Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalCVS apologizes, but pharmacists to walk out again over unsafe workplace
Less than a week after a walkout disrupted the nation’s largest retail pharmacy chain – and after a flurry of memos, meetings and a written apology from a company president – CVS pharmacists plan another walkout today over working conditions they say imperil patient safety.
After shuttering as many as 22 stores in the Kansas City area last week, organizers had planned a repeat this week and asked other pharmacists across the nation to join them.
CVS executives scrambled to Kansas City over the weekend in an attempt to avert that scenario. They met with pharmacists and pharmacy staff at several metro area locations. Those talks culminated in a meeting with walkout organizers late Tuesday, both sides confirmed to USA TODAY.
Hours later, Prem Shah, CVS’ chief pharmacy officer and president of pharmacy and consumer wellness, issued a memo to Kansas City staff apologizing for failing to address their concerns sooner and promising a series of measures to alleviate their concerns.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2023/09/27/cvs-pharmacists-plan-walk-out-again/70974522007/
Same thing happened here at Kroger (Harrisonburg, VA) and the head pharmacist finally quit. Everyone else walked out in solidarity and the place was in an uproar for months. Customers also left in droves.
Mich. State fires football coach Mel Tucker amid sex harassment scandal
Michigan State University fired head football coach Mel Tucker for inappropriate conduct on Wednesday, a stunning fall for one of the highest-paid coaches in college sports, who signed a record 10-year, $95 million contract less than two years ago.
The action comes just over two weeks after a USA TODAY investigation revealed sexual harassment allegations against Tucker by Brenda Tracy, a prominent rape survivor and activist hired by Tucker to speak to his team about sexual violence and consent.
Hours after USA TODAY’s investigation, Michigan State athletic director Alan Haller suspended Tucker without pay pending completion of the case. One week later, Haller notified Tucker he intended to fire him, saying the sexual conduct he has admitted to alone violates his contract.
“Your unconvincing rationalizations and misguided attempt to shift responsibility cannot and do not excuse your own behavior,” Haller wrote in a letter to Tucker on Wednesday. “Had you not engaged in this inappropriate and unprofessional conduct, the University would not be subject to public disrespect and ridicule regarding your actions.”
Tucker did not answer phone calls from USA TODAY to his personal and work cellphones. A voicemail has not been returned.
A complaint Tracy filed with the university’s Title IX office in December alleged Tucker pursued her romantically for several months, masturbated without her consent during an April 2022 phone call and later insinuated that he would ruin her career if she spoke out. The case has remained under investigation since, with a formal hearing scheduled for Oct. 5 and 6.
Tracy told the university’s outside investigator she believes Tucker pretended to be an ally in her cause to get close to her personally.
“It’s like he sought me out just to betray me,” she told USA TODAY.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2023/09/27/mel-tucker-michigan-state-football-coach-fired/70975766007/
Never have been a fan of those guys, and they already had other problems.
Scientists will unleash an army of crabs to help save Florida's dying reef
With giant pincers and rough, spider-like legs, Caribbean king crabs don’t look like your typical heroes. Yet these crustaceans may be key to solving one of the world’s most pressing environmental problems: the decline of coral reefs.
In recent decades, warming seas, diseases, and other threats have wiped out half of the world’s corals and 90 percent of those in Florida. And this past summer, the problem accelerated. A devastating heat wave struck the Caribbean, pushing the reef in the Florida Keys — the largest in the continental US — closer to the brink of collapse.
The decline of coral reefs is an enormous problem for wildlife and human communities. Reefs not only provide habitat for as much as a quarter of all marine life, including commercial fish, but they also help safeguard coastal communities during severe storms. Simply put, we need coral reefs.
Coral reefs, meanwhile, need crabs.
Lucky for them, help is on the way. Scientists are in the process of building a crab army — hundreds of thousands of crustaceans strong — that they’ll unleash on Florida’s reefs, giving this ailing ecosystem a tool to fight back.
https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/2023/9/27/23883039/florida-coral-reef-caribbean-king-crabs-restoration
This is beyond cool! Go forth and multiply, little guys!
The Republican debate is fake
By Zack Beauchamp
Donald Trump is solidly over 50 percent in the national polling averages, and no one else in the primary field has anything that looks like momentum. No opponent has been able to find a line of attack that could hurt him; many of them aren’t even trying. The great GOP establishment hope, that Trump’s legal problems might torpedo his campaign, was a mirage. If anything, the four indictments helped him in the primary.
At this point, the only things that could stop Trump are his death or incapacitation. Everyone in the political world — including the debate’s organizers and non-delusional rival candidates — is aware of this fact. Trump isn’t participating in the debates because he doesn’t need to: He would be lowering himself to share a stage with people who pretend to be rivals, but are really just the warm-up act for his coronation.
That doesn’t mean the debate is entirely pointless. The other candidates get something out of being on that stage, like improving their future political prospects or satisfying a need for attention. And if you squint, you might get an actually interesting window into the policy debates that will define a post-Trump Republican Party.
