After their children’s preschool was closed to the threat of coronavirus, a group of Boston mothers began doing what mothers do: volunteering to help the teachers. One proposed launching a GoFundMe page to raise money for the staff whose already meager salaries — $18 or $20 an hour — would be cut off by furloughs.
That's a meager $alary?
The Globe obviously occupies a different $trata than do I.
Then one of them challenged the premise: Why did this job, too, fall to working mothers? Why not push the school to take care of its teachers?
Their school, after all, is not funded by taxpayers or charitable donations. It’s run by Bright Horizons Family Solutions Inc., a for-profit, publicly traded corporation founded in part by Bain Capital. Bright Horizons CEO Stephen H. Kramer received $3.4 million in compensation in 2018 — or 141 times the median employee pay, according to the company’s 2019 proxy statement, posted on its website. The compensation for its top executives and its board of directors alone topped $10 million in 2018, according to the proxy statement.
Yeah, that's the ba$is and foundation we want for education, corporate for profits.
Katie Mayshak, the mother who first raised concerns, encouraged other parents to push back against Bright Horizons — a global employer that often cites its socially minded business practices. In a securities filing amid the coronavirus crisis last month, Bright Horizons reassured investors that it has a strong balance sheet, with $100 million in cash.
Yes, the elites will take care of us all, $ure.
“Companies with significant cash reserves, with a history and track record of executive compensation in the tens of millions of dollars, have a responsibility to their employees — who are both their most valuable and their most vulnerable assets,” Mayshak said.
Another Bright Horizons mother agreed, saying the highly compensated executives should make some sacrifices in solidarity with their lowest-paid workers.
“They should share the love — especially at a time like this,” said Rebecca Gillani, a Boston neurologist, and then a surprising thing happened: They did.....
A round of applau$e, 'eh?
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Related:
Boston enlists school cafeteria in fight against coronavirus
What parent is going to want their kid eating in that lunchroom in the fall, and who is going to want to clean it (what, no mask?)?
That right there is a sure sign that schools are finished.
So what is going to be done with them?
With a little border fencing and barbed wire, they can be repurposed as concentration camps!
(L-R) Sergeant Tegan Brown, her sister Sergeant Coral Brown, Specialist Brandon Bessette, and Private Cesar Alvarez of the Rhode Island Army National Guard dressed in personal protection equipment. (Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff/The Boston Globe)
No social distancing?
Must be a drill.
The four soldiers fully suited up. (Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff/The Boston Globe)
All dressed up for testing, huh?
Also see:
“I’m always in the hospital," says 21-year-old Fiona Howard. “When I get a cold or a virus, it slows my digestive system down. My body doesn’t have the reserve to get me back on track. So when normal people get a cold, they are sick for a few days and then they rebound. In January, I got a little virus and ended up in the ICU.”
Has she been tested?
"I called Peter Jillson, the CEO at Silo, and suggested he could be making a ton of money right now if he and his co-workers weren’t so altruistic. He chuckled and said business is business but as a human being, as a Vermonter, he and everybody he works with doesn’t look at this as an opportunity to cash in......"
You will have to head for the mountains because they already closed the beaches:
"Parking lots at state beaches are closing to reduce further spread of the coronavirus" by Emily Sweeney Globe Staff, April 2, 2020
In an effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus, state officials are closing all coastal beach parking lots; however, the beaches will stay open as long as people stay a safe distance away from each other and keep moving. That means you can walk, jog, or ride a bicycle at the beach without a problem, but forget about laying down on a towel, because sitting, sunbathing, and other stationary activities are prohibited.
Yeah, they are going to keep us hopping all summer long!
Governor Charlie Baker issued the emergency order Thursday to impose these restrictions and close all coastal beach parking areas managed by the Department of Conservation and Recreation by noon Friday to prevent large groups of people from congregating by the ocean during the COVID-19 outbreak.
State officials said DCR will open some seasonal state parks early and expand access at other parks to provide other open space opportunities for people to enjoy as an alternative, starting Friday. DCR officials are also urging people to check the Massachusetts State Parks COVID-19 Updates webpage before visiting any state park property.
Oh, thanks so much for letting us exercise or rights on our land.
