The Shining City Upon a Hill

[bsm2]

[BillyCarpenter]

POLITICS FEB. 25, 2021
$15 Minimum Wage Is Dead for Now Thanks to One Unelected Official





In a fateful and long-awaited ruling, Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough has decided that a bill to implement Joe Biden’s COVID-stimulus legislation cannot include a boost in the minimum wage to $15 per hour. At this juncture, it’s unclear whether MacDonough’s ruling encompasses any minimum-wage hike or only the version promoted by congressional Democrats. But either way it’s a major procedural blow to implementation of Democrats’ plan to pass relief through budget reconciliation since Republican filibusters will almost certainly preclude any minimum-wage hike pursued outside the charmed circle of a reconciliation package that can’t be filibustered.


On the one hand, the ruling saves Democrats from an internal battle between the vast majority of their House and Senate members who favor the $15 minimum wage and the few who don’t, such as Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. It is not at all likely that any Democrat is interested in alleged Republican compromise proposals for a much lower minimum wage hike married to restrictive immigration provisions. Still, pressure for the higher minimum wage could buttress those inclined to overturn the parliamentarian’s ruling. At the same time support for keeping with Senate tradition and letting the parliamentarian have the final say reportedly includes Biden and Kamala Harris.


We may yet see how far the impetus for raising the minimum wage advances, both in Congress and in the states, but the relief that was in sight for low-income workers just got further away after tonight.

[BillyCarpenter]

Mr. Potato Head (SalesServiceGuy) should be embarrassed. He's not, though and that's why he's Mr. Potato Head!!!


India makes deal with Trudeau for Vaccine. India's leader views Trudeau as Weak and Desperate





India, Canada and thenew vaccine politics


As a pharmaceutical powerhouse, India finds it now holdsthe cards over Canada and what it sees as its irksome PM.



The threat of wealthy countries hoarding vaccines for themselves and denying access to smaller and poorer countries has become the world’s primary cooperative concern. Yet how vaccine nationalism also attaches itself to pre-existing relationships between countries may become another part of this equation.


As vaccines have become the new diplomatic currency, India’s position as the world’s vaccine superpower is providing it with a foreign policy tool that now exceeds its power by traditional metrics.


India produces about 60% of the world’s vaccine output in normal times, with the Pune-based Serum Institute being the dominant manufacturer. There is no solution to this pandemic that doesn’t have India as a central player. India obviously has an enormous domestic need for vaccines, but despite this it has used its capability wisely to donate doses to neighbouring and Indian Ocean countries: Bangladesh, Mauritius, Myanmar, Nepal and the Seychelles.


Yet a recent phone call between India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau revealed that India’s powerful new instrument also provides it with influence over wealthy Western countries, a striking example of how this other strain of vaccine nationalism might materialise.


Due to a complex web of events, Canada lacks the capabilities to manufacture Covid-19 vaccines itself, leading it to scramble to secure a consistent supply from foreign sources. Initially Ottawa had done well procuring vaccines and administering their rollout, but in recent weeks, supply hit a wall. In terms of vaccines administered per 100 people, after initially being one of the leading countries, Canada has now dropped to 47th in the world. This has led to some embarrassing vaccine sub-nationalism, with Manitoba province circumventing the federal vaccine supply program and securing its own source.

Trudeau sought out Modi to ask if Canada could buy vaccines. Modi responded that India would “do its best” to fulfil Trudeau’s request, language that indicated the leverage India now has, but also left enough wiggle room should Modi choose otherwise. Last week, the Ministry of External Affairs India approved the export of vaccines to 25 countries, as they are subject to export controls. Trudeau’s request came too late to make the list, and while diplomatic calculations will continue to be built into the process, the Serum Institute’s CEO has stated shipments to Canada would be made by the end of the month.

But in the meantime India’s nationalist press have been revelling in the imagery of the phone call, of a desparate Trudeau going cap in hand begging Modi for help. Although India and Canada are friendly countries, there is a permanent thorn in the relationship that consistently irritates New Delhi: India believes that Canada is harbouring Sikh separatists, and Canada cannot stop giving India the impression that this is true.

