Week of 05/31/2021

Manchin is Simple: It’s About Power
– by David Matthews 2

In the classic Peanuts comic strip and animated cartoon, Lucy Van Pelt continues to offer the football for Charlie Brown to kick.  He knows that every time he tries to kick it, though, Lucy will pull it away at the last minute, causing him to go careening into the air and land hard on his back and head.  Every time.  Even during an actual football game when they’re on the same team and they need that field goal to win, Lucy just can’t help it.  She continually insists on holding the football for Charlie Brown, and then pull it away at the last minute so he ends up flat on his back in pain.  It doesn’t matter if the team loses to her.  It just matters that she pulls that football away before Chuck can kick it.

Holding that football and then snatching it from being kicked is power to her.  She knows that she could hold it there and let him kick it if she wanted to.  But she chooses not to.  Because it is power.  The power to cause pain and embarrassment and torment on someone she seemingly despises.

There’s been a lot of talk of late about U.S. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and his role as a spoiler to the Democrats in Washington.  After years of being in the minority in the Senate, the Dems finally were able to squeak out the thinnest of majority control in 2021, thanks in no small part to flipping the two Senate seats in Georgia from some really nasty and abhorrent Trump acolytes.  But, just when the Dems thought they were able to get things done in the Senate, up bubbles Senator Manchin like a fresh chunk of unflushed crap to serve as the new spoiler.

End the filibuster?  Not on Machin’s watch.  Even if it means not allowing a bipartisan commission on the January 6^th insurrection.  Raise the federal minimum wage?  Forget it.  Oh, you want those 50 votes to pass a bill through reconciliation?  You need Manchin.  And apparently he’s not happy about reconciliation either.

Now if you were to ask the backwater senator why he’s sabotaging needed reforms with his refusal to end the filibuster, he’d give some BS line about preserving the filibuster for when the Dems are back in the minority and that they’d need it to keep the Trump/Q Party in check.  Oh, and something about wanting to reach bipartisan deals like in the “good old days”.

Sorry Senator, but you’re living in a geriatric delusion if you truly believe that.  And this commentator suspects you don’t.

Keep the Trump/Q Party in check?  Were you sleeping through the last four years?  Pretty much everything that the Trump/Q Party’s narcissistic messiah wanted, the Senate made sure he got.  Nothing was filibustered then.  Rules were changed to prevent it, and then changed back again right before the power changed hands.

That’s what the so-called conservatives do.  #cheat2win.  That’s their modus operandi.  Change the rules to favor your faction and only your faction, and then change them again so nobody else can use them.

And bipartisan agreements?  Forget it.  That’s also pretty much a pipe dream with the current party of lies, treason, fiction, fascism, violence, and insurrection that still call themselves “Republicans”.  They ousted Senator Liz Cheney, daughter of a former Vice President, from her leadership position in the party because she refused to support the “Big Lie” of their narcissistic messiah.  Does that sound like they’re a group willing to cooperate?

Let’s get brutally honest here... there is an ugly truth behind Senator Manchin’s role as spoiler, and it has nothing to do with “bipartisan cooperation” or “preserving a traditional check of power” or any other line of pure bullshit that Manchin could cobble up.

It.

Is.

About.

Power!

Before January 2021, the man with the power for the U.S. Senate was then-Majority Leader Mitch “The Bitch” McConnell.  Nothing could get passed, enacted, or confirmed without his specific say-so.  He kept one-third of the judicial system vacant, including a seat on the United States Supreme Court, simply because he wanted to be the one to fill those seats with his own toadies.  And he did just that.

Then, after the Georgia runoff elections, the power shifted to Vice President Kamala Harris and current-Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.  But that power is limited.  McConnell still has veto power through the use and abuse of the filibuster, just like he did when he wasn’t in power briefly a decade ago.  And whatever that can’t be filibustered still needs 50 votes plus Harris’s.

That is where Manchin comes in, along with his little toady, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.  The Dems need all fifty votes.  Not forty-nine or forty-eight.  Fifty.  These two essentially hold their own party hostage for their own gains.

And, by the way, that’s also why they don’t want any more states in the union.  Make the District of Columbia or even Puerto Rico a state, and even throw Guam in for good measure, and these two lose their veto power.  It has nothing to do with “constitutional integrity” or any other boldface lie foisted by fraudulent so-called “constitutional scholars”.  It has to do with power.  Manchin’s and Sinema’s power.

