Month: November 2019

Bill Gates epitomizes the elite in 2019.

Gates sits at the center of the conversation about Big Tech, Big Money, and Big Philanthropy — all of which are increasingly unpopular with Americans who worry about the personal wealth that a small group of tech company leaders has amassed. But on Wednesday during an appearance at the New York Times’ Dealbook conference, the world’s second-richest person tried to offer a defense of billionaires in an age of massive income inequality.

Gates had to tangle with thorny questions about his connections to Jeffrey Epstein, whether the Gates Foundation should be as …

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Facebook has a leaky document problem

• Thousands of revealing internal documents and emails that Facebook struggled to keep secret were just made public, giving more details about how Facebook dealt with privacy and user data issues. [Business Insider / Rob Price]
• Read the nearly 4,000 pages of previously sealed documents here. [NBC News]
• The documents are part of a

Rep. Ayanna Pressley announced on Wednesday that she is endorsing Sen. Elizabeth Warren for president.

It’s a departure from Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib, fellow progressive members of Congress with whom Pressley is often associated, but who are backing Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“At a time when so many people find their lives threatened and their dreams denied, we need bold, compassionate leaders who put power back in the hands of people,” Pressley, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said in a statement to media on Wednesday. “We find ourselves in a fight for the soul of our nation, …

The angry conservative reaction to Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s tax proposals is quite revealing. They expose a particular intellectual tendency, one that goes beyond merely opposing higher taxes into a more fundamental defense of the American model of political economy. It’s a sense that the basic contours of America’s system, despite yawning inequality and the undeniably outsized influence of the rich over politics, is fundamentally just — and that the attempts to reform it are illegitimate efforts to impose tyrannical forms of majority rule.

One of the most interesting expressions of this view came from Michael Strain, the director of economic …

Update: Republican Tate Reeves has won the race for governor.

Democratic Attorney General Jim Hood and Republican Lieutenant Gov. Tate Reeves have run a tight gubernatorial race in Mississippi.

Tuesday’s election could lead to a power shift in the state, giving the state its first Democratic governor in 16 years. Republicans have won the governor’s seat in commanding victories in recent elections, but this time experts and pollsters believe Hood — who led in the polls until recently — could win. Strong turnout is also expected for Reeves, whose campaign has received a boost in recent weeks by visits …

Mississippi Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves has won the state’s 2019 gubernatorial election, and his victory both cements Republican power in Mississippi and ends discussion of expanding Medicaid in the state.

Reeves faced a surprisingly close race that saw his rival, Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, leading in polls for much of the year. That lead began to falter in the weeks leading up to the election, and Reeves received some last minute get-out-the-vote assistance from President Donald Trump, his son Donald Jr., and Vice President Mike Pence.

Ultimately, Reeves won both the popular vote and the majority of Mississippi …

Democrat Andy Beshear has won the Kentucky governor’s race, ousting sitting Republican Gov. Matt Bevin, and giving Democrats a big win in a conservative state.

It’s a major loss for Republicans in a state where they hold supermajorities in both chambers of the state legislature, both US Senate seats, and five out of the state’s six House seats. Bevin pulled out all the stops to clinch a win; President Donald Trump rallied in Lexington, Kentucky, Monday night ahead of the election to turn out voters. But even that last-ditch effort wasn’t enough — a sign that Trump’s influence isn’t …

Voters in several states are headed to the polls on Tuesday, November 5, to cast votes in elections that could lead to major shifts in power.

In both Mississippi’s and Kentucky’s gubernatorial races, Democrats have the potential to retake the governor’s seats, and in Virginia, Democrats could flip the House and Senate.

In Kentucky, the governor’s race is being cast as a referendum on President Donald Trump; can a Democrat win in a deep-red state one year from a presidential election? And in Mississippi, Attorney General Jim Hood has a good shot at becoming the state’s first …

Jim Hood is a political unicorn. A Democrat, Hood nonetheless has won four consecutive statewide elections in the blood-red state of Mississippi — all of them for attorney general. Now he hopes to add a new line to his resume. He’s the Democratic candidate for governor in Tuesday’s election. And the polls suggest that he’s got a real fighting chance.

But there’s a catch. Mississippi held a constitutional convention more than a century ago to, in the words of one former state governor and US senator, “eliminate the n****r from politics.” One still-remaining vestige of that convention …

Free speech and privacy on the internet declined globally for the ninth consecutive year according to the Freedom on the Net 2019 report by bipartisan watchdog and think tank Freedom House.

The report’s authors cite two main reasons for the decline: increased online election interference — by government and civilian actors alike — and increased government surveillance, both of which are spreading on social media platforms. These are topics that continue to dominate the news cycle, whether it’s Facebook’s ad policy that allows politicians to spread lies or Amazon’s growing relationships with police departments that use its Ring smart doorbells …