6.6 million Americans applied for unemployment insurance last week alone — a gut-punching figure. This brings the total who have filed during the pandemic to 17 million.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/09/66-million-americans-filed-unemployed-last-week-bringing-pandemic-total-over-17-million/
Biden rolls out new policies on Medicare and student debt in effort to court Sanders supporters. The policy announcements directly reference Sanders and his supporters, noting that they can "take pride in their work in laying the groundwork for these ideas." | Lower the Medicare age from 65 to 60 | Forgive student debt for low-income and middle-class individuals who have attended public colleges and universities. | Specifically, Biden's proposal forgives all undergraduate tuition-related federal student debt from two- and four-year public colleges and universities — as well as private Historically Black Colleges and Universities and private, underfunded Minority-Serving Institutions. | It would apply to debt-holders earning up to $125,000, with "appropriate phase-outs to avoid a cliff."
https://medium.com/@JoeBiden/joe-biden-outlines-new-steps-to-ease-economic-burden-on-working-people-e3e121037322
Wisconsin is discovering problems with absentee ballots, including hundreds that were never delivered
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/04/08/wisconsin-election-3-tubs-ballots-found-mail-processing-center/2971078001/
Three “large tubs”: Reports of missing absentee ballots pile up day after election in Wisconsin
https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/three-large-tubs-reports-of-missing-absentee-ballots-pile-up/article_a8d25435-5dfa-5e55-a422-b26477321894.html
FAUCI says US coronavirus fatalities may be as low as 60,000—far less than previous models, due to physical distancing. "Having said that we better be careful that we don't say, OK, we're doing so well we could pull back,” nation’s top infectious disease expert said on @NBCNews.
https://twitter.com/JenniferJJacobs/status/1248225061057843204
Saudi Arabia announced that the kingdom and its allies would observe a unilateral cease-fire in Yemen. If it sticks, the cease-fire would be the first nationwide truce in five years of war in Yemen.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/world/middleeast/saudi-yemen-ceasefire-coronavirus.html
First responders in Queen Creek, Arizona lined up outside Banner Hospital to thank healthcare workers for all the work they're doing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Take a look at the drone video that captured the hospital's shift change and line of emergency vehicles.
https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1248188899828080645
Reminder: “The rate at which black people are dying, compared to whites, is really just astounding. There are patterns at this intersection of race and socioeconomic status that make it very clear this is just not a story about poverty.”
https://apnews.com/71d952faad4a2a5d14441534f7230c7c
Former fake Navy secretary Thomas Modly's trip to Guam cost almost a quarter of a million dollars
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/08/politics/former-navy-secretary-trip-cost/index.html
New Document Shows Inadequate Distribution of Personal Protective Equipment and Critical Medical Supplies to States | “The document the Oversight Committee is releasing today shows that the federal government has distributed just a fraction of the personal protective equipment and critical medical supplies that our hospitals and medical first responders urgently need. | “Now that the national stockpile has been depleted of critical equipment, it appears that the Administration is leaving states to fend for themselves, to scour the open market for these scarce supplies, and to compete with each other and federal agencies in a chaotic, free-for-all bidding war. | “The President failed to bring in FEMA early on, failed to name a national commander for this crisis, and failed to fully utilize the authorities Congress gave him under the Defense Production Act to procure and manage the distribution of critical supplies. He must take action now to address these deficiencies.”
https://oversight.house.gov/news/press-releases/new-document-shows-inadequate-distribution-of-personal-protective-equipment-and
https://oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight.house.gov/files/documents/SNS%20PPE%20REPORT.pdf
Tennis Tournament Wimbledon paid pandemic insurance for almost 20 years. Now it’s getting $141 Million | A week after Wimbledon organizers canceled the tournament due to the coronavirus pandemic, more details have emerged about how an infectious disease clause in its insurance policy will help offset an estimated revenue loss of around £250 million. Wimbledon is set to receive around £114 million ($141 million) from the policy, according to the Action Network, a figure in line with The Times’ reporting last week, which estimated the payout to be in excess of £100 million. “We’re fortunate to have the insurance and it helps,” said Richard Lewis, Wimbledon’s outgoing chief executive, in an interview with The Guardian. “The insurers, the brokers and everybody involved have been excellent to work with so far, but there’s still a lot of work to do.”
https://www.sbnation.com/tennis/2020/4/8/21214031/wimbledon-canceled-pandemic-insurance-141-million
Detectives have raided the Ruby Princess cruise ship to seize evidence and question crew members about the docking and disembarkation of passengers in Sydney three weeks ago. The vessel is linked to hundreds of Covid-19 cases and more than a dozen deaths across Australia.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/apr/09/nsw-police-raid-ruby-princess-to-seize-evidence-and-question-crew-about-coronavirus-scandal
STOP EATING MEAT ALREADY. GO VEGAN. African swine fever outbreak reported in western Poland. The meat industry is so cruel and inhumane, not to mention horrible for the environment.
