I keep seeing posts by people complaining about NDP doing their job as opposition and ‘always being negative’. This is a go-to UCP retort as well. Alberta has never really had an effective opposition in the last 50 years at least. This is what it looks like. 1/11

I worked as a tour guide in the #ableg. It was the summer of the Universiade games and we had a lot of international visitors. We had our memorized tour script, including little quips and bits of trivia (the portrait eyes that follow you, the rain echo from the fountain, 2/11

the palm trees in the dome, the carillon, the kinds of marble, how the gemstones on the mace start with the letters ALBERTA, etc.) One bit was to point out the ‘opposition’ seats. I think there were 4 at that time. People from all over found that astonishing (and strange). 3/11

One of the opposition members at that time was Rachel Notley’s father. He was universally liked and admired. But there is only so much that such a small group of people can do to hold the government to account. 4/11

We now have an opposition who have been government themselves, who know how things work, who know what questions to ask, who know which stones to look under, and who have people that are very smart, very capable, and very much looking out for ALL Albertans. 5/11

1/💩ton

OK we have text of the new Stimulus bill... combined w/ a WHOLE lot of other legislation.

In all the PDF version of the full bill clocks in at 5593 pages. Can be found: https://t.co/RwPOMZ5b7d

Buckle up. This is gonna be a LONG ride!

2/x

But before we dive into the bill, a quick note from my soap box… This whole process is absurd. They JUST released a 5k+ page bill, and they are going to vote on it TODAY.

They aren't even pretending to have time to read what they're voting on anymore.

*Steps off soap box*

3/x

Ok... on to the meat. Let's start by answering the question that so many are already asking... “Will I be getting another #stimulus check?”

The answer, like last time, is “Maybe.”

Notably, the maximum stimulus amount per person this time around is $600.

4/x

Under the CARES Act, adults got $1,200 for themselves, and $500 for children as a ‘base amount.’ This time, it’s $600 for each person.

So, for instance, a single filer w/ no kids starts w/ base of $600. Family of five, like this👇starts w/ a base amount of $600 x 5 = $3k

5/x

But those amounts" will be reduced once income exceeds the following thresholds:

Single: $75,000
Joint: $150,000
HOH: $112,500

As was the case under the CARES Act, the ‘base’ stimulus check will phase out by $5 for every $100 a taxpayer is over their applicable threshold.

1. Crushing the middle class for the glorious NWO:

What you need to know about Nigeria’s Petroleum Industry Bill.

Crude oil dominates Nigeria’s economy, accounting for around 90% of export earnings. #NigeriaNeedsPIB

The country has the largest oil and gas reserves in sub-Saharan Africa with an estimated 37bn barrels of oil and 188 trillion cubic feet of gas. #NigeriaNeedsPIB

Yet for decades, the virtually ungovernable industry has been plagued by poor leadership, eye-watering corruption and environmental degradation. #NigeriaNeedsPIB

Value has leached away through opaque licensing deals, unaccountable middlemen, a lack of refining capacity and graft in the government and state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). #NigeriaNeedsPIB

Sabotage and pipeline theft in the oil-rich Niger Delta have ensured that the taxpayer loses out on billions of dollars in annual revenues. #NigeriaNeedsPIB

1) Caste discrimination & atrocities
2) Caste based inequality in education, land, housing/other assets, income, health, etc.
3) Social structure based on Varna & Jatis

As social movements/activists, how do we prioritize & how much time & energy we devote to each of them? 1/n

In a society with inequitable social structure and caste based inequalities of above kind, discrimination might be -& as ex-untouchables like us know-it is every day affair.

So where do I put my head and heart on? 2/n

Do I shout & cry every day when I see discrimination or with a 'cool' head strategize & work for changing social structure & removing/reducing those inequalities?

At a societal level, who should do what? 3/n

If I don't shout, cry & protest, I might be seen as insensitive & perpetrators might take it for granted but if I keep doing it, where do I stop because discrimination of various kind in any geography internet society is every day affair & like happening in my own house 4/n

Why I am speaking loudly on these issues is being active on Twitter/FB for some time, I got an impression that what matters most or perhaps what is made more visible is discrimination than the root causes. Is my impression wrong? 5/n

2021 NEW YEAR MESSAGE
Happy New Year Dear Compatriots and friends across the world.
This is the beginning of a new journey, a new chapter, a fresh opportunity to start and recover from the losses of 2020.

Last year was a challenging year, characterized by tales of misfortunes, deaths and illnesses. It was a tough moment for many homes and families owing to the unfortunate #COVID19 .

The pandemic plagued our world with many consequences, causing hardship and other forms of insecurity.

2020 was a year of many challenges and struggles both as individuals and as a nation. From #COVID19 to #EndSarsProtests, we witnessed disruptions in our cultures, economy, livelihoods and life itself.

These unfortunate events should propel us to re-examine ourselves, re-evaluate our priorities and commit ourselves to new norms, new cultures and new traditions.

Payrolls in November rose a mere +245k. That's the sort of number you might see in a "normal" month, and definitely not what you're hoping for in the snapback from a covid-induced shutdown.

THE RECOVERY IS STALLING.

Remember, the economy lost 22 million jobs, then gained roughly half of them back.

We still have 10 million fewer jobs than we did in February. Clawing the rest back at +245k per month will take basically forever. If this is the second half of the recovery, it's going to be grim

The dramatic ups and downs of recent months might hide the real story here: The economy is in a deep hole -- as deep as in the darkest days following the financial crisis -- and the recovery is faltering. Barely there. Making no progress. Stalled. Stopped.

The proximate causes of our slowing economy are obvious:
The virus is back, which hobbles the service sector, and stimulus has basically petered out, leaving the economy with little help. It doesn't have to be this way.

The household survey suggests that employment actually declined (by -74k) last month. So the fall in unemployment from 6.9% to 6.7% largely reflect the fact that an additional 400k people dropped out of the labor force.

Yesterday, at the end of @dbongino's pod...he talked about creating a "parallel economy."

I have a few questions for you pertaining to this. Specifically, what is the end game of a "parallel economy?"

Did we not have a parallel economy back in the 50s? An econ that was segregated for white people and "negros" (Historical context, NOT derogatory meaning).

So, I understand your idea about creating competition in the market place

Competing News Aggregators
Competing social media platforms
Video hosting platforms
PAYMENT processing platforms

Competing scholarly journals
1000s of competing news outlets...

But a parallel econ?

A parallel econ in it's entity will continue the wedge in the country which, historically, is exactly the discourse and demoralization that the left/communists THRIVE IN!

You're advocating for a systemic chaos system of constant conflict...hear me out.

Will this "parallel econ" create a "parallel country?" What geographic territory will this "parallel economy" hold?

By creating a parallel economy, you're creating a parallel country that is running in two separate, but diametrically opposed directions.

What is your endgame?

1) Since 1970, the United States has increased its population by 64%.

Northeast Ohio, a 12-county region with more people than Connecticut, has lost 7% of its population over this same time period, shrinking from 4.1 million to 3.8 million people.

2) In 1970, 1.4 million of those 4.1 million people lived in the four core cities of Cleveland, Akron, Canton, and Youngstown.

Today, barely 700,000 of the 3.8 million people live in those four cities.

3) The region was once a model of working-class prosperity. It was an exemplar of how people who didn't have a college degree could support their families, earn a good salary with good benefits, and have a stable middle-class existence.

4) In 1960, median household income in metro Washington D.C. was only 9% higher than in metro Cleveland.

Today, median household income in metro D.C. is 82% higher than in metro Cleveland.

5) This morning, I read that Ohio is poised to break its all-time annual record for drug overdose deaths.

If you look at this great analysis by @InnovateEconomy you will see that Ohio is one of the worst-performing states in terms of expanding

1. Oil & gas companies still expect the world to consume large quantities of oil & gas in 2050. That view would seem to put the oil giants in conflict with the IPCC.

𝐈𝐧 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐞...

@bstorrow

2. [O]il companies & the IPCC alike rely on a contentious strategy known as negative emissions — the practice of pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. In theory, NETs would buy the world a little more time to phase out the use of fossil fuels ...

3. "[N]one of these models are forecast machines" @DetlefvanVuuren

"It's just an element, a tool to explore different trajectories on the basis of the knowledge we have today & to see what ... might encounter."

Both critics & modelers agree such nuance is often lost

4. Many policymakers have concluded that negative emission technologies are necessary for meeting the Paris Agreement's temperature benchmarks, even if modelers themselves are more circumspect.

5. "How great would it be if, rather than just having pathways that kind of put forward technological solutions like BECCS, that we would have pathways that really articulate in clear terms the need for immediate discussions & action towards phasing out fossil fuels" @wim_carton

Over a month ago, we completed a big restructuring @FOCUSBRANDS to adjust for scale and prep for next growth phases. My 2nd big reorg in 10 years there, and I'm so proud of it! Will share more soon, but here's a thread on making changes before you are forced to + tough calls.

I am so grateful for leadership changes we made over the last 2 years - wish I would have made some even earlier. I can't imagine going through a large reorg (+2020) w/o the new presidents and leaders we promoted, invested in and hired, which also meant parting ways with some.

Making changes when you "don't have to" is a bit of a paradox. You DO have to. It's just that you aren't forced to (yet). I've learned to redefine crisis & know that a time will come that pressure-tests my team. I know that I "must" do it before I "have" to do it.

I use that knowledge to initiate changes in human, caring, and direct ways. An example of one of those convos (major paraphrasing): "you were a fit for some time, but no longer, we're not parting ways today, but we need to unwind by "X", let's build a plan to do that together"

There is much left out of that little clip of a sentence: development attempts, collaboration, etc. etc., but when you know, you know, and often (always in my experience) they do, too. At that stage, their optimal growth will be somewhere else - I want to get them there.

We need to understand misinformation & disinformation as systems, not just individual actions. An economy of false information.

