American | Jotup

Donald Trump's stroll to victory in Iowa was a foregone conclusion. This doesn't make it any less shocking

Retrieved on:

Tuesday, January 16, 2024

In Iowa over the weekend, blizzards described as “life-threatening” by the National Weather Service brought with them temperatures well below freezing, up to 25 centimetres of snow and ferocious winds.

Key Points:

In Iowa over the weekend, blizzards described as “life-threatening” by the National Weather Service brought with them temperatures well below freezing, up to 25 centimetres of snow and ferocious winds.
In these terrible conditions on Monday night, Republicans in the Hawkeye state gathered to choose their preferred candidate for president of the United States.
Iowa holds a caucus vote in presidential nominating contests, as opposed to most other states, which hold primary votes.

Iowa was always Trump’s for the taking

Even when he was not physically present in the state – which was a lot of the time – this contest was already all about Trump.
As bitter as the campaigning between these candidates has been, it has been almost entirely aimed at each other.
Just as predicted, Trump won Iowa by an overwhelming margin, with DeSantis and Haley neck and neck for second place.

The extent of Trump’s power over the party

To an extent that is almost impossible to fathom, Trump continues to dominate the Republican Party.
But the size and extent of Trump’s victory in Iowa does not tell the whole story.
Each of his challengers has defined their pitch for power largely in deference to Trump and have studiously avoided taking him on directly.
Ramaswamy, meanwhile, has sought to present himself (with little success) as a sleeker, next-generation Trump.

What does Iowa portend for democracy itself?

The positioning around Iowa, and the result, consolidate dynamics that have been underway for some time.
Every single Republican candidate who polled in Iowa is seeking to be the standard bearer of this movement.
The current trajectory is clear, and it is dangerous: dangerous for American democracy, and as a result, dangerous for the world.

Emma Shortis is senior researcher in international and security affairs at The Australia Institute, an independent think tank. Liam Byrne does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

With higher fees and more ads, streaming services like Netflix, Disney+ and Hulu are cashing in by using the old tactics of cable TV

Retrieved on:

Friday, January 5, 2024

Music, Policy, MTV, House, Daytime, ABC, HBO, Telecommunications, Woman, Telecommunications Act, Tele-Communications Inc., Industry, Amazon, Politics, C-SPAN, Representative, Frustration, TCI, Congress, News, United, NBC, STV, Netflix, Constitutional right, Technology, Income, CBS, Hulu, Letter, Sport, Weather, Advertising, Television, Time, Fox News, American, CATV, BET

There’s one thing that television viewers can count on in 2024: higher fees and more commercials.

Key Points:

There’s one thing that television viewers can count on in 2024: higher fees and more commercials.
The major streaming services – Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ and Max – have all announced rate hikes and new advertising policies.
Like their cable predecessors, streaming companies have lured people in with promises of a better and cheaper viewing experience.

Stemming the tide of ‘toll television’

This business structure also encouraged programming with mass appeal in order to deliver the broadest possible audiences to advertisers.
But not all TV viewers were happy with the formulaic quiz shows and sitcoms that dominated the airwaves.
Sensing an untapped opportunity, TV entrepreneurs tried to concoct ways to circumvent the dominance of the Big Three.
At first, this technology simply expanded the reach of CBS, NBC and ABC rather than providing a competing service.

Cable catches on

As frustrations with the limits of broadcast television intensified across the political spectrum during the 1970s, consumers, elected officials and regulators all embraced the potential of cable television to offer an alternative.
By the mid-1970s, experiments with programming disseminated via satellite and cable tested new types of niche channels and shows – like nonstop movies, sports, music or the weather – to see if audiences might be interested.
Like STV before them, cable companies tapped into frustrations with broadcasting and its advertising model.

Deregulation nation

Black Entertainment Television created new opportunities for programming geared toward Black audiences.
The Daytime Channel offered entertainment and news directed at women, while MTV connected a younger generation through music videos.
Then there was C-SPAN, which put the cameras on the House of Representatives starting in 1979.

Playing political football

Al Gore, then an ambitious senator representing Tennessee, saw an opportunity. He pounced on the issue of cable companies that had leveraged consumer demand into what he described as “total domination of the marketplace.”

Malone pushed back, highlighting the unprecedented choice that people now had on cable.
Rate increases allowed for experimentation with niche programming that never stood a chance on network broadcast stations, he added.

