1465: Satheist

"Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, a member of the panel, who served as CDC director in President George W. Bush’s administration, said the pandemic had “taught us that we have to have a coordinated, integrated public health network that functions — and the only way that we can bring that together is by having a national approach.” "

"The commission’s recommendations are more sweeping. The panel, led by Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration under President Barack Obama, calls for the creation of a new position — undersecretary for public health — within the Department of Health and Human Services, to oversee the national public health system.

The undersecretary would coordinate the work of more than a dozen federal agencies that play a role in public health, and would have the power to set minimum health standards for the states."

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Foundation History | Commonwealth Fund

Continuous Evaluation is the new way the government and military are handling clearances. For Top Secret it used to be every five years, but they got so backlogged they changed (my last one was seven years ago). I just did mine earlier this year and you have to agree to have your medical, social media, and finances monitored.

Greetings from Korea, it’s been a while since I checked in.

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It was reported this week that the massive audit firm was fined with a record $100 million fine after regulators found out that the company knew some of its auditors had been cheating on exams for "several years" - and did nothing to stop it.

This week, the Securities and Exchange Commission said that a "significant number" of candidates cheated on the Certified Public Accountant test. The kicker? Most of the cheating was on the "ethics" portion of the exam...

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Every 18-year-old leaving care will be offered £1,600 a month for two years under a Welsh government basic income pilot.

It is expected about 500 people will be eligible to join the scheme, which could cost up to £20m.

Officials said it was the highest amount offered on a basic income scheme anywhere in the world.

The Welsh Conservatives said it was a waste of money while Plaid Cymru called for the pilot to be expanded.

The £1,600 a month will be taxed and is expected to be counted as income by the UK government, meaning it would affect someone's eligibility for benefits.

It will be unconditional and will not be withdrawn if participants get a job.

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Ik hoorde je in de aflevering van afgelopen donderdag zeggen dat boeren met sledge hammers op politiebusjes insloegen. Dat lijkt inderdaad zo, maar veel van die relschoppers blijken geen boeren te zijn maar Romeo’s, verklede agenten, die door hun ‘oortjes’ toch redelijk makkelijk te identificeren zijn. Tijdens Coronademonstraties waren zij het ook steeds die vredige demonstraties in geweldadige demonstraties veranderden door hun agressieve gedrag.

Na de boerendemonstraties en een tweede bezoek bij de stikstofminister thuis was er ophef over bezoek dat een CDA-tweedekamerlid zou hebben gehad, is er een spoeddebat aangevraagd en gekomen. Dat Kamerlid bleef de hele week thuis om zijn gezin te beschermen. Uiteraard werden de boeren zwartgemaakt door de meeste partijen. FVD-er Gideon van Meijeren had vernomen dat de bezoeker een vrouw van 70+ zou zijn geweest die haar beklag had gedaan over de mening van haar plaatsgenoot over de boeren en vervolgens rustig was weggegaan. Toen hij hierover begon te praten in het debat werd hem de mond gesnoerd. Hij moest van de voorzitter een andere vraag stellen. Kennelijk moest en zou de ellende in de schoenen van de boeren geschoven worden. Die zijn en blijven (terecht) boos omdat 50% het veld zou moeten ruimen vanwege een op papier gecreëerd stikstofprobleem. Zelfs Waddeneiland Vlieland zou een probleem hebben, terwijl daar geen boeren zitten en er geen auto’s rijden…

Maandag zullen er weer demonstraties gehouden worden. Boeren uit Vlaanderen en Duitsland zeggen zich aan te sluiten. Het leger zal worden ingezet.

Hoi hoi Adam,

hope all is OK with you and your lovely wife. Our wifes are actually communicating on Insta a medium which I (probably we) won't use.

well here is the current story.

After 2.5 years of traveling we've finally settled down on an old Dutch Colonial Island Curacao. The Island is an Indipendent nation (up untill they need money then they request it from the Netherlands)

Well the funny thing happened last week and I think we are the first in the world to have it, I think we have the first climate lockdown in the world.

Last week there Wednesday there was a storm coming toward the Island named Bonnie, this area of the Caribbean typically does not have a lot of Hurricanes so our prime minister gave a press conference where he told us how serious the matter was and also set a Curfew at 04:00 in the afternoon. All schools were closed for 2 days and no shops where allowed to open. So you where not allowed to go out at all after four PM.

The day of the storm he advanced the time to 11:00 AM because the storm would hit the Island earlier. The funny thing is that the storm was 150 Miles next to the island and there was just a suddle breeze that day. A pilot friend with Meteo skills here on the Island told me already in the morning the storm would divert and nothing would happen, why didn't the government admit they were wrong.

In the press conference after the storm/breeze the prime minister didn't acknowledge he was overreacting but in stead only mentioned that there were too many people on the street after the curfew and we should obey the government better.

I think this is the first Climate lockdown in the world and I was part of it.....

The Nordstream 1 pipeline will be shut down for maintenance on July 11. Since Putin has already cut gas flow, it's likely this maintenance turns into a permanent shutdown. Our underlying assumption has always been this is where Europe ends up: complete shutdown and recession...

I was relistening to the last show and there was a question regarding DeSantis being a LT “advisor” to the SEAL Team. Upon completion of their JAG school requirements, young JAG officers are assigned various first tour positions, whether it be a Strike Group Staff JAG, Base JAG, or other basic positions. The Advisor for the SEAL Teams is simply a JAG slot for that team so they can answer the mail on how to conduct their operations IAW various laws, codes, and conventions. He may have gone on deployment, which is common, but rarely if ever do these JAG advisors ever go on actual operations where the shit hits the fan.

Much belatedly now that there's a seemingly endless US weapons pipeline going into Ukraine, the Pentagon is worried they might end of in the "wrong hands" and is seeking to take steps to do something about it. It now wants to track serial numbers of US weaponry on the ground as the fight for Ukraine continues.

As early as April US officials began admitting that once advanced systems like Javelin anti-tank weapons cross into Ukraine they have no idea where they go from there. There's speculation that some percentage of Western-supplied arms will be resold on the black market, or even make there way to other conflicts outside Ukraine, such as in the Middle East.

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US law banning federal funds paying for abortions except in certain cases

This article is about the abortion-funding amendment. For the 1997 amendment relating to court costs, see

Hyde Amendment (1997).

In U.S. politics, the Hyde Amendment is a legislative provision barring the use of federal funds to pay for abortion, except to save the life of the woman, or if the pregnancy arises from incest or rape.[1][2] Before the Hyde Amendment took effect in 1980, an estimated 300,000 abortions were performed annually using federal funds.[3]

The original Hyde Amendment was passed on September 30, 1976, by the House of Representatives, with a 312''93 vote to override the veto of a funding bill for the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW).[4][5][6][7] It was named for its chief sponsor, Republican Congressman Henry Hyde of Illinois.[3] The measure represented one of the first major legislative gains by the United States pro-life movement following the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade.

Congress later altered the Hyde Amendment several times.[3] The version in force from 1981 until 1993 prohibited the use of federal funds for abortions, "except where the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term".[8] On October 22, 1993, President Clinton signed into law the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 1994.[9]'‚The Act contained a new version of the Hyde Amendment that expanded the category of abortions for which federal funds are available under Medicaid to include cases of rape and incest.[10]

Background [ edit ] The Hyde Amendment was introduced by pro-life Congressman Henry J. Hyde and first passed by Congress in 1977, four years after Roe vs. Wade. Implementation of the initial amendment was blocked for almost a year by an injunction in the McRae v. Matthews case. During this case, the Reproductive Freedom Project, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Planned Parenthood collectively represented a pregnant Medicaid recipient and health care providers who challenged the Hyde Amendment. The United States Supreme Court vacated the injunction in August 1977, leading abortions financed by federal Medicaid to drop from 300,000 per year to a few thousand.[11] Other bans were modeled after the Hyde Amendment, extending to other annual spending bills in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This eventually led federal funds to be banned in federal worker health plans, women in federal prisons, women in the military, peace corps volunteers, and international family planning programs that use non-U.S. funds to perform or advocate for abortion.[3]

The Hyde Amendment has been re-enacted every year since 1976, but exceptions have varied.[3] For example, the 1978 Amendment presented new exceptions for rape survivors and incest cases.[11] In 1980, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the original Hyde Amendment language with a 5''4 vote in Harris v. McRae. The majority found that the Hyde Amendment did not violate the Establishment Clause under the First Amendment, or due process/equal protection provided by the Fifth Amendment.[12] This case decided the single exception for the Amendment would be in cases where the woman's life is endangered. This decision was upheld from fiscal years 1981''1993.[11] In Webster v. Reproductive Health Services of Missouri, the court held that states could also enact measures like the Hyde Amendment. President George H.W. Bush vetoed a bill with the added exceptions. This decision left the Amendment with the sole exception of concern being endangered life of the mother. The language was not altered until the Clinton Administration in 1993. At this time, the Hyde Amendment was once again expanded to include exceptions for rape and incest cases.[12][3]

In Williams v. Zbaraz (1980), the United States Supreme Court held that states could enact their own versions of the Hyde Amendment.[11]

As of 1994, federal law mandates all states to pay for abortion cases involving rape or incest.[11]

On January 24, 2017, the House voted to make the Hyde Amendment (H.R. 7) permanent. Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) stated, "We are a pro-life Congress", and he re-affirmed the government's commitment to restricting tax money to funding abortions.[13] The bill failed to become law.[14]

Arguments and effects [ edit ] Proponents of Hyde state that it is supported by 57% of the American public and opposed by 36%, as of 2016.[15] Critics say the Hyde Amendment disproportionately affects low-income women, women of color, younger women, and immigrants, as an estimated 42% of abortion recipients live below the poverty line.[16] Since the passage of the Hyde Amendment, more than one million women were not able to afford abortions and as a result carried fetuses to term, sometimes dying as a consequence.[17] Eighteen to 33 percent of Medicaid-eligible women who desire abortions have also given birth because they live in states that do not provide funding.[18][19]

The Hyde Amendment restricts abortion coverage for federally-funded health care recipients, specifically women enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid, Native American women, U.S. servicewomen and veterans, women in Peace Corps, federal employee families, D. C. women residents, and women in immigration detention facilities and prisons.[20] The Hyde Amendment does not preclude women who receive health care through the U.S. government the option of paying for the procedure out of pocket. According to a 2014 national survey of abortion patients, women in states without Medicaid coverage of abortion were three times as likely to pay for their abortions out of pocket, and five times as likely to rely on financial assistance from an abortion fund, compared to women in states with Medicaid coverage.[21]

[ edit ] States that fund abortions

State funds abortions voluntarily

State funds abortions under court order

17 states have a policy to use their own Medicaid funds to pay for abortion beyond the Hyde Amendment requirements, and an estimated 20% of abortions are paid through Medicaid.[22][23]

As of 2021, 16 states use their own state funds to pay for elective abortions and similar services, exceeding federal requirements.[24]

Consequently, the cutoff of federal Medicaid funds prompted some states to provide public funding for abortion services from their own coffers. Over time the number of states doing so has gradually expanded, either through legislation or consequent to judicial rulings.[25]

Specific stipulations have been put in place by some state governments. Some of these provisions remove restrictions that have been put in place at the federal level while others are used to further extend the reach that Hyde Amendment has put into place. For example, in Iowa, in order to receive an abortion under the Medicaid program, approval must be given from the governor.[26] In Iowa, Mississippi, and Virginia, a provision has been made for the case of fetal impairment.[26]

Further developments [ edit ] Stupak-Pitts (2010) [ edit ] The Stupak''Pitts Amendment, an amendment to the Affordable Health Care for America Act, was introduced by Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan. It prohibits the use of Federal funds "to pay for any abortion or to cover any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion", except in cases of rape, incest, or danger to the life of the mother,[27] and was included in the bill as passed by the House of Representatives on November 7, 2009. However, the Senate bill passed by the House on March 21, 2010, did not contain that Hyde Amendment language. As part of an agreement between Rep. Stupak and President Obama to secure Stupak's vote, the President issued Executive Order 13535 on March 24, 2010, affirming that the Hyde Amendment would extend to the new bill.[28]

Hillary Clinton (2016) [ edit ] The 2016 Democratic platform marked the first major political party platform to include an explicit call to repeal the Hyde Amendment.[29] The platform states:

We believe unequivocally, like the majority of Americans, that every woman should have access to quality reproductive health care services, including safe and legal abortion'--regardless of where she lives, how much money she makes, or how she is insured. We believe that reproductive health is core to women's, men's, and young people's health and well being. We will continue to stand up to Republican efforts to defund Planned Parenthood health centers, which provide critical health services to millions of people. We will continue to oppose'--and seek to overturn'--federal and state laws and policies that impede a woman's access to abortion, including by repealing the Hyde Amendment.[30]

Hillary Clinton advocated for a repeal of the Hyde Amendment throughout her 2016 Presidential campaign.[15] She was quoted as saying, "Any right that requires you to take extraordinary measures to access it is no right at all", at a campaign rally in New Hampshire.[31] The Democrat vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine reportedly stood with his running mate on the issue, despite formerly having been a supporter of the Hyde Amendment.[32]

2018 [ edit ] In 2018, Republicans proposed adding the Hyde Amendment to the Affordable Care Act in the 2018 spending bill, in exchange for increased funding to reduce insurance premiums and adding re-insurance. However, this was rejected by Democrats.[33] Former Speaker Paul Ryan had said that he would not bring measures to the floor on reducing ACA premiums without adding the Hyde Amendment language.[34]

Joe Biden (2019''present) [ edit ] During the 2020 presidential campaign, Joe Biden reversed his previous support of the Hyde Amendment and pledged to work to overturn it if elected.[35] In 2021, he introduced a 2022 budget that completely omitted the Hyde Amendment.[35][36]

A Labor, Health and Human Services bill unveiled in 2021 excludes the amendment.[37]

See also [ edit ] Abortion in the United StatesHelms Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act, an amendment from 1973 that restricts US federal funding for abortion overseasRosie Jimenez, the first woman known to have died due to an unsafe abortion after the Hyde Amendment was passedTypes of abortion restrictions in the United StatesReferences [ edit ] ^ "Abortion Funding Ban Has Evolved Over The Years". NPR . Retrieved March 10, 2019 . ^ Sarah Kliff (October 2, 2011). "The Hyde Amendment at 35: a new abortion divide". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on March 7, 2016 . Retrieved February 23, 2016 . ^ a b c d e f Rovner, Julie (December 15, 2009). "Abortion Funding Ban Has Evolved Over The Years". NPR . Retrieved June 7, 2019 . ^ Flood, Daniel J. (September 30, 1976). "H.R.14232 - 94th Congress (1975-1976): An Act making appropriations for the Departments of Labor, and Health, Education, and Welfare, and related agencies, for the fiscal year ending September 30, 1977, and for other purposes". congress.gov . Retrieved July 10, 2019 . ^ "House overrides veto of HEW funding bill". Eugene Register-Guard. (Oregon). UPI. September 30, 1976. p. 1A. ^ "Labor-HEW bill forced into law over Ford veto". Toledo Blade. (Ohio). The Washington Post. October 1, 1976. p. 1. ^ "Congress overrides veto, to adjourn". Spokesman-Review. (Spokane, Washington). Associated Press. October 1, 1976. p. 1. ^ See, e.g., Pub.L. No. 101-166, §'‚204, 103 Stat. 1159, 1177 (1989). ^ Pub.L. No. 103-112, 107 Stat. 1082 (1993). Uscode.house.gov ^ Id. §'‚509, 107 Stat. at 1113 (the 1994 Hyde Amendment). ^ a b c d e "Access Denied: Origins of the Hyde Amendment and Other Restrictions on Public Funding for Abortion". American Civil Liberties Union . Retrieved April 13, 2017 . ^ a b Shimabukuro, Jon O. (October 13, 2016). "Abortion: Judicial History and Legislative Response" (PDF) . Congressional Research Service. ^ "House Votes to Make Hyde Amendment Permanent". Speaker.gov. January 24, 2017. Archived from the original on December 29, 2017 . Retrieved April 11, 2017 . ^ Wolf, Zachary B. Wolf,Zachary B. B. (June 6, 2019). "What is the Hyde Amendment and why did Joe Biden once support it? | CNN Politics". CNN. ^ a b Haberkorn, Jennifer (October 26, 2016). "POLITICO-Harvard poll: Clinton voters eager to scrap Hyde Amendment". Politico Magazine . Retrieved June 7, 2019 . ^ Jones, Rachel K.; Finer, Lawrence B.; Singh, Susheela (January 28, 2016). "Characteristics of U.S. Abortion Patients, 2008". Guttmacher Institute . Retrieved June 14, 2019 . ^ Henshaw, Stanley K.; Joyce, Theodore J.; Dennis, Amanda; Finer, Lawrence B.; Blanchard, Kelly (June 2009). "Restrictions on Medicaid Funding for Abortions: A Literature Review" (PDF) . Guttmacher Institute. ^ "Five Facts You Should Know About the Hyde Amendment | BillMoyers.com". BillMoyers.com . Retrieved April 11, 2017 . ^ "Whose Choice? How the Hyde Amendment Harms Poor Women" (PDF) . Center for Reproductive Rights. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 7, 2021. ^ "Legislative Restrictions on Access to Abortion". NARAL Pro-Choice America . Retrieved April 11, 2017 . ^ Jerman, J.; Jones, R.K.; Onda, T. (May 2016). "Characteristics of U.S. abortion patients in 2014 and changes since 2008". Guttmacher Institute . Retrieved August 27, 2019 . ^ "Characteristics of U.S. Abortion Patients, 2008" (PDF) . Guttmacher Institute . Retrieved June 14, 2019 . ^ "Medicaid Funding of Abortion". Guttmacher Institute. December 21, 2016 . Retrieved March 27, 2019 . ^ "State Funding of Abortion Under Medicaid". Guttmacher Institute. July 1, 2021 . Retrieved July 28, 2021 . {{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) ^ Francis, Roberta W. "Frequently Asked Questions". EqualRightsAmendment.org. Alice Paul Institute. Archived from the original on April 17, 2009 . Retrieved September 13, 2009 . ^ a b "State Funding of Abortions Under Medicaid". The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. April 18, 2017 . Retrieved April 19, 2017 . ^ "November 7, 2009 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD'--HOUSE H12921". Frwebgate.access.gpo.gov . Retrieved June 14, 2019 . ^ Hall, Mimi (March 25, 2010). "Both sides of abortion issue quick to dismiss order". USA Today. ^ "DNC Platform Includes Historic Call to Repeal Anti-Choice Hyde Amendment". Democracy Now!. June 27, 2016 . Retrieved July 27, 2016 . ^ Lucas, Fred (July 25, 2016). "Democratic Platform Topples Consensus on Abortion". The Daily Signal . Retrieved April 17, 2017 . ^ "The Abortion Policy Hillary Clinton Keeps Talking About, Explained". ThinkProgress. January 12, 2016 . Retrieved April 17, 2017 . ^ "Kaine Now Backs Lifting Abortion Funding Ban". NBC News . Retrieved April 17, 2017 . ^ Julie Rovner (March 21, 2018). "Clash Over Abortion Hobbles A Health Bill. Again. Here's How". The Washington Post. Kaiser Health News . Retrieved March 22, 2018 . ^ Cunningham, Paige Winfield (March 8, 2018). "Analysis | The Health 202: Congress still can't agree on stabilizing Obamacare marketplaces". The Washington Post . Retrieved March 22, 2018 . ^ a b "Biden's Budget Proposal Reverses A Decades-Long Ban On Abortion Funding". NPR . Retrieved July 27, 2021 . ^ Branigin, Anne (June 3, 2021). "The Hyde Amendment and abortion: Why it's in the news and what you need to know". The Lily . Retrieved July 27, 2021 . {{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) ^ Folley, Aris (October 18, 2021). "Senate Democrats ditch Hyde amendment for first time in decades". The Hill . Retrieved October 21, 2021 . {{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)

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Archived Version

Sun, 03 Jul 2022 17:20

Dawn Ostroff rose to the top of the TV industry in the 2000s by developing deliciously addictive shows such as America's Next Top Model and Gossip Girl. A former local news reporter, she's credited her success to knowing what young people like. ''Being at the forefront of 'what's next' has always driven me,'' she told the news site of Florida International University, her alma mater, in 2020. But after more than three decades in TV, Ostroff saw that a generation raised on the internet had forsaken cable for apps like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. She took the job as Spotify's chief content officer in 2018 to make a new kind of hit.

Spotify Technology SA was just starting to build its podcasting business when Ostroff joined, and it needed to find a splashy way to attract listeners. Although she had no background in podcasting'--or music, for that matter'--her time in TV taught her how to talk to talent. Over the next four years, Ostroff spent more than US$1 billion on the business, licensing shows, buying production studios, and signing exclusive deals with celebrities, including the Obamas, Kim Kardashian, and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

Last year, Ostroff's research and data team asked a question that many at Spotify already knew the answer to: Had any of this spending yielded a major new hit? The team produced a report that basically said no, according to five current and former employees who didn't want to be named discussing internal business. Spotify evaluated how well shows did based on listenership, their traction on social media, and if they attracted new fans to the service, among other criteria. The team, the employees say, identified two groundbreaking hits'--neither of which Spotify produced: Serial, the true crime drama that introduced many to the format (and is now owned by the New York Times), and The Joe Rogan Experience, a talk show from the former host of Fear Factor. (Rogan's show is currently exclusive to Spotify.) A couple of dozen shows were classified as lesser hits.

The report frustrated people in Ostroff's orbit, according to the employees, who described the findings to Bloomberg Businessweek. Sure, Spotify hadn't produced a show that penetrated the culture as Serial had, but its studios are responsible for many popular podcasts. One of those studios, Parcast, is behind Call Her Daddy, a show hosted by Alex Cooper about relationships and sex that's one of the 10 most popular podcasts in the US, according to Edison Research. Another, the Ringer, produces a network of beloved sports and pop culture shows led by Bill Simmons's eponymous podcast. (I contribute to a Ringer podcast, The Town, about the business of Hollywood.) The frustration stemmed in part from the R&D team measuring podcasts against TV shows such as Lost that drew almost 20 million viewers a night in its heyday. Call Her Daddy has about 3 million listeners'--known collectively as the Daddy Gang'--according to the Los Angeles Times. (Ostroff declined to comment for this story.)

Spotify moved into podcasting to free itself from the unprofitable and competitive business of music streaming. The company's deals with record labels require it to pay them more than 70 per cent of every dollar that comes in, which is why Wall Street has long doubted the business model. Podcasting offers Spotify exclusive material that forces other tech giants to carry its service'--and creates a revenue stream the music labels can't touch. Yet despite all of Spotify's spending on podcasting, it accounted for only 7 per cent of total listening hours in the first quarter of 2022 and 2 per cent of revenue last year, the company announced in June. Rogan's show, the service's most popular and controversial, has caused Spotify one public-relations headache after another.

It's too early to call the strategy a failure. With more than 420 million users and about 182 million paid subscribers, Spotify is the largest audio service in the world. It's the dominant platform in music streaming and has supplanted Apple as the most popular way people listen to podcasts in many markets. But the company has struggled to convince Wall Street that its spending spree has been worth it. Spotify's stock price has slipped 72 per cent from its February 2021 peak, plunging from about US$365 to roughly US$101 a share as of June 21.

Daniel Ek, Spotify's chief executive officer, says the selloff is shortsighted and ignores the company's strong fundamentals. Losses from podcasting will begin to tail off this year as ad sales rise and investment growth slows, Spotify said earlier this month, and eventually podcasting will have better profit margins than music. The company's consistent user growth has attracted marketers, with total ad sales topping '‚¬1.2 billion (about US$1.3 billion) last year, more than double what they were in 2018.

Spotify now sees advertising, long an afterthought to the ''freemium'' subscription model, as a big part of its future. After a couple of years touting its high-profile original series to draw in listeners and talent, the company is shifting its messaging, positioning itself as a user-generated playground for audio, like what YouTube is for video. Spotify hosts 4 million podcasts, and it wants to host millions more. So in addition to offering up top-tier talent, it aims to make it easier for regular people sitting in their bedrooms to make a living by talking. Executives say they just need time to let the strategy play out.

Spotify is ''throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall,'' says Nick Quah, a critic and founder of industry newsletter Hot Pod. ''They have quite a bit to go in terms of constructing a mature, functioning, coherent machine. The question is whether they'll be able to do that before investors lose patience.''

Courtney Holt kept coming back to Joe Rogan. Holt had joined the company a year before Ostroff's arrival to build a business for Spotify beyond music. With Ostroff and Ek, Holt settled on podcasting as the way forward. Spotify customers were already listening to music, so it was reasonable to think they'd toggle from Drake to Dirty John, a true crime podcast. Holt pitched creators on the idea of Spotify as an alternative to Apple. They could convert Spotify's music fans into listeners of their programs, and get help selling ads. (Apple Inc. leaves this to creators.) By 2019, more than 400,000 podcasts had been uploaded to Spotify.

Rogan didn't need Spotify. The Joe Rogan Experience, with the largest audience in podcasting, was doing fine without it. But in late 2019, Holt ramped up efforts to reach him. The Spotify executive knew that it was easier to acquire an audience than build one from scratch, as he'd done successfully when he bought the rights to The Joe Budden Podcast, and fans of Budden followed the rapper-turned-podcaster to his new home. He'd been less successful developing an audience for comedian Amy Schumer. Eager to find more shows to lure listeners, Holt and Ostroff went shopping. They purchased Parcast, best known for true crime; the Ringer; and Gimlet Media Inc., the so-called HBO of podcasting because of its award-winning nonfiction series such as Reply All. Spotify couldn't buy Rogan's show'--he wasn't selling'--so it offered him more than US$100 million for the exclusive rights.

