On Tuesday, over 150 of the nation’s top economists penned an open letter calling for “immediate, bold action” to prevent the country’s coronavirus-induced recession from getting worse. 

The letter, published by the Economic Security Project and the Justice Collaborative, urged members of Congress, who will be back in session on July 20, to craft a generous and multifaceted COVID-response package that includes extended and enhanced unemployment benefits, and significant aid to state and local governments. 

Above all, the letter urges Congress to pass recurring direct cash payments to individuals and families that would be triggered by weak economic data, like high unemployment rates, and last until the economy recovers. Essentially, the proposal would issue government checks to Americans on autopilot, so that the amount of dispersed aid increases or decreases without further action by Congress.

“Even after businesses start to re-open and jobs begin to come back, there will be significant economic fallout, and demand will continue to lag if people don’t have money to spend,” the letter says. “Regular direct stimulus payments tied to economic indicators will help families stay afloat and drive economic activity.”

Economists refer to the policy as an “automatic stabilizer,” and they consider it an important recession-fighting tool because once written into law,  it’s designed to kick in without further iterations of federal legislation. Automatic stabilizers inject money into the economy when it’s weak and withdraw stimulus when it’s strong, skipping the guessing game between federal politicians and analysts of trying to adequately scale individual relief bills.

During past recessions, economists, policy analysts, and Congress have engaged in a cumbersome dance of predicting the length and breadth of economic downturns to draft and implement fiscal policies. Following the Great Recession, for instance, Congress passed a $840 billion relief bill that included virtually zero support for states and municipalities, a misfire that contributed to a sluggish, decades-long recovery. 

To avoid these often delayed and incorrectly targeted fiscal responses produced through the conventional political process, the cohort of economists are pushing for policies — like recurring direct cash payments and continued expanded unemployment insurance — that pin amounts received and periods of eligibility to the jobless rate rather than arbitrary deadlines agreed to by politicians. 

Professor Dietrich Vollrath, chair of the University of Houston’s economics department and a signatory of the open letter, said that using automatic stabilizers keeps Congress, an institution that generally lacks the foresight to accurately and efficiently forecast the length and severity of recessions, from estimating the appropriate magnitude of fiscal aid. 

“When we passed the CARES Act in March, and offered an additional $600 in unemployment insurance per week, the end of July seemed like a long time away,” Vollrath said. “It seems that under competent leadership, a pandemic would have been handled by then — obviously it hasn’t.” 

Though automatic stabilizers are gaining steam among center and left-of-center academics, as well as policy wonks on Twitter, they face opposition on Capitol Hill. 

During Congress’ first round of negotiations for coronavirus relief, the House passed a $3 trillion package that omitted automatic stabilizers after several Democrats who introduced legislation that included the policy feature compromised to advance other fiscal priorities. Moreover, this was the first bill the Democratic-controlled House sent over to the Senate, so even if it had included automatic stabilizers, it would’ve likely have been negotiated out of the final version. 

Most recently, in response to many Democrats signalling their support for tying automatic stabilizers to an extension of the $600-per-week unemployment insurance bonus, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, citing the Republican argument of creating a disincentive to work, said it would be “a mistake.” 

Another conservative argument against automatic stabilizers is its price tag: a Congressional Budget Office score of an automatic stabilizer policy–which could last for several years as unemployment is projected to remain high for at least the remainder of 2020–would be larger than that of a fiscal package that expires, say, after a few months. 

But proponents of automatic stabilizers assert that this is a false comparison, and a more astute one must account for the cost of potentially not doing enough. 

“To me, the cost of doing too little is enormous,” said Claudia Sahm, a signee of the letter and director of macroeconomic policy at the Washington Center for Equitable growth. “I am very honest and transparent about how these proposals are big dollars and would add to the deficit. In a recession, I believe it’s totally worth it.” 

