4/16/20: The staggering numbers pile higher with each passing hour. Another 5.2 million Americans filed for unemployment in the most recent reporting period. That brings the four-week total to 22 million.
As a former history teacher, I can say, very soberly, that
these are Great Depression-type numbers.
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Desperate family, headed West in search of work, c. 1933. |
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Each dot represents a thousand new unemployment claims for the week. Top row: shaded dots equal the entire work force in Minnesota. Second row, shaded: equivalent of all of Arkansas and Iowa work force. Third row: Wisconsin. Bottom row: District of Columbia and New Mexico. |
As of noon Friday, we know that 680,541 Americans have been infected with the COVID-19 virus.
The death toll stands at 35,353.
Another 13,369 Americans are hospitalized in serious or
critical condition.
ANOTHER interesting number for a Friday morning: It is estimated that 280,000 undocumented workers are manning the healthcare front lines, many in low-paid jobs in nursing homes.
That figure includes an estimated 62,500 Deferred Action Childhood Arrival or DACA-eligible individuals. Anel Medina, a 28-year-old oncology nurse for Penn Medicine in Philadelphia is one. At least 200, including Dr. Jirayut Latthivongskorn, who came to this country from Thailand when he was nine, were in medical school in 2019, or had already graduated.
(See, Trump fans: Not all undocumented workers came here to
rape or kill you or join MS-13, and cut off your heads.)
*
ON A LESS SOBERING NOTE, when your bailout check arrives in the mail, you will be thrilled to see Trump’s giant signature jumping out at you from the memo line. This will be the first time a Chief Executive’s name has ever appeared on a check issued by the U.S. Treasury.
Because: Narcissism.
If Trump could have figured a way to plaster a picture of his
fat mug on the check, he would have done that, too.
____________________
If you are a taxpayer, you are actually mailing a check to
yourself.
____________________
We should also note that if you are a taxpayer, you are actually mailing a check to yourself. Your name should appear twice.
To you, to be cashed.
From you.
Here’s how this really
works. Your present tax-paying self decides to kite a check. You don’t have
money in your account. But you and your taxpaying peers will hopefully spend
the money you send yourselves and kickstart a moribund economy. Your future
taxpaying selves will then repay the money through higher taxes, or by living
with drastically reduced government services, such as national defense, and
maybe no Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security.
Have we mentioned the projected budget deficit for Fiscal Year 2020? Yes, we have. But let’s point this out again. The deficit was going to be $1.2 trillion, even before COVID-19 hit.
Now, it’s going to be at least $3.8 trillion.
Remember the “good old days?” Like 2015 or 2018. It seems like
only yesterday that Donald J. said we’d get tired of winning if we elected him – and
he’d eliminate the federal deficit if we gave him two terms – and
Mexico would pay for the wall – and his
tax cuts would pay for themselves – and the
Dow Jones would soar – and repealing and
replacing Obamacare would be “so easy” – and
North Korea would no longer be a nuclear threat – and he’d
show us his taxes.
Well, don’t you have to wonder, even if you like Trump? Will he show his taxes this time around?
Wouldn’t it be nice to know what he paid in 2017, 2018 and 2019? Or does he pay no taxes at all? Does Trump park his dough in offshore tax havens, like so many of the Top 1%? Does he use all kinds of loopholes and accounting gimmicks to avoid paying his share? Are his tax lawyers slick? As a nation we’re about to tumble into the deepest financial hole we’ve tripped into since 1929.
Wouldn’t the MAGA crowd like to find out? Does their Cheeto-colored hero help pay for his own big, beautiful wall?
Does he send a check to I.R.S. every April 15? Or does he
just slap his signature on the checks going out this week?
*
“Nothing should be left unsaid.”
NOW, CONSIDER how fast this coronavirus can spread. Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that 655 members of crew of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt had tested positive for COVID. Chief Petty Officer Charles Robert Thacker Jr., 41, was first to die. Six sailors were hospitalized, including one in intensive care.
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Chief Petty Officer Thacker, 41. |
We learned Wednesday that more than 500 workers at a pork packing plant in Sioux Falls, S.D. had been infected. Now the parent company has closed two additional plants, one in Missouri, where six workers are known to be sick, another in Missouri where two workers have fallen ill.
In similar fashion the virus has spread in disastrous fashion at the Andover Subacute and Rehabilitation Center near Sparta, New Jersey. After receiving an anonymous tip, police visited the center and found 17 bodies stuffed in a morgue built for four. Andover Subacute, with 700 beds, has had at least 26 deaths from COVID-19. An additional 103 residents are infected.
On Thursday, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan had a bit of good news. Almost 700 police officers were able to return to work “after undergoing rapid coronavirus testing.” Abbott Labs, he explained, had provided police and fire personnel with tests that could be read in fifteen minutes.
Duggan added that around 200
city workers had tested positive. Ten had died, including bus driver Jason
Hargrove. Hargrove succumbed
after posting a viral video about a thoughtless
passenger who coughed on him. “He was everything good about public service,”
Duggan told CNN.
And in a poignant
moment, during a press conference yesterday, Massachusetts Governor Charlie
Baker mused, “When you talk about where the
numbers are going on this, what I’m really thinking about is all those people
who aren’t going to have a chance to say goodbye.” He urged people to tell
loved ones how much they care, now, when they have a chance. “Nothing,” he
continued, “should be left unsaid.” Patients who end up hospitalized are not
allowed visitors. When loved ones die, funerals are often held with one or two people
in attendance.
*
THURSDAY, WE KNOW the president decided to switch horses midstream. Then, when he got to the other side, he shot the horse that carried him over.
First, he and his allies continued to gin up blame for China. If only China had told us more about what to expect…
And the World Health Organization. They blew it. Not President Trump! Why…if only they had warned….
Now the president decided to deny he ever rode a horse across the stream. On Monday, Trump insisted, Mussolini-like, that he had “total authority” to reopen the country and get everyone back to work. When pressed by Kaitlan Collins, a CNN reporter, who asked if he could cite a constitutional basis for his claim, Trump grew agitated. “Look, look,” he fumed, “When somebody is president of the United States, the authority is total. The governors know that.”
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Ms. Collins questions the president. |
Clearly, in the last few days, some White House aide has whispered sweet nothings in Trump’s ear. “Mr. President,” he or she must have explained, “if you claim total authority, you’re going to get total blame for everything that goes wrong.”
The president stepped before the cameras again on Thursday. Instead of touting his total authority, he settled for issuing new “guidelines” to get the country moving again. “You’re going to be running it, we’re going to be helping you,” he announced to the nation’s no doubt surprised governors. “We’re going to be supplying you as needed, if you need something that you don’t have. You’re going to call your own shots. We’ll be standing right alongside of you and we’re going to get our country open and get it working and our people want to get working,” he said.
And, if anything went wrong,
the buck would definitely no longer stop with President Trump.
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