Built To Rent Suburbs: Remember YOU Owning Nothing Is Part Of The Plan...,

WSJ |  Today, built-to-rent homes make up just over 6% of new homes built in the U.S. every year, according to Hunter Housing Economics, a real estate consulting firm, which projects the number of these homes built annually will double by 2024. The country’s largest home builders are planning for that future. Backed by banks and private investment firms, they have already bet billions on the sector, and will put down some $40 billion more during the next 18 months, Brad Hunter, founder of Hunter Housing Economics, projects. Built-to-rent subdivisions have been constructed or are under development in nearly 30 states. Taylor Morrison Home Corp. , Mr. Wood’s development partner and the nation’s fifth-largest builder, has said built-to-rent could soon become 50% of its total business. The company didn’t disclose the current share.

Homeownership is expected to decline over the next two decades—a trend that started with the generation after the baby boomers, according to the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank that advocates for homeownership. Prices are rising faster than ever, leaving more people, including those with higher incomes, more likely to rent.

Built-to-rent subdivisions are attractive to some urban apartment renters who want to move to the suburbs but are unable or uninterested in buying a home. Many young professionals and families are less keen than their parents in being tied down by a 30-year mortgage, according to real-estate analysts, builders and tenants. They want the flexibility of renting and the freedom that comes with being able to pick up and leave after a lease. As they age, they may want the yard, garage, good schools and roomy basement, without the headaches of mowing that yard or buying a new motor when the garage door breaks.

Built-to-rent subdivisions are attractive to some urban apartment renters who want to move to the suburbs but are unable or uninterested in buying a home. Many young professionals and families are less keen than their parents in being tied down by a 30-year mortgage, according to real-estate analysts, builders and tenants. They want the flexibility of renting and the freedom that comes with being able to pick up and leave after a lease. As they age, they may want the yard, garage, good schools and roomy basement, without the headaches of mowing that yard or buying a new motor when the garage door breaks.

Only In America Can You Go To School For 20 Years To Earn Minimum Wage

Fauci knows exactly how much the losers who work in the labs are worth - trust and believe - you can’t make this s*#@ up. Do YOU want fresh students/technicians living in their cars and working in the BioSafetyLevel 3 BSL-3 labs?

 

The payscale of NIH funded positions is set by these jokers - after 20 years of schooling and a masters degree, you get to earn minimum wage doing the hands-on part of gain of function research.

 

Full-time, $32,697/year. OK.

32697 / 52 weeks / 40 hours = $15.71 / hr.

wisc.edu |

Position Summary:	The Influenza Research Institute (IRI) is an active and growing influenza research laboratory supporting cutting-edge research on negative-strand RNA viruses including influenza, SARS-CoV-2, and replication-deficient ebolavirus. The research group numbers over 30 including scientists, post-docs, technicians and grad students. We are looking for a Research Specialist who will characterize influenza and SARS-CoV-2 viruses and support other laboratory operations.
Position Duties:	List of Duties
Institutional Statement on Diversity:	Diversity is a source of strength, creativity, and innovation for UW-Madison. We value the contributions of each person and respect the profound ways their identity, culture, background, experience, status, abilities, and opinion enrich the university community. We commit ourselves to the pursuit of excellence in teaching, research, outreach, and diversity as inextricably linked goals.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison fulfills its public mission by creating a welcoming and inclusive community for people from every background - people who as students, faculty, and staff serve Wisconsin and the world.

For more information on diversity and inclusion on campus, please visit: Diversity and Inclusion
Degree and Area of Specialization:	Bachelors or Masters degree in biological sciences
Minimum Years and Type of Relevant Work Experience:	Minimum two years of laboratory experience. A moderate to strong knowledge and experience in molecular biology is required. In addition, animal experience and/or NGS experience is required.

Cell culture experience is important. Animal experience and biological safety level-3 (BSL-3) experience is desirable, but not required. Candidates with Illumina miSeq and ONT sequencing are encouraged to apply. Top candidates will be trained in biosafety, animal, and infectious disease research. Excellent verbal and written communication skills are required.

Additional Information:

The successful candidate must pass a background check and be approved by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under 42 CFR 73.8 and the Criminal Justice Information Security Risk Assessment. Ability to undergo and maintain a favorable background investigation and National Select Agent Registration security risk assessment. In addition, the ability to maintain a driver's license is required.

Annual seasonal influenza vaccination.

A criminal background check will be conducted prior to hiring.

A period of evaluation will be required.
Department(s):	A873100-SCHOOL OF VET MEDICINE/PATHOBIOLOGICAL SCIENCES

Why Does A 92 Year Old Man "Serve" As Gatekeeper Of The Left Or Talk To Ana Kasparian?

jacobin | In 1967, Noam Chomsky emerged as a leading critic of the Vietnam War with a New York Review of Books essay critiquing US foreign policy’s ivory tower establishment. As many academics rationalized genocide, Chomsky defended a simple principle: “It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies.”

