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Payback
Dedicated to the Fools, Racists, and Ignorant
People who vote for the GOP and trump or don't vote because they claim it is not important
oct 21, 2020
400 years and they have learned nothing
8 disturbing trends that reveal the South’s battered psyche
From Salon: Across red-state America, especially in the Deep South, the latest statistics show that the cycle of poverty, in its many manifestations, is unchanged and holding firm. Why is this? It’s easy to say this is how Republicans like to run states—cutting budgets, not raising the minimum wage, opposing labor unions. They let the poor and working class stew in their hardscrabble juices. Meanwhile, they distract voters by accusing liberals of waging war on the few sources of personal power in Southerners’ difficult lives: their religious beliefs and owning guns. But go back several decades when segregationist Democrats ruled; for the most part, they weren’t very different from today’s Republicans.
So what is it that perpetuates decades of poverty in the Deep South? What follows are eight bundles of statistics tracking this latest cycle of poverty. Could it be that people who historically have been treated badly, who have little money in their pockets but look to the sky and pray, expect less from others—including the public and private sector? Does that explain why red-staters cling to God, gun ownership and a “leave-me-alone” ferocity?
They expect politicians to defend their values and their pride and little more?
What’s going on here isn’t entirely political, even if it is used by red-state Republicans in their personal drive for power and influence. Look at what the following statistics reveal about red-staters trapped in deep cycles of poverty. What is the thread that connects lousy governance, bad health, evangelical religion and firearms fervor?
1. Southern states have the most poor people.
2. Deep South states have no minimum wage.
3. Deep South has lowest economic mobility.
4. South has lowest per capita spending by state government.
5. Forget about decent preventative healthcare.
6. One result: people self-medicate in response.
7. Forget the lottery, just pray to Jesus.
8. And hold onto that gun!
So what is it that perpetuates decades of poverty in the Deep South? What follows are eight bundles of statistics tracking this latest cycle of poverty. Could it be that people who historically have been treated badly, who have little money in their pockets but look to the sky and pray, expect less from others—including the public and private sector? Does that explain why red-staters cling to God, gun ownership and a “leave-me-alone” ferocity?
They expect politicians to defend their values and their pride and little more?
What’s going on here isn’t entirely political, even if it is used by red-state Republicans in their personal drive for power and influence. Look at what the following statistics reveal about red-staters trapped in deep cycles of poverty. What is the thread that connects lousy governance, bad health, evangelical religion and firearms fervor?
1. Southern states have the most poor people.
2. Deep South states have no minimum wage.
3. Deep South has lowest economic mobility.
4. South has lowest per capita spending by state government.
5. Forget about decent preventative healthcare.
6. One result: people self-medicate in response.
7. Forget the lottery, just pray to Jesus.
8. And hold onto that gun!
payback headlines - how you are screwed!!
*Trump-loving former Republican official who hated face masks dies from COVID-19
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘The situation is dire’: As Trump takes victory lap, new jobs report reveals alarming surge in permanent unemployment(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘WAGE THEFT’: TREASURY SIGNALS MILLIONS OF WORKERS WILL EARN LESS IN 2021 UNDER TRUMP’S PAYROLL TAX DEFERRAL(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Payroll tax cut imperils Social Security
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Michigan steelworkers slam Trump for tariffs that cost them their jobs
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Florida man who thought pandemic was ‘hysteria’ loses his wife to COVID-19
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*MEMO EXPOSES TRUMP’S UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE PLAN AS A FARCE
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump dropped into Iowa — and didn't even try to understand the devastation
(excerpt below)
*HERE’S HOW TRUMP IS DRIVING MILLIONS OF AMERICAN SENIORS INTO POVERTY
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Louisiana’s COVID-19-enabling attorney general gets tested for coronavirus before meeting Pence, tests positive(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Consumer bureau revokes payday lending restrictions
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*REVEALED: COVID-19 OUTBREAKS AT MEAT-PROCESSING PLANTS IN US BEING KEPT QUIET
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IS WAIVING THE PUBLIC’S RIGHT TO AFFORDABLE CORONAVIRUS TREATMENTS(ARTICLE BELOW)
*TRUMP LABOR DEPARTMENT QUIETLY OFFERS UP 401(K) PLANS TO PRIVATE EQUITY VULTURES
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*GOP lawmakers block health care for 130,000 people in Kansas
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*NEARLY 40 MILLION ARE OUT OF WORK BUT MCCONNELL WANTS BENEFITS TO STOP ANYWAY
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Wisconsin woman ‘kind of mad’ at Trump after she gets COVID-19 despite taking hydroxychloroquine(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Accidental Poisonings Increased After President Trump's Disinfectant Comments
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘Outrageous, callous, and cruel’: Seniors rip Trump for holding Covid-19 relief hostage to push cuts that threaten Social Security(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Tennessee Poison Center sees more calls, hospitalizations over disinfectants amid COVID-19(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Here’s how the GOP’s crusade against the IRS is keeping some people from getting coronavirus relief(ARTICLE BELOW)
*TRUMP’S TARIFFS ARE CRIPPLING AMERICAN MANUFACTURERS TRYING TO SURVIVE PANDEMIC DOWNTURN: REPORT(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘Beyond predatory’: Trump Treasury Department gives banks green light to seize $1,200 stimulus checks to pay off debts(ARTICLE BELOW)
*THE CORONAVIRUS WILL SOON WREAK HAVOC IN TRUMP COUNTRY — HERE’S WHY
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump administration quietly guts COVID-19 paid leave provision that already excluded 75% of workers(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘MONSTERS!’ FLORIDA REPUBLICANS IGNITE FURY BY ADMITTING THEY PURPOSEFULLY MANGLED STATE UNEMPLOYMENT SYSTEM(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Right-Wing Austerity Set New Orleans Up to Be a Coronavirus Disaster Zone
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump refuses to reopen Obamacare exchanges after millions of laid-off workers lose health coverage(ARTICLE BELOW)
*THE US SENT TONS OF MEDICAL SUPPLIES TO CHINA EVEN AS SENATORS WARNED OF VIRUS THREAT HERE(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Medicaid Abruptly Canceled Her Health Insurance. Then Came the Coronavirus.
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*These are the 51 GOP senators who just voted against expanding paid sick leave to protect Americans amid the coronavirus crisis(ARTICLE BELOW)
*As Trump limits guest workers from Mexico amid coronavirus, farmers warn of labor and food shortages(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘A stunning betrayal’: Swing-state farmers are fuming over Trump’s latest gift to the fossil fuel industry(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘Why are we being charged?’ Surprise bills from coronavirus testing spark calls for government to cover all costs(ARTICLE BELOW)
*TRUMP'S JUNK PLAN LEAVES FLORIDA MAN HOLDING THE BILL FOR CORONAVIRUS TESTING
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump administration proposes another Social Security rule that violates the law, hurts the disabled(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘A travesty and a disgrace’: Trump quietly issues memo that could abolish union rights for 750,000 federal workers(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Workers Face Retirement With Fear as GOP Refuses to Back Pension Protection Bill
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump looks to kill student loan forgiveness program
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION HAS LAUNCHED A BRAZEN ASSAULT ON OUR PUBLIC LANDS
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump moves to cap pay raise for civilian government workers at 1 percent
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump tariffs would bury US in 'fake prosciutto and fake Parmesan,' warns one food importer(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘It’s sickening!’ 2016 Trump voter turns on the president after his wife gets deported to Mexico(ARTICLE BELOW)
*The poor and people with disabilities ‘are going to die’: Trump takes axe to Medicaid
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*NATIONAL DEBT INCREASED BY $3 TRILLION DURING DONALD TRUMP'S THREE YEARS AS PRESIDENT(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Wisconsin lost 10% of its dairy farmers in 2019, marking its biggest decline ever as Trump's trade wars raged(ARTICLE BELOW)
*US budget deficit running 11.8% higher this year
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘We can barely eat’: West Virginia offers a chilling preview of Trump’s food stamp restrictions(ARTICLE BELOW)
*MORE DRUGMAKERS HIKE U.S. PRICES AS NEW YEAR BEGINS
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*TRUMP RUNS THE COUNTRY JUST LIKE HE RAN HIS BANKRUPTED BUSINESSES: THE NATIONAL DEBT IS SKYROCKETING WHILE ECONOMIC GROWTH IS LAGGING(ARTICLE BELOW)
PAYBACK FUNNIES(at the end)
america's reward for voting for republicans!!!
Welcome to RepublicanDebt.org
This site tracks the current Republican Debt.
The Republican Debt is how much of the national debt of the United States
is attributable to
the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush,
George W. Bush, Donald J. Trump,
and
the Republican fiscal policy of Borrow-And-Spend.
of the entire national debt
in only 9.4262% of the 244 years of the existence of the United States of America.As of Thursday, October 08, 2020 at 9:29:34AM PT,
The Current Republican Debt is:
$14,843,930,420,532.10
which means that in a total of 23 years,
these four presidents have led to the creation of
94.07%
|
|
‘Promises made, workers betrayed’: Trump gave $425 billion in federal contracts to corporations that offshored 200,000 jobs
October 6, 2020
By Common Dreams - raw story
Despite the 2016 campaign promise that he made to voters in pivotal industrial swing states throughout the Midwest that he would end the profit-driven relocation of manufacturing jobs to lower-wage countries, President Donald Trump has awarded more than $425 billion in federal contracts to corporations responsible for offshoring 200,000 jobs held by U.S. workers, according to a new report published Monday by progressive think tank and advocacy group Public Citizen.
“Time and time again, Donald Trump has proven that he will always put his corporate friends’ profits over the lives of American workers.”
—Rep. Mark Pocan
The report (pdf), Promises Made, Workers Betrayed: Trump’s Bigly Broken Promise to Stop Job Offshoring, was released during a press conference and is based on an analysis of data from the Department of Labor on trade-related job loss as well as data on federal procurement.
Researchers at Public Citizen found that Trump’s claim that he would deny billions worth of lucrative government contracts to companies that offshored jobs in order to encourage those firms to bring jobs back to U.S. factories was an empty threat. Instead, the report reveals, eight of the top 10 corporations receiving government contracts during Trump’s time in office have participated in offshoring.
According to the analysis, of the more than 300,000 U.S. workers who have lost their jobs as a result of worsening trade deficits during the Trump presidency, just over 200,000 of those jobs were classified as offshored.
“Trump lied to America’s workers when he told them jobs were staying in the United States,” said Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources, in a statement. “Under his watch jobs have left while he continues rewarding outsourcing corporations with millions of dollars in lucrative government contracts—in the middle of a pandemic.”
At least $425.6 billion in public money has gone to firms that moved jobs overseas in the past four years, according to the analysis, which means that “at least one of every four taxpayer dollars spent by the federal government on procurement contracts during the Trump administration went to the pockets of companies that offshored American jobs.”
The report states that “the Trump administration awarded an average of 2.5 times the amount, or $10 billion more, in contracts to firms that offshored during his term than those that did not.”
“Time and time again, Donald Trump has proven that he will always put his corporate friends’ profits over the lives of American workers,” said Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.). “An administration that has promised to bring jobs back to our country… has given some of the largest government contract handouts to companies known for offshoring jobs.”
According to the analysis, Boeing, General Electric (GE), and United Technologies (UT) have been among the biggest beneficiaries of government contracts during the Trump era even though all three corporations moved jobs to lower-wage locations.
Public Citizen found that during the Trump administration alone, Boeing offshored 5,800 jobs, GE offshored 2,046, and UT offshored 1,572. The latter was awarded $15.1 billion dollars in federal procurement contracts between 2017 and 2019 even while offshoring at least 1,300 jobs at its Carrier subsidiary that President-elect Trump promised to save.
“Trump lied to America’s workers when he told them jobs were staying in the United States.”
—Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva
Despite President-elect Trump’s well-publicized 2016 intervention, during which he gained national attention for pledging to prevent offshoring at Carrier, the jobs of nearly 600 unionized workers at the company’s Indianapolis plant and all 700 at its Huntington, Indiana factory were relocated to Mexico in 2017, the report explains.
“This report is more evidence that Donald Trump is the King of Offshoring,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). “For his entire term in office, Trump has awarded billions in new government contracts to firms notorious for serial American job outsourcing, showered giant multinational corporations with tax giveaways, shrugged his shoulders while people get laid off and jobs are shipped overseas—and he keeps lying through his teeth about it all.”
Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) explained how “in 2016, Trump struck a chord with voters in my district, and across the country by promising to bring those jobs back—but he has done just the opposite.”
Trump “has failed to use any of the expansive authorities over procurement policy that all presidents have and that past presidents have employed to deliver on their policy commitments and goals,” researchers wrote in the report. “Despite authority under the Procurement Act of 1949 to enact ‘policies and directives’ for federal contracting, Trump failed to exclude offshoring firms from qualifying for federal contracts.”
“Since elected, President Trump has given tax incentives and awarded hundreds of billions of dollars in federal contracts to corporations that send jobs overseas,” Ryan said. “Enough is enough. It is past time to level the playing field and cut American workers in on the deal.”
Rep. Brendon Boyle (D-Pa.) echoed Ryan, pointing out that “working families know this economy is stacked against them as American workers face stagnant wages, benefit reductions, and unfair foreign competition… President Trump simply failed in holding up his end of the bargain when he allowed these jobs to land in foreign countries.”
Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, summarized the glaring contradiction between Trump’s ostensibly pro-worker campaign pledges and his administration’s actual corporate-friendly policies.
“This is straight up promises made, workers betrayed,” she said.
“Time and time again, Donald Trump has proven that he will always put his corporate friends’ profits over the lives of American workers.”
—Rep. Mark Pocan
The report (pdf), Promises Made, Workers Betrayed: Trump’s Bigly Broken Promise to Stop Job Offshoring, was released during a press conference and is based on an analysis of data from the Department of Labor on trade-related job loss as well as data on federal procurement.
Researchers at Public Citizen found that Trump’s claim that he would deny billions worth of lucrative government contracts to companies that offshored jobs in order to encourage those firms to bring jobs back to U.S. factories was an empty threat. Instead, the report reveals, eight of the top 10 corporations receiving government contracts during Trump’s time in office have participated in offshoring.
According to the analysis, of the more than 300,000 U.S. workers who have lost their jobs as a result of worsening trade deficits during the Trump presidency, just over 200,000 of those jobs were classified as offshored.
“Trump lied to America’s workers when he told them jobs were staying in the United States,” said Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources, in a statement. “Under his watch jobs have left while he continues rewarding outsourcing corporations with millions of dollars in lucrative government contracts—in the middle of a pandemic.”
At least $425.6 billion in public money has gone to firms that moved jobs overseas in the past four years, according to the analysis, which means that “at least one of every four taxpayer dollars spent by the federal government on procurement contracts during the Trump administration went to the pockets of companies that offshored American jobs.”
The report states that “the Trump administration awarded an average of 2.5 times the amount, or $10 billion more, in contracts to firms that offshored during his term than those that did not.”
“Time and time again, Donald Trump has proven that he will always put his corporate friends’ profits over the lives of American workers,” said Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.). “An administration that has promised to bring jobs back to our country… has given some of the largest government contract handouts to companies known for offshoring jobs.”
According to the analysis, Boeing, General Electric (GE), and United Technologies (UT) have been among the biggest beneficiaries of government contracts during the Trump era even though all three corporations moved jobs to lower-wage locations.
Public Citizen found that during the Trump administration alone, Boeing offshored 5,800 jobs, GE offshored 2,046, and UT offshored 1,572. The latter was awarded $15.1 billion dollars in federal procurement contracts between 2017 and 2019 even while offshoring at least 1,300 jobs at its Carrier subsidiary that President-elect Trump promised to save.
“Trump lied to America’s workers when he told them jobs were staying in the United States.”
—Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva
Despite President-elect Trump’s well-publicized 2016 intervention, during which he gained national attention for pledging to prevent offshoring at Carrier, the jobs of nearly 600 unionized workers at the company’s Indianapolis plant and all 700 at its Huntington, Indiana factory were relocated to Mexico in 2017, the report explains.
“This report is more evidence that Donald Trump is the King of Offshoring,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). “For his entire term in office, Trump has awarded billions in new government contracts to firms notorious for serial American job outsourcing, showered giant multinational corporations with tax giveaways, shrugged his shoulders while people get laid off and jobs are shipped overseas—and he keeps lying through his teeth about it all.”
Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) explained how “in 2016, Trump struck a chord with voters in my district, and across the country by promising to bring those jobs back—but he has done just the opposite.”
Trump “has failed to use any of the expansive authorities over procurement policy that all presidents have and that past presidents have employed to deliver on their policy commitments and goals,” researchers wrote in the report. “Despite authority under the Procurement Act of 1949 to enact ‘policies and directives’ for federal contracting, Trump failed to exclude offshoring firms from qualifying for federal contracts.”
“Since elected, President Trump has given tax incentives and awarded hundreds of billions of dollars in federal contracts to corporations that send jobs overseas,” Ryan said. “Enough is enough. It is past time to level the playing field and cut American workers in on the deal.”
Rep. Brendon Boyle (D-Pa.) echoed Ryan, pointing out that “working families know this economy is stacked against them as American workers face stagnant wages, benefit reductions, and unfair foreign competition… President Trump simply failed in holding up his end of the bargain when he allowed these jobs to land in foreign countries.”
Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, summarized the glaring contradiction between Trump’s ostensibly pro-worker campaign pledges and his administration’s actual corporate-friendly policies.
“This is straight up promises made, workers betrayed,” she said.
STUPIDITY'S REWARD!!!
Trump-loving former Republican official who hated face masks dies from COVID-19
September 21, 2020
By Brad Reed - RAW STORY
Former Nashville Council Member Tony Tenpenny, a Trump-loving Republican who posted anti-face mask memes on Facebook, has died from complications resulting from being infected from COVID-19.
The Tennessean reports that Tenpenny “was hospitalized for more than a month at one of the St. Thomas hospitals and was placed on a ventilator earlier in September” before he died over the weekend.
Nashville Mayor John Cooper expressed his condolences after hearing of Tenpenny’s passing.
“I am deeply saddened to hear of the passing of former councilman Tony Tenpenny,” he said. “I send my condolences to his wife, Robbie, their son Ira and the rest of the Tenpenny family.”
As The Tennessee Holler points out on Twitter, Tenpenny regularly railed against COVID-19 restrictions on his Facebook page, and he posted memes that attacked face masks as part of a socialist plot, while also directly accusing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of lying about the severity of the disease.
Tenpenny’s Facebook page was also filled with memes and content supportive of President Donald Trump.
The Tennessean reports that Tenpenny “was hospitalized for more than a month at one of the St. Thomas hospitals and was placed on a ventilator earlier in September” before he died over the weekend.
Nashville Mayor John Cooper expressed his condolences after hearing of Tenpenny’s passing.
“I am deeply saddened to hear of the passing of former councilman Tony Tenpenny,” he said. “I send my condolences to his wife, Robbie, their son Ira and the rest of the Tenpenny family.”
As The Tennessee Holler points out on Twitter, Tenpenny regularly railed against COVID-19 restrictions on his Facebook page, and he posted memes that attacked face masks as part of a socialist plot, while also directly accusing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of lying about the severity of the disease.
Tenpenny’s Facebook page was also filled with memes and content supportive of President Donald Trump.
‘The situation is dire’: As Trump takes victory lap, new jobs report reveals alarming surge in permanent unemployment
September 4, 2020
By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams - RAW STORY
“The pain is nowhere near over for millions of workers and their families across the country.”
President Donald Trump on Friday wasted no time taking a victory lap after the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced the U.S. unemployment rate fell to 8.4% in August, but economists warned a closer look at the new economic figures reveals an alarming surge in permanent joblessness that could portend a prolonged recession if Congress and the White House fail to quickly approve additional relief.
“The failure of the Trump administration to control the virus has led to a slower pace of job gains and, while the jobless rate fell significantly last month, it is still in recessionary territory and more job seekers are at risk of longer-term unemployment.”
—Jared Bernstein, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
The number of Americans classified as permanently unemployed—as opposed to being on temporary furlough—grew by 534,000 in August even as the U.S. economy added 1.4 million jobs. On Twitter, Trump celebrated the latter data point as “great” and “much better than expected.”
The total number of workers who are permanently jobless is now 3.4 million, according to the bureau’s latest data. Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), wrote in a blog post Friday that contrary to the White House’s rosy spin, the new BLS report shows “the pain is nowhere near over for millions of workers and their families across the country.”
“At this point, the U.S. economy is still down 11.5 million jobs from where it was in February, before the pandemic hit,” wrote Gould. “With this kind of slowing in job growth, it will take years to return to the pre-pandemic labor market. And, without the $600 boost to unemployment insurance, jobs will return even more slowly than had policymakers stepped up and continued that vital support to workers and the economy.”
EPI’s Heidi Shierholz echoed Gould’s assessment, noting in a series of tweets that “the situation is dire” and “the labor market remains in crisis.”
On top of the growing number of Americans whose jobs have completely disappeared due to the Covid-19 pandemic and resulting economic collapse, economist Jared Bernstein noted that another “worrisome development” spotlighted by the new BLS report is “the shift to longer-term unemployment: the share of job losers unemployed for at least 15 weeks has gone from 8% in April to 60% in August.”
“In sum, the failure of the Trump administration to control the virus has led to a slower pace of job gains and, while the jobless rate fell significantly last month, it is still in recessionary territory and more job seekers are at risk of longer-term unemployment,” wrote Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “Importantly, note that this shift is occurring as Congress, particularly Senate Republicans, has dropped the ball on further fiscal relief.”
“Mitch McConnell and the do-nothing Republican Senate refuse to help the working class. Pathetic.”
—Sen. Bernie Sanders
As Common Dreams reported Thursday, Senate Republicans are preparing to vote as soon as next week on a “skinny” coronavirus relief package that would provide a $300-per-week federal unemployment supplement—just half of the $600 weekly payment the GOP allowed to expire in July—as well as additional funding measures that Democratic lawmakers decried as woefully inadequate.
In a Dear Colleague letter (pdf) on Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) slammed the GOP proposal as an attempt “to ‘check the box’ and give the appearance of action rather than actually meet the truly profound needs of the American people.”
“With no money for rental assistance, no money for nutrition assistance, and no money for state and local services, the census, or safe elections,” wrote Schumer, “Senate Republicans would be making another unacceptable and ineffective attempt at providing relief.”
The Washington Post‘s Jeff Stein reported Friday that the decline in the unemployment rate “emboldens voices in White House saying more stimulus is unnecessary,” even as economists warn that failing to provide additional relief funds—including substantial aid to cash-strapped state and local governments—could have catastrophic economic consequences in the near future.
Despite several recent attempts to jumpstart negotiations, Covid-19 relief talks between the White House, Schumer, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) have been stalled for weeks as tens of millions of Americans attempt to meet basic needs with drastically reduced incomes.
“Nearly 30 million Americans are going hungry,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tweeted Friday. “Meanwhile, three members of the Walton family grew their wealth by $3.7 billion in a single day. Mitch McConnell and the do-nothing Republican Senate refuse to help the working class. Pathetic.”
President Donald Trump on Friday wasted no time taking a victory lap after the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced the U.S. unemployment rate fell to 8.4% in August, but economists warned a closer look at the new economic figures reveals an alarming surge in permanent joblessness that could portend a prolonged recession if Congress and the White House fail to quickly approve additional relief.
“The failure of the Trump administration to control the virus has led to a slower pace of job gains and, while the jobless rate fell significantly last month, it is still in recessionary territory and more job seekers are at risk of longer-term unemployment.”
—Jared Bernstein, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
The number of Americans classified as permanently unemployed—as opposed to being on temporary furlough—grew by 534,000 in August even as the U.S. economy added 1.4 million jobs. On Twitter, Trump celebrated the latter data point as “great” and “much better than expected.”
The total number of workers who are permanently jobless is now 3.4 million, according to the bureau’s latest data. Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), wrote in a blog post Friday that contrary to the White House’s rosy spin, the new BLS report shows “the pain is nowhere near over for millions of workers and their families across the country.”
“At this point, the U.S. economy is still down 11.5 million jobs from where it was in February, before the pandemic hit,” wrote Gould. “With this kind of slowing in job growth, it will take years to return to the pre-pandemic labor market. And, without the $600 boost to unemployment insurance, jobs will return even more slowly than had policymakers stepped up and continued that vital support to workers and the economy.”
EPI’s Heidi Shierholz echoed Gould’s assessment, noting in a series of tweets that “the situation is dire” and “the labor market remains in crisis.”
On top of the growing number of Americans whose jobs have completely disappeared due to the Covid-19 pandemic and resulting economic collapse, economist Jared Bernstein noted that another “worrisome development” spotlighted by the new BLS report is “the shift to longer-term unemployment: the share of job losers unemployed for at least 15 weeks has gone from 8% in April to 60% in August.”
“In sum, the failure of the Trump administration to control the virus has led to a slower pace of job gains and, while the jobless rate fell significantly last month, it is still in recessionary territory and more job seekers are at risk of longer-term unemployment,” wrote Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “Importantly, note that this shift is occurring as Congress, particularly Senate Republicans, has dropped the ball on further fiscal relief.”
“Mitch McConnell and the do-nothing Republican Senate refuse to help the working class. Pathetic.”
—Sen. Bernie Sanders
As Common Dreams reported Thursday, Senate Republicans are preparing to vote as soon as next week on a “skinny” coronavirus relief package that would provide a $300-per-week federal unemployment supplement—just half of the $600 weekly payment the GOP allowed to expire in July—as well as additional funding measures that Democratic lawmakers decried as woefully inadequate.
In a Dear Colleague letter (pdf) on Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) slammed the GOP proposal as an attempt “to ‘check the box’ and give the appearance of action rather than actually meet the truly profound needs of the American people.”
“With no money for rental assistance, no money for nutrition assistance, and no money for state and local services, the census, or safe elections,” wrote Schumer, “Senate Republicans would be making another unacceptable and ineffective attempt at providing relief.”
The Washington Post‘s Jeff Stein reported Friday that the decline in the unemployment rate “emboldens voices in White House saying more stimulus is unnecessary,” even as economists warn that failing to provide additional relief funds—including substantial aid to cash-strapped state and local governments—could have catastrophic economic consequences in the near future.
Despite several recent attempts to jumpstart negotiations, Covid-19 relief talks between the White House, Schumer, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) have been stalled for weeks as tens of millions of Americans attempt to meet basic needs with drastically reduced incomes.
“Nearly 30 million Americans are going hungry,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tweeted Friday. “Meanwhile, three members of the Walton family grew their wealth by $3.7 billion in a single day. Mitch McConnell and the do-nothing Republican Senate refuse to help the working class. Pathetic.”
payback!!!
‘Wage theft’: Treasury signals millions of workers will earn less in 2021 under Trump’s payroll tax deferral
Julia Conley / Common Dreams - alternet
August 30, 2020
Days after the payroll processor for the federal government—one of the nation’s largest employers—announced it would implement President Donald Trump’s plan to defer payroll taxes for the rest of 2020, the U.S. Treasury Department indicated that employers will be responsible for paying the deferred taxes next year.
The plan is scheduled to go into effect September 1, and companies that take part will be required to collect the taxes their employees owe from the last four months of this year at the beginning of 2021—after the general election, which Trump hopes to win with claims that he’s strengthened the economy and helped workers.
The Friday announcement from the Treasury Department could mean that millions of workers will see smaller paychecks and larger tax bills in 2021, the Washington Post reported.
The news bolstered the argument made last week by employers including automakers, retail companies, and restaurants, who called the plan “unworkable” and signaled that many will decline to implement the tax deferral.
“We are concerned that many critical questions remain unanswered, making implementation a continuing challenge,” Caroline Harris, vice president of tax policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement Friday. The Chamber, which frequently endorses pro-business, anti-worker candidates and legislation, joined the employers in raising concerns about the plan last week.
The plan has been condemned from the left as well, with progressives raising alarm that Trump ultimately plans to “terminate” the payroll tax, which funds Social Security and Medicare, as he’s threatened to do if he wins reelection.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), who represents more federal workers than any other member of Congress, slammed the president’s plan as a pre-election “gimmick” meant to “give the appearance of action as the White House continues to stall negotiations for a real stimulus package.”
“The Trump administration’s plan to initiate payroll tax deferrals for civil servants treats the federal workforce as a guinea pig for a bad policy that businesses already rejected as ‘unworkable,'” Beyer said in a statement. “This payroll tax deferral does not really put money in workers’ pockets, it simply sets up the members of the federal workforce who can least afford it for a big tax bill that many will not expect. Like Donald Trump’s other economic executive orders, this will not provide actual relief to workers.”
Julie Oliver, a Medicare for All advocate who is running for Congress in Texas’s 25th congressional district, also warned companies against implementing the payroll tax deferral.
“Trump’s payroll tax ‘deferral’ is a form of wage theft,” tweeted Oliver.
The plan is scheduled to go into effect September 1, and companies that take part will be required to collect the taxes their employees owe from the last four months of this year at the beginning of 2021—after the general election, which Trump hopes to win with claims that he’s strengthened the economy and helped workers.
The Friday announcement from the Treasury Department could mean that millions of workers will see smaller paychecks and larger tax bills in 2021, the Washington Post reported.
The news bolstered the argument made last week by employers including automakers, retail companies, and restaurants, who called the plan “unworkable” and signaled that many will decline to implement the tax deferral.
“We are concerned that many critical questions remain unanswered, making implementation a continuing challenge,” Caroline Harris, vice president of tax policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement Friday. The Chamber, which frequently endorses pro-business, anti-worker candidates and legislation, joined the employers in raising concerns about the plan last week.
The plan has been condemned from the left as well, with progressives raising alarm that Trump ultimately plans to “terminate” the payroll tax, which funds Social Security and Medicare, as he’s threatened to do if he wins reelection.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), who represents more federal workers than any other member of Congress, slammed the president’s plan as a pre-election “gimmick” meant to “give the appearance of action as the White House continues to stall negotiations for a real stimulus package.”
“The Trump administration’s plan to initiate payroll tax deferrals for civil servants treats the federal workforce as a guinea pig for a bad policy that businesses already rejected as ‘unworkable,'” Beyer said in a statement. “This payroll tax deferral does not really put money in workers’ pockets, it simply sets up the members of the federal workforce who can least afford it for a big tax bill that many will not expect. Like Donald Trump’s other economic executive orders, this will not provide actual relief to workers.”
Julie Oliver, a Medicare for All advocate who is running for Congress in Texas’s 25th congressional district, also warned companies against implementing the payroll tax deferral.
“Trump’s payroll tax ‘deferral’ is a form of wage theft,” tweeted Oliver.
Payroll tax cut imperils Social Security
Social Security fund would run out of money in 3 years if Trump eliminates payroll tax: SSA analysis
Democrats say Trump's vow would “completely decimate Social Security" as advisers try to walk back his promise
IGOR DERYSH - salon
AUGUST 29, 2020 2:00PM (UTC)
President Donald Trump claimed he would eliminate the payroll tax if he is reelected — but an analysis by the Social Security Administration found that such a move would cause the Social Security Trust Fund to run out of money by 2023.
Trump recently signed a memorandum that would temporarily stop the collection of payroll taxes, which is a 12.4% tax split evenly between employees and employers that funds the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. Only Congress can cut taxes, however, so the payroll tax savings would still have to be repaid by next year's tax deadline — though Trump said he would push to forgive the deferred taxes if he is reelected.
Trump went a step further earlier this month, vowing not just to forgive this year's payroll tax but eliminate it entirely.
"If I'm victorious on November 3rd, I plan to forgive these taxes and make permanent cuts to the payroll tax. I'm going to make them all permanent," he said during a news conference at his Bedminster, N.J. golf course. "…In other words, I'll extend beyond the end of the year and terminate the tax. And so we'll see what happens."
The claim prompted alarm on Capitol Hill. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., sent a letter to the Social Security Administration questioning how permanently eliminating the tax and making no other changes would impact the viability of the Social Security Trust Fund.
"While we would not be supportive of this hypothetical legislation, we would like to be aware of its potential implications," they wrote.
Stephen Goss, the chief actuary at the Social Security Administration, told the senators in his response that the hypothetical cut would cause the Social Security Disability Insurance Trust Fund to be depleted by mid-2021 and the Social Security Trust Fund reserves "would become permanently depleted by the middle of calendar year 2023, with no ability to pay… benefits thereafter."
Goss noted that past temporary payroll tax reductions did not affect the trust fund reserves because the Treasury Department authorized automatic transfers from its General Fund, which Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin vowed to do for the deferred taxes, but it is unlikely to extend beyond that.
If the payroll tax is eliminated, Congress would have to replace the funds with about $1 trillion in tax increases. Social Security benefits for retired workers average about $1,500 per month, and "these amounts could be completely eliminated" without alternative sources of funding, Forbes reported.
"While benefits scheduled in the law… are obligations, such obligations can only be met to the extent that asset reserves are available," Goss wrote.
Democrats cited the analysis to warn that Trump's promise would "completely decimate Social Security."
"The Social Security Administration has made it clear: eliminating the payroll tax, as Trump has proposed, would bankrupt Social Security and prevent seniors and people with disabilities from receiving the benefits they have earned," Sanders said in a statement. "Defunding Social Security may make sense to the billionaires at President Trump's country club, but it makes zero sense to me. Instead of dismantling Social Security, we must expand it so that every senior can retire with the dignity they deserve."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., vowed to oppose any attempt to eliminate the payroll tax.
"The new analysis today shows the swift potential devastation of President Trump's reckless call to 'terminate' the payroll tax: shattering the sacred promise of Social Security," she said in a statement.
Advocacy groups sounded the alarm as well.
"If Donald Trump is re-elected, Social Security will cease to exist before the end of his second term," Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, told CNBC in response to the analysis.
Trump's advisers have attempted to walk back his comments.
"There is no plan to eliminate Social Security taxes," top White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told reporters at the White House. "I don't know where that idea came from. It's not true."
"When he referred to 'permanent,' I think what he was saying is that the deferral of the payroll tax to the end of the year will be made permanent," he told CNN. "It will be forgiven. The tax is not going to go away."
"That isn't what the president said at all," host Dana Bash responded. "He said the opposite."
Social Security advocates are alarmed at the deferral as well, noting that using the Treasury's General Fund undermines how the program is supposed to work.
"They're not a handout. They're not an entitlement," Dan Adcock, the director of government relations and policy at the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, told CNBC. "That's why even under those circumstances we are so strongly opposed to this."
It is highly unlikely that Congress would entertain the idea of undermining the Social Security program given that even Republicans opposed Trump's repeated calls to cut the payroll tax temporarily amid the pandemic. "A majority of Senate Republicans didn't want a payroll tax cut," NBC News reported last month.
Analyses have found that two-thirds of the benefits of a payroll tax cut would go to the richest 20% of Americans while the poorest 20% of Americans would get just 2% of the benefits. It would do nothing to help the tens of millions of people out of work.
Trump called for the payroll tax deferral after negotiations with Democrats broke down, but the fate of that deferral is still up in the air.
The memorandum called for the Treasury Department to start deferring taxes starting on September 1, but that appears highly unlikely since the department has not produced guidelines for employers or payroll processors to defer the taxes.
"The deferral isn't going to be in place for September 1st," Pete Isberg, president of the National Payroll Reporting Consortium, the payroll industry's trade association, told The Washington Post.
Because the deferral is voluntary, the language in the memorandum "raises the prospect that you have to get information to 100 million people," Isberg said, and then ensure the tax is only deferred for employees who want it.
About 30 industry groups, led by the US Chamber of Commerce, called the proposal potentially "unworkable."
"Therefore, many of our members will likely decline to implement deferral, choosing instead to continue to withhold and remit to the government the payroll taxes required by law," the groups said in a letter to Congress and the White House.
The groups said that the deferral would be "unfair to employees to make a decision that would force a big tax bill on them next year."
"We hope Congress and the Administration come together on a path that supports workers instead of burdening hard-working Americans with a large tax bill next year," the letter said.
Experts say that Trump's order is unlikely to have much impact as a result.
"There's a lot of unresolved questions about the implementation of this deferral, [and] some of the unresolved questions are quite basic," Garrett Watson, a senior policy analyst at the Tax Foundation, told NBC News. "When would the deferred tax be owed back? There isn't a date specified. There are many options here that have to be clarified. The other big thing that's hanging over a lot of this is whether or not this deferral will turn into a meaningful reduction in tax liability owed."
Companies and employees that choose to opt for the deferral could have big headaches come tax time next year.
"You don't want to be in a position where you have to withhold months worth of payroll taxes from employees all at once," Eric Toder, the co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, told NBC. "That would create a horrible problem for people."
Trump recently signed a memorandum that would temporarily stop the collection of payroll taxes, which is a 12.4% tax split evenly between employees and employers that funds the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. Only Congress can cut taxes, however, so the payroll tax savings would still have to be repaid by next year's tax deadline — though Trump said he would push to forgive the deferred taxes if he is reelected.
Trump went a step further earlier this month, vowing not just to forgive this year's payroll tax but eliminate it entirely.
"If I'm victorious on November 3rd, I plan to forgive these taxes and make permanent cuts to the payroll tax. I'm going to make them all permanent," he said during a news conference at his Bedminster, N.J. golf course. "…In other words, I'll extend beyond the end of the year and terminate the tax. And so we'll see what happens."
The claim prompted alarm on Capitol Hill. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., sent a letter to the Social Security Administration questioning how permanently eliminating the tax and making no other changes would impact the viability of the Social Security Trust Fund.
"While we would not be supportive of this hypothetical legislation, we would like to be aware of its potential implications," they wrote.
Stephen Goss, the chief actuary at the Social Security Administration, told the senators in his response that the hypothetical cut would cause the Social Security Disability Insurance Trust Fund to be depleted by mid-2021 and the Social Security Trust Fund reserves "would become permanently depleted by the middle of calendar year 2023, with no ability to pay… benefits thereafter."
