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ethanshilling

College Student's Simple Invention Helps Nurses Work and Patients Rest - The New York Times - 0 views

  • During his day shift at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Anthony Scarpone-Lambert steps into a patient’s room. The lights are off, but he knows he has to change the IV without disturbing the patient.
  • It’s this dilemma that he sought to fix by inventing what he and his co-founder call the uNight Light, a wearable light-emitting diode, or LED, that allows nurses to illuminate their work space without interrupting a patient’s sleep.
  • Mr. Scarpone-Lambert and his co-founder, Jennifferre Mancillas, are calling the light a breakthrough for frontline health care workers.
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  • They were able to finance the product, which went through 30 prototypes and iterations, with grants and personal money as well as funding from start-up accelerators and awards
  • However, it has features that distinguish it from others on the market, including different light modes — blue, red and white.
  • Red light, which has a long wavelength, can help promote alertness, while blue light, which has a shorter wavelength, tends to do the same while also suppressing melatonin, a hormone that helps regulate sleep, she said.
  • “It’s the tool that you didn’t know that you needed until it’s right on your scrub top, and you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, where has this been this whole time?’” Ms. Mancillas said. “It makes life so much easier.”
  • More than 400 nurses have tested the uNight Light, and more than 90 percent said it was helpful, the inventors said. They have received 1,500 orders and will start shipments next month.
delgadool

Opinion | What if They Held an Impeachment Trial and Nobody Came? - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Thousands of families on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border are betting that laxer rules coming from the Biden administration will make it easier for them to get to the United States and remain here. And tougher rules by the Mexican government make it more difficult for the U.S. to deport them back to Mexico. Throw in fears about further spread of the coronavirus, and it has the makings of the administration’s first self-made crisis.
  • As with Newton’s third law of motion, every progressive action will have an equal and opposite Trumpian reaction. Which is why Biden needs to seize the middle ground here.
  • It’s an improvement that relief may now be capped at $2,800 for couples making less than $100,000 a year (or $1,400 for individuals making less than $50,000). But I’d rather we spend more money on the neediest rather than sending relief to the middle class.
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  • About 1.3 million people are getting a dose every day now, with more on some days, so let’s see how it goes and then revisit this conversation.
katherineharron

Garland vows at confirmation hearing to keep politics out of DOJ while drawing bipartisan praise - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • Merrick Garland, President Joe Biden's attorney general nominee, vowed Monday to keep politics out of the Justice Department and to fully prosecute the "heinous" crimes committed in the attack on the US Capitol in the deadly riot on January 6.
  • Garland was praised by Republicans and Democrats alike in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday, where he faced questions about the politically charged investigations that await him if confirmed to lead the Justice Department
  • he strongly rebuked the Trump administration's child separation immigration policy, calling it "shameful" and committing to aiding a Senate investigation into the matter.
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  • Garland, who led the Justice Department investigation into the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, said that the current threat from White supremacists now is a "more dangerous period than we faced at that time," vowing to make his first priority to ensure investigators have all the resources they need to investigate the attack on the Capitol. He also pledged to redouble the Justice Department's efforts to fight discrimination in law enforcement and provide equal justice amid heated policy debates over race and the criminal justice system.
  • While Republicans blocked Garland's Supreme Court nomination, his selection at attorney general was lauded by both Democrats and Republicans on Monday, and he is expected to be easily confirmed. Garland's hearing will continue for a second day on Tuesday. Durbin told CNN on Monday that he expected Garland's nomination would be approved by his panel next Monday, and he expects the full Senate will confirm Garland later that week. He said Republicans have agreed not to delay next Monday's committee vote, which they can do for one week under the rules.
  • "Communities of color and other minorities still face discrimination in housing, education, employment, and the criminal justice system."
  • Garland is testifying Monday before the Judiciary Committee five years after he became the poster child for the Republican blockade of an open Supreme Court seat in the final year of President Barack Obama's term when Senate Republicans denied even a hearing for Garland as Obama's Supreme Court nominee.
  • "I think that the policy was shameful. I can't imagine anything worse than tearing parents from their children, and we will provide all of the cooperation that we possibility can," Garland told Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin of Illinois.
  • Grassley asked Garland whether he had spoken to Biden about his son's case, where federal investigators in Delaware have been examining multiple financial issues involving the younger Biden, including whether he violated tax and money laundering laws in business dealings in foreign countries, principally China, two people briefed on the probe told CNN in December. "I have not," Garland responded. "
  • Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, asked him about whether he would be Biden's "wing man," in a dig at former Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder."I am not the President's lawyer," Garland responded. "I am the United States' lawyer."
  • Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican considered a possible 2024 presidential candidate, asked Garland whether he supported defunding the police. Garland responded by saying neither he nor Biden support that, while noting, "We saw how difficult the lives of police officers were in the bodycam videos we saw when they were defending the Capitol."
  • Garland responded he did not have any regret for supporting the death penalty in that case, but he has developed concerns in the two decades since, including over exonerations, the arbitrary way it's applied and the impact it's had on communities of color.
  • "The public's faith in the Department of Justice has been shaken -- the result of four years of Departmental leadership consumed with advancing the personal and political interests of one man -- Donald Trump," Durbin said in his opening statement. "Judge Garland, we are confident that you can rebuild the Department's once hallowed halls. That you can restore the faith of the American people in the rule of law. And that you can deliver equal justice for all."
  • Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, and several other Democrats asked Garland how the Justice Department can address the disparate treatment Black Americans receive in the justice system and problems with police discrimination.Garland pointed specifically to mass incarceration as one issue that should be tackled. "We can focus our attention on violent crimes and other crimes that put great danger in our society, and not allocate our resources to something like marijuana possession," Garland said.
anonymous

Currency markets turn "risk on"; Aussie crosses $0.8 for first time in 3 years | Reuters - 0 views

