truthout--2020-07-01--Chomsky: We Must Not Let Masters of Capital Define the Post-COVID World

The global outbreak of COVID-19 has many thinking that a new economic and political order is inevitably under way .
But is that so ?
In the U.S. , the moneyed class , which has thrived under Donald Trump , won ’ t go down without pulling all stops to make sure that popular pressures for radical reforms will be blocked , says world-renowned public intellectual Noam Chomsky .
Chomsky also reminds us that overt racism has intensified under Trump , and that police violence is a symptom of the underlying white supremacy that plagues U.S. society .
Meanwhile , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trashing of arms control treaties are bringing the world ever closer to an environmental and nuclear holocaust .
C.J .
Polychroniou : It ’ s been argued by many , from various quarters , that COVID-19 has been a game changer .
Do you concur with this view , or are we talking of a temporary situation , with a return to the “ business as usual ” approach being the most likely scenario once this health crisis is over ?
Noam Chomsky : There is no way to predict .
Those who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that imperil us today are hard at work , relentlessly , to ensure that the system they created , and from which they have greatly benefited , will endure — and in an even harsher form , with more intense surveillance and other means of coercion and control .
Popular forces are mobilizing to counter these malign developments .
They seek to dismantle the destructive policies that have led us to this uniquely perilous moment of human history , and to move toward a world system that gives priority to human rights and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ capital .
We should take a few moments to clarify to ourselves the stakes in the bitter class war that is taking shape as the post-pandemic world is being forged .
The stakes are immense .
All are rooted in the suicidal logic of unregulated capitalism , and at a deeper level in its very nature , all becoming more apparent during the neoliberal plague of the past 40 years .
The crises have been exacerbated by malignancies that have surfaced as these destructive tendencies took their course .
The most ominous are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ human history — not a good omen for a world in crisis .
The stakes were spelled out in the setting of the Doomsday Clock last January .
Each year of Trump ’ s presidency , the minute hand has been moved closer to midnight .
Two years ago , it reached the closest it has been since the Clock was first set after the atomic bombings .
This past January , the analysts abandoned minutes altogether and moved to seconds : 100 seconds to midnight .
They reiterated the prime concerns : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of democracy , the last of these because the only hope of dealing with the two existential crises is vibrant democracy in which an informed population is directly engaged in determining the fate of the world .
Since January , Trump has escalated each of these threats to survival .
He has continued his project of dismantling the arms control regime that has provided some protection against nuclear disaster .
So far this year , he has terminated the Open Skies Treaty , proposed by Eisenhower , and imposed frivolous conditions to block @ @ @ @ @ @ @ last pillar of the system .
He is now considering ending the moratorium on nuclear tests , “ an invitation for other nuclear-armed countries to follow suit , ” said Daryl Kimball , executive director of the Arms Control Association .
The military industry can scarcely control its euphoria over the flood of gifts from the public to develop new weapons to destroy us all , encouraging adversaries to do likewise so that down the road , new grants will flow to try to counter the new threats to survival .
A hopeless @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but that is not pertinent ; what matters is that public largesse should flow into the right pockets .
Trump also has continued his dedicated campaign to destroy the environment that sustains human life .
His FY 2020 budget proposal , issued while the pandemic was raging , called for further defunding of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health-related components for government , compensated by increased support for the fossil fuel industries that are destroying the prospects for survival .
And , as usual , more funding for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ] wall that is a central part of his electoral strategy .
The corporate leaders Trump has installed to supervise environmental destruction are quietly eliminating regulations that somewhat constrain the damage and that protect the population from poisoning water supplies and the air they breathe .
The latter reveals sharply the malevolence of the Trump phenomenon .
In the midst of an unprecedented respiratory pandemic , Trump ’ s minions are seeking to increase air pollution , which makes COVID-19 more deadly , endangering tens of thousands of Americans .
But it doesn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no choice but to live near the polluting plants — [ those ] who are poor and Black , and who vote the “ wrong ” way .
Again , there are beneficiaries : his prime constituency of private wealth and corporate power .
Turning to the third concern of the Doomsday Clock analysts , Trump has accelerated his program to dismantle American democracy .
The executive branch has been virtually dismantled , converted to a collection of cowardly sycophants who do not dare to offend the master .
His latest step was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prosecutor who was investigating the swamp that Trump has created in Washington .
He was carrying forward the investigation of the inspectors general who Trump purged when they were getting too close .
The next projected step , we have just learned , is to be a purge of the military command , to ensure faithful obedience to the aspiring tin-pot dictator in the event of an international or domestic crisis of his making .
Trump is mimicked closely by Jair Bolsonaro ; farce imitating tragedy .
But in Brazil , there is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : the Supreme Court , which blocked Bolsonaro ’ s moves to purge the authorities investigating his own swamp .
The U.S. trails well behind .
It is quite an achievement in a mere six months to have significantly escalated all three of the threats to survival that have moved the Doomsday Clock toward midnight , while at the same time , administering a spectacular failure to deal with the pandemic .
Under Trump ’ s leadership , the U.S. , with 4 percent of the world ’ s population , has by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ] cases .
According to a study in a leading medical journal , almost all are attributable to the refusal by Trump and associates to respect the advice of scientists .
In late March , the U.S. and EU had about the same number of coronavirus cases .
Europe adopted the results of U.S. scientific studies , and cases have very sharply declined .
Under Trump , cases have increased to over five times the EU level .
European researchers are wondering whether U.S. has just given up .
Europe is now considering @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state that Trump and associates are constructing .
The idea that the U.S. government has given up is mistaken .
A more accurate conclusion is that the rulers simply don ’ t care .
Their concern is to maintain power and to shape the future society in their image .
The fate of the general population is someone else ’ s business .
The task of forging the future world is not left to executive orders .
It is by now virtually the sole concern of the Senate , with a Republican majority @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the master than the executive .
Mitch McConnell ’ s Senate has virtually abandoned any pretense of being a deliberative or legislative body .
Its task is to serve wealth and corporate power while packing the judiciary , top to bottom , with young ultra-right Federalist Society products who will be able to protect the reactionary Trump-McConnell agenda for many years , whatever the public might want .
The latest Republican effort to punish the population is to call upon the Supreme Court to terminate the Affordable Care Act ( “ Obamacare ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in its place but empty promises .
Trumpian malevolence is merely bringing to light far deeper malignancies of the socioeconomic order that can not be ignored if we are to avoid the next and probably worse pandemic , or to deal with the truly existential threats to survival that Trump is working hard to make much more severe .
These are the questions we face as we ask ourselves what we can do to shape the emergence from the current health crisis .
Since the eruption of nationwide demonstrations in defense of Black @ @ @ @ @ @ @ police , we have witnessed massive shifts in public attitudes on racism and growing defiance against Trump by leading establishment figures and even within his own party .
Can you analyze racism in the Trump era , and speculate as to whether the country is ready for a new era in race relations ?
Some insight into “ racism in the Trump era ” is provided by the record of racially motivated violence .
According to the Anti-Defamation League , in 2016 , before Trump took office , this curse accounted for 20 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ By 2018 , the figure rose to 98 percent .
And it has continued since .
FBI Director Christopher Wray reported that racially and ethnically motivated extremists had been the primary source of ideologically motivated lethal incidents and violence since 2018 , and that 2019 marked the deadliest year of white supremacist violence since the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 , Foreign Affairs reports .
