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Alphonso David Fired as Human Rights Marketing campaign President Over Cuomo Ties

Alphonso David Fired as Human Rights Campaign President Over Cuomo Ties

Alphonso David, the president of the human rights campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ organization, was fired by the group’s board on Monday night for a report revealing that he had advised former Governor Andrew M. Cuomo on dealing with allegations of sexual harassment.

David, the first black president of the group, was dismissed “for an important reason” in separate votes by the boards of the human rights campaign and its affiliated foundation after the two boards held a joint meeting. After two abstentions on the Board of Trustees, the votes were unanimous.

The removal of Mr David is the latest fallout from the report by Letitia James, the New York State attorney general, describing Mr Cuomo’s allegations of sexual harassment and the efforts of his staff to take revenge against the former governor’s accusers. Mr. Cuomo resigned in August after the report made 11 allegations and described a toxic work environment.

Mr David, who had worked as an attorney in Mr Cuomo’s office, was identified in the James report as being involved in efforts to undermine Mr Cuomo’s first accuser, Lindsey Boylan. Although Mr. David no longer worked there, he had a memo containing confidential information about Ms. Boylan’s career. He shared the memo with Mr. Cuomo’s advisors, who hoped to provide details to reporters. Mr David has claimed that as a lawyer he has an obligation to do so.

Mr David also proposed changes to a letter slandering Ms. Boylan that circulated among Mr Cuomo and his aides, saying that he would collect signatures from former aides for it. However, he refused to sign it himself and later said that he did not know the extent of the allegations against Mr Cuomo. He called for Mr Cuomo’s resignation after the report was made public.

A person familiar with deliberations on the human rights campaign board said that when the allegations came to light, Mr. David never told the organization that he was providing advice to Mr. Cuomo. The person said that Mr. David did not consult the group’s attorney or tell them that he would be interviewed by Ms. James’ office.

In a statement, board co-chairs Morgan Cox and Jodie Patterson said they had decided to end David’s role “with immediate effect for violating his contract with the human rights campaign.”

The statement also touched on a public dispute that unfolded between Mr. David and the board over the weekend after Mr. David said he had been told that a review of his actions had been completed without any wrongdoing being found.

“Yesterday and today, Mr. David issued a statement containing significant untruths about the investigation and his status with the organization,” said Mr. Cox and Ms. Patterson. “At HRC we are fighting to bring full equality and liberation to LGBTQ + people everywhere. This also includes fighting on behalf of all victims of sexual harassment and assault. “

The review was carried out by members of the HRC Executive Committee. They determined that Mr. David had a conflict of interest in advising Mr. Cuomo’s office and that his efforts are damaging the organization’s reputation. Joni Madison, the group’s chief operating officer, becomes interim president while David’s successor is sought.

Mr. David is not the only liberal ally of Mr. Cuomo involved in the James report. Recently, prominent attorney Roberta A. Kaplan, a co-founder of the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, whose mission is to fight for victims of sexual harassment, resigned after the James report revealed that she was with Tina Tchen, the executive director, spoke of Time’s Up, a letter written about Ms. Boylan by Mr. Cuomo’s staff. Despite denying the charge of advising Mr. Cuomo’s team on defamation of a victim, both Ms. Kaplan and Ms. Tchen recently resigned from their roles.

Mr David had been a Cuomo adviser for nine years when the human rights campaign hired him in June 2019. Announcing the appointment of Mr David, the group highlighted his work with the former governor on important advances in LGBTQ rights, including marriage equality and a ban on conversion therapy.

Divisions between Mr David’s supporters and those who believed he had crossed a line in helping Mr Cuomo tackle allegations of sexual harassment became even more apparent Sunday after Mr David posted his statement on Twitter. Along with stating that the review was completed without a finding of misconduct, he said that the co-chairs of the board “have now asked to consider resigning, not because of misconduct but because they believe that the incident was a ‘distraction’ to the organization. “

He said their plan was to “calmly resolve the matter this holiday weekend,” adding, “I have the support of too many of our employees, board members and stakeholders to go quietly into the night. I’m not resigning. “

“The idea that this is a distraction is just wrong,” said David. “I was not distracted, nor were my HRC colleagues who fight for human rights. The distraction would require my resignation without submitting the results of the review. “

Human rights campaign officials then released a statement to their own staff saying that the review had not been carried out and that Mr David misrepresented the information he was given about the results.

“We were very surprised and disappointed by the inaccuracies in his portrayal of events,” the two CEOs told their employees in an email. “This investigation will soon be completed,” the statement said, and the organization “will then have more to say.” The chief executives initially supported Mr. David in staying in his position, but when some staff asked if he should resign, they hired the Sidley Austin law firm to review his conduct.

The person familiar with the board’s decision said there was no written report of this review and that there never would be. Rather, there were oral presentations to the board of directors. Mr. David is said to have given the board of directors names in addition to the 10 hours he spent giving names for the interviews.

The CEO’s statement released late Monday showed that there were not just isolated calls for Mr David to step down, but hundreds of them, with staff, board members and allies wanting the group to separate from him.

“This is a painful moment in our movement,” they wrote. “While the board’s decision is not the result we ever imagined or hoped for with regard to Mr David’s tenure at HRC, his actions have placed us in an untenable position by violating the core values, guidelines and mission of Violate HRC. ”They said they were“ grateful for his guidance over the past two years, ”especially on initiatives related to the trans community.

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How Canadian Leaders Marketing campaign in a Pandemic

How Canadian Leaders Campaign in a Pandemic

After nearly two weeks of campaigning, it would be a stretch to say that election fever is sweeping Canada. Lawn signs are relatively scarce in Eastern Ontario, where I live, and others tell me similar stories from other parts of the country.

