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Letters and Articles on the Corona Virus
Unless otherwise noted, letters were submitted to the
Lawrence Eagle-Tribune newspaper
Corona Virus and CDC
10 Mar 2020
As Donald Trump brags about our preparedness to manage the new
COVID-19 virus epidemic, he has appointed Vice President Pence
to manage the effort. Besides having exactly zero medical
expertise, this is the man who exacerbated a 2014 HIV outbreak
in Indiana while governor by delaying declaring a public health
crisis and refusing to implement a clean needle exchange program
until forced to. Trump is requesting $2.5 billion to fight the
disease. However, it should be noted that he has repeatedly
slashed the budgets for the CDC and NIH plus our contribution to
the World Health Organization (WHO). And, to top it all off, he
dissolved the pandemics team at the CDC. The reality is that
Trump doesn't really care whether we live or die -- only about
his image and advancing the right-wing agenda of dismantling our
government.
Corona Virus Vaccine and Cure
29 Feb 2020
Government-funded laboratories are racing to find a test,
treatment, and/or vaccine against the new corona virus. When/if
they do, mass production of the agent will be handed over to a
private drug company. When that happens, we need to require that
the cost be kept affordable. After all, our taxes will have paid
to create it. We don't need to be gouged and charged for it
twice.
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Submitted: 9 Mar 2020
Subject: Corona Virus Fallout
As the economic shockwaves from the corona virus spread around
the world, causing stock markets to tank and seriously
disrupting manufacturing and the availability of essential
consumer and medical goods, we should remember that much of this
pain is due to companies greedy for ever higher profits eagerly
offshoring their manufacturing and supply chains to China (at
the cost of millions of good American jobs) due to their low
wages and lack of labor and environmental protections. So, when
the Chinese economy is disrupted, this effort to save a few
dollars leaves us without any backup sources for critical
materials and components or capacity to make them for ourselves.
Paid Sick Leave Exemptions
19 Mar 2020
The House of Representatives passed a bill requiring companies
to provide paid family leave for employees stuck at home because
of the corona virus. What is interesting about it are the
exemptions it contains. It exempts companies with fewer than 50
employees. This makes sense since small businesses have fewer
resources to spare. However, Republicans would not support the
bill unless it also exempted large companies with more than 500
employees. This means that the largest and most profitable
corporations, such as Amazon, Walmart, and Uber, -- who recently
got a trillion dollar tax break -- are off the hook for taking
care of their workers. The reason for this is because the
Republican party serves the interests of the rich and powerful
over the needs of ordinary Americans and Democrats always
cave-in to Republican extortion get a bill passed.
Paying for the Corona Virus Aid
Packages
28 Mar 2020
Donald Trump and Congress are pushing through several trillion
dollars worth of aid to provide for treatment and prevention of
the corona virus, relieve displaced workers, and bail out
businesses [due to the disruptions caused by it and associated
preventive measures]. These {measures} will balloon the national
debt unless they are paid for after the crisis is over. The
source of income that would cause the least hardship to ordinary
Americans and the economy would be to roll back the last few
Republican windfall tax cuts (Trump, Bush II, Reagan) that
overwhelmingly benefited billionaires and giant multi-national
corporations (and led to record budget deficits each time).
Sadly, this will not happen since those are the Republicans'
true constituents. They would much rather take it out of our
social safety net programs (e.g.; Medicaid, Medicare, Social
Security, school lunches) as they have been trying to do for the
past several decades anyway.
Reusable Bag Ban
28 Mar 2020
Governor Baker has lifted local bans on single use plastic bags
at stores as part of the attempt to slow the spread of the
corona virus. So, many supermarkets are banning reusable and
used bags and requiring that groceries be packed in "virgin"
plastic ones, claiming that reused ones may be contaminated.
However, this is just a futile feel good gesture because store
staff will still be handling money, the items being bought, and
shopping carts -- all of which will have been touched by many,
many hands -- versus the bags which are likely handled by only
one person. To limit this wastefulness, I urge everyone to
insist that each plastic bag be fully packed, instead of
starting another one for every two items as is current practice.
