Light News

Brian Dennehy, the regular-guy actor whose bulldog build, good-guy demeanor, and no-nonsense approach meshed in an array of memorable roles for film, television and the theatre, has sailed on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Dennehy
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001133/

The Postal Service is:
🌎Our only universal delivery network
👩‍💼Employer of 640,000 Americans
📦Deliverer of 1.2 billion packages of medicine a year
🎖Largest provider of jobs for veterans
🇺🇸Enshrined in the Constitution
We must save the Postal Service and protect its workers.

A president with any intelligence and integrity would increase payments to the World Health Organization in the midst of a pandemic which the WHO accurately warned us about. This one is halting payments, blaming the WHO for his own failure to respond. Unbelievable.

No industry -- not airlines, not hotels, not cruise ships -- should be bailed out. They can stay in business by borrowing at rock-bottom rates, using their assets as collateral. Taxpayer money should be used to bail out people, not corporations.

We must rebuild in a way that puts working people first. Join me, @StephanieKelton, @JeffDSachs, @RBReich, and @flyingwithsara for our live town hall now:
https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1250565614290079744
https://www.pscp.tv/w/1eaJbQVqwEkGX

Trump backs down in his confrontation with the governors, saying he will defer to them on when and how to reopen. “You’re going to call your own shots,” he tells them three days after declaring that “the president of the United States calls the shots.” If Trump allows states showing declining virus cases to re-open immediately, they could largely return to normal within a month under best-case scenario. But if cases rebound......

The Trump administration paid a bankrupt company with zero employees $55 million for N95 masks, which it's never manufactured: The Federal Emergency Management Agency awarded a $55 million contract for N95s this month to Panthera Worldwide LLC, which is in the business of tactical training. One of its owners said last year that Panthera’s parent company had not had any employees since May 2018, according to sworn testimony. It also has no history of manufacturing or procuring medical equipment, according to a review of records produced as a result of legal disputes involving the company and its affiliates. Panthera Worldwide’s parent company filed for bankruptcy last fall, and the LLC is no longer recognized in Virginia — where it has its main office — following nonpayment of fees, which according to Virginia code results in “the existence of a limited liability company” being “automatically canceled.” | “They don’t have masks. They’re not in that line of business,” said Robert Starer, a Virginia businessman who leased the training center from Panthera’s owners. “Is it possible that they have a relationship with someone in the world who could provide those masks? Who knows.” Starer is now suing the company’s two executives — Punelli and Raymond C. Jones — alleging they overstated the extent of their contracts and customer base, resulting in financial losses for his company. In a complaint filed in Virginia’s Hanover County Circuit Court, Starer alleges that the two men misrepresented “estimated revenue” as “actual cash payments . . . based on existing contracts,” causing him to suffer cash losses in 2018 and 2019. Punelli and Jones have not responded to the lawsuit, according to an attorney who represents Starer. | The FEMA contract with Panthera, which was awarded without competitive bidding, has a start date of April 1, according to a summary. Lizzie Litzow, a FEMA spokeswoman, said the Panthera contract is for 10 million masks, adding, “Panthera is not a manufacturer, they are a distributor of N95 masks.” The price that FEMA is paying Panthera per mask, about $5.50, is significantly higher than what the government pays companies such as 3M, which charges as little as 63 cents per N95 mask, with an average cost of about $1.50 for more advanced models, according to a price index. Prestige Ameritech, the largest domestic mask manufacturer, is charging FEMA about 80 cents per mask for the government’s order of 12 million N95 respirators, part of a $9.5 million contract that started April 7. Beyond the premium the federal government is paying to Panthera, the decision to award a contract to an insolvent organization with no apparent expertise in the given field struck experts as unusual.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/coronavirus-trump-masks-contracts-prices/2020/04/15/9c186276-7f20-11ea-8de7-9fdff6d5d83e_story.html
https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_va/T0479966
https://www.businessinsider.com/fema-paid-bankrupt-company-no-employees-55-million-n95-masks-2020-4

Federal programme to help small businesses weather the pandemic has run out of money, risking waves of bankruptcies and millions of additional unemployed workers amid congressional gridlock over replenishing it. Republican Senators - the people with the power to unleash more aid, are refusing and blaming Democrats.

