BAD NEWS FOLKS: Cuomo is putting Bill Mulrow, a senior advisor at the Wall Street private equity vulture Blackstone Group, in charge of the coronavirus economic recovery.
Biden on @theview says he hasn't spoken to Bernie Sanders recently and it's up to him to decide whether to drop out. "I hear what some of his supporters are saying and i'm prepared to and I have moved on some of it. So I hope we can bring it all together. That's my expectation."
BAD NEWS FOLKS: Cuomo is putting Bill Mulrow, a senior advisor at the Wall Street private equity vulture Blackstone Group, in charge of the coronavirus economic recovery.
Cuba is caricatured by the Right as a totalitarian hellhole. But its response to the coronavirus pandemic — from sending doctors to other countries to pioneering anti-viral treatments to converting factories into mask-making machines — is putting other countries, even rich countries, to shame.
Stub
It would be interesting if Puerto Rico asked for Cuban doctors.
I can only imagine what the weapons of mass decption would say if Bernie would say Cuba is doing a good job helping other countries with the CV-19 outbreak.
Joe Biden just abdicated national leadership by disappearing for a week in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. According to mainstream media, it’s no big deal.
Congressional Democrats are pushing for nationwide access to vote-by-mail and early voting in response to the spread of the coronavirus. And while lawmakers have introduced legislation to address the havoc the pandemic has had and will have on voting, they say that they’re running into the same partisan wall that has blocked related efforts in the past.
“I see no evidence that Majority Leader McConnell has weakened his opposition,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) on Monday, highlighting the Kentucky Republican’s past and continuing role as an ardent opponent of federal election legislation efforts. “To be really blunt, that’s partly because voter suppression efforts in a number of states around the country include things like changing the hours, changing the location of polling precincts—and vote-by-mail is a way to work around that or to weaken that as a voter suppression tool.”
Coons’s remarks came on a phone call with reporters, where he joined Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to discuss a bill they are cosponsoring that would expand early voting and no-excuse absentee vote-by-mail to all states in time for the November elections.
Even against the coronavirus backdrop, the Democratic senators say McConnell is acting in keeping with his history of blocking election security legislation meant to address concerns after Russia’s 2016 interference operations, and his only reluctant agreement to boost some election security funding after a months-long campaign that saw him called “Moscow Mitch.”A spokesperson for McConnell did not respond to a request for comment.
While election-related funding has been incorporated into the Senate’s coronavirus relief package that is still under debate, Klobuchar said that “we want to see a lot more,” than the just “over $100 million” currently contemplated. The Brennan Center has estimated that a robust election-protection plan related to the coronavirus could cost as much as $2 billion to cover ballot printing and procurement, postage, security, staffing, poll workers, and voter-education campaigns. A proposal unveiled by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Monday called for “billions” in grant funding for states for election administration issues and a national requirements of 15 days of early voting, no-excuse absentee voting, and that registered voters receive ballots in the mail in an emergency.
On March 18, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio went on CNN and pleaded for President Trump to mobilize the U.S. military in response to coronavirus. “I want their medical teams, which are first-rate, I want their logistical support, I want their ability to get stuff from factories all over the country where they’re needed most,” de Blasio told Anderson Cooper. “The only force in America that can do it effectively and quickly is the United States military.”
The next day, March 19, was the 17th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a catastrophic act of aggression that would go on to kill more than 1 million Iraqi people, according to one estimate. Since 2003, that date has often been marked by anti-war protests, street blockades and demonstrations at military installations, but these actions have declined in frequency and scale as the years have passed, and on Thursday—in quarantine—that anniversary went largely unremarked.
But it needs to be remembered. As political leaders on both sides of the aisle fail to create an emergency response that can provide immediate, material relief for the millions of people desperately in need, we are seeing increasing calls to turn to the U.S. military and National Guard to fill in that gap. The desperation driving this trend is understandable, but we must not uncritically turn to military institutions as providers of “medical teams” and “logistical support” without looking at how the U.S. military itself is a purveyor of unconscionable violence, from its 2003 invasion of Iraq to its worsening of the present-day global pandemic, or how it could be used to crack down on people within the United States.
This is especially urgent as politicians move rapidly to pursue a military response. On Sunday night, President Trump gave orders to activate the National Guard in New York, California and Washington into federalized status, which means they will be paid for by the federal government but under the control of states. And Military Times reports that all 50 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Washington, DC “have each mobilized components of their Army and Air National Guard to assist in their state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.” While the National Guard is a domestic force, it can be mobilized in times of war and national emergency, and it falls under the purview of the Department of Defense. Meanwhile, according to Newsweek, “the U.S. military is preparing forces to assume a larger role in the coronavirus response, including the controversial mission of quelling ‘civil disturbances’ and enforcing the law.”
