Unions and DSA Fight for Worker Safety.

SACRAMENTO PROGRESSIVE ALLIANCE: Unions and DSA Fight for Worker Safety.: As shoppers crowded into the McAllen, Texas, branch of Sprouts Farmers Market in mid-March to stockpile food, store clerk Josh Cano grew a...

New $484B Relief Bill Lacks Funds for Food Aid, Rent Relief, US Postal S...

New relief bill again favors Big Business

New relief bill again favors big corporations- in the name of Small Business.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/coronavirus-small-business-loans-

https://prospect.org/coronavirus/unsanitized-federal-reserve-bailout-transparency/

Banks Steered Richest Clients to Federal Aid,  NYT.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/business/sba-loans-ppp-coronavirus.html?

Banks made $10 billion from relief bill

Banks handling the government's $349 billion loan program for small businesses made more than $10 billion in fees — even as tens of thousands of small businesses were shut out of the program, according to an analysis of financial records by NPR.

https://www.npr.org/2020/04/22/840678984/small-business-rescue-earned-banks-10-billion-in-fees

The Tax-Break Bonanza Inside the Economic Rescue Package

As small businesses and individuals struggle to obtain federal aid, the wealthiest are poised to reap tens of billions of dollars in tax savings.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/business/tax-breaks-wealthy-virus.html?

The White House Has Erected a Blockade Stopping States from Getting PPE

SACRAMENTO PROGRESSIVE ALLIANCE: The White House Has Erected a Blockade Stopping St...: The White House Has Erected a Blockade Stopping States and Hospitals From Getting Coronavirus PPE By  David Wallace-Wells https://ny...

Oversight of the Trillion $ Bailout is Needed

The American Prospect.  David Dayen.

A couple weeks ago, Krishnamoorthi teamed up with one of his power-packed subcommittee members, Rep. Katie Porter of California (Ro Khanna, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley also sit on it), to question Wellness Matrix, a company advertising an “in-home” COVID-19 testing kit that didn’t exist, one of many scammers offering fake tests. The Securities and Exchange Commission responded by delisting Wellness Matrix from the stock exchange. Krishnamoorthi’s subcommittee questioned Alex Jones’ sale of miracle toothpaste infused with silveras a coronavirus cure. The Food and Drug Administration stopped the sales.
These were not Democratic agencies, but Donald Trump’s SEC and FDA. “That’s because of public pressure,” Krishnamoorthi said. Raising awareness of these fraud schemes makes it impossible for even an anti-regulatory executive branch to refrain from regulating.
Krishnamoorthi’s latest crusade is a real doozy. You know the story of Covidien, the big medical supply company that bought out a rival that had a contract to supply cheap ventilators to the federal government, and then cancelled that contract. The company that replaced Covidien and agreed to make cheap ventilators for the national stockpile was called Respironics, a division of Philips North America Corporation.

In 2014, Philips received a $13.8 million grant from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the Department of Health and Human Services. BARDA gives grants to develop technologies for emergency response for things like pandemics, and the grant helped create the guts of the Philips ventilator. Last September, the company agreed to a contract for 10,000 of these FDA-approved ventilators, known as the Trilogy Evo, at $3,280 a pop.
As ProPublica has reported, the Trilogy Evo did not then go into production, nor did they accelerate operations as the outbreak began. They instead took the underlying technology and built a ventilator to sell overseas at nearly six times the cost. “Taxpayer money funded this technology,” Krishnamoorthi said. “And rather than producing when taxpayers most need it, they’re profiteering by selling it abroad. It bothers me and a lot of people.”
This seems like a tailor-made situation for the Defense Production Act, to force Philips to honor the original contract for the cheap ventilators first. But while the Trump administration did invoke the DPA on Philips on April 2, it was for a new deal to purchase 43,000 ventilators for $15,000 each, still nearly five times as much as the initial quote. Jared Kushner reportedly negotiated the deal. “I have a special interest in all things Jared Kushner touches in our government,” Krishamoorthi said.
In a document request to the parent company, Krishnamoorthi asks for all contracts, communications, and details of negotiations between Philips and the government going back to 2015, as well as all sales of the new “high quality” version of the Trinity Evo being sold abroad.
This is real oversight, using the tools to simultaneously demand information from companies and raise public pressure to receive that information or change behavior. It’s worked in the past for Krishnamoorthi, as well as working for Rep. Bill Pascrell and Porter in getting Live Nation to reverse their decision on blocking some refunds to customers during the crisis. And it doesn’t require running into the brick wall of the Trump administration with requests. “I think it’s a model that unfortunately we have no choice but to use right now,” said Krishnamoorthi.
So if we want to know about this strange “air bridge” program, where FEMA is acting as logistics operator for private distributors, seeking out the information from the distributors. If we want to know about these jacked-up sales to the government of N95 masks, ask the sellers of the masks. If you want to understand bailout terms granted to companies, ask the companies. It sounds simple but it’s not always done, in many cases because the practitioners of oversight don’t want to know too much about what they’re overseeing.
Krishnamoorthi is a mainline loyal Democrat. If Pelosi had a problem with a fire breather, she could have selected someone for bailout oversight who knows how to do oversight. The lack of conflicts of interest would be a bonus too.

