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Yelp Complains About Google Results For Restaurants Years After Demanding They Get Paid For Content Showing Up in Searches
The CEO of Yelp, Jeremy Stoppelman, has gone to
regulators in Europe over Google, filing a complaint against the
way the search engine organizes results of searches for restaurants
and restaurant reviews.
Google is working on an anti-trust
settlement with European Union regulators about the way it
presents results and claims that it prioritizes Google-branded
results first. As a final agreement comes close to fruition,
critics in Europe are getting louder. Now Yelp’s CEO has joined the
chorus. As TechCrunch reported:
Documents leaked to TechCrunch from inside Yelp allege
that Google is manipulating its search results to
favor Google+ content over Yelp content. The
materials accuse Google of blatantly highlighting its own
products in searches made in the US but not in Europe in order to
avoid angering EU regulators who are reviewing Google antitrust
complaints.The source tells me these screenshots and study are what’s being
passed around internally at Yelp to demonstrate that Google’s
tactics are unfair. Yelp recently joined a formal complaint about
the leniency of an EU antitrust settlement with Google,
the New York Times reported today, and my source says
these documents helped inspired this action.
Google and Yelp have some history. In 2009 Google tried to buy
the company for more than half a billion dollars but Yelp
ultimately walked away
from the deal.
SlashGear explained more of their history
during a 2011 dust-up:
According to Stoppelman’s testimony [in a congressional
hearing], after a license to use Yelp’s review content in its
results expired in 2007, Google first sought its own user reviews
and then, in 2010, began automatically including content from Yelp
without a new license agreement. When Yelp objected, Stoppelman
claims, Google said it would only stop if the review site agreed to
be removed from the overall search index.
So it sounds like initially Yelp wanted to get paid by Google
for being included in the search engine’s results. Google tried to
buy Yelp in their attempts to expand into providing local content
for users (Google eventually
bought Zagat). Now that Google’s local search results have
evolved to provide a more comprehensive search result about local
places, one that incorporates Google and other content to
provide.
As Google Chairman Eric Schmidt explained in 2011 at the same
hearing where Stoppleman complained about Yelp’s Google placement,
“the cost of going elsewhere is zero, and users can and do use
other sources to find the information they want.” It’s
disheartening, if not surprising, that Yelp’s CEO would turn to
government to force a business that’s become a competitor to act in
a way advantageous to his own company at their expense.
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New Hampshire Man Gets Cop to Apologize After Arrest For Legal Act of Recording Him
Great news out of New Hampshire
via the law offices of Martin and Hipple:
Weare resident Bill Alleman has won a settlement in his civil
suit alleging retaliatory prosecution on the part of the Weare
Police Department. In July of 2011, Mr. Alleman was arrested for
recording Officer Brandon Montplaisir with his mobile phone. A New
Hampshire District Court judge dismissed the charges approximately
four months later, noting that recording public officials is a
right protected by the First Amendment. Alleman then sued the Weare
Police Department for retaliatory prosecution, claiming that he was
arrested and prosecuted for exercising his First Amendment
rights….
Alleman even got a written apology from Weare police chief
John D. Valleca:
In his apology, Chief Velleca said, “After reviewing your case
and applicable case law, including the recent decision in Gericke
v. Begin, we have concluded that your arrest… should not have
occurred. Accordingly, we regret and apologize for your arrest and
prosecution.” Promising continued changes in the culture of the
department, he continued, “I… provide the officers with the
training and guidance that will assist them in rendering
professional, intelligent, and competent police services. I will
continue to educate our officers on the importance of understanding
and respecting the rights of all citizens, as well as the influence
new case law has on policing.”
Alleman stated in a press release from his lawyers:
“I feel good about the settlement, but I feel great about the
fact that our police chief has, in writing, admitted that recording
the police is not a crime,” said Mr. Alleman. “I really hope we’ve
seen the end of this unlawful nonsense in New Hampshire,” he added.
“Public servants need to understand, finally, that they’re ‘at all
times accountable’ to the people.”
I wrote about Free State Project leader Carla Gericke’s
similar victory over an erroneous procecution based on the
belief she was shooting video of cops back in May.
