In response to the murder of George Floyd, violent protests erupted for the second night in a row on Wednesday in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Floyd, an African-American man, was seen on video pleading for medical assistance and saying that he could not breathe while Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin placed a knee upon his neck while detaining him on the ground. The Minneapolis Police Department identified the other officers at the scene as Thomas Lane, Tou Thao, and J. Alexander Kueng. All four officers have since been fired. What are we to make of these new developments?
Some 2.1 million Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week as US President Donald Trump and state governors try to reopen the economy. This is according to data released by the Labor Department on Thursday. "In the week ending May 23, a seasonally adjusted 2,123,000 Americans filed initial claims for unemployment benefits, falling from a revised total of 2,446,000 applications filed the week before," The Hill reported Thursday. How do we make sense of this?
"A $3 billion federal program designed to get food from farmers to hungry Americans during the coronavirus pandemic is being criticized by charitable groups for neglecting New York and other northeastern US states hit hard by the outbreak," the Financial Times reported Wednesday. "Of the $1.2 billion awarded by the US Department of Agriculture so far, only $54 million, or less than 5%, has gone to food distributors serving its northeastern region — New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, seven states that together represent roughly a tenth of the US population. The distribution of the aid has raised questions of political fairness since none of the states voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 election. It also follows allegations that companies without proper qualifications were given contracts in the 'Farmers to Families Food Box Program.'”
GUESTS:
David Schultz — Professor of political science at Hamline University and author of "Presidential Swing States: Why Only Ten Matter."
Dr. Jack Rasmus — Professor of economics at Saint Mary's College of California and author of "Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression."
Elizabeth Henderson — Member of the National Family Farming Coalition and the board of directors of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York (NOFA-NY) who co-chairs the Policy Committee and represents the NOFA Interstate Council on the board of the Agricultural Justice Project. Her writings on organic agriculture appear in The Natural Farmer and other publications, and she is the lead author of "Sharing the Harvest: A Citizen's Guide to Community Supported Agriculture." She also wrote "A Food Book for a Sustainable Harvest" for the members of the Peacework Organic Community Supported Agriculture (GVOCSA).
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