Showing posts with label Emergent. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Emergent. Show all posts

Monday, March 21, 2022

April 7, 2021: Are Democratic Cities Really Unsafe?

 

4/7/21: Did you know that as of today, 37 percent of the population of New York City is foreign-born? 

Plus, the city has a Democratic mayor.




 

____________________ 

Maybe Democrats and immigrants aren’t the problem.

____________________

  

We all remember how then-President Trump enjoyed talking about killers and rapists sneaking across the border, and Democratic mayors who failed to keep their cities safe. Never doubting a single syllable that escaped from our former president’s mouth, I had to assume people in New York City must be getting murdered at a phenomenal rate. The city had to be a veritable ghost town by now. 

I was surprised. The city suffered 289 murders in 2018. (I use that figure, because in a story about the most dangerous states, USA Today uses crime statistics from that year.)

 

Are Republican controlled places safer? I checked. Alaska had only 47 murders – proving that people who think Democrats fail the “law and order” test may not be able to perform simple division. 

New York City has 8.7 million people. That would mean your chances of being murdered by dangerous immigrant gang members, or anyone else, would be 1 in 30,104. Alaskans would have to take their chances at…1 in 15,557. Tennessee – about as red a state as you can find – had 498 murders, for a rate of 1 in 13,829. Alabama, even redder, had 607 murders, or 1 per 8,108. In other words, immigrants might not be the problem, nor the fact most cities are run by Democratic mayors.

 

Case in point: This weekend a customer at a Burger King in Memphis got mad when her order at the drive-thru window took too long. As Fox News explained, the irate woman stepped out of her car. 

Burger King surveillance video showed the woman pull out a black handgun from her car, lean into the drive-thru window and open fire.

 

Luckily, none of the employees were hit and the workers took off running through a backdoor, police said.

 

This is not to be confused with the shooting in Orlando last August, also at a Burger King, also due to a customer’s anger over a delayed order, in which one employee was killed. Nor do we mean the murder of another young drive-thru worker at a McDonalds in Elko, Nevada last November. Nor do we mean the incident in Milwaukee that month, where an irate customer broke the drive-thru window on purpose – only to have an employee at the Golden Arches come outside, pull a gun, and pistol whip the customer. Or the incident in October where an employee at a McDonalds in Kansas City, Mo., ended a dispute with a drive-thru customer by shooting and nearly killing him. 

For “variety,” you have the Oklahoma City customer who became upset when informed the McDonalds dine-in room was closed. She, too, “fired multiple shots,” according to police. That assault last May left three workers bleeding from various wounds, although none were life-threatening.

 

* 

A contract worth $628 million – and zero doses delivered. 

SINCE THE TOPIC is danger, it turns out Emergent, the company tasked with making America’s coronavirus vaccines, has botched the job. So far, their factory in Baltimore has produced 150 million doses of vaccine which is good. Emergent has also been accused of violating safety and sanitation protocols and 15 million doses had to be destroyed. Which is not good. So far, not a single dose produced has been deemed safe enough to ship. 

Definitely not good.

 

Emergent’s auditors reported last July that errors made at the factory “are not investigated to determine root cause, or are not investigated adequately.” Even worse, “Investigations are terminated without sufficient cause.” Mold was discovered repeatedly in one laboratory. The company conducted “essentially no investigation” and all workers did was wipe down the wheels of one cart. 

Since Team Trump awarded the company a contract worth $628 million you might have thought officials would have been more diligent. 

And, of course, President Trump might have asked for regular updates to ensure Emergent was doing its job. 

But he was too busy tweeting to care.

Sunday, March 20, 2022

June 17, 2021: Republicans Having a Bad Month

  

6/17/21: June still isn’t going well for Republicans. Today the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a challenge filed by the Trump administration and various GOP-controlled states, asking for the Affordable Care Act to be repealed. This was their third try to kill the 2010 law. The vote was 7-2. 

In a way, a good liberal such as this blogger can feel almost wistful about the Republican defeat – because if they had killed Obamacare, they would have had to trot out the plan Rejected-President Trump said they would have shortly after the November 2020 election. 

They don’t have any plan at all; and it would be nice for the American people to be able to see that.



U.S. Supreme Court.

 

* 

NEVERTHELESS, this week Congress got something right! First, the Senate unanimously passed a bill to make June 19 a federal holiday, “Juneteenth” being the day in 1865, when the last roots of slavery were ripped up in Texas. In the House, the vote was 415 for, 14 against. All opposed were Republicans, including Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama and Rep. Chip Roy of Texas. Other “no” votes came from South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, and Kentucky, and a couple of other states. 

I think some of these GOP lawmakers miss slavery.

 

* 

ALSO, Rep. Paul Gosar – a dependably nutty member of Congress from Arizona – decided to vote “no.” 

He was busy insisting that the name of the Capitol Hill police officer who shot and killed Ashli Babbitt during the January 6 riot be released. “It’s disturbing,” Gosar said, claiming Babbitt was “executed.” 

“The Capitol Police officer that did that shooting appeared to be hiding, lying in wait and then gave no warning before killing her.” 

Yeah, he should have just yelled loudly enough for the mob that was right behind Babbitt to hear, even though they were howling about killing House Speaker Pelosi and hanging VP Pence.

 

* 

WE ALSO LEARN today that Emergent, the manufacturer which signed a $628 million no-bid contract in May 2020, to produce coronavirus vaccines was so excited when it got the federal government’s business, that it awarded five company officials $8 million in cash and stocks. Emergent proceeded to botch production, spoil 75 million doses, and produce…so far…exactly 0 usable vaccines. 

In the Land of Trumplicans this proves we can always trust Big Business, but never Big Government, and we can never raise taxes on people like those who run Emergent and get fat payoffs. 


In related news, the Department of Education has decided to cancel $500 million in student loans owed to ITT Technical Institute, a for-profit college which profited greatly, mostly by defrauding students. This brings the total value of loans forgiven to $1.5 billion and covers 90,000 young Americans who were chiseled by for-profit operations, that specialized in profit, not education. 

The Department of Education has also announced that it will interpret provisions of Title IX as protecting transgender students from discrimination. This will no doubt enrage right-wing fans of discrimination.