Trump Is Leaving Us The Worst Mess In American History-- Has Biden Got What It Takes To Clean It Up?

 

Cult of Ignorance-- Closed by Nancy Ohanian

North Dakota should get a medal... or at least a pat on the back. The state has the highest rate of COVID infection per capita-- 82,502 per million Dakotans. I think that means that by the time Trump is thrown out into the gutter in front of the White House, 1 out of 10 North Dakotans will have had or will have COVID. Today they reported 2,270 more cases, bring the state total to 62,872. They also reported 19 more deaths and since there is no more room in any of their hospitals, there is probably a lot of trouble ahead for this extremely Trumpist state, where they gave their fearless leader a 65.1% to 31.8% victory over Biden. The only county Biden won was Rolette (where 73.01% of the people are Native Americans).

But none of that is why I'm suggesting a medal or a pat on the head. Gov. Doug Burgum, who was reelected with an even bigger margin than Señor Trumpanzee (69.2%) last week, finally issued a statewide mask mandate Friday night. After adamantly resisting masks for 9 months, Burgum's statement suddenly admitted that "The most effective weapon against COVID-19 is wearing a mask. This is a simple tool, but one that’s critical in helping protect our loved ones and slow the spread." And anyone who doesn't like it... can go to South Dakota, where psychotic mass murderer Kristi Noem will happily give them refuge. (South Dakota has the second worst outbreak per capita in the country-- 72,550 per million-- with 1,855 more cases today and a total of 64,182. South Dakota also announced 53 more deaths today, an awful lot for a state with so few people. Noem seems to love every second of it.

California and our lame-ass governor is doing better than Noem and Burgum, of course, but California has 25,938 cases per million and that is starting to climb again, for two reasons:

1- Newsom is afraid to take stringent actions
2- Too many Californians ignore even the inadequate and weak, unenforced actions he has implemented.

Texas is the only state with more overall cases and the only state besides California with over a million cases (although Florida is probably going to catch up). Newsom was exposed as a hypocrite by the San Francisco Chronicle when he was caught at a super-fancy French Laundry dinner for Jason Kinney, a slimebag lobbyist (for, among other bad actors, Facebook) and one of Newsom's less than reputable cronies. There were 12 people at the dinner-- from more than 3 households-- so it violated Newsom's own guidelines. He apologized today and said he and the Kimberly Guilfoyle replacement shouldn't have gone. You think? Especially when he's telling Californians not to travel for Thanksgiving dinners.

This morning, L.A. Times reporters Maria L. La Ganga, Sonja Sharp, and Julia Barajas wrote about Californians' deteriorating mental health. "Pandemic Holiday Season 1.0 is taking its toll on psyches and pocketbooks," they wrote. "We’ve been cooped up for the better part of nine months, but instead of drawing up lists of guests and gifts, we’re cataloging the things we cannot do as temperatures drop and coronavirus cases soar across the country. Like visit far-flung family and friends. On Friday, the governors of the three West Coast states issued 'travel advisories,' recommending against nonessential travel and urging people entering California, Oregon and Washington to self-quarantine for two weeks to slow the virus’ spread. Or buy those loved ones holiday gifts. A second round of stimulus money to help hard-hit consumers is a distant dream because of a deadlocked Congress. And even if shoppers have money in their pockets, malls are what health experts warn against: closed-in spaces with the possibility of crowds. Or even, for the high school seniors among us, apply for college in any normal fashion. Campuses are largely on lockdown. Learning is remote. The extracurricular activities that burnish an application are on hold. And you can’t bump into your counselor in the hall for a little extra guidance."

Meanwhile, President-elect Biden implored Trump to confront the surging pandemic. Trump is angry and hurt he lost and would rather play gold while people die. Michael Shear reported that Biden called the "federal response 'woefully lacking,' even as Mr. Trump broke a 10-day silence on the pandemic to threaten to withhold a vaccine from New York."

In a blistering statement, Mr. Biden said that the recent surge, which is killing more than 1,000 Americans every day and has hospitalized about 70,000 in total, required a “robust and immediate federal response.”

“I will not be president until next year,” Mr. Biden said. “The crisis does not respect dates on the calendar, it is accelerating right now. Urgent action is needed today, now, by the current administration-- starting with an acknowledgment of how serious the current situation is.”

...A spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, Rich Azzopardi, responded on Twitter, saying that Mr. Trump “has failed with his pandemic response, lied to Americans about how bad it was when he knew otherwise & was fired by voters for his incompetence. @NYGovCuomo is fighting to ensure the communities hit hardest by Covid get the vaccine. Feds providing 0 resources.”

Biden has a terrible decision to make in a few weeks, one he's certainly not looking forward to and probably wishes Trump would do it instead. There's no chance of that so it will be up to Biden to take the tough steps-- extremely unpopular in half the country-- needed to get control of the pandemic. AP's Alexandra Jaffe reported that members of Biden's coronavirus advisory board are arguing among themselves about whether or not a national lockdown is needed-- or feasible.

That’s a sign of the tough dynamic Biden will face when he is inaugurated in January. He campaigned as a more responsible steward of America’s public health than President Donald Trump is and has been blunt about the challenges that lie ahead for the country, warning of a “dark winter” as cases spike.

But talk of lockdowns are especially sensitive. For one, they’re nearly impossible for a president to enact on his own, requiring bipartisan support from state and local officials. But more broadly, they’re a political flashpoint that could undermine Biden’s efforts to unify a deeply divided country.

“It would create a backlash,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security who added that such a move could make the situation worse if people don’t comply with restrictions. “Lockdowns can have consequences that diminish the value of such an approach.”

During his first public appearance since losing the election, Trump noted on Friday that he wouldn’t support a lockdown. The president, who has yet to publicly acknowledge Biden’s victory, would likely reinforce that message to his loyal supporters once he’s left office.

...Even if a nationwide lockdown made sense, polling shows that Americans’ appetite for a closure waning. Gallup found that only 49% of Americans said they’d be “very likely” to comply with a monthlong stay-at-home order because of an outbreak of the virus. A full third said they’d be very or somewhat unlikely to comply with such an order.

Kathleen Sebelius, who was the health and human services secretary during the Obama administration, said Biden would be wise to keep his options open for now, especially as Trump criticizes lockdowns.

“It’s a very dicey topic” politically, she said. “I think wisely, the president-elect doesn’t want to get into a debate with the sitting president about some kind of mandate that he has no authority to implement.”