Rogan wanted Spotify's money, but he didn't want to appear muzzled by a corporation in exchange for cash, say three executives who worked on the deal who weren't authorized to discuss details. Rogan's millions of fans, mostly young White men, worship him as a contrarian free thinker; deferring to corporate sensitivities would be bad for his brand. Rogan demanded complete creative control and insisted on an expansive morals clause that would let him say almost anything without fear of retribution, say the execs. (Rogan didn't respond to a request for comment.) Some questioned if he was worth the risk. He routinely hosts controversial figures, such as conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. The execs debated if Spotify could replicate Rogan's audience with four or five other hosts. The short answer was no. The company went along with his demands.

Spotify's stock jumped about 8 per cent the day it announced the Rogan deal in May 2020. Investors had been lukewarm on the company since it went public in April 2018, but Rogan changed perceptions. When selling itself to investors before its initial public offering, Spotify had compared itself to Netflix Inc., another streaming service that had moved consumers from analog to the internet. And just as Netflix transitioned from hosting other production companies' TV shows to making its own, Spotify was now attempting to transition from hosting other companies' audio to producing its own (or securing exclusive rights). Many investors viewed Rogan's show as Spotify's House of Cards, the series that put Netflix on the map. The Joe Rogan Experience made its debut on Spotify in September 2020 and went exclusive in December. It's been the service's top podcast ever since.

Buoyed by the Rogan deal, Holt and Ostroff set out to corner the market on talent. They secured exclusive rights to Dax Shepard's celebrity talk show, Armchair Expert, and, eventually, Call Her Daddy, for which it paid upwards of US$60 million, say two people familiar with the terms who weren't authorized to discuss them. The pace and size of the deals stunned the industry, upended the economics of the podcasting business, and transformed Spotify from music streamer to ''multichannel tech-media company,'' says Quah. Like reality TV, popular talk shows such as The Bill Simmons Podcast and Call Her Daddy cost almost nothing to produce; the hosts sit in a studio and interview guests. (The budgets for scripted projects range from a few hundred thousand dollars to several million if top-tier talent is involved.) But Spotify was now paying popular hosts millions of dollars a year.

Hollywood talent agencies, Madison Avenue advertisers, and Wall Street investors all gave the company another look. By the start of 2021, about 25 per cent of Spotify users, or roughly 86 million people, were listening to podcasts on the service. The stock traded at more than US$300 a share, valuing the company at over US$50 billion. Wall Street's positive response to Spotify's spending prompted Amazon.com Inc. and Sirius XM Holdings Inc. to join the fray. Amazon paid US$300 million for the studio Wondery and nearly US$80 million for distribution and ad sales rights to SmartLess, a talk show hosted by actors Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, and Sean Hayes. Sirius XM acquired the podcast app Stitcher for more than US$300 million and the production company 99 per cent Invisible, with a podcast of the same name, for an undisclosed sum.

Spotify's most popular original show of 2020 was The Michelle Obama Podcast, a limited series of interviews hosted by the former first lady that attracted hundreds of thousands of new listeners. Spotify had announced its deal with the Obamas' production company, Higher Ground, in June 2019. The signing seemed like a coup.

The deal with the Obamas was the first in a series of agreements with some of the world's biggest celebrities. While Holt had been a proponent of acquiring existing studios and exclusive rights, Ostroff championed arrangements with famous people who had little experience making podcasts. She secured deals with Kim Kardashian; social media influencer Addison Rae; Prince Harry and Meghan Markle; and filmmakers Ava DuVernay, Jordan Peele, and the Russo brothers, best known for directing Marvel movies. No one had much experience in audio, but Ostroff figured that good storytelling worked in any medium.

While Ostroff lured in the big fish, wrangling this talent fell to Holt and his deputies, according to more than a half-dozen producers and podcasters who worked with Spotify. Holt had little experience as a creative executive, having spent most of his career on the business side of music and media companies. Ostroff had hired another TV exec, Liz Gateley, to oversee development of new shows, but she shifted to an advisory role and left after 18 months. (She's since returned in a similar capacity.) Holt created Studio 4 to handle projects that didn't naturally fit with Gimlet, Parcast, or the Ringer. When the Obamas, say, wanted project approval, Holt was often the one saying yes or no.

It didn't take long for relations between Spotify and its partners to sour, say the producers and podcasters. Higher Ground produced Tell Them I Am, an interview program featuring Muslim voices, and The Big Hit Show, a reported podcast about pop culture. But Spotify rejected several pitches from Higher Ground, including some that seemed to the Obamas like a slam dunk. It took months, for example, to get approval on a Stevie Wonder project produced by Questlove, the Grammy-nominated musician. (It's likely to happen.) The Obamas started their company to elevate underrepresented voices. But Spotify didn't see commercial potential in most of the ideas'--they wanted two of the most famous people on Earth behind the mic.

Most successful podcasts upload new episodes every week, often more than once. But the Obamas weren't going to spend their post-presidency grinding it out in a recording studio. They've produced movies and TV shows for Netflix, none of which required being so hands-on. The first of what would ultimately be nine episodes of Michelle's podcast featured an interview with her husband. The former president recorded a conversation with Bruce Springsteen'--and then that was it. All told, the Obamas recorded about 15 hours of audio for Spotify. Technically, they fulfilled their deal, but their output was less than what Rogan releases in a couple of weeks.

At least the Obamas produced some shows. DuVernay never did, and the deal with the Russos was never officially signed. Archewell Audio, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's studio, plans to release its first series, Archetype, later this summer or in early fall; Markle will interview experts about stereotypes that have held back women. Kardashian's first show, on criminal justice, is expected later this year, as is Peele's, which is in the horror-thriller category. Simmons argues that the investment in celebrity-driven shows has attracted millions of new listeners. Spotify needed to steal market share from Apple, and the only way to do so was to make noise. ''Sometimes you have to learn the hard way. You do a deal with a production company, and it turns out they don't know how to produce anything,'' he says. ''There have been a couple misses. There have been a lot of hits, too.''

By the middle of last year, Ostroff decided it was time for a change. The podcast business was growing, yet Wall Street was questioning the results of corporate investments. She wanted someone new to lead Spotify's podcast studios. (Holt would now oversee live audio and other new projects.) She hired Julie McNamara in September 2021 from Paramount, where she oversaw original programming for streaming service Paramount+. McNamara shuttered Holt's catch-all, Studio 4, and has overhauled the way Spotify develops and produces podcasts.

She created a central team of creative executives to help pick and shepherd projects. Partners had previously complained about an unclear chain of command and a lack of continuity in the development process. ''When you have a partnership with people that haven't done audio before but are expert creatives, having infrastructure is really important,'' she says.

Many of the executives who built Spotify's podcasting business have left the company. Lydia Polgreen, who joined Spotify to run Gimlet after a long career in print journalism, returned to the New York Times. Matt Lieber, Gimlet's co-founder, has said he will leave later this year. Holt, marginalized following McNamara's hiring, resigned. The Obamas signed a new deal with Amazon's Audible Inc. on June 21.

At the same time Rogan was boosting Spotify's share price, he emerged as a leading skeptic of COVID-19 vaccines. After listening to him peddle skepticism for more than a year, hundreds of doctors signed a letter in January 2022 rebuking him and Spotify for endangering lives. Rock star Neil Young, who had polio as a kid, threatened to pull his music from Spotify if the company didn't cut ties. Spotify declined, and Young followed through on his threat, inspiring Joni Mitchell, Nils Lofgren, and several others to follow. After a few days of scandal, Rogan vowed to do more research before talking about certain topics and to balance out the more controversial viewpoints he aired.

As the controversy was ebbing, a video circulated online documenting the many times Rogan used racial slurs on his podcast. He apologized and said his words had been taken out of context. But the comments weren't a shock to many at Spotify. The company had conducted a review of Rogan's back catalog while doing the deal and identified several episodes that violated its content guidelines, which ban inciting violence, promoting terrorism, and targeting individuals for abuse and harassment. (As a music service that offers millions of rap and hip-hop songs, Spotify has no rules against the use of certain racial slurs.) Rogan elected not to upload those episodes to Spotify, which would have taken them down. There were several others that didn't violate Spotify's guidelines but did contain potentially problematic material regarding race, sex, and other topics. The company could only ask Rogan not to upload those episodes. He did so anyway.

The controversy damaged Spotify's relationships with talent. DuVernay ended her deal that month. Still, it didn't lead to mass defections of musicians, podcasters, or users. Ek said he disagreed with many things Rogan has said, but he also declined to take action against him. ''I do not believe that silencing Joe is the answer,'' he said at the time. (Spotify declined to make Ek available for an interview.)

Throughout the scandal, Ek portrayed Rogan as just another creator, as if Spotify hadn't paid him more than US$100 million. That may be disingenuous, but it underscores that Ek, despite funding hundreds of shows, views his company as a platform, not a programmer. Producing original podcasts helps Spotify differentiate itself and draws in users and advertisers. But the long-term plan for the company is not to produce thousands of finely crafted original series. It's to host millions of shows and hope some of them become as big, or nearly as big, as Rogan's.

YouTube built a US$30 billion ad business by catering to almost every video creator in the world. Spotify wants to do the same for audio, with the goal of hosting 50 million creators by 2025. When it acquired Gimlet and Parcast, it also bought a distributor, Anchor, to more easily let people upload their podcasts. And it acquired a company called Megaphone to help creators sell ads.

Earlier this year, Spotify announced a new structure for its podcasting business: McNamara will supervise original programming, while Parcast founder Max Cutler will oversee creators, managing relationships with the millions of shows that are produced by third parties.

McNamara has already scored her first big hit with Batman Unburied, a scripted podcast based on the DC Comics character. The show supplanted Rogan's atop Spotify's charts for a couple of weeks. Spotify will soon announce a slate of programs with sportswriter Jemele Hill, who has her own, independent podcast network. McNamara will also oversee video, which Spotify sees as an opportunity. A growing number of Rogan and Call Her Daddy fans watch'--instead of just listen to'--those podcasts on Spotify. And video dwarfs audio as a business. Netflix's revenue is three times the size of Spotify's, despite comparable subscriber bases.

As Spotify's share price plunged to record lows in June, the company hosted an investor day to alter the narrative. Yes, Ek said, even as Spotify's users, sales, and subscriber base have grown, its margins haven't improved. But that's because Spotify is investing in projects that will bear fruit in the future. ''We saw the potential to be much more than just a music company,'' he said.

For all the issues Spotify has, everyone in the podcasting industry agrees that it's on track to become the dominant player everywhere, thanks largely to brute force: It's invested the most money in new shows, especially abroad, as well as in the technology to capture ad dollars. As long as Apple doesn't sell ads and fund original programming, Spotify will ultimately be the big winner.

How big the win will be is another matter. Spotify has built a multibillion-dollar subscription business without turning a profit. It says it can generate US$100 billion in sales by diversifying further into podcasts, as well as other audio businesses. Ad sales now account for more than 10 per cent of total revenue. There's still more than US$10 billion in ad sales captured annually by AM/FM radio, and billions of dollars more in the audiobook business'--most of which benefits Audible. Spotify is convinced more of that business will come its way; after all, only 14 per cent of podcasts currently earn the company any money. ''In three years, Spotify has gone from basically zero to being the market leader in the US and a bunch of other markets,'' McNamara says of podcasting. ''It is very challenging to lay the track while the train is running.''

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 17:16

Tens of thousands of people have descended on major cities across Australia to demand access to safe abortions for millions of people in the US.

The ruling ended constitutional protections for safe and legal abortion that had been in place nearly 50 years.

Tens of thousands of people have descended on major cities across Australia to demand access to safe abortions for millions of US people. (Photograph by Chris Hopkins)Rallies have been held across the country in cities including Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Hobart and Wollongong. (Photograph by Chris Hopkins) Rallies have been held across the country in cities including Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Hobart and Wollongong.

A group of pro-abortion protesters were present at the Melbourne protest, however police were called in to separate the two causes.

The demonstrations also have a local focus, seeking to expand access to abortion here in Australia. (Photograph by Chris Hopkins) The demonstrations also have a local focus, seeking to expand access to abortion here in Australia.

Geography plays a major part in accessibility for people in other parts of the country.

In states such as Western Australia , abortions are permitted on request with a referral from a doctor up to 20 weeks of pregnancy. This is subject to counselling by a medical practitioner other than the one performing the abortion, or when the woman may face serious consequences if an abortion is not performed.

After 20 weeks of pregnancy abortions are only allowed to be performed if the fetus is likely to be born with severe medical problems, and this must be confirmed by two independently appointed doctors.

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 17:10

New York City has famously handled COVID as poorly as any city on earth.

From the initial surge and horrific death rates due in part to sending COVID positive patients back into nursing homes to infect other elderly residents, to masking toddlers, to private business vaccine mandates and discriminatory vaccine passports, New York has been a leading example of what not to do.

While former mayor Bill de Blasio was responsible for many of the city's terrible policies, current mayor Eric Adams has made a concerted effort to double down and make them even worse.

Well, that is when he's not too busy dancing maskless at a restaurant, attending Broadway shows maskless, or partying at the club maskless.

During a recent press conference, Adams explained that he'll be making one of his most indefensible decisions yet; mandating the COVID vaccines for children:

Adams said in response to a question that yes, the vaccines will be mandatory and that he and his team are still ''meeting and discussing'' and trying to come up with the ''best way to do it.''

This decision is completely unconscionable.

There is zero scientific justification for mandating these specific vaccines for children, especially young children. There is conclusively no benefit whatsoever with regards to preventing kids from becoming infected or transmitting the virus to others, and children are at remarkably low risk of severe illness from COVID regardless.

Not to mention that the recent authorization of the vaccines for the youngest age groups was based on efficacy estimates that would have failed the FDA standard required for adults.

Supposed research referenced by the CDC to justify their recommendation for children was also so poorly conducted and purposefully misleading that it had to be edited by the authors. Even that wasn't enough to fix all the issues.

The trials did not even attempt to study if there was a benefit for vaccination for kids who had previously had COVID, when the CDC estimates 75% of children have already contracted the virus.

Instead of evaluating the data, or realizing how weak the case is for parents to choose to vaccinate their kids, the mayor and his team of ''experts'' is going to make that decision for them. They're purposefully ignoring any risk/benefit analysis and exclusively appealing to their political team.

This will also inevitably lead to further losses in registration for New York City schools.

Just last year, enrollment dropped 4%, and public schools lost nearly 50,000 students from 2019-2020 to 2020-2021.

Instead of putting COVID in the rearview mirror and acknowledging the reality that vaccination must exclusively be a personal choice, New York City's mayor is continuing the theater with inexplicable, offensive mandates.

There's no possible reasonable or rational justification for this decision '' so it's completely unsurprising that New York is leading the way with yet another tremendously incompetent mandate.

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 17:05

The Fed's QE may be over, and QT may be just starting (it won't last long), but don't think the Fed free money giveaway is ending any time soon. In fact, for a handful of happy, mostly anonymous counterparties, the real free-money bonanza has just begun!

Case in point: the Fed's reverse repo facility. While one can debate for hours why there is a record $2.330 trillion in cash parked at the Fed's overnight facility and what it means for systemic plumbing problems, the fact is that there is a record $2.33 trillion in cash parked at the Fed's overnight facility, doing nothing.

Well not nothing: it was nothing when rates were zero, but at 1.55% which is the current reverse repo rate, that $2.33 trillion is a golden goose for the 108 counterparties that are parking cash at the facility, a mixture of money market funds, banks, GSEs and various other financial intermediaries.

How big is this particular Golden Goose? The chart below shows the payment in interest that the Fed makes day on this record $2.33 trillion in funds: as of today it amounts to just over $100 million every single day! That's right, more than $100 million in interest payments on funds parked with the Fed, which is by definition the world's only risk-free counterparty!

But wait, there's more!

Remember excess reserves? Well, technically excess reserves ended in March 2020 when the Fed reduced reserve requirement ratios to zero, thus converting the trillions in reserves held at the Fed from "excess reserves: to plain old "reserves" and which as of today amount to $3.13 trillion.

Whatever they are called now, however, reserves parked at the Fed (which is technically an incorrect phrase since the reserves are created by the Fed) also collect interest, and as of today, the Fed's Interest on (Excess) Reserves rate, or IOER, is 1.65%. This translates into $141 million in daily interest payments every single day to the various banks (mostly foreign) whose reserves are parked at the Fed!

Combining the two we get nearly a quarter billion, or to be precise $242 million and rising, in interest payments by the Fed - this is money which is printed into existence - every single day.

All of the above is with the Fed Funds rate at 1.75%. As a reminder, the Fed hopes to keep hiking at least another 175bps (or more) in the next 6 months, which will push the rate to 3.50% and will mean that the Fed will be paying half a billion in interest every single day to a handful of mostly unknown counterparties every day, money which for said counterparties is also known as (riskless) profit and which is only the result of the Fed's previous money printing.

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 17:05

Austin City Hall (KXAN File Photo)

Austin City Hall (KXAN File Photo)by: Christopher Adams

Posted: Jul 1, 2022 / 09:49 PM CDT

Updated: Jul 1, 2022 / 09:49 PM CDT

Austin City Hall (KXAN File Photo)

Austin City Hall (KXAN File Photo)by: Christopher Adams

Posted: Jul 1, 2022 / 09:49 PM CDT

Updated: Jul 1, 2022 / 09:49 PM CDT

AUSTIN (KXAN) '-- The head of Austin's Office of Civil Rights has been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation into complaints made against her.

Carol Johnson is director of the OCR. She began her tenure with the city in February 2021.

KXAN reported back in April that a third party city-funded investigation into Johnson was underway amid allegations of mistreatment and retaliation against office employees.

''To establish the next steps and ensure OCR has a successful path forward, Carol Johnson has been temporarily assigned to administrative leave status pending completion of management's review of these complaints,'' a city spokesperson told KXAN in a statement Friday.

''This action does not mean that the City has made any final determination about the complaints but is instead a temporary step to ensure the continuity of the OCR's work while this matter is under review.''

Tamela Salda±a, assistant director of the Small and Minority Business Resources Department, will serve as acting director of the OCR while Johnson is on leave.

An initial complaint against Johnson was filed to the Office of the City Auditor in November, which was then forwarded to the Human Resources Department in January.

The city paid $15,000 to hire Austin-based Lynch Law Firm for the investigation that began in January.

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 16:32

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- A cyberattack on a software company has disrupted unemployment benefits and job seeking assistance for thousands of people in several states.

In Tennessee, the website for unemployment benefits remained down Thursday morning after the vendor, Geographic Solutions Inc., told the state Sunday that service would be interrupted. Some 12,000 Tennesseans rely on the unemployment program, and for now, they're not getting their payments.

The company said that it expects Tennessee's system to be back online before July 4.

''With a recession looming, it is unacceptable that Tennesseans cannot receive the unemployment benefits they deserve," said state Republican Sen. Paul Bailey, commerce and labor committee chairman.

In a statement dated Wednesday evening, Geographic Solutions' president said initial investigation findings indicate that no personal data was accessed and no data was removed from its network operations center.

The president, Paul Toomey, said his company identified ''anomalous activity'' on its network and immediately took the Tennessee system offline to halt the activity.

''With the help of third-party specialists, we are conducting a full investigation to determine the cause and scope of the incident,'' Toomey said. ''That investigation is still ongoing, and we are taking steps to help prevent this from happening again.''

Unemployment websites in several other states were affected too. In Louisiana, people seeking to file unemployment online are directed instead to use a call center instead. The website to file claims in Nebraska was taken offline and the state said it did not have an exact timeline for when it would be back up.

''Individuals cannot file for unemployment until the system is back online," Nebraska Department of Labor spokeswoman Grace Johnson said in an email.

It's still unclear if it was a ransomware attack or some other type of cyber incident that affected Geographic Solutions. Nor it is clear how many states are affected.

Geographic Solutions' website was not working Thursday morning. The Florida-based company has said its clients include more than 35 states and territories.

Some state-run job seeking sites were also taken offline because of the attack, including Tennessee's. Florida said it was temporarily waiving a job search requirement for those receiving unemployment payments. Texas created a new website for its job seekers with links to popular work search sites such as LinkedIn.

Nebraska said Geographic Solutions indicated that no user's personal data was compromised. Florida said there were no indications any of its state systems were breached.

Bailey, the Tennessee lawmaker, said the state's labor department needs a back-up plan, ''so they are not completely dependent on a system proven to be unreliable.'' He said the state should do ''whatever it takes'' to get people their unemployment benefits now and streamline the process to update the system with money set aside by state lawmakers.

The length of the potential outage is unknown. Texas said it anticipates its job-search sites to remain offline until early next week.

State governments, as well as their contractors, are often targets of cyber criminals. Nigerian online scam artists were particularly active in stealing increased unemployment aide at the peak of the coronavirus pandemic.

Ransomware attacks, in which criminals encrypt victims' data and demand payment to return them to normal, continue to cause havoc on digital systems that provide critical government services. A recent ransomware attack on Costa Rica's government caused teachers to go unpaid and caused chaos in the country's health care system.

Last year, cybercriminals launched ransomware attacks in the U.S. that forced the shutdown of an oil pipeline that supplies the East Coast, halted production of the world's largest meat-processing company and compromised a major software company that has thousands of customers around the world.

Despite prioritizing the problem, the U.S. government has had little luck holding major ransomware actors accountable. Many operate in or near Russia with impunity.

Allan Liska, an intelligence analyst at the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, said an attack affecting those who have lost their jobs from obtaining unemployment benefits is a stark reminder of the huge effects cybercrime can have.

''The people who will be most adversely hurt by this are those with the fewest resources,'' he said.

'--'--'--

Suderman reported from Richmond, Virginia.

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 15:41

The Commonwealth Fund has its origins in the philanthropic efforts of the Harkness family. Stephen V. Harkness began his career in New York State's Finger Lakes region at age 15 as an apprentice harnessmaker. Harkness eventually settled in Ohio and became a successful businessman. He invested early with Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler in the petroleum refining business and provided funds at a critical moment in the history of the fledgling Standard Oil Company.

Stephen's wife, Anna Harkness, had a strong civic spirit and believed in encouraging all forms of self-help. In the years following her husband's death in 1888, she moved her family to New York City where she gave liberally to religious and welfare organizations, and to the city's major cultural institutions.

In 1918, Anna Harkness founded the Commonwealth Fund with the mandate that it should ''do something for the welfare of mankind.'' Among the first women to establish a foundation, Anna initially endowed the foundation with a gift of nearly $10 million. The Fund's first president was her son, Edward Stephen Harkness, who was committed to building a responsive and socially concerned philanthropy and who, over the years, gave generously to the Fund's endowment.

As a first step, Edward hired a staff of talented and experienced people, led by General Director Barry C. Smith. Harkness and Smith led that staff to rethink old ways, experiment with fresh ideas, and take chances, a path encouraged to this day by the Fund's board of directors.

Through additional gifts and bequests between 1918 and 1959, the Harkness family's total contribution to the Fund's endowment amounted to more than $53 million. Edward Harkness died in 1940 and his estate and that of his wife Mary were bequeathed to the Fund upon her death in 1950. With these bequests, the foundation's endowment amounted to $99 million, or approximately $852 million in today's dollars.

Throughout its history and in keeping with its donors' intent, the Commonwealth Fund has sought to be a catalyst for change by identifying promising practices and contributing to solutions that could help the United States achieve a high-performance health system. The Fund's role has been to establish a base of scientific evidence on what works, mobilize talented people to transform health care organizations, and collaborate with organizations that share its concerns.

The Fund's work has always focused particularly on the challenges vulnerable populations face in receiving high-quality, safe, compassionate, coordinated, and efficiently delivered care. The foundation's communications efforts have enabled it to share knowledge and experience and reach influential audiences able to push forward the necessary agenda for achieving a high-performance health system. As an independent, nonpartisan organization, the foundation has aimed to help develop common ground from which policymakers across the political spectrum can lead the nation toward a health care system that assures its residents have long, healthy, and productive lives.

History of Fund WorkThe Commonwealth Fund's work in the 1920s led to the development of the field of child guidance and contributed to the emergence of progressive public health departments in communities around the country. From the late 1920s through the 1940s, the Fund supported the construction of rural hospitals meeting high standards of care, and in doing so laid the way for the federal Hill-Burton Act, which in 1946 initiated a program of hospital construction and improvement. Always mindful of the long-term payoff of investments in people, the Fund launched in 1925 an international program '-- initially called the Commonwealth Fund Fellowships, later changed to the Harkness Fellowships '-- bringing young professionals from the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and other English-speaking countries to the United States for extended study and travel.

Following World War II, the Fund supported the development of new medical schools in the United States, with the aim of addressing doctor shortages and the needs of communities lacking health care services. In the 1960s and early 1970s, the Fund continued to contribute to the movement to bring health care to underserved communities, including troubled urban areas. Following a period of encouraging improved medical school curricula in the late 1970s, the foundation played a major role in the 1980s in stimulating the patient-centered care movement and bringing attention to the problems facing elderly Americans, as well as the challenges confronting the nation's academic health centers. The Fund also maintained its early interest in youth development in this period by helping stimulate organized youth mentoring programs.

