Elizabeth Warren Is Everywhere On Coronavirus Response

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Money, Class, and Poverty,Leave a comment

Even before she left the presidential race, Warren had worked to shape seemingly every element of the federal government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and the steep recession that is almost certainly coming with it. Her proposal to bar companies who receive bailout funds from stock buybacks has been endorsed by even conservative Republicans, and she worked with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to make canceling student debt part of the Democratic Party’s proposed response to the crisis.

She’s peppered seemingly every branch of President Donald Trump’s administration with letters demanding details on how they’re responding, sending more than 25 letters to different branches and agencies, covering everyone from the Federal Communications Commission to the National Institutes of Health to Vice President Mike Pence’s office. 

“This is not my first rodeo,” Warren said.

… On Tuesday, she rolled out a list of eight conditions she argued should be placed on any company that receives government funds to help stay afloat during the pandemic, including a permanent ban on stock buybacks, a three-year ban on dividends or executive bonuses and setting aside board seats for employee-elected representatives.

…Warren’s role in the debate shows she’s continuing to function as the Democratic Party’s ideas factory even after her presidential campaign sputtered.

To Warren allies, it makes perfect sense that the second-term senator would grieve the end of her campaign by making policy. Warren’s original rise to political prominence was a result of the similarly complicated and all-encompassing 2008 financial crisis, and Warren released plans to deal with both a pandemic and a financial collapse during her 2020 run for the presidency.

…“If anyone is going to listen to anybody on how to get out of this, it’s going to be Elizabeth Warren,” said Mary Anne Marsh, a Boston-based Democratic strategist.

Why Elizabeth Warren Is Everywhere On Coronavirus Response | HuffPost

hmmmm

DOJ Wants to Suspend Constitutional Rights for Coronavirus Emergency

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Domestic Affairs,, Race,Leave a comment

The Trump Department of Justice has asked Congress to craft legislation allowing chief judges to indefinitely hold people without trial and suspend other constitutionally-protected rights during coronavirus and other emergencies, according to a report by Politico’s Betsy Woodruff Swan.

While the asks from the Department of Justice will likely not come to fruition with a Democratically-controlled House of Representatives, they demonstrate how much this White House has a frightening disregard for rights enumerated in the Constitution.

The DOJ has requested Congress allow any chief judge of a district court to pause court proceedings “whenever the district court is fully or partially closed by virtue of any natural disaster, civil disobedience, or other emergency situation,” according to draft language obtained by Politico. This would be applicable to “any statutes or rules of procedure otherwise affecting pre-arrest, post-arrest, pre-trial, trial, and post-trial procedures in criminal and juvenile proceedings and all civil processes and proceedings.”

…Enacting legislation like the DOJ wants would essentially suspend habeas corpus indefinitely until the emergency ended. Further, DOJ asked Congress to suspend the statute of limitations on criminal investigations and civil proceedings during the emergency until a year after it ended.

…They also asked Congress to pass a law saying that immigrants who test positive for COVID-19 cannot qualify as asylum seekers.

As coronavirus spreads through the country, activists are calling on politicians in office to release prisoners and immigrants held in detention centers, both of which can be a hotbed of virus activity with so many people in close quarters and limited or non-existent supplies of soap, sanitizer, and protective equipment.

DOJ Wants to Suspend Constitutional Rights for Coronavirus Emergency – Rolling Stone

Unamerican asshats

‘There’s no playbook for this’: Biden trapped in campaign limbo

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,Leave a comment

Because Sanders won’t quit, Biden can’t fully pivot to the general election. He can’t truly unite the party’s warring factions. Nor can he begin stockpiling the vast amounts of money he’ll need for November. His momentum has effectively been stopped cold.

A source familiar with the Democratic National Committee’s discussions says the party offered both the Biden and Sanders campaigns the opportunity to open joint-fundraising accounts. But since Sanders declined [as he did, in 2016 – a move which helped to tank the General Election Campaign and Dem Party unity… Not shocking he’s pulling the same self-important, non-Team oriented bullshit] the party is reluctant to enter into one with Biden because of the bad optics of seeming to help one candidate.

‘There’s no playbook for this’: Biden trapped in campaign limbo – POLITICO

hmmmm

Maryland man fatally shot by police ‘while asleep in his bedroom’ | US news | The Guardian

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,Leave a comment

A Maryland man who was shot and killed by a police officer was asleep in his bedroom when police opened fire from outside his house, an attorney for the 21-year-old man’s family said on Friday. The man’s girlfriend was also wounded.

…The warrant police obtained to search the Potomac home Lemp shared with his parents and 19-year-old brother does not mention any “imminent threat” to law enforcement or the public.

…“There is no warrant or other justification that would ever allow for that unless there is an imminent threat, which there was not,” Sandler said.

