In my state, our response to coronavirus has made the situation far more dire than the virus itself.
The virus primarily kills old people, and quarantine is impossible.
So of course, being the brilliant tactician that he is, Jay Inslee decided to make it illegal for 50 people to gather anywhere in our state. Smart politics - the first thing to do when implementing a lot of bad policy is make it essentially illegal to protest.
Also on the chopping block, restaurants and bars, meaning a lot of the workers, aka renters are about to get evicted because they can't pay their bills.
And who is dying? People who don't work, don't congregate in bars, and don't have kids that depend on them.
The economic fallout can't speak to the real, family destroying power of these measures. With no end in sight of this moratorium on living the poorest among us will be hit the hardest and see no relief.
And the virus is still spreading.
What will be left of our state when this is done? How many homeless can we bear?
And more personally, what will I do if we lose our home, the first property we've owned in the states?
Tuesday, March 17, 2020
Monday, March 16, 2020
Trump Corrupts the Secret Service to Service His Own Income
The Editorial Board at the Washington Post wrote an opinion piece about how the president has tried to hide how much money US taxpayers are overpaying for government employees to stay at his expensive resorts. The president has been fighting against information requests like this since January of 2017. That was the month the president was sworn into office. It's been stonewalling to hide the depth and scope of his corruption for his personal profit at our expense.
The editors write: “AFTER A Post investigation showed the Secret Service being charged high rates to stay at Trump Organization properties while guarding President Trump, his son Eric, who helps run the company while his father is in the White House, disputed the account. “I joke all the time,” he said Feb. 14 on “Fox News Rundown,” “that I would like nothing more than to never have another person from the government stay at one of our properties because it displaces a true paying guest.” He suggested the company is actually doing the government a favor in what it charges, claiming it has lost “a fortune.”
Turns out the joke is on U.S. taxpayers.
Documents recently released by the Secret Service to the watchdog group Public Citizen in response to a three-year-old public record request reveal that Mr. Trump’s company charged the Secret Service $157,000 more than had previously been known, billing the agency for rooms at Mar-a-Lago and other clubs at rates higher than his company had claimed. Previous reporting by Post reporters who had pieced together receipts from other public record requests identified $471,000 worth of payments, bringing the new known total to about $628,000. Most of the spending detailed so far in the publicly available records is from 2017 and 2018, so the full extent of what the Trump Organization is charging — in an unprecedented business relationship between a president and his own government — is still unknown.
‘That is not how the process is supposed to work. Responding in 2020 with information from 2017 and 2018 is not okay,’ said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. Indeed. Why has there been such secrecy? The Secret Service has failed to include payments in public databases, as has been past practice, and has not filed the required reports of its spending to Congress. The Trump Organization has refused to provide information, and its claims — ‘If my father travels, they stay at our properties for free — meaning, like, cost for housekeeping,’ said Eric Trump last year — have been proved false.
One of the more revealing — and disturbing — details to emerge from reporting on this matter by ProPublica centered on the difference in the room rate charged to Secret Service agents and to an employee of the Department of Veterans Affairs. The non-Secret Service government employee — unlike the Secret Service — had to adhere to government limits on hotel rates and paid less than half of what was charged to the Secret Service. For the same night.”
Both parties, democratic and republican (now the Trump Party), are fully responsible for their massive, inexcusable failures to install laws that heavily penalize the kind of corruption and authoritarian behavior that the president gets away with. These matters should have been dealt with decades ago.
American taxpayers have been deceived, betrayed and stolen from by a corrupt, incompetent two-party system. Their failures are unforgivable.
The editors write: “AFTER A Post investigation showed the Secret Service being charged high rates to stay at Trump Organization properties while guarding President Trump, his son Eric, who helps run the company while his father is in the White House, disputed the account. “I joke all the time,” he said Feb. 14 on “Fox News Rundown,” “that I would like nothing more than to never have another person from the government stay at one of our properties because it displaces a true paying guest.” He suggested the company is actually doing the government a favor in what it charges, claiming it has lost “a fortune.”
Turns out the joke is on U.S. taxpayers.
Documents recently released by the Secret Service to the watchdog group Public Citizen in response to a three-year-old public record request reveal that Mr. Trump’s company charged the Secret Service $157,000 more than had previously been known, billing the agency for rooms at Mar-a-Lago and other clubs at rates higher than his company had claimed. Previous reporting by Post reporters who had pieced together receipts from other public record requests identified $471,000 worth of payments, bringing the new known total to about $628,000. Most of the spending detailed so far in the publicly available records is from 2017 and 2018, so the full extent of what the Trump Organization is charging — in an unprecedented business relationship between a president and his own government — is still unknown.
‘That is not how the process is supposed to work. Responding in 2020 with information from 2017 and 2018 is not okay,’ said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. Indeed. Why has there been such secrecy? The Secret Service has failed to include payments in public databases, as has been past practice, and has not filed the required reports of its spending to Congress. The Trump Organization has refused to provide information, and its claims — ‘If my father travels, they stay at our properties for free — meaning, like, cost for housekeeping,’ said Eric Trump last year — have been proved false.
One of the more revealing — and disturbing — details to emerge from reporting on this matter by ProPublica centered on the difference in the room rate charged to Secret Service agents and to an employee of the Department of Veterans Affairs. The non-Secret Service government employee — unlike the Secret Service — had to adhere to government limits on hotel rates and paid less than half of what was charged to the Secret Service. For the same night.”
