Americans for Prosperity, the pro-corporate pressure group founded and funded by billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, wants employees to return to work despite desperate pleas from public health officials that people should stay home as much as possible to help contain the spread of the coronavirus.
As states began to order nonessential businesses to shut down last week, AFP released a statement calling for all businesses to remain open.
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AFP’s position, which directly contradicts the advice of medical experts who say that social isolation is essential to curbing the spread of the coronavirus, comes after the group lobbied the Trump administration in 2018 to rescind $1 billion from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
✄
The libertarian advocacy network has spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying for corporate tax cuts, deregulation, and reductions to social welfare programs, particularly state Medicaid programs.
This aggressive advocacy record has come into focus in recent days as Americans confront the coronavirus pandemic.
Medicaid funding is seen as a critical tool for treating sick patients, and many are now questioning the wisdom of reductions to the CDC’s funding and staff.
✄
The Koch network, while pushing for businesses to stay open, is taking the opposite approach for its lobbying apparatus.
AFP and its affiliates, including LIBRE Initiative and Concerned Veterans for America, are now working from home. “Out of an abundance of caution and to ensure the health and safety of our activists, staff, and voters, our staff are working from home and are utilizing digital organizing as one way to continue their grassroots engagement,” a spokesperson from AFP told CNBC.
Dick Kovacevich, the former CEO and chairman of Wells Fargo, told Bloomberg News that healthy workers under the age of 55 should return to work in April if the outbreak is controlled, saying that “some may even die” with his plan.
“We’ll gradually bring those people back and see what happens. Some of them will get sick, some may even die, I don’t know,” said Kovacevich, a former executive at Cargill and former Cisco board member.
“Do you want to suffer more economically or take some risk that you’ll get flu-like symptoms and a flu-like experience? Do you want to take an economic risk or a health risk? You get to choose.”
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Kovacevich isn’t the only former bank executive pushing for economic activity despite the risk of increased infections and death. Lloyd Blankfein, the former head of Goldman Sachs “on a gap year” according to his Twitter bio, called on Sunday for “those with a lower risk to the disease to return to work.”
“Crushing the economy, jobs and morale is also a health issue-and beyond,” he wrote on Twitter. “Within a very few weeks let those with a lower risk to the disease return to work.”
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Dallas Mavericks owner and venture capitalist Mark Cuban disagreed with Kovacevich and Blankfein, saying their advice should be disregarded.
“Ignore anything someone like me might say,” he wrote in an email to Bloomberg News. “Lives are at stake.”
Lurking at the center of this debate is an imagined world where we let Covid-19 rip through the population, killing millions and hospitalizing far more, but younger, healthier Americans keep the economy humming along as normal.
“Let’s get back to work, let’s get back to living,” said Texas’s Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. “Let’s be smart about it. Those of us who’re 70-plus, we’ll take care of ourselves. But don’t sacrifice the country.”
But many — myself included — question whether that’s realistic. As Bill Gates put it, “it’s very tough to say to people, ‘Hey, keep going to restaurants, go buy new houses, ignore that pile of bodies over in the corner.
We want you to keep spending because there’s maybe a politician who thinks GDP growth is all that counts.’”
✄
The true choice, Furman argues, is this: You can suppress the virus now and deal with a terrible economy six months from now…
….or you can wait two more months to suppress the virus, find yourself forced into yet more extreme quarantine measures because the virus is pervasive and the death toll overwhelming, and find yourself in an even more horrendous economy on the other side.
✄
In a scenario like that, it’s entirely possible that the coronavirus would infect 60 percent of the country, with a case fatality rate of 1.5 percent, in a matter of months.
That would mean almost 3 million deaths directly from coronavirus — roughly three times as many Americans as have died in every war we’ve ever fought combined.
And that doesn’t count the deaths indirectly caused by coronavirus.
With hospitals in lockdown, people would cease seeking care for chest pain, they’d put off needed surgeries, they’d try to treat at home what they would once have asked a doctor to diagnose. Many of them would die.
Cheapskate0 over 4 years ago
While all of our scriptures are on line (Book of Mormon, Pearl, Bible, &c), my favorite is my old “quad.”
In spite of several on line versions of the Herder Bible, my favorite is the one I got in Germany in 1981.
Today, I was having fun with Exodus 3:14 and John 8:58.
Sanspareil over 4 years ago
Coyotes are not susceptible to covid-19
Silly Season over 4 years ago
Americans for Prosperity, the pro-corporate pressure group founded and funded by billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, wants employees to return to work despite desperate pleas from public health officials that people should stay home as much as possible to help contain the spread of the coronavirus.
As states began to order nonessential businesses to shut down last week, AFP released a statement calling for all businesses to remain open.
