Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features slide guitarist Bob Brozman. Enjoy!

"I invented an arcade game with a robotic boxing glove and two buttons. If you push the red button it punches you in the face, and if you push the blue one it punches you in the face while telling you the red one would’ve punched you a bit harder. No one played it for some reason.

I tried adding a feature where a bunch of condescending and authoritative-sounding voices scold you for being selfish if you don’t play, but people were still like “No thank you I’d still prefer play one of those other games where I don’t get punched in the face at all.” I can’t understand it."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

Totally worth a click and a full read:

It’s Biden’s World

Biden was one of the key architects of the bankrupty bill, which made it impossible to declare bankruptcy on student loans. The result of the bankruptcy bill is that millenials and zoomers who went to university and don’t have rich parents can’t own a house and many have decided they can’t afford families. They expect to live in poverty for decades as a result. (Not going to university means you can’t even apply for good jobs.)

Biden pushed hard for three-strikes laws, the drug wars, and so on. He is responsible for completely destroying entire generations of poor black men and gutting inner cities. Biden has repeatedly tried to cut social security. He didn’t just vote for war with Iraq, he pushed the lie that Iraq had WMD, and worked hard to promote approval for the war. He actively helped repeal Glass-Steagall, setting up the 2007/8 financial crisis that caused a ten-year long “recession” for ordinary people.

We live in Joe Biden’s world. Joe Biden was there every step of the way, creating a world in which young people live in poverty, poor black (and white) men are in prison, and in which the rich get richer and everyone else scrambles to even keep up.

By any rational consideration, Biden is a bad man. Evil, even. ...

People supported Sanders so ferociously because his policies meant they could actually have health care they could use (Medicare-for-all) and might be able to not spend decades in debt, and thus start families and maybe even own a home. In other words, Sanders policies would make them more likely to NOT DIE and to be able to live a decent life. Biden’s policies do not do that. Period. So when you see upset Sanders supporters, understand that they’re angry that people who voted Biden don’t seem to care if they die or live in poverty. ...

Democrats like Biden are people who have done literal incalculable harm to both Americans and foreigners throughout their careers. Those who prefer Biden to Sanders are people who want more evil done than good, claiming that it is less evil than Trump would do (which it may well be, especially if you’re American). But they don’t actually want good. They aren’t, on the whole, in favor of doing good. They are, on the whole, in favor of doing evil. (No, no, don’t tell me about Biden’s platform. His record is what matters.)

Glenn Greenwald shoots down a big argument of voter scolds, click the link for extensive data and analysis.

Nonvoters Are Not Privileged. They Are Disproportionately Lower-Income, Non-White and Dissatisfied With The Two Parties.

Not even twenty-four hours have elapsed since Bernie Sanders announced that he was suspending his presidential run, and already a shaming campaign has been launched against those who are contemplating abstaining from voting due to dissatisfaction with the two major-party candidates. The premise invoked for this tactic is that only those who are sufficiently “privileged” have the luxury of choosing not to vote — meaning that nonvoters are rich and white and thus largely immune from the harmful consequences of a Trump presidency, which largely fall on the backs of poorer and non-white Americans.

This tactic rests on a caricature: it is designed to suggest that the only people who make a deliberate and conscious choice not to vote due to dissatisfaction are white trust-fund leftists whose wealth, status and privilege immunize them from the consequences of abstention. By contrast, this you-must-vote campaign insists, those who lack such luxuries — poorer voters and racial and ethnic minorities — understand that voting is imperative. This assertion about the identity and motives of nonvoters is critical not only to try to bully and coerce people into voting by associating nonvoting with rich, white privilege, but also to suppress any recognition of how widespread the dissatisfaction is for both parties and the political system generally among poor and non-white citizens.

But the problem with this claim is a rather significant one: it is based on the outright, demonstrable falsehood that those who choose not to vote are primarily rich, white and thus privileged, while those who lack those privileges — voters of color and poorer voters — are unwilling to abstain. ... The truth is exactly the opposite. Those who choose not to vote because of dissatisfaction with the choices offered are disproportionately poorer and non-white, while rich whites vote in far larger percentages. And the data also makes clear that the primary motive for nonvoting among those demographic groups is not voter suppression but a belief that election outcomes do not matter because both parties are corrupt or interested only in the lives of the wealthy.

Thus, those who try to demean, malign and shame non-voters are largely attacking poorer voters and voters of color, not the New York and California leftist trust-funders of their imagination. ...

Whatever else is true, those who make the choice to abstain from voting in presidential and midterm elections are overwhelmingly anything but “privileged.” The claim that they are is deliberate disinformation spread by the political and media elite class to suppress the reality of their own systemic failures when it comes to serving the needs of the vast majority of the population and to try to shame, rather than persuade, disaffected people to vote for their candidate.

US ‘Disinformation’ Claims Do Exactly What Enemies Are Accused of: Distract From Covid-19 Failures

The official Covid-19 death toll in the United States continues to climb, now exceeding 14,000, with at least hundreds of thousands more infected. Under these circumstances, the federal government has found it opportune to reignite the “Fake News” scare, censuring two familiar foes: Russia and China.

