2020 presidential election
Joe Biden Wants To Be Your FDR, So, You Know, We'd Take That
Anybody got a line on some polio?
May 12, 2020 03:00 PM
With the daily increases in coronavirus deaths and Donald Trump's escalating meltdowns, it's easy to forget there's also a presidential election going on, or would be, if things were normal, which just reminds you again how non-normal all this is. But while Trump continues lying about the fantastic job he's doing, Joe Biden is busily doing what presidential candidates are supposed to do: getting ready for the fall, and, he hopes, getting read to president come next January.
And as the dual health and economic crisis has played out, it's starting to look like Joe Biden, Mr. Moderate, is thinking about all the things that will need fixing if he defeats Trump (provided Trump doesn't launch the entire US nuclear arsenal at coastal US cities), and is inclined to do some serious Franklin D. Roosevelt, New Deal-style responses to get America back in shape. As reporter Gabriel Debenedetti puts it, Biden's original centrist pitch, a promise of a return to the pre-Trump norm, seems "almost moot" now.
And so suddenly Joe Biden is talking about far bigger plans than his "first day" goals of rejoining the Paris climate agreement, issuing executive orders to put ethics back in government, and pushing for the Equality Act to protect LGBTQ rights. Now he's talking about big government spending on green energy and infrastructure, payments to families, student loan forgiveness, and the like. He's consulting regularly with Elizabeth Warren and Jay Inslee, and talking about creating "a 100,000-plus worker Public Health Jobs Corps and the doubling of the number of OSHA investigators to protect employees amid the pandemic." And isn't that some neat stuff!
<p>Honestly, after four years of Donald Trump just making shit up as he goes along, usually with the main goal of getting the Deplorables excited and keeping rich donors happy, it's a huge relief to know that Joe Biden gets two daily briefings via video chat, on the pandemic and the economy, and then spends much of the rest of the day on the phone: </p><blockquote>He rings both Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to hear their updates on recovery legislation and to gently share his priorities when he finds it appropriate. He calls Democratic leaders in some of the hardest-hit spots, checking in with governors, including New York's Andrew Cuomo, California's Gavin Newsom, Michigan's Gretchen Whitmer, and Washington's Inslee, and mayors like Los Angeles's Eric Garcetti. At times he talks policy with Warren.<br><br>And after a year of uncomfortable distance, Biden has been phoning Obama for guidance — on unifying Democrats, on choosing a running mate, and on campaigning and communicating amid the pandemic. The pair now speaks with such frequency that some people close to the former president are starting to get amused.</blockquote><p>And he's thinking big about what's needed, comparing the recovery from the pandemic to a wartime effort, and in wartime, you don't worry about deficits. I love this anecdote: </p><blockquote>Recently, on a private call with Colorado-based donors, a disenchanted Republican told Jill Biden, Joe's wife and a prominent campaign presence, that he trusted her husband but feared he'd tacked too far left and wasn't sufficiently concerned about "the pain" of the national deficit and debt. Jill, an English professor, replied, "I agree, there's going to be so much pain that Joe has to address — it's going to be the physical pain, the emotional pain, the social pain, the economic pain that this country is going to go through." She ignored the part about the deficit.</blockquote><p>And if Joe Biden still positions himself as a centrist, that's with a recognition that the center of Democratic politics has shifted, says Debenedetti, noting that even in the primary, many parts of Biden's platform were to the left of where he and Obama were in 2008. And in this crisis, says policy director Stef Feldman, Biden is seeing opportunities for government to make a big difference for the better: </p><blockquote>What I've heard the vice-president say over and over again is this crisis is shining a bright, bright light on so many systemic problems in our country, and so many inequities. It is exacerbating and shining a light on environmental-justice issues, racial inequalities, so many other problems.