It’s Wednesday.
Before we dive into President Biden’s schedule for today. I have to ask for forgiveness, because I totally missed a President Biden Tweet for Monday…
His full statement:
Speaking in the spring of 1964 about his plans for Freedom Summer, Bob Moses summed up the heroic effort to register Black voters in the Deep South with a question: “What kind of society will we be?”
Throughout his remarkable life, Bob devoted his heart and soul to lead, teach, and organize generations of Americans to answer that question by making real the promise of our nation – that we are all created equal and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives.
He did so with uncommon grace, calm, and humility despite every bullet, arrest, and unrelenting brutality he faced.
The violent and murderous response to the Freedom Summer he organized helped galvanize support for the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. A celebrated educator by training and by heart, he understood education is a great equalizer and helped countless students, and our nation, realize their dreams and full potential.
From the polling stations of Mississippi and in classrooms of our nation, Bob always showed up and never, ever gave in. In his memory, let us continue his unfinished work and answer the question he asked us once before – to be a society that delivers on the promise of this nation.
With attacks on the right to vote unseen since the days of the Jim Crow system Bob helped to dismantle, I call on Congress again to pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Let us build the coalition of Americans of every race and background that he once formed to meet the urgency of the moment. And let us follow his towering legacy and ensure every American is treated with the dignity and respect they deserve.
Jill and I send our love and prayers to Bob’s wife, Janet, their four children, and their seven grandchildren.
May God bless Bob Moses.
White House.gov. 07/26/2021.
The New York Times reported on Sunday that Bob Moses dead in his home in Hollywood, Florida, at the age of 86. His daughter confirmed his death but no cause was given.
Moses was best known for starting the Algebra project in the 80’s. The project grew when his eldest daughter entered 8th grade and he became frustrated that the school was not teaching her algebra:
When his eldest child, Maisha, entered the eighth grade in 1982, Mr. Moses was frustrated that her school did not offer algebra, so he asked the teacher to let her sit by herself in class and do more advanced work.
The teacher invited Mr. Moses, who had just received a MacArthur “genius” grant, to teach Maisha and several classmates. The Algebra Project was born.The project was a five-step philosophy of teaching that can be applied to any concept, he wrote, including physical experience, pictorial representation, people talk (explain it in your own words), feature talk (put it into proper English) and symbolic representation.
“He understood that the literacies necessary for the 21st century were very different from the ones needed in the Industrial Age,” Courtland Cox, a veteran civil rights leader and a friend of Mr. Moses, said in a phone interview.
By the early 1990s, the program had stretched to places including Boston and San Francisco, winning accolades from the National Science Foundation and reaching 9,000 children.
Mr. Moses saw teaching “math literacy” as a direct extension of his civil rights work in Mississippi.
“I believe that the absence of math literacy in urban and rural communities throughout this country is an issue as urgent as the lack of registered Black voters in Mississippi was in 1961,” he wrote in “Radical Equations.”
In the summer of 2020, when the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis touched off global protests against systemic racism and police brutality, Mr. Moses said that the country seemed to be undergoing an “awakening.”
“I certainly don’t know, at this moment, which way the country might flip,” Mr. Moses told The New York Times. “It can lurch backward as quickly as it can lurch forward.”
New York Times. 07/25/2021.
On-ward with are regularly scheduled programming.
For Wednesday, July 28th, 2021, President Biden has received his daily brief. This afternoon he will travel to Pennsylvania where he’ll tour Mack-Lehigh Valley Operations (LVO) Manufacturing Facility. After his visit he will offer remarks on the importance of “American manufacturing, buying products made in America, and supporting good-paying jobs for American workers.”
With the end goal in mind of buying American, the Biden-Harris Administration issued the following fact-sheet on the proposed “Buy American Rule.”
Today, the President is announcing another significant step in fulfilling his commitment: the most robust changes to the implementation of the Buy American Act in almost 70 years. His proposal would increase U.S. content in the products the federal government buys and support the domestic production of products critical to our national and economic security.
With $600 billion in annual procurement spending, almost half of which is in manufactured products from helicopter blades to trucks to office furniture, the Federal government is a major buyer in a number of markets for goods and services, including the single largest purchaser of consumer goods in the world. Leveraging that purchasing power to shape markets and accelerate innovation is a key part of the Biden industrial strategy to grow the industries of the future to support U.S. workers, communities, and firms. As the pandemic has demonstrated, federal procurement can strengthen the resiliency of domestic supply chains, and reduce the risk of Americans being adversely impacted by the actions of competitor nations during a time of crisis.
