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This program was recorded on SUNDAY, MAY 31. Due to Covid-19, shows are being prerecorded beginning March 13th and until further notice. We miss our live call-in participants, and look forward to a time we can once again go live.

 

Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio), a listener call-in show  airing live every Monday night from 3-4 PM (CT) on KPFT-FM 90.1 (Houston). My co-host and Editor is Andrew Ferguson.

 

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• An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.

SIGNOFF QUOTE[s]: “People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.” ~ Bill Clinton, Democratic Convention Speech (Wednesday, August 27, 2008)

 

 

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MAIN TOPICS: TOPIC: Voting Info, July 15 Tax Deadline, SpaceX’s historic Demo-2 Crew Dragon astronaut launch, How Democracies Control the Military – Can it apply to policing?, CAPTURED COURTS – The GOP’s Big Money Assault On The Constitution, The Federalist Society has lied about its mission, Republicans are realizing the crisis is pulling them toward disaster, more

MORE.

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Make sure you are registered to vote! (Voting and election info are items 1 thru 6. Show information begins after Item 4.)

This program was recorded on SUNDAY, MAY 31. If you call in, you will NOT be able to get on the air, so please do not call the call-the show. We love our callers, but unfortunately live call-in is one of the casualties of COVID-19.

1. SPRING FUNDRAISER IS HERE.
   1. Thanks TO Rand Nichols for his very generous contribution to Thinkwing Radio and KPFT: $150
2. Next election is a runoff, originally scheduled for May, is now scheduled for July 14, 2020 – Primary Runoff Elections (SAMPLE BALLOT at com)
3. As of March 18, Harris County Clerk’s office are closed for in-person business.
   1. General business for county Clerk: https://www.cclerk.hctx.net/ and indirectly via com
   2. VOTING FAQ
4. Make sure you are registered to vote!
   1. For a personalized, nonpartisan voter guide visit VOTE411.ORG (DO NOT!! go to 411Vote!!)
   2. If you are denied your right to vote any place at any time at any polling place for any reason, ask for (or demand) a provisional ballot rather than lose your vote.
      1. HARRISVOTES.COM (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965) Dr. Diane Trautman, Harris County ClerGOV – Texas Voter Information
      2. VoteTexas.gov- Texas Voter Information
      3. HARRISVOTES.COM – Countywide Voting Centers
         1. HARRIS CTY – IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED FOR VOTING: If you do not possess and cannot reasonably obtain one of these IDs?
            1. Fill out a declaration at the polls describing a reasonable impediment to obtaining it, and show a copy or original of one of the following supporting forms of ID:
            2. A government document that shows your name and an address, including your voter registration certificate
            3. Current utility bill
            4. Bank statement
            5. Government check
            6. Paycheck
            7. (a) A certified domestic (from a U.S. state or territory) birth certificate or (b) a document confirming birth admissible in a court of law which establishes your identity (which may include a foreign birth document)
         2. You may vote early by-mail if:
            1. you are registered to vote and meet one of the following criteria:
            2. Away from the county of residence on Election Day and during the early voting period;
            3. Sick or disabled;
            4. 65 years of age or older on Election Day; or
            5. Confined in jail, but eligible to vote.
      4. Make sure you are registered
   3. Make sure you are registered:Ann Harris Bennett, Tax Assessor-Collector & Voter Registrar
      1. 1. CHECK REGISTRATION STATUS HERE
            1. CLICK How to register to vote in Texas
         2. Outside Texas, try Vote.org.
         3. Countywide Voting Centers
5. IRS Announces New July 15 Tax Deadline For Expats, Trusts, Estates And Corporations, Includes June 15 Estimated Payments Fix, By Ashlea Ebeling, Senior Contributor | FORBES.COM| Apr 9, 2020,06:54pm EDT
6. SpaceX’s historic Demo-2 Crew Dragon astronaut launch: Full coverage. By Mike Wall | SPACE.COM | 5/23/2020 UPDATED 5/30/2020
   1. On that date, Elon Musk’s company is scheduled to launch its first crewed mission, a test flight called Demo-2 that will send NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station aboard a Crew Dragon capsule.
   2. Mission Photos | Step-by-Step Guide | Crew Dragon| SpaceX Spacesuits
   3. If all goes well with Demo-2, Crew Dragon and SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket will be validated for operational crewed missions, the first of which is expected to launch later this year.
