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.
Better to build a useless Wall against much-needed Mexican immigrants (See: Mulvaney says US ‘desperate’ for legal immigrants to boost economy) than to fight a deadly disease, according to Donald “We’re not a shipping clerk” Trump.
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.
This is Step 2. of the Ten Steps to Prosperity: Federally funded Medicare — parts A, B & D, plus long-term care — for everyone
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.
Third, Trump should be turned out of office and the conservative movement should be comprehensively defeated politically.
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.
Ignorance has its penalties
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty
Twitter: @rodgermitchell
Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
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THE SOLE PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENT IS TO IMPROVE AND PROTECT THE LIVES OF THE PEOPLE.
The most important problems in economics involve:
- Monetary Sovereignty describes money creation and destruction.
- 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:
Ten Steps To Prosperity:
2. Federally funded Medicare — parts A, B & D, plus long-term care — for everyone
3. Provide a monthly economic bonus to every man, woman and child in America (similar to social security for all)
4. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone
5. Salary for attending school
6. Eliminate federal taxes on business
7. Increase the standard income tax deduction, annually.
8. Tax the very rich (the “.1%”) more, with higher progressive tax rates on all forms of income.
9. Federal ownership of all banks
10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99.9%
The Ten Steps will grow the economy and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.
MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY
