Susan Collins - Queen of Private Equity

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Friday October 30, 2020 · 10:16 AM PDT

2020/10/30 · 10:16

Three years ago the Senate Republicans were poised to vote on Trump’s $trillion tax cut giveaway to billionaires and large corporations. The final vote they needed to pass the measure was that of Susan Collins, who was considering a last-minute change in a tax loophole that benefits primarily Private Equity firms. The so-called “carried interest” loophole allows the Private Equity managers to report the gains on the sale of companies they loot as capital gains instead of ordinary income — a tax break worth at least 20%. This may not seem like much, but given the $billions the PE industry rakes in each year it is worth $millions to the general partners of these firms. But if there is any group that does not a tax break it is Private Equity:

“A handful of super wealthy multibillionaires have accumulated vast riches from running private equity funds that have performed no better on average than basic US stock market tracker funds since 2006. The number of private equity barons with personal fortunes of more than $2bn has risen from three in 2005 to 22, according to a new analysis which estimates investors paid $230bn in performance fees over a 10-year period for returns that could have been matched by an inexpensive tracker fund costing just a few basis points. “This wealth transfer from several hundred million pension scheme members to a few thousand people working in private equity might be one of the largest in the history of modern finance,” said Ludovic Phalippou, professor of finance at Oxford Saïd Business School.”

In the end, for reasons still unclear, Susan Collins caved: “carried interest” still survived and Trump got his signature tax giveaway. Now Susan is reaping the benefit of her vote:

Nearly three years later, Collins is facing a tough reelection battle and the private equity industry has become her most reliable source of donations. She has gotten more than half a million dollars in campaign contributions from the private equity industry this cycle, more than any other senator, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks political donations.

What’s more, Steve Schwarzman, the billionaire chairman and chief executive of the private equity giant Blackstone, has given $2 million to a super PAC backing her. (Schwarzman, a major Republican donor, has also given $20 million to a super PAC supporting Collins and other Republican Senate candidates.) The failure of Collins’ amendment likely saved Schwarzman alone tens of millions of dollars in taxes, according to tax experts.

With its scorched-earth practices, Private Equity has only made worse the general suffering during the pandemic. For years, Private Equity has been acquiring nursing homes and siphoning off profits while cutting skilled nursing staff and cutting investment in life-saving PPE and equipment. Private Equity firms have been buying hundreds of thousands of residential homes, charging exorbitant rents, and now evicting tenants despite the CDC eviction moratorium. Private Equity has been buying up hospital emergency room and ambulance operations, resulting in “surprise billings” for COVID-sick patients. And then there are the hundreds of thousands retail workers who have lost their jobs at name brand outlets such as Toys-R-Us and Nieman Marcus after Private Equity loaded the companies with debt and forced them into bankruptcy — but not before paying themselves hundreds of $millions in “dividends” and “management fees”.

Susan Collins has done enough damage. She must be voted out on November 3rd!

Trump embraced by German Neo-Nazis

DowneastDem

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Tuesday September 08, 2020 · 7:14 AM PDT

2020/09/08 · 07:14

Two weeks ago a mob of Nazis stormed the Reichstag in Berlin after one of the leaders announced that “Trump has landed in Berlin!”. That was the signal they had been waiting for; only the brave intervention of three police officers prevented them from gaining entrance to the building and trashing the seat of the nation’s parliamentary democracy. The scene brought up uncomfortable memories for Germans. After all, it was the burning of the Reichstag in 1933 that was used by Hitler as a pretext for abolishing the democratic constitution of the Weimar Republic and arresting or murdering leaders of the German Social Democrats (SPD) and the Communist Party (KPD).

The New York Times has an excellent piece on how Donald Trump is an inspiration to German Nazis and other right-wing extremist groups in Germany.

“Trump has become a savior figure, a sort of great redeemer for the German far right,” said Miro Dittrich, an expert on far-right extremism at the Berlin-based Amadeu-Antonio-Foundation.

Germany — a nation generally supportive of a government that has handled the pandemic better than most — may seem an unlikely place for Mr. Trump to gain such a status. Few Western nations have had a more contentious relationship with Mr. Trump than Germany, whose leader, Chancellor Angela Merkel, a pastor’s daughter and scientist, is his opposite in terms of values and temperament. Opinion polls show that Mr. Trump is deeply unpopular among a broad majority of Germans.

