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THE MULTIMILLIONAIRE HELPING REPUBLICANS WIN N.C.
TERRY GROSS, host: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. There's a new project aimed at engineering a Republican takeover of state legislatures with the expectation that will have a ripple effect on national politics. In the current edition of the New Yorker, my guest, Jane Mayer, writes about how this strategy has successfully played out in the battleground state of North Carolina, where the 2010 election left both chambers of the general assembly with firm Republican majorities for the first time since 1870.
Her article "State for Sale" is about a conservative multimillionaire named Art Pope. Pope, his family and their organizations targeted 22 legislative races. The Republicans they backed won 18 of those seats. Pope has financial ties to Americans for Prosperity, a national Tea Party group which was founded by David Koch. Last year, Jane Mayer wrote an article in the New Yorker about David and his brother Charles Koch and their role in funding conservative causes, including the Tea Party movement.
Jane Mayer, welcome to FRESH AIR. Now, the North Carolina strategy that you're writing about, of getting more Republicans in the state house, this is part of a larger plan called Red Map. What is Red Map engineered to do?
JANE MAYER: Well, Red Map was a project that was launched by something called the Republican State Leadership Committee, and the idea was to flip as many state houses across the country to Republican majorities as was possible in 2010 and particularly those states where redistricting was going to take place, congressional redistricting.
And the thinking behind it, which was very ingenious, was that state races, things like, you know, state legislature races, are cheap, and if you can just put a bit of money into them and, again, flip the statehouse, then you can control the redistricting process, which in turn gives the Republican Party a great advantage in putting members of Congress in the House of Representatives.
GROSS: So how did you find out about Red Map? Is Red Map common knowledge, or is it more of a - you know, more secretive kind of strategy?
MAYER: It wasn't secret, but basically what I found was that most people don't pay a lot of attention to what's going on in the states, especially states with the news media having to, you know, watch its budgets. There are an awful lot of statehouses that are no longer covered. And there's just not a lot of focus on what's going on at that granular level in this country.
It's kind of ground zero for where politics is playing out, but still not a lot of people watch it.
GROSS: Okay, so your focus is on North Carolina and this Red Map strategy in North Carolina, that Republicans take over the state legislature, you know, have a majority in the state legislature. Why is North Carolina so important within the larger Red Map strategy?
MAYER: Well, North Carolina is a really key state for 2012, the presidential election year. And the reason is because it's a state that traditionally teeters between Republican and Democratic. And in 2008, Obama carried it. And he carried it very narrowly, with just over 14,000 votes. And it is considered by almost any analyst you talk to to be a must-win state for Obama in 2012.
If you take a look at the map, he's going to have to try to carry it again. So what happens there may have a kind of a final effect, a very important, decisive effect on the presidential election. So I was kind of interested in seeing what was going on down there, and as much as anything, the reason I was looking at one state also was I wanted to see what happened after Citizens United, has it had any effect.
GROSS: So before we get to the answer to that question, what was the makeup of the statehouse in North Carolina before the Red Map strategy, and what is it now? How successful has the strategy been?
MAYER: It's been incredibly successful. And what happened was the legislature became majority Republican in both the House and the Senate for the first time since 1870. Basically Democrats have had at least one house in the legislature in North Carolina since, you know, somebody was jokingly saying, basically since General Sherman.
And so it's historic what happened down there. There's still a Democratic governor, Bev Purdue, but she's hanging on by a thread.
GROSS: My guest is Jane Mayer, staff writer for the New York, and her new article is called "State For Sale: A Conservative Multimillionaire Has Taken Control of North Carolina, One of 2012's Top Battlegrounds."
So the conservative millionaire mentioned in your headline is Art Pope, and he's the chair and CEO of Variety Wholesalers, which you describe as a discount store conglomerate. Give us a sense of how much money he and the foundations and organizations that he's behind have sunk into elections in North Carolina.
MAYER: Well, he has himself a family foundation with about $150 million in it, and over the past decade he and his company and, you know, a couple members of his family have basically poured money into the state's politics, $40 million is about what they've spent through their foundations. About $35 million of that has gone towards pushing a far-right political agenda in North Carolina.
And in this past election, the 2010, just the state races â again, these are little races where people don't spend much money, so a little money goes a long way - he and groups that he helped found, they were supposedly independent groups, spent $2.2 million.
And again, it doesn't sound like a lot nationally, but it can make all the difference in the context of one state. So basically what you're looking at is one very wealthy corporate captain who when motivated enough can exert enormous influence in a state.
GROSS: You write that three-quarters of the spending by independent groups in North Carolina's 2010 state races came from accounts linked to this one man, Art Pope.
MAYER: Three-quarters of the spending, exactly, of outside groups. And they're supposed to be independent groups, and they're supposed to be nonpartisan for the most part, and yet they - they - so much of the money, when you take a close look at it, is linked back to this one man, Art Pope.
GROSS: I'm going to ask a very naive question: What are the advantages of having lots of money when you're running for the state legislature?
MAYER: Well, what you can do with that money is get your message out. You can pay for commercials and for mailers that, you know, just the stuff that comes into your house that looks like junk mail.
Many of the candidates that were targeted, the Democrats who were targeted, had as many as two dozen mailers sent out to people in their district trashing them. And after a while, it begins to sink in.
I mean the reason people spend money is because it works, and the effect is mostly a message that's carried through advertising, frequently a negative message.
GROSS: In this instance, in North Carolina, frequently false or misleading information about the opponents that the Republicans were targeting. Give us an example. Actually, I'm going to ask you for an example. You describe one of the mass-mailing campaigns as being reminiscent of the Willie Horton campaign. Describe that campaign.
MAYER: Well, yeah. There was a - one of the candidates was a state senator named John Snow(ph). He was way out in the Western corner of North Carolina, and he's a former judge, and he'd been a former prosecutor. He's probably as conservative as you can get as a Democrat without becoming a Republican.
Yet he was trashed in some of the advertisements for having voted for something called The Racial Justice Act in 2009, which gave Death Row prisoners a chance to appeal their convictions if they could prove that they had been convicted because of racism.
And what it did was it allowed judge to basically - a judge to look at the conviction again. And since John Snow was a judge and a very conservative one who believed in the death penalty and had prosecuted murders, he understood the importance of this legislation.
As he said to me, it was very important that if you're going to put somebody to death, that you give the convict due process and make sure that you've arrived at the right result. But because of that, there were mailers sent out about him in his district that showed a picture of a convicted African-American murderer and gave all these lurid details about how he'd been involved in a gang rape of a child and basically said John Snow wants to let this man out.
And so it was one of those kinds of campaigns that just hits people on the most elemental level of fear...
GROSS: And John Snow did not want to let that particular man out.
MAYER: He didn't - no, of course - I mean the idea was to provide just, you know, a rational process of appeals if there was a false conviction, and it had nothing to do with letting guilty people out.
GROSS: Just not electrocuting them or putting them to death.
MAYER: Well, first of all, maybe commuting their death sentence, but if they were guilty, it wasn't even going to commute their death sentence. The idea was if - you know, there's a tremendous racial disparity in the people who are convicted on Death Row in this county, and it's long been noted that black convicts are much more likely to be given death sentences than white ones are. And it's a very touchy subject, particularly in the South.
And Snow was just bending over backwards to try to be fair and address this very well-known issue, but because of that, and voting for something that he thought was the right thing, he was being targeted in a way that misconstrued, as he said, his record. He supports the death penalty. He is a conservative. And he was being described, as he said, in a very racially slanted way to look like a liberal.
GROSS: So after being misrepresented in this mass mailing, the Democrat was defeated.
MAYER: The Democrat was defeated.
GROSS: The campaign seemed to have worked, to be effective.
MAYER: It did, and what was interesting was that the groups that - again, there were â this was - it's a small area of the country, but there were several hundred thousand dollars spent by outside groups linked to this one businessman â again, Art Pope - and it wasn't that John Snow, this one candidate, mattered so much to Art Pope. It was that he's looking at the numbers with the Red Map project in mind. You've got to just go and target Democrats up and down the line and see if you can knock them out. And that's what they did.
GROSS: Another Democrat that was targeted in this campaign through a group funded by Art Pope or one of his organizations was Chris Heagarty, a Democratic lawyer who ran for a legislative seat in Wake County, which includes Raleigh, where Pope lives.
And you describe Heagarty as having dark hair and a dark complexion, but he's white. So describe one of these ads that was used to target him.
MAYER: Well, one ad, they slapped a sombrero on his head, and then put words in Spanish on the ad that sort of said mucho taxes, adios, and then basically the gist was, at least Heagarty felt, to make him look Hispanic and to make him look alien. But in addition to that particular, you know, sort of racial subtext, they also targeted Heagerty supposedly for raising a billion dollars in taxes.
And the vote that this ad was describing was one that took place before Heagarty was even in office. He wasn't in the legislature at the time when the vote took place. So again, it was - it just - incredibly misleading. In that case, the groups allied with Pope were called out on it because it was such a factual mistake, and so they sent out another batch of mailings afterwards in which they apologized, they said sincerely for the mistake, and then went on to trash Heagarty for yet another thing.
So it was just a really negative-toned campaign, very ugly, very personal.
GROSS: Did Heagarty lose?
MAYER: He lost.
GROSS: So you have in this instance, correct me if I'm wrong, long-shot candidates who won because they had so much money behind them.
MAYER: It certainly looked that way, and it wasn't just a handful. It wasn't even just a dozen. Basically the - Pope and the groups that he was working with targeted 22 Democrats, and - or - and out of those, 18 of the Democrats went down. Now, just a point of order here - I should say that Pope and his associates say they target nobody. These were just ads about issues, and they were just to promote Republicans.
They make a big distinction between targeting Democrats and promoting Republicans. But as someone who is from the outside looking at this thing, it looked pretty harsh to me.
GROSS: Yeah, and Art Pope says his goal is to inform voters so that they can make an educated decision at the polls.
MAYER: Right, he sees this whole operation as beneficial to voters. He says it helps give more choices to voters, and it helps them understand the records, he says, of the officeholders. I mean, he has many rationales for why more money is just better.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Jane Mayer, a staff writer for the New Yorker. We're talking about her article in the current edition. It's called "State for Sale: A Conservative Multimillionaire Has Taken Control in North Carolina, One of 2012's Top Battlegrounds." Let's take a short break here. Then we'll talk some more. This is FRESH AIR.
