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Scientific American Endorses Joe Biden We’ve never backed a presidential candidate in our 175-year history—until now

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Scientific American has never endorsed a presidential candidate in its 175-year history. This year we are compelled to do so. We do not do this lightly.

The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people—because he rejects evidence and science. The most devastating example is his dishonest and inept response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which cost more than 190,000 Americans their lives by the middle of September. He has also attacked environmental protections, medical care, and the researchers and public science agencies that help this country prepare for its greatest challenges. That is why we urge you to vote for Joe Biden, who is offering fact-based plans to protect our health, our economy and the environment. These and other proposals he has put forth can set the country back on course for a safer, more prosperous and more equitable future.

The pandemic would strain any nation and system, but Trump's rejection of evidence and public health measures have been catastrophic in the U.S. He was warned many times in January and February about the onrushing disease, yet he did not develop a national strategy to provide protective equipment, coronavirus testing or clear health guidelines. Testing people for the virus, and tracing those they may have infected, is how countries in Europe and Asia have gained control over their outbreaks, saved lives, and successfully reopened businesses and schools. But in the U.S., Trump claimed, falsely, that “anybody that wants a test can get a test.” That was untrue in March and remained untrue through the summer. Trump opposed $25 billion for increased testing and tracing that was in a pandemic relief bill as late as July. These lapses accelerated the spread of disease through the country—particularly in highly vulnerable communities that include people of color, where deaths climbed disproportionately to those in the rest of the population.

It wasn't just a testing problem: if almost everyone in the U.S. wore masks in public, it could save about 66,000 lives by the beginning of December, according to projections from the University of Washington School of Medicine. Such a strategy would hurt no one. It would close no business. It would cost next to nothing. But Trump and his vice president flouted local mask rules, making it a point not to wear masks themselves in public appearances. Trump has openly supported people who ignored governors in Michigan and California and elsewhere as they tried to impose social distancing and restrict public activities to control the virus. He encouraged governors in Florida, Arizona and Texas who resisted these public health measures, saying in April—again, falsely—that “the worst days of the pandemic are behind us” and ignoring infectious disease experts who warned at the time of a dangerous rebound if safety measures were loosened.

And of course, the rebound came, with cases across the nation rising by 46 percent and deaths increasing by 21 percent in June. The states that followed Trump's misguidance posted new daily highs and higher percentages of positive tests than those that did not. By early July several hospitals in Texas were full of COVID-19 patients. States had to close up again, at tremendous economic cost. About 31 percent of workers were laid off a second time, following the giant wave of unemployment—more than 30 million people and countless shuttered businesses—that had already decimated the country. At every stage, Trump has rejected the unmistakable lesson that controlling the disease, not downplaying it, is the path to economic reopening and recovery.

Trump repeatedly lied to the public about the deadly threat of the disease, saying it was not a serious concern and “this is like a flu​” when he knew it was more lethal and highly transmissible, according to his taped statements to journalist Bob Woodward. His lies encouraged people to engage in risky behavior, spreading the virus further, and have driven wedges between Americans who take the threat seriously and those who believe Trump's falsehoods. The White House even produced a memo attacking the expertise of the nation's leading infectious disease physician, Anthony Fauci, in a despicable attempt to sow further distrust.

Trump's reaction to America's worst public health crisis in a century has been to say “I don't take responsibility at all.” Instead he blamed other countries and his White House predecessor, who left office three years before the pandemic began.

But Trump's refusal to look at the evidence and act accordingly extends beyond the virus. He has repeatedly tried to get rid of the Affordable Care Act while offering no alternative; comprehensive medical insurance is essential to reduce illness. Trump has proposed billion-dollar cuts to the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, agencies that increase our scientific knowledge and strengthen us for future challenges. Congress has countermanded his reductions. Yet he keeps trying, slashing programs that would ready us for future pandemics and withdrawing from the World Health Organization. These and other actions increase the risk that new diseases will surprise and devastate us again.

Trump also keeps pushing to eliminate health rules from the Environmental Protection Agency, putting people at more risk for heart and lung disease caused by pollution. He has replaced scientists on agency advisory boards with industry representatives. In his ongoing denial of reality, Trump has hobbled U.S. preparations for climate change, falsely claiming that it does not exist and pulling out of international agreements to mitigate it. The changing climate is already causing a rise in heat-related deaths and an increase in severe storms, wildfires and extreme flooding.

Joe Biden, in contrast, comes prepared with plans to control COVID-19, improve health care, reduce carbon emissions and restore the role of legitimate science in policy making. He solicits expertise and has turned that knowledge into solid policy proposals.

On COVID-19, he states correctly that “it is wrong to talk about ‘choosing' between our public health and our economy.... If we don't beat the virus, we will never get back to full economic strength.” Biden plans to ramp up a national testing board, a body that would have the authority to command both public and private resources to supply more tests and get them to all communities. He also wants to establish a Public Health Job Corps of 100,000 people, many of whom have been laid off during the pandemic crisis, to serve as contact tracers and in other health jobs. He will direct the Occupational Health and Safety Administration to enforce workplace safety standards to avoid the kind of deadly outbreaks that have occurred at meat-processing plants and nursing homes. While Trump threatened to withhold money from school districts that did not reopen, regardless of the danger from the virus, Biden wants to spend $34 billion to help schools conduct safe in-person instruction as well as remote learning.

Biden is getting advice on these public health issues from a group that includes David Kessler, epidemiologist, pediatrician and former U.S. Food and Drug Administration chief; Rebecca Katz, immunologist and global health security specialist at Georgetown University; and Ezekiel Emanuel, bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania. It does not include physicians who believe in aliens and debunked virus therapies, one of whom Trump has called “very respected” and “spectacular.”

Biden has a family and caregiving initiative, recognizing this as key to a sustained public health and economic recovery. His plans include increased salaries for child care workers and construction of new facilities for children because the inability to afford quality care keeps workers out of the economy and places enormous strains on families.

On the environment and climate change, Biden wants to spend $2 trillion on an emissions-free power sector by 2035, build energy-efficient structures and vehicles, push solar and wind power, establish research agencies to develop safe nuclear power and carbon capture technologies, and more. The investment will produce two million jobs for U.S. workers, his campaign claims, and the climate plan will be partly paid by eliminating Trump's corporate tax cuts. Historically disadvantaged communities in the U.S. will receive 40 percent of these energy and infrastructure benefits.

It is not certain how many of these and his other ambitions Biden will be able to accomplish; much depends on laws to be written and passed by Congress. But he is acutely aware that we must heed the abundant research showing ways to recover from our present crises and successfully cope with future challenges.

Although Trump and his allies have tried to create obstacles that prevent people from casting ballots safely in November, either by mail or in person, it is crucial that we surmount them and vote. It's time to move Trump out and elect Biden, who has a record of following the data and being guided by science.

Editor’s Note (9/15/20): This article has been edited after its publication in the October 2020 issue of Scientific American to reflect recent reporting.

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[BeaverFever]

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'I live to put people in jail': the hardline judges Trump wants on prison sentencing panel

President has nominated mostly white male former law enforcement officials for US Sentencing Commission

Donald Trump has for decades been a fierce advocate of the death penalty, but has also at times claimed to be a champion of more humane sentencing.
Eli Hager of The Marshall Project

Thu 17 Sep 2020 11.00 BST

Donald Trump has quietly nominated a slate of tough-on-crime former prosecutors to run a powerful agency that writes the sentencing rules for the entire federal prison system.

The US Sentencing Commission is an independent panel of seven members who set guidelines for federal judges to follow when calculating defendants’ prison time, with an emphasis on making sure that sentences are fair and not overly punitive. The commission is required by law to be bipartisan and to represent a diversity of backgrounds.

But Trump has broken from that precedent by proposing to fill the agency’s five empty seats with appointees who are nearly all white male former law enforcement officials. And Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, may, in the final months before the end of the president’s term, try to confirm these nominees, according to five Senate judiciary committee staffers as well as several advocacy groups.

“We’re worried they’re trying to cram these appointments through in case Trump loses,” said Kevin Ring, the president of the advocacy group Families Against Mandatory Minimums.

More than 70,000 people every year have their prison sentences calculated according to the commission’s guidelines. The president’s nominees include Henry E Hudson, a federal judge in Virginia known as “Hang ’Em High Henry,” who once said, “I live to put people in jail.”

Hudson, a former prosecutor and the former director of the US Marshals Service, led a Reagan administration anti-pornography commission that claimed that viewing sexual images causes sex crimes. Critics also point to a case in which he has refused to apologize to an intellectually disabled person he prosecuted and sent to prison for a murder that DNA evidence proved the man did not commit.

Also among the president’s picks for the commission is Judge K Michael Moore of Florida, another former prosecutor and former director of the US Marshals. In 2015, Moore sent a non-violent first-time drug offender to prison for 20 years, a sentence so extreme that Trump himself commuted it four years later.

Other nominees include Judge Claria Horn Boom of Kentucky, a former prosecutor championed by McConnell, and John G Malcolm, a former prosecutor who is now the director of a judicial studies program at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

The lone non-prosecutor in the group is Luis Felipe Restrepo of Pennsylvania, a judge and former public defender nominated to the federal bench by Barack Obama.

“These are honestly some of the most extreme rightwing nominees the administration could have possibly come up with,” said Rachel E Barkow, who was appointed by Obama to the sentencing commission and served until 2019. She is now a professor at the New York University School of Law.

