Laugh-A-Trumpics

This WIN THE MORNING article on "black people will vote for Trump!" is the funniest thing I think I've read in weeks.

If Donald Trump becomes the next president of the United States, there will be plenty of surprises along the way. One of the biggest will be the help he gets from black voters. 

According to Republican pollsters and Trump’s allies, the GOP poll-leader — who has been dogged by accusations of racism, most recently for tweeting out a chart that exaggerated the share of murders committed by blacks — is poised to out-perform with this demographic group in a general-election matchup with Hillary Clinton.

“If he were the Republican nominee he would get the highest percentage of black votes since Ronald Reagan in 1980,” said Republican messaging guru Frank Luntz, referring to the year Reagan won 14 percent of that bloc of voters. “They listen to him. They find him fascinating, and in all the groups I have done, I have found Obama voters, they could’ve voted for Obama twice, but if they’re African-American they would consider Trump.” 

Another longtime Republican pollster and veteran of multiple presidential campaigns has tested Trump’s appeal to blacks and Hispanics and come to the same conclusion. “He behaves in a way that most minorities would not expect a billionaire to behave,” explained the pollster, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid damaging relationships within the party. “He’s not a white-bread socialite kind of guy.”

Wow, holy balls.  I mean really? Black voters are going to abandon Hillary for Donald Trump? C'mon, tell me another one.

There’s more. The rest of Trump’s path to general-election victory, as laid out to POLITICO by pollsters, his campaign and his former advisers, looks like this: After winning the nomination on the first ballot, Trump unifies the party he has fractured behind him and reinvents himself as a pragmatic businessman and family man at the Republican National Convention. News of small-scale terror plots on American soil, foiled or successful, keep voters in a state of anxiety. Trump minimizes his losses with Hispanics by running Spanish-language ads highlighting his support for a strong military and take-charge entrepreneurial attitude, especially in the Miami and Orlando media markets. He draws the starkest possible outsider-insider contrast with Hillary Clinton and successfully tars her with her husband’s sexual history.

This Ben Schreckinger dude needs to lay off the meth and peyote highballs.  Never mind that this year's GOP primary has made black voters massively unhappy with Republicans.

Look, it's not impossible that Donald Trump wins.  It's just, as Douglas Adams said, finitely improbable. Even with Moose Lady's help.

Nice of Republicans to point out however that Hillary Clinton might need to do a better job not taking the black vote for granted.

StupidiNews!

• Astronomers believe there's strong evidence that a ninth planet far beyond Pluto's orbit may exist, so far out that it may take 20,000 year to orbit the Sun.
• A new report finds the grand jury in Cleveland who refused to indict two police officers in the death of Tamir Rice never actually got as far as an up-or-down vote on criminal charges.
• A British inquiry into the 2006 death of ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvineko in London found that Russian President Vladimir Putin "probably" approved the murder of the outspoken critic.
• NOAA data analysis found that 2015 was the warmest year globally since record-keeping began in 1880, beating 2014's record by nearly a quarter of a degree Fahrenheit.
• General Motors is testing its own ride-sharing service in Michigan called Maven, which will allow users to arrange rides and even rent vehicles.

Last Call For Immigration Deliberation

As expected, the Supreme Court will take up President Obama's executive actions on immigration this year, meaning it will become a major election issue starting in June.

The Supreme Court said Tuesday that it would consider a legal challenge to President Obama’s overhaul of the nation’s immigration rules. The court, which has twice rejected challenges to Mr. Obama’s health care law, will now determine the fate of one of his most far-reaching executive actions. 

Fourteen months ago, Mr. Obama ordered the creation of a program intended to allow as many as five million illegal immigrants who are the parents of citizens or of lawful permanent residents to apply for a program sparing them from deportation and providing them work permits. The program was called Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA. 

The president has said the program was the result of years of frustration with Republicans in Congress who had repeatedly refused to support bipartisan Senate legislation to update immigration laws. In an Oval Office address just before Thanksgiving in 2014, Mr. Obama excoriated Republicans for refusing to cooperate and told millions of illegal immigrants, “You can come out of the shadows.” 

