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Twitter Finally Fact-Checks Trump, but Still Lets Him Get Away With Murder (Literally) |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=51519"><span class="small">Juan Cole, Informed Comment</span></a>
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Thursday, 28 May 2020 08:44 |
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Cole writes: "Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has apparently finally had a crisis of conscience over the sewer of falsehoods spewed by Trump in his Twitter feed."
The Twitter Inc. accounts of U.S. president Donald Trump, @POTUS and @realDoanldTrump. (photo: Andrew Harrer/Getty)
Twitter Finally Fact-Checks Trump, but Still Lets Him Get Away With Murder (Literally)
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment
28 May 20
 witter CEO Jack Dorsey has apparently finally had a crisis of conscience over the sewer of falsehoods spewed by Trump in his Twitter feed. The company flagged his tweet alleging that mail-in voting is a recipe for fraud, putting in a link to reputable news sites carrying articles showing that in fact there has been almost zero fraud in mail-in voting. There is almost zero fraud in voting in general in the United States, and anyone who tries to fear-monger on the issue is almost certainly seeking to suppress the vote, i.e. is engaging in a form of voter fraud.
Trump fired back that Twitter is interfering in the 2020 election. He is like a homeless person with dementia who nevertheless still knows exactly where to sink a shiv for maximum damage in a street fight. By bringing up election interference, Trump is trying to involve the Federal Election Commission. Its chair criticized Dorsey’s decision last fall to ban political advertising entirely at Twitter, insisting that public debate is preferable.
Trump’s falsehood about the danger of mail-in ballots, however, wasn’t the really burning issue on the internet, though. Trump has been accusing former GOP congressman and MSNBC morning TV host Joe Scarborough of having murdered a staffer, Lori Klausutis, in 2001. As Katelyn Burns at Vox explains, the woman died of an undiagnosed heart attack. Her husband circulated on the internet an impassioned letter to Dorsey at Twitter asking him to intervene and prevent the president from dragging her through the mud with his conspiracy theory.
Twitter had already said that it would not interfere on the issue. Some Twitter users starting accusing Jack Dorsey of murder, to make the point that doing so is against Twitter rules and also hurtful.
But neither mail-in voting nor the outrageous accusations against Scarborough is the really urgent issue. Trump’s inaction in late February on the coronavirus and his push in May for a premature opening of the economy, along with his discouragement of the wearing of face masks are getting large numbers of people killed.
No one in social media has stood up to him on the issue of wearing face masks or avoiding crowding, even though it is an urgent life-and-death matter.
Twitter routinely bans accounts for breaking its rules, but has let Trump act with impunity. Likewise Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, who although he instituted a fact-checking mechanism, has let Trump get away with murder, or at least accusations of it.
In fact, internal Facebook research in 2016-18 showed that the platform’s algorithms spread around polarizing content, but Zuckerberg is said to have told concerned staffers not to bring him any more proposals for tweaking the program “for the public good.”
“Polarizing content” is a euphemism for genocide. The UN slammed Facebook for its role in helping foment the genocide in Burma (Myanmar) against the Rohingya.
Google’s YouTube also has an algorithm that drives viewers toward extremist videos.
The basic problem with most social media is that its business model relies on advertising, and its bottom line is at least perceived to thrive on polarization– on getting users excited and upset and at odds with one another. Trump is the perfect social media entrepreneur, who has climbed to the top by setting people against one another and filling the air waves with lies and conspiracy theories. You wonder whether, in a world with no internet social media, Trump could ever have become president or inflicted all this social, environmental and economic damage on us.
Labeling Trump falsehoods as such and putting in a link to solid news reporting is the least they could do. But that would be a full time job, given the rate a which Trump comes up with demented postings.
Trump’s positions like opposing the wearing of masks to fight Covid-19 are manslaughter on a mass scale, and he is responsible by his inaction and flawed policies for at least half of the 100,000 coronavirus deaths in the US. Now that would be worth fact-checking.  |
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A Massive Wave of Evictions Is Coming. Temporary Bans Won't Help. |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=54493"><span class="small">Alieza Durana and Matthew Desmond. The Washington Post</span></a>
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Thursday, 28 May 2020 08:25 |
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Excerpt: "Before the novel coronavirus struck, 300,000 evictions were filed in the United States in a typical month. With nearly 10 million people filing unemployment claims last month, evictions would clearly skyrocket, absent intervention from the government."