7. How democracies maintain civilian control of their militaries: Why can’t we do the same with police?
   1. MIKE – CAVEAT: For me, these topics are of interest as part of beiung a well-informed civilian. I’ve never served in the military or in a police capacity.
   2. While I go over these control issues, consider substituting the word “police forces” for “military”.
   3. While I go over these control issues, consider substituting the word “police forces” for “military”.
   4. I want to explore the theory that civilian and societal control of police forces is not that different from civilian and societal control of the military. Neither is easy or to be assumed.
   5. By necessity, I’ve excerpted those portions which I feel best apply to my premise. Read the articles in full for their entire context. (Links to these and other articles provided at bottom of this section.)
   6. I’ve found 2 articles that sum of the strategy, but application of theory is always variable depending upon circumstances and personalities.
   7. In “How Democracies Control the Military, BY Richard H. Kohn (bio)  Journal of Democracy, Volume 8, Number 4, October 1997, Johns Hopkins University Press
      1. For democracy, civilian control—that is, control of the military by civilian officials elected by the people—is fundamental. Civilian control allows a nation to base its values, institutions, and practices on the popular will rather than on the choices of military leaders, whose outlook by definition focuses on the need for internal order and external security. …
      2. … Military establishments tend naturally to try to maximize their autonomy in order to gain the resources that they believe necessary to organize, arm, and recruit most effectively for their tasks. Armed forces in democracies instinctively strive to accomplish their tasks with the fewest casualties and the smallest risk of failure. So [End Page 147] strong are those impulses that commanders and staffs sometimes try to control the definition of the mission or to stipulate the rules of engagement, to the point of circumventing or evading the direction of their civilian superiors. The challenge in democratic government is to exercise civilian authority while satisfying the legitimate needs of the military in its pursuit of national security. …
      3. … Because civilian control rests ultimately on the behavior of individuals, armed forces personnel policy is critical. Typically, the [End Page 150] executive and legislature share authority … Civilians must decide who serves and whether or not there is to be compulsory military service, [which is] the ultimate intrusion of government into the private lives of individuals in democratic societies. The decision must be the result of some consensus in society, and not be imposed by the military.
      4. Equally important are the policies relating to the commissioning, education, promotion, assignment, and retirement of officers. It is the officer corps that historically has defined military establishments. Officers provide not only the leadership in war and in peace, but continuity over time to the military profession. [I.e., “institutional memory”.]
      5. Like every profession, the military strives to limit outside jurisdiction over its domain, to define its own requirements for membership, its own standards of behavior, the scope of its expertise, the principles for advancement and assignments, the character of its relationship with clients and society generally, and virtually every other aspect of its professional world, including the limits on membership and power within the group.
      6. Because of the unique responsibilities of battle, the military must possess a large measure of autonomy. Civilians recognize the legitimacy of much of this self-definition, to the point even of permitting a separate system of justice, with different categories of crimes and punishments for members of the armed forces. Civilians recognize that both civilian control and military effectiveness require that the officer corps be insulated from partisan politics, particularly from the promotion and assignment of officers on the basis of partisan affiliation. But civilian authority must restrict autonomy to what is necessary and functional.
      7. To the extent that the military is a self-defining and self-perpetuating elite, it is less subordinate to the rest of society. The executive and legislature must control officer promotions; there must be mandatory retirements so that no one person can come to control the military forces indefinitely. In countries where civilian control is weak, support for military subordination to civilian authority should be an essential criterion for promotion and assignment. But the partisan leanings of an officer, if they exist, should never enter the equation, or the officer corps will be politicized and corrupted.
      8. The exercise of civilian control by parliament occurs through legislation, much of which must rely on open hearings and a process of oversight that holds the military and the civilian defense bureaucracy accountable. …
      9. … The legislative branch must be able to compel testimony from officials, punish false statements, and require military officers to express their professional opinions [End Page 151] independent of policy on all matters before, during, and after decisions are made. The process is inherently contentious. For the military, it is especially awkward, for it frequently squeezes them between two bosses. It can also be politically explosive. …
      10. … Finally must come arrangements to ensure that, as a matter of course, individual members of the military are held accountable to the law for their actions. While most countries recognize the necessity for a separate legal system for the military to ensure obedience in battle and enforce discipline, the system must function under the jurisdiction, even if rarely exercised, of the civilian judiciary. Military personnel must be held accountable to society for their individual behavior, although not necessarily in exactly the same ways as civilian officials. Military service imposes a harsher, more demanding set of requirements and responsibilities. Yet the soldier’s essential citizenship, with all of its obligations, cannot be abolished or suspended, because in a democracy no one can be above the law or beyond the reach of its sanctions.
