38% of Americans lived below the poverty line before the pandemic. The United States jobless claims have passed 40 million, and a lot of the jobs may not come back. The majority of SBA loans went to multinational corporations and franchises. The “essential” workers are risking their lives without a living wage. Who has time to pay attention to their Senator or Congressman? I’d be willing to bet that many Americans can’t even name the milquetoast VP. D.C. is a galaxy far, far away when you can’t pay for child or medical care. Or rent.
Just as Coronavirus has laid bare the inequality of our infrastructure and our social safety nets, it has also shed a light on our partisan divide and the falsity of some media narratives.
DIVERGING NARRATIVES
Some of the American people are starting to get a little glimpse behind the governmental curtain we have been too on-the-treadmill distracted to spend much time analyzing. American voting numbers are low on both sides because it’s hard to the keep up with the news when the needs of a majority of the populace are not being met. But the spin on either side of the aisle is different. Liberal media focuses on the mistakes made, the lollygagging, and the magical thinking. The conservative media intimates that Trump was distracted by the “Democrat’s Impeachment Hoax” and not the ninth tee. The “he said-she said” doesn’t highlight an important distinction.
Back in the early discussions of reopening the economy, a Fox News commentator quipped, “The cure can’t be worse than the disease,” and Trump parroted it two hours later, Bill Barr the next day. Within a week, Trump TV attributed the original quip to the Marketer-in-Chief, a perfect propaganda feedback loop.
When a handful of right-wing protesters began to demand that governors remand stay-at-home orders, Fox News reported it as thousands. Trump all-caps-tweeted “LIBERATE MICHIGAN, MINNESOTA, WISCONSIN,” and terrifyingly encouraged citizens to exercise Second Amendment rights to do so.
“The Republicans seem to be blaming the Democrats for the pandemic,” my wife asked. “Is that possible?”
Yes. Opening the economy versus remaining on lockdown – not even a logical equivocal choice when the issue is economic rebound through medical and scientific benchmarks – is a manufactured red-blue divisive narrative. Leaving the states to fend for themselves for PPE in a free market system and favoring red state requests while saying the quiet part out loud reinforces the divide. Even the sensibility of masks in a pandemic is dangerously touted as a “PC” issue with this Administration.
This is dangerous political dice to roll when you are gambling with citizens’ lives. Politically motivated disinformation elicits measurable mortality rates, finds a COVID and media study from the University of Chicago.
Let’s get back to those long-ago protests against the Coronavirus SIP orders: we can argue about the numbers; the armed militia; whether the Proud Boys’ participation meant that the protests were white-supremacist and anti-liberal in nature and playing to Trump’s base. But these arguments would be missing the real point. Robert Reich has noted that four new classes have emerged from the pandemic: the remotes, the essentials (medical personnel, food workers, firefighters, police), the unemployed, and the forgotten (retirement homes, prisons, homeless). I posit that there is one more class that is always behind the scenes in the modern economy and politics—the billionaires.
A little history: In 1964 Barry Goldwater’s campaign launched Operation Dixie, capitalizing on his vote against the Civil Rights Act. He didn’t win the election, but he swept five Deep South states with a particularly repulsive brand of divisiveness. Nixon’s campaign successfully rebranded the Southern Strategy by fusing ideas about the role of government in the economy, women’s place in society, white evangelicalism and white grievance. Reagan melded race, taxes, anticommunism, and religion. Bush morphed the message into anti-liberalism. The “Us v. Them” strategy is used over and over because – like Lucy, Charlie Brown and the football – Americans keep believing it.
Back in the present, a little digging turns up the fact that those grassroots protests weren’t so very “grassroots” after all. The Convention of States – a group supported by Robert Mercer — enlisted the Proud Boys to organize the protests via Facebook. Convention of States was also supported by HUD Secretary Ben Carson and Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Haven’t heard of Robert Mercer? Billionaire Mercer has funded Citizens United, the Heritage Foundation, Cambridge Analytica, and Brexit, to name a few. He partnered with the Koch Brothers before starting his own political foundation. Another sponsor is Liz Uilein. Billionaire Uilein thinks the “media is overblowing COVID-19,” and “This has been a huge disruption.” The Uilein company policy warns workers not to mention if people are sick so as not to incite undue panic. The CARES Act and subsequent bills are also big wins for Big Business.
These problems didn’t magically appear when Trump was elected. These issues have arisen over several decades, as Big Business has stripped regulation in the name of freedom. In quarantine, we just have time now to see that the same play has been run over and over on the American people. And it is not necessarily partisan. It is economic.
SOCIAL VERSUS CORPORATE SAFETY NETS
In the response to the 2008 Recession, Congress passed the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) in two initiatives: The Housing and Economic Recovery Act (HERA–$191.5B disbursed to banks) and the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA — $442.2B disbursed to corporations, insurance companies, etc). Let’s visit two EESA programs.
Of the total $633.7B, a relatively meager $368M (2010) was designated to small businesses and has been repaid and generated $8.6M in revenue to the United States government. The corporate bailouts, which were only fractionally repaid (if at all), cost the government (and thus the taxpayer) billions in losses and generated $3M in returns.
Why do I mention these stimulus packages? Because as of January 2020, when Congress was being briefed on the pandemic, banks and corporations were still receiving Recession subsidies (data set from ProPublica). Individuals were not.
It’s important to note that after the 2008 bailout, “Corporate America’s profits bounced back quickly but most working people have not seen their conditions improve,” says Amanda Fischer, the policy director of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.
No employee protections are spelled out…For every condition, there’s a loophole.
About the 2020 stimulus package, Pro Publica states,
“The real problems lie with the aid to large corporations. Most of the $454 billion…will go to them. Another portion of loans and grants are earmarked for airlines and Boeing. Though the law contains some language for these giant corporations to prevent buybacks, preclude dividends, and set limits on executive compensation, no employee protections are spelled out…For every condition, there’s a loophole. The Treasury Secretary can waive any of the Big Business conditions if… it is necessary to ‘protect the interests of the federal government.’” In addition, “…the Federal Reserve will lend to corporations to borrow up to 10 times. Anything from the Fed that isn’t a ‘direct loan’ to a company is not subject to the restrictions attached to the Treasury money.”
“Mom-and-pop” small businesses loans are on hold to support larger entities.
Where does your tax money go and who decides?
How does this all relate to the Republicans blaming the Democrats? It doesn’t. Even taking into account the differences in political ideologies (less regulation v. social safety nets), the conflicts are manufactured as a distraction to direct the narrative for the populace away from the real debate – the economic one. Where does your tax money go and who decides? Theoretically, since federal assets are generated through taxes, doesn’t that mean bailouts are social safety nets for corporations instead of individuals?
“Liberal v. Conservative,” “The immigrants are going to take your jobs,” “The terrorists are coming to get you” or “The cure can’t be worse than the disease” — are all divisive narratives designed to distract the working class and get them back on the clock so they forget that we just saw our social support system fail in a spectacular way.
A DISTRACTOR-IN-CHIEF
DJT is a polarizing character — you love him or you hate him. He has always been that guy – a corrupt would-be real estate tycoon who lied to get onto the Forbes 500 list. Just a simple fact. Trump is not the slick snake-oil salesman he wants the public to think he is. He is the look-over-here distraction suggesting that health officials check into the viability of drinking bleach to keep us from noticing what’s going on behind the scenes.
While a nation’s panicked gaze was fixed on a Coronavirus task force and economic stimulus – the one-two punch of the skyrocketing death toll and the stock plunge/job loss data – The Prevaricator-in-Chief was and is quietly strip-mining the protections of the populace: rolling back environmental regulations and introducing legislation limiting abortion and preexisting condition provisions in the ADA with a “these-are-not-the-droids-you-are-looking-for” sleight-of-hand.
Trump has signed 18 Executive Orders since the pandemic began, including EO 13924: Regulatory Relief to Support Economic Recovery. The BLM quietly rescinded Public Land Order No. 7894; Partial Revocation of a Withdrawal Created by an Executive Order Dated April 17, 1926, Which Established the Public Water Reserve No. 107; Arizona. The controversial Patriot Act provision that allowed the NSA to spy on Americans was quietly renewed on March 15. Those 150 + judicial openings that languished through the last administration and have been filled with every conservative judge anyone could find, experienced or not, will be hearing future lawsuits about EO 13831: Establishment of a White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative. And probably the solicitation order for corporate executives to apply for leadership positions at NOAA. Voting rights, abortion rights, LGBTQ rights, civil rights — while Congress is trying to find out everything the Administration is lying about, the deck is being stacked against the majority of the citizenry. Funding provided by Citizens United sees to it.
During the pandemic, Trump has now dismissed four Senate-approved Inspectors General under the radar of the American people. Conservative media would have you believe that it is in his purview for the Chief Executive to remove a career non-partisan oversight committee member just because he has “lost confidence” in that individual. Chuck Grassley (R-!owa) accurately informed Trump that IGs can only be removed for dereliction of duty and must have a 30-day review window. The Criminal-in-Chief admitted he was firing each vindictively and removed them immediately. Grassley is writing bipartisan legislation to combat the move.
