I Can’t Breathe: Police body cam video introduced in a Minneapolis court yesterday showed George Floyd struggling with the police, refusing to get in the back of a squad car, repeatedly claiming he was claustrophobic, and shouting “I can’t breathe” as he was being arrested on suspicion of passing a counterfeit $20 bill. Evidently afraid of the cops, he shouted “Don’t shoot me!” and “I’m not that kind of man!”

  He was definitely not cooperating. Floyd was wrestled to the pavement where a few minutes later he died with then Minneapolis Off. Derek Chauvin’s knee on his neck. Chauvin is on trial for murder.

  Video from another officer’s camera showed at least seven bystanders pleading with the cops to stop what they were doing. Among them was Genevieve Hansen, a fire department EMT whose pleas to check Floyd’s pulse were denied.

  Some of the video was so disturbing, one of the jurors needed to take a break.

  Another witness, 61-year-old Charles McMillian, broke down crying on the stand saying, “I couldn’t help but feel helpless.” 

  On the video of the incident you can hear Chauvin telling McMillan, “We’ve got to control this guy because he’s a sizable guy. It looks like he’s probably on something.”

  The store clerk who received the $20 bill from Floyd testified that he also thought  Floyd was high on something. But Christopher Martin, 19, said he watched what happened to Floyd and felt disbelief and guilt. Martin said, “If I had just not taken the bill, this could have been avoided.”  

Building Back: President Biden in Pittsburgh yesterday introduced his ambitious $2 trillion “American Rescue Plan” saying, “It’s not a plan that tinkers around the edges, it’s a once in a generation investment in America.” 

  The President described it as “A plan for the nation that rewards work, not just rewards wealth. It builds a fair economy that gives everybody a chance to succeed.” 

  Barely letting that thought sink in, Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell called the plan a “Trojan horse” for tax increases. “It’s called infrastructure,” he said, “but inside the Trojan horse it’s going to be more borrowed money, and massive tax increases on all the productive parts of our economy.”

   But if the plan passes, and succeeds in putting millions of people to work, Republicans will have a hard time getting one of their own elected president in 2024.

Big Plans: Among Biden’s proposals, but certainly not all inclusive, are plans for:

• Improving  20,000 miles of roads; repairing 10,000 bridges; building a network of 500,000 electric vehicle chargers. Money would also be spent on public transportation, waterways, and ports.
• Hundreds of millions would be designated for affordable housing, public schools and colleges, the electric grid, and water systems.
• Investing $500 million in manufacturing and employee training.
• $400 billion to take care of the elderly and disabled coupled with better pay and benefits for caregivers.

Viral News: With infections surging and hospitals filling once again, French President Emanuel Macron has declared a third national shutdown.

 Here in the US, infections are spiking, up 16 percent in the past two weeks.

 Deaths are picking up again, more than a thousand in the in past 24 hours. A total of 38,981 Americans have died of Covid-19 in the month of march alone, bringing the total to 552,073

Your Passport, Please: As governments and businesses struggle to re-open the country from pandemic closures, the suggestion of creating a vaccination “passport” is spurring immediate resistance from those who see themselves as defenders of personal freedom.

  The idea is to create a mobile app with a QR code to prove that someone has been vaccinated in order to allow increased attendance in restaurants and at public events. But like mask requirements, some absolutists say it’s an invasion of personal freedom and a gateway to totalitarian control of the population.

  Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican known as the QAnon Congresswoman, said a Covid passport is “something like Biden’s mark of the beast because that is really disturbing and not good.” She said a coronavirus passport would be a form of “corporate communism” that would invade a person’s medical privacy rights.

  New York State last week became the first to launch such a vaccine passport. But in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis said, “It’s completely unacceptable for either the government or the private sector to impose upon you the requirement that you show proof of vaccine to just simply participate in normal society.” 

The Spin Rack: Four people were killed yesterday, including a child, in a shooting in an office building in Orange, California. The wounded gunman was captured. — The professional baseball season opens today. — Millions of doses of the Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine were spoiled in a production screwup. — President Biden declared yesterday that the US will get all its troops out of Afghanistan, but not by the May 1 deadline set by the Trump administration. “We will leave. The question is when we leave,” Biden said at the White House. — The Environmental Protection Agency is purging roughly 40 Trump-appointed paid advisers the agency now says tilted policy too much in favor of polluting industries, including oil and gas. — “Good Morning America” host and former NY Giants defensive end Michael Strahan had a dentist close the signature gap between his two front teeth. It’s like when the actress Jennifer Gray got a nose job and nobody recognized her anymore. 

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