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How is this an improvement?

The first time I heard about Klobuchar was probably two years ago when I read a report about how she just abuses and mistreats her staff.

Visions of sugar plums were not dancing in the heads of officials in Wake Forest, N.C. Instead, they saw protesters violently clashing with members of a local Confederate group who were set to march in the towns 72nd annual Christmas parade later this month.

So to be safe, the town canceled it.

In a Wednesday night video message, Wake Forest Mayor Vivian Jones announced that the towns downtown board of directors voted to cancel the Dec. 14 Christmas parade out of concern that outside agitators would show up to protest or defend the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy, who planned to march in the event.

The decision in Wake Forest, located less than 20 miles outside Raleigh, comes almost a week after another nearby town, Garner, N.C., announced it was canceling its Christmas parade over possible protests of a float sponsored by a local Confederate group, the Raleigh News & Observer reported.

By the end of her video announcement, Jones was fighting tears.

Based on information we have received in recent days, this years event has the potential to be one marked not by marching bands and Santa Claus but instead by protests between clashing groups from outside Wake Forest, with innocent bystanders caught in the middle, Jones said. It is due to these concerns that I support the decision of the Wake Forest Downtown Board of Directors to deny these outside agitators the opportunity to use Wake Forest to spread hate and incite violence.

Wake Forest Police Chief Jeff Leonard said in a statement that one group had notified the town of its plans to protest, but that the police department was worried that more agitators would show up, wreak havoc then leave. The town had received credible information about a growing number of outside groups planning to attend to either defend or oppose the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy, according to a statement. The town had not received any threats, officials clarified, but Leonard and Jones said they still believed safety could be put at risk.

We arent happy telling kids they cant attend or participate in this years parade, but its better than trying to explain to a parent whose child was injured why we chose to proceed despite so many warning signs, Leonard said. No matter what side of this issue you are on, our focus is public safety and at this point, the risk of moving forward with the parade simply outweighs any possible reward.

The cancellations in Wake Forest and Garner come in the wake of continuing tension over the fate of Confederate monuments and history across the United States. The debate is notably playing out 40 miles west at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where groups have protested the decision by the UNC Systems Board of Governors to pay a Confederate group $2.5 million to move the Silent Sam Confederate statue off campus as part of a legal settlement.

One of those activist groups, Move Silent Sam, helped spark a conversation last month about why Garner was still allowing a Confederate group to participate in this years Christmas parade.

Is the Town of Garner trying to send the message that racism is welcome in the community? the group wrote on Twitter. Is this Raleigh, North Carolina suburb going to allow Confederates in this years Christmas parade??

The social media discussions also got the attention of town officials. While no one made any threats in their online posts, the possibility of protests was enough to sway officials to decide on Nov. 27 to cancel the event in the interest of safety, seeking to avoid disruption, officials said in a video.

Nobody was happy activists and Confederate supporters included.

Instead of canceling the Christmas parade, the Town of Garner could have disallowed divisive and hurtful symbols such as the Confederate flag, Move Silent Sam wrote in a statement.

Don Scott, commander of the Col. Leonidas L. Polk Camp No. 1486, a Sons of Confederate Veterans group, told the News & Observer that he feel[s] so bad for the children. He said the group was disappointed it used the event as a recruiting tool but that the kids were most important.

The paper asked whether the group might have considered voluntarily bowing out of the parade, though Scott said that decision would be left to Sons of Confederate Veterans leaders. (A Wake Forest-based spokesman for the North Carolina Division of the group couldnt immediately be reached for comment on either parade.)

But if it were up to me personally, if it came down to being in the parade or having it for the kids, I would choose the latter, he said.

The same day Garner announced its decision to cancel the parade, Wake Forest vowed in a statement that its parade would go on and, by law, that the Confederate group would be allowed to march in it. Officials noted that last year, as local and national debate about Confederate symbols was boiling over, town leaders had asked their legal counsel whether they could exclude certain groups from the annual Christmas parade.

