Did Last Summer’s Black Lives Matter Protests Change Anything? - Public officials favored symbolic gestures over policy reforms, but the country is still dramatically different than it was a year ago. - link
The Struggle to Vaccinate Springfield, Missouri - COVID cases continue to rise, but many residents remain reluctant to get the vaccine. - link
How Andrew Cuomo Holds On to Power - The editor of the Albany Times Union discusses the sexual-harassment allegations against the governor of New York. - link
Three Big Takeaways from a Strong July Jobs Report - The Biden economy is growing, but there’s a great need, and a great potential, for further job growth. - link
Daily Cartoon: Friday, August 6th - “Ah—it’s great to be back in the office.” - link
From Vox
Brands are already marketing to Generation Alpha -
The next generation of consumers, dubbed Generation Alpha by demographers, is being born at the height of American excess. | Getty Images
The kids born after Gen Z are prime targets for marketers — and so are their millennial parents.
My greatest desire as a toddler was to own a play kitchen, complete with miniature appliances, utensils, and plastic food. All my neighborhood playmates had one. The kitchens were everywhere, according to my mother: displayed in toy catalogs and television commercials, in day care centers, and in the homes of family friends.
It was, in hindsight, one of my very first consumerist desires, a toy that sought to instill ideals of domesticity in young girls. That didn’t matter to my parents, or to 3-year-old me. I was learning to want things: snacks, games, and gadgets that were strategically dangled in front of my barely formed child brain, even if my parents held all the buying power. This parent-child dynamic — in which the child ceaselessly annoys their caretaker to receive a desired object — likely won’t ever change.
Americans’ consumption patterns have changed, though, especially over the past decade. The next generation of consumers, dubbed Generation Alpha by demographers, is being born at the height of American excess. They will grow up in a world oversaturated with direct-to-consumer brands attempting to “disrupt” every sector imaginable, one where social media is shoppable and Amazon is ubiquitous. Today’s parents are less likely to scour the aisles of their local Target or Toys “R” Us when the internet’s boundless array of online products can be delivered to their doors with just a few clicks.
The unique consumer identity of the toddlers and babies of Generation Alpha — a term used to describe those born between 2010 and 2025 — is currently being developed for them. It will be shaped through the toys, baby food, clothes, and toddler gadgets purchased by their parents and relatives. A real-time example of this phenomenon is Ryan Kaji, the 9-year-old star of Ryan’s World, one of the most lucrative YouTube channels on the platform. For now, though, most kids are too young and offline to be drawn into social media’s marketing schema. Brands, instead, are turning to parents to wean the next generation of consumers.
“There’s a subset of young, millennial moms who are invested in buying the best products they can afford for their kids,” said Heather Dretsch, an assistant professor of marketing at North Carolina State University. “As a result, the next generation of kids are going to have very similar tastes to that of their millennial parents when it comes to brands, unlike Gen Z.”
— Andrea Hernández ️⃤ (@iiiitsandrea) May 24, 2021
Both new and traditional kid-focused brands have, for the most part, abandoned the kitschy, rainbow-colored packaging used in the ‘90s and early aughts. Think of the commercials for Fruit Gushers candy and Kid Cuisine microwavable meals. Instead, they’ve defaulted to the minimalist aesthetic familiar to any millennial-aged shopper, with serif fonts and cohesive pastel color schemes that subtly inform the consumer that this brand is ethical, economical, and safe for their child. “You can tell Gen Alpha are kids of millennials because their snacks are filled with these labels,” tweeted Andrea Hernández, a food and beverage trend analyst. “Paleo, keto, probiotic, low carb, low sugar, plant based.”
For parents, the bevy of available brands can be overwhelming. “There’s a lot of pressure not knowing what your kid needs now and what they need next,” said Julie Rogers, the co-founder of the baby shoe brand Ten Little. “Parents are always wondering how they can buy things kids can grow into instead of something that lasts only a few minutes.”
