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ej-sblog · 2 years

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Why Some Life Insurance Premiums Are Skyrocketing

Like clockwork, Sara and James Cook paid $452 a month for life insurance. That is, until a letter arrived last year telling the elderly Georgia couple the premiums on the policy they’d had for 25 years were rising sharply.

They held a universal life policy, a popular type that includes an investment account that accumulates cash when interest rates are high. But with rates at historic lows, it was being drained — quickly.

When the Cooks’ daughter, Jo Ann Sparks, asked an expert to explain her options, she recalls: “He said to me, ‘Please don’t take this the wrong way and, not to be morbid, but your mother needs to die.’”

Around the world, life insurers are wrestling with existential questions. Interest rates are near zero, and in some places have turned negative — unprecedented until recent years. It is contributing to a crisis moment for a business once considered a bedrock of financial stability and an industry that supports the retirement of millions.

In particular, companies that sell policies that run for decades, like life and long-term care insurance, face a twofold challenge: how to fund policies that were sold back when their actuaries couldn’t envision a world of interest rates below 8 percent, and what to sell now, when those same actuaries can’t envision an appreciable rise in rates anytime soon.

People who bought universal life policies in the 1980s and 1990s — some of which guaranteed annual returns of 4 percent or more — are seeing their premiums soar.

It has precipitated about a dozen lawsuits against insurers, some seeking class-action status. Many of the lawsuits claim that the insurers are raising their rates to force people to drop their policies entirely, often when they are too old to buy replacements. A canceled policy means an insurer gets to keep years of premiums without facing a future death-benefit payout.

Low interest rates are a big part of this new pressure on insurers; their earnings are being squeezed. But in recent years insurers have also undertaken various financial maneuvers to pay dividends to their shareholders despite their low earnings. Now, some say, policyholders like the Cooks are having to pay for that.

While the Federal Reserve bumped up short-term interest rates late last year, yields in the bond market continue to remain at depressed levels. In recent weeks, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note slid to a record low of 1.358 percent.

Very low interest rates cut both ways. They are good for home buyers and corporate borrowers, who can get cheap loans.

But for life insurers — where more than three-quarters of the industry’s $6.4 trillion in invested assets are parked in bonds — low rates like these can be calamitous.

If, say, an 8 percent bond from the 1990s matures, the cash must be reinvested in something new. But now, a similar bond may pay only 2 percent. The insurance policy sold to a customer back in the 1990s guaranteed a 4 percent return.

It adds up to a vexing math problem: how to back a promise of 4 percent in a 2-percent-or-less world.

The predicament crosses borders. This year, the head of Allianz of Germany, the largest insurer in Europe, called the move by the European Central Bank to slash rates to zero “a catastrophe.”

And last year, several Japanese life insurers acquired American insurers. But that says more about the weakness in Japan than it does about the strength of the American insurers. Japan, like Germany, now has negative interest rates — so interest rates in the United States are considered high.

In the United States, in the hope of staving off a reckoning, some insurers have stopped selling certain products, and have raised what policyholders must pay for some existing policies.

And they have moved into riskier investments in search of higher returns. Last year, MetLife, the nation’s largest insurer, reported a 46 percent drop in its fourth-quarter profits, not because of low interest rates but because of poor performance in the company’s hedge fund and private equity investments. Although performance has improved somewhat, MetLife now says it will drop most hedge fund investments.

Juggling to Pay Dividends

Universal life insurance was invented in the 1970s as an alternative to popular, lower-cost term life insurance. A term life policyholder buys coverage that expires at the end of a term, usually one to 30 years.

Universal policies typically cost more, but the coverage never expires and the buyer gets both a fixed death benefit and a “cash value” account, designed to earn tax-exempt interest. Money in the account can be used to help pay the policy’s premiums. But there is a risk: If the account gets used up paying those costs, the policy can lapse and coverage ends.

Universal life insurance policies sold today do not guarantee returns of 4 percent or more. Instead, many policies are loosely tied to the growth of the stock market.

Still, in the United States, some doomsayers warn that big trouble is ahead. “The word ‘insolvency’ hasn’t been said very loudly, but certainly on the street people are concerned about insurance companies and their promises and the ways they are trying to avoid keeping their promises,” said J. Robert Hunter, a former Texas insurance commissioner who is now the director of insurance for the Consumer Federation of America, an advocacy group.

Others dispute such alarmist sentiments. They argue that the life insurance industry today is already vastly different from the industry your grandfather knew. The companies, they say, are better capitalized than they have been in a decade, and the big ones have gone into new lines of business, offering a plethora of insurance and asset management products and services.

“We don’t have a doom-and-gloom scenario for the industry,” said Laura Bazer, a senior credit officer at the ratings agency Moody’s Investors Service.

But in recent years, even as low interest rates ate into the industry’s profits, some companies engaged in complex financial maneuvers that enabled them to pay hefty shareholder dividends. Normally, life insurers cannot pay shareholder dividends unless their balance sheets are flush. These maneuvers involve shifting a company’s future obligations to policyholders into special financial vehicles that do not appear on the insurer’s balance sheets.

Many of the moves were made with the blessing of state regulators who, in some cases, waived accounting rules or also approved the dividends.

For instance, one British company told investors in 2011 that it used techniques like these to navigate around “redundant” American insurance regulations requiring it to hold “excess” reserves for future claims. The firm’s American subsidiary, Banner Life Insurance, then sent the parent company “extraordinary dividends” totaling $785 million.

But now some Banner policyholders are being told their monthly payments must rise as much as sixfold, prompting a lawsuit that accuses Banner of raiding customers’ accounts to pay the dividends.

Banner said in court filings that the Maryland Insurance Administration had reviewed and approved the dividends, as well as the calculations justifying them.

In a similar vein, this spring, Axa Equitable Life Insurance raised the monthly payments on about 1,700 universal life policyholders who were over 70 and whose policies had a face value of over $1 million.

Axa said the increase was necessary because its customers were dying sooner than it expected.

Some policyholders question that argument, saying the increases were aimed at improving Axa’s bottom line. Axa, which has been increasing its dividend payouts for shareholders, projects that the premium increases will raise its profits by approximately $500 million, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan this year by a policyholder.

In its court filings, Axa included a letter from the New York State Department of Financial Services that found the proposed increase for the small group of policyholders to be “unobjectionable” and that the higher charges did “not reflect an increase in your profit goals.” In a statement, Jennifer Recine, an Axa spokeswoman, said the company believed that the lawsuit had no merit.

Having to Walk Away

Similar problems are playing out in the long-term care insurance business, which has sold policies designed to pay for nursing homes, assisted-living facilities and home health. Today, however, long-term care insurers face accusations of badly underpricing their policies as costs skyrocket. Many have either left the industry or severely reduced benefits. The remaining players, contending with low interest rates, are getting state regulators across the country to approve big premium increases.

Twelve years ago, Louann Sherbach, of Amityville, N.Y., bought a long-term care policy from Genworth. “I was assured when I purchased the policy, even though the premium was high for me at $2,300 a year, that the premium would not increase,” said Mrs. Sherbach, 65, who recently retired as an administrative director for a day care center.

About a month ago, the rate increased to $3,700. “That’s outrageous! I can’t afford that,” she said.

After paying $27,000 in premiums over the years, Mrs. Sherbach dropped the policy, believing she was walking away empty-handed. “I feel like they mismanaged my money to pay other people’s claims and now I have nothing,” she said.

But after being asked about Mrs. Sherbach’s situation, a spokeswoman for Genworth said the company was voluntarily giving customers like Mrs. Sherbach who canceled their policies new coverage, reflecting the premiums already paid.

“If a policyholder had paid $27,000 in premiums and did not have any claims,” wrote Julie Westermann, a spokeswoman for Genworth, in an email, then that customer “would have a maximum available benefit of $27,000.”

For Ms. Sparks — whose elderly parents, the Cooks, faced the near doubling of their life insurance bill — the insurance company’s strategy was clear: persuade her parents to simply walk away from the policy, despite a quarter-century of paying in.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that they were trying to get us to drop the policy,” Ms. Sparks said.

She said the insurer, Transamerica Life Insurance, sent the family charts showing the financial damage her parents would suffer if her mother lived a few more years. The charts showed that keeping the policy at the higher monthly payments “would have wiped them out for everything they had,” Ms. Sparks said.

In recent years, Transamerica has used a series of complex financial transactions to shift a large share of its obligations to policyholders into off-balance-sheet vehicles. That allowed it to send about $2 billion in “extraordinary dividends” to its corporate parent in the Netherlands, Aegon.

That left a hole in Transamerica’s finances, which policyholders like the Cooks are now being forced to fill, according to one of several federal lawsuits filed against the insurer seeking class-action status. Lawyers in those cases are seeking an injunction to block the rate increase.

Transamerica said it was “in full compliance with its contractual obligations, and intends to contest vigorously the recently filed litigation.”

After months of considering their options, the Cooks ultimately decided to drop their life policy, walking away from the $55,000 that they had spent on it over the last 25 years, Ms. Sparks said. They took the remaining cash in the account, which totaled $4,100.

CREDITS: Julie Creswell and Mary Williams Walsh

DATE: Aug. 13, 2016

SOURCE: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/14/business/why-some-life-insurance-premiums-are-skyrocketing.html

#AreteAutomation #LifeHealthAdvisors #LifeInsurance #LifeInsurancePolicy #FinancialAdvisors #Knowledge #BestForHealth #HealthIsWealth #Life

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robertreich · 3 years

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7 Ways 2020 Exposed America

If America learns nothing else from these dark times, here are 7 lessons it should take away from 2020:

1. Workers keep America going, not billionaires.

American workers have been forced to put their lives on the line to provide essential services even as their employers failed to provide them with adequate protective gear, hazard pay, or notice of when COVID had infected their workplaces. Meanwhile, America’s 651 billionaires – whose net worth has grown by over $1 trillion since the start of the pandemic -- retreated to their mansions, yachts and estates.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos sheltered in his 165,000-acre West Texas ranch while Amazon’s warehouse workers toiled in close proximity to each other, often without adequate masks, gloves, or sanitizers. The company offered but then soon scrapped a $2 an hour hazard pay increase for warehouse workers, even as Bezos’ wealth jumped by a staggering $70 billion since March, putting his estimated net worth at roughly $186 billion as the year came to an end. 2. Systemic racism is literally killing Black and Latino Americans.

