Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

The Supreme Court ruled on two cases defending the right to sue large corporations and the police. Are they just buttering us up before dropping some major bad decisions?

Meanwhile, police attacked protesters in Los Angeles as the authorities attempted to clear out a large homeless encampment. Despite the coronavirus, some homeless say they feel safer in a tent of their own than in a hotel room where they might be surveiled.

And lastly, a United Nations report says the world’s forests are best protected by indigenous peoples. So they themselves need to be protected against slash-and-burn plunderers.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

In two decisions yesterday, the Supreme Court made it easier for people to sue large companies and to hold police accountable for excessive use of force, NBC News reports. In a unanimous ruling, the court said Ford Motor Company could be sued for allegedly defective vehicles involved in accidents in Montana and Michigan. One case was brought by family members of a Montana woman who died in the crash of a 1996 Explorer that her family members said had a design flaw. The second lawsuit was filed by a man claiming he was injured in the crash of a defective Crown Victoria in Minnesota. Ford said it could be sued only in states where the vehicles were actually designed, manufactured or sold. But the court ruled that because Ford markets, sells, and services its products nationwide, state courts can consider product liability lawsuits.

In the second case, NBC reports, the court ruled five to three that police can be sued for using excessive force, even when it fails to stop someone from fleeing. The case involved a New Mexico woman, Roxanne Torres, who drove away from a parking lot when police approached to question her. Thinking they might be carjackers, not police officers, she sped away. They fired thirteen shots, hitting her twice in the back. She sued, claiming they used excessive force, making the shooting unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable seizures. The police said it wasn't a seizure, since she wasn't stopped by their gunfire. But yesterday’s opinion said it was a seizure nonetheless.

Jeffrey Bellin, a professor at William and Mary Law School, said the decision will make it easier to sue for excessive force at a time when the country is increasingly concerned with police violence. Know your rights, folks.

Police attack protesters at LA homeless camp

It’s hard out there on the streets. Los Angeles officials said they intend to close a homeless encampment at Echo Park yesterday after a night of protests as workers erected fencing and authorities ordered residents of the camp to clear out, the LA Times reports. More than two hundred protesters gathered at the park Wednesday night and Thursday morning in a tense standoff with police over the future of the encampment, which has become a flash point in the city’s homelessness crisis. The camp has drawn the ire of neighbors, and the city has agreed to move those living in the park to hotels. But some residents say they prefer to stay in the park and argue they have the right to do so.

Los Angeles police Chief Michel Moore said Wednesday night that homeless residents inside the park would be allowed to remain overnight, but that no one else could enter, and the encampment’s residents must leave within twenty four hours, according to the Times. There was a huge police presence Wednesday night. As skirmishes erupted, police were seen shoving some protesters. Park rangers, flanked by LAPD officers, began taping notices of closure onto trees and light poles on the east side of the park, where homeless people have been camping throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.

Westside City Councilman Mike Bonin issued a statement yesterday criticizing the use of police to clear the park, the Times reports. Yesterday morning a small number of people woke up inside the fenced park, worrying about what was to come. Valerie Zeller likened it to a hostage situation. The homeless woman said she was reluctant to go to a hotel, saying she had heard that residents would be searched and subjected to curfews. Protests continued yesterday. Exactly what problems have the police solved here?

UN report: Indigenous people protect forests

File this one under common sense. The embattled indigenous peoples of Latin America are by far the best guardians of the regions’ forests, according to a UN report covered by the Guardian. Deforestation rates are up to fifty percent lower in their territories than elsewhere. Protecting the vast forests is vital to tackling the climate crisis and plummeting populations of wildlife, and the report found that recognising the rights of indigenous and tribal peoples to their land is one of the most cost-effective actions. The report also calls for the peoples to be paid for the environmental benefits their stewardship provides, and for funding for the revitalisation of their ancestral knowledge of living in harmony with nature.

However, the Guardian reports, the demand for beef, soy, timber, oil and minerals means the threats to indigenous peoples and their forest homes are rising. Hundreds of community leaders have been killed because of disputes over land in recent years. And the Covid-19 pandemic has added to the dangers forest peoples face. Demands by indigenous peoples for their rights have become increasingly visible in recent years, the report said, but this has come with increasing persecution, racism, and assassinations. Supporting these peoples to protect the forests is particularly crucial now with scientists warning that the Amazon is nearing a tipping point where it switches from rainforest to savannah, risking the release of billions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere.

The report was produced by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the Fund for the Development of Indigenous Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean, the Guardian reports. It was based on a review of more than three hundred studies. The rigor is admirable, but the conclusions are obvious. People who depend on the land aren’t likely to destroy it for profit!

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

President Joe Biden answered reporters’ questions for a little over an hour yesterday at his first formal news conference, the Washington Post reports. He said he plans to seek reelection in 2024 with Vice President Harris as his running mate; indicated that he was open to revamping the filibuster to get his policy priorities, including voting rights, passed; and said that he does not picture US forces in Afghanistan next year. I guess we won the war!

A salvage company working on the operation warned yesterday that releasing the container vessel blocking traffic in the Suez Canal in Egypt could take days or even weeks, according to the New York Times. Dozens of ships laden with oil and goods destined for ports around the world are stranded in the canal. The stuck ship, the Ever Given, has been wedged in the canal since running aground on Tuesday. Have they tried greasing it up with olive oil?

New York State officials finalized a deal yesterday to legalize recreational marijuana in the state, the Times reports. The deal would allow delivery of the drug and permit club-like lounges or consumption sites where marijuana, but not alcohol, could be consumed. It would also allow a person to cultivate up to six plants at home for personal use. Legalize it already!

California State Assemblyman Phil Ting, a Democrat, yesterday unveiled the Freedom to Walk Act, which would decriminalize jaywalking across the state, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. A September report from the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area found that Black and Latino Californians received a higher number of citations for minor offenses like jaywalking compared to whites. Legalize walking, too!

MAR 26, 2021 - AM QUICKIE

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Corey Pein

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

Democrats are moving ahead with one of their top legislative priorities, a sweeping voting rights bill. Republicans call it a power grab, but of course they would, considering they’d prefer that only old white Republicans should be allowed to vote.

Meanwhile, federal prosecutors have established a conspiracy between the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys related to the January 6th Capitol insurrection. Court papers show they expected Donald Trump to declare martial law to stay in power.

And lastly, a federal moratorium on evictions expires next week. Fortunately, the Biden administration is looking at extending it at least through July.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

We’ve told you about Republican schemes to restrict the vote. Well, the New York Times reports that the Senate yesterday convened an opening hearing on a sweeping elections bill that would expand voting rights and blunt Republican state legislators’ efforts to restrict access to the ballot box. Chock-full of liberal priorities, the bill, called the For the People Act, would usher in landmark changes making it easier to vote, enact new campaign finance laws and end partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts. The legislation passed the House along party lines earlier this month. It faces solid opposition from Republicans who are working to clamp down on ballot access, and who argue that the bill is a power grab by Democrats.

