Last Call For The State Of The Pandemic, Con't

Here in Kentucky as Gov. Beshear's initiative to increase testing means more cases are being confirmed, the long, slow fight against COVID-19 continues as the state reaches 200 deaths amid 3,800 cases.

Gov. Andy Beshear announced 322 new cases of coronavirus in Kentucky Friday, the largest daily increase so far. Beshear said the increase is partly due to the state’s efforts to expand testing and that he still believes Kentucky is in the “plateau” of the pandemic. 

There are 3,779 confirmed coronavirus cases in Kentucky as of Friday evening. Beshear reported nine new deaths associated with the illness, for a total of 200. 

The governor said the uptick in cases shows that Kentuckians need to keep practicing social distancing guidelines. 

“We’ve got to stay at it, we’ve got to stay strong. This is a reminder, or even a wake up, of what we’re dealing with,” Beshear said. 

Nursing homes have been hit especially hard by the pandemic, with 578 residents and 268 staff testing positive for coronavirus. There have been 91 coronavirus deaths in Kentucky long-term facilities. 

Beshear also announced that an additional 352 state prisoners convicted of non-violent, non-sexual crimes near the end of their sentences have been released from state custody. Beshear said all of the prisoners had five years or fewer remaining on their punishments and that 339 of them were state inmates serving out their punishments in local jails. 

Beshear said it might be possible that some coronavirus restrictions will be lifted by Memorial Day on May 25, but that Kentuckians need to be prepared to still engage in social distancing and wear masks in public. 

“At best we’ll be dealing with a new normal,” Beshear said. “We’ll be able to do many more things, but the way we do them is dramatically changed. I think it’s really important for people to know we will reach something akin to an old normal once we have a vaccine or a very effective treatment.”

Beshear is making it clear this is a marathon, not a sprint.  It's going to be months before we're out of this pandemic, and then years before we can emerge from the economic carnage.  Just about everything will be different in America.  3800 cases and 200 deaths is bad, but Kentucky as an entire state is actually in better shape than neighboring Indiana, where Indianapolis/Marion County by itself has 4250 cases and 217 deaths alone.

The good news is that Kentucky isn't going to repeat the mistakes of Ohio and Michigan.  All Kentuckians will be able to request a mail-in ballot for the June primaries, GOP Secretary of State Michael Adams is fully backing Beshear on this.  Adams is still a Republican, but it seems that with the state in no danger of failing to vote for Trump and 99% certain to vote for McConnell, it's not a fight that the KY GOP figures it has to have now.

Besides, the real fight is going to be the coming massive austerity cuts to the state budget, and it won't be much of a fight with state veto override provisions in the constitution only requiring 50% +1 in the General Assembly and Senate to override anything Beshear does, tying Beshear's hands completely and the KY GOP easily has those numbers, even without the conservative Democrats in rural parts of the state.

It won't be much of a fight.  The cuts Bevin wanted but the KY GOP didn't want to be blamed for will happen thanks to COVID-19 and while Republicans are largely content with their ongoing failed attempts trying to close the state's last abortion clinic, the goal is to pin all of the state's economic woes on Beshear himself.

This era of "cooperation" will not last, I guarantee you that.

Food For Thought

The disruptions in America's food supply chain caused by COVID-19 shutdowns are going to be noticed starting in a few weeks.

Americans could start to see shortages of pork, chicken and beef on grocery shelves as soon as May as major packing plants swept by the coronavirus remain shuttered and the nation’s massive stockpiles of frozen meat begin to dwindle.

Any empty shelves to date have been the result of bumps in the supply chain, with stores being unable to restock as quickly as customers are buying. But bacon, pork chops and ham could be the first to face actual shortages: The amount of frozen pork in storage nationwide — more than 621 million pounds — dropped 4 percent from March to April, the USDA reported this week. Slaughter rates are down 25 percent, and 400,000 animals are backed up in slaughterhouses.

And with meat plants of all kinds operating at 60 percent of capacity, shortages loom for beef and poultry as well. That could also lead to higher prices and a financial squeeze for farmers, who are collecting less per animal slaughtered.

“If we start to see more closures and these facilities remain offline for a prolonged period of time, it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which consumers don’t see changes at the supermarket,” said David Ortega, an agricultural economist at Michigan State University.

Multiple economists who spoke with POLITICO said May could be when consumers have fewer options when buying meat.

There is enough — for now. The Agriculture Department’s monthly tally of meat in warehouse freezers showed total pounds of beef — about 502 million — were up 2 percent. Poultry in storage went up 4 percent, to 1.3 billion pounds. The amount of chicken in storage dipped slightly to about 921 million pounds.

But the pipeline bringing meat from farms to stores is slowing. The dip in daily pork slaughter rates “is troubling, especially for producers,” said Scott Brown, a University of Missouri agricultural economist. “If these keep declining at the rate we have seen recently then we need to worry,” he added.

The shutdown of restaurants and schools have wrecked the market for both produce and for dairy products as well. Prices are going to start spiking on food pretty quickly. Having 500 million pounds of beef sounds like a lot, and it is, but in a country of 330 million people, that won't last long, even factoring in all the folks that don't eat beef. The same goes for chicken and pork.

The nation's food processing companies turn a profit by taking out as much of the slack from the system that they can, and the system's now entering week six of major disruptions in both supply and demand.  This wouldn't be an issue if it was one, two, or even a few states experiencing something like hurricanes or ice storms that knocked out power to a region for a week.  This is the entire country, for months, and no real end in sight.

We're seeing spikes now in egg prices to start, due to industry consolidation.  Costs will be passed along as the market gets smashed on both the supply side and the demand side.

I've talked about systemic cascade failures before.  You can only break so many bits of the system before the entire system collapses and no longer works.  The more complex the interactions are between the parts, the easier it is to push the entire system over the edge.  We saw it in 2008, and we're seeing it again now, only this time a lot more systems are involved.

And yet we have Trump's "leadership" at the top.

Sigh.

Trump Goes Viral, Con't

As the US death toll from COVID-19 now approaches 50,000 this weekend, Trump's once unbreakable bastion of support from his base, while still strong, is starting to show some ugly cracks.

President Donald Trump has made himself the daily spokesman for the nation’s coronavirus response. Yet few Americans regularly look to or trust Trump as a source of information on the pandemic, according to a new survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. 

Just 28% of Americans say they’re regularly getting information from Trump about the coronavirus and only 23% say they have high levels of trust in what the president is telling the public. Another 21% trust him a moderate amount. 

Confidence in Trump is higher among his supporters, though only about half of Republicans say they have a lot of trust in Trump’s information on the pandemic — and 22% say they have little or no trust in what he says about the COVID-19 outbreak. 