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Strategist Warns SKEW “Is Flashing A Big Warning Signal For Stocks”
As stocks have pushed to new record highs in recent weeks, and VIX has dropped accordingly, the cost of protecting desperate asset managers from a far bigger collapse in prices has been soaring. We first noted the record high price of SKEW – a measure of market fear of a big drop in prices – a month ago, but for the first time in history, prices have remained elevated for a considerable period. As Bloomberg reports, the SKEW “is flashing a big warning signal for equity markets right now,” Kevin Cook, a senior stock strategist at
Zacks Investment Research Inc. in Chicago, wrote, adding that, “big players are quietly and eagerly buying up put protection while they hang onto their stocks.” This institutional nervousness is occurring as retail dives and AAII Bulls surge back above 60% of investors.
This is a record high and record long period for SKEW to be elevated…
In the past four weeks, the SKEW has exceeded 140 three times: on June 20, July 2 and July 3. Only four other earlier readings, in June 1990, October 1998, March 2006 and December 2013, surpassed this threshold since calculations started in 1990. The chart shows all but the earliest occurrence, which happened four weeks before the S&P 500 peaked for the year.
Which seems to have been triggered at the FOMC meeting (when Fed confirmed QE will end in Oct)
Source: Bloomberg
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Huge ND Wastewater Spill Prompts Calls For Fracking Regs
Submitted by Andy Tully via OilPrice.com,
Beaver dams have so far prevented about 1 million gallons of fracking wastewater discovered spilled July 8 from a rural North Dakota pipeline from spreading too far. But area residents, environmentalists and even a Republican state legislator all want more reliable measures.
The spill of the toxic saltwater, a byproduct of hydraulic fracturing, came from gas extraction operations at the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation and occurred days before it was discovered.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency said the underground pipeline spilled about 24,000 barrels, or 1 million gallon, in North Dakota’s thriving oil and gas region. The water, which can be 10 times saltier than seawater and contains salt and fossil fuel condensates, was being piped away from fuel extraction sites for safe disposal.
The spill has been threatening Bear Den Bay on nearby Lake Sakakawea, which provides water for the reservation occupied by the Arikara, Hidasta and Mandan tribes, though the EPA said there is no evidence that the lake has been contaminated.
In fact, it said, most of the saltwater had pooled near where it had spilled and that beaver dams in the area had kept it from spreading. As a result, the EPA said, the local soil has simply been absorbing the spill.
That’s a bit too fortuitous for Wayde Schafer, a spokesman for the Sierra Club in North Dakota. He said there have been four other spills in the region recently, including three caused by lightning strikes and a fourth attributed to a cow that rubbed against a tank valve.
With its current oil and gas boom, North Dakota has become the second most productive energy state behind Texas. By relying greatly on fracking, though, it also produces millions of barrels of wastewater daily that, like nuclear waste, must be buried underground forever.
In 2013 alone, there were 74 pipeline leaks that spilled 22,000 barrels of saltwater. Yet that same year, the North Dakota Legislature voted 86 to 4 against a bill that would have mandated flow meters and cutoff switches on wastewater-disposal pipelines. Energy companies protested the cost of such measures, and even state regulators argued they wouldn’t detect small leaks.
State Rep. Dick Anderson, a Republican farmer from Willow City, about 140 miles northeast of Lake Sakakawea, wants the legislature to reconsider the bill. He said a revised bill should require energy companies to conduct more frequent examination of the wastewater pipelines, including dogs trained to sniff for spills and even aerial drones that can spot pipeline breaks.
Arrow Pipeline LLC, which owns the pipeline whose spill has been threatening Lake Sakakawea, said the accident wasn’t discovered until employees were reviewing reports on production losses.
Crestwood Midstream Partners LP of Houston, which owns Arrow Pipeline, said the cleanup is likely to last for weeks.
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Meet CISA – Dianne Feinstein’s Latest Attack on Privacy, Civil Liberties and the Internet
There’s not much good you can count on Congress to accomplish, but when it comes to introducing and passing oligarch protecting, civil liberties destroying legislation, our “representatives” are absolutely relentless in their determination. Unsurprisingly, the only “distinctly native American criminal class,” as Mark Twain described Congress, is at it again when it comes to institutionalizing spying and attempting a legal run around the Bill of Rights.
