JANUARY 17, 2019

NEWS AND VIEWS


THIS IS ONE OF THOSE DAYS WHEN, INSTEAD OF HAVING TO GO LOOKING FOR EXTRA ARTICLES, IT’ FULL UP TODAY, SO I’M GOING TO PUT THE ARTICLES IN, WILLY NILLY, NOT EVEN SORTED BY SUBJECT AND GIVE FEW COMMENTS. THESE ALL STRIKE ME AS GOOD ARTICLES, SO I DON’T WANT TO CUT THEM OUT. SEE ALSO TODAY’S SECOND BLOG CALLED “BERNIE GETS A SLAMEN SLAMMIN’.”



https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8x5b3x/bernie-sanderss-socialist-revolution-is-happening-very-slowly
POLITICS
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By Eve Peyser
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Nov 14 2017, 2:28pm
Bernie Sanders's Socialist Revolution Is Happening, Very Slowly

Photo via Democratic Socialists of America on Facebook

Democrats won off-year elections across the country last week for many reasons, but let's pause for a second and give Bernie Sanders some credit. Among the historic victories Democrats earned in Virginia, New Jersey, and elsewhere were a handful of out-and-proud actual socialists who won local office. It could be a precursor to an upsurge in leftists scoring bigger wins in next year's midterms, but it's both a validation of Sanders and proof that the movement he built during the heated 2016 primaries isn't going away anytime soon.

Other than Sanders himself, the most powerful socialist in America might now be a 30-year-old Marine vet named Lee Carter, who unseated Jackson Miller, one of the Republican leaders of the Virginia House of Delegates. He decided to run after he injured his back while working in 2015. "The treatment I got at the hands of my former employer, and at the hands of the Virginia's worker compensation commission was so horrible that I thought, I can't stand for this, I have to step up," Carter told me over the phone.

But he also took inspiration from Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign, he explained, which he saw as "a concrete example of how taking a strong inclusive message of economic empowerment can motivate people who have never been that interested in politics before to get up and get involved."

Carter attributes his nine-point victory to his campaign's ability to inspire the formerly uninspired. "We were going out with a strong economic message and talking to people at their doors, and telling them that there's a reason to believe that this election can make your life better in real measurable ways," he said. "We were able to get folks who have become disillusioned with the political process, people who vote infrequently, people who don't vote at all, typically, to go out there and stand in line at the polls on a 40-degree, rainy, miserable day."

Carter is one of the 15 members of the Democratic Socialists of America who were elected to local and state government last Tuesday. (Full disclosure: I am also a member of the DSA.) The DSA's success indicates a shift in the way Americans understand socialism—it was not too long ago, in a pre-Bernie Sanders America, that "socialist" was a smear, used against Obama by his adversaries. But Sanders embraced that label, and to the terror of conservatives, more and more Americans are OK with saying they support socialism—and, apparently, voting for socialists.

Vanessa Agudelo, a DSA member who won a seat on the Peekskill, New York, City Council last Tuesday, told me she "was very much inspired by Bernie Sanders and the movement he created."

"After he had the primary taken from him I realized that the only way we would be able to successfully change the system would be from the bottom up, starting local," Agudelo, who ran as a Democrat*, explained to me in an email.

Tristan Rader, a former field director for Sanders, was another DSA member to nab a city council seat, this one in Lakewood, Ohio. "Bernie won here by 10 percent during the primaries, so I knew that I had a pretty warm welcoming, a sort of community as a DSA member, and a democratic socialist," Rader, told me. "We unseated two democratically endorsed incumbents. So, pretty huge change in this community and government."

Carlina Rivera, a Democrat elected to the New York City Council from Manhattan, joined the DSA last April, while she was campaigning for her seat. "[I was] looking for their endorsement, to be very honest," she explained, but when she began to attend meetings, she found a very supportive community.

"When you’re talking about running for office and campaigning, people are already trying to tell you that your ideas are too radical. You’re not even elected yet and people are already saying, You know you’re never going to get that done," Rivera told me over the phone. She found that DSA members encouraged her to stick to her convictions, and proved that there are many people who want to see leftist ideals enacted on a legislative level.

Fifteen socialists winning relatively minor offices is a long way away from seizing the means of production, but it's hopefully the beginning of something larger. Carter, who like many socialists wants a federal single-payer healthcare plan, told me that in the meanwhile, he wants to "step up and do it at the state level," as well as advocate for Medicaid expansion. "Medicaid expansion is step one, it's a very very important one. It's also important to recognize going into the fight that it is not the end goal," he told me.

And at a minimum, these new generation of candidates seems determined to embrace progressivism more aggressively than most Democrats. To Rivera, who was inspired by Sanders, his 2016 campaign was a rare moment where a politician ran on a platform that actually spoke to her. It "was about climate change, mass incarceration, racial injustice and healthcare for everyone," she said. "It’s going to make me a better council member."

Follow Eve Peyser on Twitter.

*Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that Agudelo ran as an independent. She ran as a Democrat. We regret the error.



https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3p4y8/what-actual-socialists-think-about-socialism
Photo illustration by Elizabeth Renstrom.
SOCIALISM
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By Geoff Dembicki
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Oct 4 2018, 3:35pm
Socialism Is Incredibly Popular but Does Anyone Know What 'Socialism' Is?
We asked a bunch of socialists what their vision of America would look like.

America is on the brink of socialist revolution. Sorta. A Gallup poll in August suggested that only 45 percent of Americans aged 18 to 29 see capitalism positively, compared to 51 percent for socialism. Though left-wing candidates haven’t performed especially well overall in Democratic primaries this year, the surprise victory of New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over a powerful incumbent has been studied and obsessed over by every media source from The Daily Show to Breitbart.