Parenthood, then, is as much a state of being as a shoppable identity. Now that baby- and child-related products are less ugly and utilitarian, it’s easier than ever for parents to express their individual style and, by extension, cultivate their child’s taste. It’s similar to the marketing notion of a “trickle-down effect,” which refers to how upper-class fashion trends influence working-class styles. This is only the first chapter of Gen Alpha’s consumerist future. They certainly aren’t the first cohort of kids to be targeted by mass media (marketing deregulation in the 1980s led to an onslaught of loosely disguised children’s advertisements). They will be, however, the first to inhabit a world of bountiful digital-first brands, brands that have had eyes on them at an extremely young age.
Sara Petersen has noticed a dramatic shift in her buying impulses between her first child, who was born in 2012, and her youngest in 2019. “It felt like everyone was buying the same stuff back in 2012, the same playmats and plastic highchairs that were ugly, chunky, and only sold in primary colors,” said Petersen, who is working on a book about digital culture and motherhood. “Now, in part thanks to Instagram, there’s an aesthetic shift toward natural wood tones, creams, and neutral pastel shades.”
Mothers have always been a key marketing demographic, she added. But in the past, it was a category that felt “identity-killing.” Even progressive, working women felt they had to conform toward a general mold of motherhood. “Everyone bought the same ugly shit, and in some ways, you felt better and worse about it,” Petersen said. “Our consumer identity was flattened into one broad, unexciting group, and there were few brands that prioritized your individual needs, that specifically catered to you.”
The era of mommy blogs in the 2000s precipitated the mom-as-influencer industrial complex, but it was predicated around a similar idea: that one’s domestic struggles can be solved and made better by an endless array of products. The prevailing stereotype of the millennial parent is of a health-conscious caretaker, wary of processed foods, and the potential of unnatural chemicals and toxins present in their child’s food or toys. They want the best of everything for their kids. It’s an idea rooted in a materialist and classist assumptions of what “good” parenting looks like.
“Parenting as an industry, if you can even call it that, is very old and hasn’t changed in nearly a century,” said Lisa Barnett, co-founder of Little Spoon, a direct-to-consumer baby and children’s meal brand. “Every service, every product hasn’t really changed. We recognize that there’s a new generation entering the life stage of being a parent.”
It made little sense, then, that baby food brands and kiddie snacks were designed with the child in mind, rather than the parent. “It’s ironic because, at least for us, the baby doesn’t internalize what the packaging looks like,” Barnett added. “We’re trying to attract the parents, thinking about what they want to look for.”
Legacy food brands like Gerber and Beech-Nut are playing catch-up to new, online-only companies like Little Spoon. They’ve altered their packaging and offered organic options, but that won’t be enough to stem the expansion of DTC, kid-focused companies. The parenting industry — or the “mom economy” — has moved largely online during the pandemic. Consumers are not only accustomed to buying clothes, household items, and toys online; parents are seeking out technology and products that are convenient and transparent.
“So much of the power of shopping from mommy Instagram lies in the really impossible state of motherhood in the US, especially during the pandemic,” Petersen added. “It makes you feel better about the state of everything, even while American society has failed to provide policies that could make mothers’ lives better, like free preschool or universal paid leave.”
Granted, most brands aren’t trying to pose as a solution or a substitution for America’s inadequate child care policies. Their aim is to support a modern vision of parenthood, one where both parents are likely working and juggling child care tasks. It just so happens that, in this pursuit, brands and parents are subtly shaping the tastes and imagined lifestyles of their little ones. The long-term effects of coming of age in a terrazzo-filled home with wooden toys, of course, remain to be seen.
So, why are advertisers so keen on millennial parents and their Gen Alpha toddlers in the first place? “Starting from the turn of the century, we began to realize that millennials would wield the greatest consumer power in the world, compared to all other age groups,” said Dretsch. While market research further broke down the millennial demographic into subcategories, the broad delineation stuck and became widely used.
Generational labels became a vague nod to a type of lifestyle or ideology held by a group of similarly aged people, often as expressed on social media. During the advent of the BuzzFeed internet in the 2010s, millennial-dom morphed into an online identity. Eventually, it all compounded into a sort of generational lore that was privy to stereotypes: Baby boomers are wealthy and unempathetic toward the financial plight of young people; Gen Z is obsessed with broadcasting their “main character” lives on TikTok; millennials were associated with, among many signifiers, avocado toast, student loans, Harry Potter, liberalism, and jaded youthfulness.