Trump also dismissed the DHHS Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority director, Dr. Rick Bright – the man whose team was literally tasked with developing the vaccine — for condemning the Administration for recommending a dangerous and now-debunked COVID-19 cure, metaphorically benching the QB when we are down by six. Career scientists, judiciary, military, and advisors are resigning in record numbers.
The CDC tests necessary to get Americans back to work? They were originally contaminated through lack of regulation and in the rush for American-made testing and the program has not recovered. The serology tests, likewise, have no federal oversight and no consistent methodology. The pandemic has not gone away. But the urgency of its devastation has been replaced over the last few weeks by a realization that the inequality that has always been a part of the American experience is the greater threat to the union.
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
A social democracy – a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole and guided by our federally-elected representatives – would’ve led to a more effective pandemic response than a free market ideology, where demand drives up the prices of PPE for the benefit of unscrupulous actors and food must be destroyed because the standard food distribution system can’t get it to the 44% of Americans that are food insecure right now.
“Trump’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has the legal authority to require private employers to provide essential workers with protective gear,” notes Robert Reich. “Don’t hold your breath.”
The Trump Administration’s systematic deregulation and defunding has led to the least workplace inspections since OSHA was founded in 1971 and a revolving door of leadership over the past three years that has left the agency toothless and dysfunctional. (Editor’s note: As of the end of May 2020, not a single citation has been issued by OSHA for COVID-related infractions). I heard an EMT thanking the supporters that donated pizza, but he also said he’d really like health coverage because he doesn’t get it through work.
A hair salon or tattoo parlor in Georgia is not going to restore the economy, but it is going to pay those local, federal, and state taxes that support firefighters, police, and schools.
Where did those taxes go? A half-billion of them went to private multinationals, not just airlines (Airlines for America $54B), but hotels (American Hotel and Lodging Association $500B), and retail (National Restaurant Association $190B), whose products the public pays for anyway. Reality just endorsed Medicare-for-All, as 27% of the American workforce just lost their jobs.
Are the Republicans blaming the Democratic leadership for distractions that led to the poor Coronavirus response? Yes. Are the Democrats blaming the Republican leadership for the disastrous pandemic management? Yes. It’s an elaborate Three-Card Monte to drive the narrative away from the fact that the representatives elected by the people are not representing the majority of the population. The 24-7 multimedia coverage blitz of the pandemic has made that abundantly clear – from the frontline health care workers without insurance to the grocery store clerk that probably didn’t expect to put their life on the line for $7.25 an hour but can’t afford to quit and will never get hazard pay. Taxation without representation – I believe that’s why America started in the first place. Big Business dominated the 20th century and nothing much changed for the general populace since the 1918 Spanish Flu.
The good news? Most of us are together. Americans: 328,239,523. Billionaires: 540. The dozens of Boogaloo Bois that carried big guns and demanded economic recovery for billionaires have been replaced by the millions of Americans asking for equality and justice for all. The media and the military are beginning to withhold cooperation from the autocracy. “Once Twitter applied its rules to Trump–and received accolades for its decision–it inadvertently set a precedent,” says the Atlantic, “…a cycle of noncooperation [has been] set in motion.”
United, we can bench the Marketer-in-Chief and his cronies for unsportsmanlike conduct. “The purpose of the federal government,” Lincoln wrote to Congress on July 4th, 1861, [i]s, “To elevate the condition of men [and women], to lift artificial burdens from all shoulders, and to give everyone an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life.”
Further Reading: The America We Need
I started to right a detailed response, but decided it was best to say how much I respect your compassion and your writing and, then, let it stand.
Thanks for the comment. Appreciate the kind words. But I also welcome the dialogue if you are so inclined.
AMEN from my back pew in a backwater.
I am tired of hearing that “we are all in this together.” If I think of the pandemic as a storm rather than a boat, maybe I will not throw a shoe at my TV set when I hear it next. I am still despairing over photos of milk being poured on the ground; I am outraged that so many workers are dependent upon the money that “trickles down” from luxury spending by the affluent. I wonder every time I see a pots and pans serenade for essential workers what the musicians will do to provide a living wage and access to health care instead. I could go on and on.
Thank you for so economically and convincingly arriving at and so succinctly articulating the bottom line issue.
Thank you so much for your comment, Ina. It wasn’t easy to sift through all the disinformation to get to the bottom line issue. Appreciate your thoughts.