22 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits in the past four weeks as labor market tumbles closer to Depression levels | Last week, 5.2 million people filed unemployment claims | The United States has not seen this level of job loss since the Great Depression, and the government is struggling to respond fast enough to the deadly coronavirus health crisis and the economic crisis triggered by shutting down so many businesses. | The 22 million jobless figure is likely an understatement since most gig workers and temporary employees have not been able to apply for aid yet. “Once one adds in those not captured by the data, we are almost certainly facing a 20 percent unemployment rate now,” said Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at audit firm RSM. “At this point in the pandemic, roughly one in every seven individuals in the workforce is unemployed.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2020/04/16/22-million-americans-have-filed-for-unemployment-benefits-in-the-past-four-weeks-as-labor-market-tumbles-closer-to-depression-levels/

Coronavirus erases almost all the 23 million new jobs created since the Great Recession
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/coronavirus-erases-almost-all-the-23-million-new-jobs-created-since-the-great-recession-2020-04-16

We are the only major country where millions of people are losing their jobs and health insurance during this pandemic. In my view, the solution is straightforward:
✔️ Keep workers on payroll and provide 100% of their wages
✔️ Treat health care as a right—not an employee benefit
https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/1250788843948818439

The retreat of a Norwegian mountain ice patch, which is melting because of climate change, has revealed a lost Viking-era mountain pass scattered with "spectacular" and perfectly preserved artefacts that had been dropped by the side of the road. The pass, at Lendbreen in Norway's mountainous central region, first came to the attention of local archaeologists in 2011, after a woollen tunic was discovered that was later dated to the third or fourth century AD. The ice has retreated significantly in the years since, exposing a wealth of artefacts including knitted mittens, leather shoes and arrows still with their feathers attached. Though carbon dating of the finds reveals the pass was in use by farmers and travellers for a thousand years, from the Nordic iron age, around AD200-300, until it fell out of use after the Black Death in the 14th century, the bulk of the finds date from the period around AD1000, during the Viking era, when trade and mobility in the region were at their zenith. Described as a "dream discovery" by glacial archaeologists, the finding was also a "poignant and evocative reminder of climate change", said James Barrett, a medieval and environmental archaeologist at the University of Cambridge, who has been working with Norwegian archaeologists on the project since 2011. | Of the hundreds of discoveries exposed by the retreating ice, some are structural, such as stone-built cairns that would have guided travellers through the fog, or the remains of a small shelter. Other finds are products that were being transported by local farmers to and from their summer pastures, such as dairy products and fodder, or by traders potentially carrying them much further afield, including reindeer pelts and antlers. Among them are delicate wooden items such as a small, wood-turned bit for a lamb or goat and a carved distaff for spinning wool - even a Bronze Age ski. Last summer's melt exposed an item that archaeologists have identified as a snowshoe for horses - "a quite remarkable object in its own right", according to Barrett.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/apr/16/spectacular-artefacts-found-as-norway-ice-patch-melts

These are big juicy checks cities would like to see with your name on it. Stop welching on your debts: Fourteen city governments say Trump's campaign now owes them a collective $1.82 million. The campaign says it’s not responsible. City officials want President Trump to help them fight the coronavirus by simply paying them money they say his campaign already owes them.
https://publicintegrity.org/politics/elections/city-leaders-to-trump-help-us-fight-the-coronavirus-by-paying-your-bills

The largest study to date on the partisan effects of vote-by-mail confirms prior research: Neither Republicans nor Democrats gain an edge. | To test partisan effects, they compiled a data set containing county-level election results, as well as public voter file data containing the party registration of voters in California and Utah. The data covered elections from 1996 to 2018. After controlling for county-level differences, the data showed “a truly negligible effect” on partisan turnout rates. The effect on partisan vote share was similarly indistinguishable from zero. One thing they did find was a modest boost in across-the-board turnout. “Vote-by-mail causes around a 2-percentage-point increase (estimates range from 1.9 to 2.4 percentage points) in the share of the voting-age population that turns out to vote.” None of these findings would come as a surprise to other political scientists who have studied the issue. Prior studies have yielded similar findings.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/16/universal-vote-by-mail-doesnt-benefit-any-political-party-study-finds/
http://www.andrewbenjaminhall.com/Thompson_et_al_VBM.pdf
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1026662130163
https://academic.oup.com/poq/article-abstract/65/2/178/1877024?redirectedFrom=PDF