Make no mistake about it the Town of Wake Forest is extremely sensitive to the emotion the confederate flag stirs among those on both sides of this issue, officials wrote in the statement. We recognize that for some the flag represents racism, hatred and bigotry, while others see it as a representation of Southern heritage protected as a matter of freedom of speech/freedom of expression.

But because Wake Forest sponsors the parade which is officially put on by the downtown board legal counsel advised the town that it had no legal basis to exclude groups based on their beliefs or signage. A town spokesman told the News & Observer that turning over the parade to a private entity the downtown board, a nonprofit could allow different rules for who is allowed to join.

All the plans in the world may not be enough to win the Democratic nomination.

Thats what some of Elizabeth Warrens ardent fans are warning less than two months before the first votes are cast, as the Massachusetts senator has lost her edge in Iowa and New Hampshire in recent polls.

They said she should tweak her strategy, fearing that too much nitty-gritty policy in the home stretch of the race and the controversy around her Medicare for All plan will eclipse her oft-told personal story and block out humanizing moments that can draw new supporters into the fold.

She could quit talking about plans and talk more about who she is and her values and what drives her, said Iowa state Senator Joe Bolkcom, who endorsed Warren in September and introduced her at a town hall event on Monday. I think that would be refreshing to people.

As her standing in the polls slipped, Warren took the unusual step of shaking things up this week. At two campaign events in Iowa, she chopped her policy-dense stump speech by more than half and answered four times as many questions from voters than usual, allowing for more unplanned moments of levity and emotion including an exchange in which she spoke powerfully about her divorce.

I feel like we all know what her plans are and quite frankly voters are not interested in plans. They are more interested in headlines and viral moments, said Ariel Glasman, a 30-year-old teacher who saw Warren, her preferred candidate, speak for the third time on Monday at the University of Iowa.

Warrens detailed and sweeping policy agenda has been the bedrock of her campaign, and powered her rise in the race last summer. Her Democratic rivals scrambled to keep up with her ideas to tax multimillionaires assets and dramatically expand the nations safety net, furiously fleshing out their own less-formed agendas.

Now, however, Pete Buttigieg,the mayor of South Bend, Ind., who has never dominated the policy primary, has leapfrogged Warren in some early-state polls. Warren has a fearsome ground game, but her supporters are worried about a race that remains unpredictable, with California Senator Kamala Harris suddenly dropping out on Tuesday and former vice president Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders putting up a fierce fight.

As the crucial Iowa caucuses approach, Warrens strategy appears to have hit a wall. She has found herself mired in the political quicksand of her most controversial plan, Medicare for All, after she was forced to spell out her support for a government takeover of health insurance when her rivals pilloried her for being uncharacteristically vague on the matter.

Her embrace of that expensiveplan has kicked up some voters lingering concerns about Warrens ability to defeat President Trump, and she has shown little appetite to hit back as rivals like Biden and Buttigieg work overtime to whip up those doubts.

Some of Warrens allies and fans say now is the time to pivot from the plans to the personal.

Shes got a very clearly identified brand: Shes got a plan for that, said Iowa state Senator Zach Wahls, who announced his support of Warren in October. And now its a question of beyond the plans . . . who are you and why are you running?

Warren has made her rise from a modest Oklahoma upbringing to a populist champion for the middle class a pillar of her typical campaign speech, and she shares one-on-one interactions with every voter who wants to stand in the selfie lines that curl around her event venues. But her focus on policy is a calling card that often looms larger than the rest of her persona.

When you think about it, having 47 different detailed policies is terrific and a sign of thoughtfulness and readiness, but is that really the best matchup to Donald Trump? said Iowa political strategist Jeff Link, who said Warrens origin story and willingness to interact with voters could provide a powerful contrast to Trump if voters know about it.

I think an adjustment could be made that would have a positive impact, said Eli Stines, a city councilor in Boone, Iowa, who has endorsed Warren and said her personal story is powerful. I know from experience that most people dont vote on policy.

Several of the more than a dozen Warren supporters interviewed, however, said Warrens plans are key to her success so far and that she should not deemphasize them.

People want solutions. People dont want platitudes anymore, said state Representative Lindsay James of Dubuque, adding that Warren has skillfully braided her policy ideas with her biography.