Goss noted that past temporary payroll tax reductions did not affect the trust fund reserves because the Treasury Department authorized automatic transfers from its General Fund, which Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin vowed to do for the deferred taxes, but it is unlikely to extend beyond that.
If the payroll tax is eliminated, Congress would have to replace the funds with about $1 trillion in tax increases. Social Security benefits for retired workers average about $1,500 per month, and "these amounts could be completely eliminated" without alternative sources of funding, Forbes reported.
"While benefits scheduled in the law… are obligations, such obligations can only be met to the extent that asset reserves are available," Goss wrote.
Democrats cited the analysis to warn that Trump's promise would "completely decimate Social Security."
"The Social Security Administration has made it clear: eliminating the payroll tax, as Trump has proposed, would bankrupt Social Security and prevent seniors and people with disabilities from receiving the benefits they have earned," Sanders said in a statement. "Defunding Social Security may make sense to the billionaires at President Trump's country club, but it makes zero sense to me. Instead of dismantling Social Security, we must expand it so that every senior can retire with the dignity they deserve."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., vowed to oppose any attempt to eliminate the payroll tax.
"The new analysis today shows the swift potential devastation of President Trump's reckless call to 'terminate' the payroll tax: shattering the sacred promise of Social Security," she said in a statement.
Advocacy groups sounded the alarm as well.
"If Donald Trump is re-elected, Social Security will cease to exist before the end of his second term," Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, told CNBC in response to the analysis.
Trump's advisers have attempted to walk back his comments.
"There is no plan to eliminate Social Security taxes," top White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told reporters at the White House. "I don't know where that idea came from. It's not true."
"When he referred to 'permanent,' I think what he was saying is that the deferral of the payroll tax to the end of the year will be made permanent," he told CNN. "It will be forgiven. The tax is not going to go away."
"That isn't what the president said at all," host Dana Bash responded. "He said the opposite."
Social Security advocates are alarmed at the deferral as well, noting that using the Treasury's General Fund undermines how the program is supposed to work.
"They're not a handout. They're not an entitlement," Dan Adcock, the director of government relations and policy at the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, told CNBC. "That's why even under those circumstances we are so strongly opposed to this."
It is highly unlikely that Congress would entertain the idea of undermining the Social Security program given that even Republicans opposed Trump's repeated calls to cut the payroll tax temporarily amid the pandemic. "A majority of Senate Republicans didn't want a payroll tax cut," NBC News reported last month.
Analyses have found that two-thirds of the benefits of a payroll tax cut would go to the richest 20% of Americans while the poorest 20% of Americans would get just 2% of the benefits. It would do nothing to help the tens of millions of people out of work.
Trump called for the payroll tax deferral after negotiations with Democrats broke down, but the fate of that deferral is still up in the air.
The memorandum called for the Treasury Department to start deferring taxes starting on September 1, but that appears highly unlikely since the department has not produced guidelines for employers or payroll processors to defer the taxes.
"The deferral isn't going to be in place for September 1st," Pete Isberg, president of the National Payroll Reporting Consortium, the payroll industry's trade association, told The Washington Post.
Because the deferral is voluntary, the language in the memorandum "raises the prospect that you have to get information to 100 million people," Isberg said, and then ensure the tax is only deferred for employees who want it.
About 30 industry groups, led by the US Chamber of Commerce, called the proposal potentially "unworkable."
"Therefore, many of our members will likely decline to implement deferral, choosing instead to continue to withhold and remit to the government the payroll taxes required by law," the groups said in a letter to Congress and the White House.
The groups said that the deferral would be "unfair to employees to make a decision that would force a big tax bill on them next year."
"We hope Congress and the Administration come together on a path that supports workers instead of burdening hard-working Americans with a large tax bill next year," the letter said.
Experts say that Trump's order is unlikely to have much impact as a result.
"There's a lot of unresolved questions about the implementation of this deferral, [and] some of the unresolved questions are quite basic," Garrett Watson, a senior policy analyst at the Tax Foundation, told NBC News. "When would the deferred tax be owed back? There isn't a date specified. There are many options here that have to be clarified. The other big thing that's hanging over a lot of this is whether or not this deferral will turn into a meaningful reduction in tax liability owed."
Companies and employees that choose to opt for the deferral could have big headaches come tax time next year.
"You don't want to be in a position where you have to withhold months worth of payroll taxes from employees all at once," Eric Toder, the co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, told NBC. "That would create a horrible problem for people."
Michigan steelworkers slam Trump for tariffs that cost them their jobs
August 25, 2020
By Tom Boggioni - RAW STORY
In interviews with MSNBC, Michigan steelworkers called out Donald Trump for his failure to come through with jobs after making big promises during campaign swings over three years ago.
In clips shared by MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle, who explained that the rise in the stock market is having little impact on the average Americans’ life, NBC correspondent Heidi Przybyla was seen interviewing workers — all currently laid-off — about job availability particularly in light of the president’s tariff war with China.
“I sat down yesterday with a few of the recently laid-off steelworkers who told me that, you know, all of those pledges from 2016 about how Trump was going to bring back their lifestyle, bring back these good-paying jobs by cracking down on trade and tariffs — all of that didn’t work out. It did nothing to save their communities,” the correspondent explained.
“It didn’t seem like any of this was coming, it just was a total surprise,” lamented steelworker John Gies. “My son is still working there, and he can’t believe that it’s gone this direction.”
“If you get in a car accident, that cage, we make that steel,” explained Mike Miller. “We make that family safe in there and that’s the pride these guys and women have when they’re making this steel. And then all of a sudden, you know that rug has been pulled out from underneath you.”
Unemployed worker Steve Bernard was more pointed in his criticism of the president.
‘”He came to this area and said if you elect me you’ll see two and a half times, you’ll see the steel industry, you guys will be fighting off orders,” Bernard recalled. ” That’s what he said. Check it out: three years later, where are we now? These guys are out of work.”
In clips shared by MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle, who explained that the rise in the stock market is having little impact on the average Americans’ life, NBC correspondent Heidi Przybyla was seen interviewing workers — all currently laid-off — about job availability particularly in light of the president’s tariff war with China.
“I sat down yesterday with a few of the recently laid-off steelworkers who told me that, you know, all of those pledges from 2016 about how Trump was going to bring back their lifestyle, bring back these good-paying jobs by cracking down on trade and tariffs — all of that didn’t work out. It did nothing to save their communities,” the correspondent explained.
“It didn’t seem like any of this was coming, it just was a total surprise,” lamented steelworker John Gies. “My son is still working there, and he can’t believe that it’s gone this direction.”
“If you get in a car accident, that cage, we make that steel,” explained Mike Miller. “We make that family safe in there and that’s the pride these guys and women have when they’re making this steel. And then all of a sudden, you know that rug has been pulled out from underneath you.”
Unemployed worker Steve Bernard was more pointed in his criticism of the president.
‘”He came to this area and said if you elect me you’ll see two and a half times, you’ll see the steel industry, you guys will be fighting off orders,” Bernard recalled. ” That’s what he said. Check it out: three years later, where are we now? These guys are out of work.”
Florida man who thought pandemic was ‘hysteria’ loses his wife to COVID-19
August 24, 2020
By Brad Reed - raw story
A Florida resident who at one time blew off the novel coronavirus as “hysteria” is now mourning the loss of his wife, who died from the disease this month.
BBC News reports that 46-year-old Florida resident Erin Hitchens has passed away after spending the past several months in a hospital on ventilator.
Erin and her husband, Brian Hitchens, both contracted the disease in May after Hitchens said he blew off wearing a mask and social distancing because he didn’t believe the virus was a real threat. While Hitchens eventually recovered from the disease, his wife remained in intensive care for several more months before passing away.
“We thought the government was using it to distract us, or it was to do with 5G,” he tells BBC News.
Hitchens also tells BBC News that at least his wife is “no longer suffering, but in peace.”
Hitchens in a Facebook post this past May admitted that he regretted not taking the virus seriously.
“This thing is nothing to be messed with please listen to the authorities and heed the advice of the experts,” he wrote. “Looking back I should have wore a mask in the beginning but I didn’t and perhaps I’m paying the price for it now but I know that if it was me that gave it to my wife I know that she forgives me and I know that God forgives me.”
BBC News reports that 46-year-old Florida resident Erin Hitchens has passed away after spending the past several months in a hospital on ventilator.
Erin and her husband, Brian Hitchens, both contracted the disease in May after Hitchens said he blew off wearing a mask and social distancing because he didn’t believe the virus was a real threat. While Hitchens eventually recovered from the disease, his wife remained in intensive care for several more months before passing away.
“We thought the government was using it to distract us, or it was to do with 5G,” he tells BBC News.
Hitchens also tells BBC News that at least his wife is “no longer suffering, but in peace.”
Hitchens in a Facebook post this past May admitted that he regretted not taking the virus seriously.
“This thing is nothing to be messed with please listen to the authorities and heed the advice of the experts,” he wrote. “Looking back I should have wore a mask in the beginning but I didn’t and perhaps I’m paying the price for it now but I know that if it was me that gave it to my wife I know that she forgives me and I know that God forgives me.”
Memo exposes Trump’s unemployment insurance plan as a farce
Matthew Rozsa / Salon - alternet
August 19, 2020
Though the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has approved funding which will allow seven states to provide a $300 weekly supplement to existing unemployment benefits — a policy implemented by President Donald Trump through an executive order earlier this month — a recent memo from the same agency implies that states are only guaranteed three weeks of federal funding for the important economy-rescuing subsidy.
“FEMA will use data from the Department of Labor, as well as state data received on applications to project the overall funding distributions,” FEMA explained in a recent memo. “Approved grant applicants will receive an initial obligation of three weeks of needed funding. Additional disbursements will be made on a weekly basis in order to ensure that funding remains available for the states who apply for the grant assistance.”
The CARES Act, which provided $600 per week of federal unemployment benefits, expired in July, and Trump’s executive order was intended as a partial extension of the relief provided in that bill. Trump’s new executive order was reported as creating a $400-a-week supplement, but the federal government is responsible for only $300 of that supplemental payment. The remaining $100 per week is covered by states themselves. FEMA is overseeing the disbursement of the supplemental funds.
This means that states which receive federal funding for the new unemployment subsidy are only guaranteed that aid for three weeks. After that, the federal government will decide each week whether to continue providing assistance to states that have already received benefits.
So far the federal government has approved funding for seven states including Colorado, Louisiana, New Mexico, Arizona, Iowa, Missouri and Utah. An eighth state, South Dakota, refused to apply for assistance.
During an appearance on CNBC, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin stated, “I would expect that most of the states qualify… so I hope we see the majority of the states” ultimately receive assistance. Last month Mnuchin said that Trump’s coronavirus relief plan would be predicated on the assumption that it should provide “approximately 70 percent wage replacement.”
There are longstanding concerns that this premise, which seems to have played a role in deciding how much Trump would provide in weekly unemployment benefits through his executive orders earlier this month, underestimates how badly millions of Americans are suffering as a result of the pandemic-induced recession.
Dr. Betsey Stevenson, an economist at the University of Michigan, told Salon by email earlier this month that the government’s spending and stimulus bills are “a far cry from what is needed to stave off hardship and poverty. . . . We currently have widespread unemployment, it is the reason why additional stimulus is so necessary.”
Dr. Austan Goolsbee, who served on President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, told Salon by email in July that “cutting payments to individuals at a moment when the virus is resurgent and the unemployment rate is in double digits will threaten the recovery.”
Economists have also anticipated that the unemployment benefits may not last long enough. As American University macroeconomist Dr. Gabriel Mathy told Salon earlier this month, “the $400 unemployment extension is less than the $600 before [from the CARES Act], and it requires a 25% ($100) match from states so it may not even happen given how tight state budgets are.”
“FEMA will use data from the Department of Labor, as well as state data received on applications to project the overall funding distributions,” FEMA explained in a recent memo. “Approved grant applicants will receive an initial obligation of three weeks of needed funding. Additional disbursements will be made on a weekly basis in order to ensure that funding remains available for the states who apply for the grant assistance.”
The CARES Act, which provided $600 per week of federal unemployment benefits, expired in July, and Trump’s executive order was intended as a partial extension of the relief provided in that bill. Trump’s new executive order was reported as creating a $400-a-week supplement, but the federal government is responsible for only $300 of that supplemental payment. The remaining $100 per week is covered by states themselves. FEMA is overseeing the disbursement of the supplemental funds.
This means that states which receive federal funding for the new unemployment subsidy are only guaranteed that aid for three weeks. After that, the federal government will decide each week whether to continue providing assistance to states that have already received benefits.
So far the federal government has approved funding for seven states including Colorado, Louisiana, New Mexico, Arizona, Iowa, Missouri and Utah. An eighth state, South Dakota, refused to apply for assistance.
During an appearance on CNBC, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin stated, “I would expect that most of the states qualify… so I hope we see the majority of the states” ultimately receive assistance. Last month Mnuchin said that Trump’s coronavirus relief plan would be predicated on the assumption that it should provide “approximately 70 percent wage replacement.”
There are longstanding concerns that this premise, which seems to have played a role in deciding how much Trump would provide in weekly unemployment benefits through his executive orders earlier this month, underestimates how badly millions of Americans are suffering as a result of the pandemic-induced recession.
Dr. Betsey Stevenson, an economist at the University of Michigan, told Salon by email earlier this month that the government’s spending and stimulus bills are “a far cry from what is needed to stave off hardship and poverty. . . . We currently have widespread unemployment, it is the reason why additional stimulus is so necessary.”
Dr. Austan Goolsbee, who served on President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, told Salon by email in July that “cutting payments to individuals at a moment when the virus is resurgent and the unemployment rate is in double digits will threaten the recovery.”
Economists have also anticipated that the unemployment benefits may not last long enough. As American University macroeconomist Dr. Gabriel Mathy told Salon earlier this month, “the $400 unemployment extension is less than the $600 before [from the CARES Act], and it requires a 25% ($100) match from states so it may not even happen given how tight state budgets are.”
Honoring the Stupid!!!
how stupid are these people???
Trump dropped into Iowa — and didn't even try to understand the devastation
The climate crisis is hitting the heartland hard — but Republicans just want to force our kids into COVID schools
JEFF BIGGERS - salon
AUGUST 19, 2020 10:00AM (UTC)
IOWA CITY, Iowa — Amid the rubble of uprooted trees and fallen power lines, my teenage son set up his climate strike protest last Friday for the 79th consecutive week, holding up a wobbly handmade sign: "Wake up, Iowa. Climate action plan now."
We were still without electricity or internet on Friday morning, four days into riding out the aftermath of the hurricane-level "derecho" storm that devastated a 770-mile swath of the heartland from South Dakota to Ohio, and left a million residents without power, along with widespread damage.
It also left an estimated 40% of Iowa's corn crop in ruins, flattening millions of acres and the state's key economic generator in a matter of minutes.
We were the lucky ones. In his 30-minute briefing at an Iowa airport on Tuesday, President Trump didn't bother to tour the storm damage in Cedar Rapids, where tens of thousands of residents have remained without power, water and shelter, camping in tents along the streets as extreme weather refugees in an undeniable humanitarian crisis.
This includes African and Southeast Asian immigrants in Cedar Rapids who have been displaced from their own countries as climate refugees.
Despite Trump's Twitter claim that he has fully signed off on Iowa's presidential disaster relief request for nearly $4 billion on Monday, the White House has omitted any individual assistance for homeowners, thousands of whom took damage to their homes, according to FEMA officials.
Only days away from starting school in one of only two states in the union without a mask requirement, the image of my son standing alone on the side of a battered street was not only a reminder of the precariousness of our times beyond our current crisis.
Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Trump-loving Republican, inexplicably waited an entire week after the derecho leveled mile after mile of the state to formally request presidential disaster relief. That served as a stark reminder of the state's and the nation's blundering inaction on the dual crises of COVID-19 and climate change facing my son's generation.
---
That may sound hyperbolic, but as teenagers in a family that has personally experienced the pandemic, as well as historic flooding, fires and catastrophic storms within their brief lifetimes, my kids recognize that they are living in age of potential environmental collapse — and it's terrifying.
Their response, as climate strikers, is incorrigibly defiant: School can wait — most schools in Cedar Rapids have been severely damaged. Adults first need to deal with the COVID and climate crises.
"We teenagers and children shouldn't have to take the responsibility," Thunberg told our town last fall, when she joined my son's climate strike in Iowa City. "But right now the world leaders keep acting like children and somebody needs to be the adult in the room."
---
In an agricultural state that still imports 90% of its food, we need to visit farms and learn about regenerative agriculture initiatives to save our soil and protect our quality, and even restore native prairies — 99% of which have been destroyed in Iowa.
With the inevitable delay and suspension of classes in schools across the nation this fall, why not have our children and schools focus on a curriculum of climate change from the growing pools of resources from scientists, climate experts, journalists, storytellers and artists, and the experiences of those in frontline communities?
Climate scientists are begging to be heard. With the Big Ten football season canceled, perhaps we can finally listen to them with the magnitude they deserve, as if a collapsing ice sheet were as important as watching grown men chase a pigskin in a stadium.
How much more outrageous is this proposal than sending our kids into incubators and chaotic hallways of the COVID virus?
How more irrational is this proposal than sending our kids to school at all, as the climate crisis unfolds before their eyes?
As celebrated theorist Buckminister Fuller concluded: "You never change things by fighting against the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete."
Or, as my son says on his street corner every week, climate strike sign in hand: Wake up, Iowa.
We were still without electricity or internet on Friday morning, four days into riding out the aftermath of the hurricane-level "derecho" storm that devastated a 770-mile swath of the heartland from South Dakota to Ohio, and left a million residents without power, along with widespread damage.
It also left an estimated 40% of Iowa's corn crop in ruins, flattening millions of acres and the state's key economic generator in a matter of minutes.
We were the lucky ones. In his 30-minute briefing at an Iowa airport on Tuesday, President Trump didn't bother to tour the storm damage in Cedar Rapids, where tens of thousands of residents have remained without power, water and shelter, camping in tents along the streets as extreme weather refugees in an undeniable humanitarian crisis.
This includes African and Southeast Asian immigrants in Cedar Rapids who have been displaced from their own countries as climate refugees.
Despite Trump's Twitter claim that he has fully signed off on Iowa's presidential disaster relief request for nearly $4 billion on Monday, the White House has omitted any individual assistance for homeowners, thousands of whom took damage to their homes, according to FEMA officials.
Only days away from starting school in one of only two states in the union without a mask requirement, the image of my son standing alone on the side of a battered street was not only a reminder of the precariousness of our times beyond our current crisis.
Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Trump-loving Republican, inexplicably waited an entire week after the derecho leveled mile after mile of the state to formally request presidential disaster relief. That served as a stark reminder of the state's and the nation's blundering inaction on the dual crises of COVID-19 and climate change facing my son's generation.
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That may sound hyperbolic, but as teenagers in a family that has personally experienced the pandemic, as well as historic flooding, fires and catastrophic storms within their brief lifetimes, my kids recognize that they are living in age of potential environmental collapse — and it's terrifying.
Their response, as climate strikers, is incorrigibly defiant: School can wait — most schools in Cedar Rapids have been severely damaged. Adults first need to deal with the COVID and climate crises.
"We teenagers and children shouldn't have to take the responsibility," Thunberg told our town last fall, when she joined my son's climate strike in Iowa City. "But right now the world leaders keep acting like children and somebody needs to be the adult in the room."
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In an agricultural state that still imports 90% of its food, we need to visit farms and learn about regenerative agriculture initiatives to save our soil and protect our quality, and even restore native prairies — 99% of which have been destroyed in Iowa.
With the inevitable delay and suspension of classes in schools across the nation this fall, why not have our children and schools focus on a curriculum of climate change from the growing pools of resources from scientists, climate experts, journalists, storytellers and artists, and the experiences of those in frontline communities?
Climate scientists are begging to be heard. With the Big Ten football season canceled, perhaps we can finally listen to them with the magnitude they deserve, as if a collapsing ice sheet were as important as watching grown men chase a pigskin in a stadium.
How much more outrageous is this proposal than sending our kids into incubators and chaotic hallways of the COVID virus?
How more irrational is this proposal than sending our kids to school at all, as the climate crisis unfolds before their eyes?
As celebrated theorist Buckminister Fuller concluded: "You never change things by fighting against the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete."
Or, as my son says on his street corner every week, climate strike sign in hand: Wake up, Iowa.
Here’s how Trump is driving millions of American seniors into poverty
By David Cay Johnston, DCReport @ RawStory
August 10, 2020
Donald Trump’s inept handling of the coronavirus pandemic is condemning millions of older Americans to get by on much smaller incomes and forcing many into permanent poverty, a new study shows.
These people can anticipate shorter lives with less robust health, while taxpayers will bear the burden of care for many years of increased welfare benefits and subsidies.
The pandemic forced 2.9 million Americans ages 55 to 70 to leave the workforce in just March through June, a study by the Retirement Equity Lab at The New School found.
That’s 50% more than the 1.9 million older workers forced into retirement in the first three months of the Great Recession in 2007. Viewed in percentage terms, 7% of older workers left the labor force in recent months, compared with 4.7% in the Great Recession
By the end of September, 4 million older workers could be displaced permanently from the job market, the study projects. And if America faces a prolonged recession because of the coronavirus, which is a distinct prospect, that number would continue growing into next year.
The one thing we know is that Donald Trump lacks the deep knowledge, critical thinking skills, emotional maturity and ability to separate sound advice from nonsense that are needed in a crisis.
Those forced out of work are disproportionately minorities and women, highlighting the structural racism and misogyny in America’s labor and retirement systems.
Months of denial, crazy ideas and incompetence by the Trump administration have resulted in America having by far the highest infection rate among wealthy nations.
Hundreds of Thousands Dead
There can be no doubt that Trump’s inaction, neglect, incompetence and corruption are largely responsible for America’s more than 160,000 deaths, a figure that may nearly double by Election Day on Nov. 3.
In the past month America recorded five times as many new infections than the combined populations of Australia, Canada, Europe (excluding Russia and Turkey), Japan and South Korea.
Those areas have twice as many people as America. That means our infection rate is 10 times that of all those areas combined. And deaths occur disproportionately among older Americans, which is prompting many teachers, nurses and others to leave the workforce rather than foolishly risk death.
In the December 2017 update of my biography The Making of Donald Trump, I predicted he would fail to act effectively in a pandemic.
“Sooner or later a crisis will arise,” I wrote, citing “a deadly virus hopscotching around the world on jetliners creating the kind of pandemic that killed Donald Trump’s grandfather a century ago. Whenever the big crisis comes the one thing we know is that Donald Trump lacks the deep knowledge, critical thinking skills, emotional maturity and ability to separate sound advice from nonsense that are needed in a crisis.”
Reduced Social Security Benefits
Social Security benefits are based on the 35 years of highest earnings out of 38 years. Being forced out of the labor market can mean fewer than 35 years or fewer years at higher pay. It also can force people to seek Social Security benefits at 62, normally the earliest eligible age, rather than collecting a larger benefit by waiting.
The maximum benefit this year at age 62 is $2,265, while someone who waits to collect at age 70 gets $3,790. The worker who waits until age 70 to collect — most likely white and well paid—gets $1.67 for every $1 the younger retiree collects.
Those figures massively overstate typical benefits because few workers qualify for the maximum. The average Social Security benefit last year was only $1,470 a month.
The older workers forced into retirement sooner than they wanted tend to labor in lower-paid occupations and those that expose them most to the risk of contracting COVID-19. Older executives and other office workers can work from home, while that option doesn’t exist for those in physical jobs from stocking grocery store shelves to driving buses.
This means that those involuntarily pushed out of the labor market are likely to depend on Social Security for most or all of their income in old age. These workers are unlikely to have pensions or significant retirement savings and are likely to still be paying off a mortgage, assuming they even own a home.
The impact of Social Security benefits is enormous. This year about 65 million Americans — retirees, widows and widowers, disabled people and orphans will collect $1 trillion. That’s a nickel on each dollar of Gross Domestic Product.
Racism, Too
There is also a strong institutionalized racist component in the reduced income disaster facing older Americans forced out of the labor market because Trump & Co. don’t know how to deal with the pandemic.
Because of the kinds of jobs they tend to hold, almost 30% of white people can telecommute while fewer than 20% of black people can.
Few low-wage workers can do their jobs from home. Only 9.2% of the bottom fourth of workers can work from home compared with 61.5% of those in the top quarter, an Economic Policy Institute study found.
Long after Trump is out of the White House taxpayers will be forced to shoulder much of the cost of these shortened working careers through more old-age welfare benefits, subsidizing housing and other costs.
There is a solution to this awful legacy — increasing Social Security benefits so the average benefit lifts older workers significantly above the poverty line.
Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, says this solution will do the trick if combined with other actions. “Americans are desperate. Those fortunate enough to have 401(k)s are depleting those savings. Those old enough to claim Social Security are doing so. But workers who claim early have their Social Security benefits reduced permanently, setting them up for destitution when they become octogenarians and have spent down their other assets,” Altman warned.
“Social Security’s modest benefits must be expanded, as the Democratic Party is proposing. As part of that expansion, those who claim early should face a smaller reduction.
“That is not only affordable; it will dramatically reduce poverty and increase economic security,” said Altman, co-author with Eric Kingson of Social Security Works, a book debunking myths about the program. In December they will be out with a new book on the widespread benefits of increasing Social Security benefits.
Demands for welfare and charitable services would fall; average lifespans rise; and, most important of all, show something Trump lacks — regard for human life.
These people can anticipate shorter lives with less robust health, while taxpayers will bear the burden of care for many years of increased welfare benefits and subsidies.
The pandemic forced 2.9 million Americans ages 55 to 70 to leave the workforce in just March through June, a study by the Retirement Equity Lab at The New School found.
That’s 50% more than the 1.9 million older workers forced into retirement in the first three months of the Great Recession in 2007. Viewed in percentage terms, 7% of older workers left the labor force in recent months, compared with 4.7% in the Great Recession
By the end of September, 4 million older workers could be displaced permanently from the job market, the study projects. And if America faces a prolonged recession because of the coronavirus, which is a distinct prospect, that number would continue growing into next year.
The one thing we know is that Donald Trump lacks the deep knowledge, critical thinking skills, emotional maturity and ability to separate sound advice from nonsense that are needed in a crisis.
Those forced out of work are disproportionately minorities and women, highlighting the structural racism and misogyny in America’s labor and retirement systems.
Months of denial, crazy ideas and incompetence by the Trump administration have resulted in America having by far the highest infection rate among wealthy nations.
Hundreds of Thousands Dead
There can be no doubt that Trump’s inaction, neglect, incompetence and corruption are largely responsible for America’s more than 160,000 deaths, a figure that may nearly double by Election Day on Nov. 3.
In the past month America recorded five times as many new infections than the combined populations of Australia, Canada, Europe (excluding Russia and Turkey), Japan and South Korea.
Those areas have twice as many people as America. That means our infection rate is 10 times that of all those areas combined. And deaths occur disproportionately among older Americans, which is prompting many teachers, nurses and others to leave the workforce rather than foolishly risk death.
In the December 2017 update of my biography The Making of Donald Trump, I predicted he would fail to act effectively in a pandemic.
“Sooner or later a crisis will arise,” I wrote, citing “a deadly virus hopscotching around the world on jetliners creating the kind of pandemic that killed Donald Trump’s grandfather a century ago. Whenever the big crisis comes the one thing we know is that Donald Trump lacks the deep knowledge, critical thinking skills, emotional maturity and ability to separate sound advice from nonsense that are needed in a crisis.”
Reduced Social Security Benefits
Social Security benefits are based on the 35 years of highest earnings out of 38 years. Being forced out of the labor market can mean fewer than 35 years or fewer years at higher pay. It also can force people to seek Social Security benefits at 62, normally the earliest eligible age, rather than collecting a larger benefit by waiting.
The maximum benefit this year at age 62 is $2,265, while someone who waits to collect at age 70 gets $3,790. The worker who waits until age 70 to collect — most likely white and well paid—gets $1.67 for every $1 the younger retiree collects.
Those figures massively overstate typical benefits because few workers qualify for the maximum. The average Social Security benefit last year was only $1,470 a month.
The older workers forced into retirement sooner than they wanted tend to labor in lower-paid occupations and those that expose them most to the risk of contracting COVID-19. Older executives and other office workers can work from home, while that option doesn’t exist for those in physical jobs from stocking grocery store shelves to driving buses.
This means that those involuntarily pushed out of the labor market are likely to depend on Social Security for most or all of their income in old age. These workers are unlikely to have pensions or significant retirement savings and are likely to still be paying off a mortgage, assuming they even own a home.
The impact of Social Security benefits is enormous. This year about 65 million Americans — retirees, widows and widowers, disabled people and orphans will collect $1 trillion. That’s a nickel on each dollar of Gross Domestic Product.
Racism, Too
There is also a strong institutionalized racist component in the reduced income disaster facing older Americans forced out of the labor market because Trump & Co. don’t know how to deal with the pandemic.
Because of the kinds of jobs they tend to hold, almost 30% of white people can telecommute while fewer than 20% of black people can.
Few low-wage workers can do their jobs from home. Only 9.2% of the bottom fourth of workers can work from home compared with 61.5% of those in the top quarter, an Economic Policy Institute study found.
Long after Trump is out of the White House taxpayers will be forced to shoulder much of the cost of these shortened working careers through more old-age welfare benefits, subsidizing housing and other costs.
There is a solution to this awful legacy — increasing Social Security benefits so the average benefit lifts older workers significantly above the poverty line.
Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, says this solution will do the trick if combined with other actions. “Americans are desperate. Those fortunate enough to have 401(k)s are depleting those savings. Those old enough to claim Social Security are doing so. But workers who claim early have their Social Security benefits reduced permanently, setting them up for destitution when they become octogenarians and have spent down their other assets,” Altman warned.
“Social Security’s modest benefits must be expanded, as the Democratic Party is proposing. As part of that expansion, those who claim early should face a smaller reduction.
“That is not only affordable; it will dramatically reduce poverty and increase economic security,” said Altman, co-author with Eric Kingson of Social Security Works, a book debunking myths about the program. In December they will be out with a new book on the widespread benefits of increasing Social Security benefits.
Demands for welfare and charitable services would fall; average lifespans rise; and, most important of all, show something Trump lacks — regard for human life.
just rewards!!!
Louisiana’s COVID-19-enabling attorney general gets tested for coronavirus before meeting Pence, tests positive
July 14, 2020
By David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement
Vice President Mike Pence traveled to Louisiana Tuesday to meet with Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards and the state’s two Republican Senators to share his message about the importance of opening all schools in the fall. Not on the tarmac in Baton Rouge when Air Force Two landed at 11:13 AM was the Bayou State’s Tea Party Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry, who tested positive for coronavirus before he was slated to greet the vice president.
“Out of an overabundance of caution with the Vice President coming to our state, I was tested for Cornavirus,” Landry told the state’s Dept. of Justice employees via email, Louisiana’s The Advocate reports. “Though experiencing no symptoms, I tested positive for COVID-19.”
Attorney General Landry has opposed measures to protect the people of Louisiana from the deadly virus, and the statistics show his efforts are not working.
While Louisiana is only 25th out of America’s 50 states in population, it ranks 12th in coronavirus cases, with 82,051. Worse, coronavirus is exploding across the state. In per capita cases the state ranks third.
Louisiana ranked eighth on Monday in new cases, with 2,224.
And in total deaths Louisiana ranks tenth, with 3,428.
Gov. John Bel Edwards, who lost an aide to the coronavirus, has tried to reduce the infection rate, but his efforts have been undermined by the Attorney General.
Last month Landry declared Governor Edwards’ order to ban live indoor music in response to the coronavirus pandemic was unconstitutional.
In May, GOP lawmakers turned to Landry to help them craft legislation “squashing” Governor Edwards’ stay-at-home order, The Advocate also reported.
Also in May Landry “urged” the Governor to re-open barber shops and salons, saying there are “thousands of licensed cosmetologists in our State; many are independent contractors who have no other source of income and are struggling to make ends meet.”
In late April he “encouraged” Gov. Edwards to allow churches, which have been major spreading sites, to re-open.
Previously, Landry promoted President Donald Trump’s fraudulent claims by “securing” “8,000 packs of azithromycin and 75,000 tablets of hydroxychloroquine sulfate … in addition to the 400,000 tablets of hydroxychloroquine directly donated by Amneal Pharmaceuticals last week.”
“Out of an overabundance of caution with the Vice President coming to our state, I was tested for Cornavirus,” Landry told the state’s Dept. of Justice employees via email, Louisiana’s The Advocate reports. “Though experiencing no symptoms, I tested positive for COVID-19.”
Attorney General Landry has opposed measures to protect the people of Louisiana from the deadly virus, and the statistics show his efforts are not working.
While Louisiana is only 25th out of America’s 50 states in population, it ranks 12th in coronavirus cases, with 82,051. Worse, coronavirus is exploding across the state. In per capita cases the state ranks third.
Louisiana ranked eighth on Monday in new cases, with 2,224.
And in total deaths Louisiana ranks tenth, with 3,428.
Gov. John Bel Edwards, who lost an aide to the coronavirus, has tried to reduce the infection rate, but his efforts have been undermined by the Attorney General.
Last month Landry declared Governor Edwards’ order to ban live indoor music in response to the coronavirus pandemic was unconstitutional.
In May, GOP lawmakers turned to Landry to help them craft legislation “squashing” Governor Edwards’ stay-at-home order, The Advocate also reported.
Also in May Landry “urged” the Governor to re-open barber shops and salons, saying there are “thousands of licensed cosmetologists in our State; many are independent contractors who have no other source of income and are struggling to make ends meet.”
In late April he “encouraged” Gov. Edwards to allow churches, which have been major spreading sites, to re-open.
Previously, Landry promoted President Donald Trump’s fraudulent claims by “securing” “8,000 packs of azithromycin and 75,000 tablets of hydroxychloroquine sulfate … in addition to the 400,000 tablets of hydroxychloroquine directly donated by Amneal Pharmaceuticals last week.”
bloodsuckers resurrected!!!
Consumer bureau revokes payday lending restrictions
BY SYLVAN LANE - the hill
07/07/20 12:16 PM EDT
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on Tuesday revoked rules that required lenders to ensure that potential customers could afford to pay the potentially staggering costs of short-term, high-interest payday loans.
The bureau released Tuesday the final revision to its 2017 rule on payday loans, formally gutting an initiative with roots in the Obama administration that was aimed at protecting vulnerable consumers from inescapable debt.
The initial rule, released shortly before President Trump appointed new leadership at the CFPB, effectively banned lenders from issuing a short-term loan that could not be paid off in full by a borrower within two weeks.
The measure required payday lenders to determine whether the customer had the “ability to repay” the loan with an underwriting process similar to what banks use to determine whether a customer can afford a mortgage or other longer-term loan.
The CFPB has now issued a new version of the regulation that scraps those underwriting requirements, in line with a proposal released in February 2019. The new regulation leaves in place the original regulation's restrictions on how frequently a payday lender can attempt to withdraw funds from a customer's bank account.
"Our actions today ensure that consumers have access to credit from a competitive marketplace, have the best information to make informed financial decisions, and retain key protections without hindering that access,” CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger said in a statement.
“We will continue to monitor the small dollar lending industry and enforce the law against bad actors.”
The CFPB’s original payday lending rule was released in October 2017 under the bureau’s first director, Richard Cordray, a Democrat ideologically aligned with the agency’s architect, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). The bureau issued a series of sweeping financial regulations during Cordray’s tenure, but few more controversial than the payday lending rule.
The 2017 payday lending rule was the first federal regulation specific to the payday lenders, which are banned in 17 states and the District of Columbia but ubiquitous where high-cost, short-term loans are legal.
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Democrats and consumer protection advocates had long targeted the high costs and aggressive collection practices employed by payday lenders. Critics accuse the industry of intentionally trapping thousands of vulnerable Americans in endless cycles of compounding debt with confusing terms and hidden fees.
“At this moment of health and economic crisis, the CFPB has callously embraced an industry that charges up to 400 percent annual interest and makes loans knowing they will put people in a debt trap,” said Lauren Saunders, associate director of the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC).
Defenders of payday lenders say the industry provides crucial temporary financing to Americans who lack a credit card, and are frequently the only lenders in economically depressed or remote areas.
Advocates for the industry warned that the original CFPB rules would effectively wipe out payday lenders and praised the bureau for reversing course.
“While we are still reviewing the new rule, it is clear that the CFPB’s decision to issue a revised final rule will benefit millions of American consumers. The CFPB’s action will ensure that essential credit continues to flow to communities and consumers across the country, which is especially important in these unprecedented times," said D. Lynn DeVault, chairman of the Community Financial Services Association of America (CFSA), a trade group for payday lenders.
Republican lawmakers also accused the CFPB under Cordray of targeting payday lenders with its initial rule out of political prejudice toward the industry.
"Today’s move by the CFPB ensures borrowers have access to these loans and will increase competition and choice in the market, ultimately benefitting the loan recipient," said Rep. Patrick McHenry (N.C.), ranking Republican on the House Financial Services Committee, in a Tuesday statement.
The payday lending industry’s fortunes quickly shifted when Cordray resigned in November 2017, giving Trump an early chance to rein in the watchdog agency. Trump tapped Mick Mulvaney, his then-budget director, to serve as the CFPB’s acting director until Kraninger was confirmed more than a year later.
The original payday loan rule was one of Mulvaney’s first targets upon taking over the CFPB. He delayed the deadline for lenders to comply with the rule in January 2019 and kicked off the rewriting process soon after.
While the CFPB director has unilateral authority over almost every agency action, Mulvaney had to prove that the original payday lending rule was based on faulty research to make sure the rewritten version could hold up in court. CFPB officials appointed by Mulvaney argued in the February 2019 draft of their rewrite that their predecessors’ research did not justify the strict standards applied to payday lenders, drawing backlash from consumer advocates.