Political scientists and pollsters expect, or hope, that the nation’s focus will turn to the campaign after Labor Day brings an unofficial end to summer’s all-too-short reign.

Meanwhile, inside the campaigns, candidates and their teams are busy looking for new ways to get their messages across and interact with voters during the pandemic, without risking in-person gatherings.

This week, I checked out a modified campaign event hosted by the Conservative Party in Ottawa, my first event of this campaign. The party has transformed part of a ballroom in a downtown Ottawa hotel into a television studio that Erin O’Toole, its leader, uses for what the party calls virtual town hall meetings, which it targets to specific parts of the country. On Tuesday, when I dropped by, the audience was in British Columbia.

For about an hour, the Conservatives robot-dialed voters in the province and asked them if they would listen in and try to ask Mr. O’Toole questions.

Mr. O’Toole had an answer for every question, of course. But the callers weren’t allowed to follow up, making it impossible to determine if his answers actually satisfied them. That said, it’s likely safe to assume that the man who asked if Mr. O’Toole would take the advice of a recent U.N. report to immediately start moving away from fossil fuels was not sated. After acknowledging that the Conservatives did not have a valid climate plan in 2019, Mr. O’Toole praised the party’s new proposal, a system that would aim for substantially smaller emissions reductions than the government’s current target.

Mr. O’Toole has conducted 10 virtual town halls from Ottawa to date. The sessions are streamed live on YouTube and through Facebook, where questions can be submitted in writing. But the questioners, and the listeners, are found mostly through automated phone calls placed by the campaign, and none of them appear on video. The party declined to describe the screening process it uses before putting anyone through to Mr. O’Toole. But there are clearly people vetting the callers.

Whether by chance or by design, many of the questions at the session that I attended, and others that I watched, were on issues that polls show resonate the most with Conservative voters, such as the budget deficit and rolling back recently strengthened gun controls. But at least two people called for action on climate change far beyond what the Conservatives are proposing.

The session had the feel of a video stream of a talk radio show. Its moderator was Michael Barrett, a Conservative member of Parliament from Eastern Ontario, who never challenged any of Mr. O’Toole’s claims and promises, the way an independent host might.

The vast ballroom-turned-studio, dominated by a flag lined stage that vaguely evokes the interior of the Parliament buildings, was utterly devoid of campaign atmosphere during the session.

The only people physically present during the town hall were professionals. In addition to me, the very socially distanced, in-person audience consisted of a television producer, a television network camera operator, a handful of Conservative Party technicians running the show, Mr. O’Toole’s bodyguards and, briefly, a photographer.

Despite the absence of a crowd, let alone crowd energy, Mr. O’Toole remained enthusiastic and energetic for the entire hour.

It’s much too early to say if virtual town halls, like other pandemic make-dos, will succeed the traditional campaign road show with its jets and buses. Mr. O’Toole is, like the other leaders, still hitting the road. I’ll also be out there soon to see how the campaigns of Mr. Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh of the New Democrats have adjusted to the pandemic.

This week: Letter Boxed, where you try to create words using letters surrounding a square. All of The Times’s games, and tips on playing them, can be found here.

A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has reported about Canada for The New York Times for the past 16 years. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten.

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Biden marketing campaign spokesman joins USTR as a prime communications officer

Biden campaign spokesman joins USTR as a top communications officer

United States Agent Seal

Source: Wikipedia

Former President Joe Biden’s chief spokesman has landed a top communications job in the US Trade Representative’s office.

Kamau Marshall, who was Biden’s director of strategic communications in the 2020 election, is now USTR’s assistant assistant for media and public affairs, according to the trade organisation’s website.

Marshall also conducted press contacts for Biden’s inauguration. The USTR is led by Ambassador Katherine Tai.

Marshall’s addition to the USTR leadership team comes as the United States is in the midst of an ongoing trade war with China.

Biden has yet to reveal whether he plans to lift the tariffs on Chinese exports that then-President Donald Trump imposed on the country’s goods. On Thursday, Biden warned American companies of worsening business conditions in Hong Kong.

Marshall has extensive political and communications experience beyond his time at Biden.

During former President Barack Obama’s tenure, he was a speechwriter and communications advisor for the Department of Agriculture. He also served on the Democratic Campaign Committee, MP Al Green, D-Texas, and the late Democratic MPs John Lewis and Elijah Cummings.

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Matt Gaetz’s marketing campaign paid $20,000 to Trump crony Roger Stone’s firm

Matt Gaetz's campaign paid $20,000 to Trump crony Roger Stone's company

Florida Republican Republican Matt Gaetz’s campaign committee paid at least $ 20,000 to a company the Justice Department claims was used by GOP politician Roger Stone and his wife to avoid taxes, such as campaign funding reports showed.

Gaetz’s campaign paid Drake Ventures LLC for three months for “Strategic Campaign Consulting,” according to the quarterly filings of the Federal Electoral Commission committee, the latest of which was released Thursday.

That filing showed that the campaign raised approximately $ 1.45 million and spent more than $ 1.9 million between April and June, and also revealed that more than $ 825,000 was spent on the Logan Circle Group , who hired PR firm Gaetz when news surfaced that he was involved in a federal investigation into sex trafficking. Gaetz is not charged with criminal law and denies any wrongdoing.

The Logan Circle Group is run by Harlan Hill, who was banned from appearing on Fox News after tweeting that Vice President Kamala Harris “comes across as such an unbearable lie.”

Gaetz’s campaign also paid $ 50,000 in legal fees for the quarter, half of which went to the law firm of Marc Fernich, the defense attorney whose notable clients include the late sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, convicted drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and the long-dead belong gang boss John Gotti.