But the president’s promise has gone unfulfilled. A coalition of 26 states, led by the attorney general in Texas, a Republican, quickly filed a lawsuit accusing the president of ignoring federal procedures for changing rules and of abusing the power of his office by sidestepping Congress. 

In February, Judge Andrew S. Hanen of Federal District Court in Brownsville, Tex., entered a preliminary injunction shutting down the program while the legal case proceeded. The government appealed, and on Nov. 9 a divided three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, affirmed the injunction. 

If the Supreme Court upholds Mr. Obama’s actions, the White House has vowed to move quickly to set up the DAPA program and begin enrolling immigrants before his successor takes over early next year. Democratic presidential candidates have said they will continue the program, but most of the Republicans in the race have vowed to dismantle it and redouble immigration enforcement.

For those of you who are thinking that SCOTUS would not deliver a body blow to executive branch power, recall last year's decision that effectively ended two centuries of presidential cabinet recess appointments, and has allowed Republicans to block filling executive positions until the president leaves office.

We'll see how oral arguments go, but I don't have too much hope here, not with this court.  The one bright spot will be heavy pressure on the next Congress to solve immigration, and a clear delineation between Republicans and Democrats.  Unfortunately, nothing will happen on immigration until Democrats get back control of Capitol Hill.

Water We Waiting For In Flint

As President Obama is in Michigan this week, the water crisis in Flint continues and a lot of fingers are being pointed. Flint resident Conner Coyne writes in Vox about what the media has gotten wrong about the situation in the city, and that the reality is that the stage for the humanitarian disaster here was set with the election of GOP Gov. Rick Snyder.

Many national media reports would have you believe that the crisis began in April 2014, when the city started drawing its water from the Flint River. They'd also have you believe that the crisis was the fault of the locally elected officials who made a catastrophic decision, not to mention city residents who did not hold their leaders accountable. 

The stage was set on March 16, 2011, when Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed Public Act 4. This measure broadened an earlier law that provided an "emergency financial manager" for financially distressed cities and school districts. Under the new law, "emergency financial managers" became "emergency managers" with the power to cancel or renegotiate city contracts, liquidate assets, suspend local government, unilaterally draft policy, and even disincorporate. (It is worth noting that Michigan emergency managers have done all of these things except disincorporate, which was entertained by a manager in the city of Pontiac.) 

The need for an emergency manager was determined by a series of highly subjective criteria. Almost every city that got one was a poor, African-American-majority city devastated by a shrinking industrial sector: Flint, Pontiac, Detroit, Highland Park, Benton Harbor, and so on. 

Flint was one of the first cities to be assigned an emergency manager in 2011, and over the course of four years had four such managers. One of the first manager's first acts was to suspend local government, and this remained essentially in force until the departure of the last emergency manager in 2015. Even today, Flint is under the scrutiny of a "transition advisory board" that has veto power over any local decision, and that has frequently overstepped its professed limited mandate to assure fiscal restraint. 

Many Michiganders found Public Act 4 to be a violation of a strong state tradition of "home rule," and so overturned it by referendum in the 2012 election. But that didn't last long: the Republican-dominated state legislature immediately passed Public Act 436, which was almost identical, although it included a provision to pay the emergency managers from state coffers rather than local. Under Michigan law, a bill that includes an appropriation like this cannot be voided through referendum. 

Some emergency managers, true, delegated limited responsibilities to the mayor or to members of the city council, but they always retained (and used) their powers to void any decision with which they disagreed. This is the key point that early coverage by flagship newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post neglected to mention: From 2011 to 2015, Flint officials had noreal control over municipal policy.
For example, a Newsweek article from October 2015 was titled "Flint: The Cheapskate City That Poisoned Its Children." 

A New York Times article reports that "Flint's mayor, Dayne Walling ... had attended a 2014 event to celebrate the switch to the new water supply," without mentioning that the emergency manager who had actually signed on for the switch was also present at that event. 

A Washington Post article from last December doesn't even utter the words "emergency Manager." 

It's those two words — "emergency manager" — that differentiate Flint from all but a handful of cities around the country, and which made it particularly vulnerable to the kind of reckless oversight that led to our contaminated water.

Chris Savage and our good friends over at Eclectablog have been covering Michigan politics and Gov. Snyder's emergency manager disaster for years, so if you want to learn more about how Flint happened, it's a great place to start.

