FAIL 2

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4/20 covid </font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">probably neglected in daily shitstorm/distractions</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">see failson</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">see fail up</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><a href="https://abovethelaw.com/2021/10/law-school-student-famous-for-saying-i-hate-black-people-now-has-prestigious-federal-clerkship/">https://abovethelaw.com/2021/10/law-school-student-famous-for-saying-i-hate-black-people-now-has-prestigious-federal-clerkship/</a></span><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see noam on neo-libtard set us up for systemic failure</font></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aha-ish:  Bannon promoted djt as disruptor, the system is sick/rigged so he will blow it up and give us something better; he will fight your enemies (the chinese, the godless commies/boomers, drain the swamp, restore American prode/dominance [coal mfg]; relatd to throw the bums out they are all crooks?  What do trumpistas think the swamp is?  they atre fine with crony capitalism b/c bizmen are tough minded, numbers-based tough realists who will bwe efficient and stop wasting our tax money on losers/POC lazy welfare queens.  so we should not be surprised when system crashes, because trump ppl know nothing, and are grifter rent-seekers.  all they know about gov't is how to leech off it and dump their messes on it. short term / self-ish thinking: how do I/the books look good for next qtr (or for trump the next news cycle, which is 12 hours?!)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">as someone else recently observed (burn dwn hs gingrich?) gop has built in political/rhet advantage b/c willing to crash the system to maintain power. (gives them leverage in negot? BUT lost votes in gov't shutdowns?]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trump-derangement-syndrome-those-of-us-who-warned-america-that-fascism-was-coming-were-called-hysterical-alarmists-we-were-right-all-along/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trump-derangement-syndrome-those-of-us-who-warned-america-that-fascism-was-coming-were-called-hysterical-alarmists-we-were-right-all-along/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Do <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">you remember “</span><a href="https://www.salon.com/2017/01/08/you-have-been-warned-trump-derangement-syndrome-will-be-a-cudgel-used-to-silence-his-critics/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Trump Derangement Syndrome</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">?”</span></font></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was a cute phrase that likely first appeared in 2015, deployed by prominent voices across the political spectrum to demean, mock, reject, dismiss and deflect the warnings that <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/07/23/ruth-ben-ghiat-on-trump-and-the-bitter-american-truth-we-do-not-have-a-real-democracy/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Donald Trump was a fascist, an authoritarian and a white supremacist</a>, not to mention a vile and dangerous human being with <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/07/31/dr-justin-frank-it-is-terrifying-to-have-a-president-who-is-psychotic/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">apparent mental pathologies</a> who posed a <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/08/03/trump-is-getting-truly-desperate--and-that-means-hes-increasingly-dangerous/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">massive threat to American democracy</a>....</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Do you remember “Trump Derangement Syndrome?”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">It was a cute phrase that likely first appeared in 2015, deployed by prominent voices across the political spectrum to demean, mock, reject, dismiss and deflect the warnings that Donald Trump was a fascist, an authoritarian and a white supremacist, not to mention a vile and dangerous human being with apparent mental pathologies who posed a massive threat to American democracy.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Such truth-telling patriots were called “hysterical” and “alarmist,” or told they were “out of touch” and overly “bitter” about Hillary Clinton’s defeat thanks to the antiquated mechanism of the Electoral College and Russian interference. Those who first raised the alarm about Trumpism as a new version of fascism were also assured that ” the institutions were strong” and fascism could never take hold in America — and most certainly not in the form of a proudly ignorant wrestling-heel wannabe and reality-TV huckster.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">When Trump won the presidential election in 2016, there were some on the left eager to dance on Hillary Clinton’s grave. A few even gave Trump the totally unearned benefit of the doubt: He claimed to oppose globalization, neoliberalism and “endless war,” and to speak for the “white working class”.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Centrist Democrats and the so-called mainstream American news media also rejected the existential threat to democracy that Trump represented. They convinced themselves, over and over, that the supposed power and gravity of the office would normalize and mature him. He was a “businessman” and a “pragmatist” eager to make deals, not an ideologue — so why worry? Trump was “brash” and “unconventional,” but America’s political institutions were strong.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>The stenographers of current events and the other hope-peddlers, with their horse-race journalism, false equivalence “both-sides-ism” and obsession with meaningless controversies would not let themselves see the truth of Trump’s danger or that of his neo-fascist movement</b>. To admit the truth about Trump would mean that the old habits of writing and thinking about American politics are obsolete. Moreover, such an admission would demand speaking truth to power in a way that many members of the mainstream news media, specifically, are too afraid to, for both professional and personal reasons.