The Recalcitrant One

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It’s a little sad that I must immediately be suspicious of the President when he says something, but when he voiced negative comments about the efforts of GM to produce ventilators on an emergency basis, the red flags went up:

“Our negotiations with GM regarding its ability to supply ventilators have been productive, but our fight against the virus is too urgent to allow the give-and-take of the contracting process to continue to run its normal course,” Trump said in a statement. “GM was wasting time. Today’s action will help ensure the quick production of ventilators that will save American lives.” [WaPo]

That action, taken on Friday, was Trump’s first invocation of the Defense Production Act., used to order GM to produce ventilators (in concert with Ventec Life Systems), but then he followed it up:

“As usual with ‘this’ General Motors, things just never seem to work out,” Trump tweeted. “They said they were going to give us 40,000 much needed Ventilators, ‘very quickly’. Now they are saying it will only be 6000, in late April, and they want top dollar.”

“Always a mess with Mary B.,” he added, referring to Barra, the company’s chief executive.

And CEO Barra’s response?

GM responded that i’ts been “working around the clock for weeks to meet this urgent need” and that its commitment to build the ventilators “has never wavered.”

“We are proud to stand with other American companies and our skilled employees to meet the needs of this global pandemic,” said Mary Barra, GM’s chairman and CEO.

At this juncture, independents are wondering what’s going on, while the Trump cultists will be stirred up since, well, their Great Leader doesn’t like GM. So what’s going on? Aaron Blake provides enlightenment the next day:

While discussing why he invoked the Defense Production Act on Friday to force General Motors to build ventilators, he acknowledged what has been a long-standing beef with the auto company: the closure of a plant in Lordstown, Ohio.

Remarkably, Trump brought that up even as he was asked specifically why he had singled GM out for this step before any other company. He dismissed the idea that it was about cost and instead cited GM’s decisions on where to house its plants.

“We don’t want to think too much about cost when we’re talking about this. This is not cost,” Trump said. “I wasn’t happy where General Motors built plants in other locations over the years. . . . And so I didn’t go into it with a very favorable view. I was extremely unhappy with Lordstown, Ohio — where they left Lordstown, Ohio, in the middle of an auto boom because we had 17 car companies coming in and then they were leaving one plant in Ohio.” [WaPo]

Aaron has more, but it’s become clear this is a two-fer for President Trump.

First, he casts blame on someone else for his blundering response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Every time a reporter brings it up, he’ll point at GM (and Ford, it turns out) and blame them for not supplying cheap ventilators.

And the reporters won’t just laugh at him and tell him to try again, which is the best course of action with an inveterate liar.

Second, he gets to cast GM and Big Auto as the enemies of the Trump cult. They take away their factories and thus Trump can hide his own failures and mistreatments of his own workers, including illegal immigrants, behind the big asses of GM and Ford.

He’ll try to pin blame – on a woman, too, from a known misogynist – on companies that don’t even normally make ventilators while refusing to accept one iota of blame for himself.

He’s quite the recalcitrant one.

Taking Decisive Action Is Now Impossible?, Ctd

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A reader writes regarding the Philly’s need for a hospital and my suggested course of action:

Was the imminent domain Olen’s idea or yours? I wasn’t sure from the pull quotes and your comments. It’s a great idea. We should promote that kind of thinking among cities and counties.

Eminent domain was my idea.

The responsibility of government is safeguarding citizens and promoting the welfare of society as a whole – not ensuring companies get the profit they want. If the corporate entities refuse to participate as needed in the face of an emergency, they also do not get to profit when the emergency passes.

Belated Movie Reviews

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A client suggesting an alternative payment plan.

The Happytime Murders (2018) turns on a plot mechanism reminiscent of Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988): humanity has a companion intelligent race, the puppets. These are provided by The Jim Henson Company, and are generally well done.

But, this may involve the same puppeteers as your beloved Sesame Street used when you were a kid, but this isn’t for your kids. This is about a hard-boiled private eye puppet, Phil Phillips, a disgraced former cop accused of deliberately missing a shot on another puppet who had a gun to the head of his partner. Not only did his shot miss the criminal puppet, the ricochet hit and killed an innocent passing puppet. Meanwhile, his human partner, Connie Edwards, fights for her life and suffers a life-threatening injury to her liver, but survives.

Years later, he’s as seedy as Sam Spade, scraping by, when an old friend, actor and puppet Mr. Bumblypants of Happytime Gang fame, a TV show now years defunct, is killed in an apparent porn store robbery where Phillips was in the back room, examining records for a client. Into this walks his former partner, Edwards, full of bitter zingers and reproach for Phillips, and the LAPD decrees they shall work together on this case.

As they investigate, though, In rapid succession other members of the cast of Happytime Gang are murdered:  Phillip’s brother, Larry, is torn apart, Lyle is caught in a gang-land style hit, Goofer, a smack addict, is found drowned in the surf at the beach, and Phillips’ old flame, the human Jenny, dies in a car bombing.

Phillips is nearby for all but Larry’s murder, and so the police pick him up for questioning.