Warren supporters in Iowa were delighted by a more personal exchange that unfolded Sunday in a windowless gymnasium in Marion, when a young voter with tears in her eyes asked Warren if there was a time when she was not accepted by someone she looked up to. Warren, who generally launches into her answers with an expression of joy (Oh, thats fabulous!) and a policy prescription, gripped the microphone and paused to steady herself.

My mother and I had very different views of how to build a future. She wanted me to marry well and I really tried and it just didnt work out, Warren said, her voice seeming to break as she described calling her mother to tell her about her divorce in 1979.

I heard the disappointment in her voice, I knew how she felt about it, but I also know it was the right thing to do, Warren said.

Then Warren and the voter embraced. As the video went viral, Warrens supporters hoped it signaled a new willingness by the candidate to move away from dense policy in favor of more humanizing exchanges that could help her with her next challenge: Getting more voters to like her enough to vote for her, even if they do not always agree with her.

Warrens shorter stump speech opened up the event for more interaction with voters, includingan amusing exchange with a man whose shirt was emblazoned with her face, and a question from a teacher about book recommendations which she dodged.

The change was a minor shakeup compared to the shifts by some of Warrens competitors for the Democratic nomination. But it was also a sign that, on the 336th day of a presidential campaign that has reveled in its consistency, Warren was apparently willing to experiment.

That shift appears necessary as voters who say they love Warrens brand as a populist policy whiz also express increasing worry about one particular plan thats overshadowing them all: Medicare for All.

One supporter, Elizabeth McGlynn, 67, stepped to the microphone in Marion to ask why Warren hadnt presented a plan that could get more people on your side. Warren offered a detailed explanation of her three-part health care plan a sign that he

Mr. Buttigiegs time at the worlds most prestigious management-consulting company is one piece of his meticulously programmed biography that he mentions barely, if at all, on the campaign trail.

As Mr. Buttigieg explains it, that is not a matter of choice. For all of his efforts to run an open, accessible campaign marked by frequent on-the-record conversations with reporters on his blue-and-yellow barnstorming bus McKinsey is a famously secretive employer, and Mr. Buttigieg says he signed a nondisclosure agreement that keeps him from going into detail about his work there.

But as he gains ground in polls, his reticence about McKinsey is being tested, including by his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination. Senator Warren, responding last month to needling by Mr. Buttigieg that she release more than the 11 years of tax returns she already had to account for her private-sector work, retorted, There are some candidates who want to distract from the fact that they have not released the names of their clients and have not released the names of their bundlers.

(On Friday night, after this article was published, Mr. Buttigiegs campaign released more information about his McKinsey years, describing his projects in general terms without naming the clients. His assignments, it said, included work for a nonprofit health insurer in Michigan in 2007, a California environmental nonprofit in 2009 and, the following year, a logistics and shipping provider in Washington.

Speaking in Waterloo, Iowa, that evening, Mr. Buttigieg reiterated his request for McKinsey to release him from the nondisclosure agreement. Its not like I was the C.E.O. I was making a lot of spreadsheets and PowerPoints but people want to know from somebody who proposes to be the president of the United States, whats in your past, he said.)

Beyond Mr. Buttigiegs agreement with McKinsey, this is something of an awkward moment to be associated with the consultancy, especially if you happen to be a Democratic politician in an election year shadowed by questions of corporate power and growing wealth inequality. The firm has long advocated business strategies like raising executive compensation, moving labor offshore and laying off workers to cut costs. And over the last couple of years, reporting in The New York Times and other publications has revealed episodes tarnishing McKinseys once-sterling reputation: its work advising Purdue Pharma on how to turbocharge opioid sales, its consulting for authoritarian governments in places like China and Saudi Arabia, and its role in a wide-ranging corruption scandal in South Africa. (All of these came after Mr. Buttigieg left the firm.)

Just this week, ProPublica, copublishing with The Times, revealed that McKinsey consultants had recommended in 2017 that Immigration and Customs Enforcement cut its spending on food for migrants and medical care for detainees.

