#Non-resident employment surges by 30

[iwan1979]

Non-resident employment in Singapore rises by 30,200, capturing 91.5% of total job growth, according to the latest Singapore Ministry of Manpower report. The MOM report also reveals a rise in retrenchments to 3,820 in 1Q 2023, up from 2,990 in 4Q 2022.

[creepingsharia]

Minnesota: Muslim immigrants are running for office, winning and reshaping the state’s politics

As Minneapolis burns, it’s clear how electing foreign Muslims - and white, far-left liberals - is working out. **More links at end of post

Also note the subtle racism now pervasive in the media, and by the Muslim author, where they capitalize the word black but not white. The article simultaneously highlights black, mostly Muslim, immigrants rise in politics while leaving unsaid that non-immigrant black Americans are being leap frogged by immigrants. Supposedly a good thing.

Young, educated and Black: Here’s how Minnesota’s politicians with African roots are reshaping the state’s politics.

 by Ibrahim Hirsi

Barely four years ago, the highest-ranking elected official in the community was Abdi Warsame, a Somali immigrant who was sworn into the Minneapolis City Council in January 2014. 

Now, the state can count at least 13 Black immigrant elected officials, including U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar; state Representatives Mohamud Noor and Hodan Hassan; and Mayor Mike Elliott of Brooklyn Center. 

In the DFL August primary, a few more Black immigrants emerged victorious. Among them are 30-year-old Omar Fateh, who will likely win a seat in the State Senate; and 35-year-old Esther Agbaje who secured another likely spot in the State House. 

The surge in the number of Black immigrants seeking elected positions is conspicuous not only in the Twin Cities metro area. It’s also taking place outside the metro area, in cities like Mankato, St. Cloud and Austin. 

...

Near the beginning of his presidency, Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Immigration Nationality Act of 1965, which opened the doors to non-European immigrants. But he could not have foreseen the full magnitude of the impact the law would have on places like the Twin Cities and beyond. 

Moments before Johnson signed the landmark immigration reform bill into law on Oct. 3, 1965, at the foot of the Statue of Liberty in New York, he downplayed the effects the legislation would have on the United States. “This bill that we will sign today is not a revolutionary bill,” he reminded Americans during the signing ceremony. “It does not affect the lives of millions. It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives.”

The president was wrong.

The legislation, also known as the Hart-Cellar Act, has affected millions of lives. It’s changed the demographics of metropolitan areas across the nation. It’s driven population growth as birth rates slow for Americans. It’s provided a steady stream of labor for emptying American farms and factories. 

And now, in Minnesota, it’s drawing more Black immigrants to seek political seats in federal, state and local governments. Since 2016, according to an unofficial headcount by Sahan Journal, at least 50 African immigrants have run for public offices in Minnesota.

...

With at least 10 elected officials now serving various public offices, Somalis make up the greatest number of Black immigrants becoming elected officials in Minnesota. Most of them represent neighborhoods that have large concentrations of foreign-born residents. 

In south Minneapolis, for instance, Somalis have elected representatives to a wide range of political offices. The most famous official is, of course, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, whose win in the August DFL primary race for the 5th District likely secured her another term in Washington.

...

The list of elected Somali officials gets longer each cycle: Mohamud Noor and Hodan Hassan serve in the State House; Jamal Osman recently won a special election for a seat to in the city council; Siad Ali joined the city’s school board in 2014; and AK Hassan is a commissioner on the Park Board.

But the Somali community has also gained a foothold more broadly. Warsame, who resigned his post as a Minneapolis councilman early this year, became CEO of Minneapolis Public Housing Authority. In 2019, Hamse Warfa joined the governor’s administration, becoming deputy commissioner at the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, (DEED). And in June, Anisa Hajimumin became assistant commissioner at DEED.

...

Most of the estimated 20,000 Liberian Americans live in the northwestern suburbs of the Twin Cities, including Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center. Earlier this year, Yakasah Wehyee, the Ph.D. candidate at the University of Minnesota, took office as a city council member in Falcon Heights.

Political observers may expect Somalis and Liberians to win some races in cities with large immigrant populations. But African immigrants have started to run for office farther afield, in places like St, Cloud, Mankato, and Austin.

In Austin, Oballa Oballa, 27, is busy these days putting up campaign signs and knocking on doors for his bid to join the city council.

...

The Hart-Cellar Act allowed millions of non-European immigrants to establish permanent homes in the U.S. While Black immigrants make up only 2.5 percent of the state’s population overall in the state, the majority of these residents are concentrated in the Twin Cities metro area.

That concentration has given them not just the political will—and a voting bloc—to pursue state and local elected seats. It’s also allowed them to establish successful businesses, vibrant social hubs, schools and religious centers: institutions that have given Black immigrants a true sense of belonging.   

These candidates don’t just represent African immigrants in the mainstream of Minnesota civic life. Rather, people from Somalia, Liberia, Ethiopia and more have become the mainstream itself.

-----------------------

Another candidate, who wants your guns, via:

Shakopee resident Sahra Odowa running against Eric Pratt

Shakopee resident Sahra Odowa will run for the District 55 seat against GOP incumbent Sen. Eric Pratt in the upcoming election.

And eventually sharia law, as we have seen recently with Islamic call to sharia blasted across neighborhoods 5x a day and night.

Must read: The Scary Answer to Trump’s Question on Ilhan Omar

[shirlleycoyle]

Everything You Need to Know About the Great Lumber Crisis of 2021

The hottest commodity of the last year was one you probably didn’t realize you needed to care about: Wood.

Lumber has long been the subject of debate over trade policy, ecosystem conservation, and climate change. But in a white-hot housing and remodeling/home improvement market, lumber prices spiked to new highs. DIYers grappling with cabin fever as well as increased demand for home remodeling contractors and home builders looking to increase housing supply sent the lumber market bonkers. Meanwhile, sawmills shut down and later faced a labor crisis, causing a shortage and subsequently causing record-breaking prices.

In some ways, the shortage is a simple supply and demand problem, but the great lumber crisis of 2021 also highlights all sorts of other things, including the global supply chain, climate change and environmental protection, labor shortages, US-Canada trade relations, and the out-of-control housing market. Here, we strive to explain the Great Lumber Panic.

THE SHORTAGE

As North America went into lockdown in March, 2020, a slew of businesses shut down. Lumber production facilities were no exception: Sawmills laid off workers, cut hours, and struggled to balance staying open with minimizing COVID transmission risk.

(Quick note: Though the terms are often used interchangeably, there’s a distinction between lumber and timber. Lumber is wood that’s been processed into rectangular beams used primarily to build homes; about 20 percent of all wood harvested in the US goes to lumber. Timber is unprocessed wood and trees, which can be turned into lumber or pulp, paper, fuel and other staple products.)

Initially, the sawmills closing down seemed broadly inconsequential; after all, Americans were stuck at home, and sending construction workers out put them at significant risk of contracting COVID-19. At the time, basically all economic activity stopped, which included homebuilding and remodeling.

Few producers anticipated that before long, there’d be an uptick in DIY home improvement projects like deck building and home office creation. Repair and remodelling (R&R) markets were responsible for the majority of the lumber demand spike, notes Paul Jannke, principal of Forest Economic Advisors (FEA). A June, 2020, survey by architecture firm The Farnsworth Group found that more than 70 percent of homeowners had started new DIY projects at home, many of them attributing long hours in lockdown to their sudden desire for refurbishments. Stimulus checks offered Americans more money to pay for these endeavors.

Interest in home-buying spiked over the pandemic, too, creating a housing boom that has yet to wane. But housing starts—new build construction projects—have been historically  low since the 2008 recession, and haven’t quite recovered yet. The US is just not building as many houses as it used to. Many who couldn’t afford to buy during the COVID-19 housing boom had no choice but to channel their COVID-19 cabin fever into where they currently reside.

“Everyone's stuck in their houses, they're looking around, they're seeing all the things that are wrong with it, they have to work from home, and oh, by the way, their kids have to study from home too,” Jannke said. “I might just want to add on another room.”

MOMMY, WHERE DO 2x4s COME FROM?

According to Jannke, just over 70 percent of wood used in the US is grown here. The rest is imported, and around 83 percent that wood comes from Canada, much of it from British Columbia: This is highly valuable wood from Spruce, Pine and Fur (SPF) trees that many regard as better for homes than the more prevalent species of tree found in the US, like yellow pine, grown in the southeast, between Texas and New York.

The US is home to 514-million acres of timberland, 30 percent of which is managed publicly (by federal, state or local agencies), according to Rocky Goodnow, vice president of North American timber service at FEA. The remaining timber (359 million acres, Goodnow says) is owned by private companies and individuals. Many of these producers are small operations—47 percent of lumber is produced by non-corporate entities—competing in a deregulated environment. But in Canada, lumber production is managed by provincial governments, and, critics say, is unfairly subsidized.

This rubs some in the American lumber industry—like the US Lumber Coalition—the wrong way. Some say Canada is able to sell logs to US clients at lower prices because federal subsidies keep costs low. Others have accused the country of “dumping,” that is, selling wood to the US at a price below the cost of production and crowding out the market, making it harder for American sawmills to compete.

For decades, the US has gone back and forth on tariffs it imposes on Canadian lumber; a recent tariff proposal has proven polarizing: The US Lumber Coalition lauded the move as a step toward “a level playing field,” while the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) critiqued it for threatening the already surging cost of homes. (The NAHB says the rising cost of lumber has made the average single-family home $36,000 more expensive on average).

The years-old trade dispute is often used to explain fluctuations in the lumber market. But researchers say this time around, the argument is overblown (the closing of the border between U.S. and Canada has also not had a direct impact; trade has continued more or less as normal).

“It has nothing to do with tariffs,” said Rajan Parajuli, assistant professor in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources at North Carolina State University, who notes that Canadian lumber prices don’t differ enough from US market prices to have a tremendous impact on US producers. Parajuli is among a few from the school who studied the impact of trade disputes with Canada on lumber prices; in a 2016 paper, he found that American consumers eat the cost of tariffs in higher lumber prices, and lost $2.3-billion between 2006 and 2015 due to trade limitations between the US and Canada.

“The real economics say that the consumers are the losers,” Parajuli said.

THE SAWMILL PROBLEM

By May of last year, wood prices were rising, but there was hardly the production capacity to supply it. This created a shortage, one that remains today, even as prices finally cool, in part because saw mills are struggling to attract new workers. June jobs data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) showed that mill employment levels fell by a few thousand jobs over the course of the pandemic, and only recently reached pre-pandemic rates in April. But as mills aim to scale up production even further, some are still feeling pressure to attract workers.

The lumber shortage has been, maybe as you'd expect, a topic of obsession for people in the housing industry. A podcast made by the NAHB has dedicated the majority of its recent episodes to the lumber shortage and when it might get better.

“I've raised my wages over 10 percent across the board,” Ross Stock, general manager of Western Cascades Industries saw mill in Oregon, said on a May episode of the podcast, called Housing Developments. “I'm hiring in every direction. And I've had limited success finding people.”

Much of the job market is reckoning with wages and working conditions in a post-pandemic economy right now, and working in a sawmill is not particularly lucrative. It's also dangerous.

“You can work in a mill, and make $20 an hour and it's hot, because they're not air conditioned, and it's kind of heavy labor,” Jannke says. “Young folks are not choosing to get into this industry.”

Image: Philipp von Ditfurth/picture alliance via Getty Images

Jannke notes that automation is changing the nature of new hires in saw mills (“A modern sawmill is not the same thing as a sawmill from 20 years ago,” he said. “Today, you need people who have computer science degrees.”) But the manual jobs that remain can be dangerous; BLS occupational injury data shows fatality rates were more than 30 times the rate across the job market, with around 66 deaths per year between 2006 and 2015.

