Here's a way pandemics could be handled a lot better

Pretty obvious, actually, though not noted in corporate "news" media.

State and federal officials have called the expiration and similar moves necessary to keep hospitals staffed amid the Omicron surge, but many RNs are calling this argument a distraction, noting that the for-profit health care system artificially deflates staffing levels to protect hospital employers’ bottom lines. They are renewing calls to end the for-profit health care system altogether and move to a single-payer system. Under a single-payer system, NNU argues, hospitals could, and likely would, have been staffed-up such that facilities could safely weather the temporary loss of employees who were out sick.

Profit-driven hospitals’ continual failure to invest in safe staffing is what’s creating the kind of dangerous working conditions driving nurses away from the profession at a time when they are needed most, unionized RNs say. “Nurses will tell you we are failing because we have let the interests of corporations and our hospital employers dictate our country’s response to this virus. Their goal is profit, not saving lives,” (National Nurses United President Zenei) Triunfo-Cortez said during a press conference last week. - Truthout

Food insecurity in Minnesota

I find it useful to visualize numbers like 1 in 10, and 1 in 6, in the context of my own neighborhood. Then I sort of mentally expand that, to try to get a better grasp of what such numbers really entail.

Then I think of the harvested fields I drove by, out in the country yesterday, and how much of that goes to waste because it's the greedheads' interests that of course need to be prioritized, in our dysfunctional, profits-over-people food system.

(Second Harvest Heartland CEO Allison) O’Toole said more than 1 in 10 Minnesotans are food insecure — meaning they lack regular access to quality, affordable food — and that 1 in 6 kids in the state is considered food insecure.

“It’s never been closer to any of us, and we are seeing record numbers of people who need help who have never had to ask for help,” O’Toole said. “And that’s why we’re really asking this entire community to help us make it OK for people to ask for help.”

And O’Toole said a hunger divide breaks along racial lines like never before.

“That is the fact that populations of color — African American, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian populations — are experiencing twice the levels of hunger that our white neighbors are, and that is getting worse every day,” she said. “It is unconscionable, and we are doing everything we can to reach the community in the highest need.” - MPR

Trump Farmers to Families program is delivering mixed results at best

To be clear, plenty of food is getting to where it needs to be, somehow. But things would be so much better without such incompetence and corruption, starting at the top.

In reality, though, some of the program’s core promises have gone unmet. That’s due at least in part to the fact that many of the companies awarded the lucrative contracts are ill-equipped to handle food in any real quantity. Food bank operators report having to pay the bill for delivery from their own budgets, receiving boxes that are leaking or falling apart, and that arrive full of commercial-grade bags of meat with no instructions for how to prepare it.

Despite these failures, new public records reviewed by The Counter indicate that the boxes have cost well above what USDA typically pays farmers and manufacturers for food it buys for food banks and schools—and, in some cases, well above what they’re actually worth. Multiple food-aid professionals we interviewed for this story said they could provide the same service for a fraction of the price by purchasing food through their existing networks, even after accounting for the costs of cardboard, transportation, and labor. Even so, the Trump administration has doubled down on support for the program. Just last week, it announced an additional $1 billion in funding. - The Counter

How loathsome can the greedheads get?

Exceedingly loathsome indeed. And it needs to be made right.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed deep inequalities and massive failures in our economic system, leaving tens of millions of people in the United States without jobs, devastating public services, and bankrupting countless small businesses,” Irit Tamir, director of the private sector department at Oxfam America, said. “Yet at the same time, thanks to a combination of government assistance and pure luck, a handful of corporations are raking it in and making already rich shareholders even richer.”

“...Profit is not a four-letter word, but when such dramatic and excessive profits are made during a time of global crisis and distributed to the wealthiest, the situation is not just fundamentally unjust, it is also economically inefficient,” Niko Lusiani, senior advisor on corporate advocacy at Oxfam America, and lead author of the analysis, said. “Corporations like Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Facebook, Pfizer, and Visa, flush with billions in pandemic profits and disproportionately benefiting from taxpayer-funded economic relief, now have the opportunity to gobble up smaller companies and deepen their market power at the expense of true competition. Taxing these windfall profits is a fair, time-tested way to rebuild better.” - Nation of Change

What a great time to change our food system for the better

Unfortunately Big Ag, Big Meat, etc., still hold way too much political power. But there are grounds for hope.

Community groups and small enterprises have stepped up during the pandemic, utilising their networks to look after the vulnerable, and generally strengthening the fabric of social safety nets. This has happened despite years of cuts.

Organisations and initiatives, are going beyond their original purposes to deliver services and care, including food. Community supported agriculture schemes, food banks, and food hubs can do this because they are already networked locally and can rely on emergency helpers. Their adaptability means they are fleet-footed, and capable of picking up the slack of an inflexible, industrialised food system.

This is not to say that supermarkets should not be applauded for their recent actions. But they are inexorably linked to industrial agriculture systems. These pose a dual risk, potentially both triggering global crises and failing to deliver provisions. For our own welfare, we should ensure that there is more to the food landscape than industrial agriculture, large-scale processing, and mega-retail. - In These Times

Child care money crisis

Though this is potentially a huge thing, there hasn't been much about it in corporate media.

