iftttwall – Page 11154

Senate Republicans’ $1 Trillion COVID-19 Relief Bill Includes Billions for New Fighter Jets, Attack Helicopters, and Missiles

The $1 trillion coronavirus relief package released by Senate Republicans yesterday includes billions of dollars for new weapons and defense projects that appear to have little to do with fighting the pandemic.

Part of the Senate Republicans’ relief package—collectively known as the Health, Economic Assistance, Liability, and Schools (HEALS) Act—is a $306 billion appropriations bill authored by Sen. Richard Shelby (R–Ala.). That legislation includes close to $30 billion in defense spending, with a good chunk of that money allocated to purchasing new aircraft, ships, and missiles.

“I believe we need to act with a sense of urgency. The American people are fighters, but the accumulated strain of this pandemic is a serious burden on folks,” said Shelby, who chairs the Senate’s Appropriations Committee, in a press release. “With the additional resources this legislation provides, I believe we can give them greater confidence that we are getting our arms around this virus.”

Speaking of arms, Shelby’s bill includes $283 million for the Army through the end of 2022 “to prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus, domestically or internationally”, on the condition that money be spent on acquiring AH–64 Apache attack helicopters made by Boeing.

The legislation also gives the Army another $375 million for upgrading its compliment of Stryker armored personnel carriers, which are made by General Dynamics. The Army reportedly awarded the company a $2.48 billion contract to build new, more mine-resistant Stryker vehicles in June. The text of the HEALS Act says that this funding will come in addition to any money that’s already been allocated.

The Air Force, meanwhile, will get $686 million to purchase more F-35As, a fighter plane made by Lockheed Martin. Its development has been plagued by cost overruns and delays. The bill will also put $720 million into funding buying more C-130J military transport aircraft, in addition to $650 million to pay for replacement wings for the Air Force’s A-10 aircraft.

The Navy will get its beak wet too, receiving $1 billion to purchase P–8A Poseidon aircraft, plus $1.4 billion for new medical ships, $260 million for a new Expeditionary Fast Transport vessel, $41 million for new Naval Strike Missiles and launchers (made by Raytheon), as a well as close to $50 million for submarine-detecting “sonobuoys.”

The Washington Post reports that many of these programs had their funding repurposed to help pay for President Donald Trump’s border wall. Republicans’ coronavirus legislation replaces that funding, and then some.

The Trump administration only slashed the budget for the Navy’s procure P–8A Poseidon aircraft by $180 million, but is now seeing its funding increased by $1 billion, reports the Post.

The Defense Department is hardly the only recipient of generous line items in the Senate GOP’s relief bill. The Trump administration reportedly requested that the legislation include $1.75 billion for a new FBI headquarters building (although the Wall Street Journal reports that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R—Ky.) has come against that particular item.)

Whether all this defense pork will end up being passed by the Senate remains to be seen.

Given that the Senate just last week approved a $740 billion defense spending bill, and the federal government ran an $864 billion budget deficit last month, one could argue now is not the time to spend more money on the military.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3hCI9eO
via IFTTT

Daily Briefing – July 28, 2020

Tyler Durden

Tue, 07/28/2020 – 18:25

Senior editor, Ash Bennington, joins Max Wiethe to cover the types of U.S. stimulus that have been implemented so far, the battle happening in Congress, and the crypto space. Ash and Max do a deep-dive into the types of monetary policy the Fed can implement and the alphabet soup of facilities they have set up to respond to the crisis. They also discuss at length what the current negotiations could mean for the 2020 elections, how the robustness of the recovery is what matters at this stage, and how the dysfunction of Congress is on display. Finally, they talk about gold breaking its all-time highs, bitcoin nearing $11,000, and the long-term view of the crypto space. In the intro, Nick Correa talks about the newly-unveiled proposal from the Republicans for fiscal stimulus and the sources of tension as Congress races toward passing a relief bill.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/308jOYd Tyler Durden

Banks Slash Credit Card Limits As Economic Crisis Not Over

Banks Slash Credit Card Limits As Economic Crisis Not Over

Tyler Durden

Tue, 07/28/2020 – 18:15

While the Federal Reserve and the Trump administration plow trillions of dollars into corporate America, buying investment-grade bonds and rocketing the stock market to new highs, there’s a much different story playing out of economic hardships for the everyday American.

There’s a massive pullback by credit card issuers at the moment, reducing credit limits and canceling accounts of consumers.

