White House war on workers
May 1 was May Day. In the Celtic calendar it’s a cross-quarter day — halfway between the vernal equinox on March 21 and the summer solstice on June 21. From Greek and Roman times, it is a celebration of the return of Spring. It’s also International Workers Day.
May Day 2020 in the U.S. should be remembered for the White House war on workers.
In four months, more Americans have died from COVID-19 than were killed in the 19 years of the Vietnam War.
Hang on, you say. That workingclass people are dying at a higher rate than others doesn’t mean the White House is waging war against them. Well, I would answer, the boys in the trenches of Vietnam knew they were shooting at the North Vietnamese, but they must have noticed who was America’s cannon-fodder. It wasn’t Bill “Oxford U” Clinton or Donald “Bonespur” Trump.
But back to the White House. Trump’s various diversions — from blaming China to advocating chloroquine or sunlight or Mr. Clean — work well for him. He serves up enough red herring to feed the multitude. The media is obliged to cover presidential press conferences and to investigate all his claims. After all, they might be true. It keeps the media busy on wild goose chases and his opposition off balance.
As soon as they nail down one lie, Trump is on to the next.
His dog-whistle to “liberate” Democratic states was brilliant. It brought out his Tea Partying white power troops who brought their Confederate flags and swastikas, jammed traffic and, in Michigan, openly carried their guns into the State legislature.
Not only did that distract from the terrible job he’s doing, but it turned the story away from class, and toward race: working-class whites are ready to go back to work and to hell with COVID. Trump amplified that message by calling them what he called the Charlottetown yahoos: “These are very good people.”
That’ll help keep working whites from making common cause with working Black people, as Martin Luther King used to preach they should. Besides, Black people have their own problems — they are dying from COVID-19 at twice the rate of their proportion of the population.
But in reality, he’s throwing white workers under the bus along with Black workers and Latinos. Trump and the Republicans want to get the economy going in time for the election (even as cases and deaths are rising). His relief programs are rigged against workers but overwhelmingly benefit corporations.
Republican antipathy for programs that support workers goes even deeper. They have long wanted to strip states of their ability to provide a social safety net funded by taxes. COVID-19 has already stretched state resources to the breaking point. But most are bound by law to balance their budgets.
Mitch McConnell (the Senate Republican majority leader) is pushing ahead with the administration’s goal of changing the face of the federal judiciary from bipartisan to corporate conservative with a penchant for believing the president is beyond the reach of both Congress and the courts. He’s handing out judgeships like kewpie dolls at a carnival.
Hence the administration’s call for states to declare bankruptcy. It’ll take a new law, but once in bankruptcy court, McConnell’s new judges can rule on who gets paid first. You can bet your last dime that won’t be workers and their state-funded pensions.
And the call for an early return to work? Among other things, that would foreclose on applications for unemployment insurance. Over 30 million workers have applied for unemployment insurance and reopening the economy would force them back to work.
A quarter of U.S. workers do not have paid sick leave or much in the way of health insurance, but Trump also wants to cut the payroll tax that currently funds Social Security and Medicare. At the same time, he agrees with the corporate position that companies should not be held liable if their practices lead to workers catching COVID-19.
All this is not so much a grand conspiracy as it is Republicans acting quickly to turn what is surely a national calamity to political advantage by using the tools at hand — in this case executive power, access to the media, judicial appointments and a rabid fan base.
In the world the Republicans are constructing out of the COVID-19 disaster, the first will come first and the last, last — if they don’t die off in the Great Cull.
In four months, more Americans have died from COVID-19 than were killed in the 19 years of the Vietnam War