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oliviaodon

Russian Women Muster for a 'Battalion of Death' - The New York Times - 0 views

  • “When at last in the fever of change the Russian Revolution made anything possible,” the Mid-Week Pictorial reported 100 years ago, “a band of girls of adventurous disposition and endowed with the high courage of youth came forward and joined a ‘Battalion of Death’ to try to infuse the Russian Army with a new desire for victory.”
  • Their commander was Maria Bochkareva (spelled “Botchkareva” by The Times). Already a decorated soldier, she met in May 1917 with Alexander Kerensky, the head of the provisional government. To solve the problem of rampant desertion she proposed the creation of all-women battalions that “would shame the men into continuing the fight,”
  • It has been found that there is absolutely no kind of work, skilled or unskilled, that women cannot do; and it has been amazing how they have learned in months trades which were formerly supposed to require years to learn
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  • Three years later, after ratification of the 19th Amendment, universal suffrage was a reality.
jayhandwerk

John McCain takes aim at Donald Trump over Vietnam medical deferment | US news | The Gu... - 0 views

  • John McCain took another shot at Donald Trump on Sunday night, with an angry reference to Americans who avoided the draft for the Vietnam war
  • Recently McCain has led calls for greater transparency from the administration over the deaths of four US soldiers in Niger.
  • McCain criticised “half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems”. He said: “We live in a land made of ideals, not blood and soil.”
Javier E

Opinion | The Bad News About Helicopter Parenting: It Works - The New York Times - 0 views

  • new research shows that in our unequal era, this kind of parenting brings life-changing benefits. That’s the message of the book “Love, Money and Parenting: How Economics Explains the Way We Raise Our Kids,” by the economists Matthias Doepke of Northwestern University and Fabrizio Zilibotti of Yale.
  • done right, it works for kids, not just in the United States but in rich countries around the world.
  • when inequality hit a low in the 1970s, there wasn’t that much of a gap between what someone earned with or without a college degree. Strict parenting gave way to an era of “permissive parenting” — giving children lots of freedom with little oversight. Why spend 18 years nagging kids to succeed if the rewards weren’t worth it?
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  • when they analyzed the 2012 PISA, an academic test of 15-year-olds around the world, along with reports from the teenagers and their parents about how they interact, they found that an “intensive parenting style” correlated with higher scores on the test. This was true even among teenagers whose parents had similar levels of education.
  • for the most part, the new parenting efforts seemed effective
  • In the 1980s, however, inequality increased sharply in Western countries, especially the United States, and the gap between white- and blue-collar pay widened. Permissive parenting was replaced by helicopter parenting
  • If you do it as an “authoritarian” parent — defined as someone who issues directives, expects children to obey and sometimes hits those who don’t — you won’t get the full benefits.
  • The most effective parents, according to the authors, are “authoritative.” They use reasoning to persuade kids to do things that are good for them. Instead of strict obedience, they emphasize adaptability, problem-solving and independence — skills that will help their offspring in future workplaces that we can’t even imagine yet.
  • Using data from a national study that followed thousands of American teenagers for years, the authors found that the offspring of “authoritative” parents were more likely to graduate from college and graduate school, especially compared with those with authoritarian parents.
  • So why wouldn’t everyone just become an authoritative parent? Religious people, regardless of their income, are more likely to be authoritarian parents who expect obedience and believe in corporal punishment
  • Working-class and poor parents might not have the leisure time to hover or the budget to pay for activities and expensive schools.
Javier E

Where is Felicity Huffman's spouse, William H. Macy, in the college admissions scandal?... - 0 views

  • Why was Felicity Huffman’s husband, an equally famous actor, not also charged with trying to bribe and fraud his kids’ way into college?
  • “Oh, I bet I know why,” sighed one friend, currently mired in her own kids’ school applications. “It’s because the moms have to do everything, including organize the crime.”
  • Macy, for what it’s worth, actually appeared to be a very involved parent. In the recorded phone calls, it was SPOUSE who brought up that his kid needed high enough scores for Georgetown. It was SPOUSE who declared the kid would perform better if the family could finagle an extended two-day SAT testing period, usually reserved for students with learning disabilities.
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  • Huffman’s “Housewives” character spent one episode trying to bribe her twins’ way into a private school, BuzzFeed points out (for $15,000 — is that how Huffman knew it was the going rate?), and so, the story goes, of course Huffman would do the same in real life.
  • The most vomitous line in the whole indictment comes from a dad — New York attorney Gordon Caplan — who tells a witness on the phone, “To be honest, I’m not worried about the moral issue.”
  • Radar ran an anonymously sourced article in which a family friend says Macy “didn’t know the details, but he knew she was trying to do something. . . He wasn’t fully aware of what she was planning.” Truly, I’m not sure which is a worse scenario for Macy: that he blithely participated in an alleged illegal plot, or that he blithely participated in an entire phone call in which the alleged illegal plot was hatched and apparently didn’t know what anyone, including himself, was talking about.
  • in terms of moral dissonance, Felicity Huffman is the most surprising villain, and the one whose motives I keep trying to unpack.
  • Huffman created the website What the Flicka, dedicated to parenting. Specifically, to being a mom. Even more specifically, to being a real, relatable, imperfect mom.
  • WhatTheFlicka.com is a land of sardonic coffee mugs and wine-o’clock-Wednesdays, and scented candles with names such as “Juice Cleanse” that purport to smell like “greens, mint, and regret.” The articles about parenting have headlines such as “10 ways I’m totally screwing up my kids” and “10 reasons to dread summer with kids” and “9 ways parenthood is like ‘Game of Thrones.’ ”
  • In other words, the site buys into a children-are-a-battlefield theory of parenting. Parenthood is impossible, and making it to bedtime without becoming an alcoholic is an excellent reason to reward yourself with a martini. We are all a hot mess!
  • In Felicity’s mind, did she do something at odds with her theory of motherhood, or was the alleged scamming an extension of it? Was allegedly buying her kids’ way into school a twisted, privileged version of, Ladies, amiright, sometimes we serve frosting for dinner and sometimes we bribe Georgetown?
  • “Ruh Ro!” she chirpily wrote in an email to her contact in the scam. “Looks like [my daughter’s high school] wants to provide own proctor.” It was a problem to be solved, practically and without much fuss.
knudsenlu

