Skip to main content

Home/ History Readings/ Group items matching "pandemic-recovery" in title, tags, annotations or url

Group items matching
in title, tags, annotations or url

Sort By: Relevance | Date Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
6More

Biden Poised to Raise Taxes on Business and the Rich - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...biden-taxes-business-rich.html
shared by rerobinson03 on 28 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Now, under President Biden, they have a shot at ushering in the largest federal tax increase since 1942. It could help pay for a host of spending programs that liberal economists predict would bolster the economy’s performance and repair a tax code that Democrats say encourages wealthy people to hoard assets and big companies to ship jobs and book profits overseas.
  • he package, which follows on the heels of Mr. Biden’s $1.9 trillion economic aid bill, is central to the president’s long-term plan to revitalize American workers and industry by funding bridges and roads, universal pre-K, emerging industries like advanced batteries and efforts to invigorate the fight against climate change.Mr. Biden plans to finance that spending, at least in part, with tax increases that could raise upward of $2.5 trillion in revenue if his plan hews closely to what he proposed in the 2020 presidential campaign. Aides suggest his proposals might not be entirely paid for, with some one-time spending increases offset by increased federal borrowing.
  • iberal economists say this year could be different, thanks to the unique political and economic circumstances surrounding the recovery from the pandemic recession. With Mr. Biden’s signing of a $1.9 trillion economic relief bill, financed entirely by federal borrowing, forecasters now expect the economy to grow this year at its fastest annual clip since the 1980s. Republicans and some economists have begun to warn of overheating growth spurring runaway inflation, which could reduce the salience of warnings that tax increases would cause growth to stall.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Mr. Biden has pledged not to raise taxes on people earning less than $400,000.
  • “The purpose of the tax system is to both raise enough revenue for what the government wants to do, and to make sure that as we’re doing that we are encouraging activities that are in the national interest and discouraging ones that are not,” said Heather Boushey, a member of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers.Key Democrats are trying to bring the party to consensus. The top tax writer in the Senate, Ron Wyden of Oregon, is drafting a series of bills to raise taxes, many of them overlapping with Mr. Biden’s campaign proposals.
  • A report from the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation this month showed that multinational companies paid an average U.S. tax rate of less than 8 percent on their income in 2018, down from 16 percent in 2017. The report also found that those companies did not slow their practice of booking profits in low-tax havens like Bermuda.
8More

Ivermectin Does Not Alleviate Mild Covid-19 Symptoms, Study Finds - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...irus-ivermectin-treatment.html US pandemic study
shared by ethanshilling on 05 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Ivermectin, a controversial anti-parasitic drug that has been touted as a potential Covid-19 treatment, does not speed recovery in people with mild cases of the disease, according to a randomized controlled trial published on Thursday in the journal JAMA.
  • Some studies have indicated that the drug can prevent several different viruses from replicating in cells. And last year, researchers in Australia found that high doses of ivermectin suppressed SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, in cell cultures.
  • But the drug has also proved divisive. While some scientists see potential, others suspect that effectively inhibiting the coronavirus may require extremely high, potentially unsafe doses.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • In the new study, Dr. López-Medina and his colleagues randomly assigned more than 400 people who had recently developed mild Covid-19 symptoms to receive a five-day course of either ivermectin or a placebo.
  • “There’s been a lot of conflicting views on this, sometimes extreme conflicting views,” said Dr. Carlos Chaccour, a researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health who was not involved in the new study.
  • They found that Covid-19 symptoms lasted about 10 days, on average, among people who received the drug, compared with 12 days among those who received the placebo, a statistically insignificant difference.
  • The researchers did find that seven patients in the placebo group deteriorated after enrolling in the trial, compared to four in the ivermectin group, but the numbers were too small to draw a meaningful conclusion.
  • Bigger trials, which are currently underway, could provide more definitive answers, said Dr. Rabinovich, who noted that she was “totally neutral” on ivermectin’s potential usefulness.
5More

Maryland Lifts Many Covid Restrictions - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ryland-covid-restrictions.html politics Pandemic
shared by delgadool on 11 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Across Maryland on Wednesday, mayors, county executives, business owners and public health officials were parsing Gov. Larry Hogan’s surprise Tuesday announcement that he was loosening statewide Covid restrictions.
  • “With the pace of vaccinations rapidly rising and our health metrics steadily improving, the lifting of these restrictions is a prudent, positive step in the right direction and an important part of our economic recovery,” Mr. Hogan said. He was joined at his announcement by Dr. Robert R. Redfield, a former director the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who is now a senior adviser to the governor.
  • “I was shocked, I thought it was a joke,” said Dr. Leana Wen, a public health professor at George Washington University and former Baltimore health commissioner.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Baltimore County Executive John A. Olszewski, Jr., said, “leaders across Maryland have been forced to scramble to meet with our legal teams, health officials, and neighboring jurisdictions to understand how this impacts our own executive orders and to determine if and how to use our own local authority moving forward.”
  • Maryland ranks in the middle of states in the percentage of its people who have been given at least one vaccine dose, according to a New York Times database, and somewhat above average in the number of new cases it has been reporting lately relative to its population — 13 per 100,000 residents. All three of the variants of the virus that are being tracked by the C.D.C. have been reported there, but only one in significant numbers: B.1.1.7, which was first identified in Britain and is more transmissible and possibly more lethal than earlier versions of the virus.
23More

