LOS ANGELES – In December 2020, about 10 months into the COVID-19 pandemic, Javier Perez-Torres boarded a bus from Los Angeles to Tijuana, Mexico, to buy a bracelet for the upcoming birthday of one of the five granddaughters who lived with him and his wife. Perez-Torres, 68, a Mexican immigrant, liked the selection of inexpensive jewelry available in the city just south of the U.S. border, so he made the trek, which lasted more than four hours round-trip.
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Lives Cut Short: COVID-19 Takes Heavy Toll on Older Latinos | Healthiest Communities He... - 0 views
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For more than a month, Miron went to the hospital to see her husband, who’d been intubated. But nurses – following COVID-19 safety protocols – wouldn’t let her in. She’d sit on a bench outside the hospital for hours, then go home, and repeat the process.In early February of last year, a nurse called to let her know her partner of more than 40 years had died. She could now see him. “I said, ‘Why would I want to see him now?’” Alicia recalls in an interview in Spanish.
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Overall, mortality from COVID-19 is some two to three times higher for Latinos than for non-Hispanic whites, says Dr. Michael Rodriguez, vice chair in the Department of Family Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Rodriguez also is a professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences in UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health.
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Latinos have maintained this type of edge despite generally having lower incomes, less access to health care and a greater prevalence of some chronic health issues, such as diabetes and obesity. Some researchers believe the life expectancy advantage is tied to the fact that many Latino immigrants to the U.S. are younger and healthier than many older Latinos, and have lower rates of smoking.
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The researchers used projections of COVID-19 mortality to reach their conclusions, and a follow-up study arrived at similar findings. A CDC analysis showing provisional life expectancy estimates also pointed to a three-year drop in life expectancy for Latinos, and a shrinking gap between Latinos and whites.
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Latino subgroups have an array of political and cultural differences. But one cultural norm that cuts across all groups is the primacy of family. Whatever country they’re descended from, it’s not uncommon for Latinos in the U.S. to live in multigenerational households that often include young children, their adult parents and a grandparent or grandparents.When young children and adults – many of whom are essential workers – live with elderly grandparents, “that increases the risk for the older people in the household,” says Dr. Luis Ostrosky, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston. “If the younger people in the household contract COVID-19, they may be OK, because younger people have stronger immune systems and tend to be healthier. Older people – who tend to be not as healthy and have chronic diseases – may become severely ill, with increased risk of hospitalization and mortality.”
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“Once you put all those together, what you find is you have the disappearing of the Latino paradox,” Saenz says.While older Latinos have continued to have a higher rate of COVID-19 mortality than their white counterparts during each year of the pandemic, the difference in death rates has diminished over time. During the first year of the crisis, Latinos age 65 and older died of COVID-19 at 2.1 times the rate of older whites, Saenz and Garcia’s research shows. In 2021, older Latinos died at 1.6 times the rate of older whites, and into late April of this year, older Hispanics had died at 1.2 times the rate of older whites. Saenz attributes the narrowing difference to COVID-19 death rates among older whites in red states where vaccination rates are lower.
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Transportation, language and employment. A study in 2020 from the UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Initiative found Latinos (and Blacks) in Los Angeles County and New York City were roughly twice as likely to die of COVID-19 as non-Hispanic whites as of July 20 of that year, and noted that carpooling or taking public transportation to work may raise the risk of coronavirus exposure. The study also found that 34% and 37% of the populations in Los Angeles County and New York City were foreign-born, respectively, with Latinos making up the largest share of that population in each area. Approximately 13% of the foreign-born do not speak English, according to the report, which poses a challenge to their obtaining important health information.
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“A three-year reduction in life expectancy is huge in historical terms. We usually have not seen reductions this large except during times of war or major pandemics,” says Theresa Andrasfay, a postdoctoral scholar at the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology at USC and one of the PNAS study’s researchers. “Of course, it’s really sad to think about the individuals who died of COVID, but it also has broader implications for the family members of those who died.”COVID-19 has not only claimed the lives of many older Latinos, but many younger, working-age Latinos as well, leaving behind children, siblings, parents and grandparents who depended on them, Andrasfay says. She says she and other researchers are working on an update, tracking the effect of COVID-19 on life expectancy in 2021: “We’re finding a similar pattern (to 2020), with Latinos having the largest reduction in life expectancy.”