But his message of disruption — his unvarnished nationalism and tolerance of white supremacists coupled with his skepticism of the pandemic’s dangers — is spilling well beyond American shores, extremism watchers say.

The Nazis’ embrace of Trump coincides with the growing popularity of the “QAnon Conspiracy” in Germany. It is estimated that there are more than 200,000 QAnon followers in Germany — second only to the United States. The most influential QAnon leader is the celebrity chef and rabid anti-Semite Attila Hildmann:

“Trump is someone who has been fighting the global ‘deep state’ for years,” Mr. Hildmann said in an interview this past week. “Trump has become a figure of light in this movement, especially for QAnon, precisely because he fights against these global forces.”

“That’s why the hope for the German national movement, or the liberation movement, lies basically with Q and Trump, because Trump is a figure of light because he shows that you can fight these global powers and that he is victorious,” Mr. Hildmann said.

“The Germans hope that Trump will liberate Germany from the Merkel corona regime,” he said, so that “the German Reich is reactivated.”

The Nazis and other extremist groups look to Trump — and to a lesser degree, Putin — because they share the values of the US and Russian presidents: contempt for democratic institutions, hatred of people of color and immigrants, hatred of the Free Press — called Lügenpresse or Fake News.

You may think that these German Trumpists are just a small fringe group that doesn’t merit much attention. But last month a national poll revealed that one third of Germans believe in conspiracy theories.

Anti-Vaxxer RFK JR. joins neo-Nazis in massive Berlin 'Anti-Corona' Protest

DowneastDem

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Saturday August 29, 2020 · 3:06 PM PDT

2020/08/29 · 15:06

Tens of thousands ‘Corona-Truthers’ descended on Berlin today to protest the measures implemented by Angela Merkel and her government to prevent the coronavirus spread. What is ironic is that the preventative measures have been largely effective and life in Germany has largely returned to normal. Compared to the United States there have been fewer than 10,000 fatalities from COVID-19 in a population of 85 million. The protest was organized by right-wing extremist organizations- including the AfD party and various anti-Semitic conspiracy groups as well as the neo-Nazi NPD party.

Among the speakers was Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. who warned against the “totalitarianism” of Angela Merkel.

He sounded the alarm concerning the 5G mobile network and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Referring to the famous Berlin speech of his uncle JFK he said “Today Berlin is is once again the front against totalitarianism.”

Protester were seen carrying poster urging “Trump, Please Help” with the QAnon logo.

Evangelical Trump supporter: Pence is "submissive wife to Trump"

DowneastDem

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Sunday August 09, 2020 · 1:31 PM PDT

2020/08/09 · 13:31

The New York Times has an excellent article explaining why white evangelicals overwhelmingly support Trump. The gist of the piece is that these folks are willing to overlook Trump’s obvious character deficiencies because he promised that “Christianity will have power” if he is in office. The reporters point to a pivotal speech Trump gave shortly before the 2016 election:

“I will tell you, Christianity is under tremendous siege, whether we want to talk about it or we don’t want to talk about it,” Mr. Trump said.

Christians make up the overwhelming majority of the country, he said. And then he slowed slightly to stress each next word: “And yet we don’t exert the power that we should have.”

If he were elected president, he promised, that would change. He raised a finger.

“Christianity will have power,” he said. “If I’m there, you’re going to have plenty of power, you don’t need anybody else. You’re going to have somebody representing you very, very well. Remember that.”

The reporters interview a number of citizens in a small town in Iowa, and reading their comments made me realize why I haven’t attended a church service since Trump was elected. He has ruined the meaning of Christianity for me. For these folks Christianity seems to involve some kind of exclusionary worldview. Equality and justice are a zero-sum game: equal justice for Blacks means discrimination of white people; acceptance of LGBTQ community means persecution of white Christians. After all, the Lord sent a white man with a beard — just like them — as Savior. Having a Black man in the White House meant “losing their freedoms,”

“Obama wanted to take my assault rifle, he wanted to take out all the high-capacity magazines,” Mr. Schouten said. “It just —”

“— felt like your freedoms kept getting taken from you,” said Heather’s husband, Paul, finishing the sentence for him.

