Tip jar for revolution…

Survey in CA on Race Relations Show More Whites Recognize the Reality Discrimination After Floyd’s Murder

The survey, which compares its results to a similar poll conducted in February, offers a before-and-after look at how Californians’ attitudes have shifted in the aftermath of the coronavirus outbreak, George Floyd’s death and the nationwide demonstrations that ensued.

Some 54% of respondents said that relations between people of different races and ethnicities in California were just fair or poor, an uptick of 13 points since February. The number of California adults who believe those relations were excellent or good dropped from 57% to 44%, the poll found. The shift, the poll indicated, occurred across racial and ethnic groups in relatively equal numbers.

White Californians are now much more likely than they were earlier this year to say that Blacks, Latinos and Asians are “frequently” discriminated against. The uptick comes as data have shown that the virus disproportionately affects Black and Latino communities, and has led to an explosion in anti-Asian hate incidents, said Paul Ong, director of UCLA’s Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, who was not involved in the poll.

“The impacts are unevenly distributed — whether we’re talking about health, whether we’re talking employment or stability or negative racial encounters,” Ong said. “Under COVID-19, those things have become much more visible and a lot deeper.”

The poll also found that respondents do not attribute the rising tensions to the recent protests over race and social justice.

On the contrary, most Californians, 55%, believe that protests over the deaths of Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and others have brought people in the state together, rather than splitting them further apart. A plurality of respondents described the protests as “justified” and “impactful,” at 31%, but also as “violent” and “dangerous” — 30% and 28%, respectively.

“The categories aren’t and don’t have to be mutually exclusive,” said Drew Lieberman, senior vice president at Strategies 360, the polling and research firm that conducted the survey.

France Scales Down Bastille Day Parade in Concession to Virus

France held a scaled-down annual Bastille Day celebration on Tuesday, with none of the usual tanks and troops parading down Paris’s Champs Elysees avenue, in a concession to the COVID-19 epidemic still stalking Europe.

Instead, President Emmanuel Macron, standing in the back of a military jeep, reviewed ranks of socially-distanced troops in the Place de la Concorde square after a flypast by military aircraft.

“I wish, with all the French, with the armies themselves, to pay a vibrant tribute to health workers and those who, in all sectors, have enabled public, social and economic life to continue,” Macron said in message released ahead of the parade.

“The dedication, tenacity, courage, solidarity that emerged strongly everywhere, in our cities as in our countryside, command admiration.”

It is the first time since 1980 that the annual parade has not been held along the Champs Elysees.

Spectators on Tuesday were not allowed near Place de la Concorde, Paris’ largest square, to avoid the spread of the disease that has killed at least 30,000 people in France.

Want More Diversity? Some Experts Say Reward C.E.O.s for It

When Charles E. Jones, the chief executive of a large Ohio-based utility, realized that his senior executives weren’t fully behind his push to hire and promote people of color and women, he decided to do something to get their attention.

In 2018, Mr. Jones linked 10 percent of annual bonuses for himself and other top executives at his company, FirstEnergy, to diversity goals, and increased the number to 15 percent the next year. “I’ve got experience that suggests that if you tie compensation to the things you want to have accomplished, you are much more successful at getting them accomplished,” he said.

Mr. Jones’s approach is striking because it is extremely rare in corporate America. But he and other management experts say it shouldn’t be. For decades, companies and top business schools have preached the gospel of tying pay to all manner of business goals, like stock price performance and profits.

Yet just 78 of roughly 3,000 companies said fulfilling diversity goals determined some portion of chief executives’ pay, according to an analysis of public pay disclosures by Pearl Meyer, a compensation consulting firm. Of those, only 11 revealed the share of pay affected by fulfilling diversity goals, and 21 gave some details of their diversity goals.

The issue has gained new salience in recent weeks as businesses across the United States have declared support for Black Lives Matter, pledged to hire more people of color and ditched decades-old brands like Aunt Jemima that were built on racist imagery.