CompareCards’ new survey shows the economic fallout from the virus-induced recession is far from over. About 25% of Americans with credit cards had an account involuntarily canceled between mid-May to mid-July, while 33% said card companies slashed their credit limit.

About 70 million people – more than one-third of credit cardholders – said they involuntarily had a credit limit reduced or a credit card account closed altogether in a 60-day period stretching from mid-May to mid-July.

The report is a clear sign that credit card issuers are still closing cards and reducing credit limits on cardholders in huge numbers, months after an April 2020 CompareCards survey showed that nearly 50 million cardholders had a card closed or credit limit reduced in the first month in which the coronavirus pandemic took hold of the country. – CompareCards

Matt Schulz, the chief industry analyst at CompareCards, told Yahoo Money that “an awful lot of Americans had one of their financial security nets taken out from under them in one of the most difficult economic times in American history.”

The pullback by credit card companies was last seen during the Great Recession when about 16% of cardholders saw limits reduced and accounts involuntarily closed.

“This is, in a lot of ways, a much bigger issue today than it was in the Great Recession,” Schulz said. “It makes sense that banks are taking an even harder line with lending because there’s so much that they don’t know, and they’re so nervous about risk.”

The key takeaway from the survey is that card closures and credit limit reductions continue through summer, even though the Trump administration promotes a ‘rocket ship recovery’ in the economy.

Millennial generation have had the most credit limits slashed and cards closed.

Even folks making over $100,000 have seen limits reduced and cards closed.

Most of the credit limit reductions weren’t huge.

This all suggest that credit card companies don’t trust consumers and are preparing for the next downturn that will pressure households once more. With a fiscal cliff looming, and if the next round of stimulus isn’t passed quickly, another credit crunch for the bottom 90% of Americans could be just ahead.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/305cIDZ Tyler Durden

COVID-19 Shows America Is Vulnerable To Biological Terror, And Weaponized Viruses Are Surprisingly Easy To Make

COVID-19 Shows America Is Vulnerable To Biological Terror, And Weaponized Viruses Are Surprisingly Easy To Make

Tyler Durden

Tue, 07/28/2020 – 17:55

Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

In this article, I want to talk about something that has been on my heart for quite a while. Over the last several months, we have all seen the chaos that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused all over the globe. Overall, more than 16 million confirmed cases have been reported worldwide, and more than 650,000 people have died. But of course those raw numbers do not tell the entire story. This virus has struck fear into the hearts of billions of people all over the world and has thrown the entire global economy into a devastating economic depression. After watching what COVID-19 has done to us, it is inevitable that many of those that wish to do us harm will be inspired to look into the feasibility of purposely releasing viruses that are even deadlier than COVID-19 inside the United States. Thanks to dramatic leaps in technology over the last couple of decades, it has become very easy to create and weaponize viruses, and once such a biological weapon is released we may never even know who attacked us.

I wanted to know who else was talking about this, and so I did a search for articles on biological terror, and I found an NBC News piece that was published back in May…

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed a structural vulnerability to biological attacks in the U.S. and Europe that requires urgent government action, multiple current and former national security and public health officials told NBC News.

Former officials in the U.S. and the U.K. warn that the devastating impact of the coronavirus on health care infrastructures and economies may act as a “neon light” for terrorist groups looking to unleash pathogens on Western nations.

In this instance, NBC News is right on the money.

I can just imagine a bunch of terrorists sitting around watching a news report about how COVID-19 is crippling the United States and seeing their eyes light up when they suddenly realize the possibilities.

And when I use the term “terrorists” in this article, I am using it in a very broad sense. We tend to think of terrorists as bearded men from the Middle East that like to run around shooting people and blowing things up, but the truth is that a “terrorist” can be anyone that seeks to use violence to advance an insidious agenda. There are certainly quite a few foreign organizations and foreign governments that would love to see the United States collapse, and it has become clear that there are actually millions of people inside the United States that hate America and would love to see it come to an end.

On top of all that, there are countless people around the world that have been taught that our planet is massively overpopulated and that the human population is a “plague” that needs to be controlled before it destroys the world. Someone with that twisted worldview may actually believe that they are “saving the globe” by releasing a deadly pathogen that kills billions of people.

I could go on all day, but I think that you get the point. There are many different reasons why someone may want to release a deadly virus, and COVID-19 has shown everyone how incredibly vulnerable we are.

For a long time, we have been concerned that terrorists may eventually get their hands on nuclear weapons and use them against us, and that may still happen someday. But it is exceedingly difficult to create a nuclear weapon, it is not easy to store a nuclear weapon, and transporting a nuclear weapon a long distance to the location that you want to attack without being detected is highly problematic.