Because of Trump the U.S. reported 162,229 new cases on Thursday, 187,896 new cases on Friday and 157,081 new cases today, bringing the U.S. total to a horrific 11,226,038. With the exceptions of Vermont, Maine, NewHampshire, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and West Virginia, every state is in pandemic out-of-control territory. The half dozen states with the worst outbreaks per capital are all states were large numbers of people are willing to put themselves and their families in harm's way by listening to a deranged Trump rather than to public health officials and experts:

• North Dakota- 82,502 cases per million residents
• South Dakota- 72,550 cases per million residents
• Iowa- 57,479 cases per million residents
• Wisconsin- 52,609 cases per million residents
• Nebraska- 49,070 cases per million residents
• Utah- 47,144 cases per million residents

This, plus an incipient depression, is what Trump is leaving Biden-- and America.

Trump's Legacy: The Pandemic

 

Confirmed new COVID-19 infections in the U.S. on Wednesday (144,391) and Thursday (162,226) were higher than the next three-worst countries combined. Today there were 183,527 more cases, bringing the U.S. total above the 11 million mark. There are 33,427 cases for every million Americans. That's significantly worse than comparable countries, even though most of them are also suffering disastrous new waves on contagion. These are the dozen countries with the biggest economies in the world-- measured by gross domestic product (GDP)-- along with how many cases per million residents they have reported as of today:

• U.S.- 33,427 cases per million residents
• China- 60
• Japan- 897
• Germany- 9,213
• India- 6,334
• U.K.- 19,370
• France- 29,429
• Italy- 18,324
• Brazil- 27,306
• Canada- 7,588
• Russia- 12,884
• South Korea- 549

This might be a good time to point out that the 3 contiguous Trumpistani states, still reveling in their devotion to Trump and in their COVIDity, probably should a wall built around them to save the rest of the country:

• North Dakota- 79,524 cases per million residents
• South Dakota- 70,453
• Iowa- 56,008

How do we get out of this? I hate to sound like a broken record, but everyone should wear a mask and practice social distancing, the way they do in China, Japan and South Korea (see numbers above). But a self-serving Trump, without an iota of concern for the people who elected him, let alone the rest of us, politicized and distorted simple public health protocols so that it's now practically impossible for majorities in Trumpistann to don a mask without being suspect... a socialist? a Muslim? a Black Lives Matters activist? a secret agent for AOC? Republican governors are already saying they will reject Biden's appeal for mask mandates in their states, including mass murderers Kristi Noem (R-SD) and Kim Reynolds (R-IA).

Because of Trump and zombie partisan governors like Noem and Reynolds, it will probably take between a million and two million deaths in the U.S. before there is anything serious that can happen with stopping the pandemic. And I don't even generally advocate shooting non-mask-wears in the streets. But even people as partisan as Charles Koch are rethinking their lockstep support for the Republican Death Cult and its welcoming posture towards the pandemic.

Q-Anon is now in Congress

Allow me to put a twitter thread by Rachel Bitecofer into narrative form, since she sees it differently. Where I think the problem is partisan, she thinks it's generational and that our situation isn't being made worse by Republicans so much as by people under 40 (most of whom are not Trump supporters):

She began by asserting that "The only way to make the under 40 crowd change behaviors (absent coercion via gov action like a mask mandate-- given Trump and the GOP have set a careless tone in concrete in the U.S.) is to start featuring the deaths of young people on local news, social media, and ads on TV. These ads would need to present only young people and highlight their deaths in ways that admittedly take their representation in the data out of proper context. Because right now, the under-40 crowd are driving the infection spread and they are doing it because they believe that if they get it-- they'll likely get the asymptomatic or low-symptom kind. It ironic, because a population that has a demonstrably shitty capability of assessing risk is suddenly really good at assessing it correctly. Because the Under-40 crowd have very, very good odds of the above, espically if they are perfectly healthy still (the bastards!) . But, no reporters even hit them back with what I'd hit them back with, which is whether they've thought through if they can live with the guilt. 'The guilt of what?' they invariably ask. 'The guilt of accidentally killing someone! Because I would be terrified of becoming an asymptotic carrier and killing someone-- like my friend, or my mom, or grandma, or sister, tots by accident!! This virus is weird. I mean you're right. The odds of anyone of us getting a deadly version of it is so small yet the obituaries are filled with people who got sick via a friend or relative that didn't know they were sick and went to dinner with them, or came to their house or something and they were just like you or me and now they're DEAD. No one can predict who it'll be. It could be any of us!' Maybe it helps."

Maybe. But I think after a million Americans are dead-- we're "just" at a quarter million right now-- Americans will finally get it through their collective skull that no masks = sickness and death. Or, if we don't, a government will must the courage to step in with mandatory measures, like serious escalating fines leading, if ignored, to prison. I hope we don't have to wait for two million deaths before that happens!

Only 7 U.S. states-- Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and West Virginia-- have fewer than 20,000 cases per million residents. Anything above 20,000 is considered an out-of-control pandemic. 16 states have over 40,000 cases per million residents. I recommend... XLear (pronounced "clear"). I'll explain why next week but go get some now and start using it.

The Biden-Harris Plan for Covid Recovery Is Not the Biden-Harris Plan You Voted For

The Biden-Harris Covid Advisory Council

by Thomas Neuburger

The new, improved transition version of the [Biden-Harris Covid plan] is so threadbare compared to the extensive, full bore assault campaign version that the shared elements are few and far between.
     —Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism
 

I have remarked privately and worried publicly that Joe Biden's Covid proposals would not pass two critical marks — free treatment for all, and free vaccines for all (see "When Should the War Against Biden's Neoliberalism Begin?").

About the vaccine in particular, I wrote, "It's impossible, on moral or practical grounds, to make the case that during a global pandemic (a) the price should be a multiple of the cost of manufacture; and (b) any user should spend a single dollar to receive it." The same applies to the cost of treatment.

Yet that case looks like it's about to be made, especially about the cost of treatment. Thanks to this excellent examination by Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism, "Quick Comments on the Biden-Harris Covid Plan: Not Much Sizzle and No Steak," we have some insight into the many differences between the Covid plan that was advertised on the campaign website and what's being touted today:

First, this new plan isn’t the same as the one on the Biden campaign site. The campaign version had no mention of contact tracing, while this iteration does. But if you simply skim the campaign version versus the president-presumptive one, you’ll see tons of program proposals from the campaign have vanished, like emergency paid leave (with reimbursements to employers), income support for gig workers whose pay has declined, rental assistance, and support for small businesses.

The campaign plan also had sweeping promises about paying for all Covid treatments, not just testing. For instance, this section, by using the term “balance billing” clearly meant it included hospitalizations and emergency room visits ... There’s not a peep about any of this in the new version. ...

