James Damore and his lawyers @JamesADamore deliver a damning document. Read it and weep, boys.... https://t.co/zyUtjagNDJ pic.twitter.com/pp5Iz0vdhf
— Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) January 9, 2018
Google will be fighting a class action that alleges discrimination against white male employees whilst simultaneously fighting a class action that alleges wage discrimination against female employees. #Popcorn https://t.co/nW56SNRHWg
— Claire Lehmann (@clairlemon) January 9, 2018
.@SalenaZito Had to pull over to the corner gas station to get photos of this original McDonald’s, at the corner of Florence and Lakewood Boulevard, in Downey. pic.twitter.com/HZlj8InV5S— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) January 5, 2018
Also has a sign saying, “Welcome to the world’s oldest-operating McDonald’s.” pic.twitter.com/aTPvfo9U2k— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) January 5, 2018
Black students in San Francisco would be better off almost anywhere else in California https://t.co/107akUpBJ1— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) January 2, 2018
Black students in San Francisco would be better off almost anywhere else in California.It's criminal. Really. Progressives are criminal. Their policies are criminal. I have to shake my head: Ironically, Marx's idea of "false consciousness" explains how generations of disadvantage minority groups have been brainwashed to believe that leftist-Democrat institutions and leaders are protecting and promoting their best interests. Mind-boggling. Man.
Many attend segregated schools and the majority of black, Latino and Pacific Islander students did not reach grade-level standards on the state's recent tests in math or English tests.
A local NAACP leader called for declaring a "state of emergency" for black student achievement, a problem the city's school board acknowledged. "The problem cannot be reduced to one sickness or one cure," said Rev. Amos C. Brown, San Francisco's NAACP branch president. "Black students have been underachievers. They're living in toxic situations. It's amazing they've done as well as they have done, but it's criminal that sophisticated children in progressive San Francisco are performing at these levels."
But is the solution to fix what's broken, or to start schools anew? Answering that question has unveiled a heated political debate in Northern California.
The district's strategy targets changing instruction, hiring, school culture and instilling the belief that all kids can learn. Vincent Matthews, San Francisco Unified School District's superintendent since May, is expected to present a detailed strategy for improvement early in the new year. An opposing plan from a controversial nonprofit called Innovate Public Schools calls for starting new schools — traditional public or charter — from scratch.
For decades, San Franciscans have called attention to the achievement gap. Following an NAACP lawsuit regarding discrimination, the city entered into a 1983 consent decree mandating desegregation. Since then, the district has changed its school assignment rules.
More recently, a group of organizers from Innovate, which has brought some charter schools to the San Francisco Bay Area and receives money from the Walton Family Foundation, has been convening parents and calling renewed attention to the problem.
In September, Innovate released a report sounding the alarm on San Francisco's achievement gap — and called for the city to establish new schools as a remedy. Innovate's organizers and parents held a news conference outside City Hall and organized a parent meeting with Matthews.
On the most recent round of tests, 87% of San Francisco Unified's black students performed below standards in math, as did 79% of Latino students and 78% of Pacific Islanders. Ninety-six percent of districts in California that serve black students had better reading scores for low-income black students than San Francisco did, Innovate found. Many minority students attend schools that are highly racially concentrated in neighborhoods such as Bayview-Hunters Point, with high rates of staff turnover and relatively inexperienced teachers.
These factors, according to a recent district report, produce "a form of academic segregation that can be especially hard to overcome."
And after decades of gentrification and displacement by tech workers, black families are moving out: In the 1998-99 school year, black students comprised 16% of SFUSD's students, compared with just under 7% last school year.
Some parents were shocked when they saw these statistics — individually, they knew there were issues, but they didn't realize their problems added up to a larger whole. The poor educational outcomes stand in stark contrast to the reputation the city has built for itself as the country's center of technological innovation.
"It's been broken for a long time," said Geraldine Anderson, a mother of three who saw local schools cut back on hours from one child to the next. "I see IT companies coming to San Francisco and so much money coming in for the city, but our kids won't be able to live here or participate."
Innovate has found advocates in parents struggling to find adequate schooling...
Recently I saw a friend—a man—pilloried on Facebook for asking if #metoo is going too far. “No,” said his female interlocutors. “Women have endured far too many years of harassment, humiliation, and injustice. We’ll tell you when it’s gone too far.” But I’m part of that “we,” and I say it is going too far. Mass hysteria has set in. It has become a classic moral panic, one that is ultimately as dangerous to women as to men.She's a great writer.
If you are reading this, it means I have found an outlet that has not just fired an editor for sexual harassment. This article circulated from publication to publication, like old-fashioned samizdat, and was rejected repeatedly with a sotto voce, “Don’t tell anyone. I agree with you. But no.” Friends have urged me not to publish it under my own name, vividly describing the mob that will tear me from limb to limb and leave the dingoes to pick over my flesh. It says something, doesn’t it, that I’ve been more hesitant to speak about this than I’ve been of getting on the wrong side of the mafia, al-Qaeda, or the Kremlin?