   8. Methods of asserting civilian control (WIKIPEDIA, in part)
      1. In The Soldier and the State, Huntington argued for what he termed “objective civilian control”, “focus[ing] on a politically neutral, autonomous, and professional officer corps”.^[1] This autonomous professionalism, it is argued, best inculcates an esprit de corps and sense of distinct military corporateness that prevents political interference by sworn servicemen and -women. Conversely, the tradition of the citizen-soldier holds that “civilianizing” the military is the best means of preserving the loyalty of the armed forces towards civilian authorities, by preventing the development of an independent “caste” of warriors that might see itself as existing fundamentally apart from the rest of society. …
      2. …The regular rotation of soldiers through a variety of different postings is another effective tool for reducing military autonomy, by limiting the potential for soldiers’ attachment to any one particular military unit. Some governments place responsibility for approving promotions or officer candidacies with the civilian government, requiring some degree of deference on the part of officers seeking advancement through the ranks. …
      3. Restrictions on Political Activities – In the United States the Hatch Act of 1939 does not directly apply to the military, however, Department of Defense Directive 1344.10 (DoDD 1344.10) essentially applies the same rules to the military. This helps to ensure a non-partisan military and ensure smooth and peaceful transitions of power. …
      4. Military dislike of political directives – While civilian control forms the normative standard in almost every society outside of military dictatorships, its practice has often been the subject of pointed criticism from both uniformed and non-uniformed observers, who object to what they view as the undue “politicization” of military affairs, especially when elected officials or political appointees micromanage the military, rather than giving the military general goals and objectives (like “Defeat Country X”), and letting the military decide how best to carry those orders out. …
   9. … In contesting these priorities, members of the professional military leadership and their non-uniformed supporters may participate in the bureaucratic bargaining process of the state’s policy-making apparatus, engaging in what might be termed a form of regulatory capture as they attempt to restrict the policy options of elected officials when it comes to military matters. …
   10. Other articles of interest:
       1. “The Role of the Military in a Democracy” – Address, 02 Jul. 1998 (Last updated: 05 Nov. 2008 07:13)
       2. Democracy and the Military – ReVista, Harvard Review of Latin America, (FALL 2002)
       3. People abroad are asking their militaries to save their democracies. It won’t work. – When generals get a taste of political power, they tend to come back for more. By Joshua Kurlantzick(Joshua Kurlantzick is a senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations.) | WASHINGTONPOST.COM | April 13, 2018 at 8:38 a.m. CDT
       4. Building Democratic Militaries, by Harold Trinkunas | JOURNALOFDEMOCRACY.ORG (2013)
       5. Civilian Control of the Military, By Michael F. Cairo (2017) (InfoUSA is maintained by the Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP), U.S. Department of State)
       6. Political Safeguards inDemocracies at War, by SAMUEL ISSACHAROFF* (Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 29, No. 2 (2009), pp. 189–214doi:10.1093/ojls/gqp006, Published Advance Access April 15, 2009)
8. Schumer and senate Democrats issue report on McConnell’s court-packing strategy, and how the Federalist Society is involved:
   1. “CAPTURED COURTS – The GOP’s Big Money Assault On The Constitution, Our Independent Judiciary, And The Rule of Law, By democrats.senate.gov
      1. … [T]he Mitch McConnell-led Senate has produced few significant legislative accomplishments. Instead, it has prioritized packing the judiciary with far-right extremists, who then enjoy life tenure as federal judges. Working hand-in-hand with the administration and anonymously-funded outside groups, the Senate has confirmed 200 new life-tenured federal judges to aggressively remake the federal courts and rewrite the Constitution. Most of these judges were chosen not for their qualifications or experience—which are often lacking—but for their demonstrated allegiance to Republican Party political goals.
      2. … This is anti-democratic and fundamentally un-American. Indeed, it is nothing less than a crisis for American democracy, which depends on a fair and impartial judiciary. Behind this capture scheme lie hundreds of millions of dollars in anonymous spending, funneled through an elaborate web of front groups. It is impossible to understand this capture scheme without understanding who is spending so much money to capture America’s courts—and how and why.