The lack of financial support for workers to stay at home because they are sick, quarantined, or just waiting for test results makes it difficult to treat this scheme as serious. And the failure to even ask for the government to cover all Covid treatment costs, not just the kind that can be administered with a needle means a lot of people who have or think they have Covid won’t seek treatment until they are really really ill, increasing the load on hospitals and producing worse outcomes.

About the cost of drugs, Matt Taibbi caught this clever price positioning by the CEO of Gilead, makers of remdesivir. First, he implied that remdesivir was worth $48,000 per treatment because "earlier hospital discharge would result in hospital savings of approximately $12,000 per patient," which Taibbi takes to mean $12,000 per day multiplied by four, the number of days earlier than normal that remdesivir-treated patients were released on average.

But Gilead, says Taibbi, was inclined to be generous and reduce the price to "a measly $3,120 per patient." Keep that $3,000 per patient number in mind.

About vaccine pricing, I see three ways a Biden-Harris plan might go:

1. The government will provide the vaccine for free to all and buy it at near cost from the manufacturer, saving lots of government money.

2. The government will provide the vaccine for free to all, but reimburse the manufacturer at near-retail prices, spending lots of government money.

3. Vaccine recipients will be charged a co-pay to offset the cost to the government of reimbursing the manufacturer at near-retail prices, spending lots of government money, but less of it. 

Since option one is actually a Sanders plan, I don't hold much hope that it will be chosen. So keep your eye on the amount of money that passes from the government to whichever drug manufacturer hits the jackpot. Billions will be a low estimate. 

More than 300 million people live in the U.S. At "just" $100 per dose, that's $30 billion dollars, not counting redosage income. And why, with a compliant government paying the bill, would the manufacturer stop at $100 per dose? Gilead's CEO counts himself generous for charging a mere $3,000 per patient for remdesivir.

Multiply $3,000, or even $1,000, times 300 million. Jackpot indeed.

_____ 

(For those who like my work, I've launched a Substack site. You can get more information here. If you decide to sign up — it's free — my thanks to you!)

Trump Deserves A Far Worse Fate Than He Is Likely To Get

 

Biden's First Order of Business by Nancy Ohanian

Trump doesn't exactly mix with the masses; no one would be able to get their hands on him, no matter how many COVID-deaths he has caused. Right now the U.S. is reporting over 100,000 new cases a day. On Monday it was 127,231 new cases. On Tuesday it was 142,212 new cases and so far today-- with hours of reporting to go-- it is 67,893 new cases, bringing the U.S. total to more than 10,600,000 (over 32,000 cases per million residents). Worse yet, hospitalizations are surging and in some Trumpist bastions, particularly the Dakotas and Nebraska, hospital capacity is non-existent, exactly what public health officials warned would happen if people didn't take the pandemic seriously and take serious precautions, the opposite of what has happened in Trumpistan counties-- which are all less educated, less healthy and less productive than the rest of America (the Moocher counties).

But Trump will never be held accountable for his criminal response to the pandemic and will never be charged for negligent homicide. In fact, the worst hit counties and states are all counties and states that gave Trump some of his biggest margins. Every single county in North Dakota is now a COVID-county and North Dakota, per capita, has more cases than any other place on earth (73,934 cases per million residents) and gave Trump a resounding 65.1% vote of confidence. Trump has nothing to fear in the Dakotas. But other than perhaps NYC or Chicago, he could probably walk down any street in America without be killed or assaulted, especially with his Secret Service protection-for-life. So Timothy O'Brien tried explaining this morning why Trump fears leaving the White House. Short version: "Losing the presidency leaves him vulnerable to financial and legal danger," after being "protected from the consequences of his own mistakes his entire life."

Born into a wealthy family, he was insulated from lukewarm academic prospects and serial business crack-ups by his father’s money. (“I often say that I’m a member of the lucky sperm club,” is how he put it in one of his books.) Emerging as a reality-TV star in the early 2000s, Trump discovered that fame allowed him to be as predatory as he pleased without repercussions. (“When you’re a star, they let you do it.”) And his 2016 ascent to the White House opened his eyes to the presidency’s legal armor-- which he interpreted broadly and often inaccurately. (“I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”)

Although Trump has over the years juggled, among other difficulties, ho-hum grades, the threat of personal bankruptcy, sexual assault accusations, an intensive federal investigation and an impeachment, he has plowed ahead relatively unwounded and unencumbered by regret. Wealth, celebrity and the presidency have kept him buoyant. All that insulation has also meant that he hasn’t learned from his mistakes. Every personal and public reckoning has been postponed or shunted aside.

Now, however, Trump is staring at two threats that loom after he leaves the White House in January. One is financial, the other legal. Neither is entirely under his control. And both may help explain, along with his perennial inability to accept losing, why Trump won’t acknowledge that President-elect Joe Biden is going to succeed him and why he has enlisted the Republican Party to help him gaslight Americans about the outcome of the presidential election.

Trump and the patchwork of businesses he houses inside the Trump Organization are saddled with more than $1 billion in debt, which Dan Alexander of Forbes has helpfully tallied. A portion of that total has been divulged over the past few years in the president’s personal financial disclosures, on file with the Office of Government Ethics. The New York Times recently revealed that Trump has personally guaranteed at least $421 million of the debt, with more than $300 million coming due within four years.

In other words, Trump is on the hook for a lot of money that he may have to scramble to repay in a Covid-19-battered economy in which his industries-- hotels, leisure, urban real estate-- have been particularly pummeled. Forbes estimates his assets are worth $3.7 billion; Bloomberg News pegs them at about $3.2 billion. He’s not going broke. But if the economy continues to struggle in coming months, those valuations will be tested. And much of what Trump holds isn’t liquid, meaning he may be hard-pressed to sell assets quickly if he needs to raise funds. Among Trump’s most valuable holdings, for example, are minority stakes in two properties controlled by Vornado Realty Trust. Rumors of fire sales might further depress the value of his portfolio.

Another thing that would weaken Trump’s ability to negotiate sweetheart financial deals or forgiveness: leaving the presidency.

On the legal side of the ledger, Trump, his children and their company face aggressive investigations into their finances, accounting practices and tax payments.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is investigating Trump for possible tax fraud and falsification of business records, according to appellate court filings. In this probe, which is also examining the president’s payment of hush money to two women who allegedly had sexual encounters with him, the DA’s office is seeking eight years of Trump’s tax returns. It is also taking a look at whether Trump inflated the value of his properties and other assets in order to secure funds from lenders and investors.