Sawmill owners are starting to pay workers more to compensate for shortages, and weekly paychecks have increased by an average of 10.4 percent since before the pandemic, the Washington Post recently reported. But Jannke says wage increases might not be enough to up production and fill the supply gap. “We're trying to ramp up our capacity really, really quickly,” he said. “That's a lot of labor that you have to get in rural areas.”

The US Department of Commerce is taking aim at shrinking the supply gap by reducing competition from Canada. It recently recommended increasing tariffs on lumber imports from 9 to 18 percent as a way to privilege American lumber production and boost jobs at home. Proposed on May 21, the increase would need several rounds of review before going into effect—and it has already garnered controversy.

What about wildfires? Will this summer’s heat impact our tree supply?

Yes and no. Jannke says this year’s record heat across much of the US, including lumber-producing regions in the Pacific Northwest, is “quite concerning.” Last year saw record-breaking wildfires and this does interrupt the supply chain: Saw mills had to shut down and evacuate to avoid the fires, loggers left their jobs to fight blazes, and wood stores were lost. He anticipates that this summer’s wildfire season will be similarly devastating.

“Since the demand supply is so tight right now disrupting the supply of lumber is just not a good thing,” he said. “It’s pretty scary.”

The impacts of climate change are as bad news for the industry as they are for ecosystems. And some fear that clear-cutting practices create a vicious feedback loop with wildfire risk: Open patches of forest raise overall temperatures, while woody debris leftover from logging becomes easy tinder, making forests more vulnerable to blazes.

But industry experts like Jannke say that, even in a changing climate, our wood supply remains strong: “We've been harvesting below our growth rates for a while. So the problem is not that the industry is harvesting too much,” he said.

This is largely because of the US timber market’s design, notes Dr. Robert Bardon, associate dean of Extension at the NC State University College of Natural Resources. Producers have a vested interest in keeping their trees growing and plant almost immediately after cutting.

“We've not seen instances of not having enough trees to harvest in, oh, 100 years,” he says.

Cutting down trees does cause disturbances to ecosystems, but Jankke believes the industry has become “more conscious” of this in its harvesting patterns, striving to cut in such a way that minimizes harms to animal and plant species.

Of course, changing weather patterns do have the potential to harm tree growth patterns: In western Canada, for example, a bark beetle called the mountain pine has proliferated, infecting and killing trees at growing rates, primarily because of climate change. These beetles fly from tree to tree to lay eggs underneath their bark, often carrying with them a fungus that disrupts the flow of water and nutrients within the tree, causing it to die. By 2012, the mountain pine beetle had attacked more than 53 percent of British Columbia’s merchantable pine trees.

The beetle's prevalence was spurred on by climate change: These beetle populations are unable to withstand freezing temperatures and typically die each winter. But warming temperatures allow mountain pines to live longer, causing outbreaks that infect trees at a larger scale.

It’s possible that changing weather patterns affect US lumber stock the same way: Though it’s still too soon to tell, the effects of the climate crisis on ecosystems are wide-reaching and any number of factors can harm tree species.

THE CRISIS ENDS (?)

Though lumber prices are still far above pre-pandemic levels, they fell by more than 40 percent in June, indicating that the crisis is not as acute as it recently was. This could be because sawmills are finally filling empty jobs, or it could be because demand for at-home projects is falling as COVID-19 restrictions lift and people go back into the world.

The cash price per 1,000 board feet of lumber is now $1,113, down from an all-time high of near $1,600 at the end of May (for context, it was $400 for the same amount in February of 2020.) Some people, of course, could consider building homes with alternative materials, like steel (which is facing its own shortage) or concrete. But Jankke, Parajuli and Bardon all caution that, ironically, this is less sustainable than building a home out of wood, which absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere even after a home is constructed.

“It can potentially be part of the solution to the climate crisis,” Jannke said.

Everything You Need to Know About the Great Lumber Crisis of 2021 syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[rcthstein-blog]

“The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.”

BASICS

NAME: Nolan Bartholomew Rothstein IV.

NICKNAMES: Lord Rothstein (?).

AGE: 34 years.

BIRTHDAY: 4 August, 1983.

SPECIES: Human.

GENDER: Male.

PRONOUNS: He/Him (Sir/Lord).

FAMILY

MOTHER: Helena Rothstein (neé Barnhardt).

FATHER: Nolan Bartholomew Rothstein III.

PARENTS: As above plus a bunch of House staff.

FAMILY: The Greenwich Rothstein’s, The Rotterdam Barnhardt’s, Eduardo and Lisa Vázquez.

SIBLINGS: Edward James (Younger brother, 30). Jasmine Mary (Younger half-sister, 26). Jensen Peter (Younger half-brother, 23), Oscar Matthew (Youngest brother, 4).

APPEARANCE

FACE CLAIM: Patrick J. Adams.

RACE/ETHNICITY: Caucasian/American.

HEIGHT: 6ft.

WEIGHT: 165lbs.

BUILD: Athletic. Engages in regular, regimented exercise.

HAIR: Straight. Thin. Kept short.

FACIAL HAIR: Usually clean shaven.

HAIR COLOR: Dark blonde/Light brown.

EYE COLOR: Blue.

SKIN COLOR: Fair.

DOMINANT HAND: Right.

ANOMALIES: Small, circular shaped birthmark on inside of right ankle.

SCENT: Wears a slightly sweet citrus based cologne.

ACCENT: General, American accent.

PHYSICAL DISABILITIES: Nill.

LEARNING DISABILITIES: Nil.

ALLERGIES: Nil.

DISEASES: Nil.

DISORDERS: None.

BLOOD TYPE: A+.

FASHION: From fancy to business casual. Collar shirts. Suits. All well cut.

TATTOOS: Nil.

PIERCINGS: None.

JEWELRY: A big fan of watches, Nolan carries an assortment with him. He has a preference for Patek Philippe but you’ll see pieces from Omega, Cartier and Tiffany.

NERVOUS TICS: He has a habit twisting his watch back and forth around his wrist. He’ll also start snacking on small foods non-stop when stressed.

HOME LIFE

HOME ADDRESS: Claremont House. Hartford, Conneticut. USA.

RESIDES: Arcadia Resort, Copenhagen. Denmark.

BORN: Greenwich, Conneticut. USA.

RAISED: Greenwich, Conneticut. USA.

VEHICLE: Various rented vehicles.  

PHONE: Custom, personalized phone designed by Rothstein Technologies.

LAPTOP/COMPUTER: Custom made laptop and tablet. Rothstein Technologies.

PETS: Part owner of numerous racing thoroughbreds.

EDUCATION AND SPECIALIZATIONS

HIGH SCHOOL EDUCATION: Graduate. Buckley School, New York City.

COLLEGE EDUCATION: Master’s Graduate. Stanford GSB.

MAJOR: Business Management.

MINOR: Finance.

CAREER: Chief Operating Officer of Rothstein Pharmaceuticals.

EXPERIENCE: Over 5 years.

EMPLOYER: Rothstein Industries. Nolan Rothstein III.

YEARLY SALARY: $3.2 Million before bonuses.

BADGE NUMBER: Nil.

WEAPONS: Owns a number of firearms. Prefers his Beretta 691 Shotgun. 

TRAINED IN: Firearm use.

LANGUAGES: English and Mandarin. Currently learning Spanish.

OTHER: Nil.

BELIEFS

POLITICAL AFFILIATION: Non disclosed.

RELIGION: Raised Catholic. Non-practicing.

BELIEFS: Survival of the fittest.

MISDEMEANORS: Nil.

FELONIES: Nil.

TICKETS AND/OR VIOLATIONS: Expunged.

DRUGS: Regularly.

SMOKES: Habitually.

ALCOHOL: Occasionally.

DIET: Fairly particular. A foodie at heart, Nolan judges everything he eats.

RELATIONSHIPS

ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: Heteroromantic.

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Heterosexual.

MARTIAL STATUS: Single.

CHILDREN: None.

AVAILABILITY: Not particularly.

LOOKING FOR: Feeling the pressure from his father, he is looking for a suitable partner. His mother has a few potential candidates lined up for him.

PERSONALITY AND INTERACTION

PHOBIAS: Nil.

HOBBIES: Hunting, Horse Racing. Gambling, Cooking.

TRAITS: Surprisingly mellow. Personable. Quick-witted. Foul mouthed. Humorous. Rather eclectic.

QUIRKS: Only wears new socks and underwear.

SOCIAL MEDIA: @nrothsteiniv

FAVORITES

LOCATION: Hermitage Bay, Antigua.

SPORTS TEAM: New England Patriots.

MUSIC: Big fan of 70′s rock. But enjoys music, generally speaking.

SHOWS: The Food Channel in its entirety.

MOVIES: Reservoir Dogs, Die Hard, Aliens.

BOOKS: Doesn’t read. Hasn’t for years.

FOOD: Chicken Fettuccine. Nolan will always order the chicken fettuccine and judge accordingly.

BEVERAGE: Sazerac Cocktail.

COLOR: Gold, obviously.

MISCELLANEOUS

MORAL ALIGNMENT: Neutral Evil.

MBTI: ESTJ-A.

MBTI ROLE: “The Executive”.

ENNEAGRAM: Type 8.

ENNEAGRAM ROLE: The Leader.

TEMPERAMENT: Choleric.

WESTERN ZODIAC: Leo.

CHINESE ZODIAC: Pig.

PRIMAL SIGN: Quetzal.

HOGWARTS HOUSE: Slytherin.

ILVERYMORNY HOUSE: Horned Serpent.:

TAROT CARD: The World.

SONG: The Man That Sold The World - Midge Ure.

[ericvick]

Commentary: It truly is a race to the finish line--will not enable Covid catch you

“Just when I assume I’m out, they pull me back in.”  – Michael Corleone, “The Godfather, Part 3”

It would seem like every single time we get started to get forward of Covid, Americans as a group decide to pull us back again into the virus. Gov. Baker’s Nov. 6 buy, requiring “all folks in Massachusetts above 5 yrs of age to use confront masks or cloth face coverings in all community places, no matter whether indoors or outdoors, even wherever they are equipped to manage 6 ft of distance from others” is nonetheless in impact, but it appears to be slipping away as a critical avoidance evaluate.  

A good friend on Beacon Hill informed me that a few months in the past there was nearly 100 percent compliance with the mask get, but now he sees older guys walking the streets flaunting their masklessness.

You also see the slippage in mask-sporting in our neighborhoods.  I’ve recognized people in some stores not carrying masks.  From time to time you’re explained to that the person is vaccinated, but how are we to know?  A third of Massachusetts voters checked the ballot for Trump. Are Trumpers determining that they never treatment about no matter if they are infected?

The slippage in taking safety measures towards the virus tracks completely with the knowledge: We are trending toward a new surge in Covid conditions across the country and in our Commonwealth. It’s a pattern that is specially affecting those beneath 30 a long time of age.  We could reduce the war to the Covid variants.

But who would not be confused by the mixed messages that we are having from our authorities officials?  The governor has opened indoor dining places, even sports venues, so why would not people think it is okay to fall the precautions?

But it’s not all right there are nevertheless tens of millions of Massachusetts people who are unvaccinated, and there are numerous unanswered concerns about what it signifies to be vaccinated.  You can still get the virus if you are vaccinated, but it is possible you’ll be asymptomatic, and it’s exceptionally not likely that you will wind up in the healthcare facility as a result.

And we even now really do not know no matter whether vaccinated individuals can move the virus to a further person.  This contains children, who, some experiments exhibit, are probably acquiring the virus at the similar charge as grownups, even though generally without the need of serious signs and symptoms.

Until these thoughts are answered, we require to go on to just take the safeguards we all know function nicely to stem Covid’s unfold.  Despite the fact that I’m vaccinated, I will carry on to put on a mask in public for the foreseeable future, partly to not be a jerk by generating other people fearful, and partly for the reason that I do not want to get an asymptomatic circumstance that can be handed together to small children, which include the grandchildren with whom I stay.

