Bezos profits, workers die in coronavirus USA

This 16 April 2020 video from the USA says about itself:

COVID-19 is Taking a Toll on Rideshare Drivers | NowThis

From lower demand for rides to higher risk of exposure, here’s what it’s like to work as an older rideshare driver in the midst of a pandemic.

In US news and current events today, drivers for rideshare companies like Uber and Lyft regularly allow strangers into their cars. As the coronavirus rapidly spreads across the U.S. and beyond, many drivers are taking extra precautions.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos cashes in on coronavirus pandemic, adding $24 billion to his fortune. By Jacob Crosse, 16 April 2020. Never letting a good crisis go to waste, the financial oligarchy has used the COVID-19 pandemic to enrich itself at the expense of society.

Amazon cracks down on rebellious workers as first COVID-19 fatality is reported. By Tom Carter, 16 April 2020. Amazon fired three workers who challenged the company’s failure to ensure safe working conditions during the pandemic.

“Production costs do not equal the cost of a human life”. Outrage grows as Amazon workers die for Bezos’ profits. By Nick Barrickman, 16 April 2020. Workers across the US spoke denounced Bezos’ fortune and the company’s unsafe practices which are leading to increasing sickness and death in its facilities.

Working-class immigrants terrorized by Trump administration avoid COVID-19 testing, treatment. By Meenakshi Jagadeesan, 16 April 2020. Reports from doctors, immigration lawyers and community organizations reveal that a significant number of immigrants, despite showing symptoms associated with COVID-19, have avoided getting tested.

By Zach Carter in the USA today:

The Rich Are Having Themselves A Fine Coronavirus

Thank President Trump and Democratic leaders in Congress

Last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell quietly said something outrageous. Asked whether the biggest banks in the country would continue making cash payments to their shareholders amid the worst economic breakdown in recorded history, Powell said yes.

“That’s a perfectly normal thing in our capitalist system”, he told David Wessell, a former Wall Street Journal reporter turned monetary policy guru at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution.

The world stands at the brink of financial catastrophe. Congress has passed a massive corporate bailout, and Powell himself has initiated the most aggressive financial rescue operation ever contemplated by the American central bank. These things do not happen when the banking system is hunky-dory.

And yet Powell continues to let the biggest banks in the country cut checks to their shareholders ― aka “rich people”, in the parlance of our times ― as a matter of routine. Almost half of all dividend income flows to the top 1% of income-earning households, while less than 8% of households in the bottom 60% earn any dividend income at all. And when the terms of the emergency coronavirus legislation were being debated in Congress last month, nobody lifted a finger to halt this miscarriage of capital ― not Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Republican-Ky.), not House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Democratic-Calif.).

As COVID-19 spreads through ranks, Pentagon stages show of force against China. By Bill Van Auken, 16 April 2020. With COVD-19 plaguing its carrier battle groups, the US military staged an “elephant walk” of B-52s and other warplanes on Guam as a demonstration of firepower against China.

World-famous Mayo Clinic cuts pay, furloughs employees amidst COVID-19 pandemic. By Matt Rigel, 16 April 2020. To date, 117 hospitals and hospital chains have imposed cuts.