Is it just me or has anybody else thought ...

that those who go on the loudest about people being not important enough compared to the economy, who should just go ahead and voluntarily die for the wealthiest's portfolios are the same nutbags who screamed the loudest about the imaginary death panels resulting from adoption of the ACA?

You Don't Need a Weatherman ...

Because of our nurses and and all healthcare professionals ...

The coronavirus will devastate the South because politicians let poverty to do so first

The coronavirus will devastate the South because politicians let poverty to do so first
But wherever it goes, this pandemic will highlight how poverty — and our willingness to let people remain in it — is a danger for all of us.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/coronavirus-will-devastate-south-because-politicians-let-poverty-do-so-ncna1186691



A volunteer helps direct traffic as food is loaded into vehicles during a mobile market day at Atlanta Motor Speedway on April 17, 2020 in Hampton, Ga.Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images
April 21, 2020, 12:02 PM CDT
By The Rev. Dr. William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, author, "Revolution of Values: Reclaiming Public Faith for the Common Good"

<snip>

According to a new analysis from Pew's Stateline, the South is poised to see more death and economic loss from COVID-19 than any other region in the country — and not only because so many Republican governors delayed stay-at-home orders, included extreme religious exemptions that allowed large crowds to continue to gather, and now seem poised to reopen everything from beaches to nail salons long before the curve has truly started to flatten. Stateline notes that decades of policies that undercut government programs and left individuals to fend for themselves have led to higher poverty rates, gaping holes in the social safety net and a health care system in which 75 rural hospitals across the region have been shuttered in the last year alone.

<snip>

Long before this present crisis, the South suffered from a pandemic of poverty that was broadly hidden from public life. Politicians who preached freedom from government as the heart of American liberty used any assent to deregulate corporations; they preached “individual responsibility” and used that to justify the dismantling of and resistance to public services and anti-poverty programs. If people are poor, they said, it is not the fault of the wealthy who used the labor of the poor with too little care or remuneration; it is not, they said, the fault of the government that failed to promote the common good when it could promote a limited one.

<snip>

The former Confederate states — all of which had been subject to federal supervision after the 1965 Voting Rights Act — have passed voter suppression measures targeting nonwhite voters since the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby decision stripped the act of its power to compel those states to submit any voting changes for federal review.

In North Carolina, for instance, the state Legislature passed an omnibus bill to suppress votes as soon as the Shelby decision came down. The North Carolina NAACP sued and a federal court found that the bill had targeted African Americans with “near surgical precision” — but the damage was done. People elected as a result of voter suppression passed policies that denied Medicaid expansion, limited unemployment benefits and changed the tax code in ways that exacerbated poverty.


<snip>

Sheriff Told Teen to Take Down Posts About Coronavirus, Family's Lawsuit Says

Sheriff Told Teen to Take Down Posts About Coronavirus, Family’s Lawsuit Says

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/us/marquette-county-sheriff-instagram-lawsuit.html

By Mihir Zaveri

April 21, 2020, 12:07 p.m. ET

<snip>

“I am still on breathing treatment but have beaten the coronavirus,” Amyiah wrote in the third post on March 26. “Stay home and be safe.”

<snip>

According to a police report included in the lawsuit, Amyiah’s posts had made other parents at school “upset.” Amyiah would have to take the posts down or risk violating rules on disorderly conduct and be cited or arrested, according to the report.

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Amyiah deleted the posts immediately. But on Thursday, the Cohoons sued the Marquette County sheriff, Joseph R. Konrath, and the officer who showed up at the home, Sgt. Cameron Klump, accusing them of violating Amyiah’s right to free speech.

<snip>

Mr. Hall told The Associated Press last week that Amyiah’s messages “caused distress and panic within the school system and law enforcement acted at the request of school health officials in a good faith effort to avoid unfounded panic.”

<snip>

Same as it ever was ...

Justin Trudeau Vows To Strengthen Gun Control Laws

Justin Trudeau Vows To Strengthen Gun Control Laws After Canada’s Deadliest Shooting
The Canadian prime minister said Monday that his government would soon move forward with legislation to ban assault-style weapons.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trudeau-gun-control-canada-nova-scotia-shooting_n_5e9e979ac5b6a486d07e92b8

By Dominique Mosbergen

<snip>

“I can say that we were on the verge of introducing legislation to ban assault-style weapons across this country,” Trudeau said, per The Washington Post. “It was interrupted when the pandemic caused Parliament to be suspended, but we have every intention of moving forward on that measure, and potentially other measures, when Parliament returns.”

<snip>

“As long as Canadians are losing their loved ones to gun violence, not enough has changed,” Trudeau said on the campaign trail in September 2019, The Guardian reported. “We know you do not need a military-grade assault weapon, one designed to kill the largest amount of people in the shortest amount of time, to take down a deer.”

<snip>

A gunman went on a shooting rampage in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia on Sunday, killing at least 18 people before being killed during a confrontation with police.

Prior to Sunday, the deadliest shooting in Canada had taken place in 1989 when a gunman killed 14 women and himself at Ecole Polytechnique college in Montreal.

<snip>







Bless Canada.

A Biden Presidency Could Be Better Than Progressives Think

A Biden Presidency Could Be Better Than Progressives Think

Campaign promises matter, and his platform shows a distinct leftward drift.
Michelle Goldberg

By Michelle Goldberg

Opinion Columnist

April 20, 2020, 8:21 p.m. ET

Credit...Hilary Swift for The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/20/opinion/joe-biden-progressive.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Contributors

<snip>

Biden’s proposals go far beyond his call for a $15 federal minimum wage — a demand some saw as radical when Sanders pushed it four years ago. While it’s illegal for companies to fire employees for trying to organize a union, the penalties are toothless. Biden proposes to make those penalties bite and to hold executives personally liable. He would follow California in cracking down on companies like Uber that misclassify full-time workers as independent contractors who aren’t entitled to benefits. He’d extend federal labor protections to farmworkers and domestic workers.

<snip>

Biden wouldn’t need to pivot so dramatically to be a transformative progressive president. There are plenty of bleak moments in his record, including his treatment of Anita Hill and his Iraq war vote, but it’s not quite as reactionary as leftists sometimes imagine. Among other things, he’s long been better-than-average on unions; as Jared Bernstein, Biden’s former chief economist, told me, “One of the main things that differentiates Biden from a traditional mainstream Democrat is his understanding of the importance of worker power.”

Still, it’s clear that he’s moving leftward. Biden recently came out for tuition-free college for students whose families earn less than $125,000. He endorsed Elizabeth Warren’s bankruptcy plan, something that would have been unimaginable in 2005, when Warren, then a Harvard law professor, charged onto the public stage to fight a regressive bankruptcy bill that Biden supported.

After long supporting the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funding for most abortions, Biden gave in to pro-choice pressure to come out against it. His climate plan already went beyond any of Barack Obama’s initiatives, and he’s pledged to make it even more robust. Biden’s health care proposal falls far short of single-payer, but it is, as Paul Waldman wrote in The Washington Post, “surprisingly liberal.”

<snip>

Absolutely not a single red cent to the Big Petroleum ...

Take care of their non white collar employees, but nothing for their bosses.

A page from my quarantine diary ...