Redneck – Lamb of God
Stressed Out – twenty one pilots
Cups – Anna Kendrick
Mar 22 2020
House
Mar 22 2020
The Breakfast Club (electoral alienation)
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
AP’s Today in History for March 22nd
Britain enacts the Stamp Act on its American colonies; The ‘Garbage Barge’; Skater Tara Lipinski reaches the record books; The Beatles release ‘Please Please Me’; Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber born.
Breakfast Tune So Long, It’s Been Good to Know You — COVID-19 Parody by Leela Grace
Something to think about, Breakfast News & Blogs below
Sara Nelson American Association of Flight Attendants Bernie Blackout Round Table
Start at 0:59:08
Saru Jayaraman, One Fair Wage vs National Restaurant Assoc. Bernie Blackout Round Table
Start at 1:16:06
Connecticut governor moves primary from April 28 to June 2
Connecticut’s change makes it mathematically impossible for Joe Biden to clinch the nomination before May.
AP
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Connecticut has decided to move its presidential primary to a later date to help stop the spread of the coronavirus.
Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont announced on Twitter the April 28 primary will now be held June 2. Connecticut is the latest state to postpone primary elections amid the global pandemic. Maryland, another state that was part of the April 28 primary, dubbed the “Acela Primary” or “I-95 Primary,” also moved its primary to June 2.
The other states to postpone are Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana and Ohio.
Merrill said moving the primary date is a “good first step” toward insuring Connecticut voters can have a say in the selection of presidential candidates while ensuring they’re safe at the polls. She said it will also give local election officials more time to prepare.
…
- Covid-19: A Best-Case Scenario
Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
- It’s Not Over
BEN SPIELBERG
Something to think about over coffee prozac
Bernie Sanders Is Trying to Rescue America’s Frail Democracy
THOMAS PIKETTY, JACOBIN
The Democratic Party elite insists nothing can be done to mobilize working-class nonvoters. By challenging their cynicism, Bernie Sanders is rendering a profound service to American democracy.
Let it be said at once: the treatment received by Bernie Sanders in the leading media in the United States and in Europe is unjust and dangerous. Everywhere on the main networks and the large daily papers we read that Sanders is an “extremist” and that only a “centrist” candidate like Biden could triumph over Trump. This biased and somewhat unscrupulous treatment is particularly regrettable when a closer examination of the facts actually suggests that only a full-scale reorientation of the type proposed by Sanders would eventually rid American democracy of the inegalitarian practices which undermine it and deal with the electoral disaffection of the working classes.
…
Let’s begin with the program. To say emphatically, as Sanders does, that a public, universal health insurance would enable the American population to be cared for more efficiently and more cheaply than the present private and extremely unequal system is not an “extremist” statement. It is on the contrary a declaration, perfectly well-documented by many research studies and international comparisons. In these difficult times when everyone deplores the rise of “fake news,” it is right and proper for some candidates to rely on established facts and not resort to obscure language and complex tactics.
Similarly, Sanders is right when he proposes large-scale public investment in favor of education and public universities. Historically the prosperity of the United States has relied in the twentieth century on the educational advance of the country over Europe and on a degree of equality in this field, and definitely not on the sacralisation of inequality and the unlimited accumulation of fortunes which Reagan wished to impose as an alternative model in the 1980s. The failure of this Reagan-style rupture is patent today with the growth of national income per capita being halved and an unprecedented rise in inequality. Sanders simply proposed a return to the sources of the country’s model for development: a very wide diffusion of education.
Sanders also proposes a considerable rise in the level of the minimum wage (a policy in which the United States were for a long time the world leaders) and to learn from the experiences in co-management and voting rights for employees on the Boards of Directors of firms implemented successfully in Germany and in Sweden for decades. Generally speaking, Sanders’ proposals show him to be a pragmatic social-democrat endeavouring to make the most of the experiences available and in no way a ‘radical’. And when he chooses to go further than European social democracy, for example with his proposal for a federal wealth tax rising to 8% per annum on multi-billionaires, this corresponds to the reality of the excessive concentration of wealth in the United States and the fiscal and administrative capacities of the American federal state, which has already been demonstrated historically.
Now, let’s deal with the question of opinion polls. The problem of the repeated assertions that Biden would be better placed to beat Trump is that they have no objective factual basis. If we examine the existing data such as those compiled by RealClearPolitics.com, it is clear in all the national opinion polls that Sanders would beat Trump with the same differential as Biden. These polls are of course premature, but they are just as much for Biden as for Sanders. In several key States, we find that Sanders would come out ahead of Trump, for example in Pennsylvania and in Wisconsin.