Biden to pledge to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by at least half by 2030 - The Was... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...biden-climate-change biden emissions climate policy politics crisis gop
shared by Javier E on 21 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • “The Biden-Harris administration will do more than any in history to meet our climate crisis,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a speech Monday. “This is already an all-hands-on-deck effort across our government and across our nation. Our future depends on the choices we make today.”
  • the new pledge will offer the latest glimpse at the profound changes that Biden wants to set in motion, from decarbonizing the country’s energy sector to phasing out gasoline-powered vehicles. Administration officials have made clear that they see the effort not only as a climate pursuit but as a massive investment in a new generation of jobs nationwide.
  • Some nations, including those that are part of the European Union, already have locked in more aggressive emissions-cutting targets. The United Kingdom on Tuesday announced a commitment to reducing its emissions by 78 percent by 2035, compared with 1990 levels — a goal the government said would take the nation more than three-quarters of the way toward reaching net zero by 2050.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • “We’re going to do it in a way that’s very deliberate,” White House domestic climate adviser Gina McCarthy told reporters Monday in a call organized by the World Resources Institute. The administration wants to transition to a cleaner economy with good-paying occupations in communities that have been hit hardest by unemployment and underinvestment, she said. “It’s intended to meet the moment we are in.”
  • “We are on the verge of the abyss,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said Monday
  • China, the largest greenhouse gas polluter, has said it plans to reach peak emissions by 2030 and effectively erase its carbon footprint by 2060, though the details remain uncertain
  • despite myriad diplomatic tensions between the two countries, the United States and China vowed Saturday to jointly combat climate change “with the seriousness and urgency that it demands.”
  • The world remains nowhere near meeting the central Paris aim of limiting Earth’s warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) compared with preindustrial levels — or ideally, remaining closer to 1.5 Celsius. Failure to hit those targets, scientists have warned, will result in a cascade of costly and devastating effects.
  • “We are way off track,” Guterres said. “This must be the year for action — the make-it-or-break-it year.”
  • To craft the new pledge in the administration’s first 100 days, White House officials scrambled staffers at agencies across the government to look for funding, programs and policies that could help curb emissions in the years ahead. Agency by agency, sector by sector, federal officials tallied up the math in an effort to make Biden’s pledge credible.
  • The International Energy Agency this week projected that global carbon dioxide emissions are set to rise by 1.5 billion tons in 2021 — the second-largest increase in history — as the world comes out of the pandemic-induced downturn
  • “This is a dire warning that the economic recovery from the Covid crisis is currently anything but sustainable for our climate,”
  • In the United States, the power sector represents one of the best opportunities to cut greenhouse gas emissions. On Friday, a collection of 13 utilities, including Exelon, National Grid and PSEG, urged Biden to pursue a range of policies “to enable deep decarbonization of the power sector, including a clean electricity standard that ensures the power sector, as a whole, reduces its carbon emissions by 80 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.”
  • The Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, meanwhile, are already laying the groundwork to curb methane emissions from oil and natural gas drilling, in part by reviving Obama administration standards reversed under Trump
  • the EPA is moving ahead to phase down the production and importation of hydrofluorocarbons — which are widely used as refrigerants and in air conditioning — by 85 percent over the next 15 years, as mandated by Congress.
  • Environmental activists, Democratic lawmakers, foreign leaders and hundreds of private companies, including Apple and Walmart, have implored the White House to make the boldest climate pledge possible.
  • Advocacy groups and academics have published detailed analyses, demonstrating ways they say the nation could cut at least half its emissions by the end of the decade.
  • But other major emitters, including China, India and Russia, have yet to spell out how exactly they intend to help put the world on a more sustainable trajectory.
  • to reach the 50 percent target, the administration will have to make some difficult-to-guarantee assumptions about the future. For instance, that new regulations aimed at curbing emissions won’t be reversed by a future administration or the courts — even though Trump furiously dismantled key Obama-era climate policies.
  • some Republicans have insisted that the far-reaching changes needed to cut greenhouse gas pollution so fast could harm an already struggling economy, particularly in communities that still depend on the fossil fuel industry.
  • Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has argued that Biden’s aggressive climate actions could kill thousands of jobs in her state. On the Senate floor last month, she called the notion that new policies could quickly replace lost jobs in coal and other fossil fuels with ones in renewable energy “a fantasy world that does not exist.”
  • Persuading other key nations to bolster the promises they made in Paris remains critical if the world is to meet its collective goal of slowing Earth’s warming. The targets set by countries such as China, India, Russia and Brazil could dramatically affect whether the world can reach the goals set almost six years ago.
  • “The international community will have the opportunity to see that Biden is good for his word,” said Rachel Kyte, dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. “A lot of diplomacy is about momentum and building momentum.”
11More

