COVID-19 has exposed how poorly prepared the U.S. healthcare system is to handle an epidemic, getting ill in the United States carries the extra burden of potential financial ruin. We need to move to a National Improved Medicare for All health system and paid medical leave as rapidly as possible. Coronavirus 2020 — Green Party National and State Responses
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While most of the developed world has been dealing with the impact of the pandemic in a reasonable fashion — caring for the sick, burying the dead, enforcing lockdowns and the sort of distancing and masking that seems so necessary—it’s played out differently here in the good old U.S. of A. Here, we have a pandemic-plus—plus a broken social safety net, a for-profit healthcare system, a war of disinformation, and that’s just to start down a list of add-on disasters.
In addition, parts of the United States have been beset by record wildfires, hurricanes, and deadly storms. So add on the impact of catastrophic climate change.
Here in the land of the fearful and the home of the riven, it’s been a pandemic plus poverty, plus staggering economic inequality, plus police violence, plus protest, plus white supremacy. It’s a nightmare, in other words and, despite those more than 210,000 dead Americans, it’s not slowing down. Pandemic living
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Trump should just resign. He should get out of the way of the public health officials who are telling us how to slow the spread of COVID-19, the health care providers who are trying to heal the sick, and the military and business managers who could quickly put together a plan under the Defense Production Act to produce and distribute needed medical resources to where they are urgently needed.
Trump had reports in January from the intelligence community and public health officials that the pandemic was coming. He told the American people that it was a Chinese problem, that it was another impeachment hoax, that it will disappear like a miracle. His late, deceitful, and misdirected response amounts to negligent homicide.
Now with the coronavirus coffins piling up, Trump has to acknowledge we have a problem. But he is incapable of taking charge and unwilling to authorize a national plan to slow the spread and supply the health care system. Instead, he petulantly refuses to talk to governors who have criticized him or to seek the advice of former presidents and retired generals with experience in dealing with pandemics and natural disasters.
Trump constantly contradicts the advice of public health officials in his coronavirus briefings that he is using as virtual campaign rallies. In concert with a callous chorus of business barons, tech venture capitalists, conservative commentators, and Republican politicians who talk of sacrificing seniors and others in order to save the economy, Trump has constantly undermined stay-at-home recommendations in tweets and rants calling for an early re-opening of the economy. Trump is killing us
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THE HAWKINS/WALKER COVID RELIEF PLAN
Medicare to Pay for COVID-19 Testing and Treatment and All Emergency Health Care
Defense Production Act to Meet Pandemic Relief Needs
An OSHA Temporary Standard to Provide Enforceable PPE Protection for Workers
$2,000 a Month per Individual (Including Children) Making Less Than $120,000 a Year
Loans to All Businesses and Hospitals for Payroll and Fixed Overhead, To Be Forgiven If All Workers Are Kept on Payroll
Moratorium on Evictions, Foreclosures, and Utility Shutoffs
Cancel Rent, Mortgage, and Utility Payments
Continue the expanded unemployment benefits that provide $600 to the amount received when people receive benefits.
Suspend Student Loan Payments with 0% Interest Accumulation
Federal Universal Rent Control
Aid to State and Local Governments Sufficient to Keep Essential Services Running
Emergency Funding to Cover US Postal Service Revenue Shortfalls Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Universal Mail-in Ballot Option for the 2020 General Election
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Green Party Platform on the Issues
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