The Full Belmonte, 12/25/2022
Ukraine's Christmas miracle
A Christmas tree yesterday amid the darkness of Sophia Square in Kyiv, Ukraine. Photo: Felipe Dana/AP
“Ten months after Vladimir Putin's invasion, the West remains united in supporting Ukraine — a signal the West is more unified overall than many experts believed, Axios World editor Dave Lawler writes.
Why it matters: Neither the sheer scale of the global response, nor the West's ability to maintain it, seemed inevitable — or even likely — when the invasion began.
‘If anybody had told you in January that Europe as a whole, led by Germany, would be doing everything they can to cut fossil fuel dependence on Russia, you'd have said they were crazy,’ said Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO.
‘And yet, that's what they're doing.’
Zoom out: Arms shipments to Ukraine over the year are without precedent, at least since World War II — and they're still increasing.
Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Washington was largely a lovefest. And when President Biden was asked about Western unity fraying in 2023, he replied he's ‘not at all worried.’
Flashback: The Kremlin's plans were predicated on taking Kyiv quickly, and essentially forcing the West to accept its victory as a fait accompli, said Alexander Gabuev of the Carnegie Endowment.
Ukraine's success in rebuffing that advance and retaking territory encouraged its Western backers to send a growing array of weapons.
Evidence of Russian atrocities in cities like Bucha increased the momentum behind sanctions.
What's next: Putin seems to be wagering that he can wait out the West — particularly if his strikes on cities push more refugees to Europe, and the lack of Russian gas deepens Europe’s energy crisis, Gabuev says.
But Zelensky has been open about his fear of ‘Ukraine fatigue’ in the West.” Read more at Axios
One of the most active Congresses ever
Photo: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters
Above: Speaker Pelosi leaves the Capitol yesterday after the House sent President Biden a $1.7 trillion spending bill, passed mostly along party lines (225-201):
‘This will probably be my last speech as Speaker of the House on this Floor, and I'm hoping to make it my shortest,’ she said. ‘Members have planes to catch, gifts to wrap, toys to assemble, carols to sing.’
‘Yes indeed, the goose is getting fat,’ Pelosi continued. ‘We have a big bill here, because we have big needs for our country.’
Speaker Pelosi waves the gavel on opening day of the 117th Congress — Jan. 3, 2021. Photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via AP
The big picture: The 117th Congress, which opened with the unfathomable attack on the Capitol, wound up as one of the most consequential legislative sessions in memory, AP's Lisa Mascaro writes:
This Congress passed monumental legislation — including a bill making one of the most substantial infrastructure investments in a generation, and another federally protecting same-sex and interracial marriages.
Senators confirmed the nation's first Black woman, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, to the Supreme Court.
The Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act passed, making lynching a federal hate crime — after more than 120 years and some 200 failed efforts to pass such legislation.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer compared this session to the LBJ and FDR eras, which produced some of the most lasting laws:
‘These two years in the Senate and House ... were either the most productive in 50 years Great Society, or most productive in 100 years since the New Deal.’” Read more at Axios
Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Above: Workers move furniture from the Speaker's suite yesterday.
Congress revises Electoral Count Act that Trump used to pressure Pence on Jan. 6
“WASHINGTON – The 117th Congress in its final days revised the antiquated 1887 Electoral Count Act that caused chaos when the current slate of lawmakers were sworn in nearly two years ago.
Pushed through the must-pass spending bill, senators and representatives have made clear a vice president does not have the power to overturn a presidential election.
The change is likely the only recommendation of the House Jan. 6 committee that will pass Congress, especially when Republicans control the lower chamber next year and Democrats control the Senate, and it comes days before the House committee expires.
‘Through the funding bill, we are ending the 117th Congress by protecting our democracy through reforming the Electoral Count Act,’ Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Thursday.
Sen. Chris Murphy, who helped write the changes, said they needed to pass ‘to make sure the next presidential election isn't stolen.’
The Electoral Count Act was brought to the forefront by former President Donald Trump, who pressured his vice president, Mike Pence, to overturn the will of American voters on Jan. 6, 2021, by throwing out states' slates of electors. Pence refused, leading to calls for his hanging by hordes of Trump supporters and armed militias who breached the Capitol in a violent attack.
Trump said Tuesday on his social media platform Truth Social that the law should remain unchanged ‘in case of fraud.’
Eighteen Republican senators disagreed with him when they voted with Democrats to approve the bill Thursday. Another nine Republicans voted for the legislation when it passed the House Friday afternoon.
What changes were made
The bill designates the vice president's role in the Electoral College count as ceremonial.
It raises the threshold to challenge presidential electors from the states to 20% of the House and Senate, rather than the current one lawmaker from each chamber.
States must now submit their official slates of electors on documents bearing their state seals and containing at least one security feature verifying their authenticity.
Legal challenges to state electors in federal court will be expedited and heard by a district court panel of three judges: two appellate judges and one district judge.
Appeals will head straight to the Supreme Court….” Read more at USA Today
Arizona Judge Rejects Kari Lake’s Effort to Overturn Her Election Loss
Kari Lake, a Republican who was defeated by Katie Hobbs in the Arizona governor’s race, had made false election claims the centerpiece of her campaign.
“A state judge on Saturday rejected Kari Lake’s last-ditch effort to overturn her defeat in the Arizona governor’s race, dismissing for lack of evidence her last two claims of misconduct by Maricopa County election officials.
The ruling, after a two-day trial in Phoenix that ended Thursday, follows more than six weeks of claims by Ms. Lake, a Republican, that she was robbed of victory last month — assertions that echoed the false contention that was at the heart of her campaign: that an even larger theft had stolen the 2020 presidential election from Donald J. Trump.