Until eventually it is determined that vaccinations will preserve the unvaccinated and children secure, individuals will will need to continue on to put on masks and observe social distancing when in public, or we’ll keep on to have surges that will hold off obtaining herd immunity.  And our financial system will not thoroughly recuperate.   I believe that we’ll finally get to that immunity phase, at least inside of the area, but it will not be until the little ones are vaccinated, which will be at the conclusion of 2021 at the earliest.  In the meantime, coaxing people today to participate in the economic system all over again will need some assurance that we’re risk-free. 

Since the travel sector has been was devastated by Covid, some governments and travel marketplace leaders are speaking about necessitating a “digital passport” that will enable vacationers to present they have been vaccinated.    

Employers and authorities simply cannot at the moment mandate vaccinations mainly because the vaccines are not Federal Drug Administration (Fda) authorised, other than for unexpected emergency use, even though several universities and other personal companies are relocating towards necessitating a vaccination.  

We never want the legislation, having said that, to get shut to a universal use of masks and other protection actions.  This would be done by the power of the purse.  The previous detail firms want is for their shoppers to experience unsafe, or to get Covid as a final result of an conversation with their businesses. 

Due to the fact it is not illegal for corporations to request their staff members users if they are vaccinated, the businesses can identify that non-vaccinated personnel don masks as part of ta gown code.  This has been used to induce employees users to get their pictures at health facilities, as putting on a mask all working day at work can be an annoyance.

These of us who do not want to sense at chance can also permit companies know that we will not interact with all those that that really don’t have a mask necessity for equally workers and consumers.  If plenty of individuals stroll out of firms wherever maskless employees and/or shoppers are authorized, and let the supervisors know why, it will be a effective incentive to enforce the governor’s mandate.

Based mostly on recent traits, it is likely that we will have 80 percent of grownups vaccinated in Massachusetts by the Fourth of July, which ought to drastically cut down on transmission of the virus.  And we could shortly discover out if it can be transmitted by the vaccinated.  But to defend young children, it is incredibly vital that we go on what we all both of those know and can do to guard other people: don a mask, maintain socially distant from other individuals not in your bubble, wash your arms, and hold out until eventually we hear a resounding “all clear.”

Bill Walczak is a Dorchester resident and co-founder and previous CEO of the Codman Sq. Wellbeing Center. His column seems weekly in the Reporter.

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[geraldbrodylaw]

Can You Qualify for Workers’ Compensation if You’re a Telecommuter?

In March of 2020, the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Newsom signed an executive stay at home order to preserve the public health and safety of California residents. This order mandated that all individuals living in the state remain at their place of residence except for permitted work, local shopping and errands, and other essential activities. The order resulted in a sudden surge of teleworking across the state. And now, many non-essential workers once again find themselves at home as intensive care units fill up and new regional stay-at-home orders go into effect. So how does teleworking affect workers’ compensation? Can you qualify for workers’ compensation if you’re a telecommuter? Read on for more information. 

Can you qualify for workers’ compensation if you work from home?

The short answer is yes, but not every person who works from home is eligible. In order to qualify for worker’s compensation, these four eligibility requirements must be met:

Your employer must carry workers’ compensation insurance

You must be an employee

Your injury or illness or injury must be work-related

You must file your claim in the required timeframe

As long as you meet these eligibility requirements, you should be able to claim workers’ compensation benefits, even if you’re working remotely. 

Let’s look at these requirements a little more closely. 

Your employer must carry workers’ comp insurance

California employers are required by law to have workers’ compensation insurance even if they only have one employee. If you are eligible for workers’ comp benefits but your employer is uninsured, you may have grounds for a lawsuit to cover your medical expenses and lost wages. 

You must be an employee

California law requires that companies pay workers’ compensation benefits to employees injured on the job, but not every worker is considered an employee. The laws do not apply to independent contractors, consultants, or gig economy workers. Many workers, however, are misclassified as independent contractors so their employer can avoid paying payroll taxes and workers’ comp insurance. Disputing your employment status in court can be tricky, but a workers’ comp lawyer can help. 

Your injury or illness must be work-related and arise from the course of your employment

As long as injuries are work-related and take place in the “work-environment,” they should be eligible for workers’ comp benefits. Determination of work-relatedness in a work-from-home claim can be tricky, Section 14300.5(b)(1) of the California Labor Code defines the work environment as "the establishment and other locations where one or more employees are working or are present as a condition of their employment. The work environment includes not only physical locations, but also the equipment or materials used by the employee during the course of his or her work." Accidents that take place during the commute between job sites would also be eligible for workers' comp benefits. 

You must file your claim within the statute of limitations

Filing a workers’ compensation claim requires that you report your injury to your employer within 30 days of becoming aware of the condition. Your employer will give you a  DWC-1 claim form, which you’ll need to return to your employer, who will then submit it to the workers’ comp insurance company. The statute of limitations for filing a workers’ compensation claim in California is one year from the date of your job-related injury or illness. If you do not file a workers’ compensation claim within a year of becoming aware of your injury or illness, you may lose your right to file at all.

In a work-from-home workers’ comp claim, you’ll need to provide evidence that the injury arose from carrying out work-related tasks. Our workers’ compensation attorneys can help you gather supporting documentation, including: time sheets, record of work hours, time-stamped emails, and other evidence that supports your claim.  

Need a workers’ comp lawyer in San Diego? Call us now!

At the Law Office of Gerald Brody & Associates, we know times are tough for everyone right now, and the last thing you need is the financial burden of additional medical bills from a work-related illness or injury.  If you’ve been injured on the job, we can help you get the benefits you need to cover your expenses and lost wages, even if you’re working remotely. 

Give us a call at (619) 528-9800 to schedule a free consultation today. 

[phgq]

Recovery in sight after Covid-19 takes toll on GenSan’s economy

#PHnews: Recovery in sight after Covid-19 takes toll on GenSan’s economy

GENERAL SANTOS CITY – This year turned out as one of the most difficult periods in the city’s history as it struggled--like the rest of the world--to cope with the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic. The city practically went on standstill for several months as local officials were forced to lock down to contain the spread of the highly contagious disease. Businesses and economic activities ground to a halt while residents were confined to their homes due to the travel and movement restrictions, rendering the usually busy streets almost deserted. This came after another promising start to the year for the city, which managed to come out strong despite a late jolt in the previous year. Showing its resiliency and solid economic foundations, the city managed to fend off the impact of the series of earthquakes that rocked the area in the last quarter of 2019 and even made early strides on the economic front. Sustaining the momentum from the previous years, the business scene was poised to take another leap with fresh investments and expansions from its over 11,000 registered micro, small and medium enterprises. After several months of waiting, the maiden flight of the new air route between the city and Clark in Pampanga finally took off in February, followed by the announcement of another major commercial airline to expand in the area in the succeeding next month. The planned expansion, however, had to take the backseat because of the pandemic. State of calamity When cases of Covid-19 started to spread in China and other countries in late January, the city government was among the first localities that raised its alert status and laid down counter-measures against the disease. On Feb. 1, the local government created its own task force to ensure the proper monitoring and implementation of control measures to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. Dubbed City Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging and Re-Emerging Infectious Diseases, the special body was tasked to lead the city’s preparations to manage and contain the spread of Covid-19. Three days later, the city council placed the area under a state of calamity and allotted an initial PHP10 million to fund mitigation and response initiatives. Heeding an advisory from the national government, city officials eventually canceled all activities in line with the Kalilangan Festival 2020 and its 81st foundation anniversary celebration in the third week of February due to the Covid-19 threat. Preemptive lockdown After the Department of Health confirmed in the first week of March the local transmission of the disease in Metro Manila and with the World Health Organization later declaring it a global pandemic, Mayor Ronnel Rivera ordered on March 13 the restriction of non-essential travels to and from the city as a “preventive measure.” On March 16, Rivera ordered the temporary closure of the city international airport to all passenger flights, banned the disembarkation and embarkation of vessel crews in all city ports, shut down entertainment and recreation-related establishments, and stricter land travel in and out of the city. The restrictions were expanded a week later after the city was placed under a lockdown or enhanced community quarantine (ECQ). The measures entailed the closure of the city’s borders, curfew from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m., general movement restriction for residents, suspension of public transportation, and the “no movement” every Sunday. The city government extended the ECQ and imposed more control measures and health protocols, such as the mandatory wearing of face masks, after recording its first confirmed Covid-19 case on April 7. More cases emerged in the succeeding weeks involving returning overseas Filipino workers and residents stranded in other areas due to the lockdowns. By June, the local government started to scale down the restrictions. It eased the area’s classification to general community quarantine (GCQ), eventually modifying it into modified general community quarantine (MGCQ) after seeing that the Covid-19 situation was already manageable. Local transmission The resumption of regular activities was only temporary as new Covid-19 cases emerged-- this time not coming from the returning OFWs and locally stranded individuals, on the third week of August. On Aug. 30, Rivera confirmed the local transmission of the disease, with the confirmed cases surging in just over a week from 54 to 76. More infections came out the following week, mostly from the city fishport complex in Barangay Tambler. This prompted the local government and the Philippine Fisheries Development Authority to place the fishport under partial lockdown from Sept. 2 to 5 to curb the infections. After considering calls from the medical community for quarantine measures due to the rising infections among front-liners and declining health care resources, Rivera placed the city anew under GCQ on Sept. 13. He restored the restrictions reminiscent of the previous lockdowns. The city remained under GCQ for an extended period as cases continued to rise. This was eventually downgraded to MGCQ on Oct. 15. The city government later extended such status until Dec. 31 along with several movement restrictions, among them the “no movement every Sunday.” On Dec. 1, the mayor issued an executive order lifting the Sunday lockdown amid clamor from the business community and shortened the curfew hours due to the improving Covid-19 situation. By then, the confirmed Covid-19 cases in the city reached 1,162 with 49 related deaths, but about 82 percent or 956 of the patients have so far recovered. As of Dec. 25, the recorded infections have increased to 1,338, but only 84 of these were active cases as the recoveries surged to 1,197. Economic impact As in other areas, many businesses in the city took a big hit due to the long lockdowns, with some eventually forced to retrench their workers, scale down their operations, or totally close shop. A report released by the Department of Labor and Employment-Region 12 as of Oct. 30 said it documented at least three establishments here with 19 combined workers permanently shutting down after absorbing huge losses. Some 68 establishments opted to downsize, affecting 720 workers; 142 businesses implemented flexible work arrangements for their 2,704 workers; 286 others with 4,484 workers decided to cease their operations temporarily. The suspension of commercial flights from the city to Manila in mid-March crippled tuna products' shipment to the domestic and international markets, as the remaining cargo flights could not cope with the daily quota. “The fishing industry is badly affected by Covid-19. We cannot market our produce for local consumption and export requirements due to the non-availability of flights. Even the city’s shrimp production is also affected because there is no Manila market,” Marfenio Tan, former president of the Socsksargen Federation of Fishing and Allied Industries Inc. (SFFAII), said in a report. The SarGen (Sarangani/General Santos) Shrimp Stakeholders Association Inc. noted that the farmgate buying price for 10-gram shrimps dropped to PHP150 per kilo from the previous PHP240 a kilo due to the situation. Cebu Pacific Air commissioned some of its passenger aircraft to bring more cargo from the city to Manila, but the volume was limited. The four-day partial closure of the city fishport complex in early September due to the emergence of Covid-19 cases resulted in around PHP300 million lost revenues for the fishing industry. Aside from these, the lockdowns also disrupted the shipment of live hogs, pork products, vegetables, and other locally produced goods to Metro Manila and other markets in Luzon and Visayas. As of the second week of December, the city government spent over PHP1 billion for its Covid-19 relief and response initiatives. John Philip Quimosing, city budget officer, said in an interview the funds were used for the multiple waves of food relief for residents, quarantine expense of returning residents, and identified close contacts, including patients' treatment. It was also spent to establish the Covid-19 treatment center, molecular laboratory, purchase of testing kits, and other related supplies. Recovery Amid the bleak situation, the city government remains optimistic that the local economy will eventually recover and bounce back from the lost opportunities in the past months. It mainly pins its hope on several developments that provided encouraging prospects for the area next year. This was bannered by the opening at the height of the Covid-19 lockdowns last April of the eight-story Sarangani Bay Specialist Medical Center, the first high-rise project approved by the city government. On Oct. 28, low-cost airline AirAsia finally made its inaugural flight from Manila to the city after seven months of delay due to the pandemic. Another commercial airline, Pan-Pacific Airlines, expanded early this month its cargo operations to the city and signified to explore the possibility of eventually opening passenger flights. Earlier, Rivera said they are hoping that the shelved developments and investments due to the pandemic will take off anew once the situation returns to normal. These include the investments committed by a delegation from China that visited the city last January. “We’re doing everything we can to address this pandemic and at the same time allow our economy to recover,” Rivera said. Complementing these efforts is around PHP3.4 billion in proposed programs and projects under the city’s Covid-19 preparation, response, and recovery plan. Riza Paches, a member of the local government’s planning team, said the plan is based on the identified short, medium, and long-term needs of the city to effectively address the crisis based on the projected risks and its capacity. The identified areas of interventions are infrastructure, hardware (equipment), supplies and materials, financial and cash assistance, training and capability building, systems or software, personnel, vehicles, and policy. Of the PHP3.4-billion fund requirement, around PHP1.16 billion was set for the infrastructure component, including the development of more isolation and treatment facilities for Covid-19. Around PHP147 million was earmarked by the city’s economic cluster next year to assist micro, small and medium enterprises, farmers, fisherfolk, transport cooperatives, and other key sectors recover from the impact of the pandemic. (PNA)