Before most in the West began worrying about the coronavirus, Agence France-Presse (2/23/20) asserted, with the US State Department as its sole source, that the Kremlin had been disseminating “anti-Western” information about the pathogen on social media in order to subvert Washington. Shortly after, the Washington Post (3/5/20) declared that “swarms of online, false personas” from Russia peddled “conspiracy theories” about Covid-19 in the US, again citing the State Department. The New York Times (3/28/20) followed with an ostensible bombshell report that Russia and China sought to “sow doubts about the United States’ handling of the crisis and deflect attention from their own struggles with the pandemic.”

Curiously, none of these articles presented proof of such nefarious online activity, instead relying chiefly on commentary and “unreleased reports” from US intelligence officials and neoconservative projects like the Alliance for Securing Democracy. An additional Washington Post story (2/29/20) reported that the State Department had discovered millions of suspicious tweets,

raising the specter that foreign governments or other malicious actors may have deliberately tried to sow fear and discord about the international health emergency—much as Russian agents had done during the 2016 presidential election in the United States.

Yet the Post by its own account found neither evidence nor so much as a mention of Russia in the State Department documents it reviewed—a lack of documentation that, in theory, should have precluded the article’s publication.

While the foreign misinformation in question isn’t clear, the purpose of the domestic narratives surrounding said misinformation is. If these reports are to be believed, the US is an innocent victim of smears by overseas actors who thwart its attempts at beneficence.

February’s Agence France-Presse article, for example, blamed the “disinformation campaign” for instilling suspicion of the West in people in Africa and Asia, thus hindering the US’s ability to effectively respond to Covid-19 outbreaks. The reality, of course, is that the US isn’t exactly known for its history of altruism toward Africa and Asia, and any distrust of the West on those continents existed long before the pandemic’s onset. That, however, hasn’t deterred the State Department, or its media stenographers, in their quest for an easy scapegoat.

Relatedly, the New York Times (3/28/20) contended that China has amplified multiple anti-US conspiracy theories in Africa and the West, and now threatens to betray its potential Covid-related détente with the peace-seeking United States. Yet China hasn’t indicated that it wouldn’t cooperate with the US on Covid-19 containment efforts. Quite the contrary: China has provided New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and other US states with gloves, N95 masks, gowns and other medical supplies, continuing to manufacture healthcare equipment as it recovers from the epidemic (New York Times, 3/29/20).

Russia, too, recently sent ventilators, personal protective equipment and other desperately needed supplies to the US, despite the sanctions imposed on it by the US. Unwilling to accept this as anything other than an opportunistic ploy, CNN (4/2/20) described the delivery as a “propaganda win for the Kremlin” that left the story’s sole sources — former State Department officials and US think-tank top brass—“mystified” and “bemused.”

There’s a patent irony here: The State Department is impugning enemies in order to distract from its own policy failures—exactly what it’s accusing those enemies of.

The US has known of the threat of the virus since at least late December 2019, when the World Health Organization was first informed of a “pneumonia of unknown cause” in China. Soon after, leading Western media reported that a “pneumonia-like” illness had infected residents of the Chinese province of Hubei (Bloomberg, 1/4/20; New York Times, 1/6/20; Washington Post, 1/7/20; NBC News, 1/9/20). In January, China swiftly marshaled government resources to construct dedicated hospitals with isolation units (CGTN, 1/24/20; New York Times, 3/19/20) and developed a regimen of quarantines, travel restrictions and comprehensive testing. As of mid-March, new cases had slowed dramatically, with estimates that its methods prevented cases from increasing by 67-fold (Nature, 3/17/20). On April 7, China reported no new deaths from Covid-19 (BBC, 4/7/20).

Despite the many lessons the US could have learned from China, the US has floundered in its response. The Trump administration has effectively refused to implement Covid-related public-health policies on the federal level, deferring to the sluggish, fragmented and inconsistent mandates of state and municipal governments. Meanwhile, deaths, new cases and unemployment continue to surge; testing is woefully limited; and hospitals are strangulated. Pointing the proverbial finger at Official State Enemies—particularly China, whose approach has garnered acclaim from the World Health Organization, and which is poised to emerge from this crisis economically far stronger than the US—thus serves as a highly necessary distraction.

Given the media’s tenor regarding China’s victories, this might not come as a surprise. With some exceptions (New York Times, 3/4/20, 3/13/20; Bloomberg, 3/11/20), Western media are still largely loath to acknowledge the success of China’s approach, continuing to insist that the country is minimizing its death counts based on “secret” US intelligence reports (Bloomberg, 4/1/20; Foreign Policy, 4/1/20; New York, 4/1/20; see FAIR.org, 4/2/20). Interestingly, none of these articles mentioned that the US’s aforementioned testing deficiencies are most likely rendering a massive undercount of Covid-19 cases and deaths.