But speak I must. It now takes only one accusation to destroy a man’s life. Just one for him to be tried and sentenced in the court of public opinion, overnight costing him his livelihood and social respectability. We are on a frenzied extrajudicial warlock hunt that does not pause to parse the difference between rape and stupidity. The punishment for sexual harassment is so grave that clearly this crime—like any other serious crime—requires an unambiguous definition. We have nothing of the sort.
In recent weeks, one after another prominent voice, many of them political voices, have been silenced by sexual harassment charges. Not one of these cases has yet been adjudicated in a court of law. Leon Wieseltier, David Corn, Mark Halperin, Michael Oreskes, Al Franken, Ken Baker, Rick Najera, Andy Signore, Jeff Hoover, Matt Lauer, even Garrison Keillor—all have received the professional death sentence. Some of the charges sound deadly serious. But others—as reported anyway—make no sense. I can’t say whether the charges against these men are true; I wasn’t under the bed. But even if true, some have been accused of offenses that aren’t offensive, or offenses that are only mildly so—and do not warrant total professional and personal destruction.
The things men and women naturally do—flirt, play, lewdly joke, desire, seduce, tease—now become harassment only by virtue of the words that follow the description of the act, one of the generic form: “I froze. I was terrified.” It doesn’t matter how the man felt about it. The onus to understand the interaction and its emotional subtleties falls entirely on him. But why? Perhaps she should have understood his behavior to be harmless—clumsy, sweet but misdirected, maladroit, or tacky—but lacking in malice sufficient to cost him such arduous punishment?
In recent weeks, I’ve acquired new powers. I have cast my mind over the ways I could use them. I could now, on a whim, destroy the career of an Oxford don who at a drunken Christmas party danced with me, grabbed a handful of my bum, and slurred, “I’ve been dying to do this to Berlinski all term!” That is precisely what happened. I am telling the truth. I will be believed—as I should be.
But here is the thing. I did not freeze, nor was I terrified. I was amused and flattered and thought little of it. I knew full well he’d been dying to do that. Our tutorials—which took place one-on-one, with no chaperones—were livelier intellectually for that sublimated undercurrent. He was an Oxford don and so had power over me, sensu stricto. I was a 20-year-old undergraduate. But I also had power over him — power sufficient to cause a venerable don to make a perfect fool of himself at a Christmas party. Unsurprisingly, I loved having that power. But now I have too much power. I have the power to destroy someone whose tutorials were invaluable to me and shaped my entire intellectual life much for the better. This is a power I do not want and should not have.
Over the course of my academic and professional career, many men who in some way held a position of power over me have made lewd jokes in my presence, or reminisced drunkenly of past lovers, or confessed sexual fantasies. They have hugged me, flirted with me, on occasion propositioned me. For the most part, this male attention has amused me and given me reason to look forward to otherwise dreary days at work. I dread the day I lose my power over men, which I have used to coax them to confide to me on the record secrets they would never have vouchsafed to a male journalist. I did not feel “demeaned” by the realization that some men esteemed my cleavage more than my talent; I felt damned lucky to have enough talent to exploit my cleavage.
But what if I now feel differently? What if—perhaps moved by the testimony of the many women who have come forward in recent weeks—I were to realize that the ambient sexual culture I meekly accepted as “amusing” was in fact repulsive and loathsome? What if I now realize it did me great emotional damage, harm so profound that only now do I recognize it?
Apparently, some women feel precisely this way. Natalie Portman, for example, has re-examined her life in light of the recent news...
The Warlock Hunt https://t.co/J4HeCxTGof via @aminterest This was, to my surprise, by far the most widely-read piece I wrote in 2017, and I suspect the most widely-read piece I've ever written.— Claire Berlinski (@ClaireBerlinski) December 31, 2017
Wowzers! #Riverdale star, Lili Reinhart, for Cosmopolitan February 2018 Issue. Can't wait to see more photos from her feature!! #BettyCooper pic.twitter.com/9CnXWPjyav
— Riverdale Fans (@RiverdaleFansOL) December 29, 2017
Most-read today: Sarah Silverman's response to a Twitter troll is a master class in compassion. After a troll lashed out at Silverman, she found him help for his pain. https://t.co/9qVh97yvUH #Trending pic.twitter.com/ivlMAuzMK6— CBC Radio (@cbcradio) January 6, 2018
I believe in you. I read ur timeline & I see what ur doing & your rage is thinly veiled pain. But u know that. I know this feeling. Ps My back Fucking sux too. see what happens when u choose love. I see it in you.— Sarah Silverman (@SarahKSilverman) December 29, 2017
California has many tools in its arsenal to block new offshore oil drilling https://t.co/y2Mo6Pmc0R pic.twitter.com/W4iXwAzFdn— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) January 6, 2018
There are two things working against the Trump administration's proposal to open up California coastal waters to new oil and gas drilling: state regulators and simple economics.More.