Ms. Lake and her supporters conjured up what they called a deliberate effort by election officials in Maricopa County, the state’s largest county, to disenfranchise her voters. But they never provided evidence of such intentional malfeasance, nor even evidence that any voters had been disenfranchised.
In a 10-page ruling, Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson acknowledged ‘the anger and frustration of voters who were subjected to inconvenience and confusion at voter centers as technical problems arose’ in this year’s election.
But he said his duty was ‘not solely to incline an ear to public outcry,’ and noted that, in seeking to overturn Katie Hobbs’s victory by a 17,117-vote margin, Ms. Lake was pursuing a remedy that appeared unprecedented.
‘A court setting such a margin aside, as far as the Court is able to determine, has never been done in the history of the United States,’ Judge Thompson wrote.
He went on to rule flatly that Ms. Lake and the witnesses she called had failed to provide evidence of intentional misconduct that changed the election’s outcome.
‘Plaintiff has no free-standing right to challenge election results based upon what Plaintiff believes — rightly or wrongly — went awry on Election Day,’ the judge wrote. ‘She must, as a matter of law, prove a ground that the legislature has provided as a basis for challenging an election.’
Undaunted, Ms. Lake insisted her case had ‘provided the world with evidence that proves our elections are run outside of the law,’ and said she would appeal ‘for the sake of restoring faith and honesty in our elections.’
Ms. Lake, a former Phoenix television news anchor, lost to Ms. Hobbs, a Democrat who is the Arizona secretary of state, and who rose to national prominence when she resisted efforts by Trump loyalists to overturn the vote in 2020.
Ms. Lake’s legal challenge, brought against Maricopa County and Ms. Hobbs, was a rallying point for the election denial movement that grew out of Mr. Trump’s refusal to accept his defeat. Since Election Day, Ms. Lake has appeared twice alongside the former president at his Mar-a-Lago resort, vowing to fight on.
The verdict deals a blow to that movement’s efforts to challenge the results of the 2022 election. Republican candidates running on Mr. Trump’s false claims lost important races in battleground states and, according to postelection polls, generated an increase in confidence in the election system among both Democrats and Republicans.
According to Democracy Docket, a left-leaning election law group founded by the Democratic campaign lawyer Marc Elias, 15 lawsuits have been brought by candidates or their campaigns over federal, statewide and legislative races since this year’s election — a steep drop from the 36 filed in 2020, 16 of them on behalf of Mr. Trump and his campaign and more by his allies.
On Monday, the judge had rejected eight of 10 claims by Ms. Lake, including a hodgepodge of conspiracy theories and vague allegations contained in a complaint filed earlier this month. He ruled that Ms. Lake could proceed on two counts
To prevail on one claim, Ms. Lake needed to prove that a county election official had deliberately caused ballot printers to malfunction for the purpose of swaying election results, and that the outcome flipped as a result.
To prevail on the other, she needed to prove that officials had purposely violated chain-of-custody procedures for handling ballots and, again, that this noncompliance had swayed the election’s outcome.
But Judge Thompson ruled that Ms. Lake came nowhere near meeting those benchmarks. No election official was ever identified as responsible for malfeasance, and no voters were identified as having been disenfranchised — let alone the thousands it would have taken to tip the outcome.
About the best Ms. Lake’s team was able to come up with was a cybersecurity specialist from Alabama, Clay Parikh — one of a number of people who have been working nationwide to promote election-denial theories — who testified that he had inspected some Arizona ballots and concluded that they were printing out 19-inch ballots on 20-inch paper.
‘This could not be an accident,’ Mr. Parikh said. But he could offer no more than theories to support his contention.
Mr. Parikh and others involved in Ms. Lake’s case have ties to Mike Lindell, the pillow manufacturer who is a central figure among election conspiracy theorists. Mr. Lindell has said he was helping to finance Ms. Lake’s legal challenge, and his own lawyer, Kurt Olsen, has led Ms. Lake’s legal team.
Testifying on Thursday, as thousands of people watched online, Maricopa County’s Election Day director, Scott Jarrett, said that the ballots Mr. Parikh had inspected all came from a few voting locations where technicians had mistakenly switched the settings of ballot printers in an effort to try to fix problems with printers that weren’t heating up properly.
Mr. Jarrett stressed that, regardless of the printer malfunctions and any other issues that created lines at some voting locations, none of those were intentional and all voters were able to vote, one way or the other.
Judge Thompson wrote that even Mr. Parikh had acknowledged that voters who faced mechanical snags still had their votes counted. The ‘printer failures did not actually affect the results of the election,’ he wrote.
Other witnesses for Ms. Lake sought to portray the problems on Election Day as causing longer lines than the county acknowledged. One right-wing pollster cited data from his own exit poll as support for the idea that turnout must have been affected, because many people who had told him they planned to vote did not complete his survey.
But an expert testifying for the defense, Kenneth Mayer, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, called the claims made by Ms. Lake’s witnesses ‘pure speculation’ and said their use of polling data was invalid.
Judge Thompson dismissed the pollster’s whole line of argument. “Election contests are decided by votes, not by polling responses,” he wrote.
Ms. Lake’s lawyers and witnesses also sought to raise doubts about county procedures that ensure security throughout the vote-counting process.
Mr. Jarrett, however, detailed extensive security procedures, including the sealing and documentation of batches of ballots, and insisted that they were followed. ‘If any ballots were inserted or rejected or lost in that process,’ he testified, ‘we would know.’
Three other midterm election challenges in Arizona have also failed in court, including the dismissal on Friday of a challenge brought by Abraham Hamadeh, a Republican attorney general candidate whose 511-vote deficit to Kris Mayes, a Democrat, triggered a state-mandated recount.