A groundbreaking linguist, Chomsky has done more to live up to this maxim than almost any other contemporary intellectual. His political writings have laid bare the horrors of neoliberalism, the injustices of endless war, and the propaganda of the corporate media, earning him a place on Richard Nixon’s “Enemies List” and in the surveillance files of the CIA. At ninety-two, Chomsky remains an essential voice in the anti-capitalist movements his ideas helped inspire.

Ana Kasparian and Nando Vila interviewed Chomsky for Jacobin’s Weekends YouTube show earlier this year. In their conversation, Chomsky reminds us that history is a process of continuous struggle, and that the working-class politics needed to secure universal health care, climate justice, and denuclearization are out there — if we’re willing to fight for them.

AK  Let’s start with a big question — why does Congress continuously tell the American people that it will not deliver on policies that have overwhelming public support?

NC Well, one place to look always is: “Where’s the money? Who funds Congress?” Actually, there’s a very fine, careful study of this by the leading scholar who deals with funding issues and politics, Thomas Ferguson. He and his colleagues did a study in which they investigated a simple question: “What’s the correlation over many years between campaign funding and electability to Congress?” The correlation is almost a straight line. That’s the kind of close correlation that you rarely get in the social sciences: greater the funding, higher the electability.

And in fact, we all know what happens when a congressional representative gets elected. Their first day in office, they start making phone calls to the potential donors for their next election. Meanwhile, hordes of corporate lobbyists descend on their offices. Their staff are often young kids, totally overwhelmed by the resources, the wealth, the power, of the massive lobbyists who pour in. Out of that comes legislation, which the representative later signs — maybe even looks at occasionally, when he can get off the phone with the donors. What kind of system do you expect to emerge from this?

One recent study found that for about 90 percent of the population, there’s essentially no correlation between their income and decisions by their representatives — that is, they’re fundamentally unrepresented. This extends earlier work by Martin Gilens, Benjamin Page, and others who found pretty similar results, and the general picture is clear: the working class and most of the middle class are basically unrepresented.

 

Carbon Zero Pissants Eat Bugs And Own Nothing

cam.ac.uk |  We  have  to  cut  our  greenhouse  gas  emissions  to  zero  by  2050:  that’s  what  climate  scientists  tell  us,  it’s  what  social  protesters are asking for and it’s now the law in the UK. But we  aren’t  on  track.  For  twenty  years  we’ve  been  trying  to  solve the problem with new or breakthrough technologies that supply energy and allow industry to keep growing, so we don’t have to change our lifestyles. But although some exciting  new  technology  options  are  being  developed,  it  will  take  a  long  time  to  deploy  them,  and  they  won’t  be  operating at scale within thirty years.

Meanwhile, our cars are getting heavier, we’re flying more each year and we heat our homes to higher temperatures. We  all  know  that  this  makes  no  sense,  but  it’s  difficult  to  start  discussing  how  we  really  want  to  address  climate  change while we keep hoping that new technologies will take the problem away.

In response, this report starts from today’s technologies: if we really want to reach zero emissions in thirty years time, what  does  that  involve?  Most  of  what  we  most  enjoy  -  spending time together as families or communities, leisure, sport,  creativity  -  can  continue  and  grow  unhindered.  We  need  to  switch  to  using  electricity  as  our  only  form  of  energy  and  if  we  continue  today’s  impressive  rates  of  growth  in  non-emitting  generation,  we’ll  only  have  to  cut  our  use  of  energy  to  60%  of  today’s  levels.  We  can  achieve  this  with  incremental  changes  to  the  way  we  use  energy: we can drive smaller cars and take the train when possible,  use  efficient  electric  heat-pumps  to  keep  warm  and buy buildings, vehicles and equipment that are better designed and last much longer.

The two big challenges we face with an all electric future are flying  and  shipping.  Although  there  are  lots  of  new  ideas  about  electric  planes,  they  won’t  be  operating  at  commercial   scales   within   30   years,   so   zero   emissions   means that for some period, we’ll all stop using aeroplanes. Shipping  is  more  challenging:  although  there  are  a  few  military  ships  run  by  nuclear  reactors,  we  currently  don’t  have  any  large  electric  merchant  ships,  but  we  depend  strongly on shipping for imported food and goods.

In  addition,  obeying  the  law  of  our  Climate  Change  Act  requires that we stop doing anything that causes emissions regardless of its energy source. This requires that we stop eating beef  and  lamb  -  ruminants  who  release  methane  as  they  digest  grass  -  and  already  many  people  have  started  to  switch  to  more  vegetarian  diets.    However  the  most difficult problem is cement:  making cement releases emissions   regardless   of   how   it’s   powered,   there   are   currently no alternative options available at scale, and we don’t  know  how  to  install  new  renewables  or    make  new  energy efficient buildings without it.

We need to discuss these challenges as a society. Making progress  on  climate  change  requires  that  the  three  key  groups of players - government, businesses and individuals -  work  together,  rather  than  waiting  for  the  other  two  to  act first. But until we face up to the fact that breakthrough technologies won’t arrive fast enough, we can’t even begin having the right discussion.

