Le Show; 2020-04-19

From deep inside your audio device of choice. And me. So we're months more than a month. That would be months into this thing of sitting at home with our loved ones. And a lot of people have different ways of dealing with it. Some have cleaned or cleaned out their long unclean closets and other crannies or their garages if they're lucky to have one. Others have started reading

those books that were piling up. I started that. Still others have revived their stamp collections. I'm sure somebody has done that. A friend of mine confessed that in her OCD-ness, she had pre-prepared 42 dinners and was pulling them out of the freezer one night at a time. But what I'm doing with a lot of my time during all of this, well besides catching up on my sleep, is watching that show every night, trying to figure it out. You know, when President Trump couldn't do his rallies anymore, it was like he was immediately shot into a near-earth orbit with about half the oxygen. Without those rallies, he's

not nourished in the same way. He takes nourishment from having others lavish, crowd love on him. And look, I'm not knocking it. I understand the feeling. I've seen it up close. But so he decided to do these every night, every evening press conferences. And I understood that strategy. And then I was trying to figure out what is the deal with what he's doing. Now, superficially, the premise is, we're bringing the experts and we're keeping you up to date on all the latest information on how great we're doing. But there's a really interesting other pattern going on. I've noticed, because he comes out, I don't know what I'm about the President. He comes out and he first reads a statement. Of course, he never reads

without interpolating some comments like very important, which I think is either to personalize the text, which clearly was not written by him, or to give him a chance to pre-read the next sentence, because he's not... This is not a character flaw. He's just not the world's best reader, or second best. So that statement tends to be a repetitious recitation. Thank you. Of what he said the day before and the day before that, regarding closing the... Using all flights from China early is the boast. And how many deaths that saved. And if you cut that number of deaths in half and then cut that number of deaths in half again,

you'd still have more deaths than we lost during the Civil War. That little trope has been repeated, I think, three or four times this week in the opening statement. So there's a comforting sense of repetition, the familiar, and then there are the change-ups. So beginning of the week, he had total authority, absolute authority over the states and how this thing is handled from here on out. Then, next night... No, no, no, it's the governors. The next night, and we're going to watch the governors, because I have the authority to overrule anything they do if I don't like it. And then finally, at the end of the week, I think the people who are protesting against the governors are acting very responsibly. By the way, that activity included, according to the former governor of Michigan. Of course, the main protests

have been in Michigan. The former governor says that some of the protesters were handing candy from their un-gloved hand to the un-gloved hands of children. What do we tell the children? Your uncle Dave gave it to you. So it's the familiar and the different in stunningly quick sequence. It's rhetorical chiaroscuro, isn't it? Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. If I come up with any less interesting theories on the subject, you know where I'll be. And now... News of smart houses and the things that make them smart, this is a message that was received by people who have smart dog feeders. Yes, there are such people. And I'm going

to just share the whole message with you because it's so damn good. Dear pet net users, we're currently experiencing a service disruption affecting the connection of generation one and generation two smart feeders. See, this is what happens to early adopters. We're working with outside partners, hopefully working inside, to develop a solution that will restore your smart feeders. Unfortunately, you may experience extended downtime as we negotiate through resource limitations affecting our partners impacted by COVID-19. During this outage, users may experience the following. One, inability to connect or reconnect smart feeder to Wi-Fi. Inability to control smart feeder functions from the pet net app. Error with pet net app, pet net app, login screen. And smart feeders showing white light indicating

smart feeder is online, while pet net app shows offline. Scheduled automatic feeds should still dispense if the unit has not been powered off. End of the statement conclusion. Maybe the smartest thing to do is feed your own damn pet. Hello, welcome to the show. I'll go my way by myself. Love is only a dime. I'll try to apply myself and teach my heart how to sing. I'll go my way by myself. Like a bird on the way. I'll face the unknown.

I feel the world alone. No one knows better than I myself. I'm by myself alone. A few years ago, on this program, you and I first made the cointorship of Dr. Stephanie

Kelton. At the time, she was one of the leading public voices for a heterodox economic theory called modern monetary theory. She's had a couple of changes of jobs since then. She was the chief economist for the minority of the Senate budget committee for a good long period of time. And now she's professor of economics and public policy at Stony Brook University. And we're talking today because what sounded heterodox and weird and left field when we first discussed it, which is this thing called modern monetary theory, seems to be what's in fact going on today, Dr. Kelton, welcome back. Thank you so much for having me back. Now have you taken a victory lap lately because we're seeing governments both in the United States and the United Kingdom spraying trillions of dollars through the economy, various programs. And the words pay for it or costing, as they say in Britain, are not being heard.

Well, you're right. And there is definitely something in that that puts a spring in my step. So I'm not sure I've taken the full victory lap yet, but I definitely have an extra little bounce in my step as a consequence of finally breaking free of this question that so dogged us for, you know, the last year, 2019. Of course, we had a very crowded field of democratic hopefuls, presidential hopefuls. And at every turn, no matter how big or small the proposal was, they were confronted time after time after time with this question about how are you going to pay for it. And so what we've seen Congress do in recent weeks is reassuring because it is evidence that Congress actually does remember how to pay for things when they feel that there's a priority. How do you pay for them with dollars, right? Yeah, it turns out that it's pretty easy. Congress writes a bill and appropriates funding.

That's how everything gets paid for. And that's how everything gets paid for all of the time, Harry. And that's a frustrating part of this is that it's not some new thing that Congress has discovered, some new power that it granted unto itself. It is, you know, a little bit like Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, you know, she discovers at the end of the film that she had the power all along. And this is the same, the same is true of Congress. They have always had the power to fund the things that they deem appropriate and a priority. Now as I recall our discussions, because the first thing that always comes up of when this idea is floated is inflation and Y-mar and now Venezuela. And as I recall our conversations and your writings and the writings of your colleagues, the constraint is whether the nation's economic resources are fully employed, both factories and personnel. And if they're

not, there's plenty of room for new demand. And it's the new demand when all resources are already being used that causes inflation. Do I have that halfway right? You have it all the way right. Yeah, that's exactly right. Congress has the power of the works. And Congress can write a budget and decide how much money it wants to spend on education and infrastructure and a variety of other things. And the relevant limit when it comes to congressional spending is how safely our economy can absorb those new dollars. If the government wants to put lots of people to work, rebuilding, crumbling infrastructure, new Medicare for all, have lots more doctors and nurses. The question is always, well, does the economy have the capacity to supply those real resources to make good on that spending or is the government spending just going to compete with the private sector for resources

that are already fully employed and thereby simply produce an inflation problem, bidding wars, driving up prices. So as long as the economy has what economists might say slack as long as there's some unemployment, as long as businesses can respond to higher demand by producing more supply, then you have balance in this system. And you don't get the inflationary pressure. The risk comes from excessive spending. Would you say we have slack now? Well, isn't it just unreal? I mean, you know, that's the thing. We've watched 16 million people, people. I mean, we see the numbers on the screen, but they're people. And their jobs are gone. And in the span of a few weeks, and the really scary thing is that we're just getting started and that we're going to continue to see this. We'll see another jobs report come out at the end of this week

and another one next week. And we are not doing a very good job containing the fallout as we've pushed pause on the economy. So yes, is the answer. There are estimates that the US could end up with something like 30% unemployment, more a higher unemployment rate than we had during the Great Depression. And so, you know, we're talking about potential slack where you've got, you know, 30% of the labor force unemployed, business is shuttering, factories closing, shutting down, turning off the machines. So there's going to be an awful lot of slack. Now, from the standpoint of people who, like you, have been promoting this view of the economy, of how the post gold standard economy and the money system works. As I say, there might be some reason for, if not cheering, at least a sigh of relief. But looking down the road, we may be saying something else entirely. The people who

are deficit hawks for, for like a better term, have not packed their bags and gone away just yet, I don't think. Might they be reading themselves to say, okay, you had this big spullerge. Now you must pay for it. Are we looking at a year or two from now? The great austerity? I, I hope not. I don't know how else to answer your question. It is definitely a risk. Those op-eds are already being penned. They've already been published. Those voices have not gone away. I think you and I in the past have talked about billionaire hedge fund manager, Peter G. Peterson, who died not too long ago. But the legacy is very much alive. This man left behind a fortune and those so-called think tanks and institutes are still very much operational. And those people have a job to do. And their job is to continue this drum beat around the need to, quote, unquote, deal with entitlements to fix the debt. Those

