Tag: corruption

Trump Administration Seizes Protective Equipment

bed empty equipments floor
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

After the Trump government failed very badly at rolling out coronavirus testing and equipment to the states, the states decided they would take on getting what they need all by themselves.  But Trump also is apparently blocking them from doing that.

In one case, Trump pressured 3M from exporting face masks to countries that had already ordered them.  This included our little brother to the north, Canada.

In another case, a shipment already shipped to Berlin, Germany was intercepted by the Trump government and sent back to Washington, DC.

In another case, Trump intercepted respirators purchased by Brazil from China in Miami, and the shipment had to be cancelled.  In other words, the US had nothing to do with the purchase but the Trump government intercepted the masks during a layover.

Most troubling, the Trump government has been seizing equipment directly from American hospitals who are desperate to protect their staff from coronavirus.

There are numerous cases where orders placed by states or hospitals have been canceled after they have been outbid by federal authorities or federal authorities have ordered vendors to sell to the federal government. According to Kaiser Health News, those compelled sales appear to be pursuant to an executive order President Trump signed on March 18th under authorities granted by the Defense Production Act.

Additional reporting from the Los Angeles Times showing that the Trump government is seizing orders made by American hospitals before they can be delivered:

Although President Trump has directed states and hospitals to secure what supplies they can, the federal government is quietly seizing orders, leaving medical providers across the country in the dark about where the material is going

Now, many are asking why would the federal government be doing that, and what are they doing with the supplies that they intercept and steal from people who have already purchased it–in many cases?

Well it turns out the federal government appears to be intercepting and redirecting equipment to commercial vendors to sell back to hospitals at a markup for a comfortable profit.  After all, what better way to make money than to scam off the top of the coronavirus response?

And who might be in charge of redirecting those supplies?  Well, that would be Trump’s jerk son-in-law Jared Kushner.  And who might be running those commercial vendors that Kushner is redirecting supplies to?  Why GOP donors of course!

Trump Impeachment Inquiry Gains Steam

It was apparent from the start that the impeachment investigation started by Nancy Pelosi was very different than the Robert Mueller investigation that seemed to go on forever and never really led to anything.

This one seems to have teeth. We have an allegation that the president held up foreign aid to a country unless they helped him go after Joe Biden. We have his white house lawyers trying to cover up the call after the fact. We have his personal lawyer and the attorney general potentially involved.

And as time goes on new information is coming to light, and at speeds a hell of a lot faster than we saw with the Mueller investigation that took forever to go nowhere.

Today we learn that the president also apparently tried to pressure another foreign government, this time Australia, to try and find out what the source was for their government’s initial warnings to Washington that Russia was attempting to corrupt Trump in connection with the 2016 election.

We also learned that the attorney general has also been personally involved in trying to find out dirt against American intelligence officials to help the president politically.

And now comes word that Democrats are also looking into Trump’s telephone calls with Putin to see if there was any funny business there. Apparently Trump’s minions tried to hide those calls too.

The president’s flunkies in the media have been trying to fight this current set of allegations. Unlike the Russia Mueller investigation, this one seems impervious to their attacks.

Trump himself is flailing about, tweeting out how this will start a civil war, how the Congressman running the investigation is a traitor, and how he wants to “meet” the whistleblower. He’s desperate.

For the Democrats, this seems to be a dream come true. Instead of focusing on the real problems Americans face, they can circle jerk to the latest round of political intrigue.

Trump’s cover-up may be worse than the crime

As is often the case, but not always, the cover-up may be worse than the crime. If the new whistleblower complaint we have against Trump is true, then it appears Trump’s staff recognized that his call with Ukraine’s new president could be read as Trump pressuring a foreign country to investigate Joe Biden, and to withhold money from that country unless they played ball.

Trump’s staff knew that he had crossed the line, but instead of letting the facts be what they were, staff apparently tried to hide the conversation on a classified computer server and otherwise prevent the conversation between Trump and the Ukrainian president from becoming public. This is all according to the new whistleblower complaint.

We will see how this all plays out, but it could be that the cover up is worse than the underlying “crime.”

Florida Governor Called a Coward, Booed, Forced to Leave Restaurant Out Back Door Like a Rat

Florida is sick and tired of its scumbag governor.  As a result of his corrupt ways, the people are literally getting stunk-out by Red Tide caused by the companies who directly fund the governor.

For the past four months, the normally pristine and beautiful waters and beaches on the south-central western coast of Florida have been turned into a stinking, putrid deep reddish brown sea of nastiness.  Oxygen has been choked out of the water and so the stink is only made worse by thousands of fish and plants dying off and being left to rot.

But it’s not just the fish and plants, the deadly putrid water is also causing dolphins and manatees to die, and not just a few, we are talking a huge number of large dead animals.  This has been going on for several months now and there does not seem to be an end in sight.

Even a whale shark has been killed by the Red Tide.

Southwest Florida is already a crappy place to live.  It’s always hot and humid and is full of crotchety old people who let casual racism fly out of their mouth because, “that’s just how my generation talked.”  But with that, residents could at least head to the beach, crack a beer and enjoy a warm sunset.  Until the Red Tide hit, which has caused the beach stink to reach several miles inland.

The cause of the Red Tide is likely natural, but human contamination makes it worse, makes it last longer, and makes it more deadly for marine life.

Just after Lake Okeechobee exploded with a massive blue-green algae bloom and water managers began flushing it to the coast, the red tide that started months earlier deepened, with the worst of the fish kills appearing in coastal waters fed by the vast lake’s western relief outlet, the Caloosahatchee River.

But a federal study going back more than a decade concluded that man-made pollution worsens red tide. That makes the lake, laced with high levels of the fertilizer nutrients phosphorus and nitrogen, a likely source. What’s not clear, since the same nutrients get flushed from the coast, is whether it’s definitely a source.

And while scientists have a more refined approach to this, citizens are directly blaming their political leaders, claiming that the diversion of water from Lake O, rerouted from the Everglades into the Gulf of Mexico so large agriculture operations can continue to develop farm land in south-central Florida–turning natural swamp land into farm land.  These operations of course put a lot of money behind Florida Republicans, who people now  believe are subservient to the money.

Rick Scott, who is probably the most corrupt scumbag of them all, is now getting the attention of voters as he tries to parlay his failed governorship into a run for the U.S. Senate.

Before being governor, Scumbag Scott was a slick businessman who almost ended up in federal prison for his role in what some call the biggest Medicare fraud in history:

At Columbia/HCA, Scott claimed he had no idea the company was, in the words of the federal government, committing “systemic” fraud in the chain of 340 hospitals and 550 home-health agencies.

After FBI agents raided his company’s offices on July 16, 1997, Scott appeared on CNN’s Moneyline and downplayed the investigation as “a matter of fact in healthcare today.”

And even though Scumbag Scott has played a big role in creating a horrible Red Tide that is the worst in recent memory, he is now running for the U.S. Senate as a “champion” of fighting the Red Tide.  With heroes like these!!