Mediaboss Marketing

More and more people are escaping to the virtual world as they realise that life must go on and that 21 days of lockdown is too long to put it on hold. If everything from ordering essentials to business meetings to conducting classes can happen online, why not socialising?

On Sunday evening, Mumbai-based regression therapist Sabari Chakraborty did what she would on a Sunday evening: have tea with friends. Only that each one stayed in their respective homes and connected via the app Zoom.

Men and women are social animals, women more so, Ms. Chakraborty told The Hindu. I dressed up in a bright sunshine yellow dress, glad to be out of my kaftans and night dresses, which were my staple wear in home quarantine. I put on some lipstick, a dash of kohl, some Chanel No. 5 of course, so what if its virtual, and sat all excited in front of my laptop, eager to meet my friends on the screen, she added.

The adda had an edge of adventure and newness, like a hidden love affair, and we chatted, drank our respective teas and coffees in our respective homes and wondered why the heck didnt we do this before? Coming Friday is a friends birthday. We shall meet again, for a virtual birthday party. So what if I cant eat the cake, I can dress up and sing Happy Birthday at least, she said.

Ms. Chakrabortys husband Indranil has already made himself at home in the virtual world. I work with leaders to help them harness the power of stories to make their conversation, speeches and presentation more inspirational. My mode of working has always been face to face. However, the COVID-19 situation changed all that. My clients are all working from home and I am under lockdown myself. So I pivoted and first converted all my training programs into an online course, Virtual Instructor-Led Delivery. I then started to reach out to my clients and the response has been positive, Mr. Chakraborty said.

While in the area of health it is the survival of the fittest, in the area of business it is the survival of the flexible and the agile, he added.

While conducting business online is not a new concept, socialising certainly is and seems to be catching on. Also on Sunday, while the Chakrabortys were attending the tea party in Mumbai, about half-a-dozen employees of a multinational bank were having an office party online in Bengaluru. Their party was facilitated by Google Duo.

At first I thought my boss was in one of his nonsensical moods when he suggested the party, said Sunanda Shukla, a senior manager with the bank who lives alone in an apartment in Bengaluru. It turned out his wife had just had an office party over video where everybody decided to dress up and it had turned out to be a raging success, Ms. Shukla added, by way of explanation.

I have avoided video calls with friends for as long as I can remember, and I reluctantly agreed to do it on Sunday evening. We all got dressed for the event and as usual, it started off with my boss taking my case on something stupid I had done. Soon the women were discussing the new Korean romcoms on Netflix and the men were bragging about their culinary skills, Ms. Shukla said.

My connection snapped somewhere in the middle and I suddenly realised how full the lonely house seemed. I reconnected and then two hours went by without us even realising it. We now plan to do this every weekend, she said.

You have reached your limit for free articles this month.

Register to The Hindu for free and get unlimited access for 30 days.

Find mobile-friendly version of articles from the day's newspaper in one easy-to-read list.

Enjoy reading as many articles as you wish without any limitations.

A select list of articles that match your interests and tastes.

Move smoothly between articles as our pages load instantly.

A one-stop-shop for seeing the latest updates, and managing your preferences.

We brief you on the latest and most important developments, three times a day.

Not convinced? Know why you should pay for news.

*Our Digital Subscription plans do not currently include the e-paper ,crossword, iPhone, iPad mobile applications and print. Our plans enhance your reading experience.

View post:
Socialising in the time of coronavirus lockdown: online tea, office parties - The Hindu

Politicians seem to be in general agreement that the stimulus bill passed Friday was necessary, and for good reason. The current economic slowdown can be best described as a natural disaster. Millions of Americans are suffering unemployment or temporary displacements, not because of a bad economy, but because of a global pandemic.

The health care system is rapidly becoming burdened by the load of acute cases and the lack of supplies.

So relief is needed. We applaud Congress and the president for overcoming partisan differences and passing a negotiated package that will provide much-needed aid.

And yet an old adage remains true. Government cannot put its hands on the economy without creating winners and losers, nor can it dole out $2 trillion without the fear that it might not have enough controls in place.