A pedestrian walks past graffiti Wednesday in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. Some cities and states have temporarily banned evictions, but advocates for the rent strike say such measures are insufficient. (photo: Ted S. Warren/AP)
A Massive Wave of Evictions Is Coming. Temporary Bans Won't Help.
By Alieza Durana and Matthew Desmond. The Washington Post
28 May 20
In many places, landlords are still filing eviction paperwork.
 efore the novel coronavirus struck, 300,000 evictions were filed in the United States in a typical month. With nearly 10 million people filing unemployment claims last month, evictions would clearly skyrocket, absent intervention from the government. In one hint of the trouble to come, researchers at the City University of New York found at the end of March that 44 percent of New Yorkers expected to have trouble making their April rent.
Fortunately, Congress, states, municipalities and the Department of Housing and Urban Development all have stepped up to issue temporary bans on eviction. That’s good news, but there are significant limits to many of these bans — and even the best of them are temporary. In many places, for instance, landlords are still filing eviction papers, even when there is a freeze on ejecting people from their homes — and not every state has imposed such a freeze. Without a stronger state and federal response, the United States appears headed toward an unprecedented housing crisis.
We at the Eviction Lab, based at Princeton University, in partnership with Columbia visiting law professor Emily Benfer, have been tracking when and how state and federal eviction policies are changing. We’ve found clear fault lines in current policies to prevent people from becoming homeless during this crisis.
The coronavirus-relief bill passed last month by Congress prohibits foreclosure on federally backed mortgage loans for 60 days, covering some 30 million homeowners. The bill also prohibits rental evictions for 120 days for properties secured by a government-backed mortgage. That covers about half of all multifamily homes. Beyond that, however, protections for renters tends to be haphazard, varying widely by state. As of this past weekend (policies are changing quickly), only 14 states have barred landlords from formally beginning the process of eviction, according to Benfer’s data; 36 — plus the District of Columbia — still permit evictions to be filed.
Many of these states are in effect simply delaying hearings, typically for 60 or 90 days or until the state’s emergency declaration lifts. What’s more, only 21 states and D.C. have halted the execution of an eviction order issued before the coronavirus outbreak turned into a major health crisis.
In the remaining states, a family legally evicted in February could be physically evicted today.
Thirteen states — including Florida, Nevada, Mississippi, Ohio, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont and Wyoming — allow cities and towns to set their own eviction policies. Some cities (Miami is a notable example) have responded by issuing moratoriums, but suburban and rural communities have been much slower to act. The problem is that housing insecurity affects communities large and small across the country. In fact, some rural towns have eviction rates that rival the highest-evicting cities.
In some cases, states have placed bureaucratic hurdles between renters and the protections that have been passed. Arizona, California, Florida, Kansas, Maryland, New Mexico, Nebraska and Utah all require tenants to demonstrate they’ve been affected by virus outbreak — either the disease itself or the mandatory business closures — before they are shielded from eviction. While there is little guidance on how to prove you’ve been affected by the outbreak, states could require tenants to contest an eviction order in court by demonstrating job termination or presenting unemployment filings (which are backlogged as is). But since most courts are closed to in-person hearings the path forward is murky.
This crisis has struck the United States at a moment when millions of people were already living perilously close to eviction. Because of stagnant wages and rising rents, one out of four renters spent over half of their income on housing. Among rent burdened households — defined as those that spend more than one third of their income on housing — half have less than $10 in savings.
Nearly a third of the American workforce — some 41.7 million people — earns less than $12 per hour and has limited access to health care, paid sick days and paid family and medical leave. The mandatory stay-at-home orders and forced closing of business will force much of this population, even with the help of unemployment insurance, to choose between paying rent or buying groceries.
Some landlords have delayed eviction and even canceled rent for their tenants. Others, however, have been less sympathetic. The Daily Beast recently reported on the case of a Las Vegas nurse who was evicted because her landlord worried she might potentially spread covid-19.
The problem is simply too consequential to be left up to landlord discretion. And if evictions are merely delayed, not permanently stopped, that could lead to a resurgence of the virus, after stay-at-home measures “bend the curve” of infection. Evicted families end up in homeless shelters, where people eat and sleep next to each other — the opposite of social distancing.
People experiencing homelessness are particularly vulnerable to upper respiratory illness including to covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Well before the pandemic, sprawling tent encampments had experienced outbreaks of medieval diseases like typhus and trench fever.
Evictions harm families in ways that will last long after the coronavirus emergency has passed. Being forced from your home has been linked to a range of negative consequences, from job loss to depression and suicide. Some harms will persist even in cases where eviction papers have been filed but eviction does not occur. An eviction record — the “scarlet E” — limits your housing options, sullies your credit and can prevent you from accessing federal housing assistance.