Since then, other candidates associated with socialism have won elections, including Rashida Tlaib, who after a primary victory in Michigan is likely to be one of the first Muslim women in Congress. And 27-year-old Julia Salazar, who won her primary in mid-September, will be the first avowed socialist to serve in New York’s state senate in almost a century.

All this had led outlets like Vox to conclude that “the rising socialist left is a major national story.” As the libertarian Reason recently noted, “People are rightly looking for alternatives, and ‘socialism’ is one of them.”

But though “socialism” is gaining in popularity, nobody can seem to agree on what it means. Some liberal commentators have suggested that socialists aren’t actually all that distinct from liberals—“The new socialist movement doesn’t look that different from a standard progressive Democratic agenda,” Noah Smith wrote on Bloomberg—while the right has described the movement in apocalyptic terms, with Housing Secretary Ben Carson recently decrying a conspiracy based around the “Fabian Society*.” [GO TO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_Society.]

As far as actual socialists are concerned, none of this does a good job of explaining what their movement is about. In the hopes of better understanding that movement, I reached out to nine thinkers with a diverse range of perspectives on socialism and had long, frank, and open-ended conversations with them about what socialism actually is, how it’s influencing US politics, and where the recent surge of enthusiasm for it could ultimately lead us.

Right away it became obvious this new generation of socialists is distinct from the progressives who have traditionally made up the leftmost flank of the Democratic Party. They are less compromising, their rhetoric is more stark, and their demands are often more sweeping. Though there is an open debate within the movement about what “socialism” is, or who the label should properly apply to, the intellectuals, activists, and politicians I’ve spoken to in the past several weeks seemed to broadly agree on several things.

They told me that critiquing our capitalist system and refusing corporate donations is a viable election strategy, fighting to reduce economic inequality can dramatically improve the lives of women and communities of color, and our society is much less democratic and free than many people are willing to acknowledge.

They also reminded me that American socialism has been on the rise before. In the early 20th century, voters elected two open Socialists to Congress, along with over 100 Socialist mayors and dozens of state legislators. The Socialist politician Eugene Debs received nearly a million votes in the 1912 presidential election. “Let’s say we were a peak athlete in full sprint competing for Olympic gold in that past generation,” Bhaskar Sunkara, the founding editor and publisher of Jacobin, told me. “Up until recently we’ve been in a deep coma and now we’ve just woken up and our pulse is still weak.”

Bernie Sanders at a 2015 rally for better wages in Connecticut. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty
Still Feeling the Bern

You could trace the story of this contemporary socialist revival back to the 2008 financial crash, the Occupy Wall Street shockwave that followed it three years later, or the 2013 election of Socialist Alternative candidate Kshama Sawant to the Seattle City Council. Yet nearly any socialist you talk to these days agrees that the revival was given rocket boosters by Bernie Sanders, or more precisely, by the grassroots movement that organized behind him.

When Sanders announced his candidacy for president in April 2015 as a democratic socialist, the New York Times ran a brief story on page A21. The mainstream media viewed him as having no shot against Hillary Clinton. But after Sanders’s sometimes explicitly anti-capitalist message drew enough crowds and fundraising to turn him into a serious candidate, the Times re-evaluated its coverage. The paper’s public editor at the time, Margaret Sullivan, acknowledged that “the tone of some stories is regrettably dismissive, even mocking at times.”

Sanders's identification as a “democratic socialist”—he’s controversially not officially a Democrat—helped reactivate a radical tradition. “A lot of black American leftists and socialists have been afraid to step out and be open in that identity,” Z, born Daniel Cook, a co-founder of Black Socialists of America, told me. “It’s obvious why, because we’ve been killed in the past just for being who we are.” Z sees his organization, which formed last year, as “that first foot out there again for black American leftists.” Lee Carter, who won a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates as a democratic socialist last year, told me that “it was Bernie Sanders’s presidential run that made me actually google, ‘What is socialism?’”

A New Style of Campaigning

People who run for elected office as socialists tend to have a different campaign strategy than other politicians. They portray themselves as representatives of grassroots social movements instead of political parties. When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was running to replace Joe Crowley as the Democratic nominee for New York’s 14th Congressional district, Crowley asked in a debate if she’d support him in the midterms even if she lost the primary.

“This has historically been the go-to ‘gotcha’ question to level at any insurgent primary candidate who criticizes the party’s political outlook,” wrote Seth Ackerman on Jacobin. If she answered yes, then she’d be telling voters her and Crowley were effectively the same. But if an insurgent says no, “Then they’ll be a spoiler. A Republican enabler.”

Ocasio-Cortez chose neither option. “I represent not just my campaign, but a movement,” she said, listing groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Muslims for Progress. “So, I would be happy to take that question to our movement for a vote, and respond in the affirmative, or however they respond.” In Ackerman’s opinion, Ocasio-Cortez’s reply “was exactly the right answer… because it then throws the question back to Crowley: ‘Well, who are you asking? Who’s the constituency that you’re consulting with when you make these kinds of political decisions?’ And the answer, obviously, is just himself and his cronies.” Ocasio-Cortez told Jacobin later that party officials weren’t happy with her, adding, “I got a lot of respect from voters.”

This isn’t just about moral high ground. Being independent of entrenched interests can also be a tactical decision. When Carter ran as a democratic socialist in Virginia, his Republican opponent was Jackson Miller, the House majority whip. “This was essentially a guy who was going to have unlimited money,” Carter said. “I was never going to beat him dollar for dollar.” He decided to run without corporate donations and focus on turning out voters jaded by the political system. “We sidestepped that whole fundraising arms race entirely and it paid off,” he explained. Carter won by 1,850 votes.

