Daily-Dose

Contents

• From New Yorker
• From Vox
• From The Hindu: Sports
• From The Hindu: National News
• From BBC: Europe
• From Ars Technica
• From Jokes Subreddit

From New Yorker

• The Delta Variant Is a Grave Danger to the Unvaccinated - One half of America is protected. The other is approaching a perilous moment in the pandemic. - link

• New York City’s Mayoral Election Didn’t Meet the Moment - The field was too big, the campaigning was too weird, and none of the candidates took the full measure of the city that they hoped to govern. - link

• The Catholic Bishops’ Brawl Over Denying Joe Biden Communion - The majority’s proposal is both hard-hearted and shortsighted. - link

• It’s Not the Heat—It’s the Humanity - Rising air temperatures remind us that our bodies have real limits. - link

• The Politics of Supreme Court Retirements - Amid calls for Justice Stephen Breyer to step down, the legal scholar Noah Feldman considers politics, partisanship, and the Court. - link

From Vox

• How Indigenous memories can help save species from extinction -

  

  From Canada to the Amazon, scientists are trying to build on Native knowledge before it’s too late.

  This story is part of Down to Earth, a Vox reporting initiative on the science, politics, and economics of the biodiversity crisis.

  From his home in remote coastal British Columbia, Ernest Mason, a 77-year-old elder and hereditary chief of the Kitasoo/Xai’xais Nation, remembers. He remembers a childhood fishing trip with his father, when they packed sleeping bags but caught so many halibut they were home before dark. He remembers setting traps for pink Dungeness crab and floating hemlock branches to collect edible herring eggs.

  He also remembers watching the first two times the herring stocks collapsed, and then, fearing a third collapse, telling the Canadian government that he and the other chiefs were banning commercial fishermen from their traditional territorial waters. “I said, ‘We’ll do what it takes to protect what we have,’” Mason told Vox. “This is one of the ways our grandfathers taught us, how to look after things. That’s one of the chores now.”

  For coastal Indigenous communities like Mason’s, these ancestral lessons can be the difference between plenty and poverty. Mason is one of the province’s few elders who was not forced into Canada’s residential schools, which stripped Indigenous children of their languages, oral histories, and cultures. This is one reason Mason, who often wears a baseball cap over his silver hair, remembers so much.

  Around the world, the memories of elders like Mason are playing a powerful role in understanding and helping to preserve marine species. A growing group of researchers, some of them from within Indigenous communities, is translating the qualitative stories of fishermen into quantitative data, in a process that often requires sensitive negotiations and uncomfortable conversations between Indigenous leaders and Western institutions. Their recollections can help fill historical and geographical gaps that have eluded scientists until now.

  Five years ago, University of Victoria PhD candidate Lauren Eckert interviewed Mason for hours about his earliest fishing memories. Since then, a series of Indigenous-led research projects — based on those memories and others — have rewritten best practices on the management of two species, Dungeness crab and yelloweye rockfish. “Science is exceptionally good at taking accurate snapshots that approach truth,” Eckert says. “But Indigenous knowledge includes long-term datasets that provide this massive canvas of information that spans decades to thousands of years.”

  Courtesy of Natalie Ban

  Both yelloweye rockfish and Dungeness crab are essential to coastal Pacific ecosystems. Dungeness crab, according to one government description, is “the most important crab species harvested” in the country’s western province. Yelloweye is threatened because adults must live 15 years before they start to spawn, making them vulnerable to overfishing.

  But government managers only have reliable information on yelloweye abundance starting in 2001 — the same year a population crash forced them to start a targeted conservation plan. Yelloweye are considered a “data-poor” species, according to the plan, because data was only collected “sporadically” from the 1980s onward. This made it difficult for government scientists to tell how steeply the population had fallen since the advent of big-boat commercial fishing in the 1970s, says Eckert.

  One place they hadn’t looked, however, was in the memories of those who were there all along.

  To reconstruct the historical abundance, or baselines, of rockfish and crab, Eckert drew on an interview methodology developed after the 1990s Atlantic cod collapse. In this “vessel-based approach,” fishermen in Newfoundland and Labrador were asked to recall memories of specific boats on which they had fished; this prompted specific memories of fish size and abundance, as well as when and where fish had been caught. Researchers translated the accounts of Central Coast fishers into box graphs estimating size, which corroborated the official modern catch records to an astounding — but not surprising — degree, Eckert says.