Black and Latino Americans account for almost 40 percent of coronavirus deaths so far, despite comprising less than a quarter of the population. As they’ve borne the brunt of this pandemic, they’ve been forced to fight for their humanity in another regard — taking to the streets across the country to protest decades of unjust police killings of their community members, only to be met with more police violence.

Among Native American communities, the coronavirus figures are even more horrifying. The Navajo Nation has had a higher per-capita infection rate than any state but can’t adequately care for the sick, thanks to years of federal underfunding and neglect of its healthcare system.

Decades of segregated housing, pollution, lack of access to medical care, and poverty have left communities of color vulnerable to the worst of this virus, and the worst of America.

3. If we can afford to bail out corporations and Wall Street, we sure as hell can afford to help people.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell continues to insist we can’t “afford” $2,000 COVID survival checks for Americans. But the latest coronavirus relief legislation doled out over $220 billion to powerful business interests that could instead have been used to help struggling working families.

Another way of looking at it: The total cost of providing those $2,000 checks ($465 billion) is less than half the amount America’s 651 billionaires added to their wealth during the pandemic ($1 trillion).

4. Health care must be made a right in America.

Even before the pandemic, an estimated 28 million Americans lacked health insurance. After it struck, an additional 15 million lost employer-provided coverage because they lost their jobs. Without insurance, a hospital stay to treat COVID-19 cost as much as $73,000. Remember this the next time you hear pundits saying Medicare for All is too radical.

5. Our social safety nets are woefully broken.

No other advanced nation was as unprepared for the pandemic as was the United States. Our unemployment insurance system is over 80 years old, designed for a different America. We’re one of the few countries in the world that doesn’t provide all workers some form of paid sick leave.

Other industrialized nations kept their unemployment rates low by guaranteeing paychecks during the pandemic. But Americans who filed for unemployment benefits often got nothing or received them weeks or months late. Under new legislation they get just $300 a week of extra benefits to tide them over.

6. The Electoral College must be abolished

Biden won 7 million more popular votes than Trump. But Biden’s margin in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin totaled just 45,000. Had Trump won these three states instead, he would have gained 37 more electoral votes, tying Biden in the electoral college. Under the Constitution, this would have pushed the election to the House of Representatives, with each state delegation getting just one vote. Even though Democrats have a majority in the House, more state delegations have Republican majorities. Trump would have been reelected.

The gap between the popular and electoral college vote continues to widen. The Electoral College is an increasingly dangerous anachronism.

7. Government matters.

For decades, conservatives have told us that government is the problem and that we should let the free market run its course. Rubbish. If nothing else, 2020 has shown that the unfettered free market won’t save us. After 40 years of Reaganism, it’s never been clearer: Government is in fact necessary to protect the public.

It’s tragic that it took a pandemic, near-record unemployment, millions of people taking to the streets, and a near-calamitous election for many to grasp how broken, racist, and backwards our system really is. Biggest lesson of all: It must be fixed.

#2020

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rjzimmerman · 3 years

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Excerpt from this Op-Ed from the New York Times:

African-American labor built much of this country’s agriculture, a prime source of the nation’s early wealth. In the years since the end of slavery, Black Americans have been largely left out of federal land giveaways, loans and farm improvement programs. They have been driven off their farms through a combination of terror and mistreatment by the federal government, resulting in debt, foreclosures and impoverishment.

So a program that would pay off United States Department of Agriculture-guaranteed and direct farm loans and associated tax liabilities of Black, Indigenous, Hispanic and other farmers of color would not only be surprising, it would be historic. And yet it looks as though that may happen: Such a measure is included in the pandemic relief package wending its way through Congress.

In the last 100 years, the number of Black-run farms has plummeted by a calamitous 96 percent, from close to a million (one in seven) of all American farms to around 35,000 (or about one in 50). The beneficiaries of that Black land loss? White farmers. By 1999, 98 percent of all agricultural land was owned by white people.

After the election, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey introduced the wide-ranging Justice for Black Farmers Act. The bill, which was reintroduced in February, would have paid off the U.S.D.A. debt of some Black farmers, and extends to Black farmers more of the benefits of the Homestead and Land-Grant College Acts of 1862. Those acts distributed land and funded public colleges focusing on agriculture, but by default they were programs for whites only, who were understood to be the “farmers” of the time.

On Jan. 27, the U.S.D.A. announced an immediate moratorium on debt collection and foreclosure for the more than 12,000 farmers who are behind in payments to two programs administered by the U.S.D.A.’s Farm Service Agency — roughly one-fourth of whom are Black or, to use the federally recognized phrase, otherwise “socially disadvantaged.”

Soon thereafter, Senator Raphael Warnock, Democrat of Georgia, introduced (with Mr. Booker, Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan) the Emergency Relief for Farmers of Color Act, which would provide direct relief payments to help socially disadvantaged farmers pay off loan debts. With the active support of the U.S.D.A., Mr. Warnock’s bill, and some provisions of Mr. Booker’s, were then incorporated into the Covid relief bill.

That bill thus now includes $4 billion for direct relief payments that will help farmers of color recover from the pandemic and pay off their U.S.D.A. farm loan debts and related taxes, along with $1 billion to be used in part for addressing the longstanding inequality in access to U.S.D.A. programs.

#Black farmers #farming #agriculture #COVID-19 Economic Relief Bill

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everlearningdad · 3 years

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For the life of me, why are Italy still given an automatic place in the six nations?

They are so far below the standard of the other five it’s both comical and sad to watch. The players must know.

Others have suggested it and it would only be fair to give other countries like Georgia an opportunity to compete.

For Scotland this year, it’s been an up and down tournament. Beating England was quickly tempered by an ill-disciplined loss to Wales and a calamitous finish against the Irish.

It could have been a momentous year. A win over the French would be nice but they pulverised England yesterday so it’s rather unlikely.

It has though, been a good tournament. Here’s to seeing full stadiums next year!

#rugby #rugby union #six nations #scotland #ireland #england #wales rugby #france #Italy

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parabolame · 4 years

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Valdosta Law Firm

The solutions of Valdosta personal injury attorneys are sought when a person declares to have been physically or emotionally wounded due to the oversight or incorrect actions of a third-party. The third-party could be another individual, a government, a firm, corporation, company, college or any other entity. Personal injury attorneys specialize in an area of the law, called Tort law. Tort law consists of non-economic as well as economic injuries to an individual's right, track record and or residential property. It additionally consists of civil actions. These attorneys are enlightened and trained in basic law, as well as in all locations of the regulation, but they typically deal with situations that belong to personal injuries or Tort law. They usually deal with injuries that result from a cars and truck or other vehicle accidents, work relevant injuries, clinical errors, and defective as well as malfunctioning products, drops as well as lots of others that are not provided below.

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Valdosta Personal injury lawyers need to be allowed to exercise in the states in which they work. In order to do so, they have to effectively finish particular bar examinations (different states will certainly have various examinations). In an ironic twist, injury attorneys are also typically called test legal representatives, although their instances seldom get to test. These lawyers choose to reach to a negotiation out of court. It is also weird, as other kinds of legal representatives go to test. If you are considering opening a personal injury case against a third-party, you likewise have to think of employing the services of an attorney. This needs to be done to make certain that not only are your legal rights being secured as an applicant, however likewise that the instance is ruled in your favor by the courts or that you get to a positive out-of-court settlement with the celebration that you want to sue.

All Valdosta lawyers as well as attorneys, including accident lawyers, embark on a moral and professional code of conduct when they qualify, as well as which they need to adhere to for the duration of their careers in the regulation profession. These codes are created and regulated by state bars. The solutions that you can anticipate from a lawyer consist of; submitting legal complaints in your place, representing in court throughout process, give legal guidance to the customers and also potential clients, and also draft lawful documents.

What steps do Valdosta personal injury attorneys take prior to they accept customer cases?

First of all, the injury attorney needs to meet with possible customers in an examination prior to they can represent them. Next, the lawyer will review the individual instances before they identify whether, there is any type of legal basis for them. If the client does have legal ground to depend on, the attorney will begin studying in order to develop a strong case with which he/she will fight for the customer, versus the third-party formerly described.

The utmost objective of a good Valdosta attorney is to win justice in addition to winning the suitable compensation for their customers. The attorney will certainly need to have the ability to make use of every feasible ability as well as piece of expertise that they have in order to win each customer's case. Nonetheless, the attorney will certainly also attempt to prevent taking the situation to the court to be heard by a Judge; so he/she will certainly attempt to reach a settlement with the third-party in the support of their customer. The standard procedures that are gone over above state that the accident attorney, without a doubt all attorneys and attorneys, needs to be loyal to their clients, as well as also value the legal representative customer discretion, in addition to regard the best passions of each client.

If you have actually been deprived or harmed as a result of the neglect of one more individual or company or any other entity, it is an excellent idea to speak with an injury attorney. Tort regulation is the area that a personal injury attorney specializes in and also includes damages, monetary; physical; and also non-economic, to a person's residential property, civil liberties, or reputation.

