ONTARIO

Dividends still went out even after soldiers marched in to long-term care homes

© Provided by National Post A staff member escorts members of the Canadian Armed Forces in to a long term care home, in Pickering, Ont. on Saturday, April 25, 2020.

OTTAWA – In the spring, Sienna Senior living needed military support in two of its overwhelmed long-term care homes where COVID-19 was surging, but even though soldiers were marching in, the company still paid out $45 million to its shareholders.

Siena is a publicly traded company that runs dozens of long-term care homes and retirement residences in Ontario and British Columbia. During the spring, two of its homes required military support; Altamont Care Community where 53 people have died and Woodbridge Vista Care Community where 31 people died.

In a report that was made public in the spring , military officers detailed appalling conditions at Altamont, including patients receiving meals late and not receiving three meals a day. When the military first arrived, they reported, some residents had been bed bound for weeks. Staff were overworked and under-resourced with personal support workers expected to cover 30 to 40 patients each on evening shifts.

The military pegged the overall cost of its COVID operations at $418 million, but that includes support for the public health agency’s warehouses, as well as the deployment to dozens of long-term care homes, seven in Ontario and another 47 in Quebec.

According to a spokesperson, for the complete operation the forces called up 9,711 reservists, at a cost of $207.8 million. The military spent another $34.2 million on travel, medical equipment, PPE and training.

Some of the costs would have been paid regardless of the pandemic, like the salaries of military doctors and nurses. Some operations that had been planned were cancelled leading to savings, but the forces’ estimate for the additional costs is still $255 million.

When the crisis hit, Sienna’s stock price plummeted, losing nearly half its value in early March. Since then, however, it has regained about half of its losses. It has also continued to pay out dividends to shareholders. The dividends were $15.6 million in the first three quarters of this year and it is likely to continue into the final quarter.

In a response, the company said the dividends were necessary and it has invested $20.5 million above and beyond any government support to improve the care homes.

“Dividends are similar to interest costs on loans — dividends are paid to shareholders who have provided the capital necessary to invest in the maintenance, upgrading and building of new long-term care residences,” the company wrote in a statement to the National Post.

 “At no point has the payment of dividends taken away from front-line care.” BULLSHIT

In addition to the military’s support, Sienna’s fiscal statements reveal the company received $21 million from the Ontario government for staffing and PPE and $4 million for capital spending to improve infection control.

The financial statement mentions the company has also applied to the government to expand the Altamont Care facility, redeveloping the 159 beds and adding 161 new ones.

Three of the company’s homes were overseen by hospitals during the pandemic and Sienna paid those hospitals $1.9 million in management fees. Long-term care homes are generally paid on an occupancy basis, but the provincial government is covering lower occupancy rates for now. Sienna is also facing several lawsuits, from patients and their families, over its handling of the pandemic.

The company said it’s offering more employees full-time hours to keep them. But a note in the financial statements reveals, while it brought on 1,400 full-time and 1,100 part-time workers between March and October, it has also lost 1,700 people for a net increase of 800 people.

The company said staffing was an issue across the long-term care sector and it struggled just as other companies did.

“Given the intensity of the pandemic, many front-line workers chose to leave the field. At the same time, COVID-19 created an intense demand for registered staff across the LTC sector, as well as from hospitals, schools and other workplaces.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was asked about the company’s decision to pay out dividends, but didn’t weigh in on the issue.

“I know over the coming months there will be many reflections by Canadians and others on that.”

The federal government put no financial conditions on companies receiving military assistance. It also did not prevent companies that received the government’s wage subsidy from paying out dividends to shareholders. Sienna did not receive the wage subsidy, but others in the long-term care sector did.

He said with the situation deteriorating so drastically in the spring, the government only wanted to do what it could to help.

“Our focus from the very beginning, was to just be there for Canadians who needed help.”

Public ownership

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who has frequently called for long-term care homes to be put into public ownership, said the company’s behaviour is reprehensible.

“A pandemic is happening, people are dying, there are horrible conditions, the military is called in all that on one side and on the other they’re paying out dividends.”

