Complications Grow, Including Inside-Selling Congressmen
A(nother) example of how complicated life could be soon: New York City recently banned single-use plastic bags. Hy-Vee, which operates supermarkets in the Midwest, just announced a “for-the-time-being” ban of reusable cloth bags in its stores “since it is harder to guarantee their cleanliness,” according to Morning News Beat.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that jurisdictions where Hy-Vees are found introduced bans on plastic bags; And NYC decided, as Hy-Vee has, that cloth bags are too risky.
What, you may seriously wonder, are shoppers to do then?
I posed a question yesterday, to an editor at Politico, who was seeking input from readers: With a growing number of jurisdictions ordering restaurants to close, the truckers who move our food and other goods from sources to stores are going to find it increasingly difficult to find places to eat. Is anyone in a position of authority giving that issue any consideration?
12–18 Months of THIS?
The Washington Post reported on Thursday (3/19) that the growing restrictions on businesses and individuals are likely to “have to be maintained, at least intermittently, until a working vaccine is developed, which could take 12 to 18 months at best”. How, precisely, is that supposed to work?
Most of us who are staying at home these days are at risk of running out of money yesterday. The idea that the federal government might cut checks to the tune of $1,000, $1,200 or some other figure — maybe once, maybe twice — sounds, frankly, like a small drop in a big bucket.
Any Little Bit Would Help
Some families, my two-person one included, could manage quite well on $2,400 or even $1,200 to supplement my Social Security payment. But while we’re officially listed as taxpayers, supposedly a qualifier for the government hand-out, we haven’t actually paid tax in several years, because we legitimately have enough deductions to reduce our tax liability to 0.
That could mean, depending on which plan of several makes it through the Congressional sausage mill, we might get as little as $600. Once or twice? Who knows?
And that, ultimately, is the big question: ‘Who knows’ much of anything about how our lives are going to be over the weeks and months to come.
The ‘good’ news is, such as it is, is that we’re all in the same boat: No one knows any more, looking forward, than anyone else.
Boo To Congressional Cheaters!
As recently as a couple of months ago, though, that wasn’t so: Two, probably four, possibly more members of Congress not only had a very good idea of what was coming, they acted on their knowledge — selling hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars of stock before the market collapsed, as it’s done in the past week or so.
Their decisions to unload then-much-valued stock was based, according to the New York Times and The Washington Post, on what the Congressmen learned at a private Senate briefing from senior government scientists about the seriousness of the coronavirus. In other words, they used ‘inside’ info to pocket stock market gains and avoid losses they had every reason to believe would occur soon — as they have, for millions of other investors.
That is not just wrong — and a violation of their public trust — it is illegal: They traded on knowledge not generally available, aka they were ‘insider trading’.
Every member of government found to have done that should be tried, convicted and imprisoned. Not just fined: But fined as well, taking back all their unearned gains… and more!
And somehow, the president should be made to suffer, too, because his indifference, his unwillingness to recognize a coming crisis and failure to act to soften its impact, has done grave damage to the country — not to mention the lives that have been unnecessarily lost.
