“Last week, the CEOs of American Airlines and Southwest Airlines told Congress that they do not think mask requirements make much sense on airplanes, where the air filtration systems are superior to what is typically found in an intensive care unit.
“I think the case is very strong that masks don’t add much, if anything, in the air cabin environment,” said Gary Kelly, CEO of Southwest. “It is very safe and very high quality compared to any other indoor setting.”
Unwilling to let anyone undermine the case for keeping a government mandate in place, White House coronavirus advisor Anthony Fauci threw cold water on the idea.
“You have to be wearing a mask on a plane,” he said bluntly on television Sunday.
When ABC News’ Jon Karl asked Fauci specifically if he thought we would ever reach the point where we did not need to wear masks on planes, he responded: “I don’t think so. I think when you’re dealing with a closed space, even though the filtration is good, that you want to go that extra step when you have people—you know, you get a flight from Washington to San Francisco, it’s well over a five-hour flight. Even though you have a good filtration system, I still believe that masks are a prudent thing to do, and we should be doing it.”
This is Faucism distilled down to its very essence. For the government health bureaucrats who have given themselves sole authority over vast sectors of American life—from travel to education to entertainment to housing—it doesn’t matter what the CEOs of these companies think. It doesn’t matter what their customers want. It doesn’t matter if maskless air travel is, for the most part, quite safe (especially for the vaccinated). It doesn’t matter if the mask mandate makes air travel impossible for families with young children. All that matters is the calculus of the most risk-averse people: unelected public health experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Like Fauci, NIH Director Frances Collins said this past weekend that air passengers should be masked—and should think twice about large gatherings, and even about going anywhere at all.”
“OSHA’s ETS, which it published on November 5, demands that companies with 100 or more employees require them to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or wear face masks and undergo weekly virus testing. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit stayed the ETS on November 6, citing “grave statutory and constitutional issues.” The 5th Circuit extended that stay a week later, when it said the mandate is “fatally flawed” because it “grossly exceeds OSHA’s statutory authority.”
After that ruling, the many lawsuits challenging the mandate were consolidated and assigned by lottery to the 6th Circuit, which the Biden administration asked to lift the 5th Circuit’s stay. In doing so, the 6th Circuit majority criticized the other appeals court for reaching hasty conclusions unsupported by precedent and for failing to properly consider the evidence that OSHA presented in favor of its mandate.
An emergency standard allows OSHA to circumvent the usual rule making process by publishing regulations that take effect immediately. But to avoid the public notice, comment, and hearing requirements that ordinarily apply to OSHA rules, the agency has to identify a “grave danger” to employees “from exposure to substances or agents determined to be toxic or physically harmful or from new hazards.” It also has to show the emergency standard is “necessary to protect employees from such danger.”
In her 6th Circuit majority opinion, Stranch has little trouble concluding that COVID-19 qualifies as an “agent” that is “physically harmful.” Citing the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, she says “an ‘agent’ is ‘a chemically, physically, or biologically active principle,'” while “a virus is defined, in part, as ‘any [of a] large group of submicroscopic infectious agents.'””
…
“Larsen opens her dissent by chiding Stranch for misrepresenting reality. “The majority opinion describes the emergency rule at issue here as permitting employers ‘to determine for themselves how best to minimize the risk of contracting COVID-19 in their workplaces,'” she writes. “With respect, that was the state of federal law before the rule, not after.”
Larsen also suggests that Stranch has pulled a bait and switch. “The majority opinion initially agrees…that an emergency standard must be more than ‘reasonably necessary’; it must be ‘essential,'” she writes. “But then that word, and the concept, disappear from the analysis. What starts as a demand for an ‘essential’ solution quickly turns into acceptance of any ‘effective’ or ‘meaningful’ remedy; and later, acquiescence to a solution with a mere ‘reasonable’ ‘relationship’ to the problem. The majority opinion never explains why ‘necessary’ undergoes such a metamorphosis.”
