The Constitutional Court.

Despite a hard-won public service wage deal being reached in late July, public service unions and government departments will on Tuesday return to the Constitutional Court where labour representatives are appealing a Labour Court ruling excusing government from sticking to a wage deal that dates back to 2018.

Unions have argued that government had an obligation to honour the agreement, regardless of circumstance, but he Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) and National Treasury say that government's fiscal constraints made honouring the agreement untenable.

The DPSA has meanwhile slammed the National Education Health and Allied Workers' Union (Nehawu) over a series of pickets planned for Tuesday at National Treasury, the Johannesburg office of the Gauteng premier, and the DPSA's office in Pretoria.

Nehawu is planning similar protests in several provinces this week to demand a higher wage increase for public servants. While the public service wage offer got the majority support required to be recognised to pass as a deal, some unions rejected it - Nehawu among them.

The latest public service wage deal was reached late last month and signed by the South African Democratic Teachers' Union (Sadtu), the National Professional Teachers' Organisation of South Africa (Naptosa), the Health and Other Services Personnel Trade Union of South Africa (Hospersa), the Public Servants' Association of South Africa (PSA) and the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (Denosa).

The deal includes an offer of a 1.5% pensionable salary increase with a monthly lump sum gratuity ranging from R1 200 to R1 600 on a sliding scale from 1 April to 31 March next year.

The DPSA did not take kindly to Nehawu's intention to protest. Public Service and Administration director-general Yolisa Makhasi said while section 17 of the Constitution recognises the right to picket, this should comply with section 69 of the Labour Relations Act on pickets in support of a protected strike.

"The picket may only be held in a public place outside the premises of the employer or with the permission of the employer, inside its premises. The intended pickets by Nehawu do not comply with the elements outlined above and are therefore unprotected under the Labour Relations Act.

"A gathering for other purposes must comply with all other relevant laws, including the municipal bylaws and the prescripts issued in terms of the applicable Covid-19 regulations and protocols," said Makhasi.

Makhasi said no demonstrations were allowed on the premises of government departments and that pickets must not interfere with the operations of the departments or be held during working hours. No-work-no-pay would also apply, Makhasi said.

"The no-work-no-pay principle is to be applied accordingly. Departments are requested to report any instances impacting negatively on service delivery as a result of employees participating in this unprotected picket to the DPSA," Makhasi said.

Regarding the matter before the Constitutional Court on Tuesday, South African Democratic Teachers' Union secretary-general Mugwena Maluleke told Fin24 that the union was prepared to put up a fight for the deeper issues underpinning its appeal, which included the principle of collective bargaining.

"We believe it's important for the Constitutional Court to pay attention to the [right to] freedom of association which encompasses the right to bargain collectively," said Maluleke. Maluleke also noted thatit took government a long time to raise concerns over noncompliance with certain clauses in the concluded collective agreement.

Nehawu secretary-general Zola Saphetha shared a letter from Makhasi in which the director-general told him that planned demonstrations needed to comply with the Labour Relations Act as well as Covid-19 safety protocols.

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Impasse between government and labour sets tone for a testy day at the ConCourt - News24

Aug 20th 2021

This By-invitation commentary is part of a series by global thinkers on the future of American powerexamining the forces shaping the country's global standing, from the rise of China to the withdrawal from Afghanistan. The contributions will be available here.

The Economist Today

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THE MULTITUDES remained plunged in ignorance and their leaders, seeking their votes, did not dare to undeceive them. So wrote Winston Churchill of the victors of the first world war in The Gathering Storm. He bitterly recalled a refusal to face unpleasant facts, desire for popularity and electoral success irrespective of the vital interests of the state. American readers watching their governments ignominious departure from Afghanistan, and listening to President Joe Bidens strained effort to justify the unholy mess he has made, may find at least some of Churchills critique of interwar Britain uncomfortably familiar.

Britains state of mind was the product of a combination of national exhaustion and imperial overstretch, to borrow a phrase from Paul Kennedy, a historian at Yale. Since 1914, the nation had endured war, financial crisis and in 1918-19 a terrible pandemic, the Spanish influenza. The economic landscape was overshadowed by a mountain of debt. Though the country remained the issuer of the dominant global currency, it was no longer unrivalled in that role. A highly unequal society inspired politicians on the left to demand redistribution if not outright socialism. A significant proportion of the intelligentsia went further, embracing communism or fascism.

Meanwhile the established political class preferred to ignore a deteriorating international situation. Britains global dominance was menaced in Europe, in Asia and in the Middle East. The system of collective securitybased on the League of Nations, which had been established in 1920 as part of the post-war peace settlementwas crumbling, leaving only the possibility of alliances to supplement thinly spread imperial resources. The result was a disastrous failure to acknowledge the scale of the totalitarian threat and to amass the means to deter the dictators.

Does Britains experience help us understand the future of American power? Americans prefer to draw lessons from the United States history, but it may be more illuminating to compare the country to its predecessor as an Anglophone global hegemon, for America today in many ways resembles Britain in the interwar period.

Like all such historical analogies, this one is not perfect. The vast amalgam of colonies and other dependencies that Britain ruled over in the 1930s has no real American counterpart today. This allows Americans to reassure themselves that they do not have an empire, even when withdrawing their soldiers and civilians from Afghanistan after a 20-year presence.

Despite its high covid-19 mortality, America is not recovering from the kind of trauma that Britain experienced in the first world war, when huge numbers of young men were slaughtered (nearly 900,000 died, some 6% of males aged 15 to 49 died, to say nothing of 1.7m wounded). Nor is America facing as clear and present a threat as Nazi Germany posed to Britain. Still, the resemblances are striking, and go beyond the failure of both countries to impose order on Afghanistan. (It is clear, noted The Economist in February 1930, after premature modernising reforms had triggered a revolt, that Afghanistan will have none of the West.) And the implications for the future of American power are unnerving.

So many books and articles predicting American decline have been written in recent decades that declinism has become a clich. But Britains experience between the 1930s and the 1950s is a reminder that there are worse fates than gentle, gradual decline.

Follow the moneyStart with the mountains of debt. Britains public debt after the first world war rose from 109% of GDP in 1918 to just under 200% in 1934. Americas federal debt is different in important ways, but it is comparable in magnitude. It will reach nearly 110% of GDP this year, even higher than its previous peak in the immediate aftermath of the second world war. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it could exceed 200% by 2051.

An important difference between the United States today and the United Kingdom roughly a century ago is that the average maturity of American federal debt is quite short (65 months), whereas more than 40% of the British public debt took the form of perpetual bonds or annuities. This means that the American debt today is a great deal more sensitive to moves in interest rates than Britains was.

Another key difference is the great shift there has been in fiscal and monetary theories, thanks in large measure to John Maynard Keyness critique of Britains interwar policies.

Britains decision in 1925 to return sterling to the gold standard at the overvalued pre-war price condemned Britain to eight years of deflation. The increased power of trade unions meant that wage cuts lagged behind price cuts during the depression. This contributed to job losses. At the nadir in 1932, the unemployment rate was 15%. Yet Britains depression was mild, not least because abandoning the gold standard in 1931 allowed the easing of monetary policy. Falling real interest rates meant a decline in the burden of debt service, creating new fiscal room for manoeuvre.

Such a reduction in debt-servicing costs seems unlikely for America in the coming years. Economists led by the former treasury secretary, Lawrence Summers, have predicted inflationary dangers from the current fiscal and monetary policies. Where British real interest rates generally declined in the 1930s, in America they are projected to turn positive from 2027 and rise steadily to hit 2.5% by mid-century. True, forecasts of rising rates have been wrong before, and the Federal Reserve is in no hurry to tighten monetary policy. But if rates do rise, Americas debt will cost more to service, squeezing other parts of the federal budget, especially discretionary expenditures such as defence.

That brings us to the crux of the matter. Churchills great preoccupation in the 1930s was that the government was procrastinatingthe underlying rationale of its policy of appeasementrather than energetically rearming in response to the increasingly aggressive behaviour of Hitler, Mussolini and the militarist government of imperial Japan. A key argument of the appeasers was that fiscal and economic constraintsnot least the high cost of running an empire that extended from Fiji to Gambia to Guiana to Vancouvermade more rapid rearmament impossible.

It may seem fanciful to suggest that America faces comparable threats todaynot only from China, but also from Russia, Iran and North Korea. Yet the mere fact that it seems fanciful illustrates the point. The majority of Americans, like the majority of Britons between the wars, simply do not want to contemplate the possibility of a major war against one or more authoritarian regimes, coming on top of the countrys already extensive military commitments. That is why the projected decline of American defence spending as a share of GDP, from 3.4% in 2020 to 2.5% in 2031, will cause consternation only to Churchillian types. And they can expect the same hostile receptionthe same accusations of war-mongeringthat Churchill had to endure.

Power is relativeA relative decline compared with other countries is another point of resemblance. According to estimates by the economic historian Angus Maddison, the British economy by the 1930s had been overtaken in terms of output by not only Americas (as early as 1872), but also Germanys (in 1898 and again, after the disastrous years of war, hyperinflation and slump, in 1935) and the Soviet Union (in 1930). True, the British Empire as a whole had a bigger economy than the United Kingdom, especially if the Dominions are includedperhaps twice as large. But the American economy was even larger and remained more than double the size of Britains, despite the more severe impact of the Great Depression in the United States.

America today has a similar problem of relative decline in economic output. On the basis of purchasing-power parity, which allows for the lower prices of many Chinese domestic goods, the GDP of China caught up with that of America in 2014. On a current-dollar basis, the American economy is still bigger, but the gap is projected to narrow. This year Chinas current-dollar GDP will be around 75% of Americas. By 2026 it will be 89%.

It is no secret that China poses a bigger economic challenge than the Soviet Union once did, since the latters economy was never more than 44% the size of Americas during the cold war. Nor is it classified information that China is seeking to catch up with America in many technological domains with national-security applications, from artificial intelligence to quantum computing. And the ambitions of Chinas leader, Xi Jinping, are also well knownalong with his renewal of the Chinese Communist Partys ideological hostility to individual freedom, the rule of law and democracy.

American sentiment towards the Chinese government has markedly soured in the past five years. But that does not seem to be translating into public interest in actively countering the Chinese military threat. If Beijing invades Taiwan, most Americans will probably echo the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, who notoriously described the German bid to carve up Czechoslovakia in 1938 as a quarrel in a far away country, between people of whom we know nothing.

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A crucial source of British weakness between the wars was the revolt of the intelligentsia against the Empire and more generally against traditional British values. Churchill recalled with disgust the Oxford Union debate in 1933 that had carried the motion, This House refuses to fight for King and country. As he noted: It was easy to laugh off such an episode in England, but in Germany, in Russia, in Italy, in Japan, the idea of a decadent, degenerate Britain took deep root and swayed many calculations. This of course is precisely how Chinas new breed of wolf-warrior diplomats and nationalist intellectuals regard America today.

Nazis, fascists and communists alike had good reason to think the British were succumbing to self-hatred. I did not even know that the British Empire is dying, George Orwell wrote of his time as a colonial policeman in his essay Shooting an Elephant. Not many intellectuals attained Orwells insight that Britains was nevertheless a great deal better than the younger empires that [were] going to supplant it. Manyunlike Orwellembraced Soviet communism, with disastrous results for Western intelligence. Meanwhile, a shocking number of members of the aristocratic social elite were attracted to Hitler. Even readers of the Daily Express were more inclined to make fun of the Empire than to celebrate it. Big White Carstairs in the Beachcomber column was an even more absurd caricature of the colonial type than David Lows Colonel Blimp.

The end of empiresAmericas empire may not manifest itself as dominions, colonies and protectorates, but the perception of international dominance, and the costs associated with overstretch, are similar. Both left and right in America now routinely ridicule or revile the idea of an imperial project. The American Empire is falling apart, gloats Tom Engelhardt, a journalist in The Nation. On the right, the economist Tyler Cowen sardonically imagines what the fall of the American empire could look like. At the same time as Cornel West, the progressive African-American philosopher, sees Black Lives Matter and the fight against US empire [as] one and the same, two pro-Trump Republicans, Ryan James Girdusky and Harlan Hill, call the pandemic the latest example of how the American empire has no clothes.

The right still defends the traditional account of the republics foundingas a rejection of British colonial ruleagainst the "woke lefts attempts to recast American history as primarily a tale of slavery and then segregation. But few on either side of the political spectrum pine for the era of global hegemony that began in the 1940s.

In short, like Britons in the 1930s, Americans in the 2020s have fallen out of love with empirea fact that Chinese observers have noticed and relish. Yet the empire remains. Granted, America has few true colonies: Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands in the Caribbean, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands in the north Pacific, and American Samoa in the south Pacific. By British standards, it is a paltry list of possessions. Nevertheless, the American military presence is almost as ubiquitous as Britains once was. American armed-forces personnel are to be found in more than 150 countries. The total number deployed beyond the borders of the 50 states is around 200,000.

The acquisition of such extensive global responsibilities was not easy. But it is a delusion to believe that shedding them will be easier. This is the lesson of British history to which Americans need to pay more heed. President Joe Bidens ill-advised decision for a final withdrawal from Afghanistan was just the latest signal by an American president that the country wants to reduce its overseas commitments. Barack Obama began the process by exiting Iraq too hastily and announcing in 2013 that America is not the world's policeman. Donald Trumps America First doctrine was just a populist version of the same impulse: he too itched to get out of Afghanistan and to substitute tariffs for counterinsurgency.

The problem, as this months debacle in Afghanistan perfectly illustrates, is that the retreat from global dominance is rarely a peaceful process. However you phrase it, announcing you are giving up on your longest war is an admission of defeat, and not only in the eyes of the Taliban. China, which shares a short stretch of its vast land border with Afghanistan, is also closely watching. So is Russia, with zloradstvoRussian for Schadenfreude. It was no mere coincidence that Russia intervened militarily in both Ukraine and Syria just months after Obamas renunciation of global policing.

Mr Bidens belief (expressed to Richard Holbrooke in 2010) that one could exit Afghanistan as Richard Nixon exited Vietnam and get away with it is bad history: Americas humiliation in Indochina did have consequences. It emboldened the Soviet Union and its allies to make trouble elsewherein southern and eastern Africa, in Central America and in Afghanistan, which it invaded in 1979. Reenacting the fall of Saigon in Kabul will have comparable adverse effects.

The end of American empire was not difficult to foresee, even at the height of neoconservative hubris following the invasion of Iraq in 2003. There were at least four fundamental weaknesses of Americas global position at that time, as I first argued in Colossus: The Rise and Fall of Americas Empire (Penguin, 2004). They are a manpower deficit (few Americans have any desire to spend long periods of time in places like Afghanistan and Iraq); a fiscal deficit (see above); an attention deficit (the electorates tendency to lose interest in any large-scale intervention after roughly four years); and a history deficit (the reluctance of policymakers to learn lessons from their predecessors, much less from other countries).

These were never deficits of British imperialism. One other differencein many ways more profound than the fiscal deficitis the negative net international investment position (NIIP) of the United States, which is just under -70% of GDP. A negative NIIP essentially means that foreign ownership of American assets exceeds American ownership of foreign assets. By contrast, Britain still had a hugely positive NIIP between the wars, despite the amounts of overseas assets that had been liquidated to finance the first world war. From 1922 until 1936 it was consistently above 100% of GDP. By 1947 it was down to 3%.

