India extends world's biggest virus lockdown

AFP / SAJJAD HUSSAINA rickshaw driver carries passengers wearing facemasks past a mural in the Lodhi Art District in New Delhi

India's nationwide coronavirus lockdown, the biggest in the world covering 1.3 billion people, will be extended until May 3, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Tuesday.

The move comes despite complaints from millions of poor, a vast underclass who have been left almost completely without support as jobs have vanished and incomes dried up.

"From the economic angle, we have paid a big price," Modi said. "But the lives of the people of India are far more valuable."

"From the experiences of the last few days it is clear that the path we have chosen is correct."

India's three-week-old lockdown, in force since March 25, was scheduled to end at midnight Tuesday.

Modi said there would be "limited relaxations" from April 20 for districts with no cases, and new guidelines for industry and agriculture would be released Wednesday.

The announcement comes as debate rages around the world on how to lift restrictions so the economic carnage of the pandemic can be eased without a new spike in infections.

AFP/File / Dibyangshu SARKARThere are fears that coronavirus infections in South Asia could skyrocket and overwhelm shaky healthcare systems

Official figures suggest South Asian nations have so far been relatively unscathed by the epidemic, with around 10,800 cases and 353 deaths in India.

Some experts say not enough tests have been conducted and the true number of infections is much higher.

And with some of the most crowded cities on the planet, there are fears that numbers could take off and overwhelm the shaky healthcare system.

Several states including Maharashtra -- home to Mumbai and with the highest number of cases -- Tamil Nadu and Odisha already announced lockdown extensions.

The World Health Organisation Tuesday praised India's decision to extend the lockdown, saying "it would go a long way in arresting the virus spread".

- India's poor -

The shutdown, with strict limits on activity, has been devastating for the economy -- and in particular for India's poor.

AFP / SANJAY KANOJIAHomeless people wait along a road in Allahabad to receive free food during the nationwide lockdown

Millions of daily wage labourers suddenly lost their jobs, forcing hundreds of thousands to travel hundreds of kilometres (miles) back to their home villages, often on foot.

Some died on the way, while others were shunned by locals when they made it back. One clip that went viral on social media showed a group of migrants being hosed down with chemicals by local officials.

Others have been stranded in cities in cramped, unsanitary conditions where the virus could spread quickly. New Delhi alone is providing hundreds of thousands of free meals.

In the financial capital Mumbai, some 800 migrant labourers gathered near a railway station on Tuesday and demanded to be allowed to return home. The protest was later dispersed by police.

- Snarl-ups -

Farmers have complained of a lack of workers to harvest crops while snarl-ups of thousands of trucks not allowed to move because of the lockdown have hampered food transport.

"We have tried to keep the interests of the poor and the daily wage workers in mind while making these new guidelines," Modi said in his 24-minute address.

AFP / Arun SANKARA motorist rides past graffiti painted on a road to raise awareness about COVID-19 in Chennai

"The central and state governments are working together to ensure that the farmers don't face any problems."

Reserve Bank of India governor Shaktikanta Das has called the coronavirus an "invisible assassin" that could wreak havoc on the economy.

A restaurant industry group, a sector that employs millions of people nationwide, warned Monday there could be "social unrest" if it did not receive financial relief.

The commerce ministry has also reportedly urged the government to consider opening more activities "with reasonable safeguards" even if the lockdown is extended.

On the deserted streets of Delhi, Manoj, a businessman, said the extended lockdown would further devastate the economy.

"People are going to lose jobs, businesses are going to shut down, unemployment is going to rise and hungry people are going to die," he told AFP.

Even before the pandemic, the Indian economy was stuttering, with the highest unemployment for decades.

Growth had slowed to about 5.0 percent before the pandemic and some analysts say it could slump to 1.5-2.0 percent this year -- way below the level needed to provide jobs for the millions coming into the labour market each month.

Paris climate goals failure 'could cost world 

$600 TRILLION'

UNCDF/AFP/File / KAREL PRINSLOO 

With just 1C of warming since pre-industrial times, Earth is already undergoing devastating heatwaves, drought, wild fires and storm surges made worse by rising seas

Nations' failure to fulfil the promises they made in the Paris climate agreement to make drastic emissions cuts could cost the global economy as much as $600 trillion this century, new analysis showed Tuesday.

Under the landmark 2015 accord, countries pledged to voluntarily reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels in order to limit global temperature rises to "well below" two degrees Celsius.

The deal committed states to work towards a safer temperature cap of 1.5C, through individual emissions reductions plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs).

With just 1C of warming since pre-industrial times, Earth is already undergoing devastating heatwaves, drought, wildfires and storm surges made worse by rising seas.

The United Nations says that global emissions must fall by more than seven percent every year between now and 2030 to hit the 1.5C target.

Yet countries' current NDCs put Earth on course to heat by far more by 2100 -- between 3C and 4C above the historic baseline.

While several studies have sought to estimate the economic cost of failure to mitigate climate change, few have tried to quantify the potential net economic gain rapid action could bring.

Writing in the journal Nature Communications, an international team of climate experts simulated the costs of global cooperative action under a variety of scenarios.

Considering aspects such as warming thresholds, the cost of low-carbon technology, the cost of climate damage and the idea of countries paying their "fair share" towards fixing the problem, the team was able to quantify net benefit -- that is how much the global economy stood to gain under various plans.

They found that the world would gain $336-422 trillion by 2100 if action was taken to keep warming to 2C and 1.5C respectively.

But if they fail to achieve the Paris temperature goals, countries stand to lose up to $600 trillion ($126-616 trillion) by century's end.

This amounts to an average loss of 0.57 percent of national GDP annually to 2100.