Committing    to    zero    emissions    creates    tremendous    opportunities:  there  will  be  huge  growth  in  the  use  and  conversion of electricity for travel, warmth and in industry; growth  in  new  zero  emissions  diets;  growth  in  materials  production,  manufacturing  and  construction  compatible  with zero emissions; growth in leisure and domestic travel; growth in businesses that help us to use energy efficiently and to conserve the value in materials.

Bringing     about     this     change,     and     exploring     the     opportunities  it  creates  requires  three  things  to  happen  together: as individuals we need to be part of the process, exploring  the  changes  in  lifestyle  we  prefer  in  order  to  make zero emission a reality. Protest is no longer enough  -  we must together discuss the way we want the solution to develop; the government needs to treat this as a delivery challenge - just like we did with the London Olympics, on-time  and  on-budget;  the  emitting  businesses  that  must  close  cannot  be  allowed  to  delay  action,  but  meanwhile  the authors of this report are funded by the government to work    across  industry  to  support  the  transition  to  growth  compatible with zero emissions.

Breakthrough technologies will be important in the future but we cannot depend on them to reach our zero emissions target  in  2050.  Instead  this  report  sets  an  agenda  for  a  long-overdue public conversation across the whole of UK society about how we really want to achieve Absolute Zero within thirty years

Compliant Obedient Piss-Ants Hate You Hesitant Piss-Ants Most Of All...,

WaPo  |  Across the Charles River in Boston, where the smallpox outbreak had begun, the board of health chairman wasn’t so mild. Samuel Durgin had offered free vaccinations to hundreds of thousands of residents, but when that failed to stem the tide of infected patients, he enlisted “virus squads” — gangs of policemen and medical officials who held down and forced people, often homeless men, to be vaccinated, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. One man was beaten so badly by police that after he was vaccinated he had to get stitches for a wound to his head.

Durgin had also publicly challenged any anti-vaccine individuals to come with him to the island where sick patients were isolated and treated. One, Immanuel Pfeiffer, accepted. He nearly died of smallpox. Many were angered that Durgin let Pfeiffer back into the community before he fell ill, where he could have ignited another outbreak, but Durgin thought the headlines — “Anti-vaccinationist May Not Live,” “Chairman Durgin Comes Up Smiling” — were worth the risk, according to the New England journal.

Still, the outbreak continued to spread, and not just to Cambridge but also to within two blocks of Jacobson’s home. So when Spencer returned and the pastor still refused, he did what the law allowed him to do: He fined Jacobson $5 (about $153 today).

Instead of paying the fine, Jacobson and a handful of other vaccine refusers appealed to a higher court, where they caught the attention and support of anti-vaccination societies. Those societies provided Jacobson with powerful attorneys, who argued the case all the way to the Supreme Court.

There had been a number of decisions in other state courts on compulsory vaccination laws, and they were all over the map. Some upheld the laws, some struck them down or placed limitations. Clearly, a national policy was needed.

The Supreme Court handed down its decision in February 1905; in a 7-2 opinion, Justice John Marshall Harlan — a former Kentucky enslaver who fought for the Union in the Civil War and wrote a blistering dissent against Plessy v. Ferguson — said public health could supersede individual rights:

“[T]he liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States to every person within its jurisdiction does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly free from restraint. There are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good.”

While the high court in Massachusetts had ruled in favor of the board of health, it also made clear that “it is not in their power to vaccinate [Jacobson] by force.” The Supreme Court didn’t contradict this, and in fact, placed more safeguards, saying “common good” laws had to be reasonable. That’s important, because “virus squads” weren’t limited to Boston; immigrants in tenements were also forcibly vaccinated in New York City, as were Black Americans in Kentucky.

By the time of the Supreme Court’s decision, nearly three years after Jacobson had first refused to be vaccinated, the smallpox outbreak in Cambridge had died down and would never return. (Smallpox was declared eradicated from the planet in 1979.)

The government began regulating the quality of vaccines, and in 1922, another Supreme Court case, Zucht v. King, specifically affirmed proof of vaccination laws for public schoolchildren.

Jacobson paid his fine and went back to his mild-mannered life of preaching to his flock. The anti-vaccine movement had only just begun.

Vic Used To "Wear The Blue Vest" But Now He's Just Big Mad And Utterly Helpless...,

trust |  I drove for Amazon from December 2019 until March of 2021, and I want to shed light on the work environment and the way the world's largest online retailer treats its employees. I want to show support for all the people I worked with and drove with, and with those who wear the blue vest across the nation. I support the driver walk-out on Easter Sunday. It's time to show Amazon that drivers are people who deserve better, and not machines who don't need a bathroom break!

When Vic started delivering packages for Amazon in 2019, he enjoyed it - the work was physical, he liked the autonomy, and it let him explore new neighborhoods in Denver, Colorado.

