#he’s like the corporal Carrot of presidents | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly · 5 months ago

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By Alan Rappeport

As former President Donald J. Trump makes his closing economic argument ahead of the election, he is outlining a vision for a manufacturing renaissance that reprises a familiar pitch: Make goods in America and enjoy low taxes, or face punishing tariffs.

Mr. Trump’s pitch combines the type of carrots-and-sharp-sticks approach that he called “America First” during his first term, when he imposed stiff tariffs on allies and competitors while lowering taxes on American firms.

During a speech in Savannah, Ga., on Tuesday, Mr. Trump suggested he would go far beyond that initial approach and adopt what he rebranded a “new American industrialism.”

The former president proposed creating “special” economic zones on federal land, areas that he said would enjoy low taxes and relaxed regulations. He called for companies that produce their products in the United States — regardless of where their headquarters are — to pay a corporate tax rate of 15 percent, down from the current rate of 21 percent. Businesses that try to route cars and other products into the United States from countries like Mexico would face tariffs as high as 200 percent.

But Mr. Trump’s vision of a “manufacturing renaissance” comes when Americans are increasingly wary of foreign investment, particularly from Asia. And while he imposed steep tariffs during his presidency, his efforts to keep American companies from shifting production overseas ran into the harsh realities of lower-wage labor and technological advancements in other countries.

While Mr. Trump was in office, manufacturing employment was essentially flat before the pandemic and had declined by the time he left office. In January 2021, the Alliance for American Manufacturing described his promises of an industrial resurgence as “mostly rhetoric.”

Mr. Trump’s talk of strengthening American manufacturing is similar, in part, to what President Biden has pushed for over the past several years. The Biden administration has embraced a form of industrial policy not seen in several decades, backing bills that devoted huge sums of money to certain industries, including semiconductors, clean energy and electric vehicles.

But Mr. Trump’s approach diverges sharply in many ways from that of Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.

Ms. Harris has called for higher taxes on corporations and has said little about how or whether she would use tariffs to influence manufacturing decisions. But she has talked about the importance of the Inflation Reduction Act, the tax and climate legislation that Democrats passed in 2022, which has attracted foreign investments given the lucrative tax credits available to help develop clean energy industries.

Mr. Trump wants to repeal that law and create a new set of tax breaks for certain industries. During his speech, he said companies that made products in the United States would pay a 15 percent tax rate.

“Foreign nations will be worried about losing their jobs to America,” Mr. Trump said as he predicted an exodus of manufacturing from China, South Korea and Germany to the United States.

The tax legislation that Mr. Trump enacted in 2017 helped bolster foreign investment by making America’s corporate tax rate more competitive with other countries. However, the tariffs that he imposed on imports from China have led to greater investment in Mexico, as companies have invested there to circumvent the levies and gain access to the U.S. market.

Mr. Trump seemed to acknowledge that development this week, saying he would enact tariffs of at least 100 percent on companies that manufactured cars and other products in Mexico and then exported them into the United States.

At a campaign event in Pennsylvania on Monday, the former president called out Deere, the agriculture equipment maker. The firm announced this year that it would shift some of its production to Mexico from Iowa, threatening the jobs of more than 200 workers.

“I’m just notifying John Deere right now, if you do that, we’re putting a 200 percent tariff on everything you want to sell into the United States,” Mr. Trump said.

The approach is reminiscent of his first term, when he would often shame companies for their plans to move production abroad, threatening tariffs and boycotts. In most cases, the strategy had limited success.

In 2016, before he took office, Mr. Trump pressured United Technologies, which was the parent company of the heating and cooling giant Carrier, to keep an Indianapolis factory open and not move the jobs to Mexico. The company initially agreed to keep the plant open, saving more than 700 jobs. However, in 2017 and 2018 Carrier cut about 500 jobs from that factory, moving those roles to Mexico.

Mr. Trump lashed out at Harley-Davidson in 2018 when it announced that it would move some of its manufacturing overseas to avoid tariffs that Europe imposed on American products in retaliation for the president’s steel and aluminum tariffs. The motorcycle company moved ahead with plans to build a plant in Thailand and close a factory in Kansas City, Mo.

And in 2019, Mr. Trump assailed General Motors after it announced plans to close a plant in Lordstown, Ohio, urging the company to “get that plant opened or sell it to somebody and they’ll open it.” The company did not budge.

“I think there’s a role for the bully pulpit,” said Todd Tucker, the director of industrial policy and trade at the Roosevelt Institute, a left-leaning think tank. “But there’s a lack of focus and a lack of consistency in his policymaking.”

The results of Mr. Trump’s efforts to attract foreign companies to set up shop in the United States have also been mixed.

In 2018, at the groundbreaking in Wisconsin for Foxconn’s factory to make flat-screen televisions, Mr. Trump called the project by the Taiwanese company the “eighth wonder of the world.” Plans for the $10 billion factory later sputtered amid changing market dynamics. Much of the planned site remains undeveloped, and most of the promised jobs have yet to materialize.

Mr. Trump pledged again this week to make America a magnet for foreign investment, but he has presented mixed messages about what kinds of investments are acceptable. Republicans and Democrats have been particularly wary in recent years of investments linked to China that could threaten American national security or pose risks to sensitive supply chains.

Speaking to farmers in Pennsylvania on Monday, the former president called for new curbs on Chinese purchases of American farmland. In both speeches this week, he said the proposed takeover of U.S. Steel by Nippon Steel of Japan should be blocked by the federal government.

“It certainly seems inconsistent with his plans to attract international companies,” said Nancy McLernon, the president of the Global Business Alliance, a lobbying group that represents international companies. “Our political leaders should unambiguously support and promote cross-border investment from our major trading partners and strategic allies.”

Some of Mr. Trump’s ideas — such as tax cuts — would require legislation from Congress. Others could be enacted through executive authority. Mr. Trump also suggested that a new manufacturing “ambassador” would help lead the recruiting effort.

“We’re going to bring thousands and thousands of businesses and trillions of dollars of wealth back to the good old U.S.A.,” he said. “We’re going to be doing it and doing it fast.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/25/us/politics/trump-taxes-tariffs-economy.html

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winter-angst · 3 years ago

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note: this idiotic idea was taking up space in my brain so I jotted it down. enjoy Brock being stupid with me lol

Brock was grating a carrot when Jack burst into the kitchen l.

“It happened.” He was breathless, clearly having sprinted up the garage steps. Brock turned to face him, confused. “They accepted my nomination. You’re looking at Judge Jack Rollins.”

Brock’s face split into a grin. Jack had been advocating for himself fiercely these past few months, desperate for that step up and as far as Brock was concerned, it was about damn time.

“That’s great, babe.” Brock set down his knife and smiled playfully. “Or should I say, your majesty.”

Jack’s eyebrows knit together. “What?”

“Y’know, since you’re a judge and all.” Brock approached, laying his palms flat against Jack’s chest, head tilted up expectantly for a celebratory kiss. But Jack’s lips didn’t meet his. His green eyes were inquisitive. Brock second guessed his formalities. “I mean… your excellence.”

Jack took half a step back. “Are you fucking with me right now?”

Brock’s face colored but his temper flared. There was nothing he had more than making a mistake and damn it all, he was going to get this right. But, yes, his political understands were… shaky at best. He never had to know these things. He ran a gym for a living, he wasn’t a politician.

“Your lordship.”

Jack’s concern faded into amusement and that was just salt in the wound. Brock loathed being laughed at. “Keep trying, honey.”

The newly-appointed judge loosened his tie and leaned against the fridge, folding his arms across his chest as he looked expectantly at Brock.

Brock, who was racking his brain for something official sounding. He’d — miraculously — never been arrested so he’d never needed to go before a judge and learn the proper formalities in addressing one. His ignorance should be a good thing.

Though, now he had a husband who was a judge, he probably needed to refresh himself on the basics. “Senator.”

That was familiar and it sounded very official.

“That is a completely different position.”

A swing and a miss. Brock scowled down at Jack’s feet, unable to meet his eyes.

Maybe there was more finesse to it. He put on an accent and tried, “governor.”

“Again, different position.”

“Well it’s not president.” Brock knew that much for certain though he didn’t know why he voiced it — especially not with the laugh that Jack uttered afterward.

“That, you are right about. C’mon, Brock, keep trying. I’m sure you’ll get there eventually.”

“Fuck you,” Brock snapped. “General.”

“That would be the military.”

“Corporal.”

“Also the military.”

“Colonel?”

“Again. Military.”

Brock huffed furiously under his breath. It wasn’t supposed to be this hard and he knew that which made the situation even more maddening than it already was.

“Prime minister?”

“No.”

Brock considered caving and just asking but that felt too much like defeat and at the end of the day Brock did not roll over and surrender so easily.

Mentally he ticked off what he’d already said and combed his mind for any others lurking in the recesses of his mind that he hadn’t explored since he left high school.

“Okay…” he muttered to himself. “Mr. Judge.”

Jack laughed at him. “I cannot believe you right now, Brock. Good God. The fact you don’t know this is appalling. What were you doing in high school?”

“Actually having a life, unlike you,” Brock spit back venomously. “Sir?”

“No, you don’t call a judge sir.”

“Your grace?”

“Nope.”

Jack took a step forward, arms outstretched. Brock stood there stubbornly before the fight left him in one fellow swoop and he sighed heavily, stepping into the hug. “It’s your honor.”

That sounded familiar and Brock’s face colored. “I knew that,” he muttered into Jack’s shoulder. “I was just fucking with you.”

“Oh?” It was clear that Jack wasn’t convinced but Brock was too ashamed to drag out the moment. Besides — Tuesday night dinner had turned celebratory. “But I’m absolutely okay with you calling me sir.”

Brock pushed him away with a scoff. “Oh, as if.”