To be fair, any of those fifty Dems can do the same thing as Manchin and Sinema if they wanted.  Any one of them can thumb their party and Schumer and the Vice President in their collective eyes and demand whatever they want for their vote.  I would suspect, though, that the rest of the Dems have pretty much nothing to gain in doing the backdoor bidding of the party of treason and violence and fascism and insurrection.  Manchin and Sinema can claim they’re holding off the fascist traitors from voting them out, but that carries little weight outside of their own states.

The filibuster was never a part of the U.S. Constitution.  It was a rule enacted in the Senate by the Senate for certain factions to hold power over the rest.  Today it is being used specifically by one party – a party of fascist treasonous insurrectionists – for the sole purpose of getting their way.  And for Manchin and Sinema to go along with that party for the sake of their own power makes them just as guilty.

Lucy Van Pelt is an evil, amoral sadistic child in the world of Peanuts who torments other kids like Charlie Brown simply because of the power she wields.  I had long hoped that she would face some sort of consequence.  Sadly, that never happened because her creator died twenty years ago.  Her two real-world counterparts in the U.S. Senate need to have their footballs ripped out of their hands, or else be kicked in lieu of the ball.

 

Week of 05/24/2021

Moses and the Pandemic
– by David Matthews 2

Even though I consider myself a free-thinker, that doesn’t mean I’m an atheist.  I’ve been brought up in a Roman Catholic environment, even getting my degree from a Catholic college run by monks.  So, yeah, I’ve been schooled in the Bible.

And with all the BS surrounding the global pandemic and all the people refusing to take precautions last year and refusing to take the vaccine this year, I had a certain story from the Old Testament that popped into my head that would best suit the red-hat anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers.

This goes back to the Book of Exodus, when the followers of God (the Hebrews) were enslaved by the Egyptians and had not yet had a home all their own. 

Now the Egyptians were not godless.  They had their own pantheon of deities they worshiped and gave prayers and sacrifices to, and they believed that their gods and the faith in their gods made them superior over others.  They believed that their Pharaoh was chosen by the gods to rule all they survey, not unlike a certain segment of Americans today.

So one day a guy named Moses, Pharaoh’s adopted brother previously exiled, strolled into Egypt and told Pharaoh to “let my people go”.  “His people” being the Hebrews that were enslaved by the Egyptians, and Moses supposedly wasn’t speaking on his own behalf, but on behalf of his singular God.  Pharaoh, of course, was unimpressed and unmoved.  So Moses tells Pharaoh his God will inflict ten plagues on the land, each getting worse and worse.

And there were a series of plagues, each one worse than the other as the days went by.  The waters turned to blood, the infestations of frogs and locusts, the boils, the blotting out of the sun and the lightning and rain and hail that burned.  And while Pharaoh’s sorcerers and advisors could explain all of those, they would not be able to explain the last and most deadly plague.

The tenth plague is, of course, the worst.  It is the sudden death of all first-born sons in Egypt.  Noble or slave, human or beast, the first-born sons will die all in one night.

Now religious accounts vary on whether or not God would carry out this tenth plague himself or an angel of death would descend down and snuff out those lives.  But that’s neither here nor there when it comes to the story.  The first-born sons, man and beast, will still all die overnight.

Unless… someone spread lamb’s blood over their doorway.  Then the plague will pass over that house and everyone inside will live to see the morning.

Of course, the Egyptians were in denial of this kind of plague.  What sort of plague affects only a portion of the population and does so lethally?  First-born sons may be significant to society, but they’re still just a fraction of the population.  What about first-born girls?  What about the rest of the children?  Why not second-born sons?  Plus, their gods were obviously stronger than any plague.  Just ask them; they’d say so!  Anything some no-name God could whip up could be countered by their own pantheon of gods.

And the lamb’s blood?  Seriously?  How could something so flimsy as lamb’s blood hold off a supposed plague?  It just seemed like too much “fake prophecy” to them.

Then it happened.  The tenth plague descended on Egypt, killing every first-born son, man and beast, noble or slave, Egyptian or otherwise, all on that night, except for those whose home entrances were marked with lamb’s blood.  No Egyptian deity prevented it.  No Egyptian deity saved any first-born son slain by the plague, including the Pharaoh’s own son.  Egypt’s gods were not stronger.  Egypt’s beliefs were impotent in the face of this lethal plague.

Comparisons can be made about the tenth plague of Egypt and our current coronavirus global pandemic.  While it doesn’t specifically target first-borns, it does kill just a portion of the populace.  Sure, it incapacitates a lot more; but, in terms of deaths, it’s just a fraction.  It doesn’t happen overnight, though.  It takes a few days for this plague to work its course.