Even so, as states and cities roll back their reopenings and reinstitute stay-at-home orders, economists who are in favor of extending enhanced unemployment insurance argue that there isn’t much empirical data to support the disincentive argument. 

Rather, they claim that given the US economy’s current lag in demand, and because most people can’t safely return back to work, an effective fiscal response is one that puts money into the hands of Americans without expecting or forcing them to leave their homes. 

“The whole point of [unemployment insurance] and direct payments is for us to pay people’s rent and fixed expenses so that, for the love of God, they stay put and don’t get sick,” Vollrath said. “Don’t go anywhere.” 

Of course, the reality is that the US is five months away from a presidential election. 

And with an incumbent who has turned mask-wearing into a political litmus test, and with little appetite for bipartisanship in Washington, it’s unclear  what Congress will come up with. 

“Nobody knows right now what [Congress] is actually going to pass,” said Sahm. “They’re going to pull a rabbit out of a hat, but we have no idea if it’s going to be a tiny little runt of a rabbit or if it’s gonna be the big one.” 

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 “I can see them from my bed,” said Emily Moelis, an 18-year-old architectural student at Penn State University, who lives in DUMBO, Brooklyn. “You can hear the dogs in our building barking and babies crying throughout the night.”  

 Between June 1 and this past Sunday, nearly 11,500 fireworks complaints were issued through the city’s 311 non-emergency hotline. Last night alone, between the hours of midnight and 2 a.m., 538 complaints were called in–compared to three complaints of fireworks that were registered during the same night in 2019.  

 In addition to filing complaints via the city’s non-emergency hotline, just after  midnight Sunday, hundreds of residents drove their cars to Gracie Mansion, Mayor Bill De Blasio’s official residence, honking their horns in a sign of protest against the mayor’s inaction regarding the nonstop fireworks.

 “Ladies and gentlemen we are citizens of this great city of New York,” said a spokesperson for the group over a speaker. “We came out here not to get involved in any political discussions, we came out here simply because we don’t feel safe.”

Hundreds are protesting outside Gracie Mansion in #Manhattan right now after @NYCMayor refuses to do anything about the insane fireworks the last few weeks plaguing NYC. Residents can’t sleep, so they decided to not allow Deblasio to sleep tonight either. pic.twitter.com/Kom1X7PTPM

— NYC Scanner (@NYScanner) June 23, 2020

 Hours later, De Blasio announced the formation of a consortium task force through the NYPD, FDNY, and Sheriff’s office that “will target suppliers, distributors and possessors of large quantities” of fireworks.

 The persisting fireworks have prompted several theories on social media about their origin and purpose.

Not trying to buy into or promote the conspiracy theory but all night long I hear fireworks and every morning I run my neighborhood block by block and there’s no fireworks debris. I don’t get it?

— Laura Jane Grace (@LauraJaneGrace) June 22, 2020

Some have even insinuated that police officers themselves are behind the nightly commotion to manufacture unrest and paranoia among communities. 

Walked around the block to figure out who’s responsible for these nightly fireworks.

Come to find out they’re coming from the building directly behind the NYPD precinct. Officers outside seemed completely unbothered by it all. pic.twitter.com/Tx84alTwHZ

— Anne-Marcelle N. (@AnneMarcelleN) June 21, 2020

If you spend time learning about COINTELPRO and the lengths law enforcement goes to suppress social movements then it’s hard to shrug off theories about things like unlimited fireworks going off every night.

— 🐝Tourmaline🐝 (@tourmaliiine) June 21, 2020

Alex Brinkman, a 31-year-old commercial advertisements producer based in Williamsburg, said that he’s seen several used canisters scattered while walking around his street over the past couple of days. 

“It seems suspicious that within a 24-hour span it went from zero visibility of fireworks to them saturating every community in Brooklyn,” he said.

 Brinkman also said that the quality of fireworks being set off makes him wary of the narrative that bored kids are solely responsible.

