Senate Democrats block mammoth coronavirus stimulus package

Some talk about the bill in this:

Why the Democrats slowed down the bill:
• McConnell’s bill includes a $500,000,000,000.00 corporate slush fund for CEOs and the ultra rich to be given at the discretion of Treasury— while leaving workers, families and children out to dry.
• McConnell’s bill has weak stock buyback language that can be waived by the Treasury Secretary; executive compensation limits only last for two years; language on worker retention is weak and includes easy outs for companies; there are no assurances in the language that workers will benefit.
• The bill doesn’t protect workers from being fired, even by companies that get millions of dollars.
• The bill provides little transparency of the lending done by Treasury (amount and to whom?).
• There are no specific provisions to protect from individuals from eviction, foreclosure or forbearance.
Other Major Problems:
• No money for state and local governments.
• No additional SNAP funds.
• No OSHA language to protect workers.
• No expanded emergency leave provisions.
• Only 3 months on Unemployment Insurance – this is an insufficient length given the scope of the crisis.
• Direct Payments are not available to the millions of people who did not file a return in 2018 or 2019.
• No money to help with the treatment of the uninsured.

COpied this from some stranger dude on the internet:

Prohibit buybacks and executive bonuses for 5 years from any company receiving bailouts. Demand a limit to corporate salaries to 400 thousand ( US presidential salary) for 2 years, limit outsourcing, outlaw unjustified firings, and force paid sick leave as a condition for any US company to receive Coronavirus relief taxpayer funds. Demand full and immediate transparency to a dictatorial Congress appointed Financial Control Board about taxpayer fund use as a prerequisite to periodic scheduled partial fund disbursements (just like Republicans did to Puerto Rico). Oh!, and drug test their executives, you know, to please the so called conservatives.

GEEEZ. Whadda buncha #@)#$&.

So…$2.2 trillion, and the consensus on the thing is just…not even debatable. The only two points that held it up was the TRIVIAL amount of money given to people who ARE UNEMPLOYED, and the amount of oversight on the corporate slush fund. Those are the only things they argued about. Complete agreement on everything else, including the $500 billion slush fund.

Republicans are worried that a few people might get a couple hundred bucks more than they ordinarily would.

And Democrats fight for the pretense of oversight like they had for TARP which was next to useless.

And the Republicans…I mean…long gone is any pretense that they care about how much money the government spends. The emperor has no clothes on that, even if they cynically play that song come election season. They don’t care about the deficit. Not in real life. That’s obvious.

So…what does that SAY about their quibbling over a hundred bucks? They aren’t motivated by fiscal restraint. So…what actually motivates them to fight over this paltry sum of money?

They. Have. CONTEMPT. For. Poor. People.

Abject contempt. They WANT them to suffer. Even if that isn’t in their conscious thought – and I’m sure they would deny it. But you tell me…play devil’s advocate for me…tell me what other motive could possibly fill in the blank for why they fought over that number. Because it wasn’t about the cost to the government.

They WANT people to go back to work even though they know it’s life-threatening for people to do that, and will overwhelm our health care professionals. They don’t care. They need the engines to keep stimulating their wealth. That is their highest priority.

And Graham! Attacking nurses – NURSES! – during a pandemic!

This is the Great USA. This is Our Country.

And everybody here knows them. I’m screaming at all my friends who already know this. Fuck these people, man.

Zooey wrote:

They. Have. CONTEMPT. For. Poor. People….

This is the Great USA. This is Our Country…

And everybody here knows them. I’m screaming at all my friends who already know this. Fuck these people, man.

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And poor people and working people will continue to vote for them.
No-one will twist their arms. They dont have to.
But they will. Biden. Trump.

w
v

wv wrote:

No, the Veil has not been lifted. Leftists already knew all this.

The rest of the nation will stay exactly as they were. Dems will blame Reps.
Reps will blame Dems. The game will continue.

The biosphere will continue circling the drain, BT.

There will not be any ‘awakening’. You cant ‘wake up’ when youve been propagandized all your life.

Watch the next Primary election. Watch the next election cycle for Senators.

w
v

And the politicians KNOW this. They know it so well that they don’t even PRETEND anymore. They just come out and say it. You know…”We’re going to come take your social security away, kill Obamacare, gut Medicare…all of it. We’re going to take every fucking cent you have and give it to rich people.” And a quarter of the people cheer this, and a quarter of them say, “Well, we need to put somebody in office who is reasonable and can make some incremental deals,” and the other half of the people stay home and don’t vote at all because it’s boring, or because it’s pointless to vote.

They just took $6,000 from every family in this country and handed it over to corporations that don’t need the money. Boeing is all like, “Well…I dunno if we are gonna take all that money if it has too many strings attached to it.” That’s how desperate they are. “Just give it to us, or no deal.”

Mitch McConnell must be laughing his ass off right now.

wv wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

If this doesn’t wake up Americans, nothing will…

The veil has been lifted permanently. Will Americans even see this?

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No, the Veil has not been lifted. Leftists already knew all this.

w
v

Well, WV, I don’t want to get into a virtual argument with you, that might lead to virtual fisticuffs, cuz right now I definitely can’t take a punch.

;>)

Had a second round of eye (retinal tear) surgeries this week (Wednesday and today), and when I awoke from a nap this afternoon, took off the bandage, the eye looked like I had lost a fight with Deacon Jones.

Anyway . . . you and I are saying close to the same thing. I’m saying external reality is X, that there’s no excuse now for anyone to still believe it’s not X, and then asked if the rest of America will finally see X, cuz the veil on that reality has clearly been lifted once and for all. I didn’t say they necessarily see the lifting of the veil, etc.

And I know leftists already know X, being a leftist meself. I know that the capitalist system has engaged in ever-successful gaslighting, which gets more and more pernicious by the minute.

But this latest pandemic and response are different. This makes it abundantly clear that trillions of dollars can be made to magically appear yet again to “save the economy,” but money wasn’t available before when people were (and still are) starving, homeless, without medical care, etc. etc.

Anyway, the latest polling, apparently, has Trump over 50% for the first time in his presidency. Which tells us No, they won’t see the lifting of the veil. And, it tells me, more than half of this nation has lost its mind.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/27/investing/tax-bill-real-estate/index.html

Wealthy real estate developers like Trump score a huge tax break in the stimulus bill

Additional thought…what with the new push for people to go back to work….

THAT’S why they wanted the stimulus to be low. So they can say they did it, but when the “offer” to let people “decide” if they want to go back to work…there is really no choice.

They want everybody going back to fucking work while they hang out in their vacation homes.