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Biden: elected officials 'shouldn't get in the way' of kids' COVID-19 vaccinations

President Biden on Tuesday took an apparent swipe at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) for declining to devote state resources to help providers pre-order COVID-19 vaccines for young kids ages 5 and under.

Biden spoke at the White House to celebrate the day vaccines became available for children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years, the last group of Americans to be granted vaccine eligibility.

Biden said he understands some parents may have questions, but the decision to vaccinate a child shouldn’t be a political one. 

“Let’s be clear, elected officials shouldn’t get in the way to make it more difficult for parents who want their children to be vaccinated and want to protect them and those around them,” Biden said. “This is no time for politics. It’s about parents being able to do everything they can to keep their children safe.”

DeSantis has been taking heat from infectious disease experts as well as national and state Democrats for his decision not to preorder COVID-19 vaccines for infants and young kids from the federal government. 

Florida was the only state that decided not to place an order.

Pediatricians and childrens’ hospitals could have started administering shots following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s endorsement if the state had a small stockpile of doses on-hand.

“The United States is now the first country in the world for safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines for children as young as six months old,” Biden said. “For the first time in our fight against this pandemic, nearly every American can now have access to life saving vaccines.” 

Earlier on Tuesday, Biden visited a vaccination clinic in Washington, D.C., where some of the first doses were being administered.  

Administration officials are concentrating their rollout efforts on community vaccination centers, pediatricians and family physicians. 

Source: TEST FEED1

CNN's Bash: Trump, Giuliani unleashed 'racist terror' on Georgia election workers

CNN’s Dana Bash said former President Trump and his top personal confidant Rudy Giuliani oversaw a campaign of “racist terror” against a pair of African-American elections workers in Georgia following his loss in the 2020 election.

After watching testimony Tuesday from Shaye Freeman Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Bash said the allegations Trump and his allies were making against the two election workers and the threats they faced as a result were “beyond comprehension.”

“But I want to go back to Shaye and her mother Lady Ruby, because it’s not just plain old terror with the two of them, it was racist terror,” Bash said. “The kind of language that people including the former president were using about her it wasn’t even thinly veiled.”

Anchor Jake Tapper interjected, saying Trump called the two election workers “hustlers.”

“Rudy Giuliani compared the votes they were allegedly hiding to drugs,” Tapper added.

“And let’s be clear these are people who they believe it is a calling, it is public service, [to] help out on election day to help out with the pillar of democracy,” Bash said. “Especially for African-Americans. Especially for African-American women who didn’t have that opportunity for so long. This country should be throwing a parade for election workers, not having the president of the United States start a reign of terror against them.”

During her testimony before the panel, Moss, who was the focal point of a conspiracy theory spread by Trump and his allies about election fraud, said the allegations against her “turned my life upside down.” 

“I don’t do nothing anymore. I don’t want to go anywhere. I second guess everything I do. It’s affected my life in a major way. In every way. All because of lies,” Moss said.

“Do you know how it feels to have the President of the United States target you?” Freeman said in her pre-taped deposition. “The president of the United States is supposed to represent every American, not to target one.”  

Source: TEST FEED1

Congress can do better than the Howey test for crypto regulation

Cryptocurrencies are generally not subject to federal regulation unless they are deemed to be “securities,” in which case the Securities Act of 1933 requires them to abide by disclosure requirements and antifraud regulation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) if they are offered to the public. 

The test the SEC uses to determine whether a cryptocurrency is a security was laid out by the Supreme Court in Securities and Exchange Commission v W. J. Howey Co. If the SEC asserts that a cryptocurrency is a security, an alleged issuer seeking to challenge that contention must litigate. The criteria contained in the so-called Howey test are irrelevant to any rational public policy reason to regulate cryptocurrency. Yet, cryptocurrency companies are forced to spend millions in legal fees to seek to demonstrate that their products do not meet these criteria.

