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    People are dying because Trump had no plan for Covid shots

    Jillian S. Ambroz, DCReport @ RawStory
    January 28, 2021

    Thanks for your support!

    This article was paid for by reader donations to Raw Story Investigates.

    Trump appointee pushed for millions more COVID infections as part of 'herd immunity' plan: emails
    Bodies are moved to a refrigeration truck serving as a temporary morgue in New York, the main focus of the US outbreak, with more than 4,750 deaths AFP / Bryan R. Smith

    This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

    Jillian S. Ambroz, DCReport @ RawStory

    If you're one of the many millions of Americans who can't get a COVID vaccine, that's because Donald Trump never had a vaccination distribution plan for the country.Though COVID raged throughout Trump's last year in office, he did nothing to prepare for vaccine distribution, consider that lost time. That was just what our co-founder, David Cay Johnston, predicted three years before the pandemic began, writing that "if a virus were to hopscotch around the planet on jetliners and create a pandemic like the one that killed his grandfather in 1918, Trump would not know what to do."

    Trump's criminal ineptitude and apathy crushed the vaccination effort before it could get off the ground, leaving President Joe Biden's administration with a monumental disaster.

    "The vaccine program was in worse shape than we anticipated," Biden said this week, suggesting he inherited a running program. Two days earlier, his chief of staff, Ron Klain, said Trump left no vaccine distribution plan.

    Because Trump did nothing COVID has killed more Americans in less than a year than all the Americans killed in World War II combat.

    "The process to distribute the vaccine, particularly outside of nursing homes and hospitals to the community, did not really exist when we came into the White House," Klain said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

    Biden's team has hit the ground sprinting as it works to set up vaccination centers in stadiums and gymnasiums and deploy thousands of clinical staff from military medical personnel and federal agencies to administer the shots.

    Among the executive orders signed in Biden's first days of his presidency were some addressing vaccine distribution. As Biden shared his plan to purchase additional vaccine doses from Pfizer and Moderna to be delivered this summer, bringing the total to 600 million doses purchased, he urged patience as his administration grapples with inoculating a nation against a pandemic.

    "This is a wartime undertaking," Biden said. "It's not hyperbole."

    Vaccinating a country of almost 330 million people takes careful planning and execution. And that goes way beyond just trying to secure enough of the vaccine – which Trump and his team royally screwed up when they rejected Pfizer's offer to purchase millions of additional doses last fall.

    In addition to the actual medication, there must be a plan in place for securing all the additional supplies necessary to administer the vaccine, from syringes and needles to alcohol swabs.

    There also must be a plan to ensure that the vaccine gets administered by trained healthcare personnel, which surely means providing training for additional personnel for an effort of this scale.

    On top of that, there must be meticulous records on the city, state, and federal levels noting who got which vaccine and when to ensure people receive the two-shots currently required for inoculation. In Phoenix, some residents who volunteered at inoculation sites and were given the first vaccination shot, couldn't make appointments for the second dose because no records were kept. After the Arizona Republic broke that story the state fixed the problem.

    But confusion, fear, and pandemonium rage from coast to coast as hoarding and uneven distribution have left states unprepared to vaccinate the public. A Wild West mentality has taken hold, including hoarding supplies that have been distributed.

    Case in point, Philadelphia let college students with little to no healthcare background distribute vaccines. The city tapped a start-up, Philly Fighting COVID, run by self-described "college kids," to set up the first and largest mass COVID vaccination site in the city. The results were shambolic, with seniors in tears as appointments were not honored, and unsupervised teenagers instead vaccinated each other and took selfies, according to The Washington Post and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

    There's even talk the 22-year-old CEO pocketed vials of vaccine. Philadelphia cut ties with Philly Fighting COVID and prosecutors say that they are chasing down "concerning" allegations.

    On the left coast, things aren't much better. California's slow and disorganized distribution efforts have led the government to outsource statewide vaccination distribution to private insurer Blue Shield of California, according to a story by Los Angeles Times. Blue Shield spent more than $1 million on Gov. Gavin Newsom's 2018 election and nearly $1.3 million in recent state lobbying efforts.

