Nick Corasaniti and Reid J. Epstein write for The New York Occasions that Republicans controlling the redistricting course of (most particularly in North Carolina on this story) proceed to make use of the method to dilute the political energy of communites of coloration.
Mr. Reives is one among a rising variety of Black elected officers throughout the nation — starting from members of Congress to county commissioners — who’ve been drawn out of their districts, positioned in newly aggressive districts or bundled into new districts the place they have to vie in opposition to incumbents from their very own social gathering.
Virtually the entire affected lawmakers are Democrats, and many of the mapmakers are white Republicans. The G.O.P. is presently looking for to widen its benefit in states together with North Carolina, Ohio, Georgia and Texas, and since partisan gerrymandering has lengthy been tough to disentangle from racial gerrymandering, proving the motive may be troublesome.
However the impact stays the identical: much less political energy for communities of coloration.
The sample has grown extra pronounced throughout this yr’s redistricting cycle, the primary because the Supreme Courtroom struck down the guts of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 and allowed jurisdictions with a historical past of voting discrimination to cross election legal guidelines and draw political maps with out approval from the Justice Division.
Former U.S. Legal professional Normal Eric H. Holder, Jr. additionally writes for the Philadelphia Inquirer in regards to the redistricting course of, a number of states, together with Pennsylvania.
Republicans have gone out of their method to attract maps that empower rural, predominantly white areas. They accomplish that at the price of disenfranchising voters within the various city and suburban areas which have seen a rise in inhabitants. Republicans have deployed a number of techniques, however probably the most egregious are people who purposefully diminish the voting energy of the communities of coloration: “packing” and “cracking.”
Each techniques are anti-democratic, and diminish the voting energy of communities of coloration both by lowering the variety of representatives they’re capable of elect or diluting their affect altogether. For instance, in Ohio, Republicans packed Black and Latino communities in Cuyahoga County, which incorporates Cleveland, into only one district, purposefully lowering illustration of those communities in Congress. In the meantime, in the identical county, Republicans additionally break up aside Asian American and Pacific Islander communities into separate districts, diminishing their voting energy. In Texas, although 95% of the inhabitants progress over the past decade has come from communities of coloration, Gov. Greg Abbott and the Republican legislature put in place maps that can truly improve the variety of majority-white districts and cut back the variety of aggressive districts in Texas to only one. They purposefully drew these maps to make sure that rural, white areas electorally overpower the vote of extra various communities.
There is no such thing as a respectable justification for these actions. It’s evident that Republicans don’t have any qualms about bending or breaking the foundations for their very own acquire and these maps present that. Their actions communicate loudly to their unwillingness to implement honest redistricting processes and create honest maps that precisely symbolize voters, and so they should be stopped — within the courts and within the states. Given what now we have seen elsewhere within the nation, it’s important for Pennsylvanians to concentrate because the map-drawing course of reaches the essential juncture of contemplating draft maps.
Kim Parker, Juliana Menasce Horowitz, and Rachel Minkin of the Pew Analysis Middle write that Individuals are actually extra prone to favor dwelling in suburbs for a brand new purpose: the COVID-19 pandemic.
About one-in-five U.S. adults now specific a desire for dwelling in a metropolis, down from a few quarter in 2018. The share of Individuals who wish to stay within the suburbs has elevated from 42% to 46% throughout this time, whereas desire for rural areas is nearly unchanged.
No matter the place they stay, almost half of Individuals (47% general) say the pandemic has divided their communities; comparatively few (13%) say it has introduced folks collectively. And plenty of see a protracted street to restoration, with about one-in-five saying life of their neighborhood won’t ever get again to the way in which it was earlier than the coronavirus outbreak.
Throughout neighborhood varieties, a few quarter or extra say the well being and financial impacts of the pandemic stay main issues the place they stay, however the results are felt most acutely in cities. Greater than four-in-ten city residents (45%) say the financial impression of the outbreak is a significant downside of their neighborhood, and 37% say the identical in regards to the well being impression of COVID-19. By comparability, 31% of these within the suburbs and 33% of rural dwellers say the financial impression of the pandemic is a significant downside of their native space, and a few quarter every say the well being impression is a significant situation.