- 'Huge losses' -

With the US set to leave the Paris deal this year, the researchers also looked at the cost of countries failing even to live up to their current NDC pledges.

That loss ranged between $150 trillion and $790 trillion -- up to 7.5 times current global GDP.

"We think that if every country or region can greatly enhance their actions for emission mitigation, it is possible to achieve the 1.5C," said lead study author Biying Yu, from the Beijing Institute of Technology.

"But implementing such a self-preservation strategy in a real word requires countries to recognise the gravity of global warming and to make breakthroughs in low-carbon technologies."

Yu said countries had traditionally prioritised short-term economic gain over climate action -- and were therefore missing out on significant cost benefits from moving early.

"Without the upfront investment, emissions cannot be reduced, and the climate damage will occur with higher probability, which will result in huge economic loss," he said.

The study found that global upfront climate investment would need to be $18-113 trillion in order for the world to "break even" in its climate plan.

More than 90 percent of this should come from G20 nations, the research found.

"If countries are well aware of the huge losses they will suffer if they don't reduce emissions... will they be more rational in making choices that will protect them, thereby boosting their response to climate change and driving the global climate governance process?" said Yu.

Fewer meetings, more toilet lids: What workplaces will look like after lockdowns

AFP/File / Angela WeissPeople commute through Grand Central Station on March 25, 2020 in New York City

Around the world countries are hitting their coronavirus peaks and starting to grapple with questions about when and how to reopen their economies.

But those people fortunate enough to have not lost their jobs should be prepared for a "new normal" when they finally go back to work, say experts.

Here is a preview of what to expect.

- No handshakes, fewer meetings -

Handshakes are out "indefinitely," said Tom Frieden, the former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Next, offices will need to start thinking about practical measures.

"Can we have doors that don't have to be opened by people? Should we be taking the temperatures of all people who enter?" he said in a call with reporters.

No-touch hand sanitizer dispensers will become common. Steps may be taken to reduce overcrowding in common spaces, and computers and phones may no longer be shared.

Mask use will be encouraged, and some workplaces may provide them.

Businesses like supermarkets are already keeping down the number of people who can enter, placing clear plastic barriers between employees and customers and enforcing physical distancing -- this could be extended to all shops, cafes and face-to-face engagements.

Offices may also stagger employee hours and have workers come in on different days so that fewer people are present at a given time -- and cut meetings.

"One of the positive impacts of COVID I hope will be fewer meetings, because there are just too many meetings," added Frieden.

- More sick days -

"Staying at home if you are sick may be encouraged vs discouraged," said Brandon Brown, a University of California Riverside epidemiologist.

The US has a famously brutal work culture driven in part by the fact there is no federally mandatory sick leave.

As a result, people tend to power through despite illness: an October 2019 nationwide survey of 2,800 workers by the accounting firm Robert Half found that 33 percent always go in when sick. That may change.

Telework may become more common for many, especially as people have learned during enforced lockdowns that it is possible.

"One thing that we found out from this pandemic and sheltering in place at home, is that in-person meetings are not always necessary. Virtual meetings should be an ongoing option from here on out," added Brown.

- Counseling provided? -

The pandemic has already extracted a devastating death toll, particularly in the hardest-hit region New York, and the onus for providing counseling may fall to great extent on employers.

"Don't forget a lot of people are gonna go back to work having lost family members," said Marc Wilkenfeld, a doctor who specializes in occupational medicine at NYU Langone Health.

"I think the bigger companies or even the smaller companies are going to need to address these issues, because you do want a workforce coming back healthy, physically and mentally."

- Toilet lids and better plumbing -

Workplaces will continue to hammer home the message to wash hands regularly and thoroughly, said Brown.

Often touched surfaces will be cleaned more frequently, but greater attention will need to be placed on keeping bathrooms clean and improving plumbing, since there is some evidence that the coronavirus can be spread via feces.

A recent Lancet paper recommended "do not ignore unexplained foul smells in bathrooms, kitchens, or wash areas" and included tips for improving plumbing like having functioning U-bends that prevent the outflow of sewage gases.

One step toward mitigating the risk is flushing the toilet with the lid down, since a flush can release up to 80,000 contaminated droplets and leave them suspended in the air for hours if it's not covered, according to a recent Hong Kong study.

But many toilets in modern workspaces lack lids -- a trend that may be reversed.

- Who returns first -

People over the age of 65 or who have underlying conditions like heart disease or diabetes are at higher risk for complications arising from COVID-19 -- and their return to offices will come later.

"When people start to go back to work, I think that it's going to be that not everyone goes back at the same time," Wilkenfeld said.

On-off social distancing may be needed until 2022: Harvard study

MAY 1 GENERAL STRIKE AGAINST A RETURN TO CAPITALISM AS IT WAS

AFP / Johannes EISELEThe US flag is seen at half-mast at the almost 

deserted Times Square on April 13, 2020 in New York City

A one-time lockdown won't halt the novel coronavirus and repeated periods of social distancing may be required into 2022 to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed, Harvard scientists who modeled the pandemic's trajectory said Tuesday.

Their study comes as the US enters the peak of its COVID-19 caseload and states eye an eventual easing of tough lockdown measures.

The Harvard team's computer simulation, which was published in a paper in the journal Science, assumed that COVID-19 will become seasonal, like closely related coronaviruses that cause the common cold, with higher transmission rates in colder months.

But much remains unknown, including the level of immunity acquired by previous infection and how long it lasts, the authors said.

"We found that one-time social distancing measures are likely to be insufficient to maintain the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 within the limits of critical care capacity in the United States," lead author Stephen Kissler said in a call with reporters.

"What seems to be necessary in the absence of other sorts of treatments are intermittent social distancing periods," he added.

Widespread viral testing would be required in order to determine when the thresholds to re-trigger distancing are crossed, said the authors.

The duration and intensity of lockdowns can be relaxed as treatments and vaccines become available. But in their absence, on and then off distancing would give hospitals time to increase critical care capacity to cater for the surge in cases that would occur when the measures are eased.

"By permitting periods of transmission that reach higher prevalence than otherwise would be possible, they allow an accelerated acquisition of herd immunity," said co-author Marc Lipsitch.

Conversely, too much social distancing without respite can be a bad thing. Under one modeled scenario "the social distancing was so effective that virtually no population immunity is built," the paper said, hence the need for an intermittent approach.

The authors acknowledged a major drawback in their model is how little we currently know about how strong a previously infected person's immunity is and how long it lasts.

- Virus likely here to stay -

At present the best guesses based on closely-related coronaviruses are that it will confer some immunity, for up to about a year. There might also be some cross-protective immunity against COVID-19 if a person is infected by a common cold-causing betacoronavirus.

One thing however is almost certain: the virus is here to stay. The team said it was highly unlikely that immunity will be strong enough and last long enough that COVID-19 will die out after an initial wave, as was the case with the SARS outbreak of 2002-2003.

Antibody tests that have just entered the market and look for whether a person has been previously infected will be crucial in answering these vital questions about immunity, they argued, and a vaccine remains the ultimate weapon.

Outside experts praised the paper even as they emphasized how much remained unknown.

"This is an excellent study that uses mathematical models to explore the dynamics of COVID-19 over a period of several years, in contrast to previously published studies that have focused on the coming weeks or months," Mark Woolhouse, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Edinburgh said.

"It is important to recognize that it is a model; it is consistent with current data but is nonetheless based on a series of assumptions -- for example about acquired immunity -- that are yet to be confirmed."

https://www.afp.com/en/news/15/social-distancing-may-be-needed-until-2022-harvard-study-doc-1ql5bc3

These Comics About Science Will Give You A Much-Needed Laugh

From Department of Mind-Blowing Theories by Tom Gauld.

Tom Gauld's Department of Mind-Blowing Theories is a collection of 150 hilarious comic strips about science and technology. Here are some of our favorites.

MY CHOICES EXCERPTED BELOW KLICK ABOVE TO SEE THE REST 

 

Department of Mind-Blowing Theories: Science Cartoons by Tom Gauld is out on April 14.

Drawn & Quarterly

Excer.pted from Department of Mind-Blowing Theories by Tom Gauld. Published by Drawn & Quarterly, April 14, 2020. Copyright © 2020 by Tom Gauld. All rights reserved.

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  Contact Arianna Rebolini is the books editor for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.
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How to beat Trump’s 2020 vote-trolling: There’s a reason why he wants to destroy the Post Office

Published April 14, 2020 By Sophia Tesfaye, Salon


Over the last 48 hours, Democrats have scored a pair of crucial wins that not only bode well for their electoral chances in November but provide a toolkit to effectively combat Donald Trump’s concern-trolling against democracy.

In Wisconsin, Democrats belatedly learned — nearly a week after last Tuesday’s disputed primary — that they flipped a seat on the state Supreme Court, winning by nearly 100,000 votes in an election held under expansive “shelter-in-place” restrictions. Republicans in the Wisconsin legislature had refused to reschedule the April 7 vote or expand access to mail-in voting, forcing voters to line up in masks at crowded precincts. Wisconsin Senate’s majority leader, Republican Scott Fitzgerald, had previously argued that lower turnout would give the conservative incumbent a “better chance” of winning a new term on the court.

Nearly a thousand miles away in Virginia, Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam signed into law sweeping election reforms that include the expansion of early voting to 45 days, repealing the Commonwealth’s voter identification requirement, allowing motor voter registration, and swapping the Lee-Jackson Day holiday — established more than a century ago to honor the “heroes” of the defeated Confederacy — with Election Day.

These state-level victories show that Republicans’ voter suppression efforts — even when seemingly coordinated between GOP-dominated state legislatures and conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court — can be beaten. The wins also show that Donald Trump’s continued trolling about election security, no matter how trivial or tangential it may appear in the middle of a horribly mismanaged pandemic response, must be challenged.

Statewide mail-in voting “doesn’t work out well for Republicans,” he recently tweeted. It’s a claim the Georgia House speaker, Republican David Ralston, recently made as well. “They grab thousands of mail-in ballots and they dump it,” Trump said of Democrats from the White House press briefing room last week, without explaining exactly what he meant or offering any evidence.

Of course Trump is merely adding to his frantic blame-shifting. He points to Barack Obama’s administration one day, misnames the deadly pathogen as the “Chinese virus” the next and appropriates the White House podium in the middle of a pandemic to hold virtual campaign rallies every single day. His twin assault on mail-in-voting and the U.S. Postal Service, which comes as states grapple with how to handle a crucial election season in an era of “social distancing,” is the latest diversion.

Perhaps most importantly, Trump is seeking to shift the blame for a possible election defeat in November.

The president doesn’t actually oppose mail-in voting on anything approaching a principle. He himself voted by mail last month in Florida’s Republican primary. But he does know that several crucial swing states, including Florida, Wisconsin and North Carolina already have vote-by-mail available without excuse, and that other swing states like Michigan and Pennsylvania will implement a no-excuse vote-by-mail system for the first time in a general election this fall. In fact, the six states with the highest rates of vote-by-mail in 2018 were all led by Republican election officials.

