Progressives Blast GOP Calls to End $300 Weekly Unemployment: 'Greed Has No Bounds'

Jason Lemon 

Progressive lawmakers pushed back hard after some Republicans and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce called for ending extra $300 weekly unemployment payments to jobless workers amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

© Susan Walsh-Pool/Getty Images Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and other progressives slammed Republican calls for ending extra $300 weekly unemployment payments after a disappointing April jobs report. In this photo, Sanders speaks during a hearing on Capitol Hill examining wages at large profitable corporations on February 25 in Washington, D.C.

GOP lawmakers and the Chamber of Congress, a pro-business lobby group that generally backs Republican candidates, blamed extra federal unemployment payments approved by Congress in the American Rescue Plan for the significantly less than expected job growth in April. The Department of Labor released the April jobs report on Friday, showing that the economy added just 266,000 jobs last month despite predictions that it would be closer to 1 million.

But progressives and officials from President Joe Biden's administration were quick to push back against the calls for ending the extra payments, as millions of workers remain unemployed.

"Providing an extra $300 a week in unemployment benefits to low-income families living in desperation is not radical. What's radical is that 719 billionaires became $1.6 trillion richer during the pandemic while the $7.25 federal minimum wage has not been increased in 12 years," Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent and prominent progressive, tweeted on Saturday.

Providing an extra $300 a week in unemployment benefits to low-income families living in desperation is not radical. What's radical is that 719 billionaires became $1.6 trillion richer during the pandemic while the $7.25 federal minimum wage has not been increased in 12 years.— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) May 8, 2021

Sanders pushed back against the Republicans' criticism of the supplemental unemployment on Friday as well.

"No. We don't need to end $300 a week in emergency unemployment benefits that workers desperately need. We need to end starvation wages in America. If $300 a week is preventing employers from hiring low-wage workers there's a simple solution: Raise your wages. Pay decent benefits," Sanders wrote on Twitter.

Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Washington Democrat who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, shared similar sentiments on social media.

"The federal minimum wage has been $7.25 since 2009. For tipped workers, it's been $2.13 for 30 years. The problem is NOT expanded unemployment assistance," Jayapal tweeted.

The federal minimum wage has been $7.25 since 2009.

For tipped workers, it’s been $2.13 for 30 years.

The problem is NOT expanded unemployment assistance.— Pramila Jayapal (@PramilaJayapal) May 8, 2021

Representative Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat who serves as the Congressional Progressive Caucus whip, blasted the calls to end supplemental payments.

"The interests of big business are at war with the interests of the working class. They will spend millions of dollars to take $300 a month away from you and your family, to force you to work for them for pennies. Their greed has no bounds," Omar tweeted.

The interests of big business are at war with the interests of the working class. They will spend millions of dollars to take $300 a month away from you and your family, to force you to work for them for pennies.

Their greed has no bounds. https://t.co/LW8qaUTLLn— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) May 7, 2021

"Businesses that pay their workers fairly aren't having trouble finding workers," Omar added. "And if your business can't turn a profit without paying people starvation wages, like the $7.50 an hour federal minimum wage, you shouldn't be in business." Continuing, the progressive congresswoman said "we wouldn't need to have this conversation" if businesses shifted the money they spent on lobbying the government to paying workers higher wages.

After the release of the latest jobs report, the Chamber of Commerce was quick to weigh in with criticism of the extra $300 weekly unemployment payments on Friday.

"The disappointing jobs report makes it clear that paying people not to work is dampening what should be a stronger jobs market," Neil Bradley, the lobby's executive vice president and chief policy officer, said. "We need a comprehensive approach to dealing with our workforce issues and the very real threat unfilled positions poses to our economic recovery from the pandemic."

In a statement emailed to Newsweek, Kasper Zeuthen, vice president of communications for the Chamber of Commerce, argued that his organization is taking into account the best interests of businesses and workers.

"It is no secret that our focus is on what is best for America's companies and their workers—and we should all be focused on how we can help our country's recovery and create more jobs," Zeuthen said.

Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, called Biden "delusional" on Twitter after he told reporters he did not believe the extra unemployment benefits were the cause of the lackluster job numbers. Representative Chris Stewart, a Utah Republican, tweeted that the news in the report was "no surprise," writing that "paying people not to work is bad policy."

"While Dems trap people in a cycle of fear & pay them NOT to work, it's clear the best thing to do is end the crisis-era policies & get Americans back to work," House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, wrote on Twitter, slamming Biden over the job figures.

Today’s jobs report is a disappointment—just like President Biden’s plan to burden families with more taxes & more debt.

While Dems trap people in a cycle of fear & pay them NOT to work, it’s clear the best thing to do is end the crisis-era policies & get Americans back to work.— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) May 7, 2021

Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh disputed the Republicans' assessment. They pointed to strong job gains in the leisure and hospitality sectors, which generally hire lower wage workers that would be most likely to be paid more on unemployment than to work.