A banner from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's campaign. Photo by Scott Heins/Getty
Longer Time Horizons

When socialist candidates win elections they face a dilemma: How do you reconcile the daily work of being a politician with the longer-term goal of ending capitalism? Confusion about this tension has led commentators like Frank Rich at New York magazine to argue insurgents like Ocasio-Cortez aren’t all that far removed from the Democratic establishment. “Despite her embrace of the socialist label, there is nothing radical about what Ocasio-Cortez ran on—government-funded higher education, Medicare for all, abolishing ICE,” he wrote in June.

Progressives might support these types of policies because they will make people’s lives easier, but socialists are looking beyond that immediate aim. They don’t necessarily see such policies as ends to themselves. They’re playing a long game against capitalism, and think greater social protections can help build a movement of people capable of overthrowing it.

Take Medicare for all. On the surface this doesn’t sound all that revolutionary, especially to a Canadian like myself. “Single-payer healthcare seems like kind of a mundane reform when you’re saying like, ‘Let’s have socialism,’” Nicole Aschoff, author of The New Prophets of Capital and a managing editor at Jacobin, told me. But in reality, she said, “It’s such a huge gain because it opens up all of this kind of breathing room, particularly for women.”

A lower-income single mother without health insurance can be financially devastated by a single visit to the hospital. “It can be disempowering to be so precarious,” Aschoff said. Having guaranteed healthcare makes it less risky for that woman to join a union, go on strike and become, for lack of a better word, more “empowered.”

Some people I spoke with pointed to Seattle as a case study for what this idea can look like in practice. One of the first things that Kshama Sawant did after being elected to Seattle City Council as a member of Socialist Alternative was to push the city to implement the first $15 minimum wage in the US. To her the fight was never just about higher wages. “It’s about raising the confidence of working people,” she told me. “That will go far beyond [any] one victory.”

Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib will support similar goals on a national level once they get to Congress (both still have to win in the general elections, but that’s likely given they are running in Democratic strongholds). Tlaib in particular has vowed to fight racism and Islamophobia at the same time that she is backing progressive economic policies like a $15 minimum wage. We have “to roll up our sleeves and dig into the structures that have been set up against us,” she told me.

Ending the Capitalist System

Even relatively modest policies that stop far short of overthrowing capitalism have provoked a massive backlash from corporate interests. After Seattle tried adopting a $48 million per year tax earlier this spring on large companies to address homelessness, Amazon halted construction on a new office tower and successfully pressured the city council to repeal the tax.

“I certainly do feel right now that the state is a tool of the capitalist class,” Maria Svart, the national director of the DSA, told me. “The only way to deal with that is to build an organized movement that’s broad enough, deep enough, and strong enough to withstand that.” At a certain point, she thinks, the balance of power will shift decisively towards this movement. And that, in theory, is when you could begin the process of ending capitalism.

The question is whether that point will ever be reached—and if the current wave of supposedly socialist politicians actually support this goal. Back when he was running for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sanders told Time that “I don’t believe government should own the means of production, but I do believe that the middle class and the working families who produce the wealth of America deserve a fair deal.” Salazar, the recently elected socialist in New York, told Jacobin that campaigning on the “abolition of private property” is “not very realistic.” Ocasio-Cortez was recently criticized by the New York City DSA for endorsing Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo after he withstood a left-wing primary challenge from Cynthia Nixon.

When I asked Tlaib, who was endorsed by the Greater Detroit DSA, what she thinks about the wider socialist worldview, she told me, “I’m a member of a lot of organizations; for me I’ve always pushed back on these labels.”

This ambiguity about revolutionary economic change sometimes causes socialist activists to question politicians who claim the socialist label. When Black Socialists of America met with Ocasio-Cortez this summer, Z pointed out to her that “most Leftists we talk to and are active with—particularly Black American ones—don’t like or trust politicians (ourselves included).” Z went on: “While your platform and policy proposals are absolutely exceptional, we’re not confident that you have a full, cohesive understanding of what Socialism is or entails, how we are to achieve it, or the base elements of what it would look like in real life.”

Sunkara told me he doesn’t think politicians like Ocasio-Cortez are a “one-to-one representation of where most democratic socialist activists and organizations are at.” But he still thinks it’s useful for the socialist cause to have politicians like her in power. “It’s a sign that we’re creating an environment where what’s mainstream is being pushed further to the left,” he said.


DSA members march in Berkeley, California in 2018. Photo by AMY OSBORNE/AFP/Getty

But What About Venezuela?

That this debate is happening at all is worrying to people like Marion Smith. He’s the executive director of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a nonprofit group established by Congress in 1993 to raise awareness of human rights abuses under communist regimes. President George W. Bush was an honorary chairman from 2003 to 2009.

Smith agrees that elements of our economic system aren’t working. He’s open to debating solutions. “We can talk about a high-tax welfare state, we can talk about an expanded healthcare system… We can talk about universal basic income,” he told me. But Smith, like many commentators critical of socialism, points to the USSR, Cuba, China, and Venezuela as places where socialist ideologies did enormous damage. “I do not think that those who are espousing ‘democratic socialism’ have done a good enough job of explaining how that differs from the ideology and the system of it in [those places],” he said. “Socialism has failed.”

There are also countries where socialism—at least some form of it—has been successful. “Since the turn of the century, every big country in South America except Colombia has elected a socialist president at some point,” Francisco Toro observed recently in the Washington Post. Peruvian President Ollanta Humala oversaw a 7 percent reduction in poverty, while in Bolivia, it fell by one-third under Evo Morales. “I never would have voted for any of these people,” Toro wrote. “But when you try to evaluate their records, the word that comes to mind is ‘mixed’: successes in some areas, failures in others, and nary a society-wide cataclysm in sight.”

