I suspect we will be hearing a lot more about Robert Kadlec in the coming days because he's also implicated in Rick Bright whistleblower complaint.

That's wasn't what trump was going for. Plus Bowen isn't one of Jared's cronies. No crony, no grift.

to get their hands on the money.

perhaps the two postings could be combined?

Reply Title: In this very confused capitalist greed society. . . .

While I know that we were and are still desperately in need of N95 masks, the phrase that sticks out in this article is this one:

“We still have four like-new N95 manufacturing lines,” Bowen wrote that day in an email to top administrators in the Department of Health and Human Services. “Reactivating these machines would be very difficult and very expensive but could be achieved in a dire situation.”

Bowen sounds more like a capitalist opportunist trying to be first in line to get a government contract where he could charge an arm-and-a-leg for each mask, than someone who was seeing a dire situation developing and offering to help. Instead he held out for a federal government contract to open up all 4 dormant lines. Per the article, he even went to Steve Bannon for help.

And his claim to being a "patriot" is pure hogwash. He could have started up one of his dormant lines and sold masks to the states and hospitals that have been desperate. Once that proved insufficient, he could have opened up another dormant line and so forth.

I understand that the article is written as part of the whistleblower complaint of Rick Bright and, yes, it shows the total absolute chaos and confusion that makes up our federal government today, but Bowen IMO is NOT on the right side of history here. In the end, other companies stepped up and he ended up with a contract that didn't inconvenience him. Per the article:

On April 7, FEMA awarded Prestige a $9.5 million contract to provide a million N95 masks a month for one year, an order the company could fulfill without activating its dormant manufacturing lines. For the masks, Prestige charged the government 79 cents a piece.

so many unused like new lines if he didn't need them? Did he need them at one time? When? Something just doesn't sound right to me.

Surgical Mask Manufacturer In Texas Is Inundated With Requests
https://www.npr.org/2020/04/06/828303817/surgical-mask-manufacturer-in-texas-is-inundated-with-requests

The federal government maybe should have stepped in somehow. I know some here on DU would say that the Feds buying pricier masks was unfairly holding up a failing business, but those same people will say that workers should be paid well, which drives up the price of what those workers produce.

There are manufacturers that are simply strategic manufacturers. This pandemic is clearly showing that an American respirator mask making company counts as a strategic business.

Something doesn't add up. There is absolutely no excuse for why our federal government is so totally screwing over all of us; but the background story should be investigated as to why Bowen didn't start up at least one of the lines and start selling the masks since there was such a demand throughout the country and the world, as well.

How do you know that he would not have shelled out the money to restart those lines. Even if the government helped him, think of the lives of medical workers that would have been saved.

you made my point. THINK of the lives of medical workers that could have been saved had he even started up one line and followed with the others as needed.

He set up several manufacturing lines and hired around 150 new workers to meet demand. Someone posted an excellent NPR interview with him.

When H1N1 subsided, hospitals and the government went back to buying from foreign manufactures. He had to fire the 150 new workers and the company almost went bankrupt. So the extra four lines existed from the H1N1 situation. In order to restart those lines he would have had to hire and train a lot of workers, if you ever owned a business, you would understand how difficult that is. In order to even consider that expense, he would have needed some certainty that orders would come in and he could recoup the investment, he was not given the assistance so it would have been monumentally stupid of him to produce something that he had no certain way of selling.

I didn't prove any "point" that you made, in fact I tend to view your post as one of the always anti-capitalism posts that frequently pop off about the inherent evils of capitalism, as if some other system has proven itself superior (which has never happened).

Up the chain and called him back the next day.

If I was running the country or it's pandemic response a light bulb would have gone off! "Hmmm the whole world is ordering masks, wonder why?"

It can't all just be incompetence. They are proactively, intentionally doing what's worst for the country.

May these businesses, workers, and all voters remember in November!

Indeed, we need true PATRIOTS FIRST!




p.s. for fuller context, Seth Abramson's thread linked below is a MUST READ

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1253805301792477184.html

I love his stuff and I had missed that one. Thanks again!

High five and many many many

They are in the business of stealing things.

They were making sure that only they and their cronies could enrich themselves from it.

Family first...

And we chose to keep them that way.

The company ramped up big to help supply masks domestically for H1N1. When that threat was resolved, there was no demand for it's masks since they cost more than those from low wage countries, hospitals and even the government went back to buying from low wage countries, since those countries were no longer hoarding the masks for their citizens and were willing to export them.

My guess is the Trump people will try to make the argument that the Obama Administration failed to keep buying from the company to fill a strategic reserve of masks. That argument, unfortunately does carry some weight since buying from the company on a strategic basis would have insured that a ready to go domestic supplier was ready to go full blast. What Trump can't cover up is that as a crisis was developing, he failed to ramp up domestic manufacturing of N95 masks the way that President Obama did - that Trump simply can't weasel out of, along with the fact that he completely ignored the strategic reserve status for more than 3 years. We don't know what information President Obama left Trump in the pandemic gameplan his administration left behind, one piece of that may have been budgeting to buy masks from the only domestic supplier - we have no way of knowing.

One learning that come from this is things like medical PPE are strategic items, there need to be a federal government-hospital system for constantly buying and rolling off inventory from domestic suppliers, without getting into questionable dealings with those suppliers.

tRump sent to China early in the outbreak come from? Seems to me that the cupboards became bare only after tRump decided we were not going to get hit with the virus and he needed to impress his "good friend, Xi".

Payback for the millions he owes China?

I am seeing more everyday people wearing what looks like new N95 masks that seem to fit well. Based upon the article, some smart people were calling him to get him started building masks.

with Trumpers about what would happen if we had a major disaster. I recall asking people, “can you imagine trump in charge during the Cuban Missile Crisis?”
I hate that I have been proven so right.

They want us dead so they don't have to count us or give us our money from SS and Medicare and the rich can steal everything we own. They want a dictatorship of the oligarchs and we are nothing but serfs, no rights, no money, no healthcare and die young working our asses off for them. They think this is their divine right - they have stolen most and they think they deserve it all and we, the working class/poor don't even deserve life.