Democrats on the Senate Rules Committee hope that testimony from former Attorney General Eric Holder, prominent voting experts and anti-corruption advocates will help build on a rising drumbeat of support from liberals, the Times reports. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that there is a concerted, nationwide effort to limit the rights of citizens to vote. He called the voting rollbacks in the states an existential threat to democracy reminiscent of Jim Crow segregationist laws, chanting Shame! Shame! Shame! at the Republicans promoting them.

So far, not a single Republican supports the nearly eight hundred-page bill, the Times reports. Democrats’ best hope for enacting the legislation increasingly appears to be to try to leverage its voting protections to justify triggering the Senate’s so-called nuclear option: the elimination of the filibuster rule requiring sixty votes, rather than a simple majority, to advance most bills. Increasingly it seems like Democrats will need to end the filibuster to get anything done at all.

Prosecutors find Proud Boys, Oath Keepers conspiracy:

A conspiracy was afoot! Leaders of the Oath Keepers militia and the Proud Boys were in communication in the weeks before the Capitol riot and appear to have coordinated some plans for the day of the attack, prosecutors said in court papers, according to the New York Times. The evidence presented in the papers connects the two most prominent targets of the federal government’s investigation into the storming of the Capitol on January 6th.

The new disclosure about the links between two extremist groups was contained in a motion filed by prosecutors seeking to keep Kelly Meggs, the leader of the Florida chapter of the Oath Keepers, in jail before his trial, the Times reports. Prosecutors cited several of Meggs’s private Facebook messages in which he told others that as many as one hundred Oath Keepers planned to be in Washington for a rally in January answering a call by Donald Trump. On Christmas Day, court papers say, Meggs wrote that his group of Oath Keepers would be serving as security guards during the days surrounding the pro-Trump event but had "orchestrated a plan with the Proud Boys" at night. On December 26th, the new court papers say, he wrote a message announcing that Trump planned to use the emergency broadcast system to invoke the Insurrection Act, effectively establishing martial law.

Even though the filing in the Meggs case was the first time that investigators have revealed evidence connecting the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, the Times says there is no indication that the government intends to merge the separate inquiries. Fifteen members of the Proud Boys are facing charges including conspiracy to resist law enforcement officers and disrupt the workings of the government. Tough break jabronis!

Evictions moratorium nears expiration:

The clock’s ticking on many renters. And the Washington Post reports that the Biden administration is weighing whether to extend a soon-expiring federal policy that prohibits landlords from evicting their cash-strapped tenants, as the US government seeks to buy more

time for an estimated ten million families who have fallen behind on their rent. The extension under discussion could run at least through July. Without it, the federal eviction ban is set to lapse in six days. The issue has taken on fresh urgency at a time when the federal government is racing to distribute roughly $47 billion in new coronavirus relief to families still struggling to pay off back-due rent and ever-mounting utility bills.

Lawmakers acknowledge the federal eviction moratorium isn’t perfect, the Post reports. Housing advocates fear fast-moving lawsuits could impede its future, and some Biden administration officials have even questioned whether the federal government has the authority to extend it. But there is nonetheless broad agreement that a continuation of the federal eviction ban is essential to prevent millions of people from being forced onto the streets as they await financial assistance. Rhode Island Democratic Senator Jack Reed, who has sponsored legislation protecting renters from eviction, called affordable housing the single most effective form of personal protective equipment one can have. He said, "If we suddenly threw people out of their homes, and onto the streets and into other people’s homes, it would accelerate covid."

The Biden administration is also discussing some additional policy tweaks to the moratorium, the Post reports. That includes a new education campaign to inform renters that the policy exists. The Biden administration also has weighed taking a greater role in enforcing the moratorium against landlords who refuse to honor it. Yeah, seems like a good idea, actually enforcing the policy.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

President Biden has asked Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the administration’s efforts to handle the increase in migrants on the southern border, the Los Angeles Times reports. Her responsibilities will involve diplomatic relations with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, where many of the migrants begin their journey. Time will tell if the US is really prepared to help improve the situation in those countries.

Governor Ralph Northam signed a bill yesterday banning the death penalty, making Virginia the first of the old Confederate states to do so, the Washington Post reports. Over the past four hundred years, Virginia has executed more prisoners than any other state. It is the second-most-prolific death-penalty state of the modern era, behind Texas. But that’s all in the past now.

The Senate yesterday voted fifty two to forty eight to confirm Rachel Levine as the nation’s assistant secretary for health, making her the highest-ranking openly transgender official in US history, according to the Post. The assistant secretary for health oversees a broad portfolio of public-health initiatives, and President Biden has said that Levine will play a key role in the nation’s coronavirus response. Which is sure to drive Republicans insane.

The Guardian reports that hundreds of people imprisoned for protesting last month’s coup in Myanmar have been released in the first apparent gesture by the military to try to placate the protest movement. Witnesses outside Insein (INSANE) Prison in Yangon saw busloads of mostly young people, looking happy with some flashing the three-finger gesture of defiance adopted by the protest movement. State-run TV said a total of six hundred and twenty eight were freed. At least fifty five remain in prison and will face charges. Solidarity.

MAR 25, 2021 - AM QUICKIE

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Corey Pein

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

Democrats are once again pushing for stricter gun control after yet another mass shooting. President Joe Biden lowered the White House flags to half-staff in honor of the ten people killed in Boulder, Colorado.

Meanwhile, an oversight panel is accusing AstraZenica of cherry-picking data to make its coronavirus vaccine seem more effective. Experts worry the news will decrease public confidence in the vaccination effort – in which case the company must bear the blame.

And lastly, the Biden administration wants to fund its plans for infrastructure and social programs with new taxes on corporations and wealthy Americans. Trust us, they can afford it.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

President Biden yesterday called for tightening gun control laws in the wake of a mass shooting Monday at a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado, less than a week after eight people were killed during a shooting spree in Atlanta, NBC News reports. Speaking at the White House, Biden suggested that he may take executive action on gun violence. He called for a ban of assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines. And he called on the Senate to immediately pass two bills the House recently approved that change background check laws.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has vowed to hold votes on the House-passed measures, but does not appear to have the support of at least ten Republicans to avoid the filibuster, according to NBC. Without sixty votes in the Senate, gun control measures are likely to fuel calls by some Democrats to nix the filibuster. Connecticut Democratic Senator Chris Murphy noted the popularity of extending background checks, and said, "Democracy dies when things that have the majority of support in Congress, the support of the president and ninety percent public support can't become a law."

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that police identified Monday’s twenty one-year-old rifle-wielding suspect as Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa. He was shot in the leg during the attack and remained in the hospital yesterday morning. He was charged with ten counts of murder in the first degree, though officials offered no details on a suspected motive. What’s worse, according to the New York Times: the city of Boulder enacted bans on assault-style weapons and large-capacity magazines in 2018, but a state district court judge ruled this month that Boulder could not enforce the bans. Police said the killer used an AR-15-type rifle, a kind of weapon that the city ordinances were intended to restrict.