California has powerful legal tools to head off new offshore development, and the price of oil offers little incentive to the energy industry to pursue expensive drilling projects next to a hostile state.
"I don't think there's any reasonable chance that there will be any leasing or drilling along the coast," said Ralph Faust, former general counsel for the California Coastal Commission. "This just seems like grandstanding" by the Trump administration.
The Interior Department on Thursday released plans to open vast areas off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to new oil and gas exploration and drilling through a five-year leasing program that would begin in 2019.
But there are myriad obstacles opponents can throw in front of the proposal, not to mention questions about whether the oil industry has much of an interest in California's offshore reserves at a time when domestic oil production is at its highest level in decades.
Under the plan, the federal government would offer 47 leases in U.S. waters on the outer continental shelf, including two each off the Northern, Central and Southern California coasts and one off Washington and Oregon.
The governors of all three states issued a joint statement Thursday saying they would do whatever it takes to block new leasing off their shores, which include some of the nation's most pristine coastlines.
The first hurdle for the Trump plan is a period of public comment and an extensive environmental review under federal law, which opponents can use to challenge the proposal as ecologically harmful.
In California, the state coastal commission also has the authority to review activities in federal waters to ensure they are consistent with the state's coastal management plans.
"The commission has extremely broad and very powerful authority to say 'no' to federal actions that would harm the coast of California and harm coastal waters," said Steve Mashuda, an attorney at Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law organization.
The commission is ready to use it.
"Nothing galvanizes bi-partisan resistance in California like the threat of more offshore oil drilling," coastal commission Chairwoman Dayna Bochco said in a statement. "We've fought similar efforts before, and we will fight them again."
While the U.S. Secretary of Commerce could override a commission finding that new oil drilling violated the state's management plan, federal courts have tended to side with states in such contests...
Twitter won't block world leaders or delete their messages https://t.co/A3gqwcnNHY
— Fox News (@FoxNews) January 6, 2018
There’s been a lot of discussion about political figures and world leaders on Twitter, and we want to share our stance: https://t.co/Ns0cuKpwd5
— jack (@jack) January 5, 2018
Democrats have spent weeks making the case that the Russia-Trump probes need to continue, piling on demands for more witnesses and documents. So desperate is the left to keep this Trump cudgel to hand that Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats have moved toward neo- McCarthyism.Hat Tip: RCP.
If that sounds hyperbolic, consider an email recently disclosed by the Young Turks Network, a progressive YouTube news channel. It’s dated Dec. 19, 2017, and its author is April Doss, senior counsel for the committee’s Democrats, including Vice Chairman Mark Warner.
Ms. Doss was writing to Robert Barnes, an attorney for Charles C. Johnson, the controversial and unpleasant alt-right blogger. Mr. Johnson’s interactions with Julian Assange inspired some in the media to speculate last year that Mr. Johnson had served as a back channel between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks. There’s still no proof, but in July the Intelligence Committee sent a letter requesting Mr. Johnson submit to them any documents, emails, texts or the like related to “any communications with Russian persons” in a variety of 2016 circumstances, including those related to “the 2016 U.S. Presidential Campaign.”
Mr. Barnes seems to have wanted clarification from Ms. Doss about the definition of “Russian persons.” And this would make sense, since it’s a loose term. Russians in Russia? Russians in America? Russians with business in the country? Russians who lobby the U.S. and might be affected by the election—though not in contact with campaigns?
Ms. Doss’s response was more sweeping than any of these: “The provision we discussed narrowing was clarifying that the phrase ‘Russian persons’ in [the committee letter] may be read to refer to persons that Mr. Johnson knows or has reason to believe are of Russian nationality or descent” (emphasis added).
If this stands, Democrats will have gone far beyond criminalizing routine government contacts with Russians, which is disturbing enough. Trump transition and administration officials have been smeared and subjected to exhaustive investigation merely for doing their job, which includes interacting with Russian officials or diplomats. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has spent the past year having to justify why, as a U.S. senator, he shook hands with the Russian ambassador. The running joke in today’s Washington is that one risks a subpoena merely for ordering a salad with Russian dressing.
But the definition in the Doss letter potentially takes all this much further. It could be that Ms. Doss was simply trying to prevent a recalcitrant witness from evading legitimate requests. But it could mean you are now officially under suspicion by the U.S. government—subject to requisitioning your emails and texts or getting your own subpoena—if your parents or even great-great-grandparents were Russkis. By some estimates, the Russian-American community is more than three million strong, and quite a few of them are Mr. Warner’s congressional colleagues, including Bernie Sanders.
