Zorro
Zorro's Journal'Pretty Catastrophic' Month for Retailers, and Now a Race to Survive
Source: New York Times
Retail sales plunged in March, offering a grim snapshot of the coronavirus outbreak’s effect on consumer spending, as businesses shuttered from coast to coast and wary shoppers restricted their spending.
Total sales, which include retail purchases in stores and online as well as money spent at bars and restaurants, fell 8.7 percent from the previous month, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. The decline was by far the largest in the nearly three decades the government has tracked the data.
Even that bleak figure doesn’t capture the full impact of the sudden economic freeze on the retail industry. Most states didn’t shut down nonessential businesses until late March or early April, meaning data for the current month could be worse still.
“It was a pretty catastrophic drop-off in that back half of the month,” said Sucharita Kodali, a retail analyst at Forrester Research. She said April “may be one of the worst months ever.”
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/business/economy/coronavirus-retail-sales.html
George Conway: Trump will never be able to accept that the presidency doesn't belong to him
Among Donald Trump’s many flaws as president is one that’s as fundamental as any: He simply doesn’t understand his job. When he ran a private company, one he owned, Trump could command all its constituent parts to do his bidding and make the rules himself. You’d think by his fourth year in the White House, he would have learned that the presidency doesn’t work that way. But obviously he hasn’t.
Trump made this clear during his briefing Monday, with an extraordinary series of statements about presidential power — well, perhaps extraordinary for anyone but him. Referring to restrictions that states have imposed to fight covid-19, Trump claimed: “The authority of the president of the United States having to do with the subject we’re talking about, the authority is total, and that’s the way it’s got to be. … It’s total. The governors know that.”
In other words, he claims the power to force the entire country to back to work, regardless of what state or local officials say. “They can’t do anything without the approval of the president of the United States,” Trump asserted. “I have the ultimate authority,” he said.
“Who told you that?” a reporter asked; Trump wouldn’t say. And no doubt, couldn’t: No competent presidential adviser would tell him that. Certainly no lawyer.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/george-conway-trump-will-never-be-able-accept-that-presidency-doesnt-belong-him/
National Archives Report Someone Tried to Scrawl "Total Authority" with Sharpie on U.S. Constitution
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—An unknown person attempted to scrawl the words “total authority” on the United States Constitution with a Sharpie, the National Archives reported on Tuesday.
A security guard spotted the attempted vandalism on Tuesday morning, when he noticed “something weird” on the glass case protecting the priceless historical document.
“Someone had written the words in big block letters,” the security guard said. “Plus, both ‘total’ and ‘authority’ were misspelled.”
“It looked like the work of a small child, but there are no school groups here because of the coronavirus and whatnot,” he added. “So it’s a real mystery.”
Harland Dorrinson, a spokesperson for the National Archives, said that, even though the Constitution was unharmed, the Archives are launching a “full investigation” to determine what “sick person” attempted to deface the document.
“Somewhere in Washington, there’s a person on the loose who hates the way the Constitution is actually written,” he said.
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/national-archives-report-someone-tried-to-scrawl-total-authority-with-sharpie-on-us-constitution
Republicans have a choice: Keep suppressing the vote -- or improve their product
WISCONSIN REPUBLICANS tried to exploit the covid-19 pandemic to manipulate a key state supreme court race last week. They failed. The credibility of the November elections — and many Americans’ health — depends on Republicans across the country taking the right lessons from this first chaotic experience of voting in the age of social distancing, rather than doubling down on voter suppression.
Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic
In last week’s marquee race, liberal challenger Jill Karofsky beat conservative state supreme court incumbent Daniel Kelly by 10 points, narrowing the court’s right-wing majority just as it is likely to hear some big cases, including on redistricting Wisconin’s highly gerrymandered legislative maps. With thousands of poll workers choosing not to show up and many polling places closed, turnout was only a bit more than 30 percent, and the vast majority of votes came in by mail. Nevertheless, thousands still risked their health to vote in person, their only option after Wisconsin Republicans refused proposal after proposal to make voting more accessible in light of the pandemic. They refused to extend mail-in ballot deadlines, relax voter ID requirements, send absentee ballots to all voters or move to an all-mail election. They litigated to the U.S. Supreme Court efforts by Gov. Tony Evers (D) to ease the process.
Though they failed to swing the race for Mr. Kelly, Republicans’ voter suppression strategy was hardly victimless. More than 11,000 voters asked for but were not sent absentee ballots. The U.S. Supreme Court declared that mail-in votes had to be postmarked by Election Day, but hundreds came in with missing or marred postmarks, leaving election officials to argue about what to do with them. Untold numbers of people understandably declined to vote in person. Others may have contracted covid-19 from staffing or waiting in line at polling places. Further litigation is a certainty.
Led by President Trump, who has railed recently against mail-in voting, Republicans may conclude that their best hope lies in suppressing turnout even further than they tried to in Wisconsin. That would be a mistake. Many states still require residents to have a valid excuse in order to obtain an absentee ballot, cumbersome witness signature requirements or strange deadlines by which mail-in votes must be received. GOP leaders should join in removing these barriers. If people cannot vote safely in person, the only reasonable option is to let them vote by mail.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/republicans-have-a-choice-keep-suppressing-the-vote--or-improve-their-product/2020/04/14/1084df12-7e82-11ea-a3ee-13e1ae0a3571_story.html
Improve their product? Yeah, like that's going to happen.
In the Villages, America's biggest retirement oasis, the dangers of coronavirus stack up
The Villages built itself into America’s biggest and most famous retirement community by selling the ultimate Florida lifestyle: endless vacation in a warm-weather paradise where you never have to be alone.
But everything that defines the Villages now puts its residents at risk.