AstraZenica Fudged Vaccine Data

Well this isn’t good. Federal health officials and an independent oversight board accused AstraZeneca of presenting the world with potentially misleading information about the effectiveness of the company’s Covid-19 vaccine, the New York Times reports. It is an extraordinary blow to the credibility of a company whose product has been seen as critical to the global fight against the pandemic. In a two-page letter to AstraZeneca and federal authorities on Monday, an independent panel of medical experts that was helping oversee the vaccine’s clinical trial in the United States said the company had essentially cherry-picked data that was, "most favorable for the study as opposed to the most recent and most complete."

Only hours earlier, the Times reports, AstraZeneca had issued a news release trumpeting the effectiveness and safety of its vaccine, whose low price has made it the leading vehicle to inoculate people worldwide. The company said that based on its US trial, the vaccine appeared to be seventy nine percent effective at preventing Covid-19. But the independent oversight board said in its letter that the vaccine’s efficacy may have been between sixty nine percent and seventy four percent. The letter reprimanded AstraZeneca for an overly rosy description of the trial data. The board wrote, "Decisions like this are what erode public trust in the scientific process."

The public airing of a conflict between a pharmaceutical company and a board overseeing a clinical trial is highly unusual, as the Times put it. It is almost certain to trigger extra scrutiny of the vaccine by regulators. Doctor Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, said the news could, "unfortunately contribute to a lack of confidence in the process." At least there’s more than one brand of vaccine.

Biden Plans to Tax the Rich

It’s about time. White House officials are exploring tax increases on businesses, investors and rich Americans to fund the president’s multitrillion-dollar infrastructure and jobs package, according to the Washington Post. The centerpiece of the tax increases would probably be a higher corporate tax rate – reversing part of President Donald Trump’s steep corporate tax cut in 2017 – as well as higher levies on investment income and a higher top marginal tax rate. President Biden’s tax increases may prove among the most controversial elements of the administration’s coming Build Back Better agenda, setting up a major confrontation with business groups and congressional Republicans.

The president has said that his tax increases will not affect people earning less than $400,000 per year, according to the Post. He and his advisers have called for funding the next major domestic priority with higher levies on wealthy Americans, citing the relative success enjoyed by the affluent during a pandemic that has pummeled the economic fortunes of the working class. The White House’s legislative effort is expected to be broken up into two main components – one focused primarily on infrastructure and clean energy investments, and a second focused on domestic priorities including child care and prekindergarten that the administration has labeled part of the, "caring economy."

The tax increases in the plan are similarly divided between those two parts. The infrastructure section of the legislation is expected to be funded primarily by taxes on businesses. The part of the legislation focused on other domestic priorities, by contrast, is expected to be funded by taxes on rich people and investors. Both sets of tax increases mirror what Biden proposed in 2020 as a presidential candidate. It’s not the radical redistribution progressives want, but it’s not a bad place to start.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Rescuers recovered at least fifteen charred bodies from a Rohingya refugee camp in southern Bangladesh after a devastating fire, officials told the Associated Press yesterday. At least four hundred people were still missing and around five hundred and sixty were injured by the fire, according to the United Nations’ refugee agency. Around forty five thousand people were displaced. As if they weren’t suffering enough!

National Guardsmen transporting Covid-19 vaccines through Texas on Monday were held at gunpoint, NBC News reports. Larry Harris, sixty six, of Willcox, Arizona, turned his truck into oncoming traffic, stopping three National Guard vans. He then pointed a gun at a soldier, identified himself as a detective, ordered the guardsmen out of their vehicles and demanded to search their vans, according to police. Luckily nobody got hurt, and the vaccines reached their destination.

The New York Times reports that the jury for the murder trial of Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd has been seated, clearing the way for the opening arguments in the trial, set to begin on Monday. The twelve-member jury includes two white men, four white women, three Black men, one Black women and two women who identify as mixed race. Two white women and a white man are the alternates. We’ll be watching.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy yesterday announced plans to slow mail delivery standards and cut hours at some post offices, the AP reports. Details of the plan come at a time of intense scrutiny on DeJoy, a major GOP donor who took over the agency last summer. The plan also includes a proposal to consolidate underused post offices, and hinted at a potential postage rate increase. Paying more for less – sounds like DeJoy is really running the place like a business.

MAR 24, 2021 - AM QUICKIE

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Corey Pein

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

New photos taken by Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar show the desperate, inhumane, and all-too-familiar conditions children and families are living in while in Border Patrol’s custody under the Biden administration.

Meanwhile, the House holds a hearing on the possibility of Washington D.C. becoming a state. You’ll never believe what the Republicans thought of all that!

And lastly, the Biden Administration is reportedly planning another massive $3 trillion economic stimulus package, this time anchored by a large-scale infrastructure plan and green energy initiatives.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

The pictures coming out of Customs and Border Protection facilities will not shock you -- not anymore at least. They’re almost exactly the same as the horrific ones that came out when Trump was in power, only this time, we’ve supposedly got a kinder and gentler executive in power.

Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar released photos on Monday from inside a CBP facilities, which he accessed on a tour for lawmakers. The photos, taken at a facility in Donna, Texas, show the conditions that many of the around 4,900 children in CBP custody are living in. They show crowded tent facilities, with children and adults wrapped in the aluminum emergency blankets lying on thin mattresses on the floor.

As we discussed last week, CBP is basically blowing every federal guideline they’re supposed to uphold, keeping children for more than the allotted three days and stopping media and lawyers from accessing the buildings. Their facilities are also very publicly overwhelmed, and the Biden administration is still scrambling to contain the growing crisis.

The Washington Post reports that the Administration is frantically searching for ways to slow down the surge of migrants and refugees, reverting back to sterner warnings not to come to migrants who have been lured by smugglers promising lax enforcement. Meanwhile, right wing groups are feeding into this chaos, distorting the real narrative of the need for better conditions for migrants in custody by feeding fake footage of border crossings to media outlets, including CNN, according to the American prospect.

And what CBP does in these situations of course is pass the pain down to the migrants in their custody. When things get tight, it’s not the laws on who can go where that bend, it’s the ones that govern how desperate people at our border should be treated.

Republicans Sputter About D.C. Statehood

The House of Representatives convened a key panel to discuss the issue of statehood for Washington D.C. on Monday, leading to several absurd showdowns with Republicans.

The issue has become a central part of the Democrats agenda on voting rights, particularly as Republican state legislatures seek to cement their power by passing the most draconian voter suppression laws as possible.

Having two Senators from D.C. wouldn’t give those people back their rights, but it would give the Democrats a massive leg up in the precarious balance of Congress. Not to mention, it would also give everyone who lives in D.C. their proper constitutional rights.

Republicans are terrified of this, of course, and their arguments against it are becoming so desperate and weak it’s pitiful to watch. Georgia Rep. Jody Hist, for instance, argued that D.C. could not be state because it didn’t have any car dealerships. It does, of course.

Meanwhile, Zack Smith, a fellow at the neocon slime-factory Heritage Foundation, said in his opening statement that D.C. residents impacted the national conversation not through voting -- because their votes don’t count, remember -- but because lawmakers can see their lawn signs when they drive to work. We’re not making this up, people.

Wisconsin Rep. Glenn Grothman then rounded out the three stooges act by arguing that D.C. could not be a state because it doesn’t have any manufacturing, agriculture, mining or drilling. Again, farms do not actually vote, but go off I guess.

