Hon Damien O Connor
Trade and Export Growth Minister Damien O’Connor announced today he will travel to the United Kingdom and European Union next month to progress New Zealand’s respective free trade agreement negotiations.
The decision to travel to Europe follows the agreement reached last week between Minister O’Connor and UK Secretary of State for International Trade, Liz Truss, to accelerate negotiations with the UK.
The trip also follows good overall progress in the tenth round of negotiations with the EU.
“Securing high-quality, comprehensive and inclusive free trade agreements with the EU and the UK will expand our market opportunities.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman put Tim Scott s dumb speech to shame with a progressive response to Biden s address to Congress Wednesday night.
And Bowman laid the blame for the failures in pandemic response and resulting economic crisis firmly at the feet of the former guy.
His full remarks below were as specific and detailed as Joe Biden s earlier. It s clear there is an organized effort to continue to push the surprisingly progressive Biden administration to do even more for the working class. That s great news.
Text of the speech as prepared for delivery, via Working Families Party:
Good evening.
I’m Jamaal Bowman, a member of Congress representing New York’s 16th District. It is my honor to speak on behalf of the Working Families Party this evening. The Working Families Party is the party of unions and working people across the country. And tonight, I’m delivering our response to President Biden’s address to Congress.
JamaalBowman
Our ‘infrastructure’ isn’t just steel and concrete. It is the millions of people who provide care services and the millions who rely on them
A teacher reads a book to incoming pre-kindergarten students in Brooklyn, New York, on 2 September 2020. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA
A teacher reads a book to incoming pre-kindergarten students in Brooklyn, New York, on 2 September 2020. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA
Tue 6 Apr 2021 06.14 EDT
Last modified on Tue 6 Apr 2021 07.43 EDT
It’s the one thing everyone in Washington can agree on: our nation’s infrastructure is crumbling and in desperate need of repair. The Biden administration has outlined its sweeping plan to overhaul crumbling roads and bridges across America, while building up the clean energy economy of the future, and that’s an important first step in the right direction. Still, as my colleagues begin debating and negotiating over specific details in this proposal, one thing has become really clear to me
The Year That Broke Care Work
The crisis of care is not new for low-income parents. The pandemic just spread the pain and created new audiences for old solutions.
Illustration by Tara Jacoby
A small guaranteed income is included in the new stimulus package approved by Congress on Wednesday afternoon. Starting around July, households earning $150,000 or less annually will receive monthly payments ranging from $250 to $300 per child, part of the larger $1.9 trillion package in response to the coronavirus pandemic. These are a kind of advance on an existing but expanded child tax credit. What that will look like for those families, however, is a direct deposit or check, not a new program they will then need to apply or ask for. The payment per child may seem small, but in total, the impact is estimated to be a 40 percent reduction of child poverty nationally, cutting child poverty in half for Black families specifically. And it will achieve this by doing something painfully straight