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Trump threatens to take US out of WHO entirely and stop all funding:
In a letter to WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Trump alleged that "the repeated missteps by you and your organization in responding to the pandemic have been extremely costly for the world" and that the WHO must "demonstrate independence from China."
"[I]f the World Health Organization does not commit to major substantive improvements within the next 30 days, I will make my temporary freeze of United States funding to the World Health Organization permanent and reconsider our membership in the organization," Trump wrote. "I cannot allow American taxpayer dollars to continue to finance an organization that, in its present state, is so clearly not serving America's interests."
Trump posted the letter on Twitter, writing, "It is self-explanatory!"
Trump has repeatedly denied any responsibility for COVID-19 spreading in America and said on April 14 that the US would temporarily halt funding the WHO until his administration completed a review of the group's response to the coronavirus pandemic. Trump's letter yesterday said that "review has confirmed many of the serious concerns I raised last month and identified others that the World Health Organization should have addressed, especially the World Health Organization's alarming lack of independence from the People's Republic of China."
[...] Trump's letter then lists a series of claims, the first being that the WHO "consistently ignored credible reports of the virus spreading in Wuhan in early December 2019 or even earlier, including reports from the Lancet medical journal."
The Lancet quickly issued a response explaining that Trump is wrong. "This statement is factually incorrect," The Lancet said. "The Lancet published no report in December, 2019, referring to a virus or outbreak in Wuhan or anywhere else in China." The Lancet's first reports on the topic were published on January 24, 2020 the statement said.
[...] Trump's letter yesterday said, "Throughout this crisis, the World Health Organization has been curiously insistent on praising China for its alleged 'transparency.'" Trump's letter did not mention that Trump himself praised China for its "transparency" on January 24 or that Trump repeatedly praised China for its coronavirus response throughout February.
[...] Health experts say Trump's travel ban had little effect on the pandemic's spread. Trump continued to downplay the virus's severity by comparing it to the flu as late as March 24, nearly two months after the WHO declared a global health emergency. Trump has also fought state governors over their cautious approaches to reopening the economy.
(Score: 3, Redundant) by bzipitidoo on Thursday May 21 2020, @04:59AM (17 children)
Very few people are savers. I used to think it was foolish of them. But, there is an incredible amount of trickery, browbeating, tear (and money) jerking, waste, and plain old monopolistic price gouging and outright cheating and robbery that it is very hard to save anything at all. You evade a good deal of harassment simply by not having anything left, and making sure everyone knows that. Change, and put away a measly $1000 in a bank account for the first time in your life, and all your ne'er-do-well relatives and "friends" will be all over your ass to spend it, and if you won't spent it on yourself, they have infinitely many things they'd like to do if only you will let them borrow that money. They will also tell you that you're hurting the economy by not spending money like a good citizen should. Why do you hate America?
Even the local governments want a piece, and if you have unpaid citations and utility bills and such like, they will make haste to take it all. Very rapacious fee structures in which a piddly $10 fine (for a parking violation or red light camera ticket, say) gets magnified to $1000 with late fees and legal fees and such like crap. To get them to ease up on that shit, you have to spend lots of time arguing and begging, perhaps going to court for some relief, working out a payment plan in exchange for dismissing a large percentage of the fines. It's all calculated to drain you of every penny, because the time you spend on the phone or in court arguing is time you are not putting in hours and collecting pay from your work. Often cheaper to pay up than fight. What they're used to is dealing with deadbeats, so they can get pretty aggressive, and take more than they should. Creditors and debt collectors will also come riding in for their hunk of flesh, tripping over each other and the city trying to be first to your money.
Swindlers are forever angling for your retirement funds. They see all that money tied up in a pension fund, and push such schemes as privatization. Have the fund sell its government bonds, and invest in the stock market, because it's a better rate of return. Sounds plausible. But what they're really trying to do is sucker pension fund management into unwittingly pumping up stock valuations by pouring a whole lot of money into the market. Then they dump while the price is still high, the stocks tank, and the pension fund is screwed and has to be bailed out, or go bankrupt.
(Score: -1, Troll) by khallow on Thursday May 21 2020, @03:05PM (16 children)
You're just making excuses for dumb decisions. If these magic con men could get all the money just because they want to, then how do rich people exist? Bill Gates has orders of magnitude more wealth than any of us meaning he is orders of magnitude a better target. Even if he is the better swindler or whatever, that doesn't provide protection any more than not having $1000 in your bank account does.