Mr. Hamadeh had sued in Mohave County to have himself declared the winner. But during closing arguments in a trial, Mr. Hamadeh’s attorney, Timothy La Sota, admitted that he didn’t have any evidence of intentional misconduct or any vote discrepancies that would make up the gap between the candidates. He asked the judge to alter
the vote count slightly, which the judge declined to do and dismissed the case.
Even then, Mr. Hamadeh blamed election officials, saying in a post on Twitter that they ‘failed democracy’ and that he would decide ‘next steps’ after the recount was completed.
Richard L. Hasen, an election law scholar and law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that the Maricopa trial was important in that it forced Ms. Lake to produce any evidence she had to back up her claims, which have provided considerable fuel for the election denier movement.
‘This demonstrates that outlandish claims of fraud and intentional rigging of elections require actual proof in court,’ Mr. Hasen said.” Read more at New York Times
Journey Guitarist to Bandmate Who Played for Trump: No Political Gigs
Neal Schon sent the group’s keyboardist, Jonathan Cain, a cease-and-desist letter following a performance at Mar-a-Lago for Donald J. Trump, saying the band should be apolitical.
“When musicians complain about political uses of their songs without permission, the cease-and-desist letters are usually sent to politicians. In the case of Journey, it is one band member against another — over a wish for the group to remain apolitical.
Last week, a lawyer for Neal Schon, Journey’s founding guitarist, wrote to Jonathan Cain, the group’s keyboardist, demanding that he stop appearing at events for former President Donald J. Trump ‘as Journey,’ and performing Journey songs at those functions, saying that Mr. Cain’s appearances have caused ‘irreparable harm to the Journey brand.’
‘Although Mr. Cain is free to express his personal beliefs and associations, when he does that on behalf of Journey or as a representative of the band, such conduct is extremely deleterious to the Journey brand as it polarizes the band’s fans and outreach,’ says the letter, a copy of which was provided to The New York Times by representatives of Mr. Schon.
‘Journey is not, and should not be, political,’ the letter adds, and notes the risk of a reduced earning potential to its next tour, set to begin in January.
The letter points to a performance by Mr. Cain last month of “Don’t Stop Believin’,” the band’s enduring power ballad, at the America First Experience Gala at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s estate in Florida. An online video of the event shows Mr. Cain seated at a keyboard, leading a singalong with conservative political figures like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kimberly Guilfoyle and Kari Lake onstage beside him. In the crowd, Mr. Trump is visible along with Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump Jr. and others.
Mr. Cain has long been connected to Mr. Trump’s inner circle. His wife, Paula White, was Mr. Trump’s spiritual adviser during his administration, and she delivered the invocation at Mr. Trump’s inauguration in 2017.
The existence of the letter was first reported by Variety.
In a statement, Mr. Cain said: ‘Neal Schon should look in the mirror when he accuses me of causing harm to the Journey brand. I have watched him damage our brand for years and am a victim of both his — and his wife’s — bizarre behavior.’
He pointed to a number of disputes in the band’s history and what he called Mr. Schon and his wife’s ‘bullying, toxic, incoherent emails,’ and added: ‘If anyone is destroying the Journey brand, it is Neal — and Neal alone.’
Mr. Schon’s wife, Michaele, is a onetime reality-TV star who was on ‘The Real Housewives of D.C.’
‘Don’t Stop Believin’,’ from Journey’s 1981 album ‘Escape,’ was a Top 10 hit when it came out. It has also had an enormously successful afterlife, appearing in the final episode of ‘The Sopranos’ in 2007, as well as in the Broadway musical ‘Rock of Ages.’ Written by Mr. Cain, Mr. Schon and Steve Perry, the group’s former vocalist, the song has racked up more than 1.4 billion streams on Spotify alone.
Musicians’ complaints about the political use of their songs also often involve accusations of copyright infringement, but given that Mr. Cain is a co-author, that may be moot, and the letter from Mr. Schon makes no mention of copyright.
Instead, its focus is Journey’s desire to remain apolitical. The letter links to a radio interview with the band, in which the group was asked whether it would have accepted an invitation to perform at Mr. Trump’s inauguration. Mr. Cain answered: ‘We’re not political. We don’t get into politics. We try to stay in our lane.’ Mr. Schon added: ‘The best place to stay is neutral, in the center.’
Intra-band tensions have long been a part of the story of Journey, which emerged as a progressive rock group in the 1970s — Mr. Schon began his career as a teenager in Santana — and found arena-filling success with dramatic pop-rock in the ’80s.
Lately, Mr. Schon and Mr. Cain, who joined the group for ‘Escape,’ have battled over various financial issues, and another letter sent to Mr. Cain this month — by a different lawyer for Mr. Schon, at a different firm — complained that Ms. White was inappropriately interfering in the band’s business affairs.” Read more at New York Times
West Point to Remove Confederate Monuments From Its Campus
A Congressional panel identified for removal or modification 13 items at the United States Military Academy that memorialize the Confederacy.
“The United States Military Academy at West Point will start removing Confederate symbols from its campus, including taking down a portrait of Gen. Robert E. Lee dressed in his Confederate uniform from the academy’s library, officials said.
Over the next year, West Point will also remove, relocate, modify or rename busts, memorials, streets and buildings named after Confederate figures as part of a directive from the Department of Defense.
Lt. Gen. Steven W. Gilland, the academy’s superintendent, said in a message on the academy’s website that the first stage of the removal process would begin during the holiday break, which started on Sunday, Dec. 18.
During the break, the academy plans to remove the portrait of Lee, as well as a stone bust of Lee, who was superintendent of West Point before he led the Confederate army, General Gilland said.
The academy will also remove a triptych of bronze plaques that include Lee and other Confederate figures and an image of a hooded figure with the words ‘Ku Klux Klan’ written below. These items would be placed in storage, the general said.
The moves come after a Defense Department directive in October that ordered West Point to remove or replace items ‘that commemorate or memorialize the Confederacy or those who voluntarily served with the Confederacy.’