Injury instances are constantly based on oversight, which occurs when an entity fails to observe a standardized degree of treatment. A few of the typical cases dealt with by a personal injury legal representative include injuries at the office, those triggered by utilizing defective items, clinical malpractices, hazardous direct exposures, birth injuries, wrongful deaths, car mishaps, etc., among numerous others.

Injury is typically accompanied by calamitous pain, monetary disorder, loss of job, special needs, rise of clinical expense, sensations of irritation as well as vulnerability, and so on. An injury attorney will enlighten you on the different legal choices offered, the civil liberties that are available to you as well as suggests of protecting them, sue of compensation in case you are qualified, and also assist you to obtain the payment. Consequently, in case of any kind of injury, it is really essential that you get in touch with an injury attorney quickly.

Personal injury regulations in Valdosta, Georgia, are intricate as well as vary from state to state. Sources of certain injuries likewise total up to criminal acts. In such instances, a separate criminal case is required. A seasoned attorney is educated about the different type of cases and also the linked procedures. The attorney will certainly assist to estimate the worth of your case based upon other comparable cases that have actually been managed and after extensive assessment of the circumstance. Lots of attorneys offer a complimentary initial consultation to the impacted. The scenario and also circumstances concerning each individual instance will be various, and also the injury lawyer will certainly additionally know the essential deadlines that have to be fulfilled in order to preserve the cases for payment.

The personal injury regulation is subject to constant changes and an experienced lawyer can give recommendations and also interpretation of the specifics that associate with the situation. The lawyer will do the needed study that is related to the insurance claim that has been submitted to hold the accountable party lawfully answerable. A lawyer can also pick to resolve such situations equally outside the court of law without tests.

The Valdosta lawyer is bound by lots of duties in serving the customer. They are called for to comply with both specialist as well as ethical regulations established by the bar associations where they are licensed. They are needed to maintain utmost loyalty towards the client and also work in the best rate of interests. Some attorneys focus on only one location of tort law such as automobile mishaps or mesothelioma.

For those impacted, it is very important to choose a personal injury lawyer who charges a practical amount of costs. There are law firms that use the solutions of several such skilled and also well-informed attorneys. The services are provided, nonetheless, are most likely to be a lot more costly than that billed by a solo specialist.

Do a search online for the phrase "injury attorney" or "injury lawyer" as well as you will see thousands of law office. Yet exactly how do you see through those outcomes to conclude that the most excellent accident attorneys are in your location? This short article will certainly allow you to ignore countless us dollars legal representatives are spending for internet search engine advertising strategies and learn who are first-rate injury attorneys.

Amongst the very first points you most definitely have to examine the very first time looking into PI attorney websites is whether the attorney/lawyer handles simply injury instances or do they likewise handle various other sorts of situations too. A multitude of attorneys, specifically those beyond the boundaries of large metropolitan locations, are generally more of the typical legal practitioners as well as look after a little of everything. Just like whatever else nowadays, you are most likely to be much more pleased obtaining an attorney that focuses primarily on mishap injury legislation only.

You don't just need to track down as well as hire an attorney at regulation that solely does accidental injury for a living, you must additionally make sure that law practice is experienced in your actual sort of insurance claim. As far as accident law office enter basic, when you have located an accident attorney that largely deals with PI cases for a living, then you should be alright employing him or her for a cars and truck accident case. This sort of situation is considered the support of most of injury legal representatives.

Most individuals would certainly be clever to narrow down the filter a little bit much more if you have a challenging scenario like clinical malpractice or maybe a product problem claim. If you are dealing with such a law suit, you absolutely ought to try to find, interview, as well as involve an accident lawyer that focuses on these sorts of instances. A great, honest injury attorney that does not do a great deal of these cases will refer you to a Valdosta law practice that does. The last thing a lawyer wants is to be in over their head.

One of the most valuable resource for any lawyer at regulation, and you also, is time. An injury legal representative will certainly require to have the opportunity to provide you the attorney-client support that is called for along with the moment to properly look into as well as supervise your case. There are often 3 or more types of injury attorneys when it pertains to time and also the number of situations they work with at the same time.

Injury lawyers are the individuals that are best able to assist victims as well as acquire compensation arising from mishaps as well as incidents. The targets will benefit most if they seek support from a personal injury lawyer that is experienced in taking care of accident relevant cases. The cost of the solutions that will certainly be given to the target, certainly, will certainly be remunerated by the client. Most of attorneys rate their costs relying on the problem of a specific situation in addition to the intensity of wounds. Generally, preliminary conversation with a personal injury lawyer does not cost anything.

Besides, most of attorneys do not take any type of payment till the settlement has actually been paid to the customer. Most of them prefer to handle their situations on the basis of agreement as well as based on the agreement they take a percentage from the compensation attained by the customer. In contrast, if the customer is defeated in case, they do not require to pay the attorney. It is extremely important for customers to distinguish the difference between fee and cost of a personal injury lawyer. The cost signifies the cost - the quantity that the client needs to pay while filing a suit.

If you become harmed in a mishap and also require immediate financial support, an injury lawyer is the ideal person who can competently represent your grievance in court for an instant as well as appropriate repayment insurance claim. The lawyer can effectively handle an extensive variety of accidents and damages including cars and truck, bus, pedestrian, van and motorcycle problems; surgical problems, fitness care responsibility issues; building and construction spot calamities, as well as others. Yet, if the problem of the instance worsens, like if the victim dies in the mishap, the relative of the sufferers will obtain the payment cash. For that reason, appointing a qualified injury lawyer is certainly the best choice all the same. When the mishap is reported, the insurance corporation panel will certainly begin to look for hints in addition to prospective evidence to provide to their company. For this reason, designating an injury attorney who is experienced at taking care of situations connected to injuries and incidents is very vital.

An accident attorney generally has extensive expertise regarding the comparable cases that have settled. In addition, they can offer crucial analytical data to the sufferer to help them make a smart decision on just how much they ought to seek an insurance claim. The lawyer has a liability to his customer and also ought to usually place an initiative in winning their client's trust as well as confidence because they will look after their welfare and benefits. For that reason, the target ought to always relay the details of their crash to their accident lawyers, even if it is their fault or mistake. The sufferer must not conceal any type of factors from their attorney because what they see as a simple issue might be a crucial factor for the lawyer. Yet, if there is any mistake or error on the part of the target, the attorney should handle it carefully and also ought to not reveal any of the client's tricks under any scenarios. So, the target of a mishap ought to assign a good lawyer as soon as possible as well as needs to have the ability to rely on him or her for the very best feasible outcome.

#Valdosta Law Firm #Injury Attorney Valdosta #Valdosta Georgia #Personal Injury Lawyer Valdosta

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eurosong · 5 years

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How I read tonight’s semi

Cyprus have been given a huge helping hand by being put as show starters. They set the energy and expectations for the casual viewers. Unless it’s calamitous on the night, it’s through.

Montenegro and Finland have been put in a notorious dead zone. There’s little hope for them if we’re being honest.

Poland, Slovenia, Czechia, Hungary, Belarus, Serbia is a major death grouping. I can see all of those songs having vocal supporters and detractors. They’re all relatively strong songs, but I can only see 4 of these 6 going through. My hunch would be Poland and Belarus missing out of these 6, but it all depends on who captures the energy the best after the mini-lull in Cyprus’ wake.

Belgium’s in one of the worst positions it’s been in a long time. Sandwiched between two rather more high-key emotional performances. Still reckon they have a more than 50% chance of qualifying, but they could get forgotten.

Georgia - call me crazy for considering this a contender to squeak through in 9th or 10th, but I think enough folk will respect it, especially with one of the most value-added stagings of the semi.

Australia, Iceland, Estonia, Portugal, Greece, San Marino is another killer bloc of fan favourites mixed with jury faves. I cannot not see Australia or Greece qualifying, and they’ll probably be top 3. I’d be surprised if more than 2 of the other 4 did. My hunch would be with Estonia and San Marino being the ones that don’t make it, but any of these could drop. Iceland and Portugal really depend on both juries (which can often be comprised of rather safe pop lovers) and televoters “getting it” and sadly that’s not a given.

#eurovision #esc #eurovision song contest #esc 2019 #opinion #eurovision 2019

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theliberaltony · 5 years

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

How much can we learn from early primary polls? Back in 2011, FiveThirtyEight Editor-in-chief Nate Silver set out to answer this question and found that early national polling is at least somewhat predictive of who will win the nomination, especially when the results are adjusted for each candidate’s name recognition.

Now, eight years later, FiveThirtyEight has collected more polling data, plus there are two more presidential election cycles — 2012 and 2016 — to look at, so we felt it was time to update the series. In the first two installments, we’re just going to look at what the polls say for competitive presidential primaries for both parties, starting with early primary polls from 1972, which is widely thought of as the start of the modern primary era. This first installment runs through 1996 — analyzing primary polls for seven presidential elections is enough ground to cover in one article — and the next installment will start with the 2000 presidential primaries and run up through the 2016 presidential primaries.

As for how this series we will work, we took all surveys from the calendar year before each election — so for the 2016 presidential primaries, that means all polls from 2015 — and then split them by whether they occurred in the first half of the year (January through June) or the second half (July through December). In the 2011 version of this series, Nate only looked at polls from the first half of the year before the election, but we decided to include the second half of the year as well because this helped us capture how a candidate’s standing changed during the course of the year and let us include candidates who jumped into the race on the later side. We also included anyone we had polling data for, no matter how likely or unlikely they were to run or win.