Gov. Cuomo said on news tonight he spoke with Jeff Wilpon. Cuomo advocated MLB season take place with no one in stands because it would be good for country to watch. Cuomo said response was that it would require a reduction in player salaries to offset lack of attendance.
https://www.twitter.com/adamrubinmedia/status/1250598240405291008

Cancel all student debt:These medical workers are tackling the coronavirus. They're also saddled with student debt. The roughly $1.7 trillion student debt crisis was around long before the pandemic. But some medical workers say now is the time for Congress to fix the system. | Tisser began repaying his medical school debt five years ago, with the loans refinanced from federal to private lenders. "If I were to die from COVID right now," he added, "my family would be stuck with $433,000" in student debt. With 45 million Americans owing about $1.7 trillion of student debt, a figure that more than doubled over the last decade, health care professionals are often on the hook for some of the largest loan amounts. The average debt of a graduating medical student is nearly $201,500, according to 2019 data from the Association of American Medical Colleges, a nonprofit that administers the Medical College Admission Test, or MCAT. Tisser is part of a grassroots network of physicians who drafted an online petition aimed at Washington lawmakers. It asks Congress to ensure that all front-line medical workers, including physicians, nurses and emergency medical services professionals, get the personal protective equipment they need, as well as health care and tax credits; in addition, the petition seeks total loan forgiveness or at least a zero percent interest rate on their student loans. They also want all medical school debt — federal or private — to be discharged if a medical worker dies from COVID-19. Tisser, who hosts a podcast about the health care system, said medical workers, in particular doctors, are "shackled" by the high costs of education. After four years of undergrad and four years of medical school, physicians are required to practice at least three years as part of a residency program at salaries of $40,000 to $60,000 a year.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/these-medical-workers-are-tackling-coronavirus-they-re-also-saddled-n1182211
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/23/calls-for-canceling-student-debt-grow-louder-amid-coronavirus-outbreak.html
https://store.aamc.org/medical-student-education-debt-costs-and-loan-repayment-fact-card-2019-pdf.html
https://students-residents.aamc.org/financial-aid/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/15ls6Mff-b5JV3uWA666Lxvo9JF1VVDEn/view
https://www.change.org/p/support-the-covid-19-pandemic-physician-protection-act-cpppa
https://talk2medocpod.com/

Carnival Executives Knew They Had A COVID-19 Problem But Kept The Party Going. It took them 43 hours to notify passengers; at that same time these people went to the buffets, concerts, bars, pools, and other activities.
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2020-carnival-cruise-coronavirus/

Over 43,000 US millionaires will get ‘stimulus’ averaging $1.6 million each
https://nypost.com/2020/04/16/43k-us-millionaires-will-get-stimulus-averaging-1-6m-each/

Senate Republicans snuck $90 billion tax cut for millionaires into coronavirus relief legislation | Republican lawmakers used the coronavirus relief bill to give millionaires a tax break they failed to include in the 2017 tax cut bill. | The Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), a nonpartisan congressional agency, estimates that more than 80% of the benefits of the tax change will benefit those who earn more than $1 million per year. | In all, about 82% of the benefits will go to just about 43,000 taxpayers. Less than 3% of the benefits will flow to those who earn under $100,000 per year. The bill also allows business owners to apply the tax changes retroactively to their 2018 and 2019 losses. | Steve Rosenthal, a tax expert at the nonpartisan think tank the Tax Policy Center, told The Post that hedge fund investors and real estate businesses will be "far and away" the main beneficiaries of the change. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., who requested the JCT analysis, accused Republicans of trying to funnel taxpayer money to millionaires amid a public health crisis. "It's a scandal for Republicans to loot American taxpayers in the midst of an economic and human tragedy," he said in a statement. "This analysis shows that while Democrats fought for unemployment insurance and small business relief, a top priority of President Trump and his allies in Congress was another massive tax cut for the wealthy. Congress should repeal this rotten, un-American giveaway and use the revenue to help workers battling through this crisis."
https://www.salon.com/2020/04/16/senate-republicans-snuck-90-billion-tax-cut-for-millionaires-into-coronavirus-relief-legislation/
https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/116-0849.pdf
https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-doggett-release-new-analysis-showing-gop-tax-provisions-in-cares-act-overwhelmingly-benefit-million-dollar-plus-earners

