Biden goes to Europe, Harris gets the heavy lifting
Survey: More than half of people who plan to look for a new job want WFH
Kamala Harris ought to complain to HR about Joe Biden.
It is just not fair.
As the first woman and the first person of color running for vice president, she helped him win the White House. They are supposed to be a team.
Some team.
He gets to go to Europe on Air Force One and she gets to go to Central America on a substitute plane after Air Force Two malfunctions and returns to base.
He gets to hang with Queen Elizabeth and the royal family at Windsor Castle while she gets sent to hot Guatemala City only to be greeted with “Go Home, Kamala” and “Trump Won” signs.
And as he meets with tough guy Vladimir Putin, she is nowhere in sight.
There is no “i” in team, Joe.
It is not easy being No. 2. It is harder when you are a woman.
While it is rare for a president and vice president to be out of the country at the same time, it happens. He could have taken her along to meet foreign leaders, especially since she had never been to Europe.
Instead of Biden walking down the steps of Air Force One in the U.K. holding on to first lady Jill Biden as though she were a crutch, he could have descended holding hands with his political partner, Kamala Harris.
While it was a first for an American president to arrive for official international talks in a foreign country holding hands with his wife, it would have been an even bigger first if he were holding hands with Harris.
A joint Biden/Harris visit would have been startling and would have had a major impact on world opinion, particularly among our adversaries.
It would have shown that a woke Biden was truly committed to equity, women’s’ rights, inclusion and power sharing by taking his vice president and successor along.
The next thing you know, Putin, at the risk of being double teamed, would have been forced to show up for talks holding hands with a woman — not his ex-wife, of course, but perhaps a female Russian dignitary.
It would have broken new ground in international relations. It would have wowed the progressives back home, too.
It also would have boosted Harris’s morale following her cringeworthy “overseas” visit to Guatemala and Mexico to get at the “root” causes of the ongoing illegal immigrant crisis at the southern border.
Biden skillfully sidestepped the immigration debacle when he forced Harris to deal with it, and it proved too much for her. Her trip south bringing financial handouts to stem the root cause of the crisis was totally unnecessary since everyone knows that the cause of the immigration fiasco — opening the border — resides in Biden’s brain.
Rather than break new ground by allowing Harris to accompany him and mingle with the important foreign leaders in Europe, Harris was sent to Guatemala and Mexico to deal with a problem Biden created when he trashed Donald Trump’s tough immigration policy.
At the exclusive G-7 gathering in picturesque Cornwall, England, Harris could have rubbed — or bumped — elbows with leaders like the U.K.’s Boris Johnson, Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy, Japanese PM Yoshihide Suga, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
She could have taken tea with the queen.
Then it would have been on to NATO and the EU in Brussels before the grand finale, the meeting with Putin in Geneva.
Think how precedent shattering that would have been had Harris attended. Instead Harris was stuck hashing out illegal immigration issues with President Alejandro Giammattei of Guatemala and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of Mexico.
Root causes? Good grief. Giammattei said the crisis was all Biden’s fault to begin with when Biden did away with Trump’s strict border policies ..
And then Harris gets pounced on for not visiting the southern border. Well, Biden hasn’t been to the border either.
Kamala Harris was set up to take the fall. She fell. She should file a grievance against her boss.
As the labor market heats up and job candidates have more choices, employers should consider preparing for a wave of resignations in the coming months, a new survey suggests.
And, the survey adds, more than half of those workers are looking for fully remote jobs.
Staffing agency Robert Half surveyed 2,800 workers — 100 in each of 28 markets, including Boston — from March 26 to April 15 and found that 30% of Boston workers plan to look for a new role in the next several months.
“Overall, it is not surprising that there are a lot of workers who are looking to move,” said Kevin Lang, a Boston University professor of economics. “Many people have had to settle for jobs they would not have taken previously or delayed searching for a new job because it was not a good time to look.”
The top reasons for looking for a new job were to obtain a salary boost and to have greater opportunities for career advancement, said Josh Drew, regional vice president for Robert Half Technology and the Creative Group. And 53% of those surveyed said they want a fully remote job, many having worked remotely over the last year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“It saves time, people can be more productive, and it’s been demonstrated now that it does work,” said Michael Klein, a professor of economics at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.
It also opens the options for job seekers, Drew said.
“Now you’re seeing people open their parameters to outside Massachusetts,” Drew said. “Some might look in New England, and some might look nationally.”
Employers may find they have to entice people with higher wages, Klein said. But for some job sectors, such as retail, the growing trend of remote work presents a challenge, particularly in Boston, said Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Associations of Massachusetts.
“The numbers of workers in Boston each day will certainly decline, and that means fewer jobs and sales in downtown consumer service businesses,” Hurst said in an email. “Of course the other side of the coin will be more jobs and higher sales in the suburbs.”
“While those employees may not be traveling into Boston every day, they will still need to grab their coffee or lunch, only now at small businesses in their own communities instead,” said Christopher Carlozzi, state director for the National Federation of Independent Business.
The survey also found that one in three workers said they prefer to work for an organization that better aligns with their personal values.
“That certainly seems to be a result of the chance to think things over during the pandemic and decide what people really want in their work,” said Robert Murphy, a Boston College professor of economics.
Attorney General Maura Healey on Tuesday called on the Securities and Exchange Commission to require companies to disclose financial risks related to climate change to potential investors.
She was joined in a letter by 11 other attorneys general, including those from California, New York, Connecticut and Vermont.
“The climate crisis threatens serious financial harm for U.S. companies, financial markets, and the investments our residents have made to fund their retirements or pay for their children’s college,” Healey said in a statement. “We’re calling on the SEC to require companies to disclose the risks climate change poses to their businesses, so that we can protect our residents and their savings.”
The coalition recommends to SEC Chair Gary Gensler that it require companies to make annual disclosures of their greenhouse gas emissions and mitigation measures and the impacts of climate change and ensuing regulation on their businesses.
The letter notes that “(c)limate-related weather events have already imposed more than $600 billion in direct economic damages on U.S. companies since 2016,” according to a study by the National Centers for Environmental Information.
In 2019, Healey used the state’s Consumer Protection Act to sue ExxonMobil, alleging that the company unlawfully omitted and downplayed climate risks and didn’t disclose them to investors. That lawsuit is currently pending in Massachusetts Superior Court.