But let's understand that in the end, Gov. Snyder did this by putting an unelected and unaccountable emergency manager in place in Flint who chose to do this.

Still wondering who made the call to switch to Flint River water? Here is the key document, signed by the Gov's EM. pic.twitter.com/QHLMELNR9B

— Jeff Irwin (@JeffMIrwin) January 20, 2016

Dispatches From Bevinstan, Con't

The "Women Are Too Stupid To Understand Telephone Conversations" bill in the Kentucky Senate has passed overwhelmingly, and will now go to the state House where it is expect to sail easily to Gov. Matt Bevin's desk.

Women in Kentucky must have a face-to-face meeting with a doctor at least 24 hours before having an abortion under a bill that cleared the state Senate on Tuesday.

The Republican-controlled chamber approved the bill 32-5. Kentucky law has required women meet with a doctor since 1998. But since then, many doctors have discussed the procedure with women on the phone. The new bill clarifies that patients must meet with doctors in person.

Kentucky has just two abortion clinics, one in Louisville and another in Lexington, the state's two largest cities.

"You can see, have better understanding, watch body language," Republican Senate President Robert Stivers said. "When you have that type of personal interaction, I think (it brings) more to light what the implications of the decision are."

The bill updates Kentucky's "informed consent law." But critics, including Derek Selznick with the American Civil Liberties Union, call it "forced delay," saying it creates "needless obstacles for women, especially burdening those that live outside of Louisville and Lexington."

Republican state Sen. Julie Raque Adams of Louisville, who sponsored the bill, said the bill does not add cost because "a woman does not need to travel outside of her own community" to receive the information.

Adams said the language of the bill allows a doctor to designate someone to represent him or her at the face-to-face meeting. For instance, she said, a doctor in Louisville could designate a social worker or nurse practitioner to meet with patients in distant counties.

Well, she didn't need to travel at all to have an informed consent conversation with her doctor before, because of this great invention called a "telephone".  Hell, these days you can take telephones with you because they are "mobile".  But, apparently, without visual body language cues, women are too stupid to make decisions.

Oh wait, these days you can have things called "teleconferences" to actually see your doctor when you are talking to them.  In fact, telemedicine to help doctors reach patients in states with a lot of rural patients, states like, say, Kentucky, is on the rise.

But apparently the subject of abortion infantilizes both physicians and patients so that technology readily available for decades doesn't work and the meeting must be in person.

The notion that this is a needless hoop for women tto jump through?  Of course not, a woman proposed the bill, silly!

Welcome to Bevinstan, where women are too stupid to be allowed to use the telephone.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/living/health-and-medicine/article55482095.html#storylink=cpy

StupidiNews!

• The Pakistani Taliban is claiming responsibility for an attack by gunmen on Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, Pakistan, 21 students and all four gunmen are reported dead.
• More than two dozen schools in New Jersey received bomb threats on Tuesday, forcing evacuations and lockdowns involving thousands of students.
• Former GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin has endorsed Donald Trump for President yesterday at a Trump rally at Iowa State University.
• UK unemployment has hit the lowest rate in a decade as Britain's jobless rate fell to 5.1%, prompting talk when, like the US, that the Bank of England will start raising interest rates.
• Computer security experts say Linux has a vulnerability that could give attackers root access to servers and Android devices, the vulnerability has existed since early 2013.

Last Call For The Robot Revolution

Whoever the next president is starting in 2017 will have to deal with the rise of office automation as millions of office jobs (and in particular pink-collar jobs) are replaced by technology over the next four years.

Are the robots coming to take our jobs? Advances in any tech that aids in automation always come with questions about the jobs they take versus the jobs they create, but the World Economic Forum warned in a report published on Monday that advances in robotics, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, and other modern technologies are currently likely to lead to a net loss of 5.1 million jobs worldwide by the year 2020.

"Without urgent and targeted action today to manage the near-term transition and build a workforce with futureproof skills, governments will have to cope with ever-growing unemployment and inequality—and businesses with a shrinking consumer base," the report states in its introduction.

