David Dayen writes a daily update on the pandemic crisis for the American Prospect. It is called “Unsanitized.” I highly recommend it.
In this post, he recounts the GOP’s lack of interest in helping anyone but their funders.
How about going to the voters with a promise to help the 1%, not them? Or just distract them by prattling about law and order and Antifa?
To read the links, open the post.
First Response
The second-to-last jobs report before the election would sound really great if you were airlifted in from the International Space Station after a year of isolation. The economy added 1.37 million jobs and dropped the topline unemployment rate to 8.4 percent. This is down from 1.7 million added in July, and remains 11.5 million jobs under the number in February, a 7.5 percent loss since the beginning of the pandemic. Permanent job loss is actually falling more quickly than it did during the Great Recession, at 3.4 million. In all 19 million workers are either unemployed or have lost their jobs, based on this report. And it includes 237,000 Census hires, who will lose their jobs shortly.
The report is indicative of a country where the rich have completely cleaved themselves off from the rest of society. As Tim Noah writes, the prediction that we were living in a plutonomy, a nation of, by, and for the 1 percent, has now come to pass. You can have an economy without caring about the welfare of an exceedingly large section of the population, if you just shut your eyes. Food bank participation and the stock market are nearing record highs, simultaneously. Threat of eviction and rental debt has never been this elevated, and neither have bank profits from investments and trading. You either have it or you don’t.
So expecting a bunch of haves in the Senate Republican caucus to figure out how to prevent disaster for the have-nots might be a foolish enterprise. Senate Republicans can enable a Federal Reserve bailout (“The Fed created a bubble where life could go on—not unlike the NBA bubble,” is one great quote from that above-linked Wall Street Journal piece), but helping invisible people they never come into contact with in a typical day? Come on, they’re not miracle workers!
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So it’s not surprising, then, that Senate Republicans can’t decide on what to do, or whether to do anything, about the continuing economic crisis. Mitch McConnell first announced a $1 trillion legislative effort, mostly as a coat rack for his scheme to give a liability release to corporations, hospitals, and schools for wrongful infections or deaths from COVID-19. That split the caucus almost in half.
McConnell has come back with something about half the size. There’s a $300 a week federal unemployment enhancement, down from the $600/week that expired in July. There’s a round of small business Paycheck Protection Program funding. There’s the $105 billion for schools, and there’s the conversion of an existing $10 billion line of credit for the Postal Service into a grant. (That’s only in there to make this bill line up with the measure House Democrats passed that was only about the Postal Service. It’s an attempt to limit the negotiation.) And of course, there’s that liability release.
Of course Chuck Schumer is outraged by the Senate GOP’s offer getting smaller, not bigger, as time goes on. And the lack of funding for state and local government (Los Angeles just announced the furlough of 15,000 city jobs), stimulus checks, rental assistance, and food assistance—those things the “other” Americans need—makes this wholly inadequate.
What McConnell wants to do is find something his entire caucus can agree on, or at least the majority of the Senate (so 50 of his 53 members), to make that the right pole in the negotiation. But that has now been threatened. Some Republicans are seeing this desire to find common ground as an opportunity to layer on unrelated ideological demands.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is pushing to add a $5 billion provision for private school vouchers to the relief bill. Few actually want this as part of the overall package, rightly reasoning that it has nothing to do with coronavirus relief. But you just need a handful of splitters—four to be exact—to derail the entire enterprise. The bill is supposed to get a vote next week, when the Senate returns to session.
One of the objections is that Cruz’ tax credit shouldn’t get in while others get out. You can imagine the mollifying of Senators playing out with the entry of other tax credits to get their grudging agreement, turning the relief bill into a tax bill with a little relief.
In the end we’re likely not to see any coronavirus bill at all. It’s already September, and at the end of the month government spending runs out. Speaker Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin have reportedly agreed on a stopgap that avoids a government shutdown, regardless of the impasse over stimulus. That stopgap is probably the last chance before the election for any additional measures. But House Democrats want a “clean” continuing resolution, which means that it won’t be used to pursue other stimulus efforts.
