And here you thought that a frequently bankrupt TV actor, surrounded by incompetent and crooked friends, who has a serious allergy to the truth, would not be up to the task, when a crisis arrived.
Well, the crisis has arrived, and weren’t you the surprised one.
Here is what Ryan Cooper of THE WEEK said:
The United States has faceplanted on every single aspect of the response.
Our health care system is a bitter joke. We do not even have universal coverage, and what coverage we have is a usurious, fragmented, Kafkaesque nightmare that routinely bankrupts people who get sick.
Part of the problem is that the conservatives have been promulgating the Big Lie that Medicare, and especially Medicare for All, is some sort of socialist plot.
And the populace which, understandably is clueless about federal financing, believe the lie, so they vote against their own best interests.
Heaven forbid that a Monetarily Sovereign government, having unlimited access to money without levying taxes, should fund health care for all the men, women, and children in America.
By making legal immigration so difficult, Trump has set the economy up for failure.
Continuing with excerpts from Cooper’s article:
President Trump’s direct response has also been horrifically bungled.
We still do not have enough tests at least two months after we should have had them. He has not secured supplies of vital equipment like masks and ventilators, and hospitals are already running short.
He did not even start activating the Army Corps of Engineers until a couple days ago.
Hospital ships that Trump boasted were on their way turned out to be docked for maintenance and will take days to get moving.
An economic support measure (which contains some emergency paid leave and unemployment insurance provisions that are worse than what most European countries have in normal times) is bogged down in Congress.
And keep in mind that most of the European governments are monetarily non-sovereign, meaning they do not have unlimited access to money, and so must pay for everything out of taxes.
Yet somehow, they manage to spend more to benefit their citizens than does the U.S. government.
Perhaps worst of all, Trump, Republican politicians, and right-wing media consistently downplayed the epidemic for weeks as it gathered strength.
As the virus quietly spread through the population, Trump was still claiming “The coronavirus is very much under control in the USA,” and conservative media was claiming it was no worse than the flu.
Just in the last few days, Republican hack propagandists like Sean Hannity have pivoted on a dime from “I see it, again, as like, let’s bludgeon Trump with this new hoax,” to “this program has always taken the coronavirus seriously. We’ve never called the virus a hoax.”
The only people surprised by Donald (18,000 lies) Trump’s repeated misstatements are the Fox News addicts, who also believe what truly evil men like Sean (forked tongue) Hannity, and Russ “the coronavirus is the common cold” Limbaugh tell them.
At any rate, this all suggests the sketch of a broad policy agenda to fix this outbreak and head off future ones.
First, the wretched American health care system needs to be sharply augmented on an emergency basis and eventually replaced with something that actually works, like Medicare-for-all.
There are zero reasons for not doing this. The four false reasons are:
–It would increase the federal deficit and debt, which as readers of this blog know, are false reasons because the federal government can support any size deficit and debt, even without collecting taxes.
-Federal spending would cause inflation, which is false because federal spending never causes inflation (not even in Zimbabwe or in the Weimar Republic). Inflation always is caused by shortages, usually shortages of food and/or oil.
–It’s socialist. This one may be the most ignorant of all. It’s the same objection that was leveled at the original Medicare. First, socialism is federal ownership and control over resources. Medicare for all would be funding, not ownership and control. And if you don’t like federal funding, then close down the government, for that is all the government does: Fund things. That’s the whole purpose of government.
–There would be long waits for medical services. The people who say this are merely saying that they want poor people to do without medical services. If the money is available, the services will be created.
Medicare for All should be implemented now, today, simply by lowering the age requirement. That is how to “make America great again,” not by wall-building.
Second, the federal government is in shambles and needs a total overhaul. To start with, we should copy Taiwan’s pandemic systems so that response teams and supplies are always ready to go on a moment’s notice.
More broadly, state capacity, which has been gutted by decades of conservative austerity, anti-science, and anti-expertise dogmatism, must be rebuilt across the board.
Conservatives have insisted for decades that the government is all but useless, and today we are all paying the price.
It turns out there are some serious downsides to having a narcissistic reality TV host in charge of the country.
Oh, he’s not just a narcissistic reality TV host. He’s much less than that. Here is what he really is.
In summary, rather than MAGA, our Hitler wanna-be is doing everything he can to turn America into a backward banana republic, ruled by incompetent criminals and family members, and led by a ruthless, lying psychopath (Yes, Trump really is a psychopath. He flunks the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, which is used to diagnose the presence of psychopathy).
But the people most at fault are not the criminals, incompetents, and family members. The people most at fault are Trump’s followers, who despite all the evidence smacking them in the face, continually excuse his every act of evil.
As Trump himself bragged, they even would excuse him if he shot someone on 5th Ave.
Why?
In Hitler’s case, the Germans had been beaten during WWI, and were being punished financially by the allies. Germans, angrily licking their wounds, desperately needed two things: Scapegoats and a leader who would punish the scapegoats.
