Our Administration proposes rolling back "burdensome" regulation mandating that all nursing homes have at least one infection control specialist on staff. Instead, nursing homes would be allowed to have such specialists on-site for a "sufficient" time, whatever that is. Naturally, nursing home CEOs have pressed for this rule change, meaning, I presume, that they could use contract employees instead of actually hiring someone who would require health insurance and other benefits. But this sure is a hell of a corporate welfare handout to contemplate in the middle of a pandemic. Infections claim some 380,000 lives at nursing homes annually, and one nursing home in Washington state has lately lost 13 residents to the coronavirus. So, hella great timing, Administration! (And no, New York Times business page, the regulatory changes won't save the "industry" money; it'll save executives money. It's 2020; learn the damn difference.)
Half a dozen witnesses claim that our President bribed (via middlemen) New York City tax assessors to cut his buildings' taxes during the '80s and '90s. And a spokeshack for our President's businesses even says, out loud, that our President's businesses were "a victim of the scandal"! You see, self-pity is bad for you and me, but it's OK for our betters. Don't hold out hope that Mr. Biden will run campaign ads about this particular corruption, though our President will not STFU about Mr. Biden's brother or son for the next eight months. At least Mr. Biden will have time to polish his civility trophy when he loses.
Speaking of the Democrats' next losing Presidential candidate, Mr. Biden now won't commit to signing a Medicare-for-All bill if it gets through Congress -- because it might "delay() providing the security and the certainty of healthcare being available now." But if he'd read the bill currently before Congress -- reading being, as we know, a good way of understanding issues as they actually exist -- he'd know that Medicare would take four years to cover everyone, giving all those supposedly best-and-brightest health insurance CEOs ample time to wind things down, and giving our government ample time to ensure no one suffers a lapse in insurance. Once that's pointed out to him, I guess he'll pivot back to TEH MEDICAREZ FOR ALLZ WILL BUSTZ ALL TEH BUDGETZ!!!!, although, of course, that's also a load of horsedoodle. (Personal to those who would tell me "don't criticize Joe Biden or you'll cause him to lose": if he wanted to win this election, he shouldn't have spent the last 50 years sucking up to right-wingers.)
Lee Fang at The Intercept notes that Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) has taken paid sick leave from his job as he self-quarantines from possible coronavirus infection -- but of course championed legislation in Florida's legislature that would have prevented counties and municipalities from enacting their own paid sick leave legislation! I guess he figures he "earned" it and you haven't, but, really, anyone can win an election -- the ability to be the biggest asshole in the room not actually being a particularly useful skill -- and anyway it's not so much about whether you can "earn" it as about whether the rest of America deserves to catch what you've got because you couldn't take a day off from work.
Finally, because we deserve some good news, U.S. District Court judge issues an injunction against our President's food stamp rollback, which would prevent the rollback from taking effect until various other lawsuits against the rollback make their way through our courts. The ruling is getting a lot of ink for citing the coronavirus pandemic as a bad time to cut food stamps, which it is, but the meat of the ruling is (get your surprised face ready) that the USDA violated the Administrative Procedures Act by failing to take heed of public comments opposing the rollback, which is, as you know, a line of reasoning Chief Justice Roberts has already accepted in his ruling striking down the Census's proposed citizenship question. I would like to put it past him to simply ignore evidence.
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