"This month's report, as far as leisure and hospitality—which includes restaurants—saw the most significant gains," Walsh told Fox News on Friday. "Lots of restaurants weren't open full time until recently," he added, saying that restaurants are only open at full capacity in about three-quarters of the country.

Yellen shared a similar perspective with reporters. "If the unemployment bonus was slowing down hiring, one would expect lower job growth in states and sectors where unemployment insurance is particularly high. In fact, what one sees is the exact opposite," the treasury secretary explained.

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Weak Job Numbers a Result of 'Paying People Not to Work,' U.S. Chamber of Commerce Says

The US economy is barreling towards a post-COVID boom. All it took was for the people in charge to finally learn from the 2008 recession's disastrous mistakes.

george@bespokeinvest.com (George Pearkes) 

 President Joe Biden has framed his infrastructure plan as a means of strengthening democracy and undermining autocracy. Alex Wong/Getty Images

The US economy is finally shaking off the cobwebs and is set up for a huge post-COVID boom.

This is because Congress, the president, and the Fed all learned from the lackluster post-2008 recovery.

Strong and sustained support for workers and American families is going to help boost the economy through 2021 and beyond.

This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author and do not represent those of his employer nor Insider.

On Wednesday, April 28, it became clear that the US economy's post-2008 malaise had finally worn off for good.

The epiphany came as I stared at my screen and saw some of the largest companies in the world report staggering numbers. Apple and Facebook shattered expectations for revenue and income as consumer spending and advertiser demand roared. Ford reportedthat semiconductor shortages would mean half of their planned production for April through June wouldn't take place as demand overwhelmed factories' ability to make chips.

Earlier in the afternoon, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell had announced that despite positive signs from the economy, the central bank would stay the course with stimulative policy to make sure the COVID shock to labor markets wasn't just put to bed, but was buried 6 feet under.

Unlike the grim slogging recovery from the global financial crisis, this recovery feels more like a thoroughbred straining against the reins as it gathers steam.
The mistakes of the past

The recession triggered by the financial crisis officially lasted from 2007 through 2009, but it was years before it truly felt over. Home prices didn't bottom until 2012, consumers steadily reduced their debt levels, and it was nearly a decade before broad measures of labor market health recovered. Manufacturing production bounced back, but not dramatically, and factories always had lots of spare capacity.

After 2008, the Fed and financial markets fretted constantly about inflation that never fully arrived. Fiscal stimulus was lacking, held back by anti-government rhetoric, the birth of the Tea Party, and timidity from the Obama economics team.

This lack of effort by policymakers and a rolling series of macro shocks from the debt ceiling standoff in 2011 to Brexit in 2016 slowed the household recovery from the subprime credit bubble and held back the US economy.

Inflation, investment, and GDP growth were all slow. The Fed (but not fiscal policymakers) eventually helped the economy hobble to the point that it could begin raising rates, but even blooming petite bourgeois confidence following the 2016 election of Donald Trump couldn't fully shake off the cobwebs.
Learning from the last crisis

There were signs in 2018 and 2019 that a shift might be looming. Wage growth was strong and unemployment was low, and when the Fed got worried it had tightened a bit too much, it eased off the brakes with rate cuts that helped reverse a modest downtick in the housing market.

Over the course of that 2018 to 2019 period, the Federal Reserve ran a "Fed Listens" tour, which tried to take the tone of ordinary people instead of focusing on abstract models. When COVID hit in early 2020, the Fed was ready, and Congress stepped up too.

While COVID has carried a devastating health toll, the economy today is dramatically better off than anyone predicted a year ago. Massive monetary easing and huge fiscal support have reduced debt payments and flooded consumers' checking accounts, and businesses have - for the most part - been able to navigate the shock despite hundreds of thousands of American deaths.

The most recent Federal Reserve policy press conference was typically dry, but I did perk up when a question was asked to Chairman Powell about an encampment of houseless people that has sprung up near the Federal Reserve. Powell spent several minutes talking about those people and was obviously uncomfortable as he noted "That could be you. That could be your sister. That could be your kid."

From the ashes of a slow-growth, over-supplied economy where businesses had little pricing power, wages were weak, and economic policy failed to support already beaten-down animal spirits, we're seeing a phoenix emerge.

Cars aren't being built not because people don't have the money to buy them, but because there's too much demand for the components used to make them. Businesses are raising prices and complaining about not being able to find enough people to work. The federal government is sending checks to support households while expanding the social safety net for the first time in two generations. Homebuilders are turning away customers because they can't throw up houses fast enough.

The recession which COVID wrought was never going to look exactly like the last one, but the recoveries are polar opposites. Policymakers are taking real steps to alleviate suffering, and it's having an obvious impact on results for companies and the overall economic backdrop. Obviously, more can be done, and the follow-on legislation proposed by President Biden tries to further push the envelope in supporting children, the elderly, creaking physical infrastructure, and long-ignored industrial policy.