The workforce number estimate, which is based on surveys and data provided by 371 companies' chief HR officers worldwide (whose combined workforces include over 13 million employees in 15 "major, developed, and emerging economies"), includes numbers for different industries' gains and losses. The biggest loser, according to the WEF, will be in the office and administrative job sector to the tune of 4.76 million jobs—due to "a perfect storm of technological trends that have the potential to make many of [the job roles] redundant," the report states. Other fields with major expected losses include manufacturing and production (1.61 million) and construction and extraction (497,000).

It's not all bad news, all this new technology will mean new jobs, particularly in STEM fields.

Meanwhile, the report's authors believe that employment demand in the engineering and architecture sectors will see a big boost, as specialists will be needed "to create and manage advanced and automated production systems." Job numbers in the "computer and mathematical sector" will actually benefit from seemingly negative trends like geopolitical volatility and privacy concerns—meaning that bigger, out-of-touch companies will hire more data-crunching specialists so that they can adapt to modern disruptions.

On the technological side, the WEF's survey points to increased reliance on the cloud as the biggest driver of hiring change, as opposed to robotics—though respondents also believed that robots' impact on hiring trends won't really begin until 2018. On the demographic side, the survey's respondents cite flexible work environments as the most impactful trend, thanks to more advanced mobile technology access across the globe. This trend in particular is a major reason the report expects such a dive in office and administrative hiring.

And that's the key.  Mobile technology and the 24/7 workplace, combined with more and more companies going to telecommuting and flex-time, mean companies will expect an on-call workforce available anywhere, at any time, from any place.  Note too that the real caveat is "jobs lost by the 15 largest economies" and while that does include India and China, one has to wonder if that means telecommuting jobs will be offshored from those areas to countries not on that list, places like Central and South America, Central Asia, Eastern and Southern Europe, and the big one, Russia.

The other point is that these are going to be pink collar jobs, traditionally held by women. Drilling into the report, the places that the US is expected to lose jobs are in the Healthcare and Energy sectors with slight growth in the office sector, but it's China and Europe that will see these office jobs go the most, with big growth in India.

We'll see how this all shakes out in the end, but that's a healthy chunk of jobs worldwide that will go away and won't come back.

The Other Side: Berning Up The Charts

Republican pundits seem really, really interested in seeing Bernie Sanders as the Democratic candidate, the way our side seems very eager to see Donald Trump running for the GOP in 2016. John Podhoretz suddenly loves the guy after Sunday's debate.

On health care, Clinton seemed to walk into a trap. She found herself defending the charge made (by her daughter!) that Bernie Sanders would dismantle ObamaCare.

He made incredibly short work of that by saying that he voted for ObamaCare and simply wants it to be the opening step toward what he calls “Medicare For All” — meaning a single-payer government health care system.

Once again, the fact that Hillary wasn’t comfortable taking that idea on directly shows the weakness of her anti-populist approach. She would say only that to raise new health care ideas would open a can of worms in 2017 that would give Republicans a way to abolish ObamaCare.

That criticism makes no sense. After all, the scenario she was addressing would involve Sanders having been elected president and sitting in the White House — which would mean he would have veto authority over any such Republican action and that the country had decided in 2016 to move farther to the left in any case.

Sanders raised $37 million last quarter, more than Clinton did and with more individual donations than any candidate before him in American history. That has strengthened him as a candidate and it emboldened him as a debater.

Hillary’s defenders will doubtless be spinning frantically over the next few days, but anyone who says she won last night is either deluding themselves or trying to delude you.

Now, let's go over this here.  J-Pod seems to think Medicare for all is a winning hand for Bernie, and seems to believe his large number of individual donors makes him "strong" and emboldened".  He really wants Bernie Sanders to beat Hillary Clinton, someone he seems to think will soon be indicted by the FBI anyhow.

If all this strikes you as weird, backhanded, and just plain suspicious, there's a good reason for that, and as Martin Longman points out, trusting your instinct on Bernie's chances in the general may be a smart move.

So, what we’re seeing here is that Sanders might be able to win the Democratic nomination while bearing the socialist label, but that it’s not exactly a big plus for him. And we have little evidence to show that he’d find easy rowing in the general election.