The plot continues on and isn’t a bad little plot overall, although there were times when it should have been creative and, instead, relied on dropping F-bombs like a World War II bombing raid. It takes advantage of some of the inevitable differences between puppets and humans, has a lovely twist at the end, but it’s not quite compelling. I think the problem lies with the puppet Phillips, because, despite the skill of the puppeteers, he is just not quite good enough at portraying his inner turmoil. It may be the fact that he’s a puppet, it might even be the cultural contamination of the various Muppet creative efforts. Or it could have been a pacing problem. I’m just not sure.

But I shan’t condemn it like Hollywood did, where The Happytime Murders was nominated for several Golden Raspberry awards; it simply wasn’t that bad. Dialog is delivered crisply, the human actors reach just the right balance of unease with puppets, the expected bigotry comes through, as does the fury of those humans who have reason to respect their puppet counterparts. And the two sex scenes (not the hot tub scene, which is only so-so) were absolutely delightful, as my Arts Editor’s guffaws confirmed.

But the script didn’t deliver as much creativity as was required, substituting inadequate profanity, and Phillips just wasn’t quite compelling. It’s an interesting effort, if only for trying to understand why it doesn’t quite make the grade.

Word Of The Day

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Gerund:

noun In Latin, a noun derived from a verb and having all case forms except the nominative.
noun In other languages, a verbal noun analogous to the Latin gerund, such as the English form ending in -ing when used as a noun, as in singing in We admired the choir’s singing.
[Wordnik (from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition)]

Used by my Arts Editor as she puzzled over dogging it, catting around, and fishing: why do fish not get the same treatment? she wonders. (I fear she did not use gerund properly, but don’t tell her that.) It also reminds me of the observation presented in Calvin and Hobbes,

Verbing weirds language.

Out of respect for author Mr. Watterson, I shall not steal the comic. Wherefore art thou, Bill?!

Artist Of The Day

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Judith Klausner is just the right amount of whimsy for me:

Yep, that’s praying mantises … mantisii … ummmm plural anyways … wearing those playing cards. There’s more of her work here. Enjoy! She’s also the artist responsible for the recent spate of Roman-Greco heads carved out of Oreo creamy centers.

Taking Decisive Action Is Now Impossible?

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Helaine Olen suggests that our ineffective governmental actions in the face of COVID-19 are not just the result of the Trump Administration’s chronic incompetence, but of a society which has been trained to be can’t-do:

Because the federal government refuses to step in and allocate ventilators to the areas with greatest need, state governors are being forced into a frantic bidding war, fighting one another for a chance at getting at least a small portion of the needed equipment for their residents. At New York Presbyterian Hospital, and no doubt others soon to come, one ventilator is simultaneously serving what’s been described as “multiple” patients.

Still, President Trump refused to trigger the Defense Production Act until Friday. Doing so earlier would have allowed him to demand that American industries manufacture needed medical equipment as a first priority, so that those who needed testing kits, ventilators and protective gear the most could have easily obtained them. Instead: “We’re getting what we need without the heavy hand of government,” the administration ludicrously claimed earlier this week.

The more likely reason? The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a powerful business lobbying group, didn’t want it to happen. So the powers that be decided it couldn’t be done.

Today, desperate for hospital beds — beds, it must be pointed out, that do not exist, in part, because of relentless cutbacks to improve hospital profits and operating margins — cities are taking over hotels, college dorms and even convention centers to care for the sick. But when city officials in Philadelphia tried to reopen Hahnemann Hospital, which closed last year, they hit a roadblock: the city couldn’t or wouldn’t come up with enough money to satisfy the private equity firm that shut the facility down. “We just think they’re unaware of the realities of the market,” a spokesman for the building’s owner told NBC’s Philadelphia affiliate.

And we can trace this to the pervasive presence of corporations in government. This is called capturing the agency in the lingo, and refers to the regulatory agency coming under the influence of the corporate entities it should be regulating. This is only exacerbated by the Republican religious that regulation is bad.

This is why one of my overarching themes is that the various sectors of society have differing goals, and mixing both methods and personnel between sectors – such as as a businessman into government – is often a toxic, not inspired, affair that should be avoided, unless the procedures have been sufficiently analyzed to understand the likely consequences, negative and positive, and the personnel have undergone the training to understand, oh, government doesn’t have a profit margin.

Oh, and my recommendation to Philly would be to take the damn hospital in an eminent domain proceeding, do it in a single afternoon meeting, even if you have to break the rules about public hearings and so forth, and if they scream and sue, tell them, Fine, scream and sue. We’re still using this building to save citizens. What the fuck are you doing to save citizens’ lives?

And if they dare to utter a single word, the response should be:

You dumb capitalists, you already had a chance to be a productive part of society. Cry & whine all you want, but we’re taking your hospital, we’re broadcasting your extremely poor response to all corners of thecountry so all know who is not a member in good standing of our society, and the names of all corporate officers will be part of that news blast. You had your chance, now FOAD. Seriously.

Yeah, reading Olen’s piece made me seriously crabby about capitalism tonight. 

Americans Aren’t The Only Stupid Ones

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So are Iranians:

Standing over the still body of an intubated 5-year-old boy wearing nothing but a plastic diaper, an Iranian health care worker in a hazmat suit and mask begged the public for just one thing: Stop drinking industrial alcohol over fears about the new coronavirus.

The boy, now blind after his parents gave him toxic methanol in the mistaken belief it protects against the virus, is just one of hundreds of victims of an epidemic inside the pandemic now gripping Iran.

Iranian media report nearly 300 people have been killed and more than 1,000 sickened so far by ingesting methanol across the Islamic Republic, where drinking alcohol is banned and where those who do rely on bootleggers. An Iranian doctor helping the country’s Health Ministry told The Associated Press on Friday the problem was even greater, giving a death toll of around 480 with 2,850 people sickened. [AP]

The source? Well, at least their leaders don’t appear to be running their mouths irresponsibly:

The poisonings come as fake remedies spread across social media in Iran, where people remain deeply suspicious of the government after it downplayed the crisis for days before it overwhelmed the country.

We are so much more alike than different, but so many of us still bare our teeth at them. And, while I take news from the TehranTimes with a grain of salt, this is worth considering:

[Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria] Zakharova said the “unprecedented political and economic pressure” on Iran allowed the outbreak to take hold in the country.

Iran is unable to buy medicine and medical equipment due to the US economic sanctions which the Trump administration has been continuously tightening as part of “maximum pressure” on Tehran.

The coronavirus outbreak has prompted various international leaders, figures and groups to call for Washington to suspend its sanctions.

Earlier this week, eight countries sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, warning about the negative impact of unilateral sanctions on the international anti-coronavirus efforts.

The UN chief has said himself the sanctions are heightening the health risks for millions of people and weakening the global efforts to contain the spread of the pandemic.

In a tweet on Saturday, Iran’s Ambassador to France Bahram Qassemi said “those who still speak of sanctions and maximum pressure should accept responsibility for the death of thousands of people”.

Despite the international outcry, Washington imposed its latest round of coercive measures against Iran on Thursday.

It’s worth asking if the American sanctions strategy on Iran is responsible for part of the intensification of COVID-19. As of this writing, Iranian deaths due to COVID-19 are 2,517, with more than 35,400+ reported infected, out of a population of roughly 83 million. Of course, these numbers come with the usual data trustability caveats.

If True, It’s Time For Another Injection Of Legislation

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I am a little bewildered at the arguments presented to the SCOTUS for keeping the Federal Dreamers program (DACA – Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) going:

Lawyers told the Supreme Court in a filing Friday that allowing termination of the program that protects undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children could mean the loss of nearly 30,000 health care workers during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Supreme Court held arguments on the Trump administration’s desire to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in November, and the court’s conservative justices seemed ready to find the president has such authority. The court could rule at any time.

But lawyers for DACA recipients said this would be an especially bad time for such an outcome.

“Healthcare providers on the frontlines of our nation’s fight against COVID-19 rely significantly upon DACA recipients to perform essential work,” said the letter, filed by the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization at Yale Law School. “Approximately 27,000 DACA recipients are healthcare workers — including nurses, dentists, pharmacists, physician assistants, home health aides, technicians, and other staff—and nearly 200 are medical students, residents, and physicians.”

The letter asked the justices to pay close attention to a brief in the case filed last year by the Association of American Medical Colleges and 32 allied organizations that “presciently identified” the current problem. The brief said the country is not prepared to “fill the loss that would result if DACA recipients were excluded from the health care workforce.” [WaPo]

This is, at it’s heart, a practicality argument, and the Court doesn’t usually address practicality. Even when it does, such as in Brown v Board of Education, they find a way to pin their decision to a bit of law or Constitution. And, I’ll note, deciding a decision on practicality comes close to legislating from the bench.

I don’t really see this as a matter for the courts, but a matter for Congress. They make the laws, and laws are often, even always, based on the practical needs of the citizens. In this particular case, I’m not talking about the needs of the so-called Dreamers, the illegal immigrants who arrived in this country as babies – too old for birthright citizenship, too young to even remember coming, much less their country-of-origin.

I’m talking the patient population of the United States. At the moment, the medical profession is under stress, and while not all specialties are seeing the same stress, it would certainly not do the profession, and the population it serves, any favors to dismiss 27,000+ healthcare workers.

So I think it is the duty of Congress to pass a law that defines healthcare worker and Dreamer, and then states

Any Dreamer who is a healthcare worker, as defined in this legislation, shall not be subject to deportation under any Federal law whatsoever; and, at the conclusion of this crisis, each healthcare Dreamer who has served selflessly and tirelessly shall receive expedited consideration for American citizenship.

I do believe the Democrats would find this an honorable law; and if the Republicans find it more palatable to embrace their xenophobia than the health of their friends and family, the Democrats can use that reprehensible decision to bash them again in the November elections.

I am going to write my Congressional representatives on the matter. And maybe Speaker Pelosi.

A Renaissance?

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This caught me by surprise:

Ratings are way up for these old-school yet stalwart newscasts, helmed by the figurative descendants of Cronkite, Jennings and Brokaw, themselves descended from ancient anchors of television yore. Around 12 million viewers watched Lester Holt’s “NBC Nightly News” last week, reportedly the show’s best ratings in 15 years; Muir’s “World News Tonight” is seeing a similar big boost, with the coronavirus crisis delivering the show’s biggest ratings in two decades. CBS’s “Evening News” is way up too, with viewership last week that beat nearly all of its prime-time shows.