But aside from the policy, the data, and the politics, this country feels different than it did in 2010. It feels ready to grow again, and return the promise of broad American prosperity that has felt absent for decades and most of all during the 2010s. Here's hoping that feeling is more than just vibes from some good earnings prints.

Read the original article on Business Insider

ONTARIO
 CityNews
'Mounting exhaustion' has nurses considering leaving profession

Duration: 02:23 

New survey reveals many Ontario nurses are contemplating a move out of the healthcare industry due to the pandemic. Brandon Rowe on the harrowing work of nurses on the front lines.

Ransomware attack leads to shutdown of major U.S. pipeline system

Ellen Nakashima, Yeganeh Torbati, Will Englund 

A ransomware attack led one of the nation’s biggest fuel pipeline operators to shut down its entire network on Friday, according to the company and two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

© Jay Reeves/AP FILE — This Sept. 16, 2016, file photo shows tanker trucks lined up at a Colonial Pipeline Co. facility in Pelham, Ala. (AP Photo/Jay Reeves, File)

While it is not expected to have an immediate impact on fuel supply or prices, the attack on Colonial Pipeline, which carries almost half of the gasoline, diesel and other fuels used on the East Coast, underscores the potential vulnerability of industrial sectors to the expanding threat of ransomware strikes.

It appears to have been carried out by an Eastern European-based criminal gang — DarkSide, according to a U.S. official and another person familiar with the matter.

Federal officials and the private security firm Mandiant, a division of FireEye, are still investigating the matter, they said.The Cybersecurity 202: A group of industry, government and cyber experts have a big plan to disrupt the ransomware crisis

“We are engaged with the company and our interagency partners regarding the situation,” said Eric Goldstein, executive assistant director of the cybersecurity division at the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA. “This underscores the threat that ransomware poses to organizations regardless of size or sector. We encourage every organization to take action to strengthen their cybersecurity posture to reduce their exposure to these types of threats.”

President Biden was briefed on the incident on Saturday morning, a White House statement said. It said the federal government is working to assess the incident’s implications, avoid disruption to supply and help Colonial Pipeline restore operations “as quickly as possible.”

Colonial Pipeline said in a statement on Friday that it had temporarily shut down all its pipeline operations after learning it had been hit by a cyber attack on some of its “information technology” or business network systems that day. As a result, the firm said, it “proactively took certain systems offline to contain the threat.” Early on Saturday afternoon, the company confirmed that the attack “involves ransomware.” It said it had notified law enforcement and other federal agencies.

© The Washington Post

Colonial’s 5,500 miles of pipelines carry fuel from refineries on the Gulf Coast to customers in the southern and eastern United States. It says it transports 45 percent of the fuel consumed on the East Coast, reaching 50 million Americans.

Ransomware attacks, in which hackers lock up computer systems — usually by encrypting data — and demand payment to free up the system, are a global scourge. In recent years, they have affected everyone from banks and hospitals to universities and municipalities — almost 2,400 organizations in the United States were victimized last year alone, one security firm reported. But the attackers are increasingly targeting industrial sectors because these firms are more willing to pay up to regain control of their systems, experts say.

“The downtime for industrial companies can cost millions,” said Robert M. Lee, the chief executive of Dragos, a major cybersecurity firm that handles incidents in the industrial control sector.

U.S. officials and experts in industrial control security said such attacks are more common than is publicly known and that most just do not get reported.

“There are absolutely cases in industrial operations where ransomware impacts operations,” but often the stories don’t hit the news, Lee said. “There are lots of industrial control companies that are battling ransomware around the United States.”The Cybersecurity 202: Lawmakers scramble for legislative solutions to a growing ransomware crisis

The trend exploded in the last three years after the WannaCry and NotPetya computer worms showed cyber criminals how targeting companies in critical industrial sectors is more likely to make companies pay out, Lee said.

The DarkSide group has hit utility firms before, said Allan Liska, intelligence analyst at the cyber threat research firm Recorded Future. In February, ransomware attacks disrupted operations at two Brazilian state-owned electric utility companies, Centrais Eletricas Brasileiras (Eletrobras) and Companhia Paranaense de Energia (Copel), he said.

Private firms that investigate cyber intrusions say they are handling cases involving DarkSide using ransomware to target American industrial companies. But there are many other ransomware groups that seem to be targeting such firms in greater numbers than ever before, analysts said.

Carrying off a ransomware attack does not require great technical sophistication, Liska said. In the world of criminal ransomware operations, some crews specialize in gaining access and others pay for that access and then lock up the data, he said. DarkSide generally falls into the lock up crew category, he said.

“The last few years have been incredibly busy” because the proliferation of vulnerabilities in firewalls and virtual private networks have allowed ransomware criminals to gain access to networks at an unprecedented scale, Lee said.