Jack laughed. “I’m going to change for dinner,” he announced, heading for the hallway.

“Wait,” Brock called and Jack turned to look at him. “Congratulations… your honor.”

#hydra husbands #brock rumlow #jack rollins #ficlet #just me rambling #i love me some dumb Brock

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cleverwordsandotherstuffilike · 4 years ago

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The Dam Is Breaking on Vaccine Mandates

It didn’t need to be this way. This spring, as people lined up for newly available, miraculously effective Covid-19 vaccines, it was easy to imagine a direct and speedy path to a protected society. The curve of administered doses appeared limited only by the supply, and the curve was looking good—perfectly calibrated for things to be normal (at least by some definition of the word) by the end of summer, just in time for schools and workplaces to reopen. So long as the vaccination rate kept pace.

Which, of course, it didn’t. Much too soon, the curve reached its inflection point, shifted from the upswing, and flattened itself out. Add to that a euphoric, masks-off reopening in much of the country. Then add the more transmissible Delta variant. Result: a pandemic of the unvaccinated that, because of its immense scale, now threatens even people with two shots, thanks to the possibility of breakthrough infections.

All of this has added up to a tipping point: The week when the carrot met the stick, when dozens of influential organizations decided it’s time for vaccine mandates.

This afternoon President Joe Biden announced vaccine rules for 4 million federal workers. “Right now, too many people are dying, or watching someone they love die,” he said. Those workers will now face a choice: attest to their completed vaccination status, or test one or two times a week, wear masks, and face travel restrictions.

“We have the tools to prevent the next wave of Covid shutting down our businesses, our schools, our society,” he said, adding that the government would reimburse small businesses that allow workers to take paid time off to vaccinate themselves or their families, and that his administration encourages state and local governments to offer residents $100 incentives. Biden also instructed the Department of Defense to look into how and when it will require Covid-19 vaccinations for members of the armed forces.

Biden’s announcement followed similar statements from a flurry of major tech firms, including Google and Facebook, which have told their tens of thousands of employees around the country that vaccinations will be required for workers returning to the office, and an earlier raft of mandates from universities, state governments and medical centers.

The moves received more legal clarity last month, after a federal judge threw out a lawsuit from a group of employees at Houston Methodist Hospital who had argued the rules were illegal because the vaccines are only authorized by the FDA for emergency use.

And it’s not just employers. In San Francisco, for example, most of the city’s bars and clubs said they will require proof from patrons starting this week.

Is it ideal to force people into doing the right thing for public health? Not really, says Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, an epidemiologist who studies health equity at UC San Francisco. That's why you first try messaging to overcome skeptics and incentives for those who need a nudge—as public health officials have done for months and will continue to do, she adds. But at this critical stage of the pandemic, the mandates are welcome news to her. “We need to use every tool at our disposal,” she says. “It’s clearly the right thing to do at this point, and hopefully it will build into more places taking action.”

There’s already a clear herding effect at play. A vanguard of leaders from hospitals, universities, and state governments made the initial argument—that the benefits of protecting their patients and residents from unvaccinated workers outweighs the worries of individual employees—and clarified that the mandates are legal. Then the big tech corporations got on board, theorizing that a fully vaccinated workforce would be good for business. They’ve been a sort of Covid cultural bellwether, leading the shutdown of offices in March 2020, with many shifting to remote work for the long term.

Those moves make mandates more palatable for companies everywhere else. In May, only 6 percent of companies reached by the consulting firm Willis Towers Watson said they were planning to require vaccinations for all employees. But now many more are considering their own plans, says Jeffrey Levin-Scherz, a doctor who leads population health at Willis Towers Watson. “The public acceptance of mandates is the biggest driver,” he says. Mandates are getting normalized—and that in turn, he hopes, will normalize getting vaccinated too.

“I think there’s been a reality check,” says Jennifer Kates, director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. Controlling the Delta variant and preventing new ones are the chief public health reasons for mandates. And for businesses, that makes for a simple calculus: Bumping up vaccination rates means less economic uncertainty. “That’s why businesses are doing this,” she says.

One argument for mandates, Bibbins-Domingo says, is that many of those who remain unvaccinated are open to it, but appear to need a new type of nudge. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 10 percent of respondents are still on the fence, and another 6 percent said they are waiting on a vaccine requirement. (Add those up, and it’s more than the 14 percent who said they would never get the vaccine.) That new nudge could be a mandate, or it could be institutions setting up slightly unpleasant alternatives to getting vaccinated, like more frequent testing or required indoor masking. “It’s a tried-and-true public health strategy,” she says. “I think we had to make being unvaccinated a little bit less convenient.”

For now, the country has a patchwork of vaccine mandates, and those patches are concentrated in wealthier, coastal regions where vaccination rates tend to be higher. They’re bound to be less common in places where political messaging, amplified by misinformation on social media, has discouraged vaccine uptake. It’s the same politicized pattern seen throughout the pandemic with issues like masks.

https://www.wired.com/story/the-dam-is-breaking-on-vaccine-mandates/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Allow people to exercise their right to refuse to vaccinate and to enjoy that freedom while confined to their homes 24 hours /day until they agree to vaccinate. Legitimate medical issues are of course exempt.

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brokenbuttonsmusic · 4 years ago

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Laura Cantrell: Nashville-born, New York-based, Acclaimed Country Singer-Songwriter & DJ (& Kitty Wells Fanatic)

This post is a near- transcript of the Broken Buttons: Buried Treasure Music podcast (episode 2, side B). Here you’ll find the narration from the segment featuring the pioneering rock band Fanny, along with links, videos, photos and references for the episode.

Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Anchor or Mixcloud.

Music blog Stereogum used to have a running feature called “Quit Your Day Job” where they interviewed indie musicians about their current or former jobs. There was one with Marty and Drew from the band Blitzen Trapper. The two discussed being torn about walking away from teaching as their third album, Wild Mountain Nation, was starting to blow up. There was another where the lead singer of War on Drugs detailed some of the disgusting things he had to clean up while working as an apartment property manager. Mostly dead rats and clogged toilet stuff, but he did walk into an apartment that had been converted into a porno set. I remembered this discontinued “musician day job” feature while reading up on my next featured artist and it got me thinking.

How many professional musicians do you think have a full time day job? How many juggle multiple side gigs and still manage to tour and put out records regularly? How many have really successful careers all while trying to make it as a musician?

I don’t actually know. I did some research and there aren’t any reliable stats that I could find. There is a lot of anecdotal discussion on the topic. The consensus seems to be that most musicians are not getting by with music as their only, or even their primary source of income. I don’t think anyone is surprised by that.

One Reddit user said less than 5% of musicians derive all or most of their income from music. He didn’t offer a source or anything, but he seemed very authoritative in his post. And then after a few more Google searches I lost interest and listened to more Laura Cantrell.

Laura Cantrell’s story is what got me pondering how indie musicians go about juggling making art with the necessity of, you know, making a living to survive. In 2003, after two critically acclaimed albums, including a tour opening for Elvis Costello all across the United States and Europe, Cantrell was at a similar crossroads. Laura had risen to the position of Vice President of Equity Research at Bank of America in New York. Yes, you heard me right. Laura Cantrell was working as a corporate executive and touring with Elvis Costello at the same time. She actively worked on the road during the day and then performed for thousands of people each night.

Before we get further into what led up to this point and what came after, let’s hear a song from Laura Cantrell’s debut album, Not the Tremblin’ Kind. Here’s the title track.

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That was Not the Tremblin’ Kind from Laura Cantrell’s first album back in the year 2000.

Laura grew up in Nashville. She played a little bit of piano and sang in the church choir, but did not get into performing music and playing out until her college years. As a teenager she worked at the Country Music Hall of Fame as a tour guide. This job, in addition to the influence of the diverse musical tastes of her parents, sparked an interest in traditional music, particularly classic country. She also became somewhat of an aficionado in this area.

This love and knowledge of the early days of country music would help differentiate Laura as she honed her sound and selected her songs while developing as a performer down the road. Before that, however, it would make her an excellent college radio DJ and later an even more excellent DJ at WFMU, one of the best and longest running free-form radio stations in the country. Out of the New Jersey/New York area, WFMU is awesome to this day, with a wide array of programming where DJs still get to play whatever they want.

Laura is my favorite kind of DJ, and the kind that has been dwindling in numbers since the rise of music downloads, which then gave way to streaming and endless algorithms. First off, she’s knows her stuff. She carefully curates each shows, and thoughtfully sequences each set within every episode. She packs in history, context and story to create something that transcends your typical weekend-afternoon-background-radio-soundtrack. I know this show is about under appreciated bands and artists, but Laura Cantrell’s contributions to radio deserve to be heard by more people. You can find her past WFMU shows, called The Radio Thrift Shop, archived on the WFMU website. You can hear her present day on her “States of Country” radio show on the Gimmie Country radio app, or on her SiriusXM George Harrison themed show “Dark House Radio,” on The Beatles station.

This concludes the part of the show where I babble my enthusiastic endorsement of Laura Cantrell’s past and present radio career.

Laura began playing music with others in college at Columbia University. Her jam pals included Andrew Webster, future member of Tsunami Bomb and Mac McCaughan, who would go on to form Superchunk and Portastatic + found Merge Records. The friends would call their band Bricks. A lo-fi, mostly apartment recording projects that played sporadic gigs over the years.

Here’s the Brick’s song, The Girl with the Carrot Skin.

Living in New York, Laura began playing guitar and writing her own songs. She also plucked some choice classic country finds and incorporated them into her own performance catalog. One day she met a guy named John who asked her to sing on a song that would appear on his band’s next major label release for Elektra.

