Thursday, November 12, 2020

In The News (7)

Media Condemns Biden For Baseless Claim That Nation Will Come Together Once Election Over Blasting the former vice president for spreading misinformation at this perilous time for democracy, media figures across the political spectrum condemned Joe Biden Friday for his baseless claim that the nation will come together once the election was over. ................  This is America, you don’t just say things like that.  


Orange County shuts down all DMV offices because of COVID-19 outbreak She advised residents to consider any public site in Orange County as a potential site of COVID-19 exposure, due to a persistent increase in newly diagnosed COVID-19 cases throughout the county. 


Trump Is Fundraising For Legal Help Fighting A ‘Stolen’ Election. Nearly All The Money Is Actually Going Elsewhere.  the formula was changed to funnel most of the money into Trump’s new leadership PAC called Save America. ........... “Donors who are giving in response to this urgent fundraising message to help defend the integrity of our election are actually helping fund Trump’s post-presidential political vehicle” ........  In the fine print of the fundraising blasts, it lays out that 60 percent of the contributions will first go to the new PAC, up to the maximum contribution of $5,000. The remaining 40 percent goes to the RNC up to the maximum $35,500. If that first 60 percent of the donation exceeds $5,000 the remnants go to the campaign’s “recount account”; if the 40 percent exceeds the $35,500 RNC maximum, only then does it go to the RNC’s legal defense fund. “Not a penny is dedicated to a legal expense account unless donors have maxed out their contributions to the first two committees, $5,000 to the leadership PAC and $35,500 to the RNC” .......... Calling leadership PACs “notorious” for being abused as slush funds, Ryan predicted that Trump will keep the coffers full by teasing a possible 2024 run, all the while finding ways to funnel money back to his businesses and family members. ........... “This is a way that he can fleece his supporters to support his own lifestyle for the next few years regardless of whether he even runs in 2024” ........... “The prohibition on the personal use of campaign funds also does not apply to leadership PACs — so leadership PAC funds could be used to pay the legal fees Trump will incur after he leaves office”  




at No comments:
Labels: ,

Saturday, November 07, 2020

In The News (6)

Schumer: ‘Now we take Georgia, then we change the world’ Two runoff elections could decide the balance of power in the Senate ..........  Republican Sen. David Perdue will face off on January 5 against Democrat Jon Ossoff after finishing ahead 49.78% to Ossoff’s 47.9%. Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler will compete against Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock. Loeffler finished with 25.94% of the vote and Warnock finished with 32.89%. Loeffler was sharing GOP votes with the well-known Rep. Doug Collins and fended off three other Republican candidates. Warnock topped six other Democrats who also competed for the seat. ................  After the Democrats maintained control in the House and won the presidency, Republicans are framing the Georgia races  as the last stand between the country and a socialist Democratic agenda. ................. Meanwhile, Democrats have made the pitch that in order for Biden to be effective in fighting the coronavirus, improving health care and rebuilding America's economy, he'll need Democrats in charge of both the House and Senate.  


Democrats are in position to 'take a sledgehammer' to the South's red wall: Juan Williams 'This is radical,' he said ........ After the 1964 Civil Rights Act, President Lyndon B. Johnson famously said that the South was going to be Republican "for a generation.” ......... Southern politics has been solid red for most of the last 50 years. But thanks to the implosion of the Republican Party under President Trump, Democrats are in position to take a sledgehammer to the red wall that has been the basis of Republican strength in Congress. Over the last month, polls put Democrats within striking distance of flipping U.S. Senate seats in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and even Mississippi (Mississippi!)." 

Juan Williams: Democrats rise in the New South Southern politics has been solid red for most of the last 50 years. .......... Trump’s history of stirring racial division is also a driving force in getting moderate white voters to be open to supporting black candidates. ........ Those white voters, often younger people who have moved to the South in recent years, are more likely than older white southerners to know Blacks, Latinos and Asians as neighbors and co-workers. ......... The glue to bind this new political alliance is a message of racial peace coming from moderate, educated candidates, both black and white, who can’t be easily caricatured by Republicans as crazy left-wingers. ........... “White residents now make up fewer than three in five voters in Georgia, and a wave of migration to the Atlanta area over the past decade has added roughly three quarters of a million people to the state’s major Democratic stronghold.” 

