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British house prices climb most in over four years (nationthailand.com)

British house prices climb most in over four years

InternationalDec 08. 2020

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Lucy Meakin

U.K. house prices surged the most since 2016 last month as realtors remained open for business while much of the rest of the economy entered a second coronavirus lockdown.

Home prices rose 7.6% in November from a year earlier, mortgage lender Halifax said Monday. On the month alone, prices gained 1.2%.

Britain’s property market has boomed since reopening after restrictions in the spring that shuttered the industry. It has been bolstered by city dwellers looking to move out of urban centers, a temporary tax break on purchases and government promises of more generous loans for young buyers.

Under a lockdown in England that ended last week, house viewings were still allowed. Realtors may find it hard to maintain the upswing though. Unemployment is rising and the tax incentive will expire at the end of March.

“The housing market has been much more resilient than many predicted at the outset of the pandemic,” said Russell Galley, managing director at Halifax. “A slowdown” in activity “is likely over the next 12 months.”

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Biden taps Becerra, Murthy to lead health team amid pandemic (nationthailand.com)

Biden taps Becerra, Murthy to lead health team amid pandemic

InternationalDec 07. 2020Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., speaks during an interview in Washington, D.C., on May 21, 2015. Becerra as President-elect Joe Biden’s Health and Human Services secretary. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Andrew Harrer 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Jennifer Epstein, Josh Wingrove, Shira Stein · NATIONAL, HEALTH, WHITEHOUSE, HEALTH-NEWS 

President-elect Joe Biden named California Attorney General Xavier Becerra as his Health and Human Services secretary on Monday and filled out a team that will lead the incoming administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Becerra will also be tasked with expanding the Affordable Care Act, one of Biden’s key health goals beyond curbing the virus outbreak.

Biden also announced he was returning Vivek Murthy to the role of surgeon general, a job he held under President Barack Obama, but this time his role will be expanded to include managing the U.S. government response to the coronavirus.

Murthy will work closely with Jeff Zients, one of Biden’s transition co-chairs, who was named coordinator of the ovid-19 response and counselor to the president. Zients was a top economic adviser to Obama and is credited with reviving the troubled Obamacare enrollment website. Former White House and Pentagon senior adviser Natalie Quillian will serve as Zients’s deputy coordinator.

Rochelle Walensky, the infectious diseases chief at Massachusetts General Hospital, was named director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Biden also named Marcella Nunez-Smith as Covid-19 Equity Task Force Chair, a new job that will coordinate the government’s response to the virus. Nunez-Smith is an associate professor at the Yale School of Medicine and co-chair of the Biden transition’s coronavirus advisory board.

Anthony Fauci, who became a celebrated and trusted voice on the pandemic response while President Donald Trump downplayed its threats, will keep his current job as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases but also serve as Biden’s chief medical adviser on the coronavirus.

“This trusted and accomplished team of leaders will bring the highest level of integrity, scientific rigor, and crisis-management experience to one of the toughest challenges America has ever faced — getting the pandemic under control,” Biden said in a statement released by his transition team.

Fauci, speaking to CNN on Monday morning, lauded Biden’s picks. “I’ve had considerable interactions with all of these individuals and they are outstanding,” he said. He said he wasn’t yet sure what shape Biden’s coronavirus task force would take, and that his role wouldn’t be “substantially different” than his current one. Trump has largely frozen out Fauci and has rarely engaged directly with his task force.

Biden is due to hold an event Tuesday unveiling some of his health team, a transition official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the event hasn’t yet been announced.

Murthy and Becerra may face difficult Senate confirmations if Republicans keep control of the chamber after two runoff elections in Georgia on Jan. 5. Becerra’s lawsuits against the Trump administration are likely to face criticism and GOP senators may also oppose Murthy’s position that gun violence is a public-health threat.

Coronavirus cases have spiked in recent weeks. Deaths in the U.S. have reached more than 282,000 and some 14.7 million people have been infected.

Health and Human Services is a vast government department that oversees the CDC, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health, among others. Biden hasn’t yet announced an FDA commissioner.

Becerra, a former congressman from the Los Angeles area, emerged as a candidate in recent days as others fell out of contention, including New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who was backed by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

His nomination solves one of the highest-stakes selections outside of the traditional four top cabinet positions, in part because Biden has placed a heavy emphasis on the coronavirus outbreak, which over the past week has set records for new cases, daily deaths and hospitalizations.

Becerra would have a long list of priorities in tackling the pandemic, including expanding testing, improving access to personal protective equipment and distributing a covid-19 vaccine.

While in Congress, Becerra supported a Medicare-for-all bill and as recently as 2017 spoke in favor of a single-payer health system. But a person familiar with Biden’s thinking said that Becerra is also prepared to work to protect Obamacare and add a public option, as Biden has said he intends to do.

As California attorney general, Becerra has led other states with Democratic attorneys general to file lawsuits defending the Affordable Care Act against the Trump administration efforts to dismantle it. That includes a case currently before the Supreme Court.

“We need someone with a lot of experience managing a large department,” Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., a Biden adviser, told CNN on Monday. “His experience is unique and I think his life experience — which we don’t talk about enough — as a minority is going to be very important.”

Becerra took on the largest hospital system in Northern California, Sutter Health, and reached a $575 million settlement with it over price-gouging charges. Former Obama administration officials say they expect the incoming administration to put an increased focus on health-care antitrust enforcement, which they say is contributing to rising medical costs.

Health-care consultants expect the new administration to quickly roll back some changes the Trump administration made to the implementation of the ACA. The Biden team will likely put more money into making it easier to buy insurance on the ACA marketplace, improve advertising of open enrollment, revise rules around LGBTQ protections, loosen work-eligibility requirements and roll back the expanded use of short-term health insurance plans.

His selection ends a roller-coaster process that saw other top candidates fall from contention, including Murthy, who Biden has tapped as his next surgeon general.

The person familiar with Biden’s thinking said the most important consideration was Becerra’s history of fighting for the Affordable Care Act, first for its passage while he served in the House, and then as California attorney general.

The person pointed to Becerra’s record on health-related issues — from lawsuits fighting vaping to joining with Louisiana’s Republican attorney general in August to lead a coalition of states urging the federal government to increase access to the covid drug Remdesivir. That effort, and others, the person said, showed that Becerra is willing to find common ground with Republicans.

Biden has committed to building the most diverse administration ever and, if confirmed by the Senate, Becerra would be the first Latino to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. The move drew praise from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

“As attorney general, Becerra led the charge to defend the Affordable Care Act, lower prescription drug costs, and protect immigrant families,” CHC Chair Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat, said in a statement, adding that the choice came “in this moment of crisis with Covid-19 devastating Latino communities.”

People of color have disproportionately contracted the virus and faced racial disparities in their health care that have further compounded the effects of the pandemic.

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Consumer confidence reaches post-pandemic high in Canada (nationthailand.com)

Consumer confidence reaches post-pandemic high in Canada

InternationalDec 07. 2020

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Shelly Hagan · BUSINESS 

Consumer confidence in Canada rose to its highest level in eight months amid optimism positive vaccine developments will sustain an economic recovery.

The Bloomberg Nanos Canadian Confidence Index, a composite measure of financial health and economic expectations, reached 53.3 last week, its highest since mid-March when widespread shutdowns were imposed to curb the spread of covid-19.