https://theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/08/african-swine-fever-outbreak-reported-in-western-poland
A Woman Gave Birth In A Border Patrol Station Still Wearing Her Pants. Now The Agents Involved Are Being Accused Of Abuse.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emaoconnor/pregnant-woman-birth-border-patrol-aclu-complaint
Can you reopen the Trial, Chuck? You didn’t hear any witnesses, you know.....: Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a longtime advocate for inspectors general and government oversight across political party and administration, today led a bipartisan group of lawmakers in calling on President Trump to provide a detailed written explanation for his decision to remove an inspector general. In a letter, the lawmakers underscore the important role inspectors general play in holding agencies accountable and outline the removal procedures, which are designed to prevent political interference. Cosigners of Grassley’s letter include Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Ron Wyden (D-Ore), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.). The 2008 Inspector General Reform Act requires the president to provide Congress with a written explanation at least 30 days prior to removing an inspector general. On Friday, President Trump informed Congress of his intention to remove Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, citing a lack of confidence. However, the 2008 law requires additional details. “Congressional intent is clear that an expression of lost confidence, without further explanation, is not sufficient to fulfill the requirements of the statute. This is in large part because Congress intended that inspectors general only be removed when there is clear evidence of wrongdoing or failure to perform the duties of the office, and not for reasons unrelated to their performance, to help preserve IG independence,” the senators wrote. The senators also raised concern about Atkinson being immediately placed on paid administrative leave, effectively removing him from his post prior to the 30-day expiration. | Specifically, current law requires that you inform the Senate and House Intelligence Committees in writing of the reasons for your removal of the IC IG, at least 30 days prior to that removal.[3] However, in your recent letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee, you stated only that, “it is vital that [you] have the fullest confidence” in those serving as IGs and that “this is no longer the case” with regard to Mr. Atkinson.[4] Further, according to public reports, Mr. Atkinson already was placed on administrative leave, effectively removing him from his position prior to the completion of the statutorily required notice period.[5]
https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/grassley-leads-bipartisan-call-safeguard-inspector-general-independence-following
http://www.grassley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/2020-04-08%20CEG%20et%20al%20to%20POTUS%20%28IC%20IG%20removal%29.pdf
"If there is going to be class warfare in this country, it’s about time the working class won that war." -- Bernie Sanders
If you are a Bernie supporter and don’t vote for Biden then you aren’t a progressive and it was never about the movement. Trump is the literal definition of what Bernie is against. Voting for Trump or a third-party candidate or writing-in somebody is the same as destroying everything Bernie worked for. Bernie will be voting Democrat straight down his ballot.
Jacobin writer @MeaganDay who's been trending lately calling Kamala hard-on-crime as an insult when her dad's predatory furniture-lending parent company was prosecuted by none other than CA Attorney General Kamala Harris for $28.4 million.
https://twitter.com/saintmaddysday/status/1237459103313772547
"People with a lot more at stake then you in the deep south chose Biden. If you can’t stand with them and do this minor thing, I question your commitment to progressive values"
https://twitter.com/schmangee/status/1247920659566678017
For those of you who plan to sit this election out or vote for Trump, just stop. The livelihoods of millions of marginalized people are at stake. We must all fight like hell to get Donald Trump out of the White House and end the rise of fascism in this country.
https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1247925162365931527
YEP: Matthew Yglesias: "The Sunrise Movement people did a tremendous disservice to their constituents’ understanding of the issues, and dealt a potentially devastating blow to their own cause, by giving Biden that utterly absurd F grade."
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1248253620824530945
Creating a situation in which you cannot articulate a difference between a candidate whose agenda would lower greenhouse gas emissions (Joe Biden) and one whose agenda would raise them (Donald Trump) is just total malpractice.
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1248254193703493633
If Trump is reelected, it’s a indescribable disaster. It means that the policies of the past four years, which have been extremely destructive to the American population, to the world, will be continued and probably accelerated. What this is going to mean for health is bad enough. I just mentioned the Lancet figures. It will get worse. What this means for the environment or the threat of nuclear war, which no one is talking about but is extremely serious, is indescribable.
It’s common to say now that the Sanders campaign failed. I think that’s a mistake. I think it was an extraordinary success, completely shifted the arena of debate and discussion. Issues that were unthinkable a couple years ago are now right in the middle of attention. The worst crime he committed, in the eyes of "the establishment", is not the policies he’s proposing per se; it’s the fact that he was able to inspire popular movements, which had already been developing, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Justice Democrats, many others - and turn them into a permanent unified nationalised grassroots movement capable of permanently applying constant pressure, constant activism, and so on, against Democrats as much as Republicans. That will affect a Biden administration.
Here's a breakdown of the North Carolina state Senate race. Democrats believe that, under the new lines, they have a path to the majority, which would require netting four seats. Republicans are confident but believe it'll take $$$ to defend their majority: Thanks to state-level redistricting, North Carolina Democrats are optimistic that the can take back the state senate for the first time since 2010.
https://www.nationaljournal.com/s/705927/the-other-north-carolina-senate-race
Happening even here in the US. Puerto Rico just signed a new decree which will allow for prosecution of those who share false information, including journalists & social media commentators. It's a slippery slope in violation of the First Amendment.
https://pen.org/press-release/puerto-rico-decree-on-criminalizing-pandemic-disinformation-unconstitutional/
@AttorneyNora voices concern that in the absence of #tech platforms enforcing accountability, there has been an 'uptick' in governments criminalizing #misinformation and #disinformation - BUT countries are beginning to utilize these laws to target #Dissent and #journalism
https://twitter.com/Tech4GS/status/1248295676473004032
Senate Democrats stalled Trump's request for $250 billion to supplement a coronavirus paycheck protection program, demanding protections for minority-owned businesses and money for health care providers and state and local governments.