Michigan's Ex-Governor Republican Rick Snyder Knew About Flint's Toxic Water And Lied About It, Lock Him Up
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/z3bdp9/michigans-ex-gov-rick-snyder-knew-about-flints-toxic-waterand-lied-about-it

'Shameful': With Blessing From Trump Treasury, Big Bank Inititually Seizes Coronavirus Relief Payments From Veterans | "USAA is confiscating the emergency $1,200 coronavirus checks from veterans and military families who have debt, leaving us struggling to survive during this crisis. This is absolutely unacceptable." | Hours after David Dayen reported Thursday at The American Prospect that USAA was seizing coronavirus stimulus money from veterans with accounts at the financial institution, the bank reversed course, telling Dayen in a statement that the money seized would returned. | VICTORY: in a statment, @USAA has announced that they have changed their policy and will no longer take stimulus payments and apply them to other debts. All money confiscated will be returned retroactively to customers. Here's the statement: pic.twitter.com/rO5sXcLbfp
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/16/victory-after-outrage-over-seizure-coronavirus-relief-payments-veterans-usaa
https://prospect.org/coronavirus/usaa-bank-grabs-stimulus-checks-from-military-families/
https://twitter.com/ddayen/status/1250832896547418113

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed an executive order to offer two weeks of paid leave for essential food workers. The paid leave will be supplemental and not negate any existing benefits.
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1250898063629008896

Schools, daycares and bars shouldn’t reopen before phase two, according to the Trump admin coronavirus guidelines, while restaurants, movie theaters, sports venues could open in phase one if practice “strict social distancing.”
https://twitter.com/JenniferJJacobs/status/1250897981127249923
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-16/trump-tells-governors-that-some-states-can-reopen-before-may-1

18-page WH document for “Opening Up America Again” does not include details for ramping up testing or contact tracing
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-convenes-members-congress-serve-opening-america-congressional-group/

The SNL comedian Michael Che is offering to pay one month’s rent for the 160 families that live in the New York public housing building where his grandmother, who died of the coronavirus, once lived
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/nyregion/michael-che-nycha-rent-coronavirus.html

One major impediment to restarting elective surgeries and other procedures shuttered during the outbreak is the main reason they were halted in the first place: a lack of medical supplies and personal protective equipment, Rachel Levine, Pennsylvania’s secretary of health, said Wednesday. Levine said the state will need a stockpile of gloves, gowns, and other equipment before starting the state’s economy to ensure another major increase in Covid-19 cases could be handled.
https://about.bgov.com/news/cash-strapped-hospitals-weigh-resumption-of-elective-surgeries/

New York on PAUSE will be extended in coordination with other states to May 15. Non-essential workers must continue to stay home. Social distancing rules remain in place. We must STAY THE COURSE.
https://twitter.com/NYGovCuomo/status/1250817149041590277

Trump followers on Facebook & Twitter: 106 million.
Biden on FacebookB & Twitter: 6.7 million
Trump on YouTube: 347,000 subscribers
Biden on YouTube: 35,500
Biden's new podcast: not in Apple's top-100
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/technology/joe-biden-internet.html