  • The dollar index dropped on Thursday, risk currencies rose to three-year highs and the euro continued its surge against the Swiss franc, as currency markets were boosted by dovish signals from the U.S. Federal Reserve.
  • Easy financial conditions, the promise of fiscal stimulus and accelerating COVID-19 vaccine rollouts have driven money into what is known as the reflation trade, referring to bets on an upswing in economic activity and prices.
  • market participants expect the bull run in global stocks, fuelled by cheap liquidity and reflation hopes, to continue for at least another six months.
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  • As world shares rose, the dollar weakened, and was down 0.3% against a basket of currencies at 89.754 at 1222 GMT.The Australian dollar rose against the U.S. dollar, crossing $0.8 for the first time in three years.The Canadian dollar also hit new 3-year highs against the U.S. dollar, up 0.3% at 1.2481 at 1224 GMT.
  • the reflation trade can benefit commodity currencies because commodity prices go up… but they also tend to benefit because of dollar weakness when stock markets come back in as well,
Javier E

Opinion | The Ideas That Won't Survive the Coronavirus - The New York Times - 0 views

  • what might die after Covid-19 is the myth that we are the best country on earth, a belief common even among the poor, the marginal, the precariat, who must believe in their own Americanness if
  • Is it too much to hope that the forced isolation of many Americans, and the forced labor of others, might compel radical acts of self-reflection, self-assessment and, eventually, solidarity?
  • we have a choice: Will we accept a world of division and scarcity, where we must fight over insufficient resources and opportunities, or imagine a future when our society is measured by how well it takes care of the ill, the poor, the aged and the different?
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  • As a writer, I know that such a choice exists in the middle of a story. It is the turning point. A hero — in this case, the American body politic, not to mention the president — is faced with a crucial decision that will reveal who he or she fundamentally is.
  • We are not yet at the halfway point of our drama. We have barely made it to the end of the first act, when we slowly awaken to the threat coming our way and realize we must take some kind of action. That action, for now, is simply doing what we must to fight off Covid-19 and survive as a country, weakened but alive.
  • The halfway point comes only when the hero meets a worthy opponent — not one who is weak or marginal or different, but someone or something that is truly monstrous. Covid-19, however terrible, is only a movie villain.
  • Our real enemy does not come from the outside, but from within. Our real enemy is not the virus but our response to the virus — a response that has been degraded and deformed by the structural inequalities of our society.
  • America has a history of settler colonization and capitalism that ruthlessly exploited natural resources and people, typically the poor, the migratory, the black and the brown.
  • That history manifests today in our impulse to hoard, knowing that we live in an economy of self-reliance and scarcity; in our dependence on the cheap labor of women and racial minorities; and in our lack of sufficient systems of health care, welfare, universal basic income and education to take care of the neediest among us.
  • What this crisis has revealed is that, while almost all of us can become vulnerable — even corporations and the wealthy — our government prioritizes the protection of the least vulnerable.
  • If this was a classic Hollywood narrative, the exceptionally American superhero, reluctant and wavering in the first act, would make the right choice at this turning point. The evil Covid-19 would be conquered, and order would be restored to a society that would look just as it did before the villain emerged.
  • But if our society looks the same after the defeat of Covid-19, it will be a Pyrrhic victory. We can expect a sequel, and not just one sequel, but many, until we reach the finale: climate catastrophe
  • amid the bumbling, there are signs of hope and courage: laborers striking over their exploitation; people donating masks, money and time; medical workers and patients expressing outrage over our gutted health care system; a Navy captain sacrificing his career to protect his sailors; even strangers saying hello to other strangers on the street
Javier E

Opinion | What Years of Emails and Texts Reveal About Your Friendly Tech Companies - The New York Times - 0 views

  • he picture that emerges from these documents is not one of steady entrepreneurial brilliance. Rather, at points where they might have been vulnerable to hotter, newer start-ups, Big Tech companies have managed to avoid the rigors of competition. Their two main tools — buying their way out of the problem and a willingness to lose money — are both made possible by sky-high Wall Street valuations, which go only higher with acquisitions of competitors, fueling a cycle of enrichment and consolidation of power
  • As Mr. Zuckerberg bluntly boasted in an email, because of its immense wealth Facebook “can likely always just buy any competitive start-ups.”
  • The greater scandal here may be that the federal government has let these companies get away with this
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  • the government in the 2010s allowed more than 500 start-up acquisitions to go unchallenged. This hands-off approach effectively gave tech executives a green light to consolidate the industry.
  • It may be profitable and savvy to eliminate rivals to maintain a monopoly, but it remains illegal in this country under the Sherman Antitrust Act and Standard Oil v. United States. Unless we re-establish that legal fact, Big Tech will continue to fight dirty and keep on winning.
Javier E

Opinion | On the Economics of Not Dying - The New York Times - 0 views

  • What, after all, is the economy’s purpose? If your answer is something like, “To generate incomes that let people buy things,” you’re getting it wrong — money isn’t the ultimate goal; it’s just a means to an end, namely, improving the quality of life.
  • A Columbia University study estimated that locking down just a week earlier would have saved 36,000 lives by early May, and a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the benefits of that earlier lockdown would have been at least five times the cost in lost G.D.P.
  • why isn’t the Trump administration even trying to justify its push for reopening in terms of a rational analysis of costs and benefits? The answer, of course, is that rationality has a well-known liberal bias.
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  • After all, if they really cared about the economy, even ardent reopeners would want people to keep wearing face masks, which are a cheap way to limit viral spread. Instead, they’ve chosen to wage a culture war against this most reasonable of precautions.
  • And the White House has dealt with expert warnings about the risks of reopening by — surprise! — accusing the experts of conspiring against the president
  • The point is that the push to reopen doesn’t reflect any kind of considered judgment about risks versus rewards. It’s best seen, instead, as an exercise in magical thinking.
  • Trump and conservatives in general seem to believe that if they pretend that Covid-19 isn’t a continuing threat, it will somehow go away, or at least people will forget about it. Hence the war on face masks, which help limit the pandemic but remind people that the virus is still out there.
katherineharron