“To put it simply, we are on the cusp of a global digital pandemic driven by greed,” former top DHS cyber official Christopher Krebs told Congress on Wednesday. He called the ransomware emergency a “digital dumpster fire.”

Last year, CISA warned pipeline operators about the threat of ransomware. CISA responded to a ransomware attack on a natural gas compression facility in which the attacker gained access to the corporate network and then pivoted to the operational network, where it encrypted on various devices. As a result, the firm shut down operations for about two days, CISA said.

The DHS warning to operators came after members of Congress in 2018 urged the agency to do more to protect pipelines from cyber attacks.

Though there is as yet no known foreign government nexus to the Colonial Pipeline incident, the U.S. government has in the past asserted links between Russian spy services and ransomware rings. Last month, the Treasury Department stated that the Russian internal security service, FSB, “cultivates and co-opts criminal hackers, including” a group called Evil Corp., “enabling them to engage in disruptive ransomware attacks.” Treasury sanctioned Evil Corp. in late 2019.

Cybersecurity researchers believe that DarkSide operates mostly out of Russia, which U.S. officials and cybersecurity experts have accused of harboring cyber criminals. These criminals avoid targeting victims in Russia, experts say.

In January 2019, the Director of National Intelligence, Daniel Coats, warned at an annual worldwide threat briefing that China has the ability to launch cyber attacks that cause temporary disruptive effects on critical infrastructure, “such as disruption of a natural gas pipeline for days to weeks” in the United States. He did not specify what type of cyber tool or mention ransomware explicitly.

A task force of more than 60 experts from industry, government, nonprofits and academia last month urged a series of coordinated actions by industry, government and civil society. Their recommendations include mandating that organizations report ransom payments and requiring them to consider alternatives before making payments. Governments, they said, could provide support to help firms hold out longer. The recommendations also call for global diplomatic and law enforcement efforts to induce countries from providing safe havens to ransomware criminals.

“Proposing this framework is merely the first step,” the task force said, “and the real challenge is in implementation.”

The Biden administration is expected in the coming weeks to issue an executive order aimed at shoring up the cybersecurity of federal civilian agencies. Though it will not specifically address private critical infrastructure, it is expected to drive standards for federal contractors that experts hope will ripple across the private sector.

Last month, the White House and Energy Department launched a 100-day action plan focused on boosting the cybersecurity of electricity sector industrial systems. The idea is to eventually expand that effort to gas pipelines and water systems.

Prices for refined oil products are slumping on the Gulf Coast because of the shutdown. Analysts say that depending on how long the pipelines are out of service, prices for gasoline and jet fuel could rise in the New York area, as they did in 2017 when a hurricane forced a shutdown.

Bob McNally, founder of the Rapidan Energy Group, said although the shutdown of the Colonial system is “massive,” if the company is able to restart operations within a couple of days, he does not expect an impact on fuel prices.

“The critical thing now is the duration,” he said. “Right now, everything depends this weekend on news that the market gets about the duration of the outage.”

Storage in both the Gulf Coast region and the Northeast “can largely mitigate the impact of a short-term event,” said Bernadette Johnson, senior vice president of power and renewables at a company called Enverus.

But if the shutdown lasts much longer than a few days, there could be a cascade of dramatic impacts, including higher prices and consumer hoarding of gasoline supplies, McNally said. Gasoline prices have been edging higher in recent weeks, in line with typical seasonal trends.

The Colonial pipeline system “is an irreplaceable, vital jugular for fuel supply to the East Coast,” McNally said. “It’s the major artery and there are no real other good options to replace it.”

One of Colonial’s two pipelines ruptured last summer in North Carolina, spilling 1.2 million gallons of gasoline, the largest spill in the state’s history.

On March 29, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), a division of the Department of Transportation, informed Colonial that its investigation of the North Carolina spill raised serious concerns about safety.

“PHMSA’s ongoing investigation indicates that conditions may exist on the Colonial Pipeline System that pose a pipeline integrity risk to public safety, property or the environment,” it said in a proposed safety order.

“The conditions that led to the failure potentially exist throughout the Colonial Pipeline System. Further, Colonial’s inability to effectively detect and respond to this release, as well as other past releases, has potentially exacerbated the impacts of this and numerous other failures over the operational history of Colonial’s entire system. ... It appears that the continued operation of the Colonial Pipeline System without corrective measures would pose a pipeline integrity risk to public safety, property, or the environment.”

In 2016, a Colonial pipeline exploded and released 4,400 barrels of gasoline into a pond in Shelby County, Ala. One worker was killed. Recovery and repair procedures were hampered by dangerous clouds of gasoline and benzene vapors, PHMSA reported.

Later that year, an underground leak of more than 7,000 barrels was discovered by a mine inspector in Alabama. That leak was attributed to pipe fatigue caused by improper preparation of the soil beneath it. For both incidents, the company agreed to pay the state $3.3 million to cover damages and penalties.

Edmonton Journal 
Saturday's letters: Province should step up for idled workers

With the recent announcement of restrictions on restaurant patios and personal services, it begs the question: where’s the data to support the shutdowns on these businesses? Are these just the easy pickings for the government to shut down?

© Larry Wong High Level Diner restaurant employee France Vargas serves a customer on the restaurant's outdoor patio in Edmonton on Wednesday May 5, 2021. The Alberta government announced new pandemic health restrictions yesterday. Indoor restaurant dining is prohibited and all outdoor restaurant patios must shut down effective 11:59pm on Sunday May 9, 2021.

My daughter is a hair stylist and server at a popular restaurant and has now been cut off from earning a living three times in the last year and a couple of months. What has the provincial government done to support my daughter with the lockdowns as it is their decision to shut down these businesses?

The federal government has stepped in but our province has neglected their duty. It would be interesting to see what would happen if our provincial government leaders were to stop accepting their pay for the same period they have shut down these businesses. I am safe to say this would not happen.

Andrew Patrick, Edmonton

Police hand out tickets to dozens leaving anti-lockdown protest in Alberta

MIRROR, Alta. — RCMP ticketed protesters leaving an anti-lockdown rally outside a central Alberta café Saturday, after the establishment was closed by health officials earlier in the week.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Despite pouring rain and a pre-emptive court injunction, hundreds gathered outside the Whistle Stop Café in the hamlet of Mirror, Alta., for the "Save Alberta Campout Protest."

Demonstrators were there to support café owner Chris Scott and challenge Public Health Orders meant to curb the spread of COVID-19.

A spokesman for the RCMP said officers took the first three hours of the protest to educate demonstrators on COVID-19 regulations and notify them that they were contravening the injunction.

"There was a decision at one point to start mounting enforcement," said Cpl. Troy Savinkoff. "That was around 4 p.m."

Savinkoff said police would provide a more thorough update on how many people were ticketed later Saturday.

On Wednesday, AHS said it closed the café after the agency received more than 400 complaints about the business since January. Health authorities said the café is to remain closed until Scott can demonstrate the ability to comply with health restrictions.

Alberta Health Services said after hearing about plans for the protest that the provincial government would take legal action that would allow RCMP officers to use reasonable force in arresting and removing any person at the rally who contravenes public health orders.

Video: Dozens gather in central Alberta to rally against COVID-19 regulations (The Canadian Press)

But that didn't stop people without masks from standing together to cheer and clap when Scott stood on a stage and encouraged them to fight for their freedom.

"I've been accused of a lot of things over this. They think it's about money. They think it's about popularity. I could care less about that," Scott told the crowd.

"I'm not fine with anyone telling me what to do with my body or how to earn an income." CAN I QUOTE YOU WHEN YOU OPPOSE A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE!

Scott then asked the crowd to follow COVID-19 regulations at the rally due to the injunction.

Three hours later, RCMP officers with body cameras began handing out tickets under the Public Health Act to those leaving the area for participating in the illegal gathering.

Last weekend, hundreds of people gathered near Bowden, also in central Alberta for a pre-advertised maskless "No More Lockdowns'" protest rodeo.

Days later, the premier announced stronger restrictions and doubled fines for scofflaws.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 6, 2021.

---

This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Facebook and Canadian Press News Fellowship.

Fakiha Baig, The Canadian Press

KULTURKAMPF TOO

Advocates say Jenner is 'out of touch' with LGBTQ issues — and America at large

Jo Yurcaba 

NBC NEWS

7/5/2021

Caitlyn Jenner made comments during an interview on Fox News’ “Hannity” show Wednesday that some transgender people say proves she’s “out of touch” — not only on LGBTQ issues, but also with the way most Americans live.

© Provided by NBC News

During the interview — her first since announcing her run for California governor — Jenner, a Republican, was asked by the host Sean Hannity to grade the performance of Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat. In her answer, Jenner said her friends are leaving the state.

“My hangar, the guy right across, he was packing up his hangar, and I said, ‘Where are you going?,’” Jenner, a former Olympian and a reality television star, said, referring to their private plane hangars. “And he says, 'I'm moving to Sedona, Arizona. I can't take it anymore. I can't walk down the streets and see the homeless.'"

Jenner faced criticism for the comment, including from those who pointed out that transgender Americans disproportionately experience homelessness.

Citing a statistic from the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, Gillian Branstetter, a longtime trans advocate and the media manager for the National Women’s Law Center, noted on Twitter that nearly one-third of trans people face homelessness at some point in their lifetimes.

She added that Jenner’s experience as a trans person is not reflective of most trans people’s lives.


Video: Caitlyn Jenner: ‘It just isn’t fair’ for trans girls to play women’s sports (MSNBC)

During her “Hannity” interview, Jenner also reaffirmed her opposition to trans girls playing on girls sports teams at school — a stance she first made public when a TMZ reporter questioned her Saturday.

