Vice President Biden is doing a campaign rally for Secretary Clinton in Cleveland, Ohio. Here’s the embedded live feed.
Vice President Biden Campaign Rally for Secretary ClintonPost + Comments (131)
by Adam L Silverman| 131 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Open Threads, Politics
Vice President Biden is doing a campaign rally for Secretary Clinton in Cleveland, Ohio. Here’s the embedded live feed.
Vice President Biden Campaign Rally for Secretary ClintonPost + Comments (131)
by Betty Cracker| 169 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, How about that weather?, Open Threads
We’re feeling mildish effects of Hurricane Hermine in la Casa de Cracker today. It’s breezy with intermittent rain. The massive Sunshine Skyway Bridge is closed due to wind gusts in excess of 50 MPH.
Alligators are gushing out of storm drains. Well, that’s an exaggeration, though there are rumors of it. One lady uploaded a video of an alligator swimming across the flooded road in front of her car:
I don’t understand everything she’s saying, but she did yield the right-of-way to the gator. It was in the crosswalk, so that was the right thing to do. But what she was doing driving around in that mess, I can’t fathom.
A man in that same area reported a “four-foot gator” swimming down the road near his house. The video above is grainy, but that looks like a bigger gator to me. (My dad is an experienced gator hunter, and he claims you can determine the approximate length of the beast by estimating the inches that separate the eyes from the tip of the snout and converting it to feet.)
Anyhoo, stay dry and safe, folks who are in the path. Thread open to all topics save one: Let’s make this a Trump-free zone, okay? I’m sick of that vile shit-stain.
This post is in: Open Threads
Once you realize it is no longer your bed, no longer your chair, and no longer your house, living with cats is pretty easy.
I walk into the bedroom to go to the bathroom, and that is what I find. You can see him almost daring me to move him. Bastard.
by Adam L Silverman| 206 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Open Threads, Politics
Fresh off of last night’s policy speech on immigration in Phoenix, Donald Trump is holding a rally in Wilmington, OH today. Currently Rudy Giuliani is warming up the crowd with a lot of red meat.
Vice President Biden will be doing a campaign rally for Secretary Clinton at 7 PM EDT tonight in Cleveland, OH and I’ve got an embedded live feed scheduled to go live for that at 6:50 PM EDT.
by Adam L Silverman| 153 Comments
This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Immigration, Open Threads, Politics, Popular Culture, Religion
Or to finish the quote from Kohelet/Ecclesiastes: “There is nothing new under the sun…”
In the 19th Century the US was gripped with one of it cyclical bouts of nativism, anti-immigrant xenophobia, and anti-minority religious extremism. Just as a frenzy was whipped up about the Ground Zero Mosque, which was actually a Muslim Community Center with a prayer chapel (akin to a Jewish Community Center), and around the building of mosques or the setting aside of land for Muslim cemeteries post 9-11, so too was a frenzy whipped up in the 19th Century around the building of Catholic churches. And just as we are currently seeing a frenzied anti-immigrant xenophobia around Latino and Hispanic immigrants – and lets be honest, its ultimately not going to matter if they’re legal or undocumented, so too did we see a 19th Century analog against Irish and Chinese immigrants, as well as others depending on the part of the US. As we are currently seeing a hard hearted focus to deny sanctuary to refugees fleeing war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria – including those who served as translators/interpreters for US and Coalition Forces and we owe a debt to provide them safe haven, so too did we see a similar hard hearted response to Jews in the 1930s and 1940s fleeing the rising and then consolidating tyranny of the NAZIs. And all too often it is the descendants of the early targets of discrimination that have chosen to lead the contemporary efforts of intolerance, nativism, and xenophobia.
(St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York)
In the mid 19th Century there was tremendous opposition to the building of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, as well as Catholic churches in other parts of the US.
At the Church of the Disciples of Christ on 28th Street near Broadway, the Rev. Joseph Bradford Cleaver spoke under the title “Crucifix Smiting the Cross; or shall the Papacy govern New York City?” He was among those who saw the opening of the magnificent new St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan the previous year as a dangerous sign of Catholic power and warned that Cardinal John McCloskey, who was “enthroned” there, would rule America as the pope’s viceroy and bring on a new Inquisition if Grace were elected mayor.
