Larissa
Larissa's JournalDeJoy Pressured Workers to Donate to G.O.P. Candidates, Former Employees say
Source: The New York Times
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major donor to President Trump and fund-raiser for the Republican Party, cultivated an environment at his former company that left employees feeling pressured to make donations to Republican candidates, and rewarded them with bonuses for doing so, according to former employees.
The arrangement was described by three former employees at New Breed Logistics, Mr. DeJoy’s former company, who said that workers would receive bonuses if they donated to candidates he supported, and that it was expected that managers would participate. A fourth employee confirmed that managers at the company were routinely solicited to make donations. The four former employees spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional retaliation.
The former employees did not say how explicit Mr. DeJoy was about linking the campaign contributions he was encouraging to the extra compensation, but three of them said it was widely believed that the bonuses were meant to reimburse the political donations, an allegation first reported by The Washington Post. Federal campaign finance law bars straw-donor schemes, in which an individual reimburses someone else to donate to a political campaign in order to skirt contribution limits. But it is legal to encourage employees to make donations, as Mr. DeJoy routinely did.
A review of campaign finance records shows that over a dozen management-level employees at New Breed would routinely donate to the same candidate on the same day, often writing checks for an identical amount of money. One day in October 2014, for example, 20 midlevel and senior officials at the company donated a total of $37,600 to the campaign of Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, who was running to unseat a Democratic incumbent. Each official wrote a check for either $2,600, the maximum allowable donation, or $1,000.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/06/us/politics/dejoy-political-donations.html
Trump Went to Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood; Fred's Widow Is None Too Happy
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-is-in-mr-rogers-neighborhood-and-freds-widow-is-none-too-happy?via=twitter_page“Fred tried to stay pretty quiet about politics, basically because his program was for children,” Joanne Rogers said.
She is under no such constraints herself.
“I’m alone now,” she said. “I don’t do a program for children.”
She made clear her feelings about Trump: “I think he’s just a horrible person.”
She did not hesitate to say how she will react if Trump is re-elected.
“I will probably go into mourning,” she said. “I can't even imagine. I would feel so badly.”
She was asked why she feels as she does about our current president.
“I think maybe the fact that Mr Trump seldom tells the truth,” she said. “If he does, it’s just a fluke, I think. But the fact [is] that I can’t believe anything he says, not even the simplest thing.”
She was speaking what she feels is the simple truth when she said, “This man is pathologically ill. Mentally ill.”
Sharon Stone blames Mask Refuseniks as Sister Suffers from Covid-19
Scroll down the page to watch Stone's Instagram message.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/aug/17/sharon-stone-blames-mask-refuseniks-sister-covid-hospital
Coronavirus Threat Rises Across U.S.: 'We just have to assume the monster is everywhere.'
Source: Washington Post, San Antonio Express-News
The coronavirus is spreading at dangerous levels across much of the United States, and public health experts are demanding a dramatic reset in the national response, one that recognizes that the crisis is intensifying and that current piecemeal strategies aren't working.
This is a new phase of the pandemic, one no longer built around local or regional clusters and hot spots. It comes at an unnerving moment in which the economy suffered its worst collapse since the Great Depression, schools are rapidly canceling plans for in-person instruction and Congress has failed to pass a new emergency relief package. President Donald Trump continues to promote fringe science, the daily death toll keeps climbing and the human cost of the virus in America has just passed 150,000 lives.
"Unlike many countries in the world, the United States is not currently on course to get control of this epidemic. It's time to reset," declared a report released last week by Johns Hopkins University.
Another report from the Association of American Medical Colleges offered a similarly blunt message: "If the nation does not change its course - and soon - deaths in the United States could be well into the multiple hundreds of thousands."
Read more: https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Coronavirus-threat-rises-across-U-S-We-just-15451292.php
Thousands of Americans consider move to virus-free New Zealand
Americans visit Immigration NZ website every 30 seconds
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12351693
More than 250,000 Americans have investigated whether they qualify to move to New Zealand since the coronavirus pandemic took hold this year.
A Kiwi demographics expert says the spike in interest from United States citizens reflects a failure of the American political and public health system, and disillusionment with the leadership of United States President Donald Trump.
"Middle class, professional America is saying, 'Well, where do we go for our own safety and the safety of our families?'" The pandemic has so far infected nearly 4.5 million Americans and claimed 151,000 US lives.
New Zealand now has just 23 active case, all in managed isolation, and has recorded 22 deaths.
Related: forbes.com: Travel Website Rates the United States the second worst place in the world to raise a family. (Mexico was dead last.)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurabegleybloom/2020/07/29/best-worst-countries-raise-family/#7df728117bec
Covid Vaccine: The supply chain to save the world is unprepared
Trump always talks about having a vaccine in the hopper by the end of the year. I believe he thinks that this lie will be his ticket to re-election. I'm no epidemiologist/scientist, but even I know such a brag is a boatload of horse hockey. We will be wearing face masks for the foreseeable future -- I'd say at least two years. In the U.S. the virus is digging its heels in and will be marching northward from the hot zone states. Americans simply do not have the cohesive force of will to slow it down. No one's going to stop us from partying and going and doing what we want ever -- except SARS-CoV-2: the boss of us for some time to come.
