Monday, January 25, 2021

Pathocrats Against Covid Cash Relief

 The one factoid that gives me the faintest glimmer of hope that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will do the right thing and not make a filibuster-protecting deal with Mitch McConnell is that the former is up for re-election next year. Fear for his own political hide is the only antidote to his life-long disease of slavish fealty to Wall Street. The wrath of New York voters is the only thing that can or will ultimately nudge Schumer in a direction more favorable to the masses of American people who already were immiserated by 40 years of bipartisan neoliberal austerity before the Covid-9 pandemic delivered the coup de grace.

Chatter about a primary challenge to Schumer, possibly by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. only adds frosting to the hope-cake.

But, but, but...  Enter the useful idiot/bad cop of the ultra-slim new Democratic senate majority, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who won't have to face the voters again until 2024. He, not Schumer,  is actually now the most powerful Democrat in the upper body of  Congress, because he wields the power to stymie the so-called nuclear option that the Dems can use to ram through a new pandemic relief package without one single Republican vote. He, along with McConnell, wants to retain the filibuster to ensure that the Senate doesn't become "just another House of Representatives."

Manchin is especially opposed to sending $1400 in new direct cash aid to Americans. Before his party won those two Georgia seats earlier this month, he opposed ending the filibuster because doing so, he said, "would blow up the Senate."

The maintenance of this arcane institution inhabited mainly by millionaires is more important to Joe Manchin than the care and maintenance of the 330 million citizens of America.

To take the cruel sting off the sadism of Manchin's thinking, other useful idiots of the plutocracy are only too glad to lend their own expertise to Austerity In the Time of Plague. Economist Larry Summers, chief architect of the Clinton-era deregulation of the finance system that led directly to the meltdown of 2008 - but who nonetheless remains a respected "expert" and serves as an informal but powerful adviser to President Joe Biden, preposterously warns that direct cash aid to struggling people would "overheat the economy" in tandem with the tragic possibility of blowing up the Senate. What he really means is that billionaires would start to sweat profusely at the prospect of poor people pocketing the equivalent of a car payment, almost a whole month's rent, or a pile of paid heating oil receipts.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and other centrist pundits parroted the neoliberal talking point that direct cash aid would come at the expense of the unemployed - who are conveniently counted in statistics only when they have lost a job or been laid off fairly recently and/or continue to actively look for work. The non-working or the disqualified working poor, who include retirees on Social Security, the disabled, and underpaid, part-time, gig and otherwise precarious workers, are simply not counted in this manufactured, divide-and-conquer category of the "deserving unemployed." They are deemed disposable elements of society, because they are either unwilling or unable to sufficiently boost the profits of the owning class through their labor.

Joe Manchin is incensed at legislation calling for a new round of $1400 checks, sputtering that not only would such bare-bones cash assistance "blow up the Senate," it would even have Franklin Roosevelt himself spinning in his grave.

“I don’t ever remember F.D.R. recommending sending a damn penny to a human being. He gave ’em a job and gave ’em a paycheck. Can’t we start some infrastructure program to help people, get ’em back on their feet?” he seethed.

Manchin ignores the fact that there was no pandemic during the Great Depression, and that Congress was just recently and physically stormed (if not quite blown up) by a mob, at least some of whom had lost businesses and other income as the direct result of the relief-absent pandemic lockdowns imposed by state and local governments.

Perhaps the most ridiculous argument against the direct cash aid is the accusation that people don't even need the money. They'd only selfishly save it, the narrative goes, instead of "stimulating" the economy with it.  Plus, even though they might need the cash now, they might not need it in another couple of months. So says "moderate" Republican multimillionaire Senator Susan Collins (not up for re-election until 2026) who wants to take a wait and see approach as to whether people will actually follow through on their impolite threats to starve to death.

The thought of desperate people holding on to part of their ill-gotten relief money until the next time that the kid needs a doctor, or an unexpectedly high utility bill arrives in the mail, is sending the reps of the obscenely wealthy into their own epidemic of conniption fits. The way these pundits and politicians moan and groan about it, there are millions of potential recipients out there who already are so flush with cash they won't know what to do with these sudden windfalls. Some of these unsuspecting and unwilling recipients will even be made to feel too guilty about getting money that they neither want nor need!

The way the austerian concern trolls insanely spin it, millions of people finally getting enough to eat for the first time in months will not send another group of people back to work. Therefore, we might as well let them starve if they can't serve capitalism. Never mind that the checks would not even go to people earning six figure incomes.

When it comes to the wealth-hoarding plutocratic class, this projection of their own greed onto hordes of straw-men is all they've got. Their arguments strain credulity, even among the normally credulous.

"I think those checks are an abomination," the conservative American Enterprise Institute's Michael Strain hysterically kvetched to the New York Times.

You may remember Michael Strain as the pathocrat who once was given a platform by the Times's David Brooks to suggest that if people are poor and they have no money and no job, then they should just hop on a bus and move to wherever the nonexistent jobs are. And then employers should be allowed to pay them sub-minimum wages until they can "prove themselves." And if sub-minimum wage isn't enough to live on, the middle class refugees can always take out a loan.

They don't care how ridiculous they sound, because idiocy in high places is such a lucrative, all-American enterprise. Just ask Donald Trump.

19 comments:

  1. I kinda think AOC has come to realize she wants more experience before taking a leap forward. She said something along those lines. And since, as I understand, NYS isn't going to lose house seats, her district isn't in danger of being eliminated, I don't think she needs to.

    But I'd love to see a primary challenge to Schumer. I wish my State Senator Michael Gianaris - who had the balls to tell the richest man in the world to go fuck himself - would consider it.

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  2. An insightful essay, as usual. However, you might have -or could in a future essay- noted the deception of the campaign promise in Georgia of $2,000.00 checks in the mail. Warnock is up for full-term election next year -I think- and this may cost him that election. Plus Biden's free ride in the press of "healing the nation" is exposed by this about face on the $2000.00 checks promise.

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  3. Forget the made-up quote, attributed to Samuel Clemens, about history not repeating itself, although it did rhyme. This is what he really said: “It is not worth while to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man’s character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible.” (Mark Twain in Eruption: Hitherto Unpublished Pages About Men and Events (1940), ed. Bernard DeVoto.)

    For anyone who skims through history books, the current $2,000 swindle underway is definitely a repeat. In 1932, the WWI Bonus March had over 40,000 demonstrators (17,000 vets plus families) camped and impatient around D.C. The vets had been given thanks-for-your-service bonus certificates back in 1924. Problem was, the certificates were not redeemable until their birthdays in 1945, hence the nickname "Tombstone Bonus."

    The vets and their families needed the money right then during the Depression. Texas Congressman Wright Patterson, himself a WWI vet, put a bill before the House of Representatives for the government to cough up the bonuses in 1932. Many of the vets camped on D.C.'s public lawns had no home to return to, no job, and very little hope left except for those bonuses.

    The absolute maximum any vet might have gotten, based on days of service and whether served at home or abroad, was capped at $625. In today's money the purchasing power of that amount equals $1,188.91. How close is that to $1,200?

    Guess what. The House overwhelmingly passed Patterson's bill. The Senate vote, however, was -- wait for it -- 18 for, 62 against, even though thousands of protesters were milling around the Capitol during the vote.

    Shortly after, President Hoover felt compelled to order the Army to disperse the protesters. The military had already infiltrated the ranks of protesters. There were indeed Communist agitators among them. Enter Generals MacArthur, Eisenhower and Patton who swiftly muscled the crowds out of town and set fire to the shantytowns. The big press around the country approved of the military's de-occupation of D.C. However, most of the people did not approve as more and more shantytowns sprang up around the country. Shantytowns are the fruit of evictions.

    New President, new Congress. In 1936, Congress finally authorized the early payment (over Roosevelt's veto), which mission was accomplished for over 3.5 million WWI vets by 1937. Historians are mostly agreed the Bonus Marchers, along with continuing agitation elsewhere, to include the homegrown Communist threat, moved Roosevelt much further to the left than he had ever imagined before he entered office. Thanks to which Capitalism survived to kill another day.

    OK, class, desks clear for a pop essay test. The hardships, the unruly D.C. protest, the Capitol, the House, the Senate, a waffling president, the military, the MSM, and those measly payouts. Which period am I referring to: 2021 or 1932? For extra points, write your essay in rhyme.

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  4. What happens if Manchin threatens to become a Republican? What if he does?