Chabeli Carrazana writes for The Nineteenth about rising knowledge and anecdotal proof that the COVID-19 pandemic could also be altering some notions of American fatherhood.
In most households the place baby care fell aside, it was moms who have been making the selection to stop work to care for kids. The disintegration of care has pushed sufficient ladies out of labor previously two years to set off a recession. What occurred to mothers was stark: Tens of millions left the workforce, then lots of of hundreds extra dropped out because the 2020 and 2021 college years started.
However what was occurring to dads was much less clear and, in some methods, extra sophisticated.
As of October, about 1,000,000 fewer fathers of school-age youngsters have been actively working within the labor pressure than pre-pandemic, in contrast with 1.4 million fewer mothers of children beneath the age of 18. In October, about half 1,000,000 dads between the ages of 25 and 54 have been on depart from work and one other half 1,000,000 have been unemployed, in keeping with knowledge supplied to The Nineteenth by Misty Heggeness, a principal economist and senior adviser on the U.S. Census Bureau who has been carefully monitoring outcomes for moms and dads through the pandemic. (The obtainable knowledge doesn’t mirror nonbinary folks, however contains some LGBTQ+ mother and father.)
These figures are all increased than pre-pandemic ranges, however nonetheless largely trending downward month-to-month since early 2020.
What the info doesn’t mirror are all the selections happening individually, between companions and between colleagues — the locations the place gender norms that have been as soon as strictly adopted, consciously or not, have gotten extra fluid.
Paul Krugman of The New York Occasions says that considerations over inflation could also be overblown—on the very least, we have to reference a time aside from the the inflation of the late Seventies.
For one factor, regardless of excessive headline numbers these days, underlying inflation by the tip of 2022 isn’t prone to be anyplace close to 1980 ranges. Normal measures are presently unreliable due to pandemic weirdness — who knew used vehicles might loom so giant within the statistics? However presumably extra strong measures just like the Atlanta Fed’s “sticky value” inflation or the Dallas Fed’s “trimmed imply” counsel {that a} Powell disinflation, if it has to occur, would begin from 3 % or 4 %, not Volcker’s 10 %. Actually, the start line for such a squeeze can be roughly the tip level of Volcker’s squeeze, which raises the query of why we should always even trouble.
Again to that in a minute.
Even when we assume that we should get inflation right down to 2 % from, say, 3 or 4 %, that’s solely a 3rd or 1 / 4 of the Nineteen Eighties adjustment. And there are causes to consider that the fee can be even smaller than that comparability implies.
Plenty of economists have instructed that the present inflation appears to be like extra like 1946-48 than just like the Seventies. Evaluating the 2 episodes is hard, partly as a result of we don’t have customary measures of core inflation going again that far, and general inflation was unstable as households nonetheless spent a 3rd of their revenue on meals. However one rough-and-ready option to get one thing like core inflation for the Forties is to take a look at service costs, which have been a lot much less unstable than items costs…
Corey Mintz writes for NBC Information that the observe of tipping service workers is unfair in lots of many respects.
The incident occurred in early December when a group of greater than 30 diners contributed to a $4,400 tip to be break up between their two servers on the Oven and Faucet in Bentonville, Arkansas. However then one of many servers, Ryan Brandt, informed the diners that her supervisor mentioned the tip needed to be shared with all workers, with solely 20 % going to her. Then she was fired. (The restaurant issued an announcement saying it wouldn’t disclose the explanation she was let go.) So we’ve received an easy-to-hate villainous restaurant supervisor, a sufferer the viewers can determine with — she has scholar loans to repay! — and a complete squadron of heroes. All of which obscures what’s truly fallacious with this story.
[…]
When adequate suggestions are given out to spice up wages above the minimal hourly charge, how these suggestions get divvied up lacks transparency and any assure of fairness. There is no such thing as a standardized method of splitting suggestions, and disclosure of tipping insurance policies has not but change into a part of the anticipated info a restaurant gives its prospects.
Whereas it could possibly appear fallacious that the Arkansas server had an meant tip snatched away, restaurant hosts, bartenders and bussers who don’t get handed money immediately may themselves working under minimal wage and counting on shared suggestions from their co-workers.
That eating places have this coverage of “splitting” suggestions and gratuities with the whole workers (versus reserving the tip just for the servers of a desk) is one purpose I all the time carry some money after I dine in, so I can all the time put the money within the hand of whoever served me.
I additionally immediately tip bussers who I discover working their asses off. I’ve labored in eating places the place waitpersons don’t tip their bussers for clearing their tables and maintaining espresso mugs crammed (amongst different help), and, in consequence, I by no means assume that waitpersons tip bussers. One of many first waitresses that I bussed for informed me to cease working so exhausting for coworkers who didn’t tip me. Inside weeks of me following her recommendation, they began tipping me.
After which there was the busy-busy 1990 Easter Sunday, with prospects lined up exterior the door. One of many waitresses informed the boss that I had stolen her $4 tip off of a desk.
The reality: I didn’t steal her cash. The shoppers put that cash in my hand and thanked me for my service. I gave that waitress the $4; in spite of everything, I had already collected almost $40 of my very own merely from being the one busser in that eating room that day.
I received tales …
Aleksander Brezar writes for Euronews that the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords, partly, might have sowed a few of the seeds for the difficulties going through Bosnia and Herzegovina right now.
Certainly one of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s three presidents, Milorad Dodik, spent the final three months pushing for legal guidelines that may see nearly half of the nation withdraw from its central establishments.
The nationalist Bosnian Serb chief is clearly aiming to weaken the nation’s central authorities, together with threats of making his personal Bosnian Serb military.
For a lot of, that is eerily just like the situation that launched the 1992-1995 Bosnian Conflict and has provoked fears of a renewed battle within the nation.
[…]
Drafted to deliver the battle to an finish in 1995, the US-sponsored Dayton Peace Accords created two principal administrative items in Bosnia — the Serb-dominated entity of Republika Srpska, or RS, and the Bosniak-Croat majority Federation of BiH.
The 2 entities got some autonomy, with an umbrella state-level authorities with its three-way presidency — with every member representing one of many three principal ethnic teams — and a council of ministers overseeing the nation’s principal establishments, together with the military, the highest judiciary, and tax administration.
It’s exactly these establishments that Dodik needs to drag out of.
Lastly right now, Richard Javan Heydarian writes for Al Jazeera, warning that Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr. is on observe to change into the subsequent president of the Philippines.
A latest survey has proven that the previous dictator’s son can rely on the help of near half of all Filipino voters within the Could 9, 2022 presidential election. His closest rival, Vice President Leonor “Leni” Robredo, has struggled to safe the help of even only a quarter of potential voters. Having already satisfied presidential daughter Sara Duterte to change into his operating mate, Marcos Jr presently enjoys a big lead simply months faraway from the election day. Because the Philippines has a single-round, first-past-the-post electoral system, the place there aren’t any runoff elections, Marcos Jr simply must win extra votes than all different candidates to clinch the presidency.
Former First Woman Imelda Marcos, infamous for her extravagance and rhetorical flourish, is now getting ready to reclaim her place of delight within the presidential palace. Whereas it’s true that Philippine elections are extensively unpredictable, the meteoric resurgence of the Marcoses is itself a stinging judgement on the profound failures of the nation’s democratic establishments. A long time of judicial impunity, historic whitewashing, corruption-infested politics and exclusionary financial progress has pushed a rising variety of Filipinos into the Marcoses’ embrace.
[…]
A century in the past, Spanish novelist George Santayana warned that “those that can’t keep in mind the previous are condemned to repeat it”. Within the Philippines, this warning has proved prescient. The recollections of the ache Marcos inflicted on the nation have been changed by nostalgia for an imaginary “golden age” beneath the late dictator. And this nostalgia, coupled with many failures of democratic politics, paved the way in which for the resurgence of the Marcoses.
Relating to that final paragraph: I do keep in mind that late Nineteenth- and early Twentieth-century thinker George Santayana was Spanish and never American, however it’s a little bit of a stretch to name Santayana a “novelist”; he solely printed one novel in his lifetime.
Everybody have an important day!
