Talking To Strangers

I love this short piece by Melissa Kirsch from yesterday's New York Times Morning newsletter which speaks to the idea of being open to the world around you, the transformative power of saying "yes"(this echoes her past article about saying yes to things that come your way, seen here) and being accepting. I try to do this in certain social settings ... it usually ends up being fun for everyone.

Public offering

By Melissa Kirsch

The Morning
May 2, 2026

I went to hear some live music by myself a couple of weeks ago. There were a handful of other people in the small performance space when I arrived, mostly in small groups. I was considering taking out my phone, a habit I try to resist when I’m unoccupied in public, when a man walked up to me and a person standing nearby and said something to the effect of, “We’re all here solo, so we should talk to one another.” I was surprised and charmed by his extroversion. I had assumed I’d have to mill about awkwardly until the show began, the tax one pays for going out alone. But this guy, whose name we quickly learned was Stefan, had treated the barroom as if it were a party he was hosting, or at least a party at which he was determined to not be bored. The three of us chatted as the place filled up, strangers with a common interest in a musician, which was enough of a connection to pleasantly fill a half-hour.

It has become very easy to avoid talking to strangers. Noise-canceling headphones, internet shopping, self-checkout lines and, when all else fails, our phones — taken out at a bar, a party, a concert — insulate us against humanity’s intrusion. It’s not all terrible: I recently made a doctor’s appointment via consultation with my medical practice’s “virtual assistant” and it was refreshingly frictionless. In a city, headphones are indispensable for boundary setting; they send a signal that one is not to be bothered. But when not interacting becomes the default, our social muscles atrophy.

“Far from random human inconveniences, strangers are actually one of the richest and most important resources we have,” the journalist David Sax wrote in a guest essay for Times Opinion a few years ago. “They connect us to the community, teach us empathy, build civility and are full of surprise and potentially wonder.”

“Full of surprise and potentially wonder”! Why would we spurn such marvels? “Well,” my antisocial alter ego counters, “strangers are also unpredictable, possibly uninterested in us and sometimes boring.” All true. Is this why I, a person who’s hardly shy, would hesitate to corral the awkward solo concert attendees into conversation? There’s always the risk of rejection, and the risk that I’d feel a responsibility to keep the conversation going even if the people I approached weren’t talkative, a social burden I’d regret. But I was so grateful to Stefan: What a gesture of generosity to extend himself, to relieve others of the awkwardness of standing alone in a space where others are socializing. I try to be this kind of person, the one who breaks the silence, the one who can extend herself, but I’m not always able to silence that alter ego.

I asked Stefan if he’s always “that guy,” the self-appointed social ringleader, the outgoing one who coaxes the wallflowers into the mix. “I’ve come to believe that people simply want fun and interesting things to happen to them,” he said. Why wouldn’t they be receptive to him?

Most of us are thinking about ourselves, about the potential embarrassment that would arise from making an overture to a stranger. Stefan’s thinking about other people, what they expect or desire from a night out, and he’s doing his part to make that a reality. “Engagement with strangers is at the core of our social contract,” Sax wrote in his guest essay. Contracts are agreements: I will do my part and you will do yours; it’s in both of our best interests. The social contract doesn’t explicitly say we have to give other people a good time (or, it might — I haven’t seen an official copy), but it does stipulate that we consider one another and the type of society we want to create.

Sometimes when I’m feeling alienated from the human race, or baffled by the actions of another, I remind myself that every single person wants to be loved. This isn’t a particularly rigorous thought about human psychology, but rather something that seems broadly true. It’s an easily accessed plot of common ground, a starting place for understanding motivations that seem inscrutable. This reminder doesn’t mean I have to love everyone, but it makes their decisions a bit more legible. If I add that everyone wants fun and interesting things to happen to them, me included, I might be more likely to start the conversation with strangers. If we all see it as our contractual duty to generate fun when the opportunity presents itself (and if we can overcome our shyness), then we significantly increase the odds that fun will ensue. And if others don’t hold up their end of the bargain? Then, as Stefan rationalizes, your attempt “gives you a good story to tell your friends.”

Link to original article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/02/briefing/public-offering.html

Just Say Yes!

This inspiring piece from journalist Melissa Kirsch appeared this weekend in The New York Times' The Morning newsletter. It speaks to an approach to life that can be uplifting. It recalls for me a tenet of improv acting from my theatre-training days and that is to always respond to anything coming at you with "Yes, and..."

Offer accepted

By Melissa Kirsch

This past week, true to my vow to continue engaging in summer activities until the equinox, I picked raspberries and flowers at a farm under the impossibly clear September sky. I was joined by my friend Aliza. I knew Aliza would be up for the outing because she operates on a policy that dictates if something is “on offer,” you should avail yourself of it. Of course, berry picking is not a hard sell. But I’ve been observing the way decision-making becomes simpler if you default to accepting what’s on offer: taking the slice of pie, staying out just a bit later, stopping at the strange little fair you happened to drive past. All tiny things one could easily decline, all things with potential for pleasure.

We spend a lot of time hemming and hawing, coming up with reasons we shouldn’t do things, even things that fall under the rubric of “Things We’d Probably Enjoy.” We decide not to try the dance class, afraid of looking foolish. We skip the picnic because we don’t know any of the people going. We consider the downsides and decide to stick with what’s familiar.

As much as I try to be a “yes person,” I have an unfortunate talent for turning opportunities into obligations. “It’s on offer” is such a gentle (and British) way of considering what’s available. I might decide I am, in fact, too tired or not interested in whatever’s on offer, but I’m examining the opportunity as an option, a gift, an offering — not viewing it as a problem.

“I think it’s a protection against regret, or too much judgment — often my go-to feelings,” Aliza said when I asked her about her position. She reminded me of a day this summer when we were wandering around a town we’d never been and came upon a run-down winery. A guy with a guitar was belting some off-key Jimmy Buffett covers on the patio. Should we stop and try some suspiciously inexpensive rosé? It was on offer! The wine was not great, but that wasn’t the point. By taking what was on offer, we took a departure. What could have been an otherwise unmemorable day was made indelible.

One should not, it seems worth noting, be doctrinaire about taking every single thing that’s on offer. Breadth of experience can come at the expense of depth, and what’s on offer could end up being expensive, or dangerous. I’m thinking of “take what’s on offer” as a default that can be overridden. It feels of a piece with a question I’ve taken to asking myself when I’m worried about something: “What if it all works out?” This is my attempt to shift my thinking from worst-case scenarios to best- or better-case ones. Being open to what’s on offer is similarly optimistic. This stand-up comedian could be terrible, this party could be boring, this offering could be one I will wish I’d refused. But it could also be great.

Link to original article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/06/briefing/offer-accepted.html

Time To Save The Country

Why Your Vote Matters: "Against Nihilism: The Power of Government Policies" by David Leonhardt

Your vote matters. Because our government matters. And it can accomplish wonderful things. Yes, the personal is political and vice versa. This wonderful article from The New York Times' The Morning newsletter by David Leonhardt shows that leaders with a To Do List can actually make a difference in the lives of United States citizens.

"The Power of Government Policies: Against nihilism"

The New York Times
The Morning
October 17, 2024
By David Leonhardt

We live in a time of cynicism about what government can accomplish. Most Americans say they don’t have much trust in Washington, regardless of which party is in charge. Even when the federal government sets out to do something that Americans support, many wonder whether it can succeed.

In today’s newsletter, I want to connect four news stories from the past few years and argue that this cynicism has gone too far — that government can indeed accomplish what it promises. I recognize some readers will support the policies I describe, while others will oppose them. But that’s OK. I’m not trying to persuade you that these policies are good or bad.

The point instead is that the U.S. federal government remains a powerful force that can alter the course of American life. The country has the capacity to address its biggest problems. Whether it does is a different matter.

1. The Covid vaccine
The pandemic was so miserable and divisive that it can be easy to overlook the triumph of the federal government’s vaccine development. Before Covid, the creation of any new vaccine took years. But Operation Warp Speed — a public-private partnership that received $18 billion in federal funding — led to the discovery of a Covid vaccine within months. That speed likely saved millions of lives worldwide.

