The Presidential Press Conference in the Biden Era Is as Awful as Ever - Under Trump, we had to listen. But now? There must be a better way. - link
The Return of Mass Shootings - Will there be a way forward this time? - link
Two Georgia Churches Grapple With the Shootings in Atlanta - Members of a Korean Baptist congregation reflected on the persistence of racism. The church where the gunman belonged insisted that he alone was responsible. - link
The Movement to Exclude Trans Girls from Sports - The opposition is cast as one between cis-girl athletes on the one hand and a vast liberal conspiracy on the other. - link
The Historians Under Attack for Exploring Poland’s Role in the Holocaust - To exonerate the nation of the murders of three million Jews, the Polish government will go as far as to prosecute scholars for defamation. - link
Biden’s massive infrastructure plan is also a climate plan.
The White House is preparing for its next big swing on the economy.
Shortly after passing his $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief package, President Joe Biden is preparing to unveil his “Build Back Better” plan Wednesday during a public address in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The White House discussed an approximately $3 trillion infrastructure package on a call last week with Senate Democrats, but the price tag and final details are still under discussion, a person familiar with the plan told Vox.
Those close to the Biden White House underscore this is a key part of the president’s agenda, and his goal of steering America’s economy toward clean energy and manufacturing. Biden and Democrats see an infrastructure package as the best way to tackle climate change and get the country to net-zero electricity emissions by 2035, by installing more electric vehicle charging stations on the nation’s roads, modernizing the electrical grid, and incentivizing more wind and solar projects. It could be financed at least in part with higher taxes on corporations and the wealthiest Americans.
“I think they’re obsessed with 2035,” former Obama climate adviser John Podesta told Vox in a recent interview, speaking about the Biden White House. “If you stand back and think about buildings, efficiency, transportation, electrification of vehicles, it’s all built on the idea that you’re running clean electrons through that system.”
In addition to using infrastructure to tackle climate change, administration officials are planning to introduce a second package that deals with the care economy, including child care and paid family leave, universal pre-kindergarten, and free community college tuition, the New York Times first reported and White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki confirmed this weekend.
The Covid-19 pandemic showed an acute need to create more of a child care safety net in the US, but the fact that the administration appears to be breaking the two packages apart could be a signal they think the infrastructure and clean energy proposals have a greater chance of passing through a closely divided Congress and getting support from moderate Democrats, including Senate swing vote Joe Manchin (WV).
No matter what, the process of coming up with a final infrastructure package will be long and fraught. Democrats are planning to kick off a bipartisan process, but could rely on budget reconciliation to pass major portions of an infrastructure package that Republicans don’t support. And it’s likely only one more big spending bill can pass this year under budget reconciliation.
“I hope it will be the largest infrastructure package in American history,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA), the chair of Congress’s Joint Economic Committee, told Vox. Speaking about a $1.5 trillion infrastructure package House Democrats passed in 2019, Beyer said, “To me, that seems it should be the floor, and we should go up from that.”
It will likely take a bit more time for the White House to release its blueprint for an infrastructure plan, and lawmakers are starting a two-week recess. But there are a lot of infrastructure bills floating around Congress that the Biden administration could incorporate.
Last year, the House passed its own $1.5 trillion infrastructure package, the Moving Forward Act. The bill invested in traditional roads and bridges infrastructure, but also put money toward revitalizing America’s rail system, aging school buildings, and spotty broadband infrastructure. Here are the key points of the Moving Forward Act:
Also in the mix is a surface transportation bill that funds roads and bridges and is up for its five-year reauthorization this year. The reauthorization bill is something that Republicans and Democrats alike see as having the potential for the most bipartisan compromise, and there has been some talk on Capitol Hill about passing a bipartisan roads and bridges infrastructure bill, and then putting the more ambitious pieces of Biden’s infrastructure plan into a budget reconciliation bill.
The House and Senate are starting in different places on the surface transportation reauthorization bill. The House bill is close to $500 billion, and the Senate passed a bipartisan $287 billion highway funding bill in 2019. Now that Democrats are in the majority, the top-line figure is likely to increase when the committee proposes an updated bill. Still, negotiations over the surface transportation bill could be overshadowed by Biden’s larger infrastructure plan.