[this thread continues from what I posted last night, about some of the most prominent South African misinfo posters]

When I started teaching courses on false information systems a few years ago at Wits, I made a point to look at it systemically: there are producers of information, distribution channels/platforms, and audiences (which can also distribute/reshare content).

To try and understand the types of false information, I also felt it was important to look at the intention/motivation of the producers of the false info. What motivated them? Money? Notoriety? Political agenda? (all of these types are in play)

It's NB to understand motive of the false info maker so you can effectively disrupt or correct their false and/or harmful information. A guy in it for clicks/fame requires different strategy to a paid actor or propagandist – although both messages/content may be the same

What we're seeing with Covid-19 misinfo is that the content created and shared by deniers is effectively the same as the conspiracy theories shared by lobbies that are anti-government, anti-media, or who blame Soros etc. This is not an accident, although original motives diverge

I just finished talking about how government works to my boys' yaya of 23 years, who's a self-proclaimed DDS. I explained to her who controls the budget, why lawmakers suck up to the President, why politicos kill each other during elections for what seems like a measly salary. 1/

I told her why I was angry with this government's response to the pandemic, how we're trillions deep in debt but hardly feeling any of it, how we're the laggard in the region in addressing COVID despite how much higher our tax rates are. I explained why we need to vote better. 2/

But what eventually made everything I was saying to her sink in was when I told her, "You know, this lousy government, it doesn't affect me or my family. You've seen that. We can sell off all our assets if we want to and just migrate to another country if we have to." 3/

I said, "All throughout this pandemic, did you see any adverse effects on my family? No. We eat what we want, my boys can turn on the aircon in their rooms and just be on the computer every day if they wanted to. We didn't suffer. But guess who did? The poor, like you." 4/

And it was then that it finally sank in how voting for someone inept impacted people in her social class so much more adversely than it ever could someone on my social class. This discussion started because we talked about Pacquiao running for the Presidency, and she liked him 5/

Income by race converged at the greatest rate between 1940 and 1970.

However, as of 2018, Black/white income disparities were almost exactly the same as they were in 1968, 50 years

Although clear majorities supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a national poll conducted shortly after its passage showed that 68% of Americans wanted moderation in its enforcement.

In fact, many felt that LBJ was moving too fast in implementing integration.

On the heels of Reconstruction came a period that Southerners called “redemption,” a violent project to restore white hegemony.

Redemption coincided with the vast upheaval of industrialization and urbanization, when the United States more broadly plunged into the Gilded Age.

But as the century turned and the Gilded Age gave way to the Progressive Era, a diverse group of reformers grabbed the reins of history and set a course toward greater economic equality, political bipartisanship, social cohesion and cultural communitarianism.

Some six decades later all of those upward trends reversed, setting the United States on a downward course that has brought us to the multifaceted national crisis in which we find ourselves today, which bears a remarkable resemblance to the Gilded Age.

1/10 - It's 5:52 in the morning, and I am revisiting decades-old thoughts about race, class, and privilege; about "Line" and "Staff" jobs and who tended to get each in the civilian Federal workplace from which I retired; ...

2/10 - ... about EEO, Diversity, "avoiding the appearance of impropriety" in assigning salary ranges to different classes of hard and sometimes dirty work, and the extent to which these salaries and classes seem "Stamped from the Beginning," to use a phrase from @DrIbram.

3/10 - These ideas and thoughts woke me up from sound sleep and had their seeds in a dream on a recurring theme I was having: I was back in my Federal Civilian office job, and we were once again wrestling with reorganization because it was moving our duties out from under us

4/10 - I have these kinds of dreams because of, I think, my disposition, which according to the way my Federal @DeptofDefense workforce management wanted to divide up the work to be done, made me a tough person to fit . . and possibly to promote.

5/10 - I had no desire to do anything but the fascinating technical work for which I was hired and, later, for which I boosted my productivity tenfold by cross-training. This came at a price, but also raised in my mind questions about that price.

These are 10 of my favourite #UrbanEconomics articles published in 2020, in alphabetical order by author, continuing with a tradition from the last couple of years

1) @TrebAllen, Arkolakis & Takahashi, JPE. Shows key theoretical properties & predictions of large class of trade/geography gravity models depend on 2 parameters: elasticities of supply and demand. Proposes IV estimation strategy relying on GE structure

2) Ambrus, Field & @rmgonzalez046, AER. 1854 London: prices fell in blocks served by well transmitting cholera. Differences persist. Model: tenants change as contracts expire, -ve externality of poor tenants, shock makes landlords persistently target poor

3) @kon_buechel & @maxvehrlich, JUE. More sociable individuals sort into cities. Even after accounting for sorting, those in denser areas call each other more often & longer, suggesting complementarity between face-to-face and phone interactions

4) @CarozziFelipe, JEEA. Shows how credit constraints affect composition of housing sales & access to home-ownership by the young. Neat model of housing markets as ladders with young in cheap units, possibly trading up as they age, post-2008 UK evidence