And the thought of a woman in the White House is abhorrent — even for the women interviewed here:

“If you are a hard-working Caucasian-American, your rights are being limited because you are seen as against all the races or against women,” she said. “Or there are people who think that because we have conservative values and we value the family and I value submitting to my husband, I must be against women’s rights.”

Her voice grew strong. “I would say it takes a stronger woman to submit to a man than to want to rule over him. And I would argue that point to the death,” she said.

She felt freer as she spoke.“Mike Pence is a wonderful gentleman,” she said. “This is probably a very bad analogy, but I’d say he is like the very supportive, submissive wife to Trump. He does the hard work, and the husband gets the glory.”

These people are convinced that Trump will win a landslide victory in November. Everywhere they look they see Trump yard signs and banners. But it’s just possible that the Lord has other plans this time and their world will once again be shaken to the core.

Letter from Auschwitz survivor to Mark Zuckerberg

DowneastDem

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Thursday July 30, 2020 · 7:27 AM PDT

2020/07/30 · 07:27

I’ve always been a strong supporter of the First Amendment and have opposed any form of censorship. One book that had a strong influence on me was Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment by Anthony Lewis. But my perspective has shifted a bit ever since Donald Trump began using Twitter to spread lies and conspiracy theories and Amazon was caught selling Boogaloo merchandise. And Facebook has been the platform of choice for white supremacists, neo-Nazis, QAnon cultists, and every other vile group — amplified by fake accounts originating in Russia and China.

Today the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published a powerful letter by a 94-year-old survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald addressed to Mark Zuckerberg, pleading with him to eliminate Holocaust-denial content from Facebook — for the sake of preserving democracy.

I have translated just a portion of the letter:

Dear Mr. Zuckerberg,

My name is Marian Turski and I am a survivor of the Lodz Ghetto, Auschwitz and two death marches — from Auschwitz to Buchenwald and from Buchenwald to Theresienstadt.

[...] Auschwitz did not fall from the sky. Auschwitz crept in step by step, from small discriminatory regulations to mass genocide. Auschwitz could only happen under circumstances where people were constantly stupefied by what they read and heard, and grew accustomed to lie after lie, and inundated with with hate speech after hate speech. And the final result of this avalanche of lies and hate speech was incitement to murder. That is why the Holocaust denial is so deadly to the democratic system.

[..]I appeal to you today not to allow Holocaust deniers to appear on Facebook — not to restrict our democratic rights but to preserve them.

Respectfully,

Marian Turski

Powerful words from one who experienced first hand how hate can take hold and destroy democracy.

O Canada! German conspiracy nuts flocking to Cape Breton

DowneastDem

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Friday July 24, 2020 · 11:04 AM PDT

2020/07/24 · 11:04

Want to spend your evenings drinking beer with your neighbors and chatting about chemtrails, George Soros, and how the 5G network is spreading the corona virus? Far right German personalities Andreas Popp and Eva Herman have found the ideal location - far from Muslim hordes streaming into Bavaria - namely, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Eva Herman is a German version of Laura Ingraham — only much dumber. Der Spiegel has the story, which was picked up by other news networks: (my translation)

A colony of right-wing extremists and conspiracy theorists from Germany in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia have made such a scenario a reality. As Der Spiegel reports in its current issue, hundreds of Germans have settled on the island of Cape Breton, which is part of Nova Scotia. Cape Breton is four times the size of Saarland (a western German state) but with a population of only 130,000.

Herman and Popp use an aggressive e-mail campaign to lure conspiracy-minded Germans to a "seminar" on Cape Breton where they are presented with loads of information about how Europe is going to hell in a hand basket thanks to immigrants from the Middle-East, Africa, and Asia. And Canada is a secure sanctuary for true Germans. Evidently the seminars are pretty lucrative for the "bio-deutsch" (i.e. genetically pure German) couple:

Invitations are sent out for one-week “seminar” that are held about four times a year. The cost per person is 3,000 euros which includes airfare and hotel. Andreas Popp calls the seminar attendees “Clear Thinkers” and holds lectures on the “status of the world” which are completely independent of the ‘ fake news” propagated by the mainstream media.

They are joined in the scheme by the Holocaust-denier Frank Eckhardt, who arranges for the real estate transactions at prices way above market. According to the report, already "hundreds of Germans" with pro-Nazi mindsets (Hunderte Deutsche mit "braunem Gedankengut") have already bought land in the Aryan enclave.

Unfortunately, the dream of a new Vaterland has turned into a nightmare for some of the true believers:

A family from Austria has been ordered out of Canada, and must leave this week, after running afoul of immigration rules.They hope to be back, but it'll be at least a year before they can return to Cape Breton, where they've sunk their life savings into a home and farm..Reinhard and Romana Fugger have invested nearly $500,000 after buying and improving a rural property in Grand River, Richmond County, in 2015. They say a local man, Frank Eckhardt and his company F.E. Property Sales, facilitated the property purchase and promised easy immigration to Canada. The Fuggers say that help with the immigration process never came."We find this property and we think we can do this in an easy way, because we have the information before that it is not hard, maybe easy, to immigrate here," said Reinhard Fugger. Eckhardt's company website, hosted in Germany and aimed at Europeans, advertises property sales and "new settler consultation." The Fuggers say they found out after they got here that they paid more than the property was worth.They paid $160,000 for 4.5 hectares of land with a small summer cottage to a lawyer recommended by Eckhardt who handled the real estate transaction. The property value was assessed at $82,000 at the time.

Now the coronavirus “hoax” has put the dream of a “Reich by the sea” on ice along with the the seminar and real estate business for the time being. Once again victims of a conspiracy — but this time not by George Soros, but rather Bill Gates.

Black kid offers white adult a donut. Gets bombarded with N-word.

DowneastDem

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Wednesday July 22, 2020 · 9:55 AM PDT

2020/07/22 · 09:55

Fourteen year-old Peter Osazuwa had just purchased some donuts in downtown Newburyport, Massachusetts. Dunkin’ Donuts made a mistake in completing the order and gave the kid extra donuts as an apology. Peter shared the donuts with his friends, but had an extra one that he offered to a white gentleman walking by on the street. What happened next is truly sickening:

The passerby, a white man, flew into a tirade against the Black teenager, bombarding him with racial slurs.

“He was asking him, ‘Do you want a donut?” and he went off,” Adama Barry, the teenager’s mother, said in an interview Tuesday. “The guy started yelling, using the n-word on him.”

As the man yelled at Peter and two of his friends, bystanders approached and attempted to intervene, but the man continued shouting, according to Barry and video of the episode, which Barry provided to the Globe.

Just before the man drove off in a Lexus sedan, someone asked him, “What did you call him?” the video shows. The man shouted the n-word through his sunroof and drove away.

Peter and his family have been in Newburyport since 2008 and haven’t experienced much overt racism, Until this past year:

“This is the second time my kids were called the n-word. They were told to go back where they came from” by a neighbor in their subsidized housing development, Barry said. “My kids were like, ‘What do they mean? This is where we’re from.’ They don’t know anywhere else. … I’m originally from Africa, but they’ve never been to Africa.”

I wonder why the recent hostility?

Over the last few days the president has tweeted context-free videos of random incidents involving black people attacking white people and baselessly argued that President Barack Obama, the country’s first black leader, committed “treason.” In an interview with the Catholic News Agency that was posted online on Monday, Mr. Trump said he planned to sign an order to protect national monuments at a time when statues of Confederate generals are being torn down across the country.

Hats off to the Newburyport police, who are now investigating the hate incident. Hopefully the have the license plate number of the ~~Trump supporter~~ white gentleman.

Private Equity and the Looting of America

DowneastDem

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Friday July 03, 2020 · 8:00 AM PDT

2020/07/03 · 08:00

Mehrsa Baradaran has an important op/ed piece in the New York Times you may have missed: The Neo-Liberal Looting of America. The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the damage private equity has done to the United States. Thousands of jobs have been lost through the bankruptcies of J Crew, Nieman Marcus, and Hertz after its PE owners layered $billions of debt on their portfolio assets, PE-owned long-term care facilities have cut skilled nursing staff and PPE resulting in untold thousands of deaths as infections raged through their facilities, PE-owned hospital emergency room groups have been aggressively laying off MD’s and nurses. But the PE executives continue to rake in $millions.

