The Necessity of a Job that Provides a Life
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| DAILY TAKE AWAY |
DODGY DEUTSCHE BANK
...he's [Trump is] pushing back today against another Times report that in 2016 and 2017, Deutsche Bank refused to report suspicious transactions by companies and organizations controlled by Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner to a federal financial-crimes watchdog, despite the urging of its own anti-money laundering specialists. Some of the transactions were with foreign entities or individuals, which raised a red flag. Doesn't mean they were illegal, but the bank's inaction shows how cavalier it is about money laundering as well as its concern over retaliation by Trump. [Fast Forward, May 20, 2019]
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| BIG PHARMA |
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| ENVIRONMENT |
Momentum is building: In early May, Maine became the first state to ban polystyrene plastic foam, Maryland isn't far behind, and other states have active legislation to address plastic foam and other forms of single-use plastics.
To tackle our plastic pollution crisis, Environmental Action is:
- Mobilizing tens of thousands to call on their governors to ban polystyrene plastic foam (one of the worst forms of plastic waste).
- Putting consumer pressure on Chipotle and other restaurants to phase out their use of plastic straws.
- Educating the public on the dangers of plastic pollution and how to reduce our own use of single-use plastics through digital and social media campaigns.
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| HEALTH |
It’s genetic: Some people really are dog people
A new study in Nature’s Scientific Reports teases out data from the Swedish Twin Registry to untangle the ties between people and dogs — and how they evolved. Growing up with pets turns out to be less important over a lifetime than your genetic makeup. Having a dog in childhood contributed only 10% to the likelihood of owning one past early adulthood, but being an identical twin played a much bigger role: 57% for women and 51% for men. The researchers muse over whether certain genes helped humans domesticate dogs 15,000 years ago and wonder whether genetics should be considered today when studying the health positives of dog ownership. About those Swedish dogs’ heredity: the most common breed was “mixed breed,” followed by golden retriever and German shepherd. [STAT: Morning Rounds , May 20, 2019]
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| HEALTHCARE |
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| IMMIGRATION |
AMERICA IS CURSING ITSELF BY MISTREATING OUR LATINO BROTHERS & SISTERS
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Again the word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, say to the land, ‘You are a land that has not been cleansed or rained on in the day of wrath.’ There is a conspiracy of her princes[a] within her like a roaring lion tearing its prey; they devour people, take treasures and precious things and make many widows within her. Her priests do violence to my law and profane my holy things; they do not distinguish between the holy and the common; they teach that there is no difference between the unclean and the clean; and they shut their eyes to the keeping of my Sabbaths so that I am profaned among them. Her officials within her are like wolves tearing their prey; they shed blood and kill people to make unjust gain. Her prophets whitewash these deeds for them by false visions and lying divinations. They say, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says’—when the Lord has not spoken. The people of the land practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the foreigner, denying them justice.
—Ezekiel 22:23-29
Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’ “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
—Matthew 25:41-46
It’s a sad time for our country. We are seeing our Latino brothers and sisters experience the violation of fundamental human rights, fundamental moral rights, fundamental constitutional rights, and fundamental truth-telling.
Dr. King once said, “We must challenge those things that damn men and people’s souls. We must have an eternal discontent with injustice.”
We live in America in the 21st century, and there is still a woman who stands in the harbor of New York and says give me your tired, your poor, and huddled masses. Yet there is a president who sits in the White House who wants to turn these people away. The immigration policies of the Trump administration are unjust and immoral. The president’s blatant disrespect for migrants and immigrants has fueled the hateful rhetoric of anti-immigrant groups. We recently witnessed the arrest of a militia group leader who had been harassing illegal immigrants near the U.S.-Mexico border. Not only is this behavior unlawful but it is immoral. The rise of the border wall agenda has enabled groups like these to take matters into their own hands. [Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II , May 13, 2019]
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| JUDICIAL MATTERS |
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| U.S. CONGRESS |
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| SPEAKING OUT |
"Fortunately for many, there are vaccines available for a number of viruses today. Vaccines for the flu, common cold, chicken pox, and shingles, for example, are easily accessible.”
