A excellent piece by David Sirota shared by Bill Moyers. —
Molly
David Sirota has a well-earned reputation as a truth-teller — an heir to I.F. Stone. We are featuring hisnewsletterhere for the first time. He’s taken a deep look into this week’s news has come up with a theme. The word of the week is looting.
In this Orwellian era, working-class people pilfering convenience store goods is called “looting,” while rich people stealing hundreds of billions of dollars is deemed good “public policy”—David Sirota
Headlinesthis morningare all aboutlooting — specifically, looting in Minneapolis, after the police killing of an unarmed African American man was caught on video. In the modern vernacular, that word “looting” is loaded — it comes with all sorts of race and class connotations. And we have to understand that terms like “looting” are an example of the way our media often imperceptibly trains us to think about economics, crime and punishment in specific and skewed ways.
Working-class people pilfering convenience-store goods is deemed “looting.” By contrast, rich folk and corporations stealing billions of dollars during their class war is considered good and necessary “public policy” — aided and abetted by arsonist politicians in Washington lighting the crime scene on fire to try to cover everything up.
To really understand the deep programming at work here, consider how the word “looting” is almost never used to describe the plundering that has become the routine policy of our government at a grand scale that is far larger than a vandalized Target store.
Indeed, if looting is defined in the dictionary as “to rob especially on a large scale” using corruption, then these are 10 examples of looting that we rarely ever call “looting”:
1. The Fed Bailed Out the Investor Class: “Thanks to this massive government subsidy, large companies like Boeing and Carnival Cruises were able to avoid taking money directly — and sidestep requirements to keep employees on.”
3. Stealth Bailout’ Shovels Millions of Dollars to Oil Companies: “A provision of the $2.2 trillion stimulus law gives (companies) more latitude to deduct recent losses… The change wasn’t aimed only at the oil industry. However, its structure uniquely benefits energy companies that were raking in record profits.”
4. The Tax-Break Bonanza Inside the Economic Rescue Package: “As part of the economic rescue package that became law last month, the federal government is giving away $174 billion in temporary tax breaks overwhelmingly to rich individuals and large companies.”
7. Large, Troubled Companies Got Bailout Money in Small-Business Loan Program: “The so-called Paycheck Protection Program was supposed to help prevent small companies from capsizing as the economy sinks into what looks like a severe recession…But dozens of large but lower-profile companies with financial or legal problems have also received large payouts under the program.”
8. Public Companies Received $1 Billion Meant For Small Businesses: “Recipients include 43 companies with more than 500 workers, the maximum typically allowed by the program. Several other recipients were prosperous enough to pay executives $2 million or more.”
10. The K Street Bailout: “Lobbyists already got bailed out, in effect, when corporations got bailed out. This is kind of the ultimate in double dipping; corporations are nursed back to health by the sheer force of Federal Reserve commitments, this allows them to keep their lobbying expenses up, and then lobbyists lobby for free money for themselves.”
All of this looting is having a real-world effect: As half a billion people across the globe could be thrown into poverty and as 43 million Americans are projected to lose their health care coverage, CNBC reports that “America’s billionaires saw their fortunes soar by $434 billion during the U.S. lockdown between mid-March and mid-May.”
Apparently, though, all of that pillaging is not enough. The looting is now getting even more brazen: President Trump is floating a new capital gains tax cut for the investor class, while the New York Times notes that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s new proposal “to retroactively lift a limit on state and local tax deductions would largely funnel money to relatively high earners.”
We don’t call this “looting” because it is being done quietly in nice marbled office buildings in Washington and New York.
We don’t call this “looting” because the looters wear designer suits and are very polite as they eagerly steal everything not nailed down to the floor.
We don’t call this “looting” but we should — because it is tearing apart our nation’s social fabric, laying waste to our economy and throwing our entire society into chaos.
There is a great deal of dangerous misinformation and propaganda being circulated in our nation and beyond related to the coronavirus and the responses of our government and those of other countries. This post and others are done with the intention to spread facts and truth, which are always the antidotes to lies.
Please note that New Zealand had the greatest immediate, proactive, and comprehensive plan to shut down the spread of the virus, and the United States government has had the least responsive reaction to the pandemic —
and please note the consequences, positive and catastrophic, related to these very different actions and lack of actions taken by those in power and the citizenry of these countries.
There are many deeply important lessens here for us all to learn, and especially in the face of our increased risk of more pandemics related to our warming planet. The coronavirus crisis and the climate crisis both offer us urgent facts and vital changes which need to guide the intentions, values, and actions of us all. — Molly
New Zealand is now down to only one active COVID-19 case, reaching a new level of success in its fight against the coronavirus. The last time a new case was reported in the country was more than a week ago; no one is currently hospitalized with the disease caused by the coronavirus.
"For the seventh day in a row, there are no new cases of COVID-19 to report in New Zealand," theMinistry of Healthsaid on Friday.
The news came on the same day that the country further eased its restrictions on the public. It will now permit gatherings of up to 100 people — clearing the way for weddings, parties, funerals and other large events. Restaurants can also host up to 100 people, as long as safety protocols are followed.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has repeatedly urged caution, even as she has celebrated a string of successes in combating COVID-19.
When Ardern announced last month that the country had eliminated community transmission,she said, "We have won that battle," and added, "But we must remain vigilant if we are to keep it that way."
— United States Confirmed 1.77M Recovered 381K Deaths 104K
Please note that New Zealand has the lowest number of cases, and the highest reported number of COVID-19 cases and deaths remains in the United States.
As of May 29, 2020, these are the known cumulative number of coronavirus cases in Nordic countries:
— Sweden 36,476
— Denmark 11,593
— Norway 8,411
— Finland 6,776
— Iceland1,805
— Faroe Islands 187
— Greenland 13 The highest number of confirmed coronavirus (COVID-19) cases in the Nordic countries as of May 29, 2020 was in Sweden, where the number amounted to 36,476. Denmark followed with 11,593 cases, and Norway with 8,411 cases.
New Zealand implemented one of the earliest lockdowns and has largely succeeded in eliminating the coronavirus under the leadership of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Some of the country's success has been attributed to her leadership, trust in science, and clear communication during the crisis. We get an update from Michael Baker, professor of public health at the University of Otago in Wellington, New Zealand. He is an epidemiologist and a member of the New Zealand Ministry of Health's Technical Advisory Group. Baker has been advising the government on its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Their slogan is "Stay home, stay safe, and be kind."
MICHAELBAKER:Yes. Well, one of the — one of my big lessons from all of this is that we have to be looking to the future at the kind of threats that you could describe as existential threats for humanity. And with a pandemic, we have, I think, failed quite badly at a global level to anticipate something that was very well described, with very good science, that was only a short distance ahead of us. It was almost in front of us. It was just a few weeks to a month or two away. And the world has really failed, I think, to assess that risk, listen to science and act in a coordinated way. And that’s why I feel very concerned, and I really hope that we’ll learn from this, this pandemic. It’s obviously not over yet. But it will be a temporary shock. It will be a horrible shock, and it’s going to potentially cause many millions of deaths across the planet. But after, you know, maybe two or three years, it will hopefully be under control in various ways.
But what it — the big lesson for me is that the far more severe threats on the horizon are about climate change and loss of biodiversity. And while those threats are going to increase and intensify over the next few years to the next few decades, they will be far more severe for humanity than the pandemic. And that’s why I really hope that we will take the lesson from this event and apply it to these other threats. So, that means listening to scientists, strengthening our global health agencies, like World Health Organization and U.N., and really taking a coordinated global response to these events. And so that’s my huge hope from this very destructive pandemic that we’re in at the moment.