Abuse isn't romantic. So why the panic that feminists are killing eros? | Jessica Valen... - 0 views

  • Catherine Deneuve and others have publicly worried that the campaign to end sexual harassment has gone too far but the truth is there is no war on romance
  • The #MeToo backlash is here, and it’s very worried about your love life. Iconic French actress Catherine Deneuve says the movement is puritanical and men should be able to “hit on women”. New York Times writer Daphne Merkin wants to know “whatever happened to flirting?” The Hollywood Reporter bemoans that #MeToo could “kill sexy Hollywood movies” while Cathy Young at the Los Angeles Times believes it will end office romance. Ross Douthat is even worried that the push to end sexual harassment could stunt population growth.
  • Who knew that humankind’s very existence depended on women’s silence in the face of abuse?
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  • somehow we’ve reached a point where any behavior short of violent predation – let’s call it the “not as bad as Weinstein” standard – is characterized as misunderstood seduction.
  • There’s a reason so many people are conflating bad and sometimes criminal behavior with romance: traditional ideas about seduction rely on tropes of women witholding sex and men working hard to get it. It’s a narrow notion of heterosexuality – one that does a good job excusing abusive behavior.
  • When will we have more concern for the women hurt by abuse than the men accused of it? One of Roy Moore’s accusers had her house burnt to the ground – arson is suspected. Harper’s magazine was on the brink of publishing the name of a woman who created the Shitty Media Men list before a feminist Twitter campaign stopped it. Some women won’t see justice for years, some ever. This moment isn’t about romance, it’s about abuse. Perhaps the fact that so many people can’t tell the difference is part of the problem.
jayhandwerk

The Latest: Trump urges support for GOP House candidate | U.S. Politics | pilotonline.com - 0 views

  • Trump says, "the only way to solve the drug problem is through toughness." Trump is making the case that a person can get the death penalty or life in prison for shooting a single person, but a drug dealer can kill thousands and spend little or no time in jail.
  • President Donald Trump is bashing the press for its coverage of his decision to agree to direct talks with North Korea.
  • McDaniel credits Trump for "record unemployment" and bringing "3 million jobs back to America."
Javier E

Opinion | An Era Defined by Fear - The New York Times - 0 views

  • I wonder if we’ve fully grasped how fear pervades our society and sets the emotional tone for our politics. When historians define this era they may well see it above all else as a time defined by fear.
  • It’s been an era when politicians rise by stoking fear
  • Fear also comes up from below, in the form of childhood trauma and insecurity
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  • It sometimes seems as if half of America’s children grow up in strained families and suffer Adverse Childhood Experiences that make it hard for them to feel safe. The other half grow up in overprotective families and emerge into adulthood unready to face the risks that will inevitably come.
  • Everybody feels besieged — power is somehow elsewhere, with the malevolent forces who are somewhere out there, who will stop at nothing.
  • Fear runs ahead of the facts and inflames the imagination
  • Fear makes everything amorphous
  • for those in the grip of fear, immigration — or globalization, Silicon Valley, Wall Street or automation — are shapeless, insidious forces that are out of control. The inevitable reaction is overreaction
  • “Fear, indeed, is intensely narcissistic,” she continues. “It drives out all thoughts of others.”
  • The irrationalities of disgust, Nussbaum continues, underlie many social evils
  • Fear induces herding behavior.
  • Fear revives ideology.
  • All trade in binaries between oppressor and oppressed, the struggle between the good groups and the menacing evil ones.
  • I’m coming to think governance might be cure. The simple act of trying to solve practical problems.
Javier E

What Is the U.S. Visa System for 'Skilled' Migrants? - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • The H-1B visa in particular, both its supporters and detractors argue, desperately needs an overhaul. Yet competing interests and disagreement over what needs fixing mean that, even with Trump’s administration having put restricting immigration flows at the center of its agenda, change is far from guaranteed.
  • The H-1B is one of several visa categories that allow foreign citizens to work while in the United States. Designed in the early 1990s as a temporary program to fill labor-market needs in highly specialized fields, such visas are issued in low numbers each year: This year’s cap was 85,000 in a nation with a labor force that’s estimated to be about 163 million people.
  • The White House has become more selective about approving new H-1B applications and changed the rules governing renewals so that the process is no longer automatic, as in Mahoney-Steel’s case.
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  • the administration is gradually making the program a little more restrictive overall. (This appears to have had little impact thus far on the number of people who have applied for H-1Bs—as Bloomberg Law noted, more than 201,000 people put in for the 85,000 visas issued this year, a 6 percent increase over the previous year’s figures.)
  • in the Immigration Act of 1990. That original legislation did two things: It expanded legal immigration by increasing the number of green cards awarded each year, and it updated a 1950s-era program for temporary workers of “distinguished merit and ability” by capping the number who could obtain the visa at 65,000. (The cap has varied over the years.) This new program, the H-1B, was designed for skilled, temporary workers in certain occupations.
  • what came next: the global tech boom and the birth of the outsourcing industry. Suddenly, what had begun as a temporary solution to address a labor shortage became a device through which hundreds of thousands of IT professionals from around the world, especially India, came to the United States. The program became a de facto path to permanent residence and, ultimately, American citizenship.
  • Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at Howard University in Washington, D.C., who studies the impact of the visa, says the H-1B prioritizes outsourcers, sets wages too low, and doesn’t address the problem it was created to solve—filling labor-market gaps.“The program has been flawed from the inception,” he told me. “My primary complaint is that it’s used for cheap indentured workers.”
  • cation process is expensive, costing upwards of $2,400 (not counting lawyer’s fees), and has become cumbersome, they argue, so no American company would voluntarily seek to hire a foreign worker when simply hiring an American one is far easier.
  • Previous administrations tried to walk the line between these competing interests, but the Trump administration, through its actions, is making the H-1B far more difficult to get—especially for Indian software companies, whose visa applications were rejected in record numbers last year.
  • all of the changes so far to the existing system have introduced an atmosphere of uncertainty for people like Mahoney-Steel. Johns Hopkins decided not to seek to renew her visa. She told me that her supervisors were trying to rewrite her job description, but that the position she occupied was deemed by her employers too generic to be a specialized skill.
Javier E

