RSN: Elizabeth Warren | To Fight the Pandemic, Here's My Must-Do List

22 July 20

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22 July 20 It's Live on the HomePage Now: Reader Supported News Will RSN Have a Budget to Continue Its Work? When an organization does not have a corporate sugar daddy or mommy every fund-raising drive is the one the determines what the budget will be going forward. Take a moment to support truly independent information. Thank you all in advance. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News Sure, I'll make a donation! Elizabeth Warren | To Fight the Pandemic, Here's My Must-Do List Elizabeth Warren, The New York Times Warren writes: "Americans stayed at home and sacrificed for months to flatten the curve and prevent the spread of the coronavirus. That gave us time to take the steps needed to address the pandemic - but President Trump squandered it....."  ....refusing to issue national stay-at-home guidelines, failing to set up a national testing operation and fumbling production of personal protective equipment. Now, Congress must again act as this continues to spiral out of control. Those who frame the debate as one of health versus economics are missing the point. It is not possible to fix the economy without first containing the virus. We need a bold, ambitious legislative response that does four things: brings the virus under control; gets our schools, child care centers, businesses, and state and local governments the resources they need; addresses the burdens on communities of color; and supports struggling families who don’t know when the next paycheck will come. Here’s what the next federal response must include: Start with funding the robust public health measures we know will work to address this crisis: ramped-up testing, a national contact-tracing program and supply-chain investments to resolve medical supply shortages. Without these measures, we will not be able to adequately reopen safely, more people will die and there will be no economic recovery. READ MORE Portland. (photo: Getty Images) ALSO SEE: Trump Threatens to Deploy Federal Agents to Chicago and Other US Cities Led by Democrats As Trump Threatens Secret Police Deployment Nationwide, Democrats Debate Expanding Surveillance Powers and New Money for DHS Ryan Grim, The Intercept Grim writes: "The rogue deployment of secret federal police forces in Portland, Oregon, has added a new complication to negotiations over reauthorizing the Trump administration's vast surveillance powers and appropriating new money for the Department of Homeland Security."   In March, a sweeping set of government authorities to monitor people in the United States expired, and Congress continues to debate what limits should be put on such powers before reauthorizing them. And the House is debating its next DHS funding bill, with the Congressional Progressive Caucus pushing leadership not to bring it up for a vote given Trump’s abuse of power and DHS agents’ role in a Portland arrest.  House Democratic leaders, however, are considering lumping in DHS funding with appropriations for the departments of Labor and Health and Human Services, making it more difficult for progressive Democrats to oppose. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said that the CPC is urging leadership either to not bring up the bill at all or to break it off from Labor-HHS and allow for a separate vote. “What you’re seeing is this giant Trump administration machine deputize every arm of government to engage in their agenda at the expense of democracy and the Constitution, so there aren’t traditional boundaries anymore for any of those pieces of legislation,” Jayapal said. “Every argument is about, do you want to give more tools to the Trump administration to destroy our Constitution?” But the debate over the government’s surveillance power is happening in a shroud of confusion, as lawmakers are unclear precisely what the intelligence community currently considers legal, given the classified nature of the operations. Leaked Republican talking points suggest the intelligence community is pushing for legal blessing of dragnet surveillance, and the ability to use the data caught up in those dragnets — not to buttress existing investigations with a warrant but to begin new ones. The GOP talking points, first obtained by Gizmodo and passed out by the Senate Judiciary Committee, suggest that investigators could use “Internet data as a starting point” in launching an investigation. That’s a radical departure from what is understood to be legal and would allow the Department of Homeland Security to collect data on, for instance, every person who visited a website sympathetic to protests in Portland, then begin to surveil each of those people, hunting for a crime that could justify an arrest — an arrest that could then be carried out by unidentified federal troops driving unmarked vans.  The talking point most concerning to civil liberties advocates was built around a hypothetical case involving a bomb builder: “Without this other information to build a probable cause case, this amendment hamstrings the Government from pursuing the bomb-builder with the Internet data as a starting point.” On Tuesday, Sens. Pat Leahy, D-Vt., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, sent a letter to Attorney General William Barr and Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe demanding assurance that the government is no longer conducting surveillance under the expired authorities, and asking whether the government believes it has authority to conduct such surveillance absent the legislation. The letter includes a reference to an extra-legal mass data collection project Barr himself authorized within the Drug Enforcement Administration when he was serving as attorney general under President George H.W. Bush. Because so much of the intelligence activity implicated by the legislation lies behind a veil of classification, lawmakers are left to rewrite the rules by piecing together clues. This leaked point is perhaps the most significant clue that the intelligence services are pursuing the ability to perform warrantless, dragnet searches — or are already doing so. Combined with the Trump administration’s willingness to deploy unmarked federal police forces against the will of state and local authorities, the push for expanded surveillance authority is alarming to civil liberties activists. “Secret surveillance cannot coexist with secret police in a free society. Both are inherently problematic and dangerous, but together the threat is immeasurable. It’s hard to escape that conclusion,” said Sean Vitka, senior policy counsel with the group Demand Progress, which is pushing to narrow the scope of the authorities.  The debate has played out in public between Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee and an ally of the intel community, and Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, who is a critic of mass surveillance and the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.  In the Senate, Wyden pushed an amendment, co-sponsored by Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., that would bar federal authorities from using a dragnet to collect search and browsing history. The amendment fell one vote short of the 60 needed to advance, but the fight for it isn’t over. Two senators who missed the vote, Patty Murray of Washington and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, have said they’re supportive, and Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., may also be gettable on a new vote, as he said he voted no on the measure because he was told by Democratic House leaders that the amendment effectively did away with FISA, which is not true. In any event, a companion amendment was introduced in the House, led by Reps. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., and Warren Davidson, R-Ohio. Ahead of a vote in the Judiciary Committee in May, Chair Jerry Nadler abruptly canceled the hearing, amid concerns among backers of the bill that Lofgren may have had the votes to pass her amendments.   House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordered Schiff and Lofgren to negotiate a way forward, and they reached a short-lived compromise that would bar such dragnet searches “of U.S. persons.” Lofgren told the New York Times that such language barred dragnet searches, as it is impossible to guarantee that such a search won’t gather intelligence on Americans. Based on that interpretation, Wyden endorsed the measure. But then Schiff told the New York Times that he interpreted the language differently, saying that as long as agents didn’t intentionally target Americans, incidental collection was OK. Following Schiff’s statement, Wyden took the unusual step of withdrawing his support. “It is now clear that there is no agreement with the House Intelligence Committee to enact true protections for Americans’ rights against dragnet collection of online activity, which is why I must oppose this amendment, along with the underlying bill, and urge the House to vote on the original Wyden-Daines amendment,” Wyden said. Critical to understanding the legislation is the definition of a “U.S. person.” The National Security Agency is clear that the term does not apply to all people in the United States, but only to citizens and “an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence.” Recipients of DACA — the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — are not considered lawfully admitted, but rather are able to remain in the country with their deportation proceedings indefinitely deferred. Undocumented immigrants, too, would fall outside those protections, but that doesn’t mean they’re the only ones vulnerable. Intelligence agencies, under Schiff’s interpretation of the language, could legally target DACA recipients for warrantless dragnet surveillance, which would then make whatever data they also collected on American citizens the legal result of incidental collection. That secret data could be turned over to secret federal police, who could make arrests from unmarked vehicles.  Instead of resolving the conflict, the House voted to go to a conference committee to negotiate with the Senate, but the Senate has yet to do the same, as reformers believe their leverage increases each day the authorities continue to be expired.  On the funding side, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus is pushing House leadership to vote on the DHS appropriations bill, having secured a reduction in the number of beds available for immigrant detention. But others in the caucus argued that the win is less than it appears, as authorities need fewer beds than before, having successfully deported so many from detention. The internal CHC vote was close and contentious, according to two members of Congress familiar with the drawn out deliberations, meaning that the caucus’ push for a vote is less than unified.  Either way, Congress is nearly certain to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government rather than independent appropriations bills, so the debate over funding is largely symbolic. Jayapal said that approving new money now for DHS is “adding insult to injury for immigrants across the country but also peaceful protesters against white supremacy.” READ MORE Mike Pompeo. (photo: Getty Images) US Orders China to Close Houston Consulate, Beijing Vows Retaliation Marty Johnson, The Hill Johnson writes: "The U.S. has ordered that the Chinese government shut down its consulate in Houston, citing the need to protect American intellectual property." READ MORE Photojournalists Nicole Hester, Matthew Hatcher and Seth Herald (who took this photo) were shot with rubber pellets by Detroit Police Cpl. Daniel Debono in an 'unprovoked' attack, according to prosecutors. Debono faces three counts of felonious assault. (photo: Nicole Hester/Seth Herald/AFP via Getty Images) Detroit Officer Charged Over Journalists Being Shot With Rubber Pellets Jason Slotkin, NPR Slotkin writes: "A Detroit police officer is facing charges over accusations that he fired rubber pellets at three photojournalists who were covering anti-racism protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd." Cpl. Daniel Debono, 32, is charged with three counts of felonious assault for allegedly firing the nonlethal ordnance at MLive photographer Nicole Hester and independent photojournalists Seth Herald and Matthew Hatcher in the early morning hours of May 31.  A statement on Monday by Wayne County prosecutors said the photojournalists, who covered the protests and wore their press credentials, encountered Debono and two other officers after protests had largely died down for the night. The three photographers were walking when they met Debono, who was dressed in riot gear and carrying his department-issued firearm and a weapon that fired the rubber pellets, prosecutors said. The three identified themselves as members of the press and held their hands up when he approached and they asked to cross the street. It was when they began to cross the street, prosecutors say, that Debono fired the rubber pellets in an "unprovoked" shooting. All three photographers sustained multiple injuries, with Hester sustaining the most. "The evidence shows that these three journalists were leaving the protest area and that there was almost no one else on the street where they were. They were a threat to no one. There are simply no explicable reasons why the alleged actions of this officer were taken," Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said in the statement.  The felonious assault charge carries a maximum penalty of four years, prosecutors note. Claims and reports of excessive police violence have been frequent during protests that began with the police killing of George Floyd in May in Minneapolis. Alongside protester accounts, multiple journalists have also come forward saying they too had been targeted or arrested by police while covering protests.  Several journalists told NPR in June that they had been fired upon with rubber rounds, tear gas and pepper spray. In May, freelance photojournalist Linda Tirado said she had been blinded in her left eye likely by a rubber bullet that struck her face. And in perhaps one of the more surreal moments captured recently on live TV, CNN reporter Omar Jimenez and his crew were arrested on the air, while covering protests in Minneapolis. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, which monitors aggressive actions against journalists in the U.S., has recorded some 241 attacks on journalists during protests, most of which were by law enforcement. At least 72 journalists have been arrested, the organization reports. During an unrelated press conference on Monday, Detroit Police Chief James Craig said he had been alerted to the alleged attack by a news outlet that employed one of the photojournalists. Craig said the department launched an investigation and suspended Debono over the incident.  Craig said the investigation had been given to prosecutors for their review.  Craig added that "by and large," his department performed in a "spectacular manner" even as protests sometimes turned violent. "Our officers have responded very appropriately, so this should not reflect, as an agency, that this one incident defines how we manage our protests," Craig said on Monday.  READ MORE The first patient enrolled in Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine trial receiving an injection at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore in May. (photo: University of Maryland School of Medicine/AP) ALSO SEE: 5 Key Takeaways From Tuesday's Big Coronavirus Vaccine Hearing Pfizer Gets $1.95 Billion to Produce Coronavirus Vaccine by Year's End Noah Weiland, The New York Times Excerpt: "The Trump administration on Wednesday announced a nearly $2 billion contract with the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and a smaller German biotechnology company for up to 600 million doses of a coronavirus vaccine." Two pharmaceutical companies announced a nearly $2 billion contract for 600 million doses of a vaccine, with the first 100 million promised before the end of the year. If the vaccine proves to be safe and effective in clinical trials, the companies say they could manufacture the first 100 million doses by December. Under the arrangement, the federal government would obtain the first 100 million doses for $1.95 billion, with the rights to acquire up to 500 million more. Americans would receive the vaccine for free. Before it could be distributed, it would first need at least emergency approval by the Food and Drug Administration. READ MORE Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Isarael arrives to chair the weekly cabinet meeting at his office in Jerusalem, June 30. (photo: Getty Images) Israel's Annexation Plan Is the Latest Stage in a Long History of Violent Dispossession Greg Shupak, Jacobin Shupak writes: "Annexation would see Israel claim sovereignty over roughly 30 percent of the West Bank, including most of the Jordan Valley and more than 230 illegal Israeli settlements." READ MORE A tree in a deforested area in the middle of the Amazon. Scientists are discovering a strong correlation between deforestation and disease outbreaks. (photo: Raphael Alves/AFP/Getty Images) The Link Between Deforestation and Disease Nathan Rott, NPR Rott writes: "Deforestation has gotten worse under the pandemic." With the coronavirus occupying global attention, there's less regulation of logging and mining operations. It's worrisome news, because scientists are discovering a strong correlation between deforestation and disease outbreaks.  A 2017 paper linked recent forest loss to 25 Ebola outbreaks that have occurred since 1976. NPR national correspondent Nathan Rott speaks with Short Wave reporter Emily Kwong about the challenges faced by tropical forests — environments rich in biodiversity. Human activity is fragmenting those habitats. How does that result in an increased risk of animals-borne diseases transmitting to humans? And what can be done to protect those forests? You can read Nathan Rott's reporting on the link between deforestation and disease here.  READ MORE Contribute to RSN Update My Monthly Donation