Many Americans know they soon will be receiving checks in the mail, the size of which depends on their marital status, number of minor dependents and annual income. They may know that unemployment benefits are being extended for up to four months at a level that, combined with state benefits, may actually provide raises compared to what some were making prior to losing their jobs.

But do they know about the tax breaks that allow real estate investors to profit from depreciation? Do they know that the bill contains money and loan guarantees for many businesses affected by the virus, but not for cruise lines, which have been particularly hard hit?

Do they know that President Trump is considering making loans to the airline industry contingent on the federal government taking part ownership of those companies?

Remember a decade ago, when the government took an equity stake in General Motors in exchange for a bailout package? Anger over that was a factor in the rise of the tea party. Now something similar is being proposed by a Republican administration.

Boeings CEO told Fox Business last weekend he wouldnt accept those terms, and that the company would seek other options to help weather its financial challenges.

The bill contains $100 billion in much needed aid for health care providers, including a 20% increase in Medicare payments to help cover the cost of treating elderly patients. But its not clear how the money will be distributed so as to help rural hospitals that are struggling with especially thin profit margins.

Insurance companies get little help to deal with the growing number of people who need hospitalization. They do get penalties to keep them from price gouging for the coronavirus tests.

And those checks youre getting? It may be hard for the government to find people who typically dont owe anything in federal taxes. These tend to be low-income people the ones who might benefit most from extra money.

To be clear, most of the package is good. It provides a needed stimulus to the economy and necessary cash for many businesses and people hard-hit by a pandemic that must not be allowed to ruin what had been a robust and prosperous economy. It provides $10.5 billion to the military, including the National Guard, which will deploy up to 20,000 soldiers to help states deal with the virus.

Companies involved with telemedicine will get $200 million. The Postal Service will get a Treasury loan of $10 billion to help it pay bills and keep delivering. Businesses get money for keeping idle workers on the payroll.

The relief package, perhaps best described as an emergency care package, should help the country manage the tough days ahead, even as it should help the economy recover when the virus is gone.

That does not mean, however, that the bill should escape careful scrutiny, nor that it should escape close monitoring to ensure proper controls are in place or that hard-hit people and businesses are not left to suffer unduly. Even in a nation used to running large deficits, $2 trillion is a lot of money to carefully track.

Read the original:
Opinion: $2 trillion in emergency relief is a lot to keep track of - Deseret News

This post may contain affiliate links; please read the disclosure for more information.

0shares

One of Wonderlands most enigmatic residents is going for a spin at the Mad Tea Party in Funko POP! form.

Funko has announced they will be releasing a POP! Ride featuring the Cheshire Cat riding one of the attractions signature teacups as part of their Funko Virtual Con taking place April 10th-12th. Unlike the Alice Mad Tea Party Funko POP! released at the Disney Parks and shopDisey last year, the Cheshire Cat rides a yellow teacup, while Alice rides a purple one.

The POP! had been scheduled to be an exclusive release at WonderCon in Anaheim during that time, but due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and Californias active stay-at-home order, the convention has been postponed. However, Funko has decided to carry on with its online release. Given that this is a convention exclusive, quantities are limited, so be sure to check Funkos website for more information.

Would you go mad for this Cheshire Cat figure? Let us know in the comments below!

MORE:

SHOP: New Limited Edition Gold Indiana Jones Funko Pop! Available Online Today Only

SHOP: Former D23 Exclusive Dapper Dans Funko Pop! Vinyl Set Goes on Sale Tomorrow at shopDisney

SHOP: Alice at the Mad Tea Party Disney Parks Funko POP! Figure Now Available on shopDisney

Related

Read the original post:
PHOTOS: New Limited Edition Cheshire Cat Mad Tea Party Funko POP! to be Released Online April 10 - wdwnt.com

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) questions David Marcus, head of Facebooks Calibra, during testimony before a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, July 16, 2019.(Erin Scott/Reuters)The coronavirus accelerates a generational and ideological transition on the right.