Again, in a plutonomy, you can’t expect plutocrat-owned lawmakers (or plutocrats themselves) to see past their noses to the non-people in the streets. The stock market took a tumble yesterday, but it would take plenty more for official Washington to notice the pain
In GOP/libertarian world, anything that helps ordinary working class and poor folks is………drum roll…………ramp up the volume…………..SOCIALISM, SOCIALISM, SOCIALISM, MARXISM/LENINISM, MORE SOCIALISM (blared with a screeching hysterical voice)!!!!!!!!
Corporations are the real socialists. By owning so many members of Congress, corporations have managed to get all kinds of tax abatement deals and subsidies. Hedge funds successfully lobbied to get capital gains taxed at a lower rate. Some employers like Walmart and McDonald’s game the system by paying low wages so that taxpayers pick up the tab for SNAP, subsidized housing and Medicaid for their employees. Drugs companies often use public dollars to back their research costs, When the drugs come out, the people get to pay for them again. Then, there is the old fashioned way corporations game the system. They hide profits offshore. Corporations have many tools at their disposal to maximize profits at the cost to everyone else. We “lessers” get nothing but harsh capitalism, and any remaining so-called public services are under attack so that the wealthy monetize and privatize the service.
I agree, about corporations. ☹️✔️
Exactly.
I hope those nasty, evil, greedy, traitorous lying rePUG-nicans get their KARMA.
But the GOP does feed blue collar whites spiritual manna, and that matters. Democrats are too materialistic in their understanding of politics.
Democrats do force-feed the spiritualism of identity politics, and thus arguably aren’t materialistic enough.
Trump signed an executive order extending the eviction moratorium until the first of the year. Yes, it’s too little and it’s bogus. But it’s more than I’ve heard out of the Democrats. If Democrats aren’t careful Trump is going to win by going to their left. People will vote for the guy who has given them something over the guy that tells them that “nothing will fundamentally change. Biden could lock up this election by supporting Medicare for All, debt forgiveness and housing and paycheck protections. Ask yourself why he isn’t supporting those things. Ask yourself why the Democrats are chasing a handful of neocon Republicans while spitting in the faces of the left. If Trump wins, it won’t be because of the left, it will be because of how Biden and the Democrats chose to treat the left.
I know you all think this is parroting “right wing talking points” or being a “Putin pawn” and “sowing dissent”. And I know you don’t believe that I want Trump gone as much as anyone. But I’m just trying to give you fair warning to hopefully avoid a shock come November. Vote shaming isn’t going to work. Our votes are ours to give or withhold. They must be earned.
Some cites would be good here Dienne. I just don’t get most of what you’ve posted, but I know you follow the issues closely and often link reliable backup. Yes, Trump, as he has done countless times, makes a weak executive gesture in pretense of filling the void of power created by our hobbled, gridlocked lawmakers. It doesn’t take much to look good in these circumstances. Blame “Biden & Dems” for gridlock? & how are any of Trump’s exec orders “going to Dems’ left”? How is Biden’s message “nothing will fundamentally change”? I read the opposite in his two recent speeches. This is wishful thinking, and I think wrong: “Biden could lock up this election by supporting Medicare for All.” As for debt forgiveness and housing and paycheck protections, his speeches intimate he’d support those in office, but we certainly need them before January. And I really can’t make sense of this: “Democrats are chasing a handful of neocon Republicans while spitting in the faces of the left.”
When you have a two-party system, you can rest assured that at least one of them is going to represent the interests of the richest of the rich. This lamentably leaves many working people justifiably feeling like they have no alternative but to pull the lever for the other party, no matter how much they dislike it. That’s not a good system.
I agree. I’d like to see three or four political parties. 😊
FLERP, the mystery of our politics is why so many working people vote for the candidate of the richest 1%.