Gastonia, NC Correspondent — A national stoppage isn't a seminar about feelings. It's groceries, chemicals, cars, and a plant that runs out of a part on Tuesday. The road is narrow. Force the last mile of bargaining under a clock that's real. Put the disputed items on a small table — attendance policy, time off … Continue reading How should Congress treat the pending rail-labor dispute so that a national freight stoppage is avoided without simply imposing terms that neither side will own?
Champagne Summits
Has the student-loan payment pause now lasted long enough to become a political entitlement rather than pandemic relief?
Myrtle Beach, SC Correspondent — Relief has a date. Entitlements have a constituency. March 2020 was a shutdown of the labor market that pays the note, and a pause then was a bridge. This isn't that labor market. Hospitality on this coast is hiring in the same month the pause is being defended as though … Continue reading Has the student-loan payment pause now lasted long enough to become a political entitlement rather than pandemic relief?
Should the United States condition further Ukraine aid on a defined end-state and on European ammunition production, or treat support as open-ended for as long as Kyiv holds?
Gastonia, NC Correspondent — Open-ended isn't a strategy. It's a feeling that resembles one on television. Kyiv holding is a condition of geography and will. It isn't a definition of done. Without a picture of done and a European factory attached, we're running a magazine as a moral subscription. Condition it, and not as a … Continue reading Should the United States condition further Ukraine aid on a defined end-state and on European ammunition production, or treat support as open-ended for as long as Kyiv holds?
Do gasoline prices at midsummer levels require a temporary federal tax holiday and drawdown of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, or would those steps worsen the longer shortage?
Myrtle Beach, SC Correspondent — A holiday on a federal tax of eighteen cents against a five-dollar sticker is a rounding error with a ribbon. A reserve drawdown is a one-time sale from a tank built for a blockade, not for a midsummer poll. Neither drills a hole or finishes a pipe. Midsummer prices hurt … Continue reading Do gasoline prices at midsummer levels require a temporary federal tax holiday and drawdown of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, or would those steps worsen the longer shortage?
How should regulators respond to the spread of monkeypox without repeating the early-COVID pattern of mixed messages and uneven access to vaccine?
Gastonia, NC Correspondent — Say who is actually at risk, say it on Monday, and say the same sentence on Friday. That's the whole rule. The current outbreak is concentrated in a defined sexual network — overwhelmingly men who have sex with men — and it's spreading through close, sustained skin contact rather than through … Continue reading How should regulators respond to the spread of monkeypox without repeating the early-COVID pattern of mixed messages and uneven access to vaccine?
Is Title 42 still a legitimate public-health tool at the border in mid-2022, or has it become an immigration policy the statute no longer supports?
Myrtle Beach, SC Correspondent — By July the public-health sentence is exhausted. The operational sentence isn't. The authority was written for communicable disease and in March 2020 it had a face — a novel virus, crowded holding rooms, no vaccine. This is a different country. Shots, boosters, full airports, and an administration that will not … Continue reading Is Title 42 still a legitimate public-health tool at the border in mid-2022, or has it become an immigration policy the statute no longer supports?
Should Finland and Sweden’s move toward NATO be treated as a durable strengthening of the alliance, or as a new set of defense obligations the United States is not ready to resource?
Gastonia, NC Correspondent — Two serious countries joining a treaty isn't two more names on a mailing list. Finland has an artillery culture, conscription it never abandoned, and eight hundred miles of border with the problem. Sweden has industry and a navy that already knew the Baltic. That's strengthening if we mean mass, geography, and … Continue reading Should Finland and Sweden’s move toward NATO be treated as a durable strengthening of the alliance, or as a new set of defense obligations the United States is not ready to resource?
What should the federal response be to the infant-formula shortage, and does it expose dangerous concentration in a regulated food category?
Myrtle Beach, SC Correspondent — A baby doesn't eat a press conference, and that's the whole test. One plant that supplied a very large share of the WIC and retail market went down in February, the agency was slow and then loud, and the remaining handful of producers couldn't cover a category the rules had … Continue reading What should the federal response be to the infant-formula shortage, and does it expose dangerous concentration in a regulated food category?
Have the January 6 committee hearings changed the public’s understanding of executive responsibility after an election, or mainly hardened existing camps?
Gastonia, NC Correspondent — I watched pieces of these the way I read a markup, looking for a sentence I could use. What I got was a miniseries. People who already believed the last president tried to break the transfer watched the clips and said so. People who already believed the institutions never accepted 2016 … Continue reading Have the January 6 committee hearings changed the public’s understanding of executive responsibility after an election, or mainly hardened existing camps?
Is the summer 2021 labor shortage a temporary residual of enhanced unemployment and school disruption, or evidence that reservation wages have shifted in a lasting way?
Gastonia, NC Correspondent — Help Wanted in a window and a federal supplement that still competes with a shift isn't a mystery of the human soul. It's a residual with a date on it. Reservation wages can move. People who spent a year staring at a kitchen table may want more money or a different … Continue reading Is the summer 2021 labor shortage a temporary residual of enhanced unemployment and school disruption, or evidence that reservation wages have shifted in a lasting way?
