Sunday, August 16, 2020

In the news, Tuesday, August 4, 2020


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AUG 03      INDEX      AUG 05
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from The Heritage Foundation
RIGHT BIAS,  MIXED  American conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C.

Homelessness has gained national attention with the growth of public encampments and street disorder, particularly in West Coast cities. Over the past decade, the federal government has spent billions on “Housing First” programs, which provide permanent housing for the homeless without requiring sobriety or participation in treatment. Although Housing First programs demonstrate strong rates of short-term housing retention, they do not improve symptoms related to drug addiction, mental illness, and general well-being—and have not reduced overall rates of homelessness. Moving forward, policymakers must re-orient federal homelessness policy toward better outcomes, prioritizing programs that require treatment, accountability, and a path to self-sufficiency for the homeless. Policymakers must rethink the federal government’s Housing First policy, which has failed to reduce overall homelessness and does not improve human well-being. Treatment First programs address the substance abuse and mental illness behind much homelessness, and provide the most effective pathway to self-sufficiency. Policymakers should redirect housing funds to programs with a proven record of helping the homeless to overcome addiction, find employment, and achieve independence.

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from Hoover Institution
Nonprofit Organization in Stanford, California

Hagia Sophia Becomes A Mosque Once Again
On Friday, July 24, Hagia Sophia was reopened as a mosque, after about a century as a museum. About 1,000 people attended Friday prayers there. The date, July 24, was not chosen at random, but marks a significant moment in military history. On July 24, 1923, the Treaty of Lausanne was signed. Well-known in Turkey, the treaty deserves more attention in the West, because it marks one of the first successful revisions to the Peace of Paris imposed by the Allies at the end of the First World War. German and Italian aspirations to revise the treaty would eventually lead to World War Two. Three years earlier, in 1920, the Allies had imposed another agreement, the Treaty of Sèvres, on the former Ottoman Empire, under which large parts of Anatolia and Eastern Thrace would have been lost to Turkish rule. The Turkish National Movement, led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, rejected Sèvres. Under Atatürk’s leadership, Turkish armies drove out the Allies in the Turkish War of Independence, a conflict that led to large casualties, both military and civilian on both sides, unleashed a storm of forced migration, and established the Republic of Turkey in October 1923. Atatürk, the Republic’s first President, represented the movement to make the new Turkey a secular state. The Republic abolished the Ottoman caliphate, under which the empire had claimed leadership of the Muslim world. An important symbol of Turkish secularism was the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a museum, thereby making it more open to people of all faiths.

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from KXLY 4 News (ABC Spokane)

Pig Out in the Park 2020 canceled
Iconic Spokane event Pig Out in the Park has been canceled due to COVID-19. The 41st annual Pig Out in the Park will now be held September 1-6, 2021.

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from MyNorthwest.com
Media/News Company in Seattle

Rantz: Defund Seattle police activists are acting like terrorists
Some defund Seattle police activists are threatening public officials by showing up to their homes. Their intent? Intimidate politicians into supporting their position. One councilmember was even threatened with physical injury if he didn’t vote the way they demanded. Activists are also publishing personal information of officers, including phone numbers. The intent? Harassment. The conduct comes awfully close to the textbook definition of domestic terrorism. In some cases, I think it meets the definition. It’s no way to act. And it’s certainly not a peaceful protest.

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from National Review  RIGHT BIAS

To Curb Polarization, Everyone Must Accept a Possibility of Temporary Loss
Early in 2016, the political scientists Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels published Democracy for Realists. There they argue that American elections are often decided not as informed referenda on ideas or on the performance of a governing party. Instead, feelings of group identity and belonging profoundly shape American elections. ... Stable democratic governance depends on patience, compromise, and the acceptance of loss. If members of a losing faction nevertheless remain invested in the institutions of a given democratic order, they will accept momentary losses as a way of shoring up those institutions over a longer term — and creating the possibility of victory in the future. Meanwhile, to secure democratic stability, a winning coalition must also accept the possibility of loss in the future. This in part means resisting the temptation to transform existing civil institutions into a mere apparatus of a partisan machine and abiding by certain constraints on power (such as longstanding protections for minority parties). Those norms are, of course, in tension with the politics of apocalypse and emergency that has become so fashionable.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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