— Dr. William Matzner, California (Healthcare Analytics, LLC)
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| In the western U.S., black carbon and ash from forest fires can affect snow brightness for up to 15 winters after a burn. | |||
| GLEASON ET AL, NATURE COMMUNICATIONS, 2019 |
“At the age of 17, I was the only kid in my town, boy or girl, to leave the country to study engineering in Germany. I really did believe I could do anything.”
— Agnes Berzsenyi, president and CEO of Women’s Health at GE Healthcare
— Agnes Berzsenyi, president and CEO of Women’s Health at GE Healthcare
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HAVES
& HAVE NOT
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Letter: As the cruelties of capitalism continues with rapidity, life no longer has a meaning for long-time traditional taxi driver – Part 1
Dear Sir:
Is the United States of America a tale of two nations – a large one affluent, a minuscule one dirt-poor? There is also plenty of evidence below to help the readers of this book answer what at first seems to be a difficult question.
Happiness is, in a sense, product of money, rather than, as many people, despite the crushing indignities of poverty that define their lives, in the negative terms so, might claim. So would Adam Smith, who spoke of money as “the obvious and simple system of natural liberty,” too, if he were still with us in this world today, one of continued entrenched inequality, rather, most likely would find reasons to inquire about the meaning of life when one is deprived, particularly of the means needed to honestly earn a living.
Should the impoverished condition of poverty of Uber drivers and that of other ride-hailing apps be expected to become a thing of the past, and so much so that a large percentage of them no longer qualify for Medicaid and food stamps? Not when in New York City alone the commissions and fees on the total revenue, one of $2 billion, generated annually, by Uber, in particular, from passenger fares, is $375 million and comparatively, negligible operating costs of the company of the same are estimated to be in the sum of $50 million per annum.
All of the immediately above information, according to a July 2018 report by two independent economists, James Parrott of the New School in New York City and Michael Reich at the University of California at Berkeley, whose professional and academic services were first purchased by the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission to study its pay proposal, though it has yet to be formally introduced.
An Uber driver, after accounting for all expenses, principally gasoline and automobile maintenance, earns $3.37 per hour. Such a risible hourly wage, humiliating rate paid for each one of his or her hard labor hours, in large part, helps explain why during the calendar year of 2017 82 percent of the global wealth generated, according to an Oxfam Report of the same year on the continuing destructive and extremely painful issue of entrenched inequality, particularly for the 3.7 billion men, women and children who are determined to make up the poorest half of the world, went to the world’s richest 1 percent.
And corruption, of course, is not only an ancient temptation, of which significance Aristotle reflected on, and this was in the 4th century B.C.E. but has since or even before that, in various forms, including its conception in moralistic terms, that is a loss of virtue in the polity, has been a manifestation of social or economic disparity – inequality between the rich and the poor. As unequal opportunity or treatment resulting from this disparity, inequality in healthcare and education, for example, continues to be on the rise, “Many college students going hungry,” read a recent front page news article in the daily Boston Globe. The same article, By Michael Levenson, on the day of ay 11, 2018, that also said a study by Sara Youcha Goldrick-Rab, a Professor of Higher Education Policy and Sociology at Temple University, “also revealed [a] sizable problem with homelessness.”
As the significantly large number (more than 650,000, in 2017) of active drivers, those of the ride-hailing firm Uber alone together continue to, in the U.S., indisputably, because for the state of insolvency that best defines the traditional taxi industry, creating a horrible situation, one of despair for drivers and owners alike, so will the overall consequence of so be one of an added-class of dirt-poor men, women and children.
Many of those same adult human males and females who were the duly proprietors of taxi medallions (medallion, a license by the Taxi and Limousine Commission or TLC in a U.S. city and town) before could, on the average, loudly say that they had some or sufficient equity in their taxi medallions – their secured pensionable age monies they convinced their anticipated net assets would be. But today, no more so, as their loans continue to have a balance that far exceeds the current market value of their medallions that have not ceased to depreciate, and with rapidity so. A state of perplexity or uncertainty over what to do in an extremely difficult situation, as bankruptcies, foreclosures and eviction notices continue to translate into even more trouble or distress for them, in various forms. The tragic death of many of their colleagues is principally a further attestation of so.
Yet, Doug Schifter, a longtime livery driver, aged 60, was not even instructed in the very basic notions of economics. Still, he understood this very well that (natural) life for many working-class men and women like him was no longer the same as it was before. Especially so, when the cruelties of capitalism persisted, and without interruption. On the day of February 5, 2018, with the help of a bullet to the head, he terminated his natural life, and this, outside the building that housed City Hall, in Lower Manhattan, New York City.
Imagine a house without a person who sufficiently earns money to support a family. It was also because of such a particular concern, though not principally so, that sadness could then be seen on the extremely fatigued faces of the surviving taximeter cab owners, taxi drivers; but more so, those of their immediate families who apparently never ceased to ask themselves if the chief breadwinners, in the literal sense of so – husbands, for instance – in their families of the same will not soon attempt to emulate Schifter, as financial problems – bank continued to threat taxi proprietors with foreclosure for non-payment – multiply, and with rapidity, suggesting that they are not only in danger of losing their medallions but also their homes.
Letter: As the cruelties of capitalism continues with rapidity, life no longer has a meaning for long-time traditional taxi driver – Part 2
Dear Sir:
“I think the first duty of society is justice.” Alexander Hamilton
The termination of life came after the man who would soon thereafter become the late Doug Schifter, by way of the social networking website Facebook, distributed blame, apparently equally so, to New York City former mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, and his successor, Bill de Blasio, as well as New York State Governor, Andrew Cuomo, and many others for permitting the whole of the taxi market to be flooded with ride-sharing taxi service, such as Uber’ or Lyft’, causing an undesired drop in demand for traditional taxi services. In extreme cases, completely destroying the lives of an untold number of people – those who are not only diligent in laboring but put effort into doing and completing tasks.
More, the end of life, tragic that was, came after Mr. Schifter had concluded that the current market conditions for the traditional taxi industry were, indisputably, a manifestation of policymakers’ vision for the market of the same, in the future, too; that the hope even reparations, in whatever the form and reduced they would be, would not be paid to the severely affected taxi proprietors, in the continued time of entrenched inequality, and even the concept itself (hope) had lost its true meaning.
It is true that politicians, still continued to, with the help of their unguarded, deceptive tongues, murmur the words “In God We Trust,” the official motto of the United States of America and of the U.S. southern state of Florida, but what clearly constituted an effective and true mockery of the victims of misguided policies and applications associated with them and now their suffering was apparently giving them the impression that their plight was and will always be for the men and women who hold public offices or government officials even a Holy pursuit.
The unintended consequences of City Halls and Town Halls’ ill-considered policies and their applications. After what many economists would call “The enormous, overnight price increase of a taxi medallion” – up to $700,000 in the Boston’s market, for example, and because of its rapidity and regularity, particularly during the last few years or so that preceded the crash, the price of a taxi medallion in nearly all municipalities is rather now being offered at a significant discount – a lot less than $100,000.
Three of the non-traditional taxi industry’s most competitive edges or advantages over the market of the traditional taxicab: The availability, in extremity, of active drivers, despite of a continuing high overturn; superior quality of service, and this, thanks to the particular help of new technologies, such as smartphone apps that connect driver-partners and riders and a much lower price (low price strategy) passengers paid to convey them between locations of their choice.
“In God We Trust,” it was adopted as the nation’s motto in 1956 as a replacement or alternative to the unofficial motto of E pluribus unum, which was adopted when the Great Seal of the United States was created and adopted in 1782.
And more, in relation to the immediately above? Did Mr. Schifter have a point? That is particularly true in New York City, where now (February 2018) there are approximately 100,000 automobiles for hire, a departure from the once 13,000 traditional taxicabs or taximeter cabs in circulation. An existential problem worthy of particular attention, more so for its outsize consequences, in continuum. Especially when many of the same taxi owners and drivers for generations then used their hard-earned monies to pay for the (economic) rent or the mortgage loan, children education and many more but different essentials of basic life may no longer prove themselves capable of doing so – an affirmation that life has become a harder one.
However, as many of the deeply affected taxi drivers and owners, in fast increasing numbers, continue to sound the alarm over their predicament they consider to be the equivalent of a Damocles’ sword type hanging over their heads and those of their families, the politicians, more so policymakers, are convinced to have remained silent over the extremely painful consequences of the ugly practices of, say, “laissez-faire economics” – not even poverty cures, at the very least, suggesting that they give cause for concern.
Yves A. Isidor
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| COLOMBIA |
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