One thing that has become crystal clear since the Edward Snowden revelations, is that much of Congress has no problem at all with unconstitutional spying. Rather, they are primarily upset that it became exposed and they are dead set on making sure no other whistleblower can ever do the same. Enter CISA, or the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act.
I’ve spent much of today reading about the bill, and have compiled what I think are the most astute observations. First, from the ACLU:
A new cybersecurity bill poses serious threats to our privacy, gives the government extraordinary powers to silence potential whistleblowers, and exempts these dangerous new powers from transparency laws.
“The bill would create a massive loophole in our existing privacy laws by allowing the government to ask companies for ‘voluntary’ cooperation in sharing information, including the content of our communications, for cybersecurity purposes. But the definition they are using for the so-called ‘cybersecurity information’ is so broad it could sweep up huge amounts of innocent Americans’ personal data.
“The Fourth Amendment protects Americans’ personal data and communications from undue government access and monitoring without suspicion of criminal activity. The point of a warrant is to guard that protection. CISA would circumvent the warrant requirement by allowing the government to approach companies directly to collect personal information, including telephonic or internet communications, based on the new broadly drawn definition of ‘cybersecurity information.’”
In addition to the threats to every American’s privacy, the bill clearly targets potential government whistleblowers. Instead of limiting the use of data collection to protect against actual cybersecurity threats, the bill allows the government to use the data in the investigation and prosecution of people for economic espionage and trade secret violations, and under various provisions of the Espionage Act.
The always excellent Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has also chimed in:
CISPA purports to allow companies and the federal government to “share” threat information for a “cybersecurity” purpose—to protect and defend against attacks against computer systems and networks. But the bill is written broadly enough to permit your communications service providers to identify, obtain, and share your emails and text messages with the government. While business leaders have conceded that they do not need to share personally identifying information to combat computer threats, the bill provides an exception to existing law designed to protect your personal information.
The newly granted powers are intended to thwart computer security threats against a company’s rights and property. But the definitions are broad and vague. The terms allow purposes such as guarding against “improper” information modification and ensuring “timely” access to information, functions that are not necessarily tied to attacks.
Once handed over, the government is able to use this information for investigating crimes that are unrelated to the underlying security threat and, more broadly, for “national security” purposes, which is a poorly defined term that includes “threats to the United States, its people, property, or interests” and “any other matter bearing on United States national or homeland security.”
Companies would also be immune from both civil and criminal liability for any action, including but not limited to violating a user’s privacy, as long as the company used the powers granted by CISPA in “good faith.” The immunity even extends to “decisions made based on” any information “directly pertaining” to a security threat. The consequences of such a clause are far-reaching.
Meanwhile, Trevor Timm, executive of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, noted in the Guardian that:
One of the most underrated benefits of Edward Snowden’s leaks was how they forced the US Congress to shelve the dangerous, privacy-destroying legislation– then known as Cispa – that so many politicians had been so eager to pass under the guise of “cybersecurity”. Now a version of the bill is back, and apparently its authors want to keep you in the dark about it for as long as possible.
Now it’s called the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (Cisa), and it is a nightmare for civil liberties. Indeed, it’s unclear how this kind of law would even improve cybersecurity. The bill was marked up and modified by the Senate intelligence committee in complete secrecy this week, and only afterward was the public allowed to see many of the provisions passed under its name.
Cisa is what Senator Dianne Feinstein, the bill’s chief backer and the chair of the committee, calls an “information-sharing” law that’s supposed to help the government and tech and telecom companies better hand information back and forth to the government about “cyberthreat” data, such as malware. But in reality, it is written so broadly it would allow companies to hand over huge swaths of your data – including emails and other communications records – to the government with no legal process whatsoever. It would hand intelligence agencies another legal authority to potentially secretly re-interpret and exploit in private to carry out even more surveillance on the American public and citizens around the world.
