https://twitter.com/jilevin/status/1250658440395005954

https://twitter.com/RBReich/status/1250881255912030208
















How in the world Trump has any supporters who are working class is dumbfounding to me. These people are crooks, period.

The infectious disease expert has a big gripe with President Donald Trump’s daily news conferences.

By Ron Dicker


The White House’s daily coronavirus briefings are wearing out one of its star attractions, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Fauci, a top infectious disease expert, said Tuesday that the televised news conferences with President Donald Trump are “important,” but a time-suck. (See the video below.)

“The downtime that we have there is really draining,” Fauci told The Associated Press in the clip. He described the waiting around, the preparation, the lengthy briefings themselves and the late hours he’s been keeping to perform other aspects of his job.

“Being there, to be able to answer the questions of the media, I think is really important,” Fauci said. “Because we’re going through a real public health crisis in our country.”

Fauci did not appear at Tuesday’s briefing. Monday’s nearly 2 1/2-hour session featured Trump blasting reporters and showing a video montage suggesting he took forceful action on the approaching pandemic while the media downplayed it. Many of the briefings have run for hours.

“If I had been able to just make a few comments and then go to work, that would have really been much better,” Fauci said. “It’s the downtime. It isn’t the idea of being there and answering questions, which I really think is important.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/anthony-fauci-coronavirus-briefings-draining_n_5e96cd4ac5b6ead1400507a7?ncid=engmodushpmg00000004

We sacrifice so much for a country that doesn’t value our lives.

By Alma Patty Tzalain

Ms. Tzalain is a member of the grass-roots organization Alianza Agrícola.

April 15, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ET

I am one of the thousands of farmworkers across the country making sure there is still food to put on your tables. Since I came to New York from Guatemala 11 years ago, I have cleaned cabbage in a packing shed, milked cows on dairy farms, trimmed apple trees in orchards and wrapped and pruned tomatoes in a greenhouse.

If I get sick with Covid-19, I’m afraid of what it will mean for my children, my compañeros and my community. But unlike many other workers in the United States, my workplace has not shut down. Farmworkers are considered essential, and yet we are left out of government support.

A few weeks ago I started to have a headache and fever. The symptoms got worse, with a sore throat and coughing. I called a health clinic, concerned that I had the coronavirus. The doctor told me that I should stay home for a week, and since there is no cure, there was no reason to come in for a checkup. But I was able to get tested for the virus.

I didn’t know what to do. I was so worried: One week at home without a paycheck? I support three daughters in Guatemala and a young son here, and I’m on my own. If I told management, what would happen? How would I feed my children or pay my rent?

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/opinion/covid-farmworkers-paid-leave.html?smid=tw-share

The coronavirus pandemic could destroy America’s child care system. The senators have a $50 billion plan for that.

By Anna North Apr 15, 2020, 8:00am EDT

Child care workers in America are in an untenable position right now. Some are on the front lines of the coronavirus response, caring for children of essential workers while often lacking health insurance themselves. Others are unable to make ends meet as families keep their kids at home and day care centers shutter.

Meanwhile, parents are left wondering whether their children’s care providers will even be in business when the pandemic is over, making child care possibly harder to find and more expensive than before.

Now, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Tina Smith (D-MN) are releasing a proposal to fix the problem. The plan, posted on Medium on Wednesday and provided to Vox exclusively ahead of publication, would set aside $50 billion for America’s child care system in the next coronavirus relief package. The money would be used in three main ways: to provide hazard pay and other support to those still caring for the children of essential workers, to help other providers keep paying their staff while they are closed, and to shore up the child care system (including boosting wages) for the future.

“When the time comes,” Warren and Smith write, “we will not be able to rebuild our economy if this country’s child care system has collapsed beneath the economic burden of this pandemic.”

The proposal is far more ambitious than the $3.5 billion set aside for child care in the recent federal stimulus legislation. And thus its prospects in the Republican-controlled Senate are uncertain, to say the least. But it is in line with what child care experts say is necessary to make sure child care providers can keep paying their workers during this time and reopen when it is safe to do so — and to remedy some of the inequities that have left child care workers in this country underpaid, overworked, and unacknowledged.

https://www.vox.com/2020/4/15/21220111/coronavirus-child-care-warren-plan

https://twitter.com/Milbank/status/1250194082858704896













Republicans are lethal to the health of the U.S.

In a private transaction, Richard Burr, Republican of North Carolina, sold the townhouse to lobbyists who had business before his committees.

by Robert Faturechi April 14, 2:15 p.m. EDT

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr, has come under fire in recent weeks for unloading stock holdings right before the market crashed on fears of coronavirus and for a timely sale of shares in an obscure Dutch fertilizer company.

Now the North Carolina Republican’s 2017 sale of his Washington, D.C., home to a group led by a donor and powerful lobbyist who had business before Burr’s committee is raising additional ethical questions.

Burr sold the small townhouse, in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, for what, by some estimates, was an above market price — $900,000 — to a team led by lobbyist John Green. That is tens of thousands of dollars above some estimates of the property’s value by tax assessors, a real estate website and a local real estate agent. The sale was done off-market, without the home being listed for sale publicly.Green is a longtime donor to Burr’s political campaigns and has co-hosted at least one fundraiser for him. In 2017, the year of the sale, Green lobbied on behalf of a stream of clients with business before Burr’s committees.

Ethics experts are generally troubled when politicians enter into business transactions with donors or lobbyists with matters before them. The legality of this sale hinges on whether the home was purchased for fair market value. If it was purchased for more than that, it would be considered a gift. Gifts of significant value from lobbyists are generally banned by Senate ethics rules, and those that aren’t are typically required to be publicly disclosed. Neither Burr nor Green disclosed any such gifts. Gifts that are intended to influence official actions are illegal.

https://www.propublica.org/article/senator-richard-burr-sold-d-c-townhouse-to-donor-at-a-rich-price


Republicans for Sale

https://twitter.com/RBReich/status/1249738177067118592

By Reed Richardson

Apr 9th, 2020, 8:01 pm

Former Facebook exec Chamath Palihapitiya dumbfounded a CNBC anchor on Thursday when he argued that billionaires, hedge funds, and mismanaged corporations, like airline companies, don’t deserve any federal bailout or stimulus money.

Speaking with Scott Wapner, host of the Fast Money Halftime Report, the Social Capital CEO unapologetically brushed off concerns for Wall Street’s financial giants, comparing their relative discomfort to the real economic pain being suffered by unemployed workers.

“Lastly, let me ask you one last question,” Wapner said. “I think we all agree that more money for Main Street is needed. Maybe not in spite of the money to all of these companies or whatever that make up the economy as well, that more money is needed everywhere, perhaps. Are you, you keep saying ‘propping up zombie companies.’ Are you arguing to let airlines fail?”

“Yes,” was Palihapitiya’s curt answer.

“Wh – Why?” a stunned Wapner said after a beat. “How does that make sense in the broader scheme of the economy?”

“When you look at, this is a lie that’s been purported by Wall Street. When a company fails, it does not fire employees it goes through a packaged bankruptcy . The people who have the pensions inside the companies, the employees of these companies end up owning more of the company. The people that get wiped out are the speculators that own the unsecured tranches or the folks that own the equity. And by the way, those are the rules of the game. That’s right. These are the people that purport to be the most sophisticated investors in the world. They deserve to get wiped out.”

https://www.mediaite.com/news/venture-capital-ceo-dumbfounds-cnbc-anchor-by-saying-billionaires-and-hedge-funds-dont-deserve-a-bailout-let-them-get-wiped-out/






Outstanding.

https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1247335425074696199












Sociopaths in action.