While the index is still below its long-term average, the gain in sentiment likely reflects hope of a quick global rollout of vaccines, with a massive mobilization set to get underway this week. The U.K. is set to launch Pfizer Inc.’s shot beginning Tuesday. The U.S. could approve the vaccine as early as Thursday. Canadian health officials expect to greenlight the shot soon after the Americans.

The Canadian stock market last month had the biggest monthly gain since April, matching global gains on optimism over vaccines.

The increase in Canadian sentiment may have broken a recent holding pattern. The index is still three points below longer-term averages, but had been hovering at current levels for weeks amid a second wave of virus cases after making up the bulk of its pandemic losses over the summer months.

Every week, Nanos Research surveys 250 Canadians for their views on personal finances, job security and their outlook for the economy and real estate prices. Bloomberg publishes four-week rolling averages of the 1,000 responses.

The share of respondents who believe the economy will strengthen over the next six months rose to 19.9%, the highest reading since September

Real estate optimism continues to grow, consistent with recent strength in home prices and sales. Some 45% of respondents say they expect the value of homes in their neighborhood to increase in the next six months

Almost 64% of respondents say their job is either secure or somewhat secure, the highest reading in two months. Through November, the economy had recovered 81% of the 3 million jobs lost during the spring shutdowns, according to a report Friday

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At Georgia rally, Trump spouts election falsehoods, amplifies old grievances (nationthailand.com)

At Georgia rally, Trump spouts election falsehoods, amplifies old grievances

InternationalDec 06. 2020Supporters of President Trump turn out in Valdosta, Ga., to hear him speak at a rally tied to the state’s upcoming runoffs. The results in Georgia will determine which party has control of the U.S. Senate. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford 

By The Washington Post · Cleve R. Wootson Jr., David Weigel, Amy B Wang · NATIONAL, POLITICS 

VALDOSTA, Ga. – In his first rally since losing the election last month, President Donald Trump continued to spout conspiracy theories about voter fraud, falsely claiming that he had defeated President-elect Joe Biden.

“We’ve never lost an election. We’re winning this election,” Trump declared soon after he took the stage outside a hangar at Valdosta Regional Airport on Saturday night. 

It was the first in a fire hose of falsehoods Trump offered up to a largely unmasked crowd of thousands, who cheered him on and repeatedly chanted “Four more years!”

Trump was ostensibly in the state to whip up support for Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who are locked in tight Jan. 5 special election races with their respective Democratic challengers, Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock. At stake is control of the Senate, where Republicans hold 50 seats. If Democrats win both seats in Georgia, they will effectively have a majority, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris serving as a tie-breaking vote if needed.

But Trump mostly focused on himself. People held “Make America Great Again” placards and draped themselves in giant “Trump 2020” flags, and there was little noticeable signage for Perdue or Loeffler. Both incumbents addressed the crowd about 90 minutes before Trump took the stage at 7 p.m.

Once at the lectern, Trump spent most of his time airing grievances and falsehoods about the presidential race, occasionally weaving in mention of the Senate runoffs. He knocked Ossoff and Warnock as “radical Democrats” who would be “total pawns” of Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. He also attacked Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both Georgia Republicans who have repeatedly vouched for the integrity of the state’s elections.

There has been no evidence of widespread voter fraud, nor of any fraud that would overturn the election results, as Trump has alleged.Trump’s legal team has lost nearly all of its cases in key states. Even Attorney General William Barr has said the Justice Department had found no evidence of voting fraud that could have changed the outcome of the election.

“I’ve probably worked harder in the last three weeks than I ever have in my life,” Trump told the crowd at one point, referring to his unprecedented personal efforts to overturn Biden’s victory since November.

Trump was introduced Saturday night by a surprise guest – first lady Melania Trump – who seemed to stick to prepared remarks, encouraging the crowd to vote for Loeffler and Perdue without mentioning her husband’s claims of a “rigged” election.

“President Trump continues to fight for you every single day. Do not let your voices be silenced,” she said. “We must keep our seats in the Senate. It is more important than ever that you exercise your right as an American citizen and vote.”

But the president quickly veered off course, bringing to lifesome Republicans’ concerns that Trump’s visit to Georgia would do more harm than good by continuing to erode GOP voters’ trust in the election system. Trump has said he would never concede to Biden, and emphasized that again on Saturday.

“If I lost, I’d be a very gracious loser. If I lost, I would say I lost and I’d go to Florida and I’d take it easy and I’d go around and I’d say I did a good job,” Trump said. “But you can’t ever accept when they steal and rig and lie.”

Nearly an hour into his remarks, Trump tried to thread the needle between claiming the election was rigged and to encourage his supporters to still vote in the Jan. 5 special election.

“You know, you’re angry because so many votes were stolen. It was taken away. And you say, ‘Well, we’re not going to do it.’ We can’t do that. We have to actually do just the opposite,” Trump said. “If you don’t vote, the socialists and the communists win, they win. Georgia patriots must show up and vote for these two incredible people.” 

Sharon Tanner, a school bus driver, had traveled with her family from Moultrie, Ga., to attend the rally. When asked who was going to be inaugurated Jan. 20, Tanner said she thought it would be Trump, not Biden.

“God’s going to open their mouths and let the truth come out,” she said.

Tanner, 53, said she didn’t know enough about Trump’s dispute with Raffensperger to comment, but she maintained that there had been enough fraud to overturn the election – and that she was planning to vote for Loeffler and Perdue on Jan. 5.

“I feel like we need to vote more now. [Trump] still needs us to do our part no matter what. I’m telling all my folks to come out and vote,” she said. “I believe he’s God’s anointed, that God chose him to fix our country.”

Both Democrats and Republicans ramped up the intensity of their campaigning in Georgia this weekend, sending high-profile surrogates to the Peach State in a frenetic final push to excite voters before voter registration for the Senate runoff election ends Monday.

Speaking at a virtual get-out-the-vote event Friday with Ossoff and Warnock, former president Barack Obama told Democrats that many of his first term’s signature accomplishments came about because he had a Democratic Senate. Even then, he admitted, it was a struggle to pass legislation “because of the way the U.S. Senate was set up.”

“The Senate is a place where, even with a big majority, it’s tough to get legislation through,” Obama said. “And if you don’t have a majority, if the Senate is controlled by Republicans who are interested in obstruction and gridlock rather than progress and helping people, they can block everything.”

Later, he added, “Once [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell was controlling that gavel and controlling the agenda in the Senate, we saw a lot of progress stop.”

Obama also knocked Republican lawmakers for politicizing measures that could be taken to bring the coronavirus under control, and referred to accusations of unethical financial trades both Perdue and Loeffler have faced.

“When you’ve got a bunch of senators who are downplaying a pandemic . . . and then as they’re downplaying it, as they’re ignoring the science and epidemiologists, suggesting that this is some partisan issue instead of something that Americans should rally around, at the same time, behind closed doors, they’re calling their brokers, that’s not public service,” Obama said. “That alone should motivate Georgians to say we want somebody in there who’s working for us.”

The virtual event also featured former Georgia gubernatorial Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams, whose work over the past two years organizing and mobilizing new voters, especially voters of color, is being credited for helping flip the state for the Democrats.