“I stick to the statements that I made,” she told Hannity. “We have to make sure that the integrity of girls’ sports is there. I think that’s extremely important. But there’s more to it than just what I said, because I just said ‘biological boys in sports’ — there’s more to it than that, and I think in the future I will explain more of that.”

WHY DON'T THEY EVER TALK ABOUT TRANSBOYS/ TRANSMEN LIKE PAT CALIFA

Jenner then added that “as a trans woman, I think role models are extremely important for young people. Trans issues people struggle with big time. Our suicide rate is nine times higher than the general public. And for me to be a role model for them, to be out there — I am running for governor for the state of California. Who would’ve ever thunk that? We’ve never even had a woman governor.”

When Hannity told Jenner that some people are mad at her for her stance on trans girls playing sports, she said “I move on.”
er
In response to the interview, Equality California, an LGBTQ advocacy group in the state, called Jenner “completely out of touch with California families” and said she dismissed the majority of Amicans who don’t support legislation targeting trans people.

Tweeting a clip of the interview, transgender activist Charlotte Clymer called Jenner’s candidacy a “grift set up by the Republican Party.”

Some people are worried that Jenner’s comments will be used to support the increasing number of state bills seeking to ban trans girls from competing on girls sports teams at school. Seven states currently ban trans people from competing on teams that align with their gender identity — six of which passed bans in 2021.

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KULTURKAMPF
Red meat politics: GOP turns culture war into a food fight

DES MOINES, Iowa — Conservatives last week gobbled up a false news story claiming President Joe Biden planned to ration red meat. Colorado Rep. Rep. Lauren Boebert suggested Biden “stay out of my kitchen.” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted out a headline warning Biden was getting “Up in your grill.”

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The news was wrong — Biden is planning no such thing — but it was hardly the first time the right has recognized the political power of a juicy steak. Republican politicians in recent months have increasingly used food — especially beef — as a cudgel in a culture war, accusing climate-minded Democrats of trying to change Americans' diets and, therefore, their lives.

“That is a direct attack on our way of life here in Nebraska,” Gov. Pete Ricketts, a Republican, said recently.

The pitched rhetoric is likely a sign of the future. As more Americans acknowledge the link between food production and climate change, food choices are likely to become increasingly political. Already, in farm states, meat eating has joined abortion, gun control and transgender rights as an issue that quickly sends partisans to their corners.

“On the right, they are just going for the easiest applause line, which is accusing the left of declaring war on meat. And it’s a pretty good applause line,” said Mike Murphy, a Republican consultant. “It’s politically effective, if intellectually dishonest.”

Ricketts was among the first to seize on the issue in recent months. In March, the governor — whose state generated $12 billion from livestock and meat products last year — slammed his Colorado counterpart, Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, for suggesting Coloradans lay off the red meat one day as a way of cutting back on greenhouse gas emissions.

Republican Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds followed Ricketts' comments quickly, claiming in a campaign fundraising email, “Democrats and liberal special interest groups are trying to cancel our meat industry."

In her weekly column a few weeks later, Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa blasted “everyone from out-of-touch politicians to Hollywood elites" as leading the left's "war on meat.”

But the issue blew up last week after a Daily Mail news story — debunked within 24 hours — suggested the Biden administration could ration how much red meat Americans can consume as part of its goal to slash greenhouse gas pollution.

During the story's short life, conservative figures pilloried Biden's apparent invasion into America's dining room.

While the story was false, there’s little doubt the livestock industry is a contributor to climate change.

A 2019 Environmental Protection Agency report noted agriculture was responsible for 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions, a quarter of which is emitted by livestock before they are butchered.

There are signs that Americans may be adjusting their diets out of concern for climate change. About a quarter of Americans reported eating less meat than they had a year earlier, according to a 2019 Gallup poll, chiefly for health reasons but also out of environmental concerns. About 30% of Democrats polled said they were eating less meat, compared to 12% of Republicans.

For some, it's hard to imagine Americans abandoning beef and easy to see its power as a political symbol, said Chad Hart, an Iowa State University agriculture economist.

Americans don't get overly sentimental about barns crammed with chickens or thousands of hogs, but few images are as quintessentially American as cattle grazing over rolling hills.

“When you think about American food, beef is what is in the centre of that plate,” Hart said. “And that’s likely to remain a national identity when it comes to what an American food plate looks like.”

To be sure, food isn't new to culture war politics.

First lady Michelle Obama was attacked as intrusive by conservatives for championing higher nutritional standards in school lunches.

As a presidential candidate in 2007, Barack Obama was accused of food elitism when he asked a group of Iowa farmers whether they had seen the price of arugula at Whole Foods, an upscale grocery chain that had not yet made it to Iowa. Obama still won the state's caucuses.

