Catastrophe or Catalyst? Reflections on COVID’s Impact on Community Colleges

The COVID-19 pandemic led to a steep decline in enrollments at community colleges, especially among Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous populations, males, and part-time students. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) and the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Acts provided funds for emergency aid and engaging disconnected students, and community colleges moved swiftly to shift services and instruction online. In this essay, we discuss how students and community colleges responded to the pandemic and what their experiences reveal about inequities in higher education. We argue that the crisis was worsened by years of underinvestment in these institutions and by entrenched structures and practices that do not address the needs and aspirations of many students. We review evidence on reforms that aim to remake community colleges in ways that improve student outcomes. While COVID-19 can rightly be viewed as a catastrophe, it may also serve as a catalyst for fundamental and lasting improvements in how community colleges are funded, organized, and operated to help more students achieve their goals.

Cooking Commoning Subjectivities: Guerrilla Narrative in the Cooperation Birmingham Solidarity Kitchen

In this chapter, we explore the recently developed concept of guerrilla narrative as a tool that offers great potential for militant research. “Guerrilla narrative” emerged from the politicization of the oral history tradition; it was developed by Marco Armiero as a research tool to explore histories of contamination and resistance in subaltern communities. In this chapter, we broaden the scope of guerrilla narrative and explore its role in the reclamation/invention of the urban commons. Particularly, we look closely at the tools that contribute to the creation of commoning subjectivities. We focus on the mutual aid relief operations led by the grassroots organization Cooperation Birmingham during the COVID-19 pandemic, analysing both their solidarity kitchen and newsletter. We argue that both are manifestations of guerrilla narrative in the sense that both produce counter-hegemonic narratives while fostering commoning practices. This means that guerrilla narrative goes beyond the wording, textual or even artistic paradigms to incorporate more embodied forms of storytelling, such as the practice or running a solidarity kitchen or other forms of material commoning practices.

Sustaining Tribal Fisheries: U.S. Economic Relief Policies during COVID-19

This article reviews the individual spend plans of U.S. states granted a funding allocation under Sec. 12005 of the Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act to identify consistency with legislative mandates to support Tribal commercial, subsistence, cultural, or ceremonial fisheries negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Utilizing critical discourse analysis, this study identifies state discursive practices in supporting Tribal sovereignty in fisheries management for the advancement of Indigenous Ocean justice. State spending plans (n = 22) publicly available and submitted to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration before July 2021 were reviewed. Few of the state spend plans listed impacts to Tribal fisheries due to the pandemic. Only two state plans included Tribal consultation and direct economic relief for commercial, subsistence, cultural, and/or ceremonial losses faced by neighboring Tribes and Tribal citizens. Overall, the protections within the CARES Act for Tribal fisheries were not integrated into state spend plans. The article identifies best practices for state fisheries relief policy content that is affirming of Tribal fishing rights and uses them to help address the ongoing pandemic crisis facing Tribal fisheries. These findings have relevance for future emergency relief programs that are inclusive of Tribal Nations. Honoring Tribal sovereignty and the federal trust responsibility must be the cornerstone of shared sustainable fisheries.

The Pandemic's Impact on Credit Risk: Averted or Delayed?

The COVID-19 recession resulted in historic unemployment and a significant shock to much of the service sector. Despite these macroeconomic challenges, banks' risk-based capital buffers remain high and the number of bank failures remains low. Government relief programs, including the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, both directly and indirectly helped stabilize bank balance sheets during the crisis.

Developments in the Credit Score Distribution over 2020

The distribution of household credit risk can vary with aggregate economic and credit conditions. For example, the share of subprime-scored borrowers declined at a relatively steady pace during the economic recovery from the Global Financial Crisis. Although the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted the economic conditions that supported this trend, the pace of decline accelerated following the pandemic’s onset in March 2020. The analysis that follows suggests that this acceleration was largely driven by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act’s (CARES Act) forbearance provisions.

Redistribution and the Monetary-Fiscal Policy Mix

We show that the effectiveness of redistribution policy in stimulating the economy and improving welfare is directly tied to how much inflation it generates, which in turn hinges on monetary-fiscal adjustments that ultimately finance the transfers. We compare two distinct types of monetary-fiscal adjustments: In the monetary regime, the government eventually raises taxes to finance transfers, while in the fiscal regime, inflation rises, effectively imposing inflation taxes on public debt holders. We show analytically in a simple model how the fiscal regime generates larger and more persistent inflation than the monetary regime. In a quantitative application, we use a two-sector, two-agent New Keynesian model, situate the model economy in a COVID-19 recession, and quantify the effects of the transfer components of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. We find that the transfer multipliers are significantly larger under the fiscal regime—which results in a milder contraction—than under the monetary regime, primarily because inflationary pressures of this regime counteract the deflationary forces during the recession. Moreover, redistribution produces a Pareto improvement under the fiscal regime.

Acts of Congress and COVID-19: A Literature Review on the Impact of Increased Unemployment Insurance Benefits and Stimulus Checks

Congress passed the first COVID-19 relief package for businesses and individuals in March 2020, when the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act was enacted, providing, among other things, one-time stimulus checks for individuals, extended unemployment insurance (UI) benefits, relief for state and local governments, liability protection, and the Paycheck Protection Program for small-business loan forgiveness.

Fall from GRASE: The Sunsetting of the Sunscreen Innovation Act

The 2020 Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act terminated the Sunscreen Innovation Act (SIA) that the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) uses to determine sunscreen actives as safe and effective for human use. The Act also nullified a recent FDA proposal that reclassified 14 organic sunscreen actives as either not safe for human use or requires more data before being used in humans. Most sunscreen actives were approved in 1978; since that time the FDA has determined that over the last 20 years several changes have occurred leading to a substantial increase in sunscreen usage and exposure that increases the potential health risks associated with their use. Based on the scientific literature for the actives reviewed, it is clear that the SIA is needed to assure that sunscreen and other over-the-counter drugs are safe and efficacious for human use prior to entering the marketplace.

Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security for Whom? IRS Overreaches in Denying CARES Act Economic Impact Payments to Migrant Workers and Incarcerated Individuals

Individuals who received advance refunds under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act met the eligibility criteria in their 2019 tax filings (or 2018 filings if they had not yet filed 2019 taxes). Advance refunds are treated as a refund of an overpayment of 2018 or 2019 taxes. Subsequent changes in tax filing status in 2020 do not retroactively make one ineligible for an advance refund. On May 6, the IRS issued guidance on its Economic Impact Payment Information Center website instructing incarcerated individuals and certain resident aliens that they should return the economic impact payments (also called advance refunds or stimulus payments) they received from the IRS. This guidance is not legally binding for two distinct reasons. First, it was issued without conforming to the procedural requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act. Second, the guidance exceeded the IRS’s rule-making authority because it contradicts unambiguous statutory language.