  As biodiversity loss and climate change loom large over our planet’s fate, these types of projects are beginning to model healthier, less extractive relationships between biologists and the communities in which they work. In the process, they could also bring key species back from the brink of extinction.

  Useful Indigenous knowledge for managing species has been brushed aside

  Reached by phone in late May, Mason says he still fishes whenever he can, and had spent the past few weeks chasing a run of spring salmon. He speaks of a strong connection to the species that have sustained him. “Everything within our world — that’s where our stories are told, that is where our history is told,” he says.

  When Mason was growing up in Klemtu, a verdant village in traditional Kitasoo/Xai’xais territory, it seemed as if a yelloweye rockfish hovered in every deep ocean crevasse. Often caught as unintended bycatch, these highlighter-orange fish have bulging amber eyes, scooped, goldfish-like pectoral fins, and a crown of towering dorsal spikes. Yelloweye can grow to nearly a meter and are one of the world’s longest-lived fish species — one caught in Alaska in 2013 was 121 years old.

  Courtesy of Ernest Mason

  In the days before refrigeration, every yelloweye Mason and his father landed was eaten fresh, salted, or dried. Nothing went to waste. The years passed, and with them arrived faster, higher-powered commercial trawlers. Soon, Mason and his peers started noticing they weren’t catching enough yelloweye, even for their ceremonial potlatches, and the fish they were catching were getting smaller. The same was true for Dungeness crab.

  Kitasoo/Xai’xais technical staff and political leaders had long expressed concerns about both species, and others, to Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO). Yet the experiences of elders and fishermen were dismissed as merely anecdotal, says Alejandro Frid, an ecologist at the Central Coast Indigenous Resource Alliance. Founded in 2010, the CCIRA works to incorporate the best of Indigenous and Western knowledge, says Frid, and represents four nations including Mason’s.

  For more than 10,000 years, the Central Coast nations have developed and practiced intricate harvesting techniques based on respect and reciprocity — like harvesting herring eggs on hemlock boughs — that long allowed the species they relied on to thrive alongside their annual harvests, says Frid.

  That Indigenous stewardship was swept aside with the arrival of European settlers, who were, says University of British Columbia marine biologist Daniel Pauly, “a bunch of racists.” Science, when properly done, Pauly says, draws on all available evidence. Canadian authorities “thought that the First Nations didn’t know what they were doing,” he says. “And in 20 years, they destroyed the salmon run.”

  Yalonda M. James/San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images

  Getty Images

  Even Canada’s very first fisheries legislation tried to force Indigenous memories and stewardship out of the equation, says Andrea Reid, a Nisga’a Nation citizen and the principal investigator at UBC’s new Centre for Indigenous Fisheries. The government went so far as to ban freshwater fishing weirs and nets that allowed for sustainable harvesting.

  One great irony, Reid says, is that Indigenous “ways of knowing” are now widely seen as “inherently scientific” in her field, in that they use experimentation and observation to learn about nature. “Many Indigenous fishing approaches stem from relational values that treat fish as relatives that we live in reciprocity with,” says Reid. “Not commodities that we exploit or command and control.”

  The Central Coast Nations are not alone in this boundary-breaking work. In one paper from 2004, researcher R.J. Hamilton lived alongside Western Solomon Island spearfishers for his research into topa, or bumphead parrotfish. In addition to biological surveys, Hamilton also conducted in-depth translated interviews with 21 fishermen, many of them elderly. Near the top of his paper, he made an effort to explain the importance of Indigenous knowledge, adding that “the anthropological nature of indigenous knowledge makes it a topic that is not well understood by many marine biologists.”

  More recently, the construction of a hydroelectric dam on the Amazon’s Xingu River spurred research into small-scale Indigenous fishers in a 2015 study published in the Brazilian Journal of Biology. The dam would cause a permanent disruption of a traditional way of life, wrote the authors, a conclusion that came to pass within a year. “It used to take an hour to get to the fishing grounds. Now it takes twice as long,” Natanael Juruna, a member of one Indigenous community, told journalist Isabel Harari in 2016. “Some places are inaccessible because the water level is too low and we can’t pass [in our boats].”

  Capturing vanishing memories is validating for those who hold them

  While the scientific approach to gathering memories may differ, there are patterns across research projects. Many papers published in this emerging field draw heavily on the methods of anthropology — a field that has its own history of racism and colonialism. Often, data takes the form of anecdotes and recollections, which are gathered during confidential, hours-long, in-person interviews.