A spokesperson for the House Transportation Committee said the surface transportation bill would be part of a larger push. “While decisions about the size and scope of a broader jobs and economic recovery plan get hammered out, Chair [Peter] DeFazio is working as we speak to advance an ambitious surface transportation reauthorization bill through his Committee later this spring, which is expected to serve as a major component of a broader infrastructure package,” committee spokesperson Kerry Arndt told Vox in a statement.
Beyond the main infrastructure bills in Congress, there are plenty of other bills that could be incorporated into a larger budget package. The House Energy and Commerce Committee has the CLEAN Future Act, which would put forward a clean electricity standard and lay out a pathway to decarbonize the US electricity sector by 2035. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL) have a bill to create a dedicated Passenger Rail Trust Fund that would serve as a primary funding stream for Amtrak, rather than the appropriations money the rail system now receives.
On the community infrastructure side, House Committee on Education and Labor Chair Bobby Scott (D-VA) has a school infrastructure bill to repair toxic and ancient school buildings, particularly in poorer and underserved communities. And Assistant Speaker of the House Katherine Clark (D-MA) has a “Child Care Is Infrastructure” bill that would authorize $10 billion over five years to invest in child care infrastructure in the US.
“The Biden administration understands this and has made a care agenda one of their top priorities,” Clark told Vox in a recent interview.
Infrastructure is sometimes talked about in Washington like it’s the most bipartisan issue in town.
Indeed, legislation funding fixes to the nation’s roads and bridges are relatively noncontroversial and bipartisan, as is the need for better broadband access in states and cities. But the main disagreement between Republicans and Democrats on infrastructure is how big a package should be, what exactly should be in it, and perhaps most importantly — how to pay for it.
Republicans want a smaller infrastructure package to deal mainly with roads and bridges, and they want to get that done without raising taxes. Democrats see things differently, viewing infrastructure as a key opportunity to transition the US economy toward clean energy, as well as strengthening “human infrastructure” with better schools, more generous child care, and free community college.
“Climate and infrastructure are closely linked,” a person familiar with the Biden recovery plan told Vox. Biden campaigned on a $2 trillion climate and clean energy plan that seeks to get the US to net zero emissions by 2050, and by 100 percent clean electricity by 2035. Biden’s campaign plan sought to create 1 million new jobs in the American auto industry, domestic auto supply chains, and auto infrastructure.
“Are [Republicans] willing to invest the amount of funding that’s required to make sure the US automaker retool and the incentives are there to make sure American consumers move toward electric vehicles?” said founder of the Climate and Energy Program at the centrist think tank Third Way Josh Freed. “It’s not at all clear that can be the case.”
Then there’s the debate of how a massive infrastructure bill, coming on the heels of an already passed and signed $1.9 trillion Covid stimulus law, will be paid for. As Vox’s Emily Stewart has detailed, Biden has already floated upping the corporate tax rate, raising taxes on households making $400,000, and adjusting the estate tax and capital gains taxes.
Importantly, these tax proposals have the support of moderate Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who has told reporters he wants an “enormous” infrastructure bill. But Manchin also wants the tax increases and larger package to be bipartisan — which will be much more difficult.
Podesta told Vox he’s certain the Biden White House will introduce a bold package with some audacious goals. How those goals are shaped by the demands of an unpredictable Congress is the bigger unknown.
“The question there is really what’s going to make it through the legislative process,” Podesta said. “The only thing I’m certain of is they’re going to push for big investments, in both power production and transmission.”
The process of drafting and passing an infrastructure bill that the White House, the Senate, and the House all agree on will likely be far more drawn out than Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid relief package; the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has a September deadline to pass the approximately $500 billion five-year surface transportation bill. But that bill isn’t likely to drive the debate around infrastructure.
Democrats want to pass many more components throughout the summer. Democrats are saying that they want the process to be bipartisan and include Republican input, but under current Senate rules, they also have one more shot to use budget reconciliation to pass an infrastructure and climate bill with 51 votes.
