“Specifically, much of Russia’s political positioning to launch an incursion into Ukrainian territory is based on Putin’s claim that Ukraine — like Russia, a former Soviet state — is an extension of Russia, the “little brother” that has been led astray by the West and must be reincorporated into the family. Thus, he sees Ukraine’s increasing westward turn as a provocation, by both Ukraine and NATO.
In reality, however, Ukraine has long been distinct from Russia, experts told Vox, and Putin’s current mythologizing of the Russia-Ukraine relationship fits a pattern of falsehoods designed to reconstitute imperial glory, and more importantly, to shield Putin from the threat of democracy in former Soviet republics — and possibly in Russia itself.
That fear informs the potential conflict brewing along the Ukrainian border, Maria Snegovaya, a visiting scholar at George Washington University’s Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, told Vox via email.
“It looks like Putin is committed to preventing the deepening cooperation between Ukraine and the US/the West,” Snegovaya said, “which he views as Russia losing Ukraine.”
Snegovaya points to a 2021 essay by Putin, titled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” as an example of his thinking.
In the essay, Putin called the two nations “essentially the same historical and spiritual space,” tracing his notion of a shared history back more than a thousand years. That assertion, though, elides a long history of differences between the two countries, and even more significantly, flies in the face of current Ukrainian attitudes, which favor membership in both NATO and the EU, (though neither is likely in the near future).”
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“Putin’s argument, as he lays it out in his 2021 essay, hinges on the idea that both nations descend from an early princedom called Kyivan Rus, which encompassed some of modern-day Ukraine and stretched north into the Baltic countries. But the historical ties between that entity and what was then Muscovy — part of modern-day Russia — aren’t particularly significant, and the idea that modern Russia evolved from Kyivan Rus doesn’t carry much weight, Jensen said.”
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“Ukraine, for its part, is distinct from Russia in many ways and has been influenced by a number of different cultures, including by Central European countries in the west, and present-day Greece and Turkey in the south. Over the centuries Ukraine was also conquered by a number of different groups, including the Mongols, Lithuanians, Poles, Austrians, and Swedes, as well as, eventually, the Russian Empire during the reign of Catherine the Great.”
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“Although Ukraine had been part of the Russian empire at various points in history, Soviet propaganda cemented the idea, at least in older generations of Ukrainians, that their country was intertwined with the Soviet Union, and indeed was “Little Russia,” as Volodymyr Kravchenko explains in Harvard’s journal of Ukrainian studies, though in reality Ukrainian nationalism existed in some form throughout the 20th century.
In the present day, Putin’s insistence that Russia and Ukraine are historically and “spiritually” the same country allows him to push another narrative — that Ukraine’s openness to joining NATO and increasing alliances with the US and European countries is both a betrayal and somehow disingenuous, a sinister plot to tear the two nations apart.”
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“The Budapest agreement saw Ukraine hand over its nuclear weapons to Russia for disposal in exchange for security assurances from the Kremlin, the US, and the UK. Under that agreement, the US assured Ukraine not only that it would respect the country’s borders and sovereignty, but also that it would respond should Russia not abide by the agreement.
Later, the Orange Revolution in 2004 — in which the Kremlin’s preferred candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, lost a closely monitored election held after protests against Yanukovych’s attempt to steal the initial presidential election — marked a turning point in Ukrainian politics, away from Russia and toward democratic institutions. While Yanukovych did eventually come to power in 2010, Ukrainian society had made a decisive break with the past by that point, and pro-democracy reforms in response to the 2004 protests contributed to Yanukovych’s downfall in 2014.
Then, the Euromaidan revolution, which began after Yanukovych backed out of a trade agreement with the EU in 2013, eventually forced Yanukovych to flee to Russia the following year. According to Peter Dickinson, writing for the Atlantic Council, both the Orange Revolution and Euromaidan “underlined Ukraine’s European choice and cemented the country’s rejection of a Russian reunion.””
“the Supreme Court handed down a pair of unsigned opinions that appear to be at war with each other.
The first, National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of Labor, blocks a Biden administration rule requiring most workers to either get vaccinated against Covid-19 or to routinely be tested for the disease. The second, Biden v. Missouri, backs a more modest policy requiring most health care workers to get the vaccine.
There are some things that differentiate the two cases. Beyond the fact that the first rule is broader than the second, the broader rule also relies on a rarely used provision of federal law that is restricted to emergencies, while the latter rule relies on a more general statute.
But the Court gives little attention to substantive differences between the laws authorizing both rules. Instead, it applies an entirely judicially created doctrine and other standards in inconsistent ways. The result is two opinions that are difficult to reconcile with each other.
The NFIB case relies heavily on something known as the “major questions doctrine,” a judicially invented doctrine which the Court says places strict limits on a federal agency’s power to “exercise powers of vast economic and political significance.” As the NFIB opinion notes, the vaccinate-or-test rule at issue in NFIB applies to “84 million Americans” — quite understandably a matter of vast economic significance.
But, if this manufactured doctrine is legitimate, then it’s not at all clear why it doesn’t apply with equal force in both cases. As Justice Clarence Thomas points out in a dissenting opinion in the Missouri case, the more modest health workers’ rule “has effectively mandated vaccination for 10 million healthcare workers.” That’s still an awful lot of Americans!
What if the Biden administration had pushed out a rule requiring 20 million people to get vaccinated? Or 50 million? The Court does not tell us just how many millions of Americans must be impacted by a rule for it to count as a matter of “vast economic and political significance.” And it’s hard to draw a legally principled distinction between 10 million workers and 84 million.
Similarly, in NFIB, the Court notes that the agency which created the broad rule at issue in that case is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) which, as its name suggests, deals with health threats that arise in the workplace, and Covid-19 is not unique to the workplace. “COVID–19 can and does spread at home, in schools, during sporting events, and everywhere else that people gather,” the majority opinion notes.
But, as the three liberal justices point out in dissent, OSHA regulates threats that exist both inside and outside the workplace all the time, including “risks of fire, faulty electrical installations, and inadequate emergency exits.” It’s not at all clear why Covid-19 is any different. And the only explanation that the majority opinion gives — that a vaccination “cannot be undone at the end of the workday,” unlike the donning of fire-safety gear — applies with equal force to both the OSHA rule and the narrow health worker’s rule that the Court refused to block. Doctors’ vaccinations can’t be undone any more than an office worker’s can be.
The Court, in other words, appears unable to articulate a principled reason why some vaccination rules should stand and others should fall.”
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“The opinions suggest that the Court will uphold rules that five of its members think are good ideas, and strike down rules that five of its members think are bad ideas.”
“the first seditious conspiracy charges in the investigation so far, and the first the Justice Department has brought in more than a decade. Seditious conspiracy isn’t the same as treason, but it’s also not terribly far off; as former federal prosecutor Laurence Tribe wrote for NBC News on Saturday, the “crime is, in effect, treason’s sibling.”
Specifically, seditious conspiracy occurs when two or more people work together to plan to overthrow the government or prevent the execution of its laws.
In the case against Rhodes and his alleged co-conspirators, the government presented evidence in the charging documents that shortly after the November 3, 2020, election, Rhodes told his followers, “Prepare your mind, body, and spirit” because, “We aren’t getting through this without a civil war.” In December, Rhodes promised a “bloody, massively bloody revolution” should a peaceful transfer of power occur, and in the lead-up to the Capitol riot purchased thousands of dollars’ worth of weapons, ammunition, and related tactical gear.
Other defendants in the case are alleged to have set up paramilitary training groups and created private Signal groups to discuss their operations, including procuring weapons and establishing a quick reaction force outside the DC area to bring in additional insurrectionists and weapons.”
“I’m very supportive of efforts to either essentially bribe localities into doing the right thing through a Race to the Top program if you don’t reduce exclusionary zoning. I think that’s a good effort, but I think that the Economic Fair Housing Act offers something both substantively and politically that’s better.
I think part of the problem with the existing federal proposals is that they suggest that exclusionary zoning is bad policy because it blocks opportunity and makes housing less affordable and damages the planet. All of those things are true, but what I think the Economic Fair Housing Act tries to do is say it’s not just bad policy, it’s immoral for governments to erect barriers that exclude and discriminate based on income … because it’s shameful what’s going on.”
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“In the 21st century, segregated communities are kept that way not through laws that explicitly attempt to keep certain areas white but through a more insidious method — exclusionary zoning and land-use regulations that make it illegal to build affordable types of housing, laws that allow wealthy Americans to block things from being built, and a failure to consistently use federal civil rights laws to desegregate.
All of this has resulted in the prices of housing and rent skyrocketing. Over the last year, diminished supply as a result of these laws has pushed the cost of shelter higher than ever, straining the pockets of working-class, middle-class, and even some high-income Americans.”
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“In certain communities, there is still an intent to segregate by race, so I don’t want to downplay that, but having said that, there’s certainly evidence that the issue of exclusionary zoning is not only about race.
We know in predominantly white communities that wealthy whites will use zoning to exclude lower-income whites. We also know, for example, in Prince George’s County, Maryland, a predominantly Black community, that there are efforts by wealthier Black people to exclude lower-income Black people through exclusionary zoning.
In some white, liberal communities, you will hear people say they are delighted to have a Black doctor or lawyer move in next door. And so they feel virtuous for no longer excluding directly based on race, without acknowledging that they’d be highly uncomfortable with working-class Black people or white people moving into the neighborhood.
So I think it’s important that we recognize that there’s exclusion going on by both race and class, which is why we need some new tools to beef up the existing laws.”
“Before the pandemic, the flu alone could sometimes push hospital systems into crisis mode, where they cancel elective procedures and limit other kinds of care. Now there’s Covid-19, which has done the same thing on its own.
Suddenly conjuring more hospital capacity every winter to handle the expected surges of flu and Covid-19 is not going to happen. Thousands of additional hospital beds are not coming in the next few years, and the US would not have the doctors and nurses to staff them anyway. It will take much longer — years or maybe decades — to improve the gaps in America’s health care infrastructure and workforce that have been exposed during Covid-19.
This means the imperative to “flatten the curve,” to limit the spread of these viruses to stop hospitals from being overwhelmed, will be with us for a long time. But the makeup of the curve will change, measuring multiple diseases instead of one.”
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“Vaccination is the best way to stop a bad Covid-and-flu season before it starts.”
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“Surveillance is critical, starting with early-warning systems. Public health institutions have long monitored the flu and they are already tracking Covid-19 in a similar manner. Monitoring the amount of virus detected in local wastewater has proven to be a reliable leading indicator of new Covid-19 waves during the pandemic. And widespread, reliable testing will be essential — including at-home tests for both Covid-19 and the flu.”
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“Frequent testing lets people know that they should isolate. If they are at higher risk of severe illness, they can get on antivirals quickly. The current therapies are most effective at stopping serious symptoms that could require hospitalization if they are taken within the first few days of an illness. Research in the last decade has found that flu antivirals are too often underprescribed for patients who would benefit most; improving prescription rates is only more critical now that the health system will be contending with both the flu and Covid-19 going forward.”
“Another question is whether, in going for broke trying to pass their dream bill, Democrats will have missed an opportunity to get less sweeping but still significant reforms enacted. Washington is abuzz with news that some Republican senators want to engage in talks about reforming the Electoral Count Act — the law Trump tried to use to get Congress and Vice President Pence to throw out Biden’s wins in key states. Yet leading Democrats like Schumer have so far voiced skepticism of those efforts.
Whether any GOP reform offer is worthwhile depends on the details, and it’s possible no deal will come together. But right now, the alternative appears to be getting no reforms at all.
The unpleasant reality for Democrats is that they’ll only be in a position to pass the agenda they say is necessary if they manage to win more elections. Yet their prospects for doing that in 2022 look bleak, considering Biden’s grim approval numbers. There’s still a chance to make the bipartisan deals they can now, and try to win more elections later. But the time for tilting at windmills is drawing to a close.”
“What’s 5G got to do with airplanes? Not much, argue the wireless carriers hoping to deploy the technology. But the FAA says it’s worried that C-band could interfere with some radio altimeters, aircraft safety tools that rely on nearby airwaves. The agency is so concerned that it’s been fighting to delay 5G deployment and has issued guidance that could cause flight cancellations from airports operating near certain 5G antennas, meaning that anyone who flies or has one of these devices could be affected.
Just hours before the launch of the new 5G signals, Verizon and AT&T also agreed to delay the rollout of C-band within two miles of certain airport runways, though the expansion of 5G service will go forward everywhere else. The latest compromise came just a day after the CEOs of 10 of the largest US airlines wrote to Pete Buttigieg warning that the “nation’s commerce will grind to a halt” due to the FAA’s new rules.
“This agreement will avoid potentially devastating disruptions to passenger travel, cargo operations, and our economic recovery, while allowing more than 90 percent of wireless tower deployment to occur as scheduled,” said President Joe Biden in a statement on Tuesday. “This agreement protects flight safety and allows aviation operations to continue without significant disruption and will bring more high-speed internet options to millions of Americans.”
To keep disruptions to a minimum, the FAA is analyzing how individual altimeter models work when C-band is turned on. The agency said on January 16 that it had approved two altimeters used in many Airbus and Boeing airplanes, which cleared about 45 percent of the US commercial airline fleet to fly when these new 5G frequencies are turned on.”
