Night Owls, a themed open thread, appears at Daily Kos seven days a week
From the offices of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer::
“We are hoping to work with the administration on a coordinated, government-wide plan to respond to the coronavirus. We are pleased that we passed an emergency response bill on an overwhelming, bipartisan basis that provided a significant increase in resources beyond the administration’s request.
“However, President Trump continues to manufacture needless chaos within his administration and it is hampering the government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak. In light of reports that the Trump administration is considering new tax cuts for major corporations impacted by the coronavirus, we are demanding that the administration prioritize the health and safety of American workers and their families over corporate interests.”
- Paid sick leave — workers impacted by quarantine orders or responsible for caring for children impacted by school closures must receive paid sick leave to alleviate the devastating consequences of lost wages;
- Enhanced Unemployment Insurance — we must ensure unemployment insurance benefits are available and sufficient for workers who may lose their jobs from the economic impacts of the epidemic;
- Food security — we must expand SNAP, WIC, school lunch and other initiatives and suspend implementation of any regulations that weaken federal food assistance, in order to ensure vulnerable populations do not lose access to food during this epidemic;
- Clear protections for frontline workers — we must have clear standards and sufficient distribution of necessary protective equipment for health care and other workers who are in contact with people who have been exposed or are suffering from the virus as well as the people responsible for cleaning buildings and public facilities;
- Widespread and free coronavirus testing — to control the spread of coronavirus, the administration must ensure that all Americans who need an evaluation are able to access locations for cost-free testing and rapidly increase the unacceptably low daily test processing capacity inside the U.S.;
- Affordable treatment for all — patients must be reimbursed for any non-covered coronavirus-related costs, or else the epidemic will be worsened because Americans will fear they cannot afford the costs associated with treatment;
- Anti-price gouging protections — we must ensure that Americans are protected from price gouging of medical and non-medical essentials during this emergency;
- Increase capacity of medical system — we must use our emergency response mechanisms to mobilize resources and facilities in order to respond to surges in demand.
TOP COMMENTS
HIGH IMPACT STORIES • THE WEEK’S HIGH IMPACT STORIES
QUOTATION
“If we consider the total growth of the US economy in the thirty years prior to the crisis, that is, from 1977 to 2007, we find that the richest 10 percent appropriated three-quarters of the growth. The richest 1 percent alone absorbed nearly 60 percent of the total increase of US national income in this period. Hence for the bottom 90 percent, the rate of income growth was less than 0.5 percent per year.”
~~Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013)
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2007—A Pardon For Libby:
It's only been two days since Dick Cheney's former Chief of Staff was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice, and already there is a rising chorus from White House apologists for George Bush to pardon Scooter Libby.
From the right came a Wednesday editorial in The Wall Street Journal, which thundered that "the time for a pardon is now," a point of view shared by The Weekly Standard, National Review and conservative admirers and friends of Mr. Libby. Many of the calls for his pardon demanded immediate action, instead of a wait for appeals to wend their way through the courts.
But setting aside, for now, the blatant hypocrisy of these former defenders of "the rule of law," have any of them considered the implications of George Bush offering, and Scooter Libby accepting, a Presidential pardon?