Corona Shock: Getting Perspective and Taking Action to Protect Ourselves and Our Nation

Besides keeping ourselves mentally clear and calm and physically healthy, and helping others do the same, we have to stay informed about what DT is doing to further undermine the health, any remnants of democracy and the security and stability of our nation. After three years of shocks to  our personal emotions, our collective mental health and our political and legal system, almost two months of the coronavirus has changed almost every aspect of our society. So many changes that we can barely digest it.

 

DT did not cause the coronavirus. And our health care system was inequitable, too expensive, cumbersome, etc. even before DT. But so much has been revealed about how his lack of judgement, incompetence and greed has made the crisis even worse.

 

Let’s go back to January 13, 2017, 7 days before DT took office. As Politico reports, DT’s aides, future cabinet members, even a future press secretary, were briefed by President Obama’s aides as part of the transition of power, on topics like preparing for a possible pandemic, and securing funding from Congress to improve our health care system, prepare antivirals, masks, etc. Besides the fact of the instability of the DT administration that has led to about two-thirds of those officials no longer being in their position, there is little evidence that DT took any of the briefing to heart. Susan Rice, who was at the meeting said: “Rather than heed the warnings, embrace the planning and preserve the structures and budgets that had been bequeathed to him, the president ignored the risk of a pandemic.”

 

He further set up this crisis with his tax cuts to the rich passed in 2017. This reduced government income and increased the national debt, thus making the nation more vulnerable and  less able to respond to a crisis such as the one we are in now. He proposed to help pay for these huge handouts to the rich by cutting programs that serve and protect the majority of us, including Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

 

DT and the GOP in general have made us all more vulnerable to a pandemic by wasting government time and resources with their attacks on the Affordable Care Act (Obama-Care) and proposing legislation that helps insurance companies more than the insured. If people cannot afford health care, they might not go for treatment when they feel ill, and thus spread the illness to others.

 

DT’s attitude toward public health could at best be called short-sighted and at worst idiotic and cruel. He proposed cuts to the 2020 and 2021 budgets for the CDC. Cuts to the CDC began in 2018 or earlier, when Obama-era health security funding was cut and the agency ran out of money. According to Fortune Magazine, “Overall in 2018, Trump called for $15 billion in reduced health spending that had previously been approved, …cutting the global disease-fighting budgets of the CDC, National Security Council (NSC), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Health and Human Services (HHS) in the process.” He dismantled the entire White House team in charge of global health security that was also created by Obama. Later, he denied knowing about this cut, but video of his talking about the cut shows that is clearly untrue. He proposed Medicaid cuts to nursing facilities for the elderly.

 

In fact, The Atlantic ran an article about how DT’s response to the Coronavirus insured the worst possible outcome. As the New York Times reports, DT has continuously minimized the scale of the coronavirus crisis, treating it as a foreign threat that could be eliminated by building a wall to keep it out. He has contradicted his own public health officials, by talking about going to work when sick, shaking hands with people on his travels (as if the warning by health officials to wash one’s hands was nonsense), and claiming a vaccine will be available soon when it will take a year or more to produce. He has politicized the crisis while blaming the Democrats for doing so, blaming Obama (again), making false statements about how our previous President handled the swine flu epidemic, implementing rules that made testing more difficult (but never happened).

 

DT claimed that the media coverage is part of a political conspiracy to destroy his presidency. He focused more on creating his wall against the “foreign virus” then getting out the test kits that are needed to actually stem this crisis and find out who and how many people actually have the disease.  In fact, the US is clearly far behind other nations in terms of the numbers of those tested.

 

It is good that DT relatively quickly stopped travel to and from China. It is good that this week he is trying to actually, finally, listen to scientists and speak more moderately in his briefings. But some of his proposals to reduce the crisis and help those of us who are sick or have lost jobs or businesses due to the illness, will make things worse. For example, his proposal to cut Medicare and suspend the payroll tax will further hurt those most vulnerable in this crisis. Suspending the payroll tax could undermine SSI while doing nothing to help people who have lost their jobs or businesses due to the virus. If you have no paycheck, a suspension of the tax does nothing for you. It predominantly helps the wealthy. Also, his cuts in the food stamp program and proposed cuts in sick leave will only worsen the situation.

