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Anyhow I've heard of how crazy a few fandom folks can get, so this doesn't surprise me too much. If anything I should probably be thankful that the cons I've been to have been run smoothly and professionally.
fanvoterbase, thoughunfortunately they aren't numerous enough to give him that 5%.1. http://mcimaps.com/congress_rankings/
A rundown of the geography, political leanings, past election results, and prominent candidates in each of Florida's 27 congressional districts, and making some light predictions of outcomes.
2. https://www.tcpalm.com/story/opinion/columnists/gil-smart/2018/05/08/could-metoo-take-down-everglades-foundation/589512002/
This is a Treasure Coast Newspapers editorial column. Summary:
My opinion: What about simply keeping the money and taking Jones off the board of the Everglades Foundation? Seems like the most obvious compromise solution.
Harvey Weinstein did some extremely terrible things, but it is beyond unfair to try and make sure somebody has no friends at all. Especially when that involves threatening said friends.
I'm not sure exactly what this guy did aside from reassuring a friend (a terrible friend). The controversy is bad PR, so it's totally logical he step down, but this still feels like a lot of misplaced anger. He never enabled Harvey Weinstein's actions, and neither did those two other guys. There should be a lot more board members and, more importantly, others who actually knew about the things Harvey did, where's the anger towards them?
What's next? Boycotting Marchesa because Georgina Chapman committed the terrible crime of finding out her husband was the worst?
Oh. um. okay.
Well, that was almost a good thing.
My drinking water is still screwed if he bombs Mar-a-Lago though.
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-walmart-crime/
First, enjoy this video about problems in the credit reporting and background check industries, courtesy of John Oliver's show Last Week Tonight.
...now, now that you've watched it, remember that they talked about the CFPB, and that they had someone who worked for the government interviewed on there talking about how unprepared they are to manage the industry and rein in everything that's wrong with it, and look at the timestamp. April 10, 2016.
The horrifying thing is when you realize there's probably been no progress, and quite possibly there's been regress, in the oversight of these industries, in the past two years.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/6/1/17417042/niall-ferguson-stanford-emails
Among them:
replies:
TL;DR Republicans got in charge of redistricting by winning state-level posts in 2009 and 2010, in the "Tea Party" backlash against Obama, while Kaine got elected senator in 2012 which was a reasonably good year for Democrats and Warner got elected senator in 2008 which was a very good year for Democrats then barely survived re-election in 2014.
1. Political partisanship has gradually undergone changes in the state. Virginia had been a "red state" (i.e. Republican-leaning) at the presidential level, going for the R candidate from 1964 to 2004, but in recent years it's transitioned to being a "purple" or "swing" state that, at this point in history, may even lean slightly "blue" (as in Democratic-leaning). A significant factor influencing this is the growth of Northern Virginia, which is basically like a giant suburb of Washington DC, containing all manner of workers and industries relating to the federal government. This means a number of higher-education and typically higher-income people, as well as a smaller contingent of immigrants of racial minorities who may have found political asylum here at some point (e.g. I noticed there's a decent number of Vietnamese-Americans). Of course, this isn't the only change/grow; there's also a big navy base in southeast Virginia which I think has had some growth, and in general there's been growth on the eastern side of the state, on the coast. Meanwhile, western parts of Virginia, especially southwest Virginia in the Appalachian Mountains has seen a gradual decrease in population, between the mechanization of and overall decline of the coal industry. Recent political partisanship "realignments" have seen wealthier higher-ed types move toward the Democratic Party (as the Republicans increasingly reject everything from social diversity to scientific reason), while down-on-their-luck rural areas experiencing economic stagnation have trended toward the Republican Party (which has sought to appeal to them by inflaming cultural tensions).
2. Republicans controlled redistricting following the 2010 census. The House delegation is skewed heavily Republican because when the redistricting process for the state's legislative districts rolled around, following the 2010 census, the Republicans were in control. So they could (and did) do gerrymandering to make the districts favor them, such as packing African-American voters (who are overwhelmingly Democratic) into one district in southeast Virginia in order to make nearby districts more Republican-leaning. There was a lawsuit over this that got resolved by some new district lines before the 2016 election, but other district lines still favor the Republicans. (As does the tendency for Dem-leaning voters to be geographically concentrated in cities.) The 2010 elections were famously bad for Democrats -- they lost over 60 seats in the U.S. House, as well as countless more in state legislatures, which are arguably the more important seats because they get to enact state policies, such as...redistricting. (Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) was also elected in 2009. Virginia's governorship is elected on odd years following presidential election years, and governors may not serve consecutive terms.)