As Larsen sees it, OSHA “has not made the appropriate finding of necessity.” She notes that “OSHA’s mandate applies, in undifferentiated fashion, to a vast swath of Americans: 84 million workers, 26 million unvaccinated, with varying levels of exposure and risk.” OSHA has the burden of explaining “why the rule should apply to a large and diverse class,” she says, but the agency “does not do so.””
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“In some respects, Larsen thinks, OSHA’s judgments are inconsistent with the numbers it cites. “OSHA has determined that no vaccinated worker is in ‘grave danger,’ whereas all unvaccinated workers are,” Larsen writes. “But the government’s own data reveal that the death rate for unvaccinated people between the ages of 18 and 29 is roughly equivalent to that of vaccinated persons between 50 and 64. So an unvaccinated 18-year-old bears the same risk as a vaccinated 50-year-old. And yet, the 18-year-old is in grave danger, while the 50-year-old is not. One of these conclusions must be wrong; either way is a problem for OSHA’s rule.””
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/12/16/jan-6-gohmert-lawsuit-pence-524839
“The law, which takes effect Jan. 1, protects patients from receiving expensive bills for unexpected out-of-network care but doctors, hospitals and insurers are still at odds over which factors an independent arbitrator should rely on to decide who picks up the tab.
The outcome could swing billions of dollars in payments, significantly influence how doctors and hospitals negotiate prices with insurers and possibly affect premiums for millions of Americans.
“This is probably one of the most significant overhauls in the health system since the [Affordable Care Act] ACA,” said a spokesperson for the Coalition Against Surprise Medical Billing, which represents insurers, employer and union groups, and works with patient groups. “We certainly don’t see any end in sight in terms of the battle in making sure that these regs are implemented.”
The coalition supports the Biden administration’s interim final rule that instructs arbitrators to rely primarily on a single factor — the median in-network rate in a geographic area — when settling disputes between providers and payers. It has sponsored multiple six-figure digital ad-buys, including one that runs through Christmas, urging regulators to stay the course.”
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“Hospitals and doctors allege the Biden administration’s decision to emphasize the median in-network rate, a figure the insurance companies calculate, gives large insurers a huge advantage when negotiating how much a service should cost.
Insurers would have an incentive to keep the in-network rates lower to avoid paying more to out-of-network doctors. And they say payers would know doctors and hospitals have little recourse if they choose to remain outside an insurer’s network.
“Being out of network is really the physicians’ only control over how their contracts look,” said Randall Clark, the president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists. “If the insurance companies can treat us the same whether we’re in network or out of network, there is no impetus on the part of the insurance companies to negotiate fair contracts.”
Trade groups representing providers say the law lists several other factors that should be equally weighted when calculating how much a service costs, such as the doctor’s experience and the complexity of the procedure. While these metrics can still be introduced during the dispute resolution process, the Biden administration’s rules don’t give them as much weight as the median in-network rate metric, which providers say puts them at a disadvantage before the process even begins.”
“The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act effectively bans all imports from China’s Xinjiang region, where the U.S. government has said that the Chinese Communist Party is perpetrating a genocide against the religious minority, including slave labor, forced sterilizations and concentration camps. Under the terms of the bill, companies that produce goods in Xinjiang can be granted an exception if they show proof that those products are not made using forced labor.
“Many companies have already taken steps to clean up their supply chains,” Rubio said. “For those who have not done that, they’ll no longer be able to continue to make Americans — every one of us, frankly — unwitting accomplices in the atrocities, in the genocide that’s being committed by the Chinese Communist Party.””
“Cruz agreed to lift his holds on 32 nominees in exchange for the Senate voting in early January on his legislation to sanction the pipeline, which the U.S. opposes but decided not to sanction in order to preserve relations with Germany.
Cruz’s blockade, which began shortly after Biden took office, has stymied the Senate’s work on foreign policy nominations, drawing rebukes from Democrats who contend that Cruz was putting U.S. national security at risk.