We have denials from those who believe that “their god” is stronger than the virus, just like the collective denial of the Egyptians who believed that their gods were stronger than the tenth plague.  There is a sick sense of irony to see news reports of ministers and another pious people who proclaimed “our god is stronger than the virus” suddenly be stricken by it.  It’s almost as if a certain deity was telling them something.

And then there is our version of lamb’s blood in the form of masks and social distancing, and now with vaccines.  While not as guaranteed as lamb’s blood against the tenth plague, the masks and social distancing and now the vaccines have kept this plague from affecting as many people as it could have.  Indeed, it could be said that once fully vaccinated, our plague simply “passes over” us.  Too bad the same can’t be said for those who think it’s just “fake news”.

Let’s get brutally honest here… those who live in ignorance and pious arrogance regarding our current plague and how to deal with it should learn the lessons from biblical Egypt.  Yes, the original tenth plague only lasted one night, as opposed to the years our current plagues last.  In a way, the Egyptians of the biblical story were lucky.  They didn’t have to deal with drawn-out misery and death.  Nevertheless, their pious self-righteous arrogance and ignorance allowed that plague to hit them.  Their beliefs did not stop the plague any more than they could stop the other nine.  Nor should our modern-day believers think their beliefs could stop this plague on humanity.

Those who still think that their belief is greater than any virus denies the obvious truth… that this plague, like others before it, is still made of the world, and therefore comes from God.  It doesn’t matter if it originated in a cave, in an illegal market, or in a lab, it’s still comes from this world.  To claim that your belief is superior over that and therefore you would be immune to it is just superciliousness.

The original story of Exodus was a test of whose beliefs were superior.  But the remedy to our current plague is not limited to followers of one belief.  The virus is of this world, and so are the vaccines.

It’s simple… take the vaccine, and, like the lamb’s blood, the plague will pass over you.  And then you can be free to be ignorant about something else.

Week of 05/17/2021

The Mystery of Vacation
– by David Matthews 2

I don’t know about anyone else, but the work I do to pay my bills is hell.  I’ve been overworked, overly stressed, underpaid, and I’ve been feeling quite underappreciated.  And I suspect I’m far from alone in that.

But for me it’s different.  In addition to doing the things that pay my bills and help put food on the table, and, of course, this weekly column, I also have responsibilities as a caregiver.  So even when I’m home, I’m still working.  It’s just that those responsibilities are not the paying kind... just like this column.  Plus, my daily commute is fraught with all sorts of stress and dangers because I’m having to deal with high-speed traffic full of self-entitled arrogant drivers.  I do not exaggerate when I say that my commute has at least one traffic accident every day. 

And all of that does wreak havoc with me physically.  I can’t remember the last time I had more than 2 hours of sleep at night.  I have a series of “naps” that make every night feel like an eternity.  The hazardous commute triggers my PTSD, which was created by all the bad drivers out there.  My muscles twitch and spasm at various times.  These are not good things.

So, yeah, everyone keeps telling me that I really need a vacation.  And not just the occasional holiday and one or two days off from the bill-paying work, because that really doesn’t stop the other responsibilities.  Any extra day or two off simply means I continue the caregiving responsibilities, not to mention a plethora of other things that need to be done that usually aren’t because I’m at the bill-paying job.

Getting that vacation can be a feat in and of itself for yours truly.  It’s not that I can’t take a vacation, but that it has to be coordinated with that bill-paying work so that others can cover the work that I get paid to do.  But they can’t do that if they’re also having to cover the work of others who also take that time off… and they always seem to claim that vacation time before I can.

But when it does happen… when I am able to take a vacation… then something strange happens.  And it doesn’t matter if it is an actual vacation where I am away from the home, or a staycation where I don’t go anywhere.  It happens either way.

Let’s start when the vacation begins…

End-of-work Friday – This is when my vacation truly begins.  There is joy in knowing that I have a whole week plus two weekends to myself.  Even if the commute home is full of accidents and traffic jams – and for some reason that always seems to happen every time I go on vacation – I am not stressed.  I know I have a whole week plus two weekends to relax and enjoy things.  I’m calm and patient and I slowly make my way home to enjoy my time off.

First Weekend – The weekend usually doesn’t change unless I go on an actual away-from-home vacation.  I just feel better because I know that I am on vacation.

