Month: August 2020

New Jersey Proposes $1,000 ‘Baby Bond’ As Wealth Gap Hits Extreme

New Jersey Proposes $1,000 ‘Baby Bond’ As Wealth Gap Hits Extreme

Tyler Durden

Wed, 08/26/2020 – 18:45

The wealth gap between in America is the widest in history, or at least the 244-year history of the country.

In a bid to address the decades of social-imbalances, mostly a byproduct of de-industrialization, technological advances, and, of course, the Federal Reserve’s monetary policies, New Jersey’s own U.S. Senator Cory Booker has proposed a new plan to invest $1,000 at birth in a nest egg for children in low-income households, which could, at one day, give them a financial lift, only accessible at the age of 18. As NYT explains:

“The idea to give out the so-called baby bonds is a scaled-down version of legislation introduced by Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, to help address a disparity that, on average, has left white families in the United States seven times wealthier than their Black counterparts.”

The New York Times said, “the move would be a small but tangible step toward confronting inequities that have been brought into particularly stark relief by the coronavirus pandemic, which has disproportionately affected Black and Latino people, who have died and lost jobs at far higher rates.” 

“The inequities are too wide, too raw, to ignore,” Murphy said in an interview.

Every baby born in 2021, to households who earn less than $131,000 per year, are eligible for the new “baby bonds”. The plan will cost an estimated $72 million in 2021, with approximately 72,000 babies expected to qualify. 

“The source of inequality generally is that some young adults have capital and others do not,” said Darrick Hamilton, a professor of economics and urban policy at The New School in New York City. “The difference between a renter and a homeowner is a down payment.”

“This is saying: Irrespective to the family you are born into, that you have a birthright to capital when you become an adult,” Hamilton added.

The $1,000 nest egg, with interest over 18 years, would be worth around $1,270 in 2039. 

To put the baby bonds in perspective for readers, this could be the beginning innings of People’s Quantitative Easing (PQE), where the Fed monetizes treasury debt to fund direct transfer payments. 

With the Trump administration already conducting massive “helicopter money” drops to corporations, households, farmers, and anyone else – we outlined in early August this is only the beginning (see: “The Fed Is Planning To Send Money Directly To Americans In The Next Crisis”). 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3aZGw8J Tyler Durden

NBA, MLB Games Postponed as Players Protest Jacob Blake Shooting

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The National Basketball Association’s playoffs came to an abrupt halt on Wednesday after players boycotted scheduled games to protest the shooting of Jacob Blake, a black man, by a white police officer.

What began with a boycott carried out by a single professional basketball team quickly spread across the league and the rest of the sports world, with two other NBA games and at least one Major League Baseball game called off as additional players joined the cause.

The Milwaukee Bucks were supposed to play the fifth game of their first-round series against the Orlando Magic on Wednesday afternoon, but Bucks players refused to leave the locker room for the start of the game. After initially warming up in the arena, players for the Magic walked off the court before the scheduled tip-off. With other teams reportedly planning similar boycotts in upcoming games, the NBA made the decision to cancel Wednesday’s entire slate of playoff games.

“Some things are bigger than basketball,” Alex Lasry, the Bucks’ senior vice president, said in a statement. “The stand taken today by the players and (the organization) shows that we’re fed up. Enough is enough. Change needs to happen. I’m incredibly proud of our guys and we stand 100 percent behind our players ready to assist and bring about real change.”

Some Bucks players were trying to get in contact with Josh Kaul, Wisconsin’s state attorney general, according to The Athletic‘s Shams Charania.

Kenosha, Wisconsin, where Blake was shot in the back at point-blank range at least seven times on Sunday afternoon, is about 30 miles south of Milwaukee. The small city has been wracked by violent protests in the days since Blake’s shooting, culminating in the destruction of several businesses and the deaths of at least two people.

The Milwaukee Brewers, a Major League Baseball team, canceled their game on Wednesday evening in order to protest Blake’s shooting. Other baseball teams are reportedly considering boycotting games as well.

NBA players and coaches have spent the past few days speaking out about Blake’s shooting. On Monday, Chis Paul of the Oklahoma City Thunder—who also happens to be the president of the NBA Players Association—used a postgame interview to share his thoughts on what had taken place in Kenosha on Sunday.

“It’s not right. It’s not right,” he said. “There’s a lot of stuff going on in the country. Sports—it’s cool, it’s good…but there are the real issues we have to start addressing.”

And on Tuesday night, it was Los Angeles Clippers head coach Doc Rivers who focused his postgame news conference on how police violence against black Americans has been politicized.

Shortly after the Bucks-Magic game was postponed Wednesday, superstar Lebron James weighed in on Twitter.

When the NBA restarted its season after a months-long COVID-19 disruption, the league allowed players to wear pre-approved political statements on the back of their jerseys. Many players have opted to wear expressions supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, and other statements calling attention to police violence towards black Americans. The court where the NBA is playing all its playoffs games—at the Walt Disney World resort near Orlando, Florida, inside a so-called “bubble” to protect against the spread of COVID-19—is painted with the phrase “Black Lives Matter.“

On Wednesday, those sentiments jumped beyond what the league likely intended. Adrian Wojnarowski, an ESPN reporter covering the NBA playoffs, wrote on Twitter that the players’ boycott caught team owners and league officials by surprise. “This is a pivot point for the NBA and professional sports in North America,” he wrote.

It remains to be seen what will come of Wednesday’s boycott, or whether the protests will disrupt more games in the days to come. Already, the incident has demonstrated how much power professional athletes have to call attention to issues that stretch far beyond the arenas and playing fields. In 1968, some of the NBA’s star players discussed a similar boycott in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., but couldn’t stir up enough support to make it happen.

Times have clearly changed. But as professional athletes made clear on Wednesday, they have not changed enough.

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Solicitor General: “At least five Justices explicitly rejected the balancing test” that considers the “benefits and burdens” under Whole Woman’s Health

Today, the Solicitor General filed an application for a stay in FDA v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. In this case, the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland issued a nationwide injunction, blocking the FDA from enforcing “longstanding safety requirements for dispensing of Mifeprex, a drug indicated for termination of pregnancy during the first ten weeks.” That court held that these regulations, in light of the CVOID-19 pandemic, “pose an undue burden on abortion access” under Casey. The Fourth Circuit denied a stay.

The application provides what I think is the Solicitor General’s first interpretation of Whole Woman’s Health following June Medical. The SG argues that the District Court was “mistaken” in its consideration of the “benefits and burdens of the safety requirements” under WWH.

Respondents’ failure to show that the challenged requirements pose a substantial obstacle should end the judicial inquiry. Yet the district court alternatively concluded that even if respondents had not established a substantial obstacle, it could balance the benefits and burdens of the safety requirements under this Court’s decision in Whole Woman’s Health. App., infra, 62a. That was mistaken. In June Medical Services L. L. C. v. Russo, 140 S. Ct. 2103 (2020), every Justice of this Court stressed the importance of demonstrating that a law poses a substantial obstacle to abortion access in order to obtain relief. See id. at 2112, 2120, 2130 (plurality opinion); id. at 2135-2139 (Roberts, C.J., concurring in the judgment); id. at 2153-2154 (Alito, J., dissenting). And at least five Justices explicitly rejected the balancing test that the district court here adopted. See id. at 2135-2139 (Roberts, C.J., concurring in the judgment); id. at 2153- 2154 (Alito, J., dissenting); id. at 2182 (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting).

The SG expressly adopts the Chief Justices’s reading of WWH–the discussion of “benefits” was dicta:

The district court nevertheless held that it could weigh the safety requirements’ benefits and burdens based on its conclusion that June Medical did not “overrule[]” “Whole Woman’s Health and its balancing test.” App., infra, 37a. But Whole Woman’s Health contains no holding adopting such a test. As the Chief Justice explained, “the discussion of benefits in Whole Woman’s Health was not necessary to its holding,” and that decision “explicitly stated that it was applying ‘the standard, as described in Casey.’ ” June Medical, 140 S. Ct. at 2139 & n.3 (concurring in the judgment) (quoting Whole Woman’s Health, 136 S. Ct. at 2309). The standard described in Casey, as the Chief Justice further observed, ” ‘squarely foreclosed’ ” any argument that a law not posing a substantial obstacle is “invalid” merely because it lacks ” ‘any health basis.’ ” Id. at 2138 (quoting Mazurek v. Armstrong, 520 U.S. 968, 973 (1997) (per curiam)).

