RSN: Robert Reich | The Privileged and Powerful in the Pandemic

26 May 20

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Robert Reich | The Privileged and Powerful in the Pandemic

Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog
Reich writes: "As America reopens for business, you might expect Jeff Bezos, the richest man in America, and his Amazon corporation, one of the most profitable corporations in America, to set the corporate standard for how to protect the health of American workers. Think again."

Amazon’s warehouses have become Covid-19 hot spots, yet Amazon has repeatedly fired workers who sound the alarm – including, just recently, a warehouse worker in Minnesota who spoke out against unsafe conditions, and, earlier in the pandemic, a worker who led a walkout Amazon’s huge JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island after several employees tested positive for Covid-19.

A few weeks ago, Amazon fired two white-collar employees after they criticized the company’s treatment of warehouse workers. I talked with one of them, Maren Costa, at a virtual rally. (The event didn’t come off quite as planned. After thousands of employees had RSVPed, Amazon deleted all invitations and emails regarding the event, according to organizers.)

“Why is Amazon so scared of workers talking with each other?” Costa wondered. “We’re all in this together. No company should punish their employees for showing concern for one another, especially during a pandemic.”

At Amazon’s AVP1 fulfillment center near Hazleton, Pennsylvania – under federal investigation because of an early spike in cases – workers say Amazon stopped sharing information about Covid-19 cases, so they started their own unofficial tally, which at last count was 64 and rising.

“Plain truth: No one cares about us,” one of them told the Philadelphia Inquirer. Another pointed to lack of enforcement of health and safety regulations. “Believe me – we’ve complained and complained and complained,” the worker said.

Only recently did Amazon start offering two weeks’ paid sick leave to workers afflicted with the virus, but some sick workers say they’ve had trouble collecting their pay despite the new policy.

The company now says anyone who doesn’t return to work will be terminated, and it’s about to eliminate an extra $2 per hour hazard pay it had given warehouse workers.

Why has Bezos and set the bar so low for the rest of corporate America? It can’t be the cost. Amazon can afford the highest safety standards in the world. Last quarter, its revenue surged 26 percent and its profits soared to $75.5 billion. Since March, Jeff Bezos’ net worth has jumped $24 billion.

So, what is it? Perhaps the arrogance and indifference that comes with extraordinary power.

Consider billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, who last week reopened his Tesla plant despite county public-health orders to keep it shut. After Musk threatened to sue the county and move the factory and jobs to another state, officials finally caved.

Tesla promptly notified workers that “Once you are called back, you will no longer be on furlough so if you choose not to work, it may impact your unemployment benefits.”

So Tesla workers are now being forced to choose between their livelihoods or, possibly, their lives. Musk says his factory is safe, but a worker who returned to the production line told the New York Times that little has changed, and “it’s hard to avoid coming within six feet of others.”

Why is Musk so intent on risking lives? It can’t be the money. Musk is rolling in it. Tesla’s stock closed at $790.96 a share last Wednesday, which put the company’s value at about $146 billion (by contrast, GM, which produces far more cars, is valued at less than $31 billion).

It’s that, like Jeff Bezos, Musk wants to impose his will on the world. The pandemic is an obstacle, so it must be ignored.

In January, Musk said Covid-19 was nothing more than common cold. In March, he tweeted the “coronavirus panic is dumb.” By late April he was calling shelter-in-place orders “fascist,” and asserting that health officials were “breaking people’s freedoms.”

If all this reminds you of someone who now occupies the Oval Office, that’s no coincidence. Musk’s thin-skinned, petulant narcissism bears an uncanny resemblance to Donald Trump, who last week tweeted, “California should let Tesla and @elonmusk open the plant, NOW.”

I once oversaw the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and I can attest that Trump’s OSHA is doing squat about worker safety in this pandemic. Trump is fine with this. All he cares about is being reelected.

Trump despises Bezos, presumably because Bezos also owns the Washington Post, which has been critical of Trump. But it’s easy to see in Bezos the same public-be-damned bullying that emanates from the White House.