The directive was based on recommendations from the Naming Commission, which was created by Congress last year to assess Defense Department items that commemorate the Confederacy at West Point and the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.
In August, the commission released a report that identified 13 Confederate “assets and memorabilia” at West Point to be removed, renamed or stored by December 2023. The report said the recommendations were not made with the intention of “erasing history,” but rather to continue teaching ‘future generations of America’s military leaders to represent the best of our national ideals.’ The commission noted that cadets at the academy would continue to learn about the Civil War and its complexities.
Protests after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 created greater urgency around efforts to remove monuments and memorials in the United States that honor those who fought to preserve slavery and uphold white supremacy.” Read more at New York Times
Leaked notes from Chinese health officials estimate 250 million Covid-19 infections in December: reports
“Almost 250 million people in China may have caught Covid-19 in the first 20 days of December, according to an internal estimate from the nation’s top health officials, Bloomberg News and the Financial Times reported Friday.
If correct, the estimate – which CNN cannot independently confirm – would account for roughly 18% of China’s 1.4 billion people and represent the largest Covid-19 outbreak to date globally.
The figures cited were presented during an internal meeting of China’s National Health Commission (NHC) on Wednesday, according to both outlets – which cited sources familiar with the matter or involved in the discussions. The NHC summary of Wednesday’s meeting said it delved into the treatment of patients affected by the new outbreak.” Read more at CNN
Taliban Bar Women From NGOs, Threatening to Worsen Crisis
A letter from Afghanistan’s Ministry of Economy warned that it would revoke the operating licenses of any organizations that defied the decree.
“The Afghan government on Saturday barred women from working in local and international humanitarian organizations, officials said, a move that threatens billions of dollars of aid that has kept Afghanistan from the brink of starvation amid an economic collapse.
The ban is the latest blow to women’s rights under a Taliban administration that appears to value eradicating women from public life over keeping the country from plunging further into a dire humanitarian catastrophe that risks the lives of millions of Afghans.
The edict, announced in a letter from the Ministry of Economy and confirmed to The New York Times by the ministry’s spokesman, warned that the ministry would revoke the operating licenses of any organizations that did not comply. It was unclear whether the ban would apply to the United Nations’ aid agencies, and to all women or only Afghan nationals working in aid organizations.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a statement that the U.N. would seek to meet with Taliban leadership to receive further clarity on the edict.” Read more at New York Times
‘Life or death:’ As Britons buckle under the cost of living crisis, many resort to ‘warm banks’ for heat this winter
A visitor serves himself a complimentary hot drink during a "Warm Spaces And Warm Welcomes" session at the Ashburton Hall community hub in Croydon, England, on December 15.
“In a community center in central London, a young child plays in a makeshift area as her caregiver rocks her stroller and chats to a friend.
The Oasis Centre in Waterloo sits in a four-story building that has a warm, inviting feeling, with plush chairs and lots of potted plants.
But it’s not your regular high street hangout. This is a haven for families and local people to escape the bitter squeeze of Britain’s cost-of-living crisis – if only for the afternoon.
Thousands of warm banks have opened their doors across the UK this winter, as household budgets are squeezed even further by spiking energy bills and inflation reaches a 40-year high, leaving many scrambling to pay for basic necessities. There are more than 3,000 registered organizations running warm banks in Britain, according to the Warm Welcome Campaign, an initiative that signposts community-led responses to the cost-of-living crisis….
The cost of living has risen sharply since early 2021, according to data from the UK government. From October 2021 to October 2022, domestic gas and electricity prices increased by 129% and 66% respectively, the same research found.
The average annual energy bill surged 96% from last autumn to £2,500 (roughly $3,000), with the UK government intervening to cap the unit cost of gas and electricity bills at that level until April 2023. However, the total amount consumers pay for their energy depends on their consumption habits, where they live, how they pay for energy and what type of meter they use, according to the UK’s regulator, Ofgem.” Read more at CNN
Brexit has cracked Britain’s economic foundations
Analysis by Hanna Ziady, CNN
Published 8:35 AM EST, Sat December 24, 2022
“It’s been two years since former Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed his Brexit trade deal and triumphantly declared that Britain would be ‘prosperous, dynamic and contented’ after completing its exit from the European Union.
The Brexit deal would enable UK companies to ‘do even more business’ with the European Union, according to Johnson, and would leave Britain free to strike trade deals around the world while continuing to export seamlessly to the EU market of 450 million consumers.
In reality, Brexit has hobbled the UK economy, which remains the only member of the G7 — the group of advanced economies that also includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States — with an economy smaller than it was before the pandemic.
Years of uncertainty over the future trading relationship with the European Union, Britain’s largest trading partner, have damaged business investment, which in the third quarter was 8% below pre-pandemic levels despite a UK-EU trade deal being in place for nearly two years.
And the pound has taken a beating, making imports more expensive and stoking inflation while failing to boost exports, even as other parts of the world have enjoyed a post-pandemic trade boom.
Brexit has erected trade barriers for UK businesses and foreign companies that used Britain as a European base. It’s weighing on imports and exports, sapping investment and contributing to labor shortages. All this has exacerbated Britain’s inflation problem, hurting workers and the business community.
‘The most plausible reason as to why Britain is doing comparatively worse than comparable countries is Brexit,’ according to L. Alan Winters, co-director of the Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy at the University of Sussex.
The sense of gloom hanging over the UK economy is captured by striking workers, who are walking out in ever larger numbers over pay and conditions as the worst inflation in decades eats into their wages. At the same time, the government is cutting spending and hiking taxes to fill the hole in its budget.
While Brexit isn’t the cause of Britain’s cost-of-living crisis, it has made the problem more difficult to solve.
