(p. 1) WASHINGTON — A year ago, President Donald J. Trump declared a national emergency, promising a wartime footing to combat the coronavirus. But as Covid-19 spread unchecked, sending thousands of dying people to the hospital, desperate pleas for protective masks and other medical supplies went unanswered.
Health workers resorted to wearing trash bags. Fearful hospital officials turned away sick patients. Governors complained about being left in the lurch. Today the shortage of basic supplies, alongside inadequate testing and the slow vaccine rollout, stands as a symbol of the broken federal response to a worldwide calamity that has killed more than a half-million Americans.
Explanations about what went wrong have devolved into partisan finger pointing, with Mr. Trump blaming the Obama administration for leaving the cupboard bare, and Democrats in Congress accusing Mr. Trump of negligence.
An investigation by The New York Times found a hidden explanation: Government purchases for the Strategic National Stockpile, the country’s emergency medical reserve where such equipment is kept, have largely been driven by the demands and financial interests of a handful of biotech firms that have specialized in products that address terrorist threats rather than infectious disease.
Chief among them is Emergent BioSolutions, a Maryland-based company now manufacturing Covid-19 vaccines for AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson. Last year, as the pandemic raced across the country, the government paid Emergent $626 million for products that included vaccines to fight an entirely different threat: a terrorist attack using anthrax.
Throughout most of the last decade, the government has spent nearly half of the stockpile’s half-billion-dollar annual budget on the company’s anthrax vaccines, The Times found. That left the government with less money to buy supplies needed in a pandemic, despite repeatedly being advised to do so.
Under normal circumstances, Emergent’s relationship with the federal stockpile would be of little public interest — an obscure contractor in an obscure corner of the federal bureaucracy applying the standard tools of Washington, like well-connected lobbyists and campaign contributions, to create a business heavily dependent on taxpayer dollars.
Security concerns, moreover, keep most information about (p. 18) stockpile purchases under wraps. Details about the contracts and inventory are rarely made public, and even the storage locations are secret.
But with the stockpile now infamous for what it doesn’t have, The Times penetrated this clandestine world by examining more than 40,000 pages of documents, some previously undisclosed, and interviewing more than 60 people with inside knowledge of the stockpile.
Former Emergent employees, government contractors, members of Congress, biodefense experts and current and former officials from agencies that oversee the stockpile described a deeply dysfunctional system that contributed to the shocking shortages last year. Their accounts were confirmed by federal budget and contracting records, agency planning documents, court filings, corporate disclosures and transcripts of congressional hearings and investor presentations. Continue reading “Federal Central Planners (and Cronies) Spent Hundreds of Millions of Strategic National Stockpile Funds on Emergent’s Outdated, Marginal Anthrax Vaccine, Leaving N95 Masks Unfunded”
Category: Public Choice
Government Cover Ups
(p. 230) It’s hard enough to find out about the things the universe prefers to keep hidden without our government, which somebody you know must have voted for, covering up what has already been found. Sometimes, of course, it hides things to save its own neck and sometimes seemingly just for the hell of it.
Norman Maclean’s musings, quoted above, are from his wonderful prize-winning account of the Mann Gulch fire in which Wag Dodge spontaneously invented a way to save his life from the wall of fire speeding toward him:
Maclean, Norman. Young Men and Fire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017 [first edition 1992].
Entrepreneur Pan Leaves Communist China After Xi Arrests Human Rights Defender and Friend
(p. B1) China’s economy is on a tear. Factories are humming, and foreign investment is flowing in. Even so, the wealthy and powerful people atop some of the country’s most prominent companies are heading for the exits.
The latest are Pan Shiyi and Zhang Xin, the husband-and-wife team that runs Soho China, a property developer known for its blobby, futuristic office buildings. In striking a deal this week to sell a controlling stake to the investment giant Blackstone for as much as $3 billion, Mr. Pan and Ms. Zhang are turning over the company as high-profile entrepreneurs come under public and official scrutiny in China like never before.
. . .
(p. B5) “For big tycoons in China, nowadays they need to be careful in general,” said Ling Chen, who studies state-business relations in China at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
. . .
Mr. Pan was . . . one of the first Chinese business leaders to recognize the power of the internet in marketing and public relations. He wrote a popular blog in the 2000s. Then, when the Twitter-like social media platform Weibo came along, he quickly became one of its most influential voices, amassing more than 20 million followers.