Thus, age became an inexact metric for commonality while glossing over nuances of race, class, geography, and religion that also define an individual’s tastes. Regardless, the raging generational wars are a fruitful development for advertisers, who championed demographic labels in an effort to appeal to specific swaths of consumers. The ability to concretely define, and thereby appeal to, a certain group is coveted knowledge, at least in the marketing world.
In an interview with Mark McCrindle, the Australian consultant who’s credited with the term “Generation Alpha,” the New York Times described generations as “less of a collection of individuals than a commodity: to be processed into a manufactured unit, marketed and sold to clients.” Defining the next generation (which includes the unborn) in the era of not-so-subtle targeted ads, in which age range is a key factor, is “like staking claim in a gold rush.”
Yet the characteristics of Gen Alpha remain largely unknown. They are too young and their pre-adolescent life too varied to conduct concrete research. McCrindle argued that data on Gen Alpha’s parents, the millennials, can forecast how these children will be raised. That premise, however, was challenged in a 2017 paper “Generation Alpha: Marketing or Science” by two Hungarian researchers, who concluded that there was not yet any evidence of a post-Gen Z group.
“By definition, an age group will become a generation if they have common experiences, concepts, and language or vocabulary that differs from the previous generations,” one researcher told Wired. “We still have no representative data on the characteristics of ‘alphas,’ only speculations about what their common, cohesive force might be.”
Even so, population researchers have admitted that age delineations are somewhat arbitrary; they prefer to group people into cohorts rather than fixed generations, based on major life events like marriage and family formation. While none of us can accurately predict the defining characteristics of Gen Alpha, marketers and brands are embarking on a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.
According to Dretsch, the marketing professor, children are capable of developing brand associations as young as 3 years old. “Whatever the parents expose the child to, the more often they will come to identify with that brand even from a very young age,” she told me. “Those connections happen very naturally and almost non-consciously.”
No, school isn’t going to be “normal” this fall -
A student enters Heliotrope Avenue Elementary in Maywood, California, on April 13, 2021. | Brittany Murray/MediaNews Group/Long Beach Press-Telegram via Getty Images
But we can still make this pandemic school year better than the last.
Not too long ago,it seemed possible that the 2021-22 school year would be a “normal” one for American kids. Parents and experts alike hoped that vaccination rates among adults would drive down community spread of Covid-19 to manageable levels. There was talk that vaccines for younger kids would arrive, giving them the same protection as adults.
But now fall is upon us, and neither of these things has happened. A combination of lagging vaccination rates and the spread of the delta variant means that a majority of counties in America are considered to be at “substantial” or greater risk of Covid-19 transmission, according to the CDC. Vaccine approval for kids under 12 could still be months away. All of that poses big challenges for school districts that are planning to welcome students back in person, five days a week.
The challenges aren’t insurmountable, though. Perhaps the biggest feat is for lawmakers, school officials, employers, families — indeed, everyone involved — to accept that the pandemic is not over, and act accordingly.
Many public health experts say masking, virus testing, and other mitigation factors can make a return to in-person school safe and feasible, but the problem is many districts are not requiring masks this year — and some states are even forbidding mask mandates in schools. Add to that the fact that vaccinations lag far behind the rate experts say is necessary to curb spread, with rates especially low in some of the same places that won’t be requiring masks.
Then there is the concern for children’s health and the ongoing disruption to family life. While most children are not at high risk for severe Covid-19, and the availability of vaccines for adults — which dramatically reduce the risk of hospitalization and death from the virus — may blunt the impact of school outbreaks, parents are still understandably concerned about their kids getting sick. The constant quarantines if caseloads are high in schools also place a big burden on working parents, many of whom lack paid sick leave and have spent much of the past 18 months trying to manage remote school while holding down a job.
That’s especially true for mothers, who have borne the brunt of child care and homeschool duties throughout the pandemic. “I’m hearing a lot of moms panicking,” Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a research organization at the University of Washington, told Vox.
There are solutions that could make schools safer and family life more livable this fall — from masks in schools to employer policies that allow flexibility to care for a child. As Kanecia Zimmerman, a professor of pediatrics at Duke University who has studied Covid-19 in schools, told Vox, “We can do this, and we can do this safely.”But these solutions will require a level of coordination, political will, and acceptance of the reality of the situation that, during the many months of this pandemic, haven’t always been in evidence.