Selling off the remaining imperial silver (to be precise, obliging British investors to sell overseas assets and hand over the dollars) was one of the ways Britain paid for the second world war. America, the great debtor empire, does not have an equivalent nest-egg. It can afford to pay the cost of maintaining its dominant position in the world only by selling yet more of its public debt to foreigners. That is a precarious basis for superpower status.

Facing new storms Churchills argument in The Gathering Storm was not that the rise of Germany, Italy and Japan was an unstoppable process, condemning Britain to decline. On the contrary, he insisted that war could have been avoided if the Western democracies had taken more decisive action earlier in the 1930s. When President Franklin Roosevelt asked him what the war should be called, Churchill at once replied: The Unnecessary War.

In the same way, there is nothing inexorable about Chinas rise, much less Russias, while all the lesser countries aligned with them are economic basket cases, from North Korea to Venezuela. Chinas population is ageing even faster than anticipated; its workforce is shrinking. Sky-high private-sector debt is weighing on growth. Its mishandling of the initial outbreak of covid-19 has greatly harmed its international standing. It also risks becoming the villain of the climate crisis, as it cannot easily kick the habit of burning coal to power its industry.

And yet it is all too easy to see a sequence of events unfolding that could lead to another unnecessary war, most probably over Taiwan, which Mr Xi covets and which America is (ambiguously) committed to defend against invasiona commitment that increasingly lacks credibility as the balance of military power shifts in East Asia. (The growing vulnerability of American aircraft carriers to Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles such as the DF-21D is just one problem to which the Pentagon lacks a good solution.)

If American deterrence fails and China gambles on a coup de main, the United States will face the grim choice between fighting a long, hard waras Britain did in 1914 and 1939or folding, as happened over Suez in 1956.

Churchill said that he wrote The Gathering Storm to show:

how the malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous; how the structure and habits of democratic States, unless they are welded into larger organisms, lack those elements of persistence and conviction which can alone give security to humble masses; how, even in matters of self-preservation the counsels of prudence and restraint may become the prime agents of mortal danger [how] the middle course adopted from desires for safety and a quiet life may be found to lead direct to the bulls-eye of disaster.

He concluded the volume with one of his many pithy maxims: Facts are better than dreams. American leaders in recent years have become over-fond of dreams, from the full spectrum dominance fantasy of the neoconservatives under George W. Bush to the dark nightmare of American carnage conjured up by Donald Trump. As another global storm gathers, it may be time to face the fact that Churchill understood only too well: the end of empire is seldom, if ever, a painless process._____________

Niall Ferguson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and managing director of Greenmantle, a political-economic advisory firm. His latest book is Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe (Allen Lane, 2021).

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Niall Ferguson on why the end of Americas empire wont be peaceful - The Economist

opinion/letters

As the disastrous results of Governor DeSantis COVID policies continue to unfold, he has decided to hedge his bet with Regeneron. Regeneron, a post-infection treatment costing $310 per treatment, is his Johnny-come-lately effort to stem the tide of illness and death his lack of leadership has allowed tovirtually go unchecked.

Im not suggesting that Regeneron is a bad thing, only that masks and vaccines combined cost far less than $310, and no reasonable person questions their efficacy. Rather than play fast and loose with the wellbeing of his constituents in order to gain the White House, which is despicable, he should have followed the science from the beginning.

Gary McManus,Jacksonville

New York City is requiring proof of Covid vaccination to attend many events including indoor dining. This is sound policy and must be extended to include all situations where people might gather including political rallies.

This is done to protect the public and allow the authorities to regulate the coming and going of potential political dissidents who object to our sensible policies.

A paper card is an inadequate form of identification since it can be easily forged. We must adopt a state of theart technology such as each person's cell phone as the only proper device to identify those who would break the law. Cell phones have the additional advantage of being accessible online for review by authorities. It will additionally be updated with other data about an individual such as their criminal record, organizations they belong to, and voting identification. For their protection, it would contain GPS information about their movement and present location in case of an emergency.

It would become the primary identification for boarding an airline, train, bus or any kind of public transportation. Total public safety. The cell phone can be quickly and easily scanned electronically for quick approval. You won't have to take it out of your pocket since it can get scanned as you walk by a scanning station.

Requiring everybody to have a cell phone puts everybody in easy contact with others thereby helping to unite all of us as one nation.

Alan Pease, Jacksonville

Floridas political sycophant-in-chief, Ron DeSantis, pushes his political ambitions by catering to his base. He deflects attention from his failure to manage the explosion of Delta infections and placates vaccine deniers by being an equivocator. He expands his position with Live Free or Die adherents by ridiculing face masks.

Numerous clusters of COVID-19 infections have spread among congregations, camps, schools, social gatherings. Rather than implementing public health measures, he promotes a fiction that Central American immigrants have caused the spike of infections.

He minimizes the risk of Delta for children by diverting attention to Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), an annual seasonal infection with relatively low mortality. He claims that face mask mandates infringe on parental rights. The double absurdity here is that RSV pales compared to COVID and more importantly, its spread is limited by face masks, handwashing, and soon, vaccines.

Recently, DeSantis topped himself. He acted heroically for having brought immune therapy for infected people to Jacksonville. I dont know how much this specific treatment costs, but typically, immunotherapy infusions cost hundreds to thousands of dollars. Even elementary school children know the Ben Franklin adage, An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. DeSantis must have skipped that day.

Bottom line: the person responsible for promoting the health of all Floridians is passive in the vaccination effort, obstructive in the use of face masks, and misleading about the threat we face. He claims his positions are consistent with conservative principles to protect the economy and individual rights. But how does a fiscal conservative promote an expensive treatment instead of low-cost vaccines and masks? Whom will he blame for the economic downturn when the labor force has been decimated and people are hunkered down at home?

Stephen Entman, Jacksonville

A major responsibility of Governor DeSantis job is to protect citizens from harm. His current strategy of appeasing radicals does not meet his responsibility, and it will not defeat the pandemic. Infact, it makesmattersworse. Masks, distancing and vaccination are not matters of personal freedom.They are highly effective and palatable tools of public safety.

The governorshould look at the facts; masks, distancing and vaccination work. In fact, they are the most effective tools currently available to beat the pandemic.The governorshould stop ignoring them. They are the key to ending this medical and social nightmare.

IfThe governoris taking advice from Donald Trump, he should stop. He may be a good real estate salesman, and he may know how to get elected, but he is not a doctor. The governor, for the sake of the welfare of the citizens of Florida, and now the children whose health and well-being are needlessly threatened should have a change of heart. He should abandon the rhetoric of division and strife, and embrace the proven, effective tools of success; masks, distancing and vaccination.

The governor has an opportunity to be successful, but he must put the health and well-being of the citizens of Florida ahead of his personal ambition. Will he do that?

I have heard the governor is a graduate of Harvard, I find it very difficult to see that he has gained any benefit from that distinction when I observe the devastating consequences of his behavior dealing with the pandemic.

Richard Cortell,Elkton

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Letters: Post-Covid infection treatment is not the answer - The Florida Times-Union

Ed Balls is unhappy about the mess. They say you can judge a cook by how he cleans and Britains one-time education minister, shadow chancellor of the exchequer and most popular Gangnam Style tribute act is surrounded by broken shells, tiramisu, pasta sauce, soup and to his mind most offensively runny custard in a hard pastry base. There are Le Creusets and frying pans and bowls and sieves, the detritus of any self-respecting cookery photoshoot.

Its very upsetting, Balls, 54, protests, brandishing a creamy whisk. Im a clean-as-you-go chef. I dont want people to get the wrong idea. This is more like Yvettes kitchen, he adds, throwing his wife, Yvette Cooper MP, under the slovenly bus. Shes like a snail, you can see wherever shes been. Its one of the reasons she doesnt cook. At a certain point I just decided it was easier for me to do it.

If the mess is out of character, hes coming clean about the cooking. Balls has always been a keen home chef, the primary meal-maker for himself, Yvette and their three children, Ellie, 22, Joe, 20, and Maddy, 17. For most of his career, however, it was a private passion. Then last summer, after Covid torpedoed a documentary he planned to make about Trumps America, he entered and won the BBCs Celebrity Best Home Cook, beating a group including the comedian Ed Byrne and Rachel Johnson, journalist and sister of Boris, for the approval of Mary Berry. Over eight episodes Balls showed aptitude for a range of dishes, but the highlight was a magnificent pirate-ship birthday cake, complete with Curlywurly cordage and white chocolate sails. When Balls explained that he had always made the birthday cakes for his children, even Berrys cockles were warmed.

In the wake of the show came the idea for a book that would expand on a collection of family recipes he collated for Ellie when she went away to university. The result is Appetite, an entertaining memoir told through food, complete with recipes for key dishes in his life. His grandmas shepherds pie. A roast like the one his mother would have on the table at the family home in Norwich every Sunday in the 1970s. The all-night slow-cooked pork he served at constituency parties, and for which he was shopping on 28 April 2011, when he accidentally tweeted his own name from Castleford Asda. Rather than be embarrassed by tweeting his own name, he leant into Ed Balls Day. The British political food book is not a crowded field, aside from Nigel Lawsons diet guide, but its fertile ground. Balls knows his onions.

By now we shouldnt be surprised by Ed Ballss extracurricular enthusiasms. In Isaiah Berlins formulation, people tend to be either hedgehogs, who know a lot about one thing, or foxes, who know a little about many things. For most of his life, Balls gave every impression of being a classic hedgehog, a gifted economist who read PPE at Oxford before a Kennedy Scholarship to Harvard and a brief career as a leader writer for the FT. At 27 he took a job working on fiscal policy for Gordon Brown with another bright young Labour wonk, Ed Miliband. It wasnt long before Balls was fast-tracked into becoming an MP, one of the heirs apparent to the Blair/Brown generation, and quickly elevated to the cabinet as secretary of state for children, schools and families. After Labour lost in 2010, Balls came third in the ensuing leadership contest behind the brothers Miliband, and emerged as the obvious choice to become shadow chancellor. He approached the 2015 general election reasonably confident he would be the next chancellor of the exchequer.

Everyone knows what happened next. A butterfly flapped its wing, David Cameron promised a referendum on the EU, Ed Miliband ate a bacon sandwich. Suddenly the Tories were in with a narrow majority. When the exit poll came in at 10pm on 7 May, Balls suffered one of those vertiginous reversals of fate that only politics, sport and war tend to offer. As dawn broke on a Conservative government, Balls found himself not only without a ministerial post, but seatless. A career that had looked guided on rails was suddenly off them. He was Labours Michael Portillo, an emblem of the changing of the guard.

In such situations politicians usually slink off, write a cathartic memoir not always in a shepherds hut and brood on what might have been. Instead, Balls threw himself into other activities with the zest he once brought to keeping Britain out of the euro. The hedgehog became distinctly foxlike. On Strictly Come Dancing, in fake tan and sequins, Balls showed BBC viewers a fun-loving, game side that hadnt always been obvious during his political career. When he got round to the cathartic book, Speaking Out, it was more readable than the usual political doorstops, a series of life lessons presented in digestible chapters. He climbed Kilimanjaro with Shirley Ballas and Dani Dyer for Comic Relief. He played the banjo at the Royal Variety Show. The big question about Ed Balls, one political journalist tells me, is how do you have that life nonstop up to the age of 48 and not end up a total psychopath? He had all these dry and busy jobs, but is also a very normal well-rounded person.

When Balls is done pretending to sieve flour we sit down for cod and chips from Knights, a West Norwood institution round the corner from the photo studio. The Balls family still often has Friday fish and chips in Castleford, Yvettes constituency, and it was a key dish in Ed and Yvettes early relationship. You cant beat chips cooked in beef fat, he says, tasting one and murmuring his approval. But you have to eat them quickly before they go completely solid.

As he digs into the fish he enumerates his other interests. A diehard Norwich City fan and club chairman for three years until 2018 Balls was a regular in the MPs v hacks fixture. He still plays once a week at Shoreditch Powerleague, with fellow ex-MP James Purnell and other old Labour lags. Then theres the piano. Ive just agreed to play in a concert in December a charity concert in Kings Place Im going to play the opening aria of the Goldberg Variations. Im starting to regret it I originally foolishly said in an interview when I was shadow chancellor that my goal was Grade 8 by 50, which sailed past. Its like the governments fiscal rules. You say, Over the next three years, I will and then every year its still within sight. Oh, and dont forget the sailing and golf.

Most politicians find ways to relax. Heath sailed, Churchill laid bricks, David Cameron chillaxed with Fruit Ninja. When politicians are still in office, these pastimes can have a whiff of being deployed for electoral effect. When Boris Johnson talked about painting crates to look like buses, it seemed calculating. Ballss life is not all beer and skittles. He is making a documentary about social care, the latest in a run that has taken him around Europe and America. Yet for the past six years Balls has given every impression of being that rarest of beasts: a happy freelancer, and politician actually enjoying being out of office.

When Labour left government in 2010 I was exhausted, he says. I thought I could have a spiralling midlife crisis. Instead, I decided I would channel that energy into other things. That sounds glib. But the serious point is that you think, Now is the time to do all the things youve really wanted to do, because youve got the chance. In social care you meet people who are young whove had something go wrong. You think, It could be me.

Ive come to terms with not having to succeed, he adds. I dont mind if Im not good. I quite like being OK at stuff. I spent years in a world where there was this drive and competition to get to the top and to feel the pressure of that. And the truth is I dont feel any pressure now. Part of me wishes Id got to that stage earlier. I wish Id spent more of my 30s and 40s with a bit more of that other stuff in the mix. I dont think doing more hours makes for better government. If I was running a team of surgeons, Id want to know they had time off.

One of his regrets is not spending more time with his children when they were young. He and Yvette were the first married couple to serve in the cabinet at the same time. We tried hard, he says. But we could have done better. Has cooking been a way to make up for lost time? Definitely. I would always do the weekend cooking when they were little, but its not just the cooking. Its asking them what they want, cooking the things they ask for, to be able to be the person who delivers. I didnt miss out entirely, but I wish I had done more. But you might as well find that out now rather than on your deathbed, because it leaves you time to do something about it.

Balls was taught to cook by his mother, and later in life it was through her meals that the family got the first inklings of her dementia, as the ever-reliable cook began serving uncooked food. I didnt think I was going to write about the dementia, he says. I was going to write about what my mum taught me and where my love of cooking began. But food was the first time we knew mums dementia was bad. I said this to my dad, and he said, For me, that happened all the time. It became normal. For you to see your mum, who had always cooked Sunday lunch, produce something raw, was a jarring moment. His dad slowly took over in the kitchen, which offended his increasingly disoriented mum. During the pandemic, with his mother in full-time care, his dad started to experiment with dishes he would never have tried before.

A whole chapter in Appetite is devoted to Ballss unsuccessful attempts at dieting, with recipes for prawn pho and black bean soup. I continually worry about my weight, but in an inadequate, slightly useless kind of way, he says. If it was just me, I probably wouldnt be having fish and chips for lunch. But as my mum says, Im heavy-boned, so Im never going to do well on the standard tables for height and weight. But I would really like to lose 8kg, I just never quite get round to it. With me its entirely about focus my lack of it.

If food at home has been about love, connection and tradition, food in politics is inevitably about power. When Peter Mandelson invited the young Balls to his flat to plot his future political career, he served just a soup and a salad. The power play was clear: Mandelson was in charge.