</blockquote><p>It's also reassuring to read that Biden consults regularly with former FDA commissioner David Kessler, and that he <em>gets science, </em>even though he doesn't even have an uncle at MIT. Kessler says, "He wants me to engage in the scientific details because it helps him — he can take what we're saying, and it helps him formulate a policy." And all without ever watching Fox News! And for all of Biden's love of bipartisanship, says his friend Sen. Chris Coons (D-Delaware), Biden is also very mindful of just how unhelpful Republicans in Congress were when it came to the 2009 stimulus bill, which Biden was in charge of managing. And if Democrats can manage to take the Senate this fall, so much the better. </p><blockquote>Recently, friends have noticed that Biden is talking less about this and more about policies that Mitch McConnell's Senate GOP would be unlikely to go for no matter what — like new environmental investments and oversight. The crisis, Biden believes, has expanded "the state of what is possible, now that the American people have seen both the role of government and the role of frontline workers," said [former national-security adviser Jake] Sullivan. "He believes he has a more compelling case to make that this is the agenda that needs to get passed."</blockquote><p>As for a possible cabinet, Biden is focused on winning the election first, but he has some people in mind. God help us, he does read Tom Friedman, so he's aware of that <a href="https://www.wonkette.com/tom-friedman-wants-a-biden-cabinet-that-looks-like-the-inside-of-tom-friedmans-head" target="_blank">dumb Friedman fantasy</a> about a cabinet full of Friedman's favorite Davos speakers. But it appears the only concrete suggestion from the column Biden is considering is the possibility of naming a few potential cabinet members during the campaign. So no, probably no Mitt Romney for secretary of State. </p><p>But he does have at least a mental short list, it seems: </p><blockquote>"If the Lord Almighty said, 'Joe, I tell you what: You have to decide in three hours what your Cabinet is or you're going to be bounced out of the race,' I could write down who could be in the Cabinet. There are at least two or three people qualified for every one of those positions," he confided to donors on a mid-April Zoom call. </blockquote><p>There's a lot more in the piece, which is probably worth burning one of your free monthly <em>New York</em> articles to read; if you were worried that Joe Biden was going to insist on a muddy moderate path, this piece may reassure you. I'm happy to see him talking about the power of government to make American life fairer, and of the need to respond to a huge crisis like the pandemic with proportionately serious government action. </p><p>Now if we could get him to commit to more of those cool old WPA murals. </p><p>[<a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/joe-biden-presidential-plans.html" target="_blank">New York</a>]</p><p></p><form name="donation" method="post" class="donation-form"><p class="subheadline">How often would you like to donate?</p><div class="form-row row--plan"><label class="plan-type__label"><input type="radio" name="plan_type" value="once" class="plan-type" required="" checked> Just once
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coronavirus
Wingnut Disinformation Kills US Coronavirus Research, Great Job Guys
But he talked to Chinese people!
May 12, 2020 11:26 AM
CBS's "60 Minutes" decided to do some actual reporting (instead of a puff piece on a (pardoned but not exonerated) war criminal), and it was pretty good! We should encourage them when they don't suck, so let's pat Scott Pelley and team on the head and give them a cookie. The story looks at the work of Peter Daszak, a US researcher who works in one of the scarier fields in health science: viruses that originate in animals, particularly bats, that can be transmitted to humans. (That's called zoonotic transmission, nerds.) Daszak was the focus of a 2003 "60 Minutes" story about his work as a disease detective, in which he warned — as many infectious disease experts have also been saying forever — that what really worried him was the possibility that
we are going to miss the next emerging disease, that we're suddenly going to find a SARS virus that moves from one part of the planet to another, wiping out people as it moves along.
So there's your framing for what's happening now, ominous cello soundtrack optional.
<p>
Now that we're in the middle of exactly such a pandemic, you might think Daszak's expertise would be in high demand, and you'd be right! Daszak is president of a research group called the "EcoHealth Alliance" and has partnered with researchers in China at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has identified and studied "hundreds of bat viruses, research that is critical right now."
</p><p>
Naturally, because the research was in China, rightwing operatives took to lying about it, and as a result, Daszak's funding from the National Institutes of Health was suddenly withdrawn after Donald Trump saw Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) lying about it on Fox News. So nope, no more coronavirus work for Peter Daszak, at least not with the federal funding he'd had for decades.