The Gaetz campaign paid Stone’s company in four separate portions of $ 5,000, the documents showed. The FEC filings list a Fort Lauderdale address for Drake Ventures associated with Stone, who lives near the coastal city of Florida.

The first of those rates came in late March, less than a week before the New York Times first reported that the Justice Department was investigating whether Gaetz had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl and was paying for her travel with him. Three days after the news broke, a second payment of $ 5,000 was made to Stone.

Gaetz’s friend, former Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg, pleaded guilty to a number of crimes in May in the case that reportedly led to the investigation of Gaetz. Greenberg cooperates with the federal prosecutor’s office.

The other two payments to Drake Ventures came after the DOJ filed a civil lawsuit against Stone and his wife, Nydia Stone, in mid-April alleging the couple used the company as an “alter ego” to “get their personal income off the ground.” protect”. forced collection and finance a lavish lifestyle. “

“They used Drake Ventures to obtain payments to be made to Roger Stone personally to pay for their personal expenses, protect their assets and avoid reporting taxable income to the IRS,” the DOJ wrote in its appeal .

The Stones owe nearly $ 2 million in unpaid federal taxes and other fees, the DOJ alleged in the lawsuit filed in Fort Lauderdale federal district court.

Federal prosecutors also accused the Stones of “defrauding the United States” by using assets in Drake Ventures’ accounts to buy their home on behalf of a separate trust.

Stone has described the lawsuit as “politically motivated”.

“Our FEC filings speak for themselves,” said a Gaetz spokesman on Thursday evening in an email to CNBC. “Despite an endless barrage of lies from the media, Congressman Gaetz continues to be one of the greatest fundraisers in Congress and the only Republican not to accept donations from federal lobbyists or PACs. He thanks his tens of thousands of donors and pledges “to always fight for them.”

Hardly any information was given about the company’s “strategic campaign advice” for the Gaetz campaign.

“I’m not interested in talking about the case or anything on record,” said Brian Harris, an attorney representing Stone and Drake Ventures on the DOJ lawsuit, in a brief phone call with CNBC before hanging up .

Stone did not respond to CNBC’s inquiries about Gaetz’s campaign committee payments. Two other attorneys representing the Stones and Drake Ventures, Derick Vollrath and Jeffrey Neiman, made no comment.

Stone and Gaetz are both Florida based and both are loyal to former President Donald Trump, who has lived at his Palm Beach golf club since leaving office in January.

In late December, Trump pardoned 68-year-old Stone, who had been convicted of lying to Congress under oath.

– CNBC’s Brian Schwartz contributed to this report.

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How one can inform if a politician is likely to be stealing marketing campaign money

How to tell if a politician might be stealing campaign cash

Individuals making small contributions — the kind of donors candidates love to talk about at campaign rallies — transformed the political landscape in 2020.

Small donors, those giving $200 or less to a candidate, accounted for a whopping $1.8 billion in federal campaign contributions by the weeks leading up to last fall’s elections, according to a joint analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics and the National Institute of Money in Politics.

That is more than three times the amount they gave in the 2016 cycle, and it accounted for 27% of the total raised from all sources. That doesn’t include the flood of individual donations to parties and political action committees.

But how many of those contributors did any due diligence before clicking on the “donate” button, to make sure their hard-earned money was actually going toward legitimate campaign expenses?

After all, tales of politicians misusing campaign funds are legion, and practically as old as politics itself.

Former Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., is a prime example. The Marine Corps veteran was a prodigious fundraiser, but large amounts of the money he raised did not go toward advancing the conservative causes he campaigned for.

Instead, they went toward everything from lavish vacations to groceries. And it helped Hunter pay for multiple extramarital affairs.

In 2019, Hunter and his estranged wife, Margaret, each pleaded guilty to charges that they conspired to steal more than $150,000 in campaign funds, in what prosecutors described as “a deliberate, years-long violation of the law.”

Rep. Duncan Hunter leaves federal court in San Diego after pleading guilty to misusing campaign funds, December 3, 2019.

Mike Blake | Reuters

“It would be so simple to say, in this case, that the victims were the campaign supporters who gave him money expecting it would be used only for the campaign, but that’s only part of the story,” former Assistant U.S. Attorney Phil Halpern told CNBC’s “American Greed.”  “The true victims include every single person that he represents in San Diego and Riverside Counties.”

Last December, just weeks before Hunter was scheduled to begin an 11-month prison sentence, then-President Donald Trump pardoned the ex-congressman and his wife. That allows Hunter to move on with his life, collect a congressional pension, and even potentially run for office again. But there is no mechanism for donors who feel they were cheated to get any of their money back.

Donor beware

Robert Maguire, research director at the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said that while it is important for people to be able to take part in the political process and support the candidate or party of their choice, the Hunter case should be a cautionary tale.

“Some of these campaigns and committees have gotten really good at making emotional appeals that apply to donors’ preexisting political beliefs,” Maguire told “American Greed.” “Sometimes that can sort of short circuit the part of your brain that says, ‘Wait, I should be doing a little research before I give this money’.”

Federal campaign finance laws require detailed disclosures by candidates and campaign committees about the money they collect and spend. All of the information is posted online at the Federal Election Commission website.

“FEC data is generally quite good,” Maguire said. “It can be kind of daunting at first to dig into, but there’s a lot of useful information in there for donors who want to hold the committees they’re giving to accountable.”

Clicking on the “Campaign Finance Data” link allows you to search not only who is contributing to your candidate, but also where the campaign is spending the money.