Psychologist John Gartner: Trump is a "sexual sadist" who is "actively engaging in sabotage"

Leading psychotherapist and author on Trump's worsening sadistic "addiction" to causing harm, pain and death

CHAUNCEY DEVEGA

APRIL 25, 2020

As of Friday, the coronavirus pandemic has killed at least 50,000 people in the United States. That number is likely to be an undercount, and it's possible we will never have a true reckoning.

At almost every juncture, Donald Trump has made decisions about the coronavirus pandemic that have led to more death. His behavior is that of a person who has no care or concern for the health, safety and welfare of the American people. Nothing could epitomize that more perfectly than his grotesque suggestion this week that "injecting" disinfectants or household cleaning products might kill the coronavirus. This would seem comical, and entirely unbelievable, if it had not actually happened.

In 2016 the Obama administration told then President-elect Trump and his advisers of the high likelihood that a pandemic would strike the nation and advised the incoming administration to take appropriate steps to reduce its impact. Obama officials also left their Trump counterparts a step-by-step guide on how to respond to a pandemic. Trump and his inner circle ignored that guidance.

Last November, the U.S. military warned Donald Trump that the country was likely to be afflicted with a devastating pandemic originating in China.

In January 2020, the Trump administration was told by its own experts that the coronavirus would spread beyond China and become a global pandemic. Again, Trump chose inaction.

Trump has deprived Democratic-led regions of the country from receiving needed medical supplies. He also waited months to begin using the Defense Appropriation Act to compel American companies to produce more ventilators, masks and other emergency equipment.

Late last year, Americans working with the World Health Organization began to warn Trump and his administration about the coronavirus pandemic. These doctors and other medical professionals were ignored.

In these examples and many others, Trump and his inner circle ignored or purged experts and other truth-tellers, and lied about, misrepresented, deflected or denied the dire threat to the American people posed by the coronavirus pandemic.

Considered in total, Trump and his regime have shown themselves to be incompetent, callous, malevolent and deeply cruel in their response to the coronavirus crisis (as well as to a plethora of other issues).

But to merely document the Trump regime's deadly failures in response to the coronavirus pandemic is to ignore the most important question: What were Trump and his advisers' underlying motivations?

This forensic question must be answered if we are ever to have a full accounting of the coronavirus, and see justice done for the sick, the dead and the dying as well as the damage done to the broader American community.

Media critic (and former Salon writer) Eric Boehlert summarizes the importance of determining Donald Trump's motives this way:

As I stressed last week, the media's preferred storyline that suggests Trump is simply incompetent doesn't add up because Trump has made the wrong decision every single time in terms of how crises like this are supposed to be dealt with. (i.e. Be consistent, transparent, factual, and credible.) It's increasingly not believable for the press to suggest Trump has been distracted or inept during this crisis, in part because of the level of White House uselessness has become so staggering.

Maybe Trump's vengeful. Maybe he wants to wreck the economy to create investment opportunities? He's under the thumb of a foreign entity? He wants to cause panic and cancel the November elections? He's a fatalist? Who knows. And honestly, the specific "why" isn't what matters now. What matters is asking the difficult questions and pondering what the Trump presidency is truly about, no matter what lurks in the shadows….

Now the press needs to shift some of its focus and ask the truly alarming questions about Trump and his motives. Because we still don't know why he essentially ordered the federal government to stand down for the virus invasion.

