RS Seminar- Economic Crisis

Friday, December 11, 2020

Democratic Socialists Win Election Campaigns

https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/the-number-of-democratic-socialists-in-the-house-will-soon-double-but-the-movement-scored-its-biggest-victories-down-ballot

Peter Dreier

Thursday, December 3, 2020

Trump's Stop the Steal Campaign

Trump's Stop the Steal campaign has a dangerous past- Nazi Germany

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/30/opinion/trump-conspiracy-germany-1918.html

...

The startling aspect about the Dolchstosslegende is this: It did not grow weaker after 1918 but stronger. In the face of humiliation and unable or unwilling to cope with the truth, many Germans embarked on a disastrous self-delusion: The nation had been betrayed, but its honor and greatness could never be lost. And those without a sense of national duty and righteousness — the left and even the elected government of the new republic — could never be legitimate custodians of the country.

In this way, the myth was not just the sharp wedge that drove the Weimar Republic apart. It was also at the heart of Nazi propaganda, and instrumental in justifying violence against opponents. The key to Hitler’s success was that, by 1933, a considerable part of the German electorate had put the ideas embodied in the myth — honor, greatness, national pride — above democracy.

Wednesday, December 2, 2020

California lags behind in available hospital beds

By Thomas Fuller and Manny Fernandez

· Dec. 1, 2020NYT>

SAN FRANCISCO — For all its size and economic might, California has long had few hospital beds relative to its population, a shortfall that state officials now say may prove catastrophic.

California is experiencing its largest surge in coronavirus cases with an average of nearly 15,000 new cases a day, an increase of 50 percent from the previous record over the summer.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/01/us/california-hospital-bed-shortage.html

Tuesday, November 24, 2020

Ever-Growing Millions of Americans Face Eviction and Hunger. Will Congress Act?

Sasha Abramsky
November 21, 2020
Truthout

As a result of Congressional inaction, in the last weeks of 2020 and with the pandemic raging worse than ever, millions of Americans are staring into an economic abyss.

People stand in line at a food distribution event ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday on November 20, 2020, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City., ANGELA WEISS / AFP via Getty Images

Back in May, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed the HEROES Act. It was aimed at delivering trillions of dollars of additional federal funds to support health care systems, unemployment benefits, housing assistance, nutritional programs, as well as money to keep cities and states, public transit systems, schools, and other vital infrastructure functioning. Since then, the House has passed several updated versions of the Act.

And yet, with Trump and the Senate GOP hostile to federal programs that they misleadingly claim will benefit only “blue states and cities,” the HEROES Act has languished. Through the late spring and summer, the GOP apparently hoped the pandemic would simply vanish, and the tens of millions of unemployed people would all be able to return to work. Opposing expanded unemployment systems, senators such as Lindsey Graham argued that support-oriented measures would sabotage the labor market by providing people with disincentives to re-enter the workforce. Once it became clear that the pandemic wouldn’t simply vanish of its own accord, the GOP pivoted, and, embracing much smaller financial stimulus packages, reframed its opposition to the HEROES Act as fiscal responsibility in the face of a Democratic legislative effort to use the pandemic as an excuse to fund all of the party’s favorite programs. Thus, legislative stalemate.