Arizona Teachers Took Their Case for Better Funding to Voters. 

A Tax on High Earners that Could Raise $1B Is Poised to Pass

By BETH HAWKINS | November 4, 2020

(Getty Images)


Arizona voters appear poised to pass a tax that would raise nearly $1 billion for teachers and other school staff by imposing a 3.5 percent “surcharge” on incomes of more than $250,000 for single taxpayers and $500,000 for couples. With 85 percent of the state’s votes counted Wednesday afternoon and Proposition 208 ahead 52.6-47.4, the Associated Press predicted the ballot question would succeed.

The money will fund pay increases for teachers and other school personnel, teacher hiring and training, and other initiatives to boost Arizona’s educator corps. The funds will likely be available starting in 2022.

“Voters will have sealed the deal on something that no legislator has had the courage to do, no governor has had the courage to do,” Arizona Education Association President Joe Thomas told azcentral.

The measure has its roots in the teacher walkouts of 2018. Photos of the state Capitol awash in a sea of educators, protesting stagnant wages in now-iconic #RedForEd T-shirts, went viral, sparking walkouts and protests elsewhere.

Frustrated that the Republican-dominated state government would not consider returning education funding to pre-recession levels, the movement’s backers vowed to take their case directly to the people. In the process, they helped energize a wave of Democratic voters, who turned out in 2018 and 2020 in larger numbers than before.

The Invest in Education Act, intended to create a dedicated source of revenue to address those concerns, was supposed to be on Arizona ballots in 2018, but a district court judge agreed with opponents who said the written description to be provided to voters lacked some specifics. In August of this year, the state Supreme Court disagreed, placing it on the 2020 ballot

Arizona Has Long Been a Testing Ground for Education Reformers. Now Teachers Could Lead an Election-Year Backlash Against Republicans

Joan Baez’ Art Is Still Political, But Now She’s Making Paintings Instead of Music
By Helen Holmes • 11/02/20 

Joan Baez at the 2019 Latin Grammy Special Merit Awards in Las Vegas, Nevada. Rich Fury/Getty Images

Among celebrities and cultural luminaries, there are a number of figures known both for their primary bodies of work and for their side hustles as painters; Lucy Liu and Anthony Hopkins are just a couple of examples. The folk singer and lyricist Joan Baez got into painting more recently, as she came towards the end of her touring career, and painting portraits has now become her primary artistic exercise. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Baez explained how her lifelong political awareness has blended in with her creation of portraits, many of which feature political leaders like Kamala Harris and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Baez’s paintings of public figures are fairly uniform in their execution, but her creations also come across as sincere representations of her peaceful beliefs and rewarding life experiences. She’s also explicitly using her artwork in order to convince people to vote. Baez recently began the “Vote! The 7 Portrait Series” on her own social channels, in which she posts her original artwork along with video commentary encouraging Americans to participate in democracy. “My painting is the best I can do at the moment to try and encourage people towards a possibly better world,” Baez told Rolling Stone. “I’m just really lucky to be able to do that.”

joancbaezofficial

Since I first shared my painting, Dr. Anthony Fauci has continued to be disrespected and marginalized by the Trump administration’s lack of commitment to science. So I have now added a word to the art, hoping to convey the message to TRUST FAUCI. In doing so, we put our faith in medical science and truth rather than lies, smoke screens, and snake oil. #trustfauci #truthmatters #sciencematters

joancbaezofficial

VOTE! The 7 Portrait Series
#5 of 7: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

#VoteThemOut #BidenHarris2020 #VOTE! #VoteBlue #DrMartinLutherKingJr #MartinLutherKing #MLK #WeVoteToHonorYou #VoteWithLove #CommitToVote #Justice #Peace #BlackLivesMatter #WeShallOvercome
🎨 www.joanbaezart.com

What We Know About the Youth Vote So Far: In 11 Key States, Early Data Suggest a Turnout Surge Among Young Americans

By MARK KEIERLEBER | November 4, 2020

Voter turnout among young Americans has long been lackluster, but early data suggest a substantial uptick in civic participation this time around as the pandemic pushed an unprecedented wave of early voting.

Even before Election Day, some 10 million people 18 to 29 years old cast early or absentee ballots, according to data from Tuft University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. To be clear, the data are part of a larger trend: More than 100 million people across all age groups made their voices heard before Election Day, putting the 2020 election on track to shatter voter turnout records.

What’s that mean for the outcome of the presidential race, once we know it? In several key states, youth turnout, which favors Democrats, could be a major boon for Joe Biden.

