“In all the coronavirus coverage, one issue that rarely makes the headlines is the correlation between body weight and the severity of COVID-19’s effects. And one angle that virtually never makes the headlines is how the government funds the unhealthy foods that increase obesity rates, thereby increasing our susceptibility to such diseases.
Last month the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a study showing that nearly 80 percent of those hospitalized with COVID-19 were overweight or obese. After age, body weight is the second greatest predictor of COVID-related hospitalization and death. Almost three quarters of all Americans ages 20 and up are overweight, and close to half of that group is considered obese.”
…
“Not only is the U. S. government not making any efforts to reduce the obesity epidemic, it is actively subsidizing food that contributes to the problem. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends that people fill half their plate with fruits and vegetables, yet the vast majority of its food subsidies—$170 billion from 1995 to 2010—go toward the major ingredients of junk food, such as corn, wheat, rice, soy, and milk.”
…
“We have the power to make real changes in the way we eat and move. The government could help that process by taking its thumb off the scale and ceasing to subsidize these foods.”
“Federal prosecutors’ show of leniency for some defendants charged in the long-running unrest in the streets of Portland could have an impact on similar criminal cases stemming from the Capitol riot, lawyers say.
In recent weeks, prosecutors have approved deals in at least half a dozen federal felony cases arising from clashes between protesters and law enforcement in Oregon last summer. The arrangements — known as deferred resolution agreements — will leave the defendants with a clean criminal record if they stay out of trouble for a period of time and complete a modest amount of community service, according to defense attorneys and court records.”
…
“prosecutors in D.C. can argue that what happened there is more serious even if the physical actions of the defendants were comparable.
“Attacking the Capitol is sui generis — it’s in a category of its own,” Levenson said. “One is the seat of government and the other is not.””
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/18/coal-country-revitalization-biden-482659
“One of the first things on the agenda this year for Kentucky Republicans was figuring out how to kneecap Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear. They dropped legislation in January that placed new limits on the governor’s emergency executive powers, quickly passed the bill, overrode his veto and then fought him in court.
In the months that have followed, lawmakers across the country — from Maine to California, Oregon to Florida — have proposed and, in many cases, passed similar measures to curtail the sweeping powers bestowed on their state executives.”
…
“Most governors insisted throughout the crisis that they were being guided by evolving science and trying to navigate uncertain terrain as best they could. But patience appears to have worn out for many legislators consigned to the backseat.”
…
“In some states, it has been a continuation of philosophical differences that have played out over the course of the still-ongoing pandemic. That dynamic has been particularly evident in places sporting Democratic governors contending with GOP-controlled statehouses like Kentucky, Kansas and Michigan, where conservative outrage over Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s pandemic mandates put her in physical danger last year.
But for other governors, it has been members of their own party who have been the ones trying to wrestle back control and deliver emphatic rebukes of their state’s leadership, as was the case in New York and Ohio last month.”
…
“Generally speaking, however, the GOP has tilted far more toward limiting what governors are allowed to do by law than Democrats to date.”
“The foreign hackers behind the massive cybersecurity failures dominating recent headlines had one critical strategy in common — they leased computers in the United States to burrow into their victim’s networks. Because U.S. cybersecurity systems don’t regard domestic connections as inherently suspect, the attackers were able to hide in plain sight. Like secretive investors deploying a series of shell companies and trusts to mask true ownership, Russia, China and other sophisticated nations effect cyber-maliciousness through a series of intermediary, innocuous-looking internet servers.”
…
“No government agency — even our powerful spy agencies — currently has a sufficiently agile legal authority to catch foreign cyber malefactors in the act of co-opting U.S. computer networks. The National Security Agency is allowed to surveil only foreign actors; pursuing them on the home front is the job of the FBI. But by the time the NSA notices suspicious foreign activity and hands the case off to the FBI, it’s often too late. The foreign malware might well have been injected into American networks, and the FBI investigation simply confirms that now-dormant internet servers in the U.S. were used by foreigners to stage their attacks.”
…
“The difficulty lies in resolving deeply felt concerns over any increase in government surveillance authority, no matter how important the purpose. We are also paralyzed by a sense of fatalism that cyber vulnerabilities are simply the price we pay for being online, and an erroneous belief that the Constitution stands in the way of any solution.
Most cybersecurity experts agree an effective public-private cyber information-sharing system is essential in stopping foreign cyber maliciousness before it causes too much damage. But information sharing isn’t enough; it would be hamstrung from the start if the government cannot seamlessly and quickly track malicious cyber activity from its foreign source to its intended domestic victims. If some government agency had that legal power, then it could, for example, quickly check out a domestic IP address after an alert from the NSA that the address was communicating with a suspicious overseas server. If that IP address showed questionable activity, the government and the private sector jointly could take steps to reconfigure firewalls or otherwise curtail the hack. Admittedly, this wouldn’t prevent hacks and attacks that were based on previously unknown software bugs (so called zero-day exploits). But the reality is that most large-scale hacks by foreign countries rely on already known software imperfections and hardware deficiencies.”
