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from Conciliar Post
ON LIONS AND INJUSTICE
It seems to me that the simple and devastating command of Jesus, “love your neighbor as yourself,” was profound in the most personally difficult way. He asks how we treat ... the one nearest to us. I can post on Facebook or put a sign on my front lawn, but that is easy. How much harder is it to love that racist person or family member with whom we come into contact every single day. I need to do justice, and be just, to that person who is acting unjustly. That person who says all those terrible things and is just downright impolite in every circumstance. Jesus calls us to love our neighbor for a reason. It is so much harder to consider how I love that person right next to me, and if everyone responded to that call in the grace of the Holy Spirit all the hard work would already be done.
from Gallup
Analytics and advisory services on the front lines of transformation
Listening to Residents' Voices to Build More Equitable Cities
People are drawn to cities because of the wide array of opportunities they offer, from employment to education to culture. The vast majority of Americans, approximately 84%, already live in urban areas and, before COVID-19, that percentage was expected to stretch to 89% by 2050. But with the pressure points of current urban design painfully exposed during the pandemic and recent protests for racial justice, cities will need to transform into more livable, sustainable and affordable environments. If leaders want to build more equitable and just cities, an Urbanova/Gallup study reaffirms they will have to do one thing first: listen.
from Hoover Institution
Nonprofit Organization in Stanford, California
The State of This Union is (Remarkably) Strong
For years, I was a guest commentator on a business-news show whose host was surprisingly literate. We covered global affairs and shared useful exchanges. But this well-schooled, worldly man had a massive blind spot he shared with a significant number of conservatives: He detested the European Union (EU) obsessively and leapt on every shred of negative data from Brussels as proof that the EU was, finally, this time, at last, truly and belatedly doomed. In the early days of Brexit, the host declared that the EU would never survive the United Kingdom’s departure since other member states would soon follow suit. When I countered that, whatever the ultimate outcome for Britain, the EU would outlive us both, he put on an I-know-better mask and changed the topic. Now the EU is behaving better during a pandemic than the United States, with the former’s member states conducting themselves more responsibly and their societies more dutifully. There are many reasons why the EU will survive and, generally, thrive. First, it does more good than harm for its populations and, populist grumping aside, EU citizens know it. Argument and ingratitude are part of the human condition, but so is clinging to attained advantage. Besides, no beast is harder to slay than an entrenched bureaucracy, and the EU is a bureaucracy so sprawling it has become a continent-wide constituency of its own. Pre-Brexit, that bureaucracy had, indeed, become overweening, and Britain’s departure, however inept, inspired a soul-searching of the soulless in Brussels. The EU apparatus remembered that it had to please national capitals more often than it annoyed them. And unity mattered. Thus, in the pandemic’s depths, we have seen more cooperation and breakthrough fiscal compromises within the EU than would have been achievable pre-Brexit. The Brexit bogeyman rescued, at least for the moment, the sick-unto-death economies of southern Europe. London’s limping departure also functioned as a deterrent to other states, rather than becoming an inspiration. If the American dream mythologizes freedom, the European vision worships stability (and with good historical reasons).
The Status Of The EU: A Frustrated Empire Built On The Wrong Assumption
As the Preamble to the 1957 Treaty of Rome stated, the purpose of the then European Economic Community was to “lay the foundations of an ever-closer union” among Europeans. This phrase became interpreted as a call for a progressively tighter political merger of the member states, with the European Union as the latest embodiment of this purpose. The problem with this progressive vision, however, is twofold: first, it is never fully achieved as the final objective remains always on the horizon and, second, it is grounded in the belief that a common market can create a unified polity. As a result, the EU is always in trouble because it is a perennially unfinished product built on weak foundations. It is a frustrated empire.
