This was a week when the Senate saw fit to go home for a long weekend while enhanced jobless benefits expired along with a ban on evictions for federally supported renters. It was also a week when the richest dude on the planet, along with the heads of other monopolistic tech firms, testified in front of a House subcommittee. I realize the focus of this hearing was antitrust, and that is a more-than-worthy enterprise, but I had hoped for at least one exchange that would go something like this:

Congressmember: Mr. Bezos, how much money do you have?
Bezos: What time is it? 11:25 a.m.? Uhhhh … $153 billion.
Congressmember: Don’t you think that’s too much?
Bezos: Excuse me?
Congressmember: Nobody needs anywhere near that much money, Mr. Bezos. Why don’t you leave more of it on the table? Why does so much of it end up with you? That seems like a really strong sign that something’s drastically wrong with the way you run your business. What you need is stronger workplace regulation and confiscatory taxation. I yield back my time.

Yeah, that didn’t happen. Not surprised.

For the Senate’s part, they appear to have rediscovered their concern about deficits, perhaps because they’re anticipating a loss in the upcoming election. Best restart the national debt scare talk now so it doesn’t seem as contrived in January. Still, it kind of amazes me that at a time when we have more people out of a job than we did at the height of the Great Depression – and we got there in a matter of weeks – Mitch and the boys are getting cold feet about spending federal dollars to pump the tires up a bit. Expect this to return to an obsession level policy if there’s a Biden administration next January, and expect plenty of the never Trumpers to be right on board.

It’s not surprising that the Senate Republicans (and most of the Democrats) act in the best interests of their constituents – rich people. There was a time, though, when they tried a little harder to conceal it. Maybe they think it doesn’t have an electoral impact. Maybe with the extremist gerrymandering they accomplished in 2010 and all the voter suppression laws they’ve put in place since article five of the Voting Rights Act was struck down – maybe with all that, they feel they can still pull it out. Well, maybe they’re right, but we’ll see. I kind of think their tactics are optimized for an economic circumstance that’s significantly less toxic than the current state of affairs. Many of the top-tier Democrats still act like it’s the 1990s; I think this is true of the Republicans as well. It’s just possible that their callous disregard for the voting public may well bite them on the ass … hard.

There haven’t been this many people down and out since the 1930s. And the people who aren’t feeling it now will feel it soon enough. That simple fact makes the politics of this moment very unpredictable.

luv u,

jp