On the other hand, a biological weapon is relatively easy to create. Scientists all over the globe have been monkeying around with viruses for decades, and much of that research is freely available online. And if you want to create your own virus, you can actually do it very easily and at a very small fraction of the cost that it would take to construct a nuclear weapon. This wasn’t always the case, but advances in technology have completely changed the rules of the game. Here is more from NBC News…

Multiple public health and security experts have expressed fears about new forms of biotechnology that allow a bacterium or a virus to be genetically sequenced, altered or weaponized more affordably and more rapidly.

Cutting-edge gene-editing technologies, which allow scientists and eager amateurs alike to tweak and reconstitute viruses at a microscopic level, have become widespread in recent years, and the industry remains poorly regulated in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Please read that last sentence very carefully.

It should chill you to the core to hear that “eager amateurs” are easily able to “tweak and reconstitute viruses at a microscopic level”. Any such research should have always been protected under national security laws, but instead so much of this research is just sitting on the Internet for anyone to take.

To me, this is one of the greatest national security threats that we are potentially facing. Someone could suddenly release a virus in a very crowded location in one of our major cities, and nobody would even realize what was happening. And by the time the virus had spread widely and people were dropping dead in the streets, the person that originally released it may have permanently disappeared.

COVID-19 is the worst public health crisis that we have seen in decades, but it is not even worth comparing to a truly deadly virus that has been weaponized. In my brand new book I talk about the next pandemic that is coming, and that next pandemic could potentially be caused by a virus that is intentionally released.

America is facing a plethora of threats from both inside and outside the country, and there are so many hate-filled people that would love to bring us down.

And now COVID-19 has shown all of those hate-filled individuals a very easy way to do just that.

I know that hardly anyone else has been talking about this, but this is something that has been very heavy on my heart.

We are so exceedingly vulnerable, and one day disaster will strike without any warning.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2P38aYp Tyler Durden

Twitter Has “Struggled For Years” To Control The Number Of Employees Who Have The Ability To Reset Accounts

Twitter Has “Struggled For Years” To Control The Number Of Employees Who Have The Ability To Reset Accounts

Tyler Durden

Tue, 07/28/2020 – 17:35

Twitter, which suffered from a major hack about two weeks ago, has apparently “struggled for years” to police the number of people who have had access to the ability to reset user accounts and override security settings, according to Bloomberg.

In fact, Jack Dorsey and Twitter’s board were warned about the growing problem “multiple times since 2015”, according to four former Twitter security employees and “a half dozen” other people close to the company.

The report says that the company’s oversight over the 1,500 workers who have the ability to reset accounts, review user breaches and respond to content violations has been a source of “recurring concern” – and while the information these employees have access to is “limited” – is has been called “a starting point to snoop on or even hack an account”.

The problem is so well known that contractors reportedly made a game out of creating bogus help-desk inquiries in 2017 and 2018 so they could open up celebrity accounts – giving them access to personal data and IP addresses. In other words, Twitter is stalking its users…

Twitter said its oversight of its employees and contractors was not an issue during the recent hack: “We have no indication that the partners we work with on customer service and account management played a part here.”

Recall, we reported about two weeks ago that Twitter had said 130 accounts were compromised during the hack. We also noted that the FBI had launched an official inquiry into the massive security breach, according to Reuters.

The FBI said two weeks ago: “We are aware of today’s security incident involving several Twitter accounts belonging to high profile individuals. The accounts appear to have been compromised in order to perpetuate cryptocurrency fraud.”

Twitter had initially commented that there was “no evidence that attackers accessed the passwords of its users”.

The massive hack allegedly originated from a Twitter employee with access to the company’s user management panel. The hack affected hundreds of billionaires and politicians, including Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bill Gates, Kanye West, Elon Musk, Wiz Khalifa, Apple, Uber, Jeff Bezos and Benjamin Netanyahu.

Tweets urged people to send money to a Bitcoin address; over $113,000 was sent.

For the full details on the hack, you can read our report on it here. In addition to the hack, a subplot emerged when we reported that sources “close to or inside” the underground hacking community leaked a screenshot of what is allegedly an internal software panel used by Twitter to interact with user accounts.

The tool was said to be used to help change ownership of popular accounts and, in the case of the hack, was said to play a role in usurping the high profile accounts involved. Screenshots of the supposed internal software are being aggressively pursued and deleted from Twitter by Twitter itself, with the company claiming that they violate the platform’s rules.