But even as many Republicans question Trump’s credibility during the pandemic, the overwhelming majority — 82% — say they still approve of how he’s doing. That’s helped keep the president’s overall approval rating steady at 42%, about where it’s been for the past few months. 

Lynn Sanchez of Jacksonville, Texas, is among those who backs Trump despite reservations about his credibility. Sanchez, who identifies as a political independent, said she trusts “only a little” of what the president says about the crisis, but believes he’s “doing the best he can.” 

“He’s contradicted his own health experts a couple of times. I believe he gets carried away and doesn’t sit down and think things through,” said Sanchez, a 66-year-old retired truck stop manager.

The survey’s findings underscore Trump’s rock-solid backing from Republicans, who have been unwavering in their overall support throughout his presidency, despite reservations about his credibility and temperament. If that support holds through the November election, Trump would still have a narrow — but feasible — path to victory.

It's that last part, the "support through the November election" part, that I don't see happening.  A lot has happened in just the last six months, let alone the last six weeks.  We're now up to 26 million jobless claims since March 15. There's no real end to this mess in sight, despite the wishful thinking of Republican governors wanting to open restaurants and beaches. 

Trump has no clue how to handle this situation, he is almost uniquely and aggressively unqualified compared to even the average American, let alone past chief executives. He's just throwing things at the wall six days a week and seeing what sticks and what tests well among his base, no matter how outlandish and ridiculous the statements are. There remains no coherent national response, it's 100% up to the states at this point as far as the "boots on the ground" actions of dealing with the virus.

It's going to become pretty clear that extended shelter-in-place orders aren't going to be tolerated by the truly dangerous end of Trump's base much longer.  Stirring up a couple hundred "grassroots" supporters on Facebook to go harass the governor's mansion is one thing, but the violent white supremacist terrorists aren't going to sit around and play Animal Crossing all day.

And while the virus may be more prevalent in NYC than in Des Moines or Flagstaff or Mobile, the economic damage to red state economies that are already dependent on the federal government is going to be much more devastating. We're looking at a perfect storm situation where a lot of bad things could possibly happen all at once on both a pandemic and social unrest scale and given that the last month or so has felt like a year, we still have six months and change to the election.

A lot can happen in six months, and I expect very little of it will qualify as good.  It's going to get to the point where the lack of leadership from the White House is going to result in something breaking down deep in the gears of society and at that point all bets are off once we hit that systemic failure scenario.

Things didn't really go bad in 2008 until Bear Stearns went under, and even then it still took a year before the economy stopped bleeding.  We've seen more damage than 2008 to our economy by a factor of three in just six weeks.  We're just plodding along trying to get through the next 24 hours and repeating that right now and it's taking all we have just to do that.

And I think very, very soon something fundamental will change all this and then we see how long we can juggle bottles of nitroglycerin before the whole thing blows.   I don't know what comes next, and anyone who says they do is lying.

StupidiNews!

• FBI Director Christopher Wray says the agency is increasing investigations into preventing COVID-19 hate crimes by white supremacist groups against Asian-Americans blamed for the virus.
• Amazon faces a new round of sharp criticism from congressional Democrats after a new report suggests the company misled House Judiciary committee members about third-party data.
• Indonesian President Joko Widodo's multi-billion dollar project to relocate the country's capital from Java to Borneo is on hold as the country struggles to deal with COVID-19.
• Britain is preparing for a second wave of COVID-19 infections with testing and tracing, but critics say that the government of Boris Johnson can no longer be trusted to handle the pandemic properly.
• The FCC and NASA are battling it out over space debris and the future of satellites as SpaceX plans to put thousands of broadband internet satellites in orbit over the next several years.

Last Call For Going Postal, Con't

The White House is making its move to "save" the US Postal Service by amputating its limbs for a infected, festering wound that Republicans inflicted on it a decade ago. 

The Treasury Department is considering taking unprecedented control over key operations of the U.S. Postal Service by imposing tough terms on an emergency coronavirus loan from Congress, which would fulfill President Trump’s longtime goal of changing how the service does business, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Officials working under Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who must approve the $10 billion loan, have told senior officials at the USPS in recent weeks that he could use the loan as leverage to give the administration influence over how much the agency charges for delivering packages and how it manages its finances, according to the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks are preliminary.

Trump has railed for years against what he sees as mismanagement at the Postal Service, which he argues has been exploited by e-commerce sites such as Amazon, and has sought to change how much the agency charges for the delivery of packages. (Amazon’s founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

Under the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus relief passed last month, the Treasury was authorized to loan $10 billion to the USPS, which says it may not be able to make payroll and continue mail service uninterrupted past September. Mnuchin rejected a bipartisan Senate proposal to give the Postal Service a bailout amid the negotiations over that legislation, a senior Trump administration official and a congressional official previously told The Post.

The borrowing terms have only been discussed among both agencies’ leadership and have not been made public because the Postal Service hasn’t officially requested the loan, the two people familiar with the matter said. Mnuchin could still decide not to pursue tough terms as the September deadline nears. The Postal Service would not have to use the entire $10 billion loan at one time, but could borrow up to that amount at any given time.

In discussions with senior USPS personnel, Treasury officials have said they are interested in raising rates on the Postal Service’s lucrative package business, its sole area of profitability in recent years. Treasury also could review all large postal contracts with package companies to push for greater margins on deliveries.

Treasury officials have said they may press the agency to demand tougher concessions from its powerful postal unions — among the public-sector unions that still retain significant leverage in negotiations with the government.

The officials have also said Mnuchin wants the authority to review hiring decisions at the agency’s senior levels, including the selection of the next postmaster general, a decision that until now has been left to the Postal Service’s five-member board of governors.

USPS spokesman David Partenheimer confirmed in an email that the agency and Treasury have begun “preliminary discussions” over the loan, but that the Treasury had not yet asked “to impose any of those conditions on that borrowing authority.” He declined to say whether these or any other terms were under discussion.

In 2006, Republicans rammed through the Postal Accountability and Enhacement Act, which mandated that unlike any other US corporation, the US Post Office was required to pre-fund all employee retiree benefits for 50 years.

The law requires the Postal Service, which receives no taxpayer subsidies, to prefund its retirees’ health benefits up to the year 2056. This is a $5 billion per year cost; it is a requirement that no other entity, private or public, has to make. If that doesn’t meet the definition of insanity, I don’t know what does. Without this obligation, the Post Office actually turns a profit. Some have called this a “manufactured crisis.” It’s also significant that lots of companies benefit from a burden that makes the USPS less competitive; these same companies might also would benefit from full USPS privatization, a goal that has been pushed by several conservative think tanks for years.