Biden Plots Big Spending Plan

The New York Times reports that the Biden Administration is putting together a massive $3 trillion economic spending bill, anchored by a huge infrastructure plan that might be funded at least in part by more taxes on corporations and the rich.

The plan right now is still being passed around advisor’s desks, though a version of it is expected to be in front of the president and congressional leaders this week. It would reportedly spend heavily on clean energy development, rural broadband, and affordable housing, all of which are sorely needed priorities.

But it may be too early to get completely excited. The Times also reports that the first package of spending may be tailored to appeal to republicans and centrist democrats, so it’s probably best to temper our expectations.

Instead of one big bill, it’s also likely that the administration will try to push different aspects of a wider plan through in pieces.

We’ll know more about what that will look like in the coming weeks, so we’ll be sure to keep a close eye on what looks good and what appears to be consolation offerings to the myth of bipartisanship.

Still, the Times says this is expected to be Biden’s big push to make his mark on the nation’s economy, so it’s going to be a big one. We’ll see what he does with it.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed Nina Turner, a former Ohio State Senator and long-time Bernie Sanders surrogate, in her campaign for the state’s 11th Congressional district. If Turner’s successful, she’ll certainly become a fast member of AOC’s growing progressive squad inside the House.

A new mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado unfolded on Monday afternoon, when a gunman opened fire inside a grocery store. Denver’s ABC affiliate reported that at least six people were killed, and that the suspect had fired on police officers as well when they arrived.

The Supreme Court has agreed to review a lower court decision that overturned the death sentence handed down to Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnev [ZHO-HAR SAR-NAI-EV], reopening the possibility that he will be executed by the state.

The Senate confirmed Marty Walsh as Joe Biden’s new labor secretary on Monday night, which had the side-effect of making Boston City Council President Kim Janey the first black mayor of the city.

MAR 23, 2021 - AM QUICKIE

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Jack Crosbie

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

Federal prosecutors say they have enough evidence to bring charges of sedition against some of the rioters who invaded the Capitol Building on January 6.

Meanwhile, The U.S. government missed a major chance to make coronavirus vaccines more accessible for all

And lastly, Biden’s Defense Secretary makes a surprise visit to Afghanistan, while the administration weighs how to continue or end our country’s destructive foreign policy there.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Federal prosecutors say they have enough evidence to bring charges of sedition against some of the rioters who invaded the Capitol Building on January 6.

Michael R. Sherwin, a federal prosecutor who had been leading the Justice Department’s inquiry into the riots, said on 60 minutes on Sunday that he thinks he has the goods to actually bring that charge, which is exclusively used for the crime of attempting to overthrow the government. That’s not particularly common, just so we’re on the same page. Sherwin said, “I personally believe the evidence is trending toward that, and probably meets those elements. I believe the facts do support those charges. And I think that, as we go forward, more facts will support that.”

I know that’s a lot of legalese, but if you consider how ambiguous federal prosecutors usually are about a lot of this stuff, it’s pretty telling that Sherwin is even humoring that idea.

Sherwin also said he was actually at the riots, observing them in civilian clothing as they unfolded on January 6. He stepped down from leading the investigation in early March, turning things over to a different prosecutor.

The New York Times points out that the last time the Justice Department actually charged someone with Sedition was in 2010, when they accused members of a militia in Michigan of plotting to fight the government. So far, the government has charged over 400 rioters in connection to the January 6 storming, but Sherwin said only about 10 percent of those are more

serious cases involving the militia guys, which is probably where we can expect sedition charges to land again. Funny how it’s always the militia guys these days!

Government Won't Pressure Drug Companies

The New York Times has an interesting and tragic story about the rollout of vaccines worldwide.

The specific patent that allows for the production of most of the coronavirus vaccines is going to be issued in a few days. It pertains to molecular engineering that was actually developed years ago, and will actually be issued to the U.S. government.

The government, in turn, has let major drug companies use this technology freely, as well as showering them with money. But the Times points out that the one thing it did not do was ensure that the drug companies would share their recipes for vaccines built on the back of this patent and force them to sign production contracts that ensured that poorer countries got doses too.

In other words, because the U.S. controls the patent that makes vaccines possible, it could use that leverage to make sure that the drug companies spread the wealth around to poorer countries. But so far it hasn’t.

Instead, what has happened is very clear. The world swarmed over every available dose, and the richest countries came out on top, because they could pay the drug companies more. Here’s how Gregg Gonsalves, a Yale epidemiologist described it;

“It was like a run on toilet paper. Everybody was like, ‘Get out of my way. I’m gonna get that last package of Charmin. We just ran for the doses.”

That’s a pretty fitting analogy. But instead of having some uncomfortable bathroom experiences, the drawbacks on a global scale are the fact that millions of people in less fortunate countries will have to wait months if not years for the vaccine, as they continue to die because once again, Western greed has won.

Defense Sec Drops Into Afghanistan

Freshly minted Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin took an unannounced visit to Afghanistan on Sunday, arriving in the country just weeks before the Biden administration faces one of its biggest foreign policy tests.

Austin landed in Kabul and then immediately choppered off to meetings with Afghan President Ashraf [AHSH-RAF] Ghani, U.S. diplomat Ross Wilson and Army Gen. Austin Miller, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, according to the Washington Post.

Austin’s presence there is a pretty clear sign that the U.S. is desperately trying to find the most acceptable end-point to the no-win situation in Afghanistan. Military leaders have been cautioning that if the U.S. removes its last troops much of the country will fall once again to the Taliban, but leaving them there means prolonging the nearly two decades of war that we started.

Turkey announced that it would hold a peace summit between Afghan government and Taliban leaders in April, which was requested by U.S. officials.

The Trump administration negotiated the original deal to withdraw troops, but did not include a provision that said the Afghan government and Taliban needed to have a peace deal before U.S. troops left.

The last troops are supposed to be out by May 1. The Biden administration has not definitively said one way or another what they’re going to do about that deadline.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Miami Beach was forced to extend its city-wide state of emergency until April 11 as police cleared streets packed with spring break revellers, disregarding any coronavirus protocols. City officials have instituted a curfew as well to deal with the overwhelming influx of spring breakers.

Friday quietly marked the 18th anniversary of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, one of the most globally destructive acts in modern history. The U.S. still has at least 2,500 troops stationed in the country.

Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern Railroads announced a plan on Sunday to combine, in a $29 billion deal that would create the first super-railroad between the U.S., Mexico and Canada. The New York Times reports that the companies are hoping to capitalize on a boom in trade once the pandemic ends.

Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas [MAY-YORK-AS] went on a media onslaught on Sunday, appearing on most of the major networks and vociferously defending the administration’s border policies, which are crumbling under the strain of another spring influx of refugees and migrants. Keep an eye on this one this week.

MAR 22, 2021 - AM QUICKIE

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Jack Crosbie

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

The pace of vaccinations is stepping up in the United States. But one group of holdouts – Republican men – now threatens the collective goal of reaching widespread immunity.

