While most Arizonans may not get a white Christmas this year, they can share in another classic Christmas tradition: the gift of a new, furry member of the family. The Bissell Pet Foundation (BPF) will completely cover or reduce pet adoption fees through their annual “Empty the Shelters: Holiday Hope” event from December 6 to 20.
The following are participating in the Holiday Hope event:
Arizona Humane Society: PetSmart in Old Town Scottsdale and their South Mountain location in Phoenix
See more participating locations here. Those not interested in adopting may donate to cover the adoption fees for another family.
Since BPF launched its Empty the Shelters events in 2016, over 67,700 animals have been adopted. This year, over 200 shelters across 40 states are participating.
Tuesday’s planned Arizona Workers Heroes Freedom March at the State Capitol is attracting national interest, according to event coordinator Merissa Hamilton of EZAZ.org.
Among those slated to speak at the noontime event is Kimball Cody, a firefighter – paramedic fired two months ago by the Salt River Fire Department. Cody’s termination after 13 years of dedicated service was due to his unwillingness receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
Similar firings are being threatened by the City of Phoenix for any of its 14,000 employees who do not provide proof of vaccination by Jan. 18, 2022, despite the fact the city told employees in May that vaccinations “are a personal choice that will not impact your employment in any way.”
City Manager Jeff Barton reversed course last month when he issued the mandate that can result in termination. Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich is suing Phoenix officials over the mandate, but it could be months before a federal court reaches a decision.
Leaders of the unions which represent the city’s public safety employees say less than 50 percent of their members intend to comply with the mandate. The worry for many Phoenix residents is that experienced police officers, firefighters, and other critical service employees will seek jobs in other communities.
“Phoenix public safety is already in a crisis,” says Hamilton, a city resident. “Police and Fire are both terribly short-staffed and 911 response times are horrific. The mandate will crush public safety and the most vital city services like trash, water, and infrastructure.”
Some city employees are expected to meet Tuesday morning with a handful of state lawmakers prior to the Heroes Freedom March to discuss the city’s actions, according to Sen. Kelly Townsend (R-LD16).
For Cody, he was one of 84 employees for Salt River FD who were notified in late August of a vaccination mandate imposed by the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community (SRPMIC) tribal council. He then spent the next 40 days reflecting on whether the vaccine was the right thing for him and his family.
“We were really hoping it would be a bluff but there was no letting up,” Cody told radio host James T. Harris on Monday. Cody explained that his two requests for medical exemptions were denied, and Salt River tribal leaders refused to consider religious or spiritual exemptions.
In the end, four firefighters were terminated for non-compliance of a vaccination mandate which was never imposed on tribal members nor the employees of Talking Stick Resort and Casino which is also owned by SRPMIC.
KIMBALL CODY INTERVIEW:
Cody, who lives in east Mesa, told Harris he is speaking at the Heroes Freedom March to help Arizonans understand the negative impacts vaccine employment mandates are having.
“This mandate is real. My wife interacts with your wife. My kids go to school with your kids,” Cody said. “This is not a mandate in California or New York or some far away land. This is a mandate that is effecting real people right here and right now.”
Cody also wants to encourage Arizonans to contact Gov. Doug Ducey and their state legislators with a demand for a special session to enable passage of anti-mandate legislation.
Hamilton says EZAZ.org is hoping for legislation or court action against all vaccination mandates in Arizona before Christmas. “Families deserve to have this mandate put to rest so they can enjoy the holidays without worry,” she told AZ Free News.
The University of Arizona (UArizona) will award one future college credit to individuals who play their informational version of the popular Age of Empires video game, called “Illuminated Histories.”
UArizona partnered with Microsoft to create the modified game. History department head and associate professor of Roman history Alison Futrell, a self-described fellow “gamer,” will teach the course alongside associate professor of medieval history Paul Milliman. Milliman described the course as the first step toward an online B.A. history degree.
Age of Empires is an acclaimed series of nine video games and several spin-offs, with the first game released in 1997. A principal designer for the original game series, Bruce Shelley, said on his Microsoft Games profile page that the developers relied mostly on children’s books to concoct the historical basis of the game. He dismissed the idea that the game relied on extensive, detailed research, instead characterizing it solely as a strategy game.
“The research for Age of Empires was done in the local community library. Extensive, detailed research is not necessary or even a good idea for most entertainment products. The best reference materials are often found in the children’s section because this is the level of historic interest for most of the gaming public,” said Shelley. “If you build in too much historic detail you run the risk of making the game obtuse. The players should have the fun, not the designers or researchers. We are trying to entertain people, not impress them with our scholarship. The words ‘model’ or ‘simulation’ are often a warning signal that the game is not fun.”