The federal government is expected to be asked to spend more money in the coming years on long-term care homes and is pushing for national standards. Singh said all of that should happen, but that renewed funding shouldn’t become profit.

”I don’t think many Canadians would feel comfortable that if we transfer money to take care of seniors, which we should, if we transfer more money to long-term care which we should, if that money went to paying shareholder dividends, or if that money goes to, to the bonuses for executives,” he said. “If we’re spending public money to help seniors that doesn’t actually end up caring for seniors, no one would think that’s a good idea.”
are cared for.”

Singh said the government could buy out the for-profit long-term care homes, starting with Revera, a company that is already owned by the Public Sector Pension Investment Board

“If we could do it with a pipeline — which I think was a bad decision — we could absolutely do it to ensure seniors 

UPDATED

Japan’s asteroid probe grabbed a ton of material 

on its second attempt

© Provided by BGR asteroid samples

The asteroid probe Hayabusa2, sent by the Japanese space agency JAXA, made two attempts to collect material from the surface of the space rock Ryugu.

As the now-returned samples reveal, the initial attempt gathered fine particles and sandy material, but the second attempt was much more impressive.

JAXA describes the second sample as including rocks as large as nearly half an inch, and they’re very hard.

Japan’s Hayabusa2 asteroid probe mission took a long, long time. Flying to and from the asteroid Ryugu took many months, and the time the spacecraft spent in orbit around the asteroid was lengthy in its own right. The biggest risk for the spacecraft — and one of the most important objectives of the mission — was to bring asteroid samples back to Earth.

It completed that task just a couple of weeks ago, and Japan slowly began to reveal information about the samples that the probe gathered. The first reveal was somewhat underwhelming, revealing some black, charcoal-like dust and small pebbles from the first sample collection attempt. Now, after JAXA showed off its second batch of asteroid sample material we can say with certainty that the mission was an absolutely huge success.

As Komo News reports, the most recent release of images of the asteroid samples offers us a much clearer picture of what Japanese scientists will be working with in the coming months and years. The second sample in particular looks quite promising, with larger chunks of rock that are apparently very hard, according to JAXA.

The differences in the sample material have been attributed to the very different circumstances under which they were collected. The first sample was snatched when Hayabusa2 made a brief touchdown on the asteroid, so it was mostly dust and smaller pebbles from the surface. For the second sample, the JAXA team actually used Hayabusa2 to launch a projectile at the asteroid, blowing a hole in the surface so that material could be collected from within the rock.

The fact that the second sample includes rocks both large and small suggests that the bedrock of the asteroid varies in terms of hardness, according to JAXA space materials scientist Tomohiro Usui. The asteroid samples are being studied in a somewhat casual way at the moment, with observations being noted, but the much more in-depth studies into the material and what the rocks may contain will happen over the course of many months and perhaps even years.

Meanwhile, the asteroid probe itself isn’t done with its work. after dropping the samples off on Earth, the probe cruised back out into space. It’s headed for another asteroid that JAXA wants to study, but this one will take a bit longer to reach. The journey to the asteroid will take 11 years, so we won’t be hearing much about that for some time.

Feast your eyes on the space rocks 

Japan’s Hayabusa 2 mission harvested

 from asteroid Ryugu

Devin Coldewey@techcrunch / •December 28, 2020


Image Credits: JAXA

Japan’s ambitious second asteroid return mission, Hayabusa 2, has collected a wealth of material from its destination, Ryugu, which astronomers and other interested parties are almost certainly champing at the bit to play with. Though they may look like ordinary bits of charcoal, they’re genuine asteroid surface material — and a little something shiny, too.

Hayabusa 2 was launched in 2014 and arrived at the asteroid named Ryugu in 2018, at which point it deployed a couple landers to test surface conditions. It touched down itself in the next year, blasting the surface with a space gun so that it could collect not just the surface gravel but what might lie beneath it. After a long trip home it reentered the atmosphere on December 5 and was collected in the Australian desert.

Although everything worked perfectly, the team could never really be sure they would truly get the samples they hoped for until they opened the sample collection containers in a sealed room back at headquarters. The materials inside have been teased in a few tweets, but today JAXA posted all of the public images along with some new explanations and discoveries.

