The effort to fight the COVID-19 pandemic is supposed to be an all-hands-on-deck response, if you listen to US President Donald Trump, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and others, but are all hands really being called, let alone welcomed? It appears to me that the Trump administration is not as concerned about eliminating the public health crisis as it is about mitigating the political problems caused by its pathetic response to the coronavirus. "For two years the Trump administration has been trying to stamp out one of Cuba’s signature programs [The Henry Reeve Brigade] - state-employed medical workers treating patients around the globe in a show of soft power that also earns billions in badly needed hard currency," the Associated Press reported April 3.
An April 3 headline in ProPublica read: "Early data shows African Americans have contracted and died of coronavirus at an alarming rate." The article notes that there are co-morbidity factors for which black people are at higher risk that "leave lungs and immune systems vulnerable: asthma, heart disease, hypertension and diabetes." These reduce the body's ability to fight the virus, exacerbating its impact in the African-American community. Here’s my thing with this report: Duh! It’s great that Doctors Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx are discussing this, but if this is breaking news, here are two other stories: There’s a guy named Nicolaus Copernicus who has proven that Earth orbits the sun, rather than the other way around, and Ferdinand Magellan's daring voyage has proved the world is round.
The US Supreme Court has "overturned the only protection in place to ensure that voters could still safely cast ballots, even if the state fails to provide them expediently," by allowing Wisconsin to "throw out ballots postmarked and received after Election Day, even if voters were entirely blameless for the delay," Slate reported Monday. "In an unsigned opinion, the majority cited the Purcell principle, which cautions courts against altering voting laws shortly before an election. It criticized the district court for 'fundamentally alter[ing] the nature of the election by permitting voting for six additional days after the election.' And it insisted that the plaintiffs did not actually request that relief — which, as [Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader] Ginsburg notes in her dissent, is simply false. ... 'If proximity to the election counseled hesitation when the District Court acted several days ago,' she wrote, 'this Court’s intervention today — even closer to the election — is all the more inappropriate.'”
"President Donald Trump on Tuesday once again voiced his support for slashing the payroll tax — the primary funding mechanism for Social Security and Medicare — and said he would be calling for such a cut even if the US were not currently in the midst of a nationwide public health and economic emergency," Common Dreams reported Wednesday. Is this "code for gutting Social Security's dedicated funding," as progressive organization Social Security Works called it?
GUESTS:
Caleb Maupin — Journalist and political analyst who focuses his coverage on US foreign policy.
Dr. Shayla C. Nunnally — Associate professor with a joint appointment in the Political Science Department and the Africana Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut. She specializes in public opinion and political behavior, race and politics, African-American public opinion and political behavior, and black political development. She is also the author of "Trust in Black America: Race, Discrimination, and Politics."
Richard Lachmann — American sociologist, specialist in comparative historical sociology and professor at the State University of New York at Albany. Lachmann is best known as the author of the book "Capitalists in Spite of Themselves," which has been awarded several prizes, including the American Sociological Association Distinguished Scholarly Book Award.
Dr. Ajamu Baraka — Journalist, American political activist and former Green Party nominee for vice president of the United States in the 2016 election.
Dr. Jack Rasmus — Professor of economics at Saint Mary's College of California and author of "Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression."
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