Our tables in this series include two key metrics that help us better understand the primary field and how things changed throughout the year we’re examining. The first is an average of each candidate’s (or potential candidate’s) numbers in all the polls for that half of the year — candidates were counted as having zero percent support in any poll they did not appear in.1

The second is an average of each candidate’s standing in the polls that is adjusted for how well-known the person was at the time. To do this, we divided a candidate’s polling average by their level of name recognition, which helped us identify folks who might have had a small national profile but were doing relatively well among voters who knew about them.2 But because pollsters aren’t consistent, our methods of estimating name recognition had to be treated as rough estimates. To reflect that inherent imprecision, we sorted candidates onto a somewhat subjective five-tier scale to sum up their level of fame.3 We combined polling averages with a few educated guesses to produce the name-recognition scores. For example, a candidate like Hubert Humphrey in 1972, who had been the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee in 1968 while serving as vice president, would almost certainly be extremely well-known, while someone who had lost the nomination to Humphrey in ’68 might not be as well-known but would still be more widely recognized than someone bursting onto the national scene for the first time. These name-recognition scores are represented as five square boxes in the table below (more black boxes means higher levels of name recognition).

And it just so happens that in the first primary we’re looking at, the 1972 Democratic primary, we have an example of how our adjusted polling average can reveal a potential winner. Take Sen. George McGovern, who was polling at around 4 percent in the first half of 1971. He wasn’t very well-known, but he was polling relatively well among those who had heard of him, so his adjusted polling average for that same six-month period was 6 points higher, at 10 percent.

The 1972 Democratic primary field

Candidates’ polling averages in the first half and second half of the year before the presidential primaries, plus an adjustment for name recognition

Name recognition Poll Avg. Adj. poll avg. Candidate 1st half 2nd half 1st 2nd 1st 2nd Ed Muskie 32.3% 24.5% 40.4% 30.6% Ted Kennedy 23.5 18.2 29.4 22.7 Hubert Humphrey 23.5 18.8 23.5 18.8 George McGovern 4.0 5.7 10.0 9.4 John Lindsay 4.4 6.7 7.3 8.3 Scoop Jackson 0.4 2.8 2.0 7.1 Eugene McCarthy 2.4 5.5 3.0 6.9 Birch Bayh 0.2 0.3 1.0 1.7 Harold Hughes 0.2 0.2 1.0 0.8 Samuel Yorty — — 0.3 — 0.6 Bill Proxmire 0.4 0.2 1.0 0.4 Wilbur Mills 0.2 0.2 0.5 0.4 J. William Fulbright 0.2 0.2 0.3 0.3

We included everyone we had polling data for, no matter how likely or unlikely they were to run.

Source: Polls

However, he trailed Sens. Humphrey, Ed Muskie and Ted Kennedy — the former two had made up the 1968 Democratic ticket, and the latter was … well, a Kennedy. But McGovern still managed to win the nomination — that’s why he’s bolded in the table above — in part because he had a good understanding of how the reformed nominating process worked. After all, he led the committee that wrote the new primary rules after the calamitous 1968 Democratic convention, where party bosses helped Humphrey get the nomination even though he had not contested any of the primaries. And even though McGovern was crushed by President Richard Nixon in the 1972 general election, Democrats kept their new primary rules. McGovern would not be the last Democrat to become the nominee despite low early polling numbers.

We’re skipping the 1972 GOP primaries because Nixon was running for re-election and faced no serious challenger from within his party — remember, we’re only interested in competitive nomination processes. So moving on to 1976, the Democratic field was comparable to 2020 in that it was crowded and support was fragmented. In the first and second halves of 1975, four or five potential Democratic candidates averaged 10 percent or more in our adjusted polling average. But three of them — Humphrey, Kennedy and Muskie — didn’t wind up running. Segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace was the nominal frontrunner in those early polls, but he was a divisive choice for obvious reasons, which left things wide open for a dark horse candidate. And in the end, one of the least-known candidates — former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter — claimed the nomination. The early primary polls don’t really capture Carter’s success, but he did set up shop in Iowa, which voted first, and his strong showing there gave his campaign a boost that helped him gain enough momentum to win the nomination. It also cemented Iowa as a premiere early state alongside New Hampshire.

The 1976 Democratic primary field

Candidates’ polling averages in the first half and second half of the year before the presidential primaries, plus an adjustment for name recognition

Name recognition Poll Avg. Adj. poll avg. Candidate 1st half 2nd half 1st 2nd 1st 2nd George Wallace 19.2% 20.0% 19.2% 20.0% Scoop Jackson 10.7 11.0 17.8 18.3 Hubert Humphrey 15.3 16.0 15.3 16.0 Ed Muskie 8.3 10.0 10.4 12.5 George McGovern 7.8 9.5 7.8 9.5 Birch Bayh 1.0 2.0 2.5 5.0 Lloyd Bentsen 2.0 0.8 10.0 3.8 Fred Harris 1.0 0.8 5.0 3.8 Jerry Brown 0.7 1.5 1.7 3.8 Jimmy Carter 0.8 0.5 4.2 2.5 Mo Udall 1.7 1.0 4.2 2.5 Frank Church 0.5 1.0 1.3 2.5 Sargent Shriver — — 1.5 — 1.9 Ted Kennedy — 10.3 — 12.9 — Julian Bond — 2.3 — 5.8 — John Glenn — 1.7 — 2.8 — John Lindsay — 1.7 — 2.8 — Adlai Stevenson III — 1.0 — 1.7 —

We included everyone we had polling data for, no matter how likely or unlikely they were to run.

Source: Polls

The 2020 Democratic race could be primed for a similar upset. The polls are currently split between two early frontrunners — still undeclared former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders — and it’s not yet clear if they will continue to sit atop the leaderboard, effectively blocking lesser-known candidates, or if their lead over the rest of the field will shrink as other candidates garner support, which could make the Democratic field look as wide-open as it did in 1976.

As for the GOP in 1976, the party had two clear frontrunners from the start. President Gerald Ford and challenger Ronald Reagan battled all the way to the national GOP convention, where Ford narrowly edged out the former California governor. The 1976 Republican primary marked the start of a streak of early polling frontrunners winning the nomination.

The 1976 Republican primary field

Candidates’ polling averages in the first half and second half of the year before the presidential primaries, plus an adjustment for name recognition

Name recognition Poll Avg. Adj. poll avg. Candidate 1st half 2nd half 1st 2nd 1st 2nd Gerald Ford 36.5% 46.5% 36.5% 46.5% Ronald Reagan 21.9 34.7 27.3 43.3 Barry Goldwater 8.0 4.7 10.0 5.8 Nelson Rockefeller 8.3 3.0 8.3 3.0 Charles Percy 6.0 1.5 10.0 2.5 Mark Hatfield 1.4 0.8 3.4 2.1 Howard Baker 5.8 1.2 9.6 1.9 Elliot Richardson 3.5 1.0 5.8 1.7 James Buckley 0.5 0.7 1.3 1.7 John Connally 0.5 0.8 0.6 1.0 Edward Brooke — 1.0 — 2.5 — William Milliken — 0.5 — 2.5 — Bill Brock — 0.3 — 1.3 — Dan Evans — 0.3 — 1.3 —

We included everyone we had polling data for, no matter how likely or unlikely they were to run.

Source: Polls

Four years later in 1980, the early national surveys had the incumbent president, Democrat Jimmy Carter, trailing badly against Sen. Kennedy, who had finally decided to run. Based on our data, Kennedy holds the dubious distinction of being the candidate with the highest adjusted polling average to not win a presidential nomination, at least for the 1972 to 1996 period. In the end, Carter was renominated, but he lost the general to Reagan.

The 1980 Democratic primary field

Candidates’ polling averages in the first half and second half of the year before the presidential primaries, plus an adjustment for name recognition

Name recognition Poll Avg. Adj. poll avg. Candidate 1st half 2nd half 1st 2nd 1st 2nd Ted Kennedy 46.8% 49.2% 46.8% 49.2% Jimmy Carter 31.7 36.2 31.7 36.2 Jerry Brown 14.1 7.9 23.6 13.2 George McGovern 0.6 0.3 0.7 0.4 Walter Mondale 0.3 0.4 0.3 0.4 Scoop Jackson 0.4 0.2 0.7 0.3 Frank Church 0.2 0.2 0.4 0.3 Daniel P. Moynihan 0.0 0.1 0.0 0.2 Mo Udall 0.1 0.0 0.2 0.1

We included everyone we had polling data for, no matter how likely or unlikely they were to run.

Source: Polls

Reagan’s nomination in 1980 marked another GOP contest won by the early frontrunner, but it also started a trend of the Republican runner-up winning the GOP nomination in the party’s next competitive primary cycle. His principal foe was former CIA Director George H.W. Bush, who was relatively unknown in the year prior to the primaries. Bush advanced from about 4 percent to 11 percent in our adjusted polling average from the first half to the second half of 1979, and even though he beat out Reagan to win the Iowa caucuses, Reagan went on to win the nomination (although it wasn’t entirely a bust for Bush, as Reagan did make him vice president).

The 1980 Republican primary field

Candidates’ polling averages in the first half and second half of the year before the presidential primaries, plus an adjustment for name recognition

Name recognition Poll Avg. Adj. poll avg. Candidate 1st half 2nd half 1st 2nd 1st 2nd Ronald Reagan 34.3% 37.3% 34.3% 37.3% Howard Baker 13.1 15.0 21.8 25.1 John Connally 10.2 12.8 12.7 16.0 Gerald Ford 19.3 12.3 19.3 12.3 George H.W. Bush 1.5 4.5 3.8 11.4 John Anderson 1.2 1.3 6.0 6.3 Phil Crane 1.0 1.0 5.0 5.2 Bob Dole 2.3 2.4 3.9 4.0 Charles Percy 1.2 0.9 3.0 2.3 James Thompson 0.3 0.4 1.4 2.1 Alexander Haig 0.4 0.8 1.1 2.1 Elliot Richardson 0.3 0.7 0.7 1.8 William Simon — — 0.3 — 1.7 Jesse Helms — — 0.3 — 1.3 Jack Kemp 0.7 0.2 3.6 0.8 Larry Pressler — — 0.2 — 0.8 Lowell Weicker — 0.9 — 4.3 — Robert Ray — 0.2 — 1.1 —

We included everyone we had polling data for, no matter how likely or unlikely they were to run.