The raw FEC data can be cumbersome to get through, so you can also check out OpenSecrets.org, operated by Center for Responsive Politics. The site synthesizes the data and adds nonpartisan context.

“Look for potentially self-serving expenditures, large restaurant payments or travel expenses that don’t make sense,” Maguire said.

Such payments are not necessarily illegal as long as they are reported to the FEC. For example, a candidate can use campaign funds to make charitable donations as long as he or she does not personally benefit. Funds can be used to pay for gifts if the recipient is not a member of the candidate’s immediate family. The candidate can even collect a salary from their campaign committee under certain conditions.

But just because the payments might technically be legal does not mean you should not scrutinize them.

“Ask questions about it,” Maguire said. “You can also flag them for your local reporter in the candidate’s district, and just say, ‘Hey, I don’t know much about this. This looks strange.’ And that can help you get to the bottom of it.”

Gaming the system

The Hunters stretched the loopholes in campaign finance law beyond their limits, even setting themselves up with credit cards that allowed them to tap into campaign funds at will, with practically no questions asked.

In the month of December 2010 alone, a month after Hunter was easily reelected to a second term, FEC records show nearly $2,500 in “travel, meals and lodging” billed to the campaign credit card.

“Almost instantly from getting that campaign credit card, it was a license to steal,” Halpern said.

In other cases, a big red flag to look for is large payments to consulting firms. Practically all candidates use consultants, so the expenditures may be perfectly legitimate. But Maguire said consultant payments can also be a way to launder contributions for a candidate or committee’s illegitimate use. He said it is another loophole in the law.

“Subcontractors don’t have to be reported,” he said. “And so there could be these large lump-sum payments to consulting firms, or even things that appear to be shell corporations or something like that, that could be sort of a catch-all for a large number of expenditures.”

If you see frequent payments to a consultant or another outside entity in the FEC data, try to research that firm as well, or ask the campaign about it, Maguire said.

“Is this just a way for them to raise a bunch of money from people who care about a particular issue and then basically put it right back in their pockets?”

Similar rules apply if you are considering a donation to a political party or a political action committee. Maguire said a committee’s website alone can offer some useful clues.

“Are there actual human beings listed on the website? Is there contact information? Does this look like an operation that actually employs people, and they come to work there every day?”

If the website lists a physical address, Google it to make sure it is not just a mail drop.

“If it pops up as a UPS store, you know, that’s kind of a red flag,” Maguire said.

Be the watchdog

The FEC, an independent agency that was the centerpiece of post-Watergate campaign finance reforms in the 1970s, has never managed to live up to expectations.

“It’s an agency that just doesn’t work right now,” Maguire said.

In recent years, it has been hobbled by a lack of funding. The agency notes in its latest request for a 7% budget increase in fiscal 2022 that its operating budget appropriated by Congress has been essentially flat since 2016.

More crucially, the commission has occasionally suffered from a lack of members. During much of the 2020 campaign season, the commission could not even meet because resignations and a lack of presidential appointments left it short of a quorum.

Even when it is at full strength, the six-member commission — no more than three members can be from the same party — frequently deadlocks, unable to agree on enforcement actions.

“Some of the largest and most consequential cases are just stymied either by dysfunction or by an inability to get the commissioners to agree on facts,” Maguire said.

In many ways, that leaves it up to you as a donor to hold your candidate accountable.

“If you are thinking of giving to a campaign or to a political committee, you should do some homework first,” Maguire said.

See how a congressman and his wife used campaign cash to fund their lavish lifestyle — and how they got away with it. Catch an ALL NEW episode of “American Greed,” Monday, June 14 at 10 p.m. ET/PT only on CNBC.

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Marketing campaign launched to get Peter Thiel’s agency out of NHS

Campaign launched to get Peter Thiel's firm out of NHS

Peter Thiel, co-founder and chairman of Palantir Technologies Inc., pauses during a news conference in Tokyo, Japan, on Monday, Nov. 18, 2019.

Kiyoshi Ota | Bloomberg | Getty Images

LONDON — A campaign is being launched to try to stop U.S. tech giant Palantir from working with the U.K.’s National Health Service.

The “No Palantir in Our NHS” campaign — launched at an event on Thursday — comes after Palantir partnered with the NHS on a Covid-19 “Data Store.” The project was designed to help the government and health service use data to monitor the spread of the virus.

Foxglove, which describes itself as a tech-justice nonprofit, is leading the campaign, while over 50 other organizations working on civil liberties, anti-racism, migrant justice and public health have also backed it.

“We got dozens of organizations to realize and agree that this company has no place in the NHS in the long term,” Cori Crider, the lawyer who co-founded Foxglove, told CNBC on Wednesday.

Palantir, which has been criticized by privacy campaigners and human rights groups on multiple occasions, declined to comment when contacted by CNBC. A spokesperson for the NHS did not respond.

What is Palantir?

Founded in 2003 by tech entrepreneurs including billionaire Peter Thiel — a Facebook board member who reportedly donated $1.25 million to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign — Palantir sells software that’s designed to help public and private organizations analyze huge quantities of data and pull out meaningful patterns and connections.

Since its inception, the $45 billion publicly listed company has supported spy agencies, border forces and militaries, with the finer details of contracts often kept a closely guarded secret.

In April 2018, Bloomberg published an article headlined: “Palantir Knows Everything About You.”

Named after the fictional “seeing stones” in “Lord of the Rings,” Palantir has been linked to everything from efforts to track down undocumented immigrants in the United States to the development of unmanned drones for bombings and intelligence.

“Their background has generally been in contracts where people are harmed, not healed,” Crider said.

Clive Lewis, a Labour Party member of Parliament and one of the campaign’s backers, accused Palantir of having an “appalling track record.”