The church where the Knights of Columbus was founded was similarly denigrated. The New York Times at the time reported on the construction of St. Mary’s in the following manner:
(St. Mary’s Church, New Haven)
“An Unprofitable Church: Roman Catholic Troubles in New-Haven.” The church on one of New Haven’s finest residential streets had been dedicated five years earlier, but only after a struggle in which the pastor was pressured to accept an alternate site. As The Times put it, “When the residents of this aristocratic avenue discovered that they were in danger of seeing a Roman Catholic church spring up among them, with all that the establishment of such a church implied, they bestirred themselves to oppose the project. The wisest of the Roman Catholics here did not favor it, and St. Mary’s was induced to exchange the lot for a good one in some other locality.” But that site was also deemed “too good” for Catholics, so a lesser lot was found. The pastor refused this, according to The Times, and built the church as originally planned on wealthy Hillhouse Avenue. According to the Times, the parish fell into debt (its parishioners being mainly “servant girls”). “The result shows how foolish were those who persisted in building the church on the spot where it stands,” The Times concluded. “How much spite had to do with it cannot now be ascertained, but the complete history of the negotiations would be very interesting. The edifice was erected beyond the boundaries of the parish, and it invaded the most exclusive homes of wealth and culture. It is an eye-sore on the avenue, a source of annoyance and injury to neighboring residents, and a complete failure as a business enterprise.”
This isn’t all that different than what we heard and saw in the opposition to the Park Avenue Islamic Center aka The Ground Zero Mosque.
(Ground Zero Mosque Protestors, New York)
The protestors had been whipped into a froth by the uninformed, but politically very profitable fear mongering of a few self appointed, but largely ignorant, arbiters of what was and was not acceptable in regards to Islam. For instance:
Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand, Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. Pls reject it in interest of healing
— Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) July 18, 2010
We also saw anti-immigrant imagery that rivals any of the modern anti-undocumented immigrant language we are currently observing. Here are just two examples:
(Anti-Chinese Graphic from The Wasp Magazine, San Francisco)
(Anti-Immigrant Statement of Principles from The Patriot, Boston)
Similarly Senator Taft sent the following letter to the Jewish War Veterans of the United States indicating his opposition to resettling 20,000 Jewish German children in the US in excess of the immigration quotas of the time.
(Letter from Senator Taft to Mr. Tarlish, Jewish War Veterans, 1939)
Senator Taft’s position on accepting Jewish German children to save them from the NAZIs and the reasons for it are not too far off from Governor Mike Pence’s in refusing to accept Syrian Civil War refugees fleeing the Islamic State:
|
|||||||||||
|
And Governor Pence is only one among 27 governors, all Republicans, that told the Obama Administration they would not accept Syrian Civil War refugees. This is also the position of the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.
“Our nation has always been welcoming. But we cannot let terrorists take advantage of our compassion. This is a moment where it’s better to be safe than to be sorry.”
What we are seeing in Election 2016 is not something new in the United States. Just as there are economic cycles and crime cycles and religiosity cycles, there also seems to be extremism, nativism, and nationalism cycles within US society too. All of this has happened before and it will, most likely happen again.
What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun. – Kohelet/Ecclesiastes 1:9
What Has Been Will Be Again, What Has Been Done Will Be Done AgainPost + Comments (153)
by David Anderson| 22 Comments
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Sports
Later on today, I’m meeting up with two referees to go to Middle of Nowhere State College for a soccer game tonight. One of my colleagues is a public policy post-doc at the local policy school and the other is a business prof focusing on economic development issues. I work with this crew once or twice a year and it is usually the geekiest and most enjoyable drives of the season.
The policy geek is always look for good teaching examples and I think we have a good one to sketch out tonight.
Over the past couple of years, the local high school soccer association and high school leagues have made a variety of changes to expectations and rules. Here are some of the changes in practice and expectations.
1) When there is a sub-varsity/varsity doubleheader the start time moved from the traditional 6:00/7:30 or 6:30/8:00 split to a uniform 5:30/7:00pm. —-Referees are expected to be at the field at least 30 minutes before kick-off.
2) All referees must renew their clearances annually even though state law allows for three years of validity for educators.
3) 12 hours of in-season training (on nights when college or high amateur leagues play) instead of the previous 6 off-season hours and four in-season hours that were better scheduled to avoid conflicts. Most of the pre-season hours could be satisfied by either a college or USSF intermediate clinic.
4) New uniforms that are unique to the high school game and can not be used for USSF or NCAA games (previously we used USSF shirts, shorts and three striped socks)
5) Formal assessments were discontinued. Now the play-off pool is determined by a combination of seniority (length in the chapter) and three season average varsity game count.
Pay has not changed since 2008.