</p><p>
Here, watch the video, which CBS News helpfully YouTubed:
</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube">
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d1d02e66bad6d940e5a702cc9b2626b4"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iHaeCNPxZ6M?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>
</p><p>Once again, let's truth sandwich this: Daszak's EcoHealth Alliance had a grant from the NIH to do disease research and prevention in multiple countries around the world. As part of that work, the group cooperated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but at no point did did US taxpayers fund the Chinese lab. China funds it pretty well! "60 Minutes" points out that just last year, the Trump administration actually increased the amount of funding for Daszak's group. But yes, Daszak <em>did </em>use part of his grant for the collaboration, to cover his group's work in China. Let us go to the <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/trump-administration-coronavirus-vaccine-researcher-covid-19-cure-60-minutes/#app" target="_blank">transcript:</a><br></p><blockquote>
Daszak had been spending about $100,000 a year collaborating with the Wuhan lab. <br>
<br>
<strong>Peter Daszak:</strong> I can't just show up in China and say, "Hi, I wanna work on your viruses." I have to do this through the correct channels. So, what we do is we talk to NIH, and they approve the people we can work with in China. And that happened. And our collaboration with Wuhan was preapproved by NIH.</blockquote><p>
Also too, while the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, haven't been conclusively discovered, it's <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/trump-administration-coronavirus-vaccine-researcher-covid-19-cure-60-minutes/#app" target="_blank">nearly certain it originated in nature;</a> as the "60 Minutes" piece details, it has none of the genetic markers you'd find in a bioweapon, and it's also extremely unlikely the virus accidentally "escaped" the lab. Daszak notes that neither the Wuhan Institute nor any other lab in the world had isolated SARS-CoV-2 prior to the pandemic. The simplest explanation, he says, is that
</p><blockquote>
There is a huge amount of evidence that these viruses repeatedly emerge into people from wild animals in rural areas through things like hunting and eating wildlife. There is zero evidence that this virus came out of a lab in China.
</blockquote><p>
And now comes the lying! On the April 14 edition of the <em>Tucker Carlson Smile-Time White Power Variety Hour,</em> Gaetz said the Wuhan lab had "birthed a monster" and demanded to know why the USA American goodpeople taxpayers were funding the Chinese lab that wingnuts really want to believe was the source of the novel coronavirus. (Again: No, the US wasn't funding the lab, and no, the virus almost certainly didn't come from there.) Carlson even had a scary photo of a bat to help emphasize the point.
</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzI3MjgzNy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNjk0NDI3M30.L_duwDzO7g6dm7nLQfCgAkmEh0JRcdsd9HXHQugAN2I/img.jpg?width=980" id="e225f" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0546ba0b48bc78e52aaa39a3d8988cc9" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Eek! Bats!</small>
</p><p>Gaetz lied, lyingly,</p><blockquote>
The NIH gives this $3.7 million grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, they then advertise that they need coronavirus researchers. Following that, coronavirus erupts in Wuhan.</blockquote><p>Again, that is a lie. And here let us also add some value: A <em>USA Today </em><a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/05/04/fact-check-obama-administration-did-not-send-3-7-m-wuhan-lab/3061490001/" target="_blank">fact-check reports</a> the story about the nonexistent grant appears to have originated with a false <em>Daily Mail</em> story April 11, and that Gaetz had repeated the lie in an April 13 tweet before going on Fox News to promote it. The rightwing bullshit machine revved up, and at Donald Trump's April 17 campaign rally "press conference," a NewsMax reporter <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/05/04/fact-check-obama-administration-did-not-send-3-7-m-wuhan-lab/3061490001/" target="_blank">asked </a>him about the grant, which, again, actually went to Daszak's EcoHealth Alliance, which is a US-based organization. </p><blockquote><strong>Reporter: </strong>There's also another report that the NIH, under the Obama administration, in 2015 gave that lab $3.7 million in a grant. Why would the US give a grant like that to China?