GOP operatives worry Trump will lose both the presidency and Senate majority - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • A little more than three months ago, as Democrats cast their ballots in the Nevada caucuses, Republicans felt confident about their chances in 2020. The coronavirus seemed a distant, far-off threat. Democrats appeared poised to nominate a self-described socialist for president. The stock market was near a record high. The economy was roaring. President Donald Trump looked well-positioned to win a second term, and perhaps pull enough incumbent Republicans along with him to hold the party's majority in the Senate.
  • Seven GOP operatives not directly associated with the President's reelection campaign told CNN that Trump's response to the pandemic and the subsequent economic fallout have significantly damaged his bid for a second term
  • Several say that public polls showing Trump trailing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden mirror what they are finding in their own private polls, and that the trend is bleeding into key Senate races. The GOP already had a difficult task of defending 23 Senate seats in 2020.
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  • All of this demonstrates how difficult it is to run as a Republican incumbent almost anywhere in 2020. Strategists who spoke to CNN worry that Trump has become a liability for Republicans needing to expand their coalition beyond the President's core base of supporters.
  • "Republican candidates need something more like Romney in '12 and less like McCain in '08," said Liam Donovan, a GOP strategist in Washington.
  • That one-two punch could knock the GOP out of power in Washington-- and it's what has strategists hoping the President's reelection team can successfully transform the race to a choice between Trump and an unpalatable Biden.
  • "This is the one thing he (Trump) cannot change the subject on," said a Republican strategist. "This is not a political opponent, this is not going way and he has never had to deal with something like this."
  • Trump overall has a 45% approval rating. While only 42% approve of how he's handled the pandemic, 50% still said they approve of Trump's handling of the economy.
  • "The economic message resonates strongly, particularly in a time like this," said Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh. "President Trump is clearly the one to restore us to that position. He did it once, he will do it again."
  • "Absent some sort of V-shaped recovery many people think he is dead in the water," said the Republican strategist.
  • Trump has solidified his position within the party. That has made it harder for Republicans in Congress to distance themselves from him without antagonizing his base. That, say Republican operatives, risks keeping away voters who may consider the GOP but don't like the President.
  • "It's a very, very tough environment. If you have a college degree and you live in suburbia, you don't want to vote for us,
  • The task requires Senate candidates to make appeals to suburban voters who flipped to Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections as a reaction against Trump.
  • Scott Reed, the political director at the US Chamber of Commerce and a veteran of Republican campaigns, said that a presidential reelection campaign is "always" a referendum on the incumbent and his party.
  • Congress, he noted is, having a relative boom in popularity -- 31% support in the latest Gallup poll, the highest in over a decade -- thanks in part to the passage of economic relief.
  • The line aims to combat the most consistent line of criticism from Democrats -- that Collins has voted in line with the Trump administration on everything from judicial appointments to health care to the President's acquittal on impeachment -- without having to disavow Trump himself.
  • "The truth is despite being massively outspent by liberal dark money groups, Republicans are still well-positioned to hold the Senate majority in the fall," said Jesse Hunt, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
  • "When he does it right three days in a row, it really bumps his numbers," said Reed. "We need command performance on message discipline."
Javier E

A Hard Reckoning for the Democrats: Race, Class and Joe Biden's Election - The Globalist - 0 views

  • The disappointing election results also raise doubts about a widespread belief among Democrats that they are on the side of history because the population of non-whites — who tend to vote for Democrats — is growing faster than the population of whites. Therefore, many Democratic leaders have assumed that they do not have to worry about losing white working class voters to the Republicans because whites will be less important in the future.
  • First, the often-cited numbers are misleading in and of themselves. The well-known New York Times columnist Tom Friedman recently wrote: “sometime in the 2040s, whites will make up 49% of the U.S. population, and Latinos, Blacks, Asians and multiracial populations 51%.”
  • But Friedman, like many other political analysts, errs when he classifies the largest minority subgroup, Latin-Americans, as “not white.” In fact, at least 65% consider themselves racially “only” white. Thus, if Latino-Americans are correctly classified (by their self-identification), whites will still make up 69% of the U.S. population by 2060. So, if racial identity really determines voting behavior, then U.S. politics will be dominated by white people for a long time.
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  • Second, the assumption that people will vote as a bloc according to their ethnic or racial identity is simplistic.
  • despite Trump’s xenophobia and racism, a larger share of Latinos and black men voted for him this year than they did in 2016.
  • Democrats also lost Texas again. During the campaign, the Democrats had targeted their appeal to Latinos by emphasizing Trump’s mistreatment of immigrants entering illegally from Mexico and Central America. But Mexican-Americans along the border supported Donald Trump because their jobs and wages are being undercut by the newer immigrants.
  • Republicans of course have been the major promoters of policies that have beneftted investors at the expense of workers. But, shamelessly and cleverly, they have diverted white working class anger toward minorities, protecting the country’s elites.
  • The Republicans’ trap for the Democrats White skin is still privileged in the United States of America and the Republican Party has increasingly pandered to racism. Democrats, for both moral and political reasons, must strongly support racial justice.
  • But in an overwhelmingly white society, they cannot attract the necessary sustained political support with a message focused on generalized white guilt.
  • Thus, for example, a majority of whites supported the Black Lives Matter movement against police brutality towards Blacks. But the support dropped sharply when demands rose for whites to pay reparations for past oppression of Blacks.
  • After all, several decades of stagnant wages, precarious employment and the erosion of upward mobility have left most whites in the United States today who must work for a living no longer feeling very “privileged.
  • National polls showed that Latino-American voters thought jobs and health care, not immigration, were the most important issues for them.
  • Economic class trumps racial affiliation Most Latinos and black Americans are working class — like the majority of whites. And the data shows the economic problems of minorities are now more likely a function of their class than their race or ethnicity.
  • Thus, the central issue of income and wealth inequality is not the privilege of “whites” any longer. Rather, it is the privilege of “rich whites.
  • As economist Adolph Reed, an African American, puts it: If you say to those white people in the bottom 50% (i.e., people who have basically no wealth at all) that the basic inequality in the United States is between black and white, they know you are wrong. More tellingly, if you say the same thing to the black people in the bottom 50% (i.e., people who have even less than no wealth at all), they also know you are wrong. It’s not all the white people who have the money; it’s the top 10% of (mainly) whites.
  • An engine of inequality Thomas Piketty and others have shown that modern capitalism has become an engine for the expansion of inequality between capital and labor. Thus, in the absence of substantial reform, incomes and opportunities for most working Americans — whatever the color of their skin — will continue to shrink.
  • Trump succeeded in part because large numbers of white working people felt abandoned by Democrats. Over the last few decades, the Democratic Party’s establishment forged an alliance with Wall Street financiers who are liberal on social issues — such as racial discrimination, immigration and abortion — but very conservative on economics.
  • One bizarre result was that throughout the campaign, voters saw the plutocrat Trump as better at creating jobs and prosperity than Biden.
  • Have Democrats really learned the lesson? Biden’s less elitist style helped him with enough white workers to win three key Midwestern states that Hillary Clinton had lost. Still, had Donald Trump shown a minimum of competence in responding to the COVID 19 crisis, he could well have been re-elected.
  • Republicans forcing the Democrats’ hands Because Republicans will do everything they can to make the Biden presidency a failure, the Democrats’ disparate factions have to unite behind him in a “popular front” against the authoritarian right. This may be hard for many on the Party’s left, but they have no choice. If Biden fails, they fail.
  • Conclusion The election gave us some clues to where U.S. democracy might be headed, but the question remains unanswered: Can Biden and the Democrats restore enough security and prosperity to the American working class to finally eradicate the neofascist political pandemic?
hannahcarter11

