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But according to Stiglitz, many GOP policies will make the crisis much worse than it has to be — including the defunding of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Trump Administration deciding to close a White House office that focused on pandemics. And the Republican push to prematurely ease up on social distancing and stay-at-home orders will only make things worse by causing an increase in coronavirus-related deaths.
“In those circumstances,” Stiglitz told The Guardian, “it won’t be the government enforcing the lockdown — it will be fear. The concern is that people are not going to be spending on anything other than food, and that’s the definition of a Great Depression.”
Stiglitz added, “We were unprepared, but even given the degree of unpreparedness, Trump’s decision to make this about politics rather than about science has meant we have responded far more poorly.”
“Rather than justice for all, we are evolving into a system of justice for those who can afford it. We have banks that are not only too big to fail, but too big to be held accountable.”
~~Joe Stiglitz, “The People Who Break the Rules Have Raked in Huge Profits and Wealth and It’s Sickening Our Politics” (2013)
At Daily Kos on this date in 2009—Happy Earth Day, National Parks!
This is a very happy Earth Day for this national parks geek. The $750 million stimulus funding that is being applied to the parks has been announced.
A brief overview of some of the project was included in this report in USATODAY:
More than 750 projects in 48 states are expected to create 30,000 to 40,000 jobs starting this summer. That includes 15,000 jobs in a proposed 21st Century Youth Conservation Corps….
The stimulus funds won’t clear the National Park Service’s $9 billion maintenance backlog, says spokesman David Barna, but they will pay for long-deferred projects at many iconic sites. […]
And there are going to be solar panels in 26 national parks, trail repair in many, a new wastewater treatment plan in Yellowstone–the list of 800 projects [pdf] is full of important park infrastructure projects to help mitigate the damage done from years of deferred maintenance. That all help makes up, a little bit, for the news that the wilderness is going wireless.
The new investment, and the news from my friend Joel Connelly that Ken Burns has a new documentary on the national parks previewing in September
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: GOP govs plow ahead with “reopening,” as Greg Dworkin shares data showing no support for it. Apologies to Canada, to whom we spread our mass shooting virus. Senate Intel says NYT can keep its Pulitzer, after all. Dersh ponders a world with no election.
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