One early-voting standout was Texas. Two days before Election Day, more than 1.3 million Texans 18 to 29 cast early or absentee ballots. Why’s that such a huge deal? Well, just 1.2 million Texans in that age group voted in 2016, according to CIRCLE. That includes early, absentee and Election Day votes combined.

Youth voters also make up a bigger share of the total ballots cast this time around. Four years ago, young people cast just 6 percent of early and absentee ballots in Texas. But this year, that percentage more than doubled to 13 percent.

It’s not just Texas. In 13 states, young people comprised a larger share of early voters than they did ahead of Election Day in 2016, according to an Oct. 29 data analysis by CIRCLE.

By Wednesday, data further bolstered predictions that youth turnout could be a major player in deciding the still too-close-call election between Biden and President Donald Trump. CIRCLE’s estimates suggested that the aggregate youth voter turnout in 11 key battleground states fell somewhere between 47 and 49 percent. The states include Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin. As election officials continue to count ballots in some of those crucial states, CIRCLE predicts that youth turnout could jump to between 51 and 53 percent.

That’d be a major change from just four years ago. In 2016, CIRCLE estimates that between 42 and 44 percent of young people made their voices heard in the equally close race between Trump and Hillary Clinton, suggesting a 10 percentage-point jump in turnout this year among voters 18 to 29.

EDlection 2020: See our complete coverage of 50 key education votes right here.

SpaceX Starship as a trash collector in Earth orbit?
Posted by Lia Rovira in HUMAN WORLD | SPACE | November 4, 2020 EARTH SKY


SpaceX Starship’s many tasks may include launching humans into space, carrying satellites into orbit and — perhaps — removing troublesome pieces of space debris.

A comment by SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell has sparked interest in whether SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft might be useful in helping to clean up space debris orbiting Earth … when it’s not busy taking humans to the moon and Mars. Shotwell inserted a comment about Starship’s role as a potential space-age garbage collector during an online interview with Time magazine (Time 100 Talks) released on October 22, 2020.

In the video above, Shotwell’s comment about Starship’s possible part-time job as a space-age garbage truck begins at about the 8-minute mark. Shotwell was giving a nod to Starship’s planned reusability, which will allow the entire spacecraft to launch back and forth from Earth orbit to Mars repeatedly, when she said:

I do want to put in a plug for Starship here … Starship also has the capability of taking cargo and crew at the same time. And so it’s quite possible that we could leverage Starship to go to some of some of these dead rocket bodies – other people’s rockets, of course – basically, go pick up some of this junk in outer space.

It’s not going to be easy, but I do believe that Starship offers the possibility of going and doing that. And I’m really excited about it.


The SpaceX Starship MK1. Image by SpaceX.

Starship is at the heart of SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk‘s longtime Mars-colonization goal, which he has said may likely be the private company’s primary vehicle for future space travel. If all goes according to plan, Starship’s many tasks will include launching people to the moon, Mars and beyond, as well as superfast travels here on Earth, carrying satellites into orbit and – perhaps – collecting and de-orbiting particularly big and troublesome pieces of space junk.

Many experts believe that space junk poses a serious threat to humanity’s use and exploration of the final frontier going forward. About 34,000 objects greater than 4 inches (10 cm) in diameter are thought to be circling Earth at this very moment, according to the European Space Agency (ESA). And it’s much harder to get an idea about the smaller stuff, but the ESA estimates are frightening: they call for about 900,000 or so orbital objects in the 0.4-inch to 4-inch (1 to 10-cm) range and 128 million shards between 0.04 inches and 0.4 inches wide (1 mm to 1 cm).

All of this material poses a serious threat to rockets and spacecraft passing by, risking major damage to hardware and flight directories because of the velocities involved.

The costs of building and launching satellites are dropping, meaning more of them are getting flung into space and creating traffic within Earth’s orbital space lanes. The fear is that a collision or two could spawn a space junk cascade – with collisions creating more debris, which create more collisions, and so on – generating clouds of accident-causing debris. This scenario, known as the Kessler Syndrome, has the potential to make space operations in Earth orbit increasingly difficult. This dread is what fuels the idea that the spaceflight community should therefore start taking mitigation measures now.

And, of course, there have been many orbital collisions already. For example, in February 2009, the defunct Russian military satellite Kosmos 2251 barreled into the operational communications satellite Iridium 33, spawning 1,800 pieces of trackable debris (and many others too small to spot) by the following October. Additionally, China and India have generated debris clouds on purpose, during destructive anti-satellite tests in 2007 and 2019, respectively.

Artist’s rendition of space junk in Earth’s orbit. Image via Getty.

SpaceX in particular is one major driver for a growing population; the company has already launched nearly 900 of its Starlink internet satellites to low Earth orbit, and has permission to launch thousands more. However, this may be the reason the company is taking proactive action on the matter. In addition to space junk sweeping, the company has also decided to lower the megaconstellation’s operational altitude, Shotwell says. SpaceX’s original plans called for first-generation Starlink satellites to fly between 684 and 823 miles high (1,100 to 1,325 km), but the shift in thinking brought them down to an altitude of 340 miles (550 km).

SpaceX’s standard operating procedure for Starlink involved de-orbiting each satellite before it dies, but flying at just 340 miles up provides a sort of failsafe: atmospheric drag will bring a defunct satellite down from that altitude, to burn up in the atmosphere, in just one to five years. Starlink satellites can also perform collision-avoiding maneuvers autonomously, using information from the U.S. Department of Defense’s debris-tracking system, according to the SpaceX Starlink page.

At the same time, researchers are developing a cleanup cubesat called OSCaR – an acronym for Obsolete Spacecraft Capture and Removal – which would hunt down and de-orbit debris on the cheap using onboard nets and tethers. OSCaR would do so relatively autonomously, with little guidance from controllers on the ground. The spacecraft is a 3U cubesat, meaning that it will be very capable for its small size, featuring onboard navigation and communication gear; power, propulsion and thermal-control systems; and four net-launching gun barrels. Each OSCaR iteration will be capable of capturing and removing four pieces of debris, and when that work is done, the cleanup cubesat will de-orbit itself within five years.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute aims to test OSCaR on the ground sometime this year, and a test in space will follow at some point if all goes according to plan.

Artist’s rendition of OSCaR cubesat. Image via Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

SpaceX is working toward the final Starship design via a series of increasingly ambitious prototypes.

The final Starship will have six of the company’s new Raptor engines, while the Super Heavy rocket will sport about 30 Raptors. With that said, SpaceX plans to have the rocket-spaceship duo up and running relatively soon. Starship is in the running, for instance, to land astronauts on the moon for NASA’s Artemis program, which is targeting 2024 for the first of those touchdowns; Japanese art-enthusiast Yusaku Maezawa has booked a Starship trip around the moon, with a targeted launch date of 2023.

And then of course, there’s the red planet – Mars – the ultimate destination for Starship. Shotwell predicted in the video above:

If the Starship program goes as planned, I do think people will be able to travel to Mars in 10 years.

Bottom line: SpaceX Starship’s many tasks may include launching humans into space, carrying satellites into orbit and — perhaps — removing troublesome pieces of space debris. The fear is that a collision or two could spawn a space junk cascade, generating clouds of debris that cause further accidents.

Read more from Space.com: SpaceX’s Starship may help clean up space junk

Read more from Spaceflight Now: SpaceX executive pitches Starship for space debris cleanup

NASA Makes a Surprise Statement, Calling Out Private Space Start-up for Big Risks

By Sissi Cao • 11/03/20


ESA’s Aeolus satellite was recently maneuvered to avoid collision with a SpaceX Starlink satellite. ESA/ATG medialab

Inspired by the ambitions of SpaceX and its rivals to move our internet infrastructure from ground cell towers and underground optic fibers to satellites orbiting from above, a Texas-based space startup called AST & Science has an even bolder idea: it wants to deploy cell towers-sized satellites in low Earth orbit to provide 4G and 5G connection to smartphones on Earth.

The company plans to build a constellation of 243 such satellites and has raised $110 million to fund the project, codenamed “SpaceMobile.” However, NASA is gravely worried about the risk of these satellites colliding with other objects in Earth’s orbit and voiced its objection to the project in an unprecedented open letter.

“With the increase in large constellation proposals to the FCC, NASA has concerns over the possibility of a significant increase in frequency of conjunction events,” the space agency wrote in a letter dated October 30. The letter was submitted during the public comment period of the company’s Federal Communications Commission petition to acquire radio spectrum permits.

See Also: Will Starlink Satellites Become Space Junk One Day? SpaceX Has an (Imperfect) Plan.


It’s the first time NASA has publicly opposed a private company’s plan to build a satellite constellation, because AST’s proposed altitude, 466 miles (720 kilometers) above Earth, lies near NASA’s “A-Train” satellites, a group of 10 Earth-observing satellites operated by the space agency and the U.S. Geological Survey.

SpaceX’s Starlink satellites orbit at a similar altitude (341 miles, or 550 kilometers), but AST’s satellites are significantly larger, which NASA said pose an “unacceptably high risk” of collision in space and would require a great deal of work on a daily basis to prevent it.

In order to provide service, each AST satellite will need large phased-array antennae that span an area of 900 square meters.

“Historical experience with the A-Train constellation has shown that this particular region of space tends to produce a large number of conjunctions between space objects,” the NASA letter said. “For the completed constellation of 243 satellites, one can expect 1,500 mitigation actions per year and perhaps 15,000 planning activities. This would equate to four maneuvers and 40 active planning activities on any given day.”

See Also: SpaceX Starlink’s Bankrupt Rival, OneWeb, To Resume Satellite Launch

Also concerned with AST’s lack of experience in building such projects, NASA estimates that up to 10 percent of the satellites may end up failing, which would make them even more difficult to maneuver around.

AST said it plans to work with NASA to address its concerns, “including providing clarification of AST’s constellation design that robustly manages orbital debris, keeping NASA and other orbital assets safe,” Raymond Sedwick, chief scientist for space systems at AST, said in a statement to Ars Technica on Monday.

Potential space collision is a growing concern among space agencies as commercial space missions crowd up low Earth orbit at an unprecedented rate.

SpaceX, the busiest satellite launcher right now, addresses this problem by installing ion engines on its Starlink satellites so that they can maneuver themselves around to avoid collisions. And when those engines die off, the satellites should naturally de-orbit and burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.

It’s not a perfect solution, though, because about 3 percent of Starlink satellites fail to function after deployment, making them de facto space debris.

Coalition Led By SpaceX, Blue Origin Want to Rewrite FCC Rules On Space Use
By Sissi Cao • 11/04/20 



In his second venture, Blue Origin, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos doesn’t have the luxury to use an existing infrastructure like the USPS for Amazon. Mark Wilson/Getty Images

As the commercial space industry takes off amid a boom of billionaire-backed rocket and satellite startups, the industry’s leading players are urging the Federal Communications Commission, which manages traffic in the increasingly busy low Earth orbit (altitudes between 160 kilometers and 1,000 kilometers), to rewrite rules about how companies use space.

On Monday, an industry coalition representing Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Virgin Orbit, Relativity Space and Sierra Nevada submitted a letter to the FCC, urging the agency to “undertake appropriate reforms of its launch and reentry licensing processes consistent with the direction outlined in Space Policy Directive 2 (SPD-2),” a White House memo issued in 2018 to push agencies like the FCC to streamline regulations regarding space use.

The letter was first reported by CNBC’s Michael Sheetz on Twitter. Noting that the number of commercial rocket launches have grown significantly since 2013, “timely Commission action can help facilitate a rapidly growing commercial space industry that supports the public interest, streamlines outdated regulatory procedures, and protects spectrum use for both government and commercial users,” wrote representatives of the coalition.


Space activities in the U.S. are regulated by multiple federal agencies. The FCC is responsible for responsible for coordinating the use of radio spectrums at which satellites transmit signals from one another in order to prevent signal interference. The agency is historically known for being highly generous in granting spectrum access to commercial missions.

“I’m not aware of any example of the FCC denying such a license,” Brian Weeden, a satellite expert at the Secure World Foundation, recently told Ars Technica. “They’re trying to be business-friendly and encourage companies to be doing business in the US.”

Apparently that’s not enough to satisfy the rapidly growing business of space companies. In Monday’s letter, the industry coalition recommended a list of principles for any potential FCC rule change, with a focus on improving spectrum access for commercial launches, coordinating spectrum use by multiple companies, and automating the application and review process.

The coalition is notably missing a number of major industry players, including longtime NASA contractor United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, and small satellite startup Rocket Lab.

Unifor extends contract talks with General Motors past strike deadline

TORONTO — The union representing Canadian workers at General Motors says its bargaining committee has decided to continue its contract talks with the company past the strike deadline.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Unifor had set a deadline of 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday to reach a new, three-year labour deal and encouraged members to be prepared to strike if needed.

But the union said just before the deadline that its master bargaining committee was ready to negotiate all night to avoid a work stoppage.

Any proposed deal to come out of the negotiations would need to be approved by GM's 4,100 union members, who are scheduled to vote on Sunday.

The union said Wednesday afternoon that executives from the Detroit automaker came to Canada this week for face-to-face discussions as bargaining heated up.

Unifor national president Jerry Dias is expected to give more information about negotiations at a news conference at 10 a.m. ET.

Ahead of its deadline, the union said the company had not offered concrete commitments on future product plans, and was falling short of earlier agreements struck by Ford Motor and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2020

 

Harry Reid Confirms US Federal Government Covered Up UFOs For Years

"There's more than one up there," the former Senate majority leader says in the new UFO documentary "The Phenomenon."