With Senate Control Hanging in Balance, 'Crazytown' Cash Floods Georgia - The New York Times - 0 views

  • The two Georgia runoff elections that will determine control of the Senate, and much of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s ability to enact a Democratic agenda, are already drawing enormous sums of cash, with more than $125 million pouring into the state in only two weeks.
  • And Ms. Loeffler, one of the wealthiest members of Congress who spent $23 million of her own money to make the runoff and can inject millions more at a moment’s notice, has already booked $40 million in television time.
  • Super PACs on both sides are racing to lock up a shrinking supply of television airtime as ad rates in the Atlanta market skyrocket, with prices this week already higher than in some of the top presidential battlegrounds in October.
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  • The twin Georgia races have swiftly taken center stage in American politics, with campaign visits by potential 2024 Republican candidates like Senators Tom Cotton and Marco Rubio and Vice President Mike Pence.
  • If both Democrats win the runoffs, they would pull the Senate into a 50-50 tie, which would give Democrats de facto control of the chamber because Kamala Harris, as vice president, would cast the tiebreaking vote.
  • Republicans are hoping to duplicate their turnout in rural and conservative-leaning areas, despite not having President Trump on the ballot to pull his impassioned supporters to the polls.
  • Political strategists say they cannot recall any modern time when so much was on the line in a runoff election in a single state.
  • Unrelenting waves of negative ads have already begun
  • “But what’s different is what you can’t see yet and you can feel: that the armies are being built, the resources are being stored up, you can feel the anticipation and excitement.”
  • Even the narrowest of Democratic majorities would considerably ease Mr. Biden’s path to confirming his cabinet picks, appointing judges and advancing his policies.
  • And Democrats worry that Black voters will not come out in the same numbers as they did this month — turnout in runoffs almost always falls sharply — and that white suburban voters around Atlanta, who rejected Mr. Trump so resoundingly, will not be as eager to deliver a Democratic Senate to Mr. Biden.
  • Some major Democratic donors, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, are downbeat on their party’s chances.
  • Yet those same donors said they were continuing to contribute to the Georgia contests because of the sheer significance of the outcome.
  • “The result of these two races is going to determine the majority in the United States Senate, which is going to determine the success or failure of the Biden policies in the next four years,”
  • But Mr. Trump’s continued refusal to concede has complicated that messaging, since it depends on accepting his loss.
  • Nationally, the Georgia races offer Republicans a chance to bring together both more establishment-aligned contributors, who were cool to the departing president, and pro-Trump financiers.
  • “The entire Republican ecosystem is working together to ensure the tables are turned.”
  • Democrats are hoping the political organization and movement created by Stacey Abrams, who nearly won her race for governor in 2018 by driving up turnout among the party’s base, will recapture that energy and especially help mobilize Black voters.
  • After the losses on Nov. 3, some Democrats said that focusing so publicly on their fund-raising successes had proved to be a distraction, as top fund-raisers like Amy McGrath in Kentucky and Jaime Harrison in South Carolina lost by large margins.
anonymous

Going undercover in the schools that chain boys | BBC - 0 views

  • He doesn't know how old he is, but he's probably about 10.
  • When I meet Ahmed, he is shackled in a room all alone. There are marks on his body from the beatings he has been given.
  • one of 23 Islamic educational institutions in Sudan, known as khalwas,
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  • some just five years old, being severely beaten, routinely shackled, and imprisoned without food and water by the sheikhs, or religious men, in charge of the schools
  • they had been raped or experienced other forms of sexual abuse.
  • children
  • Because they charge no fees, many families consider them an alternative to mainstream education, especially in remote villages that may not have government-run schools.
  • There are nearly 30,000 khalwas across the country
  • They receive money from the government and private donors both in Sudan and around the world.
anonymous

Strong Job Growth, a Terrible Job Market: The Bizarre 2020 Economy - The New York Times - 0 views