It was beautifully done, Balls says. Hed thought about it carefully. Its very memorable. The big food events in politics were not really about the food at all.

Later, Balls was present for the infamous dinner on Upper Street in Islington, at the now defunct restaurant Granita, where Blair and Brown are said to have agreed how they would divide up the leadership of the Labour party. Disoriented by a menu that featured polenta, Brown didnt eat, instead wolfing down a steak back at HQ. Gordon would have his steaks basically incinerated, Balls says. Of course I tried to have a word with him about that, but as my dad would say, There are different people and they like their beef cooked in different ways. Would Brown mind that the other recent world leader who preferred his steaks well done was Donald Trump? Gordon would not be happy about that, Balls says.

At dinner on trips abroad, Brown would often leave the unfamiliar food. Culinary conservatism helped his image, giving the impression he was simply too busy reforming the world economy to mind about such fripperies. Balls experienced the opposite, where the eating was so distracting it was impossible not to. When Ed Miliband was leader he was on a low-carb diet, I dont know why. Yet for some reason his office had ordered lasagne for this big team dinner in the shadow cabinet room. We were meant to be talking about the future of the Labour party, but all we could do was watch Ed separating meat from pasta.

Then there was bacon-sandwich-gate. You have to be very careful about what you eat on camera, Balls says. Never pasta. Pizza is tricky, too. I would have bacon and egg, but never in a sandwich. He shouldnt have been having a bacon sandwich in the first place, but he should at least have tried not to make it look like the sandwich was devouring him. It was such a stupid thing. Labours challenge at the time was not whether Ed could eat bacon sandwiches.

If the incident still rankles that may be because relations with Miliband have never recovered from his successful bid for the leadership. Eds fratricide of his brother David is well documented, but it was almost an equal betrayal of Balls. I should go and have a drink with Ed, he says. We dont have a fundamental difference about policy at all. Its just that we were both part of a tough time losing an election campaign.

Britain has witnessed a drastic change in culinary standards since 1967. For a student of globalisation like Balls, food has been a way to track a changing Britain. Any conversation about what we eat inevitably soon dovetails with other narratives in the UK, about insularity and inclusivity, the pace of change. I like the idea that I cook different things from my mum and dad, but I also like the idea that part of what I cook I inherited from them, he says.

For all Balls talks of his newfound freedom, the politician has not completely vanished. He cant resist a pop at the Tories over the school meals fiasco. They were so tin-eared, he says. What were they doing? If they had been on the ball, Marcus Rashford would not have had the same cut-through. He wont say whether he thinks Keir Starmer is the right man to lead the Labour party, only that he has his work cut out. Keirs working very hard at it, but the scale of the task is huge, he says. Its much harder than the last time either party had to rebuild like this. Hes dealing with the hard-left infiltration and the antisemitism, the disconnect that happened after the Brexit referendum. He knows that Labour cant win as an urban party and has never been able to do that.

Its also true that the pandemic has provided utter vindication to a Ballsian view of stimulus spending. After the financial crash, Balls as shadow chancellor made the case for government spending to support an economy in crisis. At the time George Osborne was able to persuade voters that austerity was a better course. Coronavirus, which put voters lives directly on the line, has put paid to that debate. Austerity feels like a very, very long time ago, Balls says. Our arguments in 2009-10 were that you have to support the economy and job creation. If you try to go too early to consolidate with austerity and cutting the state, youll make things worse. These are the arguments the Treasury, the Bank of England and the chancellor have made for the past 18 months. Theyre right. They were right 10 years ago, as well. Its taken a pandemic for people to be forced to see the wisdom of those ideas.

Listening to Balls back on his special subject, you wonder if theres still a pilot light of political ambition flickering deep within. A Labour party in search of an experienced centre-left candidate with strong economic credentials and broad public recognition could do worse than put Ed Balls into the search bar, as he himself famously failed to do. Theres an irony with Balls, as with Miliband, that the character we have been allowed to see since he left frontline politics is more appealing to voters than when he was standing. Would anything coax him back?

Im not going to say I never would, he says. The reality is I loved being in government. It was the hardest thing Ive ever done, but also the most satisfying. So if that opened up Id have to think really hard about it. But Labours not in government, nobodys asking me to do anything, Im not even in parliament. Do I ever expect to go back into politics? No.

Balls has said that hes comfortable with the idea people will remember him for his Gangnam Style routine rather than his achievements in government. Yet long after the memories of Strictly and Celebrity Best Home Cook have faded, the UK will still not be in the euro, the Bank of England will still be independent, the NHS will still be at the heart of British life. And to win elections, Labour will still need to find a way to appeal to voters beyond their base. Who knows, the wily fox might have another throw of the political dice in him. There could be a different kind of Ed Balls day to celebrate. Chancellor Balls? PM Balls? It wouldnt be the most surprising thing he has done.

Appetite: a Memoir in Recipes of Family and Food by Ed Balls is published by Simon & Schuster at 16.99. Buy it for 14.78 at guardianbookshop.com

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I could have had a midlife crisis: Ed Balls on cooking and life after politics - The Guardian

Historian Fernand Braudel warned against obsessing with fireflies and froth"the disease of presentism that infects economists and policymakers with the belief that current circumstances are special, unique and unprecedented. Covids pain not only reminds us of our economys pre-existing conditions (inadequate formalization, financialization, urbanization, industrialization and human capital), but has also demonstrated a policy willingness to take the long view by ignoring presentist demands for unprecedented deficit financing (we close with a high 12% of gross domestic product, or GDP, but if fiscal deficits could make countries rich, then no country would be poor). I make the case that the next 25 years for our economy will be very different from the last 25 years for many reasons. And the upcoming budget has a unique opportunity to take advantage of the covid policy window by amplifying existing long-term thinking on formal job creation and employability.

Lets take inventory. India is fifth in the world in total GDP, but 138th in per capita GDP. Our problem is wages, not jobs (unemployment has hovered between 5-9% since 1947). We dont have a shortage of land (we can give every Indian household half an acre and they would fit into Rajasthan and half of Maharashtra), labour (about 100 million people could shift off farms without impacting food security), or capital (domestic savings and foreign investors can supply the money required), but our challenge is how these three inputs combine. Covid is a tragedy, but is also Indias opportunity to leapfrog into a new world of work (capitalism without capital where intangible assets matter more than physical assets), new world of organizations (digitization makes where employees live and work less relevant), and a new world of education (employed learners in higher education will soon cross full-time learners and make the sequential 25 years of learning/earning/retirement redundant). The global capital glut (65% of global bonds yield less than 1%), China fatigue, and macroeconomics combine with recent reforms to substantially improve the long-term outlook for India.

The budget for 2021-22 must build on recent reforms like labour, agriculture and education to grant freedom to our firms and citizens to improve their productivity. Given the covid-induced shortfall in taxes, I propose six non-fiscal, freedom" reforms for formal job creation and employability:

One, mandatory payroll confiscation levels that are higher than the savings rate breed informality. The current cycle of enterprise formalization could be accelerated by making employee contributions to their provident fund voluntary. This money belongs to employees who should have the freedom to invest it.

Two, Indias largest health insurance programme, Employees State Insurance (ESI), has been missing during the pandemic because its governance is too large, old and unrepresentative. The budget should announce the modernization of ESI governance along with a deadline of 1 June 2021 for employee freedom from payroll-deducted health insurance contributions.

Three, online degree-linked apprentices are the future of education because they innovate in financing, social signalling, and employer connectivity. Despite the Atmanirbhar Bharat announcement to deregulate online education, only seven of Indias 1,000 universities are licensed for online learning. This is particularly tragic because over 200 foreign universities operate online in India and nobody can or should stop them. The budget must announce that all accredited universities are automatically and immediately licensed for online delivery because covid is reinventing higher education.

Four, skill universities, which are essentially Industrial Training Institute, employment exchange and college combined, are held back by regulations that confuse university buildings with building universities. The budget must announce regulations that give unqualified freedom to universities to deliver via four classrooms (online, onsite, on-the-job and on-campus) with qualification modularity between certificates, diplomas, advanced diplomas and degrees.

Five, Indias four new labour codes will soon be notified and increase manufacturing employment. The budget should announce a three-year time- frame to move to a single labour code.

And lastly, the budget must announce a cross-ministry compliance commission tasked with the rationalization, digitization and decriminalization of Indias regulatory cholesterol of 65,000-plus compliance requirements and 6,500-plus filings, and the issue of a Universal Enterprise Number. A simple reform would be the mass substitution of shall" with may".

The 2021-22 Budget coincides with the 30th anniversary of the 1991 reforms, and any evaluation must remember that China and India had similar per capita incomes in 1991 but now the Chinese are four times richer than us. Chinas 200-year quest for fuqiang (wealth and power) via fuxing (rejuvenation) formed the basis of the 2013 book Wealth and Power: Chinas Long March to the 21st Century by Orville Schell and John Delury. Its interesting to imagine what a similar book about India would be titled. People I polled mused about benevolence, forgiveness and tolerance. But as poet Ramdhari Singh Dinkar wrote: Kshama shobhti uss bhujang ko jiske paas garal ho (benevolence and forgiveness only befit serpents that have venom). Our poor dont care about soft power that doesnt deliver prosperity, and we must stop obsessing about 1991, despite its boldness, because 90% complete simply means 50% of the work is left.

Our finance minister has handled the financial horrors of covid admirably. The next budget is an opportunity to accelerate the rise of India with long-term thinking around enterprise freedom, and to put poverty in the museum it belongs.

Manish Sabharwal is chairman, Teamlease Services

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Six freedom reforms to bolster job creation and employability - Mint

We spent most of 2020 in doom and gloom mode about the economy, courtesy the coronavirus. But it is time to be optimistic again as 2021 could be a mega-boom year for the Indian economy.

Vaccines are being distributed around the world, and Indias own vaccination programme will start soon. Fortunately, India also seems to have stabilised or even declined in terms of daily new cases, at least for now. Meanwhile, the Indian economy is now open to a large extent. Hence, while we still are not out of the woods, theres enough reason to believe things will get better in 2021.

However, in order to truly jumpstart the economy, we still need more stimulus. Our greatest asset is our people and our domestic economy. If we want the economy to bounce back, we need to create massive, immediate consumption. Heres a proposed plan called Protsahan (which means stimulus/encouragement in Hindi) to give Rs 5,000 per person to every Indian, which they must spend within the next 12 months. This could amount to around Rs 20,000 per household. This substantial amount could not only help people tide over the tough times, but also give a massive push to our economy.

But some might say: where do we have this kind of money? What will it do to our deficit position? And will it be worth it? The answers to all these good questions are a resounding yes! We can do this and yes, it will be completely worth it. For this we will need to understand the proposed Protsahan scheme and go through some numbers.

This scheme will enable every Indian with a legitimate ID to get cash vouchers of Rs 5,000, to be spent within the next 12 months. Children under 18 can get half the amount, saving some costs, but for the sake of simplicity, lets keep it the same amount for this article. These Protsahan vouchers can be digital (preferred) or physical (can be issued as special notes with an expiry date). Do note that these should be given to every Indian, as figuring out who needs it more will be a far more cumbersome and time-consuming exercise. The well-off can obviously forgo these vouchers or give them to those who need it more, but they will be offered to everyone.

The vouchers will have an expiry date (say 12 months) and will be divided into two parts. Half the money will have to be spent on travel, tourism, hotels, restaurants or any other hospitality or service-based businesses. The other half will have to be spent on groceries, appliances, clothes or food items. The vouchers will be tradable and exchangeable. This means one can exchange them for cash, though the expiry date on vouchers means they may carry a discount compared to cash. This freedom to let people use themas they want will save a lot of monitoring headaches. Its just money in the hands of people, which has to be spent by them or by someone who they give it to.

Once this money comes back to the economy, it will create a major boost in almost all sectors, but particularly in those sectors that have suffered due to Covid. Jobs will come back. It will, obviously, also be a lot of fun for people as they will have free money in their hands, which they have to spend.

So, whats the catch? Of course, the big question comes: how can we afford this? Lets look at the numbers. For 140 crore people, a Rs 5,000 one-time payment would cost Rs 7 lakh crore. Its a big amount of money. However, to finance this, the government would issue a long-term 30-year bond, paying a tax-free interest of 7% per annum. There are plenty of rich people in India who would like this kind of return and hence invest in this safe yet good-yield instrument. The government can have a separate extraordinary situation borrowing, accounting it separately.

In 30 years, Indias economy would be so huge that the principal of Rs 7 lakh crore wouldnt be much and could be easily repaid. Meanwhile, the financing cost of this bond, at 7% of Rs 7 lakh crore, comes to around Rs 50,000 crore per annum. Yes, this is still significant money, and yes, we are borrowing-to-spend now, but the returns in terms of jump-starting the economy (and the higher tax revenues from it) will far outweigh the additional costs. Do note that even in these Protsahan vouchers, the government will collect GST. That alone will fund the interest payments for the first couple of years.

The government has announced various stimulus packages already for the industry. However, it now needs to stimulate our massive domestic demand. A one-off Protsahan voucher programme with a long-term bond to fund it could go a long way in giving India a roaring economic comeback in 2021. And that would indeed make for a very happy new year!

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Paying every Indian 5,000 can be the fiscal fix to make 2021 really happy - The Times of India Blog

"Prime Minister Abe will be recognized for his longtime leadership of his country and for his global outreach that has helped advance regional and international cooperation and has strengthened friendship and bonds between Japan and the United States," said Rabbi Arthur Schneier, President of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation.

Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, 1999 Appeal of Conscience World Statesman honoree, will introduceHis Excellency Shinzo Abe and join Rabbi Arthur Schneier in the presentation of the Award.

Mr. Abe served as Japan's Prime Minister and President of the Liberal Democratic Party from 2006 to 2007 and again from 2012 to 2020.Not only recognized as the longest serving Prime Minister of Japan, Mr. Abe was also known internationally for his government's economic policies, nicknamedAbenomics, which pursuedaggressive monetary policy,flexible fiscal policy, andgrowth strategy including structural reform.His tenure was marked with a foreign policy which places high importance on global diplomacy based on the fundamentals values of freedom, democracy, basic human rights and the rule of law; seeking to increase Japan's international profile by expanding ties with NATO, the EU, and other organizations beyond the Asia-Pacific region.In September 2020, Mr. Abe resigned from his position as Prime Minister due to his health issues.

Mr. Abe is a member of a prominent political family. His grandfather Nobusuke Kishi (1957-1960) and great uncle Eisuke Sato (1964-1972) served as Prime Minister, and his father Shintaro Abe served as Foreign Minister (1982-1986).

The World Statesman Award honors leaders who support peace and freedom by championing peaceful co-existence, human dignity and human rights in their homeland and working with other world leaders to build a better future for all.

Past recipients of the World Statesman Award include: British Prime Minister David Cameron, Mexican President Enrique Pea Nieto, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, The Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde and United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Other recipients included Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, King Juan Carlos I of Spain, USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev and Czechoslovakian President Vclav Havel.