Meanwhile, with his business empire on the ropes and his social media accounts suspended, Donald Trump has more urgent and costly problems to worry about. Since losing the White House, he’s become a magnet for legal actions both civil and criminal.

And lastly, Seattle got sued by big business after passing a measure mandating pandemic hazard pay increases for workers at large grocery chains. Now a federal court has ruled in favor of the city – and those essential workers.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

With the US closing in on President Joe Biden’s goal of injecting one hundred million coronavirus vaccinations, officials announced yesterday the nation is now in position to help supply neighbors Canada and Mexico, the Associated Press reports. The Biden administration announced the outlines of a plan to loan vaccines to Canada and Mexico even as the president announced that the US is on the cusp of meeting his one hundred-day injection goal today. The US is injecting an average of about two point two million doses each day – and the pace of vaccination is likely to dramatically rise later this month in conjunction with an expected surge in supply.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that Mississippi on Tuesday joined Alaska in making the vaccines available to all residents age sixteen and older. A number of individual counties, from Arizona to North Carolina, have also beckoned everyone to make appointments. These places offer the rest of the country a glimpse of the future. Some residents are thrilled to have the chance to be inoculated. But many other people are holding back, spotlighting challenges related to equity, access and trust that could complicate the quest to reach the high levels of immunity needed to stop the virus’s spread.

Nirav Shah, director of Maine’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Post he has been hearing from colleagues across the country that they are starting to see

appointments go unfilled. Polling suggests rural residents and Republicans are among the least likely to get in line for a coronavirus vaccine. A recent NPR-PBS survey found white Republicans were more hesitant than any other subset of the population. Republican men were especially disinclined, with forty nine percent saying they don’t plan to get vaccinated. What can you say, except stupid is as stupid does?

Trump Drowning In Lawsuits

This update on the legal woes of a certain former Twitter user comes from the Washington Post. The district attorney is sifting through millions of pages of his tax records. The state attorney general has subpoenaed his lawyers, his bankers, his chief financial officer – even one of his sons. And that’s just in New York. Donald Trump is also facing criminal investigations in Georgia and the District of Columbia related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. And Trump must defend himself against a growing raft of lawsuits: twenty nine are pending at last count. No charges have been filed against Trump in any of these investigations. The outcome of these lawsuits is uncertain. But the sheer volume of these legal problems indicates that – after a moment of maximum invincibility in the White House – Trump has fallen to a point of historic vulnerability before the law.

The Post identified six ongoing investigations that could involve Trump. Of the investigations, the broadest appear to be two in New York: a criminal probe begun by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Junior in 2018, and a separate civil inquiry begun by state Attorney General Letitia James in 2019. In addition, Trump faces three probes related to his efforts to overturn his loss to President Biden. Two are in Georgia, where Trump, in a phone call, pressured Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find enough votes to let him win. In Washington, DC Attorney General Karl Racine has also opened a criminal investigation into Trump’s actions on January 6th, when his supporters sacked the Capitol. Among the twenty nine lawsuits Trump is facing, about eighteen result from disputes with his properties. The rest seem to have been brought on by his presidency. This may sound bad, but he’s getting off very, very easy.

Seattle Hazard Pay Upheld

Here’s some news about a legal victory for workers on the left coast. A federal judge has dismissed a grocery industry lawsuit that sought to block Seattle’s new law granting $4- an-hour raises to grocery store workers for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic, the Seattle Times reports. The law applies to large grocers, those with more than five hundred employees worldwide and stores larger than ten thousand square feet, in Seattle. It mandates a $4-an-hour pay boost for all workers in retail locations. And that pay boost must remain in effect for as long as Seattle remains in a declared civil emergency.

The City Council passed the wage hike law unanimously in late January, the Times says, after advocacy from the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 21. Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes, whose office defended the law, said QUOTE This is a big win for grocery store employees who have been critical and vulnerable frontline workers since the start of the pandemic ENDQUOTE. The lawsuit, filed in US District Court in Seattle, alleged the city’s law interferes with the collective-bargaining process between grocery stores and unions and also picks winners and losers by singling out large grocery companies. Holmes countered that the law is well within the city’s purview of protecting workers and regulating business.

Other cities, mostly along the West Coast, including Los Angeles, Berkeley and Long Beach, California, have also recently forwarded or approved similar hazard pay boosts for grocery workers, according to the Times. Seattle has made several efforts to boost the pay of lower- wage essential workers who are often far more exposed to the virus than higher-wage office workers, many of whom have shifted to remote work. These are good ideas that more cities should copy, especially now that there’s court precedent behind them.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

The Senate approved William Burns yesterday as director of the CIA, the New York Times reports. Burns was approved by unanimous consent in the Senate. A former ambassador in Russia and Jordan and a senior State Department official, Burns, sixty four, is the only career diplomat chosen to lead the CIA. And now he’s just another old white spy.

Republican Representative Chip Roy of Texas said he had no apologies after he made what appeared to be a pro-lynching remark during a congressional hearing on combatting anti-Asian American violence, NBC News reports. In a tirade about free speech, Roy said Congress should QUOTE find all the rope in Texas and get a tall oak tree ENDQUOTE. In response, New York Democratic Representative Grace Meng said such rhetoric put a QUOTE a bull's-eye on the back of Asian Americans across this country ENDQUOTE. Indeed.

ProPublica reports that nine months after racial justice protests swept across New York City and videos showed police punching, kicking and trapping demonstrators, the city agency responsible for investigating abuses has revealed the number of officers who have so far faced serious disciplinary charges. Two. One involved an officer who flashed a white power sign, and the other concerned an officer who hit a protester with a baton. Oink, I mean oy.

Tanzania’s president, John Magufuli, one of Africa’s most prominent Covid-19 deniers, has died after a two-week absence from public life that prompted speculation that he had contracted the disease, the Guardian reports. He was sixty one. Magufuli denied the spread of Covid-19 in Tanzania and claimed vaccines were dangerous, suggesting instead that people pray and inhale herb-infused steam. What, no bleach injections? Trust the science!

MAR 19, 2021 - AM QUICKIE

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Corey Pein

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

A group of Democratic Senators led by Bernie Sanders have introduced a bill to raise taxes on companies who overpay their executives. Members of Congress also heard testimony yesterday from an Amazon worker fighting for higher wages and better conditions.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden spoke to the fears of many Asian-Americans after the deadly mass shooting in Atlanta. Despite hemming and hawing from police, a local press report suggests there is no doubt the killer was motivated by racist hatred.

And lastly, the IRS is planning to push back this year’s tax filing deadline by a full month. But the agency’s huge backlog also means delays in getting stimulus payments out to the public.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Amazon faced fresh scrutiny for its treatment of workers at a Senate hearing yesterday on income inequality, the Washington Post reports. The focus came as senators introduced a new bill to tax chief executives who make fifty times more than the median workers. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont drilled into the gap between most Americans and billionaires during his opening remarks, pointing to data that billionaires have gained significant wealth during the pandemic. Sanders’s Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act would impose increased taxes on companies that have CEOs making significantly more than a median worker at the firm. It is also sponsored by Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey of Massachusetts, as well as Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. The bill includes stock options and awards as part of a CEO’s salaries, and if the CEO is not the highest-paid employee at the company, the equation would be based on who is.