***

References:

* Philippine News Agency. "Recovery in sight after Covid-19 takes toll on GenSan’s economy." Philippine News Agency. https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1125807 (accessed December 30, 2020 at 03:00AM UTC+14).

* Philippine News Agency. "Recovery in sight after Covid-19 takes toll on GenSan’s economy." Archive Today. https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1125807 (archived).

[khalilhumam]

The ‘rural-urban divide’ furthers myths about race and poverty—concealing effective policy solutions

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/the-rural-urban-divide-furthers-myths-about-race-and-poverty-concealing-effective-policy-solutions/

The ‘rural-urban divide’ furthers myths about race and poverty—concealing effective policy solutions

By Hanna Love, Tracy Hadden Loh In the weeks since Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election, a familiar story of American politics has had plenty of time to fester: The narrative of “two Americas,” politically and economically divided into “thriving” urban places that went for Biden and “hurting” rural places that went for Donald Trump, destined by geography to a bleak future of polarization and discontent. This narrative presents two societies so fundamentally opposed they barely belong to the same world, framing urban America as diverse, educated, and economically productive and rural America as white, dependent on dying industries, and characterized by stagnation, decline, and despair. While this framing stems from real economic-political trends (including analysis from our colleagues showing that Biden-voting counties comprise 70% of the nation’s GDP), pundits, journalists, and policymakers have extrapolated these trends to fuel a urban-versus-rural narrative that is not only inaccurate, but harmful to our nation’s collective political and economic future. As we demonstrate here and expand upon in a new research series, dividing our nation into such a binary has immediate, lived consequences for people living in all corners of America. The binary-based narrative is not only inaccurate, but has potential to inflict real harm in four distinct ways. First, it prioritizes the political concerns of an imagined, white rural monolith and erases the needs of rural people of color during a pandemic which is disproportionately devastating rural Black, Latino or Hispanic, and Native American communities. Second, it furthers misconceptions about rural economies which devalue the role of rural places in American (and urban) prosperity. Third, it propagates a myth of place-based poverty that erases people living in a range of high-poverty geographies, justifying oversimplified antipoverty policies. And finally, the binary-based narrative obscures effective policy and practice solutions for rural economic development that embrace the interdependence of rural and urban economic futures.

Rural America is not all white, and spreading this falsity caters to white supremacy

As our colleague Andre M. Perry recently wrote, prioritizing calls to “heal” the rural-urban divide conceals the real divide of American racism, acts as if there are no working-class Black and brown people living in small towns, and furthers “the unstated assumption that the country can’t heal if white Americans aren’t accommodated first.” As Perry and others have pointed out since the 2016 election, conflating “rural” with “white” propagates an incomplete story of rural America that centers white political anxieties. This incomplete story furthers myths about race and poverty in America that cater to white supremacy, and the longer it remains dominant, the more severe consequences it engenders for people across America. On a political level, attributing the close election to an urban-rural divide obfuscates actual voting patterns. Situating Trump’s base in rural areas conceals the fact that a majority of white Americans voted for Donald Trump regardless of geography or income, and functionally obscures the political power of rural voters of color who helped carry the election for Biden. At the human level, the portrayal of rural America as a white monolith erases the 21% of rural residents who are people of color, and who are critical to the economic future of rural and small towns and to the health of the nation overall. This comes at a time of unprecedented crisis in which Black, Latino or Hispanic, and Native American rural communities are disproportionately devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic and require coordinated fiscal relief to survive. As we demonstrate throughout our research, if the nation wants to focus on the plight of rural America, it should strive to advance health, opportunity, and equity for communities that COVID-19’s rural surge has impacted—not cater to the resentment of an imagined white rural monolith.

Rural places are essential—but undervalued—in the American economy

Rural communities are integral for American prosperity, yet they are consistently undervalued in the dominant rhetoric. When measured by GDP, urban areas appear to be the engines of the American economy largely because the finance and knowledge economies have coalesced there, along with the bulk of the U.S. population. But these trends do not mean rural areas are irrelevant to the health of our economy or society, and there is growing global awareness that there are more ways of measuring economic value besides the GDP. Rural areas provide valuable ecosystem services to our nation and the world, such as food production, carbon sequestration, and stewardship of biodiversity and habitat resources. And, as our Brookings colleagues and the Center for American Progress point out, rural areas power, feed, and enlist to protect America, while providing natural resources, industrial innovation, and the workforce that the nation as a whole relies upon. If COVID-19’s massive disruptions have taught us anything, it is that there is real security in having fresh food, production capacity for personal protective equipment, and outdoor space within our borders. Both our policies and our rhetoric can do a better job of properly valuing these rural assets. The Democratic Party can do a better job of valuing rural places too. In past elections, rural places with recreation-, amenity-, and service-based economies were more likely to be Democratic-leaning pockets in otherwise red states. This held true in the 2020 election, as tourist-dependent rural economies in places like Colorado went for Biden—providing further indication there is no one “rural America” to blame for Trump’s enduring popularity.

Persistent poverty isn’t just a ‘rural’ problem

The narrative of the rural-urban divide propagates misconceptions about the nature of persistent poverty in America, with nefarious effects. Despite the attention paid to the economic anxieties of rural America, persistent poverty is not a rural phenomenon—and measuring it at this binary level won’t yield solutions that work for urban neighborhoods with similar statistics. Persistent poverty is pervasive. According to the Department of Agriculture’s definition, rural counties account for 84% of places struggling with persistent poverty. However, if we classify places with persistent poverty using census tract data, most of them are in metro areas (Figure 1). How we measure persistent poverty matters for how we understand whose problem this is. At the county level, 30 states have at least one place facing persistent poverty. But at the census tract level, persistent poverty touches every state and Washington, D.C. This isn’t just a methodological discussion—it’s political. We need to understand where persistent poverty is located in order to create political accountability and customize solutions for alleviating it. The “two Americas” are not urban and rural—they are neighborhoods and communities in every region that are separated by a host of other place-level challenges that shape opportunity.

What urban and rural America can learn from each other

The urban-rural divide overlooks common ground between the two and paints a picture of rural places that require “fixing” from urban America—or that should be abandoned altogether. In reality, the rural economy is structured much like the urban economy, with the service sector comprising the largest share of employment in metro and non-metro areas alike (Figure 2). Moreover, effective strategies for rural economic and community development exist, and for decades, rural leaders have been implementing them and garnering real successes in fostering recreation, amenity-based, and service economies that support rural places of opportunity. Our colleagues have demonstrated the federal government’s role in supporting thriving rural places. Our research dives into the hyperlocal role, focusing on the actions local leaders are taking to build rural resilience—including supporting clusters of locally owned small businesses that build community wealth, implementing built environment and quality-of-life improvements for vulnerable residents, strengthening social cohesion between neighbors, and nurturing new community-led structures to build capacity and advance community priorities. Embedded within our research are strategies both rural and urban leaders can learn from—lessons that reflect the shared realities of rural and urban places and the importance of locally tailored efforts to value and build upon place-based assets. Far from dismal portrayals of rural places of despair, local leaders are innovating to foster inclusive, vibrant, and connected rural places in the long term. These places are a vital part of the nation’s shared future, and we must value, engage with, and invest in them.

Investing in local strategies for rural resilience

As the COVID-19 pandemic tests the resilience of rural economies in real time, the stakes for acting upon these insights are high. Rather than focus on binary divides between a misleading rural monolith and a “thriving” urban America, we need to take seriously the value, nuance, and diversity of rural people and places. This requires investing in solutions that uplift rural communities as a matter of equity and resilience, not as a response to a media-produced narrative that centers white resentment at the expense of an increasingly diverse and dynamic rural America.

[tcifiscal]

Criminal Justice Reform in the Commonwealth: 1.6 Million People in Virginia with a Criminal Record Deserve A Fair Chance To Succeed

In the wake of a national conversation about racism, policing, and criminal justice reform, the time has come for changes to a system that has disproportionately targeted and incarcerated communities of color. This summer’s special session will be the next opportunity for Virginia’s lawmakers to advance necessary reforms, including new “fair chance” policies that remove counterproductive barriers – including in areas of employment, housing, and education – and allow people with criminal records to build a more secure economic future. 

A Flawed, Racially Biased System

Decades of “tough on crime” policies and mass incarceration have left more than 70 million people – or nearly one in three adults – in the United States with an arrest or conviction record. As a consequence, nearly half of all children in the country have at least one parent with a criminal record, making it easier for poverty to linger for multiple generations. 

But these trends have not been equally experienced, including in our commonwealth. A variety of factors – including discriminatory laws, practices (e.g., “broken windows” policing), and implicit biases – mean that race is a major factor at every stage of the justice system, such that Black Americans experience more frequent stops, searches, and arrests by police, while also facing higher rates of pre-trial detention, and ultimately harsher sentences than similarly situated white people. In fact, Black Virginians comprise about 19% of the population, but they accounted for more than 40% of all arrests in 2019. More than half – 55% – of all people in Virginia’s prisons are Black. These data points encapsulate a problem that is national in scope: in 2018, for every 100,000 adults in the United States, 555 people were imprisoned. But for every 100,000 Black adults, that number surged to more than 1,500 people. 

For the nearly 13,000 people who are released from prison in Virginia each year, and even for those who have been convicted of a minor offense, the stigma of a criminal record is difficult to wash away, including in the employment context. This is in part because employer background checks have become a standard practice. When these checks turn up a record, the applicant – if they are hired at all – can expect lower earnings: men who were formerly incarcerated can expect to work nine fewer weeks per year and earn 40% less annually, for a total loss of $179,000 even before the age of 50. 

