Presented by
With Daniel Lippman
BUSINESS GROUPS CAUGHT FLAT-FOOTED BY CDC MASK GUIDANCE: The Biden administration’s announcement Thursday that fully vaccinated Americans can ditch their masks in most situations is undoubtedly a major milestone in the country’s fight against Covid-19. But trade groups representing the businesses, and a union representing the workers who will now be tasked with enforcing mask-wearing for unvaccinated people, are now scrambling to parse what the guidance means for their members.
Larry Lynch, who as senior vice president of science and industry for the National Restaurant Association handles its Covid operating guidance, said in an interview that the new recommendations may be the industry’s biggest challenge yet. “We don t know how to be the vaccine police,” he said. “CDC didn t do us didn t do the industry, any big favors,” he added, though “it certainly helped consumers.”
A Big Oil exec told me I had a “misconception” about a special tax break polluters get that other businesses don’t. So, after explaining the deduction to him, I offered to write it out of the tax code if that what he wants. [sic] Just let me know!
Needless to say, I have a few problems with this.
The target of Rep. Porter’s ire was Mark Murphy, President of Roswell, NM-based Strata Production Company. Not a household name, you say? That’s because Strata employs 16 people and has annual revenues of $2.3 million. That’s
million, with an
[Pro Tip: 16 employees and $2.3 million in revenue is a “Mom and Pop” operator,
Congresswoman Katie Porter had little patience when Mark Murphy, president of Strata Production Company, claimed during a subcommittee video hearing that the oil and tax industry does not have special tax provisions.