“It’s built its business supporting drone and missile strikes, immigration raids and arrests, not the delivery and care of medicine,” Lewis told CNBC. “It’s got a questionable agenda, and I think that will have a negative impact on patient trust, particularly among minoritized communities who may feel a threat from big government.”

Palantir — which has been trying to grow its European business in recent years — has a significant presence in London’s Soho neighborhood, with hundreds of employees across multiple offices in the area.

Covid-19 Data Store

The Covid-19 Data Store project, which involves Palantir’s Foundry data management platform, began in March 2020 alongside other tech giants as the government tried to slow the spread of the virus across the U.K. It was sold as a short-term effort to predict how best to deploy resources to deal with the pandemic.

The contract was quietly extended in December when the NHS and Palantir signed a £23 million ($34 million) two-year deal that allows the company to continue its work until December 2022.

The NHS was sued by political website openDemocracy in February over the contract extension. “December’s new, two-year contract reaches far beyond Covid: to Brexit, general business planning and much more,” the group said.

The NHS Covid-19 Data Store contract allows Palantir to help manage the data lake, which contains everybody’s health data for pandemic purposes.

“The reality is, sad to say, all this whiz-bang data integration didn’t stop the United Kingdom having one of the worst death tolls in the western world,” said Crider. “This kind of techno solution-ism is not necessarily the best way of making an NHS sustainable for the long haul.”

Patient data is “pseudonymized” before it is processed by Palantir’s software as part of an effort to protect patient privacy. The data management technique involves switching the original data set, with an alias or pseudonym. However, it is a reversible process that allows for re-identification in the future if necessary and some have questioned whether it’s enough. Palantir may argue that it isn’t interested in the patient data itself and that it only provides the platform that allows the NHS to analyze the data.

While Palantir is processing the patient data, the NHS remains the data owner, limiting what Palantir can do with it.

Pivot to health

There have been some signs that government appetite for limitless spend on security has started to wane and Palantir may have lost a couple of deals as a result, Crider said, pointing to a report in The Guardian that highlights some of the difficulties the EU’s law agency had with Palantir’s software.

Crider believes the firm has been trying to find new sources of government contracts beyond security as a result. “They hit on a new possibility, which was health data,” she said.

The company was reportedly lobbying officials from the U.K. Department of Trade as well as health executives back in 2019. But it struggled to secure any contracts.

When the pandemic hit, however, the laws changed so that data sharing was done in a mandatory way and for the first time in U.K. history everyone’s data was pooled into a huge lake. Procurement rules were also reportedly changed. “Palantir pounced and they managed to get in,” Crider said, adding that there was no bid or competitive tender.

Palantir’s interest in health was highlighted again on Thursday when it emerged in a Financial Times report that the company has taken a strategic stake in British health firm Babylon as part of a $4.2 billion blank-check deal to take the start-up public in the U.S.

Babylon CEO Ali Parsa told the newspaper that “nobody” has brought some of the tech that Palantir owns “into the realm of biology and healthcare.” Parsa, whose app offers a variety of health care services to 24 million patients, added: “Their knowledge of healthcare can overhaul what we could do [together]. We wanted to take … the day to day biometrics of the human body and be able to construct a more pre-emptive image, by building a digital twin of each of us.”

A boy runs past a mural supporting the NHS, by artist Rachel List, on the gates of the Hope & Anchor pub in Pontefract, Yorkshire, as the UK continues in lockdown to help curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Danny Lawson | Getty Images

Crider believes the U.K. is at an inflexion point when it comes to health data.

From July 1, the NHS is planning to pool the full medical histories of 55 million patients in England into a single database that will be available to academic and third parties for research and planning purposes. Patients have until June 23 to opt out. Campaigners said Friday the “data grab” violates patient trust and they’re threatening to take legal action.

“The British public need to realize that we are now coming into a period where the future of the NHS health data, and the health data settlement of this country, is now kind of up for grabs and up for debate,” Crider said. “Companies have seen it for a while. Palantir don’t want to monetize the data they want to monetize the infrastructure, but there are other companies who absolutely do want to monetize access to the data.”

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Professional-Biden Group to Start Advert Marketing campaign Selling His Agenda in Swing States

Pro-Biden Group to Begin Ad Campaign Promoting His Agenda in Swing States

WASHINGTON – A new group dedicated to promoting President Biden’s ambitious agenda is launching a multi-million dollar advertising campaign that trumpets his Covid recovery package and infrastructure proposal, while contrasting Mr Biden’s low-key style with that of his bombastic predecessor.

Building Back Together, a progressive organization run by Biden allies, will be broadcasting minute-long television commercials next week in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia and Wisconsin highlighting the president’s response to the coronavirus and sweeping economic plans. The group plans to spend more than $ 3 million for a month, including a shorter advertisement that will appear on digital platforms in the same four states and North Carolina.

Both of these points differentiate Mr Biden’s approach from that of former President Donald J. Trump.

“You won’t hear him yelling or angry tweets because the actions speak louder for Joe Biden,” says a narrator in the TV commercial.

The shorter digital advertisement concludes: “No drama, just results.”

The strategy shows how determined the Democrats are to continue to fight Mr. Trump effectively. He may not be in the White House or be allowed to send angry or abusive tweets, but his approval ratings have dropped even further since he left the presidency and he remains the best slide for Mr Biden, who has been unusually restrained for a new president.

Meanwhile, Mr. Biden draws solid, if not spectacular, early signs, a reflection of the country’s deep polarization.

As he turns to an extensive and expensive menu of domestic proposals aimed at stimulating the economy, fighting poverty and tackling climate change, his supporters hope to retain the electorate support that helped him partly win last year have by reminding them of Mr. Biden’s predecessor.

