Hungry in America

 

Let them eat cake

 

Cruel.

Let them eat cake

 

The Nut Brigade marches on: Roger Stone edition

Roger Stone, whose 40-month prison sentence for lying to Congress and witness tampering in the Russia investigation was commuted by Donald Trump, has said Trump should seize total power and jail prominent figures including Bill and Hillary Clinton and Mark Zuckerberg if he loses to Joe Biden in November.

The long-time Republican dirty trickster, who has a tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back, offered the startling advice on Thursday, in a call to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s Infowars online show.

[...]

[Stone] had his sentence reduced on the recommendation of attorney general William Barr but he still faced prison before Trump acted. His conviction stands.

Both men were in Nevada on Saturday, Trump holding campaign events while Stone sought to raise money for himself.

[...]

Citing widely debunked claims of fraud around early voting, absentee balloting and voting by mail, Stone told Jones Trump should consider invoking the Insurrection Act and arresting the Clintons, former Senate majority leader Harry Reid, Zuckerberg, Tim Cook of Apple and “anybody else who can be proven to be involved in illegal activity”.

  

We know who should be in jail, and it's not the Clintons, Harry Reid, Cook or Zuckerberg.

He also said: “The ballots in Nevada on election night should be seized by federal marshals and taken from the state. They are completely corrupted. No votes should be counted from the state of Nevada if that turns out to be the provable case. Send federal marshals to the Clark county board of elections, Mr President!”

This is exactly what The Lincon Project has been warning about.

On Saturday, after a planned rally in Reno was cancelled because of coronavirus restrictions, Trump staged an event which disregarded such strictures in Minden. His rhetoric was not far removed from that of the man he spared prison.

Attacking the Democratic Nevada governor, Steve Sisolak, Trump said: “This is the guy we are entrusting with millions of ballots, unsolicited ballots, and we’re supposed to win these states. Who the hell is going to trust him? The only way the Democrats can win the election is if they rig it.”

Projection.

Stone said: “Governor Sisolak is a punk. He should not face down the president of the United States.”

On Sunday, on ABC’s This Week, senior Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller also attacked moves to facilitate voting by mail in Nevada. He also called Sisolak a “clubhouse governor … who, by the way, if you go against him politically … politically speaking, you’ll find yourself buried in the desert”.

[...]

Commenting on a Daily Beast report about leftwing activist groups planning what to do “if the election ends without a clear outcome or with a Biden win that Trump refuses to recognise”, Stone told Jones the website should be shut down.

Cancel culture?

In his interview with Fox News, Trump discussed an incident in the city in which US Marshals shot dead a suspect in the killing of a member of a rightwing group.

“There has to be retribution when you have crime like this,” Trump said.

He also said protests such as those in Portland would lead to “a backlash” from the political right, “the likes of which you haven’t seen in many, many years”.

But don't panic about Covid-19.

Under cover of emergency

An event planning company in San Antonio, Texas, known for throwing lavish weddings and high-end conferences, was awarded more than $39 million — one of the largest contracts handed out by USDA under a new program aimed at matching up food banks with surplus produce, meat and dairy.

Also on the list was a company that specializes in trade-related finance and one that sells health and wellness items for travelers.

[...]

The goal is to buy up a variety of excess perishable food items; pack them in easy-to-distribute boxes; and then provide the boxes to food banks and other nonprofits where people in need can pick them up.

But there are concerns about whether some of the companies awarded contracts can pull it off.

  Politico

"No experience necessary" is the Trump administration motto.

[N]umerous industry leaders were not on the list.

“It’s puzzling,” said Michael Muzyk, president of Baldor Specialty Foods, a distributor based in New York. Muzyk, who also serves as chairman of the United Fresh Produce Association, did not apply for a contract, saying he felt the program was ill-designed.

Can't imagine why he would think this administration would put out something "ill-designed".

The rollout of USDA’s fresh food buying initiative comes on the heels of intense political backlash over several large companies getting federal money through the Paycheck Protection Program run by the Small Business Administration.

It’s possible the Agriculture Department wanted to avoid similar criticism by primarily awarding the contracts to small businesses or lesser-known companies. However, some meat giants like Cargill ($7.3 million) and Tyson ($862,000) are on the list. USDA also awarded a huge, $147 million contract to Borden Dairy, a large Dallas-based dairy company that filed for bankruptcy in January.

Why do I get the feeling that a little digging would show people getting the contracts have a connection to the White House?

Other companies that are unfamiliar to those in the food industry have also raised eyebrows. Travel + Well Holdings LLC — a small company based 50 miles north of San Francisco that sells hand sanitizers, lotions and other wellness products in airports and online — was awarded $12 million to distribute fresh fruit and vegetable boxes in the Western region.

[...]

Questions have also been raised about companies on the list with virtually no public information available. For example, POLITICO was unable to identify B.E. Co Inc., which received an $800,000 contract to deliver fresh produce in the mid-Atlantic region.

[...]

When produce industry leaders saw the list of contracts issued Friday night, they were shocked to not recognize many of the names on the list.

Most of the most well-known companies in the business, from large national names like FreshPoint, a division of Sysco, to more regional companies like Keany Produce, based in Maryland, were left off.

Muzyk of Baldor Specialty Foods said it’s clear that some companies applied without understanding what’s really required to purchase, pack and distribute fresh food at the scale the program requires. It requires proper cold storage capacity and trucks as well as food safety practices, particularly for produce which is vulnerable to contamination.

“Under Covid, it’s 10 times more important that you are handling product safely,” he said.

Pshaw!

One of the questions raised by United Fresh and others is whether the businesses selected have what’s known as a PACA license — something USDA likens to a driver's license for operating a produce business. The requirement stems from a Depression-era law aimed at ensuring farmers and others get paid appropriately after they sell a perishable product.

While unknown to the general public, PACA is a huge deal in the produce sector. A company without a PACA license could have a difficult time finding buyers willing to sell it large volumes of produce for the boxes that are supposed to start going out to food banks soon.

Really, though, how long could it take to print up licenses?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.