Daily Kos: Joan McCarter

Of course chief vulture McConnell would jam a Trump Supreme Court nominee through, Republicans say

Daily Kos Staff

Friday May 08, 2020 · 1:12 PM PDT

2020/05/08 · 13:12

WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 17: U.S. Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) (2nd L) speaks as (L-R) Sen. John Thune (R-SD), and Senate Majority Whip Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) listen during a news briefing after a weekly policy luncheon July 17, 2018 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. Senate GOPs participated in a weekly luncheon to discuss Republican agenda. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) — A committee of vultures.

The Grim Reaper of everything good in Congress, Mitch McConnell, has donned his cloak and picked up his scythe, slathering over the news that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was hospitalized this week with gallbladder problems. Is there any question that the McConnell Rule established in 2016—no Supreme Court appointments for a president in an election year—would hold true for Donald Trump? Yeah. Right.

"We're going to fill" a vacancy, if there is one, said Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the No. 3 Republican leader. "With Justice Scalia […] people might not have thought he was the one, because he wasn't the oldest at the time. You just never know." Texas Sen. John Cornyn at least acknowledged that it would be a phenomenally hypocritical thing to do, but that wouldn't stop him. "If you thought the Kavanaugh hearing was contentious this would probably be that on steroids," he told reporters. "Nevertheless, if the president makes a nomination then it's our responsibility to take it up." Only when it's a Republican president, he did not add.

Let's make it the end of this iteration of the GOP. Please give $1 to our nominee fund to help Democrats end McConnell's career as majority leader!

Doctors enraged at Trump administration's botched, opaque distribution of COVID-19 treatment

Joan McCarter

Daily Kos Staff

Friday May 08, 2020 · 12:11 PM PDT

2020/05/08 · 12:11

LEONARDTOWN, MARYLAND - MARCH 24: (EDITORIAL USE ONLY) Nurses in the COVID-19 unit of MedStar St. Mary's Hospital dress in personal protective equipment before entering a patient's room March 24, 2020 in Leonardtown, Maryland. MedStar St. Maryâ€™s Hospital is located near the greater Washington, DC area in St. Maryâ€™s county, Maryland. Hospitals around the United States are continuing to prepare for an expected onslaught of cases related to COVID-19 in the days ahead. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

The experimental anti-viral drug remdesivir has shown such great promise for treating COVID-19 that it received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration so it could be distributed to hospitals as fast as it can be produced. Then the Trump administration stepped in to start the distribution of the limited amount of it available for patient treatment, as opposed to research, now. Typical of this total corrupt fiasco of an administration, no one knows who's deciding where it goes and why it seems to be going to some hospitals and not others.

"In my opinion, and I think in the opinion of many of my colleagues, there is a complete lack of transparency about how this decision is being made and who is making it," Daniel Kaul, an infectious disease physician at the University of Michigan told Stat News. His hospital isn't getting any of the treatment. Paul Biddinger, director of Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for Disaster Medicine, says his center is getting it, but "I legitimately do not have any insight into how hospitals were selected." Most of the rest of Massachusetts hospitals aren't getting any. He said his team has asked the state's Department of Public Health if federal regulations will allow them to give that agency their hospital's allotment so that it can be redistributed to where the need is greatest.

In public comments that weren't 'intended to be made public,' McSally trashes hurting cities

Joan McCarter

Daily Kos Staff

Friday May 08, 2020 · 9:36 AM PDT

2020/05/08 · 09:36

Representative Martha McSally greets US President Donald Trump during a "Make America Great" rally in Mesa, Arizona on October 19, 2018. - US President Donald Trump said Friday, October 19, 2018, that he found credible Saudi Arabia's assertion that dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi died as a result of a fight. (Photo by Nicholas Kamm / AFP) (Photo credit should read NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images) — McSally's sticking with Trump, no matter what.

As Arizona's cities are laying off and furloughing workers because of cratering revenues as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, their Republican senator is telling them to toughen up. She isn't going to help them by voting for any financial support for state local government, citing that "blue state bailout" bullshit.