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  5. Jay-- Thanks for the brief history lesson
    I'd reply in rhyme but am still intimated by the late Larry Eisenberg. He was the best

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  6. Valerie Long TweedieJanuary 27, 2021 at 10:37 PM

    I don't think enough is being made of how much the Fed has dished out to support the stock market during this Pandemic. How does 3.5 trillion compare to the $2000 checks to the people who are sliding, if not already, in poverty due to the pandemic? I think the biggest problem is all that the huge sums of money the government gives to the rich, either via the Fed or in subsidies to certain industries, isn't held up in comparison to how much is given to support people losing more and more ground economically.

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  7. McConnell did an end run on the filibuster. He got commitments from enough Democrats that they personally would not vote to end it.

    Biden and other veterans of the Senate have seen control go back and forth, elections go back and forth, and they take a longer view of the filibuster.

    This longer view gets in the way of immediate gratification, but they rightly think that their control is transitory, as it always has been.

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  8. Hallelujah! The Reddit Rebellion is still going strong. Little David has apparently kicked a Wall Street Goliath to the gutter. And it was done by a group of little people beating Wall Street at its own dirty game.

    This news should make you smile big. Here is Glenn Greenwald explaining more precisely what happened over the past 48 hours to a hedge fund, which now cries foul and plays the victim. (34 min video).
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3ZLFDQ36tI

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  9. Jay,
    But who are their leaders? What is their message? Do they have discipline? And 1,2,3...Greenwald has taken the baton from Jimmy Dore and is citing this as proof of viability of a left/right populist alliance. What a joke.
    The left already knew that Wall Street is a casino. As usual, the "mask coming off" won't change a thing, and there are plenty of institutional investors who have profited from this.
    Elon Musk tweeting was the secret sauce if you think a bunch of redditors were able to pull this off by themselves.

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  10. @Kat

    I’m sorry you didn’t get the joke.

    Usually, the heavy hitters of Wall Street are the ones who empty our pockets while laughing. The GameStop event was different, a really big surprise. A group of investor nobodies brought a big somebody (a hedge fund that skins companies alive through short selling) to its knees. Hooray! They had it coming.

    If you happen to believe, as I do, we common folk are just about always on the sad side of something called the class war, then the GameStop event of the past week was hilarious.

    You really must view the Greenwald video again. In addition to Greenwald’s crystal-clear exposition of what happened, have you ever seen this guy (Greenwald) smile so much in a 34-minute span?

    Yes, yes, Bidden, Yellen, the SEC and a shook-up Wall Street will soon stop the little guys from doing the same damn thing the big guys have been doing to the rest of us since the earth cooled. The superrich, poor things, cannot enjoy their wealth if continually beset by fear of blowbacks by those they have rendered poor.

    But let’s enjoy the few moments of levity we are allowed now and then. That’s all we’ve got.

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  11. Elon Musk had good reason to join the gamers. Wall Street has been messing with him for too long.

    As for the other issues raised by Kat, we really must stop thinking in the time-worn, ill-defined and ever-shifting categories of 'left' and 'right.' Dore and Greenwald may be opening our eyes about the continuous reformations of class. I suspect they’ve been reading books we should all set aside a few years to plow through.

    Here’s a start for those interested in the questions Kat alludes to. In the latest broadcast by LBO News (see our very own blog roll) Doug Henwood interviews Chris Maisano who illuminates the ideas of Leo Panitch. Panitch, who passed away last year, may well have mapped the way for the many underclasses of today (left-right-center whatever, wherever) to take back power and money from the untrammeled global capitalists.

    Jacobin (for free) gives you the entire article by Maisano about Panitch here:
    https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/01/leo-panitch-marxism

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  12. “One of the mistakes we make when we try to talk about politics in this country is we keep pretending that the political spectrum runs from right to left. It doesn’t. It runs from top to bottom. We live in a country where the richest 1% of the people in this nation control 40% of the total wealth, and those numbers get worse every year.”
    ~ Molly Ivins

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  13. Valerie Long TweedieJanuary 30, 2021 at 6:05 AM

    I was pretty impressed with Greenwald's ability to so succinctly summarise what had happened with the Reddit Rebellion. Personally, I think short selling, along with stock buy backs, should be illegal. I'm happy a few financially normal people were able to get the better of a scummy hedge fund. The fact that these same hedge funds are "crying foul" when they are beaten at their own game is hysterical.

    While the racism of the Right Wing of the working class is horrific and needs to be outed as socially and morally unacceptable, I do actually agree that many in the middle and working classes on both sides of the political divide have more in common with each other than they do with the investment class. My childhood best friend is a good example. She is a "liberal" Democrat, very pro Hillary, Obama and Biden, because at heart she is a Neoliberal who loves free trade and has made boat loads of money as a rentier and investor. I have a more similar world view and more in common with someone who believes that Free Trade is selling the working class down the river and that Hillary is a crook than I do with my friend who hates Ralph Nader and Julian Assange.

    The biggest problem we have today is the lack of civility in discourse (admittedly made far worse by Trump's name calling). But I don't think that is an accident. As long as we are seeing people in our same economic situation with similar needs and wants as the other, we will never find that we have a common gripe and fight. The neoliberals have a vested interest in keeping us at each others' throats.

    I really like the Molly Ivins quote, Erik. I hadn't read it before but it pretty much sums up the truth of the matter.

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  14. Yes, the whole USA misses Molly Ivins. She was taken from us too soon. But, thanks be, she left behind a few imitators [cough] close to home.

    For another peek at some of her best lines, see her obit from the NYT of 2007. I especially liked the explanations for why she left that puffed up rag.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/washington/01ivins.html

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  15. I actually do look to see who Henwood has hosted for book recommendations. I've only listened to his program once just because I prefer reading. I do look at his Twitter feed to find out who is on his program. Considering the very low regard he has for Greenwald and Dore I don't believe he would be pleased to lump Panitch in there with them. I certainly don't think Dore or Greenwald are allies-- and Greenwald is no leftist. This guy is actually saying the Tea Party was some genuine movement until it was coopted?
    Dore uncritically interviewed a Boogaloo Boi. He is trying to sell the idea of uniting with these second amendment absolutists who wish to start a civil war in the US. He prefers them to any member of the squad because they are "anti establishment". Does he not understand that they are absolutely against the federal government? Good luck with M4All there. Do you not think they are happy to keep the US as arms manufacturer to the war. To compound this stupidity, he compares such a coalition to Fred Hampton's Rainbow Coalition. It is nothing of the sort.
    Greenwald is out of his depth to report on the Gamestop story. I would trust someone like Henwood, Nathan Tankus, or Pam Martens far more. It really is not the David and Goliath story that he thinks it is. Greenwald, as always is interested in pushing a certain narrative.

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  16. @Kat

    You send flares up in many directions, so allow me to catch up with each one in turn.

    I actually do look to see who Henwood has hosted for book recommendations. I've only listened to his program once just because I prefer reading.
    Like you, I prefer print to audio. Every once in a while,though, Henwood writes a long detailed piece, always worth the slog.

    I do look at his Twitter feed to find out who is on his program. Considering the very low regard he has for Greenwald and Dore I don't believe he would be pleased to lump Panitch in there with them.
    Panitch was an updated Marxist. Henwood may be a closet Marxist. What does any of that have to do with Greenwald and Dore, who as far as I know do not yet circle in the Marxist orbit. Please provide a link to where Henwood states his low regard for Greenwald and Dore.

    I certainly don't think Dore or Greenwald are allies-- and Greenwald is no leftist.
    So what if they are not allies. Why must they be stuffed into the same stale category for some reason? How many irrelevancies, non sequiturs and straw men can we raise in one paragraph? So what if Dore and Greenwald are or are not allies? As for the term “left,” it has lost all meaning. It’s a wind-blown word with a thousand meanings in today’s political discussions, useless. What Dore and Greenwald are trying to tell us is that ‘left’ and ‘right’ should be dropped in meaningful conversation, because those terms have become meaningless, and, as Valerie pointed out above, the real divisions must be seen not on a horizontal plane but a vertical one, i.e., economically-based class divisions. The enemy is Wall Street. People from all backgrounds, the coasts and flyover country, understand that, finally.

    This guy is actually saying the Tea Party was some genuine movement until it was coopted?
    Right, because initially the Tea Party was joined by people who realized the government was screwing them. They were eventually coopted by a wing of their oppressors. Greenwald has his facts right.

    Dore uncritically interviewed a Boogaloo Boi. He is trying to sell the idea of uniting with these second amendment absolutists who wish to start a civil war in the US. He prefers them to any member of the squad because they are "anti establishment". Does he not understand that they are absolutely against the federal government?

    Those tough guys, among many other nobodies, some violent, some not, are absolutely against so many of the wheelers and dealers of federal, state and local government. So-called lefties overlap with so-called righties on many important issues. Your and my allies fighting against unrelenting economic injustice of the “establishment” can be found all over the political map. That’s the takeaway message of D and G.

    Continued ....

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  17. Continued....

    Good luck with M4All there.
    I keep hearing that 70% of the US adult population want Medicare for all. Some of those people must be gun owners, Trump supporters, pro-lifers, hyper unchristian hyper evangelicals, etc. Do you now see the overlap with “us” when it comes to economic issues? Medical bankruptcies fall on the good and the bad alike––once again, a commonality among the oppressed on an economic issue. Conditions are ripe for citizens to quit both major parties and find class-based realignments that will fight for them economically. If the nobodies would just stop fighting among each other and begin to ally against the superrich (who engineer our divisions), we might all be better off.

    Do you not think they are happy to keep the US as arms manufacturer to the war. To compound this stupidity, he compares such a coalition to Fred Hampton's Rainbow Coalition. It is nothing of the sort.
    Vague pronouns marching in all directions make me dizzy.

    Greenwald is out of his depth to report on the Gamestop story. I would trust someone like Henwood, Nathan Tankus, or Pam Martens far more. It really is not the David and Goliath story that he thinks it is. Greenwald, as always is interested in pushing a certain narrative.
    Do inform us what you believe is Greenwald’s agenda or "narrative." Sorry, but Greenwald provides a brilliant exposition of the GameStop event. By the time the others whose names you dropped get around to their precisions, everyone’s attention will be elsewhere. Greenwald, if you listen carefully, is very clear about the GameStop event NOT being a David v Goliath replay.

    I’m glad Greenwald is out there indefatigably “pushing a certain narrative.” That narrative is well-founded on facts and justice. And I’m happy he appears on media like Fox to reach those millions of stricken and rightfully angry people Hilary Clinton dismissed as “deplorables.” I wish Greenwald much success in his many endeavours. When fate dumps a Paladin like Greenwald on your doorstep, it’s a good idea not to slander him, better yet to listen with an open mind, and best to fight the real enemy, not each other.

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  18. Valerie,
    I am afraid that you are conflating the white working class with whites w/out a four year college degree-- something the NYT does all the time. Trump supporters may come from less wealthy districts-- non urban-- but they tend to be the wealthier residents in the district. Many are small business owners and the like. There is no reason to single them out for racism, in my opinion. Wealthy elites such as Tucker Carlson are just as easily the face of racism.
    Trump did nothing for the working class and actually had a very strong anti worker agenda. People that are aligned with groups that were involved in De Vos funded anti lockdown protests have shown their solidarity with the capitalists. It is not as if they are out protesting for relief for workers. Just because someone looks like a member of the working class, or even if they are a member of the working class does not mean they are part of a working class movement. A better question to ask is what do they want?
    Bernie Sanders drew a good deal of support among tech workers in California. I would assume these workers did not believe their interest lay with the owner class. (There are, to be sure, plenty of libertarian spouting bros out there, however. These are the sorts that worship people like Elon Musk.) Just because someone is a white collar worker, does not mean they are an enemy of worker solidarity.
    I think it is preferable to just say "capitalists" rather than "global elites". Global elites is a rather counter revolutionary and vaguely anti Semitic term.

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  19. Jay,
    Do I think the gun nuts and the RW Evangelicals are open to Medicare for all? Absolutely not. The gun nuts are very anti big government and I know the RW evangelical ministers actively advocate against "socialized medicine". Furthermore the support among Republicans for single payer is like 25%, which isn't nothing but this is even before the RW noise machine kicks into action.
    The Tea Party was never "coopted". A movement aimed at lowering the deficit,opposing "excessive taxation, and "fiscal responsibility" was not some sort of populist uprising. Maybe we will get another "we the people movement" when the Democrats try to ram their economic aid package through. It sounds like they intend to do it with or without Republican support.
    I expressed my opinion of Greenwald. He is a public figure and not above criticism. I don't care for his writing and don't find much value in his opinionating. You feel differently. That I don't care for him does not mean I don't have an open mind. After all, I did not always feel this way.

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