While the complete outcome is not yet available, Nevada’s caucuses have not devolved into the complete mayhem that unfolded in Iowa, which, despite Sanders having had more supporters participate in the contest, ended with an indecisive delegate result between him and Pete Buttigieg. Now with clear wins in New Hampshire and Nevada under his belt, Sanders has solidified his place at the front of the pack seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination.
As Mother Jones’ Tim Murphy wrote after the Vermont senator’s win in New Hampshire, “Sanders has become something that for most of his political career would have seemed like a joke: Right now, Bernie Sanders is the closest thing the Democratic presidential race has to a frontrunner, and he’s done it with a campaign operation that is its own kind of statement of the country he wants to build.”
Budget airline Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary called for the profiling of “males of a Muslim persuasion” at airports to prevent terrorism, in an interview on Saturday with British newspaper The Times.
“That is where the threat is coming from,” he said. His comments have led to accusations of Islamophobia and racism from British and German politicians.
O'Leary suggested that checks on families should be less stringent while Muslim men flying alone should be targeted by airport security.
“Who are the bombers? They are going to be single males traveling on their own,” the Irishman said in Saturday’s interview.
“If you are traveling with a family of kids, on you go; the chances you are going to blow them all up is zero,” he added.
“You can’t say stuff, because it’s racism, but it will generally be males of a Muslim persuasion. Thirty years ago it was the Irish,” O'Leary said.
Accused of ‘Islamophobia’ and ‘racism’
German Green party politician accused O'Leary of spreading Islamophobia with his words.
“Why can someone like O'Leary spread Islamophobia like this today? Because he thinks people don’t care. It’s time to boycott Ryanair. Also for many other reasons,” he wrote on Twitter.
Many other commentators on social media have called for a Ryanair boycott in wake of the comments.
British writer and TV presenter Adil Ray wrote that “this is discrimination, pure and simple.”
British politician Khalid Mahmood from the opposition Labour party also condemned O'Leary’s words, saying he was “encouraging racism.”
“In Germany this week a white person killed eight people. Should we profile white people to see if they’re being fascists?” Mahmood told The Times.
The boss of Ryanair, an airline that operates mainly in Europe, has previously caused controversy by suggesting that passengers should have to pay to use the toilet on his flights and that he may charge a “fat tax” on obese people.
3. Higher educated folks tend to have a better understanding of their self worth, reducing how much the rich can exploit them.
4. Higher education also fosters innovation and entrepreneurship, leading to more small companies, more competition, and an even smaller exploitable work force.
5. The class gate to higher education will be opened. And their kids will finally be truly judged based on their academic merit rather than the fact they could afford to attend in the first place.
After sitting on the sidelines of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination until the end of last year, including missing all the debates and skipping the on-the-ground campaigning essential for the first four contests, Mike Bloomberg has shot out of nowhere to claim 15 percent of Democratic support in recent polls.
Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, who once identified as a Republican and then as an independent, finally made his presidential debating debut Wednesday night after leapfrogging to third in national surveys. How did this happen? How was he able to claim a coveted podium spot when more established political figures like Sens. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker were forced from the debate stage — and the race — by sagging numbers?
The simple answer is money. Bloomberg has spent more than $400 million on advertising since November — and he’s spent more on TV in that time than all of his competitors combined. He has bought so many TV ads that other presidential and down-ballot candidates are being pushed out of the market as ad prices spike, Politico hasreported. And the spending isn’t just on traditional media buys. Bloomberg has spent $87 million on Facebook and Google advertising.
The gargantuan sums don’t include the amounts he has donated to state Democratic parties, congressional candidates and mayors, which might have something to do with his ballooning list of endorsements. And then there’s the even harder-to-quantify sums he’s invested in issue advocacy organizations that are now paying political dividends. In just one example, Bloomberg’s co-founding of the gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety provided his campaign with a massive email list of potential voters out of the gates.
In other words, Bloomberg is well on his way to buying the Democratic nomination and quite possibly the presidency. Whatever you think of his merits and the urgency of removing President Donald Trump from office, it’s easy to see that this is wrong and dangerous for our democracy. Our country’s politics and policy outcomes are already dictated by corporate interests and the ultra-rich. The wealthiest people in our country should not be allowed to use their money to capture the most powerful job in the world.
As clear as the problem is, the solution is a bit harder. Many good government groups and organizations working to solve problems like gun violence and climate change rely on wealthy individuals and personal foundations for financial support, for instance.
But there are a few straightforward steps we can take to immediately safeguard the system from the dangers of Bloomberg’s profligate approach to procuring elected office: We should ban political ads, and we should enact a public financing system for congressional elections so lawmakers don’t have to rely on obscenely rich donors like Bloomberg for support.
Hedge fund billionaire Daniel Loeb recently found himself in hot water after it was discovered that his superyacht had damaged Belize’s fragile barrier reef. Operators of the Samadhi — Buddhist for “a state of meditative consciousness and enlightenment” — had anchored the superyacht to live corals at the Lighthouse Reef Atoll, a Unesco World Heritage site.
Loeb was apologetic and promised to help fix the damaged reef. But the incident speaks volumes about the global billionaire class, whose fortunes grew by 25 percent last year. Today, the twenty-six richest people have more wealth than the world’s poorest 3.8 billion. What are the super-rich doing with all this money? For one thing, they’re buying boats.
Here are four things we can learn about the super-rich from their superyachts.
1. They Live in Their Own World
There are nearly five thousand superyachts (boats longer than thirty meters) sailing the world’s seas. But unless you’re a billionaire, a friend of a billionaire, or a pirate, you’ve probably never even seen a superyacht, let alone stepped foot on one.
On board these floating palaces are the uber-rich — the high-net-worth individuals who run the world. These individuals pull the levers of the global economy, but they are, for the most part, hidden from ordinary people, moving from their luxury high-rises to their private planes to their enormous boats.
This closed and relatively small network of elites is demonstrated and solidified through the consumption and display of luxury goods. The billionaires — from Saudi oil tycoons to Russian oligarchs to Silicon Valley tech royalty — meet at the Monaco Yacht Show to compare mast size, trade tips on how to protect a Picasso from saltwater damage, and form business partnerships.
2. They Are Above the Business Cycle
Manufacturing output is declining in a growing number of countries around the world, but yacht production is going strong. Superyacht orders have grown year over year for the past five years, and yacht builders in Britain, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands expect to see 20 percent growth in the coming decade. The .01 percent aren’t blown off course by economic headwinds.
In fact, when the business cycle goes south, and ordinary people are sucked into its maw, the super-rich often benefit. While the UK’s British Home Stores chain tanked, and 20,000 pensioners were set adrift, Topshop tycoon Philip Green was at his leisure on his £100 million superyacht Lionheart.