Joe Biden is very famous, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at his YouTube channel. Mr. Biden has just 32,000 subscribers on the influential video platform, a pittance compared with some of his rivals in the Democratic primary race and roughly 300,000 fewer than Trump. The videos that Mr. Biden posts — these days, mostly repurposed campaign ads and TV-style interviews filmed from the makeshift studio in his basement — rarely crack 10,000 views. And the virtual crickets that greet many of his appearances have become a source of worry for some Democrats, who see his sluggish performance online as a bad omen for his electoral chances in November. | Online popularity doesn’t always lead to electoral success. (If it did, New Yorkers would be listening to daily coronavirus briefings from Gov. Cynthia Nixon.) But underestimating the internet’s influence is a mistake, too. In 2016, Trump’s surging popularity among the internet’s grass roots was a bellwether that indicated his candidacy might be stronger than it appeared in traditional polls. Conversely, Mr. Biden’s lack of support from meme makers and viral-content mavens could signal trouble ahead. The problem for Mr. Biden is not that he is old or out of touch. After all, other septuagenarians, including Mr. Trump and Senator Bernie Sanders, have amassed intense and loyal online followings despite not being internet natives. And Mr. Biden was once an internet star himself. (Who can forget “Diamond Joe,” the beer-guzzling, Trans Am-driving satirical character created by The Onion, which launched a million memes during the Obama years and became an indelible, if fictional, part of Mr. Biden’s legacy?) | Trump’s unfiltered, combative style is a natural fit for the hyperpolarized audiences on Facebook and Twitter, whereas Mr. Biden’s more conciliatory, healer-in-chief approach can render him invisible on platforms where conflict equals clicks. | Mark Provost, an administrator of The Other 98%, a left-leaning Facebook page with more than six million followers, said Mr. Biden could capitalize on liberals’ hostility for Mr. Trump by giving the party’s base more red meat, and becoming more combative himself. “You want to tap into that deep id inside the Democratic Party,” Mr. Provost said. “At this point, people just want to see a bully get smacked down. They want to see him hammer Trump a lot more.” | “Trump’s supporters will run through a brick wall to vote for him,” Mr. Parscale said in a recent statement. “Nobody is running through a brick wall for Joe Biden.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/technology/joe-biden-internet.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/13/democrats-youtube-deficit-179372
https://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/biden-getting-an-autobiography-from-the-onion-whether-he-wants-it-or-not/

A joint Secret Service investigation uncovered what has become the largest fraud scheme ever prosecuted in the Southern District of Georgia, with over $410 million in fraudulent claims. Read more:
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdga/pr/operator-durable-medical-equipment-company-charged-multi-million-dollar-telemedicine

.@NYGovCuomo: "When is it over? When is it finally over? It's over when you have a vaccine and that's 12 months to 18 months."
https://twitter.com/ryanstruyk/status/1250893107111002112

These racist acts have got to stop. No one should be targeted for what they look like, where they or their ancestors come from, or who they are. COVID-19 is a danger to everyone. We will stop it by coming together—not by targeting people of AAPI heritage.
https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1250889199621832704
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/smashed-windows-racist-graffiti-vandals-target-asian-americans-amid-coronavirus-n1180556

Far-right Netherlands politician Baudet — who initiated the 2016 Dutch referendum against EU-Ukraine association agreement — admits in apps that he got paid by a Russian propagandist who "works for Putin".
https://twitter.com/StollmeyerEU/status/1250873561201414144

This is Chief Petty Officer Charles Robert Thacker Jr. He is the USS Theodore Roosevelt sailor who died of covid-19 this week. He tested positive for the coronavirus on March 30. Thacker's wife also is in the military, and was flown to Guam. He died by her side. RIP.
https://twitter.com/DanLamothe/status/1250901673515548673

A Chicago hospital treating severe Covid-19 patients with Gilead Sciences’ antiviral medicine remdesivir in a closely watched clinical trial is seeing rapid recoveries in fever & respiratory symptoms, with nearly all patients discharged in less than a week
https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/16/early-peek-at-data-on-gilead-coronavirus-drug-suggests-patients-are-responding-to-treatment/

Another Trump-backed conspiracy theory is dead. Judge Amy Berman Jackson just ruled that the jury foreperson in the Roger Stone case did not lie to the court and did not engage in misconduct during the trial. (Here is one example, of many times Trump made this false claim.)
https://twitter.com/MarshallCohen/status/1250920855762239494
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/judge-denies-new-trial-roger-stone-n1185826?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_np

The media’s framing for the most part is always Trump’s point of view. His words, his thousands of lies, just get repeated over and over, by WH correspondents who think they’re informing us, but actually they’re mostly a bunch of cowed and super-effective propaganda platforms.

You guys can do what you want. When things open up again I’m going to wait two more weeks because I don’t trust these people at all. Seems way too early to me.

It makes me irrationally angry when Pence or anyone up there says sh!t like "I know I speak for every American when I say thank you, Mr. President, for your hard work".

He reads a speech he obviously hasn't seen before and randomly emphasizes words and phrases that he thinks make him look strong and in command and it just sounds like a toddler. How the f!ck does the cult actually worship this trainwreck of a human being.

Carlin said it best: “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

I double dog dare a reporter to yell out "Is there someone else we could talk to?"

