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solarbirdSlightly - but only slightly - less COVID19 related.
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Trump fires watchdog who handled Ukraine complaint
April 3, 2020
By Mary Clare Jalonick
and DEB RIECHMANN
The Associated Press
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation-politics/trump-fires-watchdog-who-handled-ukraine-complaint/
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday abruptly fired the inspector general of the intelligence community, sidelining an independent watchdog who played a pivotal role in his impeachment even as his White House struggled with the deepening coronavirus pandemic.
Trump informed the Senate intelligence committee late Friday of his decision to fire Michael Atkinson, according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press. Atkinson handled the whistleblower complaint that triggered Trump’s impeachment last year.
Atkinson’s firing, which is part of a shakeup of the intelligence community under Trump, thrusts the president’s impeachment back into the spotlight as his administration deals with the deadly spread of coronavirus. As Trump was removing Atkinson, the number of U.S. deaths due to the virus topped 7,000.
Trump said in the letter that it is “vital” that he has confidence in the appointees serving as inspectors general, and “that is no longer the case with regard to this inspector general.”
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Tamara Keith
twitter.com/tamarakeithNPR
https://twitter.com/tamarakeithNPR/status/1246206814733185025
President Trump coming out firmly against vote by mail. "I think a lot of people cheat with mail in voting," he said. The question was whether states should be prepared for all-mail voting in November if the pandemic is still a major problem.
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Amazon execs, in leaked memo, sought to tar fired employee who organized coronavirus walkout
April 2, 2020
By Benjamin Romano
Seattle Times business reporter
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/not-smart-amazon-execs-in-leaked-memo-sought-to-tar-fired-employee-who-organized-coronavirus-walk-out/
As Amazon grapples with coronavirus infections among workers at a growing number of its facilities, senior leaders sought to discredit the organizer of a walkout in New York this week, according to an internal memo.
Amazon general counsel David Zapolsky, in notes from a meeting of top executives circulated within the company and leaked to VICE News, called walkout organizer Chris Smalls — who was fired earlier this week — “not smart, or articulate, and to the extent the press wants to focus on us versus him, we will be in a much stronger PR position than simply explaining for the umpteenth time how we’re trying to protect workers.”
Zapolsky, an Amazon employee for more than 20 years and a member of Jeff Bezos’ senior leadership team, said in a statement released Thursday by Amazon that his comments were “personal and emotional” and driven by frustration at Smalls. Amazon said Smalls was fired for failing to quarantine himself after being exposed to another employee with COVID-19 — the illness caused by the virus — among other violations. “I let my emotions draft my words and get the better of me,” Zapolsky said.
Smalls himself and union leaders have called his firing retaliation for raising concerns and helping organize worker protests of Amazon’s policies and practices in response to the coronavirus pandemic. New York government officials have launched investigations.
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Aaron Rupar
twitter.com/atrupar
2 April 2020
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1245825792988172288
TRUMP: "I will always protect your Social Security, your Medicare, and your Medicaid. We are protecting your Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid." (REALITY: Trump's most recent budget proposal includes steep reductions to those programs.)
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Trump admits "you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again" if voting access expanded
Trump says the quiet part out loud on the GOP not wanting higher turnout
Jon Queally
March 31, 2020 10:30AM (UTC)
https://www.salon.com/2020/03/31/trump-admits-youd-never-have-a-republican-elected-in-this-country-again-if-voting-access-expanded_partner/
This article originally appeared at Common Dreams. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.
President Donald Trump on Monday came right out and admitted his Republican Party would soon be defunct if voting in the United States was easier in a way that allowed more citizens to vote in elections, telling a national television audience it was a good thing that Democratic proposals for increased voting protections and ballot access were left out of last week's coronavirus relief package.
The comment came during an interview with Fox & Friends, the president's go-to show for positive coverage.
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“The Campaign Panicked”: Inside Trump’s Decision to Back Off of His Easter Coronavirus Miracle
An impulsive promise (“His view was: I need to show people there’s a light at the end of the tunnel”) led to Fauci pushback. Poll numbers—and a friend in a coma—pushed Trump to reverse course.