About the Appeal of Conscience Foundation:The Appeal of Conscience Foundation, under the leadership of Rabbi Arthur Schneier, has worked worldwide on behalf of religious freedom, human rights, peaceful co-existencesince 1965. To uphold the principle "live and let live" is the Appeal of Conscience Foundation's continuing goal. An interfaith coalition of business, religious and foreign policy leaders, this international organization promotes mutual acceptance and respect the other, peace and interreligious cooperation and provides a voice of conscience to protect minorities. The Appeal of Conscience Foundation believes that freedom, democracy and human rights are fundamental values that give nations of the world their best hope for peace, security and shared prosperity. http://www.appealofconscience.org

SOURCE The Appeal of Conscience Foundation

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Appeal of Conscience Foundation to Honor Former Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe with 2021 World Statesman Award - PRNewswire

The New Year has started on the same foot that it ended, with animal spirits pushing markets to record levels. Sentiment has been supported by the passage of fresh Covid-19 relief in the US, as well as the agreement of a post-Brexit trade deal between the UK and the EU, which was announced on Christmas Eve, thus removing a couple of tail risks heading into the new year.

Equities ultimately experienced a surprisingly strong yet extremely volatile year, which were supported by unprecedented levels of fiscal and monetary policy support following the pandemic, as well as the promising vaccine news that arrived in November.

The key themes for the first half of 2021 are an expected weaker dollar, the vaccine rollout and subsequent to freedom of movement, the new virus strain and the US-China relationship in the President Biden era.

As the holiday season ends, coronavirus cases are increasing exponentially worldwide, fuelled by the more conductible strain, leading to authorities warning that further restrictions are on the horizon. UK Prime Minister Johnson warned yesterday that restrictions in England were probably about to get tougher as calls mounted for school closures and even another national lockdown. Meanwhile in Germany discussions are ongoing, with expectations for an extension of lockdown until the end of January.

Against this backdrop, the big question for the global economy over the year ahead will be how quickly populations are vaccinated, particularly among vulnerable groups like the elderly and those with underlying health conditions who make up the majority of hospitalisations. The pace at which these groups can be vaccinated will pave the way for a gradual easing of restrictions and a return to something closer to normality, thereby it is a metric which will be closely monitored by market participants.

To date, the US and the UK have now given at least 1% of their population the first dose, and the UK is hoping to accelerate their vaccination programme as people begin to receive the Oxford/ AstraZeneca vaccine from today. Anxiety remains over the vaccines effectiveness on the new strains reported in the UK and South Africa. Health authorities have largely down played concerns however one must appreciate that we are navigating uncharted territory therefore the risks persist.

This week US politics will be in the limelight, with Tuesday's runoff elections in the state of Georgia determining which party will control the Senate over the coming two years. This is an important one for markets, since the results will affect how much of President-elect Joe Bidens agenda will be able to pass through Congress, as well as the size of any fiscal stimulus package. A democratic victory is market positive as it assumed that a larger fiscal stimulus package would be likely.

The secularly low treasury yields and tentative economic outlook in the US is expected to weigh on dollar demand throughout at least the first half of 2021. Attention will also be focused on US-China relations under the new President Biden administration. President Trump locked horns over economic practices, emerging technologies and security during his administration. Given the universal support among US institutions against the growing threat that china poses, the Biden administration could be pressured into retaining a tough stance.

Echoes of a confrontation, especially given the US authorities recent push to regularise reporting practices by Chinese firms listed on US exchanges, with the imminent threat of delisting, could lead to market volatility at a time when world economies need to find their feet, given the economic strains posed by the virus induced crisis.

This article was written by Simon Psaila, Investment Manager at Calamatta Cuschieri. The article is issued by Calamatta Cuschieri Investment Services Ltd, which is licensed to conduct investment services business under the Investments Services Act by the MFSA and is registered as a Tied Insurance Intermediary under the Insurance Distribution Act 2018.

For more information visit https://cc.com.mt. The information, view and opinions provided in this article are being provided solely for educational and informational purposes and should not be construed as investment advice, advice concerning particular investments or investment decisions, or tax or legal advice.

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Current market themes - Times of Malta

If youve visited the Los Angeles County Museum of Art recently, you may have seen a whimsical installation: 15 figures dressed in their holiday party best, mid-awkward dance move, wine sip, and emotional conversation.

Artist Alex Prager created at the tableau not at the request of the museum, but of the beer brand Miller Lite. The project doubled as both a temporary outdoor exhibition and an ad campaign celebrating the end of office holiday parties and the freedom to indulge in a little more Miller Time.

The project is part of a growing trend in the museum sector that might scandalize traditionalists but is quickly being embraced by cash-strapped institutions: sponsored content. On either side of the Atlantic, museums have teamed up with corporations in an effort to utilize their spacesand collectionsin order to reach new audiences and make a little extra dough.

In October, the Brooklyn Museum produced an interactive virtual exhibition featuring costumes from the wildly popular Netflix series The Queens Gambit, as well as from the fourth season of The Crown. While the presentation was entirely digital, the display was staged IRL in the museums famous Beaux-Arts entryway alongside related objects from the collection.

A view of Disney+s commissioned portrait of the Mandalorian. Photo: NPG

Meanwhile, in late fall in London, an offsite pop-up display in Covent Garden was the result of a collaboration between Disney+ and the National Portrait Gallery. The presentation included a Disney+-commissioned the portrait of the Mandalorian, the protagonist of the eponymous hit show, as well assix portraits of Star Warsfiguresfrom the museums own collection. Members of the Gallerys Youth Forum assisted the curatorial team in creating the captions for the display.

Last year was tough on museums. By November, the average US museum had lost $850,000 to date, according to a survey by the American Alliance for Museums, which cautioned that the figure was much higher for large institutions. Budgetary pressures forced the Brooklyn Museum to reduce its staff by seven percent.

At atime of challenged budgets, we will see museums experimenting boldly with earned-income opportunities, Andrs Sznt, a sociologist and strategic advisor to museums, told Artnet News. Traditionally, in some institutions, there was some reluctance to do so, although there was more [activity] than people usually seecountless private events that were not communicated outwardly.

Not everyone is pleased with the more public-facing direction.Los Angeles Times critic Christopher Knight wrote a scathing review of the LACMA project last month, calling it tacky. He took particular issue with the vague texts accompanying the display, which noted that the project was sponsored by Miller Lite but failed to explicitly detail the companys role in developing the project.

Omitting any reference to the brewing companys ad campaign, Knight argued, is like neglecting to mention that Pope Julius II and the Vatican were behind the Sistine Chapel, while Michelangelo was more than just a guy with a paintbrush and a dream.

Installation view of Alex Prager Holiday Party (2020). Image courtesy of the artist and LACMA.

While corporate sponsorship used to be limited to a tagline under an exhibition plaque, museums see these more immersiveand, some might argue, creatively compromisedinitiatives as a promising new avenue. Its one they are entirely unashamed of.

This installation is a timely and welcome addition to our public sculptures that allow visitors to safely experience art outdoors, said LACMAs contemporary art curator Rita Gonzalez. We hope the work brings some humor, levity, and reflection during these difficult times.

Brooklyn Museum director of corporate relations Rafael Flores noted that its Netflix partnership came about well into lockdown. We had been thinking of ways to engage our audience digitally, so this Netflix project made perfect sense for the time and context, he told Artnet News.

Anya Taylor-Joy in The Queens Gambit (2020). Photo: Netflix.

Plus, Brooklyns seniorcurator of fashion and material culture Matthew Yokobosky added, the project felt like an extension of the partnerships the museum had done in the past for its David Bowie exhibition in 2018, including an AR project with theNew YorkTimes and a collaboration on a virtual version of the show with Sony Japan. (Interestingly, Yokobosky noted, even in the two years between the Bowie show and today, technology had improved such that complex costumes were far easier to capture virtually.)

For its part, the National Portrait Gallery said its Disney+ collaboration offered a canny opportunity to share the collection while its building is closed for renovations through 2023. There is no doubt that Star Wars is a cultural phenomenon that has had a huge impact on popular culture and has involved a wide range of talent from across the British film industry, the museums chief operating officer Ros Lawler said. The two-day off-site partnership exhibition provided us with an opportunityto introduce new audiences to our portraits.

None of the museums would disclose specifics about how much money changed hands. LACMA noted thatMiller Lites sponsorship went toward underwriting the cost of the installation. As part of the NPG partnership, Lawler said, Disney+ is supporting the museums youth program for 14- to 21-year-olds.

Its clear these kinds of collaborations have been particularly popular in the lockdown era.

Were all looking at new revenue streams for cultural institutions, Yokobosky said. Were trying to rethink the admissions part of our overall budget now because even if you can be open, you can only be at 25 percent capacity. So weve all had to go back and re-forecast what the economics are going to be for the fiscal year.

The question now is whether these sorts of projects will continue beyond this phase. So far, it sounds like the answer is yes. Wed love to work with Netflix again, the Brooklyn Museums Rafael Flores said. Wed also welcome collaborations with companies that allow us to bring our mission, programs, and collections to broader audiences.

Felicity Jones by Laura Pannack, 2016, National Portrait Gallery, London

And thats not only because of economic pressures, Sznt pointed out. This generation is acutely aware that Jay-Z and Beyonc and Swizz [Beatz] can do more for art awareness, particularly among younger audiences, in a single video appearance than a series of exhibitions.

Sznto mentioned a museum in Africa that commissions local pop stars to sing about their new shows. The songs go on the radio and this is how they get people to come, he said. In short: Popular culture can be a great resource, when used wisely and creatively.

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Wed Love to Work With Netflix Again: Cash-Strapped Museums Looking for New Audiences Are Increasingly Doing Exhibits-for-Hire - artnet News

The year 2020 taught the world importance of savings. Many people lost their jobs and savings to the pandemic, but the governments fiscal stimulus package came to the rescue. The year 2021 brings hope for freedom from coronavirus as several pharma companies vaccines come to market. While there are hopes of recovery, you cant rule out the possibility of a stock market crash.

When will the market crash? You can only make an informed estimate of the possibility of a crash. A few fears of 2021 will be:

You can protect your portfolio from a possible market crash by investing in dividend aristocrats that enjoy stable cash flows and lower debt. In the pandemic crisis, real estate stocks took a hit as many businesses vacated offices, retail stores, and malls.

But energy is a commodity that will always see demand. Yes, there can be fluctuations in the volume, but energy demand will only increase. Hence these two energy stocks can give you stable dividends during a market crash and capital appreciation and dividend growth during economic growth.

Enbridge(TSX:ENB)(NYSE:ENB) is the favourite of all dividend lovers, with its 26th year of continuous dividend growth. This pipeline operator managed to increase its dividend per share even during the three major crises of this century, the 2009 financial crisis, the 2014 oil crisis, and the 2020 pandemic crisis. It was all because of its resilient business model and diversified revenue streams of oil, natural gas, and renewable energy.

Enbridge is not directly exposed to oil prices as it just transmits oil through its pipelines at a pre-determined rate. More than 99% of its revenue comes from long-term contracts. Generally, when oil and natural gas prices fall, demand increases, and so does Enbridges cash flow. Moreover, the company expects three new pipeline projects to come online in 2021 and add to its cash flow.

In the March market crash, Enbridge stock fell 35% as oil demand fell. This dip inflated its dividend yield to as high s 9%. Those who invested in this stock during the crash have locked in a life-time of high yield, which will grow as the economy grows. There is still time as the stock is down 27% from the pre-pandemic level and is offering a dividend yield of 8.2%.

One of the major long-term risks for Enbridge is a transition to clean energy. But this shift will take another 20 years to make a material difference in Enbridges cash flows. By then, the company would have a significant portfolio of renewable energy.

Enbridges long-term risk isAlgonquin Powers (TSX:AQN)(NYSE:AQN) long-term opportunity. Algonquin earns 70% of its revenue from water, electricity, and natural gas, which are essentials services and can never go out of demand. It earns the remaining 30% revenue from renewable power operations and development.

Within renewable, it has solar, wind, thermal, and hydro facilities. It has 2 GW of installed renewable energy capacity, and an additional 1.6 GW of capacity is under construction.

Algonquinsells 85% of its power generated through long-term contracts. It is growing organically and through acquisitions, which is driving its profits, dividends, and stock prices. In the last five years, its adjusted EPS and dividend per share surged at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.5% and 7.9%, respectively. Its stock also surged at a CAGR of 13.8% during this period.

Algonquin will benefit from the shift to clean energy. In the next five years, it plans to spend $9.4 billion and increase its adjusted EPS at a CAGR of 8-10%. The stock currently has a dividend yield of 3.8%. But it has the potential to increase this dividend and also give you capital appreciation.

Fool contributor Puja Tayal has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Enbridge.

Continued here:

Top 2 Dividend Stocks to Buy in 2021 - The Motley Fool Canada

LIMA What was going to be Allen Countys big day at the Statehouse on Monday was scaled back due to COVID-19.

Only a small group of people will be allowed to take part during the swearing-in ceremony in Columbus of Speaker of the House Bob Cupp, Huffman tested positive for COVID-19 and will now be sworn in during a private ceremony in Lima by Judge John Willamowski, of the Third District Court of Appeals. Both Huffman and Cupp are Republicans and are from Allen County.

It will mark the first time the two leaders of the Senate and House hail from Allen County. And for Huffman and Cupp, the historic day also will be the beginning of the biggest challenge of their political careers.

Year two of the coronavirus finds businesses still scrambling to stay afloat and consumers hesitant to spend. Hospitals have been besieged with an unending number of virus patients. And while the states unemployment rate has dropped to 5.7% from an April high of 17.6%, under-employment remains an issue.

It doesnt end there.

The two legislative chambers failed to reach an agreement on school funding after what appeared to be a solution by the House. A summer of racial unrest saw windows of the Statehouse and businesses being broken out and a state of emergency declared. If that wasnt enough, their own legislature was rocked by a bribery scandal thats being called the biggest in Ohio history.

To put it bluntly, 2020 wasnt a pretty picture for Ohio.

Initiating change

At age 70, Cupp brings with him the reputation of being a champion of collaboration, while the 60-year-old Huffman is known as a skilled negotiator. Both are highly respected in Allen County. Its where they grew up Cupp developing his work ethic on a farm outside of C0lumbus Grove, and Huffman being the fifth of nine children of a hard-charging prosecuting attorney. Allen County is also the place the two chose to raise their families and where they first began to carve out their political careers Cupp as a county commissioner and Huffman as a Lima city councilman.

Weve known each other for about 35 years. Weve talked at least weekly about the different things that are going on and some of the preparation that needs to be done for next year, Huffman said when the two sat down on separate occasions with The Lima News in December.

The fact that the new Senate president and the House Speaker are actually talking to each other is a step forward in todays world of Ohio politics.

The former speaker and the current soon-to-be former president of the Senate apparently hadnt talked in months, and so that was a problem, Cupp said. The House and Senate are going to have policy differences, we know that. And no matter how long Matt and I have known each other, it wont go away. But Im sure well be communicating with each other on a very regular basis with an attitude of solving pro0blems.

More notably, Huffman and Cupp are now holding weekly conferences with Gov. Mike DeWine, a practice that used to be common between legislative leaders and the governor, but one that also went by the wayside.

Weve restarted all of that to remove the communication blocks, Cupp said. The governor will talk about what is on his agenda, what his issues are. Ill do the same for the House and Matt for the Senate. Well see if we can all focus on the same thing. If we do have differences, what are they, and can we work through them.

Make no mistake, they dont agree on everything.

Differing opinions

The most contentious issue between the House and Senate will likely revolve around school funding. In early December the House approved the Fair School Funding Plan by an 84-8 vote. It came after three years of extensive research, collaboration and improvements from school treasurers, superintendents, finance experts and both Republican and Democratic House members. Yet, it never received a vote from the Senate, which felt it wasnt allotted enough time to review the legislation before the end of the year.

Cupp called the defeat of the legislation disappointing. Huffman said it was necessary. Both said they believe a funding plan can be worked out in 2021.

Remaining on the sidelines during the discussion was a silent governors office.

Cupp and Huffmans relationship with DeWine has been one of respect, but it hasnt always been a smooth ride. Legislators have been upset with the restrictions DeWine and the state health commissioner have implemented on residents and business owners during the pandemic. The latest came Thursday when Health Director Stephanie McCloud extended to Jan. 23 a provision that encourages people to stay at home between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.. unless they are working or engaged in an essential activity.

This fall the legislature passed a bill that put constraints on the powers of the health director and governor, only to see their action receive a quick veto.

There are issues regarding how we make public health decisions, Huffman said. Many states have legislative oversight panels.

Cupp agreed.

We are disappointed with the governors veto, he said. We had a balanced and reasonable plan that would provide appropriate legislative oversight of these health orders, and ensure Ohioans voices are heard and their rights protected.

A dark shadow

One of the first things both Cupp and Huffman will do is to make committee assignments. That will come under a dark shadow for Cupp. He became the leader of House on a historic July afternoon which saw the chamber, by a 90-0 unanimous vote, remove Rep. Larry Householder from the position. Earlier that day, the fiery Householder was formally indicted for his role in an alleged $60 million bribery scheme.

Cupp didnt make any changes in committee assignments at that time, explaining he was trying to disturb things as little as possible. Hes now taking a new look at how the committees will be structured and says he plans to reset things. The question is what to do with Householder, who while stripped of the speakers position, had no opposition on Novembers ballot and was easily re-elected over write-in candidates in Eastern Ohios Coshocton and Perry counties.

If convicted of the crime, Householder would be automatically removed from office. Otherwise, he would have to be expelled or impeached to be removed.

Cupp acknowledged impeachment is on the table its going to be considered, yes, yes but noted some members of the House believe it is best to let the criminal process play out before taking action.

The honorable thing for him to do would be to resign, Cupp said of Householder.

The road ahead

The immediate task for lawmakers during the next six months will be to hammer out a new operating budget for state fiscal years 2022-23. It will be done under the unknowns of the pandemic, something not lost on Huffman, a hard-line fiscal conservative.

I think that the fundamentals of our economy are pretty strong. This is not like 2008. Its not like other recessions in the the late 70s and early 80s, and certainly not like the Depression, Huffman said. I have an optimistic belief that by the spring of 2021, most people will want the vaccine and will have been vaccinated. To whatever degree the economy is shut down, it will change.

He has talked with owners of small businesses and says many are adapting.

Lots of businesses will have been permanently changed, especially small businesses, Huffman acknowledged. But I think the real financial freedom and ability to control your life and do the things that you want will return. The situation for people who are struggling now, for whatever reason, is going to change. Thats not an idea that originated with me. There are a lot of other people who think the same thing,

Bob Cupp is congratulated at the Ohio Statehouse after first being elected Speaker of the House on July 30. On Monday, Cupp will be sworn in as Speaker of the House for the 134th General Assembly.

Huffman

Matt Huffman, announces with his wife, Sheryl, his intention to run for state senate during a September 2013 press conference at his Lima home. On Monday, Huffman will be sworn in as the new Senate President.

Allen County lawmakers to lead Ohio Legislature

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Ohio Legislature in the hands of Cupp, Huffman - sidneydailynews.com

Perth and Kinross Council have handed out just two fines for fly-tipping in six years despite complaints skyrocketing across the region.

The local authoritys light-handed approach to fixed penalty notices (FPN) is in stark contrast to other council areas in Tayside with Dundee dishing out 90 fines since 2016 and reporting three cases to the procurator fiscal.

At Angus Council, 20 FPN have been given out in the last six years in relation to fly-tipping.

The lack of penalty notices in Perth and Kinross comes despite a huge rise in reported cases of illegal dumping in the area.

Fly-tipping reports have jumped from 523 in 2015 to 1,141 in 2019. By November 22 2020 there has already been 1,384 cases reported to the local authority figures obtained through a freedom of information request reveal.

In total, 5,691 cases have been brought to the attention of Perth and Kinross Council since 2015, resulting in just two fines both of which came in 2o2o.

By comparison, illegal dumping numbers dropped in Dundee from 1,494 in 2016 to 655 between March and November 22 of 2020.

VIDEO: Worst case of fly-tipping councillor has ever seen as masses of rubbish dumped on Tayside road

In Angus, the highest reported figure over the past six years was in 2018 with 632 cases.

Councillor Angus Forbes, convener of environment and infrastructure at Perth and Kinross Council, says he is pushing the local authority to start issuing more FPNs.

He also called for local authorities to be given more powers to tackle the problem.

Councillor Forbes told The Courier: No one should be in any doubt how seriously we take this problem and I am delighted that Perth and Kinross Council have started to issue Fixed Penalty Notices.

But all local authorities are dependant on the procurator fiscal as to whether or not these penalty notices are ever taken to court and the procurator fiscal doesnt have the resources to pursue these.

He added: This is something that needs to be changed and its my view that local councils should be allowed to pursue fixed penalty notices through the courts themselves.

However, the Conservative councillor for Carse of Gowrie believes it is unfair to compare the fines issued in Dundee and Perth and Kinross due to land mass.

He said: Its simply impractical to compare us with Dundee, firstly we have a land mass of over 5,000 km sq compared to 60 km sq of Dundee.

Most of our area is rural with good trunk road connections, ideal for professional fly-tippers.

Take my ward for example the A90 runs right through it and there are many fly-tipping hot spots within a couple of minutes drive from the main road. A lot of the fly tipping I found there over the summer originated in Dundee.

Fury as disgusting fly-tippers dump rubbish at popular Rattray park

Secondly, different authorities may count fly tipping differently, for example in Perth and Kinross Council we count additional waste left beside domestic bins as fly tipping.

Councillor Forbes also bemoaned the additional pressures fly-tipping put on farmers with a considerable amount of waste dumped on private land.

He added that changing views on the issue was the best way of tackling the growing problem.

Whilst FPNs are part of the solution, and I am pushing the council to issue more of them, we need to look at other solutions too, said Councillor Forbes.

My view is that prevention is always better than cure and the real solution lies in a change of attitude so I would strongly recommend home owners question anyone who works for them whether thats gardeners, builders, plumbers or any other trades person who offers to dispose of their waste ask them where the waste is going and ask if they have a waste transfer licence.

Waste is the owners responsibility so if fly tipping is discovered with evidence linked to your address, it will be you that the council come to speak to.

Perth and Kinross Council has set up a new fly-tipping fund people can apply for to help clean up problem areas.

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Only two fines for fly-tipping in six years in Perth and Kinross as cases skyrocket across region - The Courier

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Spencer Cox is sworn in as Utah's 18th Governor at Tuacahn Center for the Arts in Ivins on Monday, Jan. 4, 2021.

Ivins Throughout his rapidly ascending political career, Spencer Cox has served as city mayor, county commissioner, state lawmaker and lieutenant governor.

Through the challenges of the coronavirus outbreak, he said individuals, communities, industries and countries have found ways to adapt and innovate through impossible circumstances. And he marveled at the ways Utahns in particular have stepped up amid the chaos, sewing six million masks and gowns and helping neighbors fix uprooted trees and damaged homes after earthquakes and hurricane-force winds.

But Cox, 45, also recognized the many challenges facing the nation and the state, including the political divisiveness that was on show even at his inauguration, as dozens of protesters lined the road into the event, chanting Gods country, not Coxs country! and holding signs decrying state coronavirus mandates.

We are more divided than at any time in our lifetimes as the news is filled with civil unrest and protests, including one right outside this venue here today, Cox said. Hateful rhetoric dominates our political discourse. We are facing a crisis of empathy, a scourge of contempt. Very little feels united about the United States today.

Cox argued, though, that its not too late to fix this, and quoted a series of American leaders in issuing a call for the states residents to come together to write the next chapter of Utahs history and prove that yes, indeed, our greatest days still lie ahead.

I come to you from the smallest of small towns and the humblest of circumstances, he concluded, his voice cracking with emotion. In taking a sacred oath today, my family and I pledge our hearts and our hands to you these next four years. We will succeed together, as one Utah.

Along with Cox and Henderson, state Auditor John Dougall, Treasurer David Damschen and Attorney General Sean Reyes also took their oaths of office at the ceremony on Monday.

Cox said on Twitter Sunday that Hendersons speech marked the first time in the states history that a lieutenant governor has spoken at an inauguration ceremony.

During her remarks, Henderson, the states second female lieutenant governor, promised opportunity for all Utahns under the Cox administration, assuring them that theres room at the table for you but that there would be no token leadership.

We dont need more women in the public sphere solely to provide expert opinions on womens issues. We dont need more people of color in the halls of government only to help us resolve issues related to minorities. And we dont need more rural Utahns serving in our administration simply to help the people in their hometowns, she said. No, we need representation of all of our voices, so that we can solve the hard problems in front of us in the best way.

In addition to the remarks from the lieutenant governor, the location of the inauguration marked another deviation from tradition. The ceremony has typically been held at the Utah Capitol in Salt Lake City (with the recent exception of a three-year period starting in 2004 when the building was undergoing renovations) and Cox said this was the first oath of office event ever held outside of Salt Lake City.

The event also looked different than ones in years past because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Attendance at the open-air Tuacahn amphitheater was capped at around 25% of its usual 1,920-seat capacity and guests were required to physically distance.

Cox arrived in southwestern Utah ahead of the inauguration for a day of service with the Utah Food Bank on Saturday. On Sunday, he and Henderson attended several church services as part of a day of prayer before attending a freedom fireside hosted by the St. George Interfaith Council.

In Fillmore, the group visited Utahs historic territorial statehouse and Cox signed his first executive order, instructing state agencies to review occupational licenses with an eye toward eliminating barriers to work.

Often around occupational licensure, we say that were putting regulations in place to protect people when what it really does is protect people who maybe are in power or who already have the things that they need, he said. And we end up hurting people who are trying to get into an industry, who are trying to make a living.

Cox gave the example of an old Utah law that required anyone who was paid to braid hair to go to beauty school and log hundreds of hours to obtain a license. A lawsuit ultimately overturned that regulation, which he said hurt single moms who were trying to make a living for their families.

Those are the types of regulations were talking about, Cox added.

As part of the executive order, agencies must report back to Cox by the end of June with recommendations for deleting rules and regulations that are outdated or can be relaxed without risk to public health and safety.

Unfortunately, racism does still exist in our country, he said. It was unfortunately a founding principle of our country and something that weve worked over generations to fix. Weve come a long ways and weve gotten better, but we still have a ways to go.

The new governor said he believes Utah can be a leader in the country in ensuring equity and inclusion.

He reiterated that aim during comments to the media in Fillmore on Monday, noting that vaccine distribution was first and foremost his priority. He said he plans to meet this week with everyone that is participating in distribution and will be evaluating lessons learned to see where the state can do better.

I assure you that over the next few days and the next couple weeks, we will see a significant increase in the pace and number of vaccines being distributed, he said.

The goal, he said, is to exhaust the weekly supply of vaccines the week they are received.

A schedule of Coxs first week on the job shows he plans to fill much of it with meetings including with cabinet members, education stakeholders, minority leadership and other legislators and with interviews with the media. On Thursday, he plans to unveil his 2022 fiscal year budget.

- Reporter Bethany Rodgers contributed to this report.

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Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox is sworn in as Utah's 18th governor - Salt Lake Tribune

Bryan Hughes is a long way from home. Days before the U.S. Senate runoff elections in Georgia, the Texas state senator is knocking on hundreds of doors in the Atlanta suburbs each day. He drove 11 hours for an election that could mean the difference between Democrats seizing complete control in Washington and having a Republican check against a Joe Biden presidency.

The importance of these races is also felt by the suburban voters Hughes is reaching out to, many of whom live in homes valued at just under half a million dollars.

There is a tremendous amount at stake, one burly man in a Falcons T-shirt says from his doorway, carefully keeping his distance due to COVID-19 concerns. Ill be making sure to vote, to make sure there is balance. At least for the next couple years. Hughes agrees enthusiastically: We cant have one side running away with it.

Such suburban Atlanta conservatives have long powered the states Republican Party, often boasting a college education, a higher tax bracket and a desire to avoid burning bridges in this international metropolis once known as the City Too Busy to Hate. Yet there has been little public outreach to these more moderate fiscal conservatives from the GOPs two Senate candidates themselves.

Republicans Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue have both backed President Donald Trump, who has sharply divided Georgias Republicans by torching Gov. Brian Kemp and other state GOP leaders for not supporting his efforts to overturn the election over baseless fraud allegations. Loeffler and Perdue have called for the Republican secretary of state to resign, maintaining that Trump won despite a series of recounts showing otherwise. Trump is returning the favor by campaigning in the northwest part of the state on Monday to stoke rural turnout, following an earlier rally in South Georgia.

That scorched-earth strategy has left traditional Georgia Republicans out in the cold. But many in the old guard are working to help Perdue and Loeffler win, driven by a shared goal of keeping the state and the U.S. Senate red. Trumps insistence on discrediting the presidential vote makes their task harder. A recent SurveyUSA poll showed that just 18 percent of Loeffler/Perdue voters have full confidence their vote will be counted accurately, compared to 67 percent for backers of the Democratic candidates, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.

Perdue and Loeffler have to thread the needle: How do you not alienate Trump supporters who are upset, and also send the message that we are the only check on a President Joe Biden that exists?

Buzz Brockway, former Republican Georgia state representative

Some of the mainstream GOPs outreach efforts are more visible. The National Republican Senatorial Committee recently sent Ivanka Trump to Milton, one of Georgias richest cities, where she sang paeans to up-by-the-bootstraps conservatism, addressing a crowd of Ugg boots and Patagonia jackets next to Aviator glasses and upper-class guts. TV ads from a group called Peachtree PAC declare that Loeffler and Perdue will be a check on Biden but the people behind the shadowy groups $40 million in ad spending arent legally required to become public until after the runoffs.

For the most part, their initiatives are flying under the radar, driven by an intricate grassroots door-knocking network with a nuanced message. The National Rifle Association has held canvassing efforts at gun clubs across the state, including one in the famous golf-cart affluent hub of Peachtree City. Americans for Prosperity, backed by the billionaire Koch family, has 200 paid staffers and hundreds more activists from its Georgia chapter knocking on doors. They expect to reach a million doors by Election Day, on top of 3.2 million phone calls and 850,000 text messages with targeted digital and streaming ads. The Faith & Freedom Coalition which is headquartered in Duluth and whose chairman, Ralph Reed, is from Georgia will hit 650,000 doors and send 900,000 voter guides, in addition to the just over 1 million guides passed out by 5,400 churches throughout the state.

Hughes was knocking on doors with the Faith & Freedom Coalition, joining some 1,000 volunteers, many from out of state like himself. At times, the message from these groups has admitted the reality that Trump lost, even if the senators wont say it. Perdue and Loeffler have to thread the needle: How do you not alienate Trump supporters who are upset, and also send the message that we are the only check on a President Joe Biden that exists? says Buzz Brockway, a former Republican state representative now working at the Georgia Center for Opportunity, a free market think tank. Its tough to walk that line.

