Society's Child

The myth of American meritocracy

Rajan Menon
The Nation
Tue, 02 Apr 2019 11:10 UTC

© Reuters / Jonathan Drake
Students walk through the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on September 20, 2018.

Despair about the state of our politics pervades the political spectrum, from left to right. One source of it, the narrative of fairness offered in basic civics textbooks - we all have an equal opportunity to succeed if we work hard and play by the rules; citizens can truly shape our politics - no longer rings true to most Americans. Recent surveys indicate that substantial numbers of them believe that the economy and political system are both rigged. They also think that money has an outsize influence on politics. Ninety percent of Democrats hold this view, but so do 80 percent of Republicans. And careful studies confirm what the public believes.

None of this should be surprising given the stark economic inequality that now marks our society. The richest 1 percent of American households currently account for 40 percent of the country's wealth, more than the bottom 90 percent of families possess. Worse yet, the top 0.1 percent has cornered about 20 percent of it, up from 7 percent in the mid-1970s. By contrast, the share of the bottom 90 percent has since then fallen from 35 percent to 25 percent. To put such figures in a personal light, in 2017, three men- Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates - possessed more wealth ($248.5 billion) than the bottom 50 percent of Americans.

Over the last four decades, economic disparities in the United States increased substantially and are now greater than those in other wealthy democracies. The political consequence has been that a tiny minority of extremely wealthy Americans wields disproportionate influence, leaving so many others feeling disempowered.

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University of Kansas chastised for offering course on the 'Angry White Male"

AP
Fri, 05 Apr 2019 11:00 UTC

University of Kansas

A congressman is chastising the University of Kansas for offering a course titled "Angry White Male Studies."

Kansas Republican Rep. Ron Estes was among those turning to social media, lamenting in a tweet that the university has "decided to offer a class that divides the student population."

The school's academic catalog says the course will chart "the rise of the 'angry white male' in America and Britain since the 1950s, exploring the deeper sources of this emotional state."

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Officials find additional software problem in Boeing 737 Max flight control system

Aaron C. Davis, Luz Lazo & Paul Schemm
San Francisco Chronicle
Fri, 05 Apr 2019 10:54 UTC

© Ted S. Warren, AP
In this March 14, 2019, file photo, workers walk next to a Boeing 737 MAX 8 airplane parked at Boeing Field, in Seattle. A published report says pilots of an Ethiopian airliner that crashed followed Boeing’s emergency steps for dealing with a sudden nose-down turn but couldn’t regain control.

Federal aviation regulators have ordered Boeing to fix a second problem with the flight-control system of its grounded 737 Max, the company acknowledged Thursday, as new details emerged that pilots of two planes could not counteract a malfunction of the system using the company's recommended procedures.

The pilots of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 performed all the procedures recommended by Boeing to save their 737 Max 8 aircraft but could not pull it out of a flight-system-induced dive, a preliminary report into the crash concluded Thursday.

In a brief summary of the much-anticipated preliminary report on the March 10 crash, Ethiopian Transport Minister Dagmawit Moges told reporters that the "aircraft flight-control system" contributed to the plane's difficulty in gaining altitude after it left Addis Ababa airport. It crashed six minutes later, killing all 157 on board.

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Senator Blumenthal: US figure skating needs 'immediate change'

Christine Brennan
USA Today
Fri, 05 Apr 2019 10:28 UTC

© KENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images
Sexual assault allegations against John Coughlin led to SafeSport's finding of a larger culture in U.S. Figure Skating.

U.S. Figure Skating must make ''immediate change'' in the wake of the U.S. Center for SafeSport's chilling assessment that the national governing body has a culture of sexual abuse that has gone "unchecked for too long," Senator Richard Blumenthal told USA TODAY Sports in an email Tuesday evening.

"I am appalled that no one in authority appears to understand the lessons of the horrific failures that enabled Larry Nassar's abuse of young gymnasts for almost 30 years," wrote Blumenthal, D-Conn., the ranking member of the Senate subcommittee investigating the Olympic sexual abuse scandal.

On March 4, SafeSport announced that in the course of its work on sexual misconduct allegations against the late national pairs champion John Coughlin - who took his own life Jan. 18, one day after he received an interim suspension from SafeSport - it discovered "a culture in figure skating that allowed grooming and abuse to go unchecked for too long."

Person who claimed to be child missing for eight years is really Ohio convict

Reuters
Fri, 05 Apr 2019 01:33 UTC

Timmothy Pitzen, age 5 (L) - age-progressed (R)

The person who claimed to be Illinois teen Timmothy Pitzen, who went missing eight years ago, is a grown man with a criminal record, according to the FBI and state records.

Brian Michael Rini, 23, told police in the Kentucky town of Newport that he had escaped kidnappers and was Timmothy, who would now be 14 years old, briefly raising hope the long-lost boy had been found, FBI spokesman Todd Lindgren said.

Timmothy was last seen after his mother pulled him out of school in Aurora, Illinois, a far-west suburb of Chicago, and then committed suicide.

Lindgren, of the agency's Cincinnati bureau, said on Thursday that DNA tests conducted at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital showed that the person who claimed to be Timmothy was in fact Rini.

Burnt body of British missionary and activist against oil companies in the Amazon found in Peru

teleSUR
Wed, 03 Apr 2019 21:56 UTC

Paul McAuley, a British environmental activist and missionary was found dead in Peru. He used to fight against oil companies' invasion in the Amazon.

The burnt body of Paul McAuley, a 71-year old British environmental activist and Catholic missionary, was found in the Amazon city of Iquitos on Tuesday.

His body was found in a shelter house he founded for Indigenous students, "La Salle," located in the district of Bethlehem (Iquitos). Some students informed the police after finding the body.

