President Donald Trump has used the Defense Production Act to ensure beef, pork, poultry and egg plants keep operating to avoid a food shortage. That did not sit well with MsNBC Chris Hayes who objected to Trump using the DPA after blasting Trump for not using the DPA. For weeks, I have been raising what I view as a widespread misconception of the DPA and its function. This is an example of how the DPA has become part of a media mantra to suggest that the Administration refused to use the Act when it could have addressed shortfalls. This spin redirects the primary responsibility for the failure to prepare for a pandemic from governors, who ignored years of warnings of shortfalls and lack of stored material. There are legitimate questions about mistakes made in this pandemic but the DPA has increasingly been used in a way disconnected from factual and legal foundations.
Hayes objects that the Trump Administration failed to use the DPA to force production of ventilators and other items. However, as I have said previously, there is no reason to use the DPA if the Administration believes that companies are at maximum input. One legitimate objection that the Administration has made about the coverage is the widespread misrepresentations of the ventilator issue. Dr. Deborah Birx and others have noted that no one was actually denied a ventilator and that states had a surplus. We are currently producing an astonishing level of ventilators that far exceeds our expected needs by a sizable degree.
The point is that the DPA moves away obstacles or motivates companies when needed. If companies are cooperating and meeting maximum projections, there is no reason to use the DPA. The Administration has used the DPA in other areas to remove or motivate. Clearly the Administration could have used DPS on everyone and everything to negate these criticisms. However, it would simply create new levels of bureaucratic control and serve little real purpose if the companies are responding to government demands. In this hue and cry over the DPA, there is a lack of specifics in how these companies would increase their effort further or what contractual obstacles need to be removed.
The latest DPA is a classic use of the Act. The country has already faced panic buying on items like toilet paper. Much of this trend is entirely irrational. There was no reason why toilet paper should be the focus of panic buying but the result was a real shortage. The chances of a panic buying on food is far far more serious. There is already a drop of 25% in the food supply from these industries. It could drop further. The result is a serious threat to the nation as a whole in supplying the most basic necessity for life.
What is interesting about this use of the DPA is that it may be most valued due to its impact on liability. By being forced to stay open, the companies can claim that they were not negligent because they were compelled to operate. The question will be whether workers can be fired for refusing to work. They cannot be forced to do so but could face threats over a refusal to work despite the obvious risk to them.
This is a real threat to the nation. At a time of short food supply, we are seeing tens of thousands of animals slaughtered due to the reduction in processing. It is not just confined to these meat plants and the virus outbreak among the work force. We are seeing food destroyed due to interruptions in the supply chain or other market problems. This is occurring when food banks are overwhelmed. (This is an area where the government needs to act to pay farmers to allow for donations to food banks).
I remain highly suspicious of the failure of these companies to better protect workers. These are startling numbers of affected workers and deaths. The obvious response of the Administration should be to follow up with a greater federal presence in the operation and safety of these plants. The Administration needs to bring federal resources and expertise to these plants to protect workers.
However, the use of the DPA to protect the food supply is exactly the type of national emergency that the Act was designed to address. The MSNBC attack reflects a curious pattern in the media where it moves effortlessly in adopting diametrically opposed positions. The only common denominator is the target of the coverage. For months the media decried the Administration for not taking control of the pandemic and state efforts despite some of us noting that this is a primary state responsibility. Then when Trump, wrongly, claimed that he could take control, the media cried foul that this is a violation of state’s rights. Likewise, the media objected that the Trump Administration was not using its authority to grab needed PPEs and other materials. However, when the Administration started to grab such material and distribute them to hot spots, the media criticized the Administration for interfering with states from getting such material. Now the Administration is blamed for using the DPA after being chastised for not using the DPA. The most remarkable thing about this pattern of flips is the absolute ease with which it has occurred.
None of this is meant to clear the Administration. Many questions remain about early warnings and early actions. That includes the possible use (including DPA orders) on mask and PPE production. However, there has also been some remarkable successes. FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers have done phenomenal jobs in ramping up production and building needed beds and resources. The speed of industry and government to address new therapeutics and treatments is also amazing. As I have said before, the need for fair coverage has never been greater. We should not paint with too broad a brush. Much coverage remains excellent and informative. However, there is a clear agenda or bias in some of this coverage on issues like the DPA. This bias can become outright misinformation on legal issues in pandemic from criminal claims to constitutional criticisms. News coverage should have greater consistency than just the target of criticism.