These collateral consequences, however, are most pronounced for people of color. A landmark study found that among job applicants with a criminal record, the likelihood of a favorable response (e.g., an interview or job offer from the employer) for white candidates dropped by half, from 34% to 17%, but it fell by almost two-thirds, from 14% to 5%, for Black candidates. In fact, evidence suggests that white applicants with a criminal record are more likely to receive an interview from an employer than Black applicants without one. And among women who were formerly incarcerated, one analysis found that the odds of a favorable response from an employer were 93% greater for white women than for Black women. Overall, these findings underscore how job-seekers with a past criminal record are often punished twice: once for the record itself and again for the color of their skin. 

The barriers to employment that people with records face undermine our economy and public safety. According to one estimate, the stigmatization of people with felony records reduces the annual U.S. gross domestic product by an estimated $78 to $87 billion. This is despite growing evidence that people with records make good employees, an important consideration for businesses and even the U.S. military. In fact, research on individuals with a felony record serving in the military found that they were promoted more quickly and to higher ranks than other enlistees and were no more likely than service members without records to be discharged for negative reasons. At the same time, access to employment and higher wages has been shown to reduce recidivism and makes our communities safer. 

Creating Opportunity through Fair Chance Policy Reforms

As the General Assembly considers a menu of options to reform our criminal justice system, policies that create pathways to good-paying jobs for people with records can bolster families, communities, and our economy. These fair chance reforms, which build on existing laws in Virginia and best practices from other states, include:

Extending Ban-the-Box (BtB) to the private sector. In general, BtB laws delay when employers may inquire about a job applicant’s past criminal record, often until the interview stage. The basic goal is to ensure that an applicant is judged on their qualifications first. BtB laws often provide a framework, based on guidance from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, to conduct an individualized assessment of any past convictions, including 1) the amount of time passed since the offense was committed, 2) whether the offense is related to the job sought, and 3) any evidence of the applicant’s rehabilitation. During the 2020 legislative session, the General Assembly passed – in bipartisan fashion –  House Bill 757 (Del. Aird), which prohibits arrest and conviction inquiries on initial employment applications for positions with state agencies and localities. This was an important first step for people in Virginia with a record: research has shown that BtB policies “raise the probability of public employment for those with convictions by about 30% on average.” Other recent studies have found that BtB laws increase the employment of residents living in “high-crime” neighborhoods, suggesting that these policies are meaningfully increasing opportunity for people with records. To build on this progress, Virginia’s lawmakers should extend BtB to the private sector, as 13 other states across the country have done.

Reforming Virginia’s restrictive expungement law. Virginia needs a strong expungement policy both because a criminal record should not be a life sentence to poverty and research shows that an individual’s risk of recidivism drops significantly over time, eventually making them no more likely than the general public to commit a crime in the future. With this in mind, the main idea behind expungement laws is simple: once someone remains crime-free for a specified period, certain prior offenses are sealed from public view. With a “clean slate,” the goal is to knock down the many barriers – relating to employment, housing, education, and public benefits – that often result from a criminal record. Expungement policies hold the power to change lives. A recent study of Michigan’s law found that within one year after a record is cleared, people are not only more likely to be employed, but wages go up by more than 20%. Virginia’s expungement law is widely understood as one of the “least forgiving and most restrictive” laws in the nation, giving very few people the chance at a clean slate. Current law generally provides no process by which adults can expunge a past record. The law’s scope is severely limited, extending only to people who have been tried but not found guilty, people who face charges that are later dropped, and people who receive an absolute pardon from the governor.   For these reasons, legislation to reform the law has become commonplace, even as the most significant reforms have failed to advance. In the 2019 session, HB 2278 (Del. Cole), which provided for the automatic expungement of a record after an absolute pardon, passed unanimously. More recently, in the 2020 regular session, a flurry of bills were introduced but did not pass, including a proposal that would have permitted people to pursue expungements of past convictions if they remain crime-free for eight years. Future reform should be guided by two key principles. First, the scope of Virginia’s law should be expanded to make expungement possible in more circumstances. For example, Maryland outlines more than 100 misdemeanors that are eligible for judicial expungement after a specified waiting period. Many other states – from North Carolina to Mississippi to Michigan – permit, in some situations, the expungement of certain felonies, especially minor, non-violent offenses and where the individual has no other significant criminal history.  Second, Virginia should establish a system that seals records through an automatic process, rather than a petition process, which can be costly and time-consuming. The experiences of other states underscore why this is important: according to one study, only 6.5% of people who could get their records sealed did so within 5 years of becoming eligible. To avoid this “uptake gap,” Pennsylvania became the first state in the country to set up an automatic process, which seals arrest records after charges are dropped and for certain minor conviction records after 10 years. Virginia can learn from this model, which was enacted with bipartisan support in Pennsylvania. Indeed, the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus has specifically named automatic expungement as a necessary component of future criminal justice reform.

The Time for Reform Has Come

The work to reform our criminal justice system and unravel collateral consequences that keep too many people in Virginia in poverty is vital, urgent, and will require a sustained effort. The General Assembly can begin that work this summer.

– Phil Hernandez, Senior Policy Fellow & Counsel

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Learn more about The Commonwealth Institute at www.thecommonwealthinstitute.org

[itsfinancethings]

In his early 20s, after leaving business school to follow his ambition of becoming an artist and performer, Heezy Kim Yang was drawn to an out-of-the-way area of Seoul’s Itaewon district known as Homo Hill, a longtime haven for LGBTQ people in South Korea.

There, he found a place where he could interact with others without fear of judgement or discrimination, while exploring ways to express his sexuality through art. The area is a craggy hill near a U.S. military base, where, after dark, bright signs bearing the names of clubs like Queen and Soho cast the streets in multicolored light.

Nowadays, those lights are off, the bars and nightclubs are closed and the usually buzzing streets are uncharacteristically quiet after a coronavirus cluster with more than 130 cases shined unwanted attention on the neighborhood—sparking a surge in homophobia, activists say.

The South Korean government is now trying to track down anyone who visited establishments in the neighborhood, sparking fears that the country’s efficient, aggressive system of contact tracing could lead to people being outed, and imperil the neighborhood’s status as a discreet area where LGBTQ people can be themselves.

Courtesy Heezy Kim YangArtist and drag performer Heezy Kim Yang poses in a photo he posted to social media following the Itaewon coronavirus outbreak. The message on his mask translates roughly: “No Hate, Yes Solidarity.”

Now a well-known drag performer and visual artist, Yang, 29, says that the area, represents a kind of openness that is impossible to find elsewhere in South Korea.

“You cannot be completely free in other areas, as free as you can be on Homo Hill,” Yang tells TIME. “Like holding hands or kissing, you can’t do that anywhere else.”

The news of the rising number of infections has weighed on him. “I worry about friends and acquaintances because not everyone has a family that supports them,” he says.

The publicity is a stark departure for an area that is normally a discreet sanctuary for LGBTQ people in South Korea—a country that ranks low among developed economies for LGBTQ acceptance, and where many choose to keep their sexual orientations private to avoid discrimination at their workplaces or from their families.

South Korea’s media began focusing on the neighborhood after public health authorities announced that a 29-year-old man who later tested positive for the coronavirus visited several establishments in the area on May 2. Authorities gathered a list of more than 5,500 people who visited clubs there. As of Thursday, they had still not managed to contact some 2,500 of them.

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The timing of these new COVID-19 cases was particularly bad. South Korea officially relaxed its social distancing guidelines on May 6, and appeared to have gotten control of a coronavirus outbreak that, in late February, was the largest outside China. The country of 52 million has won plaudits abroad for its system of widespread testing and contact tracing. By late April, authorities had brought the number of new daily cases down to single digits—without having enacted a comprehensive lockdown.

The celebration was short lived. The number of daily new cases—two or three dozen early this week—is still far below the hundreds of new infections South Korea reported per day in late February and early March, but the new cluster has caused dismay by coming at a time many felt the country was getting back to normal.

Escalating the tension, all patrons of clubs in Itaewon were required to provide their names and contact information, though authorities said some details later proved false or incomplete. The uncertainty in tracking everyone down echoed the early escalation of South Korea’s outbreak, when members of a secretive religious group were accused of refusing to be tested and thereby spreading the virus—before church leaders agreed to provide a full list of members.

Due to concerns over the new momentum of the virus’s spread in South Korea, the government has delayed the opening of the new school year. Itaewon revelers have also become objects of scorn.

One newspaper, the Kukmin Ilbo, garnered criticism for articles that used language depicting gay men as promiscuous and prone to risky sexual behavior. Activists argued that the newspaper unnecessarily highlighted that the initial subject of the outbreak investigation had visited a gay club in an effort to stir up homophobia.

The South Korea office of Amnesty International condemned the article in a statement on Tuesday, saying such reporting “foments stigma and anti-LGBT sentiment.”

The situation leaves the South Korean government to strike a delicate balance. The country’s success in tackling the coronavirus has required citizens to cede a degree of privacy by allowing the government to track their movements through mobile phone data, then disclose those movements with or without consent. The government releases highly detailed information about the movements of each known coronavirus case. Authorities are now seeking a way to continue such tracking while being careful not to inadvertently disclose information that could lead to neighbors and colleagues learning an infected person visited a gay bar.

“Sexual orientation is not relevant for virus-prevention efforts, and such disclosure could violate rights to privacy. If information like that is disclosed, why would anyone come forward and admit that they visited those places?” said Kim Woo-joo, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Korea University Guro Hospital in Seoul.

Homosexuality is not illegal in South Korea, but openly gay public figures are rare.

On Tuesday, Hong Seok-chun, an actor and television personality who is credited as being South Korea’s first openly gay celebrity, publicly weighed in on the intensifying situation, posting a photo of Itaewon on Instagram and imploring anyone who has spent time in the area of late to get tested.

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지금은 용기를 내야 할 때입니다. 성소수자는 기본적으로 자신의 정체성이 가족에게, 지인에게, 사회에 알려지는 게 두려운 게 사실이기 때문입니다. 그래서 용기가 필요합니다. 오랫동안 이태원에서 자리를 잡고 있는 사람으로서 이번 일이 참 안타깝고 걱정스러운데, 무엇보다 아직도 검진을 받지 않고 연락이 안되는 사람들이 너무 많다는 것이 가장 우려됩니다 물론 ‘아웃팅’에 대한 걱정이 크다는 건 누구보다 잘 알고 있습니다 하지만 지금은 그 무엇보다도 본인과 가족, 그리고 사회의 건강과 안전이 우선입니다. 다행히 ‘익명 보장’ 검사가 가능하다고 하니, 지금이라도 당장 검사를 받아야 합니다. 지금은 모두가 힘든 시기입니다. 그리고 모두가 이 사태에서 벗어나고 싶어 힘을 모으고 있습니다. 방역 당국과 의료진, 그리고 국민 한 사람 한사람이 쏟은 그동안의 힘과 노력이 헛되지 않게 지금 당장 용기를 내서 검사에 임하길 간곡히 권합니다.

A post shared by Tonyhong1004 (@tonyhong1004) on May 11, 2020 at 7:46pm PDT

“Now is the time to be brave,” Hong wrote. “I, better than anyone, know the worries over outing, but right now what’s most important is the health and safety of our families and society.”

Hong is one example of how LGBTQ South Koreans are banding together. On Tuesday, to provide assistance to people in need of support, a coalition of South Korean civic groups announced the launch of a hotline for anyone who wants to be tested anonymously. “Let’s form a new community in the midst of a crisis and support each other,” the group said in a statement.

LGBTQ South Koreans who are not out to colleagues and family members, have watched with anxiety as their relatively small and discreet community suddenly garnering national scrutiny. Nightclubs with names like Trunk, H.I.M and Pink Elephant, which were previously only known to a few, are national news.

“Now these are the most famous clubs in Korea,” says Kim, a gay 30-year-old resident of Seoul, who asked that only his surname be used because he is not out to his family or employer.

Kim feels that the community has grown strong enough to withstand the crisis. “I don’t worry about those bars closing. And even if they did close, other bars and clubs would open.”

