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Will Donald Trump be held accountable for the deaths that will result from his reckless and unrelenting attacks on America’s democracy?
Don’t count on it.
His countless lies and ludicrous claims that he won the presidential race are bound to result in violence against those local officials who were responsible for running what the Dept. of Homeland Security determined was the most secure election in American history.
Trump has already achieved his goal of “delegitimizing” the election and the incoming administration of Joe Biden, as only a quarter of Republicans have accepted the outcome of the Nov. 3 tally.
Yet the president continues to stoke the conspiracy fires, while his toadies launch farcical lawsuits.
Texas attorney general Ken Paxton wants the Supreme Court to nullify the election so it can be handed to Trump.
Though Paxton's suit is crazytown, Republican attorneys general in 17 states support the audacious suit that aims to invalidate the votes of millions of Americans. Shameless publicity hound Texas Senator Ted Cruz wants to argue the case, seeing it as a way to generate support among the Trump cultists.
Trump’s war on democracy serves his purpose of diverting America’s and the world’s attention from his greatest failure: the botched handling of COVID-19.
The pandemic killed a record 3,011 of us on Dec. 9. That's more than the number of people that were murdered during the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. Many thousands more will join the 288K dead Americans before COVID-19 vaccines go into widespread distribution next spring.
On the Dec. 9 record-setting day of death, Trump hosted a Hanukkah celebration at the White House and told party-goers, “We’re going to win this election.” To Trump, those COVID-19 deaths were not part of his alternate reality.
The election is over for everyone but Trump and his deranged followers who stand ready to heed the call of Arizona’s Republican party, which asked its Twitter followers on Aug. 8 if they were willing to give their lives to overturn the election results and “die for something.”
America has been warned. The president is responsible for election-related carnage.
Happy COVID Days are Here Again… The collective wealth of America’s 651 billionaires surged 36 percent since March 18 to $4T at the Dec. 7 stock market closing price, according to a study conducted by Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies.
The billionaires enjoyed more than $1T growth in their wealth since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. That tops the $908B pandemic relief package that is being tossed about in Congress.
That $1T gain by 651 billionaires is more than it would cost to send a stimulus check to every one of America’s 330M people, almost double the two-year estimated $500B state & local budget gaps, slightly less than federal spending for Medicare ($644B) and Medicaid ($389B) and nearly four times the $267B in total stimulus payments.
The $4T in billionaire wealth is nearly double the $2.1T held by the bottom half of the US population.
“Never before has America seen such an accumulation of wealth in so few hands,” said Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness.
He looks forward to working with Joe Biden and Congress to tax the massive wealth. There’s little time to lose because things are looking pretty upbeat for billionaires these days.
The Wells Fargo Investment Institute released its “2021 Outlook: Forging a Path Forward” report on Dec. 8.
It predicts that widespread distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine and new therapeutics will propel global equities to new record highs.
“Almost always, economic recoveries have arisen from dark points in our history, and investors know well that some of the best investment opportunities often present themselves from non consensus ideas,” said Darrell Cronk, president of WFII. “These patterns are developing again.”
The rich will get richer, indeed.
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