Trump claims American workers will be able to get tested every day "very soon." (US testing capacity is nowhere near that level — we're testing about 300k a day.) pic.twitter.com/SDr9CEtuAp
REPORTER: Isn't there a double standard when WH staffers can get tested every day and normal Americans can't at all?
TRUMP: If we didn't get the tests, you'd be up complaining … I understand you very well. Better than you understand yourself pic.twitter.com/xlZpLs8pny
"It's a tiny percentage … the children recover from that" — Trump downplays a new potentially fatal coronavirus-related syndrome in children. An HHS official immediately clarifies that it's a very serious matter. pic.twitter.com/cg0qGvt5Js
[The] team is tracking cellphone data and has seen “explosive increases in mobility in a number of states” that will likely translate into more cases and deaths in 10 days.
“We’re seeing, in some states, a 20 percentage point increase in just 10 days in mobility, and that will translate into more human contact, more transmission,” Murray said.
Murray explained that the rise in mobility is likely a result of states relaxing lockdown measures and of people simply growing tired of staying indoors.
“The places that are taking off the social distancing mandates, the bump in mobility appears to be larger,” he said. “So somewhere like Georgia, which was one of the first, we’re seeing is in that category of a pretty big increase.”
That tweet above was in Colorado. No masks, no social distancing.
Here’s LA on Mother’s Day:
They wore masks, at least. But the social distancing you are supposed to do in tandem was clearly not being followed.
Cinco de Mayo tailgate party in Jacksonville Florida
The White House is encouraging this. These people clearly don’t believe they can catch it and don’t give a shit if they are asymptomatic and give it to others.
That’s what Obama was talking about when he said:
“What we’re fighting against is these long-term trends in which being selfish, being tribal, being divided, and seeing others as an enemy — that has become a stronger impulse in American life.”
They are willing to die in order to own the libs. And if they take out their grandmother or their wife or an unsuspecting grocery clerk or nurse in the process well that’s just how it has to be.
Eric Boehlert has a new piece in his newsletter Press Run (subscribe here) about the media helping the right wing protesters — and incidentally, Donald Trump:
Why are small bands of right-wing protesters deemed to be more important than huge throngs of liberal ones? That’s the media question that arises as modest clumps of “reopen America” activists continue to garner a huge amount of press attention, even though their numbers remain slight, and an overwhelmingly majority of Americans disagree with their message. Back when tens of thousands of liberals rallied against the Iraq War, the press often took a very different approach to them, downplaying their significance.
Today, Trump loyalists protesting stay-at-home orders, while actively endangering the public by refusing to adhere to social distancing guidelines, manage to maintain the press’ attention. “These anti-lockdown rallies are popping up everywhere, often with nearly as many reporters covering them as there are protesters in attendance,” noted Eric Alterman in The Nation.
In general, the modest events have numbered in the hundreds:
Even the slightly larger events have drawn comically small crowds compared to what organizers had planned for. In Madison, Wisconsin, local police estimated 1,500 activists showed up — 15,000 were expected.
The strangest media dispatch might have been the Washington Post update about a Louisiana rally, which reported “more than a dozen protesters” had gathered near the governor’s mansion demanding the state’s stay-at-home order be lifted. I can’t recall the last time the Post bothered to document a protest that involved “more than a dozen” people, which to me sounds like 15 or 20 folks. How does that qualify as news in a nation of 330 million people?
For some reason, modest-size groups of right-wing protesters taking to the streets to protest for a dangerous return to ‘normal’ amidst a crippling pandemic are deemed to represent a Very Important Story.
Trust me, they’re not. Public polling continues to show that a vast majority of Americans are skeptical of “reopening” the country without an effective vaccine in sight. And that includes a majority of Republicans. These protests really do feature the outliers of American politics. They’re small groups of fringe players (anti-vaccine extremists, gun radicals) who desperately want attention. And they get it from the press, which seems wedded to the idea that right-wing activists are inherently important and newsworthy.
The endless coverage of modest “reopen” rallies stands in stark contrast to how the press dealt with massive anti-war rallies organized by liberals and many Democrats to protest President George W. Bush’s war in Iraq. Anxious for political cover for a then-popular Republican war, journalists seemed determined to downplay the left-leaning opposition.
