Self-consolidating concrete (SCC) is a highly flowable, nonsegregating concrete that is placed without any mechanical consolidation. TRB will conduct a webinar on Thursday, June 11, 2020, from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM Eastern to discuss how SCC may be used to fill heavily congested or irregularly shaped members in bridge applications more easily while providing improved in-place quality and surface finish.The use of SCC may also decrease construction costs due to the reduced labor requirements during construct...

Does your organization know how to measure and verify pavement surface condition data based on mapping sensor technologies? TRB will conduct a webinar on Wednesday, June 10, 2020, from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM Eastern to discuss the challenges and solutions from experience on actual projects. In pavement management systems, accurate and precise condition data are essential for making data-driven decisions about maintenance and rehabilitation projects. Some condition data, including surface cracking and other d...

One of the most fascinating things about planet Earth is the way that life shapes the Earth and the Earth shapes life. We only have to look back to the Great Oxygenation Event (GOE) of 2.4 billion years ago to see how lifeforms have shaped the Earth. In that event, phytoplanktons called cyanobacteria pumped the …

Continue reading "New Data Show How Phytoplankton Pumps Carbon Out of the Atmosphere at an Enormous Scale"

The post New Data Show How Phytoplankton Pumps Carbon Out of the Atmosphere at an Enormous Scale appeared first on Universe Today.

With large swaths of the country still stifling under quarantine from the COVID-19 pandemic, more people than ever are supplementing their meager IRL social interactions with online alternatives. But but doing so can become a proverbial minefield wit...

TRB's “Tell Us ‘Our’ Story" challenge is now looking into the future. What impact do you hope to have on the world and how is the Transportation Research Board helping you make that impact? What is your vision for the Transportation Research Board 100 years from now? What are solutions that you have identified as a result of research you learned about through TRB? TRB welcomes all stories: small or large, profound or light-hearted, sobering or humorous. In addition to posting responses to these questions...

The closing panel in The Listening Lounge at February's Splore festival was a fairly ambitious one, I wasn't sure whether it was going to work and I knew I was going to depend on my panelists – a psychologist, a brilliant young Zimbabwean New Zealander, an evangelical pastor and a campaign expert – to make it work.
I'm never really sure after these discussions what's actually happened – I've spent the whole time in the moment. But re-reading the transcript (thank you to Emma Hart for that), I felt good about it.
I also felt that the subtitle: "How do we all move…

Death is in air The death of an old white horse His name; Donny His death was tragic to me How loved could he be How much I loved my Donny With his

  So I wrote an op-ed about the recent Macmillan/ebooks kerfuffle for CNN. Here’s how that all worked…. I got...

You may recall in the early days of the pandemic, that pharma giant Gilead Sciences -- which has been accused of price gouging and (just last year!) charging exorbitant prices on drug breakthroughs developed with US taxpayer funds -- was able to sneak through an orphan works designation for its drug remdesevir for COVID-19 treatment. As we pointed out, everything about this was insane, given that orphan works designations, which give extra monopoly rights to the holders (beyond patent exclusivity), are meant for diseases that don't impact a large population. Gilead used a loophole: since the ceiling for infected people to qualify for orphan drug status is 200,000, Gilead got in its application bright and early, before there were 200,000 confirmed cases (we currently have over 1.3 million). After the story went, er... viral, Gilead agreed to drop the orphan status, realizing the bad publicity it was receiving.

After a brief dalliance with chloroquine, remdesivir has suddenly been back in demand as the new hotness of possible COVID-19 treatments. Still, a close reading of the research might give one pause. There have been multiple conflicting studies, and Gilead's own messaging has been a mess.

On April 23, 2020, news of the study’s failure began to circulate. It seems that the World Health Organization (WHO) had posted a draft report about the trial on their clinical trials database, which indicated that the scientists terminated the study prematurely due to high levels of adverse side effects.

The WHO withdrew the report, and the researchers published their results in The Lancet on April 29, 2020.

The number of people who experienced adverse side effects was roughly similar between those receiving remdesivir and those receiving a placebo. In 18 participants, the researchers stopped the drug treatment due to adverse reactions.

But then...

However, also on April 29, 2020, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) announced that their NIH trial showed that remdesivir treatment led to faster recovery in hospital patients with COVID-19, compared with placebo treatment.