New York Attorney General Letitia James has launched another investigation, also focused on whether the Trump Organization and the Trump family manipulated valuations to secure funding or engineer tax benefits. James’s probe is a civil case, which could bring hefty financial penalties against Trump but no prison time (unless she finds reasons to recast it as criminal case). Vance’s investigation is a criminal matter, however, and if the Trump crew is found guilty of felonies, prison time is on the table.

Trump’s team has fought back hard against the Vance investigation, including arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court that a sitting president is immune from state criminal prosecutions. While the court rejected that notion in a landmark ruling over the summer, it would become a moot argument in any venue once Trump is no longer president.

A Trump pushed outside the legal moat that surrounds the White House becomes, for the most part, a Trump who can be sued and penalized just as any other American can. That could also give fresh traction to the sexual assault cases against him.

It’s unclear how aggressive law enforcement officials in the Biden administration will be toward Trump. They could resurrect some of the obstruction charges that have gone fallow since former Special Counsel Robert Mueller ended his probe. On the other hand, the political firestorm that could ignite might persuade Biden to hold back.

What’s clear is that Trump’s money and freedom are in play. As he comes to grips with losing the 2020 election, he will continue responding ferociously and unpredictably, like a man who for 74 years has been accustomed to getting away with almost anything.

When Trump is found guilty in Manhattan he waits for his appeal in jail (Rikers Isalnd), not in one of his mansions. Will Congress rescind his Secret Service protection-- they should-- or will the agents have to have an adjoining, unlocked, cell?

Too Bad We Can't Build A Wall Around Trumpistan-- At Least During The Pandemic

 

Red America by Nancy Ohanian

Trumpistan... the sick and dying Moocher States-- whose people like everything about socialism (other than sharing with black people and immigrants... and the name "socialism), uneducated, steeped in bigotry and superstition masquerading as religion. America's albatross-- especially during an out-of-control pandemic when their willfully poor hygiene puts the rest of us, all of us in real danger.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal noted that politics has pulled the country apart. "The widening divide between red and blue America," they wrote-- "demographically, philosophically and culturally-- can seem like an irreparable rift... And in 2020, one of the starkest divides has been attitudes about the Covid-19 pandemic. Among Republicans who voted in the 2020 presidential election, about eight in 10 said the country has coronavirus at least somewhat under control. About the same percentage of Democrats said it is not at all under control."

Thank your president for something needless and dangerous that didn't have to be politicized. But refusing to mandate masks and social distancing-- and for demonizing the whole idea of it-- Trump encouraged Republicans nationwide to keep spreading the disease, even as he did that himself, all of his rallies leading to outbreaks and deaths. When you look at the 3 states with the most cases of COVID per capita, they're all run by crackpot Trumpist governors who still refuse to follow public health officials. And the folks who live in these states? After 4 years of Trump, each voted heavily for 4 more years!

• Doug Burgum (R-ND)- 73,934 cases per million residents-- 651.%
• Kristi Noem (R-SD)- 64,809 cases per million residents-- 61.8%
• Kim Reynolds (R-IA)- 51,284 cases per million residents-- 53.2%

Yesterday, Brookings put out a paper pointing out the economic disparity between the Trump counties and the Biden counties. I found it shocking. They reported that Biden-voting counties equal 70% of America's economy! "[T]he stark economic rift that Brookings Metro documented after Donald Trump’s shocking 2016 victory has grown even wider. In 2016, we wrote that the 2,584 counties that Trump won generated just 36% of the country’s economic output, whereas the 472 counties Hillary Clinton carried equated to almost two-thirds of the nation’s aggregate economy. A similar analysis for last week’s election shows these trends continuing, albeit with a different political outcome. This time, Biden’s winning base in 477 counties encompasses fully 70% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,497 counties represents just 29% of the economy. (Votes are still outstanding in 110 mostly low-output counties...) The nation’s economic geography remains rigidly divided. Biden captured virtually all of the counties with the biggest economies in the country, including flipping the few that Clinton did not win in 2016. By contrast, Trump won thousands of counties in small-town and rural communities with correspondingly tiny economies. Biden’s counties tended to be far more diverse, educated, and white-collar professional, with their aggregate nonwhite and college-educated shares of the economy running to 35% and 36%, respectively, compared to 16% and 25% in counties that voted for Trump."

The wealth-producing counties that Trump won in 2016 Tarrant (TX), Maricopa (AZ), Duval (FL), Morris (NJ) and Pinellas (FL), he lost to Biden last week.

In short, 2020’s map continues to reflect a striking split between the large, dense, metropolitan counties that voted Democratic and the mostly exurban, small-town, or rural counties that voted Republican.  Blue and red America reflect two very different economies: one oriented to diverse, often college-educated workers in professional and digital services occupations, and the other whiter, less-educated, and more dependent on “traditional” industries.

Why does this matter? This economic rift that persists in dividing the nation is a problem because it underscores the near-certainty of both continued clashes between the political parties and continued alienation and misunderstandings.

To start with, the 2020’s sharpened economic divide forecasts gridlock in Congress and between the White House and Senate on the most important issues of economic policy. The problem-- as we have witnessed over the past decade and are likely to continue seeing-- is not only that Democrats and Republicans disagree on issues of culture, identity, and power, but that they represent radically different swaths of the economy. Democrats represent voters who overwhelmingly reside in the nation’s diverse economic centers, and thus tend to prioritize housing affordability, an improved social safety net, transportation infrastructure, and racial justice. Jobs in blue America also disproportionately rely on national R&D investment, technology leadership, and services exports.

By contrast, Republicans represent an economic base situated in the nation’s struggling small towns and rural areas. Prosperity there remains out of reach for many, and the party sees no reason to consider the priorities and needs of the nation’s metropolitan centers. That is not a scenario for economic consensus or achievement.

At the same time, the results from last week’s election likely underscore fundamental problems of economic alienation and estrangement. Specifically, Trump’s anti-establishment appeal suggests that a sizable portion of the country continues to feel little connection to the nation’s core economic enterprises, and chose to channel that animosity into a candidate who promised not to build up all parts of the country, but rather to vilify groups who didn’t resemble his base.

If this pattern continues-- with one party aiming to confront the challenges at top of mind for a majority of Americans, and the other continuing to stoke the hostility and indignation held by a significant minority-- it will be a recipe not only for more gridlock and ineffective governance, but also for economic harm to nearly all people and places. In light of the desperate need for a broad, historic recovery from the economic damage of the COVID-19 pandemic, a continuation of the patterns we’ve seen play out over the past decade would be a particularly unsustainable situation for Americans in communities of all sizes.

The Cult Of Ignorance-- Will It Kill Us All?