  • he Bizarre 2020 Economy
  • 17 months for employment to return to full health.
  • hree concepts: the level at which the economy is functioning, how fast it is improving, and whether that speed is accelerating or decelerating.
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  • Editors’ PicksJim Carrey Plays Joe Biden in ‘S.N.L.’ Season PremiereHow to Have a Disagreement Like an Adult, According to Deepak Chopra30 Years After Reunification, Old German-German Border Is a Green OasisAdvertisementContinue reading the main story
  • The level of the bath water is very low. But it’s being filled rapidly. However, the spigot is being tightened so the pace at which the water is rising has slowed.
  • Disney’s plan to cut 28,000 theme park workers. Major airlines are poised to cut tens of thousands of jobs after the expiration of a provision requiring them to keep workers on their payrolls as a condition of bailout money.
  • The incumbent party points to whatever looks good in the data as proof that its policies are working, and the challenger identifies flaws that remain.
  • We may not know the answers to those questions, but it matters a lot for understanding what kind of economy either a second-term President Trump or President Joe Biden will have to handle. For now it’s not looking good.
lmunch

The Pandemic Has Hindered Many of the Best Ideas for Reducing Violence - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Reported crime of nearly every kind has declined this year amid the pandemic. The exception to that has been stark and puzzling: Shootings and homicides are up in cities around the country, perplexing experts who normally expect these patterns to trend together.
  • The president and others have blamed protests and unrest, the changing tactics of police, and even the partisan politics of mayors.
  • And programs devised to reduce gun violence — and that have proved effective in studies — have been upended by the pandemic. Summer jobs programs were cut this year. Violence intervention workers were barred from hospitals. Group behavioral therapy programs meant to be intimate and in-person have moved, often haltingly, online.
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  • Some version of that fear — students with no school to attend, long summer days with no summer jobs, young people with nowhere to go — may be part of what is happening this year on a wider scale.
  • The behavior of the police has certainly changed. Early in the spring, officers pulled back on their interactions amid social distancing. Later in the spring and summer they faced mass protests — and may have reacted to those protests with slowdowns. But Mr. Abrams said the effect of any policing changes wouldn’t be limited to homicides and shootings.
  • “When confidence in the police wanes and drops sufficiently, then one gets a rise in so-called street justice, in people taking matters into their own hands to settle disputes,” Mr. Rosenfeld said. “That contributes to a rise in violence.”
  • Separately, there’s evidence that the presence of nonprofits in a community has helped lower violent crime. There’s evidence that hospitals can play a role in reducing violence, when gunshot victims are identified in trauma centers for follow-up interventions. There are randomized control trials showing that summer youth employment programs reduce violent crime among participants, even well after the programs have ended.
  • “The first thing to go last March when the stay-at-home order was issued here in Chicago for these young people was the stability of school,”
martinelligi

How Would Joe Biden Fight COVID-19? : Shots - Health News : NPR - 0 views

  • Trump's approach to handling the pandemic is clear from his record. His administration has delegated much of the authority for the coronavirus response to states, including testing and contact tracing. He's invested heavily in vaccine development. He signed two coronavirus relief packages and has indicated he'd sign another one after the election.
  • 3. Establish a U.S. public health jobs corps The Biden campaign pledges to "mobilize" 100,000 Americans to work with local organizations around the country to perform contact tracing and other services that would help address unmet needs in populations at high risk for COVID-19.
  • And he'd focus on uniting states around some common practices, says Ezekiel Emanuel, a physician and University of Pennsylvania professor who has briefed Biden on health policy but has no formal campaign position. Instead of "different states doing different things, the goal would be to get all the states singing from the same hymnal," Emanuel says.
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  • 2. Seriously ramp up testing The Biden campaign says the goal is to "ensure that all Americans have access to regular, reliable and free testing." It would work to double the number of drive-through testing sites and invest in "next-generation testing" including home tests and instant tests.
  • 1. Set consistent, evidence-based guidance to stop outbreaks
  • 4. Help people get health insurance Millions of American have lost health insurance during the pandemic. Biden's coronavirus plan proposes to have the federal government cover 100% of the costs of COBRA coverage for the duration of the crisis. "So when people lose their employer-based health insurance, they can stay on that insurance, given the moment we are in and the pandemic," says Stef Feldman, Biden's national policy director.
  • 5. Create a caregiving workforce During the pandemic, Biden says many families are struggling to find affordable care for their children, aging relatives or loved ones with disabilities. "At the same time, professional caregivers have either lost their jobs or continue to work while putting their lives at risk without sufficient pay," his campaign plan notes.
  • 6. Bolster resources for vaccine distribution and PPE production States will need a lot of money to distribute a vaccine and make sure it gets to everyone who wants it. There are complex logistics that will require planning and resources. For instance, states may need freezers to store their vaccines, and given how many people are hesitant to be vaccinated, they will need public education materials and guidance. Currently state governors are asking for more guidance and financial assistance.
Javier E

FC95: The Age of Louis XIV, the "Sun King" (1643-1715) - The Flow of History - 2 views

