astra zeneca the makers of russia's sputnik job agreed to cooperate the start of the effectiveness of. vaccines. states sees. and grows a virus that with figures and also costs in the countries fatalities in the 2nd world war. the international criminal court drops a probe into alleged war crimes but u.k. forces in iraq despite having a reasonable basis to what he feels he did take place. the big picture setting away in just a few moments to join us again and i'll go for the latest news update so that's when i will be happy to see you with us back.

every december we feel eager to kiss off the old year and welcome in the new but especially this year and even with the anticipation of a new presidential administration coming in we're still anxious about 2021 because of the virus what do expect let's ask someone with a keen perspective on how we've learned to adapt hillary ford which is president of strong mark business development consultants in washington hillary summit entire industries are facing existential threats restaurants for example even with loyal customers ordering takeout traditional dining establishment just can't make it with reduced seating capacity yet we're hearing how fast food chains could physically

reconfigure to multiple drive through lanes like banks have what are the big picture guidelines you are prescribing to the businesses you work with. we'll be back with you again holland and actually that's a huge move you're totally right about the businesses in terms of restaurants but i'll talk actually about some of the things that are happening in the construction architectural industries and i'm working with the trend before march was called densification and that was a law firms accounting for all the social service firms most offices as we know them and commercial real estate was organized around being a stance as possible densification densification is moving in moving now to a distributed workforce this is an open environment lot of things that are happening right now there's a few things i'll touch upon such as touch points points are going to be virtual that touch points are going to be by voice econd dishing units the 8 track system is being revamped so that the econd dishy minutes of bark you're

a different standards are being advocated is going to be voiced in troll activated systems throughout and card keys as well as sense of activated dos so all of that will be touch and that's a huge trend that's occurring within the office environment when i was in washington for our election coverage i was chatting up some drivers and they tell me that they are now driving around food because there are fewer people to move around how else do you see members all businesses staying with the way we now live . well you know you're totally right holland everybody has to adjust and i know i know if i get a friend of mine told me she was very successful executive she told me her father always talked about remember the american indians and that was they didn't keep up technologically and look what happened to their land look what happened and you always have to keep up in your era with technology so this is what's happening people working from home obviously

a becoming very profession at zoom actually see as both are projected to keep at least 20 percent of their workforce why it's more effective and a recent study came out from mckinsey saying that 48 percent of the workforce has said they'd like to work at home in the future versus the percent previously so and in addition to that what's going to happen is all the performance goals from the companies that i work with i'm talking to a job professionals about reevaluating their own performance scott you have to have different ball and setting goals for those employees that are working from home you can't just do it the same old way with regard to zoom zoom has had a whole revamping actually about the way they're going about things and you can actually report some of your sessions so then if you're going to be speaking to a group you can review what you just said you can review your performance because how you appear visually on zoom and your voice and the way you express yourself is different than it would be in person i would say human behavior human behavior as

having to adapt to zoom and other technologies throughout this shutdown we've been looking for silver linings and brian keene from smart howard dot org points to one obvious one lesson we just don't have to all be in highway traffic and traffic jams from 7 am to 9 am and then from 5 pm to 7 pm so we really can see where all of their gasoline we can actually see not produce all of that smog we don't have to waste all of that time quite frankly we are having people be much more productive because today they are the 1st in the office because they don't leave home. and then the last to leave and so it's really been fascinating to see people be more productive without creating the pollution that goes along with it and we here in the chilly northeast appreciate how slack demand has lower oil prices with another home heating oil susan yonder hillary what other silver linings do you see in the businesses you work with there's

a few silver linings i think brian's totally right of course about the environment i think you look at the typical to for example the gulf industry look at golf courses and look at what's happening with the amount of people walking outside being outside and in fact just go for sales are up 68 percent go falls are up 45 percent and so it's up 51 percent so that industry is doing rather well think about the food industry going back to what you mentioned the sad number is that 85 percent of all family owned businesses will go out of business so if you have a local restaurant go to it d.c. we always go to fabulous pristine reeky we go there locally to our ankles in go to your local restaurants but what they are adapting to is obviously take out a lot of those restaurants people don't want to sit inside so they have a takeout section to section with restaurants in addition to taking out is that they're almost becoming like add on grocery stores you know you can get more grated cheese to go home you can get all sorts to go how you can get things so that you