3. Virginia's governor and other statewide elected posts were last elected in 2017. This is of course the era of backlash against Trump, as well as against the killing of an anti-racism protester in the city of Charlottesville.
4. Virginia's two U.S. senators are:
* junior senator: former governor Tim Kaine (D), first elected in 2012 (when Obama was re-elected); he defeated former U.S. senator George Allen (R), who had earlier been unseated in 2006 (which you may recall is when there was a backlash against George W. Bush) by Jim Webb (D), Kaine's immediate predecessor. One notable catalyst for Allen's defeat was his identifying an Indian-American young man (who had been following and videotaping the Allen campaign's events) as "macaca". (He boastfully welcomed said young man to "real Virginia", by which he basically meant stereotypical "small-town America", but clearly it was Allen who did not realize that Virginia itself had changed.) Kaine will stand for re-election this year.
* senior senator: former governor Mark Warner (D), first elected in 2008 (when Obama was first elected). Warner was elected governor in 2001 (and was followed by Kaine), and left office with very high approval ratings, and he got elected governor in 2008 by a huge margin, being able to win much support both from areas transitioning toward the Democrats (such as northern Virginia) as well as more Republican rural areas. However, his re-election in 2014 was a different story -- Warner barely won a surprisingly close contest, losing support in many rural areas he had won before, in a year that was nationally quite favorable to the Republicans. Warner will stand for re-election again in 2020.
I mean, I guessed there was some gerrymandering in there, but this is genuinely fascinating all around.
Then again if we talk about the US (and a good chunk of Europe's*) policy, the government seems to go about it in a "Catch and maybe deport but mostly keep in places that are Not Prisons or Totally Not Refugee Camps".
There's been this trend lately to portray African immigrants to Europe as people who have stuff going for them (at least that's what I pick up from stuff that airs on CNN and their ilk) and options aside from "I guess I could be content being just slightly above the poverty line" or "Maybe the local warlords will calm down for some unknown reason?"
They regularly fail to mention how the biggest refugee camps are in Africa, and how extremely desperate people are capable of putting together a gigantic number of loans (I mean, if you stay, you'll actually have to come up with ridiculously fast ways of repaying those sorts of debts, whilst if you leave you have the prospect of being able to pay them back by being a porter in a backwater hospital in a random corner of Europe).
Anyways, this is mostly the human cost and not policy. I mean, you specifically are a skilled worker who should have a pretty easy way in. But, as far as I know, actually trying to be a proper immigrant from anywhere that isn't also a Perfect Country involves so many sunk cost fees and labyrinths of questioning that I am beyond respectful of the people who currently manage to pull it off.
So yeah, the systems are pretty broken, and it should really be the governments in question who try to fix that stuff and make them easier, but they really don't want to (probably entirely because of some sort of implicit racism that I can't really tackle properly as I'm not a social studies major).
*I used to really want to move to Italy, or Europe in general, but over the last few years I've become oddly concerned about extreme racism. Probably because everywhere is suddenly more racist.
Depending on where you go, there may be non-governmental organizations in your prospective new country that can help you through the process.
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Local news:
http://miami.cbslocal.com/2018/06/12/rick-scott-rookie-mistake-cost-millions/
TL;DR Florida governor Rick Scott (R), currently running for U.S. Senate, overcharged taxpayers by at least $28 million, by what seems damn like intentionally circumventing existing debris removal contracts for cleanup after Hurricane-Irma, and going with a much more expensive pair of companies.
A couple choice quotes:
The article mentions that MCM and Community Asphalt "are major campaign contributors to the Republican Party of Florida, as well as Governor Scott." Meanwhile (and not mentioned), AshBritt's CEO, Randy Perkins, ran for Congress in 2016 as a Democrat, in the 18th district (which is further up Florida's east coast -- St. Lucie, Martin, and Palm Beach counties), so I wonder if there was some degree of political influence in this decision.
(MCM, meanwhile, is also "under scrutiny" for its role in the recent collapse of a brand-new pedestrian bridge at Florida International University in Miami.)
Well, yeah, I wasn't going to go anywhere I didn't know the details of, regardless of my opinions on the matter.
This is said quite often, I think: Are these companies actively trying to play the part of terrible corrupt evil megacorp?
Also: Alex visits the States
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mRzpV95oMsIBPzXa_1v9vkITBa99_iDP/view
...no comment.