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GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Jane Mayer, she's a staff writer for the New Yorker. We're talking about her article in the current edition. It's called "State for Sale: A Conservative Multimillionaire Has Taken Control in North Carolina, One of 2012's Top Battlegrounds."
The article is about a Republican strategy to take over state legislatures in key states, in other words to make the state legislatures Republican-dominated, and then to use that to re-engineer districts in such a way so that they're more likely to vote Republican. And this is also part of a strategy to have a Republican-dominated electorate in battleground states like North Carolina.
So let's talk about Art Pope and the organizations that he has funded and created that have been giving so much money to races in North Carolina. First of all, how did he make his fortune?
MAYER: Well, it was actually his grandfather and father who made a lot of the fortune. They built up an empire of dime stores, discount stores that now own and operate a chain - several chains of them throughout the Southeast. They're about - they have something like between 400 and 500 stores.
And Art Pope's father has since passed away, and Art Pope is now the head of this empire. And it's interesting because the stores are - they're probably familiar to some of the listeners. They're Roses, Maxways, Bargain Town. They're stores that sell a lot of very inexpensive goods and - mostly imports, and pay very low wages to the people who work in them, at least in - the starting-out wages are minimum wage.
They have very shrimpy benefits for their workers, if any, and they target - the stores target a particular demographic. They try to locate the stores in neighborhoods where people have low incomes and are at least 25 percent African-American population.
GROSS: So let's look at some of the groups that Art Pope has created or co-created and has donated a lot of money to. Let's start with Real Jobs North Carolina. What is the purpose of that?
MAYER: Real Jobs North Carolina is basically just a campaign group. It's an entity that exists to accept corporate donations, mostly from companies like Art Pope's and spend them in campaigns in the state. And it targeted the Democrats and ran nasty ads against them.
GROSS: How about the group Civitas Action?
MAYER: Civitas Action is an organization that is an offshoot of a think-tank that Art Pope runs, and 95 percent of the funds come from Pope and his other organizations, his business, whatever. And it again is - it exists to target Democrats.
GROSS: And what's the think-tank?
MAYER: The think-tank is one of several he runs. He's got a â he has this kind of amazingly well-oiled political machine which he would describe as not political. He would say it is nonpartisan and policy-oriented. It pushes a conservative agenda by studying issues, by educating people to help turn them into candidates, by helping train them as candidates and by judging the work of the legislature and basically publishing scorecards, and by doing a lot of polling too, and polls that usually end up pushing conservative issues.
GROSS: So is it more activist than the description that you just gave?
MAYER: I mean, you know, this is a matter of debate. I mean, one of the things that was complicated in writing about this subject is that the laws are really blurry at this point, and they're also really badly enforced when it comes to what's a violation of the IRS codes.
These entities are supposed to be social welfare organizations that are nonpartisan in their nature, and because of that, when people donate to them, they get tax write-offs. But the question of what's partisan and what's not is to some extent in the eyes of the beholder, and Art Pope would argue that these are nonpartisan entities.
GROSS: Jane Mayer will be back in the second half of the show. Her article "State For Sale" is in the current edition of the New Yorker. You'll find a link to it on our website, freshair.npr.org. I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.
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GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross back with New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer. We're talking about her article in the current edition of the New Yorker magazine called "State for Sale." It's about a conservative multimillionaire named Art Pope whose family and their organizations poured money into Republican candidates' campaigns in the 2010 state legislative races in North Carolina.
Both chambers of the general assembly now have firm Republican majorities for the first time since 1870. Mayer connects this to a larger strategy called Red Map, whose mission is to engineer a Republican takeover of state legislatures. The 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United decision removed many restrictions on corporate spending in elections. Now, the Citizens United Supreme Court decision has really opened the doors for individuals like Art Pope and organizations like the ones he runs to give a lot more money to candidates. So would you explain the doors that Citizens United opened for Art Pope's groups?
MAYER: Basically what it does is it gives a green light to corporations to spend money directly for and against candidates. And it also makes clear to somebody like Art Pope that there are not going to be legal repercussions for pouring money into campaigns. And again, he would say he's just educating people about issues, but if he crosses a line, he's not going to get in trouble by doing so, since Citizens United.
In a way, what's it done is it's enabled anybody with access to a corporate treasury to spend almost bottomless amounts of money. And it's a particularly helpful ruling for businessmen who own their own companies, which Art Pope does. This is a privately held company, much like the Kochs have a privately held family company. So they have control over the treasuries and they don't have to answer to stockholders.
GROSS: Now, it's interesting that Art Pope helped fund the legal center run by James Bopp, the lawyer who made the initial filing in the Citizens United case. So does that have implications?
MAYER: Well, I thought so. I mean, you know, stepping back, what I was trying to look at is, where did this push to enable corporations to play such a bigger role come from and how's it affecting American politics? And one of the things that interested me is that the corporate captains like Art Pope are the ones who have funded the legal push to get rid of campaign finance rules and restrictions.
So from the start, he's been trying to gut public campaign financing. He calls it welfare for politicians. And what his critics say is he doesn't believe in public-financed elections. He believes in Pope-financed elections. And so, you know, it gives him a lot more power if he can spend all that money.
GROSS: So Pope also has a family foundation. Does the family foundation have to follow a different set of regulations than the other organizations that he's created?
MAYER: Well, yeah. I am not a tax lawyer. On the other hand, Art Pope is a lawyer, so he's very good at understanding all the fine print here. But basically he's - the first organization he and his family set up was called the John W. Pope Foundation, named after his father. And it's a private foundation, which means it's almost entirely financed by the Pope family. And when they give money to it or take money from their company and give it to this foundation, they can take tax write-offs.
They're slightly smaller tax write offs than they could get from giving to a foundation that's not completely run by one family. And there are rules that have to do with how the money is spent. It can't be spent, again, on partisan activities. So they then take that money and send it out to about a half dozen other organizations that Art Pope has also helped to found that are engaged in different areas of policy that push, again, his worldview, which is that there's too much government and there are too many taxes.
GROSS: So one of the reasons, it seems, for having different organizations and foundations is that they follow different tax laws. There's things one can do that another can't. So this way you can funnel money in all different directions and have the biggest reach.
MAYER: Exactly. And you can take different levels of write-offs. One of the - only one of the foundations that they run, the John Locke Foundation, it's called, has enough outside money to be called a public foundation as opposed to a private one. And that gets a little extra money, not just from the Pope Foundation, but in fact it's interesting. It gets money from the Koch brothers, Charles and David, who run Koch Industries. And it also gets some money from tobacco companies and a few others.
GROSS: Last year you wrote an article about the Koch brothers, two very wealthy brothers who have given a lot of support to the Tea Party movement and other very conservative causes. Art Pope is connected to the Koch brothers. What is the connection?
MAYER: Well, among other things, they've been friends for something like 25 years. And they've coordinated to some extent. Art Pope goes to - there are secret confabs that the Kochs run twice a year, and by invitation only, where everyone is sworn to secrecy and not allowed to talk about what takes place. But Pope has gone to many of them. And in those conferences, what they do is think about where to put their money.
And to a certain extent, what really caught my interest was that what the country is seeing is what looks like a kind of spontaneous combustion of far right-wing Tea Party politics. But behind that there are some very instrumental players who have great family fortunes, corporate fortunes, and who are coordinating to some extent. And Art Pope is one of the players, the Koch brothers are two more.
GROSS: So it sounds like the Koch brothers have given to Art Pope's group, but that Art Pope's group have given to the Koch brothers.
MAYER: Well, that's true. And he was praised recently by one of the Kochs for his contributions. There are a couple organizations that are national that really are kind of Tea Party organizing groups. And one of them is Americans for Prosperity, it's called. And it was founded by David Koch in 2004. And Art Pope is one of four directors. So he's a key player in this national Tea Party organizing effort. And he's worked very closely with the Kochs in doing so.
GROSS: Now, earlier you described how Pope made his fortune. His grandfather started these very cheap variety stores and now he's the head of that whole organization. And the stores locate in low income neighborhoods. They pay low wages, slim benefits. What are some of the labor-related and business-related policies that he has backed?
MAYER: Well, Pope defines himself politically as a conservative and philosophically as what he calls a classical liberal, by which he means in the school of John Locke and John Stuart Mill. And he's also a - he's had flirtations with libertarianism as well. In his view it means almost no government, free markets, and what he calls the rule of law. And what that really means in sort of our modern era is he opposes things like minimum wage laws.
He opposes all kinds of regulations on corporations. And he also thinks there should be lower taxes on the super-rich and everyone else. And he also thinks that there should be fewer estate taxes. So he will say that his political positions have nothing to do with his self-interest and that they are just intellectually what he thinks are right. And yet much like the Kochs, again, what you can see is that this worldview dovetails very nicely with the interests of their businesses and themselves.
GROSS: Something else that Art Pope advocates is slashing education budgets, including the budgets of state universities in North Carolina. How effective has he been in that?
MAYER: Well, there's been a real war underway in North Carolina, and I guess elsewhere in the country too. But in North Carolina the university's budget has become a target of the Republican Party, and particularly the right end of the Republican Party. And Pope's organizations have kind of led the crusade. He's had some of his functionaries say things of the university, they need to starve the beast.
And I think they're this year going to cut something like 16 percent from the university budget, which is really upsetting to people on the other side because basically North Carolina's public university system has been seen as kind of the crown jewel of the state. And it always ranks near the top of public universities. And people who have been involved in education in the state are really worried that they're going to have to lay off a lot of teachers and cut down on scholarships for kids who need them - and in large classes, and cut a lot of classes.
GROSS: And he's offered to fund academic programs in subjects you say he thinks are worthwhile, like Western civilization and free market economics. He contributed more than half a million dollars for free market related programs at North Carolina State. Is that the model that he wants, that classes should be taught in the subjects that wealthy patrons want to have taught?