In two-plus weeks of staying home, I’ve renewed my faith in the broadcast networks’ nightly newscasts, perhaps out of some faintly nostalgic idea that watching it is what grown-ups do, come hell or high water. People who long ago gave up the habit — or never acquired it — are finding a similar solace at the end of the day with a half-hour of Muir or Holt or the “CBS Evening News’s” Norah O’Donnell. [Hank Stuever, TV Critic for WaPo]

If you’re a little confused about, as the young adults set tells me, that adulting thing, I can confirm, being aggressively middle-aged that, indeed, this is what adults of the previous generation would do: Tune that TV to one of the broadcast networks – there were only three, ABC, NBC, and CBS, and, yes, they’re still up and running, plus a few local independents who couldn’t do global news – and then …

>mutate voice into grating oldster tone< drag themselves back to their Barcalounger …

because remote controls didn’t exist back then, make themselves comfortable, and learn what was happening in the world. Topics depended on the time frame: the Cold War and its attendant incidents, such as the Bay Of Pigs, or the ongoing nuclear arms race; the Vietnam War, which was eventually broken wide open by Walter Cronkite’s reporting on the deceptions of American government regarding it; the latest earthquake in Chile; a plague somewhere else…

You get the point. Stuever continues:

In our binge-and-purge diet of ceaseless opinions, network news is almost shockingly neutral, the thing consumers keep saying they want from their news sources. They’d be even better if they had more time to do what they’re hopelessly trying to do, which is be all things to all viewers.

By design, they must inform everyone, from the dullest among us to the sharpest. Years ago, they determined (probably through dreadful focus-group consulting) that the news must always end on a positive word, the great giving-in to those dopes always complaining that there’s never any good news. It’s hard to tell if these segments work as the intended balm; very often they seem like a saccharine waste of crucial time.

It’s true: Fox News may be the worst, but CNN and MSNBC certainly have their points of view as well. The three broadcast networks have decades of experience, learning over and over that the facts come first, and then the opinion – if any. Only newspapers, now skeletons of their former selves for the most part, have more experience with the need for neutrality and accuracy. The self-centered obsession with finding opinions that fit our preconceptions may be the best description of our addiction to the cable- and Internet- associated news sources, as they all have their tinge – or, in so many cases, contamination – of under-the-covers inclination.

I’ll be interested to see if this is a temporary surge, or if people will decide their former favorite sources weren’t really all that good after all and stick with the networks.

And this may also play into the firing of Trish Regan, noted here last night. You can be subtly wrong for quite a while, especially when your audience views you with favor, but be shockingly wrong might damage the audience. Or, given the demographic Fox News attracts, kill them off.

Normalize … Normalize … Normalize, Ctd

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It’s worth noting, as symbolic of the Fox News mission to shield the President from criticism, that Trish Regan, last seen authoring a rant claiming the COVID-19 pandemic was nothing more than a hoax concocted to damage the President’s credibility, has “parted ways” with Fox Business Network:

The Fox Business Network announced on Friday that it had parted ways with Trish Regan, the conservative news host who ignited controversy earlier this month when she dismissed the coronavirus pandemic as a conspiracy to throw President Trump out of office.

“We thank her for her contributions to the network over the years and wish her continued success in her future endeavors,” the network said in a statement to CNN Business. “We will continue our reduced live primetime schedule for the foreseeable future in an effort to allocate staff resources to continuous breaking news coverage on the Coronavirus crisis.”

The news of her departure was first reported by NBC News.

Regan faced fierce criticism earlier this month when she described the coronavirus to her viewers as an “impeachment scam.”

Regan claimed “many in the liberal media” were using the pandemic “in an attempt to demonize and destroy” Trump.

Regan appears to have become a burden to the Trump reelection effort, as her rant made her directly representative of Trump’s minimizing view of the COVID-19 pandemic, right up until he turned turtle and claimed he had seen it as a pandemic a month earlier, before almost anyone else. By dumping her, they can diminish the shadow she throws across the campaign, continue to refuse to acknowledge Trump was in denial and delayed starting up the emergency programs necessary to maximize survival odds.

Yes, that does mean lie right into the mouth of God, if necessary.

But this is what happens when you no longer benefit Trump. Right under the wheels, thump-thud-thump.

Word Of The Day

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Frisson:

  • a brief moment of emotional excitement : SHUDDER, THRILLproduce a genuine frisson of disquiet— Patricia Craig
    a frisson of surprise
    a frisson of delight [Merriam-Webster]

Noted in “What’s the Plan?” Ari Schulman, New Atlantis:

As a pandemic loomed, the country moved in remarkably short order from shrug to shutdown. Understandably, some are already questioning the wisdom of this move, noting how little information we’re acting on and the devastation the shutdown is already wreaking on the economy. The New York Times grants shutdown skepticism the frisson of “taboo.”