But, of course, we are not yet even close to “post-Trump.” In presenting it as an actual presidential debate, rather than a discussion between somewhat prominent Republicans, the debate’s organizers are lying to you. With Trump absent, and facing no serious challengers, this is all make-believe politics — a ritual the party goes through to cover up the dark reality of what the party has become.
https://www.vox.com/2024-elections/2023/9/27/23890683/second-republican-debate-gop-fake-rnc-trump
But you already knew that, right?
John Fetterman Tears Up in Senate Hearing Recounting Insults During Stroke Recovery
In a Thursday hearing on disability access held by the Senate Special Committee on Aging, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) teared up while recounting his experiences after a stroke last year impacted his ability to process language. While speaking before the committee, Fetterman held up his phone and showed the transcription app he uses, explaining that it “allows me to fully participate in this meeting and conversations with my children and interacting with my staff.”
“I had a stroke about 18 months ago. I have lost my ability to fully process language,” Fetterman said. “I like to think I was an empathetic person, truly. But since that happened, I’ve raised to a whole different kind of level.”
While audibly choking up, the senator continued: “Because I live in a political environment, I was ridiculed and made fun of, because I wasn’t able to process things sometimes.”
On the campaign trail and since taking office, Fetterman has faced personal, ableist lines of attack from both right-wing and mainstream media. Last October, when referring to Fetterman’s use of captions to give interviews, a CBS journalist asked, “Will Pennsylvanians be comfortable with someone representing them who had to conduct a TV interview this way?” Around this same time, Tucker Carlson (who was then still at Fox News) cruelly claimed that Fetterman was “brain damaged” and could “barely speak.” Fetterman’s campaign and doctors had explained that his comprehension had not been impaired and he simply struggles with auditory processing.
https://jezebel.com/john-fetterman-tears-up-in-senate-hearing-recounting-in-1850865196
I get it, Jawn, I do. I have a son on the spectrum with some of the same problems, and my late son was dysgraphic and dyslexic, so I get it.
Pete Buttigieg condemns Trump's reported remarks about wounded veteran
Pete Buttigieg, the US transport secretary and a military veteran, has criticized Donald Trump after a report that he sought to bar a severely wounded veteran from public appearances during his presidency.
In an interview with the Atlantic, Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said Trump had been irritated after Luis Avila – who lost a leg and suffered brain damage after an IED attack in Afghanistan – sang at Milley’s 2019 welcome ceremony.
“Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded,” Milley said Trump told him after the ceremony.
Milley told the Atlantic that Trump said Avila should never appear in public again.
On Sunday, Buttigieg – who was a lieutenant in the US navy reserve and served a tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2014 – told CNN that Trump’s alleged order was “just the latest in a pattern of outrageous attacks [by Trump] on people who keep this country safe”.
Military members wounded in combat, Buttigieg said, “deserve respect and a hell of a lot more than that from every American, and definitely from every American president”.
Buttigieg also said: “The idea that an American president, the person to whom service members look as a commander in chief, the person who sets the tone for this entire country, could think that way or act that way or talk that way about anyone in uniform, and certainly about those who put their bodies on the line and sacrificed in ways that most Americans will never understand … I guess wounded veterans make president Trump feel uncomfortable.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/24/pete-buttigieg-donald-trump-wounded-veteran-remarks
A shame and a disgrace, that man.....
Full fascist' Trump condemned after 'treason' rant against NBC and MSNBC
Donald Trump said Comcast, the owner of NBC and MSNBC, “should be investigated for its ‘Country Threatening Treason’” and promised to do so should he be re-elected president next year.
In response, one progressive group said the former US president and current overwhelming frontrunner in the Republican 2024 presidential nomination race had “gone full fascist”.
The Biden White House said Trump threatened “an outrageous attack on our democracy and the rule of law”.
The US media was “almost all dishonest and corrupt”, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Sunday, “but Comcast, with its one-side and vicious coverage by NBC News, and in particular MSNBC … should be investigated for its ‘Country Threatening Treason’.”
Listing familiar complaints about coverage of his presidency – during which he regularly threatened NBC, MSNBC and Comcast – Trump added: “I say up front, openly, and proudly, that when I win the presidency of the United States, they and others of the lamestream media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events.”
Trump also used familiar terms of abuse for the press: “the enemy of the people” and “the fake news media”.
Observers reacted to Trump’s threat to NBC, MSNBC and Comcast with a mixture of familiarity and alarm.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/25/trump-nbc-msnbc-comcast-country-threatening-treason
I don't think we should let this pass, do you?
Police Further Traumatize Sexual Assault Victims by Turning Them Into Suspects
Sequestered in a small interrogation room, sipping an iced coffee, Nicole Chase was trying to explain just how dysfunctional things had become at Nodine’s Smokehouse Deli and Restaurant, a family-owned place in Canton, Connecticut, that specialized in smokehouse meats and toxic masculinity.
