Economy

Coronavirus has reshaped how Californians live, learn and work in uneven ways. The pandemic has exposed the state’s long-standing digital divide with a significant share of low-income and rural households lacking reliable internet access. And even though employers have quickly adapted to remote work, the opportunity to work from home has not spread evenly across the workforce. Many Latino and Black workers who work in essential fields find themselves taking more risks to stay employed, leading to higher rates of infection and death in those communities of color.

This article first appeared on California Globe

‍

A June Phase 3 reopening

The re-openings would be contingent on COVID-19 coronavirus transmission rates continuing to either hold steady or fall in the coming weeks. Hospitals would also have to report no increases of stress on staff or supplies.

This Story First Appeared on California Globe

The recovery rate of the coronavirus remains at 98%. Flattening the curve is already behind us, so why is the state still on lockdown? California hospitals are not and never were, overrun with coronavirus victims, and are in fact, laying off staff throughout the country.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) Act of 2020 (H.R. 748) was by far the most gargantuan emergency economic stimulus package ever passed by Congress.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, addressing the 2008 Financial Crisis and the ensuing Great Recession, was "only" $787 billion at the time of passage.

(That number later crept up-- as Washington outlays are wont to do-- to $831 billion.)

Originally published on California Globe.

On Wednesday, Governor Gavin Newsom confirmed that the state currently has no plans to reopen the state or end stay-at-home restrictions as the COVID-19 coronavirus continues to spread in California.

Before this global COVID pandemic & resulting economic suffocation, political philanthropy to fix & reform our elections & governmental institutions was already severely lacking but very much needed.

The entire democracy reform space consisting of 130+ organizations raises approximately $150 million a year per Nick Troiano of Unite America.

COVID-19, like many global crises and catastrophes bring change. Sometimes permanently, often temporarily. Change comes in both positive and negative garbs. But change never fails to force itself upon society in the aftermath of human events.

As we navigate this pandemic, it is apparent that things in its wake will change and society will both modify its behavior as well as suffers its consequences These are the changes that will come.

On Friday morning, January 25, the FAA stopped all incoming flights into LaGuardia airport for an hour because of staffing issues with air traffic controllers. Departing flights were seeing delays of roughly 30 minutes, per the FAA website. Philadelphia and Newark were also experiencing delays, some up to an hour and fifteen minutes.

With the United States officially entering into the second month of the longest government shutdown in history, much has been made about partisanship in American politics. While partisanship has long existed in our political system, it has never impacted the United States’ ability to act as a world leader during times of crisis.

Gretchen Bakke thinks a lot about power—the kind that sizzles through a complex grid of electrical stations, poles, lines and transformers, keeping the lights on for tens of millions of Californians who mostly take it for granted.

They shouldn’t, says Bakke, who grew up in a rural California town regularly darkened by outages. A cultural anthropologist who studies the consequences of institutional failures, she says it’s unclear whether the state’s aging electricity network and its managers can handle what’s about to hit it.