Robert Reich: Trump can't shift public attention from coronavirus to the streets of America

By Dilip -

Trump has never offered a national strategy for testing, contact tracing and isolating those who have the disease. He has provided no standards for reopening the economy, no plan for national purchasing of critical materials, no definitive policy for helping the unemployed, no clear message about what people and businesses should do. He rushed to reopen without adequate safeguards. The White House “coronavirus taskforce” is in perpetual disarray. 

Trump has downgraded the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). His Department of Labor hasn’t even put out standards for workplace safety. Trump won’t use the Defense Production Act to secure supplies to perform tests – swabs, chemicals, pipette tips, machines, containers – so public health officials can’t quickly identify and isolate people who are infected and trace their contacts. It’s been an abominable, chaotic mess – which is why the virus is back. Yet when it comes to assaulting Americans, Trump has been asserting strong leadership. 

He’s deploying unidentified federal agents against protesters in Portland, Oregon: attacking them, pulling them into unmarked vans, detaining them without charges. Trump is also sending troops to Kansas City, Albuquerque and Chicago. He says he’ll send them to New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore and Oakland as well – not incidentally, all cities with Democratic mayors, large black populations and no violent unrest.

Trump can’t find federal personnel to do contact tracing for the coronavirus but has found thousands of agents for his secret police, drawn from the departments of Justice and Homeland Security. Trump doesn’t want to know about the coronavirus but he’s keeping careful track of the battles in the streets, demanding up-to-the-minute briefings from the front. Public health authorities don’t have adequate medical equipment to quickly analyze coronavirus tests but Trump’s police have everything they need to injure protesters, including armored vans, teargas, and tactical assault weapons – “the best equipment”, Trump boasted last week. There is no legal authority for this...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/26/donald-trump-coronavirus-portland-oregon-protests
Tom McTague: The Decline of the American World
America isn't breaking. It was already broken. By Andrew Gawthorpe // Why This Time Is Different. By Dahlia Lithwick
Black and Unarmed and Killed by the Police…an incomplete list…This is America….
Houston Police chief to Trump: Please, keep your mouth shut if you can't be constructive
Donald Trump and American carnage // Will Urban Uprisings Help Trump?
May 1968 - June 1989. It's been five decades since 1968, and things are somehow worse
Justice in America: Authorities are Cracking down Hard on Black Protesters while Treating White Supremacist Reopeners with Kid Gloves
Protests in USA over the death of unarmed black man George Floyd at the hands of police - 25 cities have imposed curfews
Mukul Kesavan - Donald Trump and the global equalization of awfulness
Karl Marx: Letter to Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America; 1865
President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Speech on the American Military Industrial Complex, January 17, 1961
Simi Mehta - Martin Luther King: Changing The World With Love
HARRY BLAIN: America’s Wars always Come Home
Adam Lusher - Story of the last survivor of the last slave ship to travel from Africa to US is published after 87 years
Michael Roberts: The top 1% own 45% of all global personal wealth; the bottom 50% own less than 1% // Global Economic Volatility and Socio Political Reactions

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