  In the case of the work done by Eckert’s team and the Central Coast Indigenous Resource Alliance, interviewees were questioned on specific places and times as prompts — for instance, the first boat they worked on, or their earliest memories of catching fish — and promised that their fishing locations would be kept secret. Finally, the researchers anonymized, collated, and analyzed these memories before drawing conclusions from the patterns that surfaced.

  Mason often felt frustrated that even as his nation fought for its tribal rights, many members of his community seemed to show deference to the Canadian government’s approval. Local and ancestral knowledge has been discounted even within Indigenous communities, says Reid. While working on her doctoral research, she herself often encountered elders who were ecstatic that their hard-won expertise was finally being taken seriously. “It has a legitimizing effect,” she says. “Even though they know more about salmon than I ever will.”

  Indigenous knowledge can actually surpass and transcend the grasp of Western science, argues Frid, the CCIRA ecologist. Stories some refer to as “myths,” adds Pauly, are often vital insights passed down through generations, capturing truths and teachable lessons about everything from floods to famines. “It’s a sad statement of how there was an undervaluing of traditional and local knowledge, that [Fisheries and Oceans Canada] couldn’t see it for its own value, that it had to be translated into their own terms,” says Frid. “But it did initiate a transformation.”

  In 2017, after a decade of data-gathering by the coastal nations, DFO announced it would establish a decision-making pilot program that required Indigenous leaders and government executives to agree on Dungeness crab management strategies. It was part of the government’s commitment to reconciliation, which included 2019 changes to the fisheries act designed to “lay the groundwork for better and more collaborative fisheries management,” says DFO spokesperson Jo Anne Walton. (While some DFO scientists support this blended approach, Frid encountered some reluctance that she likened to “kicking and screaming.”) The nations have yet to see changes in how yelloweye are protected.

  Living up to an old adage

  Years ago, Mason met with Fisheries and Oceans Canada envoys and listed off the many species that rely on small, oily herring: ling cod, halibut, red snappers, quillbacks, salmon. From there, he says, he worked his way up the food chain: “I named off humpback whales, killer whales, sea lions, seals, otters, and the birds; the loons, eagles, ravens.”

  Courtesy of Alejandro Frid

  Later, Mason recalls, a federal minister expressed confusion about why orcas were dying off. With the knowledge he grew up with, it seemed simple: Without herring, the salmon went hungry; without salmon, orcas starved. He didn’t need a research study to tell him that. “For goodness’ sakes, you’re supposed to be looking after the fisheries,” he remembers thinking.

  But Mason says that today, he focuses on preserving and reviving his nation’s lands and waters for future generations, not past harms. “Hopefully, we’ll get it back to a point where all our traditional foods are plentiful again,” he says. Even in the leanest, hardest times, Mason’s ancestors could harvest abalone, clams, cockles, mussels, sea cucumbers, and Dungeness crab from the low-tide ocean bottom. The ultimate goal, he says, is to live up to the old adage he once heard from his father: “When the tide is down, the table is set.”

• Many people don’t want to work unless it’s from home -

  

  There are more remote jobs than ever. That doesn’t mean you’ll get one.

  If you’re one of the approximately 50 percent of Americans who worked remotely during the pandemic, you’re probably wondering if remote work is in the cards after the pandemic is over. The vast majority of people say they’d like to work remotely at least part of the time, but that desire is running up against the reality of there being fewer remote jobs than there are people who say they want them. Only about 10 percent of jobs on popular hiring platforms include remote work.

  That’s a boon for jobs offering remote work. Take Zillow, for example, which saw a huge spike in applicants due to a new remote work option. The real estate marketplace announced last summer that it would allow the vast majority of its workers — 90 percent of its more than 5,000 employees — to work from home at least part of the time. That represented an about-face for a company that, before the pandemic, had demanded that most employees come to the office regularly.

  The move also positioned Zillow, which is hoping to eventually add 2,000 positions, at a desirable spot in a very tight labor market, in which many companies are struggling to get enough staff. Nearly 56,000 people applied to Zillow in the first quarter of 2021, up 50 percent from last year when there were more jobs posted.

  “If we weren’t doing this, I think it would be tremendously difficult to be filling our positions right now,” Dan Spaulding, Zillow’s chief people officer, told Recode. “We are doing this, and it is still difficult — but I think we found an edge.”

  Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images

  The company’s relative success amid a hiring crunch and resignation boom illustrates the immense draw of remote work. Employees are tripping over themselves to scoop up a relatively small number of partially and fully remote positions. Zillow isn’t the only company seeing a surge in applications for remote jobs. And while the overall number of remote jobs is increasing, there are currently far more people who say they want these jobs than there are open positions.

