Stephan: At one level, in terms of the earth's wellbeing, and the wellbeing of the matrix of life, this story of the collapse of the carbon extraction industries is very good news. At another level, for the lives of the men and women who work in these industries and the communities and businesses of which they are a part, it is a disaster and another example of the incompetence and short term greed of Impeached Trump and the Republican Party. A child could, and many probably did, see this coming. A competent government, recognizing what was happening, and why it needed to happen, would have planned for and implemented a transition policy out of the carbon era. But that wasn't done and so now there will be great human misery.
Storage tanks are filling up fast as demand collapses and companies run out of places to put the oil they keep pulling out of the ground.Credit…Bing Guan/Bloomberg
HOUSTON — Workers at Marathon Petroleum’s refinery in Gallup, N.M., are turning off the valves. Oil companies in West Texas are paying early termination fees to contract employees rather than drill new wells. And in Montana, producers are shutting down wells and slashing salaries and benefits.
Just a few months ago, the American oil industry was triumphant in its quest for energy independence, having turned the United States into the world’s biggest petroleum producer for the first time in decades. But that exhilaration has given way to despair as the coronavirus has kneecapped the economy, destroying demand for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel as cars sit parked in driveways and planes are consigned to remote fields and runways.
The oil industry has lived through many booms and busts, but never before have prices collapsed as they have this week. On Monday, one closely watched price fell below zero, meaning some traders had […]
Stephan: Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, on the basis of hard data, are two of the best economists in the world. Both are Nobel Laureates, and have long track records, and when they agree they are rarely wrong, and about the U.S. response to the Covid-19 crisis they strongly agree. So I would take what Stiglitz is saying very seriously. It is yet further proof of the damage done to America by Impeached Trump and the Republicans in Congress.
Joseph Stiglitz: ‘The public social safety net is not working.’ Credit: Vladimir Gerdo/Tass
Donald Trump’s botched handling of the Covid-19 crisis has left the US looking like a “third world” country and on course for a second Great Depression, one of the world’s leading economists has warned.
In a withering attack on the president, Joseph Stiglitz said millions of people were turning to food banks, turning up for work due to a lack of sick pay and dying because of health inequalities.
The Nobel prize-winning economist said: “The numbers turning to food banks are just enormous and beyond the capacity of them to supply. It is like a third world country. The public social safety net is not working.”
Stiglitz, a long-term critic of Trump, said 14% of the population was dependent on food stamps and predicted the social infrastructure could not cope with an unemployment rate that could hit 30% in the coming months.
“We have a safety net that is inadequate. The inequality in the US is so large. This disease has targeted those with the poorest health. In the advanced world, the US is […]
Stephan: This is how a competently led country handles a pandemic crisis. Once again I will say that the most interesting country in the world today, in my opinion, is New Zealand, and its prime minister Jacinda Ardern, I think, is the leading politician in the world. Notice, also, the difference in the quality of the people she has around her compared to the people around impeached Trump in the United States.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said her country has “done what few countries have been able to do” and contained the community spread of Covid-19 and can start easing its lockdown measures. As the BBC’s Shaimaa Khalil writes, the country’s success – and Ardern’s leadership – have won it global attention.
On 13 March, New Zealand was about to mark the first anniversary of the Christchurch shooting with a national memorial event.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (left) and Ashley Bloomfield, Director-General of Health. Credit; Getty
I asked Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern then if she was concerned about hosting such a large gathering, just after the World Health Organization (WHO) had declared a pandemic. She said she wasn’t, based on the existing scientific advice.
Things changed overnight. Not only was the event cancelled, the prime minister announced that almost everyone coming into New Zealand would have to self-isolate for 14 days.
It was among the earliest and toughest self-isolation measures in the world, which, a week later, would lead to a complete lockdown.
“We’re going hard and we’re going early,” Ms Ardern […]
Stephan: "Shining city on a hill," "World leader," "Beacon of democracy," those used to be terms the people of other nations used to describe the United States, and we were the envy of the world. No more. Now they think of us this way. I am both embarrassed and very angry that the three trolls of American foreign policy, Trump, Pompeo, and Bolton, have reduced a once proud nation to this. Purveyor of the plague seems more apt today.
Trump, Pompeo, and Bolton
Days after the Trump administration threatened Central American countries with visa sanctions if they refuse to accept nationals who are deported from the U.S. during the coronavirus pandemic, the Guatemalan health minister said an estimated 75% of the people on one deportation flight from the U.S. later tested positive for the virus.
Health Minister Hugo Monroy’s claim raised fears that the U.S. is willfully sending sick people back to the countries they left, creating conditions for larger outbreaks in countries including Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.
The U.S., which is now the epicenter of the global pandemic with more than 600,000 cases, resumed deportations on Monday after a week-long pause due to fears that ill migrants might spread the coronavirus to others on deportation flights. The Trump administration sent two flights with a total of 182 people to Guatemala Monday.Defend democracy. Click to invest in courageous progressive journalism today.
Before the flights resumed, the Guatemalan government reported that at least three nationals deported from the U.S. later tested positive […]
Thomas Kennedy, Communications Fellow for Community Change Action - truthout
Stephan: Here is a follow up on the perfidious attempt by the Republicans to privatize the Post Office.
A mail carrier wearing a mask and gloves to protect himself and others from COVID-19 loads a postal truck with packages at a post office location in Washington, D.C., on April 16, 2020.
During a recent press briefing, Trump claimed that the agency loses money every time it delivers a package for Amazon and that if it just raised its prices, USPS would be more profitable.
However, the postal service is not meant to be a profitable enterprise. It is a government service meant to unite our country by allowing the delivery of goods and information. Like many other services provided by the government, such as schools, a national postal service is not a business and should not be run as such. It is an integral agency that benefits our society and our nation would not be able to function without it. It’s actually so important that it’s protected in Article I of the Constitution.
Trump’s insistence on a national postal service motivated by profit reveals the conservative mentality at its core. In […]