<br><br><strong>Trump: </strong>The Obama administration gave them a grant of $3.7 million? I've been hearing about that. And we've instructed that if any grants are going to that area – we're looking at it, literally, about an hour ago, and also early in the morning. We will end that grant very quickly. </blockquote><p>One week later, EcoHealth's entire NIH grant was cancelled, so hooray, "the Chinese" have been punished (the Chinese were not punished) and an important source of international research into one of the most concerning disease vectors has been cut off. Daszak is still in shock over the sudden loss of a grant that had formerly been considered one of NIH's top priorities. EcoHealth's researchers are now facing layoffs, and valuable research that could lead to a coronavirus treatment — or prevention of the next outbreak, and there will always be one — has gone down the toilet. Says Daszak,</p><blockquote>This politicization of science is really damaging. You know, the conspiracy theories out there have essentially closed down communication between scientists in China and scientists in the US. We need that communication in an outbreak to learn from them how they control it so we can control it better. It's sad to say, but it will probably cost lives. By sort of narrow-mindedly focusing in on ourselves, or on labs, or on certain cultural politics, we miss the real enemy. </blockquote><p>A noseless Donald Trump then proclaimed his face had definitely been taught a lesson it wouldn't soon forget. No wait, he didn't say that; he accused CBS News of covering up for China.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-twitter_embed">
</p><div id="9d24d" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="b97a3b27579659ef7eee90ac69f0bade"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1259625738858303490" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">.@CBS and their show, @60Minutes, are doing everything within their power, which is far less today than it was in t… https://t.co/7bo11acbp1</div> — Donald J. Trump (@Donald J. Trump)<a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/statuses/1259625738858303490">1589153153.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p></p><p>Yep, the bad guy here is definitely the report that showed how rightwing bullshit is bad for science. But 'GIIIIINAA!</p><p>[<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/trump-administration-coronavirus-vaccine-researcher-covid-19-cure-60-minutes/#app" target="_blank">CBS News </a>/ <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/05/04/fact-check-obama-administration-did-not-send-3-7-m-wuhan-lab/3061490001/" target="_blank">USA Today</a>]<br></p><p>Yr Wonkette is supported entirely by reader donations. Help us keep the servers humming and the writers paid. And if you're sheltering in place, here's our <a href="https://amzn.to/33mKzZe" target="_blank">Amazon linky</a>, too.</p><p></p><form name="donation" method="post" class="donation-form"><p class="subheadline">How often would you like to donate?</p><div class="form-row row--plan"><label class="plan-type__label"><input type="radio" name="plan_type" value="once" class="plan-type" required="" checked> Just once
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Class War
Amazon VP VIP Tim Bray Quitfires Self Over 'Chickensh*t' Activist Quitfirings
Let's not eat this one.
May 06, 2020 11:08 AM
Now with fun update: Tim Bray approves of this story. See end of post.
After so many stories about terrible rich greedheads grabbing up money that should be helping small businesses, let's raise a glass to former Amazon Web Services VP Tim Bray, who last week quit his job in protest over the company's retaliation against warehouse workers who just wanted safer working conditions. As Techdirt explains, Bray was a big name in internetting, having "helped develop XML and a variety of other standards/technologies the internet relies on." But Bray said he couldn't let himself be a part of any company that would respond to legitimate criticism by firing and smearing the workers calling attention to the problems. Fittingly, he left on Friday, International Workers' Day.
Come the revolution, let's remember not to eat this one.
<p>
In a post on his personal blog, Bray
<a href="https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/04/29/Leaving-Amazon" target="_blank">explained</a> the recent firings have roots in <a href="https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/04/29/Leaving-Amazon" target="_blank">last fall's actions by Amazon workers</a> calling on the company to get its act together on climate. They started a group called <a href="https://medium.com/@amazonemployeesclimatejustice" target="_blank">Amazon Employees for Climate Justice</a> (AECJ), sent an open letter calling for greener practices, and participated in the global Climate Strike walkout. Amazon eventually released a plan to decarbonize, but it also <a href="https://www.wonkette.com/amazon-fights-climate-change-also-fights-own-employees-fighting-climate-change" target="_blank">threatened to fire employees</a> who called for the company to do better.