Psychologist and psychotherapist John Gartner, contributor to the bestselling book "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump" and co-founder of the Duty to WARN PAC, has an answer: Donald Trump is a malignant narcissist. Our president's mental pathologies inexorably compel him to hurt and kill large numbers of people — including his own supporters.

Dr. Gartner taught for many years at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School, and has private therapeutic practices in Baltimore and New York, specializing in the treatment of borderline personality disorders. In our most recent conversation, he explains that sadism and violence are central to Trump's malignant narcissism and his decision-making about the coronavirus pandemic. Gartner also warns that Donald Trump is an abuser locked into a deeply dysfunctional relationship with the American people and that, like other sadists, Trump enjoys causing harm and suffering.

Ultimately, Gartner concludes that Donald Trump is engaging in "democidal behavior" and cautions that the tens of thousands of dead (so far) from the coronavirus pandemic are not simply collateral damage from Trump's policies, but rather the logical outcome of Trump's apparent mental pathologies and the poor decisions that flow from them.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Donald Trump's behavior is very predictable. He has a very simple mind. Why do so many people treat him as some type of mystery? Why do they claim to be so "surprised" by his vile behavior?

Yes, Donald Trump is simplistic. But an atomic explosion is also very simple.  

How does the human mind remain in denial about Trump's nature when on an almost daily basis he reveals his true nature through his cruelty, lies, violence and other anti-social behavior? There are many Americans who oppose Trump who continue to claim that they are somehow surprised by his behavior?

Malignant narcissists are very sick people. They are sick in such a deep, disturbed and dark way that a normal person cannot comprehend such behavior. Therefore, normal, mentally healthy people cannot imagine or understand the mind of a malignant narcissist.

As a mental health professional, what do you see when you watch Trump's so-called briefings about the coronavirus pandemic?

Trump is both denying responsibility by saying things such as, "I take no responsibility. We've done everything right." But at the same time, Trump is also sabotaging the efforts to stop the coronavirus pandemic. This is a very important aspect of Trump's behavior. Trump is not just deflecting blame onto the governors, he is actively interfering with the governors' ability to do their job. Trump is not just incompetent. He is actively engaging in sabotage.

How does someone with his type of mind reconcile claims like "I have total power" with "I take no responsibility"? He has said both things within a few days of each other.

That is a function of how the psychology of a malignant narcissist is structured. When Trump says things such as, "I have total power," that's the grandiosity. "I'm in total control" is a function of Trump's paranoia, where everything bad is projected outward. Therefore, anything negative or bad is someone else's fault.  Bad things are other people in Trump's mind. The grandiosity and "greatness" are all him. Trump's mind runs on a formula which bends and twists facts, ideas and memories to suit his malignant narcissism. This is why Trump contradicts himself so easily. He lies and makes things up. His fantasies all serve his malignant narcissism and the world he has created in his own mind about his greatness.

The fourth component of Trump's malignant narcissism is sadism. That part of Trump's mind is more hidden. People such as Trump are malignant-narcissist sadists because they, at some deep level, are driven to cause harm to other people. Trump's life is proof of this. He enjoys ripping people off and humiliating people. He does this manically and gleefully. He has lied more than 16,000 times. He threatens people online and elsewhere. I believe that Donald Trump is also a sexual sadist, who on some basic level enjoys and is aroused by watching people be afraid of him. In his mind, Trump is creating chaos and instability so that he can feel powerful.

Professor of psychiatry and psychoanalyst Otto Kernberg called that phenomenon "omnipotent destructiveness." The bullying, the violence, the destruction, frightening people, humiliating people, getting revenge and the like — such behavior is what Donald Trump has done his whole life. It is who Donald Trump really is. Unfortunately, too many people are still in denial of that fact.

If Donald Trump is primarily obsessed with omnipotent destruction, how is that fueling his behavior?

Donald Trump has to create a field of negative corrupting energy around himself. For example, he pressures the scientific experts to bend the truth to his dreamworld during his press conferences. The scientists are basically Trump's hostages. The American people are hostages as well to Donald Trump. We are being abused by him. We know that Trump is lying. We know that he's doing nothing to help us. We feel helpless to do anything to stop him. It is causing collective mental despair. In this way Donald Trump is inducing feelings of rage and outrage — and he keeps doing it. It is not that all Americans are suckers or dupes, it is that Trump is a master at such cruel and manipulative behavior. Donald Trump knows exactly what he is doing to the physical and emotional health of the American people.

I envision Donald Trump as a megalomaniacal puppet master. The American people are his little marionettes. The American people must acknowledge that relationship to cut the strings.   

That is a great analogy. Donald Trump is a master at getting negative attention, and the more people he can shock and upset, the better. Donald Trump has been doing such a thing for years.

The pandemic has provided Trump with the opportunity to use his skill at doing such things into overdrive. America, with this coronavirus crisis, is now "The Trump Show."

Society is a type of family. Leaders are fathers, mothers, and other types of parental authority figures. In that role, Donald Trump is abusing the American people.  

Yes, the American people are being abused by Donald Trump. This is a key dimension of sadists. I also believe that Donald Trump is democidal. I would even go so far as to say that he is a "democidal maniac". If you look at human history there is one trait that all malignant narcissistic leaders have in common: They kill mass numbers of their own people. Why would Donald Trump be any different? 

Trump has had many public moments where one can see the convergence of his rage, misogyny and violence. Trump's press conferences have been a showcase for his pathologies. There is so much rage when a reporter makes clear that Trump is lying or asks him a basic question that challenges his self-delusions and fantasies. Trump's rage at women who challenge him, in particular nonwhite women such as PBS reporter Yamiche Alcindor, is palpable. 

It is probably not lost on Trump that the people who are being disproportionately killed by the coronavirus are people in Democratic blue states and cities: nonwhite people, poor people, other marginalized people in this society, working-class people. These are the people who Donald Trump sees as "less than," inferior to him, the types of people he likes to grind down under his heel.