A former CFPB economist argued in a memo obtained by The New York Times in April that Mulvaney’s political appointees manipulated data and published misleading research to justify scrapping the original payday rule.
Democratic lawmakers and payday industry critics seized on the allegations, calling for an investigation into how the new payday rule was and formal restart of the rulemaking process.
The bureau released Tuesday the final revision to its 2017 rule on payday loans, formally gutting an initiative with roots in the Obama administration that was aimed at protecting vulnerable consumers from inescapable debt.
The initial rule, released shortly before President Trump appointed new leadership at the CFPB, effectively banned lenders from issuing a short-term loan that could not be paid off in full by a borrower within two weeks.
The measure required payday lenders to determine whether the customer had the “ability to repay” the loan with an underwriting process similar to what banks use to determine whether a customer can afford a mortgage or other longer-term loan.
The CFPB has now issued a new version of the regulation that scraps those underwriting requirements, in line with a proposal released in February 2019. The new regulation leaves in place the original regulation's restrictions on how frequently a payday lender can attempt to withdraw funds from a customer's bank account.
"Our actions today ensure that consumers have access to credit from a competitive marketplace, have the best information to make informed financial decisions, and retain key protections without hindering that access,” CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger said in a statement.
“We will continue to monitor the small dollar lending industry and enforce the law against bad actors.”
The CFPB’s original payday lending rule was released in October 2017 under the bureau’s first director, Richard Cordray, a Democrat ideologically aligned with the agency’s architect, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). The bureau issued a series of sweeping financial regulations during Cordray’s tenure, but few more controversial than the payday lending rule.
The 2017 payday lending rule was the first federal regulation specific to the payday lenders, which are banned in 17 states and the District of Columbia but ubiquitous where high-cost, short-term loans are legal.
---
Democrats and consumer protection advocates had long targeted the high costs and aggressive collection practices employed by payday lenders. Critics accuse the industry of intentionally trapping thousands of vulnerable Americans in endless cycles of compounding debt with confusing terms and hidden fees.
“At this moment of health and economic crisis, the CFPB has callously embraced an industry that charges up to 400 percent annual interest and makes loans knowing they will put people in a debt trap,” said Lauren Saunders, associate director of the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC).
Defenders of payday lenders say the industry provides crucial temporary financing to Americans who lack a credit card, and are frequently the only lenders in economically depressed or remote areas.
Advocates for the industry warned that the original CFPB rules would effectively wipe out payday lenders and praised the bureau for reversing course.
“While we are still reviewing the new rule, it is clear that the CFPB’s decision to issue a revised final rule will benefit millions of American consumers. The CFPB’s action will ensure that essential credit continues to flow to communities and consumers across the country, which is especially important in these unprecedented times," said D. Lynn DeVault, chairman of the Community Financial Services Association of America (CFSA), a trade group for payday lenders.
Republican lawmakers also accused the CFPB under Cordray of targeting payday lenders with its initial rule out of political prejudice toward the industry.
"Today’s move by the CFPB ensures borrowers have access to these loans and will increase competition and choice in the market, ultimately benefitting the loan recipient," said Rep. Patrick McHenry (N.C.), ranking Republican on the House Financial Services Committee, in a Tuesday statement.
The payday lending industry’s fortunes quickly shifted when Cordray resigned in November 2017, giving Trump an early chance to rein in the watchdog agency. Trump tapped Mick Mulvaney, his then-budget director, to serve as the CFPB’s acting director until Kraninger was confirmed more than a year later.
The original payday loan rule was one of Mulvaney’s first targets upon taking over the CFPB. He delayed the deadline for lenders to comply with the rule in January 2019 and kicked off the rewriting process soon after.
While the CFPB director has unilateral authority over almost every agency action, Mulvaney had to prove that the original payday lending rule was based on faulty research to make sure the rewritten version could hold up in court. CFPB officials appointed by Mulvaney argued in the February 2019 draft of their rewrite that their predecessors’ research did not justify the strict standards applied to payday lenders, drawing backlash from consumer advocates.
A former CFPB economist argued in a memo obtained by The New York Times in April that Mulvaney’s political appointees manipulated data and published misleading research to justify scrapping the original payday rule.
Democratic lawmakers and payday industry critics seized on the allegations, calling for an investigation into how the new payday rule was and formal restart of the rulemaking process.
Revealed: Covid-19 outbreaks at meat-processing plants in US being kept quiet
Testing has found positive cases at North Carolina facilities, but officials refuse to release the information
Lewis Kendall in Durham, North Carolina
the guardian
Wed 1 Jul 2020 05.00 EDT
A chicken processing facility in western North Carolina reportedly underwent widespread testing for Covid-19 in early June.
Workers at the plant were scared. Several employees had already tested positive and the company, Case Farms – which has been repeatedly condemned for animal treatment and workers’ rights violations – was not providing proper protective equipment.
“We don’t have a lot of space at work. We are shoulder to shoulder,” said one worker, who declined to be identified, during a recent union call. “I’m afraid to go to work, but I have to go.”
The testing turned up 150 positive cases at the facility, the worker said.
On 8 June, the health department for Burke county, where the Case Farms facility is located, reported 136 new Covid cases, a 25% increase in its total caseload. Yet neither the company, county officials nor the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services would confirm whether those cases were connected to Case Farms.
It is just one example of the currently taut relationship between public health and the economy in North Carolina, as the number of Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations rises.
North Carolina is one of the largest pork and poultry producing states in the US, exporting roughly $1.25bn in hogs, chickens and turkeys every year. Health departments in rural parts of the state, areas that often lean on large meatpacking or food processing facilities as primary sources of employment, have so far been tight-lipped about Covid-19 outbreaks in those plants.
In late April, while outbreaks began emerging at meat processing plants across the country, Donald Trump signed an executive order forcing the facilities to remain open. That same month, the US exported a record amount of pork to China, despite industry claims of a domestic shortage.
Since the pandemic began, more than 36,000 meat processing and farm workers have tested positive for Covid-19 and at least 116 have died, according to a tally by the Food and Environment Reporting Network, though the true number is likely higher.
Through case interviews and contact tracing, the Burke County Health Department, where Case Farms is located, does have data about where people with positive cases work, but are choosing not to release it, said spokeswoman Lisa Moore.
“We know where they are, but we are not a county that can divulge every place where they are,” Moore said.
Case Farms requested the health department direct all questions regarding their facility to a company representative, Moore added.
In response to a series of detailed questions from the Guardian, a Case Farms spokesperson wrote that the company is “committed to continue producing food for our nation’s food supply, while taking additional safety measures to protect our employees, our company and our customers, in accordance with USDA regulations and CDC guidelines.”
Earlier this year, North Carolina’s health department had previously reported the names of farms with two or more positive cases, but in May replaced the names with addresses in order to “better reflect the location of the outbreak”, according to a department spokesperson.
“Why, when a nursing home has an outbreak, it’s in the paper, but when a meatpacking facility does, it’s not?” said Mac Legerton, a longtime grassroots policy advocate and co-director of the Robeson County Cooperative for Sustainable Development, and is among those who have criticized local and state governments’ approach to case reporting.
“The law needs to be that in a pandemic all outbreaks at public and private facilities are made public to protect the employees of the institutions and to inform the public.”
As of Thursday, there were 2,772 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in 28 meat processing plant “clusters” around the state, the department said, but would not specify further.
North Carolina as a whole has seen a marked increase in cases and hospitalizations over the past several weeks, prompting a “concerned” Governor Roy Cooper to announce last week that the state would pause in the second phase of its reopening plan.
The state requires only a few types of businesses to report outbreaks, which it defines as two or more cases, including congregate living facilities, day care centers and schools. For all other businesses, local health departments and the state DHHS depend on companies volunteering their own data or tracking down clusters through case interviews.
But failure to disclose outbreaks demonstrates that officials and company executives are prioritizing economic interests over the wellbeing of marginalized workers and communities, Legerton said.
“That lack of information puts both employees and the public at risk,” he said.
In a letter to several of the largest meat companies last week, senators Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker called on the corporations to disclose infection figures in their plants.
Virginia also recently moved to create a set of safety rules to protect workers from Covid-19 – the first of its kind in the nation – following a petition from workers in the state’s poultry processing and meatpacking industries. The drafted rules, which include requiring employers to mandate social distancing and notify employees of potential exposure, would be enforceable through fines and closures.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has received nearly 350 Covid-related complaints from employees at North Carolina businesses. One business, Pilgrim’s Pride, a poultry processing plant in Sanford, was the subject of at least eight separate complaints, with workers alleging the company was not informing them of positive tests or mandating the wearing of some protective equipment. A worker there died in May.
In Robeson county – home to a large Campbell’s Soup facility, Mountaire Farms and Sanderson Farms poultry processing plants, as well as many factory farms – businesses have been generally forthcoming with the health department, according to Bill Smith, the county’s health department director.
Smith’s office received $600,000 in federal Covid funding, which it used to set up testing sites around the county and hire school nurses as contact tracers. Smith and his team have also been collaborating on daily calls with health departments from surrounding counties, as well as coordinating closely with the local Lumbee Tribe.
But companies can make this work difficult, muddying the waters for case reporting in communities where they are one of very few employers, Smith said.
“A lot of the packing places are your largest employers, therefore it’s an economic issue,” he said. “There may be pressures from them to stay out of the packing world, if you will.”
Companies also choose to weigh public health considerations alongside public relations in determining what information to release, Smith said, pointing to publicly traded giants like Sanderson Farms and Smithfield Foods, which have “a brand they’re trying to protect”.
“If you say something about Smithfield Foods, they’ll see an effect immediately: you’ll see someone not buy Smithfield in the grocery,” he said.
Still, the decision by state and county health departments to report some outbreaks and not others appears inconsistent with the need for transparency in a public health crisis, Smith noted.
“When you’re releasing nursing home names with two illnesses, yet another place that has 900 you refuse to give, there’s some disagreement there from a public health perspective,” he said.
Workers at the plant were scared. Several employees had already tested positive and the company, Case Farms – which has been repeatedly condemned for animal treatment and workers’ rights violations – was not providing proper protective equipment.
“We don’t have a lot of space at work. We are shoulder to shoulder,” said one worker, who declined to be identified, during a recent union call. “I’m afraid to go to work, but I have to go.”
The testing turned up 150 positive cases at the facility, the worker said.
On 8 June, the health department for Burke county, where the Case Farms facility is located, reported 136 new Covid cases, a 25% increase in its total caseload. Yet neither the company, county officials nor the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services would confirm whether those cases were connected to Case Farms.
It is just one example of the currently taut relationship between public health and the economy in North Carolina, as the number of Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations rises.
North Carolina is one of the largest pork and poultry producing states in the US, exporting roughly $1.25bn in hogs, chickens and turkeys every year. Health departments in rural parts of the state, areas that often lean on large meatpacking or food processing facilities as primary sources of employment, have so far been tight-lipped about Covid-19 outbreaks in those plants.
In late April, while outbreaks began emerging at meat processing plants across the country, Donald Trump signed an executive order forcing the facilities to remain open. That same month, the US exported a record amount of pork to China, despite industry claims of a domestic shortage.
Since the pandemic began, more than 36,000 meat processing and farm workers have tested positive for Covid-19 and at least 116 have died, according to a tally by the Food and Environment Reporting Network, though the true number is likely higher.
Through case interviews and contact tracing, the Burke County Health Department, where Case Farms is located, does have data about where people with positive cases work, but are choosing not to release it, said spokeswoman Lisa Moore.
“We know where they are, but we are not a county that can divulge every place where they are,” Moore said.
Case Farms requested the health department direct all questions regarding their facility to a company representative, Moore added.
In response to a series of detailed questions from the Guardian, a Case Farms spokesperson wrote that the company is “committed to continue producing food for our nation’s food supply, while taking additional safety measures to protect our employees, our company and our customers, in accordance with USDA regulations and CDC guidelines.”
Earlier this year, North Carolina’s health department had previously reported the names of farms with two or more positive cases, but in May replaced the names with addresses in order to “better reflect the location of the outbreak”, according to a department spokesperson.
“Why, when a nursing home has an outbreak, it’s in the paper, but when a meatpacking facility does, it’s not?” said Mac Legerton, a longtime grassroots policy advocate and co-director of the Robeson County Cooperative for Sustainable Development, and is among those who have criticized local and state governments’ approach to case reporting.
“The law needs to be that in a pandemic all outbreaks at public and private facilities are made public to protect the employees of the institutions and to inform the public.”
As of Thursday, there were 2,772 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in 28 meat processing plant “clusters” around the state, the department said, but would not specify further.
North Carolina as a whole has seen a marked increase in cases and hospitalizations over the past several weeks, prompting a “concerned” Governor Roy Cooper to announce last week that the state would pause in the second phase of its reopening plan.
The state requires only a few types of businesses to report outbreaks, which it defines as two or more cases, including congregate living facilities, day care centers and schools. For all other businesses, local health departments and the state DHHS depend on companies volunteering their own data or tracking down clusters through case interviews.
But failure to disclose outbreaks demonstrates that officials and company executives are prioritizing economic interests over the wellbeing of marginalized workers and communities, Legerton said.
“That lack of information puts both employees and the public at risk,” he said.
In a letter to several of the largest meat companies last week, senators Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker called on the corporations to disclose infection figures in their plants.
Virginia also recently moved to create a set of safety rules to protect workers from Covid-19 – the first of its kind in the nation – following a petition from workers in the state’s poultry processing and meatpacking industries. The drafted rules, which include requiring employers to mandate social distancing and notify employees of potential exposure, would be enforceable through fines and closures.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has received nearly 350 Covid-related complaints from employees at North Carolina businesses. One business, Pilgrim’s Pride, a poultry processing plant in Sanford, was the subject of at least eight separate complaints, with workers alleging the company was not informing them of positive tests or mandating the wearing of some protective equipment. A worker there died in May.
In Robeson county – home to a large Campbell’s Soup facility, Mountaire Farms and Sanderson Farms poultry processing plants, as well as many factory farms – businesses have been generally forthcoming with the health department, according to Bill Smith, the county’s health department director.
Smith’s office received $600,000 in federal Covid funding, which it used to set up testing sites around the county and hire school nurses as contact tracers. Smith and his team have also been collaborating on daily calls with health departments from surrounding counties, as well as coordinating closely with the local Lumbee Tribe.
But companies can make this work difficult, muddying the waters for case reporting in communities where they are one of very few employers, Smith said.
“A lot of the packing places are your largest employers, therefore it’s an economic issue,” he said. “There may be pressures from them to stay out of the packing world, if you will.”
Companies also choose to weigh public health considerations alongside public relations in determining what information to release, Smith said, pointing to publicly traded giants like Sanderson Farms and Smithfield Foods, which have “a brand they’re trying to protect”.
“If you say something about Smithfield Foods, they’ll see an effect immediately: you’ll see someone not buy Smithfield in the grocery,” he said.
Still, the decision by state and county health departments to report some outbreaks and not others appears inconsistent with the need for transparency in a public health crisis, Smith noted.
“When you’re releasing nursing home names with two illnesses, yet another place that has 900 you refuse to give, there’s some disagreement there from a public health perspective,” he said.
we are fucked!!!
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IS WAIVING THE PUBLIC’S RIGHT TO AFFORDABLE CORONAVIRUS TREATMENTS
Sharon Lerner - the intercept
July 1 2020, 5:00 a.m.
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT has failed to include intellectual property and pricing protections in at least four contracts for drugs to combat Covid-19. Legal safeguards meant to ensure that products developed with federal funds are affordable and widely available were missing from the contracts, which are worth more than $1 billion and were released along with other documents last week in response to freedom of information requests. The omissions make it more likely that potentially lifesaving treatments and vaccines may be priced out of reach, even as the spiraling financial and health crises increase the need for affordable drugs.
Standard federal contracts ensure that inventions developed with government funding are available to the public “on reasonable terms.” But the four agreements for Covid-19-related products — three of which were made by a division of the Department of Health and Human Services known as the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, and one of which was made with the Department of Defense — notably omitted the phrase “on reasonable terms.” The government contracts with pharmaceutical companies Janssen, Regeneron, Genentech, and Ology Bioservices also limit the government’s patent rights to the products being developed for Covid-19, even though they are using taxpayer dollars to do so.
The details of the contracts, which were released to the nonprofit advocacy group Knowledge Ecology International, come as another pharmaceutical company, Gilead Sciences, announced pricing for its Covid-19 therapy, remdesivir. That drug, which was developed with at least $79 million in federal funding, will cost private insurers $520 for a single vial, hundreds of times its production cost, which researchers at the University of Liverpool have estimated at 93 cents per dose.
In an open letter on pricing released Monday, Gilead chair and CEO Daniel O’Day said that “we approached this with the aim of helping as many patients as possible, as quickly as possible and in the most responsible way” and noted that in “normal circumstances,” the company would set the price according to the value a drug provides. Based on a study that shows that the hospital stays of patients who take remdesivir are four days shorter on average than those who didn’t take the drug, Gilead estimated that value to be $12,000.
But, given its low production cost, Gilead could profit from remdesivir even if it was priced at just $1 a day, according to an analysis by Public Citizen. Instead the drug, which was rolled out with the help of the Trump administration, will cost insurers between $3,120 for a five-day course of treatment and $5,720 for a 10-day course.
Public Citizen immediately declared the pricing “offensive.” “It’s outrageous,” said Zain Rizvi, a drug-pricing expert who works for the consumer advocacy group. “Even during a pandemic, the pharmaceutical industry can’t help but price gouge.” Rizvi said that the price may affect who gets the therapy — and hit the uninsured hardest. “Some patients may choose to skip their care,” he said. “Others may be on the hook for thousands of dollars.” Hospitals may also be hesitant to use the drug because of its price.
Watchdog groups pointed to Gilead’s announcement as an illustration of the need to reign in pharmaceutical companies’ control over the pricing of their products. “This is exactly why policymakers shouldn’t leave it up to the drug companies to unilaterally set prices on drugs that wouldn’t exist without taxpayer support,” said Eli Zupnick, a spokesperson for the advocacy group Patients Over Pharma.
Yet the newly released contracts show that that during the pandemic, some government agencies are allowing pharmaceutical companies even greater than usual leeway on the pricing of drugs. Of five contracts for Covid-19-related products that BARDA released, four didn’t include the pricing and patent protections. And there are likely other agreements that give away the public’s legal rights to limit drug costs. BARDA was given $3.5 billion to spend on medical countermeasures to Covid-19 under the CARES Act and has entered into at least 20 agreements with companies to work on products to fight the virus. (The Intercept submitted a FOIA request for many of BARDA’s other contracts in April but has not received any documents.)
BARDA did not respond to a request for comment.
Exorbitant drug prices were causing bankruptcies and deaths in the United States well before the pandemic hit. Now, even as the number of coronavirus infections has topped 2.5 million and tens of millions of people have lost their jobs, the pharmaceutical industry seems even less likely to release its stranglehold on pricing. Bipartisan legislation that would address the crisis has stalled in the Senate because Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has received more than $1.6 million in contributions from pharmaceutical and health products companies, has refused to bring the bill to vote. Trump, who declared in 2018 that reducing the cost of prescription drugs was one of his “biggest priorities,” has done nothing to advance the bill. Instead, his administration is now in the midst of its latest attempt to repeal Obamacare, which could cause millions of Americans to lose their access to drugs along with the other benefits of health insurance.
According to a 1980 law known as the Bayh-Dole Act, contracts for inventions that stem from federally funded research give the government the right to “march in” and take over the license for a product it helped invent if the company doesn’t make it available at a reasonable price or if taking over the license “is necessary to alleviate health or safety needs.” The law also gives the government a nonexclusive, irrevocable right to practice an invention it helps create without paying royalties.
But agencies can skirt these requirements by using an alternate contracting model known as Other Transactions Authority agreements, or OTAs. Originally used only in a narrow range of circumstances, OTAs, first introduced in the 1950s, were becoming increasingly common in some federal agencies, including HHS and the Department of Defense, even before the pandemic. After the virus hit, both agencies were given expanded ability to use the agreements. BARDA issued its first OTA in 2013 and has been expanding old OTAs and issuing new ones for Covid-19-related products.
Proponents of the agreements argue that they’re necessary to entice companies that might not want to comply with the significant requirements of traditional federal contracts to work with government. But they also strip the government of tools that could make Covid-19 drugs accessible to all.
An agreement that Genentech, a subsidiary of Roche Pharmaceuticals, struck with BARDA for the development of a potential Covid-19 treatment called tocilizumab doesn’t give the government the right to march in and take over the patent, and also specifies that the government does not have the royalty-free right to use the invention, which leaves it with little recourse if the company doesn’t set a fair price for the drug.
“There’s no limit on what Roche can charge Americans under this contract,” said James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology International. “But even if the government wasn’t happy with the Roche price and wanted to use the royalty free license to get a company to make a generic version of it, they couldn’t do it.”
BARDA’s agreement with Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen for a coronavirus vaccine also leaves the government unable to use the product it funded without paying royalties, which could cut into the its ability to ensure an adequate supply of the vaccine. “What if Johnson & Johnson can’t make enough of its vaccine to go around?” asked Love. “Then the government won’t be able to use its right to allow someone else to make it so we have a greater supply and make it faster.”
The tipping of power away from the federal government and toward the pharmaceutical and biotech companies contracting with it is happening even as the dollar amounts of the contracts reach record highs. Genentech’s OTA with BARDA has an upper limit of $598 million. Janssen’s agreements for both its vaccine and treatments for Covid-19 are worth more than $900 million. And Regeneron will receive up to $305 million from the work on antibody treatments for Covid-19.
“These are staggering sums of money,” said Love. “You’d think as the amount of dollars go up, the terms for the government would get better, not worse.”
Standard federal contracts ensure that inventions developed with government funding are available to the public “on reasonable terms.” But the four agreements for Covid-19-related products — three of which were made by a division of the Department of Health and Human Services known as the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, and one of which was made with the Department of Defense — notably omitted the phrase “on reasonable terms.” The government contracts with pharmaceutical companies Janssen, Regeneron, Genentech, and Ology Bioservices also limit the government’s patent rights to the products being developed for Covid-19, even though they are using taxpayer dollars to do so.
The details of the contracts, which were released to the nonprofit advocacy group Knowledge Ecology International, come as another pharmaceutical company, Gilead Sciences, announced pricing for its Covid-19 therapy, remdesivir. That drug, which was developed with at least $79 million in federal funding, will cost private insurers $520 for a single vial, hundreds of times its production cost, which researchers at the University of Liverpool have estimated at 93 cents per dose.
In an open letter on pricing released Monday, Gilead chair and CEO Daniel O’Day said that “we approached this with the aim of helping as many patients as possible, as quickly as possible and in the most responsible way” and noted that in “normal circumstances,” the company would set the price according to the value a drug provides. Based on a study that shows that the hospital stays of patients who take remdesivir are four days shorter on average than those who didn’t take the drug, Gilead estimated that value to be $12,000.
But, given its low production cost, Gilead could profit from remdesivir even if it was priced at just $1 a day, according to an analysis by Public Citizen. Instead the drug, which was rolled out with the help of the Trump administration, will cost insurers between $3,120 for a five-day course of treatment and $5,720 for a 10-day course.
Public Citizen immediately declared the pricing “offensive.” “It’s outrageous,” said Zain Rizvi, a drug-pricing expert who works for the consumer advocacy group. “Even during a pandemic, the pharmaceutical industry can’t help but price gouge.” Rizvi said that the price may affect who gets the therapy — and hit the uninsured hardest. “Some patients may choose to skip their care,” he said. “Others may be on the hook for thousands of dollars.” Hospitals may also be hesitant to use the drug because of its price.
Watchdog groups pointed to Gilead’s announcement as an illustration of the need to reign in pharmaceutical companies’ control over the pricing of their products. “This is exactly why policymakers shouldn’t leave it up to the drug companies to unilaterally set prices on drugs that wouldn’t exist without taxpayer support,” said Eli Zupnick, a spokesperson for the advocacy group Patients Over Pharma.
Yet the newly released contracts show that that during the pandemic, some government agencies are allowing pharmaceutical companies even greater than usual leeway on the pricing of drugs. Of five contracts for Covid-19-related products that BARDA released, four didn’t include the pricing and patent protections. And there are likely other agreements that give away the public’s legal rights to limit drug costs. BARDA was given $3.5 billion to spend on medical countermeasures to Covid-19 under the CARES Act and has entered into at least 20 agreements with companies to work on products to fight the virus. (The Intercept submitted a FOIA request for many of BARDA’s other contracts in April but has not received any documents.)
BARDA did not respond to a request for comment.
Exorbitant drug prices were causing bankruptcies and deaths in the United States well before the pandemic hit. Now, even as the number of coronavirus infections has topped 2.5 million and tens of millions of people have lost their jobs, the pharmaceutical industry seems even less likely to release its stranglehold on pricing. Bipartisan legislation that would address the crisis has stalled in the Senate because Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has received more than $1.6 million in contributions from pharmaceutical and health products companies, has refused to bring the bill to vote. Trump, who declared in 2018 that reducing the cost of prescription drugs was one of his “biggest priorities,” has done nothing to advance the bill. Instead, his administration is now in the midst of its latest attempt to repeal Obamacare, which could cause millions of Americans to lose their access to drugs along with the other benefits of health insurance.
According to a 1980 law known as the Bayh-Dole Act, contracts for inventions that stem from federally funded research give the government the right to “march in” and take over the license for a product it helped invent if the company doesn’t make it available at a reasonable price or if taking over the license “is necessary to alleviate health or safety needs.” The law also gives the government a nonexclusive, irrevocable right to practice an invention it helps create without paying royalties.
But agencies can skirt these requirements by using an alternate contracting model known as Other Transactions Authority agreements, or OTAs. Originally used only in a narrow range of circumstances, OTAs, first introduced in the 1950s, were becoming increasingly common in some federal agencies, including HHS and the Department of Defense, even before the pandemic. After the virus hit, both agencies were given expanded ability to use the agreements. BARDA issued its first OTA in 2013 and has been expanding old OTAs and issuing new ones for Covid-19-related products.
Proponents of the agreements argue that they’re necessary to entice companies that might not want to comply with the significant requirements of traditional federal contracts to work with government. But they also strip the government of tools that could make Covid-19 drugs accessible to all.
An agreement that Genentech, a subsidiary of Roche Pharmaceuticals, struck with BARDA for the development of a potential Covid-19 treatment called tocilizumab doesn’t give the government the right to march in and take over the patent, and also specifies that the government does not have the royalty-free right to use the invention, which leaves it with little recourse if the company doesn’t set a fair price for the drug.
“There’s no limit on what Roche can charge Americans under this contract,” said James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology International. “But even if the government wasn’t happy with the Roche price and wanted to use the royalty free license to get a company to make a generic version of it, they couldn’t do it.”
BARDA’s agreement with Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen for a coronavirus vaccine also leaves the government unable to use the product it funded without paying royalties, which could cut into the its ability to ensure an adequate supply of the vaccine. “What if Johnson & Johnson can’t make enough of its vaccine to go around?” asked Love. “Then the government won’t be able to use its right to allow someone else to make it so we have a greater supply and make it faster.”
The tipping of power away from the federal government and toward the pharmaceutical and biotech companies contracting with it is happening even as the dollar amounts of the contracts reach record highs. Genentech’s OTA with BARDA has an upper limit of $598 million. Janssen’s agreements for both its vaccine and treatments for Covid-19 are worth more than $900 million. And Regeneron will receive up to $305 million from the work on antibody treatments for Covid-19.
“These are staggering sums of money,” said Love. “You’d think as the amount of dollars go up, the terms for the government would get better, not worse.”
Trump Labor Department quietly offers up 401(k) plans to private equity vultures
"401(k) investors will be devoured like lambs to the slaughter"
JAKE JOHNSON - salon
JUNE 16, 2020 5:12PM (UTC)
With the American public's attention consumed by the COVID-19 pandemic and mass protests against police brutality, the U.S. Labor Department earlier this month quietly gave corporate sponsors of retirement plans something they've been agitating over for years: a government green light to invest workers' savings into funds managed by notoriously predatory private equity firms.
The move, announced on June 3 by Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, allows large managers of 401(k) plans and individual retirement accounts (IRAs) to put workers' retirement savings into private equity investments that offer the possibility of huge returns — and devastating losses.
Scalia released the guidance in response to a request for clarification of the Trump administration's policy by Partners Group and Pantheon Ventures, private equity firms that collectively manage more than $140 billion in assets. The labor secretary presented the guidance as an effort to "level the playing field for ordinary investors."
Eileen Appelbaum, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), warned in an article published by Common Dreams on June 7 that "investing retirement savings in private equity exposes ordinary retirees to high risk."
Appelbaum noted that U.S. workers "have socked away $6.2 trillion in 401(k) accounts and another $2.5 trillion in IRA accounts."
"If just 5 percent of the money in these retirement funds were available to private equity," wrote Appelbaum, "it would be a windfall of $435 billion — real money even to private equity millionaires and billionaires."
David Sirota, Jacobin editor-at-large and former speechwriter for Sen. Bernie Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign, pointed out in his Too Much Information newsletter Monday that Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman — a major donor to President Donald Trump — has been lobbying for looser restrictions on retirement investments for years.
"In life you have to have a dream," Schwartzman said in a call with analysts days after Trump's inauguration in January 2017. "One of the dreams is our desire and the market's need to have more access at retail to alternative asset products . . . A lot of people are not allowed to put those into retirement vehicles and other types . . . If there's a change in that area that becomes a huge opportunity for the firm."
Sirota wrote that thanks to the Labor Department's guidance, "private equity firms will now be allowed to access — and skim fees off of — the $9 trillion in 100 million workers' 401k plans and IRAs."
"Now that Trump's Labor Department has opened the floodgates," Sirota added, "a lot more money could end up flowing into these opaque deals, enriching private equity executives and their friends — while leaving workers' meager retirement savings even further depleted."
The Financial Times reported that private equity shares jumped in the wake of Scalia's announcement and "outpaced the broader stock market rally."
"Carlyle climbed almost 4 percent while Blackstone and Apollo gained more than 2 percent each," FT reported.
In a column for Forbes on Saturday, Edward Siedle called the Labor Department's guidance "a huge win for the private equity industry" and "a monstrous setback to American workers who invest in 401(k)s for retirement security."
"Department of Labor watchdogs just opened the door for private equity wolves to sell the highest cost, highest risk, most secretive investments ever devised by Wall Street to 401(k) plan sponsors," wrote Siedle. "401(k) investors will be devoured like lambs to the slaughter."
The move, announced on June 3 by Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, allows large managers of 401(k) plans and individual retirement accounts (IRAs) to put workers' retirement savings into private equity investments that offer the possibility of huge returns — and devastating losses.
Scalia released the guidance in response to a request for clarification of the Trump administration's policy by Partners Group and Pantheon Ventures, private equity firms that collectively manage more than $140 billion in assets. The labor secretary presented the guidance as an effort to "level the playing field for ordinary investors."
Eileen Appelbaum, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), warned in an article published by Common Dreams on June 7 that "investing retirement savings in private equity exposes ordinary retirees to high risk."
Appelbaum noted that U.S. workers "have socked away $6.2 trillion in 401(k) accounts and another $2.5 trillion in IRA accounts."
"If just 5 percent of the money in these retirement funds were available to private equity," wrote Appelbaum, "it would be a windfall of $435 billion — real money even to private equity millionaires and billionaires."
David Sirota, Jacobin editor-at-large and former speechwriter for Sen. Bernie Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign, pointed out in his Too Much Information newsletter Monday that Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman — a major donor to President Donald Trump — has been lobbying for looser restrictions on retirement investments for years.
"In life you have to have a dream," Schwartzman said in a call with analysts days after Trump's inauguration in January 2017. "One of the dreams is our desire and the market's need to have more access at retail to alternative asset products . . . A lot of people are not allowed to put those into retirement vehicles and other types . . . If there's a change in that area that becomes a huge opportunity for the firm."
Sirota wrote that thanks to the Labor Department's guidance, "private equity firms will now be allowed to access — and skim fees off of — the $9 trillion in 100 million workers' 401k plans and IRAs."
"Now that Trump's Labor Department has opened the floodgates," Sirota added, "a lot more money could end up flowing into these opaque deals, enriching private equity executives and their friends — while leaving workers' meager retirement savings even further depleted."
The Financial Times reported that private equity shares jumped in the wake of Scalia's announcement and "outpaced the broader stock market rally."
"Carlyle climbed almost 4 percent while Blackstone and Apollo gained more than 2 percent each," FT reported.
In a column for Forbes on Saturday, Edward Siedle called the Labor Department's guidance "a huge win for the private equity industry" and "a monstrous setback to American workers who invest in 401(k)s for retirement security."
"Department of Labor watchdogs just opened the door for private equity wolves to sell the highest cost, highest risk, most secretive investments ever devised by Wall Street to 401(k) plan sponsors," wrote Siedle. "401(k) investors will be devoured like lambs to the slaughter."
for 10 years the gop has blocked health care and the stupid voters keep electing them!!!
GOP lawmakers block health care for 130,000 people in Kansas
By Dan Desai Martin - the american independent
May 22, 2020 12:45 PM
Despite the pandemic and high unemployment, Republicans in Kansas ended this year's legislative session by blocking Medicaid expansion.
On Thursday, Kansas Republicans blocked a final effort by Democratic lawmakers to expand Medicaid during the 2020 state legislative session, the Wichita Eagle reported.
The failure to pass the expansion leaves 130,000 residents who would have been eligible for it without access to the health care program.
Democratic state Sen. Dinah Sykes attempted to force a vote on the Medicaid expansion, but Republicans used a procedural tactic to stop it. Both chambers of Kansas' legislature have adjourned until early in 2021.
Throughout the session, Republican lawmakers tied the expansion of Medicaid to an anti-abortion constitutional amendment, refusing to pass one without the other. The "Value Them Both" amendment was designed, in the words of the Kansas House resolution, "to amend the bill of rights of the constitution of the state of Kansas by adding a new section thereto stating that there is no constitutional right to abortion, and reserving to the people the ability to regulate abortion through the elected members of the legislature of the state of Kansas."
State Sen. Gene Suellentrop, a Republican from Wichita, defended the decision to link health care to anti-abortion legislation, complaining, "In the last number of weeks, our constituents have not been able to go to church and our abortion clinics remain open." He added, "It rings pretty hollow (to be) expressing concern about your constituents when you support that kind of activity."
The Republican vote to deny health insurance to low-income residents came despite the fact that more than 260,000 Kansas residents, almost 10% of the state's population, have filed for unemployment benefits in the past two months.
At the beginning of this year, Republican Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning touted a deal with Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly to expand Medicaid, saying the compromise was a "really good, complete plan for Kansas." But Denning was unable to hold up his side of the deal, failing to move the legislation through the state Senate.
"Not even a global public health emergency can convince extremist Republicans to put their partisan agenda aside and finally give their constituents access to affordable health care," Jessica Post, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said in a statement.
As of Friday morning, Kansas has nearly 9,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, and at least 199 people in the state have died as a result of the virus.
On Wednesday, the Brookings Institution reported that states with more Republican-leaning counties, including Kansas, have experienced high rates of coronavirus infection in the past month, defined by having at least 100 cases per 100,000 people.
According to an analysis by USA Today, Kansas has averaged 179 new cases every day for the past week, and has among the lowest rates of coronavirus testing in the nation.
Kansas is one of 15 traditionally Republican states that has refused to expand Medicaid since 2010, when President Barack Obama signed into law the Affordable Care Act, which allows states to expand the program.
Decisions by Republican lawmakers not to accept the expansion has denied affordable health care to more than 2 million people nationwide, according to a January analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
On Thursday, Kansas Republicans blocked a final effort by Democratic lawmakers to expand Medicaid during the 2020 state legislative session, the Wichita Eagle reported.
The failure to pass the expansion leaves 130,000 residents who would have been eligible for it without access to the health care program.
Democratic state Sen. Dinah Sykes attempted to force a vote on the Medicaid expansion, but Republicans used a procedural tactic to stop it. Both chambers of Kansas' legislature have adjourned until early in 2021.
Throughout the session, Republican lawmakers tied the expansion of Medicaid to an anti-abortion constitutional amendment, refusing to pass one without the other. The "Value Them Both" amendment was designed, in the words of the Kansas House resolution, "to amend the bill of rights of the constitution of the state of Kansas by adding a new section thereto stating that there is no constitutional right to abortion, and reserving to the people the ability to regulate abortion through the elected members of the legislature of the state of Kansas."
State Sen. Gene Suellentrop, a Republican from Wichita, defended the decision to link health care to anti-abortion legislation, complaining, "In the last number of weeks, our constituents have not been able to go to church and our abortion clinics remain open." He added, "It rings pretty hollow (to be) expressing concern about your constituents when you support that kind of activity."
The Republican vote to deny health insurance to low-income residents came despite the fact that more than 260,000 Kansas residents, almost 10% of the state's population, have filed for unemployment benefits in the past two months.
At the beginning of this year, Republican Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning touted a deal with Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly to expand Medicaid, saying the compromise was a "really good, complete plan for Kansas." But Denning was unable to hold up his side of the deal, failing to move the legislation through the state Senate.
"Not even a global public health emergency can convince extremist Republicans to put their partisan agenda aside and finally give their constituents access to affordable health care," Jessica Post, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said in a statement.
As of Friday morning, Kansas has nearly 9,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, and at least 199 people in the state have died as a result of the virus.
On Wednesday, the Brookings Institution reported that states with more Republican-leaning counties, including Kansas, have experienced high rates of coronavirus infection in the past month, defined by having at least 100 cases per 100,000 people.
According to an analysis by USA Today, Kansas has averaged 179 new cases every day for the past week, and has among the lowest rates of coronavirus testing in the nation.