Since 1995, the Fund has concentrated its efforts on helping to address health care coverage and access issues, improving the quality and efficiency of health care, and slowing the growth of health care costs. The foundation underwrote a considerable part of the research underlying the development of the reforms in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, and reports of its Commission on a High Performance Health System (1995''2013) helped inform the debate leading up to this landmark legislation. Since 1995, the Fund also has been a leading philanthropic voice promoting modernization of Medicare, developing new payment methods encouraging better and more efficient health care delivery, and delivery models featuring better primary care and care coordination. In all of this work, the foundation has placed a particular emphasis on meeting the needs of vulnerable populations.

The Fund refocused its historic international activity in 1997 with the creation of an international program in health policy and practice, the aim of which is to bring the international experience to bear on the U.S. health care reform debate and to promote exchanges that stimulate health system improvements in economically advanced countries. As a result, the earlier international fellowship program was transformed into the Harkness Fellowships in Health Care Policy and Practice (expanded to include key Western European countries), and the program features an annual ministerial-level international symposium in Washington, D.C.

To ensure that its work reaches the ear of key policy audiences, the Fund expanded its communications program, developed a Washington, D.C. office, and has funded an annual bipartisan retreat for members of Congress who focus on health care issues.

Throughout its history, the Fund has been a value-added grantmaker, employing a professional staff to work closely with grantees in developing and implementing projects and communicating their results to influential audiences. The Fund's domestic and international health care surveys; its U.S. national, state, and local health care scorecards; and its highly rated website and publications program make the foundation a major information resource for improving health systems, domestically and internationally.

Jean and Harvey PickerIn 1986, Jean and Harvey Picker joined the $15 million assets of the James Picker Foundation with those of the Commonwealth Fund ($200 million at the time). Recognizing the challenges faced by a small foundation, the Pickers chose the Fund as an institution with a common interest in improving health care and a record of effective grantmaking, management, and leadership. The Commonwealth Fund strives to do justice to the philosophy and standards of the Picker family by shaping programs that further the cause of good care and healthy lives for all Americans.

Health Services Improvement FundIn April 1996, the Fund received a $1.7 million contribution from the Health Services Improvement Fund with a commitment to use these funds to improve health care coverage, access, and quality in the New York City greater metropolitan region.

Frances Cooke MacgregorIn her 2002 bequest to the Fund, Frances Cooke Macgregor gave $3.1 million to the Fund's endowment to help support projects that aim to reduce medical errors and improve patient safety. A pioneer in the fields of medical sociology and medical anthropology, Ms. Macgregor was an expert on the psychological and sociological effects of facial disfigurement.

Other DonorsWhile the Commonwealth Fund does not solicit funds, it has received periodic smaller gifts from individuals over the years, including shares of royalties received from books published by former grantees.

Harkness HouseThe Commonwealth Fund received its historic headquarters building as a bequest in 1951 from the estate of Mary Stillman Harkness, daughter-in-law of the foundation's founder, Anna Harkness. The Fund took occupancy of the building in that year, and has used it as its offices since that time.

Designed by the world-class architect James Gamble Rogers, the building was constructed between 1906 and 1908 as the residence of Edward and Mary Stillman Harkness, and was a gift to them from his mother, Anna Harkness. Much of the business of the Fund was conducted from this building during the period that Edward S. Harkness was president of the Fund, 1918 until his death in 1940.

Known as ''Harkness House,'' One East 75th Street in New York City received landmark status in 1967. The Landmarks Preservation Commission's designation described the building as ''an imposing residence in the style of an Italian Renaissance palazzo . . . outstanding not only for excellence of design and beauty of execution, but also for subtle richness of detail.'' Landmarks designation was accorded ''because Harkness House has a special character, special historical and aesthetic interest and value as part of the development, heritage and cultural characteristics of New York City.'' In a 1987 essay on the building, architecture critic Paul Goldberger described Harkness House as ''a notable presence on the cityscape of New York,'' and, noting the care that has been given to its maintenance, observed that ''the preservation of one of New York's most distinguished houses can, in and of itself, be a philanthropic gesture that enriches the quality of life for the entire city.''

The donor's expectation that the Commonwealth Fund would use this distinguished building to advance the foundation's mission continues to be fulfilled, as the architectural stature and location of the building, along with its effective maintenance, make it a very desirable location for high-level health policy meetings. The building is used both for providing office space for the Fund's staff and for meetings that advance the foundation's work.

The major restoration of the building undertaken by the Fund in the early 1980s helped spark the general move toward improved care of the city's public spaces and historic buildings on the Upper East Side, which then spread to other neighborhoods. The Fund is pleased to make it possible for those interested in architecture and social history to tour Harkness House, through periodic tours arranged by the Institute of Classical Architecture and Classical America.

The Fund also maintains the Edward S. and Mary S. Harkness Mausoleum, a National Historic Landmark at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York. Begun in 1924, the mausoleum is the result of a long and loyal relationship between the Harknesses and architect James Gamble Rogers, in collaboration with the landscape designer Beatrix Farrand and several accomplished artisans. (Read more about the mausoleum.)

Commonwealth Fund Presidents and General Directors1918''1940Edward S. Harkness1920''1947Barry C. Smith, General Director1940''1964Malcolm P. Aldrich1964''1975J. Quigg Newton1975''1980Carleton B. Chapman, M.D.1980''1994Margaret E. Mahoney1995''2012Karen Davis2013''David Blumenthal, M.D.Centennial CelebrationTo celebrate 100 years of our work to improve health care and make it affordable and accessible for all Americans, we launched a website in 2018 that tells the Commonwealth Fund's story. Explore here.

Rockefeller Archive CenterThe Fund makes its historical material available for scholarly research through the Rockefeller Archive Center at https://rockarch.org/.

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 15:23

Uganda announced that it had discovered 31 million metric tons of gold waiting to be mined in the country after several surveys were conducted. A spokesperson from the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development in Uganda, Solomon Muyita, said that these reports are aimed at attracting gold miners and investors in the crypto sector.

In a bid to boost the country's economy, the Ugandan government has licensed Wagagai gold mining company, a Chinese firm to start producing gold products in Busia district. The company embarked on the construction of its gold refinery valued at USD200m in phases in the district in 2016. Muyita said that the discovered gold could start being mined immediately.

Refining gold locally could enhance job creation, and improve social service delivery to those living close to where the mineral is extracted. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has called for the local refinement of the the commodity, calling any external refinery criminal. ''It is criminal for anybody to argue for the continued exports of raw materials in Africa, when there is 90% more value in that product that you are giving to theoutsiders'' he said.

Tan Chun Chi, the general manager of Wagagai gold mining company, says that the investment has reached US $60 million. He explains that they have been lagging behindin the construction due to the lack of the two licenses. The company has recently obtained a gold production license in March this year and has a 21-year lease to minegold in the country. and expect to double their speed because they expect to begin gold production by July 2023.

RELATED: Fortuna drills 18.3 g/t gold over 11.9 meters at S(C)gu(C)la

The company has invested $200M towards constructing a refining facility. Despite all the gold discovered in the country, the mining difficulty is notably high, and this impacts the amount of gold that is actually mined. Around 2500 to 3000 metric tonnes are mined every year.

Subscribe to our newsletter''If this is indeed the volume that we have, it is time to clean our house, and do business, in developing ourselves and our country, by going to the middle income status and beyond.'' said Winnie Ngabirwe Mineral Development Expert.

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 14:43

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler said Monday that bitcoin BTCUSD, -1.03% was the only cryptocurrency he was prepared to publicly label a commodity, rather than a security, in an interview with CNBC.

The debate over whether any particular cryptocurrency can be labeled a commodity rather than a security has far reaching implications because financial instruments that are securities can only be legally sold to the public if the issuer registers with the SEC and adheres to strict disclosure regime.

''Many of these tokens'...the investing public is hoping for a return just like when they invest in other financial assets we call securities,'' he said in an interview on Squawk Box. ''Many of these financial assets, crypto financial assets have the key attributes of a security,'' and are therefore under the SEC's jurisdiction.

''Some like bitcoin, and that's the only one I'm gonna say'...my predecessors and others have said, they're a commodity,'' he added, noting this classification gives the Commodity Futures Trading Commission a key role in overseeing bitcoin markets.

''There's two great market regulators in this country,'' Gensler continued, arguing that the agencies have the capacity to work together to bring fairness, transparency and investor protection to markets for digital assets.

Prices for digital assets like bitcoin and ether ETHUSD, -1.25% have fallen significantly in recent weeks, though have shown signs of stabilization more recently.

Bitcoin has fallen nearly 60% over the past six months, but is up about 1% over the last week, according to FactSet.

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 14:43

We will look back at current events and realise that they marked the change from a dollar-based global economy underwritten by financial assets to commodity-backed currencies. We face a change from collateral being purely financial in nature to becoming commodity based. It is collateral that underwrites the whole financial system.The ending of the financially based system is being hastened by geopolitical developments. The West is desperately trying to sanction Russia into economic submission, but is only succeeding in driving up energy, commodity, and food prices against itself. Central banks will have no option but to inflate their currencies to pay for it all. Russia is linking the rouble to commodity prices through a moving gold peg instead, and China has already demonstrated an understanding of the West's inflationary game by having stockpiled commodities and essential grains for the last two years and allowed her currency to rise against the dollar.China and Russia are not going down the path of the West's inflating currencies. Instead, they are moving towards a sounder money strategy with the prospect of stable interest rates and prices while the West accelerates in the opposite direction.The Credit Suisse analyst, Zoltan Pozsar, calls it Bretton Woods III. This article looks at how it is likely to play out, concluding that the dollar and Western currencies, not the rouble, will have the greatest difficulty dealing with the end of fifty years of economic financialisation.Pure finance is being replaced with commodity financeIt hasn't hit the main-stream media yet, which is still reporting yesterday's battle. But in March, the US Administration passed a death sentence on its own hegemony in a last desperate throw of the dollar dice. Not only did it misread the Russian situation with respect to its economy, but America mistakenly believed in its own power by sanctioning Russia and Putin's oligarchs.

It may have achieved a partial blockade on Russia's export volumes, but compensation has come from higher unit prices, benefiting Russia, and costing the Western alliance.

The consequence is a final battle in the financial war which has been brewing for decades. You do not sanction the world's most important source of energy exports and the marginal supplier of a wide range of commodities and raw materials, including grains and fertilisers, without damaging everyone but the intended target. Worse still, the intended target has in China an extremely powerful friend, with which Russia is a partner in the world's largest economic bloc '-- the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation '-- commanding a developing market of over 40% of the world's population. That is the future, not the past: the past is Western wokery, punitive taxation, economies dominated by the state and its bureaucracy, anti-capitalistic socialism, and magic money trees to help pay for it all.

Despite this enormous hole in the sanctions net, the West has given itself no political option but to attempt to tighten sanctions even more. But Russia's response is devastating for the western financial system. In two simple announcements, tying the rouble to gold for domestic credit institutions and insisting that payments for energy will only be accepted in roubles, it is calling an end to the fiat dollar era that has ruled the world from the suspension of Bretton Woods in 1971 to today.

Just over five decades ago, the dollar took over the role for itself as the global reserve asset from gold. After the seventies, which was a decade of currency, interest rate, and financial asset volatility, we all settled down into a world of increasing financialisation. London's big bang in the early 1980s paved the way for regulated derivatives and the 1990s saw the rise of hedge funds and dotcoms. That was followed by an explosion in over-the-counter unregulated derivatives into the hundreds of trillions and securitisations which hit the speed-bump of the Lehman failure. Since then, the expansion of global credit for purely financial activities has been remarkable creating a financial asset bubble to rival anything seen in the history of financial excesses. And together with statistical suppression of the effect on consumer prices the switch of economic resources from Main Street to Wall Street has hidden the inflationary evidence of credit expansion from the public's gaze.

All that is coming to an end with a new commoditisation '-- what respected flows analyst Zoltan Pozsar at Credit Suisse calls Bretton Woods III. In his enumeration the first was suspended by President Nixon in 1971, and the second ran from then until now when the dollar has ruled indisputably. That brings us to Bretton Woods III.

Russia's insistence that importers of its energy pay in roubles and not in dollars or euros is a significant development, a direct challenge to the dollar's role. There are no options for Russia's ''unfriendlies'', Russia's description for the alliance united against it. The EU, which is the largest importer of Russian natural gas, either bites the bullet or scrambles for insufficient alternatives. The option is to buy natural gas and oil at reasonable rouble prices or drive prices up in euros and still not get enough to keep their economies going and the citizens warm and mobile. Either way, it seems Russia wins, and one way the EU loses.

As to Pozsar's belief that we are on the verge of Bretton Woods III, one can see the logic of his argument. The highly inflated financial bubble marks the end of an era, fifty years in the making. Negative interest rates in the EU and Japan are not just an anomaly, but the last throw of the dice for the yen and the euro. The ECB and the Bank of Japan have bond portfolios which have wiped out their equity, and then some. All Western central banks which have indulged in QE have the same problem. Contrastingly, the Russian central bank and the Peoples Bank of China have not conducted any QE and have clean balance sheets. Rising interest rates in Western currencies are made more certain and their height even greater by Russia's aggressive response to Western sanctions. It hastens the bankruptcy of the entire Western banking system and by bursting the highly inflated financial bubble will leave little more than hollowed-out economies.

Putin has taken as his model the 1973 Nixon/Kissinger agreement with the Saudis to only accept US dollars in payment for oil, and to use its dominant role in OPEC to force other members to follow suit. As the World's largest energy exporter Russia now says she will only accept roubles, repeating for the rouble the petrodollar strategy. And even Saudi Arabia is now bending with the wind and accepting China's renminbi for its oil, calling symbolic time on the Nixon/Kissinger petrodollar agreement.

The West, by which we mean America, the EU, Britain, Japan, South Korea, and a few others have set themselves up to be the fall guys. That statement barely describes the strategic stupidity '-- an Ignoble Award is closer to the truth. By phasing out fossil fuels before they could be replaced entirely with green energy sources, an enormous shortfall in energy supplies has arisen. With an almost religious zeal, Germany has been cutting out nuclear generation. And even as recently as last month it still ruled out extending the lifespan of its nuclear facilities. The entire G7 membership were not only unprepared for Russia turning the tables on its members, but so far, they have yet to come up with an adequate response.

Russia has effectively commoditised its currency, particularly for energy, gold, and food. It is following China down a similar path. In doing so it has undermined the dollar's hegemony, perhaps fatally. As the driving force behind currency values, commodities will be the collateral replacing financial assets. It is interesting to observe the strength in the Mexican peso against the dollar (up 9.7% since November 2021) and the Brazilian real (up 21% over a year) And even the South African rand has risen by 11% in the last five months. That these flaky currencies are rising tells us that resource backing for currencies has its attractions beyond the rouble and renminbi.

But having turned their backs on gold, the Americans and their Western epigones lack an adequate response. If anything, they are likely to continue the fight for dollar hegemony rather than accept reality. And the more America struggles to assert its authority, the greater the likelihood of a split in the Western partnership. Europe needs Russian energy desperately, and America does not. Europe cannot afford to support American policy unconditionally.

That, of course, is Russia's bet.

Russia's point of viewFor the second time in eight years, Russia has seen its currency undermined by Western action over Ukraine. Having experienced it in 2014, this time the Russian central bank was better prepared. It had diversified out of dollars adding official gold reserves. The commercial banking system was overhauled, and the Governor of the RCB, Elvira Nabiullina, by following classical monetary policies instead of the Keynesianism of her Western contempories, has contained the fall-out from the war in Ukraine. As Figure 1 shows, the rouble halved against the dollar in a knee-jerk reaction before recovering to pre-war levels.

The link to commodities is gold, and the RCB announced that until end-June it stands ready to buy gold from Russian banks at 5,000 roubles per gramme. The stated purpose was to allow banks to lend against mine production, given that Russian-sourced gold is included in the sanctions. But the move has encouraged speculation that the rouble is going on a quasi- gold standard; never mind that a gold standard works the other way round with users of the currency able to exchange it for gold.

Besides being with silver the international legal definition of money (the rest being currency and credit), gold is a good proxy for commodities, as shown in Figure 2 below.[i] Priced in goldgrams, crude oil today is 30% below where it was in the 1950, long before Nixon suspended the Bretton Woods Agreement. Meanwhile, measured in depreciating fiat currencies the price has soared and been extremely volatile along the way.

It is a similar story for other commodity prices, whereby maximum stability is to be found in prices measured in goldgrams. Taking up Pozsar's point about currencies being increasingly linked to commodities in Bretton Woods III, it appears that Russia intends to use gold as proxy for commodities to stabilise the rouble. Instead of a fixed gold exchange rate, the RCB has wisely left itself the option to periodically revise the price it will pay for gold after 1 July.

Table 1 shows how the RCB's current fixed rouble gold exchange rate translates into US dollars.

While non-Russian credit institutions do not have access to the facility, it appears that there is nothing to stop a Russian bank buying gold in another centre, such as Dubai, to sell to the Russian central bank for roubles. All that is needed is for the dollar/rouble rate to be favourable for the arbitrage and the ability to settle in a non-sanctioned currency, such as renminbi, or to have access to Eurodollars which it can exchange for Euroroubles (see below) from a bank outside the ''unfriendlies'' jurisdictions.

The dollar/rouble rate can now easily be controlled by the RCB, because how demand for roubles in short supply is handled becomes a matter of policy. Gazprom's payment arm (Gazprombank) is currently excused the West's sanctions and EU gas and oil payments will be channelled through it.

Broadly, there are four ways in which a Western consumer can acquire roubles:

By buying roubles on the foreign exchanges.By depositing euros, dollars, or sterling with Gazprombank and have them do the conversion as agents.By Gazprombank increasing its balance sheet to provide credit, but collateral which is not sanctioned would be required.By foreign banks creating rouble credits which can be paid to Gazprombank against delivery of energy supplies.The last of these four is certainly possible, because that is the basis of Eurodollars, which circulate outside New York's monetary system and have become central to international liquidity. To understand the creation of Eurodollars, and therefore the possibility of a developing Eurorouble market we must delve into the world of credit creation.

There are two ways in which foreigners can hold dollar balances. The way commonly understood is through the correspondent banking system. Your bank, say in Europe, will run deposit accounts with their correspondent banks in New York (JPMorgan, Citi etc.). So, if you make a deposit in dollars, the credit to your account will reconcile with the change in your bank's correspondent account in New York.

Now let us assume that you approach your European bank for a dollar loan. If the loan is agreed, it appears as a dollar asset on your bank's balance sheet, which through double-entry bookkeeping is matched by a dollar liability in favour of you, the borrower. It cannot be otherwise and is the basis of all bank credit creation. But note that in the creation of these balances the American banking system is not involved in any way, which is how and why Eurodollars circulate, being fungible with but separate in origin from dollars in the US.

By the same method, we could see the birth and rapid expansion of a Eurorouble market. All that's required is for a bank to create a loan in roubles, matched under double-entry bookkeeping with a deposit which can be used for payments. It doesn't matter which currency the bank runs its balance sheet in, only that it has balance sheet space, access to rouble liquidity and is a credible counterparty.

This suggests that Eurozone and Japanese banks can only have limited participation because they are already very highly leveraged. The banks best able to run Eurorouble balances are the Americans and Chinese because they have more conservative asset to equity ratios. Furthermore, the large Chinese banks are majority state-owned, and already have business and currency interests with Russia giving them a head start with respect to rouble liquidity.

We have noticed that the large American banks are not shy of dealing with the Chinese despite the politics, so presumably would like the opportunity to participate in Euroroubles. But only this week, the US Government prohibited them from paying holders of Russia's sovereign debt more than $600 million. So, we should assume the US banks cannot participate which leaves the field open to the Chinese mega-banks. And any attempt to increase sanctions on Russia, perhaps by adding Gazprombank to the sanctioned list, achieves nothing, definitely cuts out American banks from the action, and enhances the financial integration between Russia and China. The gulf between commodity-backed currencies and yesteryear's financial fiat simply widens.

For now, further sanctions are a matter for speculation. But Gazprombank with the assistance of the Russian central bank will have a key role in providing the international market for roubles with wholesale liquidity, at least until the market acquires depth in liquidity. In return, Gazprombank can act as a recycler of dollars and euros gained through trade surpluses without them entering the official reserves. Dollars, euros yen and sterling are the unfriendlies' currencies, so the only retentions are likely to be renminbi and gold.

In this manner we might expect roubles, gold and commodities to tend to rise in tandem. We can see the process by which, as Zoltan Pozsar put it, Bretton Woods III, a global currency regime based on commodities, can take over from Bretton Woods II, which has been characterised by the financialisation of currencies. And it's not just Russia and her roubles. It's a direction of travel shared by China.

The economic effects of a strong currency backed by commodities defy monetary and economic beliefs prevalent in the West. But the consequences that flow from a stronger currency are desirable: falling interest rates, wealth remaining in the private sector and an escape route from the inevitable failure of Western currencies and their capital markets. The arguments in favour of decoupling from the dollar-dominated monetary system have suddenly become compelling.

The consequences for the WestMost Western commentary is gung-ho for further sanctions against Russia. Relatively few independent commentators have pointed out that by sanctioning Russia and freezing her foreign exchange reserves, America is destroying her own hegemony. The benefits of gold reserves have also been pointedly made to those that have them. Furthermore, central banks leaving their gold reserves vaulted at Western central banks exposes them to sanctions, should a nation fall foul of America. Doubtless, the issue is being discussed around the world and some requests for repatriation of bullion are bound to follow.

There is also the problem of gold leases and swaps, vital for providing liquidity in bullion markets, but leads to false counting of reserves. This is because under the IMF's accounting procedures, leased and swapped gold balances are recorded as if they were still under a central bank's ownership and control, despite bullion being transferred to another party in unallocated accounts.[ii]

No one knows the extent of swaps and leases, but it is likely to be significant, given the evidence of gold price interventions over the last fifty years. Countries which have been happy to earn fees and interest to cover storage costs and turn gold bullion storage into a profitable activity (measured in fiat) are at the margin now likely to not renew swap and lease agreements and demand reallocation of bullion into earmarked accounts, which would drain liquidity from bullion markets. A rising gold price will then be bound to ensue.

Ever since the suspension of Bretton Woods in 1971, the US Government has tried to suppress gold relative to the dollar, encouraging the growth of gold derivatives to absorb demand. That gold has moved from $35 to $1920 today demonstrates the futility of these policies. But emotionally at least, the US establishment is still virulently anti-gold.

As Figure 2 above clearly shows, the link between commodity prices and gold has endured through it all. It is this factor that completely escapes popular analysis with every commodity analyst assuming in their calculations a constant objective value for the dollar and other currencies, with price subjectivity confined to the commodity alone. The use of charts and other methods of forecasting commodity prices assume as an iron rule that price changes in transactions come only from fluctuations in commodity values.

The truth behind prices measured in unbacked currencies is demonstrated by the cost of oil priced in gold having declined about 30% since the 1960s. That is reasonable given new extraction technologies and is consistent with prices tending to ease over time under a gold standard. It is only in fiat currencies that prices have soared. Clearly, gold is considerably more objective for transaction purposes than fiat currencies, which are definitely not.

Therefore, if, as the chart in the tweet below suggests, the dollar price of oil doubles from here, it will only be because at the margin people prefer oil to dollars '-- not because they want oil beyond their immediate needs, but because they want dollars less.

China recognised these dynamics following the Fed's monetary policies of March 2020, when it reduced its funds rate to the zero bound and instituted QE at $120bn every month. The signal concerning the dollar's future debasement was clear, and China began to stockpile oil, commodities, and food '-- just to get rid of dollars. This contributed to the rise in dollar commodity prices, which commenced from that moment, despite falling demand due to covid and supply chain problems. The effect of dollar debasement is reflected in Figure 3, which is of a popular commodity tracking ETF.

A better understanding would be to regard the increase in the value of this commodity basket not as a near doubling since March 2020, but as a near halving of the dollar's purchasing power with respect to it.

Furthermore, the Chinese have been prescient enough to accumulate stocks of grains. The result is that 20% of the world's population has access to 70% of the word's maize stocks, 60% of rice, 50% of wheat and 35% of soybeans. The other 80% of the world's population will almost certainly face acute shortages this year as exports of grain and fertiliser from Ukraine/Russia effectively cease.

China's actions show that she has to a degree already tied her currency to commodities, recognising the dollar would lose purchasing power. And this is partially reflected in the yuan's exchange rate against the US dollar, which since May 2020 has gained over 11%.

Implications for the dollar, euro and yenIn this article the close relationship between gold, oil, and wider commodities has been shown. It appears that Russia has found a way of tying her currency not to the dollar, but to commodities through gold, and that China has effectively been doing the same thing for two years without the gold link. The logic is to escape the consequences of currency and credit expansion for the dollar and other Western currencies as their purchasing power is undermined. And the use of a gold peg is an interesting development in this context.

We should bear in mind that according to the US Treasury TIC system foreigners own $33.24 trillion of financial securities and short-term assets including bank deposits. That is in addition to a few trillion, perhaps, in Eurodollars not recorded in the TIC statistics. These funds are only there in such quantities because of the financialisation of Western currencies, a situation we now expect to end. A change in the world's currency order towards Pozsar's Bretton Woods III can be expected to a substantial impact on these funds.