 

And his constant lies, not only about the coronavirus but almost everything, the disinformation campaign propagated by his followers, and his attempts to gag health officials, scientists and others, makes the crisis worse because we can’t trust anything he says.

 

And remember: this crisis began just after DT interfered in the Roger Stone sentencing, fired the former acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire (after he had his aides brief Congress on Russia’s threat to our next election), and replaced him with a DT loyalist. He is clearly trying to turn the intelligence community into an agency to serve his personal political interest, not the nation’s, as he already did at the DOJ. We could go on and on describing his attempts to undermine the rule of law and what’s left of democracy in this nation.

 

We need, once again, to make calls to Congress. We can’t have big protests, due to the virus, only persistent little ones. But we can call and demand investment in health and other infrastructure⎼ we need health care for all, better and free testing, money targeted to assist those most in need, not further entitlements for the rich. A check for a thousand dollars might be nice, helpful for many of us, but will be a bitter pill to swallow by those who lose their food stamps, Medicare, Social Security, hospital bed, or life.

 

 

Here are a few phone numbers of Democratic Senators: NY Dems: Schumer: 202-224-6542 & 212-486-4430, Gillibrand: 202-224-4451. Others: Doug Jones, Al. 202-224-4124; Joe Manchin, W. VA. 202-224-3954; Krysten Sinema, AR: 202-224-4521.

GOP: Lamar Alexander: 202-224-4944, Cory Gardner: 202-224-5941, Mitt Romney: 202-224-5251, Susan Collins: 202-224-2523, Lisa Murkowski: 202-224-6665, Portman: 202-224-3353, Ben Sasse: 202-224-4224, Mike Lee: 202-224-5444.

Dem House: Nancy Pelosi: 202-225-4965

Steny Hoyer: 202-225-4131

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DT is Trying to Turn Main Street America into A Second-Class Nation

When I turn on the radio or tv to hear the Senate Impeachment Trial of the President, it is difficult to get beyond my fear, disgust or outrage. But when I do, what has become clear to me is that despite great gains on Wall Street, and the US having the largest economy and military in the world, DT is turning Main Street America into a second-class nation. What do I mean by that?

 

I am using the term “second class” differently than “second, third or fourth world nation.” By second class I mean a nation where:

  • The political system has been or is becoming unstable or inept, too corrupt to function to protect the interests of the majority of citizens, with the power centralized in the hands of one person or group.
  • The national debt is so high as to be destabilizing or potentially so.
  • The rule of money overpowers the rule of law.
  • Investment in the infrastructure is too small to prevent it from crumbling.
  • Public education is undermined or non-existent.
  • Good health care is too expensive.
  • Increasing violence, especially due to poverty, gender, race and religion.
  • Overwhelming wealth divide and concentration in relatively few hands.
  • Where the nation has been or is becoming more and more isolated from other nations.
  • Protection of the environment is severely neglected.

By this definition, the US is now or is becoming a second-class nation in each of these categories.  In terms of the political system being inept, or too corrupt, we need to start at the Impeachment trial. DT is on trial right now for abuse of power or trying to corruptly interfere in the 2020 election, as well as obstruction of Congress.

 

Although the House did not go so far as to call DT’s actions illegal, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) did. They said he violated the Impoundment Control Act by illegally withholding Congressionally approved funds. And he did it in order to extort Ukraine to do his bidding.

 

The number of corrupt acts committed by this president is almost uncountable. This is particularly important now, as DT claims he withheld aid to Ukraine for 55 days due to concern with their corruption. However, he doesn’t care about stopping corruption in the US, so it is not believable that he cares about it in Ukraine. For example, he sought to get rid of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Newsweek reported in October that he had 2500 conflicts of interest between his job as president and his business holdings. He also attacked and fired the former Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, for trying to fight corruption in Ukraine.

 

And at the heart of impeachment is DT’s attempt to get Ukraine to announce an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden, who might just run against DT for President. Also Biden had pressured Ukraine to investigate corruption more thoroughly (not less, as Giuliani claimed) and remove a corrupt prosecutor named Victor Shokin, who DT had described as “that very good prosecutor”.