</p><p>
When COVID-19 broke out in the US, workers in Amazon's big warehouses complained they weren't getting good information or protection, and that the company wasn't responding to their concerns. Amazon insisted it was being super safe and taking every possible precaution. But the company also fired warehouse worker Christian Smalls, who'd been organizing calls for better worker safety, and
<a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5dm8bx/leaked-amazon-memo-details-plan-to-smear-fired-warehouse-organizer-hes-not-smart-or-articulate" target="_blank">leaked meeting notes</a> showed Amazon executives planning to smear him and the entire labor organizing effort at Amazon:
</p><blockquote>
"He's not smart, or articulate, and to the extent the press wants to focus on us versus him, we will be in a much stronger PR position than simply explaining for the umpteenth time how we're trying to protect workers," wrote Amazon General Counsel David Zapolsky in notes from the meeting forwarded widely in the company.
</blockquote><p>
Bray details what happened next:
</p><blockquote>
Warehouse workers reached out to AECJ for support. They responded by internally promoting
<a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfNxRiOtKkPDoCi3iUe6XPyM0rzYzXezaSc4soA-3jX9SGpOw/viewform" target="_blank">a petition</a> and organizing a video call for Thursday April 16 featuring warehouse workers from around the world, with guest activist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Klein" target="_blank">Naomi Klein</a>. An announcement sent to internal mailing lists on Friday April 10th was apparently the flashpoint. Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa, two visible AECJ leaders, were fired on the spot that day. The justifications were laughable; it was clear to any reasonable observer that they were turfed for whistleblowing.<br>
<br>
Management could have objected to the event, or demanded that outsiders be excluded, or that leadership be represented, or any number of other things; there was plenty of time. Instead, they just fired the activists.
</blockquote><p>
He says that was the breaking point for him. He notes that he's well aware that "VP's shouldn't go publicly rogue," so first he took his objections through the proper channels inside Amazon. Bray says he isn't able to go into details about those discussions, but
</p><blockquote>
I made many of the arguments appearing in this essay. I think I made them to the appropriate people.
<br>
<br>
That done, remaining an Amazon VP would have meant, in effect, signing off on actions I despised. So I resigned.
</blockquote><p>
Bray also points out that all of the organizers Amazon fired were people of color, women, or both, but "I'm sure it's a coincidence [...] Right?"
</p><p>
He then
<a href="https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200504/10502544429/tim-bray-early-internet-guru-amazon-vp-quits-over-chickenshit-companys-targeting-employees-speaking-out-about-covid-19.shtml" target="_blank">listed </a>a few "descriptive phrases you might use to describe the activist-firing," such as:
</p><ol class="ee-ol">
<li><em>"Chickenshit."</em></li>
<li><em>"Kill the messenger."</em></li>
<li><em>"Never heard of the Streisand effect."</em></li>
<li><em>"Designed to create a climate of fear."</em></li>
<li><em>"Like painting a sign on your forehead saying 'Either guilty, or has something to hide.'"</em></li>
<em>
<blockquote>
</blockquote>
</em>
</ol><div>
He later removed that list, after "voices I respect told me it was mean-spirited" and he decided it didn't add anything. But Techdirt editor Mike Masnick (who happened to
<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-18458567" target="_blank">coin the term "Streisand effect"</a>) preserved 'em, and we respectfully disagree with Mr. Bray. Sometimes mean-spirited is exactly what you need. Masnick also notes that, beyond his personal connection to the term, Amazon's firing the activists may do the exact opposite of covering over the problem, what with Bray's resignation calling even more attention to it. Consider this story right here our contribution to the pointing and shouting. </div><div>
Bray goes on to say that he really does believe that Amazon management is trying its best to make conditions in the warehouses as safe as possible, but that the workers deserve to be heard, and, above all, that firing them was unconscionable. The larger problem, he says, is that<br>
</div><blockquote>
Amazon treats the humans in the warehouses as fungible units of pick-and-pack potential. Only that's not just Amazon, it's how 21st-century capitalism is done.