If we analyse the surveys on the primaries which have just taken place, it appears clearly that Sanders mobilises the working-class electorate more than Biden. It is true that the latter attracts a considerable share of the Black vote, an inheritance of the Obama-Biden ticket. But Sanders mobilises the vast majority of the Latino vote and crushes Biden amongst the 18-29 years age group, as he does in the 30-44 years group. Above all, all the polls indicate that Sanders has the best scores amongst the underprivileged (annual incomes below 50,000$, no higher education qualification), whereas Biden, on the contrary, has the best scores amongst the most privileged (annual incomes above 100,000$, higher education diploma), whether it be white voters or those from minority backgrounds, independent of age.
Now it so happens that the highest potential for mobilization is among the most underprivileged social categories. Generally speaking, voter turnout has always been relatively low in the United States: just barely above 50 percent, whereas it has long been between 70-80 percent in France and in the United Kingdom, before falling recently. If we examine things in greater detail, we also find that on the other side of the Atlantic, there is a structurally lower participation amongst the poorest half of the voters, with a difference in the region of 15-20 percent with the richest half (a difference which has also begun to be visible in Europe since the 1990s, even if it remains less marked).
…
To put it clearly: this electoral alienation of the American working classes is so long-standing that it will certainly not be reversed in one day. But what else can we do to deal with it than to undertake a far-reaching reorientation of the election program of the Democratic Party and to discuss these ideas openly in national campaigns? The cynical, and unfortunately very commonplace vision among the Democratic elites, that nothing can be done to mobilize further the working-class vote, is extremely dangerous. In the last resort, this cynicism weakens the legitimacy of the democratic electoral system itself.
Mar 22 2020
Pondering the Pundits: Sunday Preview Edition
Pondering the Pundits: Sunday Preview Edition” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
On Sunday mornings we present a preview of the guests on the morning talk shows so you can choose which ones to watch or some do something more worth your time on a Sunday morning.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
The Sunday Talking Heads:
This Week with George Stephanopolis: The guests on Sunday’s “This Week” are: FEMA Administrator Peter Gaynor; Gov. Phil Murphy (D-NJ); and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI).
ABC News Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton; former Trump Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Adviser Tom Bossert; and former Trump Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan join to discuss the pandemic and its worldwide effects.
The roundtable guests are: Former Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ); and former Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D-Chicago).
Face the Nation: Host Margaret Brennan’s guests are: Former FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb; Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases; and American Hospitals association CEO Richard J. Pollack; FedX CEO Frederick W. Smith; and former National Economic Council director Gary Cohen.
Meet the Press with Chuck Todd: The guests on this week’s “MTP” are: Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD); New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio; and Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency Peter Gaynor
State of the Union with Jake Tapper: Mr. Tapper’s guests are: Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency Peter Gaynor; Gov. J. B. Pritzker (D-IL); and Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).
His panel guests are: Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-FL); Lanhee J. Chen, Republican strategist; Dr. Vivek Murthy, former US Surgeon General; and Dr. Jen Lee, Virginia Medicaid Director
Mar 21 2020
Cut His Mike
Donald Trump’s life blood is the news media, especially cable news, since he doesn’t read. Since he took residence in the people’s house, he has manipulated the them to send his message to the followers of his cult and campaign for his reelection. When some of the cable news outlets stopped televising his sporadic lie fest press conferences with Sarah Huckleberry Sanders, she quit and he just stopped giving them. Now, with everything being shut down and mass gatherings banned due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump has turned the daily briefings at the White House with his “task force” on the pandemic into his own campaign rallies to stoke his frail ego, spewing lies and misinformation.
At yesterday’s pressed he disputed his own infectious disease expert, Dr. Antony Fauci, after a reporter asked about the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat patients infected with the virus.
Fauci: That evidence is anecdotal evidence. As the president mentioned yesterday, we are trying to strike a balance between making something that has potential of an effect available, at the same time we do it under protocol that would give us the information to determine if it is truly saving effective. But the information is anecdotal, it was not done in a clinical trial, so we cannot make a definitive statement about it.
Trump: Without saying too much, I am probably more of a fan of that than may be than anybody. But I am a big fan. We will see what happens. We understand what the doctor says is 100% correct, certainly. But I have seen things that are impressive. We will know soon. We will see. Including safety. But when you talk about safely, this has been prescribed for many years for people to combat malaria, which was a big problem. It is very effective. It is a strong drug. We will see…look, it may work, it may not work. I agree with the doctor. It may not work. But I feel good about it. That is all it is, just a feeling. You know, I am a smart guy. I feel good about it. We will see soon enough. We have big samples of people, if you look at the people. There are people in big trouble. This is not a drug that obviously I think I can speak for a lot of, from a lot of experience going because it has been out there for over 20 years. So it is not a drug that you have a huge amount of danger with. It is not a brand-new drug just created that may have a monumental effect, like kill you. We will know very soon. The FDA is working hard to get out. Right now in terms of malaria, if you want that you can get a prescription. By the way, it is very effective. It works. I have a feeling—I am not being optimistic or pessimistic. I think we should give it a try. There has been some interesting things that are happening. Some very good things. Let’s see what happens. We have nothing to lose. You know that expression? What the hell do you have to lose?
“What the hell do you have to lose?” How about your life???
This is not the first time that Trump has spouted misinformation about this virus, its spread and its treatment. It also dangerous.
Hydroxychloroquine is a class of drugs used to treat and prevent malaria, a tropical disease spread by mosquitoes. It is also used to treat discoid or systemic lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis in patients whose symptoms have not improved with other treatments. While Trump thinks he a medical doctor now and say that the drug is safe, it’s not. Beside the obnoxious side effects of headaches, dizziness, loss of appetite, nausea, diarrhea, stomach pain, vomiting, and skin rashes, it also has these nasty side effects that can be fatal: heart arrhythmias (irregular heart beat) and liver failure. It can also damage the retina of the eye, although that only happens with long term use. It also doesn’t mix well with other drugs like insulin, digoxin (a drug that regulates heart irregularities) and drugs that control seizures.
Hydroxychloriquine is far from an innocuous, or safe, drug.
From our favorite uncle, Charlie Pierce
You know, he’s a smart guy who has feelings so what do you have to lose? This, of course, just as well could be used to defend such therapeutic regimes as bleeding, boring for the simples, and voodoo. It is time for networks to stop televising the daily briefings from the Coronavirus SuperFriends live. They are vehicles for dangerous disinformation and for the president*’s re-election campaign. You get the sense that he’s getting juiced for them now that he can’t hold his mass rallies any more. But, mainly, people are told things at these briefings that at worst are perilously untrue. (Has he actually activated the Defense Production Act? Nobody seems sure.) And at best they provide false comfort for a nervous nation, which is what Alexander rightly was trying to get at when he served up that softball about frightened Americans. The president* responded by hitting himself repeatedly over the head with his bat. Somebody get the hook.
It’s time that cable news cuts his mike.
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow reviewed the empty promises and overpromises Donald Trump has made about the federal response to the coronavirus crisis and points out that his repeated lies and misinformation are not harmless when the stakes are as high as they are with this epidemic, and the media should consider not airing his press conferences live.
Maddow brought up an exchange from that briefing about a malaria drug that the president talked up while Dr. Anthony Fauci was taking a far more cautious tone about it.
“The president loves saying things like, you know, ‘There’s a drug we’ve got, it’s very effective. It approved already. Everybody is going to get it.’ He loves saying things like that because that would be a lovely thing to be able to tell people,” she continued, “unless, of course, that’s not true, and telling people a fairy tale like that is cruel and harmful and needlessly diverting and wildly irresponsible from anyone in any leadership role. It’s actually wildly responsible if someone said that to you from a barstool if any of us could go to bars anymore, but to get from the presidential podium?” [..]
“If it were up to me, and it’s not, I would stop putting those briefings on live TV. Not out of spite, but because it’s misformation. If the president does end up saying anything true, you can run it as tape. But if he keeps lying like he has been every day on stuff this important, all of us should stop broadcasting it. Honestly, it’s going to cost lives,” she concluded.
Maddow brought up a few more claims made by the president before saying that the president’s remarks could be genuinely harmful
In this time of crisis, the country will be better served if the media just reports the information that is accurate and factual. The best way to do that is cut Trump’s mike.
Mar 21 2020
The Breakfast Club (Freak Show)
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Dr. Martlin Luther King, Jr. begins march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama; the Sharkville massacre in South Africa occurs; Wrongly incarcerated Randall Dale Adams is released from prison; Musician Johann Bach born.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat.