But Vic, who asked to be referred to by his first name for fear of retaliation, did not like the sensation that he was constantly under surveillance. 

At first, it was Amazon’s “Mentor” app that constantly monitored his driving, phone use and location, generating a score for bosses to evaluate his performance on the road.

“If we went over a bump, the phone would rattle, the Mentor app would log that I used the phone while driving, and boom, I’d get docked,” he said.

Then, Amazon started asking him to post “selfies” before each shift on Amazon Flex, another app he had to install. 

“I had already logged in with my keycard at the beginning of the shift, and now they want a photo? It was too much," he said.

The final indignity, he said, was Amazon's decision to install a four-lens, AI-powered camera in delivery vehicles that would record and analyse his face and body the entire shift. 

This month, Vic put in his two-week notice and quit, ahead of a March 23 deadline for all workers at his Denver dispatch location to sign release forms authorising Amazon to film them and collect and store their biometric information.

“It was both a privacy violation, and a breach of trust,” he said. “And I was not going to stand for it.”

The camera systems, made by U.S.-based firm Netradyne, are part of a nationwide effort by Amazon to address concerns over accidents involving its increasingly ubiquitous delivery vans.

Amazon did not respond to a request for comment, but has previously told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that access to the footage was limited, and video would only be uploaded after an unsafe driving incident was detected.

Albert Fox Cahn, who runs the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project - a privacy organisation - said the Amazon cameras were part of a worrying, new trend.

"As cameras get cheaper and artificial intelligence becomes more powerful, these invasive tracking systems are increasingly the norm," he said.

 

How About The Fancy Asian Human Traffickers And Local Government(s) Looking The Other Way?

CJR  |  Meanwhile, coverage of the shooting by national media outlets remained vague; reporters seemed reluctant (or were unable) to find details about the victims or pick up reports from the Korean press. Instead, the mainstream press published profiles of the shooter. And when the Atlanta Sheriff’s Office held a press conference on Wednesday morning, the press raced to take down the official statement, which uncritically echoed the suspect’s claims that he suffered from sexual addiction, and which minimized the role of racial animus in his motivation for the killing spree. 

Lee, who had worked the police beat in Korea earlier in his career, was in disbelief. “I’ve never before seen a case where the police suggest: ‘The suspect said it wasn’t the case, therefore it’s not the case,’ ” he says. Worse, the press replicated the official statement in headlines and presented it as breaking news. In most news pieces, the spokesperson’s words were treated as self-explanatory, without additional context or questions. “It was almost as though the press believed what was said to be correct, like they wanted it to be the case,” Lee says.  

To Lee, the official statement was “clearly too absurd to repeat.” He felt no obligation to cover the press conference or to recite the spokesperson’s words. Instead, Atlanta K ran a story that recounted the community response to the official statement, titled: “ ‘Does a bad day mean you can kill someone?’: white police officers’ protection of a white murderer.” 

The press corrected course a day later, but already, public perception of the suspect’s racist and anti-Asian motives had been muddied. The shooter’s explanation for the murders—sex addiction—had been widely circulated, giving weight to long-standing associations between Asian-owned massage shops and illicit sex work. Investigations into the spas in the past week cited suggestive customer reviews and a history of police raids (some of which had been undertaken wrongfully, Lee says), in effect imputing criminality to the women. The media should ask if it is meaningful to determine whether the victims had been offering sexual services, and whether such questions are worth stigmatizing the deceased women and risking harm to family members and other spa workers. This also means that survivors, who have long lived under the radar—fearful of losing their livelihoods and immigration statuses—feel discouraged from talking publicly. “Unless they have immense courage, it’s improbable for these women to want to put themselves out there,” Lee says. 

From the beginning, Lee had feared this sort of scrutiny. Reporters for national media outlets had asked him about criminal activity at the spas, to which he declined to respond. Why speculate on a question that lacks clear relevance to the story at hand? Already, the women have been unfairly immortalized in association with their place of work. The spas could never be a full reflection of who the women were; they were survival jobs—jobs the women might have worked tirelessly to retire from, had they been allowed to live out their lives.

Silly Pissants - You Think You Pay Taxes For Public Services?

pressenza  |  Hours after writing his screed, Boyd announced his resignation and apologized. But he qualified his apology by saying that he never meant to imply that the helpless elderly were the lazy ones—just everyone else. “I was only making the statement that those folks that are too lazy to get up and fend for themselves but are capable should not be dealt a handout,” he wrote in a manner that suggested he was “sorry, not sorry.”

Most Republicans are not as overt as Boyd in their faith in social Darwinism. Take Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who instead of openly blaming Texans for their own suffering instead decided to blame climate-mitigating policies and renewable energy programs like wind power. Speaking on Fox News, Abbott railed against the “Green New Deal,” claiming that a reliance on wind turbines was disastrous because the state’s wind-generated power “thrust Texas into a situation where it was lacking power on a statewide basis.” For good measure, he added, “It just shows that fossil fuel is necessary.”