. . .
He was never too pointed in expressing his opinions. But he wanted China to learn from its mistakes, such as its cruel treatment of the moneyed and educated classes during the Cultural Revolution.
After Mr. Xi took office as China’s top leader in 2013, the authorities began going after businesspeople and intellectuals with big online followings. The police that year arrested Wang Gongquan, a friend of Mr. Pan’s and supporter of human rights causes, on charges of disrupting public order.
Mr. Pan and Ms. Zhang began selling off property holdings in China and spending more time in the United States.
For the full story, see:
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 17, 2021, and has the title “As China Scrutinizes Its Entrepreneurs, a Power Couple Cashes Out.”)
To Extort U.S. Firms, Xi Passes Laws that Firms Cannot Obey
(p. B1) Doug Guthrie spent 1994 riding a single-speed bicycle between factories in Shanghai for a dissertation on Chinese industry. Within years, he was one of America’s leading experts on China’s turn toward capitalism and was helping companies venture East.
Two decades later, in 2014, Apple hired him to help navigate perhaps its most important market. By then, he was worried about China’s new direction.
China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, was leaning on Western companies to strengthen his grip on the country. Mr. Guthrie realized that few companies were bigger targets, or more vulnerable, than Apple. It assembled nearly every Apple device in China and had made the region its No. 2 sales market.
So Mr. Guthrie began touring the company with a slide show and lecture to ring the alarm. Apple, he said, had no Plan B.
“I was going around to business leaders, and I’m like: ‘Do you guys understand who Xi Jinping is? Are you listening to what’s going on here?’” Mr. Guthrie said in an interview. “That was my big calling card.”
His warnings were prescient. China has taken a nationalist, au-(p. B3)thoritarian turn under Mr. Xi, and American companies like Apple, Nike and the National Basketball Association are facing a dilemma. While doing business in China often remains lucrative, it also increasingly requires uncomfortable compromises.
That trend raises the question of whether, instead of empowering the Chinese people, American investment in the country has empowered the Chinese Communist Party.
. . .
Mr. Guthrie’s career arc and evolving view of China tell the story of Western industry’s complicated dance with the country over the past three decades. Mr. Guthrie and many executives, politicians and academics had bet that Western investment in China would lead the country to liberalize. It is now clear that they miscalculated.
“We were wrong,” said Mr. Guthrie, who left Apple in 2019. “The wild card was Xi Jinping.”
In recent years, China shut down Marriott’s website after it listed Tibet and Taiwan as separate countries in a customer survey. It suspended sign-ups to LinkedIn after the site failed to censor enough political content. And the Communist Party urged a boycott of Western apparel companies that criticized forced-labor practices in Xinjiang, a Chinese region where the government is repressing Uyghurs, the country’s Muslim ethnic minority.
. . .
In 2014, China’s so-called dispatch labor law went into effect, limiting the share of temporary workers in a company’s work force to 10 percent. From Day 1, Apple and its suppliers were in violation.
At a Foxconn plant in Zhengzhou, China, the world’s biggest iPhone factory, temporary workers made up as much as half of the work force, according to a report by China Labor Watch, an advocacy group. After the report, Apple confirmed that the factory broke the law.
Apple executives were concerned and confused, Mr. Guthrie said. They knew the company couldn’t comply because it needed the extra workers to meet periods of intense demand, such as the holidays.
. . .
“‘This is the point. You are supposed to be out of compliance,’” he said he had told them. “‘Not so they can shut you down, but so you’ll figure out what they want you to do and figure out how to do it.’”
Mr. Guthrie, who is often tucking his long, graying hair behind his ears, began giving his lecture on Apple’s risk in China around that time. Its extreme reliance on the country left it with little leverage to resist.
Apple continued to grapple with demands from the government.
. . .
To measure the success of their lobbying, Apple executives looked to the government’s annual corporate social responsibility scores, a proxy for the Communist Party’s view of a company.
. . .
Apple’s score steadily improved. From 2016 to 2020, its ranking among all companies in China rose from No. 141 to No. 30.
Apple didn’t always successfully resist the government’s demands. Over that period, Mr. Cook had agreed to store his Chinese customers’ private data — and the digital keys to unlock that data — on computer servers owned and run by the Chinese government.