If the on-the-ground experience of socialism can vary so much in South America, what would a socialist shift look like in the US?

There are many competing answers. Yet Sunkara told me something known as the Meidnar Plan* may offer guidance. Decades ago, Sweden considered a policy that would have transferred a fixed share of profits at corporations into funds owned by people who work at them. As these funds grew, it was expected that these workers would eventually gain majority control over Sweden’s stock market.

Though the plan was opposed—and defeated—by business owners, Sunkara thinks the US shift to socialism “will look something like that.” He imagines “lots of strikes, lots of protests, lots of pitched battles. It won’t be a friendly conversation.” But he doesn’t see a bloody revolt.

A poster from the 1904 Socialist campaign* for president. Photo by GraphicaArtis/Getty
*[EUGENE V DEBS AND BEN HANFORD FOR PRESIDENT AND VICE PRESIDENT]

What Comes After

In the popular imagination—and especially among conservatives—socialism means the death of freedom. Mark J. Perry from the American Enterprise Institute recently defined it as “a centrally planned economy without market prices or profits, where most of the property is owned or controlled by the state.”

Yet when the UK Labour Party released a report last year about what a more socialist economy could look like, it described something different. “National state ownership has historically tended to be too centralised, with power in the hands of a private and corporate elite,” the report argues. Labour’s plan to move away from capitalism, The Economist noted, “owes more to little-known 20th-century economists than it does to Karl Marx. And its radicalism, which is real, lies in the area that has so far attracted least attention.”

Instead of large centralized authorities, public ownership of things like utilities might be managed by local governments, unions, and workers. The Labour model encourages workers to purchase their company and run it as a cooperative if it goes up for sale. “Economic decisions are often made by, and on behalf of, a narrow elite, with scant consideration of the well-being of the general population,” the report reads.

The Economist warned if this model was implemented poorly, “Britain as a whole would be poorer.” Yet economic democracy can be profitable. The worker-owned Mondragon Corporation in Spain has revenues of about $13 billion, and two of its representatives wrote in the Harvard Business Review that it operates “with the same profit motivation as other companies. The biggest difference is that workers have an important say in who manages them and how profits align with values.”

To Marxist economists like UMass-Amherst professor Richard Wolff, this is a huge expansion of freedom. “If you like democracy in the political sphere, why in god’s name haven’t you wondered about its absence in the economic sphere?” he said. Z from Black Socialists of America argued that when you enter a job under our current system “there’s no democracy, it’s a hierarchy and the shareholders who are the ones running the show and if you want to have a job and make money and survive you have to answer to whatever they say.” He went on: “Socialism is about dismantling that structure altogether.”

A New Generation

All of this recent talk about socialism is freaking out Republicans. “In normal times, the declarations of a fringe party and ideology in America would not merit much attention,” Newt Gingrich wrote in August on Fox News. “However, these are not normal times.” The former Republican House speaker urged Democrats to “be a little more careful about the demons they are unleashing,” a slightly ironic bit of advice coming from a prominent Trump supporter.

But it’s unclear how many socialist sympathizers actually want to end capitalism. When the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation commissioned a poll on socialism last year it found most millennials—69 percent—had trouble correctly defining socialism. “People are taking their hopes and aspirations and good visions of what we could be and putting that into a bucket called socialism,” Smith argued.

What is happening now may be far more modest than a revolution. In a time when the impacts of racism, sexism, inequality and climate change are difficult to ignore, “people are like, ‘Well if the status quo is capitalism and this alternative is called socialism, you know, I guess I prefer socialism,’” Sunkara said. “It just shows that people are hungry for an alternative, they don’t yet know the details of what that alternative would look like.”

Even without a precise definition, socialism is already affecting how political battles are fought in the US. It’s opening the door to more radical perspectives, creating a meeting point for people who are fed up with our current economic system, and changing the language we use to talk about social progress. Politically we are in unprecedented territory. “My side of the spectrum is bubbling in a way I’ve never seen before,” Wolff said. “It is a different place from what it was literally as little as five years ago.”

Geoff Dembicki is the author of Are We Screwed? How a New Generation Is Fighting to Survive Climate Change . Follow him on Twitter .



I’M SORRY TO SEE THIS, BECAUSE IT ISN’T RATIONAL. IT’S CLOSE TO INSANITY, IN FACT, BUT I AM UNCOMFORTABLE HAVING THEM ON THE ROAD ALSO. IT IS SIMILAR TO THE SITUATION OF A GRADUATE STUDENT AT UNC WHEN I WAS THERE WHO HAD A RACING BICYCLE AND WOULD TAKE IT OUT ON THE HIGHWAY. HE SAID THAT PEOPLE WOULD THROW THINGS AT HIM, LIKE MILKSHAKES OR OTHER UNDESIRABLES. IT’S FUNNY, BUT NOT FUNNY.

Arizonans Attack Self-Driving Cars

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/humans-harass-attack-self-driving-waymo-cars-n950971
Humans harass and attack self-driving Waymo cars
'They scare me... I don’t think any amount of technology can replace the human decision-making process.'
PHOTOGRAPH -- A Waymo driver in Chandler, Arizona, on Nov. 29, 2018.Caitlin O'Hara / Reuters file
Dec. 21, 2018, 2:26 PM EST
By Alyssa Newcomb

CHANDLER, Arizona -- The introduction of Google's Waymo self-driving cars in the test city of Chandler, Arizona has sparked a new kind road rage: human versus robot.