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Republicans and other members of the Trump movement used “Trump Derangement Syndrome” to bully their critics into silence. The American right celebrated drinking “liberal tears” and loved the way Trump’s victory had made Democrats and so-called progressives go “crazy.”[// to the fed art'l that mollie h etc do not defend djt cos can't but own the libs/ hit bogey[wo]men]</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Trump Derangement Syndrome is weaponized language in the same vein as the myth of the “liberal media.</b>” Both lies put Democrats and the mainstream news media on the defense. While the American right and the Republican Party (and now Trump’s neo-fascist movement) drag the issue-space further and further to the right — and have done so for decades — the “liberal media” tries to find an imaginary balance by presenting right-wing extremism as somehow a “reasonable” alternative point of view.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Trump Derangement Syndrome was also a smokescreen for Donald Trump’s wild success in advancing the agenda of the plutocrats, gangster capitalists, Christian nationalists and “Dominionists” — as well as overt white supremacists — in destroying the very idea of government itself as well as American multiracial democracy.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Of course, it was not Donald Trump’s most vocal critics who were “deranged” but his followers, enablers and allies. As I explained in January 2017, shortly before his inauguration:</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It is not those who oppose Trump who are deranged, but rather those voters who convinced themselves that a plutocrat authoritarian reality TV star con man and professional wrestler wannabe with no experience in government at any level was qualified to be president of the United States.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">This is America’s great national derangement. Those who stand against and oppose Donald Trump are patriots who are trying to return the country to sanity.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Now, some three months away from another Election Day, Donald Trump has finally arrived at the moment which those of us who were slurred as “hysterical” and “alarmist” have warned about for more than five years.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Last Thursday, Trump issued this now-infamous tweet:</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Delay the Election</b> until people can properly, securely and safely vote??? [// muslim ban "whAT'S GOIng on" = agenda/ deep state]</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">That same afternoon, when questioned about Trump’s threats to interfere with the 2020 election, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the U.S. Senate: “In the end, the Department of Justice and others will make that legal determination.” </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">This is not true. The Department of Justice and the president possess no legitimate authority to delay or cancel a federal election.</span></b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Later in the day, Trump continued to work from the authoritarian’s playbook, attempting to pivot away from his earlier statements. During a White House press event, Trump said:</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Do I want to see a date change? No. But I don’t want to see a crooked election.  </font><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">What will happen in November – it’s a mess. I want a result much more than you… I don’t want to be waiting around for weeks and months.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">This is a familiar strategy in which the authoritarian challenges norms and boundaries by floating trial balloons and then pretends to change his mind as a way to make the heretofore-unthinkable into something acceptable.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Trump’s most recent threats are but another crescendo in he and his servants’ efforts to subvert and eventually overturn secular multiracial democracy and the rule of law in America.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Only weeks ago Trump began deploying his own <b>personal secret police force</b>, hoping to enforce his will by suppressing dissent and free speech in Democratic-led cities all over the United States. The events in Portland, Oregon, are but a prelude to Trump’s national terrordome.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Trump’s own personal secret police force along with his <b>civilian “watchdogs,</b>” may well be used to intimidate Democratic voters on Election Day and beyond. Trump has repeatedly asked hostile foreign countries to interfere in the 2020 presidential election on his behalf. He was impeached for doing just that with his attempt to blackmail the government of Ukraine to launch a phony investigation of Joe Biden.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Trump continues to threaten senior Democratic leaders, including Biden, Barack Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and others with</b><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> treason </b><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">charges, potential imprisonment and perhaps even execution.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Former national security adviser John Bolton’s recent book includes details of Trump’s lurid fantasies about having journalists killed. According to Bolton, Trump supports imprisoning his “enemies” in concentration camps — something he is already doing with brown and Black migrants and refugees from Latin America, the Caribbean and other parts of the nonwhite world.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Donald Trump, has repeated his threats, ever since the 2016 campaign, that he will not respect the will of the American people if he loses a presidential election.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In sum, Donald Trump is not pretending. None of this is a game. He is a neo-fascist. Such observations and warnings are not hysterical. They are plain observations based on a consensus of the available facts.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);"> [also he can be prosecuted, just today info DA new charges?]