For one thing, the “sample catcher” itself had grains of sediment from Ryugu. Perhaps this material, exposed to different conditions than that of the containers, will prove different when analyzed.



Image Credits: JAXA

For another, sample container C appears to have an “artificial object” in it! But don’t get excited — as the team writes on their blog, “the origin is under investigation, but a probable source is aluminium scraped off the spacecraft sampler horn as the projectile was fired to stir up material during touchdown.”

In other words, it’s probably a bit of the probe that came off during the not-so-gentle process of shooting the asteroid and crashing into it.




Image Credits: JAXA

But the most important bit is all the rocks collected as planned. As you can see by the scale bar, these are little more than pebbles, but they’re large enough to show evidence of all kinds of processes leading to their particular shape and makeup. There’s also plenty of smaller-scale dirt and dust from below the surface that scientists hope could show signs of organic materials and water, the building blocks of life as we know it.

The success of the mission is worth celebrating, and the team has only just begun studying the materials brought back from Ryugu — so we can expect more information soon as they perform the painstaking work of analysis on these priceless samples. The Hayabusa 2 Twitter account is probably the best way to stay up to date day to day.

Stolen jade boulder found and returned, 

says B.C. gift shop owner

© Provided by The Canadian Press

CACHE CREEK, B.C. — The owner of a gift shop in British Columbia's southern Interior says a jade boulder stolen from outside the store earlier this month has been found.

Heidi Roy says the nearly 1,300-kilogram slab of jade stolen from outside Cariboo Jade and Gifts in Cache Creek was spotted by a member of the public who recognized it from the publicity the theft received.

Roy says in an email the slab has a few scars from its "adventure," but she's thrilled to have it back in once piece.

A photo provided by Roy shows the jade slab covered in dirt, lying in a tangle of brush and snow in the location she says it was found.

Roy says details are sparse so far and the RCMP are expected to release a statement Tuesday about their investigation into the theft.

Previously, an older grey and gold Dodge pickup truck pulling a trailer with an excavator was captured on surveillance video carrying the boulder off.

Police later found the trailer abandoned, without the jade, and the truck thought to have been used in the theft was found empty in another location.

Roy says the metre-wide slab has been displayed in front of Cariboo Jade and Gifts since she bought the store in 1985, and while it's become a tourist attraction, it is low-grade jade and worthless as semi-precious stone.

Roy is thanking people who sent words of encouragement from across the country, saying it's clear "this stone meant a lot to many more than we realized."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 28, 2020.

The Canadian Press

CANADA

 National daycare system will need funding to lower fees, expand spaces, Hussen says


OTTAWA — The federal minister in charge of the government's push on child care says bringing down fees parents pay is a key ingredient in the Liberals' design for a national system.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Social Development Minister Ahmed Hussen also says that just as critical will be to expand the number of affordable daycare spaces across the country for parents who want them.

He says the two issues have come up in his conversations with his counterparts in other countries that have created national child-care systems.

He also says the two issues are key take-aways from Quebec, which is the lone province with such a system.

Hussen said that driving down fees and ramping up the number of spaces would likely require a sizeable influx of federal funds.

He added the government expects the already high demand for daycare spots to increase once the pandemic is firmly in the country's rear-view mirror.

"We have to work hard together to decrease fees substantially, to make it more affordable for parents, but we also have to make sure that there is an increase in the number of spaces," Hussen said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

"Otherwise, we'll have a situation where you make it more affordable, but only for those who can access it. And for those who just can't find a space, they're out of luck."

The Liberals pledged to create a universal child-care system in their September throne speech as a way to help more women return to and enter the workforce as their numbers fell during the pandemic.

Along with longtime advocates, business groups have also become more vocal supports of the idea, something Hussen and other Liberals now cite when discussing child care.

November's economic statement pledged money to help provinces and territories hire, train and retain early childhood educators, as well as build the necessary government infrastructure to guide policy development.

"You can't talk about a national system, more affordability, more quality and an expansion of spaces without hiring more workers," Hussen said.

