"Michael Bloomberg’s $40 million spending splurge on politics for this year’s election taught him a lesson for 2016: You get a much better bang for your buck by trying to tip state and local elections than high-profile federal ones. So as the former New York mayor turned activist for gun control, healthier food choices, education reform, and other issues makes his spending plans for the next two years, he plans to weight his contributions more toward ballot measures, governor and school-board candidates, and away from House and Senate races, which have become glutted with outside money. 'You can keep hitting your head against a wall, or you can go elsewhere,' Bloomberg said in a statement to POLITICO. 'Change is really possible at the state and local level.' His political advisers are already scouting states where his big checks could help promote soda taxes and background checks for handgun purchasers. He’s also looking for states to promote nonpartisan primaries and redistricting, similar to a measure that failed in Oregon this month despite his $2.1 million contribution. Bloomberg, ranked by Forbes as the eighth-richest man in America, with a net worth of $35 billion, also plans to invest heavily in governor’s races in 2016. He’s looking for candidates with business backgrounds; a willingness to challenge some part of party orthodoxy; a record of working across party lines; and an emphasis on issues he cares about: curbing gun violence, easing immigration restrictions, and reforming education and pensions. 'Go someplace where everybody isn’t,' said Howard Wolfson, who was a deputy mayor for Bloomberg and now is his senior adviser. 'Especially, by the way, if those are the places where people are … actually doing something.' Wolfson said congressional races are getting too crowded for any one billionaire to make a difference. 'He doesn’t want to just be the 50th donor in any given place,' Wolfson said. 'Obviously, we care about what happens in Washington, and nobody is writing it off. But … since so much actual progress and innovation occurs at the state level or the local level, why wouldn’t you look there first?'" (Politico)
"Like millions of other Americans, I voted last Tuesday. I did not face long lines and there were no barriers to my entry to the polling station. Everyone was quite friendly, and it was a pleasant experience. They were so friendly, in fact, that they even offered a service to voters, advertised by a sign on the wall: Voters, presumably those who would have difficulty walking into the polling station due to disability, could wait in their idling cars, honk their horns and have someone aid them in voting curbside. At the time, I did not think much of this. If I'm being honest, I was at first amused by the comparison of voting to checking luggage at the airport. And there was no doubt that those using the service seemed to benefit from it. But on further thought, I began to be disturbed. It was the juxtaposition of images that bothered me. On the one hand, you had voters driving up and honking their horns to summon someone to help them vote. On the other hand, the volunteer inside the building was telling me cheerfully that I and everyone else in my state would need a valid ID to vote come 2016. Though I do have a valid ID, the juxtaposition nevertheless bothers me. The reason is that it belies everything that, in my opinion, has made America great. America's exceptionalism arises from its ability to incorporate waves of immigrants with different skills, cultures and experiences, and unify them into a coherent whole. This process is not immediate on entry, and it is not forced; rather, generations of immigrants and the children of immigrants have wanted to consider themselves Americans because being American accompanies the promise of a better life.This promise is premised on the perception of mobility, social and economic mobility. The phrase 'land of opportunity,' so closely associated with America, is emblematic of this notion. Sure, not everyone will succeed, but the possibility of success exists. What I saw at the polling place Tuesday was in stark opposition to this perception. The juxtaposition of images signaled the existence of privileged classes. Government will go out of its way to accommodate some people's voices, but will put up barriers to others. Importantly, these barriers are not in response to an actual problem; voter fraud — and particularly voter fraud of the type that would be thwarted by voter ID laws — is rare to nonexistent. Consequently, those on the wrong end of voter ID laws get the signal that their voices do not count, that they are not valued except insofar as they might provide useful labor for the privileged classes. The perception of social mobility dies in such a climate of political inequality. And because those most affected by voter ID laws are also low-income voters, these individuals are already experiencing the cost of greater economic inequality — increasing economic inequality is likely to decrease economic mobility as well." (TheHill)
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"NAME: Anil Dash AGE: 39 OCCUPATION: Start-up C.E.O., Tech advisor NUMBER OF TWEETS TWEETED: 74.2K FIRST TWEET: 'thinking about sleeping' (December 2, 2006, 1:19 A.M.) Much of tech/media gadfly Anil Dash’s Twitter clout derives from his time on the platform’s suggested follow list in its early days. He happily acknowledged this when we met last month.
'I was like—you know when you buy a Windows P.C. and there’s all this shit preloaded?' he said. 'For the most part, I’m just noise. But I always knew that!' Dash is a two-decade veteran of the tech scene in New York. These days he runs ThinkUp, a start-up that’s built around the principle of mindfulness—as applied to social media. Which means it informs you when your tweets are good, but also tells you how much you tweet about yourself each week. It works on a subscriber model—they had 1,250 as of February; Dash says they’re now at a little less than 3,000, but he believes in their loyalty. In his free time, he’s an advisor for the blogging platform Medium and the art start-up Monegraph. You wouldn’t necessarily know any of that from his Twitter, though. There, where he has more than half a million followers, he talks pop music and tech with equal fluency." (VF)
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"Last night at the Chef's Club down on Mulberry Street, there was a great publication party honoring Anjelica Huston and her new memoir, Watch Me. Joining the celebration were Joan Buck, Vogue's Hamish Bowles, actors Glenne Headly (in NYC shooting the mini-series 'Crime') and Matthew Broderick; Diane Sawyer and Mike Nichols, Whit Stillman; New Yorker writers Rick Hertzberg, Ian Frazier, Jane Kramer, and Lillian Ross; The New York Observer's Editor Ken Kurson, Shindigger's Benjamin-Émile LeHay, and Fran Lebowitz. Also on hand: Bill Whitworth (in from Little Rock), who edited the book, and Nan Graham, editor in chief of Scribner's, who published it." (NYSD)
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 "Last night in New York there was a full calendar on the benefit-gala-awards events. Over at Carnegie Hall, Glamour magazine held its 24th annual Women of the Year Awards. And so it was a glam event. The recipients were Lupita Nyong’o, Chelsea Clinton, Sylvia Earle, Robin Roberts, Mindy Kaling and Samantha Power, the current Ambassador to the UN. Down at Mallett’s on 74th and Madison, there was a booksigning for Hilary Geary Ross and Harry Benson for their new book 'Palm Beach People.' This is a sequel of sorts to their original 'New York New York' which was published in 2011. Harry’s portraits and Hilary’s edit. They drew a big crowd, not surprisingly of their New York (and also Palm Beach) friends. Both Harry and his wife Gigi and Hilary and her husband Wilbur Ross live part of the time in Palm Beach so it’s a community they know well. The Rosses probably spend more time there because it’s their main residence. Although Wilbur is by nature and by business peripatetic and all over the world." (NYSD) |
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