<br>
<br>
Amazon is exceptionally well-managed and has demonstrated great skill at spotting opportunities and building repeatable processes for exploiting them. It has a corresponding lack of vision about the human costs of the relentless growth and accumulation of wealth and power.
</blockquote><p>
This is something we can fix, Bray says. While it's very much an Amazon problem, it's not <em>only </em>an Amazon problem:
</p><blockquote>
We don't need to invent anything new; a combination of antitrust and living-wage and worker-empowerment legislation, rigorously enforced, offers a clear path forward.<br>
<br>
Don't say it can't be done, because <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52346451" target="_blank">France is doing it</a>.<br>
<br>
Firing whistleblowers isn't just a side-effect of macroeconomic forces, nor is it intrinsic to the function of free markets. It's evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture. I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison.
</blockquote><p>
To his credit, Bray also recognizes that, as a VP in Amazon's most profitable division, Amazon Web Services, he has a voice that's just structurally louder than the voices of warehouse workers. His own workplace is full of well-paid techies who get listened to, because the company thinks they're important, not just replaceable cogs.
</p><blockquote>
At the end of the day, it's all about power balances. The warehouse workers are weak and getting weaker, what with mass unemployment and (in the US) job-linked health insurance. So they're gonna get treated like crap, because capitalism. Any plausible solution has to start with increasing their collective strength.
</blockquote><p>
Sounds like the <a href="https://www.wonkette.com/millionaires-say-oh-elizabeth-warren-we-are-rich-please-eat-us" target="_blank">Patriotic Millionaires</a> should be recruiting Tim Bray, our Class Traitor of the Day.
</p><p><strong>Update: </strong>In a<a href="https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/05/06/Answers" target="_blank"> new blog post,</a> Tim Bray says he likes us, he really likes us! </p><blockquote><strong>Favorite response?</strong> · [Nobody] asked, but I'll answer anyhow. I could drop a dozen portentous media-heavyweight names and yeah, pretty well everyone weighed in. But it's not close, my fave was Wonkette: <a href="https://www.wonkette.com/amazon-vp-tim-bray-resigns-in-protest" target="_self">Amazon VP VIP Tim Bray Quitfires Self Over 'Chickensh*t' Activist Quitfirings</a>. It says, of yr humble scrivener, "Come the revolution, let's remember not to eat this one" and "Class Traitor of the Day". These lodged in what I thought was a thoroughly lucid and spirited take on the situation.<a href="https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/05/06/Answers#p-9" target="_blank"> </a></blockquote><p>Hear that Ma? I'm <em>LUCID!</em></p><p>[<a href="https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200504/10502544429/tim-bray-early-internet-guru-amazon-vp-quits-over-chickenshit-companys-targeting-employees-speaking-out-about-covid-19.shtml" target="_blank">Techdirt </a>/ <a href="https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/04/29/Leaving-Amazon" target="_blank">Tim Bray</a> / <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5dm8bx/leaked-amazon-memo-details-plan-to-smear-fired-warehouse-organizer-hes-not-smart-or-articulate" target="_blank">Vice</a> Update: <a href="https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/05/06/Answers" target="_blank">Tim Bray</a>]<br></p><p>
Yr Wonkette is supported entirely by reader donations. Help us keep the servers humming and the writers paid. And if you're sheltering in place, here's our <a href="https://amzn.to/33mKzZe" target="_blank">Amazon linky</a>, too.
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Joe Biden's Got Green New Deal In Your Stimulus!
You've got stimulus in your Green New Deal!