    Kaiser Permanente, a health maintenance organization (HMO) that provides services for more than 9 million Californians, will run a separate program for its members while assisting the state effort.

    And in a recent virtual panel, members of the American Medical Association (AMA), discussed the disappointingly slow efforts to get the 'vaccines into arms' at the state level.

    Because Trump did nothing COVID has killed more Americans in less than a year than all the Americans killed in World War II combat. That's Trump's legacy.

    This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

    Enjoy good journalism?

    … then let us make a small request. The COVID crisis has slashed advertising rates, and we need your help. Like you, we here at Raw Story believe in the power of progressive journalism. Raw Story readers power David Cay Johnston’s DCReport, which we've expanded to keep watch in Washington. We’ve exposed billionaire tax evasion and uncovered White House efforts to poison our water. We’ve revealed financial scams that prey on veterans, and legal efforts to harm workers exploited by abusive bosses. And unlike other news outlets, we’ve decided to make our original content free. But we need your support to do what we do.

    Raw Story is independent. Unhinged from corporate overlords, we fight to ensure no one is forgotten.

    We need your support in this difficult time. Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Invest with us. Make a one-time contribution to Raw Story Investigates, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click to donate by check.

    Value Raw Story?

    … then let us make a small request. The COVID crisis has slashed advertising rates, and we need your help. Like you, we believe in the power of progressive journalism — and we’re investing in investigative reporting as other publications give it the ax. Raw Story readers power David Cay Johnston’s DCReport, which we've expanded to keep watch in Washington. We’ve exposed billionaire tax evasion and uncovered White House efforts to poison our water. We’ve revealed financial scams that prey on veterans, and efforts to harm workers exploited by abusive bosses. We need your support to do what we do.

    Raw Story is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Invest with us in the future. Make a one-time contribution to Raw Story Investigates, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you.

    Report typos and corrections to: corrections@rawstory.com.
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    Why it's time to make large corporations pay living wages

    Phil Mattera, DC Report @ Raw Story
    February 26, 2021

    There was a time when landing a job with a large corporation was, even for blue-collar workers, a ticket to a comfortable life—good wages, generous benefits and a secure retirement. Women and workers of color did not share fully in this bounty, but they generally did better at big firms than small ones.

    All this began to unravel in the 1980s, when big business used the excuse of global competition to chip away at the living standards of the domestic workforce. This took the form of an assault on unions, which had played a key role in bringing about the improvements in the terms of employment. In meatpacking, for instance, what had been a high-wage, high-union-density industry turned into a bastion of precarious labor.

    The real solution to the problem is not voluntary corporate action but rather collective bargaining. Amazon and Walmart could assist their workers by dropping their opposition to unionization.

    When large corporations off-loaded a substantial portion of their employment costs, they created a higher burden for the public sector. As their pay and benefits shrank, workers turned to the social safety net to fill the gap. Programs such as Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) that were originally designed for employees of small firms and for the unemployed became a lifeline for the workforce at some Fortune 500 companies.

    Subsidizing Labor Costs

    From a social point of view, this was a good thing—but it also created a situation in which taxpayers were in effect subsidizing the labor costs of mega-corporations. This became an issue in the early 2000s with regard to Walmart, and there were unsuccessful efforts in states such as Maryland to require large firms to spend more on employee healthcare.

    Although the issue receded from public attention, figures such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have sought to keep it alive, putting the main focus on the employment practices of Amazon.com. In 2018 Sanders helped pressure the giant e-commerce firm to raise its wage rates by introducing legislation that would have taxed large companies to recoup the cost of government benefits given to their employees.

    Now the chair of the Senate Budget Committee, Sen. Sanders is continuing his effort from a position of even greater influence. He just held a hearing on whether taxpayers are subsidizing poverty wages at large corporations. As in 2018, just highlighting the issue had a concrete impact. At the hearing on Thursday (Feb. 25), the chief executive of Costco announced that his company would raise its minimum pay rate to $16 an hour. This came a week after Walmart hiked its rate to $15 but only for a portion of its workforce.