Tech Billionaires Want to Destroy the Universe - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • “Many people in Silicon Valley have become obsessed with the simulation hypothesis, the argument that what we experience as reality is in fact fabricated in a computer; two tech billionaires have gone so far as to secretly engage scientists to work on breaking us out of the simulation.”
  • Ignore for a moment any objections you might have to the simulation hypothesis, and everything impractical about the idea that we could somehow break out of reality, and think about what these people are trying to do.
  • The two billionaires (Elon Musk is a prime suspect) are convinced that they’ll emerge out of this drab illusion into a more shining reality, lit by a brighter and more beautiful star. But for the rest of us the experience would be very different—you lose your home, you lose your family, you lose your life and your body and everything around you
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  • Every summer we watch dozens of villains plotting to blow up the entire universe, but the motivations are always hazy. Why, exactly, does the baddie want to destroy everything again? Now we know.
  • It’s not just Elon Musk, who stated that ‘there’s a one in a billion chance we’re living in base reality,’ who believes this—in an extraordinary piece of hedge-betting, the Bank of America has judiciously announced that the probability that waking life is just an illusion is, oh, about fifty-fifty
  • Tech products no longer feel like something offered to the public, but something imposed: The great visionary looks at the way everyone is doing something, and decides, single-handedly, to change it.
  • once social reality is the exclusive property of a few geegaw-tinkerers, why shouldn’t physical reality be next? With Google’s Calico seeking hedge-fund investment for human immortality and the Transformative Technology Lab hoping to externalize human consciousness, the tech industry is moving into territory once cordoned off for the occult. Why shouldn’t the fate of the entire cosmos be in the hands of programmers hiding from the California sun, to keep or destroy as they wish?
  • Unsurprisingly, nobody bothered to ask us whether we want the end of the world or not; they’re just setting about trying to do it. Silicon Valley works by solving problems that hadn’t heretofore existed; its culture is pathologically fixated on the notion of ‘disruption.’
  • there’s always been the lingering suspicion that our reality is somehow unreal—it’s just that what we once thought about in terms of dreams and magic, cosmic minds or whispering devils, is now expressed through boring old computers, that piece of clunky hardware that waits predatory on your desk every morning to code the finest details of your life.
  • Kabbalist mysticists, Descartes with his deceiving demon, and Zhuangzi in his butterfly dream have all questioned the reality of their sense-experiences, but this isn’t a private, solipsistic hallucination; in the simulation hypothesis, reality is a prison for all of us
  • Its real antecedents are the Gnostics, an early Christian sect who believed that the physical universe was the creation of the demiurge, Samael or Ialdaboath, sometimes figured as a snake with the head of a lion, a blind and stupid god who creates his false world in imperfect imitation of the real Creator. This world is a distorted mirror, an image; in other words, a kind of software.
  • The Gnostics were often accused by other early Christians of Satanism, and they might have had a point: Many identified the jealous, petty, prurient God of the Old Testament with the Demiurge, while sects such as the Ophites revered the serpent in the Garden of Eden as the first to offer knowledge to humanity, freeing them from their first cage
  • In his book, Baudrillard also talks about virtual realities and deceptive images, but his point isn’t that they have clouded our perception of the reality beyond. The present system of social images is so vast and all-encompassing that it’s produced a total reality for itself; it only lies when it has us thinking that there’s something else behind the façade. Baudrillard, always something of an overgrown child, loved to refer to Disneyland: As he pointed out, it’s in no way a fake—when you leave its gates, you return to an America that’s just one giant Disneyland, a copy without an original, from coast to coast
  • ‘The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth—it is the truth which conceals that there is none.
  • Digital and cinematic media actively construct our experience of reality. The world of film stars and theme parks, social media and supermarket shelves designed to look like something out of an old-time grocery—this is the one we live in. Our Silicon Valley Satanists have made a very questionable assumption: What if there’s nowhere to break out into?
  • the virtual is also real. Why is a universe composed of software necessarily any less real than one composed of matter? Computer simulation is of course only a metaphor, a new-ish way of describing what was once expressed in oneiric or theological terms. They can’t really mean that our universe was built in something similar to the machine you’re using to read these words right now;
  • simulation is a process independent of whatever divine or technological apparatus is used to achieve it. The real argument is that, by some unknown mechanism, what we see is only a function of what really exists. But we’ve known since Kant that our sense-perception can never give us a full account of the material world; all this can be said of any conceivable reality
  • Outside the simulation hypothesis there are scientists who propose that our universe is a single black hole, with what we perceive as matter being a hologram emerging from a two-dimensional ring of information along its event horizon; there are mathematical Platonists who, following Max Tegmark, consider the world to be a set of abstract mathematical objects, of which physical objects are a crude epiphenomenon. If matter doesn’t ‘really’ exist, there’s no need for anything to be rooted anywhere; we might live suspended in a looping chain of simulations and appearances that coils back on itself and never has to touch the ground
  • Elon Musk and his co-religionists aren’t actually blinded by artifice; they’re fixated on a strange and outdated notion that somewhere, there has to be a concrete reality—they’ve just decided that it’s not this one
  • What’s far more worrying is the fact that the people who want to destroy the only world we really have are also the people increasingly in charge of it.
Javier E

A groundswell for sanity - The Washington Post - 0 views

  • a third key constituency that is underanalyzed because its ranks are not exceptionally partisan or ideological. They are citizens who ask for a basic minimum from those in charge of their government: some dignity and decorum, a focus on problem-solving, and orderliness rather than chaos. Trump and the conservatives sustaining him are completely out of line with this behavioral conservatism built on self-restraint and temperamental evenness.
  • here is a bet that there is also a quiet revolution of conscience in the country among those who are sick to death of the chaos they see every day on the news, a White House whose energy is devoted to stabbing internal foes in the back and a president who can’t stop thinking about himself. In the face of this, demanding simple decency is a radical and subversive act.
Javier E

