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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsKushner coronavirus team sparks confusion, plaudits inside White House response efforts
Kushner, who joined the administrations coronavirus efforts last week, is primarily focused on attempting to set up drive-through testing sites with the help of technology and retail executives, as well as experts in health-care delivery. The goal, officials familiar with the work said, is to have limited testing in a handful of cities running by Friday and to expand the project from there.
But Kushners team is causing confusion among many officials involved in the response, who say they are unsure who is in charge given Kushners dual role as senior adviser and Trump family member. Some have privately dubbed his team a shadow task force whose requests they interpret as orders they must balance with regular response efforts.
Some members of Kushners team are working out of offices on the seventh floor of Health and Human Services headquarters one floor above the office of HHS secretary Alex Azar while others are working out of an office in the West Wing of the White House, officials said.
They include representatives of companies such as UPS, FedEx and Flatiron Health, as well as Kushner allies inside the government such as Brad Smith, director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation.
Two senior officials said some government officials have become increasingly confused as they have received emails from private industry employees on Kushners team and have been on conference calls with them, unsure what their exact role is in the government response. Several people involved in the response said the involvement of outside advisers who are emailing large groups of government employees from private email addresses also raises legitimate security concerns about whether these advisers are following proper government protocols.
We dont know who these people are, one senior official said. Who is this? Were all getting these emails.
Kushner defended his role in an interview, saying his teams goal was to bring an entrepreneurial approach to the crisis.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/kushner-coronavirus-team-sparks-confusion-plaudits-inside-white-house-response-efforts/2020/03/18/02038a16-6874-11ea-9923-57073adce27c_story.html
JFC.
Link to tweet
underpants
(182,836 posts)Stupid little twerp.
Walleye
(31,028 posts)Walleye
(31,028 posts)And donated it to humanity. Who will remember the Kushner name 65 years from now?
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)But from the first day, drug companies made big money off the rollout of the vaccine. By now drug companies have made hundreds of billions, even into a trillion.
Walleye
(31,028 posts)Blue_true
(31,261 posts)But if the goal is to keep the price of a critical medicine as low as possible, just releasing it without patent rights is not the way. Drug companies took the research, made their variant, got a patent and prevented as much competition as possible.
Just releasing it is the same as the guy who invented the first open source code releasing it to the world, what has happened in Microsoft, Amazon and other big software companies have cornered the market on applications, either via patents or buying up companies that appeared to be a threat - meanwhile, a person has to buy a computer and the software to be able to use it seperately, and Microsoft has end of life dates that force people to pay more.
Walleye
(31,028 posts)Greed abounds in that business and it is a killer.
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)Today, you go to a Doctor or Clinic, both which charge a fee.
Government (especially in the USA) used to fund a lot of things that are now private. I do research, it used to be that a lot of ideas generated by University research could be gleaned free from journals, because the government gave University researchers grants, so they had a way to pay for special glassware, tooling, ect. Today valuable research is behind paywalls, a person can either buy the subscription service, or pay for access to a particular research paper - Universities now have to do that to fund their research because government funding has been cut back.
Walleye
(31,028 posts)When I was growing up science was everything. Of course we were still trying to beat the Russians back then.
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)40s, 50s, 60s. Then came the 70s and Republicans pushing the wrongheaded idea that government IS the problem.
Walleye
(31,028 posts)Vadem
(2,596 posts)an entrepreneurial approach my ass! That idiot needs to move back to NY with his "camping out at home" idiot wife!
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)This is the thing that I distrust most about that crew, everything to them comes down to dollars and cents, they have zero empathy.
Proud Liberal Dem
(24,415 posts)somebody would address how he should so totally NOT hold any kind of position of authority in or around the WH on matters that are supposed to be designated to duly appointed AND confirmed individuals
ananda
(28,867 posts)Translation: ways me, family, and cronies can make money!
GusBob
(7,286 posts)Although it sounds like they are not needed to see chaos