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Sorting out the Future Fund’s possible motivations is hardly straightforward, given how complicated the politics of the heavily subsidized ethanol industry have grown in recent years.
For instance, the industry has had its own differences over what form subsidies should take. Growth Energy, the trade group that includes Mr. Rastetter’s company, recently created waves by calling for subsidies to be eventually phased out — but only after some are diverted toward projects like the construction of gas pumps that would let consumers choose how much ethanol they want in their fuel.
While many of the Democrats that the fund has gone after explicitly support extending the subsidies in one form or another, the industry over all has expressed frustration that, with a December expiration looming, the Democratic Congress has not moved to do so yet.
Mandy Fletcher Fraher, a spokeswoman for the fund, dismissed ethanol and agriculture policy as a motive behind its advertising. “We’re targeting liberal spending policies,” she said, noting that the fund was equally focused on competitive races.
Democrats expressed frustration that there was no way to know why they were on the receiving end of the fund’s barrage.
Officials at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said they had been trying to figure out whether the fund had an eye on the coming deliberations over the next farm bill, with its implications for alternative energy.
Yet Mr. Braley said he was at a loss over his place on the list. For instance, he views himself as having a strong record with the ethanol industry.
CYCLING: Bodi Turner wasn’t going to let a little thing like a broken collarbone prevent him from contesting his first Olympic Games.
The 21-year-old BMX rider who now calls Tweed Heads home crashed hard during competition at the Oceania Continental championships in New Zealand in late January, putting his bid to be a part of the Australian team for Rio at risk.
But, speaking to Australian Regional Media from his training base in San Diego, Turner said he “didn’t really doubt my preparation”.
Having overcome the injury, he was this week named in the five-strong Australian BMX line-up, alongside Caroline Buchanan, Lauren Reynolds and Sam Willoughby, who will all be competing at their second Games, and fellow debutant Anthony Dean.
“It was actually my first broken bone ... of course, being the year of the Olympics I break a bone,” he said with a laugh.
“But I had a lot of support and I’m pretty good at dealing with those kinds of mental issues and got back on the horse.
“I’m one to just trust that it’s all going to work out.
Indeed stronger, Turner returned from the setback to finish an impressive 13th at the world championships in Colombia in May.
But he’s “going for gold” in Rio, where he competed in a test event earlier this year.
“I know I’m capable,” he said. “I got second place at the World Cup in Sweden last year.
“I’m capable of a podium; I’m capable of a medal.
With a BMX track not far from his family home in Melbourne, Turner began competing in what he describes a “gnarly sport” from the age of four.
“From a young age, you can accomplish a lot,” said Turner, who was named after Patrick Swayze’s character, Bodhi, from cult classic movie Point Break.
“You can race at nationals and race world championships ... I went to the Netherlands in 2004 for the world championships. I was 10 years old and actually got fourth.
“From a young age, I was actually racing for something. It wasn’t just fun with your mates.
Taking his talents on to the biggest stage in the world has been a dream since the fast and furious sport of BMX racing was introduced to the Games in 2008.
Freelancers in the so-called gig economy are increasingly turning to digital labour-sharing platforms because of the autonomy and flexibility they allow, with 45% of gig workers saying the independence provided by these platforms is preferable to full-time salaried work.
A report produced as part of the BCG Henderson Institute’s Future of Work project, titled The new freelancers: Tapping talent in the gig economy, suggests governments and employers need to take a more nuanced view of the gig economy.
The study is based on a separate survey by the BCG Henderson Institute, the Boston Consulting Group’s strategy think tank, carried out with support of Research Now SSI.
“There’s always this standard narrative of technological disruption – the highly qualified are able to adapt, but broad parts of the workforce might not be able to,” said Judith Wallenstein, senior partner and managing director of BCG Henderson in Europe and one of the report’s authors.
According to the report, most freelancers did not choose gig work for lack of better options and, for many, gig platforms fulfil preferences for greater autonomy and flexibility in both their work and private lives.
“The most surprising thing was when we asked them what their ideal future was – such as, ‘Would you want to go, or go back, to full-time, salaried employment?’ – most of them responded with, ‘No’,” said Wallenstein.
Compared with 20% of those surveyed who said they would prefer full-time, salaried work, 45% said they would choose to remain independent.
“The elements of self-directed work – the ability to choose, the flexibility, the ability to combine it with other activities and commitments they might have – ranked very highly,” said Wallenstein.
However, the report also found that gig workers are not confined to the traditionally freelance-heavy sectors of IT and transportation. “Digital freelancing has emerged as a significant source of primary and secondary employment in all major industries, giving virtually all companies access to new freelancers,” it said.
The report went on to say that the proliferation of gig work across industries challenges the perception that the gig economy is dominated by poorly paid workers.
“Low-skill, low-wage freelance tasks accounted for only about half of the freelance work sourced through platforms. Much of the remainder comprised higher-skilled, higher-paid work, such as software development and design,” it said.
It is important to note, however, that gig platforms differ wildly from one another in a number of meaningful ways. For example, a platform that acts as a middleman between an employer and a worker, where individual freelancers and employers can negotiate terms, is very different to a platform that directly contracts the worker or assigns them customers.
