The cost of a daily routine — travel, coffee, food — is far pricier than it was when offices shut down two years ago.
… Employers’ plans to return to the office, already strained by concerns about the spread of the coronavirus and the demands of an emboldened work force, are now colliding with the pressures of inflation. The cost of a daily routine — travel, coffee, food — is far pricier than it was when offices shut down two years ago. Consumer prices were 8.5 percent higher last month than they were a year earlier, the fastest 12-month inflation rate since 1981. While office occupancy has crept up to its highest level since March 2020, above 40 percent, some workers have experienced R.T.O. sticker shock. …
Average gas prices in the United States hit $4.33 a gallon last month, compared with around $2.60 in 2019, according to AAA. The Sweetgreen salad that now costs $11.95 might have been $11.20 last year. A Potbelly sandwich for $7.65 was once $7.20. An iced latte at Dunkin’ might be $3.99, up from roughly $3.70. And with the labor market still tight, employers are fielding calls from workers asking for more flexibility or raises. …
Russia launches ICBM (But only a test, presumably not nuclear armed, not aimed at Ukraine.)
NY Times – April 20
Russia announced a successful test launch of a new intercontinental ballistic missile, the Sarmat, which Russia has said can deploy many nuclear warheads and decoys meant to outwit antimissile systems anywhere in the world. The new missile, President Vladimir V. Putin said in brief televised remarks, “will force all who are trying to threaten our country in the heat of frenzied, aggressive rhetoric to think twice.”
The Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile was test-launched on Wednesday from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northwest Russia and struck a target on the Kamchatka Peninsula, 3,500 miles to the east, the Russian Defense Ministry said. It was the first launch of the Sarmat, which President Putin first described in 2018, and it will require further testing before it can be deployed, the Defense Ministry said.
Duck-&-cover-related fun fact: Since Russia, as a country, is 5600 miles across, the 11000 mile range of the Sarmat ICBM would be sufficient to drop warheads on any target on the planet, including the South pole, as it turns out.
The US Minuteman III ICBM (operational) has a range about 20% less.
In the days after the attack, Representative Kevin McCarthy planned to tell Mr. Trump to resign. Senator Mitch McConnell told allies impeachment was warranted. But their fury faded fast. ,..
But within weeks both men backed off an all-out fight with Mr. Trump because they feared retribution from him and his political movement. Their drive to act faded fast as it became clear it would mean difficult votes that would put them at odds with most of their colleagues.
“I didn’t get to be leader by voting with five people in the conference,” Mr. McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, told a friend.
The confidential expressions of outrage from Mr. McCarthy and Mr. McConnell, which have not been previously reported, illustrate the immense gulf between what Republican leaders say privately about Mr. Trump and their public deference to a man whose hold on the party has gone virtually unchallenged for half a decade. …
… The leaders’ swift retreat in January 2021 represented a capitulation at a moment of extraordinary political weakness for Mr. Trump — perhaps the last and best chance for mainstream Republicans to reclaim control of their party from a leader who had stoked an insurrection against American democracy itself.
This account of the private discussions among Republican leaders in the days after the Jan. 6 attack is adapted from a new book, “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future,” which draws on hundreds of interviews with lawmakers and officials, and contemporaneous records of pivotal moments in the 2020 presidential campaign.
Mr. McConnell’s office declined to comment. Mark Bednar, a spokesman for Mr. McCarthy, denied that the Republican leader told colleagues he would push Mr. Trump to leave office. “McCarthy never said he’d call Trump to say he should resign,” Mr. Bednar said.
No one embodies the stark accommodation to Mr. Trump more than Mr. McCarthy, a 57-year-old Californian who has long had his sights set on becoming speaker of the House. In public after Jan. 6, Mr. McCarthy issued a careful rebuke of Mr. Trump, saying that he “bears responsibility” for the mob that tried to stop Congress from officially certifying the president’s loss. But he declined to condemn him in sterner language. …
The $1.9 trillion pandemic-relief law unleashed a massive wave of spending on local construction projects and programs. Democratic candidates aren’t getting much credit.
