Author: Mary Pat Campbell

Diversity Quotas ‘Absolutely’ Work, Ursula Burns Says

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.ai-cio.com/news/diversity-quotas-absolutely-work-ursula-burns-says/

Excerpt:

Change will not come naturally to corporate boards without diversity quotas, according to Ursula M. Burns, the former chairman and CEO of Xerox. She was the first Black female chief executive of a Fortune 500 company. 

“I was dead set against quotas, but now I think quotas are absolutely, positively acceptable,” Burns said in a keynote panel for the California Conference for Women. “They’re the punishment that you get when you don’t do the right thing by yourself.” 

She noted how a change in the Golden State’s laws spurred the naming of female directors, in a conversation with California first partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who helped found gender equity nonprofit California Partners Project, directed the documentary film “Miss Representation,” and moderated the panel. Burns pointed out that public companies in California were quick to find women for their directorships when it was mandated by law in 2018, despite previously insisting that there is too little female talent in the pipeline. 

Author(s): Sarah Min

Publication Date: 5 March 2021

Publication Site: ai-CIO

Doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 Vaccine Pile Up in Europe Amid Government Restrictions

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/doses-of-astrazenecas-covid-19-vaccine-pile-up-in-europe-amid-government-restrictions-11614715968

Excerpt:

Europe’s reluctance to distribute millions of doses of AstraZeneca PLC’s Covid-19 vaccine is coming under pressure after the French government authorized use of the shot for some older people.

The French government announced it would allow people with comorbidities between the ages of 65 and 74 to receive the vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca. New data from the U.K. on Monday showed just one dose of the vaccine was effective in preventing disease and deaths among adults aged 70 and older who had received it.

France’s move was a sharp departure from a month ago when President Emmanuel Macron told reporters that the vaccine was quasi ineffective for people older than 65, without providing evidence to back up his claim. The comments helped sow doubts across the European Union that still persist.

Author(s): Stacy Meichtry, Bojan Pancevski

Publication Date: 2 March 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

Cracks develop as top Chicago union leader testifies about convention industry: “We can’t exist” with the governor’s “Phase 4 limbo”

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://capitolfax.com/2021/03/04/cracks-develop-as-top-chicago-union-leader-testifies-about-convention-industry-we-cant-exist-with-the-governors-phase-4-limbo/

Excerpt:

* The Illinois Hotel & Lodging Association live-tweeted testimony today by Chicago Federation of Labor President Bob Reiter to the Senate Tourism and Hospitality Committee about the city’s convention business…

@BobReiterJr from @chicagolabor during IL Senate Tourism Cmte. hearing: Decisions made now will impact the #travel industry for this summer and beyond. Without a roadmap, current regulations are causing events to be canceled as far out as 2022.

@BobReiterJr: Other states like Nevada & New York are moving ahead w/ changes to allow for events to reopen. We have been working w/ health experts on protocols and believe events should resume w/ 50% occupancy cap and no maximum as long as precautions are implemented.

A balancing act needs to be had that protects people’s health but also need to look at what needs to be done to get people back to work. 25-30,000 union hospitality & convention workers are out of work & are making the decisions b/w paying for healthcare, mortgage or buying food

Author(s): Rich Miller

Publication Date: 4 March 2021

Publication Site: Capitol Fax

TRUST? ILLINOIS STILL REFUSES TO PAY ITS PENSION BILL.

Mary Pat Campbell
Trust? Illinois still refuses to pay its pension bill.

Excerpt:

Only the statutory contribution is not what the state owes to meet its obligation and prevent more debt. “Statutory” should be translated as the legislature made up a number and blew it out their collective butts.

The actuarial amount owed, the amount actually needed to keep from growing the liability is several billion more that the statutory amount.

They short the pension system every year, after year, after year, after year. And this year again.

Not exactly a trust-building thing, right?

Author(s): Fred Klonsky

Publication Date: 28 February 2021

Publication Site: Fred Klonsky

How To Stop The Manchin Presidency And Raise The Minimum Wage

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.dailyposter.com/p/how-to-stop-the-manchin-presidency

Excerpt:

Any standalone, substantial minimum wage bill will face a filibuster requiring 60 votes to overcome it. Despite the White House fantasizing that Republicans might support a serious minimum wage increase, there probably are not 10 GOP senate votes to break such a filibuster. 

Meanwhile, if Democrats try to attach a minimum wage increase to a bill that Republicans actually really want to vote for — say, the National Defense Authorization Act — Republicans could move to simply strike it out of that underlying bill, which enough conservative Democrats might agree to, and then the GOP would vote en masse for final passage of the stripped-down legislation.

Everyone in Washington knows this script, so a move to attach a minimum wage to a bill like this would likely be a performative gesture, but not a legislative victory.

Author(s): David Sirota

Publication Date: 4 March 2021

Publication Site: Daily Poster

Implications of COVID-19 Mortality Patterns for Nursing Home Regulation in New York

Mary Pat Campbell
Implications of COVID-19 Mortality Patterns for Nursing Home Regulation in New York

Graphic:

Excerpt:

In its January 28 report, the attorney general’s office argued that low staffing levels in nursing homes was associated with higher death rates from the novel coronavirus. As evidence of that connection, the report presented a table (reproduced in Table 1 below) comparing death rates in nursing homes based on their star ratings for staffing from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).[5] It showed that homes with the lowest staffing grade of one star had an aggregate COVID-19 mortality rate of 7.13 percent, compared to 4.94 percent for homes with a five-star rating.