"I'm just going to be frank with you guys, okay," she said in a virtual town meeting in Arizona. "This is not the time for states and cities—unlike Arizona, unlike Surprise—who have mismanaged their budgets over the course of many decades, for them to use this as an opportunity to see you, as a taxpayer in Arizona, as a cash cow for them in whatever city you want to talk about, whether it's Chicago or New York or whatever." Or Tempe, or Mesa, or Kingman, or Page, or Prescott, Arizona. Or Phoenix, which is a projecting a $26 million shortfall. Is she lumping all those towns in with the "cities that have nothing to do with coronavirus" but failed at budgeting and managing debt, and thus need to be bailed out? "This is not the time for us in Arizona and you in Surprise to be paying for mismanagement in Chicago," McSally continued. "That's what, actually, the left is advocating for right now. What we're advocating for is we provide specific relief."

McSally isn't helping Arizona, and she sure as hell isn't helping the country. Please give $1 to our nominee fund to help Democrats end the Republican majority in the Senate and to boot McSally.

Senate Democrats join Pelosi in calling for direct, ongoing cash payments to (almost) everyone

Joan McCarter

Daily Kos Staff

Friday May 08, 2020 · 7:36 AM PDT

2020/05/08 · 07:36

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has support in the Senate for her push to include recurring monthly payments of $2,000 to individual Americans for the duration of the coronavirus crisis. Three Senate Democrats have jumped on board that plan with their own bill.

Sens. Kamala Harris, Ed Markey, and Bernie Sanders are releasing the Monthly Economic Crisis Support Act on Friday. Their bill would send $2,000 to every American making less than $120,000, and $4,000 to married couples filing jointly, with $2,000 for each of the first three children in a family. Significantly, it would be retroactive to March, helping to mitigate at least some of the damage done thus far by a botched federal response to the crisis. Harris pointed to that failure, saying that their bill recognizes that they have done not "nearly enough to meet the needs of this historic crisis." Sanders said that "Congress has a responsibility to make sure that every working-class household in America receives a $2,000 emergency payment a month for each family member," and Markey added that the plan is "the most direct and efficient mechanism for delivering economic relief to those most vulnerable."

The COVID-19 small business loan program isn't doing the job. Congress needs another plan

Joan McCarter

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday May 07, 2020 · 2:54 PM PDT

2020/05/07 · 14:54

A pedestrian walks by The Framing Gallery, closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in Grosse Pointe, Mich., Thursday, May 7, 2020. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said Thursday that auto and other manufacturing workers can return to the job next week, further easing her stay-at-home order while extending it through May 28 because of the coronavirus pandemic. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

The Paycheck Protection Program, the small business loan program created by Republican Sens. Marco Rubio and Susan Collins as part of the CARES Act, appears to be too bogged down in problems to be worth re-upping for a third round in the next version of legislation. First there were all the problems with the massive, publicly traded corporations that took the first big bites out of it; the fact that small business owners of color were largely shut out; and the fact that the loans didn't go to the parts of the country that needed them most.

Now it's becoming clear that the program is so complicated, recipients of the loans could be left with huge debt loads because meeting the requirements for the loans to be forgiven is so stringent. "Virtually every small business borrower believes that this will be forgiven," Paul Merski, a lobbyist for the Independent Community Bankers of America told The New York Times. "They took it out assuming that it would be a grant but it's not—you have to abide by very complex rules and regulations on how this is spent."

Pentagon says COVID-19 infection disqualifies recruits, precedent for insurers in an ACA-free market

Joan McCarter

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday May 07, 2020 · 12:14 PM PDT

2020/05/07 · 12:14

PEMBROKE PINES, FLORIDA - MARCH 20: Members of the Floridaâ€™s National Guard help at a coronavirus testing site they setup at C.B. Smith Park and will take place every day from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m on March 20, 2020 in Pembroke Pines, Florida. National Guard medics along with health care personnel with the Memorial Healthcare System, will be administering the test, which includes swabbing the patientâ€™s nose and throat and testing for COVID-19. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Here's a harbinger for what's to come should the Trump administration prevail in its efforts to get the Supreme Court to throw out the entirety of the Affordable Care Act: The Pentagon has decided that coronavirus is a preexisting condition and will reject recruits who've recovered from it.

"During the medical history interview or examination, a history of COVID-19, confirmed by either a laboratory test or a clinician diagnosis, is permanently disqualifying," a memo from the U.S. Military Entrance Processing Command (MEPCOM) that was leaked on social media Thursday states. The Pentagon has confirmed that this will be recruitment policy going forward with numerous outlets, including Military Times.