Source: Polls

Reagan sought re-election in 1984, and to face him Democrats nominated their early polls leader — former Vice President Walter Mondale. This marked the only time between 1972 and 1996 that the Democrats nominated someone who led in the raw polling average a year before the primary, although he still had to sort things out at the convention against his main opponents, Sen. Gary Hart and civil rights leader Jesse Jackson.

The 1984 Democratic primary field

Candidates’ polling averages in the first half and second half of the year before the presidential primaries, plus an adjustment for name recognition

Name recognition Poll Avg. Adj. poll avg. Candidate 1st half 2nd half 1st 2nd 1st 2nd Walter Mondale 33.8% 40.1% 33.8% 40.1% John Glenn 24.3 24.7 30.4 30.9 Alan Cranston 4.7 5.3 11.7 13.1 Reubin Askew 1.4 1.9 6.9 9.6 Jesse Jackson 4.0 7.6 5.0 9.5 Gary Hart 3.0 2.6 7.4 6.5 George McGovern — — 4.5 — 5.6 Ernest Hollings 0.9 1.0 4.6 5.1 Ted Kennedy 2.1 1.8 2.1 1.8 Bill Bradley — 0.7 — 1.7 — Daniel P. Moynihan — 0.3 — 0.8 — Mo Udall — 0.3 — 0.8 —

We included everyone we had polling data for, no matter how likely or unlikely they were to run.

Source: Polls

In 1988, Democrats returned to form by not nominating the early frontrunner, and instead picked Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. Yet our adjusted polling average indicated Dukakis was a lot stronger than early surveys suggested, as he enjoyed a fair bit of support while being relatively unknown. It didn’t hurt him that Hart, who was campaigning again and one of the early frontrunners, was undone by an extramarital affair. While Dukakis went on to clinch the Democratic nomination, he lost in the general election.

The 1988 Democratic primary field

Candidates’ polling averages in the first half and second half of the year before the presidential primaries, plus an adjustment for name recognition

Name recognition Poll Avg. Adj. poll avg. Candidate 1st half 2nd half 1st 2nd 1st 2nd Michael Dukakis 7.5% 11.3% 37.6% 28.2% Jesse Jackson 14.5 18.0 18.1 22.5 Paul Simon 4.2 7.5 20.8 18.7 Al Gore 3.5 6.5 17.5 16.2 Gary Hart 14.3 12.7 17.8 12.7 Dick Gephardt 4.5 4.4 22.5 11.0 Bruce Babbitt 2.2 2.0 11.0 10.1 Mario Cuomo 6.1 3.5 15.3 8.8 Pat Schroeder 0.1 1.3 0.3 3.2 Joe Biden 2.4 1.3 11.8 3.1 Ted Kennedy — — 1.3 — 1.6 Sam Nunn 1.3 0.2 6.4 0.8 Bill Bradley 0.9 0.3 2.2 0.8 Bill Clinton — 0.4 — 2.0 — Chuck Robb — 0.4 — 2.0 — Dale Bumpers — 0.2 — 1.1 — Lee Iacocca — 0.8 — 0.9 —

We included everyone we had polling data for, no matter how likely or unlikely they were to run.

Source: Polls

Opposing Dukakis in 1988 was George H.W. Bush, who had served eight years as Reagan’s vice president — yet another GOP runner-up who went on to win the next open primary. Bush also led most early polling, with Sen. Bob Dole in second. And while Dole did win the Iowa caucuses, Bush recovered in New Hampshire and won most contests after that. But this wouldn’t be the last Republicans saw of Dole; he would get his shot at the presidency later on.

The 1988 Republican primary field

Candidates’ polling averages in the first half and second half of the year before the presidential primaries, plus an adjustment for name recognition

Name recognition Poll Avg. Adj. poll avg. Candidate 1st half 2nd half 1st 2nd 1st 2nd George H.W. Bush 37.0% 42.9% 37.0% 42.9% Bob Dole 22.0 23.3 27.5 29.1 Jack Kemp 8.5 7.1 21.3 17.9 Pete du Pont 1.7 2.2 8.4 11.1 Pat Robertson 4.1 6.0 10.2 10.0 Alexander Haig 4.3 4.7 7.1 5.9 Paul Laxalt 1.6 0.1 7.8 0.7 Jeane Kirkpatrick 0.6 0.2 1.6 0.5 Howard Baker — 2.3 — 3.8 — Thomas Kean — 0.8 — 3.8 — Pat Buchanan — 0.1 — 0.2 —

We included everyone we had polling data for, no matter how likely or unlikely they were to run.

Source: Polls

In 1992, Bush became the third president to fend off a notable primary challenger since 1972. Initially, Bush’s approval rating had been high — close to 90 percent after the Gulf War. But a faltering economy and broken promise not to raise taxes weakened Bush and helped spur a challenge from the right in the form of pundit Pat Buchanan. We only have data for the second half of 1991 — at first it looked unlikely that Bush would face a serious challenge, so pollsters weren’t asking about the Republican primaries much — but we can see that despite Bush’s massive lead in the polls, Buchanan’s position was more robust than it looked. Even though his name recognition was low, those who did have an opinion of him seemed to support him. Bush won the nomination, but Buchanan embarrassed him by grabbing 37 percent of the vote in New Hampshire, and ultimately, Bush lost re-election.

The 1992 Republican primary field

Candidates’ polling averages in the first half and second half of the year before the presidential primaries, plus an adjustment for name recognition

Name recognition Poll Avg. Adj. poll avg. Candidate 1st half 2nd half 1st 2nd 1st 2nd George H.W. Bush — — 59.4% — 59.4% Pat Buchanan — — 9.8 — 24.5 Howard Baker — — 3.6 — 6.0 Jack Kemp — — 3.2 — 5.3 David Duke — — 2.8 — 3.5 Dick Cheney — — 2.6 — 3.3 Dan Quayle — — 2.0 — 2.0 Phil Gramm — — 0.4 — 1.0 Pete Wilson — — 0.2 — 0.5

We included everyone we had polling data for, no matter how likely or unlikely they were to run.

Source: Polls

Facing Bush in the general election was Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, who was still not that well-known when he announced his run for president in October 1991. Nonetheless, Clinton’s adjusted polling average improved substantially in the year leading up to the primaries. He started at around 3 percent in the first six months of 1991 and jumped to about 19 percent in the second half of the year. New York Governor Mario Cuomo led the polls, but at the last minute decided against running, and Clinton went on to defeat former Sen. Paul Tsongas and former Gov. Jerry Brown for the nomination.

The 1992 Democratic primary field

Candidates’ polling averages in the first half and second half of the year before the presidential primaries, plus an adjustment for name recognition

Name recognition Poll Avg. Adj. poll avg. Candidate 1st half 2nd half 1st 2nd 1st 2nd Mario Cuomo 20.0% 22.7% 33.3% 37.8% Jerry Brown — — 13.0 — 21.7 Doug Wilder 2.5 7.8 6.3 19.5 Bill Clinton 1.3 7.4 3.1 18.6 Bob Kerrey 1.3 5.6 3.1 14.1 Tom Harkin 1.8 5.3 4.4 13.2 Paul Tsongas 0.8 3.5 3.8 8.8 Jesse Jackson 10.5 4.1 10.5 4.1 Al Gore 8.8 0.9 14.6 1.5 Dave McCurdy 0.0 0.3 0.0 1.3 Jay Rockefeller 1.3 0.6 2.1 1.0 Lloyd Bentsen 10.0 0.8 16.7 0.9 Eugene McCarthy — — 0.4 — 0.6 Larry Agran — — 0.0 — 0.2 Dick Gephardt — 6.5 — 10.8 — Sam Nunn — 5.3 — 8.8 — Bill Bradley — 3.3 — 5.4 — Chuck Robb — 1.0 — 2.5 — George McGovern — 2.0 — 2.5 — George Mitchell — 1.0 — 2.5 — Stephen Solarz — 0.3 — 1.3 —

We included everyone we had polling data for, no matter how likely or unlikely they were to run.

Source: Polls

In 1996, the GOP chose Dole to face off against Clinton during his re-election bid, making Dole the third runner-up since 1976 to win the GOP nomination at the next opportunity. Dole seemed to have an insurmountable edge in the Republican primary polls, but he still had a rough start — he barely defeated Buchanan in Iowa and then lost to him in New Hampshire before recovering to win most other contests. Dole went on to lose in the general against Clinton.

The 1996 Republican primary field

Candidates’ polling averages in the first half and second half of the year before the presidential primaries, plus an adjustment for name recognition

Name recognition Poll Avg. Adj. poll avg. Candidate 1st half 2nd half 1st 2nd 1st 2nd Bob Dole 46.2% 44.0% 57.8% 55.0% Phil Gramm 11.1 8.6 18.5 14.3 Colin Powell 5.2 8.6 6.5 10.7 Pat Buchanan 5.6 6.6 7.0 8.2 Lamar Alexander 3.1 2.9 7.7 7.4 Steve Forbes — — 2.7 — 6.6 Richard Lugar 1.8 2.1 4.6 5.3 Alan Keyes 0.6 1.0 3.1 5.2 Arlen Specter 1.8 2.0 4.4 5.1 Pete Wilson 4.5 2.7 7.5 4.5 Bob Dornan 0.8 0.8 3.8 4.2 Newt Gingrich 3.1 1.6 3.8 2.0 Jack Kemp 0.8 0.6 1.4 1.0 Dan Quayle 1.9 0.7 1.9 0.7 Dick Cheney 0.2 0.4 0.3 0.6 Ross Perot 0.0 0.6 0.0 0.6 Pat Robertson 0.2 0.2 0.3 0.4 Bill Weld — 0.1 — 0.3 — Bill Bennett — 0.1 — 0.2 — Howard Baker — 0.1 — 0.2 — George H.W. Bush — 0.0 — 0.0 —

We included everyone we had polling data for, no matter how likely or unlikely they were to run.