While Obama was speaking, Vice President Pence arrived at an airfield in Savannah in Air Force Two for a rally for Loeffler and Perdue. He spoke about the importance of the race but also weighed in on the GOP controversy over whether Republicans upset about Trump’s baseless voter fraud claims should skip the runoffs.

“I know we’ve all got our doubts about the last election, and I’ve heard some people say just don’t vote,” Pence told the crowd of hundreds. “My fellow Americans, if you don’t vote, they win.”

Pence, making his second trip to the state for the Senate runoffs, arrived the day after GOP legislators organized a hearing in which Trump attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani suggested that there were enough allegations of irregularity to reverse the results of the presidential election. A recount, demanded by the Trump campaign, wrapped up the same day, and Republican election officials have suggested that Biden’s narrow victory would be certified again.

“I’ve heard many of you ask me: ‘Well, why should I vote? It’s rigged,’ ” said Rep. Earl Carter, a Republican, who represents Savannah in the House. “You have to get out. The president is out there making sure this was a transparent and honest election.”

Pence was not the only Republican acknowledging that questions about election integrity had sapped some voters’ enthusiasm. Soothing Republicans who think the election was stolen, while telling them to vote again in a few weeks, has been tricky for GOP leaders.

“We’re going to continue to fight for our president, Donald Trump,” said Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel at the rally, telling the crowd to reelect their senators to “fight for election integrity so that this never happens again.”

“Don’t be pressed by somebody saying, ‘I’m just going to sit it out, I don’t like what they did in the general election,’ ” Georgia Public Service Commissioner Lauren “Bubba” McDonald said. “You’ve got to get over it. Please, get over it.”

Loeffler did not attend the rally, canceling her appearance after the death of a staffer in a car crash. Perdue did not mention the election challenges in his remarks, which focused on the liberal policies that could be approved if Republicans lose the Senate.

But Pence repeatedly referred to the election contest, promising to fight “until every legal vote” is counted, while urging Republicans to vote early or request absentee ballots – even as conservative activists suggest that those ballots were at the center of conspiracies to rig the vote.

“We’re on them this time,” Pence said. “We’re watching. We’re going to secure our polls. We’re going to secure our drop boxes. So get an absentee ballot and turn it in today.”

Several Republicans who came to see Pence acknowledged the controversy and said that they, too, had questions about the vote but that they still intended to cast ballots.

“I’m keeping the faith,” said Kevin Volland, 45, as he waited for Pence to speak in Savannah on Friday. “How is there a Senate runoff, anyway? Did they swing votes away from Perdue and Loeffler? Possibly. I don’t feel 100 percent confident about Jan. 5, but I’ll be there, because I have faith. I have to.”

Harold Holifield, 59, an Army veteran from Effingham County, Ga., said he hoped Republicans would stay together.

“You don’t destroy each other trying to get toward a common goal,” Holifield said. “Hopefully [Republicans are] working for a common goal. If not, they’re turning into cannibals and eating their own.”

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Neera Tanden, Biden’s pick for budget chief, runs a think tank backed by corporate and foreign interests (nationthailand.com)

Neera Tanden, Biden’s pick for budget chief, runs a think tank backed by corporate and foreign interests

InternationalDec 06. 2020Neera Tanden 

By The Washington Post · Yeganeh Torbati, Beth Reinhard · NATIONAL, BUSINESS, WORLD, POLITICS 

In her nine years helming Washington’s leading liberal think tank, Neera Tanden mingled with deep-pocketed donors who made their fortunes on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley and in other powerful sectors of corporate America.

At formal pitches and swanky fundraisers, Tanden personally cultivated the bevy of benefactors fueling the $45 to 50 million annual budget of the Center for American Progress.

Now that President-elect Joe Biden has picked Tanden to run the Office of Management and Budget at the White House, her ties to some of the most powerful players in the U.S. economy are drawing scrutiny from some progressives and advocates for accountability in government.

The OMB acts as the nerve center of the federal government, executing the annual spending plan, setting fiscal and personnel policy for agencies, and overseeing the regulatory process across the executive branch. As OMB director, Tanden would have a hand in policies that touch every part of the economy after years spent courting corporate and foreign donors. These regulatory decisions will have profound implications for a range of U.S. companies, dictating how much they pay in taxes, the barriers they face and whether they benefit from new stimulus programs.

Between 2014 and 2019, CAP received at least $33 million in donations from firms in the financial sector, private foundations primarily funded by wealth earned on Wall Street and in other investment firms, and current or former executives at financial firms such as Bain Capital, Blackstone and Evercore, according to a Washington Post analysis of CAP’s donor disclosures and some of the foundations’ public tax filings. In the same time period, CAP received between $4.9 million and $13 million from Silicon Valley companies and foundations, including Facebook and founder Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropic organization.

CAP reports its donations only in wide ranges, making an exact figure impossible to determine. Other notable corporate donors include retail giant Walmart, insurer CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, defense contractor Northrop Grumman and for-profit college operator DeVry Education Group.

“CAP has been one of the most aggressive (think tanks) in courting corporate donors,” said Zephyr Teachout, a law professor at Fordham University in New York who has campaigned for elected office on curbing the power of special interests. Those donors, she said, “believe they can shape the worldview of the people whose voices are going to be heard and powerful with the next president.”

CAP says less than 2.5% of its funding last year came from corporate sources, down from 7% in 2011, and that corporate money does not support the think tank’s direct research. CAP’s accounting of corporate donors is limited to money that flows directly from businesses and doesn’t include money from corporate executives or foundations whose wealth comes from Wall Street.

CAP spokesman Jesse Lee said the organization “retains complete control” over its work and that all contributions come without strings attached. The organization advocates a progressive agenda that would adversely affect the bottom line for some major donors – a tax on financial transactions, upping oversight of “shadow banks” such as hedge funds and investment firms, antitrust scrutiny of big tech, a public option for health insurance, and a reversal of President Trump’s corporate tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks.

“There are many instances where the work we do cuts against the business or financial interests of our donors,” Lee said. “CAP’s policy work has always been, and will always be, independent and driven by solutions that we believe will create a more equitable and just country.”

Tanden has told staff that she will remain as CAP president through her confirmation, but Lee said she suspended her involvement in fundraising after Biden announced her nomination.

The Post reached out to all the individual and corporate donors mentioned in this story for comment. Zuckerberg’s foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, said in a statement that its funding for CAP mainly went toward criminal justice reform efforts. A CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield representative said the insurer “engages with many partners to ensure our members have access to affordable, high-quality care.” Other donors could not be reached, did not respond or declined to comment.

As a think tank, CAP provides research and advocacy about economics, criminal justice, health care, immigration and other issues. It was a popular landing place for former Obama administration officials such as Tanden, who served in a top role at the Department of Health and Human Services during the fight over the Affordable Care Act. She became CAP’s president in 2011 and received $396,063 in compensation last year from the think tank and its political arm, according to tax filings.

If she clears a potentially arduous Senate confirmation hearing, Tanden will enter the White House at a time of dire economic crisis, facing pressure from Republicans to dramatically cut spending. At the same time, progressives are pushing the new administration to rebuild the nation’s safety net for families devastated by the coronavirus pandemic, reverse Trump’s deregulatory drive and tackle what progressives see as the monopolistic practices of Silicon Valley tech giants.