"Without increasing the number of early childhood educators, then you're not really delivering on those increased spaces."

The total spend on child care in the fall statement amounted to $585 million in new money, some of it spread over five years.

In their consultations with experts, the Liberals have been told that federal funding would be need to make spaces more affordable.

In some cities, a daycare space can cost more per month than rent or mortgage payments.

On the other side, covering the cost of spaces is also seen as a way to help child-care centres rely less on steep fees that dried up when lockdowns forced them to close. Some closed for good and others were pushed to the financial brink because they often run on tight margins.

To build the kind of system nationally that Quebec has provincially could cost Ottawa upwards of $11 billion annually by some estimates once fully in place.

Child care is a provincial responsibility and a change in federal government could also shift priorities away from a plan that would take years to implement.

Hussen said the government will be looking to "generate early momentum" with provinces and Canadians to prove the Liberals are serious about the child-care promise.

He also said the government would bring "resources and political will" to the table in talks with provinces.

Hussen said similar efforts will take place with Indigenous groups to co-develop a daycare system that is culturally appropriate.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 28, 2020.

Jordan Press, The Canadian Pres

MORE PROOF AMLO IS A NEO-LIBERAL

Mexico might allow private firms to buy, distribute vaccines


MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Monday he is not opposed to private companies buying coronavirus vaccines to distribute to patients who want to pay for the shots.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

But he noted there isn’t much existing supply and warned companies not to try to buy vaccines already promised to the Mexican government.

“We are not opposed to commercializing the vaccine, to companies importing it and selling it to those who can pay,” López Obrador said. “The catch is the supply of vaccines in the world markets, because there still isn't enough production."

“We would be opposed if the ones we have under contract were to be given to a private company, that we would not permit and we would file a complaint,” he said.

Mexico's medical safety commission must grant approval for any vaccine. López Obrador said no company has yet applied to import vaccines privately.

But the issue is already clearly in the public arena, and experts have warned that fakes, frauds and thefts may start popping up amid the public's desperation to get a vaccine.

Wal-Mart de Mexico, the nation's largest retailer, had to issue a statement Monday denying a photo ad circulating online that depicts a coronavirus “vaccine” supposedly available for about $20.

“We are making clear that the information circulating on social media regarding a supposed supply of COVID-19 vaccine in our Mexico stores is false,” said a statement posted on the company's Twitter account.

López Obrador has been criticized by some in Mexico for centralizing vaccine purchases and distribution and for putting the effort — like many programs in his administration — in the hands of the military.

He says the military is best-equipped to manage the security and refrigeration chain some vaccines require.

The president has promised that vaccines will be free and available to everyone in Mexico, but so far the country has only received around 50,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine. To vaccinate 1.4 million health-care workers — the first in line to get the shots — Mexico would need 2.8 million doses.

The government is placing hopes on three vaccines now in or entering Phase 3 trials in Mexico. It announced that Novavax Inc. will be conducting part of its testing in Mexico. China's CanSino and Johnson & Johnson's Janssen Pharmaceutical business have also been conducting trials in Mexico.

The Associated Pres

Thousands of Birds Starved to Death This Fall in the U.S. South

This past autumn, people all across the U.S. southwest were finding an astounding number of dead birds littered along roads, on golf courses, and in their own driveways. Some estimated that hundreds of thousands of the creatures perished. Months later, new findings are shedding a little more light on why the spooky phenomenon may have taken place.

© Photo: Ronald Martinez (Getty Images) Flycatchers were among the species affected by the southwests mass bird die-off this fall.

Lab results on bird necropsies from the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center, released earlier this month, suggest that starvation was a cause of the mass die-off seen in August and September. 80% of the carcasses the researchers analyzed showed signs of starvation, including emaciation, severely shrunken muscles, blood leakage in intestinal tracts, and kidney failure.

Members of the public reported nearly 10,000 dead birds, including finches, flycatchers, swallows, warblers, and bluebirds, to the USGS in August and September, and they sent some 170 carcasses to the agency. The researchers analyzed 40, of which 32 showed these signs of starvation. The remaining ones weren’t in good enough condition to conduct post-mortem tests.

