Buh Bye, February!
Snow Moon rising over Mount Mansfield
by Cathy Baker Hudson (used with permission)
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Trapped in Germany’s COVID nightmare [Click] “The purported home of efficiency is lagging behind on vaccination.” I recall reading about Germany’s railway system deteriorating badly, and the new airport for Berlin is a monumental boondoggle.
ReplyDeleteBrexit means … Euro-English? [Click]
Northern Ireland halts construction of inspection facilities for post-Brexit checks [Click]
The Georgia counties turning the state blue are growing. And fast. [Click] Georgia has been steadily trending Democratic for some time.
From time to time, Like the Dew, a journal of southern culture publishes one of my pieces from Hannah Blog. This one I actually promoted to the editor because the topic is timely.
ReplyDeletehttps://likethedew.com/2021/02/28/sasser-country/#.YDvMR5NKj9Q
Congratulations on getting it published!
DeleteI cut and pasted the link, but could not get it to open. Can you double check it?
Robert Reich: Trump has captured the Republican party – and that's great news for Biden [Click]
ReplyDeleteYet again our congressional “representative” shows that his cow could do a better job. [Click] Groan. . .
ReplyDeleteListener and Bill, if you don't get e-mails from me soon, let me know here on the blog. Seems my blankity blank e-mail has started acting up, just when I thought it was functioning.
ReplyDeleteOHIO; COVID cases 967,422 and 17,297 deaths.
ReplyDelete1.7879%
DeleteEd Cumming: I hate to say it, but Britain's doing OK. Even Germany envies us... [Click] “For diehard Remoaners like me, all this endless good news about jabs and carbon emissions is pretty hard to take.”
ReplyDeleteCOVID-19 vaccination rate worldwide as of Feb. 26, 2021, by country [Click]
From the inbox:
ReplyDeleteCivic Action
We are in compounding crises, and one of the very worst is not getting nearly enough attention: The unemployment disparities between men and women.
In January alone, 275,000 women left the workforce compared with 71,000 men – nearly four times as many. We've seen this kind of disparity since the beginning of the pandemic, and experts like Jocelyn Frye are warning "the consequences for women could take years to recover from."
These are women who want to work but – because of the crises upon crises this country is facing – cannot. Many have lost their jobs, but many others have been forced to leave the workforce in order to care for children whose schools are closed or who don't have affordable childcare.
The blame lies squarely with trickle-down lawmakers who refused to do anything but the bare minimum when it came to stimulus relief. We are now facing what could be a slow economic recovery, especially for women, which is why the Biden administration's $1.9 trillion package is urgently needed. But we must also go further. We must pass legislation – like a bill to make childcare more affordable – that will help ensure any woman who wants to work can do so.
Nicole Mason, president and CEO of the Institute for Women's Policy Research, said:
"Until we can get the pandemic under control and schools open, it's going to remain sluggish, and we're not going to see women returning to the workforce in any significant, real numbers."
She also said that, "as schools and daycares continue to be closed, there is a level of uncertainty and unpredictability for women who are wanting to look for jobs or reenter the workforce. These are the calculations that women are making."
What's worse, women of color are disproportionately suffering from the economic fallout – with Black women and Latinas losing their jobs or being forced to exit the workforce in much higher numbers. If we don't act immediately, our economy will be deprived of talent, our GDP will suffer, and it could be years before women's workplace inclusion returns to pre-pandemic levels.
The time for consistent, bold action was months and months ago. No more waiting. It's time for a majority of lawmakers to reflect the will of the American people and get on board with Joe Biden's recovery plan, which will prevent our country from going into a destructive feedback loop of economic downturn – and help get more women back into the workforce. But we cannot stop there. Given that women were disproportionately hurt by the pandemic, we must make sure that they are a priority in the recovery.
This is what we know needs to happen, and we won't rest until our economy realizes its full potential and everyone – not just those in their cushy offices at the top – has economic stability. We'll be in touch soon with ways you can help get our country back on track.
And, at least in my opinion, we are certainly not yet recovered from the Great Recession of 2008 or thereabouts. Unless we are a bank.
DeleteHere are a couple of ideas: Allow homemakers to earn Social Security points just like any other worker. Provide homemakers a federal stipend (federal minimum wage for someone with another adult earner, i.e. a spouse,working outside the home and up to double minimum wage for a single head of household)indexed to inflation. Provide stay-at-home parents a federal stipend of so much per child under twenty-one, again with COLA. Such an integrated scheme, implemented by a Home & Family Administration under joint auspices of the Depts. of Labor and Health & Human Services, would both incentivize and restore social value to the career of homemaker and stay-at-home parent.
DeleteThis is a career choice. My mother chose it, she enjoyed it and she was good at it. It has always majorly pissed me off that so many people, including so many women, denigrate her job. It's not for everyone, but those who choose to pursue it deserve to be respected rather than despised and tittered at.