________________________________

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/joe-biden-pitches-himself-as-the-been-there-done-that-candidate-as-economic-and-health-crises-dominate-the-presidential-race/2020/04/16/ae0fd134-6aea-11ea-abef-020f086a3fab_story.html

Joe Biden pitches himself as the 'been there, done that' candidate as economic and health crises dominate the presidential race

By Matt Viser and Cleve R. Wootson Jr.

April 16, 2020 at 7:57 p.m. EDT

The deadly Ebola virus was spreading through West Africa, and top Obama administration officials were increasingly alarmed about Nigeria, the most populous nation in the continent. They needed the country to take action, and Joe Biden was tapped to deliver the message.

A few hours before an elaborate White House dinner for African leaders, the Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan, was summoned to a meeting in Biden's office in the West Wing. When the door closed, the vice president unleashed a string of warnings so forceful that it shocked those around him.

"He really pressed him and pressured him to ramp up Nigeria's efforts. I remember us all being surprised," said Lisa Monaco, a top homeland security adviser to President Barack Obama who at the time was helping manage the Ebola response.

The episode showcased Biden in a role he often played in the Obama administration, acting as a political Swiss Army knife brought out for specific jobs at certain moments of crisis. From the administration's opening days, he used relationships built up over decades in Washington to help blunt the impact of health crises, including Ebola, and push through a stimulus package to lift the country out of the worst economic collapse since the Depression.

As the country is again seized by a global health epidemic and economic turmoil, Biden is leaning on this record as voters determine whom they can best trust in a crisis, a judgment both Democrats and Republicans believe will be at the forefront of voters' minds in November. As President Trump tries to portray the former vice president as a bumbling bureaucrat, Biden is touting his experience — and the Obama administration's approach to handling crisis — and directly contrasting it with the response to the novel coronavirus by Trump and his federal team.

Trump and his supporters have dismissed the notion of Biden as a competent crisis manager, pointing to everything from shortages in the federal government stockpile that emerged after the Obama administration to Biden incorrectly referring to the H1N1 virus as N1H1.

"Biden was a joke," said Tim Murtaugh, communications director for the Trump campaign, citing several past stumbles. "Today he ineffectively snipes from the sidelines, offering suggestions for things President Trump is already doing, and desperately looking for relevance where there is none."

Highlighting Biden's suppport for trade policies such as NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Murtaugh added, "The idea that he can handle an economic crisis is laughable."

A review of the eight years Biden spent in the Obama administration, and interviews with nearly a dozen of those involved, showed that in moments of crisis Biden was relentless and enmeshed in the details. He could be sober and empathetic, but also prone to verbal miscues that other officials had to quickly clarify. He was less the originator of policies than the hammer to drive them into being.

The cauldron of those crises formed Biden's outlook on the current ones. Biden says he begins each day talking with his teams of health and economic advisers and keeps in touch with House and Senate leaders and mayors and governors around the country. (He also spoke recently with Trump to offer suggestions for handling the coronavirus; they agreed to keep most details of the conversation private, but both called it cordial.)

He has outlined an economic proposal to pump federal money into the economy — as the Obama administration did — and set up a presidential task force to oversee its implementation. He has called for legislation to forgive at least $10,000 per person of federal student loans, increase Social Security checks by $200 per month, and ensure no American pays out of pocket for medical care related to the coronavirus.

Biden has also been pressing for more testing of the coronavirus. He has criticized Trump for not taking action sooner to stop the spread of the virus and for not heeding early warnings to prevent it from spreading here.

More than anything, Biden is offering himself as the antithesis to Trump, a candidate who as president would delve into the details, defer to the experts and wrestle the full weight of the government to pursue his goals.

Economic collapse

As a snowstorm raged in Chicago in late 2008, the future president and vice president met with their economic team to figure out what to do about a plummeting economy. The two men had what one person in the room described as "FDR envy." They were pushing for signature programs and projects, like the Works Progress Administration or the Tennessee Valley Authority, that would be remembered half a century later as are Franklin Roosevelt's.

In many cases, they couldn't identify iconic projects, and with job figures plummeting they knew they had to come up with something fast. They decided to turn on the federal money spigot and let it flow as quickly as possible through stimulus spending. Some of it would go to states, others in the form of individual tax breaks.