Here’s what experts say schools need in the delta era
The delta variant has thrown a wrench into everyone’s plans for this school year. But the good news about delta, if there is good news, is that strategies developed for older variants of the virus should still be effective to fight it. The most effective, experts say, are vaccines.
For teachers, staff, parents, and children 12 and over, vaccines are important for Covid-19 safety in all settings. “Everyone, regardless of whether they’re in school or not, who is eligible for the vaccine, should just be getting the vaccine,” Yvonne Maldonado, a professor of global health and infectious diseases at Stanford University, told Vox. “This virus is not going to go anywhere until we have a highly, highly vaccinated community.”
For children under 12, though, vaccines may not be available until mid-winter, so for now, the best protection is masking. Schools that used masks well were still able to keep transmission low last year, Maldonado emphasized. And masks still work against delta, Zimmerman said, but with the variant more transmissible, it’s more critical than ever for schools to be meticulous about compliance. “It can’t be that there’s a slippage, or it’s hanging down at your chin for 10 minutes.”
Schools should practice distancing — the CDC recommends 3 feet, if possible — but not at the cost of keeping kids on hybrid or remote schedules, Zimmerman said. “It’s better to have people in the school building than not.” If schools can’t adhere to distancing, masking compliance becomes even more important.
Proper ventilation can be helpful too, though there’s not yet perfect data on exactly what that means, Zimmerman said. Experts do know that Covid-19 transmission is much less likely outdoors, so schools should do what they can to mimic an outdoor environment, such as opening windows. But even some urban schools in North Carolina with decades-old ventilation systems still managed to keep transmission low, she said. Their secret: “They were very adherent to masking.”
Overall, schools will need to be vigilant about face coverings until their surrounding communities achieve a combination of high vaccination rates and low rates of community spread, Zimmerman said. Before delta, “we were talking over 70 percent” as a vaccination threshold; now, “we may be talking over 80 percent.” Measures of community spread are a little harder to pin down, but the CDC’s standard for “lower” transmission — less than 20 new cases per 100,000 people over the last 14 days — could be one benchmark. “The combination of those two things is likely a scenario where things would be safe enough to eliminate masking,” Zimmerman said.
Where we actually are as we head into fall
Unfortunately, the country isn’t where it needs to be when it comes to vaccines or masks. Vaccination rates have picked up across the country in recent days, likely in response to fears about delta, but many areas remain far off target. In Missouri, for example, just 41 percent of people are fully vaccinated. Rates like that coupled with the transmissibility of the delta variant have led to high levels of community spread across much of the US.
Schools can stay open even in areas of high community spread, experts say — if everyone wears masks. But mask policies in schools remain a mixed bag. Of the 100 school districts tracked by CRPE, about a third plan to require masks, a third will make them optional, and a third have yet to announce a policy, Lake said.
Moreover, many of the same areas with low rates of vaccination also lack mask mandates in schools — and eight states outright ban such mandates. In Arkansas, for example, just 37 percent of people are fully vaccinated, and cases are surging. But a state law passed earlier this year bans districts from requiring masks.
That leaves parents worried for their kids’ safety. “I just feel like they have taken away the only tool they have for the younger kids who can’t get vaccinated,” Arkansas mom Jennifer Carter told NBC News. (The ban has been challenged in court, and last Friday, a judge temporarily blocked it.)
Forfamilies who don’t feel confident in their school’s mitigation measures, it’s not clear if remote options will be available. Many districts, like New York City, have said they will not allow students to choose full-time remote learning in the fall, even though a large number of families, especially in communities of color, have said they prefer remote learning for now.
Quarantines and testing protocols are another big unknown. With community rates of Covid-19 high going into the fall, cases are bound to pop up in schools. In the past, that’s meant quarantines and closures of classes, grades, and even whole schools for up to 10 days — a move that aimed to reduce the spread of the virus but also caused disruption for parents and students alike. The CDC now says that as long as all students are masked and maintain 3 feet of distance, students do not need to quarantine from school if exposed to an infected student. However, some districts, such as Los Angeles, are still planning to require quarantines regardless of masking, Zimmerman said.
