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A view of Russia from Helsinki
The euphoria in Washington, London, Berlin and several other NATO capitals that greeted the Swedish and Finnish applications to NATO has dimmed as Turkey has outlined just what it requires to vote in favor of the Nordic countries’ accession to the alliance. Ibrahim Kalin, a leading aide to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said Turkey would withdraw its objection only if Sweden ceased to support the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) with weapons and equipment; extradited 28 PKK members living in Sweden; and lifted sanctions that Stockholm has imposed against it. He said Finland should extradite 12 PKK members living in that country.
Turkey considers the PKK to be a terrorist organization, as does the United States. So far, neither Sweden nor Finland has acceded to Ankara’s demands.
While Sweden appears to be Turkey’s primary target, Finland considers itself to be almost collateral damage. Helsinki appears to have received nine, not 12, extradition requests, and acceded to two of them; a decision on a third request is yet to be made. Finnish officials consider that they have decent relations with the Turks. They have emphasized to their counterparts that the accession by Finland and Sweden would bolster NATO’s deterrent — not only in northern Europe, but throughout the alliance’s territory. They seem optimistic that a solution will be found to enable both countries to join NATO and are hopeful, though hardly certain, that Turkey will lift its objections in time for the NATO Madrid Summit that begins on June 29.
In the meantime, despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s initially mild reaction to the news of Sweden’s and Finland’s decisions, Russian spokesmen have continued their threats that the West will suffer “consequences” if the two countries proceed with their applications. In particular, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the European Union said that Finland’s joining NATO would raise questions about the status of both the self-governing Åland Islands, which Helsinki administers, and a 27-mile canal running from the central Finnish city of Výborg into Russia.
Finland shares an 807-mile border with Russia — the longest in Europe — and is unlikely to respond positively to Russia’s implied threats. Indeed, it was in reaction to Russia’s aggression, most recently against Ukraine, that Finnish public opinion swung heavily in favor of NATO entry. As an astute Finnish observer pointed out to me recently in Helsinki, Russian bellicosity had the opposite of its intended effect; it stiffened Finnish resistance to Moscow’s pressure.
Indeed, in the fall of 2021 an EVA poll showed only 26 percent of Finns supported NATO entry and, in December, as Russia was massing its forces on Ukraine’s border, another poll had only 24 percent in favor of their country joining the alliance. Once Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, however, Finnish public support for NATO entry shot up to 53 percent, climbing to 62 percent in April and 76 percent in May. The consensus in support for Finnish entry was so overwhelming that when the issue was put to a vote in the Finnish parliament, 188 out of 200 members voted in favor — the largest margin in favor of any measure in Finnish history.
Moreover, both the public opinion polls and the parliamentary vote reflect a fundamental change in Finnish policy. Whereas previously, in no small part a reflection of the country’s careful relationship with the Soviet Union — which critics derisively termed “Finlandization” — and with its Russian Federation successor, Helsinki’s policy was not to break with its huge neighbor, it now concluded that Russia has prompted a break, freeing Finland to go its own way.
Finland has cooperated closely with NATO, in general, and with Washington, in particular, for nearly a decade. Having joined the NATO Partnership for Peace (PfP) in 1994, 20 years later — the year that Russia seized and annexed Crimea — Helsinki became a NATO Enhanced Opportunity Partner, the highest PfP tier. During the Obama years, Finland increasingly expanded its military cooperation with the United States, culminating in 2018 with its signing, together with Sweden, a Tripartite Memorandum of Understanding with the Department of Defense.
Russian aggressiveness also spurred Helsinki to increase its defense spending from about 1.4 percent of gross domestic product in 2020 to 1.85 percent in 2021, and to 1.96 percent this year. In addition, the five-party governing coalition, with no serious opposition objection, agreed to allocate an additional 2.2 billion Euros in the five years beginning 2023, thereby bringing its percentage of GDP above NATO’s 2 percent target.
Finnish leaders are optimistic about the country’s prospects for joining NATO. Together with Sweden, Finland will convert the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake. It adds more focus on what formerly was called NATO’s Northern Flank but in reality, given the alliance’s greater proximity to Russia, more accurately should be termed NATO’s “Northern Front.” And it will constitute yet another demonstration to the Kremlin that its attempts to bully its far smaller but determined neighbor can only backfire.
Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was under secretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 a
Source: TEST FEED1
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Biden zeroes in on plan to cancel $10,000 in student loans per borrower
President Biden is nearing a decision on student loan debt forgiveness, with the president and his team zeroing in on canceling $10,000 per borrower, with some potential caveats.
White House officials cautioned no decision has been finalized as Biden continues to weigh his options. The president is scheduled to speak at the Naval Academy’s commencement ceremony on Friday and at the University of Delaware’s ceremony on Saturday.
Multiple reports indicated Biden considered using the weekend commencement ceremonies to announce some student debt forgiveness, with The Washington Post reporting the timing was changed in the wake of a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 children dead. A White House official disputed that was the case, however.
“No decisions have been made yet — but as a reminder no one has been required to pay a single dime of student loans since the president took office,” said deputy press secretary Vedant Patel.
Multiple sources told The Hill in late April that Biden was looking at canceling at least $10,000 in student debt, and indications are the White House appears to have settled on that number even as they work through potential limits on who the loan cancellation would benefit.
The Washington Post reported Friday that the latest iteration of the plan called for capping the debt forgiveness to individuals who earned less than $150,000 last year, or $300,000 for married couples. It is also unclear if the cancelation would apply to all student loan debt, or just undergraduate students.
Biden in the 2020 campaign supported forgiving at least $10,000 in federal student loans per person after several other candidates made student loan forgiveness a key part of their platforms.
Since taking office, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) have repeatedly pushed Biden on the issue, insisting it would provide immediate relief to minorities and low- and middle-income families. Schumer has called for canceling up to $50,000 in student debt per borrower.
While that large of a sum has been publicly ruled out, Biden has in recent weeks made increasingly clear he is prepared to provide some student debt forgiveness.
“I am not considering $50,000 debt reduction, but I’m in the process of taking a hard look at whether or not there will be additional debt forgiveness and I’ll have an answer on that in the next couple of weeks,” Biden said on April 28, days after he reportedly told members of the Hispanic Congressional Hispanic Caucus he was open to forgiving some student loans.
The White House has yet to give an updated timeline in the month since Biden said a decision was a couple weeks out, but officials have pointed to actions that have helped student loan borrowers over the past year and a half.
Biden last month extended the pandemic moratorium on federal student loan payments and interest accrual through August. Loan payments were first paused in March 2020 early in the pandemic under then-President Trump, and the moratorium has been extended multiple times since.
The White House has repeatedly said Biden is prepared to sign legislation canceling student loan debt, but in the meantime is weighing what authority the president has to unilaterally wipe out some debt.
Conservative critics have pushed for student loan payments to resume, arguing the moratorium has cost the federal government billions of dollars and that any widespread forgiveness would benefit disproportionately wealthy Americans. A Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget study that found roughly 75 percent of student loan repayments come from the top 40 percent of earners.
Source: TEST FEED1
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House Dem introduces bill calling to withhold pay for Congress after mass shootings
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) introduced a bill Thursday that would withhold congressional pay in the aftermath of a mass shooting.
The No Pay Until Peace Act would withhold a month of pay from all members of Congress every month that a mass shooting occurs, defined as four or more people being killed from one incident. Cleaver put forward the bill following the shooting at the Texas elementary school that killed 21, including 19 students, as legislation on guns has long been stalled in the Senate.
“While the loss of one month’s paycheck doesn’t even begin to compare to the loss of a child, every lawmaker should be held accountable for the unconscionable failure to do something, anything, that will save lives,” Cleaver said in a press release.
Cleaver said Democrats have attempted a range of methods to pass gun legislation, pursuing bipartisan agreement on “common sense” reforms like universal background checks but Republicans have impeded these efforts.
The Democratic-controlled House passed two significant pieces of legislation that would expand background checks last year, but they have not made progress in the Senate. Although Democrats are in the majority in the Senate, 10 Republicans must support advancing the bill to overcome a filibuster, and Senate Republicans have overwhelmingly not been supportive of these measures.
Cleaver cited statistics from the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence stating that Americans are 25 times more likely to be killed from gun violence than residents of other high-income countries throughout the world.
Throughout 2022, the United States has averaged almost 1.5 mass shootings per day and more than 10 per week, according to the Gun Violence Archive. A mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo killed 10 just a little over a week prior to the Texas school shooting.
“The time for thoughts and prayers has come and gone — now is the time for concrete action,” Cleaver said. “And if lawmakers aren’t going to do their jobs to protect the American people, then they ought not receive any compensation following the inevitable next mass shooting.”
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Governments have full budgets — and not enough workers
Over the past two years, the U.S. federal and state governments have been managing more than $5 trillion in pandemic aid, and there is another $1.2 trillion in infrastructure funding on the way. This spending is landing in an economy where organizations of all kinds are desperately seeking workers.
While the shortages of retail, restaurant and technical staff have received a great deal of attention, it is less noticed that governments at all levels are falling even further behind in the hiring race. And this workforce deficit is striking just as our nation is about to embark on some of the most ambitious infrastructure upgrades in half a century.
From July 2021 through March, for every 10 government jobs posted, only about four were filled — the worst rate of the 10 major economic sectors tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and lower than the pre-pandemic average. Strip out education and the figure drops to three in 10. By comparison, private-sector leisure, hospitality, trade, transport and utility companies filled roughly 70 percent of openings.
To add to the pressure, the government worker shortage is set to accelerate as The Great Retirement wave rolls in. About 15 percent of the federal workforce is eligible for retirement, and more than half of federal workers are 45 or older.
The need for governments at all levels to raise their hiring game is clear. At the moment though, their efforts are stymied by longstanding structural issues such as piecemeal recruitment strategies, tired marketing campaigns and outdated technology and recruiting channels. The pace of hiring can be glacial.
Revamping all that is wrong with government hiring is not likely to happen quickly. But the situation is far from hopeless. For one thing, many workers today place a premium on jobs that impart a sense of meaning and purpose. That is what public service is all about. For another, if governments double down on that proposition and take some straightforward actions now, it could help them find the qualified, motivated workers they need.
First, get the offering right. While job security and benefits have long been hallmarks of government service, workers today also want flexibility, a sense of belonging, professional development, and of course — meaning and purpose. They respond to job descriptions that are clear, precise — and short. To give just one example, a private-sector job description for a data scientist was two paragraphs long and included all the essentials. For a similar position in the federal government, the offering was seven jargon-stuffed pages. This is not just a waste of time but can be off-putting to applicants.
Second, be proactive. Rather than waiting for applications to roll in, government agencies can harness job listing platforms and traditional recruiters to identify and engage potential candidates. This is a proven strategy for attracting talent who might otherwise not consider government service, including candidates from diverse backgrounds and rural areas.
Third, close the deal. Job seekers don’t want to wait for months while a needlessly complicated hiring process grinds on — and often don’t have to, given the tight labor market. A recent report by NEOGOV found that it takes government agencies three times longer on average than the private sector to fill an open position. That gap could be narrowed if governments adopted practices used by other industries, such as batch interview days.
In our experience, federal agencies that have implemented some or all of these actions typically cut hiring times by as much as half and filled more jobs.
Finally, governments will not solve the problem by hiring alone. Increasing productivity through automation and digitization can help curtail the number of new workers they need.
Americans may disagree about the size of government, but everyone wants one that performs well. The sheer number of vacant government jobs right now makes that problematic. A government of, by and for the people needs to have the right people in the right place to deliver public goods. And that starts with hiring the right talent.
Adi Kumar is a senior partner at McKinsey & Company and global leader of the firm’s work with governments on infrastructure, economic development and public finance. Megan McConnell is a partner at McKinsey & Company, advising public sector organizations on human capital management. Both are based in McKinsey’s Washington D.C. office.
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US, Taiwan planning economic talks despite China warnings
Two senior Taiwanese government officials on Friday told CNN that Taiwan and the U.S. are planning talks on trade and the economy despite warnings from China.
The officials said that the countries could begin talks “in a few weeks,” with the goal of creating more significant trade and economic cooperation between the two.
The meetings will “explore concrete ways to deepen the US-Taiwan trade and investment relationship,” according to the CNN report.