Biden's primary role became selling it to his former Senate colleagues, trying to convince them to approve what became a $787 billion spending package known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

"Joe Biden, steady hand, working across the aisle, listening to people — he helped divert a depression, there's no question in my mind that that is the case," said former senator Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), a deficit hawk, who at the time was chairman of the Budget Committee.

"Now, in every detail was he right? No, nobody's going to be right in every part of a trillion-dollar package," Conrad added. "Did he, by his actions, help to divert a depression? Absolutely."

To win passage, the administration needed the votes of several Republicans. Biden targeted a half-dozen whom he called and cajoled, urging them to stand with him in a moment of crisis.

Among them was Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, an old friend who used to ride Amtrak with Biden back to their respective hometowns. Late one night in the days before the legislation would come to a vote, Biden called Specter's office and couldn't reach him. Minutes later, Specter's chief of staff Scott Hoeflich got a call on his cellphone from the White House switchboard.

"Scott, this is Joe," Biden said. "Where's Arlen?"

Hoeflich assured him they were trying to track the senator down. Shortly after, Biden called Hoeflich's cellphone again, asking for a status update. Biden also called Specter's home in Philadelphia and spoke with the senator's wife, who said her husband was sleeping. Eventually the two connected the next morning.

"He was relentless," Hoeflich said. "He was all over everything and everyone — in a positive way — super hands-on, super in the weeds."

Specter was getting enormous pressure to oppose the legislation, with Republicans worried about the cost. Biden kept emphasizing how important the legislation was to the country, and to the president. He also suggested that Specter would not face any opposition in his reelection bid the following year.

In the end, Biden helped convince three Republicans to vote for the legislation, among them Specter. The senator would soon switch to the Democratic Party, and in 2010 lose the seat he'd held for 30 years. He died in 2012.

"It did cost us politically," Hoeflich said.

It also became a seminal moment for how Obama viewed Biden, according to people close to both men. The first few weeks of their partnership had been bumpy — when Biden attempted a joke about Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. mixing up words in the oath of office, an irked Obama stood stone-faced — but Biden's efforts on the spending package had proved his value.

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/other/39441-biden-jokes-about-robertss-memory

After the bill's passage, Biden oversaw its implementation, keeping tabs on projects large and small around the country to rebuild roads and bridge and install new train lines.

"There's a theme that runs through all of this," said Jared Bernstein, who was Biden's chief economic adviser at the time. "He strongly believes in the importance of competent governance. To the level you'd expect to see from a retail politician."

Biden would call small-town mayors to check in, and he expressed an interest in details like the health of the trees that were being planted.

"He likes this word 'granular.' He uses that word a lot, then and now," Bernstein said. "He likes a tangible feel of what's going on. If I would tell him, 'We need a stimulus that's 4 percent of GDP,' he'd get it. But that's not what got him out of bed in the morning."

It was, Bernstein said, "the kind of moment that the federal government could either shine or fail. And he wanted it to shine."

Yet the measure he helped to push through also ignited new political movements — some on the right, who were frustrated with the growing size of government, and others on the left, who felt that it failed to punish Wall Street and overlooked the middle class.

"The response to the crisis was a . . . disaster, that's the basic problem. It was a nightmare," said Matthew Stoller, a fellow at the Open Markets Institute and the author of "Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy." "The reality is the response, the lack of prosecutions, the concentration of wealth, the amnesty for white collar criminals — it led directly to the kind of [animus] that got Trump elected."

An ill-advised warning

In the midst of trying to sell the recovery act package, the administration was also trying to figure out how to handle the H1N1 influenza virus, also known as the swine flu. The first U.S. case was detected in April 2009, and over the next year the pandemic would kill nearly 12,500 Americans and up to 575,000 worldwide, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Trump has recently claimed that Biden "was in charge of the H1N1 Swine Flu epidemic which killed thousands of people."

But Biden was not in charge or deeply involved at all, according to former Obama administration officials, because he was focused on the economic recovery. He went to meetings where the topic was discussed but was not involved beyond that.

Still, he did have an impact early on in the response, with comments that caused the White House to scramble. Obama had warned Americans who are sick to avoid traveling in confined spaces. Biden went further.

