It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, October 02, 2021
Rep. Cori Bush testifies
about being raped,
becoming pregnant
and getting an
abortion as a teenager
At the House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on abortion rights and access, Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., testified about her experience being raped, becoming pregnant and getting an abortion. Bush said, "Choosing to have an abortion was the hardest decision I had ever made. But at 18 years old, I knew it was the right decision for me."
Video Transcript
CORI BUSH: In the summer of 1994, I was a young girl all of 17 years old, and had just graduated high school. Like so many Black girls during that time, I was obsessed with fashion and gold jewelry and how I physically showed up in the world. But I was also very lost.
For all of my life, I had been a straight-A student, with dreams of attending college and becoming a nurse. But high school early on was difficult for me. I was discriminated against, bullied, and as time passed, my grades slipped and, along with it, the dream of attaining a full scholarship to a historically Black college. That summer, I was just happy that I passed my classes and that I finished high school.
Shortly after graduating, I went on a church trip to Jackson, Mississippi. I had many friends on that trip, and while there, I met a boy, a friend of a friend. He was a little older than I was, about maybe 20 years old. That first day we met, we flirted. We talked on the phone. While on the phone, he asked me could he come over to my room. I was bunking with a friend and hanging out, and said he could stop by. But he didn't show up for a few hours, and by the time he did, it was so late that my friend and I had gone to bed.
I answered the door and quietly told him he could come in, imagining that we would talk and laugh like we had done over the phone. But the next thing I knew, he was on top of me, messing with my clothes, and not saying anything at all. What is happening, I thought. I didn't know what to do. I was frozen in shock, just laying there as his weight pressed down upon me. When he was done, he got up, he pulled up his pants, and without a word, he left. That was it.
I was confused. I was embarrassed. I was ashamed. I asked myself, was it something that I had done? The next morning, I wanted to talk to him. I just wanted to say something to him, but he refused to talk to me. By the time that trip ended, we still hadn't spoken at all.
About a month after the trip, I turned 18. A few weeks later, I realized I had missed my period. I reached out to a friend and asked the guy from the church trip to contact me. I waited for him to reach out, but he never did. I never heard from him. I was 18. I was broke, and I felt so alone. I blamed myself for what had happened to me.
But I knew I had options. I had known other girls who had gone to a local clinic to get birth control, and some who had gotten abortions. So I looked through the yellow pages and scheduled an appointment. During my first visit, I found out that I was nine weeks-- nine weeks pregnant. And then there, the panic set in. How could I make this pregnancy work? How could I, at 18 years old and barely scraping by, support a child on my own? And I would have been on my own.
I was stressed out, knowing that the father wouldn't be involved. And I feared my parents would kick me out of the home. The best parents in the world, but I feared they would kick me out. My dad was a proud father, and always bragging about his little girl and how he knew I would go straight to college and become attorney general. That was his goal for me. So with no scholarship intact and college out of the foreseeable future, I couldn't bear the thought of disappointing my dad again. I knew it was a decision I had to make for myself, so I did.
My abortion happened on a Saturday. There were a few other people in the clinic room-- waiting room, including one other young Black girl. I overheard the clinic staff talking about her, saying she had ruined her life, and that's what they do, they being Black girls like us. Before the procedure, I remember going in for counseling and being told that, if I move forward with this pregnancy, my baby would be jacked up because the fetus was already malnourished and underweight, being told that if I had this baby, I will wind up on food stamps and welfare.
I was being talked to like trash, and it worsened my shame. Afterwards, while in the changing area, I heard some girls, all white, talking about how they were told how bright their futures were, how loved their babies would be if they adopted, and that their options and their opportunities were limitless. In that moment, listening to those girls, I felt anguish. I felt like I had failed.
I went home. My body ached, and I had this heavy bleeding. I felt so sick. I felt dizzy, nauseous. I felt like something was missing. I felt alone, but I also felt so resolved in my decision. Choosing to have an abortion was the hardest decision I had ever made, but at 18 years old, I knew it was the right decision for me. It was freeing, knowing I had options. Even still, it took long for me to feel like me again until most recently, when I decided to give this speech.
So to all the Black women and girls who have had abortions and will have abortions, we have nothing to be ashamed of. We live in a society that has failed to legislate love and justice for us, so we deserve better. We demand better. We are worthy of better. So that's why I'm here to tell my story. So today, I sit before you as that nurse, as that pastor, as that pastor, as that activist, that survivor, that single mom, that congresswoman to testify that, in the summer of 1994, I was raped, I became pregnant, and I chose to have an abortion.
At the end of a week that began with fears of severe staffing shortages at New York hospitals due to the state’s Monday deadline for health care workers to get vaccinated, data showed a dramatic increase in vaccination.
Ninety-two percent of hospital staff members and nursing home staff have now received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul reported this week. On Aug. 24, just 71 percent of hospital workers had received one dose of the vaccine, according to state figures.
“This new information shows that holding firm on the vaccine mandate for health care workers is simply the right thing to do to protect our vulnerable family members and loved ones from COVID-19,” Hochul said in a press release praising the “dramatic action” that her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, announced in late July as a way to slow the spread of the virus.
High rates of compliance with vaccine mandates are being seen in other states as well. Despite headlines showing fringe resistance nationwide, the vast majority of health care workers are getting their shots.