Governors, state legislators and state supreme courts have a number of tools to prevent mass evictions and homelessness: They can freeze all evictions during the state of emergency, including orders already given by the court; eliminate late fees for renters; and create a time frame to pay back rent and mortgage arrears, as many municipalities in California have done, so families aren’t immediately evicted once the state of emergency is lifted. More sweepingly, they could also issue a rent and mortgage freeze until the pandemic is over.
Congress has less leverage over landlords than it does over banks that sell mortgages, but there are several things it could do to ameliorate the present and future housing crisis. Only one in four families who are eligible for rental assistance currently receives it. Congress could fully fund that strapped program and ensure that every family that qualifies for housing aid gets the help they desperately need. The federal government should massively bolster rental assistance, since a $1,200 check will hardly cover rent, food and other needs for the duration of the pandemic.
If federal and state leaders do not act swiftly to patch all the holes in their eviction policies, the nation’s biggest public health crisis in a century could easily cause a full-blown outbreak of homelessness. In these trying times, eviction will not help landlords get paid. It will only spread yet more poverty, sickness and death.
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Trump Economic Adviser Reduces Workers to 'Human Capital Stock' |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=49820"><span class="small">Peter Wade, Rolling Stone</span></a>
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Wednesday, 27 May 2020 13:07 |
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Wade writes: "While discussing whether the U.S. economy might recover this fall after the coronavirus downturn, a Trump economic adviser referred to the American worker as 'human capital stock.'"
CNN's Dana Bash and senior White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett. (photo: CNN)
Trump Economic Adviser Reduces Workers to 'Human Capital Stock'
By Peter Wade, Rolling Stone
27 May 20
“Our capital stock hasn’t been destroyed, our human capital stock is ready to get back to work,” Kevin Hassett said
 hile discussing whether the U.S. economy might recover this fall after the coronavirus downturn, a Trump economic adviser referred to the American worker as “human capital stock.”
Senior White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett made the wildly insensitive remark, first flagged by Aaron Rupar on Twitter, on Sunday after CNN’s Dana Bash asked whether unemployment numbers would remain in double digits come November.
“Our capital stock hasn’t been destroyed, our human capital stock is ready to get back to work, and so there are lots of reasons to believe that we can get going way faster than we have in previous crises,” Hassett said.
Calling people “stock” is next-level apathetic, and the way Hassett used the term so casually lines up with the lack of empathy shown to the victims of the coronavirus by Trump’s administration and Republicans since the crisis began months ago.
Trump has moved ahead with attempts to cut food stamps during the crisis, while Republicans in Congress have balked at passing a second stimulus package and are looking to phase out coronavirus-related unemployment benefits.
Hassett was also asked about increasing funding for food stamps and said he hadn’t raised the topic with Trump, saying, “I have not discussed with the president.”
Hassert also called the requests for additional funding coming from states “absurd” and “radical.”
“There’s already a lot of money for state and local governments,” Hassert said. “I think that a lot of the requests for state and local bailouts that you’re seeing out there up on the Hill are, like, radically, radically more money than the expected shortfall for the year. … And the requests are kind of absurd.”
A thoughtful and commonsense debate can be had about whether or not the funding requests from states are “absurd.” But calling human beings “stock” — especially as essential workers are putting their lives and bodies on the line right now — is undeniably absurd and heartless.
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The Coronavirus Has Laid Bare the Reality of America's Racial Caste System |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=53319"><span class="small">Malaika Jabali, Guardian UK</span></a>
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Wednesday, 27 May 2020 13:06 |
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Jabali writes: "Generations after Brown v Board of Education, the US is still separate and unequal."
'In the next 66 years, fulfilling the promises of Brown requires we re-imagine and re-think our social structures.' (photo: Justin Lane/EPA)
The Coronavirus Has Laid Bare the Reality of America's Racial Caste System
By Malaika Jabali, Guardian UK
27 May 20
Generations after Brown v Board of Education, the US is still separate and unequal
 n the same week civil rights activists celebrated the anniversary of the supreme court’s unanimous decision in Brown v Board of Education, the United States observed another milestone: nearing 100,000 deaths caused by Covid-19. Early data indicates that black Americans comprise a disproportionate number of the victims. Sixty-six years after Brown partially overruled the “separate but equal” doctrine – laying the foundation for black Americans to have equal access to better schools, healthcare, and housing – this pandemic has laid bare a harsh reality: the country is still separate and still unequal.
At least 20,000 black Americans have died from the virus. Their death rate is nearly 2.5 times higher than whites, and it has never been less than twice that of Latinos and Asians, according to recent data compiled by APM Research Lab. Despite comprising 13% of the country, they make up 25% of Covid-19 deaths.
The Trump administration has placed much of the responsibility for these disparities on victims. Public officials have speculated about the victims’ smoking and drinking habits and made insinuations about their diets and lifestyle choices. There has been no contemplation, however, of the underlying conditions of America’s racial caste system, the one rooted firmly in this country’s soil.
While Brown laid the ground for desegregating the United States, this country was built on a far more entrenched foundation of white supremacy. African Americans have been deemed property longer than we have been considered citizens. Our wealth and resources have been extracted longer than we have been able to accrue or maintain them. The intentional, overt practice of white supremacy has endured longer than it has been unconscious and covert, or talked about in academic circles as microaggressions and racial privilege. It has been 66 years since the highest court in the land asserted that segregation in public schools was inherently unequal – and 400 years of America proving its assertions of liberty and equality are lip service.
Centuries of white supremacy have meant that black workers and white ones do not earn the same wages, buy the same types of houses or have the same nest eggs to pass down to their kids. It has meant private acts of racism and government-sanctioned racism, often in tandem. It has meant less access to quality public schools, higher education, or high-paid jobs that require expensive, advanced degrees. It means more grocery stores in affluent white urban neighborhoods, and fewer healthcare services for the black and dispossessed. It means black Americans rely more heavily on public transit, are less able to work from home, and are over-represented in “essential” jobs. It means more exposure to Covid-19. It means 20,000 deaths.
The disproportionate death rates in some states are astounding, with large margins dotted all over the map. In Washington DC, black people are 44% of the population, yet 80% of coronavirus deaths. In South Carolina, they make up 27% of the state and 56% of its deaths. Black people in Michigan and Missouri are 14% and 11% of the population – and 42% and 39% of Covid-19 deaths, respectively.
More studies are necessary to determine the precise cause of these disparities. Public health research has to assess why certain comorbidities, such as hypertension, may be more present in black Americans than other groups, and move past stereotypical assumptions.
The more difficult assessment, however, is what to do in the future, after the worst cases subside and the pandemic wanes. There must be a commitment not to return to normal, with black workers continuing to be the sacrificial lambs of white American liberties and corporate profiteers.
In the next 66 years, fulfilling the promises of Brown requires we reimagine and rethink our social structures. This reconsideration requires shedding the entrenched individualism that allowed white landowners to equate human suffering with their rights to enslave. It must challenge a culture that permits white liberals to claim they are in favor of integrating high-opportunity neighborhoods while fighting rabidly to prevent it when it hits their doorsteps. It requires ending the fanatical obsession with corporate profits that pushes a disproportionate number of black people to their deaths faster – whether in risky warehouses during a pandemic or the temporary and low-wage jobs that lack health benefits, paid time off and sick leave. It requires governments that provide adequate social services safety nets.
Most of all it requires a fight, because none of this will happen without one. While the Trump White House and Republican legislators loot the country’s treasury for bank and business bailouts, conservative state governments and their rightwing constituents rabidly demand that the country “reopen”. Conservatives’ long-time verbal commitments to being anti-abortion – like commitments to democracy and equality since this country’s founding – have been easily abandoned in the interests of individual convenience. And leaders of the corporate, liberal wing of the two-party system have done relatively little to challenge it.
Twenty-first century concerns about gentrification and displacement complicate the desegregation narrative; people of color in New York City, for instance, have asserted that equal access to opportunities is most important to them, regardless of the racial composition of their neighborhoods. Nevertheless, Covid-19 has clarified the fortitude of America’s racial caste system. Generations after Brown, inequality is still very much the law of the land. But the chance remains to create another precedent.
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s he headed into Memorial Day weekend, Donald Trump complained that he was COVID-19’s biggest victim. “He was just in a fucking rage,” said a person who spoke with Trump late last week. “He was saying, ‘This is so unfair to me! Everything was going great. We were cruising to reelection!” Even as the death toll neared 100,000 and unemployment ranks swelled to over 38 million, Trump couldn’t see the pandemic as anything other than something that had happened to him. “The problem is he has no empathy,” the adviser said. Trump complained that he should have been warned about the virus sooner. “The intelligence community let me down!” he said.