‘The UK chose Brexit in a referendum, but the government then chose a particularly hard form of Brexit, which maximized the economic cost,’ said Michael Saunders, a senior adviser at Oxford Economics and former Bank of England official. ‘Any hope for economic upside from Brexit is pretty much gone.’
NHS nurses strike over pay outside St Thomas' Hospital in London on December 20, 2022.
Maja Smiejkowska/Reuters
Businesses count the cost
Although Britain voted to leave the European Union in June 2016, its exit from the single market and customs union was finalized only on December 24, 2020, when the two sides finally agreed a free trade deal.
The Brexit deal, known as the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, came into effect on January 1, 2021.
It eliminated tariffs on most goods but introduced a raft of non-tariff barriers, such as border controls, customs checks, import duties and health inspections on plant and animal products.
Before Brexit, a farmer in Kent could ship a truckload of potatoes to Paris just as easily as they might send it to London. Those days are no more.
‘We hear stories every single day from small businesses about the nightmare of forms, transportation, couriers, things getting stuck for weeks at a time… the epic length of the problems is just gobsmacking,’ said Michelle Ovens, the founder of Small Business Britain, a campaign group.
UK recession could turn into a 'lost decade'
‘The way things have panned out in the last two years has been really bad for small businesses,’ Ovens told CNN.
Researchers at the London School of Economics estimate that the variety of UK products exported to the European Union declined by 30% during the first year of Brexit. They said that this was likely because small exporters had exited small EU markets.
Take the example of Little Star, a UK company that makes jewelry for children. Its business took off in the Netherlands and it had plans to expand to France and Germany next. But since Brexit, only two of more than 30 of its Dutch customers are prepared to handle the costs and paperwork to obtain stock from the company.
Products that took two days to ship are now taking three weeks, while import duties and sales taxes have made it much harder to compete with European jewelers, according to Rob Walker, who co-founded the business with his wife, Vicky, in 2017. The company is now looking to the United States for growth opportunities.
‘Isn’t it mad that we have to look to the other side of the Atlantic to do business, because it’s so difficult to do business with people 30 miles away?’ Walker said.
A truck passes a Union Jack, at the Port of Dover on April 1, 2021. The UK government has delayed post-Brexit checks on EU food imports until the end of 2023.
Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg/Getty Images
A British Chambers of Commerce survey of more than 1,168 businesses published this month reported that 77% said Brexit has not helped them increase sales or grow their businesses. More than half said they were finding it difficult to adapt to the new rules for trading goods.
Siteright Construction Supplies, a manufacturer in Dorset, told the Chamber that importing parts from the European Union to fix broken machines has become a costly and ‘time-consuming nightmare.’
‘Brexit has been the biggest-ever imposition of bureaucracy on business,’ according to Siteright.
Nova Dog Chews, a producer of snacks for canines, said it would have lost all its EU trade had it not set up a base in the bloc. ‘This has cost our business a huge amount of money, which could have been invested in the UK had it not been for Brexit,’ it added.
A UK government spokesperson told CNN that the government’s export support service has provided exporters with ‘practical support’ on the implementation of the Brexit deal. The deal is ‘the world’s largest zero tariff, zero quota free trade deal,’ the spokesperson added. ‘It secures the UK market access across key service sectors and opens new opportunities for UK businesses across the globe.’
Permanent damage to trade
Britain won’t easily replace what it has lost by forfeiting unfettered access to the world’s largest trading bloc.
The only substantive new trade deals it has struck since exiting the European Union, which did not simply roll over the deals it had as an EU member, have been with Australia and New Zealand. By the government’s own estimate, these will have a negligible impact on the UK economy, increasing GDP in the long run by just 0.1% and 0.03% respectively.
By contrast, the UK Office for Budget Responsibility, which produces economic forecasts for the government, expects Brexit to reduce Britain’s output by 4% over 15 years compared to remaining in the bloc. Exports and imports are projected to be around 15% lower in the long run.
Initial data has borne this out. According to the OBR, in the fourth quarter of 2021, UK goods export volumes to the European Union were 9% below 2019 levels, with imports from the European Union 18% lower. Goods exports to non-EU countries were 18% weaker than in 2019.
The United Kingdom ‘appears to have become a less trade-intensive economy, with trade as a share of GDP falling 12% since 2019, two and a half times more than in any other G7 country,’ the OBR said in the March report.
The decline in exports to non-EU countries could be a sign that UK businesses have become less competitive as they battle higher supply chain costs following Brexit, according to Jun Du, an economics professor at Aston University in Birmingham.
‘The UK’s trading ability has been damaged permanently [by Brexit],’ Du told CNN. ‘It doesn’t mean it can’t recover, but it’s been set back for a number of years.’
Research by the Centre for European Reform, a think tank, estimates that over the 18 months to June 2022, UK goods trade is 7% lower than it would have been had Britain remained in the European Union.
Investment is 11% weaker and GDP is 5.5% smaller than it would have been, costing the economy £40 billion ($48.4 billion) in tax revenues annually. That’s enough to pay for three quarters of the spending cuts and tax rises that UK finance minister Jeremy Hunt announced in November.
A heavy economic toll
The United Kingdom is projected to have one of the worst performing economies next year among developed nations.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development expects the UK economy to shrink by 0.4%, ahead only of sanctioned Russia. GDP in Germany is forecast to be 0.3% smaller.
The International Monetary Fund forecasts growth of just 0.3% for UK GDP next year, ahead of only Germany, Italy and Russia, which are expected to contract.
Both institutions say high inflation and rising interest rates will weigh on spending by consumers and businesses in Britain.
According to the Confederation of British Industry, a leading business group, the fall in private sector activity picked up pace in December and has now declined for five consecutive quarters.
The downward trend ‘looks set to deepen’ in 2023, principal economist at the CBI Martin Sartorius said in a statement.
