WATCH: 'Ingenious’ provision in Biden bill is a ticking time bomb for the GOP in 2022 elections
March 13, 2021, 12:00 PM ET
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The early videos from Hollywood, Florida's mass shooting show a terrified public race from the sound of the gunfire, and online cameras on the boardwalk show. CBS News reported at least 7 people have been shot, including a 15-year-old.
"Residents and visitors: Please avoid the area of Johnson to Garfield Streets, as well as the Hollywood Broadwalk, due to an ongoing shooting investigation. Heavy police presence in the area. If you are looking to reunite with a family member, we have set up a reunification area at Johnson Street and N Ocean bus loop," the Hollywood Beach Police Department posted on their Facebook page shortly before 7 p.m. ET. As of 7:36 p.m. EST, police were still advising the public that there was an "ongoing situation." The Daily Beast reported that the first shots fired were heard outside Nicks Bar & Grill around 7 p.m. local time.
Videos show beachgoers enjoying the sunshine before racing behind barriers and trees seeking cover. Another purporting to be from the scene shows a man who appeared to be shot with friends calling for medical attention and trying to help.
“Police are responding right now. We have victims treated by police and paramedics on scene and transported to the hospital,” said Mayor Josh Levy, The Sun Sentinel reported.
“It seemed like people might have gotten caught in the crossfire. But I can’t verify that,” Levy said.
The report also said that the beach usually has millions of people visiting each year.
\u201cFlorida | People can be seen scattering on public cameras as the shooting unfolds on Hollywood Beach Boardwalk. \n\nA man ducks behind concrete barriers and then tries to render aid to others that have been injured it appears. \n\nPermitless concealed becomes legal in a month here\u2026\u201d— \uff2e\uff45\uff52\uff44\uff59 \ud83c\udd70\ud83c\udd73\ud83c\udd73\ud83c\udd78\ud83c\udd72\ud83c\udd83 (@\uff2e\uff45\uff52\uff44\uff59 \ud83c\udd70\ud83c\udd73\ud83c\udd73\ud83c\udd78\ud83c\udd72\ud83c\udd83) 1685404598
\u201cHollywood Beach, FL - Memorial Day Shooting on the Boardwalk. Video from Hollywood Beach TV on FB.\u201d— kygrl (@kygrl) 1685404950
\u201cMultiple people shot including 15-year-old at Boardwalk in Hollywood Beach. Preliminary reports indicated at least seven people had been shot, including a 15-year-old in the area of the 1200 block of N. Broadwalk.\nhttps://t.co/i2NbVbbxV3\u201d— Fox3 Now (@Fox3 Now) 1685404988
\u201cAnother mass shooting\n\nHollywood Beach, Florida \n\nWhen will it stop?\n\n\u201d— David Leavitt \ud83c\udfae\ud83c\udfb2\ud83e\uddd9\u200d\u2642\ufe0f\ud83c\udf08 (@David Leavitt \ud83c\udfae\ud83c\udfb2\ud83e\uddd9\u200d\u2642\ufe0f\ud83c\udf08) 1685404607
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Low-wage workers made huge gains over two years — but there are fears it's coming to an end
May 29, 2023
An analysis in Politico using data from the U.S. Labor Department revealed that low-wage workers scored a huge boost between 2020 and 2022. But that could be ending.
According to the report, the pandemic dramatically changed the labor market, government aid, and policies during the crisis. Amid a worker shortage, anyone making $12.50 hourly saw a pay increase by 6 percent, even after inflation.
"At the same time, price spikes have eaten away raises for the highest-earning employees, leading their inflation-adjusted income to drop roughly 5 percent over the past couple of years," said the report. "The result, according to one new paper: One-quarter of the 40-year growth in the yawning gap between higher-income workers and lower-income workers has disappeared in just a few years."
The new debt ceiling agreement between President Joe Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) takes back about $30 billion in unspent COVID-19 funds. COVID-related government spending injected cash "into the economy, spurred consumer spending and put workers in ultra-high demand," Politico explained.