Even as Republican election officials in numerous states rebuff Trump’s latest attack on mail-in-voting, and there is rare bipartisan agreement on the need for changing our elections to adjust to the coronavirus outbreak, Republicans across the country have kept up their decades-long efforts to suppress certain votes from certain kinds of voters.

In North Carolina, Republican Senate leader Phil Berger took off with Trump’s vote-by-mail trial balloon to baselessly suggest that Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper could use an expansion in the program to rig the election. In Minnesota, a proposal to mail an absentee ballot to every voter was denounced by the Republican Party chairwoman as “a disappointing power grab by the Democrats at a time of extreme unease.” In New Mexico, the state GOP sued to block an effort by county clerks to hold the state’s June primary by mail. The Republican National Committee has already announced plans to spend more than $10 million on legal battles related to elections in Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida and Arizona, all key swing states. RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel published an op-ed on Fox News warning that Democrats are working to “undermine” democracy by pushing for expanded ballot access.

As it happens, the closed polling places, long lines and byzantine rules Republicans insist upon while opposing alternatives to in-person voting have a dramatic and disproportionate effect on densely populated areas where many voters of color live. That offers a powerful incentive for both Republican officials and their voters to look the other way. There will undoubtedly be a surge in voting by mail this November, no matter what Trump says. But as Salon’s Amanda Marcotte noted last week, Republicans are willing to forgo their traditionally strategic targeting for a more expansive effort to suppress all votes, everywhere.

While Democrats in the U.S. Senate have offered multiple proposals to expand both in-person early voting and no-excuse absentee voting by mail, and to help states fund contingency plans, there is little indication that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to use her limited leverage on the next round of relief funding to get those things, or that Trump would ever sign a bill that includes them. So it falls to Democratic governors to protect the vote this November — and decide the fate of congressional redistricting for the next decade.

Trump is melting down as his incoherent theory of government comes back to bite him

Published April 14, 2020 By Amanda Marcotte, Salon - Commentary


Donald Trump is melting down. Well, more than usual, anyway. Berating America in a tone that evokes Eric Cartman of “South Park,” Trump lashed out on Monday at anyone who would dare question his A-THOR-ATE-I. Monday’s propaganda session disguised as a “coronavirus briefing” was wilder than usual, with Trump going well beyond his already megalomaniacal daily rants, subjecting the viewers at home and the beleaguered White House reporters to a mendacious propaganda video that attempted to spin his wild failures into some story of great success. And throughout this meltdown, Trump was asserting his godlike powers in the same tone used to lecture trophy wives about how they need to show a little more gratitude to the man whose ill-gotten gains keep them flush with golden toilets.

“When somebody’s the president of the United States, the authority is total, and that’s the way it’s got to be,” Trump declared to the reporters who risk their health to show up daily to bear witness to a character who makes Emperor Palpatine’s on-screen villainy seem subtle and underplayed.

When CNN’s Kaitlan Collins challenged him by pointing out, correctly, that the president’s authority is not absolute, he snapped at her, “Enough!”

Trump’s petulance had an immediate cause, which is yet another — and quite excellent — report on how thoroughly he failed on the coronavirus response, this time in the form of a New York Times weekend feature. This article lays out how, for months, administration officials tried desperately to get Trump to take coronavirus seriously, but he continued to insist he could bullshit his way through this. Even the one action Trump authorized, a travel ban from China, was wasted as he aggressively fought any effort to use the time bought by the ban to prepare a medical response or institute measures to slow the viral spread.

Meanwhile, Trump is also being heavily lobbied by right-wing pundits and conservative groups who want to “reopen” the economy, seemingly gripped by the naive faith that it’s like a light switch you can turn on. But the president’s faith in a source tends to be inversely proportional to that source’s legitimacy or understanding of a topic, and so he’s chomping at the bit to do what these fools are telling him to do.

All this went into the blender of his goldfish brain and came out as a bunch of pompous declarations that he’s the king and we all have to do what he says. It started on Twitter, with Trump declaring that “some in the Fake News Media are saying that it is the Governors decision to open up the states” and, switching to the faux-regal language he loves, saying, “Let it be fully understood that this is incorrect” and that it “is the decision of the President”.

He kept at it during the daily propaganda dump coronavirus briefing, repeatedly asserting that his authority is “total” and that governors “can’t do anything without the approval of the President of the United States.”

This is flatly false, as evidenced by the way that many state governors locked down, even as Trump made it clear he didn’t want them to, and even as some of the Trumpier governors went along by refusing lockdowns, even as that led to the virus spreading. Just in case, media outlets have published helpful explainers that make clear that Trump is just making up his imperial powers.

But this isn’t just about Trump lying, which comes to the Pussy-Grabber-In-Chief more naturally even than camera-hogging. That particular lie — that he holds full power over everyone and everything — cuts directly against another one that Trump has been hiding behind throughout this coronavirus crisis and the economic fallout: That all this is someone else’s fault.

From the moment Trump realized he couldn’t just bullshit people into believing the coronavirus was a hoax, he has focused his energies almost entirely on trying to find someone else to pin the blame on, since he holds entirely blameless, as he does for all the other times he’s failed as a leader, a businessman, a husband and father, and a human being. While other presidents might put at least some effort into helping Americans get through this tragedy — try to imagine the tone Barack Obama would have struck — Trump’s singular focus is on arguing that this is not his fault.

“I don’t take responsibility at all,” Trump said during a Rose Garden press conference on March 13, exactly one month before his claims to have “total” authority.

Ever since then, it’s been a daily exercise for Trump and his supporters to find someone else to blame for the failures Trump somehow did not anticipate or prevent with his “total” authority.

Trump blames state governors, trying to argue that their lack of equipment is their fault, even as it becomes ever more clear that it’s the fault of the Trump administration, which has deliberately withheld supplies and forced states into bidding wars over medical equipment.

Trump has blamed China for fooling him about the seriousness of the situation, even though he was warned repeatedly by U.S. intelligence agencies, going back to November, that the Chinese wasn’t being truthful about this epidemic. That he chose to believe Xi Jinping over his own intelligence officials is Trump’s fault.

Trump blames the media, even though it began reporting on the seriousness of the situation long before he was willing to admit things were bad. Trump has even started to explore blaming public health officials, such as infectious disease czar Dr. Anthony Fauci, even though those are the people who have driven policies that have actually slowed the spread of the disease, and had to fight Trump’s efforts to ignore the problem every step of the way.

This is what Trump clearly wants people to believe: That he has total authority, but absolutely zero responsibility. And while Trump’s cultists, ready as always to walk off a cliff for their orange hero, will play along with this formulation, no one else, especially in the media, should be fooled.

The reality is straightforward: Trump, by refusing to take this seriously until it was too late — and also by continuing to undermine efforts to test and treat people — caused this disaster. Many of the people he’s now trying to blame, such as governors, journalists and public health officials, are doing the work to clean up the mess he made, though they can only do so much.

And the thanks these people get for trying to save the nation, which could well have the unwelcome but unavoidable consequence of rescuing Trump’s chances at re-election, is to hear Trump bellow at them about how he’s the king of everything and they need to do more bowing and scraping. (See this latest screech at New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for evidence.) But all those folks will keep on doing their job, even though that might aid the orange monstrosity who is making their lives miserable, because ultimately helping the public is their job. Taking responsibility and getting the job done is what real leaders do, and that’s something Donald Trump will go to his grave without understanding.

Lindsey Graham calls to cut coronavirus unemployment benefits by $7/hour: ‘We’ve got to get that fixed’

Published April 14, 2020 By David Edwards


Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Tuesday pointed to impeachment when he was asked to react to a propaganda video President Donald Trump played in the White House briefing room on Monday. He also called to cut benefits for the unemployed by up to $7/hour.

In an interview on Fox & Friends, Graham defended the president’s response to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

“The American people understand what you’ve done for them,” Graham reassured the president. “And this effort to destroy Trump no matter the cost to the country is getting a bit old and it’s pissing a lot of people off.”

“The president has made hard calls well and we’re going to be well below the 100,000 minimum expected [deaths],” he continued. “And it’s due to his leadership and the American people working together.”

“What did you think of that video they put together?” Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt wondered. “They put together a timeline of him saying in January, ‘Travel ban.’ Then you had people in the media saying, ‘This is ridiculous, this is going too far.'”

“I thought that was pretty smart on his part,” she added.

“People are dying right now and this president is doing everything humanly possible to work with anybody that will work with him,” Graham replied. “Do you know when impeachment ended? February 6th we voted to acquit the president and Democratic leaders who are criticizing the president now wanted to extend the trial for weeks to call more witnesses.”

“You’ve got to remember the Democratic Party on February 6th was asking the Senate to stay in session to get more witnesses!” the senator added. “These are the people who are criticizing him.”

Graham went on to suggest that coronavirus relief benefits are making workers not want to return to their jobs.

“Here’s the problem,” he explained. “The unemployment benefits in South Carolina are $23/hour to be unemployed. You’ve got a lot of small businesses trying to keep their employees on the payroll paying $16 and $17/hour. One program is undercutting the other.”

“We’ve got to get that fixed,” Graham insisted.

HE TRIED THIS STUNT IN THE SENATE WITH THE SECOND FUNDING BILL, AND SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS PUSHED BACK, AND GOT HIS AMENDMENT KILLED
Watch the video below from Fox News.

‘Beyond predatory’: Trump Treasury Department gives banks green light to seize $1,200 stimulus checks to pay off debts

April 14, 2020 By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams


“The Treasury Department is pointing out opportunities for banks and debt collectors to steal Americans’ relief checks out from under them.”

President Donald Trump’s Treasury Department has given U.S. banks a green light to seize a portion or all of the one-time $1,200 coronavirus relief payments meant to help Americans cope with financial hardship and instead use the money to pay off individuals’ outstanding debts—a move consumer advocates decried as cruel and unacceptable.

“These payments are supposed to help individuals and families put food on the table during this crisis, not enrich debt collectors.”
—Maura Healey, Massachusetts Attorney General

“The Treasury Department effectively blessed this activity on a webinar with banking officials last Friday,” The American Prospect‘s David Dayen reported Tuesday.

In an audio recording from the webinar obtained exclusively by the Prospect, Ronda Kent, chief disbursing officer at the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service, told bankers that “there’s nothing in the law that precludes” financial institutions from seizing a person’s payment and using it to pay off the individual’s debts.

“After a third of U.S. renters couldn’t make rent this month, the Treasury Department is pointing out opportunities for banks and debt collectors to steal Americans’ relief checks out from under them,” Jeremy Funk, spokesperson for consumer advocacy group Allied Progress, said in a statement responding to Kent’s comments.

“It’s the middle of a pandemic,” said Funk. “This money should be going toward food, rent, and medicine—it’s not the time to hand out favors to debt collection industry donors or pad some big bank’s bottom line,” said Funk. “Secretary Mnuchin needs to ensure that these $1,200 checks go straight into Americans pockets where they belong.”

Listen To The Recording:

Americans with direct deposit information on file with the Internal Revenue Service are expected to begin receiving the $1,200 payments in their bank accounts this week, provided that their banks do not opt to seize the money.

Those for whom the government does not have direct deposit information—a group that is disproportionately low-income—could be forced to wait up to five months to receive paper checks in the mail.