Source: Polls

And that’s a wrap for now. In Part II, we’ll look at early primary polls in contests from 2000 to 2016. And as we’ll see, Republicans broke with their habit of nominating the early polling leader, while Democrats nominated an early frontrunner twice, after doing so only once between 1972 and 1996.

Additional contributions by Laura Bronner.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Geoffrey Skelley

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berniesrevolution · 6 years

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A reckoning with America’s failed national-security policy is long overdue. Donald Trump’s reckless machinations are destructive, but so too is the bipartisan establishment consensus that has defined our role in the world for decades and remains remarkably unshaken, despite its evident bankruptcy.

Our calamitous misadventures in the Middle East and the global financial collapse of 2008 dramatically exposed the failures of this consensus. Yet while citizen movements have begun to transform domestic politics, they have been virtually invisible when it comes to foreign policy. This special issue of The Nation challenges what has been a remarkably narrow debate in this area. Without pretending to offer a grand strategy, it provides alternative perspectives, grounded in values widely shared by the American people. We seek to instigate not only a more open debate, but a new call to action.

Trump’s impulsive belligerence seems centered on his determination to tear down all things Obama. He has abandoned the Paris climate accordand the Iran nuclear deal. He has shut down the opening to Cuba and moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. He seems intent on shattering transatlantic cooperation. In doing so, he has managed to resuscitate the reputations of certain of his predecessors—even that of the ruinous George W. Bush—as well as the crackpot realism of our national-security mandarins.

One widely touted hope is that, after Trump, the United States might return to its previous role as “the indispensable nation.” We should not fall for it. Our national-security policies failed Americans long before Trump announced his run for president in 2015. As Andrew Bacevich argues in this issue, the failures are particularly manifest in our wars without end, exemplified by the debacle in Afghanistan, now in its 17th year. The Global War on Terror generates more terrorists than it kills, and yet US Special Operations Forces have been dispatched to an astonishing 133 countries over the past year—that’s 68 percent of the nations on earth. The official National Security Strategy statements of the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations all committed the United States to maintaining a military so powerful that it cannot be challenged anywhere. The most recent NSS statement declares that “revisionist nations” (Russia and China), not terrorists, are now the major threat to our national security. But in declaring our intention to confront both Russia and China, we are likely to foster an alliance between them that cannot be in our interest. We have also embarked on a renewed nuclear-arms race—mostly with ourselves.

The steady militarization of US foreign policy has hampered our ability to address real security concerns that are threatening not just our own people but the entire planet, from catastrophic climate change to a global economy rigged to foster extreme inequality, which corrupts democracy here and abroad. Our bloated military budget already constitutes over one-third of the entire world’s military spending, even as vital domestic imperatives are starved for funds. Seldom has the need for a new course been more apparent.

TOWARD COMMON-SENSE SECURITY

What would an alternative foreign policy entail? We reject the notion that the United States is faced with a choice between isolationism and the old elite consensus. Progressive reform would begin by discarding the notion that America is uniquely permitted to use force. We should recognize that, while we are a global superpower, it is in the US interest to defend international law. We can best bolster our security by respecting the law, not holding ourselves above it.

We must also roll back our failed interventions. Limiting the US military role will require more, not less, international cooperation as well as far more active diplomacy. New regional balances of power will inevitably be forged, but they need not pose a threat to American interests.

We must also ground our policy on a more realistic view of the challenges we face. The widespread campaign to portray Russia as a menacing global threat is wrongheaded. For all his bluster, Vladimir Putin is now cutting the Russian military budget. His policies, no doubt, express Russian resentments fed by provocative US actions after the end of the Cold War, which included extending NATO to Russia’s borders, in violation of promises made by the administration of President George H.W. Bush; ignoring Russian warnings against trying to incorporate Georgia and Ukraine into NATO; and helping to inflict on Russia the shock-therapy economic policy of the 1990s, which created and enriched the Russian oligarchs, impoverished millions, and looted the country’s treasury. We should seek to reengage Russia, a necessary partner in key areas, and revive efforts to limit the nuclear-arms race and reduce tensions on Russia’s borders. Moreover, a renewed Cold War narrows the space for democratic forces and strengthens the hand of a repressive state and the influence of nationalist voices—on both sides.

This country needs a fierce and energetic citizen intervention—a movement that demands both a reckoning and a change in course.

China, on the other hand, is an emerging global power, a mercantilist dictatorship that has had remarkable success in lifting its people out of poverty. Its leaders seek to extend their economic influence as they consolidate China’s leadership position in emerging technologies and markets. Trump has abandoned the strategic neoliberalism of his predecessors, replacing the Trans-Pacific Partnership with threats of a trade war against China, while gearing up the US military presence in the South China Sea.

But it is not in the US interest—nor do we have the resources—to dominate a modern Chinese military on that country’s borders. Our allies and the other nations in Asia have reasons of their own to counter growing Chinese power, and they would be better equipped to do so if they could rely on consistent US diplomatic support rather than militarism and bluster. While China’s growth has been impressive, there are serious questions about its structural imbalances and its strength moving forward, as Walden Bello discusses in this issue. Washington should prepare for the problems posed by China’s weakness rather than those potentially caused by its growing assertiveness.

(Continue Reading)

#politics #the left #The Nation #progressive #progressive movement #foreign policy #imperialism #diplomacy

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afrodesiaq · 5 years

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in a universe where mutants are vilified and feared but superheroes who come by their powers through whatever other method are lionized, why isn’t it more common in either direction for people to think that anyone with superpowers is a mutant (whether or not they are) or for people who are mutants to try and pass themselves off as not?

like okay maybe if you’re in a big city where they have magically mutant detecting sentinels on their police force then you’re just boned but like! if you are rando kid in tinysville georgia and an alien tick bites you or whatever and suddenly you have superpowers but you didn’t SEE the alien you just. wake up with superpowers!

wouldn’t you be freaking tf out like oh SHIT i’m one of those FREAKS.

or conversely if you are, in fact, a mutant but you’re Rich why doesn’t anyone just get a good PR person to be like x gene what x gene this was definitely a calamitous lab accident involving laser beams and radiation and now this fine upstanding American Hero is going to fight for Truth and Justice and Murdering Criminals just like God intended, please immediately get him a 7 figure sponsorship deal from stark industries

#marvel comics #x-men

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patriotsnet · 3 years

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Will Republicans Take Back The House

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/will-republicans-take-back-the-house/

Will Republicans Take Back The House

Republicans Positive To Win Back Both Chambers

Will Republicans take back the House?

Republican Sen. Rick Scott said, “This is going to be like 2010, 2012, 2014 where we pick up seats because of Obama’s agenda.” He also added, “Now what I talk about every day is do we want open borders? No. Do we want to shut down our schools? No. Do we want men playing in women’s sports? No. Do we want to shut down the Keystone Pipeline? No. Do we want voter ID? Yes.”

He also added that the;Democratic lawmakers;and Biden Administration are on the opposite side, giving them the advantage in the upcoming midterm election.;

Big Odds For Republicans To Win Back The House Of Representatives Next Year

The internal consultation of the National Republican Congressional Committee revealed that their party has favorable conditions to retake the majority of seats in the House of Representatives in the mid-term elections to be held next year.;

Contributing to these good predictions is that voters prefer Republicans as their leaders, and the increased unfavorability of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, according to data provided by the NRCC website on April 26.;

Even the decennial census results are on the side of a Republican triumph because the data presented by the Census Bureau show that they gained seats in the new distribution, although it is not definitive.;

Likewise, throughout the 100 days of the Biden administration at the helm of the White House, Americans have become alerted to the convenience of changing the political course.;

In this regard, NRCC spokesman Mike Berg commented in a statement, The Democrats dangerous socialist agenda is providing the perfect roadmap for Republicans to regain the majority.

Among voters most pressing considerations are the border crisis and the rampant illegal immigration that the Biden and the Democrat open border policies have fostered.;

At least 75% of voters see the border situation as a crisis or significant problem, while 23% say the border is a minor problem or not a problem at all.

Thus, 57% of voters do not believe that the CCP Virus stimulus approved by Biden is helping them and their families.

Pelosi Tells Republicans To ‘take Back’ Party From ‘extreme Right’

Nancy Pelosi has urged her Republican colleagues to “take back” their party from those at on the extreme right.

Accepting an honorary degree from Smith College in Massachusetts, the Speaker of the House said that the “country needs a big, strong Republican party” so that politicians can compete ideas for governance. Ms Pelosi urged members to prevent the party from being “a cult of personality on the extreme, extreme, extreme right”.

“This isn’t about liberal or conservative, they don’t believe in governance” she added, “Take back your party, which has done so much for the country”.

You May Like: Trump 1998 People Magazine Interview

House And Senate Odds: Final Thoughts

There is less than 1% equity on the notion that Democrats will win the House and lose the Senate, because while New Hampshire could move in a weird, contradictory manner, if Democrats win the House, the nation will be sufficiently blue that they hold all three of Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia, and they will gain Pennsylvania too.

Races are too nationalized and partisanship too entrenched for the Senate GOP to outrun a national environment blue enough to win the House, which means you can get a Democratic Congress for another term at $0.21. Its a better value than the House outright market for almost no extra risk, and thats the best kind of value.

