Mediaboss Marketing

Democrats will have a hard time preserving their slim majority if Cortez Masto and Kelly are defeated. And the two first-term senators probably cant win unless Latino voters turn out in strong numbers for them.

These are states where its going to be so close so, losing 2 or 3 percentage points of the Latino vote compared to the last [midterm] election would be devastating for Kelly or Cortez Masto, said Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist and former senior adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) presidential campaign. Not only do Democrats need to get Latinos to perform they need to overperform if theyre going to win.

Not only do Democrats need to get Latinos to perform they need to overperform if theyre going to win.

Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist

Latinos have long been regarded as a key constituency for Democrats in both states. Arizona, where Kelly won his 2020 special election by fewer than 79,000 votes, is home to about 1.2 million eligible Latino voters, who represent one-in-four eligible voters. In Nevada, Cortez Masto the first and only Latina ever elected to the Senate won her seat in 2016 by fewer than 27,000 votes. More than 400,000 Latinos are eligible to vote there, making up 20 percent of the states total.

But the early Democratic spending on Spanish-language ads in the two races represents a marked shift after years of complaints from Latino operatives that the party waits until the last minute to spend on Latino outreach.

In Arizona, Majority Forward, the nonprofit arm of Senate Democrats super PAC, has spent more than $1.5 million on Spanish-language television and radios in March alone, according to a spreadsheet created by a leading media buying company and shared with POLITICO by a Democratic consultant. The ads have largely run across the Phoenix, Tucson and Yuma areas. Kellys campaign also spent almost $28,000 on Spanish-language radio ads in the Tucson market.

In Nevada, Majority Forward has spent more than $640,000 on Spanish-language TV and radio ads in the Las Vegas and Reno areas this month, in addition to the more than $14,000 spent by Cortez Mastos campaign.

I havent seen spending from Democrats on Spanish-language ads this early in a Senate race in my entire career, Rocha said.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has been running Spanish-language TV, radio and digital ads in both states since last year, though Republicans have not spent on those ads this month.

Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), chair of BOLD PAC, the Congressional Hispanic Caucuss campaign arm, said the amount spent on Spanish-language ads in Arizona so far is huge, considering that there have been elections when $1.5 million was spent on such ads over the course of an entire year.

Clearly, lessons have been learned by Democrats, Gallego said.

Still, Latino organizers and leaders in both states emphasize that Republicans are executing their own effort on the ground and its going to take much more than Spanish-language ads to ensure Democratic victories in November.

Its going to be harder than we think it is. While Republicans may not be making big buys in Spanish radio or TV, were certainly seeing them on the ground, said Melissa Morales, president of Somos PAC, a Latino voter mobilization organization that targets battleground states. Theyre running Latino-focused events in Nevada right now They know were there and theyre there, too.

Clearly, lessons have been learned by Democrats, Rep. Ruben Gallego said.|J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

Morales noted that Somos has gotten funding from donors earlier than ever before, signaling to her that there is a recognition within the party of the importance of courting Latino voters. While she welcomed the ad spending so far, she cautioned that TV and radio ads are not nearly enough to ensure a strong performance in the fall.

I want to remind that this is going to take one-on-one conversations, its going to take organizing and its going to take reaching people personally where theyre at, Morales said.

Arizona and Nevada stand out as two of only three battleground states the other is Colorado that are expected to see significantly increased Hispanic turnout this year, according to projections from the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund. Arizona is expected to see a 9.6 percent increase in Latino voters, while Nevada will see a 5.8 percent jump, compared to 2018.

Rocha called Arizona and Nevada the top two states with sizable Latino populations that will be crucial for Democrats to keep their majority, followed by Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

A nonprofit founded by Biden allies, Building Back Together, has bolstered Democratic efforts by touting the presidents wins and the senators who helped make them possible to Latinos in Arizona and Nevada. The group is spending nearly $1 million in bilingual ads across TV, radio and digital platforms in battleground states.