April 27, 2020 01:05 PM
Joe Biden has some ideas about economic stimulus. In an interview with Politico, Biden said America needs a new stimulus bill that's a "hell of a lot bigger" than last month's $2.2 trillion CARES Act to get people through the economic chaos caused by the coronavirus, as well as bold thinking that goes well beyond the immediate crisis. My gosh, it's almost as if he knows that you don't get out of economic doldrums by forcing austerity.
Also, he cussed a lot about Donald Trump's terrible management of the crisis, but limited it to hells and damns to keep it all safe for primetime TV. We'll confess, we like Angry Joe.
<p>Politico's Michael Grunwald noted that Biden's economic talk "sounded a bit like his angrier and less moderate primary rivals, Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren," which is all to the good. Any new stimulus, he said, has to be aimed at making sure state and local governments can avoid "laying off a hell of a lot of teachers and cops and firefighters," and needs better oversight built into it, since the Trump administration is "wasting a hell of a lot of money" with the current stimulus funding. </p><blockquote>[Stimulus] is a subject close to his heart, and he passionately contrasted his own management of President Barack Obama's $800 billion Recovery Act in 2009 with President Donald Trump's approach to the trillions of dollars flowing out of Capitol Hill.<br><br>The Obama stimulus was wildly controversial, but it won bipartisan praise for its strict oversight and unusually low levels of fraud. In the interview, Biden was at his most indignant when he recounted how he recruited a gruff law enforcement veteran and government watchdog named Earl Devaney to oversee the Recovery Act in 2009, and how President Donald Trump fired the Pentagon inspector general who had been selected to oversee the CARES Act almost immediately after he signed it.</blockquote><p>Why yes, we would like to quibble with that "wildly controversial" label there, since it came from Republicans who only give two shits about deficits when there's a Democrat in the White House, and then turn around and pass tax cuts that are far larger once they're in office. But yes, more about Biden's oversight of the 2009 stimulus, please? </p><blockquote>"I wanted to bring in the toughest son-of-a-bitch in the country — I really mean it, I'm not joking — because we wanted to make sure we did it by the numbers with genuine oversight," Biden said. "Right now, there's no oversight. [Trump] made it real clear he doesn't have any damn interest in being checked. The last thing he wants is anyone watching that $500 billion going to corporate America, for God's sake."</blockquote><p>Unfortunately, the Politico piece went on to misidentify the oversight dude Trump fired, saying it was<a href="https://www.wonkette.com/trump-firing-intelligence-ig-for-doing-his-job-sure-why-not" target="_blank"> Michael Atkinson,</a> the intelligence community inspector general who forwarded the Ukraine whistleblower complaint to Congress, which led to Trump's impeachment. Silly Politico, not <em>that </em>fired IG! It was actually the<a href="https://www.wonkette.com/which-inspector-general-is-trump-saturday-night-massacring-this-lovely-tuesday" target="_blank"> Defense Department's (acting) IG Glenn Fine,</a> for the record. We can see how Politico would mix them up, since both were fired the same week in April, along with several thousand other IGs. Because Donald Trump was so focused on dealing with the pandemic, probably. </p><p>Biden had a lot more to say about how this stimmy stuff should be helping small businesses, not the big banks that have been the conduit for the "small-business" loan program that has ended up<a href="https://www.wonkette.com/mnuchin-so-mad-big-companies-bogarted-small-business-stimmy-funds-as-designed" target="_blank"> benefiting so many very large businesses.</a> Biden said Republicans had been entirely too generous to the banks, making this "the second time we've bailed their asses out," and complaining that giant banks, which are "only alive because of the American taxpayer" have given preferential treatment to their existing — and most profitable — customers in making loans through the Paycheck Protection Program.<br></p><blockquote>"We knew from the beginning that the big banks don't like lending to small businesses," Biden said. "I'm telling you, though, if Main Street businesses don't get help, they're gone."