For the full story, see:
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 17, 2021, and has the title “He Warned Apple About the Risks in China. Then They Became Reality.”)
Can the Methods of ACT UP Bring Quicker Cures for Other Maladies?
Amar Bhidé has a thought-provoking article in which he asks the public choice question of how to overcome government regulators who slow the development of breakthrough drugs. He holds up, as a main example to ponder, the AIDs ACT UP movement that is often given credit for winning concessions from the FDA that spurred the availability of a drug cocktail that greatly extended and improved the lives of AIDs patients. The passages quoted below are from a review of a book that may be a promising source for learning more about what ACT UP did and how they did it.
(p. C3) In her 2012 book, “The Gentrification of the Mind,” Sarah Schulman delved into the silence still surrounding AIDS in America.
. . .
Schulman has gone from witness to a sort of living archive. She is a former member of AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, the influential direct-action group committed to ending AIDS. Her new book, “Let the Record Show,” is based on 17 years of interviews she conducted with nearly 200 members of the organization.
. . .
The effect is rather like standing in the middle of that large room, where anyone could speak up and share an idea. Everyone is talking; small stories branch off, coalesce pages later. Speakers shade in one another’s stories, offer another angle, disagree passionately. You turn a page, and the same people have their arms linked together at a protest. Shadows start to fall; in squares of gray text, deaths are marked, moments for remembrance. So many people leave the room.
. . .
This is not reverent, definitive history. This is a tactician’s bible.
The organizational brilliance of ACT UP emerged out of necessity. The group was founded in 1987, incited by Larry Kramer’s famous call to action. The members were infected, their lovers were sick and dying. There wasn’t time to obsess over process, to contest every comma in a letter. The anarchistic framework asked only that members be “committed to direct action to end the AIDS crisis.”
. . .
When Schulman herself returns to the individual, it is to think again about the figure of the bystander. Why did these particular people rise to the moment and not others?
What thread connected an H.I.V.-positive stockbroker, a retired chemist from Queens, addicts, art students, lifelong activists, people who just happened to be in the next room at the center and wandered in, What was going on in there? For some it was their first experience of gay community; for others it was where they went when the community began to vanish. All of them became autodidacts in drug research, policy, media relations.
For the full review, see:
Parul Sehgal. “Remembering Those Who Stood Up.” The New York Times (Wednesday, May 5, 2021): C3.
(Note: ellipses added. In the original, the words NOT italicized above, were the only words that WERE italicized.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date May 4, 2021, and has the title “A New Testament to the Fury and Beauty of Activism During the AIDS Crisis.”)
The book under review is:
Schulman, Sarah. Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.
The article mentioned above by Bhidé is:
Bhidé, Amar. “Constraining Knowledge: Traditions and Rules That Limit Medical Innovation.” Critical Review 29, no. 1 (Jan. 2017): 1-33.
“Legions of Good People” Are Willing to Pay a Price “to Speak the Truth”
(p. A9) . . . in February 1986 . . . a presidential commission was investigating the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle, which killed all seven crew members a few weeks earlier.
Mr. McDonald was an engineer for the maker of the solid-fuel booster rockets. During a hearing, he believed an official of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was glossing over a prelaunch debate on whether to proceed despite unusually cold temperatures in Cape Canaveral, Fla.
Seated in the background, Mr. McDonald waved his hands for attention and then stood up. He told the commission that he and other engineers had warned that low temperatures might cause a failure of synthetic rubber O-ring seals in the rocket’s joints. The commission later found that such a failure was responsible for the explosion and that NASA had brushed aside a warning that could have saved the astronauts.
. . .
Mr. McDonald’s uninvited testimony was a shock to the commission appointed by President Ronald Reagan. In his memoir, “Truth, Lies and O-Rings,” the engineer recalled the reaction from William P. Rogers, chairman of the commission:
“Who in the hell are you?”
. . .
Mr. Rogers thanked Mr. McDonald and other engineers for giving their side of the story.
. . .
At work, however, Mr. McDonald was at times ostracized by colleagues who accused him of undermining the company’s aerospace business. Morton Thiokol moved him out of his space shuttle duties in what he considered a demotion.
. . .