"I would tell members of my family — and I have — I wouldn't go anywhere in confined places now. It's not that it's going to Mexico, it's [that] you're in a confined aircraft. When one person sneezes, it goes all the way through the aircraft," Biden said on NBC's "Today" show.

"That's me," he said. "I would not be, at this point, if they had another way of transportation, suggesting they ride the subway."

Biden's comments were not in line with what health experts were warning. They triggered frustrated responses from the still-struggling travel industry, which urged Americans to listen to medical professionals rather than politicians.

"To suggest that people not fly at this stage of things is a broad-brush stroke bordering on fear-mongering," American Airlines spokesman Tim Smith told the Associated Press.

Biden's office tried to clarify that he was only warning sick people not to travel, but other administration and Cabinet officials were brought out to reassure travelers.

"If anybody was unduly alarmed for whatever reason, we would apologize for that," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said during a White House briefing.

'Ignoring politics and letting science dictate'

If only tangentially involved in the H1N1 fight, Biden did have a more pivotal role several years later when cases of lethal Ebola began spreading. As advisers briefed Obama, Biden and others, the administration began identifying major impediments to a global response and rallying the world to address it — the sort of approach that Biden, six years later, would criticize Trump for abandoning.

"We're talking today about flatting the curve," Monaco said. "It was a similar thing in West Africa. . . . We really needed to slow the acceleration of the cases we were identifying."

When the African leaders arrived at the White House for a prearranged conference, top administration officials set up meetings between several delegations and Biden. They wanted him to be the one to confront the Nigerian president over his lack of response, and they wanted it to be done in an intimate setting, so the message could be relayed clearly without embarrassing the foreign leader.

"The very direct message was the government needed to be pushed to do more with its detection and surveillance," said Grant Harris, who was Obama's principal adviser on issues related to Africa. "It couldn't wait or risk being complacent or put too much strategy in hope."

It was a message that Biden often would be called upon to deliver, this time a few hours before a White House dinner of dry-aged beef, plantains and coconut milk.

"Biden has a unique talent with foreign leaders," said Colin Kahl, who was Biden's national security adviser during part of the Ebola response and who now teaches at Stanford. "He establishes relationships of trust. He can be their friend and have a smile on his face while jabbing them in the chest to urge action on things. It's a hard trick to pull off."

Then as now, there were calls for a travel ban. But this time — unlike with swine flu — Biden was pushing against one.

"There was a real pushback from science and public health experts that that would be really counterproductive," Monaco said. "It would discourage public health workers who we needed to go there. If they couldn't get back, how would you get anyone to go?"

"There was a period where there was a lot of fear, a lot of panic," she added. "As things got tense in terms of discussion and political pressure about having a travel ban, he was a very strong voice on ignoring politics and letting science dictate what our plans should be."

The administration set up a task force that was led by Ron Klain, who was Biden's former chief of staff. Nearly 3,000 U.S. troops were sent to Africa to help stop the spread, and Congress approved $5.4 billion in emergency funding for Ebola treatment.

And early on, the State Department transported two health workers — who had contracted the virus while working with patients in Monrovia, Liberia — to Emory University in Atlanta.

The decision attracted the attention of a New York businessman.

"Ebola patient will be brought to the U.S. in a few days - now I know for sure that our leaders are incompetent," Donald Trump wrote in the first of more than 100 tweets about Ebola. "KEEP THEM OUT OF HERE!"

"The U.S. cannot allow EBOLA infected people back," he wrote the next day. "People that go to far away places to help out are great-but must suffer the consequences!"

It was a few days later when Biden met with Jonathan, the Nigerian president, to pressure him to take more action.

Three days after that meeting, the Nigerian president declared a national state of emergency. And over the next two weeks, the country built an Ebola Treatment Unit, trained 2,300 health staff, performed 19,000 home visits and screened 150,000 travelers at airports.

"This is how it should be: swift, effective and comprehensive action in defense of citizens," Jonathan said that October in a national address to hail the country's curtailing of the disease.

The outbreak raged throughout portions of West Africa for two years, killing more than 11,300. In Nigeria, there was a minimal death toll: eight.
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Congratulations: Michael Cohen will be released early from prison due to the coronavirus pandemic and will serve the remainder of his sentence in home confinement, according to people familiar with the matter and his lawyer.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/16/politics/michael-cohen-to-be-released-prison-coronavirus/index.html