That is one face of racism in the Trump era , regularly fanned from the White House .
The current demonstrations reflect critical tendencies in the opposite direction @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scale , in commitment , in solidarity and in popular support , reaching well beyond what Martin Luther King Jr. achieved when he was still a popular figure .
These remarkable demonstrations testify to significant changes in popular consciousness .
Trump , of course , has been trying hard to stir up his white supremacist voting bloc while tweeting wild charges about how the country is under siege by the violent radicals who run the Democratic Party .
But his familiar techniques do not seem to be working as before .
So far @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the demonstrators seem to be mostly focused on policing .
This focus on police practices leads directly to inquiry into much more fundamental features of American society .
There is ample evidence that police violence in the U.S. is well beyond comparable societies , but it doesn ’ t take place in a social vacuum .
The U.S. is a far more violent society .
Violence , of course , isn ’ t in the genes .
It arises from social maladies that are reflected in many aspects of the society , not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ [ Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ] countries in social justice measures .
It ’ s clear why these maladies have a radically disproportionate impact on the Black community .
Police violence is a symptom , which can not be cured while ignoring its roots .
The spread of protests , especially to small-town America , has also brought to light the utterly weird phenomenon of the militia movement in the United States .
To what extent is the political ideology of the Republican Party under Trump linked to the extreme anti-government @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the assault on the Michigan State Legislature by the armed Michigan Liberty Militia ( “ very good people , ” Donald Trump assured us ) , the most dramatic recent case was at the village of Bethel , Ohio .
A peaceful demonstration of a few dozen people in support of Black Lives Matter was attacked by 700 counterprotesters from motorcycle gangs , “ back the blue ” groups , and proponents of the Second Amendment , many armed or with baseball bats and clubs .
The Second Amendment has nothing to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ become a rallying cry among right-wing groups , constantly evoked by Trump , always irrelevantly , to inflame the “ tough guys ” he is counting on .
As for political ideology , modern Republicans like to intone Reagan ’ s slogan that government is the problem , not the solution .
But always tongue-in-cheek .
Their idol expanded the federal government ( while almost tripling the national debt ) .
It ’ s true that the ideology of the modern Republican party is in part anti-government .
For them , government has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ responsive to the general public .
The flaw can be remedied by transferring policy-making to private tyrannies that are completely unaccountable to the public .
But government is sometimes the solution for Republicans .
One instance is when state power is needed to crush popular interference with the doctrines of the faith , the hallmark of neoliberalism from its origins in interwar Vienna , as we discussed earlier .
Government is also the solution for the huge public subsidies for the corporate sector , and more visibly , when the corporate crime wave @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crashes the economy , as has been happening regularly since Reagan .
The masters then run hat in hand to the nanny state to be bailed out .
That is happening again today , though this time the corporate greed mandated by neoliberal doctrine is only partially responsible ; when the pandemic struck , corporations that had been enriching wealthy shareholders and management with stock buybacks have been demanding , and receiving , public largesse as usual .
On top of that , it always makes sense not to let an opportunity go @ @ @ @ @ @ @ high places , “ Nearly 82 percent of the benefits from the tax law change [ in the coronavirus stimulus ] will go to people making $ 1m or more annually in 2020.
” The guiding neoliberal principle is simply a sharper version of the traditional understanding that the proper function of government is to “ protect the minority of the opulent against the majority , ” as James Madison instructed at the Constitutional Convention .
Government ’ s prime concern is the welfare of “ the men of best quality , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ during the first modern democratic revolution in 17th-century England .
The “ rabble ” will somehow fend for themselves .
How ?
In the neoliberal world , the solution for them is to join the precariat , deprived of support systems ( “ there is no society ” ) , health programs , child care , vacations , secure pensions , in fact any way to escape the ravages of the market , whatever it brings .
Pensions illustrate neoliberal logic well .
The first step has been to dissolve them into private @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lead to higher returns for those who are lucky , and to disaster for those who are not , but either way , withdrawal of security turns people ’ s minds way from “ dangerous illusions ” like solidarity and mutual support to isolation in an uncertain market .
The next step has just been taken by Eugene Scalia , who was chosen to be labor secretary on the basis of his credentials as a corporate lawyer strongly opposed to labor rights .
Under the cover of the pandemic , he quietly opened @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the destructive private equity firms , offering them a huge source of profit and inflated management fees .
Proceeding further , after firing the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York , who stepped out of line by exploring his swamp in Washington , Trump nominated as his replacement Jay Clayton , a private equity lawyer who is a long-time advocate of changing federal law “ to let asset managers funnel more money from retirees to those high-risk , high-fee firms , ” David Sirota reports in another of his invaluable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Exchange Commission ( SEC ) , which monitors these shady organizations , issued another scathing report on their malpractice , which Sirota interprets , plausibly , as a “ desperate cry for help ” to prevent the stagecoach robbery underway .
But to head off that threat , Sirota notes further , the Supreme Court quietly “ restricted the SEC ’ s power to punish private equity firms.
” The circle tightens .
Hold on to your hats as the new age is forged by the masters , step by step — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Since the outbreak of coronavirus , Joe Biden seems to have recognized that many of the problems facing the contemporary United States are structural , not cyclical .
Indeed , Biden seems to have moved further to the left since Bernie Sanders suspended his presidential campaign on April .
This raises the interesting question on whether Biden himself has changed or whether it is the politics and culture of the Democratic Party itself that have changed .
Can you comment on the policy agenda of Biden and on the possibly changing face @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recognizes I don ’ t know .
We can however read his program , which has been pressed well to the left .
Not by the Democratic National Committee or the donor class .
Rather by direct engagement of Sanders and his associates , and most important , by the constant activism of the groups that the Sanders campaign brought together and inspired .
Whether the face will continue to change depends on whether these forces will continue to mobilize and to act .
It ’ s well to remember the traditional left @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the current one .
There is an official doctrine that politics reduces to voting in an election , and then going home to leave matters to others .
That ’ s a wonderful way to suppress the population and maintain authoritarian control .
The terminology that is used to implement this technique of control is “ vote for X , ” and you ’ ve fulfilled your responsibility as a citizen .
The establishment doctrine is available both for those who favor government policy and those who oppose it .
In the latter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ lesser evil voting , ” given the acronym LEV .
The traditional left doctrine is very different .
It holds that politics consists of constant activism to resist oppression , not only from government , but from even harsher private power , and to develop people ’ s movements to promote justice and popular control of institutions .
Every few years an event comes around called an “ election.
” One takes a few minutes to see if there is a significant difference between the candidates , and if there is , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ against the worst one and then get back to work .
To illustrate the choice , consider global warming , plainly a critical matter ( for some , like me , the most critical in human history , along with nuclear war ) .
Democrats and Republicans differ sharply on the issue .
The latest study by the Pew Research Center finds that , This coming November , the difference between the candidates is a chasm .
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length .

The global outbreak of COVID-19 has many thinking that a new economic and political order is inevitably under way. But is that so? In the U.S., the moneyed class, which has thrived under Donald Trump, won’t go down without pulling all stops to make sure that popular pressures for radical reforms will be blocked, says world-renowned public intellectual Noam Chomsky. Chomsky also reminds us that overt racism has intensified under Trump, and that police violence is a symptom of the underlying white supremacy that plagues U.S. society. Meanwhile, Trump’s anti-environmental policies and his trashing of arms control treaties are bringing the world ever closer to an environmental and nuclear holocaust.