can feed the kids for the next 3 days in their school lunches because you actually use them almost like a grocery store and that's something that that online has really been a revenue source for them and of course virtually adding things virtually as well as ordering online but actually as well as noted additional products. yeah you've mentioned a couple of restaurants we know in washington and here in the ocean statement to nicole oyster bar is doing exactly the same thing very nimble. run and down to about a minute hilary but i must ask you about something you mentioned a minute ago people continuing to work from home are any of the businesses that you work with that not withstanding eager to bring people back and looking forward to the vaccine as an opportunity to do so you know out of sight out of mind is there a comfort zone with employers having people in the shop and got about a minute. yes absolutely and i think it's specially ironically some of the younger

businesses where you would think that though those it's a maybe younger people would want to be at home interesting enough quantas airlines has already announced they're going to mandate vaccines for their class so i think we're going to see in this is what i'm hearing being talked about right now i don't have a statistic or not support you but i think the proponents of businesses are going to want them and they're going to have mandated that policy jim's already talking about that obviously quantas the airlines i mentioned hotels in the travel industry i mean discussions about that that's what you see i believe you will see this is this mandate versus government making us do so so if you want to operate within our society and yes to your question specifically if you want to go back to what you might have to happen interesting prediction about as a condition of employment when i was a child in the 1950 s. the president of the united states was a grandfatherly bald guy with glasses and he told us you will get

a polio shot and in 1st grade way to lined up in half of us burst into tears but we beat polio hillary ford which. consultants stay safe time we have heard from the north pole and we can tell you with that technology will be under the tree again this year with over $183000000.00 american adults forecast to purchase tech gifts an average spend of $528.00 on tech each year since amazon began introducing its eco products millions of them end up under the tree and if you're about to well come. into your home or a charity lives with you grab a pen because when you have 3 or innings warning number one she could spill. all the beans about what's in santa sleigh just one of the many ways alexa is helpful

is by telling you when something you ordered has been delivered so if you don't want to tell you and possibly your kids that play station 5 was just delivered here's what you need to do open the alexy app on your phone and tap settings then choose notifications and select amazon shopping then under let alexa say or show titles for items you've ordered uncheck for items in deal livery updates warning number 2 alexa is always listening how well switchy hear you say her name and warning number 3 alexa remember this and amazon has fessed up she's taking notes what alexa hears you say could be stored as voice recordings or text messages this is accomplished through

amazon's cloud services including machine learning software or speech recognition and natural language understanding systems use machine learning to adapt to customers speech patterns and vocabulary and when a customer subscribes to amazon music on limited places an amazon fresh order requests a car from hoover or left orders a pizza from dominoes or makes an in school purchase of premium digital content amazon and or the political skill developer obviously need to keep a record of the transaction and for other types of alexa requests for instance setting a recurring alarm asking alexa to remind you of your anniversary placing a meeting on your calendar sending a message to a friend customers would not want or expect to deletion of voice recording to delete the underlying data or prevent alexa from performing the requested task. and you can disable that too as radio's top tech talker dave grave line from the into

tomorrow show explains if you are using any connected device as we've been saying on the air for 24 years on our show forget privacy no such thing but let's talk about at least alexa at this point so here's what you do you visit amazon dot com go to alexa privacy of course you got to log on or you can open the alexa app on your smartphone or your tablet on the settings menu you then locate the alexa account tap alexa privacy and then browse or select commands and then say alexa delete what i just said or alexa delete everything i said today and it's only today and they'll still have the information. coming up we were warned that social security would be in trouble by 2035 the virus has moved that countdown clock up to 2033 how what happens

next month could imperil social security when we come back this is the big picture on our t. america. is your media a reflection of reality. in a world transformed. what will make you feel safe.

isolation community. are you going the right way or are you being led. away. what is true what is faith. in a world corrupted you need to descend. to join us in the depths. or a mate in the shallows. which is a planet with 5 moods an atmosphere highly active geology and evidence for water ocean sincerer need. of those for biology is just far beyond our wildest imagination. problem drugs don't always come from unscrupulous dealers but from pharmacies to in

every state in the united states we've seen very sharp increase in the number of people seeking treatment for addiction to prescription opioids and invited america under the banner of medicine he persisted with the pain but instead of trying to wean him off though she just goes after dose after dose after dose and really became his drug dealer so who's to blame patients doctors manufacturers all the government. join me every thursday on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics sports business i'm show business i'll see you then.

