TRUMP’s PANDEMIC & LEADERSHIP HOAX

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© Dave Granlund.com — Political Cartoons.com (“fair use”)

“You go into a pandemic with the president you have, not the president you wish you had.”
~Paul Krugman, NYTimes

Excerpt:

Why did Trump and his team deny and delay? All the evidence suggests that he didn’t want to do or say anything that might drive down stock prices, which he seems to regard as the key measure of his success. That’s presumably why as late as Feb. 25 Larry Kudlow, the administration’s chief economist, declared that the U.S. had “contained” the coronavirus, and that the economy was “holding up nicely.”

Well, that was a bad bet. Since then, the stock market has more or less given up all its gains under the Trump presidency. More important, the economy is clearly in free-fall. So what should we do now?

I’ll leave health policy to the experts. On economic policy, I’d suggest three principles. First, focus on hardship, not G.D.P. Second, stop worrying about incentives to work. Third, don’t trust Trump.

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The DON, and Mitch Prepare to Give Away the Farm to BIGGIES.

. . . But She’s Watching for Slight-of-Hand, Fighting for Neighbors !

Elizabeth Warren, March 17

✔@SenWarren

1. Companies must maintain their payrolls and use funds to keep people working or on payroll.

 

2. Companies must provide a $15 minimum wage within one year of the national emergency declaration ending.

 

3. Companies are permanently prohibited from engaging in share repurchases.

 

4. Companies are prohibited from paying out dividends or executive bonuses while they are receiving any relief and for three years thereafter.

 

5. Companies must set aside at least one seat – but potentially two or more, as the amount of relief increases – on the board of directors for representatives elected by workers.

 

6. Collective bargaining agreements should remain in place and should not be reopened or renegotiated pursuant to this relief program.  


7. Corporations must obtain shareholder and board approval for all political expenditures.

 

8. CEOs must be required to personally certify a company is in compliance and face criminal penalties for false certifications.

Here’s a quote from Will Bunch, at Philadelphia Inquirer, with a link to Warren’s op-ed at CNN, on the topic of a just bailout for the middle class:

“When the 2008 financial crisis hit, the federal government responded with a bankers’ bailout,” Warren wrote this week in a CNN op-ed, recalling the tempest that put a once obscure academic on a near-miss White House trajectory a dozen years ago. “The rich and powerful got richer and more powerful. We should learn from the past and meet the challenges of this pandemic head-on, this time to deliver meaningful, grassroots relief directly to American families.”
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11 thoughts on “TRUMP’s PANDEMIC & LEADERSHIP HOAX”

  1. EXCERPT : Public-health defense systems are created to protect us in the future, not in the past. Yet, in a single stroke, the Trump Administration fired the people whose job it was to plan for—and attempt to blunt—inevitable epidemics, such as the one that is currently bringing much of the world to its knees.

    SOURCE : https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/coronavirus-and-the-gutting-of-americas-public-health-system#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-bottom-recirc-similar_8007c9dc-e584-4cb0-952d-0480a090895b_similar2-3_entityTopicSimilarity

  2. Cv-19 TIMELINE / Cult of Trump.

    EXCERPT: Trump’s first public remarks on the coronavirus came during an interview with the CNBC reporter Joe Kernen on January 22. Kernen asked, “Are there worries about a pandemic at this point?” To which Trump replied, “No. Not at all. And—we’re—we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s—going to be just fine.” In February, he falsely declared that “we are very close to a vaccine,” and that “within a couple of days [the number of cases] is going to be down to close to zero.” In early March, he was still urging Americans to ignore the issue, saying, “It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”

    SOURCE : https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/donald-trump-menace-public-health/608449/

  5. WORST INTELLIGENCE FAILURE EVER :
    Last week, the Washington Post reported on the steady drumbeat of coronavirus warnings that the intelligence community presented to the White House in January and February. These alerts made little impact upon senior administration officials, who were undoubtedly influenced by President Donald Trump’s constant derision of the virus, which he began on 22 January: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” SOURCE: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/29/the-coronavirus-is-the-worst-intelligence-failure-in-us-history

  6. TRUMP GUTS CDC BUDGET:
    Overall in 2018, Trump called for $15 billion in reduced health spending that had previously been approved, as he looked at increasing budget deficits, 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.