Howey, of course, did not deal with cryptocurrency or any other form of modern technology. Rather it dealt with a 1940’s era scheme to market units of a citrus grove in Florida coupled with a contract for cultivating and marketing the grove’s fruit and paying the profits to investors. The court held that an investment is an “investment contract,” and thus, a security as defined in the Securities Act, if it is “a contract, transaction or scheme whereby a person invests his money in a common enterprise and is led to expect profits solely from the efforts of the promoter or a third party.”

With respect to cryptocurrency, the crucial prong of this test is usually whether profits result solely from the efforts of a promoter or third party. Using this test, the SEC determined that Bitcoin, which is a decentralized network with no promoter, is not a security. A number of forms of cryptocurrency follow the decentralized finance, or “defi,” model that relies on peer-to-peer payments with no promoter or financial intermediary. It is unlikely that these forms of cryptocurrency would be deemed securities under Howey. Other forms of cryptocurrency, such as interest-bearing stablecoins, would meet the Howey test because a promoter is paying interest. Does this distinction make any sense?

In determining whether a financial product should be regulated, governments generally look at the following factors: Do the people who are being offered the product require protection from fraud or dishonesty? Do the markets in which the product is sold require regulation to preserve their integrity? Are there broader governmental interests at stake? 

In the case of cryptocurrency, regardless of whether profits result from the efforts of a promoter, purchasers have been defrauded of billions of dollars, resulting from cyber hacks and failures to disclose risks or the actual assets and liabilities of cryptocurrency entities. Cryptocurrency is increasingly being marketed through the same vehicles as more conventional financial products, including broker-dealers, mutual funds and securities exchanges and the integrity of these markets must be protected. Finally, important governmental interests mandate regulation. For example, since cryptocurrencies are often used by criminals, law enforcement and anti-money laundering regimes are implicated. In addition, the government’s strong interest in preserving the primacy of the U.S. dollar gives it an interest in overseeing potential competitors to the dollar. All of these factors are present for all cryptocurrencies regardless of whether or not they meet the Howey test.

Unfortunately, in the absence of congressional action to regulate cryptocurrency, the SEC is left with only the Howey test and its resulting illogic. In designing a regulatory scheme, Congress has the luxury of directly considering the technologies involved, rather than applying a test that originated in the Florida citrus industry. 

A number of schemes for regulation have already been floated, particularly for stablecoins, a form of cryptocurrency backed by financial assets. The President’s Working Group on Financial Markets has proposed that all stablecoin issuers be regulated as federally insured banks. The cost of this regulation may make this nascent industry unprofitable. 

A more prudent regulatory approach was recently proposed by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). It involves some form of state or federal license for stablecoin issuers, appropriate financial disclosure about the assets backing the product, and most importantly, a requirement that stablecoin issuers obtain audited financial statements so that purchasers can see their assets and liabilities. A regime of this sort, broadly applicable to cryptocurrency, would protect consumers, financial markets, and governmental interests while allowing the marketplace to ultimately determine whether the cryptocurrency experiment will be successful.

Howard B. Adler, a retired corporate and securities law partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, LLP, served as deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury for the Financial Stability Oversight Council from 2019-2021. He is the coauthor of the forthcoming book, “Surprised Again! The COVID Crisis and the New Market Bubble.” 

Source: TEST FEED1

Johnson 'had no foreknowledge' about fake elector slates sent to office: spokesperson

A spokesperson for Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) claimed that the Wisconsin Republican was not involved in a fake elector scheme and “had no foreknowledge” the electors would be sent to their office, responding to a revelation from the Tuesday hearing of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

“The senator had no involvement in the creation of an alternate slate of electors and had no foreknowledge that it was going to be delivered to our office. This was a staff to staff exchange. His new Chief of Staff contacted the Vice President’s office,” Alexa Henning, a Johnson spokeswoman, tweeted.

“The Vice President’s office said not to give it to him and we did not. There was no further action taken. End of story,” she added in a follow-up tweet.

