Nancy Pelosi Is Running out Clock on Stimulus-COVID 19 Relief Negotiation

Two weeks out to Election Day, and Pelosi Postures

Update: Yahoo News: reports: White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said the White House increased its stimulus offer as the Tuesday deadline to get a deal through before the election looms.

"We've increased our offer up to almost $1.9 trillion," Meadows told reporters on Monday morning. "[The president] is willing to give some additional money in terms of direct payments, he's willing to give some additional money in terms of PPP to restaurants and hotels and small businesses."

Update: Nancy Pelosi sets fake 48-hour deadline to kill stimulus bill.

Updated - A problem for American families battling the COVID 19 Pandemic amid a ravaging economy is Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell do not have to live with the consequences of their actions.

Suppose stimulus-relief negotiations produce nothing.

So what? 

Pelosi, Trump, and McConnell are going to be fine.

They don't sweat deductibles for their healthcare.

All three are millionaires anyway, so they can bail anytime they want, and they're still set, even if the American people did not pay for their pensions.

That is why last week's CNN interview of Nancy Pelosi on the stimulus talks is so jarring.

Pelosi is blatant in her willingness to walk away, and it's clear Pelosi, and not just Pelosi, could not care less what happens to the American people. 

More Democratic representatives are publicly expressing their disgust.

In the interview, Queen Nancy spoke extensively of her respect for Wolf Blitzer and stated Blitzer showed disrespect of Congress and Committee chairs. 

But viewers are left wondering where the American people fit in.

The latest news this weekend on the stimulus talks is not cause for optimism.

Pelosi does not get it, and she remains willing to walk away.

A press aide tweeted the American people will get nothing, or the White House must change its $1.8 Trillion offer.

The Speaker and Secretary Mnuchin spoke at 7:40 p.m. by phone tonight for just over an hour. While there was some encouraging news on testing, there remains work to do to ensure there is a comprehensive testing plan that includes contact tracing and additional measures to...(1/3)

— Drew Hammill (@Drew_Hammill) October 18, 2020

Mitch McConnell said the Republican-led Senate would "consider" a deal reached between the White House and Pelosi, reports The Hill.

But Pelosi and Trump seem content to drive American families over a cliff.

Oh, for Nancy's edification, the American people care even less about House Committee chairs than they do about the Queen's respect for Wolf Blitzer.

Said Pelosi last week to Wolf Blitzer, "You evidently do not respect the chairman of the committees who wrote this bill."

I know I don't.

Writes Andrew Yang:

I wish that Congress felt the impact of their failure to pass a relief bill as deeply and personally as the families that need relief.

— Andrew Yang🧢🇺🇸 (@AndrewYang) October 17, 2020

Hey, Nancy, Take the Deal; Are You Crazy?

Update: See Congress Has Another Chance to Pass a Stimulus, Democrats need to take it, (Harris, Slate).

Nancy Pelosi is deranged, the real thing.

Faced with the obliteration of the recovery, such as this recovery is, Pelosi is stubbornly refusing to take a $1.8 trillion stimulus, out of concern that this would be a political victory for the president.

Even Wolf Blitzer, no progressive is he, was taken aback by Pelosi's refusal to just take the deal Trump has offered, (Cillizza, Microsoft News).

Here's Blitzer questioning Pelosi:

Blitzer: Even members of your own caucus, Madam Speaker, want to accept this deal, $1.8 trillion, Congressman Ro Khanna for example. But let met just quote Ro Khanna, a man you know well. I assume you admire him. He's a Democrat.

And he just said this. He said "People in need can't wait until February, $1.8 trillion is significant and more than twice the Obama stimulus. Make a deal, put the ball in McConnell court."

So what do you say to Ro Khanna?

Pelosi: What I say to you is, I don't know why you're always an apologist. And many of your colleagues, apologists for the Republican position. Ro Khanna, that's nice. That isn't what we're going to do and nobody's waiting till February.

Listen to the CNN interview, Nancy Pelosi is a crazy person, truly. And this unhinged Speaker is the only person standing in the way of getting $1.8 trillion out of Trump and Mitch McConnell during the COVID pandemic.

Guess Joe Biden's position. Dead silence from the Democratic Party nominee.