construction projects are everywhere we're seeing a lot of highway and bridge repairs taking advantage of less traffic during the pandemic but the firms that are doing this work are not brands as familiar as soft drinks or fast food restaurants who are these companies one of the big z. is scam a fortune 500 company based in sweden you don't know the scan name but you know their work which includes met life stadium where the new york giants and jets play and hospitals and you may have flown through airports they've built during hurricane sally 23 scant scope barges moving construction cranes massive beams and other heavy cargo broke 3 and whacked the pensacola bay bridge in florida knocking it out of service for a 6 months isolating communities and wounding businesses there. the

locals impactive america's lawyer. mike papen tonio whose firm is warning local governments elsewhere and others who green light construction projects about scant sca joining us from mike's firm levon papen tonio is attorney sarah papen tonio sorry this story isn't just about a bridge in florida but 1st things 1st what is the status of things there in pensacola. well hallen like you said this isn't just about a bridge what this is is a classic example of a corporation coming into a local community making promises to strengthen the community to build their economy then turning around and taking short cuts ignoring safety precautions and then throwing their hands up in the air and saying oops sorry this was just a cost of doing business so to answer your question. this bridge is no longer possible it has been possible for 3 months and it won't be possible for another 6

months and to talk about what the cost of doing business is holland 60000 people rely on this bridge every day $60000.00 people rely on it to go visit family to travel to businesses to fuel this economy and it's no longer viable for this this city and it's having a tremendous effect on our economy but this isn't just an isolated incident this isn't just a local story this happens all over the country and that's why i'm thanking you for having me on the show to be able to tell this story where corporations are taking advantage of local communities and refusing to accept responsibility for it counselor explained to this layman how specifically skin it's good is liable wouldn't something like this because cigarette an act of god because it was our again. when we talk about hurricanes we're not it's not the same sense of a tornado or an earthquake which happens in a matter of seconds with hurricanes we are lucky in some sense because we've got

a few days if not a week to prepare for this storm now going back scans because one of the largest construction companies in the entire world this company has tremendous resources top notch facilities that track weather and are able to see things before even us local folks are not able to so when a hurricane enters the gulf of mexico scans that has a duty to follow their hurricane preparedness plan and what that says is they have to lock down all of their all of their construction sites they have to make sure everything is secure what we've seen here with hurricane sally is can't go completely ignored that duty to prepare for this hurricane again holland this goes back to a classic example where a corporation chooses to protect its profits because they would have lost money from not working on the the bridge rather than protecting the people that they promised to build and protect. mike tells us that scans guy has an awful reputation

he says they've paid big fines or been accused of bribery and using substandard materials elsewhere and other negligence tell us about some of these other horror stories. it's exactly as you say or this company they've got a rap sheet you know they paid $20000000.00 in fines with the settlement with the d.o.j. for fraudulent labor practices this company scans guy is basically banned from doing business in south america because they got so many bribery scandals they've been accused of racial harassment in the workforce in this last project where they're building a highway in orlando 5 of their employees died because they weren't following proper safety protocol now when when we evaluate this with a corporation we would not allow a. construction man to walk into our home and rebuild our home with that kind of background so why would we invite a corporation into our community with that kind of history to to build a bridge. indeed into our country how does being

a foreign corporation. impact their accountability here in the usa. well you know holland it makes it more difficult when you're dealing with multinational corporations oftentimes we talk about globalism in a positive sense we're constantly pushing. for globalism it's got a lot of positivity behind it but in this sense when you're trying to pursue legal remedies for communities that have been wronged it makes it difficult and that's because multinational companies like scan scarse nikkei they're smart they know that in the united states we can only attach liabilities to the assets they have within this kind of country so scans i guess that multinational company has over $170000000000.00 in global revenue but communities like pensacola who have been wronged by just blatant negligence can only attach the assets that they have