• By Ed Mazza, HuffPost 

Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said the U.S. government has been hiding key details about UFOs for years. 

“Why the federal government all these years has covered up, put brake pads on everything, stopped it, I think it’s very, very bad for our country,” Reid said in the new documentary “The Phenomenon” from director James Fox. 

“Are you saying that there’s some evidence that still hasn’t seen the light of day?” asked Fox. 

“I’m saying most of it hasn’t seen the light of day,” Reid replied. 

The film examines the history of UFO sightings in the United States and abroad, including new details about the military-confirmed encounters off the coast involving U.S. Navy pilots. It also details a 1967 report in which an object appeared over a U.S. missile base at the same time 10 of the missiles became inoperative. 

“If they had been called upon by the president to launch, they couldn’t have done it,” Reid said in the film. 

Reid, who was among the lawmakers behind a classified but since-closed U.S. government UFO program, has become increasingly outspoken about the phenomena since leaving office. However, he stopped short of confirming evidence of other-worldly activity, writing in August on Twitter that he wants the issue studied and that “we must stick to science, not fairy tales about little green men.”

He repeated that point of view in the new film. 

“Nobody has to agree why it’s there. But should we at least be spending some money to study all these phenomenon?” he asked. “The answer is ‘yes.’” 

UFO expert Lee Speigel, a former HuffPost reporter, served as a co-writer and co-producer on the film, which he said took seven years to come to fruition. 

HUFFPOST IS THE RT OF NORTH AMERICA

“Whether you’re a UFO ‘believer’ or debunker, those in-between or still undecided, it’s important to present accurate information that potentially affects the national security of all nations and the safety of all citizens of our planet,” Spiegel said. 

“The Phenomenon” is currently available via VOD.

Calgary-Nosehill Conservative MP Michelle Rempel-Garner gave a tribute to women and witches in the House of Commons.

                                        FRIDAY OCTOBER 30, HOUSE OF COMMONS

"ON THE OCCASSION OF THIS RARE BLUE MOON SAMHAIN, ALL YOU WITCHES OUT THERE KEEP ON ROCKING"

AND BLESSED BE TO YOU TOO 

Uber, Lyft keep contractor status for drivers
Joel Rosenblatt, Robert Wilkens-Iafolla
Bloomberg News

In one fell swoop, Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. on Tuesday fended off labor protections that were decades in the making, allowing the companies to keep compensating their drivers as independent contractors.

(BACK TO THE SIXTIES WITH PROVISIONS IN EMPLOYMENT LAW THAT CAN EXCLUDE TRAVELING SALESMEN AND CAB DRIVERS THAT ALBERTA USED TO HAVE)

By design, very little will change under the ballot measure approved by California voters that was underwritten by the ride-hailing companies, along with Instacart Inc., DoorDash Inc. and Postmates Inc.

While Proposition 22 requires these app-based transportation services to offer some modest new perks for drivers, it protects them from having to provide much costlier benefits that full-time employees get

.


For the companies, that makes the more than $200 million they and their supporters spent on the ballot measure campaign — a record for the most populous state — worth every penny, according to William Gould, a professor at Stanford Law School.

“Two hundred million plus is much cheaper from their perspective than paying the employees these benefits that the legislature has established for them,” said Gould, a former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board under President Bill Clinton.

Shares of Uber and Lyft surged the most in several months on the election outcome. Lyft’s stock advanced 12% by 11:40 a.m. in New York trading, while Uber was up 13%. The reaction from investors Wednesday reflects not just the stakes in California but also expectations of what will happen elsewhere.

By establishing a template for a hybrid classification of worker that breaks from the traditional employee-or-contractor mold, Proposition 22 may have broader ramifications. If the rule works out well for both the workers and companies it could influence a push for legislation in other states or on the federal level, legal experts said.

“Legal pushback may continue, but Proposition 22 sets the tone for other states to follow in recognizing gig workers as a central part of today’s economy and the future of work,” said Jesse Jauregui, partner with Alston & Bird. “Proposition 22 is pointing to a new third way’ of structuring the nature of work and may become the model for other gig workforces to follow.”

Uber and Lyft have long pushed federal and state lawmakers to adopt a “third classification.”

Some federal lawmakers have also pushed “portable benefits” that would give some benefits to drivers, but not give them the full employment entitlements or put the companies on the hook for liability.

By no stretch is Tuesday’s vote a global panacea for the ride-hailing industry, which has been ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic.

Uber and Lyft will continue to face court challenges to their labor model elsewhere in the U.S. and abroad.