The direct payments were authorized under the CARES Act, a massive coronavirus stimulus package President Donald Trump signed into law last month.

As Dayen explained, Congress explicitly exempted the one-time stimulus payments from collection under the CARES Act “if the debt is owed to federal or state agencies, unless the debt involves a child support payment.”

“But Congress did not extend this exemption to private debt collection,” Dayen wrote. “The payments are defined as tax credits and not federal benefits, making them subject to ‘garnishment,’ in which a debt collector that wins a judgment in court can seize anything of value held by the debtor.”

“Congress did give Treasury the authority under Section 2201(h) of the CARES Act to write rules exempting the payments from private debt collectors,” Dayen noted, but the Treasury Department—headed by former Goldman Sachs executive Steve Mnuchin—has thus far refused to exercise that authority despite pressure from Democratic members of Congress and state attorneys general.

I checked with the five largest consumer banks. Only JPMorgan Chase said they would not use CARES Act payments to offset debts. The other four gave no response. https://t.co/by1oQ1cNkL
— David Dayen (@ddayen) April 14, 2020

On Monday, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey issued guidance stating that the $1,200 payments “are exempt from seizure or garnishment by creditors under Massachusetts law.”

“These payments are supposed to help individuals and families put food on the table during this crisis, not enrich debt collectors,” Healey said in a statement. “With this guidance… my office is putting the debt collection industry on notice that these payments are off limits.”

Healey on Monday also signed onto a letter (pdf) led by New York Attorney General Letitia James urging Mnuchin to issue “a regulation or guidance designating CARES Act payments as ‘benefit payments’ exempt from garnishment.” The letter was signed by 25 state attorneys general.

“During this public health and economic crisis, the states do not believe that the billions of dollars appropriated by Congress to help keep hard-working Americans afloat should be subject to garnishment,” the letter states.

“Absolutely obscene. This money is for food, medicine, housing. The essentials of life.”
—Mike Siegel, Texas congressional candidate

Dayen noted that “legally speaking, banks have the right to ‘offset’ any deposits to pay off delinquent loans, overdraft fees, or other charges.”

“Banks have more immediate access to the coronavirus checks by virtue of having them deposited into accounts at their institutions,” Dayen wrote. “They’re also in front of the line for repayment of debts ahead of other private debt collectors.”

The possibility that banks could seize individuals’ relief payments as millions of people across the U.S. face layoffs, pay cuts, and reductions in work hours sparked outrage on social media.

“This is beyond predatory,” tweeted finance expert and investigative journalist Nomi Prins.

Banks win again: those $1,200 checks heading to your account? Banks can siphon off any amount you might owe them. @ddayen https://t.co/kNZUfuLrxP
— Bartlett Naylor (@BartNaylor) April 14, 2020

Absolutely obscene. A violation of every ounce of trust the people have in Congress.
This money is for food, medicine, housing. The essentials of life.
If private banks want to collect debts from our stimulus checks, we need to rethink banking. #HandsOff https://t.co/P8sZzTToHH
— Mike Siegel (@SiegelForTexas) April 14, 2020


Jess Scarane, a progressive running to unseat Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), tweeted that “this ‘stimulus’ gets worse and worse for working people every day.”

“Even the meager help we thought individuals would get can end up in the hands of banks,” said Scarane, “while people continue to struggle to put food on their tables and survive.”

Pining for taxpayer bailout, for-profit health insurance industry threatens massive post-Covid premium hikes

Published April 14, 2020 By Common Dreams


“Why should Congress enrich insurance companies with our public money when their duty is to protect the public, not to protect corporate profits?”

A lobbyist told The Hill in an interview Tuesday that unless the insurance industry receives a federal bailout, companies intend to raise premiums on Americans due to the effects of the coronavirus outbreak on private employer-based plans—a threat that progressives said only strengthens the case for a single-payer, Medicare for All system.

“Nationalize them,” Boston-based activist Jonathan Cohn said of insurance companies.

Nationalize them. https://t.co/H5YbgP9XZe
— Jonathan “Boo and Vote” Cohn (@JonathanCohn) April 14, 2020


American Benefits Council senior vice president for health policy Ilyse Schuman said that employer-based healthcare plans were unlikely to handle the stress of an increase in benefit claims from the disease without hiking prices for consumers.

“They’ll be left with no option but to pass costs along to employees in the form of higher premiums next year,” said Schuman. “That’s really why we’re asking Congress to step in and protect employer-sponsored coverage.”

According to The Hill, insurers are already asking for federal relief from the burden of paying out claims:

America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the leading trade group for insurance companies, and Blue Cross Blue Shield Association urged congressional leaders in a letter last week to provide temporary “federal risk mitigation programs to support the financial stability of plans that incur extraordinary, unplanned costs in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID-19.”

The industry’s need for a bailout in order to meet obligations built into its business model struck a number of progressive observers as indicative of the need for fundamental change in the way Americans access care.

“One more reason for Medicare for All,” tweeted the Rittenberg Report blog.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) unveiled legislation to that end on Friday, calling for universal healthcare for all Americans at least through the duration of the coronavirus crisis

“If this pandemic has taught us anything, it is that we are only as safe as the least-insured among us,” Sanders said in a statement announcing the plan.

Attorney Emma Caterine told Common Dreams that bill was a better option than bailing out the industry.

“Rep. Jayapal and Sen. Sanders’ bill would actually provide people healthcare without having to go through insurance companies that want to profit off this crisis,” said Caterine. “Why should Congress enrich insurance companies with our public money when their duty is to protect the public, not to protect corporate profits?”