Everything old is new again

That the marketplace competition and programming choice alone could deliver for the public interest.
The expansion of a media landscape forged on the terrain of private businesses and their profit margins.
It also convinced elected officials and constituents to embrace a different understanding of the public interest, one where the market reigns supreme.

Kathryn Cramer Brownell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Seeing the human in every patient − from biblical texts to 21st century relational medicine

Retrieved on:

Thursday, January 4, 2024

One study even called the care delivered to many vulnerable patients “inhumane.” Seismic changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic – particularly the shift to telehealth – only exacerbated that feeling.

Key Points:

One study even called the care delivered to many vulnerable patients “inhumane.” Seismic changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic – particularly the shift to telehealth – only exacerbated that feeling.
In response, many health systems now emphasize “relational medicine”: care that purports to center on the patient as a human being.
Seeing each person before you as someone of infinite value is fundamental to many faiths’ beliefs about medical ethics.

Divine dignity

For doctors today, this might mean taking care not to inflict shame on a person with a stigmatized illness like substance use or obesity.
A 1981 Islamic code of medical ethics, for instance, considers the patient the leader of the medical team.
The doctor exists “for the sake of the patient … not the other way round,” it reminds practitioners.

Seeing and hearing the whole patient

In undergraduate classes that I teach for future health professionals at the University of Pittsburgh, we focus on communication skills to foster dignified care, such as setting a shared agenda with a patient to align their goals and the provider’s. Students also read “Compassionomics,” by medical researchers Stephen Trzeciak and Anthony Mazzarelli, which aggregates the data showing caring’s impact on the well-being of patients and providers alike.

However, even health professionals steeped in these practices can encounter people whose humanity they struggle to see.
The course evaluation is based on a project in which students interview a friend, relative or neighbor about their experience of illness and care.
Ultimately, they identify one element of the person’s care that could have been improved by attending more to the person’s individual needs and listening to their story.

Listening with both ears

Down the road at Chatham University, I work with physician assistant students who are about to enter clinic for the first time.
These students complete a workshop including many of the same communication exercises, including “listening with both ears”: listening not only to the patient, but also to what they themselves say to the patient, considering how it will be received.

Many of them report using patient-centered skills in challenging situations, such as validating patients’ concerns that had previously been dismissed.
Yet they also report a work culture where effective communication is often seen as taking too much time or as a low priority.
The emphasis on technology and a rapid pace of treatment leaves scant room for caring, whether in Heschel’s day or ours.

Jonathan Weinkle is affiliated with American College of Physicians and American Academy of Pediatrics.

Vivek Ramaswamy is the millionaire millennial running for US president. Is he running towards a career low?

Retrieved on:

Saturday, December 30, 2023

The 38-year-old political novice is one of the America’s wealthiest millennials and made his fortune as a biotech entrepreneur.

Key Points:

The 38-year-old political novice is one of the America’s wealthiest millennials and made his fortune as a biotech entrepreneur.
The Harvard-educated son of Indian immigrants with a successful business pedigree presents himself as an anti-establishment outsider.
Associated Press reporter Bill Barrow says that Ramaswamy wants to be the candidate that “can return Trump’s ‘America First’ vision to the White House without the baggage”.

Trump’s biggest fan

Ramaswamy is a huge admirer of Donald Trump, calling him the “best president of the 21st century”.
But in a clear attempt to differentiate himself from the former president, he has sought to put forward policies that are more extreme than Trump’s agenda.

No more support for Ukraine

Writing on the American Conservative website he proclaimed a desire to follow the foreign policy path of Richard Nixon’s “cold and sober realism”.
Ramaswamy provided an illustration of how this would manifest itself under his presidency.
Citing the war in Ukraine and how his administration would negotiate a deal to end the conflict he wrote: “A good deal requires all parties to get something out of it.

Republican supporters?

His nationalistic populist foreign policy agenda and deeply conservative positions are now the hallmarks of the modern Republican party.
Yet polling ahead of the Iowa Republican presidential caucuses on January 15 2024 is not positive for Ramaswamy.
He is struggling to resonate with Republican voters and has been languishing in the polls, far behind Trump and other challengers.

Following in Trump’s shadow

Some observers have stressed Ramaswamy’s difficulties rest with his inability to consistently embody the outsider image that he wants to project.
So it looks like he is heading out of the race, with egg on his face.