Monday – I get up in a panic, kicking myself because somehow the alarm clock doesn’t wake me like it’s supposed to, and I start to rush through a shower and getting ready for work.  But then I stop.  I stop because I realize that the alarm clock didn’t wake me up because I didn’t set it.  I’m on vacation!  I try to go back to sleep for a little while longer and maybe try to catch up on that lost sleep, but it doesn’t always happen that way.  Basically I spend those hours with my coffee and some breakfast, watching the morning news for the latest traffic jams and if my commute would have been ruined.  I also check my phone often because, even though I know other people can do my work in my absence, I still feel like there’s something that’s going to ruin my time off, even though it doesn’t happen.

I start to feel good on that Monday.  I’m relaxed.  I don’t have to go to work.  My vacation is just starting.  I can do all the things that I wanted to do, go to all the places I wanted to go, work on whatever hobby that is waiting for me, and know that I have the whole week ahead of me.  I’ll even stay up a little later than usual because I know that I don’t have to get up in the morning.

Tuesday – Tuesday is really the first day that the vacation kicks in for me.  I sleep in later.  I may even get more than two hours of sleep at a time.  The breakfast is good.  I’m not checking my phone to see if work needs me for something.  I’m not checking the morning news and traffic reports.  I’ll check the weather if I need to go anywhere, but otherwise I enjoy the day because it’s still the first half of my vacation and…

Friday – Wait.  What happened to Wednesday and Thursday?  You’re not the only one wondering about that.  And, for that matter, what about the rest of Tuesday?

I know there’s stuff that I did on those days, but, no matter if it’s a staycation or an away-from-home actual vacation, that time was just a blur.  If I think about it, I can recall the stuff I did, but there is no sense of time spent like on Monday.  That leaves me with Friday and the realization that my vacation will soon come to an end sooner than I thought.

Second Weekend – Just like the first, there are still things that need to be done, but not with the sense of joy and relaxation.  My week-long vacation is ending, and now I have stuff to do in order to get ready to go back to work the following Monday and figure out what sort of stuff happened in my absence.

That’s what happens to me when I take a vacation.

Something else I am starting to notice in the past few years is that, no matter how long I take off, be it for a couple of days or a whole week, when I do get back to that bill-paying job, I quickly lose whatever feeling of calm and relaxation I may have had picked up from my time off.  The stress and aggravation not only come back, but it does so with a vengeance.  It’s almost as if the world is making me suffer for the “luxury” of taking that time off.

Now, let’s get brutally honest here… I know your experiences most likely vary from my own when it comes to that needed time off, but I’m sure many of you would agree that we have a serious problem when people are overworked and overstressed as part of their job requirement.  Working two or three jobs used to be an oddity.  Today, many American families need to do that just to keep the bills paid and food on the table and a roof over their heads. 

And it’s not just an American problem.  Japanese workers will literally work themselves to death or even suicide and it’s considered just the price of doing business.

The problem is work.  While we may know the value of it, the ones that own and run the workplace clearly don’t. 

You look at workers at WalMart who are told how to sign up for food stamps so they can supplement their meager wages.  You look at the people at Amazon who reportedly get paid more than most other places but still work in hard conditions to the point to where they recently considered joining a union.  You look at that and you compare that to someone like Jeff Bezos, who just bought a yacht so big it comes with its own smaller yacht.  We’re working harder and harder, the cost of living goes up faster than whatever wages we get, and when we do get time off, we’re made to feel like we don’t deserve it.  And the people up on top?  They seem to enjoy the good things for us.

That’s something for us all to think about… when we have the time to.  Maybe on your next vacation you can ponder it.  If you’re able to have one.

Week of 05/10/2021

 The Party of Fiction and the Lies of Unemployment

– by David Matthews 2

Those of us who actually work for a living know the value of having a steady job with a steady paycheck and having to put in long hours.  The work may be grueling, and sometimes it pushes you to the breaking point, but you know that at the end of the day you’ll get paid for that work.

But we also know how hard it can be when that work is no longer there.  When you have to spend time to look for work instead of actually working, and you see every opportunity that you may think you’re qualified for go to someone else… or sometimes to nobody at all.

Going from employment to unemployment is traumatic.  You’re not just getting a paycheck when you work.  You also invest a good portion of your time, your energy, your identity, and even your life, into that job.  You bring your meals to work, you engage in conversations with your co-workers, you risk your life in daily commutes, and you even balance your family obligations with that work.  Even if it’s not the job that you want or the job that best uses your talents, you still identify yourself with that job.  It literally is a part of your life.

