Pandemic 2020

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Jimdamick

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I'll just pose another scenario to the utter destruction of the US and any hope for the future listed in a few posts above.

Yep, the US screwed up at the beginning of this crisis. Yep, we have a nutter at the top who is using this epidemic to further polarize this country. Yep, conservatives are ignoring social distancing guidelines as if they were made up by Democrats to "make Trump look bad". This is where we are today and yep, it means that many more will die that would have lived if we had a coherent leader as prez.

But we don't. We have had almost a decade of the same kind of fumbling luddites running most of our states. Those same states are not even close to doing what's necessary to slow its spread.

OTOH, California and Washington both reacted responsibly to the virus and they are in the early stages of seeing improvements. Oregon, set in-between those two economic powers got a whiff of the problem and followed their lead. New York is in agony but they are taking the necessary steps to stop the spread. The virus isn't partisan. It doesn't care what anybody says, knows or how they vote. It feeds on the kind of inaction and lack of care on display in Texas, Florida, Nevada, and other states that have not yet taken steps to stop it. In a matter of weeks, those states are going to be a horror show, while New York begins to heal and California enacts travel restrictions to protect their public from the luddite states. There is no way those states could pretend they weren't warned, either.

So, yeah, we are screwed in the short term. I don't think it's going to last. It's going to last long enough to teach a hard lesson to states that ignored medical scientists. My guess, it's going to be about a year before we can resume the kind of open society we used to be. But the strength of this nation was never in it's banks or stock market, which are about to get hammered down. It's the people who are law abiding, hard working and while we might argue about how smart we are, history shows we are smart enough to work our way through hard times without falling apart. As some falsely predict we will.

The wind is blowing hard on conservatives. They are going to take it hard, both in their numbers, their health and politically. This decade was set to be one of difficult change. Regardless of this epidemic, by the end of this decade, the boomer-dominated society we had going in was going to be exchanged with the more diverse, better educated and tolerant millennial generation. The early part of the 20's were looking to be a bitter cat and dog fight for political control. The fading conservative movement looked to be hardening voter exclusion laws in order to maintain power of a minority white demographic that still held a plurality. This epidemic changes all of that.

I suggest this epidemic moved the hands of the clock of change forward. I think that the epidemic is speeding up the much needed refresh in leadership and social policies that were acutely needed even before this epidemic. I also submit that we are not done for economically. This is still a large country with plenty of resources at its disposal. So, yeah, these are "interesting times". Covid-19 is speeding up change that was already taking place. In a few years, I look forward to living in a less divided, more socially progressive, environmentally conscious and knowledge-driven country. But, yeah, right now, it sucks.
Fucking excellent piece of work, you should sell it :)
Kudos :)
 

DIY-HP-LED

Well-Known Member
Fucking excellent piece of work, you should sell it :)
Kudos :)
Hey Jimmy if ya want N95 masks since ya got health problems, check out bangood.com, aliexpress.com and alibaba.com for wholesale lots. Use the on site search engine for masks and PPE, get fast shipping too. Buy extra and donate if ya can, make ya feel good about it too. They have tons of PPE and are very well stocked I figure, there's money to be made.
 

Jimdamick

Well-Known Member
I put my faith in the majority of millennial women, and the generations that they raise doing a great job now that they are starting to shine in their long careers and gaining leadership roles. They are not afraid of science and facts, nor unable to admit they are wrong and incapable of seeking help to get the best results.

My generation and older have a tendency to call them 'weak' and worse, but really it is that they are hard, smart, kind, workers that don't have a lot of the same hangups that we older people grew up with in our (white) male dominated society. Utilizing 100% of the populations best and brightest with the tools and infrastructure that America has build up over since WW2 I think we are in really good hands.

It will be a bumpy road until they push out the old chauvinistic males, but we will get there.


lol you beat me by moments.
 

Budzbuddha

Well-Known Member
DEFCON 2

How coronavirus could be the ‘final straw’ for the U.S Postal Service ... No stimulus aide offered.

The U.S. Postal Service has been in trouble for some time. Now, the coronavirus crisis has come along and made everything much worse.

Mail volume (and the accompanying revenue) could be down 50% this year, according to some estimates. The already teetering Postal Service could run out of money soon. That fear, combined with widespread concerns about letter carriers exposed to the virus, has put some lawmakers into a fatalistic mindset.

