Don’t Blame Benefits for Inflation — Blame the Global Economy

Ending child care subsidies won’t restock store shelves. A fairer, more sustainable global economy might.

January 18, 2022 by Other Words Leave a Comment


By Sonali Kolhatkar

Headlines are screaming that inflation is here to stay.

U.S. consumer prices have risen by an average of 6.2 percent in the past year, the sharpest increase since 1991. Although Americans are supposedly — in the words of the New York Times — “flush with cash and jobs,” they are also deeply unhappy with the state of the economy.

It’s no wonder Republicans are thrilled and are drawing a line between inflation, public anxiety about the economy, and Joe Biden’s presidency.

What is surprising is that President Biden himself is helping them by citing his administration’s achievement of putting more money into people’s pockets as part of the explanation for the current spike in inflation.

In a November 10 speech, Biden said, “You all got checks for $1,400. You got checks for a whole range of things.” He went on to explain, “Well, with more people with money buying product and less product to buy, what happens? Prices go up.”

The New York Post, a conservative paper, jumped on the speech, claiming that the president “concedes his COVID stimulus checks fueled [the] spike in inflation.”

But the paper downplayed Biden’s assertion that “the supply chain is the reason.”

In fact, the president led his audience through a fairly clear explanation of how globalization works. By artificially driving down the cost of goods for decades, this far-flung system is especially vulnerable to disruptions like the pandemic.

As Biden explained, “Products like smartphones often bring together parts from France, Italy; chips from the Netherlands; touchscreens from New York State; camera components from Japan — a supply chain that crosses dozens of countries.”

“That’s just the nature of a modern economy,” he concluded. But should it be?

The massive web of consumer manufacturing isn’t a fact of nature. It’s a systematically deregulated system designed by multinational corporations to minimize the cost of materials and labor — and maximize their profits. This was precisely what the anti-globalization movements of the 1990s were protesting.

When Biden said in his speech that you “have to use wood from Brazil” and “graphite from India before it comes together at a factory in the United States to get a pencil,” he didn’t reveal that pencil manufacturers might be relying on illegal logging in the Brazilian Amazon. Nor did he mention that transporting goods from far reaches of the globe generates massive carbon pollution.

Now this system is hurting consumers too. In fact, they’ve been feeling the pinch for years.

Go back to polls conducted even before the pandemic — including a Gallup poll from 2018 and the General Social Survey from 2019 — and one can find widespread malaise about the state of the economy.

In other words, Americans have spent decades being disappointed with the sustained suppression of wages and increasingly insecure jobs. This is a direct consequence of the offshoring and deregulation accelerated by corporate globalization.

But instead of drawing the connection, conservative Republicans are blaming pandemic assistance and other government help, as though ending child care subsidies could restock store shelves. Conservative Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia is making similar assertions to justify stymying Biden’s proposals to expand government assistance.

A better takeaway from our current economic situation is that there is nothing natural about being at the mercy and whims of an economy designed by corporate profiteers for corporate profiteers.

We need to make the global economy fairer and more sustainable — not pull up the few remaining supports for American families.

Previously Published on otherwords with Creative Commons Licenses

8,500 KROGER WORKERS STRIKE FOR THEIR LIVES

King Soopers workers say they're paid enough to survive, but not enough to live.

January 18 2022

About 8,500 grocery workers at Kroger-owned King Soopers are on strike, demanding an end to Kroger’s greed. The Colorado workers at nearly 80 grocery stores have been on strike since January 12, fighting for livable wages and healthcare.

The grocery chain’s parent company Kroger has recently come under fire for the treatment of its workforce.

A recent survey of 10,000 Kroger employees revealed 3 out of 4 workers face food insecurity, with 14 percent experiencing homelessness in the last year. Yet for years, Kroger executives have known that most of their workers live in poverty, according to a leaked memo sent to More Perfect Union.

Workers rejected the company’s most recent contract offer on January 13, which had a base pay only pennies above Denver’s minimum wage.

“It’s very disappointing to know that the CEO made over $20 million and we have workers here that are struggling everyday just to put food on the table and feed their families,” Carol McMillan, a King Sooper worker said.

In March 2021, a mass shooting occurred inside a King Sooper store in Boulder, CO, killing ten people including workers and customers. Traumatized employees who witnessed the events received little support from the company.

After just a few weeks, workers were required to use sick days for any additional time off to recover from the events.

“We would like King Soopers to remember who we are and what we do for them. And we’d like them to respect us, protect us and pay us,” McMillan said.

Abortion rights groups tie their fight to voting rights

NARAL said Tuesday that it will back only candidates who work to pass voting rights, and Emily’s List says it won’t support Sen. Kyrsten Sinema if she doesn’t get behind changing Senate rules.


(PHOTO BY ALLISON BAILEY/NURPHOTO)

By Barbara Rodriguez, Amanda Becker
Published January 18, 2022

Editor’s note: This article has been updated with a response from Sen. Sinema.