Under the new provisions, your data can get handed over by the tech companies and others to the Department of Homeland Security (not exactly a civil liberties haven itself), but then it can be passed along to the nation’s intelligence agencies … including the NSA. And even if you find out a company violated your privacy by handing over personal information it shouldn’t have, it would have immunity from lawsuits – as long as it acted in “good faith”. It could amount to what many are calling a “backdoor wiretap”, where your personal information could end up being used for all sorts of purposes that have nothing to do with cybersecurity.But it’s not just privacy advocates who should be worried: transparency also takes a huge hit under this bill. Cisa would create a brand-new exception to the Freedom of Information Act (which is already riddled with holes), all the better to ensure everything in this particular process remains secret.
In typical intel-committee fashion, the Foia amendment wasn’t even made public until after it was passed by committee.
The fact of the matter is the Snowden leaks have done more for cybersecurity than any info-sharing bill ever could. The major tech companies have leapt forward and are now competing on who is more secure because of worries that the NSA, and other intelligence agencies for that matter, are snooping wherever they can. Certainly there is more to do, but eviscerating privacy rights in the process is not the solution.
Unsurprisingly, the financial services industry seems to be particularly excited about this piece of legislation. This shouldn’t come as any surprise in light of my recent post: Wall Street Teams Up with U.S. Intelligence Cronies in Bid to Form Fascist “Cyber War Council.”
The new Senate bill has won support from financial trade groups, among others, who say the legislation is critical to making sure hackers can’t wreak havoc on bank records.
Kenneth Bentsen, chief executive at the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, said in a statement that leaders of the Senate Intelligence panel who wrote the bill have “taken a balanced and considered approach which will help the financial services industry to better protect our customers from cyber terrorists and criminals, as well as their privacy.”
Ah, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA). This is the same Wall Street lobby that former NSA chief Keith Alexander recently signed on as a client for $600,000 per month for “cyber-security” advice.
It seems fairly obvious what CISA is intended to do. The NSA and other intelligence agencies are well aware that all Americans essentially sign away their privacy rights to large technology companies via terms of service agreements (a topic I highlighted recently). Now that the government’s access to the tech companies data has been exposed by Edward Snowden, they are looking for another way to “legal” have access. This seems to be what CISA is all about.
If you recall, the most meaningful victory achieved by Aaron Swartz prior to his untimely and tragic death at the hands of a vindictive and hateful U.S. government was leading the charge to stop Internet censorship bills SOPA/PIPA. It would be wise for all of us to take heed of his words:
We won this fight because everyone made themselves the hero of their own story. Everyone took it as their job to save this crucial freedom. They threw themselves into it. They did whatever they could think of to do. They didn’t stop to ask anyone for permission. You remember how Hacker News readers spontaneously organized this boycott of GoDaddy over their support of SOPA? Nobody told them they could do that. A few people even thought it was a bad idea. It didn’t matter. The senators were right: The Internet really is out of control. But if we forget that, if we let Hollywood rewrite the story so it was just big company Google who stopped the bill, if we let them persuade us we didn’t actually make a difference, if we start seeing it as someone else’s responsibility to do this work and it’s our job just to go home and pop some popcorn and curl up on the couch to watch Transformers, well, then next time they might just win. Let’s not let that happen.
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
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Meet CISA – Dianne Feinstein’s Latest Attack on Privacy, Civil Liberties and the Internet originally appeared on Liberty Blitzkrieg on July 15, 2014.
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BRICS Announce $100 Billion Reserve To Bypass Fed, Developed World Central Banks
As we suggested last night, the anti-dollar alliance among the BRICS has successfully created a so-called “mini-IMF” since the BRICS are clearly furious with the IMF as it stands currently: this is what the world’s developing nations just said on this topic “We remain disappointed and seriously concerned with the current non-implementation of the 2010 International Monetary Fund (IMF) reforms, which negatively impacts on the IMF’s legitimacy, credibility and effectiveness.”
As Putin explains, this is part of “a system of measures that would help prevent the harassment of countries that do not agree with some foreign policy decisions made by the United States and their allies.” Initial capital for the BRICS Bank will be $50 Billion – paid in equal share among the 5 members (with a contingent reserve up to $100 Billion) and will see India as the first President. The BRICS Bank will be based in Shanghai and chaired by Russia. Simply put, as Sovereign Man’s Simon Black warns, “when you see this happen, you’ll know it’s game over for the dollar…. I give it 2-3 years.”
