25 April 20
When you look at the massive inequities burdening our society and you ask, How can this be? look no further than the propagandists. They are the legitimizers, the rationalizers, the explainers. The straight story may not sell as well but it will ease the burdens.
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24 April 20
Garrison Keillor | The News From Manhattan: Friday, April 24, 2020
Garrison Keillor, Garrison Keillor's Website
Keillor writes: "It is drizzly today and today I shall take a deep breath and click Send and 125,000 words of memoir go off to my agent."
READ MORE
Garrison Keillor, Garrison Keillor's Website
Keillor writes: "It is drizzly today and today I shall take a deep breath and click Send and 125,000 words of memoir go off to my agent."
READ MORE
Chloroquine anti-malaria drug. (photo: CNN)
Forget Testing, Ventilators, and PPE. Donald Trump's Big Plan to Beat COVID-19 Involved Distributing Millions of Doses of an Unproven Drug
Katherine Eban, Vanity Fair
Eban writes: "This week, the U.S. death count from COVID-19 is expected to pass 50,000."
Katherine Eban, Vanity Fair
Eban writes: "This week, the U.S. death count from COVID-19 is expected to pass 50,000."
EXCERPT:
Since then, a steady drumbeat of small-scale studies and medical recommendations has cast increasing doubt on the treatment that Trump once hailed as a “game changer.” On April 21, a study of 368 COVID-19 patients at veterans hospitals showed that about 28% of those treated with hydroxychloroquine died, compared with 11% of those who didn’t receive the medication.
On the same day the National Institutes of Health issued detailed treatment guidelines, stating, “There are insufficient clinical data to recommend either for or against using chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of COVID-19.” The agency advised clinicians using the drugs to closely monitor patients for adverse effects, particularly cardiac risks.
Whether owing to the accumulation of evidence against hydroxycholoroquine’s efficacy, the resistance of career health officials, or something else entirely, the Trump administration appears to have dropped its crusade on behalf of the purported miracle cure—at least for now. It’s been over a week since the president last used a daily coronavirus briefing to promote the drug. This week, the U.S. death count from COVID-19 is expected to pass 50,000.
Bank of China. (photo: AFP)
Trump Owes Tens of Millions to the Bank of China - and the Loan Is Due Soon
Julian Borger, Guardian UK
Borger writes: "Donald Trump is reported to owe tens of millions of dollars to China, through a real estate debt which falls due in 2022, offering 'astonishing leverage' to Beijing."
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Julian Borger, Guardian UK
Borger writes: "Donald Trump is reported to owe tens of millions of dollars to China, through a real estate debt which falls due in 2022, offering 'astonishing leverage' to Beijing."
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U.S. postal worker. (photo: Paul Sancya/AP)
Trump Says He Will Block Coronavirus Aid for US Postal Service if It Doesn't Hike Prices Immediately
Lisa Rein and Jacob Bogage, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "President Trump said Friday he would not approve an emergency loan for the U.S. Postal Service if it did not immediately raise its prices for package delivery, confirming a recent Washington Post report that said he planned to exert more control over the agency."
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Lisa Rein and Jacob Bogage, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "President Trump said Friday he would not approve an emergency loan for the U.S. Postal Service if it did not immediately raise its prices for package delivery, confirming a recent Washington Post report that said he planned to exert more control over the agency."
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Farm workers harvest zucchini on the Sam Accursio & Son's Farm on April 01, 2020, in Florida City, Florida. (photo: Joe Raedle/Getty)
The Food Supply Chain Is Not Yet in Danger - but the Workers Who Keep Us Fed Are
Murtaza Hussain, The Intercept
Hussain writes: "Covid-19 is a threat to those people whose invisible labor we rely on: the underpaid, overexploited workers who harvest, transport, and stock the food that keeps society functioning."
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Murtaza Hussain, The Intercept
Hussain writes: "Covid-19 is a threat to those people whose invisible labor we rely on: the underpaid, overexploited workers who harvest, transport, and stock the food that keeps society functioning."
