CORONAVIRUS BE DAMNED! GO BACK TO WORK - DEATH IS PART OF LIFE...SO YOU DIE!

A Democrat in the Wilderness

I am not ready yet to die for Trump's bank account.

Kenosha County Democratic Party

Ron Johnson's op-ed appeared Sunday March 29th in USAToday.

Johnson, one of only 8 Republican senators who voted AGAINST the coronavirus relief bill, penned this op-ed which touts his let-them-die-for-the-sake-of-the-economy philosophy.

And its just as compassionate as his "I’m sure the deaths are horrific, but the flip side of this is the vast majority of people who get coronavirus do survive” quote earlier this month.

This time he's telling us to "keep things in perspective" and reminding us that "Each year, approximately 48,000 Americans commit suicide and an estimated 67,000 die of a drug overdose. " As if that's somehow comparable to a highly infectious virus for which there is inadequate testing and no vaccine.

He suggests people's fear of the virus is disproportionate and media hype is responsible for that concern, as if we should turn a blind eye to the growing number of people infected, the hospitalizations, the growing death toll, the fact that people are dying alone-isolated from loved ones, the lack of PPE for our healthcare workers, the refrigerator trucks holding bodies, the soccer fields and convention centers turned into make-shift hospitals, and that our healthcare system in parts of our country has been completely overrun.

Thank you once again for showing us your deep compassion for humanity, Senator Johnson.

What a guy!

https://www.usatoday.com/…/coronavirus-put-thin…/2937302001/

FOCUS | Bernie Sanders: Coronavirus Reminds Us Why We Must Guarantee Health Care to All

30 March 20

---

A Knife's Edge on Funding

Every day is a new, very consequential battle for the basic funding RSN needs to survive. The hard, cold reality is that if we lose our intensity on funding even for a day, we won’t have any funding.

Match our intensity. Please.

Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News

Sure, I'll make a donation!

---

Update My Monthly Donation

---

If you would prefer to send a check:
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043
Citrus Hts, CA 95611

30 March 20

It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News

---

FOCUS | Bernie Sanders: Coronavirus Reminds Us Why We Must Guarantee Health Care to All

Tim Hains, RealClearPolitics
Excerpt: "'What kind of system is it where people today are dying, knowing they're sick, but they're not going to the hospital because they can't afford the bill that they'll be picking up?'"

ermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said there is a new normal, with fears of the coronavirus knocking presidential campaigns online-only.

"It's changing every day because elections are being delayed," Sanders said in an interview with NPR Morning Edition's Noel King.

"Where do we go from here with the elections that are being delayed, where we can't go out and hold rallies or knock on doors? That's what we're looking at right now," Sanders said.

Sanders said "it's going to be a very steep road" to win the nomination at this point, but said he was looking forward to more debates.

"I think the American people, especially in this unprecedented moment in American history, want to hear the ideas that will lead us away from where we are right now," he said.

"These are enormously important issues and we need serious debates over them."

"People might not have thought that the United States Congress, the Republican president, the Republican Senate would do what they did," Sanders said about the $1,200 coronavirus stimulus checks going out to most working Americans. "There's a reason for that. And that is that millions of people are now demanding that we have a government that works for all. What role should the campaign play in continuing that fight to make sure that health care becomes a human right, not a privilege, that we raise the minimum wage to a living wage, et cetera, et cetera."

"I think there is growing sentiment in this country that people now understand that it is incomprehensible that we remain the only major country on earth not to guarantee health care to all, that we have an economy which leaves half of our people...living paycheck to paycheck," Sanders said.

"What kind of system is it where people today are dying, knowing they're sick, but they're not going to the hospital because they can't afford the bill that they'll be picking up?"

READ MORE

---

Contribute to RSN 

Update My Monthly Donation

Mortgage bankers say SEC needs to save them from wave of margin calls

By Joe Light and Ben Bain Bloomberg News,March 29, 2020

NEW YORK — Mortgage bankers are sounding alarms that the Federal Reserve’s emergency purchases of bonds tied to home loans are unintentionally putting their industry at risk by triggering a flood of margin calls on hedges lenders have entered into to protect themselves from losses.