The Avalon Project : Hossbach Memorandum - 0 views

  • The question for Germany ran: where could she achieve the greatest gain at the lowest cost.
  • German policy had to reckon with two hate-inspired antagonists, Britain and France, to whom a German colossus in the center of Europe was a thorn in the flesh
  • Germany's problem could only be solved by means of force and this was never without attendant risk.
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  • For the improvement of our politico-military position our first objective, in the event of our being embroiled in war, must be to overthrow Czechoslovakia and Austria simultaneously in order to remove the threat to our flank in any possible operation against the West.
  • Case 1: Period 1943-1945. After this date only a change for the worse, from our point of view, could be expected.
  • Our relative strength would decrease in relation to the rearmament which would by then have been carried out by the rest of the world. If we did not act by 1943-45' any year could, in consequence of a lack of reserves, produce the food crisis, to cope with which the necessary foreign exchange was not available, and this must be regarded as a "waning point of the regime." Besides, the world was expecting our attack and was increasing its counter-measures from year to year. It was while the rest of the world was still preparing its defenses [sich abriegele] that we were obliged to take the offensive.
  • The necessity for action before 1943-45 would arise in cases 2 and 3.
  • Case 2: If internal strife in France should develop into such a domestic crisis as to absorb the French Army completely and render it incapable of use for war against Germany, then the time for action against the Czechs had come.
  • If one accepts as the basis of the following exposition the resort to force with its attendant risks, then there remain still to be answered the questions "when" and "how." In this matter there were three cases [Falle] to be dealt with:
  • Actually, the Fuehrer believed that almost certainly Britain, and probably France as well, had already tacitly written off the Czechs and were reconciled to the fact that this question could be cleared up in due course by Germany. Difficulties connected with the Empire, and the prospect of being once more entangled in a protracted European war, were decisive considerations for Britain against participation in a war against Germany. Britain's attitude would certainly not be without influence on that of France. An attack by France without British support, and with the prospect of the offensive being brought to a standstill on our western fortifications, was hardly probable.
  • The incorporation of these two States with Germany meant, from the politico-military point of view, a substantial advantage because it would mean shorter and better frontiers, the freeing of forces for other purposes, and the possibility of creating new units up to a level of about 12 divisions, that is, 1 new division per million inhabitants.
  • Italy was not expected to object to the elimination of the Czechs, but it was impossible at the moment to estimate what her attitude on the Austrian question would be; that depended essentially upon whether the Duce were still alive
  • The degree of surprise and the swiftness of our action were decisive factors for Poland's attitude. Poland -with Russia at her rear will have little inclination to engage in war against a victorious Germany.
  • In the light of past experience, the Fuehrer did not see any early end to the hostilities in Spain
  • from the German point of view; rather were we interested in a continuance of the war and in the keeping up of the tension in the Mediterranean.
  • As our interest lay more in the prolongation of the war in Spain, it must be the immediate aim of our policy to strengthen Italy's rear with a view to her remaining in the Balearics.
  • If Germany made use of this war to settle the Czech and Austrian questions, it was to be assumed that Britain -herself at war with Italy- would decide not to act against Germany. Without British support, a warlike action by France against Germany was not to be expected.
Javier E

The good economic news is actually bad. Here's why. - The Washington Post - 0 views

  • In his essay “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren,” Keynes, seeking to dispel pessimism, predicted that, “assuming no important wars and no important increase in population,” the “permanent problem of the human race” — the “struggle for subsistence” — “may be solved.”
  • This, Keynes warned, could discombobulate the human race’s neurological wiring, because mankind has evolved through many millennia for toil and stress. Basic “habits and instincts” are unsuitable for a future of leisure and abundance. Because we have evolved as creatures designed by nature “to strive and not to enjoy.” So, work would have to be apportioned, perhaps in three-hour shifts and 15-hour workweeks, to keep people preoccupied.
  • In 1943, Paul Samuelson, who would become one of America’s leading economists and win a Nobel Prize, anticipated peace with foreboding. Good things — demobilization of more than 10 million from the armed services, the economy no longer busy producing instruments of destruction — would cause bad things. There would be “the greatest period of unemployment and industrial dislocation which any economy has ever faced.” Any economy. Ever.
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  • This stroll down memory lane suggests this rule: All news is economic news, because everything affects the economy, or reveals attitudes or behaviors that soon will affect it. And all economic news is bad — especially good economic news, because it gives rise to bad behavior.
  • In December, America’s household savings rate was the lowest (2.4 percent of disposable income) since the negative savings rates in 2005 and 2006, before the housing bubble burst.
  • As of 2013, 45 percent of working-age households had no retirement savings.
  • A 2015 Federal Reserve study revealed that half of those surveyed said they could not gather $400 to cope with an emergency; one-third said they could not sell assets, tap retirement savings or turn to family and friends to pay three months of expenses.
  • By 2017, median household savings ($14,500) for those near retirement age had declined 32 percent in a decade, and for the first time, older Americans had more credit card debt than younger Americans.
  • Between 2003 and 2015, the indebtedness of those between ages 50 and 80 increased 60 percent. Today, those between 65 and 74 have five times more debt than that age cohort did two decades ago.
  • Do you wonder how such behavior became to seem normal? A partial answer might be:
  • Americans consider deferral of gratification unnatural, which it is. Time was, however, thrift was considered a virtue. People sat at kitchen tables, calculating how to bring their outlays, for living and retiring, into alignment with their incomes.
  • But eventually many people decided: This is no fun. Instead, let’s disconnect enjoyable spending decisions from tiresome facts about resources, thereby living the way the federal government does.
manhefnawi