Earmarks — provisions in a spending bill directing money toward projects in various congressional districts — are potentially making a comeback, after past controversies over accusations of waste. With this kind of “pork” spending, some Democrats hope they can entice Republicans to lend bipartisan support to the next big budget bill.
Earmarks may mean there’s more of a deal to be had on infrastructure, but they’ll also ensure the process could be messier — with lawmakers jockeying to get their district’s priorities some money.
During the Covid-19 bill process, lawmakers were told to hold off on putting their individual wants and needs into the first budget bill, because time and quick passage were of the essence to combat the pandemic. Now, it’s going to be open season.
“Every single member has a bunch of stuff they want to do they were told they could not do in the first package,” a Democratic congressional aide told Vox. “Truly, every senator’s pet project who hasn’t been in the majority before, now has an opening.”
Biden and Democrats in Congress have months of strategic decisions ahead of them. The choices they make — whether or not to work with Republicans, whether to split up the package or keep it as one, how much to indulge the pet projects of lawmakers through earmarks — will shape a crucial piece of Biden’s legacy.
Snarky tweets targeting Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren came after the CEO told execs they weren’t pushing back hard enough on critics.
Amazon has long been at odds with Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren over their criticisms of the company’s labor and business practices. But the discord reached a new height last week when Amazon aggressively went after both on Twitter in an unusual attack for a large corporation. With each new snarky tweet from an Amazon executive or the company’s official Twitter account, insiders and observers alike asked a version of the same question: “What the hell is going on?”
Turns out that Amazon leaders were following a broad mandate from the very top of the company: Fight back.
Recode has learned that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos expressed dissatisfaction in recent weeks that company officials weren’t more aggressive in how they pushed back against criticisms of the company that he and other leaders deem inaccurate or misleading. What followed was a series of snarky and aggressive tweets that ended up fueling their own media cycles.
The timing was likely not coincidental. Bezos and other Amazon leaders are on edge as the company is facing the largest union election in its history at its Bessemer, Alabama warehouse. Election results will be tallied early this week, and Amazon officials understand that if a majority of the employee voters vote to unionize, it could set off a chain reaction at other facilities, with the potential to force the e-commerce giant to overhaul how it manages its hundreds of thousands of front-line US workers. There was terror inside the executive ranks of Amazon the last time a union election was held at a US Amazon facility — and that was only a small subset of a warehouse’s workforce, the majority of whom voted against unionization. That vote happened in early 2014, and consisted of just 27 technicians and mechanics at an Amazon warehouse in Delaware. In Alabama, though, the stakes are much higher with nearly 6,000 workers eligible to vote. Bezos knows all of this well.
So when news broke last week that Sanders was planning to visit Alabama in the final days of voting, top Amazon executive Dave Clark fired off a Twitter thread that started with the following post.
“I welcome @SenSanders to Birmingham and appreciate his push for a progressive workplace,” Clark’s account posted on Wednesday. “I often say we are the Bernie Sanders of employers, but that’s not quite right because we actually deliver a progressive workplace.”
1/3 I welcome @SenSanders to Birmingham and appreciate his push for a progressive workplace. I often say we are the Bernie Sanders of employers, but that’s not quite right because we actually deliver a progressive workplace https://t.co/Fq8D6vyuh9
— Dave Clark (@davehclark) March 24, 2021
A few hours later, the official “Amazon News” media relations Twitter account, with more than 170,000 followers, snapped back against House Rep. Mark Pocan, who had questioned Clark’s “progressive workplace” assertion by alluding to stories of Amazon’s pace of work being so demanding that workers have to “urinate in water bottles.”
“You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you?” the official Amazon News account tweeted. “If that were true, nobody would work for us.”
1/2 You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us. The truth is that we have over a million incredible employees around the world who are proud of what they do, and have great wages and health care from day one.
— Amazon News (@amazonnews) March 25, 2021
And after a back-and-forth with Sen. Elizabeth Warren that began with her criticizing the company’s tax payments, the same Amazon account “quote-tweeted” Warren with this message:
This is extraordinary and revealing. One of the most powerful politicians in the United States just said she’s going to break up an American company so that they can’t criticize her anymore. https://t.co/Nt0wcZo17g
— Amazon News (@amazonnews) March 26, 2021
An Amazon spokesperson did not reply to a request for comment.