There was the time one of her colleagues came to work high on acid, she said. On a day the restaurant made only $100, a manager closed early and got fired. Her boss, Calvin Nodine, was constantly telling sexist jokes and drinking on the job — even the customers saw it.
Chase thought she’d learned how to handle Nodine’s roving eyes and rude remarks. Until one night in May 2017, after his wife had gone home, when Chase said he pulled her into the men’s room, exposed himself and ordered her to perform oral sex.
Chase reported the incident to police the next day, an awkward, abbreviated interview with a rookie officer in the main lobby of the station as her mother sat next to her. Chase decided to quit that day, and six weeks later, she’d almost given up hope that anything would happen when she was asked to meet with Detective John Colangelo, who was now taking over the case as the lead investigator. She’d never spoken to him before, but he was friendly in a professional way as he ushered her into the interrogation room, listening to her stream-of-consciousness recollections and jotting down contact info for people who might corroborate her story. Chase felt a glimmer of optimism: Maybe her now-ex-boss would face some accountability after all, she thought.
An hour into their videotaped interview, though, Colangelo’s tone and posture subtly shifted. Soon, he was chiding her for interrupting him and getting off-topic. “You know, no one comes and tells us the entire truth,” he told her. “No one.”
https://truthout.org/articles/police-further-traumatize-sexual-assault-victims-by-turning-them-into-suspects/
Women know this almost instinctively, that men, especially cops, won't believe them. That's why we don't report.
Police Further Traumatize Sexual Assault Victims by Turning Them Into Suspects
Sequestered in a small interrogation room, sipping an iced coffee, Nicole Chase was trying to explain just how dysfunctional things had become at Nodine’s Smokehouse Deli and Restaurant, a family-owned place in Canton, Connecticut, that specialized in smokehouse meats and toxic masculinity.
There was the time one of her colleagues came to work high on acid, she said. On a day the restaurant made only $100, a manager closed early and got fired. Her boss, Calvin Nodine, was constantly telling sexist jokes and drinking on the job — even the customers saw it.
Chase thought she’d learned how to handle Nodine’s roving eyes and rude remarks. Until one night in May 2017, after his wife had gone home, when Chase said he pulled her into the men’s room, exposed himself and ordered her to perform oral sex.
Chase reported the incident to police the next day, an awkward, abbreviated interview with a rookie officer in the main lobby of the station as her mother sat next to her. Chase decided to quit that day, and six weeks later, she’d almost given up hope that anything would happen when she was asked to meet with Detective John Colangelo, who was now taking over the case as the lead investigator. She’d never spoken to him before, but he was friendly in a professional way as he ushered her into the interrogation room, listening to her stream-of-consciousness recollections and jotting down contact info for people who might corroborate her story. Chase felt a glimmer of optimism: Maybe her now-ex-boss would face some accountability after all, she thought.
An hour into their videotaped interview, though, Colangelo’s tone and posture subtly shifted. Soon, he was chiding her for interrupting him and getting off-topic. “You know, no one comes and tells us the entire truth,” he told her. “No one.”
https://truthout.org/articles/police-further-traumatize-sexual-assault-victims-by-turning-them-into-suspects/
Women know this almost instinctively, that men, especially cops, won't believe them. That's why we don't report.
Muslim Jailhouse Lawyers Are Reshaping the Fight for Prisoners Rights
In July 2020, when COVID-19 was wreaking havoc in prisons all over the country, Musa Bey was locked up in an Arizona prison. In the main wing of the prison, a couple of people contracted COVID. Instead of separating them to a different wing, prison officials kept them where they could infect others. So, Bey and five others spoke with the staff and conveyed that they felt unsafe living in close confinement with prisoners who had tested positive for COVID. Bey told them that he preferred to be moved to a closed facility that had cells instead of dorms. But prison officials interpreted this communication as a sign of the prisoners rebelling and decided to move them to a different, higher security facility called the Browning Unit.
As they were preparing to transfer them, they lined them up against the wall. “Prison officials started making a lot of comments,” said Bey. “Like, you guys think you’re all this, you think you’re all that. I don’t know what we’ll do to all you in here. Ain’t no cameras here, they can’t see us.”
Then, when Bey least expected it, the guards chained him, grabbed some clippers and shaved his beard off. “I said to him, look I’m a Muslim, don’t shave my beard, and they proceeded to shave the beard off forcefully,” said Bey.
After this incident Bey filed a grievance, addressing what happened to him and what he wanted the prison to do about it. The prison denied his grievance, which led him to appeal but that was denied to. Then, a year later, Bey followed the path taken by many incarcerated Muslims before him — he filed a civil lawsuit.
“The Muslim community is most tenacious when it comes to bringing lawsuits,” said Bey, “The overall majority of lawsuits that I’ve heard of that has been brought and won has been specifically by the Muslim community. One of the reasons why I think this is the case is because we have the will to go against injustice and do our best to combat it.”
https://truthout.org/articles/muslim-jailhouse-lawyers-are-reshaping-the-fight-for-prisoners-rights/
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