See also:

In Wisconsin We Don't Care about the 25th Amendment; Pelosi Is Out-of-touch Playing Gratuitous Politics

Madison, Wisconsin — People in Wisconsin are worried about their families, and small-business failure to come on a gargantuan scale.

So, instead of hammering out another COVID stimulus, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D) is playing games with rhetoric about the 25 Amendment, continuing a ridiculous personal spat with the president.

In three months Trump is gone, and no Cabinet member is going to sign on to a declaration that he is unfit.

Meanwhile, every economist is issuing dire warnings about that families, landlords, restaurants, taverns, professional-service, essentially everyone except the top few percent are facing catastrophe.

So, Nancy Pelosi gets to insult the lunatic in the White House that he is even more unfit. How does this help us? 

This is a colossal waste of time that tells us, in the words of Krystal Ball, "noone is this town [D.C.] actually gives a shit about the people who are most impacted."

Pelosi is self-absorbed, possessed of an inflated sense of her own personal importance, with a deep need for excessive attention and admiration, and a lack of empathy for what Americans are going through, (Mayo Clinic).

Sound like someone else in high public office?

I'm under no illusions about the White House, but Pelosi needs to focus: We matter, not her, and not her need for gratuitous insult during high national crises.

@SpeakerPelosi: "Tomorrow, by the way, tomorrow, come here tomorrow. We're going to be talking about the 25th Amendment."

Full video here: https://t.co/5q4HIglmaZ pic.twitter.com/8Jeim87yJM

— CSPAN (@cspan) October 8, 2020

Bi-partisan Refusal to Pass COIVD Stimulus Clinches It — Americans Don't Count with Dems and GOP

Veep debate shuns COVID relief bill

Parties Unmasked

 

Update: Madison, Wisconsin — Just heard the Joe Biden TV spot exclaiming "It's a simple proposition, we're all in this together." 

Biden is lying.

It's major lie. Unless you are pouring serious money into Congress and the parties, you are out; you do not count with the Republican and Democratic parties.

Even the most obtuse member of Congress realizes how devastating the recession, COVID 19 and business-as-usual are to families and most Americans.

The COVID 19 relief-stimulus bill did not even come up last night in the veep debate, noone wants to talk about it.

But Democrats and Republicans do not care. They don't, you are not a member of their D.C. club, and you may as well curse the coming Wisconsin Winter.

One would think after Trump walked away from COVID relief talks, that all of Congress would be howling, constantly raising hell, harassing us about this injustice with the frequency of a Mike Lindell My Pillow commercial. 

Outside of a few tweets and a statement or two, instead, we get dead silence and no action from Pelosi and Schumer. 

 

Krystal Ball laid it out yesterday: 

 

I will never forgive Trump for abandoning Americans right now. He was the only person who solely held in his hands the power to get this done. 

 

I don't want to let Pelosi off the hook here either. She decided for electoral gain, she would rather Americans have nothing than to give Trump any kind of a win. 

 

Now, she's probably correct politically. But it is an unconscionable, and frankly psychopathic position. 

 

Trump's position is both politically idiotic and psychopathic cruel. The bottom-line of this recession, which has ultimately dictated the lack of response, is that noone is this town actually gives a shit about the people who are most impacted.

 

This was the most unequal recession of all time, devastating the bottom half of the country, and leaving unscathed, or even benefiting the top echelons of society. If ever you wondered how much the people here actually care about you, you now know in absolutely uncertain terms — they don't.

Now, watch, (because observing and commenting is about all we can do with the two parties), as the United States sinks into another Great Recession, if we're lucky.

Disgust with Trump and Pelosi Grows; They Both Don't Get It

'If ever you wondered how much the people here [in D.C.] actually care about you, you now know in absolutely uncertain terms — they don't.'
- Krystal Ball

The COVID Coronavirus imperils the economy with a synchronized assault engineered by the president, with, it bears noting, a big assist from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D).

Trump and Pelosi seem like partners in a sick game in which Americans lose.

You won't get this from the New York Times or Washington Post, but Krystal Ball of Hill TV just blew the whistle on the whole Washington D.C. dance.

By the way, Joe Biden responded to Trump, late as usual, and his statement is fluff, nothing.