If Bezos wanted the news cycle off of the union drive for a bit, it sort of worked. But instead of talking about the union, media outlets and industry observers have been focused on the rarity and judgment of a trillion-dollar company sparring with powerful lawmakers on Twitter. Amazon’s pushback on the congressman’s comment about workers peeing in bottles also ignited a new news cycle after The Intercept revealed internal Amazon communications acknowledging that contractors who deliver Amazon packages sometimes defecate in bags and urinate in bottles.
Amazon warehouse workers who’ve spoken to Recode over the years say it is indeed rare to hear of a warehouse employee — as opposed to a delivery driver — urinate in bottles at work. But the bigger point many make is that it’s not uncommon for workers to take other measures, such as limiting how much they drink, to reduce their need to use the bathroom for fear of missing their production quotas or getting written up by supervisors for too much “time off task,” as Amazon calls it.
Inside of Amazon, rank-and-file employees were also perplexed by the company’s Twitter approach. “Suspicious activity on @amazonnews Twitter account,” was the title of one internal support ticket — called a trouble ticket inside the company — filed by an Amazon security engineer last week, according to a screenshot viewed by Recode.
“Over the past two days, there have been two threads by @amazonnews in response to comments made by US Government officials that have received considerable attention,” the ticket reads. “The tweets in question do not match the usual content posted by this account.”
The security engineer noted that the tweets were posted using Twitter’s web app rather than Sprinklr, the social media management software typically used by the Amazon News account to post tweets.
The tweets, according to the security engineer, “are unnecessarily antagonistic (risking Amazon’s brand) and may be a result of unauthorized access.”
The support ticket was closed without action, according to a source.
San Francisco is once again fighting over billionaires’ philanthropic power.
Billionaire philanthropy is once again on the defense in San Francisco, the home of many a tech billionaire.
The latest backlash centers on a city proposal to get 20,000 schoolchildren some in-person teaching and playtime this summer, after city public schools have been closed for more than a year during the pandemic. But a liberal lawmaker has temporarily derailed the initiative to raise questions about the involvement of a volunteer group that she worries is pushing a political agenda.
The saga is another flashpoint in the debate over the proper role of billionaire philanthropists — and their affiliated nonprofits — in society. And it is a window into how the city that is home to tech wealth is increasingly suspicious of civic projects from those tech leaders. Late last year, San Francisco officially condemned Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for his errors at Facebook after he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated $75 million to a local hospital.
Here’s what happened: Earlier this month, San Francisco announced that a foundation called Crankstart, funded by famous Sequoia venture capitalist Mike Moritz and his wife, Harriet Heyman, was donating $25 million to help start a city initiative to offer free summer school or day care programs to kids. The program would be aided by an outside advocacy group called TogetherSF that was formed last year to work on civic projects in the city and has also, separately, been funded by Crankstart. Crankstart brokered the arrangement between TogetherSF and the summer school program.
But TogetherSF’s involvement has become controversial — and is being cast by one San Francisco supervisor, Hillary Ronen, as a possible political play by education reformers. And Ronen this week convinced the board, on a 10-1 vote, to delay approving the program to educate San Francisco students until she could investigate TogetherSF and its political ties.
Ronen is suspicious in part because Together SF is not a typical nonprofit organization that is a 501(c)3 group, but is instead organized as part of a bigger lobbying or advocacy organization, a 501(c)4. The group is also co-led by a former aide to multiple San Francisco lawmakers. And Ronen believes that the group may have loyalties to activists who push for school privatization and charters schools, which are lightning rod issues in urban education policy.
Ronen conceded she didn’t have any hard proof of ties from Crankstart or TogetherSF’s ties to the education reform movement, but said based on its 501(c)4 structure and her limited research, it “looks and smells like” they are seeking to promote a “political agenda.” She is concerned, for instance, that the group could seek to use the volunteers it recruits for future political campaigns in support of anti-union candidates.