Authorities are questioning six Indigenous men who lived in the hostel.

McAuley was a Catholic brother of the De La Salle teaching order. He moved to Peru in 2000 to support the Indigenous activists and set up an association Red Ambiental Loretana.

India disputes Pakistani army's claim it killed seven Indian soldiers in clash

Aamir Latif, Zahid Rafiq
Anadolu Agency
Wed, 03 Apr 2019 00:00 UTC

Pakistan's army Tuesday claimed it had killed seven Indian soldiers in a fresh clash along the disputed Kashmir border, a claim rejected by New Delhi.

In a statement, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the Pakistani army's media wing, accused Indian border guards of rising cease-fire violations during the last 48-72 hours along the Line of Control (LoC), a de facto border that divides the disputed Himalayan valley between the two countries.

"Pakistan's Army is responding befittingly, which has caused heavy damage on the Indian side. The exchange of fire has damaged many Indian posts, [and] killed 7 Indian soldiers while 19 [were] injured," the statement claimed. Three Pakistani soldiers were also killed in the clash, the ISPR said.

Lt. Col. Devender Anand, Indian Defense Ministry spokesman, however, said that an Indian border officer and two civilians, including a 5-year-old girl, were killed on Monday in the clash, which occurred after a break of only a couple of weeks. At least 18 others, including four armed forces personnel, were also wounded, Anand told reporters.

Defense lawyers say the 'only possible conclusion' from gov't allegations is that Chelsea Manning was illegally spied on

Colin Kalmbacher
Law and Crime
Tue, 02 Apr 2019 19:30 UTC

Attorneys for Chelsea Manning believe the government has recently conducted illegal surveillance operations against their client.

The former U.S. Army intelligence analyst who served 7 years of a 35-year prison sentence after leaking thousands of documents to WikiLeaks was arrested again in early March after refusing to testify in front of a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia.

On Monday, Manning's legal team filed a motion to secure her release from jail pending an appeal filed with the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals last week. The appeal seeks to overturn the contempt finding issued by U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton three weeks ago.

The appeal notes Manning's belief that an unlawful surveillance operation was recently run against her by federal agents:

The government's allegation that she made statements inconsistent with her court-martial testimony leads Ms. Manning and counsel to believe that she has been and is subject to illegal electronic surveillance. The only possible conclusion is that the government has intercepted, misunderstood, and misattributed electronic communications. Ms. Manning firmly denies that her prior testimony was false.

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RT reports: Locals slam Macron's empty promises on the environment, French city plagued by pollution

RT
Wed, 03 Apr 2019 08:23 UTC

Emmanuel Macron is known as an advocate of combating pollution globally, but did he succeed in doing so in France? RT visited one of Europe's largest industrial zones, where noxious fumes are putting people's lives at risk.

Fos-sur-Mer looks like an idyllic seaside city in southern France, but it accommodates a sizeable port and industrial facilities, including oil refineries, chemical factories and steel plants. Day and night, all of these are releasing toxic fumes into the air, RT's Charlotte Dubenskij reported.

Residents claim that these compounds are having a devastating effect on their health, with the number of cancer, diabetes and asthma patients higher than the national average. "The main problem comes from the industrial port area which emits ultrafine particles that get into our lungs and blood streams," said Daniel Moutet, president of a local environmental group.

Moutet, who has diabetes, explained that the high rate of diseases could have been lower if noxious waste was disposed of properly by Fos-sur-Mer factories. "Just 50km from here, none of this is happening, so this is a local problem," he added.

Russian sovereign bonds selling like hotcakes as demand breaks all-time record

RT
Thu, 04 Apr 2019 18:28 UTC

Despite the imminent threat of US sanctions targeting Russia's financial sector, the country's ruble-denominated government bonds are selling at record pace.

Following the results of two auction sessions, the Russian Ministry of Finance raised 83 billion rubles ($1.26 billion). However, the figure failed to reach the 91.4 billion rubles reached on March 13, when demand for Russia's ruble-denominated domestic OFZs reportedly hit an all-time high.

On Wednesday, total bids received from investors for the bonds amounted to 145 billion rubles ($2.2 billion), more than half as much as the Finance Ministry raised a week ago, and 800 million rubles more than investors purchased on average during abnormally active sessions during mid-March.

The share of foreigners investing in Russia's sovereign debt is back to 30 percent, with the Finance Ministry reportedly planning to increase the number of bonds on offer this year and even double the overall year-on-year issues.

If you read the linked white house statement try not to puke.

sbc

Let's go, Brandon! Fucking asswipe, worthless, POS. Fraud! Argh! 😤

slbeaudry

I don't think this new requirement has undergone proper public review. There are procedures codified for this sort of thing. If some sort of...

Buffalo_Ken

First it will be 100 employees,then 50, then one. Masses are collectively powerful against the intolerant vocal minority and it is time to wipe...

Bezel Bub

I most certainly would not park my arse on a plane full of vaccinated people and have them infect me with their mutated virus. Whilst my...

Winternights3

Society's Child

The myth of American meritocracy

University of Kansas chastised for offering course on the 'Angry White Male"

Officials find additional software problem in Boeing 737 Max flight control system

Senator Blumenthal: US figure skating needs 'immediate change'

Person who claimed to be child missing for eight years is really Ohio convict

Burnt body of British missionary and activist against oil companies in the Amazon found in Peru

India disputes Pakistani army's claim it killed seven Indian soldiers in clash

Defense lawyers say the 'only possible conclusion' from gov't allegations is that Chelsea Manning was illegally spied on

RT reports: Locals slam Macron's empty promises on the environment, French city plagued by pollution

Russian sovereign bonds selling like hotcakes as demand breaks all-time record

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