I’m not sure that Gov. John Kasich is justified in being so confident that Sanders would lose all 50 states, but I also don’t think David Atkins is justified in his confidence that Sanders would do just fine and have no negative impact on down-ballot races.

I think Atkins wrote a well-reasoned piece, and I’m not going to rebut it in full here. What I will say is that Sanders hasn’t been put through the meat grinder yet. He may look more electable than Hillary in a couple of recent polls and his policies may poll well in the abstract, but that’s just preliminary data that should be encouraging to Sanders’ supporters but shouldn’t give anyone the idea that these questions have been settled.

Socialism is still a dirty word, even if it isn’t anywhere near as dirty as it used to be, and even if the post-Cold War kids aren’t conditioned against it. If Sanders is the nominee, the Republicans and their big business allies will spend north of a billion dollars trying to make “socialism” less popular than Windows Vista.

Maybe this anti-socialism campaign will have no more effect than Jeb Bush’s spending seems to have, but there is a difference. Jeb is one candidate in a crowded field, not the nominee facing off against a single Democratic opponent.

And, then, since political reporters never lose their jobs, most of them are old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis and good James Bond movies. They think that they know what this country will and won’t tolerate, and it won’t tolerate socialism via Vermont.

I'd love to see Bernie win *if* he could pull off his agenda.  But unless we get a Dem House and 60 solid Dems in the Senate, it's going to get blocked.

And I see Republican really, really, really want Hillary to lose.  That tells me something.

Elegy For The Turned Out

It's not the "Trump Democrats" that should worry all of us in 2016, it's the folks who don't vote and see The Donald as their best chance yet of burning the whole system down and replacing it with authoritarianism.

Ted Wade hasn’t cared about politics enough to cast a vote in a U.S. presidential election for almost a quarter of a century, back when he supported Ross Perot’s independent candidacy in 1992.

But Republican Donald Trump's 2016 White House bid has motivated Wade to get involved and he plans to support the real estate mogul in Nevada’s nominating caucus next month. Trump is a "non-politician" who can fix the "chaos" in Washington, he says.

About one in 10 Americans who plan to cast a vote this election will do so for the first time in years, if ever, and Trump holds a decided edge with them, according to polling by Reuters/Ipsos. (tmsnrt.rs/1SgeLvi)

These voters offer Trump a pool of voters who could be decisive either in the Republican primaries or a general election. They could be crucial for Trump in early-voting states such as Iowa and South Carolina, where his nearest rival, Senator Ted Cruz, is putting pressure on Trump and enjoys a strong base of support with more traditionally conservative voters.

In Reuters/Ipsos polling from June to December 2015, 27.3 percent of these “new” voters said they would vote for Trump, higher than his poll numbers among independents and Republicans who regularly vote.

By way of comparison, Cruz captures just 3.4 percent of these voters. And Senator Marco Rubio of Florida snags only 4 percent.

“I’m tired of the chaos between Democrats and Republicans and want to give somebody a try who I think can make a difference,” said Wade of Trump.

The 51-year-old has already switched his affiliation from Democrat to Republican and even attended a Trump campaign event in Las Vegas. He has told his three older children to get involved in the elections, although he did not say whether he wanted them to vote for Trump.

Trump, the Republican front-runner, has made targeting “lost” voters such as Wade a focus of his campaign. His anti-immigrant rhetoric and protectionist trade proposals have helped him to fashion a message tailored to reach Americans alienated by the endless enmity between the political parties and who, because of declining economic prospects, may feel like neither party has done much for them.

Those "lost" voters who never trusted politicians but trust a dangerous demagogue like Trump? They know exactly what they want, and Trump has made it permissible to say again.

StupidiNews!

• Amid allegations of match-fixing as the Australian Open begins this week in Melbourne, tennis governing body ATP is denying a report of a cover-up of the problems in the sport.
• A St. Paul police officer has been suspended after suggesting on Facebook that drivers should run over "idiot" Black Lives Matter protesters with their cars.
• Eagles guitarist, singer, and co-founder Glenn Frey has died at 67 from complications with pneumonia, the band's Greatest Hits album remains one of the top sellers of all time.
• Major League Baseball faces off against cable and satellite TV giants in court starting today as the league defends forcing fans to sign up for expensive packages outside a market area.
• Amazon says its Prime Air delivery drones will be able to deliver up to 5 pound packages in 30 minutes once the FAA and Civil Aviation Authority approve commercial drones.