Grassroots groups need to speak thoughtfully, suggests Tim Head, executive director for the Faith & Freedom Coalition. The social conservatives that work at Coca-Cola, at Bank of Americas regional office in order for them to be willing to somewhat publicly associate with us, we have to be more nuanced and constructive, Head says. We want these cosmopolitan social conservatives to feel like they have a safe home, where they are not going to be ashamed or embarrassed by our public positions or speech.

Americans for Prosperity, which emphasizes fiscal conservatism, has backed Perdue, running digital ads and sending informational mailers for the businessman. But it hasnt batted for the more controversial Loeffler, the richest person in the U.S. Senate, who has boasted about being more conservative than Attila the Hun and having stood by the president 100 percent of the time. Both Perdue and Loeffler put any concerns about fiscal restraint aside to jump on board with Trumps recent calls for $2,000 stimulus checks for millions of Americans, though that effort has been blocked by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Since 2018, AFP has especially targeted suburban voters, particularly women, whose voting shifts led to Republican losses in states like Pennsylvania and Arizona. AFP has also promised not to run any attack ads, keeping the focus on issues like the economy and preserving private health care. Were trying to be happy warriors, says Tony West, a Buford, Georgia-based senior adviser to AFP Action PAC. Being nonpartisan, being issues-based, allows us to be a lot more positive, whether it be the swing voter or the more conservative-aligned universe.

Still, most traditional political operatives are too skittish to say the obvious on record: that Republicans cant just win with the most extreme members of their party. Brockway was originally confident he could put me in touch with some of the leaders of those quiet efforts. But eventually, he said nobody wanted to talk. I guess it really is a secret network, he says.

Neither Perdue nor Loeffler has solicited help, sources say, from former Sen. Johnny Isakson, a congenial conservative who helped build the modern Georgia GOP and applied a saying from his real estate days to politics: There are friends and future friends. Isakson, whose retirement because of poor health led to Loefflers appointment, won reelection by nearly 14 percentage points in 2016, when Trump won Georgia by 5.

I think its unfortunate. It has more to do with the perception that this is how you win elections now and there is, in some corners of the GOP, just a disgust with the Isakson approach to things, Brockway says. I think that type of politics is a victim of our current politics, which is all about revving up your base, getting it angry and energized, and marching to the polls.

Stoking turnout is the name of the game for both parties in these runoffs, which typically have far lower turnout than presidential elections, though early vote numbers suggest the numbers in January might be close to November, given the big spending and high stakes. Were spending all our resources on GOTV, an effort that includes both traditional and newer Trump-inspired Republicans, says Martha Zoller, a former conservative radio host who chairs Georgia United Victory (GUV), the pro-Loeffler PAC. Ill be honest: I think every Republican who can be reached has been at this point.

Still, voting experts say that trust in election integrity is a major factor in whether these voters bother to show up at all. A swing of just a few thousand voters could make a big difference in close contests.

People are fed up and tired of voting, says David White, a Trump supporter who owns a concrete pumping company in exurban Canton, adding that he thinks many wont show up at the polls. The Democrats are still going to have suitcases full of votes.

That sentiment was evident at Ivanka Trumps Milton event, which White attended. When Loeffler talked about creating jobs and fighting new taxes, she was drowned out by voters chanting Fight for Trump and Stop the Steal! How the Georgia GOP juggles those passionate Trump voters with traditional supporters could make the Senate races a template for the future of the Republican Party itself.

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The Clandestine Efforts to Keep Georgia's Old-School Conservatives in the Fold - OZY

Will we ever return to normal?

It is a question being asked across the globe as a dismal 2020 turns into 2021.

And there are several additional questions.

Will vaccines against the coronavirus prove effective? How long will immunity last? Will sufficient numbers be inoculated to allow for viral suppression? Will the virus mutate, shape-shifting its genetics, forcing vaccine scientists to scramble in a game of catch-up?

And even if the virus is suppressed, will the longer term political, social and economic repercussions of the pandemic mean life will never quite return to normal? Furthermore, should we just want a simple resumption of the status quo?

The world was out of sorts with itself even before the coronavirus turned everything upside down. With the 2008-09 financial crash, established political orders already were being roiled by the rise of populism.

Writing in his pre-coronavirus book, Age of Anger: A History of the Present, Indian essayist Pankaj Mishra argued many people felt powerless, losing faith in traditional political authorities to protect them or in their ability to restore reassuring predictability.

Resentment was rising at the increasingly unequal distributions of wealth and power. The left-behinds wanted a new deal. And the rise of new powers also was starting to buffet the global status quo, reigniting old resentments and triggering new conflicts.

All of that was prior to the emergence of the deadly virus to test governments, adding yet more unpredictability and suspicion. And now the public health crisis has morphed into a multi-headed hydra of interlinked upheavals.

Tens of millions have lost their jobs. And when the full tsunami of economic repercussions hits, say economists, the ranks of the unemployed will swell. While mass vaccination points to an end to the COVID-19 pandemic in the next year or so, it does not provide immunity against longer-term economic damage, says Stephen Roach, a senior fellow at Yale University and former chief economist at Morgan Stanley, the New York-based investment bank. COVID-19 is the illness caused by the coronavirus.

Recent research on the impact of 19 major pandemics dating back to the 14th century each with death counts in excess of 100,000 highlights the long shadow of the economic carnage, he adds.

Governments are borrowing massively or burrowing deep into reserves to try to weather the pandemic, hoping that post-pandemic economic growth will pick up fast to restore equilibrium.

In Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio's classic book, The Decameron, completed shortly after the 14th century Black Death, seven young women and three young men escape the bubonic plague and seclude themselves in a villa outside Florence. There they narrate 100 tales to occupy themselves. The book concludes with the group returning to Florence to pick up their former lives when the plague is over.

But pandemics and disease, like wars, leave their mark, and the history of pandemics suggests many wont get to return to their pre-contagion lives. Plagues and pestilence have reshaped countries before. They can also doom empires. According to American historian Timothy Winegard, author of The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator, published last year, a fresh virulent strain of malaria may have contributed to the decline of ancient Rome.

In England, the long-term effects of the medieval Black Death were far-reaching, according to historian Tom James, with agriculture, religion, economics and even social class affected. Medieval Britain was irreversibly changed, he wrote in a commentary for the BBC. The same happened to Boccaccio's north Italy.

Analysts and historians warn the pandemic will cast a long economic shadow. Long-lasting changes to the way we shop, travel and socialize are likely to significantly affect certain sectors, says Stephen Machin, director of the Center for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics. Uncertainty about the course of the pandemic means the recovery could be even slower. Consequently, the economic scars have considerable potential to cut even deeper, he adds.

World economic output will be about 7% lower than it would otherwise have been due to the pandemic, according to projections. The United Nations has warned an additional 207 million people could be pushed into extreme poverty by 2030, due to the severe long-term impact of the pandemic, bringing the number to more than a billion.

Other economists foresee an acceleration of the pre-coronavirus trend toward de-globalization, which in turn risks retarding economic growth, reducing per-person income. Mohamed El-Erian, the chief economic adviser at Allianz, a European multinational financial services company, has forecast a general impetus to de-globalization.

Some individuals will be affected harder than others, says Brian Bell, an economist at Kings College London. Those most likely to become unemployed are the young, those with a lower level of qualifications, Black workers and those on low pay. Similar to previous recessions, the COVID-19 crisis has the potential to scar a large number of individuals, most of them already in a precarious situation, he adds.

Likewise, it is the most vulnerable and poorer economies that will suffer the most. Oxford Economics, a consultancy, says, Overall long-term economic scarring will be slightly higher in emerging markets than in advanced economies, partly because of labor market rigidities, financial imbalances, and the tight limits governments can offer in terms of fiscal support to their citizens and ailing businesses. On its scorecard, the Philippines, Peru, Colombia, Malaysia, India and Argentina are among the countries likely to suffer the worst economic impact.

Will pandemic prompt any improvements?

Optimists say some good may come out of the year of the plague, though, much as some good also emerged from past pandemics. Historians say the Black Death hastened the end of feudalism, because of the impoverishment of many aristocrats and landowners.

While some fear even deeper political polarization, optimists note the coronavirus pandemic has seen signs of greater social solidarity, too. In the United States, there has been a mushrooming of mutual aid networks with appeals for help and offers of assistance broadcast on Facebook and other social media sites. Neighbors and the members of the mutual aid networks have helped feed the hungry, mask the mask-less and shop for the elderly and infirm. That could leave behind a sharper appetite for grassroots, social activism, binding neighborhoods more, say activists.

Likewise, Italians displayed a strong sense of civic solidarity throughout much of 2020. From hilltop Italian villages to large towns, many Italians have been scrambling to assist municipal authorities to ensure the elderly and vulnerable get food and attention. And it was Italians who led the way, as the world shut down in the early days of the pandemic, to display their support for front-line health workers by singing from their balconies. The spontaneous, choral nightly performance inspired other Europeans to follow.

Remaining legacies?

For many white-collar employees, the pandemic saw a marked shift from office work to home-based employment, especially in well-wired advanced economies. Some observers forecast the move may well be lasting and that it has benefits. Home workers have more control over their time, allowing them greater freedom to decide when to do tasks, giving them greater choice in how to balance work, family life and leisure.

They dont waste time commuting and some studies suggest there are productivity gains, too; although others worry about the loss of social interaction and say home-based employees risk becoming isolated.

Reducing commuter traffic also has environmental and climate benefits, reducing strain on transport infrastructure and costs and lowering greenhouse gas emissions, according to Capital GES, a Swiss-based employment consultancy that works in 25 countries. Some studies warn the climate benefits could be blunted, however, by increased heating and cooling of homes.

Climate-action campaigners hope the pandemic will act as a massive nudge to rethink the relationship between humans and nature, saying the coronavirus is a dramatic reminder that the natural world shouldnt be taken for granted. Some governments say economic recovery plans are a once-in-a-generation opportunity to kickstart a green recovery.

If 2020 has taught us anything, it is that we cannot have healthy people without a healthy planet, says Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program.

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The Year of the Coronavirus and its Legacy - Voice of America

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s the new year opens, the absent virtue that Boris Johnson most needs is resolution. Though 2020 was not a year that anyone foresaw with the promised clear vision, 2021 will be when 2020s consequences come in. Mr Johnson has delayed and prevaricated his way through the coronavirus pandemic so far but has been given the benefit of the doubt. When the economic consequences become plain, as they will this year, the Prime Ministers resolution will be tested and he will bemoan the loss of the one great advantage he has carried with him until now.

That advantage is Brexit and the signing and ratifying of a thin trade deal is a reminder that getting what you want in politics is rarely an unmixed blessing. The Tory party replaced Theresa May with Johnson so that he could get Brexit done and he fought and won a general election on the same slogan and the same basis. Now, he has done something risky, which is that he has, actually, got Brexit done. There will be further squalls and disputes but, in political terms Brexit is a done deal.

That success gives the Conservative Party two problems. The first, the lesser of the two, is that Brexit turns out to bring nothing to those who voted for it. We are almost a week into our new age of national freedom. What fresh liberties have you enjoyed so far? What have you done that the European Union was previously preventing you from doing? No, me neither. The whole argument has been a colossal waste of time and most people will carry on their lives without ever noticing anything, for good or ill. Which raises the second, really troubling, problem for the Conservative Party. How will it cope without Brexit to complain about? There is a psychological dimension to this. The EU has provided a convenient scapegoat for Tories of a certain vintage, and now they have rid themselves of that ready-made excuse. But the worst of getting what you wished for is that you can no longer go on wishing for it. You no longer have an issue that stirs your passions and unites your coalition.

The Conservatives two blocs of support have little in common: wealthy shire elites and poorer northern voters

The Conservative Party won an unusual victory in December 2019. It now has two blocs of support with little in common. In rural England a wealthy, educated shire elite still saw the Tories as the custodians of their best interests. In the towns of the West Midlands, the North-West and North-East of England a much poorer constituency who regarded Jeremy Corbyn as unpatriotic deserted the Labour Party. Economically and socially these two groups share very little. They have diametrically opposed views on the correct level of taxation and the desirability of using state power to pursue a more equal country. The only thing that brought them together was Brexit and now Brexit has gone.

Johnson thus goes into this new year resolving to seek other ways to bind his coalition together. His immediate task, of course, is to get a grip on his uncertain handling of the pandemic. The obvious course, loathe as the Prime Minister appears to be to make a decision, is to establish a national lockdown with a plan attached for unlocking as the vaccine is distributed. But even a more assured pandemic response will not stifle the job losses that are coming. When the bad economic news comes in the Government is going to need a plan to point to and it is going to have to be a plan that unites the shire counties with its urban vote.

This is not easy. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has pointed out that Britain has the starkest regional inequalities in the developed world. Only London, the South-East and the East of England generate an economic surplus. Johnson keeps saying that he is committed to rebalancing the economy, but this is going to take millions he does not have in the Treasury and political capital he will not find in his party. There may be other issues on which Tories of the North and South can unite. Immigration and crime, perhaps. But none will be as resonant as Brexit.

Johnson is a successful electoral politician and his good fortune has been to have competed against only duffers. Labour fielded a superannuated Ken Livingstone in the mayoral elections of 2008 and 2012 and the hapless Jeremy Corbyn in the December 2019 general election. Finally, Johnson, if he sticks around for the next contest, will have to face his first serious opponent in Sir Keir Starmer. When that time comes he will have to find something to talk about because, for the moment, he has lost his winning hand.

Philip Collins is founder and writer-in-chief of The Draft

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How will the Tory party cope without Brexit to complain about? - Evening Standard

Will Vitka | @WillVitka

January 1, 2021, 2:00 AM

Its over. 2020 is finally over. And with any luck, 2021 will be better for everyone. But lets not count our chickens before they hatch.

Theres an ongoing pandemic, a vaccine rollout, economic woes, new laws, Joe Bidens inauguration, elections in Virginia and more to watch out for.

Here are some of the big local stories happening in the D.C. area in 2021.

FILE In this Dec. 22, 2020, file photo Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, prepares to receive his first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, Pool, File)

D.C., Maryland and Virginia started receiving the shipments of the COVID vaccine in December. And Maryland and Virginia are already sending extra doses to the continuously shortchanged District, more than tripling the amount available for health care workers in the nations capital.

Health care workers in the region, others on the frontline combating the pandemic, as well as nursing home residents, will be the first to get the vaccine. Eventually, the public at large will be vaccinated, though no hard dates have been set on that widespread distribution plan.

Current projections suggest the public could get the vaccine in the spring: March, April or May. But it depends on vaccine supply and distribution.

The pace of the vaccine distribution is already being criticized by President-elect Joe Biden, who said things will get worse before they get better.

Biden, who takes office Jan. 20, said he has directed his team to prepare a much more aggressive effort, with more federal involvement and leadership, to get things back on track.

The president-elect said he would move heaven and earth to get us going in the right direction.

He set a goal of administering 100 million shots of the vaccine within his first 100 days in office, but said to accomplish that, the pace of vaccinations would have to increase five to six times to 1 million shots a day. Even with that pace, however, Biden acknowledged it will still take months to have the majority of Americans vaccinated.

Turning this around is going to take time. We might not see improvement until were well into March, as it will take time for our COVID response plan to produce visible progress, he said.

