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Farmworkers: Now “Essential,” but “Denied the Just-Enacted Benefits”
“In fields and rural communities across the United States the nation’s 2.5 million agricultural laborers are waiting for the shoe to drop — for the first cases of coronavirus among farmworkers. As they wait they are already feeling sharply the effects of the measures taken to contain the virus’s spread.”
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Pandemic as Reckoning
Democrats “now want to bargain over all the things Republicans rejected in the first three bills. On a conference call [Monday], House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said her caucus was ‘taking inventory’ on what the public needed, throwing out ideas like a surge of funds for hospitals for personal protective equipment and coronavirus testing, full paid medical leave, more state and local government aid, assistance for overburdened pension funds, guaranteed free treatment of COVID-19 cases for everyone, an OSHA emergency temporary standard to mandate safety rules in workplaces kept open through the crisis, and longer-term goals like a buildout of broadband…
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“U.S. Beats War Drums in Middle East”
“Leaders in Washington and Tehran say they don’t want a full-scale war, but they are playing a dangerous game. And the people of Iraq will suffer the consequences.
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Sick Teen Turned Away for Lack of Insurance Died: Pandemic Reveals “Inefficiency and Inhumanity” of a Broken System
“This one case report of a teen with possible COVID-19 is the tip of the deep, deep iceberg of deaths caused by our fractured and dysfunctional health insurance system. It is profoundly sad that this young man died due to delayed medical care because he lacked insurance. What is untold is the hundreds or thousands like him across the country during this pandemic. And the tens of thousands who die each year in the U.S. because of being uninsured.”
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Escalating Sanctions on Iran and Venezuela During Pandemic a “Crime Against Humanity”
“U.S. sanctions against Iran, which the Trump administration has cruelly strengthened, continue to collectively punish extremely vulnerable people. The United States’ current ‘maximum pressure’ policy severely undermines Iranian efforts to cope with the ravages of COVID-19, causing hardship and tragedy while contributing to the global spread of the disease.”
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Bailout or Corporate Robbery?
“As the world struggles with the pandemic, corrupt corporations like Boeing should be held accountable for their failure to prepare for a known risk, and for their destructive social behavior. That behavior has been lethal at times, and socially destructive at others. In Boeing’s case, passengers died on its 737 MAX, while banks and other corporations ruined millions of people’s lives and cost many people their homes.”
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Does COVID-19 Require Separate Medical Facilities?
“There is a huge disconnect between the personal protective equipment healthcare workers (HCWs) should be wearing to protect themselves from coronavirus, and what actually exists right now for them to use. The White House has told the governors to find their own supplies. The equipment market is in chaos. Nurses and doctors deserve congratulations for their bravery and commitment to continue working, even without adequate protective equipment. CDC is now telling them to make their own equipment. But Kaiser Permanente threatened to fire nurses for wearing their own N95 respirators.”
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Trump to Us: Drop Dead
“Tuesday, Donald Trump floated the idea of ending the stay-at-home guidance currently widely in effect to suppress COVID-19 transmission. This strategy is central to the critical goal to ‘flatten the curve’ — aiming to sharply reduce cases in the short-term to minimize total pandemic cases and also to prevent overwhelming of hospital capacity to handle serious cases.”
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#GeneralStrike?
“It’s dawning on more people how critical their labor is and how little these corporations care about them. The veneer of we’re-going-to-take-care-of-you has dropped away. Health care workers are having their lives endangered by corporate moves.”
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Universal Vote-by-Mail Program Amid Pandemic
“States around the country are pushing back primary and runoff elections in the hope that election procedures can return to normal at a later time,” said Chad Dunn, co-founder of the UCLA Voting Rights Project and co-author of the report. “But hope is not a plan. We must prepare now to protect the fundamental right to vote.”
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“With a tiny staff, it has managed to place on the air and in newspapers, points of view otherwise excluded from the national debate.”
Howard Zinn