Trump's plan is Hostage-Taking 101: either the House and Senate pass legislation to put the USPS under the control of the Treasury Department, or Trump stands by and watches the postal system fail. The collapse of the postal service would hurt Trump's voters the most, but so did Chinese and EU tariffs and they still love him for it.

We'll see very quickly if Trump is this deranged, and betting against "Trump being willing to go this far" never ends well.

Orange, Green, And Seeing Red

The Trump regime is making sure the execution of the CARES Act is massive grift and embezzlement scheme for GOP donors, because that was the only point in Republicans agreeing to the bill.  It never mattered if Trump signed it or not, it passed with an overwhelming veto-proof margin, but he was always going to make sure he and his got paid from it.

In late March, real estate investment firm Ashford Inc. was on the verge of financial ruin. But it had an ace in the hole: a pair of D.C. lobbying firms stacked with Trump fundraisers and White House alumni. 

A few weeks later, Ashford is now the top recipient nationwide of coronavirus relief aid from the $350 billion Paycheck Protection Act. 

The Dallas-based Ashford does extensive business in the hotel industry through a pair of real estate investment trusts. Its chairman, Monty Bennett, penned an open letter on March 22 detailing just how devastating the virus had been for his company.

“My industry and our businesses are completely crushed,” he wrote “This pandemic’s economic impact on the hotel industry is worse than all of the previous calamities combined.” 

Bennett himself is a huge Trump donor. He’s given over $200,000 to the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee, and a joint fundraising committee supporting both of them since last year, according to Federal Election Commission records. He chipped in even more in support of Trump’s 2016 campaign. 

Twelve days before Bennett wrote that open letter, Ashford had beefed up its political muscle even more. It hired its first-ever Washington lobbying firm, Miller Strategies. That firm is run by Jeff Miller, who was a finance vice-chair of President Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee. He has raised more than $2.8 million for the RNC and a Trump joint fundraising committee so far this cycle, including $2.5 million in the first quarter of 2020 alone, according to FEC filings. Miller’s firm also employs Jonathan Hiller, the former director of legislative affairs for Vice President Mike Pence, and Ashley Gunn, Trump’s former director of cabinet affairs. 

Miller’s lobbying registration form said it would be working on “issues as they relate to the hotel industry” on Ashford’s behalf. He didn’t respond to inquiries about whether he helped the company secure PPP aid. 

Miller’s work on Ashford’s behalf shows how some large companies have attempted to leverage political connections into a greater share of the massive amounts of federal money being doled out to mitigate the economic damage caused by the coronavirus. It also shows how some large chains have attempted to maximize their assistance from the PPP program by treating each of their franchises as a separate business, enabling awards to multiple firms owned by the same parent company. 

On the same day that Ashford hired Miller, it inked a separate lobbying deal with another Trump-connected firm. Bailey Strategic Advisors is run by Roy Bailey, a Trump fundraiser who served as finance chair of pro-Trump super PAC America First Action and on the board of an affiliated dark money group, America Fist Policies.

Bailey’s firm was more specific about what it would be doing on Ashford’s behalf, saying in lobbying registration forms that it would work on “issues related to COVID-19 relief for the hotel industry.” 

News of the $53 million in PPP funds that Ashford eventually received—more than any other company—has fueled criticism this week of the large amounts of money from the program steered to large firms, ostensibly at the expense of smaller ones. The PPP program is set to get another $300 billion injection after its initial funds were depleted in a matter of days. 

“As small businesses are struggling across the country, it’s still mega-donors first for Donald Trump and his administration,” said Jeb Fain, a spokesman for the Democratic super PAC American Bridge, in a statement on Ashford’s work in securing PPP funds. “Hardworking Americans deserve better than a president more focused on special favors than managing a major crisis.”

To recap, Ashford got over $ 50 million in PPP  "small business" taxpayer funds.. More than any business in the country.

No doubt a healthy chunk of that will be donated back to Trump's campaign and the RNC.

This is happening all over the country.  It's a massive scheme.

They're stealing from the bank in broad daylight because nobody gives a damn.

Expelling The Experts

I've wondered openly why Donald Trump hasn't fired Dr. Anthony Fauci or Dr. Deborah Birx, the two medical experts often seen at Trump's press conferences, and it's because Birx is willing to placate Trump, and Fauci is a 30-year veteran and firing him would be too much of a stretch for even Mitch McConnell to support.

However, given Trump's nearly infinite capacity for petty vengeance, it doesn't mean other, less visible medical experts haven't been let go.

The doctor who led the federal agency involved in developing a coronavirus vaccine said on Wednesday that he was removed from his post after he pressed for a rigorous vetting of a coronavirus treatment embraced by President Trump. The doctor said that science, not “politics and cronyism,” must lead the way.

Dr. Rick Bright was abruptly dismissed this week as the director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, and as the deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response.
Instead, he was given a narrower job at the National Institutes of Health. “I believe this transfer was in response to my insistence that the government invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the Covid-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit,” he said in a statement to The New York Times’s Maggie Haberman.

“I am speaking out because to combat this deadly virus, science — not politics or cronyism — has to lead the way,” he said.
The White House declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Alex Azar, the health and human services secretary, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. The medical publication Stat reported on Tuesday that Dr. Bright had clashed with Bob Kadlec, the assistant health secretary for preparedness and response.

Dr. Bright, who noted that his entire career had been spent in vaccine development both in and outside of government, has led BARDA since 2016.

In the statement, he said: “My professional background has prepared me for a moment like this — to confront and defeat a deadly virus that threatens Americans and people around the globe. To this point, I have led the government’s efforts to invest in the best science available to combat the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Unfortunately, this resulted in clashes with H.H.S. political leadership, including criticism for my proactive efforts to invest early into vaccines and supplies critical to saving American lives,” he said. “I also resisted efforts to fund potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections.”

Dr. Bright, who is a career official, pointed specifically to the initial efforts to make chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine widely available before it was scientifically tested for efficacy with the coronavirus.

“Specifically, and contrary to misguided directives, I limited the broad use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, promoted by the administration as a panacea, but which clearly lack scientific merit,” he said.

Since the corrupt Trump regime purchased 29 million doses of the drugs, boosting the coffers of the pharmaceutical companies that undoubtedly several regime members have stock in, Dr. Bright had to go, as Trump needed somebody's head to serve as a warning.

As Rebecca Sugar once commented about her Cartoon Network show Steven Universe, when the network agreed to do special PSA programming about standing up to bullying using the show's characters a few years ago, "the difference between interpersonal conflict and being a bully is that a bully only wants to hurt people."

It's an important lesson, and it explains the man in the Oval Office very well.  When somebody disagrees with Trump, he doesn't want conflict resolution, he doesn't want to improve on his viewpoints or learn anything new, he only wants to cause them pain.