The big lesson from South Korea's coronavirus response

How to Make the Economic Depression Worse

Starve the Beast, Feed the Depression

Anti-government ideology is crippling pandemic policy.

Paul Krugman

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/opinion/trump-coronavirus-economy.html?

Essential or Expendable? Farmworkers Condemn Lack of Protection and Econ...

How Trump & Republicans are Leveraging the Pandemic to Hoard Power | The...

It's simpler than it looks: The Party Reform Possibility

It's simpler than it looks: The Party Reform Possibility: I recently got this video in email: It's a ~17 minute "confessional" from a Republican election strategist, Stuart St...

OAN: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)- Trump news

Workers Lives Put at Risk

OSHA PRESSURED TO STEP UP ENFORCEMENT: Congressional Democrats, labor unions and other worker advocates are increasingly agitated that the Occupational Safety and Health Administrationhasn't set harsher requirements for masks, gloves and social distancing in essential workplaces like grocery stores and pharmacies, POLITICO's Ian Kullgren reports.

Critics say the agency's inaction could worsening a pandemic that has already claimed more than 16,000 lives in the U.S., Ian writes. During the 2009 H1N1 outbreak, OSHA published a lengthy documentenforcing CDC guidelines for the health care industry. It required health care employers to follow certain hygiene procedures, to postpone elective surgeries on patients who might be infected, and to perform high-risk procedures in airborne infection isolation rooms, among other measures.

"The Trump administration has published no comparable document for the coronavirus — meaning that the CDC guidelines are strictly optional, according to former safety officials," Ian writes. 

GROCERY UNION DEMANDS PROTECTIONS AS WORKERS DIE: The 1.3 million-member United Food and Commercial Workers union demanded Wednesday that the CDC direct grocery employees and customers to wear protective masks, Ian reports.

Retail workers and cashiers, including those in grocery stores and pharmacies, are among those most at risk of contracting the virus, data shows. At least 1,500 UFCW workers were infected as of Tuesday, and 30 had died, the union said, though it was still making tallies.

MEANWHILE... CDC SAYS ESSENTIAL WORKERS DON'T NEED TO QUARANTINE: The Trump administration Wednesday said that health workers and other essential employees who have been exposed to the coronavirus should go back to work instead of quarantining for 14 days, POLITICO's Brianna Ehley reported.

First responders and health care workers across the country had previously been isolating for two weeks — the estimated period in which an individual can develop symptoms — after coming within 6 feet of a coronavirus patient. The new guidance is an effort to address frontline workforce shortages.

But unions and worker safety groups are calling on the CDC to revoke the policy, arguing the administration has "abandoned its responsibility to protect workers."

"It is well established that there is significant risk of transmission from asymptomatic and presymptomatic individuals," said Rebecca Dixon, executive director of the worker advocacy group the National Employment Law Project. "Thus these guidelines risk endangering workers, their families, their communities, and the public."

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka argued that the move was an effort to ensure businesses will continue to profit. "These dangerous new guidelines tell employers to keep potentially infected workers at work," Trumka said, adding that the change "does not protect essential workers on the front lines and ignores firmly established science."

