Category: Uncategorized

Joe Biden’s First Days in Office as President

This will be the most dramatic change in federal policies since the early days of the FDR administration starting March 4, 1933.  Biden’s new team will face the gravest national challenges of any new administration since those dark days of the Great Recession. 

This is what is being reported.

The day he takes office, Biden is planning to return the United States to the Paris climate accords and repeal the ban on U.S. entry for citizens of some majority-Muslim countries. He will sign an order extending nationwide restrictions on evictions and foreclosures and implement a mask mandate on federal property.

Plans, spelled out in a memo Saturday by Biden Chief of Staff Ron Klain to incoming White House advisers, will address what Klain called “four overlapping and compounding crises.”

They are the Covid-19 pandemic that has claimed close to 400,000 U.S. lives, the resulting economic downturn, climate change, and a national reckoning over racial equity in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Ron Klain, Joe Biden Chief of Staff

“In his first 10 days in office, President-elect Biden will take decisive action to address these four crises, prevent other urgent and irreversible harms, and restore America’s irreversible harms, and restore America’s place in the world,” Klain wrote. “President-elect Biden will take action — not just to reverse the gravest damages of the Trump administration — but also to start moving our country forward.”

Joe Biden gives Americans his initial Plans Once he is Inaugurated

The president-elect’s pandemic-response package was presented today on cable television. It will include steps to speed production and distribution of vaccines, an additional $1,400 in direct payments to individuals and expanded unemployment benefits.  The LA Times reported on his plans. 

The package is titled the “American Rescue Plan.”  Biden’s proposal is divided into three major areas: $400 billion for provisions to fight the coronavirus with more vaccines and testing, while reopening schools; more than $1 trillion in direct relief to families, including through stimulus payments and increased unemployment insurance benefits; and $440 billion for aid to communities and businesses, including $350 billion in emergency funding to state, local and tribal governments. 

If the GOP blocks the Biden plan for recovery they will be seeing losses in Congress in 2022.

A Good News Start to 2021

Two additional vaccines for Covid-19 may be authorized for use in the US in the coming months as the country tries to deal with record hospitalizations and deaths.

The COVID-19 vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca wasn’t the first to be OK’d by regulators in the U.K.—health officials authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech jab nearly four weeks earlier. And it’s not the most effective—Stage 3 clinical trials suggest it prevents COVID-19 symptoms about 70% of the time vs. about 95% for the Pfizer vaccine and a similar one from Moderna (which is authorized in the U.S., but not the U.K.).

The first thing to know about the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab is that it’s cheap. AstraZeneca has promised it will not make a profit on the vaccine during the pandemic. As a result, it costs $3 to $4 per dose around the world. Compare that to $25 to $37 a dose for the vaccine developed by Moderna and about $20 a dose for Pfizer’s jab, according to figures reported in Europe.

The Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine that the United Kingdom approved for use on Wednesday may be authorized for emergency use in the US in April, according to Moncef Slaoui, chief scientific adviser for Operation Warp Speed.

In addition, Johnson and Johnson’s single-dose vaccine may be authorized for emergency use in February and could be a “game changer” for the US, Slaoui said. Phase 3 trial recruitment for this vaccine has been completed.

Source for this information is CNN and Time magazine.

Working from Home is now part of American Life

The fix is in. Working from home is now part of American life and it’s not going away when COVID-19 vaccinations have been given to most of the population.

A neighbor of mine who does video editing no longer drives 30 miles to work. He does his job on-line. Unless his employer demands he drive to the office he will continue to work at home after the virus is gone. For him it means ending his one hour drive each way and reduced ware and tear on his car.

The working from home idea is not new. Even before COVID-19 became a factor, increasing numbers of people have been saying goodbye to their onerous commute to work. Thanks to ever-evolving technologies like Skype, Facetime, Slack, Zoom, Google Hangouts, authenticator apps, and cloud computing—not to mention texting and email—it’s no longer necessary to be in an office full-time to be a productive member of the team. In fact, many kinds of work can be done just as effectively, if not more so, from a home office.

“Consumer Brands Bet Working From Home Is Here to Stay,” by Annie Gasparro and Sharon Terlep: “Consumer-product companies are expanding factories and revamping production lines, wagering that work-from-home habits like growing beards and fixing quick lunches will outlast the coronavirus pandemic. Millions of Americans spent much of the year working from home. While legions of employers are planning to reopen their offices, many have said they would let employees continue working remotely some or all of the time once the pandemic subsides.

“As a result, many food-and-consumer-products companies are investing in factories, equipment and brands to provide more of those items for years to come, seeking to accommodate consumers who are making more coffee, buying more casual clothes and tending beards with trimmers and balm rather than shaving them off.

“Conagra Brands Inc. and Kraft Heinz Co. are buying and upgrading equipment to make more at-home lunch foods. General Mills Inc. has added a manufacturing line for Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal at a Georgia factory, which the company said is one of its most expensive capital projects ever. Kimberly-Clark Corp. is converting a plant to make toilet paper for homes instead of offices, and Procter & Gamble Co. is adding beard-care products in addition to Gillette razors.”

The work at home employees may not need office space at their employer’s office.  That translates to reduced office space needed by businesses.  If those “employees” are paid as contractors rather than “employees” they can claim a deductible of part of their home as a business expense.

What’s not to like? Comradery, friendships, the lack of a feeling that you are part of a team. All other things being equal, an employee who is physically in an office constructively communicating in person with colleagues and supervisors is better positioned to get a promotion, raise, or new opportunity than one who opts to remain in the comforts of their home.

That’s life in 2021 and beyond.