Cuomo threatens Trump with legal action over vaccine distribution plan

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Source: New York Daily News

Gov. Cuomo repeated his threat to sue the Trump administration as he invoked Martin Luther King, Jr. during Sunday remarks about the COVID outbreak at historic Riverside Church in Manhattan.

“The Rev. Dr. King, who spoke in this magnificent church, said of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhumane because it often results in physical death,” Cuomo said. “COVID proved Dr. King right.”

The governor went on to repeat his criticism of the Trump administration’s plans for distributing the coronavirus vaccine once it becomes available, saying that relying on hospitals and the private sector will perpetuate inequalities during the outbreak, which has affected communities of color at disproportionately high rates.

Cuomo called for community groups to be enlisted in vaccine distribution and elaborated on his previous threat to sue the feds if they don’t change their distribution plan. He said it would violate the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, citing the 1982 Supreme Court case Plyler v. Doe.

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/cuomo-threatens-trump-with-legal-action-over-vaccine-distribution-plan/ar-BB1b24Gp?ocid=DELLDHP&li=BBnbfcL

[Cha]

1. Gov Cuomo will Do IT!

[katmondoo]

2. How is Trump involved with the distribution of the Vaccine After Jan.20th

[BumRushDaShow]

3. If HHS puts together contracts with certain entities that include stipulations

like a "schedule for distribution" (say, a phased availability of product over a 6-month period and/or a non-proportional/non-population-based amount designated for states), where places like NY or other "blue states" are listed by the government to be near the end of the list's distribution time frame and/or end up with a smaller amount of doses per capita than "preferred" red states, etc), then that is something that could certainly cross over administrations if signed before and effective after January 20, 2021.

[ancianita]

4. Biden could then fire people in HHS over those "schedule for distribution" stipulations, too.

There's no excuse they could give him that would justify preferential treatment.

If such contract documents exist, Cuomo's legal teams could take this to court before the Biden administration even begins.

[BumRushDaShow]

5. Biden can remove the appointees

but then any new staff that come in might want to review any contracts that have been put in place (if any) for vaccine distribution.

One of the issues that has come up is a nightmare scenario of Turtle blocking every confirmation. That would be a last straw, IMHO, although it might require some Biden finesse to halt that kind of nonsense, being that Biden was essentially "born and raised" in the Senate, and knows all the ins and outs of it.

[ancianita]

6. I wonder if the Senate leader's nationwide harm, proven by Senate Dems as baseless and

intentional, could be the basis of an impeachment of the Senate leader.

EDIT: Not impeached (man, I must be tired), but whatever can be done to him by vote. Since whatever he decides to do at this point -- especially shutting the government down -- is going to harm Republican senators up for re-election in '22.

[BumRushDaShow]

7. Unfortunately the power to discipline a member (by whatever degree) in the Legislature

is controlled strictly by each chamber, so apparently the House cannot attempt to impeach a Senator but the Senate can discipline one of their own (censure, expel, etc).

[ancianita]

9. I realized that at the same time I realized I was tired. Thanks.

You'd think I'd remember all the reading and discussing we've done about impeachment, but no.

I was hoping for expelling. I'll look that one up, since this McConnell's pattern of refusal is not even rational politically, just derelict.

[BumRushDaShow]

10. If we managed to take over the Senate

we could initiate it... But just like impeachment, it's one of those things that requires 2/3rds (67) to do it and that is pretty near impossible.

[ancianita]

11. How they won't see helping their own people as being in their best re-election interests...

[BumRushDaShow]

12. I think back to when they started doing shots across the bow of their own

back in 2010, by threatening to and eventually carrying out the primarying of fhose considered "dissidents". E.g., people like Bob Bennett of UT, because they noticed that he wasn't insane enough. So that resulted in them putting up Mike Lee (and others) to run against him, and Lee ended up winning the primary to oust a senior Senator. Meanwhile Orrin Hatch saw what happened in his colleague's race so when it came time for his re-election bid, he went full-on loon. Hatch had already been one of the ones I called the "annoying Republicans", but this time his job was on the line, so he drank the koolaid and didn't stop drinking until he finally retired.

Similar happened to Lisa Murkowski in AK, where she was also primaried and nearly ousted from her seat during the general except that she carried out a massive write-in campaign that required that people who did write her in, needed to spell her name correctly or the vote would not count. And she managed to hang on.

So they have that battleax over them to conform or they're toast.

[ancianita]

13. Instructive examples, thanks.

The battleax, a good term -- for protection racket politics -- on the voter end, the promise of special protections that never, ever come, with believers living the illusion of safety lest the battleax swing at them. The whole four years of "soon" talk is what their stealth vampirism is about.

Until Trump they'd run in the background as Lee Atwater, Mr. Reality by Consensus, used Reagan to dupe Americans into living Western myths.

Now 71 million call facts irrelevant, truth not truth, just left wing bias, covid patients deny unto death, Texans sit in food lines while their "representatives" in DC preserve the power of their story, and now their life and death.

Cuomo is right to go after the money that props them.

[BumRushDaShow]

14. I have posted elsewhere that those type of people "admire the bully"

and prefer "style over substance". It's sad to think of it that way but that is what we are seeing - en masse.

I have given the perfect example when I posted about this before (the bully character "Biff" from "Back to the Future" ) and bizarrely enough, I was obviously spot on because the character WAS based on Trump (which I never knew...). I.e.,

From the original "Back to the Future" -

and the sequel -

[ancianita]

15. Hah! Life imitated art, and who knew how much 'style' could sap the health and wealth of a nation.

Now they know. Yet cling to the glory of the story of their suffering.

[BumRushDaShow]

16. And interestingly enough

(and I think I only saw that sequel film maybe once and I liked the first one better), that sequel established how Biff "cheated" to gain his wealth via the "plot device" of having been given fore-knowledge of the World Series winners from the '50s to the current film's time (and could then make millions from betting on those games).

The moral being that it belies the whole idea that they got where they were by being "self-made" and "through hard work", which is actually a lie. Yet they are admired and held up as some kind of legitimate entity who is worthy of emulaton.

[Steelrolled]

8. The idea of having community groups being involved in the distribution

of the vaccine sounds insane to me. Trump is not directing the vaccine distribution, grown ups are. Let them do their job.

[moriah]

17. County health units would be a good addition to just pharmacies and doc offices.

After all, at least in my state, when I was a kid we were too poor to get my shots in a doctor's office for school.

All of my school-required shots were obtained at the CHU, who also maintained the shot records for MMR/other school required vaccines.

And even though a child was the person who said New York wouldn't get doses, the "grown ups" who were supposed to be in control of the toddler that has rampaged through this White House the last nearly four years let him say it, as well as let him do lots of other things because really there ARE no "grown ups" in charge and won't be until Biden gets in.

[Steelrolled]

18. The grownups I was referring to were the people actually doing the vaccine distribution,

not politicians. I've learned long ago that 99% of the stuff Trump says is meaningless. His threat against New York is part of that 99%.

I think I got most of my shots while at school. This was a long time ago. My recollection is that someone would come to the classroom door and tell the teacher they were ready, and we would line up in the hallway outside the nurses room, watching the kids who just got they shot holding their arms and walking back to the classroom. I clearly remember the smallpox vaccine, because it didn't hurt that much (a big relief).