To prevent foreign selling of the $6.97 trillion of short-term securities and cash, interest rates would have to be raised not just to tackle rising consumer prices (a Keynesian misunderstanding about the economic role of interest rates, disproved by Gibson's paradox[iii]) but to protect the currency on the foreign exchanges, particularly relative to the rouble and the yuan. Unfortunately, sufficiently high interest rates to encourage short-term money and deposits to stay would destabilise the values of the foreign owned $26.27 trillion in long-term securities '-- bonds and equities.

As the manager of US dollar interest rates, the dilemma for the Fed is made more acute by sanctions against Russia exposing the weakness of the dollar's position. The fall in its purchasing power is magnified by soaring dollar prices for commodities, and the rise in consumer prices will be greater and sooner as a result. It is becoming possible to argue convincingly that interest rates for one-year dollar deposits should soon be in double figures, rather than the three per cent or so argued by monetary policy hawks. Whatever the numbers turn out to be, the consequences are bound to be catastrophic for financial assets and for the future of financially oriented currencies where financial assets are the principal form of collateral.

It appears that Bretton Woods II is indeed over. That being the case, America will find it virtually impossible to retain the international capital flows which have allowed it to finance the twin deficits '-- the budget and trade gaps. And as securities' values fall with rising interest rates, unless the US Government takes a very sharp knife to its spending at a time of stagnating or falling economic activity, the Fed will have to step up with enhanced QE.

The excuse that QE stimulates the economy will have been worn out and exposed for what it is: the debasement of the currency as a means of hidden taxation. And the foreign capital that manages to escape from a dollar crisis is likely to seek a home elsewhere. But the other two major currencies in the dollar's camp, the euro and yen, start from an even worse position. These are shown in Figure 4. With their purchasing power visibly collapsing the ECB and the Bank of Japan still have negative interest rates, seemingly trapped under the zero bound. Policy makers find themselves torn between the Scylla of consumer price inflation and the Charybdis of declining economic activity. A further problem is that these central banks have become substantial investors in government and other bonds (the BOJ even has equity ETFs on board) and rising bond yields are playing havoc with their balance sheets, wiping out their equity requiring a systemic recapitalisation.

Not only are the ECB and BOJ technically bankrupt without massive capital injections, but their commercial banking networks are hugely overleveraged with their global systemically important banks '-- their G-SIBs '-- having assets relative to equity averaging over twenty times. And unlike the Brazilian real, the Mexican peso and even the South African rand, the yen and the euro are sliding against the dollar.

The response from the BOJ is one of desperately hanging on to current policies. It is rigging the market by capping the yield on the 10-year JGB at 0.25%, which is where it is now.

These currency developments are indicative of great upheavals and an approaching crisis. Financial bubbles are undoubtedly about to burst sinking fiat financial values and all that sail with them. Government bonds will be yesterday's story because neither China nor Russia, whose currencies can be expected to survive the transition from financial to commodity orientation, run large budget deficits. That, indeed, will be part of their strength.

The financial war, so long predicted and described in my essays for Goldmoney, appears to be reaching its climax. At the end it has boiled down to who understands money and currencies best. Led by America, the West has ignored the legal definition of money, substituting fiat dollars for it instead. Monetary policy lost its anchor in realism, drifting on a sea of crackpot inflationary beliefs instead.

But Russia and China have not made the same mistake. China played along with the Keynesian game while it suited them. Consequently, while Russia may be struggling militarily, unless a miracle occurs the West seems bound to lose the financial war and we are, indeed, transiting into Pozsar's Bretton Woods III.

[i] Chart kindly provided by James Turk from his recent book, Money and Liberty (pub. Wood Lane Books)

[ii] See Treatment of Reserves and Fund Accounts '-- Balance of Payments Division IMF Statistics Department.

[iii] Gibson's paradox showed that the price correlation with interest rates was with the general price level, not with the rate of price changes. Because Keynes and others failed to explain it, modern economists ignore this relationship with respect to monetary policies. See https://www.goldmoney.com/research/goldmoney-insights/gibson-s-paradox

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect those of Goldmoney, unless expressly stated. The article is for general information purposes only and does not constitute either Goldmoney or the author(s) providing you with legal, financial, tax, investment, or accounting advice. You should not act or rely on any information contained in the article without first seeking independent professional advice. Care has been taken to ensure that the information in the article is reliable; however, Goldmoney does not represent that it is accurate, complete, up-to-date and/or to be taken as an indication of future results and it should not be relied upon as such. Goldmoney will not be held responsible for any claim, loss, damage, or inconvenience caused as a result of any information or opinion contained in this article and any action taken as a result of the opinions and information contained in this article is at your own risk.

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 14:38

American writer, teacher, and journalist (1867''1957)

Laura Ingalls Wilder

Laura Ingalls Wilder, circa 1885

BornLaura Elizabeth Ingalls ( 1867-02-07 ) February 7, 1867Pepin County, Wisconsin, U.S.DiedFebruary 10, 1957 (1957-02-10) (aged 90)Mansfield, Missouri, U.S.Resting placeMansfield Cemetery, Mansfield, Missouri, U.S.OccupationWriterteacherjournalistfamily farmerPeriod1911''1957 (as a writer)GenreDiaries, essays, family saga (children's historical novels)SubjectMidwestern and WesternNotable worksNotable awardsLaura Ingalls Wilder Medal est. 1954 SpouseChildren2, including Rose Wilder LaneParentsRelativesLaura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder (February 7, 1867 '' February 10, 1957) was an American writer, mostly known for the Little House on the Prairie series of children's books, published between 1932 and 1943, which were based on her childhood in a settler and pioneer family.[1]

During the 1970s and early 1980s, the television series Little House on the Prairie was loosely based on the Little House books, and starred Melissa Gilbert as Laura and Michael Landon as her father, Charles Ingalls.[2]

Birth and ancestry [ edit ] Caroline and Charles Ingalls

Laura Elizabeth Ingalls was born to Charles Phillip and Caroline Lake (n(C)e Quiner) Ingalls on February 7, 1867. At the time of Ingalls' birth, the family lived seven miles north of the village of Pepin, Wisconsin, in the Big Woods region of Wisconsin. Ingalls' home in Pepin became the setting for her first book, Little House in the Big Woods (1932).[3] She was the second of five children, following older sister, Mary Amelia.[4][5][6][7] Three more children would follow, Caroline Celestia (Carrie), Charles Frederick, who died in infancy, and Grace Pearl. Ingalls Wilder's birth site is commemorated by a replica log cabin at the Little House Wayside in Pepin.[8]

Ingalls was a descendant of the Delano family, the ancestral family of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.[9][10] One paternal ancestor, Edmund Ingalls, from Skirbeck, Lincolnshire, England, emigrated to America, settling in Lynn, Massachusetts.[9]

Laura is the 7th great granddaughter of the Mayflower passenger Richard Warren.[11] She was a third cousin, once removed, of U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant.[12]

Early life [ edit ] When she was two years old, Ingalls Wilder moved with her family from Wisconsin in 1869. After stopping in Rothville, Missouri, they settled in the Indian country of Kansas, near modern-day Independence, Kansas. Her younger sister, Carrie, was born in Independence in August 1870, not long before they moved again. According to Ingalls Wilder, her father Charles Ingalls had been told that the location would be open to white settlers, but when they arrived this was not the case. The Ingalls family had no legal right to occupy their homestead because it was on the Osage Indian reservation. They had just begun to farm when they heard rumors that settlers would be evicted, so they left in the spring of 1871. Although in her novel, Little House on the Prairie, and Pioneer Girl memoir, Ingalls Wilder portrayed their departure as being prompted by rumors of eviction, she also noted that her parents needed to recover their Wisconsin land because the buyer had not paid the mortgage.[13]

The Ingalls family went back to Wisconsin where they lived for the next three years. Those experiences formed the basis for Wilder's novels Little House in the Big Woods (1932) and the beginning of Little House on the Prairie (1935).

On the Banks of Plum Creek (1939), the third volume of her fictionalized history which takes place around 1874, the Ingalls family moves from Kansas to an area near Walnut Grove, Minnesota, settling in a dugout on the banks of Plum Creek.[14]

Laura Ingalls Wilder dugout location

They moved there from Wisconsin when Ingalls was about seven years old, after briefly living with the family of her uncle, Peter Ingalls, first in Wisconsin and then on rented land near Lake City, Minnesota. In Walnut Grove, the family first lived in a dugout sod house on a preemption claim; after wintering in it, they moved into a new house built on the same land. Two summers of ruined crops led them to move to Iowa. On the way, they stayed again with Charles Ingalls' brother, Peter Ingalls, this time on his farm near South Troy, Minnesota. Her brother, Charles Frederick Ingalls ("Freddie"), was born there on November 1, 1875, dying nine months later in August 1876. In Burr Oak, Iowa, the family helped run a hotel. The youngest of the Ingalls children, Grace, was born there on May 23, 1877.

The family moved from Burr Oak back to Walnut Grove where Charles Ingalls served as the town butcher and justice of the peace. He accepted a railroad job in the spring of 1879, which took him to eastern Dakota Territory, where they joined him that fall. Ingalls Wilder omitted the period in 1876''1877 when they lived near Burr Oak, skipping to Dakota Territory, portrayed in By the Shores of Silver Lake (1939).

De Smet [ edit ] Surveyor's House, the first home in Dakota Territory of the Charles Ingalls family '' De Smet, South Dakota

Wilder's father filed for a formal homestead over the winter of 1879''1880.[15] De Smet, South Dakota, became her parents' and sister Mary, who was blind, home for the remainder of their lives. After spending the mild winter of 1879''1880 in the surveyor's house, they watched the town of De Smet rise up from the prairie in 1880. The following winter, 1880''1881, one of the most severe on record in the Dakotas, was later described by Ingalls Wilder in her novel, The Long Winter (1940). Once the family was settled in De Smet, Ingalls attended school, worked several part-time jobs, and made friends. Among them was bachelor homesteader Almanzo Wilder. This time in her life is documented in the books Little Town on the Prairie (1941) and These Happy Golden Years (1943).

Young teacher [ edit ] On December 10, 1882, two months before her 16th birthday, Ingalls accepted her first teaching position.[16] She taught three terms in one-room schools when she was not attending school in De Smet. (In Little Town on the Prairie she receives her first teaching certificate on December 24, 1882, but that was an enhancement for dramatic effect.[citation needed ]) Her original "Third Grade" teaching certificate can be seen on page 25 of William Anderson's book Laura's Album (1998).[17] She later admitted she did not particularly enjoy it, but felt a responsibility from a young age to help her family financially, and wage-earning opportunities for women were limited. Between 1883 and 1885, she taught three terms of school, worked for the local dressmaker, and attended high school, although she did not graduate. (According to the books, this was due to her first teaching job starting before her schooling finished.)

Early marriage years [ edit ] Rose Wilder Lane birthplace roadside marker '' De Smet

Laura and Almanzo Wilder, circa 1885

Location of Wilder homestead where both of Wilder's children were born '' De Smet

Ingalls' teaching career and studies ended when the 18-year-old Laura married 28-year-old Almanzo Wilder on August 25, 1885, in De Smet, South Dakota.[18][19] From the beginning of their relationship, the pair had nicknames for each other: she called him "Manly" and he, because he had a sister named Laura, called her "Bess", from her middle name, Elizabeth.[19] Almanzo had achieved a degree of prosperity on his homestead claim;[20] the newly married couple started their life together in a new home, north of De Smet.[21]

On December 5, 1886, Wilder gave birth to her daughter, Rose. In 1889, she gave birth to a son who died at 12 days of age before being named. He was buried at De Smet, Kingsbury County, South Dakota.[22][23] On the grave marker, he is remembered as "Baby Son of A. J. Wilder".[24]

Their first few years of marriage were difficult. Complications from a life-threatening bout of diphtheria left Almanzo partially paralyzed. Although he eventually regained nearly full use of his legs, he needed a cane to walk for the remainder of his life. This setback, among many others, began a series of unfortunate events that included the death of their newborn son, the destruction of their barn along with its hay and grain by a mysterious fire,[25] the total loss of their home from a fire accidentally set by Rose,[26] and several years of severe drought that left them in debt, physically ill, and unable to earn a living from their 320 acres (129.5 hectares) of prairie land. These trials were documented in Wilder's book The First Four Years (published in 1971). Around 1890, they left De Smet and spent about a year resting at the home of Almanzo's parents on their Spring Valley, Minnesota, farm before moving briefly to Westville, Florida, in search of a climate to improve Almanzo's health. They found, however, that the dry plains they were used to were very different from the humidity they encountered in Westville. The weather, along with feeling out of place among the locals, encouraged their return to De Smet in 1892, where they purchased a small home.[27][28]

Move to Mansfield, Missouri [ edit ] Rocky Ridge Farm, Mansfield, Missouri

In 1894, the Wilders moved to Mansfield, Missouri, and used their savings to make the down payment on an undeveloped property just outside town. They named the place Rocky Ridge Farm[29] and moved into a ramshackle log cabin. At first, they earned income only from wagon loads of fire wood they would sell in town for 50 cents. Financial security came slowly. Apple trees they planted did not bear fruit for seven years. Almanzo's parents visited around that time and gave them the deed to the house they had been renting in Mansfield, which was the economic boost Wilder's family needed. They then added to the property outside town, and eventually accrued nearly 200 acres (80.9 hectares). Around 1910, they sold the house in town, moved back to the farm, and completed the farmhouse with the proceeds. What began as about 40 acres (16.2 hectares) of thickly wooded, stone-covered hillside with a windowless log cabin became in 20 years a relatively prosperous poultry, dairy, and fruit farm, and a 10-room farmhouse.[30]

The Wilders had learned from cultivating wheat as their sole crop in De Smet. They diversified Rocky Ridge Farm with poultry, a dairy farm, and a large apple orchard. Wilder became active in various clubs and was an advocate for several regional farm associations. She was recognized as an authority in poultry farming and rural living, which led to invitations to speak to groups around the region.[31]

Writing career [ edit ] An invitation to submit an article to the Missouri Ruralist in 1911 led to Wilder's permanent position as a columnist and editor with that publication, which she held until the mid-1920s. She also took a paid position with the local Farm Loan Association, dispensing small loans to local farmers.

Wilder's column in the Ruralist, "As a Farm Woman Thinks", introduced her to a loyal audience of rural Ozarkians, who enjoyed her regular columns. Her topics ranged from home and family, including her 1915 trip to San Francisco, California, to visit Rose Lane and the Pan-Pacific exhibition, to World War I and other world events, and to the fascinating world travels of Lane as well as her own thoughts on the increasing options offered to women during this era. While the couple were never wealthy until the "Little House" books began to achieve popularity, the farming operation and Wilder's income from writing and the Farm Loan Association provided them with a stable living.

"[By] 1924", according to the Professor John E. Miller, "[a]fter more than a decade of writing for farm papers, Wilder had become a disciplined writer, able to produce thoughtful, readable prose for a general audience." At this time, her now-married daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, helped her publish two articles describing the interior of the farmhouse, in Country Gentleman magazine.[32]

It was also around this time that Lane began intensively encouraging Wilder to improve her writing skills with a view toward greater success as a writer than Lane had already achieved.[33] The Wilders, according to Miller, had come to "[depend] on annual income subsidies from their increasingly famous and successful daughter." They both had concluded that the solution for improving their retirement income was for Wilder to become a successful writer herself. However, the "project never proceeded very far."[34]

In 1928, Lane hired out the construction of an English-style stone cottage for her parents on property adjacent to the farmhouse they had personally built and still inhabited. She remodeled and took it over.[35]

Little House books [ edit ] Little House in the Big WoodsFarmer BoyLittle House on the PrairieOn the Banks of Plum CreekBy the Shores of Silver LakeThe Long WinterLittle Town on the PrairieThese Happy Golden YearsThe First Four YearsThe Stock Market Crash of 1929 wiped the Wilders out; Lane's investments were devastated as well. They still owned the 200-acre (81-hectare) farm, but they had invested most of their savings with Lane's broker. In 1930, Wilder requested Lane's opinion about an autobiographical manuscript she had written about her pioneering childhood. The Great Depression, coupled with the deaths of Wilder's mother in 1924 and her older sister in 1928, seem to have prompted her to preserve her memories in a life story called Pioneer Girl. She also hoped that her writing would generate some additional income. The original title of the first of the books was When Grandma Was a Little Girl.[36] On the advice of Lane's publisher, she greatly expanded the story. As a result of Lane's publishing connections as a successful writer and after editing by her, Harper & Brothers published Wilder's book in 1932 as Little House in the Big Woods. After its success, she continued writing. The close and often rocky collaboration between her and Lane continued, in person until 1935, when Lane permanently left Rocky Ridge Farm, and afterward by correspondence.

The collaboration worked both ways: two of Lane's most successful novels, Let the Hurricane Roar (1932) and Free Land (1938), were written at the same time as the "Little House" series and basically retold Ingalls and Wilder family tales in an adult format.[37]

Authorship controversy [ edit ] Some, including Lane's biographer, William Holtz, have alleged that Wilder's daughter was her ghostwriter.[38] Existing evidence includes ongoing correspondence between the women about the books' development, Lane's extensive diaries, and Wilder's handwritten manuscripts with edit notations shows an ongoing collaboration between the two women.[21]

Miller, using this record, describes varying levels of involvement by Lane. Little House in the Big Woods (1932) and These Happy Golden Years (1943), he notes, received the least editing. "The first pages ... and other large sections of [Big Woods]", he observes, "stand largely intact, indicating ... from the start ...[Laura's] talent for narrative description."[39] Some volumes saw heavier participation by Lane,[40] while The First Four Years (1971) appears to be exclusively a Wilder work.[41]Concludes Miller, "In the end, the lasting literary legacy remains that of the mother more than that of the daughter ... Lane possessed style; Wilder had substance."[37]

The controversy over authorship is often tied to the movement to read the Little House series through an ideological lens. Lane emerged in the 1930s as an avowed conservative polemicist and critic of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration and his New Deal programs. According to a 2012 article in the New Yorker, "When Roosevelt was elected, she noted in her diary, 'America has a dictator.' She prayed for his assassination, and considered doing the job herself."[42] Whatever Lane's politics, "attacks on [Wilder's] authorship seem aimed at infusing her books with ideological passions they just don't have."[43]

On the topic of historical fiction and its influence on modern views of race relations, literary scholar Rachelle Kuehl notes that Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series has received backlash for her problematic portrayal of Native Americans.[44] They have also been the subject of postcolonial writing including Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner's "To Laura Ingalls Wilder" included in her 2017 collection Iep Jaltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter.

Enduring appeal [ edit ] The original Little House books, written for elementary school''age children, became an enduring, eight-volume record of pioneering life late in the 19th century based on the Ingalls family's experiences on the American frontier. As Irene Smith pointed out shortly after "These Happy Golden Years (1943) was published, Wilder began "with a style appealing to the eight-year-olds and continuing in volumes of increasing length and difficulty. This graduation is a distinguishing feature of the Little House books."[45] The First Four Years, about the early days of the Wilder marriage, was discovered by her literary executor Roger MacBride after Lane's 1968 death and published in 1971, unedited by Lane or MacBride. It is now marketed as the ninth volume.[41]

Since the publication of Little House in the Big Woods (1932), the books have been continuously in print and have been translated into 40 other languages. Wilder's first'--and smallest'--royalty check from Harper, in 1932, was for $500, equivalent to $9,930 in 2021. By the mid-1930s the royalties from the Little House books brought a steady and increasingly substantial income to the Wilders for the first time in their 50 years of marriage. The collaboration also brought the two writers at Rocky Ridge Farm the money they needed to recoup the loss of their investments in the stock market. Various honors, huge amounts of fan mail, and other accolades were bestowed on Wilder.[citation needed ]

Autobiography: Pioneer Girl [ edit ] In 1929''1930, already in her early 60s, Wilder began writing her autobiography, titled Pioneer Girl. It was rejected by publishers. At Lane's urging, she rewrote most of her stories for children. The result was the Little House series of books. In 2014, the South Dakota State Historical Society published an annotated version of Wilder's autobiography, titled Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography.[46][47]

Pioneer Girl includes stories that Wilder felt were inappropriate for children: e.g., a man accidentally immolating himself while drunk, and an incident of extreme violence of a local shopkeeper against his wife, which ended with his setting their house on fire. She also describes previously unknown facets of her father's character. According to its publisher, "Wilder's fiction, her autobiography, and her real childhood are all distinct things, but they are closely intertwined." The book's aim was to explore the differences, including incidents with conflicting or non-existing accounts in one or another of the sources.[48]

Political views [ edit ] Wilder has been referred to by some as one of America's first libertarians.[49] She was a longtime Democrat, but became dismayed with Roosevelt's New Deal and what she and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, saw as Americans' increasing dependence on the federal government. Wilder grew disenchanted with her party and resented government agents who came to farms like hers and grilled farmers about the number of acres they were planting.[50] Her daughter was similarly a strong libertarian.[51][50][52]

Wilder supported women's rights (though she worried that women would vote according to what their husbands wanted, and not as they wanted)[53] and education reform.[53] She also became infamous for a short period for shaking the hand of an African American man, which was controversial for segregated Missouri.[53] Indeed, part of the plot of Little House on the Prairie involves an African American doctor saving the Ingalls family's lives.[54]

Later life and death [ edit ] Upon Lane's departure from Rocky Ridge Farm, Laura and Almanzo moved back into the farmhouse they had built, which had most recently been occupied by friends.[35] From 1935 on, they were alone at Rocky Ridge Farm. Most of the surrounding area (including the property with the stone cottage Lane had built for them) was sold, but they still kept some farm animals, and tended their flower beds and vegetable gardens. Almost daily, carloads of fans stopped by, eager to meet the "Laura" of the Little House books.

The Wilders lived independently and without financial worries until Almanzo's death at the farm in 1949 at age 92. Wilder remained on the farm. For the next eight years, she lived alone, looked after by a circle of neighbors and friends. She continued an active correspondence with her editors, fans, and friends during these years.

Gravesite of Laura Ingalls Wilder and husband Almanzo Wilder at Mansfield Cemetery, Mansfield, Missouri. Buried next to them is daughter Rose Wilder Lane.

In autumn 1956, 89-year-old Wilder became severely ill from undiagnosed diabetes and cardiac issues. She was hospitalized by Lane, who had arrived for Thanksgiving. She was able to return home on the day after Christmas. However, her health declined after her release from the hospital, and she died at home in her sleep on February 10, 1957, three days after her 90th birthday.[55] She was buried beside Almanzo at Mansfield Cemetery in Mansfield. Lane was buried next to them upon her death in 1968.[56]

Estate [ edit ] Following Wilder's death, possession of Rocky Ridge Farm passed to the farmer who had earlier bought the property under a life lease arrangement.[57][58] The local population put together a non-profit corporation to purchase the house and its grounds for use as a museum.[59] After some wariness at the notion of seeing the house rather than the books be a shrine to Wilder, Lane came to believe that making a museum of it would draw long-lasting attention to the books. She donated the money needed to purchase the house and make it a museum, agreed to make significant contributions each year for its upkeep, and donated many of her parents' belongings.[60]

In compliance with Wilder's will, Lane inherited ownership of the Little House literary estate, with the stipulation that it be for only her lifetime, with all rights reverting to the Mansfield library after her death. Following her demise in 1968, however, her chosen heir, Roger MacBride, gained control of the books' copyrights.[61] as well as her business agent and lawyer. The copyrights to each of Wilder's "Little House" books, as well as those of Lane's own literary works, were renewed in his name after the original copyright had expired.[62][63]

Controversy arose following MacBride's death in 1995, when the Laura Ingalls Wilder Branch of the Wright County Library in Mansfield'--the library founded in part by Wilder'--tried to recover the rights to the series. The ensuing court case was settled in an undisclosed manner, with MacBride's heirs retaining the rights to Wilder's books. From the settlement, the library received enough to start work on a new building.[64][65]

The popularity of the Little House books has grown over the years following Wilder's death, spawning a multimillion-dollar franchise of mass merchandising under MacBride's impetus.[66] Results of the franchise have included additional spinoff book series[citation needed ]'--some written by MacBride and his daughter, Abigail'--and the long-running television series, starring Melissa Gilbert as Wilder and Michael Landon as her father.

Works [ edit ] Because she died in 1957, Wilder's works are now public domain in countries where the term of copyright lasts 50 years after the author's death, or less; generally this does not include works first published posthumously. Works first published before 1924 or where copyright was not renewed, primarily her newspaper columns, are also public domain in the United States.[citation needed ]

Little House books [ edit ] The eight "original" Little House books were published by Harper & Brothers with illustrations by Helen Sewell (the first three) or by Sewell and Mildred Boyle.