C.J. Polychroniou: It’s been argued by many, from various quarters, that COVID-19 has been a game changer. Do you concur with this view, or are we talking of a temporary situation, with a return to the “business as usual” approach being the most likely scenario once this health crisis is over?
Noam Chomsky: There is no way to predict. Those who have primary responsibility for the multiple crises that imperil us today are hard at work, relentlessly, to ensure that the system they created, and from which they have greatly benefited, will endure — and in an even harsher form, with more intense surveillance and other means of coercion and control. Popular forces are mobilizing to counter these malign developments. They seek to dismantle the destructive policies that have led us to this uniquely perilous moment of human history, and to move toward a world system that gives priority to human rights and needs, not the prerogatives of concentrated capital.
We should take a few moments to clarify to ourselves the stakes in the bitter class war that is taking shape as the post-pandemic world is being forged. The stakes are immense. All are rooted in the suicidal logic of unregulated capitalism, and at a deeper level in its very nature, all becoming more apparent during the neoliberal plague of the past 40 years. The crises have been exacerbated by malignancies that have surfaced as these destructive tendencies took their course. The most ominous are appearing in the most powerful state in human history — not a good omen for a world in crisis.
The stakes were spelled out in the setting of the Doomsday Clock last January. Each year of Trump’s presidency, the minute hand has been moved closer to midnight. Two years ago, it reached the closest it has been since the Clock was first set after the atomic bombings. This past January, the analysts abandoned minutes altogether and moved to seconds: 100 seconds to midnight. They reiterated the prime concerns: nuclear war, environmental destruction and deterioration of democracy, the last of these because the only hope of dealing with the two existential crises is vibrant democracy in which an informed population is directly engaged in determining the fate of the world.
Since January, Trump has escalated each of these threats to survival. He has continued his project of dismantling the arms control regime that has provided some protection against nuclear disaster. So far this year, he has terminated the Open Skies Treaty, proposed by Eisenhower, and imposed frivolous conditions to block the re-negotiation of New Start, the last pillar of the system. He is now considering ending the moratorium on nuclear tests, “an invitation for other nuclear-armed countries to follow suit,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.
The military industry can scarcely control its euphoria over the flood of gifts from the public to develop new weapons to destroy us all, encouraging adversaries to do likewise so that down the road, new grants will flow to try to counter the new threats to survival. A hopeless task, as virtually every specialist knows, but that is not pertinent; what matters is that public largesse should flow into the right pockets.
In the midst of an unprecedented respiratory pandemic, Trump’s minions are seeking to increase air pollution, which makes COVID-19 more deadly.
Trump also has continued his dedicated campaign to destroy the environment that sustains human life. His FY 2020 budget proposal, issued while the pandemic was raging, called for further defunding of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health-related components for government, compensated by increased support for the fossil fuel industries that are destroying the prospects for survival. And, as usual, more funding for the military and for the [border] wall that is a central part of his electoral strategy. The corporate leaders Trump has installed to supervise environmental destruction are quietly eliminating regulations that somewhat constrain the damage and that protect the population from poisoning water supplies and the air they breathe. The latter reveals sharply the malevolence of the Trump phenomenon. In the midst of an unprecedented respiratory pandemic, Trump’s minions are seeking to increase air pollution, which makes COVID-19 more deadly, endangering tens of thousands of Americans. But it doesn’t much matter. Most have no choice but to live near the polluting plants — [those] who are poor and Black, and who vote the “wrong” way.
Again, there are beneficiaries: his prime constituency of private wealth and corporate power.
Turning to the third concern of the Doomsday Clock analysts, Trump has accelerated his program to dismantle American democracy. The executive branch has been virtually dismantled, converted to a collection of cowardly sycophants who do not dare to offend the master. His latest step was to fire the State of New York prosecutor who was investigating the swamp that Trump has created in Washington. He was carrying forward the investigation of the inspectors general who Trump purged when they were getting too close. The next projected step, we have just learned, is to be a purge of the military command, to ensure faithful obedience to the aspiring tin-pot dictator in the event of an international or domestic crisis of his making.
Trump is mimicked closely by Jair Bolsonaro; farce imitating tragedy. But in Brazil, there is still a slim barrier to executive criminality: the Supreme Court, which blocked Bolsonaro’s moves to purge the authorities investigating his own swamp. The U.S. trails well behind.
It is quite an achievement in a mere six months to have significantly escalated all three of the threats to survival that have moved the Doomsday Clock toward midnight, while at the same time, administering a spectacular failure to deal with the pandemic. Under Trump’s leadership, the U.S., with 4 percent of the world’s population, has by now registered 20 percent of [COVID-19] cases. According to a study in a leading medical journal, almost all are attributable to the refusal by Trump and associates to respect the advice of scientists.
In late March, the U.S. and EU had about the same number of coronavirus cases. Europe adopted the results of U.S. scientific studies, and cases have very sharply declined. Under Trump, cases have increased to over five times the EU level. European researchers are wondering whether U.S. has just given up. Europe is now considering a ban on travelers from the pariah state that Trump and associates are constructing.
The idea that the U.S. government has given up is mistaken. A more accurate conclusion is that the rulers simply don’t care. Their concern is to maintain power and to shape the future society in their image. The fate of the general population is someone else’s business.
The task of forging the future world is not left to executive orders. It is by now virtually the sole concern of the Senate, with a Republican majority that is perhaps even more subservient to the master than the executive. Mitch McConnell’s Senate has virtually abandoned any pretense of being a deliberative or legislative body. Its task is to serve wealth and corporate power while packing the judiciary, top to bottom, with young ultra-right Federalist Society products who will be able to protect the reactionary Trump-McConnell agenda for many years, whatever the public might want.
The Second Amendment has become a rallying cry among right-wing groups, constantly evoked by Trump to inflame the “tough guys” he is counting on.
The latest Republican effort to punish the population is to call upon the Supreme Court to terminate the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) — as always, offering nothing in its place but empty promises.
Trumpian malevolence is merely bringing to light far deeper malignancies of the socioeconomic order that cannot be ignored if we are to avoid the next and probably worse pandemic, or to deal with the truly existential threats to survival that Trump is working hard to make much more severe.
These are the questions we face as we ask ourselves what we can do to shape the emergence from the current health crisis.
Since the eruption of nationwide demonstrations in defense of Black lives and in support of defunding the police, we have witnessed massive shifts in public attitudes on racism and growing defiance against Trump by leading establishment figures and even within his own party. Can you analyze racism in the Trump era, and speculate as to whether the country is ready for a new era in race relations?
Some insight into “racism in the Trump era” is provided by the record of racially motivated violence. According to the Anti-Defamation League, in 2016, before Trump took office, this curse accounted for 20 percent of terrorism-related deaths in the U.S. By 2018, the figure rose to 98 percent. And it has continued since. FBI Director Christopher Wray reported that racially and ethnically motivated extremists had been the primary source of ideologically motivated lethal incidents and violence since 2018, and that 2019 marked the deadliest year of white supremacist violence since the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, Foreign Affairs reports.
That is one face of racism in the Trump era, regularly fanned from the White House. The current demonstrations reflect critical tendencies in the opposite direction. The demonstrations are unprecedented: in scale, in commitment, in solidarity and in popular support, reaching well beyond what Martin Luther King Jr. achieved when he was still a popular figure.
These remarkable demonstrations testify to significant changes in popular consciousness. Trump, of course, has been trying hard to stir up his white supremacist voting bloc while tweeting wild charges about how the country is under siege by the violent radicals who run the Democratic Party. But his familiar techniques do not seem to be working as before.
So far, the [short-term] goals of the demonstrators seem to be mostly focused on policing. This focus on police practices leads directly to inquiry into much more fundamental features of American society. There is ample evidence that police violence in the U.S. is well beyond comparable societies, but it doesn’t take place in a social vacuum. The U.S. is a far more violent society.
Violence, of course, isn’t in the genes. It arises from social maladies that are reflected in many aspects of the society, not least its very low ranking among OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] countries in social justice measures. It’s clear why these maladies have a radically disproportionate impact on the Black community. Police violence is a symptom, which cannot be cured while ignoring its roots.
The spread of protests, especially to small-town America, has also brought to light the utterly weird phenomenon of the militia movement in the United States. To what extent is the political ideology of the Republican Party under Trump linked to the extreme anti-government ideology of the militia movement?
Apart from the assault on the Michigan State Legislature by the armed Michigan Liberty Militia (“very good people,” Donald Trump assured us), the most dramatic recent case was at the village of Bethel, Ohio. A peaceful demonstration of a few dozen people in support of Black Lives Matter was attacked by 700 counterprotesters from motorcycle gangs, “back the blue” groups, and proponents of the Second Amendment, many armed or with baseball bats and clubs. The Second Amendment has nothing to do with the demonstration, but has become a rallying cry among right-wing groups, constantly evoked by Trump, always irrelevantly, to inflame the “tough guys” he is counting on.
Withdrawal of security turns people’s minds way from “dangerous illusions” like solidarity and mutual support to isolation in an uncertain market.
As for political ideology, modern Republicans like to intone Reagan’s slogan that government is the problem, not the solution. But always tongue-in-cheek. Their idol expanded the federal government (while almost tripling the national debt). It’s true that the ideology of the modern Republican party is in part anti-government. For them, government has a serious flaw; it is somewhat responsive to the general public. The flaw can be remedied by transferring policy-making to private tyrannies that are completely unaccountable to the public. But government is sometimes the solution for Republicans. One instance is when state power is needed to crush popular interference with the doctrines of the faith, the hallmark of neoliberalism from its origins in interwar Vienna, as we discussed earlier. Government is also the solution for the huge public subsidies for the corporate sector, and more visibly, when the corporate crime wave that has been unleashed by neoliberal principles crashes the economy, as has been happening regularly since Reagan. The masters then run hat in hand to the nanny state to be bailed out. That is happening again today, though this time the corporate greed mandated by neoliberal doctrine is only partially responsible; when the pandemic struck, corporations that had been enriching wealthy shareholders and management with stock buybacks have been demanding, and receiving, public largesse as usual.
On top of that, it always makes sense not to let an opportunity go to waste. Thanks to friends in high places, “Nearly 82 percent of the benefits from the tax law change [in the coronavirus stimulus] will go to people making $1m or more annually in 2020.”
The guiding neoliberal principle is simply a sharper version of the traditional understanding that the proper function of government is to “protect the minority of the opulent against the majority,” as James Madison instructed at the Constitutional Convention. Government’s prime concern is the welfare of “the men of best quality,” as they called themselves a century earlier during the first modern democratic revolution in 17th-century England. The “rabble” will somehow fend for themselves.
How? In the neoliberal world, the solution for them is to join the precariat, deprived of support systems (“there is no society”), health programs, child care, vacations, secure pensions, in fact any way to escape the ravages of the market, whatever it brings.
Pensions illustrate neoliberal logic well. The first step has been to dissolve them into private 401(k)s. That might lead to higher returns for those who are lucky, and to disaster for those who are not, but either way, withdrawal of security turns people’s minds way from “dangerous illusions” like solidarity and mutual support to isolation in an uncertain market. The next step has just been taken by Eugene Scalia, who was chosen to be labor secretary on the basis of his credentials as a corporate lawyer strongly opposed to labor rights. Under the cover of the pandemic, he quietly opened the 401(k) market to the destructive private equity firms, offering them a huge source of profit and inflated management fees.
Proceeding further, after firing the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, who stepped out of line by exploring his swamp in Washington, Trump nominated as his replacement Jay Clayton, a private equity lawyer who is a long-time advocate of changing federal law “to let asset managers funnel more money from retirees to those high-risk, high-fee firms,” David Sirota reports in another of his invaluable exposés of state-corporate crimes. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which monitors these shady organizations, issued another scathing report on their malpractice, which Sirota interprets, plausibly, as a “desperate cry for help” to prevent the stagecoach robbery underway. But to head off that threat, Sirota notes further, the Supreme Court quietly “restricted the SEC’s power to punish private equity firms.”
The circle tightens. Hold on to your hats as the new age is forged by the masters, step by step — if we let them have their way.
Since the outbreak of coronavirus, Joe Biden seems to have recognized that many of the problems facing the contemporary United States are structural, not cyclical. Indeed, Biden seems to have moved further to the left since Bernie Sanders suspended his presidential campaign on April. This raises the interesting question on whether Biden himself has changed or whether it is the politics and culture of the Democratic Party itself that have changed. Can you comment on the policy agenda of Biden and on the possibly changing face of the Democratic Party?
What Biden recognizes I don’t know. We can however read his program, which has been pressed well to the left. Not by the Democratic National Committee or the donor class. Rather by direct engagement of Sanders and his associates, and most important, by the constant activism of the groups that the Sanders campaign brought together and inspired. Whether the face will continue to change depends on whether these forces will continue to mobilize and to act.
It’s well to remember the traditional left perspective on the quadrennial extravaganzas, including the current one.
There is an official doctrine that politics reduces to voting in an election, and then going home to leave matters to others. That’s a wonderful way to suppress the population and maintain authoritarian control. The terminology that is used to implement this technique of control is “vote for X,” and you’ve fulfilled your responsibility as a citizen.
The establishment doctrine is available both for those who favor government policy and those who oppose it. In the latter form, it has recently been called “lesser evil voting,” given the acronym LEV.
The traditional left doctrine is very different. It holds that politics consists of constant activism to resist oppression, not only from government, but from even harsher private power, and to develop people’s movements to promote justice and popular control of institutions. Every few years an event comes around called an “election.” One takes a few minutes to see if there is a significant difference between the candidates, and if there is, to take another few minutes to vote against the worst one and then get back to work. To illustrate the choice, consider global warming, plainly a critical matter (for some, like me, the most critical in human history, along with nuclear war). Democrats and Republicans differ sharply on the issue. The latest study by the Pew Research Center finds that,
Americans continue to be deeply politically divided over how much human activity contributes to climate change. About seven-in-ten Democrats (72%) say human activity contributes a great deal to climate change, compared with roughly two-in-ten Republicans (22%), a difference of 50 percentage points. The difference is even wider among those at the ends of the ideological spectrum. A large majority of liberal Democrats (85%) say human activity contributes a great deal to climate change. Only 14% of conservative Republicans say the same.
This coming November, the difference between the candidates is a chasm.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.


truthout--2020-07-01--Workers Filed More Than 4,100 Complaints About Protective Gear. Some Still Died.

COVID-19 cases were climbing at Michigan ’ s McLaren Flint hospital .
So Roger Liddell , 64 , who procured supplies for the hospital , asked for an N95 respirator for his own protection , since his work brought him into the same room as COVID-positive patients .
But the hospital denied his request , said Kelly Indish , president of the American Federation of State , County and Municipal Employees Local 875 .
On March 30 , Liddell posted on Facebook that he had worked the previous week in both the critical care unit and the ICU and had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me God is still in control , ” he wrote .
He died April 10 .
The hospital ’ s problems with personal protective equipment ( PPE ) were well documented .
In mid-March , the state office of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration ( OSHA ) received five complaints , which described employees receiving “ zero PPE.
” The cases were closed April 21 , after the hospital presented paperwork saying problems had been resolved .
There was no onsite inspection , and the hospital ’ s written response was deemed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ local OSHA spokesperson confirmed .
The grief and fear gripping workers and their families reflect a far larger pattern .
Since March , more than 4,100 COVID-related complaints regarding health care facilities have poured into the nation ’ s network of federal and state OSHA offices , which are tasked with protecting workers from harm on the job .
A KHN investigation found that at least 35 health care workers died after OSHA received safety complaints about their workplaces .
Yet by June 21 , the agency had quietly closed almost all of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ led to a citation or a fine .
The complaint logs , which have been made public , show thousands of desperate pleas from workers seeking better protective gear for their hospitals , medical offices and nursing homes .
The quick closure of complaints underscores the Trump administration ’ s hands-off approach to oversight , said former OSHA official Deborah Berkowitz .
Instead of cracking down , the agency simply sent letters reminding employers to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines , said Berkowitz , now a director at the National @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a travesty , ” she said .
A third of the health care-related COVID-19 complaints , about 1,300 , remain open and about 275 fatality investigations are ongoing .
During a June 9 legislative hearing , Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia said OSHA had issued one coronavirus-related citation for violating federal standards .
A Georgia nursing home was fined $ 3,900 for failing to report worker hospitalizations on time , OSHA ’ s records show .
“ We have a number of cases we are investigating , ” Scalia said at the Senate Finance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ violations , we will certainly not hesitate to bring a case.
” A March 16 complaint regarding Clara Maass Medical Center in Belleville , New Jersey , illustrates the life-or-death stakes for workers on the front lines .
The complaint says workers were “ not allowed to wear ” masks in the hallway outside COVID-19 patients ’ rooms even though studies have since shown the highly contagious virus can spread throughout a health care facility .
It also said workers “ were not allowed adequate access ” to PPE .
Nine days later @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Birchenough texted her daughter : “ The ICU nurses were making gowns out of garbage bags .
… Dad is going to pick up large garbage bags for me just in case.
” Kristin Carbone , the eldest of four , said her mother was not working in a COVID area but was upset that patients with suspicious symptoms were under her care .
In a text later that day , Birchenough admitted : “ I have a cough and a headache … we were exposed to six patients who we are now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a sudden got coughs and fevers.
” “ Please pray for all health care workers , ” the text went on .
“ We are running out of supplies.
” By April 15 , Birchenough , 65 , had died of the virus .
“ They were not protecting their employees in my opinion , ” Carbone said .
“ It ’ s beyond sad , but then I go to a different place where I ’ m infuriated.
” OSHA records show six investigations into a fatality or cluster of worker @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Department spokesperson said the initial complaints about Clara Maass remain open and did not explain why they continue to appear on a “ closed ” case list .
Nestor Bautista , 62 , who worked closely with Birchenough , died of COVID-19 the same day as she did , according to Nestor ’ s sister , Cecilia Bautista .
She said her brother , a nursing aide at Clara Maass for 24 years , was a quiet and devoted employee : “ He was just work , work , work , ” she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ OSHA complaint , Clara Maass Medical Center spokesperson Stacie Newton said the virus has “ presented unprecedented challenges.
” “ Although the source of the exposure has not been determined , several staff members ” contracted the virus and “ a few ” have died , Newton said in an email .
“ Our staff has been in regular contact with OSHA , providing notifications and cooperating fully with all inquiries.
” Other complaints have been filed with OSHA offices across the U.S. Twenty-one closed complaints alleged that workers faced threats of retaliation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the lack of PPE .
At a Delaware hospital , workers said they were not allowed to wear N95 masks , which protected them better than surgical masks , “ for fear of termination or retaliation.
” At an Atlanta hospital , workers said they were not provided proper PPE and were also threatened to be fired if they “ raise [ d ] concerns about PPE when working with patients with Covid-19.
” Of the 4,100-plus complaints that flooded OSHA offices , over two-thirds are now marked as “ closed ” in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a complaint that staffers handling dead bodies in a small room off the lobby of a Manhattan nursing home weren ’ t given appropriate protective gear .
More than 100 of those cases were resolved within 10 days .
One of those complaints said home health nurses in the Bronx were sent to treat COVID-19 patients without full protective gear .
At a Massachusetts nursing home that housed COVID patients , staff members were asked to wash and reuse masks and disposable gloves , another complaint said .
A complaint about an Ohio @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to wear protective equipment when caring for COVID patients .
That complaint was closed three days after OSHA received it .
It remains unclear how OSHA resolved hundreds of the complaints .
A Department of Labor spokesperson said in an email that some are closed based on an exchange of information between the employer and OSHA , and advised reporters to file Freedom of Information Act requests for details on others .
“ The Department is committed to protecting America ’ s workers during the pandemic , ” the Labor Department said in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in place to protect employees , and employers who fail to take appropriate steps to protect their employees may be violating them.
” The agency advised its inspectors on May 19 to place reports of fatalities and imminent danger as a top priority , with a special focus on health care settings .
Since late March , OSHA has opened more than 250 investigations into fatalities at health care facilities , government records show .
Most of those cases are ongoing .
According to the mid-March complaints against McLaren Flint , workers did @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are not allowed to bring them from home.
” They also said patients with COVID-19 were kept throughout the hospital .
Filing complaints , though , did little for Liddell , or for his colleague , Patrick Cain , 52 .
After the complaints were filed , Cain , a registered nurse , was treating people still awaiting the results of COVID-19 diagnostic tests — potentially positive patients ― without an N95 respirator .
He was also working outside a room where potential COVID-19 patients were undergoing treatments that research supported by the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spread the virus widely in the air .
At the time , there was a debate over whether supply chain breakdowns of PPE and weakened CDC guidelines on protective gear were putting workers at risk .
Cain felt vulnerable working outside of rooms where COVID patients were undergoing infection-spreading treatments , he wrote in a text to Indish on March 26 .
He fell ill in mid-March and died April 4 .
McLaren has since revised its face-covering policy to provide N95s or controlled air-purifying respirators ( CAPRs ) to workers on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ A spokesperson for the McLaren Health Care system said the OSHA complaints are “ unsubstantiated ” and that its protocols have consistently followed government guidelines .
