CodyyyGardner Categories Government
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1. BREAKING
3 major corporations say they'll stop donating to members of Congress who tried to overturn the election
BlueCross BlueShield (@BCBSAssociation)
Marriott (@MarriottIntl)
@CommerceBank
Follow along for more on these 3 plus 141 other
@MarriottIntl @CommerceBank 2. In the last 3 cycles, the BlueCross BlueShield PAC has donated 959K to GOP candidates and 359K to Dem candidates.
Now, BCBS's CEO says it will "suspend contributions to those lawmakers who voted to undermine our democracy"
https://t.co/r4Z4TjJUCe
@MarriottIntl @CommerceBank 3. @CommerceBank's PAC favors Republicans over Democrats by a 6 to 1 margin. The bank now says it has "suspended all support for officials who have impeded the peaceful transfer of power"
@MarriottIntl released a similar statement to Popular Information.
https://t.co/r4Z4TjJUCe
4. @tesszeeks and I contacted 144 corporations that donated this cycle to Senators who objected to the Electoral College vote
We asked if their support would continue
We got a lot of other responses + a lot of corporations who, so far, are ignoring
5. More details coming in this thread. But if you value this kind of work, please subscribe to our newsletter, Popular Information.
It's free to sign up.
The newsletter, not this Twitter account, is what makes this work possible.
3 major corporations say they'll stop donating to members of Congress who tried to overturn the election
BlueCross BlueShield (@BCBSAssociation)
Marriott (@MarriottIntl)
@CommerceBank
Follow along for more on these 3 plus 141 other
@MarriottIntl @CommerceBank 2. In the last 3 cycles, the BlueCross BlueShield PAC has donated 959K to GOP candidates and 359K to Dem candidates.
Now, BCBS's CEO says it will "suspend contributions to those lawmakers who voted to undermine our democracy"
https://t.co/r4Z4TjJUCe
@MarriottIntl @CommerceBank 3. @CommerceBank's PAC favors Republicans over Democrats by a 6 to 1 margin. The bank now says it has "suspended all support for officials who have impeded the peaceful transfer of power"
@MarriottIntl released a similar statement to Popular Information.
https://t.co/r4Z4TjJUCe
4. @tesszeeks and I contacted 144 corporations that donated this cycle to Senators who objected to the Electoral College vote
We asked if their support would continue
We got a lot of other responses + a lot of corporations who, so far, are ignoring
5. More details coming in this thread. But if you value this kind of work, please subscribe to our newsletter, Popular Information.
It's free to sign up.
The newsletter, not this Twitter account, is what makes this work possible.
The rejection by the UK court of the US Govt's request to extradite Julian Assange to stand trial on espionage charges is obviously great news. But the judge endorsed most of the USG's theories, but ultimately found the US prison system too inhumane to permit extradition.
The US DOJ has already said it intends to appeal. The question -- and I'm hearing different things on this -- is whether the courts will keep Assange imprisoned while that appeal is pending. The court ordered him released, but it's unclear if the DOJ appeal will keep him in jail.
This wasn't a victory for press freedom. Quite the contrary: the judge made clear she believed there are grounds to prosecute Assange in connection with the 2010 publication.
It was, instead, an indictment of the insanely oppressive US prison system for security "threats."
Ultimately, though, from a humanitarian *and* a political perspective, what matters most is that Assange be freed as soon as possible. The US Govt doesn't care what prison he's in, or why: they just want him silenced and in a cage.
He should be freed immediately.
The full ruling is at the link. Savor the last, sweet paragraph.
https://t.co/edZcOywXUE
The US DOJ has already said it intends to appeal. The question -- and I'm hearing different things on this -- is whether the courts will keep Assange imprisoned while that appeal is pending. The court ordered him released, but it's unclear if the DOJ appeal will keep him in jail.
This wasn't a victory for press freedom. Quite the contrary: the judge made clear she believed there are grounds to prosecute Assange in connection with the 2010 publication.
It was, instead, an indictment of the insanely oppressive US prison system for security "threats."