The President turned his back on you. pic.twitter.com/oeI8dck2LL

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 6, 2020

Said Krystal Ball this morning:

I will never forgive Trump for abandoning Americans right now. He was the only person who solely held in his hands the power to get this done. I don't want to let Pelosi off the hook here either. She decided for electoral gain, she would rather Americans have nothing than to give Trump any kind of a win. 

Now, she's probably correct politically. But it is an unconscionable, and frankly psychopathic position.

Trump's position is both politically idiotic and psychopathic cruel. The bottom-line of this recession, which has ultimately dictated the lack of response, is that noone is this town actually gives a shit about the people who are most impacted. 

This was the most unequal recession of all time, devastating the bottom half of the country, and leaving unscathed, or even benefiting the top echelons of society. If ever you wondered how much the people here actually care about you, you now know in absolutely uncertain terms — they don't.

Watch the Hill TV segment below.

Trump to Country: Nothing, No Stimulus, No Direct Payments, 'Im Ending COVID Relief Talks'

Biden Fails to Respond

Update: Economy nears tipping point as Trump sends new erratic, contradictory intentions on aid.

The news hit Tuesday mid-afternoon in a Tweet, Donald Trump is pulling the plug on America.

Reports the New York Times:

President Trump on Tuesday abruptly ended talks with Democrats on an economic stimulus  bill, sending the stock market sliding and dealing a final blow to an intensive set of on-again-off-again negotiations to deliver additional pandemic aid to struggling Americans before the November elections.

Mr. Trump announced that he was pulling the plug on the effort in a series of afternoon tweets in which he accused Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California of 'not negotiating in good faith' and urged Senate Republicans to focus solely on confirming his nominee to the Supreme Court in the coming weeks.

This means struggling families get nothing, small businesses get nothing, renters get nothing, small landlords get nothing and are left with no means of recouping months of no rent from tenants, states and municipalities get nothing, for starters, as the COVID Coronavirus imperils the world economy with a synchronized failure engineered by the president of the United States.

"Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell warned earlier Tuesday that the economic recovery remains fragile seven months into Coronavirus pandemic without further economic stimulus," reports the AP.

Trump ended his no-relief Tweets in all capitals: "THE BEST IS YET TO COME!"

Meanwhile Joe Biden tweeted eight times in the hour after Trump in communications in which the Democratic Party nominee failed to note, comment or advocate in any way on Trump's walking away from COVID relief. 

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he supports Trump's decision.

Moratorium on Residential Evictions Should Come with Landlord Subsidy Fast

In late Oct, Pres Donald Trump issued a sweeping moratorium on residential evictions through the Centers on Disease Control and Prevention.

The moratorium seems a rare bold, public health initiative. 

It's not and it exemplifies policy not even approaching half-measure value on a still-growing crisis.

What a massive stimulus bill should do to address this swath of policy is send federal money directly to landlords to pay for tenants in need of help.  

The subsidy could can be free, or payback without interest or whatever. This would solve the problem for the tenants, the landlords, the banks and the coming worst-yet liquidity crisis. 

In context, the moratorium is dishonest. Tenants in need are just pushing off eviction until after Jan 1 because after that they’ll be expected to come up with a pile of money for back-rent, penalties and they won’t have it.

If Trump were smart, he'd push, as he is able, a major stimulus legislation that includes a residential landlord stimulus.

But comprehensive public policy solving crises is not what Trump, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden do.

They all play political games and likely Democratic Party officeholders will receive a new memo advising Dems to blame everything on the Russians.

Scott Walker's Sickening Foxconn Boondoggle

Net benefits calculated as increased tax revenue minus state
payments under August 2017 Special Session Assembly Bill 1,
(dark blue), and cumulative (purple), in millions of dollars,
by fiscal year (2018 indicates FY 2018-19).
Source: Legislative Audit Bureau,, via EconBrowser.

Update: Walker adminstration caught suppressing data on the Fox Con; story ignored but in a rational political culture would dominate journalistic coverage:
 ---
Madison, Wisconsin — Macro-economics and state policy guru, Jake's Econ, demonstrates the folly of the Fox Con in his latest analysis.

Long after Gov. Scott Walker has moved from his long slurping off the public spigot, long after Walker has cashed in on anti-public corporate money, Wisconsin will be facing a dangerous deficit from the proposed $3 billion Foxconnn give-away, if Walker gets his way and signs the Fox Con bill.