MAYER: Well, that's certainly what his critics would say. His organizations are trying to slash the budgets more generally for the public universities but then fund the kinds of curriculum that they believe in. So for instance, he's provided a half million dollars, upwards of that, to the economics department of North Carolina State. And what that money pays for is to bring in conservative and free market economic speakers who will, again, push the agenda that Art Pope believes in. So he'll fund the kinds of education he believes in and attack the kind that he doesn't.
GROSS: My guest is Jane Mayer. Her article "State for Sale" is in the current edition of the New Yorker. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
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GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Jane Mayer. She's a staff writer for the New Yorker. We're talking about her article in the current edition that's called "State for Sale: A Conservative Multimillionaire Has Taken Control of North Carolina, One of 2012's Top Battlegrounds." And the millionaire in question here that she writes about is Art Pope. So now that the Red Map strategy appears to have succeeded in North Carolina, the strategy of having Republicans dominate the state house, and the strategy has succeeded in North Carolina with the help of funding by Art Pope and his organizations and foundations, Republicans in the state legislature have proposed new voting eligibility laws, laws that critics say would limit the voting rights largely of Democrats. What are these laws that have been proposed by Republicans in North Carolina?
MAYER: Well, what they're been talking about doing is requiring voters to produce state photo IDs. And that's one part of it. So you have to have the right kind of identification with you, which the critics say is much more of a problem generally for the - for students and poor people, who often tend to vote Democratic. Another thing that they're contemplating doing is closing down the window of time during which people can vote.
They had the polls open for extra time during 2008 so that people, for instance, who worked could vote on Sundays. And there were extra weeks open and so you could vote early. There's a push to close down this window. And you know, I interviewed Art Pope at some length. And he was pretty clear that he felt that the Democrats outfoxed the Republicans by allowing all of this kind of open voting in 2008. And that was one of the things that really gave Obama the edge.
So they've got it in their sights and they're planning to do whatever they can do to sort of close it off. I mean they're saying that it's all about ending voter fraud. But I don't think they've been able to produce any serious examples of vote fraud.
GROSS: And there are similar strategies in other states around the country. Is it part of a larger Republican strategy to try to outfox Democrats in the voting booth?
MAYER: It certainly seems so. There was an interesting study put out by the Brennan Center earlier this week that suggested that it is a national push by the Republican Party and that as many as five million voters could be disenfranchised this way. The reason that it matters so much in a place like North Carolina is that Obama only won the state by 14,000 votes. That's such a small margin that, you know, every vote really counts for both sides there. So the fight is going to be fierce on these issues.
GROSS: The Democrats have even decided to have the national convention in Charlotte, North Carolina.
MAYER: That's right. I mean, and I think that indicates, again, how important that state is to them.
GROSS: So on the ballot in 2012 will be a bill to ban gay marriage. Is that a constitutional amendment that they're proposing? A state constitutional amendment?
MAYER: It is a constitutional amendment they're proposing to ban gay marriage. And again, these are the kinds of sort of social issues - emotional hot button issues that galvanize voters, and particularly the Democrats are saying the Republicans are doing it in order to get a lot of sort of social conservatives mad and to the polls.
GROSS: Is that an Art Pope issue? Is he funding that initiative at all?
MAYER: Specifically, gay marriage, he won't commit to where he stands on it one way or the other. I did ask him about it and he said he just - he won't say. But the point is that he's empowered the people who are making it an issue. And in many ways people watching him think that he dictates the agenda of the Republican Party in the legislature in North Carolina.
GROSS: Do you know if Democrats are trying similar strategies to the strategies you outline in your New Yorker article that Republicans are using?
MAYER: You know, I think that one of the effects of Citizens United is it allows labor unions to spend just like corporations. And I do think that some of the labor unions hope to spend more money and throw their weight around. But one of the Democrats that I interviewed down in North Carolina, a man named Mac McCorkle, who is, I think he's a professor now at Duke, but he's been a Democratic consultant, said the problem is there are no Democrats like that, at least in North Carolina.
It's a real problem for the Democrats. He described the party there as gotten a little bit flabby and disorganized. And I just don't know, at least in that state, whether there is a counterpart in particular.
GROSS: So you say that unions can take advantage of the Citizens United case as well and start spending more money on candidates. But in a Southern state like North Carolina, where unions aren't strong - I'm not sure if unions are even allowed in North Carolina, are they?
MAYER: It's the least unionized state in America. Basically there's not a lot of union money to balance it in that part of the world.
GROSS: It would have to be national money.
GROSS: You article is titled "State for Sale." Do you think there are more states becoming for sale in the same way that you describe North Carolina as having been for sale? And do you think we're becoming a nation for sale? Do you think that elections are getting more controlled by big money?
MAYER: Well, I think you certainly can see the numbers are just going up and up and up. And money's becoming more and more kind of spectacular in the sums that are being spent. So you know, I'd have to take a look at every state before I could say that it's, you know, the same story in every state. But certainly I think this is a cautionary tale. And you know, at the end of the day I think it poses some very deep questions in the country.
Because, you know, I go back to thinking about somebody like Louis Brandeis who said you can either have concentrations of great wealth or you can have a democracy, but you can't have both. And there's a tension between the idea of one man/one vote and spending huge buckets of money by a few people. And I guess we're sort of watching it play out out there.
GROSS: Jane Mayer, thank you so much for joining us.
MAYER: Thanks for having me, Terry.
GROSS: Jane Mayer's article, "State for Sale," is in the current edition of the New Yorker. There's a link to it on our website, freshair.npr.org.
STEVE JOBS: 'COMPUTER SCIENCE IS A LIBERAL ART'
TERRY GROSS, host: When Steve Jobs died yesterday, many of us felt a sense of personal loss because his work transformed computer technology and changed our lives. He was a visionary. He co-founded Apple and played a key role in the creation of the Mac, the iPod, iTunes, the iPhone, iPad and other innovative devices and technologies, which so many other companies have done their best to imitate.
Jobs was 56 and had pancreatic cancer. He had a liver transplant in 2009 and stepped down as Apple's CEO last August. We're going to listen back to an excerpt of the interview I recorded with Steve Jobs in 1996, 11 years after he was ousted from Apple. He returned to Apple the year after we spoke.
From what I've read, it sounds like you were really the advocate for having a mouse on the Mac. Why did you push for that and what was the argument against it?
STEVE JOBS: Well, as I mentioned earlier, I went to Xerox PARC, Palo Alto Research Center, in 1979 and I saw the early work on graphical user interfaces that they had done. And they had a mouse and it was obvious that you needed a pointing device and a mouse seemed to be the best one. We tried a bunch of other ones subsequently at Apple and a mouse indeed was the best one. We refined it a little bit.
We found that, you know, Xerox's had three buttons. We found that people would push the wrong button or be scared that they were going to push the wrong button, so they always looked at the mouse instead of the screen. So we got it down to one button so that you could never push the wrong button. Made some refinements like that. The Xerox, you know, mouse cost about $1,000 a piece to build.
We had to engineer one that cost 20 bucks to build. So we had to do a lot of those kinds of things. But the basic concept of the mouse came originally from a company called SRI, through Xerox and then to Apple. And there were a lot of people at Apple that just didn't get it. We fought tooth and nail with a variety of people there who thought the whole concept of a graphical user interface was crazy, but...
GROSS: On what grounds?
JOBS: On the grounds that it either couldn't be done, or on the grounds that real computer users didn't need, you know, menus in plain English, and real computer users didn't care about, you know, putting nice little pictures on the screen. But fortunately I was the largest stockholder and the chairman of the company, so I won.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
GROSS: I know at Apple there was, at least early on, a very informal, you know, non-corporate type of atmosphere. I wonder if there are any lessons you learned about what worked and didn't work in the corporate lifestyle at Apple that you've applied to your current companies, NeXT and Pixar.
JOBS: Well, you know, I don't know what a corporate lifestyle is. I mean, Apple was a corporation, we were very conscious of that. We were very driven to make money so that we can continue to invest in the things we loved. But it had a few very big differences to other corporate lifestyles that I'd seen. The first one was a real belief that there wasn't a hierarchy of ideas that mapped into the hierarchy of the organization. In other words great ideas could come from anywhere and that we better sort of treat people in a much more egalitarian sense in terms of where the ideas came from.
And Apple was a very bottoms-up company when it came to a lot of its great ideas. And we hired, you know, truly great people and gave them the room to do great work. A lot of companies - I know it sounds crazy - but a lot of companies don't do that. They hire people to tell them what to do. We hire people to tell us what to do. And that led to a very different corporate culture, and one that's really much more collegial than hierarchical.
GROSS: What do you think the state of the computer would be if it weren't for Apple? This is a chance, I guess, for a really self-serving answer. But, I mean, I'm really curious what you think.
JOBS: I usually believe that if, you know, if one group of people didn't do something within a certain number of years, the times would produce another group of people that would accomplish similar things. I think that, personally, our major contribution was a little different than some people might think. I think our major contribution was in bringing a liberal arts point of view to the use of computers.
GROSS: Yeah, explain what you mean by that.
JOBS: What I mean by that is that, you know, if you really look at the ease of use of the Macintosh, the driving motivation behind that was to bring not only ease of use to people - so that many, many more people could use computers for nontraditional things at that time - but it was to bring, you know, beautiful fonts and typography to people, it was to bring graphics to people, not for, you know, plotting laminar flow calculations, but so that they could see beautiful, you know, photographs, or pictures, or artwork, et cetera, to help them communicate what they were doing potentially.
Our goal was to bring a liberal arts perspective and a liberal arts audience to what had traditionally been, you know, a very geeky technology and a very geeky audience. And...
GROSS: What made you think that that more liberal arts direction was the direction to head in?
JOBS: Because in my perspective, and the way I was raised, was that science and computer science is a liberal art. It's something that everyone should know how to use, at least, and harness in their life. It's not something that should be, you know, should be relegated to five percent of the population over in the corner. It's something that everybody should be exposed to, everyone should have a mastery of to some extent, and that's how we viewed, you know, computation or these computation devices.
GROSS: And you think that, you know, that that concept really caught on in the whole industry, eventually?
JOBS: You know, it's in the - Apple certainly - that's the seed of Apple, you know, computers for the rest of us. And I think the sort of - the liberal arts point of view still lives at Apple. I'm not so sure that it lives that many other places. I mean, one of the reasons I think Microsoft took 10 years to copy the Mac was 'cause they didn't really get it at its core.
GROSS: Steve Jobs recorded in 1996, before he oversaw the creation of the iPod, iPhone and iPad. We want to add our thanks to him for his many innovations.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.