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1248303467220746243
Yep, Democrats hyped the extreme end (millions of Americans will be infected and hundreds of thousands will die!) and Republicans hype the other extreme end (it's a hoax to attack Trump, nevermind that 180 countries are infected, get back to work!): The COVID-19 pandemic has been accompanied by wrenching images, from previously healthy people hooked up to ventilators to photos of normally packed plazas and boulevards standing almost empty. But in the United States, perhaps none have been so widely shared – and derided -- as pictures of college students partying on then still-open beaches in Florida, celebrating spring break. As one partier infamously put it on March 18: “If I get corona, I get corona. At the end of the day, I’m not gonna let it stop me from partying.” All of this led to outrage on social media, along with loud demands that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis close the beaches and put spring break effectively out of business. The governor refused. This has led to confident predictions that Florida had been seeded with coronavirus cases and was likely to emerge as the next hot spot. | So what do we actually see in the data (which are admittedly imperfect, about which more below)? If spring break was really creating an epidemic in Florida, we should expect to see a “bending of the curve” – in the wrong direction – starting to emerge about five days after spring break. This curve-bending should also be more severe than what we see occurring in most other states, assuming that what Florida did was uniquely dangerous. | I’ve taken the data from the indispensable Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering dashboard, which tracks outbreaks of the virus by nation, state and county. The data are current as of April 7, 2020. I’ve then traced the number of reported cases by state dating back to March 15, a few days before the spring break stories broke. This is useful because cases that were seeded by spring break partiers largely should have presented by now as well as many of the second-order transmissions. As you can see, New York and, to a lesser extent, New Jersey dominate the caseload in the United States. You may not be able to read the state names in the bottom right (click on the chart to enlarge it), but Florida is in the cluster well beneath New York and New Jersey. Whatever else we might say about Florida, it isn’t the next New York, at least not yet. | Regardless, Florida’s relative position has been remarkably stable during this time period. It has fluctuated between having the fifth most cases (multiple times) and the ninth most cases (March 16, 25, and 28). Regardless, if you want to know what a spring break surge might look like, check out Louisiana (which goes from 41st in cases to fifth over this time period, possibly due to Mardi Gras) and Michigan (which goes from 43rd to third, for who knows what reason). So far, at least, the trend in Florida isn’t consistent with an exploding caseload. Even this might not be fair to Florida. It is, after all, the third most populous state in the nation. We’d expect it to have more cases than, say, Wyoming, even if it were doing a good job containing the virus. We can redo the above charts examining cases per million residents: | On a per capita basis, we see a bit more separation. New York, New Jersey, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Michigan stand out as states with caseloads increasing at unusual rates. Florida, however, is buried in the middle of the pack. We can see this better by removing the preceding six states. | Florida is wedged between Nevada and Mississippi, along with Idaho. Again, we’re not seeing the sort of exponential growth that we would expect to see had the media meltdown over spring break been fully justified. Finally, after fluctuating wildly early on (at a time where a fraction of a case per million could move a state more than 10 ranks), Florida has stabilized in the middle of the pack in terms of rank. Overall, Florida (so far) doesn’t seem to be showing the sort of unusual acceleration that we would expect if it were really en route to becoming the next New York. Having said that, this article is headlined with a question -- for a couple of reasons. First, this pandemic is not over. Florida could explode tomorrow. It’s probably too early to answer the question, but we should at least be willing to contemplate it. Second, there are reasons to push back against the above analysis. We turn to those reasons now, but they illustrate a couple of broader points about the way we should think, and write, about the pandemic. | Half of all states have tested between 0.45% and 0.86% of the population – a very narrow band. The overall range is just 1.5%. Florida’s hasn’t tested the most people in the country, but it hasn’t tested the fewest either. It’s tested a larger share than states generally recognized as doing a good job with the virus, such as Ohio and California. It’s tested more than states with large outbreaks, such as Michigan. Overall, it seems hard to explain away the fact that New York currently has 11 times as many cases per capita as Florida on the grounds that New York has tested three times as many people per capita as Florida. Nonetheless, a friend I know and trust (and who has taught me a lot about this outbreak) suggests that beachgoing college students have gone back home after spring break ended and have seeded their states with this nasty virus. This probably happened, at least to some extent, and my point isn’t that there were zero costs associated with letting spring break move forward. But it seems unlikely that the people who infected vacationers in Florida wouldn’t have also infected native Floridians and other locals on the beach, including bartenders, hotel staff, and so forth. That, after all, is the storyline about how spring break was supposed to create an explosion in Florida. Some of this probably occurred, but for whatever reason, it hasn’t yet led to a Florida explosion. You can look at the locations where the virus is picking up in Florida and infer that the counties are also spring break hotspots -- though you would presumably have