USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue: ‘The Real Modern-Day Heroes’ Are Farmers, Ranchers, Truckers, Supermarket Workers

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Sonny Perdue, a member of President Donald Trump’s cabinet, told Breitbart News this weekend that the “real modern-day heroes” fighting the coronavirus crisis are those making sure food supply chains are up and running through this prolonged national shutdown.

Perdue, a member of Vice President Mike Pence’s White House Coronavirus Task Force, on Friday evening joined the team at the daily briefing in the White House Briefing Room to break down a new program that the USDA has put together to make sure kids nationwide are getting breakfast and lunch even though many schools are closed.

“Many people may not even know that it’s the U.S. Department of Agriculture who works with our local and state partners to facilitate our school lunch program among all the schools in our country,” Perdue said on Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM 125 the Patriot Channel. “We procure the food, and we have regulations about what they can serve—nutrition and all that—we work with them closely.”

“It’s challenging when schools are not there, but these kids are not getting that breakfast or lunch and sometimes, as you know, sadly it may be the only real nutrition they get during the day,” he explained. “What we’ve done is work with waivers for any program like this has to be done by regulation. We’ve been as flexible as the law allows in waivering many of these requirements at our schools for our school lunch professionals and our nutrition people that we deal with on a regular basis in the states. So we’re really allowing parents to come pick up meals, they’re grab-and-go at these congregate sites where they’re not allowed to congregate any longer, so we’re allowing them to pick up meals at any time and many other waivers that they’re usually constrained by have been waived almost immediately by the USDA.”

At the White House on Friday evening, standing alongside Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Pence after Trump finished speaking and taking questions, Perdue announced the rollout of a new program designed to deliver lunches and breakfasts to children in rural areas whose parents might not be able to pick them up during the crisis. Logistics company McLane Global, whose CEO Benton McLane joined the Task Force in the Briefing Room, is spearheading the effort. Panera Bread’s CEO Niren Chaudhary also joined the Task Force for the briefing to roll out an effort his company is launching in Ohio to get lunches to kids there.

“Many of these kids live in really remote areas,” Perdue told Breitbart News. “While we’ve found that Amazon can get to all of them, we were not getting to all of them with our food and school lunches and breakfasts. Based on the partnership you heard from Denton McLane last night from McLane Global — it’s a logistics company and it’s partnering with Baylor University’s collaborative on hunger and poverty along with Pepsico to provide resources as well – they are packing meals, it’s going to be up to a million meals a week for kids in our rural areas, all they have to do is call or email the mealsforyou.org at Baylor University and if their school is registered as a rural system, then those meals will be delivered to their doorstep.”

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/03/30/exclusive-usda-secretary-sonny-perdue-the-real-modern-day-heroes-are-farmers-ranchers-truckers-supermarket-workers/

New Zealand Site Crashes as Locals Rush to Report Rule-Breaking Neighbors Amid Lockdown

New Zealanders are so eager to report others for breaking COVID-19 lockdown rules that the police website for reporting such cases crashed shortly after going live, local law enforcement officials revealed Monday.

With New Zealand currently under a coronavirus lockdown, strict measures such as maintaining a distance of 2 meters from others have been imposed by authorities. Other restrictions include only allowing residents to leave their homes for essential reasons, i.e. for groceries or medical care.

According to the Guardian, the website for reporting people who break lockdown rules has already crashed on at least one occasion since going live on Sunday. More than 4,000 reports have already been submitted.

"We've had 4,200 reports of people believing others weren't complying," New Zealand Police Commissioner Mike Bush is quoted as saying by AFP.

"It shows how determined Kiwis [a nickname used to refer to people from New Zealand] are that everyone complies with us,” Bush added.

However, not all of those reports are being pursued by police officers.

“Not every one of these over 4,000 reports will result in a visit from police. For example, some are reports of people jogging or walking past. People are of course allowed to do this within their own neighbourhoods. We have been attending where there are large groups of people congregating,” an unidentified police spokesperson told the Guardian.

According to Bush, at least three people in New Zealand have been detained for breaking the lockdown rules, one of whom remains in police custody. He also noted that campervans carrying tourists traveling throughout the country have been a sustained issue.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has also urged the public to report cases of people breaking lockdown measures.

"Now is not the time to bend the rules. This is a time to stay at home and save lives," Ardern recently told reporters, according to AFP.

The latest data from Worldometer reveals that there are almost 600 cases of the novel coronavirus in New Zealand, but only one death has resulted thus far.

https://sputniknews.com/society/202003301078767438-new-zealand-site-crashes-as-locals-rush-to-report-rule-breaking-neighbors-amid-lockdown/

Contractor behind troubled Afghan propaganda program billed Pentagon $425 MILLION for unaired ads — lawsuit

The Pentagon’s one-time top propaganda producer in Afghanistan billed the US millions of dollars to produce ads it knew full well would never air, let alone win hearts and minds, a lawsuit by a company whistleblower has alleged.

The Leonie Group took in upwards of $425 million in military contracts from 2008 until 2015 to produce TV, radio, and billboard ads on behalf of the US in Afghanistan, knowing the lion’s share of the propaganda would never be seen by Afghan eyes, a recently-unsealed lawsuit by Scott Kreller, the company’s former president, claims. Adding insult to injury, Leonie allegedly retaliated against Kreller for trying to clamp down on the “fraud.”

