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Mrs. Alan Greenspan and I can’t stomach her. I turned it off ASAP. 💩🤮 Appreciate your other links, LD. Blitzer did a decent job in the CNN one. Should i be surprised?
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is getting much of what he wants in an emerging coronavirus relief package, after months of digging in his heels against a demand by Democratic leaders to pass a multi-trillion-dollar package that would shore up the ailing finances of state and local governments.
The GOP leader isn’t getting liability protection for businesses and other organizations but McConnell himself last week proposed dropping that controversial item along with another large tranche of funding for state and local government.
State and local funding was a top priority of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).
Democrats are getting $90 billion in relief for local governments but it will be distributed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, meaning city and state leaders will have less control. Democrats say that money for housing assistance will also help ease the fiscal burdens on states.
But McConnell is getting a deal a lot closer to what Democrats dismissed as the “emaciated” plan he pushed in recent months than the $2.2 trillion Heroes Act that Pelosi and Schumer said should have been the “starting point” of the talks.
That was quickly leading to some criticism on Wednesday as it emerged the sides were closing in on an agreement, though in Congress, some Democrats taking shots at the package still said it should be approved.
“This is not any place close to what is needed,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said of the emerging $900 billion deal.
…
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) similarly criticized the bill while giving his blessing to its outlines.
Sanders had pushed for a new round of stimulus checks, something that will be a part of the final package.
But the checks will not be as large as he wished, and it will not include other provisions including he aid to local governments that he’d backed.
“There is simply not enough money in the proposal to deal with the unprecedented crises that we now face,” Sanders said Wednesday.
Senior adviser to @BernieSanders Faiz Shakir has been warning about an “austerity mindset” in the Democratic Party he says will cost them with working class voters. Describing these talks, he told me earlier today: “Austerity mindset means every addition comes with subtraction.” https://t.co/YizzxJAsNP
and i am working on new, kinder ways to allow people to take their fingers out of their ears and stop saying nya nya nya so they can hear what you are saying.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and union leaders have contacted Kroger Co. officials in an effort to get them to restore hero pay for workers during the coronavirus pandemic and improve worker safety.
Sanders (I-Vt.), a two-time candidate for president, teamed with two United Food and Commercial Workers International Union leaders in sending a letter to Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen. One of their key requests is for downtown Cincinnati-based Kroger (NYSE: KR), the nation’s largest operator of traditional supermarkets, to restore the so-called “hero pay” of an extra $2 per hour to Kroger frontline employees in stores who are at risk by dealing with the public.
Kroger had instituted hero pay in March as recognition for the added risk they took on to deal with customers during the coronavirus pandemic. It also later paid bonuses of $400 to full-time workers and $200 to part-timers. Kroger halted the hazard pay in June after previously extending it.
Sanders and two UFCW local union presidents who represent 30,000 workers at Kroger stores in Colorado, Wyoming and Washington state also urged Kroger to “take the necessary and responsible steps to improve stores’ safety,” they said in the letter.
“As we navigate this especially hazardous winter season, it is imperative to recognize the dangers essential grocery store workers face,” they said in the letter. “Our members, your employees, are at a higher risk of contracting COVID-19, yet these heroes are being denied the Hero Pay you awarded them at the beginning of the pandemic. Kroger’s employees went from Heroes to Zeros.”
They said Kroger initially recognized the dangers in March when it instituted hero pay and safety procedures such as enforcing mask requirements, limiting the number of shoppers in stores and improving staffing levels so workers could wipe and disinfect store areas as well as take breaks for extra hand-washing. But in May, Sanders and the union leaders said, Kroger began relaxing some procedures while saying things were beginning to return to normal.
“These decisions blatantly disregarded the dangers essential grocery store workers faced, not just by going into work but also by weakening them financially when dealing with Covid-related hardships, such as lack of child care due to homeschooling, sick relatives, and additional medical costs,” they said in the letter.
With a coronavirus relief deal finally coming together after months of disastrous inaction from Congress and obstruction by the GOP, Rep. Ilhan Omar said late Wednesday that lawmakers should be “embarrassed” by the inadequacy of the emerging package given the scale of the public health and economic emergencies facing the country.
In an interview on “The Mehdi Hasan Show,” the Minnesota Democrat lamented that the $900 billion relief measure congressional leaders are close to finalizing is dramatically smaller than the $2.2 trillion CARES Act approved in March.
“It’s really quite shameful that we find ourselves negotiating a deal with such a small amount of money when we know just how devastated the American people are across our country,” said Omar, the whip for the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC). “Think about it: in March, we were able to send $1,200 checks to people and give them $600 in unemployment insurance benefits. And now we’re talking about possibly sending a one-time check, eight months later, of $600 and reducing that unemployment benefit to $300.”