Pelosi endorses $2,000 every month to everybody in next $2 trillion COVID-19 response bill

Joan McCarter

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday May 07, 2020 · 10:00 AM PDT

2020/05/07 · 10:00

A For Sale By Owner and closed due virus sign is displayed in the window of Images On Mack in Grosse Pointe Woods, Mich., Thursday, April 2, 2020. The coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak has triggered a stunning collapse in the U.S. workforce with 10 million people losing their jobs in the past two weeks and economists warn unemployment could reach levels not seen since the Depression, as the economic damage from the crisis piles up around the world. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

The elements of CARES 2, the next big coronavirus response bill, are finally emerging from the Democratic Congress, where at least the horrendous scope and urgency of the emergency seems to be recognized even if it's not accompanied by urgency. It is reportedly aiming at another $2 trillion: "billions of dollars more to expand coronavirus testing, unemployment benefits, small business loans and aid for state and local governments."

The encouraging part: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "and other lawmakers voiced support for including in the next package $2,000 in recurring monthly payments for Americans," which might be the single most important thing they could do. Additionally, The Hill reports that Pelosi and team have prioritized vote-by-mail, funding for the U.S. Postal Service, broadband infrastructure, and worker protections. Rep. Maxine Waters says she's ready "to fight till hell freezes over" to include $100 billion in rental assistance and an eviction moratorium, while Reps. Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are arguing for cancellation of rent and mortgage payments for the duration of the pandemic.

The chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee seems to be a big blabbermouth, and corrupt to boot

Joan McCarter

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday May 07, 2020 · 7:57 AM PDT

2020/05/07 · 07:57

Chairman Richard Burr, R-NC, reaches for hand sanitizer at a Senate Intelligence Committee nomination hearing for Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-TX, on Capitol Hill in Washington,DC on May 5, 2020. - The panel is considering Ratcliffes nomination for Director of National Intelligence. (Photo by Andrew Harnik / POOL / AFP) (Photo by ANDREW HARNIK/POOL/AFP via Getty Images) — It's not clear whether he invested in hand sanitizer.

Sen. Richard Burr, Republican of North Carolina and the No. 1 guy in the Senate for hearing sensitive, classified information about the health and safety of the nation, seemingly can't keep a secret. At least not one that has the potential to make him and his buddies a lot richer, which he capitalized on personally, cashing out as much as $1.5 million in stock just before the COVID-19 market crash. He also warned his wealthy friends in the exclusive Tar Heel Circle about the classified intelligence he'd received on the dire pandemic that was coming.

Now Propublica, the outlet that discovered Burr's stock dump, has found another beneficiary of Burr's classified knowledge. On the same day that Burr dumped his stocks, beating the market crash, so did his brother-in-law. Gerald Fauth, Burr's relative and also a Trump appointee on the National Mediation Board, sold between $97,000 and $280,000 in shares the same day Burr unloaded his. It could be purely coincidental, of course, but how likely is that? This was on Feb. 13, two weeks before Burr talked to the Tar Heel Circle, and the day before the market crash. Meanwhile, Burr was telling the public that everything was going to be fine.

The first round of small business loans didn't go where the need was greatest

Joan McCarter

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday May 07, 2020 · 6:06 AM PDT

2020/05/07 · 06:06

OLD BETHPAGE, NY - APRIL 10: A worker at Han's Natural Farms handles a customer's groceries on April 10, 2020 in Old Bethpage, New York. According to Johns Hopkins University, New York state has more confirmed coronavirus cases than any other country outside of the United States. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

A couple of weeks ago the geographical distribution of the small business loans in the Paycheck Protection Program under the COVID-19 response bill, the CARES Act, raised a lot of eyebrows. It sure seemed on first glance that a disproportionate amount of loan money was going to red states that hadn't been coronavirus outbreak centers. Since then, some of the specific "small" businesses that got the loans—the L.A. Lakers, the Ritz Carlton hotels, major restaurant chains—grabbed the headlines, but the perplexing geographical distribution of funds intrigued a couple of economists at the New York Fed. So they dug into the data from the first round of loans, trying to answer the question: "Have PPP loans gone to the areas of the country and sectors of the economy hardest hit by COVID-19?"