Another idea here relates to Leon Festinger and his original study in the 50’s on the UFO cult. The cult believed that the Midwest be flooded on a certain date and aliens were going to swoop down and save them. Festinger inserted some volunteers into the kookoo cult. Now of course, the flood never happened, and the aliens never did swoop down out of the sky. This was an act of disconfirmation, and many cult members simply said “good-bye!” to the cult. But other member’s beliefs grew stronger.
One condition aiding that continued belief/delusion was that – “the individual believer must have social support. It is unlikely that one isolated believer could withstand the kind of disconfirming evidence that has been specified. If, however, the believer is a member of a group of convinced persons who can support one another, the belief may be maintained and the believers may attempt to proselytize or persuade nonmembers that the belief is correct.”\
So propaganda outlets like MSNBC can provide that social support to the Democratic cult members. Oh look! Somebody else believes Russiagate, for example, so that means I am not an idiot after all!
Whether this is a planned benefit, or just accidental, I do believe that is what MSNBC and others do – permit deluded individuals to continue to believe a wrong thing in spite of evidence and facts.
Here is a link if you are interested. I have read the book and it is interesting!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky, I was told that in Hebrew times false prophets were stoned to death.
🎆📞🔫
My how things have changed! Nowadays, most of our false prophets are just stoned.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky, no canabis in Canaan, just milk & honey. Oh, and stones. Lots and lots of stones.
Carl Orff:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Fortuna
🎶
AUGUST 23, 2008
“Change,” “Hope” … Why They Must be Talking About Joe Biden!
by ALEXANDER COCKBURN
“Change” and “hope” are not words one associates with Senator Joe Biden, a man so ripely symbolic of everything that is unchanging and hopeless about our political system that a computer simulation of the corporate-political paradigm senator in Congress would turn out “Biden” in a nano-second.
The first duty of any senator from Delaware is to do the bidding of the banks and large corporations which use the tiny state as a drop box and legal sanctuary. Biden has never failed his masters in this primary task. Find any bill that sticks it to the ordinary folk on behalf of the Money Power and you’ll likely detect Biden’s hand at work…..
…..Biden is a notorious flapjaw. His vanity deludes him into believing that every word that drops from his mouth is minted in the golden currency of Pericles. Vanity is the most conspicuous characteristic of US Senators en bloc , nourished by deferential acolytes and often expressed in loutish sexual advances to staffers, interns and the like. On more than one occasion CounterPunch’s editors have listened to vivid accounts by the recipient of just such advances, this staffer of another senator being accosted by Biden in the well of the senate in the weeks immediately following his first wife’s fatal car accident……
https://www.counterpunch.org/2008/08/23/quot-change-quot-quot-hope-quot-why-they-must-be-talking-about-joe-biden/
Highlighting this:
“On more than one occasion CounterPunch’s editors have listened to vivid accounts by the recipient of just such advances, this staffer of another senator being accosted by Biden in the well of the senate in the weeks immediately following his first wife’s fatal car accident……”
So said ‘event’ would have taken place in Dec. 1972 or early Jan. 1973.
m & e — The appropriate measure is excess deaths, irrespective of the assigned ’cause of death’.
I can see i missed very little here today besides the usual tit for tat crap.
I find it amazing that we are over a million cases of a new disease on the one hand, with a lot of excess deaths over the usual, on the one hand,
and on the other hand, a unicorn spike in unemployment happening even as the Federal Reserve turns on a historically unimaginable firehose of liquidity, crazy bailouts, stock market frenzy, emergent recession which may be very deep and dark,
the economy suffers badly, the disease still spreading around the world, and yet the curve was flattened and many states and locales are reopening for business this friday on the day of the worker, may day, God be praised
and yet 3/4 of what i see has been posted on here is all about Don Trump, Orange man bad, or not
this comments section is being trolled and choked by irrelevant stuff at a time when absolutely amazing things are unfolding before our eyes, we in the midst, and much of it is of deep constitutional significance
but just take a look at what people are doing here trolling
to my Republican and conservative friends, I say, they are trolling you, they are wasting your time, they are choking this comments area with propagandistic filth, there is very little sincere conversation, and I suggest you adopt a less reactive approach to your own comments, by simply ignoring their filth and adding your own quality insight and contents as if the other garbage was not even there
just a suggestion – i hope i am not too preachy, im sure i’ve added my own measure of irrelevant stuff over the years
1 agree. You may have noticed I have begun to take the same approach.
Good post Kurtz. I’ve been doing that for awhile. I prefer to engage the low-hanging fruit of illogical and hypocritical comments. There has been and will continue to be plenty to work with.
Mr. K:
“just a suggestion – i hope i am not too preachy, im sure i’ve added my own measure of irrelevant stuff over the years”
******************
Preachy? Irrelevant? Perish the thought. That’s my raison d’être !
“they are trolling you, they are wasting your time, they are choking this comments area with propagandistic filth, there is very little sincere conversation,”
Yep. That is why I seldom engage with them. Like I have said before, they are not here to discuss ideas. They have an agenda and therefore they are like Joseph Goebbels. You could never have an honest PUBLIC conversation with Old Joe because all he would do is lie and spin about the Nazis winning the war, even in late 1943 when it was obvious to everybody the jig was up. Now in PRIVATE, he might be honest and admit that Germany was toast and that he was going to try to get his family to Switzerland. That’s the way Peter Shill/Set and bytheDNCscript are. There are a few honest idiots here like enigmainblack and Mike Appleton. Maybe justiceholmes and even ynot. But most of them are just shills and it would not be possible to have an honest exchange with them. Just a waste of time.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
OT:
“‘I Will Bring Down the Entire House of Cards.’ FBI Documents Reveal Communication Between Roger Stone and Julian Assange”
https://time.com/5828958/roger-stone-julian-assange-fbi-russia-probe/
BY ERIC TUCKER, COLLEEN LONG AND MICHAEL BALSAMO / AP APRIL 28, 2020 10:34 PM EDT
(WASHINGTON) — Weeks after Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel in the Russia investigation, Roger Stone, a confidant of President Donald Trump, reassured WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in a Twitter message that if prosecutors came after him, “I will bring down the entire house of cards,” according to FBI documents made public Tuesday.
The records reveal the extent of communications between Stone and Assange, whose anti-secrecy website published Democratic emails hacked by Russians during the 2016 presidential election, and underscore efforts by Trump allies to gain insight about the release of information they expected would embarrass Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.
The documents — FBI affidavits submitted to obtain search warrants in the criminal investigation into Stone — were released following a court case brought by The Associated Press and other media organizations.
They were made public as Stone, convicted last year in Mueller’s investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, awaits a date to surrender to a federal prison system that has grappled with outbreaks of the coronavirus.
In a June 2017 Twitter direct message cited in the records, Stone reassured Assange that the issue was “still nonsense” and said “as a journalist it doesn’t matter where you get information only that it is accurate and authentic.”
He cited as an example the 1971 Supreme Court ruling that facilitated the publishing by newspapers of the Pentagon Papers, classified government documents about the Vietnam War.
“If the US government moves on you I will bring down the entire house of cards,” Stone wrote, according to a transcript of the message cited in the search warrant affidavit. “With the trumped-up sexual assault charges dropped I don’t know of any crime you need to be pardoned for — best regards. R.”
Stone was likely referring to a sexual assault investigation dropped weeks earlier by Swedish authorities. Assange, who at the time was holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, was charged last year with a series of crimes by the U.S. Justice Department, including Espionage Act violations for directing former Army private Chelsea Manning in one of the largest compromises of classified information in U.S. history.
Assange responded to Stone’s 2017 Twitter message by saying: “Between CIA and DoJ they’re doing quite a lot. On the DoJ side that’s coming most strongly from those obsessed with taking down Trump trying to squeeze us into a deal.”
Associated Press writer Jill Colvin in Washington contributed to this report.
I was for the DPA, before I was against the DPA.
Here we are in 2020. It seems like 1920 when I was 8.
Remember the dude who drank fish tank cleaner, and his pitiful weeping wife who blamed Trump??? Now, for the rest of the story!
————–
Arizona police are now conducting a homicide investigation into a woman who claimed she gave her husband fish tank cleaner after President Trump claimed the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine was an effective treatment for coronavirus.
Wanda Lenius told NBC News last month that she and her husband Gary consumed fish tank cleaner because it contained a chemical that Trump suggested might be an effective prophylactic and treatment for coronavirus. The cocktail, which contained four teaspoons of fish tank cleaner mixed with soda water, put Wanda in the ICU and killed Gary. “My advice,” Wanda explained, is “don’t believe anything that the President says and his people because they don’t know what they’re talking about.”