 

Cult Of Ignorance by Nancy Ohanian

By the end of last week, the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. passed 10 million. On Saturday there were 127,167 new cases reported in the U.S., along with 1,030 new deaths. Yesterday 102,726 new cases were reported. There are now over 31,000 cases per million Americans. Anything over 20,000 is a catastrophic out-of-control pandemic. In North Dakota, the most infected place on the planet, one in 10 residents will have been infected with the coronavirus before Trump is expelled from the White House. Some will die; some will recover fully; many will be side-effects for years if not for a lifetime. South Dakota is close behind (62,625 cases per million residents.) 10 other states-- all of which voted for Trump in 2016-- have over 40,000 cases per million residents:

• Iowa- 48,431 cases per million residents
• Wisconsin- 45,928 cases per million residents
• Nebraska- 42,594 cases per million residents
• Mississippi- 42,568 cases per million residents
• Alabama- 41,542 cases per million residents
• Utah- 41,367 cases per million residents
• Tennessee- 41,272 cases per million residents
• Idaho- 40,827 cases per million residents
• Louisiana- 40,432 cases per million residents
• Arkansas- 40,382 cases per million residents

In another couple of days, Florida (39,292 cases per million) will join that exclusive club of contagion. For comparison's sake, France has 29,691 cases per million, Spain has 29,691, the U.K. 17,526, Italy 15,474 and Germany 8,071. Our pals in Asia? Japan has 848 cases per million, South Korea has 537, Hong Kong 716, Thailand 55 and Taiwan 69. China? 60 cases per million residents.

Everyone in Asia is wearing a mask. Everyone in the Dakotas has decided mask-wearing infringes on their liberty. From the beginning I've been saying that somewhere between a million and two million Americans would have to die before Americans either started wearing masks on an Asian level or, started being shot down in the streets for not wearing them and infecting the rest of us. Maybe Pfizer will save us, the way it saved the stock market today. Maybe. This morning's report by Dan Goldberg and Miranda Ollstein for Politico, Pandemic on course to overwhelm U.S. health system before Biden takes office, wasn't exactly sanguine. Hoover left FDR the Great Depression. Trump-- a much worse president than Hoover-- is leaving Biden a depression and an out of control pandemic with a "surging coronavirus outbreak on pace to hit nearly 1 million new cases a week by the end of the year."

Congress, still feeling reverberations from the election, may opt to simply run out the clock on its legislative year. Meanwhile, the virus is smashing records for new cases and hospitalizations as cold weather drives gatherings indoors and people make travel plans for the approaching holidays.

“If you want to have a better 2021, then maybe the rest of 2020 needs to be an investment in driving the virus down,” said Cyrus Shahpar, a former emergency response leader at the CDC who now leads the outbreak tracker Covid Exit Strategy. “Otherwise we’re looking at thousands and thousands of deaths this winter.”

The country’s health care system is already buckling under the load of the resurgent outbreak that’s approaching 10 million cases nationwide. The number of Americans hospitalized with Covid-19 has spiked to 56,000, up from 33,000 one month ago. In many areas of the country, shortages of ICU beds and staff are leaving patients piled up in emergency rooms. And nearly 1,100 people died on Saturday alone, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

“That’s three jetliners full of people crashing and dying,” said David Eisenman, director of the UCLA Center for Public Health and Disasters. “And we will do that every day and then it will get more and more.”

The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation predicts 370,000 Americans will be dead by Inauguration Day, exactly one year after the first U.S. case of Covid-19 was reported. Nearly 238,000 have already died.

...Some governors in the Northeast, which was hit hard early in the pandemic, are imposing new restrictions. In the last week, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island activated nightly stay-at-home orders and ordered businesses to close by 10 p.m. And Maine Democratic Gov. Janet Mills on Thursday ordered everyone to wear a mask in public, even if they can maintain social distance.

But in the Dakotas and other states where the virus is raging, governors are resisting calls from health experts to mandate masks and restrict gatherings. On Sunday morning, South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem incorrectly attributed her state's huge surge in cases to an increase in testing and praised Trump's approach of giving her the "flexibility to do the right thing." The state has no mask mandate.

And unlike earlier waves in the spring and summer that were confined to a handful of states or regions, the case numbers are now surging everywhere.

In New Mexico, the number of people in the hospital has nearly doubled in just the last two weeks and state officials said Thursday that they expect to run out of general hospital beds in a matter of days... Minnesota officials said last week that ICU beds in the Twin Cities metro area were 98 percent full, and in El Paso, Texas, the county morgue bought another refrigerated trailer to deal with the swelling body count.

An “ensemble” forecast used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-- based on the output of several independent models-- projects that the country could see as many as 11,000 deaths and 960,000 cases per week by the end of the month. Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory suggest that the U.S. will record another 6 million infections and 45,000 deaths over the next six weeks, while a team at Cal Tech predicts roughly 1,000 people will die of Covid-19 every day this month-- with more than 260,000 dead by Thanksgiving. The University of Washington model forecasts 259,000 Americans dead by Thanksgiving and 313,000 dead by Christmas.

Eisenman predicted that by January, the United States could see infection rates as high as those seen during the darkest days of the pandemic in Europe-- 200,000 new cases per day.

“Going into Thanksgiving people are going to start to see family and get together indoors,” he said. “Then the cases will spread from that and then five weeks later we have another set of holidays and people will gather then and by January, we will be exploding with cases.”

A report by Sarah Mervosh, Mitch Smith and Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio in the NY Times this morning indicated much the same: "hospitalizations have nearly doubled since mid-September, and deaths are slowly increasing again." A pandemic response expert in hard-hit South Carolina, Dr. Krutika Kuppalli: "We are in a terrifying place. All I see is cases continuing to go up, unless we do something." The Trump regime and their Republican allies in Congress have washed their hands of doing anything to fight the pandemic. In fact, the GOP would rather fight the Democrats trying to respond to it. The Republicans in Congress are like snipers taking aim at firefighters trying to put out a 10-alarm blaze.

In The States With The Worst COVID Situations MORE People Voted For Trump This Time Than In 2016! Kushner And His Ilk Are Evicting Them From Their Homes Now

 

I know I can come of like a jerk sometimes, but let me be brutally honest anyway: if people who voted for Trump get evicted, GOOD! They deserve it-- and worse. Now, Kushner-in-law would have never done this before election day but his real estate management firm, Westminster Management, has submitted hundreds of eviction filings in court against tenants with past due rent... despite the pandemic. I hope lots of Trump supporters learn a little something about who the Trumps are. It's the non-Trump supporters I'm worried about. As for the Kennedys' "Let's Lynch The Landlord," that's always been one of my favorite songs.