“ We have always provided appropriate PPE and staff training that adheres to the evolving federal , state , and local PPE guidelines , ” Brian Brown said in an email .
Separate from the closed complaints , OSHA investigations into Liddell and Cain ’ s deaths are ongoing , according to a spokesperson for the state ’ s Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity .
Nurses @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said the complaints they aired before a nurse ’ s death have not been resolved .
( KHN is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente . )
On March 18 , nurses filed an initial complaint .
They told OSHA they were given surgical masks , instead of N95s .
Less than a week later , other complaints said staffers were forced to reuse those surgical masks and evaluate patients for COVID without wearing an N95 respirator .
Several nurses who cared for one patient who wasn ’ t initially suspected of having COVID-19 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ according to Amy Arlund , a Kaiser Fresno nurse and board member of the National Nurses Organizing Committee board of directors .
Sandra Oldfield , a 53-year-old RN , was among them .
Arlund said Oldfield had filed an internal complaint with management about inadequate PPE around that time .
Arlund said the patient ’ s illness was difficult to pin down , so dozens of workers were exposed to him and 10 came down with COVID-19 , including Oldfield .
Lori Rodriguez , Oldfield ’ s sister , said Sandra was upset @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ended up testing positive for COVID-19 hadn ’ t been screened earlier .
“ I don ’ t want to see anyone else lose their life like my sister did , ” she said .
“ It ’ s just not right.
” Wade Nogy , senior vice president and area manager of Kaiser Permanente Fresno , confirmed that Oldfield had exposure to a patient before COVID-19 was suspected .
He said Kaiser Permanente “ has years of experience managing highly infectious diseases , and we are safely treating patients who have been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spokesperson Marc Brown said KP “ responded to these complaints with information , documents and interviews that demonstrated we are in compliance with OSHA regulations to protect our employees.
” He said the health system provides nurses and other staff “ with the appropriate protective equipment.
” California OSHA officials said the initial complaints were accurate and the hospital was not in compliance with a state law requiring workers treating COVID patients to have respirators .
However , the officials said the requirement had been waived due to global shortages .
Kaiser Fresno @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a statement , but the agency has ongoing investigations at the facility .
Arlund said tension around protective gear remains high at the hospital .
On each shift , she said , nurses must justify their need for a respirator , face shield or hair cap .
She expressed surprise that the OSHA complaints were considered “ closed.
” “ I ’ m very concerned to hear they are closing cases when I know they haven ’ t reached out to front-line nurses , ” Arlund said .
“ We do not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Health News ( KHN ) is a national health policy news service .
It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente .

Federal officials filed just one citation against an employer and rapidly closed complaints about protective gear.
COVID-19 cases were climbing at Michigan’s McLaren Flint hospital. So Roger Liddell, 64, who procured supplies for the hospital, asked for an N95 respirator for his own protection, since his work brought him into the same room as COVID-positive patients.
But the hospital denied his request, said Kelly Indish, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 875.
On March 30, Liddell posted on Facebook that he had worked the previous week in both the critical care unit and the ICU and had contracted the virus. “Pray for me God is still in control,” he wrote. He died April 10.
The hospital’s problems with personal protective equipment (PPE) were well documented. In mid-March, the state office of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) received five complaints, which described employees receiving “zero PPE.” The cases were closed April 21, after the hospital presented paperwork saying problems had been resolved. There was no onsite inspection, and the hospital’s written response was deemed sufficient to close the complaints, a local OSHA spokesperson confirmed.
The grief and fear gripping workers and their families reflect a far larger pattern. Since March, more than 4,100 COVID-related complaints regarding health care facilities have poured into the nation’s network of federal and state OSHA offices, which are tasked with protecting workers from harm on the job.
A KHN investigation found that at least 35 health care workers died after OSHA received safety complaints about their workplaces. Yet by June 21, the agency had quietly closed almost all of those complaints, and none of them led to a citation or a fine.
The complaint logs, which have been made public, show thousands of desperate pleas from workers seeking better protective gear for their hospitals, medical offices and nursing homes.
The quick closure of complaints underscores the Trump administration’s hands-off approach to oversight, said former OSHA official Deborah Berkowitz. Instead of cracking down, the agency simply sent letters reminding employers to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, said Berkowitz, now a director at the National Employment Law Project.
“This is a travesty,” she said.
A third of the health care-related COVID-19 complaints, about 1,300, remain open and about 275 fatality investigations are ongoing.
During a June 9 legislative hearing, Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia said OSHA had issued one coronavirus-related citation for violating federal standards. A Georgia nursing home was fined $3,900 for failing to report worker hospitalizations on time, OSHA’s records show.
“We have a number of cases we are investigating,” Scalia said at the Senate Finance Committee hearing. “If we find violations, we will certainly not hesitate to bring a case.”
A March 16 complaint regarding Clara Maass Medical Center in Belleville, New Jersey, illustrates the life-or-death stakes for workers on the front lines. The complaint says workers were “not allowed to wear” masks in the hallway outside COVID-19 patients’ rooms even though studies have since shown the highly contagious virus can spread throughout a health care facility. It also said workers “were not allowed adequate access” to PPE.
Nine days later, veteran Clara Maass registered nurse Barbara Birchenough texted her daughter: “The ICU nurses were making gowns out of garbage bags. … Dad is going to pick up large garbage bags for me just in case.”
Kristin Carbone, the eldest of four, said her mother was not working in a COVID area but was upset that patients with suspicious symptoms were under her care.
In a text later that day, Birchenough admitted: “I have a cough and a headache … we were exposed to six patients who we are now testing for COVID 19. They all of a sudden got coughs and fevers.”
“Please pray for all health care workers,” the text went on. “We are running out of supplies.”
By April 15, Birchenough, 65, had died of the virus. “They were not protecting their employees in my opinion,” Carbone said. “It’s beyond sad, but then I go to a different place where I’m infuriated.”
OSHA records show six investigations into a fatality or cluster of worker hospitalizations at the hospital. A Labor Department spokesperson said the initial complaints about Clara Maass remain open and did not explain why they continue to appear on a “closed” case list.
Nestor Bautista, 62, who worked closely with Birchenough, died of COVID-19 the same day as she did, according to Nestor’s sister, Cecilia Bautista. She said her brother, a nursing aide at Clara Maass for 24 years, was a quiet and devoted employee: “He was just work, work, work,” she said.
Responding to allegations in the OSHA complaint, Clara Maass Medical Center spokesperson Stacie Newton said the virus has “presented unprecedented challenges.”
“Although the source of the exposure has not been determined, several staff members” contracted the virus and “a few” have died, Newton said in an email. “Our staff has been in regular contact with OSHA, providing notifications and cooperating fully with all inquiries.”
Other complaints have been filed with OSHA offices across the U.S.
Twenty-one closed complaints alleged that workers faced threats of retaliation for actions such as speaking up about the lack of PPE. At a Delaware hospital, workers said they were not allowed to wear N95 masks, which protected them better than surgical masks, “for fear of termination or retaliation.” At an Atlanta hospital, workers said they were not provided proper PPE and were also threatened to be fired if they “raise[d] concerns about PPE when working with patients with Covid-19.”
