https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-ed-gillespie-is-surging-in-virginia/2017/10/20/90351bfa-b503-11e7-be94-fabb0f1e9ffb_story.html?utm_term=.66d5595dff60

In the run-up to Virginia’s 2014 Senate election, Republican Ed Gillespie trailed Sen. Mark Warner (D) by double digits in almost every single public poll. Gillespie knew the polls were wrong, but to the GOP establishment, Warner seemed invincible, and as Election Day approached, the party focused its resources on more “winnable” races (such as Scott Brown’s failed Senate campaign in New Hampshire). Two weeks before Election Day, Gillespie tried to get the GOP to kick in just $350,000 for ads and get-out-the-vote efforts, but his pleas fell on deaf ears.

In the end, he lost not by double digits, or even single digits. He lost by just eight-tenths of a percentage point. As Larry Sabato explained, “Had outside Republican groups invested more than a pittance in Gillespie .?.?. he might be in the Senate today.” Indeed, if Republicans had invested even a pittance — just $350,000 — it would almost certainly have put him over the top.

The lesson should be clear: Don’t underestimate Gillespie.

Now Gillespie is running for governor, and just a few weeks ago, many were once again writing him off. An Oct. 3 Post-Schar School poll showed Gillespie trailing his opponent, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam (D), by 13 points. Gillespie wasn’t buying it. “I’m in a dead-heat race, within the margin of error,” he tells me.

Already, he’s being proved right once again. An Oct. 17 Christopher Newport University poll showed Northam’s lead had tightened to just 4 points. Then, a few days later, a Monmouth University poll showed Gillespie leading Northam by 1 point.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/20/investing/trump-stock-market-americans/index.html?iid=hp-stack-dom

Since President Trump's election, the Dow has spiked more than 4,600 points, or about 25%. The S&P 500 has added $2 trillion in value.

That's all great news if you're investing in corporate stocks, or if your 401(k) is heavy on equities. Over the past three years, the value of families' portfolios has risen "dramatically" to an average of $344,500, according to a September Federal Reserve report.
Yet the spoils of the stock market run are slanted heavily in favor of the wealthy.

Barely one-third of families in the bottom 50% of earners own stocks, according to the Fed. On the other hand, nearly 94% of the top income group owned stocks in 2016. Lower-income Americans don't have extra money to put into stocks, and a third of workers don't have access to a 401(k) or another retirement plan, according to Pew.

Young people are also less likely to benefit from the rally. Less than a third of people ages 18 to 29 owned stocks on average between 2009 and 2017, according to a Gallup survey released in April. Nearly two-thirds of Americans between 30 and 64 own stocks. "They saw their parents get burned and don't have as much money to invest," says Ryan Detrick, a senior market strategist at LPL Financial.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/19/investing/psychopathic-hedge-fund-managers/index.html?iid=hp-stack-dom

Does it pay to be nice? The answer is yes, according to a new study that suggests fund managers with psychopathic traits make less money.

The study, published Thursday in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, found that hedge fund managers with psychopathic personality traits delivered returns that were 15% lower than rivals over a decade.

The authors said that their findings undermine the assumption that psychopaths tend to be more successful.

"The supposition is that through bald self-interest, cool detachment to the welfare of others, and the force of manipulation and deception, psychopathic individuals achieve powerful, managerial roles and monetary wealth," the authors said.

Psychopathic traits might help someone reach the pinnacle of their profession, the researchers said, but they often then fail to perform in top jobs.

They were looking for evidence of what psychologists call the "dark triad" of psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism. Traits include impulsive, aggressive or manipulative behavior, as well as emotional detachment or a lack of empathy.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/10/small-town-economies-culture/543138/

To erode small-town culture is to erode the culture of the nation.

Seventy-five years ago, The Atlantic published an essay by a man named Arthur Morgan. The essay, “The Community—The Seed Bed of Society,” appeared in the February 1942 issue, and was later expanded into a book called The Small Community: Foundation of Democratic Life. Both the essay and the book were arguments on behalf of communities, especially small towns, which Morgan believed had been abandoned by modernity to become “an orphan in an unfriendly world … despised, neglected, exploited, and robbed.”

The social good of such places, Morgan insisted, was being “dissolved, diluted, and submerged by modern technology, commercialism, mass production, propaganda, and centralized government.” While many big-city residents might not worry about the fate of small towns, Morgan believed they should because the “controlling factors of civilization are not art, business, science, government. These are its fruits. The roots of civilization are elemental traits—good will, neighborliness, fair play, courage, tolerance, open-minded inquiry, patience.” These traits are best transmitted from one generation to the next in small communities, he argued, from where they are then spread throughout entire societies. To erode small-town culture was to erode the culture of the nation.

At a time when many small towns are in crisis—facing economic decline, drug addiction, despair—when economists and pundits recommend giving up on small towns, telling their populations to abandon their homes to find economic opportunity elsewhere, Morgan’s 75-year-old plea remains a trenchant warning. Some modern-day sociologists and historians, while not buying everything Morgan said and wrote about small towns, agree with his main point: Such places are vital threads in America’s fabric.