</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">As historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat explained in a 2017 essay at The Washington Post:</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>The strongman knows that it starts with words. He uses them early on to test out his plans to expand and personalize executive power on political elites, the press and the public, watching their reaction</b>s as they arrange into the timeless categories of allies, enemies and those who help him by remaining silent. Some say the strongman is all bluster, but he takes words seriously, including the issue of which ones should be banned.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Now what to do?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In a perfect and just world, the hope peddlers, professional centrists, stenographers of current events and others who maintain the boundaries of approved public discourse in America would go to the public square, prostrate themselves before the world and then beg forgiveness for how they, for years and by various means, empowered Donald Trump.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">That will not happen. Instead, such voices will proclaim that they were sounding the alarm about Donald Trump years ago and are the real vanguard defenders of American democracy. In reality, such voices were enablers, far behind the truth if not actively running away it. They are now trying to position themselves on the correct side of history because their shame and failure to protect America from Donald Trump and his neo-fascist movement are so great.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In the weeks remaining before Election Day — which will certainly not be “free and fair” and when Trump’s machinations will be at their most extreme — the mainstream news media and the<b> American people must internalize the fact that the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution mean little for Trump and his regime</b>.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Hopeful claims — or delusions — that the Constitution and state laws dictate the rules of Election Day must be viewed with extreme cynicism. Trump and his enforcers are not restrained by such arcane conventions.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">If there is indeed an election on Nov. 3, Americans mUst vote against Trump in overwhelming numbers in order to force him to step down. Unless Donald Trump is convincingly vanquished at the polls, he will find some way to stay in office.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>If Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr try to cancel the presidential election or interfere with it in any other way, Americans must take to the streets and engage in corporeal politics — including a national strike and other plans to disrupt day-to-day life and “business as usual” — on a scale so large that they make the George Floyd people’s uprising look like a PTA meeting.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Ultimately, those of us who warned the American people for years, sometimes on a daily basis, about this Mad King and would-be tyrant take no joy from saying, We told you so. There is no satisfaction in being correct about such a horrible thing.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">On this point,<b> Jared Yates Sexton, author of “American Rule: How a Nation Conquered the World But Failed Its People,</b>” wrote last Thursday on Twitter:</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Those of us warning that Trump is an authoritarian capable of destroying democracy haven’t been doing it for profit or attention or out of unwarranted alarmism. None of this is hard to predict. They don’t hide it at all. Stop expecting everything to be fine because “America.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">To watch American democracy, fall so ill so fast, and now to be on the verge of collapse — when such a thing could have been so easily prevented — is a world historical tragedy. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">SYSTEM CRASH economy, health care sys?!</span></b></font></font></font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">epic fail/genocide:</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">wow 3 in one day an 8/20, apparently vanity fair</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/jared-kushner-called-on-to-resign-after-damning-report-reveals-his-depravity/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/jared-kushner-called-on-to-resign-after-damning-report-reveals-his-depravity/</font></a></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">common dr</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>in the wake of devastating new reporting by Vanity Fair, a chorus of voices Friday called for the immediate resignation of Jared Kushner, a top White House advisor and the son-in-law of President Donald Trump, for disastrous—and deadly—failures by the administration that appear to have put the political desires of the president above the public health needs of the American people.</b></font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Vanity Fair article takes an exhaustive look at decisions made and actions taken by a secretive task force led by Kushner that was charged with implementing an “aggressive, coordinated national COVID-19 response”—including a federal testing regime that would help stem the spread of the virus<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">. What the investigation uncovered, according to reporter Katherine Eban, was an ultimately “aborted plan” for a far-reaching national testing strategy and a deliberative process that “began not with public health experts but with bankers and billionaires.”</span></font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While the plan itself devised by the team Kushner put together was characterized as “imperfect” but “a starting point,” the most shocking revelations have to do with why the strategy, which members of the unit believed would head straight to Trump’s desk and then be rolled out nationwide with large fanfare in early April, suddenly seemed to disappear—like “poof into thin air,” said one participant in the effort.</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Eban reports:</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">the prospect of launching a large-scale national plan was losing favor, said one public health expert in frequent contact with the White House’s official coronavirus task force.