He is in favor of the government’s contact tracing program and hopes the Itaewon outbreak will be a turning point for LGBTQ Koreans. “The media’s frame for reporting on the LGBTQ community has been sensationalism,” he says. “Now is the time to take action to defend ourselves from hatred.”

Despite the current tensions, in recent years South Korea’s LGBTQ community has taken steps out of the Itaewon shadows. Compared to the start of his career, Yang, the artist and drag performer, finds more opportunities to show his work in new places and collaborate with non-LGBTQ artists.

“Things are definitely better than they were five or ten years ago. Now I can open up to people relatively more easily, most people are more open minded and don’t have any prejudice,” he says.

He feels that the ongoing backlash is a response to LGBTQ people’s growing profile. “Now we are vocal and visible, our status is higher now and we’re being talked about.”

Yang also worries that, with the climate of distrust caused by the ongoing pandemic, those gains are now in peril, saying, “I don’t want everything that we’ve achieved to go away.”

Please send tips, leads, and stories from the frontlines to virus@time.com.

[nathanielburgos]

US Immigration Ban: Not Applicable to Non-Immigrant Visa Holders

Update: Clarifying details on the temporary suspension of immigration to the US, the yet to be signed Executive Order is restricted to those seeking green cards only. This suspension is effective for 60 days and will be revisited depending upon the economic conditions in the US.

If the Coronavirus pandemic continues to influence the US economy and unemployment rate, the US government will consider extending the temporary pause to immigration for another 30 days.

Who Is Not Impacted By This Immigration Suspension?

This order is currently applicable to those seeking employment-based green cards and relatives of those green card holders who are not citizens yet. It does not include the following –

H-1B, non-immigrant, specialty work visa holders

H-2B, temporary non-agricultural workers

H4, dependent visa holders

Other H category visa holders, including health care workers

Other foreign workers coming into the US on non-immigrant visas including L-1A and L-1B visa holders

F1, international student visa holders

B2 visitor visa holders including visiting relatives of US Citizens

Who Will Be Impacted By This Immigration Suspension?

Yr. 2019 had 462,422 green card recipients enter US.

This temporary suspension is restricted to those seeking permanent residency in the US. These family- sponsored green card holders will not be allowed into the US for the next 60 days. This also includes –

Immediate relatives of US Citizens

Family Sponsored Preference

Employment Sponsored Preference

Diversity Immigrants

Others, including Special Immigrants

With mass unemployment surging across the country and unemployment claims crossing 22 million over the past weekend, President Trump has indicated that he will temporarily suspend immigration into the US “to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens.” He intends to sign an executive order to put this into action. Details of this are still awaited.

In January this year, as the Coronavirus was rapidly spreading across the country, the chances of having an economic recession was 41%. As unemployment surged, the possibilities of going into a recession have gone up by 67%. This fear has instilled the need to save local jobs and curtail the entry of foreign workers like H-1B and H-2B workers.

Since President Trump declared a national emergency due to the Coronavirus pandemic four weeks ago, he has taken several steps to restrict movement of immigrants into the US. He instituted travel restrictions for anyone coming in from China and the 26 Schengen countries in Europe. He also closed the shared borders with Canada and Mexico to arrest the spread of the deadly virus.

The intent to suspend immigration to the US was conveyed in a tweet by President Trump.

Today we have little details regarding his impending Executive Order. While immigration is a broad term, the many questions swirling around this are –

whether this immigration suspension will impact in-coming immigrants only?

what about the legal immigrants who are already in the US and have a valid visa?

will this increase wait times for green card applicants?

does this Executive order affect foreign workers on already in the US on an H-1B work visa?

and their eligible spouses who are on an H4 EAD?

what about international students coming in on an F1 student visa?

how temporary will this suspension be for?

As we await further details, stay tuned here to follow this developing story.

US Immigration Ban: Not Applicable to Non-Immigrant Visa Holders published first on https://ordergcmsnotescanada.tumblr.com/

[ericvick]

Activists dread basic safety net will not capture evictions

New eviction situations for failing to shell out lease are on the increase in Massachusetts in the six weeks since a state ban expired, and housing advocates want a stronger reaction from Beacon Hill given the rise in COVID-19 an infection rates and the looming finish to a federal moratorium ban.

So much, attempts to take out tenants have taken the form of a gradual-constructing wave fairly than the sudden surge that some feared. Circumstances have been submitted in current months at around the exact same fee as right before the pandemic, and a federal moratorium will block several evictions from staying executed but is due to expire at the conclusion of the calendar year.

But with the pandemic’s next surge in Massachusetts accelerating, neighborhood teams and activists are worried that the state is unnecessarily dangling about the edge of popular housing insecurity.

“We are suitable at the starting of the cliff,” stated Lisa Owens, govt director of the Town Lifetime / Vida Urbana team that has urged lawmakers to just take supplemental techniques. “This is kind of our final chance to act.”

To date, the state demo courtroom system has received 1,882 newly submitted residential eviction for failure to shell out rent cases considering that Oct. 17, when the moratorium that experienced been in place for just about 6 months expired. They trickled in slowly at to start with, with only 70 in the initially two months, and then quickly picked up tempo.

Around the previous two months, conditions have been filed at about the same clip as right before the pandemic: 714 in the week of Nov. 16, and 558 in the holiday-shortened week of Nov. 23. On leading of those people, advocates estimate there are countless numbers of other eviction cases that had been submitted before the condition moratorium took result that could be on the shift the moment again.

Filing an eviction case is in several circumstances just an early step in the system, and not all filings will final result in forceful removal of a tenant. Lots of cases cannot continue to the execution stage until eventually 2021 beneath a separate moratorium the US Facilities for Condition Management issued.

Lew Finfer, co-director of the Massachusetts Communities Action Community, mentioned that the calendar year-conclude deadline – mixed with the impending expiration of expanded unemployment supports Congress created – could prove to be a risky turning level.

“It’s a bleak circumstance receiving additional and more bleaker and shifting into a disaster condition as this all mounts up,” Finfer claimed.

In April, in the course of the very first peak of the COVID-19 outbreak, Gov. Baker signed a monthly bill placing a moratorium on almost all non-unexpected emergency evictions and foreclosures. The laws did not exempt tenants from finally making fantastic on economic obligations, but aimed to continue to keep as many folks as possible securely housed all through the general public wellbeing crisis and at a time when employment losses have been high due to compelled small business closures.

Baker prolonged the non permanent ban once, but he authorized it to expire on Oct. 17 and as a substitute unveiled a $171 million plan.

The proposal enhanced the greatest Residential Aid for Families in Transition (RAFT) benefit available from $4,000 to $10,000 per residence, with $100 million available for the plan this fiscal calendar year.

Far more than 5,800 distinctive homes have been given RAFT rewards because April, in accordance to an administration spokesperson. In between June 1 and Nov. 30, the point out paid out $15.6 million in both of those RAFT support and administrative fees to the regional agencies that distribute the funding.

Baker’s alternate to extending the moratorium drew praise from quite a few real estate leaders and landlords, who have argued that they do not want to result in housing insecurity but at times require to use court docket filings to solve difficulties with tenants.

Greg Vasil, president and CEO of the Increased Boston Real Estate Board, reported enabling the short term ban to finish will assist point out and market leaders get a clearer feeling of the outlook on the floor.

“When I glance at this challenge, filing the conditions isn’t the challenge. What we require to do is make sure men and women do not end up on the sidewalk,” Vasil explained. “I don’t consider any individual would like to be capable to do that. I consider what they want to do is search at these circumstances like an onion. We peel again the very first layer and we’ve solved some of people. Let’s get the job done on the 2nd layer and the third layer and see, at the end of the working day, when we’re at last down to the main of the onion, how a lot of cases are actually still left with folks with full hardship, and then see what methods we could possibly be able to have to enable them out.”

Other companies and leaders aligned with tenants do not share Vasil’s optimism about the administration’s reaction.

The RAFT program experienced a backlog just before the new strategy, and limits on the expanded funding — this kind of as requiring that tenancy can previous for six months or until finally June 2021 for homes with university-aged young children — make it «a great deal harder» to accessibility, according to Andrea Park, an attorney with the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute.

A free mediation program the administration served start with the Office of Community Collaboration has been available for landlords and tenants since Nov. 16, in accordance to an administration spokesperson.

A number of other factors of the plan have nevertheless to make tangible impacts, Park explained. The administration said it would seek the services of attorneys to assist far more tenants have legal illustration through eviction proceedings, but that venture is nonetheless receiving off the ground.

“Not only are individuals assets not all set now, there was no way they were being likely to be completely ready,” Park stated. “They were being declared 5 times in advance of (the moratorium) finished. There have been folks who, on Monday morning following the moratorium ended on Saturday night, acquired eviction notices, like ‘you’re likely to be out in a few times.’”

According to Demo Court knowledge, practically 98 per cent of defendants in rent-relevant eviction situations in 2020 did not have a law firm, in contrast to just 35 percent of plaintiffs.

Park, Owens, and Finfer reported they imagine lawmakers ought to choose a extra forceful method, backing legislation co-authored by Housing Committee Co-chair Rep. Kevin Honan that would maintain a moratorium in place for a calendar year soon after the state of emergency’s end and provide cash to little landlords monetarily impacted by the crisis.

That invoice (H 5018) has unsuccessful to acquire traction. In Oct, Honan said it wanted extra time and operate immediately after it cleared his committee.

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[cringeynews]

New Post has been published on

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Austria just decisively rejected the far-right’s presidential candidate

The results aren’t even fully counted in Austria’s presidential election. Yet the far-right Freedom Party’s candidate, Norbert Hofer, has already conceded defeat due to crushing early returns — a result that stunned political observers and gives hope that the far-right wave sweeping the West can be stopped.

The polls closed at 5 p.m. Vienna time (11 a.m. EST) on Sunday. Projections based on early returns showed Hofer’s opponent — the left-wing independent candidate Alexander Van der Bellen — with a seven point lead (53.6 percent to 46.4p percent). While the exact numbers are liable to change after each vote is counted, Van der Bellen ‘s lead is so wide that Hofer cannot hope to overcome it (the margin of error on the early projections is 1.6 percent).

“You have supported me so magnificently and I am infinitely sad that it did not work out,” Hofer wrote in a short Facebook message to his supporters. “I congratulate Alexander Van der Bellen on his success.”

Austrian polls completely missed this. Virtually all of them predicted a close election, with many showing a narrow Hofer victory. Van der Bellen’s surprise landslide suggests that polls aren’t systematically understating the far-right’s chances, a la Brexit and Trump — rather, it’s that polls can miss in both directions.

“WOW!,” Cas Mudde, an expert on far-right politics at the University of Georgia, tweeted after the results came in. “First time I love to be wrong in 2016!”

More importantly, Austria’s decisive rejection of Hofer shows that divisive, race-baiting politics isn’t guaranteed to triumph in the modern West. Austrians rejected the candidate who declared that “Islam has no place in Austria” in favor of a candidate who asked them to allow “reason rather than extremism to lead our decisions.”

There might be some hope for the West after all.

Hofer’s party is legitimately radical

Norbert Hofer. (Alex Domanski/Getty Images)

To understand why this election mattered so much, you have to understand what Hofer and the Freedom Party (FPÖ) actually stood for.

Founded in 1956, in large part by former Nazis seeking a legitimate vehicle to participate in Austrian democracy, the party was irrelevant in mainstream Austrian politics for decades. But in 1986, the party was taken over by firebrand Jörg Haider.

Haider reoriented the party around one central element: fear of immigrants. He warned that mainstream politicians encouraged “foreign infiltration” of Austria and that Islam was “incompatible” with “human rights and democracy.” At the same time, he praised the Nazis, saying that Hitler had a “proper employment policy.”