Last Call For Settling Up In Cincy

The big story here in the Cincy area tonight is the announcement of a settlement between the University of Cincinnati and the family of Sam DuBose, killed last year by campus officer Ray Tensing over a license plate stop.

The family of a man shot and killed by a University of Cincinnati police officer who pulled him over for not having a front license plate has reached a $5.3 million settlement with the school, the family and university announced Monday.

The deal gives the family of Samuel DuBose $4.85 million and promises free undergraduate tuition for his 12 children who range in age from 4 to 23.

The educational component of the settlement is valued at approximately $500,000.

Additionally, UC will erect a memorial to DuBose on campus and UC President Santa Ono will also issue an apology to the family for the loss of DuBose.

"This did not need to happen, and we need to make sure this doesn't happen to another family," said Terina Allen, DuBose's sister. "And if we have that memorial, maybe that makes people stop and say 'Wow.' And maybe it won't happen again."

"Everybody's hurt, you know?" Raegan Brooks, DuBose's 18-year-old daughter said. "And everybody's suffering from, you know, the loss."

Brooks is the administrator of her late father's estate meaning she will ultimately decide how the settlement money is doled out.

"We got some positives from it, but my dad won't be here," Brooks said. "So it's still a bittersweet moment."

Al Gerhardstein, a civil rights attorney who helped the DuBose family during settlement talks, said, "It is Martin Luther King Day. And he encouraged us to resolve our disputes peacefully. The family heard that. They had the most violent thing happen to Sam DuBose that can happen from a law enforcement officer. They lost their dad, their brother, their son and yet they responded peacefully and have worked for months with UC to try and both honor his legacy and promote reforms that will change things for the future and make this less likely to happen."

The fact the settlement was announced on MLK Day is not lost on DuBose's fiancee, Da'Shonda Reid.

"We're still looking for dreams," Reid said. "We're still marching. We're still singing. We're still praying. What has changed? We're still losing lives out here."

I have to say, while nothing can replace losing a loved one to murder like that, the University definitely appeared to be treating the DuBose family with good faith, and the tuition especially is a valuable offering that the University will hopefully be able to make a difference with in the future.

But DuBose's fiancee is right: black people are still dying out here.  In the end, that's the part that must change, and the settlement being announced on MLK Day makes it all the more important.
 

On Martin Today

A reminder that on today, the day we celebrate the life of Dr. King, that his most enduring message was that to get to the justice fulfilled of "I have a dream" that at some point white America would realize that it had failed black America for decades and would most likely continue to do so.

That was 50 years ago.

Hasn't happened yet.

Hence the "dream" part. Oh, and his assassination.

Please recall this as Republicans fall all over themselves to remind you of what Dr. King would think of America today.

Welcome To Jurassic Pork

A new year and a new administration in Frankfort means it's time to check in with Ken Ham and the Yabba Dabba D'oh. The new Noah's Ark Encounter that's being built off tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and will finally open this July as Newsweek's Lindsey Tucker takes a look.

Despite many competitive advantages, including buying a 99-acre parcel of land from the city for a mere dollar, the $101 million project has been plagued for five years by setbacks that include a lack of public support, unfruitful fundraising efforts and a bitter lawsuit over $18 million in tax incentives that the state withheld due to church-state separation concerns. But none of this has discouraged Ham, who says his ark could draw as many as 2 million visitors in its first year, although such projections are highly disputed.

Last month, I flew to Kentucky to meet Ham and tour the ark site and AiG’s design studio. The ark—which is still being built at the end of a very long, carefully guarded dirt road with a sign marked “Danger… Keep out”—is hidden from public scrutiny, and for good reason. In order to incentivize building there, Williamstown declared the ark site and the surrounding 1.25 miles a tax increment financing (TIF) district, which is a fancy way of saying that over the next 30 years, 75 percent of sales and real estate taxes generated within the area will go back to fund Ark Encounter. There’s also an employment tax for workers in the district, but more on that shortly.

Ham didn’t stand up when an assistant shuffled me into his office one Friday afternoon. He has railed against the media time and time again for, he says, falsely claiming that taxpayer money is going toward building the ark. When he speaks, he does so slowly, his words even and calculated. “No Kentucky taxpayer money is going to build the Ark Encounter,” he tells me. Several times.

Ham is telling the truth, but it’s a literal interpretation of the truth. The money used to build Ark Encounter came from donations of almost $30 million, plus $62 million in high-risk, unrated municipal bonds backed by the project’s future revenues. If Ark Encounter never makes significant profits (and bond documents warn that it may not), neither the city nor AiG is on the hook for the bond money. However, according to Mike Zovath, chief actions officer for AiG and Ark Encounter, the millions in tax dollars that will be rebated through the formation of the aforementioned TIF district could go toward repaying the bonds and funding future attractions. What neither of them mentioned in conversations with me or in their many blog posts on the subject is that, as part of the TIF agreement, employees working within the TIF district will be subject to a 2 percent employment tax on gross wages for the next 30 years. In other words, $2 out of every $100 earned by people working at or around the park will go directly to paying off the attraction. So while tax dollars might not actually have been used to build the ark, a boatload that would otherwise go back into the community will instead be used to pay off Ark Encounter’s debt.

Nice scam if you can get it, huh?  Workers, many of whom will be making minimum wage, are the ones who will be taxed to pay off the park's debt for the next 30 years.  But let's not lose sight of the true function of the park:

There’s more than just public money at stake. Other Ark Encounter attractions will reportedly include a petting zoo, a first-century village and so-called teaching exhibits with titles like “Flood Geology” (how the separation of continents and marine fossils found on mountaintops “are a direct result of the flood” ) and “The Ice Age” (AiG insists there was only one). Famed scientist and educator Bill Nye, who came under fire from some scientists in 2014 for dueling with Ham in a televised evolution vs. creationism debate, warns that using commonwealth dollars to suppress science is bad for the whole country. “Raising a generation of young people who are confused about the natural history of the Earth is not in our best interest,” he says. “This project is going to slow the response of voters in the Commonwealth to climate change and it’s going to hold us all back.” Given the way AiG rejects scientific evidence, he thinks it might not be so bad if the ark park goes the way of the Titanic.

Now, should the ark park, well, sink during the Bevin years, how much will ol' MIT grad Matt put into saving the place?  I think we'll find out before too long.

StupidiNews!

• US officials say three military contractors have gone missing in Iraq since Friday, grabbed from a convoy in Baghdad's Dora neighborhood.
• A new Oxfam study finds that the number of billionaires on earth that control the same amount of wealth as the world's poorest 50% is down to just 62 people.
• American prisoners released by Iran, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, have arrived safely in Germany as sanctions against Iran are being lifted starting this week.
• Hollywood will face possible EU fines this week in Brussels as European Union antitrust regulators take on pay-TV contracts for movie blockbusters. 
• The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft that its Xbox 360 console scratched game discs and made them unplayable.

Dealing With The Five Percent

President Obama realizes that the problem with unemployment isn't just people losing jobs, it's people not having skills to get new jobs in new industries. His latest proposal is to do something about that.

President Barack Obama on Saturday proposed changes to the U.S. unemployment insurance system that he says would offer more security to the jobless and encourage experienced workers to rejoin the workforce, even if it means taking a pay cut.

"We shouldn't just be talking about unemployment; we should be talking about re-employment," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address.

The president's proposal would require states to provide wage insurance to workers who lose their jobs and find new employment at lower pay. The insurance would replace half of the lost income, up to $10,000 over two years. It would be available to workers who were with their prior employer for three years and make less than $50,000 in their new job.

The proposal also would require states to make unemployment insurance available to many part-time and low-income workers, and it would mandate that states provide at least 26 weeks of unemployment insurance. Nine states fall short of the benchmark, the White House said.

The "re-employment insurance" program would be part of the President's final budget proposal, which of course with the GOP controlling Congress and 31 states, it has zero chance of ever being adopted.  Perhaps in 2017 we'd have a more amenable Congress, but that would take people, you know, voting, and in record numbers.

It's not impossible, but at this point I don't see 2016 turnout being above 50%, much less the 70% plus it would take to shift Congress and the states.