In summer, the stakes are rising for Biden - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html US Politics Biden Trump Presidential Ratings
shared by yehbru on 01 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Sagging job approval ratings, unanticipated challenges at home and abroad and, above all, diminishing legislative momentum have been hallmarks of the first summer in office for recent presidents.
  • During their first summers, both Clinton and Obama found themselves sinking into legislative quagmires that sapped their public support and energized their opponents.
  • Biden has advantages Clinton and Obama did not: The economy is recovering faster today than it did for either of them, opponents have not mobilized as energetic a grassroots backlash against his plans today as they did in 1993 and 2009, respectively, and Biden's approval rating has remained remarkably stable through late spring
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Almost all recent presidents have seen their approval ratings sink from their inauguration through the end of their first summer in office
  • Obama suffered more steady erosion through his first months; W. Bush bounced around the most (until his response to the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, catapulted him to an elevated approval rating he maintained for months), while Trump's numbers started very low (44% approval in his first Gallup survey) and edged into the thirties, a nadir that only Clinton also hit by the end of his first summer.
  • the most common thread in the summer slump for these presidents is a shift in focus from executive action, which typically comes across as crisp and decisive, to legislative negotiation, which is inevitably lengthy and messy.
  • "Early in a president's term, media coverage and many politicians from both parties stay relatively positive (or at least less negative than later)," he wrote me in an email. "Opposition politicians tend to mute their criticism, at least a bit, in the wake of an election defeat
  • Long legislative fights during their first year have weakened presidents in both parties. Even Trump's approval ratings reached some of their lowest points ever as he pushed his effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act in summer 2017.
  • With the economy steadily recovering from the pandemic, Biden is in a stronger position on that front than either Clinton or Obama. And Republicans so far have failed to mobilize against him anything like the grassroots resistance from the tea party or even the eventual uprising from gun owners, small business groups and conservative Christians that coalesced against Clinton.
  • Cutting a deal offers Biden the chance to notch a legislative victory and show progress on one of his core campaign promises -- proving he can bring the parties together -- but at the cost of what would likely be a significant retrenchment of his plans.
  • The fear among some Democrats is that if Biden also asks them to pass his infrastructure plan on a purely party-line vote, he might not be able to go back to that well on other issues for which bipartisan agreement is considerably less likely, particularly legislation to establish a national floor of voting rights that would override some of the restrictions on ballot access that red states are passing.
10More

Steel and lumber prices are sky-high. Lifting Trump's tariffs could help - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html
shared by mattrenz16 on 02 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • The US economy is so hot the supply of key materials can't keep up with surging demand — sparking shortages and price spikes in everything from computer chips and copper to chlorine.
  • This choice underscores the challenging position Biden finds himself in. Despite what his critics may say, he doesn't have a magic wand to immediately stabilize prices. And some of the issues can be attributed to the unique nature of the crisis: a self-imposed shutdown of the economy followed by an intense rebound.
  • Trump's lumber and steel tariffs, introduced in 2017 and 2018 respectively, were aimed at protecting American industry and jobs against alleged unfair trade tactics — and the steel industry says they've been essential to keeping the sector afloat during the pandemic. But the logic of the tariffs is being undermined by not only supply shortages but also breathtaking price spikes.Read More
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Despite a 20% pullback in recent weeks, random-length lumber futures are still up more than 400% from their April 2020 low. Lumber prices have skyrocketed so much that it's causing remodeling nightmares and creating even more sticker shock in the booming housing market.
  • Likewise, prices for US hot-rolled, coil steel, the most widely produced finished steel product, have spiked almost 270% since bottoming out last August and hit a record high of $1,616 per ton on Friday, according to S&P Global Platts. Before this boom, the prior peak was $1,100 in 2008.
  • Murphy, whose organization opposed the Section 232 steel tariffs from the beginning, argued tariff relief is a way government can help accelerate the recovery while simultaneously easing inflation jitters.
  • Meanwhile, both the steel and lumber industries are strongly urging Biden to keep the tariffs in place. Removing them could prove to be politically unpopular, especially among steel workers in battleground Rust Belt states.
  • Scott argued the steel tariffs effectively supported the industry and that removing them, along with quotas limiting imports, would lead to both a "hemorrhaging of jobs" and importing steel that is in many cases worse for the environment than what is made in America.
  • The Biden administration does not appear to have made a decision yet on lifting the steel or lumber tariffs, though new efforts are being made to address rising inflation concerns.
  • Biden announced late last week his administration will soon take unspecified steps to fight supply chain pressures, beginning with construction materials and transportation bottlenecks.
5More