Richard Hargy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Ice hockey player Johnson dies after neck cut

Retrieved on:

Sunday, October 29, 2023

Adam Johnson: Nottingham Panthers forward dies after neck cut in Challenge Cup match

Key Points:

Adam Johnson: Nottingham Panthers forward dies after neck cut in Challenge Cup match
Last updated on .From the section Ice hockey
Nottingham Panthers forward Adam Johnson has died after suffering a serious cut to his neck from a skate during Saturday's Challenge Cup match.
"Adam, our number 47, was not only an outstanding ice hockey player, but also a great team-mate and an incredible person with his whole life ahead of him.
The Elite Ice Hockey League (EIHL) confirmed Sunday's matches across the UK have been postponed "in light of this deeply upsetting news".
Johnson previously played in North America's National Hockey League (NHL), playing 13 games for the Pittsburgh Penguins.

I studied 1 million home sales in metro Atlanta and found that Black families are being squeezed out of homeownership by corporate investors

Retrieved on:

Thursday, October 26, 2023

Critics say this practice drives up home prices and worsens the housing shortage, making it harder for families to afford to buy.

Key Points:

Critics say this practice drives up home prices and worsens the housing shortage, making it harder for families to afford to buy.
So I analyzed more than 1 million property sales in the Atlanta metropolitan area from 2007 to 2016.
I found that global investment firms buying up local properties are indeed hurting Atlanta families – specifically, Black ones.

Neighborhood transformations

For an average neighborhood, home purchasing by large corporate investors explained one-quarter of that decline.
They’re even more concentrated in predominantly Black neighborhoods, where more than 10 houses in a row can be owned by the same corporation.
In my study, I found that large investors tend to snap up housing in majority-nonwhite, lower-income suburban neighborhoods.

Home is where the financial security is

Despite this, the national homeownership rate declined by 5.5 percentage points between 2007 and 2016, reaching a five-decade low of 62.9%.
To be sure, policies like racial covenants, discriminatory mortgage lending practices and redlining fueled low homeownership rates for Black Americans long before the Great Recession.
But global investors’ growing control of single-family homes only widens existing racial gaps in homeownership and wealth.

Directions for new research

While my study focused on Atlanta, it’s not the only place where residents are competing with global investors for housing.
Investment firms’ single-family rental portfolios are largely concentrated in Sun Belt metro areas, including Phoenix, Charlotte and Jacksonville.
Many investment firms have recently been switching from a buy-to-rent business model to a build-to-rent model, which could complicate matters.

An open-source tool for housing policy research

It’s been hard for researchers to identify corporate-owned, single-family homes, since it requires proprietary real-estate data and labor-intensive number crunching.
Using data-driven approaches like this is an important step toward developing policy solutions.

Brian Y. An does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Do 'sputnik moments' spur educational reform? A rhetoric scholar weighs in

Retrieved on:

Tuesday, October 3, 2023

From the publication of the landmark A Nation at Risk report on education in 1983 to the polarizing election of Donald Trump, one moment after another has been compared to the sputnik episode.

Key Points:

From the publication of the landmark A Nation at Risk report on education in 1983 to the polarizing election of Donald Trump, one moment after another has been compared to the sputnik episode.
As a professor who studies the rhetoric of education reform, I know that what politicians and others call sputnik moments do not always live up to that name.
Some sputnik moments spark enduring public debates, while others are easily forgotten.

American education called into question

In the spring of 1958, Life magazine ran a series of articles entitled: “Crisis in Education.” One Life article compared the rigor of U.S. education unfavorably with that of the Soviets.
Another Life article referred to American education as a “carnival.” President Dwight Eisenhower read the Life articles and began advocating for what would become the National Defense Education Act of 1958.
It was a first-of-its-kind intervention in education policy and funding.
Ever since, pivotal events for education in the U.S. have been called sputnik moments.

Reagan and a flailing education system

In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education published A Nation at Risk.
We responded by making math, science, and engineering education a priority.” Reagan cited NASA’s space shuttle program as evidence that the nation had succeeded.
But like sputnik, it spurred decades of discussion about the rigor of public education in the U.S.

Obama on competition with China

Obama needed to sell his proposal to the nation and to the House of Representatives, which the Republicans had taken control of in the 2010 midterm elections.
It also did not result in the creation of an Advanced Research Projects Agency for education.