Kansas is one of 15 traditionally Republican states that has refused to expand Medicaid since 2010, when President Barack Obama signed into law the Affordable Care Act, which allows states to expand the program.
Decisions by Republican lawmakers not to accept the expansion has denied affordable health care to more than 2 million people nationwide, according to a January analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
republicans to america's unemployed: fuck you!!!
Nearly 40 million are out of work but McConnell wants benefits to stop anyway
By Emily Singer - the american independent
May 21, 2020 10:16 AM
As 2.4 million more applied for unemployment insurance, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he will not extend the added $600 weekly benefit.
Another 2.4 million Americans filed jobless claims last week, bringing the total number of Americans out of work to 38.6 million, the Department of Labor reported on Thursday.
The news comes as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has vowed to end the additional $600 weekly payment unemployed Americans are receiving under provisions of the $2 trillion CARES Act Congress passed in March.
According to Politico, McConnell told House Republicans on Wednesday that the additional payments "will not be in the next bill."
The $600 addition to unemployment payments is set to expire at the end of July.
House Democrats passed a bill last week that would extend the extra benefits through the end of the year.
A blog entry posted by the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute charges that Republicans' criticism of the increased benefits is "either ill-informed or in bad faith." The added unemployment insurance, it says, "has been the best response yet to the economic shock of the coronavirus and should be extended."
"The extra $600 has been by far the most effective part our economic policy response to the coronavirus shock," the institute noted. "It is likely improving — not degrading — labor market efficiency, and we should build on this and make the nation’s unemployment insurance system well-resourced and far more generous even in normal times."
Republicans have been opposed to the added benefit since the beginning.
Senate Republicans unsuccessfully tried to strip the weekly payment boost from the bill in March. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) led the charge, claiming that the added benefit would discourage Americans from working by paying them more in unemployment benefits than they would earn from the jobs they had prior to their layoffs.
The EPI disagreed. "Without generous relief, these workers and their families would have had to run down meager savings and go into debt just to survive during the lockdown period," it said.
"Even without the epidemic, it would be stupid and cruel to use cutbacks to UI benefits that make them too stingy to live on as a cudgel to demand people somehow find a job quickly in an absolute nightmare of a job market," the institute said.
Ultimately, Republicans such as McConnell, Donald Trump, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy say, they have no plans to pass any more coronavirus relief anytime soon.
Republicans have condemned the HEROES Act passed by House Democrats, which would provide aid to unemployed workers, money for more direct payments to Americans, and relief for state and local governments.
Trump vowed to veto the bill, and the Senate is set to leave town for the Memorial Day recess without taking any action on it or any other coronavirus relief legislation.
Another 2.4 million Americans filed jobless claims last week, bringing the total number of Americans out of work to 38.6 million, the Department of Labor reported on Thursday.
The news comes as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has vowed to end the additional $600 weekly payment unemployed Americans are receiving under provisions of the $2 trillion CARES Act Congress passed in March.
According to Politico, McConnell told House Republicans on Wednesday that the additional payments "will not be in the next bill."
The $600 addition to unemployment payments is set to expire at the end of July.
House Democrats passed a bill last week that would extend the extra benefits through the end of the year.
A blog entry posted by the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute charges that Republicans' criticism of the increased benefits is "either ill-informed or in bad faith." The added unemployment insurance, it says, "has been the best response yet to the economic shock of the coronavirus and should be extended."
"The extra $600 has been by far the most effective part our economic policy response to the coronavirus shock," the institute noted. "It is likely improving — not degrading — labor market efficiency, and we should build on this and make the nation’s unemployment insurance system well-resourced and far more generous even in normal times."
Republicans have been opposed to the added benefit since the beginning.
Senate Republicans unsuccessfully tried to strip the weekly payment boost from the bill in March. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) led the charge, claiming that the added benefit would discourage Americans from working by paying them more in unemployment benefits than they would earn from the jobs they had prior to their layoffs.
The EPI disagreed. "Without generous relief, these workers and their families would have had to run down meager savings and go into debt just to survive during the lockdown period," it said.
"Even without the epidemic, it would be stupid and cruel to use cutbacks to UI benefits that make them too stingy to live on as a cudgel to demand people somehow find a job quickly in an absolute nightmare of a job market," the institute said.
Ultimately, Republicans such as McConnell, Donald Trump, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy say, they have no plans to pass any more coronavirus relief anytime soon.
Republicans have condemned the HEROES Act passed by House Democrats, which would provide aid to unemployed workers, money for more direct payments to Americans, and relief for state and local governments.
Trump vowed to veto the bill, and the Senate is set to leave town for the Memorial Day recess without taking any action on it or any other coronavirus relief legislation.
Accidental Poisonings Increased After President Trump's Disinfectant Comments
BY JEFFREY KLUGER - time
MAY 12, 2020 8:00 AM EDT
President Trump’s April 23 musing that injections of disinfectant could help defeat the coronavirus did not do much for his reputation as a reliable arbiter of public health. What’s harder to determine is how many people—if any—took his advice and in some way ingested the toxic chemicals. The most recent bulletin from the American Association of Poison Control Centers (AAPCC), which aggregates data from its state counterparts, does offer some clues, however.
Even before Trump’s comments, accidental poisonings from bleach and other disinfectants were on the rise from Jan. 1 to March 31 of this year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, with people sanitizing surfaces, groceries, smartphones and more as a defense against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Most of the poisonings were the result of inhalation of fumes, but there were ingestion cases as well, typically among children who got their hands on chemicals left out in the open.
What’s key is what happened in the weeks that followed Trump’s controversial and widely debunked comments—and there does appear to have been a rise in accidental poisonings thereafter.
In January, February and March of 2020, accidental poisonings with household disinfectants were up 5%, 17% and 93% respectively over the same months in 2019. In April, which includes an eight day period from the 23rd of the month to the 30th, following Trump’s comments, the increase was 121% compared to April of 2019. In the first ten days of May, things settled down some, with poisonings up 69% over the same 10-day period in 2019.
For bleach, the numbers are less dramatic, but still telling. In January, February and March 2020 poisonings were up 7%, 1% and 59% respectively over each of the same months last year. In April they leapt 77%. As with disinfectants, May has similarly improved a bit, with the first ten-day period showing an increase of 51% over the same 10 days last year.
Critically, association is not causation, and with a frightened public doing whatever it can to protect itself from the virus, the same increases in poisonings might have happened regardless of Trump’s remarks. But the presidential megaphone is a powerful one, and even dangerous ideas projected through it can influence an awful lot of people.
Still, it bears repeating that no household bleaches, disinfectants or other cleaning chemicals are meant for any kind of internal use. In case of emergency, call the AAPCC’s hotline at 1-800-222-1222.
Even before Trump’s comments, accidental poisonings from bleach and other disinfectants were on the rise from Jan. 1 to March 31 of this year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, with people sanitizing surfaces, groceries, smartphones and more as a defense against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Most of the poisonings were the result of inhalation of fumes, but there were ingestion cases as well, typically among children who got their hands on chemicals left out in the open.
What’s key is what happened in the weeks that followed Trump’s controversial and widely debunked comments—and there does appear to have been a rise in accidental poisonings thereafter.
In January, February and March of 2020, accidental poisonings with household disinfectants were up 5%, 17% and 93% respectively over the same months in 2019. In April, which includes an eight day period from the 23rd of the month to the 30th, following Trump’s comments, the increase was 121% compared to April of 2019. In the first ten days of May, things settled down some, with poisonings up 69% over the same 10-day period in 2019.
For bleach, the numbers are less dramatic, but still telling. In January, February and March 2020 poisonings were up 7%, 1% and 59% respectively over each of the same months last year. In April they leapt 77%. As with disinfectants, May has similarly improved a bit, with the first ten-day period showing an increase of 51% over the same 10 days last year.
Critically, association is not causation, and with a frightened public doing whatever it can to protect itself from the virus, the same increases in poisonings might have happened regardless of Trump’s remarks. But the presidential megaphone is a powerful one, and even dangerous ideas projected through it can influence an awful lot of people.
Still, it bears repeating that no household bleaches, disinfectants or other cleaning chemicals are meant for any kind of internal use. In case of emergency, call the AAPCC’s hotline at 1-800-222-1222.
‘Outrageous, callous, and cruel’: Seniors rip Trump for holding Covid-19 relief hostage to push cuts that threaten Social Security
May 5, 2020
By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams
Grassroots advocacy groups representing millions of retirees and seniors across the United States are speaking out against and urging Congress to oppose President Donald Trump’s threat to block desperately needed Covid-19 relief legislation if it does not slash the payroll tax, which funds Social Security and Medicare.
“It is outrageous, callous, and cruel for President Trump to hold the American people, and seniors in particular, hostage if Congress doesn’t go along with his plan to gut Social Security for current and future retirees,” said Richard Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, an organization with over four million members nationwide.
“Choking off Social Security’s funding stream is an existential threat to seniors’ earned benefits.”
—Max Richtman, National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare
“The president’s plan is also bad economics. Social Security puts more than $800 billion into the economy each year. Destabilizing the system when we are in the middle of an economic downturn is exactly the opposite of what we need to do,” Fiesta added. “The 4.4 million members of the Alliance for Retired Americans call on all members of Congress to refuse to make such a deal. We will fight this attempt to gut Social Security and in November we will remember who was willing to defend and protect our earned benefits.”
During a Fox News town hall Sunday night, Trump said he would oppose any additional coronavirus stimulus package that does not include his long-desired payroll tax cut, which would provide zero direct relief to the more than 30 million Americans who have lost their jobs over the past six weeks. The president suggested at a press briefing last month that the tax cut should be permanent.
“We’re not doing anything unless we get a payroll tax cut,” Trump said Sunday, just days after vowing to protect Social Security and Medicare.
Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, said in a statement Monday that Trump’s remarks “set off alarm bells for America’s seniors and their advocates.”
“Make no mistake: by pushing to cut off the program’s funding stream, President Trump is taking the first step toward dismantling Social Security,” said Richtman. “The president’s campaign to eliminate payroll taxes is a violation of his patently false promises to seniors ‘not to touch’ Social Security. This proposal goes way beyond ‘touching.’ Choking off Social Security’s funding stream is an existential threat to seniors’ earned benefits.”
The multi-trillion-dollar CARES Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law in late March, contains a provision allowing employers to delay payment of the payroll tax for at least the duration of 2020.
Advocates warned at the time that the provision, which replaces payroll tax revenue with general revenue, represents a fundamental threat to Social Security’s long-term financial health. Nancy Altman, president of advocacy group Social Security Works, predicted that Republicans will “undoubtedly use the general revenue to demand cuts to Social Security in the name of ‘reining in entitlements.'”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a proponent of Social Security cuts, hinted in that direction last month, declaring that “the future of our country in terms of the amount of debt that we’re adding up is a matter of genuine concern.”
In a statement on Monday, Altman said the president’s relentless push for a payroll tax cut shows “how desperately Trump and the right-wing ideologues surrounding him want to defund Social Security, so they have an excuse down the road to demand cuts to our earned benefits.”
“Trump’s actions are a war on seniors,” said Altman. “He wants to open up the economy, even though Covid-19 is disproportionately costing seniors their lives. Now he is insisting on threatening Social Security on which most seniors rely for their food, medicine, and other basic necessities. Members of Congress, particularly House Democrats, need to stand strong and call Trump’s bluff.”
“It is outrageous, callous, and cruel for President Trump to hold the American people, and seniors in particular, hostage if Congress doesn’t go along with his plan to gut Social Security for current and future retirees,” said Richard Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, an organization with over four million members nationwide.
“Choking off Social Security’s funding stream is an existential threat to seniors’ earned benefits.”
—Max Richtman, National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare
“The president’s plan is also bad economics. Social Security puts more than $800 billion into the economy each year. Destabilizing the system when we are in the middle of an economic downturn is exactly the opposite of what we need to do,” Fiesta added. “The 4.4 million members of the Alliance for Retired Americans call on all members of Congress to refuse to make such a deal. We will fight this attempt to gut Social Security and in November we will remember who was willing to defend and protect our earned benefits.”
During a Fox News town hall Sunday night, Trump said he would oppose any additional coronavirus stimulus package that does not include his long-desired payroll tax cut, which would provide zero direct relief to the more than 30 million Americans who have lost their jobs over the past six weeks. The president suggested at a press briefing last month that the tax cut should be permanent.
“We’re not doing anything unless we get a payroll tax cut,” Trump said Sunday, just days after vowing to protect Social Security and Medicare.
Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, said in a statement Monday that Trump’s remarks “set off alarm bells for America’s seniors and their advocates.”
“Make no mistake: by pushing to cut off the program’s funding stream, President Trump is taking the first step toward dismantling Social Security,” said Richtman. “The president’s campaign to eliminate payroll taxes is a violation of his patently false promises to seniors ‘not to touch’ Social Security. This proposal goes way beyond ‘touching.’ Choking off Social Security’s funding stream is an existential threat to seniors’ earned benefits.”
The multi-trillion-dollar CARES Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law in late March, contains a provision allowing employers to delay payment of the payroll tax for at least the duration of 2020.
Advocates warned at the time that the provision, which replaces payroll tax revenue with general revenue, represents a fundamental threat to Social Security’s long-term financial health. Nancy Altman, president of advocacy group Social Security Works, predicted that Republicans will “undoubtedly use the general revenue to demand cuts to Social Security in the name of ‘reining in entitlements.'”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a proponent of Social Security cuts, hinted in that direction last month, declaring that “the future of our country in terms of the amount of debt that we’re adding up is a matter of genuine concern.”
In a statement on Monday, Altman said the president’s relentless push for a payroll tax cut shows “how desperately Trump and the right-wing ideologues surrounding him want to defund Social Security, so they have an excuse down the road to demand cuts to our earned benefits.”
“Trump’s actions are a war on seniors,” said Altman. “He wants to open up the economy, even though Covid-19 is disproportionately costing seniors their lives. Now he is insisting on threatening Social Security on which most seniors rely for their food, medicine, and other basic necessities. Members of Congress, particularly House Democrats, need to stand strong and call Trump’s bluff.”
stupid people following advice of a fool!!!
Tennessee Poison Center sees more calls, hospitalizations over disinfectants amid COVID-19
Brinley Hineman, Nashville Tennessean
10:06 p.m. CT April 24, 2020
The Tennessee Poison Center has seen an increase in calls related to cleaning supply overexposure as well as a jump in people hospitalized after ingesting hydrogen peroxide as Tennesseans try to ward off the coronavirus.
Since the coronavirus hit Tennessee, health care workers at the center, housed at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, have fielded more calls from people across the state who have possibly overexposed themselves to disinfectants.
Dr. Rebecca Bruccoleri, the medical director of the Tennessee Poison Center, told The Tennessean that people have phoned the center for concerns related to bleach, hand sanitizer and all purpose cleaners.
“A lot of it is just getting exposed," Bruccoleri said. "Someone might ingest it or they might get it on their skin and be concerned about it.”
The surging calls are on trend with what's being seen nationwide. Across the country, calls to poison control lines related to cleaners and disinfectants have jumped 20%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
And Bruccoleri, as well as Lysol, pushed back after President Donald Trump speculated during a Thursday news conference that injecting disinfectants may help fight the virus.
“I think that people are looking for an answer and there’s a lot of misinformation on the internet," Bruccoleri said. "I think the important thing to stress is that people need to look at reputable websites and talk to their doctors before doing any alternative therapy. That’s a good screening measure.”
Increased calls related to bleach, hydrogen peroxide
Specifically, the doctor said there's been increased calls regarding bleach and hydrogen peroxide.
“Bleach should not be injected or ingested to prevent coronavirus," Bruccoleri said. No chemicals or cleaning products should, she said.
Most stores have been wiped of cleaning supplies, but bleach often remains, pushing more Tennesseans to turn to the chemical.
Bleach is caustic, which means it can destroy tissue, especially if it's ingested.
“It can be really, really dangerous," Bruccoleri said. “It can destroy your internal organs.”
Hydrogen peroxide has wrongly been touted as a cure-all for a variety of ailments and diseases, from cancer to HIV, and now the coronavirus.
Bruccoleri said since January she's personally seen five patients, including children, who have required hospitalization because of ingesting hydrogen peroxide. After being admitted to the hospital, all the patients recovered.
"This is incredibly rare," she said. “This is new for this area to have that kind of volume."
Two teaspoons of hydrogen peroxide can let out a liter of oxygen in the human body, the doctor said. When that gas has nowhere to go, it can be deadly, especially if it settles in your brain or lungs.
Since the coronavirus hit Tennessee, health care workers at the center, housed at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, have fielded more calls from people across the state who have possibly overexposed themselves to disinfectants.
Dr. Rebecca Bruccoleri, the medical director of the Tennessee Poison Center, told The Tennessean that people have phoned the center for concerns related to bleach, hand sanitizer and all purpose cleaners.
“A lot of it is just getting exposed," Bruccoleri said. "Someone might ingest it or they might get it on their skin and be concerned about it.”
The surging calls are on trend with what's being seen nationwide. Across the country, calls to poison control lines related to cleaners and disinfectants have jumped 20%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
And Bruccoleri, as well as Lysol, pushed back after President Donald Trump speculated during a Thursday news conference that injecting disinfectants may help fight the virus.
“I think that people are looking for an answer and there’s a lot of misinformation on the internet," Bruccoleri said. "I think the important thing to stress is that people need to look at reputable websites and talk to their doctors before doing any alternative therapy. That’s a good screening measure.”
Increased calls related to bleach, hydrogen peroxide
Specifically, the doctor said there's been increased calls regarding bleach and hydrogen peroxide.
“Bleach should not be injected or ingested to prevent coronavirus," Bruccoleri said. No chemicals or cleaning products should, she said.
Most stores have been wiped of cleaning supplies, but bleach often remains, pushing more Tennesseans to turn to the chemical.
Bleach is caustic, which means it can destroy tissue, especially if it's ingested.
“It can be really, really dangerous," Bruccoleri said. “It can destroy your internal organs.”
Hydrogen peroxide has wrongly been touted as a cure-all for a variety of ailments and diseases, from cancer to HIV, and now the coronavirus.
Bruccoleri said since January she's personally seen five patients, including children, who have required hospitalization because of ingesting hydrogen peroxide. After being admitted to the hospital, all the patients recovered.
"This is incredibly rare," she said. “This is new for this area to have that kind of volume."
Two teaspoons of hydrogen peroxide can let out a liter of oxygen in the human body, the doctor said. When that gas has nowhere to go, it can be deadly, especially if it settles in your brain or lungs.
Here’s how the GOP’s crusade against the IRS is keeping some people from getting coronavirus relief
April 18, 2020
By Matthew Chapman - raw story
Republicans are not fans of the Internal Revenue Service. Many GOP lawmakers have called for its abolition outright, and when Republicans controlled the House, they progressively cut its budget further and further.
But all of that has had consequences on not just tax enforcement, but — as The Washington Post reported on Saturday — execution of the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package.
“On Wednesday, what would have been Tax Day, many Americans who would have been wondering how much they had to send the Internal Revenue Service instead wondered how much they would get in stimulus bill money from Washington,” wrote the editorial board. “Some got $1,200 checks for themselves but not the $500 for each under-17 dependent they were supposed to receive. Others, including many who used tax preparation services, got nothing at all because the IRS did not have their electronic bank account information. New electronic tools to help people get their money worked for some but not others.”
“The IRS must fix the glitches, fast,” wrote the board. “But blame should not be cast solely on a federal bureaucracy that Congress ordered to organize, in a matter of weeks, the massive logistical effort required to send tens of millions of people hundreds of billions of dollars, in a variety of ways, in partnership with other big agencies, when its banking records were incomplete, all the while protecting against identity theft and other forms of fraud … Moreover, Congress itself deserves much blame for the undercapacity of the IRS. Years of GOP defunding led to severe underinvestment in staff, technology and customer service, the folly of which is only more obvious now.”
“In normal times, the big problem with the Republican campaign against the IRS was that it led to lax enforcement of tax laws, which let cheaters skip out on paying massive amounts of money to the Treasury,” wrote the board. “Small amounts of funding spent to maintain a functional IRS would have yielded large amounts of income that the federal government was owed, at the same time ensuring fairness for the vast majority of Americans who obeyed the law.”
“Now the big problem is that Congress suddenly needs an efficient, staffed-up agency to help rescue the economy, but it must fight the downturn with the agency lawmakers built,” wrote the board. “Without the years of cuts, the IRS would be more capable of answering Americans’ many questions about confusing procedures to obtain their stimulus checks. It would also have had more capacity to build the technological tools it had to create on the fly to aid distribution.”
“Democrats began reinvesting in the IRS after they took the House in 2018. Lawmakers also allocated more money to the agency in its recent economic rescue package,” noted the board. “Congress should continue this long-needed reversal. And the next time some legislator wants to score cheap political points by attacking the IRS, lawmakers should remember what happened this year.”
But all of that has had consequences on not just tax enforcement, but — as The Washington Post reported on Saturday — execution of the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package.
“On Wednesday, what would have been Tax Day, many Americans who would have been wondering how much they had to send the Internal Revenue Service instead wondered how much they would get in stimulus bill money from Washington,” wrote the editorial board. “Some got $1,200 checks for themselves but not the $500 for each under-17 dependent they were supposed to receive. Others, including many who used tax preparation services, got nothing at all because the IRS did not have their electronic bank account information. New electronic tools to help people get their money worked for some but not others.”
“The IRS must fix the glitches, fast,” wrote the board. “But blame should not be cast solely on a federal bureaucracy that Congress ordered to organize, in a matter of weeks, the massive logistical effort required to send tens of millions of people hundreds of billions of dollars, in a variety of ways, in partnership with other big agencies, when its banking records were incomplete, all the while protecting against identity theft and other forms of fraud … Moreover, Congress itself deserves much blame for the undercapacity of the IRS. Years of GOP defunding led to severe underinvestment in staff, technology and customer service, the folly of which is only more obvious now.”
“In normal times, the big problem with the Republican campaign against the IRS was that it led to lax enforcement of tax laws, which let cheaters skip out on paying massive amounts of money to the Treasury,” wrote the board. “Small amounts of funding spent to maintain a functional IRS would have yielded large amounts of income that the federal government was owed, at the same time ensuring fairness for the vast majority of Americans who obeyed the law.”
“Now the big problem is that Congress suddenly needs an efficient, staffed-up agency to help rescue the economy, but it must fight the downturn with the agency lawmakers built,” wrote the board. “Without the years of cuts, the IRS would be more capable of answering Americans’ many questions about confusing procedures to obtain their stimulus checks. It would also have had more capacity to build the technological tools it had to create on the fly to aid distribution.”
“Democrats began reinvesting in the IRS after they took the House in 2018. Lawmakers also allocated more money to the agency in its recent economic rescue package,” noted the board. “Congress should continue this long-needed reversal. And the next time some legislator wants to score cheap political points by attacking the IRS, lawmakers should remember what happened this year.”
Trump’s tariffs are crippling American manufacturers trying to survive pandemic downturn: report
April 15, 2020
By Matthew Chapman - raw story
On Wednesday, Politico reported that President Donald Trump’s tariffs are worsening the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
“Amid the worst recession in nearly a century, a wide range of U.S. businesses hit by President Donald Trump’s tariffs are starting to face an increasingly stark juggling act of trying to keep employees on the payroll while paying staggering tariff bills, some as high as 25 percent,” wrote Adam Behsudi. “Every month, Kevin Feig sends the Treasury roughly $300,000 in tariffs to import auto parts that he supplies to national retail chains. He said his tariff bill matches his monthly payroll expenses for the 110 workers he is hoping to keep employed through a federally backed loan from the government’s new Paycheck Protection Program.”
“U.S. retailers in March reported the biggest one-month plunge in the nearly three decades data has been kept on retail sales, according to Commerce Department data released Wednesday,” continued the report. “The plummeting demand, which is expected to carry into this month and beyond, has reverberated down the supply chain. For many companies that rely on consumer foot traffic, it means less cash on hand to pay wages, rent and invoices on inventory ordered long before the pandemic was on anyone’s radar.”
In other words, even if fewer people are buying their products, companies still have to pay tariffs on inventory they ordered months ago before the downturn was evident.
“Trump has rejected efforts to relax punitive tariffs that have hit roughly $360 billion worth of goods from China, imports of steel and aluminum, foreign-made washing machines and other goods that have been caught up in his trade offensive,” said the report. “But he did sign off on a proposal presented to him during a White House meeting two weeks ago that would have temporarily suspended payments on a separate set of long-standing tariffs that cover roughly 50 percent of U.S. imports, said people familiar with the plan.”
You can read more here.
“Amid the worst recession in nearly a century, a wide range of U.S. businesses hit by President Donald Trump’s tariffs are starting to face an increasingly stark juggling act of trying to keep employees on the payroll while paying staggering tariff bills, some as high as 25 percent,” wrote Adam Behsudi. “Every month, Kevin Feig sends the Treasury roughly $300,000 in tariffs to import auto parts that he supplies to national retail chains. He said his tariff bill matches his monthly payroll expenses for the 110 workers he is hoping to keep employed through a federally backed loan from the government’s new Paycheck Protection Program.”
“U.S. retailers in March reported the biggest one-month plunge in the nearly three decades data has been kept on retail sales, according to Commerce Department data released Wednesday,” continued the report. “The plummeting demand, which is expected to carry into this month and beyond, has reverberated down the supply chain. For many companies that rely on consumer foot traffic, it means less cash on hand to pay wages, rent and invoices on inventory ordered long before the pandemic was on anyone’s radar.”
In other words, even if fewer people are buying their products, companies still have to pay tariffs on inventory they ordered months ago before the downturn was evident.
“Trump has rejected efforts to relax punitive tariffs that have hit roughly $360 billion worth of goods from China, imports of steel and aluminum, foreign-made washing machines and other goods that have been caught up in his trade offensive,” said the report. “But he did sign off on a proposal presented to him during a White House meeting two weeks ago that would have temporarily suspended payments on a separate set of long-standing tariffs that cover roughly 50 percent of U.S. imports, said people familiar with the plan.”
You can read more here.
‘Beyond predatory’: Trump Treasury Department gives banks green light to seize $1,200 stimulus checks to pay off debts
April 14, 2020
By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams - raw story
“The Treasury Department is pointing out opportunities for banks and debt collectors to steal Americans’ relief checks out from under them.”
President Donald Trump’s Treasury Department has given U.S. banks a green light to seize a portion or all of the one-time $1,200 coronavirus relief payments meant to help Americans cope with financial hardship and instead use the money to pay off individuals’ outstanding debts—a move consumer advocates decried as cruel and unacceptable.
“These payments are supposed to help individuals and families put food on the table during this crisis, not enrich debt collectors.”
—Maura Healey, Massachusetts Attorney General
“The Treasury Department effectively blessed this activity on a webinar with banking officials last Friday,” The American Prospect‘s David Dayen reported Tuesday.
In an audio recording from the webinar obtained exclusively by the Prospect, Ronda Kent, chief disbursing officer at the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service, told bankers that “there’s nothing in the law that precludes” financial institutions from seizing a person’s payment and using it to pay off the individual’s debts.
“After a third of U.S. renters couldn’t make rent this month, the Treasury Department is pointing out opportunities for banks and debt collectors to steal Americans’ relief checks out from under them,” Jeremy Funk, spokesperson for consumer advocacy group Allied Progress, said in a statement responding to Kent’s comments.
“It’s the middle of a pandemic,” said Funk. “This money should be going toward food, rent, and medicine—it’s not the time to hand out favors to debt collection industry donors or pad some big bank’s bottom line,” said Funk. “Secretary Mnuchin needs to ensure that these $1,200 checks go straight into Americans pockets where they belong.”
Americans with direct deposit information on file with the Internal Revenue Service are expected to begin receiving the $1,200 payments in their bank accounts this week, provided that their banks do not opt to seize the money.
Those for whom the government does not have direct deposit information—a group that is disproportionately low-income—could be forced to wait up to five months to receive paper checks in the mail.
The direct payments were authorized under the CARES Act, a massive coronavirus stimulus package President Donald Trump signed into law last month.
As Dayen explained, Congress explicitly exempted the one-time stimulus payments from collection under the CARES Act “if the debt is owed to federal or state agencies, unless the debt involves a child support payment.”
“But Congress did not extend this exemption to private debt collection,” Dayen wrote. “The payments are defined as tax credits and not federal benefits, making them subject to ‘garnishment,’ in which a debt collector that wins a judgment in court can seize anything of value held by the debtor.”
“Congress did give Treasury the authority under Section 2201(h) of the CARES Act to write rules exempting the payments from private debt collectors,” Dayen noted, but the Treasury Department—headed by former Goldman Sachs executive Steve Mnuchin—has thus far refused to exercise that authority despite pressure from Democratic members of Congress and state attorneys general.
On Monday, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey issued guidance stating that the $1,200 payments “are exempt from seizure or garnishment by creditors under Massachusetts law.”
“These payments are supposed to help individuals and families put food on the table during this crisis, not enrich debt collectors,” Healey said in a statement. “With this guidance… my office is putting the debt collection industry on notice that these payments are off limits.”
Healey on Monday also signed onto a letter (pdf) led by New York Attorney General Letitia James urging Mnuchin to issue “a regulation or guidance designating CARES Act payments as ‘benefit payments’ exempt from garnishment.” The letter was signed by 25 state attorneys general.
“During this public health and economic crisis, the states do not believe that the billions of dollars appropriated by Congress to help keep hard-working Americans afloat should be subject to garnishment,” the letter states.
“Absolutely obscene. This money is for food, medicine, housing. The essentials of life.”
—Mike Siegel, Texas congressional candidate
Dayen noted that “legally speaking, banks have the right to ‘offset’ any deposits to pay off delinquent loans, overdraft fees, or other charges.”
“Banks have more immediate access to the coronavirus checks by virtue of having them deposited into accounts at their institutions,” Dayen wrote. “They’re also in front of the line for repayment of debts ahead of other private debt collectors.”[...]
President Donald Trump’s Treasury Department has given U.S. banks a green light to seize a portion or all of the one-time $1,200 coronavirus relief payments meant to help Americans cope with financial hardship and instead use the money to pay off individuals’ outstanding debts—a move consumer advocates decried as cruel and unacceptable.
“These payments are supposed to help individuals and families put food on the table during this crisis, not enrich debt collectors.”
—Maura Healey, Massachusetts Attorney General
“The Treasury Department effectively blessed this activity on a webinar with banking officials last Friday,” The American Prospect‘s David Dayen reported Tuesday.
In an audio recording from the webinar obtained exclusively by the Prospect, Ronda Kent, chief disbursing officer at the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service, told bankers that “there’s nothing in the law that precludes” financial institutions from seizing a person’s payment and using it to pay off the individual’s debts.
“After a third of U.S. renters couldn’t make rent this month, the Treasury Department is pointing out opportunities for banks and debt collectors to steal Americans’ relief checks out from under them,” Jeremy Funk, spokesperson for consumer advocacy group Allied Progress, said in a statement responding to Kent’s comments.
“It’s the middle of a pandemic,” said Funk. “This money should be going toward food, rent, and medicine—it’s not the time to hand out favors to debt collection industry donors or pad some big bank’s bottom line,” said Funk. “Secretary Mnuchin needs to ensure that these $1,200 checks go straight into Americans pockets where they belong.”
Americans with direct deposit information on file with the Internal Revenue Service are expected to begin receiving the $1,200 payments in their bank accounts this week, provided that their banks do not opt to seize the money.
Those for whom the government does not have direct deposit information—a group that is disproportionately low-income—could be forced to wait up to five months to receive paper checks in the mail.
The direct payments were authorized under the CARES Act, a massive coronavirus stimulus package President Donald Trump signed into law last month.
As Dayen explained, Congress explicitly exempted the one-time stimulus payments from collection under the CARES Act “if the debt is owed to federal or state agencies, unless the debt involves a child support payment.”
“But Congress did not extend this exemption to private debt collection,” Dayen wrote. “The payments are defined as tax credits and not federal benefits, making them subject to ‘garnishment,’ in which a debt collector that wins a judgment in court can seize anything of value held by the debtor.”
“Congress did give Treasury the authority under Section 2201(h) of the CARES Act to write rules exempting the payments from private debt collectors,” Dayen noted, but the Treasury Department—headed by former Goldman Sachs executive Steve Mnuchin—has thus far refused to exercise that authority despite pressure from Democratic members of Congress and state attorneys general.
On Monday, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey issued guidance stating that the $1,200 payments “are exempt from seizure or garnishment by creditors under Massachusetts law.”
“These payments are supposed to help individuals and families put food on the table during this crisis, not enrich debt collectors,” Healey said in a statement. “With this guidance… my office is putting the debt collection industry on notice that these payments are off limits.”
Healey on Monday also signed onto a letter (pdf) led by New York Attorney General Letitia James urging Mnuchin to issue “a regulation or guidance designating CARES Act payments as ‘benefit payments’ exempt from garnishment.” The letter was signed by 25 state attorneys general.
“During this public health and economic crisis, the states do not believe that the billions of dollars appropriated by Congress to help keep hard-working Americans afloat should be subject to garnishment,” the letter states.
“Absolutely obscene. This money is for food, medicine, housing. The essentials of life.”
—Mike Siegel, Texas congressional candidate
Dayen noted that “legally speaking, banks have the right to ‘offset’ any deposits to pay off delinquent loans, overdraft fees, or other charges.”
“Banks have more immediate access to the coronavirus checks by virtue of having them deposited into accounts at their institutions,” Dayen wrote. “They’re also in front of the line for repayment of debts ahead of other private debt collectors.”[...]
The coronavirus will soon wreak havoc in Trump country — here’s why
April 6, 2020
By Tom Boggioni - raw story
According to three public health policy experts writing for the Washington Post, rural communities that are strongholds of Donald Trump voters are about to feel the brunt of the coronavirus pandemic that has shut down the country’s major metropolitan areas and it will likely will be worse.
In their column for the Post, Michelle A. Williams, a dean at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Bizu Gelaye from Massachusetts General Hospital and Emily M. Broad Leib, deputy director of the Harvard Law School Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation claim it is only a matter of time before COVID-19 ravages small communities — and that the effects will likely be worse for a multitude of reasons.
Writing, “Covid-19 is infiltrating more of the country with each passing day. Colorado, Utah and Idaho are grappling with sudden clusters in counties popular with out-of-state tourists. Cases are also skyrocketing in Southern states such as Georgia, Florida and Louisiana,” they add, “So far, sparsely populated communities have been better insulated from the spread. But since no place in the United States is truly isolated, there’s simply no outrunning this virus. Every community is at imminent risk.”
Noting that people living in rural communities tend to be older — and thus more susceptible to the coronavirus — the trio of experts explain they already “…suffer from a rural mortality penalty, with a disparity in mortality rates between urban and rural areas that has been climbing since the 1980s. Chronic financial strain and the erosion of opportunity have contributed to “deaths of despair” as well as a rise in conditions such as heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and stroke. Add in prolonged social distancing and the economic downturn, and these trends will surely worsen.”
More importantly, those communities lack the health facility infrastructure to handle heavy critical care caseloads.
“Rural counties have just 5,600 intensive care beds total, compared with more than 50,000 in urban counties. In fact, half of U.S. counties do not have any ICU beds at all. And even if these counties are somehow able to scale up their infrastructure, experts are afraid there will not be enough health-care workers to staff them,” they wrote.
“Long before the novel coronavirus emerged as a threat, America’s rural hospitals were already in dire financial straits. About 1 in 4 are vulnerable to being shuttered, with 120 having closed in the past decade. With the pandemic looming, many of these health systems have been forced to cancel elective procedures and non-urgent services such as physical therapy and lab tests, which in some cases account for half of their revenue. As cash flow wanes, the American Hospital Association warns that even more hospitals could be forced to shut their doors exactly when patients need them most.”
“It is clear the battle against covid-19 will look vastly different in the heartland than in our cities. The U.S. Navy won’t be docking a floating hospital in Nuckolls County, Neb,” they added. “But if what’s happened in America’s coastal cities can teach us anything, it’s that the coming weeks will determine the trajectory of this virus. And we don’t have a moment to waste.”
You can read more here.
In their column for the Post, Michelle A. Williams, a dean at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Bizu Gelaye from Massachusetts General Hospital and Emily M. Broad Leib, deputy director of the Harvard Law School Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation claim it is only a matter of time before COVID-19 ravages small communities — and that the effects will likely be worse for a multitude of reasons.
Writing, “Covid-19 is infiltrating more of the country with each passing day. Colorado, Utah and Idaho are grappling with sudden clusters in counties popular with out-of-state tourists. Cases are also skyrocketing in Southern states such as Georgia, Florida and Louisiana,” they add, “So far, sparsely populated communities have been better insulated from the spread. But since no place in the United States is truly isolated, there’s simply no outrunning this virus. Every community is at imminent risk.”
Noting that people living in rural communities tend to be older — and thus more susceptible to the coronavirus — the trio of experts explain they already “…suffer from a rural mortality penalty, with a disparity in mortality rates between urban and rural areas that has been climbing since the 1980s. Chronic financial strain and the erosion of opportunity have contributed to “deaths of despair” as well as a rise in conditions such as heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and stroke. Add in prolonged social distancing and the economic downturn, and these trends will surely worsen.”
More importantly, those communities lack the health facility infrastructure to handle heavy critical care caseloads.
“Rural counties have just 5,600 intensive care beds total, compared with more than 50,000 in urban counties. In fact, half of U.S. counties do not have any ICU beds at all. And even if these counties are somehow able to scale up their infrastructure, experts are afraid there will not be enough health-care workers to staff them,” they wrote.