So along came Hilter who appealed to their fear, anger, and bigotry by promising to punish the scapegoats (Jews), and to make Germany great, again.
In America, the adult white population was resentful of the Mexicans, other people of color, foreigners, and the poor, who were “being given preference for everything” and who were going to be “running the country.”
So along came Trump, who promised to punish those minorities and aliens, who were being “given preference.”
He appealed to the pent-up bigotry of the “religious” whites, and now, despite his obvious failings, hatred has overcome reason, which has led to this incredible statistic:
An ABC News/Ipsos poll released Friday reports that 55 percent of respondents approve of Trump’s management of the public health crisis, while 43 percent disapprove.
The latest figures represent a boost in the president’s rating from the previous iteration of the survey, published one week ago, which showed only 43 percent approval for Trump and 54 percent disapproval.
And this brings us to the famous quote by H.L Mencken:
“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.
“Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
And now, the great masses of plain people, will suffer and suffer and suffer, because they have allowed their fears and hatreds to overcome their eyes, and ears, and common sense, and ignorantly follow the Pied Piper to their doom.
Gap Psychology describes the common desire to distance oneself from those “below” in any socio-economic ranking, and to come nearer those “above.” The socio-economic distance is referred to as “The Gap.”
Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics.
Implementation of Monetary Sovereignty and The Ten Steps To Prosperity can grow the economy and narrow the Gaps:
The president’s remarks amounted to a rebuke of governors’ recent pleas for greater federal intervention.
President Donald Trump on Thursday put the onus on governors to obtain the critical equipment their states need to fight the coronavirus pandemic, telling reporters that the federal government is “not a shipping clerk” for the potentially life-saving supplies.
Appearing at the daily press briefing of the White House coronavirus task force, the president defended his decision to invoke the Defense Production Act — which would allow the administration to direct U.S. industry to ramp up production of emergency medical provisions — without actually triggering the statute.
“We’re not a shipping clerk.”
“Governors are supposed to be doing a lot of this work, and they are doing a lot of this work,” Trump said.
“The Federal government is not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping. You know, we’re not a shipping clerk.”
The president’s remarks amounted to a rebuke of governors’ recent pleas for more robust federal intervention amid the rapidly spreading outbreak, which they warn will soon overwhelm local health care systems if hospital beds, face masks and other necessities are not soon furnished in significantly greater numbers.
Trump said Thursday the administration will “help out wherever we can,” but added that the acquisition of urgent supplies “is really for the local governments, governors and people in the state, depending on the way they divide it up. And they’ll do that, and they’re doing a very good job of it.”
But earlier Thursday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, the current epicenter of the outbreak in the U.S., exhorted the administration to help meet the demand for equipment.
Cuomo has specifically sounded the alarm over the lack of ventilators in states across the nation, warning that New York would require five or six times its current supply of the respiratory machines to treat the projected number of coronavirus patients.
“Every state is shopping for ventilators. We‘re shopping for ventilators. We literally have people in China shopping for ventilators, which is one of the largest manufacturers.”
“We’re going to need protective equipment in hospitals,” Cuomo said. “We‘re going to need ventilators. And that is something that a state can‘t do but the federal government can do.”
Remember those heartless words — “We’re not a shipping clerk” — as your friends, relatives, and fellow Americans sicken and die for lack of medical equipment.
Pressed by a reporter Thursday on the dire shortage of medical supplies and coronavirus testing, President Donald Trump deflected responsibility for the crisis and instead put the burden on governors.
Speaking at what’s become a daily White House press briefing on the coronavirus pandemic, Trump insisted that states should take the lead in supplying the badly needed medical equipment and protective items, despite the federal government’s vastly greater resources and capabilities.
President Trump said much of the responsibility to secure enough ventilators, masks and tests lies with governors rather than the federal government, as he delivered a press conference alongside members of the Coronavirus Task Force Thursday.
Mr. Trump has enabled the Defense Production Act, but says he won’t implement it until he needs to, despite criticism that production of medical equipment needs to be ramped up now.
NEW DELHI – President Donald Trump and White House officials downplayed coronavirus concerns Tuesday, describing the epidemic as “very well under control in our country” despite a sharp increase in cases globally and warnings of “severe” disruptions.
Speaking to reporters in India, where he was taking part in a state visit, Trump noted that few people have been diagnosed with the virus in the U.S. and claimed that the “whole situation will start working out.”
But markets tumbled hours later as health officials warned of a more extensive impact in the United States.
“Disruption to everyday life may be severe,” said Nancy Messonnier, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. Schools could be closed, public gatherings suspended and employees forced to work remotely, she said.
“This proposal brings desperately-needed resources to the global fight against coronavirus,” Schumer said in a statement. “Americans need to know that their government is prepared to handle the situation before coronavirus spreads to our communities. I urge the Congress to move quickly on this proposal. Time is of the essence.”