StupidiNews!

• While violent crimes have dropped in most American cities due to COVID-19 according to police statistics, grand theft auto is spiking in many places as cars remain unused for many.
• Referring to any more direct federal aid packages as "blue state bailouts", Senate GOP Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he'd rather states be allowed to declare bankruptcy instead.
• The Australian government is backing the Trump regime's insistence that the WHO face inquiry on its COVID-19 response and Beijing's explanation on the illness's origins.
• Japan is largely ignoring Prime Minster Abe's emergency orders as gamblers are venturing into crowded city pachinko parlors despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
• A new study finds that US shelter-in-place order will hurt the economy in the short run, but in the long-term the lives saved will be worth $5.2 trillion.

Last Call For Tracking The Virus (And Everything)

Two years ago I warned you about Palantir, the massive data-mining startup founded by Silicon Valley Trump donor (and probable vampire) Peter Thiel, who was busy snapping up Trump regime, corporate, and state government data analytics contracts to track everything from America's grocery store purchases to undocumented immigrants hiding from ICE by building digital profiles of everyone in America for sale to the highest bidder.

Now the Trump regime is counting on Palantir to track COVID-19 and to predict which states can "safely" resume opening businesses and public areas and when, to become the single source of the country's information on where the virus is.

Palantir, the data-mining firm created by investor Peter Thiel, is best known for its work with global intelligence, military, and law enforcement agencies. Now, the company has a contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to help the federal government create a new data platform called HHS Protect Now.

The Daily Beast has confirmed that Palantir will provide a major aspect of the analytics platform. Sources familiar told The Daily Beast that Palantir’s data suites will be a primary contributor to HHS Protect Now, if not the core element of the tool.

Palantir’s involvement in the creation of a new government coronavirus data platform system underscores the Trump administration’s reliance on close political allies of the president to respond to the global pandemic. Thiel was Trump’s earliest and highest-profile backer in Silicon Valley, and delivered a prime-time speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention. A top donor to conservative causes and the first outside investor in Facebook, Thiel was, according to The Wall Street Journal, instrumental in pushing the social networking giant to allow politicians to lie in advertisements on the platform. It’s a policy that many outside observers believe will help the Trump campaign—which Thiel has again pledged to support.

Palantir, which Thiel helped found—and still retains a sizeable stake in —has watched its already-lucrative government business skyrocket in the Trump era. Palantir “provided digital profiling tools” to Immigration and Customs Enforcement “as it carried out President Trump’s increasingly controversial policies for apprehending and deporting undocumented immigrants,” according to The Washington Post. The firm had anticipated going public, although the coronavirus may have delayed plans for an IPO.

The HHS Protect Now platform, which is set to be unveiled later this week, pulls data from across the federal government, state and local governments, healthcare facilities, and colleges, to help administration officials determine how to “mitigate and prevent spread” of the coronavirus, according to a spokesperson for the department.

Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House’s coronavirus response, receives nightly briefings based off data compiled and analyzed on the platform, the spokesperson said. Birx has, over the past several weeks, often appeared at daily press briefings to speak about her analysis of coronavirus data-related testing, hospitalizations and community spread.

Two officials working with the administration’s coronavirus task force said the president is himself relying on Birx’s presentations in determining where and when to reopen parts of the U.S. economy. That positions HHS Protect Now as one of the most important data tools the federal government possesses.

Putting aside the huge ethical implications of one of Trump's largest donors getting a contract to be the company to track and provide critical health information during a global pandemic that's already killed 45,000 Americans, let's remember that the company happily worked with police departments in LA and New Orleans to profile millions of citizens and assign them "social scores" to mark them for further police harassment and arrest before committing crimes.

The New Orleans program was scrapped a few years ago, but the LAPD program didn't end until last year after existing since 2010.

Now Palantir is going to be tracking all of us for a virus, with the government's blessing.

State Of The Pandemic, Con't

Over the river in Ohio, business owners can't wait to get back to work because COVID-19 is apparently a hoax created to destroy God-Emperor Trump.

As a GOP-controlled Ohio House panel heard again from a series of business owners Monday urging a reopening of the state, one owner testified that he thinks the whole coronavirus pandemic is part of a plot to thwart the re-election of President Donald Trump. 

“This was a government overreach that was politically motivated, quite frankly, to derail our commander in chief’s ability to be re-elected for four more years,” said Bill Bader Jr., owner of Summit Motorsports Park near Norwalk. 

“It was more politically motivated than erring on the side of the health and safety and well-being of the citizens of this great country of ours. The media reaction incensed, scared, struck fear in the hearts of people to the point where it blinded people to their constitutional rights.” 

Columbus Democrat David Leland, one of the 24 members of the House Economic Recovery Tax Force, asked, “Do you really believe that Gov. Mike DeWine, Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, and all the people that are leading us in this particular crisis — their motivation for doing that was to unseat the president of the United States?” 

Bader didn’t back down. 

“Yes. I think this was a well-constructed plan. I think the timing of it was unique,” he replied. 

And he questioned Leland’s citation of 41,000 deaths in the U.S. from the virus, bringing up an undocumented conspiracy theory. 

“I understood that every fatality that took place in the United States of America, there was a check box that it was mandated that they perish as a result of the coronavirus. Are there truly 41,000 fatalities due to COVID-19?” 

Bader’s original response came in response to questioning from Rep. Nino Vitale, R-Urbana, who said, “I don’t think you’re really doing any harm in reopening your business, and we don’t need any more central-government planning and restrictions. We need to get Ohio open again.”

During another witness’s testimony, Rep. Jon Cross, R-Kenton, said the state should not decide which businesses can and can’t operate. 

“We need to work to reopen all business in Ohio,” he said.

We have to reopen everything.

Even if it kills you.

Barr Goes Viral, Con't

Attorney General Bill Barr is all but promising federal legal action against states that don't "reopen their economies" by the end of the month.

The Justice Department will consider taking legal action against governors who continue to impose stringent rules for dealing with the coronavirus that infringe on constitutional rights once the crisis subsides in their states, Attorney General William Barr said.

Blunt means to deal with the pandemic, such as stay-at-home orders and directives shutting down businesses, are justified up to a point, Barr said in an interview Tuesday on “The Hugh Hewitt Show.” Eventually, though, states should move to more targeted measures, Barr said. He said he supports the approach laid out by President Donald Trump.

“We have to give businesses more freedom to operate in a way that’s reasonably safe,” Barr said. “To the extent that governors don’t and impinge on either civil rights or on the national commerce -- our common market that we have here -- then we’ll have to address that.”

