1. So far as I can discover, opposition parties in the European countries (and elsewhere) are cooperating with the leadership of the party in power by acquiescing in its policies for dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. In fact, the Conservative government of Great Britain is considering inviting representatives of the Labour Party (excluding Jeremy Corbyn) to participate in a national government, though for a limited time only. (A period of four months has been suggested.)
The exception to this pattern is the US Democratic Party, which twice blocked passage of the Trump Administration’s emergency rescue bill costing $1.6 trillion in the Senate by larding it with liberal pork, including increased fuel emissions standards for airlines, expansion of wind and solar tax credits, other items lifted from the Green New Deal and $25 million for the Kennedy Center as part of a $100 million arts funding. Finally, Democrats and Republicans were able to reach an agreement early Thursday at midnight approving a larger stimulus package costing up to $2 trillion after some of these marginal allotments were added. This Party's obstructive strategy is inspired by Rahm Emmanuel’s maxim about never letting a good crisis go to waste. In this instance, the Democracy is probably overreaching itself. In which case, it may soon discover that the crisis it didn’t allow to go to waste was its own.
2. Le Figaro, the best conservative daily I know of, recently published an interesting feature the newspaper has continued to run for the past several days now. Unfortunately, Figaro doesn’t publish an edition in English, or any other language; its consistently superb contents are available exclusively to people who know French, which is too bad.
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