Opinion | Republicans, Don't Ignore the Evidence on 'Labor Shortages' - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-wages-unemployment-covid.html
shared by rerobinson03 on 07 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Talk of labor shortages is everywhere. That is to say, many economic commentators and policymakers have been bemoaning the supposedly alarming reports of a lack of workers to fill the jobs vital to the ongoing economic recovery. But there is always a chorus of employers complaining they can’t find the workers they need. We have to look beyond anecdotal reports to fully understand the data.
  • As we sift through the latest jobs report, which showed the economy gained 559,000 jobs in May, three key findings rise to the surface.
  • This is also true today. Wage growth decelerated in May in most sectors. And in the vast majority of sectors, wages are growing solidly but not fast enough to raise concern about damaging labor shortages, given that job growth is also strong. Further, we still have 7.6 million fewer jobs than we did before Covid and there are large employment gaps in virtually all industries and demographic groups
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Nevertheless, many commentators have ignored this evidence. They conclude not only that there are widespread shortages, but that the culprit is pandemic unemployment insurance benefits. Governors in 25 Republican-led states have now said they will no longer accept federal unemployment benefits. This will cut aid to nearly four million impacted workers, despite the absence of compelling evidence that jobless benefits are causing problems in the labor market. Instead, we have considerable evidence that it is helpful.
  • But employers of low-wage workers typically have a great deal of power to suppress wages. Out of desperation, these workers often have no choice but to take any job no matter how bad the wages, unsafe the labor, or chaotic the schedule as they try to cobble together child care or elder care. Unemployment insurance isn’t keeping people out of the labor market en masse right now. But, when expanded benefits mean some individuals don’t feel the same pressure to accept a terrible job, that is what economists would call efficiency enhancing.
6More

Opinion | Federal Money for Public Libraries - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...libraries-funding.html US Federal Money
shared by saberal on 04 May 21 - No Cached
  • We strongly agree, and cite public libraries as the ultimate example: trusted, welcoming community and civic spaces offering education and opportunity for all. These beloved neighborhood institutions and their free and irreplaceable services, classes and programs will be central to our recovery.
  • Public libraries, the most democratic of institutions, have $26 billion in capital need nationwide; New York City libraries alone have $1.1 billion.
  • You document bullying behavior seemingly tolerated for decades. Underlings were too intimidated or fearful to call out Mr. Rudin publicly. The ultimate arbiter of justice in such cases should be the consumer of performing arts.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Letters to this newspaper, as well as numerous commentaries elsewhere, have persuasively lauded the achievements of Joe Biden, Anthony Fauci and Nancy Pelosi on challenges ranging from public health to poverty. But another of their contributions to our culture deserves far more attention than it generally receives.
  • So I was surprised to read about the passing of skinny jeans, which have been around for most of my adult life. Discovering that they are no longer “cool” is like saying goodbye to a part of me (and to my millennial coolness).
  • While Ecclesiastes says “for everything there is a season,” I wish that the season of skinny jeans could have lasted a little longer. If I’d known that my favorite trousers would be going out of style, at least I could have worn them instead of my pandemic leggings for the past year!
11More

Colorado Has More Mass Shootings Than Other Places. Survivors Say We All Have Trauma To... - 0 views