to explain the large number of cases in Sumter County (The Villages) via a different mechanism -- but these are also the more urbanized areas that typify viral spread in other states. We’d expect Miami-Dade to have an outsized number of cases even without spring break. These are also, incidentally, places where New Yorkers fleeing the city were landing, which makes it all the more surprising that Florida isn’t following New York’s trajectory (yet). Regardless, the variation in cases among counties in Florida isn’t that large; no county yet has more than 10 cases per 10,000 residents, with most of the counties with at least one case clustered between two and five cases per 10,000 residents. Incidentally, Volusia County, which includes Daytona Beach, is on the lower end of that range even though it didn’t close its beaches until Friday. There were also reasons from the start to be skeptical of the spring break explosion storyline: for example, that DeSantis had already banned gatherings in excess of 10 people. Most of the infamous pictures of crowded beaches were taken from far away, but if you look closely most of the clusters of people aren’t really that close. Perhaps most importantly, there’s evidence that heat slows the spread of the virus. If you had to have people not socially distancing, a hot, sunny beach without smooth surfaces and with lots of salt water is probably a good place to have it happen. Of course, part of the problem with spring break isn’t what happens on the beaches – indeed the worst social distancing violations probably happen off the beaches. But the point isn’t that there were zero transmissions during spring break. It’s simply that we don’t see the out-of-control transmission some expected. Which brings me to my final point. In response to this information, a person might argue that even if Florida didn’t get a New York-style explosion in cases, it probably has more cases than if it had closed down the beaches and theme parks earlier. I’m inclined to agree. But I’m not sure that avoiding what seems to be at best a fairly marginal (for now) increase in cases beyond what the state would have suffered is clearly worth the damage it would have done to local businesses by cutting off spring break. In other words, DeSantis might have gotten the cost-benefit right.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/04/09/did_ron_desantis_make_the_right_call_142905.html
https://www.physiciansweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/Reuters_Direct_Media/HealthNewsOnlineReport/tagreuters.com2020binary_LYNXMPEG2A17P-VIEWIMAGE.jpg
https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/destinations/2020/03/19/spring-break-beaches-florida-look-packed-despite-coronavirus-spread/2873248001/
https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1240371160078000128
https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2020/03/24/dumbest-s-desantis-takes-heat-as-he-goes-his-own-way-on-coronavirus-1268818
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.htmlfZtY5De3qtiS01mOec#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6+
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/florida-could-be-the-next-new-york-in-the-coronavirus-outbreak
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2020-03-17/florida-bans-gatherings-of-more-than-10-on-beaches-amid-coronavirus-spring-break-concerns
https://kfor.com/news/national/video-shows-packed-florida-beach-amid-coronavirus-warnings/
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3551767
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/health/story/2020-04-01/social-distancing-working-san-diego
Up to 150 Members of the Saudi Royal Family Infected With Coronavirus
https://www.newsweek.com/150-members-saudi-arabia-royal-family-infected-coronavirus-report-1497032
Italy says number of doctors killed by coronavirus passes 100
https://www.france24.com/en/20200409-italy-says-number-of-doctors-killed-by-coronavirus-passes-100
The fossilised skulls of dinosaur embryos that died within their eggs about 200m years ago, have been digitally reconstructed by scientists, shedding new light on the animals’ development, and how close they were to hatching.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/apr/09/scientists-digitally-reconstruct-skulls-of-dinosaurs-in-fossilised-eggs
LOL Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. on Wednesday said that arrest warrants had been issued for reporters from The New York Times and ProPublica after both publications wrote stories criticizing his decision last month to partially reopen his Virginia-based college.
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/492015-liberty-university-police-issue-arrest-warrants-for-nyt-propublica-reporters
LOL The arrest warrants Jerry Falwell Jr. says have been issued for 2 journalists came from Liberty University's police department
https://www.businessinsider.com/falwell-jr-warrants-on-journalists-came-from-liberty-campus-police-2020-4
Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump and the Trump Organization just suffered a major defeat in federal court–losing a battle to have a years-old so-called “racketeering enterprising” lawsuit against them decided via secret arbitration. Those claims are now all but certain to be litigated publicly. The class action plaintiffs originally filed suit in October 2018, alleging the Trump family members and their family-owned business promoted and endorsed a multi-level marketing, or pyramid, scheme known as ACN Opportunity, LLC. But those business ventures clearly didn’t pan out. Essentially, the plaintiffs claim, ACN was a classic American “get-rich-quick scheme” that relied on Trump and his family “conn[ing] each of these victims into giving up hundreds or thousands of dollars.” The plaintiffs contend that the Trump family falsely endorsed and promoted ACN by insisting that the enterprise “offered a reasonable probability of commercial success.”
https://lawandcrime.com/lawsuit/trump-family-loses-huge-court-fight-to-force-racketeering-enterprise-lawsuit-into-secret-arbitration/
People treat social media like casual conversation with ten million of their closest friends and they just blurt things out. The consequences are far reaching.