Recently, the group ran Spanish-language TV ads exclusively in both states promoting Bidens role in helping small businesses with loans amid the pandemic. They also placed Spanish-language billboards in Arizona touting how Biden, in his first year in office, had invested $2.7 billion in loans for Latino-owned small businesses, child tax credit checks for 17 million Latino children and heath care for 730,000 Latinos.

Mayra Macias, chief strategy officer of Building Back Together, explained that one of the reasons the group is targeting Arizona and Nevada, as well as other battleground states with large Latino populations, is because those are states where its going to be important for [Biden] to have folks that will back up his agenda.

At the same time, there is a keen awareness of frustrations among some Latino leaders and organizers who argue that the Biden administration hasnt followed through on all its campaign promises and needs to push harder to get more done this year.

Both the administration and the party are falling short of delivering on the promises our communities were expecting and that they showed up for [by voting] in the middle of a pandemic, said Alejandra Gomez, co-executive director of LUCHA, a grassroots organization in Arizona that plans to knock on hundreds of thousands of doors this year.

So, I ask: How bad do Democrats want to win? Because Latinos are ready, she added. Theyre turning out but we need to give people something to be excited for.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated that Republicans have not spent money on Spanish-language TV or radio ads for the Senate races in Arizona and Nevada. The GOP has spent in both states, but not this month.

Originally posted here:
Dems begin building a Latino vote firewall in the West - POLITICO

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub, the Reserve Bank of Australia, Bank NegaraMalaysia, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and the South African Reserve Bank today announced thecompletion of prototypes for a common platform enabling international settlements using multiple centralbank digital currencies (mCBDCs).

Led by the Innovation Hub's Singapore Centre, Project Dunbar proved that financial institutions coulduse CBDCs issued by participating central banks to transact directly with each other on a sharedplatform. This has the potential to reduce reliance on intermediaries and, correspondingly, the costs andtime taken to process cross-border transactions.

The project was organised along three workstreams: one focusing on high-level functional requirements anddesign, and two concurrent technical streams that developed prototypes on different technologicalplatforms (Corda and Partior).

The project identified three critical questions: which entities should be allowed to hold and transactwith CBDCs issued on the platform? How could the flow of cross-border payments be simplified whilerespecting regulatory differences across jurisdictions? What governance arrangements could give countriessufficient comfort to share critical national infrastructure such as a payments system?

The project proposed practical solutions for addressing these issues, which were validated through thedevelopment of prototypes that demonstrated the technical viability of shared multi-CBDC platforms forinternational settlements.

A common platform is the most efficient model for payments connectivity but is also the mostchallenging to achieve. Project Dunbar demonstrated that key concerns of trust and shared control can beaddressed through governance mechanisms enforced by robust technological means, laying the foundation forthe development of future global and regional platforms, said Andrew McCormack, Head of the BISInnovation Hub Centre in Singapore.

The project's findings also affirmed that any such arrangement should be subject to the governancedeemed appropriate by central bank participants, including allowing them to retain control of theapplication of rules on a jurisdictional and currency level.

The details and conclusions of the project were published today in a report that supports the efforts ofthe G20roadmap for enhancing cross-border payments, particularly in exploring an internationaldimension of CBDC design.

Project Dunbar has provided valuable insights into the opportunities and challenges associated withdeveloping a shared platform for multiple CBDCs to enhance cross-border payments. Allowing entities todirectly hold and transact in CBDCs from different jurisdictions could reduce the need for intermediariesin cross-border payments, but it would need to be done in a way that preserves the security andresilience of these payments. While there is clearly more work to be done in thinking about thefeasibility and design of multi-CBDC platforms, the findings from Project Dunbar provide a good platformfor future work in this area, said Michele Bullock, Assistant Governor (Financial System), ReserveBank of Australia.

View post:
BIS Innovation Hub and Central Banks of Australia, Malaysia, Singapore and South Africa Develop Experimental Multi-CBDC Platform for International...

With one sizable difference, they could be scenes of everyday recreation in the sunshine state of Florida: a tourist playing with a football, another eagerly chasing a remote control boat round a lake.