Jill Biden will be historic first lady: Just call her ‘Professor FLOTUS’  she continued teaching at Northern Virginia Community College during the eight years she served as second lady ........... She intends to be the first FLOTUS in the role's 231-year history to pursue her career and keep a paying job while living in the White House and serving as first lady. ............. “The beauty of (being FLOTUS) is that you can define it however you want," she told Vogue in July 2019. "And that’s what I did as second lady – I defined that role the way I wanted it to be. I would still work on all the same issues. Education would be right up there, and military families. I’d travel all over this country trying to get free community college.” .............. "I don’t like to see my son attacked, and certainly I don’t like to see my husband attacked, but to me, these are distractions," she said. “This election is… about the American people....The American people don’t want to hear these smears against my family.” ............. Biden, 69, has a bachelor's degree and two master's degrees, and a doctorate of education from the University of Delaware, which she earned in 2007 under her original name, Jill Jacobs. ............ "Teaching is not what I do. It's who I am," Biden said in a pre-speech tweet. .................... At least initially, most of her students were unaware of the full identity of "Dr. Biden" as either a U.S. senator's wife or as second lady, according to an interview with Vogue in March. She asked Secret Service agents to dress like college students and sit unobtrusively out in the hallway, on laptops, and it worked. .................. Biden, born in Hammonton, New Jersey, and raised in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, was getting divorced when she met her husband (she married Bill Stevenson after graduation from high school but they had drifted apart by their junior year at the University of Delaware). .............  According to the story, the then-U.S. senator from Delaware, a widower with two young sons who had lost his wife and baby daughter in a car accident, saw her picture in an ad (she did a little local modeling), and sought her out; their first date was in spring 1975. ............. “Jill is always grading papers,” Obama said. “Which is funny because I’d forget, ‘Oh yeah, you have a day job!’ And then she pulls out her papers and she’s so diligent and I’m like, ‘Look at you! You have a job! Tell me! Tell me what it’s like!’"





Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Biden’s Win, House Losses, and What’s Next for the Left The congresswoman said Joe Biden’s relationship with progressives would hinge on his actions. And she dismissed criticism from House moderates, calling some candidates who lost their races “sitting ducks.” ..............  we aren’t in a free fall to hell anymore ............. Every single candidate that co-sponsored Medicare for All in a swing district kept their seat. We also know that co-sponsoring the Green New Deal was not a sinker. Mike Levin was an original co-sponsor of the legislation, and he kept his seat. ...............  the thing is, I’ve been unseating Democrats for two years. I have been defeating D.C.C.C.-run campaigns for two years. That’s how I got to Congress. That’s how we elected Ayanna Pressley. That’s how Jamaal Bowman won. That’s how Cori Bush won. ............. if you’re not spending $200,000 on Facebook with fund-raising, persuasion, volunteer recruitment, get-out-the-vote the week before the election, you are not firing on all cylinders. ............. If you’re not door-knocking, if you’re not on the internet, if your main points of reliance are TV and mail, then you’re not running a campaign on all cylinders. .................. We need to do a lot of anti-racist, deep canvassing in this country. ............ There’s a lot of magical thinking in Washington ............ So the D.C.C.C. banned every single firm that is the best in the country at digital organizing. .................  this anti-activist sentiment .............. Before the election, I offered to help every single swing district Democrat with their operation. And every single one of them, but five, refused my help. And all five of the vulnerable or swing district people that I helped secured victory or are on a path to secure victory. And every single one that rejected my help is losing. And now they’re blaming us for their loss. .................  the history of the party tends to be that we get really excited about the grass roots to get elected. And then those communities are promptly abandoned right after an election. ..............  so it’s going be really hard after immigrant youth activists helped potentially deliver Arizona and Nevada. It’s going to be really hard after Detroit and Rashida Tlaib ran up the numbers in her district. ..............  If the party believes after 94 percent of Detroit went to Biden, after Black organizers just doubled and tripled turnout down in Georgia, after so many people organized Philadelphia, the signal from the Democratic Party is the John Kasichs won us this election? I mean, I can’t even describe how dangerous that is. ................. The last two years have been pretty hostile. Externally, we’ve been winning. Externally, there’s been a ton of support, but internally, it’s been extremely hostile to anything that even smells progressive. ............... Or are they going to just kind of double down on this smothering approach? And that’s going to inform what I do. .............. Is there a universe in which they’re hostile enough that we’re talking about a Senate run in a couple years? ..............  the odds of me running for higher office and the odds of me just going off trying to start a homestead somewhere — they’re probably the same.