…“Any attempt by the police to shift responsibility on to Duncan or his family, who were sleeping when the police fired shots into their home, is not supported by the facts,” the statement says.

Maryland man fatally shot by police ‘while asleep in his bedroom’ | US news | The Guardian

hmmmm

‘Nature is taking back Venice’: wildlife returns to tourist-free city

On By peanutgallerynhIn Europe,, Media and Culture,Leave a comment

La Serenissima’s hundreds of canals have been emptied of speeding motorboat taxis, transport and tourist boats. The chugging vaporetti water buses now run on a reduced timetable. Even most of the gondolas are moored.

The clarity of the water has improved dramatically. Cormorants have returned to dive for fish they can now see.

…The reason is the absence of motorised transport, which normally churns up the muddy canal floor.

….In a queue to buy fish at his local fishmonger in Canareggio, Franco Fabris, an architect, reminisced: “When I was a kid growing up, there were far less boats in the canals and lots of kids would jump in and go swimming.”

“For the moment I am not going out fishing as all the restaurants I supply have closed, so what is the point?” said Franco Folin, a fisherman. “But when this all over, we may well see more fish returning because for the moment pleasure fishing is prohibited – there will be an awful lot of extra marine life in the lagoon.”

‘Nature is taking back Venice’: wildlife returns to tourist-free city | Environment | The Guardian

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Senate coronavirus vote delayed after Rand Paul pushes doomed amendment

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,Leave a comment

“Unfortunately, first we must dispose of a Republican amendment that would make a condition of the bill to require the president to terminate military operations in Afghanistan. Yes you heard me right!” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “In a time of national emergency this Republican amendment is ridiculous, a colossal waste of time. We probably could have voted on this bill a day or two ago if not for the need to schedule this amendment.”

Senate coronavirus vote delayed after Rand Paul pushes doomed amendment

Mmmm, karma… She can be a little bit of a bitch, eh Rand?

What historians hear as Trump describes coronavirus: racism

On By peanutgallerynhIn Media and Culture,Leave a comment

From the plague to SARS, whenever an outbreak spread, racism and xenophobia weren’t far behind.

…”Jewish populations were accused of deliberately poisoning the wells and causing the plague. We know examples of this from many places in Europe,” Varlik says.

As rumors spread, Jews were killed, buried alive and burned at the stake. 

…An 1832 cholera outbreak “was very largely blamed on Irish Catholic immigrants,” Kraut says.

“This is in part because this was also the period of the Second Great Awakening, of intense Protestant evangelism, and Catholics were always the target of that,’ he says. “They attributed the presence of the epidemic to the ‘filthiness’ and ‘ignorance’ of Irish Catholic immigrants.”

“Whenever there’s a crisis like an epidemic, people immediately look for who to blame. And groups that have already been stigmatized are natural targets,” Kraut says.

…”During an outbreak of smallpox in San Francisco in 1876, a population of 30,000 Chinese living there became medical scapegoats, Chinatown was blamed as a ‘laboratory of infection,’ and quarantined amidst renewed calls to halt immigration. The Chinese Exclusion Act, the first immigration law based on race, was enacted in 1882,” Lee noted in a recent essay for Salon.

“As soon as the immigration started to increase, that is when the job prospects for white laborers became threatened, and that is when the rumors about Chinese being disease vectors began,” she told CNN.

What historians hear as Trump describes coronavirus – CNN

hmmm

Democratic primary: no election rigging against Sanders for Biden – Vox

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,Leave a comment

Experts who’ve studied actual rigged elections in places like Russia say the notion that the Democratic primary is being “rigged” is completely bogus — and they warn that perpetuating this narrative could deeply harm the legitimacy of the election, and faith in US democracy itself.

…Are there misgivings to be had about the way that people of color and minorities were covered during this election and the way that the female candidates were covered by the media? Absolutely. Is that election rigging? No.

A lot of the other commentary I saw, particularly from some Sanders supporters, was that the fact that moderates like Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg endorsed Biden was some sort of election rigging. That’s a normal political process that happens all the time. That’s not rigging.

…The fact that US states are the ones administering elections means there is less room for top-down corruption or top-down rigging. …States so firmly hold onto that control. They have the right to purchase voting machines, they have the right to set what ballots look like. They have the right to set the rules and regulations for how elections are run in their states.

So it’s very, very difficult to organize some sort of top-down effort, especially in some cases where those election officials may not be of the same political party as you.

…Even the allegation of election rigging might discourage some people from going out and voting. That was worrisome when President Trump said that the election was rigged in the 2016 campaign, and it’s worrisome now when we have candidates on the left and the right saying the same thing.

Democratic primary: no election rigging against Sanders for Biden – Vox

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