Yes, the pandemic was also a case study of government failure. Republican politicians (including Donald Trump, who deserves some credit for Warp Speed) refused to embrace the vaccines, leading to hesitancy that cost lives. And many Democratic-run school districts shut down for a year or longer, causing lasting damage to children.

All of this, though, was a reminder of the power of government, for good and ill.

2. Immigration
In the debate over immigration, you sometimes hear the suggestion that the U.S. is powerless to change migration flows. “Border Enforcement Won’t Solve the U.S. Migrant Crisis,” as a typical op-ed argued in 2022. One way or another, according to this argument, people will find ways to enter the U.S.

But that argument is mostly wrong, as the past four years show.

President Biden took office promising a more welcoming approach to immigration than any president in decades. Sure enough, immigration surged. During the first three years of Biden’s administration, annual net immigration (the number of people arriving, regardless of legal status, minus the number of immigrants leaving) averaged 2.4 million, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That’s about three times as high as during Trump’s presidency. It’s more than twice as high as under Barack Obama.

Late last year, Biden changed course. The administration first worked with Mexico to reduce migration flows and then tightened border policies, as my colleague Hamed Aleaziz has explained. Almost as quickly as immigration spiked in 2021, it has fallen in 2024:

A restrictive approach to border security won’t keep out everybody, but it makes a huge difference. Many experts believe that the ideal immigration system would involve both a more secure border and more legal pathways to entry. That combination is well within Congress’s power.

3. Economic policy
Biden’s economic record is obviously mixed. But he made a set of specific promises about using the federal government to rebuild infrastructure, reduce medical costs, promote clean energy and expand certain kinds of manufacturing. In each of these cases, it’s happening.

New semiconductor factories are being built in Arizona, Missouri, Texas and elsewhere. Roads and bridges are being rebuilt. The cost of insulin has plunged for many people. Clean energy production has increased.

Biden’s industrial policy has been a reminder of the vital role that the federal government has historically played in creating industries like aviation, biotechnology, fracking and the internet.

4. Taxes
As with immigration, you sometimes hear the claim that federal laws don’t much matter — and particularly that the wealthy can find ways to avoid any tax increases. That’s not correct.

After Obama raised taxes on wealthy Americans, they paid more in taxes. After Bill Clinton raised income taxes at the start of his presidency, the same thing happened. And after Clinton later cut capital-gains taxes, tax payments fell.

If Democrats control both the White House and Congress next year, they really will be able to increase taxes on the rich. And if Republicans sweep into power, they will cut taxes on the rich.

The bottom line: The fact that governments remain powerful forces even in a globalized, digitized economy doesn’t answer many of the hard questions about what policymakers should do, of course. But it at least offers an antidote to the nihilism that sometimes dominates political debates.

Link to original article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/17/briefing/taxes-immigration-economy.html

SEVENTY-FIVE PER CENT

From yesterday's New York Times' "The Morning" newsletter by wonderful journalist David Leonhardt, comes this piece examining the source of extremist violence. The percentage committed by right-wing extremists stands at a stomach-churning seventy-five per cent.

The Right's Violence Problem

‘Numbers don’t lie’
Over the past decade, the Anti-Defamation League has counted about 450 U.S. murders committed by political extremists.

Of these 450 killings, right-wing extremists committed about 75 percent. Islamic extremists were responsible for about 20 percent, and left-wing extremists were responsible for 4 percent.

Nearly half of the murders were specifically tied to white supremacists:

As this data shows, the American political right has a violence problem that has no equivalent on the left. And the 10 victims in Buffalo this past weekend are now part of this toll. “Right-wing extremist violence is our biggest threat,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the ADL, has written. “The numbers don’t lie.”

The pattern extends to violence less severe than murder, like the Jan. 6 attack on Congress. It also extends to the language from some Republican politicians — including Donald Trump — and conservative media figures that treats violence as a legitimate form of political expression. A much larger number of Republican officials do not use this language but also do not denounce it or punish politicians who do use it; Kevin McCarthy, the top House Republican, is a leading example.

It’s important to emphasize that not all extremist violence comes from the right — and that the precise explanation for any one attack can be murky, involving a mixture of ideology, mental illness, gun access and more. In the immediate aftermath of an attack, people are sometimes too quick to claim a direct cause and effect. But it is also incorrect to pretend that right-wing violence and left-wing violence are equivalent problems.

Fears in Washington
If you talk to members of Congress and their aides these days — especially off the record — you will often hear them mention their fears of violence being committed against them.

Some Republican members of Congress have said that they were reluctant to vote for Trump’s impeachment or conviction partly because of the threats against other members who had already denounced him. House Republicans who voted for President Biden’s infrastructure bill also received threats. Democrats say their offices receive a spike in phone calls and online messages threatening violence after they are criticized on conservative social media or cable television shows.

People who oversee elections report similar problems. “One in six election officials have experienced threats because of their job,” the Brennan Center, a research group, reported this year. “Ranging from death threats that name officials’ young children to racist and gendered harassment, these attacks have forced election officials across the country to take steps like hiring personal security, fleeing their homes, and putting their children into counseling.”

There is often overlap between these violent threats and white supremacist beliefs. White supremacy tends to treat people of color as un-American or even less than fully human, views that can make violence seem justifiable. The suspect in the Buffalo massacre evidently posted an online manifesto that discussed replacement theory, a racial conspiracy theory that Tucker Carlson promotes on his Fox News show.

(This Times story examines how replacement theory has entered the Republican mainstream.)

“History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse,” Representative Liz Cheney, one of the few Republicans who have repeatedly and consistently denounced violence and talk of violence from the right, wrote on Twitter yesterday. “The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and antisemitism,” Cheney wrote, and called on Republican leaders to “renounce and reject these views and those who hold them.”

A few other Republicans, like Senator Mitt Romney, have taken a similar stance. But many other prominent Republicans have taken a more neutral stance or even embraced talk of violence.

Some have spoken openly about violence as a legitimate political tool — and not just Trump, who has done so frequently.

At the rally that preceded the Jan. 6 attack, Representative Mo Brooks suggested the crowd should “start taking down names and kicking ass.” Before she was elected to Congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene supported the idea of executing Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats. Representative Paul Gosar once posted an animated video altered to depict himself killing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and swinging swords at Biden.

Rick Perry, a former Texas governor, once called the Federal Reserve “treasonous” and talked about treating its chairman “pretty ugly.” During Greg Gianforte’s campaign for Montana’s House seat, he went so far as to assault a reporter who asked him a question he didn’t like; Gianforte won and has since become Montana’s governor.

These Republicans have received no meaningful sanction from their party. McCarthy, the Republican leader in the House, has been especially solicitous of Brooks and other members who use violent imagery.

This Republican comfort with violence is new. Republican leaders from past decades, like Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, Howard Baker and the Bushes, did not evoke violence.

“In a stable democracy,” Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist, told me, “politicians unambiguously reject violence and unambiguously expel from their ranks antidemocratic forces.”

Link to original article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/briefing/right-wing-mass-shootings.html

Life may actually flash before your eyes on death by Holly Honderich

I don't know if you caught this recent little news item (it probably got buried because of the start of WW III)...it has fascinating implications.

Life may actually flash before your eyes on death - new study
By Holly Honderich
BBC News, Washington

New data from a scientific "accident" has suggested that life may actually flash before our eyes as we die.

A team of scientists set out to measure the brainwaves of an 87-year-old patient who had developed epilepsy. But during the neurological recording, he suffered a fatal heart attack - offering an unexpected recording of a dying brain.

It revealed that in the 30 seconds before and after, the man's brainwaves followed the same patterns as dreaming or recalling memories.

Brain activity of this sort could suggest that a final "recall of life" may occur in a person's last moments, the team wrote in their study, published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience on Tuesday.

Dr Ajmal Zemmar, a co-author of the study, said that what the team, then based in Vancouver, Canada, accidentally got, was the first-ever recording of a dying brain.

He told the BBC: "This was actually totally by chance, we did not plan to do this experiment or record these signals."

So will we get a glimpse back at time with loved ones and other happy memories? Dr Zemmar said it was impossible to tell.

"If I were to jump to the philosophical realm, I would speculate that if the brain did a flashback, it would probably like to remind you of good things, rather than the bad things," he said.