The SG reads June Medical the same way that Judge Willett and the Eighth Circuit did read it.

Accordingly, June Medical confirms that the undue-burden standard adopted in Casey continues to “requir[e] a substantial obstacle before striking down an abortion regulation.” Id. at 2139; see also Hopkins v. Jegley, No. 17-2879, 2020 WL 4557687, at *2 (8th Cir. Aug. 7, 2020) (per curiam) (vacating preliminary injunction of abortion regulations in light of June Medical because the district court had applied a “cost-benefit standard”).3

But the SG punts on the Marks rule issue.

FN3: 3 The district court also concluded that the Chief Justice’s opinion in June Medical rejecting the court’s reading of Whole Woman’s Health is not the narrowest one under Marks v. United States, 430 U.S. 188 (1977), and therefore is not controlling. But that is beside the point here, because the four dissenting Justices in June Medical agreed with the Chief Justice on the substantial-obstacle requirement, 140 S. Ct. at 2154 (Alito, J.), and thus the district court’s contrary view is likely to be reversed by this Court if affirmed by the Fourth Circuit.

I had expected Texas’s petition for rehearing en banc to tee up the first major challenge to WWH. But the Court may resolve this question on the shadow docket. Indeed, the SG relies on the Chief’s opinions’ in June Medical and South Bay:

That sort of judicial management of public-health policy is inappropriate. The “Constitution principally entrusts ‘the safety and the health of the people’ ” to officials who must ” ‘act in areas fraught with medical and scientific uncertainties,’ ” and who generally “should not be subject to second-guessing by an ‘unelected federal judiciary,’ which lacks the background, competence, and expertise to assess public health.” South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, 140 S. Ct. 1613, 1613-1614 (2020) (Roberts, C.J., concurring in denial of application for injunctive relief) (brackets and citations omitted). And that is especially true when the second-guessing amounts to a conclusion that a “woman’s liberty interest” outweighs “the State’s interests” in protecting her “health”—a comparison of “imponderable values” that is not “a job for the courts.” June Medical, 140 S. Ct. at 2136 (Roberts, C.J., concurring in the judgment).

Stay tuned.

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CDC Issues New Guidelines That Discourage COVID-19 Diagnostic Testing

NasalswabAleksandrSchastnyiDreamstime

“With smaller testing we would show fewer cases!,” tweeted President Trump back on June 23 with regard to diagnostic COVID-19 tests. “Instead of 25 million tests, let’s say we did 10 million tests. We’d look like we were doing much better because we’d have far fewer cases. You understand that,” Trump said on CBN News. The president told the participants at his Tulsa campaign rally in June, “I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please!'” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany later told reporters, “It was a comment that he made in jest.” Trump almost immediately contradicted McEnany, telling a reporter, “I don’t kid, let me just tell you, let me make it clear.”

And it turns out that the president really wasn’t kidding. The New York Times is reporting that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was pressured by officials in the White House to change its testing recommendations.

U.S. Public Health Service Admiral Brett Giroir, a physician, denies being pressured. “Let me tell you right up front that the new guidelines are a C.D.C. action,” said Dr. Giroir. “As always, guidelines received appropriate attention, consultation and input from task force experts—and I mean the medical and scientific experts—including C.D.C. director Redfield and myself.”

The CDC’s new guidelines issued on Monday do in fact discourage Americans from getting tested for COVID-19 infections. Before changes were made Monday, the CDC website said testing was recommended “for all close contacts of persons with SARS-CoV-2 infection.” The revised guideline reads:

If you have been in close contact (within 6 feet) of a person with a COVID-19 infection for at least 15 minutes but do not have symptoms: You do not necessarily need a test unless you are a vulnerable individual or your health care provider or State or local public health officials recommend you take one.

One problem is that if you wait to get tested until after symptoms appear after being exposed to an infected person, you can become an unwitting presymptomatic spreader of the virus. For example, one recent study found that nearly 50 percent of infections were transmitted while folks were presymptomatic. It is also possible that asymptomatic people who could be identified via a more robust testing regime may also be inadvertently infecting other people. In fact, the CDC’s own current best estimate scenario assumes that asymptomatic people are 75 percent as infectious as those who have symptoms.

Instead of discouraging people from seeking COVID-19 tests, the U.S. should be massively ramping up testing as part of a comprehensive effort to control the pandemic and enable the safe reopening of the economy.

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Solicitor General: “At least five Justices explicitly rejected the balancing test” that considers the “benefits and burdens” under Whole Woman’s Health

Today, the Solicitor General filed an application for a stay in FDA v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. In this case, the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland issued a nationwide injunction, blocking the FDA from enforcing “longstanding safety requirements for dispensing of Mifeprex, a drug indicated for termination of pregnancy during the first ten weeks.” That court held that these regulations, in light of the CVOID-19 pandemic, “pose an undue burden on abortion access” under Casey. The Fourth Circuit denied a stay.

The application provides what I think is the Solicitor General’s first interpretation of Whole Woman’s Health following June Medical. The SG argues that the District Court was “mistaken” in its consideration of the “benefits and burdens of the safety requirements” under WWH.

Respondents’ failure to show that the challenged requirements pose a substantial obstacle should end the judicial inquiry. Yet the district court alternatively concluded that even if respondents had not established a substantial obstacle, it could balance the benefits and burdens of the safety requirements under this Court’s decision in Whole Woman’s Health. App., infra, 62a. That was mistaken. In June Medical Services L. L. C. v. Russo, 140 S. Ct. 2103 (2020), every Justice of this Court stressed the importance of demonstrating that a law poses a substantial obstacle to abortion access in order to obtain relief. See id. at 2112, 2120, 2130 (plurality opinion); id. at 2135-2139 (Roberts, C.J., concurring in the judgment); id. at 2153-2154 (Alito, J., dissenting). And at least five Justices explicitly rejected the balancing test that the district court here adopted. See id. at 2135-2139 (Roberts, C.J., concurring in the judgment); id. at 2153- 2154 (Alito, J., dissenting); id. at 2182 (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting).

The SG expressly adopts the Chief Justices’s reading of WWH–the discussion of “benefits” was dicta:

The district court nevertheless held that it could weigh the safety requirements’ benefits and burdens based on its conclusion that June Medical did not “overrule[]” “Whole Woman’s Health and its balancing test.” App., infra, 37a. But Whole Woman’s Health contains no holding adopting such a test. As the Chief Justice explained, “the discussion of benefits in Whole Woman’s Health was not necessary to its holding,” and that decision “explicitly stated that it was applying ‘the standard, as described in Casey.’ ” June Medical, 140 S. Ct. at 2139 & n.3 (concurring in the judgment) (quoting Whole Woman’s Health, 136 S. Ct. at 2309). The standard described in Casey, as the Chief Justice further observed, ” ‘squarely foreclosed’ ” any argument that a law not posing a substantial obstacle is “invalid” merely because it lacks ” ‘any health basis.’ ” Id. at 2138 (quoting Mazurek v. Armstrong, 520 U.S. 968, 973 (1997) (per curiam)).

The SG reads June Medical the same way that Judge Willett and the Eighth Circuit did read it.

Accordingly, June Medical confirms that the undue-burden standard adopted in Casey continues to “requir[e] a substantial obstacle before striking down an abortion regulation.” Id. at 2139; see also Hopkins v. Jegley, No. 17-2879, 2020 WL 4557687, at *2 (8th Cir. Aug. 7, 2020) (per curiam) (vacating preliminary injunction of abortion regulations in light of June Medical because the district court had applied a “cost-benefit standard”).3

But the SG punts on the Marks rule issue.

FN3: 3 The district court also concluded that the Chief Justice’s opinion in June Medical rejecting the court’s reading of Whole Woman’s Health is not the narrowest one under Marks v. United States, 430 U.S. 188 (1977), and therefore is not controlling. But that is beside the point here, because the four dissenting Justices in June Medical agreed with the Chief Justice on the substantial-obstacle requirement, 140 S. Ct. at 2154 (Alito, J.), and thus the district court’s contrary view is likely to be reversed by this Court if affirmed by the Fourth Circuit.