The report follows a warning from Beijing on Wednesday, when a Chinese military spokesperson announced that the country conducted “combat readiness patrols and actual combat exercises” around Taiwan.
“This is a solemn warning to the recent US-Taiwan collusion activities. It is hypocritical and futile for the US to say one thing and do another on the Taiwan issue, and frequently encourage the ‘Taiwan independence’ forces,” Col. Shi Yi, of the Eastern Theatre Command of the People’s Liberation Army, said.
Days before Shi’s announcement, President Biden contributed to U.S.-China tensions when he affirmed that the U.S. would defend Taiwan militarily if China invaded the island, saying, “That’s the commitment we made.”
“Taiwan is part of China,” Shi insisted in the statement Wednesday. “The theater troops are determined and capable of thwarting any external forces’ interference and separatist attempts to ‘Taiwan independence’, and resolutely safeguard national sovereignty and security and regional peace and stability.”
A senior Taiwanese official also informed CNN that the country plans to send a delegation to the SelectUSA Summit in June, a meeting to promote foreign investment in the U.S. arranged by the Commerce Department’s International Trade Administration.
The U.S. and Taiwan are especially interested in cooperation in sectors related to supply chain resilience and sustainable development.
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Trump EPA chief ordered drivers to speed when running late, says internal report
Then-Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt instructed his security detail to drive above the speed limit to make appointments, sometimes to the point of “endanger[ing] public safety,” according to a federal report first obtained by The New York Times.
In the report, federal agents wrote that Pruitt, who often ran late, frequently told his drivers to “speed it up,” and prompted them to use sirens and lights, asking “can you guys use that magic button to get us through traffic?”
In 2017, Pruitt directed an agent to turn on the lights and sirens while driving into oncoming traffic to pick up the then-administrator’s dry cleaning while he was 35 minutes late to a meeting, according to the report.
Agents said Pruitt both specifically directed drivers to use lights and sirens and directed them “implicitly through his body language and cues.”
In at least one case, the report states, an agent told Pruitt that the lights and sirens were only to be used in emergency situations rather than to make up for simple lateness, which noticeably upset Pruitt and caused him to fall silent for “an uncomfortable time.”
The agent was removed from their position within days, according to the report.
The witness “described that this action sent a clear message to the [protective security detail] that if you didn’t perform the bidding of the Administrator, you would lose your job,” the report states. “This idea made for many uncomfortable times where PSD agents were directed to use lights and sirens in violation of … policy and public safety.”
Pruitt, President Trump’s first EPA head, left the position in 2018 following a series of controversies around expenditures and ethics rule.
These included his using his role to seek job opportunities for family members, installing a $43,000 soundproof room from which to make private phone calls and requiring around-the-clock armed security.
In April, Pruitt announced that he would run in the special election to succeed Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who has announced his retirement at the end of the current Congress, four years before the end of his current term.
The Hill has reached out to Pruitt for comment.
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Activists, workers press Google founders to support racial equity audit
A collection of civil society groups and employees at Alphabet, Google’s parent company, sent letters to Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and former CEO Eric Schmidt Friday urging them to support a racial equity audit at Alphabet
The letters are pressing the three men to either support or abstain from voting on an investor proposal calling for an independent audit that will be evaluated at Alphabet’s annual stockholder meeting next Wednesday.
Brin, Page and Schmidt collectively control over half of all shareholder votes despite no longer being involved in the day-to-day operations of Google or its parent company because their shares have inflated voting power.
“[Y]our support or abstention has the power to make or break this popular and necessary investor-led advocacy,” read the letters, signed by the digital rights nonprofits Access Now, the industry watchdog Accountable Tech and the civil rights organization Color of Change.
The nonbinding proposal urges Alphabet’s board of directors to commission a third-party group to analyze the company’s adverse impacts on Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) communities, both internally and externally.
Alphabet’s proxy statement has recommended shareholders to vote against the proposal, arguing that the company is already committed to advancing racial equity and that it is already transparent about work it does in that space.
“Given our significant actions to evaluate and improve our DEI and racial equity efforts and our robust transparency around this work, our Board does not believe that the audit requested by this proposal would provide substantial additional information to stockholders as we advance this work,” the statement concludes.