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Though he wasn’t in the best of health, Salvador Macias, 83, enjoyed going to a neighborhood community center for senior activities in Long Beach, a beachside city about 25 miles south of downtown Los Angeles. He lived in a modest, tidy house with his wife, Manuela, and their adult daughter, Julie.Salvador suffered from three chronic health conditions: diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure, says his son, Joe Macias.In August 2020 – four months before health care workers received the first COVID-19 vaccine – the elder Macias became ill with the disease, suffering from fatigue and severe shortness of breath. After several days, Salvador died at home. Manuela, who doesn’t have the chronic health conditions her husband had, also contracted COVID-19. She was hospitalized for a week, but survived.
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June Poised to be Major Month for Coronavirus Vaccine Decisions | Health News | US News - 0 views
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The Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory committee has several meetings scheduled for June, including a two-day meeting in mid-June when experts will consider whether to allow shots from Moderna and Pfizer in America’s youngest kids – a major milestone that has eluded parents for months.
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Additionally, the committee meets at the end of June to discuss whether and how to modify the coronavirus vaccine to combat circulating variants.The pair of developments could mean major changes on the vaccine front. Many parents have criticized the Biden administration for moving too slowly to authorize a coronavirus vaccine for the youngest children as record numbers became infected and hospitalized during the omicron wave. Meanwhile, experts have raised concerns over waning vaccine efficacy while waves of new coronavirus variants wash over the country and show no signs of slowing.
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The company said that the majority of infections were mild and that no kids developed severe cases of COVID-19, but it acknowledged that efficacy of the vaccine dropped during the omicron surge. It added that it is “preparing to evaluate the potential of a booster dose for all pediatric populations.”
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Despite mounting anticipation for the decision, the percentage of parents who will get their young children vaccinated is likely to be low compared to other age groups. A survey from February found that 31% of parents of children in the age range will get their kid vaccinated right away if a vaccine is authorized.
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The decision has to come this month “because of the time required for manufacturing the necessary doses,” three of FDA’s top officials – FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, vaccine expert Peter Marks and principal deputy commissioner Janet Woodcock – wrote in a paper published by the journal JAMA in May.Both Pfizer and Moderna are studying vaccines designed to combat omicron and other strains. However, data on the shots remains scarce.
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Clinical data from Moderna’s shot is expected this month, according to the company. Moderna in April released findings to support its booster shot development strategy, but the data comes after research in animals suggested the omicron-specific shot might not provide additional protection. A study from scientists at the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’s Vaccine Research Center found that primates boosted with the original vaccine had similar levels of protection as monkeys who got an omicro
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The Biden administration has warned of potential fall and winter surges infecting up to 100 million Americans as it gears up for a fall booster shot campaign, whether that is with an omicron-specific shot or not. The FDA authorized a fourth vaccine dose for people ages 50 and older in March, and expanding the shot to more age groups is under consideration.“Administering additional COVID-19 vaccine doses to appropriate individuals this fall around the time of the usual influenza vaccine campaign has the potential to protect susceptible individuals against hospitalization and death, and therefore will be a topic for FDA consideration,” the officials wrote.In fact, the officials said that coronavirus booster shots could be on their way to becoming a yearly occurrence.
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It is time to “accept that the presence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is the new normal,” according to the officials.“It will likely circulate globally for the foreseeable future, taking its place alongside other common respiratory viruses such as influenza,” they wrote.But paying for the shots remains an issue for the Biden administration as Congress shows little appetite for approving more COVID-19 funding.
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London Mayor Sadiq Khan Wants Trump's State Visit to Britain Canceled | National News |... - 0 views
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London Mayor Wants Trump State Visit Canceled The U.S. president criticized the mayor on Twitter following the London Bridge terror attack.
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London Mayor Sadiq Khan has again signaled he thinks government officials should rescind U.S. President Donald Trump's invitation for a state visit to Britain later this year. "I don't think we should roll out the red carpet to the president of the U.S.A. in the circumstances where his policies go against everything we stand for," Khan told Britain's Channel 4 News on Monday. Khan and Trump have been at odds in the wake of Saturday's London Bridge truck-and-knife terror attack that left seven people dead and dozens injured. [RELATED: Police Identify All 3 London Attackers] Trump on Sunday took to Twitter to criticize Khan's response to the attack, in which the London mayor said citizens shouldn't be alarmed by seeing more law enforcement on the streets. "At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is 'no reason to be alarmed!'" Trump tweeted.ADVERTISING Khan's office initially said the mayor was ignoring Trump's comments, calling the tweet "ill-informed" and accusing Trump of purposefully taking the mayor's remarks out of context. And Trump again lashed out.