Of the 4,100-plus complaints that flooded OSHA offices, over two-thirds are now marked as “closed” in an OSHA database. Among them was a complaint that staffers handling dead bodies in a small room off the lobby of a Manhattan nursing home weren’t given appropriate protective gear.
More than 100 of those cases were resolved within 10 days. One of those complaints said home health nurses in the Bronx were sent to treat COVID-19 patients without full protective gear. At a Massachusetts nursing home that housed COVID patients, staff members were asked to wash and reuse masks and disposable gloves, another complaint said. A complaint about an Ohio nursing home said workers were not required to wear protective equipment when caring for COVID patients. That complaint was closed three days after OSHA received it.
It remains unclear how OSHA resolved hundreds of the complaints. A Department of Labor spokesperson said in an email that some are closed based on an exchange of information between the employer and OSHA, and advised reporters to file Freedom of Information Act requests for details on others.
“The Department is committed to protecting America’s workers during the pandemic,” the Labor Department said in a statement. “OSHA has standards in place to protect employees, and employers who fail to take appropriate steps to protect their employees may be violating them.”
The agency advised its inspectors on May 19 to place reports of fatalities and imminent danger as a top priority, with a special focus on health care settings. Since late March, OSHA has opened more than 250 investigations into fatalities at health care facilities, government records show. Most of those cases are ongoing.
According to the mid-March complaints against McLaren Flint, workers did not receive needed N95 masks and “are not allowed to bring them from home.” They also said patients with COVID-19 were kept throughout the hospital.
Filing complaints, though, did little for Liddell, or for his colleague, Patrick Cain, 52. After the complaints were filed, Cain, a registered nurse, was treating people still awaiting the results of COVID-19 diagnostic tests — potentially positive patients ― without an N95 respirator. He was also working outside a room where potential COVID-19 patients were undergoing treatments that research supported by the University of Nebraska has since shown can spread the virus widely in the air.
At the time, there was a debate over whether supply chain breakdowns of PPE and weakened CDC guidelines on protective gear were putting workers at risk.
Cain felt vulnerable working outside of rooms where COVID patients were undergoing infection-spreading treatments, he wrote in a text to Indish on March 26.
“McLaren screwed us,” he wrote.
He fell ill in mid-March and died April 4.
McLaren has since revised its face-covering policy to provide N95s or controlled air-purifying respirators (CAPRs) to workers on the COVID floor, union members said.
A spokesperson for the McLaren Health Care system said the OSHA complaints are “unsubstantiated” and that its protocols have consistently followed government guidelines. “We have always provided appropriate PPE and staff training that adheres to the evolving federal, state, and local PPE guidelines,” Brian Brown said in an email.
Separate from the closed complaints, OSHA investigations into Liddell and Cain’s deaths are ongoing, according to a spokesperson for the state’s Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity.
Nurses at Kaiser Permanente Fresno Medical Center also said the complaints they aired before a nurse’s death have not been resolved. (KHN is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.)
On March 18, nurses filed an initial complaint. They told OSHA they were given surgical masks, instead of N95s. Less than a week later, other complaints said staffers were forced to reuse those surgical masks and evaluate patients for COVID without wearing an N95 respirator.
Several nurses who cared for one patient who wasn’t initially suspected of having COVID-19 in mid-March wore no protective gear, according to Amy Arlund, a Kaiser Fresno nurse and board member of the National Nurses Organizing Committee board of directors. Sandra Oldfield, a 53-year-old RN, was among them.
Arlund said Oldfield had filed an internal complaint with management about inadequate PPE around that time. Arlund said the patient’s illness was difficult to pin down, so dozens of workers were exposed to him and 10 came down with COVID-19, including Oldfield.
Lori Rodriguez, Oldfield’s sister, said Sandra was upset that the patient she cared for who ended up testing positive for COVID-19 hadn’t been screened earlier.
“I don’t want to see anyone else lose their life like my sister did,” she said. “It’s just not right.”
Wade Nogy, senior vice president and area manager of Kaiser Permanente Fresno, confirmed that Oldfield had exposure to a patient before COVID-19 was suspected. He said Kaiser Permanente “has years of experience managing highly infectious diseases, and we are safely treating patients who have been infected with this virus.”
Kaiser Permanente spokesperson Marc Brown said KP “responded to these complaints with information, documents and interviews that demonstrated we are in compliance with OSHA regulations to protect our employees.” He said the health system provides nurses and other staff “with the appropriate protective equipment.”
California OSHA officials said the initial complaints were accurate and the hospital was not in compliance with a state law requiring workers treating COVID patients to have respirators. However, the officials said the requirement had been waived due to global shortages.
Kaiser Fresno is now in compliance, Cal/OSHA said in a statement, but the agency has ongoing investigations at the facility.
Arlund said tension around protective gear remains high at the hospital. On each shift, she said, nurses must justify their need for a respirator, face shield or hair cap. She expressed surprise that the OSHA complaints were considered “closed.”
“I’m very concerned to hear they are closing cases when I know they haven’t reached out to front-line nurses,” Arlund said. “We do not consider any of them closed.”
Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.


truthout--2020-06-30--Fauci Is “Very Concerned” US COVID Cases May “Go up to 100,000 a Day”

Anthony Fauci , director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of President Donald Trump ’ s coronavirus task force team , gave a grim assessment of where things could be headed with regard to the total number of new cases of COVID-19 infections seen daily in the United States .
The country is “ going in the wrong direction ” in terms of controlling the spread of COVID-19 , Fauci said , while testifying before the Senate Health , Education , Labor and Pensions Committee .
Fauci and other health experts were on Capitol @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on reopening schools in the fall and other businesses that have not yet opened .
The committee hearing took place as the U.S. has begun to see higher numbers of the disease being recorded , including on Saturday when a record-breaking 45,300 new cases were identified .
Since the coronavirus pandemic reached the country , over 2.6 million cases have been documented , with more than 126,360 recorded deaths from the disease as of Tuesday afternoon .
With those numbers from this past weekend in mind , Fauci explained that it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ higher , since the U.S. is not showing any signs of stopping the spread of COVID-19 .
“ We are now having 40-plus-thousand new cases a day .
I would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around , and so I am very concerned , ” Fauci said during his testimony .
The infectious diseases expert also offered some advice that some in the country — including President Trump — have openly thwarted : wear a mask to help stop the spread of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ get the message out that we are all in this together , ” Fauci warned .
“ If you are outside your home and can ’ t socially distant , you should wear a mask at all times.
” At the same committee hearing , Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Robert Redfield encouraged the same moves .
“ It is critical that we all take the personal responsibility to slow the transmission of COVID and embrace the universal use of face coverings .
I ask those that are listening to spread @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Yet for some , masks and facial coverings have become a political statement , with those having conservative leanings being less likely to wear them , according to a recent Pew Research poll on the subject .
The most prominent individual to refuse to wear a mask , of course , is the president .
Trump has infamously chosen not to don a facial covering , in spite of recommendations from his own health experts telling every American to do so .
Some of Trump ’ s refusal to wear a mask might @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I just don ’ t want to be doing — I don ’ t know , somehow sitting in the Oval Office behind that beautiful Resolute Desk , the great Resolute Desk , I think wearing a face mask as I greet presidents , prime ministers , dictators , kings , queens .