The abortion rights group NARAL said Tuesday it will no longer back candidates who don’t support Democratic efforts to pass federal voting rights legislation, just hours after the similarly aligned Emily’s List said it will pull its endorsement of U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema if she does not reverse her opposition to changing Senate filibuster rules that have stymied those efforts.

The moves — which came as President Joe Biden and Democratic leaders are at a critical juncture on voting rights, with Senate votes slated for this week that are expected to fail — show that abortion rights groups increasingly see the two movements as interwined.

NARAL President Mini Timmaraju said in a statement that the group will not endorse or support any senator “who refuses to find a path forward on this critical legislation.”

“Without ensuring that voters have the freedom to participate in safe and accessible elections, a minority with a regressive agenda and a hostility to reproductive freedom will continue to block the will of the majority of Americans,” she said.

Abortion rights groups’ focus on flailing Democratic efforts to get voting rights legislation through the U.S. Congress put Sinema in the crosshairs. Emily’s List, which backs Democratic women who support abortion access, said it would no longer endorse the Arizona lawmaker, who is up for reelection in 2024, if she did not back changes her party is seeking to the Senate filibuster.

“Electing Democratic pro-choice women is not possible without free and fair elections. Protecting the right to choose is not possible without access to the ballot box,” Emily’s List President Laphonza Butler said in a statement Tuesday.

Sinema is an original co-sponsor of a voting rights bill, but has nevertheless said she opposes her party leaders’ push to change filibuster rules so that election legislation could pass the chamber by a simple-majority vote instead of clearing the typical 60-vote threshold.

As Biden came to the Senate last week to talk to Democrats about voting rights, Sinema reiterated her opposition to filibuster changes in a speech on the Senate floor, saying the “harried discussions about Senate rules are but a poor substitute for what I believe could have, and should have, been a thoughtful public debate at any time over the past year” about how to pass a voting rights bill.

More from The 19th

State lawmakers prepare for a future without Roe v. Wade
Build Back Better isn’t dead, but talks have moved behind the scenes

The next day, more than 70 Arizona women asked Emily’s List — a top donor to Sinema’s Senate and House campaigns — to make a “public demand to Senator Sinema to support ending the filibuster.”

The call was heeded on Tuesday when Butler said that the country is at an “inflection point in the fight for voting rights and reproductive freedom” and that the group’s “mission can only be realized when everyone has the freedom to have their voice heard safely and freely at the ballot box.”

“So, what we want to make it clear: if Sen. Sinema can not support a path forward for the passage of this legislation, we believe she undermines the foundations of our democracy, her own path to victory and also the mission of EMILY’s List, and we will be unable to endorse her moving forward,” Butler said in a statement.

Sinema said in a statement to The 19th that the Senate filibuster “has been used repeatedly to protect against wild swings in federal policy, including in the area of protecting women’s health care.”

“People of good faith can have honest disagreements about policy and strategy. Such honest disagreements are normal, and I respect those who have reached different conclusions on how to achieve our shared goals of addressing voter suppression and election subversion,” she added.

ALASKA

Tribal sovereignty ballot initiative smashes threshold

'The amount of support we’ve gotten throughout this process has been amazing'


Zachariah Hughes
Anchorage Daily News

A campaign to formalize the government-to-government relationship between federally recognized tribes in Alaska and the state is moving forward. On Wednesday, organizers submitted 56,200 signatures in support of the measure to the Division of Elections, far more than the 36,140 required to put it before voters on November’s statewide ballot.

“The amount of support we’ve gotten throughout this process has been amazing,” said Barbara ‘Wáahlaal Gidáak Blake, one of the co-sponsors of the Alaskans for Better Government campaign.

According to organizers, signatures came from all 40 legislative districts around the state.

“This puts us in a state of trusting that Alaskans are going to step up for Indigenous people,” Blake said.

The measure would formalize in state statute the peer relationship between tribes and other government entities, an arrangement already acknowledged by Alaska’s courts and the federal government. The legal foundations of tribal sovereignty in U.S. date back almost two centuries. But according to Blake, the state of Alaska sues its federally recognized tribes over jurisdictional disputes more often than any other state in the nation, typically losing in the courts after costly litigation drains resources from both sides.

By formalizing the state’s recognition of tribal sovereignty, supporters say doors will open for more efficient, effective implementation of measures that benefit tribal members at the local level without substantially altering state laws.

“What this does is codify what’s already recognized by the federal government,” said state Rep. Tiffany Zulkosky.

The Bethel-based Democrat represents the House district covering the Yukon-Kuskokwim region, and she sponsored a bill with nearly identical language to the ballot initiative. The Alaskans for Better Government campaign is the second in what is essentially a two-pronged approach toward the same goal, and organizers are largely agnostic about which route ultimately succeeds, though the voter initiative currently looks more feasible. Last May, Zulkosky’s bill received overwhelming support in the House with a vote of 35 to 4. But it is unlikely to advance in the upper chamber during the upcoming session.

“The path towards yes looks a lot different in the Senate than it does in the House,” Zulkosky said.

She and other supporters say that if the measure is approved, it will give tribal entities and the state overall more tools for dealing with complex major issues like child welfare, public safety and transportation. They point to the Alaska Tribal Health Compact as a prime example. The 1994 agreement directs federal dollars into Alaska that are overseen, administered and implemented by tribal entities as large as the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage, and as tiny as the clinics operating in almost every rural community in the state.


Alaska Native Medical Center, Sept. 2, 2021 (Photo by Joaqlin Estus, Indian Country Today).

Zulkosky, who outside of her legislative duties is employed by the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp., said it was those government-to-government relations in the health care sector that allowed tribal entities to administer COVID-19 vaccine doses to rural residents more quickly than they were delivered to almost any other group of Americans.

Comparable arrangements could be possible in the years ahead, Zulkosky said, with tribes working to leverage federal money for government functions currently overseen by the state.

“How do we stretch every dollar at a time when Alaska’s Legislature is trying to resolve fiscal issues?” Zulkosky asked.


Stay updated on ICT’s ANCSA project using #ANCSA50 and at https://indiancountrytoday.com/tag/ancsa-50.

The initiative has backing from some of the largest and most powerful Alaska Native groups and corporations, including the Alaska Federation of Natives, Sealaska and the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, among others.

Blake said that the group has not seen any organized opposition to the ballot initiative yet.

During a brief debate on Zulkosky’s House bill, only two lawmakers spoke out against it, though few of the objections were substantive.

“I am generally a fan of local control, local government. However, it’s not clear to me at this time how much authority is being granted, (and) what the long-term significance could be,” said Wasilla Republican Rep. Christopher Kurka during debate. He’s now running for governor.

Organizers say that even if the measure is approved it will not have major day-to-day impacts for most Alaskans, nor, Zulkosky said, will it “significantly change the dynamic of the legal relationship that tribes have with their members.”

As state officials certify signatures for the measure, the campaign says it will begin focusing on adding members to its steering committee, building coalitions and raising funds.

Campaign manager Alex Murphy helped submit boxes of tribal recognition initiative petition signature booklets to the State Division of Elections in Anchorage, Alaska on Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2022. (Photo by Bill Roth, Anchorage Daily News)

MUSLIMS ARE A MINORITY IN SRI LANKA

US officials, rights groups condemn billionaire investor’s Uyghur comments

Chamath Palihapitiya says ‘nobody cares’ about the

persecution of Uyghurs in western China.

By Alim Seytoff and Nuriman Abdurashid
2022.01.18

Chamath Palihapitiya’s comment that “nobody cares” about the persecution of Uyghurs in western China prompted a flurry of condemnation from a variety of quarters, including the NBA team the billionaire investor partly owns, which released a statement saying that he had little involvement with its operations.

Chamath Palihapitiya, who runs Social Capital in Palo Alto, California, said on a podcast on Monday that China’s ongoing persecution of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, which the U.S. and other countries have called a genocide, did not register with him as an issue of much concern.

“Nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs, okay. You bring it up because you care and I think it’s nice that you care. The rest of us don’t care. I’m just telling you a very hard, ugly truth. Of all the things that I care about, yes, it is below my line,” Palihapitiya said.

Social Capital invests in 74 startups, mostly in the technology sector. The company’s website says that its “mission is to advance humanity by solving the world’s hardest problems.”

The Warriors joined Uyghur advocates, business leaders, and U.S. officials in condemning the statement, calling him “a limited investor who has no day-to-day operating functions” with the team.

“Mr. Palihapitiya does not speak on behalf of our franchise, and his views certainly don’t reflect those of our organization,” the Warriors said.

Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, a Uyghur rights advocacy group, noted that the Biden administration and U.S. Congress have recognized China’s campaign of persecution on Uyghurs as a genocide.

“It is really inhuman for a businessman to say he doesn’t care about Uyghurs in his search of profit and money in China,” he told RFA, referring to Palihapitiya. “He may have become rich, but he has lost his humanity.

“Their continued investment in China and statement that they don’t care about the plight of the Uyghurs will embolden China and result the deaths of many more people,” Isa said.

‘An unprecedented callousness’

In a tweet, Palihapitiya sought to clarify his earlier comments but did not apologize for them.

“In re-listening to this week’s podcast, I recognize that I come across as lacking empathy. I acknowledge that entirely,” he wrote in a statement he posted on Twitter. “As a refugee, my family fled a country with its own set of human rights issues so this is something that is very much a part of my lived experience. To be clear, my belief is that human rights matter, whether in China, the United States, or elsewhere. Full stop.”

But Nury Turkel, the vice chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) , said that Palihapitiya’s comment reflects a broader problem: the willingness of executives in the business and sports communities to ignore China’s human rights abuses in pursuit of money-making opportunities.

“This kind of unrepentant and unconscionable behavior should be met with consequences,” Turkel tweeted.

“It’s appalling that Chamath engages in genocide denialism and playing the whataboutism card considering his family background of suffering human rights abuses in Sri Lanka. The communist regime he is defending will not hesitate to lock him up if he criticizes China in the same way he does with the United States,” Turkel, a Uyghur-American lawyer who has been sanctioned by the Chinese government along with fellow USCIRF commissioners, said in a later comment to RFA.

German researcher Adrian Zenz, who has documented China’s abuses against the Uyghurs, told RFA on Tuesday that Palihapitiya’s comments were “like an attempt to normalize a massive human rights violation to make it appear that we can coexist, that we can live with it.”

But Zenz also said that even though Palihapitiya “expressed the sentiment of an unprecedented callousness,” the effect in the end was the same as people who say the genocide is terrible but do nothing.

“He’s at least being honest about it,” Zenz said.

U.S. Rep. Tom Malinowski, a New Jersey Democrat who sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee, also criticized Palihapitiya.

“I’ve had enough of CEOs who criticize injustice in the U.S. (which is fine but costs them nothing), while kissing up to the Chinese government. Congress cares about the Uighur genocide, and we’ve only just begun to stop greedy corporations from profiting from it,” Malinowski tweeted.

Diplomatic boycotts of Beijing Olympics

Meanwhile, Mike Pompeo, former secretary of state under the Trump administration, called on the NBA to speak out against Palihapitiya.

“If the @NBAtruly stands for justice, they will denounce these comments by @chamath and denounce the CCP’s genocidal oppression of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang,” he said referring to the Chinese Communist Party.

Western countries, including the U.S., the United Nations, and some foreign parliaments have declared that the Chinese government’s severe abuses against the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang amount to genocide and crimes against humanity.

In December, President Joe Biden signed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act into law.

Additionally, the U.S. and several other nations have announced diplomatic boycotts of the Beijing Winter Games, sending athletes but no officials.

Support for Palihapitiya’s sentiment was limited, with Andy Mok, a commentator for China’s state-run CGTN media network, tweeting “@chamath is a rock star.”

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Tuesday that he was not aware of Palihapitiya’s comments.

“I can tell you that Xinjiang-related affairs are purely China’s internal affairs, which brook no interference by any external forces,” he said during a regular press conference when asked for the government reaction to the executive’s statement.

Translated by the Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

FAUCI CALLED HIM A 'MORON'
GOP Senator to Steve Bannon: ‘Deep State,’ Dr. Fauci Funded Gain of Function Research ‘Responsible for 800,000 Dead Americans’

NO, IT WAS TRUMP

By Alex Griffing

MEDIAITE

Jan 18th, 2022

U.S. Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS) went on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast this week and accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of being part of a “Deep State” conspiracy, which he suggests is behind the Covid-19 pandemic.

“What is your endgame?” Bannon asked Marshall in regard to his investigations into Fauci – who was recently caught on a hot mic during a hearing calling the senator a “moron” after an exchange about whether or not Fauci’s financial disclosures are public record.

“Steve, I think we’re over the target,” Marshall began. “And he is part of this Deep State that is actually lying or certainly misleading the public. So he lied to Congress and the American people at least three times during that last hearing and we proved him wrong.”

Marshall claimed that he proved Fauci wrong on his financials, saying that “he made over $2 million in 2020 while the economy was locked down.” The Kansas senator continued:

On the gain of function issue here and what we’re talking about in that tape is you talk about the Deep State, I’m learning so much about the Deep State, but what they did on this particular issue was a project called Project Diffuse. They asked the Department of Defense to fund it and the Department of Defense said no this is viral gain of function studies we’re not going to do it

“But then Dr. Fauci turns around and funds it through Ecohealth with research in Wuhan, China,” claimed Marshall. “This is like doing nuclear research with Iran, can you believe, uh, the stuff that we’re uncovering here.”

Bannon, shaking his head in agreement, followed up by asking Marshall to expand on how he thinks Dr. Fauci has lied.

Marshall doubled down, charging, “I think he lied saying the NIH has never funded viral gain of function, happy to go down that trail.” The senator also claimed Fauci lied by saying his financials are publicly available and “on this Rand Paul story.”

Marshall continued, “If you look at that in the emails to Dr. Fauci that we’ve seen, people that on in January were saying there’s a 70/30 chance this virus came from a laboratory and a week later they changed their mind and say ‘oh this had to come from nature.’”

“Dr. Fauci knows that I know. He can’t blow these smoke and mirrors in my ear. I understand this viral gain of function. He’s been the head cheerleader, the cash cow, since about 2010, recall 2014 is when President Obama put a moratorium on viral gain of function.”

Bannon then praised Marshall and Paul for both being doctors, saying “Fauci can’t squirm out of you” because doctors ask more detailed questions than lawyers would on these issues. Paul is an ophthalmologist and Marshall is an obstetrician.

Bannon, predicting the upcoming Beijing Olympics “won’t go on” then asked, “Why is gain of function research so dangerous?”

“It’s more dangerous than a nuclear warhead, right?” Marshall responded. “It’s responsible for the death of 800,000 Americans. I think when it’s all said and done it’s going to be 10 or 20 million people worldwide. So just think about where this virus came from.”

Marshall concluded:

We started doing research in the University of North Carolina lab with Dr. Xi in 2015 and 16 even though there’s a moratorium we used NIH dollars to figure out how to take the SARS virus and put a protein spike on it that would stick to the human lung cell-like glue but that wasn’t enough in 2017 and 18 Dr. Fauci funded Ecohealth to fund the Wuhan laboratory with Dr. Xi to put this furin cleavage site in that spike protein so this virus could dump its guts into the human lung cells so obviously it is a weapon and this is the tip of the iceberg.

Watch the full clip 

LIBERTARIAN
Tulsi Gabbard says people must 'stand up against' Biden’s new domestic terrorism policy

CLINTON DID THIS AFTER THE OKLAHOMA BOMBING

by Matthew Miller, Social Media Producer
| January 18, 2022 06:17 PM

Former Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard sharply criticized the Biden administration's deployment of a domestic terrorism unit to target those with “anti-authority” or “anti-government” beliefs, telling people that "we must all stand up against this."

The Justice Department is creating a task force to combat domestic terrorism, according to a top official, the New York Times reported last week. Gabbard tweeted her rebuke of the new policy, along with a clip of her Fox News appearance Sunday in which she discussed the policy.

“Biden’s new policy of directing a domestic terrorism unit to target those who have an ‘anti-authority’ or ‘anti-government' attitude exposes their anti-liberty/anti-democracy mindset. We must all stand up against this, regardless of our political party,” Gabbard tweeted.

Gabbard explained during the interview why the Biden policy is "authoritarianism."

“We have the deputy attorney general of the United States speaking to the American people about how they are standing up a domestic terrorism unit to support their efforts to target those who hold anti-government or anti-authority ideologies,” Gabbard explained. “When we stop and think about that for a second, what does that really mean? The authorities in our government, the Biden administration, are targeting Americans for holding anti-authority views. That is authoritarianism,” she added.

Gabbard has recently begun to express strong disapproval of President Joe Biden and his policies. On Friday, she posted a video to Twitter explaining why she no longer supports the Biden administration, saying the president has succeeded in dividing the country more than ever, along with another rebuke of his new domestic terrorism policy.

“Biden promised to unite our country. Instead he betrayed us, pouring fuel on the fire of divisiveness, tearing our country apart. Biden compares those who disagree with him to racists, traitors & enemies, & has his AG target Americans as domestic terrorists. Unfit to lead,” Gabbard tweeted along with her video.

An interview in the metaverse
BY AVI LOEB, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR

 — 01/18/22

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN 

AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

© ASSOCIATED PRESS/ Wally Santana

When I opened the link to my first interview in the metaverse, the interviewer appeared to be a monkey with heart-shaped glasses. He introduced himself as the avatar of the real interviewer, “Club Metaverse” podcast host Marc Fernandez, whose voice I could hear. Fernandez reasoned that this monkey is a non-fungible token (NFT) worth tens of thousands of dollars — because it is part of a rare digital collection.

During the Q&A, I explained to the metaverse monkey with heart glasses that as a scientist, I am in love with the actual reality of the physical world, shared by all humans. And as a result of being in love with the physical reality, I want to know everything about it and not be distracted by fictitious notions of it. Just like cosmetic make-up, these notions hide true beauty along with any pimples. Naturally, I’d prefer to see my real interviewer’s face and not the avatar, even if the latter is digital art worth a lot of money.

Metaverse assets could disappear as a result of a global electricity blackout. But other virtual realities are entrenched in our mind. For example, mainstream theoretical physicists dedicate their careers to exploring the multiverse in the string theory landscape, without goggles attached to their heads. It is human nature to fly high on the wings of imagined narratives rather than be chained by the constraints of scientific evidence.

The metaverse interview focused on the question of whether `Oumuamua, the first interstellar object spotted near Earth by the Pan-STARRS observatory, might have been technological equipment sent by another civilization.

Three days later, I was interviewed by William Shatner who portrayed Captain James T. Kirk on the imagined USS Enterprise in “Star Trek.” I had never enjoyed “Star Trek” because its storyline violates the laws of physics — and that bothers me as a physicist.

Following both interviews, I came to realize that the metaverse would be a fertile backdrop for science fiction narratives. However, in dealing with the reality we all share, we must separate science from fiction. And as Galileo Galilei advocated, this is best done by subjecting ideas to experimental tests. In that vein, a science fiction idea such as the possibility that an interstellar object might be technological equipment manufactured by an advanced technological civilization will be tested experimentally by the Galileo Project that I am leading.

Some extraterrestrial equipment that the Galileo Project finds might be defunct. NASA launched five spacecraft that will exit the solar system within tens of thousands of years. They were intended to report back on what they probed in the solar system, but in a billion years they will be space trash. Most interstellar equipment might be like unusable plastic bottles on the surface of the ocean, accumulated over the billions of years of the cosmic star formation history, during which most stars were born before the Sun.

The likelihood of success in finding mail within our mailbox — the orbit of the Earth around the sun, depends on the abundance of artificial objects per unit volume. There may be many more small objects than large objects, and Pan-STARRS telescope is only able to detect reflected sunlight from objects bigger than a football field within the Earth-sun separation. NASA never sent out a craft that big but many smaller ones. Also, some spacecraft might move much faster than comets or asteroids and all the search algorithms employed by astronomers would miss very fast-moving objects.

The senders may not be alive at present. But even if we imagine electromagnetic communication of some probes with their senders, it would likely be done in brief, sporadic, directional, narrow-band transmissions to save power, and so we could easily miss them. The travel time of signals is very long, tens of thousands of years across the Milky Way disk. It, therefore, makes more sense for probes to pursue a task assigned to them by their senders without feedback, like a group of ants on a journey to a distant hill without the ability to communicate with their base colony in real time.

In an email correspondence I had with former NSF Director France Cordova, she noted insightfully that most of the exodus of probes might occur near the end in the life of the star hosting a civilization. The civilization from where probes were sent in a final act of distress might have died by now. In this case, it would be just the technological descendants that we will encounter.

Experimental data from the Galileo Project will serve as the meeting place between what is possible and what exists, similarly to my first interview in the metaverse. The metaverse allows a virtual reality, which violates the laws of physics. But when we take its goggles off, we must accept the pleasure and pain of the real world in which the laws of physics do not budge. Pain because those laws dictate that humans cannot live a long life when exposed to cosmic-rays on the surface of Mars. Pleasure because the same laws allow humans to live long on Earth, where if they choose, they can pretend to be monkeys with sunglasses in the metaverse.

Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University's Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011-2020). He chairs the advisory board for the Breakthrough Starshot project and is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos,” both published in 2021.

Florida suspends health official in probe over vaccine law

A central Florida health official has been put on administrative leave as state officials investigate whether he tried to compel employees to get vaccinated for COVID-19 in violation of state law

Via AP news wire

Virus Outbreak-Governors
(Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)


A health official who has helped lead central Florida s response to the pandemic has been put on administrative leave as state officials investigate whether he tried to compel employees to get vaccinated for COVID-19 in violation of state law.

The state health agency is conducting an inquiry into Raul Pino, director of the Florida Department of Health in Orange County “to determine if any laws were broken in this case,” Florida Department of Health press secretary Jeremy Redfern said in an email.

A measure Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law last fall prohibits government agencies from implementing vaccine mandates and restricts private businesses from having vaccine requirements unless they allow workers to opt out for medical reasons, religious beliefs, immunity based on a previous infection, regular testing or an agreement to wear protective gear.

“The Department is committed to upholding all laws, including the ban on vaccine mandates for government employees and will take appropriate action once additional information is known," Redfern said in the email. He didn't offer further details.

Orlando s WFTV reports that Pino was put on leave after he sent an email to staff earlier this month critical of their vaccination rate.

Pino wrote that out of 568 staffers, only 77 had received booster shots, 219 had gotten two vaccines doses and 34 only had a single dose, according to the television station.

“I am sorry but in the absence of reasonable and real reasons it is irresponsible not to be vaccinated,” Pino wrote. “We have been at this for two years, we were the first to give vaccines to the masses, we have done more than 300,000 and we are not even at 50% pathetic.”

Pino has led the health agency in Orange County since 2019 and has served as a leading figure in the public response to the pandemic in metro Orlando.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M THE AMERICAN WAY

Glendale Man, Companies Ordered To Pay Restitution For Ponzi Sheme

January 18, 2022 ADI Staff Reporter

The Arizona Corporation Commission ordered Tony Spooner of Glendale, First Federal Security, Inc., and Rokay Unlimited, LLC to pay $774,158 in restitution and a $50,000 administrative penalty for defrauding investors.

The Commission found the respondents offered and sold unregistered securities and notes issued by companies controlled by EquiAlt, LLC to at least 47 investors, the majority of whom were senior citizens investing a significant portion of their life savings. However, the respondents were not registered to offer or sell securities in Arizona.

The Commission found the respondents, during the offer or sale of EquiAlt securities, made material misrepresentations and omissions to the investors regarding the securities’ risk and liquidity.

The Corporation Commission found Spooner and his affiliated companies represented to investors that EquiAlt, LLC was raising capital to purchase, improve, lease, and dispose of distressed real property. In actuality, EquiAlt, LLC was operating as a nationwide Ponzi scheme.

Paradise Valley Serial Securities Violator Ordered To Pay $733,606 In Restitution

January 17, 2022 ADI Staff Reporter

The Arizona Corporation Commission has ordered Michael Barry Eckerman of Paradise Valley, Luxury Management Group and MTE 2013 Trust to pay restitution and administrative penalties for defrauding investors with an investment involving real estate and luxury automobile rentals.

The Commission ordered the respondents to pay $733,606 in restitution. The Commission ordered Eckerman to pay an administrative penalty of $100,000 and Luxury Management Group to pay a $70,000 penalty.

The Commission found Luxury Management Group, LLC was a short-term real estate and automobile rental company that sold unregistered promissory notes to three investors, two of whom also were sold future options in company stock and one of whom was also sold investment contracts. One investor placed her life’s savings with respondents.

The Commission found the respondents titled their contracts as “commercial paper loans” when they were actually securities subject to the Commission’s jurisdiction. None of the respondents were authorized to offer or sell securities in Arizona.

The Commission found Michael Eckerman was the subject of prior temporary cease and desist orders filed by the Corporation Commission, Michael Eckerman’s prior companies failed to pay investors and Luxury Management Group’s house rentals were threatened by injunction litigation initiated by a Paradise Valley homeowner’s association.

Sellers Penalized For Unlawful $114 Million Investment In Social Media Business

January 17, 2022 ADI Staff Reporter

The Arizona Corporation Commission ordered Voice of Guo Media, Inc. (VGM) and Lihong Wei Lafrenz of Tucson to pay a $100,000 administrative penalty for defrauding investors in connection with a social media business.

The Commission found Lafrenz, also known as Sara Wei, offered and sold securities issued by GTV Media Group, Inc. (GTV), an entity controlled by Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Kwok or Miles Guo. Investors were told they would receive a return related to GTV’s social media business. However, Lafrenz and Voice of Guo Media, Inc. were not registered to offer or sell securities in Arizona.

The Commission found the respondents sold approximately $114 million in GTV stock to more than 4,500 investors from 39 countries, including U.S. investors from at least 37 states.

The Commission found the respondents promoted the stock offering in online chatrooms and through emails to investors, some of whom were accredited and non-accredited. There was no minimum investment amount to invest in the stock offering through VGM and investment amounts were generally in the amount of $100 or more.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also filed an action against Voice of Guo Media, Inc. and Lihong Wei Lafrenz, and has already ordered VGM to pay disgorgement to the SEC in its action.

 

© Associated Press/Jose Luis Magana

Happy Tuesday and welcome to On The Money, your nightly guide to everything affecting your bills, bank account and bottom line. 

Today’s Big Deal: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice's antitrust division have launched a new inquiry aimed at updating guidelines to block illegal mergers. We’ll also look at the Supreme Court’s recent rejection of a request to block a federal mask mandate for air travel.

But first, check out the massive asteroid passing by Earth today. 

For The Hill, we’re Sylvan Lane (slane@thehill.com), Aris Folley (afolley@thehill.com) and Karl Evers-Hillstrom (kevers@thehill.com).

Let’s get to it.

Feds launch inquiry amid surge in mergers

The FTC and Department of Justice's antitrust division on Tuesday launched a new inquiry aimed at updating guidelines to block illegal mergers.

The agencies are seeking public input to update guidelines over the next 60 days.

“Illegal mergers can inflict a host of harms, from higher prices and lower wages to diminished opportunity, reduced innovation and less resiliency,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement. 

• The inquiry comes amid a surge in new mergers, filings for which doubled between 2020 and 2021. 
• The two agencies tasked with antitrust enforcement spent 18 months reviewing their joint guidance on vertical mergers during the Trump administration. The FTC voted last fall to withdraw those guidelines on a party-line vote. 
• The Department of Justice separately said it intends to review guidelines for both vertical mergers — referring to acquisitions within the same supply chain — and horizontal ones, which deal with competitors.

The announcement Tuesday is one of the first major collaborations between Khan and Kanter, two nominees of President Biden who were strongly backed by progressives. 

The Hill’s Chris Mills Rodrigo has more here.

TRADING TROUBLES

Two-thirds of Americans support banning lawmakers from trading stocks: poll 

Sixty-seven percent of Americans support banning lawmakers from trading stocks, according to a new poll from progressive firm Data for Progress.

The poll, released on Tuesday, found that figure increased to 74 percent when respondents were given arguments for and against a ban.

Seventy-five percent of Democrats said they strongly or somewhat support a ban on lawmaker stock trading alongside 76 percent of independents and 70 percent of Republicans. 

• It follows another poll from the Trafalgar Group and conservative advocacy group Convention of States Action finding that 76 percent of voters believe that lawmakers and their spouses have an “unfair advantage” when trading stocks. 
• Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has said that lawmakers have the right to make private investments, but she recently announced that Congress may need stricter penalties for those who violate stock trading rules. 

Several lawmakers, including Sens. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) recently introduced bills to prevent members of Congress from trading stocks. 

Read more here from The Hill’s Olafimihan Oshin. 

DOES THAT INCLUDE ANTIVAXXERS
Wisconsin GOP Proposes Halting Unemployment Benefits to Those Who Turn Down Jobs

BY AARON MCDADE

ON 1/18/22 

Several Wisconsin Republican lawmakers have introduced legislation that would restrict the state's unemployment benefits, shortening the period they could be claimed and opening the possibility that benefits could be canceled if a recipient declines or skips a job interview, among other changes.

The lawmakers introduced several bills to address what they said is still a labor crisis in their state, according to The Associated Press.

"We have such an immense number of jobs available," Senate President Chris Kapenga said at a news conference introducing the bills, the AP reported. "The people who are on benefits are not in the workforce. We want to reduce that so we don't have dependency on government. No person has ever become prosperous and independent on a welfare check."

The Republicans also said they expect to pass the legislation by the end of next month because they have a majority in both chambers of the state legislature, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

However, it is unclear what future the bills would face if they make it to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, and a spokesperson for his office did not confirm to the Journal Sentinel whether Evers would veto the measures.