“Preliminary results indicate that patients who received remdesivir had a 31% faster time to recovery than those who received placebo,” according to the press release. “Specifically, the median time to recovery was 11 days for patients treated with remdesivir compared with 15 days for those who received placebo.”

The mortality rate in the remdesivir treatment group was 8%, compared with 11.6% in the placebo group, indicating that the drug could improve a person’s chances of survival. These data were close to achieving statistical significance.

And then...

“In addition, there is another Chinese trial, also stopped because the numbers of new patients with COVID-19 had fallen in China so they were unable to recruit, which has not yet published its data,” Prof. Evans continues. “There are other trials where remdesivir is compared with non-remdesivir treatments currently [being] done and results from some of these should appear soon.”

Gilead also put out its own press release about another clinical trial, which seems more focused on determining the optimal length of remdesivir treatment. Suffice it to say, there's still a lot of conflicting data and no clear information on whether or not remdesevir actually helps.

Still, that hasn't stopped people from trying to figure out just how much Gilead will price gouge going forward:

The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), which assesses effectiveness of drugs to determine appropriate prices, suggested a maximum price of $4,500 per 10-day treatment course based on the preliminary evidence of how much patients benefited in a clinical trial. Consumer advocacy group Public Citizen on Monday said remdesivir should be priced at $1 per day of treatment, since “that is more than the cost of manufacturing at scale with a reasonable profit to Gilead.”

Some Wall Street investors expect Gilead to come in at $4,000 per patient or higher to make a profit above remdesivir’s development cost, which Gilead estimates at about $1 billion.

So... we've got a range of $10 to $4,500 on a treatment that we don't yet know works, and which may or may not save lives. But, given that we're in the midst of a giant debate concerning things like "reopening the economy" -- something that can really only be done if the public is not afraid of dying (or at least becoming deathly ill) -- the value to the overall economy seems much greater than whatever amount Gilead wants to charge. It seems the right thing to do -- again, if it's shown that remdesevir actually helps -- is to just hand over a bunch of money to Gilead, say "thank you very much" and get the drug distributed as widely as possible. Though, again, it should be noted that a decent chunk of the research around remdesevir was not done or paid for by Gilead, but (yet again) via public funds to public universities, which did the necessary research. The idea that it's Gilead that should get to reap massive rewards for that seems sketchy at best. But the absolute worst outcome is one in which Gilead sticks to its standard operating procedure and prices the drug in a way that millions of Americans can't afford it, and it leads to a prolonging/expanding of the pandemic.

Very '90s kit was everywhere – and it saved Apple's ass too

On this day in 1998, Steve Jobs took to the stage of the Moscone Center in San Francisco for a product launch that would indelibly change the face of computing and arguably save the firm he founded almost 22 years earlier.…

Problems aside, no one is sure how useful phone-based tracking will be

The NHSX, a technology group within the UK government's National Health Service, has released the source code for its Android and iOS COVID-19 coronavirus contact-tracing apps in an effort to allay privacy concerns and improve the code.…

Think about all of the products you use every day, both at home and at work. Every single thing you use started out as an idea or concept from someone who thought, “If I had something like this, it would make life so much easier.” We all have those ideas. But how does a product go from concept to solid object sitting on a shelf waiting for you to buy it? The process is long and complex and inv; (read more)

Source: Suzy - Discipline: BioTech

OK, let’s pick up our discussion where we left off last week, at feasibility.  You did it. You successfully convinced a room full of vice presidents and directors, or maybe even the CEO that they should take your fabulous product idea to the next level.  You’ve got marketing on board, excited to promote it and now it’s time for the work to begin.You are the lead scientist s; (read more)

Source: Suzy - Discipline: BioTech

Picking up our discussion on the new product development life cycle, we last talked about R&D and before that feasibility. The next department to work on the new product is marketing. The person who will announce to the world the arrival of this new kit is the Product Manager or Marketing Manager.(If you do not recognize some terms used here, please ask or check the Marketing Dictionary.)Today; (read more)

Source: Suzy - Discipline: BioTech

After attending a conference a couple months ago and being forced to sit through some pretty bad presentations, I had in mind to discuss the importance of grad students learning how to put together and deliver a good presentation. This skill is critical and I can't believe how many scientists struggle with presentations.  I know it's tough and I know when you're nervous it ; (read more)