In the past two years, there have been at least 21 instances documented by local police involving people harassing Waymo vehicles since the cars began sharing the road with regular drivers in the Phoenix suburb of 240,000.

Those instances include a man waving a pistol at a Waymo vehicle as it passed his driveway, tires slashed while idling in traffic, thrown rocks, and a Jeep that ran a Waymo car off the road six times, according to a review by the Arizona Republic.

Waymo, the self-driving car division that spun out from Google X, has been in Chandler since 2016, perfecting the autonomous vehicle's ability to use an array of cameras and computer programs to start, stop, accelerate, change lanes, turn, and more. During road tests, a person sits in the driver's seat for when safety calls for human intervention.

The vehicles, easily noticeable with clunky hub of Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology on top, are a constant sight in neighborhoods and on the city’s surface streets.

Go a mile in Chandler and it’s nearly impossible not to spot a Waymo vehicle. Waymo's fleet logs more than 25,000 miles a day on public roads.

“Over the past two years, we’ve found Arizonans to be welcoming and excited by the potential of this technology to make our roads safer," Waymo told NBC News in a statement. "We believe a key element of local engagement has been our ongoing work with the communities in which we drive, including Arizona law enforcement and first responders.”

For some, the cars are no longer a novelty and have been accepted as any other vehicle on the road.

“I drive by them. They don’t bother me,” said Sarah Miranda.

But other local residents say the cars make them uncomfortable.

Kevin Ridley, a retired technical writer in Tempe, told NBC News he prefers not to drive next to Waymo cars and does his best to avoid being stuck next to or behind one in traffic.

“They scare me,” he said. “I don’t think any amount of technology can replace the human decision-making process... How many people will be hurt or killed as we learn the limitations or missed parameters of the programming for self-driving cars as they are released to the public?”

Waymo said in a statement that “keeping our drivers, our riders and the public safe is our top priority.”

Drivers are advised to call the police if they ever feel unsafe. Each vehicle is also equipped with a hands-free button that connects the human test drivers to Waymo dispatch, who can help them handle a situation with police or alert the entire Waymo fleet for safety or security concerns. The company says instances of police involvement in Arizona and California have been rare.

RUBBER TO THE ROAD

Arizona has become a popular testing ground for self-driving vehicles, thanks to both its lack of moisture and regulation. In 2015, Governor Doug Ducey signed an executive order that said "it is in Arizona's interest to support the development of these technologies, by allowing testing and operation of self-driving vehicles on certain public roads, in order to advance the technology.”

And more self-driving initiatives in Arizona have been unveiled just this month. Kroger and Nuro, a Mountain View, California company, announced they will start testing grocery delivery in Scottsdale, another Phoenix suburb, using an autonomous vehicle called the R1. The delivery truck doesn’t have a steering wheel or seats.

Local Motors said its electric, driverless shuttles, called “Olli” will be tested next year at the East Valley Institute of Technology in Mesa, Arizona.

Not all of the self-driving technology tests have gone smoothly.

In March, the State of Arizona barred Uber from testing its self-driving cars on public roads after a pedestrian was killed while crossing the street in the path of an Uber vehicle. Uber resumed testing of its autonomous vehicles on Thursday, but is currently limiting the test to a one-mile loop in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

A YELLOW LIGHT FLASHES

Americans are still cautious about the self-driving future. A Brookings survey found that 21 percent of adult internet users said they would ride in an autonomous vehicle, compared to 61 percent who said they would not.

Andrew Maynard, director of the Risk Innovation Lab at Arizona State University's School for the Future of Innovation in Society, said that while many people are curious and excited about the cars, he expects there will be more incidents like those in Arizona.

"Sadly, I think we probably will see more incidents involving humans harassing self-driving cars," Maynard told NBC News. "This is something the companies operating these vehicles and authorities need to take seriously."

"This sort of public backlash, even if from a minority of people," said Maynard, "could come back to bite them."

Alyssa Newcomb
Alyssa Newcomb is an NBC News contributor who writes about business and technology.


ANOTHER DEM ANNOUNCES FOR 2020. I STILL HOPE BERNIE WINS THE PRIMARY. I DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HER EXCEPT THAT SHE IS VERY PRETTY.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kirsten-gillibrand-the-60-minutes-interview/
Kirsten Gillibrand: The 60 Minutes interview
As the New York Senator announces her bid for president, take a look back at her February 2018 interview with Sharyn Alfonsi
Jan 16, 2019
BY Brit McCandless Farmer

VIDEO INTERVIEW

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) this week announced that she is entering the growing field of 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls. Last February, she spoke with 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi about a range of topics sure to come up when she hits the campaign trail, including gun control, immigration, and sparring with President Trump.

"I think it's hard to run for office," Gillibrand told Alfonsi at the time. "You know, a lot of women don't like the negative campaigning. They don't like the aggressiveness of it."

ot-senatorgillibranda.jpg
© 2019 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.



SEE THIS VIDEO. SLOWLY, THIS PANCAKE SHAPED ICE CIRCLE SLOWLY ROTATES. SPOOKY STUFF.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/giant-rotating-ice-disk-in-westbrook-maine-presumpscot-river-draws-international-attention/
CBS NEWS January 17, 2019, 8:11 AM
Giant ice disk: 300-foot frozen spectacle forms in Maine river
DAVID BEGNAUD

VIDEO -- MASSIVE FROZEN DISK APPEARS IN MAINE RIVER 3:18 DURATION

The frigid cold temperatures hitting the Northeast this week have already created a frozen spectacle in Maine where a giant disk of ice in a river near Portland is drawing international attention. The icy wonder was spotted Monday morning by a nearby property owner who notified the city immediately.