</blockquote><p>For the next round of stimulus spending, Biden said it's vital to get aid for state and local government, and beyond that, to focus on the long-term thinking that'll be needed to help the economy get back on track. But not back to the same old thing: </p><blockquote>Biden suggested that after four rounds of legislation designed primarily to stanch the economic bleeding, the next round should include more forward-looking investments that could help the economy start to recover and grow once the virus is contained. He suggested a "trillion-dollar infrastructure program that can be implemented really rapidly," as well as "dealing with environmental things that create good-paying jobs."<br><br>Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have suggested that "green stimulus" would be a nonstarter with Republicans, but Biden said investments in light rail, clean drinking water, and half a million electric vehicle chargers on the nation's highways could help retool the economy for the future.</blockquote><p>Such long-term investments, he said, would lead to the economic growth that would help pay for the spending that will dig us out of the current slump. We should repeal the 2017 Big Fat Tax Cuts for Rich Fuckwads, he said, which "wasn't worth the powder it will take to blow it to hell." Instead, investing in green infrastructure and jobs for the future will be "the only thing that grows the economy back so the deficit doesn't eat you alive." </p><p>Not surprisingly, once the Politico interview went up, a Trump campaign spokesidiot, Tim Murtaugh, offered a load of codswallop, claiming that Biden wants to use the coronavirus crisis to sneak through a Green New Deal while the planet's temporarily less polluted (OK, he didn't say it <em>that</em> way), and that green energy would create "millions of job losses in the energy sector," as if nobody would have jobs in clean energy. Then Murtaugh told another whopper: </p><blockquote>Joe Biden helped preside over the worst economic recovery since World War II, so economic advice from him is not exactly a hot commodity.</blockquote><p>Pre-Rona <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2018/10/30/two-charts-show-trumps-job-gains-are-just-a-continuation-from-obamas-presidency/#48a8be451af3" target="_blank">Unemployment </a>and <a href="https://www.mikebloomberg2020.com/news/chart-of-the-week-debunking-the-trump-economy" target="_blank">GDP</a> charts, please? </p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzE2OTIzNC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxNTk1MzkzN30.qMC2IWS8DWUdpKGDAJwaB2WBPUwJFxj5cJ_nZ5bfLgY/img.jpg?width=980" id="cc480" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="47d34f75a4cb31a79ba93f36b79233ad" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
</p><p><br></p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzE2OTIzNi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNzc3MjQzMH0.VQshUk7mt1WaIFuQweqh-O3H_ayI-K7_tAy9-yMtK_A/img.jpg?width=980" id="69d37" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="16be304df9e9f250545f4d3e5d9c6753" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
</p><p>And of course, the Obama recovery could have been much stronger were it not for deficit hawks' insistence on austerity, which limited the effects of the post-2008 stimulus. Let us lecture you about how Republican austerity also fucked over the progress being made by the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2011/07/16/138185648/when-a-turn-toward-austerity-turned-to-disaster" target="_blank">New Deal in 1937,</a> shall we? Grrr. Makes us so mad we could mildly cuss like Joe Biden! </p><p>In any case, it's a good interview and you should read it; Joe Biden is clearly listening to people telling him we could use some genuinely progressive economics right now, and we're looking forward to hearing more of this stuff. The Biden campaign really needs to write all this up in some policy papers for us to roll around in.</p><p>[<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/25/joe-biden-green-stimulus-207848" target="_blank">Politico</a> / Photo by <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/49554622748/" target="_blank">Gage Skidmore,</a> Creative Commons <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/" target="_blank">license 2.0</a>]<br></p><p>Yr Wonkette is supported entirely by reader donations. Help us keep the servers humming and the writers paid. And if you're sheltering in place, here's our <a href="https://amzn.to/33mKzZe" target="_blank">Amazon linky</a>, too.</p><p></p><form name="donation" method="post" class="donation-form"><p class="subheadline">How often would you like to donate?</p><div class="form-row row--plan"><label class="plan-type__label"><input type="radio" name="plan_type" value="once" class="plan-type" required="" checked> Just once
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