I had expected Texas’s petition for rehearing en banc to tee up the first major challenge to WWH. But the Court may resolve this question on the shadow docket. Indeed, the SG relies on the Chief’s opinions’ in June Medical and South Bay:

That sort of judicial management of public-health policy is inappropriate. The “Constitution principally entrusts ‘the safety and the health of the people’ ” to officials who must ” ‘act in areas fraught with medical and scientific uncertainties,’ ” and who generally “should not be subject to second-guessing by an ‘unelected federal judiciary,’ which lacks the background, competence, and expertise to assess public health.” South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, 140 S. Ct. 1613, 1613-1614 (2020) (Roberts, C.J., concurring in denial of application for injunctive relief) (brackets and citations omitted). And that is especially true when the second-guessing amounts to a conclusion that a “woman’s liberty interest” outweighs “the State’s interests” in protecting her “health”—a comparison of “imponderable values” that is not “a job for the courts.” June Medical, 140 S. Ct. at 2136 (Roberts, C.J., concurring in the judgment).

Stay tuned.

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CDC Issues New Guidelines That Discourage COVID-19 Diagnostic Testing

NasalswabAleksandrSchastnyiDreamstime

“With smaller testing we would show fewer cases!,” tweeted President Trump back on June 23 with regard to diagnostic COVID-19 tests. “Instead of 25 million tests, let’s say we did 10 million tests. We’d look like we were doing much better because we’d have far fewer cases. You understand that,” Trump said on CBN News. The president told the participants at his Tulsa campaign rally in June, “I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please!'” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany later told reporters, “It was a comment that he made in jest.” Trump almost immediately contradicted McEnany, telling a reporter, “I don’t kid, let me just tell you, let me make it clear.”

And it turns out that the president really wasn’t kidding. The New York Times is reporting that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was pressured by officials in the White House to change its testing recommendations.

U.S. Public Health Service Admiral Brett Giroir, a physician, denies being pressured. “Let me tell you right up front that the new guidelines are a C.D.C. action,” said Dr. Giroir. “As always, guidelines received appropriate attention, consultation and input from task force experts—and I mean the medical and scientific experts—including C.D.C. director Redfield and myself.”

The CDC’s new guidelines issued on Monday do in fact discourage Americans from getting tested for COVID-19 infections. Before changes were made Monday, the CDC website said testing was recommended “for all close contacts of persons with SARS-CoV-2 infection.” The revised guideline reads:

If you have been in close contact (within 6 feet) of a person with a COVID-19 infection for at least 15 minutes but do not have symptoms: You do not necessarily need a test unless you are a vulnerable individual or your health care provider or State or local public health officials recommend you take one.

One problem is that if you wait to get tested until after symptoms appear after being exposed to an infected person, you can become an unwitting presymptomatic spreader of the virus. For example, one recent study found that nearly 50 percent of infections were transmitted while folks were presymptomatic. It is also possible that asymptomatic people who could be identified via a more robust testing regime may also be inadvertently infecting other people. In fact, the CDC’s own current best estimate scenario assumes that asymptomatic people are 75 percent as infectious as those who have symptoms.

Instead of discouraging people from seeking COVID-19 tests, the U.S. should be massively ramping up testing as part of a comprehensive effort to control the pandemic and enable the safe reopening of the economy.

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Daily Briefing – August 26, 2020

Daily Briefing – August 26, 2020


Tyler Durden

Wed, 08/26/2020 – 18:25

Senior editor, Ash Bennington, joins managing editor, Ed Harrison, to discuss risk assets, credit markets, and the fiscal cliff. Within an environment of secular stagnation, they talk about the cross-asset play between bonds and equities as well as how overall credit tightening in the financials sector and the velocity of M2 money plummeting will have pernicious effects on growth. They also consider the dichotomy of monetary and fiscal policy and why the Fed will have to continue throwing all their chips in should fiscal authorities continue to be hawkish. In the intro, Nick Correa gives an overview of the tightening of credit markets.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3lu1P7x Tyler Durden

Marxism Is Coming At Breathtaking Speed – Do This Before It’s Too Late

Marxism Is Coming At Breathtaking Speed – Do This Before It’s Too Late

Tyler Durden

Wed, 08/26/2020 – 18:25

Via InternationalMan.com,

International Man: So-called “Woke” culture and political correctness have spread like wildfire across the West.

What do you think are the ramifications of this?