</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that <b>because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.</b></font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>That logic may have swayed Kushner. “It was very clear that Jared was ultimately the decision maker as to what [plan] was going to come out,” the expert said.</b></font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">On April 27, Trump stepped to a podium in the Rose Garden, flanked by members of his coronavirus task force and leaders of America’s big commercial testing laboratories, Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp, and finally announced a testing plan: It bore almost no resemblance to the one that had been forged in late March, and shifted the problem of diagnostic testing almost entirely to individual states.</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">While the veracity of such claims cannot be verified—and Kushner refused to answer a detailed set of questions or be interviewed by Vanity Fair—the implications of such a decision speak for themselves and drew immediate outrage and a demand for accountability.</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“Imagine the administration had intel on an imminent terrorist attack that would kill over 100,000 people, and chose to do nothing because it was politically easier,”</b> tweeted Matt Duss, foreign policy advisor for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), on his personal account. “That’s what we have here. We need to be talking about accountability. For all of it.”...</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aha: this mixes with perennial run gov't like a biz put a rational old white guy with biz sense to use numbers to make decisions</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">cf moyers cox So won civil war; pluto olig: only rich white men deserve are qualified to govern, thus kush gets covid and ME peace:</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">a 720</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/heres-why-jared-kushners-plan-for-widespread-19-testing-just-went-poof-into-thin-air/" rel="bookmark" title="Here’s why Jared Kushner’s plan for widespread COVID-19 testing ‘just went poof into thin air’" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4; display: block; font-family: " open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px" font-weight="font-weight" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" color="color" important="important">Here’s why Jared Kushner’s plan for widespread COVID-19 testing ‘just went poof into thin air’</a></font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></font></div></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">is heat redistribution boost for buffer?</font></font></p><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=---</font></font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>aha yikes: ocean buffer turns into amplifier?! 5/20 typhoon displace inda? bangladesh in covid outbreak --> camps [rohinga]</b></font></font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="font-size: small;"><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18052020/hurricane-tropical-storms-climate-change" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18052020/hurricane-tropical-storms-climate-change</a></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span id="docs-internal-guid-14d522bf-7fff-3832-940f-9e472685db1b" style="box-sizing: inherit;">New warnings of a global warming-driven increase in the most deadly and destructive tropical storms are especially scary in regions already hit hard, including the Southeastern U.S., where Hurricane Michael damaged 60,000 homes </span><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CABamdgnHCA/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent;">in 2018</a>, and the Caribbean, where <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18092017/hurricane-maria-irma-climate-change-models-storm-path-forecast-puerto-rico" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent;">Hurricane Maria</a> killed nearly 3,000 people in Puerto Rico and <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22092017/hurricane-maria-puerto-rico-congress-recovery-aid-poverty-climate-change" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent;">crippled the island's infrastructure</a>. </font></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span id="docs-internal-guid-14d522bf-7fff-3832-940f-9e472685db1b" style="box-sizing: inherit;">There's more of the same ahead, recent federal research suggests. One </span><a href="https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1920849117" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent;">study</a> found that the chances of major tropical storms forming increased globally by 6 percent in each of the last four decades. A <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/04/28/1922500117" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent;">second</a> shows the biggest increase in frequency in already storm-battered areas, including Florida, the Bahamas, eastern Africa, Japan, China and the Philippine Islands.</font></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span id="docs-internal-guid-14d522bf-7fff-3832-940f-9e472685db1b" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The results bolster "projections of increased (tropical cyclone) intensity under continued warming," the authors of the first study wrote. Those researchers focused on storms with winds greater than 115 mph (category 3 or above), because those cause the most damage.</font></span></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The findings landed as residents are warily watching Tropical Storm Arthur spin toward the Carolina coast well ahead of the official start of the hurricane season, and with projections for above-average hurricane activity in the Atlantic this summer. </font></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">In the Bay of Bengal, Tropical Cyclone Amphan is projected to drive a deadly surge of flooding toward Bangladesh this week, with winds of more than 170 mph. Emergency responders are struggling to evacuate up to a million people, and provide them with emergency shelter during the global coronavirus pandemic, which requires evacuees maintain physical distancing to prevent the spread of the disease.