Little House in the Big Woods (1932) '' named to the inaugural Lewis Carroll Shelf Award list in 1958Farmer Boy (1933) '' about Almanzo Wilder growing up in New YorkLittle House on the Prairie (1935)On the Banks of Plum Creek (1937)[a]By the Shores of Silver Lake (1939)[a]The Long Winter (1940)[a]Little Town on the Prairie (1941)[a]These Happy Golden Years (1943)[a]Other works [ edit ] On the Way Home (1962, published posthumously) '' diary of the Wilders' move from De Smet, South Dakota, to Mansfield, Missouri, edited and supplemented by Rose Wilder Lane[67]The First Four Years (1971, published posthumously by Harper & Row), illustrated by Garth Williams '' commonly considered the ninth Little House bookWest from Home (1974, published posthumously), ed. Roger Lea MacBride '' Wilder's letters to Almanzo while visiting her daughter Rose Wilder-Lane in 1915 in San Francisco[68]Little House in the Ozarks: The Rediscovered Writings (1991)[69] LCCN 91-10820 '' collection of pre-1932 articles[70]The Road Back Home, part three (the only part previously unpublished) of A Little House Traveler: Writings from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Journeys Across America (2006, Harper) LCCN 2005-14975 '' Wilder's record of a 1931 trip with Almanzo to De Smet, South Dakota, and the Black HillsA Little House Sampler (1988 or 1989, U. of Nebraska), with Rose Wilder Lane, ed. William Anderson, OCLC 16578355[71]Writings to Young Women '' Volume One: On Wisdom and Virtues, Volume Two: On Life as a Pioneer Woman, Volume Three: As Told by Her Family, Friends, and Neighbors[72]A Little House Reader: A Collection of Writings (1998, Harper), ed. William Anderson[71]Laura Ingalls Wilder & Rose Wilder Lane, 1937''1939 (1992, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library), ed. Timothy Walch '' selections from letters exchanged by Wilder and Lane, with family photographs, OCLC 31440538Laura's Album: A Remembrance Scrapbook of Laura Ingalls Wilder (1998, Harper), ed. William Anderson, OCLC 865396917Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography (South Dakota Historical Society Press, 2014)[46]Before the Prairie Books: The Writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder 1911''1916: The Small Farm[citation needed ]Before the Prairie Books: The Writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder 1917''1918: The War Years[citation needed ]Before the Prairie Books: The Writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder 1919''1920: The Farm Home[citation needed ]Before the Prairie Books: The Writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder 1921''1924: A Farm Woman[citation needed ]Laura Ingalls Wilder's Most Inspiring Writings[citation needed ]Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Pioneer Girl's World View: Selected Newspaper Columns (Little House Prairie Series)[citation needed ]The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder, edited by William Anderson[73]Laura Ingalls Wilder Farm Journalist: Writings from the Ozarks, edited by Stephen W. Hines[74]Laura Ingalls Wilder's Fairy Poems, Introduced and compiled by Stephen W. Hines[75]Legacy [ edit ] Documentary [ edit ] Little House on the Prairie: The Legacy of Laura Ingalls Wilder (February 2015) is a one-hour documentary film that looks at the life of Wilder. Wilder's story as a writer, wife, and mother is explored through interviews with scholars and historians, archival photography, paintings by frontier artists, and dramatic reenactments.

Historic sites and museums [ edit ] Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society '' De Smet, SD

Laura Ingalls Wilder House and Museum, Mansfield, MissouriLaura Ingalls Wilder Museum, Pepin, Wisconsin[76]Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum, Walnut Grove, Minnesota[77]Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society museum and historic homes, De Smet, South Dakota; annual pageant performed here[78][79][80]Laura Ingalls Wilder Park and Museum, Burr Oak, Iowa[81]Little House on the Prairie Museum, Independence, Kansas[82]Wilder Homestead, Malone, NY[83]De Smet Cemetery in Kingsbury County, South Dakota, where many Little House Ingalls family members are buriedPortrayals on screen and stage [ edit ] Multiple adaptations of Wilder's Little House on the Prairie book series have been produced for screen and stage. In them, the following actresses have portrayed Wilder:

Melissa Gilbert in the television series Little House on the Prairie and its movie sequels (1974''1984)Kazuko Sugiyama (voice) in the Japanese anime series Laura, The Prairie Girl (1975''1976)Meredith Monroe, Tess Harper (elder version), Alandra Bingham (younger version, part 1), Michelle Bevan (younger version, part 2) in part 1 and part 2 of the Beyond the Prairie: The True Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder television films (2000 and 2002)Kyle Chavarria in the TV miniseries Little House on the Prairie (2005)Kara Lindsay in the Little House on the Prairie book musical (2008''2010)Wilder Medal [ edit ] Wilder was five times a runner-up for the annual Newbery Medal, the premier American Library Association (ALA) book award for children's literature.[a] In 1954, the ALA inaugurated a lifetime achievement award for children's writers and illustrators, named for Wilder, of which she was the first recipient. The Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal recognizes a living author or illustrator whose books, published in the United States, have made "a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children". As of 2013, it has been conferred nineteen times, biennially starting in 2001.[85] In 2018, the award was renamed the Children's Literature Legacy Award in light of language in Wilder's works which the Association perceived as biased against Native Americans and African Americans.[86]

Other [ edit ] Google Doodle commemorated her 148th birthday in 2015.[87]Hall of Famous Missourians at the Missouri State Capitol '' a bronze bust depicting Wilder is on permanent display in the rotunda. She was inducted in 1993.Missouri Walk of Fame '' Wilder was honored on the Walk in 2006.[88]Wilder crater on planet Venus was named after Wilder.In her 1916 essay "Look for Fairies Now", Wilder asked, "Of what use are eyes to a tree, I wonder?". The following century has seen continued research on the detection of far-red receptors by plants, including as a possible factor in crown shyness.The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of 'Little House on the Prairie', 2011 book by Wendy McClureSee also [ edit ] References [ edit ] Notes [ edit ] ^ a b c d e f Five times from 1938 to 1944 Wilder was one of the runners-up for the American Library Association Newbery Medal, recognizing the previous year's "most distinguished contribution to American literature for children". The honored works were the last five of eight books in the Little House series that were published in her lifetime.[84] Citations [ edit ] ^ "Laura Ingalls Wilder | Biography, Books, & Facts". Encyclopedia Britannica . Retrieved February 4, 2020 . ^ Little House on the Prairie , retrieved May 14, 2019 ^ "Laura Ingalls Wilder". wisconsinhistory.org. Wisconsin Historical Society. Archived from the original on February 10, 2007. ^ Benge, Janet and Geoff (2005). Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Storybook Life. YWAM Publishing. p. 180. ISBN 1-932096-32-9. ^ "What Really Caused Mary Ingalls to Go Blind?". February 4, 2013. American Academy of Pediatrics. Press release announcing Allexan, et al.: ' Allexan, Sarah S.; Byington, Carrie L.; Finkelstein, Jerome I.; Tarini, Beth A. (March 1, 2013). "Blindness in Walnut Grove: How Did Mary Ingalls Lose Her Sight?". Pediatrics. 131 (3): 404''06. doi:10.1542/peds.2012-1438. PMC 4074664 . PMID 23382439. ^ Dell'Antonia, KJ (February 4, 2013). "Scarlet Fever Probably Didn't Blind Mary Ingalls". The New York Times . Retrieved February 4, 2013 . ^ Serena, Gordon (February 4, 2013). "Mistaken Infection 'On The Prairie'?". HealthDay; U.S. News & World Report (usnews.com/health-news) . Retrieved February 4, 2013 . ^ "Laura.pdf" (PDF) . Little House Wayside; Pepin, Wisconsin (visitpepincounty.com) . Retrieved February 8, 2015 . ^ a b Gormley, Myra Vanderpool; Rhonda R. McClure. "A Genealogical Look at Laura Ingalls Wilder". GenealogyMagazine.com. Archived from the original on October 25, 2014 . Retrieved October 25, 2014 . ^ "Eunice Sleeman". Edmund Rice (1638) Association (edmund-rice.org). 2002. Archived from the original on February 26, 2010 . Retrieved April 20, 2010 . Eunice Sleeman was the mother of Eunice Blood (1782''1862), the wife of Nathan Colby (born 1778), who were the parents of Laura Louise Colby Ingalls (1810''1883), Ingalls' paternal grandmother ^ Famous Kin: https://famouskin.com/famous-kin-chart.php?name=9317+richard+warren&kin=12145+laura+ingalls+wilder ^ "Famous Descendants". MayflowerHistory.com. ^ Kaye, Frances W. (2000). "Little Squatter on the Osage Diminished Reserve: Reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's Kansas Indians". Great Plains Quarterly. 20 (2): 123''140. ^ "Laura Ingalls Wilder Timeline". Laura Ingalls Wilder. The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum; National Archives and Records Administration (hoover.archives.gov). Archived from the original on October 25, 2014 . Retrieved October 25, 2014 . ^ "Land Records: Ingalls Homestead File". National Archives. August 15, 2016 . Retrieved June 13, 2019 . ^ "Laura Ingalls Wilder Timeline". Herbert Hoover Presidential Library & Museum. Herbert Hoover Presidential Library & Museum. Archived from the original on August 14, 2003 . Retrieved January 27, 2017 . ^ Anderson, William (1998). Laura's Album. Harper Collins. ^ "Laura Ingalls Wilder Historical Timeline". December 28, 2018. ^ a b Wilder, Laura Ingalls; Wilder, Almanzo (1974). West from Home: Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder, San Francisco, 1915. HarperCollins. p. xvii. ^ Ketcham, Sallie (2014). Laura Ingalls Wilder: American Writer on the Prairie. Routledge. ISBN 978-1136725739. ^ a b Thurman, Judith. "Wilder Women". The New Yorker . Retrieved February 4, 2020 . ^ "Laura Ingalls Wilder Timeline". hoover.archives.gov. West Branch, IA, US: The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum. Archived from the original on May 25, 2016 . Retrieved June 8, 2016 . ^ "De Smet Info". ingallshomestead.com . Retrieved June 8, 2016 . ^ "Christian Living: A Magazine for Home and Community". Mennonite Publishing House. March 3, 1963 '' via Google Books. ^ Miller 1998, p. 80. ^ Miller 1998, p. 84. ^ "The story behind the stories: Laura Ingalls Wilder's life in Minnesota and beyond". MinnPost. August 19, 2014 . Retrieved February 4, 2020 . ^ Messud, Claire (April 19, 2018). "Wilder and Wilder". New York Review of Books. ISSN 0028-7504 . Retrieved February 4, 2020 . ^ "Laura's Life on Rocky Ridge Farm". Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Home & Museum. November 5, 2012 . Retrieved December 24, 2016 . ^ Danilov, Victor J. (2013). Famous Americans: A Directory of Museums, Historic Sites, and Memorials. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-9186-9. ^ Wilder, Laura Ingalls (2007). Hines, Stephen W. (ed.). Laura Ingalls Wilder, farm journalist : writings from the Ozarks. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. ISBN 978-0826266156. OCLC 427509646. ^ Miller 1998, p. 161. ^ Miller 1998, p. 162. ^ Miller 2008, p. 24. ^ a b Miller 1998, p. 177. ^ Hines-Dochterman, Meredith (September 30, 2005). "Students visiting Wilder's prairie". St. Joseph News-Press. ^ a b Miller 2008, p. 40. ^ Holtz 1993.[full citation needed ] ^ Miller 1998, pp. 6, 190. ^ Miller 2008, pp. 37 et seq. ^ a b Thurman, Judith (August 10, 2009). "Wilder Women: The mother and daughter behind the Little House stories". The New Yorker . Retrieved February 8, 2015 . ^ Thurman, Judith (August 16, 2012). "A Libertarian House on the Prairie". The New Yorker . Retrieved February 8, 2015 . ^ Fraser, Caroline (October 10, 2012). " 'Little House on the Prairie': Tea Party manifesto". Los Angeles Review of Books . Retrieved February 8, 2015 '' via Salon (salon.com). ^ Kuehl, Rachelle (January 2022). "Through Lines: Exploring Past/Present Connections in Middle Grade Novels". The Reading Teacher. 75 (4): 441''451. doi:10.1002/trtr.2041. ISSN 0034-0561. S2CID 237650427. ^ Irene Smith, "Laura Ingalls Wilder and The Little House Books", in William Anderson, ed. The Horn Book's Laura Engalls Wilder, The Horn Book, n.p., 1987, p. 12. ^ a b "Pioneer Girl is out!". November 21, 2014. Pioneer Girl Project (pioneergirlproject.org). South Dakota Historical Society Press. Retrieved October 15, 2015. ^ Higgins, Jim (December 5, 2014). "Laura Ingalls Wilder's annotated autobiography, 'Pioneer Girl,' shows writer's world, growth". Milwaukee Journal Sentinel . Retrieved December 23, 2014 . ^ Flood, Alison (August 25, 2014). "Laura Ingalls Wilder memoir reveals truth behind Little House on the Prairie". The Guardian . Retrieved August 26, 2014 . ^ Boaz, David (May 9, 2015). "The Legacy of Laura Ingalls Wilder, One of America's First Libertarians". Time . Retrieved June 11, 2019 . ^ a b Klein, Christopher (February 7, 2014). "Little Libertarians on the Prairie: The Hidden Politics Behind a Children's Classic". History.com . Retrieved June 11, 2019 . ^ Blakemore, Erin (April 8, 2016). "Politics on the Prairie: Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane". Daily Jstor . Retrieved June 11, 2019 . ^ McElroy, Wendy (April 2, 2019). "The Little House on the Prairie of Laura Ingalls Wilder". LewRockwell.com . Retrieved June 11, 2019 . ^ a b c Wilder, L. I., & In Anderson, W. (2017). The selected letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder. ^ Wilder, L. I. (1932). Little house in the big woods: Little house on the prairie. New York: Harper & Row. ^ "Laura I. Wilder, Author, Dies at 90. Writer of the 'Little House' Series for Children Was an Ex-Newspaper Editor. Wrote First Book at 65". The New York Times. Associated Press. February 12, 1957 . Retrieved October 24, 2012 . Mrs. Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the 'Little House' series of children's books, died yesterday at her farm near here after a long illness. Her age was 90. Article preview. Article available only by subscription or purchase. (subscription required) ^ Wilson, Scott (2016). Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed. McFarland. ISBN 978-0786479924 '' via Google Books. ^ McHugh, Catherine. "5 Facts About Laura Ingalls Wilder". Biography . Retrieved January 15, 2021 . ^ Holtz 1995, pp. 334, 338. ^ "Mansfield Plans Wilder Museum". Springfield News & Leader. February 24, 1957. ^ Holtz 1995, p. 340. ^ See Carolyn Fraser, Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Henry Holt and Co., 2017. Also see William Holtz, The Ghost in the Little House: A Life of Rose Wilder Lane. University of Missouri Press, 1995. ^ Richardson, Lynda (November 23, 1999). "Little Library On the Offensive". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved February 4, 2020 . ^ See Carolyn Fraser, Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Henry Holt and Co., 2017. ^ Strait, Jefferson (April 28, 2001). "Wilder library on verge of settlement". Springfield News-Leader. ^ Levine, Hallie (November 3, 1999). "Lawsuit on the Prairie: Battle Pits Small Library Against Huge Estate". New York Post . Retrieved February 4, 2020 . ^ Tharp, Julie; Kleiman, Jeff (2000). " "Little House on the Prairie" and the Myth of Self-Reliance". Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy. 11 (1): 55''64. ISSN 1052-5017. JSTOR 43587224. ^ "On the Way Home: The Diary Of A Trip From South Dakota To Mansfield, Missouri, In 1894". Kirkus Reviews. November 1, 1962. Retrieved October 2, 2015. ^ "West From Home: Letters Of Laura Ingalls Wilder, San Francisco, 1915". Kirkus Reviews. March 1, 1974. Retrieved October 2, 2015. ^ Wilder, Laura (1991). Hines, Stephen W. (ed.). Little House in the Ozarks: The Rediscovered Writings. Nashville: T. Nelson. ISBN 0883659689. ^ "Little House in the Ozarks". Kirkus Reviews. July 15, 1991. Retrieved October 2, 2015. "Wilder was an experienced journalist; many of her articles, often written for a publication called Farmer's Week, described her life on the farm where she and Almanzo had finally settled". ^ a b "A Little House Reader: A Collection of Writings by Laura Ingalls Wilder". Kirkus Reviews. December 15, 1997. Retrieved October 2, 2015. ^ Wilder, Laura Ingalls (2006). Hines, Stephen W. (ed.). Writings to young women from Laura Ingalls Wilder. Nashville, TN: Tommy Nelson. ISBN 1400307848. OCLC 62341531. ^ "The Selected Letters Of Laura Ingalls Wilder". ingallshomestead.com . Retrieved December 24, 2016 . ^ "Laura Ingalls Wilder Farm Journalist". ingallshomestead.com . Retrieved December 24, 2016 . ^ Wilder, Laura (1998). Hines, Stephen W (ed.). Laura Ingalls Wilder's fairy poems. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Pub. Group. ISBN 978-0385325332. OCLC 37361669. ^ "Home". Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum (lauraingallspepin.com) . Retrieved February 8, 2015 . ^ "Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum". Walnut Grove, MN (walnutgrove.org) . Retrieved February 8, 2015 . ^ "Ingalls Homestead". Ingalls Homestead. ^ Ingalls, Discover Laura. "Tour the original homes of the Ingalls family". Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Homes. ^ "Laura Ingalls Wilder Pageant". Laura Ingalls Wilder Pageant. ^ "Home". Laura Ingalls Wilder Park and Museum (lauraingallswilder.us) . Retrieved February 24, 2008 . ^ "Home". Little House on the Prairie Museum (littlehouseontheprairiemuseum.com) . Retrieved February 8, 2015 . ^ "Wilder Homestead, Boyhood Home of Almanzo". almanzowilderfarm.com . Retrieved December 24, 2016 . ^ "Newbery Medal and Honor Books, 1922''Present". ALSC. ALA. "The John Newbery Medal". ALSC. ALA. Retrieved 2013-03-08. ^ "Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, Past winners". Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC). American Library Association (ALA). "About the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award". ALSC. ALA. Retrieved 2013-03-08. ^ "Association removes Laura Ingalls Wilder's name from award". AP News. Associated Press. June 24, 2018 . Retrieved June 25, 2018 . ^ "Laura Ingalls Wilder's 148th Birthday" . Retrieved June 10, 2015 . ^ "2006". www.cherryblossomfest.com . Retrieved May 14, 2019 . Works cited [ edit ] Holtz, William (1993). The Ghost in the Little House: A Life of Rose Wilder Lane . University of Missouri Press. ISBN 0-8262-0887-8. Holtz, William (1995). The Ghost in the Little House: A Life of Rose Wilder Lane. University of Missouri Press. ISBN 0-8262-1015-5. '' Edition: illustrated, reprint, revised; 427 pp.; selections and bibliographic data retrieved from Google Books 2015-10-15.Miller, John E. (1998). Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Woman Behind the Legend . University of Missouri Press. ISBN 0-8262-1167-4. Miller, John E. (2008). Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane: Authorship, Place, Time, and Culture . University of Missouri Press. ISBN 978-0-8262-1823-0. Further reading [ edit ] Campbell, Donna (2003). " 'Written with a Hard and Ruthless Purpose': Rose Wilder Lane, Edna Ferber, and Middlebrow Regional Fiction". In Botshon, Lisa; Goldsmith, Meredith (eds.). Middlebrow Moderns: Popular American Women Writers of the 1920s. pp. 25''. hdl:2376/5707. ISBN 978-1-55553-556-8. Cochran-Smith, Marilyn (2016). "Color Blindness and Basket Making Are Not the Answers: Confronting the Dilemmas of Race, Culture, and Language Diversity in Teacher Education". American Educational Research Journal. 32 (3): 493''522. doi:10.3102/00028312032003493. S2CID 146270683. Fatzinger, Amy S. (2008). "Indians in the House": Revisiting American Indians in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House Books (PhD Thesis). University of Arizona. hdl:10150/195771. Fraser, Caroline (2017). Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder. New York: Metropolitan Books. Heldrich, Philip (2000). " 'Going to Indian Territory': Attitudes Toward Native Americans in Little House on the Prairie". Great Plains Quarterly. 20 (2): 99''109. JSTOR 23532729. Limerick, Patricia Nelson (November 20, 2017). " 'Little House on the Prairie' and the Truth About the American West". The New York Times. Sickels, Amy (2007). Laura Ingalls Wilder . Facts On File. ISBN 9781438123783. Smulders, Sharon (2002). " 'The Only Good Indian': History, Race, and Representation in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie". Children's Literature Association Quarterly. 27 (4): 191''201. doi:10.1353/chq.0.1688. Singer, Amy (2015). "Little Girls on the Prairie and the Possibility of Subversive Reading". Girlhood Studies. 8 (2): 4''20. doi:10.3167/ghs.2015.080202. Stewart, Michelle Pagni (2013). " 'Counting Coup' on Children's Literature about American Indians: Louise Erdrich's Historical Fiction". Children's Literature Association Quarterly. 38 (2): 215''35. doi:10.1353/chq.2013.0019. External links [ edit ] Laura Ingalls Wilder in MNopedia, the Minnesota EncyclopediaLaura Ingalls Wilder at Library of Congress Authorities, with 144 catalog recordsBeyond Little House '' Laura Ingalls Wilder Legacy and Research AssociationLaura Ingalls Wilder, Frontier GirlTravel map of Laura Ingalls Wilder '' A map showing Laura Ingalls Wilder's travels from her birth in 1867 to 1894.About the Ingalls Family (Sarah S. Uthoff)Western American Literature Research: Laura Ingalls WilderLaura Ingalls Wilder: An American Fixture (Pamela Smith Hill)Museums [ edit ] Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum, Walnut Grove, Minnesota:Laura Ingalls Wilder Park & Museum, Burr Oak, IowaElectronic editions [ edit ] Works by Laura Ingalls Wilder at Faded Page (Canada)

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 14:30

Much belatedly now that there's a seemingly endless US weapons pipeline going into Ukraine, the Pentagon is worried they might end of in the "wrong hands" and is seeking to take steps to do something about it. It now wants to track serial numbers of US weaponry on the ground as the fight for Ukraine continues.

As early as April US officials began admitting that once advanced systems like Javelin anti-tank weapons cross into Ukraine they have no idea where they go from there. There's speculation that some percentage of Western-supplied arms will be resold on the black market, or even make there way to other conflicts outside Ukraine, such as in the Middle East.

Image source: AFP/Getty''We have fidelity for a short time, but when it enters the fog of war, we have almost zero,'' one intelligence source told CNN in a prior report. "It drops into a big black hole, and you have almost no sense of it at all after a short period of time."

But on Thursday, the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) issued a statement urging US military leaders to send weapons inspectors into war-torn Ukraine in order to directly monitor the literal billions of dollars in arms being handed out.

This would go beyond the current set-up of the Pentagon simply taking Ukrainian officials' "word for it" when it comes to proper distribution and usage of weapons and ammo against the Russian invading forces. After all, there have been signs the Department of Defense is tapping into America's own vital stockpiles in order to supply the Ukrainians.

An analyst with the military commentary site Defense One describes that currently, "All U.S. officials can do now is review receipts of the arms transfers from other locations in Europe and take Ukrainian officials' word that the weapons are being properly used and stored."

But DSCA deputy director Jed Royal has stated, "Over time, we would like to be able to extend our insights with greater presence on the ground."

Royal added that in a scenario inspectors are sent in, it would not be "some kind of operational detachment or anything along those lines." But that's not how Moscow would see it, after vowing to target any inbound foreign weapons shipments in locates it identifies in the conflict theater. The Pentagon official said further:

"What I'm talking about is a security cooperation office, appropriately the right size given the mission set for Ukraine, that would fall under chief of mission authority like we have in other countries," he said.

The Pentagon's "end-use monitoring" mission typically involves inspectors physically reviewing weapons and checking serial numbers. That is ''just harder to do that without a robust presence on the ground,'' Royal said.

Without one, "we are somewhat limited in our ability to get the kind of insight that we would like to have."

But according to a recent report in The New York Times, the CIA has had a significant ground presence since the start of the Russian invasion and even prior.

I'm starting to wonder whether the US Government's ability to find ways to justify its posture of Endless War - and that's what it is: endless - might have something to do with how a tiny slice of Americans (corporate and security state elites who wield huge power in DC) benefit? pic.twitter.com/kCnaorRJda

'-- Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 1, 2022Yet it goes without saying that Pentagon foreign weapons transfer programs have some degree of actual oversight, being much more in public view and officially disclosed, whereas the CIA operates in the shadows - often with its activities not being detailed till years later (the covert "Timber Sycamore" program in Syria is a prime example).

Thus the CIA has less incentive to provide oversight and accountability when it comes to US covert arms programs - and often even actively fights to prevent such oversight.

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 14:18

Image source, Getty Images Image caption, About 500 young people could be eligible for the scheme

Every 18-year-old leaving care will be offered £1,600 a month for two years under a Welsh government basic income pilot.

It is expected about 500 people will be eligible to join the scheme, which could cost up to £20m.

Officials said it was the highest amount offered on a basic income scheme anywhere in the world.

The Welsh Conservatives said it was a waste of money while Plaid Cymru called for the pilot to be expanded.

The £1,600 a month will be taxed and is expected to be counted as income by the UK government, meaning it would affect someone's eligibility for benefits.

It will be unconditional and will not be withdrawn if participants get a job.

But the Welsh government is no longer calling the plans a pilot of Universal Basic Income (UBI), where every individual is given a sum of money.

Ministers want to test out how the payments could help care leavers be better placed for their transition into independence as adults.

Social Justice Minister Jane Hutt said the plans would "deliver financial stability for a generation of young people that need it most".

Image caption, Milly said the pilot is a "good opportunity" for carers

A teenager who has foster parents said the pilot could make care leavers "equal with everyone else".

Milly, 17, represents the National Youth Advocacy service on the Welsh Youth Parliament and has spoken openly about her care experiences.

She said the pilot was a good opportunity, adding people in care were "disadvantaged financially and this will bring us level".

She said it would be a "safety net" for those who have been in care who may not have support from their families.

"Many have been damaged, physical and mentally - this can help pay for private counselling or therapy as often public waiting lists for these services are so long."

