By Caitlin Owens @ Axios.com, 2 hrs. ago

The Koch network will spend 60% more on the 2018 cycle than it did on the 2016 presidential election, the largest midterm investment it's ever had, Tim Phillips of Americans for Prosperity told reporters Saturday. This includes up to $20 million on “communicating the benefits of tax reform," along with other policy and politics efforts. The network spent about $250 million on policy and politics in the 2016 cycle.

Why this matters: [....]

Gerrymandering. It’s become the embodiment of so many of the evils in the U.S. political system. Frustrated by the lack of competitive elections? Blame gerrymandering. Appalled by the growing number of ideological extremists in Congress? Blame gerrymandering. What about congressional gridlock? Gerrymandering did it.

But the end of gerrymandering would be no panacea. Indeed, gerrymandering may be just as much a symptom of America’s political problems as a cause.

By Hannah Beech & Rick Gladston @ NYTimes.com, Jan. 24

BANGKOK — Delivering an unusual public rebuke, former Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico resigned Wednesday from a Myanmar advisory board on the Rohingya crisis, calling it a pro-government “cheerleading squad” and chastising the country’s civilian leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, whom he has long considered a friend.

“She has developed an arrogance of power,” Mr. Richardson said by telephone during a layover in Tokyo on his way back to New Mexico from Myanmar. “I’ve known her a long time and am fond of her, but she basically is unwilling to listen to bad news, and I don’t want to be part of a whitewash.” [....]

By Michael S. Schmidt & Maggie Haberman @ NYTimes.com, Jan. 25, 8:16 pm

"Breaking/Scoop". Happened last June. Maggie's just been sharing it with Anderson Cooper @ CNN over the phone right after the publication button was hit. Only reason I knew about it was that was what I had on in the background. Ironic that Carl Bernstein happens to be on Cooper's show.

By David Wasserman @ The Gerrymandering Project @ FiveThirtyEight.com, Jan. 25

[....] It’s easy for opponents of gerrymandering — the drawing of political boundaries for the benefit of one party or group over another — to argue what districts shouldn’t look like. All they have to do is ridicule the absurdity of the most bizarre patchworks ever woven to elect members of Congress. For example, “The Rabbit on a Skateboard,” “The Upside-Down Chinese Dragon” or the “Mask of Zorro.”

But it’s much more difficult to say what districts should look like, because reformers can disagree on what priorities should govern our political cartography. Should districts be drawn to be more compact? More conducive to competitive elections? More inclusive of underrepresented racial groups? Should they yield a mix of Democratic and Republican representatives that better matches the political makeup of a state? Could they even be drawn at random? These concepts can be difficult to define and often stand in tension with one another [....]

Note that this is not labeled an editorial, it is the current home page headline news story @

Bloomberg.com by Matthew Campbell, Jan. 24

• Executives, academics concerned about damage to U.S. science
• Innovation boosted by immigrants seen at risk in crackdown

By Alan Blinder & Daniel Victor @ NYTimes.com, Jan. 23

ATLANTA — On Tuesday, it was a high school in small-town Kentucky. On Monday, a school cafeteria outside Dallas and a charter school parking lot in New Orleans. And before that, a school bus in Iowa, a college campus in Southern California, a high school in Seattle.

Gunfire ringing out in American schools used to be rare, and shocking. Now it seems to happen all the time.

The scene in Benton, Ky., on Tuesday was the worst so far in 2018: Two 15-year-old students were killed and 18 more people were injured. But it was one of at least 11 shootings on school property recorded since Jan. 1, and roughly the 50th of the academic year.

Researchers and gun control advocates say that since 2013, they have logged school shootings at a rate of about one a week [....]

By Javier C. Hernandez & Iris Zhao @ NYTimes.com, Jan. 24

[....] The police in the southern Chinese city of Dongguan are now trying to find the parents of the girl, who the authorities say abandoned her on Saturday because they could not afford to treat her epilepsy.

The case has prompted a national debate about the high cost of medical treatment and the hardships suffered by children with disabilities. Each year, about 100,000 children are abandoned across China, according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission, many of them because they have disabilities [....]

A health care system marked by high co-payments and deductibles, as well as inconsistent coverage, means that paying for treatments can be devastating for low-income families. Adding to the problem, many families lack insurance coverage for infants, advocates say.

Ms. Qiu said that while families with disabled children in large cities like Beijing and Shanghai receive generous subsidies, those living in smaller cities often lack the resources to give them long-term care [....]

Super Bowl LII was planned to be Costas’ last, but NBC announced this week that the longtime  commentator would not be hosting the pregame show on Feb. 4. It was thought NBC might have yanked Costas for his comment in November that “the reality is that this game destroys people’s brains.”

But Costas dismissed that notion in an email to Sports Business Daily.

“The decision was mutually agreeable, and not only do I not have a problem with it, I am actually happy about it,” Costas told the website. “I have long had ambivalent feelings about football, so at this point, it’s better to leave the hosting to those who are more enthusiastic about it.”

Justin Terranova, New York Post, today.  Dag does not see a lot of traffic on sports. I thought this might be of broader cultural interest.