Corruption, sleaze and lies
The brazenness of the president's lies and self serving corruption are not just staggering hypocrisy. It is both deeply immoral and deeply insulting to Americans who are forced to overpay to support the president's personal income. What is even more troubling, it apparently is legal. What the president has done over the last three years is plainly show just how weak to non-existent defenses of democracy, the rule of law, honest governance, ethics and transparency really are.Both parties, democratic and republican (now the Trump Party), are fully responsible for their massive, inexcusable failures to install laws that heavily penalize the kind of corruption and authoritarian behavior that the president gets away with. These matters should have been dealt with decades ago.
American taxpayers have been deceived, betrayed and stolen from by a corrupt, incompetent two-party system. Their failures are unforgivable.
Re: Coronavirus (COVID-19)
First, please don’t get me wrong.
As a bleeding heart liberal, I do not wish hardship or suffering on
anyone (or anything, for that matter). I
don’t even kill bugs, unless they can carry potential diseases (fleas, ticks
mosquitoes). Then I will quickly extinguish
them with a regretful cringe on my face.
I’ve always been more of a life “promoter” than “destroyer,” forever rooting
for the underdogs in life. That being
said…
In a few more weeks, refrigerators and cupboards, along
with accommodating supermarkets, will begin looking mighty bare. Medicines for what ails you will be harder to
find. Need your prescription refilled, “Sorry
we don’t have that in stock now. Maybe
in a month or so.” No more pizza delivery or fast food take-out. Nonchalantly trashing that over-abundance of leftover
food on your plate will no longer be a complacent option. Pets crying for food? Sorry Fido. In other words, if it hasn’t already, my guess is that life’s
gonna get pretty damned “real” for a lot of people out there. More real than it’s ever been before.
Let me hone in on America; the good old opulent U.S. of A.,
and my home. Will this virus be a crude awakening
to Americans’ lifestyles? Or, once everything
settles down and the worst is over, will we just go back to business as usual? Will anybody even remember it (lessons learned)?
Give your thoughts on what this virus will (or does) mean to us,
here in America. Or, what it will (or does) mean
to you, wherever on the planet you may live.
Thanks for posting and recommending.
Sunday, March 15, 2020
The New Judicial Conservatism
The New York Times has analyzed 10,025 federal court decisions from 2017 to 2019 to see how the president's appointees are doing in terms of partisanship. His judges are partisan.
The NYT writes: “One new judge, who had held a political job in the Trump administration, dissented on an issue of particular importance to the president: disclosure of his financial records. The judge, Neomi Rao, opposed a decision requiring the release of the documents to a congressional committee, a mandate the president continues to resist and is now before the Supreme Court.
“They have long records of standing up, and they’re not afraid of being unpopular,” said Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative advocacy group that has pushed for the mold-breaking appointments. Ms. Severino once served as a law clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas, one of the Supreme Court’s most reliably conservative members.
‘The problem as I see it is not that judges differ ideologically — of course they do — nor is it that a Republican president would look for someone with congenial ideological preferences,’ Mr. Burbank said. ‘It’s that in recent decades the search has been for hard-wired ideologues because they’re reliable policy agents.’
When Mr. Trump took office there were 103 unfilled federal court openings, in addition to a Supreme Court seat, in part because Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader of the Senate, and allies had refused to proceed with confirming many of Mr. Obama’s nominees. The last time so many vacancies had been left to a successor of the opposing party was when the federal bench was expanded by dozens of judges under President George H.W. Bush.”
There really are Trump judges and judges from other presidents. Maybe it is reasonable to see federal judges the president has appointed as politicians in black robes who cannot be voted out of office.
The NYT writes: “One new judge, who had held a political job in the Trump administration, dissented on an issue of particular importance to the president: disclosure of his financial records. The judge, Neomi Rao, opposed a decision requiring the release of the documents to a congressional committee, a mandate the president continues to resist and is now before the Supreme Court.
“They have long records of standing up, and they’re not afraid of being unpopular,” said Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative advocacy group that has pushed for the mold-breaking appointments. Ms. Severino once served as a law clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas, one of the Supreme Court’s most reliably conservative members.
‘The problem as I see it is not that judges differ ideologically — of course they do — nor is it that a Republican president would look for someone with congenial ideological preferences,’ Mr. Burbank said. ‘It’s that in recent decades the search has been for hard-wired ideologues because they’re reliable policy agents.’
When Mr. Trump took office there were 103 unfilled federal court openings, in addition to a Supreme Court seat, in part because Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader of the Senate, and allies had refused to proceed with confirming many of Mr. Obama’s nominees. The last time so many vacancies had been left to a successor of the opposing party was when the federal bench was expanded by dozens of judges under President George H.W. Bush.”
There really are Trump judges and judges from other presidents. Maybe it is reasonable to see federal judges the president has appointed as politicians in black robes who cannot be voted out of office.
Should President Donald Trump resign over his coronavirus response?
CAST YOUR VOTE HERE:
https://thetylt.com/politics/should-president-donald-trump-resign-over-coronavirus-response
THE COUNT SO FAR:
(of course the count will change as more people start to vote)
https://thetylt.com/politics/should-president-donald-trump-resign-over-coronavirus-response
THE COUNT SO FAR:
(of course the count will change as more people start to vote)
Saturday, March 14, 2020
Grasping for God straws?
At today’s Coronavirus press conference, which took place just a couple of hours ago, Dr. Ben Carson announced that Donald Trump is calling for a “National Day of Prayer.”
I know what I think. What do you think?
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