people are out there and, you know, they're getting, they get quoted all the time in the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. They turn to these people and they always give them some oxygen to insert this kind of commentary into the discourse so that right now what they're saying is, all right, we had a debt problem before. And because of the coronavirus, we had to expand fiscal policy. We had to run more deficits. We had to run bigger deficits. And we get it. We had to do that. And that's going to add to the debt. So once we get through this health crisis on the other side, we await austerity. That's when we begin to go after the deficits to begin to cut programs and their favorites are Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. And yes, I very much worry that there's going to be a battle, a very live and heated battle. I intend to participate through all hours of the day in that because it is the worst possible outcome is if we come out on the other side with an economy

that's already badly damaged and potentially looks like a great depression type situation. And then we have people saying, oh, let's try to be more like Herbert Hoover in this moment. Well, or Jay Edgar, if you want to pick your hovers, I've always had problems. And I think many people may join me in this in the conflation of the two terms debt and deficit. When the federal government runs a deficit, it is spending more money than it takes in taxation. Debt is when it owes money to somebody and it does that by issuing bonds. Are the two things necessarily tightly locked? No, they're tightly locked in the sense that we have a convention of selling bonds when we run budget deficits. So the government auctions US treasuries and we call that government

borrowing. And so when the government runs deficits, it sells treasury bonds and those treasury bonds become part of this thing that we unfortunately refer to as the national debt. So I will often tell people that, you know, we do not have a deficit problem. We do not have a debt crisis. We have a communications crisis. We have a language problem. It's the words that we use to describe what's happening that gives rise to all this fear and anxiety. When you use the word, not you, but when we use the word deficit, that carries with it a connotation that automatically resonates with people that something improper has happened. Something missing. Yeah, something's missing. There's a shortfall. There's somebody did something wrong. If you turn on a sporting event and you're watching your team and the announcer say at halftime, oh, well, if the lakers are going to come back and win this, they're going to have to overcome a 12 point deficit. Well, that's a deficit, right? You have to make up for that. And that's the way we're used to hearing that word. So when somebody

says a government is running deficits, people think that's a terrible thing, but it's not a terrible thing because the deficit is just the difference between how many dollars the government is spending into the economy and how many it is subtracting back out through taxation. So if they spend a hundred in and they tax 90 back out, we label it a deficit. And we say the government has run a deficit. We write a minus 10 on the government's ledger. What we forget is that if they put a hundred in and only swipe 90 back out, then they've made a deposit. The deficit is a financial contribution to some part of our economy. Now, the question is for whom, right? On whose balance is that $10 now sit? And for what purpose? Is it a good deficit? But when you mentioned the debt, the debt is what happens after that, after the deficits are run. So now that the government has put that $10 deposit into the economy, it matches that deficit spending by selling a US government bond

called treasury, a treasury. And so they hold up this trend figuratively, hold up this treasury bond. And they say, this is a $10 treasury bond. These dollars pay interest. The dollars that I put into the economy don't pay interest. Who would prefer to hold these dollars? The treasuries. And sure enough, there are people who are gladly give up their non-interest bearing dollars and swap them out for a US treasury. Now, the government does not need to borrow its own currency. The federal government of the United States is the issuer of the dollar. There's no reason economically to borrow its own dollars back. So that's a voluntary thing that Congress has decided to do that it wants to give people the option to trade up their dollars, if you like, to swap out their deficit dollars for US treasuries. But because we call that borrowing and because we label it the national debt, it gets people very twisted around where they start thinking of

their own personal finances. They say, oh, borrowing, that's a bad problem, right? Oh, debt, that's not going to end well. And so then the conversation, it's a conversation problem. It's a educational problem. It's the problem of your grandchildren are paying for this. That's exactly right. So when they tell us, well, your share of the national debt, they want us to think of that as our own personal liability. When in fact, it is for those of us who are lucky enough to own some of these things, there are not our liabilities. There are assets. It's part of our savings. It's part of our wealth. We are holding those dollars in the form of a very safe interest-bearing government security called a US Treasury. It's a great thing. If you're lucky enough to be someone who has enough money that they don't spend everything they make, they can set something aside and they want to invest in a very secure, interest-bearing asset. Just a momentary factual question. What percentage of treasuries are held by the Chinese these days?