By Gabriel Sherman
April 1, 2020
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/inside-trumps-decision-to-back-off-of-his-easter-coronavirus-miracle
The national debate set off by Donald Trump’s announcement that he wanted churches packed on Easter was, like so many Trump crises, a self-inflicted one. In the days after Trump tweeted that “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF,” his medical advisers, led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, implored Trump not to relax the government’s social distancing guidelines. Trump dug in. “His view was: I need to show people that there is light at the end of the tunnel,” a former West Wing official told me. Under pressure, members of the coronavirus task force discussed privately how parts of the country might be opened in April, but cautioned Trump not to get locked into a specific timetable given the deteriorating conditions in New York hospitals and ominous upticks in cases in New Orleans, Detroit, and elsewhere. “They discussed it internally, but they never intended Trump to announce it,” a Republican working with the task force told me.
Trump’s impulsive decision—and its messy aftermath—consumed the West Wing during the critical week that governors were pleading with the White House to deliver medical supplies before hospital systems began to collapse. “It was totally crazy,” the Republican told me. Dr. Fauci, Senator Lindsey Graham, and others raced to convince Trump that an Easter opening would be a cataclysmic error that could cost millions of lives. “This is a very, very stressful situation for everybody, including me,” Fauci told me in a phone interview on Monday. By last weekend Fauci’s arguments broke through: Trump agreed to extend the social distancing guidelines until the end of April.
Trump’s latest tonal and tactical shift (and almost certainly not the last) was driven by several factors, both personal and political. Trump learned that his close friend, 78-year-old New York real estate mogul Stan Chera, had contracted COVID-19 and fallen into a coma at NewYork-Presbyterian. “Boy, did that hit home. Stan is like one of his best friends,” said prominent New York Trump donor Bill White. Trump also grew concerned as the virus spread to Trump country. “The polling sucked. The campaign panicked about the numbers in red states. They don’t expect to win states that are getting blown to pieces with coronavirus,” a former West Wing official told me. From the beginning of the crisis, Trump had struggled to see it as anything other than a political problem, subject to his usual arsenal of tweets and attacks and bombast. But he ultimately realized that as bad as the stock market was, getting coronavirus wrong would end his presidency. “The campaign doesn’t matter anymore,” he recently told a friend, “what I do now will determine if I get reelected.”
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Navy fires captain who sought help for virus-stricken ship
April 2, 2020
By LOLITA C. BALDOR and ROBERT BURNS
The Associated Press
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation-politics/navy-fires-captain-who-sought-help-for-virus-striken-ship/
WASHINGTON (AP) — The captain of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier facing a growing outbreak of the coronavirus on his ship was fired by Navy leaders who said he created a panic by sending his memo pleading for help to too many people.
Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly said the ship’s commander, Capt. Brett Crozier, “demonstrated extremely poor judgment” in the middle of a crisis. He said the captain copied too many people on the memo, which was leaked to a California newspaper and quickly spread to many news outlets.
Modly’s decision to remove Crozier as ship commander was immediately condemned by members of the House Armed Services Committee, who called it a “destabilizing move” that will “likely put our service members at greater risk and jeopardize our fleet’s readiness.”
Modly told Pentagon reporters during an abruptly called press conference Thursday that Crozier should have gone directly to his immediate commanders, who were already moving to help the ship. And he said Crozier created a panic by suggesting 50 sailors could die.
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Once restarted, post-coronavirus economy might enter unprecedented rough seas
3 April 2020
By Jon Talton
Special to The Seattle Times
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/once-restarted-post-coronavirus-economy-might-enter-unprecedented-rough-seas/
Like my Seattle Times colleagues, I’m working from home. From the home office in my Belltown condo, I overlook the nearly empty headquarters towers of Amazon. Like thousands in this technopolis, those employees are also working remotely.
But that’s only one view. Near me is a Subway, with one worker, open for takeout. Fancier restaurants are shut, along with other businesses that can’t be handled from home. Hotels are nearly empty, occupancy rates around 9%. Construction on the nearly finished former WeWork tower is shut down; another nearby tower’s groundbreaking is in limbo.
This Janus-faced situation is borne out in the latest data.
Weekly unemployment claims hit 695,000 in October 1982, during the severe recession induced by then-Fed Chairman Paul Volcker to strangle runaway inflation. That high mark over 53 years of record-keeping wasn’t even surpassed during the worst of the Great Recession.
But the week ending March 28 saw more than 6.6 million new jobless claims nationally, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Washington state’s unemployment claims hit 181,975, far eclipsing the record set only the week before.