Of particular interest are the buttons labeled “SEARCH BLACKLIST” and “TRENDS BLACKLIST”.

We asked earlier this month: Could these be tools actively used by Twitter to censor what Tweets and topics appear during searches and on its trends page?

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3f7HjF6 Tyler Durden

A SWAT Team Blew Up This Family’s Home in Pursuit of a Suspect Who Wasn’t Even There

A SWAT team this month rendered a residence in Charlotte, North Carolina, unlivable after firing pepper spray and tear gas into the house while in pursuit of a suspect who was not there.

Trey McClendon, 19, was later arrested without incident.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD) sought McClendon on violent felony arrest warrants, according to a statement from Lt. Andy Harris. “SWAT was called to the scene to assist with his apprehension given McClendon’s violent history,” he said. “After several hours of attempting to communicate with Mr. McClendon were unsuccessful, officers attempted to enter the location to take McClendon into custody. Once officers gained access to the residence, they determined that McClendon was not present in the residence.”

But the London family, who own the home, tell a different story. They claim they knew McClendon wasn’t present at their house, and that they only gave officers permission to enter so that the officers could check for themselves without incident. “The keys were literally placed in their hands, and we don’t understand why they decided to bring tanks out,” Dominique Camm, the family’s lawyer, said at a press conference on July 17.

McClendon does not live at the residence.

“The violent criminal history is just obscene,” Rob Tufano of CMPD told the local NBC affiliate. “No officer is just going to walk in with a set of keys.”

Instead, on July 11, the CMPD team deployed the tear gas and pepper spray, as well as what neighbors described as flash bang grenades, a tank, snipers, and K-9 units, according to The Charlotte Observer. The result: significant structural damage, including several holes in the ceiling.

Police permitted the London family to return to the residence at 3:30 a.m. on the morning of July 12 when they realized they’d need to find another place to live.

“They destroyed our family home, a place where we stayed, a place where we once called home and had family gatherings—a place that we can no longer call a home,” Ebony London Gunter, whose mother lived at the house, said at the press conference. “This is the place that we come and gather, and so now it’s like our sense of security, our sense of family has now been taken and shaken. And they did that for nothing. Like, at the end of the day, they walked away empty handed and they left us to deal with this.”

CMPD says they offered “alternate living conditions” while the necessary repairs are made, but Camm countered that neither he nor the family had heard such an offer, according to The Observer. The city will reportedly pick up the bill.

Problems of police militarization certainly aren’t new. Just last month, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case of a family whose home in Greenwood Village, Colorado, was destroyed by SWAT agents after they deployed tear gas, flash bang grenades, 40 mm rounds, breaching rams, and two Bearcat armored vehicles while attempting to apprehend a shoplifter who had no relationship to the family in question. The home was totaled. The city gave the family $5,000.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/339LDS9
via IFTTT

E-Mails to Sen. McConnell Found Not to Be Criminally Threatening

Howard Weiss had sent eight e-mails (anonymously) to Senator Mitch McConnell in 2018 and 2019 via the Senator’s online form. Today’s decision by Judge Charles Breyer (N.D. Cal.) in United States v. Weiss, concluded that the e-mails didn’t fall within the “true threats” exception, as it has been defined within the Ninth Circuit:

A statement is objectively a true threat only if it “would be understood by people hearing or reading it in context as a serious expression of an intent to kill or injure” another person. In United States v. Bagdasarian, the Ninth Circuit reversed the defendant’s conviction for threatening to kill presidential candidate Barack Obama, holding that predictive and exhortatory statements, such as “Obama fk the niggar, he will have a 50 cal in the head soon,” were not true threats. Such statements conveyed “no explicit or implicit threat on the part of [the defendant] that he himself will kill or injure Obama.” The defendant’s further statement, “[S]hoot the nig,” was “an imperative intended to encourage others to take violent action, if not simply an expression of rage or frustration,” but it did not suggest that the defendant himself was going to shoot Obama.