Jake cites Menzie Chinn, Professor of Public Affairs and Economics at the Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs, (University of Wisconsin-Madison), at Econbrowser.

Chinn notes the "uncertainty" that exists around Foxconn corporate conduct and the volatility of the market of Foxconn LCD tv screens, for example.

Wisconsin breaking even over decades is unlikely, so Chinn posits the necessity of intellectual honesty in accessing the Foxconn-Trump-Walker initiative.

Writes Chinn:

The fact that this venture does not seem to be a big positive for Wisconsin seems to match the literature that indicates state tax incentives to relocate businesses do not typically have big payoffs. From a survey by Buss (2001):

Tax literature, nowin hundreds of publications, provides little guidance to policy makers trying to fine-tune economic development. Taxes should matter to states, but researchers cannot say how, when, and where with much certainty. Firms may need tax incentives to increase their viability in some locations, but researchers cannot definitively say which businesses or which locations.

Perhaps more relevant to this specific case:

… declining companies tended to take advantage of programs targeted toward distressed areas, whereas growth companies tended to locate in non-distressed counties. Tax incentives made distressed areas worse or no better off, whereas non-distressed areas always improved ... .

Question: Will we be watching LCD tv screens in 27 years?

In 27 years, it won't matter. Walker and Republicans will be gone from public office, living off a public pension and the people still around Wisconsin then can clean up the fiscal, environmental and economic catastrophe

Scott Walker and his gang will be doing just fine, and that's what really matters.

Wisconsin Is Saying 'No' to the Fox Con

Wisconsin delivers a hostile response to Chinese scheme to foist
colony onto the Badger state.
Scholar, Allen Ruff, created the Facebook news group site,
Say No to the Fox Con over weekend, quickly gathering
100-plus members as state mobilizes opposition to Foxconn.

Imposing a colony in Wisconsin land of sand and water

Madison, Wisconsin — In July Donald Trump, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Janesville, Wisconsin) and Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wisconsin) extolled the virtues of tax payers coughing up $ 3 billion to Fox Conn, (aka Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd), in an unprecedented bid to induce the controversial electronics company to site a plant in Wisconsin—a "win" sounding too good to be true, (Washington Post).

Hon Hai Precision-Foxconn is too good to be true; it's a lie.

Wisconsin people smell a rat; an anti-human, polluting rat that infamously induced Chinese workers to commit suicide rather than be forced to work another day in Chinese work camp-'dormitory' complexes, (CBS News), (Jenny Chan, New Technology, Work and Employment), (CNN Technology). [Foxconn communications director Liu Kun, argued in defense of worker suicides that "with more than a million employees in China alone, the rate of 'self-killing' wasn't far from China's relatively high average," after the company installed anti-suicide nets to catch workers jumping to their deaths in prison dormitories, (CBS News).]

Led by social media such as Facebook, Wisconsin's political culture supports a ready resistance to Foxconn.

On August 4, scholar-activist Allen Ruff created the Facebook group site, Say No to the Fox Con, quickly gathering 150-plus members, expected to balloon to 1,000s by the end of next week as  a "clearing house for critical news and views, primarily articles to inform and educate opposition to the construction of a Foxconn factory in Wisconsin. Pieces regarding the impact on the environment, accounts of the firm's operations elsewhere, and analyses of other effects and 'externalities' not offered up by backers."

Gov. Scott Walker has called a for a special legislative session to push the tax-water-sand give-away through in August before citizens begin focusing on the scam, (Fortune), intended in part to reelect Gov. Jobs Failure who counts on Wisconsinites too discouraged to effectively oppose his regime.

Notes John Nichols in The Capital Times:

Walker, who has claimed over the years that the state is too impoverished to adequately fund public education, public services and roads, has suddenly determined that Wisconsin has an extra $3 billion to hand off to a controversial multinational corporation that is famous for making big promises to nations and states and then failing to deliver.

How is this possible?

Easy. Walker is running for re-election and, as a career politician, he is perfectly happy to sacrifice fiscal responsibility on the altar of his own ambition.

Blowing up the Fox Con is the win working families are counting on before the state is mobilized against Walker in the 2018 gubernatorial campaign.