Although she welcomes the announcement, Milly still has questions about how the payments will be rolled out: "I'd like to see evidence that everyone in care will be entitled to it."

Image source, Getty Images

How will it work?

Every person leaving care at the age of 18 for the first 12 months of the pilot will be offered the chance to take part.

They will receive payments for 24 months, amounting to an income worth £19,000 before tax annually, with the first payment a month after their 18th birthday.

Officials say it is equivalent to the real living wage and will be taxed at the basic rate.

Media caption, An experiment in Finland saw 2,000 people paid '‚¬560 (£490) a month, instead of their unemployment benefit.

Laura Tams, 42, from Pontardawe, who has been fostering for six years, told BBC Radio Wales additional support was also needed for young people leaving care.

"These children have been through things that to you and I belong in nightmares. We cannot all of a sudden expect them at 18 to be able to run a house and to spend that money wisely."

Welsh officials are also promising extra support for those taking part, such as financial wellbeing training.

There is no date for when the scheme will be launched, although officials said it was likely to be in the summer.

Image source, Alex Sommerville

Image caption, Alex Sommerville, who was in care when she was younger, said she was concerned young people would not want to go into education or work

Former youth worker Alex Sommerville, who left care when she was younger, told BBC Radio Wales Breakfast with Claire Summers she did not believe the scheme would encourage care leavers to find work, or study further.

Ms Somerville, from Swansea, said: "Some would still want to go for education or work, but there is a part of me thinking, if you're getting that wage every month, why would you?"

"I'm very worried about giving young people all of that money and expecting them to know how to spend it in the best way for themselves."

Welsh Conservative spokesman for social partnership Joel James said trials had shown basic income failed to incentivise work and had proven to be a "waste of public money".

Plaid Cymru's economy spokesman Luke Fletcher said it was a step in the right direction but needed a "structure around it to enable it to meet the ambition of addressing poverty and unemployment, as well as improving health and financial wellbeing".

Image source, Getty Images

Image caption, The income will be subject to tax

What is the difference between Universal Basic Income and Wales' plan?

UBI is where a government pays all individuals a set amount, regardless of their means.

Backers say it could help reduce poverty and be easier and less stressful to navigate than more complex means-tested benefits, but opponents say it is extremely costly and not targeted at those who need it.

Once it was announced that the pilot would focus on care leavers, critics argued it was not actually universal.

The Welsh government had initially described it as a pilot of UBI, but has now stopped doing so.

Asked why it was not a trial of UBI, Social Justice Minister Jane Hutt told BBC Wales that the government needed "to be realistic". and the pilot needed to be "meaningful in terms of the funding".

A basic income for care leavers has been tried in Santa Clara, California, where 72 young adults received $1,000 (£739) initially for 12 months.

In Finland, research on a basic income pilot with jobless people for two years found it did not lead them to find work, although they felt happier.

The Welsh government plans were welcomed by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a charity which researches poverty in the UK.

To match the level of basic income for care leavers at about the real living wage is bold.

With so many people in Wales paid only the national minimum wage there may well be those who think the offer to care leavers is over-generous.

But in economic terms if the project is successful and results in better paid work and healthier lives, the long-term benefits would flow back into the economy.

While this is not is a pilot of UBI, its outcomes will be relevant to the debate around that.

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 14:10

The creator of the mega-popular show "Friends" is embarrassed about the lack of diversity on the show and she's putting out a $4 million donation to make amends for her demographic sins.

Many on the left have long criticized the show for what they perceived was a relative lack of diversity among the actors despite it being set in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City.

Co-creator Marta Kauffman said she initially was frustrated by the criticism and believed that the show was unfairly singled out.

She has since changed her mind.

''I've learned a lot in the last 20 years,'' Kauffman explained in an interview with Zoom. ''Admitting and accepting guilt is not easy. It's painful looking at yourself in the mirror. I'm embarrassed that I didn't know better 25 years ago."

Kauffman said that the protests against the death of George Floyd opened her eyes to the presence of racism in society.

''I knew then I needed to course-correct,'' she said.

Kauffmann is donating $4 million to Brandeis University, her alma mater, to fund an endowed chair in their department of African and African American studies.

''It took me a long time to begin to understand how I internalized systemic racism,'' Kauffman said.

''I've been working really hard to become an ally, an anti-racist," she added. "And this seemed to me to be a way that I could participate in the conversation from a white woman's perspective.''

One of the show's stars, David Schwimmer, responded to criticism about diversity in 2020.

''I don't care," said Schwimmer to the Guardian at the time. "The truth is also that show was groundbreaking in its time for the way in which it handled so casually sex, protected sex, gay marriage and relationships. You have to look at it from the point of view of what the show was trying to do at the time."

He also said that he pushed for his character, Ross, to date non-white characters on the show, and he did.

Here's more about Schwimmer's response to criticism: David Schwimmer On 'Friends' Diversity Criticismwww.youtube.com

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 14:00

Ernst & Young better have some "answers"...

It was reported this week that the massive audit firm was fined with a record $100 million fine after regulators found out that the company knew some of its auditors had been cheating on exams for "several years" - and did nothing to stop it.

This week, the Securities and Exchange Commission said that a "significant number" of candidates cheated on the Certified Public Accountant test. The kicker? Most of the cheating was on the "ethics" portion of the exam...

The SEC also said that Ernst & Young "made a submission" that it didn't have "current issues with cheating when, in fact, the firm had been informed of potential cheating on a CPA ethics exam," a new report from CNN revealed.

Gurbir Grewal, director of the SEC's Enforcement Division, commented this week: "This action involves breaches of trust by gatekeepers within the gatekeeper entrusted to audit many of our nation's public companies. It's simply outrageous that the very professionals responsible for catching cheating by clients cheated on ethics exams of all things."

He said it was "equally shocking" that the company didn't fess up during the investigation.

Grewal continued: "This action should serve as a clear message that the SEC will not tolerate integrity failures by independent auditors who choose the easier wrong over the harder right."

The SEC also ordered that Ernst & Young bring on two independent firms to "help remediate its deficiencies," the report said.

"Nothing is more important than our integrity and our ethics," the auditor responded by saying. "We have repeatedly and consistently taken steps to reinforce our culture of compliance, ethics, and integrity in the past. We will continue to take extensive actions, including disciplinary steps, training, monitoring, and communications that will further strengthen our commitment in the future."

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 13:33

Dr. Vladimir ''Zev'' Zelenko passed away today, leaving behind a legacy of helping others in the fight against Covid-19.

Dr. Zelenko was a physician, scientist, and activist for medical rights. He is most recognized for his safe and practical application of a novel three-drug combination of hydroxychloroquine, zinc sulfate, and azithromycin to combat Covid-19 in prehospital settings.

Dr. Zelenko graduated with a B.A. degree in Chemistry from Hofstra University with high honors. In May 2000, he earned his M.D. degree after receiving an academic scholarship to attend S.U.N.Y at Buffalo School of Medicine. Dr. Zelenko completed his residency in family medicine at South Nassau Communities Hospital in Oceanside, N.Y. in May 2004. Since then, Dr. Zelenko has worked in the Hudson Valley of New York as a family doctor.

In March 2020, Dr. Zelenko's team was one of the first in the country to successfully treat thousands of Covid-19 patients in the prehospital setting. While battling recurrent and metastatic sarcoma, recovering from open-heart surgery, and undergoing aggressive chemotherapy, Dr. Zelenko developed his now-famous ''Zelenko Protocol,'' which has saved lives all around the world.

In December 2020, Zelenko with co-authors published an article on a retrospective case study of outpatient treatment with zinc, low-dose hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, which indicated a significant reduction in the incidence of hospitalization of COVID-19 patients that had been treated with the protocol, 2.8% treated compared with 15.4% untreated.

Zelenko was also a courageous advocate and defender of fundamental principles of medicine. He persevered against unrelenting defamation of character from the media, and threats against his person. Dr. Zelenko was an observant orthodox Jew, and was married with 8 children, and has authored two books called Metamorphosis and Essence to Essence.

The World Council for Health is saddened by the news of Dr. Zelenko's passing, following his long battle with cancer. He was a passionate and dedicated doctor who fought tirelessly for his patients. We will remember him for his courage and determination in the face of adversity. Our thoughts are with his family, patients, and friends at this difficult time.

You can learn more about Dr. Zelenko's legacy through his foundation, The Zelenograd Freedom Foundation.

''I have looked death in the eye and I have been made ready to meet God. I fear nothing on this earth.''

Dr. Zelenko I am mourning my mentor & dear friend. My first partner in #freedom shenanigans 2020. I'm in disbelief, but his last message for me was to keep inspired and keep fighting! I love you, one of the greatest and strongest heroes Dr. #Zelenko Rest In Peace! You earned it! Go with God.

HONTE cette soci(C)t(C) qui ne respecte mªme pas le legs des d(C)funts... Le Dr #Zelenko dans ses derniers mots touchants nous laissait la fondation FREEDOM. Son compte a (C)t(C) ferm(C) par Tweeter twitter.com/jj_talking/sta'...

BREAKING 🚨 Twitter just banned the account for the Zelenko Freedom Foundation. Yes, they banned the account of a non-profit foundation that was recently founded by world-renowned doctor Vladimir Zelenko while he was dying.

I am mourning my mentor & dear friend. My first partner in #freedom shenanigans 2020. I'm in disbelief, but his last message for me was to keep inspired and keep fighting! I love you, one of the greatest and strongest heroes Dr. #Zelenko Rest In Peace! You earned it! Go with God.

I am mourning my mentor & dear friend. My first partner in #freedom shenanigans 2020. I'm in disbelief, but his last message for me was to keep inspired and keep fighting! I love you, one of the greatest and strongest heroes Dr. #Zelenko Rest In Peace! You earned it! Go with God.

I wonder if we could get #Zelenko trending in memory of the wonderful doctor who stood up and spoke out.

HONTE cette soci(C)t(C) qui ne respecte mªme pas le legs des d(C)funts... Le Dr #Zelenko dans ses derniers mots touchants nous laissait la fondation FREEDOM. Son compte a (C)t(C) ferm(C) par Tweeter twitter.com/jj_talking/sta'...

BREAKING 🚨 Twitter just banned the account for the Zelenko Freedom Foundation. Yes, they banned the account of a non-profit foundation that was recently founded by world-renowned doctor Vladimir Zelenko while he was dying.

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 13:33

An Australian horse heiress is saddled with charges after being accused of having sex with a 14-year-old boy four times in a single day.

Savannah Daisley, 45, faced Waverley Local Court in Sydney on Tuesday on child sex abuse allegations, with Judge Jaqueline Milledge denying her bail over the ''quite disturbing'' allegations.

The glamorous mother of two, who is the daughter of famed Aussie horse breeder Ross Daisley, strongly denies the accusations and intends to plead not guilty.

Cops claim an unbridled Daisley molested the minor four times before 5 p.m. on May 20 last year. It's unclear whether the pair were known to each other prior to the alleged acts.

Daisley's defense lawyer cried neigh '-- arguing that the accusations against his socialite client were made ''in spite,'' and that it was an ''oath vs. oath'' case.

However, prosecutor Daniel Richardson claims evidence, straight from the horse's mouth, exists: He said a police officer told him about a recording of a tawdry phone call made by the heiress, in which she allegedly admits to kissing the teen.

Savannah Daisley, 45, has faced court after being accused of having sex with a 14-year-old boy in May last year. Instagram Daisley is a trained naturopath who founded the business Smart Cleanse, which offers various 14-day detox plans. Smart CleanseRichardson claimed that the recording reveals that Daisley had little recollection of the incident, perhaps due to her being intoxicated at the time.

''But she says, 'I thought you were going to call the police on me, I thought we had placed this in a little box and thrown it deep into the sea,''' the prosecutor told the court. ''[The officer's] instruction to me was the phone call was quite damning to her. The facts are that admissions were made that were captured on telephone intercept and it is a quite serious matter.''

Daisley is accused of having sex with the minor four times on May 20, 2021. The glamorous mom of two is the daughter of famed Australian horse breeder Ross Daisley, whose thoroughbred won the famed Royal Ascot in 2003. FacebookDaisley's Instagram account has been deleted, but a screenshot of a recent post, obtained by news.com.au, features a caption penned by the heiress revealing she was 223 days sober. The post also reveals that she had ''walked away from her partner of 8 years.''

Daisley is a trained naturopath who founded the business Smart Cleanse, which offers various 14-day detox plans.

The company website reads: ''Over a number of years, Savannah has helped tens of thousands of people detoxify their bodies, lose weight, heal their digestion, improve strength and fitness, eliminate stress, reverse the aging process, overcome various adverse health conditions through the benefits of detoxification, and is passionate about doing so.''

The brunette is also the author of two books: ''14 Day Smart Cleanse'' and the forthcoming ''Epigenetics,'' which is set to examine how ''stress and toxins have a detrimental effect on cell function and structure.''

The business owner is set to remain behind bars after a judge denied her bail, describing the allegations as ''disturbing.'' InstagramDaisley's father, Ross Daisley, shot to fame after his thoroughbred racehorse Choisir won the prestigious Royal Ascot and Newmarket races back in 2003.

He offered to pay $10,000 to ensure his daughter would return to court if she was granted conditional freedom. A judge denied the offer.

Daisley will remain behind bars until her next court appearance on August 23.

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 13:31

Nearly 9 out of 10 recent student debt borrowers say Joe Biden's campaign pledge to cancel at least $10,000 of college debt affected their decision-making. And a big majority think he'll do more than that.

The survey results come as Biden is reportedly considering $10,000 cancellations for federal college borrowers earning under $150,000 a year.

At the same time, Biden faces a decision over whether to allow student debt repayments to resume after several pandemic-era pauses, but at a time when surging inflation gives postponement advocates more ammo.

Absent signing off on his fifth extension, borrowers would resume payments after August 31'--as midterms approach and Democrats stare down the barrel of a major nationwide setback.

It remains to be seen whether Biden will use debt cancellation as a spoonful of sugar to help the payment-resumption medicine go down, or if he'll pair cancellation with yet another payback postponement as a self-serving election gimmick.

The college-focused website intelligent.com surveyed 1,000 people who'd taken on student debt since the 2020 election. A whopping 86% claim Biden's campaign promise affected their decision to take on debt.

Of those who are still enrolled, 30% say they're either unlikely or very unlikely to continue going to college unless Biden takes a chunk of debt off their backs and redistributes it across everyone else's.

For this crowd of debtors, Biden's $10,000 pledge doesn't seem relevant, as a whopping 71% are either confident or very confident that Biden will forgive most or all of student debt. Cancelling it all would represent a nearly $1.7 trillion giveaway.

If Biden doesn't forgive any debt, 31% of the Democratic survey participants say they're either unlikely or highly unlikely to vote for him in 2024.

It reminds us of a sentiment that that's been expressed in many ways and dubiously attributed to various historical figures. Its accuracy, however, is unquestionable: "When the people find they can vote themselves largesse from the treasury, it will herald the end of the republic."

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 13:29

It is going to be a radically new world in California's trucking sector with the imposition of AB5, and it isn't clear what parts of the industry '-- if any '-- are ready for it.

''Most immediately, motor carriers must evaluate and adopt alternative operating models to mitigate risk if they intend to continue to do business in California'' was the admonition from the Benesch law firm in the wake of the Supreme Court decision in the case of California Trucking Association vs. (state Attorney General) Bonta. The decision opens the door for the imposition of AB5, the law on independent contractors that leans heavily toward classifying workers as employees rather than ICs.

''Motor carriers should immediately evaluate their California operations to determine what steps, if any, should be taken to respond to the changed backdrop for trucking'' was the call to action from the trucking-focused Scopelitis law firm.

On the other side of the divide, there was celebration, including a victory lap by Lorena Gonzalez, the former and future labor leader who successfully pushed for AB5's passage in the California legislature in 2019.

The fact that trucking companies will have to abide by basic labor laws in CA takes us one step closer to rebuilding the middle class that was almost deregulated out of existence. Proud of my @Teamsters union, #defendingDynamex hasn't been easy'... but nothing good ever is. #AB5

'-- Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher (@LorenaSGonzalez) June 30, 2022''The fact that trucking companies will have to abide by basic labor laws in CA takes us one step closer to rebuilding the middle class that was almost deregulated out of existence,'' Gonzalez said in a tweet.

In denying a review of the appellate court decision, the Supreme Court returned the case to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A 9th Circuit ruling in 2021 overturned a lower court injunction that had kept AB5 at bay from California's trucking sector, even as the law that seeks to define independent contractors was implemented in other parts of the economy.

The original injunction from the lower court was based on its conclusion that AB5 was in conflict with provisions in the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994 (F4A). Attorneys for the trucking industry were heartened when the court agreed to consider questions of state preemption of F4A, including looking at a case involving C.H. Robinson (NASDAQ: CHRW). But ultimately, the court failed to take up both the CTA and C.H. Robinson cases.

The appellate court had allowed the injunction against the law to remain in effect while the CTA pushed to have the Supreme Court hear its appeal. With that denied, the stay is expected to be lifted within days and AB5 will go into effect, retroactively, to Jan. 1, 2020. That creates the prospect of litigation or state action for past actions.

A mixed bag of earlier exemptionsThe implementation of AB5 throughout the California economy in 2020 came with a Swiss cheese lineup of exemptions, both in the original bill and in AB 2257, which sought to address the concerns of sectors that said they had been particularly hard-hit by AB5.

Among the exempted professions: doctors, dentists and hairstylists. Among those exempted in the second bill: translators (who were particularly vocal about the damage to their industry under AB5,) youth sports coaches and insurance inspectors.

Critics of AB5 have held that the lengthy, seemingly random list of exemptions was evidence that AB5 was largely targeting two sectors: trucking and gig drivers such as those at Uber, Lyft and with parcel services. So far, that latter group has not come under AB5 because of voter approval of Proposition 22 on Election Day 2020, though a court later ruled Prop 22 unconstitutional. That court decision is on appeal, and a stay has allowed gig drivers protected by Prop 22 to remain outside the control of AB5.

AB5 is particularly problematic for the trucking sector. That's because it is based on the ABC test to define independent contractors, the B prong of which is being interpreted as a possible death knell or at least a major hindrance to the independent owner-operator model in trucking.

The B test defines an independent contractor as a worker who is engaged in ''work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity's business.'' A trucking company hiring an independent owner-operator to move freight is seen as likely in violation of the B prong.

Unions eye drayage drivers as an opportunityThe question now turns to what the trucking industry does specifically in response to the hard reality that AB5 has arrived on the doorstep.

From the organized labor side, recommendations on how trucking companies should proceed include turning drivers into employees.

''If I was advising the trucking sector, I would be getting ready for AB5 to be the law of the land in California, and for the state to begin enforcing it,'' Doug Bloch, political director for Teamsters Joint Council 7, which represents the union in Northern California and northern Nevada, told FreightWaves.

Bloch said the Teamsters ''recognizes there are legitimate owner-operators out there in trucking.'' But he pivoted when discussing trucking to a specific part of the trucking ecosystem: drayage drivers.

''In places like the ports, the state has found misclassification to be the norm,'' Bloch said. Drayage drivers should now be ''looking at where I am going to end up working,'' he said, predicting that port companies that now utilize the services of independent drayage drivers will turn to an employee model.

Bloch said the Teamsters ran a campaign ''a decade ago'' that was successful in converting some drayage companies to an employee model rather than one utilizing independent owner-operators.

''That is our goal, to have owner-operators hired as drivers,'' Bloch said. ''Our goal is for the shipping industry to take responsibility for these drivers.'' If the workers are converted to employees, he said, it will be easier for them to be paid an amount that reflect at least the minimum wage, and it would push the responsibility for buying new zero-emission vehicles on to the port companies, rather than on to the drivers. ''We'll be asking fleet owners to do this,'' Bloch said.

Given the state's focus on regulatory issues surrounding the ports, it is reasonable to think actions by California under AB5 might first arrive in the drayage industry.

Matt Schrap, the CEO of the Harbor Trucking Association, which represents drayage companies, issued a brief but harsh statement in response to the high court's decision.

''It is extremely unfortunate that this Court couldn't see through their own political agenda to identify the obvious preemption that exists under the F4A,'' he wrote in an email to FreightWaves. ''This ruling will have far reaching impacts that will upend the industry as we know it. Tens of thousands of truck drivers will be driven out of established business relationships within a week. No doubt this will further stress the supply chain.''

Bloch was asked what would be the impact on freight movement in lanes away from the ports '-- specifically an example in which an independent owner-operator moves freight between Riverside County outside of Los Angeles and Northern California. What might that person's legal status become?

''It's a good question,'' he said. But he came back to the issue of misclassification. ''I don't really care what sector of the trucking industry you're in, I would be concerned about misclassification.''

Bloch added that ''what we've seen is that every time the laws change, the industry finds some way to adapt.''

CTA issues blistering statementNot surprisingly, the statement issued by the CTA after the SCOTUS non-action held little back.

''Gasoline has been poured on the fire that is our ongoing supply chain crisis,'' the organization said. ''In addition to the direct impact on California's 70,000 owner-operators who have seven days to cease long-standing independent businesses, the impact of taking tens of thousands of truck drivers off the road will have devastating repercussions on an already fragile supply chain, increasing costs and worsening runaway inflation.''

Existing trucking company models may need to changeIn a note Marc Blubaugh of the Benesch law firm sent to clients, he discussed several alternatives to the traditional model.

One is an employee driver model, along the lines of what union officials would like to see. Another is largely turning a carrier that now utilizes independent owner-operators into a brokerage house, and putting freight in the drivers' hands in the same way that a traditional brokerage would do. Since freight movement would no longer be part of the company's activity, the independent owner-operators would be engaged in ''work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity's business,'' the specific wording in the B prong.

Blubaugh did not mention it, but AB5 came with the business-to-business exception, a multipronged test that must be fully met to legally hire an independent contractor who might otherwise violate the ABC test. There is disagreement in the industry about whether the exception's rigorous tests and need for 100% compliance make it largely unworkable.

Greg Feary, a partner with the Scopelitis law firm, said Thursday he already had discussions with clients who are ''starting to take action. You are going to see the trucking industry respond to this relatively rapidly.''

He said there was a ''laundry list of options on the table.'' Some of them are extreme, like halting all business in California, particularly if it's a relatively small part of a company's business. ''Why take the risk?'' Feary said.

A push by a company to bring on more employee drivers might come into conflict with what Feary said was the ''conventional wisdom '... that most of these independent contractors don't want to be employee drivers.''

The brokerage option as discussed by Feary would involve drivers who are now independent but are leased to a company, and operating under their DOT authority, would obtain their own authority. The company they are leased to would then broker freight to that driver.

''For me, motor carriers are going to have to be making decisions and review all of the potential options,'' Feary said.

Action by the state might come quickly, Feary said. The state agencies most likely to bring legal action for what are seen as violations of AB5 would be the state Division of Labor Standards Enforcement or the state's Employment Development Department.

More articles by John Kingston

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 13:20

Global oil prices could reach a ''stratospheric'' $380 a barrel if US and European penalties prompt Russia to inflict retaliatory crude output cuts, JPMorgan Chase analysts warned.

The Group of Seven leading industrial nations are working out a complicated mechanism to cap the price fetched by Russian oil in an attempt to tighten the screws on President Vladimir Putin amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

But Moscow can afford to reduce daily crude production by 5 million barrels without excessively damaging the Russian economy, JPMorgan analysts including Natasha Kaneva wrote in a note to clients.

For much of the rest of the world, however, the results could be disastrous.

A 3 million barrel cut to daily supplies would push benchmark London crude prices that are now around $111 to $190, while the worst-case scenario of 5 million could mean ''stratospheric'' $380 crude, the analysts wrote.

''The most obvious and likely risk with a price cap is that Russia might choose not to participate and instead retaliate by reducing exports,'' the analysts wrote.

''It is likely that the government could retaliate by cutting output as a way to inflict pain on the West. The tightness of the global oil market is on Russia's side.''

Updated: July 02, 2022, 6:23 AM

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 12:56

Downing Street is exploring the idea of trying to tackle the housing crisis with ultra-long mortgages of up to 50 years that could pass between generations, allowing more people to build up equity rather than pay rent.

Mortgage experts said the idea could bring some benefits but flagged problems, including the potential to saddle children with debt, and the fact it would not tackle the fundamental issue of housing supply.

Under the plan being examined by No 10, a longer mortgage period would allow people to borrow larger sums, with the possibility of passing the debt on, although it remains unclear what government action would make this happen.

Other housing ideas being considered by Downing Street include trying to free up government-owned land for rapid homebuilding, and exploring whether institutions such as schools could build homes for key workers priced out of local areas.

Boris Johnson, speaking to reporters during his trip to the Nato summit in Madrid this week, confirmed that the idea of 50-year mortgages was being looked at, saying the government ''wants to find all sorts of creative ways to help people into ownership''.

He said: ''Last year we had 400,000 first-time buyers. That's a great number, we're starting to turn the tide, but it is crucial for this government and for our overall economic story if those numbers continue to be strong.

''We need young people to have the confidence, to have the deposits, the mortgage packages to be able to get into ownership. If you're good enough to pay a lot in rent, we should find ways to help you to convert that into a mortgage.''

Asked if he was considering ultra-long mortgages, he replied: ''Yes, certainly.''

The idea of multi-decade mortgages being transferred between generations is not new and has been pioneered in Japan, where 100-year family mortgages have been offered for some time.