And in districts that don’t offer a remote option, it’s not clear how students will be able to learn if they’re sent home to quarantine. “There is no contingency plan in most places as far as I can tell,” Lake said.
Across the country, planning for the fall remains a patchwork, with guidance from state governments limited and issues like masks highly politicized. Advice from the CDC, too, “has been pretty slow in coming and fairly hands-off,” Lake said.
Despite more than a year of experience with pandemic learning, this summer looks a lot like last summer, she added, when many districts rushed toward normalcy without adequate plans for how to backtrack. “It is shocking to me that we’re in the situation that we’re in,” she said. “But on the other hand, it feels very, very familiar.”
Here’s what that means for families
It’s not yet clear whether the delta variant causes more severe disease in children than earlier versions of the virus, Zimmerman said. In general, delta’s impact on severity is still being studied. But since it’s more transmissible, more children are catching it, and some of them will become severely ill. “Kids get sick” from Covid-19, Zimmerman said. “That has never been a question.”
That’s not a reason to keep schools closed, Zimmerman said. Shutting school buildings again “should be the absolute last thing that people do.” But failing to use the tools we know work, like masks, puts kids — and adults — needlessly at risk. As Zimmerman put it, delta shouldn’t change the calculus around schools unless “people are not going to do the things that are necessary to protect children and protect staff.”
And while kids getting sick is a major worry on parents’ minds, it’s not the only one. They also have to contend with the uncertainty inherent in another year of pandemic schooling. For students, another year of subpar planning for quarantines and remote options could mean more instruction time lost, already a big concern among education experts. After two school years impacted by Covid-19, “the academic losses are really high,” Lake said.
For parents, meanwhile, another year of quarantines means another year when they may be unable to work for days or even weeks at a time because a child can’t go to school. Known Covid-19 exposures aren’t the only issue. The ordinary coughs and colds that are part of children’s lives have taken on a new seriousness, with parents often needing to pull kids out of school for multiple days until they can get a negative Covid-19 test.
Anyone else been crying everytime you think about fall & your kids starting school and how we still don’t have childcare & your pretty sure you & your kids will be exposed & you’ll have to quarantine, which means being home & trying to work all hours of the day, again. #ItsFine
And the burden of these pandemic-era school disruptions tends to fall disproportionately on moms. In one survey last October, 63 percent of mothers said they were primarily responsible for their children’s online schooling, compared with just 29 percent of dads. Over the last 16 months, “Who was figuring out the schooling situation? Moms. Who were the main communications going to? Moms,” Susannah Lago, a mother of two and founder of the group Working Moms of Milwaukee, said. “That’s really hard.”
Women have disproportionately dropped out of the workforce over the last year, with child care likely a factor. After all, mothers with kids under 12 spent an average of eight hours a day on child care last year, the equivalent of a full-time job. And many say that ongoing uncertainty over school in the fall is keeping them from going back to work. “I can’t ask in an interview: ‘Do you mind if I take off two weeks with no notice,’” Bee Thorp, a mother of two in Virginia, told the New York Times.
For those still working, meanwhile, the delta variant and schools’ inconsistent policies just mean even more of the juggling, stress, and confusion that some hoped they’d left behind when the vaccines arrived. Parents are saying, “I can’t do this again,” Lake said.
Making the coming school year safer starts with letting go of “normal”
The situation this fall isn’t what anybody hoped for. But there are still ways for district officials and other decision-makers to help students, staff, and families have the best school year possible. The first is, very simply, to follow the science.
For now, that means masks in schools, Maldonado said. In places where state or city officials haven’t mandated masks, districts may need to take the lead. “If they go beyond what the states or the counties are mandating, then so be it,” Maldonado added. “They may need to be the guardians of the safety of their children.”
That could be a challenge in places where mask mandates are banned. But at least four school districts in Florida have said they will require masks in the fall, in defiance of the state’s ban, according to the Washington Post. “Now is a good time for folks to kind of dig deep and really think about what are student interests and what do we have to do to protect those interests,” Lake said.
Promoting vaccines — not just in schools but around the country — is also crucial, public health experts say. So far, few districts are planning to mandate vaccines for students or staff, and some teacher’s unions have opposed mandates. But even without a mandate, parents can help protect themselves and their communities by making sure they and any eligible older children get the vaccine. “Get everyone in your family who can be vaccinated vaccinated so that you can, at least, protect your bubble as much as you possibly can,” Zimmerman said.