Crowds have been lining the Presumpscot River in Westbrook, Maine, over the past few days to see the natural phenomenon in person. One family who was there well after dark Wednesday night said it offered an exciting diversion in the middle of a busy winter week. While the disk does appear to have stopped rotating, visitors just want to catch a glimpse before it all disappears.

"Westbrook is now famous for this spinning ice disk in the river, which is great!" one woman said.

A whopping 300 feet wide, the frozen disk had been slowly spinning on the Presumpscot River for at least three days.

"I was just speaking to my sister in England … I said 'We've made national news.' And she texted me back and she said, 'No, you haven't made national, you've made international. You were just on the BBC!" Maine resident Deborah Lorendo said.

Eric Fisher, chief meteorologist for CBS Boston station WBZ-TV, said the rotation of the ice can be driven by the current of the river and also by temperature changes in the water underneath the ice, creating a vortex that causes it to spin.

nfa-begnaud-ice-disk-needs-tracks-and-gfx-frame-2921.jpg
"The shore in this case acts as almost like a grinding wheel where the ice hits the coast and it starts to shave off. And it creates this perfect pizza shape of the ice disk there floating in the water," Fisher said.

Steven Daly specializes in river ice hydraulics for the Army Corps of Engineers. He said while ice disks are not unheard of, the ones he's seen are much smaller, ranging from 30 to 50 feet.

"They're very rare. We may hear about these once or twice a winter," Daly said. "They had the perfect combination of air temperature, ice production and flow conditions for this to form … and it may not happen again for a number of years."

Now that it's touching the river bank, it's unclear if this ice disk will once again begin spinning. The approaching winter storms will also likely bury it in snow.

Daly said the thickness of ice disks can vary and advises that no one should walk on them, but rather study them from a safe distance onshore.

© 2019 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.


https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-46480704
Alternative ways to break Brexit deadlock
JANUARY 17,2019 5 hours ago

Theresa May is making a last ditch bid to save her Brexit deal after suffering a crushing defeat in a Commons vote on it.

Britain is still on course to leave the EU, but nobody knows whether it will be with a deal or not, or whether there will be a general election or a second referendum.

You can read about all the likely scenarios here.

But here are some alternative ideas that a few weeks ago seemed highly unlikely but which could, in these extraordinary times, start to look like contenders.

Cancel Brexit
Image copyrightREUTERS

The European Court of Justice has ruled that Britain can revoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty - the legal mechanism taking the country out of the EU on 29 March - without the approval of the other 27 member states.

This turns previous assumptions about Brexit on their head, and gives hope to those who believe it has all been a terrible mistake.

There is some debate over how the government would go about cancelling Brexit. And given the divided state of Parliament, it is hard to see how any prime minister could get backing for such a move without a further referendum.

Theresa May ruled it out on the grounds it would be seen as a betrayal of the 17.4 million people who voted to leave in 2016.

European Council President Donald Tusk has hinted that cancelling Brexit would be his preferred option, tweeting, after Mrs May's deal was defeated by 230 votes: "If a deal is impossible, and no-one wants no deal, then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?"

RELATED: EU's Tusk hints UK should cancel Brexit

The Queen intervenes
Image copyrightREUTERS

With no apparent parliamentary majority for any single course of action - is it time to get the Queen involved?

In Britain's constitutional monarchy, this is not meant to happen. Her Majesty has always remained above the political fray and will, no doubt, want to stay that way. But she is the only person who can invite someone to form a government and become prime minister.

And if Theresa May loses a no-confidence vote in the Commons - and Labour has not ruled out tabling further such motions after Theresa May won the vote on 16 January - then this power could come into play.

There would be a 14-day period during which the Queen could ask someone to form a new government if it was clear they could command the confidence of the House. That could be Labour or another Conservative government or a cross-party government.

The Queen would not be able to exercise her own political judgement - everything would depend on whether the would-be new prime minister is deemed to have a realistic chance of getting their laws through Parliament.

The nightmare scenario, for the Queen and her advisers, is where it's not clear who has the best chance of winning a confidence vote but different people are making competing claims. If after 14 days, a new government cannot gain MPs' confidence, a general election will follow. There could be multiple confidence votes, or none, before the 14-day deadline.

One thing the Queen can't do is dissolve Parliament and trigger a general election. The monarch was stripped of that power by the 2011 Fixed-term Parliament Act.

A Citizens' Assembly
Brexit is not the only controversial issue to be put to a public vote recently - and some countries, such as the Republic of Ireland, before a referendum on overturning to its ban on abortion, have turned to a "citizens assembly" to find a way forward.

In Ireland, the body was set up to advise elected representatives on a number of ethical and political dilemmas. It is made up of 99 members chosen at random to broadly represent the views of the Irish electorate, and a chairman.

Citizens' assemblies are meant to give their members time to learn about an issue through discussions led by experts and then reach a conclusion through a series of votes.

The Guardian backs a citizens' assembly to sort out Brexit, arguing in an editorial that Parliament should have the right, if it chooses, to put the ideas the assembly produces to a referendum.

Left-wing campaign group Compass is another backer, and is supported by Labour MP Liz Kendall, former Archbishop of Canterbury the Right Reverend Lord Williams and Blur front man Damon Albarn, among others.

Green MP Caroline Lucas was reported to be planning to raise the citizens assembly plan with Theresa May when she met the prime minister to discuss Brexit compromises, after the PM's Brexit plan was voted down.