Weiss’s comments were also steeped in “rage and frustration,” and they were indisputably violent. Nonetheless, read in context, the statements predicted that other people would hurt Senator McConnell, not that Weiss would. See, e.g., Opp’n Ex. A1 (stating, “You will die in thestreet by DC resistance motherfucker!!!!!” but not identifying himself as being part of the “DC resistance”); Opp’n Ex. A5 (stating, “The Kentucky Resistance is going to hang you by your pussy lips and punish you,” but not identifying himself as being part of “The Kentucky Resistance”); Opp’n Ex. A7 (stating, “The Kentucky Resistance says they are going to cut your throat from ear to ear and then your gook wife’s,” and using the word “they”); Opp’n Ex. A8 (stating, “… the Kentucky Resistance is going to totally execute you. They have stated youare a deadman! And soon. We are so glad to hear that they are finally going to take action. We cannot wait to know you are dead,” and using the word “they”). It is true that Senator McConnell’s staff considered some of these messages threatening. See, e.g., Opp’n Ex. A1 (“Please see below threats that came in through our online message system”). But just as the statement, “Obama fk the niggar, he will have a 50 cal in the head soon” was not a true threat, see Bagdasarian, no reasonable jury could find that Weiss’s statements predicting that other people would harm Senator McConnell met the definition of true threats, see also New York ex rel. Spitzer v. Operation Rescue Nat’l, 273 F.3d 184, 196 (2d Cir. 2001) (“generally, a person who informs someone that he or she is in danger from a third party has not made a threat, even if the statement produces fear. This may be true even where a protestor tells the objects of protest that they are in danger and further indicates political support for the violent third parties.”)….

A statement is subjectively a true threat if the defendant “made the statements intending that they be taken as a threat.” “The speaker need not actually intend to carry out the threat.” Here, though the government asserted at the motion hearing that Weiss’s conduct meets the subjective test for a true threat, it provided no support for that assertion. In fact, the government asserts repeatedly in its briefing that Weiss had the intent to harass Senator McConnell, but never mentions an intent to threaten. See, e.g., Opp’n at 1 (“Defendant Howard Weiss is charged with the harassing use of a telecommunications device … with intent to harass U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell.”); id. (“From October 2018 through October 2019, defendant used his cell phone to send a total of eight emails to Senator McConnell … with the intent to harass Senator McConnell”); Opp’n at 20 (“the references to Senator McConnell are simply direct and circumstantial evidence of defendant’s intent to harass a specific person”), id. at 21 (arguing that the relevant intent was the intent to harass, not the intent to convey a political opinion).

The only evidence of Weiss’s intent that the Court is aware of comes from Weiss’s interview with law enforcement, in which he admitted to having an intent to harass the Senator, rather than to threaten him. He told law enforcement that he decided to harass Senator McConnell because the senator made political decisions with which he disagreed. He admitted that he used racial slurs in furtherance of his intent to harass the Senator, saying, “that’s just terrible harassment, that’s just anger and bullshit.”

Weiss’s words were violent and repugnant, as even he seems to have eventually understood. But because he did not convey that he himself would harm Senator McConnell, and the government has not identified any basis for concluding that Weiss intended to threaten, rather than harass, the Senator, the “true threat” exception does not apply.

Here are the e-mails, which were quoted in part above:

turtle, If you push this for Friday, the resistance is coming to DC to slash your throat. You will die in thestreet by DC resistance motherfucker!!!!! You will not live to regret it!!!!!! …

turtle cum drinker, The yelling resistance should have put a bullet in your head and then kill all the people you love! …

[Subject:] Your intelligence is zero … You motherfucking scumbag crook turtle[.] Go fuck yourself. I have been furloughed and you heartless bastard could give a shit. You fucking criminal. Someone needs to kill you! You are going to lose next election and we will get rid of your satanic evil ass you loser fuckhead

[Subject:] You are a criminal Russian asset … Turtle, You motherfucking chinc lover, russian paid scumbag. With your fucking chinc father-in-law bank rolling you. You fucking animal better get ready for the biggest loss of your shitty heartless evil toxic life. We know you will believe this is just unimportant bullshit, however you better not….

[Subject:] Losers will die turtle, … Go fuck yourself you fucking criminal motherfucker. In 2020, You are fucking a closed case. You are a fucking dog who will be put down!!! The Kentucky Resistance is going to hang you by your pussy lips and punish you for what you think you got away this. Your consequential decision will afford you the most torture you will ever endure. scalia was the biggest asshole in the judicial system ever.

[Subject:] The 2020 election … You racist fucking criminal chinc loving motherfucker. You are going down in2020 and then you will suffer the consequences and they will burn your life down!

[Subject:] We need your chink whore to go back “To where the fucking gook came from. You motherfucking racist scum. The Kentucky Resistance says they are going to cut your throat from ear to ear and then your gook wife’s.” …

[Subject:] The gravity of your nonexistence … Whether you believe it or not, after watching Frontline the Kentucky Resistance is going to totally execute you. They have stated youare a deadman! And soon. We are so glad to hear that they are finally going to take action. We cannot wait to know you are dead.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2BDfzut
via IFTTT

Senate Republicans’ $1 Trillion COVID-19 Relief Bill Includes Billions for New Fighter Jets, Attack Helicopters, and Missiles

The Trump administration only slashed the budget for the Navy’s procure P–8A Poseidon aircraft by $180 million, but is now seeing its funding increased by $1 billion, reports the Post.

Whether all this defense pork will end up being passed by the Senate remains to be seen.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3hCI9eO
via IFTTT

A SWAT Team Blew Up This Family’s Home in Pursuit of a Suspect Who Wasn’t Even There

A SWAT team this month rendered a residence in Charlotte, North Carolina, unlivable after firing pepper spray and tear gas into the house while in pursuit of a suspect who was not there.

Trey McClendon, 19, was later arrested without incident.

McClendon does not live at the residence.

“The violent criminal history is just obscene,” Rob Tufano of CMPD told the local NBC affiliate. “No officer is just going to walk in with a set of keys.”

Police permitted the London family to return to the residence at 3:30 a.m. on the morning of July 12 when they realized they’d need to find another place to live.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/339LDS9
via IFTTT

Teachers Unions Want Wealth Taxes, Charter School Bans, and Medicare-for-all Before Schools Can Reopen

As school districts across the country grapple with the question of how to safely and effectively educate students amid a pandemic, teachers unions are making increasingly ridiculous demands, some of which have nothing to do with the health or safety of students, teachers, or administrators.

Take the group United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA). That union represents more than 35,000 teachers in the nation’s second-largest school district. Earlier this month, UTLA published a paper calling for schools to remain closed until the district could ensure adequate supplies of protective gear for teachers and students. UTLA also demanded the reconfiguring of classrooms to allow for social distancing.

But that wasn’t it. UTLA also stated that the pandemic requires an immediate moratorium on new charter schools in Los Angeles. How does that protect student or teacher safety? It doesn’t, of course. If anything, the pandemic has revealed the necessity of additional educational options for parents and students.

UTLA didn’t stop there. It is also demanding things that the officials in charge of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) don’t have the power to grant, such as the passage of Medicare-for-all, new state-level wealth taxes in California, and a federal bailout of the LAUSD—which is struggling to meet pension obligations for retired teachers and staff.*

Without passing judgment on the merits of any of these policies, it is obvious that reopening schools should not be conditioned on Congress totally overhauling the American health care system.

Sadly, these nonsense demands are also popping up outside of California. More than 10 teachers unions—including those in Boston, Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul—have joined up with the Democratic Socialists of America to say that “schools cannot continue in this crisis without the resources our students need and deserve.”

What sort of demands are being made? For starters, those unions want a national ban on evictions, a moratorium on charter schools, an end to voucher programs, and the abolition of standardized testing. They also want a “massive infusion of federal money”—though it is unclear how much that actually is—paid for by, of course, “taxing billionaires and Wall Street.”

To be fair, the coalition is also pushing some good ideas, like getting police officers out of schools. But what does any of this have to do with safely educating children during a pandemic?

The decision to reopen schools or keep them closed is one that should be made at the local level—and it should of course take the health of teachers into consideration, also while balancing the interests of students, parents, and taxpayers. But all of that can only happen if the teachers unions are willing to bargain in good faith.

State and federal officials can help by expanding educational choice as rapidly as possible. If teachers unions are keeping public schools closed, parents should be provided with alternatives—or, as President Donald Trump has proposed, parents should get their school taxes refunded in full to use as they see fit.

“If Walmart employees strike, you can take your money elsewhere,” says Corey DeAngelis, director of school choice for the Reason Foundation, the nonprofit which publishes this website. “If teachers strike, you should be able to take your child’s education dollars elsewhere.”

It might come to that. On Tuesday, the American Federation of Teachers announced that it would support local unions that decide to go on strike over school reopening plans. Randi Weingarten, the union’s president, told Politico that those “safety strikes” should be a “last resort” for members.

That’s probably small comfort for parents and families who don’t know if their kids will be able to go back to school this year. If the teachers unions are determined to keep schools closed until they can be completely safe—or until Congress passes Medicare-for-all—then we’re all going to be waiting a while.

CORRECTION: This piece initially claimed the United Teachers Los Angeles was demanding Medicaid-for-all as a condition of reopening schools. They are seeking the passage of Medicare-for-all.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2BIryHe
via IFTTT