“The message is simple: chaos is over, competence is in, and help is there for Americans,” said Stephanie Cutter, a Building Back Together advisor who is close to Mr. Biden and senior officials from the West Wing.

The group, which was first reported in February, airs in select and costly markets: Las Vegas, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee; and Scranton, Pennsylvania, Mr. Biden’s childhood home. The group has done some research because it has stated that it will not disclose the identity of its donors.

The ads aim to convince people of color, upscale white suburbanites, and the smaller group of working class whites who have switched from supporting Mr. Trump in 2016 to supporting Mr. Biden in 2020 from independent or even Republican-minded voters who supported Mr Biden but may have voted for GOP candidates below.

The goal for this and future ad blitzes, officials say, is to try to cement the president’s new coalition by reminding them of what they may not have liked about Mr. Trump and by following the agenda of Put Mr. Biden up. They hope that by mixing television and digital, they will reach voters across platforms and throughout the day.

Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are not only major battlegrounds for the president, but they also have some of the most significant races for next year’s Senate and governor seats.

These new efforts, mainly aimed at promoting Mr. Biden, could also help Democratic candidates in those states whose medium-term fortunes depend in large part on the president’s popularity. Many in the party, including Mr Biden himself earlier this year, have said that former President Barack Obama did not do enough to highlight his early agenda and paid a price for it in the 2010 midterm elections.

This is the group’s first advertising campaign, but the organization intends to be the main external group for Mr Biden at least until next year’s mid-term election. The name comes from the president’s campaign slogan, which has become an abbreviation for his post-Covid economic proposals.

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Health

White Home to make use of celebrities, athletes in advert marketing campaign to fight Covid vaccine hesitancy

White House to use celebrities, athletes in ad campaign to combat Covid vaccine hesitancy

In this screenshot Eva Longoria speaks at the 26th Annual Critics Choice Awards on March 07, 2021.

Getty Images

The Biden government is launching a massive campaign Thursday to convince more Americans to take the Covid-19 vaccines, government officials told NBC News.

The campaign, titled “We Can Do This: Live,” targets young people through social media and includes virtual events where celebrities and athletes answer Americans’ questions about the vaccines, according to NBC News.

Famous people to take part in the campaign include actress Eva Longoria, Billionaire owner Mark Cuban of Dallas Mavericks, Kelly Ripa and Ryan Seacrest, co-hosts of “Live with Kelly and Ryan,” and people from NASCAR , the NBA and WNBA, according to NBC News.

According to a detailed publication of the campaign received from NBC News, the goal is to reach Americans, especially young people, “right in the places where they already consume content online, including social media, podcasts, YouTube and more”.

The government’s efforts come because polls suggest a significant proportion of Americans are likely to refuse to fire the shots, potentially stifling the nation’s recovery from the pandemic that killed at least 569,405 Americans in just over a year.

Some young people appear to be resistant to vaccinations. A recent survey by STAT News-Harris found that 21% of Generation Z or young adults ages 18 to 24 said they wouldn’t get the Covid vaccine and another 34% said they would “wait a while.” and see “before being vaccinated.

In addition, some doctors said some of their patients had become skeptical of the vaccines after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration asked states last week to stop distributing Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine after six rare ones , but potentially to temporarily discontinue cases. Fatal bleeding disorders have been reported.

Many of former President Donald Trump’s supporters are also strongly against taking the vaccine, say public health and policy experts, which worries U.S. health officials who hope enough people will be vaccinated for the country to receive herd immunity to the virus .

The Chief Medical Officer of the White House, Dr. Anthony Fauci previously said 75% to 85% of the US population would need to be vaccinated to create an “umbrella” of immunity that will prevent the virus from spreading.

Vaccine supplies are already exceeding demand in some regions of the US as local health authorities struggle to get people to vaccinate.

As of Wednesday, more than 134 million Americans, or 40% of the total US population, had received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, according to the CDC. Around 87.5 million Americans, or 26.4% of the total US population, are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.

According to the CDC, the United States reported an average of 3 million shots per day over the past week, a slight decrease from 3.4 million reported shots per day on April 13.

Fauci said Monday that there would be a “court press” to get people vaccinated.

“It is very worrying that people are politically unwilling to be vaccinated,” Fauci said Monday on CBS This Morning. “I find this really extraordinary because they say you are encroaching on our freedoms by asking us to wear masks and doing restrictions that affect public health problems. The easiest way to overcome this is to yourself get vaccinated. “

–CNBCs Nate Rattner and Rich Mendez contributed to this report.

Categories
Health

Biden provides replace on Covid vaccination marketing campaign

Biden gives update on Covid vaccination campaign

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President Joe Biden will propose a tax credit for small and medium-sized businesses that offer their employees paid vacation to get vaccinated against Covid and recover from possible side effects.

Biden will also announce that this week the U.S. will hit 200 million Covid shots that have been given since he took office.

Biden will also urge employers to use their resources to encourage and incentivize more people to vaccinate. The US vaccination rate appears to have decreased slightly in the past few days.

The White House has maintained the urgency of vaccinations, stressing that Covid remains a serious threat – especially as highly contagious variants spread across the US

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Business

7 Republicans Swear Off Marketing campaign Cash From Large Tech: Stay Updates

Representative Ken Buck of Colorado said last month that he would not accept money from the tech giants’ political action committees.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Joe Skipper/Reuters

A group of seven House Republicans said on Wednesday that they would no longer take donations from major tech companies or their top executives, a sign of the growing distance between some conservatives and big business.