I consider this last good advice, even after the epidemic is
over.
More Corporate Bail-Outs
1 Apr 2020
The $2 trillion economic aid package just passed by Congress
includes $500 billion to bail out the giant, multinational
corporations. These are the same companies that used their $700
billion economic crisis bailout from mismanagement in 2009 and
their trillion dollar tax cuts in 2017 for stock buy-backs,
mergers, and executive bonuses, rather than to bolster their
fiscal stability or raise employee wages. In light of this, I do
not appreciate my hard-earned tax money (not to mention the
associated increase in the national debt) being used to bail
them out from their bad decisions yet again.
COVID-19 Good for Trump
3 Apr 2020
The COVID-19 epidemic appears to be tailor made to help Donald
Trump sail to reelection. While he stumbles through
mismanaging the crisis, he holds daily press conferences where
he lies, slings insults, and brags about what a great job he is
doing, followed by his minions who always open by thanking him
for his "great leadership" (lest they be fired for insufficient
fawning). Meanwhile, his prospective Democratic opponents
are completely sidelined. They cannot hold rallies and are
getting exactly zero press coverage. This is how Trump secured
the Republican nomination in 2016 -- by sucking all of the air
out of the room while the press completely ignored his
opponents. In the midst of this all corona all the time
coverage, I urge news organizations to remember that there is
still an election going on and to cover the other candidates
too. They are still out there.
Trump Really Is Botching Corona Virus
Response
9 Apr 2020
Donald Trump's acolytes such as Jay Ambrose and the many writers
to this newspaper blatantly
twist facts and attempt to change history to validate their
support for him, always minimizing
his missteps while amplifying those of Democrats.
He did allow the Pandemic Response Team to be disbanded in 2018
as "unnecessary" because we'd
never have another one after the last four. He has repeatedly
attempted to slash the CDC and
NIH budgets. He (with congressional Republicans) has worked
ceaselessly to take affordable
health insurance away from tens of millions of low wage workers
(who are the most harmed by
this economic shutdown) by repealing the Affordable Care Act
that would pay for their care if
they get sick. This is all on the record.
He initially denied the corona virus epidemic as a "Democratic
hoax," minimizing its
significance for a month before finally being jolted into taking
any action at all, and then
continuing to drag his feet. He lies and slings misinformation
daily at his press conferences
which then needs to be corrected by the doctors. He plays petty
politics by withholding
desperately needed supplies from states with governors who
criticize him while giving it to
those with ones who praise him. Indeed, he has left states to
compete with each other and
FEMA for supplies, saying, "I'm not responsible." Again, this
can all be verified by playing
back his own words.
Republicans' latest talking point is that he was distracted by
the impeachment proceedings.
Nonsense! His acquittal in the Republican-controlled Senate was
a forgone conclusion and he
took plenty of time for campaign rallies and playing golf. Also,
as any person with a job
knows, it's a poor executive who can't focus on more than one
issue at a time.
Next, Senate Republicans wanted to just throw unrestricted money
at the giant corporations and
give minimal benefits to displaced workers and small businesses
in their bailout package. It
was Democrats who held out for controls on what corporations
could do with their bailouts
(which Trump immediately said he would ignore) and for resources
that would actually benefit
ordinary Americans. This is amply documented too.
Finally, perhaps Republican's bogywoman Nancy Pelosi might have
overreached in trying to add
infrastructure projects to the relief bill, but they are
seriously needed. Plus, almost 300
bills to benefit ordinary citizens and the environment passed by
the House this year have
unceremoniously died upon reaching Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell's desk. One can't
blame her for trying. Republicans routinely slip pet provisions
into must pass legislation
all the time.
You cannot negate facts in the public record just because it
contradicts your bias.