</font></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span id="docs-internal-guid-14d522bf-7fff-3832-940f-9e472685db1b" style="box-sizing: inherit;">New tropical storm data from 2010 to 2017 showed that "the </span>probability of a hurricane having wind speeds of at least 100 knots increased by approximately 15 percent between the early and latter halves of the 39-year record." </font></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span id="docs-internal-guid-14d522bf-7fff-3832-940f-9e472685db1b" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><b>Overheated oceans caused by global warming are super-charging tropical storms,</b> but year-to-year variations are also affected by short-term climate cycles like El Niño. The new study helps sort out the different influences, making it "95 percent certain" that oceans heated by global warming are brewing up bigger storms more often, according to </span>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)</span> hurricane scientist Jim Kossin, who led the study.</font></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span id="docs-internal-guid-14d522bf-7fff-3832-940f-9e472685db1b" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><b>"This shows us there is a global trend of more stronger hurricanes,</b>" Kossin said. "It's consistent with our expectations, based on physics." Warmer oceans supply more energy for storms and the warmer atmosphere holds more moisture.</span><a href="https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/analysis/storms/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent;"> Several recent studies</a> show how those combine to cause more damage worldwide, and pin down the role of global warming.</font></font></p></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></div><div><div class="header-list-style" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h2 class="entry-title grid-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 17px; font-family: " open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/heres-how-corporate-deals-are-making-ppe-shortages-even-worse/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; font-size: 18px; letter-spacing: 0px;">Here’s how corporate deals are making PPE shortages even worse</a></font></h2><div class="grid-post-box-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 12px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 12px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="author-italic author vcard" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(136, 136, 136); font-size: inherit;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/alex-henderson/" title="Posts by Alex Henderson" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; font-size: inherit;">Alex Henderson</a> </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(136, 136, 136); font-size: inherit;">May 22, 2020</span></font></div></div><div class="item-content entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 18px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When hospitals have an insufficient amount of PPE (personal protective equipment), the chances of doctors and nurses being infected with coronavirus increases. Many hospitals in the U.S. have been complaining…</font></p></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">an 5/20</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></font></div><div><div class="mag-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 19px; padding: 0px; position: relative; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h3 class="magcat-titlte entry-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; letter-spacing: 1px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/indias-treatment-of-muslims-and-migrants-puts-lives-at-risk-during-covid-19/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">India’s treatment of Muslims and migrants puts lives at risk during COVID-19</font></a></font></h3><div class="grid-post-box-meta mag-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 7px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="author-italic author vcard" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/jayramasubramanyam/" title="Posts by Jay Ramasubramanyam" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Jay Ramasubramanyam</a>, <a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/the-conversation/" title="Posts by The Conversation" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The Conversation</a></font></span></font></div></div><div class="mag-excerpt entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">by Jay Ramasubramanyam, Carleton University In India, the second most populous country in the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed pre-existing fault lines of inequality and communalism, exposing current problems…</font></font></p></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/putins-russia-is-handling-the-covid-19-outbreak-much-like-trumps-america-badly/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/putins-russia-is-handling-the-covid-19-outbreak-much-like-trumps-america-badly/</font></a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Dennis Muilenburg, the former CEO of Boeing</span><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">, also committed to the phony Business Roundtable pledge. Shortly after making the commitment to “deliver value to customers,” Muilenburg was fired for failing to act to address the safety problems that caused the 737 Max crashes that killed 346 people.  After the crashes, he didn’t issue a meaningful apology or even express remorse to the victims’ families and downplayed the severity of the fallout to investors, regulators, airlines, and the public. <b>He was rewarded with a $62 million farewell gift from Boeing on his way out.</b></span></font></font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">a bunch like this: including game-over libtard cf nial ferg</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/the-failures-and-inadequacies-of-neoliberalism-are-now-on-stark-display/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/the-failures-and-inadequacies-of-neoliberalism-are-now-on-stark-display/</font></a></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The failures and inadequacies of neoliberalism are now on stark display</b></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Subin Dennis / Independent Media Institute April 10, 2020</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It is a sign of how bad things are when the editorial board of the Financial Times, the world’s leading business newspaper, carries an editorial calling for “radical reforms… reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades.” The FT editorial of April 3 has advocated, among other things, a more active role for governments in the economy, ways to make labor markets less insecure, and wealth taxes. The FT’s editorial board, increasingly concerned about saving capitalism from itself, had written about the need for “state planning” and a “worker-led economy” last year in August. But the April 3 editorial has garnered much more attention since it comes amidst a massive crisis</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>By now it has become obvious that substantial state intervention in the economy—frowned upon by the apostles of neoliberal economics—is back to the center stage across the world.</b></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The situation is such that the public sector, long maligned by neoliberal economists and weakened by governments beholden to neoliberalism, is playing a major role in the fight against coronavirus. Its role would have been much more effective and wide-ranging if it hadn’t been hit hard by decades of fund cuts and waves of privatization. Nevertheless, with the ineffectiveness of private production with profit motive as its driving force to handle a crisis becoming more evident, the public sector, production with state direction, and some amount of planning are making a major comeback.</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Public Health Care</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The case of the sectors that are directly concerned with health care provision is the most conspicuous, with the inadequacies of private health care during a crisis becoming evident to even right-wing leaders.</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">We see Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of the UK, repeatedly talking about the need to protect the National Health Service</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> (Britain’s publicly funded health care system). </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He even said, “there really is such a thing as society,” contradicting Margaret Thatcher, his conservative predecessor who batted for pure individualism in 1987 by saying “There is no such thing as society.”</span></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Britain and many other countries in Western Europe have had relatively robust public health care systems. In many of these countries, such as Italy, Spain and the UK, public health care systems have suffered in recent years because of fund cuts and privatization of public facilities. Apart from the policy vision of the leaders of these countries themselves, they also came under pressure from the technocrats of the European Commission, who repeatedly demanded spending cuts on health care. Along with the easy-going attitude displayed by many of the Western governments in the early weeks of the coronavirus outbreak, such weakening of the public health care systems have made their response to the coronavirus outbreak a more arduous task. For now, the governments of Spain and Ireland have temporarily taken over their private hospitals to deal with the crisis.</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The case of the United States, with its private, insurance-based health care system, is far worse. </b>Not only was a sufficient number of testing kits unavailable in the United States for months, but the costs of testing and treatment remain prohibitive for a large section of the population, particularly to the 30 million uninsured and 44 million underinsured. This means that many people simply wouldn’t be able to afford to get tested and treated, endangering the health and lives of themselves and others.</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The difference between the United States on the one hand, and China and South Korea on the other, comes readily into the picture here. Testing and treatment for coronavirus is free in China, which was crucial in the country’s success in bringing the epidemic under control. South Korea has done extensive testing, which was made available for free. Treatment costs were covered by the government and the insurance companies.</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Importance of the Public Sector, However, Goes Much Further</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In times of crises such as the present one, which is comparable to war, the ability of economies to produce (or at least source) and distribute things becomes critical. Two kinds of things assume particular importance:</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Essential things that are necessary for the immediate sustenance of the people. </b>These include food and medicines, and in turn, the things necessary to produce them. If there are large gaps in the supply and distribution of these things, there would be a famine. If the gap is smaller, there would still be many unnecessary deaths. Even leaders who are otherwise callous about starvation deaths would be concerned about such an eventuality during a crisis, because social tensions that could rise as a result of this would make it even more difficult to tide over the crisis, whether it is a war or a pandemic. During the Second World War, Britain resorted to rationing to solve this problem. The people of India were squeezed to finance the Allies’ war in South Asia with Japan, and the result was the Bengal Famine, which took the lives of 3 million people.</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The kind of things that are necessary to tide over the crisis. During times of war, armaments would be the most crucial among these. In the case of the coronavirus crisis, the main things would be items like ventilators, masks, hand sanitizer, gloves and medicines to treat the symptoms. Large gaps in the supply of these things would be disastrous. In the case of a war, such gaps could lead to defeat in war. In the case of a lethal pandemic, people would die in huge numbers, as we see right now. We could say this is an industrial famine of sorts contributing to the casualties, with countries unable to make ICUs, ventilators and masks fast enough in adequate quantities, and in many cases, to set up hospitals and quarantine facilities quickly enough.