That seemed to be particularly true at the New York Times, where executive editor Howell Raines wanted to prove his right-wing critics wrong. “According to half a dozen sources within the Times, Raines wanted to prove once and for all that he wasn’t editing the paper in a way that betrayed his liberal beliefs,” wrote Seth Mnookin in his 2004 Times expose, Hard News. Mnookin quoted Doug Frantz, the former investigative editor of the Times, who recalled how “Raines was eager to have articles that supported the war-mongering out of Washington. He discouraged pieces that were at odds with the administration’s position on Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction and alleged links of al-Qaida.”
That mindset meant downplaying anti-war rallies. On October 26, 2002, protesters staged a massive rally in Washington, D.C., drawing more than 100,000 people from across the country. The next day in a small piece on page 8 that was accompanied by a photo larger than the article itself, the Timesreported falsely, in the second paragraph, that “fewer people attended than organizers had said they hoped for.” Two days later, scrambling to fix the article’s obvious error, yet at the same time refusing to run an actual correction, the Times published a second, sort of do-over article about the rally.
Editors at the Washington Post seemed similarly unsure how to handle that October 2002 outpouring of antiwar sentiment in their backyard, as the newspaper dramatically downplayed the story. The Post’s ombudsman at the time, Michael Getler, was not impressed. “Last Saturday, some 100,000 people, and possibly more, gathered in downtown Washington to protest against possible U.S. military action against Iraq,” he wrote. “The Post did not put the story on the front page Sunday. It put it halfway down the front page of the Metro section, with a couple of ho-hum photographs that captured the protest’s fringe elements.”
That fit a Post pattern. The month before, when large anti-war rallies were held in London and Rome, the paper gave the global events no coverage the following day. Fact: Between September 2002 and February 2003, the Post editorialized 26 times in support of the looming invasion, which turned out be a $2 trillion failure.
Today, there’s simply no reason for the press to still be showering attention on dangerous groups of “reopen” stragglers.
For more on the predictably out-sized media attention right-wing protester are getting, read Alterman’s The Nation piece, in full: “The Press Is Amplifying a Dangerous Know-Nothing Ideology.” In it, Alterman provides historical context regarding the media’s long, sad history of amplifying Republican extremists and presenting them as mainstream:
So it’s no surprise that the miscreants demanding the right to infect themselves and others have no trouble receiving the loving attention of the uncritical mainstream media. It’s as if we’ve been in training for this death march for decades.
A message from Eric:
The response to PRESS RUN has been overwhelming since its launch. I’m grateful to everyone who reads it. Now I want to offer people a chance to support PRESS RUN— to support its mission of progressive media commentary, its voice, and to this work. You can support PRESS RUN for cost of a premium cup of coffee — $6 a month. (Yes, a free sign-up option still exists.)
Independent media criticism from experienced, smart critics like Boehlert’s is vital now. Otherwise you’ll have nothing but right wing propaganda and a lot of mainstream “both-sides” journalism. This new model is worth supporting if you can.
Riverside County has the 2nd most COVID cases & deaths in California but its supervisors just voted to rescind public health orders.
A patient is removed from Magnolia Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Riverside this month after more than three dozen residents tested positive for coronavirus and the nursing staff did not show up for work.(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times
Maybe the supervisors forgot about the death of Deputy Terrell Young, 52, a 15-year veteran and the department’s first to die from COVID-19. He leaves behind his wife of 31 years and four children.
Perhaps they need to see the photo of David Werksman, 51, a Riverside County Sheriff’s deputy who was with the department for 22 years. Better yet, the supervisors should hear from his wife and three children who are still alive.
Of course these deaths happened WAY back in April, so I guess they become just another number.
Do the supervisors need to know that this hits more than old people? Here’s the story of 21 year old Valeria Viveros, who worked as a nursing assistant at a skilled nursing facility that had an outbreak.
We can show the supervisors of the communities around Riverside the photos. We can show them the data that it’s not just olds and POC who are getting hit because gasp, *White People* are dying and that seems to make a difference to some.