The Trump administration requested $2.5 billion Mondayto tackle the virus, an amount Democrats deemed insufficient. According to Schumer’s office, Congress appropriated $6 billion for the 2006 avian flu, and $7 billion for the H1N1 flu in 2009.
Testifying before a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azardefended the administration’s request, saying the amount was “appropriate, and if not, if it doesn’t fund it enough, we’ll come back to you and work with you.”
Donald Trump has asked Congress to speed emergency cheques to Americans, enlisted the military for hospitals and implored ordinary people to do their part by staying home to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
In a massive federal effort, the president’s proposed economic package alone could approach a trillion dollars, a rescue initiative not seen since the Great Recession.
He wants cheques sent to the public within two weeks and is urging Congress to pass the stimulus package in a matter of days.
As analysts warn the country is entering a recession, the government is grappling with an enormous political undertaking with echoes of the 2008 financial crisis.
At the Capitol on Tuesday, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell vowed the Senate would not adjourn until the work was done.
“Obviously, we need to act,” he said. “We’re not leaving town until we have constructed and passed another bill.”
He said the Senate will vote on a House-passed package of sick pay, emergency food and free testing, putting it back on track for Mr Trump’s signature — despite Republican objections.
Overnight, the White House sent legislators a 46 billion dollar emergency funding request to boost medical care for military service members and veterans, fund production of vaccines and medicines, build 13 quarantine centres at the southern border for migrants and make federal buildings safer, among other measures.
The Trump request also reverses cuts to the Centres for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health that Trump proposed in his February budget for next year and would create a 3 billion dollar fund for unanticipated needs.
Bigger than the 700 billion dollar 2008 bank bailout or the nearly 800 billion dollar 2009 recovery act, the White House proposal aims to provide a massive tax cut for wage-earners, 50 billion dollars for the airline industry and 250 billion dollars for small businesses.
“This is a very unique situation,” said Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin, exiting a private briefing of Senate Republicans. “We’ve put a proposal on that table that would attract a trillion dollars into the economy.”
Step 2. Federally funded Medicare — parts A, B & D, plus long-term care — for everyone. Sanders’ “Medicare for all” proposal has been estimated to cost $1.38 trillion per year. Other health policy experts have put the single-payer health plan price tag much higher, with price tags ranging from $2.4 trillion a year to $2.8 trillion a year.
Step 3. The cost of Social Security for all would depend on how many people receive it, and how much each person receives. Current SS costs about $1 trillion which is doled out to about 61 million people. There are about 212 million people over 21 in the U.S., so giving all of them the same SS amount would require about $3.5 trillion.
Then add in the remaining Steps and the total easily could exceed $7 trillion. Yet, the 10 Steps are needed to prevent/cure recessions and depressions while improving the lives of Americans. In “Trumpese,” the 10 Steps can “make America great, again.”
Two questions:
Can the federal government afford the Ten Steps?
Would implementation cause inflation?
1. Can the Monetarily Sovereign federal government afford $3 trillion – $7 trillion to give Americans prosperity?
Alan Greenspan: “A government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency.” Ben Bernanke: “The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.” St. Louis Federal Reserve: “As the sole manufacturer of dollars, whose debt is denominated in dollars, the U.S. government can never become insolvent, i.e., unable to pay its bills. In this sense, the government is not dependent on credit markets to remain operational.”
Perhaps, the real question should be: Can the private sector (you and me) afford to continue paying trillions, and still not receive what the Ten Steps could offer?
Today, the private sector pays or does without. That is how these services are funded. The federal government, being Monetarily Sovereign, has unlimited financial resources. The private sector does not. Question answered.
Why then doesn’t Congress budget spending the money?
I suspect the primary answer is: They want to add just enough dollars to prevent a depression, which would tempt voters to throw them out of their cushy jobs — but still stick the public with a mild recession. In short, Gap Psychology rules.
(Gap Psychology is the desire to distance oneself from those considered “below” you in any socioeconomic ranking, and to come closer to those above.)
The richer do not want the less rich to prosper. They resent aid to poorer people who are felt to be “lazy takers.” It is Gap Psychology that demands those receiving aid to seek employment, though there is no financial reason for this.
In Summary: We are in a perilous situation that can lead to many deaths and a financial disaster, perhaps a full-fledged, long-lasting depression.
Both the health and the financial problems can be cured with ample inputs of money, which the federal government can provide at no cost to anyone.
Which political party will be remembered as the “too-little, too-late party”?
For no good reasons, the government drags its feet. With every passing day of inaction or inadequate action, more people will suffer. Who is at fault?
Only the rich will thrive. And that seems to be the point.
Gap Psychology describes the common desire to distance oneself from those “below” in any socio-economic ranking, and to come nearer those “above.” The socio-economic distance is referred to as “The Gap.”
Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics.
Implementation of Monetary Sovereignty and The Ten Steps To Prosperity can grow the economy and narrow the Gaps:
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 