Biden’s team wants EU allies to get real on ‘strategic autonomy’
““I sat through many, many defense ministerials when I was working at the Pentagon and was here in Brussels, where every defense minister around the table would all be in violent agreement about the need to spend more on defense and have a more modern capable military,” said Chollet, who has spent more than a quarter-century working on U.S. diplomacy inside and outside of government, including stints at the State Department, White House and Pentagon.
“But then all those defense ministers would have to go back to their parliaments, to their governments and have to defend those budgets or advocate for those budgets, and they were not successful,” he added. “And that’s a dynamic that still exists here.”
Chollet said that if European allies were finally ready to get serious, Washington would be more than happy to provide guidance about the types of capabilities to start building up.”
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“Traveling around the world, he said he sensed that America had not lost its luster.
“There is still a very strong demand signal for American leadership,” he said. “Whether it’s in Bosnia, where I just was, whether it’s in Southeast Asia, where I was three weeks ago, whether it’s in Libya and Tunisia, where I was six weeks ago: People want more of the United States. They want our presence. They want our leadership.”
And that, he said, he tells friends at home is not to be taken for granted: “The U.S. in that position is unique. There are not many countries that you can say that about, if any actually around the world. There’s not a lot of people wanting more of China.””
The U.S. Approach to Ukraine’s Border War Isn’t Working. Here’s What Biden Should Do Instead.
“U.S. policy has generally been to offer sticks to Moscow and carrots to Kyiv. Successive administrations have tried to use coercive instruments—largely sanctions or the threat of them—to incentivize Russia to withdraw forces from rebel-held areas of the Donbas and deter further incursions. In parallel, Washington supports Kyiv economically, politically and militarily. The assumption is that the U.S. can coerce Russia into backing down by threatening consequences while strengthening Ukraine’s defenses and anchoring it to the West.”
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“But Moscow’s current military buildup has been accompanied by dramatically tougher rhetoric in recent months, suggesting that this time is different. President Vladimir Putin may believe Ukraine is at an inflection point and that it’s time to up the ante. The risk of a major war seems real enough to justify a new U.S. approach. The current policy of threatening punishments and bolstering Kyiv might be morally justified, but it is highly unlikely to alter Putin’s calculus. The Biden administration should accept the unsatisfying reality that it will likely not be able to coerce Putin to de-escalate if he is determined to act. America’s leverage is limited.
Where the United States does have significant leverage is with Ukraine—and this leverage is largely untapped. Rather than focusing only on coercing Russia, the Biden administration should also push Kyiv to take steps toward implementing its obligations under the Minsk II agreement, which Ukraine has shown little desire to do since the deal was brokered six years ago. Ukrainian steps toward complying with the agreement, flawed as it is, might actually invite de-escalation from Russia and reinvigorate the languishing peace process.
The threats against Ukraine implicit in Russia’s troop buildup are morally reprehensible and contrary to Moscow’s international commitments. But to avoid a war, persuading Kyiv to make the first move might be our best hope.”
The coalition of rebel forces taking on Ethiopia’s government, explained
https://www.vox.com/2021/11/7/22768365/ethiopia-capital-rebel-coalition-tplf-civil-war-explained?fbclid=IwAR0DvUc6fJ_XW2unCieuDDGjKaRAon9VnqEgGRZToDXUjOh7PhgRo70n4bY
Why the US nursing crisis is getting worse
https://www.vox.com/coronavirus-covid19/22763417/us-covid-19-hospitals-nurses-shortage
Why are rich countries still monopolizing Covid-19 vaccines?
“Vaccines aren’t distributed equally: Rich countries have about twice the population of low-income countries, yet they have received about 50 times as many Covid-19 vaccine doses”
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“Hoarding and production constraints are part of the story, but so are less-appreciated obstacles like clogged supply chains and breakdowns in communication between vaccine makers, donors, and recipients. These problems are solvable, however, and countries like the United States are uniquely positioned to contribute.”
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“Countries that are counting on Covid-19 vaccine imports, whether through donations or purchases, are often in the dark about when and where rich countries and pharmaceutical companies will ship their doses”
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“the United Kingdom donated 9 million Covid-19 vaccine doses to low-income countries this summer, but several of the countries receiving them warned that they would not be able to distribute most of them in time. Many vaccines have a limited shelf life, and donated vaccines are often close to expiration. In May, Malawi was forced to discard 20,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccines because the country’s health system could not administer them before the shots expired.”
The chip shortage has a silver lining
“Manufacturers haven’t overcome the worldwide semiconductor shortage. Gaming consoles like the PlayStation 5 are still scarce, automakers are delivering cars with missing features, and Apple may end up producing 10 million fewer iPhones in 2021. For a few companies, however, these supply chain woes may have an unexpected upside.
The manufacturing delays abroad and relentless demand for consumer electronics have turned into a windfall for some chipmakers in the United States. Even lesser-known American manufacturers with aging or secondhand equipment have seen a surge in sales for the legacy chips, or microcontrollers, they produce. These parts are inexpensive to make but are a critical component for many devices, and as supply chain troubles have affected larger companies that focus on more advanced technologies, demand for the more basic chips has grown. Flush with customers, the companies that make these microcontrollers are now on a spending spree to boost their overall manufacturing capacity.”
Democrats have no plan to fight housing inflation
“Over the course of the pandemic, home prices have skyrocketed; the underlying issue is simply that there are not enough homes for the people who need them (in particular in the places where people need to live for their jobs). This supply crisis is forcing a growing number of people to bid on a small number of available homes, thus increasing prices.
But not all “housing investments” are created equal. Generally, there are two ways you can attack an affordability crisis: 1) You work to make the item itself less expensive (supply-side policies), or 2) You give people more money to be able to afford the item (demand-side policies).