Haider was remarkably successful. In 1999, the FPÖ won 26.9 percent of the national vote, securing the party a place in the Austrian government as a junior coalition partner. However, it was unable to end immigration to Austria: By 2003, 12.5 percent of Austrian residents were foreign-born.

Haider died in 2008, by which time the party’s popularity had fallen; it won just 11 percent of the vote that year. But under the leadership of Hofer and Strache, the Freedom Party has made a comeback in recent years.

“The [Freedom Party’s] support is steadily growing: for more than a year it has topped every representative poll, being consistently backed by around 30 per cent of the respondents,” political scientists Philip Rathgeb and Fabio Wolkenstein write at the London School of Economics’ Europe blog.

According to Rathgeb and Wolkenstein, there are a number of reasons for this, including a slow economy and a political stalemate between the two dominant parties that has stymied policymaking. But immigration is by far the most important part of the story.

Austria’s longstanding nativist streak came to the fore in the summer of 2015, when the European refugee crisis became the continent’s dominant political issue. The FPÖ has cast Syrian and other Muslim refugees as a threat to Christian-European civilization. This message has resonated with Austrian voters, a majority of whom think their country is on the wrong track.

Alarmed by FPÖ’s surge in the polls on a wave of anti-refugee sentiment, the Austrian government reversed its pro-refugee policy, closing Austria’s borders to refugees and asylum seekers. But that wasn’t enough to stop the FPÖ’s rise: The party won a plurality in the first round of Austria’s presidential election in April, forcing a runoff between Hofer and Van der Bellen (the candidates from the establishment center-right and center-left parties were eliminated in this first round, showing just how unhappy many Austrians were with the status quo).

The runoff vote was supposed to have been months ago: It was first held in May, with Van der Bellen winning by a tiny 31,000 margin. But an Austrian court nullified the vote, citing irregularities with mail-in ballots. The court rescheduled a redo of the presidential runoff vote for December 4.

Over the course of this extended campaign, Hofer’s radicalism became extremely clear to observers.

Why Hofer’s defeat is such a big deal

(Getty Images)

Traditionally, the Austrian president is mostly a ceremonial figure, with real power wielded by the chancellor (Austria’s equivalent of a prime minister). But, as scholar of Austrian politics Fabio Wolkenstein explains, the Austrian constitution technically grants the president surprisingly unlimited powers to dismiss the chancellor and wield executive power on his or her own.

No Austrian president since 1945 has exercised this power, snuck into the constitution by an anti-democratic chancellor in 1929, for obvious reasons (cough, Hitler, cough). But Hofer had suggested he was open to invoking these so-called “secret” powers, telling Austrians that you “will be surprised about all the things that are possible.”

It’s hard to know whether Hofer actually would have actually been willing to remake the traditional role for the presidency — many observers were skeptical he’d be willing to take such a large risk. But even if Hofer hadn’t exercised the presidency’s full powers, his victory would have been dangerous.

For one thing, Hofer had occasionally signaled that he was open to taking Austria out of the European Union, something he could have pushed from his new high-profile perch.

For another, Hofer, a soft-spoken and telegenic candidate, had a real skill for making the FPÖ seem less radical and more normal. If he continued this trend during the presidency, it could have buoyed the FPÖ’s numbers in Austria’s 2018 presidential elections — potentially helping to fuel a far-right takeover of the country’s entire government.

“A moderate and, so to speak, well-behaved FPÖ president would be a great way of signaling electability to those who are still skeptical,” Wolkenstein writes for the London School of Economics’ Europe blog. “This makes imaginable a comfortable victory of the FPÖ — which consistently has approval ratings higher than those of all other parties — in next general election in 2018.”

Well, not anymore. It turns that, as slick as Hofer might have been, Austrian voters saw through him — and voted in large numbers for his tolerant opponent.

Austria’s election is a break in the far-right wave

Van der Bellen. (Alex Domanski/Getty Images)

Prior to Sunday, far-right populists had been riding a wave of victories.

The far-right, properly understood, is a group of parties around the West united principally around their hostility to mass immigration and mulit-culturalism. These parties — which have strong presences everywhere from the Netherlands to Sweden to Hungary — differ on traditional left/right issues like the size of the welfare state and LGBT rights.

But they all agree that mass immigration, particularly from non-white nations, poses a direct threat to the safety and cultural identity of Western countries. They’ve succeeded as a direct result of dissatisfaction among white voters with cultural change. They win because, not despite, of their racism.

In 2016, this message proved to more effective than almost anyone had thought it would in years prior.

Brexit was, a project of Britain’s far-right United Kingdom Independence Party, was the first shock. Trump, who fits the far-right model to a tee, was an even bigger shock. Just last week, France’s center-right Republican party elected François Fillon — a candidate who adopted the far-right message on immigration — to be its standard bearer in the 2017 presidential election. Fillon is ahead in most general election polls; the runner up is Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right Front National.

These three results — Britain’s referendum, America’s presidential vote, and France’s center-right primary — had mostly been missed by the polls. They suggested that the far-right was stronger than even its West-wide strong poll numbers had suggested; that we were about to experience a wave of far-right parties

If any party were to benefit from such a wave, it should be the FPÖ — one of Europe’s most established and historically successful far-right parties. Moreover, Austria has been a major way station for migrants since the refugee crisis really took off in 2015 — with over one million migrants entering the country (though mostly not settling there) in the past year. You’d think the stage would be set for a sweeping Hofer victory, one that would prove that the polls yet again missed a far-right wave.

And indeed, the polls did miss Austria’s presidential election — only in the exact opposite direction. Hofer was blown out.

What makes Hofer’s defeat even more important, in a political sense, is the message Van der Bellen ran on. Instead of running on far-right lite policies, as some mainstream European politicians have done, he presented a straight contrast — preaching tolerance and acceptance, and casting Hofer’s anti-immigrant message as a threat to Austrian values.

His most successful campaign video featured an 89 year old Holocaust survivor warning that “it’s not the first time something like this has happened,” calling on Austrians to reject bigotry and embrace Van der Bellen’s more open vision of Austria.

The success of this strategy “should be major wake-up call for defeatist liberal democrats,” Mudde, the UGA expert on the far-right, writes. “Populism can be beaten and it can be beaten without pandering!”

Does this mean the far-right’s momentum has been stopped? No, and it’s kind of a mistake to think in those terms. Each national election is mostly about national issues; it’s not like Americans voted for Trump because the UK voted for Brexit. So it’s not like a defeat for the far-right in Austria means that they’ll lose in Dutch parliamentary or French presidential elections.

It does show, however, that defeating the far-right doesn’t require embracing a version of their message. Though ideals about tolerance and equality have taken a beaten in 2017, Austria’s election shows that they can still win the hearts of Western voters.

Via

[newstfionline]

Headlines

Child care crisis pushes US mothers out of the labor force (AP) Angela Wynn had just launched her own project management business, hitting a career stride after years of struggle that began with earning an undergraduate degree as a single mother. Then the coronavirus pandemic hit, forcing many schools to shift online. The now-married mother of five saw little choice but to give up her newly minted business to help three of her children cope with remote learning while her husband, the primary breadwinner, kept his job at a senior living center. “To see all that come to fruition, I did it, but now it’s gone,” said Wynn, who has always been the main caretaker for her children, ages 1, 5, 11, 12 and 18. “But my priority is my kids and their education is everything.” Wynn’s story is becoming distressingly common. Research is increasingly pointing to a retreat of working mothers from the U.S. labor force as the pandemic leaves parents with few child care options and the added burden of navigating distance learning. Thousands of school districts are starting the school year with remote instruction, including most of the largest ones. At least half the country’s child care providers are closed and may not survive the crisis without financial help to cope with implementing safety standards and reduced enrollment. Negotiations for a bailout of the industry have stalled in Congress.

American savings accounts are now ‘steadily declining’ as coronavirus effects linger (Yahoo Money) After weathering the early stages of the recession, poorer Americans are now losing what financial security they had, with the most difficult months yet to come, according to a non-profit that works with lower earners. “Things are looking very frightening for working families in the U.S. right now.” said Leigh Phillips, the president and CEO of SaverLife. “Over the last few months, we have seen savings balances steadily declining and deposits into savings steadily declining.” Factors like the drying up of government assistance and new burdens—such as school closings and continuing under-employment—won’t make things any easier, Phillips said. The assessment is based on a new report that compiles the results of six months of surveys and interviews of SaverLife’s members. Among the 380,000 members, the median income is just $25,000; 84% are parents, 81% are female, and 60% are non-white.

A New Front in America’s Pandemic: College Towns (NYT) Last month, facing a budget shortfall of at least $75 million because of the pandemic, the University of Iowa welcomed thousands of students back to its campus—and into the surrounding community. Within days, students were complaining that they couldn’t get coronavirus tests or were bumping into people who were supposed to be in isolation. Undergraduates were jamming sidewalks and downtown bars, masks hanging below their chins, never mind the city’s mask mandate. Now, Iowa City is a full-blown pandemic hot spot—one of about 100 college communities around the country where infections have spiked in recent weeks as students have returned for the fall semester. Despite the surge in cases, there has been no uptick in deaths in college communities, data shows. This suggests that most of the infections are stemming from campuses, since young people who contract the virus are far less likely to die than older people.

A Chasm Grows Between Portland and the Rest of Oregon (NYT) Trucks carrying bales of hay, horse paddocks and Christmas tree farms—drive a few miles out of Portland and the suburbs quickly give way to rural Oregon. Barely a half-hour from the Portland streets where racial justice protesters on Saturday were marking 100 consecutive days of tempestuous, sometimes violent, demonstrations, there are plenty of communities where people dismiss the protesters as lawless hooligans. “Portland is an island in Oregon,” said Stan Pulliam, the mayor of Sandy, a more conservative town of 10,000 people about 30 miles southeast of Portland that feeds off the economic dynamism of Oregon’s largest city but also strives to be separate from it. “We are scared to death that what’s happening in Portland will ever come out to where we live.” The ideological divide between Portland and its environs can be stark. Conservative groups outside Portland have held demonstrations in support of the police. Protesters in Portland have called for police forces to be abolished altogether. Conservatives who have lived in the Portland area for decades say they increasingly feel like strangers in their own state when they visit the city.

UK warns EU on Brexit: We won’t blink first (Reuters) Britain will not blink first in Brexit trade negotiations with the European Union and is not scared of a no-deal exit at the end of the year, the country’s top Brexit negotiator warned the bloc on Sunday. Britain left the EU on Jan. 31 but talks have so far made little headway on agreeing a new trade deal for when a status-quo transition arrangement ends in December. Talks are due to resume in London on Tuesday but they have stalled over Britain’s insistence that it have full autonomy over state aid and its demands over fishing. Britain says the EU is dragging its feet in talks and has failed to fully accept that it is now an independent country. “We are not going to be a client state. We are not going to compromise on the fundamentals of having control over our own laws,” negotiator David Frost told the Mail. “We are not going to accept level playing field provisions that lock us in to the way the EU do things.”

Pope: Gossiping is “plague worse than COVID” (AP) Pope Francis said Sunday that gossiping is a “plague worse than COVID” that is seeking to divide the Catholic Church. Francis strayed from his prepared text to double down on his frequent complaint about gossiping within church communities and even within the Vatican bureaucracy. Francis didn’t give specifics during his weekly blessing, but went on at some length to say the devil is the “biggest gossiper” who is seeking to divide the church with his lies. “Please brothers and sisters, let’s try to not gossip,” he said. “Gossip is a plague worse than COVID. Worse. Let’s make a big effort: No gossiping!”