But the bottom line is that Riverside supervisors voted to rescind the state’s emergency orders. Why? Who are they really listening to? What are those people’s reasons? And finally, if the people in the community and those around them agree this is a terrible, deadly decision, “What can be done?”
The friend who tipped me off to this story lives in Palm Springs, right next to Riverside County. His question was, “How do I stop my city supervisors from doing what Riverside supervisors did?”
Sonia Y Angell, MD, MPH State Public Health Officer & Director California Department of Public Health @DrSoniaAngell
First they should know that lawful Executive Orders have been defied. Public health reopen guidelines in the state of California were ignored. (See EO N-60-20, and Health and Safety Code sections 120125, 120140, 131080, 120130(c), 120135, 120145, 120175 and 120150, ) PDF Link signed by Sonia Y Angell, MD, MPH, State Public Health Officer & Director California Department of Public Health
The Riverside county supervisors couldn’t meet the reopen guidelines. They know there will be consequences but they don’t care!
From the article:
“Supervisor Jeff Hewitt implored the supervisors to vote to lift all restrictions — including the state’s — immediately.
Regarding the county’s orders, he said he wanted to drop all COVID-related restrictions and trusted residents and businesses to make decisions to secure health and safety.
“Although he understood the state had threatened to withhold disaster funds from counties that have defied Newsom’s staged plan, Hewitt scoffed at his fellow supervisors’ plan to negotiate with Newsom on reopening criteria.”
Hewitt trusts that businesses would make decisions to protect their employees. Without any consequences? He gives this BS libertarian answer why they would.
“They will do what they need to to attract the most customers,” he said of county businesses. “Even though I feel like I don’t need a mask — I don’t like a mask, that’s my personal choice — I’ll carry one around all the time because there’ll be a lot of businesses I want to go in that’ll require me to wear a mask.”
Well what if they want to attract COVID deniers? There’s lot’s of money in selling to rich idiots, but what about the non-idiots who have to breath the same air?
As I told my friend, these people can’t be convinced with photos of the dead, then need to be sanctioned.
Also, when you listen to Hewitt during the supervisor meeting he reveals that it’s the business owners who are telling him what to do. Will he name them? Could the media talk to them so that the public can know who is putting their profits before people’s lives?
They people won’t hear from the business owners with real power telling the supervisors what to do because they want to be behind the scenes. They don’t want to take the heat from the public. They don’t want to have a conversation with the head of the nursing homes in their community who can ask the family of the dead to call them on the phone.
They aren’t going to voluntarily reveal who they are and face the majority of the people in the community and the ones around Riverside. They expect Hewitt to take the heat, and then see if they should back down.
I have a whole piece coming noting how the anti-lockdown protesters and the “ReOpen” people are using the same tactics and methods as the gun lobby groups. There are ways to beat them, but it’s just insane that people even have do this.
Dozens of angry Michiganders, fueled by conspiracy theories and disinformation about the coronavirus, are promoting violence and mobilizing armed rallies against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Facebook, in violation of the social media company’s policies.
Metro Times gained access to four private Facebook groups that can only be seen by approved members. The pages, which have a combined 400,000 members, are filled with paranoid, sexist, and grammar-challenged rants, with members encouraging violence and flouting the governor’s social-distancing orders.
On Sunday, after being contacted by Metro Times, Facebook removed one of the groups, Michigan United for Liberty, and deleted posts on others for violating the company’s policy against inciting violence. Facebook announced last month that it will remove groups and events that encourage people to defy social-distancing measures. Facebook also is investigating the other groups.
“We removed one group for violating our policies and will remove any other violations as we continue our review,“ a Facebook spokesperson tells Metro Times.
Assassinating Whitmer is a common theme among members of the groups. Dozens of people have called for her to be hanged.
“We need a good old fashioned lynch mob to storm the Capitol, drag her tyrannical ass out onto the street and string her up as our forefathers would have,” John Campbell Sr. wrote in a group called “People of Michigan vs. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer,” which had nearly 9,000 members as of Monday morning.
Steve Doxsie had the same idea: “Drag that tyrant governor out to the front lawn. Fit her for a noose.”