This is the person who started the “Kamala is a cop” talking point. She's a convicted pedophile.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1248078321839230977.html
Baby QAnon Was Just Arrested | The feds arrested the self-proclaimed QAnon founder after he posted images of NFL players’ brain scans.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/baby-qanon-was-just-arrested
I used to think the problem with some Bernie Sanders supporters was that only Bernie Sanders, and no other politician, was good enough for them (hence tearing down progressive-but-not-quite-as-progressive candidates and politicians). I now realize I was wrong. The problem with some Bernie Sanders supporters is that even Bernie Sanders isn't good enough for them. The real Bernie Sanders is a pretty piss-poor "neolib" sellout compared to the Bernie Sanders that exists in their head.
National Press Secretary for the Bernie Sanders: Biden supporters should focus on door knocking, organizing, and backing policies that Americans actually want, like Medicare for All, free public college, medical debt cancellation, and a wealth tax. Berating people online isn’t it.
https://twitter.com/briebriejoy/status/1248304211437277184
The rest of us: If Americans "actually wanted" Bernie's policies, we would have voted for him. The problem is not even always with his goals -- it's with his inability to chart a course to get there that doesn't rely on Republican officeholders suddenly turning Marxist and OKing Free Everything.
https://twitter.com/Kat4Obama/status/1248315150253223936
We’re all Biden people now. Unless you’re a Trump person.
https://twitter.com/JJohnsonLaw/status/1248321865489227776
Trump and Republicans are wrong about the dangers of absentee ballots | To begin with, election fraud has been rare in this country for decades. Impersonation fraud, where one person shows up at the polling place claiming to be a voter who died or moved, is practically nonexistent, yet it has formed the excuse for some Republican-led states to pass strict voter-identification laws that many Democrats believe are motivated by a desire to deter their likely voters. Given that record, it is easy to think that the new Republican warnings about mail-in voting are similarly vacuous. But the picture is more complicated. Ballots cast outside the watchful eye of election officials can be stolen, altered, sold or destroyed — crimes often committed not by voters, but against them. Think of the 2018 race in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, in which the evidence that a Republican operative had arranged to destroy and alter absentee ballots was so overwhelming that the state’s bipartisan election board unanimously required the election to be held again. According to the well-constructed News21 database, absentee-ballot ballot fraud made up 24.2 percent of all reported prosecutions of election crimes between 2000 and 2012. But the total number of cases was just 491 — during a period in which literally billions of votes were cast. While certain pockets of the country have seen their share of absentee-ballot scandals, problems are extremely rare in the five states that rely primarily on vote-by-mail, including the heavily Republican state of Utah. Election design requires tradeoffs. Many states offer absentee balloting because they realize that the tremendous convenience to voters outweighs the small risk of fraud. Now, of course, the covid-19 pandemic has radically elevated the risk of gathering at polling stations, making mail-in balloting a crucial alternative. Consider this week’s primary in Wisconsin, during which 175 of 180 polling places in Milwaukee were closed. The state could not keep up with all the absentee-ballot requests, leaving some voters to choose between being unable to vote or risking their health to cast a ballot. | Next, states should send an application for an absentee ballot to every voter listed on voting rolls. They should not send the ballot itself until a voter requests one, since voting rolls in many states unfortunately are not accurate enough. Voters should also be allowed to request absentee ballots online. States should also prevent the unlimited collection of absentee ballots by private individuals — sometimes pejoratively referred to as “ballot harvesting.” North Carolina prohibited unlimited collection, but that ban was not enforced and collection allowed the actual ballot tampering that took place. I favor Colorado’s system which allows one person to collect no more than 10 ballots. There are some voters who need assistance getting their votes to the U.S. mail or to a state collection box, such as some on Native American reservations or those who are elderly or disabled. States should also ensure that ballot collection limitations do not put additional burdens on minority voters, as a federal court recently found happened in Arizona. Finally, we should not forget that absentee ballots are more likely to be rejected than ballots cast in person, often because of voter error that cannot be corrected as it can in person. Absentee voters should be told if their ballots are being rejected for technical reasons — such as a purported mismatched signature — and have the chance to cure the problem and have their ballot counted.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/09/trump-is-wrong-about-dangers-absentee-ballots/
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/briannasacks/dowless-britt-inside-north-carolina-absentee-ballot-machine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Harris_(North_Carolina_politician)#Investigation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCrae_Dowless
https://votingrights.news21.com/article/about/
https://votingrights.news21.com/interactive/election-fraud-database/
https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/all-mail-elections.aspx
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/01/27/arizona-ballot-harvesting-law-discriminates-minority-voters-ninth-circuit/4589610002/
Hospitals say feds are seizing masks and other coronavirus supplies without a word | Trump has directed states and hospitals to secure what supplies they can, the federal government is quietly seizing orders, leaving medical providers across the country in the dark about where the material is going and how they can get what they need to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. Hospital and clinic officials in seven states described the seizures in interviews over the past week. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is not publicly reporting the acquisitions, despite the outlay of millions of dollars of taxpayer money, nor has the administration detailed how it decides which supplies to seize and where to reroute them. Officials who’ve had materials seized also say they’ve received no guidance from the government about how or if they will get access to the supplies they ordered. That has stoked concerns about how public funds are being spent and whether the Trump administration is fairly distributing scarce medical supplies. | “Are they stockpiling this stuff? Are they distributing it? We don’t know,” one official said. “And are we going to ever get any of it back if we need supplies? It would be nice to know these things.”
