Money and Computing

The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law and the Bipartisan Policy Center today published a report on the state of the election official profession and the toll of the unprecedented attacks on these officials’ authority, credibility, and personal safety that surged in the run-up to the 2020 election and have not stopped. The report features a survey finding that one in three election officials report feeling unsafe because of their job, and one in six reported having been threatened due to their job. The authors provide solutions for the various problems facing election officials, with calls to action for local, state, and federal governments as well as social media companies and other institutions. more »

GAO: "The US Postal Service's financial viability has been on our High Risk List since 2009. Declining mail volumes and increased costs have made it harder for USPS to cover all its costs. USPS cites quality customer service as important to sustaining its business. We looked at USPS's process for addressing residential customer complaints. In fiscal year 2020, USPS received 10.7 million complaints, with 69% of those related to missing or delayed packages. USPS started using a new software system in 2019 to track complaints and customer service issues. The system collects more detailed data and may help identify the causes of some problems." more »

Results from a Phase 3 clinical trial enrolling 29,960 adult volunteers in the United States and Mexico show that the investigational vaccine known as NVX-CoV2373 demonstrated 90.4% efficacy in preventing symptomatic COVID-19 disease. The candidate showed 100% protection against moderate and severe disease. In people at high risk of developing complications from COVID-19 (people 65 years or older and people under age 65 with certain comorbidities or with likely regular exposure to COVID-19), the vaccine showed 91.0% efficacy in preventing symptomatic COVID-19 disease. more »

Republican political leaders are blaming Democratic President Joe Biden for accelerating inflation. But Jerome Powell, chairman of the US Federal Reserve Board, was appointed by Republican President Donald Trump — and the Fed says inflation will not be a long-term problem. Those numbers suggest that inflationary pressures are modest. Other dynamics, however, are unprecedented, reflecting deeper changes in the economy that may have accelerated with the pandemic. But at UC Berkeley, high-level economists are offering some calming advice: A measure of inflation is inevitable as the US economy comes back online, but it will likely be modest. And it will almost certainly blow over as the economy stabilizes. more »