    Some Wage Boosts

    After years of wage stagnation, it is heartening to see that large companies are beginning to feel some pressure to boost their wage rates. Yet rises of only a few dollars an hour will not do the trick. Pay needs to be substantially higher than $15 an hour. That's why the real solution to the problem is not voluntary corporate action but rather collective bargaining. Amazon and Walmart could assist their workers much more by dropping their opposition to unionization.

    Having a voice at work would solve not only the pay problem but also the crisis in healthcare coverage and other benefits. The scope of that crisis was made plain by another speaker at the Senate Budget Committee hearing. Cindy Brown Barnes of the Government Accountability Office summarized research showing that an estimated 12 million adults enrolled in Medicaid and 9 million adults living in households receiving food stamp benefits earned wages at some point in 2018.

    The GAO had more difficulty determining the portion of these populations employed at large corporations. That is because only a limited number of the state agencies administering Medicaid and food stamps collect and update employer information on recipients.

    Corporations On the Dole

    The partial data is still revealing. Among the six states providing employer information for Medicaid recipients, Walmart was in the top 10 in all, while McDonald's and Amazon were in five. Among the nine states providing employer information for food stamp recipients, Walmart was in the top 10 in all, while McDonald's was in eight and Amazon was in four.

    These findings provide valuable information for the Sanders campaign against poverty wages. Companies such as Amazon—which recently reported that its annual revenues in 2020 were up 38% and its profits nearly doubled to $21 billion—can well afford to pay employees a living wage and provide the benefits necessary for a decent standard of living.

    Public safety net programs are essential to society, but those who are employed by mega-corporations should not have to make use of them.

    Justice Department says more than 300 people charged to date over Capitol riots

    Reuters
    February 26, 2021

    By Sarah N. Lynch and Mark Hosenball WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department has charged more than 300 people with taking part in the deadly storming of the Capitol by former President Donald Trump's supporters, and at least 280 have been arrested, Acting Deputy Attorney General John Carlin told reporters on Friday. "The investigation into those responsible is moving at a speed and scale that's unprecedented, and rightly so," he said. "Those responsible must be held to account, and they will be." His comments came just one day after Capitol Police Acting Chief Yogananda Pittman told...

    Donald Trump Jr. bizarrely boasts about his father's conduct after the 2020 election

    Meaghan Ellis, AlterNet
    February 26, 2021

    Don Trump, Jr. recently expressed a sense of pride about his father's unwillingness to accept the unfavorable outcome of the presidential election.

    During a recent appearance on Fox News, Trump Jr. spoke with Sean Hannity where he offered a bizarre analysis of his father's defeat. He claims that his father showed the world that presidential candidates do not have to "lose gracefully.He went on to slam his father's political party as he noted that there appeared to be "an absence of 'natural push-back,' among apparently spineless Republicans who in fact spent months (with few exceptions) defending his father's false claims and baseless conspiracies about a stolen election that culminated in violence," according to Talking Points Memo.

    "The Republicans aren't willing to do it. They've shown that over the decades. They'd just rather lose gracefully, I guess," Trump Jr. told Hannity, adding, "Donald Trump has shown that you don't have to do that."

    In the wake of Trump's acquittal following his Senate trial over accusations that he incited the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol, Trump Jr. appeared to boast about his father's efforts to challenge the foundation of America's democracy. He believes the message his father sent is that "you can actually push back" although it is not "an easy fight."

    He went on to express arguments about the alleged double standard Republicans are faced within the United States. According to Trump Jr., the media and mainstream tech companies are "doing whatever they can to destroy the Republican party."

    "We don't have a level playing field," he said. "Until we have more people that willing to step up and tell the truth and speak to the American people, we're a little bit at a loss and it's ridiculous."

    Trump Jr.'s remarks came just days before Trump's upcoming appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

    While Trump's future political plans remain uncertain, Trump Jr. suggested that his father's influence on the Republican Party will have lasting impacts for years to come. He said, "If you're reading the room and you're intelligent, you realize that Donald Trump is still the future of the Republican Party."

     
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