But the remarkable images posted to social media over the past week feature alligators, not humans seeming to confirm a Tennessee university study that said crocodilians like to have fun too.

A picture posted to the Alligators of Florida Facebook page by Sandra Raymon Harrison showed an alligator in the Big Cypress preserve with a football in its jaws. How the reptile came across the ball, and whether it had any playmates, was not specified.

Commentators worried that the alligator had the ball stuck in its mouth were assured by experts who pointed out the massive force of the creatures bite could pop the ball in a heartbeat.

The second playful gator was captured in a short video clip posted to the website of Jacksonvilles ActionNewsJax TV, swimming in hot pursuit of a remote-controlled boat.

The images were shot by a producer from the station who filmed a neighbor launching the vessel and noticed the alligator swimming along in pursuit. The animated alligator changes speed and direction several times as the boat zips before it.

Both episodes appear to bear out the research of University of Tennessee Knoxville animal behavior expert Vladimir Dinets, whose 2015 study, Play Behaviour in Crocodilians, noted such behavior was not uncommon.

Social play by crocodilians is almost never reported but this doesnt mean that it is particularly rare, Dinets wrote, after spending more than 3,000 hours observing crocodilians in the wild and captivity.

He witnessed alligators at play with river otters in Big Cypress and detailed the story of a crocodile in Costa Rica that bonded with its rescuer.

Play behavior included swimming together, rushing at [him] with an open mouth in mock charges, sneaking on him from behind as if to startle him, and accepting being caressed, hugged, rotated in the water and kissed on the snout, he wrote.

According to a Science Daily report accompanying the study, the results show[ed] a softer side of the intimidating creatures one that includes romping around with river otters and people.

A third recent episode of Florida alligators potentially at play, however, had to be discounted. A video posted to Facebook of an apparently friendly 20ft alligator named Grandpappy leading a 6ft reptile across a Lakeland golf course ended with the smaller of the two being eaten.

See original here:
Alligators just want to have fun: Florida images may show predators at play - The Guardian

When Sam Burns won the 2022 Valspar Championship on Sunday, he became the second golfer in the last three events to pick up at least three PGA Tour wins before making his debut at Augusta National. Burns' three victories (two Valspars and the Sanderson Farms Championship) have pushed him into the top 10 in the Official World Golf Rankings, but they all came after the 2021 Masters, which means his drive down Magnolia Lane in two weeks will be his first.

Collin Morikawa also won three times (including a major championship) before the oddly-situated 2020 Masters in November. Morikawa finished T44 in his Masters debut before going on to win the Open Championship the following summer.

All of this begs the question: Could a first-time participant at Augusta unlock the Rubik's cube that was once disguised as a nursery?

It's been done before, but it hasn't happened inn a long time. In 1979, Fuzzy Zoeller shot 70-71-69-70 and won in a playoff over Tom Watson and Ed Sneed.

Since that tournament, though, first-timers have not gotten off the schneid. The prevailing narrative is that it takes old-school characteristics like wisdom and mettle and battle-testedness to conquer Augusta in your debut. I'm not sure that's exactly correct, though.

Last year, debutante Will Zalatoris finished one shot out of a playoff as Hideki Matsuyama went on to win. I'll never forget what he said that Thursday after shooting 70 to sit T4 after 18 holes.

"Kind of the joke that I've been saying with my family is if I'm stupid enough to think I can play here, then I'm stupid enough to think I can win it," said Zalatoris. "Like I said, just kind of focusing on the process, and I know that's a very boring media statement that I'm sure you guys hear a lot, but it's what's gotten me here."

Zalatoris isn't the only golfer to have recent first-time success at Augusta. In fact, of the seven golfers who have finished in second place at the Masters since World War II, five of them (Jason Day, Jonas Blixt, Jordan Spieth, Sungjae Im and Zalatoris) have come in the last 10 years.

The anecdote that younger players are more prepared to win when they get on the PGA Tour,which seems to have some statistical roots, also appears to be true at the Masters.