  • Introduction From 1643 to 1815 France dominated much of Europe's political history and culture.  Foreigners came to France, preferring it to the charms of their own homeland.  Even today, many still consider it the place to visit in Europe and the world.  In the 1600's and 1700's there was a good reason for this dominance: population.  France had 23,000,000 people in a strongly unified state compared to 5,000,000 in Spain and England, and 2,000,000 in the Dutch Republic and the largest of the German states.  This reservoir of humanity first reached for and nearly attained the dominance of Europe under Louis XIV, the "Sun King".
  • Louis' early life and reign (1643-61) Louis was born in 1638 and succeeded his father, Louis XIII, as king in 1643 at the age of five.  Luckily, another able minister and Richelieu's successor, Cardinal Mazarin, continued to run the government.  In 1648, encroachment by the government on the nobles' power, poor harvests, high taxes, and unemployed mercenaries plundering the countryside after the Thirty Years War led to a serious revolt known as the Fronde, named after the slingshot used by French boys.  Louis and the court barely escaped from Paris with their lives.  Although Mazarin and his allies crushed the rebels after five hard years of fighting (1648-53), Louis never forgot the fear and humiliation of having to run from the Parisian mob and fight for his life and throne against the nobles.  This bitter experience would heavily influence Louis' policies when he ruled on his own.
  • Louis XIV may not have said, "I am the state", but he ruled as if he had said it.  Louis was the supreme example of the absolute monarch, and other rulers in Europe could do no better than follow his example.  Although Louis wished to be remembered as a great conqueror, his first decade of active rule was largely taken up with building France's internal strength.  There are two main areas of Louis' rule we will look at here: finances and the army. Louis' finance minister, Jean Baptiste Colbert, was an astute businessman of modest lineage, being the son of a draper.  Colbert's goal was to build France's industries and reduce foreign imports.  This seventeenth century policy where a country tried to export more goods and import more gold and silver was known as mercantilism.  While its purpose was to generate revenue for the king, it also showed the growing power of the emerging nation state.  Colbert declared his intention to reform the whole financial structure of the French state, and he did succeed in reducing the royal debt by cutting down on the number of tax farms he sold and freeing royal lands from mortgage.  Colbert especially concentrated on developing France's economy in three ways.
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  • Versailles Louis' religious faith was largely a superficial one attached to the elaborate ritual of the Catholic mass.  This love of ritual also showed itself in how Louis ran his court at his magnificent palace of Versailles, several miles outside of Paris.  Much of the reason for building Versailles goes back to the Fronde that had driven Louis from Paris as a young boy.  Ever since then, Louis had distrusted the volatile Paris mob and was determined to move the court away from the influence of that city.  Versailles was also the showpiece of Louis' reign, glorifying him as the Sun King with its magnificent halls and gardens.
  • Religion was one aspect of Louis' reign that illustrated the absolute nature of his monarchy quite well.  Louis himself was quite a pious Catholic, learning that trait from his mother.  However, in the spirit of the day, he saw religion as a department of state subordinate to the will of the king.  By the same token, not adhering to the Catholic faith was seen as treason. As a result, Louis gradually restricted the rights of the French Huguenots and finally, in 1685, revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had given them religious freedom since the end of the French Wars of Religion in 1598.  This drove 200,000 Huguenots out of France, depriving it of some of its most skilled labor.  Thus Louis let his political and religious biases ruin a large sector of France's economy.
  • Results of Louis' reign The age of Louis XIV was important to European history for several reasons.  First of all, it saw the triumph of absolutism in France and continental Europe.  Versailles was a glittering symbol and example for other European rulers to follow.  Any number of German and East European monarchs modeled their states and courts after Louis XIV, sometimes to the point of financial ruin.  Second, Louis' wars showed the system of Balance of Power politics working better than ever.  French aggression was contained and the status quo was maintained.  All this had its price, since the larger sizes of the armies and the final replacement of the pike with the musket took European warfare to a new level of destruction.  Finally, Louis' reign definitely established France as the dominant power in Europe.  However, the cost was immense and left his successors a huge debt.  Ironically, the problems caused by Louis XIV's reign would help lead to the French Revolution in 1789 and the spread of democratic principles across Europe and eventually the world.
  • Louis' main goals were to expand France to its "natural borders": the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees.  This, of course, would make him enemies among the Dutch, Germans, Austrians, Spanish, and English.  Therefore, Louis' diplomacy had to clear the way to make sure he did not fight everyone at once.  For this purpose he skillfully used money to neutralize potential enemies (such as Charles II of England in the Secret Treaty of Dover) and extracted favorable terms from stalemate or losing situations.  But Louis could also make some fateful blunders to hurt his cause.  His obsessive hatred of the Dutch dominated his policy too much, as did his own self-confidence and arrogance in trying to publicly humiliate his enemies.  However, this just alarmed Louis' enemies more, especially the Dutch, Austrians, and English, who allied against Louis to preserve the balance of power.
  • Exhaustion on both sides finally led to the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.  Louis' grandson took the throne of Spain and its American empire, but the French and Spanish thrones could not be united under one ruler.  Austria got the Spanish Netherlands to contain French aggression to the north.  Just as the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 had contained Hapsburg aggression, the Treaty of Utrecht contained French expansion.  Two years later Louis XIV was dead, with little to show for his vaunted ambitions as a conqueror except an exhausted economy and dissatisfied populace.
  • Just as Louis's palace at Versailles dominated European culture during the late 1600's and early 1700's, his diplomacy and wars dominated Europeans political history.  As Louis himself put it: "The character of a conqueror is regarded as the noblest and highest of titles."  Interestingly enough, he never led his troops in battle except for overseeing a few sieges from a safe distance.
  • I am the state. — Voltaire, incorrectly quoting Louis XIV
Javier E

Facebook Is Not the Town Square - The Bulwark - 0 views

  • everyone knows that Facebook is just our new, digital Town Square, right? You can’t blame Facebook if it’s just a distillation of all our worst and best impulses.
  • Except that it’s not.
  • Have you ever been to an actual town and visited its square?
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  • On Facebook, you have to endure anonymous abuse of this nature with absolutely no recourse other than to hit the “report” button and hope that some community standards drone, somewhere, suspends the offending account for a couple days.
  • In a real town square, you can see people’s faces and usually you know them already.
  • On Facebook, you’re dumped into a group of “friends” you’ve never met, or interacted with—many of whom might not even be actual human beings. And the only help you get in determining social context is a combination of text, emojis, and gifs.
  • On Facebook, you may be arguing with hired Russian trolls who are actively employed by Vladimir Putin to sow discord in the world.
  • In a real town square, if someone claims they plan to assault you and your family you can punch their physical face with your physical fist.
  • In a real town square, you can fit, at most, a few hundred people. If you’re in the square of a giant, world-historic city in Russia or China, you might be able to squeeze in 600,000 people. On Facebook, you have . . . everyone on planet Earth!
  • In a real town square, people who insist that COVID vaccines are filled with mind control nanobots and that the Jews are enslaving children are relegated to the fringes.
  • Facebook follows you everywhere—like a psychotic ex. It’s always hiding in the bushes and you have no choice but to wonder what the heck it’s up to right now,
  • In a real town square, if the entire town became convinced that their mayor is the Christ risen and decided that they needed to stockpile AK-47s in preparation for the apocalypse then visitors to the town would quietly leave (and warn the authorities).
  • On Facebook, those folks get a guest pass to every other Town Square—again in the world—and are free to go around preaching their lunacy to others without being constrained by space, time, or economics.
  • In a real town square, the town doesn’t benefit financially by attracting the stupidest/craziest/most pernicious townfolk to the soapbox and then doing everything in their power to make sure the residents of the town are afraid to leave the square for fear of missing something truly terrible.
  • Facebook makes approximately all its money by getting you to rubber-neck through your day as you slow-roll past trainwreck after trainwreck.
  • In the real world, the Town Square stays (as the name suggests) in TOWN!
  • On Facebook, they are brought together into powerful collectives, afforded megaphones, and algorithmically ushered into everyone’s sphere of influence to corrupt otherwise rational and healthy discourse.
  • But in fairness, there is one aspect of the town square metaphor where Facebook is a pretty decent facsimile of the real thing. It’s the one where we used to drag innocent people to a gallows, accuse them of something completely insane, like “witchcraft,” and then either ruin or end their lives.
  • Facebook is pretty good at that because its fortunes are made by making sure that you keep coming back—it doesn’t matter if you’re sharing pics of kitties, contributing to a genocide, or part of an angry mob that’s destroying someone’s livelihood or reputation on some fanciful whim.
  • What’s another real-world concept where a private unregulated enterprise gets to make a fortune running psychological experiments on the population of the world, which leads to a slow collapse of civil and civic order and drives everyone insane? I’m actually drawing a blank—but it sure as hell isn’t a “town square.”
woodlu