</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is in this context that leaders of government who ideologically disagree with state intervention in the economy are seen taking direct action in commandeering private companies to produce necessary things.</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Thus we see Donald Trump, who had initially resisted the pressure to use the Defense Production Act—a wartime law—to mobilize private industry, finally using the law to direct General Motors to produce ventilators.</b></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The government of Italy directed its only producer of ventilators, Siare Engineering, to ramp up the production of ventilators for the country, and sent engineers and other staff members from the Ministry of Defense to help with production. The company canceled all its orders from abroad to produce for the country.</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Countries with a large public sector, robust industrial capacity, and the ability to effectively intervene in the market would be at a considerable advantage here. T</b>hat is the case with China, which put the state-owned China State Construction Engineering to work to construct two emergency quarantine hospitals at breath-taking speed. The state ensured the flow of products such as grain, meat and eggs into the Hubei province while it was under lockdown, and coordinated the production and distribution of masks and other medical products. Once the outbreak within the country was under control, it began supplying masks and ICU equipment to other countries in need.</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">India, a large country with a poor health care system, does not have enough masks and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for its health workers. The number of ICU beds and ventilators available in the country is very low. For a population of 1.34 billion, it only has 31,900 ICU beds available for COVID-19 patients, according to the country’s Health Ministry officials. To compare, Germany, with 82.8 million people, had 28,000 ICU beds as of mid-March.</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If the number of COVID-19 patients in India surges, hospitals and their critical care facilities will be overwhelmed. The public sector Bharat Electronics Limited has been asked to produce 30,000 ventilators to meet the urgent need. Hindustan Lifecare (another public sector company) and the Rail Coach Factory under the Indian Railways are going to manufacture ventilators. The public sector Ordnance Factory Board (OFB), which the government has tried continuously to weaken in the recent years, is now producing masks, sanitizer and coveralls for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). It has also developed a ventilator prototype and is preparing for production.</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Within India, it is the state of Kerala that has dealt with the pandemic in the most effective manner. In the Left-ruled state, which has resisted the policy of privatization pushed by successive central governments, public sector companies are manufacturing hand sanitizer and gloves, and have raised the production of essential medicines.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Kudumbashree, a massive government-backed organization of women’s collectives with 4.5 million members, is making masks, which the public sector is helping distribute. Mass organizations of youth and popular science activists are pitching in by making hand sanitizer. Volunteers supported by a state-led initiative have developed a respiratory apparatus that could free up ventilators.</span></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is not as if making masks, sanitizers and gloves requires advanced technology. But industrial capacity is needed to churn them out in large numbers, or at least large mass organizations, class organizations or collectives that can mobilize people to manufacture them. The inability of the United States to even ensure the supply of such items stands out in this regard. Four decades of neoliberalism seem to have led not only to the undermining of industrial capacity useful for public purposes, but also to the hollowing out of collective energies.</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Need for Production Capabilities and Societal Control Over Them</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In short, the lesson is that in times such as these, a society needs two things.</b></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>It needs production capabilities</b>. During a time of crisis, if a country doesn’t have the necessary industrial capacity, it will be in trouble even if it has money to buy if the other countries that do have the production capabilities block the export of the required goods. This is what is happening right now to so many countries, such as Italy and Serbia. (In the mad scramble for resources, there have even been reports of countries offering higher amounts to buy masks ordered by other countries, and of some countries even seizing shipments for themselves.) Not only is industrial capacity needed, but some excess capacity is also required in some crucial areas. As the public health expert T. Sundararaman pointed out recently, the public health care system needs to have unused capacity, which will allow it to expand and take on the extra load when there is an emergency. </font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Excess industrial capacity in China, which is often seen as a problem (including by sympathetic observers), turned out to be useful, with the country being able to manufacture essential goods to not just meet its own demands, but also that of other countries.But relying on market forces doesn’t give any guarantee of industrial capacity being built up. The kind of production capabilities built without planning would be haphazard, and may not cover the needs of an emergency when it presents itself. India, which adopted a strategy of substantial economic planning during the first few decades after independence, only to abandon it in the recent decades, is witnessing this to its peril right now.