The Moribund EUWhat is the point of the European Union? Only a few years ago such a question, especially coming from a British Brexiteer such as me, might have been written off as simply provocative rudeness from an ideological foe. Today, however, in the light of the EU’s incapacity to meet the strategic challenges posed by China’s aggressive foreign policy, the health challenges posed by COVID-19, the economic challenges caused by the global lockdown, and the budgetary challenges posed by Britain (its second-largest net contributor) leaving, it is legitimate to ask what the EU is really for at this stage of the 21st century.
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from Huffington Post
from Mises Institute
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, MIXED
Trump's Payroll Tax Order Is Good Politics, but Doesn't Offer Much Tax Relief
President Trump issued a new executive order on August 8 directing the Treasury Department to defer the 6.2 percent Social Security tax on wages for employees making less than about $100,000 a year. The suspension on collections will be in effect from September 1 through December 31. Unfortunately, the suspension on collections—which applies only to the employee share of payroll taxes—doesn't amount to an actual tax cut, since collections could resume at any time after December 31. Moreover, once the September-December deferment period is up, employees would still be responsible for their tax liability back to September 1.
Calculating GDP Correctly
While gross domestic product is considered by many to be the most important statistic regarding our economic well-being, Austrian and non-Austrian economists alike have criticized it as being an unsound representation of the health of an economy. Readers of mises.org are probably familiar with these arguments and I am not going to rehash these critiques. However, some of the criticisms of this statistic misrepresent how the statistic is determined. I think it would be instructive to explain how GDP is calculated.
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from National Review RIGHT BIAS
How Houston Defied Doomsday COVID Predictions
Houston’s approach is a model for how hospital systems should handle intense case surges. As data out of Houston, the epicenter of Texas’s coronavirus outbreak, began to show a surge in cases and hospitalizations at the end of June, the doomsday projections began in full force. “Three weeks from now, if these trends continue, the city’s I.C.U.s will be overwhelmed . . . the storm has arrived in Houston,” a local doctor wrote in a June 26 piece for The New Yorker. “It’s Like New York ‘All Over Again,’” blared a July 4 headline in the New York Times. Two days later, science reporter Donald MacNeil warned during an episode of the Times podcast The Daily that “in Houston, doctors who knew the situation in New York are saying that what’s happening there looks like what happened in New York in early April.” And as the Texas Medical Center (TMC) reported 446 new coronavirus hospitalizations on July 5 — a record-high — the fear intensified. But, more than a month later, the numbers tell a different story. Following its record-high spike in daily hospitalizations, TMC has seen a steady decline over several weeks, with Monday’s 127 new COVID hospitalizations marking the system’s best day since June 14. Data from the Southeast Texas Regional Advisory Council (SETRAC) shows that Harris County’s coronavirus bed census has been nearly cut in half, from almost 4,000 confirmed and suspected COVID hospital cases on July 15 to 2,083 on August 10. Why, then, were the comparisons to New York and the predictions of mass-hospitalization made in the first place?
from seattlepi.com (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
LEFT-CENTER, HIGH, Online and former print newspaper in Seattle, WA
Fred Hutch: 80% of people infected do not spread COVID-19; super spreaders driving transmission
A new report from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center is giving researchers a better understanding of how and when person-to-person transmission of COVID-19 occurs, with findings showing that 80% of those infected will not spread the virus, laying the blame of transmission largely on gatherings. The preliminary research, conducted by epidemiologists and infectious disease physicians, shows that people with COVID-19 only shed enough viral load to be contagious for a brief period of time: one to two days. These brief periods when an infected person is most contagious is known as super spreading, and researchers believe that it is now driving the pandemic. However, that two day period when a person is most contagious and likely to spread the illness often occurs before the person is exhibiting any symptoms, meaning they are most likely to infect others before ever knowing they are sick. "The ethical thing to do as an individual is to walk around with the assumption that you’re infectious and contagious, and that it’s your responsibility to protect the public,” said Dr. Joshua T. Schiffer, an infectious diseases physician and author of the research.
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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington
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