Bernie Sanders Speaks After Suspending Presidential Campaign | NBC News

Robert Reich: How CEOs Are Ruining America

Infrastructure and a Green Stimulus: Why We Must Organize Before Congress Acts

Infrastructure and a Green Stimulus: Why We Must Organize Before Congress Acts

Bad Economic Theory and Practice, Demolished

Bad Economic Theory and Practice, Demolished

DACA Recipients Helping to Fight the Coronavirus

• A Demographic Profile of DACA Recipients on the Frontlines of the Coronavirus Response

This column looks at the demographics of DACA recipients who are working on the frontlines of the COVID-19 response, highlighting three inextricably linked industries and occupation groups identified as “essential critical infrastructure workers” by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

o   More than 200,000 work on the front lines of a coronavirus response; this includes an estimated 29,000 health care workers⚕️🏥

o   States with the most DACA recipients are also home to the largest number of DACA recipients working in health care occupations: California (8,600), Texas (4,300), New York (1,700), Illinois (1,400), Florida (1,100), Arizona (1,000), and Washington (1,000) are all home to sizable numbers of these frontline health workers.

o   Across the United States, 14,900 DACA recipients are among the hundreds of thousands of teachers who have pivoted from the physical to the digital classroom, including 4,300 in California, 2,800 in Texas, and 1,000 in Illinois.

o   4,700 DACA recipients work in food-related wholesale trade, and 8,800 DACA recipients work in food warehousing, transportation, and delivery.

o   Another group of essential food-related workers are those keeping grocery stores open and operable. That includes 14,900 DACA recipients, employed in roles such as cashiers (6,000); stockers and laborers (2,900); and supervisors (1,200).

Sacramento Company to produce thousands of Ventilators

SACRAMENTO PROGRESSIVE ALLIANCE: Sacramento Company to produce thousands of Ventila...: With the  coronavirus pandemic worsening,  a little-known Sacramento manufacturer announced a deal Monday to dramatically ramp up producti...

Deficit Lessons for the Pandemic From the 2008 Crisis

Deficit Lessons for the Pandemic From the 2008 Crisis



Joseph Stiglitz

Let’s Stop the Bailout Fraud Before It Starts

SACRAMENTO PROGRESSIVE ALLIANCE: Let’s Stop the Bailout Fraud Before It Starts: Let’s Stop the Bailout Fraud Before It Starts Bill Moyers interviews Neil Barofsky, who as Special Inspector General uncovered rampant c...

Federal Relief for California

New Analysis: What does the COVID-19 federal relief package mean for California?

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to bring severe health and economic hardship and risks for the state, California leaders and communities are working to understand what the three recently passed fiscal relief acts will do for workers, households, businesses, and local governments who urgently need help. The Budget Center team is out with a new analysis summarizing key provisions of the federal fiscal relief package as well as outstanding questions to be addressed in future federal and state actions. Read our new online report – COVID-19 Federal Fiscal Relief Package: Implications for Californians.

Why fake news spreads faster than real news: 1 simple tool to spread hop...

How to Stay Sane When the World Seems Crazy

How to Stay Sane When the World Seems Crazy

Stop and take a breath. The world will keep spinning.

By Allie Volpe

·       Published March 23, 2020Updated March 30, 2020

Our constant, relentless exposure to news and headlines has a way of inspiring near-constant dread. As distressing news continually filters to the top of our feeds, phones and TVs, it isn’t uncommon to feel more than a little nervous about the state of the world.

And often, many people are. Over 50 percent of Americans want to stay informed on current events but say following the news is a source of stress, according to the American Psychological Association’s 2019 “Stress In America” survey. More broadly, Americans are among the world’s most stressed people, with 55 percent of adults saying they experiencing stress during “a lot of the day” prior, according to a Gallup poll.

It’s easy to turn on the news and believe the world is ending. When a large-scale news event — say, a pandemic — affects many groups, people want to discuss it more widely and frequently, said Dr. Kathleen Smith, a therapist and author of “Everything Isn’t Terrible: Conquer Your Insecurities, Interrupt Your Anxiety, and Finally Calm Down.”

This constant conversation can lead to a snowballing of negative thoughts. Catastrophizing, or a pattern of thinking that jumps to the worst-case scenario, is an evolutionary response to threat, Dr. Smith said.

“Humans are able to imagine the worst-case scenario, which is a trait most other animals do not have,” she said. “That ability to do that and plan ahead has helped us survive. It has gotten in the way because we have a lot of reality-based problems today that need solving.”

There are ways to cope when things are rough — and ways to remind yourself the world will keep on spinning.

Why we catastrophize

“When people catastrophize, in many ways, it’s a maladaptive way of trying to regain control,” said Dr. David Rosmarin, the founder and director of the Center for Anxiety and an assistant professor in the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

We try to regulate our emotions when life feels out of control, Dr. Rosmarin said. But anticipating ultimate doom and gloom as a means of taking control in uncertain times is not particularly effective. Jumping to worst-case scenarios breeds poor decision-making, he said: People tend to adopt a “who cares” attitude, which can contribute to hopelessness and despair.