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Last month, we found out that we're pronouncing ARIANA GRANDE's last name wrong. It's GRAN-DAY, ya know, like CANDY.....and now, CHRISSY TEIGEN says we've got HER last name wrong, too.
She posted a video on Twitter saying, quote, "I'm tired of living this lie. It's TY-GEN, not TEE-gen, like everyone says it. She then asked her mom, who was also in the video, and she confirmed it.
Now, it couldn't have gone on this long without Chrissy participating in it, and she basically embraced it professionally because she got tired of correcting everybody.
When a follower pointed out that SHE says it wrong too, Chrissy owned up to it and said, quote, "I know. I even correct people when they say it correctly. It's all very effed up."
But on the Emmy red carpet last night, she said that she wanted everyone to CONTINUE saying it wrong.
She said, quote, "I still will say TEE-GEN . . . [say] TEE-GEN. Sorry Dad!"
(Photo: Getty Images)

domain: news


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I’ve been a big fan of Lois McMaster Bujold since I first encountered The Warrior’s Apprentice in my mom’s friend’s house, about five years ago. Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, Bujold’s latest book, is a delightful science fiction romance, the latest in her thirty-year-career-spanning Vorkosigan Saga. Science fiction and romance can easily be a bad combination – either genre can end up feeling like an afterthought – but Bujold is a master of that mixture. Human relationships and emotions are frequently a focus of her work, and though I think only three Vorkosigan books count as romance novels per se, far more of them could easily be called romantic novels.*
In many ways, Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance resembles the earlier A Civil Campaign (which may be all the recommendation Vorkosigan fans need). Its central plot is the developing relationship between Captain Ivan Vorpatril and Tej Arqua, the circumstances of which are sometimes dramatic and sometimes comic, but always light. The Vorkosigan Saga in general tends to unfold at an intense pace, with the turns of the plot sometimes making one dizzy, but where this style makes some of the novels military thrillers and some of them harrowing explorations of character, in Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance the impression is one of farce. The secondary plot, which involves intergalactic intrigue and various clever/harebrained schemes, is exciting and funny and interesting, but never eclipses Ivan and Tej; the really important thing about all that machination is how it gets in the way of the couple.
What distinguishes this novel most clearly from Bujold’s other work is its focus on characters who have so far been secondary players in others’ lives, not heroes. Ivan is the cousin of Miles Vorkosigan, the protagonist of most of the books in the series that bears his name. In his first appearances, Ivan seemed friendly but very shallow, mainly interested in avoiding trouble and having a good time. By Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, however, he’s almost twice as old as he was in The Warrior’s Apprentice (and Bujold has been writing him for thirty years), and he’s become more complex with time. Bujold takes this opportunity to show us that competence does not only come in the explosive, impressive form Miles usually displays; after lots of Vorkosigan books about incredible badasses whose failures are as heroic as their successes, it’s an interesting experience to read about the dedicatedly average person who’s been living with those kinds of people his entire life. There’s a really lovely moment in which Ivan thinks to himself that he “like[s] flowcharts—nice and clear and you could always tell just where you were and what you should do next, everything laid out neatly. … Why couldn’t life be more like flowcharts?” Few protagonists would ask themselves that question. And this wish for a simple life isn’t just an enlightening way of thinking about Ivan; one of the most compelling aspects of the developing romance is the pair’s mutual realization that with each other, they can just be ordinary people, rather than being expected to excel and conquer the world.
I don’t really want to go into too much detail about Tej, because the reader begins the book completely in the dark about her, and many of the book’s plot reveals consist of the discovery of secrets about her and her history and family. Her position in her family has been much like Ivan’s, as mentioned above; while her relatives are clearly the heroes of their own important dramas, she’s mostly thought of herself as their assistant. Bujold loves to show us a female character coming into her own and learning to respect herself over the course of a romance, and Tej is a worthy addition to this theme. (Note I say “over the course of”, not “through”: she doesn’t come to appreciate herself simply because Ivan does.)
The couple’s interactions are just frankly adorable. I’m personally especially charmed by the way they talk about sex – though they’re both reasonable adults about it, Ivan can’t hide the fact that he’s from conservative Barrayar, and galactic-born Tej shocks him more than a few times. (It is probably going to become increasingly evident, readers, that I love it when books are interesting and intelligent on the subject of sex. Bujold is especially excellent at this – not only do her characters have different, and yet equally reasonable, ways of approaching sexuality, their thoughts about it genuinely reflect the cultures they come from, which is no mean feat.) The very beginning of their acquaintance is, as is correct for a romantic farce, really unpromising; Ivan tries to pick Tej up at her workplace, and later ends up knocked unconscious for his pains. So of course their bliss by the end is correspondingly wonderful.
The only real caveat I have to my recommendation of this novel is the obvious fact that it’s the latest in a series that is now over fifteen books long and counting. There is some exposition (fairly neatly structured) toward the beginning, so the plot doesn’t depend on anything that isn’t mentioned in the book itself. But there are still two major problems with reading Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance alone. First of all, for me, a lot of the pleasure of this book was in seeing how Ivan had grown and changed since I first met him. If you’ve never read a book with Ivan Vorpatril in it before, you won’t get that, and I think the book will still be fun but less so. There’s also the fact that this book can’t help but spoil some of the previous ones. Lots of characters from other novels appear, of course, and so you learn what their general life situations are, meaning that you learn about events of previous books. As a lover of the Vorkosigan Saga, I think people shouldn’t do things that will spoil them on any Vorkosigan books, but I recognize that not everyone who reads Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance is planning on reading all the rest of the books in its series, and also not everyone minds spoilers in general. So consider yourselves warned, and choose wisely!
* Some of you may be asking yourselves what the difference is. Romance fans generally consider a book a romance novel only if romance is the focus of the plot and the leads end up in a happy relationship. So, for example, a novel with a significant romantic subplot that is nevertheless obviously a subplot probably isn’t a romance novel.