“There has to be, in my book, unprecedented transparency and agreement that funders of this initiative are doing so because they’re very concerned about children — and aren’t trying to advance some alternative privatization, charter agenda that is meant to dismantle our public schools,” Ronen told Recode.
Together SF’s founders, Kanishka Cheng and Griffin Gaffney, say their work is non-political and that they merely are seeking to mobilize a network of volunteers to serve their hometown in crisis. They are helping the city with work like collecting donations from private employers and creating a website for the program.
“We’re incredibly surprised by it, honestly. This is the first we’re hearing about this privatization, charter agenda come up as a reason to question the program and our involvement,” Cheng told Recode. “It’s not at all what Together SF has been involved in.”
For now, Ronen has just delayed the vote on the program by two weeks. She told Recode she doesn’t expect it to jeopardize the summer program, but that she was open to voting against it if her investigation revealed new information. But regardless of the final vote, some observers are concerned that the conflict — along with the high-profile Zuckerberg censure in the spring — could dissuade more and more wealthy philanthropists from donating money if it only brings them more scrutiny. The city is also about to embark on a $2 billion fundraising drive, also led by Ronen, when it will need more money from wealthy people.
Moritz, a former board member of Google, and his wife Heyman, an award-winning novelist, have long made local causes a focus of Crankstart, which has a private profile but is one of the Bay Area’s biggest foundations by total assets at almost $2 billion. Crankstart has donated over $50 million to San Francisco nonprofits in 2020, funding efforts during the pandemic that paid San Francisco essential workers to quarantine if sick and local efforts to feed the hungry.
Moritz told Recode that he was trying to help local schoolchildren “and nothing beyond that.”
“All we want to do is to help people who don’t necessarily have a great, wonderful ticket for a great education to get that ticket. That’s all,” he said. “Does it pass the litmus test of is this good for San Francisco, or for a portion of San Francisco? I think the answer is yes.”
Moritz is technically the funder of TogetherSF’s parent company, Civic Action Labs, which runs TogetherSF and a second organization that has also faced tough questions about its political ties. That organization is Here / Say Media, a new media publication focused on San Francisco news that has drawn raised eyebrows from journalism ethicists because it is owned by the 501(c)4 parent company. Almost all nonprofit newsrooms are traditionally structured as 501(c)3 groups rather than as “dark money” political groups, as 501(c)4 organizations are sometimes called.
What unites these two stories is that Here/Say Media, which is also run by Cheng and Gaffney, originally declined to disclose its donors — and that troubled media observers. But then on March 9th — the day before the city of San Francisco announced the involvement of Cheng and Gaffney in the summer program — Here/Say quietly updated its website to disclose that Crankstart was a funder.
“We knew the [summer] program was launching. We’d be more visible. So we wanted to be more transparent about that,” Cheng said when asked about the timing.
Cheng and Gaffney are trying to unwind the intertwined controversies; They are in the process of trying to turn Together SF into a new 501(c)3 organization, which will theoretically reduce suspicions about their political agenda. They said that they will also spin out Here / Say Media into a new, to-be-determined, non-political structure, too.
But political critics of San Francisco government — which is managing several concurrent crises, including one involving its school board over racist tweets — are concerned that the damage has already been done. And that philanthropists will find other things to fund with their billions rather than a city that makes their life difficult.
Asked if this brinkmanship sent a bad message to private philanthropists who want to get involved in city life, Moritz said “actions speak much louder than words.”
“We live in a bit of a political cauldron, and so you know it’s just part of life,” Moritz said. “It certainly won’t deter us if people who don’t even know us, people we’ve never even talked to, ascribe various motives to us.”
Ronen, though, insists it is merely about transparency.
“If their investments is free and clear, and don’t involve a political agenda — fantastic, that’s very generous and wonderful,” Ronen said. “But if they involve an agenda, no thanks. We don’t want your investment. You have enough power as it is.”
Ibrahimovic adapts to mentor role with Sweden after comeback - At 39 years old, Ibrahimovic is about more than just goals at this stage of his career
I’ve had many humbling moments on ‘The Apprentice’, says Niraj Puran Rao - Competing in ‘The Apprentice ONE Championship’, which combines business and martial arts, Pune-based Niraj Puran Rao talks about representing India and why ‘biz talk’ in sports should be highlighted
Tokyo Olympics 2021 | Overseas ticket holders may get only partial refunds - Tokyo organizers said about 600,000 Olympic tickets have been sold to people outside Japan
Thisara Perera becomes first Sri Lankan to hit six sixes in an over - He achieved the feat batting for Sri Lanka Army against Bloomfield Cricket and Athletic Club in at the Army Ground in Panagoda town
Hardik, Krunal, Suryakumar join Mumbai Indians squad in Mumbai - The three were on national duty for the ODI series against England.
Assam Assembly elections | Why did BJP spend crores on ads if it is confident of winning: Congress - “There is no unanimity among the BJP leaders on the number of seats they are expected to win as they want to mislead people and hide their failure,” says Assam Congress chief Ripun Bora
Somanna confident of convincing dissidents in Basavakalyan - Taking note of the unrest in the Basavakalyan unit of BJP after the party ticket was denied to the local aspirants and given to Kalaburagi-based Shara
Mumbai HC mulls special masks for disabled - Plea calls for transparency in use and collection of fines from protocol violators
Only 5.4% of houses under Centre’s flagship scheme reached completion so far this year - Advent of pandemic caused long delays at every stage, says Rural Development Ministry
Final decision on pay revision of RTC staff soon, says Savadi - He appeals to employees union to drop the plan of going on indefinite strike from April 7
Mediator drug: French pharmaceutical firm fined over weight loss pill - The drug was authorised for overweight diabetics but is believed to have killed hundreds of people.
Covid: Barcelona hosts large gig after testing crowd - The pilot project aims to see if mass Covid testing will allow the return of big events.
Coronavirus: UK vaccine offer to Ireland ‘a runner’, says Arlene Foster - Arlene Foster says she will again ask Boris Johnson to offer vaccines to the Republic of Ireland.
Covid jab: One dose in care homes gives ‘substantial’ protection - A study suggests 62% of residents are protected by a single dose of the vaccines used in the UK.
Covid-19: Two found after people flee Dublin hotel quarantine - Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney says it is “not ideal” that people absconded from quarantine.
SpaceX targeting Monday for Starship launch, but weather is iffy [Updated] - This rocket rolled to the launch pad less than three weeks ago. - link
A ship, wrecked: HBO’s The Last Cruise chronicles COVID-19’s infamous cruise ship - A staffer sums it up (before knowing the damage): “The walking dead, a dystopian situation.” - link
Ars Technica’s non-fungible guide to NFTs - Is blockchain item authentication a speculative fad or a technological sea change? - link
Meet Boston Dynamics’ next commercial robot, Stretch - It can unload trucks, build pallets, and will fit anywhere a pallet fits. - link
Activision releases online-only PC game without online content, cracked in one day - Game’s console versions don’t require online connection; all lack online content. - link
That ship has sailed.
submitted by /u/reeram
[link] [comments]
Every day I have to tell this poor man that his wife died 20 years ago. I could have moved to another house or even ignore his question. But the look of joy in his eyes whenever I answer him is worth the world.
submitted by /u/YZXFILE
[link] [comments]
Don’t let him drive that cargo freighter,
don’t let him steer that cargo freighter,
don’t let him near that cargo freighter,
early in the morning.
submitted by /u/superbob201
[link] [comments]
In Heaven, all three faced God, who wanted to know what they believed in.
The German Shepherd said, “I believe in discipline, training, and loyalty to my master.”
“Good!” said God. “Sit at my right side.” Then God asked, “Doberman, what do you believe in?”
The Doberman answered, “I believe in the love, care, and protection of my master.”
“Aha,” said God, “you may sit on my left.”
Then God looked at the cat and asked, “And what do you believe in?”
“I believe,” replied the cat, “that you are sitting in my seat.”
submitted by /u/JDPip
[link] [comments]
“You’re whale cum son, you’re whale cum.”
submitted by /u/chewymacaron
[link] [comments]