Sometimes the catastrophic thoughts can become self-fulfilling prophecies, Dr. Smith said. For example: A widespread panic about a toilet paper shortage indeed resulted in a mass of shoppers rushing to buy toilet paper, thus creating a shortage. “We think we need to fix the problem, whether it’s based in reality or not,” she said.

Accept uncertainty

Although recent history may paint a tumultuous picture, we live in relatively safe times, Dr. Rosmarin said. Less than a century ago, he said, real, consistent threats of war were a reality in ways to which we’re now unaccustomed. (And constant news updates weren’t even present to perpetually stoke fear.)

Because of that general feeling of security, we’re not used to dealing with uncertainty, Dr. Rosmarin said. To better accept the unknown, we have to relinquish control, he said, and maintain trust that the powers that be are working to solve large-scale issues — which is what we subconsciously do any time we use public transit and airplanes, for example.

Sign up to receive our daily Coronavirus Briefing, an informed guide with the latest developments and expert advice.

Sign Up

“When the cabin door to the cockpit closes and I’m not the one inside,” he said, “I’m happy because I don’t know how to fly a plane and you don’t want me flying a plane.”

Stick to the facts

Anxiety makes us feel powerless, said Dr. Steven Stosny, a therapist who coined the term “Headline Stress Disorder,” or the feeling of stress borne from the news. A sense of powerlessness then breeds fear that we won’t be able to handle the consequences of a terrible event, whether unemployment or sickness. However, we tend to exaggerate the severity of the threat and underestimate our ability to cope, he said.

“We cope better than we think we will,” he said. “And that’s survival.”

Instead of feeling powerless, evaluate what you know to be true in this moment — and don’t exaggerate — to help ground you. Think: I have my health, I have my family, I can still make delicious meals.

Take stock of your reality by asking yourself straightforward questions, like, “What are my responsibilities to myself, my family and the larger community?” and “What reality-based problems do I need to solve today?” Dr. Smith suggested.

“To me, that’s being very responsible because you’re responding to reality and not the nightmare, which is easy to,” she said. “If you jump to the worst-case scenario it doesn’t equip you to help yourself in any way. You freeze up because it becomes unmanageable.”

Avoid all-or-nothing thinking

When news and facts are constantly changing, it can be easy to jump to conclusions and fill in the blanks, Dr. Smith said. However, we shouldn’t rush to process current events with black-and-white thinking. Absolutist, or all-or-nothing, thinking, isn’t a healthy way to cope, and is common among those with depression, researchers found in 2018.

To avoid this thought pattern, give the circumstance nuance. Just because a handful of events were canceled, for example, doesn’t mean the world is tumbling into isolation — it means our leaders care about our safety and are taking precautions. Dr. Smith suggests writing down such nervous thoughts or giving anxiety a name. “I call my anxiety Carl,” she said. “Carl says the world is probably going to end — and that makes me go, Carl probably doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Sometimes adding a little bit of humor can help.”

Take care of yourself

Research has shown anxiety impacts our decision-making skills, and in frenzied times, you want to make the most informed decisions for yourself and your family. Keep yourself in tiptop shape with elements of self-care: Studies have shown that exercise, deep sleep and social interactions — even if it’s just a phone call or video chat — diminish stress and anxiety. You may also want to step back from social media or find ways to make the experience less nerve-racking.

Perhaps most importantly, cut yourself some slack.

“Don’t beat yourself up for worrying,” Dr. Stosny said. “That’s only going to make you worry more.”

Even if group gatherings aren’t feasible, take part in one-on-one video hangouts, FaceTime calls and text threads, Dr. Rosmarin suggested. “Just because we’re socially segregated doesn’t mean we need to be socially isolated.”

But remember to turn off the tech eventually. In times of crisis, Dr. Rosmarin advised avoiding phones and other news sources at least an hour before bed.

Get involved

Donate or volunteer with an organization you feel is making positive contributions, whether locally, nationally or internationally. Not only does volunteer work lower the risk of depression and gives participants a sense of purpose, it also may reduce stress levels.

“Anything you do proactively will help,” Dr. Stosny said. “It helps ward off some of the powerlessness or anxiety, even if it’s small.”

And it’s OK if those charitable efforts end with a virtual happy hour or dessert as a reward.

A version of this article appears in print on March 30, 2020, Section B, Page 5of the New York edition with the headline: Staying Sane When the World Seems Crazy. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe