If you mean bu$ine$$:
"Pressure builds on state government to help businesses deal with the pandemic; All eyes will be on the Baker administration on Friday to see what new relief is proposed" by Jon Chesto Globe Staff, June 25, 2020
The federal government has pumped billions of dollars into the Massachusetts economy to help businesses and workers cope during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now, it is the state government’s turn.
The Legislature’s economic development committee will hold a public hearing on Friday to review a stimulus bill filed by the Baker administration mere weeks before the pandemic abruptly closed much of the state’s economy.
Everything changed almost overnight, of course. Rather than turbo-charging an already powerful engine, state officials now want to prevent a sputtering machine from stalling out.
They have moved some policy measures along in response, such as bills that allow notarizations to happen remotely and restaurants to sell beer and wine to go, but a broad economic development bill? We are still waiting.
Unlike Congress, state lawmakers need to pass a balanced budget every year. Money is tight, to say the least, but state officials do have some resources. There should be room in the state budget for targeted business help, assuming more federal aid for states comes through from Congress. They can also borrow money by issuing bonds, and the Baker administration controls millions in federal block grants that advocates want to see deployed as quickly as possible.
The hearing on Friday will last for much of the day. All eyes will be on Mike Kennealy, Governor Charlie Baker’s point person for economic development. Will Kennealy propose changes to reflect the new state of emergency? The committee leadership expects some modifications, but a spokesman for Kennealy declined to respond to questions on Thursday, saying he wouldn’t have anything to share before Friday.
In a legislative hearing earlier this month, Kennealy said the state can’t come anywhere near the $15 billion in federal help that has come to Massachusetts through the Paycheck Protection Program, a disaster loan program, and other efforts. State officials should look at opportunities to fill in the gaps. The original bill focused on housing creation; Kennealy probably won’t give up that priority, even as he faces new urgent needs.
Tourism leaders from Boston, Cape Cod, and Western Mass. will push on Friday to protect the industry’s tiny slice of hotel taxes, some $10 million a year, and will again ask for the authority to create localized hotel taxation districts to fund regional marketing efforts.
The Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations, meanwhile, will continue its campaign for small-business assistance. The original bill included $10 million for community development financial institutions to reach underserved populations with small-business loans. The Mass. Association of CDCs would like to see that increased to $35 million.
Joe Kriesberg, head of the association, says the Baker administration should consider expanding its annual borrowing cap beyond the current limit of $2.4 billion to accommodate the state’s new housing and economic development needs.
He's bulli$h on the economy, and that is their an$wer to everything. More debt!
Kriesberg is also pushing Kennealy’s office to distribute small-business grants as soon as possible from the state’s new allotment of Community Development Block Grant funds. The first distribution, some $9.5 million, could be announced as soon as Friday, and Kriesberg said the state has at least $26 million more to work with. Likewise, the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts will also speak up in favor of grants to help businesses owned by people of color.
Must be nice to be in charge of pa$$ing out the dough! Make people do what you want, especially bin the age of COVID-19.
It’s not all about cash, though. Legislators also can ease the burden on small businesses through policy changes. One example: a bill to help the hard-hit restaurant industry. This measure, among other things, would waive any interest imposed on delayed meals taxes and would cap the fees that meal-delivery companies charge. The House approved the bill, but the Senate hasn’t acted yet. Bob Luz, president of the Massachusetts Restaurant Association, said he remains hopeful after meeting with Senate President Karen Spilka (by Zoom, of course) on Wednesday to discuss its prospects.
OMG!
It's not all about the cash -- meaning that's all it is about!
I feel sorry for Luz. He knows what is going on and yet he is reduced to groveling.
Senator Eric Lesser, cochairman of the economic development committee, said time is of the essence. Every day brings more news of economic devastation. He wants the committee to advance a bill within the next few weeks.
Time is of the essence but the committee will be taking weeks to advance the bill out!
Only in Ma$$achu$etts does that make sense.
Ideally, Lesser would like to see a bill that helps small businesses with their cash-flow crises and prepares waves of displaced workers for new careers. Suddenly struggling hospitals and universities, long reliable bedrocks of the region’s economy, also need to be stabilized.
Suddenly the hospitals and universities are hurting?
Really?
Suddenly?
Yes, the state might need to borrow more money. Could it hurt the state’s credit rating? Maybe, but overly high unemployment is a worse alternative. The risk, Lesser said, is in doing too little to address this problem, not in doing too much.....
Of course, time is of the essence!
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As usual, the money will disappear to who knows where and we will be told that in the chaos and confusion, mistakes were made, blah, blah.
Related:
"The state is expanding its rebate program for electric vehicles to commercial fleets, environmental and energy officials announced Thursday. Companies and nonprofits will be eligible for $2,500 rebates on the purchase of any electric vehicle worth up to $50,000; plug-in hybrids that meet mileage requirements are eligible for rebates worth $1,500. The state program had previously only applied to personal vehicles. It expired briefly last year before receiving new funding for 2020 and 2021. The state has committed at least $27 million to distribute in rebates each year, though so far only about $1.6 million has been distributed through June 2020, according to a state database. In a statement, Governor Charlie Baker said expanding the program to commercial vehicles will help meet the state’s goal of reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The new rules will apply to company-owned vehicles, including vehicles provided to employees; rental car companies will also be eligible, the state said."
They are spewing away millions while the unemployment assistance program is broke (because of Nigerian scammers, pfft. Any excuse to hide massive incompetence, corruption, and theft). Looks like an attempt to drive you out of collecting.
Now Hark, the Landlord's Angels Sing, Glory to the Newborn King.....
Mass. House approves Juneteenth state holiday
Still virtually doing vitally important work!
How could we ever live without them?
Now about that sudden visit to the doctor:
"Harvard study finds pandemic will cost primary care doctors an average of $65,000; The big problem: The switch from in-person visits to online appointments is cutting into revenue" by Jonathan Saltzman Globe Staff, June 25, 2020
Full-time primary care doctors in the United States will lose on average of more than $65,000 in revenue this year as a result of the cancellation of most outpatient visits from February to May, according to a Harvard Medical School study of the impact of COVID-19 on these medical practices.
The lost revenue, combined with uncertainty over how much longer insurers will cover the telephone and video appointments that are replacing many office visits, threatens the viability of some practices and could even lead to closings, the study says.
That's what Gates, et al, want, more centralized consolidation in healthcare.
Did the local doctors know what they were doing, go along because they were ordered to by their pharmaceutical masters, or were they duped by the drill? We know the government is buying their silence if they collaborated with this scam, but what about the rest whose practices will be destroyed? Did they realize this was going to be part of the bargain?
That could imperil America’s health, said the article published Thursday in the journal Health Affairs. The nation’s roughly 220,000 primary care physicians treat more than 60 percent of patients who visit doctors because of chronic conditions, including high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity.
Yeah, hi.
“A health care system without the necessary primary care infrastructure therefore is likely to be increasingly fragmented, more costly, and less effective, and these costs will be borne by all Americans,” said the study, led by researchers at the medical school’s Blavatnik Institute.
Hey, as long as it isn't born by the genocidal eugenicists behind all this and as they as they get richer, then my health is fine.
Dr. Bruce Landon, senior author of the study, said he supports the growing calls for the federal government to provide targeted relief to primary care doctors. The study estimates that it would take about $15 billion to make them whole.
What, they didn't get in on the trillions trough that was rolled out by Treasury and the Fed?
Congre$$ didn't see to your primary care doctors amid COVID-19?
In fact, hundreds of thousands of health workers were laid off during the crisis, an odd time to get rid of qualified professionals, no?
Now the primary care physicians must go begging to save a profession to which they devoted their very soul in earning the credentials -- and Bill Gates his crew has $hat on them.
“If we fail to pay attention to them, many of them are at risk for going away,” said Landon, a professor of health care policy and medicine at Harvard and a practicing internist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
The federal government has provided financial aid to other health care sectors, including $10 billion for rural hospitals.
Problem $olved then.
The pandemic caused hospitals to cancel elective medical procedures and outpatient programs so doctors could focus on COVID-19 patients. That had a devastating impact on the bottom lines of many hospitals and health systems, and the fallout has been widely reported.
Shouldn't have thrown in with the COVID-19 $camdemic, but I guess had no choice since government and health officials work for BIG PHARMA.
Were you guys duped or did you know you were engaging in a $elf-de$tructive endeavor?
The government come to you and say, hey, we are doing this drill for a couple months and we really need you to cooperate on this. When it's over, everything will go back to normal, but we need to do this test to see if we are ready in case an Event 201 happens or something. Is that what they toldja?
Last week, Mass General Brigham, the state’s largest network of hospitals and doctors, said it would temporarily cut executive compensation and freeze pay for thousands of employees after losing $800 million in revenue during the coronavirus epidemic. The measures, which will affect 50,000 employees, are expected to save $500 million for the 12 months beginning July 1. The health care network (formerly Partners HealthCare) also said it would suspend contributions to retirement plans. Mass. General Brigham is the state’s largest private employer, with 78,000 workers.
Nothing about the hundreds of thousands of layoffs in hospitals and health systems across the country during the plannedemic(??!!).
In contrast, said the Harvard study, the plight of primary care doctors and, in particular, independent community-based practitioners, has been “lost in the din.” Primary care practitioners see patients in over half of the roughly 1 billion office visits in the United States each year.
I cancelled my appointment and haven't heard from him since. I'm sure he has plenty of people to call. Let him take a Black man in my place.
Some of these doctors lack a financial cushion to handle the lost revenue. The average primary care practice supports four employees — clinical and office workers ― at a cost of well over $200,000 a year, according to the study.
More than a quarter of practicing primary care doctors are 60 or older, the researchers said, and the pandemic could prompt some to retire sooner than they had planned.
Maybe he did that then.
Many primary care doctors struggled to convert to telemedicine, even though public and private insurers generally agreed to cover it. The decision by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and private insurers to cover telemedicine appointments retroactively to March at the same rate as for office visits kept a number of primary care doctors from hemorrhaging more money, said Landon, the study’s senior author, but the government has pledged to do that only for the duration of the public health crisis. Landon doesn’t know when that commitment will end, and he worries that a quarter of primary care patients will want to continue virtual visits for some time because of the fear of catching COVID-19.....
OR NOT GO AT ALL!
They lie, we die.
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Related:
"For the past three months, the majority of doctor visits in Massachusetts have occurred far from a doctor’s office. Confined to home amid the pandemic, patients and physicians have been talking on the phone or gazing via video screens, sometimes uneasily, into each other’s living rooms. This new kind of medicine — called telehealth — swept across the normally change-resistant world of health care with astonishing speed, and it is transforming doctor-patient interactions in ways that will continue to evolve. Even as other aspects of life went digital, “the health care system lagged behind for years and years," said Barbra Rabson, president and CEO of Massachusetts Health Quality Partners. "All it took was a pandemic and the system changed overnight.” Medical practices are gradually opening for more in-person care, but it’s clear telehealth is here to stay. A new phrase has already entered the health care lexicon to describe a skill required for virtual doctoring: “webside manner.” By all accounts so far, most patients and clinicians readily adapted to the technology and appreciate its convenience. Telehealth seems especially well-suited to mental health therapy, but worries and questions remain. Telehealth was able to take off so quickly because state and federal regulators issued emergency rules that removed the key obstacles. Still, telehealth has downsides....."
I'm glad the Globe cleaned up that diagnosis, and the truth Hertz, huh, doc?
They have issued an orange alert so just stay off the beaches:
"Should Mass. residents be worried about tourists from coronavirus hotspots importing more illness?" by Kay Lazar Globe Staff, June 25, 2020
Massachusetts has done the hard work. Nearly everything was closed down for months. Residents have socially distanced and are (mostly) wearing masks. Now, the state’s closely watched rate of positive COVID-19 cases is the lowest it’s been in weeks, and many restaurants and services are making a comeback, but so, too, is tourism, and with such a sharp rise in infection rates in many Southern and Western states, should Massachusetts residents worry about visitors from coronavirus hotspots importing more illness here?
Depends on who they are, right?
I mean, if they are people of color or LQBGT freaks or illegal immigrants, that's fine. If they are lily white Trump supporters, stay out!
The possibility of tourist-borne coronavirus contagion prompted the governors of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, a tri-state region once ravaged by the virus, to issue a travel advisory on Wednesday directing people arriving from states with high coronavirus rates to quarantine for 14 days. New York’s advisory promises fines of up to $10,000 for violators.
Stay the hell out those states as well my own!
That's my advisory.
Don't come here.
Ever!
Massachusetts has had a 14-day quarantine advisory in place since late March for all travelers coming into the state, but it includes no such fines, rendering it relatively toothless. Exactly how many out-of-state visitors Massachusetts may see in these unusual times is not clear. Many of these out-of-staters typically head to the Boston and Cambridge area. Hordes of Texans visited last year, too. Texas is battling a surging number of COVID-19 cases this week, with 11 percent of all tests coming back positive, according to the Johns Hopkins tracker.
Look at that!
Hordes of Texans visited!
Hordes!
HA-HA-HA!
The Bo$ton Globe pre$$itute lets her self-internalized elitism bleed right into her "journali$m," and I'm sure she doesn't even know it!
HORDES of Texans -- as if they were a PESTILENCE descending upon the $tinking city of Bo$ton. As if they were INVADERS!
Why anyone would ever want to visit Bo$ton ever again is beyond me. Just try getting a table for dinner and see what happens. City officials are waiting on you with a tape measure.
Visitor quarantines may seem like a smart intervention to keep the virus from crossing state lines. Symptoms can take up to 14 days to appear after someone is infected, and research suggests people can transmit the virus even when they’re showing no signs of illness, said Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, an infectious diseases physician and medical director of the Special Pathogens Unit at Boston Medical Center, but a quarantine strategy may not be a realistic approach to stopping further infections, she said, because it’s hard to monitor every car crossing the border, and the state can’t stop travelers flying in to airports, which are federal sites.
It's always shifting with these f**kers. Some quarantines good, other quarantines bad. Maybe we should quarantine their f**king asses on Antartica, say. F**k them!
“After states have been going it on their own, we are now quickly realizing our state is tied to [other] states,” Bhadelia said. “What happens in Florida or Arizona is not independent. Our borders are so porous.”
PFFFFT!
Legal issues associated with attempting to block or impede travel may also prove an obstacle, said Wendy Parmet, a professor of law, public policy, and urban affairs at Northeastern University.
“Travel advisories are themselves deeply problematic,” she said. “The dilemma is showing up the disaster of what’s been happening: the fact that we don’t have a federal policy, and no consistency among the states.”
That's the end game, more federalization thus more centralization.
She allowed that the plight of Massachusetts this summer “may be an instance where there is some merit to [travel quarantines] because you have situations with people coming in from jurisdictions that are not doing social distancing, or widespread use of masks, and it’s a real problem,” but some coronavirus travel advisories issued by states, in the absence of a coherent national strategy, have already run into legal challenges, including Maine’s earlier rule mandating a 14-day quarantine with no other option, Parmet said. The rule was eased before the lawsuit played out. Maine now waives the quarantine for visitors who receive a negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours prior to arrival.
Yeah, test everybody with your $hit tests!
Some states have issued rules targeting a tourist’s place of residence rather than a blanket rule applying to everyone coming in, but that approach raises the risk of running afoul of the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Constitution, which prevents state governments from discriminating against out-of-state citizens, Parmet said.
The solution is the lawsuit.
“Texas earlier in the pandemic tried to put a quarantine on people from Louisiana and it doesn’t work,” Parmet said. “It’s a statement, but we can’t rely on these kinds of measures to keep us safe when we have a patchwork system around the country the way we do.”
So we need one uniform national standard, right?
Texas had set up checkpoints along its border with Louisiana to enforce the rules, but lifted them a month later. Back in April, the shoe was on the other foot: Massachusetts persistently ranked near or in the top five states for deaths, per capita infections, and the rate of those who tested positive for the virus. Today, Massachusetts is among a minority of states with significantly declining numbers.
I'm glad Baker killed to pot shops and kept those sick stoners from infecting us all.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo cited a similar success story for his state, once the nation’s epicenter for the virus, in announcing the region’s new travel advisory. “We have to make sure the virus doesn’t come in on a plane,” Cuomo said at a news conference Wednesday.
Yeah, you don't want to be starting brush fires by sticking them in nursing homes (Texas is preparing to put them in pediatric wards), and is that the next 9/11? Terrorists bringing a virus on a plane and crashing it into a nuclear power plant?
The new rules for New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut which took effect Thursday will apply to travelers from states with an infection rate of more than 10 per 100,000 people over a seven-day rolling average, or a 10 percent or higher positivity rate among those tested over a seven-day rolling average.
Asked whether Massachusetts might consider a similar action targeted at specific states, Governor Charlie Baker on Wednesday brushed off the suggestion.
“You can’t mandate it,” he told reporters. “I mean, it’s not constitutional.”
OMG, a flicker of hope. He's not a king.
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Almost time for dinner:
"Whole Foods workers sent home for wearing Black Lives Matter masks" by Katie Johnston Globe Staff, June 25, 2020
When you click on the Whole Foods corporate website, the first thing you see are the words, “Racism has no place here,” but neither, apparently, do Black Lives Matter face masks.
After seeing reports of Whole Foods workers in other states being sent home for refusing to take off Black Lives Matter face masks, Savannah Kinzer decided to bring the movement to Cambridge, and, sure enough, when she and her colleagues put on masks emblazoned with the phrase Wednesday afternoon, the manager told them they either had to remove the masks or go home. So seven of them walked out.
On Thursday, Kinzer showed up for her 11 a.m. shift and passed out more masks, and once again, she was sent home, along with at least a dozen others.
She is the troublemaker, huh?
Kinzer?
Employees at the River Street store are part of a wave of workers trying to spread the Black Lives Matter message and encountering resistance from major companies that have publicly disavowed racism.
Sorry, but the First Amendment only applies to government, not corporations or business.
Earlier this month, Amazon, which owns Whole Foods, said it would donate $10 million to organizations dedicated to racial justice, and chief executive Jeff Bezos posted a letter on social media from a customer attacking the company’s support for Black Lives Matter, replying: “You’re the kind of customer I’m happy to lose,” yet managers at the Cambridge store told employees that they couldn’t wear Black Lives Matter masks because they weren’t part of the dress code. This despite the fact that Patriots masks, and a mask Kinzer wore earlier this week that said, “Soup is good,” went unchallenged, Kinzer said. (On Thursday, Kinzer said, workers were told to remove masks with Red Sox and Narragansett logos.)
Beyond the double standards is thi$:
"The net worth of Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries Ltd., has jumped to $64.5 billion, making him the only Asian tycoon among the world’s top 10 richest people, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He holds the number nine spot. Ambani has benefited from a flurry of investment in the company’s digital unit, Jio Platforms Ltd. Shares of the Indian conglomerate have doubled from a low in March, just as other billionaires on the list have been hit by the coronavirus pandemic. The rise of the 63-year-old as India heads for its worst-ever recession is a reminder of the nation’s deep economic divide: The top 10 percent hold more than three-quarters of total wealth. Ambani lives in a 27-story mansion in Mumbai that has three helipads, a 50-seat movie theater, three floors of hanging gardens, and a health spa and fitness center. Reliance last year surpassed state-owned Indian Oil Corp. to become the country’s largest company by revenue. Jeff Bezos, of Amazon, heads the top 10 list, with $160 billion, followed by Bill Gates (Microsoft, $112 billion) and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook, 90.6 billion)."
There is the triumvirate clique that wishes to control the world!
Why are the workers not protesting that?
In a statement, Whole Foods said, “In a customer-focused environment, all Team Members must comply with our longstanding company dress code, which prohibits clothing with visible slogans, messages, logos or advertising that are not company-related. Team Members who do not comply with dress code are always given the opportunity to comply. If a Team Member is wearing a face mask that is outside of dress code, they are offered a new face mask. Team Members are not able to work until they comply with the policy.”
Seems pretty straight forward.
Can't wait for the robots to take over. Then the complaining humans will be permanently muzzled and Bezos can get along with doing God's work, uninterrupted by whining workers who don't realize how good they have it.
Kinzer, 23, a recent Northeastern University graduate who started working as an Amazon Prime shopper at Whole Foods in April, hoped the masks would make the company back up its words with actions. She created fliers to spread the word about the movement.
When businesses take a stance against racism, it doesn’t make sense to keep their employees from making the same argument, said Dan Cence, chief executive of the Boston public relations firm Solomon Mccown & Cence. “Why would you not let individuals who agree with you express it themselves?” he said. “Businesses can’t rely on the old Michael Jordan adage: take no stance because ‘Republicans buy sneakers too.' ”
Because it opens the door to wearing a swastika or Star of David mask, or God forbid, a full or burqa.
Leavar Michel, another Prime shopper at the Cambridge store, was among those sent home for wearing a Black Lives Matter mask on Thursday. Michel, 19, said that most of the managers at the store are white, while the employees he sees when he starts his shift at 6 a.m. are almost all people of color. Michel, who is Black, is thrilled that a white woman is leading the charge. “It makes it easier for us, personally, to fight and really say what we want because we know that we have support from other races,” he said.
Maybe you guys should burn the place down to get what you want. I'm in no way suggesting that, but it seems to work for some folk.
Still, some employees are afraid to wear the Black Lives Matter masks for fear of losing the income they need to pay for college or support their families, said Michel, who also works as an independent stock trader. “Employers understand what power they have because of the lack of jobs available, and I think they’re using that to force people to not spread the message to avoid offending customers,” he said. “It’s not like we’re rioting or doing anything. We’re wearing masks.”
So are the rioter, so.... ????
I guess he is gambling his money away.
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Related:
"A day after Disney said it would delay reopening its California theme parks, the union representing actors at Walt Disney World said Thursday that the company should also postpone welcoming back guests at its Florida parks which are scheduled to reopen next month after being closed since March because of the coronavirus pandemic. The Actors’ Equity Association said that it was unclear how Disney World could “responsibly’’ reopen as coronavirus cases continue to soar in the Sunshine State. Florida reported having more than 114,000 confirmed cases on Thursday, a jump of about 5,000 cases over the previous day. The state has had at least 3,327 coronavirus-related deaths. Disney World’s four theme parks are slated to start opening July 11. The theme parks resort has already reopened some hotels and its restaurant-and-shopping district. Orlando’s other major theme park resorts — Universal Orlando and SeaWorld Orlando — started welcoming back visitors earlier this month."
Who would ever want to go there again?
Time to look for a new job, kiddo:
"Job mobility — one key to a dynamic labor market — may be a casualty of the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Deloitte Global Millennial Survey 2020. After several years of increases, less than a third of millennials now anticipate changing jobs in the next two years. Young people cited the need for stability as one reason for their desire to stay put. Another may be that the oldest members of this cohort are approaching their 40s, so age could influence their responses. Deloitte surveyed millennials, born between January 1983 and December 1994, and Generation Zers, born between January 1995 and December 2003."
What will they do when the money runs out?
Move back home?
See:
"The five members of the MBTA’s board of directors said goodbye and even read a letter of advice to their successors at their final scheduled meeting Monday, after five years of emergency oversight. That farewell, it turns out, may have been premature. House and Senate negotiators agreed to a one-year extension of the board’s term, with the Senate giving it approval Thursday afternoon. If the House finalizes the deal and Governor Charlie Baker signs the legislation, the board will stay in place until next summer. The move is essentially a punt after the House and Senate had each proposed different visions for future T governance....."
That's when the clock ran out on me.
Have a good night, readers.
UPDATE:
Baker urges Mass. residents to keep up the fight against outbreak with coronavirus surging in other states
They dare not risk losing control of the populace or narrative; thus, a second shutdown is warranted.