This comes from a Democratic Party that supposedly rejects group-based discrimination. Substitute the words “Arab or Arab background” into a hypothetical Republican version of the letter, and the left would melt down—not without reason.
The Doss letter suggests this is of a piece with the Democrats’ manic effort to keep the Trump-Russia investigations going, no matter what. As Republican congressional leaders have hinted that their probes may be wrapping up, the left’s demands and tactics have become ever more desperate. The Washington Post this past weekend ran a piece straight out of House Intelligence Committee ranking member Adam Schiff’s talking points, regurgitating complaints that Chairman Devin Nunes has run an incomplete probe. The accusation inspired House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy to quip that Mr. Schiff’s desired witness list is “pretty much every character in any Dostoevsky or Tolstoy novel.”
The House Intelligence committee has collected nearly 300,000 documents, conducted 67 transcribed witness interviews, and issued 18 subpoenas. It’s held 11 hearings, taken 164 hours of testimony, and reviewed 5,251 pages of that testimony. It’s spent 346 days investigating Russian meddling. The country deserves the committee’s final recommendations as to how to avoid further Russian interference, especially given we are again in an election year...
Farm labor from Mexico has been on the decline in California, and farmers are having trouble finding U.S.-born workers to make up the difference https://t.co/B8lcJDmfG3
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) January 5, 2018
Nicholas Andrew Flores swatted at the flies orbiting his sweat-drenched face as he picked alongside a crew of immigrants through a cantaloupe field in California's Central Valley.
The 21-year-old didn't speak Spanish, but he understood the essential words the foreman barked out: Puro amarillo. And rapido, rapido! Quickly, Flores picked only yellow melons and flung them onto a moving platform.
It was hard and repetitive work, and there were days under the searing sun that Flores regretted not going to a four-year college. But he liked that to get the job he just had to "show up." And at $12 an hour, it paid better than slinging fast food.
For Joe Del Bosque of Del Bosque Farms in the San Joaquin Valley, American-born pickers like Flores, though rare, are always welcome.
For generations, rural Mexico has been the primary source of hired farm labor in the U.S. According to a federal survey, nine out of 10 agricultural workers in places like California are foreign-born, and more than half are in the U.S. illegally.
But farm labor from Mexico has been on the decline in California. And under the Trump administration, many in the agricultural industry worry that deportations — and the fear of them — could further cut the supply of workers.
But try as they have to entice workers with better salaries and benefits, companies have found it impossible to attract enough U.S.-born workers to make up for a shortage from south of the border.
Del Bosque said he'll hire anyone who shows up ready to work. But that rarely means someone born in the U.S.
"Americans will say, 'You can't pay me enough to do this kind of work,'" Del Bosque said. "They won't do it. They'll look for something easier."
For some immigrants working the fields, people like Flores are a puzzle — their sweating next to them represents a kind of squandering of an American birthright.
"It's hard to be here under the sun. It's a waste of time and their talents in the fields," said Norma Felix, 58, a Mexican picker for almost three decades. "They don't take advantage of their privilege and benefit of being born here. They could easily work in an office."
Most don't last long, she said.
"There is always one or two who show up every season," Felix said. "They show up for three or four days and turn around and leave."
Agriculture's reliance on immigrant labor, especially in the American West, goes back to the late 1800s, after the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad, said J. Edward Taylor, a UC Davis rural economist.
"The domestic farm workforce was simply not big enough to support the growth of labor-intensive fruit and vegetable crops," he said...
All bundled up and keeping warm #winteriscoming ☃️ pic.twitter.com/uh8LPxpuAm
— Maitland Ward Baxter (@MaitlandWard) December 6, 2017
Snapchat took it down... pic.twitter.com/XsV0ChkJko
— Maitland Ward Baxter (@MaitlandWard) December 8, 2017
I'm Hittin' it Hard on a Monday... 💪🏻💦 pic.twitter.com/uKxFSbZROE
— Maitland Ward Baxter (@MaitlandWard) December 12, 2017
Overdressed 😂😜💁🏻 pic.twitter.com/2FEflTYj3v
— Maitland Ward Baxter (@MaitlandWard) December 29, 2017
My latest in National Affairs, with @RWBhandari https://t.co/oT18A3MGLz— Thomas Hopson (@thomasehopson) January 2, 2018
American politics is overwhelmed by bitterness and rancor. The norms that structure the work of our constitutional system are everywhere under attack. Partisan loyalties now seem to determine not only people's worldviews and policy priorities but also what facts they will accept or choose to treat as lies. The rhetoric of animus and apocalypse is the everyday parlance of both parties, particularly when each talks about the other. And although this polarization may have its roots inside the Beltway, its toxicity pervades the public.More.