In a separate panel interview years later, Shelley clarified that history wasn’t the main point of the game, but rather “human experience.”
“The games aren’t so much about history but about the human experience, which is not just what we’ve done and what we are doing, but what we might do,” said Shelley.
“We love to study the role of games in the premodern world: exploring how they’ve impacted human society and individual lives over time. Games connect the past, present, and future in a way that makes them ideal for teaching and learning history,” said Futrell. “History begins with wonder, which is why you will have opportunities to dive deeper into the history surrounding Age of Empires IV. If you’ve ever wondered about topics like medieval medicine, the role of women warriors, or the culture of the Mongol empire – professor Milliman and I have written ‘Illuminated Histories’ from the University of Arizona to help you engage with the historical sources.”
UArizona’s latest recruitment campaign, first reported by Arizona Daily Independent, came out a day before the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) announced a significant low in college enrollments. The latest ABOR report noted that about 46 percent of students went on to enroll in a two- or four-year college degree in 2020. Based on declining college enrollments, college completions, and high school completions, ABOR estimated that less than 17 percent of current high school freshmen would graduate from a four-year college.
The ABOR report claimed that college degrees directly impacted the quality of Arizona’s workforce.
“This is a concern because educational attainment is a primary factor that impacts the quality of Arizona’s labor market and the state’s ability to compete regionally and nationally for high-paying employers and jobs,” stated ABOR.
According to a 2018 study, the majority of those who played video games graduated from college. A vast majority of the remainder had completed at least one or more years of college or graduate school at the time of the survey.
UArizona hasn’t been the only university to turn to video games to increase the appeal of a higher education. In recent years, universities have begun to offer scholarships for competitive video gaming, called “esports.” The 2018 championship game for League of Legends, a multiplayer game, reached a peak of 200 million viewers – more than double than the last three Super Bowls. The League of Legends championships normally pull well over 100 million viewers.
Global video game revenues have surpassed the global movie and American sports industries combined.
That potential success that governing bodies like the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) are considering the addition of esports to their purview.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Data from the Census Bureau and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) indicated that nearly 1.2 million Arizona workers would lose their jobs under President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate. Senator Rand Paul’s (R-KY) office conducted the research, published through the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Businesses & Entrepreneurship days before Thanksgiving.
The 1.2 million workers account for 33 percent of Arizona’s workforce. Compliance would further cost Arizona businesses at least $70 million total. The main types of workers impacted come from America’s backbone: wholesale trade, retail, and manufacturing. These three categories of workers were largely classified as “essential workers” throughout 2020 and this year. Arizona ranked 12th for the number of workers it may lose, after California (nearly 4.8 million), Texas (over 4.5 million), Florida (over 2.9 million), New York (over 2 million), Ohio (nearly 1.9 million), Georgia (over 1.8 million), Illinois (nearly 1.7 million), Pennsylvania (under 1.7 million), North Carolina (under 1.6 million) Michigan (under 1.5 million), and Tennessee (over 1.2 million).
According to the research, nearly 45 million workers nationwide are at risk of losing their jobs: about 22 percent of the nation’s entire workforce, ringing in at a compliance cost of at least $1.29 billion.
According to Senator @RandPaul and the @SmallBizCmteGOP, over ONE MILLION Arizona workers are at risk of losing their jobs because of Biden's unconstitutional COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
That's why our office continues to take action to protect hardworking taxpayers. pic.twitter.com/OMq0CJ64vJ
Biden’s vaccine mandate relied on the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to require companies with 100 or more employees to have employees fully vaccinated or following standard COVID-19 safety protocols: masking and weekly testing. The mandate would require companies to provide paid time off for workers who get vaccinated, but it wouldn’t require costs of acquiring tests – though individual states or local laws might.
Based on recent court rulings, it’s unclear when the vaccine mandate would be implemented. A federal appeals court halted Biden’s vaccine mandate last month. Another federal court also halted a similar Biden mandate requiring Medicare and Medicaid health care workers to get vaccinated, in a case launched by a coalition involving Attorney General Mark Brnovich. Following that ruling, OSHA decided to suspend enforcement of the mandate.
The vaccine mandate also may face a challenge in the legislature. The Senate will vote on a resolution to effectively bar Biden’s vaccine mandate. Through the Congressional Review Act (CRA), the House and Senate may overturn a federal regulation without presidential approval. However, such a resolution would likely not advance in the Democrat-controlled House.
Last month, one of Biden’s chief economic advisors, Jared Bernstein, toldCNBC that adverse financial impacts due to the mandate would be overshadowed by the economic growth afforded by vaccinations. When asked if the Biden Administration expected companies to sacrifice their revenue growth, Bernstein said that he couldn’t speak for individual companies and that many would face “a very different outlook.”