I had the privilege of being part of a volunteer team who phonebanked Nepali-speaking registered voters in swing states...

Posted by Anil Jung Shahi on Saturday, November 7, 2020
at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

In The News (5)

Meet the contenders for Biden’s Cabinet The president-elect is expected to nominate a mix of progressives, moderates and even a few Republicans as he seeks to satisfy a broad coalition. 
The Election That Broke the Republican Party By lashing themselves to the president’s desperate conspiracies of fraud, GOP officials have undermined their own legitimacy.  

at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

Friday, November 06, 2020

In The News (4)

Fight for Senate majority boils down to Georgia The dual runoffs, with the Senate majority on the line, would set the stage for a nail-biting finish to an already chaotic, historic election year, with millions already set to pour into the state. ............. The dynamic will put Georgia at the center of the political universe for roughly the next 60 days with two races that are already being nationalized. Multiple officials who will be involved in the race declined to put a price tag on the runoff, but one GOP official didn’t rule out that it could top $100 million. .............  Winning both Georgia Senate races if they go to runoffs will be tough. ........ the path for Democrats would rely heavily on high turnout in Atlanta and the suburbs. ........... “If there are any Republicans out there that think this is going to be a cake walk, I think they should pay more attention to the fight that’s happening right now at the presidential level and understand what’s coming”

Stacey Abrams lauded by Democrats for mobilising black voters in Georgia Voting rights activist credited as architect behind grassroots efforts to turn state ‘blue’ ......... It was an endorsement in February from Jim Clyburn, the veteran black Democratic congressman, that resurrected Joe Biden’s flailing presidential primary campaign.  ..........  “As Democrats chart a course forward as a party, the first person they should turn to is Stacey Abrams.” ..........  Voter registration figures, early voting data and county-level election results suggest similar patterns helped Mr Biden edge out Mr Trump in other battleground states, notably Pennsylvania and Michigan. ..................... a surge of black people signing up to cast ballots in the wake of the killing of George Floyd at the start of the summer. ......... “The truth of the matter is when democracy needed recalibration, it was the most consequential voting bloc in American history.” 



Trump Moves Into the Burn-It-Down Phase The president’s White House press conference showed that he knows his reelection prospects are fading, and he’ll try anything to keep power. .............  Trump is a showman who prizes presentation above everything else, who watches his interviews with the sound off, who critiques appearances with precision, who famously mocks his opponents as “sleepy” and “low energy.” When Trump goes back to watch his performance tonight, he’ll see a salesman who wasn’t selling. ......... On Fox News, John Roberts described Trump’s remarks as the words of a man who was losing and trying to hold on to power. Even the loyal New York Post described the president as “downcast” and his charges as “baseless.” The talkers on CNN were even more withering: Jake Tapper deemed the appearance a disgrace. “We knew the president wasn’t going to lose gracefully, if he lost,” he told viewers. “But frankly, watching him flail like this is just pathetic.” Trump’s lone nominal defender on the network, former Senator Rick Santorum, said the president’s accusations were without merit and “dangerous.” Anderson Cooper likened the president to “an obese turtle on his back, flailing in the hot sun.”  .......... Among conservatives, there is already talk of asking Republicans in the Pennsylvania state legislature to overrule the popular will and submit their own electors on Trump’s behalf. 

