Sanders, Trump Are Pushing $1,000-plus Cash Payments to People; Biden, Pelosi, Schumer Are Opposed or Silent

Democratic Leadership Mired in Total Failure

Update: Congressional Dems Are to the Right of the GOP. The party’s leadership is failing the test posed by the coronavirus.
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Want more evidence Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer do not give care about you?

Democratic leader Schumer criticizes Trump's call for $1,000 checks https://t.co/mVQvz85f69

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 19, 2020

I truly don't know how to describe how maddening it is that Republicans and Trump officials are to the left of Congressional Dem leadership on this issue. Absolutely fucking maddening. pic.twitter.com/qz55vvyzih

— jordan (@JordanUhl) March 18, 2020

Joe Biden is asleep at the switch, finding a Joe Biden quote, any position, on the Trump and Sanders-proposed $1,000-plus payments to Americans is impossible.

Nothing.

From Saagar Enjeti and Krystal Ball at Rising:



Reports the Los Angeles Times: "On Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said the federal government was looking into 'sending checks to Americans immediately' as part of a $1-trillion stimulus proposal from the Trump administration to combat the negative impact of the coronavirus outbreak on the economy."

And it's the Democratic Party establishment that are holding up relief during this crisis.

From CommonDreams:

'Nancy Pelosi is officially to the right of Tom Cotton on economic support for American families,' HuffPost reporter Zach Carter tweeted on Sunday. 'This is a total failure of Democratic Party leadership.'

Pelosi's deputy chief of staff Drew Hammill on Twitter Tuesday emphasized that any aid 'MUST be targeted' for the Speaker to approve it, drawing further anger from the left. 'Why?' asked New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie. 'If we agree that the crisis is stark and immediate, and we know that precise targeting takes time and administrative effort, why make that a requirement when you can simply disburse the funds *now* and collect from high-income recipients *later*?'

New Consensus president Saikat Chakrabarti was flabbergasted at Pelosi's resistance to payments for all Americans.

'This crazy obsession in Dem leadership with looking 'reasonable' by not 'doing too much' is about as impractical and insane as you can get in the face of a pandemic,' Chakrabarti tweeted.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, has proposed a $2 trillion package including direct payments to Americans.

Journalist Walker Bragman on Wednesday noted the absurdity of Trump being closer to Sanders on relief than Democratic leadership. 

Democrats do not care about you, and never have. How can we doubt it now?

"We must provide direct, emergency $2,000 cash payments to every person in America every month for the duration of the crisis. We are likely already in a recession. Workers are losing income while their bills pile up. We must begin issuing cash payments of $2,000 a month for every person in America to provide households with the assistance they need to pay their bills and take care of their families," writes Bernie Sanders today in an email.

Emergency $2,000 cash payments to every person?

No, says the Democratic Party.

Sanders and Trump Admin Call for Cash Payments Amid Biden Silence and Primary Wins

VIX fear-volatility remains near record-high.

Updated - Madison, Wisconsin — Following Joe Biden's sweep of last night's primary elections, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Sen. Bernie Sanders are issuing urgent calls for direct cash payments for Americans.

"We need to provide a direct emergency $2,000 cash payment to every household in America every month for the duration of the crisis to provide them with the assistance they need to pay their bills and take care of their families," Sanders said, (Newsweek).

Mnuchin and Bernie Sanders are singing the same song on a massive federal governmental response to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and the unofficial U.S. recession, both of which are unpredictable in their severity and duration.

Joe Biden's views on the stimulus are unclear to this point.

We are likely already in a recession.

Workers are losing income while their bills pile up.

We need to provide direct, emergency $2,000 cash payments to every person in America every month for the duration of the crisis.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) March 18, 2020

Yet, Biden is racking up win after win on the campaign trail.

Personally, I would not trust anything Joe Biden has to say on the global economic crisis anymore than I trusted Biden on the secret weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the moral imperative for mass incarceration and marijuana criminalization, cutting Social Security and the moral primacy of banks over people.

On the campaign front, the presidential race is shaping up as Bernie Sanders and the Trump administration v. Joe Biden and the neo-libs whose 40-year project brought us this outcome.

And on policy, the Trump administration and Bernie Sanders are leading the fight for working families.

Meanwhile, the markets are in for another volatile session today.

So, Biden has been running on parables and lies, not-on-point.

VIX

The VIX index measures fear and expected volatility of investors, offering an educated guess on the next 30-day period of the CBOE Futures Exchange (CFE) and S and P 500 Index.

The VIX functions as a red flag revealing market psychology and pathology.

The higher the VIX, the more the volatility and fear.

The VIX is at trading at $75.91 on March 18, 2020, 10:10 Eastern Time.
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On October 24, 2008, the nightmare of 2008, the VIX reached a day-high record of 89.53.