Sanders invited Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to testify at the Budget Committee hearing, the Post reports, but he declined to appear. Jennifer Bates, an Amazon worker at the company’s warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, testified about the unionization efforts there. Bates said the company had been holding meetings to discourage workers from joining the union, sometimes multiple times a week. Voting by mail is already underway in Alabama and will end March 29. President Joe Biden expressed support for the union late last month. Bates

outlined why she believes workers need the union – to advocate for better working conditions and a higher living wage. Working at an Amazon warehouse is no easy thing, she said, adding QUOTE They seem to think you are another machine ENDQUOTE. Every worker deserves to be treated like a human.

Biden Addresses Atlanta Killings

President Biden yesterday addressed the spa shootings in Atlanta that left eight people dead, NBC News reports. He said he understands the concern among Asian Americans as investigators work to determine a motive. Biden said QUOTE Whatever the motivation here, I know Asian Americans, they are very concerned, because as you know I have been speaking about the brutality against Asian Americans, and it's troubling ENDQUOTE. Biden said that he had spoken on the phone yesterday with the attorney general and the FBI director and that a motive for the shootings was still being determined. A gunman shot and killed eight people at three massage spa parlors in the Atlanta area on Tuesday night, and six of the victims were women of Asian decent. Cherokee County sheriff's Captain Jay Baker said that after a brief manhunt, Robert Aaron Long, twenty one, was arrested and later confessed to the attack.

According to NBC, Baker said in a news conference yesterday that Long claimed that the attack was not racially motivated. Baker said that Long told investigators that he had a sex addiction and that he saw the spas as QUOTE a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate ENDQUOTE. But according to local Korean-language press translated by New York magazine writer E. Alex Jung, Long screamed during his attack that he would kill all the Asians.

Last week we told you how anti-Asian hate crimes have spiked during the pandemic. According to a new study cited by CBS News, Asian Americans were subjected to nearly three thousand eight hundred hate incidents over the last year. Verbal harassment and shunning accounted for sixty eight percent of the incidents. Physical violence accounted for eleven percent. It’s gotta stop, and it would help if authorities didn’t dither about the perpetrators’ movitves.

IRS May Delay Tax Deadline

Good news for procrastinators: The Internal Revenue Service is expected to postpone the country’s tax-filing deadline to mid-May, the Washington Post reports. The agency is grappling with a backlog of twenty four million returns awaiting processing since the 2019 tax year. The workload has put the agency underwater – and under political siege – as lawmakers fret that long-unresolved troubles at the IRS could undercut the Biden administration’s economic recovery efforts. Millions of Americans still have not received some stimulus checks under prior coronavirus aid packages, even as the tax agency continued distributing payments yesterday.

The IRS shared the full scope of its backlog with the House Ways and Means Committee and the agency’s own government watchdogs. The numbers, obtained by the Post, dwarf the data the IRS has shared with the public. The effects of the IRS backlog have been substantial: The delays have kept some Americans from receiving their tax refunds for months while preventing some cash-strapped workers and companies from taking advantage of some of the stimulus benefits that Congress authorized. The IRS communicated its plans to adjust the tax-filing deadline to House and Senate lawmakers yesterday.

Ken Corbin, commissioner of the wage and investment division at the IRS, declined to discuss the potential changes to the tax-filing deadline during an interview with the Post yesterday. But he said the situation reflects the many, many challenges the country and agency have faced because of the virus and other more recent obstacles, including inclement weather. The delays threaten the IRS’s ability to deliver an array of new relief under the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and could result in uncomfortable questions for IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, who is set to testify before the House Ways and Means Committee today. I wonder if he’ll blame the weather, too.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

FBI agents have arrested two organizers for the Proud Boys in Philadelphia and North Carolina, and prosecutors filed new charges against two other prominent members of the far- right group in Florida and Washington State as federal authorities continued their crackdown on its leadership ranks, the New York Times reports. Named in the indictment are Charles Donohoe, Zach Rehl, Ethan Nordean, and Joseph Biggs. They effed around and found out.

Texas attorney general Ken Paxton said Griddy Energy will forgive the more than $29 million owed by customers in unpaid bills, NBC reports. As people struggled to survive the recent storm, Griddy debited enormous amounts from customer accounts, Paxton said. He had sued the company under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, and is still negotiating for relief to people who already paid their bills, which surged as high as $10,000 after the storm. The gall of these vultures!

A United Nations report slammed multiple countries for flagrantly violating a global arms embargo by funneling weapons to warring sides in Libya, the Washington Post reports. A a UN-appointed panel of experts documented scores of shipments of illicit items, including drones and transport aircraft, as well as the deployment of mercenaries, to Libya’s two chief factions. Russia, Turkey, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and others are implicated. What an awful, tragic mess.

Donald Trump’s son Eric, who runs the family’s private company, touted the potential of transforming their Doral golf resort into a gambling destination, according to the Post. The business pivot comes amid a push among Florida Republicans to legalize casinos in areas of the state that have long opposed them. During Trump’s presidency, revenue at the heavily indebted club dropped steeply, falling forty four percent last year. A failing club: Sad.

MAR 18, 2021 - AM QUICKIE

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Corey Pein

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

Joe Biden speaks directly to the press on one of the first occasions of his presidency, and drops a couple big lines, including support for quote “reforming” the filibuster and an admission that Andrew Cuomo could be on the way out.

Meanwhile, other Democrats continue to embarrass themselves, as new reports allege that Dianne Feinstein’s husband is trying to nepotism his way into an ambassadorship under Biden, though the 87-year-old California Senator insists she’ll keep her seat either way.

And lastly, the GOP continues its assault on voting rights around the country, leaning heavily on bogus allegations of voter fraud, despite widespread evidence that it just doesn’t happen.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Joe Biden sat down with ABC’s George Stephanopolous on Tuesday night for one of the first major interviews of his presidency, and delivered a couple key quotes that could have big ramifications for his party’s future.

First, Biden indicated that he supports changing the Senate filibuster rule, a big hangup that has plagued the Democratic party’s ability to enact his agenda.

Still, Biden, a long time Senator, did not say he wants to completely abolish the filibuster, instead saying that the Senate should go back to the talking filibuster, where a Senator who wanted to delay a vote had to stand and speak for as long as possible.

Even this change has Mitch McConnell scared, as he vowed to take a quote “scorched earth” endquote strategy if Democrats touch the filibuster.

That wasn’t all from Biden on Tuesday night though. He also weighed in on the allegations against New York Governor and Democratic rising star Andrew Cuomo, saying that the governor should resign if the investigation into his conduct finds that the multiple allegations of sexual harassment and assault against him are true.

Biden added quote “I think he'll probably end up being prosecuted, too." endquote.

Doesn’t look good for old Andy’s long-term prospects as a Democratic leader there! Biden plans to follow this one-on-one with a full news conference on Thursday.

Dems Hope Nepotism Can Solve Feinstein Problem

Meanwhile, 87-year-old senator Dianne Feinstein still has no plans to retire, even as her husband tries to glad-hand his way into an overseas posting as one of Joe Biden’s ambassadors.

