When America seeks to address a crisis or achieve preeminence, it looks to science. This is true whether the issue is the economy , climate change , national security or even a pandemic . And yet, today, Americans spend more on potato chips than on energy research . For President Biden and the new Congress, the time is now for new thinking about how we prioritize and fund science, as well as public primary and secondary education. In 2019 we spent one tenth of one percent of the GDP on biomedical basic research but nearly 18 percent of the GDP on health care . And what of overall competitiveness? Mainland China is increasing research and development investment by double digit percentages each year while U.S. investment, as a percentage of GDP, has remained stagnant for nearly half a century. China is close to passing the United States in total R&D investment based on purchasing power parity. China’s entire GDP is projected to pass that of the United States, using currency exchange rates, by around the end of the decade. If PPP conversion is applied to GDP, China passed the United States several years ago. ADVERTISEMENT The United States cannot hope to compete with China based on workforce size ; rather, America must compete by being first to create new knowledge and inventions and put them to good use. Our public educational system is currently ill-equipped to meet this goal. American 15-year-olds rank 25th among 31 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations and regions in combined reading, math and science scores, state governments on average cut investment in their public universities by more than 20 percent per student for full time students and there have not been enough young Americans choosing careers in science and engineering for decades. Not surprisingly, America’s scientific community is heavily dependent on the talents and ambitions ...
Civil war united states
The $15 Minimum-Wage Debate Clarifies the Partisan Economic Divide
Republican “populists” are on the wrong side of this fight. Photo: J Scott Applewhite/AP/Shutterstock For many left-wing pundits, America’s partisan divide in 2021 is defined by its lack of a strong material basis . After all, a voter’s income level tells you less about her political allegiances today than it has for most of our nation’s modern history . In 2020, some of the wealthiest Zip Codes in the United States backed the party of organized labor by a landslide margin, while some of the poorest broke overwhelmingly for the party of libertarian billionaires. The ties that bind blue America’s tech entrepreneurs to its nonwhite gig workers — or red America’s oil barons to its white rural poor — are those of culture , not economics. Democrats stand for a multiethnic conception of American identity, secularism, cosmopolitanism, racial justice, and gender equality; Republicans, for a normatively white and Christian America, the patriarchal family, and zero-sum nationalism. In geographic terms, these divisions cleave the nation less by region than by density : All across the country, navy-blue urban cores fade into baby-blue inner-ring suburbs, red-violet exurbs and deep-red countryside. This “culture war trumps all” thesis elides many nuances. For one thing, the prominence of zero-sum nationalism in factory towns decimated by globalization surely cannot be attributed to culture alone. For another, a large segment of nonwhite Democrats espouse right-of-center views on immigration and gender, and thus, vote less on the basis of cultural attitudes than some combination of communal bonds, historical memory, and economic interest. Nevertheless, if liberals’ culturalist account of America’s political divide has its flaws, the “populist” right’s efforts to cast the conflict between red and blue in strictly materialist terms — with Republicans representing the interests of blue-collar workers in the heartland, and Democrats of cosseted professionals in ...
Rep. Kevin McCarthy: Dems’ $1.9 trillion COVID bill is not rescue or relief plan, it’s a Pelosi payoff
close Video Rep. Kevin McCarthy: Democrats’ $1.9T coronavirus relief bill is ‘too corrupt, liberal’ House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy provides insight into the coronavirus stimulus bill on ‘Fox and Friends.’ A year ago today, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention warned U.S. citizens to prepare for "disruption" from the coronavirus outbreak across American cities. And throughout the past 12 months, we have seen Americans make sacrifices and persevere in the fight against this virus. The progress we have seen in our economy and in our efforts to stop the spread have been substantial. In April 2020, the unemployment rate for American workers stood at 14.7 percent. Today the unemployment rate is 6.3 percent. At the same time, new COVID-19 cases continue to plummet. Thanks to a historic, heroic undertaking by the Trump administration's Operation Warp Speed, 1.45 million Americans are now receiving a vaccine shot every day. These positive signs are improvements in the right direction towards getting Americans back to work, back to school, and back to health. But there is no denying there is more work to do. About 10 million Americans remain unemployed , and millions of children are struggling from an education and mental health crisis fueled by sustained school closures and perpetuated by special interest groups. PELOSI VOWS TO KEEP MINIMUM WAGE PROVISION IN HOUSE BILL; HARRIS COULD ACT We also know that the optimal stimulus plan is to completely reopen our economy. At this point, we have the data and experience to protect our vulnerable citizens, while taking the steps to continue to return to full normalcy. Video To reclaim our lives from the virus and rebuild a prosperous economy, we must take a precise approach to continue the momentum the American people have already achieved. For that reason, House Republicans introduced 286 amendments during the mark-up process for the ...