In a nutshell, no. The loans have not gone to the areas hit hardest by the pandemic. They find that "some of the hardest hit areas—such as New York, New Jersey, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—are getting fewer loans than some Mountain and Midwest states on a per-small-business basis." Here's a mind-blowing finding: while less than 20% of New York businesses were approved for the loans, more than 55 percent of small businesses in Nebraska are expecting PPP funding." From the initial reports of the loan program, they found "there is no statistically significant relationship between the severity of the economic impact of COVID-19—measured both in terms of cases and unemployment claims—and the share of small businesses getting PPP loans, after excluding New York and New Jersey."

Health officials privately see waves of new outbreaks resulting from Trump's reopening

Joan McCarter

Daily Kos Staff

Wednesday May 06, 2020 · 8:25 AM PDT

2020/05/06 · 08:25

US President Donald Trump reacts during a Coronavirus Task Force press briefing at the White House in Washington, DC, on April 19, 2020. (Photo by JIM WATSON / AFP) (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)

On May 1, while Donald Trump was crowing to the nation about his great victory over the novel coronavirus and saying he'd "solved every problem," officials in the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Health and Human Services (HHS) were on a conference call, sharing their concerns over continuing medical equipment shortages and the danger of states reopening too soon. Politico obtained a recording of that grim call.

"We've ensured a ventilator for every patient who needs one," Trump said in his mini-rally. "The testing and the masks and all of the things, we've solved every problem. We solved it quickly." So, Trump said, let's reopen. Meanwhile, Daniel Jernigan, director of the Centers for Disease Control's influenza division, opened the conference call by saying that the "numbers of deaths definitely will be high" with the administration's stay-at-home restrictions expiring. "If, at the end of stay-at-home orders, you were to lift everything and go back to normal business, and not have any community mitigation, you would expect to see in the second week in May we begin to increase again in ventilator uses," another unidentified official said. "Which means cases increase, and by early June, we surpass the number of ventilators we currently have."

Trump's demands for payroll tax cut blown off by Senate Republicans who have bigger, deadlier plans

Joan McCarter

Daily Kos Staff

Wednesday May 06, 2020 · 7:06 AM PDT

2020/05/06 · 07:06

WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 6: (L-R) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) walks off the stage asPresident Donald Trump looks on during an event about judicial confirmations in the East Room of the White House on November 6, 2019 in Washington, DC. More than 150 of the president's federal judicial nominees have been confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Donald Trump might want to seize the opportunity provided by the COVID-19 pandemic crisis to destroy Social Security, but it appears Senate Republicans don't want to have that fight right now. That doesn't mean they're not on board with all the other tax cuts Trump is eyeing, but even Senate Republicans seem to understand that the payroll tax cut Trump wants is ridiculous.

Trump's talking about a slew of new tax cuts for the wealthy. Because of course he is. That includes a cut in the capital gains tax rate and more corporate giveaways, allowing companies to deduct the full costs of investments they made during this crisis—and in perpetuity, if Trump has his way. Also, he wants to expand the deduction for corporate spending on meals and entertainment, which wouldn't benefit Trump resorts at all, I'm sure. What he also wants to do is to suspend the payroll tax for workers, which does pretty much nothing to help anyone. It stops the flow of funds into the Social Security and Medicare system that is now keeping older Americans afloat and is a gift only to the people who need it least right now—the ones who are still getting their paychecks. That's not a fight Senate Republicans want to get mired in right now.

Fired vaccine doctor files whistleblower complaint, says administration ignored coronavirus warnings

Joan McCarter

Daily Kos Staff

Tuesday May 05, 2020 · 12:57 PM PDT

2020/05/05 · 12:57

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 19: President Donald Trump listens during a teleconference with governors at the Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters, with Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar is at left on March 19, 2020 in Washington, DC. With Americans testing positive from coronavirus rising President Trump is asking Congress for $1 trillion aid package to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. (Photo by Evan Vucci-Pool/Getty Images)

Dr. Rick Bright is back in the news. The vaccine researcher says he was fired from his position in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) because he fought Donald Trump on things like "the broad use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, promoted by the administration as a panacea, but which clearly lack scientific merit." He has now officially filed a whistleblower complaint, charging that the administration ignored dire coronavirus warnings.

Bright alleges that the administration was warned in late January of a critical shortage of surgical masks and of the need to start work immediately on a vaccine. He says the White House ignored the warnings. He said that early on in the spread of the virus, he warned about supply chain shortages but got little support from anyone in the administration other than trade adviser Peter Navarro, and ultimately was excluded from meetings on the coronavirus that he was scheduled to attend. Eventually, Bright was fired.

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