Henning was responding to a text exchange displayed by the House panel during its fourth hearing on Tuesday, in which Sean Riley, who was identified as an aide to Johnson, texted Chris Hodgson, who was an aide to former Vice President Pence.

“Johnson needs to hand something to VPOTUS please advise,” Riley wrote to Hodgson after noon on Jan. 6, 2021, using the acronym for vice president of the United States. 

“What is it?” Hodgson replied.

“Alternate slate of electors for MI and WI because archivist didn’t receive them,” Riley answered.

“Do not give that to him,” the Pence aide said back.

Johnson was not among the close to 150 Republicans who objected to some of the 2020 presidential election results. 

The revelation comes as lawmakers seek to show the role President Trump played in seeking to pressure officials from states such as Georgia and Arizona battleground states that then-candidate Joe Biden ultimately won — to reject Biden’s win.

Source: TEST FEED1

Cheney calls on ex-White House lawyer to testify before Jan. 6 panel

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol is working to secure testimony from former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said Tuesday. 

“Our evidence shows that Pat Cipollone and his office tried to do what was right. They tried to stop a number of President Trump’s plans for Jan. 6,” Cheney, who is a vice-chair of the committee, said at the close of Tuesday’s hearing. 

“We think the American people deserve to hear from Mr. Cipollone personally. He should appear before this committee, and we are working to secure his testimony,” Cheney added. 

Cipollone served as White House counsel from October 2018 through the end of the Trump presidency, and he defended the former president during both of his impeachment trials. 

Cipollone’s name came up during the first public hearing the committee held earlier this month when former White House senior adviser Jared Kushner was shown testifying that he dismissed Cipollone’s threats to resign ahead of Jan. 6 as “whining.” 

“You know, him and the team were always saying, ‘Oh we’re going to resign, we’re not going to be here if this happens, if that happens,’ so I kind of took it up to just be whining, to be honest to you,” Kushner said in private deposition. 

Members of Cipollone’s team, including Eric Herschmann, have testified to the committee in deposition shown in prior hearings that they felt legal theories floated by the likes of Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman had no legal standing and were potentially dangerous. 

Cheney signaled on Tuesday that future hearings will shed more light on what Cipollone said and did in the weeks before the Jan. 6 riots. 

“Our committee is certain that Donald Trump does not want Mr. Cipollone to testify here,” Cheney said.  

Source: TEST FEED1

Why pandemic-era tipping is ending

Americans were happy to over-tip during the pandemic. But with inflation pinching their pockets, signs that Americans want to tip less are growing. 

Many people propped up their local economies early in the pandemic by upping their gratuities at local coffee shops, corner stores and favorite take-out spots — the latter being a once-novel idea.  

But now, experts say there is a perfect storm of factors, including inflation and lack of COVID-19 incentives, leaving increasingly “cranky consumers” waiting for exemplary service before shelling out a little extra at the end. 

Traditional tipping etiquette dictates that customers give their servers an extra 15 to 20 percent, before tax, in addition to the price of their meal, according to etiquette site Emily Post.  

Yet a recent survey from CreditCards.com revealed that tipping in several categories has fallen below pre-pandemic levels. The number of customers surveyed who said they always tip fell by 4 percentage points from 77 percent in 2019 to 73 percent in 2022. Four percent said they never tip.  

“Inflation is cutting into consumers’ purchasing power and a tight labor market has left many service industry businesses understaffed and struggling to provide top-notch customer experiences,” Ted Rossman, senior industry analyst at CreditCards.com, said at the time. 

Soaring costs at the pump and price hikes at the grocery store also mean less disposable income across the board, which can translate into less cash for often underpaid service industry workers who rely on customer tips for their survival.  

Yet restaurants too are feeling inflation and supply crunches and are responding by raising menu prices, creating less of an incentive for customers to tack on a tip to their bill. Customers are also seeing other service disruptions.  

The great resignation played a significant role in ongoing service issues, Florida International University hospitality professors Andrew Moreo and Lisa Cain wrote in an analysis on hospitality industry burnout. They noted hospitality workers fueled the so-called great resignation, listing low pay, long hours and weekend shifts as major factors pushing workers out of the industry.  

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Moreo told Changing America in an interview the decline in customer experience might offer another element in explaining the decline in customers’ tipping habits. 

“Customers aren’t receiving the service that they’re used to. The menus have shrunk, and prices have increased. Often, they go in and what they want from the menu, even if the item is still on the menu, maybe they’re out of it because of supply chain issues,” Moreo said. 

“People are waiting longer to be sat, or the whole service is taking longer because they’re being short staffed. Not enough servers, not enough cooks. So, I think their overall experiences have unfortunately diminished as well,” Moreo added.  

Moreo said he learned in conversations with colleagues and associates in the industry that tips popped up in uncommon areas like take out and at the coffee counter as frontline workers were offering what was seen in 2020 as essential services. 

Typically, according to Emily Post, there is no obligation to tip for take-out services except in cases where there are large or special orders. 

But even Moreo, who spent time in the hospitality industry, said his views on tipping are evolving, especially when it comes to takeout, as the U.S. moves out of its pandemic economy.  

“But, you know, even me, someone who’s in the industry, has certainly backed off. My perspective is that I see tipping as a reward for excellent service and an excellent experience,” Moreo said. “And if I’m just calling in an order and going and picking it up, what real service did you provide? Where was the extra touch? Where was the extra bit that should really earn that tip? 

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Source: TEST FEED1

Goldman Sachs sees higher likelihood of recession in next year

Economists from Goldman Sachs said on Monday that the probability of a recession in the next year is higher than they last previously predicted, as other executives have warned of economic uncertainty ahead.

The economists said in a note they were raising the likelihood that there would be a recession over the next year from 15 percent the last time they weighed in to 30 percent now. 

They also predicted lower gross domestic product (GDP) growth for both 2022 and 2023: 2.4 percent on an annual average basis compared to 2.5 percent for 2022, and 1.4 percent in 2023 compared to 1.6 percent.

“We now see recession risk as higher and more front-loaded,” the economists wrote. “The main reasons are that our baseline growth path is now lower and that we are increasingly concerned that the Fed will feel compelled to respond forcefully to high headline inflation and consumer inflation expectations if energy prices rise further, even if activity slows sharply.”

The development comes as Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in an interview on Tuesday that “a recession is inevitable at some point,” saying it is “that is more likely than not” there will be a recession in the near term. 

Before the Federal Reserve hiked up interest rates to its highest in nearly three decades, JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jaime Dimon earlier this month predicted an economic “hurricane.”

“That hurricane is right out there down the road, coming our way. We just don’t know if it’s a minor one or Superstorm Sandy or Andrew or something like that, and you better brace yourself,” he said at the time. 

The United States has suffered high inflation in addition to enduring supply chain issues, impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The ongoing Russian invasion in Ukraine has complicated matters, affecting prices of some goods in addition to the supply chain of certain goods. 

In a recent interview with The Associated Press, President Biden tried to stress some optimism and argued that a recession is not “inevitable.”

“Be confident, because I am confident we’re better positioned than any country in the world to own the second quarter of the 21st century,” Biden told the AP. “That’s not hyperbole, that’s a fact.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Starbucks' first chicken sandwich has arrived

(NEXSTAR) — Starbucks has entered the chicken sandwich chat. On Tuesday, the coffee giant announced the arrival of its Chicken Maple Butter and Egg Sandwich, becoming the latest restaurant chain to offer its own version of the ever-popular food item.

The sandwich features an oat biscuit roll filled with white meat chicken, eggs and a maple butter spread, Food and Wine reports. A Starbucks representative told Nexstar the sandwich is now a permanent menu item.

The sandwich is part of Starbucks’ new items released this summer. The roster also includes the Pineapple Passionfruit Refresher beverage, the nondairy Paradise Drink Refresher, and Cookies & Cream Cake Pops. New items are available in U.S. stores starting Tuesday.