"But what's memorable would be different for every person."

Dr Zemmar, now a neurosurgeon at the University of Louisville, said in the 30 seconds before the patient's heart stopped supplying blood to the brain, his brainwaves followed the same patterns as when we carry out high-cognitive demanding tasks, like concentrating, dreaming or recalling memories.

It continued 30 seconds after the patient's heart stopped beating - the point at which a patient is typically declared dead.

"This could possibly be a last recall of memories that we've experienced in life, and they replay through our brain in the last seconds before we die."

The study also raises questions about when, exactly, life ends - when the heart stops beating, or the brain stops functioning.

Dr Zemmar and his team have cautioned that broad conclusions can't be drawn from a study of one. The fact that the patient was epileptic, with a bleeding and swollen brain, complicates things further.

"I never felt comfortable to report one case," Dr Zemmar said. And for years after the initial recording in 2016, he looked for similar cases to help strengthen the analysis but was unsuccessful.

But a 2013 study - carried out on healthy rats - may offer a clue.

In that analysis, US researchers reported high levels of brainwaves at the point of the death until 30 seconds after the rats' hearts stopped beating - just like the findings found in Dr Zemmar's epileptic patient.

The similarities between studies are "astonishing", Dr Zemmar said.

They now hope the publication of this one human case may open the door to other studies on the final moments of life.

"I think there's something mystical and spiritual about this whole near-death experience," Dr Zemmar said. "And findings like this - it's a moment that scientists lives for."

Link to original article:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60495730

HOW TO SAVE LIVES

Vaccine mandates are controversial. They’re also an effective way to save lives.

By David Leonhardt and Ian Prasad Philbrick | The New York Times
July 23, 2021

How to save lives
Vaccine mandates are controversial. They’re also effective.

• Before Houston Methodist became one of the first hospital systems in the U.S. to mandate Covid-19 vaccines, about 85 percent of its employees were vaccinated. After the mandate, the share rose to about 98 percent, with the remaining 2 percent receiving exemptions for medical or religious reasons, Bloomberg’s Carey Goldberg reported. Only about 0.6 percent of employees quit or were fired.


• Schools — including Indiana University and many private colleges — that require students and workers to get vaccinated have reported extremely high uptake.


• A recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey of Americans who had been opposed to getting vaccinated and later changed their minds found that mandates — or restrictions on the unvaccinated — were one common reason. One 51-year-old man told Kaiser that he began to feel as if he had “limited options without it.”


• The French government will soon require that people show proof of vaccination or a recent negative test to eat at a restaurant, attend a movie or participate in many other activities. After President Emmanuel Macron announced the policy last week, the number of vaccine appointments surged. Italy announced a similar policy yesterday, The Times’s Marc Santora explains.

It’s true that these mandates often generate intense criticism. In France, more than 100,000 people marched to protest Macron’s policy. In the U.S., critics sued, unsuccessfully so far, to stop Indiana University’s mandate. Some Republican politicians have also tried to stop mandates, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio.

The mandates are also not 100 percent effective. Some people will receive exemptions, as was the case at Houston Methodist. A small number may forge vaccine records. And some vaccinated people will still contract mild versions of Covid, through so-called breakthrough infections.

But even with the opposition and the exceptions, mandates can play a major role in reducing the spread of Covid and saving lives. That’s especially true now that the Delta variant is fueling a rise in cases. “The takeaway message remains, if you’re vaccinated, you are protected,” Dr. Céline Gounder, an infectious disease specialist, told our colleague Apoorva Mandavilli. “You are not going to end up with severe disease, hospitalization or death.”

A ‘staggering’ success

Covid is a new disease, and the debates over Covid policy can seem new, as well. But they’re often not wholly new. They instead echo longstanding debates. Vaccine mandates fall into this category.

Throughout history, societies have struggled with when and how to require vaccines. Opponents of mandates have argued that individuals should be allowed to make their own health decisions — and bear the consequences: What, they ask, is more personal than deciding whether to inject a medicine into one’s body? Supporters of mandates have replied that society has a duty to protect its citizens, including those who cannot be inoculated (like young children and some immunocompromised people, in the case of Covid) and are therefore put at risk by people who voluntarily refuse vaccines.

For these reasons, vaccine mandates cause intense disputes. But when supporters win the argument, public health has often benefited. Guy Nicolette, an administrator at the University of California, Berkeley, pointed out to The Washington Post that colleges have long required other vaccines, like the one for measles. “It’s staggering how well a mandate works on a college campus,” he said.

Dr. Aaron Carroll, Indiana University’s chief health officer, has noted that the country’s victories over many diseases — including smallpox, polio, mumps, rubella and diphtheria — have depended on vaccine mandates by states or local governments. “That’s how the country achieves real herd immunity,” Carroll wrote in The Times. (In the U.S., a national mandate may be unconstitutional.)

When states and school districts have opted not to require vaccines, a disease can often spread needlessly, Carroll explained. That has been the case with human papillomavirus, a sexually transmitted disease known as HPV that can cause cancer. It’s also been the case with influenza, which kills about 35,000 Americans in a typical flu season.

Covid now seems certain to join influenza and HPV as diseases that American society chooses to accept. But it is a choice. Companies, schools and communities that decide to enact vaccine mandates will almost certainly save American lives by doing so.

Mark Barnes, a former health official in New York City, told Bloomberg that he expected the number of these mandates to grow in coming months. “We’re going to see more vaccine mandates by large organizations of all kinds,” he predicted.

Link to original article:

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/07/23/world/covid-variant-vaccine-updates#vaccine-mandates-are-controversial-theyre-also-effective

The Economy Does Much Better Under Democrats. Why? by David Leonhardt

Why Are Republican Presidents So Bad for the Economy?
G.D.P., jobs and other indicators have all risen more slowly under Republicans for nearly the past century.

By David Leonhardt | Graphics by Yaryna Serkez
Mr. Leonhardt is a senior writer at The Times. Ms. Serkez is a writer and graphics editor for Opinion.

Feb. 2, 2021

A president has only limited control over the economy. And yet there has been a stark pattern in the United States for nearly a century. The economy has grown significantly faster under Democratic presidents than Republican ones.

It’s true about almost any major indicator: gross domestic product, employment, incomes, productivity, even stock prices. It’s true if you examine only the precise period when a president is in office, or instead assume that a president’s policies affect the economy only after a lag and don’t start his economic clock until months after he takes office. The gap “holds almost regardless of how you define success,” two economics professors at Princeton, Alan Blinder and Mark Watson, write. They describe it as “startlingly large.”

Since 1933, the economy has grown at an annual average rate of 4.6 percent under Democratic presidents and 2.4 percent under Republicans, according to a Times analysis. In more concrete terms: The average income of Americans would be more than double its current level if the economy had somehow grown at the Democratic rate for all of the past nine decades. If anything, that period (which is based on data availability) is too kind to Republicans, because it excludes the portion of the Great Depression that happened on Herbert Hoover’s watch.

The six presidents who have presided over the fastest job growth have all been Democrats, as you can see above. The four presidents who have presided over the slowest growth have all been Republicans.

The big question, of course, is why. And there are not easy answers.

I have shown the data to multiple economists in recent weeks, and most say they are not sure how to explain it, at least not fully. “We don’t quite get why it’s the case,” Katherine Eriksson, a professor at the University of California, Davis, who specializes in economic history, told me. Marianne Wanamaker, an economist at the University of Tennessee, described the pattern to the graduate students in a class she teaches and asked for their thoughts. “They were sort of stumped,” she said.

Part of the answer surely involves coincidence. Some presidents, like Barack Obama and George W. Bush, take office when the economy is in a downturn, while others, like Harry Truman and Donald Trump, inherit a boom. Some, like Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan, preside over military buildups; others, like Dwight Eisenhower and Bill Clinton, drawdowns. More broadly, the economy’s performance stems from millions of decisions made every day by businesses and consumers, many of which have little relation to government policy.

Still, the pattern is so strong and long-lasting that coincidence alone is unlikely to be the only explanation. Statistical noise, as Mr. Blinder and Mr. Watson wrote in their paper exploring the pattern, does not seem to be the answer.

What, then, are the most plausible theories?