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That’s The Guitar from They Might Be Giant’s 1992 album, Apollo 18. John Flansburgh asked Laura to sing on that recording. It was the first time Laura recorded in a professional studio. John Flansburgh became a fan of Laura’s music and released her first recorded material as part of his Hello CD of the Month Club, an EP called The Hello Recordings in 1996.

Let’s hear another Laura Cantrell song. This time one that she wrote with Amy Allison. From Laura Cantrell’s 2014 album, No Way There From Here, this is All the Girls are Complicated.

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That was Laura Cantrell with All the Girls Are Complicated from her last full length release, No Way There From Here. Actually, that was her last full album of new material, but Laura did release an album a few years back of her BBC recordings on John Peel’s radio show. That album is called At the BBC: On Air Performances and Recordings 2000-2005.

I mentioned earlier that Peel was a big fan. Again, here’s John Peel’s full quote about Laura’s first album, Not the Tremblin’ Kind: "[It is] my favourite record of the last ten years and possibly my life.” Having the endorsement of the legendary English disc jockey was enough to give Cantrell wider exposer throughout the UK. She developed a loyal fanbase through regular appearances on Peel’s show, as well as US and European tours, including the opening slot for Elvis Costello. Which brings us back to Laura’s fork in the road. Before her third album, Laura decided to walk away from the corporate gig. She was excited to focus on music full time, but a little worried about walking away from the security of a successful career she liked and position she was good at.

From a spotlight CNN Business did on Cantrell in 2004:

“For several months until she finally quit, Cantrell balanced her day job with a growing schedule of rehearsals, gigs, recordings and publicity. On the day she appeared on the Conan O'Brien show she was at her desk until lunchtime.”

“And while life as a professional musician is a dream come true, Cantrell still looks back with fondness on more than a decade on Wall Street.”

“‘I came into Wall Street with a very typical kind of stereotype that it was all going to be people just obsessed with money. What I found was that there were just loads of interesting people who were a lot like myself, just doing it as a job and who had lives that were full of other things.’

‘So I miss some of the contact with people I met. Ironically it was a very supportive environment for me as an artist.’”

Laura’s first two albums were released on the the indie label Diesel Only, which was founded by her husband, Jeremey Tepper. Her third album was released by Matador Records, also an indie label, but with an impressive roster that included Liz Phair, Modest Mouse, Pavement and Sleater-Kinney. Released in 2005, Humming By the Flowered Vine continues Cantrell’s classic country sound, but with some evolved production and arrangements. Laura’s mastery as a song selector gets more and more impressive. This album includes a cover of a rare, unreleased Lucinda Williams song form 1975 called, “Letters.”

In fact, Lucinda Williams herself was thoroughly impressed with Laura’s cover of “Letters.” She attributes the cover to bolstering her confidence to go back through her earlier material and look for her own buried treasures.

From Blurt Magazine:

“The inspiration for her journey through the past struck when she heard Laura Cantrell’s version of her song ‘Letters,’ which Williams wrote around 1975 and recorded on a demo but never officially released. Explains Williams, ‘She got a copy from a mutual friend and did a beautiful, really sweet version of it that made me think wow, she brought this early song back to life, maybe I should go back and review some of my old stuff. I’ve got all these tapes of old little songs, but I never thought they were good enough to do anything with.’”

You know you’re an ace at finding under appreciated gems when you surprise Lucinda Williams by helping her discover one of her own songs. Let’s hear Laura Cantrell’s version of Letters.

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That was Laura Cantrell with Letters from her 2005 release Humming by the Flowered Vine.

In 2008, Laura returned with an EP called, Trains and Boats and Planes with 9 songs about… trains, and boats and planes. It’s very good and it includes a fun cover of New Order’s Love Vigilantes.

Throughout this time, Laura continued her radio show. She also started a family and became co-owner and co-operator of Diesel Only Records.

In this clip from an interview with Face Culture, you can really hear Laura’s passion for country music and its roots. She talks about the importance of country’s influence on rock n’ roll, and how each artist is inspired by something great that came before.

And Laura continuously pays tribute to the greats that came before through her radio show and on her own records. In 2011, Laura released a tribute to Kitty Wells called “Kitty Wells Dresses: Songs of the Queen of Country Music.” The collection includes nine Kitty Wells covers and one original, the title track, Kitty Wells Dresses.

From the Washington Post:

Here’s Laura talking about the inspiration for the album.

“Kitty wore very typical stage clothes for women who performed at barn dances and in early country music shows,” says Cantrell, a Nashville-born, New York-based country singer and host of an old-time music show on the legendary radio station WFMU.

“They were these frilly gingham dresses, non-threatening and cutesy. It became this uniform that all the women of the era wore, and I always thought it was a great metaphor for how you can underestimate the strength of the person or the value of the artist underneath.”

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That was the song Kitty Wells Dresses from Laura Cantrell’s tribute album of the same name, released in 2011. Wells was the oldest living member of the Country Music Hall of Fame upon its release. She was also the first woman inducted into the hall. Cantrell met and talked to Kitty about her album. She said that Kitty asked which songs were selected and as Laura began calling them out, Kitty would sing each one.

I’ve mentioned all of Laura’s past and present DJ efforts, all of which I’ll link to on my website, brokenbuttons.com. Laura also continues to release music. She had planned a host of special activities for the 20th anniversary of Not the Tremblin’ Kind, which had to be put on hold due to all things 2020.

You can contribute to Laura’s IndigGoGo campaign to help fund her new digital singles collection that she’s already started releasing. The plan is to release six singles with an A and a B side, all working with different musicians and producers. I’d recommend the $50 Kitty Wells Dresses Pack, which gets you access to the digital singles as their released, a signed CD copy of both the singles collection and the Kitty Wells Dresses album, as well as a copy of Laura's essay on Kitty and Patsy Cline from the book "Rock and Roll Cage Match: Music's Greatest Rivalries"

Laura Cantrell is the rare performer whose work is deeply rooted in its original source material while still feeling fresh and exciting. Laura’s radio shows can be described the same way. A buried treasure unearthing buried treasure and taking the old and classic and making it new and lasting and so much sweeter. Laura Cantrell.

References and other stuff to check out:

Laura’s Indiegogo campaign for her digital singles series

The Radio Thrift Shop - Laura’s prior radio show. You can stream past episodes and check out her playlists

Gimmie Country, where Laura hosts her current show States of Country. New episodes air 3:00 Monday EST. Laura chats during the show with listeners in the app.

Darkhorse Radio on Sirius XM. Laura’s other show dedicated to George Harrison. New episodes air Thursday at 3:00.

John Peel wiki entry about Laura

TMBG wiki entry about Laura

A Wall Street journal feature on Laura

An NPR feature on Laura

A CNN Business Week feature on Laura

Stereogum archive of the Quit Your Day Job feature

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yesterdayiwrote · 2 months ago

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So, having an expense budget for a position like his is not unusual. There will be costs to him undertaking his role - travel, accommodation, dining, wardrobe etc - and the expense budget is essentially the FIA saying "We'll pay to cover these aspects of the role so you're not out of pocket", BUT as with most corporate roles (or government roles) there will be ALOT of rules in place as to how this money is spent in order to comply with ethics regulations and he must provide receipts and disclosures to ensure he's abiding to them - which he's refused to do. Red Flag Number One

There's really then two separate issues raising from this.

He's wanting to forgo expenses budgets meaning he circumvents disclosing who he's paying money to and what for. Is this money coming out of his pocket, or are these things being covered by people who may want to buy his favour? Gifts should also be disclosed, but if it's falling as something that would usually be expendable he can claim he paid for it out of his own pocket with no further scrutiny. Mr I M Rwandan gives him the money for a 5* hotel stay in Las Vegas ... then 2 months later they announce the FIA Gala is in Kigali. People might have legit questions but there's now no paper trail for this. (NOT saying that happened but as an example)

The money for this fund isn't his to make a fund with. He may feel he has the funds to cover his own expenses, but future applicants to the role may not. So in order to take on the role, they have to propose to pull the funding from The Presidents Fund. Given it benefits the people who will be voting in the election, its an immediate campaign killer and means the FIA president role can only be taken by people with the funds or backers to fund their undertaking of the work. The fund exists while HE is in the role, and acts as a carrot to dangle for people to keep him in the role. He's using FIA money to fund his own reelection chances. Putting money into grassroots motorsport is fine, but it shouldn't really be going directly to voting clubs for ethics reasons.

There's loads of issues raised from this for sure, but those 2 stick out as major red flags with regards to where funds are going and who is paying for what...

Oh the GPDA knew what they were doing by pulling on this thread...

#This kind of corresponds to my work area so I have a small amount of insight #I'm not an expert though so don't rely on me as the oracle here

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cecilspeaks · 5 years ago

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158 - The Battle for Time

Kasper Rhodes:

The future wants you. The future needs you. The future will have you, whether you want to or not. Welcome to Night Vale.

Kasper Rhodes here, hello. There’s a lot of talk generally and in particular about the future. Everyone’s going on about this or that, rocketships and spires, eternal life and AI, but the future is also soil and leaves. It’s a hand holding a hand, it’s clouds and it’s water and it’s salt. The future is organic as anything. There is still sweat in the future, [chuckles] I’m sweating right now! It’s hot where I am. And I am Kasper Rhodes, president of the Quality Cyborg Corporation, and I can take you away from all this, in the name of the Smiling God. The God that grins down at us all, grinning through our pain and grinning through our joy, just always grinning, just always the smile.

Do any of you believe in anything? I do. I believe in anything at all, I just believe. What a powerful thing it is to believe, to let doubt (--) [0:02:27] off you, [chuckles] just like the sweat.

I have a proposition and it’s also a promise. I will take your brain, and how much were you using it anyway, and I will put it in a robot. And that robot will do wonderful things. That is my promise. And it’s also a proposition. [chuckles] Anyway, we’ll talk more in person, I’m on my way. I’ll see you soon.