domain: library


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Published on BioPortfolio: 2018-08-14T18:27:09-0400
This multi-center, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study will evaluate the change in liver fat content, pharmacokinetics and safety of RO5093151 in patients with non-alcoholic...
The principal purpose of this study is to determine whether increased intakes of n-3 polyunsaturated (omega-3) fatty acids will reduce the amount of fat stored in the liver in patients wit...
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is the most common cause of chronic liver disease worldwide. It is defined as the accumulation of fat (>5%) in the liver cells in the absence of excessive...
The hypothesis of this study was that ginger supplement consumption can be introduced as a new therapeutic strategy for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease through the improved body antioxid...
Background: - Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is the most common form of liver disease in the United States. It includes many conditions. Researchers want to study fatty liver disease b...
Design and rationale of the INSYTE study: A randomised, placebo controlled study to test the efficacy of a synbiotic on liver fat, disease biomarkers and intestinal microbiota in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) represents a spectrum of fat-related conditions ranging from simple fatty liver, to non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), fibrosis and cirrhosis. There is gro...
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is a leading cause of chronic liver disease and can lead to cirrhosis, hepatocellular cancer and end stage liver disease. It is also associated with increased cardiov...
The pathogenesis of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) has not been well recognized yet.
The modest consumption of alcohol has been reported to decrease the incidence of fatty liver or prevalence of steatohepatitis. In this study, we investigated the effect of light alcohol consumption on...
Efficacy, safety, and tolerability of lubiprostone for the treatment of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in adult patients with constipation: The LUBIPRONE, double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled study design.
This paper reports the protocol of a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled study to test the efficacy, safety, and tolerability of lubiprostone (LUB) vs. placebo on suppressing gut permeability...
Lipid infiltration of the hepatic parenchymal cells that is due to ALCOHOL ABUSE. The fatty changes in the alcoholic fatty liver may be reversible, depending on the amounts of TRIGLYCERIDES accumulated.
Liver diseases associated with ALCOHOLISM. It usually refers to the coexistence of two or more subentities, i.e., ALCOHOLIC FATTY LIVER; ALCOHOLIC HEPATITIS; and ALCOHOLIC CIRRHOSIS.
Fatty liver finding without excessive ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION.
Lipid infiltration of the hepatic parenchymal cells resulting in a yellow-colored liver. The abnormal lipid accumulation is usually in the form of TRIGLYCERIDES, either as a single large droplet or multiple small droplets. Fatty liver is caused by an imbalance in the metabolism of FATTY ACIDS.
Cytoplasmic hyaline inclusions in HEPATOCYTES. They are associated with ALCOHOLIC STEATOHEPATITIS and non-alcoholic STEATOHEPATITIS, but are also present in benign and malignant hepatocellular neoplasms, and metabolic, toxic, and chronic cholestatic LIVER DISEASES.

domain: medical


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At the time of writing the reorganisation of local government in Northern Ireland has almost ground to a standstill as it has been swallowed up in the stalemate created by the wider political dealings taking place amongst the main parties in the Assembly.
I have been chairing the Local Government Reform Joint Forum in Northern Ireland in recent months, which is the body tasked with negotiating employment matters between the employers and staff side associated with the on-going reorganisation process.
D-day for reorganisation is supposed to be May 2011. Unfortunately for all concerned, the finalisation of the legislation through the Northern Ireland Assembly has become wrapped up in the current high profile debate about the devolution of policing powers. The resulting impasse has brought the complex timetable on issues such as statutory consultation on boundaries to the very brink of impossibility. The latest rumours are of a delay until 2015.
The reorganisation has been mooted since 2002. Subsequent Review of Public Administration recommendations that have been negotiated back and forth concluded that the current 26 District Councils will be replaced by 11 new authorities, which will incorporate some additional functions transferred from other agencies.
With this in mind, local government has set off with some fervour to put plans in place to ensure not only a seamless transition come vesting day, but also that modern systems and processes are in place from the outset of the new authority’s existence. Transition committees have been formed and change managers are in post to help build the necessary infrastructure.
The Local Government Reform Joint Forum I have been involved in has discussed vacancy control procedures, local negotiation forum arrangements, staff transfer schemes, systems for filling of posts and severance schemes. It has made exceptional progress due to the understanding and respect shown to each others’ positions at both sides of the table.
Unfortunately, at a time when the new councils should be starting the appointment process for chief executives who can then develop governance and organisational structures, systems and processes, a desired corporate culture, organisational identity and council branding, the full process is wading in treacle due to circumstances beyond local government’s control.
Who knows what effect this will have on staff morale. But a further delay to a process that has been ongoing for almost a decade is surely unthinkable. However, with every passing day the timescale to effect that seamless transition becomes ever shorter and the one thing that anyone who has been involved in reorganisations in England, Scotland and Wales knows is that time is of the essence.
The grains of sand are slipping through this particular hourglass at an alarming rate.


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Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez, Jr. on Thursday announced that the Philippines would receive up to 40 million Covid-19 vaccine doses from the Covax global initiative.
“Ikinagagalak ko po na ibalita na ang atin pong Covax facility para sa Pilipinas ay naaprubahan na po. Sa loob po na posibilidad na makasiguro na mayroon tayong mga 30 – 40 million na doses for free para po sa lahat sa ating mga kababayan,” Galvez said in a Laging Handa briefing,
Covax is a global initiative coordinated by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and the World Health Organization (WHO).
It is a platform that supports the research, development and manufacturing of Covid-19 vaccine candidates. Covax seeks to provide countries worldwide equitable access to safe and effective vaccines, once they are licensed and approved.
Galvez did not specify the brand of vaccines to be given to the country but said Pfizer vaccines were expected to arrive first.
“Wala pa po tayong definite kung ano pong vaccine ang mauunang i-deploy; but most likely, iyong Pfizer. We are preparing for the Pfizer,” he said.
Covax’s vaccine portfolio for Covid-19 includes those manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen and Novovax.
The Philippine government has P73.2 billion allocated for vaccine procurement in its 2021 national budget.
Galvez earlier said at least 50,000 Filipinos were expected to be vaccinated by February this year. John Ezekiel J. Hirro


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WASHINGTON — The Latest on the Trump administration’s plan to lift restrictions on surplus military gear to police departments (all times local):
tap here to see other videos from our team.
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to restore the flow of surplus military gear to local police departments.
The Obama administration severely limited the program two years ago amid a public outcry over how the equipment was used during protests in Ferguson, Missouri, after the fatal police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown. But Attorney General Jeff Sessions says those restrictions went too far. He says the new approach will boost public safety.
Sessions announced Trump’s decision to a cheering crowd Monday at the national convention of the Fraternal Order of Police in Nashville, Tennessee.
The White House has released a copy of the executive order signed by Trump.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions says a new executive order restoring the flow of surplus military gear to local police departments will boost public safety.
Sessions says President Donald Trump is ending restrictions on a program that provides cast-off equipment such as firearms and helicopters to local and state police agencies. Sessions announced the plan to a cheering crowd at the national convention of the Fraternal Order of Police in Nashville.
The Obama administration severely limited the program in 2015 amid public outcry over how the equipment was used after protests in Ferguson, Missouri, following the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown.
Sessions says those restrictions went too far. He says the Trump administration will not put “superficial concerns” over public safety.
Police groups say they need the equipment to keep officers safe.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions is announcing a plan to lift restrictions on surplus military equipment that can be passed on to police.
It’s a step that civil liberties groups fear will lead to more violent confrontations among police and protesters. But the Trump administration believes the program that supplies grenade launchers and high-calibre weapons to local law enforcement agencies is necessary for public safety.
Sessions is unveiling a revival of the program during a national convention of the Fraternal Order of Police, one of the groups that had long pushed Trump to end the Obama-era ban.
A summary of Trump’s executive order being circulated among police groups says it shows he values safety over appearances. It describes much of the gear as “defensive in nature,” intended to protect officers.
President Donald Trump is preparing to lift restrictions on surplus military equipment that can be passed on to local law enforcement agencies.
The move comes in spite of past concerns that armoured vehicles and other gear were escalating confrontations with protesters.
Documents obtained by The Associated Press indicate Trump is preparing to sign an executive order undoing an Obama administration directive aimed at the restricting the use of surplus military equipment. Under the previous administration, police agencies saw limits placed on their access to grenade launchers, bullet-proof vests, riot shields, firearms, ammunition and other gear.
The documents indicate that Trump’s order would fully restore the program under which “assets that would otherwise be scrapped can be repurposed to help state, local, and tribal law enforcement better protect public safety and reduce crime.”

