The Netherlands: Dutch police reorganisation to take twice as long, cost twice as much

The reorganisation of the Dutch police network to create a national police body will take twice as long and cost twice as much as forecast, according to current affairs programme Nieuwsuur.

Nieuwsuur bases its claims on a confidential report on progress so far by justice minister Ard van der Steur. In the report, Steur states: ‘The period allocated to organise the basis will be extended from two years to five.’ Nieuwsuur also claims the budget is being doubled from €230m to €460m.

Note EU-Digest: Presently the system is not only plagued by reorganizational problems, but also by what many people describe as incompetence and lazyness.

Read more at: Dutch police reorganisation to take twice as long, cost twice as much - DutchNews.nl

The Corona Virus: Americans Are Paying the Price for Trump’s Failures - by David Frum

I don’t take responsibility at all,” said President Donald Trump in the Rose Garden on March 13. Those words will probably end up as the epitaph of his presidency, the single sentence that sums it all up says the Atlantic in a very factual piece by Donald Frum.

"The United States is on trajectory to suffer more sickness, more dying, and more economic harm from this virus than any other comparably developed country.

That the pandemic occurred is not Trump’s fault. The utter unpreparedness of the United States for a pandemic is Trump’s fault.

The loss of stockpiled respirators to breakage because the federal government let maintenance contracts lapse in 2018 is Trump’s fault. The failure to store sufficient protective medical gear in the national arsenal is Trump’s fault.

That states are bidding against other states for equipment, paying many multiples of the precrisis price for ventilators, is Trump’s fault. Air travelers summoned home and forced to stand for hours in dense airport crowds alongside infected people? That was Trump’s fault too.

Ten weeks of insisting that the coronavirus is a harmless flu that would miraculously go away on its own? Trump’s fault again. The refusal of red-state governors to act promptly, the failure to close Florida and Gulf Coast beaches until late March? That fault is more widely shared, but again, responsibility rests with Trump: He could have stopped it, and he did not.

The lying about the coronavirus by hosts on Fox News and conservative talk radio is Trump’s fault: They did it to protect him. The false hope of instant cures and nonexistent vaccines is Trump’s fault, because he told those lies to cover up his failure to act in time. The severity of the economic crisis is Trump’s fault; things would have been less bad if he had acted faster instead of sending out his chief economic adviser and his son Eric to assure Americans that the first stock-market dips were buying opportunities. The firing of a Navy captain for speaking truthfully about the virus’s threat to his crew? Trump’s fault. The fact that so many key government jobs were either empty or filled by mediocrities? Trump’s fault.

The insertion of Trump’s arrogant and incompetent son-in-law as commander in chief of the national medical supply chain? Trump’s fault. H

For three years, Trump has blathered and bluffed and bullied his way through an office for which he is utterly inadequate. But sooner or later, every president must face a supreme test, a test that cannot be evaded by blather and bluff and bullying. That test has overwhelmed Trump.
Trump is failing. He will continue to fail. And Americans are paying for his failures.

The fact are as follow: the coronavirus emerged in China in late December. The Trump administration received its first formal notification of the outbreak on January 3. The first confirmed case in the United States was diagnosed in mid-January. Financial markets in the United States suffered the first of a sequence of crashes on February 24. The first person known to have succumbed to COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, in the United States died on February 29. The 100th died on March 17. By March 20, New York City alone had confirmed 5,600 cases. Not until March 21—the day the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services placed its first large-scale order for N95 masks—did the White House begin marshaling a national supply chain to meet the threat in earnest. “What they’ve done over the last 13 days has been really extraordinary,” Jared Kushner said on April 3, implicitly acknowledging the waste of weeks between January 3 and March 21".

Bottom-line: Donald Trump and his administration can only be qualified as "incompetence on steroids"

EU-Digest

USA: A National Calamity in the Making: Robert Reich

The violence in Charlottesville, Virginia today is a national calamity. It is a product of white supremacists and home grown terrorists.

Donald Trump responded by condemning hatred “on many sides.” His refusal to call it what it is, and condemn the neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and KKK members who perpetrated this violence, is a dangerous lie that fuels more hatred and violence.

Kudos to the Republican senators who are now calling on Trump to denounce the white supremacists that incited this tragedy. More must join the call. The country needs all our leaders – Republican and Democrat – to stand united against hatred and bigotry.

But all of us – you and I and every decent person in America – must also stand up against it: Not with violence, but with a firm and visible commitment to decency, tolerance, and the rule of law.

Don’t wait for Donald Trump to condemn it. He unleashed it. It is now up to us. We must not allow this in America.

Read more: Robert Reich: A National Calamity in the Making | Alternet

USA Trump Administration:Trump’s Odds of Impeachment Are Spiking Online - by Bess Levine

Since the election, millions of people the world over have comforted themselves with the thought that no matter how outrageous, incompetent, or stupid Donald J. Trump may be, at least the odds are reasonably high that he won’t make it through a full term. Sure, with Republicans controlling Congress, impeachment would be no easy feat, but sooner or later, he would have to do something that would get them to put country before politics. (Whether Vice President Mike Pence would be an improvement is, among Democrats, another subject of debate.)

While we’re probably not there yet, the events of this week—wherein Trump fired the man who was investigating his campaign for ties to Russia—have betting men and women worldwide putting more money on the odds of The Big I. Per Politico:

On the website PredictIt, traders set the Trump’s chances of still serving as president at the end of 2017 at 83 percent, as of Wednesday afternoon. That’s down from 87 percent at the close of trading Tuesday — though the price has stabilized from the low-water mark of 79 percent following the Comey news. Across the pond, where bettors have been more bullish on Trump’s potential removal, the Irish bookmaker Paddy Power told Politico on Wednesday that its Trump impeachment odds had shortened, from 10/11 (52 percent) to 4/6 (60 percent) . . .

The odds on Bovada, another offshore gambling site with a bigger U.S. footprint, are more pessimistic about Trump’s removal. Trump is considered marginally more likely than not to serve a full term as president; bettors have to wager $130 to win $100 that Trump will make it to January 20, 2021.

Of course, the G.O.P. does not appear ready to wash its hands of Trump and, as Politico points out, as of now, “few Democrats are openly talking about impeaching” him. Then again, the president is little more than 100 days into his term. Imagine what kind of unhinged, potentially impeachable acts we have to look forward to.

Read more: Trump’s Odds of Impeachment Are Spiking Online | Vanity Fair