‘Businesses continue to face a number of headwinds, with rising costs, labor shortages, and weakening demand contributing to a gloomy outlook for next year. ‘” Read more at CNN
Here’s who helped Elon Musk buy Twitter
Who pulls the financial strings at Twitter? These are Musk’s backers
“Elon Musk’s $44 billion Twitter takeover has so far been marked by turmoil.
After slashing half the company’s 7,500 member staff, he’s driven away advertisers and created a bigger financial hole for the company. So far, his ideas for bringing in additional money — paying for verification and additional features — have failed to make much of a dent. An unscientific poll he launched recently told him to step down as CEO.
On a Twitter audio chat recently, Musk cited the company’s precarious financial position as a driver of his aggressive job cuts and drastic actions, adding “we have an emergency fire drill on our hands.”
That’s making at least some of his investors in the deal antsy, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Last week, at least a couple of the original investors received letters from a Musk associate soliciting additional investments, according to two people familiar with the matter, although it was unclear if that would proceed.
Here’s who initially invested in the deal, and what we know about why:
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al Saud
Estimated Contribution:
$2 Billion
The Saudi prince agreed in May to convert his shares of Twitter, worth nearly $2 billion, into a stake in the company when Musk took it private. A month earlier, he had publicly sparred with Musk about the company’s worth, but later tweeted that Musk would be an “excellent leader for Twitter.”
The prince has previously placed winning bets on Apple, Amazon and eBay. But his latest Silicon Valley investment has drawn skepticism in Washington. President Biden and some members of Congress have called on officials to examine the role of Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Twitter deal.
The Qatar Investment Authority
Estimated Contribution
$375 Million
Known for its investments in companies including Barclays, Credit Suisse and Volkswagen, the $450 billion fund has an expansive footprint across the globe, and counts itself among Musk’s investors, putting up $375 million toward the deal. The fund is fueled by Qatar’s liquefied natural gas exports and helps power the gulf nation’s diplomatic and political projects.
Musk was spotted with Mansoor Bin Ebrahim Al-Mahmoud, CEO of Qatar Investment Authority earlier this month at the World Cup finale.
Binance
Estimated Contribution
$500 million
The massive cryptocurrency exchange was recently in the news for backing out of its plans to acquire FTX, a rival exchange co-founded by Sam Bankman-Fried that has since collapsed. Shortly after Musk’s initial bid for Twitter, Binance contacted him and committed $500 million toward the purchase.
The exchange’s executives have said they support Musk’s desire to curb the presence of bots on the platform. They have also said they see Twitter as an opportunity to research and develop crypto-related technology and services, including payments and authentication. The crypto company, founded in China, has no headquarters and has drawn the scrutiny of regulators in the United States, Britain and Japan.
What they get: As part of the deal, anyone who invested $250 million or more gets special access to confidential company information. But giving that privilege to foreign investors is raising flags with Biden and U.S. officials. Of particular interest is whether that includes access to personal data about Twitter’s users since several of the entities are entwined with governments that have a history of cracking down on dissidents on Twitter and other online platforms.
Venture Capitalists
Andreessen Horowitz
Estimated Contribution
$400 Million
One of the most famous venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, this firm has invested in Airbnb, Lyft and Coinbase. Co-founder Marc Andreessen was one of the people who privately messaged Musk about the Twitter deal, according to court filings. ‘If you are considering equity partners, my growth fund is in for $250 [million] with no additional work required,’ Andreessen wrote. His firm would go on to give even $400 million. He has cheered on Musk in recent weeks on Twitter, particularly during the release of the ‘Twitter Files,’ a string of releases on behavior inside the company before the takeover.
The other co-founder, Ben Horowitz, said in several tweets that the venture capital firm believes in ‘Elon’s brilliance’ to make Twitter ‘what it was meant to be.’ Horowitz went on to say that Twitter suffers from a range of issues, including censorship. He said that Musk was ‘perhaps the only person in the world’ who could build the public square people hoped for, echoing the praise that conservatives have directed toward Musk, who they see as a champion of free speech.
Sequoia Capital
Estimated Contribution
$800 Million
Another storied investment firm in the tech world, Sequoia Capital, has backed DoorDash, Zoom and 23andMe. A partner at the firm, Roelof Botha, has known Musk for decades, and was hired by him to work on what would become PayPal. Sequoia has also invested in Musk’s other ventures, SpaceX and the Boring Company. ‘Elon has succeeded in many different industries,’ Botha said during an interview at a Wall Street Journal conference in October. ‘He’s an incredible first-principles thinker.’
What they get: Some of the biggest players in Silicon Valley are now tied to Twitter’s future. They will expect a major return on their investments, and their influence ensures that they can throw their weight around. How Musk decides to run the company, who he hires and promotes, and what features and products he emphasizes will reveal the role these investors will play in the new, private Twitter. But as their messages and public comments suggest, they’re also trying to get into Musk’s good graces.
Elon’s Buddies
Larry Ellison
Estimated Contribution
$ 1 Billion
The co-founder and chairman of the software company Oracle, Larry Ellison is known for his lavish spending. The tech titan, whom Musk counts as a friend, purchased the Hawaiian island of Lanai, in 2012. Earlier this year he texted Musk, ‘Elon, … I do think we need another Twitter.’ Ellison would go on to pledge $1 billion to Musk’s purchase.
The billionaire has cultivated ties with Donald Trump, hosting the president in 2020 at his estate in California’s Coachella Valley and giving millions to Republican candidates and committees, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. After Musk said in October that he would not reinstate banned accounts until there was a clear process in place for doing so, he restored Trump’s account after a 52 percent majority of users in a Twitter poll he ran voted in favor of the decision.
