Allow me to introduce you to Trey Hollingsworth, representative for Indiana's 9th congressional district (the south central part of the state, stretching from just south of Indianapolis to just north of Louisville). He's the vice ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee Subcommittee on Investor Protection, Entrepreneurship, and Capital Markets (that's a mouthful!) and serves on the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Diversity and Inclusion. Rep. Hollingsworth is also the 12th wealthiest member of Congress, with a net worth of $50 million. And what does this leader have to say about the current crisis?
"It is always the American government's position to say, in the choice between the loss of our way of life as Americans and the loss of life, of American lives, we have to always choose the latter. ... The social scientists are telling us about the economic disaster that is going on. Our [Gross Domestic Product] is supposed to be down 20 percent alone this quarter. It is policymakers' decision to put on our big boy and big girl pants and say it is the lesser of these two evils. It is not zero evil, but it is the lesser of these two evils, and we intend to move forward that direction. That is our responsibility and to abdicate that is to insult the Americans that voted us into office."
Are you reading what I'm reading? He's saying that your life, my life, the lives of the 2,400 Americans who died yesterday — including 49 Hoosiers — the lives of tens of thousands of Americans are not worth the cost of the U.S. losing money. That tens of thousands of deaths is somehow less evil than losing money. And it's not like he's alone in those sentiments.
Speaking of money, remember those stimulus checks we're all supposed to get? Yeah, they've been delayed again. This time the delay is so that Trump can get his signature put on all the checks. What a brazen politicization of this situation. Listen, I got one of those checks G.W. Bush sent out in 2008, and it definitely didn't have his name on it. Maybe that's because it's a hideous abuse of government resources for political ends? Maybe because it's super-shitty to make people wait even longer (they were already saying it would take 20 weeks for paper checks) just so you can take credit for something the entire legislative branch had to authorize first?
Meanwhile, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, 644 (!!!) employees of one meatpacking plant have tested positive for COVID-19. The governor of South Dakota refuses to shut down businesses in the state, instead saying she'll just do a massive trial of the malaria drug the president has been touting. Meatpacking plants in Iowa and Colorado have shut down because they also had a bunch of employees test positive. So I guess we have meat shortages to look forward to, because these companies put profits ahead of people until they were forced not to.
My sister Bethany called yesterday to tell me that she went to buy eggs, and discovered that the price had QUADRUPLED to $4/dozen. Meanwhile, farmers who supply restaurants are ... you guessed it ... breaking hundreds of thousands of eggs every day because they can't sell them, and nobody can figure out how to divert those eggs to grocery store customers.
It was another elearning day at home, so another absolutely exhausting workday for me. And it snowed. On April 15. The boys worked on their cursive and made cookies, and we even did a virtual appointment with Max's orthodontist. Now that was "fun." We had to take pictures of the inside of his mouth from various angles and submit them through the orthodontist's website, along with any concerns we had (like, for example, not letting him get overcorrected again when he should be almost done with his braces at this point). Then we sent all that info to the orthodontist, he looked at all the pictures, and within an hour, he had given us a report addressing our concerns and telling Max to keep up the good work of constantly wearing his rubber bands to anchor the braces in the correct position. Let's hope Max can get those braces off sometime soon!
Nationwide cases: 643,725. Deaths: 28,487.
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