Ultimately, though, from a humanitarian *and* a political perspective, what matters most is that Assange be freed as soon as possible. The US Govt doesn't care what prison he's in, or why: they just want him silenced and in a cage.
He should be freed immediately.
The full ruling is at the link. Savor the last, sweet paragraph.
https://t.co/edZcOywXUE
1. I believe the government is about to make another huge mistake. Where is @UKLabour in all this? I have some questions @Keir_Starmer should be asking urgently. Please RT to raise awareness.
2. Where is the modelling or evidence to support a focused protection vaccination strategy? The government has chosen it as its preferred strategy but it must have considered other options. Will the government publish the data and the alternative options considered?
3. A responsible government will have modelling for 20%, 50% and 80% vaccine coverage, and projections for the number of infections, Long Covid and deaths in each scenario. Where are those models? On what basis has the government opted for the 20% scenario?
4. The government should also have modelled each of these scenarios against a backdrop of low, medium and high community transmission. What is the impact of each vaccination scenario against varying levels of community transmission?
5. There should also be some assessment of incidence of reinfection and likely evolution of variants given different levels of community transmission. What does this assessment tell us?
It seems increasingly likely that, come March, the govt is planning to say to under-65s without pre-existing conditions: go forth and get Covid https://t.co/BhHNG3M2DR
— D_Shariatmadari (@D_Shariatmadari) January 10, 2021
2. Where is the modelling or evidence to support a focused protection vaccination strategy? The government has chosen it as its preferred strategy but it must have considered other options. Will the government publish the data and the alternative options considered?
3. A responsible government will have modelling for 20%, 50% and 80% vaccine coverage, and projections for the number of infections, Long Covid and deaths in each scenario. Where are those models? On what basis has the government opted for the 20% scenario?
4. The government should also have modelled each of these scenarios against a backdrop of low, medium and high community transmission. What is the impact of each vaccination scenario against varying levels of community transmission?
5. There should also be some assessment of incidence of reinfection and likely evolution of variants given different levels of community transmission. What does this assessment tell us?
I want to call out this particular point in my larger tweetstorm, because it sorta maps onto a dumb talking point from the left: "The government can borrow and spend any amount we want. American *can't* have a Greek-style debt crisis, because we borrow in our own currency!"
My right-wing followers, of course, understand why this won't fly: America borrowing in dollars, and under US law rather than some neutral third country, is not a law of nature. People with money could easily decide it was too risky to make us dollar-denominated loans.
(Or at least, at any price we'd want to pay.)
What would make them decide this? The fastest way would be for America to borrow a metric crap ton of money, and then default or let inflation eat away the value of our loans so we're repaying pennies on the dollar in real terms.
And since the "America can't have Greek-style debt crisis" talking point is genreallly only uttered by people who are urgin gus to do exactly the sort of thing that make it more likely we'll have trouble borrowing money in dollars, this is just deeply, deeply silly.
I mean it would probably work for a while--as Adam Smith said, "There's a lot of ruin in a nation". I am prepared to concede that the natural stopping point of this binge might be quite a few years away. I only say there is some stopping point.
But American institutions are strong in significant part because we don't let politicians act like Donald Trump, particularly not when they get close to the white house. It's not a law of nature; it's something we're actively doing. If we stop doing it, we lose our immunity.
— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) January 8, 2021
My right-wing followers, of course, understand why this won't fly: America borrowing in dollars, and under US law rather than some neutral third country, is not a law of nature. People with money could easily decide it was too risky to make us dollar-denominated loans.
(Or at least, at any price we'd want to pay.)
What would make them decide this? The fastest way would be for America to borrow a metric crap ton of money, and then default or let inflation eat away the value of our loans so we're repaying pennies on the dollar in real terms.
And since the "America can't have Greek-style debt crisis" talking point is genreallly only uttered by people who are urgin gus to do exactly the sort of thing that make it more likely we'll have trouble borrowing money in dollars, this is just deeply, deeply silly.