In the last decade, private equity management has led to approximately 1.3 million job losses due to retail bankruptcies and liquidation. Beyond the companies directly controlled by private equity, the threat of being the next takeover target has most likely led other companies to pre-emptively cut wages and jobs to avoid being the weakest prey. Amid the outbreak of street protests in June, a satirical headline in The Onion put it best: “Protesters Criticized For Looting Businesses Without Forming Private Equity Firm First.” Yet the private equity takeover is not technically looting because it has been made perfectly legal, and even encouraged, by policymakers.

The magnitude of the greed is breathtaking.

The number of private equity barons with personal fortunes of more than $2bn has risen from three in 2005 to 22, according to a new analysis which estimates investors paid $230bn in performance fees over a 10-year period for returns that could have been matched by an inexpensive tracker fund costing just a few basis points. “This wealth transfer from several hundred million pension scheme members to a few thousand people working in private equity might be one of the largest in the history of modern finance,” said Ludovic Phalippou, professor of finance at Oxford Saïd Business School.”

That’s $230 billion that could have been deployed to raise wages of employees, of investing in plant and equipment, or in product innovation. But they also get special tax treatment denied to the rest of us:

Their standard fee structure involves collecting around 2 percent of the investor money they manage annually, and then 20 percent of any profits above an agreed-upon level. This lucrative arrangement also lets them tap into the very favorable “carried interest” tax loophole, allowing them to pay much lower capital gains tax rates on their earnings, rather than normal income taxes like most people.

Now the limited partners in these private equity funds include university endowments and public pension funds. So isn’t it a net positive if the PE returns are securing the retirements of public employees? But, according to the Financial Times the research shows that PE funds perform no better than the market as a whole:

Mr Phalippou’s analysis indicates that large US public pension plans earned about $1.50 (net of fees) for every $1 invested in private equity funds between 2006 and 2015. This translates into annualised returns of about 11 per cent, little different from the US stock market over the same period.“The performance of PE funds, net of fees, matched that of public equity markets since 2006,” said Mr Phalippou.

My hope is that Elizabeth Warren will be appointed Secretary of Treasury in the Biden Administration and can finally push through her Stop Wall Street Looting Act.

QAnon Conspiracy Comes to Germany

DowneastDem

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Saturday May 23, 2020 · 7:42 AM PDT

2020/05/23 · 07:42

Last February 43 year-old Tobias Rathjen, a Trump enthusiast, went on a shooting rampage in Hanau, outside of Frankfurt, killing 9 people of Middle Eastern or Turkish background. Authorities later found an English language video in which he warned Americans that they are under the control of “invisible secret societies,” and he spoke of subterranean military bases where “they abuse, torture and kill little children.” This video provided the first clue that the QAnon conspiracy had made its way from the US to Germany. The belief that children are being abducted and sexually tortured or killed by dark forces - possibly under control of Hilary Clinton, or Barack Obama, or the "New World Order" (i.e. the Jews) -is at the core of the QAnon "doctrine." Donald Trump was brought forth to engage in mortal combat with these dark forces. The coronavirus pandemic has only amplified and accelerated the gospel of Q - a common belief is that the virus was concocted by Barack Obama, or Bill Gates, with the scientific support of US epidemiologist Anthony Fauci - in order the bring the world closer to End Times - the ultimate battle between Good and Evil.

"You know that a small group of manipulators, operating in the shadows, pull the planet’s strings. You know that they are powerful enough to abuse children without fear of retribution. You know that the mainstream media are their handmaidens, in partnership with Hillary Clinton and the secretive denizens of the deep state. You know that only Donald Trump stands between you and a damned and ravaged world. You see plague and pestilence sweeping the planet, and understand that they are part of the plan. You know that a clash between good and evil cannot be avoided, and you yearn for the Great Awakening that is coming. And so you must be on guard at all times. You must shield your ears from the scorn of the ignorant. You must find those who are like you. And you must be prepared to fight.

You know all this because you believe in Q."