The conservative Wall Street Journal, which has long been hostile to tackling climate change through renewable energy, repeated this claim in an editorial blaming “stricter emissions regulation” and the loss of coal-powered plants for widespread misery in the snow-blanketed South.

In fact, millions of Texans are going without power because of the Republican emphasis on cheap power over reliable power. Seeing electricity generation as a profit-making enterprise rather than the fulfillment of a public need, GOP policies in Texas have made the state vulnerable to such mass outages. Moreover, plenty of wintry areas successfully run wind turbines when properly prepared to do so. And, Abbott did not see fit to point out that harsh winter temperatures lead to frozen natural gas pipelines—the real culprit in the outages.

Even as a majority of Texans now believe that climate change is really happening, their governor in late January vowed to “protect the oil and gas industry from any type of hostile attack from Washington.” Apparently protecting Texans from the ravages of the fossil fuel industry is not in his purview. This is hardly surprising given how much fossil fuel industry contributions have ensured Abbott’s loyalty to oil and gas interests.

The conservative mindset can be counted on to prioritize private interests over public ones. In a Republican utopia, the rich are noble and deserving of basic necessities, comforts, and life itself. If they have rigged the system to benefit themselves, it means they are smart, not conniving. In the future that Republicans promise, “Only the strong will survive and the weak will parish (sic),” as per Boyd’s post. In other words, our lives are expendable, and if we die, it is because we deserve it and were simply not smart enough to survive.

Caren An'Em Still Not Woke To The Great Reset As New Normal Slavery 2.0

publicseminar |  This past summer, Kroger, one of the nation’s largest grocery store chains, received a 15-year, 75 percent sales tax exemption for setting up two new data centers in Ohio. This is the definition of unnecessary. Kroger is not exactly poverty struck – it accrued profits of more than $2 billion last year. Moreover, subsidizing data centers is for suckers. Companies need to build that infrastructure, and they don’t create all that many positions. Municipalities and state governments that subsidize data centers sometimes literally pay upwards of seven figures per job.

Then it got worse: Kroger is using its data to move into what’s known as the “ghost kitchen” business, something that is a terrible development for local independent restaurants. So, Ohio taxpayers are helping a massive supermarket chain put other businesses out of business, including their favorite corner eatery. That Ohio is doing this in a year when small restaurant proprietors are under all but existential threat adds insult to injury.

Ghost kitchens are as spooky as they sound. Big corporations like gig companies, supermarkets, and fast food chains use the data they collect through their various lines of business to create delivery-only food operations. But here’s the catch: They often hide and disguise the fact that they aren’t actual restaurants. They give them homey sounding names, like Seaside or Lorenzo’s, and build out web pages that make them appear to be places you could drop in on. In fact, they are randomly located in warehouses and other industrial spaces, and backed by big investors and corporations whose participation is often hidden by a web of shell companies.

The poster children for this issue are the big delivery app companies — UberEats, GrubHub, and Doordash — which use the data they collect doing deliveries for restaurants, and which they don’t subsequently share with those restaurants, to see what sort of items sell best and when. Then, much like Amazon weaponizes the data it collects from small businesses that sell on its platform to create its own products, the delivery apps use the data to create their own, delivery-only food outlets, with the aim of cutting real restaurants out of the business entirely. (Amazon, of course, won’t miss this opportunity either: It has invested in a delivery and ghost kitchen company called Deliveroo.) 

This model of operating a platform and then also competing on it should just be illegal, even though it’s widespread. Whether it’s Amazon using info gained from its third-party sellers to steal products, Google using data gleaned from its advertising technology to outbid publishers, or delivery apps cutting real restaurants out of the restaurant business, the issue is the same: The corporation that runs the infrastructure has an anticompetitive advantage over all of the other participants. As Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, succinctly puts it, “You can be an umpire, or you can be a player—but you can’t be both.”

But even if authorities woke up and banned Uber from going into the ghost kitchen business, that wouldn’t stop Kroger. It’s got the data too, and it doesn’t need to trick rival businesses into turning it over. It’s the largest grocer in the U.S., and the second-largest in-person retailer after Walmart. It runs stores under its own corporate name, as well as Harris Teeter and 14 other brands. They are using info gained from their own shoppers. Kroger is partnering with an outfit called ClusterTruck that uses algorithms to remove the so-called “pain points” of ordering food, which I suppose means orders showing up cold, or something.

Lockdown Shit Flowed Downhill From Governor To Bureaucrat To Desperate Peasants...,

 jsonline  |  Fewer than 1% of calls from Wisconsin residents who lost their jobs during the pandemic were answered by state officials overseeing unemployment benefits, and the Evers administration did not report key information to lawmakers showing the full scope of the problem, a new state audit shows.   

The audit confirms stories the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has heard for months from hundreds of people who were forced out of jobs or work because of the pandemic, and it is being released a week after Gov. Tony Evers fired the agency's secretary over lack of progress in clearing claims from more than 90,000 people. 

