Robert Reich, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center - Robert Reich Blog
Stephan: A reader sent me this, and I agree with every word of it. I am publishing it because it brings clarity to a fecal fog of Trumpian fantasy and disinformation.
Robert Reich | Registered nurses and health care workers protest a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) available for frontline workers amid the coronavirus pandemic Credit: Win McNamee/Mario Tama/Getty
Donald Trump is getting nervous. Internal polls show him losing in November unless the economy comes roaring back.
So what is Trump’s reelection strategy? Ignore the warnings of public health experts and reopen the economy at all costs.
Here’s his lethal 4-part plan:
Step 1: Remove income support, so people have no choice but to return to work.
Trump’s Labor Department has decided that furloughed employees “must accept” an employer’s offer to return to work and therefore forfeit unemployment benefits, regardless of the risk of returning to work before it’s safe.
Forcing people to choose between contracting a potentially deadly virus or losing their livelihood is inhumane. It’s also nonsensical. Our collective health in this pandemic depends on as many workers as possible staying home.
Step 2: Hide the facts.
No one knows how many Americans are infected because the Trump administration continues to drag its heels on testing. As of May 5th, only 7.5 million tests have been completed in a population of over 330 million Americans.
Stephan: America's gun psychosis, the insecurity of a certain cohort of lower-class largely overweight white men concerning their manliness, and their virulent White racism have combined to create the Red Hat Maga militia movement.
These men and the women around them are not very bright, but they are violent, and it is that violence and the country's tolerance for it, that really concerns me not only for itself but what it tells us about the ubiquity of unspoken White racism in our society. As I said recently how would the media deal with an aggressive pack of Black men in camos armed with AK-47s storming into a state capital? How would the police react? How would the political class respond?
We saw the precursors of the Red Hat Maga militia movement in Hitler's Brown Shirt, and Mussolini's Black Shirt militia movements. People that don't learn from history repeat it in their ignorance.
Think of it as a kind of high fever warning us the national body is seriously ill.
The U.S. government has the official public policy of never negotiating with terrorists, paying them ransom or otherwise surrendering to their demands. The logic is simple: to give in to terrorists is to encourage more violence and other attacks.
It would appear that the state of Michigan does not follow the same policy.
Stephan: Kakistocratic kleptocracy, a government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state, who also care for nothing but their own power and greed. That is the world of Trump. Every day we see the reports, hear the stories, and yet nothing changes the feelings and minds of nearly half of us. It is destroying us.
Trump’s Agriculture Department is turning our nation’s cattle ranchers and feedlot operators into modern-day sharecroppers as beef prices soar during the pandemic.
Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) asked the Senate Judiciary Antitrust subcommittee to hold a hearing on claims of price manipulation and collusion in the beef meatpacking industry. Fischer pointed to the spike in the index of prices for butchered beef compared with the 30% drop in cattle futures after Jan. 24, when the country’s first coronavirus case was reported.
Feedlot operators often have one or two meatpackers who buy their cattle. These large companies can dictate contract terms. Since 1980, 41% of U.S. cattle producers have gone out of business.
Stephan: I am so sick of these stories, they are endless. To Trump, everything is a grift. There is no morality, there are no ethics, only the grift, the chance to make profit or advance oneself by any means.
Donald Trump (Salon/Getty Images/AP
A private jet company founded by a major Republican donor received nearly $27 million in federal grants from a $2 trillion economic relief package intended to offset the blunt of coronavirus pandemic.
The company — Clay Lacy Aviation, which is headquartered in Van Nuys, Calif. — provides private charter and management services to “business and world leaders, Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, professional athletes, sports franchises, celebrities and dignitaries,” according to its website.
Its U.S. fleet reportedly numbers more than 100 business jets, worth more than $1 billion, and conducts charter operations in a number of locations including West Palm Beach, nearby Mar-a-Lago and Trump International Golf Club. The $27 million was a grant — and not a loan — so it does not have to be repaid.
The week after President Donald Trump accepted the Republican party nomination in July 2016, Clay Lacy Aviation donated $50,000 to Trump Victory, the joint fundraising vehicle shared between the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, according to FEC filings. Trump Victory transferred $2,700, the maximum amount, to the Trump campaign.
Stephan: And here we have another tale of special favors to special friends. One by one Trump eliminates the inspector generals whose task is to ensure the integrity of government and thumbs his nose at the Congress as a group of impotents to whom he need show no deference or concern.
Your democracy is disappearing before your eyes America and 44% of us, the Magas, think that is a grand thing.
Empires do not last forever, and they die from the inside out. We are watching it happen. This is how it will go down in the history books.
An Omaha, Nebraska-based private jet company whose principal owner donated generously to Donald Trump and Republicans ahead of the 2016 election received $20 million in taxpayer aid from the federal bailout package passed in March.
A Jet Linx aircraft on Sept. 25, 2019, in Teterboro, New Jersey. The private jet company, whose owner was an early Trump donor, received $20 million in taxpayer aid. Credit: Sylvain Gaboury/Patrick McMullan via Getty
Jet Linx Aviation, which caters to well-to-do CEOs and executives, was the second private plane company founded or owned by Trump donors to receive federal funds designated for the airline industry under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act. CNBC reported on Thursday that Clay Lacy Aviation, a Van Nuys, California-based private jet company whose founder has given nearly $50,000 to the Republican National Committee and Trump, got $27 million in federal funds.
Jet Linx Management Company Vice Chairman John Denny Carreker and his wife, Connie, gave $68,100 to Trump’s campaign, the Republican National Committee and the Trump Victory Committee between October 2015 and November 2016, Federal Election Commission filings show. Connie […]
