Day: December 15, 2020

Closing Thought–15Dec20

Barr leaves the admin for better days?

Trump’s Pit Bull has decided he has had enough or was it Trump that it was time for him to go spend time with his family?

Minutes after California’s Electoral College votes made President-elect Joe Biden’s victory official, President Trump made a big announcement—but it wasn’t a concession. Trump said Attorney General William Barr has resigned and will be leaving his administration as of Dec. 23, reports Reuters. “Just had a very nice meeting with Attorney General Bill Barr at the White House,” Trump tweeted. “Our relationship has been a very good one, he has done an outstanding job!” Trump said Barr “will be leaving just before Christmas to spend the holidays with his family” and Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen will become acting attorney general.

Sources tell the AP that Trump spent most of Monday watching Electoral College results and calling allies, but broke away to meet Barr. In a resignation letter shared by Trump, Barr said he had updated the president on his “review of voter fraud allegations in the 2020 election and how these allegations will continue to be pursued.” Barr told Trump he was “proud to have played a role in the many successes and unprecedented achievements you have delivered for the American people.” The resignation follows tension between Trump and Barr over the president’s election fraud claims and Barr’s refusal to disclose investigations of Hunter Biden’s finances during the campaign

Who believes that excuse?

Those that do please contact me for I have a bridge I would like to sell them.

“lego ergo scribo”

Cessation Of Home Evictions

The raging pandemic and the loss of employment had caused a surge in the number of home evictions because of the inability to pay ones mortgage….

Something had to be done…..

The government, the CDC to be exact, had issued an order for the cessation of home evictions during the pandemic.

This action, although needed, leaves gaping holes in the Trump administration’s response to the pre-existing and current pandemic-impacted housing crisis.

The coronavirus pandemic was expected to trigger the severest housing crisis in U.S. history. By one estimate, as many as 40 million Americans were at risk of eviction.

Then in September, the CDC made an unprecedented announcement: Most evictions had to be halted through the end of the year. Dr. Robert R. Redfield, director of the CDC, signed a declaration that said evictions could get in the way of the nation’s attempts at curbing the coronavirus.

But the moratorium is failing to keep many families in their homes during the crisis, according to eviction records, housing advocates and legal aid attorneys. Tens of thousands of people have been evicted since September because the CDC’s policy has been applied inconsistently across states and some landlords have ignored or challenged their tenants’ attempts at using the protection, experts say.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/05/why-home-evictions-are-still-happening-despite-cdc-ban.html

AS one might expect….the inconsistency of the Trump admin made this attempt to help the American people little more than just another idle promise.

The Eviction Lab at Princeton University has identified around 80,000 evictions in just the 27 cities that it tracks, including Cleveland, Houston, Tampa and New York, during September, October and November.

Jim Baker, executive director of the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, has counted more than 20,000 new eviction cases filed since September by corporate landlords in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, Tennessee and Texas alone.

Once again the people of this country are secondary…..the Congress made sure to protect corporations in this time of hardship and yet did very little for the people that pay the bills for this failing experiment that is our government.

And yet we vote the same type of gutless spineless politicians time after time……the fault is ours not the system.

At least the Congressional Progressives tried to do the right thing…..

A group of progressive lawmakers including Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders sent letters to the Department of Housing and Urban Development and private landlord associations on Wednesday demanding an immediate nationwide moratorium on evictions as individuals and families struggle with the massive financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Evicting families from their homes in the middle of a pandemic is cruel and dangerous,” reads the letter (pdf) to Housing Secretary Ben Carson. “HUD must avoid the risk of exacerbating a public health emergency and protect the safety of renters.”

Joining Warren and Sanders in signing the letter were Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), and Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.).

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/18/progressive-lawmakers-demand-nationwide-moratorium-cruel-and-dangerous-evictions

Sadly this went nowhere…..because the cowardly centrists were not on-board….their owners and donors made sure this went nowhere.

Finally….Please STOP calling Pelosi a Progressive!  It shows your ignorance when you do.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

More Covid News–Good And Bad

Sorry to be a downer with the hopes around the new vaccine…..but the bad news first…..

Yes we have a vaccine and people are starting to be treated…..the same day as the US vaccine began more news has come out about the pandemic……a new strain of Covid-19…….a strain that the vaccine may not protect people from acquiring.

A new variant of the coronavirus has been identified in Britain and while Health Secretary Matt Hancock says it could be linked to a fast rise in cases, experts say people should remain calm. Hancock told lawmakers Monday that more than 1,000 cases of the new variant have been identified, and “it may be associated with the faster spread in the southeast of England,” where COVID cases have been rising sharply,” the Guardian reports. “I must stress at this point that there is currently nothing to suggest that this variant is more likely to cause serious disease, and the latest clinical advice is that it’s highly unlikely that this mutation would fail to respond to a vaccine,” Hancock said, per CNN.

Hancock said British scientists are researching the variant and the World Health Organization has been notified. He said that with infection rates in some areas doubling every seven days, London and a few neighboring areas will return to a stricter lockdown level this week. University of Birmingham expert Alan McNally tells the BBC that the variant was detected in recent weeks. “Let’s not be hysterical. It doesn’t mean it’s more transmissible or more infectious or dangerous,” he says. “It is something to keep an eye on.” He adds: “Huge efforts are ongoing at characterizing the variant and understanding its emergence. It is important to keep a calm and rational perspective on the strain as this is normal virus evolution and we expect new variants to come and go and emerge over time.”