Barr’s comments come as the Trump administration and states are struggling -- and at times fighting with each other -- over the best approach to deal with the crisis. Trump has stoked tensions with some Democratic governors who are dealing with protests against stringent social-distancing rules, even as his administration backs guidelines that call for states to open up gradually.

Trump tweeted over the weekend that his supporters should “liberate” Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia -- three states with Democratic governors and strict stay-at-home orders. The move came just a day after Trump outlined the return-to-work guidelines contingent on states meeting specific benchmarks on testing and a decline in Covid-19 cases.

This is all part of Trump's plan to shift blame for the COVID-19 death toll to Democratic governors, of course.   The ones who maintain social distancing measures will be sued by Barr.

But let's not forget the "back to work!" push by the GOP is far more sinister, especially since it's black and brown faces who are the essential workers.

The lieutenant governor of Texas, who was criticized last month for saying it was worth risking lives to return to work if that meant saving the economy, has doubled down on his comments.

Dan Patrick, who turned 70 this month, faced a social media backlash in March for telling Fox News that many of his generation were willing to "take a chance" and return to work because an economy that was shut down by the coronavirus would harm future generations.

As parts of Texas started to reopen this week following weeks of restrictions, Patrick defended his comments on Monday, telling anchor Tucker Carlson again that the recent economic hardship had left him "vindicated."

"When you start shutting down society and people start losing their paychecks and businesses can't open and governments aren't getting revenues...I'm sorry to say that I was right on this," he said.

"I'm thankful that we are now beginning to open up Texas and other states because it's been long overdue."

Questioning the shifting projected death toll over the last few weeks he believed that "we have the wrong numbers, the wrong science."

Comparing the death toll in Texas with its population, he went on to say, "every life is valuable but 500 people out of 29 million and we're locked down and we're crushing the average worker, we're crushing small business, we're crushing the markets, we're crushing this country."

Using data from the Texas Department of State Health Services, the Texas Tribune reported that as of Monday, the death toll in the state stood at 495, with 19,458 positive tests.

Patrick went on: "There are more important things than living, and that's saving this country for my children and my grandchildren and saving this country for all of us.

Once again, American history can be reduced to "black and brown people need to die to keep white people happy, healthy, and well-fed." COVID-19 didn't change that one bit.

You can see how eager Republicans got to start feeding people to the furnace of industry when those people primarily turned out to be not white ones.

Oh, and for some unknown reason, a major breach of email, password and privacy data just happened to hit major health organizations and non-profit health foundations over the weekend.

Unknown activists have posted nearly 25,000 email addresses and passwords allegedly belonging to the National Institutes of Health, the World Health Organization, the Gates Foundation and other groups working to combat the coronavirus pandemic, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors online extremism and terrorist groups.

While SITE was unable to verify whether the email addresses and passwords were authentic, the group said the information was released Sunday and Monday and almost immediately used to foment attempts at hacking and harassment by far-right extremists. An Australian cybersecurity expert, Robert Potter, said he was able to verify that the WHO email addresses and passwords were real.

The lists, whose origins are unclear, appear to have first been posted to 4chan, a message board notorious for its hateful and extreme political commentary, and later to Pastebin, a text storage site, to Twitter and to far-right extremist channels on Telegram, a messaging app.

No doubt we'll see a whole bunch of out-of-context emails and attacks on these groups this week that just happen to get leaked at the exact time when Trump and other Republicans need to start discrediting health officials by justifying reopening of businesses during a pandemic to save his own ass.  FOX State TV will be back to "the COVID-19 hoax" by the end of the month.

And Barr will have his "reason to investigate" these non-profits.

Watch.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump says his executive order banning immigration that he tweeted about Monday night will only last for 60 days and involve blocking"certain green card holders".
• Convicted Trump co-conspirators Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort may not be released from prison due to COVID-19 after all due to "clarification" on federal prison policy the Justice Department.
• At least seven confirmed COVID-19 cases have surfaced in Wisconsin after the Supreme Court forced the state to go ahead with in-person primary voting last week.
• Harvard University says it never received small business loan money it was eligible for after Donald Trump threatened the institution this week to return the money it never actually got.
• Poison control experts say Americans are exposing themselves to potentially deadly combinations of cleaning products in an effort to sanitize their homes amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Con't

The long-rumored fourth volume of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian collusion was released today, and while heavily redacted as it directly involves intelligence methods and means, the conclusion that Vladimir Putin and Russia helped elect Donald Trump in 2016 is inescapable.

Tuesday's bipartisan report, from a panel chaired by North Carolina Republican Richard Burr, undercuts Trump's years of efforts to portray allegations of Kremlin assistance to his campaign as a "hoax," driven by Democrats and a “deep state” embedded within the government bureaucracy.

The intelligence community’s initial January 2017 assessment of Moscow’s influence campaign included “specific intelligence reporting to support the assessment that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and the Russian government demonstrated a preference for candidate Trump,” the committee’s report says. The panel also found “specific intelligence” to support the conclusion that Putin “approved and directed aspects” of the Kremlin’s interference efforts.

Senators and committee aides examined everything from the sources and methods used for the intelligence-gathering, to the Kremlin’s actions itself. The 158-page report is heavily redacted, with dozens of pages blacked out entirely. But its final conclusions were unambiguous.

“The committee found no reason to dispute the intelligence community’s conclusions,” Burr said in a statement, adding that the intelligence community’s conclusions reflect “strong tradecraft” and “sound analytical reasoning.”

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the committee’s vice chairman, praised the intelligence agencies’ “unbiased and professional work,” and warned that there was “no reason to doubt that the Russians’ success in 2016 is leading them to try again in 2020.”

The panel's findings are in line with a previously issued bipartisan statement in which Senate Intelligence leaders endorsed the January 2017 assessment by the clandestine community. The newest conclusions come in the fourth of five reports the committee is releasing on Moscow’s interference in the 2016 campaign. The committee last month approved the report unanimously.

The report devotes “additional attention” to the disagreements among some intelligence agencies about the Russian government’s intentions in meddling in the 2016 campaign. The report states that “the analytic disagreement was reasonable, transparent, and openly debated among the agencies and analysts.”

It also notes that the committee interviewed officials involved in drafting the January 2017 assessment, which came out days before Trump's inauguration, and states that they were not subject to political pressure.

The January 2017 assessment found that “Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary [Hillary] Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments.”

Notably, according to the Senate’s report, the initial assessment did not include information from or citations based on former British spy Christopher Steele’s unverified dossier of claims about Trump’s relationship with Russia. It noted that the FBI’s senior leadership insisted, though, that the dossier be mentioned in an annex. The Steele dossier is expected to be addressed in the committee’s fifth and final report.