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Leaked Drone Documents Show Two-Faced U.S.-Pakistan Relationship - US News and World Re... - 0 views
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The Pakistani government has known about and, at times, been complicit in the highly criticized U.S. drone campaign against suspected terrorists within the Islamic nation's borders, according to recently released documents.
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The revelation, unveiled through classified CIA materials obtained by the Washington Post, flies in the face of Pakistani rhetoric which for years has denounced the strikes as acts of war and crossing a "red line." The Pakistani prime minister said as recently as Wednesday after a meeting at the White House that the U.S. must end such strikes.
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These have accounted for more than 3,600 deaths, roughly 1,000 of which were civilians. The CIA memos, maps and photos unveiled by the Post indicate the intelligence agency shared this information with the Pakistani government between 2007 and 2011, when the campaign intensified.
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"We see them as a direct violation of our sovereignty. We also see them as a violation of international law," Pakistani Ambassador to the U.S. Sherry Rehman told reporters in February.
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"There is no question of quiet complicity. There is no question of 'wink and nod.' This is a parliamentary 'red line' that all our government institutions have internalized as policy," she said. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met with President Barack Obama at the White House on Wednesday. Sharif brought up the issue of drones with Obama, and later emphasized "the need for an end to such strikes."
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A break in U.S. drone strikes in May 2013 also aligned with the Pakistani election. Experts in counterterrorism strikes and relations with Pakistan believed at the time this was not a coincidence.
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Education Budget Hearing Highlights Gulf Between GOP and Trump | Education News | US News - 0 views
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Education Budget Hearing Exposes Chasm Between GOP and Trump
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When Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos testified before a Senate appropriations subcommittee Tuesday regarding the president’s budget proposal, her remarks that private schools must follow federal law if they receive federal funding received the lion’s share of attention. But the hearing, during which nearly every GOP members criticized aspects of the spending plan, also exposed just how far apart the Trump administration’s education agenda is with that of Republicans in Congress, perhaps foreshadowing how likely – or not – the White House is to achieve any of its policy priorities.
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Jeremy Corbyn Tries to Pull Off the Impossible as Theresa May Tries to Hold On to Power... - 0 views
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U.K. Election: Theresa May Tries to Hold On
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As the United Kingdom takes part in its third nationwide vote in two years on Thursday, Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, a political renegade, is trying to do what was once thought impossible: become prime minister. "We're going to win tomorrow!" Corbyn said late Wednesday in his final speech of the campaign, given in his London-area Parliamentary district. "Tomorrow you have the power to say our country can be better than this. It can be run in the interests of the majority; not the political and corporate elites."
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Trump Vows Infrastructure Reform, Democrats See 'Disappointment' | US News - 0 views
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Trump Vows Infrastructure Reform as Democrats See 'Disappointment'
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President Donald Trump offered few new details of his infrastructure plan during a speech Wednesday afternoon in Cincinnati, though he did promise that "everything about it is going to be right." That may include how support for the proposal lines up on Capitol Hill. After Trump's remarks, lawmakers on the left immediately panned his plans to potentially put the future of the country's public roads into private hands. "Once again, we have another disappointment in the Trump administration. Not only are they not putting serious dollars into infrastructure, they're actually going to do it by selling off to private individuals and private companies on Wall Street the ability to supposedly create this infrastructure investment and these jobs," Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., said on a conference call hosted by the progressive Millions of Jobs Coalition. "The problem is, in places like Wisconsin, for the vast majority of our state, we're not going to see a dime, because it's not a profitable enterprise."
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Donald Trump Tweets 'Total And Complete Vindication' Following James Comey Testimony | ... - 0 views
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Trump Accuses Comey of Lying to Congress
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President Donald Trump tweeted Friday morning that James Comey's testimony gave him "total and complete vindication," and he accused the former FBI director of lying under oath. "Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication," he tweeted. "..and WOW, Comey is a leaker!"
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But Kasowitz simultaneously cheered Comey's confirmation that he had told Trump that Trump was not personally under investigation by the FBI and said his testimony "makes clear that the president never sought to impede the investigation into attempted Russian interference in the 2016 election."