The benefits of such a scheme are manifold. Off the top of my head and in no particular order:
Delete- It would help single parents.
- It might be of great assistance to battered spouses, giving them money of their own and so a means of escape from the abusive marriage.
- It would help revitalize neighborhoods.
- With more adults (mainly but not exclusively mothers) at home to keep an eye on them, children would be better off than in child care facilities, that are often outside the neighborhood, to say nothing of so many of them being substandard as well as many being impersonal.
- With so many women, including so many suburban white women receiving the stipend, Congress might suddenly find itself with a powerful incentive to fully fund the Home & Family Administration which would almost certainly entail, gasp, making sure corporations and individuals in, say, the upper 15% inclusive pay every red cent of taxes they owe.
When Social Security was set up, it was the social assumption that the wife would be a homemaker, and the husband the breadwinner. It was set up so that the wife could qualify on her husband's quarters. Whether it was set up originally to be gender neutral or not, I don't know--but it has been for some time now. The choice of whether to use one spouse's quarters for both, or both spouses' quarters individually, or to change at some point or another, can make significant differences, and the SSA is very good at helping to figure out how to do it to get the most benefit. Miyoko cashed out her Japanese social security account after we married, which of course meant that not long after the yen increased considerably in value against the dollar. We didn't know at the time that there is a treaty that would have allowed her to reside in the US and collect her Japanese social security rather than US social security--but on the other hand, some years later it was discovered that the Japanese government had lost track of millions of social security accounts.... so who knows how that would have worked out. Water under the bridge and all that. One of the brighter things I did was to delay taking SS until I turned seventy--that added about a third to the monthly payment. For someone using the spouse's quarters to qualify, there is no benefit to delaying past the spouse's full retirement age to start taking SS, but to get their maximum they must wait until the spouse's full retirement age. When one spouse passes away, the survivor gets only one SS payment, but it is the larger of the two. It really does surprise me that so many people start taking SS payments just as soon as they can; I am sure most of those people are able to continue working. But it's probably like the lottery winners who want the whole thing as soon as possible, although taking it over ten or twenty years would give them more.
DeleteAccording to the NIT:
ReplyDeleteRoughly one-third of active-duty troops and National Guard members — mostly younger personnel — have declined to take the vaccine, another potential hole in the broad-scale immunity that health experts say is needed for Americans to reclaim their lives.
Currently the vaccines have emergency use authorizations; when they are fully authorized by the FDA, the service members can be ordered to accept vaccination. There are still stories going around about the anthrax vaccinations and how they proved to be unnecessary; that doesn't help. But of course those service members are too young to remember polio or any other serious diseases that were stopped by large-scale vaccination programs. I am 74, and we got the Salk vaccine when I was in 5th grade; I can remember the news about the localized polio epidemics every summer, seeing kids with leg braces, etc. Probably no one under the age of 70 would remember. It amazes me how few people know about the Spanish Flu, but maybe I am more aware because it killed my grandmother.
DeleteThinking of fading memories of the Spanish Flu, I have heard of Irish farmers (big ag types?) who have proposed plowing the mass graves of those who died in the potato famine. Oh, and BTW, there was a potato famine in Scotland at the same time, which made it much easier to carry out the Highland Clearances.
DeleteDemocrats Abandon Plan B for Minimum Wage Hike [Click] So that leaves Plans C and D, both of which require either Manchin’s cooperation or the absence of a Senator who would vote against the $15 minimum wage. I figure that a Republican is more likely than a Democrat to be hospitalized with the coronavirus.
ReplyDeleteThree names mysteriously removed from Khashoggi intelligence report after initial publication [Click] The Wayback Machine was on the job, though.
ReplyDeleteTracking Coronavirus Vaccinations Around the World [Click] Both total vaccinations and vaccinations per capita by country given—the US has vaccinated the most people by far. That surprises me.
ReplyDeleteVT cases: 15,198-15,098 = 100
ReplyDelete2462 active cases 204 deaths(0x2)
Recovered 12,532 (82.5%)
Hospital 25(-4) ICU 8(+4)
Tests 330,640 (+742)
Positivity Rate down to 1.4%
DeleteDeath rate down to 1.3%
Alan and Susan, how are you feeling today?
ReplyDeleteI feel fine. Still have a red swelling on my shot arm. It's fairly firm, so I think it will take some time to subside. It really doesn't hurt though, even when I touch it.
DeleteI'm feeling fine. So, a little pain at the injection site the day after the shot, and torpor for two days. The discomfort I felt after that was unrelated.
DeleteAnd that compact exercise cycle is wonderful! With ten minutes twice a day using my feet/legs, and five minutes twice a day using my hands/arms the pain, stiffness and limited range of motion I have had since my medical adventures eleven years ago are gone or very nearly so. Far less expensive and more convenient than a gym membership, and far safer than cycling. The only thing it doesn't take care of is neck exercise to prevent tension headaches. Some of the best money I have ever spent.