Today’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking marks just the first set of proposed reforms to procurement policy under the Biden-Harris Administration to ensure taxpayer dollars help America’s businesses compete in strategic industries and help ensure America’s workers thrive.
The proposed rule directs the following changes to strengthen Buy American requirements:
White House.gov. 07/28/2021.
Bullet Points:
- “Make Buy American Real” and close loopholes by raising the domestic content threshold. The Buy American statute says products bought with taxpayer dollars must “substantially all” be made in the U.S. However, today, products could qualify if just 55%–just over half—of the value of their component parts was manufactured here. The NPRM proposes an immediate increase of the threshold to 60% and a phased increase to 75%. This proposal would close a problematic loophole in the current regulation, while also allowing businesses time to adjust their supply chains to increase the use of American-made components. If adopted, this change would create more opportunities for small- and medium-sized manufacturers and their employees, including small and disadvantaged enterprises, from all parts of the country. To support this work, the Small Business Administration has created a new manufacturing office in its federal contracting division.
- Strengthens domestic supply chains for critical goods with new price preferences. As the pandemic made clear, supply chain disruptions can impact the health, safety, and livelihoods of Americans—leaving us without access to critical goods during a crisis. Some products are simply too important to our national and economic security to be dependent on foreign sources. The NPRM proposes applying enhanced price preferences to select critical products and components identified by the Critical Supply Chain review, mandated under E.O. 14017, and the pandemic supply chain strategy called for under E.O. 14001. These preferences, once in place, would support the development and expansion of domestic supply chains for critical products by providing a source of stable demand for domestically produced critical products.
- Increases transparency and accountability in Buy American rules. Reporting challenges have hampered implementation of Buy American rules for decades. Currently, contractors only tell the government if they meet the content threshold rather than reporting the total domestic content in their products. The NPRM proposes to establish a reporting requirement for critical products. The new reporting requirement would bolster compliance with the Buy American Act and improve data on the actual U.S. content of goods purchased. More complete and accurate data would be used to target future improvements to support America’s entrepreneurs, farmers, ranchers, and workers— and along the way, create good jobs and resilient communities.
The fact-sheet moves on to talk about how the Biden-Harris Administration is already “Buying American”.
As part of the whole-of-government initiative, today, agencies are highlighting more than $2 billion in new purchases to support the manufacturing of innovative technologies and products in America.
- The Department of Energy acquired new electric vehicles for its fleet, all of which were manufactured in the US or have batteries that were produced at US facilities. The Department will also purchase steel products, advanced computing, and hazardous materials isolation equipment manufactured in Texas, Iowa, Idaho, Louisiana, South Carolina, Ohio, Connecticut and Wisconsin.
- The General Services Administration (GSA) worked with 8(a) small business to procure energy efficient technologies for federal facilities. These contracts are a part of GSA’s Green Proving Ground program, which tests emerging technologies at federal facilities in order to help them scale and become viable in the market.
- The Department of Defense funded prototypes to sustainably source critical minerals and to create a new training hub with the Department of Energy to increase the productivity of the U.S. machine tool base.
- NASA added new project recipients to its programs to rapidly acquire lunar delivery services from American companies to further U.S. capabilities for science, exploration, or commercial development of the Moon and to demonstrate a commercially-developed habitable space station elements with the potential to transition to free-flying, self-sustaining commercial destinations in low earth orbit.
- The Office of Naval Research issued Phase 1 awards for a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project to accelerate the pace, security and quality of autonomous vehicles.
- The Department of Labor purchased $1.5 million of Made in America products, spanning a range of needs from office furniture to state of the art testing equipment to ensure America’s mines and other workplaces are safe.
- The Army Corps of Engineers Mississippi Valley Division issued over $42 million in new contracts to help make communities more storm and flood resistant and to improve the flow of goods along the Mississippi River to support the region’s manufacturers.
President Biden has tweeted 2 times so far for Wednesday.
From the shared link:
Find help with rent and utilities
If you’re looking for help with housing costs, you’re not alone.
State and local organizations are distributing federal rental assistance in their communities. The money can help landlords and renters who are struggling to keep up with rent and other bills.
Many programs take applications from both landlords and renters.
Search below to find your local program. If you find more than one program, start with the closest one to you.See who qualifies and how the money can be used
Consumer Finance.gov.