I mean it would probably work for a while--as Adam Smith said, "There's a lot of ruin in a nation". I am prepared to concede that the natural stopping point of this binge might be quite a few years away. I only say there is some stopping point.
This is a must-read article by @mlipsitch and @kesvelt and I strongly agree with the central points: we urgently need to step up genomic surveillance & get transmission down now in the US while these are rare.
But a couple things to expand on from a virology point of view.
The piece talks about the B117 variant as if it’s not SARS-CoV-2, but it is. B117 is distinguished by 23 changes across the genome, but it’s still fundamentally the same virus. It’s a different variant (some are calling it a strain depending on how that’s defined).
But 23 nucleotide changes aren’t sufficient to make this a completely different virus. So we are still fighting SARS-CoV-2. Just a new and improved version. Improved how? Well it’s more transmissible but the mechanism isn’t yet known.
When viruses become more transmissible it can happen in a few different ways:
-virus can be more fit (replicate to higher titers, hence more shedding)
-virus can replicate more efficiently in specific tissues (like the nose)
-spike can bind the receptor more efficiently and...
...thus infect host cells more efficiently
-virus can get better at evading/antagonizing innate host antiviral defenses
-increased environmental stability
-people can shed virus for longer periods of time
But a couple things to expand on from a virology point of view.
The article and the accompanying thread from @kakape are well worth a read https://t.co/32c8l66eTV
— Jason Kindrachuk, PhD (@KindrachukJason) January 9, 2021
The piece talks about the B117 variant as if it’s not SARS-CoV-2, but it is. B117 is distinguished by 23 changes across the genome, but it’s still fundamentally the same virus. It’s a different variant (some are calling it a strain depending on how that’s defined).
But 23 nucleotide changes aren’t sufficient to make this a completely different virus. So we are still fighting SARS-CoV-2. Just a new and improved version. Improved how? Well it’s more transmissible but the mechanism isn’t yet known.
When viruses become more transmissible it can happen in a few different ways:
-virus can be more fit (replicate to higher titers, hence more shedding)
-virus can replicate more efficiently in specific tissues (like the nose)
-spike can bind the receptor more efficiently and...
...thus infect host cells more efficiently
-virus can get better at evading/antagonizing innate host antiviral defenses
-increased environmental stability
-people can shed virus for longer periods of time
I think there is a good fucking reason why JOSH HAWLEY has been pushing the fairness doctrine but for social media. How can anyone propose government intervention into what kind of politics gets oxygen when the majority of the House GOP voted the way they did yesterday?
He knows what he is proposing. He knows it is a backdoor. He knows it can entrench and promote white supremacist fascist propaganda forever. He is counting on there being a backdoor when he takes the presidency.
Look at all the calls to police the social media companies for “bias” against conservatives. Look how it propped up the kind of speech that took us to yesterday. “Fairness” and “political neutrality” were euphemisms for forcing platforms to carry propaganda and incitement.
CDA 230 is a sideshow but it’s not an empty one.
There’s a lot of good-hearted and intelligent people who are going to fall for this shit in the coming days. Do not forget where Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz have stood on 230, fairness doctrine, and the like. Do not forget who they were when they took their masks off yesterday.
Curious - do you think it doesn\u2019t work because it\u2019s obsolete in the social media era, or that it\u2019s impossible to enforce for Fox and Newsmax?
— SIMD Crawford (@omershapira) January 7, 2021
He knows what he is proposing. He knows it is a backdoor. He knows it can entrench and promote white supremacist fascist propaganda forever. He is counting on there being a backdoor when he takes the presidency.
Look at all the calls to police the social media companies for “bias” against conservatives. Look how it propped up the kind of speech that took us to yesterday. “Fairness” and “political neutrality” were euphemisms for forcing platforms to carry propaganda and incitement.
CDA 230 is a sideshow but it’s not an empty one.
There’s a lot of good-hearted and intelligent people who are going to fall for this shit in the coming days. Do not forget where Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz have stood on 230, fairness doctrine, and the like. Do not forget who they were when they took their masks off yesterday.