U.S. Exits Paris Climate Agreement | Britannica.com - 0 views

  • At a rose garden ceremony on June 1, 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump declared his intention to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement. 
  • would have negative effects on job growth, hinder manufacturing, and bring about dramatic declines in the coal mining, natural gas, steel, and cement industries
  • The Paris Agreement, which was designed to control and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, was the centerpiece of the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
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  • Although many of the world’s other leaders have expressed their disappointment with Trump’s decision, they have also underscored their commitment to solving the problem of global warming, with or without American participation
  • To date there are only two other countries that have not yet signed on to the Paris Agreement: Syria and Nicaragua. Syria, which remains in the throes of a destructive civil war, noted that it was not in a position to sign such agreements because of ongoing sanctions from Western countries. The government of Nicaragua, however, refused to sign on for different reasons. Nicaragua believes that the Paris Agreement does not go far enough to reduce emissions, arguing that wealthy countries such as the United States should have been forced to make deeper commitments.
manhefnawi

Spain - The reign of Charles III, 1759-88 | Britannica.com - 0 views

  • Two features distinguished the reforms of Charles III (the “Caroline” reforms) from those of the early Bourbons. First, Charles was a “reformer’s king” in that he consistently supported reforming ministers.
  • After 1714 Spain experienced a gradual economic recovery, which became quite marked in the second half of the 18th century.
  • Charles III maintained that the key to Spain’s prosperity lay in the development of an American market in the Indies. He saw clearly that Spain alone could not preserve an overseas market closed to the outside world against Britain.
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  • Once it was clear to Charles that British terms were nonnegotiable, then the Bourbon Family Compact of 1761, a mutual-defense treaty with France, was a piece of realpolitik, signed by the “Anglophile” Ricardo Wall.
  • The consequence of such an alliance was involvement in the Seven Years’ War—too late to save France.
  • The Treaty of Paris (1763) concluded the Seven Years’ War and destroyed France as an American power.
  • The Family Compact was therefore an immediate military failure, and it was only the revolt of the North American colonies against Britain that enabled Spain to recover the ground it had lost; the successful alliance with France to aid the colonists resulted in the Treaty of Versailles (1783), which gave back Sacramento, the two Floridas, and Minorca.
  • In 1788 Charles III, who had been the “nerve” of reform in the sense that he loyally supported able ministers, was succeeded by his son, Charles IV, a weak, amiable man dominated by a lascivious wife, María Luisa.
  • The volume of Spanish goods in the American trade increased 10-fold in 10 years, prompting British concern at the Spanish revival.
  • The problems of imperial defense were thus temporarily solved by British weakness after 1765. The positive side of Charles III’s imperial policy was an attempt to create an efficiently administered colonial empire that would provide the crown with increased revenues and with a closed market for the exports of an expanding Spanish economy, a program known as the “Bourbon Reforms.”
  • The main attack of the regalists fell on the Jesuit order.
  • The question arises of the extent to which the policies of Charles III resulted from the acceptance by his servants of the precepts of the Enlightenment.
  • When the French Revolution exposed the dangers of progressive thought, the traditionalist cause was immensely strengthened, and the Inquisition appeared to the crown itself to be a useful instrument to control the spread of dangerous ideas
  • The purpose of reform was to remove what seemed to civil servants to be “traditional” constrictions on economic growth and administrative anachronisms that prevented the efficient exercise of royal power.
  • the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars put unbearable pressures on a weak power. Reform was now dangerous. Neutrality was impossible; alliance with either France or the anti-revolutionary coalitions engineered by Britain proved equally disastrous
  • Spain had no alternative but to declare war on France after the execution of Louis XVI in 1793. The war was popular but disastrous; in 1794 the French armies invaded Spain, taking Bilbao, San Sebastián (Donostia–San Sebastián), and Figueres (Figueras).
  • Napoleon had lost all faith in Godoy and Spain as an ally; the “dirty intrigues” of Ferdinand, prince of Asturias and heir to the throne, against his father and Godoy led Napoleon to consider drastic intervention in Spanish affairs
  • compelled the abdication of Charles IV and the dismissal of Godoy. Napoleon summoned both the old king and Ferdinand VII to Bayonne, where both were compelled to abdicate. The Spanish throne was then offered to Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon’s brother.
anonymous

Brexit: What can UK learn from other external EU borders? - BBC News - 0 views

  • As the British government continues to debate the kind of customs relationship it wants with the European Union after Brexit, one question looms large: how will it solve the Irish border problem?
  • One of the most difficult issues in the entire Brexit process is how to ensure that there is no return to a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, once that border becomes the external border of the European Union, of its single market and its customs union.
  • So being in a customs union doesn't automatically make border checks entering or leaving EU territory disappear; in this case that's partly because Turkey is not part of the single market and its common set of rules and regulations.
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  • That means that if the UK leaves all the EU's economic structures there is currently no example anywhere around Europe, or further afield, that can keep the Irish border after Brexit as open as it is now.
Javier E

Greens Are the New Hope for Europe's Center. For the Far Right, They're Enemy No. 1. - ... - 0 views

  • she knows if the Greens are to become a bigger force, they will have to convince voters that climate policy is not an elitist but a common cause, while also addressing their economic concerns.
  • “The lesson from France is that we cannot save the climate at the expense of social justice,” said Ms. Baerbock, who at 38 is roughly the same age as her party. “The two things need to go hand in hand.”
  • In recent European elections, Green parties gained significantly in other corners of the Continent, too, winning 63 out of 751 seats in the European Parliament, an increase of about 47 percent.
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  • The collapse of traditional social democratic parties has opened acres of space on the center left. A generation of younger voters is casting about for new allegiances, and others, for an antidote to the nationalist, populist far right.
  • With migration receding in the news, climate change has become a potent new front in the battle between green-minded liberals and populists.
  • they have become enemy No. 1 for far-right populists and others who cast their policies as part of an elitist agenda that hurts ordinary people
  • In Germany, where the Greens surged to over 20 percent in the recent European Parliament elections, their campaign posters explicitly attacked the far right: “Hatred is no alternative for Germany.”
  • Britain’s Greens won a striking 12 percent of the vote, finishing fourth ahead of the governing Conservatives, not only by promoting the environment — but also by opposing Brexit.
  • To those who could least afford it, the tax was seen as a way for them to offset the environmental damage caused primarily by big businesses and the jet-setting urban elites, who increasingly vote Green but whose lifestyles have the biggest carbon footprint
  • “The Green idea has been European from the outset, because you can’t solve environmental problems within national borders,
  • In southern Europe, with swelling debt and high youth unemployment, Green parties remain marginal
  • the Alternative for Germany, commonly known as AfD, accuses Ms. Baerbock’s party of being elitist — and hypocritical
  • “They buy themselves a good conscience, because they are the ones who hurt the environment most, they are the ones with the air miles.”
  • “But ordinary people are being told that they are responsible for the impending climate apocalypse because they drive a car,” Mr. Hilse said.
  • They were not only the most popular among all voters under the age of 60 but for the first time among unemployed voters, too.
  • in the European Parliament, the Greens will have roughly the same influence in the 751-seat assembly as the far-right populists led by Italy’s interior minister, Matteo Salvin
  • Germany’s Greens recently learned from a study of voter concerns in Europe that the second-most-popular statement among far-right voters, after one on limiting migration, was this: “We need to act on climate change because it’s hitting the poorest first and it’s caused by the rich.”
  • “Environmental policies are punitive when they are poorly implemented,’
  • “But if we reallocate this money to help people better insulate their homes and reduce their energy bills, everything is fine,
  • That is what Germany’s labor unions are preaching, too.
  • “If you want to achieve an ecological society, you have to take working people with you. That new society,” he said, “has to be fair.”
  • Workers are facing the prospect of job losses and transformation on two fronts: automation and climate policy
Javier E

Seeds, kale and red meat once a month - how to eat the diet that will save the world | ... - 0 views

  • By 2050, there will be about 10 billion of us, and how to feed us all, healthily and from sustainable food sources, is something that is already being looked at
  • The Norway-based thinktank Eat and the British journal the Lancet have teamed up to commission an in-depth, worldwide study, which launches at 35 different locations around the world today, into what it would take to solve this problem
  • Their solution is contingent on global efforts to stabilise population growth, the achievement of the goals laid out in the Paris Agreement on climate change and stemming worldwide changes in land use, among other things
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  • The initial report presents a flexible daily diet for all food groups based on the best health science, which also limits the impact of food production on the planet
  • The Eat-Lancet report posits that the global food system is broken. From the numbers quoted alone, it is hard to disagree: more than 2 billion people are micronutrient deficient, and almost 1 billion go hungry, while 2.1 billion adults are overweight or obese
  • Unhealthy diets are, it says, “the largest global burden of disease”, and pose a greater risk to morbidity and mortality than “unsafe sex, alcohol, drug, and tobacco use combined”
  • we are not (yet) extinct, but we have an era named after us. And what we are eating has a lot to do with that. Food production, the report states, “is the largest source of environmental degradation”.
  • It has identified a daily win-win diet – good for health, good for the environment – that is loosely based on the much-lauded Mediterranean diet, but with fewer eggs, less meat and fish, and next to no sugar.
  • it does include a range of foodstuff types that are adaptable, in theory, to the cuisines (potato or cassava; palm-oil-based, say, or soy-rich) and primary dietary restrictions (omnivore, no pork, pescatarian, vegetarian, vegan) found across the world
  • the daily ration of red meat stands at 7g (with an allowable range of 0-14g); unless you are creative enough to make a small steak feed two football sides and their subs, you will only be eating one once a month.
  • you are allocated little more than two chicken breast fillets and three eggs every fortnight and two tins of tuna or 1.5 salmon fillets a week
  • Per day, you get 250g of full-fat milk products (milk, butter, yoghurt, cheese): the average splash of milk in not very milky tea is 30g
  • The diet functions on the basis of 2,500 kcal daily,
  • It is still more food – way, way more – than two billion people currently have access to.
  • The future served up on a plate Monday
  • Breakfast: Porridge (made with water) with 1 tbsp honey or maple syrup, topped with nuts and seeds, and one piece of fruit; one cup of tea or coffee with milk
  • Lunch: Fennel, avocado, spinach and broccoli salad with feta and mustard and plant-oil dressing with one slice of sourdough bread, plus one plain yoghurt pot with a handful of berries
  • Dinner: Roast red cabbage and red lentil dahl with rice
  • Snack: Sugar-free ricecakes with nut butter.
  • Tuesday Breakfast: Two eggs with two slices wholemeal toast and Marmite
  • Lunch: Barley or other wholegrain salad with smoked mackerel, seeds
  • radishes, celery, chickpeas, herbs, oil and lemon juice dressing; one piece of fruit.
  • Dinner: One baked sweet potato with salsa, cavolo nero, avocado, black beans, grated cheese and a dollop of sour cream.
  • Snack: One handful of roasted chickpeas.
  • Wednesday Breakfast: Two slices of wholemeal toast with one sliced banana and honey; one cup of tea or coffee with milk.
  • Lunch: Spicy miso noodle soup with tofu, radishes, leafy greens and poached egg (that’s your quota for two weeks used up: no eggs for you next week); small pot of plain yoghurt
  • Dinner: Steamed veg (kale, broccoli and carrot) with a yoghurt and fresh herb dressing and olive oil, root veg and bean mash.
  • Snack: Cannellini bean dip with red pepper sticks
Javier E

