2020.1225.0006...

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The Republican party has ushered in a dark Christmas, indeed. We deserve better

This year hundreds of thousands of Americans have died of Covid and millions have sunk into poverty, thanks to Republican callousness

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Three hundred thousand Americans have died from Covid this year. Well over 200,000 of them died unnec­es­sarily. Had our government managed this public health crisis in a mature and rational way, the deaths would be a fraction of what they are. Our govern­ment chose not to do so. Our leering and stupid leader chose to make the wearing of masks into a defining political issue – not out of necessity, or for any financial gain, or out of adherence to any phi­los­ophy, but out of aggressive stupidity, laziness and self-rationalization. Usually, the Republican party screws regular people because someone stands to get rich on it. In this case, it was only because they formed a coward’s puppet line behind an awful leader with a loud voice. In every community in America, there are people lying dead because their elected officials were scared of being tweeted at by a former reality show host.

Merry Christmas, America.

Tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs this year through no fault of their own. Tens of thousands of small businesses, each one representing the dreams and ambitions of a human being and the employment of many others, have failed this year through no fault of their own. The money that our government appropriated to carry all of these people and businesses through this natural disaster ran out months ago, and nothing more has been forthcoming, even as we watch our friends and neighbors sink into bankruptcy and food insecurity and desperation.

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The Disconnect Between the Stock Market and the Real Economy Is Destroying Our Lives

Stocks are the wall that protects the rich from the consequences of this crisis

In the month of April — as 30 mil­lion Amer­i­cans filed for unem­ploy­ment, and des­ti­tute small busi­ness­es closed for­ev­er, and rent strikes were demand­ed, and city and state gov­ern­ments fore­cast years of grim aus­ter­ity — the U.S. stock mar­ket had its best month in more than 30 years. Day after day, we were treat­ed to sto­ries of absolute ruin in the real econ­o­my, right next to anoth­er glo­ri­ous rise in stocks. After a sharp sell­off in March, the S&P 500 index has bounced back to where it was in the fall of 2019, as if that lit­tle dev­as­tat­ing glob­al pan­dem­ic were noth­ing more than a fleet­ing, momen­tary annoyance.