Learning
The Federal Open Market Committee Statement: The Path of the Economy Continues to Depend On The Course Of The Virus
"The path of the economy continues to depend on the course of the virus. Progress on vaccinations and an easing of supply constraints are expected to support continued gains in economic activity and employment as well as a reduction in inflation. Risks to the economic outlook remain.The Committee seeks to achieve maximum employment and inflation at the rate of 2 percent over the longer run. With inflation having run persistently below this longer-run goal, the Committee will aim to achieve inflation moderately above 2 percent for some time so that inflation averages 2 percent over time and longer‑term inflation expectations remain well anchored at 2 percent." more »
Berkeley Talks Transcript: Finding Hope for Biodiversity Conservation, An Interview With Bree Rosenblum, Global Change Biology Professor at UC Berkeley
"Extinction is also not new on our planet. We estimate that more than 99% of species that ever existed on the planet have gone extinct. So extinction is a natural process on planet earth but what’s different about the dynamics of extinction today are the pace, extinctions are happening much more quickly than they have in the past, and the cause. Extinctions have never before been caused by a single species. So species have always caused each others’ extinction because of species interactions. But the fact that we have a single species, our species, that’s having a global impact on extinction patterns around the world is new. This is something that we think has never happened before on the history of our planet. And so extinction is a natural process, but extinction is being accelerated because of human impacts on the planet." more »
Jo Freeman Reviews: Justice, Justice Thou Shalt Pursue: A Life’s Work Fighting for a More Perfect Union By Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Amanda Tyler
Jo Freeman Reviews: This book features a selection of Ginsburg’s legal writing. In the first section, there is one appeals court brief and two transcripts of oral arguments before the Supreme Court. All on gender equality, they illustrate Ginsburg’s strategy of arguing cases where men were the legal losers in the belief that the court would be more sympathetic. Moritz concerned a section of the IRS code that allowed women, widowers and divorced men to take a tax deduction for the care of dependants. The plaintiff was a never-married man who was caring for his mother. Frontiero v. Richardson concerned the different standards for servicemen and women to get benefits for their dependent spouses. Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld challenged a portion of the social security law which permitted widows but not widowers to collect special benefits to care for minor children. more »
Department of Justice Issues Annual Report to Congress on its Work to Combat Elder Fraud and Abuse
“The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the risk for abuse directed towards seniors who are socially isolated and vulnerable to exploitation,” said Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta. “As this Annual Report demonstrates, the department has marshalled a wide array of tools – enforcement actions, research, public education and outreach, training and victim services – to combat elder abuse and to ensure that our seniors have the support and protections that they deserve.” “While technology has brought the world together in many ways, it has also opened the door to a myriad of fraud schemes that prey upon older adults,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco. Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) released the first 2020 Elder Fraud Report providing information useful for targeting interventions. For example, the report found that over 100,000 persons over the age of 60 filed a complaint, with a resulting loss of nearly $1 billion, although the greatest financial losses were associated with confidence fraud/romance scams. more »