“I think that makes a big difference,” said Andy Chamberlain, deputy director of policy at the Association of Independent Professionals and the Self-Employed (IPSE).
In an attempt to deal with the structural discrepancies between digital gig platforms, the report also identified four new freelancer “tribes” based on the type of platform they work on and the degree to which they are integrated into the client’s workflow.
However, the BCG Henderson Institute’s segmentation came from additional interviews it held with freelancers, while the statistics in the report, including those about freelancer preferences, were based on the survey results which did not segment the freelancers in this manner. It is therefore difficult to distinguish what type of gig workers held positive or negative attitudes towards freelancing.
Despite this, the report suggested a consensus among business leaders that digital labour-sharing platforms would only become more pronounced.
Roughly 40% of respondents said they expected freelance workers to account for an increased share of their workforce in the next five years, while 50% agreed the corporate adoption of gig platforms would be a significant trend.
With the number and importance of gig workers increasing, there is a risk that labour could become more precarious.
Antonio Aloisi, a teaching fellow in European Social Law at Bocconi University, has previously argued that mass take-up of labour-sharing platforms could increase productivity, but warned that employment could become fragmented into “hyper-temporary” jobs, known as micro-tasks, as a result.
“All these intermediaries recruit freelance or casual workers who are labelled as independent contractors, even though many indicators seem to reveal a disguised employment relationship. Uncertainty and insecurity are the price for extreme flexibility,” he wrote in 2016.
According to the most recent figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the current UK employment rate is at a high of 75.8%, with roughly 32 million people in work.
However, according to a 2016 analysis of official figures by labour market economist John Philpott, one in five workers – or 7.1 million – are facing precarious employment conditions that mean they could suddenly lose their work.
Further figures from the ONS show that 1.8 million (6% of the UK’s active workforce) are also on zero-hour contracts.
“I’m very worried about precarity in the workforce – I don’t deny that in any form. I just don’t believe that the gig economy will be a massive driving force behind this,” said Wallenstein.
The report found that in mature markets, such as the UK, US, Germany, Sweden and Spain, only 1% to 4% of workers cited gig platforms as their primary source of income. A further 3% to 10% reported using gig platforms as a secondary source of income.
Juliet Schor, a professor of sociology at Boston College who has been studying the sharing economy since 2010, wrote in 2014 that it was difficult to assess the impact of these new earning opportunities due to the fact that they are being introduced a time of high unemployment and rapid restructuring of the labour market.
“If the labour market continues to worsen for workers, their conditions will continue to erode, and it will not be because of sharing opportunities. Alternatively, if labour markets improve, sharers can demand more of the platforms because they have better alternatives,” said Schor.
According to Wallenstein, in terms of regulating to protect workers from greater precarity, the industry that they work in and the type of work they are doing, regardless of skill level, matters.
“You can argue that at the high-skill end of the spectrum, one shouldn’t worry too much because those are very similar to a lot of the liberal professions that have been around for decades,” said Wallenstein.
“Digital platforms give them further reach with what they’re doing, but it doesn’t change their way of working, their income structure or the way they purchase health insurance, and so on.
Organisations will have to find new ways of reskilling their workforce as they get to grips with artificial intelligence and other digital technologies.
Matthew Taylor’s review on the gig economy calls on government to invest in digital technology to support self-employed people.
India maybe losing its pre-eminence as the IT outsourcing venue of choice – we look at five outsourcing venues to watch.
But in the ruling released Friday, the three-judge panel found that the newly created maps gave an unfair advantage to voters in suburban districts and should not be used. The maps violated equal representation, or “one person, one vote” principles in the U.S. Constitution, the panel said.
The ruling ordered the federal trial judge who tried the case to prohibit use of the new maps in the November elections. The decision affects all nine school board seats and two newly created regional Board of Commissioners seats that were scheduled to be on the Nov. 8 ballot.
“We see no reason why the November 2016 elections should proceed under the unconstitutional plans we strike down today,” the justices wrote in the ruling.
Their decision came on the last day of filing for candidates seeking a seat on the Wake school board. And it added more confusion to an election year that has seen many shifts of voting calendars and districting maps.
This decision is an important recognition that redistricting is not a free-for-all. The Constitution provides safeguards to ensure that partisan gamesmanship does not interfere with the right to an equal vote.
The new maps could also be challenged in court. State Sen. Chad Barefoot, a Wake Republican who authored the district changes, said his office is evaluating the state’s legal options.
“It is unconscionable that an unelected and unaccountable federal court has not only quashed an effort to increase representation and geographic diversity on the Wake County Board of Commissioners, but has effectively disenfranchised all Wake County voters by canceling the county commission and school board elections,” Barefoot said in a statement.
School board Chairman Tom Benton urged the Wake County delegation in the state legislature to restore the election maps that the school board had adopted in 2011. If not, he said legislators should set up a process that would allow for full public input and vetting of any new proposed plan.