None of this began with Donald Trump. It was all there in the culture wars of the Obama years and in the deep divisions of the Bush era. It is systemic. Our political dysfunction in this century looks less like a failure of individuals and more like a corrosion of our entire political culture and its institutions.
Many observers of this problem, especially on the right though increasingly on the left as well, tend to explain it by resorting to critiques of "identity politics." But identity politics is something we tend to see others doing while failing to recognize that we are doing it ourselves. And because we tend to miss the breadth of its scope and reach, we fail to see not only how central it is to the trouble with our politics but also how it might be overcome.
Identity politics is not just a problem of the left. It is a way of thinking that pervades our self-understanding. Our rancorous political conversation now consists of three competing theories of identity in America — three stories of how our differing backgrounds should shape our common political life. One of these (espoused by a significant swath of the left but increasingly co-opted by an influential minority on the right) treats politics as a continuous struggle across racial lines, and so conceives of coalitions on racial grounds. Another (advanced more commonly on the right in our time) insists that the principled distinction in our politics is not between racial groups but along the legal line of citizens versus non-citizens. Finally, the third theory of identity (espoused by some elites of both parties, and barely aware of itself as a theory of identity at all) views the other two schools of thought as pernicious and proposes its own form of identity defined by an ideal of cosmopolitan dignity.
Each of these theories, as practiced, is unstable. And each rejects the other two as un-American without really quite understanding them. It is this problem — our country's conceptual blind spot on identity — that drives so much of our present polarization. To be sure, disagreements over identity are a causa causans of why Republicans and Democrats can barely get along. But it isn't only that the two sides speak different languages; it's that our political languages fall short of our political needs.
The solution is not a new and improved theory of identity, although in time the country could use one. Instead, a practical solution would require us to begin by pivoting from philosophy to institutions. It is all well and good to debate the various theories of identity. But our leaders should also focus on building and sustaining those institutions that can concretely ground a functional civic life — one that works in practice even if it sometimes seems as though it couldn't work in theory. To begin this work, we should seek to better understand the quandary of American identity, so that we might rise above it.
Jessica Biel Leggy, Busty, And Curvalicious In Tight Workout Attire, Oh My! https://t.co/qaMFoOsOjA pic.twitter.com/aEPmfmi3An
— Popoholic (@Popoholic) January 3, 2018
Knee-high socks and blue steel gazes are BACK (amongst many other awesome retro styles!). Check out my New Year + New You picks launching on @amazon home in 2018! https://t.co/KorwILcsRR pic.twitter.com/thMtPRxV0w
— Jessica Biel (@JessicaBiel) December 30, 2017
.@ClaudiaRomani ushers in 2018 with a fab photoshoot.
— Egotastic! (@egotastic) January 3, 2018
📷: https://t.co/CB0SJhb5mz pic.twitter.com/nQ7IAs4jIV
.@ClaudiaRomani is all woman, all Christmas, all curves.
— Egotastic! (@egotastic) December 26, 2017
See the pics: https://t.co/3A1mYxFWyh. pic.twitter.com/w70OvhcIwD
@ClaudiaRomani CR💜💜💜💜💜1 #WCF is just always the very perfect queen of curves always Claudia #1 CR💜💜💜💜💜1 pic.twitter.com/DpBGSJldNV
— Tom Elliott LE★💜★💍13 (@thomaselliott19) December 29, 2017
@ClaudiaRomani CR💜💜💜💜💜1 #WCT for the last time in 2017 the breathtaking Claudia #1 CR💜💜💜💜💜1 pic.twitter.com/yHb0LOSrNO
— Tom Elliott LE★💜★💍13 (@thomaselliott19) December 28, 2017
@ClaudiaRomani CR💜💜💜💜💜1 Claudia such amazing stunning beauty by the sea what a lady #1 CR💜💜💜💜💜1 pic.twitter.com/CEtpxyB9gD
— Tom Elliott LE★💜★💍13 (@thomaselliott19) December 28, 2017
@ClaudiaRomani CR💜💜💜💜💜1 #WCT is always the breathtaking Twitter queen Claudia #1 CR💜💜💜💜💜1 pic.twitter.com/bWvjmOfdgo
— Tom Elliott LE★💜★💍13 (@thomaselliott19) December 26, 2017
Another brilliant column by my favorite columnist. How does he consistently top himself? https://t.co/Omvt6c9ahi— Jane (@Jane00245086) January 3, 2018
The Next Revolution In Military Affairs: How America's Military Will Dominate https://t.co/PC4T8XPKVm— National Interest (@TheNatlInterest) January 2, 2018
A Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) is a theory about the evolution of warfare over time. An RMA is based on the marriage of new technologies with organizational reforms and innovative concepts of operations. The result is often characterized as a new way of warfare. There have been a number of RMAs just in the past century.