Chris MacIntosh: The “woke culture” is simply Marxism writ large.

It’s been with us for at least two generations, educating our children in the West with neo-Marxist ideologies. They’ve simply become more and more egregious. It started with gender studies and feminism studies.

We’re at the point now where we’re having debates around whether two plus two should equal four—because it’s a white supremacist ideal.

It’s the notion that science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, also known as STEM, is a white, male patriarchal construct that should be abolished.

I don’t know about you, but when I drive across a bridge or walk into a building, I’d like to know that mathematics and science have played a part in constructing that.

I don’t want to drive across a bridge built by somebody who won’t acknowledge that two plus two equals four.

So, what are the ramifications? Where do I start?

I had a conversation many years ago, which only came back into my consciousness three or four years ago. I was still about 20 years old at the time. I met a gentleman who said something about how to figure out where our country is going.

He was an asset manager who I just bumped into while doing a hike up Table Mountain.

He said, “If you watch what’s taking place in the universities, if there’s a very strong zeitgeist in one way or the other, watch that. Whatever that zeitgeist is, you’re going to find that, within five to ten years, in the country.”

The reason is that the leaders of the country—the CEOs, the people in management, in politics, in the courts, all come from those universities. If you look at what has been transpiring in the West over the last decade at least, in the universities—it is frightening.

It’s not a surprise now that we find these people are in positions of power. They’re instituting their vision of how the world should work. Their ideology—their zeitgeist—is Marxism. So, this woke culture is just Marxism.

Unfortunately, it is now in the DNA of the West.

As much as I want to believe that we could eliminate that, it starts with the universities and being able to educate a whole new class of people correctly.

When I say correctly, I mean, principles that adhere to civil liberties and the like.

These people don’t believe that at all. So, we’re seeing it now coming into the political landscape and the legal landscape. It’s not good.

The ramifications are that the West is committing suicide.

International Man: What does this cultural shift mean for anyone with savings and wealth?

Chris MacIntosh: If you realize that the Bolsheviks are coming – which they are – realize that they will come after anybody with any wealth.

Because there is this desire to create an equal society, what they call equity, which is really just is a redistribution of wealth. There’s one thing, having the ability to see what sectors can benefit and investing in them. But it would be a tragedy to do that only to find that the Bolsheviks come and take it away from you.

That’s another whole different topic. How any person deals with that is particular to their own set of circumstances.

The first step is to realize that they will come for your savings and your wealth.

Firstly, the savings will be taken away via an inflationary impact. That’s fine; you can protect yourself against that. But certainly, they’re going to come after anybody that is deemed to not be with the revolution.

“We’re all in this together.”

Remember?

That’s what we’re seeing now with COVID, how we’re all in this together. Well, the hell we are.

Let’s look at it like this.

How many lockdowns would we have globally if every politician that instituted those lockdowns simultaneously lost all of their income?

This is essentially what they’ve forced many millions of people globally to do. They’ve forced them to lose their income.

But politicians don’t lose their income. They still earn their big fat salaries, their perks, and their travel allowances.

Yet they stand there saying, “We’re all in this together.” We’ve seen this playbook before. It is now coming down the train tracks at breathtaking speed. And you needed to prepare yesterday.

*  *  *

Disturbing economic, political, and social trends are already in motion and now accelerating at breathtaking speed. Most troubling of all, they cannot be stopped. The risks that lie ahead are too big and dangerous to ignore. That’s why contrarian money manager Chris Macintosh just released the most critical report on these trends, What Happens Next. This free special report explains precisely what’s coming down the pike and what it means for your wealth and well-being. Click here to access it now.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2QoyCfQ Tyler Durden

New York’s MTA Is Losing An Astounding $200 Million Per Week

New York’s MTA Is Losing An Astounding $200 Million Per Week

Tyler Durden

Wed, 08/26/2020 – 18:05

New York’s MTA is losing an astonishing $200 million per week as a result of the drop in ridership associated with the coronavirus pandemic. As a result, the organization is doing what all underprepared organizations are doing when forced upon hard times: begging the government for more help. 

The MTA is currently in “survival mode” according to a new report by Bloomberg that highlights that the agency is seeking $12 billion worth of federal funds to help cover its budget deficits through 2021. 

Pat Foye, the MTA’s chief executive officer, said earlier this week: “Our sole focus now is on survival, how to reduce costs, maintain service and minimize reductions in force while protecting the capital program.”

The organization’s Board has convened an emergency meeting in August to discuss its finances. It faces a $16 billion deficit through 2024 and has told the government that, without help, it will need to boost fares, freeze wages, reduce service and stop major capital projects – you know, all the things a business should do when its customers start to wane. 

But apparently these types of business adjustments are no longer acceptable, as the organization believes it should be able to press on as normal, including with its expansion of the Second Avenue subway and its direct access projects from Penn Station to Connecticut, despite not having any customers. 

Subway ridership is down 75% from pre-pandemic levels; the Metro-North railroad has seen a drop of 83% and the LIRR has dropped 76% from pre-pandemic levels. 

The MTA already secured $451 million last week from a new $500 billion lending program put in place by the Federal Reserve. At 1.92%, the rate was lower than what Wall Street offered the MTA, equating to about $12 million savings over the course of the 3 year loan. 

And while this cash helps the MTA in the short term, its long-term outlook is still questionable. Bob Foran, the MTA’s chief financial officer, said: “We don’t have unlimited reserves. We cannot continue to spend money unless we have assurance that we’re going to receive this federal support. So that’s why we’re asking for the $12 billion for this year and for next year so that we don’t run off a cliff beginning in January.”

Brrr…

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Trump Wants Biden Drug Tested Before First Debate

Trump Wants Biden Drug Tested Before First Debate

Tyler Durden

Wed, 08/26/2020 – 17:45

President Trump says he wants both he and Joe Biden to take drug tests before their first debate on September 29, according to an Oval Office interview with the Washington Examiner.

Trump “expressed suspicion at what he said was a sudden, marked improvement in Biden’s debate performance during the Democratic primary season,” which Trump thinks was due to the use of performance-enhancing drugs, according to the report.

“Nobody thought that he was even going to win,” Trump said of Biden – who participated in 11 debates during the primary season. Trump suggested that there was a big difference in Biden’s performance between the first debates against a crowded Democratic field and the last debate on March 15 against Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“… his debate performances were so bad. Frankly, his best performance was against Bernie. We’re going to call for a drug test, by the way, because his best performance was against Bernie. It wasn’t that he was Winston Churchill, because he wasn’t, but it was a normal, boring debate. You know, nothing amazing happened. And we are going to call for a drug test, because there’s no way — you can’t do that.”

More via the Washington Examiner:

Q: “What do you think was going on?”

“I don’t know how he could have been so incompetent in his debate performances and then all of a sudden be OK against Bernie,” Trump answered. “My point is, if you go back and watch some of those numerous debates, he was so bad. He wasn’t even coherent. And against Bernie, he was. And we’re calling for a drug test.”

Q: “Is this like a prizefight, where beforehand you have a test?”

“Well, it is a prizefight,” Trump answered. “It’s no different from the gladiators, except we have to use our brain and our mouth. And our body — to stand. I want all standing; they want to sit down.”

The president based his call entirely on his own observations, and not on any actual knowledge of Biden’s actions. “All I can tell you is that I’m pretty good at this stuff,” he said. “I look. I watched him in the debates with all of the different people. He was close to incompetent, if not incompetent. And against Bernie he was normal…And I say how does that happen?“

The first Trump-Biden debate, to be held at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, is little more than a month away. The president gave no indication of when he would make his drug test request, or even to whom. But he appeared to know that there is little chance such a thing would actually happen. “I think it’s appropriate,” Trump said. “I don’t know that they’ll let me do it, but I think that they should do it.”

“Go back and watch his performances in some of those debates,” Trump continued. “He didn’t know where he was. And all of a sudden he was not good, he was normal, and I don’t understand how. I don’t know if there is or not, but somebody said to me he must be on drugs. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I’m asking for a drug test. Both candidates. Me, too. I take an aspirin a day.”

Meanwhile, Biden supporters have been looking for ways to wriggle out of an in-person debate altogether, while Notre Dame – which withdrew from hosting the first Trump-Biden debate after the St. Joseph County deputy health director recommended against it, and the college cited a “diminished educational value.”

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YCNKuF Tyler Durden