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) put it bluntly: “We need to start thinking in those apocalyptic terms,” he said in an interview with Yahoo Finance Tuesday, “because we are about to face the apocalypse.”

The current crisis is “in many ways the final straw,” said Connolly, who is chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees the Postal Service. He believes that without some sort of intervention it will run out of cash in June.

Questions of safety are now dogging the service. “There's a growing anxiety that they're at risk and that there's not sufficient resources to protect them even in the most minimal of ways like hand sanitizers or gloves or the like,” Connolly said.

Two weeks ago, ProPublica published a report saying that some postal employees were continuing to work after displaying COVID-19 symptoms, and seemingly healthy employees had insufficient protection against the virus.

Postmaster General Megan J. Brennan responded to some of the concerns on Wednesday during a Board of Governors session. "We are promoting healthy behaviors and protocols and encouraging any employee who feels sick to stay home,” she said. “In order to further encourage this behavior, we have updated our leave policies to allow liberal use of leave."

Brennan also acknowledged some supply problems in the recent past saying, "we are continuing to work to overcome gaps in the supply chain to insure that our employees have access to hand sanitizer masks and gloves."

But questions are likely to keep coming. Sen. Cory Booker and other New Jersey Democrats wrote a letter to Postmaster General Brennan last week expressing a series of concerns and questions. On Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders sent another letter raising similar questions.

F258B7EE-FCD2-49C1-A192-5875B5E87876.jpeg


A spokesperson for Booker told Yahoo Finance that his office has not received an answer but remains hopeful that we can work with the service “to implement stronger workplace protections for the safety and well-being of USPS employees as well as the millions of Americans who depend on their services.”

"The health and well-being of our employees is always our first thought in facing the COVID challenge," the Postmaster General said on Wednesday. She also underlined that the CDC, WHO, and Surgeon General all “have all said that there is very low risk that this virus is spread through mail which should be a comfort to us all and to the public.”

Connolly agreed the risk of transmission via mail is low, but “if we made sure that all of our postal workers had access to hand sanitizers and gloves, we could come close to eliminating the risk.” A lack of guidance or protection for letter carriers “is very imprudent and puts people at some risk. Not a high risk, but a risk.”

The USPS has made one change: it no longer requires customer signatures. Letter carriers will instead – from a distance – request the customer’s information and enter it themselves.


They're going to run out of cash in June’

The USPS operates as a self-supporting, independent federal agency – sort of halfway between an independent business and a government agency. It likes to tout that the service “receives no tax dollars,” instead paying for itself from the sale of postage, products and services.

During the phase 3 negotiations, Connolly and other House Democrats proposed changing that by eliminating outstanding debt and allotting $25 billion to further shore up USPS finances. They even wrote a letter to Sen. Mitch McConnell “to seek your urgent help.”

They also want to repeal a mandate imposed in the Postal Act of 2006, which they say denies the USPS a chance to be profitable, arguing that the rule requires the Postal Service to pre-fund retirement health benefits for its employees. It’s a financial burden that puts “the Postal Service in a straight jacket,” according to Connolly, and has been the focus of repeal attempts for years.

The push didn’t work. The final package, signed into law by President Trump last Friday, included $10 billion in additional borrowing authority with strings attached.

” Stings Attached “ .......

The National Association of Letter Carriers, a union representing postal employees, responded: “That is woefully inadequate.”

Connolly says that some of the conditions on the $10 billion (including more of a Treasury role in management) was “an unacceptable condition for everybody,” and he still sees the USPS going out of business within months if nothing is done.


Then USPS and ‘Phase 4’ negotiations


The Postal Service has been gradually shrinking for years as outfits like UPS and Fedex Express (not to mention email) encroach further on its business. Total mail volume has shrunk from 170.9 billion pieces of mail in 2010 to 146.4 billion in 2018.

Yet advocates note the USPS still serves important functions, from delivering prescription drugs to Social Security checks. It also remains the only option in some rural areas where; as the National Association of Letter Carriers points out, “private companies rely on the USPS for last-mile delivery.”

We have to hang in there and VOTE THESE REPUB FUCKS OUT !
#FuckYouMoscowMitch #FuckYouTrump

Moscow Mitch has already been cockblocking Pelosi on follow up talks on legislation from the house and stated he will “ MOVE
SLOWLY “ on it........ unfucking believable. .. and even Jared has quietly Jockeyed his position behind FEMA.

Lord Jesus in heaven send two flaming lightning bolts up their collective asses.
 
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