“Long before the novel coronavirus emerged as a threat, America’s rural hospitals were already in dire financial straits. About 1 in 4 are vulnerable to being shuttered, with 120 having closed in the past decade. With the pandemic looming, many of these health systems have been forced to cancel elective procedures and non-urgent services such as physical therapy and lab tests, which in some cases account for half of their revenue. As cash flow wanes, the American Hospital Association warns that even more hospitals could be forced to shut their doors exactly when patients need them most.”
“It is clear the battle against covid-19 will look vastly different in the heartland than in our cities. The U.S. Navy won’t be docking a floating hospital in Nuckolls County, Neb,” they added. “But if what’s happened in America’s coastal cities can teach us anything, it’s that the coming weeks will determine the trajectory of this virus. And we don’t have a moment to waste.”
You can read more here.
Trump administration quietly guts COVID-19 paid leave provision that already excluded 75% of workers
The administration also excluded some health workers and first responders from being eligible for paid leave
IGOR DERYSH - salon
APRIL 3, 2020 6:28PM (UTC)
The Trump administration has quietly issued new guidance that will exempt many small businesses from having to provide some workers with paid leave during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Department of Labor issued a temporary rule Wednesday that effectively exempted businesses with fewer than 50 workers from being required to provide 12 weeks of paid leave for workers whose children are suddenly at home from school or child care under the coronavirus stimulus package signed by President Donald Trump.
Democrats already agreed to exclude workers at large companies with more than 500 employees from being eligible for sick leave during negotiations with Republicans. As a result, more than 75% of American workers are employed by companies not required to provide them with sick leave during the pandemic.
The bill passed by Congress said businesses with fewer than 50 employees could be eligible for exemptions if they prevent the business from being able to function, The New York Times reported. The Trump administration's guidance has effectively exempted these businesses entirely from having to provide paid leave to workers who have to take care of their families, though it still requires them to provide paid leave if employees themselves get sick.
These companies can refuse to provide paid leave if doing so would "cause the small business to cease operating," if the worker's absence would create a "substantial risk" or if there were not enough workers "able, willing and qualified" to fill in for them.
The Times noted that health care providers, first responders and some federal government employees can also be denied paid leave under the bill.
Democrats called out the Labor Department for adding provisions not included in the original bill. The department's guidance allows companies to require workers to provide certification that they needed to take leave and that there needed to be work for the employee in order to be eligible, thus exempting businesses that have been forced to shut down under stay-at-home guidelines.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., sent a letter to Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia accusing his department of issuing guidelines that "violate congressional intent" and "contradict the plain language" of the bill.
"Given that congressional intent was to respond to the unprecedented nature of this pandemic," the letter said, the department had "the responsibility to provide the maximum flexibility for workers during this crisis — not restricting their leave to when employers grant their consent."
Scalia said in a Wednesday statement that "the bill provides unprecedented paid leave benefits to American workers affected by the virus, while ensuring that businesses are reimbursed dollar-for-dollar."
But Murray and DeLauro argued that some of the department's guidance "has no basis in the text" of the law and that there was "nothing in the text" requiring many of the new provisions. The letter called on the department to "immediately revise" its guidance "in accord with the text and congressional intent" of the law.
Economists also sounded the alarm over a provision that exempts health care workers.
"Exempting health care providers and emergency responders threatens our nation's ability to fight back against the coronavirus and makes us all more vulnerable," Heather Boushey, who heads the progressive think tank Washington Center for Equitable Growth, told The Times. "Our health care workers are the most susceptible to exposure and are in a position to pass it on to other patients. These are the workers who most need to be protected."
The guidance was just one way in which the Trump administration has sought to undermine provisions in the bill pushed by Democrats. The president issued a signing statement last week undercutting the law's provision creating a "special inspector general," who would be charged with overseeing corporate loans made by the Treasury Department under the new law.
"I do not understand, and my administration will not treat, this provision as permitting the [inspector general] to issue reports to the Congress without the presidential supervision required" by Article II of the Constitution, Trump said in the signing statement, arguing that the administration views that provision and those requiring reports to Congressional committees as optional. "These provisions are impermissible forms of congressional aggrandizement with respect to the execution of the laws."
The move drew strong criticism from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.
"And just like that, the Congressional oversight provisions for the 1/2 TRILLION dollar Wall St slush fund (which were *already* too weak) are tossed away the day the bill is signed," she tweeted. "This is a frightening amount of public money to have given a corrupt admin [with zero] accountability."
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the signing statement was "no surprise."
"But Congress will exercise its oversight," Pelosi told MSNBC. "And we will have our panel appointed by the House to, in real-time, to make sure we know where those funds are going to be expended."
Pelosi announced a new select committee Thursday that would oversee the administration's coronavirus response.
"The panel will root out waste, fraud, and abuse and will protect against price gouging, profiteering, and political favoritism," she said. "Where there's money there's also frequently mischief. We want to make sure there are not exploiters out there."
The Department of Labor issued a temporary rule Wednesday that effectively exempted businesses with fewer than 50 workers from being required to provide 12 weeks of paid leave for workers whose children are suddenly at home from school or child care under the coronavirus stimulus package signed by President Donald Trump.
Democrats already agreed to exclude workers at large companies with more than 500 employees from being eligible for sick leave during negotiations with Republicans. As a result, more than 75% of American workers are employed by companies not required to provide them with sick leave during the pandemic.
The bill passed by Congress said businesses with fewer than 50 employees could be eligible for exemptions if they prevent the business from being able to function, The New York Times reported. The Trump administration's guidance has effectively exempted these businesses entirely from having to provide paid leave to workers who have to take care of their families, though it still requires them to provide paid leave if employees themselves get sick.
These companies can refuse to provide paid leave if doing so would "cause the small business to cease operating," if the worker's absence would create a "substantial risk" or if there were not enough workers "able, willing and qualified" to fill in for them.
The Times noted that health care providers, first responders and some federal government employees can also be denied paid leave under the bill.
Democrats called out the Labor Department for adding provisions not included in the original bill. The department's guidance allows companies to require workers to provide certification that they needed to take leave and that there needed to be work for the employee in order to be eligible, thus exempting businesses that have been forced to shut down under stay-at-home guidelines.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., sent a letter to Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia accusing his department of issuing guidelines that "violate congressional intent" and "contradict the plain language" of the bill.
"Given that congressional intent was to respond to the unprecedented nature of this pandemic," the letter said, the department had "the responsibility to provide the maximum flexibility for workers during this crisis — not restricting their leave to when employers grant their consent."
Scalia said in a Wednesday statement that "the bill provides unprecedented paid leave benefits to American workers affected by the virus, while ensuring that businesses are reimbursed dollar-for-dollar."
But Murray and DeLauro argued that some of the department's guidance "has no basis in the text" of the law and that there was "nothing in the text" requiring many of the new provisions. The letter called on the department to "immediately revise" its guidance "in accord with the text and congressional intent" of the law.
Economists also sounded the alarm over a provision that exempts health care workers.
"Exempting health care providers and emergency responders threatens our nation's ability to fight back against the coronavirus and makes us all more vulnerable," Heather Boushey, who heads the progressive think tank Washington Center for Equitable Growth, told The Times. "Our health care workers are the most susceptible to exposure and are in a position to pass it on to other patients. These are the workers who most need to be protected."
The guidance was just one way in which the Trump administration has sought to undermine provisions in the bill pushed by Democrats. The president issued a signing statement last week undercutting the law's provision creating a "special inspector general," who would be charged with overseeing corporate loans made by the Treasury Department under the new law.
"I do not understand, and my administration will not treat, this provision as permitting the [inspector general] to issue reports to the Congress without the presidential supervision required" by Article II of the Constitution, Trump said in the signing statement, arguing that the administration views that provision and those requiring reports to Congressional committees as optional. "These provisions are impermissible forms of congressional aggrandizement with respect to the execution of the laws."
The move drew strong criticism from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.
"And just like that, the Congressional oversight provisions for the 1/2 TRILLION dollar Wall St slush fund (which were *already* too weak) are tossed away the day the bill is signed," she tweeted. "This is a frightening amount of public money to have given a corrupt admin [with zero] accountability."
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the signing statement was "no surprise."
"But Congress will exercise its oversight," Pelosi told MSNBC. "And we will have our panel appointed by the House to, in real-time, to make sure we know where those funds are going to be expended."
Pelosi announced a new select committee Thursday that would oversee the administration's coronavirus response.
"The panel will root out waste, fraud, and abuse and will protect against price gouging, profiteering, and political favoritism," she said. "Where there's money there's also frequently mischief. We want to make sure there are not exploiters out there."
why are jobless upset? they elected them!!!
‘Monsters!’ Florida Republicans ignite fury by admitting they purposefully mangled state unemployment system
April 3, 2020
By Travis Gettys - raw story
Republicans admitted Florida’s unemployment system was “designed to fail” — and then whined about their election chances now that the system was overwhelmed by thousands of suddenly jobless people.
The U.S. economy collapsed under the weight of the coronavirus outbreak that’s nowhere near abating, and Florida Republicans are forming a circular firing squad now that unemployed workers are finding the “Connect” system was purposefully designed to discourage new claims to keep jobless numbers down.
“Everyone we talk to in that office when we ask them what happened tells us, ‘the system was designed to fail,’” one adviser to Gov. Ron DeSantis told Politico. “That’s not a problem when unemployment is 2.8 percent, but it’s a problem now. And no system we have can handle 25,000 people a day.”
The system was implemented by former Gov. Rick Scott, now a GOP senator, and the state’s Republican-led legislature, which promised business groups Connect would grant them tax breaks while delivering just $275 in unemployment benefits to jobless workers for a maximum of 12 weeks.
Their admissions and blame-shifting sparked fury across social media.
The U.S. economy collapsed under the weight of the coronavirus outbreak that’s nowhere near abating, and Florida Republicans are forming a circular firing squad now that unemployed workers are finding the “Connect” system was purposefully designed to discourage new claims to keep jobless numbers down.
“Everyone we talk to in that office when we ask them what happened tells us, ‘the system was designed to fail,’” one adviser to Gov. Ron DeSantis told Politico. “That’s not a problem when unemployment is 2.8 percent, but it’s a problem now. And no system we have can handle 25,000 people a day.”
The system was implemented by former Gov. Rick Scott, now a GOP senator, and the state’s Republican-led legislature, which promised business groups Connect would grant them tax breaks while delivering just $275 in unemployment benefits to jobless workers for a maximum of 12 weeks.
Their admissions and blame-shifting sparked fury across social media.
Right-Wing Austerity Set New Orleans Up to Be a Coronavirus Disaster Zone
BY Mike Ludwig, Truthout
PUBLISHED April 3, 2020
New Orleans — Back in 1997, when Steve Scalise was a Louisiana state representative, he joined other right-wing lawmakers in co-authoring and passing a “state preemption” law that prevents city governments from raising the minimum wage for their residents. Today, Rep. Scalise is one of the most powerful Republicans in Congress, and Louisiana is one of only five states where the wage floor is frozen at the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour. More than one in four children live in poverty in Louisiana, which remains one of the poorest states in the nation despite modest gains in recent years.
While the minimum wage preemption law does not mention any city by name, activists say the Democratic stronghold of New Orleans — with its history of activism, bustling urban tourist economy and large numbers of Black voters — was clearly a target. Despite its cultural richness, New Orleans had the highest poverty rate among the nation’s 50 largest metro areas in 2017. After coming under pressure from activists, the New Orleans City Council passed a resolution last year urging the state legislature to end the state minimum wage preemption so the city could raise its wage floor. So far, lawmakers have failed to act.
With the outbreak of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, poverty is once again exacerbating an economic and public health crisis in Louisiana and New Orleans.
New Orleans is considered a hot spot for infections, with 3,148 confirmed cases and 125 deaths as of Thursday. The number of cases in New Orleans and across Louisiana ballooned this week as testing became more widely available. The number of confirmed cases statewide spiked by 2,726 from Wednesday to Thursday, reaching a total of 9,150, according to the state health department. As of Thursday, 310 deaths were reported statewide, and the per capita death rate in New Orleans remains one of the highest in the country.
Experts say poverty is a driving factor behind an explosion of COVID-19 cases in New Orleans, where low-income families are crammed into substandard housing and 53 percent of households do not have enough savings to survive at poverty levels for three months without income. About 20 percent of households do not have any internet access, a major source of news and public health information about the outbreak that many of us take for granted, according to The Data Center. New Orleanians are more likely to have underlying health conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes that increase the likelihood of severe COVID-19 outcomes than residents of other hard-hit cities, including New York City and Seattle.
New Orleans is known for its resilience in times of crisis, but the signs of disaster are now hard to miss. Businesses are shuttered, and tens of thousands of people are likely out of work. Louisiana is running out of ventilators, and the local convention center is being converted into a makeshift hospital with thousands of beds to care for COVID-19 patients overflowing from hospitals. Refrigeration units are set up outside a suburban morgue and at least one hospital to hold the bodies of COVID-19 victims that funeral homes are currently unprepared to take.
Nurses and health care workers on the front line of the pandemic continue to report working without N95 masks and other protective gear that prevents the spread of disease, thanks to nationwide shortages and relaxed federal guidelines, according to online nurses’ forums and workers who spoke to Truthout on the condition of anonymity. Across the city, nurses report suffering emotional breakdowns on a daily basis.
While much media attention has focused on how recent Mardi Gras celebrations and New Orleans’ unique social culture may have contributed to the spread of coronavirus, activists and experts say years of austerity at the state level and deeply rooted structural racism created the conditions that have made New Orleans a coronavirus hot spot and weakened Louisiana’s ability to recover from the pandemic’s economic damage.
Republicans Block Paid Sick Leave
Former Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal revised Scalise’s minimum wage preemption law in 2012, signing a highly partisan bill into law that added mandatory paid sick leave for workers to the list of labor measures that city governments are banned from requiring of private businesses. Today, activists are clamoring to change the law so cities like New Orleans can expand paid sick leave for untold numbers of workers who are currently forced to choose between paying their bills and staying home to care for themselves or their family members during the COVID-19 outbreak.
“This is part of a national trend of neoliberalism and right-wing politics that has come from a legacy of slavery and Jim Crow and white supremacy in the South since the founding of the nation,” said Benjamin Zucker, an organizer with Unleash Local, a statewide coalition of grassroots groups fighting to end state preemption of economic reforms. “It’s not an accident that it’s majority-Black cities like New Orleans and Jackson and Birmingham that want to be able to raise wages and pass paid sick leave laws that are being stopped by majority-white conservative state legislatures.”
---
However, the legislature only met briefly this week before suspending its session due to the coronavirus outbreak and the stay-at-home order. Last year, the Republican-controlled legislature rejected a proposal to create a paid sick and parental leave policy that would have provided 80 percent of state employees with paid time off to recover from illness or care for a newborn child.
Zucker said that if state preemption were lifted, action in New Orleans would be swift. The mayor, city council and most voters support raising the minimum wage within the city limits and establishing paid sick leave requirements.
“At the minimum we should be allowed to do what people here overwhelmingly want to do,” Zucker said. “Let us have some democracy here.”
Louisiana Among States “Significantly Underprepared” for Recession
New Orleans is a blue oasis in a deeply red state, and conservatives have long controlled the state legislature. Lewis said Louisiana has yet to recover from Jindal’s two terms in office, when Louisiana joined states across the country in slashing funding for public health departments and other social services as tax revenues dropped during the Great Recession. Like many other states, funding for public programs was never fully restored in Louisiana.
For example, Lewis said the Louisiana Department of Child and Family Services, which administers childcare and nutrition assistance to low-income families, had 2,400 more employees in 2008 than it does today. Jindal also privatized “charity” public hospitals in New Orleans and elsewhere, allowing profit-seeking contractors to infiltrate the health care system’s safety-net institutions.
“We are completely dependent now on the free market,” Lewis said.
Gov. Edwards is a Democrat who appeals to conservative voters with anti-choice and pro-gun stances and staved off a Republican challenger last year to win a second term in office. Despite his conservative positions on some issues, Edwards pleased progressives by expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act during his first term, something Jindal refused to do as he padded his right-wing resume ahead of the 2016 campaign season. Without the Medicaid expansion, about 500,000 people would be without health coverage as COVID-19 courses through the state, according to Lewis.
---
Meanwhile, Louisiana has seen a bigger increase in unemployment due to coronavirus than any other state, according to WalletHub. Gig workers and those working in informal economies, which are major sources of income for many people living in tourist-heavy New Orleans, are among the hardest hit as economic recession looms. Louisiana is heavily dependent on revenues from the oil and gas industry, which is facing a financial crisis as fuel prices plummet globally. A recent economic “stress test” of state government budgets conducted by Moody’s Analytics ranks Louisiana among more than a dozen states nationally that are “significantly underprepared” for a recession.
“We’re going to have to now be fighting for the little bit of social safety net that we have left in this state,” Lewis said. “Louisiana is woefully unprepared for a recession.”
While the minimum wage preemption law does not mention any city by name, activists say the Democratic stronghold of New Orleans — with its history of activism, bustling urban tourist economy and large numbers of Black voters — was clearly a target. Despite its cultural richness, New Orleans had the highest poverty rate among the nation’s 50 largest metro areas in 2017. After coming under pressure from activists, the New Orleans City Council passed a resolution last year urging the state legislature to end the state minimum wage preemption so the city could raise its wage floor. So far, lawmakers have failed to act.
With the outbreak of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, poverty is once again exacerbating an economic and public health crisis in Louisiana and New Orleans.
New Orleans is considered a hot spot for infections, with 3,148 confirmed cases and 125 deaths as of Thursday. The number of cases in New Orleans and across Louisiana ballooned this week as testing became more widely available. The number of confirmed cases statewide spiked by 2,726 from Wednesday to Thursday, reaching a total of 9,150, according to the state health department. As of Thursday, 310 deaths were reported statewide, and the per capita death rate in New Orleans remains one of the highest in the country.
Experts say poverty is a driving factor behind an explosion of COVID-19 cases in New Orleans, where low-income families are crammed into substandard housing and 53 percent of households do not have enough savings to survive at poverty levels for three months without income. About 20 percent of households do not have any internet access, a major source of news and public health information about the outbreak that many of us take for granted, according to The Data Center. New Orleanians are more likely to have underlying health conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes that increase the likelihood of severe COVID-19 outcomes than residents of other hard-hit cities, including New York City and Seattle.
New Orleans is known for its resilience in times of crisis, but the signs of disaster are now hard to miss. Businesses are shuttered, and tens of thousands of people are likely out of work. Louisiana is running out of ventilators, and the local convention center is being converted into a makeshift hospital with thousands of beds to care for COVID-19 patients overflowing from hospitals. Refrigeration units are set up outside a suburban morgue and at least one hospital to hold the bodies of COVID-19 victims that funeral homes are currently unprepared to take.
Nurses and health care workers on the front line of the pandemic continue to report working without N95 masks and other protective gear that prevents the spread of disease, thanks to nationwide shortages and relaxed federal guidelines, according to online nurses’ forums and workers who spoke to Truthout on the condition of anonymity. Across the city, nurses report suffering emotional breakdowns on a daily basis.
While much media attention has focused on how recent Mardi Gras celebrations and New Orleans’ unique social culture may have contributed to the spread of coronavirus, activists and experts say years of austerity at the state level and deeply rooted structural racism created the conditions that have made New Orleans a coronavirus hot spot and weakened Louisiana’s ability to recover from the pandemic’s economic damage.
Republicans Block Paid Sick Leave
Former Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal revised Scalise’s minimum wage preemption law in 2012, signing a highly partisan bill into law that added mandatory paid sick leave for workers to the list of labor measures that city governments are banned from requiring of private businesses. Today, activists are clamoring to change the law so cities like New Orleans can expand paid sick leave for untold numbers of workers who are currently forced to choose between paying their bills and staying home to care for themselves or their family members during the COVID-19 outbreak.
“This is part of a national trend of neoliberalism and right-wing politics that has come from a legacy of slavery and Jim Crow and white supremacy in the South since the founding of the nation,” said Benjamin Zucker, an organizer with Unleash Local, a statewide coalition of grassroots groups fighting to end state preemption of economic reforms. “It’s not an accident that it’s majority-Black cities like New Orleans and Jackson and Birmingham that want to be able to raise wages and pass paid sick leave laws that are being stopped by majority-white conservative state legislatures.”
---
However, the legislature only met briefly this week before suspending its session due to the coronavirus outbreak and the stay-at-home order. Last year, the Republican-controlled legislature rejected a proposal to create a paid sick and parental leave policy that would have provided 80 percent of state employees with paid time off to recover from illness or care for a newborn child.
Zucker said that if state preemption were lifted, action in New Orleans would be swift. The mayor, city council and most voters support raising the minimum wage within the city limits and establishing paid sick leave requirements.
“At the minimum we should be allowed to do what people here overwhelmingly want to do,” Zucker said. “Let us have some democracy here.”
Louisiana Among States “Significantly Underprepared” for Recession
New Orleans is a blue oasis in a deeply red state, and conservatives have long controlled the state legislature. Lewis said Louisiana has yet to recover from Jindal’s two terms in office, when Louisiana joined states across the country in slashing funding for public health departments and other social services as tax revenues dropped during the Great Recession. Like many other states, funding for public programs was never fully restored in Louisiana.
For example, Lewis said the Louisiana Department of Child and Family Services, which administers childcare and nutrition assistance to low-income families, had 2,400 more employees in 2008 than it does today. Jindal also privatized “charity” public hospitals in New Orleans and elsewhere, allowing profit-seeking contractors to infiltrate the health care system’s safety-net institutions.
“We are completely dependent now on the free market,” Lewis said.
Gov. Edwards is a Democrat who appeals to conservative voters with anti-choice and pro-gun stances and staved off a Republican challenger last year to win a second term in office. Despite his conservative positions on some issues, Edwards pleased progressives by expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act during his first term, something Jindal refused to do as he padded his right-wing resume ahead of the 2016 campaign season. Without the Medicaid expansion, about 500,000 people would be without health coverage as COVID-19 courses through the state, according to Lewis.
---
Meanwhile, Louisiana has seen a bigger increase in unemployment due to coronavirus than any other state, according to WalletHub. Gig workers and those working in informal economies, which are major sources of income for many people living in tourist-heavy New Orleans, are among the hardest hit as economic recession looms. Louisiana is heavily dependent on revenues from the oil and gas industry, which is facing a financial crisis as fuel prices plummet globally. A recent economic “stress test” of state government budgets conducted by Moody’s Analytics ranks Louisiana among more than a dozen states nationally that are “significantly underprepared” for a recession.
“We’re going to have to now be fighting for the little bit of social safety net that we have left in this state,” Lewis said. “Louisiana is woefully unprepared for a recession.”
congrats to all the geniuses who voted for trump and needed insurance!!!
Trump refuses to reopen Obamacare exchanges after millions of laid-off workers lose health coverage
The White House estimates that hundreds of thousands of Americans will die as a result of the coronavirus pandemic
IGOR DERYSH - salon
APRIL 1, 2020 6:12PM (UTC)
The Trump administration has refused to reopen Obamacare exchanges to allow millions of laid-off workers get health insurance, even though the White House estimated that hundreds of thousands of Americans will die as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
Nearly a dozen states have reopened their enrollment period to help the millions of workers who lost their jobs amid statewide lockdowns, but a White House official told Politico that the administration had no plans to relaunch HealthCare.gov and was instead "exploring other options."
The Obamacare enrollment period ended months ago, but millions of people have filed for unemployment since the coronavirus crisis began. Though some Democratic states have reopened their insurance marketplaces, the Trump administration oversees enrollment for the vast majority of states.
The decision surprised insurers, who said last week that they expected Trump to announce a special enrollment period after conversations with officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, according to the report.
Trump himself said last week that he was considering a special enrollment period at the same time as his administration supports a lawsuit seeking to repeal Obamacare in a move that would strip insurance coverage from more than 20 million people.
"It's something we're talking to a lot of people about," the president said. "We'll see what happens."
People who lose their employer-based insurance are eligible to apply for health care on the marketplace but must provide proof that they lost coverage while a special enrollment period would make the process easier and would not require that paperwork, The New York Times' Margot Sanger-Katz reported.
Aside from the marketplace, some laid-off workers have the option to extend their employer-based insurance through COBRA, which costs users far more than the insurance they get through their job. Low-income workers can also apply for Medicaid, though many Republican states have refused to expand Medicaid under the Obamacare law.
Trump has promoted cheaper short-term health plans as an alternative to the Obamacare exchanges, but these plans typically do not cover pre-existing conditions and often result in larger bills than the out-of-pocket costs on the Obamacare marketplace.
Many lawmakers have called for Trump to reopen the marketplace since the crisis began, though Congress did not include a special enrollment period in their $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief bill.
Even insurers urged the administration to announce a special enrollment period.
"Given the risk posed by COVID-19, it is more important than ever for people to have health coverage," the heads of America's Health Insurance Plans and Blue Cross Blue Shield Association wrote in a letter to Congress, according to CNN.
The move comes as the White House grapples with projections showing unprecedented death tolls. The White House estimated that between 100,000 to 240,000 people would die — even with extensive mitigation efforts — compared to more than 2 million who may die without sustained intervention.
Without a special enrollment period, many people will face the crisis without coverage, "leaving them potentially exposed to tens of thousands of dollars in costs if they get sick from the novel coronavirus and need medical treatment," HuffPost's Jeff Young wrote. "Sick people not being isolated and treated means they are at risk of spreading the coronavirus to more people."
Democrats on Tuesday condemned the decision.
"This isn't just an outrageous decision, but it's also a deadly one," Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, tweeted. "Moments ago, Donald Trump announced we should expect 100-200k deaths in the U.S. For those without health insurance, this is fatal. It's time to end this senseless war on healthcare."
"In the middle [of] a pandemic that could kill hundreds of thousands, Trump and his toadies are deliberately blocking Americans from buying healthcare," Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., added. "Theirs is fanatical cruelty that will kill people."
Nearly a dozen states have reopened their enrollment period to help the millions of workers who lost their jobs amid statewide lockdowns, but a White House official told Politico that the administration had no plans to relaunch HealthCare.gov and was instead "exploring other options."
The Obamacare enrollment period ended months ago, but millions of people have filed for unemployment since the coronavirus crisis began. Though some Democratic states have reopened their insurance marketplaces, the Trump administration oversees enrollment for the vast majority of states.
The decision surprised insurers, who said last week that they expected Trump to announce a special enrollment period after conversations with officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, according to the report.
Trump himself said last week that he was considering a special enrollment period at the same time as his administration supports a lawsuit seeking to repeal Obamacare in a move that would strip insurance coverage from more than 20 million people.
"It's something we're talking to a lot of people about," the president said. "We'll see what happens."
People who lose their employer-based insurance are eligible to apply for health care on the marketplace but must provide proof that they lost coverage while a special enrollment period would make the process easier and would not require that paperwork, The New York Times' Margot Sanger-Katz reported.
Aside from the marketplace, some laid-off workers have the option to extend their employer-based insurance through COBRA, which costs users far more than the insurance they get through their job. Low-income workers can also apply for Medicaid, though many Republican states have refused to expand Medicaid under the Obamacare law.
Trump has promoted cheaper short-term health plans as an alternative to the Obamacare exchanges, but these plans typically do not cover pre-existing conditions and often result in larger bills than the out-of-pocket costs on the Obamacare marketplace.
Many lawmakers have called for Trump to reopen the marketplace since the crisis began, though Congress did not include a special enrollment period in their $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief bill.
Even insurers urged the administration to announce a special enrollment period.
"Given the risk posed by COVID-19, it is more important than ever for people to have health coverage," the heads of America's Health Insurance Plans and Blue Cross Blue Shield Association wrote in a letter to Congress, according to CNN.
The move comes as the White House grapples with projections showing unprecedented death tolls. The White House estimated that between 100,000 to 240,000 people would die — even with extensive mitigation efforts — compared to more than 2 million who may die without sustained intervention.
Without a special enrollment period, many people will face the crisis without coverage, "leaving them potentially exposed to tens of thousands of dollars in costs if they get sick from the novel coronavirus and need medical treatment," HuffPost's Jeff Young wrote. "Sick people not being isolated and treated means they are at risk of spreading the coronavirus to more people."
Democrats on Tuesday condemned the decision.
"This isn't just an outrageous decision, but it's also a deadly one," Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, tweeted. "Moments ago, Donald Trump announced we should expect 100-200k deaths in the U.S. For those without health insurance, this is fatal. It's time to end this senseless war on healthcare."
"In the middle [of] a pandemic that could kill hundreds of thousands, Trump and his toadies are deliberately blocking Americans from buying healthcare," Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., added. "Theirs is fanatical cruelty that will kill people."
trump kissing china's ass, then lies and endangers americans!!!
The US Sent Tons of Medical Supplies to China Even as Senators Warned of Virus Threat Here
Now the Trump administration is begging other countries to send us masks and respirators.
Trump sent 17.8 tons of protective equipment to China in February after US had first case of COVID-19: report
FERNANDA ECHAVARRI - REPORTER - mother jones
March 29, 2020
The United States government sent nearly 17.8 tons of donated medical supplies to China—including masks and respirators—almost three weeks after the first case of the coronavirus was reported in the state of Washington.
In a press release from the State Department dated Feb. 7, the agency announced it was prepared to spend up to $100 million to assist China as the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths continued to rise there. The day the press release went out, Trump tweeted that he spoke with China’s President Xi Jinping and that China would be “successful especially as the weather starts to warm & the virus hopefully becomes weaker and then gone.”
At the time, sending supplies overseas may have seemed like the right thing to do. But it’s worth noting that this release of vital medical supplies came two days after several senators, including Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy, offered to allocate congressional emergency funding for preventative health measures and research to ward off the virus in the United States—and President Donald Trump turned it down. “Local health systems need supplies, training, screening staff, etc…” tweeted Murphy, “and they need it now.”
Trump would go on to call the virus the Democrats’ “new hoax” and deny that it posed a risk to Americans for weeks after that.
How the tables have turned. As of Saturday afternoon, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports 103,321 cases of the coronavirus in the United States and 1,668 deaths, the highest number of confirmed cases worldwide. Hospitals across the country are now experiencing an unprecedented shortage of respirators and masks. Desperate nurses and doctors are taking to social media to show their need for protective equipment with the hashtag #GetMePPE, as they treat patients who are dying of the virus.
On Wednesday, the Trump administration asked the international community for donations of equipment, including N-95 masks, gloves, respirators, and hand sanitizer. But even as his officials ask for foreign aid, as CNN points out, Trump has a very different public message. As he boasted during Tuesday’s coronavirus briefing at the White House: “We should never be reliant on a foreign country for the means of our own survival.”
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told CNN’s Jake Tapper Sunday morning that Trump’s response at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic ultimately cost American lives. “His denial at the beginning was deadly,” Pelosi said. Trump’s continuous delay in “getting equipment to where it’s needed, is deadly.”
In a press release from the State Department dated Feb. 7, the agency announced it was prepared to spend up to $100 million to assist China as the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths continued to rise there. The day the press release went out, Trump tweeted that he spoke with China’s President Xi Jinping and that China would be “successful especially as the weather starts to warm & the virus hopefully becomes weaker and then gone.”
At the time, sending supplies overseas may have seemed like the right thing to do. But it’s worth noting that this release of vital medical supplies came two days after several senators, including Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy, offered to allocate congressional emergency funding for preventative health measures and research to ward off the virus in the United States—and President Donald Trump turned it down. “Local health systems need supplies, training, screening staff, etc…” tweeted Murphy, “and they need it now.”
Trump would go on to call the virus the Democrats’ “new hoax” and deny that it posed a risk to Americans for weeks after that.
How the tables have turned. As of Saturday afternoon, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports 103,321 cases of the coronavirus in the United States and 1,668 deaths, the highest number of confirmed cases worldwide. Hospitals across the country are now experiencing an unprecedented shortage of respirators and masks. Desperate nurses and doctors are taking to social media to show their need for protective equipment with the hashtag #GetMePPE, as they treat patients who are dying of the virus.
On Wednesday, the Trump administration asked the international community for donations of equipment, including N-95 masks, gloves, respirators, and hand sanitizer. But even as his officials ask for foreign aid, as CNN points out, Trump has a very different public message. As he boasted during Tuesday’s coronavirus briefing at the White House: “We should never be reliant on a foreign country for the means of our own survival.”
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told CNN’s Jake Tapper Sunday morning that Trump’s response at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic ultimately cost American lives. “His denial at the beginning was deadly,” Pelosi said. Trump’s continuous delay in “getting equipment to where it’s needed, is deadly.”
red state social safety net!!!
Medicaid Abruptly Canceled Her Health Insurance. Then Came the Coronavirus.
Months after Judith Persutti appealed the unexpected decision by Medicaid to cancel her health insurance, she still awaits a response. She is one of millions of Americans who face the coronavirus threat with chronic illnesses and no insurance.
by Akilah Johnson - propublica
March 25, 5 a.m. EDT
HARDEEVILLE, S.C. — Every day during what seems like an endless quarantine, Judith Persutti assigns herself a chore. So far she’s washed the curtains and dusted the miniblinds in the little country house where she is sheltering in place with her oldest granddaughter.
Stop to rest when the fatigue sets in. Lie down when the pain becomes too much.
And, of course, check the mail.
She’s waited more than a month for a letter to come from the state’s Medicaid agency telling her whether she will be reinstated on the federal-state health insurance program for low-income families or individuals who are aged, blind or disabled.
Now, with South Carolina — like states throughout the nation — suddenly consumed by an unprecedented crisis that has the country’s health and wealth in a vise grip, Persutti wonders if her letter will ever come. The safety net is already severely strained, and she realizes the tangled bureaucracy handling her appeal now is scrambling on so many urgent fronts that resolving individual problems is likely to get pushed to the bottom of the pile.
“Medicaid is stalling in hopes I catch the virus,” she quipped in a recent text message, her gallows humor not lost to the stress of the pandemic.
In the span of a few weeks, the 64-year-old, whose grandchildren occasionally call her “nanosaurus,” has gone from barely thinking about COVID-19 — or really even knowing what it was — to losing sleep over yet another threat to her health.
She has osteoarthritis and fibromyalgia, hypertension and asthma. She’s supposed to take a mix of prescription medications for pain, inflammation, blood pressure and anxiety, but she can’t afford them all.
She squeezes by on $739 a month in Social Security and an additional $149 in food stamps; her platinum-gray hair has grown into a bob because she can no longer spare the price of upkeep on a beloved pixie cut. And the pain from squatting, standing or walking for long periods has made it impossible for her to hold a job.
There was a brief moment in the fall when the state gave her Medicaid, saying she qualified based on her disabilities and low income. It lasted a month. Then, the state took it away with little explanation other than it had made a mistake.
Determined to fight the decision, she appealed, traveling about two and half hours to the state capital, Columbia, to prove that she is disabled to a hearing officer at an administrative proceeding. It was just before the global pandemic erupted in the U.S., spreading fear of the novel contagion as far as Persutti’s one-stoplight town.
Persutti is one of the country’s 28 million uninsured adults, many with chronic illnesses that make them particularly vulnerable to the dangers of COVID-19. The Affordable Care Act was meant to give access to insurance to all Americans. But 14 states, including South Carolina, have declined to expand Medicaid qualifications under Obamacare. And even for those who seem to qualify, like Persutti, actually getting and maintaining Medicaid can be a byzantine, frustrating, even futile process.
Now, isolated with her 27-year-old granddaughter Karlie, she knows that her age and chronic health conditions make her especially vulnerable to a virus that has no cure, antiviral drug or vaccine. And without Medicaid, she faces it all with no health insurance.
Persutti must have gone through eight drafts of her testimony the night before her hearing to appeal the state’s termination of her Medicaid coverage. Sitting in her bedroom sanctuary, with windows overlooking a backyard near the Savannah River that often fills with grazing deer, she crossed through lines, ripped out notebook pages and tossed them aside. How to describe the ways chronic pain has forced her to modify her life?
Finally, she arrived at a summary and wrote it into a purple-and-white floral notebook:
Although I possess the skills to work in an office setting, I’m unable to sit or stand for any length of time due to the pain in my hips and knees from the osteoarthritis. I also have fibromyalgia, which being so unpredictable, as to when a flare up will hit, I cannot commit to a set schedule. I have been prescribed medication. But I cannot drive, let alone stay focused on the job while taking it. So it’s like a Catch-22 situation.
The coronavirus was only a distant rumble as she prepared for the hearing, something then seeming to affect only faraway places like China and Italy. Folks in her town, a largely rural area a short drive from the luxury resorts of Hilton Head Island, were barely noticing. President Donald Trump, who visited the state the night before the first-in-the-south Democratic presidential primary, was still calling the disease “a hoax” stirred up by political rivals and a distrustful news media.
Persutti watched a conservative wave sweeping Columbia, touting work requirements that would make it harder to get Medicaid, which cost about $7.7 billion in 2019 — or about 17% of its budget — in a state that has historically taken a harsh view toward public benefits. And it bothers Persutti, who is white, that at times it seems “different races other than just white ones, plain white ones, Caucasian ... are targeted.” About 46% of the state’s Medicaid recipients are black, 40% are white and 9% are Hispanic.
South Carolina recently received approval from the Trump administration to impose work requirements on nondisabled adult Medicaid recipients, a change the state estimated would reduce the rolls by as many as 7,100 recipients.
Other states were doing the same; 10 received federal approval, though court injunctions paused implementation in most of them.
And in the midst of all that, Persutti needed to convince South Carolina’s health agency to add her back to the rolls, that stripping her coverage after only a month was unjustified.
For years, Persutti had worked two jobs at once, raising her daughters alone. Her days started before sunrise when she’d make dinner, put it in the refrigerator, then bike to her customer service job at a carpet cleaning company. At shift’s end, she’d bike to a supermarket deli, work until 10 p.m., and then pedal home, where she often collapsed fully clothed across the bed.
“I look back on it, and I don’t know how I did it. I never rested. Never,” she said.