www.cpr.org/...rs-trauma-boulder-king-soopers
shared by anonymous on 24 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Like their predecessors did at Columbine in 1999 and Aurora in 2012, some of Colorado’s top elected officials gathered Tuesday to mourn victims of a mass shooting.
  • Ten people, including one Boulder police officer, were killed at King Soopers in the city Monday. It’s not clear exactly how many witnesses, now survivors, were in the store, though video footage showed at least a dozen being escorted out.They now join the thousands of people that have survived shootings at schools and other public places in the Denver metro since Columbine. More than 1,800 students attended Columbine in 1999, plus staff. Thousands more, collectively, were at other such shootings, like Platte Canyon High School in 2006, Deer Creek Middle School in 2010, a movie theater in Aurora in 2012, a Walmart in Thornton in 2017, and STEM School in Highlands Ranch in 2019. 
  • A 2019 Denver Post analysis found that the Denver metro has the third-most mass shootings, per capita, of the country’s largest metro areas since 1999. Survivors and experts say there’s a cumulative effect to so many shootings: the circle of survivors, who may face a lifetime of recovery, grows larger with each incident. 
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Some community members try to cope by avoiding places where shootings have happened, like movie theaters, Nicoletti said. That may prove more difficult with a grocery store, he added. Others enter a state of denial, believing that a shooting couldn’t happen to them. 
  • A better alternative, Nicoletti said, is to be as prepared as possible while not accepting that shootings are inevitable. Countless active shooter drills that have been carried out in schools and workplaces since Columbine are one example of that. Another is simply observing where all the exits are when you enter a building. 
  • Columbine survivor Missy Mendo said the only way she’s been able to keep herself from normalizing shootings through the years is to work to help people affected by them. That includes her role as a member of the Rebels Project, a local non-profit that helps survivors of mass shootings from around the world connect with one another. Mendo said Monday’s shooting in Boulder was especially difficult for her to try to comprehend.
  • Two graduates of Columbine High School co-founded the Rebels Project and named it after the school’s mascot. One of those co-founders is Heather Martin, a teacher at Aurora Central High School. 
  • She, like other survivors, has spent years finding her own coping strategies. Mental health care, including therapy, has been a big help, she said. But her fears can creep up again after she hears about another school shooting. 
  • Survivors of mass casualty events each have their own unique stories, Martin said. But they all share a common bond, or, as Martin and Mendo say, they belong to a club that no one wants to be in. That club continues to grow with each shooting, a fact that Martins says makes her feel “helpless.”
  • Suddenly, Martin said, she wasn’t the only person who felt nervous in crowded places like a grocery store.
  • It’s not just direct survivors of mass shootings that are feeling trauma right now — whether it’s images of the Boulder shooting seen via traditional and social media, or a year of living with a global pandemic. The key, Martin said, is to give yourself the grace to accept that it’s real and valid. 
7More

China Still Grew and Fueled Its Rise as Covid-19 Shook the Global Economy - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...und-on-u-s-economy-11610967016 economy covid
shared by mariedhorne on 18 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • In 2020, China advanced its aspirations by simply emerging with its growth intact from a brutal year when a pandemic shook the world economy.
  • On Monday, Beijing said its gross domestic product rose 2.3% last year. While that is the weakest annual rate of growth since the Mao era, it was enough to make China the only major world economy to gain any ground at all last year, and accelerated its likely overtaking of the U.S. economy, economists say.
  • The World Bank projects the global economy to have pulled back by 4.3% last year, dragged down by a 7.4% contraction in the eurozone. The U.S., the world’s largest economy, is expected to have shrunk by 3.6%
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • “We had a perfectly V-shaped recovery profile in China, whereas the U.S. looks more like a W,” said Michael Spencer, chief Asia-Pacific economist for Deutsche Bank. “It will have taken the U.S. a year longer than China to get back to the pre-Covid path.”
  • Forecasters now expect China’s economy to grow by another 8% or more in 2021, helping put it on track to overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest economy by 2028, as many as five years earlier than pre-coronavirus projections.
  • Without China’s contribution, says Homi Kharas, a senior global economics and development fellow at the Brookings Institution, the world economy would have shrunk by 5.7% last year, versus the roughly 4.3% pullback now expected by the World Bank.
  • With many of her competitors in Southeast Asia still grappling with their own factory shutdowns and supply-chain issues, Ms. Yang was able to claw away market share, helping Serenity Made finish 2020 with sales 30% higher than the year before.
4More

U.S. Retail Sales Fell 0.7% in December as Covid-19 Cases Rose - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...ronavirus-recovery-11610676272 covid-19 economy
shared by mariedhorne on 18 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Retail sales, a measure of purchases at stores, restaurants and online, declined a seasonally adjusted 0.7% in December from the prior month, the Commerce Department said Friday. That marked the third consecutive month of declines, and November’s retail sales were revised lower to a 1.4% drop, after a stretch of growth last spring and summer.
  • According to the National Retail Federation, holiday sales rose 8.3% compared with the same period a year ago, exceeding the trade group’s estimate of a 3.6% to 5.2% increase. Home-improvement and online retailers posted big gains, while sales at apparel chains and department stores—which historically tend to do well during the season—continued to decline. Holiday sales exclude restaurants, gasoline and auto sales, and measure the year-over-year gains in the combined November-December period.
  • Recent private-sector data suggested a mixed start to this year. NPD Group, which tracks retailers, said Thursday that sales at retailers focused on items such as apparel and personal-care products increased 27% in the week ended Jan. 9—the largest increase in that category since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s tracker of 30 million credit and debit cardholders recorded a 2.7% decline in spending from a year earlier in the week through Jan. 11.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Physical traffic to retail stores fell sharply this holiday season, according to firms that use sensors and cameras to track in-store shopping. Between Nov. 22 and Jan. 2, store traffic dropped 33% year-over-year, according to Sensormatic Solutions, which uses cameras and software to track visits to thousands of malls and shopping centers. By contrast, in November and December online sales grew 32.2% year-over-year to $188.2 billion,
6More