Pressure has mounted for Feinstein to retire for years in the hope that a younger and ideally more progressive Senator could take one of California’s two safely-blue seats.

The reason is pretty simple: Feinstein is clearly not as sharp as she once was, which the party has pretty openly hinted at.

She was asked to step down from her ranking position on the Judiciary committee after putting on an insipid, pandering performance during the Amy Coney Barrett confirmation hearings.

The party is also eager to replace Feinstein with a black woman, as the Senate has precisely zero members who fit that demographic now that Kamala Harris is sitting in the VP’s office.

The New York Times reports that the Democrats are hoping Biden will solve that problem for them by handing Feinstein’s husband Richard Blum, a wealthy investor and long time friend of the president.

The hope is that if Blum takes an overseas vanity post, he’ll take Feinstein with him and away from the Senate. But in comments to reporters this week, Feinstein insisted she would serve out the rest of her term, which lasts until 2025. But hey, maybe in this case a little nepotism will go a long way.

GOP Leans Into Voter Fraud

The GOP is once again putting out an absolute onslaught of bills aimed at stripping the right to vote from millions of Americans.

Their reasoning is very simple: when more people vote, the Republicans lose. To stop that happening, they’re trying to weaponize any skewed advantage they can get in the courts and legislatures to make sure that fewer people exercise their right.

In Texas alone, NBC News reports that there are more than two dozen restrictive voting bills currently going through the GOP-controlled legislature. Many of them take aim at the spooky specter of so-called voter fraud, which is a scare tactic designed to make people think the Democrats steal elections.

In reality, the Houston Chronical reports that Texas’s Attorney General’s office spent a combined 22,000 hours looking for voter fraud in the 2020 election and found just 16 cases of a false address being registered. There are 17 million voters in Texas.

Some of the more insidious bills specifically target voters Republicans know they can’t win over. One strategy they’re using is to try to limit the hours polling places can be open for early voting or standardize the hours across the state, which data shows would help turnout in smaller, rural communities and hurt it in the busy urban areas. That’s a pretty obvious one right there.

It’s worth noting that this is going on all over the country. Republicans have tried ploys like this in Georgia, Florida, and all over the South -- wherever they’ve got control of a state, voting rights are going to suffer.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

A new U.S. intelligence report finds that, surprise! Both Russia and Iran tried to influence the 2020 election, but China, remarkably, did not. We’ll see how various interests in D.C.’s foreign policy blob try to weaponize this information.

Moderna announced that it will begin testing its vaccine on children under the age of 12, enlisting over 6,000 volunteers in the U.S. and Canada, which could give crucially missing data on how effective and safe the vaccine is in young children.

In Texas, Pete Buttigieg’s Department of Transportation made a crucial judgement to pause one of the state’s most notoriously racist highway expansion projects, which would have displaced over 1,000 predominantly minority households and subjected thousands of others to increased pollution and potential flooding.

The Washington Post reports that House Democrats are expected to re-introduce a Medicare For All bill into the House today, renewing their push despite the ambivalence of the Biden administration. More than 100 representatives are expected to put their names on the Bill.

MAR 17, 2021 - AM QUICKIE

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Jack Crosbie

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

A subtle policy left in place by the Trump administration could let private interests hack up Medicare even further unless the Biden Administration steps in.

Meanwhile, Europe’s wider vaccine rollout hits a major snag as new concerns over possible side-effects cause several nations to suspend use of the Astra Zeneca vaccine. Fortunately, the U.S. is mostly using Moderna and Pfizer.

And lastly, new data shows that Elon Musk’s defiant reopening of Tesla factories during the pandemic could have caused hundreds of coronavirus cases among his employees.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

We’ve known since well before the election that the first months, if not years of the Biden presidency will be defined by rooting out and undoing all the damage the Trump administration did in four years.

As the Center for Health Journalism reports, one policy that’s flying under the radar could spell trouble for Medicare recipients, as subtly-hidden Trump-era program promises to hand off more of the nation’s only centralized healthcare program to private interests.

The program is called the Geographic Direct Contracting Model, or Geo for short. Its goal is to cut costs for the government by putting Medicare patients on a semi-privatized managed care plan, rather than regular, government-run Medicare.

One source told the CHJ that the Geo programs are so subtle and complex that QUOTE “someone might not know they’re in one.” endquote.

But where they’ll feel it, often, is when they try to get medical care. The new model won’t necessarily raise out of pocket costs for the beneficiaries, but advocates worry that it could mean that complex health care becomes less accessible for people on the plans, similar to some of the problems people have faced on Medicare Advantage plans.

All of this adds up to a system that the CHJ said could quote “potentially turn every senior into a customer of a privately-run managed care organization.” Your everyday customer may not even notice, but the insurance companies and big healthcare corporations are the ones that will make a killing on this.

The big red flag is when this went into place: December 2020, right as Trump was on the way out. And due to the lack of media coverage of these small changes, advocates are worried that the Biden administration might drop the ball.

Diane Archer, the president of healthcare watchdog Just Care USA, wrote in an op-ed for Common Dreams quote:

“It's bad policy, a government giveaway to Wall Street, and a betrayal of the most basic principles of Medicare. The Biden administration should immediately kill this toxic legacy of the former president."

Endquote.

Hopefully we’ll see some movement on this soon.

Europe Pauses AstraZeneca Rollout

Meanwhile, problems continue to plague Europe’s vaccine rollout. On Monday, Germany, France, Italy and Spain became the latest countries to suspend use of the Astra Zeneca vaccine after unconfirmed reports of patients experiencing blood clots.

Let’s be clear: the reports thus far aren’t backed up by any data or research yet, so they may be overblown. The company claims there’s no evidence of any link to an increased risk for blood clots. European authorities are doing a full assessment of the vaccine, but until that comes out they’ve paused its use.

The risk, however, is that any pause to Europe’s rollout could enhance the spread of several more infectious and potentially more deadly variants of the virus. These variants are in the U.S. as well, but scientists think our vaccine rollout is on pace to head off the worst of them.

The other big risk that European scientists want to avoid, is people refusing the vaccine after stories like this come out.

They’re probably figuring that a short pause while they accumulate better research is the best move, rather than pushing ahead with a jumpy population that needs to get inoculated fast.

This particular snag won’t hit the U.S., of course, as our primary vaccines are the Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson and Johnson ones, which thus far have been found to be overwhelmingly safe. Mississippi, for instance, became the second state to open vaccine eligibility to every adult on Monday.

Elon Musk Reopened Factories and His Workers Got Sick

Tech overlord Elon Musk has had a pretty active pandemic, pushing the limits of government regulators on a national and local level alike. But at least one of his brazen decisions could have come with some serious consequences for the people who work underneath him.

The Washington Post reports that Alameda County data shows that Tesla’s Bay Area production plant recorded hundreds of coronavirs cases following Musk’s defiant re-opening of the factory last May. Musk famously dared local officials to arrest him and re-opened facilities in defiance of stay-at-home orders early last year, and this is what he got.