Washington Post reporters Johnathan O'Connell, Aaron Gregg and Anu Narayanswamy wrote this morning that "A state eviction moratorium currently bars Maryland courts from removing tenants from their homes, and a federal moratorium offers renters additional protection. But like other landlords around the country, Westminster has been sending letters to tenants threatening legal fees and then filing eviction notices in court-- a first legal step toward removing tenants. Those notices are now piling up in local courthouses as part of a national backlog of tens of thousands of cases that experts warn could lead to a surge in displaced renters across the country as eviction bans expire and courts resume processing cases. Many of the Westminster tenants facing eviction live on low or middle incomes in modest apartments in the Baltimore area, according to tenants. Some of them told the Washington Post they fell behind on rent after losing jobs or wages due to the pandemic."

Vultures in Maryland like Kushner are unable to evict anyone from their homes right now-- and the state moratorium was renewed last week. Now, they're just laying the groundwork. and  by the way, last year Kushner, personally made $1.65 million from his ownership stake in Westminster.

Last year Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh sued the company for its management practices, alleging that the company collects illegitimate fees for applications and evictions, and illegally claims tenants’ security deposits. Kushner Cos. representatives have called the suit politically motivated and are fighting the charges.

Westminster manages more than 20,000 apartments, according to its website. It is far from the only company moving to evict tenants despite the pandemic; housing experts have been warning for months that as Americans’ stimulus benefits run dry and eviction moratoriums expire, backlogs in eviction cases may be leading to a surge in renters being forced from their homes, particularly at the end of the year when the CDC moratorium ends.

Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, which tracks evictions in 24 cities, found that landlords there have filed for 92,619 evictions during the pandemic. Election Lab’s Alieza Durana said that the lack of federal data made comparing time frames difficult but that whoever is elected president will face “increasing numbers of people at risk of eviction, particularly among marginalized communities.”

Data from past years suggests that evictions have a disproportionate impact on racial minorities. From 2012 to 2016, Black renters had evictions filed against them by landlords at nearly twice the rate of White renters, according to Eviction Lab data.

Some of Westminster’s tenants, including those facing eviction, are Black, and their plight was highlighted Oct. 26 by public backlash to comments Kushner made on Fox News. Kushner said on the air that Trump wants to help Black people but that they have to “want to be successful” for his policies to work.

“President Trump’s policies are the policies that can help people break out of the problems that they’re complaining about, but he can’t want them to be successful more than they want to be successful,” Kushner said.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany defended Kushner, issuing a statement saying it was “disgusting to see internet trolls taking Senior Advisor Jared Kushner out of context as they try to distract from President Trump’s undeniable record of accomplishment for the black community.”

Another research and advocacy group, the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, found that corporate landlords have filed more than 10,000 eviction notices in five states-- Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas-- since September.

“There is definitely a question about what happens as time goes on,” said Jim Baker, the group’s executive director. “Clearly we are seeing some increases. It doesn’t add up to a surge yet. But with big companies making these filings and with moratoriums expiring, we are wondering if we will see more.”

Kushner is in a unique position to understand how the coronavirushas ravaged the national economy and the real estate industry.

After joining the nascent coronavirus task force with Vice President Pence, Kushner said at an April 2 news conference that “the president wanted us to make sure we think outside the box, make sure we’re finding all the best thinkers in the country, making sure we’re getting all the best ideas, and that we’re doing everything possible to make sure that we can keep Americans safe.”

But his handling of the federal pandemic response, in which he quickly assembled a team of private-sector volunteers with limited expertise in health, ended with the administration leaving large parts of the response to the states.

“The bottom line is that this program sourced tens of millions of masks and essential [personal protective equipment] in record time, and Americans who needed ventilators received ventilators,” Kushner said in a May statement. “These volunteers are true patriots.”

Before Trump ran for president, Kushner had taken over his family’s real estate company from his father, Charlie Kushner. Jared Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, reported combined assets valued at between $204 million and $783 million last year.

Kushner has passed on some chances to avoid conflicts of interest. He planned to divest his stake worth between $25 million and $50 million in the real estate start-up he co-founded, Cadre, and received an approval in February from the Office of Government Ethics to do so tax-free. But in June he withdrew the request, according to a filing with the office.

Kushner’s company has struggled to pay some of its own debts, including by missing payments to one of its lenders on the retail space at the old New York Times building on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, according to securities filings. Kushner Cos. did not comment when asked about the property.

Advocates credit President Trump, Congress and some states for moratoriums that they say have kept people in their homes despite job losses and pay decreases due to the pandemic.

The Cares Act prohibited landlords at properties supported by federal housing programs, including Westminster’s Owings Run property, from making any court filing to start legal action. That moratorium expired July 24, allowing landlords to begin filing after a 30-day grace period, as early as Aug. 25.

...Even with the moratoriums in place, tenants and advocates say landlords can effectively bully some families out of their properties without a formal eviction taking place.

Experts say they see far more “constructive evictions”-- cases in which people leave because they are pressured over missed rent and don’t know their rights. Some tenants don’t want an eviction on their permanent record because it can show up on credit ratings and other legal screenings, experts and tenants said. Others move out to avoid court fees.

“This is the warning shot-- do you want to have your stuff just thrown out on the street, or do you want to just go?” said Georgetown University law professor Adam J. Levitin. “I suspect in many cases landlords are hoping to move people out without having to go through the actual formal eviction.“ Several tenants said they were regularly being charged court fees for eviction cases that started before the pandemic and have been reopened in recent months.

Zafar Shah, an attorney with a Baltimore-based legal aid nonprofit, the Public Justice Center, said even relatively small fees “can make the difference between the eviction going through or not, or the tenant being able to take the bus to work.”

Booker, one of the Owings Run residents, described the eviction threats as “heartless” coming from a company owned by the president’s son-in-law.

“The way they’re treating us is just making us feel like we’re nothing. It feels like we’re … what’s the word … disposable,” she said. “They just want us gone so someone else can come in."

Homelessness is horrific at any time-- but during a pandemic! And remember, it was the policies of the Trump Regime that Kushner is such a big part of that has turned the U.S. into the world's worst COVID hellhole. The U.S. daily reports will absolutely be north of six figures today-- just as they were yesterday, when the U.S. had it's worst day in terms of new cases since Trump decided his role in the pandemic was to politicize it and kill as many people as possible. On Tuesday, the U.S. reported 94,467 new cases (and 1,187 new deaths). Wednesday there were new 108,353 new cases reported (and 1,201 new deaths). Numbers are still coming for today but there are already 118,204 new cases reported and 1,125 new deaths.