Yellen Calls for More Aid to Avoid Longer, More Painful Recession - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...-more-economic-aid-11610999772 politics
shared by mariedhorne on 19 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Janet Yellen, President-elect Joe Biden’s choice for Treasury secretary, plans to tell lawmakers that the U.S. risks a longer, more painful recession unless Congress approves more aid and urge them to “act big” to shore up the recovery.
  • “Economists don’t always agree, but I think there is a consensus now: Without further action, we risk a longer, more painful recession now—and long-term scarring of the economy later,” Ms. Yellen will say. “Over the next few months, we are going to need more aid to distribute the vaccine; to reopen schools; to help states keep firefighters and teachers on the job.”
  • Mr. Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, unveiled last week, provides for another round of direct stimulus payments, extended and enhanced jobless benefits, funding for schools and first responders and the creation of a nationwide vaccination program. It also includes longstanding Democratic priorities, such as raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour and expanding paid leave for workers.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The hearing comes at a time of growing uncertainty over the progress of the pandemic, which has killed close to 400,000 people in the U.S., as well as the state of the economy. Retail sales fell for the third straight month in December and employers cut jobs, ending seven months of employment gains.
  • Mr. Mnuchin said he couldn’t extend them beyond their Dec. 31 expiration, drawing criticism from Democrats who accused him of trying to hamstring the incoming administration.
  • Democrats and Republicans might press her on whether the Treasury would incorporate climate change into the broader financial regulatory framework, and whether she sees a more active role for the FSOC in the Biden administration.
13More

In Dash to Finish, Biden and Trump Set Up Showdown in Pennsylvania - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-biden-campaign.html election US trump politics biden Culture
shared by tsainten on 02 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Pennsylvania has more Electoral College votes, 20, than any other traditional battleground except Florida, and Mr. Trump won the state by less than one percentage point in 2016.
  • the president was set to make an appeal to white, working-class voters in Scranton, where Mr. Biden was born, while the Democratic nominee was aiming to solidify a broad coalition of white suburbanites and voters of color on a two-day swing through Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and elsewhere in western Pennsylvania.
  • “Every day is a new reminder of how high the stakes are, how far the other side will go to try to suppress the turnout,” Mr. Biden said as he campaigned here Sunday. “Especially here in Philadelphia. President Trump is terrified of what will happen in Pennsylvania.”
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Republicans are now hoping for a favorable ruling at the federal level, where a judge has called an election-eve hearing for Monday.
  • Vehicles bearing Trump flags halted traffic on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey; local officials said the motorcade backed up traffic for several miles. In Georgia, a rally for Democrats that had been scheduled was canceled, with organizers citing worries over what they feared was a “large militia presence” drawn by Mr. Trump’s own event nearby.
  • there were more than 350,000 absentee ballots that had been requested by Democratic voters that had yet to be returned.
  • “Souls to the Polls”
  • he F.B.I. was investigating the incident that “in my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong,”
  • Of the three big Northern swing states Mr. Trump won by a hair four years ago, the once reliably blue state of Pennsylvania is the one his advisers believe is most likely within his reach. That’s in large part because of the support of rural voters and Mr. Biden’s call for eventually phasing out fossil fuels, an unpopular stance for many voters in a state with a large natural gas industry.
  • Mr. Trump entered the final hours of the race in a worse position here than he was four years ago, when Pennsylvania was seen as Hillary Clinton’s firewall.
  • That lead, however, isn’t enough to make Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans feel fully confident about the state of the race in Pennsylvania. Some of the president’s opponents in recent days have been worried about turnout in the state's rural counties, as well as calls about requested ballots that never arrived.
  • Pennsylvania’s economy is emerging from the pandemic recession but still has a long road ahead to its pre-crisis state. Like the nation, it has seen a two-track recovery that has left small businesses and low-earning workers behind.
  • Pennsylvania saw its unemployment rate fall to 8.1 percent in September, according to the Labor Department, nearly identical to the national rate of 7.9 percent. That is a significant improvement from the 16.1 percent unemployment it posted in April. But the state still had 380,000 fewer jobs in September than it did in September of 2019, and there are 18 percent fewer small businesses open here compared to a year ago, according to data compiled by the economists at Opportunity Insights.
6More

Covid: White House accuses top scientist Fauci of 'playing politics' | BBC - 0 views

bbc.com/...election-us-2020-54774137 covid-19 fauci trump whitehouse
shared by anonymous on 02 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • The White House has accused leading infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci of playing politics days before the election in an interview about the coronavirus pandemic.
  • deaths in the US have now passed 230,000, while more than nine million cases have been registered
  • Dr Fauci said Mr Biden was "taking it seriously from a public health perspective", while Mr Trump was "looking at it from a different perspective… the economy and reopening the country".
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • abrupt change" in public health practices and behaviours.
  • unacceptable and breaking with all norms
  • "If you vote for Joe Biden it means no kids in school, no graduations, no weddings, no thanksgivings, no Christmas, and no Fourth of July together."Other than that you'll have a wonderful life. Can't see anybody, but that's alright," he said.He cast the election as "a choice between a Trump super-recovery and a Biden depression".
13More