VIDEO
Media captionLiz Kendall suggests a "citizens' assembly of ordinary people", as used in Ireland, to ask UK voters about Brexit
NI to pilot 'Citizens' Assembly'

Senior backbenchers take control
Image caption -- Nick Boles MP, co-architect of a plan for backbenchers to draw up a compromise plan

This was a scheme dreamed up by Conservative backbencher Nick Boles and two colleagues, Nicky Morgan and Sir Oliver Letwin, who want a softer Brexit than the one being promoted by Mrs May.

Mr Boles has put forward legislation, the European Union Withdrawal Number 2 Bill, that would give the government three weeks to seek a compromise and leave as planned on 29 March.

If his bill failed to get through the Commons, the three MPs had planned to push for a solution that takes the job out of government hands. Instead, the 36-strong House of Commons Liaison Committee would have been tasked with coming up with its own compromise deal.

The committee, comprised of chairmen and women of the Commons select committees and other parliamentary committees, meets periodically to give the prime minister a grilling on issues of the day. It has not previously been pressed into action to come up with policy ideas.

Its members span every shade of opinion on Brexit, from Conservative Remainers such as Sarah Wollaston to veteran Eurosceptics Sir Bill Cash and Bernard Jenkin. There are also Labour and SNP figures, and one Lib Dem.

Whether they could do a better job than the cabinet of agreeing a Brexit deal is an open question.

And they have now rejected the proposal, with the majority of members saying at a meeting on Wednesday, 16 January that they felt they were not equipped to draw up legislation.

There was also anger at what was seen as an attempt to bounce the committee into accepting Mr Boles's plan, although it is understood there are likely to be further moves to give Parliament a decisive role in deciding the way ahead on Brexit.

Two referendums
A cross-party group of MPs, under the People's Vote banner, is pushing for another EU referendum.

But what would the question be? A direct "Remain or Leave" re-run of the 2016 vote? Leave with a deal or no-deal? Or a combination of the two, with potentially three questions?

Vernon Bogdanor, professor of government at King's College, London, has suggested the Brexit impasse could be resolved by holding a further referendum - then another one. He wrote in the Guardian that two referendums could be held a few weeks apart - the first, a straight Leave or Remain choice. Then, if Leave won, another vote on the terms of departure.

Former cabinet minister Justine Greening has suggested an alternative - one referendum offering three choices, with people getting a first- and second-preference vote.

A government of national unity
Image copyrightPA -- Image caption -- Winston Churchill's wartime coalition with King George VI

Could a cabinet made up of different parties, usually formed during a time of national crisis, offer a solution?

It may seem like a concept confined to the history books - stirring up memories of Winston Churchill's wartime coalition or Ramsay MacDonald's 1930s national government, but it has been publicly floated as a way out of the Brexit stalemate.

Advocates of such an arrangement have included Tory pro-Remain MP Anna Soubry, who suggested Mrs May should reach out to the SNP, Plaid Cymru, Labour backbenchers "and other sensible, pragmatic people who believe in putting this country's interests first and foremost".

Her fellow Tory backbencher Sir Nicholas Soames, Churchill's grandson, has also backed the idea.

Both the Labour and Conservative front benches rejected the suggestion last summer - but it was revived by Remain-supporting Conservative MP Nicky Morgan in December.

However, Ramsay MacDonald's decision to form a national government was considered a betrayal by many in the Labour Party, in the early 1930s. And the electoral battering suffered by the Lib Dems after going into coalition in 2010 will still be fresh in many minds.

A Parliamentary Commission

A Parliamentary Commission, made up of senior figures from the Leave and Remain sides of the debate, to oversee Brexit, is another idea that has been raised by MPs. There was a lot of talk about this in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 referendum. Heavyweight figures, including Nicola Sturgeon, Lord Hague, Sir John Major and Yvette Cooper backed it.

It is probably far too late to set up such a body to oversee the UK's withdrawal from the EU, on 29 March. But the idea might regain some traction if trade talks get under way after Brexit day or if the Brexit deadline is extended.

But MPs are not meant to tell governments what to do, just scrutinise the decisions of ministers and hold them to account. So the danger is it could end up being a talking shop with no real power.


https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/425239-pro-trump-group-doing-opposition-research-on-sherrod-browns-wife-report
Pro-Trump group doing opposition research on Sherrod Brown’s wife: report
BY MICHAEL BURKE - 01/14/19 01:54 PM EST

PHOTOGRAPH – SHERROD BROWN © Greg Nash

A conservative group has conducted opposition research into Connie Schultz, the journalist and wife of a potential 2020 presidential candidate, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio).

Buzzfeed News reported that an operative for the group America Rising filed a public records request with Kent State University in November that sought records related to Schultz, who teaches journalism at the university.

The request was filed days after Brown was elected to another term in the Senate, a victory that fueled new talk of a presidential run that the Ohio Democrat has done nothing to swat away. The university responded 20 days later with 37 pages of documents, according to Buzzfeed.

Samantha Cotten, a spokeswoman for America Rising*, told Buzzfeed that the group will be using its "full opposition research, tracking, and communications system" against the entire Democratic field in 2020.

"America Rising uses [Freedom of Information Act requests] as a tool to ensure all publicly available information about a candidate is made known to voters,” Cotten said. “We are employing our full opposition research, tracking, and communications system to the entire 2020 Democratic field to hold them accountable.”

Justin Barasky, an adviser to Brown, in a statement to The Hill called the opposition research "no surprise."

"It's no surprise that Republicans are working overtime to prepare for the potential candidates that they’re most worried about," Barasky said.

Schultz worked for several years as a journalist at The Cleveland Plain Dealer, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2005.

Brown has not officially declared whether he will seek the presidency in 2020 but has said he is "seriously thinking about" making a bid.