Since the tragic mass shooting in Hanau, the popularity of QAnon in Germany has only grown. Each week so-called Hygiene-Demos take place across Germany to protest government laws to contain the COVID-19 pandemic:

Even as Germany is celebrated as Europe’s foremost example of pandemic management, an eclectic protest movement that began last month with a few dozen people marching against coronavirus restrictions has ballooned into more than 10,000 demonstrators in cities across the country.[...]Message boards are flush with far-right conspiracy theories and prepper groups, which have long fantasized about a crisis so deep that it would lead to the collapse of Germany’s liberal order, said Stephan Kramer, the head of the regional office of the domestic intelligence agency in Thuringia. “They are mobilizing,” Mr. Kramer said. “The corona crisis feeds into their narrative of a decline in Western liberalism. It feeds militancy and potentially violence.”

Each week sees more protestors wearing QAnon t-shirts or carrying placards with QAnon slogans. Why would so many latch onto a purely American conspiracy theory? It seems that Germans are especially susceptible to theories involving unseen elite forces that are really in control of the world. Even today, millions of Germans believe the 9/11 attacks were an "inside job", carried out by the CIA and Mossad (possibly directed by George Soros or the Rothschilds). A Swiss "peace researcher" - Daniele Ganser - makes $millions giving "lectures" to packed auditoriums across Germany with his slide presentation that "proves" the Twin Towers were brought down by "controlled demolition" - this nearly 20 years after that tragic event.

The journalist Hannes Stein sums up in a piece in Die Welt : Der Kult um Q und seine deutschen Jünger ("The Q-cult and its German Disciples"):

"The followers of QAnon view the pandemic as a fake construct by the elite that will be used to enslave the Volk. "Trust the Plan", "Enjoy the Show", "No one can stop what is coming". Perhaps in 12 months there will be a vaccine against the coronavirus. But no medical treatment or vaccine will help against this fanaticism."

Yes, as we have seen at Trump rallies, there is no cure for stupid.

Sweden is NOT the model

DowneastDem

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Tuesday May 12, 2020 · 10:27 AM PDT

2020/05/12 · 10:27

I just heard Senator Rand Paul tell Dr. Fauci that we should embrace the Swedish model of “herd immunity” in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, that massive testing and contact tracing are totally unnecessary, that the virus was no worse than the seasonal flu with respect to Kentucky.

I happened to catch this article in the Swiss newspaper Tages Anzeiger which has a different take on the Swedish situation. (all translations mine).

Protection of the elderly was a central component of the Swedish approach. And by Easter it was apparent that this had been “a catastrophic failure”, as the Swedish tabloid ‘Aftonbladet’ wrote, which otherwise is a loyal supporter of the Swedish line. Sweden recorded more than 3 times as many deaths from Covid-19 than its neighbors Denmark, Norway and Finland combined. [...] Sweden had “sacrificed its elderly”.

Evidently the conditions in the Swedish nursing homes and assisted living facilities are no better than the awful situation here in the US.

Cost cutting and privatization of the sector have led to a situation that everything is lacking in the nursing homes. “They were using paper napkins with rubber bands stapled on to use as face masks” a doctor reported. “We are the worst of all Nordic countries when it came to saving our elderly.”

And in Sweden there are the same heartbreaking stories we have become accustomed to here in the United States:

The journalist Björn Hygstedt spoke about his anger at the fact that his 92 year-old father died from the coronavirus without a family member at his side. Hygstedt wrote a text that went viral about the death of his father. He is certain about one thing: this was the fault of the government officials. “Their failure has cost too many lives.”

But for Rand Paul, this is precisely the model America must follow.

Catholic Bishops Issue Bizarre Conspiracy-Laden Anti-Vax Appeal

DowneastDem

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Monday May 11, 2020 · 7:36 AM PDT

2020/05/11 · 07:36

The bishops issued an Appeal for the Church and the World in multiple languages, signed also by cardinals and archbishops in Germany and elsewhere. The document is highly critical of government efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19 through social distancing, quarantine of infected individuals, testing and contact tracing, comparing these measures to “dictatorships”.

The appeal was evidently drafted by the nemesis of Pope Francis — the Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò and has been endorsed by many leaders in the Catholic Church who vehemently oppose the Pope’s more liberal course.

Throughout the appeal is a warning that the global effort to deal with COVID-19 is leading to a dangerous “odious technological tyranny” in a “world government beyond all control”.

