“Over the years, the rate of unemployment has become not just a gauge of the health of the labor market but the most common yardstick policymakers use to assess the health of the economy as a whole.
By this measure, despite the pandemic, things don’t look so bad right now. The headline unemployment rate for December stood at 6.7 percent. In recent years, there’s been some public recognition that that the headline rate is something of an undercount, since it only includes people actively looking for work; so-called discouraged workers who are unsure of how to go about a job search or who are too discouraged to try any more don’t show up in that top-line number. And, for decades now, the BLS has diligently supplemented the headline unemployment rate with additional information about these workers.
But it turns out that discouraged workers aren’t the only problem with the unemployment rate. In fact, these days the headline unemployment rate isn’t just an undercount, it actually paints an alternate reality that masks the degree to which low- and moderate-income people are hurting. As a result, policymakers believe these Americans are better off than they actually are.
There are two additional problems with the way we count people who are unemployed.
First, there’s no accounting for how many hours a part-time worker is working.”
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“Our unemployment figures make it look like the person working a handful of hours because that’s the only work they can get is just as “employed” as a full-time CEO. In practice, this means that the unemployment rate actively obscures how many workers are living in poverty in part not because they don’t have a job, but because they can’t get enough hours.
Second, the data doesn’t indicate whether the job a worker is doing pays enough to keep them out of poverty.”
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“Anyone who wants full-time work but can only find part-time work, and those working full-time but earning too little to climb above the poverty line, should be considered functionally unemployed. I’ve begun to calculate this, which I’ve dubbed the True Rate of Unemployment. And the TRU in December wasn’t 6.7 percent — it was an alarming 25.1 percent.”
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“In February 2020, when the economy was supposedly “hot,” the official BLS release suggested that a mere 3.5 percent of Americans were unemployed, but the “TRU” number was 24 percent.”
“There’s plenty of debate among legal scholars about the validity of the Republicans’ latest argument that only sitting presidents can be subjected to an impeachment trial, even if the House issued impeachment articles while he was still president. Examples exist of federal officials who were impeached after leaving office. In 1876, President Ulysses S. Grant’s Secretary of War William Belknap was impeached, tried and acquitted after he left office. In 1862, a federal judge who had deserted for the Confederacy was impeached and disqualified from holding federal office, as well.
Whether these precedents would persuade the U.S. Supreme Court that Trump’s second impeachment trial is constitutional is likely unanswerable. The only way to get the question before the Court is if Trump were to challenge a conviction in the Senate. Even then, the Court could dismiss the case as a political question that only Congress can resolve. Congress answered that question in the affirmative this week — presidents can be tried after leaving office, at least so long as the impeachment occurred beforehand. Moreover, it’s hard to argue that the case is moot — or stale — because the Constitution offers a remedy that’s still meaningful for citizen Trump: “disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States.”
In light of the events of Jan. 6, the Republican consensus that Trump’s impending trial is unconstitutional is chilling.
It would mean that first-term presidents who lose reelection can, with impunity, incite mob insurrectionists to attack the Capitol while Congress is counting the Electoral College votes. As Laurence Tribe tweeted, Rand Paul’s argument “would give all future presidents two weeks at the end of their term to go on a crime spree without ever having to face the consequences in a Senate disqualification trial.” By definition, there’s never enough time between Jan. 6 and inauguration day, Jan. 20, for Congress to present and vote on articles of impeachment, transfer the articles to the Senate, swear in senators, subpoena the president, exchange pre-trial briefs, hold a real trial with witnesses and documents (which Republicans blocked the first time), deliberate as Senator-jurors and vote on whether to convict.
So where does this absurdly narrow interpretation leave us? Apparently, if you want to impeach someone for attempting to overturn an election by force, the plot needs to be successful and you have to wait until the first part of his second term to do anything about it.
It’s hard to imagine this would have made sense to the Framers.”
“The 2015 Iran deal came together after years of U.S. and international sanctions battered the Islamic Republic’s economy and internal political shifts made an agreement more viable. The deal, which seven countries negotiated, lifted nuclear-related sanctions on Iran in exchange for severe curbs on its nuclear program.
However, the nuclear deal left in place numerous other U.S. sanctions on Iran, such as those related to the Islamist regime’s support for terrorism, its ballistic missile program and its human rights abuses. Many of the U.S. sanctions are especially powerful because they apply to non-American entities who would otherwise want to do business with Iran.
Trump took office complaining that the nuclear agreement was too narrowly focused and that its provisions didn’t last long enough. He withdrew the U.S. from the deal in 2018 — then reimposed the nuclear-related sanctions while also piling on new sanctions on other fronts, such as ones targeting the Iranian regime’s corruption or its backing of terrorist activity. Overall, the sanctions have badly hit Iran’s economy, which also has been hurt by the coronavirus pandemic.
Since the U.S. departure, Iran, too, has taken steps that have put it out of compliance with the agreement, including enriching uranium to 20 percent purity. Iranian leaders say they’ll return to compliance with the deal once the United States lifts its sanctions — ideally returning to the 2016 status, they say. But Biden has indicated he wants Iran to return to compliance first before he’ll lift sanctions.”
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“People who worked in the Trump administration say the new president shouldn’t lift any of the sanctions because the nuclear deal isn’t worth reviving. Rather, they argue that the Trump team handed Biden a gift by placing Iran’s Islamist regime under such intense pressure.
“Don’t let up,” said Len Khodorkovsky, a former senior State Department adviser on Iran policy. “The only way to get positive movement out of Iran is to increase pressure.”
The deal’s supporters, however, point out that Trump’s strategy failed to push Iran into talks for a more stringent agreement. Nor has Tehran stopped other behavior that has upset the U.S. and its allies, such as backing militias outside its borders; it’s also closer to being able to build a nuclear weapon today than it was when the U.S. was in the deal.”
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“Former U.S. officials say it’s possible that Biden’s final decisions will result in a mixed picture: Non-nuclear sanctions with a solid legal basis will stay on, while other sanctions – such as some that appear intended to wreck the nuclear deal – will likely be removed.
The Biden team might also take an incremental approach: Offer some limited sanctions relief in exchange for initial actions on Iran’s part to roll back its recent nuclear advances as a first step toward a full return to the agreement by both countries.
There is pressure to move quickly. For one thing, Iran’s presidential election, set for June, could usher into power a hardline government opposed to the nuclear deal.
But when asked for comment, a State Department official indicated the process of returning to the agreement will take longer than many advocates might wish.
“Iran is a long way from returning to compliance, and there are many steps in the process we will need to evaluate,” the official said in a written statement. “Our first order of business will be consulting with Congress and our allies on the path forward.””
“In a 662-page report analyzing the ’08 crash, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission identified a broad cast of villains that caused or contributed to the crisis. They include 5 investment banks that at the time fueled a surge of trading in “toxic” mortgage-backed securities, and derivatives of those securities: Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch. AIG insured billions of dollars of overvalued securities without the reserves to cover losses. Horrible underwriting standards at mortgage issuers such as Countrywide and Wachovia produced millions of loans borrowers were doomed to default on.
Bond-rating agencies such as Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s failed to identify the risk and rated mortgage-backed securities destined to blow up as safe as US Treasuries. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government agencies that securitize mortgages, became insanely overleveraged and collapsed. Regulators such as the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission did nothing to intervene until it was far too late. Years of federal policy meant to encourage homeownership allowed some buyers to borrow far more than they could afford. And a 1999 law that eased bank regulations allowed banks to take risks that ultimately threatened the entire financial system.
Hedge funds had little to do with this. There were two hedge funds run inside investment bank Bear Stearns that bet heavily on mortgage-backed securities and collapsed in 2007. But those weren’t the types of hedge funds run by independent operators mostly working with wealthy individuals’ money. A 2012 Rand report found that hedge funds played little role in the housing bubble that caused the crash.”
“According to reports from the region, the Myanmar military has taken into custody several top civilian leaders, including Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and democracy activist whose political party has won recent elections. In a televised statement, the military said that it had taken control of the country and declared a state of emergency for one year.
The military has been unhappy with the outcome of elections in November in which Suu Kyi’s party did well, while the military-backed party fared relatively poorly. The military is alleging voter fraud. Myanmar’s new parliament was due to convene Monday for its first session.
In a statement late Sunday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the United States is “alarmed” by the reports.
“The United States opposes any attempt to alter the outcome of recent elections or impede Myanmar’s democratic transition,” Psaki said, adding that the U.S. “will take action against those responsible if these steps are not reversed.””
“State legislators in 28 states have filed 106 bills restricting the franchise thus far in 2021 — and the overwhelming majority have come from Republicans. Compare that to last year at this time: Then, only 35 such bills had been filed in six states.
“We are seeing a backlash,” says Eliza Sweren-Becker, the report’s lead author. “Rather than going out and trying to persuade voters, we’re seeing legislators trying to shrink the electorate in order to ensure job security for themselves.”
The proposed legislation largely falls into two categories: bills that either increase the difficulties individual Americans would face absentee voting or that give officials greater leeway to shrink the voter pool. Some are attempts to roll back voting rights expansions necessitated by the pandemic; others are retreads of policies Republicans have pushed before, like expanded voter identification laws.”
https://www.vox.com/22254292/alexei-navalny-russia-protests-vladimir-putin-palace-video
“These sheriffs’ refusal to enforce the stay-at-home orders is part of a long tradition of sheriffs picking and choosing when and how to require their constituents to follow the law. From defying gun control orders to selective enforcement of traffic violations, our system has granted wide latitude to law enforcement.”
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“The nature of policing requires some level of discretion when it comes to enforcement. Traffic violations are so common that police have to decide which ones are worth ticketing and stopping (these decisions are rife with racial bias). However, outright refusal to uphold a law goes beyond that day-to-day discretion as sheriffs appoint themselves lawmakers and law enforcers in the same breath.”
“The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an expanse of public land in Alaska the size of South Carolina, is one of the last untouched landscapes in the world. The native Gwich’in people — who have lived in harmony with the area’s migratory Porcupine caribou herd for centuries — call the refuge’s vast coastal plain Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit, or “The Sacred Place Where Life Begins.”
But in the past few years, the fate of the refuge’s roughly 19.5 million acres has become rather bleak: Its permafrost is melting rapidly, along with the rest of the Arctic region. The refuge’s coastal plain also remains at risk to oil and gas development, which companies have long had their eye on but have been barred from doing — until now.
Drilling in the US Arctic is what President Trump has longed to do, in hopes of making the US the No. 1 energy producer in the world. And in early December, the administration made a stunning, last-ditch announcement that it will auction off drilling rights in the refuge on January 6 — two weeks before President-elect Joe Biden takes office. It’s the administration’s final attempt to turn a profit on Indigenous lands with little regard for the environmental or cultural ramifications.”
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“For centuries, the Arctic refuge — particularly the coastal plain — has been central to Alaska Natives’ way of life. The ancestral name of the plain refers to the calving grounds for the caribou, whose migratory path still guides the Gwich’in and other Indigenous people today. If oil drilling rights in the sacred land are sold, Alaskan Natives fear it would disrupt the caribou’s migratory patterns along with other wildlife. It would also interrupt the way the Gwich’in people prepare for sacred harvest as their ancestors have thousands of years ago.
“This is not just a Gwich’in issue; there are a lot of Alaska Natives who depend on the caribou and the animals that migrate there,” Bernadette Demientieff, a Gwichyaa Zhee Gwich’in and the executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, told Vox. “Our identity as Gwich’in is not up for negotiation and our culture is not up for sale. We will fight this every step of the way.”
Already, the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline on the west end of the national refuge, which has had multiple hazardous oil spills in the region, provides a stark reminder of the fossil fuel industry’s menacing presence on Indigenous lands. Fossil fuel operations emit tons of greenhouse gases that contribute to the planet’s warming temperatures. And to do so on Indigenous lands in the Arctic — already dubbed ground zero for the climate crisis — only adds insult to injury for communities most vulnerable to climate change, like the Gwich’in people.”