They've got about a trillion dollars. So I think in total, depending upon how you want to go gross, like the entire enchilada, I think about 40% is held internationally. Japan holds about a trillion, China holds about a trillion. It had about twice that much, not all that long ago. But these countries, what happens is these countries export a lot of goods and services to the US. So in the case of China, they sell more to us than we buy from them. So as a result, we are importing from China. We pay China with dollars and the Chinese have the same option that any other holder of US dollars has. They can hold on to their non-interest-bearing dollars or they can trade them up in a sense for US treasuries. And so what people refer to as quote-unquote borrowing from China is nothing more than China saying, I don't want to hold on to my dollars in a checking account. I would prefer to

keep them in a savings account. And so they buy treasuries. And that's all that's happening. But this language problem has us feeling insecure, vulnerable to a hostile foreign country that, oh my god, borrowing from China and adversary, that puts us at risk somehow. In the brief amount of time we have left, I want to shift a bit, still on the subject of debt, though, but real debt. Because as you indicate, the United States doesn't have to borrow, it can never run out of its own currency because it owns the manufacturing facility that pumps it out, metaphorically speaking. But there are countries that do have actual debts that are actually borrowing the countries of the European Union because they don't make their own currency. And countries which, whether they make their own currency or not, are indebted internationally because of the underdeveloped, we used to say nature of their economies. I'm talking about the countries

of South Sub-Saharan Africa and the countries of the European Union. And the G20 just this week announced intention to pause the debt repayments of the Sub-Saharan countries and other other, what we used to call third world countries. And a former colleague of yours, Michael Hudson, has been in the Washington Post recently with an op-ed, an idea that he's been pushing for a long time, at least in other pages, called a debt jubilee that is to say a period where those kinds of debts are just forgiven because otherwise they crush economies. I know this is not your field, this is his, but what's your opinion about that? Yeah, I mean, I know, Michael, I've known him for a long, long time. And one of his famous lines is, debts that can't be repaid won't be repaid. And of course, he's exactly right. I mean, we can, the IMF and institutions like that can string

investors, can try to string these countries along with conditionality and more lending and extract as much as humanly possible out of them. But the more humane gesture as Michael proposes is to recognize that these developing countries, as you're referring to them as we refer to them, they will remain forever developing if we don't allow them the space to move beyond the developing stage into the developed economy stage. And that is probably what is required. That is letting them out of the debt trap, finding a way to wipe the slate clean, let these countries start afresh and to the extent possible help them find ways to avoid taking on debt that isn't denominated in their own individual currencies because that's what locks them into this perpetual treadmill where once they're on it and they start borrowing in dollars, then they've got to

orient their economy usually around exporting in order to earn dollars so that they can service dollar denominated debt. And that usually means that countries produce low value added goods and services and they never become developing economies that produce more high tech high value added. So they don't become wealthy. And they're not producing mainly for their own populations. That's right. That's right. So much of the productive effort is oriented around producing in order to put things in containers and shift them elsewhere to be consumed and raise real living standards somewhere else just to get the dollars to hand them back over to creditors. One other question because I have to let you go and you've been very generous with your time today. As you see the future and I know you don't have a turbine on with a ruby in the center, is this is widely predicted going to be a time of international decoupling,

declobalization in that sense, more manufacturing for the homeland, not only in this country but in a lot of other countries. We've seen the limits of long supply chains. I think maybe it will. Local and localism might be the word of the future. Whether it's food supply or other kinds of domestic production, building redundancies problem, this crisis, well one of the problems the crisis exposes is just how thin the protective layer is when it comes to the supply chain and manufacturing. If we had some redundancies built in it we weren't wholly dependent upon certain countries and other parts of the world to manufacture face masks and ventilators and medicines. If we had those redundancies here at least we would have something to ramp up when these sort of dislocations happen and food is becoming a very big problem right