China Mocks Biden Syria Bombing: ‘America Is Back’
China’s state-run Global Times newspaper mocked President Joe Biden on Friday, quoting his declaration, “America is back,” in a headline about his decision to bomb Syria on Thursday evening. Biden made the remark in a speech about foreign policy in early February, in which he vowed to limit American military engagement. “And they know when you speak, you speak for me,” Biden told diplomats at the State Department. “And so — so is the message I want the world to hear today: America is back. America is back. Diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign policy.” On Thursday, 36 days into his presidency, Biden took unilateral action in Syria, ordering what the Pentagon dubbed a “defensive precision strike” on members of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a legal wing of the Iraqi armed forces. “At President Biden’s direction, U.S. military forces earlier this evening conducted airstrikes against infrastructure utilized by Iranian-backed militant groups in eastern Syria,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said in a statement. “Specifically, the strikes destroyed multiple facilities located at a border control point used by a number of Iranian-backed militant groups, including Kait’ib Hezbollah (KH) and Kait’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada (KSS).” The named groups are among the most influential members of the PMF, particularly KH, or the Hezbollah Brigades. The Global Times suggested Biden had undermined his promises to the American people in its coverage of the strikes, in an article it titled with Biden’s words, “America Is Back.” the Communist Party-approved experts quoted in the piece made the case that, under President Donald Trump, the White House preferred to use economic incentives and punishments like sanctions to confront national security threats by starving them of funding. Under Biden, military violence superseded the sanctions policy, they claimed. “During the Trump era, the US tended to use economic sanctions against Iran and did not ...
U.S. airstrike in Syria kills 1, wounds several, says Iraqi militia official
BAGHDAD — A U.S. airstrike in Syria targeted facilities belonging to a powerful Iranian-backed Iraqi armed group, killing one fighter and wounding several others, an Iraqi militia official said Friday, signaling the first military action undertaken by U.S. President Joe Biden. The Pentagon said the strikes were retaliation for a rocket attack in Iraq earlier this month that killed one civilian contractor and wounded a U.S. service member and other coalition troops. The Iraqi militia official told The Associated Press that the strikes against the Kataeb Hezbollah, or Hezbollah Brigades, hit an area along the border between the Syrian site of Boukamal facing Qaim on the Iraqi side. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak of the attack. Syria war monitoring groups said the strikes hit trucks moving weapons to a base for Iranian-backed militias in Boukamal. “I’m confident in the target that we went after, we know what we hit,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters flying with him from California to Washington, shortly after the airstrikes which were carried out Thursday evening Eastern Standard Time. The Biden administration in its first weeks has emphasized its intent to put more focus on the challenges posed by China, even as Mideast threats persist. Biden’s decision to attack in Syria did not appear to signal an intention to widen U.S. military involvement in the region but rather to demonstrate a will to defend U.S. troops in Iraq and send a message to Iran. The U.S. has in the past targeted facilities in Syria belonging to Kataeb Hezbollah, which it has blamed for numerous attacks targeting U.S. personnel and interests in Iraq. The Iraqi Kataeb is separate from the Lebanese Hezbollah movement. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group that monitors the war in Syria, said the strikes targeted a shipment of weapons that were being taken by trucks entering Syrian territories from Iraq. The ...