  Before the pandemic, many Americans hadn’t regularly been able to work from home, but that changed during lockdown. And for many employers and employees, the new arrangement worked surprisingly well. People were just as productive as they were before but they got to skip their lengthy commutes and spend more time with their families. As it turned out, much of what people did in an office could be accomplished pretty easily with wifi, a laptop, and Zoom. Now, as companies reopen their offices this fall, the ability to work remotely is at the top of their employee wish lists, with some valuing it higher than a pay raise.

  Indeed, up to a third of office workers say they’ll quit their jobs if they can’t work remotely at least some of the time, and people are quitting their jobs at the highest level on record. Some 4 million people quit their jobs in April, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a figure that represents 2.7 percent of the workforce. And there are more jobs open than ever before.

Needless to say, employers are finding it difficult to fill positions. Companies that offer remote work are having an easier time. Companies that don’t offer it may want to start.

The growth of remote work and remote work demand

Data from a number of job sites illustrates the growing popularity of remote work, which for the purposes of this article includes jobs that allow working from home some or all of the time. On LinkedIn, the share of US jobs that allow remote work increased fivefold, from less than 2 percent in May 2020 to about 10 percent in May 2021. Those jobs are getting 25 percent of all applications. ZipRecruiter saw similar growth in remote jobs, which it says are getting four times the number of applications as jobs that don’t have any remote options.

“A lot of people are competing over very few [remote] jobs,” Julia Pollak, ZipRecruiter’s labor economist, said. “And then there’s very little competition for the in-store, at-workplace, in-warehouse kinds of jobs.”

Retail workers are leaving en masse, many lured away by other entry-level jobs offering higher wages and work from home.

“The biggest shift has been toward remote work being even an option for these lower-wage, less-senior jobs,” Pollak said. “That wasn’t a thing before.”

On LinkedIn, the most in-demand remote entry-level opportunities are in customer service (support, data entry), business development (which includes cold-calling), and product management.

Pollak says she’s noticed many industries that haven’t typically been associated with remote work are letting employees complete at least some of their tasks at home. Home health aides, for example, used to have to go into offices to complete their paperwork. Now, some of their employers are allowing them to do that portion of their job where they wish. Sales reps and even construction managers are finding that some employers are offering part-time remote positions.

Still there’s a gap between the desire for remote work and the availability, especially in fields outside of knowledge work.

Of course, the biggest growth in remote work options is where many would expect: the tech industry. Tech had already been facing challenges getting qualified workers. Given the current state of affairs, these software engineers and data scientists have an even stronger upper hand.

Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images

Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images

“It’s insanity. We’ve never seen the demand so high for top tech talent,” said Josh Brenner, CEO of Hired, which focuses on finding sales and tech workers for its client companies.

These trends are playing out in demands for higher wages, better benefits, and remote work for tech employees. And it seems to be working, as evidenced by what employers are offering on recruitment platforms.

Nearly half the jobs on Hired’s platform now include remote work. That’s up from 10 percent at the beginning of last year. The biggest growth areas for remote work are consumer mobile, security, real estate, and analytics, according to Hired.

FlexJobs, which was already geared specifically at remote and freelance work, has seen the share of jobs on its platform offering at least partial remote work go from 60-70 percent in 2019 to around 90 percent now, according to career development manager Brie Reynolds.

Employees whose jobs are calling them back into the office, she said, aren’t necessarily quitting, but they are actively searching for remote jobs.

“For those companies that are not putting remote work in place in some capacity, over the next few months there’s probably going to be quite a number of people who are jumping ship to go to a more remote job,” Reynolds said.

How remote work could benefit employers

This isn’t just employees getting what they want in a tight labor market. Many of the people Recode spoke to spun this as a way for companies to actually meet their diversity goals. Removing geographic and time constraints means employers can reach out to a much wider pool of qualified candidates. Women and people of color are much more likely to prefer remote work than their male or white counterparts, according to a recent Slack survey.

Women frequently cite child care as a reason. LinkedIn’s group product manager for careers products, Ada Yu, sees offering remote work as a way to attract more women, who disproportionately left the workforce during the pandemic.

“Flexibility of schedule will really help employers try to recruit, retain, and engage with parents in general, but especially women,” Yu said.

Black employees say remote work is better for their sense of belonging. They are 20 percent more likely to be open to remote work than employees on average, according to Hired’s Brenner.