The local high school referee group had 190 members in it for the 2015 playing season. That broke down to roughly 30 people whose highest level games were either professional or scholarship college, another 20 refs whose highest level games were D-3 college, ethnic mens’ amateurs or Regional USSF youth ball and 140 refs whose highest level games were either low level State Cup or high school depending on how they were being assigned. I was uncomfortable working with about ten refs as they found ways to screw games up in old and uncreative ways. Last year, we sent 24 referees to the state playoff system, twenty one of them had as their highest level game either a professional match or a scholarship game.
Using basic policy analysis skills can we make any predictions about the impact of these policy changes?
The short version is the 2016 referee group has 123 referees signed up including half a dozen rookies and a dozen people whose age plus weight is north of 350. I left this year. There are now four people whose highest level game this year is either a professional or a college scholarship match. Nine of the ten refs that I don’t like working with are still doing high school. The other retired and moved out of the region.
Is this surprising?
No.
The policy analysis problem starts at looking at a cost benefit analysis. Before these rule and practice changes, the equilibrium of supply and demand led to 190 referees being willing to do high school games at the going rate. That going rate compensated referees for their time to get to and from games, it compensated referees for their skill, it compensated referees for the time to attend training, it compensated referees for their clearances and it compensated referees for the pain in the ass nature of high school ball’s fans and parents.
However we got a brand new set of costs imposed on refereeing. Any one of them might have been shrugged off with incremental attrition. All of these changes led to mass attrition. The move to a 5:30 kick-off means that quite a few fields that I could just get there in time for a 6:00pm game would require me and many others to leave work early, take time off or really lean on favors/goodwill to get there for 5:00pm instead of 5:30pm.
The annual clearance renewal just increases the cost of clearances from an average of $35/year to $105/yr.
The annual training put on by high school has always been bad as it is always Ref 101 as there is a steady flow of new refs and refs who have been working the game for twenty first years in a row. However the old system allowed most of the training to be done when there were few competing demands of time. The previous in-season training requirements meant I gave up two evenings with my family which was painful by the end of October as I had barely seen them, but I was not given up paid work to attend. The new requirements have a cost of six evenings with my family and the opportunity cost of taking on paid work for either college or amateur ball.
New uniforms are another $100 a year for a short sleeve and long sleeve plus more laundry coordination and finding space in my big bag of crap.
Finally the play-off reward system now rewards individuals who have been around forever and only do high school games. There is a reason why individuals who have been around forever and are not doing college or professional games are not doing those games.
So using basic cost benefit analysis, the bundled costs are now above the reservation price for a lot of referees.
Can we make any other predictions?
The distribution of the quits is predictable. 90% of the people who had clearly superior options left. The opportunity cost of doing high school was increasing as it meant either less family time (which is extremely valuable during the Fall season) or giving up better paid work. The choice was fairly low cost for the people with better and higher paying options. The next cohort of people who did either D-3 or Regional USSF ball as their highest level games saw 60% attrition. After that, it was a steady but fairly low level of attrition as the people who left either were the ones who had only been doing one or two games a week and the early start times conflicted with work or people who had life happen to them.
There is now a significant high school referee shortage.
The immediate policy response has been a steady stream of e-mails begging referees to come back (all is forgiven but no requirements are changed). The other impact is the referee group has told its remaining members that no games will be allowed to be turned back or additional blocks in availability granted (this should do wonders for retention next year).
The in-season impact will be a lot of referees will be on games that they really should not be on which means a lot more red cards and a lot more players getting hurt from preventable situations. The long term impact is the high school group really needs to rethink their economic model, but they won’t until they are under 100 referees next year.
This post is in: Election 2016, Hillary Clinton 2016, Open Threads, Woman in the Whitehouse 2016, Women's Rights Are Human Rights
.
Keep the faith, and one eye on the opposition…
Remember that huge $10M ad buy Trump camp advertised earlier this week? It's Wednesday and here's how it looks: pic.twitter.com/Jrn8M5At4K
— Ali Vitali (@alivitali) August 31, 2016
Remember that $10M Trump ad buy?
Two days later, half of that ad buy still hasn’t been purchased https://t.co/z9uPXU6jjG
— Mark Murray (@mmurraypolitics) August 31, 2016
And TV stations don’t say “sure, we’ll run the ads, we know you’re good for it, pay us when you can” https://t.co/2jM1zjHN0y
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) August 31, 2016
What’s on the agenda as we look forward (longingly) towards the big weekend?
Thursday Morning Open Thread: Keep Moving ForwardPost + Comments (174)