Several food chains have introduced their own specialty chicken sandwiches in the past few years, including Popeye’s, Burger King and Wendy’s. Popeye’s chicken sandwich release in 2019 was widely viewed as being a viable competitor to Chick-Fil-A’s chicken sandwich.

Though new chicken sandwich launches are big headline-grabbers for restaurants, the new items don’t always take off. Taco Bell’s Crispy Chicken Sandwich Taco launched nationally in September 2021 but was phased out in the following months.

Source: TEST FEED1

New remote brain-computer interface could be game-changer for paralyzed

Researchers have made great strides toward eventually providing the more than 5 million people with paralysis in the U.S. more mobility and independence with the development of an experimental device called a brain-computer interface (BCI). 

In recent years, BCIs have successfully enabled dozens of study participants who lost the use of their limbs after strokes, accidents or diseases such as multiple sclerosis, to control a mouse cursor, keyboard, mobile device, wheelchair and even a robotic arm that provides sensory feedback to the patient, simply by using their own mind. The technology could be a gamechanger to help those with paralysis return to work and communicate more quickly and effectively. 

The BCI system involves implanting microelectrode arrays in a patient’s motor cortex, the area of the brain that naturally controls movement. Patients are then asked to imagine moving their own arm or hand, and the sensors in the motor cortex pick up those signals from the brain and transmit them as commands to an external device such as a computer cursor or a wheelchair. 

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While trials of the technology have been ongoing for years, participation has been limited due to logistics and geography, as paralysis volunteers in studies are required to travel to lab facilities on a regular basis. 

But now, BCI manufacturer Blackrock Neurotech and the University of Pittsburgh are working together to make the studies more accessible to a greater population of candidates living with paralysis with the use of a compact, remote BCI system that can be used at home. Researchers will be able to test a broader range of study participants and collect more safety and efficacy data, a key step on the path to commercializing the technology.

“It is essentially a new version of the entire BCI system that is designed for in-house use,” Florian Solzbacher, co-founder and chairman of Blackrock Neurotech, a company that manufactures a suite of BCI technology, said in an interview. 

“This was usually set up so all the studies and trials could only be done in the hospital or in a clinical research setting. And so that required participants to travel to the lab several times a week to work there. This creates a far more realistic setting,” he said. 

Solzbacher said the device looks somewhat like an iPad with a small box the size of a cell phone that’s attached to a type of medical brace. The device can easily attach to a wheelchair and is light to carry. The software used during research trials has also been modified to be operated with little technical support. In the lab, experiments typically required rack mounted data acquisition systems and five or so computers to carry out the research. He said the at-home BCI can allow users to write their own emails or text messages and work on a computer. 

“Being able to run things at home with a portable at-home system participants can start, or maybe a caretaker with no more knowledge than the lay person can start, is a big step,” Solzbacher said. 

Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh’s Rehabilitation and Neural Engineering Laboratory (RNEL) in 2020 demonstrated that a study participant could use a portable version of the BCI system at home to move a mouse cursor, play computer games and type out sentences. Pitt has been a leader in BCI research, successfully enabling a paralyzed man to operate a robotic arm and hand that provides tactile feedback directly to the man’s brain. 

Pitt researchers say the new agreement with Blackrock Neurotech will lay the groundwork to scale up key trials. 

“One of the current things we hear from participants is that they really want a device that they can have at home that will actually benefit them in their daily life,” Jennifer Collinger, researcher with the University of Pittsburgh’s RNEL, said. 

“The trials that we’ve been running at the University of Pittsburgh and all of the other sites that are doing similar research right now, they’re essentially temporary studies where almost all of the experiments are happening in the lab, or at least there’s lab personnel supervising the system. What they really want to see is something they can use independently all the time.” 

Blackrock Neurotech late last year was granted Breakthrough Device designation from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its “MoveAgain” BCI system, which is similar to devices it plans to use in trials and hopes to be its first commercial BCI platform in 2023. 

Source: TEST FEED1