BeckyDem
BeckyDem's JournalHopes fading for coronavirus relief bill as Congress returns
By ANDREW TAYLOR Associated Press SEPTEMBER 7, 2020 — 7:59AM
WASHINGTON — At least there won't be a government shutdown.
But as lawmakers straggle back to Washington for an abbreviated preelection session, hopes are dimming for another coronavirus relief bill — or much else.
Talks between top Democrats and the Trump administration broke off last month and remain off track, with the bipartisan unity that drove almost $3 trillion in COVID-19 rescue legislation into law this spring replaced by toxic partisanship and a return to Washington dysfunction.
Expectations in July and August that a fifth bipartisan pandemic response bill would eventually be birthed despite increased obstacles has been replaced by genuine pessimism. Recent COVID-related conversations among key players have led to nothing.
Democrats seem secure in their political position, with President Donald Trump and several Senate GOP incumbents lagging in the polls. Trump is seeking to sideline the pandemic as a campaign issue, and Republicans aren't interested in a deal on Democratic terms — even as needs like school aid enjoy widespread support.
https://www.startribune.com/hopes-fading-for-coronavirus-deal-as-congress-returns/572340112/
Unsanitized: Republicans Working on the Least They Can Possibly Do
Plus, the politicization of vaccines. This is The COVID-19 Daily Report for September 4, 2020.
BY DAVID DAYEN SEPTEMBER 4, 2020
First Response
The second-to-last jobs report before the election would sound really great if you were airlifted in from the International Space Station after a year of isolation. The economy added 1.37 million jobs and dropped the topline unemployment rate to 8.4 percent. This is down from 1.7 million added in July, and remains 11.5 million jobs under the number in February, a 7.5 percent loss since the beginning of the pandemic. Permanent job loss is actually falling more quickly than it did during the Great Recession, at 3.4 million. In all 19 million workers are either unemployed or have lost their jobs, based on this report. And it includes 237,000 Census hires, who will lose their jobs shortly.
The report is indicative of a country where the rich have completely cleaved themselves off from the rest of society. As Tim Noah writes, the prediction that we were living in a plutonomy, a nation of, by, and for the 1 percent, has now come to pass. You can have an economy without caring about the welfare of an exceedingly large section of the population, if you just shut your eyes. Food bank participation and the stock market are nearing record highs, simultaneously. Threat of eviction and rental debt has never been this elevated, and neither have bank profits from investments and trading. You either have it or you don’t.
So expecting a bunch of haves in the Senate Republican caucus to figure out how to prevent disaster for the have-nots might be a foolish enterprise. Senate Republicans can enable a Federal Reserve bailout (“The Fed created a bubble where life could go on—not unlike the NBA bubble,” is one great quote from that above-linked Wall Street Journal piece), but helping invisible people they never come into contact with in a typical day? Come on, they’re not miracle workers!
So it’s not surprising, then, that Senate Republicans can’t decide on what to do, or whether to do anything, about the continuing economic crisis. Mitch McConnell first announced a $1 trillion legislative effort, mostly as a coat rack for his scheme to give a liability release to corporations, hospitals, and schools for wrongful infections or deaths from COVID-19. That split the caucus almost in half.
https://prospect.org/coronavirus/unsanitized-republicans-least-they-can-do-stimulus-relief-bill/
GREYSTONE NURSING HOMES, WHOSE EXECUTIVES GAVE $800,000 TO TRUMP, ARE EPICENTERS OF COVID-19 DEATHS
Nursing homes operated by Greystone have some of the nation’s highest reported death counts, federal data shows.
Matthew Cunningham-Cook
September 4 2020, 7:00 a.m.
IN AUGUST OF 2018, the Department of Housing and Urban Development faced the biggest default in its history. Rosewood Homes, which operated a chain of nursing homes in Illinois, defaulted on a $146 million mortgage that was backed by HUD. The Greystone-backed owner had to pay over $3 million in fines to HUD and the Securities and Exchange Commission for failing to file financial statements and defrauding investors. The mortgage on the homes had been serviced by Greystone, the No. 1 lender in HUD-backed nursing homes.
Then HUD took them over and spent $30 million maintaining and upgrading the facilities, and appointed a receiver to administer the homes. When the homes were ready to go back on the market, the buyer was Greystone, which had already managed over 30 nursing homes in Florida. HUD has refused to disclose the asking price, according to the New York Times.