Mar 21 2020
In Memoriam: Kenny Rogers (August 21, 1938 – March 20, 2020)
“You gotta know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ’em.”
The Gambler has folded for the last time.
Kenny Rogers, the Grammy award-winning country music icon, has died aged 81.
Rogers “passed away peacefully at home from natural causes under the care of hospice and surrounded by his family,” according to a statement by representative Keith Hagan. [..]
Rogers topped the charts during the 1970s and 1980s, and won three Grammy awards. He was best known for his hit song The Gambler, released in 1978.
He went on to star in TV movies based on The Gambler and other songs. Rogers worked for some 60 years before retiring from touring in 2017 aged 79. Despite his crossover success, he always preferred to be thought of as a country singer.
Mar 20 2020
Sometimes, you’re just plain wrong.
You know, if Megan McArdle weren’t so butt hole ignorant about mostly everything except ass kissing for success and working your network as opposed to, you know, actually knowing something and contributing value instead of extracting rent because you were to the manor born, and had just shut up about how wrong she was or admitted it without claiming that somehow, by the magic of meritocracy, our current Pandemic and the resulting Economic chaos validated the FORTY YEARS OF FAILURE she and the people she’s defending have delivered because Doctors?
I know Doctors. Some have been better than others, no more than a handful or two have actively tried to kill me that I’m aware of, and I’m not dead yet. All of them had at least 8 years of training at our finest institutions, one was a highly respected Department Head. He tried to poison me with Potassium despite the fact I was specifically being treated for an over sufficiency (if you have not done the research you can tolerate low Potassium for a time but the other side not so much).
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not down on Doctors. I’m a Medical Miracle that only exists because of Doctors, but that is not who runs Hospitals. No, it is not highly trained Physicians bound by the Hippocratic Oath, it’s squads of cubicle dwelling MBAs from Prager U or some similarly esteemed establishment who work for the Mega-Hospital Corporations or even worse, Health Insurance.
Their job is not to help you get better. It’s to make sure you die cheaply.
But she didn’t do that. I normally don’t do “call outs” but Megan, you deserve one for this piece of self-satisfied privileged crap.
When it comes to the coronavirus, we elites got it wrong. So did you populists.
By Megan McArdle, Washington Post
March 20, 2020
Disaster plans that assumed, quite reasonably, that everything would be normal somewhere have now fallen to pieces. So have many of the just-in-time supply chains that assumed goods would always flow from country to country with ease. Including those that provide us with critical goods such as pharmaceuticals and surgical masks.
So let me open by saying this to the populists who opposed me and my fellow liberalizers: You had a point.
Yup. Stop right there. Thank you for coming to see the error of your ways and apologizing.
And for those of you taking notes, that’s how you do it if you ever have to. I was mistaken (details superfluous unless you are looking to continue the dispute after admitting defeat). You were right. I was wrong. I have changed my mind.
Or you can just shut up which is what I usually do, but no, we will explain in detail how we were wrong (I told you, superfluous) and why it doesn’t matter because you were wrong too and Doctors.
During a crisis, geography and nationality still matter far more than we acknowledged, and that means we need to think strategically about maintaining essential production capacity.
Travel bans can at least slow epidemics, if not stop them. That time they buy can be very valuable. We were silly to keep insisting that bans wouldn’t work, or to reflexively call them racist.
Exposure to markets hasn’t made China noticeably more free or democratic, our grateful junior partner in a post-conflict world. Witness the fact that the Chinese government now seems to be trying to blame this disease on us, rather than admitting that the plague originated in Wuhan and is now rocketing around the world due to China’s own failure to effectively contain it early on, and the Chinese Communist Party’s unfortunate success at concealing the danger from other countries until covid-19 had spread well beyond their borders.
I say this because I know there is nothing more maddening than being right about something, and then, when reality vindicates you, seeing your opponents carry on without admitting that, well, you were right, and we were wrong.
Still a mistake, but here is where we go off the rails. Enter the Entitlement Elite Whine about how they are disrespected because of their constant failures.
But I also say this because I want to point out something else: About other things, we were right, and you were wrong.
The populist insistence that experts are inherently suspicious, part of a class conspiracy against the people, contains a grain of truth: Cosmopolitan professionals do have a class interest, as all groups do, and their “disinterested” technocratic rules and assessments have a suspicious tendency to preserve their own privileges. Too, since the election of Donald Trump, they have been too willing to violate their own prior standards when criticizing him, even as they complain about his norm violations.