There are already signs that governments around the world are using the crisis to expand the security state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is using the crisis to side-step legislative oversight, and an upcoming trial for corruption, to enact sweeping “security” measures. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is also using the crisis to seize dramatic powers that allow him to criminalize the press under the name of protecting security. We should be wary of similar maneuvers in the United States.
Since the US taxpayer has paid uncounted Billions into our military I would take full advantage of the logistical abilities to help the shortage of PPE and move equipment where its needed the most. I would do the same with the military’s medical personal. Their are way to many vacant buildings that can be used as field hospitals and CVB-19 testing sites, I think the troops would rather be helping our own citizens for a change on a mission of mercy rather than fighting another useless war over natural resources.The enforcement of law and civil disturbances had better stay at the state and local level as far as I’m concerned. This isn’t a Katrina- New Orleans level event where the national guard and the military had to step in. Hopefully the next president order a complete re assessment of our pandemic response team and be ready to go for the next one and making sure that we have the basics on hand and ready to go. Trumpcorp will say everything went perfectly of course.
They will need one hell of a support team to keep those maintained and functioning, other than the Elon Musks of the world I doubt most of them couldnt change batteries in a flashlight.
President Trump is considering whether to bring the economy out of its government-induced coma in the next week or two, insisting the pain of the restrictions should not outweigh that from the coronavirus itself.
But investors, portfolio managers and economists with a front-row seat to the ongoing carnage on Wall Street and beyond aren’t so sure that scaling back social distancing is the right move. Many say the economy — and still-sliding stock market along with it — won’t begin to recover until the United States definitively turns the tide against the disease.
“You may get a [market] bounce on the headline,” Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial Inc., tells me. “Or the market could down even more if the community of investors and traders believe this is the opposite of what is needed. Above all else it will be the empirical data that suggests the virus is receding.”
Adam Sarhan, CEO of investment firm 50 Park Investments, says the market will only stop plumbing new lows once new infections level off. “What the world, and the market, needs to see is that number stop going up,” he says.
“Think of it as a trade: What’s the risk of reopening early?” Sarhan said. “The risk is the number of cases continues to skyrocket, and longer term, you’re just digging a much deeper hole.”
US on way to 63k cases. You want to re-open the economy around acceptable trade-offs? That involves mandatory compulsory universal testing. We don’t even have enough tests for those that want one. What about a second or third wave & having to shut economy again? pic.twitter.com/kfh98V6AJp
The World Health Organization said on Tuesday it was seeing a “very large acceleration” in coronavirus infections in the United States which had the potential of becoming the new epicenter.
Over the past 24 hours, 85 percent of new cases were from Europe and the United States, WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris told reporters. Of those, 40 percent were from the United States.
Asked whether the United States could become the new epicentre, Harris said: “We are now seeing a very large acceleration in cases in the U.S. So it does have that potential.
“…They (the United States) have a very large outbreak and an outbreak that is increasing in intensity,” Harris added.
Alarm is growing about the safety of more than 37,000 people held in immigrant detention centers and private jails that contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, where it is nearly impossible for them to avoid close contact to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Nearly half of those detained by ICE are accused of no crime other than civil immigration violations. Immigrants at three jails in New Jersey are now on hunger strikes over unsanitary conditions that put them at high risk during the pandemic. We hear from a detained person on hunger strike and speak with John Sandweg, former acting director of ICE during the Obama administration, who is calling for ICE to release thousands from detention, and Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, or CHIRLA, which just led a national effort to stop immigration enforcement actions.
both parties have turned away from caring for much of the population for a long time. Mental and emotional health, basic needs, poor education and rotten leadership have combined to create what seems like a whole angry and uninformed populous. The danger in all this neglect is coming home to roost.
