PLEASE PROTECT US FROM OUR CUSTOMERS
Business executives and front‐line workers are pushing government officials to require customers to wear masks, a step that could allow companies to avoid alienating a portion of the public.
—Wall Street Journal, June 23, 2020
WHAT A CONCEPT
A small group of favored tech stocks are actually trading higher than before the pandemic. Take Tesla. Its quirky CEO, Elon Musk, argues that people like him, people who’ve become rich by building companies, are actually good for the economy.
—NPR, July 6, 2020
AREN’T CONSUMERS THE POINT?
The crown jewel of [Jeff Bezos’s congressional] testimony “is very likely to be the consumer,” said Guru Hariharan, who years ago helped build some of Amazon’s seller services and now runs CommerceIQ, which works with brands selling on Amazon.
—Wall Street Journal, July 28, 2020
GOOD TO KNOW THEY’VE KEPT IT ETHICAL FOR EIGHT YEARS
The vote Friday marked the first time the House had reprimanded a member for an ethics‐related violation since August 2012.
—Washington Post, July 31, 2020
PEOPLE HAVE LESS MONEY, SO LET’S RAISE THEIR TAXES
Cash‐starved cities and states across the country are starting to weigh whether to raise taxes on homes, cigarettes, local businesses, and global tech giants, hoping to rake in new revenue that might help them close the massive budget shortfalls created by the coronavirus pandemic.
—Washington Post, June 26, 2020
BIDEN URGES PEOPLE WITH IRAs TO VOTE REPUBLICAN
The former vice president, speaking at an event in Pennsylvania, said he wanted to end the “era of shareholder capitalism.”
“Throughout this crisis, Donald Trump has been almost singularly focused on the stock market, the Dow and Nasdaq. Not you. Not your families,” Biden said. “If I am fortunate enough to be elected president, I’ll be laser‐focused on working families, the middle‐class families I came from here in Scranton. Not the wealthy investor class. They don’t need me.”
—CNBC, July 29, 2020
CAN IT COME WITH FREEDOM TOO?
Starting this fall, schools in Hong Kong will display colorful new governmentissued posters declaring that “freedom comes with responsibilities.” Administrators may now call the police if anyone insults the Chinese national anthem on campus.…
After months of antigovernment protests in Hong Kong, China’s ruling Communist Party is reaching into the semiautonomous territory to overhaul an education system that it sees as having given rise to a generation of rebellious youth.
—New York Times, July 11, 2020
REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN BOOTED FOR TOO MUCH DECENCY, TOLERANCE
A Republican congressman, whose decision to officiate a same‐sex wedding last year angered some local Republicans, lost his party’s nomination to a conservative challenger in Saturday’s drive‐thru convention.
—CNN, June 14, 2020
IF ONLY SOMEONE HAD WARNED HER
Here are the three words that no elected official, serving or retired, wants to say: “I was wrong.”
Throughout my career, I was known for taking some very lonely votes. But I made a mistake in 2002 when I voted to create the Department of Homeland Security.…
—Sen. Barbara Boxer, Washington Post, July 25, 2020