- BRICS MINISTERS SIGN DEVELOPMENT BANK AGREEMENT
- INITIAL SUBSCRIBED CAPITAL OF BRICS BANK IS $50 BLN: STATEMENT
A quick take on existing monetary policy.
- MONETARY POLICY MUST BE CAREFULLY CALIBRATED: BRICS STATEMENT
The punchline, however, is that using bilateral swaps, the BRICS are effectively disintermediating themselves from a Fed and other “developed world” central-bank dominated world and will provide their own funding.
We are pleased to announce the signing of the Treaty for the establishment of the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) with an initial size of US$ 100 billion. This arrangement will have a positive precautionary effect, help countries forestall short-term liquidity pressures, promote further BRICS cooperation, strengthen the global financial safety net and complement existing international arrangements. We appreciate the work undertaken by our Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors. The Agreement is a framework for the provision of liquidity through currency swaps in response to actual or potential short-term balance of payments pressures.
Incidentally, the role of the dollars in such a world is, well, nil.
Key excerpts from the Full statement:
We remain disappointed and seriously concerned with the current non-implementation of the 2010 International Monetary Fund (IMF) reforms, which negatively impacts on the IMF’s legitimacy, credibility and effectiveness. The IMF reform process is based on high-level commitments, which already strengthened the Fund’s resources and must also lead to the modernization of its governance structure so as to better reflect the increasing weight of EMDCs in the world economy. The Fund must remain a quota-based institution. We call on the membership of the IMF to find ways to implement the 14th General Review of Quotas without further delay. We reiterate our call on the IMF to develop options to move ahead with its reform process, with a view to ensuring increased voice and representation of EMDCs, in case the 2010 reforms are not entered into force by the end of the year. We also call on the membership of the IMF to reach a final agreement on a new quota formula together with the 15th General Review of Quotas so as not to further jeopardize the postponed deadline of January 2015.
BRICS, as well as other EMDCs, continue to face significant financing constraints to address infrastructure gaps and sustainable development needs. With this in mind, we are pleased to announce the signing of the Agreement establishing the New Development Bank (NDB), with the purpose of mobilizing resources for infrastructure and sustainable development projects in BRICS and other emerging and developing economies. We appreciate the work undertaken by our Finance Ministers. Based on sound banking principles, the NDB will strengthen the cooperation among our countries and will supplement the efforts of multilateral and regional financial institutions for global development, thus contributing to our collective commitments for achieving the goal of strong, sustainable and balanced growth.
The Bank shall have an initial authorized capital of US$ 100 billion. The initial subscribed capital shall be of US$ 50 billion, equally shared among founding members. The first chair of the Board of Governors shall be from Russia. The first chair of the Board of Directors shall be from Brazil. The first President of the Bank shall be from India. The headquarters of the Bank shall be located in Shanghai. The New Development Bank Africa Regional Center shall be established in South Africa concurrently with the headquarters. We direct our Finance Ministers to work out the modalities for its operationalization.
We are pleased to announce the signing of the Treaty for the establishment of the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) with an initial size of US$ 100 billion. This arrangement will have a positive precautionary effect, help countries forestall short-term liquidity pressures, promote further BRICS cooperation, strengthen the global financial safety net and complement existing international arrangements. We appreciate the work undertaken by our Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors. The Agreement is a framework for the provision of liquidity through currency swaps in response to actual or potential short-term balance of payments pressures.
Goodbye visions of an ADR-world currency.
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Activists and Their “Parallel Science” Propaganda Machine
The folks over at the Genetic Literacy
Project are featuring an insightful article on how activists
gin up junk science to support their predetermined views. The
article, “‘Parallel
science’ of NGO advocacy groups: How post-modernism encourages
pseudo-science” is by Marcel Kuntz, who is the director of
research at the French National Center for Scientific Research.