Don midwest
hey, the dems should be proud of a 25% approval rating
it is better than some congress ratings in the single digits
With the usual exceptions—Senator Bernie Sanders in a series of live-streamed online addresses, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on social media, representatives Maxine Waters and Rashida Tlaib in actual proposed legislation—every Democratic voice raised during a maddeningly unproductive week seemed to caution against trying too hard, while attaching a PowerPoint slide to the cautionary message for good measure. Senator Kamala Harris, whose dud presidential campaign has lately become a slightly more plausible vice-presidential one, took the opportunity to reheat her LIFT Act, which would direct preposterously insufficient payments to a narrow subset of Americans who were neither too rich nor, not a little nauseatingly, too poor. (Harris later deleted those tweets.) When the frontrunner for the party’s presidential nomination finally weighed in on the ongoing negotiations over the scale and targeted reach of a bailout at week’s end, it was to ask that the nation’s reigning plutocrats be mindful in processing the bailouts they were about to receive. “I am calling on every CEO in America to publicly commit now to not buying back their company’s stock over the course of the next year,” Joe Biden’s team tweeted on Friday morning. “As workers face the physical and economic consequences of the coronavirus, our corporate leaders cannot cede responsibility for their employees.” On Sunday afternoon, after a cheerful Weekend At Bernie’s-style emoji cameo on a popular DJ’s Instagram feed the day before, Biden reappeared on Twitter to ask that Social Security payments be bumped up by $200 a month.
All the while, the Republicans did what Republicans do—sought to direct whopping no-strings-attached funds to powerful interests while effectively removing all non-wealthy people from the equation, pausing at regular intervals to laud the integrity and handsomeness that their forgetful and vinegary president had brought to duffing every single aspect of the governmental response to the virus. The Democrats, in response, did what they generally do. They made clear that they were disappointed in the Republicans; they advocated for something vague and qualified and means-tested that might benefit some people in a clever double-banked fashion; they made sure that it would not arrive too soon, or too generously. It would allow newly precarious workers and small business owners to apply for low-interest loans, where applicable. They maneuvered and then aimed to let the game come to them. “Biden aides and allies … are projecting an aura of calm,” Politico reported, “saying Trump’s false claims and reinvented history about the virus will haunt him on their own as the economy craters.”
But the response to a president and a party that is openly saying that hundreds of thousands of deaths is a reasonable price to pay for Getting The Economy Going simply cannot be getting together with stakeholders from all sides and trying to find a way to get that number a little lower. Nor is it the Pelosi-approved method of waiting for voters to punish the offending parties at the ballot box after months of unimaginable and preventable suffering.
At this moment, erring on the side of saying or doing too little instead of too much would be not just infuriating in the typical Democratic ways but devastating and damning in essential ones; the crystalized threat presented by this crisis and this moment requires a clear and commensurate response in both words and deeds. Strategically laying low or working the angles—such as gaming the outcomes within the denser stretches of mundane appropriations bills—doesn’t work terribly well in comparatively normal circumstances. But the Democrats’ usual tactics are terrifyingly insufficient when they’re deployed in response to business interests and reactionary politicians opting into a holocaust in the best interests of a market. It is ghoulish in the most contemporary of ways that this sort of thing is even up for debate, but it’s most important to see the effort to counter it as what it is: not a political campaign but an existential one, and so not the sort of thing that you get to do twice.
Our government and the rich people it exists for have more than enough money to buoy the economy for a year and buy everyone time to quarantine until a vaccine is ready. The Fed is printing trillions of dollars (that’s $1,000,000,000,000s) a week. The rich would rather us die.
I am mystified that Jean Luc Picard is one of Bezos’ biggest heroes.
phatkhat
If they are as hard to get as the “grants” from Home Depot… Well, they only give them to star employees who have a truly tragic loss. You know, the stuff you can make feel-good PR videos about. Gag.
BREAKING: I've just issued a Stay Home-Work Safe Order for Harris County residents effective midnight tonight. Folks should stay home except for essential needs. This moment in history will define our future. History will say we prioritized human life. pic.twitter.com/Wnn22uZXNq
Former Vice President Joe Biden is under pressure to find new ways to command the spotlight amid criticism that he’s cut too low of a profile as the coronavirus crisis has worsened.
Some Democrats want to see Biden, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, as the public face for the party in offering a countermessage to President Trump.
Trump has seen an uptick in his approval rating over the past two weeks, even as the daily White House briefings have had a circus-like atmosphere and the president’s claims have been picked apart.
Biden, meanwhile, had not spoken on camera for nearly a week when he broadcast a live video from his home in Delaware on Monday to criticize Trump’s “planning and preparation” for the virus.
Several former Obama administration officials told The Hill that’s not enough.
“You’re constantly hearing about [Andrew] Cuomo, and I know he’s the governor of New York, but Joe Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee,” one former official said. “He needs to show his leadership.”
“Here’s a guy who has deep relationships on the Hill, who understands how we govern, and he’s largely been on the sidelines,” the former official said. “I know a lot of us expect more from him in this moment.”
wpDiscuz
How’s everyone doing?