Not long ago, as the severity of the coronavirus pandemic became clear, journalists were quick to say that the crisis marked the end of an era. The Trump Presidency is Over, declared a headline in The Atlantic. One article in Politico said, The Pandemic Is the End of Trumpism. A New York Times op-ed column carried the headline, The Era of Small Government Is Over.

Well, yes. At least so far as that last article is concerned. The era of small government has been over for decades (if it ever happened at all). The highpoint of Republican and conservative efforts to limit the size and scope of the federal Leviathan was either Ronald Reagans 1982 budget or the ClintonGingrich welfare reform of 1996. Then the GOP abandoned its plans for minimal government.

Even the Tea Party insurgency which began as a rebellion against standpatters in the Republican establishment protested cuts to Medicare and achieved little more than a sequester that severely damaged military readiness. And, of course, the current Republican president was elected on a pledge not to touch senior health care and retirement benefits. No small-government conservative, he.

What the moment requires is some intellectual modesty. It is far too early in the development of this national emergency to make definitive judgments on its political, economic, social, and cultural effects. We might as well explore alternative scenarios. For example: The coronavirus might not signify a conclusion to or beginning of a historical era, so much as an acceleration of previously germinating inclinations.

This quickening is most visible in the United States Senate. It was the youthful and heterodox members of the Republican conference who first recognized the severity of the challenges emanating from Wuhan, China. As Congress put together its economic-relief bill, these lawmakers did not worry about violating free-market dogma. They recognized the extraordinary nature of the situation. Their primary concern was the fate of the unemployed. In so far as Trumpism, to the degree that it exists, describes a political tendency that is suspicious of overseas commitments, international trade, and unchecked immigration, and more worried about the rise of China than the revanchism of Russia, this pandemic does not spell the end. It may even serve as vindication.

The Republican senators most widely seen as preparing to run for president in 2024 have used the past few weeks to articulate a conservatism that is more heavily weighted toward security than freedom. Tom Cotton has a bill, cosponsored by Mike Gallagher in the House, to end U.S. dependence on the Chinese manufacture of pharmaceuticals. Josh Hawley introduced an Emergency Family Relief Act that was much more ambitious than the (for now) onetime payments included in the economic triage bill. Marco Rubio designed the small-business lending component that is essential to the CARES Act. They all criticized the Chinese government for lying about the coronavirus as it spread throughout the world.

On Capitol Hill, then, the virus has elevated the senators and staffers who have spent the last few years calling for a realignment of Republican politics away from the prerogatives and priorities of corporate America and toward those of middle- and working-class families without college degrees. The China hawks, economic nationalists, and advocates of industrial policy have found themselves playing the role of Cassandra, who saw the cost of war firsthand after her warnings were dismissed.

The young people on the right drawn to the agenda of national populism will come out of this experience more skeptical of China, more critical of the pre-crisis economic policy of the GOP, more suspicious of uncontrolled flows of labor, capital, and goods across borders. They may find that they have company, since the number of unemployed and nonparticipants in the labor force is about to swell.

If the results of the disease and recession are widespread and long-lasting, expect the new acolytes of realignment to adopt Tyler Cowens formulation of state-capacity libertarianism as a possible model for reconciling markets with a state strong enough to boost infrastructure, education, and research and development. The lack of capacity in the public-health system and in the domestic manufacture of pharmaceuticals and personal protective equipment is a tragic reminder of the consequences of drift. Recent days have provided empirical proof of the aphorism that capitalism is, in the end, a government program.

A traditionalist right that understands the United States is in a full-spectrum competition with China, that uses public policy to strengthen working families in both the service and manufacturing sectors, and that observes and promotes American traditions of constitutional liberty would not be the worst upshot of this calamity. But it is just one conceivable outcome. And by no means the most likely.

The debate over conservative economic policy is just that, a debate, and the pro-market and supply-side constituencies, while no longer fashionable in certain corners of the Internet, have lost none of their vigor, none of their intellectual ability, none of their institutional power. The mounting pressure from some on the right to restore economic normalcy as soon as possible testifies not only to the un-sustainability of lockdowns over time, but also to the potency of the status quo ante coronavirus.