[whoosh]

Cecil: (-) am I through? Am I, am I on the air? Am I on the air? I come to you in a time of emergency and panic. We thought we could cheat death. Kasper Rhodes promised to take our brains and freeze them into the future where we could be reawakened into life eternal. But it was all a lie. Kasper is a time traveler here to collect the brains of the past, to power robots of servitude in the future. We were being tricked into an eternal life of manual labor, and now we know the truth and stand against them.

Unfortunately, he has called in reinforcements from the future, and they are those very robots with our brains inside of them. They cannot fight against their programming, and they weep as they crush us, but still they crush us. There are robots patrolling outside of the abandoned grain silo and every other spot in town where the Quality Cryogenics Corporation is storing brains, so we cannot save our fellow citizens from the terror of the future.

(-) [0:04:01]. Kasper worships a Smiling God. I thought we had escaped that cosmic terror but it has returned, and it has come for our minds. Night Vale, I call for resistance. I call for a stand against the future. I muster the present to destroy every moment that comes after. We will never stop fighting, we will never surrender.

Oh, um, ahem, but first. Tickets are going on sale for the Lions Club charity raffle. All proceeds from the raffle will be going of weapons and barricades to be used against the endless onslaught of the future robots piloted by our own brains. So that’s just a great cause. Let’s have a look at the prizes. There’s a package tour to somewhere called Nash-vile. That’s exciting. Uh, the package includes a map showing where Nash-vile is, and a pad of paper on which is scrolled: “You should probably get a hotel room when you get there.” Everything you need for a fun vacation. There are ten free piano lessons from Louie Blasko. He says that piano is a great way to exercise your mind and your creativity, and he promises much fewer injuries this time around. There’s a free haircut and style consultation from Telly the Barber. Uuuuuuuuuugh! Ugh, that vile Telly! Meh, I shouldn’t say that. Carlos has forgiven Telly for cutting his – beautiful hair all those years ago, and so I should too. There are lots of things I should do, and I’m sure I’ll get to them eventually. In the meantime, though: ugh! Vile Telly! Finally, there is the grand prize, which is an all expenses paid trip into the bottomless hole betwixt the dunes, that inexplicable dark pit that appeared a few years ago out in the Sand Wastes. We’re not sure who donated this prize, it just showed up at the Lions Club in a basket that smelled of mud and wet dog. But the winners will have the opportunity, in fact they will be compelled whether they want to or not, to leap into the bottomless hole betwixt the dunes. This is all expenses paid. I’m not sure what expenses there are to jumping into a bottomless hole but in any case, they’re covered. Raffle tickets are only 5 dollars and can be purchased at the Lions Club or by whispering into any crack in any wall. And again, proceeds go to saving us from the robot army, so please do buy a few.

[whoosh]

Kasper Rhodes: There’s a lot of talk generally an in particular about pain. “Oh, I’m in pain,” many say, “Oh, this pain is the worst I’ve ever felt,” many say. Many just scream and that’s understandable, I’d scream too if I could, but you can’t scream with a smile. That’s one of the laws of the Smiling God. I believe in laws. But then, I believe in anything.

Have you ever had rock candy? Who even thought up something so useless as these crystalline sugar lumps? What point is there to any of this, when rock candy is the kind of thing that we as humans apparently are up to? Generally, also in particular. But what I’m talking about is, what point is there to rock candy? And what I’m also asking is, what point is there to you? But I can provide a point, at you anyway. Wouldn’t that be nice for once? And don’t we want it to be nice for once, just once before we go? I’m talking here about purpose, and I have more purpose than I need. You have less purpose than you want. Let’s meet in the middle, and there in the middle, I will take your brain. Believe in the Smiling God and why not? I do.

[whoosh, high-pitched noises]

Cecil: [distorted] Night Vale, we will fight! [normal] Night Vale, we will win! The night may be long, but inevitably comes the dawn. Especially now that time works correctly here. Tamika Flynn has gathered her militia, who have aged to the point where they are no longer teenagers. It was kind of cute, a local friendly teenage militia, but now they’re just a militia, which is less cute. But definitely good to have on our side in this struggle. They are currently pelting the robots with stones but – ah, the robots’ metal frames are impervious to such attacks. Oh, this is so worrying! Josh Crayton, local shapeshifter, has resumed the form of a waterfall in an attempt to short out the electronics of the robot army. Unfortunately it appears that their bodies are water resistant and perhaps even waterproof, and so they are simply walking past him like he isn’t there. Josh, maybe some other form? Oh, OK, OK, Josh has panicked and accidentally taken the form of a 1970’s style avocado green galley kitchen. Oh, Josh, this will not be helpful at all.

“We’re going about this fight all wrong!” said Lenny Butler, who has no official bona fides on military tactics, but considered himself an aficionado of rowdy boys really taking it to each other on the battlefield. Lenny continued: “What we want to do is fight them!” When asked what that meant, he shrugged and (-) [0:09:47] irritably. “I know what it means!” he said. “I’m not gonna waste time explaining it to you, just like, flank them!”

Other towns have been forced to join the fight, as the robots are sweeping through the entire area. The ghosts of Pine Cliff have enthusiastically entered the fray. Unfortunately, of course, ghosts cannot physically affect our world, and so they are just hovering back and forth through the robots. But good hussle out there!

Citizens of the Whispering Forest muttered warm compliments to the robots in an attempt to simulate them into their tree forms, but robots are immune to compliments, as they’re only able to think as highly of themselves as they are programmed to do. Oh no, nothing is working! Ugh. Well, this seems like as good a time as any to talk about survival tips. The first thing to consider is your water source. Now, your body is 60 per cent water, so that seems like enough, let’s move on. Next, you will want to consider food. Stuck up on essentials like canned peas, easily stored grains, and those little bags of baby carrots which are just big carrots carved into small spaces and called babies. Which his not how babies are made. This is not what the word “baby” means. Anyway, if you find yourself in an emergency situation without enough food, consider expanding your definition of the word “food”. For instance, theoretically, you could eat a desk if you tried hard enough. Maybe the problem isn’t a lack of food, but lack of motivation on your part. Finally ,look for shelter. This one is easy, there are houses and buildings everywhere and you can just go into them. Some of them will be locked, they might even have people inside who say things like: “What are you doing in my house?” and: “You can’t be in here, this is the stock room of an Arby’s!” But don’t let naysayers like that get you down. This has been, survival tips.

[whoosh]

Kasper: There is a lot of talk generally and in particular about triumph. “We are winning,” a person might say. “We will defeat you,” a person might crow as the town falls in supplication around him. “You will all be taken to the future!” that person might continue. “You will be made useful.” And isn’t that wonderful? To be made useful? Isn’t that the best thing a person can be? I think so. It doesn’t matter what you think, [chuckles] it turns out you never did. It’s so impersonal chatting over the phone, es-especially since you haven’t been picking up. It seems rude, your refusal to listen to me, but-but I don’t mind. After all, it’s hard to begrudge you your last minutes of human freedom. Tell you what, tell you what, I’ll head over and collect you myself. Wouldn’t that be nice? For me, I mean, again it doesn’t matter what it is for you, it turns out it never did. OK, [distorted] see you soon, bye bye!

[whoosh]

Cecil: Give me back my radio frequency! Oh, I… Am I, I think I’m back on. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Well, I’ll talk whether you can hear me or not. More robots are pouring out of the time vortexes. The vorteces, vortes.. vorces.. vort-vortex-eses. Whatever they are. Thousands of robots are coming out and this is too much, we can never defeat all of them! The robots are marching to Kasper Rhodes’ army that was already here and they are… Listeners, they are fighting them. These new robots are fighting on our side. At their head is the one I recognize as containing the brain of Charlie Bair, the dayshift manager at the Ralphs, and he’s [huffing] he is announcing that some of the robots have broken free of their programming, that they have found a way to manipulate the metal body they were trapped in, and they have come back to help us prevent this all from happening. And the present day human Charlie Bair is running up to join his future metal counterpart. Night Vale, out on that battlefield is a robot which contains your brain! Find that robot and help it fight, or fight it, depending o n which side it’s on. Together, with ourselves, we can win this. There is still hope. There is always hope. There is also always The weather.

[“Sugar Neighbors” by Dane Terry https://www.thedaneterry.com]

Together, us and us, our own selves and our robot selves, we rushed against Kasper Rhodes, more and more of his robots broke free of their programming and joined us. Tamika and her militia were now Tamikas and their militias, and the intimidation factor was through the roof. This whole time, we just had to trust ourselves. [chuckles] And also have versions of ourselves that were embedded in super strong metal bodies. That was all it took this whole time to be victorious. Charlie Bair the human stood shoulder to shoulder with Charlie Bair the robot, and both fought valiantly. Josh Crayton took the form of a chainsaw, which was then wielded by Josh Crayton’s brain in a robot body to glorious and gory effect. It did not take long for the tides to turn. Sometimes, once the balance shifts, it shifts as quickly and definitively as a broken elevator plunging down a shaft. And then, Kasper Rhodes himself finally fell. Whether it was the stones cast by the Tamikas, or the fists of the Charlies, or Josh the chainsaw wielded by Josh the robot, I cannot say. In the chaos of battle, individual human action becomes indistinct, but the fact of Kasper’s death is indisputable. And in that moment he fell, every robot slumped into stillness, because time had changed. Kasper never took our brains when we died and used them in robots of the future, and because of that, every one of those robots no longer had a brain in them. They were empty shells. We carried those empty shelves with affection and care to Grove Park, where they would be sorted for parts and the resulting scrap metal used to fix the massive amount of damage done to town by this battle.