Reduced Is Not The Equivalent Of None, Ctd

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In this post I suggested another reason to avoid exposure to COVID-19 are the possible long-term consequences, of which none are known. Well, The Mirror has published an article that suggests surviving men may be really unhappy – at least, the fathering kind:

… a new study has warned that the disease could also cause damage to men’s testicles.

While this link is yet to be proven, researchers from Wuhan’s Tongji Hospital are urging male coronavirus patients to have their fertility tested once they’ve recovered.

In their study , which has been widely shared on Chinese social media, the researchers, led by Professor Li Yufeng, explained: “New coronavirus infections are mainly caused by damage to the lungs and immune system, but in theory new coronavirus infections can also cause testicular damage.

How so?

The coronavirus invades cells through the combination of a protein (S protein) and an enzyme, dubbed ACE2.

In particular, large amounts of ACE2 are expressed in the testis, indicating that coronavirus has the potential to cause damage in this area.

The researchers added: “It is theoretically speculated that new crown infection may cause testicular damage, affecting sperm production and androgen synthesis.

“Obstructed sperm production will affect male fertility, and severe cases may cause male infertility; androgen deficiency may affect male secondary sexual characteristics and sexual function, and reduce quality of life.”

So they haven’t seen any cases, they’re merely theorizing. It’s hard to really analyze the danger here, since it’s based on theoretical interactions and not sample cases.

It’ll be interesting to see if this just sinks under the surface as no evidence comes available, or if men start complaining. This could render the uninfected men quite attractive.

That Zippy New Currency Went That-A-Way

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On Lawfare, former CIA analyst Yaya J. Fanusie assesses the weaponization – my word – of cryptocurrencies:

As the North Korean case highlights, two things enable cryptocurrency laundering: easy access to unhosted wallets and the existence of cryptocurrency exchanges around the world with lax anti-money laundering (AML) measures. Although the U.S. began regulating cryptocurrency exchanges in 2013, most other nations have lagged behind in applying AML rules to cryptocurrency activity. The intergovernmental Financial Action Task Force, which sets global AML standards, provided formal guidance in 2019 for how all countries should regulate their virtual asset sectors. But illicit actors will likely continue exploiting differences in national regulatory regimes to find noncompliant exchanges where they can trade crypto anonymously. Even this month, a Seychelles-based exchange announced it would cease U.S. operations so that it could onboard clients without verifying their identity. …

Legal and regulatory activity surrounding crypto and illicit finance will likely grow in the coming years as U.S. adversaries rely increasingly on cryptocurrency operations to fund threats. The U.S. Treasury now designates cryptocurrency addresses just as it designates bank accounts and other property, and the Justice Department is seeking to acquire funds held by 113 cryptocurrency accounts involved in the North Korean laundering transactions. With such enforcement actions likely to continue, intelligence analysts, sanctions compliance officers and financial crime investigators will need to become much more conversant with the world of crypto.

Fanusie structured this essay around an apparent North Korean hack of an exchange which netted the autocracy around $250 million. The easy lesson to draw is here is, if you really insist on holding & using cryptocurrencies, be careful of your exchanges.

The hard question?

I think the hard question is whether or not the unintended consequences of cryptocurrencies overwhelm the perceived advantages of cryptocurrencies. I am aware that cryptocurrencies were initially – allegedly? – devised to deprive governmental entities of control of money supplies. Financial histories are replete with accounts of countries printing money in order to satisfy debts, only to see inflation spiral out of control to the detriment of the citizenry. In fact – not following cryptocurrencies much – I have to wonder, or ask my readers, if the flip side of that desire has been considered: there are times when printing money by increasing the debt is highly desirable – such as the $2 trillion stimulus bill, now under consideration, to rescue workers left bereft as companies are forced to suspend operations in the face of COVID-19. Can cryptocurrencies display enough flexibility to perform the same function – save citizens from undeserved financial disaster – even if not in the same way?

But, more importantly, I have to wonder if the cryptocurrencies invented and enabled by the West are being used by its adversaries to damage the West. North Korea, despite the imbecilic blather of President Trump, is no friend of the United States, and would happily see us drown in our own toxins, helping it along if possible. So would Russia and, probably, China – all have national ambitions unblunted by the terrible wars that have left Europe unsettled for more than a century.

And while I have little reason to doubt the idealistic goals of the progenitors of the primordial cryptocurrency example, bitcoin, I do have to wonder about other cryptocurrencies, as well as the founders and managers of exchanges. Are their motivations congruent to the original, or merely pecuniary? Almost regardless of the answer, is this blinding them to the existential dangers they let loose by chasing their dreams? Remember this?

Even this month, a Seychelles-based exchange announced it would cease U.S. operations so that it could onboard clients without verifying their identity.

That would worry me a lot if I were in cryptocurrencies. While there is certainly more than one lesson in history concerning mismanagement of the money supply by government entities for personal or nationalistic reasons, there is an argument to be made that better societal management through responsible selection of leaders is far more appropriate than simply leaving in an outraged huff and taking one’s marbles into the bear’s den – which may turn out to be an accurate description of cryptocurrency advocates’ actions.

The Cry Of The Amateur

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Ever sit out in the wilderness, campfire petering along (yeah, this isn’t your fantasy), hear a wild, drawn out cry, and think, that’s the cry of the …

President Trump cast doubt Thursday on New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s assertion that his state, which has become the epicenter for the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, will need 30,000 ventilators to properly care for the influx of patients anticipated to flood hospitals in coming weeks.

“I have a feeling that a lot of the numbers that are being said in some areas are just bigger than they’re going to be,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity in a phone interview. “I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. You know, you go into major hospitals sometimes they’ll have two ventilators, and now all of a sudden they’re saying, ‘Can we order 30,000 ventilators?’” [WaPo]

I have a feeling.

Or, from Fox News, a couple of weeks ago, when Trump was informed of estimated death rates:

Now, this is just my hunch …

Yeah. No training, no learning, no curiosity, no idea. But he’s got a hunch. It’s the cry of the wild – and lame – amateur.

But, back to the WaPo article, this next paragraph was enlightening:

The president’s comments came shortly after the New York Times reported that the White House had abruptly called off a plan to announce this week that General Motors and Ventec Life Systems would be partnering to produce as many as 80,000 ventilators, citing concerns with the deal’s $1 billion price tag.

It’s all about the money, baby. Which is to say, given President Trump’s history of cutting financial corners, of refusing to pay what is specified in contracts, and from the comments of his offspring that money is all he thinks about, I think he’s projecting.

He’s projecting his grasping, underhanded ways on everyone else. If he can put himself in Governor Cuomo’s place and say, Ooooo, ooooo, I know how to get more and more of those oh so valuable ventilators – and notice he emphasizes their cost – well, then, since everyone is like himself in his mind, they’ll do it.

And, in his projection, he’s endangering all the hypothetical patients the doctors fear they’ll be faced with.

Defeating National Self-Annihilation

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Getting away from COVID-19 for a moment, many years ago I speculated that a democracy could vote itself out of existence through the election of a Party devoted to that goal; I never seemed to notice that this, roughly speaking, is what happened to the Wiemar Republic in the 1930s. It lends some urgency to the question of how a democracy can prevent such an occurrence, given that attempting to stop such a thing is nominally a transgression of democracy itself.

But can’t the same be said for permitting a democracy to destroy itself? Actually, I suspect not, despite the allure of the concept, because democracy is not an end in itself, nor an unalloyed good. Democracy is a tool that a group of people have chosen to use as their tool of governance. We like to believe it’s the best tool in all circumstances, but, quite frankly, this belief may only be a belief.

All that said, for the advocate of a democracy that is in the midst of enemies, real or perceived, that might wish to destroy that democracy, a safeguard is a desirable, yet nettlesome, thing, for well-regarded democracies are all about the rights accorded to the individual and respected by the State. How to go about that?

Well, it turns out Israel has to tried to thread that needle, as Lila Margalit explains on Lawfare:

The power to bar political parties from participating in elections was first recognized by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1964, in a case involving the “Socialist’s List,” a party affiliated with the pro-Nasserist Al-Ard movement, banned as a security threat a year earlier. Despite the lack of any explicit statutory authorization to disqualify political parties, the court held that the CEC [Central Elections Committee] had the inherent power to disqualify parties that seek to undermine the very existence of Israel. Two decades later, in 1985, the constitutional Basic Law: The Knesset was amended to provide statutory authority to disqualify parties that negate fundamental constitutional norms. The amendment was passed following another court ruling, which held that the CEC could not disqualify parties on additional grounds unless the law was changed.

Today, this provision—Article 7A of the Basic Law—allows parties as well as individual candidates to be barred from running for office if their purposes, activities or statements negate Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state; incite racism; or support the armed struggle of an enemy state or a terrorist group against the country. The power to disqualify a party is held by the CEC, a highly politicized body that includes party representatives from the outgoing Knesset and is headed by a Supreme Court justice. The CEC’s decisions can be appealed to the Supreme Court, and any decision to disqualify individual candidates must be affirmatively approved by the court before it becomes final.

Interestingly enough, under Article 7A only right wing individuals and organizations have been banned. I do find it discouraging to see the CEC is highly politicized, though. It suggests to my mind that disqualification is just another weapon in the war between political parties, just another paving stone on the pathway to hell.

Outrage Repeat?

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One of the less fortunate results in the wake of the Great Recession was the failure for any business leader to suffer any great sanctions. From the bankers and insurance companies, such as AiG, they got their TARP funds, performed a little reform within, and carried on, unless they were bought out. A glaring exception was Lehman Brothers, which no one bought out and died, as if a single exception.

And Americans were not pleased. This is not how capitalism is supposed to function, in the minds of most folks. The strong survive and the weak and foolish go under.

So I’m very interested to find out in the coming days, months, and years how the apparent rescue of Boeing, victim of its own foolishness in the case of the 737 Max tragedies, and then joining in the general corporate suffering brought on by the COVID-19 outbreak. Here’s WaPo:

Lawmakers have inserted in the Senate’s $2 trillion stimulus package a little-noticed provision aimed at providing billions of dollars in emergency assistance to Boeing, the aerospace giant already under fire for deadly safety lapses in its commercial jets, three people with knowledge of the internal deliberations said.

The Senate package includes a $17 billion federal loan program for businesses deemed “critical to maintaining national security.” The provision does not mention Boeing by name but was crafted largely for the company’s benefit, two of the people said. Other firms could also receive a share of the money, one of the people said. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations.

The carve-out is separate from the $58 billion the Senate package is providing in loans for cargo and passenger airlines, as well as the $425 billion in loans it is allocating to help firms, states and cities hurt by the current downturn. Congressional aides cautioned that the Senate bill was still going through last-minute revisions and could change.

I was particularly appalled at this:

In a Tuesday interview on Fox, Boeing chief executive Dave Calhoun said he would not be willing to give the government an equity stake in the company in exchange for a bailout, implying the company would only accept assistance on its own terms. President Trump has said he would support the idea, suggested by his economic adviser, of taking an equity stake in companies that receive assistance in the package.

“If they force it, we just look at all the other options, and we’ve got plenty of them,” Calhoun said.

I think that’s an elitist attitude, and I note that former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley has resigned from the board for even considering taking this opportunity. But Boeing also has the ear of President Trump:

“Probably I would have considered [Boeing] the greatest company in the world prior to a year ago. Now they get hit 15 different ways,” Trump said in a March 17 news conference, alluding to problems with the now-grounded 737 Max jetliner. “It was coming along well, and then all or a sudden this hits,” Trump said. “So we’ll be helping Boeing.”

And since they don’t mention the loan terms, you can guess they’ll be very favorable.

This is crony capitalism at it’s worst, and should provoke public outrage. However, we’re all distracted by the outbreak, the yelling about the old should sacrifice themselves for the good of the Republican Party, and all that goes along with it, so I suspect Boeing will get the money for far better terms than the TARP recipients.

And will we be outraged by TARP? We were last time, but this time it’s easier to point at COVID-19 as a natural disaster, even if it’s been ill-managed by both the Chinese and the Americans.

Belated Movie Reviews

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Sarah Winchester’s residence as it is today.

Winchester (2018) is a vapid little horror movie built on the more substantial bedrock of the story of Sarah Winchester, widow of the heir to the Winchester fortune and 50% of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. She lived during the late 1800s to 1922; she lost her husband and only child to disease, and thereafter built what is today known as the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, CA, a veritable museum of Winchester’s life. We’ve visited it and, liking houses that have housed oddballs, had a ball, as Mrs. Winchester was quite the superstitious lady. A house on which construction proceeded 24/7 (or she’ll die!) makes for quite the collage.

However, this movie aspires to take us from this reality to the next, from life to the dead, and it really just flounders about. It’s not the cast’s fault: led by Dame Helen Mirren, they give it their best shot. The problem lies in a story which attempts to use Mrs. Winchester’s superstitious nature to launch into a paranormal horror story about her supposed guilty conscience about all the deaths caused by the rifles produced by her late husband’s company, and that leads to the ghosts of the slain arriving for a noisy little buffet dinner made of her soul.

But perhaps I jest.

There’s very little to find compelling, from the widowed psychologist devoted to rationalism until he isn’t, to Winchesters, Sarah, her niece Marian and her family, and a museum-worthy collection of Winchester rifles, all running around trying to round up all these ghosts, including that bloodthirsty one …

Yeah. I’m sure this appeals to some temperaments, but it’s just a little too silly for me.

But if you’re considering visiting the Winchester Mystery House, this might give you a taste of how the structure may have been before God’s hammer fell on it. Well, someone’s, anyways. It was damaged in the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, and some of it has never been rebuilt.

But it’s fun. If you get a chance, go see the house. Don’t bother with the movie.

He Says Bad Things, But Can He Do Bad Things?

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Yesterday, the President upset various professionals with this statement:

I would to have it open by Easter. I will — I will tell you that right now. I would love to have that — it’s such an important day for other reasons, but I’ll make it an important day for this too. I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter. [whitehouse.gov[1]]

He thinks the near-term is a bright future; meanwhile, his own Surgeon General has suggested that this week may see a horrific uptick in infection counts. The various governors have protested:

Governors across the nation on Tuesday rejected President Donald Trump’s new accelerated timeline for reopening the U.S. economy, as they continued to impose more restrictions on travel and public life in an attempt to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

The dismissal of Trump’s mid-April timeframe for a national reopening came from Republicans and Democrats, from leaders struggling to manage hot spots of the outbreak and those still bracing for the worst. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, the head of the National Governors Association and a Republican, called the messaging confusing since most leaders are still focused on enforcing the restrictions, not easing them. He accused the White House of running on a schedule made of some “imaginary clock.” [AP]

I think Governor Hogan should call on the RNC to unilaterally upend the primary results for the GOP and declare Trump unqualified and unacceptable, but that’s just me being a drama queen.

So can President Trump “reopen” the country the week of Easter? Here’s Professor Chesney on Lawfare:

2. No, the president cannot simply order state and local officials to change their policies

Here we have issues that fall under the headings of both federalism and separation of powers. Let’s start with federalism.

Most readers will appreciate this already, but it needs to be said: Our constitutional order has a federal structure, meaning that (a) federal powers are supreme, yes, but limited in scope and (b) the state governments are independent entities, not mere subordinate layers under and within the federal government (that is, the federal-state relationship is not similar to the way that counties and cities are subordinate layers under the state governments).