Enough! Those in power must stop viewing the pandemic as an obstacle to personal ambition. Over 300,000 people around the world have lost their lives in just four months, including more than 90,000 Americans. Bezos, Musk, Trump, and all others in positions to help contain this disaster are morally bound to do so, their own ambitions be damned.

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Robert S. Mueller III testifies before the House Judiciary Committee in July 2019. (photo: Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)

Supreme Court Stops House Democrats From Seeing Secret Mueller Material for Now
Robert Barnes and Ann E. Marimow, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "The Supreme Court on Wednesday stopped House Democrats for now from seeing secret grand jury material from Robert S. Mueller III's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether President Trump obstructed the special counsel's work."
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Nurses administer coronavirus tests in Maryland. (photo: Win McNamee/Getty)

Maryland Reports Largest Rise Yet in Coronavirus Cases, 4 Days After Reopening
Bill Chappell, NPR
Chappell writes: "The Maryland Department of Health reported 1,784 newly confirmed COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, setting a new high mark four days after the state began reopening its economy."
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Rebekah Jones is the architect of Florida's COVID-19 dashboard. (photo: Rebekah Jones)

Florida Scientist Says She Was Fired for Refusing to Change Covid-19 Data 'to Support Reopen Plan'
Langston Taylor, Tampa Bay Times
Taylor writes: "One day before a top Florida Department of Health data manager lost her role maintaining the state's COVID-19 data, she objected to the removal of records showing people had symptoms or positive tests before the cases were announced, according to internal emails."
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In this April 29, 2020, file photo Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks at a news conference at the State Department in Washington. (photo: AP)

Pompeo Used Elite Taxpayer-Funded Dinners to "Cultivate a Donor Base"
Josh Lederman, Laura Strickler and Dan De Luce, NBC News
Excerpt: "As federal workers file out of the State Department at the end of a Washington workday, an elite group is often just arriving in the marbled, flag-lined lobby: Billionaire CEOs, Supreme Court justices, political heavyweights and ambassadors arrive in evening attire as they're escorted by private elevator to dinner with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo."

EXCERPTS:

State Department officials involved in the dinners said they had raised concerns internally that the events were essentially using federal resources to cultivate a donor and supporter base for Pompeo's political ambitions — complete with extensive contact information that gets sent back to Susan Pompeo's personal email address. The officials and others who attended discussed the dinners on condition of anonymity.

An NBC News investigation found that Pompeo held about two dozen Madison Dinners since he took over in 2018. NBC News obtained a master guest list for every dinner through the end of 2019, as well as internal State Department calendars from before the pandemic emerged, showing that future dinners were on the books through at least October. The master list includes the names of nearly 500 invitees and specifies who accepted, although it is possible some people RSVP'd but didn't show up in Foggy Bottom for dinner.

The Madison Dinners, which aren't disclosed on Pompeo's public schedule, add another element to what his critics say is a pattern of pushing the edge of the envelope by using government resources for potential personal or political gain.

Steve Linick, who was abruptly fired Friday evening as the State Department's inspector general, was investigating whether Pompeo made a political appointee carry out personal errands like walking his dog, NBC News reported.

On Tuesday, a State Department official and two other people familiar with the matter identified the political appointee to NBC News as Toni Porter, who had also worked for Pompeo at the CIA and now works in the Office of the Secretary of State. Emails reviewed by NBC News show that Porter was the chief liaison between Pompeo's office and the Office of the Chief of Protocol, which runs the Madison Dinners.

In the opinion of a senior Trump administration official who requested anonymity out of concern for retribution, "if the president knew about any of this, he would have fired Pompeo months ago."

Many of those invited are, indeed, global thought leaders whose perspectives could be valuable to America's top diplomat: foreign ministers from allied countries, senators and prominent historians. But others seem to have little connection to the world of diplomacy, such as country singer Reba McEntire, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr.

At one of the final dinners before the pandemic, as President Donald Trump was edging away from a potential military confrontation with Iran in January, Pompeo and his wife hosted the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., Princess Reema bint Bandar; Raytheon CEO Thomas Kennedy; national security adviser Robert O'Brien; and Fox News host Brian Kilmeade, according to a seating list reviewed by NBC News.