If the coronavirus rips through the community, experts say the Villages’ huge population of highly social seniors could crush the local health care system. Older adults are much more likely to be hospitalized or to die from the virus. If too many people need intensive care, the fear is there will not be the supplies and hospital space needed to save lives. This is already happening in some cities.
In the Villages, nearly 80 percent of residents are over 65.
The community has other factors lined up against it. Its main hospital has been given a rare one-star rating by the federal government and has been criticized by residents for long emergency-room wait times. It sits in a part of the state that Harvard University researchers found would be ill-equipped to handle a large influx of coronavirus patients, based on the number of available hospital beds.
https://www.tampabay.com/special-reports/2020/04/04/in-the-villages-americas-biggest-retirement-oasis-the-dangers-of-coronavirus-stack-up/
George Soros: Guarantee paychecks for all workers displaced by coronavirus to save the economy
The catastrophic collapse in U.S. employment due to the coronavirus crisis demands far more from the federal government than it has done so far.
Nearly 17 million Americans filed for unemployment in just the three weeks ending April 4. And analysis by the research center INET Oxford predicts that without urgent action, 24% of U.S. jobs could be lost in coming weeks — compared with just 3.3% during the 2007-2009 recession. That kind of job loss would be equal to the worst years of the Great Depression and would mean more than 37 million Americans are out of work. The impact will be felt most severely by low-income workers.
The goal, until it is safe for people to return to work, must be to maintain the economy in “sleep mode.” That will require keeping businesses and workers as intact as possible, ready to “wake up” and return to work when the health crisis passes, in order to drive a strong recovery. How? The federal government must immediately guarantee the paychecks of all Americans for the duration of the crisis.
Other countries have done exactly this. Germany, France, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Australia are all providing direct funding to employers to cover worker paychecks and keep workers in their jobs during the lockdowns.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-04-13/op-ed-george-soros-explains-how-to-keep-the-economy-from-tanking-during-the-coronavirus-pause
It's the Worst Possible Time for Trump to Make False Claims of Authority
I teach my law students that every so often in the law, the best way to understand the veracity of a claim is just to say it out loud. They got a great example of this on Monday when President Trump made a contribution to the legal lexicon: “When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total. And that’s the way it’s got to be. It’s total.”
In terms that would even have made President Richard Nixon blush, our commander-in-chief sounded more like the leader of some tinpot dictatorship than of the United States.
The design of our Constitution was designed to rebel against such arrogation of power. Separation of powers and federalism aren’t fusty concepts designed to please rebellious aristocrats; they are the living embodiment of our founders’ desire to divide and check power — not vest “total” “authority” in one person, no matter how wise that person may be.
That was the basic genesis of the Declaration of Independence — King George III had grabbed all the government power for himself. The declaration’s text proclaims “the history of the present King of Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” The American Constitution is a self-conscious reaction to that concentration of power, not a document to mirror and enable it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/opinion/trump-states-authority.html
Coronavirus-stricken Chris Cuomo trashes CNN gig during radio show meltdown
Chris Cuomo’s coronavirus-induced fever may have subsided but the CNN anchor was red hot on Monday.
The longtime cable host, 49, had an existential mini-crisis on his SiriusXM show, lashing out at his lucrative primetime gig and blasting President Trump as “full of s–t.”
“I don’t want to spend my time doing things that I don’t think are valuable enough to me personally,” Cuomo said. “I don’t value indulging irrationality, hyper-partisanship.”
Cuomo said his battle with COVID-19 has made him rethink his values and question his position as a public figure.
https://nypost.com/2020/04/13/chris-cuomo-trashes-cnn-gig-during-covid-19-meltdown/
America Can Afford a World-Class Health System. Why Don't We Have One?
In March, Congress passed a coronavirus bill including $3.1 billion to develop and produce drugs and vaccines. The bipartisan consensus was unusual. Less unusual was the successful lobbying by pharmaceutical companies to weaken or kill provisions that addressed affordability — measures that could be used to control prices or invalidate patents for any new drugs.
The notion of price control is anathema to health care companies. It threatens their basic business model, in which the government grants them approvals and patents, pays whatever they ask, and works hand in hand with them as they deliver the worst health outcomes at the highest costs in the rich world.
The American health care industry is not good at promoting health, but it excels at taking money from all of us for its benefit. It is an engine of inequality.
Now is a difficult time to talk about the costs of health care. Doctors and nurses are risking their lives to fight the virus. We need more doctors and nurses. We need more beds, more ventilators and more protective equipment, and we need vaccines and drugs. High prices are not the best nor the only way to get drugs or vaccines that will win the war against the virus, but they can help.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/opinion/covid-inequality-health-care.html
The Me President: Trump uses pandemic briefing to focus on himself
President Trump stepped to the lectern Monday on a day when the coronavirus death toll in the United States ticked up past 23,000. He addressed the nation at a time when unemployment claims have shot past 15 million and lines at food banks stretch toward the horizon.
Yet in the middle of this deadly pandemic that shows no obvious signs of abating, the president made clear that the paramount concern for Trump is Trump — his self-image, his media coverage, his supplicants and his opponents, both real and imagined.
“Everything we did was right,” Trump said, during a sometimes hostile 2½ -hour news conference in which he offered a live version of an enemies list, brooking no criticism and repeatedly snapping at reporters who dared to challenge his version of events.
Trump has always had a me-me-me ethos, an uncanny ability to insert himself into the center of just about any situation. But Monday’s coronavirus briefing offered a particularly stark portrait of a president seeming unable to grasp the magnitude of the crisis — and saying little to address the suffering across the country he was elected to lead.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-pandemic-briefing-focus-himself/2020/04/13/1dc94992-7dd8-11ea-9040-68981f488eed_story.html
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