      3. Republican Party efforts to rig our nation’s courts began long before President Trump came into office. . By the early 1970s, the emergence of popular, bipartisan public safety and welfare programs and civil rights protections had alarmed elements of corporate America and the conservative far-right. In response, future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell wrote the now-infamous “Powell Memo,” which painted the business community as under attack by academics, the media, liberal politicians, and other progressives.
      4. Powell urged corporate America to mobilize a counterattack. The “conservative legal movement” became a key part of this reactionary counterattack. Constructed around novel theories of constitutional interpretation, this movement was at its core a political project to combat alleged “judicial activism” by allegedly left-leaning judges. In fact, the movement worked to ensure that corporate America, the ultra-rich, and the Republican Party would succeed in the courts.
      5. In the 1980s, the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies became the institutional hub of this reactionary counterrevolution. Established in 1982, the Federalist Society “proclaimed the virtues of individual freedom and limited government” — code words for its supporters’ anti-government, anti-regulatory agenda. Today, the Federalist Society officially claims no role in politics, policy, or judicial nominations, but the facts show that it is the nerve center for a complex and massively funded GOP apparatus designed to rewrite the law to suit the narrow-minded political orthodoxy …
9. The Federalist Society Says It’s Not an Advocacy Organization. These Documents Show Otherwise. By AMANDA HOLLIS-BRUSKY and CALVIN TERBEEK | POLITICO.com | August 31, 2019 (Amanda Hollis-Brusky is an associate professor of politics at Pomona College and author of Ideas With Consequences: The Federalist Society and the Conservative Counterrevolution. Calvin TerBeek is a Ph.D. candidate in political science)
   1. MIKE NOTE: The Federalist Society – [Self-identifies as] The Federalist Society is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) charitable organization. Our federal tax identification number is 36-3235550.
   2. This past March [2019], when the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies held its 37th annual national gathering for conservative law students, the lineup of speakers and panelists included an impressive number of Republican Party and conservative movement stars. …
   3. Despite what appears to be an obvious political valence, the Federalist Society and its high-profile members have long insisted the nonprofit organization does not endorse any political party “or engage in other forms of political advocacy,” as its website says. The society does not deny an ideology—it calls itself a “group of conservatives and libertarians”—but it maintains that it is simply “about ideas,” not legislation, politicians or policy positions.
   4. Federalist Society documents that one of us recently unearthed, however, make this position untenable going forward. The documents, made public here for the first time, show that the society not only has held explicit ideological goals since its infancy in the early 1980s, but sought to apply those ideological goals to legal policy and political issues through the group’s roundtables, symposia and conferences.
   5. The question of whether the Federalist Society is properly characterized as a “society of ideas” or a political organization has significant ramifications. The Code of Conduct for United States Judges, a set of guidelines administered by the federal judiciary’s Judicial Conference, was revised earlier this year to bar sitting federal judges from participating in conferences and seminars sponsored by groups “generally viewed by the public as having adopted a consistent political or ideological point of view equivalent to the type of partisanship often found in political organizations.” (The Code does not “explicitly” apply to Supreme Court justices, though they have looked to it in the past.) One former federal judge argued that under the new ethics opinion, the Federalist Society is now a “no-go zone for federal judges.” The Society’s president, Eugene Meyer, responded, calling the former jurist’s argument an “absurd and ludicrous” interpretation of the rule, adding that the Federalist Society has said “time and again” that it is nonpartisan and does not take official policy positions.
   6. But the newly unearthed documents—a 1984 grant proposal and cover letter, written by Meyer on the Federalist Society’s behalf and now housed in the late Judge Robert Bork’s papers at the Library of Congress—provide evidence that the Federalist Society, in contravention of what the new Code states, in fact “advocates for specific outcomes on legal or political issues.” This suggests that federal judges, by attending Federalist Society events, are transgressing the Code’s new guidelines. Given the importance of active federal judges to the Federalist Society’s long-term goal of reshaping the law, barring them from the society’s events could hamper its continued ability to exert the political influence it has impressively built over decades. …
   7. …The Federalist Society’s founders and conservative patrons understood early on that the battle for control of the law would not be won on campuses alone. In the January 1984 grant proposal, Meyer, then the Federalist Society’s executive director, asked the conservative-leaning Smith Richardson Foundation for “seed money” to fund a new entity, a “Lawyers Division.” The central goal, Meyer wrote, was “to build an effective national conservative lawyers organization.” Meyer began the proposal by asserting that an alternative to “an increasingly radicalized bar,” exemplified by the American Bar Association, was now necessary because “lawyers continue to fill key positions in the modern instrumentalities of the welfare state.”