The Biden transition team declined to make Tanden available for an interview about CAP’s fundraising, referring to her comments when she was officially named to Biden’s economic team. She vowed to “help shape those budgets and programs to keep lifting Americans up, to pull families back from the brink.” Tanden’s nomination has received widespread praise from high-profile progressive Democrats, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sherrod Brown of Ohio.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the former presidential candidate – who, after a swipe at his personal wealth by the former media arm of CAP’s political affiliate, accused CAP last year of being beholden to corporate donors – declined to comment on Tanden’s OMB nomination. Tanden expressed regret about the attack on Sanders at the time and said she had no editorial control over the media site.

Some past OMB directors in Democratic administrations previously worked in the federal government, while others had fundraising backgrounds from serving in Congress or working at foundations and private companies. The current director, Russell Vought, served as vice president of Heritage Action for America, a conservative advocacy group.

The Biden team will take over the executive branch from an administration which, despite Trump’s pledge to “drain the swamp,” regularly and dramatically flouted ethical norms. A review last year by ProPublica found that the Trump administration had employed 281 lobbyists, quadruple the number the Obama administration had employed six years into office. And Trump’s refusal to divest himself from his hotel businesses means that he financially benefited from the presidency, with his properties receiving at least $2.5 million in taxpayer funds since he took office.

A White House spokesman, Judd Deere, said Trump “has always taken his responsibility seriously to uphold the rule of law and govern this nation ethically and soundly.”

Progressives are demanding that a Biden administration serve as the starkest possible ethical contrast to the Trump administration.

“Neera Tanden has spent the last decade raising money from the top companies and highest-net-worth individuals in the country, which is a bit at odds with what Biden pitched during the campaign,” said Matt Bruenig, president of the People’s Policy Project, a left-wing think tank that accepts only small donations.

CAP’s ties to corporate and foreign interests are not unique among Washington think tanks. Though frequently cast as independent, scholarly sources of expertise, many think tanks are backed by the same businesses and foreign governments that hire Capitol Hill influence peddlers. These think tanks essentially operate as unregistered lobbyists, reaping the benefits of tax-exempt status while disclosing limited information about their donors.

The fiercest criticism of CAP’s fundraising has targeted its acceptance of between $1.5 million and $3 million from the United Arab Emirates in recent years. The country is one of the United States’ staunchest allies in the Middle East and plays a key role in supporting Trump’s hard-line approach to Iran. But human rights advocates condemn the UAE for fighting alongside Saudi Arabia in a civil war that has ravaged Yemen, one of the world’s poorest countries, and for joining with the Saudis in a blockade of neighboring Qatar.

After Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi’s 2018 murder at the hands of Saudi officials, CAP put out a statement denouncing the “heinous and reprehensible act” but stopping short of demanding specific consequences to punish the kingdom. The think tank also declined to go to bat for a bipartisan resolution in the Senate aimed at ending U.S. involvement in the war in Yemen.

In another, previously unreported example of what some in and outside CAP viewed as UAE influence on the think tank, an unsigned essay in 2017 welcomed the ascension of Mohammed bin Salman as the new Saudi crown prince, saying he would usher in a “long era of stability at the top” and “economic and social reforms.”

“That reads like something that would be distributed by a Saudi foreign agent,” said Ben Freeman, who monitors foreign influence at the Center for International Policy. “Thousands of civilians had already been killed in Yemen, and we knew that MBS was the architect of that war. It’s hard for me to understand how CAP could support someone some so oppressive and a regime with absolutely egregious human rights issues.”

Lee pointed to other policy papers and statements on CAP’s website that called for an end to the war and criticized the crown prince’s authoritarian tactics, as well as a foreign policy event in 2018 with a keynote speech by Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a Democrat who has been a leading critic of U.S. involvement in Yemen.

In early 2019, CAP said that though contributions did not influence its foreign policy positions, the think tank would no longer accept donations from the UAE and other anti-democratic governments. Lee said Tanden was not involved in arranging the UAE donations and did not meet with their representatives until after CAP stopped accepting the funding.

The UAE and Saudi embassies did not respond to requests for comment.

But it’s not just think tanks’ dependency on donations from corporate and foreign interests that is problematic, critics said. They argued that the hundreds of hours of relationship-building that goes into securing large donations from big corporations and wealthy individuals gives private interests the opportunity to subtly influence the views of Tanden and others in her position.

In 2018, CAP received a donation of between $50,000 and $99,999 directly from Blackstone, a powerhouse in private equity, as well as a separate one in the same range from Hamilton “Tony” James, Blackstone’s executive vice chairman. That year CAP hosted an event featuring James’s book, in which the billionaire lays out potential solutions to the retirement crisis facing many Americans. Tanden gave introductory remarks at the event for James, who also sits on CAP’s trustee advisory board.

Members of CAP’s board include Andrew Hauptman, chairman of investment firm Andell; Glenn Hutchins, a private equity investor; Eric Mindich, a former hedge fund manager; and Kristin Mugford, a former executive at Bain Capital.

Mindich, who along with his wife has made large donations to CAP in recent years, said the think tank has “some of the most brilliant policy thinkers in the country working to advance values that I share” and that Tanden has a record of turning those values into reality.

“CAP isn’t trying to advance my financial interests. If anything, the opposite,” he said. “They advance the kind of country I want to see.”

“Anyone who thinks Neera would put corporate interests above what she believes is best for America clearly doesn’t know Neera Tanden,” said Mugford, who left Bain in 2013 and now lectures at Harvard Business School. Mugford has made sizable donations to CAP in recent years, which she said reflected her belief in its effectiveness on issues such as economic security, jobs, and education.

“Their policy solutions often go against my personal economic interest, but they reflect my values and will help move our country forward,” she wrote in an emailed statement.

Jeff Hauser, who scrutinizes executive branch appointees at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, called the corporate money that flows into CAP “corrosive,” though he added that the think tank plays an important role in a civil society that lacks public support for policymaking institutions. Founded in 2003 by allies of Bill and Hillary Clinton, CAP is widely viewed as a Democratic administration-in-waiting, with a revolving door between the think tank and the White House.

While CAP certainly doesn’t toe the line of all of its donors, Hauser said it can serve as a moderating influence.

“It’s soft influence but it’s very powerful, and it amounts to influence laundering in terms of the money because people don’t associate CAP with big tech or Wall Street, they associate it with the Democratic Party,” he said. “Being associated with the Center for American Progress is a way to build credibility in Washington. And it’s a way for companies to navigate risk because you have an open line of communication with a government in waiting.”

Michael Ettlinger, director of the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy and a former vice president for economic policy at CAP, said he did not think Tanden’s experience raising money from the corporate world would affect how she approached the OMB position.

“You don’t buy Neera,” he said. “She’s got her strong views and I don’t think she’s going to be hugely influenced.”

During his time at CAP, which he left in 2013, the money the think tank received from corporate donors “never directly affected what we were doing,” he said, though he sensed an extra level of scrutiny if their work had bearing on a donor.

“If we were going to do something that would offend a funder, we were just asked to be really careful that we were positive we were right,” he said.

Potential funders who did ask for quid pro quos in exchange for donations were rejected by the think tank, Ettlinger said. He declined to give specific examples.