An example of an RMA is the mechanization of warfare that began in World War I with the introduction of military airpower, aircraft carriers, submarines and armored fighting vehicles. Out of these advances in technology came independent air forces, strategic bombardment and large-scale amphibious operations. Another occurred with the invention of nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles leading to the creation of new organizations such as the now-defunct Strategic Air Command and new concepts such as deterrence. In the 1970s, the advent of information technologies and high-performance computing led to an ongoing RMA based largely on improved intelligence and precision strike weapons. The 1991 Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 are considered to be quintessential examples of this RMA.
According to the theory of dialectics, all revolutions give rise to counter-revolutions. The counter to the precision strike revolution arose in the form of anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities. These included weapons systems such as sophisticated air defenses, long-range precision fires and unmanned vehicles. But more significantly, the A2/AD counterrevolution seeks to exploit new means of combat -- electronic and cyber warfare, in particular, and operations in domains such as outer space -- to attack the sensors, networks, and command and control systems on which the precision strike revolution was based.
A still new RMA could be imminent. It is a function, first and foremost, of the proliferation of sensors and so-called smart devices, the creation of increasingly large, complex and sophisticated information networks, and growing potential in automated systems and artificial intelligence. The first step in this revolution, now evident in the commercial world and our personal lives, is the rise of the “Internet of Things.” But it is the marriage of ubiquitous information collection, virtually unlimited data storage, advanced computational analytics and global, near-instantaneous communications that will truly revolutionize the world.
This emergent RMA is also driven by the need to address the A2/AD challenge and to more fully exploit the opportunities presented by new technologies and concepts of operations. Electronic and cyber “weapons” can be employed both offensively and defensively. Sensors and weapons in each of the domains of warfare (land, air, sea, outer space and cyberspace) can be employed in all others.
The current overarching concept encompassing the various aspects of the new RMA is Multi-Domain Battle (MDB). Although the MDB approach to future warfare is still evolving, one reasonable definition of it can be found in the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command draft document, Multi-Domain Battle: Evolution of Combined Arms for the 21st Century, 2025-2040: “a new, holistic approach to align friendly forces’ actions across domains, environments, and functions in time and physical spaces to achieve specific purposes in combat, as well as before and after combat in competition.” The key to the conduct of MDB is something called “convergence.” This is defined in the same document as...
UC Santa Cruz sits on an idyllic expanse of redwood groves and rolling meadows. World-class surf is just minutes away.More.
Its researchers were the first to arrange the DNA sequence of the human genome and make it publicly available.
About nine miles away, Cabrillo College in Aptos is the closest community college. But at a recent UC Santa Cruz sales pitch featuring University of California President Janet Napolitano, numerous Cabrillo students made it clear Santa Cruz wasn't their first transfer choice. Cal State is cheaper and classes are smaller, said one student. Santa Cruz housing is too expensive, said another. Several named UCLA or UC Berkeley as their dream schools.
"Santa Cruz life is too hippie for me." said Rachel Biddleman, a 21-year-old studying political science. "I'm more of a city person."
UC Santa Cruz recently launched a million-dollar effort to reach out to community college students around the state in an effort to change minds and boost its transfer numbers. The university is under pressure to meet state demands that eight of the nine UC undergraduate campuses enroll one transfer student for every two freshmen. Santa Cruz and Riverside both fall short, a failure Gov. Jerry Brown cited last year as one reason why he is withholding $50 million from UC's budget.
Last year, Santa Cruz enrolled about three freshmen for every transfer student. Of the campuses under state scrutiny, only Riverside did worse, with about four freshman per transfer.
State finance officials will decide this spring if the campuses have made sufficient "good faith efforts" toward meeting the ratio, which was set by Brown and Napolitano in 2015, said H.D. Palmer, the spokesman for the state finance department. He said one reason why Brown is pushing for increases is that they provide a more cost-efficient path to a four-year degree because transfer students complete their first two years of studies at the less expensive community colleges.
UC Santa Cruz Chancellor George Blumenthal, however, considers finance bureaucrats judging university enrollment actions "unbelievable micromanagement."
But he says the campus is trying hard — starting with correcting what he said were misperceptions. People still hear the name and picture the campus "Rolling Stone" once dubbed "the stonedest place on earth."
"Some people still think of us as a kooky place … as banana slugs, hippies and protests," he said. "We're also a serious university."
At Cabrillo College, Blumenthal talked up the work on the human genome project, as well as research in marine science and astronomy and astrophysics. Students got the chance to meet a Santa Cruz faculty member whose team won worldwide acclaim this fall for becoming the first to capture the light generated by a cataclysmic merger of two neutron stars. Last fall, the London-based Times Higher Education ranked UC Santa Cruz third in the world in research influence based on how many times scholars cited its work.