Review: 'Transaction Man' and 'The Economists' Hour' - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • little more than a generation ago, a stealthy revolution swept America. It was a dual changing of the guard: Two tribes, two attitudes, two approaches to a good society were simultaneously displaced by upstart rivals
  • In the world of business, the manufacturing bosses gave way to Wall Street dealmakers, bent on breaking up their empires. “Organization Man,” as the journalist William H. Whyte had christened the corporate archetype in his 1956 book, was ousted by “Transaction Man,” to cite Nicholas Lemann’s latest work of social history.
  • In the world of public policy, lawyers who counted on large institutions to deliver prosperity and social harmony lost influence. In their place rose quantitative thinkers who put their faith in markets.
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  • It was The Economists’ Hour, as the title of the New York Times editorial writer Binyamin Appelbaum’s debut book has it.
  • Lemann and Appelbaum contribute to the second wave of post-2008 commentary. The first postmortems focused narrowly on the global financial crisis, dissecting the distorted incentives, regulatory frailty, and groupthink that caused bankers to blow up the world economy
  • The new round of analysis broadens the lens, searching out larger political and intellectual wrong turns, an expansion that reflects the morphing of the 2008 crash into a general populist surge.
  • Berle went further. He laid out in detail how shareholders, being so dispersed and numerous, could not hope to restrain bosses—indeed, how nobody could do so. Enormous powers to shape society belonged to company chieftains who answered to no one. Hence Berle’s prescription: The government should regulate them.
  • “the Treaty of Detroit,” GM’s bosses granted workers regular cost-of-living pay increases, a measure of job security, health insurance, and a pension—benefits that were almost unheard-of. General Motors had “set itself up as a comprehensive welfare state for its workers,” in Lemann’s succinct formulation.
  • Berle celebrated the Treaty of Detroit by propounding a pro-corporate liberalism. The corporation had become the “conscience-carrier of twentieth-century American society,” he marveled
  • Anticipating the “end of history” triumphalism of a later era, the sociologist Daniel Bell feted the corporatist order in a book titled The End of Ideology.
  • the chief threat to Berle’s vision came not from America’s suspicion of concentrated power. It came from economics
  • Starting in the 1970s, however, economists began to wield extraordinary influence. They persuaded Richard Nixon to abolish the military draft. They brought economics into the courtroom. They took over many of the top posts at regulatory agencies
  • The rise of economics, Appelbaum writes, “transformed the business of government, the conduct of business, and, as a result, the patterns of everyday life.
  • In sum, Jensen’s prescriptions inverted Berle’s. The market could be made to solve the problem of the firm. Government could pull back from regulation
  • Jensen agreed with Berle’s starting point: Corporate managers were unaccountable because shareholders could not restrain them. But rather than seeing a remedy in checks exerted by regulators and organized labor, Jensen proposed to overhaul the firm so that ownership and control were reunited
  • After decades in which economists’ influence expanded rapidly, the striking thing about the Trump administration and its foreign analogues is that they have largely dispensed with economic advisers
  • Shortly after the publication of his research, the invention of junk bonds made hostile takeovers the rage. During the ’80s, more than a quarter of the companies on the Fortune 500 list were targeted. Jensen became the scholar who explained why this unprecedented boardroom bloodbath was good news for America.
  • to a considerable extent, the news was good. Shielded from market discipline, the old corporate heads had deployed capital carelessly
  • From 1977 to 1988, Jensen calculated, American corporations had increased in value by $500 billion as a result of the new market for corporate control. Reengineered and reinvigorated, American business staved off what might have been an existential threat from Japanese competition.
  • Michael C. Jensen, an entertainingly impassioned financial economist who reframed attitudes toward the corporation in the mid-’70s.
  • Even before the 2008 crash, Jensen disavowed the transactional culture he had helped to legitimize. Holy shit, Jensen remembers saying to himself. Anything can be corrupted.
  • Contrary to common presumption, the economics establishment in the 1990s and 2000s did not believe that markets were perfectly efficient. Rather, influential economists took the pragmatic view that markets would discipline financiers more effectively than regulators could
  • He is happy to state at the outset that market-oriented reforms have lifted billions out of poverty, and to recognize that the deregulation that helped undo Berle-ism was not some kind of right-wing plot. In the late ’70s, it was initiated by Democrats such as President Jimmy Carter and Senator Ted Kennedy.
  • Inequality has grown to unacceptable extremes in highly developed economies. From 1980 to 2010, life expectancy for poor Americans scandalously declined, even as the rich lived longer.
  • Meanwhile, the primacy of economics has not generated faster economic growth. From 1990 until the eve of the financial crisis, U.S. real GDP per person grew by a little under 2 percent a year, less than the 2.5 percent a year in the oil-shocked 1970s.
  • economists have repeatedly made excessive claims for their discipline
  • In the ’60s, Kennedy’s and Johnson’s advisers thought they had the business cycle tamed. They believed they could prevent recessions by “fine-tuning” tax and spending policies
  • When this expectation was exposed as hubris, Milton Friedman urged central banks to focus exclusively on the supply of money circulating in the economy. This too was soon discredited. From the ’90s onward, economists oversold the benefits of targeting inflation, forgetting that other perils—the human cost of unemployment, the destabilization wrought by financial bubbles—might well be worse than rising prices
  • Greenspan and Summers ducked the political challenge of buffering new kinds of financial trading with regulatory safeguards
  • Yet a large cost eluded Jensen’s calculations. The social contract of the Berle era was gone: the unstated assumption of lifetime employment, the promise of retirement benefits, the sense of community and stability and shared purpose that gave millions of lives their meaning. Berle had viewed the corporation as a social and political institution as much as an economic one, and the dismembering of corporations on purely economic grounds was bound to generate fallout that had not been accounted for
  • today’s fierce international competition and disruptive innovation oblige businesses to cut costs or go under. The dilemma is that, even as they compel efficiency, globalization and technological change exacerbate inequality and uncertainty and therefore the need for a compassionate social contract
  • LinkedIn is not a solution to worker insecurity writ large, still less to inequality. On the contrary, a world in which people compete to gather connections may be even less equal than our current one. A few high-octane networkers will attract large followings, while a long tail of pedestrians will have only a handful of buddies
  • Rather than buy in to a single grand vision, societies should prefer a robust contest among interest groups—what Lemann calls pluralism. Borrowing from the forgotten early-20th-century political scientist Arthur Bentley, Lemann defines groups broadly. States and cities are “locality groups,” income categories are “wealth groups,” supporters of a particular politician constitute “personality groups.” People inevitably affiliate themselves with such groups; groups naturally compete to influence the government; and the resulting push and pull, not squabbles among intellectuals about organizing concepts, constitutes the proper stuff of politics
  • Lemann is aware of the risks in this conclusion. He cites the obvious objection: “The flaw in the pluralist heaven is that the heavenly chorus sings with a strong upper-class accent.” In a contest of competing interest groups, the ones with the most money are likely to win
  • For those who regard inequality as a challenge, an interest-group free-for-all is a perilous prescription.
  • Appelbaum presents a series of persuasive recommendations, confirming that Lemann is wrong to despair of reasoned, technocratic argument. If policy makers want ordinary Americans to appreciate the benefits of open trade, they must ensure that displaced workers have access to training and health care. Because some interest groups are weaker than others, government should correct the double standard by which the power of labor unions is regarded with antipathy but the power of business monopolies is tolerated
  • Progressives should look for ways to be pro-competition but anti-inequality
  • —it isn’t so clear that the economists have departed
  • throughout Appelbaum’s narrative, many of the knights who slay the dragons of bad economic ideology are economists themselves. The story of the past generation is more about debates among economists than about economists pitted against laypeople. Perhaps, with a bit of humility and retooling, the economists will have their day again. If they do not come up with the next set of good ideas, it is not obvious who will
Javier E