Then she worked for 16 years for a friend’s cab company — first as a driver, then as a dispatcher — until sitting for 12-hour shifts became untenable.
“I remember the last night I dispatched,” she recalled. Her leg hurt so bad she had to be helped to her car. “I told them, don’t ask me anymore.”
She retired, and her long quest to secure Medicaid began soon after. She first applied in July 2018. It took the state nine months to begin vetting her application and an additional six months to approve her.
While she briefly had coverage, she began making the doctors appointments to get caught up on some tests and procedures. Then, a letter dated Nov. 26 arrived around Thanksgiving abruptly canceling her coverage. The explanation: “You do not meet the rules of age or disability.”
The letter mentioned her constitutional right to appeal. The Supreme Court in 1970 ruled that state and federal governments can not deprive anyone of public benefits without giving them the opportunity to adjudicate their case at a fair hearing.
The Trump administration has cited the right to a hearing as one of the “guardrails” protecting “vulnerable” Medicaid beneficiaries while moving to save money by making it harder to enroll. In November, CMS Administrator Seema Verma said imposing work requirements would help beneficiaries live “a life that knows the dignity of a job.” Now, amid the COVID-19 outbreak, the administration loosened Medicaid rules allowing states to respond more freely to the crisis, and new federal laws say states can’t kick someone off Medicaid or make enrollment more difficult (such as by imposing work requirements) until the public health emergency designation ends. So anyone who was enrolled in South Carolina’s Medicaid as of March 18 gets to keep it for now, according to the state.
To “help stop the spread of COVID-19” while still fulfilling “its critical public health mission,” South Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement Tuesday that it’s closed local eligibility offices to walk-ins but is maintaining normal business hours and opened its call center on Saturday so people can “complete any action they would” normally do in person over the phone or online or through the mail.
The state said it is trying to make provisions to continue hearings and appeals to ensure “the civil rights of our members ... during this period of important social distancing” but did not answer questions about the status of pending cases.
Persutti appealed South Carolina’s rejection, but most people on Medicaid in the state — and elsewhere — never do. Just over 1 million people are on Medicaid in South Carolina, a state that processes applications and eligibility reviews by the tens of thousands annually. Last year, according to the state, 3,711 appeals were requested but only 101 hearings were held. It’s an eligibility and appeals system whose own employees have criticized it as being error-filled and opaque, creating delays for people needing coverage. Too many hands touch a single case file, said a 2017 report, and each time a file is given to a different employee, the chance of error increases. The result, the report said, is that “some clients are receiving benefits they are not qualified for and some are not receiving benefits when they should be.”
South Carolina’s DHHS said late last month that it’s dedicated to an “environment of continuous improvement.” And partly as a result of the feedback from state Medicaid managers studying various parts of the system, the agency has opened three new processing centers and created a team to review eligibility determinations.
Persutti no longer drives, so her daughter and Karlie took her to the hearing, where she used a walker to step into the Jefferson Square government building. At the time, the interstate to Columbia still bustled and people were unaware of what was about to hit.
Persutti imagined her hearing taking place in a formal courtroom before a panel of “old men smoking stogies.” Instead, she and Karlie faced Colleen Clark, the presiding hearing officer, and Jan Easton, who represented the state, in an unremarkable 11th-floor conference room with a box of tissues on the table.
The hearing took about an hour. And the language at times — many times — was so dense, technical and jargon-filled that Clark often stopped to translate it into something comprehensible.
Clark’s questions probed Persutti’s thick medical file, including at least two different medical evaluations done at different times that reached different conclusions about her ability to return to work. “I can’t give you a reason” why, Easton said of the discrepancy.
As for Persutti: What’s an average day like? (Unpredictable.) How many bad days in a month? (At least 10.) Was the walker you are using prescribed by a doctor? (No.) Pain medications? (Yes.) Are they controlled substances? (Some.) Did you sign for them? (Yes.)
“I do have a question,” Karlie interjected. “She was sent an acceptance letter, and then a month later it was overturned.”
Clark said the agency “accidentally approved you.” She called it “a processing error in your favor.”
As the hearing wrapped up, Clark said it might take a while to reach a decision and a letter would be sent to her home, typically in 30 days although there’s no set time frame.
Persutti returned to Hardeeville hopeful and started watching her mailbox as the world abruptly shifted.
It’s hard for Persutti to feel optimistic as time passes — and not just because of COVID-19.
Three days after her Medicaid hearing, a letter came from the South Carolina Department of Social Services saying the state gave her too much in food stamps last year, overpaying her by about $42 a month and demanding its money back.
It took a week of phone calls and paperwork to sort out the miscalculation so that she did not have to repay it.
Then came a phone call from her doctor’s office, which has a sliding pay scale for uninsured patients like Persutti.
The doctor wanted to make sure she was up to date with her prescriptions and cautioned her to stay inside.
But she still hasn’t heard from Medicaid.
And right now, she wonders if she ever will.
Stop to rest when the fatigue sets in. Lie down when the pain becomes too much.
And, of course, check the mail.
She’s waited more than a month for a letter to come from the state’s Medicaid agency telling her whether she will be reinstated on the federal-state health insurance program for low-income families or individuals who are aged, blind or disabled.
Now, with South Carolina — like states throughout the nation — suddenly consumed by an unprecedented crisis that has the country’s health and wealth in a vise grip, Persutti wonders if her letter will ever come. The safety net is already severely strained, and she realizes the tangled bureaucracy handling her appeal now is scrambling on so many urgent fronts that resolving individual problems is likely to get pushed to the bottom of the pile.
“Medicaid is stalling in hopes I catch the virus,” she quipped in a recent text message, her gallows humor not lost to the stress of the pandemic.
In the span of a few weeks, the 64-year-old, whose grandchildren occasionally call her “nanosaurus,” has gone from barely thinking about COVID-19 — or really even knowing what it was — to losing sleep over yet another threat to her health.
She has osteoarthritis and fibromyalgia, hypertension and asthma. She’s supposed to take a mix of prescription medications for pain, inflammation, blood pressure and anxiety, but she can’t afford them all.
She squeezes by on $739 a month in Social Security and an additional $149 in food stamps; her platinum-gray hair has grown into a bob because she can no longer spare the price of upkeep on a beloved pixie cut. And the pain from squatting, standing or walking for long periods has made it impossible for her to hold a job.
There was a brief moment in the fall when the state gave her Medicaid, saying she qualified based on her disabilities and low income. It lasted a month. Then, the state took it away with little explanation other than it had made a mistake.
Determined to fight the decision, she appealed, traveling about two and half hours to the state capital, Columbia, to prove that she is disabled to a hearing officer at an administrative proceeding. It was just before the global pandemic erupted in the U.S., spreading fear of the novel contagion as far as Persutti’s one-stoplight town.
Persutti is one of the country’s 28 million uninsured adults, many with chronic illnesses that make them particularly vulnerable to the dangers of COVID-19. The Affordable Care Act was meant to give access to insurance to all Americans. But 14 states, including South Carolina, have declined to expand Medicaid qualifications under Obamacare. And even for those who seem to qualify, like Persutti, actually getting and maintaining Medicaid can be a byzantine, frustrating, even futile process.
Now, isolated with her 27-year-old granddaughter Karlie, she knows that her age and chronic health conditions make her especially vulnerable to a virus that has no cure, antiviral drug or vaccine. And without Medicaid, she faces it all with no health insurance.
Persutti must have gone through eight drafts of her testimony the night before her hearing to appeal the state’s termination of her Medicaid coverage. Sitting in her bedroom sanctuary, with windows overlooking a backyard near the Savannah River that often fills with grazing deer, she crossed through lines, ripped out notebook pages and tossed them aside. How to describe the ways chronic pain has forced her to modify her life?
Finally, she arrived at a summary and wrote it into a purple-and-white floral notebook:
Although I possess the skills to work in an office setting, I’m unable to sit or stand for any length of time due to the pain in my hips and knees from the osteoarthritis. I also have fibromyalgia, which being so unpredictable, as to when a flare up will hit, I cannot commit to a set schedule. I have been prescribed medication. But I cannot drive, let alone stay focused on the job while taking it. So it’s like a Catch-22 situation.
The coronavirus was only a distant rumble as she prepared for the hearing, something then seeming to affect only faraway places like China and Italy. Folks in her town, a largely rural area a short drive from the luxury resorts of Hilton Head Island, were barely noticing. President Donald Trump, who visited the state the night before the first-in-the-south Democratic presidential primary, was still calling the disease “a hoax” stirred up by political rivals and a distrustful news media.
Persutti watched a conservative wave sweeping Columbia, touting work requirements that would make it harder to get Medicaid, which cost about $7.7 billion in 2019 — or about 17% of its budget — in a state that has historically taken a harsh view toward public benefits. And it bothers Persutti, who is white, that at times it seems “different races other than just white ones, plain white ones, Caucasian ... are targeted.” About 46% of the state’s Medicaid recipients are black, 40% are white and 9% are Hispanic.
South Carolina recently received approval from the Trump administration to impose work requirements on nondisabled adult Medicaid recipients, a change the state estimated would reduce the rolls by as many as 7,100 recipients.
Other states were doing the same; 10 received federal approval, though court injunctions paused implementation in most of them.
And in the midst of all that, Persutti needed to convince South Carolina’s health agency to add her back to the rolls, that stripping her coverage after only a month was unjustified.
For years, Persutti had worked two jobs at once, raising her daughters alone. Her days started before sunrise when she’d make dinner, put it in the refrigerator, then bike to her customer service job at a carpet cleaning company. At shift’s end, she’d bike to a supermarket deli, work until 10 p.m., and then pedal home, where she often collapsed fully clothed across the bed.
“I look back on it, and I don’t know how I did it. I never rested. Never,” she said.
Then she worked for 16 years for a friend’s cab company — first as a driver, then as a dispatcher — until sitting for 12-hour shifts became untenable.
“I remember the last night I dispatched,” she recalled. Her leg hurt so bad she had to be helped to her car. “I told them, don’t ask me anymore.”
She retired, and her long quest to secure Medicaid began soon after. She first applied in July 2018. It took the state nine months to begin vetting her application and an additional six months to approve her.
While she briefly had coverage, she began making the doctors appointments to get caught up on some tests and procedures. Then, a letter dated Nov. 26 arrived around Thanksgiving abruptly canceling her coverage. The explanation: “You do not meet the rules of age or disability.”
The letter mentioned her constitutional right to appeal. The Supreme Court in 1970 ruled that state and federal governments can not deprive anyone of public benefits without giving them the opportunity to adjudicate their case at a fair hearing.
The Trump administration has cited the right to a hearing as one of the “guardrails” protecting “vulnerable” Medicaid beneficiaries while moving to save money by making it harder to enroll. In November, CMS Administrator Seema Verma said imposing work requirements would help beneficiaries live “a life that knows the dignity of a job.” Now, amid the COVID-19 outbreak, the administration loosened Medicaid rules allowing states to respond more freely to the crisis, and new federal laws say states can’t kick someone off Medicaid or make enrollment more difficult (such as by imposing work requirements) until the public health emergency designation ends. So anyone who was enrolled in South Carolina’s Medicaid as of March 18 gets to keep it for now, according to the state.
To “help stop the spread of COVID-19” while still fulfilling “its critical public health mission,” South Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement Tuesday that it’s closed local eligibility offices to walk-ins but is maintaining normal business hours and opened its call center on Saturday so people can “complete any action they would” normally do in person over the phone or online or through the mail.
The state said it is trying to make provisions to continue hearings and appeals to ensure “the civil rights of our members ... during this period of important social distancing” but did not answer questions about the status of pending cases.
Persutti appealed South Carolina’s rejection, but most people on Medicaid in the state — and elsewhere — never do. Just over 1 million people are on Medicaid in South Carolina, a state that processes applications and eligibility reviews by the tens of thousands annually. Last year, according to the state, 3,711 appeals were requested but only 101 hearings were held. It’s an eligibility and appeals system whose own employees have criticized it as being error-filled and opaque, creating delays for people needing coverage. Too many hands touch a single case file, said a 2017 report, and each time a file is given to a different employee, the chance of error increases. The result, the report said, is that “some clients are receiving benefits they are not qualified for and some are not receiving benefits when they should be.”
South Carolina’s DHHS said late last month that it’s dedicated to an “environment of continuous improvement.” And partly as a result of the feedback from state Medicaid managers studying various parts of the system, the agency has opened three new processing centers and created a team to review eligibility determinations.
Persutti no longer drives, so her daughter and Karlie took her to the hearing, where she used a walker to step into the Jefferson Square government building. At the time, the interstate to Columbia still bustled and people were unaware of what was about to hit.
Persutti imagined her hearing taking place in a formal courtroom before a panel of “old men smoking stogies.” Instead, she and Karlie faced Colleen Clark, the presiding hearing officer, and Jan Easton, who represented the state, in an unremarkable 11th-floor conference room with a box of tissues on the table.
The hearing took about an hour. And the language at times — many times — was so dense, technical and jargon-filled that Clark often stopped to translate it into something comprehensible.
Clark’s questions probed Persutti’s thick medical file, including at least two different medical evaluations done at different times that reached different conclusions about her ability to return to work. “I can’t give you a reason” why, Easton said of the discrepancy.
As for Persutti: What’s an average day like? (Unpredictable.) How many bad days in a month? (At least 10.) Was the walker you are using prescribed by a doctor? (No.) Pain medications? (Yes.) Are they controlled substances? (Some.) Did you sign for them? (Yes.)
“I do have a question,” Karlie interjected. “She was sent an acceptance letter, and then a month later it was overturned.”
Clark said the agency “accidentally approved you.” She called it “a processing error in your favor.”
As the hearing wrapped up, Clark said it might take a while to reach a decision and a letter would be sent to her home, typically in 30 days although there’s no set time frame.
Persutti returned to Hardeeville hopeful and started watching her mailbox as the world abruptly shifted.
It’s hard for Persutti to feel optimistic as time passes — and not just because of COVID-19.
Three days after her Medicaid hearing, a letter came from the South Carolina Department of Social Services saying the state gave her too much in food stamps last year, overpaying her by about $42 a month and demanding its money back.
It took a week of phone calls and paperwork to sort out the miscalculation so that she did not have to repay it.
Then came a phone call from her doctor’s office, which has a sliding pay scale for uninsured patients like Persutti.
The doctor wanted to make sure she was up to date with her prescriptions and cautioned her to stay inside.
But she still hasn’t heard from Medicaid.
And right now, she wonders if she ever will.
gop supports socialism for corporations but lets you starve!!!
These are the 51 GOP senators who just voted against expanding paid sick leave to protect Americans amid the coronavirus crisis
March 19, 2020
By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams - raw story
Republican senators on Wednesday teamed up to kill an amendment introduced by Democratic Sen. Patty Murray that would have expanded paid sick leave to millions of U.S. workers left out of a bipartisan coronavirus relief package.
Every Republican present for the vote, 51 in total, voted against the amendment while every Senate Democrat voted in favor.
Sens. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.) were the only senators who did not vote on the amendment, which would have guaranteed two weeks of paid sick leave as well as 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave to all U.S. employees and independent contractors.
“[Fifty one] Republican senators just voted against an amendment… that would have expanded paid leave to millions of Americans left out of the package,” tweeted progressive advocacy group Indivisible. “Let that sink in.”
“If one of these Republicans (or two!) is your senator,” the group added, “call their office right now and tell them you saw their vote and you won’t forget that they voted against the Murray amendment to expand paid sick leave to millions of Americans: 1-855-980-2355.”
The full coronavirus relief package, formally known as the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, easily passed the Senate Wednesday afternoon by a vote of 90-8, and President Donald Trump subsequently signed the measure into law.
While calling it an urgently needed first step, progressives criticized the legislation as woefully inadequate given that it only provides paid sick leave to about 20% of the U.S. private sector workforce while excluding workers at companies with more than 500 employees.
In a speech on the Senate floor ahead of Wednesday’s vote, Murray pitched her amendment as a “commonsense step” that would be good for both workers and small businesses. The amendment was a modified version of the PAID Leave Act, which Murray introduced Tuesday alongside Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.).
“It’s the right thing to do for our economy and for public health—and we should get it done as soon as possible,” Murray said. “If we don’t do this, if we let this opportunity slip by, we are sending a message to scared people across the country that we still are not willing to acknowledge the scope of the tragedy we are seeing unfold.”
Every Republican present for the vote, 51 in total, voted against the amendment while every Senate Democrat voted in favor.
Sens. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.) were the only senators who did not vote on the amendment, which would have guaranteed two weeks of paid sick leave as well as 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave to all U.S. employees and independent contractors.
“[Fifty one] Republican senators just voted against an amendment… that would have expanded paid leave to millions of Americans left out of the package,” tweeted progressive advocacy group Indivisible. “Let that sink in.”
“If one of these Republicans (or two!) is your senator,” the group added, “call their office right now and tell them you saw their vote and you won’t forget that they voted against the Murray amendment to expand paid sick leave to millions of Americans: 1-855-980-2355.”
The full coronavirus relief package, formally known as the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, easily passed the Senate Wednesday afternoon by a vote of 90-8, and President Donald Trump subsequently signed the measure into law.
While calling it an urgently needed first step, progressives criticized the legislation as woefully inadequate given that it only provides paid sick leave to about 20% of the U.S. private sector workforce while excluding workers at companies with more than 500 employees.
In a speech on the Senate floor ahead of Wednesday’s vote, Murray pitched her amendment as a “commonsense step” that would be good for both workers and small businesses. The amendment was a modified version of the PAID Leave Act, which Murray introduced Tuesday alongside Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.).
“It’s the right thing to do for our economy and for public health—and we should get it done as soon as possible,” Murray said. “If we don’t do this, if we let this opportunity slip by, we are sending a message to scared people across the country that we still are not willing to acknowledge the scope of the tragedy we are seeing unfold.”
when your government is run by fools!!!
As Trump limits guest workers from Mexico amid coronavirus, farmers warn of labor and food shortages
March 18, 2020
By Common Dreams - raw story
While images of barren grocery store shelves grab headlines and circulate on social media as people worldwide stock up on staples to get through the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, farmers in the United States are warning that the Trump administration’s decision to limit seasonal workers from Mexico could soon lead to labor and food shortages.
“Under the new restrictions, American farmers will not have access to all of the skilled immigrant labor needed at a critical time in the planting season. This threatens our ability to put food on Americans’ tables.”
—Zippy Duvall, American Farm Bureau Federation
The U.S. government announced Monday that “in response to the global pandemic COVID-19, and in line with the Mexican government’s call to increase social distancing, the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City and all U.S. consulates in Mexico will suspend routine immigrant and nonimmigrant visa services starting March 18, 2020, and until further notice.”
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue reportedly told growers on a call Tuesday that consulates in Mexico will continue processing applications for returning guest workers under the H2A program—long criticized as exploitive—but will no longer process applications for new applicants, who represent up to 60% of the needed laborers.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture told multiple news outlets that it is “directly engaged with the State Department and working diligently to ensure minimal disruption in H2A visa applications during these uncertain times.”
According to Reuters, “Farmworker visas and other seasonal guest worker visas are still being processed in smaller countries including El Salvador and Guatemala.”
Reuters reported Tuesday on U.S. fruit and vegetable growers “bracing for dramatic disruptions to their labor force” because of the guest worker changes:
While the harvesting of grains like wheat and corn is mostly automated in the United States, fruit and vegetable farmers rely on seasonal guest workers to pick their crops.
“When the process is stopped midstream, it likely means those crews won’t be there exactly when they’re needed, if they get there at all. That means lost crops. That means lost food,” said Dave Puglia, president of the Western Growers Association, which represents fruit and vegetable growers in states including California and Arizona.
“Increasingly… we just don’t have the labor force domestically. We’re turning more and more to H2A workers because there’s no other way to get our crops harvested and packed and off to consumers,” he said.
Puglia warned foods that could soon be affected by the low guest worker numbers include broccoli, cauliflower, celery, leafy greens, melons, and radishes.
Robert Guenther, senior vice president for public policy at the United Fresh Produce Association, told Bloomberg that berries, cucumbers, and leafy greens will likely be impacted first but tree fruit like citrus, nectarines, peaches, and plums could be affected in May and June. He was frank in his assessment of the anticipated fallout of the new visa policy.
“There won’t be anyone to harvest the crops,” Guenther said. “It will be devastating to growers and ultimately to the supply chain and consumers. They won’t have the food.”
In a statement Tuesday, Zippy Duvall, president of the lobbying group American Farm Bureau Federation, emphasized that growers “remain committed to doing the work in the fields, orchards, and barns across the country to ensure Americans have access to healthy, affordable food,” but also expressed concern about the labor limitations.
“The decision to halt visa application processing in Mexico will restrict the number of immigrant workers being allowed to enter the country,” said Duvall. “Under the new restrictions, American farmers will not have access to all of the skilled immigrant labor needed at a critical time in the planting season. This threatens our ability to put food on Americans’ tables.”
“We fully support the administration’s efforts to protect the public during this health crisis,” Duvall added. “We are in constant contact with USDA, the State Department, and the White House. We have urged them to find safe, practical ways to admit farm laborers as emergency workers for visa purposes while still protecting public health.”
Purdue said in a statement Tuesday that “if you have ideas or solutions for USDA, I urge you to reach out—we want to hear from the experts in the field.”
“Food is essential all year round, but in the face of a pandemic it is critical the shelves remain stocked and supplies remain plentiful,” Purdue acknowledged. “America’s farmers and ranchers, and those on the front lines in the food service industry are doing their part.”
In a video Tuesday, Purdue urged Americans to refrain from “hoarding” shelf-stable foods and claimed that U.S. food supply chains “remain strong.”
The limits on guest workers from Mexico aren’t the only immigration-related moves the federal government has made in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The New York Times reported Tuesday that the Trump administration will soon announce plans to send back to Mexico all asylum-seekers and undocumented immigrants who attempt to cross the southern border between ports of entry.
Although “the ports of entry would remain open to American citizens, green card holders, and some foreigners with proper documentation,” according to the Times, “some foreigners would be blocked, including Europeans currently subject to earlier travel restrictions enacted by the administration. The entryways will also be open to commercial traffic.”
Amnesty International USA advocacy director for the Americas Charanya Krishnaswami charged Wednesday that “the Trump administration’s ban on asylum-seekers coming from Mexico has nothing to do with making Americans safer from the coronavirus pandemic.” She accused the president of “engaging in fear-mongering to justify racist and discriminatory policies whose only purpose is to demonize people seeking safety.”
“The Trump administration has already sent tens of thousands of asylum-seekers to harm’s way in Mexico, forcing them to survive in dangerous and precarious conditions and exposing them to appalling risks of kidnapping, torture, and other abuses,” Krishnaswami added. “Instead of doubling down on these failed tactics, the Trump administration should reverse these cruel and punitive policies and allow people to seek safety following the process required by U.S. and international law.”
“Under the new restrictions, American farmers will not have access to all of the skilled immigrant labor needed at a critical time in the planting season. This threatens our ability to put food on Americans’ tables.”
—Zippy Duvall, American Farm Bureau Federation
The U.S. government announced Monday that “in response to the global pandemic COVID-19, and in line with the Mexican government’s call to increase social distancing, the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City and all U.S. consulates in Mexico will suspend routine immigrant and nonimmigrant visa services starting March 18, 2020, and until further notice.”
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue reportedly told growers on a call Tuesday that consulates in Mexico will continue processing applications for returning guest workers under the H2A program—long criticized as exploitive—but will no longer process applications for new applicants, who represent up to 60% of the needed laborers.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture told multiple news outlets that it is “directly engaged with the State Department and working diligently to ensure minimal disruption in H2A visa applications during these uncertain times.”
According to Reuters, “Farmworker visas and other seasonal guest worker visas are still being processed in smaller countries including El Salvador and Guatemala.”
Reuters reported Tuesday on U.S. fruit and vegetable growers “bracing for dramatic disruptions to their labor force” because of the guest worker changes:
While the harvesting of grains like wheat and corn is mostly automated in the United States, fruit and vegetable farmers rely on seasonal guest workers to pick their crops.
“When the process is stopped midstream, it likely means those crews won’t be there exactly when they’re needed, if they get there at all. That means lost crops. That means lost food,” said Dave Puglia, president of the Western Growers Association, which represents fruit and vegetable growers in states including California and Arizona.
“Increasingly… we just don’t have the labor force domestically. We’re turning more and more to H2A workers because there’s no other way to get our crops harvested and packed and off to consumers,” he said.
Puglia warned foods that could soon be affected by the low guest worker numbers include broccoli, cauliflower, celery, leafy greens, melons, and radishes.
Robert Guenther, senior vice president for public policy at the United Fresh Produce Association, told Bloomberg that berries, cucumbers, and leafy greens will likely be impacted first but tree fruit like citrus, nectarines, peaches, and plums could be affected in May and June. He was frank in his assessment of the anticipated fallout of the new visa policy.
“There won’t be anyone to harvest the crops,” Guenther said. “It will be devastating to growers and ultimately to the supply chain and consumers. They won’t have the food.”
In a statement Tuesday, Zippy Duvall, president of the lobbying group American Farm Bureau Federation, emphasized that growers “remain committed to doing the work in the fields, orchards, and barns across the country to ensure Americans have access to healthy, affordable food,” but also expressed concern about the labor limitations.
“The decision to halt visa application processing in Mexico will restrict the number of immigrant workers being allowed to enter the country,” said Duvall. “Under the new restrictions, American farmers will not have access to all of the skilled immigrant labor needed at a critical time in the planting season. This threatens our ability to put food on Americans’ tables.”
“We fully support the administration’s efforts to protect the public during this health crisis,” Duvall added. “We are in constant contact with USDA, the State Department, and the White House. We have urged them to find safe, practical ways to admit farm laborers as emergency workers for visa purposes while still protecting public health.”
Purdue said in a statement Tuesday that “if you have ideas or solutions for USDA, I urge you to reach out—we want to hear from the experts in the field.”
“Food is essential all year round, but in the face of a pandemic it is critical the shelves remain stocked and supplies remain plentiful,” Purdue acknowledged. “America’s farmers and ranchers, and those on the front lines in the food service industry are doing their part.”
In a video Tuesday, Purdue urged Americans to refrain from “hoarding” shelf-stable foods and claimed that U.S. food supply chains “remain strong.”
The limits on guest workers from Mexico aren’t the only immigration-related moves the federal government has made in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The New York Times reported Tuesday that the Trump administration will soon announce plans to send back to Mexico all asylum-seekers and undocumented immigrants who attempt to cross the southern border between ports of entry.
Although “the ports of entry would remain open to American citizens, green card holders, and some foreigners with proper documentation,” according to the Times, “some foreigners would be blocked, including Europeans currently subject to earlier travel restrictions enacted by the administration. The entryways will also be open to commercial traffic.”
Amnesty International USA advocacy director for the Americas Charanya Krishnaswami charged Wednesday that “the Trump administration’s ban on asylum-seekers coming from Mexico has nothing to do with making Americans safer from the coronavirus pandemic.” She accused the president of “engaging in fear-mongering to justify racist and discriminatory policies whose only purpose is to demonize people seeking safety.”
“The Trump administration has already sent tens of thousands of asylum-seekers to harm’s way in Mexico, forcing them to survive in dangerous and precarious conditions and exposing them to appalling risks of kidnapping, torture, and other abuses,” Krishnaswami added. “Instead of doubling down on these failed tactics, the Trump administration should reverse these cruel and punitive policies and allow people to seek safety following the process required by U.S. and international law.”
‘A stunning betrayal’: Swing-state farmers are fuming over Trump’s latest gift to the fossil fuel industry
March 6, 2020
By Brad Reed - raw story
Farmers’ organizations are warning President Donald Trump that he will face a real backlash from a key swing-state constituency if his administration keeps pushing to give oil refineries exemptions to biofuel-blending rules.
Bloomberg reports that the Renewable Fuels Association, National Farmers Union, and the National Biodiesel Board all called out the administration’s plans to appeal a court ruling that invalidated biofuel waivers that it granted to three oil refineries.
Specifically, the groups said that an appeal of the decision “would be viewed as a stunning betrayal of America’s rural workers and farmers,” and could potentially harm the president’s reelection prospects.
“We cannot stress enough how important this decision is to the future of the rural economy and to President Trump’s relationship with leaders and voters across the heartland,” they said in a joint statement.
Suppliers of corn-based ethanol and soybean-based biodiesel have accused the administration of being all too willing to grant waivers to refineries without considering their impact on the American agricultural industry, which for years has been also hurt by the president’s assorted trade wars.
“Trump is on the verge of outraging every farm and biofuel group in the country,” Monte Shaw, executive director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, tells Bloomberg. “We could have had a fairly uneventful year for RFS policy heading toward November, but this action would seriously threaten Trump’s reputation in rural states.”
Bloomberg reports that the Renewable Fuels Association, National Farmers Union, and the National Biodiesel Board all called out the administration’s plans to appeal a court ruling that invalidated biofuel waivers that it granted to three oil refineries.
Specifically, the groups said that an appeal of the decision “would be viewed as a stunning betrayal of America’s rural workers and farmers,” and could potentially harm the president’s reelection prospects.
“We cannot stress enough how important this decision is to the future of the rural economy and to President Trump’s relationship with leaders and voters across the heartland,” they said in a joint statement.
Suppliers of corn-based ethanol and soybean-based biodiesel have accused the administration of being all too willing to grant waivers to refineries without considering their impact on the American agricultural industry, which for years has been also hurt by the president’s assorted trade wars.
“Trump is on the verge of outraging every farm and biofuel group in the country,” Monte Shaw, executive director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, tells Bloomberg. “We could have had a fairly uneventful year for RFS policy heading toward November, but this action would seriously threaten Trump’s reputation in rural states.”
your stupid president imports a contagious disease and now you have to pay for the tests!!!
‘Why are we being charged?’ Surprise bills from coronavirus testing spark calls for government to cover all costs
March 2, 2020
By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams - raw story
“Huge surprise medical bills [are] going to make sure people with symptoms don’t get tested. That is bad for everyone.”
Public health advocates, experts, and others are demanding that the federal government cover coronavirus testing and all related costs after several reports detailed how Americans in recent weeks have been saddled with exorbitant bills following medical evaluations.
Sarah Kliff of the New York Times reported Saturday that Pennsylvania native Frank Wucinski “found a pile of medical bills” totaling $3,918 waiting for him and his three-year-old daughter after they were released from government-mandated quarantine at Marine Corps Air Station in Miramar, California.
“My question is why are we being charged for these stays, if they were mandatory and we had no choice in the matter?” asked Wucinski, who was evacuated by the U.S. government last month from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak.
“I assumed it was all being paid for,” Wucinski told the Times. “We didn’t have a choice. When the bills showed up, it was just a pit in my stomach, like, ‘How do I pay for this?'”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is not billing patients for coronavirus testing, according to Business Insider. “But there are other charges you might have to pay, depending on your insurance plan, or lack thereof,” Business Insider noted. “A hospital stay in itself could be costly and you would likely have to pay for tests for other viruses or conditions.”
Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University, told the Times that “the most important rule of public health is to gain the cooperation of the population.”
“There are legal, moral, and public health reasons not to charge the patients,” Gostin said.
William LeGate 🧢✔
@williamlegate
Congress needs to immediately pass a bill appropriating funding to cover 100% of the cost of all coronavirus testing & care within the United States. We will not have a chance at containing it otherwise.@tedlieu - as my rep, can you please ensure this is brought up?
6:58 AM - Mar 2, 2020
In the case of the Wucinskis, Kliff reported that “the ambulance company that transported [them] charged the family $2,598 for taking them to the hospital.”
“An additional $90 in charges came from radiologists who read the patients’ X-ray scans and do not work for the hospital,” Kliff noted.
The CDC declined to respond when Kliff asked whether the federal government would cover the costs for patients like the Wucinskis.
The Intercept‘s Robert Mackey wrote last Friday that the Wucinskis’ situation spotlights “how the American government’s response to a public health emergency, like trying to contain a potential coronavirus epidemic, could be handicapped by relying on a system built around private hospitals and for-profit health insurance providers.”
Last week, the Miami Herald reported that Osmel Martinez Azcue “received a notice from his insurance company about a claim for $3,270” after he visited a local hospital fearing that he contracted coronavirus during a work trip to China.
“He went to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where he said he was placed in a closed-off room,” according to the Herald. “Nurses in protective white suits sprayed some kind of disinfectant smoke under the door before entering, Azcue said. Then hospital staff members told him he’d need a CT scan to screen for coronavirus, but Azcue said he asked for a flu test first.”
Azcue tested positive for the flu and was discharged. “Azcue’s experience shows the potential cost of testing for a disease that epidemiologists fear may develop into a public health crisis in the U.S.,” the Herald noted.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, highlighted Azcue’s case in a tweet last Friday.
“The coronavirus reminds us that we are all in this together,” Sanders wrote. “We cannot allow Americans to skip doctor’s visits over outrageous bills. Everyone should get the medical care they need without opening their wallet—as a matter of justice and public health.”
Last week, as Common Dreams reported, Sanders argued that the coronavirus outbreak demonstrates the urgent need for Medicare for All.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. surged by more than two dozen over the weekend, bringing the total to 89 as the Trump administration continues to publicly downplay the severity of the outbreak.
Dr. Matt McCarthy, a staff physician at NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital, said in an appearance on CNBC‘s “Squawk Box” Monday morning that testing for the coronavirus is still not widely available.
“Before I came here this morning, I was in the emergency room seeing patients,” McCarthy said. “I still do not have a rapid diagnostic test available to me.”
“I’m here to tell you, right now, at one of the busiest hospitals in the country, I don’t have it at my finger tips,” added McCarthy. “I still have to make my case, plead to test people. This is not good. We know that there are 88 cases in the United States. There are going to be hundreds by middle of week. There’s going to be thousands by next week. And this is a testing issue.”
Public health advocates, experts, and others are demanding that the federal government cover coronavirus testing and all related costs after several reports detailed how Americans in recent weeks have been saddled with exorbitant bills following medical evaluations.
Sarah Kliff of the New York Times reported Saturday that Pennsylvania native Frank Wucinski “found a pile of medical bills” totaling $3,918 waiting for him and his three-year-old daughter after they were released from government-mandated quarantine at Marine Corps Air Station in Miramar, California.
“My question is why are we being charged for these stays, if they were mandatory and we had no choice in the matter?” asked Wucinski, who was evacuated by the U.S. government last month from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak.
“I assumed it was all being paid for,” Wucinski told the Times. “We didn’t have a choice. When the bills showed up, it was just a pit in my stomach, like, ‘How do I pay for this?'”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is not billing patients for coronavirus testing, according to Business Insider. “But there are other charges you might have to pay, depending on your insurance plan, or lack thereof,” Business Insider noted. “A hospital stay in itself could be costly and you would likely have to pay for tests for other viruses or conditions.”
Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University, told the Times that “the most important rule of public health is to gain the cooperation of the population.”
“There are legal, moral, and public health reasons not to charge the patients,” Gostin said.
William LeGate 🧢✔
@williamlegate
Congress needs to immediately pass a bill appropriating funding to cover 100% of the cost of all coronavirus testing & care within the United States. We will not have a chance at containing it otherwise.@tedlieu - as my rep, can you please ensure this is brought up?
6:58 AM - Mar 2, 2020
In the case of the Wucinskis, Kliff reported that “the ambulance company that transported [them] charged the family $2,598 for taking them to the hospital.”
“An additional $90 in charges came from radiologists who read the patients’ X-ray scans and do not work for the hospital,” Kliff noted.
The CDC declined to respond when Kliff asked whether the federal government would cover the costs for patients like the Wucinskis.
The Intercept‘s Robert Mackey wrote last Friday that the Wucinskis’ situation spotlights “how the American government’s response to a public health emergency, like trying to contain a potential coronavirus epidemic, could be handicapped by relying on a system built around private hospitals and for-profit health insurance providers.”
Last week, the Miami Herald reported that Osmel Martinez Azcue “received a notice from his insurance company about a claim for $3,270” after he visited a local hospital fearing that he contracted coronavirus during a work trip to China.
“He went to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where he said he was placed in a closed-off room,” according to the Herald. “Nurses in protective white suits sprayed some kind of disinfectant smoke under the door before entering, Azcue said. Then hospital staff members told him he’d need a CT scan to screen for coronavirus, but Azcue said he asked for a flu test first.”
Azcue tested positive for the flu and was discharged. “Azcue’s experience shows the potential cost of testing for a disease that epidemiologists fear may develop into a public health crisis in the U.S.,” the Herald noted.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, highlighted Azcue’s case in a tweet last Friday.
“The coronavirus reminds us that we are all in this together,” Sanders wrote. “We cannot allow Americans to skip doctor’s visits over outrageous bills. Everyone should get the medical care they need without opening their wallet—as a matter of justice and public health.”
Last week, as Common Dreams reported, Sanders argued that the coronavirus outbreak demonstrates the urgent need for Medicare for All.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. surged by more than two dozen over the weekend, bringing the total to 89 as the Trump administration continues to publicly downplay the severity of the outbreak.
Dr. Matt McCarthy, a staff physician at NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital, said in an appearance on CNBC‘s “Squawk Box” Monday morning that testing for the coronavirus is still not widely available.
“Before I came here this morning, I was in the emergency room seeing patients,” McCarthy said. “I still do not have a rapid diagnostic test available to me.”
“I’m here to tell you, right now, at one of the busiest hospitals in the country, I don’t have it at my finger tips,” added McCarthy. “I still have to make my case, plead to test people. This is not good. We know that there are 88 cases in the United States. There are going to be hundreds by middle of week. There’s going to be thousands by next week. And this is a testing issue.”
Trump's Junk Plan Leaves Florida Man Holding The Bill For Coronavirus Testing
It would be a wildly ironic lesson in why the ACA matters, and it is. But it's also a warning about the public health crisis facing us.
By Karoli Kuns - crooks &liars
2/25/2020
Remember when Trump decided he'd get rid of the ACA by approving junk plans that could impose pre-existing conditions restrictions and don't pay for benefits that qualified ACA plans are required to cover? Remember how the right wing celebrated that and Trump crowed about how people could buy these crappy plans and tell themselves they had health insurance?
Well, have I got a story for YOU, courtesy of the Miami Herald. Osmel Martinez Azcue came down with flu-like symptoms after he visited China as part of a work trip. While he said he'd ordinarily just go get some cold and flu medicine from CVS, he thought he had better be tested for coronavirus, given the possibility he could have gotten it on his trip.
What happened next? This:
He went to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where he said he was placed in a closed-off room. Nurses in protective white suits sprayed some kind of disinfectant smoke under the door before entering, Azcue said. Then hospital staff members told him he’d need a CT scan to screen for coronavirus, but Azcue said he asked for a flu test first.
“This will be out of my pocket,” Azcue, who has a very limited insurance plan, recalled saying. “Let’s start with the blood test, and if I test positive, just discharge me.”
Oh. So the hospital did that. And he had the flu. What a relief for him!
Well, sort of. Right about the time he was recovered from his bout of the flu, he was slapped with a bill for $3,270, all of which was denied by his insurance company.
But wait! It gets better!
Hospital officials at Jackson told the Miami Herald that, based on his insurance, Azcue would only be responsible for $1,400 of that bill, but Azcue said he heard from his insurer that he would also have to provide additional documentation: three years of medical records to prove that the flu he got didn’t relate to a preexisting condition.
Yep, that's right. Some genius at the crappy for-profit insurer who was happy to take Azcue's money but cover nothing and then come up with the bogus argument that somehow a bout of the flu related to some mysterious pre-existing condition (What? He had a cold 3 years ago?) is EXACTLY why the ACA exists.
Was Azcue stupid for buying junk insurance? Yeah, he was. Here's why he did it:
Azcue said he earns about $55,000 a year working for a medical device company that does not offer health insurance, but his insurance plan wasn’t always so narrow. Last year, Azcue said he was covered under an Affordable Care Act-compliant plan that cost him about $278 in monthly premiums.
Those premiums shot up to $400 a month when his full year salary kicked in, so he canceled his plan in November, he said. Azcue said he now pays $180 per month for the limited plan from National General Insurance.
Was Azcue smart for going and getting tested for coronavirus? Yes, he absolutely was. He gets a "good citizen" award for that.
But what has just happened here is a leading indicator of what kind of health crisis is looming in front of us, because there are going to be a LOT of people out there with no insurance who will not do that. They will tell themselves they just have a cold, nothing more, go to CVS for some meds, pass around that virus to everyone they come in contact with, and maybe end up in the hospital, or worse yet, dead.
“When someone has flu-like symptoms, you want them to to seek medical care,” said Sabrina Corlette, a Georgetown University professor and co-director of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms. “If they have one of these junk plans and they know they might be on the hook for more than they can afford to seek that care, a lot of them just won’t, and that is a public health concern.”
It's more like a public health crisis. Sure, let's hear more about how people don't want to give up their GREAT private insurance for Medicare for All.
Well, have I got a story for YOU, courtesy of the Miami Herald. Osmel Martinez Azcue came down with flu-like symptoms after he visited China as part of a work trip. While he said he'd ordinarily just go get some cold and flu medicine from CVS, he thought he had better be tested for coronavirus, given the possibility he could have gotten it on his trip.
What happened next? This:
He went to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where he said he was placed in a closed-off room. Nurses in protective white suits sprayed some kind of disinfectant smoke under the door before entering, Azcue said. Then hospital staff members told him he’d need a CT scan to screen for coronavirus, but Azcue said he asked for a flu test first.
“This will be out of my pocket,” Azcue, who has a very limited insurance plan, recalled saying. “Let’s start with the blood test, and if I test positive, just discharge me.”
Oh. So the hospital did that. And he had the flu. What a relief for him!
Well, sort of. Right about the time he was recovered from his bout of the flu, he was slapped with a bill for $3,270, all of which was denied by his insurance company.
But wait! It gets better!
Hospital officials at Jackson told the Miami Herald that, based on his insurance, Azcue would only be responsible for $1,400 of that bill, but Azcue said he heard from his insurer that he would also have to provide additional documentation: three years of medical records to prove that the flu he got didn’t relate to a preexisting condition.
Yep, that's right. Some genius at the crappy for-profit insurer who was happy to take Azcue's money but cover nothing and then come up with the bogus argument that somehow a bout of the flu related to some mysterious pre-existing condition (What? He had a cold 3 years ago?) is EXACTLY why the ACA exists.
Was Azcue stupid for buying junk insurance? Yeah, he was. Here's why he did it:
Azcue said he earns about $55,000 a year working for a medical device company that does not offer health insurance, but his insurance plan wasn’t always so narrow. Last year, Azcue said he was covered under an Affordable Care Act-compliant plan that cost him about $278 in monthly premiums.
Those premiums shot up to $400 a month when his full year salary kicked in, so he canceled his plan in November, he said. Azcue said he now pays $180 per month for the limited plan from National General Insurance.
Was Azcue smart for going and getting tested for coronavirus? Yes, he absolutely was. He gets a "good citizen" award for that.
But what has just happened here is a leading indicator of what kind of health crisis is looming in front of us, because there are going to be a LOT of people out there with no insurance who will not do that. They will tell themselves they just have a cold, nothing more, go to CVS for some meds, pass around that virus to everyone they come in contact with, and maybe end up in the hospital, or worse yet, dead.
“When someone has flu-like symptoms, you want them to to seek medical care,” said Sabrina Corlette, a Georgetown University professor and co-director of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms. “If they have one of these junk plans and they know they might be on the hook for more than they can afford to seek that care, a lot of them just won’t, and that is a public health concern.”
It's more like a public health crisis. Sure, let's hear more about how people don't want to give up their GREAT private insurance for Medicare for All.
Trump administration proposes another Social Security rule that violates the law, hurts the disabled
Joan McCarter
Daily Kos Staff
Thursday February 20, 2020 · 11:56 AM PST
The Trump administration has been making a low-key but concerted attack on Social Security in the past weeks, not in public pronouncements, but in attacks on the program through the rule-making process. While the proposal intended to kick Social Security Disability claimants off of benefits has received attention, a second rule that would make the appeals process harder to navigate has flown under the radar. Administrative law judges and Democrats in Congress have been paying attention, though.
he rule would cut administrative law judges out of the loop in taking up standard cases, conducting hearings, and issuing decisions on applications for disability benefits—all responsibilities currently reserved for them. The Social Security Administration says that the change would streamline the hearing process and "provide us with appropriate flexibility, particularly when budgets may not support additional hiring or unanticipated shifts in disability application rates occur." What it will actually do, the judges and members of Congress say, it strip due process rights from people applying for benefits. It would also violate the law and Supreme Court precedent, the administrative law judges' union says. The administration is "trying to undermine the ALJs' judicial independence" they argue in their comment opposing the rule, and "effectively subject the entire administrative adjudicative process under performance appraisal control by the agency."
The end result would be that the "claimant is denied a truly independent review within the agency and is left only with an appeal to the courts for such a review." The Supreme Court, in Smith v. Berryhill, they argue, said that a claimant must have access to an appeal specifically with an administrative law judge, and that "is indeed a matter of legislative right rather than agency grace." That's what Democrats in Congress said, too, in their comment on the proposed rule, sent jointly by Sen. Ron Wyden, ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, and Rep. Richard Neal, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Reps. Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney, the chairs of the Judiciary and the Oversight and Reform committees of the House, signed on as well for good measure.
"SSA's proposed rule would erode due process for Americans who are appealing a denial of Social Security or Supplemental Security Income (SSI), threatening access by eligible individuals to disability, retirement, and survivors' benefits," the members wrote in their comment letter. "Replacing independent Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) with Administrative Appeals Judges (AAJs) is contrary to congressional intent for impartial SSA hearings, and it is not supported by the rationale asserted in the proposed rule." It would contradict the congressional intent of the law regarding disability claim proceedings.
It would also almost certainly mean fewer people would receive disability benefits, a chief aim of the Trump administration.
he rule would cut administrative law judges out of the loop in taking up standard cases, conducting hearings, and issuing decisions on applications for disability benefits—all responsibilities currently reserved for them. The Social Security Administration says that the change would streamline the hearing process and "provide us with appropriate flexibility, particularly when budgets may not support additional hiring or unanticipated shifts in disability application rates occur." What it will actually do, the judges and members of Congress say, it strip due process rights from people applying for benefits. It would also violate the law and Supreme Court precedent, the administrative law judges' union says. The administration is "trying to undermine the ALJs' judicial independence" they argue in their comment opposing the rule, and "effectively subject the entire administrative adjudicative process under performance appraisal control by the agency."
The end result would be that the "claimant is denied a truly independent review within the agency and is left only with an appeal to the courts for such a review." The Supreme Court, in Smith v. Berryhill, they argue, said that a claimant must have access to an appeal specifically with an administrative law judge, and that "is indeed a matter of legislative right rather than agency grace." That's what Democrats in Congress said, too, in their comment on the proposed rule, sent jointly by Sen. Ron Wyden, ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, and Rep. Richard Neal, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Reps. Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney, the chairs of the Judiciary and the Oversight and Reform committees of the House, signed on as well for good measure.
"SSA's proposed rule would erode due process for Americans who are appealing a denial of Social Security or Supplemental Security Income (SSI), threatening access by eligible individuals to disability, retirement, and survivors' benefits," the members wrote in their comment letter. "Replacing independent Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) with Administrative Appeals Judges (AAJs) is contrary to congressional intent for impartial SSA hearings, and it is not supported by the rationale asserted in the proposed rule." It would contradict the congressional intent of the law regarding disability claim proceedings.
It would also almost certainly mean fewer people would receive disability benefits, a chief aim of the Trump administration.
‘A travesty and a disgrace’: Trump quietly issues memo that could abolish union rights for 750,000 federal workers
February 22, 2020
By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams - raw story
“This administration will not stop until it takes away all workers’ rights to form and join a union.”
President Donald Trump on Thursday quietly issued a memo granting Defense Secretary Mark Esper the power to abolish collective bargaining rights for the Defense Department’s 750,000 civilian workers, a move unions decried as part of the administration’s far-reaching assault on organized labor.
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) condemned the memo, which was published in the Federal Register (pdf) Thursday, as “a travesty and a disgrace.”
“The administration’s divide-and-conquer strategy with respect to organized labor is as disgusting as it is shameful.”
—American Federation of Government Employees
The memo argues that a unionized Defense Department workforce could pose a threat to “national security” and that, if necessary, collective bargaining rights at the department should be scrapped in the interest of “protecting the American people.”
“When new missions emerge or existing ones evolve, the Department of Defense requires maximum flexibility to respond to threats,” the memo states. “This flexibility requires that military and civilian leadership manage their organizations to cultivate a lethal, agile force adaptive to new technologies and posture changes.”
“Where collective bargaining is incompatible with these organizations’ missions,” the memo continues, “the Department of Defense should not be forced to sacrifice its national security mission and, instead, seek relief through third parties and administrative fora.”
It is unclear whether or how Esper intends to act on his legal authority.
Larry Mishel, distinguished fellow at the Economic Policy Institute, called the White House’s justification for ending collective bargaining rights at the Defense Department “atrocious.”
The existence of the memo, which Trump signed on Jan. 29, was first reported by Government Executive earlier this month.
The outlet noted that “the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 includes a provision allowing the president to issue an order excluding agencies and agency subcomponents from collective bargaining rules if the rules ‘cannot be applied to that agency or subdivision in a manner consistent with national security requirements.'”
Everett Kelley, AFGE’s national secretary-treasurer, said in a statement that denying Defense Department employees “the collective bargaining rights guaranteed to them by law since 1962 would be a travesty—and doing it under the guise of ‘national security’ would be a disgrace to the sacred oath and obligation that all federal workers make to their country.”
“This administration will not stop until it takes away all workers’ rights to form and join a union, and we will not stop doing everything we can to prevent that from happening.”
—Everett Kelley, AFGE
“This administration will not stop until it takes away all workers’ rights to form and join a union,” said Kelley, “and we will not stop doing everything we can to prevent that from happening.”
Government Executive noted that “unionized workforces within the Defense Department vary widely.”
“Civilian workers at the U.S. Coast Guard are represented by the [AFGE], as are the Defense Logistics Agency and the Defense Contract Management Agency,” the outlet reported. “Blue-collar workers at military bases and depots across the country are represented by a variety of unions, and teachers at on-base schools for children of service members bargain collectively as well.”
Trump and corporate-friendly officials in his administration have been attacking public- and private-sector unions since the president took office in 2017.
Last October, Politico obtained an internal memo penned in 2017 by White House domestic policy adviser James Sherk, who urged Trump “to eliminate all job protections for federal workers and a requirement that federal contractors provide paid sick leave for employees.”
“The Trump administration has already acted on key recommendations in the memo,” Politico reported. “For example, it has changed overtime pay calculations and put forth rules making it harder for companies to be held liable for labor violations committed by franchisees and contractors.”
The memo, Politico noted, also recommended that Trump “issue an executive order eliminating employee unions at the Defense Department on the basis of national security.”
In an October statement responding to Sherk’s recommendations, AFGE said “the administration’s divide-and-conquer strategy with respect to organized labor is as disgusting as it is shameful.”
“But it won’t work,” the union said. “Across this country, our members and the members of every other labor union are getting educated, organized, and mobilized. As the largest union representing federal employees, AFGE will continue to resist the president’s mob mentality and disrespect for the federal workforce and the work they do.”
President Donald Trump on Thursday quietly issued a memo granting Defense Secretary Mark Esper the power to abolish collective bargaining rights for the Defense Department’s 750,000 civilian workers, a move unions decried as part of the administration’s far-reaching assault on organized labor.
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) condemned the memo, which was published in the Federal Register (pdf) Thursday, as “a travesty and a disgrace.”
“The administration’s divide-and-conquer strategy with respect to organized labor is as disgusting as it is shameful.”
—American Federation of Government Employees
The memo argues that a unionized Defense Department workforce could pose a threat to “national security” and that, if necessary, collective bargaining rights at the department should be scrapped in the interest of “protecting the American people.”
“When new missions emerge or existing ones evolve, the Department of Defense requires maximum flexibility to respond to threats,” the memo states. “This flexibility requires that military and civilian leadership manage their organizations to cultivate a lethal, agile force adaptive to new technologies and posture changes.”
“Where collective bargaining is incompatible with these organizations’ missions,” the memo continues, “the Department of Defense should not be forced to sacrifice its national security mission and, instead, seek relief through third parties and administrative fora.”
It is unclear whether or how Esper intends to act on his legal authority.
Larry Mishel, distinguished fellow at the Economic Policy Institute, called the White House’s justification for ending collective bargaining rights at the Defense Department “atrocious.”
The existence of the memo, which Trump signed on Jan. 29, was first reported by Government Executive earlier this month.
The outlet noted that “the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 includes a provision allowing the president to issue an order excluding agencies and agency subcomponents from collective bargaining rules if the rules ‘cannot be applied to that agency or subdivision in a manner consistent with national security requirements.'”
Everett Kelley, AFGE’s national secretary-treasurer, said in a statement that denying Defense Department employees “the collective bargaining rights guaranteed to them by law since 1962 would be a travesty—and doing it under the guise of ‘national security’ would be a disgrace to the sacred oath and obligation that all federal workers make to their country.”
“This administration will not stop until it takes away all workers’ rights to form and join a union, and we will not stop doing everything we can to prevent that from happening.”
—Everett Kelley, AFGE
“This administration will not stop until it takes away all workers’ rights to form and join a union,” said Kelley, “and we will not stop doing everything we can to prevent that from happening.”
Government Executive noted that “unionized workforces within the Defense Department vary widely.”
“Civilian workers at the U.S. Coast Guard are represented by the [AFGE], as are the Defense Logistics Agency and the Defense Contract Management Agency,” the outlet reported. “Blue-collar workers at military bases and depots across the country are represented by a variety of unions, and teachers at on-base schools for children of service members bargain collectively as well.”
Trump and corporate-friendly officials in his administration have been attacking public- and private-sector unions since the president took office in 2017.
Last October, Politico obtained an internal memo penned in 2017 by White House domestic policy adviser James Sherk, who urged Trump “to eliminate all job protections for federal workers and a requirement that federal contractors provide paid sick leave for employees.”
“The Trump administration has already acted on key recommendations in the memo,” Politico reported. “For example, it has changed overtime pay calculations and put forth rules making it harder for companies to be held liable for labor violations committed by franchisees and contractors.”
The memo, Politico noted, also recommended that Trump “issue an executive order eliminating employee unions at the Defense Department on the basis of national security.”
In an October statement responding to Sherk’s recommendations, AFGE said “the administration’s divide-and-conquer strategy with respect to organized labor is as disgusting as it is shameful.”
“But it won’t work,” the union said. “Across this country, our members and the members of every other labor union are getting educated, organized, and mobilized. As the largest union representing federal employees, AFGE will continue to resist the president’s mob mentality and disrespect for the federal workforce and the work they do.”
voting for republicans, you are screwed!!!
Workers Face Retirement With Fear as GOP Refuses to Back Pension Protection Bill
BY Thomas Conway, OurFuture - truthout
PUBLISHED February 15, 2020
Glen Heck spent 28 years sweating in a Campti, Louisiana, paper mill that he likes to say was “hotter than nine kinds of hell.”
But now, Heck’s sacrifice may have been for nothing because his multiemployer pension plan is one of about 150 nationwide set to go broke. If that happens, the 78-year-old Heck will have to find a cheaper, lower-quality health plan and keep the beef herd he’s itching to sell.
The Democratic-controlled House passed—with bipartisan support—a commonsense plan to save Heck’s pension and those of another 1.3 million workers, retirees and widows. But Republican leaders in the Senate refuse to consider it.
In the meantime, the futures of workers and retirees like Heck hang in the balance. Many face retirement with fear instead of anticipation.
Multiemployer pension plans like Heck’s include workers from two or more companies in industries such as transportation, entertainment, construction and paper. Employers make contributions for workers as part of their compensation. Heck and others often give up wage increases or other benefits to fund those plans.
Many of the 1,400 plans nationwide are still healthy. But through no fault of workers or retirees, about 150 are struggling.
Recessions in 2001 and 2008 cut the plans’ investment earnings, and some corporations used bankruptcies to evade pension obligations. Deregulation forced less-competitive companies out of business, straining the plans’ resources.
Now, they owe more money to beneficiaries than they have coming in, and they’re at risk of collapsing. The PACE Industry Union-Management Pension Fund (PIUMPF)—Heck’s plan—is one of them. According to recent projections, the fund will be insolvent in as few as 10 years.
Under the bill passed by the House, the Butch Lewis Act, the Treasury Department would loan money to troubled plans. The plans would use the money to meet their obligations to retirees, and they would repay the loans over 30 years.
The federal government already has an agency, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC), to pay benefits to retirees when multiemployer plans crumble. But it’s no substitute for the Butch Lewis Act.
PBGC provides only a fraction of the benefits beneficiaries earned. Also, so many plans are imperiled that the PBGC’s insurance program itself is at risk of collapse.
If plans fail, workers and retirees will lose as much as 98 percent of their benefits. The Butch Lewis Act would ensure that they receive the money they earned, not pennies on the dollar.
Heck, a former officer with United Steelworkers (USW) Local 13-1331 in Campti, knows widows of paper workers—one with a small child—who’d be financially devastated without their late husbands’ pensions. He knows a retiree with major health problems who’d have no way of paying medical bills without his pension checks.
“He’s just worried to death about it,” said Heck, who worked at the paper mill under a handful of operators, including current owner International Paper.
Cedric McClinton, president of Local 13-1331 and a technician at the paper mill, said pensions are the main source of retirement income for many workers and retirees. If those benefits get cut, there’s no easy way to make up the difference.
“You’re either looking at working longer—and who wants to work until you’ve got one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel—or you’re looking at making concessions after you’ve worked all that time,” McClinton said.
Workers worry about downsizing their homes, giving up travel plans and going on government assistance programs.
“We talk about these things all the time,” McClinton said. “It’s real.”
Instead of passing the Butch Lewis Act to fix the pension crisis, Senate Republicans introduced legislation that would make the problem worse.
Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee want to increase the premiums that retirement plans pay PBGC—something that would push currently healthy plans into financial ruin and put more workers’ retirements in jeopardy. The added costs also would propel some employers into bankruptcy, costing workers their jobs.
Grassley and Alexander also want to increase taxes on pensions, taking a bigger slice of the benefits workers earned and imposing a greater burden on retirees unable to afford it.
Workers and retirees didn’t create the pension crisis. But Grassley and Alexander want them to pay for it.
“That’s mind-boggling,” fumed Travis Birchfield, who’s lobbied for the Butch Lewis Act on behalf of Evergreen Packaging workers represented by USW Local 507 in Canton, N.C. “We’ve done bailouts and tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, and then working people can’t get a damn loan?”
Uncertainty gnaws at Birchfield’s co-workers. Some in their 60s are thinking about retirement, but hesitate because of the pension crisis.
“They’ll ask us, ‘what do you think is going to happen?’ We can’t answer those questions,” Birchfield said.
McClinton and Birchfield pounded the halls of the Capitol to share members’ stories and concerns. But Senate Republicans fail to get the message.
Pensions aren’t perks or “extras.” Workers earned these benefits, and they rely on that money being there during their golden years, just as members of Congress count on receiving taxpayer-subsidized pensions when they leave office.
Failing to pass the Butch Lewis Act means consigning 1.3 million Americans to meager retirements. Some will fall into poverty after supporting themselves all of their lives. Many already see their dreams slipping away.
These hard-working men and women deserve immediate Senate passage of a responsible bill that safeguards their futures.
“Nobody’s trying to get rich here,” Birchfield stressed. “We’re just trying to get our retirements.”
But now, Heck’s sacrifice may have been for nothing because his multiemployer pension plan is one of about 150 nationwide set to go broke. If that happens, the 78-year-old Heck will have to find a cheaper, lower-quality health plan and keep the beef herd he’s itching to sell.
The Democratic-controlled House passed—with bipartisan support—a commonsense plan to save Heck’s pension and those of another 1.3 million workers, retirees and widows. But Republican leaders in the Senate refuse to consider it.
In the meantime, the futures of workers and retirees like Heck hang in the balance. Many face retirement with fear instead of anticipation.
Multiemployer pension plans like Heck’s include workers from two or more companies in industries such as transportation, entertainment, construction and paper. Employers make contributions for workers as part of their compensation. Heck and others often give up wage increases or other benefits to fund those plans.
Many of the 1,400 plans nationwide are still healthy. But through no fault of workers or retirees, about 150 are struggling.
Recessions in 2001 and 2008 cut the plans’ investment earnings, and some corporations used bankruptcies to evade pension obligations. Deregulation forced less-competitive companies out of business, straining the plans’ resources.
Now, they owe more money to beneficiaries than they have coming in, and they’re at risk of collapsing. The PACE Industry Union-Management Pension Fund (PIUMPF)—Heck’s plan—is one of them. According to recent projections, the fund will be insolvent in as few as 10 years.
Under the bill passed by the House, the Butch Lewis Act, the Treasury Department would loan money to troubled plans. The plans would use the money to meet their obligations to retirees, and they would repay the loans over 30 years.
The federal government already has an agency, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC), to pay benefits to retirees when multiemployer plans crumble. But it’s no substitute for the Butch Lewis Act.
PBGC provides only a fraction of the benefits beneficiaries earned. Also, so many plans are imperiled that the PBGC’s insurance program itself is at risk of collapse.
If plans fail, workers and retirees will lose as much as 98 percent of their benefits. The Butch Lewis Act would ensure that they receive the money they earned, not pennies on the dollar.
Heck, a former officer with United Steelworkers (USW) Local 13-1331 in Campti, knows widows of paper workers—one with a small child—who’d be financially devastated without their late husbands’ pensions. He knows a retiree with major health problems who’d have no way of paying medical bills without his pension checks.
“He’s just worried to death about it,” said Heck, who worked at the paper mill under a handful of operators, including current owner International Paper.
Cedric McClinton, president of Local 13-1331 and a technician at the paper mill, said pensions are the main source of retirement income for many workers and retirees. If those benefits get cut, there’s no easy way to make up the difference.
“You’re either looking at working longer—and who wants to work until you’ve got one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel—or you’re looking at making concessions after you’ve worked all that time,” McClinton said.
Workers worry about downsizing their homes, giving up travel plans and going on government assistance programs.
“We talk about these things all the time,” McClinton said. “It’s real.”
Instead of passing the Butch Lewis Act to fix the pension crisis, Senate Republicans introduced legislation that would make the problem worse.
Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee want to increase the premiums that retirement plans pay PBGC—something that would push currently healthy plans into financial ruin and put more workers’ retirements in jeopardy. The added costs also would propel some employers into bankruptcy, costing workers their jobs.
Grassley and Alexander also want to increase taxes on pensions, taking a bigger slice of the benefits workers earned and imposing a greater burden on retirees unable to afford it.
Workers and retirees didn’t create the pension crisis. But Grassley and Alexander want them to pay for it.
“That’s mind-boggling,” fumed Travis Birchfield, who’s lobbied for the Butch Lewis Act on behalf of Evergreen Packaging workers represented by USW Local 507 in Canton, N.C. “We’ve done bailouts and tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, and then working people can’t get a damn loan?”
Uncertainty gnaws at Birchfield’s co-workers. Some in their 60s are thinking about retirement, but hesitate because of the pension crisis.
“They’ll ask us, ‘what do you think is going to happen?’ We can’t answer those questions,” Birchfield said.
McClinton and Birchfield pounded the halls of the Capitol to share members’ stories and concerns. But Senate Republicans fail to get the message.
Pensions aren’t perks or “extras.” Workers earned these benefits, and they rely on that money being there during their golden years, just as members of Congress count on receiving taxpayer-subsidized pensions when they leave office.
Failing to pass the Butch Lewis Act means consigning 1.3 million Americans to meager retirements. Some will fall into poverty after supporting themselves all of their lives. Many already see their dreams slipping away.
These hard-working men and women deserve immediate Senate passage of a responsible bill that safeguards their futures.
“Nobody’s trying to get rich here,” Birchfield stressed. “We’re just trying to get our retirements.”
Trump looks to kill student loan forgiveness program
Annie Nova - cnbc
2/11/2020
KEY POINTS
As student debt continues to climb, President Donald Trump on Monday released a budget for 2021 that would slash many of the programs aimed at helping borrowers.
Student loan spending would be cut by $170 billion in Trump’s plan, titled “A Budget for America’s Future.” The reductions include “sensible annual and lifetime loan limits” for graduate students and parents and the end to subsidized loans, in which the government covers the interest for borrowers who are still in school or experiencing economic hardship.
It would also reduce the number of repayment options for borrowers and nix the popular, if challenged, public service loan forgiveness program.
That program, signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2007, allows not-for-profit and government employees to have their federal student loans canceled after 10 years of on-time payments. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimates that up to one-quarter of American workers are eligible.
“The Trump Administration already has a reputation of being anti-borrower,” said Mark Kantrowitz, a higher education policy expert. “This just takes it further.”
In all, Trump’s proposal would request $66.6 billion for the U.S. Department of Education, trimming the budget by $5.6 billion, or nearly 8%. The proposed cut is less steep than last year, when he called for a nearly 10% reduction in spending for the department.
Still, any cuts to student loan relief programs are unlikely to sit well with many voters.
Eighty percent of Americans agree that the government should make it easier for people with student debt to repay their loans, a study by The Pew Charitable Trusts found. Another poll found that nearly 60% of registered voters said they would support a plan to cancel all existing student loan debt.
Meanwhile, leading Democratic presidential candidates on the campaign trail are vowing to cancel the majority or all of the country’s outstanding student loan debt.
Bernie Sanders has proposed wiping out the country’s $1.6 trillion outstanding student loan tab.
Elizabeth Warren’s plan would cancel $50,000 in student debt for borrowers with household incomes of less than $100,000. People who earn between $100,000 and $250,000 would be eligible for forgiveness on a sliding scale.
- The Education Department’s budget would be slashed under Trump’s 2021 budget.
- Cuts include the end of subsidized student loans and the popular public service loan forgiveness program.
As student debt continues to climb, President Donald Trump on Monday released a budget for 2021 that would slash many of the programs aimed at helping borrowers.
Student loan spending would be cut by $170 billion in Trump’s plan, titled “A Budget for America’s Future.” The reductions include “sensible annual and lifetime loan limits” for graduate students and parents and the end to subsidized loans, in which the government covers the interest for borrowers who are still in school or experiencing economic hardship.
It would also reduce the number of repayment options for borrowers and nix the popular, if challenged, public service loan forgiveness program.
That program, signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2007, allows not-for-profit and government employees to have their federal student loans canceled after 10 years of on-time payments. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimates that up to one-quarter of American workers are eligible.
“The Trump Administration already has a reputation of being anti-borrower,” said Mark Kantrowitz, a higher education policy expert. “This just takes it further.”
In all, Trump’s proposal would request $66.6 billion for the U.S. Department of Education, trimming the budget by $5.6 billion, or nearly 8%. The proposed cut is less steep than last year, when he called for a nearly 10% reduction in spending for the department.
Still, any cuts to student loan relief programs are unlikely to sit well with many voters.
Eighty percent of Americans agree that the government should make it easier for people with student debt to repay their loans, a study by The Pew Charitable Trusts found. Another poll found that nearly 60% of registered voters said they would support a plan to cancel all existing student loan debt.
Meanwhile, leading Democratic presidential candidates on the campaign trail are vowing to cancel the majority or all of the country’s outstanding student loan debt.
Bernie Sanders has proposed wiping out the country’s $1.6 trillion outstanding student loan tab.
Elizabeth Warren’s plan would cancel $50,000 in student debt for borrowers with household incomes of less than $100,000. People who earn between $100,000 and $250,000 would be eligible for forgiveness on a sliding scale.
The Trump administration has launched a brazen assault on our public lands
By Sarah Okeson, DCReport @ RawStory - Commentary
on February 10, 2020
Trump’s Bureau of Land Management, now run by attorney William Perry Pendley, wants to take our nation back to the days of the Dust Bowl when ranchers lorded over public land and their cattle grazed away the natural vegetation and destroyed the topsoil.
The bureau has scheduled meetings this month in Montana, Nevada, New Mexico and Wyoming about “updating and modernizing regulations” and “improving permitting efficiency.”
The bureau administers almost 18,000 permits and leases for livestock, mostly cattle and sheep, grazing on 155 million acres of public land in the western United States.
Erik Molvar, executive director of the Western Watersheds Project, compared livestock grazing to “a slow and invisible cancer.”
Cattle, unlike bison, evolved in northern Europe where rain is plentiful. They are basically unsuited to the Dry West where sagebrush is sometimes the most common plant. Cattle like to gather in or near streams where they wallow in the water and shit.
Cattle have helped transform deep, narrow streams of the west into wider, warmer streams where silt smothers trout eggs and salmon eggs. Bacteria from the cows’ manure can make the streams dangerous or even fatal for anglers or children who contract E. coli poisoning. The state of Wyoming downgraded 76% of its streams to “secondary contact” levels of monitoring to artificially reduce the number of Clean Water Act violations.
Livestock also spread invasive weeds such as cheatgrass which grows for a few weeks and then becomes tinder-dry, making fires more frequent. The weed was brought to the United States by ships between 1850 and the late 1890s and spread along railway lines.
President Franklin Roosevelt signed the first law about grazing on public land, the Taylor Grazing Act, in 1935. The act, named for Colorado politician Edward Taylor, set up a grazing bureau in the Interior Department.
Public land continued to deteriorate so Congress passed the Federal Land Policy and Management Act in 1976, signed by President Gerald Ford. Bruce Babbitt, President Clinton’s Interior Secretary, strengthened grazing regulations, but President George W. Bush’s Interior secretary, Gale Norton, tried to weaken those laws.
Norton, an attorney who previously worked at the Mountain States Legal Foundation, put together a wish list for ranchers that would have even made it easier for ranchers convicted of environmental crimes to get grazing permits.
Norton’s BLM concluded the 2006 regulations would have no effect on endangered or threatened species despite the bureau’s list of 30 species of birds, 49 species of fish, 39 species of mammals, 137 species of plants, eight species of snails, 10 species of crustaceans, six species of reptiles, 15 species of insects and 11 species of amphibians living on the land that were on the endangered or threatened lists or candidates to be on those lists.
Federal judges threw out Norton’s regulations, but now Pendley and team Trump are trying again to destroy our public lands.
The bureau has scheduled meetings this month in Montana, Nevada, New Mexico and Wyoming about “updating and modernizing regulations” and “improving permitting efficiency.”
The bureau administers almost 18,000 permits and leases for livestock, mostly cattle and sheep, grazing on 155 million acres of public land in the western United States.
Erik Molvar, executive director of the Western Watersheds Project, compared livestock grazing to “a slow and invisible cancer.”
Cattle, unlike bison, evolved in northern Europe where rain is plentiful. They are basically unsuited to the Dry West where sagebrush is sometimes the most common plant. Cattle like to gather in or near streams where they wallow in the water and shit.
Cattle have helped transform deep, narrow streams of the west into wider, warmer streams where silt smothers trout eggs and salmon eggs. Bacteria from the cows’ manure can make the streams dangerous or even fatal for anglers or children who contract E. coli poisoning. The state of Wyoming downgraded 76% of its streams to “secondary contact” levels of monitoring to artificially reduce the number of Clean Water Act violations.
Livestock also spread invasive weeds such as cheatgrass which grows for a few weeks and then becomes tinder-dry, making fires more frequent. The weed was brought to the United States by ships between 1850 and the late 1890s and spread along railway lines.
President Franklin Roosevelt signed the first law about grazing on public land, the Taylor Grazing Act, in 1935. The act, named for Colorado politician Edward Taylor, set up a grazing bureau in the Interior Department.
Public land continued to deteriorate so Congress passed the Federal Land Policy and Management Act in 1976, signed by President Gerald Ford. Bruce Babbitt, President Clinton’s Interior Secretary, strengthened grazing regulations, but President George W. Bush’s Interior secretary, Gale Norton, tried to weaken those laws.
Norton, an attorney who previously worked at the Mountain States Legal Foundation, put together a wish list for ranchers that would have even made it easier for ranchers convicted of environmental crimes to get grazing permits.
Norton’s BLM concluded the 2006 regulations would have no effect on endangered or threatened species despite the bureau’s list of 30 species of birds, 49 species of fish, 39 species of mammals, 137 species of plants, eight species of snails, 10 species of crustaceans, six species of reptiles, 15 species of insects and 11 species of amphibians living on the land that were on the endangered or threatened lists or candidates to be on those lists.
Federal judges threw out Norton’s regulations, but now Pendley and team Trump are trying again to destroy our public lands.
congrats fed workers, especially you trump supporters!!!
Trump moves to cap pay raise for civilian government workers at 1 percent
BY JOHN BOWDEN - the hill
02/10/20 07:23 PM EST
President Trump on Monday said federal civilian worker pay increases would be capped at 1 percent next year, sparking criticism from groups representing government employees.
The president argued in a statement that the move was necessary to "put our Nation on a fiscally sustainable course."
"This alternative pay plan decision will not materially affect our ability to attract and retain a well‑qualified Federal workforce," Trump said. "[O]ur pay system must reform to align with mission-critical recruitment and retention goals, and to reward employees whose performance provides value for the American people."
Congress in the past has effectively overturned similar orders by passing appropriations bills, later signed into law, that provide different pay schedules for federal workers.
Monday's announcement from Trump comes just weeks after he signed an executive order in late December raising the base pay of all federal civilian workers by 2.6 percent. That pay raise took effect in January.
The lower cap drew outrage from some employee unions.
The president of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association slammed Trump's announcement, urging Congress to reject what he called a "contemptible" decision.
"At a time when the federal government faces ominous recruitment and retention challenges, the president’s [fiscal year 2021] budget continues to shortchange and renege on previous commitments to federal employees and retirees," Ken Thomas said in a statement. "These contemptible recommendations do nothing more than undermine the strength of our resilient civil service, and I urge Congress to reject it outright."
In August 2018, Trump initiated an effort to freeze federal civilian worker pay rates. He later implemented the freeze by executive order, but that move was later nullified by Congress in a spending deal.
RELATED: Federal employee retirement benefits would be cut under Trump's budget
Politics Federal employee retirement benefits would be cut under Trump's budget
President Trump has again proposed reducing the value of federal retirement benefits while requiring most federal employee ... (Washington Post)
The president argued in a statement that the move was necessary to "put our Nation on a fiscally sustainable course."
"This alternative pay plan decision will not materially affect our ability to attract and retain a well‑qualified Federal workforce," Trump said. "[O]ur pay system must reform to align with mission-critical recruitment and retention goals, and to reward employees whose performance provides value for the American people."
Congress in the past has effectively overturned similar orders by passing appropriations bills, later signed into law, that provide different pay schedules for federal workers.
Monday's announcement from Trump comes just weeks after he signed an executive order in late December raising the base pay of all federal civilian workers by 2.6 percent. That pay raise took effect in January.
The lower cap drew outrage from some employee unions.
The president of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association slammed Trump's announcement, urging Congress to reject what he called a "contemptible" decision.
"At a time when the federal government faces ominous recruitment and retention challenges, the president’s [fiscal year 2021] budget continues to shortchange and renege on previous commitments to federal employees and retirees," Ken Thomas said in a statement. "These contemptible recommendations do nothing more than undermine the strength of our resilient civil service, and I urge Congress to reject it outright."
In August 2018, Trump initiated an effort to freeze federal civilian worker pay rates. He later implemented the freeze by executive order, but that move was later nullified by Congress in a spending deal.