Source: Suzy - Discipline: Careers

This week I will answer questions sent to me by a LabSpaces reader. I welcome additional input from readers who have their own experiences with industry job hunting and using recruiters. Please do feel free to share your knowledge. Questions: I have really been enjoying your posts on your experience with working in industry. I am coming to decide that I want to jump off the academia boat and try; (read more)

Source: Suzy - Discipline: BioTech

I realize that sounds kinda nuts — why are we asking PARENTS to show us their KIDS being independent? Who, after all, is better at making videos? Mom or little Ava (who’s 5)? But legally we can’t ask anyone under 13 to do anything. So go document your children doing something new on their own, […]

The post Fishing in 2030 | 7 Future Megatrends | How will it affect us as anglers? appeared first on Ocean Blue Fishing Adventures.

Cats. Cats are the best, and I can’t seem to settle down in any one place for too long, so my cats (possibly to their dismay) have had to move around with my silly butt. I don’t own a boat that can cross the Pacific Ocean, so that means taking them on a plane. BUT! While it’s no fun for anyone, it’s not really as hard as you think! Really really! My cats are my family, and if you’re here then you probably also have furry family members, and you are worried about flying with them. I’ve both taken my cats in the cabin and had to check them into the pet cargo hold (to my terror), but they not only survived, they are all flourishing wonderfully. While things do happen (and if something happens, raise a ruckus and make sure that whomever hurt your baby knows it), for the most part, flying is actually pretty safe for cats. Not that you want to take them. It’s just that sometimes you have to. So read on for my personal tips on how to make the flight go as smoothly as possible for all of you! Trust me, you’ll want it to be this way. My cats at the vet for their checkups and vaccinations. 1. Do Your Homework. This might seem obvious, but that being said, let’s put it out there anyway. Know your stuff! There are two things that you’re going to need to find out as soon as you decide to fly with your pets:      a) What paperwork does the airline require for me to bring my cat on the plane?      b) What does my arrival location require for me to bring my cat into the country/state? Usually, a) is the easiest part. It’s usually just a health certificate from your vet, issued less than a week before travel. Just book an appointment at your vet for less than a week before departure, and tell them that you’re flying to (wherever). All of my vets, even my one in Japan, either knew what they needed, or looked it up beforehand. Check your airline’s webpage (my absolute favorite for flying with pets is Alaska Air, btw. You can take two in the cabin by yourself, and it’s the only airline I know of that allows this!), and follow the instructions. I keep all of my paperwork with my passport while flying, so that I can show it to the ticketing agent or anyone else that asks (sometimes, nobody has, but at least I had it). In all of the cases where I’ve flown, my plane required a current health certificate to board, and when I left Japan, they required an inspection from the on-site team, which I just asked for when I arrived in Narita. b) can be easy, or it can be hard. In order to enter the US from Japan, I had to check the US Customs website for the country’s official regulations, and Washington State for its regulations.  The US didn’t have any regulations at the time, but Washington state required a health certificate (same as the plane), and current rabies vaccination, both of which I had done within the week before I left. Funny enough, nobody checked my paperwork after I landed, since it was the 4th of July and the Agricultural Inspections office was closed. When I went to Hawaii, it was another story. It was a long, long, long process (more than 6 months) to get all of my testing and paperwork done for Sansa to enter the state, but I did it, kept all of my paperwork in order, and was able to leave the airport in Hawaii with her in my arms without any fuss! There was a lot to do, but I just made sure that I knew what I needed, did it, and had the documentation, and things were pretty smooth sailing afterward! You should always check the official government pages to make sure that you have the correct information. In Hawaii’s case, it can be found here. All of my cats reacted differently to being examined. 2. Get your stuff in order! Once you have your list of things that you need (vaccinations, health checks, etc), then CALL the airline to make your reservations (you always need to call them in order to add pets to your tickets. They usually cost a little bit extra, and try to get them in the cabin if you can). Then, check your airline’s website to find out what kind of carrier you will need, and whether you will need anything else. When I flew to Washington the first time, and to Hawaii, I only had one cat, so I didn’t need any food (I brought some anyway, and a little bowl in my carryon just in case), and a soft-sided carrier that would fit in the dimensions they specified on their websites (it’s usually in the pet section or the carry-on section, and every airline is different). When I flew to Washington again, it was with three cats, so I needed two large hard carriers that met certain criteria for my babies flying underneath, and one soft-sided one for the baby going in the cabin. The website for the airline was very specific, but it was easy to find what I needed at Petco. Check, check, and check. I had my carriers, my paperwork, and I was ready! When your cat isn’t too happy about getting her shots. 3. Getting ready for the flight. A week or so before my flight (or days in my last case), I set all of my pet carriers out in the living room and set them up how I was going to have them for the flight — I lined the bottoms with puppy training pads (in case there was an accident in-flight), then a towel for absorbency (in the large hard carriers only), and finally, on top of that, a blanket that I had been using a lot (so that it had our scents on it, and would comfort the cats). I sprayed the interior of all of the carriers with Feliway, and left them out for the cats to get used to them. The carriers sitting out for the curious kitties to explore. They all took turns exploring the carriers, and after a few days, got comfortable with them and would lounge around inside, play with them, and rub up against the sides. This was all in order to reduce the stress of travel on them as much as possible. I continued to spray them with Feliway at least once a day until we left. There is no hard and fast rule on this, but I took away my cats’ food and water the morning of the trip, and waited until just before we left to toss out the litter boxes. There was some satisfaction in being able to stuff those nasty things in a giant garbage bag and haul them to the trash without scooping! Hey, take pleasure while you can– you’re about to undertake something pretty stressful! After I called my Uber, I rounded up the cats one by one and deposited them in their carriers. Nobody was particularly happy about this, but just be patient. Two of my babies at the airport waiting for inspection. All of them were champs! 4. The Flight Be calm, patient, and as rational as possible. I know that it’s pretty scary (terrifying, to me) to let your precious babies our of your sight, but once the porter had helped me to the ticket counters (I actually needed two the last time, and I tipped them very well), I just reminded myself that it would all be over soon, and that the calmer I was, the better the kitties would feel. In order to pass through security, you will need to remove the cats one-by-one from their carriers and hold them while the crew puts your carrier through the scanner, or manually scans by hand (two of mine were too large to fit). Sometimes, they will let you do all of this in a separate room so that the cats are calmer, but there isn’t always one available (it will say that you can do this on most websites, but I wasn’t allowed a separate room the last time and had to hold three wiggly cats in the middle of the airport). BRING A HARNESS FOR THIS. I can’t stress this enough. My cats don’t like harnesses, but I fastened one to them before I brought them out of the carrier, and removed it right after, and it brought me a lot of peace of mind. None of my cats tried to run, but I have heard that some cats do, and you don’t want to take that chance. Look for a harness like this one— thick and really hard to pull out of. Better safe than sorry. I only brought one harness for three cats, since I would only need to take out one cat at a time. By the next morning, everyone was already claiming “our” new bed as their own. And that’s it!  Once you’re on the flight, it’s mostly a waiting game. I honestly am not sure whether the cats or I were more stressed about the trip, and they were certainly shaken and scared when they arrived at our new home. However, within a few days, my cats were all behaving as if they’d never lived anywhere else. They rebound quickly as long as you shower them with love and affection. ???? Well, those are my tips for making the smoothest ride possible! It helps to have litter and litter pans, food, etc, sent to your new place before you arrive, as well, so that everything will be easy to set up for you. Make sure that your kitties are confined to one room for at least a few hours, and let them hide for as long as they need to. They’ll get curious and hungry and come out on their own. I hope this helps someone! If I did it, anyone can! Remember, I took three cats on a flight overseas BY MYSELF! Nobody to even drop my off at the airport but an UberXL driver! =^-^=

On April 30, 2015 Ed Schultz, host of The Ed Show, interviews Senator Bernie Sanders on his announcement that he will run for President of the United States in the Democratic Primary. Continue reading →

An Offer in Compromise is an agreement between the taxpayer and the government that settles a tax liability for payment of less than the full amount owed. The Internal Revenue Service will generally accept an Offer in Compromise when it … Continue reading →

'Lesser of Two Evils' argument is not resonating with DNC protestors. Salon.com's Ben Norton says grassroots movements will be more mobilized under a Republican candidacy. "There?s no question that Trump would be horrific as a candidate but if we have 4 or 8 years of Clinton of more wars, of more austerity, of another economic crisis, and potential bailouts of banks and large corporations etc., you know you think Trump is bad now? Wait for what we'?ll see in 4 or 8 years." Continue reading →

The Brainwashing Of Hillary Voters Is Complete. Hillary Clinton voters are either getting paid or have been brainwashed into defending her pro-corporate status quo policies. Jimmy Dore breaks it down on his broadcast, October 20, 2016. Continue reading →

The best way I know to cook beans, and the one I always return to. A version of the much-loved Tuscan bean recipe - fagioli al fiasco. Traditionally, beans were baked overnight in a Chianti bottle placed near the embers of that night's fire. While not exactly authentic (no fire here), I do a riff on the general idea, using a low-temperature oven and enamel-lined pot.

Continue reading How to Cook Beans that are Tender, Creamy, and Nearly Perfect on 101 Cookbooks

I added my own commentary to Sacramento Gun Show signs

Tired of dragging armfuls of wine to a party? Why not try buying wine in a box?

In my ice-making adventures, I stumbled across these Ikea bowls which have a nearly spherical shape. They are great for making ice balls!

Desperate to see a show? Bring a sign and come alone.

A 3D printer is a desktop fabrication machine. I can make almost anything, and it is crazy.

I lowered my NOx emissions by 234 PPM

Declares Intent to Break the Exaflop Barrier; Develops Exascale Research Collaboratory in Dublin

Village Roadshow Limited (ASX: VRL), a leading Australian entertainment company, has selected IBM Cloud (NYSE: IBM) to host its business infrastructure, providing scale and speed to support a premium entertainment experience for customers. The IBM Cloud provides the platform for key operations spanning the diverse needs of Village Roadshow’s four key business divisions - Cinema Exhibition, Theme Parks, Film Distribution and Marketing Solutions.

IBM Australia (NYSE: IBM) and The Sauce, today published the first Australian BPO Report 2012 (ABPO Report), which investigates the current state of business process outsourcing in Australia and points to future trends. Global expansion is seen to be the key driver and benefit of outsourcing decisions amongst 71 percent of organisations surveyed. The report also showed significant anticipated growth in business process outsourcing activity among large organisations with between 1,000 to 5,000 employees (this constituted one-third of all respondents). This group of Australian organisations is expecting an increase of 20 percent over the next two years.

IBM, (NYSE: IBM) today announced the findings of its 2016 Global Customer Experience Index (CEI) Study, which showed that Australia is above the global average when it comes to providing a good shopping experience for consumers, with a CEI rating of 43 percent compared with 40 percent globally. The results provided a snapshot of the Australian retail sector, revealing that some businesses are still struggling to provide a seamless cross-channel experience, personalisation and convenience for customers.

(I know I've been scarce lately -- it's been a bad two years or so -- and I keep swearing I'm going to get back to posting regularly and it keeps not happening, but this was worth using up some spoons for.)

Background

The context, for those who've missed it: The Archive of Our Own was awarded the 2019 Hugo Award™ for "Best Related Work" in August by the voting membership of this year's Worldcon™. As fandom does, a lot of people predictably joked about "welp, my Stucky tentacle porn just won a Hugo" or "my Stucky A/B/O has won 0.0000482% of a Hugo!" The World Science Fiction Society™, who holds the service mark for "The Hugo Awards"™ and licenses the ability to award those awards each year to the independent organization that seeks the license to throw each year's Worldcon™, decided that they would like us all to know we should stop doing that and this award being given to "The Archive Of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works" does not mean that we, users of the AO3 or members of the OTW, are 'Hugo winners'. (Repeatedly. In great detail and at great length.)

( cut for length )

comments

Richard Lawn has posted a new SETI Perspective entitled How did life begin on Earth and elsewhere?.

CEOs of the major Wall Street banks have been summoned to the White House to discuss the coronavirus...

The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It 

The coronavirus has starkly revealed what most of us already knew: The concentration of wealth in America has created a a health care system in which the wealthy can buy care others can’t. 

It’s also created an education system in which the super-rich can buy admission to college for their children, a political system in which they can buy Congress and the presidency,  and a justice system in which they can buy their way out of jail. 

Almost everyone else has been hurled into a dystopia of bureaucratic arbitrariness, corporate indifference, and the legal and financial sinkholes that have become hallmarks of modern American life.

The system is rigged. But we can fix it.

Today, the great divide in American politics isn’t between right and left. The underlying contest is between a small minority who have gained power over the system, and the vast majority who have little or none. 

Forget politics as you’ve come to see it – as contests between Democrats and Republicans. The real divide is between democracy and oligarchy.

The market has been organized to serve the wealthy. Since 1980, the percentage of the nation’s wealth owned by the richest four hundred Americans has quadrupled (from less than 1 percent to 3.5 percent) while the share owned by the entire bottom half of America has dropped to 1.3 percent.

The three wealthiest Americans own as much as the entire bottom half of the population. Big corporations, CEOs, and a handful of extremely rich people have vastly more influence on public policy than the average American. Wealth and power have become one and the same.

As the oligarchs tighten their hold over our system, they have lambasted efforts to rein in their greed as “socialism”, which, to them, means getting something for doing nothing.

But “getting something for doing nothing” seems to better describe the handouts being given to large corporations and their CEOs. 

General Motors, for example, has received $600 million in federal contracts and $500 million in tax breaks since Donald Trump took office. Much of this “corporate welfare” has gone to executives, including CEO Mary Barra, who raked in almost $22 million in compensation in 2018 alone. GM employees, on the other hand, have faced over 14,000 layoffs and the closing of three assembly plants and two component factories.

And now, in the midst of a pandemic, big corporations are getting $500 billion from taxpayers. 

Our system, it turns out, does practice one form of socialism – socialism for the rich. Everyone else is subject to harsh capitalism.

Socialism for the rich means people at the top are not held accountable. Harsh capitalism for the many, means most Americans are at risk for events over which they have no control, and have no safety nets to catch them if they fall.

Among those who are particularly complicit in rigging the system are the CEOs of America’s corporate behemoths. 

Take Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, whose net worth is $1.4 billion. He comes as close as anyone to embodying the American system as it functions today.

Dimon describes himself as “a patriot before I’m the CEO of JPMorgan.”

He brags about the corporate philanthropy of his bank, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to his company’s net income, which in 2018 was $30.7 billion – roughly one hundred times the size of his company’s investment program for America’s poor cities. 

Much of JP Morgan’s income gain in 2018 came from savings from the giant Republican tax cut enacted at the end of 2017 – a tax cut that Dimon intensively lobbied Congress for.

Dimon doesn’t acknowledge the inconsistencies between his self-image as “patriot first” and his role as CEO of America’s largest bank. He doesn’t understand how he has hijacked the system.

Perhaps he should read my new book.

To understand how the system has been hijacked, we must understand how it went from being accountable to all stakeholders – not just stockholders but also workers, consumers, and citizens in the communities where companies are headquartered and do business – to intensely shareholder-focused capitalism.

In the post-WWII era, American capitalism assumed that large corporations had responsibilities to all their stakeholders. CEOs of that era saw themselves as “corporate statesmen” responsible for the common good.

But by the 1980s, shareholder capitalism (which focuses on maximizing profits) replaced stakeholder capitalism. That was largely due to the corporate raiders – ultra-rich investors who hollowed-out once-thriving companies and left workers to fend for themselves.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, for example, targeted major companies like Texaco and Nabisco by acquiring enough shares of their stock to force major changes that increased their stock value – such as suppressing wages, fighting unions, laying off workers, abandoning communities for cheaper labor elsewhere, and taking on debt – and then selling his shares for a fat profit. In 1985, after winning control of Trans World Airlines, he loaded the airline with more than $500 million in debt, stripped it of its assets, and pocketed nearly $500 million in profits.

As a result of the hostile takeovers mounted by Icahn and other raiders, a wholly different understanding about the purpose of the corporation emerged.

Even the threat of hostile takeovers forced CEOs to fall in line by maximizing shareholder profits over all else. The corporate statesmen of previous decades became the corporate butchers of the 1980s and 1990s, whose nearly exclusive focus was to “cut out the fat” and make their companies “lean and mean.”

As power increased for the wealthy and large corporations at the top, it shifted in exactly the opposite direction for workers. In the mid-1950s, 35 percent of all private-sector workers in the United States were unionized. Today, 6.4 percent of them are.

The wave of hostile takeovers pushed employers to raise profits and share prices by cutting payroll costs and crushing unions, which led to a redistribution of income and wealth from workers to the richest 1 percent. Corporations have fired workers who try to organize and have mounted campaigns against union votes. All the while, corporations have been relocating to states with few labor protections and so-called “right-to-work” laws that weaken workers’ ability to join unions.

Power is a zero-sum game. People gain it only when others lose it. The connection between the economy and power is critical. As power has concentrated in the hands of a few, those few have grabbed nearly all the economic gains for themselves.

The oligarchy has triumphed because no one has paid attention to the system as a whole – to the shifts from stakeholder to shareholder capitalism, from strong unions to giant corporations with few labor protections, and from regulated to unchecked finance.

As power has shifted to large corporations, workers have been left to fend for themselves. Most Americans developed 3 key coping mechanisms to keep afloat.

The first mechanism was women entering the paid workforce. Starting in the late 1970s, women went into paid work in record numbers, in large part to prop up family incomes, as the wages of male workers stagnated or declined. 

Then, by the late 1990s, even two incomes wasn’t enough to keep many families above water, causing them to turn to the next coping mechanism: working longer hours. By the mid-2000s a growing number of people took on two or three jobs, often demanding 50 hours or more per week.

Once the second coping mechanism was exhausted, workers turned to their last option: drawing down savings and borrowing to the hilt. The only way Americans could keep consuming was to go deeper into debt. By 2007, household debt had exploded, with the typical American household owing 138 percent of its after-tax income. Home mortgage debt soared as housing values continued to rise. Consumers refinanced their homes with even larger mortgages and used their homes as collateral for additional loans.

This last coping mechanism came to an abrupt end in 2008 when the debt bubbles burst, causing the financial crisis. Only then did Americans begin to realize what had happened to them, and to the system as a whole. That’s when our politics began to turn ugly.  

So what do we do about it? The answer is found in politics and rooted in power.

The way to overcome oligarchy is for the rest of us to join together and form a multiracial, multiethnic coalition of working-class, poor and middle-class Americans fighting for democracy.

This agenda is neither “right” nor “left.” It is the bedrock for everything America must do.

The oligarchy understands that a “divide-and-conquer” strategy gives them more room to get what they want without opposition. Lucky for them, Trump is a pro at pitting native-born Americans against immigrants, the working class against the poor, white people against people of color. His goal is cynicism, disruption, and division. Trump and the oligarchy behind him have been able to rig the system and then whip around to complain loudly that the system is rigged.

But history shows that oligarchies cannot hold on to power forever. They are inherently unstable. When a vast majority of people come to view an oligarchy as illegitimate and an obstacle to their wellbeing, oligarchies become vulnerable.

As bad as it looks right now, the great strength of this country is our resilience. We bounce back. We have before. We will again.

In order for real change to occur – in order to reverse the vicious cycle in which we now find ourselves – the locus of power in the system will have to change.

The challenge we face is large and complex, but we are well suited for the fight ahead. Together, we will dismantle the oligarchy. Together, we will fix the system.

How to Prepare for the Trump Recession

The global coronavirus pandemic has put our economy in free-fall.

Even through Donald Trump’s reckless economic policies, like his pointless trade war with China or his deficit-busting tax cuts for his billionaire donors, the economy has somehow managed to keep chugging along — until now. 

All of the stock market gains from Trump’s time in office have been wiped out, and over the course of just over one week in March the Dow Jones Industrial Average experienced its five largest drops in history. 

Worse than a plummeting stock market, businesses and major industries have been forced to shutter their windows to help combat the rapid spread of the virus, putting hundreds of thousands of workers’ paychecks at risk. 

A recession is inevitable at this point. Here are 3 things we can do to prepare.  

Number one: We need to reform unemployment insurance so it reflects the needs of today’s economy. 

When it was first created in 1935, unemployment insurance was designed to help full-time workers weather downturns until they got their old jobs back. But there are fewer full-time jobs in today’s economy, and fewer people who are laid off get their old jobs back again. 

As a result, only 27% of unemployed workers receive benefits today, compared to 49% of workers in the 1950s. We need to expand unemployment coverage so that everyone is protected.

Number two: We need to strengthen Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, also known as  public assistance. 

Since its creation in 1996, the number of families receiving cash assistance has declined dramatically – and not because they’re doing well. Between 2006 and 2018, just 13% of families were lifted out of poverty, while the number of families receiving public assistance fell by 39%.

Already weak, the program didn’t hold up well during the Great Recession. Funding doesn’t automatically expand during economic downturns – meaning the more families are in need, the less money there is to help them. The program also has strict work requirements, which can’t be fulfilled in a deep recession. Worse yet, many individuals in need have already exhausted their five years of lifetime eligibility for assistance.

We need to reform the public assistance program so that more families in need are eligible. It should be easier to waive the strict work eligibility requirements during the economic downturn, and the lifetime five-year limit should be suspended.

Number three: We need to protect the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP or food stamps. 

Unlike public assistance, SNAP responded well during the Great Recession. Its requirements are designed to expand during economic downturns or recessions.

Waiving work requirements during the Great Recession made thousands of people in need eligible for the program who otherwise wouldn’t have been. Between December 2007 and December 2009, the number of SNAP participants rose by 45%. The program helped keep an estimated 3.8 million families out of poverty in 2009.

But that might not be an option this time around, as SNAP has come under attack from the Trump administration, which is trying to enact a draconian rule change that would kick an estimated 700,000 of our most vulnerable citizens off of the program. Luckily, a judge blocked the rule from going into effect, but the administration is still fighting to enforce it — even in the middle of a global pandemic. We need to make sure SNAP’s flexibility and ability to respond to economic downturns is protected before the next recession hits.

Stronger safety nets are not only good for individuals and families in need. They will also prevent the looming recession from becoming an even deeper and longer economic crisis. 

How CEOs Are Ruining America

Today, America’s wealthiest business moguls – like Jamie Dimon, head of JPMorgan Chase – claim that they are “patriots before CEOs” because they employ large numbers of workers or engage in corporate philanthropy.

Rubbish.

CEOs are in business to make a profit and maximize their share prices, not to serve America. And yet these CEOs dominate American politics and essentially run the system. 

Therein lies the problem: They cannot be advocates for their corporations and simultaneously national leaders responsible for the wellbeing of the country. This is the biggest contradiction at the core of our broken system.

A frequent argument made by CEOs is that so-called “American competitiveness” should not be hobbled by regulations and taxes. Jamie Dimon often warns that tight banking regulations will cause Wall Street to lose financial business to banks in nations with weaker regulations. Under Dimon’s convenient logic, JPMorgan is America. 

Dimon used the same faulty logic about American competitiveness to support the Trump tax cut. “We don’t have a competitive tax system here,” he warned.

But when Dimon talks about “competitiveness” he’s really talking about the competitiveness of JPMorgan, its shareholders, and billionaire executives like himself.

The concept of “American competitiveness” is meaningless when it comes to a giant financial enterprise like JPMorgan that moves money all over the world. JPMorgan doesn’t care where it makes money. Its profits don’t directly depend on the wellbeing of Americans.

“American competitiveness” is just as meaningless when it comes to big American-based corporations that make and buy things all over the world. 

Consider a mainstay of corporate America, General Electric. Two decades ago, most GE workers were American. Today the majority are non-American. In 2017, GE announced it was increasing its investments in advanced manufacturing and robotics in China, which it termed “an important and critical market for GE.” In 2018, over half of GE’s revenue came from abroad. Its once core allegiance to American workers and consumers is gone.

Google has opened an Artificial Intelligence lab in Beijing. Until its employees forced the company to stop, Google was even building China a prototype search engine designed to be compatible with China’s censors.

Apple employs 90,000 people in the United States but contracts with roughly a million workers abroad. An Apple executive told The New York Times, “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible” – and showing profits big enough to continually increase Apple’s share price.

American corporations will do and make things wherever around the world they can boost their profits the most, and invest in research and development wherever it will deliver the largest returns. 

The truth is that America’s real competitiveness doesn’t depend on profit-seeking shareholders or increasingly global corporations. The real competitiveness of the United States depends on only one thing: the productivity of Americans. 

That in turn depends on our education, our health, and the infrastructure that connects us. Yet today, American workers are hobbled by deteriorating schools, unaffordable college tuition, decaying infrastructure, and soaring health-care costs. 

And truth be told, big American corporations and the CEOs that head them – wielding outsized political influence – couldn’t care less. They want tax cuts and rollbacks of regulations so they can make even fatter profits. All of which is putting Americans on a glide path toward lousier jobs and lower wages. How’s that for patriotism?

The first step toward fixing this broken system is to stop buying CEOs’ lies. How can we believe that Jamie Dimon’s initiatives on corporate philanthropy are anything other than public relations? Why should we think that he or his fellow CEOs seek any goal other than making more money for themselves and their firms? We can’t and we shouldn’t. They don’t have America’s best interests at heart — they’re making millions to be CEOs, not patriots.

Big American corporations aren’t organized to promote the wellbeing of Americans, and Americans cannot thrive within a system run largely by corporations. Fundamental reform will be led only by concerned and active citizens.