“I think it’s perfectly reasonable for senators to try and get votes on policy issues that matter to them,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said in a brief interview. “What I think is perfectly unreasonable is that there are holds on dozens of ambassadors and senior nominees by several Republican senators. We have to have a path towards confirming qualified nominees.””
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/12/16/israel-emirati-rapprochement-biden-middle-east-problem-524851
“I spoke with current and former H-1B holders, U.S. workers, union reps, academics, lobbyists, recruiters and immigration lawyers on both sides of the political spectrum. While they differed on the specifics, many said that the program is used not to fill labor shortages, as corporations insist, but to cut costs. Critics say that businesses regularly game the system to pay H-1B visa holders below market wages, both exploiting foreign workers and stacking the deck against American job seekers.
As a candidate, President Joe Biden promised reform, saying “high skilled temporary visas should not be used to disincentivize recruiting workers already in the U.S. for in-demand occupations.” Now in office, his administration is considering increasing the wages companies have to pay H-1B workers, which would reduce the incentive for companies to hire foreign workers. This summer, it quietly — and unsuccessfully — defended in court a Trump-era rule that would have replaced the lottery system currently used to allocate visas with one that prioritizes the highest-paying jobs. Both Democratic senator Dick Durbin of Illinois and Republican senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa had long been calling for the change, saying in a joint letter that the “H-1B visa program is greatly in need of reform.”
But full scale reform is going to prove tricky for a president who campaigned as a champion for both workers and immigrants. Because while many pro-labor groups say the program lines the pockets of the likes of Google and Facebook at the expense of American workers, immigration advocates, along with business interests, oppose measures to rein it in, saying that doing so will hurt American competitiveness by narrowing access to a badly needed pipeline of high-skilled talent. Politically, H-1B reform is pegging two powerful Democratic constituencies against each other. Meanwhile, getting anything through a sharply divided Congress won’t be easy.”
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“H-1B reform could drastically change the landscape of business and immigration in the U.S. There are roughly 600,000 H-1B visa holders in the country, the vast majority from China and India. Most of these jobs are in tech, but companies can also use the program to hire, say, Spanish-language teachers or doctors with special skills.”
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“Proponents of the H1-B program say that U.S. firms need access to foreign STEM talent in order to remain competitive, an argument that hinges on the existence of a domestic labor shortage in the tech world. Unemployment in the tech sector is significantly lower than it is for the economy overall, which business groups say is evidence that domestic tech workers are doing pretty well and foreign workers are mostly filling demand above and beyond what the domestic workforce can supply.
The problem is, historically it’s not clear that there has been a labor shortage in tech. Skeptics point to the fact that median wages in the sector haven’t increased everywhere in the country, or all that dramatically. “What happens when there’s something in short supply?” said Ron Hira, an associate professor of political science at Howard University and research associate with the pro-labor Economic Policy Institute (EPI). “You have a price mechanism. In this case, it would be wages. So, anything in shortage you’d see wages going through the roof.” The fact that there haven’t been dramatic wage spikes, he says, suggests that claims of labor shortages in the U.S. are overblown.
Instead, Hira and others believe that corporations have become accustomed to paying below market wages through use of the H1-B program. Employers are required to pay H-1B workers the higher of either the actual wage paid to a worker in a comparable role at their company, or the average wage for similar workers based on occupation, geography and experience. Employers select this “prevailing wage” from four levels set by the Department of Labor.
But an analysis by EPI found that, in 2019, employers certified 60 percent of all H-1B jobs at the two lowest levels — leading to questions about whether corporations were classifying these jobs at artificially low levels to avoid paying higher wages.”
…
“Wages can be pushed down by other factors, too. H-1B visas are held by employers, which means there are restrictions on the free movement of labor. Foreign workers can’t simply leave the company if their wages aren’t competitive. “I felt like I had no option to negotiate whatsoever,” said a Pleasanton, Calif.-based former H-1B worker and now-green card holder who didn’t want to be identified for fear of professional repercussions. He guesses he was paid 25 to 35 percent less than his domestic counterparts as an H-1B worker.
