Are Conservatives Yearning for the Inequality of Yesteryear?

 

July 24, 2020



Greed, racism, and more greed were on full display in Washington, DC this week.

In the first case, Republicans in the Senate and the administration blew enough holes in a House bill to sink a provision that required employers to provide paid sick leave.

In the second, the Trump administration scissored away a 2015 rule designed to combat housing discrimination, replacing it with a rule that ... well ... makes discrimination easier.

Trump explicitly linked the rule change to his reelection bid, leaning on the conservative trope that suburbia is full of non-working, house-proud white women. In a tweet to "The Suburban Housewives of America," Trump thundered that "Biden will destroy your neighborhood...!"

"If you call me a 'suburban housewife,' I will knee you in the fucking groin," responded one mother of three who works full time. Her comment echoed an avalanche of other such remarks.

As a child of the 1950s, Trump's vision was forged in his early years, including his years learning to strong-arm minority tenants that Trump's father saw as a variety of vermin. They say that conservatives don't like change. Trump simply ignores it. 

But back to paid sick leave. In a (deeply biased) news article on Thursday, Huffpo's Emily Peck highlighted the plight of "essential workers" -- including janitors, grocery-store workers, meatpackers, and chicken processors -- who were forced to work whether they were sick or not, a sure way to spread COVID-19 and misery.

Think of this man as a politician hauling you
backward into the past.

The House passed bills in March and in May that would have extended paid sick leave to these people. But even after the Senate passed an emaciated version of the bill in March, the Labor Department carved out an exemption for health care workers. In all, 83 percent of employed workers got no additional sick leave, according to the National Partnership for Women.

The working poor, in short, got the knob end of the drumstick. Like Trump's hopelessly tin-eared tweet, the Senate's failure to help essential workers get sick leave is like another step backwards in time -- to the days before OSHA, before the Fair Labor Standards Act, to the decades and centuries before that when the poorer the people, the poorer they'd stay.

In this era, the Senate and administration are pulling tow ropes against working people trying to move toward a better future. Is this the fate of the American Dream?

Let's restate Gatsby: So working Americans beat on, boats against the current -- borne by greedy, moneyed politicians back ceaselessly into the past. 







"Paying For Blisters" by Rum Bucolic Ape is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

 
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/508745-trump-administration-ends-obama-fair-housing-rule?fbclid=IwAR2r8f_2SbBx-tKW8ys81OibFVvSAaX4Pihe_kTBY4cnr1713roq9wE4YdI

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/universal-paid-sick-leave-pandemic_n_5f197179c5b6128e68217a84?fbclid=IwAR3sO9SUi5dHArI8uT7Lr5XJ0otZe35l8kyh-ylItYIEo4EcQElpIEmpCy8&test_ad=taboola_iframe_mw_news

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-suburban-housewives-tweet_n_5f19ed20c5b6128e6822d610