   8. SHORTER VERSION OF ARTICLE ABOVE- REVEALED: New documents show the Federalist Society has lied about its mission — and could blow up on sitting judges, By Matthew Chapman | COM | Published on August 31, 2019
      1. On Saturday [on August 31, 2019], political science academics Amanda Hollis-Brusky and Calvin TerBeek wrote an exposé in Politico revealing that the Federalist Society, an association of conservative and libertarian lawyers infamous for forming a semi-official pipeline of right-wing academics into the federal court system, have deliberately misled the public about the purpose of their organization’s existence for years.
      2. “Despite what appears to be an obvious political valence, the Federalist Society and its high-profile members have long insisted the nonprofit organization does not endorse any political party ‘or engage in other forms of political advocacy,’ as its website says,” they wrote. “The society does not deny an ideology — it calls itself a ‘group of conservatives and libertarians’ — but it maintains that it is simply ‘about ideas,’ not legislation, politicians or policy positions.”
      3. “Federalist Society documents that one of us recently unearthed, however, make this position untenable going forward,” they continued. “The documents, made public here for the first time, show that the society not only has held explicit ideological goals since its infancy in the early 1980s, but sought to apply those ideological goals to legal policy and political issues through the group’s roundtables, symposia and conferences.”
      4. The newly discovered papers resided in the Library of Congress with the records of the late Judge Robert Bork, President Ronald Reagan’s failed Supreme Court nominee.
      5. In one private grant proposal to a prospective conservative donor in 1984, for example, Federalist Society President Eugene Meyer promised that the Federalist Society would promote “the formation of groups of conservative lawyers in the major centers for the practice of law, who feel comfortable believing in, and advocating, conservative positions.” He also suggested the group would advocate against environmental, banking, and employment regulation, and recommend judges for appointments.
      6. All of this could have significant consequences. Earlier this year [2019], the Code of Conduct for United States Judges was modified to prohibit judges from participating in conferences held by groups “generally viewed by the public as having adopted a consistent political or ideological point of view equivalent to the type of partisanship often found in political organizations.”
      7. In light of these documents explicitly revealing the political goals of the Federalist Society, that means that sitting judges may be in violation of the Code if they attend Federalist Society seminars — something conservative judges at all levels of the court system do routinely to exchange ideas and proposals. (The Code is not binding on the Supreme Court, but is on appeals and district court judges.)
      8. For his part, Meyer disputes all of this, calling this interpretation of the Code “absurd,” and stating that it is “silly” to treat these documents “as a serious source for what the Society is and does today.”
      9. “If the new advisory opinion is enforced, one can imagine the society or a federal judge suing on the grounds of free speech and freedom of association,” concluded Hollis-Brusky TerBeek. “And, as a testament to its success, the Federalist Society might get a sympathetic hearing from the very same judiciary it helped build.”
10. Republicans are realizing the crisis is pulling them toward disaster, By Paul Waldman, Opinion writer | WASHINGTONPOST.COM | May 21, 2020 at 12:14 p.m. CDT
    1. “The worst is behind us,” declared Herbert Hoover in 1930. Two years later, Franklin Roosevelt won the presidency by an 18-point margin, capturing 42 states.
    2. Now, nearly 90 years later, at least some Republicans are starting to worry that President Trump could meet a fate similar to Hoover’s, and drag them down with him.
    3. The latest weekly employment figures, released Thursday, show the magnitude of this economic catastrophe: Another 2.4 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, bringing the total to 38.6 million over nine weeks. Analysts are now predicting that the unemployment rate will soon top 30 percent. The highest it reached during the Great Depression was 25.6 percent.
    4. And what’s on the minds of the Republican leadership? They’re worried that we’re coddling the unemployed:
    5. At issue is the enhanced unemployment aid Congress approved in late March, which includes an extra $600 in weekly payments to out-of-work Americans. On Tuesday, President Trump articulated his reluctance to extend those benefits during a closed-door lunch with Senate Republicans, many of whom share his concern that the expanded federal payments deter people from returning to work. The enhanced benefits expire in July. …
    6. … CNN reports that the number of Republicans coming around to some kind of further rescue package is growing:
    7. Publicly and privately, Republicans are signaling that they believe the Senate will have to move beginning in June on another recovery package, calls that many believe will intensify next month after senators hear concerns about the deteriorating economy in their states during next week’s Memorial Day recess.
    8. And some are quietly urging President Donald Trump to get more involved.
    9. Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he’s pushing Trump to get behind a plan to pump more money into infrastructure projects — even though that idea has gotten an icy reception from McConnell so far. …
    10. … So here’s the situation. In one corner you have Trump, who is opposing further rescue packages not because of firm ideological convictions but because he’s gripped by magical thinking. … In another corner you have Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who remains adamantly opposed to any further rescue bills. His opposition is a little hard to explain, though he may have concluded that Trump will lose, so Republicans might as well hold the economy down so President Biden can suffer the consequences.
    11. Then you have these other Republicans, many of whom are up for reelection, beginning to come around to the idea that doing something — even if it’s not in line with their small-government principles — is far better than doing nothing, if the latter means defeat in November. …
11. Hertz Files For Bankruptcy, Raises Fears It May Flood Market With Hundreds Of Thousands Of Used Cars – Hertz has filed for bankruptcy after being dealt a devastating blow by the coronavirus. BY Michael Gauthier | CARSCOOPS.COM | Posted on May 23, 2020
    1. … Despite the bankruptcy filing, it’s business as usual as Hertz and its subsidiaries remain open. As a result, “all reservations, promotional offers, vouchers, and customer and loyalty programs” should continue as planned. The company also noted they have more than $1 billion (£821,959,400 / €917,010,700) in cash to support its continuing operations.
    2. That’s a pretty significant cash reserve, but the company is drowning in approximately $17 (£13.9 / €15.6) billion in debt. The coronavirus has also ground travel to a halt, virtually eliminating the need for rental cars.
    3. In the bankruptcy announcement, Hertz said “The impact of COVID-19 on travel demand was sudden and dramatic, causing an abrupt decline in the company’s revenue and future bookings.” …
    4. It remains unclear how the bankruptcy will pan out, but there have been fears the rental company could liquidate part of its fleet of roughly 570,000 vehicles. If this were to happen, it could flood the used car market and drag prices down significantly. …
12. Weight Watchers fires thousands of employees over Zoom: Report – Audio-only Zoom call reportedly lasted only a few minutes. By Ann Schmidt | FOXBusiness | 2020-May-22
    1. WW International — formerly called Weight Watchers — reportedly fired thousands of its employees last week over Zoom, according to recent reports.
    2. Last week, an anonymous post on com claimed thousands of WW service providers were laid off.
    3. On Friday, HuffPost reported the audio-only call lasted just a few minutes.
    4. According to the website, the manager who fired the employees read from a script and had everyone else muted so they couldn’t ask questions. Some employees who were fired had even worked at the company for “decades,” HuffPost reported.
    5. By the weekend, employees’ emails had reportedly been shut down and they no longer had access to WW employee websites.
    6. According to a report by com, some employees claim that up to 4,000 workers were fired in the call.
13. Babies born to surrogate mothers in Ukraine are trapped there because Covid-19 travel restrictions prevent their parents from taking them home. By Jonah Fisher, BBC Kyiv
    1. Click link to see video: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/embed/p08d7zmf/52721154
14. Ukraine: Dogs auctioned to pay owners’ debts – Thoroughbred dogs that were confiscated under a court order in Ukraine to pay for their owners’ debts have been put up for auction online. COM | 22 May 2020
    1. … The auction, highlighted by an opposition MP, has drawn criticism. Many initially thought it was a joke when two dogs were put up for auction on a state-owned online site for confiscated goods. But it soon became clear the dogs were real. One has not yet been sold but one has a potential buyer. …
    2. … There was indignation on social media, and one opposition MP, Oleksiy Honcharenko, said bailiffs should not be seizing innocent dogs.
    3. “We really have to confiscate pets from their owners,” Justice Minister Denis Malyuska told BBC Ukrainian. “Even though they are taken because of their former owners’ insolvency, often it turns out for the best when pets have been badly treated.”
    4. Daily life for many Ukrainians is expensive, with pensions failing to keep pace with the steep rises in gas bills in recent years. Earlier this year, an MP in the ruling party of President Volodymyr Zelensky apologised after advising one struggling pensioner to sell her dog. …
    5. … Confiscated pets were often bought back by the owner or their relatives for a symbolic sum, the minister said. …
15. The Yeast Supply Chain Can’t Just Activate Itself – There’s a reason the ingredient is still missing from stores. By Aaron Mak | SLATE.COM | April 15, 20206:47 PM
    1. Bread making is enjoying a pandemic-driven renaissance right now, but it’s hitting one hitch: No one can find any yeast.