I don ’ t know , somehow , I don ’ t see it for myself , ” Trump said in April .
Other reasons why Trump won ’ t wear a mask appear to be political .
In an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this month , the president said that he believes some in the U.S. wear masks to spite him , or to show disapproval of his presidency .

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force team, gave a grim assessment of where things could be headed with regard to the total number of new cases of COVID-19 infections seen daily in the United States.
The country is “going in the wrong direction” in terms of controlling the spread of COVID-19, Fauci said, while testifying before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Fauci and other health experts were on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to offer their thoughts on reopening schools in the fall and other businesses that have not yet opened.
The committee hearing took place as the U.S. has begun to see higher numbers of the disease being recorded, including on Saturday when a record-breaking 45,300 new cases were identified. Since the coronavirus pandemic reached the country, over 2.6 million cases have been documented, with more than 126,360 recorded deaths from the disease as of Tuesday afternoon.
With those numbers from this past weekend in mind, Fauci explained that it’s possible the daily totals could go even higher, since the U.S. is not showing any signs of stopping the spread of COVID-19.
“We are now having 40-plus-thousand new cases a day. I would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around, and so I am very concerned,” Fauci said during his testimony.
The infectious diseases expert also offered some advice that some in the country — including President Trump — have openly thwarted: wear a mask to help stop the spread of COVID-19.
“We have got to get the message out that we are all in this together,” Fauci warned. “If you are outside your home and can’t socially distant, you should wear a mask at all times.”
At the same committee hearing, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Robert Redfield encouraged the same moves.
“It is critical that we all take the personal responsibility to slow the transmission of COVID and embrace the universal use of face coverings. I ask those that are listening to spread the word,” Redfield said.
Yet for some, masks and facial coverings have become a political statement, with those having conservative leanings being less likely to wear them, according to a recent Pew Research poll on the subject.
The most prominent individual to refuse to wear a mask, of course, is the president. Trump has infamously chosen not to don a facial covering, in spite of recommendations from his own health experts telling every American to do so.
Some of Trump’s refusal to wear a mask might stem from reasons of vanity.
“I just don’t want to be doing — I don’t know, somehow sitting in the Oval Office behind that beautiful Resolute Desk, the great Resolute Desk, I think wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens. I don’t know, somehow, I don’t see it for myself,” Trump said in April.
Other reasons why Trump won’t wear a mask appear to be political. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal earlier this month, the president said that he believes some in the U.S. wear masks to spite him, or to show disapproval of his presidency.
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.


truthout--2020-06-30--Lawmakers Dismiss Trump’s Claim That Russian Taliban Bounties Are a “Hoax”

After a meeting at the White House to discuss intelligence relating to how Russian military operatives were allegedly paying bounties to Taliban militants to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan last year , House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer expressed disagreement with President Donald Trump , who had called reports on the matter a “ hoax ” in a tweet over the weekend .
“ Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible , and therefore did not report it to me or @ VP , ” Trump said on Sunday .
“ Possibly another fabricated Russia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nytimesbooks , wanting to make Republicans look bad !
!
!
” According to reporting from The New York Times last week , Trump was supposedly briefed on the bounties on American soldiers made by Russian agents to Taliban militants months ago , with an update to their reporting stating that the president received the information in one of the President ’ s Daily Brief documents given to him in late February .
Separate reporting from The Associated Press , however , said that the White House was aware of the bounties @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and that then-National Security Adviser John Bolton had briefed the president on them .
It ’ s unclear which narrative is the more accurate version of events at this time .
The briefing that House leaders received on Tuesday made it clear , however , in Hoyer ’ s mind at least , that the situation was not something to take lightly , and that the White House was in possession of credible intelligence corroborating the Times ’ s and other news agencies ’ reporting .
“ The president called this a hoax @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we have just received led me to believe it is a hoax , ” Hoyer said at a press conference .
“ There may be different judgments as to the level of credibility , but there was no assertion that the information we had was a hoax.
” Hoyer also criticized the fact that the briefing at the White House did not include perspectives from intelligence agency officials .
Absent from the meeting , Hoyer noted , was CIA Director Gina Haspel .
Without the input of intelligence officers , the briefing was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ White House ’ s views .
“ I thought this briefing was the White House personnel telling us their perspective .
I think we knew the White House perspective , ” Hoyer added .
“ What we need to know is the intelligence perspective.
” Hoyer further called the information he was briefed on a “ red flag ” — one that was either “ not waved ” to begin with , or that the president ignored when he first saw it .
Joining Hoyer at the press conference on Tuesday was House @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was also among those briefed at the White House about the intelligence regarding the Russian bounties .
Schiff suggested in his statement that the fact that Russia was involved may have led to aides not briefing the president on the matter .
“ I shared the concern at the White House today that I think many of us have , which is , there may be a reluctance to brief the president on things he doesn ’ t want to hear , and that may be more true with respect to Putin and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to any other subject matter , ” Schiff said .

After a White House briefing House leaders said the intelligence was credible and not something to be taken lightly.
After a meeting at the White House to discuss intelligence relating to how Russian military operatives were allegedly paying bounties to Taliban militants to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan last year, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer expressed disagreement with President Donald Trump, who had called reports on the matter a “hoax” in a tweet over the weekend.
“Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or @VP,” Trump said on Sunday. “Possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax, maybe by the Fake News @nytimesbooks, wanting to make Republicans look bad!!!”
According to reporting from The New York Times last week, Trump was supposedly briefed on the bounties on American soldiers made by Russian agents to Taliban militants months ago, with an update to their reporting stating that the president received the information in one of the President’s Daily Brief documents given to him in late February.
Separate reporting from The Associated Press, however, said that the White House was aware of the bounties as far back as last year, and that then-National Security Adviser John Bolton had briefed the president on them.
It’s unclear which narrative is the more accurate version of events at this time.
The briefing that House leaders received on Tuesday made it clear, however, in Hoyer’s mind at least, that the situation was not something to take lightly, and that the White House was in possession of credible intelligence corroborating the Times’s and other news agencies’ reporting.
“The president called this a hoax publicly. Nothing in the briefing that we have just received led me to believe it is a hoax,” Hoyer said at a press conference. “There may be different judgments as to the level of credibility, but there was no assertion that the information we had was a hoax.”
Hoyer also criticized the fact that the briefing at the White House did not include perspectives from intelligence agency officials. Absent from the meeting, Hoyer noted, was CIA Director Gina Haspel.
Without the input of intelligence officers, the briefing was less insightful, more demonstrative of the White House’s views.
“I thought this briefing was the White House personnel telling us their perspective. I think we knew the White House perspective,” Hoyer added. “What we need to know is the intelligence perspective.”
Hoyer further called the information he was briefed on a “red flag” — one that was either “not waved” to begin with, or that the president ignored when he first saw it.
Joining Hoyer at the press conference on Tuesday was House Intelligence chair Rep. Adam Schiff, who was also among those briefed at the White House about the intelligence regarding the Russian bounties. Schiff suggested in his statement that the fact that Russia was involved may have led to aides not briefing the president on the matter.
“I shared the concern at the White House today that I think many of us have, which is, there may be a reluctance to brief the president on things he doesn’t want to hear, and that may be more true with respect to Putin and Putin’s Russia than with respect to any other subject matter,” Schiff said.
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