RELATED: Federal employee retirement benefits would be cut under Trump's budget
Politics Federal employee retirement benefits would be cut under Trump's budget
President Trump has again proposed reducing the value of federal retirement benefits while requiring most federal employee ... (Washington Post)
Trump tariffs would bury US in 'fake prosciutto and fake Parmesan,' warns one food importer
JOSEPH N. DISTEFANO/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS
2020/2/10
Escalating U.S. tariffs on imports from Italy threaten to unravel the intricate trade networks that make Italian American cuisine possible, and could slash transport, retail, and restaurant jobs across the United States, food purveyors are warning.
“Every dollar the tariffs go up” pushes more U.S. stores and consumers towards “fake prosciutto and fake Parmesan” from other countries as a cheap substitute for la buona cucina, Riccardo Longo, owner of Gran Caffè L’Aquila on Chestnut Street in Center City, said last week at a gathering he hosted of competitors and lobbyists who seek to stave off the threatened taxes.
It’s not just that some Americans won’t pay more for the best: It’s also that small-town Italian producers are feeling forced by the uncertainty to seek new markets in Asia and the Middle East, Longo and other importers said.
Food makers in Italy and importers in the U.S. depend on a network of relationships built up by a century of Italian American immigration, tourism, nostalgia and food education. The threatened 25% tariffs and the resulting drop in profit margins and sales would shift supply lines and threaten to disrupt or end that long heritage, said restaurant supplier Bill DiGiacomo of DiGiacomo Bros. Specialty Foods Co. in Conshohocken.
The owners said selected imported foods have already been slapped with tariffs — including a big seller, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese — but they have so far been successful at persuading the government to hold back on slapping taxes on a wider range of goods.
But in October, the World Trade Organization ruled the U.S. would be justified if it slapped up to $7.5 billion in “retaliatory” tariffs against European Union countries, including Italy, as punishment for aggressive subsidies to jet airplane maker Airbus, which competes with America’s Boeing. So now the importers fear their margins will collapse.
Longo said big food import companies have been stuffing their warehouses before the tariffs hit, but small businesses don’t have that option. If tariffs are imposed, “we are done,” he said.
“Italian culture is all about food, wine, and family,” said Emilio Mignucci, third-generation operator of Di Bruno Bros. He said the business rests on tight personal relationships with families like the cheesemaking Auricchios of Cremona, olive-oil makers in the hills around Lucca, and the crostini bakers of Abruzzo.
“But they don’t have to ship to Di Bruno’s,” he added. If tariffs drive up prices and U.S. orders drop, pinched sellers will find markets among the rapidly growing economies of Asia and elsewhere, leaving Americans behind.
“My grandfather said, ‘All you need to do is sell the best you can find, and people will get it,’” Mignucci said. “Our prosciutto is $5 more than the guy down the street. A box of crostini already costs $20. I buy them by the shipping-container load. But $5 a bag (in new tariffs) is not sustainable.”
These small-town Italian exporters “have nothing to do with the Airbus,” added former U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta (R., Pa.), a Trump supporter who was at the gathering and is lobbying for the 450-member American Italian Food Coalition to stop the tariffs.
“I support the president when he stands up for American jobs,” said Barletta, who is also known for his opposition to Mexican immigration. But the Italian tariffs are more likely to hurt U.S. employment, which should give the administration pause, he added.
Small Italian companies that are used to relying on the American market may be able to sell elsewhere, but the dislocation in the meantime will cost jobs in both countries, said Amato Berardi, a Philadelphian who formerly held one of the seats in the Italian Parliament reserved for American expatriates.
The threat of tariffs unsettles many delicate trade relationships, warned Salvatore D’Angelo, owner of D’Angelo’s Ristorante Italiano in South Philadelphia. He blames the threat of new tariffs for the increased difficulty he’s had finding some Italian wine in recent foreign shipments to Pennsylvania state stores: The suppliers are sending product elsewhere, he suspects.
Philip P. Jaurigue, CEO of Sabre Systems Inc. in Warrington, whose clients include Boeing, also attended the presentation and said many companies large and small are working to limit the impact of retaliatory tariffs.
But tariffs can damage even businesses they don’t affect directly, D’Angelo warned.
As a young man, D’Angelo said, he was a marble importer. He watched the once-robust Italian marble imports crumble because of a U.S.-Mexico dispute over marble prices. Supply uncertainty drove buyers out of the market, he said, even those not directly touched by the dispute.
D’Angelo worries that’s happening now to the food business. He blamed government interference in natural markets for squeezing family businesses, caught in international politics.
“Every dollar the tariffs go up” pushes more U.S. stores and consumers towards “fake prosciutto and fake Parmesan” from other countries as a cheap substitute for la buona cucina, Riccardo Longo, owner of Gran Caffè L’Aquila on Chestnut Street in Center City, said last week at a gathering he hosted of competitors and lobbyists who seek to stave off the threatened taxes.
It’s not just that some Americans won’t pay more for the best: It’s also that small-town Italian producers are feeling forced by the uncertainty to seek new markets in Asia and the Middle East, Longo and other importers said.
Food makers in Italy and importers in the U.S. depend on a network of relationships built up by a century of Italian American immigration, tourism, nostalgia and food education. The threatened 25% tariffs and the resulting drop in profit margins and sales would shift supply lines and threaten to disrupt or end that long heritage, said restaurant supplier Bill DiGiacomo of DiGiacomo Bros. Specialty Foods Co. in Conshohocken.
The owners said selected imported foods have already been slapped with tariffs — including a big seller, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese — but they have so far been successful at persuading the government to hold back on slapping taxes on a wider range of goods.
But in October, the World Trade Organization ruled the U.S. would be justified if it slapped up to $7.5 billion in “retaliatory” tariffs against European Union countries, including Italy, as punishment for aggressive subsidies to jet airplane maker Airbus, which competes with America’s Boeing. So now the importers fear their margins will collapse.
Longo said big food import companies have been stuffing their warehouses before the tariffs hit, but small businesses don’t have that option. If tariffs are imposed, “we are done,” he said.
“Italian culture is all about food, wine, and family,” said Emilio Mignucci, third-generation operator of Di Bruno Bros. He said the business rests on tight personal relationships with families like the cheesemaking Auricchios of Cremona, olive-oil makers in the hills around Lucca, and the crostini bakers of Abruzzo.
“But they don’t have to ship to Di Bruno’s,” he added. If tariffs drive up prices and U.S. orders drop, pinched sellers will find markets among the rapidly growing economies of Asia and elsewhere, leaving Americans behind.
“My grandfather said, ‘All you need to do is sell the best you can find, and people will get it,’” Mignucci said. “Our prosciutto is $5 more than the guy down the street. A box of crostini already costs $20. I buy them by the shipping-container load. But $5 a bag (in new tariffs) is not sustainable.”
These small-town Italian exporters “have nothing to do with the Airbus,” added former U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta (R., Pa.), a Trump supporter who was at the gathering and is lobbying for the 450-member American Italian Food Coalition to stop the tariffs.
“I support the president when he stands up for American jobs,” said Barletta, who is also known for his opposition to Mexican immigration. But the Italian tariffs are more likely to hurt U.S. employment, which should give the administration pause, he added.
Small Italian companies that are used to relying on the American market may be able to sell elsewhere, but the dislocation in the meantime will cost jobs in both countries, said Amato Berardi, a Philadelphian who formerly held one of the seats in the Italian Parliament reserved for American expatriates.
The threat of tariffs unsettles many delicate trade relationships, warned Salvatore D’Angelo, owner of D’Angelo’s Ristorante Italiano in South Philadelphia. He blames the threat of new tariffs for the increased difficulty he’s had finding some Italian wine in recent foreign shipments to Pennsylvania state stores: The suppliers are sending product elsewhere, he suspects.
Philip P. Jaurigue, CEO of Sabre Systems Inc. in Warrington, whose clients include Boeing, also attended the presentation and said many companies large and small are working to limit the impact of retaliatory tariffs.
But tariffs can damage even businesses they don’t affect directly, D’Angelo warned.
As a young man, D’Angelo said, he was a marble importer. He watched the once-robust Italian marble imports crumble because of a U.S.-Mexico dispute over marble prices. Supply uncertainty drove buyers out of the market, he said, even those not directly touched by the dispute.
D’Angelo worries that’s happening now to the food business. He blamed government interference in natural markets for squeezing family businesses, caught in international politics.
‘It’s sickening!’ 2016 Trump voter turns on the president after his wife gets deported to Mexico
February 3, 2020
By Brad Reed - raw story
A man who voted for President Donald Trump in 2016 now says he would never back the president a second time after his own wife got deported to Mexico.
In an interview with The Nation, Georgia resident Jason Rochester said that he voted for Trump in 2016 thinking that he’d only deport undocumented immigrants who committed violent crimes, and not people like his wife, a woman named Cecilia Gonzalez who crossed into the United States from Mexico when she was 19 years old.
“I had to go with the fact that my wife would be fine because she was not a bad person,” he explained. “I was wrong.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would subsequently deport Gonzalez in early 2018, leaving Rochster to care for their young son, who at the time was just four years old.
Rochseter now says that he will not vote for the president this year, even though so far he doesn’t see a Democrat whom he could support. In addition to deploring the treatment of his own wife, Rochseter also says he’s disgusted by Trump’s policy of separating migrant families at the border.
“They’re children,” he said. “It’s sickening that our country has stooped to this level.”
Read the whole interview here.
In an interview with The Nation, Georgia resident Jason Rochester said that he voted for Trump in 2016 thinking that he’d only deport undocumented immigrants who committed violent crimes, and not people like his wife, a woman named Cecilia Gonzalez who crossed into the United States from Mexico when she was 19 years old.
“I had to go with the fact that my wife would be fine because she was not a bad person,” he explained. “I was wrong.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would subsequently deport Gonzalez in early 2018, leaving Rochster to care for their young son, who at the time was just four years old.
Rochseter now says that he will not vote for the president this year, even though so far he doesn’t see a Democrat whom he could support. In addition to deploring the treatment of his own wife, Rochseter also says he’s disgusted by Trump’s policy of separating migrant families at the border.
“They’re children,” he said. “It’s sickening that our country has stooped to this level.”
Read the whole interview here.
The poor and people with disabilities ‘are going to die’: Trump takes axe to Medicaid
January 30, 2020
By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams - raw story
“Trump wants to destroy Medicaid while claiming to save it. This fiendish scheme is an Orwellian fable conjured up by the most shameless pack of liars to ever occupy our government.”
The Trump administration on Thursday unveiled a plan allowing states to convert federal Medicaid funding into block grants, a longstanding conservative goal that critics warn could have deadly consequences for millions of vulnerable people who rely on the healthcare program as a major source of income.
Seema Verma, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), announced the so-called “Healthy Adult Opportunity” initiative in a statement claiming the policy will “improve health outcomes and care” for low-income people.
“Trump’s plan will ensure that many working families who are currently covered by Medicaid will face cuts to their services, wait lists for needed care, and the risk of medical debt and bankruptcy from trying to pay for illness.”
—Eagan Kemp, Public Citizen
Progressive advocacy groups warned the plan could do precisely the opposite by giving states a green light to cut Medicaid spending and divert federal funding to other state programs, potentially leaving millions without essential healthcare coverage.
“People, poor disabled people in particular, are going to die,” tweeted Alice Wong, director of the Disability Visibility Project. “Not an exaggeration.”
Urging the public to look beyond the plan’s benign label, Public Citizen healthcare policy advocate Eagan Kemp said President Donald Trump’s “nefarious program is just a Medicaid block grant by another name, and the only opportunity it will provide is to miss out on needed care or go broke trying to get it.”
“Trump’s plan will ensure that many working families who are currently covered by Medicaid will face cuts to their services, wait lists for needed care, and the risk of medical debt and bankruptcy from trying to pay for illness,” Kemp said in a statement. “These further attempts to cut health care are just more evidence that Americans need Medicare for All now to protect their access to care once and for all.”
The proposal, which is likely to face legal challenges, invites states to apply for a waiver to receive a lump-sum payment from the federal government for Medicaid instead of open-ended matching funds. Right-wing supporters of block-granting Medicaid claim it would give states more “flexibility,” but critics warn the move could limit states’ ability to increase healthcare spending in response to public need.
“Any state taking this offer is engaging in fiscal malpractice,” Eliot Fishman, senior director of health policy with advocacy group Families USA, said in a statement. “Furthermore, the administration is acting lawlessly. None of the statute regarding Medicaid match rates can be waived administratively.”
“We are better than this, and we—the American people—must hold the Trump administration and Republican members of Congress accountable,” said Fishman.
Congressional Democrats joined healthcare advocacy groups in condemning the plan.
“Trump wants to destroy Medicaid while claiming to save it,” tweeted Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-N.J.). “This fiendish scheme is an Orwellian fable conjured up by the most shameless pack of liars to ever occupy our government. Never forget Republicans’ goal is to steal healthcare from as many Americans as they can.”
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the Senate Health Committee, said in a statement that “even after people across the country spoke out and pressed Congress to reject President Trump’s plan to gut Medicaid with his Trumpcare bill, he’s still charging forward with harmful policies that will hurt the many families who rely on Medicaid.”
The Trump administration on Thursday unveiled a plan allowing states to convert federal Medicaid funding into block grants, a longstanding conservative goal that critics warn could have deadly consequences for millions of vulnerable people who rely on the healthcare program as a major source of income.
Seema Verma, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), announced the so-called “Healthy Adult Opportunity” initiative in a statement claiming the policy will “improve health outcomes and care” for low-income people.
“Trump’s plan will ensure that many working families who are currently covered by Medicaid will face cuts to their services, wait lists for needed care, and the risk of medical debt and bankruptcy from trying to pay for illness.”
—Eagan Kemp, Public Citizen
Progressive advocacy groups warned the plan could do precisely the opposite by giving states a green light to cut Medicaid spending and divert federal funding to other state programs, potentially leaving millions without essential healthcare coverage.
“People, poor disabled people in particular, are going to die,” tweeted Alice Wong, director of the Disability Visibility Project. “Not an exaggeration.”
Urging the public to look beyond the plan’s benign label, Public Citizen healthcare policy advocate Eagan Kemp said President Donald Trump’s “nefarious program is just a Medicaid block grant by another name, and the only opportunity it will provide is to miss out on needed care or go broke trying to get it.”
“Trump’s plan will ensure that many working families who are currently covered by Medicaid will face cuts to their services, wait lists for needed care, and the risk of medical debt and bankruptcy from trying to pay for illness,” Kemp said in a statement. “These further attempts to cut health care are just more evidence that Americans need Medicare for All now to protect their access to care once and for all.”
The proposal, which is likely to face legal challenges, invites states to apply for a waiver to receive a lump-sum payment from the federal government for Medicaid instead of open-ended matching funds. Right-wing supporters of block-granting Medicaid claim it would give states more “flexibility,” but critics warn the move could limit states’ ability to increase healthcare spending in response to public need.
“Any state taking this offer is engaging in fiscal malpractice,” Eliot Fishman, senior director of health policy with advocacy group Families USA, said in a statement. “Furthermore, the administration is acting lawlessly. None of the statute regarding Medicaid match rates can be waived administratively.”
“We are better than this, and we—the American people—must hold the Trump administration and Republican members of Congress accountable,” said Fishman.
Congressional Democrats joined healthcare advocacy groups in condemning the plan.
“Trump wants to destroy Medicaid while claiming to save it,” tweeted Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-N.J.). “This fiendish scheme is an Orwellian fable conjured up by the most shameless pack of liars to ever occupy our government. Never forget Republicans’ goal is to steal healthcare from as many Americans as they can.”
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the Senate Health Committee, said in a statement that “even after people across the country spoke out and pressed Congress to reject President Trump’s plan to gut Medicaid with his Trumpcare bill, he’s still charging forward with harmful policies that will hurt the many families who rely on Medicaid.”
NATIONAL DEBT INCREASED BY $3 TRILLION DURING DONALD TRUMP'S THREE YEARS AS PRESIDENT
BY JAMES CROWLEY - newsweek
ON 1/23/20 AT 9:40 AM EST
George Conway
@gtconway3d
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In other news, yesterday was the third anniversary of @realDonaldTrump’s inauguration. In the three years he’s been president (during two of which his party controlled both houses of Congress) the national debt has increased by
$3,266,795,731,264.14.
Nearly four years after then-presidential candidate Donald Trump said he would eliminate the federal debt in eight years, the deficit has since risen by more than 16 percent under his presidency.
On Tuesday, attorney George Conway, a frequent Trump critic and husband of White House Special Counsel Kellyanne Conway, pointed out that three years into Trump's first term as president, the national debt increased by $3 trillion, bringing it to over $23 trillion now. Conway cited figures from the National Debt Tweets in his tweet.
As a Republican presidential candidate, Trump said he would eliminate the national debt in eight years, which was $19 trillion in 2016, according to The Washington Post. Asked by journalist Bob Woodward if that would involving raising taxes to ease the problem, Trump responded: "I don't think I'll need to. The power is trade. Our deals are so bad."
But as of January, President Trump signed $4.7 trillion more into the debt until 2029, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB).
At a private dinner with wealthy donors last Friday, just days before the third anniversary of his inauguration, the president brushed off critics amid concerns of his spending and growing national debt. "Who the hell cares about the budget? We're going to have a country," he said, as reported by The Washington Post.
The national debt has increased significantly under both the Bush and Obama administrations, increasing about 101 percent from the end of Clinton's administration to the end of Bush's. Republicans criticized Obama for doubling debt by nearly $9 trillion.
According to CRFB President Maya McGuineas, the deficit would have increased under Trump, even if he hadn't signed any legislation. But the new policies he signed beginning in 2017 reflect further spending, which is unusual during a period of economic growth.
"Just like the economic performance isn't totally attributable to the president, the existing policies that are baked into the cake don't reflect Trump's initiative," MacGuineas told Newsweek. "The laws he's signed, though, do. And in this case, he's signed into law two major tax cuts--the one that everybody notices."
The two pieces of legislation that added the most to the national debt are the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) and the 2018 and 2019 Bipartisan Budget Acts (BBA), according to CRFB. In addition to these, the ACA Tax Repeal and other legislation--which included disaster relief, emergency spending, and ACA tax delays, signed in December 2019--added a combined total of about $665 billion.
MacGuineas also said that laws Trump has signed have increased spending, without revenue increasing enough to maintain it, creating more debt than expected. "There were a number of increases that were already on track that came from our growing healthcare and retirement cost. But President Trump massively exacerbated that problem with the laws he signed, which included creating lower revenues and higher spending. And obviously, because of the laws of math, that means we're left with much larger borrowing," she said. "What's unusual is that during a period of economic expansion the borrowing would be increasing from year to year, but that's what's been happening under President Trump."
The increased spending elevated the deficit. The TCJA act has added $1.8 trillion to the debt and can add another trillion dollars, if tax cuts are extended past their 2025 expiration.
During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump not only planned to eliminate the national debt, but also planned to balance the national budget and eliminate budget deficit. However, the increased spending with less income has kept deficits high. A Congressional Budget Office projection predicts $1 trillion deficits annually from 2020 to 2028.
"It's really unusual to be borrowing this much, when the economy is this strong. In fact, we've never had a deficit this large relative to GDP, when the economy was growing this strongly," MacGuineas said. "Deficits have their role, but at this point in the business cycle there is no need for the borrowing that we are undertaking."
Both BBAs added a total $2.2 trillion, mainly by increasing defense and non-defense spending caps through 2021.
When asked if there was anything that can be done to make improvements to the debt, MacGuineas said much can be done with political will. "We're going to need to raise revenues and slow the growth of spending," she said. " That can look like repealing the tax cut, higher tax rates, or new taxes like the carbon tax. It can look like making fixes to our retirement and healthcare system. It can put back in spending caps like we had on defense or domestic discretionary. Frankly the problem is so large that we need to be looking at all those areas. What it really takes is honesty and political will and leadership."
On Tuesday, attorney George Conway, a frequent Trump critic and husband of White House Special Counsel Kellyanne Conway, pointed out that three years into Trump's first term as president, the national debt increased by $3 trillion, bringing it to over $23 trillion now. Conway cited figures from the National Debt Tweets in his tweet.
As a Republican presidential candidate, Trump said he would eliminate the national debt in eight years, which was $19 trillion in 2016, according to The Washington Post. Asked by journalist Bob Woodward if that would involving raising taxes to ease the problem, Trump responded: "I don't think I'll need to. The power is trade. Our deals are so bad."
But as of January, President Trump signed $4.7 trillion more into the debt until 2029, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB).
At a private dinner with wealthy donors last Friday, just days before the third anniversary of his inauguration, the president brushed off critics amid concerns of his spending and growing national debt. "Who the hell cares about the budget? We're going to have a country," he said, as reported by The Washington Post.
The national debt has increased significantly under both the Bush and Obama administrations, increasing about 101 percent from the end of Clinton's administration to the end of Bush's. Republicans criticized Obama for doubling debt by nearly $9 trillion.
According to CRFB President Maya McGuineas, the deficit would have increased under Trump, even if he hadn't signed any legislation. But the new policies he signed beginning in 2017 reflect further spending, which is unusual during a period of economic growth.
"Just like the economic performance isn't totally attributable to the president, the existing policies that are baked into the cake don't reflect Trump's initiative," MacGuineas told Newsweek. "The laws he's signed, though, do. And in this case, he's signed into law two major tax cuts--the one that everybody notices."
The two pieces of legislation that added the most to the national debt are the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) and the 2018 and 2019 Bipartisan Budget Acts (BBA), according to CRFB. In addition to these, the ACA Tax Repeal and other legislation--which included disaster relief, emergency spending, and ACA tax delays, signed in December 2019--added a combined total of about $665 billion.
MacGuineas also said that laws Trump has signed have increased spending, without revenue increasing enough to maintain it, creating more debt than expected. "There were a number of increases that were already on track that came from our growing healthcare and retirement cost. But President Trump massively exacerbated that problem with the laws he signed, which included creating lower revenues and higher spending. And obviously, because of the laws of math, that means we're left with much larger borrowing," she said. "What's unusual is that during a period of economic expansion the borrowing would be increasing from year to year, but that's what's been happening under President Trump."
The increased spending elevated the deficit. The TCJA act has added $1.8 trillion to the debt and can add another trillion dollars, if tax cuts are extended past their 2025 expiration.
During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump not only planned to eliminate the national debt, but also planned to balance the national budget and eliminate budget deficit. However, the increased spending with less income has kept deficits high. A Congressional Budget Office projection predicts $1 trillion deficits annually from 2020 to 2028.
"It's really unusual to be borrowing this much, when the economy is this strong. In fact, we've never had a deficit this large relative to GDP, when the economy was growing this strongly," MacGuineas said. "Deficits have their role, but at this point in the business cycle there is no need for the borrowing that we are undertaking."
Both BBAs added a total $2.2 trillion, mainly by increasing defense and non-defense spending caps through 2021.
When asked if there was anything that can be done to make improvements to the debt, MacGuineas said much can be done with political will. "We're going to need to raise revenues and slow the growth of spending," she said. " That can look like repealing the tax cut, higher tax rates, or new taxes like the carbon tax. It can look like making fixes to our retirement and healthcare system. It can put back in spending caps like we had on defense or domestic discretionary. Frankly the problem is so large that we need to be looking at all those areas. What it really takes is honesty and political will and leadership."
Wisconsin lost 10% of its dairy farmers in 2019, marking its biggest decline ever as Trump's trade wars raged
Joseph Zeballos-Roig - business insider
Jan. 14, 2020, 08:18 AM
Wisconsin shed 10% of its dairy farmers last year, data from the state's Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection shows.
It marked the biggest one-year drop on record, and underscored the negative impact of Trump's trade war on a swing state critical to his re-election bid.
In 2019, Wisconsin lost 819 dairy farms, the department said, leaving 7,292 dairy farms in place. The state leads the nation in the number of farm bankruptcies, according to the American Farm Bureau.
After Trump launched his trade war against China and other friendly nations in 2018, China responded by slapping hundreds of billions of dollars worth of tariffs on American products.
Last year, China slashed its purchases of American dairy products by 50%. Combined with falling milk prices, the trade war has thrown many farmers out of business. The economic environment has worsened considerably for small dairy farms in particular.
The state's coveted 11 electoral votes went to Trump by 23,000 votes in 2016 - or less than one percentage point - a razor-thin margin that promises to make it another key battleground in the 2020 election. Additional volatility could weaken his support among farmers, though their backing remains strong.
Farmers have suffered significant business losses because of the trade war, resulting in a $28 billion bailout package that's double the amount the government forked over to Detroit automakers at the height of the recession a decade ago.
Still, a greater share of that aid may be going to richer farmers. The Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit organization, said in a study released in November that wealthier farmers have drawn larger cash payments compared to poorer ones.
Americans have also borne the brunt of Trump's tariffs. A paper released this week from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that consumers paid for "approximately 100 percent" of the tariffs in the form of increased prices.
However, both China and the United States are set to sign a "phase one" agreement that would de-escalate the trade war on Wednesday.
RELATED: 'We forgive him' Where Christian evangelicals worship Trump more than Jesus
Large numbers of voters across rural Wisconsin flipped from supporting Obama to Trump – now dividing lines over the president are even deeper
RELATED: *STUPIDITY EXPLAINED: SWING VOTERS ON TRUMP 'HE DRIVES ME CRAZY BUT HE'LL GET MY VOTE'
THE LATEST FROM COUNTIES WHERE VOTERS SWUNG FROM OBAMA TO TRUMP: CHRIS MCGREAL FINDS IOWA VOTERS PINING FOR CALM BUT CREDITING TRUMP ON THE ECONOMY
'HE DRIVES ME CRAZY BUT HE'LL GET MY VOTE'
- Wisconsin shed 10% of its dairy farmers last year, according to data from the state's Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection.
- It marked the biggest drop in a single year, and underscored the negative impact of Trump's trade war in a state critical to his re-election bid.
- Last year, China slashed its purchases of American dairy products by 50%, helping to throw scores of farmers out of business.
- The business environment has particularly worsened for small farmers.
Wisconsin shed 10% of its dairy farmers last year, data from the state's Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection shows.
It marked the biggest one-year drop on record, and underscored the negative impact of Trump's trade war on a swing state critical to his re-election bid.
In 2019, Wisconsin lost 819 dairy farms, the department said, leaving 7,292 dairy farms in place. The state leads the nation in the number of farm bankruptcies, according to the American Farm Bureau.
After Trump launched his trade war against China and other friendly nations in 2018, China responded by slapping hundreds of billions of dollars worth of tariffs on American products.
Last year, China slashed its purchases of American dairy products by 50%. Combined with falling milk prices, the trade war has thrown many farmers out of business. The economic environment has worsened considerably for small dairy farms in particular.
The state's coveted 11 electoral votes went to Trump by 23,000 votes in 2016 - or less than one percentage point - a razor-thin margin that promises to make it another key battleground in the 2020 election. Additional volatility could weaken his support among farmers, though their backing remains strong.
Farmers have suffered significant business losses because of the trade war, resulting in a $28 billion bailout package that's double the amount the government forked over to Detroit automakers at the height of the recession a decade ago.
Still, a greater share of that aid may be going to richer farmers. The Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit organization, said in a study released in November that wealthier farmers have drawn larger cash payments compared to poorer ones.
Americans have also borne the brunt of Trump's tariffs. A paper released this week from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that consumers paid for "approximately 100 percent" of the tariffs in the form of increased prices.
However, both China and the United States are set to sign a "phase one" agreement that would de-escalate the trade war on Wednesday.
RELATED: 'We forgive him' Where Christian evangelicals worship Trump more than Jesus
Large numbers of voters across rural Wisconsin flipped from supporting Obama to Trump – now dividing lines over the president are even deeper
RELATED: *STUPIDITY EXPLAINED: SWING VOTERS ON TRUMP 'HE DRIVES ME CRAZY BUT HE'LL GET MY VOTE'
THE LATEST FROM COUNTIES WHERE VOTERS SWUNG FROM OBAMA TO TRUMP: CHRIS MCGREAL FINDS IOWA VOTERS PINING FOR CALM BUT CREDITING TRUMP ON THE ECONOMY
'HE DRIVES ME CRAZY BUT HE'LL GET MY VOTE'
US budget deficit running 11.8% higher this year
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER - ap
1/13/20
The U.S. budget deficit through the first three months of this budget year is up 11.8% from the same period a year ago, putting the country on track to record its first $1 trillion deficit in eight years.
In its monthly budget report, the Treasury Department said Monday that the deficit from October through December totaled $356.6 billion, up from $318.9 billion for the same period last year.
Both government spending and revenues set records for the first three months of this budget year but spending rose at a faster clip than tax collections, pushing the deficit total up.
The Congressional Budget Office is projecting that the deficit for the current 2020 budget year will hit $1 trillion and will remain over $1 trillion for the next decade. The country has not experienced $1 trillion annual deficits since the period from 2009 through 2012 following the 2008 financial crisis.
The actual deficit for the 2019 budget year, which ended Sept. 30, was $984.4 billion, up 26% from the 2018 imbalance, reflecting the impact of the $1.5 trillion tax cut President Donald Trump pushed through Congress in 2017 and increased spending for military and domestic programs that Trump accepted as part of a budget deal with Democrats.
The projections of trillion-dollar deficits are in contrast to Trump’s campaign promise in 2016 that even with his proposed tax cuts, he would be able to eliminate future deficits with cuts in spending and growth in revenues that would result from a stronger economy.
For the first three months of the 2020 budget year, revenues have totaled $806.5 billion, up 4.8% from the same three months a year ago, while government spending has totaled $948.9 billion, an increase of 6.3% from a year ago.
Both the spending amounts and revenue amounts are records for the first three months of a budget year. The deficit in December totaled $13.3 billion, slightly lower than the $13.5 billion deficit in December 2018.
In its monthly budget report, the Treasury Department said Monday that the deficit from October through December totaled $356.6 billion, up from $318.9 billion for the same period last year.
Both government spending and revenues set records for the first three months of this budget year but spending rose at a faster clip than tax collections, pushing the deficit total up.
The Congressional Budget Office is projecting that the deficit for the current 2020 budget year will hit $1 trillion and will remain over $1 trillion for the next decade. The country has not experienced $1 trillion annual deficits since the period from 2009 through 2012 following the 2008 financial crisis.
The actual deficit for the 2019 budget year, which ended Sept. 30, was $984.4 billion, up 26% from the 2018 imbalance, reflecting the impact of the $1.5 trillion tax cut President Donald Trump pushed through Congress in 2017 and increased spending for military and domestic programs that Trump accepted as part of a budget deal with Democrats.
The projections of trillion-dollar deficits are in contrast to Trump’s campaign promise in 2016 that even with his proposed tax cuts, he would be able to eliminate future deficits with cuts in spending and growth in revenues that would result from a stronger economy.
For the first three months of the 2020 budget year, revenues have totaled $806.5 billion, up 4.8% from the same three months a year ago, while government spending has totaled $948.9 billion, an increase of 6.3% from a year ago.
Both the spending amounts and revenue amounts are records for the first three months of a budget year. The deficit in December totaled $13.3 billion, slightly lower than the $13.5 billion deficit in December 2018.
benefits of voting republican!!!
‘We can barely eat’: West Virginia offers a chilling preview of Trump’s food stamp restrictions
January 13, 2020
By Brad Reed - raw story
The Trump administration late last year finalized plans to enforce stricter work requirements for food stamp recipients in a move that’s estimated will kick 750,000 low-income Americans off the program.
The state of West Virginia has had similarly strict requirements on food stamps for the past few years, and the New York Times reports that this policy has increased food insecurity without having a significant impact on employment.
“We can barely eat,” West Virginia resident Chastity Peyton tells the Times.
Peyton and her husband both work — but their jobs don’t offer steady enough hours for them to consistently qualify for food stamps.
All of this has put an added strain on local food banks that have seen a significant increase in clients since the policy change.
“A few years ago, at the first of the month we would be slow and toward the end of the months we would be busy,” Diana Van Horn, who runs a food pantry at the Trinity Episcopal Church in the West Virginia town of Milton, tells the Times. “Now we are busy all the time.”
And Cynthia Kirkhart, who runs the region’s major food bank, tells the Times that people started showing up at the warehouse asking for food after the stricter work requirements were put in place.
West Virginia resident Jerome Comer says that many people in the state simply cannot find jobs because they can’t afford a car.
“You say, ‘Well, they’re able-bodied Americans.’ Yeah, but they live 40 miles out in the holler,” he tells the Times. “They can’t walk to McDonalds.”
Read the whole report here.
The state of West Virginia has had similarly strict requirements on food stamps for the past few years, and the New York Times reports that this policy has increased food insecurity without having a significant impact on employment.
“We can barely eat,” West Virginia resident Chastity Peyton tells the Times.
Peyton and her husband both work — but their jobs don’t offer steady enough hours for them to consistently qualify for food stamps.
All of this has put an added strain on local food banks that have seen a significant increase in clients since the policy change.
“A few years ago, at the first of the month we would be slow and toward the end of the months we would be busy,” Diana Van Horn, who runs a food pantry at the Trinity Episcopal Church in the West Virginia town of Milton, tells the Times. “Now we are busy all the time.”
And Cynthia Kirkhart, who runs the region’s major food bank, tells the Times that people started showing up at the warehouse asking for food after the stricter work requirements were put in place.
West Virginia resident Jerome Comer says that many people in the state simply cannot find jobs because they can’t afford a car.
“You say, ‘Well, they’re able-bodied Americans.’ Yeah, but they live 40 miles out in the holler,” he tells the Times. “They can’t walk to McDonalds.”
Read the whole report here.
hey trumpsters, you are fucked again!!!
More drugmakers hike U.S. prices as new year begins
Michael Erman - reuters
1/1/20
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Drugmakers including Bristol-Myers Squibb Co, Gilead Sciences Inc, and Biogen Inc hiked U.S. list prices on more than 50 drugs on Wednesday, bringing total New Year’s Day drug price increases to more than 250, according to data analyzed by healthcare research firm 3 Axis Advisors.
Reuters reported on Tuesday that drugmakers including Pfizer Inc, GlaxoSmithKline PLC and Sanofi SA were planning to increase prices on more than 200 drugs in the United States on Jan. 1.
Nearly all of the price increases are below 10% and the median price increase is around 5%, according to 3 Axis.
More early year price increases could still be announced.
Soaring U.S. prescription drug prices are expected to again be a central issue in the presidential election. President Donald Trump, who made bringing them down a core pledge of his 2016 campaign, is running for re-election in 2020.
Many branded drugmakers have pledged to keep their U.S. list price increases below 10% a year, under pressure from politicians and patients.
The United States, which leaves drug pricing to market competition, has higher prices than in other countries where governments directly or indirectly control the costs, making it the world’s most lucrative market for manufacturers.
Drugmakers often negotiate rebates on their list prices in exchange for favorable treatment from healthcare payers. As a result, health insurers and patients rarely pay the full list price of a drug.
Bristol-Myers said in a statement it will not raise list prices on its drugs by more than 6% this year.
The drugmaker raised the price on 10 drugs on Wednesday, including 1.5% price hikes on cancer immunotherapies Opdivo and Yervoy and a 6% increase on its blood thinner Eliquis, all of which bring in billions of dollars in revenue annually.
It also raised the price on Celgene’s flagship multiple myeloma drug, Revlimid, 6%. Bristol acquired rival Celgene in a $74 billion deal last year.
Gilead raised prices on more than 15 drugs including HIV treatments Biktarvy and Truvada less than 5%, according to 3 Axis.
Biogen price increases included a 6% price hike on multiple sclerosis treatment Tecfidera, according to 3 Axis.
Gilead and Biogen could not be immediately reached for comment.
3 Axis advises pharmacy industry groups on identifying inefficiencies in the U.S. drug supply chain and has provided consulting work to hedge fund billionaire John Arnold, a prominent critic of high drug prices.
Reuters reported on Tuesday that drugmakers including Pfizer Inc, GlaxoSmithKline PLC and Sanofi SA were planning to increase prices on more than 200 drugs in the United States on Jan. 1.
Nearly all of the price increases are below 10% and the median price increase is around 5%, according to 3 Axis.
More early year price increases could still be announced.
Soaring U.S. prescription drug prices are expected to again be a central issue in the presidential election. President Donald Trump, who made bringing them down a core pledge of his 2016 campaign, is running for re-election in 2020.
Many branded drugmakers have pledged to keep their U.S. list price increases below 10% a year, under pressure from politicians and patients.
The United States, which leaves drug pricing to market competition, has higher prices than in other countries where governments directly or indirectly control the costs, making it the world’s most lucrative market for manufacturers.
Drugmakers often negotiate rebates on their list prices in exchange for favorable treatment from healthcare payers. As a result, health insurers and patients rarely pay the full list price of a drug.
Bristol-Myers said in a statement it will not raise list prices on its drugs by more than 6% this year.
The drugmaker raised the price on 10 drugs on Wednesday, including 1.5% price hikes on cancer immunotherapies Opdivo and Yervoy and a 6% increase on its blood thinner Eliquis, all of which bring in billions of dollars in revenue annually.
It also raised the price on Celgene’s flagship multiple myeloma drug, Revlimid, 6%. Bristol acquired rival Celgene in a $74 billion deal last year.
Gilead raised prices on more than 15 drugs including HIV treatments Biktarvy and Truvada less than 5%, according to 3 Axis.
Biogen price increases included a 6% price hike on multiple sclerosis treatment Tecfidera, according to 3 Axis.
Gilead and Biogen could not be immediately reached for comment.
3 Axis advises pharmacy industry groups on identifying inefficiencies in the U.S. drug supply chain and has provided consulting work to hedge fund billionaire John Arnold, a prominent critic of high drug prices.
payback cartoons
payback funnies
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what you see is what you get!!!
your share, idiot!!!!