From the article:
Political ecologists–commentators in the media and among NGO
advocacy groups–like science…when it confirms their views. When it
contradicts them, rather than changing their minds, they often
prefer to change the science to fit their ideology. They have thus
created a “parallel science.” Which should not be confused with
pseudo-sciences (e.g. astrology, false medicine, the paranormal,
ufology, etc.).Pseudo-sciences may harm naive believers, parallel “science” is
harming democracy. It is a component of a predetermined political
project to the exclusive benefit of the ideological views of a
minority. “Parallel science” seemingly resembles science, but it
differs from science since its conclusions precede
experimentation.Parallel “science” has been created to replace scientists,
especially in risk assessment, by “experts” (often self-proclaimed)
supportive of a political project. This parallel “science” is
hidden behind positive-sounding terms, such as “citizen science” or
“independent” or “whistleblower”, while mainstream scientists are
accused of having “conflicts of interest” or having ties with
“industry”. In order to further propagate distrust in current risk
assessment, parallel “science” will invoke unrelated past health
problems or environmental damages, but never to the way science has
solved problems. …Why is parallel “science” not discredited and why is it
represented so uncritically by the media? The answer partly lies in
the current dominance of a relativist ideology. The danger of such
a postmodern approach to science is that it considers all points of
views to be equally valid and thus raises the value of
“independent” (in fact ideological) views to the same level as
scientific ones.
Let me give an example of how “parallel science” manufactures
propaganda for activist groups with which they can mislead the
credulous. In March, 2014, Doug Gurian-Sherman, senior scientist in
Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists,
stated in no less a place than MIT’s
Technology Review:
It’s also worth noting that there’s
no real consensus on GMO crop safety.
As evidence that there’s “no real consensus,” to what website
did Gurian-Sherman link? A declaration issued by the European
Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility.
ENSSER is a collection of long-time foes of agricultural
biotechnology. The disingenuous statement has so far been signed by
fewer than 300 scientists, including such anti-biotech luminaries
as Charles Benbrook, Vandana Shiva, Gilles-Eric Seralini, and
Gurian-Sherman himself. Referring to this declaration as
evidence against biotech crop safety is akin to citing a statement
from tobacco company scientists asserting that cigarette smoking
isn’t a risk factor for lung cancer.
See also my earlier post today on Seralini’s
anti-biotech junk science.
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Millennials Don’t Like Either Party, Democrats Viewed as the Better of Two Bad Options
Reason-Rupe has a new survey and report out on
millennials—find the report
here.
Millennials don’t have much
confidence in either of the two major political parties. When asked
who they trust most to handle a series of issues, neither Democrats
nor Republicans receive a majority of support on any of the 15
issues surveyed. Instead pluralities say they trust “neither” party
to handle 12 of the 15 issues.
Pluralities trust Democrats the most on gay marriage, the
environment, and poverty. Republicans only marginally exceed the
Democrats on promoting entrepreneurship. In fact, even Republican
millennials don’t trust the Republican Party across most of the
issues.
Half of millennials (50%) say they trust neither party to handle
privacy, with 27 percent trusting Democrats and 17 percent saying
the same of Republicans. Dissatisfaction with both parties is
understandable given that both parties have staked nearly the same
position on the issue and both President Obama and President Bush
expanded surveillance programs. Those who disagree with the status
quo on domestic surveillance lack a partisan alternative to
represent their views.
Likewise, millennials don’t have many options to choose from if
they care about fiscal responsibility either. Large pluralities
trust neither party on government spending and the budget
deficit.
Notice—these two issues, spending and the deficit, have
historically advantaged Republicans, yet today less than a
quarter of young adults say they trust Republicans to handle these
issues now.* Instead, more trust Democrats (3 out of 10) than
Republicans.
Other issues that have traditionally advantaged Republicans,
such as taxes and foreign policy, don’t garner support for either
party and see Republicans losing ground to Democrats. A third of
millennials trust Democrats to handle taxes and foreign policy, a
quarter trust Republicans, and nearly four in 10 trust neither.
Although civil liberties and fiscal responsibility are important
issues for millennials, the economy and jobs are
given highest
priority. Neither party has convinced a majority that their
approach is best. However, nearly twice as many trust Democrats
(37%) as Republicans (21%) to promote job creation. Another 37
percent say neither party is best at promoting jobs in the
economy.
Drug policy is another issue where both parties take similar
positions and millennials trust neither. Forty-one percent say
neither party can adequately handle drug policy, but slightly more
trust Democrats (32%) than Republicans (21%).