In the course of a week, we literally had Trump's cultists, his spokespeople, saying, "People should sacrifice themselves for the economy." Literally go out and die. Of course the real meaning there is, "I want you to go out and die so that I can be re-elected because I'm dependent on the economy." Trump and his allies have been telling people to go out and risk their lives as an act of loyalty to "the economy." And of course Trump is willing to see people die to ensure — at least in his mind — that he will be re-elected. In many ways he is positioning himself as a god who demands human sacrifice.

Such behavior and beliefs are common among malignant narcissists. Malignant narcissists like Donald Trump view other human beings as kindling wood to be burned for their own personal enrichment and enlargement and expansion.

Beyond mere negligence, much of Trump's and his regime's behavior is malevolent. Trump and his sycophants knew that potentially millions of Americans could die but chose to do nothing. His administration has gone so far as to purge people from the government who were trying to warn the public.

Again, that behavior is part of the psychology of malignant narcissistic leaders. They are democidal. Malignant narcissistic leaders kill many of their own people through wars and political terror, but also through willful incompetence. These types of leaders actively do things that will kill large portions of the population. Causing harm is a type of addiction for them. Donald Trump's addiction is only getting worse.

Donald Trump is a human predator. That is what he does. He will not change. At this point, I hold the American people, the news media, the Republican Party and its voters ultimately responsible for the calamity that is Trump's reign. 

The 2020 presidential election will decide either the life or death of America.

What would you tell those Americans and others who would object to your analysis of Trump and the danger he represents? Because many people would protest that whatever Trump's flaws may be, of course he loves America, and it's inconceivable we would have a president who would actively seek to harm the American people.

Follow the facts to the obvious and true conclusion. If all the facts show that Donald Trump is a malignant narcissist with these powerful sadistic tendencies, this omnipotent destructiveness, where he's getting pleasure and a sense of power from dominating people and degrading people and destroying people and plundering people and laying waste to people, both psychologically and physically, then to deny such obvious facts is willful ignorance.

What do you think Donald Trump will do if, shortly before Nov. 3, it appears clear that he is going to lose the election?

Rather than making a prediction as to Trump's specific actions, it is more helpful to describe the type of actions he will take. Rather than trying to say, "This is the move he'll make." Like in a relationship, Donald Trump is the abuser. He is the husband or father who is abusing his partner or children or other relatives. The American people are like a woman who is leaving her abuser. She tells her abuser, "That's it! I am done with you!" She has her keys in hand and is opening the door of the house or apartment to finally leave. What happens? The democidal maniac Donald Trump will attack us, badly. Make no mistake. Donald Trump is going to find a way to attack and cause great harm to the American people if he believes that he will lose the 2020 election.

CHAUNCEY DEVEGA

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RSN: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar | How to Sustain Momentum for the Anti-Racism Movement

08 July 20

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Funding is in fact critically lacking and the situation is now quite serious.

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A FEW MORE DONORS LIKE THIS - Donor writes in and says: “Monthly donation: I would like to increase it from $15 monthly to $25 monthly. I really value what you do and provide for readers.” It would only take a handful of donors like that to make this work. Inspiring. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

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Kareem Abdul-Jabbar | How to Sustain Momentum for the Anti-Racism Movement

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Los Angeles Times
Abdul-Jabbar writes: "In my 60 years of social activism, I've heard these gospel songs before and my fear is that once the spotlights go down, the sympathetic audience - now moved to tears by the chorus - simply goes home, the words to the songs quickly forgotten."
READ MORE




Vauhxx Rush Booker said one of the alleged perpetrators jumped on his neck, using what felt like 'his full body weight' on July 4. Yesterday, protesters rallying on his behalf were struck by a car. (photo: Vauhxx Rush Booker/NY Post)

Black Activist Says He Was Victim of 'Attempted Lynching' by White Group in Incident Partially Caught on Video
Meagan Flynn, The Washington Post
Flynn writes: "Indiana authorities said Monday they are investigating a reported racist attack on a Bloomington black man, who said a group of white men pinned him to a tree, beat him and threatened to 'get a noose' after accusing him and a friend of trespassing on private property on July 4."
READ MORE



Five months after the start of the pandemic in the U.S. there are still shortages of gowns, hair covers, shoe covers, masks and N95 masks says a nursing union representative. (photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images/AFP)

Protective Gear for US Medical Workers Runs Low as Virus Resurges
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "The personal protective gear that was in dangerously short supply during the early weeks of the coronavirus crisis in the United States is running low again as the virus resumes its rapid spread and the number of hospitalized patients climbs."
READ MORE



U.S. Mexico border. (photo: Getty Images)

How Trump Is Using the Pandemic to Crack Down on Immigration
Catherine E. Shoichet and Priscilla Alvarez, CNN
Excerpt: "The Trump administration's changes to the US immigration system during the pandemic have been swift and sweeping."
READ MORE



Jared Kushner. (photo: Evan Vucci)

Trump Friends and Family Cleared for Millions in Small Business Bailout

Jack Gillum, Isaac Arnsdorf, Jake Pearson and Mike Spies, ProPublica

Excerpt: "Businesses tied to President Donald Trump's family and associates stand to receive as much as $21 million in government loans designed to shore up payroll expenses for companies struggling amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to federal data released Monday."

A hydroponic lettuce farm backed by Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr., applied for at least $150,000 in Small Business Administration funding. Albert Hazzouri, a dentist frequently spotted at Mar-a-Lago, asked for a similar amount. A hospital run by Maria Ryan, a close associate of Trump lawyer and former mayor Rudy Giuliani, requested more than $5 million. Several companies connected to the president’s son-in-law and White House adviser, Jared Kushner, could get upward of $6 million.