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“The problem is altimeters rely on parts of the spectrum that neighbor the airwaves used by the C-band. In a nightmare scenario, the FAA thinks that signals sent over C-band could interfere with these altimeters — specifically older altimeters — creating a potential safety issue. Meanwhile, the Federal Communications Commission already determined that 5G would not pose a problem for modern altimeters, and similar 5G technology has already been deployed in Europe with no issue.”
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“the FAA is continuing to lift restrictions on aircraft, one by one, as airlines prove their altimeters can work when C-band is turned on.”
“”I asked Wharton students what they thought the average American worker makes per year and 25% of them thought it was over six figures,” she tweeted…”One of them thought it was $800k.”
As she estimates the real answer is around $45,000 a year, Strohminger has a hard time wrapping her head around what some Wharton students believed was an average wage.
“Really not sure what to make of this,” she wrote.
Neither did the Internet.
Strohminger’s tweet set off a range of reactions from experts and observers wondering if this classroom interaction accurately reflected what future business leaders think about the state of wages in the United States.
“People tend to believe that the typical person is closer to themselves financially than what it is in reality,” Ken Jacobs, the chair of the University of California at Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education, told The Washington Post. “It is an odd notion in America that people think of $200,000 or $100,000 as a typical wage when it is quite a bit above.”
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According to the Social Security Administration, the average U.S. annual wage last year actually was $53,383, with the median wage at $34,612. The Labor Department reported that median weekly earnings in the fourth quarter of last year were $1,010, which comes out to an annual wage of $52,520, according to MarketWatch.”
“what’s really worth paying attention to are Biden’s goals for offshore wind power, which is an important energy source for regions like the northeastern US that lack the space and ample sunlight that solar energy depends on. It’s here that the new plan goes from mundane to ambitious, and it may be an indicator of how the administration intends to address issues related to climate change, energy, and jobs at the same time.”
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“As of today, the US has only seven offshore wind turbines — five in a wind farm off Rhode Island’s Block Island, and two more set up as tests in Virginia. But on February 23, the federal government will auction offshore wind leases to utilities or offshore wind energy developers in an ocean region called the New York Bight, off the coasts of New York and New Jersey. The holders of those leases will then be able to set up wind farms in the area that generate up to 7 gigawatts of energy — enough to power about 2 million homes — which would require 600 to 700 turbines.”
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“Those 600 or 700 wind turbines will require people to build turbine components, ship them out to sea, and maintain them once they’re set up. To make that happen, the White House and Transportation Department are aiming to create nearly 80,000 offshore wind-related jobs by 2030 by investing in ports across the Eastern Seaboard — some as far inland as Albany, New York, from where turbine parts will be shipped down the Hudson River to the New York Bight.”
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“The turbines, fishers say, could negatively affect marine life. They’re also concerned that turbine towers may interfere with radar, while no-sail safety zones in the vicinity of turbines may affect their ability to reach fishing areas. The long-term impacts of wind turbines on marine life still aren’t clear, but a study in Europe’s North Sea showed turbine bases may act as artificial reefs for animals like mussels. Late last year, the Energy Department awarded Duke University a $7.5 million grant to study offshore wind’s impact on marine life, the results of which should provide a fuller picture of how turbines might affect fisheries. In the meantime, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is looking for workarounds, which is why the sale notice for the New York Bight includes provisions aimed at helping fishers, such as 2.8-mile-wide transit lanes for fishing vessels.”
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“The challenges don’t end there: Even if the wind turbines do get built, and even if their potential impacts on marine life are minimized, there has to be somewhere for the energy they produce to go. Transmission lines — those high-voltage cables you see strung up on steel struts across vast stretches of the country — are usually built by regional transmission organizations, and Jacobs says there might not be enough of them to carry all the energy produced by those new turbines.
This is exactly the issue Germany faced in 2020, when a lack of transmission capacity in Northern Germany meant the region had to send some of its wind power to neighboring countries instead. “They had a whole lot of offshore wind arrive at the beach,” Jacobs said. “And then the German utility industry said, ‘Oh, we hadn’t really prepared for this.’”
The Biden administration seems to want to avoid having a similar situation happen in the United States. That’s why the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law includes funding for transmission lines, and the administration announced the Energy Department is launching an initiative called Building a Better Grid that will act as a sort of central planning authority for grid improvements. But it’s unclear if that transmission buildout will happen by the time offshore wind gets up and running in the New York Bight — and the administration makes no mention of distribution lines, or the lower-voltage wires that bring electricity to homes and businesses. Those are usually built in the US by local utilities, explained Kyri Baker, assistant professor of engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, and they’re often only replaced once they become completely inoperable.”