now in the food supply chain. I think maybe that is the right thing and I think if there's a silver lining in all of this maybe that's what it is. Isn't there a conceptual conflict between redundancy and efficiency and haven't we cast our lot ideologically with efficiency? Well we did cast our lot but but I guess what I'm hopeful of is that we're that this crisis is demonstrating that at the cost of just in time production and some of the efficiency surrounding the supply chain manufacturing that this is not clearly efficient. What we are left with today is highly inefficient so maybe there is a worthwhile trade-off to be made not saying that you shut down completely and seal borders and don't have trade at all but that you know you try to balance the risks of over reliance on production and these just in time supply chains by building

in some protective infrastructure domestically and locally. Final question you have a new book the deficit myth when's it coming out? June 9th. Okay right on schedule? Yeah I mean the time who could have known but it turns out I think the timing is pretty remarkable so with any luck it helps us to avoid the the question that you posed earlier which is you know do we end up in a situation where after we you know demonstrate that we have the fiscal fortitude to spend money and deal with crises and emergencies are we going to revert back to oh I forgot that you know we don't have the power to do things anymore because once we get through this health crisis we're we're going to find ourselves right back in the middle of a crisis that we were already facing and that's the climate crisis. So it isn't as if oh the crisis is over now we don't have to act with with ambition and with force any longer we're going to need all of the firepower and

all of the commitment on the part of the federal government to continue to deal with the next emergency and the next emergency. Dr. Stephanie Kelton thank you so much for joining us today. You're my pleasure. Thanks for having me. One night far from the ground was taken the air locked up the barnyard with the greatest of care down in the henhouse something stirred when he shot it who's out this is what he heard they ain't nobody here but us chickens they ain't nobody here at all so calm yourself and stop that fuss they ain't nobody here but us we chickens trying to sleep and you butt in and

hobble hobble hobble hobble with your chin they ain't nobody here but us chickens they nobody here at all you're stomping around shaking around you kicking up an awful dust we chickens trying to sleep and you butt in and hobble hobble hobble hobble it's a sin tomorrow it's a busy day we got things to do we got eggs to lay we got ground to dig and worms to scratch it takes a lot of sitting getting chicks to hatch oh they ain't nobody here but us chickens they ain't nobody here at all so quiet yourself and stop that fuss they ain't nobody here but us kindly point that gun the other way and hobble hobble hobble hobble off and hit two eggs tomorrow it's a busy day we got things to do we got eggs to lay we got ground to dig and worms

to scratch it takes a lot of sitting getting chicks to hatch they ain't nobody here but us chickens they ain't nobody here at all so quiet yourself and stop that fuss they ain't nobody here but us and kindly point that gun the other way and hobble hobble hobble hobble off and hit two eggs hey boss man what do you say it's peace the begins ain't nobody here but us chickens God it's un-serious this week doesn't it?

deadline Richmond Virginia on Richmond diocese priest defied the bishops order and he started blogging again to help parishioners through the coronavirus pandemic he's been told to pack his bags get out of Richmond Richmond diocese bishop carry nest out remove father mark white from serving his pastor at two churches effective immediately that was father mark two churches white if white learned of his removal in an email from bishops nest out white was pastor St Joseph's in Martinsville in Saint Francis of a CC Frankie animals to you and me in Rocky Mountain he'd been ordered to remove his popular blog last year blog was critical oh the blog was critical of a church's handling of its sexual abuse scandals and bishop nest out threatened white to take down the blog or lose his job white did remove the blog for a time but as the corona virus pandemic canceled church services

he got back online to provide help to parishioners through the uncertain time in a press release online nest out said white has been reassigned to chaplain of various prisons in the area you know the places where the virus is rampant news of the godly latest gentleman copyrighted feature of this broadcast now let's check on the old warm thing offshore energy producing platforms in u.s waters of Gulf of Mexico are emitting twice as much methane that's a greenhouse gas that's more potent but not as long lasting as karma dioxide more twice as much than was previously thought that's according to a new study from the University of Michigan anybody protesting that yet up in Michigan get out of the university liberators researchers conducted first of its kind pilot study sampling pilot study sampling air over offshore oil and gas platforms in the old Gulf of Mexico their findings suggest the federal