Bloomberg and New York, however, made sure to attribute the US’s lack of preparedness in part to China’s alleged undercounts—citing Deborah Birx, an immunologist employed by none other than the US State Department.

System Update With Glenn Greenwald - Edward Snowden, Andray Domise and Cassie King

Lawsuit Aims to Stop Baltimore Police From Using War-Zone Surveillance System to Spy on Residents

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on Thursday to stop the Baltimore Police Department from testing one of the most expansive surveillance regimes in any American city, an aerial photography system capable of tracking the outdoor movement of every one of its 600,000 residents. Last week the Baltimore Board of Estimates approved a police contract with Persistent Surveillance Systems LLC to let the company and police fly three airplanes outfitted with high-resolution cameras over the city. According to the contract, the imaging systems can photograph up to 32 square miles every second, allowing for the slow-motion reconstruction of virtually all outdoor movement.

Baltimore police representatives have previously stated that the intent of the Aerial Investigation Research program is for the planes to fly simultaneously, allowing them to record imaging for 90 percent of the city.

In their complaint, lawyers for the ACLU call the system a “society-changing threat to individual privacy and to free association” and argue that it violates constitutional rights to privacy and free association.

“The data collected through the AIR program will amount to a comprehensive record of the movements of Plaintiffs and nearly everyone in Baltimore — facilitating an unprecedented police power to engage in retrospective location-tracking,” the complaint says. “The AIR program would put into place the most wide-reaching surveillance dragnet ever employed in an American city, giving [Baltimore police] a virtual, visual time machine whose grasp no person can escape.”

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a community organization called Leaders for a Beautiful Struggle, which has advocated for racial justice and police reform in the city, as well as by two other Baltimore activists and community organizers. The ACLU argues that constant aerial surveillance would “undermine the ability of LBS to carry out political activities crucial to its mission.”

Noam Chomsky on Trump’s Disastrous Coronavirus Response, Bernie Sanders & What Gives Him Hope

Warning Pelosi and Schumer Against 'Inadequate Half-Measures,' Progressives Demand People-First Coronavirus Relief

With the U.S. economy in free-fall as the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread across the nation, progressives are warning Democratic congressional leaders against caving to GOP demands for yet another business-friendly relief measure that would do little to alleviate the financial pain of frontline workers and the unemployed.

In a joint statement on Wednesday, advocacy groups Indivisible, MoveOn, and Community Change Action said they are "deeply alarmed" at the possibility that that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "are acquiescing to severely inadequate half-measures" proposed by the Trump White House.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on Tuesday asked Congress for an additional $250 billion to replenish a small business loan program—created as part of a stimulus package passed last month—that has thus far been marred by confusion and delays.

In a statement Wednesday, Pelosi and Schumer indicated that they would accept the $250 billion funding increase request if the legislation also includes an increase in funding for hospitals, states, and federal nutrition assistance—a proposal that progressives criticized as woefully insufficient.

On Thursday, Senate Democrats blocked an attempt by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to pass by unanimous consent a GOP-crafted bill that included only the White House's demand for more small business funding. Senate Republicans subsequently stopped Sen. Chris Van Hollen's (D-Md.) effort to push through Democrats' alternative legislation.

Indivisible, MoveOn, and Community Change Action warned that the White House and McConnell are "trying to force a business-only measure that completely ignores the needs of American families."

"We need more from Democratic leaders," the groups said. "We call on Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer to use the profound power they hold in this moment to provide solutions that will save lives and help families survive this crisis."

A diverse coalition of hundreds of progressive organizations is demanding that Democrats propose a "People's Bailout" that adheres to the following five principles:

1. Health is the top priority, for all people, with no exceptions;
2. Economic relief must be provided directly to the people;
3. Rescue workers and communities, not corporate executives;
4. Make a downpayment on a regenerative economy while preventing future crises; and
5. Protect our democratic process while protecting each other.

"The Democratic leadership needs to listen to their own constituents—their pain, anxiety, and outrage," Indivisible's national policy director Angel Padilla said in a statement Wednesday. "This is a crisis of unprecedented scale, and Democrats need to use the full power of the House to advance solutions that match the needs of the moment. We expect to see a bill following the principles of the People's Bailout."

More at the link.

The New York Fed, Owned by Multinational Banks, Is Nationalizing Capital Markets

For the first time in the history of the Federal Reserve, it has signed on to a plan with Congress to nationalize the unmanageable debts of global banks and other multinational corporations and put the U.S. taxpayer on the hook for the losses. Conducting the bulk of these programs will be the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, known as the New York Fed, which is a private institution owned by (wait for it) multinational banks.

Because the New York Fed is owned by multinational banks and is allowed to create trillions of dollars out of thin air to conduct bailouts of global banks and multinational corporations since it created this precedent in 2008, it is effectively functioning as a multinational central bank with the Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C. and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell little more than titular props for what’s really going on.

