- Don't Blame Facebook. It's the Education, Stupid (Ozy) "Yes, Donald Trump’s support was confined almost exclusively to whites, who, despite the media’s infatuation with America’s coming majority minority, still make up 70 percent of the electorate. But among this supermajority, the most accurate predictor of Trump support was educational achievement. Among college-educated whites (36 percent of voters) Trump eked out a four-point margin. But whites with no college (34 percent of voters) preferred Trump by a whopping 39 percent. The reason undereducated whites flocked to Trump is simple and stark. From 1989 to 2012, on a net basis, every single job created in the U.S. required a postsecondary education. While employment for those with some college grew by 42 percent and for those with a bachelor’s degree by 82 percent, for those with a high school diploma or less, employment fell by 14 percent.The only solution is more and better public education for America’s poor, from pre-K through precalculus and on to college."
BUSINESS/FINANCE:
- Mandatory Saving for Retirement Gets a Thumbs Up From Millennials (Fortune) "Nearly seven in 10 young adults say they believe individuals should be required to save in retirement accounts, according to a survey from Natixis Global Asset Management. On average, millennials first enrolled in a retirement savings plan at age 23, while Gen X signed up at age 27 and boomers, at 31. This early start shows that millennials appreciate the extent to which they must provide retirement security for themselves. It also reflects the move to auto enrollment by many companies that offer 401(k) plans."
- 5 marketing trends to watch for in 2017 (VentureBeat) "Live streaming hasn’t fully taken off yet, but expect it to boom in 2017. Get ready for more direct use of augmented reality within apps, both immersive experiences and tangentially related ones. But in 2017, we’re expecting chatbots to improve significantly and to be used in new ways. Immersive viewing experiences could really break ground in 2017."
HEALTH:
- Trump spurs fears, hopes among Americans insured by the Affordable Care Act (WaPo) "On few matters is the political divide as pure as it is on health care. Early this fall, nearly 9 in 10 Democrats said in a survey for Harvard University and Politico that they thought the government has a major role in improving the health system, and 80 percent said the ACA is working well. Among Republicans, only about a quarter said the government has a major role, while an equal share said the government has none. Nearly 90 percent said the ACA is working poorly."
- A Battle to Change Medicare Is Brewing, Whether Trump Wants It or Not (NYT) "Supporters say this approach (premium support) could save money by stimulating greater price competition among insurers, who would offer plans with lower premiums to attract customers. Democrats say that premium support would privatize Medicare, replacing the current government guarantee with skimpy vouchers — 'coupon care for seniors.' The fear is that the healthiest seniors would choose private insurance, lured by offers of free health club memberships and other wellness programs, leaving traditional Medicare with sicker, more expensive patients and higher premiums."
LISTEN TO THIS:
- Castro's Cuba: Bay Of Pigs As A 'Fascinating And Important' Failed Endeavor (NPR) "But then John Kennedy made the problem much worse because he realized a good way to defeat Richard Nixon was to beat the Eisenhower administration over the head with Fidel Castro. How could they allow this communist dictator to come to power a mere 90 miles away from American shores? And then - he wins. And then he's handed this plan by the CIA, which he knew a little bit about, but he didn't know the details. And they're telling him, Mr. President, you need to pull the trigger on this right now. And he had gotten himself into a situation that he didn't really know how to get out of. He didn't really want to go ahead with the Bay of Pigs invasion, but he had painted himself into a corner. I mean it, shows so many themes in American history. One is how fear is used in politics and how that sometimes can come back to bite the person who is using it - the candidate who is using it."
- Fake News Surge Pins D.C. Pizzeria As Home To Child-Trafficking (NPR) "Basically, the sort of reality-based community thought this was this insane sort of joke or a made-up fiction. But within many of these conspiratorial online communities, they were at least taking this seriously. What's wild additionally is that it seems as if it's almost like a game to them, like a video game. And the players are actually real, and the tools that are used are based in social media."