Georgia preps for war with Senate majority on the line Both parties are getting ready to dump millions into the two Senate runoffs.  




at No comments:
Labels: , ,

Thursday, November 05, 2020

In The News (3)



Even If Joe Biden Wins, He Will Govern in Donald Trump's America The 2020 election did not go according to plan for the Democrats. It was a far cry from the sweeping repudiation of Trump that the polls had forecast and liberals craved. After all the outrage and activism, a projected $14 billion spent and millions more votes this time than last, Trump’s term is ending the way it began: with an election once again teetering on a knife’s edge, and a nation entrenched in stalemate, torn between two realities, two orientations, two sets of facts......  the congressional Republicans who enabled him instead notched unexpected gains ....... The GOP appeared likely to retain the majority in the Senate and cut into the Democratic House majority, defying the polls and fundraising deficits. Republicans held onto states such as Florida, South Carolina, Ohio and Iowa that Democrats had hoped to flip. They cut into Democrats’ margins with nonwhite voters, made gains with Latinos in South Florida and the Rio Grande Valley, and racked up huge turnout among non-college-educated white people, while halting what many conservatives feared was an inexorable slide in the suburbs. ......... “Democrats always argued, ‘If more people voted, we would win,’” says GOP strategist Brad Todd, co-author of The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics. “Well, guess what? Everybody voted, and it didn’t help the Democrats. There is a multi-racial, working-class ethos that is animating the new Republican coalition.” ........... he will be governing Trump’s America: a nation unpersuaded by kumbaya calls for unity and compassion, determined instead to burrow ever deeper into mutual antagonism. Win or lose, Trump has engineered a lasting tectonic shift in the American political landscape, fomenting a level of anger, resentment and suspicion that will not be easy for his successor to surmount ..............  The COVID-19 pandemic has just entered its worst phase yet, rampaging across the country virtually unchecked. The economic fallout from the virus continues to worsen without new federal aid. ..............  something is completely rotten in the foundations of our democracy ........  our identity crisis continues. ....... He made little alteration to his bull-in-a-china-shop attitude, even though the hellscape he raged against was now one that unfolded on his watch. ......... Biden shattered campaign-finance records—his campaign hauled in $952 million, dwarfing the incumbent by more than $300 million ...... “These Trump rallies and Trump parades and all those kinds of things, they don’t strike me as the type that would be answering a polling call” ................. “He’s still going to be the leader of the party and the biggest voice, and he’ll at least flirt with the idea of running again. It’s going to continue to be a populist, grievance-fueled party.”  

US election 2020: Why racism is still a problem for the world's most powerful country  It's the mindset that led President Woodrow Wilson, in office from 1913 to 1921, to oversee the re-segregation of multiple federal agencies. This is the same president who publicly backed the Ku Klux Klan. It's the mindset that at the turn of the 20th Century saw the vilification of black people as wide-eyed "happy negroes" content with their lot as poor share croppers and shoe shiners. ..................  African Americans don't have that luxury. The past is the present, the racism is the same. ......... A big issue in the campaign was urban crime and the Clinton administration's controversial 1994 Crime Bill that critics say increased mass incarceration and led to the disproportionate jailing of tens of thousands of black men. Joe Biden helped get that legislation on the books, and his involvement has come back to haunt him. ..............  the fear of a bad encounter with the police lives in the mind of every African American. 


at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

In The News (2)

Even if Biden wins, the world will pay the price for the Democrats' failures

The left just got crushed


Three Reasons Biden Flipped the Midwest Trump gave away his gains with key groups from four years ago and Biden reclaimed lost Democratic ground.

A Dreadful New Peak for the American Pandemic The country recorded more than 100,000 coronavirus cases today—the highest single-day total since the pandemic began.