Any state or country with more than 20,000 cases per million residents has an out-of-control pandemic. Right now Trumpistan is the worst place on the planet earth, coronavirus-wise. These are the unlucky 13 states with their cases per million (along with what percentage voted for Trump's reelection:

• North Dakota- 65,398 cases per million residents (65.0% Trump, up from 63.0%)
• South Dakota- 57,820 cases per million residents (61.8% Trump, up from 61.5%)
• Iowa- 44,987 cases per million residents (53.1% Trump, up from 51.1%)
• Wisconsin- 49,924 cases per million residents (48.8% Trump, up from 47.2%)
• Mississippi- 41,627 cases per million residents (59.3% Trump, up from 57.9%)
• Alabama- 40,618 cases per million residents (62.3% Trump, down from 62.8%)
• Louisiana- 39,973 cases per million residents (58.5% Trump, up from 58.1%)
• Tennessee- 39,796 cases per million residents (60.7% Trump, same as 2016)
• Nebraska- 40,329 cases per million residents (58.7% Trump, same as 2016)
• Utah- 38,769 cases per million residents (58.3% Trump, up from 45.5%)
• Florida- 38,523 cases per million residents (51.2% Trump, up from 49.0%)
• Arkansas- 38,889 cases per million residents (62.7% Trump, up from 60.6%)
• Idaho- 38,935 cases per million residents (63.7% Trump, up from 59.3%)

I just saw this new analysis by AP that shows that 93% of the most infected counties in the country, 376 of them, went for Trump! Makes sense. Their survey showed that 36% of Trump voters described the pandemic as "completely or mostly under control" and another 47% said it was "somewhat under control," while, 82% of Biden voters said the pandemic is not at all under control. So which group wears masks and practices social distancing and doesn't get COVID and which group doesn't wear masks and doesn't parctice social distancing... and gets COVID and then spreads it to their families, colleagues and friends? The biggest tragedy of the Trump Pandemic!

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

 

by Noah

As you can see above, I've created a new Trump Death Panel Hat. It's the hat that no Republican would want to be seen without! Hell, they'd feel naked without it!

By the time you read this, the horrid COVID-19 death toll will have zoomed past the 230,000 listed on the red Trump hat above. It was 226,000 just a few days ago when I made it. It's hard to keep up. Sadly, what we need one of those big digital counters like the ones that show the ever mounting national debt. They have those in prominent places around the country. Here in NYC, there's one I always see by Penn Station and Madison Square Garden. They could have similar counters that showed the mounting COVID-19 deaths. The thing is, though, that if you placed them at Trump rallies, the audiences would cheer and cheer wildly. "Hey! Our boy Trump did that! Yay! Best president ever!"

I also know that if I got enough of these hats manufactured (in the U.S.A., course), I could sell them outside Trump rallies and those nihilistic Republican nutballs would wear them proudly. I could sell a Pence Edition with a big 10-inch fly on it! The Trumpers would even come back next week for the 240,000 hat and the week after that for the 250,000 hat! I could even sell a gold monthly edition! With a facsimile signature, of course. Hey, collect 'em all!

I'd make a fortune, I tell ya, a fortune! I could sell subscriptions!

How Many Americans Have To Die From COVID Before The Country Unites Behind Science And Expertise And Casts Out The Devil's Sowers Of Doubt?

 

CNN fact checker Dale told the L.A. Times that Trump lies so much that he can't keep up with them and that he's decided to stop counting each individual lie and "just focus on the big stuff." Although Trump claims that doctors are being paid to exaggerate the numbers of COVID cases and COVID deaths, those stats are a lot easier to keep up with that the lies Trump spouts-- by one count, a lie every 75 seconds at his super-spreader rallies. Friday in Green Bay, for example, he told the morons in attendance that without him it would be illegal to say "Merry Christmas" and that if Biden is elected "There will be no heating in the winter, no air conditioning in the summer, and no electricity." As for the pandemic, the U.S. is worse off than any other developed country-- and most undeveloped country by every metric conceivable. Trump's inability to lead has lead to 86,293 new cases yesterday, bringing our national total to 9,401,590 cases and 236,072 deaths.

A key metric to judge how each country, regardless of size, is handling the pandemic is to look at the number of cases reported per million residents. Here's the U.S. compared to 2 dozen other developed countries. (keep in mind that anything over 20,000 cases per million is pretty much the definition of an out-of-control pandemic)

• Belgium- 35,524 cases per million residents
• Israel- 34,185
• USA- 28,406
• Spain- 27,042
• Chile- 26,616
• Brazil- 25,981
• Argentina- 25,740
• France- 20,937
• Netherlands- 20,480
• Switzerland- 17,779
• U.K.- 14,876
• Ireland- 12,400
• Sweden- 12,288
• Austria- 11,628
• Italy- 11,243
• Russia- 11,086
• Denmark- 7,993
• Germany- 6,340
• Canada- 6,195
• Australia- 1,078
• Japan- 795
• South Korea- 517
• New Zealand- 391
• China- 60
• Taiwan- 23

The prime minister of Belgium announced yesterday his country is shutting down again, calling it a "last chance" to keep the country’s health care system from collapse. France and Germany have already done so and the UK is about to do likewise. But, back in Trumpistan where there isn't even a national mask mandate, the 17 worst hit states-- those with the most cases per million residents-- are all states where majorities (or pluralities) voted for Trump in 2016 and where many people-- including those in government-- listen to Trump's gaslighting rather than to public health experts when it comes to dealing with the pandemic. States you want to avoid going to for now:

• North Dakota- 57,628 cases per million residents
• South Dakota- 51,988

• Iowa- 40,561
• Mississippi- 40,374
• Louisiana- 39,208
• Alabama- 39,216
• Wisconsin- 38,707
• Tennessee- 38,170
• Florida- 37,366
• Arkansas- 37,176
• Idaho- 36,153
• Nebraska- 36,565
• Utah- 35,763
• South Carolina- 34,302
• Georgia- 33,981
• Arizona- 33,790
• Texas- 32,996

Wall Street Journal reporter Elizabeth Findell reported that "The percentage of tests for Covid-19 coming back positive in South Dakota has soared to 46%. That’s more than eight times the World Health Organization’s recommended 5% threshold for businesses to be open. As Covid cases surge across the U.S. and in Europe, South Dakota and North Dakota hold a distinct position: Each has more new virus cases per capita than any other states have seen since the pandemic began. South Dakota has the most and North Dakota the second-most."

Recently, Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, who very much needs to be tried for negligent homicide, penned an OpEd about her abject failure to protect her state, although she congratulated herself for doing a great job and worked once again to mislead Dakotans about the effectiveness of wearing masks, concluding that "if folks want to wear a mask, they should be free to do so. Similarly, those who don’t want to wear a mask shouldn’t be shamed into wearing one. And government should not mandate it. We need to respect each other’s decisions-- in South Dakota, we know a little common courtesy can go a long way."