Again, this is a Senate report, on a committee headed by Republican Richard Burr, that states that yes, the Russians helped Trump, and that this particular conclusion was reached without the Steele Dossier.

And let's remember that DC Federal Judge Reggie Walton still has his unredacted copy of the Mueller Report to examine.  Even with COVID-19 delaying federal court proceedings by weeks, Walton is expected to start his review of the report this week, as Chuck Pierce notes.

I choose to believe that, maybe, it’s because federal Judge Reggie Walton has cloistered himself at the moment to do some serious reading. From the National Law Journal:

U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton of the District of Columbia had ordered the Justice Department to turn over the report, in a ruling that sharply criticized U.S. Attorney General William Barr’s handling of the more than 400-page document. Walton said Barr displayed a “lack of candor” in his public rollout of the Mueller report, and the judge assailed the Justice Department leader for appearing to spin the Russia investigation’s findings “in favor of President Trump.” 

“The court has grave concerns about the objectivity of the process that preceded the public release of the redacted version of the Mueller Report and its impacts on the department’s subsequent justifications that its redactions of the Mueller Report are authorized by the [Freedom of Information Act],” Walton said in his 23-page ruling March 5.

Justice Department lawyers submitted the report Monday, only to have Walton note that he will not be able to review the unredacted version until at least April 20, in light of an order issued by Chief Judge Beryl Howell that drastically limited the court’s operations amid the coronavirus crisis.

This would account for the wild detour that the president* took over the weekend when he hijacked some time in the Follies to go after Mueller again. At the time, I just thought that one of the tiny hamsters in his brain had fallen off the wheel. Now, I’m not so sure. When last we heard from Judge Walton, he was fitting William Barr’s reputation for a shroud. Now, he’s self-quarantined with the entire Mueller report. That’s got to get knees watery all throughout the administration*.

Count on it.  Trump knew both the Senate Intel report and Judge Walton's review were coming this week.  It's far from over, guys.

The Ghosts Of Bevinstan

Two bizarre and awful stories today about Republicans Behaving Badly here in Kentucky, the first is Robert Goforth, the state House Republican who tried to primary then Gov. Matt Bevin last year and got 40% of the vote, has been arrested on domestic violence charges.  Warning, this is relatively graphic.

Former Kentucky gubernatorial candidate Robert Goforth was arrested Tuesday morning on domestic violence charges, according to authorities.

Goforth, 44, was booked into the Laurel County Detention Center just after 4 a.m. on charges of first-degree strangulation, fourth-degree assault (domestic violence) and third-degree terroristic threatening.

The Laurel County Sheriff's Office arrested Goforth just after 3 a.m. at a residence off Blevins and Brown Road after a woman filed a complaint at the 911 Dispatch Center in London, according to an arrest citation.

The woman alleged the assault happened about 1:30 a.m. with three small children in the home, and she had visible marks on her forehead, neck and arms, according to authorities.

The arrest citation noted that the woman completed paperwork for an emergency protective order and told deputies that Goforth tried to "hog tie her."

Police say that Goforth, a Republican legislator from East Bernstadt, strangled the woman with an "Ethernet cord from a kitchen drawer, and threatened to kill her".

Goforth also struck the woman, leaving her with a bruise and knot on the forehead, according to the arrest report.

The woman told deputies that when her face was toward the ground, Goforth grabbed an Ethernet cable and began strangling her "to the point that she had difficulty breathing and believed she was going to pass out," according to the citation.

The woman said she was able to leave the residence after promising Goforth she would unlock her phone, which is what "initiated the altercation," according to the citation.

When deputies traveled to the residence, they had to make two attempts to make contact with Goforth, and they also found all three children safe, the arrest report said.

Goforth did not appear to be "under the influence of alcohol or drugs," the citation noted.

And speaking of Matt Bevin, after months of speculation about rumors that he had an affair with a staffer last year, Bevin exploded on Twitter at an account late last night, loudly denying what he called "vulgar and slanderous lies".

Former Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin chastised an anonymous Twitter user who accused Bevin of cheating on his wife and impregnating a former staffer, calling the allegations "vulgar and slanderous lies."

"Let me be perfectly clear," Bevin said in an April 20 tweet. "The vulgar and slanderous lies being spread about me and my family and others by the partisan hacks on this Twitter feed are reprehensible and utterly baseless."

The former governor was responding to a Twitter account dubbed "kypoljunkie" that alleged Bevin "had an affair with his press secretary. She's pregnant."

The account does not identify the staffer by name.

"The fact is, Matt, I could care less about your personal life," the anonymous account said in response to Bevin. "I think most Kentuckians would agree we’re all way better off with you, especially considering the situation we’re currently facing. My source has no reason to lie. I found it worth sharing as such, you lying fraud."

imilar anonymous online accounts making those allegations and other claims against Bevin have been popped up for weeks but have not been reported or substantiated by any Kentucky media outlet.

The anonymous account claims it has "pretty solid news from a solid source" about Bevin, who lashed out at the allegations online.

"Your 'deep' and 'solid' Frankfort sources, if they actually exist, are full of crap and are nasty, lying rumor mongers just like you," Bevin tweeted.

"My wife and I have been faithfully married to one another for 24 years and counting, and for all of you nitwits to slander her and my family in this way is disgusting... Shame on you!"

Now, Bevin has a temper and used it a number of times in press conferences and in speeches, but I can't recall him exploding on Twitter and getting in an argument with randos online like this, which definitely makes me think  there's something to this story.  Bevin's previously been radio silent since his now infamous "Chicken Little" tweet last month on COVID-19. Methinks the former governor doth protest too much.

Either way, a not-so-gentle reminder that Kentucky Republicans, like Republicans across the country, are awful, terrible human beings, and we need to stop voting for them as a country.

That Poll-Asked Look, Con't

MSNBC's Steve Kornacki breaks down the latest NBC/WSJ poll on Trump's performance issues.

White men, non-college
Trump 65%
Biden 29%

White women, non-college
Trump 55%
Biden 37%

White men, college+
Trump 44%
Biden 46%

White women, college+
Trump 29%
Biden 64%

— Steve Kornacki (@SteveKornacki) April 20, 2020

Trump still gets two-thirds of white men without college degrees and nothing is going to change that.  Nothing.

Not even the mass deaths of a pandemic.

Democrats need to let "working-class" white guys go.  They're all about the racism at this point.  Take the 30% or so and be grateful.

Having said that, If Joe Biden really is even with white men with college degrees and actually does have a thirty-five point lead among white women with college degrees, then Trump is toast.

In 2016, Clinton won white women with college degrees by only 7 points, and lost white men with college degrees by 14 points.  That means the Rust Belt states that won the country from Trump, PA, WI, MI are definitely slipping from Trump's grasp, but Trump-leaning battleground states like NC, Florida, and Arizona are very winnable for Joe.  Hell, it means the second tier of GOP states like Ohio and Iowa are even in play for Biden at this point, maybe, maaaaybe even Georgia.

Standard caveat though: COVID-19 and Trump holding the leash on unprecedented federal emergency powers means any semblance of a normal election is out the window.

StupidiNews!

• The Trump Regime says North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is in a "grave" medical condition after surgery, both CNN and NBC News are reporting.
• Donald Trump tweeted late last night that he plans to unilaterally suspend all immigration into the United States because of the "invisible enemy" of COVID-19.
• US oil contracts for West Texas Intermediate Crude are back into positive territory after closing below zero for the first time ever on Monday due to cratering global oil demand.
• The US Senate will vote on a package of supplemental small business and hospital relief money on Tuesday, the House is expected to return to take up the bill next week.
• Facebook has reversed position on taking down COVID-19 social distancing protest events on its social media service, previously Facebook said it was waiting on states to declare the events illegal.

Last Call For State Of The Pandemic

Georgia GOP Sen. Brian Kemp has decided that more of his constituents need to die in the service of profit, so he's reopening businesses like gyms and tattoo parlors on Friday.

Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp announced Monday that certain businesses can reopen this week in a move that breaks from the majority of state leaders and defies the warnings of many public health officials. 

Kemp said specifically that fitness centers, bowling alleys, body art studios, barbers, hair and nail salons, and massage therapy businesses can reopen as early Friday, April 24. Theaters and restaurants will be allowed to open on Monday, April 27, while bars and night clubs will remain closed for now. 

The decision follows new guidance unveiled by President Donald Trump last week meant to help states loosen their social distancing restrictions. 

According to an influential model often cited by the White House, from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Georgia hit its projected "peak" for daily deaths 13 days ago, on April 7. 

But that same model predicts that dozens of people will die each day in the coming week. And to limit a resurgence of the virus, the model says that Georgia shouldn't start relaxing social distancing until after June 15 -- when the state can begin considering other measures to contain the virus, such as contact tracing and isolation. 

Notably, Kemp said Monday that no local ordinance can restrict the openings, which will be implemented statewide. "In the same way that we carefully closed businesses and urged operations to end to mitigate the virus' spread, today we're announcing plans to incrementally and safely reopen sectors of our economy," he told reporters.

So good luck to Atlanta and southwest Georgia, two of the hardest hit areas in the country, as I expect a catastrophic spike in the state's COVID-19 cases in two weeks and thousands of deaths in three.

Here in Kentucky, a week after Easter Sunday church services and protests in Frankfort at the State Capitol, we've had our biggest spike in new cases yet.

Kentucky experienced its highest single-day spike in coronavirus cases after protests broke out in the state to lift lockdowns, according to reports.

Gov. Andy Beshear announced there were 273 new cases Sunday, bringing the total to 2,960, news station WCPO reported. 

“We are still in the midst of this fight against a deadly and highly contagious virus,” Beshear said. “Let’s make sure, as much as we’re looking at those benchmarks and we’re looking at the future, that we are acting in the present and we are doing the things that it takes to protect one another.” 

The Bluegrass State is among the regions that have seen demonstrators take to the streets last week to call for the end of lockdown restrictions.

I'm hoping Kentucky doesn't make the same mistake Georgia has, it will be a fatal one for many.

Republicanism is a death cult, full stop.

Fun-Sized Rebellion, Con't

As I pointed out yesterday, the "major protests" against state governors in Michigan, Ohio, Minnesota, Kentucky, and a couple of other states are all the work of Trump supporting right-wing groups with lots of cash and lots of suckers to rile up.  Even the Washington Post has finally figured out they're being played.

A trio of far-right, pro-gun provocateurs is behind some of the largest Facebook groups calling for anti-quarantine protests around the country, offering the latest illustration that some seemingly organic demonstrations are being engineered by a network of conservative activists.

The Facebook groups target Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York, and they appear to be the work of Ben Dorr, the political director of a group called “Minnesota Gun Rights,” and his siblings, Christopher and Aaron. By Sunday, the groups had roughly 200,000 members combined, and they continued to expand quickly, days after President Trump endorsed such protests by suggesting citizens should “liberate” their states.

The Dorr brothers manage a slew of pro-gun groups across a wide range of states, from Iowa to Minnesota to New York, and seek primarily to discredit organizations like the National Rifle Association as being too compromising on gun safety. Minnesota Gun Rights, for instance, describes itself as the state’s “no-compromise gun rights organization.”

The online activity instigated by the brothers helps cement the impression that opposition to the restrictions is more widespread than polling suggests. Nearly 70 percent of Republicans said they supported a national stay-at-home order, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll. Ninety-five percent of Democrats backed such a measure in the survey.

Still, the Facebook groups have become digital hubs for the same sort of misinformation spouted in recent days at state capitol buildings — from comparing the virus to the flu to questioning the intentions of scientists working on a vaccine.

Public health experts say stay-at-home orders are necessary to slow the spread of the new coronavirus, which has already killed more than 40,000 in the United States. The Trump administration last week outlined three phases for states to reopen safely — guidelines contradicted by the president when he urged citizens to rise up against the rules that heed the recommendations of his own public health advisers. 

“If people feel that way, you’re allowed to protest,” Trump said Sunday. “Some governors have gone too far, some of the things that happened are maybe not so appropriate.”

Facebook won't lift a finger to stop dangerous misinformation like this from spreading, because they are paid handsomely to spread dangerous misinformation.  The right absolutely learned the correct lessons from 2016.

Facebook said Sunday it did not remove the groups or events partly because states have not outlawed the activity. Organizers also have called for “drive-in” protests, in keeping with recommendations that people keep a short distance between each other. In other cases, involving protests planned for states like New Jersey and California, the company has removed that content, Facebook said.

“Unless government prohibits the event during this time, we allow it to be organized on Facebook. For this same reason, events that defy government’s guidance on social distancing aren’t allowed on Facebook,” said Andy Stone, a spokesman for the company.

Like Trump, they are blaming the states.  It's their fault that protest events aren't being specifically outlawed, you see.  I don't see many governors willing to go that far, either.  It's exactly what these groups want, too, and state governors are smart enough not to create martyrs for the cause.

And of course, these right-wing groups are happily in bed with our white supremacist domestic terrorist friends, because they are all one big incest fest. Will Bunch makes this clear (he's literally written an entire book on the Tea Party phenomenon, The Backlash):

These right-wing groups certainly want to reelect Trump (and keep the wretched DeVos in her Education Department post) but what they’re really afraid of is that both the public-health catastrophe and the growing economic meltdown will lead to a political, economic or even social revolution in the United States that will threaten the status quo — i.e., them. The coronavirus has exposed the everyday disaster that is America’s employer-based health-care system and the broader fragility where millions were just one lost paycheck away from a miles-long line at a food bank. The conservative movement in America, therefore, will die a deserved and overdue death unless the oligarchs can change the political conversation around to your God-given right to buy plant seeds and Baskin-Robbins — and fast.

It’s also worth noting (and probably worthy of a separate column) that these billionaires and millionaires have zero moral qualms about working with some of the worst white-supremacists or neo-fascists in order to make sure a crowd turns out, which would explain how swastikas and the like turned up at the DeVos-sponsored protest in Lansing. Here in Pennsylvania, the protest planned for Monday in Harrisburg by a rapidly growing Facebook group called Pennsylvanians Against Excessive Quarantine is led, curiously, by (ahem) a gun activist from (double ahem) Ohio. And just last August, that so-called gun activist, Chris Dorr, was investigated in Ohio after a Facebook rant in which he vowed that, after any effort to restrict the right to bear firearms, “there will be political bodies laying all over the ground ... we gun owners will pull the trigger, and leave the corpses for the buzzards."

Dorr’s alarming words speak to one of the real risks here — the kind that experts call stochastic terrorism, in which a movement leader’s incitements, such as the president of the United States urging gun activists to “LIBERATE” Virginia, are translated into specific acts of violence by low-level and possible unhinged followers. If it sounds familiar, we’ve already seen it play out from El Paso to Germany, and now the danger in this time of coronavirus is very, very real. 

Trump, of course, is a vainglorious narcissist incapable of understanding how his hateful words affect other humans, but the fact that so many other conservatives are willing to amplify this dangerous message should give you some insight into what’s really happening here. The right-wing movement is so used to what it now feels is its entitlement to wield power in America that it is willing to risk many lives — both among its political friends and foes, either from the suffocation of COVID-19 or even from a hail of bullets — in its pathetic need to hold on by its fingernails.

Besides, locking up a couple of hundred protesters kind of assures a new COVID-19 hotspot.

I am glad to see the Post calling these groups out, however, instead of playing the both sides game for once.  These assholes aren't wasting time to try to create deadly distractions to try to help Trump, no matter how many of us die in the process.

The Great Escape (Clause)

A minimum-security prisoner in North Carolina named Richard Cephas escaped from the federal prison camp in Butner, and contacted Raleigh News and Observer reporter Dan Kane to make arrangements to turn himself in if he can serve out his sentence in home confinement, as the Butner prison camp is overrun with COVID-19.

An inmate who fled a federal prison camp in Butner and remains on the loose told The News & Observer on Thursday that he escaped because he feared death from coronavirus. 

“I take ownership of having to serve my time,” said Richard R. Cephas, 54, who had been at the Federal Correctional Complex serving time on a drug conviction. “I signed up for a jail sentence, not a death sentence.” 

Cephas contacted the N&O on Thursday morning, leading to interviews by phone and FaceTime. He didn’t reveal where he was — but he said he wants to turn himself in. He contacted the N&O, he said, to tell the public about the issues he saw at Butner and why he needed to flee. 

Cephas fled Butner two weeks ago after the prison complex reported nine inmates and one employee had tested positive for the virus. Since then, those numbers have surged dramatically. The Federal Bureau of Prisons on Thursday reported 66 inmates and 25 staff had tested positive at Butner, one of the worst outbreaks in the federal system. 

The bureau reported Butner’s first inmate death tied to the virus on Sunday, and has announced three other deaths since then. All had other health issues contributing to their deaths.

Cephas said he has neutropenia, a medical condition that makes him high risk for contracting the virus because his body struggles to make enough white blood cells that combat infections. His attorney, Bill Rhodunda of Wilmington, Del., confirmed in a phone interview that Cephas has the condition. 

Prison officials first reported a positive test at Butner on March 26. Since then, as the numbers grew, Cephas said he grew more fearful for his life. He said he sought early release but said the staff at Butner had not responded to his requests. 

Making matters worse, he said, was the way the prison handled the outbreak. He said he works as an orderly at the prison camp, so he was acutely aware of a lack of soap. A staffer told him there wasn’t enough to go around, he said, and inmates were urged to use soap they had purchased. 

Masks and gloves also hadn’t been issued, he said, and inmates couldn’t socially distance themselves in the confined space. A directive issuing masks for inmates and requiring staff to wear masks didn’t come until five days after he fled the prison, according to an email sent by the facility’s warden and provided to the N&O by an employee. The employee asked not to be identified for fear it could affect their employment.

Families of other inmates have also contacted the N&O in recent days to complain about a lack of soap and other unsanitary conditions. 

Bureau of Prisons officials could not be reached after four phone calls by The N&O on Thursday afternoon. 

Cephas was one of nine people from Delaware arrested as part of an investigation prosecutors called “Operation Bear Trap.” Prosecutors said in a news release at the time that it involved two different drug conspiracies with overlapping participants, one to sell methamphetamine brought in from Mexico and one to traffic cocaine.

This is a man willing to trade additional time as a federal prisoner in order to save his life.  I don't see how prosecutors don't tack on years for the escape, but if he's willing to turn himself in safely and serve home confinement, I think as a federal prosecutor I'd be willing to take the deal.

Of course, this is the Barr "Justice" Department, which means they'll probably pick up the reporter and stick him in a room for a day or two in order to get him to talk, pushing charges of aiding and abetting an escaped federal inmate.

Oh, and I'm sure the cops will kill Cephas on sight, that goes without saying, as he's black and an escaped inmate.

I hope that Cephas's escape will bring attention and help to the inmates still in Butner.  Sadly, with this administration, I don't think anything will change, and a whole lot of people are going to die as a result.

StupidiNews!

And we're back to a normal schedule this week.

• The RCMP confirm one Mountie is dead and 15 other civilians were killed in a weekend shooting rampage in Nova Scotia, the suspect was cornered on Sunday and is reported deceased.
• Donald Trump admits all GOP senators other than Utah's Mitt Romney were included on the White House's task force on "reopening America" due to Romney's impeachment vote to convict Trump.
• Thousands of masked Israeli protesters filled streets in Jerusalem demonstrating against a power-sharing government led by indicted PM Benjamin Netanyahu.
• Congress is close to a $500 billion supplemental small business rescue plan that could be passed as soon as this week as Millions of Americans remain unemployed due to COVID-19 shutdowns.
• COVID-19 is complicating efforts in East Africa to fight a massive new locust swarm, some 20 times larger than the one that ravaged the continent earlier this year.