[AMV] Amerikaanse politiek #749 POTUS' Pandemic Patronage

quote:

Op zaterdag 11 april 2020 19:48 schreef Chivaz het volgende:

[..]

Ik ben niet de persoon hoor die “hypocriet” gedrag aan één kant zit te veroordelen terwijl aan de andere kant de straat schoongeveegd word.

twitter:

alexburnsNYT twitterde op zaterdag 11-04-2020 om 18:39:45 This is an exhaustive, devastating portrait of failure at the highest levels of government, and a president who refused to understand the gravity of a threat that has now frozen the country and consumed his administration

From a 6-person all-star team 👇
https://t.co/ZaVwpQU5Lz reageer retweet

quote:

“Any way you cut it, this is going to be bad,” a senior medical adviser at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Dr. Carter Mecher, wrote on the night of Jan. 28, in an email to a group of public health experts scattered around the government and universities. “The projected size of the outbreak already seems hard to believe.”

A week after the first coronavirus case had been identified in the United States, and six long weeks before President Trump finally took aggressive action to confront the danger the nation was facing — a pandemic that is now forecast to take tens of thousands of American lives — Dr. Mecher was urging the upper ranks of the nation’s public health bureaucracy to wake up and prepare for the possibility of far more drastic action.

“You guys made fun of me screaming to close the schools,” he wrote to the group, which called itself “Red Dawn,” an inside joke based on the 1984 movie about a band of Americans trying to save the country after a foreign invasion. “Now I’m screaming, close the colleges and universities.”

SPOILER

Om spoilers te kunnen lezen moet je zijn ingelogd. Je moet je daarvoor eerst gratis Registreren. Ook kun je spoilers niet lezen als je een ban hebt.

twitter:

EricLiptonNYT twitterde op zondag 12-04-2020 om 01:19:49 JUST POSTED ADD ON: Readers Guide to"RED DAWN" Emails. Vital historical documents that give unvarnished guide to pandemic of 2020 in the US. Researchers will turn to them for decades to come. Not the nightly WH news conferences. Read them yourself. https://t.co/5NWdk5TQCo reageer retweet

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op zondag 12-04-2020 om 00:00:00 Katie Porter and Sara Nelson: Relief funds should be used to pay workers, not bail out corporations.

"What if workers kept their paychecks and health insurance, and had the certainty that their same jobs would be there when the economy is able to reopen?"
https://t.co/MXPhUDs4tE reageer retweet

Rep. Porter, Sara Nelson Propose Idea To Keep More Workers Employed | The Last Word | MSNBC

twitter:

jkbjournalist twitterde op zondag 12-04-2020 om 02:52:02 BREAKING: Florida Gov DeSantis, seeking to hide Covid infections & deaths, pressures Miami Herald law firm to squelch records suit | Miami Herald https://t.co/6WHQHU1T9t reageer retweet

quote:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ general counsel called a representative of the Miami Herald’s law firm seeking to quash a public records lawsuit that would force the state to divulge the names of all elder-care facilities that have had a positive test for the coronavirus.

The back-door pressure — through an attorney that had no involvement in the case — paid off.

The law firm, Holland & Knight, told Sanford Bohrer, a senior partner with decades of representing the Miami Herald, to stand down and abandon the lawsuit.

The suit will still be filed, but by another law firm, said Miami Herald publisher and executive editor Aminda Marqués González.

“We are disappointed that the governor’s office would go so far as to apply pressure on our legal counsel to prevent the release of public records that are critical to the health and safety of Florida’s most vulnerable citizens,” Marques said. “We shouldn’t have had to resort to legal action in the first place. Anyone with a relative in an elder care facility has a right to know if their loved ones are at risk so they can make an informed decision about their care.”

[..]

twitter:

scontorno twitterde op zaterdag 11-04-2020 om 15:07:39 Unlike most governors, Florida's Ron DeSantis has seen his public standing fall during the coronavirus crisis after a month of confusing orders, unforced errors and bizarre statements like falsely claiming young people haven't died.

From @lmower3 and I.

https://t.co/tVyfUcagh9 reageer retweet

twitter:

lydiadepillis twitterde op zaterdag 11-04-2020 om 18:05:28 Catching up on all the crazy stuff my colleagues have been digging into this week. Like this dissection of the way the White House is steering huge no-bid contracts for COVID-19 response outside the normal procurement channels and won't explain why or how: https://t.co/Qbiv6a6fEi reageer retweet

quote:

Last month, as a deadly new virus swept over the globe, one Canadian defense contractor predicted on an earnings call that it would lead to a big business opportunity in the U.S. Thanks to the White House, that bet paid off just a few weeks later in a $96 million no-bid deal.

In an unusual move, even in times of disaster, the White House stepped into the federal purchasing process, ordering the Federal Emergency Management Agency to award a contract to AirBoss of America. The Trump administration has rushed through hundreds of deals to address the pandemic without the usual oversight, more than $760 million reported as of this week, but the AirBoss transaction is the single largest no-bid purchase, a ProPublica analysis of federal purchasing data found.

While FEMA placed the order, it was directed to do so by the White House, ProPublica found.

It is unclear why the White House chose AirBoss for the protective equipment, which is similar to products made by other vendors.

“I can’t think of an example of the White House sending FEMA a directive to procure items from a particular company in a particular manner,” said Tim Manning, a former FEMA deputy administrator during the Obama administration.

The March 31 FEMA contract called for the company to produce 100,000 powered respirators and filters for medical workers treating patients in New York — a critical need that the Trump administration has been slow to address. The contract calls for them to be delivered to New York by July 31, five months after the state’s first reported case.

[..]

twitter:

yabutaleb7 twitterde op zaterdag 11-04-2020 om 22:28:37 In one task force meeting, Trump suggested he and Fauci do a good-cop, bad-cop routine at that day's briefing.

Inside the White House's (many) task forces, none of which have yet produced a cohesive plan to beat the pandemic. with @AshleyRParker @jdawsey1 https://t.co/AtX92lxD5w reageer retweet

quote:

During one task force meeting in the Situation Room last month, Trump turned to Fauci and challenged him.

It was the day the administration was adding Ireland and the United Kingdom to its travel restrictions, and Trump wanted to understand why talk of “herd immunity” — allowing the coronavirus to sweep a nation largely unchecked, with the belief that those who survived would then be immune — was such a bad idea.

“Why don’t we let this wash over the country?” Trump asked, according to two people familiar with his comments, a question other administration officials say he has raised repeatedly in the Oval Office.

Fauci initially seemed confused by the term “wash over” but became alarmed once he understood what Trump was asking.

“Mr. President, many people would die,” Fauci said.

The president said he understood but since then has repeatedly made clear he wants to reopen things soon — although significant roadblocks remain.