We kept one robot, though, just one. The scrawniest one with the most rusted joints and Pamela Winchell, who has been reading books on hobbyist surgery, removed Kasper’s brain from his still warm body and placed it in that robot, and the robot came to life in a panic. “Don’t worry,” we told Kasper the robot, “we’re not going to hurt you! We’re just putting you to work for the Miriam McDonald memorial fund. You will clean up the sand from the Sand Wastes until all the sand is gone. We don’t know how long that will take, it may take forever. Good luck!” And even now, a lone robot with a broom sweeps sand out of the desert. Hm. A fitting end for an unfit man.

[sighs in relief] Now there is only us, and the returned reality of our aging. And our death. I have come to think that Carlos was right. There is nothing more scientific than death. We fear it, reasonably, because it is a thing we can never know, perhaps not even when we experience it. But it is not worth perverting our lives, changing everything about ourselves just to avoid our natural ends. New generations will come. New people will live. And like everyone before us, we will gracefully exit to make room for those coming after. As the old saying goes: “Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you.” [laughs] This is not a story about you! And you were glad, because it would be boring if every story was.

Good night, Night Vale, Good night.

Today’s proverb: Every friend group has a joyful chasm. If you do not know who the joyful chasm is, then I have news for you: you are the joyful chasm.

[post credits segment]

Kasper: There’s a lot of talk generally and in particular. So many words. Oh man. Oooh maannn. Ugh, oh! [chuckles] This is not how. It isn’t. Was it? But it’s what’s left of me. Oh, it’s quiet in here at least. I can’t feel the smile anymore. (--) [0:25:49] that smile. In here, it is quiet and dark. My metal body moves, but my brain is still. I like it in here. [shivers] Nooo-oooo! That smile! The- the smile has appeared. Oh, oh God, y- you don’t understand! The smile is in here with me. [distorted noise, discordant music rises, then fades out]

#welcome to night vale #wtnv transcripts #episode 158 #the battle for time

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newstechreviews · 4 years ago

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In a slightly different world, Fargo season 4 might never have happened. After the FX anthology drama ended its third season, creator Noah Hawley admitted that he didn’t have an idea for a follow-up. And, he figured, “the only reason to do another Fargo is if the creative is there.” So, if there was to be a sequel, Hawley estimated it would take three years. That was in June 2017.

Thirty-nine months later (it would have been 34 had COVID not temporarily halted production), the show has reemerged with a story whose timeliness is obvious. It marks a significant departure from the earliest seasons of Fargo, which pitted good and evil archetypes against each other in arch, violent crime capers that ultimately erred on the side of optimism. Season 3 flirted with topicality, from an opening scene that hinged on Soviet kompromat to a hauntingly inconclusive final showdown between the latest iterations of pure good—represented by Carrie Coon’s embattled police chief Gloria Burgle—and primordial evil (David Thewlis’ terrifying V.M. Varga). Five months into Donald Trump’s presidency, that ending simultaneously reflected many Americans’ fears for the future and suggested that the battle for the human soul would be an eternal one. You can imagine why Hawley might have considered it a hard act to follow.

Instead of trying to top the high-flown allegory of its predecessor, the fascinating but uneven new episodes tackle conflicts of a more earthly nature: race, structural inequality, American identity. To that end, Fargo season 4 ventures farther south and deeper into history than it has gone before, to Kansas City, Mo. in 1950. For half a century, ethnic gangs have battled over the midsize metropolis. The Irish took out the Jews. The Italians took out the Irish. Finally, just a few years after a brutal World War in which fascist Italy numbered among the United States’ enemies, the Great Migration has brought the descendants of slaves north to this Midwestern city whose complicity in American racism dates back to the Missouri Compromise.

This upstart syndicate is led by one Loy Cannon (Chris Rock in a rare dramatic role), a brilliant, self-possessed power broker who doesn’t relish violence but is determined to exact reparations from this country, on behalf of his beloved family, by any means necessary. Loy’s deputy and closest friend is a learned older man by the name of Doctor Senator (the great Glynn Turman, all quiet dignity). In an early episode, the two men walk into a bank to pitch its white owner on an idea they’ve been testing out through less-than-legal means in the Black community: credit cards. (“Every average Joe wants one thing: to seem rich,” Loy explains to the banker.) He turns them down, of course, convinced that his clientele would have no interest in purchasing things they couldn’t afford. We’re left wondering how the ensuing saga might’ve been different if Loy and Doctor Senator had been allowed to channel their considerable intelligence into a legit business.

Elizabeth Morris/FXSalvatore Esposito and Jason Schwartzman in ‘Fargo’

The Italians, meanwhile, are starting to enjoy the rewards of their newfound whiteness—a largely invisible transformation marked in The Godfather by Michael Corleone’s relationship with naive WASP Kay Adams. (In keeping with previous seasons’ allusive style, Fargo often playfully evokes Francis Ford Coppola’s trilogy.) In the wake of their capo father Donatello’s (Tommaso Ragno) death, two brothers battle for control of the Fadda clan—a crime family that has Italian-accented patriarchalism written into its very name. Crafty, spoiled, crypto-corporate Josto (Jason Schwartzman, doing a scrappier, cannier take on his Louis XVI character in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette) has long been Donatello’s right hand. But his younger brother Gaetano (Salvatore Esposito, imported from Sky Italia’s acclaimed organized-crime drama Gomorrah), a brawny brute who came up in Sardinia busting heads for Mussolini, stands between Josto and the consolidation of power.

Generations-old tradition dictates that if two syndicates are to share turf in Kansas City, their leaders must raise each other’s sons. These exchanges are supposed to be a sort of insurance policy against betrayal; never mind that they never work out as planned. So Loy very reluctantly trades his scion Satchel (Rodney Jones) for Donatello’s youngest (Jameson Braccioforte). The boy finds a protector in the Faddas’ solemn older ward, Patrick “The Rabbi” Milligan (Ben Whishaw, humane as always), who double-crossed his own Irish family in an earlier transaction.

Ethelrida Pearl Smutny (E’myri Crutchfield from History’s 2016 Roots remake) is the show’s other innocent youth, a bright and insightful Black teenager whose parents (Anji White and indie rocker Andrew Bird) own the poignantly named King of Tears funeral home. Every Fargo season needs a personification of goodness, and in this one it’s Ethelrida. Not that her virtuousness makes her life any easier. In a voiceover montage that opens the season premiere, she tells us that she learned early on that, as far as white authority figures were concerned, “the only thing worse than a disreputable Negro was an upstanding one.” Her inscrutable foil is Oraetta Mayflower (Jessie Buckley), a white nurse neighbor whose patients tend to die before they can experience too much pain. Oraetta’s quaint Minnesota accent (another Fargo staple) belies the racist views she politely but unapologetically espouses; she seems fixated on making Ethelrida her maid.

Elizabeth Morris/FXE’myri Crutchfield in ‘Fargo’

It’s fitting that Oraetta is both the most tangible link to Fargo’s home turf and the first character who ties together the mobster’s story with that of the Smutny family. As her loaded last name suggests, she seems to embody a particular form of evil that has been a constant in American life since the colonial period: white supremacy. Oraetta harms, kills and plunders with minimal consequences. No wonder she has eyes for Josto, the first Fadda who knows how to wield his white identity, building alliances with government and law enforcement that would be impossible for the Cannon syndicate. (Josto’s version of Kay Adams is the homely daughter of a politician.) “I can take all the money and pussy I want and still run for President,” he boasts at one point.

The reference to our current President’s briefly scandalous Access Hollywood tape is so flagrant as to elicit an involuntary groan. It’s lines like this that expose the limitations of Hawley’s attempt to fuse the topical and the elemental. Fargo still creates an absorbing, cinematic viewing experience, with painterly framing, pointedly deployed split-screen and arcane yet evocative needle drops. A not-at-all-gratuitous black-and-white episode could almost stand on its own as a movie. And, as in past seasons, the show gives us many remarkable performances: Rock may seem an odd pick for a gangster role, but the same shrewdness and indignation that fuel his stand-up persona also simmer beneath Loy’s measured surface. The pain Whishaw’s character carries around in his body goes far beyond what can be conveyed in dialogue. Bird broke my heart as a meek, loving dad. But in his eagerness to make a legible, potent political statement, Hawley struggles to find the right tone and keep the season’s many intersecting themes straight.

Elizabeth Morris/FXJessie Buckley in ‘Fargo’

The show is simply trying to do too much within a limited framework. Fargo wouldn’t be Fargo without some eccentric law enforcement, so an already-huge cast expands to fit a crooked local detective with OCD (Jack Huston) and Timothy Olyphant—whose roles on Deadwood and Justified made him prestige TV’s quintessential cop—as a smarmy, Mormon U.S. Mashal who snacks on carefully wrapped bundles of carrot sticks. Yet Hawley also realized that he needed to break from previous seasons that, like the Coens’ film, cast a white police officer as the avatar of goodness; hence Ethelrida, whose investigation into her city’s criminal underworld takes the form of a school assignment, and whose soul is stained by neither corruption nor white privilege. She’s a wonderful character, but her and Oraetta’s story line can feel peripheral to the gang war.

With such a crowded plot, it’s no wonder the show can’t maintain a consistent tone. Each season of Fargo creates a hermetically sealed moral universe, doling out divine and definitive justice to each character according to their position on the spectrum spanning from good to evil. In the past, its archness has served as a self-aware counterbalance to the sanctimony inherent in such a project. And there’s still plenty of irreverence in season 4, particularly when it comes to Hawley’s depiction of the Faddas, Oraetta and the other white characters. But there’s nothing funny about the oppression and discrimination that Loy, Doctor Senator and Ethelrida face. Each of their fates is shaped at least as much by a society that is hostile to people who look like them as it is by the moral choices they make as individuals. So the scripts give them the dignity they deserve at the expense of inflicting earnestness—along with frequent reminders, such as Schwartzman’s Trump line, that the story’s themes remain relevant today—on a format that isn’t built for it. Realistic characters and absurd ones awkwardly mingle.