Dont Miss: What Are The Main Differences Between Democrats And Republicans

Poll: 78% Of Capitol Hill Staffers Believe Gop Will Take Back The House In 2022

78% of Capitol Hill staffers believe that House Republicans are on track to reclaim the house majority in 2022, according to a new poll.

Capitol Hill staffers were asked a series of questions, gauging congressional support for President Bidens agenda and individual issues such as gun control in a new Punchbowl News poll.;While responses to individual issue questions fell down partisan lines, 78% of respondents indicated they believe the GOP will control the House of Representatives after the 2022 midterm elections.

Seventy-eight percent of senior Capitol Hill aides believe the Republicans will regain the House in 2022, according to a poll from Punchbowl#RepublicanParty#HouseOfRepresentatives#Nrcc#NancyPelosi#PunchbowlNews

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The poll surveyed 158 staffers serving as chiefs of staff, legislative directors, press secretaries and communications directors to members of the House of Representatives and the Senate. The partisan breakdown of the survey was fairly even with 80 respondents identifying as Democratic staffers and 78 respondents identifying as Republican staffers, according to Punchbowl.

Respondents also gave their predictions on which party will control the Senate, with 70% of respondents indicating their belief that Democrats will control the Senate after the 2022 midterm elections.

Punchbowls poll was conducted between May 11 and May 28.

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Democrats Odds Of Keeping The House Are Slimming Fast

The Democratic House majority emerged from the 2020 election so bruised and emaciated that experts gave it less than three years to live.

In defiance of polling and pundit expectations, Republicans netted 11 House seats in 2020, leaving Nancy Pelosis caucus perilously thin. Since World War II, the presidents party has lost an average of 27 House seats in midterm elections. If Democrats lose more than four in 2022, they will forfeit congressional control.

If the headwinds facing House Democrats have been clear since November, the preconditions for overcoming those headwinds have also been discernible: The party needed Joe Biden to stay popular, the Democratic base to stay mobilized and, above all, for Congressional Democrats to level the playing field by banning partisan redistricting.

A little over 100 days into Bidens presidency, Democrats are hitting only one of those three marks.

Historically, theres been a strong correlation between the sitting presidents approval rating and his partys midterm performance. Only twice in the last three decades has the presidents party gained seats in a midterm election; in both cases, their approval ratings exceeded 60 percent.

The party that controls the presidency tends to gets less popular as time goes on, and future declines are surprisingly correlated with first quarter polling.Many reasons that this cycle might be different, but so far public polling points to Dems getting 48% on election day.

It didnt.

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National View: Republican Resurgence In 2022 Already On The Horizon

Reading the political tea leaves 18 months in advance is as tricky as making a weather forecast for the same timeframe. But every so often, circumstances combine to increase the odds in the forecasters favor. Looking ahead to next years midterms is one of them. Because if things continue on their current course, Nov. 8, 2022, will be a very good night for Republicans around the country.

For starters, history is on the GOPs side going into the campaign. Theres a long track record of the incumbent presidents party losing seats during a midterm election. In fact, since 1934, only two presidents have enjoyed an increase in their partys numbers in the House and Senate: Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934 and George W. Bush in 2002.

Excluding those two exceptions, losses are big for the party that occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Especially for first-term presidents and particularly in the House. Consider Presidents Donald Trump , Barack Obama , Bill Clinton , Ronald Reagan , and Gerald Ford . All were shellacked at the ballot box, resulting in significantly fewer members of their party in the House of Representatives.

According to FiveThirtyEight, the GOP also has a turnout advantage in midterms. Under Republican presidents since 1978, the GOP has enjoyed a plus-one shift toward party identification for those who vote in midterm elections. That margin swells to plus-five under Democratic presidents.

A Zombie Republican Party Will Overwhelm Joe Biden In The 2022 Midterms

Representative Kevin McCarthy discusses if Republicans can take back the House in 2020

President Biden promised he will restore the soul of America. Hes already running out of time. The commander-in-chief is 78 and unlikely to see out more than one term in office. By the time the pandemic crisis passes mid-2021, inshallah Biden could find his administration has run out of gas before it ever really got started. A week is a long time in politics. Two years can whizz by.

For now, Biden appears to hold the aces. He has a Democratic majority in the House Of Representatives and his vice president, Kamala Harris, can cast the deciding vote in a split Senate. The economy, stimulated to its guts, is expected to roar as this year goes on. His opposition, the Republican Party, looks prone wrecked by its calamitous marriage to Donald Trump. The Republican base still hates the Republican establishment and vice versa. The infamous storming of the Capitol on 6 January, we are told, has tarnished the American right for a generation or more.

The Republican Party, for all its problems, remains the strong favourite to win the House in the 2022 midterms, possibly by a large margin, and they may even take back the Senate

Trump or no Trump, the Grand Old Party marches on. The mistake pundits make is to confuse Republicanism with a normal democratic movement. It is more like the political equivalent of the undead a zombie army that horrifies every sane voter but somehow always wins because people hate the Democrats more.

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Mcconnell: House Senate Gop Wins In 2022 Would Check Biden

Addison Mitchell McConnellHouse approves John Lewis voting rights measureThe Hills 12:30 Report Presented by AT&T Pelosis negotiates with centrists to keep Bidens agenda afloatMcConnell urges Biden to ignore Aug. 31 Afghanistan deadlineMORE on Thursday pledged that if Republicans win back control of Congress next year they could be a check against the Biden administration, forcing it into the political center.

McConnell, speaking at an event in Kentucky, said that American voters have a big decision to make in 2022, when control of both the House and Senate are up for grabs.

Do they really want a moderate administration or not? If the House and Senate were to return to Republican hands that doesnt mean nothing happens, McConnell said.

What I want you to know is if I become the majority leader again its not for stopping everything. Its for stopping the worst. Its for stopping things that fundamentally push the country into a direction that at least my party feels is not a good idea for the country, he added. And I could make sure Biden makes his promise to be a moderate.

Democrats are trying to keep their majorities in both the House, where they have a nine-seat advantage, and the Senate, which is evenly split but where they have the majority since Vice President Harris is able to break ties.

The Cook Political Report rates both the Pennsylvania and North Carolina seats as toss-ups, and Johnsons seat as lean R.

‘the Beast Is Growing’: Republicans Follow A Winning At All Costs Strategy Into The Midterms

Much remains uncertain about the midterm elections more than a year away including the congressional districts themselves, thanks to the delayed redistricting process. The Senate, meanwhile, looks like more of a toss-up.

House Democrats think voters will reward them for advancing President Joe Biden’s generally popular agenda, which involves showering infrastructure money on virtually every district in the country and sending checks directly to millions of parents. And they think voters will punish Republicans for their rhetoric about the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2020 election.

“Democrats are delivering results, bringing back the economy, getting people back to work, passing the largest middle-class tax cut in history, while Republicans are engaged in frankly violent conspiracy theory rhetoric around lies in service of Donald Trump,” said Tim Persico, executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

But the challenges Democrats face are real and numerous.

They knew they would face a tough 2022 immediately after 2020, when massive, unexpected GOP gains whittled the Democratic majority to just a handful of seats.

“House Republicans are in a great position to retake the majority,” said Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, “but we are taking nothing for granted.”

His rural district had been trending Republican for years. Kind won re-election last year by just about 10,000 votes.

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Republicans Are In An Excellent Position To Weasel Their Way Back To House Control

When the Democrats took control of all three branches of the federal government following the 2020 election, they did so with the slimmest margin possible â a 50/50 split in the Senate and an 11-seat advantage in the House of Representatives, which has already slipped to a margin of just eight votes, thanks to special elections and run-offs. The first test of how well that razor-thin Democratic advantage will hold will come in 2022, and it may be decided before a single vote is cast. A new study conducted by Democratic data firm TargetSmart and published by Mother Jones found that Republican-controlled state legislatures around the country could effectively take back control of Congress simply through the shady and dubious practice of gerrymandering.

Here’s the problem that faces Democrats with the 2022 election season approaching: Despite having control of the federal government, the left has lost ground at the state level. Republicans control 61 total chambers of state governments, including holding a trifecta in 23 states. In many of these states, the party with legislative control gets to re-draw the lines for congressional districts, allowing them to create bizarre borders that serve only to set up a favorable outcome. According to TargetSmart, Republicans will have the ability to re-draw 187 congressional districts, while Democrats will only control 75.

I Ultimately Decided Against Running For Congress In A Red District But My Research Found A Way For Democrats To Make Inroads In Such Places

Political pundits seem united in their belief that Democrats will struggle to hold the House of Representatives in 2022.

The historical precedent that the party out of power in the White House always gains in the midterms and the likely impact of partisan and racial gerrymandering has fostered a consensus that Democrats will lose seats.

Theyre wrong. Democrats have the opportunity to widen the playing field in 2022 with the right candidates, a message focused on economic growth anda surprise to somea clear pro-democracy appeal designed to woo the one-quarter to one-third of Trump voters who are Liz Cheney Republicans.

My opinion is based on nearly 40 years in government and politicsbut more importantly, it is based on the last eight months that I spent actively exploring a race for Tennessees 3rd congressional district.

I recently decided for personal and professional reasons that I cannot run in 2022. But through the testing the waters process, I discovered a path to possible victory in my east Tennessee district that should be replicable in many other similar districts around the nation.

The remainder of Hamilton County, suburban and rural areas outside of Chattanooga, accounts for another one-quarter of the district population: It is Republican turf and the home to the districts five-term incumbent, Chuck Fleischmann. And half of the district vote comes from all or parts of 10 other counties, the largest being Anderson County, home to Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

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Renewable Energy And Health Care Among The Sectors That Could Get Shakeup Due To Midterms

The 2022 midterm elections are already affecting Washington, and the results could shake up sectors such as renewable energy, health care and finance.