But there is another truth, which is that modern crises, whether they be wars or pandemics, require highly trained experts and competent bureaucracies. And so they require more than a president who can ignore cosmopolitan pieties; they require a president who knows which technocrats to trust, who builds an organization where their talents can be rapidly and effectively deployed, and who listens when these experts tell him something he doesn’t want to hear. If he is too paranoid and angry at imagined elite conspiracies to do those things, then when the crisis arrives, he will be deaf to the truth, blind to the disaster that is unfolding under his aegis and helpless to address it effectively.
So, Doctors. And the Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio is a “Populist” therefore “Popular” Policies (supported by vast super majorities) bad and, frankly, Small D “democratic” Government bad. Aristocracy Forever!
I recommend burnt hair and dog vomit with that.
Mar 20 2020
Dow Be Down Down
The story you are about to read is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the ignorant.
U.S. markets wrap up worst week since the 2008 financial crisis
By Thomas Heath and Taylor Telford, Washington Post
March 20, 2020
U.S. markets finished one of their all-time messy weeks Friday, tumbling more than 10 percent from where they began Monday to wrap up their worst weekly finish since the 2008 financial crisis. Stocks were wrenched all week in hourly spasms as investors try to fathom where the coronavirus will eventually leave the U.S. economy.
The craziness ran right up to the closing bell, as the Standard & Poor’s 500 index and Dow Jones industrial average plunged more than 3 percent minutes after the World Health Organization warned that global health systems were “collapsing” under the coronavirus.
The Dow shed 925 points, more than 4.6 percent, to close a 19,173 — erasing all Trump-era gains. The S&P finished at 2,305, down 4.3 percent, while the tech-centric Nasdaq composite slid 3.8 percent to close at 6,880.
Investors remain in the same fog they’ve inhabited since markets began their swift drop in February, after the S&P 500 and Dow hit all-time highs. All three indexes are now in a bear market decline of at least 20 percent from their top. The Dow and S&P have erased more than 30 percent in a month.
“We had years of low volatility and rising markets, and this virus crisis made it call come to an end at once,” said Kathy Jones, chief fixed income strategist at the Schwab Center for Financial Research. “There is no endpoint in sight and that’s causing a degree of panic because people are saying, ‘I just need to hold some cash.’ There will be more turmoil, but we flushed out a lot of the people who were leveraged. A lot of good things are happening to restore liquidity and order to markets.”
…
Markets lurched all week, but nothing signified the chaos like oil prices, which dropped below $20 a barrel on Friday — a mark not seen in years. Oil prices are so low that the industry may go through a generational restructuring. Prices need to be at least in the $50 barrel range for companies and producing states to make a profit.Oil prices saw their worst and best percentage changes in back-to-back days Wednesday and Thursday as the Saudi-Russian feud resets markets. The federal government said it might jump in, ordering millions of barrels of oil purchases for the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help soak up excess supply and protect prices.
Governments and central banks have unleashed a torrent of measures to relieve the economic stranglehold of the coronavirus. But those moves have yet to calm investors and institutions that have been unloading assets from stocks to bonds to gold in order to meet cash obligations.
“People feel like a battered boxer, unsure of how to respond to a flurry economic punches,” said Sam Stovall of CFRA Research. “The good news out of this bad news is the volatility looks like it is coming to a crescendo. Only two other periods in the past half-century have seen a high level of volatility.
Ok ek, how long have you been sitting on that one?
The important thing about my jokes is they amuse me.
Mar 20 2020
Pondering the Pundits
Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Paul Krugman: 3 Rules for the Trump Pandemic
One: Don’t trust the president.
So Donald Trump is now calling Covid-19 the “Chinese virus.” Of course he is: Racism and blaming other people for his own failures are the defining features of his presidency. But if we’re going to give it a nickname, much better to refer to it as the “Trump pandemic.”
True, the virus didn’t originate here. But the U.S. response to the threat has been catastrophically slow and inadequate, and the buck stops with Trump, who minimized the threat and discouraged action until just a few days ago. [..]
Why did Trump and his team deny and delay? All the evidence suggests that he didn’t want to do or say anything that might drive down stock prices, which he seems to regard as the key measure of his success. That’s presumably why as late as Feb. 25 Larry Kudlow, the administration’s chief economist, declared that the U.S. had “contained” the coronavirus, and that the economy was “holding up nicely.”