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve has been trying to slow down the economy with consistent interest rate hikes out of fear wages for workers are increasing too fast for inflation to fall again.
But the analysis explained that such a slowdown hurts low-wage workers more than others. Job vacancies have decreased, as have those quitting their jobs.
"This presents a clear inflection point for the Biden administration and its allies in Congress," said Politico. "While the administration has been largely supportive of the Fed’s moves as households strain under the burden of inflation, progressive lawmakers and economists have questioned whether progress for low-wage workers is being sacrificed in pursuit of price stability."
Meanwhile, Democrats question the Fed's decisions to allow joblessness to increase, even though it is at its lowest in history.
"The portion of national income that goes toward paying workers has actually declined in the past two years," Politico quoted former-Fed Vice Chair Lael Brainard from a speech early this year, before joining as Biden's economic adviser. At the same time, “corporate profits as a share of GDP remain near postwar highs,” she also said.
Katrin Kark, director of workforce innovations at Local Initiatives Support Corp., argued that employers should be doing more to train workers so that there are options for advancement.
“Higher entry wages alone aren’t enough to close those opportunity gaps,” she explained.
Meanwhile, a pro-capitalism conservative economist told Fortune that corporate greed had gone too far.
"Corporations, particularly in developed economies like the U.S. and U.K., have used rising raw material costs amid the pandemic and the war in Ukraine as an 'excuse' to raise prices and expand profit margins to new heights, he said. And the French investment bank isn’t just historic: It’s one of the select banks considered to be 'systemically important' by the Financial Stability Board, the G20’s international body dedicated to safeguarding the global financial system."
Arin Dube, a University of Massachusetts Amherst professor, is optimistic that benefits for low-wage workers won't hit a wall. He has hope for a possible increase in income equality for the next few years.
“That’s a lot of change packed in just a few years,” he said. “It’s very hard to imagine something that plays that in reverse in the next three years.”
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A deal McCarthy cut to become speaker could come back to haunt him in the debt debate – here’s why
May 29, 2023
Early indications suggest President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) have the numbers to pass their debt limit deal through Congress, but several procedural hurdles could torpedo the deal, one of which is the of the speaker’s own making, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Friday said the U.S. government would run out of money to pay its bills by June 5 unless Congress votes to extend the debt limit ceiling.
Terms of the deal between Biden and McCarthy include a two-year extension of the debt limit and an agreement to cut most domestic programs while increasing military spending by around 3 percent.
The deal has angered both parties' progressive and conservative winds but is expected to enjoy bipartisan support.
But the bill will need to clear some procedural chokepoints that could complicate efforts to resolve the debt limit debate, the report said.
Sabrina Siddiqui, Lindsay Wise and Andrew Duehren write for The WSJ, "In both chambers, vocal opponents of the bill could slow its passage, threatening to derail the effort to avoid an unprecedented U.S. default. Some conservatives in the House and Senate have said they would oppose the deal because it doesn’t go far enough to limit federal spending, while some progressives charge that the spending curbs are too steep.”
Among the toughest procedural checkpoints the debt limit deal is facing is the little-known House Rules Committee, where three far-right Republicans sit as a result of a deal McCarthy made with his party’s ultraconservative wing to win the speakership.
Two of those members, Reps. Chip Roy (R-TX) and Ralph Norman (R-SC) have already said they plan to oppose the deal, and Roy on Monday suggested that the deal may never make it out of the committee.
The far-right congressman claims McCarthy promised him during his speakership vote that the Rules Committee would only advance measures supported unanimously by the committee’s nine Republican members.
“A reminder that during Speaker negotiations to build the coalition, that it was explicit both that nothing would pass Rules Committee without AT LEAST 7 GOP votes - AND that the Committee would not allow reporting out rules without unanimous Republican votes,” Roy tweeted.
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