More Coronavirus News

Looking for more information? D.C., Maryland and Virginia are each releasing more data every day. Visit their official sites here:Virginia|Maryland|D.C.

FILE In this Aug. 14, 2020, file photo, members with the Washington, D.C. Dept. of Health, administer COVID-19 tests on F Street, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

The pandemic isnt going anywhere. In fact, cases continue to rise both in the D.C. area and nationwide.

COVID-19 killed more than 343,000 Americans by the end of 2020. And more than 19.7 million are infected, making the U.S. No. 1 for infections, according to tracking data from Johns Hopkins, which is nearly double the number of cases No. 2 India has at 10.2 million.

As of Dec. 31, 2020, there were more than 655,000 cases and 11,700 deaths in the Washington region:

Heed local leaders calls to stay vigilant and safe as you head into 2021.

More Coronavirus News

Looking for more information? D.C., Maryland and Virginia are each releasing more data every day. Visit their official sites here:Virginia|Maryland|D.C.

(Getty Images/iStockphoto/stevanovicigor)

There are a slew of new laws taking effect in the District, Maryland and Virginia in 2021.

They include an amended foam ban in D.C., a minimum-wage increase in Maryland and a ban on holding cellphones while driving in Virginia.

Get the full breakdown from WTOP.

Traffic on the Capital Beltway in Maryland. (WTOP/Dave Dildine)

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogans Beltway widening project has come under fire from citizens groups, Montgomery County leaders and even the U.S. Navy but, nevertheless, the Maryland Department of Transportation has accelerated the timeline for next steps on its $11 billion I-495/I-270 managed lanes highway project.

The agency sent out a formal Request for Proposals on Dec. 18, 2020. Financial responses are due on Jan. 8.

Hogans plan widens all of I-270, all of I-495 and the federally owned Baltimore-Washington Parkway, and while proposals are being sought, parts of the project are subject to a separate two-year environmental review that wont begin until 2021 at the earliest.

According to Maryland Matters, transit advocate and former chairman of the Tri-County Commission in Southern Maryland Gary V. Hodge accused MDOT of attempting to push the highway-widening plan past the point of no return before the governor leaves office. Hogan is term-limited and will leave office early in 2023.

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., speaks at a news conference on District of Columbia statehood on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, June 16, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Statehood has long been a quest for many District residents, and the effort has gained momentum.

Longtime advocate D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Nortons bill,HR 51, passed a House vote on June 26, 2020, after it was brought to the floor by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.).

In December of 2020, Hoyer became an original cosponsor of the D.C. statehood bill for the 117th Congress, which starts January 2021.

What are the chances the District becomes a state in 2021? Slim, albeit possible.

Norton has enough votes in the House (and 173 cosponsors) for the bill to pass there, but the Senate is likely to remain a roadblock, even if Democrats pick up two more seats in the hotly contested Jan. 5 Georgia Senate runoff races.

If the Democrats do succeed in nabbing two more seats in Georgia, the Senate would be split, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the deciding vote. But a D.C. statehood bill would need more than a simple majority in the Senate since Republicans are likely to filibuster over (justified) concerns that overwhelmingly left-leaning District voters would install three new Democrats to Congress. That means Senate Democrats need to muster up 60 votes to overcome a Republican filibuster.

On the plus side, Nortons D.C. statehood bill has been placed on the Senate floor calendar for the first time in history.

Delaware Sen. Tom Carper is the lead Senate sponsor for HR 51.

The moon rises over the Virginia state Capitol in Richmond, Va., Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

There are two vacancies in the Virginia House of Delegates that voters will decide on in January.

In District 2, which covers parts of Prince William and Stafford counties, Democrat Jennifer Carroll Foy stepped down to focus on campaigning and raising money to make a run for the governors office in 2021.

Democrat Candi King and Republican Heather Mitchell are vying for the seat.

In District 90, which covers parts of Norfolk and Virginia Beach, Joe Lindsey retired from his seat to become a Norfolk General District Court judge.

Democrat Angelia Williams Graves and Republican Sylvia Bryant are jockeying for the position.

Proud Boys and Antifa fight after the Million MAGA March from Freedom Plaza to the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 12, 2020. The rally was held to back President Donald Trumps unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud in the U.S. election. (Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump are planning a rally Jan. 6 at Freedom Plaza and the Lincoln Memorial the same day Joe Bidens election win is set to be certified by Congress.

Women for America First says it expects some 5,000 participants for each park area to be used, according to the permit application.

The far-right extremist group The Proud Boys who clashed with counterprotesters earlier in December in a night of violence that left four stabbed, including a police officer, and attacked historically Black D.C. churches promised to attend.

Three other rallies are also planned, according to The Washington Post.

Trump has encouraged his supporters to rally, tweeting, Be there, will be wild!

Peter Navarro releases 36-page report alleging election fraud more than sufficient to swing victory to Trump https://t.co/D8KrMHnFdK. A great report by Peter. Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 19, 2020

In addition, two downtown D.C. hot spots for Proud Boys Harrington Hotel and Harrys Pub will be closed during the planned rally.

ShutDownDC has asked its own supporters to help block Trump supporters from being able to stay at certain hotels in the D.C. area.

Thats why we are asking you to call the following hotels and demand that they 1) RENOUNCE Trump-affiliated protesters and 2) CANCEL the reservations of people coming to town to undermine democracy on January 6, the group said in an email.

Those hotels include: Holiday Inn Alexandria, Washington Marriott at Metro Center, Holiday Inn Capitol Hill, Hyatt Place Washington DC/White House, Willard InterContinental Hotel and the Capital Hilton.

President-elect Joe Biden announces his climate and energy nominees and appointees at The Queen Theater in Wilmington Del., Saturday, Dec. 19, 2020. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Joe Bidens inauguration is scheduled for Jan. 20, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol.

Because of the pandemic, the event will only have about 1,000 people in attendance. Traditionally, 200,000 tickets are distributed to members of Congress for their constituents.

Trump, who continues to make unproven claims of widespread voter fraud, has not yet told current and former White House aides whether he will attend Bidens inauguration.

Get all the details you need from WTOPs 2021 inauguration FAQ.

The coffered ceiling of the Metro Center station rises above a waiting train December 02, 2020 in Washington, D.C. Due in part to the drastic decline in ridership because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Metro is proposing to cut weekend rail service, close 19 of 91 stations, shorten hours of operation, slash bus routes by more than half and lay off 2,400 workers starting in July to meet a $494.5 million deficit in the fiscal year. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Metro is facing a historic budget crisis because of the pandemic, according to General Manager Paul Wiedefeld. As a result, the agencys proposed 2021 budget slashes service and shutters 19 stations to compensate for a $500 million deficit. Other changes include closing Metrorail at 9 p.m., ending weekend service and reducing the number of trains.

According to Metros budget proposal, the 19 stations that would close are:

If the proposed budget is accepted, roughly 2,400 jobs would be eliminated.

Metros next fiscal year starts July 2021.

Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe announces that he is running for the Democratic nomination for governor during a press conference in Richmond, Va., Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2020. (Bob Brown/Richmond Times-Dispatch via AP)

Virginians will be deciding who heads to the general election in November. Big tickets include the governorship, lieutenant governor and attorney general.

Due to Virginia law, current Gov. Ralph Northam is not allowed to seek consecutive terms as governor.

Among the Democrats facing off in the primary are former Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy, Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, state Sen. Jennifer L. McClellan and former Gov. Terry McAuliffe. Republicans include Del. Kirk Cox and state Sen. Amanda Chase, although Chase indicated that she plans to run as an Independent.

Democrats aiming for the lieutenant governor seat include Del. Hala Ayala, Del. Elizabeth Guzman, Norfolk City Council member Andria McClellan and Del. Sam Rasoul. Puneet Ahluwalia and Lance Allen are on the GOP ticket for lieutenant governor.

In the Democratic primary for attorney general, current Attorney General Mark Herring faces a challenge from Del. Jerrauld Jones. On the Republican side, Del. Jason Miyares is battling attorney Chuck Smith.

FILE Jessica Bowman, Deputy Commissioner of the Virginia Department of Elections, shows off her shoes at the Richmond general registrars office in Richmond, Va., Friday, Sept. 18, 2020. (Bob Brown/Richmond Times-Dispatch via AP)

The big day for voters in Virginia to decide their next governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general.

The Associated Press and Maryland Matters contributed to this report.

Like WTOP on Facebook and follow @WTOP on Twitter to engage in conversation about this article and others.

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2021 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

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2021 preview: Big local stories to watch in DC area - WTOP

The covid-19 pandemic has exposed existing faultlines and inequities in the economy, but is the way out spending more on social security programmes or cutting back on the fiscal deficit? Would an urban employment guarantee scheme help job creation and spur short-term demand as well as long-term economic growth? These are the questions our panel of experts debated in an hour-long session titled, Pandemic, unemployment, inequality: The way forward as part of Mints Road to Recovery series in the run-up to the Union Budget in February 2021.

Leading the hour-long conversation on Monday evening were Manish Sabharwal, Chairman and Co-Founder of Teamlease Services Ltd; Dr. Jyotsna Jha, Director of the Bengaluru-based Centre for Budget and Policy Studies; Rosa Abraham, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University; and Ashutosh Gupta, India Country Manager, LinkedIn with journalist Mitali Mukherjee as moderator.

While the panellists werent entirely in accord on the way forward, one thing all four agreed upon was that covid-19 has not created but only reminded us of the socio-economic problems and inequality gaps that India faces. While Sabharwal focused on the need for structural reform to spur growth, Dr. Jha and Abraham emphasised that government spending on health, education and social security was essential for overall economic growth. Gupta, meanwhile, explained why reskilling needed priority in the Budget to take the country forward. The road to recovery lies in reskilling, especially for those in sectors such as education, healthcare and hospitality, which employ large numbers of women and have been hardest hit by the virus effect," said Gupta.

Though employment has recovered in the last few months, incomes have fallen. People have returned to work [after the lockdown], but our research has found that fewer women are back in the workforce and even among the men, 80% have come back to jobs that pay less or are now self-employed," said Abraham. People have come back to employment but in more precarious ways." In this context, an urban jobs guarantee scheme could provide the kind of social safety net that less privileged sections of society require.

This kind of spending would benefit the economy at large, said Jha, pointing out that secure employment and income would create demand for private goods, spark consumption and have a multiplier effect on helping small businesses and, in turn, economic growth. Public spending on social security does not have to be detrimental to the economy. Governance reforms can be socially responsible and yet push economic growth," she said.

Sabharwal made pitch for fiscal prudence, saying, Spending money wont create jobs. Schemes like MNREGA are not an employment but a poverty solution. Find the money is not a solution; there is a shortage of it in a year like this one where the pandemic has exhausted resources." Instead, he said, the Budgets focus should be on boosting investment and putting more money in the hands of employees by removing mandatory contributions to Provident Fund and ESI, labour reform, and regulatory changes. I can think of many non-fiscal ways to create freedom for entrepreneurs," he said.

Jha made the point that signalling is very important for a government. In addition to gender, caste, urban-rural and other inequalities, this pandemic has also worsened interstate inequalities," said Jha. States that were in a better position before will recover faster so the role of the Union government and the Budget is very important in terms of signalling what is important so that states will follow."

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Can India spend its way out of its unemployment crisis? - Mint

The House appears poised to override President TrumpDonald TrumpNew York Post editorial board calls on President Trump to 'start thinking' about Georgia runoffs instead of overturning election Loeffler, Perdue praise Trump for signing COVID-19 relief legislation after uncertainty Trump signs .3T relief, spending package MOREs veto of the must-pass annual defense policy bill, a dramatic rebuke of Trump in the final days of his presidency.

House lawmakers will vote Monday on overriding Trumps rejection of the fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which passed both chambers of Congress with more than the two-thirds majority needed to overcome a veto.

Some Republicans have said they would sustain Trumps veto despite supporting the bill earlier this month. Still, dozens would need to flip their vote for the override to fail, and some Democrats who previously voted against the measure could switch their votes to override Trump.

Top House Democrats are projecting confidence they have the votes needed to deliver the first veto override since Trump took office.

The FY21 NDAA passed with overwhelming, veto-proof support in both the House and Senate, and I remain confident that Congress will override this harmful veto, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam SmithDavid (Adam) Adam SmithThe Grinch steals Joe Biden's Christmas Overnight Defense: Trump vetoes defense bill, setting up override vote | Trump raises objections to government funding, COVID-19 relief package | Trump offers Iran 'friendly health advice' as tensions heat up Trump vetoes defense bill, setting up potential override MORE (D-Wash.) said in a statement after Trump vetoed the measure on Wednesday. While the president may not care about our service members and their families, Congress still places an immense value on their service and sacrifice.

Speaker Nancy PelosiNancy PelosiTrump signs .3T relief, spending package New York Democratic Party chairman warns Ocasio-Cortez against challenging Schumer Incoming Democratic House members sidestep questions on voting for Pelosi as speaker MORE (D-Calif.), calling Trumps veto an act of staggering recklessness, said in her own statement the chamber will take up the veto override with bipartisan support.

Including this years defense bill, Trump has issued nine vetoes during his presidency.

Republicans have been largely reluctant to vote against Trump over the past four years. But Trump may have met his match in the NDAA, a bill he has never before vetoed.

Lawmakers are immensely proud of the bills 59-year streak of becoming law and do not want to be remembered as the Congress that failed to deliver. The $740 billion legislation authorizes funding for jobs, military bases and weapons manufacturers that affect nearly every congressional district and state. Troops would lose out on a host of special pay and bonuses without passage of the NDAA.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have also been stressing the importance of cybersecurity provisions in this years bill after a massive hack suspected to have been carried out by the Russians compromised myriad government systems at key agencies.

Weve just had one of the worst cyberattacks against us in our history. We experience threats from around the world every day. Our troops deserve a pay raise and it is our duty to keep America safe, tweeted Rep. Will HurdWilliam Ballard HurdLawmakers call for including creation of Latino, women's history museums in year-end spending deal House Republicans who didn't sign onto the Texas lawsuit Defense policy bill would create new cyber czar position MORE (R-Texas), who is retiring at the end of this Congress. Our goal was to rebuild our military and defend our nation. The NDAA does just that and it modernizes our forces. I will be supporting it again.

Trumps veto of the defense bill is just one of the ways he has thrown a wrench into the final days of this congressional session.

The president late Sunday signed a $2.3 trillion government funding and coronavirus relief package, but only after offering surprise objections a day after the measure negotiated by his administration was passed by the House and Senate.

He signed the bill a day after unemployment benefits extended by the measure ran out, but before a government shutdown would have been triggered on Tuesday.

Lawmakers in both parties had called for him to sign the measure, and Trump ultimately relented even while continuing to criticize it.

On the NDAA, Trump has offered several shifting explanations for his opposition. He first threatened to veto it over a requirement that Confederate-named military bases be renamed.

He then demanded lawmakers add a provision that would repeal an unrelated tech liability shield law from 1996 that he has been fixated on as Twitter appends corrective labels to his posts making unsubstantiated allegations of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

Trump has also complained the defense bill is weak on China, despite several provisions aimed directly at Beijing, such as the creation of a $2.2 billion fund specifically to counter China.

And he has lashed out at provisions designed to put up roadblocks over his orders to withdraw thousands of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Germany.

My administration has taken strong actions to help keep our nation safe and support our service members. I will not approve this bill, which would put the interests of the Washington, D.C., establishment over those of the American people, Trump said last week in his veto message to Congress that also called the NDAA a gift to China and Russia.