“Those forecasts are for 4.5 and 6 percent. The connection between a strong economy and vaccinations and the trajectory of the caseload is extremely clear to me – and, in fact, quite elastic, it happens very quickly. And, of course, that is the motivation behind the vaccination program,” said Bernstein. “I’ve looked at almost every important variable I could find. Yet that does certainly make the case that vaccines, economic progress, strong growth, revenue growth, income growth, wage growth, jobs, GDP, industrial production – every variable I look at seems highly and positively elastic to these wiggles in the caseload.”
Bernstein serves on the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) alongside Chairwoman Cecilia Elena Rouse and fellow member Heather Boushey. Rouse served under Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama on the National Economic Council (NEC) and CEA, respectively. Boushey would have served as the chief economic advisor for failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s transition team.
According to the CDC, a vast majority of the elderly are either partially or fully vaccinated. 88.8 percent of individuals aged 50 to 64, 99.9 percent of individuals aged 65 to 74, and 97.7 percent of individuals over 75. About 10 percent of those from each age range are awaiting their second dosage.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
As if small business owners haven’t had enough to deal with, now comes word that Congress pulled the rug out from under a major COVID-19 relief program that was supposed to run through the end of 2021.
Instead, many business owners are left scrambling to adjust their business plan with just three weeks left in the year.
The Employee Retention Tax Credit (ERTC) program was approved by Congress in 2020 to allow many small business owners to offset much of the cost of payroll taxes for those employees who were retained despite the pandemic. The program was to run through Jan. 1, 2022, allowing employers to claim credits of up to $7,000 per employee per quarter for all four quarters this year.
But that abruptly changed when President Joe Biden recently signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
According to the White House-supported legislation, the ERTC program came to a halt as of Sept. 30. That retroactive end means business owners who developed their budget based on claiming the credits Congress previously approved for the fourth-quarter will have a rude awakening at tax time.
Restaurants, retail, and professional services businesses are among the industries expected to be hardest hit by ERTC’s early termination, which was not previously publicized by the Biden Administration. It has fallen on business and trade associations to get the word out after the fact, but it is feared the message will be too late for many small businesses.
The National Federal of Independent Businesses is encouraging impacted business owners to notify their U.S. Representatives and Senators in hopes Congress will address the problem by restoring the original end date.
In October, the National Retail Federation projected nearly $860 billion in 2021 holiday sales, bolstered by customers planning to spend more than 2020. Online retailers and the brick-and-mortar type retailers were also told to expect one-half of shoppers to begin their holiday purchases even before Thanksgiving.
Many economists also forecasted that holiday shoppers will be purchasing fewer items but would be willing to spend money for better quality and more substantive items, if supply chain problems don’t get in the way. All of which means a lot of eyes were focused on the results from the key Thanksgiving holiday shopping days including Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday.
Sensormatic Solutions provides services to retailers in the areas of inventory intelligence, shopper experience, loss prevention, and operational effectiveness. According to Sensormatic, shopper activity on Nov. 26 through Nov. 28 increased more than 34 percent compared to 2020. During the same three days, however, traffic at brick-and-mortar stores was 21 percent lower than in 2019.
It is unknown whether the decision by most major retailers to remain closed all of Thanksgiving Day had any impact on buyer decisions. But one retail executive says December 2021 still provides unique opportunities and challenges for retailers.
“Shoppers are returning to stores, but there are still lingering health and safety concerns making some cautious of traditionally crowded shopping days,” said Brian Field, senior director of global retail consulting for Sensormatic. “With a data-driven understanding of customer concerns, retailers can implement processes to help make shoppers feel comfortable in stores – via occupancy monitoring, temperature checks, extended hours and a seamless contactless shopping experience.”
Sensormatic also looked at Cyber Monday data. One change over 2020 is that many retailers with physical stores made their online sales pricing and special offers available to in-store shoppers. But those Cyber Monday offers did not help generate additional foot traffic, which ended up being similar to a typical fall day.
“Though the mix of weekday shopping had been on the rise throughout the pandemic as shoppers take advantage of more flexible work schedules and try to avoid weekend crowds, Cyber Monday typically has no impact on in-store traffic and the same was true of this year,” Field said.
Yet according to Field, the overall data shows retailers should breathe a sigh of relief with the direction holiday sales are taking.
“Over the past month, in-store traffic has progressively improved as consumers have started their holiday shopping early,” Field said. “Retailers are seeing positive change year over year, and the Black Friday weekend data shows an upward trajectory toward pre-pandemic levels.”