“We’ve seen that once companies start opening up these remote searches, they’re able to also achieve their goals in terms of bringing in a more diverse employee base,” Brenner said.

The future of office space

It’s so far unclear what the rise of remote work will mean for office space, especially since many companies are adopting hybrid work plans in which employees will spend only part of their time in the office. How much office space they need will depend, in part, on how much their employees end up coming to the office.

Currently, only 9 percent of large companies say their office portfolios will get “significantly smaller” in the next three years, according to the latest employer survey from real estate services company CBRE. Some 72 percent of companies are anticipating modest office space reductions. Instead of drastically downsizing, companies are altering their floor plans to have fewer dedicated desks and more shared space for people to work together when they’re in the office.

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images

Zillow, for now, is keeping its office space (though, to be fair, it held long-term leases so it doesn’t have much of a choice). Instead of downsizing, the company is redesigning its offices to be more geared for collaboration, which it says will be the main objective when its remote workers do come into the office.

About 60 percent of Zillow employees anticipate working from an office once a month or less going forward. The company plans on bringing in fully remote employees a few times a year.

“We do feel that in-person collaboration is still going to be really important coming out of the pandemic,” Zillow’s Spaulding said.

The vast majority of collaboration, however, will have to happen online.

For those who want remote jobs but are unable to get them, more jobs are likely to become remote in the future as companies use the perk as a way to attract much-needed employees. The desire to work remotely doesn’t seem to be going away, and more jobs can be remote than already are.

• Biden’s biggest anti-poverty plan is about to launch. Here’s how he can make it even better. -

  

  The government needs to make sure that everyone eligible gets the expanded child tax credit — and that it becomes a permanent program.

  July 15, 2021, could wind up being one of the most important days in the history of American anti-poverty policy.

  On that day, most parents in the United States will begin receiving monthly checks of up to $300 per child — no strings attached.

  What’s technically happening: The child tax credit (CTC), a policy that has existed in some form since 1997, has been expanded, both in its size (going from $2,000 per child per year to $3,000 for children ages 6 through 17, and $3,600 for children under 6) and in its reach.

  But calling this a “tax credit expansion” makes it seem less momentous than it is. It’s really a one-year test of an idea known as a child allowance, a policy that has been adopted in most rich countries besides the United States.

  We know from the experiences of peer countries from Great Britain to Spain to Germany to Canada that child allowances can slash child poverty dramatically, and, as a consequence of reducing poverty, improve child health, increase parents’ time with their kids, and perhaps even raise incomes and extend life spans down the road for children who benefited.

  The key to this policy’s success is that all poor families are eligible. Before this year, many poor children were deliberately excluded from the CTC on the theory that doing so would encourage their parents to work. Biden, as part of his stimulus plan and at the urging of poverty and child welfare advocates, signed into law an expansion to all poor families for tax year 2021.

  Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

  If everyone eligible gets it, it could slash child poverty by 40 percent; add in stimulus payments and other Biden measures and child poverty would fall even more. But that depends on everyone eligible for the expanded CTC actually getting their checks, which will require massive outreach and government investment; more on this below.

  If you’re reading this and are a parent to a child who’s a US citizen or resident immigrant, there are two ways to get the money. You’ll get it automatically if you filed a 2019 or 2020 tax return (if you got stimulus checks for your kids last year and this spring, you’re good); if you didn’t file those years, or if you have a kid who was born after you filed, the IRS has set up a site to help you sign up. The nonprofit website GetYourRefund can also be helpful and can connect you with an IRS-certified volunteer to help you get your money.

  The plan is for the IRS to send out monthly payments through the end of 2021. Because the monthly payments will only last from July to December, they won’t include the full value of the credit; the rest will be sent out with tax returns in April 2022.

  That sets up a challenge for the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress. They want to make some or all of these changes to the child tax credit permanent, to have the monthly benefits not abruptly stop in January. But that will require quick action by Congress, and a successful rollout of the CTC right now.

  It is hard to overstate the importance of the CTC expansion, not just to poverty in America but to Joe Biden’s legacy. If it sticks, it will be the largest, most important anti-poverty measure the US has taken since the Lyndon Johnson administration, and could stand as the most impactful domestic achievement of Biden’s presidency. It could earn recognition alongside Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security as one of the Democratic Party’s most enduring and popular policies.

  But it has to stick — and Biden and his allies in Congress need to act fast to make that happen.

  A generous benefit, but will it get to everyone who needs it?

  The vast majority of American parents — covering 39 million households, or 88 percent of households with children, per the Treasury Department — will receive the monthly payments automatically.

  That still leaves out millions of households. Now, many of them are excluded because they make too much money. The credit starts phasing out at $112,500 annual gross income for most single parents and $150,000 for most married parents; the maximum income to receive some credit depends on the number of children in a household, but a married couple with two kids won’t see the credit go away until they reach $480,000 in income.

  But others won’t receive the benefit automatically because they haven’t filed their taxes. A big challenge for proponents of this expanded benefit is making sure people who are eligible actually receive it. Compounding the challenge is that the population in greatest danger of not getting the benefit is also the one that happens to need it most.

  Even with a long-established benefit like the earned income tax credit (EITC) — a refundable credit for which many low-income families are eligible — the filing process is sufficiently complicated that about a fifth of households eligible for that benefit don’t file to receive it.

  The most important recipients of the expanded CTC from an anti-poverty perspective are extremely poor recipients who have literally $0 in taxable income. These potential CTC beneficiaries receive no benefit from the EITC because it’s reserved for families with “earned income.” Without any taxes to owe, or EITC to receive, these poor households generally don’t file their taxes and won’t get the CTC automatically. Before this year, this population was also excluded from the child tax credit, which previously had an income floor of $3,000, with anyone below that entirely excluded (and those right above that threshold receiving a reduced credit).

  Some people in this population filed to receive stimulus payments, which last year were available, for the first time in American history, to people with $0 in income. But others did not. IRS data suggests that at least 2.3 million children in the US fall into this category. But that’s likely an undercount. “We know that number … excludes some children,” Kris Cox, deputy director for federal tax policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), told me.

  That figure — 2.3 million children — is a small fraction of the roughly 73 million total children in the US. But it may be a particularly vulnerable and low-income fraction, and it’s crucial that the IRS reach it. “Most likely, the people who will be missed are the very lowest incomes,” Elaine Maag of the Tax Policy Center, one of the country’s leading experts on the child tax credit, told me in an email.

  So far, the results of the effort to find these potential recipients and sign them up have been mixed at best. Critics have lambasted the IRS’s website allowing non-filers to sign up for the CTC as confusing, hard to use, and impossible to navigate on a mobile phone. The Washington Post’s Michelle Singletary reports that community groups working on outreach have found the system frustrating; it’s web-based and requires email addresses, when the population these groups work with often has limited access to computers and the internet.

  Maag notes that the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program could help non-filers navigate the system — but VITA is overburdened in good times and has been struggling to adapt to mostly online operation during the pandemic. (As a VITA volunteer, I can attest that trying to wrangle together W2s and Social Security cards online and over the phone was very tricky this year.)

  To be fair to the IRS, this has been a very difficult period for the agency, with many new policies to implement with minimal resources, insufficient staffing, and not a lot of prep time. “The IRS had to deal with the filing season, everything that went on with unemployment compensation, getting stimulus payments out, etc.,” John Wancheck, a senior adviser on tax credit policy at CBPP, told me. “All of that is very complicated and late-breaking.”

  That said, there’s more they can and should do to reach these groups. Chuck Marr, senior director of federal tax policy at CBPP, notes that state governments have a lot of information on non-filing low-income households from administering Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP, or “food stamps,” colloquially). The IRS can and should be working with those governments to reach families with low or zero income to ensure they get a benefit that would be a big help.

  The next step for policymakers: Making the child allowance permanent

  Even more important over the long run than reaching the poorest households is making sure the child tax credit does not expire after a year.

  The Biden CTC expansion is modeled after a bill embraced by most Democratic members of the House and Senate in 2019 known as the American Family Act. That act would have expanded the CTC to the same amounts as Biden ($3,000 per year for kids ages 6 to 17, $3,600 per year for under 6), made the credit available to people with no income (known as making it “fully refundable”), and paid it out monthly. All of that is in Biden’s plan.

  But the AFA was a permanent policy, whereas Biden only implemented these improvements for one year.

  Members of Congress behind the AFA are pushing hard to make these increases permanent as soon as possible. In a statement in April, its champions in the Senate (Michael Bennet (D-CO), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), and Cory Booker (D-NJ)) and the House (Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Suzan DelBene (D-WA), and Ritchie Torres (D-NY)) declared, “Expansion of the Child Tax Credit is the most significant policy to come out of Washington in generations, and Congress has an historic opportunity to provide a lifeline to the middle class and to cut child poverty in half on a permanent basis. … Permanent expansion of the CTC will continue to be our priority.”

  Bennet has said he will “fight like hell” for a permanent extension, and Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR) and House Ways and Means Chair Richard Neal (D-MA) are on board to make the policy permanent.

  The Biden administration’s position has been subtler. Expanding the child tax credit costs money, and to make it permanent under Senate budget reconciliation rules (which enable passage with just 50 Democrats, rather than requiring 10 Republicans to get on board to break a filibuster), it needs to be offset with tax hikes or spending cuts elsewhere in the budget.

  So Biden has proposed, as part of his American Families Plan, making the full refundability of the credit permanent, but only extending the expansion of the benefit amount to $3,000/$3,600 through 2025.

  Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

  Al Drago/Bloomberg/Getty Images

  This is a complicated idea, so let me walk through it a bit.

  Under current law — that is, once the one-year expansion from the Biden stimulus elapses — the CTC will go back down to $2,000 per child, and stop being available to the poorest households in 2022. Parents will get the remainder of their 2021 credit when they file taxes, but monthly payments will cease in January 2022. Also under current law, it will fall to $1,000 per child in January 2026 — because that’s when the bulk of the Trump tax cuts, which expanded the credit to $2,000 per child from $1,000, expire.

  Under congressional Democrats’ plan, the credit will stay at $3,000/$3,600, paid out monthly, and stay available to the poorest households forever.

  Under the Biden plan, the $3,000/$3,600 amounts would continue through January 2026. Then the credit would fall to $1,000 per child. But, unlike under current law, that $1,000 per kid would be available to families with little or no earnings. Millions of children would either not be in poverty or be in less severe poverty in the Biden scenario compared to the status quo. Of course, millions more would benefit if the credit were $3,000 for older kids and $3,600 for younger, rather than $1,000.

  So what is Biden doing here? By setting his extension to just through January 2026, it appears he’s setting up a fight over the credit to coincide with the expiration of Trump’s tax cuts. While Trump paid for, and thus made permanent, most of his corporate tax cuts, his rate cuts for top earners (and expansions of benefits for middle-class people like the child credit and the standard deduction) expire in January 2026. Republicans will really, really want to make at least some of Trump’s cuts permanent. If the expanded child tax credit is expiring at the same time, Biden can offer a trade: your rate cuts for the rich, for my child credit.

  This is a risky proposition, of course, and a lot can change politically in four years. Democratic fans of the credit in Congress would be more comfortable if it’s made permanent as part of the mammoth $6 trillion reconciliation bill that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-VT) are putting together.

  Alternatively, they could try to push it through the “tax extenders” process: At any given time, there are a lot of obscure tax provisions that expire every year or two and are extended regularly for a few more years by Congress, usually because some specific interest group considers them very important. Often, these are less contentious measures than a child tax credit extension, but because tax extender bills are seen as “must-pass,” this might be another avenue for CTC advocates.

  Either way, time is running out. There are only six months until monthly payments of the credit cease, and Congress has a busy docket in the meantime. If it wants to avoid a completely preventable spike in child poverty — because that is what is in store once this expanded benefit expires — it has to act quickly to extend the credit.

From The Hindu: Sports

• Pandemic washes away the usual vibrancy of Moolam Boat Race - The 400-year-old Moolam Boat Race, which marks Kerala’s boat racing season, is reduced to a few customary rituals in 2021 owing to the Coronavirus pandemic

• Delta variant reported during Euro 2020: Danish officials - At least three people who attended the game between Denmark and Belgium tested positive for the virus

• Best Test team should be decided over at least three games: Kohli after losing WTC final - Kohli feels a multi-game final would also capture the essence of Test cricket much better than a one off showdown

• Don’t know reasons for not getting first-class games ahead of England series: Virat Kohli - The Indian team came into the marquee clash without any first-class game while the champions got ready with a two Test series against England.

• Ashwin ends WTC 2019-21 cycle as leading wicket-taker - The 34-year-old Tamil Nadu off-spinner achieved the feat during the World Test Championship final against New Zealand

From The Hindu: National News

• PM distracting present with theatrics, toying with country’s future: Rahul - Congress leader Rahul Gandhi accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday of distracting the present with theatrics and “toying” with the future o

• Aisha Sultana violated COVID norms, HC told - She did not observe quarantine, mingled with people: Lakshadweep administration

• SD College signs pact to study spread of water hyacinth - ₹3-cr. project in tie-up with two U.K. universities, ICRISAT, NIPHM

• Selection of Group-I candidates done in transparent way, says service panel member - The selection of candidates in Group-I Mains exams was done in a transparent way, scrupulously following the rule book, said the Andhra Pradesh Publi

• Uttarakhand CM residence being prepared for COVID-19 patients during third wave - Uttarakhand Chief Minister Tirath Singh Rawat on Thursday said he is preparing his official residence for the treatment of coronavirus patients durin

From BBC: Europe

• Covid-19: Europe braces for surge in Delta variant - Germany says Europe is “on thin ice” amid warnings Delta could make up 90% of cases by late August.

• Belarus opposition head Tikhanovskaya condemns ‘sham trial’ of husband - Opposition head Svetlana Tikhanovskaya calls the trial of her husband and five others act of “revenge”.

• Navy defending our values in Russia dispute, says Boris Johnson - Boris Johnson says it is “appropriate” for UK warships to sail through disputed waters around Crimea.

• John McAfee: Anti-virus creator found dead in prison cell - The software mogul is found dead hours after a Spanish court allowed his extradition to the US on tax charges.

• Athens priest arrested for acid attack on bishops - The suspect was allegedly caught with cocaine and threw acid during his disciplinary hearing.

From Ars Technica

• Hyundai’s 2022 Tucson Hybrid is a charming and efficient crossover - There’s a lot to like about this 38 mpg crossover, which starts at under $30,000. - link

• Fast 9 film review: Fast and furious enough, but buckle up for potholes - An explosive excuse to return to theaters, even if it misses some of the F&F point. - link

• A quick-start guide to OpenZFS native encryption - Learn the hows, whys, and whats of OpenZFS encryption with this short guide. - link

• Physicists show that flying beer coasters will flip 0.45 seconds into flight - Without the frisbee’s rounded edges, beer mats flip onto their side with a backspin. - link

• Supreme Court backs cheerleader over school that punished her for Snapchat post - HS violated First Amendment when it kicked cheerleader off junior varsity team. - link

From Jokes Subreddit

• What’s the difference between Donald Trump and a bird? -

  A bird can still tweet.

  submitted by /u/SilntMercy
  [link] [comments]

• A husband and wife are having issues in the bedroom. The wife can’t orgasm because it’s too damn hot. -

  They See A Sex Therapist, And He Recommends That They Have A Constant Supply Of Cool Air In The Bedroom, So The Man Asks His Best Friend To Waft A Towel While He And His Wife Make Love.

  Begrudgingly, The Friend Submits And Says Yes.

  After 20 Minutes Of Lovemaking, The Woman Is No Closer To Orgasm, So The Friend Wafting The Towel Recommends That They Switch Places. So The Friend Is Now Having Sex With The Woman While The Husband Wafts The Towel.

  After Two Minutes, The Woman Starts To Tremble And Lets Out An Incredible Cry As She Reaches The Most Intense Orgasm She Has Ever Had.

  The Husband Looks At His Friend, And Proudly Proclaims, “Now That, My Friend, Is How You Waft A Fucking Towel.”

  submitted by /u/YZXFILE
  [link] [comments]

• A farmer is worried that his sex life with his wife is getting a bit dry (NSFW) -

  They go to see a therapist, who asks them what they think the problem is. The wife says, “I just don’t have time for it, I’m too busy cooking, cleaning, doing the laundry and everything else. Sex is starting to lose its appeal”.

  The farmer is disheartened to hear this, but listens to the therapist, who tells him, “You need to change things up a bit. You’ll just have to do something sexy to attract her.”

  The next morning, the wife is in the house, ironing some clothes, when she hears strange sounds from outside. She runs out of the kitchen and into the front yard, and sees her husband completely naked thrusting his dick in and out of tractor’s exhaust pipe. “What on Earth are you doing?” she shouts.

  The farmer looks up at her. “Well the therapist said to do something sexy to a tractor.”

  submitted by /u/notriple
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• Two blondes were taking a walk through a bush when they came across a set of tracks. -

  ‘I’m sure they’re bear tracks!’, said the first blonde. ‘No, they’re deer tracks’, said the second blonde, confidently.

  They were still arguing when the train hit them.

  submitted by /u/Arkady2009
  [link] [comments]

• A mother and her young son were driving in their car when a dildo suddenly flies outta nowhere and hits the windshield, the mother trying to not ruin the child’s innocence says “it was just a bug sweetie, don’t worry” -

  The kid replies saying “How it even got of the ground with a dick that big amazes me”

  submitted by /u/criteriaz
  [link] [comments]