The analysis from the Legislative Audit Bureau Friday shows 93.3% of the 41 million calls to the state Department of Workforce Development unemployment call centers between March 15 and June 30 were blocked, or callers received a busy signal. 

About 6% of callers hung up before reaching anyone and 0.5% of calls were ultimately answered.

But the agency didn't report the full scope of the problem to lawmakers on the audit committee, the audit shows. 

Between April and June, the agency reported to Republican audit committee co-chairs Sen. Rob Cowles and Rep. Samantha Kerkman that 4.9 million telephone calls were "blocked, abandoned, and answered."

But auditors found a total of 19.6 million calls were actually blocked or resulted in busy signals.

"That's the piece that is most troubling," Cowles, R-Green Bay, said in an interview.

Amy Pechacek, former deputy secretary of the Department of Corrections who now oversees DWD until a new leader is chosen, said in a statement the agency's antiquated IT system hamstrung staff's ability "to quickly implement new changes and programs, which prompted even more calls and questions" to the call centers.

 

Bruh..., Tased And Arrested For No Mask, Outdoors? Or, For Failure To "RESPECKT MAH AUTHORITEH!!!!"

thehill |  An Ohio police officer tased and arrested a woman on Wednesday after she refused to leave an eighth grade football game for not wearing a mask, officials said.

Police in Logan, Ohio, who identified the woman as Alecia Kitts, said the officer told Kitts she would be asked to leave because she was not wearing a mask, in violation of school policy. After Kitts refused to leave the stadium, the officer warned she would be cited for trespassing. She was tased after she resisted arrest.

A video circulated online appears to show the officer, identified as School Resource Officer Chris Smith, handcuffing the woman and saying, “Put your hands behind your back.”

“I will not put my hands behind my back,” she responds. “I’m not currently doing nothing wrong.”

Approximately two minutes later, the officer tases the woman, arrests her and takes her away from the stands. 

Police said in a statement that when Smith informed Kitts she needed to wear a mask, she responded she had asthma and would not put it on.

"Officer Smith advised the female several times that she needed to put her mask on, and that if she did not, she would be asked to leave and would have to wait outside the stadium," the statement reads. "The female continually refused his request and Officer Smith advised her that if she refused to leave, she would be cited for trespassing and escorted off the property."

Pelosi Shat On You Peasants And DARED YOU To Say Anything About It!!!

turcopolier |  If it is safe for an 80 yo member of congress to get a haircut, it is safe to vote in person. 

If it is safe for an 80 yo member of congress to get a haircut, it is safe for our children to got to school.

If it is safe for an 80 yo member of congress to get a haircut, it is safe for us to go to church. 

If it is safe for an 80 yo member of congress to get a haircut, it is safe to open small businesses. Just don't mention hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) + zinc + azithromycin, that gets you purged by Gulag.

In Dallas, opening a hair salon was a week in jail for the owner.

Bitch set me up, says speaker Marion Barry Pelosi.

But the danger! Yes, the danger. Because schools and churches are where the voting precincts are. 

That's how the left will suppress the vote, by keeping them closed, and forcing junk mailing style elections. As to Nancy's dilema, let's hear from an expert, who is rumoured to say:
 

"Be carefull where you get a blow and dry" 

Can America's Poor Self-Organize To Survive The Dystopian Now?

tomdispatch |  This society has long suffered from a kind of Stockholm syndrome: we look to the rich for answers to the very problems they are often responsible for creating and from which they benefit. The wreckage of this pandemic moment is a bitter reminder of this affliction, as well as a signpost suggesting how we must emerge from this crisis a just and more equitable nation. With a possible depression ahead and more social unrest on the rise, isn’t it time to stop vindicating the wealthiest people in this country and look instead to leadership from those who were living in a depression before Covid-19 even hit and already organizing and protesting?

Here’s a story from a long-ago moment that's still relevant. Two months before his assassination in 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., travelled to Chicago, to enlist the women of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) -- the predecessor to the National Union of my day -- into the Poor People’s Campaign. As he walked into a conference room at a downtown Chicago YMCA, Dr. King encountered more than 30 welfare rights leaders seated strategically on the other side of an exceedingly large table. One of his advisers later noted that the women’s reception of the southern civil rights leader was a “grand piece of psychological warfare.”

Representing more than 30,000 welfare-receiving, dues-paying members, they had not come to passively listen to the famed leader. They wanted to know his position on the recent passage of anti-welfare legislation and quickly made that clear, pelting him with questions. Dr. King felt out of his element. Eventually, Johnnie Tillmon, the national chairwoman of the NWRO, stepped in. “You know, Dr. King,” she said, “if you don’t know about these questions, you should just say you don’t know and then we could go on with this meeting.”

To this, Dr. King replied, “We don’t know anything about welfare. We are here to learn.”