There’s no ban on businesses connected to Trump’s orbit receiving money. Democrats added a provision to the CARES Act excluding government officials and their family members from receiving some bailout funds, but not those from the PPP.

The firms sought funding under the Paycheck Protection Program, one of the Trump administration’s sweeping pandemic relief efforts. Created in late March by the CARES Act, it allowed small businesses — generally, those with fewer than 500 employees — to apply for loans of up to $10 million. The loans can be forgiven if used to cover payroll, rent, mortgage interest or utilities.

The program paid out $521 billion to almost 4.9 million companies in an effort to provide relief for small businesses and their workers amid the sudden economic shock brought on by the pandemic. As applications slowed after the initial rush, $132 billion remained unspent, and Congress voted to extend the program.

After resisting releasing the names, the government bowed to pressure from critics and watchdog groups. On Monday, the administration disclosed only those entities that were approved by banks for loans over $150,000. A consortium of news organizations, including ProPublica, has sued the administration under the Freedom of Information Act to release the full list of recipients and loan details.

The program has been criticized for including some loan recipients, particularly large, publicly traded companies, and for favoring wealthier businesses that had existing relationships with banks. In some cases customers could essentially skip the line. Overall, however, many economists praise the PPP for having gotten billions to companies relatively quickly.

The New York Observer, the news website that Kushner ran before entering the White House and is still owned by his brother-in-law’s investment firm, was approved for between $350,000 and $1 million, data shows. A company called Princeton Forrestal LLC that is at least 40 percent owned by Kushner family members, according to a 2018 securities filing, was approved for $1 million to $2 million. Esplanade Livingston LLC, whose address is the same as that of the Kushner Companies real estate development business, was approved for $350,000 to $1 million. The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The loans to Kushner-related companies were first reported by The Daily Beast.

In addition, up to $2 million was approved for the Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy, a nonprofit religious school in Livingston, N.J., that’s named for Jared Kushner’s grandfather and supported by the family.

In April, a bank approved a loan of between $150,000 and $350,000 for the Pennsylvania dental practice of Albert Hazzouri, who golfs with Trump and frequents Mar-a-Lago, the president’s private club in Palm Beach, Florida. In 2017, Hazzouri used his access to the president to pass him a policy proposal on club stationery on behalf of the American Dental Association. He addressed the note to Trump “Dear King.”

Hazzouri also leaned on his relationship with Trump in an unsuccessful bid to obtain a dentistry license to expand his business in Florida. Hazzouri didn’t immediately return calls seeking comment Monday.

Firms tied to the president’s children also stand to benefit from the program. A small indoor lettuce farming business applied for funds between $150,000 and $350,000, SBA data show. Trump Jr. had invested in Eden Green Technology, a vertical farming company just south of Dallas, whose co-chair, Gentry Beach, was a Trump campaign fundraiser.

Trump Jr. purchased his shares as Beach sought Trump administration funding for his other global business interests, ProPublica first reported in December 2018.

The company has said Trump Jr. played no role in running Eden Green and was brought in during “U.S. friends and family fundraising efforts.” A spokesman, Trevor Moore, said that the company “followed the standard procedure” in applying for the PPP loan and that “receiving it has provided for the preservation of 18 jobs.” It’s not clear how much Trump Jr. invested or whether he’s been paid any dividends since purchasing his shares. Neither Trump Jr. nor a spokesman returned a message seeking comment.

Monday’s list included a Manhattan law firm whose marquee attorney has fiercely defended Trump for almost two decades. Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP — whose managing partner, Marc Kasowitz, was at one point the president’s top lawyer in the special counsel’s Russia investigation — was set to receive between $5 million and $10 million from Citibank, data show. (The largest loan a company could seek was $10 million.)

Once dubbed the “Donald Trump of lawyering” by The New York Times, Kasowitz represented Trump in the Trump University fraud lawsuit. and during the 2016 campaign he helped keep Trump’s 1990 divorce from being unsealed. ProPublica reported three years ago that Kasowitz bragged to friends that he made between $10 million and $30 million per year.

A law firm spokeswoman said its employees have maintained their full salary and benefits thanks to the PPP loan and “substantial cost-saving measures and greatly reduced partner distributions.” The firm has about 400 employees, data show. She said neither Kasowitz nor the firm had any conversations with anyone in the administration about the loan. Other major law firms, such as Boies Schiller Flexner and Wiley Rein, also received loans.

The loans helped a hospital executive tightly linked to another Trump attorney and confidant, Rudy Giuliani. Cottage Hospital, a 25-bed critical access facility in Woodsville, New Hampshire, received between $2 million and $5 million in PPP loans. The hospital’s CEO, Maria Ryan, is a longtime close associate of Giuliani’s.

During the last few years, Ryan has accompanied Giuliani on trips to Jerusalem, where the two visited the Hadassah Medical Organization, and to London, where they attended a two-game series between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. Last September, Giuliani brought Ryan to a state dinner at the White House.

Ryan currently co-hosts a talk radio show with Giuliani called “Uncovering the Truth.” She has referred to Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, as her “business partner.” Cottage Hospital’s annual revenues typically exceed $30 million, according to its most recent publicly available federal tax return. Ryan’s salary, the last filing shows, is nearly $300,000.

“Mr. Giuliani has nothing to do with the PPP loan,” Ryan wrote in an email to ProPublica. “We applied like any other small business through our bank.”

The loan data released Monday does not reveal the $30 billion in loans that have been canceled. Nor does it provide specific dollar amounts, but instead ranges of loan amounts. Businesses that spend the money according to key provisions of the program, which mainly involve continuing to pay workers, will have the loans forgiven.

Last week, Trump signed legislation to extend the program until early August.