We have reason to believe, on the basis of official data on the incidence of the epidemic as related to the number of deaths, that there are powers interested in creating panic among the world’s population with the sole aim of permanently imposing unacceptable forms of restriction on freedoms, of controlling people and of tracking their movements. The imposition of these illiberal measures is a disturbing prelude to the realization of a world government beyond all control.

Of course, the idea of a “world government” has anti-Semitic connotations which flare up from time to time among Catholic clerics, although the “odious technological tyranny” is probably a reference to Bill Gates — the boogeyman of coronavirus conspiracy theories.

The most disgusting section of the appeal is the warning against vaccines — the bishops imply the COVID-19 vaccines (which don’t even exist yet) are made from aborted fetuses:

We ask the scientific community to be vigilant, so that cures for Covid-19 are offered in honesty for the common good. Every effort must be made to ensure that shady business interests do not influence the choices made by government leaders and international bodies. It is unreasonable to penalize those remedies that have proved to be effective, and are often inexpensive, just because one wishes to give priority to treatments or vaccines that are not as good, but which guarantee pharmaceutical companies far greater profits, and exacerbate public health expenditures. Let us also remember, as Pastors, that for Catholics it is morally unacceptable to develop or use vaccines derived from material from aborted fetuses.

No doubt the bishops were elated that the appeal was co-signed by the notorious anti-vaxxer and Kennedy family black sheep Robert Francis Kennedy Jr.

Private Equity is making the pandemic worse

DowneastDem

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Friday May 01, 2020 · 10:04 AM PDT

2020/05/01 · 10:04

After we all come through this terrible period I hope Congress will investigate the role that Private Equity has played in exacerbating the overall suffering. Take nursing home/long-term care facilities. This sector has been a favorite target of PE investors for years. The model is to layer excessive levels of debt on the assets acquired and use the proceeds not to invest in care or new equipment but to pay the PE investors hefty dividends and “management fees”. In order to cover the debt service the PE owners typically cut staff, neglect plant improvement, and, in some cases, engage in sale-leaseback transactions on the nursing home properties.

The result is that the patients suffer:

The research showed that private equity-owned nursing homes were able to fill more beds than their peers, as patient volume at these acquired facilities increased by eight percent. At the same time, nursing staff declines following buyout deals. Total nursing staff hours fell by 1.4 percent, the research showed.

These measures combined resulted in the addition of nearly $770,000 to the average private equity-owned nursing home each year, according to the paper.

Good deal for the investors — not so good for the patients. Overall quality has suffered across all indicators including quality of care, facility infrastructure, managerial quality, and patient rights; nurse staffing compliance with guidelines; and patient health outcomes. This was before the COVID-19 outbreak. These facilities were already understaffed and under-resourced — lacking basic PPE such as n-95 masks or ventilators. And we have seen, tragically, how the virus has ravaged nursing homes. In Massachusetts half of the state’s 3,000+ deaths from the virus have come from nursing homes and long-term care facilities.

Another favorite Private Equity target has been hospital emergency room staffing. While hospitals are straining to care for an influx of seriously ill COVID patients, the PE firms are cutting desperately needed staff and pay:

TeamHealth, a major medical staffing company owned by the private-equity giant Blackstone, is reducing hours for ER staff in some places and asking for voluntary furloughs from anesthesiologists, the company confirmed to ProPublica. Multiple ER providers working for a main competitor, KKR-owned Envision Healthcare, said their hours also are being cut.

Even as some hospitals risk running out of room to care for COVID-19 patients, demand for other kinds of health care is collapsing. This irony is straining the business models of hospitals and the companies that staff them with doctors and other medical professionals.

I could go on from sector to sector — from restaurant chains to retail to prison health service groups — to show how the greed of Private Equity has been making an already terrible situation worse in this country. But it will only get worse. For the PE industry has over $1.5 Trillion of “dry powder” and is eager to acquire and “streamline” as many publicly listed companies as possible, now that share prices have declined to new lows. Senator Elizabeth Warren and AOC have teamed up on a bill — The Pandemic Anti-Monopoly Act — to impose a moratorium on PE takeovers. But as long as the Republican Party is in the pocket of Private Equity there is little chance of the bill passing.

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