    2. Shortages of dry yeast have been a consistent complaint since business shutdowns and stay-at-home orders have kept most Americans eating in—and hoarding many dry and canned goods to prepare. While some supply chains have begun to catch up with demand surges for certain products, yeast has been one area where they’re struggling to keep up. Robb MacKie, president and CEO of the American Bakers Association, said the industry was unprepared for the run on yeast because there’s usually a lull in demand for bread products and ingredients in the first quarter of the year, while the peak typically comes during the November and December holidays. The pandemic has flipped that schedule on its head, he said, with demand surpassing what producers would expect even in the busy season.
    3. … [T]he supply chain issues may not have anything to do with these ingredients. Instead, a major problem seems to be getting all that yeast packaged.
    4. Heilman, who oversees three Fleischmann’s Yeast plants in the U.S., has been trying to ramp up production by staffing facilities to max capacity and asking workers to hold off on vacations. … “Where we wound up maxed out is our ability to package.” The facility in India where the company gets its jars was shuttered, and materials for paper packets have also run low. The extra staff that the plants are recruiting will mostly be aiding this packet packaging effort, as well as drying the yeast.
16. Will empty middle seats help social distancing on planes?, By John Walton | COM | 22nd April 2020
    1. As more countries mull lifting Covid-19 lockdowns, airlines are examining what flying might look like as travel restrictions start to be relaxed. Carriers are haemorrhaging money and it’s very much in their interests to get planes back in the air. Passenger confidence will be one of many hurdles to overcome, however, with many worried about keeping a reasonable distance from their fellow travellers.
    2. Several airlines are exploring the idea of keeping middle seats empty, to avoid passengers sitting directly beside each other. …
    3. … Removing the unloved middle seat option would lead to a hearty hooray from the travelling public. Sit by the window and you get a view, plus a bulkhead to snooze against. In an aisle seat, you can pop to the toilet or stretch whenever you like. The middle seat has no such benefits, unless you’re one of those people who strikes up conversations with their seatmates.
    4. But would blocking middle seats actually help us maintain proper social distancing and if so, how long could airlines keep doing it? Is it a realistic option beyond the very short term? …
    5. …Planes are very much not set up for social … Billions of dollars have been spent in recent years in particular to fit as many people as possible into smaller spaces. For example, when the big wide-body, twin-aisle, twin-engine Boeing 777 started flying in the 1990s, most of them had nine seats per economy row on long-haul flights. Today, almost all airlines flying the plane – whether long-haul with the likes of Emirates or short-haul within Japan – have 10 seats, meaning narrower seats and narrower aisles. …
    6. …LIFT Aero Design’s Daniel Baron points out that there are a number of other measures that airlines can use to try and make travel safer. “Let’s not forget that cabin air circulation is on par with operating theatres,” he says. “A combination of pre-flight screening, thorough cabin sanitising, smart seat assignments and masks will likely be the way forward in the short to medium term.”
    7. … Delta Air Lines has changed the way it boards aircraft, and is now boarding them strictly from the rear to the front, so passengers sitting at the back don’t have to pass those sitting at the front. The airline is also boarding fewer people at a time to improve physical distancing of passengers.
    8. Many airlines are also cancelling or reducing inflight food and beverage service to reduce interactions on board: Southwest is serving individual cans of water rather than its usual full drinks round, for example. Some airlines are offering to-go bags in the gate area instead.
17. What went wrong with the media’s coronavirus coverage? And can we do better?, By Peter Kafka | VOX.COM | Apr 13, 2020, 7:10am EDT
    1. … Much of the mainstream media amplified [the] slow and muddled reaction to the rapidly spreading virus. Since alarming reports about Covid-19 began to emerge from China in January, the media often provided information to Americans that later proved to be wrong, or at least inadequate.
    2. For instance: While President Trump has been correctly pilloried for describing the coronavirus as less dangerous than the flu, that message was commonplace in mainstream media outlets throughout February. And journalists — including my colleagues at Vox — were dutifully repeating exhortations from public health officials not to wear masks for much of 2020. …
    3. … [I]t’s worth looking back to ask how the media could have done better as the virus broke out of China and headed to the US.
    4. Why didn’t we see this coming sooner? And once we did, why didn’t we sound the alarm with more vigor?
    5. If you read the stories from that period … you’ll find that most of the information holding the pieces together comes from authoritative sources …: experts at institutions like the World Health Organization, the CDC, and academics with real domain knowledge.