domain: sociology


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We explore topics related to social exclusion using a wide variety of approaches, methodologies, and paradigms.
In our participatory action research (PAR) and youth participatory action research (YPAR) collaborations, we don't do studies on community members or young people, we do studies with them on issues of local importance. Moreover, we understand these projects to be growthful and educative for all parties involved.
We contribute our skills to support community-based organizations and advocacy work that advances social inclusion and psychological wellness.
Through our qualitative work, we are able to bring the nuances of participants' own voices and insights to bear on our research questions. The data that we analyze for these projects often exists in the form of interview or focus group narratives.
These projects address research questions that can be addressed via the collection of statistically-analyzable data.
We have one such project now in progress and we are inviting participants! In it, we are investigating the kinds of services that K-12 teachers and school counselors can recommend for their students. We would appreciate your participation if you work in a school in one of these ways:
1) You are a teacher
2) You are a school counselor, school social worker, or school psychologist
3) You are a graduate-level trainee in one of these fields -- either teaching/education or school counseling/social work/psychology
You can accept this invitation by clicking onto the link below. The link will take you to a page that tells you more about the survey, and then to the survey itself, which takes about ten minutes to complete.
Here's the link to the survey:
We would appreciate your forwarding the survey link to others who qualify as participants. Thanks in advance for considering this invitation!
We understand psychological principals, practices, and scholarship to have important implications for the broad public interest -- and vice versa. In our conceptual work, we analyze psychological research to discover its application to questions of social inclusion and equity, and we also analyze aspects of social inclusion/exclusion with regard to their implications for psychological practice.

domain: psychology


- Kia EV9 concept will preview a large battery-electric SUV at the 2021 LA auto show, based on the E-GMP platform.
- The SUV is expected to offer the accommodations of the Kia Telluride, and could offer seating for seven.
- Kia and Hyundai will both reveal electric SUV concepts at the LA auto show, with the Hyundai Ioniq 7 concept also scheduled for a November 17 reveal.
Kia is about a week away from revealing its next battery-electric concept, with the EV9 headed to the LA auto show. Prior to that reveal the automaker has shared a handful of teaser images previewing the EV9 concept, which is expected to be close in size to a Kia Telluride, featuring a relatively long wheelbase, short overhangs, and a boxy profile.
Just how closely will it preview a production model?
The rendering show an adventurously styled vehicle with rhombus-shaped elements, including prominent wheel arches, so this likely isn't meant to be a particularly close preview of a production vehicle when it comes to some exterior details, but as an idea of the overall size of one of the next Kia electric models it should be a good indicator.
In the next few years Kia is expected to field electric SUVs below the EV6, which itself is about to go on sale stateside, and also above it. The EV9 certainly appears like an early look at what we could see the brand introduce following the debut of the EV6 stateside, offering those who could be shopping for a Telluride an electric alternative that will be roughly comparable in size and accommodations. If that's the route Kia is considering, the resulting production model could be just about the largest electric SUV offered at that point in time, simply because other automakers are not ready to offer electric models in that segment just yet, at least when it comes to non-luxury brands.
In particular, the shortened hood and intricate hood surfaces certainly mirror some aspects of the EV6, and now that there isn't an engine up front the overall length of the hood can be shorter as well, and feature more modest overhangs. Out back, the concept hints at maximizing cargo room and headroom for rear seat passengers, promising a versatile and usable interior in contrast to plenty of rakish electric SUVs we've recently seen from other automakers.
"The renderings illustrate a highly conceptual cabin that has been honed to give the driver and passengers a light, flexible, and adaptive interior space as the experience of the journey evolves. A stunning interactive ultra-wide display and a radical new take on the traditional steering wheel are just two of the standout interior features," the automaker adds.
The EV9 concept will be paired with Hyundai Ioniq 7, which will also be revealed in concept form at the LA auto show, and teasers of which have also been shared this week. The similarly-sized Ioniq 7 is also believed to be a preview of a large battery-electric SUV, positioned as an alternative to the Palisade.
We'll see both in the metal on November 17, as the LA auto show gets going.


Oxford-based New Chamber Opera's summer production features a beautiful innkeeper, amorous noblemen and a faithful servant in a classic Goldoni comedy
Antonio Salieri’s most recent claim to fame is as the villain in Schaffer’s play Amadeus; but a little earlier he was an extremely successful and famous composer whose works were smash hits and played all over Europe. One of his most successful was La Locandiera, now being revived by New Chamber Opera as their outdoor summer opera. First performed in Vienna in 1773, it travelled to Italy, France and Germany but then disappeared from the repertoire. The New Chamber Opera performances, with a new translation by Simon Rees, will be the first in England in modern times.
Based on a play by Goldoni, the story revolves around Mirandolina, the sharp-witted and charming landlady of a wayside inn. She teases her faithful servant and suitor Fabrizio whilst deftly deflecting the amorous advances of various noblemen, even teaching the misogynist Cavaliere di Ripafratta a salutary lesson in love.
The New Chamber Opera production of Salieri’s La Locandiera opens in the Warden’s Garden, New College Oxford, on July 8 and continues for 7 more performances.


This story makes you never want to go on vacation! Florida police are looking for the people who threw a house party in a home that wasn’t theirs.
The illegal festivities threw down in Seaside when dozens of people broke into an $8 million home and had a the time of their lives! The party-goers even posted pics and videos of the wild time they were having!
The Walton County Sheriff's Office is investigating a rowdy house party thrown by young people who deputies say broke into the $8 million home.— WEAR ABC 3 (@weartv) June 20, 2022
They were singing along to the music at the top of their lungs!
Here's our ask; if you were there, know someone who was there, were invited, knows who circulated the flyer for the party (yes, we know about that too) you are asked to come forward.— Walton Co. Sheriff (@WCSOFL) June 20, 2022
DO YOURSELF A FAVOR and let us know. pic.twitter.com/ELOmC5jbdF
Everyone ran when Walton County Sheriff’s deputies arrived after there were complaints made about the noise. Deputies said that there were items stolen and the house was damaged.
The illegal Florida house party guests are now on the run and deputies want the public’s help in finding them.
[SOURCE News Channel 8]


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“Flooded Our Streets with Guns:” Congressman Castro Slams Gov. Abbott’s Dangerous Gun Laws After Five San Antonio Police Officers Are Shot in Two Weeks
SAN ANTONIO — After a fifth San Antonio police officer was shot in less than two weeks, Congressman Joaquin Castro (TX-20) released the following statement slamming Texas Governor Greg Abbott and the Republican legislature for their failure to prevent gun violence:
“Over the last eight years, Governor Abbott and Texas Republicans have weakened public safety laws and flooded our streets with guns. The result has been a clear increase in gun violence. Today, violent Texas criminals can easily evade federal background checks and build deadly weapons arsenals to use against police and innocent bystanders. The recent wave of shootings against SAPD officers should be a wake-up call about the dangerous, lawless environment that Texas Republicans have fostered in our state. Law enforcement officers and the public are paying the price for this recklessness,” said Congressman Castro.
Since 2015, the Texas legislature has approved a slew of legislation weakening state gun laws, including a 2016 open carry law and a 2021 open carry expansion that allows most Texans to carry weapons in public spaces without any license, safety training, or background checks. Legislators have also passed recent laws limiting how universities, hotels, and other establishments can restrict guns on their own premises. In the wake of the 2022 Uvalde shooting, the legislature rejected attempts to raise the age for gun purchases and institute state background checks.
Federal law requires federally licensed firearm dealers to conduct background checks prior to the sale of a firearm unless the potential gun purchaser has a state permit to buy or possess firearms. As a result, handgun license holders in Texas are exempt from the federal background check requirement when purchasing a handgun. Texans who have been prohibited from possessing firearms because of a criminal conviction may continue to hold state firearms licenses if the state does not remove their license in a timely manner.
Texas does not require private sellers to conduct background checks. In 2019, the Odessa mass shooter – a convicted criminal – failed a federal background check prior to buying the weapon used in the shooting in a private sale.
Information sourced from the Giffords Law Center.
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Bands with buzz: Wye Oak, La Sera, Alex Winston, Tabi Bonney
Winston has been grouped with the likes of Florence + the Machine and Marina and the Diamonds - "the quirky girl pop thing," she calls it. But besides the fact that they are all women with distinctive voices, there isn't much to tie those artists together. Winston takes her inspiration from more classic sounds, particularly Chuck Berry and the Motown legends from her hometown. The elegant simplicity of those artists is what appeals to her.
Berry "could take four chords and make five songs," she said. "And they're all interesting and all have great melodies. It's great music, but it's not overcomplicated." Winston also mentions the Supremes as a favorite. "I just love gang vocals, a wall of sound and melodies that carry the song." When she plays live, a trio of backup singers helps bring this vision to life.
Developing a sound that she calls her own is Winston's proudest achievement to date. As a teenager, she worked with many producers and managers who told her what songs to sing and how to sing them.
When it came time to write her own material, she said, that control "stunted me creatively. Singing other people's songs for so long, I was like, 'How do I even do this?'" Nevertheless, those early experiences were valuable.
"I just feel really grounded," she said. "I've been through this to an extent, and I know not to get excited about the [stuff] that isn't real. This is the first time I feel ready to be going constantly," she adds excitedly. Now it's only a matter of time before listeners catch up.
Next local show: Saturday. Doors open at 9 p.m. Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW. 202-667-4490. www.blackcatdc.com. $12.
Veteran takes a new approach
More than any of these other artists, D.C. rapper Tabi Bonney knows what it's like to have buzz. Early in his career he had a bona fide hit with his slinky local anthem "The Pocket," which was inescapable on local hip-hop station WPGC in 2006. As is often the case when an up-and-coming artist scores a surprise hit, there were plenty of enticing career opportunities. But Bonney decided not to cash in on his buzz. Labels flew him to Los Angeles and New York, where he met with executives who made him pitches. But they just didn't get it.
"They thought 'The Pocket' was a dance," Bonney said, comparing it to current craze the Dougie. "You come in, you meet them and they just don't understand. All they know is that you're being played on the radio and they're looking at numbers."
So Bonney never signed a deal. But he has no regrets. "Why would you just hand over everything and put it in their hands if you already see what's going on with other artists?" he said, referring to friends and peers who put pen to paper only to see their albums get stuck in seemingly eternal limbo. Bonney chose to stay independent and maintain artistic freedom.
But here's the thing about buzz - it's fleeting. Bonney remains one of the city's best MCs and most charismatic performers, but the spotlight has shifted to other artists. His good friend Wale is now the face of D.C. hip-hop, with a string of well-received mixtapes landing him the major deal that Bonney passed on.