Erdogan raises rhetoric in Greece standoff in Mediterranean (AP) Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday warned Greece to enter talks over disputed eastern Mediterranean territorial claims or face the consequences. “They’re either going to understand the language of politics and diplomacy, or in the field with painful experiences,” he said at a hospital’s opening ceremony in Istanbul. Ankara is currently facing off against Greece and Cyprus over oil and gas exploration rights in the eastern Mediterranean. All sides have deployed naval and air forces to assert their competing claims in the region. “They are going to understand that Turkey has the political, economic and military power to tear up the immoral maps and documents imposed,” Erdogan added, referring to areas marked by Greece and Cyprus as their economic maritime zones. He stressed that Turkey was “ready for every eventuality and result.” The president’s comments come after NATO said military officers from Greece and Turkey had begun technical discussions to reduce the risk of armed conflict or accidents.

100,000 march in Minsk to demand Belarus leader resign (AP) Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched Sunday to the outskirts of the presidential residence in the capital of Belarus, calling for the country’s authoritarian leader to resign as protests against President Alexander Lukashenko entered their fifth week. Protests also took place in major cities throughout Belarus, said Interior Ministry spokeswoman Olga Chemodanova. Crowd sizes for those protests were not immediately reported, but Ales Bialiatski, head of the Viasna human rights organization, said the demonstration in Minsk attracted more than 100,000 people. The protests, unprecedented in Belarus for their size and duration, began after the Aug. 9 presidential vote that election officials said gave Lukashenko a sixth term in office with 80% support. Protesters say the results were rigged, and some have explained to Associated Press journalists exactly how the fraud took place in their districts.

Land in Russia’s Arctic Blows ‘Like a Bottle of Champagne’ (NYT) A natural phenomenon first observed by scientists just six years ago and now recurring with alarming frequency in Siberia is causing the ground to explode spontaneously and with tremendous force, leaving craters up to 100 feet deep. When Yevgeny Chuvilin, a Moscow-based geologist with the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, arrived this summer at the rim of the latest blast site, called Crater 17, “it left quite an impression,” he said. While initially a mystery, scientists have established that the craters appearing in the far north of western Siberia are caused by subterranean gases, and the recent flurry of explosions is possibly related to global warming, Mr. Chuvilin said. The explosions occur underneath small hills or hummocks on the tundra where gas from decaying organic matter is trapped underground. Contained beneath a layer of ice above and permafrost all around, the gas creates pressure that elevates the overlying soil. The explosions occur when the pressure rises or the ice layer thaws and breaks suddenly. Where the gas comes from is a matter of debate, said Mr. Chuvilin, one of Russia’s leading experts on permafrost, the jumbled layer of soil, ice, prehistoric plants and the occasional frozen mammoth that covers 67 percent of Russia’s land surface.

Typhoon Haishen hammers southern Japan with high winds and power outages (Reuters) Typhoon Haishen battered Japan’s southern mainland with powerful winds and drenching rain, cutting power to tens of thousands of homes and prompting authorities to call for some 1.8 million people to evacuate. “This typhoon is headed toward and may potentially make landfall in Kyushu, bringing record rains, winds, waves and high tides,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said at a meeting with cabinet ministers earlier. “I am asking that people exercise the utmost caution.”

Students Climb Trees and Travel Miles for a Cell Signal (NYT) On school days, the three teenage students hop on a motorbike and ride to their personal study hall: a spot along a narrow road outside the Indonesian village of Kenalan where they can get a stable cellphone signal. Sitting on the shoulder of the road, they do their lessons on smartphones and a single laptop as cars and motorbikes zip by. The three students—two sisters and their 15-year-old aunt—have been studying this way on the island of Java since March, when Indonesia closed its schools and universities to contain the coronavirus. “When the school ordered us to study at home I was confused because we don’t have a signal at home,” said one of the girls, Siti Salma Putri Salsabila, 13. The travails of these students, and others like them, have come to symbolize the hardships faced by millions of schoolchildren across the Indonesian archipelago. Officials have shuttered schools and implemented remote learning, but internet and cellphone service is limited and many students lack smartphones and computers. In North Sumatra, students climb to the tops of tall trees a mile from their mountain village. Perched on branches high above the ground, they hope for a cell signal strong enough to complete their assignments.

Australia’s COVID-19 epicenter extends hard lockdown till late September (Reuters) Australia’s coronavirus hot spot state of Victoria on Sunday extended a hard lockdown in its capital Melbourne until Sept. 28, as the infection rate has declined more slowly than hoped. Australia’s second most populous state has been the epicenter of a second wave of the novel coronavirus, now accounting for about 75% of the country’s 26,282 cases and 90% of its 753 deaths.

A Hungry Lebanon Returns to Family Farms to Feed Itself (NYT) “We got spoiled,” said Jad André Lutfi, who helps run Falafel Abou André, his family’s business, a cheap and casual chain. “We’ve imported anything you can think of from around the world.” So it went for years, until the country’s economy caved in, before the coronavirus pandemic paralyzed what was left of it and an explosion on Aug. 4 demolished businesses and homes across Beirut—to say nothing of the damaged port, through which most of Lebanon’s imports arrive. The country that boasts of serving the Arab world’s most refined food has begun to go hungry, and its middle class, once able to vacation in Europe and go out for sushi, is finding supermarket shelves and cupboards increasingly bare. Hence the politicians’ sudden cry: The Lebanese, they urged earlier this year, must grow their own food, waging what Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the militia and political party Hezbollah, has called “agricultural jihad.” As cures go, victory gardens might seem a poor substitute for the economic and political reforms that international lenders and the Lebanese alike have demanded to halt the country’s collapse. But the alternative is bleak. “Even making hummus at home is a luxury now,” said Mr. Lutfi, noting that a kilogram of Mexican chickpeas has tripled in price. “These are necessities. Now they’re becoming a luxury.”

[themonicanerkar31]

Water softener Market 2020 Global Analysis, Research, Review, Applications and Forecast to 2023

Market Research Future (MRFR) states that global water softener market is likely to expand at a CAGR of about 5.3% across the forecast period of 2019 to 2024. As per MRFR’s analysis, the global market of water softening systems is expected surge as concern regarding clean drinking water consumption surge.

Watts Water Technologies, an international developer of solution for water safety and supply, partnered with Planet Water Foundation, a non-profit organization that works on providing clean drinking water, on bringing clean water to Thailand.

Free Report Sample @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/7769

Market Insights

Increase in number of patients afflicted with water-borne diseases is surging the need for installing water softening system. The rise in concern about health is encouraging the installation of these systems in both residential and industrial areas. This is expected to surge its global market over the review period.  Soft water plays an important role in preventing industrial accidents that are caused due to uncontrolled heat generation of machinery.  Employers’ growing concern towards workers’ safety is promoting installation of water softening system across the burgeoning manufacturing industry. Considering commercial applications of soft water, they are used in laundry and restaurants, which is likely to contribute the market expansion.

Segmental Overview

The global market of water softening systems has been classified by type, application, flow rate, and sales channel.

By type, the global market study is divided into salt-free and salt-based. Increase in sales of water softening systems is noted,  as concern for clean water consumption surge. Salt-free type of systems are likely to gain popularity among people due to its ability to readily lower the concentration of ions. By flow rate, the global market is segmented into 05 GPM to 30 GPM, 30 GPM to 60 GPM, 60 GPM to 90 GPM, and above 90 GPM. By application, the global market has been segmented into commercial, residential, and industrial. The high demand for clean and safe drinking water is increasing the sales of these systems for residential use. By sales channel, the global market has been sectioned into offline and online. As e-commerce industry grows, high number of online sales is observed. The online segment is expected to significantly contribute the expansion of the water softener market in the review period.

Regional Outlook

Europe, North America, Asia-Pacific, and the Rest of the World (RoW) are regions that are analyzed under the regional outlook section of the report.

The Asia-Pacific water softener market is likely to gain global foothold across the assessment period. The expansion in population pool, hike in per capita income, and rise in cognizance about water softening are some of the causes due to which the APAC market is likely to register fast-paced growth. In the near future, the market in North America is expected to gain momentum owing to the existence of cash-rich manufacturers.

In Europe, the market expansion can be attributed to the hefty investment made by companies and governments for R&D and presence of techniques that aid in providing healthy and clean water in for residential and industrial use. Additionally, the residence of the largest water softening system developers and  companies their strong aftermarket network are expected to boost the regional market growth.

Key Players

Qingdao Haier Co., Ltd (China), Wychwood Water Systems Ltd (UK), Watts Water Technologies Inc. (US), A.O. Smith Water Technologies (US), Harvey Water Softeners Ltd (UK), BWT Aktienge­sellschaft (Austria), EcoWater Systems LLC (US), Pentair Residential Filtration LLC (UK), Culligan International Company (US),  Pelican Water Systems (US), Feedwater Limited (UK), Monarch Water Ltd. (UK), and Marlo Incorporated (US) are key contenders of the global water softener market.

Browse Complete Report @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/water-softening-systems-market-7769

[tamanna31]

Water softener Market Segmentation, Parameters and Prospects 2020 to 2024 Industry Research Report

Market Research Future (MRFR) states that global water softener market share is likely to expand at a CAGR of about 5.3% across the forecast period of 2019 to 2024. As per MRFR’s analysis, the global market of water softening systems is expected surge as concern regarding clean drinking water consumption surge.

Industry News

September 2019

Watts Water Technologies, an international developer of solution for water safety and supply, partnered with Planet Water Foundation, a non-profit organization that works on providing clean drinking water, on bringing clean water to Thailand.

Free Sample PDF @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/7769

Market Insights

Increase in number of patients afflicted with water-borne diseases is surging the need for installing water softening system. The rise in concern about health is encouraging the installation of these systems in both residential and industrial areas. This is expected to surge its global market over the review period.  Soft water plays an important role in preventing industrial accidents that are caused due to uncontrolled heat generation of machinery.  Employers’ growing concern towards workers’ safety is promoting installation of water softening system across the burgeoning manufacturing industry. Considering commercial applications of soft water, they are used in laundry and restaurants, which is likely to contribute the market expansion.

Segmental Overview

The global market of water softening systems has been classified by type, application, flow rate, and sales channel.

By type, the global market study is divided into salt-free and salt-based. Increase in sales of water softening systems is noted,  as concern for clean water consumption surge. Salt-free type of systems are likely to gain popularity among people due to its ability to readily lower the concentration of ions. By flow rate, the global market is segmented into 05 GPM to 30 GPM, 30 GPM to 60 GPM, 60 GPM to 90 GPM, and above 90 GPM. By application, the global market has been segmented into commercial, residential, and industrial. The high demand for clean and safe drinking water is increasing the sales of these systems for residential use. By sales channel, the global market has been sectioned into offline and online. As e-commerce industry grows, high number of online sales is observed. The online segment is expected to significantly contribute the expansion of the water softener market in the review period.

Regional Outlook

Europe, North America, Asia-Pacific, and the Rest of the World (RoW) are regions that are analyzed under the regional outlook section of the report.

The Asia-Pacific water softener market is likely to gain global foothold across the assessment period. The expansion in population pool, hike in per capita income, and rise in cognizance about water softening are some of the causes due to which the APAC market is likely to register fast-paced growth. In the near future, the market in North America is expected to gain momentum owing to the existence of cash-rich manufacturers.

In Europe, the market expansion can be attributed to the hefty investment made by companies and governments for R&D and presence of techniques that aid in providing healthy and clean water in for residential and industrial use. Additionally, the residence of the largest water softening system developers and  companies their strong aftermarket network are expected to boost the regional market growth.

Key Players

Qingdao Haier Co., Ltd (China), Wychwood Water Systems Ltd (UK), Watts Water Technologies Inc. (US), A.O. Smith Water Technologies (US), Harvey Water Softeners Ltd (UK), BWT Aktienge­sellschaft (Austria), EcoWater Systems LLC (US), Pentair Residential Filtration LLC (UK), Culligan International Company (US),  Pelican Water Systems (US), Feedwater Limited (UK), Monarch Water Ltd. (UK), and Marlo Incorporated (US) are key contenders of the global water softener market.

Know More @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/water-softening-systems-market-7769