According to the language in the recent stimulus bill (CARES Act) passed by Congress and signed into law by President Trump, together with an interview Fed Chairman Jerome Powell gave to the Today show on March 26, the nationalization of bad debts will work like this: the U.S. Treasury will hand $454 billion of taxpayers’ money to the Federal Reserve. The Fed will, in turn, hand the bulk of this money to the New York Fed. The New York Fed will then create Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) using the $454 billion as loss absorbing capital (equity) to leverage its purchases of bad debts to $4.54 trillion. Ostensibly, if debt markets keep sinking and the New York Fed needs to buy up more bad debts from the global banks and multinational corporations, Congress and the U.S. Treasury will put the U.S. into ever deeper debt to oblige our multinational overlords. (Before the last financial crisis, U.S. national debt stood at $11 trillion. It has more than doubled in a dozen years to the current $24 trillion. Much of that growth resulted from fiscal stimulus measures to shore up the U.S. economy that multinational banks on Wall Street destroyed in 2008.)

Nearly Third Of Country Didn’t Pay Rent!

US unemployment rises 6.6m in a week as coronavirus takes its toll

More than 6.6 million Americans lost their jobs last week, with 16 million jobs gone in the past three weeks, as the coronavirus pandemic brought the US economy to a standstill.

Millions of Americans filed for unemployment benefits again last week, the US labor department confirmed on Thursday, as shutdowns across the US led employers to lay off workers in nearly every corner of the market. Economists had expected 5.25 million Americans to file for unemployment benefits for the week ending 4 April.

In the previous two weeks the shutdowns cost close to 10 million people their jobs. Layoffs that started in the restaurant and leisure industries have now spread to include manufacturing, construction and even healthcare.

The astonishing pace of losses means more people have been put out of work in the last three weeks than in the two years of the last recession. Job losses are rising in every state and economists are predicting the unemployment rate will soon reach 15% or higher, levels unseen since before the second world war.

McDonald’s Workers Strike Across Country & Block Drive Thru’s

IMF chief flags up grim global economic forecast

The head of the International Monetary Fund has warned that all but a handful of the organisation’s 189 member states will suffer falling standards of living this year as a result of the worst global economic crisis since the 1930s. Kristalina Georgieva said the sudden onset of the Covid-19 pandemic meant the IMF’s new forecasts for the world economy were going to be grim when released next week – and there was a risk that the impact could be even worse than currently expected. She said more than 170 countries will suffer a reversal of living standards in 2020. ...

Georgieva said the crisis knew no geographic boundaries and the “bleak outlook” applied to advanced and developing economies alike. “Everybody hurts. Given the necessary containment measures to slow the spread of the virus, the world economy is taking a substantial hit.” She added, however, that the pandemic was likely to hit vulnerable countries hardest, adding that more than 90 nations had now sought help from the IMF in recent weeks following a fall in demand, more expensive borrowing and a drop in commodity prices.

Capital flight from emerging market economies – seen as risky by investors during crises – had amounted to about $100bn (£80bn) in the last two months – more than three times the outflows seen during the financial crisis of 2008.

Matt Taibbi: Why this bailout is worse than 2008

'Unforgettable' Footage of Endless Line of Cars at Food Banks a Stark Illustration of Coronavirus Crisis in US

Images and video of miles of cars lined up at food banks in San Antonio and other cities across the U.S. present a striking example of the economic effects of the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, which has thrown at least 16 million Americans out of work in recent weeks and increased pressure on the distribution centers to provide key staples for a flood of needy people in the country.

"Unforgettable image: thousands of cars lined up at a San Antonio food bank today, the desperate families inside kept safely apart," tweeted CNN senior editor Amanda Katz. "Breadline, 2020."

Unforgettable image: thousands of cars lined up at a San Antonio food bank today, the desperate families inside kept safely apart. Breadline, 2020. https://t.co/PnKWQijwPa pic.twitter.com/SJOmeLgymD

— Amanda Katz (@katzish) April 10, 2020

On Thursday, San Antonio Food Bank creative manager Robert R. Fike posted a time-lapse video of the line of cars waiting to get supplies.

This is what I saw. Blistering heat. Folks in line since 7pm the night before. To get food. Hundreds of volunteers busting it to serve, so families could go home (probably to pass some out to their neighbors too) & get the nourishment they need.

This is the COVID-19 Crisis. pic.twitter.com/CL8Be0wNwI

— Robert R. Fike (@robfike) April 9, 2020

"It was a rough one today," San Antonio Food Bank president and CEO Eric Cooper told the San Antonio Express News. "We have never executed on as large of a demand as we are now." ...

Se. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), an outspoken advocate for economic relief efforts, tweeted on Friday that the scenes from food banks were indicative of the need for immediate Congressional action.

"It is outrageous that in the richest country in the history of the world, people are going hungry," said Sanders.

It is outrageous that in the richest country in the history of the world, people are going hungry. Congress must radically increase food assistance programs and offer grocery delivery options to ensure all people are able to eat safely during this crisis. https://t.co/zkvsGFdHOA

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) April 10, 2020

According to the New York Times, food banks across the country are facing funding shortfalls in the face of increasing demand despite donations from the superrich:

Feeding America, the nation's largest network of food banks, with more than 200 affiliates, has projected a $1.4 billion shortfall in the next six months alone. Last week, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, announced that he was donating $100 million to the group—the largest single donation in its history, but still less than a tenth of what it needs.