“State parks and associated parking areas remain open at this time; however, the public is asked to visit state parks and other open space properties that are located near their homes to ensure social distancing to limit the spread of COVID-19,” officials said in a press release. “Additionally, DCR’s agency-owned ice rinks, visitor centers, campgrounds, playgrounds, fitness areas, athletic fields, athletic courts, golf courses, and bathroom facilities will remain closed until Monday, May 4, 2020. DCR will also be limiting the amount of parking spaces available at certain high-visitation state parks.”
You need not worry. I see you coming, I'm heading in the other direction.
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The pandemic poses significant access-to-justice obstacle, but fortunately a Cambridge technologist is developing solutions:
"Citing infected nurse, lawyers argue ICE detainess in Bristol County jail are in danger; Federal judge signals he’s inclined to begin releasing some prisoners" by Martin Finucane, Andrea Estes and John R. Ellement Globe Staff, April 2, 2020
A federal judge is expected to decide Friday whether to begin releasing more than 100 civil immigration detainees in Bristol County, who lawyers say are at “imminent risk” of contacting COVID-19 because of unsafe and overcrowded conditions at the jail.
As they insist that you remain under house arrest, they are letting the illegal immigrants -- with no jobs and no prospects -- out of jail. I hop none are gang members.
In an hourlong teleconference, US District Judge William G. Young said he was inclined to start freeing some detainees because medical evidence suggests that reducing the population would “improve the chances” that others at the jail would not contract the virus.
What if the "evidence" is wrong or a lie?
“I don’t think there’s any medical evidence that cuts the other way,” said Young, who divided the 147 detainees at the Bristol County House of Correction and the C. Carlos Carreiro Immigration Detention Center into five levels of risk, ranging from those who have no criminal record or charges to those convicted of serious crimes.
If you are not looking for it, you won't see it.
Young suggested that detainees in the three lowest risk categories are the most likely to be eligible for release.
A nurse at the facility has tested positive for coronavirus, but Thomas Kanwit, an assistant US attorney who represents Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson, said there’s no evidence the virus is present among the detainees, or will appear anytime soon. He said the nurse had only limited contact with detainees.
“I don’t agree it’s an absolute necessity that the virus will eventually be in the population and at that point it will be too late,” Kanwit said. “If the courts are convinced that the only solution that makes sense is some measure of reduction of the population, then I’m fighting an uphill battle.”
Aren't we all?
"I’m operating on the premise that the fewer the people in the facility, the more likely the people there will remain safe,” Young said.
Oren Sellstrom, arguing for the detainees, urged Young to move quickly to release as many of them as possible.
“The situation is escalating rapidly and has been since the start of this pandemic,” Sellstrom said.
Young, who urged the sides to try to negotiate an agreement, said anyone released would have to be symptom-free and be taken to a home or an apartment, where they would remain quarantined for 14 days, under house arrest.
Like the rest of us, and what guarantee do we have they will stay there?
Lawyers for Civil Rights filed the class-action lawsuit against Customs and Immigration Enforcement and Hodgson, whose department houses ICE detainees under contract with the federal government.
The lawyers said they are representing a group of 147 people. At least 111 of the immigrants have never been convicted of a violent crime, and at least 56 have never been convicted of anything at all. Of the 31 people with final orders of removal, only three have scheduled removal dates, the lawyers said.....
Being illegally in the country is apparently no longer a crime.
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Related:
"A Bridgewater State Hospital patient pleaded not guilty Thursday to allegedly distributing fentanyl and cocaine that led to another patient’s fatal overdose in September, the Plymouth district attorney’s office said in a statement. Kevin Malette, 35, of Brockton, was arraigned by teleconference at Brockton Superior Court on one count of manslaughter, possessing/delivering drugs or articles to prisoners in a correctional institute or jail, and other charges relating to the possession and distribution of narcotics, according to the statement. Malette was held on $250,000 cash bail. Hospital staff found the victim, Jeffrey Link, 51, of Fall River, unresponsive in his locked cell around 12:30 a.m. on Sept. 19 while they were conducting routine inmate checks, the district attorney’s office said. Staff members tried to perform life-saving measures on Link and he was taken to Morton Hospital in Taunton, where he was pronounced dead. Investigators discovered that Link had traded four bags containing more than $100 worth of food and coffee from the hospital’s canteen for narcotics, according to the statement. Investigators found the bags in the possession of Malette, who lived in another building at the hospital, the statement said."