In a Sunday letter, the Mortgage Bankers Association urged the Securities and Exchange Commission and the nation’s main brokerage regulator to address the problem by telling securities firms not to escalate margin calls to “destabilizing levels.” The MBA, whose members underpin the housing market, asked the watchdogs to direct brokers to work constructively with lenders.

The rally in prices for mortgage-backed securities that’s been fueled by the Fed’s large-scale buying is “leading to broker-dealer margin calls on mortgage lenders’ hedge positions that are unsustainable for many such lenders,” the trade group wrote in its letter to SEC chairman Jay Clayton and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority president Robert Cook.

Finra declined to comment. An SEC spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to e-mails seeking comment outside of normal business hours.

The Fed initiated its bond purchases earlier this month as the spread of the coronavirus hammered financial markets, causing liquidity to dry up and prices to plummet as the typical buyers of mortgage-backed securities fled. The pain mortgage lenders are now facing from their hedges shows that government intervention can trigger unintended consequences.

The MBA letter, signed by chief executive Robert Broeksmit, said that when lenders issue new loans, they often simultaneously short mortgage-backed securities. This is done because the loans might fall in value before a banker can sell them to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The bet against mortgage bonds helps protect the lender if that happens, Broeksmit wrote.

Now, with lenders getting crushed on these hedges, they’re facing a wave of demands from brokers that they sell holdings or put more money in their trading accounts.

“Broker-dealers’ margin calls on mortgage lenders reached staggering and unprecedented levels by the end of the past week,” Broeksmit wrote. “The inability of a large set of responsibly-managed lenders to meet these margin calls would jeopardize the very objective of the Federal Reserve’s agency MBS purchases — the smooth functioning of both the primary and secondary mortgage markets.”

A surge in margin calls is also inflicting major pain on commercial real estate with the threat of widespread loan defaults prompting a wave of selling of commercial mortgage-backed securities. Colony Capital CEO Tom Barrack on Sunday called for a moratorium on margin calls and Fed buying to halt the sell-off for bonds tied to commercial properties.