“After an intensive, months-long election, only one-eighth of the workers at Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama warehouse voted in favor of a union. More than twice as many voted against. Roughly half didn’t vote at all.
The election’s losers are incredulous that they could have fallen short on the merits. Challenges are already underway, accusing Amazon of unfair labor practices such as positioning a mailbox improperly. And to be sure, Amazon appears to have behaved obnoxiously, and perhaps even unlawfully in some instances.
But when nearly 6,000 workers have two months to cast ballots, and the union secures fewer than 750 “yes” votes, the idea that it has what workers want looks a bit ridiculous.”
…
“Workers have shown that they dislike the hyper-adversarialism and political activism that American unions bring into their workplaces but are eager for more representation, voice, and support than they can achieve individually. What they want, and need, is a middle ground that neither side is offering.
Research has borne this out. In a landmark 1994 survey, Harvard professor Richard Freeman and University of Wisconsin professor Joel Rogers asked more than 2,400 nonmanagement workers whether they would prefer representation by an organization that “management cooperated with in discussing issues, but had no power to make decisions” or by one “that had more power, but management opposed.” Workers preferred cooperation to an adversarial stance by 63 percent to 22 percent, a result that held even among active union members.
In 2017, MIT professor Thomas Kochan conducted a similar survey and found that interest in joining a union had grown and workers wanted a wide range of services that a union could provide to them, including: collective bargaining; health, unemployment, and training benefits; legal assistance; input into work processes; and representation in management decision-making. On the long menu of options, the two that stood out as making workers less likely to join are exact the ones that seem to get union activists most excited: politics and strikes.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/20/lawmakers-race-china-batteries-483285
“As recently as 1980, there were only a few parts of the country — mostly in Appalachia and the Deep South — that had median incomes more than 20 percent below the average, and then you had a small number of places that were 20 percent above the average, like DC and the New York suburbs, for example. But now whole swaths of the country are 20 percent below the average and it includes basically the entire Midwest, while huge strips of the coast are now above the 20 percent above the average.”
…
“a two-step process: Amazon upends all of these brick-and-mortar retail businesses and then swoops into the areas where the laid-off employees live and hires them as underpaid bodies in their warehouses.”
…
“We talk about coal miners getting laid off, but countless more retail workers have been laid off. The professional retail clerk took more losses than any other in recent years.
To put it simply, what you have now are the sort of jobs that once allowed a 55-year-old woman in Elmira, New York, to manage a jewelry counter at a department store being replaced by a warehouse job that pays less, involves much more strenuous working conditions, is far more socially isolating, and that same 55-year-old woman will have a much harder time hacking it.”
…
“We’re talking about intensely rote and inhuman work. We’re talking about a company that uses algorithms to track productivity and bathroom breaks.”
…
“These are really grueling jobs. There’s a reason why the turnover is so high. And if anything, the jobs have only gotten more rote and more repetitive and more isolated as the robots at the warehouses have gotten more automated.”
…
“The company’s demands of local governments are extraordinarily aggressive. It seeks large reductions on its future tax bills, on the property taxes owed for the warehouse or data center, and sometimes also on the payroll taxes owed on the workers.”
…
“if you’ve had your manufacturing base wiped out in Baltimore or southwest Ohio or wherever it might be, and then along comes this company that’s going to hire 2,000 people at a warehouse, it’s hard to say no.”
“A great deal of the initial violence came after state prosecutors decided last month they would not charge the leaders of nationalist party Sinn Fein for breaking Covid-19 regulations in June by attending the funeral for Bobby Storey. Storey was a former top member of the Irish Republican Army, the paramilitary group that waged a violent campaign against the British and for a reunified Ireland during the Troubles
Many unionists perceived the decision to not prosecute the members of the party as a sign of political favoritism, given that unionists were told to cancel their traditional Twelfth of July parades last summer, and the loaded symbolism surrounding the funeral. The decision sparked outrage and protests.”
…
“another major factor fueling the anger and protests is the way that many in Northern Ireland feel betrayed by the terms of Brexit — the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union — which was completed at the beginning of this year. Some unionists feel blindsided by the British government, which they believe has left them in the lurch”
…
“Another complicating factor is that the period around the Easter holiday often features “increased communal conflict,” Politico notes, because of Irish Republican Army commemorations among nationalists in Northern Ireland on the one side and unionist parades on the other.
Further complications may be coming from criminal groups who might be trying to add to the chaos and exploit tensions over Covid-19 restrictions in order to cause problems for law enforcement.
There’s a complex array of factors that could explain what’s contributing to the current chaos — and given that swirl, it could evolve further in the future.”