RICHMOND, Va. — As Chris Frelke surveyed the Thomas B. Smith Community Center, he conceded that the beige-and-green cinder block structure was not much to look at. But Mr. Frelke, the parks director in Virginia’s capital, spoke with excitement describing the image in his mind’s eye: One day, there would be a pristine new complex capable of providing services from child care to community college classes.
That dream complex is not some remote fantasy. The city of Richmond intends to build it in the next few years using $20 million from the American Rescue Plan, President Biden’s trillion-dollar coronavirus-relief law. Richmond will receive a total of $155 million, a cash infusion that its Democratic mayor, Levar Stoney, called “a once-in-a-lifetime sort of investment.”
“This is akin to our New Deal,” Mr. Stoney said.
Unlike the New Deal, however, this $1.9 trillion federal investment in American communities has barely registered with voters. Rather than a trophy for Mr. Biden and his party, the program has become a case study in how easily voters can overlook even a lavishly funded government initiative delivering benefits close to home.
Mr. Biden’s popularity has declined in polls over the past year, and voters are giving him less credit for the country’s economic recovery than his advisers had anticipated. In Virginia, Democrats got shellacked in the 2021 off-year elections amid the country’s halting emergence from the depths of the pandemic.
Ambivalence among voters stems partly from the fact that many of the projects being funded are, for now, invisible.
At Richmond’s Southside Community Center, slated to balloon in capacity with the help of rescue plan funding, Linda Scott, a 75-year-old pickleball enthusiast, said she had heard nothing of the coming upgrades.
“I know that we’re getting lots of money,” said Ms. Scott, a self-described independent who voted for Mr. Biden. “But what we’re doing with it, I’m not sure.”
Thirteen months after Mr. Biden signed the emergency package, that money is starting to fuel a wave of investment on city infrastructure, public services and pilot programs unlike any in decades. …
City and county leaders are spending confidently, boasting of the generational improvements they are making with the help of Mr. Biden’s legislation. …
… Getting voters excited about the American Rescue Plan is a tall order when so many are preoccupied with the price of gasoline and the cost and availability of other basic goods — concerns the emergency-spending bill was not designed to address.
A Gallup poll in March found that more Americans said they worried a great deal about inflation than any other issue. Crime and homelessness, both targets of rescue spending, were not far behind.
The American Rescue Plan, which also funded direct relief payments to voters and health programs like vaccine distribution, has been criticized by Republicans and some economists for pumping too much money into the economy and probably contributing to inflation. …
With Inflation, Workers Are Facing Return-to-Office Sticker Shock
NY Times – April 20
Russia launches ICBM (But only a test, presumably not nuclear armed, not aimed at Ukraine.)
NY Times – April 20
Russia announced a successful test launch of a new intercontinental ballistic missile, the Sarmat, which Russia has said can deploy many nuclear warheads and decoys meant to outwit antimissile systems anywhere in the world. The new missile, President Vladimir V. Putin said in brief televised remarks, “will force all who are trying to threaten our country in the heat of frenzied, aggressive rhetoric to think twice.”
The Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile was test-launched on Wednesday from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northwest Russia and struck a target on the Kamchatka Peninsula, 3,500 miles to the east, the Russian Defense Ministry said. It was the first launch of the Sarmat, which President Putin first described in 2018, and it will require further testing before it can be deployed, the Defense Ministry said.
Duck-&-cover-related fun fact: Since Russia, as a country, is 5600 miles across, the 11000 mile range of the Sarmat ICBM would be sufficient to drop warheads on any target on the planet, including the South pole, as it turns out.
The US Minuteman III ICBM (operational) has a range about 20% less.
It would seem we have a Missile Gap.
‘I’ve Had It With This Guy’: GOP Leaders Privately Blasted Trump After Jan. 6
NY Times – April 21
Go figure!
(Could it be local GOPsters are taking the credit?)
If Biden’s Plan Is Like a ‘New Deal,’ Why Don’t Voters Care?
NY Times – April 21