After a campaign event on Wednesday in Birmingham, Ala., Mr. Buttigieg remarked on the latest revelations. The decision to do what was reported yesterday in The Times is disgusting, he said. And as somebody who left the firm a decade ago, seeing what certain people in that firm have decided to do is extremely frustrating and extremely disappointing.

Mr. Buttigieg was recruited by McKinsey at Oxford. The company seeks out Rhodes scholars like him, banking that their intellects will make up for their lack of M.B.A.s from traditional recruiting grounds like Harvard Business School.

Yet even during the recruitment process, Mr. Helbling recalled, Mr. Buttigieg made it known that, like many applicants, he saw the business experience on offer at McKinsey as a good job in the near term, in his case an asset on the way to a career in public service.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., released new details on Friday about his confidential work with McKinsey & Co. a decade ago at the same time he escalated calls for the consulting firm to release him from a nondisclosure agreement.

Buttigieg, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, faced repeated questions from voters and the media this week about what he did for McKinsey between 2007 and 2010. McKinsey has received increasing criticism from the public for its past work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, authoritarian governments and opioid manufacturers.

The newly released details dont include the names of Buttigiegs clients but are the most detailed accounting yet of how he spent his time with McKinsey, which consults for companies and governments around the world.

In 2007, according to Buttigiegs campaign, Buttigiegs first project for McKinsey as an associate involved working for a nonprofit health insurance provider for three months, undertaking on-the-job training and performing analytical work as part of a team identifying savings in administration and overhead costs.

In 2008, Buttigieg spent six months in the Toronto area for a grocery and retail chain, analyzing the effects of price cuts on various combinations of items across their hundreds of stores.

That same year, Buttigieg briefly worked in Chicago for a division of a consumer goods retail chain on a project to investigate opportunities for selling more energy-efficient home products in their stores. He then took time off to volunteer full time for a Democratic campaign for governor in Indiana.

Between 2008 and 2009, Buttigieg worked mostly in Connecticut to help produce a report called Unlocking Energy Efficiency in the U.S. Economy on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the Natural Resources Defense Council and other nonprofit environmental groups and several utility companies.

In 2009, Buttigieg consulted mostly in California for an environmental nonprofit group on a study to research opportunities in energy efficiency and renewable energy.

That same year, he was stationed in Washington and made visits to Iraq and Afghanistan to serve a U.S. government department in a project focused on increasing employment and entrepreneurship in those countries economies.

Between 2009 and 2010 in Washington, Buttigieg served a logistics and shipping provider working to identify and analyze potential new sources of revenue as his final assignment for McKinsey.

Buttigieg said this was the complete list of his cli

So even with these alledged quotas, that city is still one of the deadliest in the world for violent crime.

Less than a year after Amazon.com Inc. walked away from a planned headquarters in New York, the e-commerce giant has announced a significant expansion in midtown Manhattan.

The company signed a lease for 335,000 square feet in the Hudson Yards neighborhood on the west side. The new office will accommodate more than 1,500 workers and is slated to open in 2021, according to an e-mailed statement.

As we shared earlier this year, we plan to continue to hire and grow organically across our 18 Tech Hubs, including New York City, the Seattle-based company said.

Amazon abandoned plans in February to build an additional headquarters in New Yorks Long Island City neighborhood following fierce public criticism of tax breaks promised to the company, and concerns about the impact on housing costs and transportation. The move sent shock waves through New Yorks real estate community, which worried that the city was becoming inhospitable to business.

But recent months have shown that companies are still attracted to New York and its deep pool of talented workers. Facebook Inc. announced that it was leasing more than 1.5 million square feet at Hudson Yards last month. And Google is also in the midst of a major expansion in the city.

Amazon said it is not receiving tax benefits or other incentives for its new office, which will be located in SL Green Realty Corp.s building on 10th Avenue between 33rd and 34th Streets. The outpost will be roughly the same size as the companys other corporate offices in New York, where it currently has more than 3,500 employees in its tech hub.