READ MORE
Following the May 4, 1970 shooting of students at Kent State University, students at UNM took over the student union building. (photo: Steven Clevenger/Corbis)
Fifty Years Ago This Spring, Millions of Students Struck to End the War in Vietnam
Steve Early, Jacobin
Excerpt: "In May 1970, 4 million students went on strike across the country, shutting down classes at hundreds of colleges, universities, and high schools and demanding an end to the Vietnam War. Fifty years later, their rebellion remains an inspiration, as radical student politics is back on the agenda."
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Steve Early, Jacobin
Excerpt: "In May 1970, 4 million students went on strike across the country, shutting down classes at hundreds of colleges, universities, and high schools and demanding an end to the Vietnam War. Fifty years later, their rebellion remains an inspiration, as radical student politics is back on the agenda."
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A green turtle swims over a coral reef in Maui, Hawaii. (photo: Reinhard Dirscherl/Getty)
Trump Just Lost the 'Clean Water Case of the Century'
Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch
Rosane writes: "The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the Trump administration Thursday in a case Earthjustice called 'the clean water case of the century.'"
Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch
Rosane writes: "The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the Trump administration Thursday in a case Earthjustice called 'the clean water case of the century.'"
EXCERPT:
The case concerned a Maui, Hawaii wastewater treatment plant that pumped around four million gallons of sewage a day into groundwater, where some of it reached the Pacific Ocean, The New York Times reported. Maui County and the Trump administration argued that the plant did not need a Clean Water Act permit if the waste was passing through groundwater before entering protected waters, but the court rejected that narrow interpretation of the landmark environmental law six to three.
"We do not see how Congress could have intended to create such a large and obvious loophole in one of the key regulatory innovations of the Clean Water Act," Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in the majority opinion, as Earthjustice reported.
Earthjustice brought the case on behalf of Maui environmental groups Hawaiʻi Wildlife Fund, Sierra Club-Maui Group, Surfrider Foundation and West Maui Preservation Association. Both the Hawaiʻi District Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled against the county, but the Supreme Court case was high stakes.
"If the Supreme Court endorses the county's position, it would open a massive loophole for every polluter in the country to avoid regulation of their discharges by the law that protects the nation's waterways," arguing Earthjustice attorney David Henkin said in November 2019.
By backing up the county's case, the Trump Environmental Protection Agency was also reversing the agency's historic position, The Associated Press reported. This is in keeping with other Trump administration attempts to weaken water protections, such as its rollback of the Clean Water Rule rule granting protection to small streams and wetlands.
"This decision is a huge victory for clean water," Henkin said. "The Supreme Court has rejected the Trump administration's effort to blow a big hole in the Clean Water Act's protections for rivers, lakes and oceans."
Henkin said it was likely the lower court would now order the Maui plant to get a permit for its activities and ensure they do not damage the ocean. They have already been found to have harmed a coral reef.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Brett Kavanaugh joined Breyer in the majority opinion, while Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito dissented, though Alito wrote his own dissent, The New York Times reported.
"Based on the statutory text and structure, I would hold that a permit is required only when a point source discharges pollutants directly into navigable waters," Thomas wrote, according to The Associated Press.
In the majority ruling, the court did not go as far as the environmental advocates, who argued a permit was needed for any pollutants that "actually and foreseeably reach navigable surface waters," The New York Times reported.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled entirely in favor of the environmental groups, but Breyer said that standard was too all-encompassing and would include things like "pollutants carried to navigable waters on a bird's feathers."
Instead, he argued that discharges into groundwater had to be regulated if they were the "functional equivalent" of a direct discharge.
But Earthjustice still touted the decision as a win, and CNN Supreme Court analyst and University of Texas School of Law professor Steve Vladeck said it would boost water-protection efforts.
"Compared to the argument that it does not require permits for any groundwater pollution, which the county and the three dissenting justices all argued, this result will both empower the federal government to more aggressively regulate such pollution and allow private parties to sue when that regulation fails," Vladeck told CNN.
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