Even in his time, Morgan was sometimes accused of being a utopian dreamer, but he was also practically minded. He was a civil engineer who, after a peripatetic early life, came to care deeply about promoting community. He opened a business in Dayton, Ohio, where he had helped establish the Miami River Conservancy District to prevent flooding. Antioch College, located nearby in the village of Yellow Springs, appointed him to the board of trustees, and he became president of the school in 1920. There he created one of the first systems of “cooperative education,” a program in which students learned in traditional academic settings part-time, and worked in businesses and industries part-time.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/national/single-payer-explainer/?utm_term=.1933f3bf9edd

As Republican efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act continue in the background, some Democrats are starting to eye a new health policy goal: implementing a single-payer system. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced a single-payer bill in mid-September with 16 Democratic co-sponsors — 16 more than he got when he introduced the bill two years earlier. But how is the health-care system funded now, and how would “single-payer” change that?

There are three major components to every health-care system, single-payer or not: a patient, a payer (typically an insurance company or the government) and a provider. Here’s how money moves between them:

How multi-payer systems work
Virtually all health-care systems follow this general pattern, but who the payers are can vary widely. In the U.S. private insurance market, patients typically purchase coverage from one insurance company among many competing insurers. Because different people end up with different insurers, there are multiple payers throughout the U.S. health-care system.

How single-payer systems work
In a purely single-payer system, there is, as the name would indicate, just one payer — typically the government. This is analogous to how the United States administers some portions of Medicaid: The government provides coverage, and no private insurers are involved.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/17/news/economy/trump-premiums/index.html?iid=hp-toplead-dom

President Trump and congressional Republicans have long vowed to lower health insurance premiums.

But Trump's decision to halt funding for Obamacare's cost-sharing subsidies last week will actually raise rates next year. Plus, the move increases what taxpayers will have to shell out to support Obamacare.

Many states had already allowed insurers to steeply hike Obamacare premiums for 2018, anticipating that Trump may cut off federal support for the subsidies, which reimburse insurers for reducing the deductibles and co-pays of lower-income enrollees. In California, for instance, carriers will levy a surcharge of up to 27% on silver-level plans.

Some insurers are spreading the hikes out across all their plans, but others are limiting it to just silver-tier polices -- the plans eligible consumers must purchase to receive the cost-sharing subsidies.

Regulators in some states that hadn't taken this precaution swiftly moved to boost rates after Trump's announcement.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2017/10/17/how-the-russians-pretended-to-be-texans-and-texans-believed-them/?utm_term=.f5b03f3f08a0



In early 2016, while researching some of the most popular U.S. secession groups online, I stumbled across one of the Russian-controlled Facebook accounts that were then pulling in Americans by the thousands.

At the time, I was writing on Russia’s relationship with American secessionists from Texas, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. These were people who had hitched flights to Moscow to swap tactics, to offer advice and to find support. They had found succor in the shadow of the Kremlin.

That was how I eventually found my way to the “Heart of Texas” Facebook page (and its @itstimetoecede Twitter feed as well). Heart of Texas soon grew into the most popular Texas secession page on Facebook — one that, at one point in 2016, boasted more followers than the official Texas Democrat and Republican Facebook pages combined. By the time Facebook took the page down recently, it had a quarter of a million followers.

The page started slowly — just a few posts per week. Unlike other secession sites I’d come across, this one never carried any contact information, never identified any of individuals behind the curtain. Even as it grew, there was nothing to locate it in Texas — or anywhere else, for that matter. It was hard to escape the suspicion that there might be Russian involvement here as well.

There were other oddities about the site. Its organizers had a strangely one-dimensional idea of its subject. They seemed to think, for example, that Texans drank Dr. Pepper at all hours: while driving their giant trucks, while flying their Confederate battle flags, while griping about Yankees and liberals and vegetarians.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/15/media/trump-jessica-rosenworcel-nbc-license/index.html?iid=surge-story-summary

A top Federal Communications Commission official is putting pressure on her colleagues to end their silence amid President Trump's threats against TV networks that are critical of his administration.

Democratic commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, who was first appointed by President Obama and brought back to the commission by Trump, said the FCC should make it very clear that the agency will not revoke licenses simply because Trump does not like their coverage.

"History won't be kind to silence," Rosenworcel, who is one of five FCC commissioners, told CNN's Brian Stelter on "Reliable Sources" Sunday. "I think it's important for all the commissioners to make clear that they support the First Amendment, and that the agency will not revoke a broadcast license simply because the president is dissatisfied with the licensee's coverage."

Trump lit a fire under First Amendment proponents last week when he called NBC a partisan institution whose licenses should be "challenged and, if appropriate, revoked."

NBC, like many news outlets, has aggressively reported on story lines that are critical of the president. It's fueled Trump's critiques of the press and prompted him to brand truthful stories about his presidency "fake news."