Also see:
In Jamaica Plain, a new bank prompts a neighborhood to fight back
They won, and more help is on the way:
"Patriots team plane arrives with protective masks from China" by Victoria McGrane and John R. Ellement Globe Staff, April 2, 2020
The news, which broke early Thursday, resembled a plot pulled straight out of a summer blockbuster: The Kraft family had deployed a New England Patriots team plane to China to deliver about one million desperately needed N95 respirator masks to health care workers in Massachusetts.
I'm beginning to think this whole thing is a script.
Yet the story is as alarming as it is heartwarming, underscoring a harsh reality as the coronavirus pandemic spreads ever faster around the United States. Governor Charlie Baker and his counterparts throughout the country are forced to go to extraordinary lengths to secure life-saving medical equipment in the absence of a coordinated federal response.
Why is it such a pell-mell thing when other countries are doing better?
We are/were America, no?
What happened to my country?
“The Krafts were terrific. They were a phone call away, and immediately went to work on the logistics associated with this, and did not stop until they could make it happen,” Baker said at his daily news conference Thursday. He praised both Jonathan and his father, Patriots owner Robert Kraft, along with Chinese officials and members of his administration focused on developing and implementing the state’s response to the pandemic. “This was a total team effort on every level.”
It's a ‘game changer,’ the mammoth machine that can sterilize up to 80,000 respirator masks a day is coming to the Boston area — a major breakthrough that could potentially recycle protective masks safely for all Massachusetts hospitals battling the coronavirus pandemic. Partners HealthCare has teamed up with Battelle, a nonprofit based in Columbus, Ohio, and the city of Somerville on the project, which addresses a crisis for health-care workers as they face widespread shortages of personal protective equipment. The machine is scheduled to be operational next week, and he brought it up from Florida.
The Kraft family also agreed to pay $2 million toward some of the cost of purchasing the masks, Baker told the Globe.
“This is not how it is supposed to work,” said Representative Katherine Clark of Melrose, a member of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership team.....
Well, it kind of iOS and it kind of isn't, and she is still “very grateful” for the Kraft family’s generosity and help getting the critical gear, but....
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The Globe says that was a real championship move and they should be awarding the QB from Alabama as a reward.
"Pelosi announces new select committee to oversee coronavirus response" by Erica Werner and Paul Kane The Washington Post, April 2, 2020
WASHINGTON —House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the creation of a new select committee Thursday with subpoena powers to scrutinize the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, and its management of the new $2 trillion economic rescue law.
I saw this, and I know his hands are dirty as much as everyone else's, but the Democrats are disgusting. It's one thing after another with them in their single-minded obsession and hatred. You can read the day's posts and clearly see I'm not necessarily defending him; I just realize, as does he, that he is powerless to stop all this. He tried and failed. I don't really hold him blameworthy. The best he can do is warn us as he is held hostage in the White House.
‘‘Where there’s money there’s also frequently mischief,’’ Pelosi, a California Democrat, said as she announced creation of the special bipartisan panel she said would be focused on rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse.
Yeah, unless it's Clinton Foundation loot.
Pelosi’s announcement comes amid growing clashes between congressional Democrats and the Trump administration about oversight of the new rescue legislation and a $500 billion fund controlled by the Treasury Department. Trump has to appoint a new inspector general to oversee that fund, but has already signaled opposition to the scope of that person’s mandate.
The divisiveness acts as a diversion and sucks in the weak-minded.
Pelosi told reporters on a conference call that her new committee would be modeled after the World War II-era committee run by then-Senator Harry Truman, whose role in investigating the implementation of billions of dollars in defense contracts eventually led to his elevation to vice president.
I don't know if she sees that as a stepping stone, but why did she not investigate the missing trillions under Rumsfeld back in 2001, a number that has grown to $20 billion by some accounts.