It is unconscionable that an unelected and unaccountable federal court has not only quashed an effort to increase representation and geographic diversity on the Wake County Board of Commissioners, but has effectively disenfranchised all Wake County voters by canceling the county commission and school board elections.
In the meantime, Benton called the ruling a “miracle” as it means he won’t have to run against Vice Chairwoman Monika Johnson-Hostler in November. The new maps had put them both in the same district.
“Nobody knows what the next step will be in terms of the election time frame, but we’re obviously extremely pleased that the current districts have been ruled unconstitutional,” Benton said.
The Wake County Board of Elections is the defendant in the lawsuit because it’s charged with implementing the maps. Brian Ratledge, chair of the Wake Board of Elections, said Friday that the board’s attorney is reviewing the opinion and figuring out what options are available.
In 2013, the General Assembly redrew the lines for all nine Wake school board seats, turning two into regional districts that each cover about half the county. In 2015, state legislators changed the Wake commissioner lines to match those used by the school board.
Republican legislators insisted there were no partisan motives behind the change.
The new lines were challenged in a federal lawsuit filed by a group of left-leaning Wake County residents and groups. In February, U.S. Chief District Court Judge James C. Dever III, a George W. Bush appointee, dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that the plaintiffs failed to show the new lines violated constitutional requirements.
The U.S. Fourth Circuit granted a request for an expedited appeal and heard arguments in May.
The ruling noted email exchanges and meetings between the Wake County Republican Party chairman and key legislators on how the GOP could win a majority of seats on the reconfigured boards.
Brian Fitzsimmons, chairman of the Wake County Democratic Party and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, praised the ruling. “This is a decisive victory for Wake County citizens, and further proves that the General Assembly’s continued desire to circumvent the will of the people is unprovoked, unwarranted and now officially unconstitutional,” he said.
▪ In 2011, Wake County school board flips from Republican to Democratic majority.
▪ In 2013, state lawmakers vote along partisan lines to redraw Wake school board election maps.
▪ In 2014, Wake County Board of Commissioners flips from Republican majority to all members being Democrats.
▪ In 2015, state lawmakers redraw, again along on partisan lines, Wake Board of Commissioners maps to be the same as the ones used by the school board.
CAPITALISING on forward 50 entries goes a long way to winning a game of footy.
WE all want to be among the best in the world.
THE Echuca Basketball Association has never been better — and Basketball Victoria Country couldn’t agree more.
FORWARDS get the attention, defence wins premierships.
ECHUCA United’s A grade netball team has sent hearts racing once again following a nail-biting win in the Murray Netball League on Saturday.
EXCITING, nail biting and promising.
LEITCHVILLE-GUNBOWER is back with a vengeance.
Echuca co-coach Andrew Walker: ‘‘It was a really pleasing victory for us. It was a hard fought win, the pressure from both sides was really high and that made for an exciting game of football. We were brutal in our attack, we never made it easy for them to get their hands on the football and that’s exactly what we wanted to see this year.
THE feeling of winning is something every athlete lives for.
FOOTBALL is a pretty simple game when you think about — the team who kicks the most goals usually wins.
Keep Your Head Above Water Each answer is a compound word or a familiar two-word phrase containing the consecutive letters H-H-O, as in H2O. For example, given the clue "Dutch province containing Rotterdam and The Hague," the answer would be "South Holland."
On-Air Challenge: Each answer is a compound word or a familiar two-word phrase containing the consecutive letters H-H-O, as in H2O. For example, given the clue "Dutch province containing Rotterdam and The Hague," the answer would be "South Holland."
Last Week's Challenge: Name a food item. Divide this word in half. Take the second half followed by the first half twice, and you'll get a familiar saying. If you take the second half twice, followed by the first half, you'll name a well-known person. What are the food item, saying and person's name?
Answer: The food item is mayo, the saying is "Yo, mama," and the person's name is Yo-Yo Ma.
Winner: Rob Dobrusin of Ann Arbor, Mich.
Next Week's Challenge from listener Dan Pitt of Palo Alto, Calif.: Think of a common five-letter word in one syllable. Change the fourth letter to the next letter of the alphabet, and you'll get a common word in two syllables, also in five letters. What words are these?
A woman wears a "No Vax" sign on her backpack in a demonstration after officials banned children not vaccinated against measles from public spaces,West Nyack, New York, March 28, 2019.
Rabbi Mordechai Shain isn’t sure about vaccines.
Almost all of the 400 kids in the school he runs, from 3 months old to eighth-grade teens, are vaccinated. About eight or 10 are not. But he’s skeptical that immunization works at all.
Shain’s school, located in the Jewish population center of suburban Bergen County, is the only one among about a dozen Orthodox schools there that still accepts unvaccinated kids, according to L’via Weisinger, a school nurse who runs a group of nurses at Bergen Jewish schools.
The vaccine issue has become especially urgent as measles has spread in nearby haredi Orthodox communities with low vaccination rates. On Tuesday, Rockland County in New York, which borders Bergen County, barred unvaccinated minors from public places. The county has had 153 confirmed cases of measles since October.
The group also hosts regular conference calls featuring anti-vaccine doctors, according to Gothamist.

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