“We are not embarrassed enough as leaders,” said Omar, who last week joined a CPC letter (pdf) demanding “at least $2,000 for all working individuals and families” in the relief package.
"It's really quite shameful that we find ourselves negotiating a deal with such a small amount of money," @IlhanMN tells Mehdi about Covid relief. "A possible one-time check of $600," 9 months after struggling Americans received $1,200: "We are not embarrassed enough as leaders." pic.twitter.com/Ttsw6IDRKT
You can bet your sweet bippy, the billionaires, banksters, and other craporate white collar crooks cleaned up BIG time back in March. Mnuchin made sure of it, and Congress?? AWOL.
Multimillionaire televangelist Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Texas netted $4.4 million in bailouts through the federal COVID-19 relief program, records show.
The Houston megachurch, the largest in the nation with 52,000 weekly congregants, received the forgivable Paycheck Protection Program loan in late July, the Houston Business Journal reported Sunday.
The loan was the third-highest in the Houston area during all of July and August, the outlet noted, citing federal data.
Lakewood’s PPP check went to 368 full- and part-time employees, spokesman Donald Iloff told the Houston Business Journal.
He said in-person services that were suspended from March 15 through Oct. 18 due to the COVID-19 pandemic impacted “its ability to collect substantial donations during those services.”
..
Osteen — whose sermons are seen around the world — is worth an estimated $100 million. He took the helm of Lakewood Church following the death of his dad, founding pastor John Osteen, in 1999.
phatkhat
Not as bad, I suppose, as the one who took the PPP money and bought a private jet. Though I think he had to give it back when the story went viral. These assholes are in it for the money. They don’t give a rat’s ass about the congregants.
The revelation that elite cyber spies in past months conducted the largest hack against US officials in years has put the spotlight on SolarWinds, the Texas-based company whose software was compromised while servicing some of the biggest agencies and companies in the United States.
SolarWinds provides computer networking monitoring services to corporations and government agencies around the world, and has become a dominant player since it was founded in 1999.
“They’re not a household name the same way that Microsoft is. That’s because their software sits in the back office,” said Rob Oliver, a research analyst at Baird who has followed the company for years. “Workers could have spent their whole career without hearing about SolarWinds. But I guarantee your IT department will know about it.”
The firm was founded by two brothers in Tulsa, Oklahoma, ahead of the feared turn-of-the-millennium Y2K computer bug. On an October earning call, the company’s chief executive Kevin Thompson touted how far it had come since.
There was not a database or an IT deployment model out there to which the company did not provide some level of monitoring or management, he told analysts. “We don’t think anyone else in the market is really even close in terms of the breadth of coverage we have,” he said. “We manage everyone’s network gear.“
That dominance, however, has become a liability. On Sunday, SolarWinds alerted thousands of its customers that an “outside nation state” had found a back door into its most popular product, a tool called Orion that helps organizations monitor outages on their computer networks and servers.
The company revealed that hackers snuck a malicious code that gave them remote access to customers’ networks into an update of Orion. The hack began as early as March, SolarWinds admitted, giving the hackers plenty of time to access the customers’ internal workings.
In a new wrinkle in the still-unfolding SolarWinds saga, it seems that some of the company’s top investors sold off close to a collective $280 million dollars in stock just days before the news of its role in a far-reaching federal cyberattack became public.
That’s according to a new Washington Post report that specifically calls out two investment firms—Silver Lake and Thoma Bravo—that together own a whopping 70% of all SolarWind’s stock and controlled six of the company’s board seats. The two firms sold off, respectively, $158 million dollars and $128 million dollars in shares on December 7—six days before SolarWinds disclosed that some of its monitoring products were subject to a “highly-sophisticated” attack at the hands of an unnamed nation state.
Interestingly enough, these sales also happened just days before the company’s longterm CEO, Kevin Thompson, announced his resignation after close to 10 years with the company.
The sequence of events could raise eyebrows among enforcement officials, considering how SolarWinds’s stock took a tumble of about 22% in the immediate aftermath of the breach. Jacob S. Frenkel, as former senior counsel at the SEC told The Post, large trades in advance of any major announcement—like a change in leadership or the disclosure of a major breach—is “a formula for an insider trading investigation.” A probe like this could take up to a year, he added.
Things reportedly got testy on Wednesday during an internal conference call as lawmakers tried to iron out a bipartisan agreement for a coronavirus relief bill, The Washington Post reports.
Multiple aides told the Post that tensions flared specifically between Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), who reportedly got into a heated exchange over how big stimulus checks should be. Checks were initially left out of the $900 billion proposal before reportedly being added as part of a compromise. Sanders argued for more robust direct payments, while Manchin advocated for a lower amount, instead preferring to emphasize unemployment benefits.