The other stuff I think: Congress will have to cough up more cash to keep Americans off the streets; children won't finish the school year (community spread = school buses, mass transit). There's other stuff I think but won't say; I don't want to be a total Debbie Downer. You -- all of us -- have got to take care of ourselves to the best of our ability. If you've survived Covid-19, God bless you. If you've lost loved ones to it, I will keep you in my heart and prayers. If you've never been infected, do everything you can not to be. Don't allow yourself to be overwhelmed by fear. Fear and stress mugs the immune system that you'll need to be strong against Covid-19.
Full article at link:
Bloomberg.com: The Supply Chain to Save the World is Unprepared for a Vaccine
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-25/the-supply-chain-to-save-the-world-is-unprepared-for-a-vaccine
Making a vaccine quickly is hard enough but distributing one worldwide offers a host of other variables, and conflicting forces may work against the effort: The infrastructure powering the global economy is scaling down for a protracted downturn just as pharmaceutical companies need to scale up for the biggest and most consequential product launch in modern history.
“We’re not prepared,” Neel Jones Shah, global head of air carrier relationships at San Francisco-based freight forwarder Flexport, said during a webinar this week with other logistics executives.
“Let’s all be honest here, vaccine supply chains are exponentially more complex than PPE supply chain,” he said, referring to personal protective equipment like surgical masks and gloves. “You can’t ruin PPE by leaving it on the tarmac for a couple of days. You will destroy vaccines.”
U.S. Failures are holding back search for Coronavirus Drugs
Full article at link.
The Guardian: U.S. Failures are holding back search for coronavirus drugs
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/26/us-failures-are-holding-back-search-for-coronavirus-drugs
The global effort to produce useful anti-Covid medicines is being hampered by the US because researchers are testing drugs in “an arbitrary, willy-nilly way”, the expert leading the UK’s programme has warned.
Britain’s Recovery Trial programme, which has involved 12,000 patients at several hundred British hospitals, has already pinpointed one promising new drug to tackle the disease and also highlighted two others – previously thought to be potential life-savers – as being useless.
But the failure of the US medical system to match this output has meant that other promising treatments that could have been cleared for widespread use have still to be evaluated. In particular, convalescent plasma (blood plasma that is taken from Covid-19 patients and which contains antibodies that could protect others against the disease) has still to be properly tested on a large-scale randomised trial.
“Tens of thousands of people have already been given convalescent plasma in the US but these treatments were not randomised,” said Professor Martin Landray, one of the founders of the Recovery programme. “They just give individuals convalescent plasma in the hope it will work. Vast quantities have been given and they still have no idea whether it helps or harms or has no impact,” added Landray, an expert in the setting up of large-scale drug trials.
Paul Fusco, photographer on RFK's Funeral Train, passes away
Mr. Fusco passed away on July 15, 2020. It was Fusco who took the poignant photographs of mourners who waited for Robert F. Kennedy's funeral train to pass on its journey from New York City to Washington, D.C. (Arlington Cemetery).
The Guardian: Gallery of Pictures from Robert F. Kennedy's Funeral Train
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2020/jul/17/robert-f-kennedy-funeral-train-by-paul-fusco-in-pictures
CBS This Morning: RFK's Final Journey
In a period of just five years -- from 1963 to 1968 -- President John F. Kennedy, his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were all assassinated. At the news of President Kennedy's assassination, my grade school was dismissed. My sister and I held hands and ran all the way home. For the first and last time ever, we witnessed people -- men and women -- openly sobbing in the street.
Abraham, Martin and John song (by Dion)
Coronavirus Warning from Italy: The Effects of Covid-19 could be worse than first thought
Italian doctors are warning that COVID-19 is not just a respiratory disease but a killer affecting the whole body. The long-term effects of COVID-19, even on people who suffered a mild infection, could be far worse than was originally anticipated, according to researchers and doctors in northern Italy.
Psychosis, insomnia, kidney disease, spinal infections, strokes, chronic tiredness and mobility issues are being identified in former coronavirus patients in Lombardy, the worst-affected region in the country.
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-warning-from-italy-effects-of-covid-19-could-be-worse-than-first-thought-12027348
PBS Frontline: The Virus: What Went Wrong?
Season 2020: Episode 1 - Runtime -- 1:24:22 (One hour, 24 minutes, 22 seconds)
As COVID-19 spread from Asia to the Middle East to Europe, why was the U.S. caught so unprepared? Despite repeated warnings of a potent contagion headed our way, America’s leaders failed to prepare and protect us. Why and who is accountable?
https://www.pbs.org/video/the-virus-what-went-wrong-mk79yu/
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