Tanden’s experience leading CAP, which publishes policy recommendations for many domestic and foreign issues, has given her the policy chops needed to lead OMB, Ettlinger said. The president-elect called Tanden “a brilliant policy mind with critical practical experience across government” and noted that she was raised by a single mother on food stamps.

“She will be in charge of laying out my budget that will help us control the virus, deal with the economic crisis and build back better,” Biden said. “But above all, she believes what I believe – a budget should reflect our values.”

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Former Australian FM calls on Australia to ‘get out of the hole’ with China (nationthailand.com)

Former Australian FM calls on Australia to ‘get out of the hole’ with China

InternationalDec 06. 2020

Former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans

By Chinadaily

CANBERRA — Former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans has called on his country to “get out of the hole” into which it has dug itself with China.

In a recent article published on “Pearls and Irritations,” a specialist blog focusing on policy development, Evans, who was the Australian minister for foreign affairs between 1988 and 1996, pointed out four key failures of Australia in managing its relationship with China.

“The first is … too much tone-deaf stridency in our language, starting with the way Malcolm Turnbull introduced the undue influence legislation in 2017; too much over the top behavior, as in the ASIO/AFP raids on Chinese journalists”, and too much unchecked offensiveness in parliamentary performances, he wrote.

The second point, as he mentioned, is the failure to fully factor in the risks of “not only irritating but hurting China, as we have done in not just joining but leading the international charge on Huawei, tough foreign investment restrictions and foreign influence laws.”

He then talked about Australia’s stands, too many of which “have played all too readily into the United States ‘deputy sheriff’ narrative.”

The last point was the “insufficient recognition that there is not a lot of downside for China in getting stuck into Australia.”

“China may like our coal, and agricultural products, and to have Australia as a student and tourist destination, but it does not need us for any of them,” Evans wrote.

He then moved on to suggestions of how to get out of the hole, including “stop digging” and “moderate the official language.”

“…our leaders should make absolutely clear, when we take a negative position on anything to do with China, that this is a matter of independent national judgment and not of looking over our shoulder for guidance from our own imperial masters,” Evans said.

The next point was that Australia should acknowledge the legitimacy and inevitability of some of China’s international aspirations as well as commercial concerns.

Finally he called on the Australian government to find issues on which there is common ground. “In areas like on climate, nuclear weapons, peacekeeping, counter-terrorism, arms control and — for the most part — response to pandemics, it (China) has played a more interested, constructive and potentially cooperative role than has generally been recognized,” said Evans.

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Va. Republicans navigate Trumpism in 2021 governor’s race (nationthailand.com)

Va. Republicans navigate Trumpism in 2021 governor’s race

InternationalDec 06. 2020Del. Kirk Cox, R-Colonial Heights, addresses a crowd in 2019 after his win against Democrat Sheila Bynum-Coleman. MUST CREDIT: photo for The Washington Post by Julia Rendleman. 

By The Washington Post · Laura Vozzella · NATIONAL, POLITICS 

RICHMOND, Va. – Virginia Republicans, who haven’t won a statewide race in more than a decade, see 2021 as their best chance in years to reverse their losing streak – but they will have to wrestle with Trumpism to do it.

One of just two states (along with New Jersey) to pick a governor the year after the presidential election, Virginia has a habit of rebelling against the party in the White House. By Election Day 2021, President-elect Joe Biden will have been in power nearly a year – and Republicans are hoping the so-called “Virginia curse” will work in their favor as the state elects a governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general. All 100 seats in the House of Delegates also will be on the ballot. 

“When a Democrat is in the White House, Virginia Republicans get bullish, because history shows that’s when the Republicans have the best chance to take back the governor’s mansion,” said Richard Cullen, a former Republican state attorney general and former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

That sense of opportunity means an unusually large pack of Republicans are eyeing the Executive Mansion. And the sheer size of the potential field could complicate how the party contends with Trumpism, which is expected to remain the party’s most animating and problematic force long after President Trump’s term ends.

Two are officially in the race: state Sen. Amanda Chase of Chesterfield and Del. Kirk Cox of Colonial Heights, the former speaker of the House of Delegates. 

Five others are actively exploring bids: Northern Virginia businessman Pete Snyder, who is expected to formally announce soon; former Carlyle Group co-chief executive Glenn Youngkin; state Sen. Emmett W. Hanger Jr. of Augusta; Charles “Bill” Carrico, a retired state trooper and former state senator from Grayson County, in the state’s far Southwest; and outgoing Rep. Denver Riggleman. 

Trump won Virginia’s 2016 presidential primary with just under 35% of the vote, but lost the general election here by five points. This year, he lost the state by 10 points. And in between, Democrats flipped three congressional seats plus the state House and Senate in blue waves widely seen as rebukes to the Republican president. 

While toxic to swing voters in the suburbs, especially in populous Northern Virginia, Trump remains highly popular with the Republican base. That puts the Virginia GOP in a pickle as it chooses its nominee in June, say Republicans and Democrats alike.

“In order to win the [Republican] Party nomination, you’ve got to appeal to the Trumpian right – but in order to win the general, you can’t lose Fairfax [County] by 36 points,” said Jared Leopold, Democratic strategist for one of three Democrats officially running for governor, state Sen. Jennifer McClellan of Richmond. 

The other two Democrats formally in the race are Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax and Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy of Prince William. Former governor Terry McAuliffe, who defied the Virginia curse by winning in 2013 while fellow Democrat Barack Obama was in office, is widely expected to seek a second term. The current governor, Democrat Ralph Northam, is prohibited by the state constitution from seeking back-to-back terms.

Former Republican governor George Allen said the party can best navigate those tricky politics by pursuing “kitchen table” issues, such as education and jobs, that have appeal across the aisle. A softer style, he said, wouldn’t hurt either.

“Most Republicans will not defend President Trump’s manners, but they love what he’s done on taxes, on energy, reasonable regulation, strong national defense, standing up to China and the judges he’s nominated,” Allen said. “Developers from New York City are not known for their hospitality. They’re pushy and all that. . . . I think we need to recognize there’s only one Donald Trump in this universe.” 

Some Republicans openly worry about the candidate who draws the most comparisons to Trump’s flamboyant style: Chase. They say that in a large field, she could emerge as the GOP nominee, alienating swing voters in the general election and dooming the party’s chances up and down the ballot. 

Chase, a senator since 2016, has drawn rebukes from her own party leaders for cursing out a Capitol Police officer over a parking spot and claiming on Facebook that Virginia Democrats “hate white people.” Chase strapped an assault-style weapon over her shoulder for a gun rights rally in July attended by “boogaloo boys,” a far-right anti-government group pushing for a second civil war. (Chase said she didn’t know who was in the crowd.) On Friday, she created a stir by posting side-by-side photos of herself and civil rights icon Rosa Parks on Facebook, with the message: “We never backed down.”

“I know a lot of people say I’m Trump in heels, and I’ve embraced it,” said Chase, who was a home-schooling mom when she got into politics and touts the criticism from fellow Republicans as proof that she’s shaking up the establishment in both parties. “Republicans keep talking about how they want to win the suburbs. I am the suburbs. And suburban women are sometimes a little bit sassy.”

