Congress’s recently passed $2 trillion coronavirus “relief” package is a pathetic joke. I put the word “relief” in quotes because the bill’s biggest beneficiary is — surprise, surprise!—the corporate elite. The bill grants a $500 billion slush fund to corporations. This comes at a time when — coronavirus aside — most of these companies are enjoying record profits. And it comes two years after the GOP granted the wealthy a massive tax cut.
Working-class people…? We get a paltry $1,200 check in the mail. And many Americans will not even receive that money until at least four months from now.
Once again, our bourgeois elected officials have demonstrated — in starkly painful terms — who they really represent. Ralph Nader, the famed consumer advocate and three-time independent presidential candidate, put it best: “We are supposed to have a government of, by, and for the people,” he once wrote. “Instead we have a government of the Exxons, by the General Motors, and for the DuPonts.”
Not only has the coronavirus pandemic laid bare the abject inefficiency and utter inhumanity of capitalism. It has also illustrated the sheer hypocrisy of the system’s staunchest defenders.
“But How Are You Going to Pay for It?”
Never again do I want to hear a member of either capitalist party tell us, condescendingly, that we simply “cannot afford” urgently needed programs like the Green New Deal or Medicare for All. The bad-faith question, “How are you going to pay for it?” was always selectively applied bullshit. Here we have the proof.
Congress had absolutely no trouble coming up with the $2 trillion relief bill. There were, indeed, no questions whatsoever about how the House and Senate plan to “pay for” this bill or how it might impact the once-sacred Deficit. (Remember the Deficit Hawks on the right? Funny how they basically vanished under Trump, isn’t it…?)
Just think if these same members of Congress addressed the climate crisis with the same swiftness and sense of urgency.
The truth is the ruling class’s objection to programs like M4A and climate change legislation has never been about the cost. The money is there for the programs they care about — war, corporate bailouts, tax cuts for the wealthy, border walls, the military, etc. Their objection to these programs is based entirely on their ideological opposition to them.
As Sen. Bernie Sanders has often observed on the campaign trail, we already have a form of socialism in this country: Socialism for the rich and “rugged individualism” for everybody else.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) made a similar point during a recent virtual town hall with Sanders.
“It’s a fascinating progressive moment,” she said, “because what it has shown is that all of these issues have never been about ‘how are you going to pay for it?’ It’s never been about whether we have the capacity to do these things or if the logistics have worked out.”
All of these excuses that we have been given as to why we cannot treat people humanely have suddenly gone up in smoke and what has been revealed is that all of these issues were really about a lack of political will and who [is] deemed worthy … in an emergency or not.
Obviously, I am grateful to have some money coming — as I suspect many working-class Americans are. (I was laid off from my job before the coronavirus pandemic hit the U.S.)
But $1,200 is barely enough money to cover rent. (Rents in Portland alone, are about $1,500 a month.) And once that money is gone…then what…? Likewise, what about all those Americans who have now lost their health insurance as a result of being laid off? Whatever happened to being able to “keep our private health insurance” if we “want to”?
Working-class people are sick and tired of settling for a few crumbs. We want — and we deserve — the whole damn pie!
Trump to NY: Drop Dead!
Meanwhile, Donald Trump continues to deny New York hospitals the respirators they need to deal with the sheer influx of coronavirus patients. Nurses in New York City have had to make due with makeshift (and, thus, highly inadequate) face masks and other protective clothing. A viral photo featuring three NYC nurses at Mount Sinai Hospital wearing trash bags in place of proper medical protective clothing has generated justifiable outrage.
Kious Kelly, an assistant nursing manager at the same hospital, died on Tuesday, from COVID-19. He had been infected with the novel virus almost two weeks prior. Kelly was 48-years-old.
How a majority of Americans can approve of the Orange Menace’s “handling” of the coronavirus pandemic is beyond baffling. He is not “handling” the crisis at all. He is holding a bunch of rambling, Orwellian press conferences devoid of any substantive information or even any rhetorical presidential leadership. Then again, most of Trump’s affluent supporters have likely not yet been hit by the virus.
Trump’s only concern is that the pandemic and the likely recession that is already underway will hinder his reelection campaign. He literally does not care if people die — that people are already dying — from the virus.
The Market Demands a Sacrifice
Members of the Republican Party are now urging elderly Americans to be willing to sacrifice their lives for Wall Street’s profits. It is like something straight out of The Daily Show — except it is not parody. They are actually saying this with a straight face.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson that elderly Americans should be willing to sacrifice their lives “for their grandchildren” in order to save the capitalist economy in an interview on March 24.
Patrick said:
No one reached out to me and said, “As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?” And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in. And that does not make me noble or brave or anything like that. I just think there are lots of grandparents out there in this country like me.
And here I thought the Republican Party was supposed to be the “pro-life” party. Remember when Republicans ludicrously insisted Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act would lead to “death panels”? Patrick is literally calling for death panels.
Of course, Patrick himself is at no real risk to the coronavirus. He has health insurance — some of the best in the country, for that matter. It is the poor and working-class senior citizens he wants to go die for Wall Street’s profits. Turns out Karl Marx was not merely being metaphorical when he compared capital to a vampire that “only lives by sucking living labour…”
Patrick’s repugnant comments inspired the Twitter hashtag, “#NotDyingForWallStreet.”
His remarks come on the heels of Trump calling for The Economy to be “re-opened” by Easter. This, of course, directly contradicts the advice of the medical community. But then, Trump and his anti-intellectual supporters have never had much time for science or “experts” of any kind.
Revolution, Anyone…?
The pandemic has ripped off the mask of our ostensibly “humane” and “virtuous” economic system. This crisis has the ruling class so terrified they are no longer even attempting to couch their language in the lofty rhetoric of “patriotism” or any sort of concern for the well-being of something called the “middle class.” Capitalism came to America dripping in the blood of genocide and slavery. We are not witnessing a glitch or a “failure” of the system due to “greed.” It is operating precisely how it was designed to.
For decades, critics of socialism and communism have pointed to Stalinist Russia or Maoist China as “evidence” of socialism’s inherent violence and brutality. Never mind that neither of these dictatorships was actually socialist.
But what about capitalism’s body count? Thousands of Americans die every year due to lack of health care, lack of housing, low-paying jobs or from hurricanes, droughts, or tornadoes augmented by climate change. And the coronavirus pandemic is likely to yield an ominously large death toll — one easily rivaling that of Sept. 11, the elite’s standard bearer climactic event, used to justify the most egregious civil liberties violations, for the last 20 years, now.
Many are calling for a general strike at the beginning of April. Some are planning to withhold their rent. As of this writing, workers at Amazon and the online grocery-delivery service, Instacart, have gone on strike. This is an encouraging start. We need to increase the pressure. We may not be able to march and demonstrate in the streets, but we can still withhold our labor power.
If the coronavirus pandemic has illustrated anything it is who truly holds power in our society. It is not the bosses, the billionaire CEOs or the rest of the bourgeoisie. It is the workers. Suddenly, nurses, grocery store clerks, UPS drivers, and other “low-skilled” retail workers have become incredibly important to all of us as we “shelter in place.”
These workers deserve more than just our “thanks,” and “praise.” They deserve universal access to free health care, paid sick leave, a living wage, and hazard pay for those in “essential businesses,” forced to go to work. Indeed, if anything has made the case for the necessity of Bernie Sanders’ socialist agenda, it is the coronavirus pandemic.
As Peter Daou, a former adviser to John Kerry and Bill Clinton and current supporter of Sanders, tweeted, “If this coronavirus catastrophe and the establishment’s response to it doesn’t radicalize you politically, you’re not paying enough attention.”
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