Beyond mitigation measures, districts need to communicate with parents clearly and with as much notice as possible about what they can expect for the fall, Lake said. “As the pandemic has shown us, they’ve got to be able to respond to changing conditions quickly and communicate to families how that’s going to work.”
Meanwhile, employers will need to be understanding of the fact that for working parents, this fall won’t be back to normal. They need plans in place to make sure workers can take time off if their kids are home from school, and they need to offer mental health support to parents who are dealing with the stresses of a pandemic for yet another year. More than anything, they need to demonstrate the same level of flexibility that families are being asked to show in dealing with the uncertainties of school in the Covid-19 era.
“That goes two ways,” Lago said. It’s “not just families being flexible for Covid; it’s employers being very flexible to support the people that make their company run.”
Indeed, everyone involved may need to acknowledge that, yet again, school isn’t going to look the way it did before the pandemic, and everyone needs to plan for that. “Let’s not pretend that things are back to normal,” Lake said. “We’re not out of this yet.”
How two competing cryptocurrency policies began a conversation on digital rights -
Cryptocurrency, and the money it can generate, has been a key topic of debate for lawmakers looking to pass the $1 trillion infrastructure bill. | Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto/Getty Images
The $1 trillion infrastructure bill could change how cryptocurrency is taxed.
Senate deliberations continued over the weekend over a $1 trillion infrastructure bill, with a particular focus on how the bill could impact the world of cryptocurrency. The infrastructure bill, known as HR 3684, allocates money to build roads, bridges, transportation systems, and support clean energy, among other developments. The bill includes a tax provision that outlines plans to raise about $28 billion for that $1 trillion package through taxes from crypto transactions.
“As we know, cryptocurrency is a digital asset that more and more people are investing in. We should want that to continue, and continue in a healthy and sustainable way,” said Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) during Sunday’s Senate session. Portman, along with other senators, proposed an amendment to the bill’s cryptocurrency tax provision in order to quell concerns over digital rights. However, Portman’s was the second proposed amendment that dealt with this concern. The two competing amendments illuminate the concerns of those in the crypto space who are particularly unhappy with one key word in the tax provision: “broker.”
Cryptocurrency investors are unhappy with the new tax provision
The bill identifies a “broker” as anyone “responsible for and regularly providing any service effectuating transfers of digital assets on behalf of another person,” and anyone thus identified would be subject to tax reporting requirements. That appears to include people like “miners,” who use a “proof of work” system by solving algorithms with computers and software that, if correct, serve as verification for crypto transactions. Miners don’t have customers, so they wouldn’t be able to get access to the information necessary to complete a 1099 tax form — something the provision requires brokers submit. Brokers must also submit reports of any transactions over $10,000 to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which was already required of them before the bill was proposed.
Digital rights nonprofit the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) believes such requirements are also an issue of privacy. “The mandate to collect names, addresses, and transactions of customers means almost every company even tangentially related to cryptocurrency may suddenly be forced to surveil their users,” the foundation wrote in a statement issued last week.
Cryptocurrency’s decentralized financial system and its blockchain transactions don’t tie information to an individual, but rather to the series of transactions that came before, thus cryptocurrency marketplaces do not easily allow for the collection and reporting of information on users. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey weighed in on the current state of crypto discussions. “Forcing reporting rules on Americans who develop software and hardware, who mine and secure the network, or who run nodes to build resilience and efficiencies, is an impossible ask that will only drive development and operation of this critical technology outside the US,” tweeted Dorsey.
Forcing reporting rules on Americans who develop software and hardware, who mine and secure the network, or who run nodes to build resilience and efficiencies, is an impossible ask that will only drive development and operation of this critical technology outside the US.
The tax provision has met pushback from other digital rights advocates, like the nonprofit Fight for the Future, which urged supporters to call senators and encourage lawmakers to reconsider the crypto regulations. “We feel strongly that policies that impact people’s basic civil liberties and people’s rights in the digital age should never be tacked on to legislation like an infrastructure bill,” Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future, told CNN. Additional backlash came from cryptocurrency stakeholders like Square, Coinbase, and RibbitCapital, that were among a group of entities to sign onto a joint letter addressing the bill’s shortcomings and encouraging alternatives.