There are 16 first-timers in this year's Masters, but not all of them have an equivalent chance of winning the event. Among those who have qualified, Talor Gooch, Harry Higgs, Tom Hoge and Min Woo Lee are all interesting, but it's Burns that stands apart from the rest. In addition to his No. 10 world ranking, Burns is ranked No. 9 on Data Golf and possess the physical skillset to win a major championship.

He has a pretty spotty history at majors thus far in limited experience. Burns' best finish at a major thus far is a T29 at the 2019 PGA Championship at Bethpage Black. However, he's turned himself into a plus in every strokes-gained category (off the tee, approach, around the greens and putting), and the thing he does best (iron play) also happens to be the most statistic when it comes to winning this tournament.

Perhaps the stronger trait Burns already possesses is that he knows how to win. Many first-timers qualify by getting into the top 50 in the Official World Golf Rankings or maybe qualifying for the previous year's Tour Championship. Not all of them have won, and even the ones that have normally haven't won as often as Burns.

That won't make the pressure feel different on that second nine on Sunday afternoon with the world watching, but it does provide some much-needed confidence for those trying to seal the deal.

"When you're coming down the stretch and you're near the lead and you want to have this belief that you can do it, sometimes it's tough when you haven't done it yet," said Burns on Sunday after winning the Valspar for a second time. "So, I think for me today, it was just only thing I can control is what I'm doing, how I'm reacting to the shots, everything else is out of my control."

What is in Burns' control, like the rest of the field at Augusta National here in a few weeks, is a major championship win. He's unlikely to get it because technically everyone playing is unlikely to get it.

But if recent form holds (we've seen a newcomer finish second in two straight Masters), Burns is the best bet to enter that conversation. And given his game and his growth over the last year, who knows, he might just mess around and become the first player in over 40 years to go out there and win it in his first four rounds ever at the most prestigious tournament in the world.

Read more from the original source:
Masters 2022: Debuting golfers on the rise can contend at Augusta National, recent trends show - CBS Sports

The McGowan Government is reforming the tow truck industry in Western Australia to protect people involved in traffic accidents and combat bad behaviour and price gouging.

Consumer Protection invited more than 6,000 stakeholders to engage in consultation on reforms for the industry, which received 37 formal submissions and more than 400 survey responses from industry participants, consumers, insurers and government agencies.

About 90 per cent of survey respondents agreed the industry should be regulated.

The following suggested reforms have received strong community support:

Responsibility for executing changes has moved to the Department of Transport, who will present reform options to the State Government by the middle of this year.

Depending on reform options, this may include legislative changes.

While this work is ongoing, the Department of Transport is also preparing amendments to the Road Traffic (Vehicles) Regulations 2014 to update technical standards and begin rolling out a communications campaign to advise drivers of their rights.

This will require maximum tow and storage fees to be recorded on the 'tow truck driver's statement', which is given to the person authorising the tow at the roadside.

The consultation report that summarises the feedback can be viewed on the Consumer Protection website.

Comments attributed to Commerce Minister Roger Cook:

"The views expressed as part of the consultation process indicated widespread community concern about the tow truck industry in WA.

"Ethical operators report that they are disadvantaged by the tactics of some unscrupulous drivers who threaten, mislead and harass people to get business.

"The consensus is that this behaviour needs to be stamped out."

Comments attributed to Transport Minister Rita Saffioti:

"Western Australia and Tasmania are the two States with the least regulation of the towing industry.

"Regulation in WA is long overdue and is essential to ensure that consumers are properly protected whilst improving safety and confidence in the industry.

"The community consultation has identified a host of concerns that we want to address through the reform process.

"This work will now be given to the Department of Transport to continue and I look forward to receiving options for how we implement this reform later this year.

"The reform and associated regulation will bring WA in line with most other Australian States and ensure that we have legislation in place that serves the needs of the community whilst supporting an honest towing industry that encourages fair competition."

Commerce Minister's office - 6552 6500

Transport Minister's office - 6552 5500

Read the original post:
McGowan Government to reform WA tow truck industry - Media Statements