domain: artistic


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Checkvienna - Siebenbrunnengasse is a family 2-star hotel set close to Belvedere Palace and Museum, Schonbrunn Palace and St. Stephen's Cathedral .
The property is set 15 minutes' walk away from Haus des Meeres, Wien Museum Schubert Sterbewohnung and The Third Man Museum. Checkvienna - Siebenbrunnengasse Hotel is within about 30 minutes' walk of the center of Vienna.
Längenfeldgasse Metro Stop subway station is in a 15-minute stroll and Eichenstraße (Fendigasse) bus stop is just 5 minutes' walk from the hotel. The hotel lies within 20 km of Schwechat International airport.
Checkvienna - Siebenbrunnengasse Hotel provides guestrooms appointed with free Wi-Fi, a kitchen, a refrigerator, a DVD player and a microwave.
Eat & Drink
Guests can enjoy portuguese and austrian cuisine in Senhor Vinho located 350 meters away.

domain: travel


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The UK Tote Group raises £20m to help fund a diversification of its pool-betting offering to include football wagering.
The UK Tote Group is today delighted to announce the appointment of John Williamson as the Group’s Non-Executive Chairman from 1st September 2020.
The Tote is delighted to be working in collaboration with the Hong Kong Jockey Club to offer UK customers new betting opportunities on Hong Kong racing.
Today, the UK Tote Group is delighted to announce the launch of the Tote’s new website – tote.co.uk – which provides customers with a new dedicated digital pool betting experience for horseracing.
Racing Post has today announced a new long-term partnership with the U.K. Tote Group to provide content across a range of platforms including the revamped Tote Ten to Follow.
Betfred sells its remaining 75% stake in the Tote pool betting operation to the UK Tote Group, the Alex Frost-led outfit formerly known as Alizeti Capital.


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Fire district sells Freeland station to county
The ts have been crossed and the is have been dotted on a real estate transaction between Island County and Fire District 3.
Island County Public Works purchased the old Freeland Fire Station on East Harbor Road from the fire district for $119,000.
The idea for the purchase was hatched several years ago between fire and county officials. Gary Hess, an engineer with Island County Public Works, brokered the project with Jan Smith, chief deputy at the sheriffs office.
The hope is to move the South Precinct of the Island County Sheriff office to that location.
The South Precinct is currently in a strip mall off Main Street. Rent for those offices is $2,000 per month, and the East Harbor Road location is more centrally located.
It is the countys intention to move the South Precinct of the Sheriffs office to that location sometime in the future, said Mike Shelton, Island County Commissioner.
Shelton is not sure when that will happen because the county does not have the money right now to replace or remodel the structure.
Cost of a remodel has been estimated at $450,000.
It is anticipated that our office will use the building site, but funding is such that it will likely be a number of years before we can utilize the facility, said Jan Smith, spokeswoman for the sheriffs office.
We do appreciate the efforts of the fire commissioners and chief, and of Bill Oakes, director of Island County Public Works, who have been responsible for making sure that the site will continue to be used for public safety, Smith said.
The fire district posted for sale signs on three of its properties at about the same time in 2003. The sales, including the old Freeland station, didnt generate much interest from the public.
However, two other mothballed stations, Saratoga and Bush Point, were sold to private parties.


Abeer Sahlani: The Bahrain has to end the regime’s repression
Member of the European Parliament, Abeer Sahlani, confirmed that the regime’s government had not ended its current repression in Bahrain.
Sahlani explained in press statements that security officers systematically use torture to coerce detainees to confess to charges they did not commit.
Sahlani, who is of Iraqi origin, added that the regime’s authorities continue to ignore their human rights obligations towards political detainees despite the fact-finding committee and the international community’s recommendations.
Human rights violations
She indicated that Bahrain’s actions violate its human rights obligations, including the Convention Against Torture, the International Covenant and the Arab Charter on Human Rights.
These statements coincide with a storm of criticism directed at the Bahraini regime by MPs in the European Parliament.
Many deputies are pressing the European Union leaders to take a firm stand against these violations of activists and all those who oppose the policies of the Khilafid regime.
A Belgian deputy and senator shed light on the deteriorating human rights situation in Bahrain.
They raised political prisoners and death sentences in the kingdom ruled by the Al Khalifa family with an iron fist.
This came in a series of parliamentary questions directed by Representative Hugues Pitt and Senator Bert Anzio to Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sophie Wilms.
Meanwhile, Bahraini Leaks was briefed on a document from the European Parliament and questions directed to the European Commission about Bahrain’s human rights situation.
Members of Parliament asked Brussels politicians strongly-worded questions, asking them to intervene urgently to put an end to the abusive practices.
On behalf of the Commission, the European Union’s High Representative answered last week to Parliament on the matter.
The document stated that the European Union is systematically raising the issue with the regime’s authorities.
He called on the authorities, according to the document, to release all persons detained for expressing their views, exercising their human rights, or defending the rights of others.
The European Union has also repeatedly expressed its principled position against the death penalty.
“Moreover, the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights supports civil society organizations working to abolish the death penalty all over the world, including Bahrain.”
Simultaneously, a British human rights organization condemned the Khilafid regime’s authorities’ use as to the death penalty for opinion activists in Bahrain.
This is part of its attempts to perpetuate repression and intimidation against the opposition, demanding political reforms.
Reprieve said on the fourth anniversary of the execution of three opinion activists in mid-January of 2017 that their execution was unjust.
And she stressed that such incidents should not be repeated at all.
Bahrain turned into a large prison and occupied first place in the Arab world in terms of detainees.
The number of prisoners has reached 12,000 since the 2011 revolution.