Supporters of the racial equity audit point out that comparable companies, such as Meta and Apple, have committed to undergoing their own external reviews.
“Alphabet is one of the most influential companies on the planet that shapes people’s attitudes about all sorts of things through search, through YouTube,” said Michael Connor, executive director of Open MIC, a corporate responsibility group that also signed the letters. “The proposal… is not an extraordinary request.”
An audit, supporters say, is crucial to addressing research that Alphabet’s products are harmful to BIPOC communities.
Ramah Kudaimi, the deputy campaign director of the Crescendo Project at the Action Center on Race & the Economy, another signer, pointed to the role she says YouTube plays in spreading anti-Muslim sentiment.
“YouTube unfortunately has been found in reports again and again to inspire anti Muslim bigotry,” she told The Hill, citing New Zealand’s conclusion that the shooter who killed 51 people at Christchurch mosques in 2019 was radicalized by the platform.
“YouTube will continue to ‘say we’re getting better at it’,” Kudaimi continued, referring to promises about reducing the incidences of harmful content on the platform. “But sadly there’s not enough transparency about what is the actionable steps they’re actually taking around these issues.”
The proposal also highlights criticism of Google’s search engine for being amplifying to racial, ethnic and gender biases.
“We are concerned algorithms will rely on data that reinforces negative stereotypes and either exclude people from seeing ads for housing, employment, credit, and education or show only predatory opportunities,” a group of five Democratic Senators wrote in a letter last summer urging Alphabet to conduct an audit.
Supporters of the audit are also hopeful it can shed some light on internal workplace decisions that Alphabet has been criticized for.
“We’ve seen over the past years the impacts of discrimination in the workplace,” said Parul Koul, a software engineer at Google and the executive chair of the Alphabet Workers Union, which now counts over 900 members in its ranks and signed onto the letters.
“An audit like this would help reveal a fuller picture of what’s happening and, in my view, help certify what workers already know to be true: that these aren’t isolated incidents but part of a larger trend that Google must do more to address.”
Koul highlighted the high-profile dismissals of Timnit Gebru, a top Google artificial intelligence ethicist who said she was fired in 2020 after being asked to retract a paper, and April Christina Curley, a former recruiter who said she was let go for raising concerns about bias against historically Black colleges and universities during hiring.
“As current workers who work on the products and the tools that will be audited we want to be able to make clear that an audit is not a hindrance but a necessary step to ensure that Google’s tech and policies are ensuring a safer and more equitable world,” Koul added.
Source: TEST FEED1
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Watch live: Biden delivers Navy commencement address
President Biden on Friday is scheduled to deliver the commencement address at the U.S. Naval Academy’s Class of 2022 graduation ceremony in Annapolis, Md.
The president’s remarks will begin at 10 a.m. ET.
Watch the live video above.
Source: TEST FEED1
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Prices rose at slightly slower rate in April, new data shows
Consumer prices grew at slower yearly and monthly rates in April, according to data released Friday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, the Federal Reserve’s preferred gauge of inflation, rose 6.3 percent in the 12 months ending in April, down from a 6.6 percent annual inflation rate in March.
The index rose 0.2 percent in April alone, well below the 0.9 percent monthly gain from March.
Without food and energy prices, which tend to be more volatile, the PCE price index rose 4.9 percent annually in April and 0.3 percent between March and April. The data was largely in line with economists’ expectations.
Inflation may have reached its peak earlier in the year as rising interest rates, shifting consumer spending habits and deepening concern about the global economy begin to weigh on price growth. Even so, the annual inflation rate remains close to four-decade highs and well above the Fed’s ideal level of 2 percent annual price growth.
Consumers also powered through rising prices to increase their spending overall, even as their disposable income flattened out last month. Personal consumption expenditures, a measure of consumer spending, rose 0.9 percent in April and 0.7 percent when adjusting for inflation. While disposable personal income rose 0.3 percent, the gain was wiped out after adjusting for inflation.
Americans also reduced their savings in April as they continued to spend amid high inflation. Households saved 4.4 percent of their disposable income last month, the lowest rate since September 2008, according to the BEA.
Updated at 8:58 a.m.
Source: TEST FEED1