“People who have been here for 10 years, or even some people who were born and brought up here who’ve been in good jobs making six figures, suddenly they’re losing their jobs just because [their employers] found somebody from India who would do it for $50,000,” said Choudhary.”
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“Some argue that the H1-B visa program lifts all boats: There is research showing that an increase in foreign STEM workers as a share of a city’s total employment increases wages for domestic workers more broadly. But for many workers, any aggregate benefits of the program are far outweighed by the costs. In 2015, Disney famously fired over 200 U.S. workers, some of whom said they were made to train their H1-B-holder replacements.”
…
“One of the biggest arguments made by tech and other companies against making it harder for foreigners to come in on an H-1B visa is that it would dissuade the “best and brightest” from coming to the U.S. But several of the people I spoke with said that’s not always the case. “It’s a mixed bag,” said the Pleasanton, Calif.-based former H-1B worker about the caliber of the H-1B visa holders he worked with.
In recent years, H-1Bs have been awarded by lottery because the number of visa applicants has far exceeded the annual cap. Immigration advocates say that this shows the scope of the need for high-skilled foreign workers. But critics say that has led to a proliferation of mediocre workers.
There’s also the problem of players who want to cheat the system.”
…
“H-1B visas are good for three years, after which workers may apply for an additional three year extension. After his six years were up, Vikram’s employer initiated the process of applying for a green card for him, but, because of an enormous backlog for people coming from India, the processing time was expected to last at least nine years.
Vikram decided it wasn’t worth it. He still works with his former employers — but now as part of his own business, which he runs from India, charging his American clients half the cost of a U.S. salary.”
…
““The focus on H-1B, as if it were the way that we get skilled workers into our economy — that’s an artifact of the misuse of the H-1B visa,” said Bruce Morrison, a former Democratic congressman who wrote the legislation that created the H1-B program. “The H-1B program is a non immigrant program. And non immigrant by definition is supposed to be temporary.”
His solution is to expand the current limit of 140,000 employment-based green cards per year. “We still have the same numerical limitations that we had in 1990,” said Morrison. Biden’s immigration bill includes a provision that would increase the number of employment-based green cards to 170,000.
“People who have green cards have a right to become citizens,” says Morrison. “They get to vote, they have the same rights as citizens, they can’t be exploited in a legal sense. These are real values.””
“Afghanistan’s government lost trust in the United States because of the Trump administration’s negotiations with the Taliban and the Biden administration’s insistence on withdrawing its forces, a former Afghan official said Sunday in describing his government’s collapse earlier this year.”
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“Mohib told Brennan the decision was made to leave when it became clear that the military had largely melted away and the police had not shown up for work. “We had to make a decision that was right for Afghanistan,” Mohib said.
For his part, Mohib said the Afghan government expected more from the United States, but that his country was betrayed by the U.S. government negotiating with the Taliban independently.
“What happened was the rug was pulled under the Afghans’ feet,” he said, adding: “The decision to talk directly and engage the Taliban and make a deal with the Taliban that didn’t include the Afghan government was protested.””
“Outgoing New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is urging the Biden administration to send help as the Covid-19 Omicron variant rises dramatically in the city’s five boroughs.
The variant’s lightning-fast spread in the city forced the cancellation of Radio City Music Hall’s annual “Christmas Spectacular” over the weekend and led Saturday Night Live to broadcast without a live studio audience and with a smaller cast.
De Blasio said the White House should invoke the Defense Production Act to help provide a larger number of at-home tests as well as monoclonal antibody treatments. He also said the Biden administration should fast-track approval of an antiviral pill from Pfizer.
“We need help now … and we need a surge of support in terms of monoclonal antibody treatments,” de Blasio said at a briefing on Sunday. “We need more made available for New York City.””