First, it’s worth rejecting a few unlikely possibilities. Congressional control is not the answer. The pattern holds regardless of which party is running Congress. Deficit spending also doesn’t explain the gap: It is not the case that Democrats juice the economy by spending money and then leave Republicans to clean up the mess. Over the last four decades, in fact, Republican presidents have run up larger deficits than Democrats.

That leaves one broad possibility with a good amount of supporting evidence: Democrats have been more willing to heed economic and historical lessons about what policies actually strengthen the economy, while Republicans have often clung to theories that they want to believe — like the supposedly magical power of tax cuts and deregulation. Democrats, in short, have been more pragmatic.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt first ran for president, in 1932, he did not have a fully coherent economic plan. He sometimes argued that reducing the deficit was the key to ending the Depression. Above all, though, he called for “bold, persistent experimentation.” As he explained: “Take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”

Over time, he and his advisers came to champion the ideas of John Maynard Keynes. In an economic downturn, when companies and households are caught in a vicious cycle of spending reductions, the government needs to step in. The Keynesian approach has shaped Democratic economic policy ever since.

It has made Democratic presidents much more aggressive in responding to crises than Republicans. Not only was Hoover passive in the face of the Depression, but the first George Bush was slow to fight the 1990-91 recession, and the second George Bush was slow to begin fighting the 2007-9 financial crisis. Mr. Obama and now President Biden, when faced with an economic crisis, have been much bolder.

Michael Strain, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, told me that he believed the overall partisan pattern was mostly coincidence. But, he said, “It is certainly a defensible posture that in periods of economic distress Democrats are more concerned about jobs than Republicans.”

The past year has offered another case study. Mr. Trump repeatedly downplayed the coronavirus pandemic, and the country suffered. The economy would have experienced a downturn no matter who was president, but his scattered response aggravated the pandemic and the recession. In some other countries, life is much closer to normal. In the United States, Mr. Trump became the first president since Hoover to preside over a decline in employment.

The pragmatism gap isn’t only about recessions, either. Democrats have also been more aggressive about making job-creating investments — in medical research and clean energy, for example — that the private sector does not make when left to its own devices. Occasionally, a Democratic president has even been willing to go against type in order to encourage growth. Mr. Clinton, persuaded that deficit reduction could bring down interest rates and accelerate growth, scrapped some early spending plans and raised taxes. Interest rates fell, and the economy boomed.

Some past Republican presidents took a similarly pragmatic approach. Despite being conservative, both Eisenhower and Nixon were nonetheless comfortable using government to help the economy when needed. The elder George Bush signed a tax increase that contributed to the deficit reduction that, in turn, fueled the 1990s boom.

For the most part, however, Republican economic policy since 1980 has revolved around a single policy: large tax cuts, tilted heavily toward the affluent. There are situations in which tax cuts can lift economic growth, but they typically involve countries with very high tax rates. The United States has had fairly low tax rates for decades.

The evidence now overwhelmingly suggests that recent tax cuts have had only a modest effect on the economy. G.D.P. grew at virtually the same rate after the 2017 Trump tax cut as before it. If anything, the Clinton tax increase of 1993 has a better claim on starting a boom than any tax cut since.

One possibility is that the two parties are both responding to the interest groups that support and finance them, suggested Ms. Wanamaker, who worked in the White House Council of Economic Advisers during the Trump administration. But the Democratic-leaning groups (like labor unions and civil-rights organizations) may favor policies that lift broad-based economic growth, while Republican-leaning groups (like the wealthy) favor policies that mostly shift income toward themselves.

These explanations are almost certainly not complete. Much of the partisan gap remains mysterious. At the end of their academic paper on it, Mr. Blinder, a former Federal Reserve vice chairman and Clinton administration official, and Mr. Watson encourage other economists to study the issue.

But if the causes are not fully clear, the pattern is. The American economy has performed much better under Democratic administrations than Republican ones, over both the last few decades and the last century. And as Ms. Wanamaker said, “Administrations do certainly have the ability to affect economic outcomes.”

Link to original article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/opinion/sunday/democrats-economy.html

200,000

As the US surpasses 200,000 Covid-19 deaths, survivors have a message: This is not a hoax

By Theresa Waldrop, CNN

Updated 7:40 PM ET, Tue September 22, 2020

Even as the nation surpasses 200,000 Covid-19 deaths, there are still people who think the coronavirus is a hoax. Survivors of the disease and members of victims' families beg to differ and are sharing their very real experiences with the deadly disease.

Ann and Marvin Robinson, a married couple in Casper, Wyoming, got the virus almost three months ago. Marvin, 73, still has shortness of breath, and both are battling fatigue.

"We have friends who still believe it's a hoax. They think that it's going to go away on Election Day," Ann, 72, told CNN's Brianna Keilar on Tuesday.

"It's trying to convince people that the 200,000 people who have died were important," Ann said of her efforts to assure people of the reality of the virus.

Their friends "kind of discount the fact that older people get it that have underlying conditions, that they were going to die anyway," Ann said. "Well, I'm an older person and I have underlying conditions, and I intend to live for a lot more years."

As of Tuesday afternoon, more than 6.88 million people have contracted the virus nationwide, and at least 200,477 people have died.

Covid-19 is now the second-leading cause of death in the US, just after heart disease, according to the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).

Heather-Elizabeth Brown, a 35-year-old police chaplain and corporate trainer in the Detroit area, spent about 100 days in the hospital with Covid-19. More than a month of her hospital stay was spent on a ventilator and in a coma in intensive care.

She said she still has trouble breathing and with fatigue.

"Simple things like getting up the stairs or walking to my car or outside to get something winds me, and the fatigue factor is also a really big part of the after effects," Brown said.

"I find that I can't get through a whole day without having to stop and lie down and rest, just because I'm absolutely exhausted from doing everyday simple tasks like, you know, getting a shower or making breakfast."

"I absolutely want people to know that Covid is a real disease," Brown told Keilar. "It's not fake, it's not made up, it's not a conspiracy. It is something that is communicable and it is something that can be very dangerous."

Sondra Wolfe lost her husband to Covid-19. She is frustrated that the pandemic has become a political issue in the United States.

"People see the numbers and so many of them don't care," Wolfe told CNN last week. "I want to put a human face and a family, what a family is going through, the grief that this has caused, and maybe change some minds that this is a real thing."

Diana Berrent was one of the first in her New York community to be diagnosed with the virus on March 18, she said.

She founded a support group for survivors, Survivors Corps, that has more than 90,000 members.

At the end of August, Berrent was "still having terrible GI issues, massive headaches, and what feels like a deep ear infection," she told CNN's Jake Tapper. "But it pales in comparison to what many of our members are experiencing, really dramatic things, neurological issues, tachycardia, things as dramatic as Covid-onset diabetes and Covid-onset lupus."

What she wants people to know, she said, is that "this is not a matter of either getting the flu or dying. There is a very, very large bucket in the middle, which seems to constitute a huge proportion of people who get Covid, who are not recovering. You do not want to end up in that group of people."

When you see people's stories on Survivor's Corps of, for example, a 25-year-old who is writing a living will and "don't think they're going to make it to see their wedding day, you'll have a change of heart," Berrent said.

Maureen Fagan's sister Adeline Fagan, 28-year-old and a second-year OB-GYN resident living in Houston, died Saturday after battling Covid-19 for a few months. Fagan's family has been speaking out since in an effort to save other lives.

"Everyone could be an Adeline and that's the scary part of this," Fagan told CNN's Kate Bolduan, asking people to follow the guidelines to protect other people.

"If you can do something as simple as wearing the mask, social distancing, even just using hand sanitizer, to do your part," she said.

"I think you have a right to do that, just as a human being and trying to be a good person."

Link to original article:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/22/us/covid-19-survivors-say-virus-not-a-hoax/index.html

How George Michael Transformed Pop by Nick Levine

How George Michael Transformed Pop
By Nick Levine for BBC Culture
8th September 2020

When George Michael released his second solo album Listen without Prejudice Vol 1 in September 1990, he wasn’t asking fans to embrace a captivating new persona as equivalent pop giants like Madonna and David Bowie did during their imperial phases. But in a way, he was attempting something just as audacious: he wanted to shed the misleading image he had created for himself as one of the most recognisable stars of the 1980s. Now he wanted to show the world more, though not yet all, of who he really was. “Today the way I play the game has got to change,” he sang on the album’s astonishing second single Freedom! ‘90, a song the producer Mark Ronson has described as a “funk groove masterpiece” and “the Mona Lisa”.

In the same song, Michael delivered the rather pleading refrain “I just hope you understand – sometimes the clothes do not make the man”, then drove home his message in the accompanying music video by torching his signature leather jacket from the Faith album campaign three years earlier. However, in a typically contradictory artistic statement, the video in which he asked us to embrace the new, more authentic him featured five huge supermodels of the era – Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz, Christy Turlington and Cindy Crawford – but not a single glimpse of the artist himself. As singer-songwriter Leo Kalyan notes wryly, Freedom! ‘90 has “one of the most iconic music videos of all time – despite George Michael’s absence from it”. Indeed, Michael refused to appear not only in Listen without Prejudice Vol 1’s music videos, but even on its album cover. Though still only 27 years old, he already had the music industry clout to do exactly as he pleased.

Michael made his name alongside school friend Andrew Ridgeley as part of the exuberant duo Wham! (Credit: Getty Images)

As it turns 30 this month, Listen without Prejudice Vol 1 is now widely acknowledged as a modern pop classic. An October 2017 reissue released to coincide with George Michael: Freedom, a posthumous documentary film about the singer who had passed away 10 months earlier, returned the album to the top of the UK charts 27 years after it first made number one. With sophisticated pop songs influenced by The Beatles (Heal the Pain) and The Rolling Stones (Waiting for That Day) and a stripped-down cover of Stevie Wonder’s They Won’t Go When I Go that shows off Michael’s chops as a soul singer, it is seen in retrospect as the album that successfully cemented his position as a pop maestro, not a mere pop puppet.

A huge gamble

But when it first came out in September 1990, this deeply introspective and mostly downbeat LP was a massive risk for a singer who had become a global superstar by crafting glittering, radio-friendly hits like 1984’s debut solo single Careless Whisper and 1998’s pop-soul gem Father Figure. It was also the first time that Michael, the north London-born son of a Greek Cypriot restaurateur and an English dancer, allowed his personal happiness to impinge on his vaulting professional ambition.

After forming the exuberant duo Wham! in 1981, he and school friend Andrew Ridgeley scored a string of global hits that made them pin-ups and even pioneers: in 1985, Wham! made history by becoming the first Western group to visit China. A year later, Michael cannily called time on the two-piece before their fizzy pop confections like Club Tropicana and Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go could become passé – Wham! bowed out in the most triumphant style imaginable, with a sell-out concert at London’s Wembley Stadium. In 1987, he released his debut solo album Faith – a collection of state-of-the-art pop-R&B which sold more than 25 million copies worldwide, placing him up there with Madonna, Michael Jackson, Prince and Whitney Houston as an icon of the era. Alongside the music, he refined his pin-up status with an image that Paul Flynn, author of Good As You: 30 Years of Gay Britain, calls “straight drag”. Flynn says that in 1987’s Faith video, Michael “dressed himself up very much like Tom Cruise in Top Gun”, a style calculated to be as marketable as possible. Or, as Michael put it himself, knowingly, on Freedom! ‘90, after his band Wham! ended in 1986 and he began focusing on his solo career, he “went back home [and] got a brand new face for the boys at MTV” .

The album is a grand apologia for being in the closet – and the one where he turns his back on fame – Paul Flynn
Today, it's impossible not to view Michael's Faith image – and his determination to shed it with Listen without Prejudice Vol 1 – through the prism of his own repressed sexuality. By the late-1980s he knew he was far more attracted to men than women, but chose to keep it hidden for the sake of his family and career. “If your goal is to become the biggest-selling artist in America – which was still my bizarre goal – you’re not going to make life difficult for yourself, are you?” he told Gay Times in 2007. Michael didn’t come out until 1998 when he was arrested by an undercover officer for engaging in a “lewd act” in an LA public lavatory – an incident he then sent up in that year’s disco banger Outside, taking the sting out of any embarrassment he might have felt. “I’d service the community,” he sang with his tongue firmly in his cheek, “but I already have, you see.”

For his first solo album Faith, Michael adopted a performatively macho image complete with aviators and leather jacket (Credit: Getty Images)

But if Outside seemed to show fans a new, more liberated Michael, then it was a process that started eight years earlier with Listen without Prejudice Vol 1. Flynn calls the album Michael’s “grand apologia for being in the closet” as well as “the album where he turns his back on fame”. “It’s the album where he realises where his hollow ambitions have led him to, and the compromises they have involved, which have so much to do with his sexuality,” Flynn says. He points out that the poignant album track Mother’s Pride, on which Michael sings about a son going off to war, can be read as a metaphor for a son coming out of the closet. Certainly, Michael delivers lyrics such as “and in her heart the time has come to lose a son” with palpable pathos.

Reckoning with his sexuality

While writing Faith, Michael disguised any personal turmoil within flashy pop music that was designed to grab the zeitgeist – though the music video for I Want Your Sex, the album’s self-consciously provocative lead single, featured his then-girlfriend Cathy Jeung, Michael later said it was written about a man who was playing hard to get. On Listen without Prejudice Vol 1, however, Michael’s complex private life fuelled music that was more subdued and nuanced, and which alluded to his sexuality without making anything explicit. Cowboys and Angels, a beautiful jazz-flavoured ballad from the album, was inspired by the same unrequited love that Michael mined for I Want Your Sex. “He was the guy I was in love with when I was with Cathy (Jeung), who was definitely in love with me at that time,” he told Attitude magazine in 2004. “So it was very autobiographical.”

There were also hints of Michael's inner conflict in Heal the Pain, a Beatles-influenced folk-pop song which he later recorded as a duet with Paul McCartney. Now, when Michael sings, “How can the outside world be a place that your heart can embrace? Be good to yourself because nobody else has the power to make you happy,” it’s easy to hear him directing this sound advice at himself. Elsewhere, the house-flecked Soul Free – besides Freedom! ‘90, the album’s only uptempo song – shimmered with the possibility of a semi-illicit thrill as Michael sang in an ecstatic falsetto: “When you touch me baby, I don't have no choice, oh that sweet temptation in your voice!”

Freedom! ‘90 is about breaking free of your past – and for Michael this seems to be as much about making a point to his record label as about embracing his sexuality – Leo Kalyan
However, it would be reductive to suggest that Listen without Prejudice Vol 1 was solely about Michael processing his sexuality. It's also an album where he shook off any remnants of his teen-pop years. “Freedom! 90 is about breaking free of your past,” Kalyan says, “and for George Michael this seems to be as much about making a point to his record label as about embracing his sexuality for the first time”. The sublime, slow-burning Waiting for That Day placed Michael next to the big boys of British rock by borrowing from The Rolling Stones – Mick Jagger and Keith Richards get a co-writing credit for his nod to You Can’t Always Get What You Want – and Praying for Time, a socially conscious ballad, has earned comparisons to John Lennon over the years. Released as the album’s lead single, it found Michael grappling with Western wealth inequality and the hypocrisy surrounding it. Even 30 years on, his dry observation that “charity is a coat you wear twice a year” still feels stingingly on the nose.

Underappreciated in its time

Though Listen without Prejudice Vol 1 sold eight million copies worldwide and won Michael a Brit Award for best British album, it was widely regarded as a commercial disappointment after Faith’s blockbuster success. Michael felt his record label, Sony Music, had failed to promote it properly in the US and subsequently took them to court, alleging that the company treated him as “no more than a piece of software”. Because of this lawsuit, which Michael eventually lost, a planned follow-up album called Listen without Prejudice Vol 2 never materialised.

As his career progressed, Michael became admired for his unapologetic candour when it came to sex and sexuality, among other things (Credit: Alamy)

It’s fitting, though, that Michael gave three songs intended for the project – including the brilliant, hip-shaking hit single Too Funky – to Red Hot + Dance, an HIV/Aids charity album released in June 1992. Written by a closeted gay man at the height of the epidemic, Listen without Prejudice Vol 1 is an album steeped in the grief and confusion of the HIV/Aids era. Michael acknowledged in a 2007 Desert Island Discs interview that “Aids was the predominant feature of being gay in the 1980s and early 90s as far as any parent was concerned” and a major factor in his decision not to come out to his own family sooner. It’s little wonder that, as he became more emotionally honest in his music, he no longer sounded ready to party.

Now, nearly four years after Michael’s untimely death on 25 December 2016, Listen without Prejudice Vol 1 forms a cornerstone of his legacy – along with his early Wham! hits, 1987’s more ostentatious Faith and 1996’s fascinating and reflective Older album. “His music connects with so many people because he wrote classic songs about universal human experiences, but he always told the story through his individual lens,” says Kalyan.

Though he remained closeted and conflicted for another eight years following its release, Listen without Prejudice Vol 1’s steadfast rejection of pop star artifice is an important stepping stone in Michael’s journey to becoming the scrupulously honest man we now remember him as. He retained a certain mystique right up to his death, but Michael’s willingness to confront his public and private mistakes helped to pave the way for today’s more transparent pop landscape, where a superstar like Katy Perry feels comfortable discussing her depression in a radio interview, and other household names like Justin Bieber and Dua Lipa post apologies for tone deaf moments and past faux pas.

After he came out in 1998, Michael became known for speaking with absolute candour about his recreational drug use, the depression he suffered in the 1990s after losing his lover Anselmo Feleppa to Aids then his mother Lesley to cancer, and his unapologetic attitude towards gay sex. Asked by The Guardian in 2006 why he enjoyed cruising on London’s Hampstead Heath when “he could get any man he wants”, Michael replied matter-of-factly: “I do get anyone I want. But I like a bit of everything. I have friends up there, I have a laugh.” Drag king and mega-fan Georgeous Michael says that “as a queer person coming of age in the early 2000s, it felt really empowering to hear someone embrace those things publicly”.

So, when he sings “gotta have some faith in my sound – it’s the one good thing that I’ve got,” on Freedom! ‘90, Michael was only half right. His sound helped to make him the pre-eminent British pop star of his generation, but George Michael's profound humanity and successful battle to present himself authentically is what makes him a truly great artist. That battle wasn’t won by Listen without Prejudice Vol 1, but this incredible album is definitely the point at which he put his flag in the sand.

Link to original article:
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200908-how-george-michael-transformed-pop

http://www.georgemichael.com/

Absentee ballots don't need to be returned through the mail. Here are other options.

This is very valuable information. Please pass it along to all who might need to know this. As long as the Fascist-in-Chief is trying to actively PREVENT people from voting by sabotaging the postal service, there ARE other ways to get your ballot counted. If you are worried about COVID and do not want to or cannot vote in person on voting day perhaps for a reason other than COVID, there are other places you can drop off your ballot BEFORE the election. Here in California, in addition to numerous drop boxes in my county, I can return my ballot anytime before election day to my county clerk's office. Some states even allow a proxy to drop it off for you. Read below to find out more! Don't let the Monster thwart your vote for Biden.

Absentee ballots don't need to be returned through the mail. Here are other options.
BY SOPHIE LEWIS

AUGUST 15, 2020 / 12:59 PM / CBS NEWS

As the United States Postal Service faces a financial crisis and nationwide in-person voting seems less and less likely due to the coronavirus pandemic, voters around the country are concerned that their votes will be compromised. But absentee ballots do not need to be returned through the mail — there are several other options to make sure your ballot arrives on time.

President Trump requested an absentee ballot himself, but his positions on funding USPS and voting-by-mail have been inconsistent. And on Friday, USPS warned 41 states that it may not be able to deliver all mail-in ballots on time.

According to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, casting a ballot using a voting machine at a polling place has declined steadily in popularity over the last several election cycles, with more voters choosing early voting, absentee voting and vote-by-mail. More than 50% of voters in 16 states cast their votes in one of these ways in 2016.

USPS is the only way to receive an absentee or mail-in ballot in most states. However, there are many ways to vote by mail that do not involve returning your ballots through USPS.

"In the states where election officials mail ballots to all registered voters, recent data shows the majority of those voters do not return their ballots in the mail," a 2017 EAC report stated. "They either drop them off at designated locations or at drop boxes."

Click here for up-to-date information on voting in your state during the pandemic.

- In-Person Early Voting
Forty states and the District of Columbia have some form of early voting in place, allowing voters to cast their ballot in person while avoiding crowds. Some states have even extended early voting due to the pandemic.

The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) website has information on early voting by state.

- Local Election Office or Polling Location
Almost all states allow voters to deliver their ballots in person at their local election office. To find a list of local election offices, you can search your state Board of Elections website or Secretary of State website.

However, many voters may not live close enough to return their ballot to a location election office. In this case, they may be able to instead return it to an alternative location.

According to the NCSL, eleven states and Washington D.C. allow voters to drop off ballots at any in-person voting locations in the county, including Arizona, California, Colorado, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Utah and Washington.

Two states, New Hampshire and Vermont, allow voters to return their ballots to a polling place. In these cases, a voter must return their ballot to their assigned precinct polling place on Election Day.

Twenty-six states and the District of Columbia allow someone else to return ballots on behalf of voters. Communities can designate a single person to collect ballots for the community, keeping voters with higher risks of contracting coronavirus safe in their homes.

Ten states permit an absentee ballot to be returned by the voter's family member: Arizona, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio and Oklahoma.

In some states, the number of ballots a single person can collect may be limited. Check the NCSL website for details on ballot collection in each state.

Remember to wear a mask and maintain social distancing when delivering your ballot in person.

- Drop Boxes
Drop boxes — special containers for voters to drop off absentee ballots in sealed envelopes — have become more commonplace in the last decade, and are an efficient and secure way to return your ballot while entirely skipping the mail process. Those monitored by surveillance cameras are often available 24 hours per day, seven days per week, while others that are monitored by election workers have specified hours of operation.

Boxes are often placed in convenient and accessible locations, including city or county office buildings, libraries, college campuses, community centers and along public transit routes.

Eleven states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Washington — have ballot drop boxes set up in some or all counties, NCSL says.

The EAC recommends counties install one drop box for every 15,000 to 20,000 registered voters. It also advises that officials make the locations of these drop boxes publicly known 80 days before an election — which is Saturday, August 15.

The number of drop boxes varies widely by state. Michigan says that it has nearly 1,000 drop boxes ready to go ahead of the election, and Connecticut recently installed around 200 drop boxes just one month before its primary election.

But Ohio's Secretary of State Frank LaRose said this week that he is banning counties from adding any more drop boxes, saying its too close to the election to make new changes. Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett said his state does not allow drop boxes for fear voters may feel pressured by peers to vote a certain way.

In June, President Trump and the RNC sued election officials in Pennsylvania to prevent the state from using drop boxes. This week, a federal judge ordered them to provide evidence of vote-by-mail fraud in the state.

Typically, election officials need to receive absentee/mailed ballots by the time polls close on Election Day, November 3. Some states accept ballots received after this date if they were postmarked before the election.

Check with your local election office to figure out which option is best for you.

Link to original article:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/absentee-ballot-alternatives-usps-mail-in-voting-presidential-election/

Thank you CBS and journalist Sophie Lewis for getting this information out to the public in this age of lies and disinformation!

His Pledge To Destroy Social Security and Medicare

Trump pledged to permanently scrap the payroll taxes used to fund Social Security and Medicare if he wins re-election

Joseph Zeballos-Roig for Business Insider Aug 8, 2020, 5:21 PM

* President Donald Trump vowed on Saturday to scrap the payroll tax, a funding mechanism for Social Security and Medicare, if he wins re-election.

* "If I'm victorious on November 3rd, I plan to forgive these taxes and make permanent cuts to the payroll tax," Trump said at a press conference announcing executive actions on coronavirus relief.

* Experts say the move to cut payroll taxes would further erode the shaky finances of both programs.

President Donald Trump pledged on Saturday to scrap the payroll tax, a key mechanism that's used to fund Social Security and Medicare.

"If I'm victorious on November 3rd, I plan to forgive these taxes and make permanent cuts to the payroll tax," Trump said at a press conference. "I'm going to make them all permanent."

He later said: "In other words, I'll extend it beyond the end of the year and terminate the tax. So we'll see what happens."

The payroll tax funds Medicare and Social Security

The federal government imposes a 15.3% levy on wages known as the payroll tax. It's evenly divided between employers and workers, and most of it goes to fund Social Security. It also helps to finance Medicare, the federal health insurance program for people over the age of 65 and for younger Americans with disabilities.

In an April 2020 Gallup poll, 58% of retirees said they relied on Social Security for a "major source" of their income.

Trump's unexpected comments on Saturday came as he signed an array of executive actions aimed at providing relief to Americans during the pandemic. Among them was a deferral in the collection of payroll taxes, which he is waiving from September through the end of the year for workers earning below $104,000 a year.

But it doesn't forgive workers' payments outright since the power to eliminate taxes or change the tax code rests with Congress. As workers and employers are still legally on the hook to make those payments next year, experts say it's unlikely that workers will see a bump in their wages anytime soon. Companies are more likely to continue withholding the money from paychecks.

Link to original article at BusinessInsider.com
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-said-would-end-payroll-taxes-fund-social-security-medicare-2020-8

The Republican Party has been trying to destroy Social Security and Medicare for decades now. They nurture a special hatred of these programs that help millions and millions of people from falling into poverty, helping them to eat, and helping them to medical treatments and care. It is a typical and transparent move from a party that has no coherent plan of government but now only seems to stand for destruction and punishment.

‘Friday Night Massacre’ at US Postal Service as Postmaster General — a Major Trump Donor — Ousts Top Officials

‘Friday Night Massacre’ at US Postal Service as Postmaster General — a Major Trump Donor — Ousts Top Officials

"America is in a dead sprint to authoritarianism. The man is pulling out all the stops to prevent the citizens of this country from holding a legitimate election in which he might face removal from office."

BY JON QUEALLY | AUGUST 8, 2020

Government watchdogs, Democratic lawmakers, and pro-democracy advocates declared it a “Friday Night Massacre” for the US Postal Service after news broke in a classic end-of-the-week dump that Louis DeJoy — a major GOP donor to President Donald Trump and the recently appointed Postmaster General — had issued a sweeping overhaul of the agency, including the ouster of top executives from key posts and the reshuffling of more than two dozen other officials and operational managers.

According to the Washington Post:

The shake-up came as congressional Democrats called for an investigation of DeJoy and the cost-cutting measures that have slowed mail delivery and ensnared ballots in recent primary elections.

Twenty-three postal executives were reassigned or displaced, the new organizational chart shows. Analysts say the structure centralizes power around DeJoy, a former logistics executive and major ally of President Trump, and de-emphasizes decades of institutional postal knowledge. All told, 33 staffers included in the old postal hierarchy either kept their jobs or were reassigned in the restructuring, with five more staffers joining the leadership from other roles.

Already under fire for recent policy changes at the USPS that mail carriers from within and outside critics have denounced as a sabotage effort to undermine the Postal Service broadly as well as disrupt efforts to carry out mail-in voting for November’s election amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the moves unveiled late Friday were viewed as an overt assault on democracy and a calculated opportunity to boost Republicans’ long-held dream of undercutting or privatizing the government-run mail service while also boosting their election prospects in the process.

“Another Friday night massacre by this administration — and this time dealing another devastating blow to our postal service,” said Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.) “The American people deserve answers and we’re going to keep fighting for them.”

Scanlon was among more than 80 congressional lawmakers who sent a letter to DeJoy earlier in the day expressing “deep concerns” about operational changes he has made for mail carriers that have delayed deliveries and lowered standards.

“It is vital that the US Postal Service not reduce mail delivery times, which could harm rural communities, seniors, small businesses, and millions of Americans who rely on the mail for critical letters and packages,” the letter stated. “Eliminating overtime and directing postal workers to leave mail on the floor of postal facilities will erode confidence in the Postal Service and drive customers away, resulting in even worse financial conditions in the future.”

Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, warned what occurred Friday is designed to weak the Postal Service, slow vote-by-mail, and disrupt the 2020 Census.

“We are sounding an alarm regarding personnel changes, policy shifts and service disruptions happening inside the US Postal Service on Louis DeJoy’s watch,” Clarke said in a statement. “The postal service lies at the heart of our democracy and is critical to the success of an unprecedented vote-by-mail system that is needed for a fair and effective 2020 election season. The postal service helps ensure that our nation’s most vulnerable communities are receiving medications and resources during the pandemic. It is also critical to the efforts to achieve a full and accurate 2020 Census.”

Clarke said the administration’s intentions are clear: “DeJoy, a Trump donor with no experience inside the postal service, has been installed to cause chaos and disruption at a time when the timely delivery of mail could not be more critical.”

As Common Dreams reported earlier Friday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren was among those who signed the letter and also called for DeJoy’s efforts to be investigated by the Inspector General of the USPS. Since 2016 alone, DeJoy has donated more than $2.5 million to the Republican Party and candidates. In 2020, prior to his appointment as Postmaster General by the GOP-controlled board of governors, DeJoy had already given approximately $360,000 to a Super PAC supporting Trump’s reelection.

As the Post notes in its reporting, the reshuffling of top managers and executives — as well as a hiring freeze and push for early retirements— “worried postal analysts, who say the tone of DeJoy’s first eight weeks and his restructuring have recast the nation’s mail service as a for-profit arm of the government, rather than an essential service.”

In a video posted to Twitter, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Oreg.) characterized DeJoy as a “political crony” of the president’s and also denounced the brazen efforts now on display as a “Friday Night Massacre” scenario:

Appearing Friday afternoon on Capitol Hill, DeJoy brushed off accusations that he is acting as a political bag man for Trump. “While I certainly have a good relationship with the president of the United States, the notion that I would ever make decisions concerning the Postal Service at the direction of the president or anyone else in the administration is wholly off-base,” DeJoy said.

But outside critics like Walter Shaub, former head of the Office of Government Ethics and a fierce critic of Trump’s behavior as president, said the latest move should be seen as nothing less than a direct effort by DeJoy to exploit his authority at the Postal Service to further the president’s political interests and reelection prospects.

According to Brian Tyler Cohen, a liberal commentator and podcast host, “Congressional Democrats need to do something about this” immediately.

“If we wait until October/November, it’ll be too late,” said Cohen. “Trump is actively sabotaging the election under our noses—this isn’t theoretical, it’s happening RIGHT NOW.” Cohen said this situation should be treated like a “f***ing five-alarm fire” and said action must be taken by both lawmakers and the US public without delay.

Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), chair of the House subcommittee which has oversight for the USPS, said what DeJoy is trying to pass off as simple organizational restructuring is actually “a Trojan Horse” designed to destroy one of the nation’s most trusted and valued institutions from within.

Connolly on Friday night called it, “Deliberate sabotage to disrupt mail service on the eve of the election — an election that hinges on mail-in ballots.”

Link to original article at Bill Moyers On Democracy:
https://billmoyers.com/story/friday-night-massacre-at-us-postal-service-as-postmaster-general-a-major-trump-donor-ousts-top-officials/

The Republican Party Is Racist and Soulless. Just Ask This Veteran GOP Strategist. by David Corn

This is a very worthwhile read. If a major, life-long Republican can wake up to the truth, it is time for national change.

The Republican Party Is Racist and Soulless. Just Ask This Veteran GOP Strategist.
Stuart Stevens says he now realizes the hatred and bigotry of Trumpism were always at the heart of the GOP

by David Corn for Mother Jones
September/October 2020 issue

When Donald Trump decided to back-burner the coronavirus crisis and reboot his reelection campaign with superspreader events in June, he headed to an arena in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to present his case for four more years. In front of an audience of maskless fans standing side by side, Trump performed his usual routine. He threw out buzzwords (“law and order,” “left-wing radicals”). He boasted. (“I have done a phenomenal job” responding to the pandemic.) He denigrated his opponent as “Sleepy Joe.” He obsessed over personal grievances and slights, devoting much time to slamming news outlets that had recently shown video of him walking gingerly down a ramp after delivering a commencement address at West Point. What was mostly missing from Trump’s speech: ideas.