Migratory Birds Are Failing to Adapt to Climate Change

Malnourishment was the only major commonality the researchers found from their necropsies. The USGS scientists also tested the bird bodies for signs of parasites, bacterial or viral diseases, or pesticide poisoning, but found none of those were among the birds’ causes of deaths. At the time of the die-off, some scholars speculated that smoke from the U.S. West’s record-breaking 2020 wildfire season may have been a factor. But the analysis also found no evidence of smoke poisoning in the birds.

Despite this, Jon Hayes, the executive director of the Audubon Society’s southwest branch, still believes the fires may have played a role. “The birds could have been altering their migration path to avoid smoke plumes, thereby increasing the energy demand of their migration and causing exhaustion,” he told Audubon Magazine. “The evidence they’ve shown regarding poor body condition could still fit that scenario, and so I think there’s still questions like the role of fire in particular.”

Whatever the exact conditions that led to the birds’ starvation, it seems climate-related changes were a major factor. The report does not determine exactly what led to the birds’ starvation, but the researchers say a severe drought in the region over the summer is a probable cause. Amid dry conditions, plants produce fewer seeds, and bugs aren’t able to reproduce as much, all of which spells disaster for avian diets.

After the drought came a massive sweep of cold weather, which the researchers think may have further destabilized the birds’ condition. Around Labor Day in early September, the Southwest saw temperatures fall below freezing, which may have made birds’ preferred food choices even scarcer.

The unexpected cold front and winds may have also disoriented the birds, causing them to fly into objects and buildings. “Some were struck by vehicles and many landed on the ground where cold temperatures, ice, snow and predators killed them,” USGS said in a press statement.

The findings are a warning sign of difficult times ahead for birds. As the climate crisis worsens, studies show the American West and South will see far more frequent and severe dry spells. Seemingly random spurts of cold weather will also become more common.

A 2019 report found that North America has already lost 30% of its birds since 1970, and changes in climate bear a large part of the blame. Another report last year found that 389 bird species—including some impacted by the 2020 southwestern die off, like warblers—are facing potential extinction due to changes in temperatures and precipitation patterns.

The die-off makes it clear that the world must get its act together on the climate crisis by rapidly drawing down our greenhouse gas emissions. If we don’t, all species, including birds, will suffer. Since birds regulate bug populations and pollinate plants, the effects of their decline will be felt throughout entire ecosystems, including by humans. It’s in our best interest to help them out.

Amid pandemic, Pacific islands work to offset food shortages

.

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Coronavirus infections have barely touched many of the remote islands of the Pacific, but the pandemic’s fallout has been enormous, disrupting the supply chain that brings crucial food imports and sending prices soaring as tourism wanes

© Provided by The Canadian Press

With a food crisis looming, many governments have begun community initiatives to help alleviate shortages: extending fishing seasons, expanding indigenous food gathering lessons and bolstering seed distribution programs that allow residents greater self-reliance.

“We initially started with 5,000 seeds and thought we would finish them in nine months’ time. But there was a very big response, and we finished distributing the seeds in one week,” said Vinesh Kumar, head of operation for Fiji's Agriculture Ministry.

The project provides residents with vegetable seeds, saplings and basic farming equipment to help them grow their own home gardens.

Fiji resident Elisabeta Waqa said she had contemplated starting a garden before the pandemic, but -- with no job, extra time at home and seeds from the ministry and friends -- finally took action.

Looking to have “zero financial investment,” Waqa collected buckets, crates and other potential planters discarded on the side of the road and in the trash. Soon her yard transformed into containers of green beans, cucumber, cabbage and other produce.

“When I started harvesting about two, three weeks later, that’s when I realized: My gosh, this is a hobby people have had for so long. I thought about just how much money I could save my doing this,” Waqa said.

Geographically isolated with limited arable land and increased urbanization, many of the Pacific island countries and territories have seen their populations shift from traditional agriculture-based work to tourism. The trend has created an increased reliance on imported food such as corned beef, noodles and other highly processed foods instead of the traditional diet of locally grown items like nutrient-rich yams and taro.

Eriko Hibi, director of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Liaison Office in Japan, called the shift a “triple burden” of health issues: undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies and obesity.

When the pandemic hit, nearly all the countries in the region closed their borders. Shipping supply chains — including fertilizer for farms and food — were disrupted, causing prices to rise. In Suva, Fiji, the cost of some fresh fruits and vegetables rose by up to 75% during the first weeks.

At same time, tourism — which Hibi said accounts for up to 70% of some countries’ gross domestic product — came to a halt, leaving thousands unemployed with decreased access to food.

“It’s not just about the availability of the prices in the market but also the purchasing power of the consumers, which has gone down,” Hibi said.

In Tuvalu, the government held workshops teaching youth indigenous food production methods such as taro planting and sap collection from coconut trees. In Fiji, the government extended fishing season of coral trout and grouper that could be sold for income or used as food. Numerous governments encouraged residents to move back to rural areas that had stronger independent food resources.

Tevita Ratucadre and his wife moved back to a rural village in Fiji to save on rent and food costs after being laid off from the hotel where they worked because of COVID-19.

In the city, “you have to buy everything with money, even if you have to put food on the table,” Ratucadre said. “In the village you can grow your own things.”

Having watched his parents farm when he was a child, Ratucadre said he was able to remember how to plant and grow cassava stems from a neighbour. He now grows enough food for his family, he said.

“When I used to work, I used to buy whatever I wanted to eat when I’d go to the supermarket,” he said. “Now I have to plant and eat whatever I’ve planted.”

Mervyn Piesse, a research manager at Australian-based research institute Future Directions International, said it was too early to know what the potential health benefits could be but regional diets might shift away from imports to more fresh food, even after the pandemic.

“There is, I think, a movement in parts of the Pacific for people to actually start thinking about, ‘If we can grow food ourselves during a global pandemic, why can’t we do the same thing at normal times?’” Piesse said.

Waqa said she has already made up her mind — though she’s begun working again, she’s taught her older children how to take care of the garden and harvest produce while she’s gone.

“Now I save money on food, know where my food is coming from and just feel more secure about having food,” she said. “I don’t want to go back to the way things were before.”

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Victoria Milko, The Associated Press

Sen. Bernie Sanders vowed to delay the passage of a defense bill should the Senate decide not to hold a vote on making $2,000 direct payments per person.

© Provided by Washington Examiner

President Trump vetoed the $740 billion defense package on Wednesday, and on Monday, the House voted to override that veto. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell aims to hold a vote to override on the Senate floor, but in order to skip the procedural waiting period, the consent of all senators is required.

Should Sanders choose to filibuster the vote, the Senate will be unable to vote on the matter until New Year's Day.

"Let me be clear," the independent senator from Vermont said in a Monday statement, "if Senator McConnell doesn't agree to an up or down vote to provide the working people of our country a $2,000 direct payment, Congress will not be going home for New Year's Eve. Let's do our job."

Sanders told Politico that he understood McConnell's desire to expedite the vote but added that he would not allow it until one was held on the direct payments, "no matter how long that takes."

Such a delay would likely complicate the campaign schedules of Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, who both face Jan. 5 runoff elections in Georgia. Politico reported a source close to Sanders who said those races were a factor in his decision.

Voting to approve the payments would be an increase from the already agreed $600 in the COVID-19 relief bill signed by the president on Sunday.

Original Author: Haley Victory Smith

WASHINGTON EXAMINER 

Original Location: Bernie Sanders pledges to hold up defense budget unless Senate votes on $2,000 stimulus checks

Trump’s delay in signing the stimulus bill could keep $5.9 billion from unemployed Americans

© Provided by Business Insider Donald Trump. Getty

President Donald Trump finally signed the $900 billion COVID-19 relief bill nearly a week after it was passed by Congress.

The delay means that unemployed Americans have already missed a week of the $300 supplemental unemployment insurance the bill provides.

With nearly 20 million Americans receiving some form of unemployment benefits as of early December, that would add up to almost $6 billion in foregone payments.

On Sunday, President Donald Trump finally signed the $900 billion COVID-19 relief package and $1.4 trillion omnibus package funding the government and avoiding a shutdown.