Democrats frustrated, GOP jubilant in Senate fight

Biden Edges Close to 270

Despite ‘racist’ charges, Trump did better with minorities than any GOP candidate in 60 years

Can Republicans Become a Multiracial Working-Class Party?



at No comments:
Labels: , , ,

Wednesday, November 04, 2020

In The News (1)

Once Again, a Nation Cuts It Too Close for Comfort Democrats are dashed in their hopes for a quick or decisive knockout. 

Republicans clinging to Senate majority as Dems under-perform The key races include GOP-held seats in Maine and North Carolina, while Georgia could send two Senate elections into overtime. 




China shapes a new U.S. economic era: The return of industrial policy The latest episode of POLITICO’s Global Translations podcast explores the new industrial policy emerging in America to counter China’s ascent.



at No comments:
Labels: , ,

Coronavirus News (310)

He Already Saw the Election as Good vs. Evil. Then His Tractor Burned. In Nebraska, President Trump’s supporters hope he wins a second term, and that they get four more years of feeling like the country’s leader understands and defends them.

Trump Is Now ‘Biohazard-Curious,’ Says Trevor Noah After the president offered to “kiss the guys and the beautiful women” at his Florida rally, Noah speculated that he might have lost Mike Pence’s vote.


Don’t Grieve Alone. Reach Out. Finding emotional support during a crisis often means turning to long-established networks already built for distance. ..............  and often felt like I was having one long, sustained panic attack. .......... friends kept vigil with me, lighting up my phone with support and listening when I called to vent or cry. ..........  We can share stories, cry and laugh together over Zoom, but we can’t simply sit in quiet companionship or hold each other when words fail us. After my loss, I ran out of words to share; I couldn’t imagine calling anyone. ............ As it turned out, socially distanced grieving didn’t mean grieving alone — so many people found ways to offer support, as if they knew what I needed even when I didn’t. It occurred to me that most of them hadn’t needed to dig deep in order to understand what I was going through. ..............  starting with “just one person who has been consistently good about reaching out” to you. “This gives that person positive feedback” for being such a good friend to you ............ the intimacy that can take root when we have a bit of physical distance, and at the same time get these powerful glimpses into each other’s homes and daily experiences. ............... Whenever I rise and get back to it — to help my family, to do my job, to support my friends the way they’ve generously supported me — I often think of my mother, the person most responsible for showing me that love can defy distance and be an endless source of strength and resilience. 

He Won’t Concede, but He’ll Pack His Bags All evidence suggests that the president would run from the responsibility of overseeing the violent fracture of America.

Trump Is Suffering From Trump Derangement Syndrome The president’s abnormal comments may be the best evidence that, deep down, he really is normal.

ActBlue’s stunning third quarter: $1.5 billion in donations Democratic online donors are pouring cash into 2020 campaigns, from Joe Biden down to state legislative candidates.

Bidenworld fires warning shot against Cabinet jockeying Members of Joe Biden's transition team have been fuming at the recent flood of stories listing people in contention for top administration posts.

at No comments:
Labels: , , , , ,

Coronavirus News (309)

A Framework for Leaders Facing Difficult Decisions
How the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally may have spread coronavirus across the Upper Midwest Within weeks of the gathering that drew nearly half a million bikers, the Dakotas, along with Wyoming, Minnesota and Montana, were leading the nation in new coronavirus infections per capita.
Jimmy Kimmel Rips Into Trump’s  ‘Superspreader’ Rally “Even though his own White House put out guidelines saying there should be no gatherings in central Iowa with more than 25 people, they’re doing this,” Kimmel said of President Trump’s rally.
Biden’s Covid Response Plan Draws From F.D.R.’s New Deal Mr. Biden has staked his campaign on a more muscular federal role in fighting the coronavirus pandemic. But some of his big government proposals may be difficult to put into effect.
Nerd Wars Nate Silver and G. Elliott Morris are trying to make sense of the 2020 election — and each other..............  When FiveThirtyEight first published its forecast for the 2020 race, it put Biden’s chances to win at 71 percent, while The Economist set them at 87 percent. Today the two have gotten significantly closer: FiveThirtyEight has an 87 percent chance of a Biden win, and The Economist has 91 percent.  








at No comments:
Labels: , , , , ,

The Polls Were Off Again

Biden was supposed to have had a 10 point lead nationally. That was a recipe for a landslide. Instead, one day later, we are looking at a nailbiter. The polls were off again. Looks like they are not designed to reach the core of Trump voters. 

