Patrick's Notebook

By Jacob Weindling

KEY POINTS

• Amazon told Congress that “we don’t use individual seller data directly to compete”
• WSJ spoke to 20 former employees and reviewed documents all showing this to be untrue
• Amazon said they have launched an internal investigation in response to WSJ’s findings

Contradicting what Amazon told Congress as well as its publicly stated policies, a report from the Wall Street Journal found that Amazon employees “have used data about independent sellers on the company’s platform to develop competing products.” WSJ was able to come to this conclusion by reviewing documents and conducting interviews with more than 20 former employees of Amazon’s private-label business.

In July of last year, lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel grilled Amazon, Facebook and Google. The chair of the committee, Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., pressed Nate Sutton, an associate general counsel at Amazon, about these allegations, saying “You said we do not consult data to compete with other sellers online. You do collect enormous data about prices [and] what’s popular. You’re saying that you don’t use that in any way to promote Amazon products? I remind you, sir, you’re under oath.” » Read the rest of this entry «

By Emily Singer
White House officials who question Trump’s ideas on the novel coronavirus risk being attacked or fired.

By Donald Trump’s own admission, he has based decisions on how to handle the COVID-19 pandemic on his own gut feelings.

On March 20, he said his decision to push the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 was based on “a feeling.”

And earlier in March, Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that he doubted the World Health Organization’s coronavirus death rate estimate based simply on a “hunch.”

Yet Trump has attacked, sidelined, or even fired members of his own administration for making comments based on scientific facts and hard evidence — often because their fact-based comments do not mesh with Trump’s beliefs.

Here are the four members of Trump’s administration who have put their jobs in jeopardy for not agreeing with Trump’s gut feelings:

Vaccine expert Rick Bright

Rick Bright, a doctor who led the federal agency tasked with developing a vaccine for the coronavirus at the Department of Health and Human Service, said he was demoted for demanding more stringent testing of hydroxychloroquine before recommending it to treat COVID-19, the New York Times reported on Wednesday. » Read the rest of this entry «

By Dawn Geske

Another 4.4 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week for the first time, bringing to more than 26 million the number who have filed since the coronavirus pandemic began ravaging the U.S. economy five weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Labor reported Thursday.

“With the nation unable to mount the public health response needed to reopen businesses, unemployment benefits are carrying the weight and serving as the last line of defense for millions of struggling families,” Andrew Stettner, senior fellow and an unemployment insurance expert at the Century Foundation, said in an emailed statement.

Some 26 million people have filed for unemployment in the last five weeks, as businesses were forced to temporarily close their doors due to stay-at-home orders enacted across the country. While some states have relaxed the orders, others have extended restrictions, sparking protests.

“Heartbreaking is too kind of a word for the grief the pandemic has caused in lives lost,” Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton and adviser to the Federal Reserve, tweeted. “It is foolish to think this wound will heal rapidly. Congress needs to [act] ahead of the next phases of this crisis. They are self evident. They can’t be wished away. Lead don’t leave.

“Hard for employers to call back workers in [the] most social of industries and succeed for any length of time given the ongoing contagion of the virus and need for social distancing. Also, imagine the costs of attempting to open while PPE and disinfectant [are] still scarce,” Swonk added. » Read the rest of this entry «

By Robert Reich, RawStory.com

With the coronavirus pandemic wreaking havoc on the global economy, here’s how massive corporations are shafting the rest of us in order to secure billions of dollars of taxpayer-funded bailouts.

The airline industry demanded a massive bailout of nearly $60 billion in taxpayer dollars, and ended up securing $50 billion – half in loans, half in direct grants that don’t need to be paid back.

Airlines don’t deserve a cent. The five biggest U.S. airlines spent 96 percent of their free cash flow over the last decade buying back shares of their own stock to boost executive bonuses and please wealthy investors.

United was so determined to get its windfall of taxpayer money that it threatened to fire workers if it didn’t get its way. Before the Senate bill passed, CEO Oscar Munoz wrote that “if Congress doesn’t act on sufficient government support by the end of March, our company will begin to…reduce our payroll….”

Airlines could have renegotiated their debts with their lenders outside court, or file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. They’ve reorganized under bankruptcy many times before. Either way, they’d keep flying.

The hotel industry says it needs $150 billion. The industry says as many as 4 million workers could lose their jobs in the coming weeks if they don’t receive a bailout. Everyone from general managers to housekeepers will be affected. But don’t worry – the layoffs won’t reach the corporate level. » Read the rest of this entry «

By Alex Henderson, AlterNet

Robert Reich, former secretary of labor for the Clinton Administration, and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman aren’t the only major economists who are highly critical of President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Joseph Stiglitz is voicing his displeasure as well, and as the Nobel prize-winning economist sees it, Trump’s response to the crisis has been a failure from both a health/safety standpoint and an economic standpoint.

Stiglitz made some grim predictions for the United States during an interview with The Guardian — including an economic depression and unemployment that could reach 30%. And the U.S., Stiglitz laments, doesn’t have the social safety net needed to address such economic conditions.

“The numbers turning to food banks are just enormous and beyond the capacity of them to supply,” Stiglitz told The Guardian. “It is like a third world country. The public social safety net is not working.”

In the U.S., Stiglitz noted, coronavirus has been especially hard on those who are least able to cope it.

“The safety net is not adequate and is propagating the disease,” Stiglitz warned. “There is very weak unemployment insurance, and people don’t think they can rely on it.”

The Great Recession of the late 2000s and early 2010s was the worst economic downturn in the U.S. since the 1929 crash and the Great Depression of the 1930s. And Stiglitz believes that coronavirus and the GOP’s disastrous response to it will bring on an economic event worse than the Great Recession. » Read the rest of this entry «

by Marshall Auerback, Jan Ritch-Frel, Brave New Europe

The coronavirus pandemic has upended the global economic system, and just as importantly, cast out 40 years of neoliberal orthodoxy that dominated the industrialized world.

Forget about the “new world order.” Offshoring and global supply chains are out; regional and local production is in. Market fundamentalism is passé; regulation is the norm. Public health is now more valuable than just-in-time supply systems. Stockpiling and industrial capacity suddenly make more sense, which may have future implications in the recently revived antitrust debate in the U.S.

Biodata will drive the next phase of social management and surveillance, with near-term consequences for the way countries handle immigration and customs. Health care and education will become digitally integrated the way newspapers and television were 10 years ago. Health care itself will increasingly be seen as a necessary public good, rather than a private right, until now in the U.S. predicated on age, employment or income levels. Each of these will produce political tensions within their constituencies and in the society generally as they adapt to the new normal.

This political sea change doesn’t represent a sudden conversion to full-on socialism, but simply a case of minimizing our future risks of infection by providing full-on universal coverage. Beyond that, as Professor Michael Sandel has argued, one has to query the “moral logic” of providing “coronavirus treatment for the uninsured,” while leaving “health coverage in ordinary times… to the market” (especially when our concept of what constitutes “ordinary times” has been upended). » Read the rest of this entry «

from ZeroHedge.com

Researchers and clinicians who have ‘experimented’ with random mass testing for COVID-19 have made some pretty amazing – and amazingly depressing – discoveries. Yesterday, we shared a report about one sweeping antibody testing regime set up by researchers in Santa Clara County in California.

The study found that the estimated level of novel coronavirus penetration in the county was “50-80% higher” than what had been recorded.

If that isn’t enough to terrify every day trader who ratcheted up their exposure heading into the weekend, a news story about another surprising discovery – this time on the East Coast – has just come to our attention.

After a cluster of cases involving residents of a South Boston homeless shelter, Massachusetts public health officials tested every resident of the Pine Street shelter in Boston’s South End.

The results have garnered the attention of the CDC, which is “actively investigating the situation,” according to Boston 25 News. » Read the rest of this entry «