While many of the new law's provisions will help support individual, businesses, and communities across America, Trump's delay in signing the bill for nearly a week after it was passed by Congress is likely to be very costly for Americans receiving unemployment benefits.

Insider calculated how much, and it's quite a few billion.

Different kinds of funding

First, we need to consider the pipes through which this stimulus actually gets to people.


Video: Trump asks Congress to amend COVID aid bill to increase payouts (FOX News)

One of the provisions in the relief package is a weekly $300 supplement to unemployment insurance, similar to the $600 weekly additional pay for unemployed workers included in the CARES Act in the spring and early summer.

The just-passed bill included an 11-week extension of the $300 supplemental payments, running through March 14, 2021. But because of Trump's delay in signing the bill into law, the first week of those payments has been missed, leaving millions of Americans without that initial $300 payment.

The supplemental payments go out to unemployed Americans receiving benefits from traditional state-run unemployment programs, as well as two federal programs implemented in the CARES Act. The Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) program provides unemployment benefits to workers who have exceeded their normal state unemployment benefits, while the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program supports workers who would typically not be covered by traditional unemployment, like gig workers and workers directly affected by the pandemic.

As of the week ending December 5, the most recent data available from the Labor Department, about 5.5 million Americans were receiving traditional unemployment, 9.3 million were receiving checks from the PUA program, and 4.8 million were receiving pandemic emergency unemployment compensation.

The cost a week makes

All together, about 19.5 million Americans were receiving benefits from one of those three programs, and thus missed out on last week's $300 supplemental pay that they would have received if Trump had signed the legislation by Saturday. That represents about $5.9 billion in total supplemental unemployment insurance that wasn't paid out, assuming roughly similar numbers of Americans receiving benefits last week.

Although, as noted above, the supplemental $300 benefit was originally intended to run for 11 weeks, the missing week now effectively means that only 10 weeks of the extra money will be paid out, since the benefit is scheduled to end on March 14. Per The New York Times, it remains unclear whether or not states will be able to retroactively pay that money, with Labor Department guidance coming in the near future.

That could be just the start of problems caused by the delay - the PEUC and PUA programs were also slated to expire last week under the CARES Act, and were extended in the new bill. The Washington Post wrote that the delay in signing the bill could lead to further slowdowns in states implementing those extended programs, putting benefits for millions of Americans at risk.

Rasmussen quotes Stalin in tweet on US election

Republican-leaning pollster Rasmussen invoked a quote attributed to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in a Twitter thread Sunday suggesting Vice President Pence could attempt to overturn the results of the presidential election

PENCE DOES HIS BANE IMITATION

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© Getty Images Rasmussen quotes Stalin in tweet on US election

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything. - Stalin," the pollster tweeted, before going on to outline a scenario in which Pence refuses to certify the results in swing states.

Supporters of President Trump have made similar arguments that Pence, as president of the Senate, has the power to reject Electoral College results.

However, the theory is based on a misreading of U.S. code that simply authorizes the vice president to call on states to submit their electoral votes if they do not do so by the fourth Wednesday in December, according to The Washington Post.

"The Vice President is not supposed to control the outcome of the process for counting the electoral votes from the states. That's true from the perspective of the Constitution as well as the Electoral Count Act," Edward Foley, a law professor at the Ohio State University, told The Hill in an email.

"The Vice President chairs the joint session, but does not decide what electoral votes to count," he added, noting it "was clearly understood...that the Vice President might be a candidate in the election under consideration, and they did not want this conflict of interest to affect the result."

T. Greg Doucette, an attorney and Trump critic who frequently fields questions about the president's capacity to legally challenge the results of the election, tweeted that "Pence has no power to 'strike' anything. He opens the envelopes, gives the certificates to the tellers, the tellers count."

As for the quote attributed to Stalin, frequently invoked as a warning against totalitarianism, it is disputed whether the Soviet leader actually said it. A variation on it appears in Russian in a 2002 memoir by Stalin's secretary Boris Bazhanov, who attributed it to his former boss discussing a vote by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

The Hill has reached out to Rasmussen for comment.