Blumenthal told students from four area community colleges about the university's undergraduate research opportunities, emphasis on social justice and leadership in environmental sustainability. He said a new summer academy could help them make the transition.
Napolitano pitched UC's generous financial aid, diversity and support for immigrants. "The doors to the University of California are open. ... Right next door is UC Santa Cruz!" she said.
Emily Ratajkowski talks feminism and 'being sexualized' https://t.co/Mkk0d2F8Ai— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) January 3, 2018
.@michellemalkin on @POTUS' use of Twitter: "The fact that @POTUS can say so much in 140 or 280 characters, & sum up what all of the moral cripples in the news media can't...I think it's a very, very powerful and potent tool. And he's used it to great effect." pic.twitter.com/cbyYdf7t9U
— Fox News (@FoxNews) January 3, 2018
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) January 1, 2018
Our first issue of 2018 stars the incredible @mariamenounos! The TV host and entrepreneur is opening up about how her life-changing brain tumor diagnosis shifted her attitudes and actions on work, family, and especially her health: https://t.co/eSaxxf8clr On stands December 26! pic.twitter.com/eDDKmycHaX
— Women's Health (@WomensHealthMag) December 20, 2017
@YouTube you CANNOT ignore this. You have so many incredibly talented content creators who strive to make this platform a better place. Stop promoting the trash that makes us all look bad.— Justine Ezarik 🎉 (@ijustine) January 2, 2018
— FHM (@FHM) January 1, 2018
Lucy Pinder looks gorgeous in pictures from her 2018 calendar https://t.co/D7tCFcZanZ— The Sun Showbiz (@TheSunShowbiz) November 8, 2017
We've Got The First Pics From Lucy Pinder's 2018 Calendar (And They're An Early Holiday Gift). https://t.co/MtfeYtyHpI @LPinderOfficial pic.twitter.com/aTb4gKud64
— FHM (@FHM) November 4, 2017
Chloe Goodman Cameltoe in Red One Piece Swimsuit— Taxi Driver (@TaxiDriverMovie) December 29, 2017
- https://t.co/LpvdShPO2w - pic.twitter.com/frCB1OuSte
More liberal NYT cancellations coming after this headline, no doubt— AlexaShrugged (@AlexaShrugged) January 2, 2018
- The Trump Effect: Business, Anticipating Less Regulation, Loosens Purse Strings
https://t.co/3s1uHuUD9x
WASHINGTON — A wave of optimism has swept over American business leaders, and it is beginning to translate into the sort of investment in new plants, equipment and factory upgrades that bolsters economic growth, spurs job creation — and may finally raise wages significantly.That part above concerning the "little historical evidence" on how regulations kill economic growth is pure baloney. If anything, perhaps the authors are alluding to how the historical legal-institutional framework of the American economy has contributed to the consolidation of markets and secure property rights. No one argues against such a regulatory framework. Nope. Business leaders and entrepreneurs are now responding to the Trump administration's incentives and market signals for an expansionary business environment. Think of the opposite in the previous administration: Obama, "So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them, because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted..." Hillary, "We're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business..."
While business leaders are eager for the tax cuts that take effect this year, the newfound confidence was initially inspired by the Trump administration’s regulatory pullback, not so much because deregulation is saving companies money but because the administration has instilled a faith in business executives that new regulations are not coming.
“It’s an overall sense that you’re not going to face any new regulatory fights,” said Granger MacDonald, a home builder in Kerrville, Tex. “We’re not spending more, which is the main thing. We’re not seeing any savings, but we’re not seeing any increases.”
The applause from top executives has been largely reserved for the administration’s economic policy agenda. Many chief executives have been publicly critical of President Trump’s approach to social and cultural issues, including his response to a white nationalist march over the summer in Charlottesville, Va., that turned deadly and his decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord. Two of the business advisory councils that Mr. Trump assembled in the nascent days of his presidency disbanded after executives grew concerned about his public remarks on the violence in Charlottesville.
There is little historical evidence tying regulation levels to growth. Regulatory proponents say, in fact, that those rules can have positive economic effects in the long run, saving companies from violations that could cost them both financially and reputationally. Cost-benefit analyses generally do not look just at the impact of a regulation on a particular business’s bottom line in the coming months, but at the broader impact on consumers, the environment, public health and other factors that can show up over years or decades.
But in the administration and across the business community, there is a perception that years of increased environmental, financial and other regulatory oversight by the Obama administration dampened investment and job creation — and that Mr. Trump’s more hands-off approach has unleashed the “animal spirits” of companies that had hoarded cash after the recession of 2008.