Workers in the U.S. are staring down the precipice as lawmakers fail to address the economic ravages of the pandemic. Even as some 21 million people remain unemployed, the $600 per week in additional unemployment insurance created by Congress’s coronavirus relief package, the CARES Act, is set to expire on July 31. Student debt payments will resume on October 1 for the 34 million federal student loan borrowers whose loans were suspended by CARES. But perhaps no cliff is as steep as the early care and education sector, which may be cut in half by the time the pandemic is over. To save it, the sector will need an infusion of at least $50 billion. But so far, despite how essential child care is to restarting the economy, Congress has been unwilling to meet the crisis with the resources required to stave off a crisis. - Truthout

So now, underpaid, disrespected teachers are supposed to save the economy for Trump

Potentially risking their lives in the process. It would be good if corporate media would more frequently note that Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump are remarkably ignorant, foolish people.

What’s sadly ironic about all this sudden newfound appreciation for teachers as essential to the economy is that government leaders and policy makers, from both major political parties, have spent years attacking the economic well-being of public schools and teachers.

School districts have never recovered from budget cuts states imposed during the Great Recession that started at the end of 2007. In an article for the Progressive, Nicholas Johnson from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted, “School districts have never recovered from the layoffs… [states] imposed back then. When COVID-19 hit, K-12 schools were employing 77,000 fewer teachers and other workers—even though they were teaching two million more children, and overall funding in many states was still below pre-2008 levels.”

Teachers now make 4.5 percent on average less than they did more than 10 years ago, according to the National Education Association, and public school teachers earn 17 percent less than what comparable workers earn, according to the Economic Policy Institute. - Jeff Bryant/Citizen Truth

DeVos contemplates grotesque, despicable abuse of power

If she does follow through, this would likely quickly fall to legal challenges. But that it's being considered is another indicator of what loathsome sociopaths are now running the federal executive branch.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said Tuesday that she is “very seriously” considering withholding federal funding from schools that don’t reopen in the fall...

She told (Tucker) Carlson on Tuesday that fears of coronavirus transmission from public health officials was an example of “fearmongering.” - The Hill

"If schools reopen this fall, more people will likely die. Full stop." - Truthout

BLM uses COVID-19 cover to assault public lands

Under Trump, these sorts of things were picking up before the pandemic. (They were hardly absent under previous presidents, of both parties.) But as with much else, despicable land-use policies seem to be accelerating.

The Bureau of Land Management has spent the pandemic churning out rapacious public land projects at breakneck speed. This includes egregious grazing decisions drastically increasing livestock numbers for powerful ranchers. After complaints, Idaho BLM Director John Ruhs responded that ranching was an essential service. At the same time, an avalanche of BLM deforestation projects hit. Ely BLM’s Long and Ruby Valley Watershed Restoration EA decision arrived by certified mail, authorizing more grotesque pinyon-juniper carnage and smashed roller-beaten sagebrush across 136,000 acres of public land. That’s 213 square miles laid to waste within a nearly half million-acre landscape, plus blanket tree removal around all springs. It’s the latest in a dismal series of cookie cutter projects tearing apart the Great Basin. - CounterPunch

Brutal education job losses

You’ve probably seen that many of the billionaires have become even more glutted beyond the dreams of avarice, during the pandemic. There is a long list of far better uses to which that money should be put. If you ask me, preventing this would be #1.

It has been well documented that fiscal austerity was a catastrophe for the recovery from the Great Recession. New estimates show that without sufficient aid to state and local governments, the COVID-19 shock could lead to a revenue shortfall of nearly $1 trillion by 2021 for state and local governments. In lieu of substantial federal investments, budget cuts are certain. But I, for one, did not expect to see the losses as soon as April. As of the latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), state and local government employment fell by 981,000, with the vast majority of losses found in local government. And the majority of those local government losses are in the education sector, with a loss of 468,800 jobs in local public school employment alone. - EPI

The pending hunger crisis

In relative terms, that is. Given the vast quantities of overproduction and waste in our corrupt food system, any hunger, anywhere in the U.S., is a crisis that shouldn’t be happening.

A poll released by the U.S. Census Bureau (last) week revealed that at least nine million American households that include children are unsure whether they'll be able to access enough food in the next four weeks and millions more are experiencing housing insecurity during the coronavirus pandemic.

The bureau's weekly Household Pulse Survey, taken between May 14 and 19, asked respondents about their loss of employment, food security, overall health, and other issues they are facing during the pandemic. - Common Dreams

Unconscionable Trump plans for National Guard deployments

As of this writing there appears to be a decent likelihood that Trumpers will yield to pressure from multiple places, and extend the assignments so personnel get their benefits. But the fact that this was even being considered, as the saying goes, "speaks volumes."

The more than 40,000 National Guard members deployed to states to help in coronavirus relief may end up one day short of qualifying for federal benefits under the Post-9/11 GI bill once President Trump’s executive order deploying them expires on June 24.

An official with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said in an interagency call on May 12 reported on by Politico that the guardsmen will face a “hard stop” on June 24 to prevent them from reaching the 90 days of duty credit needed to qualify for early retirement and education benefits. - The Hill

Farmers can try for SBA loans, now, but it won't be enough

It is something, though, and that is a positive.

Last week the federal Small Business Administration (SBA) opened an online portal exclusively for “agricultural enterprises” (read: farmers) to apply for a Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL). For decades prior, farmers had been barred from accessing this low-interest, long-term loan program...

PPP also quickly ran out of funding (since replenished), and many expect the same fate for EIDL given the backlog of requests and the scale of need. Chastang said, “The SBA cannot speculate on when those funds will be exhausted.”

“It’s helpful but it’s not enough,” said NFFC’s Treakle. “This program is going to run out of money and there aren’t enough resources in this particular program to help farmers in need.”

He also expressed concern that farmers who don’t fit the commodity mold—independent, diversified, or organic producers, who sell directly into local and regional markets—will be left out. - The Counter