The bills cover a wide range of qualifications governing unemployment and state medical benefits, including requiring the Department of Workforce Development to audit at least 50 percent of the required employment search activity that benefit recipients are required to submit to prove they are looking for work.

Barricades are seen in front of the State Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin, on Jan. 17, 2021. Republican lawmakers in the state recently introduced legislation proposing changes to the state's unemployment benefits program.

KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Another key change would be connecting the state unemployment rate to the amount of time recipients can collect unemployment benefits. Currently, the benefits can be collected for 26 weeks and under the proposed legislation, the unemployment rate would have to be over 9 percent for recipients to be able to collect benefits for that long, according to the Journal Sentinel.

At the state's current reported unemployment rate of 3 percent, unemployment benefits would be available for 14 weeks.

The AP also reported that "able-bodied, childless adults" could lose Medicaid benefits if they turn down a job offer, and employers could report people who skip or reject job interviews, which could lead to their unemployment benefits being denied.

Last week, Republican lawmakers in the state also continued to push a bill that would allow people to use a prior COVID infection and recovery as immunity instead of a vaccine, and would allow people who are fired for not complying with vaccine mandates to still qualify for unemployment benefits, the Journal Sentinel reported.

Similar bills extending benefits to those who lose their jobs over being unvaccinated have been passed, discussed or enacted into law in at least five other Republican-led states, according to a December report from The Washington Post.

Upcoming study aims to gauge prevalence and impact of traumatic brain injury on juveniles in detention

By Micah Danney | 10 hours ago

U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Jason Couillard/Released

A U.S. Military neuropsychologist examines brains for traumatic injury,

which criminal justice researchers are exploring among Floridians in juvenile detention facilities.

Traumatic brain injury among juvenile offenders will be assessed as part of a three-year research project that’s slated to enroll the first of roughly 110 youth and young adult study participants in Florida as early as late January. Ultimately, the study aims to determine which TBI treatments might help keep those youth from cycling in and out of detention, complete their education and succeed at work.

The upcoming probe follows several previous studies suggesting that as many as 60% of men incarcerated in U.S. prisons had such head injuries. 

The research to detect TBIs in juveniles will involve youth from five Florida detention facilities run by Youth Opportunity Investments, a private company that says its rehabilitation programs are trauma-informed, taking into consideration detainees, physical, mental and behavioral histories. Its services include mental and behavioral health counseling.

“The systems need to be changed to accommodate these kids as they’re being reintroduced into the communities,” said Denny Armington, president of the Youth Opportunity Foundation, an independent arm of the private juvenile corrections company. “The real issue we’re trying to get at is recidivism because that is rampant, and if you don’t do anything to try to change that, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

Because the participating facilities are all-male, the study, conducted by University of South Florida researchers, will enroll 13- through 22-year-old men and boys, said Armington, a former rehabilitation hospital administrator. 

They will be selected from among hundreds of individuals screened for moderate and severe TBI as they are admitted to the juvenile facilities. The screening uses an assessment tool developed by Ohio State University that starts by asking interviewees to self-report if they have ever been hit in the head, been in a car accident, been involved in a fight or lost consciousness, for example. Researcher-clinicians will track the health of those diagnosed with such injuries from their entry through their release from juvenile facilities, when they will be linked with community-based clinicians who specialize in brain injury treatment. 

Partnering with the Florida Department of Vocational Rehabilitation, the research project also aims to demonstrate whether treating TBI, alongside ensuring that brain-injured youths who re-joining their communities also succeed in school, get a job and access to career development, will help lower rates of recidivism among that population.

Pediatric neuropsychologist: TBI treatment should be individualized

Individualized treatment is critical to helping young people with TBI recognize and manage their disability, said Gerard Gioia, neuropsychology chief at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C. He has studied and treated TBI in children for more than two decades, specializing in pediatric concussion and mild TBI and in disorders involving memory, self-control, ability to follow instructions and other so-called executive functioning skills.

If, for example, someone with pre-existing attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder suffers a concussion or mild TBI, he said, “… some of the impulsivity and that sort of thing gets kids in trouble. And depending on what sort of trouble they get in, you add on top of that a brain injury and now you’re multiplying, or certainly worsening” the situation.

Identifying TBI early is critical to providing effective interventions, and treatment needs to be tailored to patients’ individual needs, said Gioia, who heads his hospital’s Safe Concussion Outcome, Recovery & Education Program. Treatments can include keeping a concussed young person physically active to help that individual’s brain heal; and educating young people about what adversely affects TBI so that they might more readily avoid situations that trigger TBI symptoms. 

“Coming out of the justice system is tough enough,” Armington said. “When you have an injury like TBI, it’s tougher. If we don’t do anything about this, that will be a serious mistake on our behalf.”

He continued: “If this topic has been broached, it hasn’t been broached thoroughly. I’m not a clinician. But I continue to be amazed that this has not been a bigger deal.”

JJIE editor Katti Gray contributed to this report.