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As Democrats in Washington work to deliver on infrastructure spending and other priorities, theyre trying to make progress in large part because of a key event thats still more than a year away.

That event is the midterm elections on Nov. 8, 2022, when Republicans will aim to take back control of the House and Senate and become a more powerful check on the priorities of President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats.

What leaders are thinking about, particularly since we have unified party control, is that these midterm elections are inevitably a referendum on the governing party, said Sarah Binder, a senior fellow in;governance studies;at the Brookings Institution and a professor of;political science;at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

In that sense, shrinking time coupled with What is it that Democrats want to run on? it adds pressure on Democrats to get their priorities through the door.

Time is growing short, Binder said, because party leaders often avoid making their members vote on tough issues in the same calendar year as an election, since that can hurt incumbents in tight races. Party leaders often think primarily about what they can get done in the first year of a Congress, as opposed to counting on the second year, she said.

Sectors that could win or lose

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This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends

“They say the first step in solving a problem is recognizing there is one. This book is my own ‘left of boom’ [military lingo for getting to the bomb-maker before a bomb is made] effort. It is the story of our vast digital vulnerability, of how and why it exists, of the governments that have exploited and enabled it and the rising stakes for all of us. While this story may be familiar to some, I suspect it is one few are aware of, and even fewer truly understand. But it is our ignorance of these issues that has become our greatest vulnerability of all. Governments count on it. They’ve relied on classification requirements and front companies and the technical nature of the issues involved to conceal and confuse one stubborn fact: The very institutions charged with keeping us safe have opted, time and time again, to leave us more vulnerable. My hope is that this book may serve as a wake-up call, to encourage the awareness necessary to solve what may be the most complex puzzle of our digital age.” (p. 440)

Dr. Shoshana Zuboff wrote The Age of Surveillance Capitalism in 2019. Perlroth’s book could be a potent addendum to that work as infosec experts glean greater and greater info into the espionage, PSYOPS, and combat taking place within the circuitry of the world. Take in mind that most of this is seriously under-the-radar and classified stuff, which leans easily into some right-wing demographics saying such information is baseless “conspiracies”. (Perlroth does have a link to her thorough bibliography, and a solid 100 pages of endnotes in my e-copy to leave the mouth-breathers clutching their anonymous Parler handles and berating the New York Times because that is what their media moguls’ puppeteers do.) I’ve been apart of at least three large hacks (that I know of) and have three organizations trying to watch my back as all that info has been cast into the murk of the dark web. NetGalley got hacked just last week. The facts are there for those who have been paying attention, and Perlroth was elbowed into this niche facet of journalism, learning so much over the last 10 years, and summarizes the evolution of cyberwarfare well enough here—and it’s horrifying.

“By the time the NSA’s exploits boomeranged back on American towns, cities, hospitals, and universities, there was no one to guide Americans over the threshold, to advise them, or even to tell them that this was the threshold they would be crossing.

For decades the United States had conducted cyberwarfare in stealth, without any meaningful consideration for what might happen when those same attacks, zero-day exploits, and surveillance capabilities circled back on us. And in the decade after Stuxnet, invisible armies had lined up at our gates; many had seeped inside our machines, our political process, and our grid already, waiting for their own impetus to pull the trigger. For all the internet’s promise of efficiency and social connectivity, it was now a ticking time bomb” (p. 391).

Basically, we’re screwed. Everyone. Offense is far more powerful and better-funded than defense; governments around the world have partnered with any hacker they can to suit their needs and push their agendas; freelancers, mercenaries, fringe companies, and anarchists run wild on the web; every device is completely hackable; every company on Earth has been probed or infiltrated; the tech companies only care about their profit-margins; and, most elected officials only care about their stock portfolios. One carefully exploited “zero-day” could cripple any country, as we’ve already seen with Iran, Ukraine, Estonia, and Georgia. The use of tech can suppress a citizenry, as we know well with China and so many despotic nations. The internet can be easily exploited to sway millions of people and polarize a populace with distrust, disinformation, and propaganda, often leading to upheaval and mob violence, as we’ve seen in India, Ukraine, Britain, Myanmar, and the United States of Hypocrisy. Greed overrules morality. Power supersedes democracy. It’s only a matter of time before things get exponentially worse.

Zero-day weapon markets, Stuxnet, fuzz farms, the Patriot Act and the Pentagon’s Total Information Awareness (TIA) project, Snowden, Aurora, Heartbleed, NotPetya, WikiLeaks, Crowdfence, WannaCry . . . the list goes on.

In July of 2017, the Wolf Creek nuclear power plant in Burlington, Kansas, was hacked by Russia using a modified Stuxnet cyber-attack (https://www.wired.com/story/hack-brief-us-nuclear-power-breach/). Hell, even monolithic Google and the wealthiest man in the world, Bezos’s personal phone, were hacked. Perlroth visits several “hacking conventions�� and deftly illustrates how kids can break into any device, any system, in a matter of minutes, performing on a stage for the audience, which no-doubt includes lots of federal recruiters salivating at the possibilities. But it’s not just federal organizations. It is nation-states and corporations, “white hats” and “grey hats” and “black hats”, all vying for the talent to add more soldiers to the battlefield of the code for their personal desires. The new battlefield is fought from comfy chairs far, far away.

As she learned how easy it was to access her personal information after the Aurora hack: I changed every password to every account I ever had to absurdly long song lyrics and movie quotes and switched on 2FA [two-factor authentication]. I didn’t trust password managers. Most had been hacked. Even companies that bothered to scramble, or ‘hash’, users’ passwords were no match for hackers’ ‘rainbow tables’—databases of hash values for nearly every alphanumeric character combination, up to a certain length. Dear reader, use long passwords” (pp. 248-9). I feel such things are band-aids over bullet wounds, but doing something is better than nothing.

NPR’s Terry Gross interviewed the author for Fresh Air: https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/966254916/u-s-cyber-weapons-were-leaked-and-are-now-being-used-against-us-reporter-says

. . . and Jill Lepore of The New Yorker did a nice review of this book: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/02/08/the-next-cyberattack-is-already-under-way

“The arrogant recklessness of the people who have been buying and selling the vulnerability of the rest of us is not just part of an intelligence-agency game; it has been the ethos of Wall Street and Silicon Valley for decades. Move fast and break things; the money will trickle down; click, click, click, click, buy, buy, buy, like, like, like, like, expose, expose, expose. Perlroth likes a piece of graffiti she once saw: ‘Move slowly and fix your shit.’ Lock down the code, she’s saying. Bar the door. This raises the question of the horse’s whereabouts relative to the barn. If you listen, you can hear the thunder of hooves.”

Lock down the code. I hired on to federal service in 2014, and then the OPM breach was realized. Most federal systems have been breached, just as much as the US has breached so many foreign systems. This is the new war zone, and there are no long-term winners here, unless we philosophize about who might be standing atop the ruins when it’s all over. In 2018, the RAND Corporation complied the most comprehensive report on cyber risk to date. The report is here (https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2299.html) and has a summary of: “The resulting values are highly sensitive to input parameters; for instance, the global cost of cyber crime has direct gross domestic product (GDP) costs of $275 billion to $6.6 trillion and total GDP costs (direct plus systemic) of $799 billion to $22.5 trillion (1.1 to 32.4 percent of GDP).”

I doubt the literal “code” can ever be truly watertight. Reading this book grants huge respect for those responsible for coding well. It is no-doubt a terribly tough job. The best bet is to unplug everything, but our Pavlovian addiction to our tech toys is unbreakable at this point, and the “Internet of Everything” will inevitably make the whole world worse, unless the powers-that-be can lock down the f-ing code. Otherwise, I fear it will take nothing short of a calamitous “accident” to show us we don’t need such things after all. (Would an exploding nuclear plant in Kansas really change peoples’ minds here? History says “no”.) Remember the Tampa water-system hack of just 3 weeks ago from this writing? (https://www.npr.org/2021/02/09/965791252/fbi-called-in-after-hacker-tries-to-poison-tampa-area-citys-water-with-lye) Buckle up, because those “invisible armies” lined up at our gates are only getting started, and while Russia is a meddling anarchist sowing confusion and division and getting its tentacles coiled around our infrastructure, China is a voraciously hungry juggernaut vacuuming up everything it possibly can (https://www.npr.org/2021/02/24/969532277/china-wants-your-data-and-may-already-have-it), while so many other countries (North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates) and so many companies, shell-fronts, criminal groups, and lone-wolf anarchists have their own agendas.

“Digital vulnerabilities that affect one affect us all. The barrier between the physical and digital worlds is wearing thin. ‘Everything can be intercepted’ is right, and most everything important already has—our personal data, our intellectual property, our chemical factories, our nuclear plants, even our own cyber weapons. Our infrastructure is now virtualized, and only becoming more so as the pandemic thrusts us online with a scope and speed we could never have imagined only weeks ago. As a result our attack surface, and the potential for sabotage, has never been greater” (p. 439).

It all raises the very question she writes on page 46: “How does anyone sleep at night?”

She does offer better bandages in the Epilogue. Scandinavia and Japan are paragon examples of nations doing the best they can. (What is with Scandinavia being so damn close to perfection in so many ways?) “We will never build resilience to cyberattacks—or foreign disinformation campaigns, for that matter—without good policy and nationwide awareness of cyber threats. We should make cybersecurity and media literacy a core part of American curriculum” (p. 449). I couldn’t agree more. The PATCH Act (Protecting our Ability to Counter Hacking Act) is also a promising start, but the proverbial Pandora’s Box has been smashed. I doubt a genuine digital Geneva Convention will ever happen, but we can certainly fortify the walls, hold transparency and accountability as tenets, and expect governments and corporations to do their utmost to protect the digital Commons.

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