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Conquer Rome from your Waytostay apartment
When it comes to holidays in Italy, Rome is one of the most popular city break destinations. Rent one of the many Rome apartments and set out to discover the city. Throw a coin into the Trevi Fountain and make a wish. Visit all the monuments of Ancient Rome, like the Colosseum. Go the Vatican. Or even fall in love with a beautiful Italian! There are lots of piazzas. But don’t miss the most famous ones, like the Piazza del Popolo. There’s no need to make a mess of the kitchen in your apartment in Rome when you can head out and try the local food. Sample an oven-baked pizza or a tasty pasta dish or two while you are here. As they say - "When in Rome"! Oh, and don’t forget to order some real Italian ice-cream for dessert.
Our apartments in Rome are rated 8.6 out of 10 based on 1095 opinions.
Rome Apartments in Centro Storico
When you think of Rome, the first thought for many is the Great Empire of years gone by and if you want to experience a piece of it for yourself then Centro Storico is the ideal location for an apartment in Rome. Delve into the historic centre of Rome and soak in all the history and culture it has to offer. From the world famous Colosseum; the largest amphitheatre from the Roman world to the former pagan temple of the Pantheon; Centro Storico has so much to see and do. A holiday apartment in Rome situated in this magnificent area is ideal with many of the attractions walking distance away. As well as being a historical gem, the area also has high end boutiques and flashy nightclubs to interest the modern traveller as well. A short break would however be incomplete without a trip to the most famous Roman street market; Campo de´Firori, where selling is a fine art form. Centro Storico really has it all, making it the perfect spot for a Rome apartment!
Rome Accommodation in the Vatican City
No visit to Rome would be complete without a visit to the home of Christianity; The Vatican City. This sovereign state within a state is the smallest one in the world, however still manages to cram in 11 magnificent museums to marvel at. Highlights in this wonderful location are the Sistine chapel, St. Peter´s Basilica and the Raphael rooms where some of the greatest pieces of art and architecture the world have ever seen are present. Enjoy your holiday by staying in Rome accommodation within the Vatican itself and you might even catch a glimpse of the Pope or at the very least one of the Swiss Guard.
Apartments in Rome - Trastevere
A Rome apartment in Trastevere will ensure you see the city in a new light as it is completely different from the rest of the Roman neighbourhoods and proud of it. This beautiful neighbourhood has a trendy and international feel as well as remaining true to its traditional roots. The location is perfect for holidaying with friends as bars and clubs line the winding cobblestone streets. Shopaholics are also welcome with boutique after boutique allowing you to expand your wardrobe during your city break to Rome. However, art lovers will also find something to interest them in Trastevere with Cavallini´s frescoes a must see in Santa Cecilia church as well as one of the oldest basilicas in Rome; Santa Maria Church. Whether you want to party in a multicultural hotspot or view some of Rome´s finest churches, a Rome apartment in Trastevere is the place for you.
San Giovanni rentals in Rome
San Giovanni is the perfect spot to embrace all things Italian, making it a great location for an apartment in Rome. This area blends modern avenues with ornate cathedrals to create an astounding destination for anyone to discover. The food lovers will have plenty to sample in San Giovanni as the markets have a strong emphasis on local produce, so get ready to satisfy your taste buds. Frugal shoppers and vintage enthusiasts will also be at home in this district with the second hand market at Via Sannio the place to go to pick up a bargain or two. For a great mixture of things to do a Rome apartment in San Giovanni.
The green hill of Monteverde
This green haven is definitely the place to rent an apartment in Rome if you are looking to enjoy a serene and peaceful getaway. The area is named after the green hill of Janiculum and is the ideal spot to enjoy a picnic or go for a casual stroll. A must see in the district is Villa Doria Pamphili Park, a former privately owned spot now open for the public to enjoy. The zone is all about enjoying some outdoor fun away from the hive of activity in the main city and tourist attractions. If you are looking for a refreshing break then look no further than a Rome apartment in Monteverde.
Central Apartments in Prati
Prati is the perfect area to rent a Rome apartment if you want to see all the tourist attractions without being stuck right in the centre of all the hustle and bustle. This is a very safe neighbourhood to stay in due to its proximity to the Vatican and also a perfect location to visit the Vatican if an apartment in the heart of the sovereign state isn´t for you. Music is an essential feature of the area with many authentic trattories and bars offering live music from a range of different genres, suitable for any taste. For Jazz lovers visit the famous Jazz lounge Alexanderplatz which is the ideal spot to escape from it all and listen until your heart´s content. A central location with lots to explore, Prati is the perfect place to rent a Rome apartment.
The famous Spanish Steps date back to the 18th century and link Piazza di Spagna to the sombre Fontana della Barcaccia. Lovers of Keats will be able to visit a museum dedicated to him in the area where he lived and died. The artistic nature of the area still remains to this day with artists busy painting portraits at the top of the steps. The location is perfect for anyone looking to hit the shops straight after with the upmarket Via dei Condotti right on the doorstep.
You can´t go to Rome without visiting the renowned Trevi Fountain. This baroque fountain is probably the most famous one in the world and a hotspot for tourists. The sculpture is intricately done and includes a mythological scene with Neptune at the forefront flanked by two Tritons. If you want to come back to Rome in the future legend says that you must throw a coin into the fountain in order for your return to be granted.
History enthusiasts will be intrigued by the vivid past that Castel Sant´Angelo has endured over the centuries. Starting off life as a mausoleum for Emperor Hadrian, this majestic palace has also been a papal residence, castle, prison and museum since its construction. Film buffs will also recognise it from the film “Angels and Demons”.
Why book with us
Here at Waytostay we will not only offer a wonderful choice of hand-picked apartments throughout the city but also provide support before, during and after your stay. We pride ourselves on our dedicated customer service team who are always happy to help with issues and queries. When a customer indicates a recommendation or a problem with an apartment we will contact the apartment owner and endeavour to find a solution as quickly as possible. Not only this, but we have a multi-lingual team willing to offer any assistance communicating with the owner if they don´t speak your language.
Take advantage of your stay in Rome to get to know other cities in Italy. With Waytostay you can find the best apartments in Florence and the finest rentals in Milan. Don´t just take our word for it and check out what our customers say on the independent review site Trustpilot.

domain: geography


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Junior Guinea Pig
- Aug 4, 2019
- Reaction score
Poor thing! I hope he is ok :-(Not sure if this is the correct place to post the thread, but I wanted to make people aware of the danger of the Gnaw play block from Pets at Home! (UK)
I have four beautiful piggies but tonight it almost became three. Saturday (Yesterday) I bought two large gnaw blocks, I filled the blocks with their favourite treats and hay. This was what was suggested on the Label as well as the label stating it is suitable for rabbits and guinea pigs and promotes natural behaviour!
So I bought two! But I bought them from the shop, so naturally I didn’t check the online reviews... which has so many awful reviews on the danger of this block. My baby Gaz, got his head stuck so tightly that It took bolt cutters to break the block to get him out! My first thought was to take him to the Vet but in all honestly I didn’t think we had time. I feel as guilty as anything as I checked on them this morning and they were fine and then I was out and checked on them as soon as I got back... I am so thankful I got to him when I did. Sadly he is not out of the woods and I can only hope he is okay in the morning.
I’m so upset, he is sitting on my lap now on a towel and seems okay!
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Please do not buy this product! I will be writing a strongly worded letter to Pets at Home first thing tomorrow!

domain: pet


Just another data point. I'm a lefty, left eye dominant. I tought myself how to shoot right-handed handguns because most handguns, especially back then, were made for the predominantly right-handed world. Although I still use my left dominant eye, just cock my head slightly, which probably isn't even noticable to an observer.
But when it comes to rifles I shoot lefty. It's too hard to break the left eye dominance.
Your son will likely be more abidextrous than most people.


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Living the dream
Known as Qadasi (meaning white person), David and his partner Maqhinga are travelling from city to city bringing their unmistakably traditional African sound, with a western folk thread, to audiences both nationally and internationally. This year alone, the duo has travelled to four different countries and opened for well-known South African band, Mango Groove at their concert in Ballito earlier this year.
But 26-year-old David’s story starts when he was first exposed to the Zulu culture at around nine years old. “My late father was a journalist with the Mercury newspaper and I used to go into rural areas with him when he was covering events and doing stories. I fell in love with the Zulu culture and a big part of that culture is music,” says David.
A passion ignited
David started his journey of discovering and learning Maskandi music by collecting cassette tapes of legendary traditional Zulu musicians and, when his parents introduced him to the music of Johnny Clegg at around 10 years old, his passion was truly ignited. David taught himself to play the guitar by watching Johnny Clegg DVD’s and listening to Maskandi tapes, copying the chords one-by-one.
When you meet David it’s hard to believe this young white boy who speaks fluent Zulu grew up in town and not on a farm. However, none of his family speaks Zulu and instead he picked it up from the music he listened to. He also did Zulu instead of Afrikaans at school.
In the beginning David says it was quite hard to learn to play Maskandi, so he fine-tuned his skills learning Western folk and country music instead.
Despite being very shy in his younger years (and still quite shy in fact), David was persuaded to perform on stage at school and even took part in the SA’s Got Talent reality television programme in 2008, shortly after his dad passed away. “I didn’t get very far in the competition, I was just too young. But the response I got from the judges and audience proved to me that I could take my music to the next level.”
A year later David met the man who would help set his musical career in motion. It was suggested to him that he find a man named Maqhinga Radebe, a highly respected Maskandi guitarist, when he was looking for someone to help him tune his new instrument, the concertina or Zulu ‘squash box’.
“I got Maqhinga’s details and met him at a small studio in Durban, which was owned by Sibongiseni Shabalala (the son of Joseph Shabalala of Ladysmith Black Mambazo fame). My mom, sister and I went to Durban to meet him and he took me to get the instrument tuned. Afterwards we went back to the studio and Maqhinga and I ended up having an impromptu jam session.” Two weeks later David received a call from Sibongiseni, offering him a solo record deal.
Already very successful in his own right, Maqhinga had spent a few years touring overseas with Ladysmith Black Mambazo as their guitarist and had also been a member of Sibongiseni’s Maskandi group, called Shabalala Rhythm. “When I met him, I had no idea how highly respected Maqhinga was in the Maskandi music industry.”
With Maqhinga as his producer, David released his first solo album and started to create a name for himself as a Zulu musician. “Maqhinga was always behind the scenes, but we spent a lot of time together jamming and writing songs. One day we decided to start doing some intimate, acoustic gigs together.” The duo started receiving enquiries about doing international gigs and their first big overseas gig was in Ireland in 2013. Since then they’ve performed across Asia, the United Kingdom, Europe and around South Africa. They’ve opened for Johnny Clegg and have performed for King Goodwill Zwelithini.
The duo released their album, Lashis ‘Ilanga, in 2016 and it was nominated for a South African Music Award and a South African Traditional Music award in 2017.
“Our music really is traditional, old school Maskandi and while we do have a western influence, to make ourselves more relatable on an international stage, we are still seriously African, and South African. Going forward we hope to create more of a name for ourselves internationally. We want to fly our flag high. The flag always comes first, and then our own success.”
Details: www.davidjenkins.co.za / Facebook: Qadasi Music / Maqhinga Radebe
Text: Leah Shone | Photographer: Amy Jenkins
Get It Magazine Ballito/Umhlanga – October 2018


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CHICAGO – September 17, 2018 – CTPF oversees a diverse portfolio of U.S. stocks, real estate, fixed income, private equity, and international investments which provide risk-adjusted returns while allowing the Fund to “ride out” short-term fluctuations in individual asset classes.
Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund Submits Ninth Annual Report On Illinois Economic Opportunity Investments
Trustees highlight investment opportunities that contribute to the growth of the Illinois economy
CHICAGO – September 12, 2018 – The Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund (CTPF) submitted its ninth annual report on Illinois Economic Opportunity Investments to the Governor and the Illinois General Assembly. As of June 30, 2018, CTPF employed 17 Illinois-based investment managers who managed assets with a market value of $3.3 billion. These assets represented 30.6% of CTPF’s investment portfolio.

domain: finance