Hawley’s attempt to correct his show’s political blind spots is laudable, and some pieces of the allegory work well; the ritual of ethnic gangs trying—and failing—to work together by raising each other’s sons makes an inspired metaphor for America’s fragile social contract. Even so, Fargo seems fundamentally ill-equipped to address systemic inequality. Though that failing may well render future seasons similarly flawed, if not impossible, in our current political climate, it doesn’t negate the pleasures or insights of what remains one of TV’s most ambitious shows. Like this nation, the new season is a beautiful and ugly, inspiring and infuriating, a tragic and sometimes darkly hilarious mess. As frustrating as it often was to watch, I couldn’t look away.

#Blogger

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adsthumbsblog · 3 years ago

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The Real State of The Economy

On January 28, 2008 President George Bush graced us with his grand oratory, The State of The Union Address. This was his last. Although he gave us a bleak economic forecast Bush's speechwriters buttered up the rhetoric to sound more like a call to arms than the bitter truth. We are on a slippery slope and the only thing holding us out of the abyss is a strand of fiscal floss. The Cliff's Notes version of the address includes a focus on our dire economic straights. Are we going into recession? Well, if it feels hot, looks bright, and smells of smoke, chances are it is a fire.

Bush has decided to use the carrot approach to jumpstart the floundering economy versus giving us the cold hard tax stick. As a matter of fact our President swore not to raise taxes and furthermore if a bill is passed to his desk that even hints at a tax increase he will veto it. His tactic in restarting the economy is his much-hyped tax refund increases. This refund increase will allow people to go shop. It is a very kind gesture to China. Do you really think all the refundees will loyally go out with their bankrolls and blow their wad on strictly American made products? However, we do want to stay on China's good side.

To his home crowd, of republicans, the speech seemed to go over as well as Oprah's Favorite Things episodes. Bush got many standing ovations and even a strange whoopee sound which seemed to downright delight Dick Cheney. The camera kept panning the room to focus on Hillary and Obama. They both looked as if they had V.I.P. seating to the Armageddon.

With the national economy out of order, there is a slightly better prognosis for local economies. There are many variants in each regional economy that will determine if markets will sink or swim in this quasi-recession. At an Economic Trends Seminar in San Diego January 2008 the local versus national economy was brought into focus. A panel of experts from different industries included San Diego's own Mayor Jerry Sanders. A wrap-up of this event included some comforting trends, in San Diego, apart from the rest of the country's decay.

The current factors determining the economy are the government's fiscal, monetary, trade, and regulatory policies. Small businesses will fare far better than large corporations during this down period. One reason is because small businesses are inherently more nimble. Secondly, smaller companies are not as often tied up in borrowing money and accruing monumental debt. More specifically in San Diego all transactions are trending toward all that is urban. San Diego is not spreading out like Los Angeles, but instead going vertical. Real Estate expert Gary London, of The London Group Real Estate, appropriately calls this the "Manhattanization of San Diego".

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aunti-christ-ine · 7 years ago

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Why Michael Cohen is possibly the biggest threat to Trump

By Philip Bump June 13 at 3:32 PM

Michael Cohen began working for President Trump as his personal attorney over a decade ago, well before Trump was seriously considering running for president — back, in fact, when Trump was still a Democrat. Cohen’s role at the Trump Organization was broad, involving him in potential real estate projects and serving, in the New York Times’s phrasing, as a “do-it-all fixer” — a role that apparently included occasionally berating journalists on Trump’s behalf.

During 2016, Cohen didn’t work directly for the Trump campaign, though he was still working as the candidate’s attorney and making television appearances on behalf of Trump’s candidacy. During the primaries, he was involved in a Trump Organization effort to build a new tower in Moscow. This effort included personal outreach to the spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin aimed at speeding the process. (The project was abandoned in mid-2016.)

In late October 2016, with days left to vote, Cohen arranged a payment of $130,000 to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, preventing her from telling the media about an alleged sexual encounter between her and Trump a decade before. After the election, Cohen pitched himself as a consultant offering insight into Trump and the Trump presidency. He took in millions in consulting fees from a number of corporate and private interests — including the U.S. affiliate of a company founded by a Russian oligarch and, the BBC reported last month, allies of the president of Ukraine.

Cohen is mentioned in the dossier of material compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele as a liaison between Russian actors and the campaign, claims that have never been validated publicly. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is reportedly investigating a visit by Cohen to Prague in 2016 — a trip that would match a detail of the Steele dossier. Mueller is also reportedly looking into a Russia-Ukraine peace proposal that was given to Cohen by a Ukrainian lawmaker and which Cohen gave to then-national security adviser Michael Flynn shortly before Flynn resigned.

Before he worked with Trump and extending into his tenure as the future president’s attorney, Cohen had his own businesses on the side, including owning a number of New York City’s once-lucrative taxi medallions and serving as an adviser to disparate organizations. He also made his own real estate transactions on the side, some of which involved big profits in a short time frame. It’s these efforts, it seems, which resulted in federal investigators working for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan to raid Cohen’s homes and office in April, seizing numerous physical documents and electronic devices looking for evidence to bolster potential criminal charges against Cohen.

At least, that’s what Trump argues.

“This doesn’t have to do with me,” he said about Cohen’s legal troubles during an interview on “Fox and Friends” in April. “Michael is a businessman. He’s got a business. He also practices law. I would say probably the big thing is his business, and they’re looking at something having to do with his business. I have nothing to do with his business.”

That may be the case. It may be true that the acts under investigation are solely related to Cohen’s side hustles. Until charges are filed, if charges are filed, we won’t know.

But it doesn’t really matter. If there are criminal charges in the offing (which seems likely) and Cohen is worried about a conviction (same), it gives authorities a powerful carrot to dangle in front of him: cooperation. And Cohen cooperating with the authorities — specifically, with Mueller and his team — is probably the biggest threat that Trump might face.

On Wednesday, multiple outlets reported that Cohen was considering cooperating with prosecutors having parted ways with the legal team that had been representing him in an ongoing legal dispute over the material seized in that April raid. Cohen is reportedly in a difficult position. He reportedly needs new attorneys per the New York Times, in part because he has unpaid bills with his representation — the sort of thing that might disincline a law firm to take him on as a client. Or he can reach an agreement with prosecutors to tell them what he knows in exchange for quickly wrapping up the investigation into him.

There are others who could provide a sweeping overview of Trump’s activity before, during and after the campaign, certainly. But the combination of dealing with Trump in all three of those phases, being involved with Trump to the extent that Cohen was and facing possible criminal charges that might inspire someone to flip? Only Cohen fits that bill. Former campaign chairman Paul Manafort no doubt has a lot to offer prosecutors, should he decide to trade in his knowledge for a clean criminal slate. But Manafort can’t speak to the Trump Organization before 2016. He can’t talk about attempts to curry business in Russia before and after the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. It’s quite possible that no one except Trump has as broad an overview of Trump the businessman and Trump the candidate as Cohen.

Cohen is also uniquely positioned as a threat to Trump on the campaign. We can set aside the Steele dossier allegations which, if proven true, would be game over for the question of collusion. Consider just the payment to Stormy Daniels. It’s not as intriguing as Russian collusion, but it’s quite likely that campaign finance laws were broken by concealing a payment meant to aid Trump’s election. There may be other instances of Cohen fixing similar problems for Trump in 2016 which raise similar questions.

The only two people who know precisely the ways in which Cohen might implicate Trump are Cohen and Trump — though it’s a safe bet that a few people carrying badges around Washington have a good sense of it, too. Cohen’s legal problems may, in fact, be entirely separate from Trump. But if they aren’t, and if Cohen decides to share what he knows with the authorities, it’s hard to imagine someone who is more likely to put Trump at significant legal risk.

#Washington Post #michael cohen #michael flynn #paul manafort #so-called president #Lyin Donnie Dotard #tRUmp #ukraine #impeach tRUmp

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eagle-eyez · 3 years ago

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Wednesday's news that senior Politburo official Nikolai Patrushev has conveyed to his Iranian counterpart Admiral Ali Shamkhani that is set to be admitted as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) should give the Joe Biden administration pause.

Especially as this news comes in the backdrop of the United States’ drawdown exit from Afghanistan and an expectation that the grouping will play a greater role in the region in the absence of an American presence.

But first let’s look at what the SCO is, its members and its goals:

What is the SCO?

As per the grouping’s website: “The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is a permanent intergovernmental international organisation, the creation of which was announced on 15 June, 2001, in Shanghai (China) by the Republic of Kazakhstan, the People's Republic of China, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Russian Federation, the Republic of Tajikistan, and the Republic of Uzbekistan. It was preceded by the Shanghai Five mechanism.”

Who are its members?

The grouping has eight permanent members: China, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, and India. Of these eight, the two that joined most recently are India and Pakistan (in June 2017).

What are its goals?

Strengthening mutual trust and neighbourliness among the member states; promoting their effective cooperation in politics, trade, the economy, research, technology and culture, as well as in education, energy, transport, tourism, environmental protection, and other areas

Making joint efforts to maintain and ensure peace, security and stability in the region

Moving towards the establishment of a democratic, fair and rational new international political and economic order

What does that mean? In essence, the SCO is a Eurasian group that is seen as a counterbalance to NATO.

Why is this important? The SCO also currently has four observer states. Of these, two states are of particular interest to the Biden administration for quite different reasons: Iran and Afghanistan.

Iran takes it slow, China extends olive branch

As mentioned above, Iran is on its way to becoming a full member of the SCO. This even as the Biden administration is attempting, seemingly without much success, to pressure Iran to rejoin the JCPOA.