“Either President Trump sends in the troops or there is going to be a midnight lynching in Lansing soon,” Michael Smith chimed in.
Others suggested she be shot, beaten, or beheaded.
“Plain and simple she needs to eat lead and send a statement to the rest of the democrats that they are next,” James Greena, of Fennville, wrote.
Chris Rozman said, “She needs her ass beat. Most of these politicians need a good ass whooping. Just. Punch there lights out.”
When someone suggested the guillotine, Thomas Michael Lamphere responded, “Good ol’ fashioned bullets work better, but I like the enthusiasm.”
“Wonder how long till she’s hit with a shotgun blast,” Chris Parrish wrote.
Matthew Woodruff had another idea: “Can we please just take up a collection for an assassin to put that woman from Michigan down,” he asked.
The comments are especially disturbing because some of those calling for violence are planning to attend an armed rally at the Capitol building in Lansing on Thursday. On April 30, hundreds of protesters, some of them heavily armed, descended on the state Capitol“ during the “American Patriot Rally,” and there were armed protesters as part of ““Operation Lansing” on April 15. A two-day rally is also planned for the weekend.
“We could’ve taken over the capital last time if we wanted,” Chris Coffey said. “This was just a display. Next time won’t be!”
“If she thinks the last protest was bad she hasn’t seen anything yet,” DonnaCookie Grady warned.
“We haven’t had any bloodshed yet, but the populous is counting to three, and the other day was two,” Dave Meisenheimer wrote in Michiganders Against Excessive Quarantine, which has more than 385,000 members. “Next comes watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants.”
Gordon Chapman says he’s going to the Thursday rally and hopes demonstrators are “armed to the teeth.”
“Voting is too late we need to act now,” Chapman said.
The potential for violence prompted some public officials, including Whitmer and Attorney General Dana Nessel, to promote banning firearms from the Capitol building.
“There are legislators who are wearing bulletproof vests to go to work,” Whitmer told ABC News last week. “No one should be intimidated by someone who’s bringing in an assault rifle into their workplace.”
At 11 a.m. Monday, the bipartisan Michigan State Capitol Commission plans to discuss a firearms ban. In a letter to the six-member commission, Nessel told the panel that it has the legal authority to ban guns from the Capitol.
Nessel’s support of the ban drew anger on another private Facebook page, Whitmer Recall Movement, which has more than 3,500 members.
“We are sharpening a stick for you Dana,” Pete Scudamore wrote.
“DO you want me to bring the rope, shouldn’t be too hard to find a good tree,” Russell Kynn asked.
Nessel’s spokeswoman Kelly Rossman-McKinney says the attorney general’s office will not tolerate threats.
“We take every threat seriously — and, of course, we are doing everything we can to minimize threats,” Rossman-McKinney tells Metro Times.
They are being given permission from the very top:
The Governor of Michigan should give a little, and put out the fire. These are very good people, but they are angry. They want their lives back again, safely! See them, talk to them, make a deal.
The great people of Pennsylvania want their freedom now, and they are fully aware of what that entails. The Democrats are moving slowly, all over the USA, for political purposes. They would wait until November 3rd if it were up to them. Don’t play politics. Be safe, move quickly!
No wonder the Trump death cult refuses to wear masks or take any precautions to avoid getting or giving the virus. Look at this ridiculous nonsense:
Four CEOs of food companies and the president of the American Farm Bureau Federation were told to remove their face masks before a meeting in Iowa Friday with Vice President Mike Pence, a startling video posted by The Intercept reveals.
Pence — also without a mask — appeared a short time later at the headquarters of the Hy-Vee grocery chain in West Des Moines for a roundtable discussion with the men in front of an audience.
Just hours earlier Pence was informed that his press secretary Katie Miller had tested positive for COVID-19. She and six others in Pence’s entourage with suspected exposure to Miller were pulled from Pence’s flight to Iowa just before takeoff. Pence’s office denied news reports Sunday that he was self-isolating because of his exposure to Miller.
Video before the Hy-Vee roundtable shows an unidentified woman walking up to two groups of the men, all wearing face masks. She can be seen speaking to them and mimicking a gesture as if she’s removing a face mask. All of the men remove their masks. It isn’t clear who she was representing, but going maskless is a hallmark of the Trump administration.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends wearing masks in groups and in public. But Pence and President Donald Trump have not complied with those guidelines in an apparent effort to make it appear that things are heading back to normal despite the ongoing pandemic.
The audience watching the Iowa roundtable practiced social distancing in the wide spacing of seating, but almost no one wore masks. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) all participated in the roundtable, but none wore a mask.
I guess those CEOs are members of the death cult too. Good to know.
After three years of political and actual carnage under Trump, including Robert Mueller’s description of acts that amounted to, he told Congress, obstruction of justice; Trump’s “fine people on both sides” reaction to a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville where a counter-protester was killed; his rampant conflicts of interest and credible accusations of his violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution; his close to 17,000 false statements; a travel ban that primarily targets mostly Muslim-majority countries;impeachment for alleged extortion of a foreign government (he was acquitted in the Republican Senate), and the gross mishandling of a deadly pandemic, you’d think somebody on an editorial board might say it’s time for the President to leave.
Y’think???? But only one has called for his removal, The LA Times, and they said exactly what every single member of every responsible editorial Board knows should happen :
while a handful of large-newspaper editorial boards called for his impeachment, I could find only one — the LA Times — that called for his removal (and with a headline that covered all the bases: “Convict and remove President Trump — and disqualify him from ever holding office again”).
The article is long but worth reading to get a sense of the history of newspapers calling for presidential resignations. But the reason why only one newspaper has called for Trump to go is never directly stated, although a lot of virtual ink is spilled talking around the reason: They’re cowards.
And in fact, Joe Lockhart is also a coward for his refusal to explicitly label his pals’ cowardly behavior for what it is. Still, he does conclude nicely, although he surely knows he’s whistling in the dark:
…they [newspapers] should go down fighting. If the President is unfit to lead the country, then say it. And if lives are at risk and our Constitution is being attacked on a regular basis, then it is the duty of our great editorial pages to seek the ultimate remedy — a call for resignation.
Early last week, George W. Bush released a video in which he called for compassion and solidarity during the pandemic. It was the sort of sentiment we used to assume was just pro forma from our leaders in a time of crisis but was a startling departure from anything we’ve gotten from President Trump. Trump naturally, was miffed and complained that Bush hadn’t supported him during the impeachment.
On Friday, Yahoo News reported on a conference call Barack Obama had with a large group of former administration staff and supporters in an effort to rev them up for the Biden campaign. Since the call included 3,000 participants, Obama undoubtedly knew it would be made public. So his sharp criticism of the administration’s response to the COVID-19 crisis was notable. I think everyone expected that he would be campaigning for his former wingman Joe Biden, but this was unusually pointed:
This election that’s coming up — on every level — is so important because what we’re going to be battling is not just a particular individual or a political party. What we’re fighting against is these long-term trends in which being selfish, being tribal, being divided and seeing others as an enemy — that has become a stronger impulse in American life.
It’s part of the reason why the response to this global crisis has been so anemic and spotty. It would have been bad even with the best of governments. It has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mindset — of “what’s in it for me” and “to heck with everybody else” — when that mindset is operationalized in our government.
“Absolute chaotic disaster” describes it perfectly. Since Trump has already exploded all the other norms it’s past time for some of the elder statesmen to remove the traditional cone of silence that requires former presidents to be quiet during their successor’s term. We’ve got 80,000 dead and counting who need a voice in this disaster.
I was a little bit surprised when Trump didn’t respond. He spent the weekend at Camp David with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and his national security team. We saw pictures of all these middle-aged and older white men sitting in close quarters without masks, and you have to wonder what could possibly be so important they felt the need to convene such a meeting in the middle of this contagion. Perhaps the president really was too immersed in the crisis to care what his predecessor had to say about him?
Not bloody likely. On Sunday Trump spent the entire day tweeting and retweeting like a lunatic, much of the time about the leftovers of the Russia investigation, including the Michael Flynn case and numerous threats that Obama himself was in the crosshairs of the “investigation of the investigation,” which Trump excitedly started calling “OBAMAGATE.” Apparently he finally heard about that phone call.
If you didn’t know better, you think the global pandemic that’s killing thousands of Americans every single day was pretty much over. The president had barely a word to say about it in more than 125 tweets and retweets, other than a few in which he managed to pat himself on the back while insulting Obama and Biden.
We are getting great marks for the handling of the CoronaVirus pandemic, especially the very early BAN of people from China, the infectious source, entering the USA. Compare that to the Obama/Sleepy Joe disaster known as H1N1 Swine Flu. Poor marks, bad polls – didn’t have a clue!
As you can see, that’s completely absurd. The H1N1 epidemic killed about 12,000 people in the U.S. over the course of a year. We are on track for more than 100,000 dead in less than three months. Who could possibly buy this ridiculous comparison?
But Trump’s core tactic, right here and now, is to try to convince everyone that he isn’t presiding over a mass death event in our own country, the likes of which Americans haven’t seen in more than a century. Last week he spoke to the governor of Iowa in one of those unmasked, up-close meetings he’s demanding of fellow Republicans to try to prove the virus is no big deal:
The media likes to say we have the most cases. But we do by far the most testing. If we did very little testing we wouldn’t have the most cases. So, in a way, by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad.
When the virus started sweeping through the White House itself, Trump still couldn’t allow himself to admit what it actually means:
TRUMP: “Katie, she tested very good for a long period of time, and then all of the sudden she tested positive … this is why the whole concept of tests aren't necessarily great … today, I guess, for some reason, she tested positive." 😳 pic.twitter.com/xNFEJn3W9s
His erratic thought processes and unhinged behavior are getting worse. I suspect that’s largely because he simply cannot do what he has always done, which is to fudge the numbers. That doesn’t mean he and his accomplices aren’t going to try.
A few weeks ago, Salon’s Amanda Marcotte observed that that Trump’s stated desire to “keep his numbers down” from the very beginning of the pandemic crisis wasn’t limited to this specific circumstance. Lying about numbers is a lifelong habit:
Lying about statistics is at the heart of who Trump is. The man has never met a number that he didn’t think he should immediately improve to flatter himself through straight-up lying and manipulation.
(I could add his lies about his yuge hands, but that would be crude.) The point is that while he routinely lies about everything, lying about the number of sick and dying Americans takes a particular form of chutzpah.
He’s doing it anyway. The administration deep-sixed the detailed CDC guidelines for states and local governments to thoughtfully and strategically open up their businesses and other institutions — clearly because they would make clear that what the states are actually doing is unsafe. Now we have reports that the Trump administration literally plans to start lying about the death toll. Axios reported last week:
A senior administration official said he expects the president to begin publicly questioning the death toll as it closes in on his predictions for the final death count and damages him politically.
Of course, in actual reality the death toll is almost certainly being understated. Until mid-April, a person was only identified as having died of COVID-19 if they had tested positive for the coronavirus before death — and testing was sporadic at best.
This strategy appears to be working for Trump with the base. According to polling, 40% of Republicans believe there are fewer deaths than are being officially reported. Maybe he figures if he just keeps tweeting about “Obamagate” he can convince them that the whole thing never happened at all.
The Week’s Ryan Cooper suggests that government of the people, by the people, and for the people should actually be government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Everyone deserves a federal bailout.
Moves the Federal Reserve has made to prop up the economy during the pandemic are directed, predictably, to keeping “financial markets from seizing up or big businesses from collapsing” while typical Americans hang on by their fingernails. Aid packages passed by Congress have been hodgepodge and freighted with the predictable handwringing over incentivizing work and deservedness. God forbid we should hand money to the little guys just as gut-kicked by the global pandemic as banks and airlines:
Let me first review what’s been happening. The Fed has been printing up trillions to spend stabilizing various financial markets, buying Treasury bonds, corporate debt, municipal bonds, and even risky “junk” bonds. They also have levered up the $454 billion corporate slush fund Congress appropriated (and overseen by Treasury Secretary Mnuchin), making the total loan program worth about $4.5 trillion. It seems that the corporate sector and the top of the income distribution are absolutely swimming in liquidity, and since returns on safe U.S. debt are lousy, and a few big companies like Amazon are doing very well, money is flooding back into stocks — so the markets go up even as unemployment skyrockets.
While the Fed is not handing money directly to Wall Street — financial markets are receiving loans, mainly — its power to regulate the market undergirds the entire financial system which is itself an outgrowth of state power. Cooper argues, “Even in normal times, the backing of the Fed provides the credibility, security, and fraud protections that allows the whole thing to run — indeed, it directly owns and operates half the American payments system.” It wields enormous political power.
It is reasonable to ask, on behalf of whom? For anyone who lived through the Great Recession, that question answers itself.
Perhaps more importantly for the immediate future, there is no reason the Fed can’t simply hand out printed money to every citizen. Currently it is legally forbidden from spending money in this way, but this technical distinction has already been deeply eroded, as it is buying up U.S. debt in gigantic quantities — effectively funding the massive coronavirus rescue spending through printing. Every adult could have a Fed bank account, and to keep people from starving during the pandemic, money (let’s start with $2,000 per month) could flow directly into citizens’ pockets in a matter of hours once it was set up. Paying out an equal amount to every citizen would be facially fair, and considering it as taxable income would allow the state to recoup payments to the rich on the back end. It would also be dramatically more effective economic stimulus than its “quantitative easing” experiments, which seem to mostly benefit the rich.
Free money for everyone would not only be useful today, but also during any future recession. It would not create inflation because during a recession there is slack economic capacity in the form of idle workers and factories. Once full employment was reached, payments could be dialed back down to a trickle to head off price increases.
Cooper concludes, “If big corporations can get the benefits that ultimately flow from the power of the printing press, the rest of the American people should get a piece of the action.”
The reason they do not, I’d add, is not because that would upset the markets, but because it would modulate the power imbalance in this country. A monthly check would take away the leverage Donald Trump is now using to pressure paycheck workers back to work in Petri-dish environments. Right now, workers face a life-threatening disease or else hunger and financial ruin by staying home. Because contrary to Lincoln’s formulation, this is neither their government nor their economy. Their lot is to serve the economy while others benefit.
While Donald J. Trump postures that he is a war president, he refuses to behave like one. He dithered for months while the virus ran wild on theses shores. “The United States reacted like Pakistan or Belarus,” The Atlantic’s George Packer wrote. Timothy Egan of the New York Times reflected on the country that once was:
A country that turned out eight combat aircraft every hour at the peak of World War II could not even produce enough 75-cent masks or simple cotton nasal swabs for testing in this pandemic.
A country that showed the world how to defeat polio now promotes quack remedies involving household disinfectants from the presidential podium.
A country that rescued postwar Europe with the Marshall Plan didn’t even bother to show up this week at the teleconference of global leaders pledging contributions for a coronavirus vaccine.
Yesterday, I noted that while thousands wait in lines at food banks, farmers are flushing milk and plowing under crops for which there is no demand in the COVID-19 shutdown. If the Fed and Congress refuse to cut people monthly checks, the federal government could at least pay farmers for those products and muster its considerable resources to get them to where hungry Americans most need them.
In a real war, the U.S. ferries soldiers, supplies, and equipment to the most remote locations on the planet and money is no object. They run a 24-hr operation. Logistics? The Department of Defense manages logistics in its sleep. So why are Americans going hungry and food banks struggling in this “war” on U.S. soil?
Is it because our military lacks the skills and funding to backstop farmers and get food to where it’s needed? Or because the reality TV star in the White House and his congressional allies lack the will to see that government of the people acts for the people? Or is it because they see providing concierge service to the financial industry as government’s job while being a shipping clerk is beneath them?
Update: Added back paragraph dropped in edit.
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like. Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way by June, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.
The BBC shared this excerpt from Richard II, written during Shakespeare’s own lockdown during the plague, read by Judi Dench, Rory Kinnear, Adjoa Andoh and Tom Hollander :
But the bottom line is that Riverside supervisors voted to rescind the state’s emergency orders. Why? Who are they really listening to? What are those people’s reasons? And finally, if the people in the community and those around them agree this is a terrible, deadly decision, “What can be done?”