That day, Dr. King would learn much about the long struggle those women had waged for dignity in the workplace and the home. They taught him that programs of social uplift should be a permanent right and that the welfare system of the mid-twentieth century, much like our own, was structured as a public charity that callously differentiated between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor. They introduced him to policy proposals that were generations ahead of their time, including a demand for a Guaranteed Adequate Annual Income, or what many now call a Universal Basic Income (UBI).

Four months into the Covid-19 crisis, with this country already afloat on a sea of inequality that would have been unimaginable even to those women in 1968, a sea change in public opinion may be underway when it comes to what’s necessary and possible. Ideas that only a few years ago would have been considered unimaginable like universal healthcare, guaranteed affordable housing, and debt relief are now breaking into the mainstream. Don’t think, however, that such policy positions, like the idea of a UBI, have materialized on Capitol Hill and in Beltway think tanks out of thin air. They are, at least in part, the result of long-term agitating, educating, and organizing led by the poor themselves.

Those of us in the welfare rights movement always saw our work as the kindling for a wildfire of organizing by the poor and dispossessed. Our projects of survival, like Tent City, were not just about housing and feeding people. They were also about securing the lives of those committed to building the kind of movement necessary to transform society. Projects organized around immediate needs also became bases of operation for policy analysis and future plans.

Bout To Be Showtime In Kansas City

guardian |  In Kansas City’s poorest neighbourhoods, they wait and they watch.

The city’s most vulnerable residents wait for coronavirus to reveal itself as they watch its daily progression from the edges of the country to the heartland. But they face another wait too. For the money to run out, uncertain which of these two potential calamities will arrive first but dreading the day the two collide.

Chris Brown lost his job as a waiter as soon as Kansas City’s mayor ordered the closure of restaurants and bars. “I was lucky that I had a little money in my pocket when this happened. Not a lot. Maybe $100. But that’s more than a lot of people, especially in my industry. I know a lot of my comrades out there only had $20 in their pocket when the restaurant closed. I don’t know what they’re doing,” he said.

Until the end of last week, Brown and his wife, Alex Smith, still had a lifeline. Smith worked as a bartender at a hotel which remained open in a neighbouring county. But that closed on Friday and now the couple, both in their mid-40s, are down to the cash in their pockets with no savings and no health insurance.

“We took the little money we have and came down to get groceries so we at least had some food for the next few weeks,” said Brown outside the Save A Lot discount food store on Kansas City’s east side, one of the poorest parts of the city.

Coronavirus has been relatively slow to reach the sprawling plains of Missouri and Kansas, although deaths have been creeping up. But its impact is already felt among the hardest-up residents of Kansas City, which straddles the Missouri River dividing the two states. Both are reporting a spike in unemployment claims and they’re likely to go on rising with the Kansas City metro area under a stay-at-home order from Tuesday and more businesses closing.

Even when they were working, Brown and Smith earned only $2.15 an hour, the federal minimum wage for servers, plus tips.

Relax, Just Let It Happen...,

libertyblitzkrieg |  It didn’t take long for the most opportunistic, nefarious and corrupt actors in the U.S. to turn a pandemic crisis into another massive power grab attempt. We’ve seen it before; after 9/11 and also throughout the response to the financial crisis a decade ago. The irredeemable sociopaths who always make the big, important decisions used those crises to consolidate wealth and power. They’re going for it again.

There are many examples, but let me list a few:

– The EARN IT bill, by which senators are attempting to destroy widespread public use of encryption, i.e. private communications. (EFF)

– The White House and the CDC are asking Facebook, Google and other tech giants to give them greater access to Americans’ smartphone location data. (CNBC)

– The Justice Department has quietly asked Congress for the ability to ask chief judges to detain people indefinitely without trial during emergencies. (Politico)

– U.S. Senators are attempting to use the crisis as an opportunity to pull off a gigantic corporate coup. (Matt Stoller, BIG)

We often get distracted debating the implications of Fed actions, and in the process lose sight of the bigger picture. The real question we need to be asking is why do we allow a handful of unelected banker welfare agents the right to shape our entire world? It’s a crazy system, and until we start questioning the underlying premises of everything about our world, we’ll remain confused and subjugated.

Elites Conspiring to Create A Permanent Underclass Who'll Work For Peanuts

unz |  This is the contempt these people have for you and me and everyone else who isn’t a part of their elitist gaggle of reprobates. Here’s a clip from another article at the WSJ that helps to show how the financial media is pushing this gigantic handout to corporate America:.