“Kirkland requires that any accessory dwelling units (ADUs)—often known as granny flats or in-law suites—can be no larger than 800 square feet and no higher than 15 feet above the main home. They also must come with an off-street parking space.
Of the people who applied for such permits in Kirkland since 1995, nearly half never ended up starting construction. A survey by the city in 2018 found that design constraints were the biggest difficulty applicants faced.
Kirkland’s granny flat rule is just one of countless examples of ordinances, restrictions, and red tape that have slowly wrapped up America’s cities, regulating how much people can build, where they can build it, and what they can use it for.
While often justified initially as a means of protecting public health, zoning codes have now gone far beyond nuisance laws—which limited themselves to regulating the externalities of the most noxious polluters—and control of infectious disease. They instead incorporated planners’ desires to scientifically manage cities, protect property values, and combat the moral corruption that supposedly came with high-density housing.”
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“”It’s a bit counterintuitive. Very large cities have problems of pollution and congestion, which are very difficult to solve,” says Alain Bertaud, a senior research scholar at New York University’s Marron Institute of Urban Management. “In spite of all that…these messy cities, if you look at what people produce, they produce a much larger part of the [gross domestic product] than the rest of the country per capita.”
Cities at their root, says Bertaud, are labor markets where people are presented with lots of choices about where to work and companies have lots of options for whom to hire. This intense intermingling of capital and labor means innovative ideas can spread more quickly and production can become more specialized. The result is that urban economies end up producing more wealth than would be possible if the workers and firms that inhabit them were spread out among smaller communities.”
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“In 1793, Philadelphia, then America’s capital, was hit with a severe outbreak of yellow fever that killed 10 percent of the city’s population. “It’s pretty shocking, and it’s something that the founding fathers had to deal with. I think it’s left out of the musical Hamilton,” says Catherine Brinkley, an assistant professor of community and regional development at the University of California, Davis.
This outbreak of yellow fever, says Brinkley, inspired the first efforts to start cleaning up city streets through mucking out gutters and creating alleyways where waste could be dumped. Cholera outbreaks in American cities in the 19th century led to the creation of the first systems that could pipe in clean water and carry away sewage.
The stubborn unwillingness of people to abandon cities even in the face of periodic epidemics gave rise to interventions that made urban life a little less deadly. In his 2011 book Triumph of the City, the Harvard economist Edward Glaeser notes that developments like municipal water service and waste collection—which he calls “self-protecting urban innovations”—led to significant reductions in urban mortality. Between the end of the Civil War and the 1920s, the death rate in New York City dropped by two-thirds. Chicago saw a similar decline over the same period, with about half that fall in mortality chalked up to the provision of clean water.
The later addition of use-segregating, density-restricting zoning codes, predicated on the now-discredited “miasma” theory that a lack of light and air was to blame for the spread of urban disease, did much less to improve public health.”
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“Most folks, whether they’re medieval Parisians or modern Americans, are unwilling to spend more than 30 minutes traveling, one way, between home and work.
This iron law of urban commuting—sometimes known as Marchetti’s constant, after Italian physicist Cesare Marchetti—has profound implications for how cities look, and, particularly, how sprawling or dense they can be.
If cities exist primarily as labor markets, and people are generally only willing to spend 30 minutes getting to work, the scale of an urban area’s agglomeration effects is going to depend on (a) how many jobs your average city worker can reach within a half-hour’s travel from his home and (b) how many employees can live within 30 minutes of your average city firm.
One can imagine two basic ways of adjusting for this reality: building up to accommodate more homes and firms within a given space, or speeding travel so that more destinations can be reached in a given amount of time.
Physical limits on both building and transportation technology meant that for the first few thousand years of their existence, cities tended to be pretty small, cramped places. Jonathan English, writing for CityLab in 2019, showed that pre-industrial urban areas packed most of their populations within a mile of the city center in order to accommodate a half-hour walking commute. The 19th century brought with it innovations not just in public health but also in transportation and building construction, allowing cities to grow beyond their previous limitations.”