Need help applying? Find a housing counselor
The rest of the website lists the 481 total rental assistance programs.
When Biden Bits was posted on Tuesday, President Biden had 2 tweets. He added 4 more tweets giving him a Tuesday Tweeting Total of 6 tweets and 0 retweets.
Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework Tweets:
Coronavirus Tweet:
On Tuesday the CDC updated their Interim Public Health Recommendations:
*Sips Coffee*
Okay, so, here’s the deal, as you guys already know, but I’m gonna ramble off anyway.
The CDC fucked up, when they told vaccinated people they could ditch the mask, we know that, because what it did, was gave people not vaccinated the ability to not mask too.
Now what the CDC is attempting to do is put the tooth paste back in the tube. By saying even if vaccinated wear a mask, but they are falling short, and their guidance will fall on deaf ears.
Here’s why, they are saying if your area like mine with a rising case count and low vaccination rate we should mask indoors again, but if you live in a higher vaccinated area with lowering case loads, you don’t have too.
Talk about sending a mixed message.
My advice, that is neither medical or scientific; even if you are vaccinated, you should probably just wear your mask until IDK when. Because as much as I’m looking forward to wearing sweaters, and sweat pants, winter is coming, and with it, comes flu season on top of the Delta variant.
The Tweet that wrote my headline:
CNN says: A swastika was found carved into an elevator at the State Department on Monday, leading Secretary of State Antony Blinken to condemn the hateful carving and describe it as a reminder that anti-Semitism is still alive. “As this painfully reminds us, anti-Semitism isn’t a relic of the past,” Blinken wrote in a memo to all State Department employees that was reviewed by CNN. “It’s still a force in the world, including close to home. And it’s abhorrent. It has no place in the United States, at the State Department or anywhere else. And we must be relentless in standing up and rejecting it.”
Axios was the first to report the swastika writing; A swastika was found on Monday etched into the wall of a State Department elevator near the office of its special envoy to monitor and combat anti-semitism, according to a person familiar with the discovery and a picture obtained by Axios.
State Department Deputy Principal Spokesperson Jalina Porter, was asked about the discovery of the swastika, in Tuesday’s State Department briefing.
Q: There are reports that a swastika was found yesterday etched into the wall of a State Department elevator near the office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism. Could you confirm that? And what will the State Department – how will the State Department handle this? Has Blinken addressed it?
Porter said: So thank you for your question. And yes, unfortunately, late yesterday a swastika was found carved in an elevator in our building here at the State Department. This hateful graffiti has been removed and this incident will be investigated. As the Secretary has shared with a message to all of our employees, this is completely abhorrent. It’s a painful reminder, and anti-Semitism isn’t a relic of the past; it’s still a force that we’re dealing with in the world, and unfortunately, we’re dealing with it close to home. It has to be said that anti-Semitism has no place in the United States and certainly has no place in the State Department. We can and must be relentless in standing up and rejecting this type of hate and hate in all forms. We also know that from our history and from history of other nations that anti-Semitism often goes hand in hand with racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and any other hatred that you can name. None of these ideologies have a place in our workplace and they certainly have no place in the United States. As far as any personnel updates, we don’t have any specific update to share outside of that Secretary Blinken, when he spoke to members of Congress last month, that we are working very diligently to – on the nomination of a special envoy to combat anti-Semitism, and we surely hope that the person is in place soon.
Q: [the reporter asked the question as a second question] really briefly on this swastika incident, can – the report that this was found near the office of the anti-Semitism envoy is part of the question that I’m interested in getting an answer to, because not to make any kind of light of this, but if it was in an elevator, doesn’t – the proximity of it to any number of offices depending on what floor the elevator is on is a question. So my question is: Is the department treating it at the moment, pending an investigation, as something that was directly related to that office? Thanks.
Porter said: Well, I’ll say again that the situation with the swastika is currently being investigated, and as far as proximity, I mean, anywhere inside or nearby the State Department or inside or nearby – in the United States is just unwelcome, and we will continue to condemn it.
Axios has a photo of the swastika published in their article.
President Biden’s remarks are scheduled for 2:00 p.m. D.C., time.
The daily press briefing has probably concluded as it’s a press gaggle aboard Air Force One. As such, it’s audio only and sometimes, the live audio link fails. If it fails, the White House usually posts the audio only YouTube later in the day.
This is an Open Thread.