The Washington Free Beacon, which first reported that Wanda was a “prolific” Democratic donor and that she had a troubling relationship with her husband that included a previous domestic assault charge, revealed Tuesday night that Mesa City Police Department is conducting a criminal investigation into the death of Gary, and requested recordings of the Free Beacon’s interviews with Wanda.
“As this is an active investigation, I cannot go into any details at this time regarding the case,” homicide detective Teresa Van Galder told the Free Beacon. In an interview, Wanda Lenius told the outlet that her decision to drink the cleaner with her husband was “a spur of the moment thing,” and that they ingested “one teaspoon and some soda” each — at least four times the lethal limit.
The Beacon also reported that friends of the deceased man were skeptical that he would knowingly consume fish-tank cleaner.
“What bothers me about this is that Gary was a very intelligent man, a retired [mechanical] engineer who designed systems for John Deere in Waterloo, Iowa, and I really can’t see the scenario where Gary would say, ‘Yes, please, I would love to drink some of that Koi fish tank cleaner,’” one of his close friends told the Washington Free Beacon. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/woman-who-blamed-trump-after-giving-her-husband-fish-tank-cleaner-now-under-investigation-for-murder/
——————
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky —
Makes me wonder if he made the mistake of telling her he liked President Trump.
That warrants the death penalty in the opinion of many Democrats.
Perfect setup. She can kill him and blame it on Trump.
It will be interesting to see what the investigation develops.
If it is murder I imagine all of the media who accused Trump of killing him by endorsing fish tank cleaner to clear your bowels and prevent the Wuhan Virus will be rushing to our screens to apologize.
Yet so many of you have escaped.
‘A Mesa Police spokesman refuted reports circulating in conservative media outlets, calling them “inaccurate.”‘ NBC report, linked below.
People love to get all worked up, without having the facts. Let them finish their investigation.
“Police say death of Arizona man is not being investigated as a homicide”
“A Mesa Police spokesman refuted reports circulating in conservative media outlets, calling them “inaccurate.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/police-say-death-arizona-man-not-being-investigated-homicide-n1195591
Excerpt:
PHOENIX — Police said Wednesday that the death of an Arizona man who consumed a form of chloroquine phosphate in March is not being investigated as a homicide at this time.
Gary Lenius, a resident of Mesa, died on March 22 after he, along with his wife Wanda, consumed a version of chloroquine phosphate intended to treat fish for parasites.
“This investigation is not being treated as a homicide. The death of Gary Lenius has not been ruled a homicide at this time,” Mesa Police Department spokesman Jason Flam told NBC News.
Flam said the department’s homicide unit is involved because it “investigates all reported deaths within the City of Mesa” — from deaths related to car accidents to the elderly in hospice.
“It’s still an active, ongoing investigation,” he said.
On Tuesday, the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative outlet, published an article reporting that a “homicide investigation” into Wanda Lenius was underway. Flam called that report, which has circulated widely in other conservative outlets, “inaccurate.”
Wanda Lenius told NBC News in an interview in late March that she had the non-prescribed chloroquine phosphate at her home for the koi fish that the couple once owned. She said they both each mixed one teaspoon of the non-prescribed chloroquine phosphate with soda. Gary Lenius died at the hospital, and Wanda Lenius remained in critical condition at the hospital for multiple days. -NBC
Tanks for the update! I can’t wait to see how this plays out.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Hmmm. It is not just conservative outlets. Yahoo carried the story too. Here is one of the comments I found interesting:
———–
Wanda is starting to sound more and more like a real gem.
“In 2005, after working full time at John Deere for four years, Wanda Lenius went on long-term disability after developing debilitating mental and physical health problems from gender and age discrimination she faced at the company, according to court records in a 2012 lawsuit she filed against John Deere. The litigation was similar to a lawsuit she had filed in 1997 against her former employer, the Cedar Valley Medical Clinic. That case was dismissed in 1999.”
And:
“Wanda Lenius said her husband was planning to schedule a doctor’s appointment and were worried he might pick up coronavirus at the clinic. That’s when, she said, she reached for the fish tank cleaner in her pantry.
Asked if she and Lenius had a conversation about taking the chloroquine at that time, she told the Free Beacon: “No. I mean, it was really kind of a spur of the moment thing.”
A friend of Lenius’s said that Wanda Lenius “often made a cocktail of vitamins for Gary. Gary loved Wanda,” said the friend. “He trusted her to do the right thing for him, I doubt that he second-guessed when she gave him the chloroquine.”
So – did she even tell him what it was, or did she present it as yet another one of her vitamin cocktails?
https://news.yahoo.com/woman-blamed-trump-giving-her-133613382.html
———————
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Of course homicide detectives routinely investigate failing to follow package instructions for fish tank cleaner.
Another conspiracy theory, glad you are on it.
I don’t know. She is supposedly a big Democratic buff, and she drinks fish tank cleaner because of something Trump said???
I don’t want to carp about it, but that smells fishy to me. Maybe she is being koi or something???
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
It’s a red herring! Tuna it out.
The notion that Americans are on the edge of starvation is rich.
Americans would do well to experience real hunger of true necessities and, perish the thought, suffer
We deserve nothing less
The Joe Bisen – Tara Reade sexual assault story is going to fester drip, drip, drip all the way to the DNC Nomination. The Democrats did not learn from their failed DNC Hillary-Donna Brazile – Debbie W. Schultz fiasco. That did not end well and nor will Biden’s coronation. God help us with another 4 years of Trump and with elitist DNC leaders. Our country deserves better
“Biden himself has said that sexual-harassment claims should be carefully investigated. When Christine Blasey Ford alleged, after Brett Kavanaugh was nominated tot the Supreme Court, that he had tried to rape her in high school, Biden said the Senate Judiciary Committee “should undertake a thorough and nonpartisan effort to get to the truth, wherever it leads.” When Reade herself came forward, Biden’s campaign said her claims should “be diligently reviewed by an independent press.”
The Atlantic
JT is now full on defending Trump’s failure of leadership and no doubt thinks DDay should have been planned by the governors.
Gee, I wonder how many N-95 Gov DeSantis of Florida had stockplied in anticipation of a pandemic? Anyone want to guess? Who is stupid enough to think more than zero? JT? Say, wasn’t there a National Stockpile for that purpose? No doubt JT thinks that was a mistake. Say, wasn’t there a WH pandemic task force? no doubt JT thinks that was a mistake. Gov DeSantis has got this!
We rank 41st among countries in per capita testing, but the new guidelines Trump issued Monday relies on private enterprises – say, where’s Google and the promised tracking website? – and lists the federal government as “supplier of last resort” for tests. Brilliant! The one thing the federal government could do to make the wished for reopening go well and our “wartime president” is AWOL. According to JT, it’s up to the Governors.
What an idiot.
How ironic that you claim media are disingenuous, Turley. You claim: “The MSNBC attack reflects a curious pattern in the media where it moves effortlessly in adopting diametrically opposed positions.” That is simply not true. MSNBC criticized Trump for using the power of the DPA for political reasons. He was immediately willing to use the DPA to help out the meat packing industry, which heavily contributes to his campaign, but not willing to use this power to help save lives when hospitals and first responders desperately needed PPE for their own safety and that of their patients. MSNBC didn’t mention this, but I will: Trump wouldn’t use DPA to ramp up PPE production because the areas of greatest need were in blue states, like New York and California. Trump sent 100 ventilators to ruby-red Indiana, Mikey Pence’s home state, when they didn’t ask for them and didn’t need them. New York state had to beg other states for ventilators.
When health care providers and first responders were desperately short of PPE, Trump made it clear that he would do nothing: let the states figure it out. And, the PPE that his “administration” has confiscated was NOT distributed to hot spots. We don’t know where it went. Trump made clear that he’s not going to use the power of the federal government help with PPE or even testing. Why do we have a CDC, if each individual state is required to figure out how to deal with a pandemic? Individual states don’t belong to the WHO. Handling a pandemic and procuring supplies to save lives should not be the sole responsibility of the states.
As to forcing employees to risk their lives working in unsafe and unsanitary conditions, Trump gave their employers the added bonus of an executive order preventing them from suing no matter how egregiously negligent they were for violating safety standards and refusing to protect the health of their workers. The employees are also not able to collect unemployment if work is available and they refuse to work. All OK with Turley. Why shouldn’t the individual states where these meat packing plants are located be required to figure it out on their own?
The point of the MSNBC criticism of Trump is that he plays politics with the power he stole, just like he did with aid to Ukraine. He is despicable.
Natasha, JT is in the tank for Trump with the most of his followers here, They have him figured out.