The Civil War Election

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/09/pers-s09.html



9 September 2020

The US presidential election is now eight weeks away. The campaign between Trump and Biden is pitting an administration that is making an increasingly open appeal to violence and police state repression against a Democratic Party campaign that, as always, offers no genuine alternative to the drive toward authoritarianism and war.

The Trump administration is utilizing the election campaign in an attempt to build up a right-wing, fascistic movement on a ferociously antisocialist basis. Trump has followed up his praise of Kyle Rittenhouse, who murdered two protesters and injured a third in Kenosha, Wisconsin last month, with calls for vengeance directed against opponents of police violence.

At his press conference on Monday, the president hailed the killing of protester Michael Reinoehl by US Marshals last week. “If somebody is breaking the law, there has got to be a form of retribution,” Trump declared, condoning extrajudicial reprisals from his supporters. The same day, he retweeted a statement from right-wing commentator Dinesh D’Souza declaring that political unrest would lead to the “rise of citizen militias around the country”—that is, fascistic vigilante organizations like Patriot Prayer, responsible for terrorizing protesters in Portland, Oregon.

As the World Socialist Web Site has noted, Trump is not running for president; he is running for Führer. His campaign seems to be modeled on Hitler’s bid for German chancellor in 1932. Using language that is unprecedented in American history, Trump is seeking to create conditions, regardless of the outcome on November 3, in which he will emerge as the leader of an extra-constitutional, right-wing movement.

There is no doubt that if Trump wins, he will immediately escalate the suppression of democratic rights and implementation of police state forms of rule.

Under these conditions, the argument of the Democratic Party is that all opposition to Trump must be directed behind the election of Biden. For workers to allow their struggles to be subordinated to the electoral considerations of the Democratic Party, however, would be a fatal political error.

Trump did not emerge from nowhere. He expresses in the most unvarnished form the essentially fascistic, antidemocratic impulse of the American ruling class as a whole. That Trump is not some sort of demon unleashed from hell is revealed in the fact that the growth of authoritarianism and fascism is a universal phenomenon, from Brazil and India to France and Germany.

The working class must direct its opposition to the underlying disease of which Trump is an expression. What are the conditions that are fueling this crisis?

First, the coronavirus pandemic has exposed the catastrophic state to which capitalism has driven society. It is an extreme expression and product of the subordination of everything to the profit interests of the corporate and financial oligarchy.

The ruling class has effectively adopted a policy of “herd immunity,” allowing the virus to spread without restraint. The back-to-work campaign, spearheaded by Trump but implemented by both the Democrats and Republicans, has already led to an enormous surge in the death toll, which is now approaching 200,000 people. The University of Washington now estimates that the number of deaths by the end of the year could rise to above 400,000.

Second, alongside the health impact of the pandemic is a deepening social and economic crisis for millions of people. Despite the back-to-work campaign, there are more than 11 million fewer jobs now than before the pandemic hit. It is six weeks since Congress allowed federal unemployment benefits to expire, throwing millions into poverty. The number of Americans facing hunger this year is projected to increase by 45 percent, to more than 50 million.

The multitrillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street, sanctioned with the nearly unanimous support of Congress in late March, produced massive growth in the wealth of the oligarchy. On Tuesday, Forbes published its latest update on the wealth of American billionaires, reporting that the wealth of the richest 400 people has reached a record $3.2 trillion, up $240 billion from a year ago.

Third, the deepening economic, social and political crisis increases the danger that the ruling class will see war abroad as a means of resolving its problems at home. Trump is making aggressive moves in the South China Sea as part of its offensive against China, while the Democrats, if they come to power, are committed to an intensification of the conflict with Russia and war in the Middle East.

It is to these conditions that the Trump administration is responding. In its October 19, 2019 statement, “No to American fascism! Build a mass movement to force Trump out!,” the Socialist Equality Party stated:


To downplay, let alone deny, the fact that the Trump presidency is metastasizing rapidly into a right-wing authoritarian regime, with distinctly fascist characteristics, is to close one’s eyes to political reality. The old refrain, “It can’t happen here”—i.e., that American democracy is eternally immune from the cancer of fascism—is hopelessly out of date. The very fact that a thug like Trump ascended to the White House testifies to the terminal crisis of the existing political system.

These processes have only intensified over the past year, vastly accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic. Trump’s fascistic rhetoric is an attempt to beat back a growing social movement of the working class against the policies of the corporate and financial oligarchy.

The Democratic Party, however, represents another faction of the same oligarchy. Its appeal is to dominant factions of the military and the intelligence agencies as the arbiters of political power to whom it will turn if Trump refuses to leave office. Its main aim is to suppress any form of social opposition that threatens the interests of the ruling elite.

Over the past week, Biden has denounced protests over police violence, attacked socialism, and made clear that he will run his campaign on the most right-wing basis possible. In the final stages of the election, the Democrats are attempting to revive their anti-Russia campaign to ever more explicitly target left-wing opposition within the United States as the work of “foreign adversaries.”

Biden presents himself as the “man in the middle” under conditions of a developing civil war situation. His campaign offers nothing to address the social catastrophe confronting masses of people. The Democrats’ open embrace of militarist violence—welcoming as part of their “coalition” the leading architects of the Iraq war—even allows the fascistic Trump to posture as an opponent of the “military-industrial complex.”

The Democrats are above all opposed to raising any issues that undermine the economic and financial interests of the ruling elite. An indication of the social policies that a Biden campaign would pursue if in office was given in an article published in the Washington Post on Monday. Referring to the economic proposals released by the Biden campaign—consisting of milquetoast reforms that were the product of discussions with the “Sanders-Warren” wing of the party—the Post wrote:


But in private calls with Wall Street leaders, the Biden campaign made it clear those proposals would not be central to Biden’s agenda. “They basically said, ‘Listen, this is just an exercise to keep the Warren people happy, and don’t read too much into it,’” said one investment banker, referring to liberal supporters of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-mass.). The banker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks, said that message was conveyed on multiple calls.

The Democratic Party, for all its denunciations of Trump, makes no mention of the essentially fascistic character of the policies he is pursuing. It should be recalled that even though Trump lost the last election by three million votes, the immediate response of the Democratic Party was to offer its collaboration. The election, Obama said, was an “intramural scrimmage” between two sides of the same team.

If the Democrats were to lose on November 3, or even if they were to win, the response would be no different. They would immediately offer an olive branch to Trump and the Republican Party.

The ability of Trump to attract and maintain a following is largely a product of the inability of the Democrats to offer anything to address the social crisis. In the end, the actual differences are marginal, focused above all on foreign policy. The fact that the contest is even close, under conditions of mass death and social devastation, is an indictment of the Democratic Party. It is incapable of making a popular appeal precisely because of the class interests that it represents.

The strategy of the working class cannot be guided by the arithmetic of an election, but the logic of the class struggle.

The Socialist Equality Party and our election campaign—Joseph Kishore for president and Norissa Santa Cruz for vice president—direct all of our attention to the growth of working class opposition. The election must be seen not as an end, but as part of a broader process. This will prepare the working class for whatever outcome—whether it is Trump or Biden in the White House or whether it is the direct intervention of the military.

There is already growing opposition in the working class. Teachers and parents are mobilizing against the efforts to reopen the schools amidst the raging pandemic. Educators and students have begun to fight against the dangerous reopening of colleges and universities, including a strike that began yesterday at the University of Michigan by 1,000 lecturers and graduate students.

There is seething anger among autoworkers, Amazon workers, transportation workers, service workers and other sections of the working class to the back-to-work campaign and the effort by the corporations to use the pandemic to increase exploitation. A “winter of discontent” is brewing with millions out of work and facing poverty and eviction.

This is combined with the continued protests over police violence and racism, sparked in late May by the murder of George Floyd. While fueled by the unending epidemic of police violence, the protests have given expression to deep social anger and a desire among millions of workers and youth to fight back.

The struggles of different sections of the working class must be organized and united through the formation of independent factory, workplace and neighborhood safety committees. The fight of teachers against the back-to-school campaign must be connected with the fight of students against the reopening of the universities, the fight of workers against the horrific conditions in the plants, the fight of the unemployed against social devastation, and the fight of the youth against police violence.

At issue in every struggle is the question of political power: What class rules and in whose interests. The only solution to the crisis is one that is directed against the capitalist system. A massive diversion of social resources away from the bailout of the rich and the financing of militarism and war is required. The wealth of the oligarchs must be seized, and the gigantic corporations and banks turned into public utilities to create the conditions for a globally coordinated program to save lives.

The fight against the pandemic is not primarily a medical question. As with every great problem confronting the working class—social inequality and poverty, war, environmental degradation and dictatorship—it is a political and revolutionary question, which raises the need for the working class to take power in its own hands, overthrow capitalism, and restructure all of society on the basis of social need.

This program must become the basis for unifying all the struggles of the working class in the United States and, moreover, provide a lead to the fight of workers throughout the world.

The next two months are critical. The SEP and our sister parties in the International Committee of the Fourth International are spearheading the fight to build a socialist leadership in the working class. This is the most urgent political task. The essential conclusion that must be drawn is to join and build the Socialist Equality Party.




Statement of the Socialist Equality Party (US) Political Committee

John Pilger: The Stalinist Trial of Julian Assange

https://citizentruth.org/john-pilger-the-stalinist-trial-of-julian-assange/

Having reported the long, epic ordeal of Julian Assange, John Pilger gave this address outside the Central Criminal Court in London on September 7 as the WikiLeaks Editor’s extradition hearing entered its final stage.

(By: John Pilger, Mintpress News) 

When I first met Julian Assange more than ten years ago, I asked him why he had started WikiLeaks. He replied: “Transparency and accountability are moral issues that must be the essence of public life and journalism.”

I had never heard a publisher or an editor invoke morality in this way. Assange believes that journalists are the agents of people, not power: that we, the people, have a right to know about the darkest secrets of those who claim to act in our name.

If the powerful lie to us, we have the right to know. If they say one thing in private and the opposite in public, we have the right to know. If they conspire against us, as Bush and Blair did over Iraq, then pretend to be democrats, we have the right to know.

It is this morality of purpose that so threatens the collusion of powers that want to plunge much of the world into war and wants to bury Julian alive in Trumps fascist America.

In 2008, a top secret US State Department report described in detail how the United States would combat this new moral threat. A secretly-directed personal smear campaign against Julian Assange would lead to “exposure [and] criminal prosecution”.


The aim was to silence and criminalise WikiLeaks and its founder. Page after page revealed a coming war on a single human being and on the very principle of freedom of speech and freedom of thought, and democracy.

The imperial shock troops would be those who called themselves journalists: the big hitters of the so-called mainstream, especially the “liberals” who mark and patrol the perimeters of dissent.

And that is what happened. I have been a reporter for more than 50 years and I have never known a smear campaign like it: the fabricated character assassination of a man who refused to join the club: who believed journalism was a service to the public, never to those above.

Assange shamed his persecutors. He produced scoop after scoop. He exposed the fraudulence of wars promoted by the media and the homicidal nature of America’s wars, the corruption of dictators, the evils of Guantanamo.

He forced us in the West to look in the mirror. He exposed the official truth-tellers in the media as collaborators: those I would call Vichy journalists. None of these imposters believed Assange when he warned that his life was in danger: that the “sex scandal” in Sweden was a set up and an American hellhole was the ultimate destination. And he was right, and repeatedly right.

The extradition hearing in London this week is the final act of an Anglo-American campaign to bury Julian Assange. It is not due process. It is due revenge. The American indictment is clearly rigged, a demonstrable sham. So far, the hearings have been reminiscent of their Stalinist equivalents during the Cold War.


Today, the land that gave us Magna Carta, Great Britain, is distinguished by the abandonment of its own sovereignty in allowing a malign foreign power to manipulate justice and by the vicious psychological torture of Julian – a form of torture, as Nils Melzer, the UN expert has pointed out, that was refined by the Nazis because it was most effective in breaking its victims.

Every time I have visited Assange in Belmarsh prison, I have seen the effects of this torture. When I last saw him, he had lost more than 10 kilos in weight; his arms had no muscle. Incredibly, his wicked sense of humor was intact.

As for Assange’s homeland, Australia has displayed only a cringeing cowardice as its government has secretly conspired against its own citizen who ought to be celebrated as a national hero. Not for nothing did George W. Bush anoint the Australian prime minister his “deputy sheriff”.

It is said that whatever happens to Julian Assange in the next three weeks will diminish if not destroy freedom of the press in the West. But which press? The Guardian? The BBC, The New York Times, the Jeff Bezos Washington Post?

No, the journalists in these organisations can breathe freely. The Judases on the Guardian who flirted with Julian, exploited his landmark work, made their pile then betrayed him, have nothing to fear. They are safe because they are needed.

Freedom of the press now rests with the honourable few: the exceptions, the dissidents on the internet who belong to no club, who are neither rich nor laden with Pulitzers, but produce fine, disobedient, moral journalism – those like Julian Assange.


Meanwhile, it is our responsibility to stand by a true journalist whose sheer courage ought to be inspiration to all of us who still believe that freedom is possible. I salute him.

'Worst-Case Scenario': Report Finds Sturgis Motorcycle Rally a Superspreader Event Infecting Over 260,000

"These cases represent a cost of over $12.2 billion," researchers wrote.


by
Lisa Newcomb, staff writer




https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/09/08/worst-case-scenario-report-finds-sturgis-motorcycle-rally-superspreader-event

Public health experts this week reiterated warnings against large gatherings following a new report that estimates the 10-day Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota last month led to more than 260,000 Covid-19 cases around the country and cost an estimated $12.2 billion in public healthcare spending.

The research suggests that between August 2 and September 2, nearly one in five coronavirus cases was linked to the rally.

"The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally represents a situation where many of the 'worst-case scenarios' for superspreading occurred simultaneously," wrote the report's authors, including Andrew Friedson, an associate professor of economics at the University of Colorado Denver. "The event was prolonged, included individuals packed closely together, involved a large out-of-town population, and had low compliance with recommended infection countermeasures such as the use of masks."


Authors of the report, published by Germany-based IZA Institute of Labor Economics, tracked anonymous cell phone data from the rally and estimated the event helped spread Covid-19 to at least 263,708 people and cost billions:


If we conservatively assume that all of these cases were non-fatal, then these cases represent a cost of over $12.2 billion, based on the statistical cost of a Covid-19 case of $46,000 estimated by Kniesner and Sullivan (2020). This is enough to have paid each of the estimated 462,182 rally attendees $26,553.64 not to attend. This is by no means an accurate accounting of the true externality cost of the event, as it counts those who attended and were infected as part of the externality when their costs are likely internalized.

However, this calculation is nonetheless useful as it provides a ballpark estimate as to how large of an externality a single superspreading event can impose, and a sense of how valuable restrictions on mass gatherings can be in this context. Even if half of the new cases were attendees, the implied externality is still quite large. Finally, our descriptive evidence suggests that stricter mitigation policies in other locations may contribute to limiting externality exposure due to the behavior of non-compliant events and those who travel to them.

"This is a recurrent story of large crowds that disdain masks and distancing fueling superspreader events that keep driving the pandemic," Atul Gawande, surgeon and author, tweeted in response to the report.


In a Covid-19 media briefing Tuesday, Joshua Clayton, South Dakota's state epidemiologist, downplayed the institute's findings. He told reporters, "from what we know, the results [of the IZA report] do not align with what we know," and noted the study had not been peer reviewed.

South Dakota surged to post the nation's third highest per capita in Covid-19 cases this month, but, possibly due to the state's contact tracing protocols, South Dakota health experts have not attributed nearly as many coronavirus cases to the rally held August 7-16.

According to reporting by the Rapid City Journal on September 3:


118 South Dakotans have Covid-19 as a result of attending the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, the [state Department of Health] reported Thursday.

Clayton said the state is basing its rally tally on South Dakota residents who in 14 days prior to their illness onset visited Sturgis or attended an event that would be considered part of the motorcycle rally prior to their illness.

Clayton said the state is not counting secondary infections in their tally. A secondary infection would be someone who went to the rally, contracted Covid-19, and then infected a friend or family member who was not at the rally.

National public health experts were quick to point to the consequences of mass gatherings in light of the new findings:



South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, has taken a "hands off approach" to Covid-19 mitigation, wrote the IZA report's authors. Noem bragged about the Mount Rushmore State's low Covid-19 infection rate in a tweet on August 10.

A staunch supporter of President Donald Trump, Noem spoke last month at the Republican National Convention, where she railed against Covid-19 mitigation efforts including social distancing and mask-wearing, saying, "We are not—and will not—be the subjects of an elite class of so-called experts."

As "Sturgis" trended on Twitter Tuesday, Noem called the IZA report "fiction":


As of Tuesday, South Dakota was second only to neighboring North Dakota in coronavirus cases per 100,000 people, according to the New York Times dashboard. The United States continues to lead the world in Covid-19 cases and mortalities, with more than 6.5 million reported cases and nearly 194,000 deaths.

The state's congressional representatives have hardly commented about the Sturgis rally at all on Twitter, and both Noem and Republican Sen. John Thune this week posted photos of themselves at the South Dakota State Fair—an event that drew more than 200,000 people last year—which was held over Labor Day weekend.



Echoing Clayton's dismissive sentiment about the IZA report, South Dakota Secretary of Health Kim Malsam-Rysdon told reporters Tuesday her department wants to "better understand the source they are using" to come up with the $12.2 billion healthcare cost total, adding that people "shouldn't put too much stock into models" and that using cell phone pings to project Covid-19 cases isn't an accurate correlation.

Friedson responded to critics on Twitter Tuesday.

"A lot of people (or maybe bots?) have accused my co-authors and I of having a political agenda with this paper," Friedson tweeted in a thread.

"I would encourage anyone with this take to see our respective research records," he continued. "My work, and that of my collaborators has come down on many different 'sides' of many different important policy issues. We go where the evidence leads us."

Citing 'Criminal Exposure' in Straw-Donor Scheme and Possible Perjury, House Announces Investigation Into DeJoy

House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney said the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors should immediately suspend DeJoy as the probe moves forward.


by
Jake Johnson, staff writer








https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/09/08/citing-criminal-exposure-straw-donor-scheme-and-possible-perjury-house-announces

The Democrat-controlled House Oversight Committee is launching an investigation into Postmaster General Louis DeJoy over reports that, as CEO of a major North Carolina logistics company, he orchestrated an unlawful straw-donor scheme for the benefit of Republican political candidates, the latest scandal threatening to engulf the head of the U.S. Postal Service.

In a statement late Monday, House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) urged the USPS Board of Governors to immediately suspend DeJoy as the probe moves forward and said her panel will also investigate the postmaster general for possible perjury.

DeJoy, the former head of fundraising for the Republican National Convention in Charlotte, faces "criminal exposure" both if the claims surrounding the alleged straw-donor scheme are true and "also for lying to our committee under oath," said Maloney.

During sworn testimony before the Oversight Committee last month, DeJoy expressed outrage at a line of questioning pursued by Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), who pushed the postmaster general on whether he reimbursed any of his company's top executives for contributing to President Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.

"That's an outrageous claim, sir, and I resent it," said DeJoy, himself a megadonor to Trump's campaign. "The answer is no... I'm fully aware of legal campaign contributions, and I resent the assertion, sir. What are you accusing me of?"


The Washington Post and the New York Times reported Sunday that DeJoy pressured his employees at New Breed Logistics to write checks for Republican congressional and presidential candidates and reimbursed them for doing so through bonuses. DeJoy served as CEO of the company from 1983 to 2014.




"Louis was a national fundraiser for the Republican Party. He asked employees for money. We gave him the money, and then he reciprocated by giving us big bonuses," David Young, DeJoy's director of human resources at New Breed Logistics, told the Post. "When we got our bonuses, let's just say they were bigger, they exceeded expectations—and that covered the tax and everything else."

According to the Times,


A review of campaign finance records shows that over a dozen management-level employees at New Breed would routinely donate to the same candidate on the same day, often writing checks for an identical amount of money. One day in October 2014, for example, 20 midlevel and senior officials at the company donated a total of $37,600 to the campaign of Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, who was running to unseat a Democratic incumbent. Each official wrote a check for either $2,600, the maximum allowable donation, or $1,000.

The straw-donor allegations came as DeJoy was already facing growing calls to resign over his sweeping Postal Service operational changes that significantly slowed mail across the nation and threatened the timely delivery of ballots for the November election, sparking allegations of deliberate and politically motivated sabotage by the postmaster general.

As Common Dreams reported, Democratic lawmakers and other officials said the new revelations provide further reason for DeJoy to step aside or be removed by the USPS Board of Governors, which unanimously appointed him in May despite his potential conflicts of interest and complete lack of prior experience at the Postal Service.

"Megadonor Louis DeJoy seemingly broke multiple campaign finance laws, continuing a dangerous pattern of turning our institutions of government upside-down, from the Postal Service to our election campaigns," Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause, said in a statement Sunday.

"It is extraordinarily disturbing," Flynn continued, "that megadonor DeJoy is abusing his power as Postmaster General to help President Trump win reelection, meanwhile apparently demonstrating disregard for key campaign finance laws designed to promote the integrity of our democratic elections."

'Horrifically Catastrophic': Report Finds So-Called US War on Terror Has Displaced as Many as 59 Million People

"We need a reckoning. We can't simply move on."


by
Jake Johnson, staff writer

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/09/08/horrifically-catastrophic-report-finds-so-called-us-war-terror-has-displaced-many-59

The ongoing U.S. "war on terror" has forcibly displaced as many as 59 million people from just eight countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia since 2001, according to a new report published Tuesday by Brown University's Costs of War Project.


The latest figure represents a dramatic increase from the Costs of War Project's 2019 report, which estimated that 21 million people had been displaced internally or forced to flee their home countries due to violence inflicted or unleashed by U.S.-led wars over the past two decades. That report also put the death toll of the so-called war on terror at 801,000 and the price tag at $6.4 trillion.Titled "Creating Refugees: Displacement Caused by the United States' Post-9/11 Wars" (pdf), the new report conservatively estimates that at least 37 million people have "fled their homes in the eight most violent wars the U.S. military has launched or participated in since 2001."

The new report argues that "wartime displacement (alongside war deaths and injuries) must be central to any analysis of the post-9/11 wars and their short- and long-term consequences."

"Displacement also must be central to any possible consideration of the future use of military force by the United States or others," the report states. "Ultimately, displacing 37 million—and perhaps as many as 59 million—raises the question of who bears responsibility for repairing the damage inflicted on those displaced."



In addition to the tens of millions displaced by U.S. military actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya, and Syria, the report notes that millions more have been displaced by "smaller combat operations, including in: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Niger, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia."




"To put these figures in perspective, displacing 37 million people is equivalent to removing nearly all the residents of the state of California or all the people in Texas and Virginia combined," the report says. "The figure is almost as large as the population of Canada. In historical terms, 37 million displaced is more than those displaced by any other war or disaster since at least the start of the 20th century with the sole exception of World War II."




David Vine, professor of anthropology at American University and the lead author of the new report, told the New York Times that the findings show "U.S. involvement in these countries has been horrifically catastrophic, horrifically damaging in ways that I don't think that most people in the United States, in many ways myself included, have grappled with or reckoned with in even the slightest terms."

Matt Duss, foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), demanded such a reckoning in a tweet responding to the Costs of War Project's latest findings.

"The scale of the disaster the United States has inflicted on the world—through three war on terror presidencies—is staggering," wrote Duss. "We need a reckoning. We can't simply move on."

'So Meager It Insults the American People': Democratic Leaders Say GOP Covid-19 Relief Plan Is Dead on Arrival

"Senate Republicans appear dead set on another bill which doesn't come close to addressing the problems and is headed nowhere."


by
Jake Johnson, staff writer

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/09/08/so-meager-it-insults-american-people-democratic-leaders-say-gop-covid-19-relief-plan

Update:

Upon returning from summer recess on Tuesday, Senate Republicans introduced a 78-page piece of legislation that party leaders have called a "skinny" coronavirus relief plan, which progressive lawmakers and other critics swiftly decried as inadequate, echoing earlier complaints about the proposal from top congressional Democrats.

"How pathetic," tweeted Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). "While Senate Republicans tell us we can't afford to give $2,000 a month to the working class during the economic crisis, the Covid-19 'relief' bill they just released provides $161 million in corporate welfare to the coal industry during a climate emergency."

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), speaking on the chamber's floor Tuesday, said that "if you want to draft a bill that is certain to fail, this is it." He added, "As the pain from this pandemic gets bigger and bigger, Republicans think smaller and smaller."


Reporters and advocacy groups took to Twitter to highlight what the GOP proposal lacks, particularly compared with legislation that House Democrats passed in May:



Earlier:

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday is set to unveil Covid-19 relief legislation that Democratic congressional leaders are already rejecting as a dead-on-arrival measure that is stuffed with "poison pills" and inadequate to meet the increasingly dire needs of tens of millions of jobless, hungry, and eviction-prone Americans.


While the legislation has not yet been released in full, reporting indicates the bill will propose a $300-per-week federal boost to unemployment benefits—half of the supplement Republicans allowed to expire at the end of July—a liability shield for corporations that expose workers and customers to Covid-19, funding for a school privatization effort, money for small businesses, and other provisions.In a joint statement issued shortly after McConnell (Ky.) announced he will hold a procedural vote on the measure later Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said, "Senate Republicans appear dead set on another bill which doesn't come close to addressing the problems and is headed nowhere."


Schumer and Pelosi said the Senate GOP proposal, which would need Democratic votes to pass, "is laden with poison pills Republicans know Democrats would never support."

"Instead of helping state and local workers facing layoffs, feeding hungry families, providing adequate funding for testing and treatment to fight the pandemic, helping renters keep the roof over the heads, stopping the dismantling of the U.S. Postal system, and making sure Americans can cast their ballots safely in fair elections this November," said Pelosi and Schumer, "this emaciated bill is only intended to help vulnerable Republican senators by giving them a 'check the box' vote to maintain the appearance that they're not held hostage by their extreme right wing that doesn't want to spend a nickel to help people."

In an interview with Bloomberg, Pelosi said the Republican plan "is so meager it insults the American people."

"We know we have to compromise," Pelosi added, "but get real, Mitch McConnell."


The GOP's latest relief proposal will come as stimulus talks between the White House, McConnell, and Democratic leaders have been stalled for weeks even as the U.S. economy remains in deep recession, with millions of Americans now permanently unemployed due to the Covid-19 pandemic and continued legislative inaction.

In May, the Democrat-controlled House passed a $3 trillion bill that would revive the $600-per-week federal unemployment supplement, provide another round of $1,200 stimulus checks, and approve $1 trillion in aid to struggling state and local governments. McConnell has refused to allow a Senate vote on the HEROES Act, which he dismissed as an "unserious liberal wish list."

"This man has been blocking the HEROES Act for 116 days," Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, tweeted in response to McConnell's vote announcement Tuesday. "Do not forget that."

Nancy Pelosi Challenger Shahid Buttar Responds to Allegations

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwN2eGXV_Nc