Nuclear energy united Europe. Now it is dividing the club | The Economist - 1 views

  • “The peaceful atom”, wrote Jean Monnet, the cognac salesman turned founding father of the EU, was to be “the spearhead for the unification of Europe”.
  • Europe was a nuclear project before it was much else. In 1957 the EU’s founding members signed the Treaty of Rome to form the European Economic Community, the club’s forebear. At the same time they put their names to a less well-known organisation: Euratom, which would oversee nuclear power on the continent.
  • Where nuclear power was once a source of unity for Europe, today it is a source of discord
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  • Of the EU’s 27 countries, only 13 produce nuclear power. Some ban it. France and Germany, the two countries that dominate EU policymaking, find themselves directly opposed
  • France generates over 70% of its power from nuclear reactors
  • The reality of European politics is kaleidoscopic
  • Is nuclear power green (since it emits very little carbon dioxide) or not (because nuclear accidents, though extremely rare, are dangerous)?
  • How the EU is managing the decision reveals a lot about the club.
  • politics
  • Franco-German engine sputtering on nuclear policy, unlikely alliances have formed. France and the likes of Poland and the Czech Republic are usually sparring partners.
  • Countries in eastern Europe see the French as protectionists who suck up to Russia
  • when it comes to nuclear power the two are firm pals. It is tempting to carve the EU into simple blocs,
  • Nuclear policy is a reminder that fates in the EU are bound together, whether the topic is energy, the environment or the economy
  • Germany has pledged to close all its nuclear power plants by 2022
  • Countries from Belgium to Bulgaria followed
  • scrapping plans to build nuclear power stations and pledging to switch others off
  • Europe falling back in love with nuclear power is just one example of the many policy debates heading in a French direction
  • Nuclear power is another debate in which Paris gets its way.
  • the EU is a dealmaking machine, with consensus forged via a mix of bribery, blackmail and back-scratching.
  • Gas power is undergoing the same kinds of debate as nuclear power. While gas generates carbon emissions, it is cleaner than coal, argue its supporters.
  • If the politics are linked, so are the policy consequences
  • A likely compromise is that while stiff rules could remain for day-to-day spending, countries could be able to spend more freely in the name of the green transition. If nuclear power is labelled green in the private sector, it becomes harder to avoid a similar designation when it comes to public money
  • On paper the European Commission, which makes the initial decision on how to treat nuclear power, is full of civil servants who offer technocratic answers. In practice, they know the question of nuclear power is political. They also know that life will be easier if they answer it quickly, preferably before a new German government containing a virulently anti-nuclear Green party is formed
  • Germany is likely to be on the losing side. It gave up on nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster in 2011, when an earthquake and tsunami caused a meltdown in Japan
  • those countries that pride themselves on only using the cleanest energy will benefit from those that rely on more debatable sources.
  • The EU is an increasingly homogenous beast, with fewer carve-outs for those who want to do things differently. Collective decisions have collective outcomes. “To approach our atomic future separately…would have been insane,” wrote Monnet. The EU will approach its atomic future together, whether some countries like it or no
Javier E