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-04-07/hospitals-washington-seize-coronavirus-supplies
86-Year-Old Is Killed in E.R. Over Social Distancing | The woman became disoriented and grabbed the IV pole of another patient, who shoved her and caused a fatal head wound, officials said. | By Edgar Sandoval April 8, 2020 | One Saturday afternoon in late March, as the coronavirus pandemic flooded hospitals across New York City with desperately ill people, an 86-year-old lost her bearings and started wandering the emergency room at Woodhull Medical and Mental Health Center in Brooklyn. The woman, Janie Marshall, who had dementia, grabbed onto another patient’s IV pole to regain her balance and orient herself, the police said. The patient, Cassandra Lundy, 32, had apparently become irate that Ms. Marshall had broken the six feet of personal space recommended to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus, law enforcement officials said. Ms. Lundy shoved the older woman, knocking her to the floor. Ms. Marshall struck her head and died three hours later. Ms. Marshall’s death underscored how hospital officials are struggling to keep order in health care facilities overrun by the pandemic, as crowding generates a new level of fear and anxiety. Initially, hospital officials handed Ms. Lundy a summons for disorderly conduct. But a week later, after the medical examiner ruled Ms. Marshall’s death a homicide, the police charged Ms. Lundy with manslaughter and assault. “How do you put your hands on a 86-year-old woman?” said Ms. Marshall’s grandniece, Antoinette Leonard Jean Charles, 41, a medical student in Tennessee. “I also understand the fear level of every person in New York has. There is a notion of every man for themselves. But attacking an elderly person? That went too far.” A spokesman for Brooklyn Defender Services, which is representing Ms. Lundy, declined to comment. New York officials imposed social-distancing rules — maintaining space between people to stop the spread of the highly contagious coronavirus virus — in mid-March, shortly after the metropolis became the epicenter of the outbreak in the United States. The virus has claimed the lives of thousands of New Yorkers in a little more than a month. In a statement, Woodhull hospital officials said they were cooperating with investigators. “We are terribly saddened by this death,” the hospital said in a statement. “We are committed to ensuring a safe, health-focused environment in these very demanding times so our heroic health care workers can continue to deliver the quality, compassionate care New Yorkers need more than ever.” The events that led to Ms. Marshall’s death began on March 27, when she told her niece she had a piercing stomachache. The niece, Eleanor Leonard, 72, called an ambulance, which took Ms. Marshall to Woodhull, where she had been treated for similar symptoms earlier in the week. In the crowded emergency room, Ms. Marshall was diagnosed with a blocked bowel, and doctors said they would admit her, Ms. Leonard said. But the hospital, in an effort to limit the spread of the coronavirus, did not allow Ms. Leonard or other family members to stay with her in the emergency room. Ms. Leonard said she could do nothing but wait by the phone for updates. The next day at about 2 p.m., Ms. Marshall, disoriented, began walking around the emergency room, the police said. She crossed paths with Ms. Lundy, and the women — both from Brooklyn — got into an argument before the younger woman pushed her to the ground. Ms. Marshall hit her head on the floor, lost consciousness and died hours later, investigators said. Ms. Lundy told detectives she had shoved Ms. Marshall because she “got into the defendant’s space,” according to a criminal complaint. The attack was captured on surveillance video, the complaint said. Unaware of Ms. Marshall’s injury, Ms. Leonard kept calling the hospital that day. She finally reached someone shortly after 5 p.m. who told her that Ms. Marshall was with a nurse receiving medical care. “I thought, ‘That’s great. She’s being tended to,’” Ms. Leonard recalled. “I didn’t know she was dead already.” Ms. Leonard went to sleep feeling hopeful. Her phone rang at 3:30 the next morning. A doctor told her that Ms. Marshall had gone into cardiac arrest. “Are you telling me she’s dead?” Ms. Leonard recalled saying. “What happened?” Ms. Leonard said she went to the hospital later that morning, but after several hours of waiting was sent home without an explanation. “We thought it was weird, cardiac arrest?” Ms. Jean Charles, the grandniece, said. “She had gone in for something completely different. She suffered from dementia, bowel blockage, not heart problems that we knew of.” Then a cousin on Long Island called Ms. Leonard with troubling news. He had seen a news report online. “Did you know your aunt was murdered?” the cousin asked. Ms. Leonard then searched her aunt’s name on Google and saw news accounts. “I was so stunned,” she said. “It just tore at my gut that something like this would happen.” Ms. Leonard wonders why hospital officials did not inform her about the incident when it happened. “I understand we are in the middle of a pandemic,” she said, “but to say nothing?” Ms. Lundy has previous arrests, including charges of drug possession in 2018 and 2019, according to court records. It remained unclear why she had visited the hospital that night. Ms. Marshall was born in Abbeville, S.C., in 1934, the youngest of 12 children. Her parents died when she was young and she followed some of her siblings to New York City, settling in Williamsburg, family members said.