At Houston Methodist Hospital, one of the first to announce a vaccine mandate, just 153 hospital staff members, or 0.58 percent of more than 26,000 employees, were fired or resigned because they refused to get vaccinated for COVID-19.
Health care workers are vaccinated at a medical center in Portland, Ore. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)
At Novant Health System in North Carolina, 175 workers, or 0.50 percent, of the 35,000-person workforce have been terminated due to vaccine noncompliance. And at Indiana University Health, which employs a workforce of roughly 28,500 people, just 125 employees no longer have a job because they refused to take the vaccine.
All of these hospitals have, in turn, hired vaccinated health care workers to fill the open positions left by those who refused to be inoculated for a disease that has so far killed nearly 700,000 Americans.
Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and a public health professor at George Washington University, says mandates are critical for any kind of substantial progress on the pandemic.
“We are seeing all across the country that vaccine mandates work,” Wen told Yahoo News. “If there are people who remain unvaccinated, there is a higher likelihood that they could end up becoming infected and being out of work for that reason, [in turn] infecting other people and causing other people to be out of work.”
A recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study showed that unvaccinated people are 29 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than those who are vaccinated. Many hospitals saw those statistics play out in real time over the summer months when, thanks to the Delta variant, infections spiked. More than 97 percent of all COVID-19 patients in hospitals over that period were unvaccinated.
A health worker with syringes at a vaccination site in New York City. (Kena Betancur/AFP via Getty Images)
But for critics of the vaccine, including some health care workers who choose not to get inoculated, the data does not outweigh what they see as an infringement of personal liberty.
Dr. Mollie James, a critical care doctor in Queens, N.Y., has been treating COVID-19 patients since the beginning of the pandemic. But last Monday was her last day on the job because of what she calls a “ridiculous vaccine mandate.”
“Mandates are not health care,” James told Yahoo News. “Many doctors and nurses in New York have already had COVID, so we have the protection of natural immunity — which has been shown to be far more durable than the vaccine.”
But according to a CDC study released in August, “COVID-19 vaccines offer better protection than natural immunity alone, and ... vaccines, even after prior infection, help prevent reinfections.” the agency says on its website.
James has been a surgeon for the past 11 years at multiple hospitals in the New York City area and two major Midwestern health systems. She’s now looking to go into a private practice and says she’s also willing to seek employment in states that don’t have vaccine mandates.
“At this point, it seems likely that every person will end up getting the virus, so early outpatient treatment should be our primary focus,” she said, adding, “My colleagues are generally supportive of me; most are infuriated that early outpatient therapy has been censored and led to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths.”
Anti-vaccine protesters in Farmingdale, N.Y. (Steve Pfost/Newsday RM via Getty Images)
For many, outpatient treatment begins and ends with the COVID-19 vaccine.
“This is not just about your individual choice about whether or not to be vaccinated — it’s also about the health and well-being of everybody else around you,” Dr. Alyssa Burgart, a bioethicist and pediatric anesthesiologist at Stanford University, told Yahoo News. “And that's the core tenet of vaccination.”
As vaccine mandates for health care workers grow in popularity, a similar dynamic is playing out in school districts where vaccine mandates have been implemented.
With its 150,000 employees, New York City’s public school district is the nation’s largest. Come Friday at 5 p.m., school personnel will be required to have at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine or face termination. As of Monday, 97 percent of principals and about 95 percent of teachers had been vaccinated, according to city and teachers' union data, and about 87 percent of nonteaching staff had received the vaccine.
Still, some schools have longer noncompliant lists than others. The city’s teachers' and principals' unions have pushed back on the upcoming deadline, saying the tight window would leave many schools ill equipped. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio first announced the mandate in late August, but after an unsuccessful court challenge this week to the mandate guidance, some school staff members had only days to get vaccinated.
“At this point, principals and superintendents have been reaching out consistently to tell us that they are concerned about not having enough staff,” Mark Cannizzaro, president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, said during a press conference last Friday. “I've heard from several schools that have anywhere between 30 and 100 people currently on a noncompliant list.”
“It’s not just teachers and administrators that are needed in schools,” Cannizzaro added. “We need to have our custodial staff, our paraprofessionals, our kitchen staff, our school aides and, of course, our school safety agents.”
The mayor’s office is choosing to move forward with the policy that could cost some staff members their jobs.
“We have thousands and thousands of vaccinated, experienced substitute teachers ready to go,” de Blasio said last week. “That's the obvious first go-to, but it's also true that central staff has thousands of educators, certified educators, who could step into different roles if needed.”
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio at the opening of a vaccination center for Broadway workers in April. (Noam Galai/Getty Images)
But de Blasio made clear that he hoped workers would simply comply with the mandate.
“The reality we’re seeing right now is we think the overwhelming majority of our educators and staff are going to be there on Monday, having gotten that first dose and moving forward,” he said.
While vaccine hesitancy has helped account for low inoculation rates nationwide, it’s clear that mandates, and the threat of job termination, have helped increase the percentage of vaccinated Americans.
And while critics have assailed governments and businesses that have put the mandates in place for what they perceive as infringing on their rights, Wen believes that misses the point about why vaccines are needed.
“If you are a health care worker treating vulnerable patients, if you’re a teacher working around children too young to be vaccinated, it’s your responsibility, first and foremost, to not get them sick,” she said. “If you're a health care worker, you are required to be vaccinated against the flu every year. You are required to show proof of vaccination against hepatitis, against measles and chickenpox. We need to look at COVID-19 no differently.”
Cover thumbnail photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images, John Moore/Getty Images, J. Conrad Williams, Jr./Newsday RM via Getty Images
No cheap, easy or quick fix'; Hospitals oust unvaccinated workers in preview of 50-state mandate
Ken Alltucker, USA TODAY
New York this week gave the nation an early glimpse of what the Biden administration's 50-state vaccine mandate for health care workers might look like.
The Empire State's hospitals dismissed or suspended dozens of workers for failing to meet a Monday deadline requiring workers get at least their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Anticipating service disruptions from frontline health workers quitting or getting fired, health systems from New York City to upstate delayed non-emergency operations, cut clinic hours and paid travel nurses up to $200 an hour to fill vacant shifts.
The dismissals represented a small percentage of workers at large health systems. Most holdout employees got vaccinated in the days leading up to Monday’s deadline as Gov. Kathy Hochul touted a 92% immunization rate among hospital staff this week.
"I’m not going to sugarcoat it – it’s certainly been difficult," said Bea Grause, president of the Healthcare Association of New York State.
Despite the short-term headaches, Grause said the mandate is critical "to put COVID-19 in the rearview mirror" and protect workers, patients and the communities they serve.
“There’s no cheap, easy or quick fix to it, and we’re just going to have to problem solve as we move forward,” she said.
'More and more jobs open'
President Joe Biden last month announced all hospitals that take Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement must vaccinate their workers. The agency that oversees those federal health programs has yet to announce details on when a national mandate will take effect.
While health leaders acknowledge and support mandatory vaccination, some worry workforce disruptions punctuate a widespread shortage of health care workers at hospitals and clinics nationwide. The number of health job openings swelled during the pandemic with the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting 1.8 million health care openings as of July, up from 1.1 million open jobs in July 2020.
Staffing agencies that provide nurses and other temporary health care workers said requests from hospitals have surged during the pandemic. And once the Biden mandate kicks in for hospitals, requests for contract nurses are likely to go higher to fill vacancies amid a nationwide labor shortage.
New York hospitals have achieved a high vaccination rates and hospitals and health facilities have plenty of current and retired health pros to draw from. Perhaps the bigger disruptions will come in smaller communities with lower vaccination rates, said Todd Walrath, CEO of ShiftMed, which places nursing assistants, licensed practical nurses and registered nurses with hospitals and nursing homes.
"We continue to see an erosion of available workers, and more and more jobs open," Walrath said.
Nevertheless, states are pushing ahead with mandates.
Large California hospitals reported vaccination rates above 90% for a mandate that took effect Thursday for hospital and other health care workers. Two other states, Maine and Connecticut, delayed deadlines to give hospitals and workers more time to comply. Maine's vaccination deadline for health care workers was pushed back a month to Oct. 29. Connecticut's state hospital and nursing home employees must get vaccinated by Oct. 4, a week later than the state's original deadline.
Private health systems are pursing their own mandates, even in states that don't have a broader mandate for health care workers. North Carolina-based Novant Health last week suspended 375 unvaccinated workers and gave them five days to comply with its mandate. Nearly 200 were vaccinated and the remaining employees were dismissed or quit.
About 99% of the health system’s 35,000 employees across 800 locations agreed to get vaccinated.
Carl Armato, president and CEO of Novant Health, said in a statement the health system has added travel workers throughout the pandemic to plug coverage gaps. In the last week, the health system hired more than 150 health workers.
“Without a vaccine mandate for team members, we faced the strong possibility of having a third of our staff unable to work due to contracting, or exposure to, COVID-19,” Armato said in a statement. “This possibility only increases heading into a fall season with the more contagious and deadly delta variant.”
People gather at City Hall to protest vaccine mandates on August 09, 2021, in New York City.
Rural hospitals brace for mandate
Other experts agree that vaccine mandates are necessary. Not only must hospitals ensure workers are healthy, they must set an example for patients and families, said Dr. Kenneth Campbell, an assistant professor in the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.
As a former operations analyst for the Cook County Health & Hospitals System, Campbell helped implement the Chicago-based health system's policy requiring employees get flu shots. The vast majority complied. A small number of objectors were suspended.
Hospital executives are accustomed to worker shortages caused by strikes, retirements or chronic staffing gaps. And even though more workers might quit or be dismissed for refusing COVID vaccination, Campbell said it's a necessary tradeoff.
"If we don’t make this stand now, we can lose this war," said Campbell. "Thousands and thousands more lives can be lost."
Rural hospitals faced chronic doctor and nurses shortages before the pandemic began, and things worsened over the past 18 months, said Alan Morgan, CEO of National Rural Health Association.
Rural communities have higher rates of unvaccinated people, and COVID death rates are higher that metro areas. Unlike large urban hospitals that can recruit staff from big cities and suburbs, rural hospitals don't have the labor pool or financial resources to tap in times of crisis.
Morgan is concerned the federal government hasn't articulated a plan to address inevitable staffing gaps at rural hospitals. The Biden administration could reassure rural hospitals if it released a plan that included steps such as deploying public health service workers and Federal Emergency Management Agency teams, providing funding for hospitals to hire travel nurses or sharing information about available federal grants, Morgan said.
Morgan cited New York Gov. Hochul's plan to make National Guard troops available to plug staffing gaps at as the "the type of leadership we need" to assist rural hospitals.
"There are a lot of tools available," Morgan said. "But to date, there’s been no indication there's any plan, other than the administration saying we don’t anticipate a problem."
The holidays are fast approaching and you know what that means: pumpkin spice everything, seasonal cheer, and family gatherings — all while avoiding your QAnon adherent relatives like the plague. But when you do eventually get cornered by them, come prepared.
In his latest book, How to Talk to a Science Denier, author Lee McIntyre examines the phenomenon of denialism, exploring the conspiracy theories that drive it, and explains how you can most effectively address your relatives' misplaced concerns over everything from mRNA vaccines to why the Earth isn't actually flat. asdf
Belief in conspiracy theories is one of the most toxic forms of human reasoning. This is not to say that real conspiracies do not exist. Watergate, the tobacco companies’ collusion to obfuscate the link between cigarette smoking and cancer, and the George W. Bush–era NSA program to secretly spy on civilian Internet users are all examples of real-life conspiracies, which were discovered through evidence and exposed after exhaustive investigation.
By contrast, what makes conspiracy theory reasoning so odious is that whether or not there is any evidence, the theory is asserted as true, which puts it beyond all reach of being tested or refuted by scientists and other debunkers. The distinction, therefore, should be between actual conspiracies (for which there should be some evidence) and conspiracy theories (which customarily have no credible evidence). We might define a conspiracy theory as an “explanation that makes reference to hidden, malevolent forces seeking to advance some nefarious aim.” Crucially, we need to add that these tend to be “highly speculative [and] based on no evidence. They are pure conjecture, without any basis in reality.”
When we talk about the danger of conspiracy theories for scientific reasoning, our focus should therefore be on their nonempirical nature, which means that they are not even capable of being tested in the first place. What is wrong with conspiracy theories is not normally that they have already been refuted (though many have), but that thousands of gullible people will continue to believe them even when they have been debunked.
If you scratch a science denier, chances are you’ll find a conspiracy theorist. Sadly, conspiracy theories seem to be quite common in the general population as well. In a recent study by Eric Oliver and Thomas Wood they found that 50 percent of Americans believed in at least one conspiracy theory.
This included the 9/11 truther and Obama birther conspiracies, but also the idea that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is deliberately withholding a cure for cancer, and that the Federal Reserve intentionally orchestrated the 2008 recession. (Notably, the JFK assassination conspiracy was so widely held that it was excluded from the study.)
Other common conspiracy theories — which run the range of popularity and outlandishness — are that “chemtrails” left by planes are part of a secret government mind-control spraying program, that the school shootings at Sandy Hook and Parkland were “false flag” operations, that the government is covering up the truth about UFOs, and of course the more “science-related” ones that the Earth is flat, that global warming is a hoax, that some corporations are intentionally creating toxic GMOs, and that COVID-19 is caused by 5G cell phone towers.
In its most basic form, a conspiracy theory is a non-evidentially justified belief that some tremendously unlikely thing is nonetheless true, but we just don’t realize it because there is a coordinated campaign run by powerful people to cover it up. Some have contended that conspiracy theories are especially prevalent in times of great societal upheaval. And, of course, this explains why conspiracy theories are not unique to modern times. As far back as the great fire of Rome in 64 AD, we saw conspiracy theories at work, when the citizens of Rome became suspicious over a weeklong blaze that consumed almost the entire city — while the emperor Nero was conveniently out of town. Rumors began to spread that Nero had started it in order to rebuild the city in his own design. While there was no evidence that this was true (nor for the legend that Nero sang while the city burned), Nero was apparently so upset by the accusation that he started his own conspiracy theory that it was in fact the Christians who were responsible, which led to the prevalence of burning them alive.
Here one understands immediately why conspiracy theories are anathema to scientific reasoning. In science, we test our beliefs against reality by looking for disconfirming evidence. If we find only evidence that fits our theory, then it might be true. But if we find any evidence that disconfirms our theory, it must be ruled out. With conspiracy theories, however, they don’t change their views even in the face of disconfirming evidence (nor do they seem to require much evidence, beyond gut instinct, that their views are true in the first place). Instead, conspiracy theorists tend to use the conspiracy itself as a way to explain any lack of evidence (because the clever conspirators must be hiding it) or the presence of evidence that disconfirms it (because the shills must be faking it). Thus, lack of evidence in favor of a conspiracy theory is in part explained by the conspiracy itself, which means that its adherents can count both evidence and lack of evidence in their favor.
Virtually all conspiracy theorists are what I call “cafeteria skeptics.” Although they profess to uphold the highest standards of reasoning, they do so inconsistently. Conspiracy theorists are famous for their double standard of evidence: they insist on an absurd standard of proof when it concerns something they do not want to believe, while accepting with scant to nonexistent evidence whatever they do want to believe. We have already seen the weakness of this type of selective reasoning with cherry-picking evidence. Add to this a predilection for the kind of paranoid suspicion that underlies most conspiracy-minded thinking, and we face an almost impenetrable wall of doubt. When a conspiracy theorist indulges their suspicions about the alleged dangers of vaccines, chemtrails, or fluoride — but then takes any contrary or debunking information as itself proof of a cover-up — they lock themselves in a hermetically sealed box of doubt that no amount of facts could ever get them out of. For all of their protests of skepticism, most conspiracy theorists are in fact quite gullible.
Belief in the flatness of the Earth is a great example. Time and again at FEIC 2018, I heard presenters say that any scientific evidence in favor of the curvature of the Earth had been faked. “There was no Moon landing; it happened on a Hollywood set.” “All the airline pilots and astronauts are in on the hoax.” “Those pictures from space are Photoshopped.” Not only did disconfirming evidence of these claims not cause the Flat Earthers to give up their beliefs, it was used as more evidence for the conspiracy! And of course to claim that the devil is behind the whole cover-up about Flat Earth could there be a bigger conspiracy theory? Indeed, most Flat Earthers would admit that themselves. A similar chain of reasoning is often used in climate change denial. President Trump has long held that global warming is a “Chinese hoax” meant to undermine the competitiveness of American manufacturing.
Others have contended that climate scientists are fudging the data or that they are biased because they are profiting from the money and attention being paid to their work. Some would argue that the plot is even more nefarious — that climate change is being used as a ruse to justify more government regulation or takeover of the world economy. Whatever evidence is presented to debunk these claims is explained as part of a conspiracy: it was faked, biased, or at least incomplete, and the real truth is being covered up. No amount of evidence can ever convince a hardcore science denier because they distrust the people who are gathering the evidence. So what is the explanation? Why do some people (like science deniers) engage in conspiracy theory thinking while others do not?
Various psychological theories have been offered, involving factors such as inflated self-confidence, narcissism, or low self-esteem. A more popular consensus seems to be that conspiracy theories are a coping mechanism that some people use to deal with feelings of anxiety and loss of control in the face of large, upsetting events. The human brain does not like random events, because we cannot learn from and therefore cannot plan for them. When we feel helpless (due to lack of understanding, the scale of an event, its personal impact on us, or our social position), we may feel drawn to explanations that identify an enemy we can confront. This is not a rational process, and researchers who have studied conspiracy theories note that those who tend to “go with their gut” are the most likely to indulge in conspiracy-based thinking. This is why ignorance is highly correlated with belief in conspiracy theories. When we are less able to understand something on the basis of our analytical faculties, we may feel more threatened by it.
There is also the fact that many are attracted to the idea of “hidden knowledge,” because it serves their ego to think that they are one of the few people to understand something that others don’t know. In one of the most fascinating studies of conspiracy-based thinking, Roland Imhoff invented a fictitious conspiracy theory, then measured how many subjects would believe it, depending on the epistemological context within which it was presented. Imhoff’s conspiracy was a doozy: he claimed that there was a German manufacturer of smoke alarms that emitted high-pitched sounds that made people feel nauseous and depressed. He alleged that the manufacturer knew about the problem but refused to fix it. When subjects thought that this was secret knowledge, they were much more likely to believe it. When Imhoff presented it as common knowledge, people were less likely to think that it was true.
One can’t help here but think of the six hundred cognoscenti in that ballroom in Denver. Out of six billion people on the planet, they were the self-appointed elite of the elite: the few who knew the “truth” about the flatness of the Earth and were now called upon to wake the others.
What is the harm from conspiracy theories? Some may seem benign, but note that the most likely factor in predicting belief in a conspiracy theory is belief in another one. And not all of those will be harmless. What about the anti-vaxxer who thinks that there is a government cover-
up of the data on thimerosal, whose child gives another measles? Or the belief that anthropogenic (human- caused) climate change is just a hoax, so our leaders in government feel justified in delay? As the clock ticks on averting disaster, the human consequences of the latter may end up being incalculable.
A historic low number of estates paid taxes in 2020, underscoring how much that tax has weakened in the last two decades. But Democrats are looking to change that as part of their tax hikes targeting the wealthy.
Democratic lawmakers want to tax estates worth $5.85 million or more — reverting back to the same exemption amount as in 2017. Currently, only estates worth $11.7 million are taxed. The move would subject more estates to the tax starting next year.
“Estate taxes have basically been gutted over the last couple of decades,” Samantha Jacoby, senior tax legal analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told Yahoo Money. “It’s easy to plan around. It's easy for wealthy people with sophisticated advisers to avoid it entirely, and even when people do pay it is a relatively low rate.”
An estate tax is on the transfer of wealth from a deceased person and is enacted before beneficiaries receive their inheritance. Currently, a federal estate tax of 40% applies to estates above $11.7 million for single filers and to estates above $23.4 million for joint filers. Some states also impose additional estate taxes.
As the exemption has progressively increased in the last 20 years, the number of estates paying the tax has drastically decreased. In 2020, 1,900 taxable returns were subject to estate tax, down from 50,500 in 2001, according to data from the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. If the Democrats' proposal is enacted, the number of returns subject to the tax will return to 2017 levels or around 5,500, according to Jacoby.
The per-person exemption was $675,000 in 2001, but is $11.7 million in 2021. The last time the exemption was increased — which lowers the number of estates subjected to the tax — was in 2017 when it was nearly doubled by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act under the Trump administration.
Photo: Getty Creative
“We’ve seen both tax rates decrease and exemption levels increase,” Jacoby said. “This means that very few estates pay anything and even the estates that are subject to the estate tax have a relatively low effective rate.”
The effective estate tax in 2018 was only 16.5%. Currently, fewer than 1 in 1,000 estates face the estate tax, according to Jacoby.
‘Reducing income and wealth inequality’
Decreasing the estate tax exemption would also raise $50 billion in the next five years, according to Jacoby. An additional $27 billion of revenue would be raised by changes to the treatment of grantor trusts and modifications to estate tax valuation rules. Both provisions make it harder for the wealthy to escape the estate tax.
“This would reduce the ability of very wealthy people with sophisticated tax advisers to avoid the estate tax even further by using complicated trust arrangements,” Jacoby said.
Inheritances account for about 40% of all household wealth and are concentrated among high-income earners, according to the CBPP. Weakening the estate tax exacerbates wealth inequality, according to Jacoby.
President Joe Biden also wanted to repeal the step-up basis, which allows heirs to pay capital gains based on the price of the asset when it was inherited rather than when it was originally acquired. The provision is not included in the latest version of the plan introduced by the House Ways and Means Committee, meaning it’s likely to be excluded from the final legislation.
“Without repealing the step-up basis, it's even more important for the estate tax to be stronger,” Jacoby said. “You can think of the estate tax as sort of a backstop to not having taxation of unrealized capital gains.”
INSIDER TRADING Clarida Traded Into Stocks on Eve of Powell Pandemic Statement Craig Torres Fri, October 1, 2021
(Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve Vice Chair Richard Clarida traded between $1 million and $5 million out of a bond fund into stock funds one day before Chair Jerome Powell issued a statement flagging possible policy action as the pandemic worsened, his 2020 financial disclosures show.
Clarida’s trades, described in forms filed with the government ethics office, show the shifting of the funds out of a Pimco bond fund on Feb. 27, 2020, and on the same day buying the Pimco StocksPlus Fund and the iShares MSCI USA Min Vol Factor exchange-traded fund in similar dollar ranges. For the year, he listed five transactions.
The following day on Feb. 28, a Friday, at 2:30 p.m., Powell took the unusual step of releasing a statement saying the virus poses “evolving risks to economic activity.” In the same statement, Powell said the Fed was “closely monitoring developments and their implications for the economic outlook.”
Emergency Cut
The Fed announced a half percentage-point rate cut on March 3 following an emergency meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee. “Vice Chair Clarida’s financial disclosure for 2020 shows transactions that represent a pre-planned rebalancing to his accounts,” a Fed spokesman who was speaking on behalf of the vice chair said. “The transactions were executed prior to his involvement in deliberations on Federal Reserve actions to respond to the emergence of the coronavirus and not during a blackout period. The selected funds were chosen with the prior approval of the Board’s ethics official.”
The transactions are likely to further heighten scrutiny of the ethics rules and governance of the U.S. central bank after two regional Fed chiefs announced their departures following revelations about their trading activity last year. One of the presidents, Eric Rosengren of Boston, said his resignation was due to a serious health condition.
Clarida, a former executive at Pacific Investment Management Company LLC, was visiting faculty and students at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, the day of the trading, and not in his office in Washington. His calendar for the month shows a single phone call with a Board member on Feb. 27 at 4:45 p.m. after the market close, as well as numerous meetings with Fed staff on prior days.
The Fed spells out clear guidelines for trading activity by policy makers. Its Voluntary Guide to Conduct for Senior Officials says “they should carefully avoid engaging in any financial transaction the timing of which could create the appearance of acting on inside information concerning Federal Reserve deliberations and actions.”
It also says that they should avoid dealings that might “convey even an appearance of conflict between their personal interests, the interests of the system, and the public interest.” February 2020 was a time of extreme moves in financial markets as investors reacted to the threat of the global spread of Covid-19. Stocks fell steeply and bond markets were in a powerful rally.
“The pandemic was spreading quickly and the economic outlook was evolving rapidly. That was not the appropriate time for top Fed officials to be making multi-million dollar changes to their portfolios,” said Andrew Levin, a Dartmouth College professor and former special advisor to the Fed’s Board. “The Fed should welcome an external review of all financial transactions made by Federal Reserve Board members last year.”
A declassified 2018 State Dept. report suggests noises linked to 'Havana Syndrome' were probably just crickets
Marianne Guenot Fri, October 1, 2021, Close-up of a cricket (not the species in the story) perching outdoors.
Andrew Casson/EyeEm/Getty Images
An advisory group for the State Department analyzed sounds associated with the "Havana syndrome."
The 2018 report, now declassified, found the sound was likely made by a particularly loud cricket.
The report found that the sounds were not likely to have caused the potential medical effects.
A 2018 State Department inquiry into the loud noise associated with a mysterious set of symptoms nicknamed the "Havana Syndrome" found that the sound was probably caused by local crickets.
The so-called Havana Syndrome is characterized by symptoms consistent with a head injury such as balance issues, visual impairment, tinnitus, trouble sleeping, headaches, and problems with thinking or remembering, Insider's Aylin Woodward previously reported.
Several who had symptoms consistent with the "syndrome" reported hearing a high-pitched noise, a recording of which was published by the Associated Press in 2017 and can be heard in the video below.
While the declassified report suggests a cause for the noise, it does not purport to explain the other troubling symptoms.
Despite increased attention in the years that followed, no conclusive explanation has emerged as of October 2021.
A 2020 National Academies of Science found that the most plausible explanation for the symptoms appeared to be "pulsed radio frequency energy," although it could not rule out other leading theories such as chemical exposures, infection, or psychological issues.
Cheryl Rofer, a retired chemist from Los Alamos National Laboratory, previously told Insider that if a microwave weapon had been used, there would be physical marks of the attack.
"The evidence would be on the outside of their body," she told Insider's Aylin Woodward, adding: "It would be like a thermal burn."
The Pentagon has asked its 2.9 million service members to come forward if they have felt symptoms consistent with the "syndrome," according to a memo seen by The New York Times.
In Portugal, There Is Virtually No One Left to Vaccinate
LISBON, PORTUGAL - SEPTEMBER 29: Tourists check their cellphones outside Belem Tower by the Tagus River at the end of the afternoon during the COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic on September 29, 2021 in Lisbon, Portugal. The use of protective mask outdoors has not been longer mandatory as of September 13, but according to the measures of the third phase of the deconfinement associated with the pandemic, as of October 01 the use of masks is still mandatory in shops, schools (except at outdoor playgrounds), theaters, cinemas, congress halls, event venues, health establishments and services, residential or foster care facilities, or home support services for vulnerable populations, elderly people, or people with disabilities.
(Photo by Horacio Villalobos#Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)More Marc Santora and Raphael Minder Sat, October 2, 2021
Portugal’s health care system was on the verge of collapse. Hospitals in the capital, Lisbon, were overflowing and authorities were asking people to treat themselves at home. In the last week of January, nearly 2,000 people died as the virus spread.
The country’s vaccine program was in a shambles, so the government turned to Vice Adm. Henrique Gouveia e Melo, a former submarine squadron commander, to right the ship.
Eight months later, Portugal is among the world’s leaders in vaccinations, with roughly 86% of its population of 10.3 million fully vaccinated. About 98% of all of those eligible for vaccines — meaning anyone over 12 — have been fully vaccinated, Gouveia e Melo said.
“We believe we have reached the point of group protection and nearly herd immunity,” he said. “Things look very good.”
On Friday, Portugal ended nearly all of its coronavirus restrictions. There has been a sharp drop in new cases, to about 650 a day, and vanishingly few deaths.
Many Western nations fortunate enough to have abundant vaccine supplies have seen inoculation rates plateau, with more than 20% of their populations still unprotected. So other governments are looking to Portugal for possible insights and are watching closely to see what happens when nearly every eligible person is protected.
False dawns in the coronavirus pandemic have been as common as new nightmare waves of infection. So Portugal could still see a setback as the delta variant continues to spread globally.
There have been worrying signs from Israel and elsewhere that protection offered by vaccines can fade over time, and a worldwide debate is raging over who should be offered booster shots and when.
Portugal may soon start offering boosters to older people and those deemed clinically vulnerable, Gouveia e Melo said, and he was confident they could all be reached by the end of December.
But for the moment, as bars and nightclubs buzz with life, infections dwindle and deaths plummet, the country’s vaccination drive has succeeded even after encountering many of the same hurdles that caused others to flounder.
The same flood of misinformation about vaccines has filled the social media accounts of the Portuguese. The country is run by a minority left-wing government, a reflection of its political divisions. And, according to public opinion polls, there was widespread doubt about the vaccines when they first arrived.
Gouveia e Melo has been credited with turning it around. With a background working on complicated logistical challenges in the military, he was named in February to lead the national vaccination task force.
Standing 6 feet, 3 inches, the admiral made it a point to wear only his combat uniform in his many public and television appearances as he sought to essentially draft the nation into one collective pandemic-fighting force.
“The first thing is to make this thing a war,” Gouveia e Melo said in an interview, recalling how he approached the job. “I use not only the language of war, but military language.”
While politicians around the world have invoked a similar martial rhetoric, he said it was critical to his success that he was widely seen as detached from politics.
He quickly assembled a team of some three dozen people, led by elite military personnel — including mathematicians, doctors, analysts and strategic experts from Portugal’s army, air force and navy.
Asked what other countries can do to bolster their own vaccination efforts, he did not hesitate to offer his best advice.
“They need to find people who are not politicians,” he said.
Before the pandemic, Portugal was fortunate to have a robust national vaccination program. It grew out of the country’s devastating experience battling polio, which was still affecting the country after Gouveia e Melo was born in 1960. He recalls when the daughter of a family friend fell ill from the disease and the suffering that followed.
Manuela Ivone da Cunha, a Portuguese anthropologist who has studied anti-vaccination movements, said that “vaccine doubters and anti-vaxxers are in the minority in Portugal, and they are also less vocal” than they are in many other countries.
Leonor Beleza, a former Portuguese health minister who is now the president of the Champalimaud medical foundation, said Portugal’s rollout clearly benefited from the discipline stemming from the nomination of a military officer.
“He formulated a communications policy about what was happening that gave credibility and trust,” she said.
As the task force devised the most efficient system to safely stream the most people through inoculation centers, they used troops to build confidence in the system. People could see the vaccines were safe as soldier after soldier got shots.
At the same time, the task force made a point of showing doctors and nurses getting their shots, as well, to drive home the message of vaccine safety.
While other countries have featured doctors, nurses, police officers and soldiers in their vaccine campaigns, Gouveia e Melo said the consistency of the messaging was critical.
Still, as the campaign moved onto younger age groups over the summer — with less than half of the public vaccinated — there were signs that resistance was building.
In a submarine, the admiral said, you are in a slow ship trying to catch faster ships.
“You have to position yourself and be smart about how to do it,” he said, “and seize the opportunity when it arrives.”
In July, Gouveia e Melo seized such an opportunity.
Protesters were blocking the entrance to a vaccination center in Lisbon, so he donned his combat uniform and went there with no security detail.
“I went through these crazy people,” he said. “They started to call me ‘murderer, murderer.’”
