1.21 Wealth held by the world’s billionaires has grown from $3.4 trillion in 2009, right after the meltdown, to $8.9 trillion in 2017. (UBS and PwC Billionaires Insights via Bloomberg) The 3.8 billion people who make up the world’s poorest half saw their wealth decline by 11% last year. (Oxfam, which works to alleviate poverty, via AP)
1.20 After two overtime championship games, it will Pats-Rams in the Super Bowl
1.20 David von Drehle in the Post: “At such a time, it is good to remember that the life we revere and celebrate this week was shadowed by doubt, stalked by division, haunted by fear and plagued by a sense of failure. We honor Martin Luther King Jr. not for his victories, which remain incomplete at best. We honor him for his vision, and for his sacrificial commitment to that vision. He saw what we might be capable of — as individuals and as a nation — and believed in that possibility so deeply that he dropped everything else, even life itself, to hold it high where we can always see it. Like King, we also choose each day whether to live in hope or fear, with love or hate, as builders or destroyers. From King, we learn the lesson that these choices are never as easy as they sound and never as popular as we imagine. In King, we have a model for choosing, and a fierce example of the final refusal to give up.”
1.20 Saints lose after blown pass interference call. Los Angeles Rams cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman admits he should have been called for pass interference: “Yes, I got there too early,” he said after the game. “I was beat, and I was trying to save the touchdown. . . .I just know I got there before the ball got there. And I whacked his ass.”
1.18 BuzzFeed News “cites two unnamed federal law enforcement officials who say Cohen acknowledged in interviews with [Mueller‘s office] that the president directed him to deceive Congress about key facts linking Trump to the proposed deal in Russia.” Mueller‘s office denies the story
1.16 Chris Christie in Let Me Finish, his memoir, says President Trump “trusts people he shouldn’t, including some of the people who are closest to him.” Christie says Trump has a “revolving door of deeply flawed individuals — amateurs, grifters, weaklings, convicted and unconvicted felons — who were hustled into jobs they were never suited for, sometimes seemingly without so much as a background check via Google or Wikipedia.”
1.16 Theresa May survived a no-confidence motion in the House of Commons on Wednesday evening, 325 to 302, a day after the humiliating defeat of her Brexit plan imperiled both her leadership and Britain’s departure from the European Union.
1.16 In the Post, Josh Holmes, an adviser to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, called Pelosi “a total fighter. She understands political leverage. She wields the knife.”
1.16 Pelosi asks Trump to postpone his State of the Union address because of the shutdown
1.16 Albany
1.15 State of the State Address
1.15 Theresa May‘s Brexit deal was rejected by the House of Commons by 230 votes – the largest defeat for a sitting government in history. MPs voted by 432 votes to 202 to reject the deal, which set out the terms of Britain’s exit from the EU on 29 March.
1.15 Albany
1.14 Albany
1.14 A picture of an egg has replaced Kylie Jenner as the most-liked picture on Instagram
1.14 James Hohmann in the Washington Post: “Eight of the 10 federal election cycles from 2000 through 2018 resulted in a change of which party controlled the House, Senate or White House. The last four midterms were all so-called change elections. Historically speaking, this is a remarkable level of political volatility. Only three of the 10 cycles from 1960 to 1978 brought such change. It was four of 10 from 1980 to 1998. Most Americans think the country is on the wrong track. The numbers on the right and the left who believe the system is not working for them continue to rise. Social trust, trust in government and confidence in almost every institution continue seemingly inexorable long-term declines. Combined with rising income inequality and an era of disruptive technological advancements, this all adds up to a recipe for more tumult going forward. Republican strategist Bruce Mehlman believes the defining clash of our time is between people who believe change is coming too slowly and those who believe change is happening too quickly. The Too Fast coalition is full of folks who feel like strangers in their own land. People tend to blame globalization, immigration and political correctness for their problems. They turn to nativism, protectionism and isolation. The Too Slow coalition is angry about the failure to address accelerating climate change, income inequality and mass shootings.Many in this category have lost faith in capitalism and see socialism as appealing. While the Too Fast crowd feels like the #MeToo movement has gone too far, the Too Slow coalition believe it’s only scratched the surface. They see persistent civil rights failures and the enduring gender pay gap. Both cohorts are skeptical of the establishment, elites and moderates. The Too Slow champions have come from the left, whether Bernie Sanders in the United States or Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico. The Too Fast champions have mostly been nationalists from the right, whether President Trump or Boris Johnson in the U.K. or Jair Bolsanaro in Brazil.