governments calculations are too low UM's research found that for the full Gulf oil and gas facilities emit approximately a half a pterogram of methane each year that's comparable with large emitting oil and gas basins like the four corners region in the southwest United States the effective loss rate of produced gases roughly three percent similar to large on shore basins primarily focused on oil and significantly higher than current inventory estimates offshore harvesting accounts for roughly one third of the oil and gas produced worldwide around the world and these facilities both vent and leak methane I'd rather leak than vent I think I don't know about you until now only a handful of measurements of offshore platforms have been made no aircraft studies of methane emissions in normal operations have been conducted the EPA's annual inventory numbers for offshore emissions are not produced with the help of sampling no they just put their finger in the air wet it see if it smells like methane the study

published in environmental science and technology identified identified three reasons for the discrepancy between EPA estimates and their findings one errors in platform counts offshore facilities in state waters there are more than 1300 of them we're missing from the US inventory two persistent emissions from shallow water facilities mainly those focused on natural gas are higher than indicated by the inventory and three your three large older facilities situated in shallow waters tended to produce episodic disproportionately high spikes of methane emissions these facilities they tend to have more than seven platforms a piece contribute nearly 40 percent of emissions that consist than less of consist of less than one percent of total platforms if this emission process was identified correctly it could provide an optical mitigation opportunity the researchers said

in plain English now you know fix it it was the one oh but now just a little news in Olympic movement just a little produced by Jim Ershalve third well Tokyo Olympic organizers and the IOC are going to cut some of the extras out of next year's postponed games that's an attempt to limit what's expected to be billions of dollars in added expenses IOC member John Coats who heads the inspection team for Tokyo said that cuts were likely in areas such as hospitality and expensive live sites for public viewing quote do we need to

make provisions for as much hospitality for the sponsors the broadcasters and the national Olympic committees he asked suggesting coronavirus pandemic made dampen enthusiasm a year from now many of the broadcasters may not have as big a presence here of advertisers because of the economic downturn he said he news coach talked about the difference between must have features and nice to have accessories which may be ruled out when the Olympics open next July by the way we were hearing all about how hot it is in Tokyo and July they postponed it a year they couldn't postpone it till August no or September no it's July again back to the story coach also made it clear Tokyo organizers and the Japanese government will be absorbing the billions in added

expenses like the Japanese government caused the epidemic he said the IOC would make several hundred million dollars in an emergency contribution to help struggling international sports foundation federations and national Olympic committees stay afloat the money is not destined for the Tokyo organizers or the Japanese governments which are actually preparing the games we will not stand by and see our international federations collapse coach said we'll be sitting debt no he didn't Japan's obligation to absorb the added cost is stipulated in the host city contract signed in 2013 when Tokyo won won the games near the the IOC nor Japanese officials are offering cost estimates media reports in Japan suggest an added bill of two to six billion on top of the reported 12 and a half billion but a national audit says the figure gonna be twice that much so that's two to six on top of

24 you do the math literally the IOC was expected to pay out about 600 million to federations this year proceeds from the Tokyo Olympics some federations rely almost exclusively on IOC contributions that wasn't very good planning a reporter for a Japanese broadcaster asked the organizing committee president if the IOC should pitch in on cost to help Tokyo we're in the midst of studying and reviewing the additional costs he said of course we know we'll have to pay we have to pay however the general direction is reducing the cost to the extent possible Tokyo's CEO Toshiro Muto promised to take a fresh look at the level of services we provide coast coach was asked to explain how Japan will be in shape to host the Olympics in 15 months Tokyo's coronavirus has been spiking and the prime minister is called for emergency measures asking for people to stay home we've given ourselves as much time as possible

said coach pointing out some wanted to reschedule for the spring there was a factor to go as late as possible but not into the football season because it's the Olympics it's a movement and we all need one every day and now ladies and gentlemen newest from outside the bubble hey remember when president trump used to warn us that immigrants into this country were bringing in diseases you know what he was right he just had the the directional arrow wrong Guatemalan president Alejandro Jammate said this week a number of migrants on a deportation flight from the U.S. were infected with the coronavirus there fears the contagion in the sprawling U.S. migrant detention system run by ice is spreading to central America Jammate

