Mitch McConnell wants to let corporations kill you without consequence

Thom plus logo Probably the most under-reported story of the year has been how Mitch McConnell is holding Americans hostage in exchange for letting big corporations kill Americans without any consequence.

Mitch took you and me hostage back in May, when the House of Representatives passed the HEROES act that would have funded state and local governments and provided unemployed workers with an ongoing weekly payment.

Mitch refused to even allow the Senate to discuss the HEROES Act until or unless the legislation also legalized corporations killing their workers and customers. To this day, he refuses to let it even be discussed in the Senate.

We've seen companies fire people for refusing to take their lives in their hands, executives organize betting pools on which employees are going to die first, and companies lying openly to their workers and customers about the dangers of COVID-19.

Mitch McConnell wants to protect them all. Even worse, his immunity can extend well beyond COVID and sets up a process that could put corporations above the law permanently, across every community in America, in ways that state and local governments can never defy.

While Republicans have fought against raising the minimum wage or letting workers unionize for over 100 years, what McConnell is doing now is giving corporations the ultimate right: the right to kill their employees and customers with impunity.

And McConnell's holding your local police and fire departments, public schools and state healthcare programs hostage in exchange for his corporate immunity.

This is beyond immoral. This is ghastly, and should have been at the top of every news story in America for the past six months. But many of the corporations that are looking forward to complete supremacy over their workers include the giant corporations that own our media.

America has suffered for over 40 years under Reaganism's neoliberal mantra, picked up from Milton Friedman, that when corporations focus exclusively on profit an "invisible hand" will guide them to do what's best for people and communities.

It's a lie.

This is an assault on workers' rights, but, even greater, it's a corporate assault on human rights. McConnell is saying that a corporation's right to kill its workers and customers is more important than the lives of human beings.

As unemployment benefits are running out, evictions loom, small businesses are dying left and right, millions of families have been thrown into crisis and more than 10 million Americans have lost their health insurance, McConnell continues to hold us all hostage.

It's time to fight back. If corporate media continues to refuse to discuss McConnell's blackmail, we must individually speak up among friends and communities, and also let our lawmakers know what we think. It's time to raise some hell.

-Thom

Comments

Hephaestus's picture
Hephaestus 2 years 23 weeks ago
#1

Fascist Mitch Mc is on an evil hate pitch against the true wealth creators

You have to wonder what the morbidly rich will do when there is no worthy economic activity?

And, currencies retain no value?

Riverplunge's picture
Riverplunge 2 years 23 weeks ago
#2

Tell me: Is being a psychopath a requirement for political office?

Or do you start as a sociopath and work your way up?

How can you not care about people when we pay you such high salaries??

stopgap's picture
stopgap 2 years 23 weeks ago
#3

As bad as McConnell is, what really worries me now are the appointments Trump is making over at the Pentagon and his intention to name Jeffrey Rosen as acting Attorney General.

These are not the actions of someone that plans to go quietly. These are the actions of someone that plans to stage a coup. Anyone that thinks otherwise hasn’t been paying attention.

alis volat's picture
alis volat 2 years 23 weeks ago
#4

I have read sociopaths are created-psychopaths are born that way. I believe a conscience is what makes us human, so it's no wonder that someone unburdened with one can do inhumane things.

Experts say anything from one to three percent of the population are in this category. Let's settle on two; that means there are likely 11 of them in Congress. I'll bet your mind is running through some names right now! Mitch will top my list.

We do need to raise hell, but in the process it is just as important to raise awareness. They are toxic and can't be fixed with current methods. Avoiding them and their sick minds is the only answer.

I wish I could say we'll survive Trump and McConnell, but clearly a whole bunch of us already have not. God bless broken bruised America. Time for some serious therapy and TLC.

RepubliCult's picture
RepubliCult 2 years 23 weeks ago
#5

It's painfully obvious, we don't have a free press.
They are slaves to their boardrooms' decisions.
So, many will continue to die.

deepspace's picture
deepspace 2 years 23 weeks ago
#6

"...it is just as important to raise awareness." - alis volat

That is the key.

Fascism is fascism, whether it's money-is-God corporate-style fascism, oligarchic Putin-style fascism, or straight-up, jackbooted Nazi-style fascism. Only the methods differ. In the end, we lose both our democracy and our human rights. The "soft tyranny" of radical corporatism in the form of extreme marketing is perhaps the most insidious -- for trinkets and baubles and shallow entertainment, we lose our soul.

Watch The 12th Man on Netflix. That's what the human spirit is capable of, what true resistance to fascism looks and feels like. How soon we forget.

Self-determination and the rule of law, not men, comes at a high price indeed. Are the average, modern-day Americans, mesmerized by their blinking and whirring devices, willing to pay it? Or have our corporate masters already won the war by winning over our minds? Are we mere consumers in the billionaires' system of runaway monopoly capitalism, or are we brave and noble citizens in a principled democracy that's worth fighting for, worth raising hell over?

History proves again and again that it's so very hard to achieve democracy and therefore human rights and so very easy to lose them both.

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