Stephan: Mitch McConnell gives voice to the Republican approach to governance. He says that the Republicans are trying to stop a "Blue state bailout," and most of the media just pass that on without explaining it is a blatant lie. In fact, the Blue states have been underwriting the failure of the Red states for decades. Kentucky, for instance, is the 5th largest recipient of federal aid. That means for every dollar Kentuckians pay into the treasury they take more than a dollar out.
Or consider the Republican position about the SNAP food program that they are trying to decimate. Mississippi, more a third world country than a state economically, leads the pack in number of people on SNAP, with Kentucky ranking a slightly less dismal 7th. And yet the people of Kentucky, like the people in Mississippi, vote Republican year after year; essentially voting against their own wellbeing.
Republican Senator and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday he favors allowing states struggling with high public employee pension costs amid the burdens of the pandemic response to declare bankruptcy rather than giving them a federal bailout.
“I would certainly be in favor of allowing states to use the bankruptcy route,” he said Wednesday in response to a question on the syndicated Hugh Hewitt radio show. “It’s saved some cities, and there’s no good reason for it not to be available.”
The host cited California, Illinois and Connecticut as states that had given too much to public employee unions, and McConnell said he was reluctant to take on more debt for any rescue.
“You raised yourself the important issue of what states have done, many of them have done to themselves with their pension programs,” he said. “There’s not going to be any desire on the Republican side to bail out state pensions by borrowing money from future generations.”
McConnell’s remarks drew a biting response from state and local officials.
Stephan: On any list of the most incompetent and repugnant people appointed to high positions in government by criminal Trump, Betsy DeVos would surely be in the top 5. I find her so repulsive that even looking at a picture of her is offputting. You may already know that her family is one of the uber-rich families creating the astroturf (supposedly spontaneous) uprising resisting shelter-in-place policies. Or you may know all the damage she has done to public education in her drive to turn schools into profit centers, instead of educational institutions. But this latest move on her part is so vile it takes your breath away.
The Trump administration banned undocumented college students Tuesday from receiving emergency assistance amid the coronavirus pandemic even though Congress did not exclude the group in a relief bill.
US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos Credit: Mandel Ngan/Getty
The $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief bill passed by Congress last month included $6 billion for colleges to help students deal with expenses after campuses around the country shut down. But the Department of Education, led by Secretary Betsy DeVos, issued new guidance this week that limits the aid to only citizens and certain legal permanent residents.
The policy says that students must have filed or be eligible for a Free Application for Federal Student Aid. However, undocumented students are barred from receiving most types of federal aid.
The guidance will prevent undocumented students, including hundreds of thousands of students protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program from receiving the aid, according to Politico. The National Education Association said the move exhibited an “astounding” level of “cruelty.”
Stephan: This story and the story that follows illustrate about as clearly as two stories could the obscene financial inequality that is destroying the United States. One of the takeaways from this pandemic I hope will be the recognition that neoliberal economics must be replaced by economic policies that support wellbeing as their first priority.
Though the coronavirus itself may not discriminate in terms of who can be infected, the COVID-19 pandemic is far from a great equalizer. In the same month that 22 million Americans lost their jobs, the American billionaire class’s total wealth increased about 10%—or $282 billion more than it was at the beginning of March. They now have a combined net worth of $3.229 trillion.
The initial stock market crash may have dented some net worths at first—for instance, that of Jeff Bezos, which dropped down to a mere $105 billion on March 12. But his riches have rebounded: As of April 15, his net worth has increased by $25 billion. Eric Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom, was one of the few to see an increase in net worth even as the markets crashed, and he’s now up $2.58 billion.
These “pandemic profiteers,” as a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank, calls them, is just one piece of the wealth inequality puzzle in America. In the background is the fact that since 1980, the […]
Christopher Rugaber, Reporter - PBS/Associated Press
Stephan: Now, after reading the previous story about how much additional wealth billionaires have accumulated since the Covid-19 pandemic began, here is the antipode. We have a wealth disease in America in which a tiny number of people get richer and richer while the vast majority of the country gets poorer and poorer. This is the result of voting for Republicans all of whose social policies are structured by neoliberal economics and designed to make the rich, richer.
Hands of business person working on laptop Credit: Getty
WASHINGTON — Like many Americans cooped up during the virus outbreak, Jeff Kardesch of Austin, Texas, is spending a lot of time on social media. It isn’t just idle talk with friends. Kardesch is struggling to find out when he’ll receive the unemployment benefits he needs.
His business as a self-employed film and commercial producer evaporated once Austin canceled the annual South by Southwest festival in early March. Since then, no other work has replaced it.
Yet because Kardesch is self-employed, it’s a headache for him to obtain unemployment aid — or even figure out when he will. A new federal relief package made freelancers like him eligible for unemployment benefits for the first time. But Texas, like most states, has had to establish a new system to process these new claims and distribute the money.
Kardesch, 23, applied in late March. He was quickly turned down. He has since reapplied. No luck.
“It’s really frustrating,” Kardesch said. “Nothing so far has really worked. The most I can do is just […]
Stephan: I have increasingly been noticing a correlation between Covid-19 deniers and climate deniers. The same names keep appearing in both denier efforts; the same Republican funded institutes, the same Republican thinktanks, the same Republican politicians, the same Republican media.
The willful ignorance and disinformation purveyed by these organizations, these people, in my opinion, is actually an act of murder. Forty-two thousand American, men, women, and children are dead in large measure because of the denierism, incompetence, ideology, theology, and greed of these Republicans.
We could not stop Covid-19 appearing in the U.S., but we most certainly could have responded and handled this pandemic very differently.
Credit: DeSmog
“Government should be doing little or next to nothing,” Richard Ebeling wrote in a post about COVID-19 republished on March 24 by the Heartland Institute. “The problem is a social and medical one, and not a political one.”
“I just think we’re going to be fine. I think everything is going to be fine,” Heartland editorial director and research fellow Justin Haskins said about COVID-19 during a March 13 episode of the podcast In the Tank. “I really don’t think this is going to be a problem even two to three months from now.”