Greystone also apparently maintained close ties to President Donald Trump. On the same day that bids were due in a federal government auction of the troubled $95 million Rosewood nursing home chain — May 31, 2019 — Greystone’s CEO donated $360,600 to the president’s reelection fund, Trump Victory, using a shell company that omitted his name. Over the next few weeks, a Greystone managing director and his wife followed up with another $360,000 to the Trump Victory Fund, and in November, a Greystone executive donated $100,000 to the president’s Super PAC, America First Action, for a total of over $820,000.
Greystone’s nursing homes have now become epicenters of death in the coronavirus crisis. Federal data shows that 51 deaths have occurred at University Rehab at Northmoor in Peoria, Illinois, while 16 deaths have occurred at Greystone’s Apollo Health and Rehab in Saint Petersburg, Florida, putting both homes among the worst in the country for Covid-19 deaths. The Rockledge Health and Rehab Center in Florida has 24 deaths, the Lake Cook Rehab and Healthcare Center in suburban Chicago has 20 deaths, and the Riverside Rehab and Healthcare Center in Alton, Illinois, has 21 deaths. Despite the deaths, money from the federal government has flowed, as Greystone facilities have received at minimum $15 million in Covid-19 grants and loans since the pandemic began.
Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Health, described the donations from Greystone executives to Trump funds as “another tale from Trump’s corruption playbook. He again puts special-interest wealth over public health."
https://theintercept.com/2020/09/04/nursing-homes-coronavirus-deaths-greystone/
"THERE IS NO MERCY"
As the Coronavirus Descended on the Border, the Trump Administration Escalated Its Crackdown on Asylum
for The Intercept
Ryan Devereaux
September 5 2020, 7:00 a.m.
SHORT WALK from the border, in the Mexican city of Nogales, Sonora, sits a modest building packed with long, cafeteria-style tables. The comedor, as it’s known locally, is clean and inviting, with space for up to 60 guests. The walls are decorated with hand-painted images of Christ and his apostles, done in the style of a children’s book. Tucked away in one corner of the room are medical supplies, stacked and organized in plastic bins. Sister María Engracia Robles Robles, a nun with the Missionary Sisters of the Eucharist, floats from the kitchen into the common area, serving hot breakfast and lunch to anyone who needs it.
The comedor was born out of work Robles and two other nuns began in 2006. At the time, Arizona was the epicenter of migration along the border and the site of a major humanitarian crisis. While people headed north were dying in the desert in record numbers, a growing deportation machine was sending a steady flow of survivors to Nogales. The nuns began feeding the deportees out of the trunks of their cars. In 2008, they secured the property where the comedor now stands. Officially run by a coalition of organizations known as the Kino Border Initiative, its first iteration had no walls. There was no relief from the desert heat. When the monsoons came, the nuns walked through standing water to serve food.
In years past, the guests were almost all recently deported Mexican men. That’s no longer the case. Sitting in the corner of the comedor on a bright, clear morning in late February, I watched as a long line of families from Guatemala, Honduras, and other countries in Latin America and across the world walked through the front door. They filled the benches, packed shoulder to shoulder. Many came by bus from Ciudad Juarez, crossing contested cartel territory where a Mormon family was massacred just a few months prior.
Once the parents and kids were settled in, Sister Robles went around the room asking them what they were thankful for. As I scribbled a man’s answer in my notebook — to be with his daughter — a little girl in a pink jumper handed me an empty tube of Chapstick, then a tiny figurine of a woman in a green dress, then a broken blue crayon. She smiled as she shared her treasures one by one. The girl and her sister were from Chilpancingo, her mother later told me, a Mexican city in the state of Guerrero, not far from the town where 43 students were disappeared by police in 2014. It was the violence, the mother said, that caused them to leave.
https://theintercept.com/2020/09/05/us-mexico-border-coronavirus/
Ben Crump @AttorneyCrump Police brutality has been normalized in America for far too long.
We must all remember: this pattern is NOT NORMAL. We must STOP justifying this behavior, and hold ALL of these officers accountable!
https://twitter.com/AttorneyCrump/status/1300492050161373185
White privilege
Teen charged in Kenosha killings stalls return to Wisconsin
https://abc3340.com/news/nation-world/teen-charged-in-kenosha-killings-stalls-return-to-wisconsin-08-28-2020
Facebook Employees Slammed Zuckerberg Over Militia Groups And QAnon After Kenosha
Following days of violence and civil unrest, Facebook employees wonder if their company is doing enough to stifle militia and QAnon groups stoking violence on the social network.
Ryan Mac
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Frustrated Facebook employees slammed CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday during a companywide meeting, questioning his leadership and decision-making, following a week in which the platform promoted violent conspiracy theories and gave safe harbor to militia groups. The billionaire chief executive was speaking via webcast at the company’s weekly all-hands meeting, attempting to address questions about violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and the QAnon conspiracy that has proliferated across Facebook.