Lawmakers in both parties had urged Trump publicly and privately not to veto the NDAA. They were also hoping a strong enough bipartisan vote would dissuade Trump from vetoing the bill, which passed the House in a 335-78 vote, followed by an 84-13 vote in the Senate.

After Trumps veto, Republicans were largely quiet.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthyKevin Owen McCarthyGrowing number of House Republicans warm to proxy voting GOP senator warns K checks can't pass, urges Trump to sign COVID deal House GOP rejects unanimous consent on ,000 direct payments MORE (R-Calif.) has previously said he would not override Trumps veto despite voting in favor of the bill. His No. 2, House Minority Whip Steve ScaliseStephen (Steve) Joseph ScaliseGOP puts pressure on Pelosi over Swalwell Top Republicans push back on changes to motions to recommit Top GOP lawmakers call for Swalwell to be removed from Intelligence Committee MORE (R-La.), voted against both the compromise bill this month and the initial House version in July.

But the No. 3 House Republican, Rep. Liz CheneyElizabeth (Liz) Lynn CheneyCongress barrels toward veto clash with Trump Top GOP lawmakers call for Swalwell to be removed from Intelligence Committee GOP leaders pinched by pro-Trump bid to reverse election outcome MORE (Wyo.), is urging her colleagues to override Trump.

Without timely passage of the FY2021 NDAA, thousands of military families will be forced to lose their hazardous duty pay during the holidays. Given the sacrifices they and their families make for the cause of freedom, our troops should never have their livelihoods threatened by political battles in Washington, D.C. In addition to hurting our troops, failing to pass the NDAA will have dire consequences for our national security, Cheney said in a statement after Trumps veto.

Congress must uphold its highest responsibility providing for the defense of this nation and ensure this bill becomes law, she added.

One wild card is the possibility that some House lawmakers might not return to Washington for Mondays vote, for various reasons. Some might not want to travel during the height of the pandemic or already have the coronavirus, while others might not feel compelled to come back for a single day because they are retiring or lost reelection.

Many Democrats have voted by proxy during the pandemic, but Republicans have largely opposed the practice. Overriding a veto requires two-thirds of those voting, not two-thirds of the entire chamber.

Rep. Rick LarsenRichard (Rick) Ray LarsenHouse Democratic Rep. Rick Larsen tests positive for COVID-19 House plans Dec. 28 vote to override Trump's possible defense bill veto Biden's Pentagon pick puts Democrats in a bind MORE (D-Wash.) said the possibility of absences coupled with the GOPs refusal to vote by proxy would help the House easily override Trumps veto.

"That's all to our advantage, Larsen, who recently tested positive for COVID-19, said last week.

The unusual post-Christmas session is necessary to meet a deadline to override the veto by noon on Jan. 3, when the 117th Congress starts. If lawmakers fail to override the veto before then, the new Congress would need to start from scratch on the bill.

A Democratic House aide previously told The Hill the lower chamber needs to send the veto message to the Senate by Tuesday to overcome any procedural hurdles in the upper chamber and finish by Jan. 3.

If the House fails to muster two-thirds support on Monday, the override effort dies.

But if the House successfully overrides Trump as expected, action then moves to the Senate, where any one senator who supports Trumps veto could drag out procedural hurdles by forcing a separate vote.

The Senate is planning to convene Tuesday to start the process if the House is successful on Monday.

Sen. Rand PaulRandal (Rand) Howard PaulFive GOP senators to watch in next month's Electoral College fight Meghan McCain says Merry Christmas to all except 'healthy people under 65' getting vaccine before front-line workers GOP Sen. Rick Scott, staff to wait to get COVID-19 vaccine MORE (R-Ky.), who briefly held up passage of the NDAA earlier this month, has indicated he could similarly delay an override vote.

I very much am opposed to the Afghan war, and Ive told them Ill come back to try to prevent them from easily overriding the presidents veto, Paul told reporters last week.

Senators have suggested the final override vote could happen the morning of Jan. 3, just hours before the new Congress is sworn in. Sen. John ThuneJohn Randolph ThuneFive GOP senators to watch in next month's Electoral College fight Trump criticizes Senate Republicans ahead of election results vote, urges a 'fight' Biden faces fight with Congress for more coronavirus relief MORE (S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican, warned last week it could take a "few days" for the Senate to jump through all the procedural hoops.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman James InhofeJames (Jim) Mountain InhofeTrump vetoes defense bill, setting up potential override Congress barrels toward veto clash with Trump Pompeo: Russia 'pretty clearly' behind massive cyberattack MORE (R-Okla.), who has been loyal to Trump on everything but this years NDAA, urged Congress to override the veto, saying troops shouldnt be denied what they need ever.

The NDAA has become law every year for 59 years straight because its absolutely vital to our national security and our troops. This year must not be an exception, Inhofe said in a statement after Trumps veto. I hope all of my colleagues in Congress will join me in making sure our troops have the resources and equipment they need to defend this nation.

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House poised to override Trump veto for first time | TheHill - The Hill

On 14 October 2020, the Luxembourg government submitted to the Parliament the budget bill for fiscal year 2021. It was approved by the Parliament on 17 December 2020 and published in the Official Journal on 23 December 2020 (the Law).

This e-alert provides an overview of the key tax changes as from 2021.

REAL ESTATE INVESTMENTS TAXATION

Introduction of a new special 20% tax on all income derived by tax opaque Luxembourg funds from domestic real estate assets

As from 1 January 2021, a new 20% real estate tax ("prlvement immobilier") will be due by certain investment vehicles which receive income from real estate located in Luxembourg. Investment vehicles holding real estate located outside of Luxembourg will not be affected by this tax.

Entities within the scope of the prlvement immobilier

The Luxembourg entities covered by this measure are the following investment funds to the extent they have a legal personality (except for the SCS which is expressly excluded) (i) undertakings for collective investment (UCIs) subject to Part II of the Luxembourg law of 17 December 2010, (ii) specialised investment funds (SIFs) subject to the Luxembourg law of 13 February 2007 and (iii) reserved alternative investment funds (RAIFs) subject to the Luxembourg law of 23 July 2016.

Tax transparent investment vehicles, such as the limited partnership (socit en commandite simple), the special limited partnership (socit en commandite spciale) or fund under a contractual form (fond commun de placement), are excluded from the scope of the real estate tax.

Income subject to the real estate tax

Real estate tax is levied on income derived by the Luxembourg investment vehicle from Luxembourg real estate. Income includes rental income (excluding VAT) and capital gains realized directly or through tax transparent vehicles (including the disposal of interest in a transparent body which holds a real estate property located in Luxembourg).

The real estate tax applies at a rate of 20% as from 1 January 2021.

Non deductibility of the real estate tax

The real estate tax is not deductible when determining the amount of income from property and is neither creditable nor deductible by any investor.

Declaration and reporting

The relevant investment vehicles must declare said income to the Luxembourg Tax Authorities (LTA) by 31 May and pay the tax to the LTA by 10 June of the calendar year following the year in which the income is received or realised. First declaration will take place no later than 31 May 2022. An auditor report, to be attached to the return, must certify that the declared income has been computed in accordance with relevant legal provisions and provide details of the computation.

Investment vehicles within the scope of the real estate tax, must inform the LTA by 31 May 2022 at the latest whether or not they have held (directly or indirectly) Luxembourg real estate at any time during the calendar years 2020 and 2021. Such reporting must be filed even if no income was generated from the Luxembourg real estate. Investment vehicles filing a return for 2021 will be deemed compliant with this reporting obligation.

The same reporting applies to investment vehicles having changed, during calendar years 2020 and 2021, their legal form from an entity within the scope of the real estate tax to a tax transparent entity while holding directly or indirectly Luxembourg real estate.

A lump sum fine of EUR 10,000 may apply in the event of failure to declare the aforementioned information.

Lower subscription tax rate for UCIs investing in sustainable economic activities

As from 1 January 2021, under specific conditions, lower subscription tax rates will be available for investment funds covered by the Luxembourg law of 17 December 2010 relating to the undertakings for collective investments (Part I and Part II of the 2010 UCI regime) that invest in sustainable economic activities as defined by EU Regulation 2020/852.

In a nutshell, if the portion of net assets of the UCI, or of the compartment, invested in sustainable economic activities is at least respectively 5%, 20%, 35% and 50% of the total net assets of the UCI or the compartment, then the subscription tax rate will be respectively 0.04%, 0.03%, 0.02% and 0.01 % for that portion of assets. An auditor report must certify the relevant percentage and shall be attached to the subscription tax return.

Updated depreciation rate for rented real estate assets

As from fiscal year 2021, accelerated depreciation rate applicable to rented real estate is decreased from 6% to 4% and will apply to real estate assets whose construction has been completed since less than five years (currently 6 years) at the beginning of the fiscal year.

The same rate will apply for investment expenditures engaged for an older housing to the extent it exceeds 20% of the assets acquisition price and at the beginning of the fiscal year renovation work has been completed since less than five years.

A novelty has been introduced with a 6% depreciation rate granted for certain sustainable energy renovation investment expenditure for rented housing. Such depreciation rate is granted if as at 1st January of the fiscal year renovation work has been completed since less than nine years and a financial assistance has been granted for these expenditures under article 4 of the amended law of 23 December 2016 establishing an aid scheme for the promotion of sustainability, rational use of energy and renewable energies in the field of housing.

Existing 6% depreciation rate will continue to apply if existing requirements are met and the building has been built or acquired before 1st January 2021, or if the renovation of an old dwelling has been completed before 1st January 2021.

Special allowance for taxpayers benefiting from the accelerated depreciation rate

As from fiscal year 2021, taxpayers making use of the above-mentioned accelerated depreciation rate may, under certain conditions, claim an additional tax deduction up to EUR 10,000 (doubled in case of joint taxation).

Private wealth management companies (SPF) and real estate investments

Prohibition as from 1 July 2021 for SPF (socits de gestion de patrimoine familial) to hold via Luxembourg or foreign partnerships or FCPs (fonds communs de placement) real estate assets. Indirect detention though joint-stock companies will however remain allowed. This measure complements the existing prohibition contained in the SPF law of 11 May 2007 to directly hold real estate or grant interest bearing loans.

Increase of registration duty for capital contribution of real estate

If the proposal is accepted as it currently stands, capital contributions of immovable property to a civil or commercial (Luxembourg or non-Luxembourg) company will become subject to the common registration duty rules. In case of contribution in kind (apport pur et simple), registration duties would therefore be increased from 0.5% + 2/10 to 2% +2/10 and the transcription tax would be increased from 0.5% to 1 %. Furthermore, the delay according to which the property may be subsequently transferred to a shareholder (other than the one who contributed it) after liquidation, wind-up or capital reduction without duty to apply is extended from 5 to 10 years.

EMPLOYEES TAXATION

Impatriates regime

The impatriate regime will be codified in Luxembourg law as from 2021 onwards whereas it is now based on administrative guidance (i.e., Circular 95/2 dated 27 January 2014 which will be abolished as from 1 January 2021). Some conditions and effects of the regime will change, for instance the new regime will only apply to impatriate employees earning at least EUR 100,000 per year (currently EUR 50,000 per year) and it will apply for a period of up to 9 years (currently up to 5 years following the year of the employees arrival). One of the main differences is that the lump-sum compensation for specific recurring expenses will be changed by a 50% exemption of the impatriation premium not exceeding 30% of the beneficiarys annual basic salary.

Introduction of a new employee participation mechanism and abolition of the current stock option regime

The current tax regime for stock option and warrant plans governed by circular letter L.I.R. 104/2 issued by the Luxembourg tax authorities on 29 November 2017 will be abolished end of 2020. Instead, the Law introduces in the Luxembourg income tax law a new regime for employees participation under which employees can be granted a participative premium connected to the financial result of the employer.

At the level of the employee the participative premium will benefit from a 50% tax exemption and the payment would remain tax deductible at the level of the employer provided certain requirements are met.

The beneficiary of the participative premium must be an employee affiliated to the Luxembourg social security, or to a foreign social security scheme covered by a bi - or multilateral social security instrument and the payment cannot exceed 25% of the beneficiarys gross annual remuneration received the same year (excluding any benefits in cash and/or in-kind, bonuses, the premium itself).

Several conditions shall also be met at the level of the of the employer in order for the participative premium exemption to apply:

An employer deciding to pay such a premium to his employees will be required to inform the Luxembourg tax authorities (tax office in charge of withholding tax on wages).

Introduction of electronic withholding tax cards

Electronic withholding tax cards will be progressively introduced in 2021 by the Luxembourg tax authorities and access will be granted to employers directly. As from 1st January 2022, the withholding tax cards will be accessible only electronically and the employers will be obliged to use the new platform to access said cards.

OTHER MEASURES

Changes to the fiscal unity regime

The Luxembourg fiscal unity regime will be amended in line with EU Law following a recent case law of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) (C-749/18). The ECJ ruled in this case that the Luxembourg fiscal unity regime constitutes an infringement of the freedom of establishment considering that a parent company in a Member State other than Luxembourg is obliged to dissolve the vertical fiscal unity between its direct and indirect Luxembourg subsidiaries (potentially resulting in adverse Luxembourg tax consequences) in order to enable its direct subsidiary to establish a horizontal fiscal unity albeit this is not required if the parent company is tax resident in Luxembourg.

Article 7 of the Law temporarily remedies this infringement by allowing a group to change from a vertical fiscal unity to a horizontal fiscal unity tax neutrally provided the following conditions are met:

Groups have until the end of the tax year 2022 to tax neutrally change from a vertical fiscal unity to a horizontal fiscal unity. The commentary to the draft law explains that this period should be sufficient for groups to verify if they should expand their current vertical fiscal unity into a horizontal one.

The changes to the fiscal unity regime will enter into force as from tax year 2020.

Small Business Scheme threshold increased

Under the Law, the threshold for the VAT small business scheme to apply is brought from currently EUR 30,000 to EUR 35,000 per year. By way of reminder, taxpayers whose turnover does not exceed the small business scheme threshold are not obliged to pay VAT on their income.

Tax credit for the self-employed, employees and pensioners

As from 2021, existing tax credit for the self-employed, employees and pensioners will be increased. The minimum amount is increased from EUR 300 to EUR 396 and the maximum amount is increased from EUR 600 to EUR 696. Formulas for calculating the credit tax are adjusted accordingly.

Certificate for inheritances free of inheritance tax

In the case of tax-free inheritances, the indirect tax authorities (Administration de lEnregistrement, des domaines et de la TVA) issue a certificate of fiscal value. As from 2021, this certificate will have a civil value with the objective to ease the access to movable property dependent on such inheritance. Any third-party holder of property (e.g., credit institution) will be required to accept this certificate as proof that the holder of the certificate is an heir.

Introduction of a CO2 tax

An autonomous excise duty on most gas and hydrocarbon is introduced. By way of example, the new tax is expected to lead to a EUR 0.05/L increase for petrol and diesel.

Insurance tax Electronic filing

Compulsory electronic filing of insurance tax returns with the indirect tax authorities (Administration de lEnregistrement, des domaines et de la TVA) is introduced.

Abolition of the venture capital investment certificates

The tax regime for venture capital investment certificates will be repealed due to the limited use of this regime.

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Luxembourg 2021 Budget Law: Overview of the key changes - Lexology