said 12 randomly selected migrants who arrived in Guatemala on the deportation flight tested positive when examined by the centers for disease control and prevention he suggested more on the flight attested positive as well quote a large part of it was infected he said in a presidential address that's a flight carrying 73 Guatemalans that left the U.S. for Guatemalan city earlier this week the trump administration is pressured Guatemalan to keep receiving deported migrants despite growing concern there that attorneys are bringing the virus with them and could infect remote communities only 400 detainees in the U.S. out of more than 32 thousand have been tested so far that's the testimony that the acting director of ice-caved congress this week the house committee on oversight said that same official confirmed ice does not routinely test detainees before deporting them more than 1600 people deported from the U.S. to Guatemala

over the last month were allowed to go home and into voluntary unenforced quarantine fears arising and may have ceded the central america nation with an untold number of undetected cases increasing its vulnerability to the pandemic there have been 30 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among ice employees working in the agency's detention facilities only unmundated Guatemala began testing every passenger who shared a flight with someone confirmed as positive that same day plane carrying 76 people arrived on an ice flight from Alexandria Louisiana migrant who was feeling ill was tested and found to be infected leading to tests for everyone else 43 tested positive despite sowing no signs of illness and they are in medical quarantine jama te spoke while wearing a surgical mask he said the cdc team also tested 12 of the passengers at random on friday all tested positive he said flights would be suspended until the u.s. certifies passengers on such flights

are free of the virus and he didn't even say you're welcome news of the warm ladies and gentlemen a copy righted feature of this brought that that report was from france 24 this copy righted feature is broken now my favorite from last week which we had hold over because it kept developing acting secretary the navy tamas modli or modli apologized for calling the now ousted commander of the u.s.s nuclear aircraft carrier stupid in an address to the ship's crew modli told the crew that their former commander captain Brett Krocher was either quote to naive or too stupid to be in command or that he intentionally leaked to the media a memo in which he warned about coronavirus spreading aboard the aircraft carrier and urged action to save his sailors is what they are he also accused Krocher of committing a betrayal and creating a big controversy in Washington by disseminating the warning so widely

although later reports indicated he sent it only to 10 officials modli then apologized in the navy for his comment let me be clear i do not think captain Brett Krocher is naive nor stupid i think i always believed him to be the opposite i apologize for any confusion this choice of words may have caused he also apologized directly to krocher for any pain my remarks may have caused then as a result of the ensuing firestorm he resigned he distributed one final memo to the fleet as his last act as navy secretary he distributed a memo which said in the classic hard rock satire rockumentary movie called this is spinal tap there's a scene in which the lead guitarist Nigel Tufnell misspelled is explaining how the band is able to take their sound to the next level does this sound like a familiar story to you how many times in your navy or marine cork

career if you thought about or even suggested a different better way of doing things in the response has been well that's not how we do it i guarantee that this has happened to you more than once if not you must not be in the department of the navy thanks for the spins sacramato area coffee company temple told its employees this week that protective face mass violated stress code and the workers who cannot show up for shifts due to concerns over the virus pandemic should reach out to the unemployment department company own several locations in the sacramato region sells its coffee at most supermarkets it apologize for the email but not before blowback on social media well of course not before that the public's response prompted temple founders shan comasher to announce that he would be stepping down from his role with the company he'd be giving hundred percent authority on all company wide decisions to his director of retail operations it's not a surgical position by the way the email should not have been sent

out he said and was not approved by temple operations it is not a reflection of any of our procedures and policies currently in place its contents were inexcusable and we sincerely apologize we in recent weeks a trio of popular dispensers of lifestyle advice droop pinsky met eyes and film the growl have appeared on media outlets or digital video down playing the threat of the pandemic this is according to variety pinsky and in sundry february and march parents are suggested to followers the coronavirus would be quote way less virulent than the flu as told viewers of fox news channels Hannity earlier this week that having children to go back to school might be quote appetizing despite the fact it could potentially help spread the contagion and result in two or three percent more deaths pinsky apologized noting that his comments were incorrect as this week admitted he misspoke and magrod not to fill appeared this week on fox news channel with lora ingram

calling for the nation to get back to normal life noting the united states does not choose to prevent automobile accidents or swing pool deaths in a video posted the next day magrod said we need to safely responsibly follow the science and get put back to our lives as soon as possible i don't mean to say that we need to push run just run out there and start pretending that nothing has ever happened i don't mean that at all acknowledge this use of auto accidents and swing pool accidents were quote bad examples daydeline scottland it's a big place but scotter swimming has apologized to its aquatic community after an online training session with its elite athletes was crashed by a zoom bomber who subjected around 300 participants to quote disturbing content the event was hosted on notoriously insecure video conference application zoom it's faced a backlash from users worried about the lack of end encryption

of meeting sessions and zoom bombing uninvited guests gaining entry and disrupting proceedings scotter swimming sincerely apologizes for the incident that happened this morning during an organized zoom event where the aquatics community were invited to work out at the end of last week we shared information about the workout across social media platforms unfortunately the link was zoom bombed with disturbing content shared with circa 300 people the video was immediately shot down the incident referred to the police cyber crime unit unquote scotter swimming several american banks have been reporting service issues while americans are checking their balances for the federal stimulus checks banks across the country say their websites applications and phone lines are experiencing problems under the high volume of traffic first third bank always love that name posted that its applications and phone lines are experiencing intermittent temporary issues we apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience bb and t

another bank reported problems with their mobile banking and adding we understand home ported is for you to have access to your account info especially now the alliance credit union apologized to a customer who criticized the bank for saying they were delayed response times when the website wasn't working we apologize for the inconvenience while many people are attempting to view their federal stimulus tax checks the bank said our team understands and is working hard towards restoring full access to online banking a pnc spokesperson told the hill that pnc customers are saying intermittent mobile and care center access like other banks this is the result of an unprecedented volume of customers said the statement similarly another bank cfcu see me also apologize to customers for issues associated with online and mobile banking because of the extreme levels of traffic a two page ad the brand on the sacramid will be on Easter Sunday and good friday set off a flurry of emails to the

city's daily newspaper about its overt anti-semitic language the response resulted in a printed apology two days after Easter the sacramid will be issued a 10 paragraph apology that's that's on a paragraph for an apology our goal read and part is always to provide meaningful and valuable news and information to serve you and help us all live better lives through civil communication the headline of the ad an apology ad with anti-semitic language is unacceptable no no in connection but the company that owns the sacramid will be announced this week it is for sale and the same ad appeared in another newspaper in another california city eureka the time standard ran sponsored contract with vaguely sorry thinly veiled anti-semitic language paid for by a private individual we apologize said the standard without reservation to every reader in the community as a whole having published this offensive and an inexcusable language and will

work hard to ensure this type of content never appears in the pages of the time standard again assuming that there will be pay sorry they didn't say that and to prove that to our new listeners in derango calorado that we will cover the local news too the derango herald has removed Saturday's action line column from its website and regrets it was published it targeted new Mexico visitors and offended many of our readers in the four corners and the attorney of a man who went viral on social media early this year after slapping slapping the Hawaiian monk seal has described his clients actions as a brief lapse of judgment north carolina attorney blank longs of the man responsible since paid state and federal fines and the attorney apologized saying his client was sorry for his immature inexcusable actions it's unclear how much he was fined and the attorney doesn't make his clients name public McDonald's in china has apologized and closed the restaurant

for issuing a notice banning black people from entering amid this spread of coronavirus multiple reports have said the fast food chain said the ban on black people is not a representative of its inclusive values although there is a Chinese TV ad now for a whitening cleaning product that has a Chinese woman throwing a black man probably her boyfriend from these books of the ad into the washing machine to whiteen him up data line Chicago the company was weekend demolition of a former coal plant in little village near Chicago sent a massive cloud of dust into that neighborhood apologize for causing anxiety and fear apology did not prevent the company from being sued for the act the EU European Union Commission president has offered a heartfelt apology to Italy for not helping it at the start of its deadly coronavirus outbreak did not apologize to Greece for not helping during the other thing the apologies of the week ladies and gentlemen a copyrighted feature of this broadcast

well who would have thought it that's it for this week's edition of the show back next week whenever you want it on your device of choice and a lot of new Orleans piano music right now on the harry shearer channel at youtube check it out the show comes to you from century progress productions and originates through the facilities of the www and on new Orleans flagship station the changes easy radio network thanks to Thomas Walsh and Pam Haustead and thanks to you for listening