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be trusted to be fair and just. And if they decide to disregard the
demands of the new inspector-general and Congress, who is going
to do anything about it? Barr’s Justice Department? Impeachment?
There would have been ways to direct aid to those who need
it, to households, beyond the pittance included for some. That in-
cludes those working people who had authentic jobs and the huge
precariat who were getting by somehow with temporary and irreg-
ular employment, but also others: those who had given up, the hun-
dreds of thousands of victims of “deaths of despair” — a unique
American tragedy — the homeless, prisoners, the great many with
such inadequate housing that isolation and storing food is not an
option, and plenty of others that are not hard to identify.
Political economists Thomas Ferguson and Rob Johnson put
the matter plainly: While the universal medical care that is stan-
dard elsewhere may be too much to expect in the U.S., “there is
no reason why it should have one sided single payer insurance for
corporations.” They go on to review simple ways to overcome this
form of corporate robbery.
At the very least, the regular practice of public bailout out of
the corporate sector should require stiff enforcement of a ban on
stock buybacks, meaningful worker participation in management,
an end to the scandalous protectionist measures of the mislabeled
“free trade agreements” that guarantee huge profits for Big Pharma
while raising drug prices far beyond what they would be under ra-
tional arrangements.

At least.

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