Liberty University faces class-action lawsuit from students over ineffective pandemic response: report

Published April 14, 2020 By Matthew Chapman


On Tuesday, The Daily Beast reported that a student at Liberty University is bringing a class-action lawsuit against the school over its “glacially slow” response to the coronavirus pandemic.

“The unidentified student accuses the school and its president, Jerry Falwell Jr., a vocal Trump supporter, of downplaying the coronavirus threat and refusing to refund students for ‘room and board and other campus fees’ after classes were moved online,” reported Emma Tucker. “‘Liberty University is, in a very real sense, profiting from the COVID-19 pandemic — keeping its campus and campus services ‘open’ as a pretext to retain Plaintiff’s and the other Class members’ room, board and campus fees, despite no longer having to incur the full cost of providing those services, all the while putting students’ finances and health at risk,’ the lawsuit reads.”

The school has dismissed the lawsuit as meritless, and asserts that students were in fact offered $1,000 credits for vacating housing on its Lynchburg, Virginia campus.

Falwell more broadly has defended the decision to reopen his campus despite Virginia being under a state of emergency — a decision that has led to several students being infected. He has asserted that students need not be on the physical campus and can attend classes remotely, and that only about ten percent of the student body opted to remain in housing, most of whom were from abroad and didn’t want to return home to outbreaks in their own countries. Local Virginia officials, however, claim Falwell “misled” them when working out his plans to reopen.

After negative press coverage of his decision, Falwell announced that warrants were out on a pair of journalists from ProPublica and The New York Times for criminal trespass on the campus. It later turned out that the “warrant” was actually signed by a campus security officer, and there did not appear to be any signature from a judge or certification from a state court clerk.

Roger Stone floats theory that Bill Gates wants to ‘microchip’ people with ‘mandatory vaccinations’

Published April 14, 2020  By Sky Palma

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Speaking on Joe Piscopo’s radio program this Monday, longtime Donald Trump associate Roger Stone regurgitated a fringe conspiracy about Bill Gates’ reported involvement in the development of a vaccine for coronavirus, according to the New York Post.

“Whether Bill Gates played some role in the creation and spread of this virus is open for vigorous debate. I have conservative friends who say it’s ridiculous and others say absolutely,” Stone told Piscopo on his show The Answer.

“He and other globalists are using it for mandatory vaccinations and microchipping people so we know if they’ve been tested. Over my dead body. Mandatory vaccinations? No way, Jose!” Stone added

Conspiracy theories about Bill Gates’ alleged sinister motives in helping to create a vaccine for coronavirus have been circulating for weeks now. According to Media Matters, variations of Gates-inspired conspiracy theories in regards to a potential vaccine have even made their way onto Fox News.

White House is ‘heavily considering’ rumors about China creating COVID-19 intentionally for possible biological war

April 14, 2020 By Sarah K. Burris


Conspiracy theorists have tried to spin the idea that China intentionally created COVID-19 in a lab, the only purpose of which would be for a biological attack or war.

Defense One editor Kevin Baron reported that Defense Secretary Gen. Mark Milley revealed in a Q&A Tuesday that the DOD has looked into it.

“We’ve had a lot of intelligence take a hard look at that,” he said. “It’s inconclusive, although the weight of evidence leans towards natural. But, we don’t know for certain.”

New York Times White House reporter Maggie Haberman noted that the conspiracy theory is something that has been circulating among the Trump administration.

“Those rumors are being considered heavily within the White House, and in part, officials say, because there are gaps in the information from China,” Haberman tweeted.

Baron noted that Gen. Milley’s comments will likely “fuel a lifetime of additional conspiracy theories and speculation,” even though his tone was dismissive.

He said they’ve looked “Hard” and “the weight of evidence leans towards natural.”

See the full Twitter thread here.

We’re being conned by a White House intent on using the coronavirus crisis to unravel democracy

Published April 14, 2020 By Michael Winship, Common Dreams- Commentary

In our last episode, mail had finally arrived at my building in downtown Manhattan after many days without, all because of the devastating impact of COVID-19 at my local post office.

The delivery included a bombastic fundraising letter from the National Republican Congressional Committee under the name of Mike Pence excoriating Nancy Pelosi and the evils of socialism, a graceless exercise of the poison pen and maltreatment of the bulk postage rate.

In the week and a half since, postal carriers, fighting sickness and struggling to cope with understaffing brought on by the pandemic, have managed to deliver letters to my place on two other occasions.

The last batch included a couple of mass mail postcards from the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announcing, in all caps, “PRESIDENT TRUMP’S CORONAVIRUS GUIDELINES FOR AMERICA.”

President Trump’s? Really? Somehow, I just don’t picture him in the Oval Office personally scribbling down these guidelines while Melania sat in the Roosevelt Room rereading The Federalist Papers.

As we know all too well, especially here in New York City, our insecure manchild-in-chief has to have his name on everything, whether it’s a casino or corona. Reports continue that among other self-aggrandizements, Trump had pondered putting his EKG-like signature on the bipartisan recovery bill’s stimulus checks, and historian Jon Meacham told The Washington Post on Friday, “Trump has cast himself in the role of [the] generous monarch who is saying, ‘I have given you this, dear subjects’ — and it’s a remarkably selfish and self-referential performance. It’s our money, for goodness sake. It’s not his money.”