She said that this new committee needed to serve as an everyday watchdog of the more than $2 trillion already allocated to fight the virus and the virtual lockdown it has placed on the economy.
The House Select Committee on the Coronavirus, as Pelosi called it, will be chaired by Representative James Clyburn, of South Carolina, who is the No. 3 Democratic leader as majority whip. No further details were provided about how many lawmakers would serve on the panel.
I thought it was going to be bipartisan. That's what was reported above. Then she picks the most partisan guy around, the guy who delivered South Carolina to Joe.
The new $2 trillion coronavirus spending law, enacted on Friday, included several oversight mechanisms, but some Democrats are already expressing concern that President Trump could try and minimize their scope.
Republicans voiced immediate skepticism about Pelosi’s move to stand up a new select committee.
‘‘This seems really redundant,’’ House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, told reporters on a call following Pelosi’s announcement.
McCarthy also expressed concerns about how the committee would be created since the House is on a long recess and no one knows when they are coming back given health concerns from the coronavirus. Several lawmakers have tested positive.
She said the new committee will have the full investigative authorities of any congressional oversight committee. ‘‘It’s no use having a committee unless you have subpoena power,’’ Pelosi said.
She is making me ill.
The select committee would supplement oversight mechanisms that Democrats pushed to include in the $2 trillion rescue package signed into law on Friday. Some experts are already questioning how effective those mechanisms can be.
Democrats have already called on Trump to quickly nominate a new inspector general tasked with overseeing how Treasury makes loans and loan guarantees as part of the $500 billion program. This process could take months, though, as the person must be nominated by the White House and confirmed by the Senate, which is not in session because of coronavirus fears.
The needs are urgent, stay inside, the banks get their loot overnight, and now we are told the process could take months.
Trump has already suggested he may try to block one of the inspector general’s most important tools: Their ability to alert Congress if the executive branch is denying requests for information.
‘‘There’s a bunch of oversight provisions [in last week’s $2 trillion law], and they are not as muscular as one might want,’’ said Adam Levitin, a professor at Georgetown Law who played a key oversight role during the financial crisis bailout programs of 2008, and also consulted with Democrats on language in the new bill.
As Congress and the Trump administration negotiated the vast rescue bill, one comment from Trump unnerved Democrats perhaps more than any other, when he told reporters: ‘‘I’ll be the oversight.’’
‘‘Democrats were never going to let President Trump be the oversight,’’ said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat. ‘‘It’s why we put in multiple layers of robust oversight, accountability, and transparency, and we’re going to do everything we can to see that they are enforced.’’
PFFFFT!
I imagine they would have no problem were it Jared.
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The Democrats postponed the convention until August due to coronavirus fears, but a federal judge won’t delay Wisconsin primary.
I'm sure they will be looking into this:
"Hospitality industry: Trump’s company seeks financial help as coronavirus takes toll" by David Enrich, Ben Protess and Eric Lipton New York Times, April 2, 2020
NEW YORK — All over the country, businesses large and small are seeking breathing room from their lenders, landlords, and business partners as they face the financial fallout from the coronavirus crisis.
Sigh.
President Trump’s family company is among those looking for help.
With some of its golf courses and hotels closed amid the economic lockdown, the Trump Organization has been exploring whether it can delay payments on some of its loans and other financial obligations, according to people familiar with the matter and documents reviewed by The New York Times.
People are still sneaking into the courses, and they are being cited and fined by police (employees of a McDonald’s snitched on them).
Representatives of Trump’s company have recently spoken with Deutsche Bank, the president’s largest creditor, about the possibility of postponing payments on at least some of its loans from the bank, and in Florida, the Trump Organization sought guidance last week from Palm Beach County about whether it expected the company to continue making monthly payments on county land that it leases for a 27-hole golf club.
The discussions with Deutsche Bank and Palm Beach County are preliminary, and it isn’t clear whether Trump’s company will be able to delay or reduce its payments, according to people briefed on the discussions.
Like the broader hospitality industry, the Trump Organization is poised to take a significant hit from the coronavirus crisis. In recent weeks, the company has temporarily closed its hotel overlooking the Las Vegas Strip, cut staff and services at its hotels in New York and Washington and largely shuttered its golf clubs in Florida and New Jersey. It also closed the Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, which at this time of year would normally be serving as the “winter White House,” as Trump likes to call it.