Cox, a retired high school civics teacher and baseball coach who has served 30 years in the House, mostly tries to sidestep the polarizing national issues Chase plays up. He says his mantra – “practical solutions for everyday problems” – appeals to independents and Democrats as well as the blue-collar voters Trump brought in to the party.

“When you knock on a working-class family’s door and you ask them what’s on their mind, it’ s not what the pundits on TV are saying,” he said, adding that K-12 schools and more affordable higher education are more important to them.

Cox has tried to thread the needle when it comes to Trump. Where Chase has led “Stop the steal” rallies alleging, without evidence, voter fraud in Virginia, Cox has held off commenting on the presidential election results. He said he would wait until the electoral college votes in mid-December – an approach that has drawn criticism from Democrats, including Del. Marcus Simon, D-Fairfax, who tweeted that Cox and state party leadership have failed to push back on Chase’s “nonsense.”

Cox seemed to take pains to avoid using Trump’s name in August, when he issued a statement confirming he was exploring a run but saying he would hold off any announcement so the party could focus on its efforts to “defeat Joe Biden.”

While Chase has attacked Cox directly – slamming him, for example, for agreeing to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act – Cox has pushed back more obliquely.

“Part of the appeal of the president is he’s authentic,” he said. “I’m going to be Kirk Cox. . . . They [voters] are not interested in imitations right now.”

Some Trump fans say Chase cannot win them over by mimicking his norm-shattering style.

“What I like about Donald Trump is my embassy’s in Jerusalem, I’ve got 300 judges, I got a tax cut,” said Matt Colt Hall, a Southwest Virginia native and political commentator for the conservative blog Bearing Drift. “There are people out there that can give the Trump policy without strapping an AR-15 across their chests in downtown Richmond.” 

John Fredericks, a conservative radio host and Trump backer who was chairman of his Virginia campaign in 2016, says Chase is not the automatic heir to the Trump vote.

“Just because you jump up and down and flail your arms doesn’t mean you’re inheriting the Trump votes. That’s what Corey Stewart did, running around with Confederate flags,” he said, referring to the Trumpian Republican who challenged Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., in 2018 and lost by 16 points. “Trump expanded the party. Amanda shrinks the party.”

But even Chase’s critics think she has a good shot at the nomination. 

“She absolutely could get the nomination,” said Cole Trower, who represents the Young Republican Federation of Virginia on the State Central Committee. “When you have several other candidates who are mainstream splitting the vote up, then the path to victory becomes easier for her.” 

That anxiety was expected to spill over into the State Central Committee meeting Saturday, when members began meeting remotely at 10 a.m. to decide whether to nominate its slate of statewide candidates in a primary or a convention. The meeting will be streamed live on the party’s Facebook page. 

Conventions, typically day-long events with multiple rounds of voting, are more likely to favor far-right candidates, because often, only the most hardcore party activists are willing to travel across the state to participate. 

But the politics of the convention-primary choice were scrambled this year. Chase, who might be expected to fare well at a convention, said she feared it would be rigged by party leaders out to undermine her, and vowed to run as an independent if the committee chose that method. 

Meanwhile, some Republicans who typically favor primaries but oppose Chase considered voting for a convention because they doubted that she could garner the required majority vote – 50 percent plus one. In a primary, she could win with a plurality.

“She’s the favorite to be the nominee in a crowded primary. No question about it,” Fredericks said, estimating she might have support from 30 percent to 35 percent of Republicans. “Amanda is the one candidate that has a base that will come out for her. The problem for Amanda is, the base also has a ceiling, and it’s not 50 percent plus one.”

Trower feared Chase’s opposition to a convention might be a head fake. “You ever heard of the term reverse psychology?” he said. “Her supporters would definitely show up in a convention. They’re going to show up no matter what.”

Riggleman, who lost his nomination at a convention after he’d presided over a same-sex wedding, said a much broader and more representative slice of the electorate can participate in statewide primaries. 

“I don’t think the big-tent party should turn into the carnival-tent party,” said Riggleman, who is considering running as an independent. “The Republican Party just keeps spiraling. . . . If we double down on conventions, the Republican Party will eventually become a third party in Virginia.”

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The coronavirus has come roaring back into Brazil (nationthailand.com)

The coronavirus has come roaring back into Brazil

InternationalDec 06. 2020Rio de Janeiro Gov. Claúdio Castro 

By The Washington Post · Terrence McCoy, Heloísa Traiano · WORLD, THE-AMERICAS 

RIO DE JANEIRO – For weeks, it has seemed to Carla Santos de Lima that people here have been in the thrall of a collective delusion that the pandemic was on the way out. 

The beaches, bars and restaurants had filled. The message: Rio de Janeiro was back. 

The pleasant fiction held for weeks – even as people explained away surging coronavirus cases as a temporary blip. It finally unraveled late last month for Santos de Lima.

Her elderly father had fallen gravely ill with the coronavirus. The family had launched a desperate search to find an intensive care bed for him. But they were all full with other covid patients.

He died Nov. 28, inside an ambulance outside the hospital, just as his long-awaited bed opened up. 

“When the restrictions were relaxed, it resulted in this illusion that the problem was under control,” said Santos de Lima, 33,a public school teacher.”People believed it was possible to resume a certain normality. This ended up bringing about for us a false sense of security.” 

The city – and much of Brazil – is grappling with the sudden realization that there is nothing secure about this moment. The coronavirus has suddenly roared back.

And there’s now the chance that even in pandemic-battered Brazil – where more people have died of the virus than any other nation save the United States – things could soon become as bad, if not worse, than ever before.

In Rio de Janeiro, where the virus has already killed tens of thousands, upturned the economy and sent rates of homelessness soaring, moments that recall the darkest days of the pandemic are once more appearing in the news. 

Sick people, unable to get help in the medical system, are again being found dead at home. Lines stretching into the hundreds are forming for intensive care beds. Hospital officials are warning of supply shortages and an imminent collapse in medical services. 

Even the vaunted private heathcare system reached 98% capacity in its intensive care units this week, officials said. In states across the country, the situation wasn’t much better.

“Brazil has to be very, very serious,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, told reporters earlier this week. The situation is “very, very worrisome.”

But public health experts in Rio de Janeiro are expressing alarm over what they are seeing – both from officials and also from ordinary people. 

In May, during the worst weeks of the first wave, city life was vastly constrained. Even if Rio never fully locked down, shops and restaurants closed, people worked from home and several field hospitals were opened. 

This time is different. There is neither talk of field hospitals, nor restrictions on businesses. The streets and beaches remain full of unmasked people who are either unaware or unbothered by the alarming health warnings. 

“We are not going to take a step backward,” acting Rio de Janeiro Gov. Claúdio Castro said Thursday, conceding the difficulty of reinstating restrictions. “It’s no use to pass measures that the population won’t follow.” 

On Friday, Castro and Rio Mayor Marcelo Crivella announced the opening of more hospital beds and that city schools would halt classes. But health officials across the country are warning that such minor restrictions almost certainly won’t be enough. 

The most powerful weapon against the coronavirus – fear – has dulled. Many people either simply don’t care or no longer believe in the dangers posed by the coronavirus.

“We’re facing a campaign of disinformation and denial,” said Suzana Lobo, the president of the Brazilian Association of Intensive Medicine. “The impact in January will be very, very large. Our fear is that in January and February the health system won’t be able to bear it.”