Voters Are Motivated To Keep Protections For Preexisting Conditions : Shots - Health Ne... - 1 views

www.npr.org/...-up-traditional-party-politics
shared by mattrenz16 on 03 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • The sources of Puerto Rico's economic and social troubles are many, but prominent among them, Llompart believes, is a system in which the island's two main political parties have spent decades fighting over one major issue – whether Puerto Rico should remain a commonwealth territory of the United States, or seek statehood.
  • "We haven't become a state in all these decades," she said.
  • When she goes to the polls to vote for a new governor on Tuesday, Llompart said she'll vote for neither Pedro Pierluisi, the candidate for the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, nor for Carlos Delgado from the pro-commonwealth Popular Democratic Party.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Llompart said she'll split her ballot. For governor, she's supporting the candidate who supports Puerto Rico's independence from the United States, and for downticket offices she'll support candidates from a new party, Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana — or Citizens' Victory Movement — that's emerging as the first substantial challenge in decades to the island's two-party system.
  • Though polling indicates that one of the two traditional party candidates will win, the numbers also suggest it could be with support from less than 40% of the electorate, the smallest vote share ever to propel a Puerto Rican governor to office.
  • The island's youngest voters have come of age during a recession that has driven an exodus of half-a-million people — largely young adults — to the mainland United States. The past four years alone have arguably been the most tumultuous in Puerto Rico's modern history. It has declared bankruptcy, lost control of its own finances to a federal board appointed to resolve its debt, faced massive cuts to education and pensions, muddled through the recovery from two major hurricanes, faced earthquakes, corruption scandals, and a pandemic.
  • Both parties' candidates are polling around 10 to 12%, and have similar policy priorities, though the pro-independence party has historically made the island's independence from the United States a central tenet of its platform.
  • Lebrón said it's that same energy driving the unprecedented political realignment that appears to be taking hold this year, as more voters demand a move away from the two-party system they believe has prioritized the statehood question while sidelining the needs of everyday Puerto Ricans.
  • "Not in this election, but maybe in 2024, or 2028, because the numbers in the younger demographic with these two old parties are very, very weak."
  • Alexandra Lúgaro, the Citizens' Victory gubernatorial candidate – is considered a longshot to win, but if candidates from her party earn seats in the legislature or at the municipal level, it could build momentum that carries the party to stronger showings in future elections.
  • "We're exhausted," Lebrón said.
  • Tuesday's election will also include a non-binding referendum asking Puerto Ricans whether they support statehood, and two additional minor candidates for the governorship.
  • DeLeón believes Victoria Ciudadana has a better chance of siphoning support away from the traditional pro- and anti-statehood parties that he feels have driven Puerto Rico's economy into the ground.
7More

Opinion | Is Trump Trying to Take the Economy Down With Him? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...mp-transition-fed-markets.html US history politics trump election
shared by cartergramiak on 20 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Consumed by Election Day, Congress effectively abandoned the country when it failed to reach an agreement in October on a desperately needed relief bill. Now, its energy is geared toward the partisan mess of the presidential transition and two Senate runoffs in Georgia.
  • To Chairman Powell’s credit, he and the Fed took the remarkable step of publicly disagreeing. “The Federal Reserve would prefer that the full suite of emergency facilities established during the coronavirus pandemic continue to serve their important role as a backstop for our still-strained and vulnerable economy,”
  • till, there was hope that the Fed could make up for it by being even more aggressive about its ability to issue low-cost loans, using ample CARES Act funds and its own statutory powers.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • For those wondering how an alphabet soup of emergency financial measures that can be turned off by a lame duck cabinet member’s whim came to be so important: No, it’s not supposed to work this way. On paper, Congress should have seen that the ongoing crisis — including the roughly one million teachers and many other public workers in education who have been laid off because state and local budgets are in shambles — was getting worse, and that it required them to pass renewed direct fiscal aid.
  • Only two loans have been made: one to the State of Illinois and another to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of New York for a total of $1.7 billion, which is 0.3 percent of the $500 billion Congress authorized for facilitating such loans in the CARES Act. And for the M.T.A., those loans remain inadequate, as New York City still plans to lay off subway workers and drastically cut service.
  • President-elect Biden’s pick for Treasury secretary will be much more likely to work with, not against, the Fed in more generously supporting state and local governments. Many of the prominent names being floated have already worked closely with Chairman Powell and expressed sympathy for a more aggressive use of recovery tools.
  • We have a long way to go until Inauguration Day, yet the Fed can begin to prepare itself now to act as more than a backstop. Based on the prospects for action from Congress, our states and local communities will need it.
5More