Barkow noted that the commission is supposed to promote evidence-based sentencing reform, its decisions made based on facts about crime and recidivism rather than ideological posturing.

These are honestly some of the most extreme rightwing nominees the administration could have possibly come up with
Trump and McConnell’s late effort to install a tough-on-crime lineup at this influential federal agency comes at a time when millions of Americans have taken to the streets to demand a less racially biased and more humane criminal justice system.

The president himself has for decades been a fierce advocate of the death penalty and punitive justice, but has also at times claimed to be a champion of more humane sentencing – based mainly on agreeing in 2018 to sign the First Step Act, which rolled back some of the federal system’s most draconian punishments.

But these sentencing commission appointments and Trump’s recent law-and-order rhetoric mark a return to form. “The president ought to choose people who will faithfully implement the First Step Act and be true to its intent,” said Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator.

Trump has said little publicly about his nominees, perhaps to avoid provoking media attention that could complicate their confirmation by the Senate judiciary committee. Senator Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, is a member of that committee, as are some Republicans – including Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Mike Lee of Utah – who have supported some efforts to moderate harsh sentencing.

“During normal times, the wonkiness of nominees to the sentencing commission might have allowed the package to move forward,” said David Safavian, general counsel of the American Conservative Union and an advocate of sentencing reform. “But it’s too easy for Democrats to demagogue Henry Hudson.”

Judiciary committee staffers said that one or two of Trump’s picks may get confirmed, but probably not all. Reform advocates say there is not enough time to properly evaluate the candidates, and that any vote on them should wait until next year.

Spokespeople for McConnell and for Senator Lindsey Graham, the chair of the judiciary committee, did not respond to requests for comment as to whether there will be a confirmation hearing in the coming months.

The sentencing commission has tremendous power over how many Americans are locked up in federal prisons and for how long.

During the Obama administration, the agency voted unanimously that nearly 50,000 federal drug offenders could have their sentences reduced; they got an average of about two years shaved off their time behind bars. The sentencing commission also provides data and recommendations to Congress and the president about crime policy.

But over the past four years, several members of the panel have seen their six-year terms expire. And, as Trump has focused on appointing judges, he had not moved aggressively to fill those openings until the past month.

The process of selecting sentencing commission nominees is heavily influenced by the attorney general’s office. Legal experts see William Barr’s hand in this slate of nominees consisting of nearly all former justice department prosecutors.

“Prosecutors always say, ‘We don’t make the law, we just enforce it,’” said Safavian of the American Conservative Union. But choosing this group of appointees to set federal sentencing rules, he said, “is one of many examples of how that is not at all true”.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... p-nominees

[DrCaleb]

U.S attorney general Barr likens stay-at-home orders to slavery

[llama66]

Barr is a monumental piece of shit.

[DrCaleb]

And it's weird isn't it? He was not like that when he was working for Bush.

But yes, saving people's lives is exactly like slavery.

[raydan]

Barr should try being a slave for a few years just to make sure.

[Thanos]

Any sort of professionalism or ethics from someone who works for Trump is too much to expect from a toad like Barr. Remember, he was the one who rigged the release of the Mueller report to make Trump look innocent when the details of the report showed that he was anything but clean.

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TDPS Trump Contradicts CDC

[Strutz]

llama66 llama66:

Barr is a monumental piece of shit.

Pretty much sums it up.

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[BeaverFever]

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Pence's former lead coronavirus task force aide slams Trump and endorses Biden in new video

Washington (CNN) — A former top aide to Vice President Mike Pence assailed President Donald Trump's response to the pandemic in a new video Thursday, adding to the growing list of former Trump administration officials who have criticized the President and, in several cases, endorsed his Democratic opponent Joe Biden.

Olivia Troye, who was a homeland security adviser to Pence and his lead staffer on the White House's coronavirus task force, charged in the two-minute video that Trump failed to protect the American public because he only cared about himself and getting reelected. Troye's criticism is particularly striking because of her role working on the coronavirus task force, which Pence leads.

"Towards the middle of February, we knew it wasn't a matter of if Covid would become a big pandemic here, it was a matter of when," said Troye, who left the White House in late July. "But the President didn't want to hear that, because his biggest concern was that we were in an election year, and how was this going to affect what he considered to be his record of success?"

At one coronavirus task force meeting, Troye claimed that Trump suggested "maybe this Covid thing is a good thing."

"I don't like shaking hands with people. I don't have to shake hands with these disgusting people," Troye claimed Trump said at the meeting....

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/17/politics ... index.html

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The president is yelling at his FBI director on Twitter.

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But Chris, you don’t see any activity from China, even though it is a FAR greater threat than Russia, Russia, Russia. They will both, plus others, be able to interfere in our 2020 Election with our totally vulnerable Unsolicited (Counterfeit?) Ballot Scam. Check it out! twitter.com/cspan/status/1…