 “These aren’t sparklers or ground-bound explosives—they are the loudest of the loud,” he said. “It seems like a massive operation.”  

 So far, city officials have not confirmed who is setting the fireworks off, nor have they commented on whether an organized group or random residents are behind the nightly shows of explosive phosphorus.

 Layla Mustafa, a 26-year-old Bushwick resident, said that she’s definitely noticed fireworks during past summers, but they only happened closer to Independence Day, and would always end before or around midnight.

 “You assumed it was kids messing around because it used to happen near the holiday and they never went too late into the night,” Mustafa said. “The fireworks we are dealing with now are aggressive and professional-grade.”

 Mustafa, who lives across the street from a halal chicken coup, hasn’t gotten much sleep over the last several weeks. 

“Between the sounds of fireworks bursting and the clucking of scared chickens, I can barely make it through a night’s sleep uninterrupted without taking Nyquil,” she said.

 Mustafa wishes she had more information from officials as most of what she’s been seeing about the fireworks has been through social media. 

 “We don’t know much, but we do know that it’s an act of protest, whether it’s coming from the police or residents,” she said.

The post The daily boom of fireworks startles New Yorkers appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

 In the early morning hours of May 29, CNN reporter Omar Jiménez was arrested by Minnesota state police on live television. Jiménez was calm and asked the officers what they wanted him and his crew to do, but they did not respond and instead handcuffed and arrested him.  

 “What am I under arrest for?” Jiménez asked as he was being turned away from the camera’s view and being escorted by police to what the viewer assumed would be jail.  The cameraman, Leonel Mendez,  continued to film Jimenez as he was perp walked until he fell out of view.

A black reporter being arrested on live TV while covering the protests in reaction to police killing yet another black man—during a pandemic that is disproportionately affecting black Americans—has filled me and millions of fellow Americans with an overwhelming sense of despair and pain. I feel broken. 

I woke up to all of this after a restless night. The president of the United States’ responded to a police officer kneeling on the neck of an unarmed black man, until he stopped breathing, by threatening people who were angered and grieving another senseless death.

“When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” he wrote on Twitter. The tweet was flagged and deleted by Twitter.

It’s a decades-old law-and-order phrase that has been given new life by Trump.

But make no mistake, this is bigger than one man. It’s bigger than one year. Bigger than one election. This problem has been 400 years in the making, festering throughout American society even as “black faces in high places”—as the Princeton Philosopher Cornel West eloquently put it—seemed to signal a new beginning for this country. 

It was all a facade. Some of us knew that then, but more are suddenly coming to grips with this uncomfortable reality. 

My only option, though, like many generations of black Americans before me, is to somehow, someway find a morsel of hope to continue. This is a sad maxim of being black in this country, but it’s also a survival mechanism. 

If we lose this sense of hope, no matter how fleeting it may feel at times, then what else is there for me to continue for? I’ve promised to keep myself from thinking about the answer to this question for too long. 

Instead, I’m trying, though sometimes failing, to find things that bring me hope for a better future. And don’t get it twisted, this is not a naiveté or blind hope. It is a feeling that is sowed by the diversity and youth of the protesters across the country. 

From Dallas to Brooklyn, Minneapolis to Atlanta, Los Angeles to Washington D.C., an overwhelming number of those protesting are millennials or younger. These protesters are black, brown, white, Latinx, Asian and the like. They are straight, gay, trans, non-conforming and non-binary. Simply put, these protesters come from all walks of life—informed by intrinsically different lived experiences. 

The one thing that unites these people, however, is a shared sense of outrage over a society that has been broken for far too long. Quite literally pushing up their bodies against a system and society that was never built for them. The levels of empathy exhibited by those protesters among my generation is inspiring, and it provides me with the hope to continue. 

And it is precisely this hope that will prevent this wicked society from breaking me, no matter how broken I currently feel.