Coronavirus: 'Slow and steady' approach by Scotland - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...uk-scotland-52867284 crisis
shared by brookegoodman on 31 May 20 - No Cached
  • Nicola Sturgeon has said people's quality of life is as important as restarting the economy in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
  • Ms Sturgeon said Scotland would stay on a "slow and steady" route out of restrictions.
  • Speaking on Sky's Sophy Ridge on Sunday show, the first minister said the Scottish government was committed to taking a cautious approach because it was clear coronavirus had not gone away.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • She added that she wanted to avoid a situation where, "people are being told they have to go back to work and they remain in lockdown for the rest of the time - that would not give very much quality of life to people".
  • Meanwhile, 80 organisations from across different sectors of Scottish life have written to Ms Sturgeon calling for a radical response to the coronavirus recovery.
11More

In Florida, Biden Says 'I Wasn't Surprised' by Trump's Diagnosis - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...biden-florida-covid.html biden trump us politics pandemic coronavirus campaign
shared by aidenborst on 06 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • Joseph R. Biden Jr. ventured onto the campaign trail, where he wished the president a speedy recovery but criticized his leadership, suggesting that he bore some responsibility for his positive test after flouting public health guidelines around masks and social distancing.
  • “Anybody who contracts the virus by essentially saying masks don’t matter, social distancing doesn’t matter, I think is responsible for what happens to them,” Mr. Biden said
  • “Quite frankly, I wasn’t surprised,” he said in response to another question.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Mr. Biden, whose campaign said he had tested negative for the coronavirus on Sunday,
  • But on Monday, after the president unleashed a flurry of all-caps tweets urging his supporters to vote, Mr. Biden issued several sharp remarks about the administration’s approach to the virus, even as he expressed well wishes for the president’s health.
  • Mr. Biden said during an address that he delivered in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami while wearing a mask. “Now that he’s busy tweeting campaign messages, I would ask him to do this: Listen to the scientists. Support masks. Support a — mask mandates nationwide.”
  • Mr. Trump left the hospital after tweeting in reference to a disease that has killed more than 209,000 people in the United States: “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life.” He emphasized that message in a video he posted on Twitter soon after arriving back at the White House.
  • “There’s a lot to be concerned about,” Mr. Biden responded on NBC, noting the death count. “I hope no one walks away with the message, thinking that it is not a problem. It’s a serious problem.”
  • “President Trump cannot advance democracy and human rights,” Mr. Biden said, “when he has embraced so many autocrats around the world, starting with Vladimir Putin.”
  • “I look like a socialist?” Mr. Biden said. “I’m the guy that ran against the socialist, remember? I got in trouble through the whole campaign, twenty-some candidates — ‘Joe Biden was too centrist, too moderate, too straightforward.’ That was Joe Biden.”
  • “Cuba is no closer to freedom and democracy than it was four years ago,” he said, arguing that the current “administration’s approach is not working.”
8More

Trump's Return Leaves White House in Disarray as Infections Jolt West Wing - The New Yo... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-covid-white-house.html trump politics pandemic
shared by cartergramiak on 07 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • The West Wing was mostly empty, cleared of aides who were sick or told to work from home, and staff in the White House residence were in full personal protective equipment.
  • Aides said the president’s voice was stronger after his return from the hospital Monday night, but at times he still sounded as if he was trying to catch air.
  • Four more White House officials tested positive, including Stephen Miller, a top adviser to Mr. Trump, bringing to 14 the number of people carrying the virus at the White House or in the president’s close circle.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • West Wing aides, shaken by polls showing the president badly trailing Joseph R. Biden Jr., worried that they were living through the final days of the Trump administration
  • Late in the day, the stock market collapsed when Mr. Trump abruptly called off talks for a congressional coronavirus relief bill after the Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell, said such a stimulus was badly needed.
  • Some White House staff members wondered whether Mr. Trump’s behavior was spurred by a cocktail of drugs he has been taking to treat the coronavirus, including dexamethasone, a steroid that can cause mood swings and can give a false level of energy and a sense of euphoria.
  • Prominent supporters of the administration said Mr. Trump should have stayed at the hospital until he was no longer infectious or should remain confined to his residence.
  • There were no answers, either, on when Mr. Trump last tested negative for the virus — a crucial piece of information that the White House and Dr. Conley have refused to answer and would establish the known state of Mr. Trump’s health before the presidential debate last Tuesday or before he attended a fund-raiser in New Jersey on Thursday. The White House first made public that Mr. Trump had tested positive early last Friday.
« First ‹ Previous 121 - 140 of 156 Next ›
Showing 20▼ items per page