In the UK, relatively long mortgages are already the most common. According to the Building Societies Association, 37% of first-time buyers took out mortgages of between 30 and 35 years, with only 10% opting for less than 20 years.

The key challenge is the decades-long acceleration of home prices beyond growth in pay. In England, people in full-time work now need to spend an average of 9.1 times their annual earnings to buy a home.

Longer-term mortgages would mean people could borrow greater sums with the same monthly mortgage repayment, potentially opening up many more homes to those currently unable to buy, who might end up spending less money on repayments than they do currently on rent.

What these mortgages would not do, however, is solve the long-term shortfall in housebuilding.

Graham Taylor, the managing director of the mortgage firm Hudson Rose, said the idea had complexities. ''On the face of it, it seems like a great idea,'' he said. ''But the problem remains that the loan would need to be affordable for all the original applicants and also the children who inherit it. Otherwise, the children could risk inheriting a liability they are unable to manage, which, when secured against your home, has catastrophic consequences.''

Other potential complications include that when a property is passed on to children, inheritance tax could be liable, and the prospect of people having to maintain payments into retirement.

Rob Gill, the managing director of Altura Mortgage Finance, said that if the plan did open up the market to more first-time buyers, this would have the effect of keeping property prices artificially high. ''It seems governments the world over will do anything to avoid the alternative of property prices actually falling,'' he said.

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 12:53

If you've ever hankered after the taste of human flesh, now you can sample it in the form of an all-new plant-based burger that claims to perfectly replicate the taste and texture of human meat

Would you want to try this burger? ( Image: Oumph!)

A bizarre "human-meat" flavoured burger has won a top award.

The bizarre burger is said to taste exactly like human flesh, despite being completely meat free and vegan friendly.

Its creator, Swedish food company Oumph!, said it had even worked to get the perfect texture of flesh for their cannibalistic creation.

However a spokesperson for the company insisted: "No humans were injured in the development of this product."

The burger was crafted from soya, mushrooms and wheat protein as well as plant-based fats and "a mysterious spice mix".

The spokesperson added: "The curious and fearless get a chance to try the world's first plant-based burger resembling human meat.

The company promised no humans had been harmed in the production of the burger but they did not say how they knew it tasted right ( Image:

Oumph!)"By creating this special edition burger Oumph! wanted to prove that it is possible to produce plant-based products that taste like 'any meat' and are exciting to try."

The super-creepy ad campaign showed a crazed-looking bloodstained butcher clutching the oozing plant-based sandwich.

The company did not explain what they used as a guideline for the taste and texture of human flesh.

The stunt was awarded a Silver Brand Experience and Activation Lion at Cannes Lions Festival last week.

Henrik kerman, Global Brand Leader at Oumph! said: "I am incredibly proud of this award and the great teamwork behind it!

"Our mission is to change how people eat, and it is our duty to use creativity as a tool to make this change happen.

The brand won a top award for their blood-soaked ad campaign ( Image:

Oumph!)"As a small brand we need to be bold and ready to push some boundaries to break through, and I think this campaign is a good example of us doing just that."

Tomas Ostiglia, Executive Creative Director at LOLA MullenLowe said: "The bravery of launching a risky idea that is 100% on brand is always rewarded. "

"First, for the audience and second, but no least, for the industry. The plant-based category is at its peak, it seems like every day a new brand pops up.

"And as a small Swedish challenger brand, Oumph! had to convince meat-lovers, vegetarian or not, that their plant-based products can in fact replicate the taste of any meat.

"A claim most are tired of hearing and even more tired of being disappointed by. And of course, a solution was to make a tasty plant-based human meat burger."

Anders Linden, Oumph! Co-founder, Corporate Chef and Head of Innovation said: "The Cannes win: "Developing a plant-based burger that tastes of human meat was exciting, and a little bit scary, and then for this campaign to win in Cannes is incredibly exciting! We developed this burger in no time as soon as we knew what taste and texture we were after.

"This is our ultimate and weird way of showing that it's possible to create any type of food by using just plants."

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 12:47

Finland and Sweden's green light to join NATO is set to bring about the U.S.-led Western military alliance's largest expansion in decades. Meanwhile, the G7, consisting of NATO states and fellow U.S. ally Japan, has adopted a tougher line against Russia and China.

In the East, however, security and economy-focused blocs led by Beijing and Moscow are looking to take on new members of their own, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, two influential Middle Eastern rivals whose interest in shoring up cooperation on this new front could have a significant impact on global geopolitical balance.

The two bodies in question are the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and BRICS. The former was established in 2001 as a six-member political, economic and military coalition including China, Russia and the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan before recruiting South Asian nemeses India and Pakistan in 2017, while the latter is a grouping of emerging economic powers originally consisting of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) upon its inception 2006, and including South Africa in 2010.

"The BRICS and the SCO share one important ideological quality: they are both focused on multipolarity, and their summits have even been held back to back with one another at times," Matthew Neapole, an international affairs expert and contributor to the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Canada, told Newsweek.

"Both are angling to act as force multipliers for this drive for multipolarity, to help along with alternatives [i.e, in currency or banking]," he added. "It could, in theory, facilitate economic linkages and step into gaps that U.S. institutions are not filling due to sanctions, such as those laid on Russia."

Security and economy-focused blocs led by Beijing and Moscow are looking to take on new members, including Iran and Saudi Arabia. In this combination photo, Russian President Vladimir Putin (top left) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (top right) meet on February 4, 2022, ahead of the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing, China. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi (bottom left) and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman are also pictured. Alexei Druzhinin/Meghdad Madadi/Alexander Zemlianichenko/SPUTNIK/ATP IMAGES/AFP/Getty ImagesIran, already an SCO observer, began its formal membership ascension process amid the latest leaders' summit in September. On Monday, the Iranian Foreign Ministry announced the Islamic Republic would also seek to join BRICS.

Across the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia has also reportedly considered applying for BRICS membership, as revealed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during his visit to the kingdom in late May. The announcement followed Saudi Arabia joining Argentina, Egypt, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Senegal, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates at China's invitation for a "BRICS+" discussion, after which Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin announced members had "reached consensus on the BRICS expansion process."

Of these candidates, Argentina has already applied for membership, potentially advancing the group's status toward being a major player in international economic relations. And with the SCO seeking to grow as well, Beijing and Moscow might be poised to advance their effort to sway the international influence equilibrium toward a broader group of countries that do not necessarily sign on to an explicitly U.S.-led international order.

And while Neapole argued that there would be "big hurdles to get over" in trying to transform this vision from ambitious talk to substantive action, he said a cohesive SCO-BRICS bloc could have a huge impact on reshaping the world order.

"If it can be successful in positioning itself as the standard-bearer of the Global South or G20, develop strong organizational mechanisms and integrate more thoroughly," he said, "it could be quite influential."

BRICS' multipolar approach to international affairs has proven attractive to both Iran and Saudi Arabia alike. The two nations, however, have their own unique reasons for seeking membership.

For Riyadh, the move would likely be less about choosing sides against the close ties it has fostered for decades with Washington and more about the kingdom's own growing status as an independent player.

"China's invitation to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to join the 'BRICS' confirms that the Kingdom has a major role in building the new world and became an important and essential player in global trade and economics," Mohammed al-Hamed, president of the Saudi Elite group in Riyadh, told Newsweek. "Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 is moving forward at a confident and global pace in all fields and sectors."

This vision, unveiled by Prince Mohammed bin Salman a year before being appointed as heir to the throne and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia in 2017, outlined a plan to diversify his country's oil-dependent economy and present a new image of the kingdom to the international community.

And while Crown Prince Mohammed has sought to enhance cooperation with the U.S., especially as President Joe Biden prepared this month for his first visit to the monarchy he once branded a "pariah" over alleged human rights abuses, the Saudi royal has also expanded ties with Russia and China in recent years. Joining BRICS would demonstrate a commitment to Riyadh's resolve in dealing with other major powers and mark a significant win for the effort to boost economic frameworks established outside of the auspices of the U.S. and its immediate allies.

"This accession, if Saudi joins it, will balance the world economic system, especially since the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the largest exporter of oil in the world, and it's in the G20," Hamed said. "If it happens, this will support any economic movement and development in the world trade and economy, and record remarkable progress in social and economic aspects as Saudi Arabia should have partnerships with every country in the world."

This approach came in stark contrast to that of Washington, which has regularly shut out countries it disagreed with through a growing list of sanctions. The U.S.' dominant position in the global financial system has traditionally left few options for these nations, but that situation has gradually changed as frameworks like BRICS offer potential ways to dodge these restrictions.

U.S. President Joe Biden gestures as he addresses media representatives during a press conference at the NATO summit in Madrid on June 30, 2022. Biden has sought to revive and reinforce U.S. global leadership, especially in the face of Russia's war in Ukraine and an increasingly powerful China. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty ImagesAmong those countries looking to counter U.S. economic pressure is Iran. International sanctions against the Islamic Republic in response to its nuclear activities were lifted in 2015 after a multilateral nuclear deal was reached with the U.S. and other major powers, including China, France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom, but then-President Donald Trump abandoned the deal in 2018, severely impacting Tehran's ability to trade with the international community.

Biden has set out to negotiate a potential return to the accord that was reached during his vice presidency under former President Barack Obama. However, a series of negotiations held since April of last year has left the U.S. and Iran at an impasse and another set of talks held in Qatar this week appeared to end early with no sign of a breakthrough.

Frustration over shifting politics in Washington has led Tehran to increasingly look to its own region for strategic partnerships, which it has increasingly forged with Beijing and Moscow.

"Iranian officials have come to the conclusion that the U.S. and its Western allies will never allow the Islamic Republic of Iran to play its well-deserved regional role as a middle power," Zakiyeh Yazdanshenas, a research fellow at the Center for Middle East Strategic Studies in Tehran, told Newsweek.

"Therefore, they have decided to neutralize U.S. attempts to isolate Iran by further closing to non-western bodies like SCO and BRICS," she added. "In addition, Iranians consider the future world order to be Eastern and they are trying to get closer to organizations in which Eastern powers such as Russia and China play a significant role."

This doesn't mean that the two blocs are necessary anti-Western in nature. Though a concerted effort has emerged to empower countries outside of the traditional G7 grouping from which Russia was suspended in 2014 as conflict first erupted over Ukraine and other major economies such as China and India have not been invited, the SCO and BRICS, which are not formal military alliances like NATO, saw themselves as inherently inclusive.

"The SCO and the BRICS have not been established as an alternative to Western organizations," Yazdanshenas said, "and their specific function has not been defined on the basis of confrontation with the West or the existing world order."

Still, she argued that growing international competition has only intensified "the balancing function of non-Western organizations" such as the SCO and BRICS. And here, she said Iran could serve as an important asset for both coalitions.

"Joining a moderate power with an anti-Western approach such as Iran to these bodies can strengthen this aspect of SCO and BRICS," Yazdanshenas said. "Iran has been under the most severe sanctions in the last decade, yet it has been able to significantly expand its power in the region."

And, like Saudi Arabia, Iran's oil and gas reserves make it an important strategic partner, especially given the worsening frictions over global energy that have been exacerbated by Western sanctions on Russia, and heated rivalry between Beijing and Washington.

"Iran is the only producer of energy resources in the Persian Gulf that is not an ally of the United States and will not refuse to supply energy to China in the event of an escalation of the trade war between Beijing and Washington," Yazdanshenas said. "In addition, Iran's geopolitical position has been strengthened in the wake of Russia-Ukraine war and that is of great importance for great powers in these bodies i.e. Russia and China."

The energy problem plays into two key reasons having both Iran and Saudi Arabia on board for BRICS would be a "major gain" for the organization, according to Akhil Ramesh, a fellow at the Hawaii-based Pacific Forum.

"For countries like China and to an extent India, import dependency for oil has been a major headache, both from an economic standpoint of trade deficits and from a geopolitical standpoint of having to make security and strategic sacrifices for the sake of oil imports," Ramesh said. "Having three large oil producers in the grouping [Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia] could possibly give these countries the option of securing oil at discounted rates or through alternative arrangements [barter]."

Tehran and Riyadh's oil reserves would also lend BRICS a stronger hand in taking on the U.S. dollar's hegemony over the world financial system as Ramesh argued that, "in order to replace the USD as the global reserve currency you would need to have more commodity-exporting countries, especially oil exporting ones buying into the idea."

"Moreover," he added, "China and Russia are expanding the grouping to create a coalition of countries that have pending disputes with the West or have been humiliated by the West in the past [thinking Argentina and Falklands]."

And in this respect, Ramesh expressed that the U.S. and its allies had committed "a grave error" in overlooking the importance of BRICS, as well as the SCO, emerging financial institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the National Development Bank and China's broader Belt and Road Initiative, which counts some 148 countries and 32 international organizations as partners.

"The U.S. and its allies are grossly underestimating China, in particular," Ramesh said. "BRICS, SCO, development banks such as AIIB, NDB, and infrastructure initiatives such as China's BRI are all different platforms for engaging mostly poor countries that do not get a say in world affairs or have a seat at the high table."

As internal divisions have threatened to derail NATO's agenda, feuds among members also serve as a complicating factor for organizations led by China and Russia. And even if Iran and Saudi Arabia were to both join BRICS, it would not necessarily prove a breakthrough in their bitter rivalry.

The two nations have pursued quiet diplomacy over the past year, but their regional bout for influence has continued to rage across the Middle East, most violently so in Yemen, which has been devastated by a years-long war between a Saudi-led coalition in support of an exiled government on one side and the Iran-aligned Ansar Allah, or Houthi, rebels on the other. The conflict has only quieted in recent months as a result of a fragile three-month truce and not necessarily because of any lasting solution.

But China and Russia have demonstrated a capacity to bring enemies together under a common banner as seen with the SCO's simultaneous admission of India and Pakistan five years ago.

China's Belt and Road Initiative counts more than 200 cooperation documents signed by 148 countries and 32 international organizations as of February 6, 2022, according to the country's official Belt and Road Portal. Newsweek/Belt and Road PortalYaroslav Lissovolik, a Moscow-based Russian International Affairs Council expert and Valdai Discussion Club program director, said BRICS too has the capacity to host countries with clashing worldviews, mentioning the specific case of China and India, whose rivalry has turned occasionally turned violent, and even deadly, along their disputed Himalayan border.

And while he said that the "expansion of the BRICS core membership may indeed result in greater challenges in attaining consensus on key decisions going forward," he felt there was ample room to work together on broader questions.

"In this respect, the addition of Iran and Saudi Arabia would not change matters fundamentally within BRICS as there is scope for a divergence in views," Lissovolik told Newsweek, "and while there may be disagreement on particular local/regional problems, there may be greater unity on global issues."

He argued that disputes among members have not stopped BRICS from managing "to advance with an increasingly ambitious development agenda, including with respect to launching the BRICS+ initiative and the pragmatic cooperation within the BRICS development institutions."

"What this means is that the BRICS offer the possibility of development on the basis of divergence in economic models and approaches to economic modernization rather than convergence towards one particular universal model," Lissovolik said.

"While allowing for the differences in views and approaches among their members," he added, "BRICS economies can move decisively forward in tackling those global challenges where they manage to forge a consensus."

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 12:36

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) '-- New York lawmakers approved a sweeping overhaul Friday of the state's handgun licensing rules, seeking to preserve some limits on firearms after the Supreme Court ruled that most people have a right to carry a handgun for personal protection.

The measure, signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul after passing both chambers by wide margins, is almost sure to draw more legal challenges from gun rights advocates who say the state is still putting too many restrictions on who can get guns and where they can carry them.

Hochul, a Democrat, called the Democrat-controlled Legislature back to Albany to work on the law after last week's high-court ruling overturning the state's longstanding licensing restrictions.

Backers said the law, which takes effect Sept. 1, strikes the right balance between complying with the Supreme Court's ruling and keeping weapons out of the hands of people likely to use them recklessly or with criminal intent.

But some Republican lawmakers, opposed to tighter restrictions, argued the law violated the constitutional right to bear arms. They predicted it too would end up being overturned.

Among other things, the state's new rules will require people applying for a handgun license to turn over a list of their social media accounts so officials could verify their ''character and conduct.''

Applicants will have to show they have ''the essential character, temperament and judgment necessary to be entrusted with a weapon and to use it only in a manner that does not endanger oneself and others.''

As part of that assessment, applicants have to turn over a list of social media accounts they've maintained in the past three years.

''Sometimes, they're telegraphing their intent to cause harm to others,'' Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said at a news conference.

Gun rights advocates and Republican leaders were incensed, saying the legislation not only violated the Second Amendment, but also privacy and free speech rights.

''New Yorkers' constitutional freedoms were just trampled on,'' state Republican Chair Nick Langworthy said.

The bill approved by lawmakers doesn't specify whether applicants will be required to provide licensing officers with access to private social media accounts not visible to the general public.

People applying for a license to carry a handgun will also have to provide four character references, take 16 hours of firearms safety training plus two hours of practice at a range, undergo periodic background checks and turn over contact information for their spouse, domestic partner or any other adults living in their household.

Hochul's chief lawyer, Elizabeth Fine, insisted the state was setting out ''a very clear set of eligibility criteria'' and noted that the legislation includes an appeals process.

The measure signed into law Friday also fixes a recently passed law that barred sales of some types of bullet-resistant vests to the general public. The previous law inadvertently left out many types of body armor, including the type worn by a gunman who killed 10 Black people in a racist attack on a Buffalo supermarket.

The Supreme Court's ruling last week struck down a 109-year-old state law that required people to demonstrate an unusual threat to their safety to qualify for a license to carry a handgun outside their homes. That restriction generally limited the licenses to people who had worked in law enforcement or had another special need that went beyond routine public safety concerns.

Under the new system, the state won't authorize permits for people with criminal convictions within the past five years for driving while intoxicated, menacing or third-degree assault.

People also won't be allowed to carry firearms at a long list of ''sensitive places,'' including New York City's tourist-packed Times Square.

That list also includes schools, universities, government buildings, places where people have gathered for public protests, health care facilities, places of worship, libraries, public playgrounds and parks, day care centers, summer camps, addiction and mental health centers, shelters, public transit, bars, theaters, stadiums, museums, polling places and casinos.

New York will also bar people from bringing guns into any business or workplace unless the owners put up signs saying guns are welcome. People who bring guns into places without such signs could be prosecuted on felony charges.

That's a reverse approach from many other states where businesses that want to keep guns out are usually required to post signs indicating weapons aren't allowed.

Gun advocates said the law infringes on rights upheld by the Supreme Court.

''Now we're going to let the pizzeria owner decide whether or not I can express my constitutional right,'' said Sen. Andrew Lanza, a Staten Island Republican. ''This is a disgrace. See you in the courts.''

___

Associated Press/Report for America writer Maysoon Khan contributed to this report. Maysoon Khan is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. Follow Maysoon Khan on Twitter.

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Sat, 02 Jul 2022 13:22

Gisteren, 22:12 in BINNENLAND

''¸ ANP

DEN HAAG - In het najaar maakt het kabinet de voorkeurslocatie bekend van twee nieuwe kerncentrales. Volgend najaar moet dan definitief worden beslist over financiering, rol en kosten van de overheid en het gunningsproces, heeft minister Rob Jetten (Economische Zaken en Klimaat) aan de Tweede Kamer laten weten.

''¸ ANP

In het coalitieakkoord hebben VVD, D66, CDA en ChristenUnie afgesproken om twee nieuwe centrales te bouwen om de energievoorziening te verduurzamen. Er lopen nu een aantal onderzoeken naar onder meer financiering, locatie en techniek.

De bouw van nieuwe kerncentrales duurt zeker tien jaar. 'žErvaringen uit het buitenland leren dat het benodigde proces complex en kostbaar is, de besluitvorming veelomvattend en het verkrijgen van maatschappelijk draagvlak heel belangrijk'', aldus Jetten.

Uit een rapport van KPMG bleek vorig jaar dat stabiel overheidsbeleid een belangrijke voorwaarde is voor de bouw van een nieuwe kerncentrale. Ook zou de overheid financieel moeten bijdragen aan de realisatie en is het volgens marktpartijen belangrijk om te kiezen voor bewezen technologie.

Uit het rapport bleek ook dat de provincie Zeeland positief staat tegenover de bouw van een nieuwe kerncentrale en dat het voor Noord-Brabant onder voorwaarden bespreekbaar is.

Het kabinet wil de kerncentrale in Borssele langer laten doordraaien. Om deze centrale na 2033 nog stroom te laten produceren neemt Jetten nu alvast de eerste stappen. Het kabinet gaat onder meer de wet aanpassen en er moet een milieueffectrapportage worden opgesteld.

Lunch UpdateDagelijks tijdens de lunch een update van het belangrijkste nieuws.

Ongeldig e-mailadres. Vul nogmaals in aub.

Lees hier ons privacybeleid.

Bekijk meer van30 jun.Binnenland

Zuid-Koreanen willen nieuwe kerncentrales bouwen in NederlandDe plannen voor de bouw van twee extra kerncentrales zullen nog niet voor de zomer worden beklonken. Hoewel klimaatminister Rob Jetten de Tweede Kamer beloofde nog voor de zomer met een brief te komen waarin hij uitgebreid ingaat op het belang van kernenergie, zal die brief die vrijdag in de ministe...

25 jun.Financieel

Grootste Duitse kerncentrale Isar-2 kan langer openblijvenDe grootste Duitse kerncentrale Isar-2 kan zonder problemen langer openblijven om stroomtekorten te helpen voorkomen.

10 jun.

'Overstap op stroom problematisch'Het is inmiddels overduidelijk dat de gedwongen overschakeling op stroom zeer slecht gaat uitpakken, stelt Oane Jansen.

09 jun.Buitenland

Iran verwijdert 27 camera's van atoomwaakhondIran is van plan om 27 camera's van het Internationaal Atoomenergieagentschap (IAEA) te verwijderen. Rafael Grossi, de directeur-generaal van de atoomwaakhond, zei tijdens een persconferentie dat Iran die stap donderdag al wil nemen en dat hij de toekomst van het nucleaire akkoord uit 2015 somber in...

03 jun.

'Hand in eigen boezem steken'De minister voor Klimaat en Energie Rob Jetten heeft zijn collega ministers gemaand meer tijd en energie te steken in hun departementen om uiteindelijk de geformuleerde klimaatdoelen te halen. Ok, maar wat doet Rob Jetten zelf, vraagt Kees Jan Porre zich af?

Europese Commissie in feite medeplichtig aan PoetinHet is geen wonder dat eurocommissaris Frans Timmermans en zijn kabinetschef Diederik Samsom hun gewicht in de strijd gooien voor het samengaan met GL; ze zitten op dezelfde lijn tegen kernenergie. Voor GL was dat actiepunt nummer 1, en Samsom als voormalig Greenpeaceleider zal daar geen verandering...

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Fri, 01 Jul 2022 13:55

Een archieffoto van een eerder boerenprotest. Foto: ANP / Robin van Lonkhuijsen Melkveehouder Koos Cromwijk, een van de meest prominente protesterende boeren, is uiteraard zwaar teleurgesteld dat de stikstofplannen van het kabinet doorgaan. Hij demonstreerde gisteren bij de Tweede Kamer. Nadat de stemming over de stikstofplannen voor hem zeer teleurstellend verliepen, verscheen hij niet veel later voor de camera's van GeenStijl.

Hij verklaarde dat de acties van de boeren nog lang niet over zijn. Integendeel, volgens hem hebben de boeren nog een heel belangrijke troef in handen, legde hij uit tegen verslaggever Tom Staal. En die kunnen wel eens heel nadelig uitpakken voor burgers, zei hij.

Boze demonstranten blijven strijdvaardigAlhoewel hij in eerste instantie lachend voor de camera verscheen, was die lach al snel van zijn gezicht verdwenen. 'žHet huilen staat je nader dan het lachen, denk ik?'', vroeg Tom Staal aan hem. 'žHet wordt strijdvaardigheid nu. Het is klaar'', zei de boer.

Koos Cromwijk is inmiddels een nationale bekendheid. Zo verscheen hij maandag nog in Op1 om het boerenbelang te vertegenwoordigen en dat maakte de tongen los bij kijkers. Vooral het optreden van beide presentatoren viel niet goed. Vorige week hield hij nog een betoog over de zorgen van boeren.

Boer Koos: 'Ik zou maar alvast inslaan'Het is dus 'klaar', aldus boer Koos. Maar bij die dreigende woorden bleef het niet. 'žJe wist dat dit zou komen, h¨'', aldus verslaggever Tom Staal. 'žJa, inderdaad. En nu moeten we verdergaan. We hebben nog een hele goede kaart in handen. Echt een hele goede kaart. En dat gaat de burger merken. Dat ze anders moeten kijken naar de boeren en dat de politiek andere keuzes moet maken.''

Wat die kaart is, wil hij in eerste instantie niet zeggen. 'žHou je de kaart tegen de borst?'', vraagt de GeenStijl-verslaggever aan de melkveehouders. 'žJazeker, maar denk aan de supermarkten'', geeft hij een tipje van de sluier. 'žOftewel, ik moet even inslaan alvast?'' 'žDat zou ik maar doen'', aldus de boze boer.

Dat hij en andere boze boeren de supermarkten willen raken, is dus duidelijk. Maar hoe ze dat willen doen, nog niet. Het lijkt echter een kwestie van tijd voordat dat duidelijk wordt.

Steeds meer kritiek op boeren nu acties verharden: 'Stop deze waanzin'

Foutje gezien? Mail ons. Wij zijn je dankbaar.