The bigger news, though, is that the country is as divided as ever, and the Covid catastrophe does not seem to have budged the country much. It is the same old, same old. America has the political equivalent of a lifestyle disease. 

Biden will squeak through, but there is no landslide. 



America Is Eerily Retracing Rome’s Steps to a Fall. Will It Turn Around Before It’s Too Late? Two thousand years ago, the famous Republic had a chance to reject a dangerous populist. It failed, and the rest is history.

Can Biden Still Win? Can Trump Still Win? Yes. Here Are the Remaining Paths. The president was able to close off several avenues to an early Biden win, but the former vice president still has a number of options.

What’s Left in the Seven States That Will Decide the Race Though they’re still too close to call, there are some indications of which way things might go...... If Mr. Biden did carry Georgia, along with the other states mentioned so far, he’d win more than 300 electoral votes. 

Democrats Battle for Senate Control as They Maintain Grip on House Majority The two parties grappled for advantage in the fight for the Senate majority as Democrats aimed to add to their majority in the House. ....... That left both sides closely watching Maine, North Carolina and Georgia, where partial returns showed exceedingly tight races between Republican incumbents and their Democratic challengers........... At least one Senate race taking place in Georgia, an unexpectedly competitive battleground this year, was headed for a winner-takes-all January runoff that could decide the balance of the Senate only weeks before Inauguration Day if Tuesday’s contests did not. The state’s other race could also end up in a runoff, but it was too early to be certain.......  while strategists in both parties had said a second blue wave could wash out 10 to 20 Republicans, by Wednesday morning, returns indicated that no such sweep had materialized ..... Worried about Mr. Trump’s chances, though, many Republicans closed their campaigns with warnings to voters of the risks posed by putting the White House and Congress under full Democratic control.........  If Democrats were able to grab control of the House, Senate and White House at once for the first time since 2010, they could abolish the legislative filibuster — the last major vestige of minority rights in the Senate — and push through an ambitious slate of bills on voting rights, gun safety, policing and prescription drug prices. They would most likely reserve much of their political capital for expanding the Affordable Care Act and raising taxes on the wealthy to offset that and other new programs.........  Facing a Senate led by Mr. McConnell, Mr. Biden could even have an uphill battle winning its approval to fill his cabinet, and he would certainly face opposition to liberal nominees to the federal courts. 

2020 Should Be the Last Time We Vote Like This Turnout was inspiring, but our voting system is badly flawed....... Set against so many less important transactions in American life — ordering a complicated coffee from a national chain, or finding the best sushi place in a town you’ve never visited before — the simple act of casting a ballot is laughably antiquated. ....... In many countries, elections are administered by nonpartisan agencies that set rules for the entire nation. In the United States, elections are often run by elected officials — Republican or Democratic secretaries of state, for instance — and rules about who gets to vote and how they do so differ from state to state.

at No comments:
Labels: , , ,

Tuesday, November 03, 2020

Coronavirus News (308)

LinkedIn Top Startups 2020: The 10 Indian companies on the rise

5 takeaways from Xi Jinping’s speech during 40th anniversary visit to Shenzhen Chinese president full of praise for people of southern tech hub on visit to mark 40th anniversary of it becoming China’s first special economic zone ‘This is a global development miracle that the Chinese people have created together,’ he says

President Xi calls on more young Hongkongers to work, study, live in mainland China in speech holding up Shenzhen as model city Xi gives Shenzhen a mission to revitalise ‘one country, two systems’ as he launches new era of integration for southern China President appeals to Hong Kong’s youth to experience life on the mainland to ‘bring their hearts closer to the motherland’

Progressives don’t love Joe Biden, but they’re learning to love his agenda “The most transformative presidents in our nation’s history — Lincoln, FDR, LBJ — were not ideologues.”