Even more famously, Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis was pilloried by Republicans as far out of touch with rural America in the midst of the 1980s farm crisis when he suggested Iowa farmers consider diversifying crops by planting Belgian endive.

That prompted GOP vice-presidential nominee Dan Quayle to hold up a head of endive, a green used in salads, to show a crowd in Omaha ?just how the man from Massachusetts thinks he can rebuild the farm economy."

In the past, food was a way of painting Democrats as out of touch with rural America. Today, the message is about climate and the economy.

There is a growing movement to discourage meat-eating and a massive market for meat replacement foods. The Green New Deal, a sweeping environmental outline championed by liberal New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, calls for a sharp reduction in livestock production.

Biden has called the plan an “important framework" but has not endorsed it.

As these policies remain only plans for now, Republicans complaining about them have offered little substance with their claims of a war on meat.

Still, Republicans have looked for ways to signal which side they're on. In April, Ernst introduced a bill that would bar federal agencies from setting policies that ban serving meat to employees.

Ricketts declared “Meat on the Menu Day” in March and came back Wednesday to name all of May “Beef Month."

These efforts do little to address the beef industry's substantial problems, including a backlog in slaughterhouses stemming from the pandemic, drought and the high cost of feed.

And a spokesperson for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association kept her distance from the food fight.

“When emotions and rhetoric run high on either side of the political aisle, NCBA remains focused on achieving lasting results,” said spokesperson Sigrid Johannes.

___

Associated Press writer Grant Schulte contributed to this report from Lincoln, Neb.

This story has been corrected to show that Quayle was vice-presidential nominee, not vice-president, when he joked about Dukakis' endive remark.

Thomas Beaumont And Scott McFetridge, The Associated Press

#ENDCUBAEMBARGO

The Guardian picture essay

Cuba during the pandemic – photo essay

Avril and her friend are students at the National Ballet School, and train at home.

Photographer Leysis Quesada Vera describes life during the pandemic in Havana’s Los Sitios neighbourhood. Her work is supported and produced by the Magnum Foundation, with a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. Magnum Foundation is a nonprofit organisation that expands creativity and diversity in documentary photography. Through grant making and mentorship, Magnum Foundation supports a global network of social justice and human rights-focused photographers and experiments with new models for storytelling

by Ruaridh Nicoll

Fri 7 May 2021

Los Sitios lies to the south of Centro, the careworn barrio that gives Havana its coarse voice and whose northern limit is the Malecon, the famous corniche set against the Florida Straits.

The photographer Leysis Quesada Vera describes Los Sitios – her neighbourhood – as home to “people who work with tourists but not in the hotels. They sell cigars, probably illegally, clean the houses where tourists stay, sell souvenirs.”

The pandemic has pauperised these people. “What they’re doing now is queueing to buy things from the store to resell them on the black market.” She understands. She is raising two children and hasn’t had any income for a year.

Tracers, medical students who screen households and undertake contact tracing, confer in the street.
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For much of 2020, Cuba’s extensive health system kept the virus all but beyond the island’s borders, but at the cost of tourism. The economy contracted by 11% , imports fell by 40%.

Still, even the few reported cases spooked residents. There was an outbreak in Los Sitios and the authorities blocked the roads in and out.

Leysis is from San Francisco, a village of 50 houses without electricity in the state of Matanzas. She came to Havana in 1996 “like a crazy girl without any home. I’ve been living in all the tough neighbourhoods.”



Yenifer Almeida in the last months of her pregnancy.

She was an English teacher, but hung out with photographers, and in photography studios. “l was going to every exhibition – photography and painting – and I loved the bohemian life.” Her first camera was a Nikon FM2; her greatest subjects would become her daughters, Avril and Mia.

“At the beginning of the pandemic I think everyone was afraid.” Certainly she stayed at home at first, but as the streets were sealed off, she ventured out. “It was a mess before they realised they needed to organise,” she says.
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Even prior to the virus, Cuba was suffering. Donald Trump’s administration had tightened the 60-year-old US embargo, shutting down the channels through which Cubans abroad could send money home. Cuba’s antiquated infrastructure was already crumbling, the city falling down around Leysis.
Crowds wait in the streets - an everyday occurrence.

The virus added hunger. The government maintains controls of all imports but now has little hard currency to pay for them. Huge queues formed whenever there were rumours of chicken, oil or medicine.

“It used to be easy for me to walk in the street and take pictures,” she says. “But now, with people suffering and stressed it is different. They’d watch me taking pictures of the queues and were sometimes aggressive. One day a woman attacked me.”

At the same time, medical students were spreading out through the streets, asking door to door for news of symptoms. Leysis photographed them as they slipped by like modern-day plague doctors.






