“The message should be simple – you want to go back to normal life? Wear a mask. You want your children to go to school and to be able to go to bars and not be unemployed? Wear a mask. You don’t want another lockdown? Wear a mask.”
— Yanis Ben Amor, executive director of the Center for Sustainable Development and experienced researcher of infectious diseases, ‘Trump is in a dreamland’: what the US should do now on Covid-19
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“The US economy isn’t roaring back. Just over half of Americans have jobs now, the lowest figure in more than 70 years. What’s roaring back is Covid-19. Until it’s tamed, the American economy doesn’t stand a chance.”
— Robert Reich, COVID-19 Is Closing In on Trump
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“Under capitalism the workers have always been compelled to live in unclean quarters of the towns, where epidemic disease is rife. It was only owing to the dread that they themselves would suffer from these epidemics, that the capitalists introduced certain measures to improve the sanitation of the areas in which their wage-slaves dwelt. . . . Capitalism was only interested in the protection of public health in so far as this was necessary for its own safety.”
— Nikolai Bukharin and Yevgeni Preobrazhensky, The ABC of Communism, 1919
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“Germany’s death rate is 109 per million population, according to Johns Hopkins, compared with 391 per million in the US. That means that more than two-thirds of the US deaths – 86,000 at least – would have been prevented if we had achieved Germany’s death rate.”
— Tom Frieden, former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (7/5/20), ‘Trump is in a dreamland’: what the US should do now on Covid-19
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“Just a 2% tax on total financial wealth would generate enough revenue to provide nearly a $14,000 annual stipend to every American household (including those of the richest families).”
— Paul Buchheit, The Protests We Should Be Having to Make the Super-Rich Very Afraid
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“Trump has done one thing. He’s asked the supreme court to strike down the Affordable Care Act. If the court agrees, it will end health insurance for 23 million more Americans and give the richest 0.1% a tax cut of about $198,000 a year.”
— Robert Reich, COVID-19 Is Closing In on Trump
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“Live every day like it’s your last and one day you’ll be right.”
— Willie Nelson
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“To the extent Trump’s racist provocation is a strategy rather than simply an instinct, it is a miscalculation. The electorate was more than 90% white when Richard Nixon deployed his southern strategy; the proportion is now 70% white and shrinking. But more than that, Trump’s racism has alienated a large number of white people.”
— Dana Milbank, ‘Rats jumping off the sinking ship’: Trump’s red meat has ‘unnerved Republicans’ who ‘enabled’ him
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“These monuments were proof that even traitors could undergo the fires of historical redemption without uttering a word of repentance. The monuments weren’t placed on pedestals or battle flags flown on the grounds of state capitals to help America remember. On the contrary: They were placed in public spaces to help America forget.”
— Tony Norman, The Day They Tore Old Dixie Down
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