Barrett, Declining to Detail Legal Views, Says She Will Not Be ‘a Pawn’ of Trump President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee refused to weigh in on critical matters that could come before the court, including health care, abortion rights and a possible election dispute.

China Got Better. We Got Sicker. Thanks, Trump. With a different leader, the United States could have contained the coronavirus. ......... the out-of-control antics of an incoherent American president, a man clearly desperate to stay in office because losing could mean his prosecution, humiliation and liquidation all at the same time. ............. Alas, we aren’t who we think we are. Covid-19 was supposed to be China’s Chernobyl. It’s ended up looking more like the West’s Waterloo. .......... Some of China’s facial recognition technology is so good, you don’t even have to take off your face mask. Your eyes and upper nose will do. ............. we have a uniquely individualistic culture, a highly fragmented local-state-federal power-sharing system, a frail public health system, a divided body politic, a Republican Party whose business model has long been to cripple Washington, and so many people getting their news from social networks that amplify conspiracy theories and destroy truth and trust. ............. we now have a president whose political strategy for re-election is to divide us, to destroy trust — and to destroy truth — and to declare any news hostile to his goals as “fake.” And without truth and trust in a pandemic, you’re lost. .............  a strategy of “total harm minimization” that would have protected the elderly and most vulnerable, while gradually feeding back into the work force the young and healthy most likely to experience the coronavirus either asymptomatically or mildly — and let them keep the economy humming and build up some natural herd immunity as we awaited a vaccine. ............. what ails us today is something that cannot be cured by a Covid-19 vaccine. We have lost the trust in each other and in our institutions and a basic sense of what is true — all necessary to navigate a health crisis together. We had them in previous wars, but not today’s.  


Don't Ignore the Good News On Covid-19 From Asia There’s light at the end of the lockdown tunnel, provided the right lessons are learnt. ........... The U.S. looks to have given up on controlling the pandemic until a vaccine arrives. ........... The strategies pursued by South Korea, Vietnam, China and others do still seem to be paying off. While the total Covid-19 death toll is between 500-700 per million people in France, the U.K., Spain and the U.S., in China and South Korea it is below 10 per million. Cases are a less perfect measure, but there’s a similar observable gap. Wuhan, once the epicenter of Covid-19, is welcoming tourists again. .................   If the key to avoiding more lockdowns is finding a way to “live with the virus” — through widespread testing, tracing of contacts and isolating positive cases to slow transmission — Western countries have made structural, not cultural, errors. ..............  Even the famously organized Germans failed to halt the second wave. ...............  South Korea tested early, and often, using walk-in centers and drive-throughs. In Wuhan, the authorities tested 11 million people over 2 weeks. The share of tests coming back positive in South Korea and Vietnam is below 1%; in France and Spain it has risen to 10%.   



Jack Ma's Blunt Words Just Cost Him $35 Billion China just showed the billionaire who’s boss in derailing fintech giant Ant Group’s monster IPO. Regulators might do better to heed his words instead. ...........   In that speech, apart from labeling the global banking Basel Accords as an “old people’s club,” Ma said “systemic risk” is not the issue in China. Rather, China’s biggest risk is that it “lacks a financial ecosystem.” Chinese banks are like “pawn shops”, where collateral and guarantees are the hard currencies. As a result, some decided to go so big they are not allowed to fail. “As the Chinese like to say, if you borrow 100,000 yuan from the bank, you are a bit scared; if you borrow a million yuan, both you and the bank are a little nervous; but if you take a 1 billion yuan loan, you are not scared at all, the bank is,” Ma said.


at No comments:
Labels: , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)