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Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador gestures during a news conference at National Palace in Mexico City, Mexico, December 26, 2018. (photo: Daniel Becerril/Reuters)

It's Time for Mexico to Tax the Rich
Kurt Hackbarth, Jacobin
Hackbarth writes: "Mexico is one of the most unequal countries in the world, with a caste of superrich lording over a mass of urban and rural poor barely surviving. Andrés Manuel López Obrador's transfer programs have gone some way toward distributing wealth, but much more needs to be done."

usterity and the fight against corruption will allow us to free up sufficient funds, more than we can imagine . . . to stimulate the development of Mexico,” said President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) in his inaugural address on December 1, 2018. “With this simple formula of ending corruption and putting republican austerity into practice, there will be no need to raise taxes in real terms, and this is a commitment I am making.”

“Austerity,” “no new taxes”: Just what kind of administration was AMLO launching only minutes into his presidency? A year and a half later, and with the aggravating circumstance of a COVID-19-induced recession in the offing, both the successes and limitations of the president’s fiscal policy have become much clearer.

A Politics of Principle

AMLO took pains later in the same speech to distinguish his definition of the word austerity from the one that has ravaged economies worldwide. “[It] does not mean, as is thought in other countries, a mere collection of adjustments in productive and social expenditure. Here we understand it not only as an administrative matter, but as a politics of principle, one that implies ending the privileges of the top-level bureaucracy. [Former president Benito] Juárez said that public officials must learn to live with a just sense of moderation, and we sustain that there cannot be a rich government with a poor population.”

In other words, what AMLO has argued for, here and elsewhere, is a moral understanding of austerity: the idea, inherited from Rousseauian republicanism and the nineteenth-century liberals who laid the foundations of the modern Mexican state, of enlightened governors who live within their means and lead by example. In a country oppressed for centuries by top-heavy, centralized administrations, from the viceroys of New Spain to the “Pharaonic” presidencies of recent times, the message is a potent one.

The sight of former president Enrique Peña Nieto winging around the world with his expensive retinue in a luxury plane so large it required the building of a custom hangar, while members of the government used official helicopters for golf outings, and his wife had a multimillion-dollar home built in the exclusive Lomas district of Mexico City (by the same chummy contractor that built the airplane hangar), rankled to the core a public scraping by with an average wage of little over US$500 a month.

This idea of exemplary austerity, combined with the liberation-theology-inspired concept of the preferential option for the poor (the slogan for his first presidential run in 2006 was “Por el bien de todos, primero los pobres,” or “For the good of all, the poor come first”) combined to give AMLO’s message an ardor that has underpinned its success.

As opposed to the crop of bland technocrats who have occupied the center-left terrain in much of the Anglophone world, AMLO speaks with a simple and clear moral urgency, one that goes over the head of the fickle middle class to speak directly to the half of the nation living in poverty. Where the Left in other countries has ceded the concept of morality to the hypocrisy and fundamentalist pandering of the Right, AMLO has made it his own.

If It Walks Like a Duck

AMLO’s vision took legislative form in the eponymous Law of Republican Austerity, passed in November 2019. Among the stipulations were a ten-year ban on public servants joining private companies they had a part in supervising or regulating; the ability to nullify contracts derived from influence peddling; limits on top salaries, office expenses, government-financed travel to congresses and conventions, advertising, and the assignation of drivers, secretaries, and outside consultants; a crackdown on agencies duplicating the same functions; a ban on the purchase of luxury vehicles, on unnecessary office remodeling, and private savings, pensions, and health plans for public servants; the prohibition of nepotism in hiring; and a crackdown on the proliferation of public trust funds, too often used for discretionary purposes.

Few would argue with these provisions, nor with the overarching need to attack the excess and corruption of prior administrations in order to free up funds for the president’s social agenda. The problem is, in order to fully finance his priority projects — the national guard, maintenance scholarships for students and apprentices, old age and disability pensions, aid for farmers, and big-ticket infrastructure items such as the new Mexico City airport, the Dos Bocas oil refinery, and the controversial Maya Train project in the Yucatán Peninsula — he has also had to resort to stiff cuts elsewhere. Particularly hard hit have been the areas of tourism, culture, the environment, scientific investigation, and archeology, a situation aggravated by a COVID-19-induced executive order requiring swingeing cuts in agencies’ operating expenses for the rest of 2020.

The argument can and has been made that these cuts were necessary to clip the wings of the “golden bureaucracy” that has continued to squander money at the highest levels of administration. And although there is no doubt that this is true, this justification can only go so far. AMLO, it is to be recalled, ran for president in 2018 on a platform calling for a balanced budget. And while all of this has kept the vultures of international lenders away — at the same time that neighbors such as El Salvador have succumbed to the temptation of an IMF loan to fight COVID-19 — an uncanny resemblance begins to present itself between AMLO’s macroeconomic policy and the strictures of orthodox economics. How much of his vaunted moral austerity, then, is also economic?

Taxes Are for Suckers

A primary factor underlying AMLO’s “robbing Peter to pay Paul” budgetary maneuvers, as we saw at the outset, is his refusal to generate more revenue through taxes. What he has done in recent weeks, to great success, is to crack down on companies that issue false tax receipts and goad some of the country’s largest tax delinquents into coughing up what they owe.

Companies such as Walmart, Toyota, IBM Mexico, and FEMSA (owner of the OXXO chain of convenience stores) have agreed to settle up back taxes, late fees, and fines to the tune of some $30 billion pesos (US$1.3 billion). So incensed was the owner of FEMSA, José Antonio Fernández Carbajal, at having to pay his taxes that he promised to pour double of what he owed into defeating AMLO in the recall referendum scheduled for 2022.