Charles A. Tribbett III, a consultant who advises large corporations about hiring and compensation, said many executives and board members were discussing whether to link pay to diversity goals, a change he endorsed. “I believe the time is now for that discussion to be turned into action,” said Mr. Tribbett, a managing director at Russell Reynolds.

Deb Lifshey, a managing director at Pearl Meyer, agreed that there was growing interest in the practice, though she said it was too early to say whether it would be sustained. “Whether or not this will have a material impact on how much compensation they’re making is hard to tell,” she said.

Only five of the Fortune 500 companies have Black chief executives, and some of the most successful American companies haven’t significantly increased the number of African-Americans in their senior ranks.

Making diversity targets part of compensation and disclosing them would not just give top executives a financial incentive to hire and promote more Black and Latino people, but also provide a public scorecard that employees and shareholders could use to determine whether companies were following through on their commitments.

FirstEnergy paid out nothing on the diversity-related part of the bonus in 2018 after the company fell short on two of three targets. Last year, it paid out the segment of the bonus for meeting two of the goals: hiring women and people from underrepresented ethnic groups for professional jobs, and including them as candidates in succession plans. But executives fell short on a measure related to how employees responded to questions about diversity in a company survey.

Typical neoclassical liberalism via capitalism. They do this in academia, and it’s not working that well. No one should have this kind of incentive to do the right thing. Want more diversity? Give workers a seat at the Board.

Gold Coast residents say no to a pot shop near a park. ‘If people want to smoke, God bless them, let them smoke, but why in this neighborhood?’

A group of Gold Coast residents is opposing plans for a marijuana store near their neighborhood, saying the dispensary would be too close to a park and a nearby school, and would add to congestion in the area.

Chicago-based PharmaCann wants to open the marijuana store, called Verilife, at 12-14 W. Maple St., less than a block away from Mariano Park.

“Nobody’s against having a pot dispensary,” said Matthew Newberger, president of the Mariano Park Advisory Board. “It’s just that we think it’s an inappropriate place to put one.”

The opposition comes as the city resumes consideration of proposed marijuana stores, a process halted by the pandemic.

The state decides which marijuana companies get licenses and where they can open stores. Chicago dispensaries also need approval from the Zoning Board of Appeals, so community members and aldermen can offer testimony the board can consider.

So far, five Chicago dispensaries have received approval from the zoning board. Two have opened, including Cresco Lab’s Sunnyside dispensary at 436 N. Clark St., in River North and Windy City Cannabis’ shop at 923 W. Weed St., in the Goose Island neighborhood.

The board is set to consider PharmaCann’s application during a virtual meeting Friday. Newberger is pushing for an in-person meeting.

“Why do you have to have this now when quite a few of the residents said that they are unable to or uncomfortable with the technology of accessing the meeting?” he said. “Wait at least until we can have a face-to-face.”

Ald. Brian Hopkins, 2nd, said he plans to formally oppose PharmaCann’s plan at Friday’s meeting and has already filed a statement of opposition with the board.

Hopkins said he supports planned marijuana shops in other parts of his ward, but the Gold Coast residents were adamantly against PharmaCann’s plans. “It’s rare to see such a one-sided opinion from a community like the Gold Coast, where, like any neighborhood, there’s controversies,” he said.

The residents voiced their concerns at a community meeting in early March.

Jeremy Unruh, director of public and regulatory affairs for PharmaCann, said the company’s plans for the dispensary address some of the residents’ concerns. The dispensary will use an online ordering system through which customers will reserve a time slot to pick up their order, reducing lines. The store will employ a security guard to address residents’ worries about increased crime surrounding the sale of a product that is often paid for in cash.

As for the location itself, Unruh said the dispensary would be more than 500 feet away from Ogden Elementary School, in compliance with the city’s location restrictions.

“There are no issues that we think are insurmountable,” Unruh said.

Some residents disagree.

“It is really close to the school, and kids walk in that neighborhood all the time to get to the school,” said Terri Chen, whose 10-year-old daughter is going into fifth grade at Ogden. “It’s a no-go for me.”

Customers at Gibsons Bar and Steakhouse, which is less than a block from the proposed dispensary location, have been discussing concerns over dinner, said John Colletti, managing partner with Gibsons Restaurant Group.

“We live in the neighborhood here, we work in the neighborhood, and we’ve always obliged the concerns of the neighbors,” he said. “My partners and I are not talking as prudes. If people want to smoke, God bless them, let them smoke, but why in this neighborhood?”

In February, residents, an alderman and business owners in the city’s West Town neighborhood opposed plans to open a dispensary on the same block as an addiction treatment center.

That proposed dispensary is still waiting for a decision from the zoning board.

The mindset is incredulous here. None of these parents drink alcohol? No one in the Gold Coast has an addiction? Do they not know all of the precautions dispensaries take, including childproof containers? In my town, they even have shuttle rides in parking lots for security.

Does Trump deserve a second term

“What would Trump do with a second term?” asked Rich Lowry, editor of the conservative National Review. “At the moment, not only does no voter know the answer to that question; Trump himself has no idea.”

Every presidential candidate bungles an interview now and then. But no incumbent has ever whiffed the key question — why are you running? — three times in a row.

So Trump wasn’t just having a bad day. When it comes to policy, he really doesn’t know what he’d do in a second four years. He’s out of ideas, and his staff hasn’t produced any new ones he’d bother to mention.

Yes, he’d like to make the economy stronger — but that’s not a plan.

And yes, he’d keep trying to Make America Great Again — but that’s a slogan on a baseball cap, not a program for governing.

It’s not unprecedented for an incumbent to run without a detailed second-term plan. Ronald Reagan did it in 1984, when his campaign theme was the gauzy “Morning in America.” It was a time of economic recovery and national optimism, and Reagan won in a landslide.

That appears to have been Trump’s plan too. But with the coronavirus crisis spiraling out of control and the economy staggering, he doesn’t have a Plan B. Rather than provide leadership in the battle against the pandemic, he complains that it has hurt his campaign.

Tommy Tuberville Is Running Out the Primary Clock in Alabama

Armed with an advantage in the polls, an outsider message and President Donald Trump’s full-throated endorsement, Tuberville has spent the past 19 weeks sitting on his lead over Jeff Sessions, as Tuesday’s GOP primary runoff for Senate in Alabama finally approaches.

While Trump’s former attorney general has increasingly upped his attacks — calling Tuberville unprepared and weak for refusing to debate him — Tuberville hasn’t taken the bait, avoiding direct confrontation with Sessions for months.

“It’s like he’s holding his lead and playing prevent defense,” Chris Brown, a GOP strategist in the state who raised concerns about Tuberville’s lack of vetting in the primary, said, invoking a football metaphor for extreme cautiousness. “I don’t think people really know much about Tommy Tuberville other than Trump endorsed him, and he coached football.”

In Alabama, that may prove to be enough. The two men are vying to take on Sen. Doug Jones, who won a special election in 2017 and is the most vulnerable Democrat up this year. As Trump and his party have seen their poll numbers slip over the past few months, a victory in Alabama is essential to Republicans’ chances of retaining their Senate majority.

Instead of the pending matchup with Jones, the runoff has been defined by Trump’s continued ridicule of Sessions, who held the Senate seat for two decades before Trump plucked him out of the chamber to take over the Justice Department. But Sessions’ recusal from the investigation over Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, while praised by career prosecutors and ethics watchdogs, drew Trump’s ire — and Sessions never recovered in the president’s eyes.

“Jeff Sessions is a disaster who has let us all down,” Trump tweeted on Saturday, three days before Tuesday’s runoff. “We don’t want him back in Washington!”

Sessions fired back, calling the insults “juvenile” and reiterating his opinion that Tuberville was “too cowardly” to debate.