"Millions Of Americans Are About To Find Out How Badly Trump & The GOP Have Screwed Them Over"
"Millions of Americans Are About To Find Out How badly Trump And The GOP Have Screwed Them Over," Daily Kos, July 7, 2020. By Dartagnan. - Edited.
Robert Reich, writing for 'The Guardian,' weighs in on the fairy tale that our country is somehow “roaring back,” as Donald Trump characterized it when he hawked a report last week based on misleading unemployment statistics, numbers which were already woefully out of date at the time they were released: The US economy isn’t roaring back. Just over half of Americans have jobs now, the lowest figure in more than 70 years.
What’s roaring back is Covid-19. Until it’s tamed, the American economy doesn’t stand a chance. As former Labor Secretary Reich notes, “The uptick in jobs in June was due almost entirely to the hasty reopening, which is now being reversed.” Last month, many businesses rehired previously laid-off employees based on cues they received from state governors assuring them the crisis had passed, that it was “time to reopen.” Those governors and Republicans in their legislatures, in turn, took their cues from a political imperative pushed relentlessly by the White House.
But, as most of these governors well knew, that wasn’t the reality at all. It was simply a story spun out of thin air by an administration growing increasingly desperate about its re-election chances; a story to mollify a restless public grown increasingly frustrated at the endless lockdowns; a story to provide temporary cover for Republicans at the state and federal level who had absolutely no clue how to handle this pandemic. But mostly it was a story to satisfy their donors, who were seeing their corporate profits evaporate and taking it out on their paid stooges in Congress and the states. And the GOP jumped to the task, bailing out businesses as much as they possibly could with hundreds of billions of dollars, without ever telling the American public where those funds were actually going (Hint: it was to their donors). But it wasn’t done out of any concern for American workers. If it had been, the GOP would have come up with a game plan that didn’t simply involve waving some fairy dust. [Editor’s note: The administration did later decide to reveal some information about recipients of the funds after public pressure.]
In effect this was all an untested medical experiment on a grand scale, collectively embraced by the GOP, with ordinary Americans as its unwitting subjects. The reopening push was not based on any scientific or medical planning to address the pandemic, but on wholly on “feel-good” politics designed to satisfy their donors for a few months. After that charade had done its work–zero. So when those June unemployment numbers trumpeted by Trump and his GOP-state media last Thursday were actually compiled, reported Covid-19 cases in this country were averaging 25,000 daily, because all those reopenings in late May were only beginning to register a corresponding spike in infections. Since that report, cases have now jumped drastically to an average of 55,000 per day or more, forcing many states that had prematurely reopened to reverse themselves, shutting down businesses once again in a desperate attempt to prevent the virus from spiraling out of control and overwhelming their state’s medical capabilities.
Last week, NIAID Director Anthony Fauci warned that we were likely to see 100,000 cases of new infections every day, thanks to inadequate efforts to contain the virus, and thanks to these misguided reopenings.
Republican state legislators from TX to AZ, to WI, where Covid-19 cases are now shooting through the roof, all rode the “reopening” bandwagon for months while pounding their chests on their Facebook pages about their “patriotism,” attending rallies in support of gun-toting Neo-Nazi militias, and bringing frivolous lawsuits to force businesses to reopen. In most Republican-led states (and some Democratic-run ones as well), the GOP’s blind push and often violent agitation to force accelerated reopenings caused several states to issue blanket, credulous edicts to reopen long before it was safe to do so. But in less than a week since those new job numbers were released, instead of a nation “roaring back” we are now witnessing an embarrassing and hasty retreat by the GOP from everything they and Trump said and did. Meanwhile, the pandemic hasn’t gone anywhere in the last 4 months. It still hangs around, strong as ever, like a voracious beast, ready to devour anyone foolish enough to try to defy it.
All of those efforts are proving to be disastrous: AZ Gov. Doug Ducey (R), initially refused to order masks and even barred local officials from doing so. This week he closed all gyms, bars and movie theaters in the state. The governors of FL, TX and CA have also reimposed restrictions. And so on across America. A vast re-closing is under way, as haphazard as was the reopening. In the biggest public health emergency in US history, in which nearly 130,000 have already lost their lives, still no one is in charge.
You’d think some Republicans would have the decency to apologize. But none has, to date. Meanwhile, as a result of Republican dithering and inaction, millions of Americans are now finding themselves teetering on the edge of a financial abyss, thanks to the complete lack of a coherent national response to this crisis by this president, and thanks to Republican officials at all levels who abetted him...
More, https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/millions-of-americans-are-about-to-find-out-how-badly-trump-and-the-gop-have-screwed-them-over/
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