Iran, which shares a 900-kilometre border with Afghanistan, already seems keen to achieve peaceful coexistence with the Sunni Taliban, with its new President Ebrahim Rasi seemingly taking pleasure rubbing salt in the wound of the Americans by saying the US military "defeat" in Afghanistan was a chance to bring peace to the country.

Meanwhile, as events continue to unfold in Afghanistan at a rapid pace, the Chinese seem to be operating with two old maxims in mind: “You can choose your friends but not your neighbours” and “never let a good crisis go to waste”.

Continuing to make overtures to the Taliban while stopping short of openly recognising the government, Beijing on Wednesday said it will decide on extending diplomatic recognition to the Taliban in Afghanistan only after the formation of the government in the country, which it hoped would be "open, inclusive and broadly representative".

“China’s position on the Afghan issue is consistent and clear," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a media briefing here answering a question when will China accord diplomatic recognition to the Taliban insurgents, which has taken control of Afghanistan. “If we have to recognise a government, the first thing is that we will need to wait until the government is formed," he said. “We hope there will be an open, inclusive and broadly representative regime in Afghanistan. Only after that, we will come to the question of diplomatic recognition," he said.

To be fair, China, which itself shares a rugged 76-kilometre border with Afghanistan, made its position clear on Monday itself after the Taliban seized control of the country, saying it is “ready to deepen "friendly and cooperative" relations.

One big reason for Beijing to keep an eye on Afghanistan is its age-old worry that the country will become a hub for the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a separatist outfit aligned to Al Qaeda which is waging an insurgency in Xinjiang.

Beijing also has a trillion dollars worth of reasons to keep its eye on the ball: China has been eying large-scale investments in Afghanistan as the country has the world's largest unexploited reserves of copper, coal, iron, gas, cobalt, mercury, gold, lithium and thorium. In 2011, the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) won a $400 million bid to drill three oil fields for 25 years, containing roughly 87 million barrels of oil. Chinese firms have also gained rights to mine copper at Mes Aynak in Logar province.

The Chinese are aware that war is an expensive proposition. Given that turmoil in Afghanistan could be extremely bad for its business, Beijing could well be adopting the carrot and the stick approach with the Taliban.

India casts watchful eye

For India, the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan brings its own set of headaches.

A security analyst, who did not wish to be named, told New Indian Express that China would like assert its influence on West Asia through Afghanistan by bringing the war-torn country into the scheme of things in connection with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which India remains adamantly opposed to.

Also in the forefront of New Delhi’s mind is the fate of its much-touted Chabahar Port project in eastern Iran – jointly built by India, Afghanistan and Iran, crucial to New Delhi’s interests for its vital geostrategic location and long seen as a counterweight to the Chinese-backed Gwadar port in Pakistan (the Kohinoor of its Belt and Road initiative) – which could be sidelined or simply made irrelevant by "changing circumstances".

Worse for India, China and Tehran also seem to be getting friendlier, what with Beijing’s planned $400 billion investment in Tehran over the next 25 years. The possibility of Chabahar Port being linked with Gwadar Port in Pakistan – the endpoint of CPEC – would be a possibility New Delhi would not like to contemplate given China’s avowed strategic encirclement strategy known as “String of Pearls.”

Russia takes pragmatic view

In the meantime, Russia, which has, shall we say, a colourful history with Afghanistan is looking to get on side with the Taliban as well. Despite the hardline Islamist group tracing its origins back to the war against the Soviets in the 1980s, Russia's view on the group now is pragmatic. Analysts say the Kremlin wants to protect its interests in Central Asia, where it has several military bases and is keen to avoid instability and potential terrorism spreading through a region on its doorstep.

A Russian foreign ministry statement Monday said the situation in Kabul "is stabilising" and claimed that the Taliban had started to "restore public order". Well, quite.

And ambassador Dmitry Zhirnov said the Taliban, who he was due to meet Tuesday, was already guarding his embassy and had given Moscow guarantees that the building would be safe. The militants had assured the Russians that "not a single hair will fall from the heads" of their diplomats, he said. This is a stark contrast to the last time hardliners came to power in Afghanistan in 1992, when Moscow struggled to evacuate its embassy under fire after a disastrous decade-long war.

Three decades later, the Kremlin has boosted the Taliban's international credibility by hosting it several times for talks in Moscow, despite the movement being a banned terrorist organisation in Russia. The aim of these talks, say analysts, is to stop the conflict from spilling into neighbouring countries and a terrorism spike in its Central Asian neighbours, where Russia maintains military bases.

"If we want there to be peace in Central Asia, we need to talk to the Taliban," said Nikolai Bordyuzha, the former secretary-general of the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO). He commended the Russian embassy for staying open. The Taliban has moved to reassure its northern neighbours that it has no designs on them, despite several Central Asian countries having offered logistical support to Washington's war effort.

Ambassador Zhirnov suggested the Taliban had also given Moscow assurances. He said Russia wanted Afghanistan to have peaceful relations with "all the countries in the world" and that "the Taliban had already promised us" this.

Russia's dialogue with the Taliban is the fruit of several years of courting. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in July described the Taliban as a "powerful force", and blamed the Afghan government for faltering progress in talks. "It is not for nothing that we have been establishing contacts with the Taliban movement for the last seven years," the Kremlin's Afghanistan envoy, Zamir Kabulov, told the Ekho Moskvy radio station on Monday.

This relationship has raised many eyebrows, given that the Taliban has its roots in the anti-Soviet Mujahideen movement from the 1980s. But Alexander Baunov of the Carnegie Moscow Center said Russia now believed the Taliban have changed since the last time it was in power in the 1990s when it gave shelter to Al Qaeda.

"Moscow does not see this version of the Mujahideen as its enemy," he said.

But Russia isn’t taking any chances either. Its foreign ministry has suggested it will not rush into a close relationship with a Taliban government, saying it would monitor the group's conduct before deciding on recognition.

And as the Taliban advanced through Afghanistan this summer, Russia staged war games with allies Uzbekistan and Tajikistan on the Afghan border in a show of force. Central Asia expert Arkady Dubnov said Moscow would now look to strengthen its military presence in the region. "To different extents, these countries will be obliged to accept Moscow's help, but none will want to exchange their sovereignty for their security," he said.

What can the SCO do?

Russian International Affairs Council director-general Andrey Kortunov told China's Global Times, SCO is in a good position “to address simultaneously (the) security, economic and human development agendas of Afghanistan". As the country looks to rebuild and recover, the SCO members can provide “support for political stability, implementation of large-scale economic projects and assistance for social capital building".

He, however, mentioned fault lines among the SCO members saying that “select SCO states could form project-based coalitions to engage in initiatives of their choice without necessarily trying to involve all of SCO member states".

Russia, China and Iran have one more thing in common: none have shuttered their embassies and are in constant contact with the Taliban. The bottom line is that all these countries, for their own geopolitical reasons, could potentially recognise the Taliban in the days to come. Which could bring them in direct conflict with the United States, whose intelligence agencies are already expressing concern about terrorist groups potentially reforming in Afghanistan under the radar.

At least we live in interesting times.

With inputs from agencies

from Firstpost World Latest News https://ift.tt/3y0Yi5B

#World

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daniloqp · 4 years ago

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The prey is being breached with the vaccine warrants

https://theministerofcapitalism.com/blog/the-prey-is-being-breached-with-the-vaccine-warrants/

It was not necessary be like that. This spring, as the list was made to get Covid-19 vaccines effectively miraculously available, it was easy to imagine a direct and fast path to a protected society. The curve of administered doses appeared limited only by supply and the curve looked good, perfectly calibrated for things normal (at least by some definition of the word) in late summer, just in time for schools and jobs to reopen. As long as the vaccination rate kept pace. Which, of course, was not the case. Very soon, the curve reached the turning point, shifted from the rise, and flattened. Add a euphoric, masked reopening to much of the country. Then add the more transmissible Delta variant. Result: a pandemic of the unvaccinated that, due to its immense scale, now threatens even people with two shots thanks to the possibility of advanced infections.

All of this has added to a turning point: the week the carrot met the stick, when dozens of influential organizations decided it was time for vaccine mandates.

That was the message this afternoon when President Joe Biden announced vaccination rules for 4 million federal workers. “Right now, there are too many people dying or watching someone they love die,” he said. These workers will now be able to choose: certify their vaccination status completed or test once or twice a week, put on masks and deal with travel restrictions. “We have the tools to prevent the next wave of Covid from shutting down our businesses, our schools and our society,” he said, adding that the government will reimburse small businesses that allow workers to take time off to get vaccinated. to themselves or their families, and that their administration encourages state and local governments to offer residents $ 100 incentives. Biden also instructed the Department of Defense to consider how and when they will require Covid-19 vaccines for members of the armed forces.

Biden’s announcement followed similar statements from a group of large technology companies, including Google and Facebook, who have told their tens of thousands of employees across the country that workers who need to return to the office will have to be vaccinated and another series of mandates of the universities, state governments and medical centers. The moves received more legal clarity last month, after a federal judge filed a lawsuit against a group of Houston Methodist Hospital employees who had argued the rules were illegal because vaccines are only allowed by the FDA for emergency use. And it’s not just employers. In San Francisco, for example, most bars and clubs in the city he said they will require pattern testing from this week.

Is it ideal to force people to do the right thing for public health? Not really, says Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, an epidemiologist who studies health equity at the University of California, San Francisco. To do this, first try sending messages to overcome skeptics and incentives for those who need a boost“As public health officials have done for months and will continue to do so,” he added. But at this critical stage of the pandemic, the turning point of mandates is good news for her. “We have to use all the tools at our disposal,” he says. “Clearly that’s what needs to be done right now and it’s something we hope will be built in more places that take action.”