✄
AFP’s position, which directly contradicts the advice of medical experts who say that social isolation is essential to curbing the spread of the coronavirus, comes after the group lobbied the Trump administration in 2018 to rescind $1 billion from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
✄
The libertarian advocacy network has spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying for corporate tax cuts, deregulation, and reductions to social welfare programs, particularly state Medicaid programs.
This aggressive advocacy record has come into focus in recent days as Americans confront the coronavirus pandemic.
Medicaid funding is seen as a critical tool for treating sick patients, and many are now questioning the wisdom of reductions to the CDC’s funding and staff.
✄
The Koch network, while pushing for businesses to stay open, is taking the opposite approach for its lobbying apparatus.
AFP and its affiliates, including LIBRE Initiative and Concerned Veterans for America, are now working from home. “Out of an abundance of caution and to ensure the health and safety of our activists, staff, and voters, our staff are working from home and are utilizing digital organizing as one way to continue their grassroots engagement,” a spokesperson from AFP told CNBC.
https://theintercept.com/2020/03/26/americans-for-prosperity-cdc-coronavirus/
Silly Season over 4 years ago
Dick Kovacevich, the former CEO and chairman of Wells Fargo, told Bloomberg News that healthy workers under the age of 55 should return to work in April if the outbreak is controlled, saying that “some may even die” with his plan.
“We’ll gradually bring those people back and see what happens. Some of them will get sick, some may even die, I don’t know,” said Kovacevich, a former executive at Cargill and former Cisco board member.
“Do you want to suffer more economically or take some risk that you’ll get flu-like symptoms and a flu-like experience? Do you want to take an economic risk or a health risk? You get to choose.”
✄
Kovacevich isn’t the only former bank executive pushing for economic activity despite the risk of increased infections and death. Lloyd Blankfein, the former head of Goldman Sachs “on a gap year” according to his Twitter bio, called on Sunday for “those with a lower risk to the disease to return to work.”
“Crushing the economy, jobs and morale is also a health issue-and beyond,” he wrote on Twitter. “Within a very few weeks let those with a lower risk to the disease return to work.”
✄
Dallas Mavericks owner and venture capitalist Mark Cuban disagreed with Kovacevich and Blankfein, saying their advice should be disregarded.
“Ignore anything someone like me might say,” he wrote in an email to Bloomberg News. “Lives are at stake.”
https://www.businessinsider.com/richard-kovacevich-former-wells-fargo-ceo-work-die-coronavirus-pandemic-2020-3
Silly Season over 4 years ago
Lurking at the center of this debate is an imagined world where we let Covid-19 rip through the population, killing millions and hospitalizing far more, but younger, healthier Americans keep the economy humming along as normal.
“Let’s get back to work, let’s get back to living,” said Texas’s Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. “Let’s be smart about it. Those of us who’re 70-plus, we’ll take care of ourselves. But don’t sacrifice the country.”
But many — myself included — question whether that’s realistic. As Bill Gates put it, “it’s very tough to say to people, ‘Hey, keep going to restaurants, go buy new houses, ignore that pile of bodies over in the corner.
We want you to keep spending because there’s maybe a politician who thinks GDP growth is all that counts.’”
✄
The true choice, Furman argues, is this: You can suppress the virus now and deal with a terrible economy six months from now…
….or you can wait two more months to suppress the virus, find yourself forced into yet more extreme quarantine measures because the virus is pervasive and the death toll overwhelming, and find yourself in an even more horrendous economy on the other side.
✄
In a scenario like that, it’s entirely possible that the coronavirus would infect 60 percent of the country, with a case fatality rate of 1.5 percent, in a matter of months.
That would mean almost 3 million deaths directly from coronavirus — roughly three times as many Americans as have died in every war we’ve ever fought combined.
And that doesn’t count the deaths indirectly caused by coronavirus.
With hospitals in lockdown, people would cease seeking care for chest pain, they’d put off needed surgeries, they’d try to treat at home what they would once have asked a doctor to diagnose. Many of them would die.
https://www.vox.com/coronavirus-covid19/2020/3/27/21193879/coronavirus-covid-19-social-distancing-economy-recession-depression
russef over 4 years ago
That has been declared illegal.
RobinHood over 4 years ago
I’m rereading The Hitxhhikers Guide To Galaxy
Bruce1253 over 4 years ago
I’m working my way through the “Honor Harrington Series” by David Weber
William Robbins Premium Member over 4 years ago
I’ve lived in cyberspace for 30 years. Same old same thing. Yo ho, a hermit’s life for me…
pamela welch Premium Member over 4 years ago
Good one, Scott ♥ Funny!