The debate over who should be exempt from financial reporting
In response to the criticism, Sens. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Pat Toomey (R-PA) proposed an amendment to the bill’s tax provision that would reinstate protections for individual investors. The amendment releases entities — including miners, software designers and protocol developers — from the need to report data that would be difficult or impossible for them to collect. Specifically, if passed, the amendment would exempt brokers from the following reporting requirements:
“(A) validating distributed ledger transactions (B) selling hardware or software for which the sole function is to permit a person to control private keys which are used for accessing digital assets on a distributed ledger, or (C) developing digital assets or their corresponding protocols by other persons, provided that such other persons are not customers of the personal developing such assets or protocols.”
And then there’s the proposed amendment from Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA), Rob Portman (R-OH), and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), which is also backed by the White House.The Warner-Portman- Sinema amendment would exempt traditional cryptocurrency miners who participate in time-consuming “proof of work” (PoW) systems like Bitcoin and Ethereum 1.0 from the financial reporting requirements outlined in the tax provisions. However, it would maintain the reporting requirements for those using a “proof of stake” (PoS) system used by many altcoins (cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin), which is less energy-intensive and gives mining power based on the percentage of coins held by a miner.
Currently, only altcoins (any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin) use PoS systems, which leaves their users at more of a disadvantage if the Warner-Portman-Sinema amendment were to be passed. From a legislative perspective, though, this option may be more attractive, and has more administration support.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki praised the Warner-Portman-Sinema amendment because the administration believes it “strikes the right balance and makes an important step forward in promoting tax compliance.” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen spoke with lawmakers Thursday about concerns over the Wyden-Loomis-Toomey amendment, implying that they should instead support the Warner-Portman-Sinema amendment, according to the Washington Post.
This rift between supporters of the two amendments led to a more public rebuke of the Warner-Portman-Sinema amendment from one of the Wyden-Loomis-Toomey amendment’s authors. “While I appreciate that my colleagues and the White House have acknowledged their original crypto tax had flaws, the Warner-Portman amendment picks winners and losers based on the type of technology employed,” tweeted Toomey. “The Warner-Portman plan exempts bitcoin miners, but not other transaction validators or software developers who create these platforms.”
While I appreciate that my colleagues and the White House have acknowledged their original crypto tax had flaws, the Warner-Portman amendment picks winners and losers based on the type of technology employed. That’s horrible for innovation.
Some experts believe the conflict over the amendments entirely misses the point of just how difficult it is to regulate cryptocurrency. Writing for Coindesk, Angela Walch, a research associate at the UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies, recommended lawmakers treat cryptocurrency as a separate issue rather than lumping it into a major spending bill.
“Just because policymakers and regulators have allowed [the crypto financial system] to grow to its present state largely unchecked, does not mean that rapid-fire, piecemeal regulation is the best way to address the situation,” she wrote.
Talks are ongoing as the Senate works to pass an infrastructure bill that has already been stymied in the past by cross-partisan differences. Given the chorus of voices across the political spectrum speaking out about cryptocurrency, the infrastructure bill appears to be more of a beginning than the last word on the future of how the US tackles crypto.
From The Hindu: Sports
High time that I stop feeling pressure and see my game from a different perspective: Deepika - Ace Indian acrcher on Monday confessed that she needs to stop buckling under the pressure of performance at the Olympic Games and approach the bigges
Mr. Kool and Glorious Legend work well - Mr. Kool and Glorious Legend worked well when the horses were exercised here on Monday (Aug. 9).Outer sand: 800m: Treasure Delight (rb) 58, 600/44. F
Mandeep Jangra wins second professional bout, with TKO, in USA - The 27-year-old, who is a silver medallist from the 2013 Asian Championships and the 2014 Commonwealth Games, turned professional in March this year.
Vikas undergoes shoulder surgery - Vows to come back stronger from Olympic heartbreak
Fight master dies of electrocution during Kannada movie shoot - The accident occurred at Jogenahalli near Bidadi on August 9
U.K. High Court grants Nirav Modi permission to appeal on mental health and human rights grounds - Justice Martin Chamberlain delivered his verdict to conclude that the arguments presented by Nirav Modi’s legal team concerning his “severe depression” and “high risk of suicide” were arguable at a substantial hearing.