- Trump fires watchdog who handled Ukraine complaint
- President Trump coming out firmly against vote by mail
- Amazon execs, in leaked memo, sought to tar fired employee who organized coronavirus walkout
- Trump lies about Social Security and Medicaid again
- Trump admits "you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again" if voting access expanded
- “The Campaign Panicked”: Inside Trump’s Decision to Back Off of His Easter Coronavirus Miracle
- Navy fires captain who sought help for virus-stricken ship
- Once restarted, post-coronavirus economy might enter unprecedented rough seas
----- 1 -----
Trump fires watchdog who handled Ukraine complaint
April 3, 2020
By Mary Clare Jalonick
and DEB RIECHMANN
The Associated Press
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation-politics/trump-fires-watchdog-who-handled-ukraine-complaint/
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday abruptly fired the inspector general of the intelligence community, sidelining an independent watchdog who played a pivotal role in his impeachment even as his White House struggled with the deepening coronavirus pandemic.
Trump informed the Senate intelligence committee late Friday of his decision to fire Michael Atkinson, according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press. Atkinson handled the whistleblower complaint that triggered Trump’s impeachment last year.
Atkinson’s firing, which is part of a shakeup of the intelligence community under Trump, thrusts the president’s impeachment back into the spotlight as his administration deals with the deadly spread of coronavirus. As Trump was removing Atkinson, the number of U.S. deaths due to the virus topped 7,000.
Trump said in the letter that it is “vital” that he has confidence in the appointees serving as inspectors general, and “that is no longer the case with regard to this inspector general.”
----- 2 -----
Tamara Keith
twitter.com/tamarakeithNPR
https://twitter.com/tamarakeithNPR/status/1246206814733185025
President Trump coming out firmly against vote by mail. "I think a lot of people cheat with mail in voting," he said. The question was whether states should be prepared for all-mail voting in November if the pandemic is still a major problem.
----- 3 -----
Amazon execs, in leaked memo, sought to tar fired employee who organized coronavirus walkout
April 2, 2020
By Benjamin Romano
Seattle Times business reporter
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/not-smart-amazon-execs-in-leaked-memo-sought-to-tar-fired-employee-who-organized-coronavirus-walk-out/
As Amazon grapples with coronavirus infections among workers at a growing number of its facilities, senior leaders sought to discredit the organizer of a walkout in New York this week, according to an internal memo.
Amazon general counsel David Zapolsky, in notes from a meeting of top executives circulated within the company and leaked to VICE News, called walkout organizer Chris Smalls — who was fired earlier this week — “not smart, or articulate, and to the extent the press wants to focus on us versus him, we will be in a much stronger PR position than simply explaining for the umpteenth time how we’re trying to protect workers.”
Zapolsky, an Amazon employee for more than 20 years and a member of Jeff Bezos’ senior leadership team, said in a statement released Thursday by Amazon that his comments were “personal and emotional” and driven by frustration at Smalls. Amazon said Smalls was fired for failing to quarantine himself after being exposed to another employee with COVID-19 — the illness caused by the virus — among other violations. “I let my emotions draft my words and get the better of me,” Zapolsky said.
Smalls himself and union leaders have called his firing retaliation for raising concerns and helping organize worker protests of Amazon’s policies and practices in response to the coronavirus pandemic. New York government officials have launched investigations.
----- 4 -----
Aaron Rupar
twitter.com/atrupar
2 April 2020
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1245825792988172288
TRUMP: "I will always protect your Social Security, your Medicare, and your Medicaid. We are protecting your Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid." (REALITY: Trump's most recent budget proposal includes steep reductions to those programs.)
----- 5 -----
Trump admits "you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again" if voting access expanded
Trump says the quiet part out loud on the GOP not wanting higher turnout
Jon Queally
March 31, 2020 10:30AM (UTC)
https://www.salon.com/2020/03/31/trump-admits-youd-never-have-a-republican-elected-in-this-country-again-if-voting-access-expanded_partner/
This article originally appeared at Common Dreams. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.
President Donald Trump on Monday came right out and admitted his Republican Party would soon be defunct if voting in the United States was easier in a way that allowed more citizens to vote in elections, telling a national television audience it was a good thing that Democratic proposals for increased voting protections and ballot access were left out of last week's coronavirus relief package.
The comment came during an interview with Fox & Friends, the president's go-to show for positive coverage.
----- 6 -----
“The Campaign Panicked”: Inside Trump’s Decision to Back Off of His Easter Coronavirus Miracle
An impulsive promise (“His view was: I need to show people there’s a light at the end of the tunnel”) led to Fauci pushback. Poll numbers—and a friend in a coma—pushed Trump to reverse course.
By Gabriel Sherman
April 1, 2020
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/inside-trumps-decision-to-back-off-of-his-easter-coronavirus-miracle
The national debate set off by Donald Trump’s announcement that he wanted churches packed on Easter was, like so many Trump crises, a self-inflicted one. In the days after Trump tweeted that “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF,” his medical advisers, led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, implored Trump not to relax the government’s social distancing guidelines. Trump dug in. “His view was: I need to show people that there is light at the end of the tunnel,” a former West Wing official told me. Under pressure, members of the coronavirus task force discussed privately how parts of the country might be opened in April, but cautioned Trump not to get locked into a specific timetable given the deteriorating conditions in New York hospitals and ominous upticks in cases in New Orleans, Detroit, and elsewhere. “They discussed it internally, but they never intended Trump to announce it,” a Republican working with the task force told me.
Trump’s impulsive decision—and its messy aftermath—consumed the West Wing during the critical week that governors were pleading with the White House to deliver medical supplies before hospital systems began to collapse. “It was totally crazy,” the Republican told me. Dr. Fauci, Senator Lindsey Graham, and others raced to convince Trump that an Easter opening would be a cataclysmic error that could cost millions of lives. “This is a very, very stressful situation for everybody, including me,” Fauci told me in a phone interview on Monday. By last weekend Fauci’s arguments broke through: Trump agreed to extend the social distancing guidelines until the end of April.
Trump’s latest tonal and tactical shift (and almost certainly not the last) was driven by several factors, both personal and political. Trump learned that his close friend, 78-year-old New York real estate mogul Stan Chera, had contracted COVID-19 and fallen into a coma at NewYork-Presbyterian. “Boy, did that hit home. Stan is like one of his best friends,” said prominent New York Trump donor Bill White. Trump also grew concerned as the virus spread to Trump country. “The polling sucked. The campaign panicked about the numbers in red states. They don’t expect to win states that are getting blown to pieces with coronavirus,” a former West Wing official told me. From the beginning of the crisis, Trump had struggled to see it as anything other than a political problem, subject to his usual arsenal of tweets and attacks and bombast. But he ultimately realized that as bad as the stock market was, getting coronavirus wrong would end his presidency. “The campaign doesn’t matter anymore,” he recently told a friend, “what I do now will determine if I get reelected.”
----- 7 -----
Navy fires captain who sought help for virus-stricken ship
April 2, 2020
By LOLITA C. BALDOR and ROBERT BURNS
The Associated Press
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation-politics/navy-fires-captain-who-sought-help-for-virus-striken-ship/
WASHINGTON (AP) — The captain of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier facing a growing outbreak of the coronavirus on his ship was fired by Navy leaders who said he created a panic by sending his memo pleading for help to too many people.
Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly said the ship’s commander, Capt. Brett Crozier, “demonstrated extremely poor judgment” in the middle of a crisis. He said the captain copied too many people on the memo, which was leaked to a California newspaper and quickly spread to many news outlets.
Modly’s decision to remove Crozier as ship commander was immediately condemned by members of the House Armed Services Committee, who called it a “destabilizing move” that will “likely put our service members at greater risk and jeopardize our fleet’s readiness.”
Modly told Pentagon reporters during an abruptly called press conference Thursday that Crozier should have gone directly to his immediate commanders, who were already moving to help the ship. And he said Crozier created a panic by suggesting 50 sailors could die.
----- 8 -----
Once restarted, post-coronavirus economy might enter unprecedented rough seas
3 April 2020
By Jon Talton
Special to The Seattle Times
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/once-restarted-post-coronavirus-economy-might-enter-unprecedented-rough-seas/
Like my Seattle Times colleagues, I’m working from home. From the home office in my Belltown condo, I overlook the nearly empty headquarters towers of Amazon. Like thousands in this technopolis, those employees are also working remotely.
But that’s only one view. Near me is a Subway, with one worker, open for takeout. Fancier restaurants are shut, along with other businesses that can’t be handled from home. Hotels are nearly empty, occupancy rates around 9%. Construction on the nearly finished former WeWork tower is shut down; another nearby tower’s groundbreaking is in limbo.
This Janus-faced situation is borne out in the latest data.
Weekly unemployment claims hit 695,000 in October 1982, during the severe recession induced by then-Fed Chairman Paul Volcker to strangle runaway inflation. That high mark over 53 years of record-keeping wasn’t even surpassed during the worst of the Great Recession.
But the week ending March 28 saw more than 6.6 million new jobless claims nationally, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Washington state’s unemployment claims hit 181,975, far eclipsing the record set only the week before.
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Date: 2020-04-04 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-05 07:01 pm (UTC)