“She arrived with big dreams and wide eyes, ready to take on the world,” Ms. Jean Charles said. She became a successful accountant at a time when few black women practiced the profession, eventually working for the Social Security Administration and earning a bachelor’s degree from Queens College. She never married or had children, but she was a role model to her numerous nieces and nephews, her relatives said. “We don’t want to remember her as a victim,” Ms. Jean Charles said. “She always told us, there is no shame in being the first African-American in any field. She was a leader.” As it has become customary during the coronavirus pandemic, Ms. Marshall’s relatives and members of her church, Concord Baptist Church of Christ in Brooklyn, were planning to attend a virtual funeral service on Tuesday to abide by social-distancing rules, her family said. Ms. Leonard said she planned to ride in a limousine by herself to Pinelawn Memorial Park on Long Island and bid her one last farewell from inside the vehicle. “We want to obey social-distancing rules, and yet she died because of these social-distancing rules,” Ms. Jean-Charles said. “It’s ironic in a very sad way.” | Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/nyregion/coronavirus-brooklyn-janie-marshall-cassandra-lundy.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/nyregion/ny-coronavirus-hospitals.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/27/nyregion/coronavirus-new-york-update.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/05/us/coronavirus-dilemmas-mourning.html
My sister Laura is insane! Dismissing the advice of Dr. Fauci and other medical experts only to prop up her “chosen one” is not only reckless but deadly. Is she looking for more evidence to be used against her in the legal suit against FOX? Easter my #$&@ Laura! @IngrahamAngle
https://twitter.com/CurtisIngraham1/status/1247693628211752961
Trump spent all of January and February praising China while he was downplaying the virus. He even praised them saying they were being transparent.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/25/politics/trump-coronavirus-china/index.html
A whopping 72% of Americans polled said they would not attend if sporting events resumed without a vaccine for the coronavirus. The poll, which had a fairly small sample size of 762 respondents, was released Thursday by Seton Hall University's Stillman School of Business.
https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/29018209/poll-fans-attend-games-vaccine
Pres issues Coronavirus disaster declarations for Alaska and Idaho. By my count, that means all 50 states plus DC and 4 US Territories have now received the designation for additional @fema assistance.
https://twitter.com/markknoller/status/1248371987992502272
An observation about Italy and Spain: Both seem to have "flattened their curves," but both countries continue to have thousands of new infections each day and hundreds of deaths. It appears to be a very slow path back down.
https://twitter.com/charlesornstein/status/1248367406210330624
824 deaths reported over a 24 hour period in New York City. There were 906 people murdered in New York City over the last three years combined
Every person that has died from COVID-19 in St. Louis City has been Black.
http://www.stlamerican.com/your_health_matters/covid_19/all-12-covid-19-deaths-in-the-city-of-st-louis-were-black/article_da7ed56c-79d1-11ea-85bc-7b8539eaf346.html
Florida is spending up to $100 million just on people to back up the state's unemployment call center. That's $22 million more than they spent on the entire (broken) unemployment website.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/04/09/florida-is-spending-up-to-100-million-to-back-up-its-failed-unemployment-website/
DeSantis is despicable but the catastrophic online unemployment portal is 100% on Rick Scott, one of the lowest forms of scum that ever defiled the earth. Rick Scott should be ashamed of himself. He's a supreme douche, just like his daddy, 45. He thinks we all want a $600 paycheck for a few weeks and then we won't want to go back to work like we're all a bunch of lazy bums, just like him. He does nothing.
An important point: 6-7 million unemployment insurance initial claims per week might be telling us the system's maximum capacity to process claims per week, not how many people are trying. There are likely several million more trying to send in their claims.
Italy—where the testing situation looks much like here (gradually increasing with fluctuations)—had a period of 10-12 days where new cases were roughly at a plateau, before taking a more unambiguous turn downward. The US has now been at a plateau for 7 or 8 days. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1248381278975488003
Police across Miami-Dade (but **especially** in Homestead) are arresting and jailing people for violating local curfews. That's while activists push to lower the jail population to prevent COVID-19 from getting in, or limiting its spread.
https://www.wlrn.org/post/least-16-curfew-violation-arrests-made-across-miami-dade#stream/0
Trump just announced that student loan payments are being waived for 6 months. This is CARES Act (2.5 trillion dollar covid-19 bailout), not Trump
https://qz.com/1831064/us-student-loan-payments-are-suspended-for-6-months-with-many-exceptions/
CNN's Jim Acosta: "How can the administration discuss the possibility of re-opening the country when the administration does not have an adequate nationwide testing system for this virus? Don't you need a nationwide testing system?"
Trump: "No. We have a great testing system."