So were the cops not arresting blacks and Latinos as much as other races for the same infractions or were the cops' actually being instructed to arrest blacks and Latinos at a higher rate than other races for the same infractions?

the new commander instructed officers to think of white and Asian people as soft targets and urged them to instead go after blacks and Latinos for minor offenses like jumping the turnstile, a half-dozen officers said in sworn statements.

You are stopping too many Russian and Chinese, one of the officers, Daniel Perez, recalled the commander telling him earlier this decade.

Another officer, Aaron Diaz, recalled the same commander saying in 2012, You should write more black and Hispanic people.
...
Six officers said in their affidavits that Mr. Tsachas, now a deputy inspector, pressured them to enforce low-level violations against black and Hispanic people, while discouraging them from doing the same to white or Asian people.

No REmake2 or RE7, but they include remasters, mario kart and fucking street fighter?

What are you asking. Both robbers were in jail for prior armed robbery and were released.

Another example of how prison reform does not work.

At a police station tucked into an end-of-the-line subway terminal in South Brooklyn, the new commander instructed officers to think of white and Asian people as soft targets and urged them to instead go after blacks and Latinos for minor offenses like jumping the turnstile, a half-dozen officers said in sworn statements.

You are stopping too many Russian and Chinese, one of the officers, Daniel Perez, recalled the commander telling him earlier this decade.

Another officer, Aaron Diaz, recalled the same commander saying in 2012, You should write more black and Hispanic people.

The sworn statements, gathered in the last few months as part of a discrimination lawsuit, deal with a period between 2011 and 2015. But they are now emerging publicly at a time when policing in the subway has become a contentious issue, sparking protests over a crackdown on fare evasion and other low-level offenses.

The commander, Constantin Tsachas, was in charge of more than 100 officers who patrolled a swath of the subway system in Brooklyn, his first major command. Since then, he has been promoted to the second-in-command of policing the subway system throughout Brooklyn. Along the way, more than half a dozen subordinates claim, he gave them racially explicit directives about whom to arrest.

Those subordinates recently came forward, many for the first time, providing signed affidavits to support a discrimination lawsuit brought by four black and Hispanic police officers.

The officers claim they faced retaliation from the New York Police Department because they objected to what they said was a longstanding quota system for arrests and tickets, which they argued mainly affected black and Hispanic New Yorkers.

The authorities have deployed hundreds of additional officers to the subways, provoking a debate about overpolicing and the criminalization of poverty. Videos of arrests of young black men and of a woman selling churros in the subway system have gone viral in recent weeks. Demonstrators have taken to the subway system and jumped turnstiles in protes

Six officers said in their affidavits that Mr. Tsachas, now a deputy inspector, pressured them to enforce low-level violations against black and Hispanic people, while discouraging them from doing the same to white or Asian people.

Inspector Tsachas declined to comment when reached by telephone this week, but his union representative said the inspector denied the allegations of misconduct. The Police Department also declined to address the allegations.

The department has said in the past that its enforcement of fare evasion is not aimed at black and Hispanic people.

More than three years ago, when Inspector Tsachas was promoted to his current rank, the police commissioner at the time, William J. Bratton, said that allegations Inspector Tsachas pushed quotas were false.

I have full faith and support in him, Mr. Bratton said. He added that Inspector Tsachas had the requisite skills and comes highly recommended.

Most of the people arrested on charges of fare evasion in New York are black and Hispanic, according to data the Police Department has been required to report under local law since 2017.

Between October 2017 and June 2019, black and Hispanic people, who account for slightly more than half the population in New York City, made up nearly 73 percent of those who got a ticket for fare evasion and whose race was recorded. They also made up more than 90 percent of those who were arrested, rather than given a ticket.

Some elected officials have complained about the apparent racial disparity in arrests, saying it may indicate bias on the part of officers or an unofficial policy of racial profiling by the police.

The focus of black and brown people, even if other people were doing the same crime, points to what many of us have been saying for a while, the citys public advocate, Jumaane Williams, said in an interview. The same actions lead to different results, unfortunately, depending on where you live and an overlay of what you look like.

but to claim the police are the fucking Punisher is about as accurate as calling Trump a paragon of equality in immigration policies.

Did some other politician challenge someone to a pushup contest? This sounds familiar.