And then… it’s gone.  That’s not you anymore.  Whether you are laid off or you are fired, that part of your life ends. 

It ends, but all the other obligations that you have don’t end.  You still have bills to pay.  You still need to put food on the table.  You still have medical costs, car maintenance, mortgages, credit card debt, and loans to pay off, and none of the entities behind those things will care that you’re suddenly out of work.  They still want their money.

Think you might need more education?  That’s not free.  That costs money that you don’t have anymore.  That was another fun little con game from the Great Recession.  People were digging themselves further and further into debt trying to get a degree that still didn’t give them that promised job.  And, from personal experience, I came across plenty of folks with masters and doctorates that still ended up out of work and fighting for jobs alongside those with a GED.

If you’re lucky, you might find new work elsewhere relatively quick.  But if you’re in the middle of an economic slump, a mini-recession, a Great Recession, a depression, or even a full-blown economic collapse, you’re having to compete with a lot of other people for that same opening, and some of them will be more qualified than you will ever be, and some will be younger and fresh from college and willing to work harder and cheaper.  And the longer that you’re out of work, the harder it will be to get work, because a certain “employment” business decreed during the Great Recession that if you’re not employed again in six weeks, you are “unemployable”.  That means you may be perfect for the job but the potential employer will still reject you for no other reason than because you were out of work for longer than six weeks.

So if you’re out of work after a while, you start sacrificing things like your retirement plans, your savings, your thoughts on vacations or getting a new car or a new anything.  You start tapping into whatever stock holding you may have had.  You look into tapping into your 401K.  You empty out your savings account.  You start hocking whatever precious metals you may have like an old family ring or jewelry or a coin collection, and you also borrow against your credit.  Anything to keep the bills paid and the food coming and a roof over your head until you can get that new job.

My father knew about this in the recession of the 70’s and the mini-recession of the late 80’s.  I knew about it during the mini-recession of the late 80’s and the Great Recession of the late 2000’s.  We both knew the value of work and also the hardships of being unemployed and struggling to get work.

That said, I’ve also heard all of the lies and delusional fantasies being whipped by a certain political faction and a certain political party when it comes to the subject of work and unemployment.  Lies and delusional fantasies that show their malicious nature when it comes to the American people, both in the past and the present.

We are still in the first half of 2021, as of this article’s posting, and we are a little over a year into a once-in-a-century global pandemic that has killed millions, is still killing millions, devastated businesses worldwide, and has left millions more out of work.  It is still running roughshod in places like India, where medical services are beyond overwhelmed and a steady supply of oxygen is now worth more than gold. 

Yes, there are vaccines.  They’re being distributed.  And, for some places in the United States, the rate of infection and the number of deaths are slowing or even stopping.  These are all good news. 

But that doesn’t mean that the pandemic is over with.  There are countless millions that have not gotten the vaccine and have not worn masks or practice social distancing – even if it is physically possible.  The virus is still spreading, and there are several variants of that virus now because of those millions that refuse to wear masks and social distance from others.  It’s like thinking you can go back to an area that was still in the middle of a wildfire simply because some parts of that wildfire are no longer spreading.

On top of that, we have idiot governors making the decision to “open up” their states and businesses and expecting everything to go back to business as usual immediately.  These are from the same political faction and the same party of fiction that have spent the past year questioning the science, challenging the emergency measures to keep businesses closed and measures to keep people home to minimize exposure to the virus.  Even worse, their followers are the ones that hate masks, refuse to social distance, refuse to admit the danger even exists, and are refusing to get vaccinated because of their delusions propped up by some Facebook comment.

So now we have this delusion that somehow the economy is going to snap back because people are getting vaccinated.  That means more business, that means more people back at work, that means the service industry roaring back with a vengeance.  Supposedly. 

Except that businesses are whining about a supposed “lack” of people willing to work at the jobs they’re offering.  The latest jobs report didn’t help matters either.  And now their friends in the party of fiction and delusional fantasy are quick to pin the blame on those who are unemployed because they’re getting that needed government assistance that keeps food on the table and bills paid and a home over their heads.

“They’re getting paid more to stay at home than working those jobs,” is what the script from the party of fiction says.

Folks, I’ve heard this same pack of lies from this same group during the Great Recession, when millions of people who were unemployed for longer than the six-week period and became “unemployable”, and the so-called “financial experts” were praising a supposed “jobless recovery”.  The same whine then of “people getting money to do nothing” is being regurgitated today.