Kreller claimed he was fired in February 2017 after refusing to submit an inflated $4.5 million invoice to the US government for “double-billed” psychological operations despite “several months” of pressure “on an almost weekly basis” from the company’s owners.

But that final invoice was just the straw that broke the camel’s back, Kreller claims, describing how the Pentagon essentially poured money into a black hole for four years before demanding a minimum of accountability from his former employer — and even afterwards got precious little return on its investment. Despite accepting a $120 million contract to churn out propaganda for the population of occupied Afghanistan over the 2010-2014 period, Leonie had no way to verify that any of the work it billed the Pentagon for was actually being seen by the target population.

Only when the Pentagon ordered Leonie to begin to “monitor and verify” its ad placements in 2014 did the company even make an effort to see its work made it onto the airwaves — and even then, it didn’t try very hard, according to Kreller. At any given time, fewer than 75 percent of the company’s TV ads and less than 45 percent of its radio ads were actually being seen by a single Afghan — and those two mediums accounted for over 95 percent of the material Washington was paying for. Kreller’s suit alleges all this happened with the full knowledge and consent of the “owners, officers, managers, and employees” — presumably including himself — who “knowingly submitted false bills” to the US government.

While Kreller initially filed suit in the US District Court of Washington DC in July 2017 under the False Claims Act, the case was only unsealed earlier this month, after the government declined to join the case. The Pentagon severed its relationship with Leonie in 2016 for reasons including, but not limited to, its mounting doubts about the company’s ability to deliver effective propaganda. The False Claims Act allows private citizens to file suit on behalf of the government, but the government only joins in less than a quarter of such cases, according to the Justice Department.

Claiming he was told by a Leonie board member that he was fired for refusing to submit the last fraudulent invoice, Kreller is asking for double his back pay plus interest, compensation for “special damages,” reinstatement to his position, and litigation and attorneys’ fees. It’s not clear how warmly his old company will welcome him back after suing it and airing its dirty laundry, however.

https://www.rt.com/news/484526-pentagon-leonie-propaganda-afghanistan/

Pentagon’s Top Watchdog to Oversee $2 Trillion Rescue Package

The Pentagon’s top watchdog has been given an additional duty: to oversee the distribution of the $2 trillion CCP virus rescue bill.

Glenn Fine, the acting Inspector General for the Pentagon, has been appointed to chair the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC), one of three key oversight mechanisms attached to the rescue package.

President Donald Trump on Friday signed the $2.2 trillion stimulus bill meant to fuel the fight against the pandemic and sustain the hard-hit economy as the nation takes drastic measures to stop the spread of the disease.

Like similar measures taken in other countries, America’s stimulus package is the largest of its kind in modern national history.

The appointment of Fine in his oversight role was announced on Monday by the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE).

The committee wields an $80 million budget, and is tasked with oversight and preventing and finding fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement.

Governments Can’t Fix This Economic Crisis They Caused

Before analyzing the emergency plans that the global economy needs, we must remember that, as in the past, the prudence and responsibility of the civil society and businesses will help us to get out of this crisis .

In the face of an unprecedented crisis, we have to be realistic, responsible and cautious.

This is a supply shock added to a mandatory shutdown of the economy. As such, a serious response must be supply-side driven. It is ludicrous to try to stimulate demand with printed money and public spending in a forced lockdown where any extra demand will not drive supply up, even may drive it down.

A mandatory shutdown due to a supply shock is not solved with government spending or demand-side measures. Printing money and lowering rates help the already indebted and governments with already historic-low bond yields, deficits are already going to soar due to automatic stabilizers.

Governments that overspent in growth times, massively increased debt and ignored the pandemic risks only to then create a widespread lockdown cannot present themselves as the solution.

Small and medium enterprises do not need a government to incentivize demand, because this is not a demand problem, the shutdown is imposed by law due to a health epidemic that lawmakers preferred to ignore.

We cannot fall into the trap of believing that what the economy needs is more monetary easing when it fails, and if it does not work then we must try even more monetary insanity.

Monetary insanity is not the solution to monetary excess and lunacy.

It is our duty to warn of the risks of falling into irresponsible optimism, precisely so that we can get out of this crisis sooner and better.

What Recovery Will There Be?

Estimates of economic growth are plummeting at breakneck speed . The closure, albeit temporary, of economic activity, transport and trade, will mean an inevitable recession. The biggest mistake policymakers can make is to believe in a V-shaped recovery. All governments should prepare for an L-shaped recovery. If I am wrong, economies will be stronger anyway, but if I am right, massive stimulus implemented only three weeks after a market all-time high and immense deficit spending policies at the very beginning of a pandemic crisis will cripple the economy to an irreparable situation.

https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/governments-cant-fix-this-economic-crisis-they-caused/

WHO is incompetent by design?

As you know, the World Health Organization (WHO) is an agency of the useless United Nations. Completely useless, both of them in my opinion.

China has LIED to WHO and they, in turn, have LIED to the world:

https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/who-is-incompetent-by-design/

Dyson develops ventilator in just 10 days

This is awesome! I love his vacuum cleaners!

www.architecturaldigest.com/story/dyson-designs-ventilator-10-days-covid-19-patients