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For starters, the Manchester event was held in a sporting arena. Activists and operatives grouped themselves into sections according to their preferred candidates. Big ticket donors were eating and drinking the night away as the candidates emerged one-by-one onto the main stage to bright lights and thunderous applause.

All this activity spoke  a central question the party has struggled with: Which wing of the party—the grassroots, the progressive camp or the more moderate, establishment faction—do Democrats think is best-equipped to take on President Donald Trump in the general election?

Many voters and pundits assumed the answer would become clear after the results from the first caucus and primary states came in. But the event in New Hampshire did little to provide clarity. With uncertainty clouding the outcome of the Iowa Caucus, and with so many different candidates still in the race—some of whom are here and some not — many New Hampshire Democrats are questioning whether there will be a clear answer about the party’s future direction even after Tuesday’s primary.

Nina Turner, Bernie Sanders Campaign Co-Chair, and former Ohio State Senator, excites an audience of supporters in Manchester, NH ahead of the last debate before Tuesday’s primary. Photo by Ahmed Mohamed

“Honestly, I am more confused leaving this event than I was going into it,” said 57-year-old John Bonelli as he stared down at his rainbow-colored, donkey-shaped lapel pin. “You hear one candidate speak and you see the appeal. Then you go to another candidate’s event or town hall and they also work for you—it’s tough.”

Mr. Bonelli, who identifies as a progressive and voted for Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in 2016, was joined by his best friend and former college roommate, Norman Price.

Mr. Price, a self-described “middle-of-the-road” voter, said he too was impressed with many of the candidates, although he left feeling the strongest about Klobuchar and Warren. “I recognize that they don’t exactly represent the same thing,” Mr. Price said, “but they are—in my opinion—both energetic women who have garnered the most goodwill among the supporters of other candidates.”

Mr. Bonelli and Mr. Price are only two of hundred-thousand or so New Hampshire voters who will finally be having their say in Tuesday’s primary. Indeed, how New Hampshire voters feel about a candidate has historically been a pretty reliable barometer of whether or not that individual would go on to win the nomination.  In the past 50 years, no candidate has secured the nomination without placing in the top two slots in the Granite State.

This year, however, as conversations and criticisms about the lack of racial and ethnic diversity in the early primary states, New Hampshire included, many voters here are cautioning that not that the results here may not be as predictive as in past years.

“There are three paths to nomination: the progressive and establishment lanes, and then there’s the Bloomberg path,” said 62-year-old Leslie Kellern, referring to the candidacy of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is not on the New Hampshire ballot.  She said that as she was leaving a kickoff event for Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. “He’s the third piece of the puzzle that makes me even more uncertain about who to put my support behind,” she said.

Josie Pinto, a native of New Hampshire and a regional director for the New Hampshire  Youth Movement, a grassroots effort that has partnered with another similar group called the Sunrise Movement  said that the party needs to hear from other states: “New Hampshire is not a diverse state, many of us have multiple bachelors’ degrees and come from fairly privileged backgrounds, so we have been—and hope to continue—listening to movement allies and grassroots organizations across the nation about who they believe has the best chance of beating Trump,’’ said Ms. Pinto.

Over at the nearby Manchester Double Tree Hotel, where party’s more establishment supporters mingled in the lobby over cocktails and pretzels while they mulled over ways to close ranks and support just one moderate candidate that they feel could best defeat Mr. Trump.

At the same time, many grassroots organizations, which lean more toward Mr. Sanders or Ms. Warren, were canvassing across the state, using a broad array of progressive issues and policies that they felt could bring nonvoters into the fold.

While all eyes are currently on New Hampshire, many voters may be looking elsewhere for guidance on a winning strategy.

“I would like to see how other, more diverse states make their judgements before casting my vote,” said Ms. Kellern.

Ahmed Mohamed is a graduate student in the Business and Economic Reporting Program

The post Confused by Iowa and unsure about who is electable, some New Hampshire Democratic voters are pouring water on the first-in-the-nation primary.  appeared first on Pavement Pieces.