Reports the Post, members trying to rush the $900 billion proposal into law are “infuriated” by the potential for Sanders’ opposition to blow up the whole deal.
Sanders, for his part, has called the inclusion of $600 checks a “good start,” but is vowing to keep fighting “for more.”
And she ended the interview with snark — telling Blitzer ,”Thank you for sensitivity to our constituents’ needs” and then when he responded that he was aware of their needs because ‘I see them on the street begging for food, begging for money,” the Speaker of the House said this: “Have you fed them? We feed them, we feed them.”
Actually, in this case, I think she’s on the more stimulus side because the House already passed legislation with more stimulus. She is a crappy negotiator no doubt.
Honestly, who can be surprised that this was McConnell’s only motive. It’s obviously effective so Ossoff and Warnock need to keep hammering the point that more stimulus checks are needed and the only way to get the checks is to vote for them.
Maybe it was just a way to rally his troops, but it’s remarkable that @senatemajldr tells his caucus they have to act on stimulus to protect GA senators in a runoff, not the millions of Americans who are being hammered by COVID & economic fallout. https://t.co/UaIF9VZqmx
The U.S. government would save about $2.6 billion if President-elect Joe Biden halts construction on the border wall project on his first day in office, according to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimates reviewed by The Washington Post.
Biden told reporters this summer he would not build “another foot” of the border barriers that became a symbol of the Trump presidency and one of the most expensive federal infrastructure projects in U.S. history. But the financial implications of a decision to stop work — including the costs to the government it will potentially incur — have not been publicly disclosed.
U.S. Army Corps commanders met with members of the Biden transition team last week to discuss the border wall project, Corps spokeswoman Raini Brunson said. She declined to comment on the estimates reviewed by The Post, referring additional questions to the president-elect’s office.
“We cannot speculate on what the final cost estimates for undelivered work would be nor speculate about what actions a White House Administration may or may not take,” Brunson said in a statement.
Biden’s transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
The Trump administration obtained about $15 billion for the barrier project, enough to complete 738 miles of new fencing, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Just about one-third of the $15 billion was provided by Congress through the standard appropriations process; Trump took the rest from Department of Defense counternarcotics programs and military construction accounts.
The U.S. Army Corps estimates show there will be about $3.3 billion in unused funds in the project’s accounts on January 21. Army Corps officials have engaged in a series of meetings in recent weeks about how to end the contracts — and what can be done legally, and when.
While the Biden administration will have the ability to terminate or modify contracts with the construction firms building the barrier, those companies will be able to bill the government for “demobilization” fees that cover the withdrawal of crews, materials and equipment from the border. Those fees are projected to add up to about $700 million, according to the estimates.
The Army Corps also priced out a third option that would not add more linear miles to the barrier but allow companies to complete the roads, sensors and other “attributes” that are part of the contracts. CBP officials have long insisted the barrier is part of a “system” that includes powerful detection technology and roads that allow patrol agents to respond faster to incursions.
Of the $1.6 billion remaining in Department of Homeland Security money for the project — just one of the funding sources — the government would be able to save $1.1 billion by completing these ancillary features, estimates show, compared with $1.46 billion by freezing the project entirely. The Biden administration has not said whether it would consider completing those elements of the project, or bring everything to a screeching halt.
The president-elect’s agenda calls for an immediate end to the national emergency declaration that allowed Trump to “siphon federal dollars” from defense budgets, according to the transition team’s website.
“Building a wall will do little to deter criminals and cartels seeking to exploit our borders,” Biden’s plan says. “Instead of stealing resources from schools for military children and recovery efforts in Puerto Rico, Biden will direct federal resources to smart border enforcement efforts, like investments in improving screening infrastructure at our ports of entry, that will actually keep America safer.”
Construction crews along the border have been working round-the-clock in multiple locations to build the barriers as fast as possible before Biden takes office, anticipating that the project’s days are numbered. Environmental and conservation groups who oppose the project have expressed outrage that crews continue to bulldoze and dynamite through sensitive desert and mountain regions, altering the landscape as they clear a path for barriers they won’t have time to install.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection acting commissioner Mark Morgan told reporters this week that Biden’s pledge to stop work would be a “waste of taxpayer money” adding up to “billions.”
“There has been talk about quote ‘not building another foot of wall.’ I want to talk about the reality, not the political reality, but the substantive impact, of stopping construction,” Morgan said. “Let’s consider the cost directly to American taxpayers when we walk away, which will probably be billions of dollars that have already been invested and assigned to a contract.”