However, that table was based on the limited data available in mid-November, which encompassed 6,645 deaths, only half the number that are documented now.

When that table is brought up to date, it shows no clear association between lower staffing grades and higher coronavirus mortality (see Table 2). Homes with a three-star staff rating showed the largest percentage of deaths, at 13.62, compared to 12.98 for two-star homes and 12.14 for one-star homes.[6]

Author(s): Bill Hammond, Ian Kingsbury

Publication Date: 4 March 2021

Publication Site: Empire Center for Public Policy

Cuomo Aides Altered Nursing Home Report to Conceal Death Toll

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.nationalreview.com/news/cuomo-aides-altered-nursing-home-report-to-conceal-death-toll/

Excerpt:

Aides to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo rewrote a July report by state health officials to conceal the number of nursing home residents who died from coronavirus in the state, according to reports.

Cuomo’s top aides worked to hide the fact that more than 9,000 nursing home residents had died from the virus in the state at the time, according to reports from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. 

….

Cuomo’s aides clashed with the state’s health officials over the July report, which the Health Department worked on with the consulting firm McKinsey. The report included a chart comparing nursing home deaths in New York with other states, according to the New York Times, which showed that New York’s total of 9,250 deaths was far greater than that of the next highest state, New Jersey, which had 6,150 at that time.

The chart put the death toll at about 50 percent higher than the number the Cuomo administration had touted at the time.

Author(s): BRITTANY BERNSTEIN

Publication Date: 5 March 2021

Publication Site: National Review

Combined State and Federal Corporate Income Tax Rates in 2021

Mary Pat Campbell
Combined State and Federal Corporate Income Tax Rates in 2021

Graphic:

Excerpt:

Corporations in the United States pay federal corporate income taxes levied at a 21 percent rate. Many states also levy taxes on corporate income. Forty-four states and D.C. have corporate income taxes on the books, with top rates ranging from North Carolina’s single rate of 2.5 percent to a top marginal rate of 11.5 percent in New Jersey. Fourteen states levy graduated corporate income tax rates, while the remaining 30 states levy a flat rate on corporate income.

In Nevada, Ohio, Texas, and Washington, corporations are subject to gross receipts taxes in lieu of corporate income taxes. Delaware and Oregon impose a tax on corporate income and a separate levy on gross receipts.

Author(s): Garrett Watson

Publication Date: 3 March 2021

Publication Site: Tax Foundation

How elimination versus suppression became Covid’s cold war

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/03/covid-19-elimination-versus-suppression?mc_cid=919aa668d9&mc_eid=983bcf5922

Excerpt:

The rest of the world is pursuing a mitigation and suppression strategy, according to which we will have to live with Covid-19 and therefore we must learn to manage it – aiming for herd immunity by the most painless route possible. The poster child for this approach is Sweden’s chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, who told me last week that elimination was a pipe dream for most of the world because even if a country were able to achieve it once, it would be impossible to prevent reintroductions without maintaining a costly and potentially restrictive surveillance apparatus. If the strategy failed, the country would have to revert to suppression anyway, but the population would have paid a much higher price. He too is in it for the long haul, he says; “sustainability” is his watchword. This is how he justifies the gradual tightening of restrictions in his country, from a very relaxed start.

And so the world is cleaved in two, with each bloc operating according to a different set of assumptions, in a kind of public health rerun of the cold war. One bloc assumes that Covid-19 can be eliminated, the other that it can’t. The latter thinks the former is chasing an impossible utopia. The former thinks the utopia could be achieved if only everyone pulled together.

Author(s): Laura Spinney

Publication Date: 3 March 2021

Publication Site: The Guardian

Greensill Capital planning to file for insolvency in U.K. this week

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/greensill-capital-planning-to-file-for-insolvency-in-u-k-this-week-11614789098

Excerpt:

Embattled financial startup Greensill Capital plans to file for insolvency in the U.K. this week, as it simultaneously moved toward a deal to sell its operating business to Apollo Global Management APO, -1.69%, according to people familiar with the matter.

The deal with Apollo, which could be struck by the end of the week, would be part of a Greensill insolvency, similar to the U.S. bankruptcy process, the people said.

The Wall Street Journal previously reported the two sides were in talks for a deal that would pay Greensill around $100 million. Through the acquisition Apollo would take over Greensill’s core operations and inherit clients that generate around $7 billion in assets, according to the people familiar with the matter.

Author(s): Julie Steinberg and Ben Dummett

Publication Date: 3 March 2021

Publication Site: MarketWatch

Wall Street wants to end Trump-era ESG fund rule for 401(k) plans

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/04/wall-street-wants-to-end-trump-era-esg-fund-rule-for-401k-plans.html

Excerpt:

The Labor Department issued a rule in October, during the Trump administration, that experts say would curb use of ESG funds in 401(k) plans.

Money managers and other stakeholders are pushing the Biden administration to scrap the rule or agree not to enforce it, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Investor demand for ESG funds has grown significantly. 401(k) plans represent a big untapped growth source.

Author(s): Greg Iacurci

Publication Date: 4 March 2021

Publication Site: CNBC