1.14 Trump hosts National Champion Clemson Tigers, feeds them $3000 worth of fast food
1.14 Howard Wolfson on Axios: “The loss of opportunity in major swaths of the U.S. is more relevant to Americans than the rise of living standards in the developing world or space exploration. People are angry and anxious. Good luck running on the notion that things are better than they think — that was, in part, Hillary’s message — and it fell flat in MI, PA and WI. The real question is whether or not someone can channel that anxiety in a productive and optimistic way, with a real plan to make things better.”
1.13 Axios: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, while miles behind President Trump in online action, has far more Twitter power than the most prominent Democrats, including the congressional leaders and the likely 2020 presidential candidates. Ben Thompson — founder of Stratechery, and one of the most pioneering online thinkers — says that neither Ocasio-Cortez’s “background nor her position as a first-time representative are … noteworthy enough to be driving the national political conversation. And yet she is doing exactly that. In short, she is the first. . . politician that is not only fueled by the Internet, but born of it.”
1.12 In response to Judge Jeanine‘s question about being a Russian agent, Trump replied, “I think it’s the most insulting thing I’ve ever been asked.”
1.10 Albany
1.10 Trump: “The buck stops with everybody.”
1.9 People over 65 and ultra conservatives shared about seven times more fake information masquerading as news on the social media site than younger adults, moderates and super liberals during the 2016 election season, says a new study in the journal Science Advances .
1.9 After passing out candy to start the meeting, Trump walks out of a negotiation to end the government shutdown when Democrats again refuse to increase money for a wall; calls the meeting “a waste of time.” Schumer: “It was an amazing meeting. The president threw another temper tantrum, slammed the table and walked out.” Pelosi: “It wasn’t even a high-stakes negotiation. It was a petulant president of the United States.” Pence: “I don’t recall him ever raising his voice or slamming his hand.”
1.8 Trump: “This is a crisis of the heart, and a crisis of the soul.” How would he know?
1.8 Steve Schmidt on MSNBC: “Where are the pesos?”
1.8 The average man in the U.S. has about five and a half hours of free time a day—30 minutes more than the average woman
1.8 Axios: 68% of young people (ages 14 to 29) said school shootings are the most important issue facing the U.S. 77% said they or someone close to them had suffered from mental health issues. SocialSphere, which conducted the poll, linked that to the shootings. “The issue connects young Americans unlike anything except 9/11 in the last 20 years,” said John Della Volpe, founder and CEO of SocialSphere, and director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics. About the study: Della Volpe conducted focus groups of 14- to 29-year-olds in multiple cities — Atlanta, Chicago, Columbus, L.A. and Parkland, Fla. Then he polled 2,235 people from the same age group. School shootings were the No. 1 issue for female, white, black, Hispanic, rural and suburban youth. It was in the top three for male, Republican and rural youth. Almost 50% of African Americans said they know someone who has been shot. Important fact: School shootings have politicized this generation. A preliminary estimate is that 31% of those polled voted in the midterms, Della Volpe said, nearly double the 2014 midterm turnout for this age group.
1.8 The median household income between 2013 and 2017 in New York was $62,765. The median household income in Westchester was $89,968. Here are the top 6 highest-earning communities in Westchester: County: Scarsdale: $250,000+; Bronxville: $205,781; Larchmont: $198,661; Pound Ridge: $198,500; North Castle: $180,859; Briarcliff Manor: $157,963
1.7 Karen Tumulty in the Post: Warren represents a stark contrast from Clinton in a more fundamental way. While Clinton had a 20-point plan ready for every question, she failed to weave it all together into anything that resembled a coherent rationale for her candidacy. At one point, her campaign, floundering to articulate what she stood for, put together a document of 84 ideas for slogans. By the end, her message seemed to be only that Trump was not fit to be president. Warren, on the other hand, diagnoses virtually every issue — from student debt to climate change, gun control to retirement security — with the same blunt prescription. “The answer is corruption, pure and simple. We have a government that works for those at the top,” she says. “When we get organized, when we push back, we can make some real change.” It is noticeable that Trump’s name rarely crosses her lips, a sign she believes this message can connect with some of the same frustrated middle-class voters who flocked to him in 2016.
1.7 Jonathan Chiat in New York: “Just as Trump did not expect to win the election and neglected to plan for his transition, he shut down the government on a whim, after right-wing media complained about his plan to approve a government funding bill. Nobody in the administration had a clear understanding of just what a shutdown would entail. . . .The administration did not realize that 38 million Americans lose their food stamps under a shutdown, nor did it know that thousands of tenants would face eviction without federal assistance.”