As far as his postcard goes, there’s nothing wrong with the guidelines per se—wash your hands, stay at home, etc.—but like pretty much every move made by this administration during our crisis, it’s way past due. As The New York Times noted in an extensive investigation headlined, “He Could Have Seen What Was Coming,” published over the weekend, Trump “was slow to absorb the scale of the risk and to act accordingly, focusing instead on controlling the message, protecting gains in the economy and batting away warnings from senior officials…


“… Mr. Trump’s response was colored by his suspicion of and disdain for what he viewed as the “Deep State” — the very people in his government whose expertise and long experience might have guided him more quickly toward steps that would slow the virus, and likely save lives…

“The chaotic culture of the Trump White House contributed to the crisis. A lack of planning and a failure to execute, combined with the president’s focus on the news cycle and his preference for following his gut rather than the data cost time, and perhaps lives.”

Yet in this same moment, despite their deadly ineptitude when it comes to disease, Trump and administration officials seem intent on using our current crisis to their advantage—personal, political and ideological—depending on our understandable distraction to slip through their latest horrendous changes to government.

As time goes by, there’s no doubt that it will be revealed how many of Trump’s pals and GOP cronies took advantage of this national tragedy to make a fast buck—just look, for one, at the US senators who simultaneously told the public that all would be well while allegedly selling off their shares in businesses they knew were about to be gut punched by COVID-19 (and I include in their gang Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein).

Look, too, among many other examples, at the firing of inspectors general dedicated to investigating malfeasance in the government, Trump and Secretary of State George Pompeo’s de facto evisceration of the Peace Corps, under the guise of calling volunteers home from overseas to protect them from the pandemic, the summary deportation of 10,000 migrants at the southern border by citing emergency public health regs, or the suspension of environmental rules – leaving it to industries to self-regulate, using the virus as an excuse to let polluters run amok.

They’re trying to pull a multitude of fast ones and the United States Postal Service is yet another target. I wrote in last week’s piece, “The House version of the recent $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package included $25 billion in emergency funding to make up for revenues lost in the pandemic.” It also canceled USPS debt and offered the post office loans of up to $10 billion, but those loans are all that survived what finally was passed into law.


Now it turns out, as per The Washington Post, that the reason for that was—surprise!—Donald Trump. If it helped bail out the post office with additional needed cash, he threatened to veto the entire coronavirus stimulus bill. The Post reported, “President Trump has blocked potential emergency funding for the agency that employs around 600,000 workers, repeating instead the false claim that higher rates for Internet shipping companies Amazon, FedEx and UPS would right the service’s budget.”
The competition from other delivery companies and the Internet is a real problem but what truly keeps the post office in debt, even with all that competition, is $72 billion in prepaid pension and healthcare costs for its employees, a system like no other in government or corporate America. This was foisted on the postal service by a lame duck Republican Congress in 2006. Many hoped it would force the USPS into privatization. Without this unnecessary burden, the postal service would almost break even.

We also know there’s nothing our president likes better than kicking someone when they’re down and this virus comes at a time when the post office’s own defenses are at an all-time low. The USPS now is projecting losses of $2 billion a month because of COVID-19. According to the Post, 500 postal workers have tested positive, another 462 are presumed positive, 6000 are in self-quarantine and 19 have died.

Mail volume is steadily declining because of the disease and could be down by as much as half by the end of June. With $19 billion in existing debt, by the end of September, the USPS could be “financially illiquid” and may lose $23 billion in the next year and a half.

Postmaster General Megan Brennan now is asking Congress for $25 billion to cover lost revenue from the pandemic, $25 billion for modernization and another loan of $25 billion. On Trump’s behalf, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin is pushing back, saying that in this next round of negotiations around recovery legislation, such a proposition would be a poison pill.

Trump’s public rationale for attacking the postal office—it’s failure to raise prices for delivery—is specious. In part, what this really is about, in addition to the desire to turn USPS over to corporate interests, is punishing Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO, and publisher of The Washington Post, the investigative reporting of which has been a perpetual thorn in Trump’s thin skin. Although increasingly, Amazon has developed delivery systems on its own, it’s still dependent on the postal service to get its goods in the hands of even the most faraway domestic customer.

But beyond this particular, childish lashing out at a perceived enemy like Bezos is something even scarier to our soul-deprived man in the Executive Mansion—free and fair elections. Eric Lutz at Vanity Fair writes that Trump’s “apparent plan to bleed the postal service dry comes as the agency is poised to play perhaps a bigger role than ever in November’s election, as Democrats and voting rights activists call for mail-in voting and other measures to ensure Americans can safely cast ballots in the midst of the pandemic.”

Trump says, “I think mail-in voting is terrible,” claiming that it’s rife with fraud, which, it almost goes without saying, is a lie. Not to mention hypocritical, as he himself has used mail-in ballots in last year’s midterms and this year’s Florida primary. What’s really behind his opposition is the knowledge, as he himself admitted, that the more Americans who are able to vote, the worse it is for him and the GOP. “If you ever agreed to it,” he declared, “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

As the coming weeks go by and the news of his drop in the polls grows more dire, Trump will become increasingly desperate. Watch as he tries to do his worst, suppressing the vote and working to prevent states that don’t already have it from adopting the mail-in ballot (or quashing any attempt to make mail-in voting a federal law).

This man has no qualms stomping on the Constitution—just witness his wild and bogus pronouncement Monday that his authority “is total.” So why would he hesitate for an instant to try eradicating the USPS, the only federal agency that’s actually called for in that Constitution? Even though the USPS consistently is ranked the most popular government agency and is essential to millions who depend on it not just for mail but prescriptions, money and other essentials, Trump doesn’t care or want to know. Any impediment to his supremacy has to go.

And lest we forget, he’s nuts.

“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift com.pletion of their appointed rounds”—the words engraved over the entrance of New York City’s former main post office. But a global pandemic might be able do what neither weather nor darkness can—especially if it’s aided and abetted by a cynical, venal president and a party committed to a death grip of power over patriotism and naked partisanship above liberty, country and democracy