Michael Bleiweiss
Original Jay Ambrose Article:
https://www.EagleTribune.com/opinion/column-dont-take-pelosis-word-for-it/article_e1c225c5-5c62-5603-9a26-0d0301f36e7a.html
Subject: Where Are the Billionaires
26 Apr 2020
Where are the billionaires and the top corporate executives who
get paid tens of millions of dollars per year? Over the past 20
years, they and their companies were given trillions of dollars
in tax cuts by Republican presidents and congresses. So, it's
very telling that exactly none of them and very few of their
giant companies have lifted one finger or paid one penny to help
in fighting the corona virus pandemic or its resulting displaced
workers. Indeed, Amazon is denying its minimum wage warehouse
workers protective equipment. Also, many of these corporations
effectively stole relief money they don't need nor deserve
intended for our hurting small businesses. You can rest assured
that they will not be the ones paying off the debt incurred by
these relief packages -- we little people will. Now, they are
pushing to "get the economy going again" before it's safe to do
so. They don't care whether we live or die -- only how much
money they can extract from us and keep for themselves.
Subject: Trump & Republicans Don't Care
about Us
12 May 2020
Whose welfare do Donald Trump and Republicans care about?
Spoiler alert -- it's not ours.
In his rush to "get the economy moving again," Trump talks
casually and dispassionately about the resulting additional
hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 deaths as just a cost of doing
business for getting his economic numbers back up before the
election. He's pushing states to lift their restrictions and
precautions, even those where the number of cases are still
increasing out of control. He even suppressed a detailed CDC
blueprint on how to safely reopen state economies in favor of
his own team's vague guidelines.
Trump is also using the crisis to accelerate his roll back of
environmental protections, including easing limits on ash and
toxic metals/chemicals emissions from coal-fired power plants,
thereby increasing the very health problems that make people
more likely to die from the corona virus. To top it off, he has
joined a lawsuit brought by Republican-controlled states to
invalidate the Affordable Care Act, thereby taking away health
insurance from tens of millions of people just as laid off
workers are losing their employer provided coverage.
Meanwhile, back in the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
is opposing federal aid to the states and suggesting that they
can just declare bankruptcy. This would destroy their ability to
function for decades. Who would sell them goods/services or buy
their bonds if there is no guarantee that they would be paid
back? It's also an insidious back door way to destroy public
sector unions. In any bankruptcy, workers are always at at the
back of the line after investors and other creditors get paid
first. They would likely be left in the lurch as their pensions
and retirement benefits are cancelled (most government workers
do not participate in Social Security or Medicare).
McConnell also wants to shaft private sector workers. He wants a
provision that would have displaced workers lose their
unemployment benefits if they do not immediately return to work
upon being recalled because they fear being infected due to a
lack of safety precautions. At the same time, he wants to
indemnify employers against any liability if their workers do
get sick or die due to negligence. And, Trump is exacerbating
this by suspending enforcement of OSHA safety regulations. So,
workers get hit from three sides.
Finally, tucked deep inside the various relief packages are an
array of tax cuts that specifically benefit people making over
$1 million per year. The bottom line is that Trump and
Republicans don't care whether we live or die as long as their
corporate and billionaire donors reap their profits.
Michael Bleiweiss
Subject: COVID-19 Data Suppression
20 Jul 2020
With corona virus cases and deaths spiking in many (mostly
Republican-controlled) states, Donald Trump has a new way of
dealing with the pandemic -- hiding the data. Rather than
actually providing resources and guidance to tamp it down, he
has cut funding for testing and taken tracking of cases away
from the Centers for Disease Control -- who openly publish the
data -- and transferred it to Health & Human Services, where it
can be buried behind a firewall. He is even sending National
Guard troops into hospitals to "instruct" administrators on how
to obfuscate the cause of admissions and deaths to make the
numbers look lower. Welcome to 1984.
Subject: Clinton's Non-Pandemic
20 Aug 2020
In response to "COVID-19 Propaganda," if Hillary Clinton were
president, we wouldn't have 175,000 deaths from the corona
virus. We would have had a functional pandemic response team
with a detailed blueprint for how to handle the virus and a
president who paid attention to the daily security briefings and
took it seriously from the start. The pandemic would have been
nipped in the bud through swift, decisive, coordinated, and
science-based action.