limited in the united states so that makes it more difficult to hold these corporations accountable for their actions because they play the system in a way that we can't necessarily get retribution for we're speaking with attorney sarah patton tonio from levon papen tonio when these big jobs are bid i can only imagine how dazzling the presentation in the conference room is promises promises but what tone fathers and governors and corporations that are bidding out projects like this do would be smarter shoppers and ovoid what's happened there in pensacola. while like you said we have to be smart shoppers but it has to come from the local level what we've seen in the past is that we can't rely on politicians to support us we can't even sometimes rely on the media to tell the proper story so that means it has to come from the local route we've seen huge

success with. movements from things like the black lives matter movements protests against police brutality we've seen what the local communities can do to create tangible change and to demand political accountability but it's also important that we remind ourselves that that doesn't just apply to the political realm we can also use the same tactic when we're going to get small to national corporations like scan sky so when we're talking about these companies coming in and bidding on projects you have to show up you have to speak out because when we start talking about all of the bad acts that scans guy has people start to listen they start to question hey do we really want this this corporation to come in and be responsible for such a huge project when they've messed up so many times in the past you see when local communities like pensacola like small communities all over the country start to threaten the reputation of these major corporations they start to listen they start to take responsibility and so we as as

a community as as just the public have to show up speak out at public hearings and start really telling the story you have given us a great new reason to buy american sarah pap antonio regards to mike and thank you for stepping into the big picture. with the presidential transition under way all eyes now turn to georgia where there are 2 united states senate seats up for grabs and runoff elections and in the balance control of the united states senate also in the balance social security in the view of president franklin roosevelt's grandson who recalls how 85 years ago when my grandfather's signed social security into law he called the legislation of cornerstone which is being built but is by no. means complete democratic

policy makers followed his lead regularly increasing its benefits and adding protection for people who become disabled and their families and james roosevelt jr quotes interviews with a a r t in which senator kelly last alert chose her words carefully saying quote we need to preserve social security for people who are close to retirement or in retirement and he says that means she thinks benefits should not be preserved for those not close to retirement though she does not define what that means one year 2 years senator david perdue has gone even farther he is openly on board with slashing jordan georgians and all americans earned benefits in this coming year 2021 social security is forecast to begin drawing down its

trust fund to cover benefits so far it's only been tapping the interest on that fund unless congress acts the center for retirement research at boston college predicts that social security beneficiaries can expect at least a 20 percent cut in benefits when the trust fund runs out in 2023 that's 2 years sooner than projected because of the pandemic i asked economist richard wolffe is the only way to fix social security to deny benefits to the as yet unborn or is the system just unfixable i think the system the way it is now is . to tell the people who have been pouring money into social security all their lives that their retirement will now be and then and then because we are

in. they getting on the promise of giving them the retirement that they have a war and likewise what kind of people will give their children the gift of no retirement benefits no we have to fix it it is fixable but it's going to have to take basic change when you have millions and tens of millions unemployed as we have had since the last week of march of this year those people are not paying him on in the social security millions and billions of dollars are not flowing in to that system upon which a growing number of us depend that has to be attended to is a couple of ways to do that we do not require people who earn over roughly $120000.00 a year to contribute to social security for the money they earn above that that was never justified it should be fixed those very well that people can most afford to

give to social security it's a long overdue that they do so likewise we sure take social from the incumbent people get from the property they own just from the raber they drain well why should we know that this is always been a political 3rd rail and in a harris poll conducted after the election 74 percent believe that social security would have to be an immediate crisis meaning the trust fund goes insolvent for congress to act the grandson of f d r r only 4 term united states president says georgia. it's up to you and that is the big picture will be back same time next week and right there in your pocket or purse on our portable t.v. up you can download it free in the app store or google play or at portable t.v.

and you can see our t.v. america live and set your d.v.r. on direct t.v. channel 321 dish 280 and we are the live stream at youtube dot com slash our to america i'm holland cook happy hanukkah. and question more.

are discussing a new school of economics alien economics this israeli brought about by negative interest rates means contact with the galactic federation. imagine picking up a future textbook on the early years of the 21st century what are the chapters schools gun violence school shootings. first it was my job it was my bill it was my savings i have nothing i have nothing that is not. aloof or resources i look for jobs i look for.