Some businesses will essentially be able to get away with shortcuts that they could not have under a continuation of Obama-era policies. The coal industry, for instance, will not have to worry about a regulation, overturned by Congress and Mr. Trump, that would have protected streams from mining runoff.
Brett Hartl, the government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said the Trump administration might avoid big-splash regulatory rollbacks this year and instead would make it harder for federal agencies to block business expansion.
“It’s not going to be sexy things like ‘We’re killing the Clean Power Plan,’” Mr. Hartl said, referring to the Obama-era rule aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants. “But you can make it systematically harder for an agency to do the right thing.”
Only a handful of the federal government’s reams of rules have actually been killed or slated for elimination since Mr. Trump took office. But the president has declared that rolling back regulations will be a defining theme of his presidency. On his 11th day in office, Mr. Trump signed an executive order “on reducing regulation and controlling regulatory costs,” including the stipulation that any new regulation must be offset by two regulations rolled back.
That intention and its rhetorical and regulatory follow-ons have executives at large and small companies celebrating. And with tax cuts coming and a generally improving economic outlook, both domestically and internationally, economists are revising growth forecasts upward for last year and this year.
Even before it became clear that Republicans would pass a major tax cut, capital spending had risen significantly, climbing at an annualized rate of 6.2 percent during the first three quarters of last year. Surveys of planned spending also show increases...
Chicago man's success shows college dreams are within reach for more people with autism. https://t.co/AGxa5RCoNL (via @vikkiortiz) pic.twitter.com/i4P5hMjCU2
— Chicago Tribune (@chicagotribune) December 15, 2017
It was never a question whether Paris King would go to college.More.
The 23-year-old, who is on the autism spectrum, loved learning — especially history — and he and his parents saw no reason why he shouldn’t continue to do so after high school.
But during the four years King spent earning his bachelor’s degree in history at Roosevelt University, he endured setbacks that would have challenged any student. His father died. King was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He was mugged near his home. And his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer that required aggressive treatment.
So when King walked across the stage and received his diploma Friday at a graduation ceremony, he was cheered on by faculty, family and friends for not only believing that a person with autism is capable of college, but also for overcoming enormous personal challenges to become a role model for people with disabilities.
“Paris never has a bad attitude,” said Danielle Smith, associate director of academic success at Roosevelt University. “He always finds a way to do it.”
King is one of four students with autism who graduated with bachelor’s degrees from Roosevelt this year, a number that has been steadily increasing for the past four years, Smith said.
“I came to college so I can learn more about the world we live in,” King said. “It has been a fun experience, but it has been hard.”
The increase at Roosevelt mirrors a national trend of students with autism enrolling in and finishing college. Because universities cannot, by law, require students to report autism or other disabilities in college applications, exact numbers are hard to pin down. But anecdotally, advocates say the large increase in the number of people diagnosed with autism is prompting more conversations about how to offer opportunities and access to the growing population.
And in turn, more students on the autism spectrum are pursuing bigger education goals.
“It’s really important for every individual to be able to have access to lifelong learning opportunities,” said Vanda Marie Khadem, founder of the Autism Higher Education Foundation, which launched in 2008 with a mission of opening access to education for people on the autism spectrum.
“Parents are demanding it, and students are demanding it, and teachers are recognizing it,” she said.
King, the youngest of three children, grew up in a Navy family that relocated several times when he was young. As a toddler growing up in San Diego, he exhibited speech delays, sensitivity to noise and fixations with hobbies. But after a doctor’s quick evaluation incorrectly determined King was not on the autism spectrum, and instead had an unspecified learning disability, his parents carried on, handling his idiosyncrasies without guidance from doctors or educators, said his mother, Patricia King.
The family moved to the Chicago area by the time Paris King was of school age. Because he struggled to focus and missed social cues, he often was separated into classes for students with behavioral problems. King also became the target of bullies. At 12 years old, he was diagnosed to be on the autism spectrum — a revelation that triggered mixed emotions from his parents, his mother recalled.
“I felt irresponsible, because as we know now, the earlier you’re able to get intervention and get them the help they need, the better they do,” Patricia King said.
But it also motivated Paris King’s parents to advocate for him and his access to educational opportunities from that point on, she added.
“It was definitely in the plan for him to go to college,” she said. “We believed that he had the ability … and the whole plan was to support him as much as he could, to make sure that he had the tools that he needed.”
With encouragement from his teachers at Gary Comer College Prep High School, where he graduated with honors, King applied to Roosevelt University. He and his parents sought out the university’s Academic Success Center, which works with students with disabilities to help them meet the same class and credit requirements expected of all students.
King began meeting twice a week for an hour with Smith, of the academic center, who was impressed with the way he tackled difficult assignments, from term papers on ancient African tribes to readings on renewable energy. King takes longer to focus and get his thoughts onto paper than some of his classmates, but he never lets his challenges stifle him, Smith said.