Bernie's Plan Will Work

Update: Poll: Trump beats Clinton head-to-head. "Bernie Sanders is closing the Democratic primary gap and is stronger than Hillary Clinton in the general election," David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, said in a statement.

Hillary Clinton knows the number of frack-you cards sent her way via the American people. They don't like her decades-long embrace of Mega-banks and Health Insurance corporations over people.

What Hillary Clinton will never get is all minorities and the white working class want is an equal shot, what they will get under Bernie Sanders. From Paul Krugman in a graph:

The clock is ticking on Clinton's latest big lie she's a friend of the working class, and she wants the game called now because of the very real possibility of her Big Con being blown.

President Obama: Wealth Inequality Is 'defining challenge of our time'

President Barack Obama delivers remarks on economic mobility during
an event hosted by the Center for American Progress at
Town Hall Education Arts Recreation Campus in Washington, D.C.,
Dec. 4, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

President Obama spoke against the widening gulf of wealth that has transformed the United States into a third-world nation in many parts of the country.

This development of vast wealth inequality is by design, with new mobilizations by a radicalized GOP, the Koch brothers and the politicized far-right that have seen the fruit of its long struggle seeking unresponsive rule of our democratic republic.

Can anyone even imagine a Republican speaking against wealth inequality or reckless Wall Street? How about quoting Abe Lincoln: "all that serves labor, serves the nation. All that harms labor is treason."

From Megan Slack at the White House

Today in Southeast Washington, DC, President Obama spoke about what he called the defining challenge of our time: reversing a decades-long slope toward growing inequality and a lack of upward mobility. It's a trend that has jeopardized middle-class America’s basic bargain, the idea that if you work hard, you have a chance to get ahead.

In the years after World War II, America built the largest middle class the world has ever known, President Obama said. 

[D]uring the post-World War II years, the economic ground felt stable and secure for most Americans, and the future looked brighter than the past.  And for some, that meant following in your old man’s footsteps at the local plant, and you knew that a blue-collar job would let you buy a home, and a car, maybe a vacation once in a while, health care, a reliable pension.  For others, it meant going to college -- in some cases, maybe the first in your family to go to college.  And it meant graduating without taking on loads of debt, and being able to count on advancement through a vibrant job market.

“Everyone’s wages and incomes were growing,” President Obama said “And because of upward mobility, the guy on the factory floor could picture his kid running the company some day.”
But by the late 1970s, this social compact began to unravel as jobs began to disappear and our economic foundation weakened. Inequality started to grow, and it got harder for children of lower-income families to move upward. Today, a family in the top 1 percent has a net worth 288 times higher than the typical family. And a child born in the top 20 percent has about a 2-in-3 chance of staying at or near the top, while a child born into the bottom 20 percent has a less than a 1-in-20 shot at making it to the top.
“The idea that so many children are born into poverty in the wealthiest nation on Earth is heartbreaking enough,” President Obama said.

But the idea that a child may never be able to escape that poverty because she lacks a decent education or health care, or a community that views her future as their own, that should offend all of us and it should compel us to action.  We are a better country than this.
So let me repeat:  The combined trends of increased inequality and decreasing mobility pose a fundamental threat to the American Dream, our way of life, and what we stand for around the globe.

“We can make a difference on this,” President Obama said. “In fact, that’s our generation’s task -- to rebuild America’s economic and civic foundation to continue the expansion of opportunity for this generation and the next generation.”
The President said that this is the reason he ran for office.

I take this personally. I’m only here because this country educated my grandfather on the GI Bill. When my father left and my mom hit hard times trying to raise my sister and me while she was going to school, this country helped make sure we didn’t go hungry.  When Michelle, the daughter of a shift worker at a water plant and a secretary, wanted to go to college, just like me, this country helped us afford it until we could pay it back.
So what drives me as a grandson, a son, a father -- as an American -- is to make sure that every striving, hardworking, optimistic kid in America has the same incredible chance that this country gave me. It has been the driving force between everything we’ve done these past five years.  And over the course of the next year, and for the rest of my presidency, that’s where you should expect my administration to focus all our efforts.

In his remarks, President Obama laid out a few key principles to help guide our efforts in expanding opportunity. Read them here, or watch the full speech below.

Zombie Economics

Econo-art from Cezmi Dispinar: