

One question that comes up repeatedly, is why economics isnt offered as a separate major, as it once was, when the programme was first introduced a decade ago. Umakant fills in the gaps, Our main goal when we started was to offer an inter-disciplinary programme; thats why we decided to give more emphasis to DS. In any case, 50% of the courses are economics-based. Also, at that point of time, we had less number of faculty available for economics. So, it was temporarily halted as a major, though DS, ES and economics can still be taken as minors.

However, with a curriculum restructuring on the horizon, work for potentially reintroducing economics as a major is under way. There has been significant demand for this major, and many queries from students, parents and alumni.

Minors

For engineering students with a penchant for the social sciences, the department offers about 30 courses that can be taken up as electives. Similarly, the M.A. students can take engineering courses such as sustainable development. They have the option of minoring in general management or operations management offered by the management department, besides their departments own minors. IIT-Ms placement and internship cells cater to all of the institutions students whichever companies come to recruit the B. Tech students, also recruit the M.A. students, if the job scope fits.

What makes this programme different from the usual path of three years B.A. and a two-year M.A.? If you take any universitys curriculum, you will see that in their postgraduate syllabi, they repeat all the courses done in the undergraduate years. They provide depth, but the breadth is about the same as the first degree. So here, by integrating the degrees, we try to avoid repetition of the courses, and offer better breadth. But its not the case that we neglect depth, explains Umakant.

For the students, this proves invaluable. This programme gives you exposure to a lot of different fields and perspectives, which you would miss out on if you were just concentrating on one discipline, says Ashraya. Students study a variety of social science subjects during the first two years. They decide between ES and DS in their third semester, and are allotted majors according to their prior performance, as well as their personal preferences the class is split into two, with 23 seats available for each. However, even in the third and fourth years, several of the two majors courses are the same, save about 12-15 core courses.

First-year students are assigned a faculty advisor who guides them throughout their five-year stay. Students can go to partner universities in Germany or Denmark for exchange in their third year. Though internships arent mandatory, almost all students complete around two or three during their time in the programme. For Avinaash R., III, Development Studies, the best part of the programme is interacting with the professors. They are amazing individuals from very strong academic backgrounds, have in-depth knowledge and never fail to inspire you, he says.

Originally posted here:

A liberal dose of the arts - The Hindu

It's 13 yearssince Peter King lost preselection to future prime minister Malcolm Turnbullduring an epic and bitterly fought battlein the blue ribbon Liberalseat of Wentworth.

The high-profile 2004 skirmishleft him humiliated and out of Parliament. But Mr King appears to be back,embarking on a series of presentations to local Liberal Partybranches.The unlikely topic? The threat of a nuclear strike by North Korea.

In a softly lit upstairs room in Paddington's Lord Dudley Hotel on Tuesdaynight last week, Mr King outlined a doomsday scenario reminiscent ofthe Soviet nuclear panic during the 1950s,perhaps appropriate given the average age of the 30 or so supporters in the room.

Joining Mr King was lawyer Matthew Bransgrove, co-author of what was being touted as a "civil defence plan".

At the outset, the pair declared thethreat of a North Korean nuclear strike so real that it warrantedestablishment of a 2000-kilometre "submarine exclusion zone" around Australia to guard against attacks.

These included the prospect of North Korean suicide bombers in submarines that, to avoid detection, would be made of fibreglass and could "employ a snorkel and travel at night under diesel power".

"A submarine attacking Sydney, for example, would surface once it had passed the Harbour Bridge and continue up the Parramatta River to the weir at Rydalmere before detonating," Mr King warned.

"Australia is utterly defenceless against such a suicidal submarine attack".

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A barrister and member of the naval reserve, Mr King argued that North Korea's intercontinental ballistic missile tests meant its leader Kim Jong-un "will hold the power of life and death over us all very soon".

To prepare for a possible attack, MrBransgroveproposed that the federal government assessed "underground car parks, subways and road tunnels" as potential public bomb shelters.

He suggested two compulsory and "unannounced drills" should take place in every Australian city annually, one on a week day and one on a weekend, and there should be a network of early warning sirens established across public buildings.

Notably, Mr King's speech also tookaim at thefederal government's response to North Korea'sthreat to target Australia and declared "leadership is required" to implement his plan.

Mr King compared Mr Turnbull's response that Australia had"extensive arrangements with our allies, in particular the United States" with that of former British prime minister Stanley Baldwin who, during the 1930s, "buried his head in the sand as Germany begun its rearmament".

The speech to members of the Liberal Party Woollahra branch is the first of several Mr King hopesto deliver. An event is planned for Vaucluse members in a fortnight and another is slated for Bellevue Hill.

It has promptedspeculation Mr King may be positioning himself for a return tilt atpreselection for Wentworth, possibly ifMr Turnbull quits politics if he loses the leadership or the next election.