TAGS SHERROD BROWN AMERICA RISING OPPOSITION RESEARCH 2020 DEMOCRATIC FIELD


OH MY, I DO HOPE OUR ELECTRICAL SYSTEMS DON’T GO OUT IN OUR FUTURE. I WANT TO BE ABLE TO GET NEWS. OF COURSE, WE COULD GO BACK TO THE OLD TRAVELING BARD SYSTEM, OR THE TOWN CRIERS.

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/425804-jewish-american-publication-the-forward-ending-print-paper-cutting-staff-40
Jewish-American news publication The Forward ending print edition, cutting staff 40 percent
BY MICHAEL BURKE - 01/17/19 09:51 AM EST

The Forward, a Jewish-American news publication based in New York, will end its print edition and lay off 40 percent of its staff, according to the New York Post.

The Forward, which has been printed for the past 121 years, will now shift to an online-only product that will feature English and Yiddish editions.

Publisher and CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen told the Post that the publication is "taking the next step in making our brand more relevant to our readers and more connected to their lives."

“We are announcing that this spring The Forward will complete its evolution from what was once a print-focused publisher to become a digitally focused publication," Feddersen added.

Those who will be laid off include editor-in-chief Jane Eisner, executive editor Dan Friedman, digital director David Goldiner and design director Kurt Hoffman, according to the Post. The Forward's masthead features 21 editorial staffers and another 20 contributing editors.

One source told the Post that the cuts are being implemented because "the revenue is not really there."

“They’ve been losing money for years but lately the losses have been more than $5 million a year," the source added.


https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/425818-generation-z-may-be-most-liberal-demographic-yet
Generation Z may be most liberal demographic yet
BY REID WILSON - 01/17/19 10:08 AM EST

PHOTOGRAPH – VOTING BOOTHS © Getty Images

A generation of post-Millennials is poised to enter the electorate as perhaps the most liberal age cohort ever, fueled by unprecedented diversity and expansive views of the role of government.

On issues ranging from the treatment of racial minorities to climate change to diversity in society, the post-Millennial generation — dubbed Generation Z by demographers — looks a lot more like the Millennial Generation than like their parents in Generation X or the Baby Boom generation, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.

But Generation Z takes an even more liberal view of the role of government in society than do Millennials. Seven in ten members of Generation Z say the government should do more to solve problems, while just 29 percent say government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals.

Just under two thirds of Millennials say government should do more. About half of those in Generation X and the Baby Boom generation agree.

Many of the attitudes held by Generation Z — those born after 1996, who are now between the ages of 13 and 21 — are formed through experience with an unprecedented level of racial and societal diversity, said Kim Parker, Pew’s director of social trends research.

“They’re overwhelmingly the most racially and ethnically diverse generation we’ve seen.

They’re on track to be the most well-educated generation we’ve seen. They’re less likely to drop out of high school and more likely to go to college,” Parker said.

One measure of the evolution of the youngest generation is that more than a third of them, 35 percent, know someone who prefers to be addressed using gender-neutral pronouns, compared with just a quarter of Millennials and less than a sixth of those in Generation X.

Almost six in ten members of Generation Z say forms or online profiles that ask about gender should include options other than “man” or “woman.” And 57 percent say they are very or somewhat comfortable referring to someone else by a gender-neutral pronoun, slightly lower than the 59 percent of Millennials who say the same but far higher than older generations.

“They look pretty similar to Millennials in terms of their liberal values and their openness to societal changes,” Parker said.

The youngest generation, too, is more likely to support protests by NFL players who kneel during the national anthem, a favored boogeyman for President Trump. Six in ten members of Generation Z approve of the protests, about the same as the number of Millennials who do so.

Majorities of every older generation disapprove of the take-a-knee protests.

Just three in ten members of Generation Z approve of President Trump’s job performance, almost identical to his approval rating among Millennials. Trump’s approval rating is north of 50 percent among only one age cohort, the Silent Generation, those between the ages of 73 and 90.

The new report shows a potentially significant generational schism between the country’s youngest and oldest Republicans, one that is likely to influence debates within the GOP if those attitudes hold.

Generation Zers who say they are members of or lean toward the Republican Party are more likely than older Republicans to say that racial diversity is a good thing for the country, and that immigrants have a positive impact on the country.

By contrast, those in Generation Z who identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party are virtually identical to Democrats in older generations, on everything from the role government plays to the benefits of diversity and immigration.

“Democrats are more in lock step across generations on these big social and political issues,” Parker said. “You don’t see these kinds of generational divides among Democrats.”

The Pew Research Center study is based on a survey of 920 teens between the ages of 13 and 17, conducted online in September, October and November, and on a nationally representative survey of 10,682 adults over the age of 18 conducted online in September and October.

The total sample of members of Generation Z, 1,178 respondents, carries a margin of error of plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.
TAGS DONALD TRUMP GENERATION Z MILLENNIALS


THE FOLLOWING VIDEO MAY BE OF INTEREST TO MANY. IT IS THE TIME TEAM DIG EXPLORING THE BOMBING OF LONDON IN THE BLITZ. WE ARE TURNING OUR EYES BACK TO THE GERMAN ATTACKS ON EUROPE DURING WORLD WAR II NOW, AND IN MY OPINION WE SHOULD NOT FORGET THAT LINK TO A CIVILIZATION-KILLING HITLERIAN MACHINE. AS WITH ALL OF THE TIME TEAM PUBLICATIONS, THIS IS OF GREAT INTEREST TO ME. SEE IF YOU ENJOY IT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buS8203B1Dg
Time Team Special 23 (2006) - Buried by the Blitz (Shoreditch, London)


MADDOW NEWS

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