The lawmakers said in a letter that the companies limited the reach of conservative voices, citing bans on the chat app Parler after it was used by participants in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and abused their market power.

“These monopolies have shown that personal liberty can be threatened by corporate tyranny just as much as by government tyranny,” they said in the letter. All but one of the lawmakers are members of the Judiciary Committee, which oversees the antitrust questions confronting the tech companies.

The pledge was led by Representative Ken Buck of Colorado, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee. Mr. Buck said last month that he would not accept money from the tech giants’ political action committees.

For years, lawmakers on the right have attacked Google, Twitter and Facebook, accusing the companies of unfairly removing content posted by conservatives. The lawmakers have also accused Amazon and Apple of stifling competition. In recent weeks, some conservatives have turned on other major businesses — traditionally their allies in efforts to deregulate the economy — that have opposed their positions on voting rights and other issues.

Five of the lawmakers received donations from the corporate political action committees of Google, Facebook and Amazon in the last election cycle. Representatives Chip Roy of Texas, Gregory Steube of Florida and Andy Biggs of Arizona, who signed the pledge, all received a combined $3,500 in donations. Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina (not Oklahoma, as previously reported here) received $1,000 from Amazon’s political committee.

But it is also possible that some of the lawmakers who signed the pledge will not have to turn any donations down in the near future. Amazon and Google froze donations to lawmakers who voted against certifying the election results after the Jan. 6 attack. Facebook paused all of its political donations.

Mr. Steube and Mr. Norman, as well as Representatives Dan Bishop of North Carolina and Burgess Owens of Utah, all objected to the results of the presidential election.

Mr. Bishop and Mr. Owens both signed the pledge even though they did not receive money from the firms’ political committees last election cycle.

JPMorgan Chase said it was bringing on more workers and focusing on managing its bankers’ hours better. Credit…Justin Lane/EPA, via Shutterstock

On Tuesday, JPMorgan Chase’s co-heads of investment banking, Jim Casey and Viswas Raghavan, announced policies aimed at improving working conditions amid record deal volume and an industrywide debate about banker burnout, especially in the junior ranks.

The country’s largest bank has tried similar moves before. Mr. Casey spoke with the DealBook newsletter about the company’s latest plan — and whether this one will stick.

Burnout became the buzz on Wall Street after a group of 13 anonymous first-year analysts at Goldman Sachs described how frequent 100-hour weeks were taking a toll on their mental and physical health.

To help alleviate that level of exhaustion among its own ranks, JPMorgan is bringing on more workers to help cope with heavy deal volume, which generated $3 billion in investment banking fees in the first quarter, up nearly 60 percent from the previous year. It has already hired 65 analysts and 22 associates this year and plans to add another 100 junior bankers and support staff, “if we can find them, as quickly as we can,” Mr. Casey said.

It’s also focused on managing its bankers’ hours better. JPMorgan will tell associates not to do marketing work on weekends. It will encourage all bankers to go home by 7 p.m. on weekdays and add more flexibility for personal time. It will force bankers to take at least three weeks’ vacation a year. It will require group heads to call two to three junior bankers every day to find out what’s working.

Some of these actions are similar to what JPMorgan rolled out in 2016, but “it wasn’t stringently enforced,” Mr. Casey said. Why not? “Laziness.”

This time, junior bankers’ hours and feedback will figure in senior managers’ performance evaluations and — crucially — compensation.

One thing the bank won’t be doing: offering one-time checks or free Peloton exercise bikes to staff after a big rush, like at some other banks. “It’s not a money problem,” Mr. Casey said. “If we just cut the junior bankers a check now,” he said, “then that would be the excuse that everybody says, ‘Well, OK, the problem is fixed.’ No, it’s not.”

And some other things won’t change. Banking is a client-service job, so managers sometimes have limited control over workloads and hours. “You might do 100 deals a year, but that client only does one deal every three years,” Mr. Casey said.

As to how the bank will measure the success of these policies, “ask me what our turnover ratio has gone to and I will tell you,” Mr. Casey said. What’s the target? “Lower.”

American Airlines expects to hire about 300 pilots this year and twice as many next year.Credit…Eduardo Munoz/Reuters

American Airlines plans to bring back all of its pilots by the end of summer and start hiring new ones this fall, reflecting optimism across the industry that widespread vaccinations will encourage more people to book flights.

The airline expects to hire about 300 pilots this year and twice as many next year, Chip Long, American’s vice president of flight operations, said in a note to pilots on Wednesday. He added the airline planned to honor offers it made to new pilots but didn’t fulfill last year when the pandemic crushed demand for tickets.

United Airlines also said this month that it would restart pilot hiring and expected to make about 300 offers this year.

“The return to flying of so many of our pilots and the addition of hundreds more, the resumption of many old routes and the introduction of new destinations are hopeful signs, opportunities to look beyond the immediate and into a brighter future,” Mr. Long said.

A spokesman for the union that represents American’s pilots, the Allied Pilots Association, welcomed the news but said it should come with more scheduling certainty for its members.

“We have faith that we can get it done, but we have to have the tools to do it,” said the spokesman, Dennis Tajer, who is also a pilot at American.

Airlines have been heartened by the increase in bookings over the past month and are optimistic that even more people will fly this summer. American has said it expects this summer to offer more than 90 percent of the seats on domestic flights as it did in 2019 and 80 percent of the seats on international flights.

Still, the airline is expected to report a large loss for the first three months of the year when it announces quarterly results on Thursday morning.

The company that began as Krystle Mobayeni's side project, BentoBox, scaled up significantly in the pandemic to help restaurants.Credit…Gili Benita for The New York Times

The past year has crushed independent restaurants across the country and brought a reality to their doors: Many were unprepared for a digital world.

