The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed Covid-relief legislation in May and again in October, but the Republican-controlled Senate blocked both. However, according to Trump, it was the Democrats who “cruelly blocked Covid-relief legislation,” implying that it’s the Democrats who came up with the “ridiculously low” $600 figure, when that amount was forced upon the bill by the Republicans in order to minimize costs. Combined with assertions by Trump that he won the election in a “magnificent landslide,” the President really is living in his own world. 

German Lopez: ‘Everyone Failed on Covid-19’

 

From Vox:

America’s Covid-19 epidemic is truly national. Every region has far too many coronavirus cases and deaths, with cases increasing in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., for at least some time over the past couple months.

In June, just three states reported daily new coronavirus cases higher than 12 per 100,000 people. Today, every state except Hawaii exceeds that threshold. Some of that is due to greater testing capacity, but the climbing toll of hospitalizations and deaths, which have reached record highs nationally in the last month, show this is not merely a “casedemic” of sick people who might have gone undetected earlier in the year, but a rising tide of Covid-19 across the U.S.

So how did America get here?

The primary answer lies in President Donald Trump and Republican leaders in Congress, who have collectively abdicated the federal government’s role in addressing the outbreak or even acknowledging its severity. From Trump’s borderline-denialist messaging on Covid-19 to Congress’s inability to pass more economic relief, the country has been left in a place where states, local governments, and the public have to fend for themselves — and none of them have the resources to deal with the coronavirus on their own....

When a failure in the U.S. is nationwide, chances are the problem is rooted in a common variable — a systemic factor that’s influencing the behavior of leaders across the country.

Particularly with an infectious disease, a big failure in one part of the country is typically going to result in some level of spread to others. It’s just too difficult, if not impossible, to restrict travel among states, due to the social, legal, and political issues involved. That’s what made a federal strategy so important for every single state — but such a federal plan never came, and the Trump administration and Congress actually pulled back from offering aid to states, counties, and cities as the pandemic progressed.

At the top of the list of problems is the failure to pass a second economic relief bill. Democrats have pushed for a bill in Congress, passing multiple versions of one in the House. But Trump made clear the bill was less of a priority than getting his Supreme Court nominee through the Senate. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has continuously resisted a stimulus package on both fiscal grounds and to push for legal protections for employers so they’re not held legally liable for Covid-19 spread in their workplace.

 

 

Read the full article.

Craig Sterling: ‘Fifty Years of Tax Cuts for Rich Didn’t Trickle Down, Study Says’

 

Cartoon by Clay Bennett for the Chattanooga Times Free Press

From Bloomberg:

Tax cuts for rich people breed inequality without providing much of a boon to anyone else, according to a study of the advanced world that could add to the case for the wealthy to bear more of the cost of the coronavirus pandemic.

The paper, by David Hope of the London School of Economics and Julian Limberg of King’s College London, found that such measures over the last 50 years only really benefited the individuals who were directly affected, and did little to promote jobs or growth.

“Policy makers shouldn’t worry that raising taxes on the rich to fund the financial costs of the pandemic will harm their economies,” Hope said in an interview....

Their findings published Wednesday [December 9, 2020] counter arguments, often made in the U.S., that policies which appear to disproportionately aid richer individuals eventually feed through to the rest of the economy. The timespan of the paper ends in 2015, but Hope says such an analysis would also apply to President Donald Trump’s tax cut enacted in 2017.

“Our research suggests such policies don’t deliver the sort of trickle-down effects that proponents have claimed,” Hope said.

Read the full article.

Robert Freeman: ‘The Economy Isn’t Working. That’s Exactly the Plan.’

Cartoon by Mike Luckovich for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  

From Common Dreams:

For the four decades between 1940 and 1980, the share of national income that went to the top 10% of income earners was remarkably stable, around 34%. This included those decades that are generally regarded as “the golden age of capitalism” 

But in the four decades since 1980, the share of the same top 10% has skyrocketed to 47%, a breathtaking upward shift in national income to those who are already the richest.  The upward distribution of wealth over the same period is actually even greater. 

It’s a cliché, but like so many clichés, it is grounded in reality. The rich are getting richer and everyone else is getting poorer. That is exactly the plan, and the plan is working exactly as intended. In fact, it is accelerating, as every new crisis becomes a new pretext for ladling more and more and more of the nation’s wealth into the coffers of the already wealthy....

Donald Trump has been stunningly successful for the very wealthy which is part of the reason they have backed him. He passed massive tax cuts that accelerated the upward transfer of wealth. But that is actually the lesser part of what makes him so valuable to the wealthy. 

The far greater part is that he has re-directed the rage of the dispossessed, downwardly-mobile working class from the economic system that has caused their distress ... to the altogether bogus factor of race. This has shielded the wealthy from being held accountable for having engineered and built an economy that has intentionally shafted the vast majority of its own citizens.

 

 Read the full article.

Fareed Zakaria: ‘Trump's Plutocratic Populism Marches On’

From three years ago: What if Donald Trump’s supporters are motivated more by racial and cultural issues — such as white supremacism — than they are by their own economic self-interests?

Seth Meyers: ‘Trump Joins New Election Lawsuit as U.S. Hits Record COVID Deaths’

 

 Some mistakes take four years to be corrected.