| | | | Following today's shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise and four others by a man who strongly supported Bernie Sanders and opposed President Donald Trump, the line between violent political rhetoric and violent action must be closely examined, writes Peter Beinart in the Atlantic.
"At a time when America's president, with widespread Republican support, dehumanizes some of the most vulnerable people in the country, how do progressives express their moral fury without embracing a dehumanizing language of their own?" Beinart asks. "Before Wednesday, many liberals may not have considered that an urgent question. Now they have no excuse."
| | A Decline in European Populism? | | FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver has tracked a fall in support for right-wing populist parties in Europe since Trump's election:
"In the Netherlands, France and the U.K., right-wing parties faded down the stretch run of their campaigns and then further underperformed their polls on election day," Silver writes. "The right-wing Alternative for Germany has also faded in polls of the German federal election, which will be contested in September."
"[T]here's been another pattern in who gains or loses support: The warmer a candidate's relationship with Trump, the worse he or she has tended to do," Silver points out.
| | | There's an easy solution, Farhad Manjoo suggests in the New York Times. It's on us:
"You gasp with each new report on Uber's toxicity," Manjoo writes. "On Tuesday, there was the harassment and discrimination documented in an endless list of internal recommendations by Eric H. Holder Jr., the former attorney general, who was hired to peer into Uber's ugly depths. Then, while presenting the report to employees, an Uber board member made a sexist remark."
"Yet if you're like many people, in a day or two you'll shrug, pull out your phone and call up an Uber anyway. You have a meeting across town and the car isn't driving itself, at least not yet.
"Don't do it — at least not without considering the full weight of your decision, and the many alternatives you might turn to instead. Try Lyft. Use a taxi, a bus or a train… To encourage a better Uber, it's time to play the only card you've got: If it backslides or otherwise fails to live up to the promises it's making now, stop using Uber."
-- Political correctness isn't the answer, argues Leonid Bershidsky in Bloomberg View: "If the company's business strategy remains the same -- growing the business at a breakneck pace to dominate every market -- then it's a mistake to reconsider the company's culture as radically as Uber appears poised to do with all the expensive consultants it's been hiring," Bershidky writes. "Replacing a focus on achievement at any price with more meetings, meditation and new-age rhetoric while still trying to be aggressive can only lead to cognitive dissonance, flagging employee morale and more painful staff departures."
"Uber is tearing itself apart before it decides where it's going as a business. That's putting the horse ahead of the cart; culture change should be organic and constructive, and a highly public political correctness show definitely isn't."
| | Brits Seek Salvation Abroad | | The number of U.K. citizens seeking citizenship abroad has spiked, Jennifer Brown points out in Quartz:
"Nearly 2,900 British citizens were naturalized in Germany in 2016, a hefty 361% rise on the year before. And since it takes several months to complete the application process, Brits who applied after the Brexit referendum last June may not get their passports until this year, suggesting another big jump in naturalizations in 2017," Brown writes.
"Other European countries have also seen a rise in applications from British citizens, including France and Italy. Applications for Irish passports from mainland Britain are up 60% so far this year, following a 40% rise last year, to around 65,000 submissions."
| | Putin "Cannot Feel
Completely Secure" | | Though "far from a victory," a "new wave" of anti-corruption protests in Russia, including those on Monday, aren't a great sign for Putin, argues Mikhail Fishman in the Moscow Times.
"In the last few months, [Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny] has taken a quantum leap, establishing himself as the only true and energetic opponent of Putin in Russian politics," Fishman writes. "Treated as an outcast by the establishment and totally banned from Russian national television, Navalny has nonetheless achieved nationwide recognizability."
"[W]ith mass protests becoming Russia's political reality again, the president cannot feel completely secure. These rallies — and their spread across the country — show that, for millions of young Russians, there is something wrong with the political system."
| | Where's Trump on Interest Rates? | | Ahead of today's decision by the Federal Reserve to raise its key interest rate a quarter point, one notable voice failed to weigh in, Matthew Zeitlin points out in BuzzFeed News.
"The Fed's agenda of hiking interest rates to curb inflation at low levels of unemployment have escaped critique or analysis by President Trump, who has been willing to expound publicly on many other topics that have generally been considered off limits for the president," Zeitlin writes.
"While staying mum on monetary policy decisions is in keeping with traditions of Federal Reserve independence, it is remarkable considering how frequently Trump trumpets job creation, the low unemployment rate, and growth in the stock market, all of which can be affected by Federal Reserve policy."
| | | | | | |
No comments:
Post a Comment