In January 2019, Business Insider calculated Bezos makes roughly $4,474,885 every hour, making his donation to Feeding America the equivalent of around 22-and-a-half hours of passive wealth generation.

San Antonio was not the only city to see record numbers of people seeking help and miles of cars waiting for food. Pittsburgh, Inglewood, Chicago, and Sunrise, Florida were among cities with packed roads leading to local facilities and massive amounts of food to be distributed.

'Imagine Having Ability to Do This All Along, and Choosing Not to': Eli Lilly Cuts Cost of Insulin Amid Covid-19 Outbreak

Rep. Ilhan Omar on Wednesday was among skeptics of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly's move to reduce the price of insulin during the coronavirus outbreak who pointed out that the company's refusal to do so in the past has cost thousands of people their lives despite the ease with which it apparently could have cut prices.

"Imagine having the ability to do this all along, and choosing not to while people died," Omar tweeted Wednesday evening.

Imagine having the ability to do this all along, and choosing not to while people died.

Unconscionable! https://t.co/OCI8zy8wXT

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) April 8, 2020

Eli Lilly announced Tuesday it will cap the co-pay cost of the drug at $35 for the duration of the coronavirus, or COVID-19, crisis, the company's senior vice president Mike Mason said in a statement.

"Too many people in the U.S. have lost their jobs because of the COVID-19 crisis, and we want to make sure no one goes without their Lilly insulin," said Mason.

The deal will not apply to those on "government insurance such as Medicaid, Medicare, Medicare Part D, or any State Patient or Pharmaceutical Assistance Program, according to CNBC.

The price change comes after sustained criticism of Eli Lilly and other pharmaceutical companies which have kept the price for insulin, a life-saving drug for people suffering from diabetes, at artificially inflated prices that have left many patients unable to afford the medication.

As The Hill reported:

Insulin prices spiked nearly 100 percent between 2012 and 2016, often costing thousands of dollars even for insured people with high-deductible plans, leading to sharp criticism from politicians including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) of Lilly and its fellow insulin manufacturers Sanofi and Novo Nordisk.

Stories of preventable deaths from diabetics rationing or an inability to purchase the medicine have been a constant feature of media healthcare coverage over the past few years, leading critics of Eli Lilly to point out the company's decision to keep prices high in the past was not easily swept under the table by Tuesday's announcement.

New 'Appalling' Rejection of Asylum-Seekers Shows Trump Admin Using Covid-19 to Do What It 'Always Wanted'

Under the cover of the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump has escalated his administration's immigration crackdown by harnessing a federal law allowing Border Patrol agents to expel migrants seeking asylum without process for their claims, new reporting reveals.

"This is cruel and unnecessary. We cannot allow the administration to use the COVID-19 pandemic to demolish our tradition of asylum—any national response must be based in science, not racism and xenophobia," the ACLU wrote on Twitter of the move last Friday.

The new rule took effect March 20, as the Associated Press and ProPublica—which first reported on the move—detailed.

The regulation takes advantage of provisions of the Public Health Service Act empowering the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to bar people who could pose "a serious danger" by bringing in a communicable disease entry to the U.S.

The U.S. has the highest number of COVID-19 cases in the world—over 432,000 as of this writing.

A Border Patrol memo leaked to @propublica has directed agents to send migrants who cross the border back immediately, ignoring U.S. asylum laws. https://t.co/cm9LpPBTsu pic.twitter.com/IvdxGplpbV

— ProPublica (@propublica) April 3, 2020

An estimated 7,000 migrants have already been expelled to Mexico in the last two weeks.

US newspapers face 'extinction-level' crisis as Covid-19 hits hard

As journalists across the US scramble to cover the impact of the coronavirus, they are grappling with a bitter irony: as demand for their stories soars, the decline of the business model that funds them is speeding up catastrophically.

The devastating sweep of Covid-19 is the biggest story in a generation, and for most newspapers and news sites it has triggered record numbers of readers. Yet the virus, industry experts warn, will spell the end for “hundreds” of those organizations, laying off journalists and closing titles.

Media outlets across the US have already responded to a huge drop in advertising triggered by the economic shutdown by sacking scores of employees. Some newspapers, just as demand is at its highest, have stopped printing – reverting to a digital-only operation that is just as vulnerable to the whims of advertisers.

The decrease in advertising was swift, as businesses tightened spending due to the economic impact of Covid-19. For a journalism industry already barely scraping by, the impact was almost immediate. ...

Penny Abernathy, the Knight chair in journalism and digital media economics at the University of North Carolina, predicts a swath of newspapers and websites will close. “I think there’ll be hundreds, not dozens,” Abernathy said. “An extinction-level event will probably hit the smaller ones really hard, as well as the ones that are part of the huge chains.”

