The $3 trillion coronavirus relief package unveiled by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and her Democratic colleagues on Tuesday contains only 20 mentions of “diversity.”
That’s a significant reduction compared with the 32 times the word “diversity” appeared in the relief package Pelosi introduced in March, which was several hundred pages shorter than the current version. But there’s still plenty for progressives to be excited about. The word “economy,” for example, appears just twice in the entire bill.
Like its previous iteration, the newly introduced Democratic legislation is stuffed with left-wing policies that have been slightly reframed to suggest a relevance to the coronavirus pandemic. For example, the bill would allocate $50 million for “environmental justice grants to prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus.”
The Environmental Protection Agency would use the funding to “investigate or address the disproportionate impacts of the COVID–19 pandemic in environmental justice communities,” whatever that means.
The word “cannabis” appears 68 times in the text of the bill, occasionally in close proximity to “diversity.” One provision of the bill, for example, would force federal banking regulators to issue an annual “diversity and inclusion report” to Congress on “minority-owned and women-owned cannabis-related legitimate businesses.” – READ MORE
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