The ​_Post_ ​reports that the data shows 450 reported cases among the plant’s 10,000 workers between May and December. That’s only 4.5 percent of the workers of course, but it shows exactly what acceptable casualties were for the richest man in the world.

Tesla was required to report its cases to the county, but the data stayed under wraps until it was unearthed by a legal transparency website earlier this year.

On Monday, Musk announced that he had official changed his job title at Tesla to, and I quote, “the Technoking of Tesla,” making his CFO the “master of coin” on official SEC filings. The guy clearly would rather make epic internet jokes than protect his workers, which is about what we should expect from him at this point.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

The Senate confirmed Deb Haaland, Joe Biden’s pick for Interior Secretary, by a 51 to 40 vote on Monday. Haaland was by far the most progressive pick for the post and will be the first Native interior secretary of the U.S.

The Washington Post reports that the fencing around the U.S. Capitol put up after the January 6 riots will start to come down and the National Guard presence will decrease in the coming weeks, after finding no quote “credible threat” against Congress. It only took, what, two full months since Inauguration for them to demilitarize the capitol?

CIA officials overseas are pissed at their superiors, the Intercept reports, after the U.S.’s lead spy agency vaccinated most of its Langley, Virginia staff in early January, while foreign bureaus are still trying to find supply of the vaccine for their members.

And finally, the Guardian reports that noted fascist Steve Bannon has finally lost a years-long legal battle to set up a right wing political academy in an 800-year-old church in Italy. Darn! Real bummer for the whole world on that one.

MAR 16, 2021 - AM QUICKIE

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Jack Crosbie

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

The Washington Post reports that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement is dropping off asylum seekers who are positive for COVID-19 at bus stops with no prior warning to the activist groups who are trying to unite them with families or find them housing, while FEMA steps in to take over housing unaccompanied minors overwhelming facilities on the border.

Meanwhile, New York State’s vaccine czar reportedly questioned local officials as to their loyalty to embattled governor Andrew Cuomo, prompting an ethics complaint on top of the existing sexual harassment scandals leveled against Cuomo.

And lastly, despite the sweeping measures included in the new covid relief bill, Democrats left one loophole in: the new stimulus payments aren’t exempt from debt collection, and it’s Congress’s job to make sure stand alone legislation fixes that as soon as possible.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

The immigration crisis has not let up in the first months of Joe Biden’s presidency, and the Washington Post reports that some forces Trump enabled are still enacting brutal policies toward people who come here seeking a better life.

The Post reports that for weeks, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has been dropping off COVID-positive detainees at bus stations with no prior warning to the activist groups or family members trying to find them homes or housing.

ICE claims that it’s their policy to notify local authorities when they release a detainee that has COVID, but some county officials say they had no idea when and where immigrants carrying the disease would be released.

Let’s be clear: this danger is in no way the fault of the immigrants themselves, who are often crammed in unsafe and overcrowded detention facilities that are hotbeds for covid.

In fact, as we reported last week, the number of unaccompanied minors has skyrocketed at the border. Recently, the New York Times reports that the Biden Administration has asked FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to step in and help house some of the children that had previously been forced into sparse adult facilities run by Customs and Border Protection.

These kids are supposed to be cared for and helped by the Department for Health And Human Services, which has a spotty record in that respect to start and has so far failed to adequately handle the influx of new immigrants as well. It seems that even if Biden has good intentions, America’s immigration system is still broken beyond any easy repair.

Cuomo Goon Squeezed Local Officials

Meanwhile, the depths of Andrew Cuomo’s alleged corruption continue to sink. The Washington Post reports that New York State’s so-called vaccine czar, a long-time Cuomo advisor, called up local officials and grilled them over their loyalty to the governor amid the ongoing sexual harassment investigation.

Cuomo called a deranged press conference on Friday where he refused to resign and said he wouldn’t quote “bow to cancel culture.” endquote. And while all this has been going on over the past few weeks, the Post reports that the man involved in determining who gets vaccines in New York State has been leaning on local officials to curry favor for the Governor.

The vaccine’s czar’s name is Larry Schwartz. He’s a self-admitted 30-year friend of Cuomo who earned the reputation as his quote “enforcer” during a long career in Albany. Schwartz even admitted making the calls to county officials, although he insisted they were of a personal nature and not in his official capacity. Still, one local official was so disturbed about the timing of one of Schwartz’s calls right after a vaccine supply meeting that he filed notice for an impending ethics complaint.

According to the post, Schwartz was asking officials what their position was and trying to ascertain whether or not they’d be changing their public statements as the evidence against Cuomo mounted. Basically, trying to see who would denounce the Governor next.

Sure, this could all be a coincidence. But if we know anything about how Andrew Cuomo does politics at this point it wouldn’t be a surprise for one of his friends, who happens to control vaccine supply in the state, to imply that staying on the Governor’s good side was important for lower-level local officials.

Stimulus Checks Vulnerable to Debt Collectors

Stimulus checks started hitting American bank accounts this weekend, in what is surely a welcome relief for many hard-working people who have been struggling to make ends meet over the past year.

But Common Dreams reports that the architects of the American Rescue Plan did not build in protections against debt collectors into the bill signed last week. That means that debt collectors and companies could immediately suck the stimulus payments out of peoples’ bank accounts. We saw this happen with the CARES act, which also lacked similar protections. While the

stimulus was a boon for some, it was also a huge windfall for predatory debt collectors seeking to make their money back as quickly as possible in spite of the recession.

The $600 payments we got in December did have protections against this, which is why it’s so damaging that the $1400 checks don’t have the same. Because of some procedural snags with the reconciliation process, lawmakers will now have to pass an independent bill protecting stimulus payments from debt collectors, and who knows how long that will take.

Oregon Senator Rod Wyden has already pledged to introduce protective legislation. But as the American Prospect already noted, for debts that have already seen a court judgement, that protection will be too late: the collectors can take it already. A stopgap measure would stop new debt judgments from swiping the stimulus checks, but for many Americans, the weekend’s windfall will be pretty short lived.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Internal documents obtained by the Washington Post show that Facebook is conducting a sweeping internal review of what kind of content is fueling vaccine skepticism on their service. And sure enough, the Post reports that it’s turning up all kinds of QAnon adjacent material that isn’t technically against the platform’s rules. Sounds like they should make some new ones.

Senior U.S. Officials claimed that they were ready to sit down with Iran as early as today and re-enter the Iran nuclear deal, but both sides have been offering conflicting and combative statements in recent weeks that have stonewalled or derailed any negotiations. We’ll have to see if Biden’s consultant-stacked State Department can make any meaningful headway.

A peaceful vigil for Sarah Everard, a 33-year-old woman who was allegedly kidnapped and killed by a London police officer was forcefully disrupted by the UK’s largest police force on Saturday, showing that the U.S. is far from having a monopoly on out-of-control state violence.

And in the U.S., rallies marking the one-year anniversary of Breonna Taylor’s death took place in several major cities, while in Taylor’s hometown of Louisville, while Kentucky’s GOP-controlled state legislature passed a bill criminalizing insulting police officers.

MAR 15, 2021 - AM QUICKIE

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Jack Crosbie

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn