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Friday, March 27th, 2020

Senate Decides Now Would Be a Good Time for a Monthlong Vacation

Author:     Eric Levitz
Source:     New York Magazine
Publication Date:     26 March 2020
 Link: Senate Decides Now Would Be a Good Time for a Monthlong Vacation
Stephan:   This is the level of the obscene incompetence of the leadership of the Republican dominated U.S. Senate which, added to the utter incompetence of the Trump administration has resulted in the United States having the worse and most incompetent response to the Covid-19 virus in the developed world. I didn't really believe this story could be true, until I had checked it with three reliable sources. But, yes, it is true, in the midst of an international pandemic Moscow Mitch and his buddies don't see much need for the Senators to stay in Washington, so they're going to take a month off for vacation. Really.

Spring breakers. Credit: Samuel Corum/Getty

Last week, roughly 3 million Americans lost their jobs. Until today, the all-time record for weekly unemployment claims in the U.S. had been 700,000. Now it is 3.3 million (in seasonally adjusted terms). That record is likely to last exactly seven days, as economists widely believe that more Americans were laid off this week than last.

Meanwhile, confirmed coronavirus deaths in the U.S. just crossed 1,000. In some cities, hospitals are already running out of beds for the severely ill and morgue space for each day’s dead. Some have taken to storing the deceased in refrigerated trucks. Confirmed cases of COVID-19 are still growing exponentially, while much of the country is failing to observe the CDC’s recommendations for containing the virus’s spread. If current trends continue, the United States may soon be the epicenter of both a global pandemic and economic depression.

And the Senate has decided that now would be a good time to take a monthlong […]

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