NEWS:
- MORE FOR THE IRS? Trump's plan would mean tax hike for some married couples, middle class, analysis finds (Fox) "President-elect Donald Trump's proposals would modestly cut income taxes for most middle-class Americans. But for nearly 8 million families -- including a majority of single-parent households -- the opposite would occur: They'd pay more. Most married couples with three or more children would also pay higher taxes, an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found. And while middle-class families as a whole would receive tax cuts of about 2 percent, they'd be dwarfed by the windfalls averaging 13.5 percent for America's richest 1 percent. 'The largest tax reductions are for the middle class,' said Trump's 'Contract With the American Voter,' released last month. The tax hikes that would hit single parents and large families would result from Trump's plan to eliminate the personal exemption and the head-of-household filing status. 'If you're a low- or moderate-income single parent, you're going to get hurt,' said Bob Williams, a fellow at the Tax Policy Center. All independent analyses show most of the benefit of Trump's plan flowing to the wealthiest Americans. Nearly half of Trump's tax cuts would go to the top 1 percent of earners, the Tax Policy Center found. Less than a quarter of the cuts would benefit the bottom 80 percent."
- Finger Pointed at Russians in Alleged Coup Plot in Montenegro (NYT) "The man, Aleksandar Sindjelic, a veteran anti-Western activist from neighboring Serbia, has become a key informant — and a suspect — in a sprawling investigation into an alleged plot orchestrated by two Russians to seize Montenegro’s Parliament building last month, kill the prime minister and install a new government hostile to NATO. With a few thousand soldiers, a handful of tanks and only 600,000 residents, Montenegro — whose application to join NATO was accepted in May and now awaits ratification — is hardly a military powerhouse. But it controls the only stretch of coastline where warships can dock between Gibraltar and eastern Turkey not already in the hands of the alliance." and Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say (WaPo) "Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery — including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human 'trolls,' and networks of Web sites and social-media accounts — echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. Two teams of independent researchers found that the Russians exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment, as an insurgent candidate harnessed a wide range of grievances to claim the White House."
- How long before the white working class realizes Trump was just scamming them? (WaPo) "Had Hillary Clinton won the election, the white working class might have gotten some tangible benefits — a higher minimum wage, overtime pay, paid family and medical leave, more secure health insurance, and so on. Trump and the Republicans oppose all that. So what did the white working class actually get? They got the election itself. They got to give a big middle finger to the establishment, to the coastal elites, to immigrants, to feminists, to college students, to popular culture, to political correctness, to every person and impersonal force they see arrayed against them. And that was it."
- This is the single most dangerous thing Donald Trump said in his New York Times interview (WaPo) "Hiding behind the 'well, there's no law that says I can't do this' is not exactly presidential. And a belief that the president isn't bound to do everything he can to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest suggests a dangerous slippery slope about what a president can and should do in office."
- Michigan Common Core Supporters Praise Trump’s Education Chief Pick Betsy DeVos (Breitbart) "DeVos serves as a board member of Common Core champion Jeb Bush’s foundation. Bush also praised Trump’s decision to nominate her for the top education official in the country. Trump vowed to eliminate Common Core while on the campaign trail, referring to it as a 'disaster.' He also said he would work to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education."
- Retired Marine generals recommended each other to Trump as Pentagon chief (WaPo)
- Hopes for a female president dashed, women take running for office into their own hands (WaPo)
POLITICS:
- Conway unloads on Romney (Politico) "'I’m all for party unity, but I’m not sure that we have to pay for that with the secretary of state position,' Conway said. Appointing Mitt Romney as secretary of state would be viewed by many supporters of President-elect Donald Trump as a major betrayal, former Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told CNN on Sunday."
- No, Conservatism Should Not Embrace Populism (National Review) "There is obvious incompatibility between conservatism’s “don’t just do something, stand there” nature and populism’s demands for action that is forceful even if rash. That’s populism: Doing what you know is wrong, heedless of harmful consequences — some unintended, others easily foreseeable — because the masses will perceive it as empathy. Trump did not win because of populism. His final vote tally will be roughly equal to the 62 million George W. Bush garnered in 2004. Let’s bear in mind the Census Bureau’s estimate that our population has grown by 30 million since then. Even with Trump’s marginal improvement over the hauls of Romney in 2012 and McCain in 2008 (about 61 and 60 million, respectively), the GOP has flat-lined, at least in presidential elections, in which voter participation is at its heaviest."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Tech Was Supposed to Crash in 2016. It Got Real Instead (Wired)
- The race to build the fastest supercomputer just sped up (WaPo)
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- These Kick-Ass Beats From Korea's Countryside Will Get You Rocking (Ozy)
Sign up for email distribution of the Day's Most Compelling News below or by visiting Top of the News
BUSINESS/FINANCE:
- Mandatory Saving for Retirement Gets a Thumbs Up From Millennials (Fortune) "Nearly seven in 10 young adults say they believe individuals should be required to save in retirement accounts, according to a survey from Natixis Global Asset Management. On average, millennials first enrolled in a retirement savings plan at age 23, while Gen X signed up at age 27 and boomers, at 31. This early start shows that millennials appreciate the extent to which they must provide retirement security for themselves. It also reflects the move to auto enrollment by many companies that offer 401(k) plans."
- 5 marketing trends to watch for in 2017 (VentureBeat) "Live streaming hasn’t fully taken off yet, but expect it to boom in 2017. Get ready for more direct use of augmented reality within apps, both immersive experiences and tangentially related ones. But in 2017, we’re expecting chatbots to improve significantly and to be used in new ways. Immersive viewing experiences could really break ground in 2017."
HEALTH:
- Trump spurs fears, hopes among Americans insured by the Affordable Care Act (WaPo) "On few matters is the political divide as pure as it is on health care. Early this fall, nearly 9 in 10 Democrats said in a survey for Harvard University and Politico that they thought the government has a major role in improving the health system, and 80 percent said the ACA is working well. Among Republicans, only about a quarter said the government has a major role, while an equal share said the government has none. Nearly 90 percent said the ACA is working poorly."
- A Battle to Change Medicare Is Brewing, Whether Trump Wants It or Not (NYT) "Supporters say this approach (premium support) could save money by stimulating greater price competition among insurers, who would offer plans with lower premiums to attract customers. Democrats say that premium support would privatize Medicare, replacing the current government guarantee with skimpy vouchers — 'coupon care for seniors.' The fear is that the healthiest seniors would choose private insurance, lured by offers of free health club memberships and other wellness programs, leaving traditional Medicare with sicker, more expensive patients and higher premiums."
LISTEN TO THIS:
- Castro's Cuba: Bay Of Pigs As A 'Fascinating And Important' Failed Endeavor (NPR) "But then John Kennedy made the problem much worse because he realized a good way to defeat Richard Nixon was to beat the Eisenhower administration over the head with Fidel Castro. How could they allow this communist dictator to come to power a mere 90 miles away from American shores? And then - he wins. And then he's handed this plan by the CIA, which he knew a little bit about, but he didn't know the details. And they're telling him, Mr. President, you need to pull the trigger on this right now. And he had gotten himself into a situation that he didn't really know how to get out of. He didn't really want to go ahead with the Bay of Pigs invasion, but he had painted himself into a corner. I mean it, shows so many themes in American history. One is how fear is used in politics and how that sometimes can come back to bite the person who is using it - the candidate who is using it."
- Fake News Surge Pins D.C. Pizzeria As Home To Child-Trafficking (NPR) "Basically, the sort of reality-based community thought this was this insane sort of joke or a made-up fiction. But within many of these conspiratorial online communities, they were at least taking this seriously. What's wild additionally is that it seems as if it's almost like a game to them, like a video game. And the players are actually real, and the tools that are used are based in social media."
NEWS:
- MORE FOR THE IRS? Trump's plan would mean tax hike for some married couples, middle class, analysis finds (Fox) "President-elect Donald Trump's proposals would modestly cut income taxes for most middle-class Americans. But for nearly 8 million families -- including a majority of single-parent households -- the opposite would occur: They'd pay more. Most married couples with three or more children would also pay higher taxes, an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found. And while middle-class families as a whole would receive tax cuts of about 2 percent, they'd be dwarfed by the windfalls averaging 13.5 percent for America's richest 1 percent. 'The largest tax reductions are for the middle class,' said Trump's 'Contract With the American Voter,' released last month. The tax hikes that would hit single parents and large families would result from Trump's plan to eliminate the personal exemption and the head-of-household filing status. 'If you're a low- or moderate-income single parent, you're going to get hurt,' said Bob Williams, a fellow at the Tax Policy Center. All independent analyses show most of the benefit of Trump's plan flowing to the wealthiest Americans. Nearly half of Trump's tax cuts would go to the top 1 percent of earners, the Tax Policy Center found. Less than a quarter of the cuts would benefit the bottom 80 percent."
- Finger Pointed at Russians in Alleged Coup Plot in Montenegro (NYT) "The man, Aleksandar Sindjelic, a veteran anti-Western activist from neighboring Serbia, has become a key informant — and a suspect — in a sprawling investigation into an alleged plot orchestrated by two Russians to seize Montenegro’s Parliament building last month, kill the prime minister and install a new government hostile to NATO. With a few thousand soldiers, a handful of tanks and only 600,000 residents, Montenegro — whose application to join NATO was accepted in May and now awaits ratification — is hardly a military powerhouse. But it controls the only stretch of coastline where warships can dock between Gibraltar and eastern Turkey not already in the hands of the alliance." and Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say (WaPo) "Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery — including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human 'trolls,' and networks of Web sites and social-media accounts — echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. Two teams of independent researchers found that the Russians exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment, as an insurgent candidate harnessed a wide range of grievances to claim the White House."
- How long before the white working class realizes Trump was just scamming them? (WaPo) "Had Hillary Clinton won the election, the white working class might have gotten some tangible benefits — a higher minimum wage, overtime pay, paid family and medical leave, more secure health insurance, and so on. Trump and the Republicans oppose all that. So what did the white working class actually get? They got the election itself. They got to give a big middle finger to the establishment, to the coastal elites, to immigrants, to feminists, to college students, to popular culture, to political correctness, to every person and impersonal force they see arrayed against them. And that was it."
- This is the single most dangerous thing Donald Trump said in his New York Times interview (WaPo) "Hiding behind the 'well, there's no law that says I can't do this' is not exactly presidential. And a belief that the president isn't bound to do everything he can to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest suggests a dangerous slippery slope about what a president can and should do in office."
- Michigan Common Core Supporters Praise Trump’s Education Chief Pick Betsy DeVos (Breitbart) "DeVos serves as a board member of Common Core champion Jeb Bush’s foundation. Bush also praised Trump’s decision to nominate her for the top education official in the country. Trump vowed to eliminate Common Core while on the campaign trail, referring to it as a 'disaster.' He also said he would work to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education."
- Retired Marine generals recommended each other to Trump as Pentagon chief (WaPo)
- Hopes for a female president dashed, women take running for office into their own hands (WaPo)
POLITICS:
- Conway unloads on Romney (Politico) "'I’m all for party unity, but I’m not sure that we have to pay for that with the secretary of state position,' Conway said. Appointing Mitt Romney as secretary of state would be viewed by many supporters of President-elect Donald Trump as a major betrayal, former Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told CNN on Sunday."
- No, Conservatism Should Not Embrace Populism (National Review) "There is obvious incompatibility between conservatism’s “don’t just do something, stand there” nature and populism’s demands for action that is forceful even if rash. That’s populism: Doing what you know is wrong, heedless of harmful consequences — some unintended, others easily foreseeable — because the masses will perceive it as empathy. Trump did not win because of populism. His final vote tally will be roughly equal to the 62 million George W. Bush garnered in 2004. Let’s bear in mind the Census Bureau’s estimate that our population has grown by 30 million since then. Even with Trump’s marginal improvement over the hauls of Romney in 2012 and McCain in 2008 (about 61 and 60 million, respectively), the GOP has flat-lined, at least in presidential elections, in which voter participation is at its heaviest."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Tech Was Supposed to Crash in 2016. It Got Real Instead (Wired)
- The race to build the fastest supercomputer just sped up (WaPo)
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- These Kick-Ass Beats From Korea's Countryside Will Get You Rocking (Ozy)
Sign up for email distribution of the Day's Most Compelling News below or by visiting Top of the News
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