By Malcolm Glenn/New America

Record unemployment claims are beginning to illustrate the stark economic reality of the COVID-19 pandemic. We knew they were coming, but the numbers are still staggering – and we’re nowhere near a sustainable respite from the damage.
Indeed, for some groups, the greatest pain is yet to come. The 2008 economic downturn is a sad, recent example of this: A 2015 report from the ACLU and the Social Science Research Council projected that, by 2031, the decline in black household wealth resulting from the downturn would be almost 10 percentage points worse than the decline of white household wealth. That’s worth restating: While overall wealth will be down across all racial groups, the gap will be massively wider for black families 23 years after the start of the crisis.

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Posted on May 12, 2020

By Robert Reich

Last August, the Business Roundtable – an association of CEOs of America’s biggest corporations – announced with great fanfare a “fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders” and not just their shareholders.
They said “investing in employees, delivering value to customers, and supporting outside communities” is now at the forefront of their business goals – not maximizing profits.
Baloney. Corporate social responsibility is a sham.

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Posted on May 11, 2020

By Abrahm Lustgarten/ProPublica

The scientists who study how diseases emerge in a changing environment knew this moment was coming. Climate change is making outbreaks of disease more common and more dangerous.
Over the past few decades, the number of emerging infectious diseases that spread to people – especially coronaviruses and other respiratory illnesses believed to have come from bats and birds – has skyrocketed. A new emerging disease surfaces five times a year. One study estimates that more than 3,200 strains of coronaviruses already exist among bats, awaiting an opportunity to jump to people.
The diseases may have always been there, buried deep in wild and remote places out of reach of people. But until now, the planet’s natural defense systems were better at fighting them off.
Today, climate warming is demolishing those defense systems, driving a catastrophic loss in biodiversity that, when coupled with reckless deforestation and aggressive conversion of wildland for economic development, pushes farms and people closer to the wild and opens the gates for the spread of disease.

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Posted on May 8, 2020

By Chris Frey/The Conversation

The COVID-19 pandemic and economic shutdown have temporarily produced clearer skies across the U.S. Meanwhile, however, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been busy finding reasons not to pursue long-lasting air quality gains.
On April 30, the agency published a proposed new rule that retains current National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Particulate Matter without any revisions. It took this action after a five-year review process, in which scientific evidence showed unequivocally that these standards are not adequate to protect public health.

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Posted on May 7, 2020

By Julia Conley/Common Dreams

In the next five decades, more than three billion people – one third of the world’s population – could live in regions with climate conditions considered unlivable, according to a new study reported on by the New York Times and other major media outlets around the globe that may have gotten lost under all the pandemic coverage.

New study: in 50 years, ~3.5 billion people will be living in areas that will be too hot to live in, absent successful action on climate change.
That’s why we should look to recover from this crisis in ways that prevent the next.https://t.co/nf2fThJMay

— Adam Browning (@adambrowning) May 5, 2020

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Posted on May 6, 2020

By Susan Hurley/Chicago Jobs with Justice

On April 1st, nearly a third of U.S. apartment renters could not pay their rent. On May 1st, even more people were unable to pay rent. The landscape of landlords is incredibly varied from individuals with a two-flat to multibillion-dollar corporations and everything in between.
Meet our local billionaire Sam Zell, the head of companies that own over 150,000 rental properties – including apartments, manufactured homes and RV parks. Last year, Zell was ranked number 119 on the Forbes 400 list with an estimated $5.5 billion in personal wealth. While one of his companies, Equity Residential, announced freezes on evictions for April, May and June in response to the coronavirus crisis, they simultaneously increased rents.

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Posted on May 5, 2020

By Christina Jewett and Shefali Luthra/Kaiser Health News

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has in recent weeks launched investigations into deaths of workers at 34 health care employers across the U.S., federal records show, but former agency officials warn that the agency has already signaled it will only cite and fine the most flagrant violators.
The investigations come as health care workers have aired complaints on social media and to lawmakers about a lack of personal protective equipment, pressure to work while sick, and retaliation for voicing safety concerns as they have cared for more than 826,000 patients stricken by the coronavirus.
Despite those concerns, the nation’s top worker safety agency is not viewed as an advocate likely to rush to workers’ aid. President Donald Trump tapped a Labor Department leader who has represented corporations railing against the very agency he leads.

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Posted on May 4, 2020

By David Rutter

No historical hero translates perfectly from one era to another. They might be less perfect than the showbizzy legends. Or maybe they are just too complex to fit inside a comfy media shoebox.
Those caveats do not deter street-punk chicken-fighters from appropriating heroes of the American Revolution to their own cause. They are historical thieves without honor. A pox on them.
After carefully assessing photos of the assembled, armed yahoo/protesters in Lansing, Mich., this week, I compared them to the Colonial heroes they claim to represent. My first observation: “Sir, I knew Thomas Jefferson, and you are no Thomas Jefferson.”

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Posted on May 1, 2020

By The Kaiser Family Foundation

The nation’s low-wage workers face a particular kind of bind.
They tend to work in service industries – such as the restaurant, hospitality and retail sectors – that are especially at risk for loss of income during the COVID-19 pandemic, or in jobs such as health care workers, grocery store workers and delivery drivers, where they may continue to work but face a higher risk of contracting the disease.
According to a new KFF analysis, over 25 million nonelderly adults worked in low-wage jobs in 2018, putting them among the bottom 20 percent of earners. Such workers will have limited ability to absorb income declines or afford health care costs, finds the analysis, which examines the characteristics of such workers and the implications of the pandemic for their jobs, health, and financial security.

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Posted on April 30, 2020

By Charles Seife/Undark

The ancients had a surefire way to cut through the fear and unpredictability of an epidemic: A quick visit to an oracle would reveal the nature and course of the disease, and even the cure. After the afflicted citizens followed instructions to sacrifice a youth, recover some old bones, fashion some hemorrhoid-shaped statues out of gold, or whatever else the priests recommended, the plague would be lifted, and life would go back to normal – or so, at least, the thinking went.
Modern-day humans look to scientists rather than sibyls to answer questions about the natural world. But this means that we have to sacrifice the speed and certainty of oracles for the slow, uncertain bumbling of scientific progress. This is the one sacrifice that science requires us to make, and it’s what gives scientists their power to understand the natural world in a way that oracles and priests never could. Yet, during the coronavirus crisis, it seems to be hurting us in ways we never expected.

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Posted on April 28, 2020