 

An article in GQ states that DT corrupted the American Presidency in every conceivable way, “turning the highest office in the land into one crooked cesspool.” “Throughout his tenure in the White House, DT has leveraged the powers of his office… to enrich himself at every opportunity” from profiting greatly from the GOP and foreign leaders staying at his hotels, charging the Secret Service and the American taxpayers for golf carts and for his own vacations or for advertising for his properties, etc., etc.. According to New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood, he used his own charity in a “shocking pattern of illegality,” including using it to buy a portrait of himself.

 

He has interfered in court cases, and undermined the rule of law, in the Mueller Investigation, and of course, in his threat to Adam Schiff last weekend, and in his Impeachment.

 

We can also see DT’s attitude in the statements of his defense attorneys. On Saturday, attorney Mike Purpura tried to argue that the President did nothing wrong. According to CNN & other fact-checking organizations, Purpura is at best deceptive, if not lying. He says there was no pressure on Ukrainian President Zelensky, a fact supposedly supported by Zelensky himself. This ignores the fact that without DT’s support, Ukraine would fall to Russia in a short time. If Zelensky acknowledged the pressure exerted by the U. S. President, his nation would die.

 

Purpura said Ukraine did not know the aid was even withheld. However, evidence shows some Ukrainian officials knew about the holdup by the day of the July 25th phone call.

 

There are even more ridiculous claims: as outlined by the CNN fact-check, one of DT’s other lawyers, Pat Cippolone, said that the President was “locked out” from participating in the House hearings. The House made a formal offer to have the President’s attorney present, but Cippolone himself wrote the letter rejecting any participation. And GOP Congresspeople participated both in the closed door and public hearings.

 

Another of the President’s attorneys, Jay Sekulow, repeated the claim debunked by our own intelligence services that it was the Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 election, and that they did so for Hillary Clinton’s interest. And Rudy Giuliani, a fourth lawyer for DT, traveled in Ukraine and other places to spread the disinformation. Compelling evidence was released in November that all this disinformation was part of Russia’s effort to frame Ukraine for the interference.

 

And what is the supposed evidence for Ukraine interfering in the election that the GOP is citing? Ukrainian officials liked Hillary Clinton and made insulting comments about DT. If this is evidence that Ukraine interfered in the election, then is the fact that 52% of the American public voted against DT evidence that half of the American public interfered in the election?

 

The disinformation campaign by Russia sought to spread lies that Ukraine was responsible for the hack of the DNC. DT and his lawyers also claimed Hillary’s campaign was directed by Ukrainian oligarchs and her server was in the Ukraine. There is no evidence for any of these claims. They are so ridiculous I can’t believe that members of DT’s legal team are still speaking lines written as Russian propaganda.

 

All this shows not only that the corruption of this administration is beyond anything ever seen before in this country, but the utter contempt DT and his party have for democracy, the truth, and the rule of law.

 

As far as the other criteria of a second-class nation:

 

The tax cut passed by the GOP in 2017 created a looming deficit in government income, causing the debt to double from 2015 to 2019.  Newsweek reported that over the last three years of DT, the debt increased by $3 trillion; the US Debt Clock has the debt at over $23 trillion. The tax cut served large corporations and the wealthy and scores of Republican lawmakers, not the middle class (whose gains, if any, were small and temporary).  To pay off the debt, the U. S. now pays more than $1 billion each day on interest payments and the amount paid per day will continue to rise.

 

Based on data by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the deficits over the next 30 years will rise to “unprecedented levels.” This will deprive the nation of funds needed for infrastructure, public education, health care and social programs. It will reduce economic opportunities for individuals and make it more difficult to get money to finance homes, college education, cars, and anything else. The CBO estimates that if we reduced the debt to the historical average level, the income per person would rise on average as much as $5,500. This is one measure of what DT’s tax cut is costing most of us.

 

The high levels of debt also reduce the government’s ability to respond to any future crises, which puts our nation in a potentially threatening situation.  Who benefits from this?

 

I could go on and on, about how DT:

 

DT is not making America great but undermining our security and future. He needs to be impeached before he becomes a dictator⎼ and over a second-class nation.

 

 

This post was syndicated by The Good Men Project.