IT Rules draconian law on free speech, says plea in HC - Division bench was hearing petition filed by legal news website The Leaflet and a PIL plea by journalist Nikhil Wagle
First CNG bus rolls out in Kolkata - They will bring down cost of running and also reduce pollution, says Minister.
Rajya Sabha returns bill to end all retrospective taxation - After the ‘The Taxation Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021’ was returned by Rajya Sabha, all tax demands made on companies using a 2012 legislation on indirect transfer of Indian assets prior to May 28, 2012 will be withdrawn.
From BBC: Europe
Greece wildfires: ‘It’s like a horror movie but it’s real life’ - Thousands of people have had to evacuate Greece’s second biggest island as severe wildfires rage.
Greece wildfires: Evia island residents forced to evacuate - Hundreds on the island of Evia flee to safety by sea as a record heatwave triggers devastating fires.
Climate change: IPCC report is ‘code red for humanity’ - Heating from humans has caused irreparable damage to the Earth that may get worse in coming decades.
Thunberg calls out climate impact of fashion brands in Vogue interview - Many companies are only pretending to care about the climate, the activist tells Vogue Scandinavia.
Thailand man charged over death of Swiss tourist near waterfall - The 27-year-old man has been charged with murdering the 57-year-old woman.
From Ars Technica
Stingle is a privacy-focused, open source photo backup application - The mobile app encrypts your photos before uploading them to the cloud. - link
Review: James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad is like The Boys on steroids - The humor is dark, the body count is high, and the finale is just plain bonkers. - link
Researchers announce the smallest exoplanet discovered yet - A 3-planet system may expand out to 5, and one of its members is pretty small. - link
Deep dive into stupid: Meet the growing group that rejects germ theory - Germ theory denialist Facebook group went from 147 members in April 2020 to 18.4K now. - link
The 2021 Audi SQ5 Sportback: Cool looks, but it drinks too much - This sporty SUV would be improved by the addition of an electric powertrain. - link
From Jokes Subreddit
A married man keeps telling his wife “Honey, you have such a beautiful butt” -
Every person in the town agrees that she does have a very beautiful butt. The man’s birthday is coming up so she decides to take a trip to the tattoo parlor and get the words “Beautiful butt” tattooed on her ass.
She walks in and tells the tattoo artist he husband thinks she has a beautiful butt. He looks and says, “You do have a beautiful butt”. She then tells the man she wants Beautiful butt tattooed on her ass. The man tells her "I can’t fit that on your ass, it takes up too much space. But I tell you what, I will tattoo the letters BB on each cheek and that can stand for beautiful butt. She agrees and gets it done.
On the man’s birthday she hears him come home and is only wearing a robe. She then stands at the top of the stairs. He opens the door and she says “look honey.” She then takes off the robe she is wearing, bends over, and the man yells “WHO THE FUCK IS BOB?”!
A naked woman jumps into a taxi. The taxi driver stares at her, looking her over from top to bottom. The woman is offended and asks the taxi driver “What’s the matter? Haven’t you ever seen a naked woman before?”
The taxi driver responds: “Oh, it’s not the fact that you’re naked that bothers me.”
“Then why are you looking at me that way?”
“Well, ma’am, I’m looking at you and thinking, ‘where the hell is this lady keeping the money to pay for this ride?’”
An old woman tells her husband that if he walks across the kitchen floor after she mops again she’s going to kill him. -
The next time she mops the kitchen floor he does it again. He gets the kitchen floor dirty and tracks water into the living room. She does as promised. Without saying a word she goes to their bedroom, gets his pistol out of the closet, and shoots him dead in his recliner.
Then she calls 911 and tells them “I told my husband that if he walks through the kitchen after I mopped then I would kill him. He didn’t listen and I shot him.”
Emergency dispatch immediately sends an ambulance for the husband and a squad car for the wife. The chief of police hears about the call shortly afterwards, thinks it’s a rather strange story so he drives to the house. When he gets there his officers are still waiting outside.
He asks “Officers, why haven’t you gone inside and arrested the woman?”
They reply “Sir we can’t go in now. The kitchen floor is still wet.”