Unlike other small retailers, restaurateurs could keep the tech low, with basic websites and maybe Instagram accounts with tantalizing, well-lit photos of their food. It meant businesses like BentoBox, which aims to help restaurants build more robust websites with e-commerce abilities, were a hard sell, Amy Haimerl reports for The New York Times.

For many, BentoBox’s services were a “nice to have,” not a necessity, the company’s founder, Krystle Mobayeni, said.

But the pandemic sent chefs and owners flocking to the firm as they suddenly needed to add to-go ordering, delivery scheduling, gift card sales and more to their websites. Before the pandemic the company, based in New York City, had about 4,800 clients, including the high-profile Manhattan restaurant Gramercy Tavern; today it has more than 7,000 restaurants on board and recently received a $28.8 million investment led by Goldman Sachs.

The moment opened a well of opportunity for other companies like it. Dozens of firms have either started or scaled up sharply as they found their services in urgent demand. Meanwhile, investors and venture capitalists have been sourcing deals in the “restaurant tech” sector — particularly seeking companies that bring the big chains’ advantages to independent restaurants.

“The E.U. is spearheading the development of new global norms to make sure A.I. can be trusted,” said Margrethe Vestager of the European Commission.Credit…Yves Herman/Reuters

  • The European Union on Wednesday unveiled strict regulations to govern the use of artificial intelligence. The rules have far-reaching implications for major technology companies including Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft that have poured resources into developing artificial intelligence. “With these landmark rules, the E.U. is spearheading the development of new global norms to make sure A.I. can be trusted,” Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission executive vice president who oversees digital policy for the 27-nation bloc, said in a statement.

  • Netflix reported the addition of four million new customers in the first quarter, below the six million it had forecast. The company expects to add only one million new customers for this current quarter ending in June. Netflix shares plummeted about 10 percent in after-hours trading.

  • Apple unveiled new products on Tuesday that showed how it continued to center its marketing pitch on consumer privacy, at the potential expense of other companies, while muscling into markets pioneered by much smaller competitors. Apple showed off a new high-end iPad and an iMac desktop computer based on new processors that Apple now makes itself. The company said it was redesigning its podcast app, which competes with companies like Spotify, to enable creators to charge for their shows. It revealed the AirTag, a $29 disc that attaches to key rings or wallets so they can be found if lost. And after its product show, Apple said that it planned to release iPhone software next week with a privacy feature that worries digital-advertising companies, most notably Facebook.

U.S. stocks rose on Wednesday, reversing some of the previous day’s drop. The sentiment in stock markets this week has shifted from the optimism that recently set record highs amid growing concerns about coronavirus variants that are leading to new outbreaks.

The S&P 500 ticked up 0.4 percent after falling 0.7 percent on Tuesday.

The Stoxx Europe 600 index rose about 0.5 percent after plunging 1.9 percent on Tuesday. That was the biggest one-day decline since December.

Oil prices fell, with futures on West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, declining 1.2 percent to just below $62 a barrel.

  • Netflix shares dropped nearly 8 percent after its latest earnings report. For the first quarter of 2021, Netflix said after markets closed on Tuesday that it added four million new customers, less than the six million it had forecast. It’s another sign that, although Netflix still dominates streaming, its rivals are starting to catch up.

  • As plans for a European Super League for soccer rapidly fell apart on Tuesday, shares in publicly traded football clubs that had joined the group dropped. Manchester United shares fell in New York, extending a 6 percent drop from the previous day. Shares in Juventus, an Italian club, tumbled more than 10 percent.

  • Inflation in Britain rose less in March than economists predicted. The annual rate of price increases was 0.7 percent, data published Wednesday showed, up from 0.4 percent in February. The jump is notable, but it is less than the 0.8 percent analysts had predicted. As in the United States, policymakers and economists expect some of the increase to be temporary and explained by transitionary factors such as the steep drop in oil prices this time last year. Therefore, bets are that the central bank won’t reduce its monetary stimulus yet.

A growing number of retirees and those approaching retirement are in debt.

The share of households headed by someone 55 or older with debt — from credit cards, mortgages, medical bills and student loans — increased to 68.4 percent in 2019, from 53.8 percent in 1992, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute. A survey at the end of 2020 by Clever, an online real estate service, found that on average, retirees had doubled their nonmortgage debt in 2020 — to $19,200.

Susan B. Garland reports for The New York Times on what to do if you’re in this position:

  • Consult a nonprofit credit counseling agency, which will review a client’s expenses and income sources and create a custom action plan. The initial budgeting session is often free, said Bruce McClary, senior vice president for communications at the National Foundation for Credit Counseling. An action plan could include cutting unnecessary spending, such as selling a rarely used car and banking some proceeds for taxi fare.

  • Tap into senior-oriented government benefits, such as property tax relief, utility assistance and Medicare premium subsidies. The National Council on Aging operates a clearinghouse website for them, BenefitsCheckUp.org. “The average individual 65-plus on a fixed income is leaving $7,000 annually on the table” in unused benefits, said Ramsey Alwin, the council’s president.

  • Avoid using high-interest credit cards to fill income gaps. Medical bills typically charge little or no interest but turn into high-interest costs if placed on credit cards, said Melinda Opperman, president of Credit.org. Instead, she said, patients should call hospitals or other providers directly to work out an arrangement.

  • Avoid taking out home-equity loans or lines of credit to pay off credit cards or medical bills, said Rose Perkins, quality assurance manager for CCCSMD, a credit counseling service. Though tapping home equity carries a lower interest rate than a credit card, a homeowner could put a home at risk if a job loss, the death of a spouse or illness made it difficult to pay off the lender, she said.