Kathryn Murdoch Steps Out of the Family Shadow to Fight Climate Change - The New York T... - 0 views

  • Ms. Murdoch said that she actually got the inspiration to take on climate change from that Al Gore talk at the Fox retreat in 2006. The former vice president presented a version of the slide show that had just been turned into the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”
  • the urgency of the climate crisis jolted her. “I decided to switch everything I was doing,” she said. “I wanted to be able to look my children in the eye and say ‘I did everything I could.’”
  • Now, working with the nonpartisan group Unite America, she is connecting like-minded organizations that are trying to overhaul the democratic process of voting to make it less likely to reward partisanship. She is also raising funds to ensure that the network will be effective.
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  • “I’m not saying I have all the answers — I don’t,” she said, “But what I know and what I feel very strongly is that sitting around not doing anything is the wrong answer.”
  • “Murdoch media are notorious amongst climate scientists for their constant stream of misinformation on climate change,” said Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “I can see how a thinking person who marries into that family might feel an urge to counter at least a little bit of the damage they do.”
  • She decided, however, that spreading scientific knowledge might not be enough. People already understand that the planet is warming and that humans are the cause. The deeper problem, she said, is that the government of the United States isn’t doing anything about it.
  • ichard H. Pildes, a professor at New York University Law School and an expert on constitutional law and democracy, said that democracy reform efforts were laudable but a long shot. They “might have effects at the margins,” he said, but “these reforms are not likely to fundamentally transform our politics from this hyper-polarized era we’ve been in for nearly 40 years.”
  • “Everyone is so panicked about the situation and wants to help, but doesn’t know what to do.”
  • She said she still had “a lot of hope” that we are capable of solving the climate crisis. “But we don’t yet have the political will.”
brickol

Under Intense Criticism, Trump Says Government Will Buy More Ventilators - The New York... - 0 views

  • Faced with a torrent of criticism from cities and states that have been pleading for help to deal with the most critically ill coronavirus victims, President Trump announced on Friday that the federal government would buy thousands of ventilators from a variety of makers, though it appeared doubtful they could be produced in time to help hospitals that are now overwhelmed.
  • His announcement came shortly after authorizing the government to “use any and all authority available under the Defense Production Act,” a Korean War-era authority allowing the federal government to commandeer General Motors’ factories and supply chains, to produce ventilators.
  • Just 24 hours before, he had dismissed the complaints of mayors and governors who said that they were getting little of the equipment they needed for an expected onslaught of serious cases.
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  • He was essentially ordering the company to do something it had already arranged to do: G.M. announced earlier on Friday that it was moving forward with an emergency joint venture with a small manufacturer, Ventec Life Systems, even in the absence of a contract from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
  • In a late-afternoon news conference, Mr. Trump said, “Now it turns out we will have to be producing large numbers.” He said that over the next 100 days, “we will either make or get, in some form, over 100,000 additional units,” more than three times the nation’s annual production.
  • Mr. Trump’s announcement at his coronavirus task force’s daily briefing came on a day of intensive criticism of the administration’s slow response and lack of leadership in a pandemic that has now resulted in over 1,500 deaths in the United States. More than 100,000 people here have been infected with the coronavirus, according to a New York Times database. The United States is the only country so far to hit that milestone.
  • Much of the criticism has focused on the absence of sufficient stockpiles of basic materials like masks and ventilators, and especially on the lack of urgency in organizing increased production and distribution.
  • Officials in more than 200 American cities, large and small, report a dire need for face masks, ventilators and other emergency equipment to respond to the coronavirus outbreak, according to a survey released on Friday.
  • In total, the conference tabulated that cities needed 28.5 million face masks, 24.4 million other items of personal protection equipment, 7.9 million test kits and 139,000 ventilators.
  • Roughly two-thirds of the cities said they had not received any emergency equipment or supplies from their state, the report said. And of those that did receive state aid, nearly 85 percent said it was not enough to meet their needs.
  • More than 90 percent — or 192 cities — told the conference that they did not have an adequate supply of face masks for police officers, firefighters or emergency workers. In addition, 92 percent of cities reported a shortage of test kits to diagnose who has contracted the virus — a problem Mr. Trump has said in recent days was all but solved — and 85 percent said they did not have a sufficient supply of ventilators available to health facilities.
  • In New York, the epicenter of the virus in the United States, doctors and nurses have reported that they were being forced to experiment with putting several patients on a single ventilator — a largely untested, unapproved practice that state authorities are now permitting in an effort to keep alive older adults or immunocompromised patients who could not breathe on their own.
  • “I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators,” Mr. Trump said Thursday night, discussing an urgent request from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York. “You know, you’re going to major hospitals sometimes, they’ll have two ventilators. And now, all of a sudden, they’re saying, can we order 30,000 ventilators?”
  • Mr. Trump’s abrupt change on the need for ventilators appeared to be in response to news reports that his administration had decided at the last minute not to announce a $1.5 billion contract with G.M. because of concern about the high cost and slow delivery of the machines.
  • Because Mr. Trump played down the severity of the coronavirus for much of January and February, and into the beginning of March, the White House got a late start in assessing how much equipment would be needed.
  • The White House had been preparing to unveil the G.M.-Ventec joint venture this week, and had hoped to announce that upward of 20,000 ventilators would be available in weeks, and that ultimately 80,000 would be produced. But the company complained that FEMA would not commit to spending the $250 million or so it would take to retool the factory.
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