At a dinner in November, as impeachment hearings were in full swing, the Pompeos dined with former Major League Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth, American Gaming Association President Bill Miller and Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, the influential anti-abortion rights lobbying organization. The Malaysian ambassador and Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., a key defender of Trump during the impeachment proceedings, rounded out the list.

Then there was the dinner in May 2019 that occurred after Trump stormed out of an infrastructure meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who accused him of throwing a "temper tantrum." Among those invited for the next evening's dinner were Fox News host Laura Ingraham; the E.U. ambassador; Republican power couple Matt and Mercedes Schlapp and Chick-fil-A Chairman Dan Cathy, a major donor to campaigns against same-sex marriage.

"The CEO of Chick-fil-A is not someone I would say is involved in foreign policy," a person with knowledge of the dinner said.

The business moguls invited to the affairs include AOL co-founder Steve Case and Republican megadonors like Home Depot founder Ken Langone, hedge fund executive Paul Singer and Texas real estate tycoon Harlan Crow. The invitees also include Pompeo's classmates from the U.S. Military Academy, including Joe DePinto, CEO of 7-Eleven, and Steve Cannon, whose company owns the Atlanta Falcons.

Twenty-three percent of invitees have been associated with media or entertainment, and another 30 percent are government types: current or former officials, members of Congress and judges and their spouses. Media figures skew heavily toward conservative TV personalities, with 39 percent of them from Fox News.

Many are major players in Republican politics, such as former Bush strategist Karl Rove and David Urban, a lobbyist and political consultant on Trump's 2020 advisory committee. Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch appear on the list, as do Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, although it's unclear whether all of them attended.

The master guest list includes many notations on specific invitations being handled directly by Susan Pompeo, including those for Sununu, the New Hampshire governor; Dr. Larry Beamer, a surgeon in Wichita, Kansas; and historian Niall Ferguson. Pompeo, a former House member from Kansas who entered political life without significant wealth, has presented himself publicly as more of a low-key politician, especially compared to his last two predecessors at the State Department, who were extremely wealthy.

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Joe Biden. (photo: Gerry Broome/AP)

Joe Biden: Israeli Threat of Annexation, Settlement Activity 'Will Choke Off Hope of Peace'
Amir Tibon, Haaretz
Tibon writes: "Former Vice President and presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said on Tuesday that he opposes Israeli annexation of the West Bank, as part of his general opposition to 'unilateral steps' that would 'undercut the prospects for peace.'"
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William Perry Pendley is Trump's pick to lead the US Bureau of Land Management. (photo: Matthew Brown/AP)

He Opposed Public Lands and Joked About Shooting Endangered Species. Trump Gave Him a Top Environment Job
Jimmy Tobias, Guardian UK
Tobias writes: "In July 2017, William Perry Pendley, a crusading conservative attorney, delivered a speech to a group of rightwing activists in North Carolina in which he was completely candid about his ideological commitments."

Under the leadership of William Perry Pendley, the Bureau of Land Management is failing to fulfill its most basic duties of safeguarding America’s public lands, his critics say

He accused “the media” of selling “their soul to the greens”. And after criticizing the Endangered Species Act, he made light of killing endangered species.

“This is why out west we say ‘shoot, shovel and shut up’ when it comes to the discovery of endangered species on your property,” he said, according to an audio recording of the event obtained by the Guardian. “And I have to say, as a lawyer, that’s not legal advice,” he added, as some in his audience quietly snickered at the reference to the illegal extermination, and the burial, of endangered animals.

It has been almost three years since he gave those remarks, and Pendley is now the acting director of the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, a powerful agency that oversees more than 240m acres of federal land belonging to the American people, manages mineral resources and is required to comply with environmental laws like the Endangered Species Act.

Pendley has helped turn BLM into what one high-level employee, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, called “a ghost ship” in which “suspicion”, “fear” and “low morale” abound, despite the best efforts of career civil servants to support each other.

As Pendley and his superiors at the interior department press ahead with an effort to move BLM’s headquarters from Washington DC to Grand Junction, Colorado, the agency has hemorrhaged staff members and lost critical institutional memory, which many critics believe was the true purpose of the relocation effort all along.

