Political Misfits

Is This a Relief? Who’s Rescuing Who?

A $2 trillion relief bill cleared the US Senate, but who will it truly relieve?
Sputnik

A pandemic is causing a medical and economic crisis in the US under a Republican president, and still the Democrats are managing to lose the perception race. The party needs Bernie Sanders and his campaign as a nerve center for collaboration and hard-nosed policy if they’re going to be of any use in this crisis.

Dr. Margaret Flowers, co-director of Popular Resistance and a member of the steering committee of HOPE - Health Over Profit, joined hosts Bob Schlehuber and Jamarl Thomas to break down the massive COVID-19 spending bill being heralded as a major victory. It’s an injection of money into a system that we already know has been failing Americans for decades. Why are we bailing out the corporations and industries supported by taxpayer money year after year? Where is the accountability? And why is our government still underestimating the duration of this crisis?

The Misfits ask what exactly is going on with Joe Biden and why US media seems to be pretending that he’s fine? He’s not fine, guys.

Author and professor Gerald Horne, historian and chair of history and African American Studies at the University of Houston, spoke with the Misfits about the political context of this progressive moment in American politics, and how Sanders gained and lost so much steam. Horne also had a few lessons from the past as to what portions of the public are really helped by the public health system, and whose health matters.

Kevin Gosztola, journalist, documentary filmmaker, writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure, explained Julian Assange’s plea to be released on bail, given his vulnerability to severe disease as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. That appeal was denied. Assange’s rights continue to be eroded because of what can only be described as personal distaste by the elites that he challenges, Gosztola argues. Now, an already sick man is left vulnerable to a death sentence, before his trial even concludes. The three also discuss the potential for the response to the virus to erode the rights to a fair and public trial.

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