</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The society, or the state as the representative of society, needs to be able to control the production facilities. </b>When a crisis hits a country with production capabilities in the private sector, the state can invoke emergency powers to bring them under control. But it would be a painful process, especially in countries where the private corporate sector is not used to submit to discipline. Given the enormous influence that the corporates have over the state itself, the state might try to prolong having to invoke such emergency powers, as was seen in the United States, and that could have disastrous consequences. India has the worst of all possible worlds—cronyism is rampant, industrialization has not taken off (whether it is because of cronyism or in spite of it need not detain us here), and the public sector has been undermined.Even when the state is trying to play a more active role, its efforts could be undermined by private firms acting in their own self-interest of maximizing profits. This was seen in the United States, where private companies were engaging in price gouging, by selling masks that are normally sold for 85 cents for $7, leading to the New York state governor to call upon the federal government to nationalize the acquisition of medical supplies. He said that the U.S. government should order factories to produce masks, gowns and ventilators; otherwise the situation would be impossible to manage. The state using private facilities can be costly as well, as was seen in Britain, where the National Health Service is paying 2.4 million pounds per day as rent to private hospitals for 8,000 beds.</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Does calling for more domestic production capabilities that the state can control mean that every country should be left to fend for itself? Certainly not—every country cannot produce everything; smaller countries would find it particularly difficult. International trade would be needed for countries to procure things that they cannot produce for themselves. But as the developments of the recent months show, today’s trade regime has nothing to do with solidarity, and it provides no guarantee of countries being able to access goods during an emergency. This is no accident. Lack of solidarity is embedded in the way capitalism has developed, with the bulk of the world’s wealth concentrated in the hands of a few countries, and within countries, in the hands of the super-rich. This system has to be overhauled for a regime of solidarity to emerge. Production and its fruits becoming less concentrated in some regions of the world and in the hands of a minority would pave the way for power relations to be less unequal, which is a precondition for real solidarity among people and societies.</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Along with socialized health care, an immediate stop to privatization, and a stronger, expanded public sector should become part of the transitional demands of the left as we search for an exit from the pandemic crisis.</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Subin Dennis is an economist and a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He was the Delhi State vice president of the Students’ Federation of India.</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div></div></div><div><p align="left" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.25em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>=</strong></font></font></p><p align="left" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.25em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4.5/20</font></font></p><p align="left" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.25em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an reopens beaches?!</font></font></p><p align="left" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.25em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></p><p align="left" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.25em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/georgia-gop-governor-orders-several-ga-beaches-to-reopen-days-after-acknowledging-hes-woefully-uneducated-on-coronavirus-spread/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/georgia-gop-governor-orders-several-ga-beaches-to-reopen-days-after-acknowledging-hes-woefully-uneducated-on-coronavirus-spread/</a></font></font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><p align="left" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.25em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="http://click1.e.alternet.org/zdzdlgfvftzkzlqqkbpffkfqqbkqvswcdtfzprgsrmmp_amlkmlslnmhspblpltp.html?a=&b=4213&c=21989&d=2">http://click1.e.alternet.org/zdzdlgfvftzkzlqqkbpffkfqqbkqvswcdtfzprgsrmmp_amlkmlslnmhspblpltp.html?a=&b=4213&c=21989&d=2</a></font></font></p><p align="left" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.25em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong></strong></font></font></p><p align="left" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.25em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 4.2.20</font></font></p><p align="left" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.25em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Deadly ignorance’: Georgia GOP governor slammed for falsely claiming ‘we didn’t know’ asymptomatic people can transmit coronavirus</font></font></p><p align="left" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.25em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Alex Henderson</font></font></p><p align="left" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.25em; padding: 0px;" /><p align="left" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.25em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Republican Gov. Brian Kemp asserted that the realization one can spread coronavirus despite being asymptomatic was a “game-changer” for him.</font></font></p><p align="left" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 1.25em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong></strong></font></font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></div></div>