“A skeleton crew is left” at BLM headquarters, said the employee. “So few people were able to move west that a lot of people retired early and a lot of people took other jobs, so my ballpark estimate is there is only about 20% of permanent employees left” at headquarters. As a result, the agency is failing to fulfill its most basic duties, like responding to public records requests and conducting oversight of state and regional operations, the staffer added.

Environmental and government watchdog groups are now responding with a lawsuit that calls into question the legitimacy of Pendley’s position. Last week a pair of environmental nonprofits sued the interior department, alleging that by repeatedly tapping Pendley as the BLM’s acting director, rather than officially nominating him for the position, the interior secretary has skirted the Senate confirmation process usually required for high-level executive branch appointments, and has violated federal law.

“The illegitimate Pendley appointment is particularly troublesome because he has forcibly moved the BLM Headquarters from Washington DC, to remote western Colorado,” said Peter Jenkins, a senior counsel at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, one of the groups that sued. “In doing so he uprooted the lives of scores of seasoned BLM staff and disrupted this already strained agency.”

An interior department spokesperson defended Pendley’s record.

“Mr Pendley brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the department and is committed to carrying out the administration’s priorities and achieving the BLM’s … mission for the betterment of the American people,” said Conner Swanson, the spokesperson. “Mr Pendley has provided a steady hand in facilitating important matters, from the BLM headquarters move west to its response to Covid-19.” Swanson has said that the lawsuit against Pendley is “baseless”.

Pendley, a tall man with a handlebar mustache and a penchant for cowboy boots, has remarked in the past that his “personal opinions are irrelevant” to his job at BLM.

“I have a new job now. I’m a zealous advocate for my client. My client is the American people and my bosses are the president of the United States and [interior] secretary [David] Bernhardt,” Pendley said during an appearance at the conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists in Fort Collins, Colorado, last year. “What I thought, what I wrote, what I did in the past is irrelevant. I have orders, I have laws to obey, and I intend to do that.”

Pendley has long opposed public lands and wildlife protections. After serving in the Reagan administration in the 1980s, he became the president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF), a conservative litigation organization funded by conservative and industry groups including the Charles Koch Foundation and Exxon Mobil, according to research from the watchdog groups Documented and Accountable.US.

Under Pendley’s leadership, the firm was a persistent foe of federal land agencies, getting involved in dozens of cases on behalf of industry groups and private landowners to challenge environmental protections implemented by the interior department.

Pendley became something of a fixture among the anti-government set, writing numerous books extolling rebellion against public lands and the federal government. He has expressed sympathy in the past for the Bundy family, whose militant agitation against federal land ownership included the armed takeover of the Malheur national wildlife refuge in 2016.

He has compared climate change to unicorns because “neither exist”. And in a 2016 National Review article, he laid out a case that argued for the near-total abolition of federal public lands across the nation.

Given his long history of legal advocacy on behalf of extractive industries, Pendley brought with him a 17-page recusal list of past clients, employers and investments when he took control of the BLM in 2019. The list included groups such as the American Exploration & Mining Association and the Petroleum Association of Wyoming. It has been nearly impossible for the public to know whether Pendley has abided by his recusal list, however, because the BLM has failed to release his detailed official calendar to the public.

Though Pendley has long been a committed conservative, he has not always had kind words for Donald Trump. In a 2016 op-ed in the Daily Caller, for instance, he said then-candidate Trump “is not fit to pull off Reagan’s boots”.

Apart from Pendley’s role in moving BLM’s headquarters to Colorado, the agency under his leadership has also repeatedly proposed land management plans that heavily promote the energy industry. In March, for instance, conservationists in Montana came out aggressively against a BLM resource management plan that they believe is far too friendly to corporate oil and gas interests, according to the Billings Gazette.

In a statement issued earlier this year, Representative Raúl Grijalva, the chairman of the House natural resources committee, expressed his concerns over Pendley.

“Anyone who wants our land management agencies to be functional in the future needs to recognize the seriousness of what Secretary Bernhardt, acting director Pendley, and their subordinates are doing.”

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