    6. The problem, in many cases, was that that information was wrong, or at least incomplete. Which raises the hard question for journalists scrutinizing our performance in recent months: How do we cover a story where neither we nor the experts we turn to know what isn’t yet known? And how do we warn Americans about the full range of potential risks in the world without ringing alarm bells so constantly that they’ll tune us out? …
    7. … Journalists have been doing crucial reporting about what the US government got wrong as the pandemic advanced, and what US leaders could have done to prepare America. They provided analysis that put the news in context. And they have also provided important on-the-ground dispatches from places around the world that have been devastated by the disease — often at great personal risk — starting at its epicenter in Wuhan, China.
    8. But when it came to grappling with a new disease they knew nothing about, journalists most often turned to experts and institutions for information, and relayed what those experts and institutions told them to their audience.
    9. And given that the Covid-19 coronavirus is brand new, even the best-meaning experts and institutions gave conflicting information, some of which now has proven to be inaccurate or up for debate. That includes National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci, who is now the most trusted official in the federal government when it comes to the Covid-19 response, but as late as February was calling the risk from coronavirus “minuscule” and warning people to worry instead about “influenza outbreak, which is having its second wave.” …
    10. … Laura Helmuth, who was the health and science editor at the Washington Post and recently left to become editor-in-chief of Scientific American, says acknowledging gaps in knowledge is crucial but not easy.
    11. “One thing that science journalists have been getting better at is not just saying what we do know, but what we don’t know,” she says. “But most journalists aren’t accustomed to doing that.”
    12. … Mainstream journalists who know how to read and understand academic research reports are a select group and have been for decades. Many midsize newspapers once employed dedicated science journalists, but those jobs have been dwindling for years. …
    13. … In some cases, the screaming was there, but you had to work to hear it. You wouldn’t find it in a headline or the top of a newscast, but if you absorbed the whole thing, you’d find news that would scare you into some kind of action.
    14. My sort-of come-to-Jesus moment started on February 27 when I listened to Times reporter Donald McNeil on the paper’s Daily He said the worst-case scenario was a repeat of the 1918 flu pandemic, which killed 50 million people worldwide and at least 675,000 in the United States.
    15. In that version, McNeil said calmly: Everybody in the US would “know somebody who dies.”
    16. It’s most gripping in audio form, but I want to pull out a section here:
        1. Donald G. McNeil Jr. – Some big chunk of the country — 30, 40, 50 percent — are likely to get a new virus when it blows through. And if you don’t get it in the first wave, you might get it in the second wave.
        2. Michael Barbaro – And 2 percent lethality rate of 50 percent of the country. I don’t want to do that math. It’s really, really awful.
        3. McNeil – It’s a lot of people. It means, you know, you don’t die, 80 percent of people have mild cases. But you know somebody who dies.
        4. Barbaro – That’s pretty horrible … Okay. Now, the best-case scenario.
        5. McNeil – The best-case scenario is one of these drugs works, and basically everybody gets sick next year, but everybody who is hospitalized gets a drug that keeps them from dying and keeps them from going into deep, deep, deep respiratory distress. And we have the equivalent of a bad flu season. And then everybody says, ‘Oh, the media, they blew it out of proportion again.’ You know, it’s all ridiculous. And, you know, I get blamed.
    17. That was enough for me — sort of. I didn’t change my plans to travel to Los Angeles the following week, but I did start assuming that the rest of my spring plans were going to be up in the air. And I told my family that we should start buying food — not in panic, but slowly. And I wondered how The Daily’s millions of listeners would respond.
18. Program Eligibility by Federal Poverty Level for 2020
    1. FROM HEALTHCARE.GOV: Federal Poverty Level (FPL): The 2020 federal poverty level (FPL) income numbers below are used to calculate eligibility for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). 2019 numbers are slightly lower, and are used to calculate savings on Marketplace insurance plans for 2020.
    2. How federal poverty levels are used to determine eligibility for reduced-cost health coverage: Income between 100% and 400% FPL: If your income is in this range, in all states you qualify for premium tax credits that lower your monthly premium for a Marketplace health insurance plan.
    3. The Federal Poverty level in California for a family of four is $103,000, according to this chart from com.
    4. MIKE: Think about that, and the overall ramifications on health and opportunity. And what about other states?
    5. Ramifications:
       1. Minimum wage
       2. Executive pay disparity with workers
    6. Impact on public health, the economy, and more.