As the television cameras rolled, the admiral calmly stood his ground.
“I said the murderer is the virus,” Gouveia e Melo recalled. The true killer, he said, would be people who live like it is the 13th century without any notion of reality.
“I attempted to communicate in a very true and honest way about all doubts and problems,” he said.
But not everybody welcomed his approach.
“We don’t really have a culture of questioning authorities,” said Laura Sanches, a clinical psychologist who has criticized Portugal’s mass vaccination rollout as too militaristic and called for it to exclude younger people.
“And the way he always presented himself in camouflage army suits — as if he was fighting a war — together with the language used by the media and the politicians, has contributed to a feeling of fear that also makes us more prone to obey and not question,” she said.
Still, the public messaging campaign — including an aggressive television and media blitz — made steady progress.
“In the beginning, we had some 40% who were unsure,” Gouveia e Melo said. Now, according to polls, he said, only 2.2% do not want the vaccine.
As he stepped down from the task force this week, the admiral said he felt the country was on a good course. But, ever the submariner, he cautioned that vigilance would remain essential to ensuring that this war was won.
Florida miner's lawsuit accuses JPMorgan of manipulating silver prices
Fri, October 1, 2021 FILE PHOTO: JPMorgan Chase & Co corporate headquarters in New York
LONDON (Reuters) - A Florida-based silver miner has filed a damages claim against JPMorgan , accusing the bank of manipulating the silver market to push prices so low the company's mine had to close.
The complaint, filed on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, said Hidalgo Mining Corp raised $10.35 million from investors to finance a silver mine in Mexico that began production around 2012 and stopped in 2014.
Silver prices averaged around $31 an ounce in 2012 and $19 an ounce in 2014.
JPMorgan declined to comment.
Hidalgo's claim, seen by Reuters, uses as evidence information from an investigation by U.S. regulators which found that JPMorgan staff between 2008 and 2016 sent fake buy and sell orders into metals and Treasuries markets to move prices in their favour.
Traders say this technique, known as spoofing, is a short term trading tactic rather than a means of long-term price suppression.
JPMorgan last year agreed to pay more than $920 million to settle the investigation.
The bank also paid $15.7 million last week to settle a class action lawsuit brought by investors who said the manipulation had caused them losses.
2016-08-04 · And so, in 1973, Bunker and Herbert bought over 35 million ounces of silver, most of which they flew to Switzerland in specifically designed airplanes guarded by armed Texas ranch hands. According to one source, the Hunt’s purchases …
Nelson Bunker Hunt: How two brothers from Texas drove the ... https://newsrnd.com/business/2021-02-03-nelson-bunker-hunt--how-two... 2021-02-03 · Many Americans carried their silver cutlery to the pawnbroker to turn it into cash. But then the financial establishment put an end to the hustle and bustle: On "Silver
Nelson Bunker Hunt - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Bunker_Hunt In the last nine months of 1979, the brothers profited by an estimated US$2-4 billion in silver speculation, with estimated silver holdings of 100 million troy ounces (3,100 t). [9] Primarily because of the Hunt brothers' accumulation of the precious metal , prices of silver futures contracts and silver bullion rose from $11 an ounce in September 1979 to $50 an ounce in …
FTC report reveals Big Tech's acquisition loopholes Chairwoman Lina Khan is calling for Big Tech watchdogs to shut down these workarounds in the future.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has released a new report about Big Tech’s anticompetitive practices that manages to be somewhat disparaging to both corporations and its own ranks. In presenting the report, FTC chair Lina Khan said merger watchdogs, including the FTC itself, must do better to keep score of smaller acquisition transactions, hundreds of which have flown under the commission’s radar in the last decade.
“The study highlights the systemic nature of their acquisition strategy,” Khan said during the meeting (h/t Bloomberg). “Digital markets in particular reveal how smaller transactions invite vigilance.”
The study focuses on acquisitions made by Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, though the FTC’s advice is not by any means limited to those specific companies. Khan’s public FTC meeting about the report concluded that watchdogs should be more assertive in closing loopholes that allow these transactions to slide by without investigation. BETTER LATE THAN NEVER? — This week’s report is the culmination of research started by the FTC back in February 2020. The initiative’s goal was always very pointed: Quantify the many smaller acquisitions made by Big Tech companies between 2010 and 2019. Corporations are only required to report their acquisitions if they’re worth more than $92 million. This rule is taken advantage of more often than not so companies can keep their smaller deals out of the purview of watchdogs.
The FTC’s investigation found that, between the five of them, Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft made 8616 not-reported acquisition transactions. Of those, 94 did actually go over the $92 million mark but met other criteria that let them slide by. Three more would’ve hit the threshold if they’d added debts and liabilities; nine more would’ve hit it if “contingent compensation to founders and key employees” had been added. NO MORE ROOM TO SLIDE BY — The report, along with Khan’s guidance, follows the FTC’s larger tear against Big Tech. The FTC is no longer willing to allow these enormous technology companies to wield their power unchecked.
That’s not going to let up any time soon. FTC chairwoman Lina Khan, who President Biden appointed earlier this year, has made it her express mission to bring more balance to the tech world. “I look forward to working with my colleagues to protect the public from corporate abuse,” Khan said in a statement at the time of her confirmation.
As Khan stated in the public meeting about this report, it will now be up to the FTC to ensure the next decade doesn’t follow suit. Let’s hope watchdogs take Khan’s missive to heart.