Both have their place in policymaking. But if you pursue demand-side policies when you are facing a massive supply shortage, you end up increasing prices, not decreasing them. And the nation is facing an estimated 3.8 million unit shortage.”
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“The major constraint on building housing in the places where people are demanding it the most is zoning laws. These laws restrict what kinds of homes can be built and where, and regulate the size of homes to the point that smaller or “starter” homes are becoming incredibly scarce. For instance, a law mandating that lots of land be no less than 4,000 square feet means that starter homes (smaller than 1,400 square feet) are illegal. The history behind these laws is complicated, but essentially they are a way for some homeowners to block change in their communities, and in their original form were a tool of segregationists.
Beyond even small, single-family homes, it is illegal in most of the United States to build duplexes or small apartment buildings that could bring down the cost of housing. The White House has repeatedly acknowledged this problem, but in the Build Back Better bill, Democrats have metaphorically thrown up their hands, abrogating responsibility for the driving force behind skyrocketing home prices.
The best way to have tackled this problem would have been to tie the dollars in the bipartisan infrastructure framework to zoning reform. Iowa law professor Greg Shill suggested tying existing highway dollars to zoning reform, quipping that “there’s no reason Iowans should be subsidizing a highway from Silicon Valley to SF when the Valley makes it illegal to build homes under $1M.”
Essentially, if California wants federal dollars to build highways or transit, it’s going to need to reform policies like parking minimums and minimum lot sizes to get it. Instead, states are being handed money from the federal government to construct transportation networks that exclude large swaths of the American public from using them.
The federal government has held highway funding hostage for other reasons in the past — notably was the 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which “requires that States prohibit persons under 21 years of age from purchasing or publicly possessing alcoholic beverages as a condition of receiving State highway funds.” President Ronald Reagan also conditioned highway dollars on setting a national minimum speed limit; this was later repealed, which one study shows may have cost over 12,500 lives
If Democrats are serious about attacking housing inflation, they should put real money into incentivizing states to hold localities accountable. States are ultimately in control of local zoning policy “
Hating work is having a moment
“Many had expected people to return to the workforce en masse after federal unemployment benefits expired in September. While that’s happened to some degree — the economy added more than half a million jobs last month — there are still many more Americans holding out, thanks to a variety of reasons, from savings to lack of child care to the ongoing risks of the pandemic.
Importantly, the pandemic — as well as government social safety nets like extended unemployment benefits — gave people the time, distance, and perspective to reevaluate the place of work in their lives.”
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“There are still more than 4 million fewer people in the workforce than there would be if labor force participation were at pre-pandemic levels. There are 10.4 million open jobs and just 7.4 million unemployed, according to the latest data. Of course, many of these open jobs are bad: They have bad pay, dangerous working conditions, or just aren’t remote (remote positions on LinkedIn get 2.5 times more applications than non-remote, according to the company).
The result is a situation where many employers — especially those in industries with notoriously bad pay and conditions — are having difficulty finding and retaining workers. To counter it, they’re raising wages, offering better benefits, and even altering the nature of their work. Depending on their strength and duration, these various actions could have long-lasting impacts on the future of work for all Americans.”
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“In September, a high of 4.4 million people quit their jobs, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which has been tracking this data since 2000. That’s 3 percent of all employment and follows a summer of record quit numbers. Quitting has been especially prevalent in lower-paying, lower-status jobs like those in leisure, hospitality, and retail.”
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“In 2021, approval of labor unions grew to 68 percent of Americans, its highest rate in more than 50 years. This is happening as many American workers are attempting to unionize their workplaces. Recent unionization efforts include Starbucks, Amazon, and meal-kit delivery service HelloFresh. Last month was dubbed “Striketober,” as more than 100,000 workers across industries, including workers at John Deere and in film and TV crews, participated in various labor actions. This is one of the many worker trends bulwarked by social media, which is rampant with support for unions.”
How a simple solution slashed child mortality in rural Kenyan villages
“a large-scale experiment called WASH Benefits, which randomly selected certain villages in rural Kenya to receive a variety of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) programs, while other villages served as a control group.
The experiment tried a bunch of different WASH interventions, including more sanitary latrines, programs promoting hand-washing with soap, nutrition supplements for young children, and more.
One tactic in particular jumped out: adding a simple chlorine solution to drinking water.”
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“Water chlorination is standard in developed countries these days; America’s experience began in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1908, at the instigation of a doctor named John L. Leal. Chlorine is a powerful disinfectant, and in the US context, doses of chlorinated solution safe for human consumption proved particularly powerful at killing the bacteria that caused typhoid fever in the water supply.
Other cities and states copied Leal’s advance, and typhoid deaths plummeted. In Massachusetts, for instance, a state for which good records exist, the death rate from typhoid fell by over 99 percent between 1905 and 1945, driven by cleaner water and increased vaccination.
It wasn’t just typhoid. Chlorination and other clean-water programs played a huge role in the fall in overall mortality and child mortality in the US over the 20th century.”
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“The new study on chlorination in Kenya used data collected in 2018 on the deaths of all children in the target villages born after January 2008, and compared death rates in villages that got these chlorine dispensers four to six years earlier to those in villages that didn’t get them.
The results were astonishing: Mortality for children under 5 fell by 63 percent. The baseline death rate for children under 5 in the control villages was a horrific 2.23 percent — more than one in 50 children died before their fifth birthdays.
Providing chlorine cut that rate to 0.82 percent, or less than one in 100.
To be sure, that’s still far too high; in the US in 2019, the under-5 death rate was about 0.13 percent. But cutting child mortality by more than half is a huge achievement.”