There is already a clear pastoral effect. A vanguard of leaders from hospitals, universities and state governments he made the initial argument: that the benefits of protecting his patients and residents from unvaccinated workers outweigh the concerns of individual employees and clarified that mandates are legal. Then the big tech corporations joined in, theorizing that a totally cowardly workforce would be good for business; have been a kind of cultural independence Covid, which led the shutdown of offices in early March 2020, with many moving on to long-term remote work.

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jetsway · 4 years ago

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Why Bill Gates Is Keen on Private Jets?

Makers of personal luxury planes like Bombardier Inc., General Elements Corp. what's more, Textron Inc. cut creation rates before in the pandemic yet recently have sounded idealistic about their capacity to win new clients.

"You have individuals that are coming in to business aeronautics that have not truly been doing business flight or claimed a value piece of an airplane," Textron CEO Scott Donnelly told financial backers as of late. "The decrease in the quantity of [commercial] flights is making it extremely challenging for individuals to get from direct A toward point B in the country without requiring an entire day doing it." North America represents almost 66% of the world's armada of personal luxury planes.

Environment concerns are genuine yet so are close term wellbeing stresses, and the comfort of flying private yields genuine usefulness benefits for top corporate chiefs, Carter Copeland of Melius Exploration said in a meeting. While personal luxury planes have a bigger carbon impression comparative with the quantity of seats, the outflows made by that side of the market fail to measure up to the more extensive business flying industry, so the last will probably draw in more consideration from environmental change activists, he said.

Honeywell Worldwide Inc., which makes motor innovation and cockpit controls for business jets, has said it anticipates that demand for private flights should get back to 2019 levels by the center of this current year. The development case from that point is murkier and is doubtlessly attached to personal luxury plane travel turning out to be more feasible for the general population, or maybe turning into a greener option in contrast to business flight if the area can lead the way on electric planes.

With arrangements stopped until another hardline organization gets to work in Tehran, the shots at resuscitating the 2015 Iran atomic arrangement at any point in the near future are not splendid. Besides, even effective discussions probably won't prevent Iran's chiefs from seeking after atomic weapons. The Biden organization needs to track down a superior method to hinder them.

It's as yet conceivable, maybe even possible, that the longing for sanctions alleviation will provoke the Iranians to rejoin the arrangement, officially known as the Joint Thorough Game plan, when they finish up the U.S. will make no further concessions. That would move back a portion of Iran's new advances, including its improvement of uranium to 60% immaculateness and its creation of uranium metal, utilized in atomic warheads.

Getting back to private jets the state of affairs bet, however, will likewise feature the first arrangement's major deficiencies — its quick moving toward dusk provisions, most remarkably. At the point when the JCPOA's key arrangements pass in 2030, there will be no restrictions on the size of Iran's atomic foundation, the number or sorts of axes it can run, or even the measure of weapons-grade fissile material it might have or deliver. By 2023, only a long time from now, there will be no restrictions on Iran's long range rockets, exceptionally viable conveyance vehicles for atomic weapons.

The way that the Biden organization desires to come to a "more extended and more grounded" follow-on arrangement mirrors its acknowledgment that the JCPOA isn't adequate. The difficulty is, approaching Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has clarified that Iran has no interest in such an arrangement. Affectations seldom, if at any time, adjust Iran's conduct and are probably not going to change the personalities of either Preeminent Pioneer Ayatollah Ali Khamenei or the new president.

Nor is Iran's demand that it doesn't plan to foster atomic weapons solid. In case that were valid, the system might have sought after undeniably less exorbitant options in contrast to building its own broad advancement capacity. Setting up a common atomic industry to create power, utilizing fuel outfitted from outside the nation, was consistently an alternative — one that Iran reliably dismissed. Proof of its work on planning atomic warheads, uncovered in the atomic file Israel uncovered of Tehran, just affirms its advantage in a weapons program.

In the event that the U.S. can't convince Iran to temper such desires utilizing carrots, which appears to be improbable given Iran's resolved quest for an enormous atomic framework, it should discover more compelling sticks. To begin, the Biden organization ought to reexamine its expressed target and be clear the U.S. is resolved to prevent Iran from obtaining an atomic weapon, yet from having the option to deliver a bomb rapidly. It's possible Iran desires to turn into a limit atomic weapons state like Japan, which doesn't have an atomic weapon yet has every one of the way to create one rapidly. Not at all like Japan, Iran is a danger to its neighbors and should not be in a position where it could successfully give the world an atomic weapons done deal during a period based on its personal preference.

The Biden organization should in this way fix its definitive approach to say Iran won't be permitted to turn into an atomic weapons edge state. In principle, dealings could concede such a result. One approach to do as such is expand the JCPOA's nightfall statements for another 10 to 20 years. A superior option is force severe cutoff points on Iran's creation capacities and the numbers and kinds of rotators it can run, in ceaselessness.

In case Raisi's administration keeps on dismissing follow-on talks, in any case, the U.S. should make the expenses of seeking after a limit ability far more clear. To do as such, the Biden organization ought to consider giving Israel the GBU-57 Monstrous Arms Penetrator, a 30,000-pound mountain-buster, as some in Congress have supported. Such a weapon could be utilized to annihilate Fordow, the underground Iranian improvement office, just as other solidified atomic locales.

Obviously, the White House would have to arrive at a firm understanding with the Israelis about triggers for the bomb's utilization. In any case, being ready to give Israel a particularly fearsome weapon and renting the B-2 aircraft to convey it would send an incredible message. The Iranians may question whether the U.S. would finish its dangers; they will not experience any difficulty accepting the Israelis will.

Truth be told, giving the GBU-57 to Israel might be the best instigation for Iran to arrange a "more extended and more grounded" bargain. Really at that time may the system acknowledge that the U.S. is not kidding about keeping Iran from getting an edge status — and that Iran chances its whole atomic foundation without an arrangement restricting it. Under such conditions, Iran's chiefs will have an impetus to get something now for tolerating a result that the U.S. furthermore, Israel may somehow force.

Flying by personal luxury plane contract has numerous advantages, and in the event that you have the cash to do as such, you can decide to utilize this choice, which is the favored voyaging technique for some expert competitors, business leaders, diversion VIPs, guard authorities, government officials, and rich people. The facts confirm that utilizing an airplane sanction has reclassified how residents travel, in contrast with customary business flights. The advantages related with a private contract are more sumptuous, and you have greater accessibility as far as non-stop trips to distant areas all throughout the planet.

Booking your Sanction

despite the fact that it requires more opportunity to book a sanction flight, it tends to be finished easily on the web, or through phone with a record leader for the airplane contract organization you have picked. The area you pick will figure out which contract organization you can utilize; a few organizations are simply prepared to travel a particular distance because of the size of their airplanes. Your spending plan likewise assumes a significant part in this cycle. When booking your arrangement

#busniess #plane

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allthebrazilianpolitics · 4 years ago

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Charting a New Course for U.S.-Brazil Action on the Amazon

President Joe Biden has a lengthy climate change to-do list: Amid rising global temperatures, more frequent and extreme weather events, and the rapid loss of nature, there is little time to lose. Biden reflected this urgency in the first days of his presidency, in the content of his executive order (EO) on the climate crisis, issued in late January 2021.1 Among the highest international environmental priorities in this EO is setting a climate strategy on the Amazon, which—in addition to its pivotal role in any global solution to the climate crisis—serves as an important element of a U.S. strategy toward South America. The stakes are high: A stable and vibrant Amazon could continue to absorb about 5 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions,2 offsetting roughly the equivalent of all greenhouse gas emissions from Russia, the world’s fifth-largest emitter.3 Reducing deforestation rates would also address a major emissions source, as cutting down and burning forests in Brazil emitted 952 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2019, equal to the annual emissions from 245 coal-fired power plants.4

The situation is dire, especially in the Brazilian Amazon. In office for just two years, far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has overseen an aggressive assault on the country’s long-standing legal and institutional protections for the Amazon and its Indigenous communities. Several examples of the change in trajectory include surging annual deforestation rates, an increase in fires tied to illegal land clearing for unapproved soy and cattle farming, cuts to the budgets and enforcement capacity of the country’s environmental police (IBAMA) and space agency (INPE), and the opening of 237 Indigenous areas in April 2020 to land claims by outside speculators.

President Biden has made clear that he is focused on Brazil’s role in addressing climate change. During the 2020 presidential debate, then-candidate Biden affirmed the urgency of addressing the threat that President Bolsonaro’s policies posed to the Amazon and to the global climate, proposing to work with global partners to create a $20 billion fund that would incentivize Bolsonaro to change his approach to the Amazon. If Bolsonaro did not agree to the plan, “Brazil would face ‘economic consequences’,” said Biden.13 In his January 27 executive order on tackling climate change, he directed the Treasury and State departments, along with the U.S. Agency for International Development and the International Development Finance Corporation, to develop a plan for supporting protection of the Amazon and other important ecosystems through market-based mechanisms.14 This carrot-and-stick proposition—and Biden’s commitment to centering climate action in his administration’s foreign policy—demonstrates that the president recognizes the stakes for getting the right outcomes in the Amazon—for the global climate, human rights, and the rule of law.

The question now is what these two paths—one with Brazil’s cooperation and one without—should look like. The Biden administration should demonstrate to Brazil that there is significant, long-term support for pursuing a more sustainable future in the Amazon, including enhanced partnership with the United States. At the same time, the urgency of the situation means that the United States cannot necessarily rely on a partnership with Brazil or wait for Brazil to agree to such a partnership. If Brazil opts not to act, the Biden administration should take steps with other countries and with the private sector to reduce economic contributions to deforestation and pressure Brazil and other countries to take meaningful action in the Amazon.

#brazil #united states #politics #environmentalism #environmental justice #amazon rainforest #brazilian politics #us politics #joe biden #international politics #mod nise da silveira

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