Subject:
Trump Lied about Corona Virus Severity
10 Sep 2020
It has been revealed that Donald Trump knew the seriousness of
the corona virus from the
beginning and deliberately chose to downplay it to "prevent
panic." Such blatant misdirection
is inexcusable, especially since he also not only completely
failed to take any meaningful
action to stop it, but actually actively interfered with such
efforts and left us all to fend
for ourselves. It takes a real sociopath to blithely allow the
resulting 190,000 (and
counting) deaths and massive economic disruption to occur -- or
a Russian agent.
Subject: No Pre-Election Vaccine
22 Sep 2020
I am by no means an anti-vaxer. I get my flu shot every year and
the pneumonia and tetanus
boosters as recommended. However, I will not get any COVID-19
vaccine that comes out before
the election. The FDA and HHS are headed by Trump appointees who
see their jobs as making
their boss look good, rather than adhering to good science. I
will take it when these
agencies are headed by people who believe in applying real
science and prioritize protecting
our health.
Subject: Your
Freedom Ends at My Face
9 Dec 2020
To all of you insisting on exercising your personal and
religious "freedom" by attending large indoor gatherings while
refusing to wear masks, all you're doing is being superspreaders
like your role model Trump. Your deliberate thoughtlessness is
the reason that our cases and deaths are spiking out of control
and hospitals are overloaded. So, this is to make it clear that
your "freedom" ends at my face and my right to not get sick.
Subject: More Heritage Foundation Pandemic Deception
16 Jan 2022
Joel Griffith, this month's shill for the corporate and
billionaire funded Heritage Foundation,
spins a collection of lies, misinformation, half truths, and
faulty logic to advance their
right-wing agenda by blaming government policies for the current
alleged spate of economic
ills.
First, it is not government spending on pandemic bailout
programs nor health and environmental
regulations nor increased worker pay causing the current spate
of inflation. Rather, much of
it is simply price gouging by middlemen and retailers.
Businesses see opportunity in consumer
desperation and jump on it -- capitalism at work.
Second, he attributes mandated precautions to try to end the
pandemic for our supply chain
issues. The real causes are:
-
People buying too much stuff that they don't really need,
creating an unnecessary surge
in demand.
-
Corporations shipping our manufacturing (and jobs) to Asia
to save a few dollars on labor.
Now that's coming home to bite us as the ships carrying all
of that extra stuff back up
in ports.
Also, would he prefer that millions of Americans die instead of
"just" hundreds of thousands?
Their hypocrisy is exposed by how Republicans and right-wing
media are artificially ginning
up the anti-vaccine/anti-mask hysteria, thereby extending the
pandemic.
Third, he complains that wages are increasing faster than
productivity. That is the height
of cynicism. For that past 40 years, average workers' wages have
significantly lagged
increases in productivity and inflation. The current pay
increases are merely an overdue
restoration of balance and a response by people who are tired of
poverty wages. Meanwhile,
top executive pay has soared from about 40 times median pay in
1980 to 400 times now without
any perceptible increase in their productivity. Also, returning
to work is disincentivized
by fear of getting sick and dying, not safety net benefits.
Fourth, he asserts that economic growth is slowing down. This
while private sector hiring is
proceeding at near record rates, unemployment is at its lowest
in over 50 years, and consumer
spending is soaring (see above). Besides, economic growth is not
necessarily a good thing.
Much of our environmental problems (even if the Heritage
Foundation denies global warming)
are due to too much consumption and its resultant trash.
Finally, the stock market is not the economy. Barely half the
population has any participation
and only the giant institutional investors and investment
companies have any influence over
prices.
Michael Bleiweiss
Original Article:
https://www.EagleTribune.com/opinion/commentary-is-stagflation-returning-in-2022/article_1a7ccf55-c0c3-5d16-af23-a0a38cf40eac.html
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