Donald Trump’s election

Sure enough, Trump’s election did revitalize the national discussion of civic education.
There was also the Civic Learning for a Democracy in Crisis by the Hastings Center.
Even the Trump administration joined in the conversation with its 1776 report, which called for a patriotic form of civic education.

Why do we have sputnik moments?

Sputnik moments can be spontaneous or constructed through rhetoric after the fact, or they can fall somewhere in between.
In the late 1950s, critics of American education made the most of their moment by demanding a greater emphasis on math, science and language.
Because they capitalized on their moment, policymakers and education reformers have continued to be vigilant for more moments like sputnik ever since.

Being told where their blood ends up encourages donors to give again – new research

Retrieved on:

Monday, October 2, 2023

Blood, American Red Cross, Organization, World Blood Donor Day, German Red Cross, Research, University, Red Cross, University of Hamburg, Austrian Red Cross, American, Population, Time, International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, Medical device, Pharmaceutical industry

Working with the Austrian Red Cross, we looked at whether nearly 75,000 people who had donated in the prior two years would return to give blood.

Key Points:

Working with the Austrian Red Cross, we looked at whether nearly 75,000 people who had donated in the prior two years would return to give blood.
They were either thanked for their previous donation, thanked and told how their blood was used, or thanked and told how their next donation would be used.
If giving donors more information about how their blood was used boosts blood donations, it can save lives.
We plan to discover whether and how organizations that collect donated blood should tell donors when that happens with their blood.

Where the Supreme Court stands on banning books

Retrieved on:

Monday, October 2, 2023

Some of these efforts have resulted in laws that threaten to jail librarians.

Key Points:

Some of these efforts have resulted in laws that threaten to jail librarians.
Bans – and the banning of bans – have already ended up in the courts.
They alleged that school officials violated students’ First Amendment rights when they removed books that discussed, race, racism and LGBTQ+ people.

Encounters with new ideas

The case specifically focused on the school library and was not about curriculum in the classroom.
One student, on behalf of four other students in the school district, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court.
The suit claimed that removing the books from the library infringed upon the students’ First Amendment rights to freely access ideas and information.

An unclear ruling

The ruling was divided – five justices affirmed the appeals court’s decision in favor of the students, though not all of them agreed on exactly why.
Justices Thurgood Marshall and John Paul Stevens signed on to this opinion, which was not a majority opinion.
Two justices wrote concurring decisions, but only one agreed with the trio’s overall conclusion that the board had unconstitutionally infringed on students’ rights.

The current state of the law

Therefore, they ruled, school officials may remove books only for sound educational reasons or legitimate purposes – such as pervasive vulgarity or lack of educational suitability.
If any of the current cases reach the Supreme Court, the current justices could rule differently, of course.

Halifax's new development projects must not repeat the wrongs done to racialized communities

Retrieved on:

Wednesday, September 6, 2023

The demolition of Africville in the 1960s and subsequent expropriation without compensation are well-documented examples of injustices.

Key Points:

The demolition of Africville in the 1960s and subsequent expropriation without compensation are well-documented examples of injustices.
In the years since, there has been little substantial action to emplace African Nova Scotian residents in Downtown Halifax.
The project is a mixed-use residential district planned on the site of the former Cogswell highway interchange in downtown Halifax.
The elevated interchange was at the epicentre of a 1960s-era urban renewal project to construct a highway system through downtown Halifax.

Gentrification and erasure

This more recent wave of gentrification has been referred to as “Africville 2.0.” Thus far, city officials have sidestepped important questions about future land divestment, affordable housing and zoning.
Halifax Regional Municipality has promised to include some form of affordable housing in the future Cogswell District, but it is unclear what is meant by affordable.
A density bonusing program has been established to encourage the creation of public benefits including affordable housing by the private sector.

“Blight Removal” in Halifax’s past

Urban renewal goals in 1960s Halifax were twofold: the creation of a brand new harbourfront highway system and the removal of problematic housing.
Cogswell presents a prime example of similar renewal programs criticized by Jacobs in her influential 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
He produced maps with oversized dots representing perceived social ills such as households on welfare or children appearing in juvenile court.

Bridging Divides

In the decade since, the municipality has conducted extensive public consultation as a “cornerstone” of the planning process.
Thus far, the planning and design efforts have focused on street shapes and public space design, right down to fountains, bike lanes and benches.
Without a sincere commitment to these actions, lower-income African Nova Scotian families will continue to struggle with displacement in their city.