Well, that was a bad bet. Since then, the stock market has more or less given up all its gains under the Trump presidency. More important, the economy is clearly in free-fall. So what should we do now?
Michelle Goldberg: Of Course Trump Deserves Blame for the Coronavirus Crisis
There’s no moving forward without understanding what’s going wrong.
It can become tedious to dwell on the fact that the president is a dangerous and ignorant narcissist who has utterly failed as an executive, leaving state governments on their own to confront a generational cataclysm. But no one should ever forget it.
Soon, even if the pandemic is still raging, there will be an election, and the public will be asked to render a verdict on Trump’s leadership. Being clear that people are suffering and dying needlessly because the president can’t do his job isn’t looking backward. It’s the only way to move forward.
Jamelle Bouie: The Era of Small Government Is Over
We’re going to have to reach much deeper than stimulus and bailouts into the way we conduct business with each other.
To stop the spread of the coronavirus, state and local governments have shut down as much of communal life as possible. People are also social distancing, staying out of public spaces to slow transmission of the disease. But this has destroyed demand for goods and services, putting the United States on the path to a recession that could easily become an outright depression.
Washington is, finally, working toward a response. But even the most ambitious proposals are nowhere near powerful enough to actually stop the coronavirus from destroying the economy. To do that, policymakers have to go beyond stimulus or bailouts for select industries. They have to take responsibility for economic life on a scale not seen since the New Deal.
Ted Lieu: Trump is stoking xenophobic panic in a time of crisis
I genuinely want President Trump to succeed in stopping the spread of the novel coronavirus, and will do everything I can to help him in this effort. At stake are the lives of my elderly parents, my family, my constituents and many Americans. But Trump’s repeated insistence on calling coronavirus the “Chinese virus” is more than just xenophobic; it causes harm both to Asian Americans and to the White House’s response to this life-threatening pandemic. I served on active duty in the U.S. military to defend the right of any American to make politically incorrect statements, but as a public figure, I cannot stand idly by while the president uses his pulpit to exacerbate xenophobia in a time of crisis. [..]
Trump’s rhetoric adds fuel to the growing fire of hatred being misdirected at Asian Americans. The fact that he is the president of the United States, who is responsible for the well-being of all Americans, only makes his rhetoric even more disturbing. The leaders of both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization have warned that we should not use terms such as “Chinese virus.” The novel coronavirus already has an official name, SARS-CoV-2, and an unofficial name, covid-19. Injecting an ethnic qualifier to the virus is unnecessary and can stigmatize Asian Americans.
Eugene Robinson: How to create togetherness without actually being together
In a crisis, our natural reaction is to do something, anything. What makes the covid-19 crisis so difficult, and so unsettling, is that we’re being asked to do nothing.
The solution, scientists tell us, is not action but inaction: Stay home. Don’t visit with your neighbors, or embrace your friends if you pass them on the sidewalk, or even shake hands. Interact with your co-workers via Slack or Skype or some other software that can only simulate something we seem to yearn to be part of at the most fundamental level: a community engaged in a common purpose.
Yet this artificial and unnatural isolation works to defeat the enemy only if we all do it in concert, and if we can maintain these conditions over an extended period of time. To do that, we must somehow create togetherness without actually being together.
Catherine Rampell: No, the airlines do not need a bailout
A lot of American companies deserve and require a taxpayer bailout right now in order to survive, and to prevent a prolonged recession or even depression.
The airlines are not among them.
President Trump has declared that airlines and other marquee companies in the travel industry (cruise lines, hotels) are “prime candidates” for a federal rescue — whether it’s called a “bailout” or perhaps a euphemistic “freedom payment.”
Airlines probably seem like sympathetic targets for massive government help — especially in light of more morally repugnant taxpayer rescues from recent history. We were willing to bail out Wall Street banks a decade ago, saving the arsonists from the fire they themselves had lit; shouldn’t we do the same for an industry victimized by a global pandemic it played zero role in creating?
But that’s not the right framework for thinking about whether a taxpayer bailout is required, or even desirable. Rather, the relevant questions are: (1) Is the failure of any of these individual businesses likely to spill over to the rest of the economy? (2) Are there more effective ways to resolve a company’s financial problems than a taxpayer-funded bailout?
For airlines, the answers are no and yes, respectively.
Mar 20 2020