“I never considered myself a hero for doing my job in the best manner that I knew how and telling the truth about it,” he wrote, adding that “there are legions of good people out there every day defending their professional opinions and willing to speak the truth at some risk to their own job security. They just haven’t been involved in such a high-profile news making event like me.”
For the full obituary, see:
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date March 30, 2021, and has the title “Rocket Engineer Blew the Whistle on NASA After the Challenger Disaster.”)
The McDonald memoir mentioned above is:
McDonald, Allan J., and James R. Hansen. Truth, Lies, and O-Rings: Inside the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2018..
Virologist “Dismayed” That Wuhan Lab Conducted Two Coronavirus Studies “With Only a Modest Level of Safety Measures”
(p. A6) On the heels of President Biden’s abrupt order to U.S. intelligence agencies to investigate the origins of the coronavirus, many scientists reacted positively, reflecting their push in recent weeks for more information about the work of a virus lab in Wuhan, China. But they cautioned against expecting an answer in the three-month time frame of the president’s request.
After long steering clear of the debate, some influential scientists have lately become more open to expressing uncertainties about the origins of the virus. If the two most vocal poles of the argument are natural spillover vs. laboratory leak, these new voices have added a third point of view: a resounding undecided.
“In the beginning, there was a lot of pressure against speaking up, because it was tied to conspiracies and Trump supporters,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University. “There was very little rational discussion going on in the beginning.”
. . .
While researchers generally welcome a sustained search for answers, some warn that those answers may not arrive any time soon — if ever.
“At the end of this process, I would not be surprised if we did not know much more than we know now,” said W. Ian Lipkin, a virologist at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University who was one of the first U.S. scientists to visit China in early 2020 and consult with public health authorities there.
China’s lack of cooperation with the W.H.O. has long fueled suspicions about how the coronavirus, known as SARS-CoV-2, had emerged seemingly from nowhere to seize the world.
. . .
Speaking recently to the former New York Times journalist Donald McNeil Jr., Dr. Lipkin said he was dismayed to learn of two coronavirus studies from the Wuhan Institute of Virology that had been carried out with only a modest level of safety measures, known as BSL-2.
In an interview with The Times, Dr. Lipkin said this fact wasn’t proof in itself that SARS-CoV-2 spread from the lab. “But it certainly does raise the possibility that must be considered,” he said.
A BSL-2 level of research would also add to the difficulty researchers will face trying to pin down clear evidence that a coronavirus infected the staff. At higher levels of security, staff regularly give blood samples that can be studied later for genetic material from viruses and antibodies against them. There may be no such record for SARS-CoV-2.
For the full story, see:
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 27, 2021, and has the title “Scientists Don’t Want to Ignore the ‘Lab Leak’ Theory, Despite No New Evidence.”)
Biden’s “Abrupt Shift” on Wuhan Lab Origin of Covid-19
(p. A1) WASHINGTON — President Biden ordered U.S. intelligence agencies on Wednesday to investigate the origins of the coronavirus, indicating that his administration takes seriously the possibility that the deadly virus was accidentally leaked from a lab, in addition to the prevailing theory that it was transmitted by an animal to humans outside a lab.
. . .
But the president’s carefully worded directive underscored a new surge in interest about the lab, which President Donald J. Trump and some of his top aides repeatedly blamed for the pandemic. Some scientists attributed the renewed focus on the lab to Mr. Trump’s departure from the White House — and being less identified with the theory — while others said it reflected the deep frustrations with the recent W.H.O. report that was co-written by Chinese scientists.
. . .
(p. A8) “For over a year, anyone asking questions about the Wuhan Institute of Virology has been branded as a conspiracy theorist,” Mr. Hawley said. “The world needs to know if this pandemic was the product of negligence at the Wuhan lab, but the C.C.P. has done everything it can to block a credible investigation.”
In the past several days, the White House had played down the need for an investigation led by the United States and insisted that the W.H.O. was the proper place for an international inquiry. Mr. Biden’s statement on Wednesday was an abrupt shift.
. . .
Scientists had been reluctant to discuss the lab leak hypothesis last year because they had been on guard against disinformation, said Marc Lipsitch, a Harvard epidemiologist.
“Nobody wants to succumb to conspiracy theories,” he said.
But the March report by the group of W.H.O.-chosen experts in collaboration with Chinese scientists, dismissing the possibility of a lab leak as “extremely unlikely,” compelled some scientists to speak out.
“When I read that, I was very frustrated,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University. Along with Professor Lipsitch, she signed a letter published in the journal Science this month saying that there was not enough evidence to decide whether a natural origin or an accidental laboratory leak caused the coronavirus pandemic.
“I think it’s really an unanswered question that really needs more rigorous investigation,” Dr. Iwasaki added.
From the earliest weeks of the outbreak, the Chinese government has worked to delay, deflect or block independent investigation of the virus’s origins.
Chinese officials said in early 2020 that the outbreak began at a Wuhan market, and they blamed illegal wildlife sales there. They did so despite having evidence that undermined that theory: Early data showed that four of the first five coronavirus patients had no clear links to the market. The government resisted accepting an international scientific mission.
For the full story, see:
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story was updated May 27, 2021, and has the title “Biden Orders Intelligence Inquiry Into Origins of Virus.” Where the wording in the online and print versions of the passages quoted above differs, the passages quoted above follow the online version.)
Three Wuhan Lab Researchers Sought Hospital Care at Time When Covid-19 Is Thought to Have Emerged
(p. A1) WASHINGTON—Three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report that could add weight to growing calls for a fuller probe of whether the Covid-19 virus may have escaped from the laboratory.
The details of the reporting go beyond a State Department fact sheet, issued during the final days of the Trump administration, which said that several researchers at the lab, a center for the study of coronaviruses and other pathogens, became sick in autumn 2019 “with symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness.”
The disclosure of the number of researchers, the timing of their illnesses and their hospital visits come on the eve of a meeting of the World Health Organization’s decision-making body, which is expected to discuss the next phase of an investigation into Covid-19’s origins.
Current and former officials familiar with the intelligence (p. 8) about the lab researchers expressed differing views about the strength of the supporting evidence for the assessment. One person said that it was provided by an international partner and was potentially significant but still in need of further investigation and additional corroboration.
Another person described the intelligence as stronger. “The information that we had coming from the various sources was of exquisite quality. It was very precise. What it didn’t tell you was exactly why they got sick,” he said, referring to the researchers.
November 2019 is roughly when many epidemiologists and virologists believe SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the pandemic, first began circulating around the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where Beijing says that the first confirmed case was a man who fell ill on Dec. 8, 2019.
The Wuhan Institute hasn’t shared raw data, safety logs and lab records on its extensive work with coronaviruses in bats, which many consider the most likely source of the virus.
. . .
The Biden administration declined to comment on the intelligence but said that all technically credible theories on the origin of the pandemic should be investigated by the WHO and international experts.
“We continue to have serious questions about the earliest days of the Covid-19 pandemic, including its origins within the People’s Republic of China,” said a spokeswoman for the National Security Council.
. . .
David Asher, a former U.S. official who led a State Department task force on the origins of the virus for then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, told a Hudson Institute seminar in March that he doubted that the lab researchers became sick because of the ordinary flu.
“I’m very doubtful that three people in highly protected circumstances in a level three laboratory working on coronaviruses would all get sick with influenza that put them in the hospital or in severe conditions all in the same week, and it didn’t have anything to do with the coronavirus,” he said, adding that the researchers’ illness may represent “the first known cluster” of Covid-19 cases.
For the full story, see:
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 23, 2021, and has the title “Intelligence on Sick Staff at Wuhan Lab Fuels Debate On Covid-19 Origin.”)
Musk Confronts or Ignores Regulators Who Block Innovation
(p. A1) He’s become one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs by reinventing industries from electric cars to rockets. Along the way, he’s also rewritten the rules of engagement with U.S. regulators.
Elon Musk has emerged a winner in a series of run-ins with a range of regulatory agencies that have watched as he sidestepped rules or ignored enforcement attempts. He has overmatched an alphabet-soup of agencies that oversee financial markets and safety in the workplace, on highways and in space flight.
Most chief executives try to avoid regulators—or at least stay in their good graces. Many accused of overstepping have paid fines or agreed to make improvements.
Mr. Musk, revered by some investors for his iconoclastic approach, has taken a different tack on his way to becoming one of the richest men in the world, not letting regulations hinder his goals to revolutionize transportation with Tesla Inc.’s electric cars or colonize Mars using SpaceX rockets.