1.7 Jennifer Rubin in the Post: “President Trump takes solace from his high approval rating among Republicans. That, however, has come at the expense of support among women, the college-educated, nonwhites, independents, the young, etc. And that dichotomy will increasingly put him at risk for a simple reason: The GOP isn’t what it once was. Gallup reports: Significantly more U.S. adults continued to identify as political independents (42%) in 2018 than as either Democrats (30%) or Republicans (26%). At least four in 10 Americans have been political independents in seven of the past eight years, including a record-high 43% in 2014. … n just the past decade, an increasing proportion of adults have identified as independents, reaching 40% for the first time in 2011 and generally maintaining or exceeding that level since then. As a result, since 2011, the percentage of independents has exceeded the percentage identifying with the Democratic Party by 11 points on average, and the percentage identifying as Republicans by 14 points. “Eighty percent of Republicans” may sound good, but if the GOP is only 26 percent of the electorate, that gives Trump just under 21 percent of the entire pie.”
1.6 Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on 60 Minutes: ‘You look at our tax rates back in the ’60s, and when you have a progressive tax-rate system, your tax rate, let’s say, from $0 to $75,000 may be 10% or 15%, etc. But once you get to the tippy tops, on your 10 millionth dollar, sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60% or 70%.’That doesn’t mean all $10 million are taxed at an extremely high rate, but it means that as you climb up this ladder, you should be contributing more,” said the lawmaker, who also got attention this week thanks to a dance video from her college years that went viral.”
1.5 Nicholas Kristof in the Times: “Each day on average, about another 295,000 people around the world gained access to electricity for the first time, according to Max Roser of Oxford University and his Our World in Data website. Every day, another 305,000 were able to access clean drinking water for the first time. And each day an additional 620,000 people were able to get online for the first time. Never before has such a large portion of humanity been literate, enjoyed a middle-class cushion, lived such long lives, had access to family planning or been confident that their children would survive. . . .[C]hild deaths are becoming far less common. Only about 4 percent of children worldwide now die by the age of 5. That’s still horrifying, but it’s down from 19 percent in 1960 and 7 percent in 2003. Indeed, children today in Mexico or Brazil are less likely to die by the age of 5 than American children were as recently as 1970. The big news that won’t make a headline and won’t appear on television is that 15,000 children died around the world in the last 24 hours. But in the 1990s, it was 30,000 kids dying each day. . . . .[N]ine out of 10 Americans say in polls that global poverty is worsening or staying the same, when in fact the most important trend in the world is arguably a huge reduction in poverty. Until about the 1950s, a majority of humans had always lived in “extreme poverty,” defined as less than about $2 a person per day. When I was a university student in the early 1980s, 44 percent of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. Now, fewer than 10 percent of the world’s population lives in extreme poverty, as adjusted for inflation. Likewise, Americans estimate that 35 percent of the world’s children have been vaccinated. In fact, 86 percent of all 1-year-olds have been vaccinated against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis.”
1.3 Michigan Representative Rashida Tlaib told a crowd about her desire to oust Donald Trump: “[W]hen your son looks at you and says, ‘Mama, look, you won. Bullies don’t win.’ And I said, ‘Baby, they don’t, because we’re gonna go in there and we’re gonna impeach the motherfucker!’”
1.2 Trump: “Russia used to be the Soviet Union. Afghanistan made it Russia, because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan. Russia. … The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there. The problem is, it was a tough fight. And literally they went bankrupt; they went into being called Russia again, as opposed to the Soviet Union. You know, a lot of these places you’re reading about now are no longer part of Russia, because of Afghanistan.”
1.2 Alexandra Pelosi on her mother: “She’ll cut your head off and you won’t even know you’re bleeding.”
1.2 New York Times: “And, as he enters his ninth year in office, Mr. Cuomo’s tight inner circle of advisers has shrunk to the point of concern among even his close allies. His relentless pace, intense management style, stubbornness and reluctance to trust newcomers have made him ever more reliant on a select few aides.”
1.1 Mitt Romney in the Washington Post: “To a great degree, a presidency shapes the public character of the nation. A president should unite us and inspire us to follow “our better angels.” A president should demonstrate the essential qualities of honesty and integrity, and elevate the national discourse with comity and mutual respect. As a nation, we have been blessed with presidents who have called on the greatness of the American spirit. With the nation so divided, resentful and angry, presidential leadership in qualities of character is indispensable. And it is in this province where the incumbent’s shortfall has been most glaring.”
1.1 The New York Times: Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York on Tuesday cast himself and the state that he leads as progressive beacons and a bulwark against President Trump, taking the oath of office while standing on Ellis Island. In his third inaugural address, Mr. Cuomo pledged to pursue a “new justice agenda” that would confront a “cancer” of hatred and division that he said threatened the nation. Speaking in the Great Hall on Ellis Island, Mr. Cuomo conspicuously avoided invoking the president by name, even as he sharply rebuked a federal government that he said “has sought to demonize our differences and make our diversity our greatest weakness rather than our greatest strength.” “America’s only threat is from within: It is the growing division amongst us,” Mr. Cuomo said. New York, he vowed, would be “the light to lead the way through the darkness.”