The only issue on which Republicans could credibly compete with
Democrats is promoting entrepreneurship: 28 percent trust
Republicans and 27 percent trust Democrats. While Republicans talk
about promoting small business, start-ups, and entrepreneurship, it
is possible that young people either have not heard this message or
don’t think Republicans are serious or competent on the matter.
However, millennials don’t think Democrats will do a very good job
either in fostering entrepreneurship either.
While millennials have little confidence in Republicans to
handle important issues, their view of Democrats isn’t much better.
On issues that Democrats have traditionally
had an advantage on, such as education, immigration, and health
care, trust in Democrats doesn’t exceed 40 percent. Nevertheless,
support for Democratic handling is double that of Republicans for
education (37 to 17 percent) and immigration (37 to 18
percent).
While a slim majority (51%) say they have a favorable opinion of
the Affordable Care Act, the Democratic overhaul of the health care
system, only 36 percent of millennials say they trust Democrats to
handle health care overall. Only 21 percent trust Republicans; a
plurality (37%) say neither party can properly handle health care
issues.
Even Republicans Don’t Trust the Republican
Party
Another reason Democrats are handily beating Republicans is that
even Republican millennials trust the Democratic approach
on a number of issues. Nearly a third of Republican millennials
prefer Democrats’ handling of same-sex marriage and the
environment, and a quarter prefers Democrats’ handling of poverty.
No more than 15 percent of Democratic millennials trust Republicans
on any issue.
Compiling these results into a Party Trust Index shows that not
even Republican millennials trust the Republican Party to
competently handle the nation’s most pressing concerns. On all 15
issues combined, only 47 percent of Republican millennials
primarily trusted the Republican Party while 69 percent of
Democratic millennials trusted the Democratic Party.
Political science research has shown that political independents
tend to lean one partisan way or the other, but millennial
independents are still overwhelmingly unwilling (79%) to endorse
the parties on the issues. Of all millennials, 28 percent refused
to endorse either political party on any of the 15 issues
surveyed.
Among the millennial cohort, Republicans are no longer viewed as
most competently able to handle issues on which they have
historically had the advantage. While Democrats aren’t viewed
favorably either, they are viewed as the better of two bad options.
Given millennials’ low level of confidence in both major political
parties, it is less surprising that more than half initially say
they are independent rather than affiliate with a partisan label
they don’t trust.
To learn more about
millennials, check
out Reason-Rupe’s new report.
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French President Urges His Countrymen: Stop Bashing Your Country, Have Some Confidence
A few days ago it was that other great egaliatarian president, Barack Obama, who urged Americans to tear free from the shackles of cynicism and to unleash some more of that hopium that got Obama elected in the first place. Now it is the turn of that other just as impressive socialist, France’s own Francois Hollande, who just like Obama has seen his popularity rating crumble to unprecedented levels, come up with his own prescription for how to fix the troubles that ail France. In short: “less lamenting and disparaging, more confidence.”
From Reuters:
In the television interview to mark Bastille Day, when a crowd stormed a Paris prison on July 14, 1789, at the outset of the French Revolution, Hollande said his compatriots were more inclined than some others to put their country down.
“We are very proud but, at the same time, I would say there is a sort of sickness, which is not serious but which can be contagious, whereby we are always lamenting and disparaging,” he said.
“Speak well of your country because, when I’m abroad, people do speak well of France, of what it’s doing in the international arena, in the diplomatic sphere, on defense, the operations we have carried out for peace, but also innovation, companies.”
The president also cited entrepreneurs, major companies with significant exports, the tourist industry and agriculture.
“We have to fight but, most importantly, we have to have confidence in ourselves,” he said.
Bottom line: watch your president and government lie every day while pandering and preaching, working solely on behalf of the rich, while you rot away in your part-time jobs or worse, unemployed, surviving day to day on the measly pittance the government hands you to make you a docile little handout addicted serf, and at the end of the day, whatever you do, don’t become a jaded, cynical lamenter and disparager, but have “hope and confidence.” Truly the road to socialist utopia is paved with best intentions.
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1tNvSt4 Tyler Durden