All of this is well, good, and necessary. But it is no substitute for an integral tax reform. Mexico’s tax-to-GDP ratio of 16.1 percent, less than half of the OECD average, ranks it dead last among member countries. Lulled by decades of oil revenue and immigrant remittances, it has created a tax code that is an open invitation for the wealthy to evade. On paper, Mexicans pay taxes at levels that are practically European: a progressive income tax (ISR) of up to 35 percent and a value-added tax (IVA) of 16 percent. But because of a generous system of write-offs — including private school tuition, private doctor’s visits, and every peso of the IVA incurred in business expenses — wealthy individuals and corporations wind up getting most or all of this back, and can even wind up with hefty balances in their favor to apply to subsequent years.

Meanwhile, the “captive contributors” (salaried employees and the poor) are left to foot the bill. What is more, special tax rules allow corporations to put off paying taxes, sometimes for years. And thanks to the nation’s extremely low capital gains rate of 10 percent, businesses can be bought and sold on the stock market with precious little going to public coffers — such as the nation’s banks, most of which were gobbled up by foreign concerns before even this modest levy existed.

The result is one of the most unequal countries in the world, with a caste of superrich lording over a mass of urban and rural poor barely getting by. And while AMLO’s transfer programs have gone some way toward distributing wealth, these programs will only ever be a palliative without a serious effort to overhaul a deeply unjust tax system.

Gaining Steam

The phenomenon of upper-class tax avoidance, of course, is a pan–Latin American problem. And recent polling evidence suggests a growing consensus throughout the region on the need to tax large fortunes. In Chile, following a tax hike on the wealthy passed in the winter as a response to the fall uprisings, its Congress passed an additional 2.5 percent tax on fortunes in May in order to finance an emergency basic income program during the COVID-19 crisis. Similar measures are being debated in Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, and Bolivia by presidential candidate Luis Arce.

It would be exceedingly ironic if AMLO, who has made a crusade out of exposing the privileges, cronyism, and corruption of the “white-collar mafia,” were to remain isolated from this trend. If he considers austerity to be such a moral virtue, it is time for Mexico’s superrich to experience their share of it.

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Learn the rules of foraging and unlock access to treasures hiding in plain sight in the woods and by the shore. (photo: Courtney Sofiah Yates/The New Yorker)

Foraged Foods Shorten the Supply Chain
Hannah Goldfield, The New Yorker
Goldfield writes: "Chicken-of-the-woods mushrooms that fry up like their namesake, snappy sea beans that need no extra salt, sassafras syrup, and other edible offerings from the wilds outside the city limits."

 lot of the talk about quarantine cooking, in the beginning, was, like, ‘Here’s twenty ways to use a can of tuna,’ ” James O’Donnell recounted the other day. “It was very much survivalist.” O’Donnell and his partner, Amanda Kingsley, own Allora Farm & Flowers, in Pine Plains, New York, where they grow what they need for their floral-design studio, plus vegetables. It struck him that “a lot of people at home could probably use feeling connected to the natural world right now, a little bit of excitement and wonder.” Before the pandemic, a substantial part of O’Donnell and Kingsley’s business was supplying restaurants with ingredients that they foraged sustainably from the acres that they lease, as well as from friends’ properties and from public lands in the Hudson Valley and on Long Island. With the restaurant market shrinking, they decided to experiment with a direct-to-consumer weekly-ish Wild Box, available for delivery in the Bronx, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens.

To forage safely requires a good amount of training. Perfectly edible plants can look nearly identical to perfectly poisonous ones. In some cases, a berry that grows on a tree may be as palatable as its flower is lethal. Still, eating my way through a Wild Box gave me hope for my chances of surviving should even the canned tuna run out. Learn the rules—many inherited from indigenous peoples—and unlock access to treasures hiding in plain sight in thickets, on riverbanks, and by the shore. A hefty wedge of chicken-of-the-woods mushroom pried from a tree trunk performed exactly as its name would suggest, its edges pan-frying to a crisp golden brown that rivalled a buttermilk crust, its creamy interior shredding almost like meat.

A vial of sassafras syrup, made by steeping bark and small roots removed responsibly from a sassafras tree, was transformed into an aromatically fizzy glass of root beer when mixed with soda water. The detailed ingredient key that came in the box suggested treating tender, sweet, snappy sea beans—a succulent, also known as samphire, that grows on beaches and in coastal marshes—like salad greens, but to leave the salt out of your vinaigrette until you had tasted the dressed beans. Sure enough, they were so infused with a natural brine that they didn’t need a single grain.

As instructed, I chopped a few stems of henbit—a wild herb in the mint family, identifiable by its square stalk and tiny purple flowers—and mixed it into beaten pheasant eggs for an omelette. The eggs were from a tiny Brooklyn restaurant called Honey Badger, run by Fjolla Sheholli and Junayd Juman. Before the pandemic, the couple served an elaborate tasting menu. Now they offer a version to go, plus meal kits, pantry items, and a “curated market basket,” all with an emphasis on foraged items; Sheholli, who spent much of her childhood learning the land around her grandmother’s farm, in Kosovo, is a skilled forager who gathers ingredients outside the city on a weekly basis. The eggs had been laid on an oxymoronically named wild-game farm upstate, but my market basket also included an assortment of uncultivated flora that Sheholli had hand-collected: a small bouquet of red clover, which I brewed into a subtle tea; a few sprigs of wild bay leaf; a generous bunch of common vetch, or wild peas, which bore wispy tendrils and tiny pods.

Though there is much that is technically edible growing in the parks, medians, and other patches of greenery in the five boroughs, Sheholli does not recommend foraging from them; there could be lead, or worse, in the soil. But she and Juman, who have long supported the local community—during the pandemic, by delivering food to elders—have no intention of slowing down in their mission to, as she puts it, “shorten the supply chain.” Every week, she will forage, and, as soon as they can, the couple will serve their food on Brooklyn’s most natural landscape: the sidewalk. 

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