Just what the world needs these days…..a new strain of Covid-19…..let us just hope that the response will be better and more thorough than the response for the most recent pandemic.

Now the good news……

The Pfizer vaccine is already happily being doled out. And now Moderna’s may join it within a week, reports the Washington Post. Like Pfizer’s, it was found to be highly effective, around 94%, in clinical trials. On Tuesday, a panel of FDA scientists confirmed the accuracy of those results, clearing the way for the next steps. A panel of outside experts is expected to endorse the vaccine on Thursday, followed by a quick emergency authorization of its use by FDA regulators, per Bloomberg. If Moderna’s vaccine follows the same path as Pfizer’s—and no surprises are expected—the first inoculations would be delivered on Monday.

Please be well and be safe.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Covid Day Of Reckoning

The news about our present pandemic is a mixed bag……

First the US has hit a horrific height…..the day was Monday, 14Dec20…….

The US death toll from the coronavirus topped 300,000 Monday just as the country began dispensing COVID-19 shots in a monumental campaign to conquer the outbreak. The number of dead rivals the population of St. Louis or Pittsburgh, the AP reports. It is equivalent to repeating a tragedy on the scale of Hurricane Katrina every day for more than five months. It is more than five times the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam War. It is equal to a 9/11 attack every day for more than 100 days. “The numbers are staggering—the most impactful respiratory pandemic that we have experienced in over 102 years, since the iconic 1918 Spanish flu,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious-disease expert, said days before the milestone.

That was the bad news….the good news happened on the same day…..

It’s a big moment in the COVID fight: The first doses of a vaccine have been administered in the US. “I feel hopeful today. Relieved,” ICU nurse Sandra Lindsay tells the AP after getting her shot at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New York. She was the first person inoculated in New York state with the vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech, reports NBC News. Her health care peers around the nation also were getting shots on Monday. The hopeful development comes as the US nears the unwanted milestone of 300,000 COVID deaths. Health authorities say it will be months before the vaccine will be widespread enough to make a noticeable dent in the spread of the virus.

Maybe now we can see improvement in the numbers of cases and deaths……may we survive this as well…..

With the news that we are commencing the treatment of the virus there are still a big bloc of people that are resisting the vaccine…..why is that?

Overall, 60 percent of American adults said that they would “definitely” (29 percent) or “probably” (31 percent) take a vaccine “if it were available today,” according to a Pew Research Center poll conducted Nov. 18-29. Eighteen percent said that they would “definitely not” take the vaccine, and 21 percent said that they would “probably not.” Other polls have revealed similar findings (for the most part). A Morning Consult survey on behalf of National Geographic conducted Nov. 20-23 found 61 percent of Americans were either “likely” or “somewhat likely” to take a vaccine if it were approved by the FDA and made available to them. In that poll, 30 percent said they were unlikely to take the vaccine, including 19 percent who indicated they were “very unlikely.” And a Gallup poll conducted Nov. 16-29 showed roughly the same splits.1

Why A Big Bloc of Americans Is Wary Of The COVID-19 Vaccine — Even As Experts Hope To See Widespread Immunization

This is their decision….but if they choose not to get vaccinated then there is NO reward for being stupid.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

That Rule Of Law

College Of Political Knowledge

Lecture Series–

Ever since the election of Trump in 2016 and since he was given the oath of office there has been this debate about the so-called “rule of law”….pundits have been accusing Trump to ignoring this ……and yet he continued to be the lawless president with no checks and balance…..

Now that Biden has handed Trump his walking papers the pundits have gone to applauding the return of the rule of law…..

Personally I think they all are trying to turn manure into sirloin.

First before I tell why I think this is nothing more that editorializing to get a paycheck…..let us define the “rule of law”….

The American democratic system is not always based upon simple majority rule.  There are certain principles that are so important to the nation that the majority has agreed not to interfere in these areas.  For instance, the Bill of Rights was passed because concepts such as freedom of religion, speech, equal treatment, and due process of law were deemed so important that, barring a Constitutional Amendment, not even a majority should be allowed to change them.

Rule of law is a principle under which all persons, institutions, and entities are accountable to laws that are:

  • Publicly promulgated
  • Equally enforced
  • Independently adjudicated
  • And consistent with international human rights principles.

https://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-activities/overview-rule-law

The “rule of law” requires measures to ensure adherence to the principles of supremacy of the law, equality before the law, accountability to the law, fairness in the application of the law, separation of powers, participation in decision-making, legal certainty, avoidance of arbitrariness, and procedural and legal transparency.

  1. Principle of legality .
  2. Protection of human rights .
  3. The monopoly of government coercion to ensure law enforcement .
  4. Oversight by an independent judge in matters of the government implementing and enforcing the rule of law
  5. Honesty and open to the public .

None of which was there in the Trump administration.

When they allow a group like the Federalist Society to dictate what type of person is to be a judge then the independent judiciary is gone.

Now my take…..

The “rule of law” use to be principles that the nation lived by…..The government and its officials and agents as well as individuals and private entities are accountable under the law. The laws are clear, publicized, stable, and just; are applied evenly; and protect fundamental rights, including the security of persons and property and certain core human rights.

Then Trump was elected and the country suffered and was diminished…..the question should not be can we return to the rule of law but rather is the rule of law gone forever?

Do not get me started on the silliness of our “better angles”……those mythical creatures are gone forever.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”