Although he referred to his tax cuts for the wealthy, his appointment of conservative judges, and his “beautiful” wall on the US-Mexico border, Trump had little to say about economic policy, national security, health care, education, housing, the environment, and other subjects. Moreover, he offered no agenda for a second term other than vague promises of making everything swell. Days later, during a friendly Fox News “town hall,” Sean Hannity asked Trump to spell out his plans for a second term. He replied by rambling on about his inauguration and attacking John Bolton.

All this was nothing new for Trump, who approaches the presidency more as performance artist than policymaker. But in the Oklahoma crowd were many unmasked Republican senators and House members, who clapped along and looked delighted to be props for The Trump Show. Once upon a time, Republican legislators and party leaders claimed they cared deeply about certain foundational issues—the deficit, family values, free trade, hawkish foreign policy. Now they were cheering a twice-divorced adulterer who had run up the federal debt, sloppily imposed tariffs, and embraced the anti-American autocrats leading Russia and North Korea—a man devoid of serious thought and guiding policy principles, a self-fixated candidate who presented no intellectual framework for his presidency. Had the GOP become the party of no ideas?

This seemed a premise worth exploring, so I thought I would check in with veteran Republicans who once were attracted to the party for its conservative ideals but who have become Trump critics. First on my list was Stuart Stevens, the chief strategist for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential bid. I should note that I feel a bit awkward when I talk with Stevens. Plenty of people have asserted that my exposé of the “47 percent” tape in 2012—remember Romney denigrating nearly half of Americans as freeloaders who want the government to take care of them?—played a part in his defeat. But Stevens has always been gracious when we have crossed paths. And this time was no exception. It turned out Stevens had much to say on the current state of his party. Actually, enough for an entire book.

Asked if the Republican Party in the Trump years has become an outfit free of governing ideas, Stevens went even further: “It was all a lie.” He noted that this was word-for-word the title of his forthcoming book, It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump. The modern GOP, he said, never truly cared about the ideas it claimed to care about.

This was a stunning indictment coming from a longtime political consul­tant who had toiled on five Republican presidential campaigns and numerous Senate and gubernatorial races. “The Republican Party has been a cartel,” Stevens said excitedly. “And no one asks a cartel, ‘What’s your ideological purpose?’ You don’t ask OPEC, ‘What’s your ideology?’ You don’t ask a drug gang, ‘What’s your program?’ The Republicans exist for the pursuit of power for no purpose.”

Throughout his decades as a Republican, Stevens considered this racist element a bug in the system. He now realizes it has been a feature.

He huffed that the Republican Party had not merely drifted away from its core positions, as sometimes occurs with political parties: “Fair trade, balanced budgets, character, family values, standing up to foreign adversaries like Russia—we’re all against that now. You have to ask, ‘Does someone abandon deeply held beliefs in three or four years?’ No. It means you didn’t ever hold them.” He added: “I feel like a guy who was working for Bernie Madoff.”

Stevens, an erudite fellow who is also a novelist and a travel writer, has become an emblematic ex-Republican. He once believed in GOP ideals and ideas. Now he saw it all as a huge con. His new book is a confession and cri de coeur. The first line is blunt: “I have no one to blame but myself.” In these pages, Stevens self-flagellates, calling himself a “fool” for his decades of believing—and lying to himself—that the Republican Party was based on “a core set of values.” Acknowledging his role, Stevens writes, “So yes, blame me. Blame me when you look around and see a dysfunctional political system and a Republican Party that has gone insane.” The book offers one overarching prescription for the GOP: “Burn it to the ground and start over.”

In our conversation, Stevens exploded with loathing for the party he once faithfully (and lucratively) served. He rejected the common view that Trump had hijacked the GOP. No, he explained, the triumph of know-nothing Trumpism marked the culmination of an internal conflict that had existed for decades between the party’s “dark side” and its professed ideals. Even William F. Buckley Jr., often hailed as a grand public intellectual and the founding father of the modern conservative movement, was “a stone-cold racist” in the 1950s, Stevens pointed out. (Buckley at that time considered white people more “advanced” and more fit to govern.)

“A lot of us in the party liked to believe the dark side was a recessive gene, but it’s a dominant theme,” Stevens, a seventh-­generation Mississippian who was named for Confederate Gen. Jeb Stuart, told me. “And it’s all about race. The Republican Party is a white party and there still are more white people than non-white people.” So that is whom the party aims at—even if this will eventually be a losing proposition as the nation’s demographics continue to shift. Ronald Reagan achieved a landslide victory in 1980 by bagging 56 percent of white voters; 28 years later, John McCain lost with 55 percent of white voters. Perhaps the party’s fixation on white voters can work one more time with Trump in 2020. “But we’re talking about the Confederacy—literally,” Stevens said.

And Nazi Germany. On his own, with no prompting, Stevens went straight to the Defcon-1 analogy: “I tell my GOP friends, ‘It’s crazy to say it’s 1934 in Germany…when it’s clearly 1936.’” He insisted that the 1930s are important for understanding the current moment. “When there was rising anti-Semitism, isolationism, and pro-Nazi sentiment, why did the US not become fascist?” Stevens asked. “Because of FDR. Leaders matter, and the GOP has now completely abdicated its role.” Instead, the party has yielded completely to demagoguery and race-baiting to exploit the racism and resentments of certain white voters. Throughout his decades as a Republican, Stevens considered this racist element a bug in the system. He now realizes it has been a feature.

“They are the Trump Generation. It’s how they will be remembered. Like the segregationists of old.”

In 2012, Romney enthusiastically sought and accepted Trump’s endorsement, though Trump had been championing the racist birther conspiracy theory. But for Stevens, the decisive moment when the party embraced its ugly heritage came in December 2015, when Trump, then the leading Republican presidential candidate, called for a ban on Muslim travelers to the United States. As Stevens now sees it, Reince Priebus, then the chair of the Republican National Committee, should have declared that the GOP did not support such bigotry and staked out a moral position. Perhaps Trump would still have marched on to victory, but such a move might have distanced the party from a racist candidate. Instead, the party kept mum and eventually folded to Trump. (Romney would go on to be the only GOP senator to vote to remove Trump from office at the end of his impeachment trial.)

Stevens now argues that Trump’s rise was not a fluke that the party can sidestep or survive. “This is the complete moral collapse of a governing party of a major superpower,” he remarked. He wonders how he could have been blind to the GOP’s racism and turpitude for so long. “It is hard to see this when you’re in the middle of it,” he said. “The only analogy I can find is the collapse of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, when the difference between reality and what is believed became so disjointed. I should’ve seen this. I did see this, but I wanted to believe the crazies were a minority.”

Stevens conceded that had Trump not come along, he still might not have been fully aware of the structural immorality of the GOP: The Republican Party was “a comfortable place for a lot of us. If Trump had lost, I’d probably still be working for a Republican candidate. But Trump made it impossible to deny what the party is. I just don’t get why these Republican senators don’t stand up to him. What’s the worst thing? You’ll be an ex-senator? They are the Trump Generation. It’s how they will be remembered. Like the segregationists of old.”

It was hard to slow Stevens down as he spoke. He had so much to confess. He forecast a bleak future for the party. Citing the demise of the Repub­lican Party in California (where more voters are now registering “no party preference” than Republican), he observed that the GOP was becoming a “regional/Sun Belt party.” And he shared his fear that young political operatives working for the party have drawn the lesson that a candidate must emulate Trump to win—that what most matters is not policy ideas but the ability to attack and exploit fears, divisions, tribalism, and resentments. “Elizabeth Warren can articulate a coherent theory of government,” Stevens said. “There is no coherent theory of government for Republicans right now. Usually a coherent theory versus an incoherent theory carries the day.”

“It’s really incredible how this had happened,” Stevens told me, as I realized I had received far more material from him than anticipated. “This is the last book in the world I wanted to write. It is tough to come to terms with this, and incredibly depressing. If we say we believe in personal responsibility, you have to take personal responsibility and start with yourself. We created this. It didn’t just happen.” Stevens was not pleased or satisfied with his epiphany: Ideas are not the currency for today’s GOP and never truly were. And Trump alone could not be blamed for that. “Republicans only exist to elect Republicans,” Stevens remarked with sadness. “They are down to one idea: How can we win?”

Link to original article:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/08/racism-republican-party-stuart-stevens/