No one is more guilty of spreading COVID across America-- other than President Super-Spreader and Vice President Super-Spreader-- than Noem. Her motorcycle rally and state fair have caused tens of thousands of cases across the Midwest and cost the U.S. taxpayer an estimated $60 billion in medical treatment. Friday's much-discussed Stanford report-- The Effects of Large Group Meetings on the Spread of COVID-19: The Case Of Trump Rallies can and should be applied to Noem's events as well and no doubt will be if she is ever indicted and tried. The report focused on the spread of contagion and death for 10 weeks after 18 of Trump's super-spreader rallies across the country. They concluded that these 18 rallies have-- so far-- "resulted in more than 30,000 incremental confirmed cases of COVID-19" and more than 700 deaths.

And in case you missed it the first time I ran it...

The Wealthy Have Made Billions Since The Pandemic Began-- Should There Be A Special Pandemic Profit Tax... Maybe 99%?

 

Nationally the problem is Trump; in Florida he has 3 main henchmen

Secure in the knowledge that some folks are stupid enough to believe his gaslighting, Trump has been congratulating himself on having defeated the pandemic, even as the coronavirus spikes out of control across the country. On Wednesday there were another 81,581 new cases reported, bringing the U.S. total to the 10 million it is expected to reach right around election day. The 17 states with the worst number of cases per million residents are all states that voted Trump in 2016 and all states where state government has been unreceptive to advice on social distancing and mask mandates from public health officials. (The states I've bolded have learned nothing since then and will deliver their electoral voted to Trump again. Voters in the non-bolded states are considering making up for the tragic mistake they made in 2016:

• North Dakota- 53,972 cases per million residents
• South Dakota- 48,606 cases per million residents
• Mississippi- 39,846 cases per million residents
• Louisiana- 39,115 cases per million residents
• Iowa- 38,768 cases per million residents
• Alabama- 38,577 cases per million residents
• Tennessee- 37,615 cases per million residents
• Florida- 36,998 cases per million residents
• Wisconsin- 36,925 cases per million residents
• Arkansas- 36,355 cases per million residents
• Idaho- 34,573 cases per million residents
• Nebraska- 34,401 cases per million residents
• Utah- 34,511 cases per million residents
• South Carolina- 33,910 cases per million residents
• Georgia- 33,610 cases per million residents
• Arizona- 33,314 cases per million residents
• Texas- 32,240 cases per million residents

Anything over 20,000 cases per million residents is generally considered an out of control, catastrophic pandemic. Yesterday, Germany instituted a second national lockdown with just 5,895 cases per million residents!

About a week or so ago a BBC business reporter based in NYC, Natalie Sherman, wrote a piece for the BBC audience worldwide, Coronavirus: US poverty rises as aid winds down. She wrote that university researchers have concluded that "nearly 8 million Americans-- many of them children and minorities-- have fallen into poverty since May. Last week, nearly 900,000 people filed new claims for jobless benefits-- the highest number since August. Analysts have called for aid to prevent the economic recovery from stalling." Mitch McConnell has prevented that and quickly adjourned the Senate until after the election, fearful that Trump might make him compromise with the Democrats, who have already passed a pandemic rescue package.

Last spring's $3 trillion aid package-- which mostly bailed out businesses but did include $1,200 aid checks (+ $600/week in temporary supplemental unemployment payments for people thrown out of work)-- "initially blunted the economic upheaval caused by the virus, prompting poverty rates to decline. But those figures began to tick up again this summer, as the one-time financial boost from the cheques wore off and the expansion to unemployment benefits expired at the end of July. As of September, the poverty rate stood at 16.7%, up from 15.3% in February and 14.3% in May, with higher rates among children and minorities.

Trump has celebrated that the economy has so far rebounded faster than many analysts initially expected.

But while the US has regained about half the jobs lost in March and April, many economists do not expect the labour market to fully recover before the end of 2023-- and they warn that momentum appears to be slowing.

Thursday's Labor Department report showed an unexpected 53,000 increase in unemployment filings from the week before, sending new claims to a two-month high.

More than 25 million people continued to collect some form of unemployment payment as of 26 September, the Labor Department said.

Wells Fargo economist Sarah House said the report showed "the risk of the labour market's recovery going into reverse."

The Republican Party has refused to authorize any more aid to the country, almost comic that this is the one and only time they have stood up to Trump!

When the Republicans talk about how the economic threat of the pandemic is overblown, they're talking about how well the wealthy have weathered the national disaster-- like the 47 billionaires who have gotten richer during the pandemic. Gabrielle Olya wrote that the pandemic "has disrupted the financial well-being of millions of people around the world, with many losing jobs, shuttering their businesses or losing a large portion of their retirement savings due to market volatility. Yet somehow, the world’s richest seem to be coming out of the crisis unscathed-- and in many cases, even richer. Here are some familiar names and the amount their fortunes have increased since March 18:

• Jeff Bezos of Amazon +$72.6 billion
• Elon Musk of Tesla +$63.3 billion
• Jeff Zuckerberg of Facebook +$42.1 billion
• Jim, Rob and Alice Walton of Walmart- total +$35.7 billion
• MacKenzie Scott of Amazon (Jeff Bezo's ex) +$23.6 billion
• Larry Ellison of Oracle- $19.9 billion
• Phil Knight of Nikes- $19.8 billion
• Bill Gates- $17.8 billion
• Michael Dell of Dell Technologies +$15.6 billion
• Sergey Brin of Google +$15.1 billion
• Larry Page of Google +$15 billion
• Warren Buffett +$12.6 billion
• Gerard Wertheimer and his bro Alain Wetheimer of Chanel +$7.5 billion each
• Michael Bloomberg +$6.9 billion
• Charles Koch and sister-in-law Julia Koch +$6.7 billion each
• Sheldon Adelson of the Mafia +$4.3 billion
• John Mars and sister Jacqueline Mars of Mars candy +$4.2 billion each
• Jim Simons of Renaissance Technologies +$1.9 billion

Many radicals are suggesting that these billionaires should be guillotined but-- with some exceptions-- that is too harsh. How about a much fairer proposition? An excess income tax for anything any individual made over $500,000 during the pandemic? The details would have to be worked out in Congress but if 100% is considered too high (I don't consider it too high, but you know the Blue Dogs and New Dems)... how about just 99%? (and don't sneer; 1 percent of a billion is $10 million dollars. AND they still have their heads!)