There's a reason [soylentnews.org] mountains exist. It's not just that Gates ilk has gotten lucky and/or figured out the money machine. It's also that he's figured out how to keep them away from his money. That's why his stash kept growing rather than shrinking the moment his luck ran out.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2020, @06:02PM (5 children)
No you're being an asshole.
Most of the things they mentioned are actual costs of living and functioning in modern society. On top of that you get the scammers. Keep trying to defend billionaires like it was purely their inherent superiority and not a matter of luck and timing.
The entire point of capitalism is to monopolize markets, and the only way to maintain the magic competitive free market is through anti-monopoly regulations. But of course you die hard capitalists think regulation is the devil and actually the cause of monopoly problems. So I guess we're done here, you're an idiot who just wants to play King of the Hill.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday May 21 2020, @08:23PM (4 children)
Most isn't all. Nobody is telling you that you need to reduce your costs to zero. Just that spend less than you are making is a really good idea.
I guess you didn't get why I mentioned billionaires in the first place. They're far bigger targets than you are, yet they figured out how to protect themselves from scammers. There's plenty more where that came from that don't earn that much. Learn from the people who figured these things out rather than make excuses for yourself.
That tells me you don't have a clue what capitalism is about. It's merely about owning capital and the infrastructure (like stock markets, laws, and such) that enables that.
Which most of the world does. That box is checked off.
Notice how we slid from a discussion about saving six months of your wages to some fantasy narrative about "die hard capitalists" who ungoodthink about regulation? That's just making excuses.
I'm reminded of a saying: "You can't control what kind of day you will have. But you can control how you will respond."
Here, you can't control the banks, governments, billionaires, rest of humanity, awful relatives, sucky personal circumstances, etc. But you can control how you respond to what you get. Saving six months of salary is a good response. Whining about the mean old die hard capitalists is not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 22 2020, @03:49AM (1 child)
Ah nice, another BOLD REPETITION with some more strawmen arguments. Sorry, you've reached the limit of how much I care to argue with you.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Friday May 22 2020, @04:53AM
I reasonably replied "Nobody is telling you that you need to reduce your costs to zero." Now, it's a "straw man"? Someone should have made a different argument then so I wouldn't have to point out the painfully obvious.
Then there's the idiocy about billionaires, monopolies, imaginary die-hard capitalists, and other nonsense that demonstrates vast lack of clue. They have nothing to do with saving six months of wages or other basic steps that even the poorest among us can do.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday May 22 2020, @04:59AM (1 child)
Conservatives have a hell of a problem advocating for their legitimate points above all the noisy idiocy that, sadly, come from many of their own. It's not just being wrong, it's the pushing of mean propaganda that is so stupid that even many kids aren't fooled, and so cruel that its veracity is irrelevant next to its sheer sickness.
Money is one of the most fraught subjects there is. People lie about money all over the place. Some try to fake having lots, for instance getting the expensive, flashy sports car and dressing to the nines, stretching their credit to the max and a little beyond to do it.. They've gone way out on a limb to maintain the illusion. If any slightest misfortune happens, everything falls apart. Others are "bottomers", ready with stories of financial hardship and woe and misfortune, all to explain why they can't pay their bills and deserve pity, and perhaps even a raise and some charity too. And also to let everyone know they haven't a thing to steal, so don't bother trying. They'll tell those whoppers with a straight face while, for instance, filling the capacious gas tanks of their large SUVs. They even make a virtue out of having the most debt of everyone in the room. And nearly everyone with anything at all is into radio silence. When it comes to the actual size of that bank account of theirs, the rule is "don't ask, don't tell".
However, all that does not change the fact that the playing field is tilted. And, the tilt has grown. The poor are forever getting dinged for 20%, 50% or 100% more, in interest fees and as penalties for being late. Banks have lots of little tricks, such as ordering debits to cause the maximum number of overage penalty charges. Might have 1 big one that will bounce, and 99 little ones that can be covered if only the bank will do the big debit last. Instead, they do the big one first, and cause all 100 debits to fail, and sock their "customer" with 100 penalty charges instead of just 1. Then the poor schmuck they screwed is faced with a ton of collateral damage, as the 99 bills that would have been paid on time are now late, and increased by at least 20% in interest and penalties. That's one heck of a huge penalty for one little slip. Finance in America is a minefield densely populated with traps of that sort. Did you think 29% interest on credit card debt was bad? How's 300% interest on a pay day loan sound? And, they do all they can to obfuscate just how horrendous the interest is. Some of what they do is flat out illegal, but somehow law enforcement hasn't time or resources to rein them in. Very common is fees for services that slightly better off people get for free, such as check cashing services.
And, pay disparity has gone wild. Upper management is taking in a far bigger proportion of the wealth a company generates than they were in the 1960s. People know it too. They don't know just how bad it has gotten, but they do know it has gotten worse, much worse. Worker productivity has gone up, but pay has not stayed proportional.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Friday May 22 2020, @03:51PM
They're not the only ones. Why in the world are we even debating the effectiveness of basic financial practices?
Just because there are abusive practices and loans now doesn't mean that they didn't exist in the past. What makes you think these things are worse now? And notice every concern you had above can be addressed by having enough savings in your checking accounts to avoid both the overdraft fees and any need for abusive loans. It's only when people live hand to mouth that these tricks work. And one can always shop around for banks that offer a better deal.
And let's consider the end game here. We aren't complaining about this because it's something to complain about. The goal is yet more regulation, social programs, etc. I get that there are a small number of people who due to unfortunate circumstance can't save money. I also get that they are a small number. I'm tired of making excuses for over half the population that can't be bothered to do rudimentary savings and such. My views on this are twofold. First, if something can be done at the individual level (and far more efficiently, I might add) than at the government bureaucracy level, then it should. After all, if we can't trust people to take care of themselves, then why are we allowing them to vote and other things of responsibility? We've already decided they're too incompetent.
Second, these are due to personal decisions. If they choose to live hand to mouth, then who am I to disagree? I say let them live with it. It sounds like mere enforcement of existing regulation would solve much of the abusive loan problem, but that issue doesn't mean that we should be modifying our society to accommodate bad personal decisions.
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday May 22 2020, @06:28AM (9 children)
When you're raised by con men (well bankers lawyers) like Bill Gates was, you know the tricks and can avoid them and con others to become a billionaire by selling shitty software. Being well taught, he can do the conning legally too.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 22 2020, @03:29PM (8 children)
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday May 23 2020, @02:23AM (7 children)
Can learn, not will learn. There's all kinds of things that people are capable of learning, give enough time and motivation, doesn't mean people learn everything that can be learned.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 23 2020, @03:06PM (6 children)
(Score: 2) by dry on Sunday May 24 2020, @04:39AM (5 children)
Being good at sports is a near universal human (actually dogs, horses etc too) experience. Myself, I'm shitty at them.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 24 2020, @05:06AM (4 children)
Lot of people in your (and my) boat. Which is why it's not near universal.
(Score: 2) by dry on Sunday May 24 2020, @05:18AM (3 children)
Lots of people with impaired cognitive powers, often through their parents bad choices or bad luck (it's parents all the way down). My Mom seems to have been conned out of perhaps half a million dollars as she descended into Alzheimer's. Is it her fault?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 24 2020, @06:38AM (2 children)
So what? I noted that when I called it a small number. In a population of 300 million (or 7.5 billion for that matter), even small numbers are a lots of people. The problem is what do you do to everyone else to protect that small number? I think it reasonable to provide some level of care for people who can't take care of themselves. But the more you extend that care to people who can take care of themselves, the less resources you have available for the people who need it.
Yes. She didn't plan for that cognitive decline. If you're at point A where you can handle yourself, but you know in a few years you'll be a point B where you can't (Alzheimer's isn't unique in being something that you can reasonably predict outcomes), then you need to do something between point A and point B to protect what you have. Giving close family power of attorney is one such thing.
And I remain puzzled as to what the rest of us could do, aside from routine enforcement of law, to prevent the con you mention.
(Score: 2) by dry on Sunday May 24 2020, @06:53AM (1 child)
I don't know the answers but the first step is recognizing that there is a problem. People like my Mom are/were in total denial, it has to be scary feeling your mind going, valuing your independence and such. What we shouldn't do is just ignore the problem and go "tough".
None of us are perfect and we're all a millimetre from some bad luck. A car accident with head injury can change your life really quick.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 24 2020, @07:19AM
If we don't "go tough", she's still has Alzheimer's and still is out half a million. We haven't done anything to change the situation at the society-level because the tools just don't exist. As I see it, about the only things that society can do are 1) educate people on seeing both doctors and estate planners, 2) enforce laws on fraud and such, and 3) help take of people when they are ill enough that they can't help themselves. We're already doing that.