Yes, the “unemployment numbers” went down back then, but that wasn’t because of people getting work, and it sure as hell wasn’t because any of them, “gave up”.  It was because people lost unemployment assistance.  The “unemployment rate” does not measure actual unemployment.  It only counts those that actually receive financial assistance from unemployment insurance, and it assumes that you are “employed” if you’re not receiving it.

Receiving unemployment assistance – something that I strongly suspect nobody in the party of fiction knows a damn thing about – is not “free money”.  Depending on the state, you have to check in on a regular basis to keep the benefits going.  You may even need to show how much time you spent on any given week looking for work, and the places you applied for, and the outcome of each place you applied.  You literally have to work on getting work in order to receive assistance because you are not working.  They are sure as hell not staying home and “doing nothing”!

Understand as well that the party of fiction could very well end that needed assistance on a whim, just like they did during the Great Recession.  Two state governors entrenched in the party of fiction have recently announced that they are doing just that for their own citizens.  On a federal level, they can shut down the government or refuse to raise the debt ceiling, shutting off the money needed for those programs, and they have a long and sorted history of doing just that.  For families struggling to keep things going while looking for work, that partisan game can hurt them just as much as the pandemic did a year ago. 

Oh, and the hold on student loans and evictions and foreclosures?  Those will end, if they haven’t already.  And it will seriously hurt people when those pauses do end.  That’s not hypothetical.

Something else to think about… with all of the businesses supposedly reopening, and the demand for students to go back to school, has anyone heard a peep about resuming daycare facilities?  After-school services?

Think of all of the parents that were able to work before the pandemic because they knew their kids would be looked after.  Do you think any of them would be willing to work again as long as their kids are staying at home doing virtual education and there are no care services for the kids to be taken to afterward?

Listen, folks, I was a latchkey child before the term even was coined.  I know all about having to fend for yourself because your parents are off working.  But even I know that today’s parenting does not allow parents to leave their little kids alone the whole day unsupervised.  You want them to work?  You better get daycare restored first.

And now let’s talk about those jobs that are going unfilled.

How many of those openings pay minimum wage?  If you were working $17-an-hour before the pandemic and you got laid off, would you really be wanting to work eight-plus-hours a day at fast food franchise for less than half that?  Lenders don’t care if your pay is suddenly halved.  They want their money.  The grocery store doesn’t care if suddenly you’re not making the money you’re used to.  If you can’t pay for the food, then you don’t get to take it home for your family.  No wonder food pantries are still being depleted!

Something else to consider… For 22 states, unemployment assistance without the original temporary $600 boost, never mind the current $300 boost, was still under the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.  So you want to tell us again how people are supposedly “making more staying home”?  Because that seems to be yet another piece of fiction from the party of fiction.

Let’s get brutally honest here… if the party of fiction and the political faction that thrive in nothing but lies and deceit really want people working again, then they need to tell their cult followers that they have to end their bullshit denial and mask up and take the vaccine.  Let’s end this pandemic with a roar instead of a prolonged whimper.  And they also need to tell their business buddies that they need to raise wages.  And I mean for everyone, new workers and old. 

Complaining that getting unemployment is more than what a minimum-wage job offers is not a condemnation on the assistance.  That’s a shame of the business for not paying enough.  And that’s something that has been going on for quite some time.

And don’t give us the crap about “whatever the marketplace will bear”, because that is another lie.  When a company is obsessed with profits and they purposefully keep wages low to maximize their profit margins, that’s not the “marketplace”.  That’s just profiteering.

Why don’t you look up the name Dan Price and his company Gravity Payments?  A few years back, he made the decision to pay everyone in his company the same $70,000 a year wage as he gave himself.  He rejected the whole “marketplace” lie and gave everyone in his business the same living wage as himself.  All the people in the party of fiction and the talk radio idiots were screaming “socialism” and demanded he stop doing that.  Guess what happened?  His payroll doubled and his revenues tripled.  His employees can afford to do more than just make ends meet.  They can buy that new car, or get that new house, or save for their retirement, or go on that vacation, and, at least until the pandemic, it didn’t hurt their business.

“Marketplace” my ass.

It’s not going to be easy getting out of this pandemic.  You can’t expect people to suddenly jump into work at a fraction of what they used to get and do to so in an environment where they still run the risk of infection, hospitalization, and even death.  To expect them to do otherwise is not only malicious, but negligently homicidal.  And for a political party of lies and deceit and fiction to try to force people to do so in the name of business is nothing short of aiding and abetting genocide.