Mr King did not respond to a request for comment. For the moment, the focus appearedto be squarely on Kim, his missiles and, as one attendeeput it on the night, "scaring the pants off everyone".

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Back with a bang: Turnbull nemesis Peter King warns Liberal branches over North Korean strike - The Sydney Morning Herald

The White House announced Bannon and White House chief of staff John Kelly mutually agreed that Bannon's last day would be Friday. The statement came after several media reports that Bannon's departure was imminent.

The New York Times reported that Bannon submitted his resignation on Aug. 7, but the announcement was delayed after violence at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend.

Kuttner said Bannon, a populist who was said to be at odds with the more moderate members of the Trump administration, called him on Tuesday. During that conversation, Bannon contradicted the president's North Korea position and jabbed at colleagues.

"I wanted to give him enough rope, if you will. I wanted to let him say what he wanted to say, which was damning enough," Kuttner said.

"This is a guy who is strategically very smart, on the other hand who is so full of himself that he makes catastrophic errors."

The New York Times did not immediately comment in response to a request from CNBC.

CNBC's Jacob Pramuk contributed to this report.

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Liberal writer who talked to Bannon: One problem with theory that he resigned on Aug. 7 ... - CNBC

HBO Real Time host Bill Maher used his show Friday night to chart out a (comedic) courseforwardin the heated debate over the removal of Confederate memorials across the country. Followingthe violence that was seenat a white supremacistrally Charlottesville, Virginia last weekend, theres been a renewed scrutiny on the lasting symbols of the Confederacy.

I dont know how many people are out there like this, Maher said of theneo-Nazis and white supremacists who gathered to protest the removal of a Confederate statue, but he argued, too many stand silently in support as the memorials stoke hate and fear directed towards their neighbors.

What happened to Southern hospitality, Maher asked his panel. Just the idea that, Well, if this offends some people I wont do it.' Instead, Maher noted, it seems that the people who walk past these statues every day never ask themselves a simple question: What does this mean to other people?

Offering a few example monuments that could replace memorials to Confederate leaders like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, Maher joked that he wanted to show these heritage people what it would be like if you had to walk by a statue you didnt like every day.

First up: Colin Kaepernick taking a knee during the national anthem.

As if the thought of a giant tribute to the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback wasnt offensive enough, Maher suggested a statute that is certain to offend the religious sensibilities of conservatives in the South.

The Evolution of Jesus would probably piss [them]off, Maher joked.

The War on Christmas memorial, modeled after the Marine Corps War Memorial in Washington D.C., depicted the pulling down of a Christmas tree instead of the raising of the U.S. flag at Iwo Jima.

Watch the full line-up of offensive liberal statues below:

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Bill Maher brilliantly trolls Confederate statue supporters with a list of liberal replacements - Salon

See below for an important update.

Google revealed in a blog post that it is now using machine learning to document "hate crimes and events" in America. They've partnered with liberal groups like ProPublica, BuzzFeed News, and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to make information about "hate events" easily accessible to journalists. And now, there are troubling signs that this tool could be used to ferret out writers and websites that run afoul of the progressive orthodoxy.

In the announcement, Simon Rogers, data editor of Google News Labs, wrote:

TheDocumenting Hate News Index built by theGoogle News Lab, data visualization studioPitch Interactiveand ProPublica takes a raw feed of Google News articles from the past six months and uses theGoogle Cloud Natural Language APIto create a visual toolto help reporters find news happening across the country. Its a constantly-updating snapshot of data from this year, one which is valuable as a starting point to reporting on this area of news.

The Documenting Hate project launched in response to the lack of national data on hate crimes.While the FBI is required by law to collect data about hate crimes, the data is incomplete because local jurisdictions aren't required to report incidents up to the federal government.

All of which underlines the value of the Documenting Hate Project, which is powered by a number of differentnews organisations and journalistswho collect and verify reports of hate crimes and events. Documenting Hate is informed by both reports from members of the public and raw Google News data of stories from across the nation.

On the surface, this looks rather innocuous. It's presented by Google as an attempt to create a database of hate crimes information that should be available with a quick Google search, it should be noted. But a quick glance atthe list of partners for this project should raise some red flags:

ProPublica poses as a middle-of-the-road non-profit journalistic operation, but in reality, it's funded by a stable of uber-liberal donors, including George Soros's Open Society Foundations and Herb and Marion Sandler, billionaire former mortgage bankers whose Golden West Financial Corp. allegedly targeted subprime borrowers with "pick-a-pay" mortgages that led to toxic assets that were blamed for the collapse of Wachovia. The Southern Poverty Law Center, of course, is infamous for targeting legitimate conservatives groups, branding them as "hate groups" because they refuse to walk in lockstep with the progressive agenda. And it goes with out saying that The New York Times and BuzzFeed News lean left.

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Google Working with Liberal Groups to Snuff Out Conservative ... - PJ Media