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Boeren hebben het gemunt op supermarkten: 'Inslaan? Zou het maar doen'

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/ Live news Issued on: 30/06/2022 - 19:32

Two campaigners from the Just Stop Oil protest group glued themselves to the frame of a painting at the Van Gogh exhibition at London's Courtauld Gallery Tolga Akmen AFP London (AFP) '' A pair of environmental protesters in Britain on Thursday glued themselves to the frame of a Vincent van Gogh painting on display at a London art gallery.

The stunt, the latest direct action demonstration by climate change activists, saw the duo from the "Just Stop Oil" group glue their fingers to the Dutch master's "Peach Trees in Blossom".

The oil on canvas work painted in 1889 is part of a Van Gogh collection hanging at the Courtauld Gallery at Somerset House in the British capital.

It comes the day after five members of the group, which wants a halt to all new UK fossil fuel projects, were arrested over a similarly disruptive protest at an art museum in Glasgow.

"We don't want to be doing this," Louis McKechnie, one of the pair claiming to have attached himself to the Van Gogh work, told onlookers at the London gallery, according to footage shared by "Just Stop Oil".

"We're here glued to this painting -- this beautiful painting -- because we're terrified for our future," the 21-year-old added, noting he and his fellow activist expected to be arrested.

"If there was any other way of getting the change we need, we would've done it -- we've tried everything else."

The Courtauld confirmed the incident took place mid-afternoon and prompted the closure of the gallery in which the painting hangs for the rest of Thursday.

"We expect The Courtauld Gallery to reopen to the public as normal tomorrow," it added in a statement.

McKechnie, a former engineering student who has already been arrested 20 times and spent six weeks in prison, is fast becoming one of the most recognisable faces among Britain's climate change activists.

In March, he risked the wrath of football fans when he tied himself to a goalpost in the middle of a match between Newcastle and Everton.

He told AFP earlier this month that he was prepared to become "public enemy number one" over his direct actions.

In the video from the gallery Thursday, McKechnie accused the UK government of "pushing through over 40 new fossil fuel projects" which were "like signing our death warrants".

"My generation has no other choice but to take this kind of action," he added.

On Wednesday, Britain's independent Climate Change Committee (CCC) warned that the British government was failing to make adequate progress meeting targets in its new net-zero strategy to be carbon neutral by 2050.

That prompted campaign group Greenpeace UK, business groups and opposition politicians to urge ministers to ramp up delivering on climate change policies.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservative government has recently reviewed its energy strategy, including provision of nuclear, wind and solar power.

But it is also examining fossil fuel projects in the North Sea, as part of attempts to safeguard domestic supplies after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

(C) 2022 AFP

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Fri, 01 Jul 2022 13:33

The Facts Inside Our Reporter's NotebookResidents of some states may not get their next unemployment checks on time as a vendor cyberattack has shut down their websites.

The states all do business with Florida-based Geographic Solutions. The company has not posted any information on its social media pages about the cyberattack. A warning page appears when trying to access the company's webpage.

Up to 40 states and Washington, D.C. could be affected, according to a news release from the Louisiana Workforce Commission. No personal data was exposed, according to state officials there. But some state residents may get their unemployment check late as Louisiana's HIRE website is down, they said.

"The HiRE website is used to file unemployment claims, job searches and other functions,'" Louisiana officials said in a news release. "This outage impacts the near 11,000 people currently filing continued claims for unemployment in Louisiana."

Officials with the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce said they cannot access data to process unemployment claims.

"The Department will distribute benefits as soon as possible, right now there is no timeline as to when that will happen,' the department said in a news release. "Once the system is operational, claimants can complete their certifications for any missed weeks, and they will receive a lump sum for any delayed payments."

CalJOBS, a virtual job search center run by the state, is also down, according to California's Employment Development Department.

"In response, EDD has temporarily waived the CalJOBS registration and resume upload requirement for unemployment insurance recipients," the department said in a news release. "Californians are still required to search for work to be eligible for unemployment benefits."

The outage only affected job application site in some states. Other states that have reported problems are North Carolina, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Alaska and Florida.

The outage began Sunday and no timeline was given as to when the websites could go back online.

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 17:27

Aaron Ginn : The free democratic world - ''The vaxx is perfect! Everyone needs to take it or lose your rights and go to jail.''T'... https://t.co/X8AKDoZxBR

Thu Jun 30 15:40:49 +0000 2022

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 17:15

Dr Thomas Hillig ' #EUSEW2022 Ambass.'--#EVS35 #EVs : At @Eurelectric PS22, @Siemens Managing Board Member & @SiemensInfra CEO, Matthias Rebellius turns the spotlight on'... https://t.co/eGz09yOtJU

Thu Jun 30 12:26:26 +0000 2022

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 17:11

Anne McCloy : Anne: Do you have numbers to show that it's the concealed carry permit holders that are committing crimes? Hochul'... https://t.co/UeucqwmWKH

Wed Jun 29 23:16:41 +0000 2022

umiami91 🇺ðŸ‡...ðŸŒ>> : @AnneMcCloyNews The former ''science-and-evidence-based'' governor saying evidence doesn't matter.

Sun Jul 03 16:29:47 +0000 2022

KetchupDodgeLife : @AnneMcCloyNews https://t.co/qVkbWzP39Z

Sun Jul 03 14:09:34 +0000 2022

KetchupDodgeLife : @AnneMcCloyNews Translation: as long as I'm scared I can do whatever I want to you

Sun Jul 03 13:20:55 +0000 2022

Reza Gorji, M.D., FASA : @AnneMcCloyNews Folks: vote her out.

Sun Jul 03 09:19:36 +0000 2022

Kdrama Kpop Fan🇺🇸🏠: @AnneMcCloyNews @slimestOAT Hochul- no facts required

Sun Jul 03 04:03:46 +0000 2022

J.G. Lockwood : @AnneMcCloyNews Why am I not surprised that her constituents would put a knucklehead like her into the highest office in N.Y.?

Sun Jul 03 02:55:30 +0000 2022

Harriet : @AnneMcCloyNews What a tool. And those of you who believe this witch hunt are bigger tools.

Sun Jul 03 02:41:32 +0000 2022

A Lady is Classy 🐞 I'm no lady. : @AnneMcCloyNews She's comparing to Mississippi? One of the lowest income states. High crime rates. Nobody understan'... https://t.co/1QYR9l4rxH

Sun Jul 03 02:39:38 +0000 2022

Norman Brady : @AnneMcCloyNews Hochul has got to go. Pelosi lap dog!

Sun Jul 03 00:34:20 +0000 2022

tiredinrhodeisland : @AnneMcCloyNews She begs the question. All laws should be sensible. On what basis did she conclude this one is sensible?

Sun Jul 03 00:21:19 +0000 2022

Nick Brown 🇺🇸 MAGA GANG : @AnneMcCloyNews Thank you for actually doing journalism!

Sat Jul 02 22:58:23 +0000 2022

Joe Ruszczyk : @AnneMcCloyNews That's why the cities with the strongest gun laws have the highest gun crime rate. Guns don't rob,'... https://t.co/TT64IYoXRU

Sat Jul 02 22:50:14 +0000 2022

Al Doney : @AnneMcCloyNews In WAAAAAAAAAAAY over her head. We were almost better off with Andy the toucher.

Sat Jul 02 21:57:53 +0000 2022

Steve 🇺🇸🇮🇱 : @AnneMcCloyNews Ah, yes. ''I don't need data or facts or evidence. I just know it's true.'' The skree of BS grifters everywhere. ðŸðŸ¤

Sat Jul 02 21:22:26 +0000 2022

alan1000🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 : @AnneMcCloyNews @nodramahere7 Never ask for facts, the Left does not operate there- The ''Liberal World Order'' req'... https://t.co/OA0oNcHY2K

Sat Jul 02 20:20:02 +0000 2022

Walt : @AnneMcCloyNews So when a criminal (who doesn't care about gun laws) decides to shoot up one of these places, we sh'... https://t.co/rIs6JahXjt

Sat Jul 02 20:11:24 +0000 2022

Unmasked granny killa : @AnneMcCloyNews In the full video this clip is taken from, Hochul goes on to cite some study or statistic and some'... https://t.co/sQSbAaBKDO

Sat Jul 02 19:45:20 +0000 2022

John Nelson : @AnneMcCloyNews The 1908 policy was found to be unconstitutional and thrown out. You ma'am are a tyrant and doing m'... https://t.co/J3tBIEUyrc

Sat Jul 02 19:42:07 +0000 2022

Alpheaus Marcus : @AnneMcCloyNews Translation I am running for reelection so I have to have a bill on gun control to appear and appea'... https://t.co/9Gl8lJRhl8

Sat Jul 02 19:41:01 +0000 2022

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 17:07

Video: 'Inflation is far too important to keep making statements like this': Jeff Bezos blasts Biden for trying to blame gas stations for astronomical prices - and even China mocks the president by claiming he 'now realizes capitalism is exploitation'

Biden's economic advisor, Brian Deese, Americans should 'stand firm, paying record high gas prices, future of the liberal world order.'

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 17:05

Breaking911 : CNN: "What do you say to those families that say, 'listen, we can't afford to pay $4.85 a gallon for months, if not'... https://t.co/9qjHLVsg3q

Fri Jul 01 01:42:08 +0000 2022

LaWayne Schrader : @Breaking911 Stop this!

Sun Jul 03 16:59:59 +0000 2022

Faith'®¸ : @Breaking911 @smartestfrmMars What for you think ''liberal world order'' means? It doesn't mean what the commenters o'... https://t.co/l6GajPCfii

Sun Jul 03 16:50:48 +0000 2022

Art Vandelay : @Breaking911 Liberal World Order or elites world order? This guy is a big deal at the World Economic Forum which ha'... https://t.co/Sm0i1GyFKH

Sun Jul 03 16:48:43 +0000 2022

Stubone : @Breaking911 Liberal?! Don't you men ''new'' world order?

Sun Jul 03 16:41:38 +0000 2022

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 16:52

Arnaud Bertrand : WowðŸ¯Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: "I chaired the commission for the Lancet for 2 years on Covid. I'm pretty convinced it c'... https://t.co/hF097sK0iW

Sat Jul 02 15:44:04 +0000 2022

Marco Voskamp : @RnaudBertrand #hetkloptniet

Sun Jul 03 16:48:32 +0000 2022

DocMike : @RnaudBertrand 'žIch war 2Jahre lang Vors. der Lancet Kommission zu Covid. Ich bin ziemlich ¼berzeugt, dass es aus e'... https://t.co/3dtNP7FwAU

Sun Jul 03 16:47:19 +0000 2022

Rene : @RnaudBertrand Was sagt @c_drosten dazu?

Sun Jul 03 16:46:12 +0000 2022

mrknc : @RnaudBertrand Is there good reason for economist to chair covid commission of a biomedical journal?

Sun Jul 03 16:44:29 +0000 2022

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 16:45

Wall Street Silver : You'll own nothing ......Enjoy your rental pod.Sound ON https://t.co/YQLOFIEFal

Thu Jun 30 20:00:00 +0000 2022

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 16:44

Chinese economy to 'spew deflation over world' says expert Get

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Author and J Capital Research co-founder Anne Stevenson-Yang has warned the world to brace for deflation, as China's economy is about to crash. As Xi Jinping's communist regime is still pushing for a zero-Covid policy and inflation gallops around the world, China has seen its exports crumble, driving goods prices down. After two years of rapid economic growth in 2020 and 2021, China's export market is experiencing a dangerous decline.

Speaking to ABC News, Ms Stevenson-Yang said: "So, my base case for China, I think that the Chinese economy is really going to through a crash. I think that China is going to spew deflation into the world pretty soon, like along about the third quarter of this year."

Lockdowns within China, the West's waning economic power and the emergence of competitors are all factors contributing to China's deflation '' a gradual decrease in goods' prices.

While assets and prices decrease over time, buyers' purchasing power increases. This economic phenomenon goes contrary to inflation, which has the opposite effect '' increasing prices in the economy and reducing buyers' purchasing power.

Xi Jinping's regime is experiencing deflation (Image: GETTY)

Anne Stevenson-Yang believes China's economy will go through a crash (Image: YOUTUBE/@ABC NEWS)

Though it may seem like good news, deflation is usually the sign of an impending recession. When deflation happens, consumers tend to hold off on purchasing in the hopes that prices will keep falling. However, producers then take the brunt of reduced consumption and generate less income, which can result in unemployment and higher interest rates.

This cycle creates higher unemployment, lower prices and even less spending. As a result, deflation leads to more deflation.

When asked why it will happen so soon and spread so quickly, Ms Stevenson-Yang said: "Because China is responsible for huge amount of commodity consumption. And so, as their demand declines, then commodity prices decline. And that's an international effect."

READ MORE: Five pieces of bad news for Putin: Russia's troubles laid bare

Anne Stevenson-Yang has warned the world to brace for deflation (Image: YOUTUBE/@ABC NEWS)

Deflation is the opposite of inflation (Image: EXPRESS)

"But I think the key thing Renminbi has got to depreciate. And as the Renminbi depreciates, that's what pushes deflation into the world," Ms Stevenson-Yang said.

China has enjoyed decades of skyrocketing economic growth due to its low-cost exports of machinery, textile and consumer products '' so much so that it has become the world's largest economy with close to 20 percent of the world's GDP.

The outsized Chinese economy means any slowdown affects the rest of the world. And over the last few years, its economy has taken a few bumps with the US-China trade war and Covid-19.

DON'T MISS:Truss warns against dependence' on 'unreasonable' China [REPORT]China-US conflict risk risk ramps up 'Risk of nuclear war very high!' [REPORT]Why has Nato compared China to Russia? [EXPLAINER]

Xi Jinping's strict zero-Covid policy is contributing to deflation (Image: GETTY)

The rising inflation has also led to decreased spending and lowered demand in the United States and Europe.

Other Asian countries are also siphoning parts of China's exports. For instance, Taiwan has captured seven percent of China's furniture exports, five percent of textile and two percent of electronic goods, according to estimates.

On Xi Jining's Government's intervention, Ms Stevenson-Yang said: "They're intervening rather heavily. It looks like to me. But you can't stop it altogether."

READ NEXT:War fears skyrocket as Truss says UK should send Taiwan weaponsChina launches third aircraft carrier in chilling warningWuhan lab leak theory gains ground as experts point to evidenceRooney in huge TV chase with BT, Sky Sports and China wanting starChinese eating cancerous dogs at Yulin - it's grotesque, DR PETER LI

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 16:36

After testing positive for COVID-19 earlier this month, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Tuesday that he has joined a growing group of people experiencing a Paxlovid rebound, following treatment with Pfizer's antiviral.

Fauci, 81, said that when he first tested positive two weeks ago, he had very minimal symptoms. However, when he began to feel worse, "given [his] age," he was prescribed Paxlovid.

Other than fatigue and a bit of congestion, Fauci reported that he felt "really quite well," and after his five-day course of Paxlovid, he tested negative with a rapid test.

However, after testing negative for three consecutive days, Fauci said he decided to take one more test out of precaution and subsequently found himself positive again on the fourth day.

"It was sort of what people are referring to as a Paxlovid rebound," Fauci said during a remote interview with the Foreign Policy Global Health Forum on Tuesday.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Chief Medical Advisor to the President, participated in a COVID-19 press briefing at the White House on Dec. 01, 2021 in Washington.

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images, FILE

Over the course of the next day, he began to feel "really poorly," and "much worse than in the first go around," he added.

Paxlovid is authorized in the U.S. for people with mild-to-moderate symptoms of COVID-19, who are at significant risk of progressing to severe illness.

Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked doctors to be on the lookout for the seemingly rare, but increasingly reported phenomenon.

"Paxlovid continues to be recommended for early-stage treatment of mild to moderate COVID-19 among persons at high risk for progression to severe disease," the CDC wrote in a health alert in May.

The rebounding phenomenon, which is described as a recurrence of COVID-19 symptoms or the development of a new positive viral test after having tested negative, has been found to occur between two and eight days after initial recovery. A brief return of COVID-19 symptoms may be part of the "natural history" of the virus, officials wrote, and may occur in some people, regardless of treatment with Paxlovid or vaccination status.

Just last week, Fauci told reporters during a White House COVID-19 briefing that he was feeling well after testing positive and taking his first course of Paxlovid.

"All is well with Fauci and thank you for asking," Fauci said. "I'm vaccinated. I'm doubly boosted. And I believe if that were not the case, I very likely would not be talking to you, looking as well as I look, I think, right now."

However, after his COVID-19 recurrence, Fauci was prescribed another course of Paxlovid, he said. As of Tuesday, he is on his fourth day of a five-day course.

"I am on my fourth day of a five-day course of my second course of Paxlovid. And fortunately, I feel reasonably good. I mean, I'm not complete[ly] without symptoms, but I certainly don't feel acutely ill," Fauci said.

Health officials have reported that while information is still limited, available data suggests that most people who experience the rebound are not likely to suffer from severe forms of disease.

Covid-19 treatment pill Paxlovid is seen in a box, at Misericordia hospital in Grosseto, Italy, Feb. 8, 2022.

Jennifer Lorenzini/Reuters, FILE

At this time, CDC states that there is currently no evidence that an additional treatment of Paxlovid, is needed, following a rebound.

The Food and Drug Administration also says that ''there is no evidence of benefit at this time for a longer course of treatment '... or repeating a treatment course of Paxlovid in patients with recurrent COVID-19 symptoms following completion of a treatment course.''

The CDC currently recommends that doctors advise their patients with COVID-19 rebound to follow CDC's guidance on isolation and take additional precautions to prevent transmission.

Patients should re-isolate for at least five days, and per agency guidance, can end their re-isolation period after five full days, if fever has dissipated for 24 hours and symptoms are improving, the CDC says. Physicians are also recommended to tell their patients to wear a mask for a total of 10 days after rebound symptoms started, the agency said.

"Regardless of whether the patient has been treated with an antiviral agent, risk of transmission during COVID-19 rebound can be managed by following CDC's guidance on isolation, including taking other precautions such as masking," the agency wrote in May.

Earlier this month, Pfizer also reported new clinical trial data that showed that Paxlovid did not significantly reduce the risk of going to the hospital or dying in people with standard risk of developing severe illness. However, the company said the treatment still works well in high-risk individuals.

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 15:53

TexasLindsay' : ðŸ--¥ WATCH: Life Insurance Payouts Hit Record Highs in 2021 | @EpochTVus https://t.co/8nwmYgwqew

Thu Jun 30 19:55:41 +0000 2022

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Sun, 03 Jul 2022 15:45

Ultra Jeff : I actually like this guy. He's a liberal. And I like him. https://t.co/9Skxq3rve6

Wed Jun 29 21:09:42 +0000 2022

Gambino/Renfah : @RidinRoadsTX Hate to be that guy, but he's not a liberal - He's a progressive. Liberals aren't that smart. Spend s'... https://t.co/93GYejMOuX

Sun Jul 03 15:41:10 +0000 2022

Nacho Average Chip : @RidinRoadsTX 🤣

Sun Jul 03 15:19:25 +0000 2022

Papa Dave : @RidinRoadsTX https://t.co/p8P7hn62Kk

Sun Jul 03 15:12:03 +0000 2022

Bennett : @RidinRoadsTX He's not wrong. Republicans or Dems in USA, Labour or Tory in UK. Same in every so called democratic'... https://t.co/loSDowe5uf

Sun Jul 03 15:06:09 +0000 2022

SassyRedHeaded👨ðŸ>>'ðŸš'MAGA Mermaid👮ðŸ>>''‚¸ðŸ‡ºðŸ‡¸ðŸ‘¨'''¸ : @RidinRoadsTX Oh and he's funny

Sun Jul 03 15:02:32 +0000 2022

Irish Johnson : @RidinRoadsTX I might listen to him if he'd made his bed. What kind of adult doesn't make their bed in the morning?

Sun Jul 03 15:00:19 +0000 2022

Jesus Christ is my Lord and My King : @RidinRoadsTX Way to much cursing and the money should be put to good use. Selfish ambitions aren't always selfish'... https://t.co/PxZcqzWDnr

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Sun Jul 03 14:54:41 +0000 2022

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Fri, 01 Jul 2022 13:15

The problem wasn't the lack of vaccinations. It was the requirement that got so many people fired/laid off. Socialism (well, really any for of ACTUAL authoritarianism) always ultimately fails.

He has it completely wrong. The vaccinated are sicker than the unvaccinated by a mile. Look at Fauci for proof.

The D-rats will blame anything and anyone for their failures.

Lemme square this circle'...

Biden buying 3 billion$$$ worth of Phizer poison and the Ukrainian billions are examples of Money Laundering'...

Sad to think this will probably the smartest statement coming out of the Brandon Administration today'...FJB'...

What a crock. Such BS. Who believes this shit? Scary.

Correlation does not imply causation, dip stick. Who are these individuals in charge? Do they think we the people are that stupid? I guess maybe they do. None of them, as my dearly departed dad used to say, know their rear end from second base. Love the baseball analogy.

Powell demonstrates that he is part of the problem. The problem is the feds passing out trillions of dollars in an unprecedented giveaway during a time when there was nothing to do with the money. The mass vax program failed. The mandates caused widespread social and economic disruption. Oh Yeah. Biden was installed via a stolen election.

Government paid billions to Big pharma for jabs that didn't work.

Revenge-0-BuckFiden2000000

Fukin idiot

Merrick Garland must use the same barber as this guy

Inflation is caused by Liberal Socialist Democrats that use air and the dead ones that still vote.

SMH SMH The vac is the problem. Doesn't work'...never did'...no one wants it yet they are making another one. Adult Sudden Death Syndrome. Hmm ðŸ¤--

This dumba$$ thinks we are all dumba$$e$.#insulting

Might have been climate change or global warming. Plus those dastardly unvaccinated. Yeah, jerks not going along with the program. Are we hurting for leadership!

The ONLY reason people did not return to work as planned was because Biden made an unconstitutional executive order on all businesses of 100 employees or more.

We havent forgotten how they tried to needle rape us!

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I just added ''needle tape'' to my vocabulary.

👍

Our so called top people are mental lightweights. If my idea didn't work it's because the plebes won't listen. Can't somebody make them listen? Powell is too old and I'm starting to see shades of Sniffy.

Does that idiot Brain Dead Joe require everyone in his orbit to have a labotomy? They have cornered the market on stupid.

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Did they change the definition of inflation too?

Blaming inflation on the unvaccinated'.... Blame a vaccination that didn't work and killed more than it saved. Blame the monsters who created this bio-weapon. Blame out of control spending by DC. Blame ridiculously low mortgage rates for years. Blame a lot of things, but certainly NOT the American people. All we've done is make this country work and pay our stinking taxes that are squandered by the federal government.

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The FED is the problem. They know very well that all the QE would put us where we are now, but their priority was 'free' money, not the health of our system. Bankers are the worst of the worst.

How do people this stupid get to these positions.

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They were tapped based on how immoral they are.

The difference between humans and animals is animals don't allow the dumbest to lead.

The whole Biden Administration are not qualified for their positions.

Babylon is falling

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Gov linked folks being stupid.

That's what happens when you manipulate the market and print money for your buddies to make yourself seem important. Another self-important unimportant. And ''LET'S GO BRANDON''

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Blame everyone EXCEPT those in charge, you know, The ones causing it all!In order to get a position in this regime, #1 you must be brain dead, like the big guy'.....

Sure blame me but not yourself for printing money. This guy is actually stupider than Janet Yellen. he's a deep state commie.

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Every time Powell, like Yellen, opens his mouth he shows he is a complete idiot. Somebody should ask him since the Fed has caused every recession and the Great Depression when are you going to be honest and take credit for the current recession

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I ran out of gas. I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts! IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD!

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If you are a democrat all of that would be credible'--even under oath. Any then who would doubt you is''of course''a racist.

I guess he does not know that the vaccinated are the ones getting Covid, or worse.

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Oh , but he does'...it's as planned.

And I thought it was all Trump's fault. If Powell thinks the labor force is under pressure because of the unvaccinated wait till the vaccinated start dropping from Sudden Adult Death Syndrome. Then he can blame Fauci.

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END THE FED

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Just imagine what is going to happen when the work force is decimated by vaccine injuries. The impacts of the forced vax are going to play out over a decade or more. How many will be dead or incapacitated by strokes, heart attacks, neurological degradation, etc'... You think the supply chain is bad now? And, just wait until the lawsuits destroy every company's ledger.With Tyrants, it's always someone else's fault. These monsters will spend eternity in Hell.

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Thought it was all Putin's fault!

If you haven't figured out that the Fed (NOT Government but private European banking cabal) is try to steal everything and kill you yet, you haven't been paying attention. Catch up with the compelling read: The Creature from Jekyll Island

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Something very evil is going on and it is clearly a planned agenda.

That's responsibly a good thing for the ecosystems and the climate. Less people breathing evil CO2 and no using evil electricity ( you can use the rope over and over) and if you rush the corpses to the Soylent Green refrigerators you can feed the hungry and poor that are coming over our open borders

Fight the progressives donate

There is NO ONE in this administration that is sane,Our economy will colapseJust hope November will help

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You're assuming they actually want the economy to work. I don't.

Hew Powell,

Blame me! Blame the Ultra-Pureblood KatyPatriot and the other millions like me that wholly rejected, and continue to reject, the poison jab.

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I'm sick of these lying B@st@rds!!

Inflation has been caused by the unvaccinated, and my dog ate my homework'... can you get more childish?

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