    The effects of those cuts are being felt today. While the CDC announced plans to test people with flu-like symptoms for COVID-19, those have been delayed and only three of the country’s 100 public-health labs have been able to test for coronavirus.
    SOURCE: https://fortune.com/2020/02/26/coronavirus-covid-19-cdc-budget-cuts-us-trump/

  7. DOCTOR TELLS IT STRAIGHT, ON FOX NEWS :

    “Look at what South Korea did, and what we did. Their population is one-sixth of ours,” he said. “Look at the cases they have. Look at the mortality they have. It’s a trifle compared to what we’re dealing with right now because we’ve had a very weak response and they had a really strong response.”

    source : https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fox-news-host-asks-doctor-about-the-governments-coronavirus-response-heres-why-he-might-not-be-invited-back-2020-04-02?mod=mw_latestnews

  10. !! WAR SCORE !!

    Written by former GOP speech-writer to President George W. Bush, a stunning and eloquent recounting of the timeline of Trump’s slow-motion disaster, titled THIS IS TRUMP’S FAULT :

    EXCERPT:

    I don’t take responsibility at all,” said President Donald Trump in the Rose Garden on March 13. Those words will probably end up as the epitaph of his presidency, the single sentence that sums it all up.

    Trump now fancies himself a “wartime president.” How is his war going? By the end of March, the coronavirus had killed more Americans than the 9/11 attacks. By the first weekend in April, the virus had killed more Americans than any single battle of the Civil War. By Easter, it may have killed more Americans than the Korean War. On the present trajectory, it will kill, by late April, more Americans than Vietnam. Having earlier promised that casualties could be held near zero, Trump now claims he will have done a “very good job” if the toll is held below 200,000 dead.

    That the pandemic occurred is not Trump’s fault. The utter unpreparedness of the United States for a pandemic is Trump’s fault. The loss of stockpiled respirators to breakage because the federal government let maintenance contracts lapse in 2018 is Trump’s fault. The failure to store sufficient protective medical gear in the national arsenal is Trump’s fault. That states are bidding against other states for equipment, paying many multiples of the precrisis price for ventilators, is Trump’s fault. Air travelers summoned home and forced to stand for hours in dense airport crowds alongside infected people? That was Trump’s fault too. Ten weeks of insisting that the coronavirus is a harmless flu that would miraculously go away on its own? Trump’s fault again. [. . . more. . . ]

    SOURCE : https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/americans-are-paying-the-price-for-trumps-failures/609532/

    BUT MAYBE, just maybe, it’s our fault for electing someone so incompetent, to lead us. Fake leadership !!!

  11. !! WAR SCORE !!

    Written by former GOP speech-writer to President George W. Bush, a stunning and eloquent recounting of the timeline of Trump’s slow-motion disaster, titled THIS IS TRUMP’S FAULT :

    EXCERPT:

    I don’t take responsibility at all,” said President Donald Trump in the Rose Garden on March 13. Those words will probably end up as the epitaph of his presidency, the single sentence that sums it all up.

    Trump now fancies himself a “wartime president.” How is his war going? By the end of March, the coronavirus had killed more Americans than the 9/11 attacks. By the first weekend in April, the virus had killed more Americans than any single battle of the Civil War. By Easter, it may have killed more Americans than the Korean War. On the present trajectory, it will kill, by late April, more Americans than Vietnam. Having earlier promised that casualties could be held near zero, Trump now claims he will have done a “very good job” if the toll is held below 200,000 dead.

    That the pandemic occurred is not Trump’s fault. The utter unpreparedness of the United States for a pandemic is Trump’s fault. The loss of stockpiled respirators to breakage because the federal government let maintenance contracts lapse in 2018 is Trump’s fault. The failure to store sufficient protective medical gear in the national arsenal is Trump’s fault. That states are bidding against other states for equipment, paying many multiples of the precrisis price for ventilators, is Trump’s fault. Air travelers summoned home and forced to stand for hours in dense airport crowds alongside infected people? That was Trump’s fault too. Ten weeks of insisting that the coronavirus is a harmless flu that would miraculously go away on its own? Trump’s fault again. [. . . more. . . ]

    SOURCE : https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/americans-are-paying-the-price-for-trumps-failures/609532/

    BUT MAYBE, just maybe, it’s our fault for electing someone so incompetent, to lead us. Fake leadership !!! (About as valuable as a degree from Trump University!)

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