View article on FAIR's website ACTION ALERT: Dangerous Misinformation From AP Jim Naureckas AP's report on Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's downplaying of Covid-19 called it a "life-or-death coronavirus gamble"—but AP's standard description of the disease, included in this and many other stories, offers similar false reassurance. There's a boilerplate passage that the Associated Press likes to insert into its stories on the coronavirus (e.g., 3/28/20, 2/29/30, 3/30/20). Under the headline "What You Need to Know About the Virus Outbreak" (3/30/20), it's the first language after the heading "What You Need to Know." And what AP thinks you need to know is this: For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death. The vast majority of people recover. Well, that sounds reassuring, doesn't it? Especially if you're not an older adult or a person with existing health problems, you might even be thinking—what's the big deal? First of all, "existing health problems" are extremely common. Half of American adults have high blood pressure (American Heart Association, 1/31/18)—one of the most prevalent pre-existing conditions among Covid-19 fatalities, according to a study of Italian deaths from the disease (Bloomberg, 3/18/20).  Other common illnesses associated with coronavirus deaths include diabetes, which affects 9% of American adults (CDC, 7/18/17), and coronary heart disease, which affects 7% (CDC, 12/2/19). Altogether, according to the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, up to half of all non-elderly Americans have pre-existing health conditions. So the "some" that are liable to "more severe illness" may amount to "most." How does that work out in reality? A Centers for Disease Control report (3/26/20) looked at domestically acquired cases of Covid-19 in the US from February 12 to March 16—a total of 4,226 cases. (As of March 30, there have been 142,746 cases of the rapidly spreading disease in the US.) Of the 2,449 patients whose ages were known, 70% were under 65. In this group, the hospitalization rate for patients 20–44 was at least 14%; for patients 45–54 and 55–64, it was at least 21%. Among the elderly, the hospitalization rate was about half again as high, rising to a minimum of 31% among those 85 and older. Only patients under 20 had a hospitalization rate comparable to that of influenza, with at least 1.6% of cases in this group going to the hospital. Almost a quarter of the hospitalized patients required intensive care. Of these, nearly half were under 65, with 36% of the intensive care Covid-19 patients aged 45–64 and 12% aged 20–44. Only patients under 20, the report found, never needed intensive care. (Some of those who require intensive care may never recover full lung capacity—ABC, 3/28/20.) These figures need to be understood in the context of the limits of the US hospital system, which has less than a million beds and less than 80,000 intensive care beds. Even a small fraction of adults—elderly or otherwise—catching the coronavirus would risk totally overwhelming US healthcare. The CDC's summary of its data sends a much different message than AP's boilerplate: Covid-19 can result in severe disease, including hospitalization, admission to an intensive care unit and death, especially among older adults. Everyone can take actions, such as social distancing, to help slow the spread of Covid-19 and protect older adults from severe illness. As for AP's claim that "the vast majority of people recover"—of the 142,746 US cases to date, 4,562 have recovered and 2,489 have died; the outcome of the rest has yet to be determined. In China, the only country where a major outbreak seems to have brought under control, 93% of 81,470 cases have been resolved, and of the resolved cases, 4% were fatal. By way of comparison—which AP's glib assurance to the "vast majority" fails to provide—the seasonal flu kills 0.1%–0.2% of people who come down with it. It's possible that the eventual death rate from Covid-19 will be considerably lower than 1 in 25; outside of the epidemic's epicenter in Hubei province, where the healthcare system was initially overwhelmed, the Chinese death rate for resolved cases is 0.9%. But in China, officials moved quickly to pause economic activity, and tested aggressively so asymptomatic carriers could be identified and isolated, thus preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed on a national level. The United States has so far failed to follow this example—and our major national news service lulling readers into a false sense of security delays the time when we will begin to do so. ACTION: Please tell the Associated Press to include a serious warning about the dangers of Covid-19, based on CDC guidelines, in its standard description of the coronavirus. CONTACT: Web Form: Contact the Newsroom Twitter: @AP Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message to AP in the comments thread of this post. Featured Image: AP photo (3/30/20) of a hospital nurse in Bergamo, Italy.

© 2020 Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. All rights reserved. Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting Our mailing address is: FAIRNESS & ACCURACY IN REPORTING 124 W. 30th Street, Suite 201 New York, NY 10001 FAIR's Website FAIR counts on your support to do this work — please donate today.

Mashpee tribe’s reservation land ‘disestablished’

By Jessica Hill
Posted Mar 29, 2020

MASHPEE — An unprecedented decision by the U.S. secretary of the Interior to rescind the Mashpee Wampanoag’s land-into-trust comes as a “hardcore blow” to the tribe, according to Tribal Council Chairman Cedric Cromwell.


Cromwell learned the news during a call Friday afternoon with the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

He thought the bureau was calling to see if there was anything the tribe needed during the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, he was told that Interior Secretary David Bernhardt has ordered that the tribe’s land be taken out of trust and the reservation be disestablished.

“It was absurd,” Cromwell said in a phone interview Saturday. “It’s like a punch in the nose from a bully.”

Cromwell said he tried to ask questions about what this new order means and when it will take effect, but he received no answers.

“It’s somewhat of a dictatorship,” he said.

“It feels like we’ve been dropped off into a new world we’ve never seen before, i.e., in this pandemic and the way my tribe is being treated,” Cromwell said. “With this happening now, this is a direct, hardcore blow to dissolving and disestablishing my tribe.”

Because of the pandemic, many tribal operations were put on hold, such as the construction of 42 affordable housing units in Mashpee and the operation of a school dedicated to reestablishing its tribal language.

Also in limbo are the tribe’s plans to build a $1 billion casino in Taunton, which was part of a yearslong litigation that led to the questioning of whether the tribe qualified for land-in-trust status.