In a fiercely individualistic society, where people have little trust in either government or each other, the pandemic has from the beginning been a mass social experiment in the limits of scientific persuasion. But now public health officials are increasingly worried that their warnings don’t matter. 

“It’s this story: ‘My life for a dip in the ocean,'” said Ligia Bahia, a public health professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. “It’s as if we haven’t learned any lessons. For us, it’s very sad.”

“We’re completely defeated,” she added. “I don’t even want to talk about a vaccine.”

Now many Brazilians who have been victimized by the disease only see a year filled with mistakes, errors in judgment and confusion.

Santos de Lima, the teacher, said everyone in her family, who live in the impoverished and crime-plagued area of Pavuna, had been petrified by the disease. But as cases began to diminish, the city relaxed almost all of its containment measures. 

“Very, very, very irresponsible,” Santos de Lima now says of the decision.

But at the time, she, along with much of the city, was loosening up. Allowing herself to believe the worst had passed, she went back to the classroom. And her family started to get together once more, even though her 65-year-old father, Carlos Alberto Correia de Lima, was in poor health. Soon much of the family had the coronavirus.

Now many of them can’t look past the guilt.

“You ask whether we are responsible for what happened,” she said. “We keep asking if things could have been different, if our contact could have been avoided.”

But she can’t come up with any good answers.

“The guideline is to avoid contact, but are we supposed to stay in complete isolation for nine months?”

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Just 25 congressional Republicans acknowledge Biden’s win, Washington Post survey finds (nationthailand.com)

Just 25 congressional Republicans acknowledge Biden’s win, Washington Post survey finds

InternationalDec 06. 2020

Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler share the stage with President Trump during a rally Saturday night in Valdosta, Ga. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford

By The Washington Post · Paul Kane, Scott Clement · NATIONAL, POLITICS, CONGRESS 

WASHINGTON – Just 25 congressional Republicans acknowledge Joe Biden’s win over President Donald Trump a month after the former vice president’s clear victory of more than 7 million votes nationally and a convincing electoral-vote margin that exactly matched Trump’s 2016 tally. 

Two Republicans consider Trump the winner despite all evidence showing otherwise. And another 222 GOP members of the House and Senate – nearly 90% of all Republicans serving in Congress – will simply not say who won the election.

Those are the findings of a Washington Post survey of all 249 Republicans in the House and Senate that began the morning after Trump posted a 46-minute video Wednesday evening in which he wrongly claimed he had defeated Biden and leveled wild and unsubstantiated allegations of “corrupt forces” who stole the outcome from the sitting president. 

A team of 25 Post reporters contacted aides for every Republican by email and phone asking three basic questions – who won the presidential contest, do you support or oppose Trump’s continuing efforts to claim victory and if Biden wins a majority in the electoral college, will you accept him as the legitimately elected president – and also researched public statements made by the GOP lawmakers in recent weeks to determine their stance on Biden’s win. 

The results demonstrate the fear that most Republicans have of the outgoing president and his grip on the party, despite his new status as just the third incumbent to lose reelection in the last 80 years. More than 70% of Republican lawmakers did not acknowledge The Post’s questions as of Friday evening. 

They are largely hiding from answering questions about the election, neither congratulating Biden nor embracing Trump’s most strident positions and false claims. Just eight Republicans, 3% of all GOP lawmakers, voiced support for Trump’s current strategy of claiming victory and asking state legislatures to declare him the victor in states that he lost. 

This GOP nonresponse stands in stark contrast to Democrats in 2016. The morning after media outlets called Trump the winner, Hillary Clinton conceded and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N. Y., fielded a call from Trump. Schumer issued a statement shortly thereafter congratulating the president-elect and calling for Americans to “come together.”

Today, most Republicans just want to avoid the Trump question altogether, following the lead of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., whose office pointed to his recent comments about the election and declined to participate in the survey. 

On Tuesday, McConnell ducked questions about Trump’s claim of fraud and refused to take any leadership role in acknowledging Biden’s victory. 

“The future will take care of itself,” he told reporters. 

On Thursday, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., would not even consider how he would fight executive orders in Biden’s first days in office, leaving open the idea that someone else could be sworn in on Jan. 20. 

“Let’s wait until [we see] who’s sworn in,” McCarthy said, “and we can discuss that.”

Today’s reactions – or, mostly, non-reactions – mirror how many Republicans handled four years of Trump’s intemperance: A few predictable Trump critics would condemn his actions, such as the decision to use tear gas on peaceful protesters to clear Lafayette Square in June so Trump could walk across the park, but most would try to avoid the subject. 

Their complicit silence now comes as Trump continues to mount an unfounded campaign against the democratic outcome of an election, leaving them isolated as other federal, state and local Republican officials have rejected Trump’s false assertions. 

Even Kellyanne Conway – Trump’s 2016 campaign manager and longtime adviser, who famously coined the phrase “alternative facts” – went further than most Republican members of Congress. She admitted Friday that it looked like Biden “will prevail” and called for a “peaceful transfer of democracy.”

On Tuesday, Attorney General William Barr declared that the Justice Department had not found any evidence of voter fraud that would change the outcome of the election, following the top election cybersecurity official’s declaration that the election had been safe from any hacking. 

The president summarily fired that official, Christopher Krebs, and is said to be weighing action against Barr.

The Trump campaign has suffered multiple losses in their post-election legal challenges to overturn the results, with stinging defeats Friday in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada and Wisconsin.

In Arizona and Nevada, judges tossed full-scale challenges to the states’ election results filed by the Republican Party and the campaign, respectively.

Last month, U.S. District Judge Matthew W. Brann dismissed a Trump campaign lawsuit to block the certification of Pennsylvania’s election results, and in a scathing opinion, wrote that the campaign had “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations” in its effort to throw out millions of votes.

“In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state,” Brann wrote.

Two Michigan Republican legislative leaders, after being summoned to the White House, announced they would not intervene to block Biden’s relatively comfortable win there. In Arizona, Republican Gov. Doug Ducey signed election results Monday certifying Biden’s narrow victory there, saying a bipartisan collection of local officials oversaw a clean election. 

In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both Republicans, certified Biden’s slender victory there and have resisted calls from Trump and his supporters to throw out the results. 

One of Raffensperger’s deputies implored the state’s U.S. senators, Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, to oppose Trump’s efforts, warning of potential violence to civil servants.

Instead, Perdue’s public and private actions are emblematic of how many Republicans feel. 

With him and Loeffler facing Jan. 5 runoff elections that will determine the Senate majority, the two have publicly embraced Trump’s baseless claim that the Dominion Voting Systems machines used in Georgia were rigged as part of a global conspiracy, hoping to retain support among the president’s strongest backers. Both also have called for Raffensperger to resign.

Yet, in a video obtained by The Post, Perdue privately acknowledged the reality that Trump lost and that Republicans needed to focus on those Georgia races to save the Senate majority. 

“We can at least be a buffer on some of the things that the Biden camp has been talking about,” he told donors on a video conference.

Other highlights from the survey found that:

– 11 of the 52 Senate Republicans acknowledge Biden’s victory;

– Of the 14 House Republicans who recognize the true winner, six are retiring from politics at the end of this month and two more represent districts that Biden won convincingly.

Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., went as far as any Republican in embracing Biden. The two worked together on the “Beau Biden Cancer Moonshot” proposal, named for Biden’s son who died of brain cancer in 2015, turning it into a massive 2016 medical research bill.

Within hours of the Nov. 7 declaration of Biden’s victory, Upton vowed to work with the new administration. 

“I am raising my hand and committing to work with President-elect Biden and my colleagues on both sides of the aisle,” he said. 

Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., held out until Nov. 21 when a federal judge, ushered to confirmation by the staunch conservative senator, issued a scathing rebuke of Trump’s legal challenges in Pennsylvania and gave a legal seal of approval to Biden’s win there.

“Joe Biden won the 2020 election and will become the 46th President of the United States. I congratulate President-elect Biden,” Toomey said in a statement. 

Judges in other states have repeatedly rebuffed the Trump campaign’s legal challenges, and on Friday the effort suffered losses in Michigan, Arizona and Nevada.

Reps. Paul Gosar of Arizona and Mo Brooks of Alabama are the only Republicans in Congress who have publicly insisted Trump is the winner. Gosar has spent several weeks embracing the disproved conspiracy theory that the Dominion voting machines used in Arizona, Georgia and some other states manipulated the results and stole the election for Biden. Dominion has called the claims unfounded. 

He said he will never accept the Democrat as the legitimately elected president. “No, never. Too much evidence of fraud,” he said.

But Brooks and Gosar are extreme outliers on Capitol Hill, with the overwhelming majority of Republicans content to avoid the question. Many have stated that somehow the Dec. 14 meeting of the electoral college, in all 50 states, will provide a clear winner – perhaps naively expecting Trump to concede that point.

Still, as enough states have certified the results to make Biden the winner, Republicans still won’t publicly commit now to considering the Democrat the legitimately elected president when he wins the majority in the electoral college.

No one has a trickier task than Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo.,, who is chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, which is in charge of all events on Capitol grounds for the Jan. 20 inauguration.

Committee staff have acknowledged that Biden is the winner and begun working with the president-elect’s team to plan the event, with much of the usual pomp and circumstance getting a new look for social distancing during the pandemic. 

“We are working with the Biden administration, likely administration, on both the transition and the inauguration,” Blunt said Sunday on CNN, catching himself after he declared Biden the winner. 

He paused and tried to explain how he still is awaiting the electoral college decision in a few days. 

Is Joe Biden the president-elect? 

“Well, the president-elect will be the president-elect when the electors vote for him. There is no official job president-elect,” he said. 

Blunt’s office did not answer The Post’s question on whether he would accept Biden as the legitimately elected president if he wins the majority in the electoral college.

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Deflation alarm in Spain tests Lagarde’s optimism on prices (nationthailand.com)

Deflation alarm in Spain tests Lagarde’s optimism on prices

InternationalDec 05. 2020Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, speaks during a live stream video of the central bank’s virtual rate decision news conference in Frankfurt, Germany, on Oct. 29, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Chris Ratcliffe. Photo by: Chris Ratcliffe — Bloomberg /Location: Danbury, United Kingdom 

By Syndication The Washington Post, Bloomberg · Jeannette Neumann 

When the coronavirus hit Europe this year, Manuel Vegas asked his Spanish association of hotel directors to avoid cutting room costs by more than 25%. Instead, they plunged as much as 60%, and he reckons “we won’t get back to 2019 prices until at least 2023.”

Falling prices can be found across the continent as economic restrictions and job insecurity deter spending. But in some quarters it’s the fear of steep and entrenched declines — a deflationary trap that drags wages and ultimately brings the whole economy down — that has people like Vegas worried most.

Weaker economies, and those more reliant on services such as tourism, are at the greatest risk, putting much of southern Europe once again in danger. Of the seven euro-area nations on the Mediterranean and Adriatic seas, only France and Malta have positive rates of inflation. Spain’s is -0.9%, Greece’s is -2%.

Policymakers in Madrid are also making the case that the rest of the bloc isn’t immune though. Subzero inflation in places such as Germany may be largely explained by tax cuts and lower energy bills, but the perception of falling prices can take hold if it persuades consumers to put off spending now in the hope of a better deal later.

“We are seeing an increase in the portion of goods whose prices are increasing very little or falling, which is a sign of the risk” in the euro zone, Oscar Arce, the Bank of Spain’s chief economist, said in an interview last month.

So far, the European Central Bank isn’t too worried. While it will almost certainly boost monetary stimulus next week, that’s to counter the shock of the second wave of the pandemic. It projects inflation — currently the weakest since 2016 at -0.3% — will turn positive next year.

President Christine Lagarde declared on Oct. 29 that she didn’t foresee deflationary threats “at all.” Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel said this week the aim of stimulus should be to maintain current financial conditions, not make them even looser.

That’s a view shared by some economists, who say a swift growth rebound after the crisis subsides will kill any deflationary pressures.

“When the economy is back in shape, we’ll see prices increase again,” said Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “People will realize there is a lot of accumulated demand.”

Even Bank of Greece Governor Yannis Stournaras is banking on such a bounceback. While acknowledging that his nation’s price declines have postponed spending and deepened the recession, he said in an interview that “with the recovery of the economy next year, the inflation rate will become positive again.”

One factor that could help southern Europe in particular is the European Union’s 1.8 trillion-euro ($2.2 trillion) enhanced budget and recovery fund, which will disburse grants and cheap loans to countries to aid the recovery from the pandemic.

That spending, though temporary, counters an underlying weakness in the euro zone. While the ECB strives to stabilize inflation at just under 2%, that’s an average for the bloc as a whole, risking some countries being left behind. Fiscal support can help plug that gap — one reason why the ECB has long argued for a permanent such facility.

Still, Jordi Gali, an economist at Spain’s Research Center for International Economy, wonders if the pandemic might have had a deeper impact by permanently instilling caution in consumers, with consequences for prices.

“We may be in a situation — and this is extremely uncertain because we don’t have a precedent in recent times — in which savings remain abnormally high,” Gali said. “The concern is that we may get trapped in this very low level of inflation that could be negative or slightly negative like in Japan over much of the past three decades.”

Such a risk is what officials such as Arce, and his boss, Bank of Spain Governor Pablo Hernandez de Cos, warn the euro region is facing if the ECB doesn’t act decisively enough.

Even if their colleagues in Frankfurt don’t buy into that argument next week, it could factor into future decisions both on easing and on the redesign of its monetary policy framework.

The central bank is already discussing shifting the definition of its price-stability goal in a way that could allow for overshooting on inflation after long periods of weakness. It is mulling a new target of 2%, rather than “close to but below 2%.”

For Athanasios Orphanides, a former ECB Governing Council member, that last change is a no-brainer — and should be enacted immediately rather than when the strategic review ends around the second half of next year.

“If the average is too low, as the ECB has been maintaining after the euro crisis, then more states actually enter into deflation territory,” he said. “That’s one reason it’s bad policy for the ECB to be maintaining this ‘lowflation’ regime.”

It’s a view Spain’s hotel managers would recognize, even if they don’t follow the details of the ECB’s policy debates.

“We will be living with the scars from this crisis for some time,” Vegas said. “Not just in Spain, but across Europe.”