Tuesday, March 31st, 2020
Peter Wade, - RollingStone
Stephan: I have held onto this story for a week because I thought it couldn't possibly be correct. Even Trump and Barr wouldn't that blatantly dismantle the Constitution. Well, I was wrong, that is exactly what they want to do. We are drifting into a kleptocratic christofascist takeover of the country just as the Titanic sailed onto an iceberg and sank. The Trumplicans, using the Covid-19 pandemic for cover are attempting a form of coup in which your Constitutional rights are suspended. Wake up America!
Attorney General William Barr participates in a news conference with Justice Department officials.
Credit: Michael Reynolds/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
The Trump Department of Justice has asked Congress to craft legislation allowing chief judges to indefinitely hold people without trial and suspend other constitutionally protected rights during the coronavirus and other emergencies, according to a report by Politico’s Betsy Woodruff Swan.
While the asks from the Department of Justice will likely not come to fruition with a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, they demonstrate how much this White House has a frightening disregard for rights enumerated in the Constitution.
The DOJ has requested that Congress allow any chief judge of a district court to pause court proceedings “whenever the district court is fully or partially closed by virtue of any natural disaster, civil disobedience, or other emergency situation,” according to draft language obtained by Politico. This would be applicable to “any statutes or rules of procedure otherwise affecting pre-arrest, post-arrest, pre-trial, trial, and post-trial procedures in criminal and juvenile proceedings and all […]
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Tuesday, March 31st, 2020
Stephan: Please don't be so naive as to believe that everyone in the country is working together to help with this pandemic. And for heaven's sake don't take anything Trump says in his Coronavirus campaign events as either serious or the truth. In fact, there are a significant number of rich Trumplican vultures who are looking to make this crisis very personally profitable. In a properly run government, of course, that wouldn't be happening, wouldn't be permitted, but in the American kleptocracy, it is not only permitted it is being supported and encouraged by criminal Trump and his goblins.
As the coronavirus death toll continues to rise in the United States, Americans have been told by conservative pundits, politicians and — more importantly — President Donald Trump that it’s time to loosen federal guidelines on social distancing to “open up” the economy by Easter Sunday.
Health officials — including Dr. Anthony Fauci, who directs the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — have warned that encouraging people to go back to work would devastate efforts to slow the spread of the lethal virus.
Part of the problem is that these health officials seem to think that Trump and the rest of the talking heads making these public declarations don’t know that they’re putting people’s lives at risk.
They know. They just don’t care.
When Dan Patrick, Texas’s Republican lieutenant governor, suggested that the elderly go back to work to save the economy, he knew they’d be risking their lives to do so. “Those of us who are 70-plus, we’ll take care of ourselves. But don’t sacrifice […]
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Tuesday, March 31st, 2020
Stephan: How is this legal you may ask? I don't know, but it is so typical of the Trump era; there's always a grift.
The ventilator for which your tax dollars paid.
Credit: ProPublica
Five years ago, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services tried to plug a crucial hole in its preparations for a global pandemic, signing a $13.8 million contract with a Pennsylvania manufacturer to create a low-cost, portable, easy-to-use ventilator that could be stockpiled for emergencies.
This past September, with the design of the new Trilogy Evo Universal finally cleared by the Food and Drug Administration, HHS ordered 10,000 of the ventilators for the Strategic National Stockpile at a cost of $3,280 each.
But as the pandemic continues to spread across the globe, there is still not a single Trilogy Evo Universal in the stockpile.
Instead last summer, soon after the FDA’s approval, the Pennsylvania company that designed the device — a subsidiary of the Dutch appliance and technology giant Royal Philips N.V. — began selling two higher-priced commercial versions of the same ventilator around the world.
“We sell to whoever calls,” said a saleswoman at a small medical-supply company […]
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Tuesday, March 31st, 2020
David Edwards, - Raw Story
Stephan: Listening to a multi-millionaire tell millions of hourly wage workers on a national television interview that they ought to be able to get along on $17 a day for two and a half months would be satire in a book or play. When it is the Secretary of the Treasury in the midst of a pandemic crisis it is so immoral and despicable I simply don't have words to describe it. But it happened.
Margaret Brennan of CBS interviewed Steve Mnuchin
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on Sunday said that he expects Americans to be able to survive for two and a half months on just $1,200, which is about $17 per day.
In an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation, host Margaret Brennan noted that the $1,200 relief checks that many Americans will be getting would not be enough in some parts of the country.
“I think the entire package provides economic relief overall for about 10 weeks,” Mnuchin explained. “Hopefully we will kill this virus quicker and we won’t need it, but we have liquidity to put into the American economy to support American workers and American business.”
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Tuesday, March 31st, 2020
CAITLIN EMMA, JENNIFER SCHOLTES and THEODORIC MEYER, - Politico
Stephan: You remember that bill that just passed that supposedly was designed to help ordinary Americans? Well, the real story is a little more complicated as this report lays out. Hundreds of thousands are projected to die. The economy is crashing. We have a criminal psychopath and incompetent as president. But, hey, there are still chances for a profitable grift if you know the right politician. The corruption in America is staggering.
Moscow Mitch, happy man.
In the race to save the economy and pass the largest economic rescue package in American history, Congress still found a way to do some old-fashioned home state favors and reward key special interests.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) managed to successfully push a minimum assistance figure for every state — $1.5 billion — to make sure small states like his weren’t left out in the legislation.
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A provision for the FDA to approve “innovative” sunscreens—which would benefit L’Oreal, which has operations in Kentucky—appeared in the bill, which was steered in the Senate by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Aides to McConnell said, however, that he did not push for the provision and that it was the result of a bipartisan working group led by other senators working to reform over-the-counter medications.
The gaming industry wasn’t left out either: Casinos will be able to tap […]
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