After all, the law of unintended consequences stipulates that for every action there is an equal and unplanned and (probably) negative reaction. The cascading collapses of demand, liquidity, and solvency may soon put us in a world more unstable than the creaky one we already inhabit. And if past is prologue, the monetary and fiscal expansion that authorities have used to stave off doomsday will look very different to conservatives out of power. One year from now, the American political scene could well resemble that of a decade ago, when a unified Democratic government was under siege from Red State outsiders who had rekindled opposition to deficit spending.

If that happens, then anyone connected to the coronavirus response will be exposed to intra-party challenges. And Nikki Haley, who defended capitalism with aplomb in the Wall Street Journal, and resigned from the board of Boeing after the company requested a federal bailout, will benefit from an anti-statist turn on the grassroots right. In the long run, then, coronavirus may end up reinvigorating both the nationalist and free-market camps.

But you know what else happens in the long run. For the time being, coronavirus has accelerated a generational and ideological transition within American conservatism toward the politics of social conservatism, foreign-policy unilateralism, and economic solidarity.

This article originally appeared on the Washington Free Beacon.

See the rest here:
Conservatism in the Time of Coronavirus - National Review

More than a decade ago, banking and industry bailouts begun during the George W. Bush administration and continuing early into the Barack Obama administration sparked resentment among the masses, cut adrift in recovery efforts after the devastating 2008 recession. This gave rise to the tea party, including a strong faction in Waco. Yet last week lawmakers such as Republican Congressman Bill Flores, elected regionally under the tea party aegis in 2010, backed a $2 trillion bailout package again picking industry winners and losers but this time also making $1,200 payouts to Americans left struggling in an economic calamity worsened still by governmental dithering amidst a bona fide plague. Have any lessons been learned?

Granted, we appreciate the difference in circumstances generating the Troubled Asset Relief Program of 2008 and the CARES Act signed into law Friday by President Trump. The former followed a period of excess and poor judgment infecting everyday folks buying homes they couldnt afford and wildly unregulated Wall Street profiteers and bankers. To quote Republican Sen. Patrick J. Toomey of the pandemic now idling millions of workers and hobbling businesses that, by their nature, defy social distancing: This is more like an act of God or war footing.

Yet President Trump contributed much to the coronavirus pandemic now surging and taking lives in the United States, not only by repeatedly downplaying concerns about spread of the contagion a month ago but failing to consult the National Security Council playbook on fighting pandemics. He failed to ignite sufficient production of test kits and let his colossal ego interfere with getting relief to governors showing more resolve and courage. Only Friday did he belatedly sign the Defense Production Act, compelling General Motors to produce thousands more ventilators for a likely surge of coronavirus patients. One wishes the president had taken this crisis as seriously as he did matters at our southern border.

We side with Republicans on scrapping certain out-of-place Democratic ideas, including requiring placement of workers on corporate boards aided by the CARES Act; thats a fight for another time than a full-blown pandemic. However, given billions of dollars in loans and credits, we applaud the insistence by Trump and the Democrats to prohibit stock buybacks, limit executive compensation and ensure half of federal assistance goes toward retaining employees for airlines and other companies benefiting in federal assistance. Yet the tea party lessons of 2009 should hold fast in 2020: We expect Congressman Flores and other lawmakers to exercise aggressive congressional oversight and demand disclosure of implementation of this massive package, as specifically written into the law, to prevent all abuse and waste. This includes an inspector general and an oversight board.

Trump on Friday vowed to ignore portions of the law giving Congress transparency into certain stimulus spending, insisting that such requirements violate the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution. Which raises two key questions: Given that Republicans and Democrats just voted for this law, will they now live up to its terms jointly, even if this president resists? And why did the president sign this bill if he was resolved to violate it? Just what we need in a pandemic crisis: a potential constitutional crisis.

Continue reading here:
EDITORIAL: Just what we need in a pandemic crisis - Waco Tribune-Herald