The plateau in new cases per day (around 30,000) seems to be limited by how many tests are performed. Simply put, if tests are limited to 150,000 with 20% positives a plateau is hit at 30,000 new cases a day. Below I've shown how this tracks with the last 10 days of US historical data on testing from https://covidtracking.com/data/us-daily
I calculated the postives percentage as the most recent Positive / Total Tests (423,164 / 2,195,771 = 19.3%).
Date Positive Negative Total Tests New Tests New Cases New Tests x 19.3%
------ -------- --------- ----------- --------- --------- -----------------
08 Apr 423,164 1,772,607 2,195,771 141,309 30,570 27,272
07 Apr 392,594 1,661,868 2,054,462 146,105 31,263 28,198
06 Apr 361,331 1,547,026 1,908,357 146,325 29,023 28,240
05 Apr 332,308 1,429,724 1,762,032 137,685 26,553 26,573
04 Apr 305,755 1,318,592 1,624,347 227,485 33,767 43,904
03 Apr 271,988 1,124,874 1,396,862 129,114 32,889 24,919
02 Apr 239,099 1,028,649 1,267,748 117,742 28,283 22,724
01 Apr 210,816 939,190 1,150,006 101,122 26,133 19,516
31 Mar 184,683 864,201 1,048,884 104,030 24,153 20,077
30 Mar 160,530 784,324 944,854 113,503 21,469 21,906
This highlights the importance of widespread, large-scale testing. Without it:
- New cases appear to plateau leading to a false sense of security
- Deaths are undercounted due to undiagnosed cases
- Projection models are less accurate (garbage in garbage out)
Look at the comparison for NYC's EMT/paramedic for calls of cardiac arrest with historical comparisons for last year. Reports of COVID-19 being linked with heart damage are being credibly reported
https://twitter.com/GwynneFitz/status/1247472844549828608?s=20
https://khn.org/news/mysterious-heart-damage-not-just-lung-troubles-befalling-covid-19-patients/
Birx also said two days ago that there were a million unprocessed tests
It feels like just yesterday...
Reminder:
Trump: "Mail-in voting is horrible. It's corrupt."
Reporter: "But you voted by mail in Florida's election last month, didn't you?"
Trump: "Sure, I can vote by mail through the --"
Reporter: "So how do you reconcile that?"
Trump: "Because I'm allowed to."
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1247660220349849601
A ask yourself how a company started two weeks ago by a Republican fundraiser is able to claim that it has 'the largest global supply chain for covid-19 medical supplies'
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/27/republican-fundraiser-company-coronavirus-152184
Has anyone else ever noticed for any briefings Trump gives, he never has a person on the side conveying the message in sign language? Everyone does this - I’ve even been to concerts where they do it. But not Trump. Not ever. Think about the person that has to sign the pure shit pouring out of his mouth. You'd need 3 sets of hands. One hand for a constant middle finger. Somebody doing sign language would immediately quit after being unable to keep up with the word salad and blatantly stupid rambling sessions they can't reproduce without looking like they are experiencing convulsions.
Trump on March 6 on testing: "Anybody that wants a test can get a test."
Trump TODAY on a nationwide testing system: "Do you need it? No. Is it a nice thing to do? Yes. We're talking 325 million people. That's not going to happen, as you can imagine."
Fauci: "Often, people say re-open the government, like it's a light switch on-and-off for the entire country. We have a very large country with really different patterns of disease and outbreaks in different parts of the country. So, it's not going to be a one size fits all."
115 employees furloughed for 90 days. Four newsroom leaders laid off. Big pay cuts for top brass. If you read my feed for news, please subscribe. The current deal is 99¢/day and it supports crucial work. http://miamiherald.subscriber.services/digital-subscription … If you do it, @ me !!! I wanna celebrate you!
https://twitter.com/samanthajgross/status/1248389677427470336
McClatchy, owner of 30 US newspapers, said it will furlough 4.4% of its employees, lay off four executives and reduce some executive compensation to address the financial pressures from coronavirus
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/09/media/mcclatchy-newspaper-furloughs-coronavirus/index.html
Louisiana state Rep. Reggie Bagala (R) has died from COVID-19. He was 54.
https://www.nola.com/news/coronavirus/article_1b719610-7ab6-11ea-9ec8-0f29eb03c71b.html
Louisiana House Rep. Reggie Bagala has died from #COVID19 at 54. On Facebook, he expressed frustration weeks ago after leadership refused to shut down in early March, with the House speaker and Senate president saying on March 13 that "the legislature is open for business."
https://twitter.com/ashtonpittman/status/1248389956583604228
John Prine (October 10, 1946 – April 7, 2020) was an American country folk singer-songwriter. He was active as a composer, recording artist, and live performer from the early 1970s until his death and was known for an often humorous style of original music that has elements of protest and social commentary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Prine
Explore our detailed report on the impacts of the coronavirus throughout California:
➡️ Infections and deaths
➡️ Detailed maps of the cases
➡️The spread of the virus
➡️ Closures for your county
https://www.latimes.com/projects/california-coronavirus-cases-tracking-outbreak/
Judge Rules MGM Must Hand Over Unaired ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ Trump Tapeshttps://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/mgm-must-hand-over-unaired-231622536.html
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