Federal agencies say he’s breaking the rules and endangering people. Mr. Musk (p. A10) says they’re holding back progress.
. . .
The Federal Aviation Administration criticized SpaceX for launching a rocket in December [2020] without a proper FAA license. Mr. Musk ridiculed the FAA space division in a tweet as “fundamentally broken.”
. . .
When asked to comment on the specifics of this article, Mr. Musk replied with a “poop” emoji. Asked to elaborate, Mr. Musk declined to provide any input on his interactions with federal agencies or his view toward regulation. In a tweet Tuesday, Mr. Musk said he agrees with regulators “99.9% of the time.” He added that when they disagree, it “is almost always due to new technologies that past regulations didn’t anticipate.”
. . .
After the FAA delayed a January [2021] test launch, Mr. Musk accused the agency of holding back progress and argued that its regulations were outdated. “Their rules are meant for a handful of expendable launches per year from a few government facilities,” he tweeted on Jan. 28. “Under those rules, humanity will never get to Mars.”
. . .
The National Labor Relations Board ruled in March that Tesla had violated U.S. labor law by hindering unionization and ordered Mr. Musk to delete a tweet discouraging employees from unionizing. Tesla this month appealed the decision, saying the NLRB’s ruling was “contrary to law.”
Mr. Musk’s tweet remains online. The NLRB declined to comment.
For the full story, see:
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed years, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 28, 2021, and has the title “Elon Musk’s War on Regulators.”)
New Regulations Pushed by Union Allied with de Blasio Will Limit New NYC Hotels
(p. A8) Mayor Bill de Blasio and other New York City leaders are pushing a controversial plan to drastically restrict hotel development, a move that the mayor’s own experts fear could endanger the city’s post-pandemic recovery and cost billions in lost tax revenue.
. . .
The Council is expected to approve the plan in time for Mr. de Blasio to see it become law before he leaves office this year. Once it is in place, developers fear that few, if any, new hotels would be built.
. . .
“We flag that to continue with this proposal could be seen as contrary to economic recovery principles and sound planning,” Marisa Lago, the director of the planning department, wrote last year in the memo to City Hall.
But Mr. de Blasio’s views hew closer to those of another group: the hotel workers union that endorsed his 2020 presidential campaign, pouring $440,000 into ads to bolster his ill-fated candidacy.
The union, the Hotel Trades Council, has long pushed to limit the construction of new hotels, which are often nonunion. Its calculation has been that limiting the development of such hotels, which typically offer less-expensive lodging than existing full-service hotels, would tend to increase hotel room prices generally and bolster the higher-end hotels where many of its workers are employed.
. . .
In most of the city, developers are free to build hotels in areas that are zoned for such use. Under a special approval process, building hotels would become far more challenging, said Moses Gates, vice president of housing and neighborhood planning at the Regional Plan Association, an influential nonprofit planning group. No other type of routine development currently gets the kind of scrutiny that Mr. de Blasio is proposing for hotels, he said.
“Hotels would be the only common land use which would always need City Council approval to be built, no matter what,” Mr. Gates said.
. . .
The Hotel Trades Council’s support of a special permit process for new hotels may seem counterintuitive, since it is effectively opposing the growth of jobs in the industry that it represents. Union hotel jobs in New York City provide one of the few pathways to the middle class for workers with no college education.
“Labor generally is in favor of employment and of growth, but especially jobs in their own sector,” said Harry C. Katz, a professor of collective bargaining at Cornell University.
But mid-market hotels that serve middle-class tourists are hard to unionize, union and industry experts say. If citywide special permits are adopted, as is expected, the hotel union would most likely use its political leverage to pressure Council members to only accept new hotels that use union labor.
For the full story, see:
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 27, 2021, and has the title “A $7 Billion Mistake? New York Seeks to Curb New Hotels.”)
The research co-authored by Stone and mentioned above was described in:
Stone, Brian, Jr., Evan Mallen, Mayuri Rajput, Carina J. Gronlund, Ashley M. Broadbent, E. Scott Krayenhoff, Godfried Augenbroe, Marie S. O’Neill, and Matei Georgescu. “Compound Climate and Infrastructure Events: How Electrical Grid Failure Alters Heat Wave Risk.” Environmental Science & Technology (published online in advance of print on April 30, 2021).