I feel a bit dizzy, not sure if it’s the Covid 19 or from politicians changing direction 180 degrees over the weekend.
Cuomo on Friday:
New York on PAUSE after Cuomo issues mandatory coronavirus shutdown
Cuomo on Monday:
Revving up for a Biden regime.
He’s prepared to What??
He has no idea. He just read what the teleprompter said. All he wants is our votes, but he isn’t getting mine.
I dunno, PB. I’ve seen some rumors that the DNC may replace Joe with Cuomo. Just what we need, another dynastic Wall St. politician.
Very authoritarian.
How’s everyone doing?
I feel a bit dizzy, not sure if from Covid 19 or politicians doing 180’s.
Cuomo on Friday: Shut it all down!
Cuomo on Sunday: Cuomo warns socializing ‘has to stop and it has to stop now’
Liberals swoon: “Cuomo is so presidential!”
Cuomo on Monday: But the economy!
Gov. Andrew Cuomo: We Have To Start Thinking About How We Restart The Economy
Quomo “So presidential” the bar is pretty low due to Trumpcorp and throw in Biden as well. Now if it were Bernie he would never reach it.
Cuba’s Coronavirus Response Is Putting Other Countries to Shame
It would be interesting if Puerto Rico asked for Cuban doctors.
I can only imagine what the weapons of mass decption would say if Bernie would say Cuba is doing a good job helping other countries with the CV-19 outbreak.
Why Did Joe Biden Disappear Right as the Coronavirus Pandemic Exploded?
Need a real leader, not a caretaker. I don’t think Joe Biden is that guy.
How he managed that(positive numbers) i’m at a loss, to me his handeling of the CV-19 been a
As the Coronavirus Spreads, Democrats Roll out Postal Voting Plans
We Should Be Very Wary About the Growing Military Response to the Coronavirus Crisis
Amen! T and R, LD!! 🙂
Since the US taxpayer has paid uncounted Billions into our military I would take full advantage of the logistical abilities to help the shortage of PPE and move equipment where its needed the most. I would do the same with the military’s medical personal. Their are way to many vacant buildings that can be used as field hospitals and CVB-19 testing sites, I think the troops would rather be helping our own citizens for a change on a mission of mercy rather than fighting another useless war over natural resources.The enforcement of law and civil disturbances had better stay at the state and local level as far as I’m concerned. This isn’t a Katrina- New Orleans level event where the national guard and the military had to step in. Hopefully the next president order a complete re assessment of our pandemic response team and be ready to go for the next one and making sure that we have the basics on hand and ready to go. Trumpcorp will say everything went perfectly of course.
They will need one hell of a support team to keep those maintained and functioning, other than the Elon Musks of the world I doubt most of them couldnt change batteries in a flashlight.
Even many on Wall Street are against an early scale down.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-finance-202/2020/03/24/the-finance-202-wall-street-to-trump-don-t-restart-economy-before-stopping-coronavirus-spread/5e790faf602ff10d49ad2665/?utm_source=reddit.com
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-who-usa/u-s-has-potential-of-becoming-coronavirus-epicenter-says-who-idUSKBN21B1FT?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews&utm_source=reddit.com
https://truthout.org/video/covid-19-will-spread-like-wildfire-in-migrant-jails-if-detainees-arent-released/
both parties have turned away from caring for much of the population for a long time. Mental and emotional health, basic needs, poor education and rotten leadership have combined to create what seems like a whole angry and uninformed populous. The danger in all this neglect is coming home to roost.
hey, the dems should be proud of a 25% approval rating
it is better than some congress ratings in the single digits
ain’t it wonderful to be the minority party
Glad im a indy. I would be embarrassed to be a “member” of either party.
https://newrepublic.com/article/157039/americas-diseased-politics-coronavirus-legislation
i want to shake them, or maybe hug them until they remember their humanity in great gasps of tears.
Humanity? Don’t count on it. Unless they lose one of their family. Maybe not even then.
I am mystified that Jean Luc Picard is one of Bezos’ biggest heroes.
If they are as hard to get as the “grants” from Home Depot… Well, they only give them to star employees who have a truly tragic loss. You know, the stuff you can make feel-good PR videos about. Gag.
your county? smart judge
Probably Harris County, TX. Houston.
It is Harris County, Houston. I live in IL.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/489096-biden-under-pressure-to-step-up-coronavirus-response
Joe Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee…
It ain’t over, yet, dude.