The meeting came one day after the Verge reported that a self-proclaimed militia group calling itself “Kenosha Guard” had used its Facebook page to issue a “call to arms” — violating Facebook's own policies — and remained online even though at least two people reported it before the shooting. It also followed weeks of employee unrest, in which the company’s rank and file have urged the CEO to combat the spread of QAnon-related content on its platform.
All of Facebook’s more than 50,000 employees can watch and comment on the stream during the meeting, or view a recording after its conclusion — and as Zuckerberg spoke, angry comments poured in.
“At what point do we take responsibility for enabling hate filled bile to spread across our services?” wrote one employee. “[A]nti semitism, conspiracy, and white supremacy reeks across our services.”
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facebook-employees-slam-zuckerberg-kenosha-militia-shooting
Delayed Second Stimulus Already Leading to Cuts in Grocery Store Spending
Posted on August 28, 2020 by Yves Smith
The rich are so well insulated from the impact of the pandemic that they’ve managed not to see evidence of rising hunger in the US, like big lines at food kitchens. A new bit of evidence comes in the Wall Street Journal today, via a detailed account about how consumers are cutting back on grocery spending. With food such a core budget item, it seems likely that lower food spending translates into deeper cuts on other fronts.
The Journal attributes the falloff to the end of the $600 a week unemployment supplement in July. Grocers are sufficiently concerned that they are starting to offer more discounts.
The level of distress is almost certainly worse than the Journal reports, since the paper is relying on dollar spending. As most of you know, there’s been a lot of inflation in food prices even though the press has not taken much notice.
On top of that, I suspect, based on reader reports that some households are staring to up their stockpiles in anticipation of worsening levels of Covid in the winter, which could lead both to production problems and mini-buying panics. So if some are buying more to increase personal inventories, that means the adjusted average (in terms of purchases for current consumption) is even lower
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/08/delayed-second-stimulus-already-leading-to-cuts-in-grocery-store-spending.html
Staring down Trump, Kamala Harris says she stands with protesters on racial equality
Washington — In her first solo speech as Democratic vice presidential nominee, Senator Kamala Harris vowed to stand with the protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, as many in the country reel from the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man who was unarmed, in Wisconsin on Sunday.
"We also see pain, hurt, and destruction in the aftermath of yet another Black man shot by police. Jacob Blake was shot seven times in the back in broad daylight in front of his three young sons," Harris said during her Thursday address. "People are rightfully angry and exhausted. And after the murders of Breonna and George and Ahmaud and so many others, it's no wonder people are taking to the streets. And I support them."
Harris, who delivered her remarks at George Washington University to a socially distanced press corps, not far from her Washington residence and blocks away from the White House, where President Trump will be addressing the Republican National Convention on Thursday evening.
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The California senator spoke with feeling about the shootings of unarmed black people that have come to light in the wake of George Floyd's murder. She promised that during a Biden-Harris administration the families of those shot by police would "have a seat at the table—in the halls of Congress and in the White House."
"Justice: let's talk about that because the reality is that the life of a black person in America has never been treated as fully human, and we have yet to fulfill that promise of equal justice under law," Harris said standing in front of American flags and gesturing to accent her points.
The California senator also condemned the pockets of violence that ensued after Blake's shooting. "We must always defend peaceful protest and peaceful protesters. We should not confuse them with those looting and committing acts of violence, including the shooter, who was arrested for murder. And make no mistake we will not let these vigilantes and extremists derail the path to justice. "
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kamala-harris-kenosha-protests-racial-equality-trump-covid-pandemic/
Coast Guard video shows Laura aftermath in tiny Cameron, La. area
CAMERON, Louisiana - A Coast Guard crew flew over parts of Cameron Parish Thursday in the wake of Hurricane Laura.
Crews were launched from New Orleans to fly west and conduct assessments of Louisiana port infrastructure along the vulnerable coastal areas.
Laura made landfall in the Cameron area just after midnight Thursday morning.
The Washington Post spoke with someone from there who reported in the immediate aftermath, it was difficult to reach family members who remained.
Many people were evacuated ahead of landfall earlier in the week, but a handful remained in the small, southwestern Louisiana parish.
Buildings not flooded by storm surge Thursday sustained heavy wind damage.
The video was of high water and flooding along Highway 82, which runs about 97 miles from Pecan Island to the Louisiana-Texas state line.
https://www.wbrz.com/news/coast-guard-video-shows-laura-aftermath-in-tiny-cameron-la-area/
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