Jack Dorsey
Estimated Contribution
$1 billion
One of the co-founders and former chief executive of the company, Jack Dorsey rolled over his investment in Twitter to Musk’s new private enterprise, doubling down on his faith in the tech mogul, to the tune of $1 billion.
Dorsey, who runs the tech conglomerate Block, was one of several key characters who encouraged Musk to pursue Twitter, according to private text messages made public through court documents. In the messages, Dorsey told Musk that he had previously tried to get him to join the board but was blocked, and later referred to the board as ‘terrible.’
After Musk oversaw dramatic firings and layoffs at his new company, Dorsey apologized on Twitter for growing his former company too quickly.
What they get: From political persuasion to regained glory, the wealthy elite in Silicon Valley have myriad reasons to ally themselves with Musk — and may have some asks of him too. A host of Musk’s associates now function as a small council of lieutenants, helping to bring Musk’s vision of a ‘hardcore’ Twitter 2.0 to fruition. Jason Calacanis, a longtime Musk associate who helped fundraise and cheerlead during the turbulent run-up to the deal, has played an important role in the company’s transition. And once Musk shifts his focus from Twitter, there’s also the role of CEO up for grabs.
Banks
Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Barclays
Estimated Contribution
$13 billion
A collection of several banks — including Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Barclays — have lent Musk more than a quarter of the funding, or $13 billion. After a boom of dealmaking in 2021, coming off the uncertainty of the pandemic, Musk’s buyout presented an enticing opportunity.
This intimidating debt load and Musk’s optimistic revenue projections present daunting math for the company. Musk’s platform would need to charge $44 a month to recoup the advertising value generated by the top segment of U.S. power users if it relied only on subscriptions, according to an internal document reviewed by The Washington Post.
What they get: While these banks won’t hold the same type of sway over Twitter, they are a powerful weight on the billionaire, who will owe roughly $1 billion in interest a year. Musk has also at times last year put more than half of his Tesla shares down as collateral on loans, according to financial filings, worth tens of billions of dollars. But Tesla has slumped roughly 65 percent this year, highlighting both the risks facing tech companies in a downtrodden market and the danger of loading a slow-growth company like Twitter with too much debt. The banks helping to finance his Twitter deal would play a huge role if the company ever goes under.” Read more at Washington Post
Twitter restores suicide prevention feature
Move follows criticism of Elon Musk after #ThereIsHelp feature disappeared from searches
“Twitter has restored a feature that promoted suicide prevention hotlines and support groups after its CEO Elon Musk was criticised over their removal.
The feature, known as #ThereIsHelp, placed a banner at the top of search results for certain topics and listed contacts for organisations in numerous countries related to mental health, HIV, vaccines, child sexual exploitation, Covid-19, gender-based violence, natural disasters and freedom of expression.
Reuters reported on Friday that the feature was taken down a few days ago.
Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, confirmed the removal and called it temporary. Irwin said: ‘We have been fixing and revamping our prompts. They were just temporarily removed while we do that. We expect to have them back up next week.’
Irwin said: ‘Google does really well with these in their search results and [we] are actually mirroring some of their approach with the changes we are making.’ She added: ‘We know these prompts are useful in many cases and just want to make sure they are functioning properly and continue to be relevant.’
Musk, who did not initially respond to requests for comment about the removal, had tweeted: ‘False, it is still there.’ In response to criticism by Twitter users, the billionaire also wrote that ‘Twitter doesn’t prevent suicide.’
The initial removal had led some consumer safety groups and Twitter users to express concerns about the wellbeing of vulnerable users on the platform.
Eirliani Abdul Rahman, who had been on a recently dissolved Twitter content advisory group, said the disappearance of #ThereIsHelp was ‘extremely disconcerting and profoundly disturbing’. She added even if it was only temporarily removed to make way for improvements, ‘normally you would be working on it in parallel, not removing it’.
Musk has previously said that impressions, or views, of harmful content are declining since he took over the company in October and has tweeted graphs showing a downward trend, even as researchers and civil rights groups have tracked an increase in tweets with racial slurs and other hateful content.
The entrepreneur has also declared he wants to combat child abuse imagery on Twitter and has criticised the previous ownership’s handling of the issue. But he has reduced large portions of the teams involved in dealing with potentially objectionable material.
Twitter had launched some prompts about five years ago and some had been available in over 30 countries, according to company tweets.” Read more at The Guardian
Tesla's sinking stock
Data: Yahoo Finance. Chart: Axios Visuals
“Tesla stock fell 18% this week alone — and has dropped around 65% in 2022, The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription).
Why it matters: Elon Musk's ‘ability to use his shares at Tesla to raise money, by selling or borrowing against them, has been complicated by their rapid downdraft.’
What's happening: Tesla is falling because of high interest rates, and because Tesla investors worry Musk is distracted.
The bottom line: Musk is worth about $140 billion — about $50 billion of that in Tesla shares.” Read more at Axios
Another above-average wildfire season for 2022. How climate change is making fires harder to predict and fight.
“Harlene Schwander didn’t need a second warning from firefighters as a blaze burned toward her home in Klamath River, California, in July.
Schwander told the Associated Press she only had time to grab a few prized possessions before fleeing. ‘I left everything,’ the artist said, including her art collection.
Dubbed the McKinney Fire, it killed four people and burned down a community center and tavern, among other homes and businesses.
In Panama City, Florida, in March, Paul and Laurie Shuman watched glimpses of their home go up in flames through security video on his phone as a wildfire burned into their neighborhood. It was the second time they’d lost a home. Hurricane Michael destroyed the first in 2018.
These two fires on opposite sides of the country are among 64,835 wildfires reported in the nation this year, as of Dec. 9, the most since 2017. Combined the fires burned more than 7.4 million acres. That’s higher than the 10-year average in both number of fires and acres burned. The 10-year average as of Dec. 9 was 54,091 fires and 7.1 million acres burned.