Krystal and Saagar laugh at Biden's WEAK attempt to woo left, TYT audience on the fence about Joe

Biden Is Courting Bernie Voters With a New Plan to Forgive College Debt

On his first day as the presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden made a pair of major shifts to the left seemingly aimed at wooing Bernie Sanders and his former supporters. Biden made his first major policy overture to Sanders on Thursday, moving left on both healthcare coverage and college affordability as he looks to woo Sanders’ younger and more liberal supporters as well as to reframe his campaign’s policies to cope with recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

The first new proposal is a major shift for Biden: He now says he wants to forgive federal student loan debt for most people who attended undergraduate public colleges and universities, as well as Historically Black Colleges and other minority-serving institutions. Anyone making under $125,000 a year would be eligible. ...

The Medicare proposal is also a significant step to the left as well. He now wants anyone age 60 and over to be able to sign up for Medicare without any additional costs, a major expansion of a program currently limited to those age 65 and over. A Biden spokesman says this would be a full expansion — not a buy-in to Medicare, like Biden has long proposed through a “public option” expansion of Obamacare for anyone.

Krystal Ball: We have a terrible choice in 2020, two fake populists

Medicare for All Advocates Warn Biden That Lowering Age to 60 Solves Nothing

Progressives on Thursday were quick to call foul after it was reported that Joe Biden, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, put forth a pair of policy proposals—one lowering the Medicare age to 60 and the other a student debt relief program—purportedly designed to win over supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders who instead saw the plans as woefully insufficient.

"We have to do more to ease the economic burden on working people," Biden said in a tweet announcing the plan. "So today, I'm adopting two new policies to help deliver relief."

We have to do more to ease the economic burden on working people. So today, I'm adopting two new policies to help deliver relief. As president, I will:

- Lower Medicare eligibility to age 60
- Forgive student debt for low-income and middle class families https://t.co/wtMnhJdCaR

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) April 9, 2020

"That he's willing to shift on these issues after telling us they were 'pie-in-the-sky' indicates that we can go further," tweeted Briahna Joy Gray, Sanders' campaign press secretary.

Gray's optimism, however, was not shared by everyone on the left. In a lengthy Facebook essay reacting to the proposals, CUNY professor Corey Robin questioned how Biden could hope to pass anything approximating his plans through Congress.

"The rule of politics is you never get 100% of what you want," said Robin, adding, "Our sense of political time is not keeping up with actual time, and I find the euphoria of complacency and incrementalism totally mystifying."

Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman of the Washington Post broke the story Thursday, reporting that Biden was announcing the shift in policy as a way to show Sanders supporters that what he now supports is "significantly more liberal than what he supported when he was vice president."

As Sargent and Waldman explained, the policy proposals show that Biden and his campaign are acknowledging the political reality that Sanders and his movement have changed the national conversation around domestic politics:

There will, of course, be many Sanders supporters who will see these proposals as insufficient, and there's a reasonable case to be made for that position. But you could also see them as a validation of Sanders' entire strategy.

Sanders ran for president not just to win, but also to get his ideas in wide circulation and pull the Democratic Party to the left. And that’s precisely what's happening. The party is going to nominate a candidate with establishment roots and centrist instincts, but that candidate is adapting his policy agenda to move in Sanders' direction.

In an email to the Post, Economic Policy Institute director of research Josh Bivens said the overtures were further proof that the Sanders effect on the party was real and making a difference.

"Both of these ideas represent really welcome U-turns from what was damaging conventional wisdom even in big swaths of the Democratic Party for years," wrote Bivens.

But other progressives were skeptical, at best, of the content of Biden's proposals, calling the Medicare age rollback in particular a transparent attempt to placate concerns over the former vice president's commitment to single-payer healthcare that would benefit the private insurance industry more than taxpayers.

"These policies are what I would expect from Republicans," tweeted anthropolgist and political activist Michael Oman-Reagan. "This is not a 'big overture' by any stretch of the imagination."

PNHP president-elect Dr. Susan Rogers, in exclusive comment to Common Dreams, said that Biden's so-called "big" gesture is simply not sufficient to address the healthcare crisis in the country, especially now that the coronavirus outbreak has paralyzed the economy and thrown millions out of work—and off of employer-provided insurance.

"One of the main benefits of Medicare for All is that it uncouples health coverage from employment, which is even more urgent now as our system of job-based private insurance is crumbling beneath our feet," said Rogers. "Reducing Medicare eligibility to age 60 does not resolve the underlying problem for the vast majority of working Americans and their families."

Saagar Enjeti: Have Progressives Given Up On Dem Establishment, Biden?

Democratic pro-Israel group takes credit for Sanders dropping out, fundraises off keeping Dem platform pro-Israel

The lobby group Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) sent out an email this morning, celebrating the fact that Bernie Sanders dropped out of the presidential race and gearing its supporters up for a fight to keep the Democratic platform pro-Israel.