You don't $ay?
Yet the company, which has a portfolio of more than a dozen golf clubs and luxury hotels in the United States and overseas, has opted to keep some of its properties open absent government orders to close, in contrast with the widespread shutdowns by some larger hotel chains.
Everyone gets their own private golf cart.
Other companies may be able to tap into a $500 billion rescue fund that will be administered by the Treasury Department, but the economic bailout package, which Trump signed into law last week, specifically barred the president and his family from accessing that money.
If you read the fine print, you will find that the "provision inserted by Democrats to block the families of government officials from receiving certain assistance might not exempt the companies owned by the family of Jared Kushner."
Late last month, Trump’s representatives contacted their relationship managers in Deutsche Bank’s New York private-banking division, which caters to wealthy customers. They wanted to discuss the possibility of delaying payments on some of the hundreds of millions of dollars of outstanding loans that the Trump Organization has from the bank, according to a person briefed on the talks.
The discussions are continuing.....
The eviction notice is in the mail.
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I guess it's true that disasters like the coronavirus bring out the best in people:
CONTAGION (2011)
I thought it sucked because it stoked fears real and imagined.
President Donald Trump warned Wednesday that Iran was planning a “sneak attack on U.S. troops and/or assets in Iraq” and later cited unspecified intelligence he said indicated potential plots by local Tehran-aligned forces there.
“Don’t do it,” the president warned at a press briefing that evening, threatening that his “response will be bigger” this time after U.S. airstrikes last month targeted Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah positions but also reportedly killed Iraqi troops, police officers and a civilian.It was soon reported Trump ordered “Patriot surface-to-air missiles and a variant of the Navy’s SeaRAM and CIWS, or close-in weapon system, which fires 3,000 rounds a minute” be sent to Iraq to protect US bases.
Lost in the latest reportage is the fact the rockets fired at US soldiers were a direct response to Trump’s Mafia hit on Iran’s Qassem Soleimani.
A second establishment propaganda mill reported:
It was not immediately clear what intelligence Trump had obtained to prompt him to issue his tweet on Wednesday… [during a] subsequent press conference he indicated the US’s likely target would be Kata’ib Hezbollah, saying the US had “very good information on the group planning the attack”. He added: “It was led by Iran, not necessarily Iran, but by groups supported by Iran, but that to me is Iran.”President Trump now has the distraction of a virus and the unfolding of a government-engineered depression to cover what the neocons plan to do in Iraq and Iran.
Considering Trump had zero reluctance to murder Soleimani in high-tech mob boss fashion, it is entirely possible he will go after Iran’s expeditionary Quds force commander Esmail Ghaani. He is scheduled for a meeting in Baghdad this week. “Ghaani is hoping to unite the Shia factions, and the visit is seen as a test of whether he can match the famed influence of Suleimani.”
Then again, taking into account Trump’s recent vacillations on Iran, he may decline to start another war in the Middle East. He believes the impending depression is “V-shaped” and America will bounce back after increasingly authoritarian COVID-19 measures are put into place and never rescinded.
If he believes there will be a bounce to prosperity, he is surely deluded. Before the middle of June, it is likely the US will be in a full-blown depression with hyperinflation, food shortages, mass protests, political violence, and the possibility of military rule as laid out in the state’s continuity of government plans for “national emergencies.”
Oliver North, now handsomely compensated as a patriot-celebrity, in the early 1980s under a compromised Reagan helped put into motion a plan to round-up and intern millions of “troublemakers,” most listed on the Main Core database established by FEMA under National Security Directive (NSD) 69 and National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 55. Main Core is now held by the NSA, FBI, CIA and more than likely the national security state’s corporate public-private partners (a classic example of Mussolini fascism-corporatism).
The severity of the depression and the reaction by the state will result in the final and complete destruction of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. This will be of little concern to folks facing poverty, eviction, homelessness, and the disease, mental illness, alcohol, and drug addiction, and early death that invariably accompanies the fall of managed economies and the failure of government.
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