The Republican Party's Motivated Reasoning - The Bulwark - 0 views

  • sometimes, people will trust someone simply because the messenger is saying what they want to hear. Psychologists call this “motivated reasoning.”
  • Keep all this in mind as you consider Ed McBroom, a Republican state senator in Michigan who recently came to national attention thanks to the rantings of former President Trump and a riveting profile written by the Atlantic’s Tim Alberta. McBroom chairs the Michigan senate’s oversight committee, a position that empowered him to investigate allegations of voter fraud during the 2020 general election
  • here is the background and record on McBroom:
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  • He entered politics to advocate for traditional or socially conservative beliefs. “He glowed with certain passions—outlawing abortion, preserving family values, fighting bureaucrats on behalf of the little guy—that could not be championed in the stables,” Alberta writes. McBroom stated his position on gun ownership in 2012: “The Second Amendment guarantees our rights to own firearms[,] and I stand strongly for that correct interpretation.”
  • The American Conservative Union gave McBroom the best marks of any Michigan state senator—voting in line with the organization’s position 95 percent of the time—in 2019, the most recent year of data. By the old rules of political communication, no one is more qualified to be a “credible messenger” to the right-of-center voters of the U.P. than Ed McBroom.
  • last month, McBroom and three of his senate colleagues—two of them Republicans, only one a Democrat—released their report, and it “crackled with annoyance at certain far-flung beliefs,” writes Alberta:
  • His committee interviewed scores of witnesses, subpoenaed and reviewed
  • thousands of pages of documents, dissected the procedural mechanics of Michigan’s highly decentralized elections system, and scrutinized the most trafficked claims about corruption at the state’s ballot box in November. McBroom’s conclusion hit Lansing like a meteor: It was all a bunch of nonsense. “Our clear finding is that citizens should be confident the results represent the true results of the ballots cast by the people of Michigan,” McBroom wrote in the report. “There is no evidence presented at this time to prove either significant acts of fraud or that an organized, wide-scale effort to commit fraudulent activity was perpetrated in order to subvert the will of Michigan voters.” For good measure, McBroom added: “The Committee strongly recommends citizens use a critical eye and ear toward those who have pushed demonstrably false theories for their own personal gain.”
  • “McBroom said he is not fazed by the criticism or the prospect of a primary challenge, which he was already expecting,” notes the Michigan Bridge. “I’ve been totally honest and up front, and if (voters) judge that’s not what they want, and if the majority of them want a different course of action, that’s okay,” he told that publication.
  • Yet despite three of the four senators who wrote the election report being Republicans; and despite McBroom’s ideological reputation, the product of a decade in Michigan’s state legislature (he was a state rep from 2010 to 2018), and the familiarity of the McBroom family name, and McBroom’s culturally Christian values—despite all that, his political standing is still taking a hit.
  • Trump trashed McBroom and the state senate president, Republican Mike Shirkey. He published their office phone numbers. He urged people to “vote them the hell out of office.”
  • more to the point about credible messengers is this: McBroom said that he’s felt heat from people he knows—allies of his—not just randos on social media. “It’s been very discouraging, and very sad, to have people I know who have supported me, and always said they respected me and found me to be honest, who suddenly don’t trust me because of what some guy told them on the internet,” he told Alberta.
  • So thorough were the authors’ conclusions that they recommended “the [state] attorney general consider investigating those who have been utilizing misleading and false information about Antrim County,” where an obvious and brief reporting error showed Biden thumping Trump, “to raise money or publicity for their own ends.”
  • What McBroom clarified is this:
  • Trump’s base is the animating force of the Republican party, which holds GOP officials accountable mostly for their accountability to Trump. To this group, there is no such thing as a credible critic of the former president.
  • the unanswered question that confronts coalition-builders today is how to reach a movement for which all reasoning is motivated reasoning; for which facts and proof are subjective
clairemann

Inflation in Turkey is at a near two-decade high. Is it part of Erdogan's plan? | PBS NewsHour - 0 views

  • For Turkey, 2021 was marked by a freefalling currency, the lira, and record-high inflation. The government's monetary policy has sent the country into economic turmoil.
  • I'm struggling to make ends meet. The prices have gone up, so I had to take up extra work. I'm doing a part-time job out of necessity.
  • Turkey is suffering its highest inflation in nearly two decades. From December 2020 to December 2021, prices rose more than 36 percent, everything from food to gas.
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  • The economic crisis is everywhere. In December, bread lines stretched around the corner. And as the Turkish lira plunged, Turks around the country rushed to change money into U.S. dollars.
  • But President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says it's part of his plan.
  • The economic pain runs deep. Extensive borrowing and previous interest rate cuts were already driving up prices. But analysts say Erdogan's recent medicine is making the country sicker. Under his pressure, since September, Turkey's Central Bank slashed interest rates four times.
  • Soner Cagaptay, Washington Institute for Near East Policy: Anyone who took econ 101 in college would know, if your inflation climbs up, interest rates have to follow that. Erdogan is doing the opposite.
  • He says Erdogan's motivation is difficult to know, but, in the last few months of 2021, the lira lost almost half of its value, in December, 18.4 for $1. And a weak lira can boost tourism and Turkish exports.
  • Erdogan is maybe trying to create what is called growth out of contraction. In other words, let the economy crash and burn, and that will make Turkish exports very affordable, because the lira has lost its value, and the country will have a restored growth driven by strong export sector and also demand for Turkish tourism and services.
  • There are some signs of increased tourism. Last month, Bulgarians by the busload arrived in Istanbul to buy cheap groceries and bargain bazaar Christmas gifts.And Erdogan says exports are at an all-time high. Turkish authorities have also raised the minimum wage by 50 percent. And a new plan pays Turks to keep their bank deposits in lira. But the depreciation is still large, as is the anger. In November, protesters called for the government to resign and the police to back down.
  • If Erdogan does not restore economic growth, he's not going to win the next elections in 2023. We're going to see the country's economic resilience pushed back, and also a more unified opposition.
  • At this stage, I think the only way for him to stick to power — it looks like he's not going to be able to restore strong economic growth — is by becoming more autocratic only.
lucieperloff

Prince Andrew and Boris Johnson: The U.K. Deals With Two Crises at Once - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Stoic, dignified and comforting, the queen’s words helped anchor the country during the fretful days that followed — not the first time the monarchy has acted as a stabilizing force for the government during tumultuous events.
  • While these cases are about starkly different issues, they both feature privileged middle-aged men under fire for their behavior, raising age-old questions of class, entitlement and double standards.
  • Commentators said, half in jest, that the legal ruling against Andrew, 61, helped Mr. Johnson, 57, because it deflected attention from his grilling in the House of Commons, where opposition lawmakers accused him of lying and demanded that he resign. But both men are at the mercy of forces largely out of their control.
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  • What the two cases have in common, critics said, is a lack of accountability on the part of the main actors.
  • With so much at stake, especially in a year in which the queen is celebrating 70 years on the throne, royal watchers speculate that Andrew will seek his own settlement with Ms. Giuffre. Who would pay that settlement, and with what money, are already questions being asked by British newspapers.
  • But that does not mean she is without influence. Legal experts say the monarchy, because of its longevity and constancy, can have a moderating effect on the most extreme forces in politics.
  • If anything, her disciplined adherence to social distancing rules — captured most poignantly when she grieved alone in a choir stall at the funeral of her husband, Prince Philip, last year — is a vivid contrast to the prime minister’s after-work socializing.
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