The email, which was written by DMFI President Mark Mellman, takes partial credit for Sanders’s departure. “Bernie Sanders suspended his campaign for president,” Mellman, “That’s a big victory — one you helped bring about.”

Before Iowa’s January caucus, DMFI did run a series of anti-Sanders ads in Iowa, but the Vermont Sanders won the state’s popular vote anyway. The group spent more than $800,000 on the ads and the effort helped Sanders raise $1.3 million in just one day.

Mellman declares that the lobbying organization’s next battle will be over the Democratic platform. “Extreme groups aligned with Sanders, as well as some of his top surrogates — including Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar — have publicly declared an effort to make the platform anti-Israel,” he writes. Mellman points out that, while some people dismiss the importance of party platforms, the GOP effectively became an anti-abortion party after modifying its platform in 1976. “As a career political professional, I will tell you that if Democrats adopt an anti-Israel platform this year, the vocabulary, views, and votes of politicians will shift against us dramatically,” writes Mellman, “We simply can’t afford to lose this battle.”

Nathan Robinson explains his feud with Vox on why the left doesn't owe Biden anything

After 'Civic Catastrophe' in Wisconsin, Congress Urged to Fully Fund National Vote-by-Mail for November

Calls are mounting from rights advocates for Congress to fully fund a nationwide shift to mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic after a "civic catastrophe" in Wisconsin Tuesday, when the state's Republican legislative leaders and Supreme Court forced people to vote in-person despite the serious threat to public health.

Aquene Freechild, co-director of Public Citizen's Democracy Is For People Campaign, said in a statement earlier this week that the situation in Wisconsin highlighted the need for the country to better prepare for the general election in November.

"Every voter deserves a chance to cast their ballot safely by mail, drop box or curbside, or to be able to vote early," she said. "Forcing voters to choose between preserving their health and casting a ballot is unconscionable."

Make no mistake: The GOP has weaponized the coronavirus.

Be prepared for this to happen all across America this November. https://t.co/9SuiPxhV2U

— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) April 8, 2020

Echoing Freechild, Common Cause president Karen Hobert Flynn declared Wednesday that "every American deserves to have their voice heard on election day, but voters should never be forced to risk their personal safety in order to cast a ballot."

"The decision to hold an in-person election in Wisconsin yesterday was reckless and irresponsible, endangering the lives of tens of thousands of Wisconsinites and needlessly disenfranchising thousands more," she added. "Congress must investigate this matter thoroughly and look for ways to ensure something like what happened yesterday is not repeated in November or ever again.”

Common Cause sent a letter (pdf) to the Committee on House Administration and the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, urging those committees' Democratic and Republican leaders to hold emergency hearings on how Wisconsin and other states have handled elections during the ongoing virus outbreak.

"The sight of residents in Milwaukee, Green Bay, Waukesha, and other cities standing in lines that extended blocks amidst a pandemic was both inspiring and heartbreaking because it never should have happened," said Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin. "The people of Wisconsin deserve better and America deserves answers in order to ensure this is never allowed to happen again."

Critics Decry 'Massive Step in Wrong Direction' as Big Banks Move to Buy Up Fracking Industry Assets With Coronavirus Bailout Funds

Climate advocates are slamming banking interests after a report Thursday revealed that JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Citigroup are planning to take over distressed oil and gas companies assets in the wake of an industry collapse, likely by using new access to federal bailout money included in the coronavirus relief package passed by Congress.

"It's never been more obvious that fossil fuels are a bad investment, and yet rather than following their supposed commitments to climate action, these big banks are doubling down on their toxic investments and getting directly into the fossil fuel business," Sierra Club campaign representative Ben Cushing said in a statement.

As Reuters reported Thursday, the decision by the banks to look into taking over oil and gas companies comes in the wake of oil price drops in March that have led to the potential for fossil fuel companies to go bankrupt under the strain of the collapse of the fracking industry. 

"This development exposes the central role of banks in fossil fuels and clearly illustrates the riskiness of fossil finance," said Rainforest Action Network senior campaigner Jason Opeña Disterhoft.

Jamie Dimon running fracking companies is the hellish detour on this timeline I probably should have but honestly did not see coming https://t.co/jgB15RJ2Xh

— Kate Aronoff (@KateAronoff) April 9, 2020

According to Reuters:

Oil and gas companies working in shale basins from Texas to Wyoming are saddled with debt.

The industry is estimated to owe more than $200 billion to lenders through loans backed by oil and gas reserves. As revenue has plummeted and assets have declined in value, some companies are saying they may be unable to repay.

[...]

If banks do not retain bankrupt assets, they might be forced to sell them for pennies on the dollar at current prices. The companies they are setting up could manage oil and gas assets until conditions improve enough to sell at a meaningful value.

"So Chase and Wells Fargo want to cut out the middleman and go into the oil business, directly destroying the climate?" 350.org founder Bill McKibben said in a statement Friday. "Greed does weird things to your mind and your heart."

For banks to take over the oil and gas companies, economic journalist Doug Henwood told Common Dreams Friday, they will be using assurances of funding from the Federal Reserve included in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act passed in March to combat the COVID-19 outbreak. Henwood said he found it "appalling" that public money from the CARES Act could be used for bailing out oil and gas companies.

"Our bankruptcy laws have several purposes," said Henwood. "One is to save a business that is otherwise healthy that just has too much debt. Wipe out some of the debt, and the business can come back. But some businesses should just be wound down, and bankruptcy is an orderly way to do that. That's the case for fracking, which makes neither economic nor ecological sense. "

"Fracking requires huge, high-risk investments and the wells can run dry before all the bills are paid," Henwood continued. "It's a filthy business in itself, poisoning the groundwater. And when the fuel it yields is burned, it fills the air with carbon. We should be phasing out carbon as quickly as possible, and fracking is an excellent place to start. By all means, support displaced workers and communities, but let these monsters go under."

Opec and Russia agree to cut oil output in bid to prop up prices

Opec and its allies led by Russia agreed on Thursday to cut their oil output by more than a fifth and said they expected the United States and other producers to join in their effort to prop up prices hammered in the coronavirus crisis.

The cuts by the oil cartel plus its allies, a group known as Opec+, amount to 10m barrels per day (bpd), or 10% of global supplies. Reductions of 5m bpd are expected to come from other nations to help navigate the deepest oil crisis in decades.

Global fuel demand has plunged by around 30m bpd, or 30% of global supplies, as steps to fight the virus have grounded planes, cut vehicle usage and curbed economic activity.

An unprecedented 15m bpd cut still would not remove enough crude to stop the world’s storage facilities quickly filling up. And far from signalling any readiness to offer support, the US president, Donald Trump, has threatened Opec with sanctions if it does not fix the oil market’s problem of oversupply.

Trump, who has said US output was already falling due to low prices, warned Riyadh it could face tariffs on its oil if it did not cut enough to help the US oil industry, whose higher costs have left it struggling with low prices.

Bill would remove U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia in 30 days

A Republican U.S. senator introduced legislation on Thursday to remove American troops from Saudi Arabia, adding pressure on the kingdom to tighten its oil taps to reverse the crude price drop that has hurt domestic energy companies.

The legislation from Senator Bill Cassidy, of oil-producing Louisiana, would remove U.S. troops 30 days after enactment, a full month faster than similar legislation introduced by two other Republican senators in March.

Cassidy introduced the bill as OPEC+, a production group including Saudi Arabia and others in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies including Russia, closed in on a deal to slash oil output by a record amount of about 15 million barrels, or 15% of global production.

The extra oil from Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, has made it impossible for energy companies in the United States, the world’s top oil and gas producer, to compete, Cassidy said.

“Withdrawing troops placed to protect others recognizes that friendship and support is a two-way street,” he said.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

It’s a Scandal That We Don’t Know Who Supported the Coronavirus Bailout. Help Us Find Out.

Coronavirus Stimulus Law Allows the Federal Reserve to Hold Secret Meetings on Corporate Bailouts

Fed Chair Powell Tells Whoppers This Morning on the Brookings Institution Webcast

The inequality virus: how the pandemic hit America's poorest

Hill reporter: How Pelosi is controlling the next bailout package

Progressive Caucus Demands Pelosi Unveil Bold Coronavirus Package That Includes $2,000 Monthly Cash Payments, Vote-by-Mail

Sanders and Jayapal Put Forth Bill to Provide No-Cost 'Health Care for All During Pandemic'

"Who Cares? Let 'Em Get Wiped Out": Stunning CNBC Anchor, Venture Capitalist Says Let Hedge Funds Fail and Save Main Street

As Small Businesses in US Face Coronavirus Doomsday, Big Insurers Say: We Can't Save You. We Won't Save You.

Snowden Warns Governments Are Using Coronavirus to Build 'the Architecture of Oppression'

Have Australia and New Zealand stopped Covid-19 in its tracks?

The Deadly Vanessa Baraitser

Kyle Kulinski: What went wrong for the Sanders campaign

Bernie campaign aide cites Tucker Carlson, admits they were too soft on Joe Biden

Pairing 'Green Deal' With 'Just Recovery' in EU, Groups Embrace Tackling COVID-19 and Climate Emergency in Tandem

Trump Advances Climate Doom With Massive Fracking Expansion on Federal Lands in Colorado

'A disastrous situation': mountains of food wasted as coronavirus scrambles supply chain

'Unprecedented Threat' for East Africa as Larger Second Wave of Locust Crisis Arrives Amid Pandemic

The Real Conspiracy: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

A Little Night Music

Bob Brozman - Never Hit The Same Place Twice

Bob Brozman - Hula Blues

Bob Brozman - Dream about my gal

Bob Brozman - Honeymoon Blues

Bob Brozman - Backwards Blues

Bob Brozman - Come On In My Kitchen

Bob Brozman - Chopping Wood Blues

Bob Brozman - Down the road

Bob Brozman - Stack O Lee Aloha