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All the Infrastructure a Tyrant Would Need, Courtesy of Bush and Obama - Conor Frieders... - 0 views
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Bush and Obama have built infrastructure any devil would lust after. Behold the items on an aspiring tyrant's checklist that they've provided their successors:A precedent that allows the president to kill citizens in secret without prior judicial or legislative reviewThe power to detain prisoners indefinitely without charges or trialOngoing warrantless surveillance on millions of Americans accused of no wrongdoing, converted into a permanent database so that data of innocents spied upon in 2007 can be accessed in 2027Using ethnic profiling to choose the targets of secret spying, as the NYPD did with John Brennan's blessingNormalizing situations in which the law itself is secret -- and whatever mischief is hiding in those secret interpretationsThe permissibility of droning to death people whose identities are not even known to those doing the killingThe ability to collect DNA swabs of people who have been arrested even if they haven't been convicted of anythingA torture program that could be restarted with an executive order
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we're allowing ourselves to become a nation of men, not laws. Illegal spying? Torture? Violating the War Powers Resolution and the convention that mandates investigating past torture? No matter. Just intone that your priority is keeping America safe.
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This isn't a argument about how tyranny is inevitable. It is an attempt to grab America by the shoulders, give it a good shake, and say: Yes, it could happen here, with enough historical amnesia, carelessness, and bad luck. We're not special. Our voters won't always pick good men and women to represent us.
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Stop acting like the president takes an oath to keep us safe, when his job is to protect and defend the Constitution. Doing so keeps the American project safe.
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Past generations fought monarchies, slaveholders, and Nazis to win, expand, and protect that project. And we're so risk-averse -- not that we're actually minimizing risk -- that we're "balancing" the very rights in our Constitution against a threat with an infinitesimal chance of killing any one of us
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the national-security state, loosed of the Constitution's safeguards, is a far bigger threat to liberty than al-Qaeda will ever be. Vesting it with more power every year -- expanding its size, power, and functions in secret without any debate about the wisdom of the particulars -- is an invitation to horrific abuses, and it renders the concept of government by the people a joke.
The New Nuclear Renaissance - 0 views
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Ahead of Election, Poll Shows a Nation Divided | US News - 0 views
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election poll shows nation Evangelicals Trump division
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Less than two weeks away from the presidential election, an annual survey released Tuesday shows the nation is sharply divided on nearly every topic
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from race relations to what problems the next president should fix first, and a record percentage of people believe the country is on the wrong track – up nearly 20 percentage points since the last race for the White House.
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a sizable number of Americans, particularly evangelical Protestants, believe the nation’s best days came during the era of Elvis, the Cold War and legal segregation.
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Roughly 72 percent of likely Trump voters believe the American way of life has changed for the worse since the 1950s, but 70 percent of likely Clinton voters say things have changed for the better.
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“Does the future look bright? Are we going to reach back for something in the past? Or are we going to lean into the cultural and demographic changes that are happening in the country and even celebrate those changes?”
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the winner, Jones says, will face a daunting challenge: unifying a country that’s divided on partisan lines, including political correctness and whether the election itself will be legitimate.
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nearly half think the era of Beyonce, Islamic State group and Black Lives Matter is so bad that the country needs an authoritarian leader “who is willing to break some rules in order to set things right.”
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vangelical Protestants had the most pessimistic view of any group: Nearly three-quarters of them – 74 percent – say American culture has changed for the worse since the 1950s
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Left-right partisanship, along with class, race and education levels, divides Americans on nearly every issue:
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Democrats overwhelmingly believe immigrants make America stronger, while Republicans clearly believe they’re detrimental to the national character;
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a wide margin of Democrats worry about wealth and inequality, while less than a third of Republicans think it’s a concern.
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“To the sense that there’s this vertigo among many, particularly those who are on the losing side of this change, and feeling left behind, is not so surprising, I think
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Syria Becoming Breeding Ground for Attacks on Europe, U.S. - US News and World Report - 0 views
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U.S. inaction in Syria has created a "cauldron of bad activity" that is breeding thousands of foreign extremist fighters to eventually launch attacks against the U.S. and Europe, according to senior U.S. lawmakers.
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He also cited infighting among Islamic extremist groups, some of which wish to launch foreign attacks from strongholds in eastern Syria. Al-Qaida affiliates there are advocating for patience to establish a foundation before provoking Western military response, Rogers said.
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When it's over, these people will be combat trained, combat hardened and they're going to want to go home," Rogers said of the extremists. "We are going to have a wave of individuals who are committed, who have training that we haven't seen before going to Europe, and by the way the U.S. as well."
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The U.S. stated after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that it would not allow such havens to exist again. Syria today is perhaps the largest safe haven the U.S. has seen without an ability to conduct counter operations, said Rogers. "That should concern all of us." The U.S., Russia, and other players in the civil war, now well into its third year, will likely meet this November for a second round of talks in Geneva, following a similar summit in July 2012.
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Human Rights Groups Allege U.S. Drone Strikes Unlawful - US News and World Report - 0 views
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Amnesty International's report "'Will I be next?' U.S. Drone Strikes in Pakistan" investigates nine of the 45 reported drone strikes that took place between January 2012 through September 2013. The report discloses that some of the victims hit by the drones were not the intended al Qaida or Taliban targets but civilians.
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The Amnesty report suggests that the U.S. could possibly be committing international war crimes on account of some of the drone strikes that have occurred. "Amnesty International is seriously concerned that these and other strikes have resulted in unlawful killings that may constitute extrajudicial executions or war crimes," the report stated.
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The report says the first attack killed 8 people and the second attack came moments later, after locals had rushed to help the wounded. The incident wounded 22 people and killed 18 men, including a 14-year-old boy.
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Obama also defended the drone program , when it came into question this past May, by saying that the unmanned airplanes would only be used if there was an "imminent threat," and when they was "near certainty" that civilians would not be hurt and "no other governments capable of effectively addressing the threat," CNN reported.
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Is the U.S. Disengaging From the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict? - US News - 0 views
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With a weak Palestinian leader and an Israeli prime minister who has rejected peace, the Obama administration might prefer a disengagement doctrine.
Scrutiny Over Handling of Michael Brown Case Continues - US News - 0 views
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Ta-Nehisi Coates defines a new race beat - Columbia Journalism Review - 0 views
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history culture race racism American idea exceptionalism journalism slavery freedom empathy white privilege
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“The Case for Reparations,” Coates’ 16,000-word cover story for The Atlantic, where he is a national correspondent. Published online in May, it was a close look at housing discrimination, such as redlining, that was really about the need for America to take a brutally honest look in the mirror and acknowledge its deep racial divisions.
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The story broke a single-day traffic record for a magazine story on The Atlantic’s website, and in its wake, Politico named him to its list of 50 thinkers changing American politics
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Coates believes that if there is an answer to contemporary racism, it lies in confronting the pas
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When an event becomes news, there is often an implication that it is an exception—that the world is mostly working as it should and this event is newsworthy because it’s an aberration. If the race-related stories we see most often in the media are about personal bigotry, then our conception of racism is limited to the bigoted remarks or actions—racism becomes little more than uttering the n-word.
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he came to see black respectability—the idea that, to succeed, African-Americans must stoically prevail against the odds and be “twice as good” as white people to get the same rights—as deeply immoral.
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For Coates, true equality means “black people in this country have the right to be as mediocre as white people,” he says. “Not that individual black people will be as excellent, or more excellent, than other white people.”
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he cites research that in 1860 slaves were the largest asset in the US economy. “It is almost impossible to think of democracy, as it was formed in America, without the enslavement of African-Americans,” he says. “Not that these things were bumps in the road along the way, but that they were the road.”
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Another term for that road is “white supremacy.” This refers not so much to hate groups, but, as Coates defines it, a system of policies and beliefs that aims to keep African-Americans as “a peon class.”
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To be “white” in this sense does not refer merely to skin color but to the degree that someone qualifies as “normal,” and thus worthy of the same rights as all Americans
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The pool where all these ideas eventually arrive is a question: “How big-hearted can democracy be?” he says. “How many people can it actually include and sustain itself? That is the question I’m asking over and over again.”
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it is a question of empathy. Are humans capable of forming a society where everyone can flourish?
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there was the coverage of Michael Brown (or Jordan Davis, or Renisha McBride, or Eric Garner): unarmed African-Americans killed by police or others under controversial circumstances. In each case, the storyline was that these horrific encounters were caused either by genuine provocation, or by race-fueled fear or hatred. Either way, they were stories of personal failings.
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we miss the real question of why there is a systemic, historical difference in the way police treat blacks versus whites.
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To him, it’s an open question whether or not America will ever be capable of fostering true equality. “How big-hearted can democracy be? It points to a very ugly answer: maybe not that big-hearted at all. That in fact America is not exceptional. That it’s just like every other country. That it passes its democracy and it passes all these allegedly big-hearted programs [the New Deal, the G.I. Bill] but still excludes other people,
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a lack of historical perspective in the media’s approach to race. “Journalism privileges what’s happening now over the long reasons for things happening,” he says. “And for African-Americans, that has a particular effect.”
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Even the very existence of racism is questioned: A recent study published by the Association of Psychological Science has shown that whites think they are discriminated against due to race as much if not more than blacks.
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“So when you’re talking about something like institutional racism and prejudice, how do you talk about that as an objective reality?”
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Coates’ strength is in connecting contemporary problems to historical scholarship. “I think if I bring anything to the table it’s the ability to synthesize all of that into something that people find emotionally moving,” he says. The irony of the reparations piece, as unoriginal as it may have been to scholars, is that it was news to many people.
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Reporting on race requires simultaneously understanding multiple, contradictory worlds, with contradictory narratives. Widespread black poverty exists; so do a black middle class and a black president
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Progress is key to the myth of American Exceptionalism, and the notion that America is built on slavery and on freedom are discordant ideas that threaten any simple storyline. Coates, together with others who join him, is trying to claim the frontier of a new narrative.
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reading Coates is like building a worldview, piece by piece, on an area of contemporary life that’s otherwise difficult to grasp.
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“To come and tell someone may not be as effective in convincing them as allowing them to learn on their own. If you believe you come to a conclusion on your own, you’re more likely to agree.”
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It’s brave to bare yourself intellectually on the Web, and to acknowledge mistakes, especially when the capital that public intellectuals appear to have is their ability to be “right.”
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Coates is equally demanding of his followers. Online he is blunt, and willing to call people out. He cares enough to be rigorous
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despite being a master of online engagement, Coates insists he does not write for others, an idea he explained in a recent post: “I have long believed that the best part of writing is not the communication of knowledge to other people, but the acquisition and synthesizing of knowledge for oneself. The best thing I can say about the reparations piece is that I now understand.”
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He is no soothsayer, telling people what to think from on high, but rather is refreshingly open about what he doesn’t know, inviting readers to learn with him. Coates is not merely an ivory-tower pontificator or a shiny Web 2.0 brand. He is a public intellectual for the digital age.
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In a 2010 post about antebellum America, Coates mentioned feminist and abolitionist Angelina Grimke. “Suffice to say that much like Abe Lincoln, and Ulysses Grant, Angelina Grimke was a Walker,” he wrote. “What was the Walker reference?” Rosemartian asked in the comments section. “Just someone who spends their life evolving, or, walking,” Coates replied. “Grant and Lincoln fit in there for me. Malcolm X was another Walker. Walkers tend to be sometimes—even often—wrong. But they are rarely bigots, in the sense of nakedly clinging to ignorance.”
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Why Trump Now? - The New York Times - 0 views
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The economic forces driving this year’s nomination contests have been at work for decades. Why did the dam break now?
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The share of the gross national product going to labor as opposed to the share going to capital fell from 68.8 percent in 1970 to 60.7 percent by 2013
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the number of manufacturing jobs dropped by 36 percent, from 19.3 million in 1979 to 12.3 million in 2015, while the population increased by 43 percent, from 225 million to 321 million.
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The postwar boom, when measured by the purchasing power of the average paycheck, continued into the early 1970s and then abruptly stoppe
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Starting in 2000, two related developments added to worsening conditions for the middle and working classes.
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that year marked the end of net upward mobility. Before 2000, the size of both the lower and middle classes had shrunk, while the percentage of households with inflation-adjusted incomes of $100,000 or more grew. Americans were moving up the ladder.
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After 2000, the middle class continued to shrink, but so did the percentage of households making $100,000 or more. The only group to grow larger after 2000 was households with incomes of $35,000 or less. Americans were moving down the ladder.
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The second adverse trend is that trade with China, which shot up after China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in December 2001, imposed far larger costs on American workers than most economists anticipated
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If one had to project the impact of China’s momentous economic reform for the U.S. labor market with nothing to go on other than a standard undergraduate economics textbook, one would predict large movements of workers between U.S. tradable industries (say, from apparel and furniture to pharmaceuticals and jet aircraft), limited reallocation of jobs from tradables to non-tradables, and no net impacts on U.S. aggregate employment. The reality of adjustment to the China shock has been far different. Employment has certainly fallen in U.S. industries most exposed to import competition. But so too has overall employment in local labor markets in which these industries were concentrated. Offsetting employment gains either in export-oriented tradables or in non-tradables have, for the most part, failed to materialize.
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High wage workers find it relatively easy to adjust and “do not experience an earnings loss,” argue Autor and his colleagues. Low wage workers, in contrast, “suffer large differential earnings loss, as they obtain lower earnings per year both while working at the initial firm and after relocating to new employers.”
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The recipe for populism seems pretty clear: take a surge in manufacturing imports from China and continued automation in the US workplace and add a tepid macroeconomy. The result is a combustible stew sure to sour the stomach of party leaders nationwide.
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The stew, to continue Hanson’s metaphor, began to boil over with the cataclysmic financial collapse in September 2008, which many people left and right felt was caused by reckless financial engineering on Wall Street. The collapse and the destruction it left in its wake was, without question, the most important economic and political event in recent years.
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“It was the financial crisis, what it revealed about government-Wall Street links, and the fumbling of the response to it that put the nail in the coffin of trust in government,
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, TARP insulated the very institutions and executives that caused the collapse and the disastrous recession that followed.
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The widespread sense that all the elites in Washington and New York conspired to bail out the miscreants who caused the disaster and then gave them bonuses, while the rest of us lost our houses or saw their value, the biggest and often only asset of Americans, plummet, lost our jobs or saw them frozen and stagnant, and then saw gaping inequality grow even more, is just palpable.
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On Jan. 10, 2010, the Supreme Court granted those in upper income brackets additional privileges in its Citizens United decision (buttressed by subsequent lower court rulings) that allowed wealthy individuals, corporations and unions to make unlimited political contributions. By opening the door to the creation of SuperPACs and giving Wall Street and other major financial sectors new ways to buy political outcomes, the courts gave the impression, to say the least, that they favored establishment interests over those of the less well off.
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A Bloomberg poll last September found that 78 percent of voters would like to see Citizens United overturned, and this view held across a range of partisan loyalties: Republicans at 80 percent; Democrats at 83; and independents at 71.
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. Obamacare, a program many in the white middle and working classes perceived as reducing their own medical care in order to provide health coverage to the disproportionately minority poor.
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By the midterm elections of 2010, voter dissatisfaction among whites found expression in the Tea Party movement, which produced the sweeping defeat of Democrats in competitive congressional districts as well as of moderate and center-right Republicans in primary contests.Voter anger was directed at two targets — the “undeserving rich” and the “undeserving poor.”
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To many of those who cast their ballots in anger in 2010 and 2014, however, it appeared that their votes had not changed anything. Obamacare stayed in place, Wall Street and corporate America grew richer, while the average worker was stuck going nowhere.
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Already disillusioned with the Democratic Party, these white voters became convinced that the mainstream of the Republican Party had failed them, not only on economic issues, but on cultural matters as well.
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A September 2015 Ispos survey asked voters if they agreed or disagreed with the statement “More and more, I don’t identify with what America has become.” 72 percent of surveyed Republicans concurred, compared to 58 percent of independents and 45 percent of Democrats. Two thirds of Republicans, 62 percent, agreed with the statement “These days I feel like a stranger in my own country,” compared to 53 percent of independents and 37 percent of Democrats. Here is one place where Trump’s scathing dismissal of political correctness found fertile ground.
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If he prevails, a constituency that could force politicians to confront the problems of the working and middle class will waste its energies on a candidate incompetent to improve the lives of the credulous men and women lining up to support him.
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the consequences of disillusionment with old guard Republicans:The intersection of inequality driven by real wage/income stagnation and the fact that the folks perceived to have blown the damn economy up not only recovered first, but got government assistance in the form of bailouts to do so. If you’re in the anxious middle and that doesn’t deeply piss you off, you’re an unusually forgiving person.
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This election has demonstrated that there is no Republican Party organization, per se. The Republican Party exists as an array of allied groups, incumbent office holders, media organizations, and funding vehicles (e.g., SuperPACs, 501(c)(4)s, and the like). When people ask why the “establishment” or “the party” has not done anything to stop Trump, it is not exactly clear who they mean.
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The tragedy of the 2016 campaign is that Trump has mobilized a constituency with legitimate grievances on a fool’s errand.If he is shoved out of the field somehow, his supporters will remain bitter and enraged, convinced that a self-serving and malign elite defeated their leader.
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In these circumstances, Bernstein wrote, the logic supporting the traditional Republican Party fell apart:The core theme of Republican establishment lore has been to demonize not unregulated finance or trade or inequality, but ‘the other’ – e.g., the immigrant or minority taking your job and claiming unneeded government support. And yet, none of their trickle down, deregulatory agenda helped ameliorate the problem at all. So they lost control.
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Missing in your narrative were 2 other factors that contributed to American anger and the turn to Mr. Trump. Those two factors are: the group of very wealthy American's who were convened by the Koch brothers to pool their resources to destroy President Obama and the Congressional Democrats and moderate Republicans, e.g. Senator Lugar.
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were suffering from a major contraction and the drying up of credit & jobs and the President unwisely & wrongly appointed the Simpson-Bowles commission to rein in the debt. Remember Harvard's Rogoff & Reinhart who came up with that Debt to GDP ratio? And the rally of our elites & Pete Peterson et al that Deficits were the problem, when the truth, based on history, was just the opposite.
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The 2nd factor which can also be attributed to the White House as well as Democrats in the Congress who joined Republicans in misdiagnosing the problem as deficits and debt.
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How Serious Is the French Proposal on Middle East Peace? - US News - 0 views
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It is still unclear whether the international community will support the French initiative to restart talks on a two-state solution.
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The ambitious French idea first suggested by Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius at the end of January of holding an international conference to kick-start the two-state solution process in Paris in July is alive and kicking. A senior Western diplomat in Jerusalem told Al-Monitor that the initiative to restart Israeli-Palestinian talks has been adopted by the new French Foreign Minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault.
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The three-step approach — which France proposed at the end of January 2016 and includes consultations with Palestinians and Israelis, a spring preparatory meeting of the international working groups and a July conference in Paris — is definitely on track, the diplomat said.
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It is unclear how strongly the international community will support the French initiative. Washington appears to have washed its hands of the Palestinian conflict, although US Secretary of State John Kerry made a special effort to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Feb. 21 during Kerry's most recent visit to Amman. No details of that meeting have been made public and it is not clear whether the French conference idea was discussed.
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A major stumbling block to the conference has been the possibility of Israel refusing to attend over the French desire to recognize a Palestinian state if the talks fail, according to the former minister. Speaking to an annual gathering of French diplomats Jan. 29 about what France would do if it faced a wall of Israeli rejection, Fabius said, "Well, … in this case, we need to face our responsibilities by recognizing the Palestinian state."
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Despite the obvious skepticism due to past failures, an international effort to replicate the Iranian agreement process and solve the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict might work if there is seriousness behind the French effort and if Washington is willing to spend political capital to make it work.
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Christmas Delivery: First U.S. Space Station Shipment in Months - US News - 0 views
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The International Space Station accepted its first U.S. shipment in more than half a year early Wednesday, receiving Christmas presents and much-needed groceries for the resident astronauts.
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"There's much rejoicing on the ground," Mission Control radioed.
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NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren (CHELL LEND-grin) used the space station's big robot arm to grab the capsule and its 3 ½ tons of cargo. The operation went smoothly, thanks to all the practice Lindgren put in. He operated the crane via joy sticks, joking earlier this week, "I knew those hours playing video games would come in handy!"
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The capture occurred as the spacecraft soared 250 miles above the Arabian sea, skirting the coast of Oman. Three hours later, the capsule was bolted into place. The door was to remain shut until Thursday, though, given the crew's busy schedule.
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The supply ship, dubbed Cygnus after the swan constellation, rocketed into orbit Sunday from Cape Canaveral, Florida. NASA's commercial shipper, Orbital ATK, used another company's rocket for the launch. Orbital supply runs had been on hold ever since a launch explosion last year. The other U.S. supplier, SpaceX, meanwhile, has not made a delivery since April because of a launch accident.
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Orbital flight controllers, based at company headquarters in Dulles, Virginia, applauded and shook hands once the Cygnus made contact with the space station Wednesday morning. They wore retro-style white shirts, black slacks and skinny black ties in honor of the Mercury astronaut for whom the capsule had been named, Deke Slayton, a commercial space pioneer before his death in 1993.
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The previous Cygnus also bore Slayton's name, but ended up being destroyed seconds after liftoff in October 2014. Orbital christened this capsule the S.S. Deke Slayton II.
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NASA is paying billions of dollars to Orbital and SpaceX to stock the space station. The pantry got a little too empty for NASA's taste over the past year; besides the two lost commercial shipments, Russia also endured a failed supply run. The Russian Space Agency didn't take long, however, to resume flights; another shipment is scheduled for just before Christmas.
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Two of the six-man crew — space station commander Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko — are three-quarters of the way through a one-year mission. They're especially eager to see the Cygnus contents, since they won't be back on the planet until March.
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The Cygnus will remain at the space station for a month, before being filled with trash and cut loose for a fiery re-entry.