7/11-12/20: Time to catch up on a few of the failures and threats to the rule of
law perpetrated by Trump and his team of miscreants.
____________________
A $1.3 billion contract to build more than 40 additional miles of
border protection.
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First, unemployment is rising rapidly. If you
need work, however, you may be able to get it, repairing a section of Trump’s
border wall. This section was completed in January by Fisher Industries,
a company out of North Dakota.
Cost: $42 million.
Due to erosion, this spanking new section is
in danger of toppling into the Rio Grande. That means Mr. Trump has to start
blaming his “enemies.” In a Sunday tweet he claims, “this very small (tiny) section of wall” was built
by a private group and “only done to make me look bad.”
This would make sense if you were high on
powerful narcotics and too lazy to check for information readily available thanks
to the free press doing its basic job. (Or you could read my blog for 12/13/19.)
First, the “tiny” section is three miles long. It was built not by “enemies” of
the president, but with help from a group that raised $25 million online. Their
sales pitch: they supported Mr. Trump.
Called “We Build the Wall,” the group attracted powerful friends of the man in the White House. Steve
Bannon joined the board. Kris Kobach, once tasked by Trump with finding those
3-5 million illegal voters who pulled the lever for Hillary, became general
counsel. Trump endorsed him in his 2018 bid for the governorship of Kansas.
Kobach didn’t win, and never did find those imaginary illegal voters.
Tommy Fisher, owner of Fisher Industries, isn’t an “enemy” of the
president. He appeared repeatedly on Fox News, where he
praised the president effusively. This no doubt helps explain how his company
got a $1.3 billion contract to build more than 40 additional miles of wall. You can read all about it in that bible of builders, Construction
Dive, if you’re not a lazy ignoramus, like President Twitter Thumbs. Senator
Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican, was stoked about the contract when it
was announced in May 2019. He pointed out that the wall would be painted black
for aesthetic reasons, and also to make it too hot to climb.
Unless, of course, climbers waited until
nightfall. Or waited a few months until the barrier toppled over.
 |
Apparently, no one ever heard of erosion on a riverbank. |
*
“An ex-telemarketer repeatedly
accused of fraudulent practices.”
AT LEAST THE WALL that Fisher built stood for
several months. That’s a better record that a company called Fillakit
can boast. Team Trump paid $7.3 million to that company, a fledgling Texas operation,
which promised to supply tubes used for coronavirus testing.
As ProPublica explains, FEMA “signed its first deal with Fillakit on May 7, just six days after the company
was formed by an ex-telemarketer repeatedly accused of fraudulent practices
over the past two decades.” Officials in several states quickly learned that
when the federal government is contracting for critically needed healthcare
supplies, inking contracts with former telemarketers might not be the optimum strategy.
The containers weren’t what the doctors ordered:
[Officials] say that these
“preforms,” which are designed to be expanded with heat and pressure into
2-liter soda bottles, don’t fit the racks used in laboratory analysis of test
samples. Even if the bottles were the right size, experts say, the company’s
process likely contaminated the tubes and could yield false test results.
Fillakit employees, some not wearing masks, gathered the miniature soda bottles
with snow shovels and dumped them into plastic bins before squirting saline
into them, all in the open air, according to former employees and ProPublica’s
observation of the company’s operations.
“It wasn’t even clean, let alone
sterile,” said Teresa Green, a retired science teacher who worked at Fillakit’s
makeshift warehouse outside of Houston for two weeks before leaving out of
frustration.
*
THE BIG NEWS continues to be the spreading
virus and the question of what must be done to blunt the damage. Saturday,
President Trump finally wore a mask in public. Of course, he was visiting
injured servicemen and women at Walter Reed Hospital. Masks were required.
White House aides were quick to trumpet his bold
mask-wearing leadership. One even tweeted, “Joe Biden is finished,” as if Trump
had ended the crisis by doing what sensible Americans had been doing for weeks.
We don’t usually quote Democrats. But this is
too good
to pass up. “Trump finally puts on a mask,”
strategist Jesse Lehrich responded, “and his campaign applauds him like he’s a
child who just tied his own shoes for the first time....It would be comical if
it weren’t all so tragic.”
“He’s made a lot of mistakes.”
Sunday, the State of Florida set a grim record:
Most cases of virus by any one state in one day:
15,300.
The disastrous spread in states like Florida,
Texas and Arizona has left the White House scrambling for someone new to blame.
The current scapegoat is Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading
expert on infectious diseases. “He’s made a lot of mistakes,” the president
said of his adviser last week, as if to say he, Donald, had made none.
A split seems to be developing. Fauci has
said that he doesn’t know where Trump gets some of his ideas – for example,
that 99% of COVID-19 cases are totally harmless. The president has said we’re
“doing great” in handling the crisis. “As a country,” Fauci said four days ago, “when you compare us to
other countries, I don’t think you can say we’re doing great. I mean, we’re
just not.” Top Trump aides have been
complaining that Fauci doesn’t have the president’s back.
He’s not supposed to have the president’s
back or anyone else’s. He’s a scientist. He’s supposed to explain science.
Trump is an idiot and hasn’t talked to his leading expert in weeks.
Admiral Brett Giroir, the man in charge of
the U.S. coronavirus testing program, could get the orange cold shoulder next.
He admitted Sunday that “stringent lockdowns” may be necessary again in states
where disease is exploding. Giroir said that all Americans should wear masks when they go out in public. In areas where cases are
skyrocketing, he warned that restaurants and bars should close immediately. He said
hospitalizations and deaths were likely to rise. At a peak, in April, we had
85,000 people hospitalized. Giroir said we were now at 63,000. “But we do
expect those [numbers] to go up.”
We’re not doing great. According to the CDC,
the numbers for July 11
were:
62,918 new cases.
On July 12, we racked up another,
60,469.
(This is getting really
depressing.)
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