As California is pummeled by unprecedented storms and wildfires, corporations are fighting a landmark bill exposing their true contributions to climate change.
Summary
California faces an intense climate battle as major corporations pour millions into lobbying against a groundbreaking bill that mandates full disclosure of their carbon emissions. The legislation, which aims to unveil companies' real impact on climate change, is nearing a vote in the state Assembly after passing the Senate. Meanwhile, corporations, including Chevron and Blue Diamond Growers, have ramped up their opposition, despite many already pledging net-zero carbon commitments in the future.
Billionaire real estate interests and conservative megadonors with ties to Supreme Court justices want the high court to end rent stabilization.
In the midst of a national housing crisis, billionaire real estate interests and conservative groups are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn New York City's rent stabilization law, a move that could lead to significant rent increases across the city. The law, enacted in 1969, restricts annual rent increases for nearly half of all rental units in the city. Housing policy analysts warn that if the law is overturned, it could result in a surge in homelessness, overcrowding, and displacement. The high court's ruling on this issue could also pave the way for legal challenges to rent control laws across the country. Meanwhile, at least one group petitioning the court has been found to have substantial ties to known GOP megadonors and benefactors of Supreme Court justices, adding another layer of complexity to the case. The Supreme Court will decide on the petition on September 26, with potential ramifications for the 2023-2024 term.
To get confirmed, the justice pledged to follow an anti-corruption law that he later ignored — now he says Congress can't regulate the Supreme Court.
Justice Samuel Alito's recent assertion that Congress lacks the authority to regulate the Supreme Court contradicts pledges made by him and other justices during their confirmation processes to adhere to congressional ethics laws. Investigations revealing failures to comply with federal gift laws, including Alito's acceptance of a private jet flight before ruling on a related business matter, have fueled calls for Congress to impose a formal code of ethics on the Supreme Court.
As hundreds of thousands lose coverage and face major additional out-of-pocket expenses, private equity enters the spotlight.
Summary:
The health insurer Friday Health Plans, supported by private equity, was ordered by Colorado state regulators to cease operations, leaving 30,000 policyholders without health insurance. This follows the path of Bright Health, another private equity-backed insurer that had to terminate its business, affecting hundreds of thousands of policyholders. These events highlight the risks of private equity entering an already unstable health insurance market, with over a million people losing their health insurance due to the failures of these two companies. The private equity business model, centered on profit extraction rather than provision of consistent, affordable care, often results in worse patient outcomes. The collapses expose regulatory gaps, where these insurers were approved to operate without adequate capital and oversight.
Not necessarily the best comparison if it's just aggressively caching. The real comparison to make is analytics tracking events and other evil things like random battery hungry background tasks
I'm pretty sure most Trump supporters already worship him more than God so it seems to be on its way 😅
I have experience with this and I still firmly dislike React Native. I am currently using Flutter, but am looking forward to Kotlin Multiplatform improvements which will soon also be available on the 3 platforms
Do you have a source for that? I say this because it made the news everywhere when it was exposed. Just to be clear... it wasn't that affiliate links made the index. The Brave browser would hijack what you typed in the URL bar, even if it was the exact URL, with their own affiliate link
Just to comment on the "devolve into approval", if I were to vote strategically with a score voting system like star and 3 candidates, I would give my first preference 5 stars, my second 1 star, and my third no stars. This couldn't be done with approval and in the instant runoff step my full vote would go to either my favorite or second if they made it. And unlike rcv IRV I was also able to express significant difference between my choices.
As a side note, I don’t really like the term “rcv” because IRV is not the only ranked choice voting system. It’s certainly the most popular, but there are other ways of counting ballots that contain ranked choices. Minimax is one great example of a different ranked choice system.
I'm speaking to what's being pushed in the US, I am open to look at other versions, but at the same time after fully looking at STAR I'm not sure how much of an advantage they'll have over it. In the US we've already seen vote splitting and tabulation impact the few elections we have here, and some states have reverted to plurality over it.
As a scientist I'm always open to changing my opinion with new information, but STAR performs strongly across many statistical domains so it'll be an uphill battle for anything else imo.
Boost was my favorite app and I paid for premium. But ever since joining Lemmy I've been trying to replace all my apps with ones that are FOSS. I'll have to pass on this one unless things change
If you would like to see where I'm coming from on these points you can check out this video that goes through approval, score, rcv, and star and debunks some rcv claims
It's 3 hours though so trying to condense to a comment is tough but I found the points eye opening
I'll try to TLDR the election security standpoint, which is covered in the video: Most voting methods can be tabulated locally, like the fediverse you can tally them at the local level and report updates as you go. For rcv every ballot needs to be shipped to a central location for counting. We lose out on local data that can catch errors along the way, and targeted attacks can be made in transit. The sheer amount of votes and the tabulation process in the central location is slow and error-prone. The video gives some examples of how this has already caused issues in the few states that have used rcv so far
To throw out another critique that opened my eyes: we all agree that plurality voting is bad, but in a way, rcv can be thought of as a series of plurality votes. With each round you only are able to give backing to one person, and based on the order of the rounds some very unfortunate situations can occur. So on a fundamental level I think score voting methods are better, where approval is basically a 0 or 1 score, which is why I prefer STAR as a 0 - 5.
The concept of ballot exhaustion in rcv is also not spoken about enough. I think most people believe that its okay to vote your conscience for first because your next votes will count, but that simply is not the case for many people under rcv. This is also covered in the video
To your point about proportional systems, I think they have a place in our system, and proportional STAR is part of equal votes "package" of methods (also mentioned in the video :D)
Maybe make it a co-op and put the CEO + AI article company out of business
I'm down for that
To focus more on the product there are 2 incidents I think of as to why I don't use brave
honorable mention is their affiliation with crypto
I preface this by saying that I agree that the Justice Democrats and related have not lived up to expectations, but what I've realized is just how foolish it is to think that it would have gone significantly differently. And no, I'm not an electoralism doesn't work person. Every vote matters, but it also needs to go hand in hand with an active and engaged citizenry.
As long as the democrats can point to the republicans and say 'vote for us or else!' then we can only chip away at the ranks every couple of years.
The biggest threat we can pose to them is to start getting voting reform passed, which needs to be done in each state.
To not derail too much:
Personally, I find that STAR voting is the best option, with Approval just behind it. I've recently learned that ranked choice is a fundamentally flawed system that still leads to 2 strong parties and weakens election security, so I'm actively trying to push back against it when I see it.
Once we drive a wedge between what can literally be described as a chokehold on our country's freedoms, we can start to make larger impacts at the federal level. For now we need more people on the ground talking to people about the issues and waking them up to its causes. I've found it to be a lot nicer out there than it is online, and encourage everyone to start a small group to canvas. It's going to take all of us