“The Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and banking regulators deserve congratulations for their bold, necessary actions to provide liquidity to the U.S. financial system amid the coronavirus crisis. But more remains to be done. We thus recommend: (1) immediate congressional action …. to authorize the Treasury to use the Exchange Stabilization Fund to guarantee prime money-market funds, (2) regulatory action to effect temporary reductions in bank capital and liquidity requirements… (NOTE–So now the banks don’t need to hold capital against their loans?) .. additional Fed lending to banks and nonbanks….(Note -by “nonbanks”, does the author mean underwater hedge funds?)…

We recommend that the Fed take further actions as lender of last resort. First, it should re-establish the Term Auction Facility, used in the 2008 crisis, allowing depository institutions to borrow against a broad range of collateral at an auction price (Note–They want to drop the requirement for good Triple A collateral.) … Second, it should consider further exercising its Section 13(3) authority to provide additional liquidity to nonbanks, potentially including purchases of corporate debt through a special-purpose vehicle” (“Do More to Avert a Liquidity Crisis”, Wall Street Journal )

This isn’t a bailout, it’s a joke, and there’s no way Congress should approve these measures, particularly the merging of the US Treasury with the cutthroat Fed. That’s a prescription for disaster! The Fed needs to be abolished not embraced as a state institution. It’s madness!

And look how the author wants to set up an special-purpose vehicle (SPV) so the accounting chicanery can be kept off the books which means the public won’t know how much money is being flushed down the toilet trying to resuscitate these insolvent corporations whose executives are still living high on the hog on the money they stole from credulous investors. This whole scam stinks to high heaven!

Meanwhile America’s working people will get a whopping $1,000 bucks to tide them over until the debts pile up to the rafters and they’re forced to rob the neighborhood 7-11 to feed the kids. How fair is that?

And don’t kid yourself: This isn’t a bailout, it’s the elitist’s political agenda aimed at creating a permanent underclass who’ll work for peanuts just to eek out a living.

You're All In This Together But Don't Get It Twisted, We Come First!

npr |  While average Americans fret on social media about empty toilet paper aisles, author Nelson Schwartz says the wealthy are installing hospital-grade filtration systems and building safe rooms. 

The coronavirus has exposed the vast inequalities in our health care system: Rich Americans from movie stars to Instagram influencers are getting access to COVID-19 tests before many sick people showing relevant symptoms.

In "The Velvet Rope Economy: How Inequality Became Big Business," Schwartz writes about how private services like concierge doctors disincentivize investments in health care and other public services.

Wealthy people can pay concierge doctors an annual fee for around the clock care. Now, he says, in the era of coronavirus, one concierge doctor who stocked up on virus swabs is organizing drive-through testing in Silicon Valley for his clients only.

Another medical concierge firm is helping people with underlying conditions like respiratory distress get oxygen concentrators, he says. The firm is also writing 90-day prescriptions and arranging nebulizers for taking drugs in case the supply chain is disrupted.

“Concierge docs are doing what they can to help their patients, even if that means jumping the line,” he says. “In the age of the coronavirus pandemic, not all patients are created equal.”

This is how health care works in this country right now, but Schwartz says it’s frightening because “we're all in it together.” Testing only a small number of people puts everyone at risk, he says.

People showing COVID-19 symptoms need to receive tests over the “worried well,” he says.

America Exceptionally Vulnerable to SARS-CoV 2

theweek |  All over the world, governments are scrambling to defend their citizenry from COVID-19, the disease caused by the outbreak of novel coronavirus. So far it seems levels of success have varied; countries like Italy and Iran have struggled so far, while Vietnam and Taiwan have seemingly put forth an efficient and effective response.

The United States, where a major outbreak is clearly developing, however, is in a class by itself. America's atrociously inadequate welfare state makes it by far the most vulnerable rich country to a viral pandemic, and the vicious, right-wing ideology of the Republican Party has wrecked the government's ability to manage crises of any kind.

The national health care system is of course the most important tool for any country trying to fight off an epidemic — all citizens need to be able to get tested, receive treatment, or be quarantined if necessary. If and when a vaccine is developed, the system needs to distribute it to everyone as fast as possible. That means handing it out for free in locations across the country, and perhaps making it mandatory if uptake is insufficient.

The American health care system fails at every one of these tasks. Nearly 30 million Americans are uninsured, and a further 44 million are underinsured — meaning they will likely hesitate to go to the doctor if they start developing COVID-19 symptoms. This problem is seriously exacerbated by the rampant predatory profiteering that infects every corner of the health care system. Indeed, responsible citizens who have gone in for tests have already started getting slammed with multi-thousand dollar bills. A father and daughter who were evacuated from China and then forcibly quarantined for several days (luckily they were not infected) went home to find $3,918 in bills.

If you are working-class person with a $10,000 deductible (not at all uncommon), going to the doctor simply because you have flu-like symptoms (which is how most cases of COVID-19 are experienced) could very easily send you into bankruptcy. If infected, millions of Americans are likely going to take their chances — and keep spreading the virus.

Indeed, U.S. health care is not only by far the worst system among rich countries, it is much worse than that of many middle-income or poorer countries when it comes to confronting a fast-moving epidemic.

Yet Another Reason Donny and Mike So Tight-Lipped About SARS-CoV2?

The acronym for the day is NDMS. Once (if?) the President declares a public health emergency, Uncle Sam is on the hook for out-of-pocket medical costs via the National Disaster Medical System. https://t.co/rVfYOf26FY pic.twitter.com/2PPwerteuQ

— Carlos Mucha (@mucha_carlos) February 29, 2020