Issues of national security are, of course, hypersensitive, but there is no longer any serious movement inside India to create a separate Sikh state, known as Khalistan. The idea now only exists within the romanticism of a minority of the Sikh diaspora, and as a tool Pakistani intelligence uses to annoy New Delhi. The Indian government gives outsize weight to these factors.
Working against – or in unison – with this are Canada’s democratic realities. Around 1.5% of the Canadian population is Sikh, but as a publicly engaged and well-organised group, they play a major role in Canada’s domestic politics. There are currently 18 Sikh politicians in the House of Commons, 13 more than in India’s lower house. A number of vital electorates in Toronto and Vancouver simply cannot be won without the support of the Sikh community.

This often leads Canadian politicians to make attempts to engage with the Sikh Canadians, only to aggravate New Delhi. Trudeau himself has been a master of this, whether it has been attending a Khalsa Day parade in Toronto in 2017 where Khalistani flags were waved and images of Sikh militants were put on display, or inviting a man convicted of terrorist charges to receptions in Mumbai and New Delhi on his disastrous trip to India in 2018.

[copier addict]

Mr. Potato Head (SalesServiceGuy) should be embarrassed. He's not, though and that's why he's Mr. Potato Head!!!


India makes deal with Trudeau for Vaccine. India's leader views Trudeau as Weak and Desperate





India, Canada and thenew vaccine politics


As a pharmaceutical powerhouse, India finds it now holdsthe cards over Canada and what it sees as its irksome PM.



The threat of wealthy countries hoarding vaccines for themselves and denying access to smaller and poorer countries has become the world’s primary cooperative concern. Yet how vaccine nationalism also attaches itself to pre-existing relationships between countries may become another part of this equation.


As vaccines have become the new diplomatic currency, India’s position as the world’s vaccine superpower is providing it with a foreign policy tool that now exceeds its power by traditional metrics.


India produces about 60% of the world’s vaccine output in normal times, with the Pune-based Serum Institute being the dominant manufacturer. There is no solution to this pandemic that doesn’t have India as a central player. India obviously has an enormous domestic need for vaccines, but despite this it has used its capability wisely to donate doses to neighbouring and Indian Ocean countries: Bangladesh, Mauritius, Myanmar, Nepal and the Seychelles.


Yet a recent phone call between India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau revealed that India’s powerful new instrument also provides it with influence over wealthy Western countries, a striking example of how this other strain of vaccine nationalism might materialise.


Due to a complex web of events, Canada lacks the capabilities to manufacture Covid-19 vaccines itself, leading it to scramble to secure a consistent supply from foreign sources. Initially Ottawa had done well procuring vaccines and administering their rollout, but in recent weeks, supply hit a wall. In terms of vaccines administered per 100 people, after initially being one of the leading countries, Canada has now dropped to 47th in the world. This has led to some embarrassing vaccine sub-nationalism, with Manitoba province circumventing the federal vaccine supply program and securing its own source.

Trudeau sought out Modi to ask if Canada could buy vaccines. Modi responded that India would “do its best” to fulfil Trudeau’s request, language that indicated the leverage India now has, but also left enough wiggle room should Modi choose otherwise. Last week, the Ministry of External Affairs India approved the export of vaccines to 25 countries, as they are subject to export controls. Trudeau’s request came too late to make the list, and while diplomatic calculations will continue to be built into the process, the Serum Institute’s CEO has stated shipments to Canada would be made by the end of the month.

But in the meantime India’s nationalist press have been revelling in the imagery of the phone call, of a desparate Trudeau going cap in hand begging Modi for help. Although India and Canada are friendly countries, there is a permanent thorn in the relationship that consistently irritates New Delhi: India believes that Canada is harbouring Sikh separatists, and Canada cannot stop giving India the impression that this is true.

Issues of national security are, of course, hypersensitive, but there is no longer any serious movement inside India to create a separate Sikh state, known as Khalistan. The idea now only exists within the romanticism of a minority of the Sikh diaspora, and as a tool Pakistani intelligence uses to annoy New Delhi. The Indian government gives outsize weight to these factors.
Working against – or in unison – with this are Canada’s democratic realities. Around 1.5% of the Canadian population is Sikh, but as a publicly engaged and well-organised group, they play a major role in Canada’s domestic politics. There are currently 18 Sikh politicians in the House of Commons, 13 more than in India’s lower house. A number of vital electorates in Toronto and Vancouver simply cannot be won without the support of the Sikh community.

This often leads Canadian politicians to make attempts to engage with the Sikh Canadians, only to aggravate New Delhi. Trudeau himself has been a master of this, whether it has been attending a Khalsa Day parade in Toronto in 2017 where Khalistani flags were waved and images of Sikh militants were put on display, or inviting a man convicted of terrorist charges to receptions in Mumbai and New Delhi on his disastrous trip to India in 2018.

Your continued assertions that anyone within this forum has any power over vaccine acquisition and distribution is, to put it mildly, quite idiotic. We all realise how you love to feel superior, but even you must see how ridiculous some of your statements are. I'm not talking about the news reports you post, just the personal comments you choose to include with them. Anyway bigdog, have a good one.

[BillyCarpenter]

Your continued assertions that anyone within this forum has any power over vaccine acquisition and distribution is, to put it mildly, quite idiotic. We all realise how you love to feel superior, but even you must see how ridiculous some of your statements are. I'm not talking about the news reports you post, just the personal comments you choose to include with them. Anyway bigdog, have a good one.

Once again, you fail to grasp the nature of the situation. It's not me who think's I'm superior. No. It's the USA that is superior to Canada. That's why we produce our own vaccine and your PM, Justin Trudeau, is going around the world begging for vaccine and making a laughing stock of himself. You're too much of a Trudeau bootlicker to admit it and and Mr. Potato Head has nothing between his ears but mush.

[bsm2]

POLITICS FEB. 25, 2021
$15 Minimum Wage Is Dead for Now Thanks to One Unelected Official







In a fateful and long-awaited ruling, Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough has decided that a bill to implement Joe Biden’s COVID-stimulus legislation cannot include a boost in the minimum wage to $15 per hour. At this juncture, it’s unclear whether MacDonough’s ruling encompasses any minimum-wage hike or only the version promoted by congressional Democrats. But either way it’s a major procedural blow to implementation of Democrats’ plan to pass relief through budget reconciliation since Republican filibusters will almost certainly preclude any minimum-wage hike pursued outside the charmed circle of a reconciliation package that can’t be filibustered.


On the one hand, the ruling saves Democrats from an internal battle between the vast majority of their House and Senate members who favor the $15 minimum wage and the few who don’t, such as Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. It is not at all likely that any Democrat is interested in alleged Republican compromise proposals for a much lower minimum wage hike married to restrictive immigration provisions. Still, pressure for the higher minimum wage could buttress those inclined to overturn the parliamentarian’s ruling. At the same time support for keeping with Senate tradition and letting the parliamentarian have the final say reportedly includes Biden and Kamala Harris.


We may yet see how far the impetus for raising the minimum wage advances, both in Congress and in the states, but the relief that was in sight for low-income workers just got further away after tonight.

Dead Because the Republican party Don't want to raise the minimum wage Let them eat cake

[BillyCarpenter]

Dead Because Republicans Don't want to raise the minimum wage Let them eat cake

No, it's dead because it's unconstitutional. The article I posted explains it but I'm afraid this is over your head. Google it.

[bsm2]

No, it's dead because it's unconstitutional. The article I posted explains it but I'm afraid this is over your head. Google it.

Just like the Republicans will not support the Covid Rescue Plan

PS it's. a Senate Rule BOZO

[BillyCarpenter]

PS it's a Senate rule. BOZO

Then why are you blaming republicans? That doesn't make any sense.

[bsm2]

Then why are you blaming republicans? That doesn't make any sense.

Reading Required Understanding YOUR problem