Clockwise from top left: a bread queue forms in the morning; a woman collects chlorine from trucks disinfecting the streets; a retired woman works as a seamstress to make a living; a man sells stools in Reunion Street.
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“You know though,” she says. “The best pictures are still in my mind. I saw really amazing pictures, but the people, they were looking at me with faces that said, ‘Please don’t do that’. Sometimes I’d see people in tears.”

She was keeping close focus on her daughters, Avril who is 17 and Mia who is nine.

Avril is a senior at Havana’s storied National Ballet School. Before the pandemic, she would rehearse and train all day in the school’s palatial, light-filled studios. This was reduced to an hour on the ground floor of Leysis’ building. “Although not any more because there are a lot of cases in our neighbourhood and some other guys like to practise there,” Leysis says.

Customers queue for cotton candy.

On 15 November last year Cuba – for reasons both sentimental and economic – reopened its airports. The day before the island had 27 new cases, while the US had 159,003. Planes arrived from Florida packed with exiled family who rushed to all corners of Cuba’s 1,250km length, taking Covid-19 with them.

Avril, almost an adult, could go out and queue for bread, but early in the pandemic the government ruled that children couldn’t be on the streets, so Mia had to stay at home.

“She has been a long time without going anywhere,” says Leysis. “Sometimes I don’t know what to do with her. You cannot buy anything in the shops now and I have run out of paper for her to draw on.



Entry is barred to quarantined blocks in Los Sitios neighbourhood.
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“But she is very happy. She is creating all the time. I have no thread because we live on the roof and she has used it to make spider webs. I don’t know how many times she has dressed up.”

Cases have been steadily rising since Christmas. Now reports of the newly infected daily average above 1,000; still far below other countries but people are dying.

Good healthcare and emigration has aged Cuba – the median is 42 (in the US it is 38 and neighbouring Haiti 22) – and so it is a vulnerable population. The authorities plan to start immunising Havana’s population this month in a 1.7m strong trial of two homegrown vaccines, Soberana-02 and Abdala.

Mia sad and in a bad mood, due to the confinement after almost a year without being able to leave the house.

In the meantime the queues grow longer and food more scarce. “Last year, I spent like, eight hours, nine hours to buy things,” says Leysis. “But now it’s maybe two or three days. I can’t do that. I was walking in the street yesterday and people were fighting. I came back without anything. I felt so, so bad.”

Voters 16, 17 years old cast ballots for the first time in Wales

Crystal Goomansingh 

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young 

After lowering the voting age to 16 in 2020, younger voters participated for the first time on May 5, 2021.

Marking ballots and history, young residents in Wales walked into polling stations Thursday, May 6, paper voter registration cards in hand.

"Extending the franchise to as many people as possible is a really sensible move," said Harvey Jones.

At 22 years old, Jones is one of the youngest candidates vying for a seat in the Senedd Cymru, or Welsh parliament.

"I wasn't old enough to vote in the last election in 2016, so this is exciting," said Jones.

Read more: Millennials can have a very strong voice in deciding Canada’s future — if they choose to vote

When the Senedd and Elections (Wales) Act 2020 was passed, lowering the voting age from 18 to 16, more than 70,000 new voters became eligible to select a local candidate as well as a regional representative in the Senedd.

Active citizenship and democratic participation by young people in the United Kingdom is an area of research for Andy Mycock.

"When the U.K. lowed the voting age to 18 in 1969, within a decade, every other liberal democracy had followed suit. It was like a domino effect," said Mycock, reader at the University of Huddersfield.

"Vote at 16 has taken a much, much longer time to introduce and I think that highlights the fact that there is more complexity about this tension between the age of enfranchisement and the age of majority. But it's happening," said Mycock.

Scotland was the first to grant 16-year-olds the right to vote during the 2014 Independence vote.

Read more: ‘Students are the future’: N.B. youth cast ballots in mock federal election

The Electoral Reform Society would like to see the voting age reduced across the U.K.

"We've really learned from going into schools, we've spoken to hundreds of young people over the past couple of years, and they are absolutely more informed and more excited and more engaged," said Jess Blair, director of the Electoral Reform Society Cymru.


Federal Election 2019: Jagmeet Singh proposes lowering voting age to 16

It's not known how many of the newly-eligible voters cast ballots.

Younger voters, however, cautioned people against rushing to judgments about interest levels based on this one election, saying time is needed.

In general, voter turnout has been low for previous Welsh parliamentary elections.

The COVID-19 pandemic also changed how candidates were able to engage with voters in an attempt to build excitement.

Still, researchers see the opening up of the democratic process in Wales leading to more younger people gaining the right to vote.

Read more: B.C. premier considering lowering the voting age to 16

"I think that that effect will also then reach into other countries. What we're seeing in Canada is also debates around the idea that the voting age should be lowered. The Vote16 campaign in B.C. is certainly making a lot of gains and a lot of noise. We're also we're seeing it in New Zealand and Australia," said Mycock.

For now, though, the voting age remains 18 in Canada, as well as New Zealand and Australia.