According to Morgan, the government would be on the hook for materials the companies have purchased, including steel bollards that might have to be “destroyed” if they aren’t installed in the ground. The acting commissioner also said border wall contractors could charge the government for the cost of refilling trenches with dirt if concrete isn’t poured into them by the time Biden pulls the plug.
“More costs to the taxpayer for nothing,” Morgan said.
CBP officials say crews are on pace to finish 450 miles of new fencing by the end of the year. Much of that has been built across national forests, wildlife preserves and other public lands in western states where the government already controls the property. Progress has been much slower along the banks of the Rio Grande in Texas, where nearly all the land is in private hands and landowners have battled Trump administration efforts to seize it through eminent domain.
That’s all the War Department does is suck up taxpayer money and waste it. So Byedone brings it to an immediate halt. At least the environmental damage will stop.
The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits rose again last week to 885,000 as a resurgence of coronavirus cases threatens the economy’s recovery from its springtime collapse.
The Labor Department said Thursday that the number of applications increased from 862,000 the previous week. It showed that nine months after the viral pandemic paralyzed the economy, many employers are still slashing jobs as the pandemic forces more business restrictions and leads many consumers to stay home.
wpDiscuz
Tips, Comments, Complaints, Etc!
T and R, LD & JD!! 🎄☮️😊👍
Mrs. Alan Greenspan and I can’t stomach her. I turned it off ASAP. 💩🤮 Appreciate your other links, LD. Blitzer did a decent job in the CNN one. Should i be surprised?
Go Bernie go let them have it
McConnell getting much of what he wants in emerging relief deal
Manchin, just another hillbilly GOPuker.
Bernies spot on
Money for the MIC –check
Money for tax breaks for the rich– check
Money for tax breaks for corporations –check
$1200 for American’s with incomes under 75k Congress WHAT!!! –were broke, what about the deficit, who’s going to pay for it.
But Congress will add to the debt for the first 3 and have the mint print more money to make it happen– no questions asked
and i am working on new, kinder ways to allow people to take their fingers out of their ears and stop saying nya nya nya so they can hear what you are saying.
Bernie Sanders sends letter to Kroger CEO urging worker pay hike
If the Kroger Craporate could afford the original extra pay, then what’s the problem now?
Some executives probably saw a decline in their million dollar bonuses. Let THEM go wait on customers who refuse to wear a mask.
My question was actually smartazzy. Spot on about the greedball executives.
no kidding. it’s outrageous, tbh, but we can’t stay in perpetual outrage.
Can’t we though? (Half-kidding.)
People not being appropriately outraged is kinda how we got here.
‘We Are Not Embarrassed Enough’: Ilhan Omar Slams Congress for Failing the Public on Covid Relief
You say it loud, girl! We hear you out here in the sticks.
You can bet your sweet bippy, the billionaires, banksters, and other craporate white collar crooks cleaned up BIG time back in March. Mnuchin made sure of it, and Congress?? AWOL.
At least Moscow Mitch will stay on the billionaires Christmas card list
Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church received $4.4M COVID-19 PPP loan
Not as bad, I suppose, as the one who took the PPP money and bought a private jet. Though I think he had to give it back when the story went viral. These assholes are in it for the money. They don’t give a rat’s ass about the congregants.
I’m amazed at how these legal con artist’s continually con people out of their hard earned money, i just SMDH in disbelief
Exhibit A of my earlier comment about what human garbage cleaned up from the CARES act.
SolarWinds: company at the core of the Orion hack falls under scrutiny
Investors Sold an Awful Lot of SolarWinds Stock Before Its Hack Was Disclosed
Of course, it’s insider trading. It is supposed to be illegal but that’s been a joke for years. 🙁
Good. Manchin and his pals were infuriated.
https://news.yahoo.com/bernie-sanders-joe-manchin-reportedly-224000063.html
I wonder whose side “We feed them” Pelosi is on?
Actually, in this case, I think she’s on the more stimulus side because the House already passed legislation with more stimulus. She is a crappy negotiator no doubt.
She’s a rich, semi-senile, Botoxed joke who seriously needs to retire.
Honestly, who can be surprised that this was McConnell’s only motive. It’s obviously effective so Ossoff and Warnock need to keep hammering the point that more stimulus checks are needed and the only way to get the checks is to vote for them.
Biden order to halt border wall project would save U.S. $2.6 billion, Pentagon estimates show
That’s all the War Department does is suck up taxpayer money and waste it. So Byedone brings it to an immediate halt. At least the environmental damage will stop.
https://6abc.com/business/us-jobless-claims-rise-to-885000-amid-resurgence-of-covid/8843678/
The rising unemployment numbers are high on my list of most depressing indicators.