The order comes from no court, Cromwell said, and has never been done before. Since 1934, with the implementation of the Indian Reorganization Act, lands have been put in trust for tribes across the nation to uphold its sovereignty. The current administration is the first to remove a tribe from its trust status, Cromwell said.

The news comes about a month after the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Interior Department lacked authority to take that land into trust for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe in 2015. The court had upheld a 2016 decision that the tribe was not under federal jurisdiction at the time that the Indian Reorganization Act was passed, disqualifying it for land-in-trust status.

The tribe had appealed that ruling, and in a separate action, had filed suit against the Interior Department in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to challenge its reversal. Cromwell said the separate lawsuit is still happening in Washington. They are waiting for the oral arguments to be filed.

The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe remains a federally recognized tribe, according to Conner Swanson, deputy press secretary for the Department of the Interior.

“On March 19th, the court of appeals issued its mandate, which requires Interior to rescind its earlier decision,” Swanson said in an email. “This decision does not affect the federal recognition status of the Tribe, only Interior’s statutory authority to accept the land in trust. Rescission of the decision will return ownership of the property to the Tribe.”

A bill called the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Reservation Reaffirmation Act would resolve much of the tribe’s uncertainties. It would stop litigation and confirm the tribe’s homeland, Cromwell said. But the bill is stuck in the Senate.

U.S. Rep. William Keating, D-Mass, the main sponsor of the bill, said in a phone interview Saturday that this order to disestablish the tribe’s land-in-trust comes as odd timing and that competing interests could be causing the bill’s delay.

Keating said the bill is bipartisan, with Republican leaders co-sponsoring it, and should have moved through quickly.

When the bill was put forth in the House in May, President Donald Trump tweeted his opposition.

Matt Schlapp, chairman of the Conservative Political Action Committee, is a lobbyist for the Rhode Island casinos, such as the Twin River Casino in Lincoln, Keating said. His wife, Mercedes Schlapp, is a senior White House communications aide.

“I think that’s what’s slowing it in the Senate,” Keating said.

He said there is no logic in the Interior Department’s decision. During a time of national health and economic emergency, the secretary of the Interior should be reaching out to help all Native American tribes, Keating said in a statement.

Keating said Bernhardt should be ashamed.

“This is just a cruel act and it’s hard to understand how someone could act like that at this time,” Keating said.

“Is he foolish enough to think that putting it out on a late Friday in the midst of the coronavirus, it will get buried?” Keating said. “That’s the opposite. It’s cruel.”

While the tribe’s legal team explores options available for them to take through court, Cromwell is calling for a meeting with Bernhardt to learn why this decision was made. He also urged President Trump to support the tribe and hopes Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will work to pass the bill.

“I’m calling upon the United States Congress to right this wrong to immediately take up the bill and pass it,” Cromwell said.

Jean Luc-Pierite, president of the board of directors of the North American Indian Center of Boston, said in an email to Cromwell that the center is writing a letter for state action to address the impacts of the Indian Country during the pandemic. He said the center will also include language to support the Wampanoag Tribe’s efforts to protect their lands.

“This is an existential crisis for all tribes federally recognized after 1934,” wrote Luc-Pierite, who is a member of the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana.

“I just want to call out to all of America to rise up,” Cromwell said. “We’re not giving up and this is not the end.”


THE MASHPEE WAMPANOAG TRIBE BEGAN ITS RECENT QUEST IN SWAMPLAND IN MIDDLEBORO. 
THERE'S A GREAT DEAL OF HISTORY IN THE TRIBE'S QUEST FOR A CASINO...WASN'T THEIR FIRST PROPOSAL IN PLYMOUTH? THEN MIDDLEBORO, THEN FALL RIVER, THEN TAUNTON? 

MIDDLEBORO REMEMBERS

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

REEL WAMPS

WAMPALEAKS

GLADYS KRAVITZ

carverchick


Is Cedric Cromwell being truthful about even having an active application for lands-in-trust?