Scientists widely expect conditions to worsen in coming decades, the result of a combination of factors, including the warming climate, intense droughts, storms, forests laden with trees downed by hurricanes, urbanization and conflicts over how to manage land to prevent extreme fires….” Read more at USA Today
Weather hero
“Mark Woodley — a sports reporter for KWWL News 7, the NBC station in Waterloo, Iowa — got called in to do outside weather reports during yesterday's endless morning show. He got crankier by the hour.
When the chipper anchor asked from the warm studio how he was "feelin' out there," Woodley replied: ‘The same way I felt about eight minutes ago when you asked me that same question. ... It's absolutely fantastic, Ryan!’
Woodley should get an Emmy for this: ‘How do I get that StormChaser 7 duty?! ... That thing's heated. The outdoors, currently, is not heated.’
‘What better time to ask the sports guy to come in about five hours ... earlier than he would normally wake up, go stand out in the wind and the snow and the cold and tell other people not to do the same,’ Woodley ranted.
‘This is a really long show. ... Can I go back to my regular job?’
Woodley tweeted a supercut of his storm hits: ‘This is what you get when you ask the sports guy to come in to cover a blizzard in the morning show.’ It now has 7 million views.” Read more at Axios
Former Juilliard Chair Goes on Leave Amid Sexual Misconduct Investigation
An outside law firm is looking into claims against Robert Beaser, a professor who led the composition department for 25 years.
“The Juilliard School has placed a professor on leave and commissioned an independent investigation after a magazine article said he had sexually harassed students while chair of the New York conservatory’s composition department, a role he held from 1994 to 2018.
A spokeswoman for the school said that Juilliard had conducted investigations of the professor, Robert Beaser, in the late 1990s and a few years ago but that recent reporting by VAN, a magazine about classical music, brought new allegations to its attention. Juilliard declined to say what its previous investigations concluded, and the spokeswoman, Rosalie Contreras, said that further comment could compromise ‘the integrity of the investigation.’
Beaser, 68, went on paid leave on Dec. 16 while an outside law firm investigates. He will not perform ‘teaching duties and other faculty responsibilities while the investigation is being conducted,’ Adam Meyer, Juilliard’s provost, wrote in an email to faculty.
An article that VAN published last week about misconduct allegations against Juilliard faculty members reported that Beaser had sexual relationships with students and that in one instance he had implicitly tied a female student’s career opportunity to her willingness to comply. The people making accusations against Beaser were not named in the article….” Read more at New York Times
Thomas Pynchon, Famously Private, Sells His Archive
The elusive author of ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ and ‘Mason & Dixon’ has sold his papers to the Huntington Library. They include drafts, notes and letters — but sorry, no photographs of him.
“For years, archival traces of the novelist Thomas Pynchon have been almost as rare as sightings of the man himself.
Only a handful of confirmed photos of him are known to exist. While letters by him sporadically pop up for sale, those that have surfaced in publicly accessible archives have tended to disappear from view just as quickly, following protests from the famously private author.
But now, the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, Calif., has acquired Pynchon’s literary archive, promising to open a window into the mind and methods of an author whose dense, erudite, playfully postmodern and often extremely long novels like “Gravity’s Rainbow” (760 pages) and “Against the Day” (1,085) have inspired serious scholarship, cultish devotion and wild-eyed conspiracy theories.
The archive includes 48 boxes — 70 linear feet, in archivist-speak — of material dating from the late 1950s to the 2020s. There are typescripts and drafts of all his published books, from “V.” (1963) to “Bleeding Edge” (2013). And there are copious research notes on the many, many subjects (World War II rocketry, postal history, 18th-century surveying) touched on in his encyclopedic novels.
But for all its richness, those hoping for a more intimate view of the man who twice made a cheeky cameo on “The Simpsons” with a paper bag over his head may be out of luck.
The archive includes correspondence relating to the publishing process, the library said, but no private letters or other personal material. And no, there are no photographs of Pynchon either.
Karla Nielsen, the library’s curator of literary collections, said the archive reflects how Pynchon, now 85, has approached his career.
‘There’s been a real effort throughout his life to have the focus be on the work,’ she said, when asked about negotiations with Pynchon and his family. ‘That was very similar to how they wanted the archive.’
This being Pynchon, the acquisition comes with a whiff of intrigue. The Huntington, unusually for the announcement of a major acquisition, declined to provide any images of the materials. (Less unusually, it also declined to give the purchase price.)
Those involved with the acquisition also declined to describe any particular items, or say whether they had spoken directly with Pynchon. Nor would they confirm longstanding rumors about his writing process (did he really write “Gravity’s Rainbow” on graph paper?) or say when, if ever, Pynchon — a onetime engineering major and keen observer of technology who also suggested it is OK to be a Luddite — abandoned his Olivetti Lettera 22 (which got a shout-out in “Inherent Vice”) and started using a word processor.
The Huntington, a private institution, has more than 11 million items in its collection, from treasures like a Gutenberg Bible and Shakespeare’s First Folio to contemporary photography. Its holdings in 20th century and contemporary literature include the papers of Hilary Mantel, Charles Bukowski, Eve Babitz and Octavia Butler.
Its palatial Beaux-Arts home surrounded by lush gardens represents a very different California from the seedy surf towns, hippie communes and sprawling subdivisions of Pynchon’s novels set in the state.
The acquisition was spearheaded by Nielsen, who several years ago wrote to Pynchon’s literary agent and wife, Melanie Jackson, making the Huntington’s case….” Read more at New York Times
The Huntington has more than 11 million items in its collection, from treasures like a Gutenberg Bible and Shakespeare’s First Folio to contemporary photography. Credit...Aaron P/Bauer-Griffin, via Getty Images