What follows from this? The federal government cannot commandeer the machinery of the state governments (or, by extension, of local governments). That is, the federal government cannot coerce the states into taking actions to suit federal policy preference. See, e.g., New York v. United States and Printz v. United States. And so, the federal government cannot compel state and local officials to promulgate different rules on social distancing and the like.

And the Executive has no authority, constitutionally or statutorily, to override State officials.

So what should we expect? Chesney suggests a lot of pressure from Trump, both directly and via his base. Governor Walz of Minnesota just put in place a shelter in place order to last two weeks, so it doesn’t seem likely we’ll be back in full economic production mode by Easter.

But we may be mourning our dead. I hope not, though – supposedly, Minnesota is doing quite well at staying away from each other.

1 If you haven’t seen or read an entire news conference with Trump, this one is fairly salutary in its incoherentness. Give it a read.

Just Like A Fox News Viewer

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I’ve theorized, supported by observations offered over the years by analysts and, hey, Fox News viewers themselves, that Fox News is popular because it offers news and, more importantly, analysis that makes those viewers happy. Not informed (as Bruce Bartlett will tell you), but happy.

And that’s just what came to mind when I read this:

Conservatives close to Trump and numerous administration officials have been circulating an article by Richard A. Epstein of the Hoover Institution, titled “Coronavirus Perspective,” that plays down the extent of the spread and the threat. The article, published last week, had predicted that deaths would peak at 500, the milestone surpassed Monday. [WaPo]

It sounds to me like these conservatives found an article by some respected scholar that was far more comforting than the analyses offered by epidemiologists and other experts and decided that it was the right one.

But that level of analysis isn’t fair. The name, Richard Epstein, rings a faint and garbled bell for me, so I looked him up, thinking maybe he’s a distinguished epidemiologist with a different take on things. Yeah?

Richard Allen Epstein (born April 17, 1943) is an American legal scholar known for his writings on subjects such as torts, contracts, property rights, law and economics, classical liberalism, and libertarianism. Epstein is currently the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and director of the Classical Liberal Institute at New York University, the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law emeritus and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. [Wikipedia]

Guess not. Just another lawyer getting outside of his field. Now, I’ll be scrupulous and note that his article now includes an addendum. First, the paragraph over which he feels some regret:

From this available data, it seems more probable than not that the total number of cases world-wide will peak out at well under 1 million, with the total number of deaths at under 50,000 (up about eightfold). In the United States, if the total death toll increases at about the same rate, the current 67 deaths should reach about 5000 [this number was 500, I surmise, in the original publication of the article – HAW] (or twn [sic] percent of my estimated world total, which may also turn out to be low). [See correction & addendum at the end of this essay.]

And the addendum:

That estimate is ten times greater than the 500 number I erroneously put in the initial draft of the essay, and it, too, could prove somewhat optimistic. But any possible error rate in this revised projection should be kept in perspective. The current U.S. death toll stands at 592 as of noon on March 24, 2020, out of about 47,000 cases. So my adjusted figure, however tweaked, remains both far lower, and I believe far more accurate, than the common claim that there could be a million dead in the U.S. from well over 150 million coronavirus cases before the epidemic runs its course.

But I add that out of politeness only; I see little reason to take a lawyer’s estimate of an epidemiology problem’s effect over an expert in the field, at least not until the lawyer has built up some credit in the field.

But while looking over his paper – and, I confess, as he doesn’t seem to have bona fides, I lost interest and wandered off – it did occur to me that all of the curve graphs really need an enhancement, and maybe one of my readers has run across it. Let’s take this example:

First, get rid of the blue area.

Next, add in a line reflective of how the death rate will change as we run out of hospital beds. Maybe the rate goes from 1% to 3%, I dunno.

Now add in other occupants of those beds: critical car accident victims, gunshot victims, flu victims, severe asthma suffers, etc etc. See how those lines change as we suddenly run out of hospital beds.

I think it’s a mistake to graph the anticipated costs of COVID-19 in isolation, because hospital beds, while not being perfectly fungible, are, to some extent, interchangeable; the same holds true for medical personnel. We should put those graphs up, all estimates, of course, just to bring home to people who don’t want to take this too seriously, how themselves and their relatives becoming ill not only impacts other COVID-19 sufferers, but other patients who need a hospital bed.

Good graphs can mostly be improved. Here’s my favorite visual display of data ever.

Embodying Individualism’s Mindset, Ctd

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Concerning the Senate chamber’s denizens, a reader asks:

Are there enough GOP Senators out of chamber for the Democrats to ram some stuff through, if they can get it on the floor past McC?

Not that I’ve heard. My understanding is that the Senate is down five Republicans: Rand, Lee, Romney, Cruz, Gardner, and Scott. I see that’s six. That suggests the currently able to vote members are 47-45-2, with Pence casting any deciding votes necessary.

It makes me laugh to think of another Republican going down and suddenly Schumer is the Majority Leader, though. Maybe that’d require two. I think some forehead veins would be popping.

And then maybe a deliberate exposure of Democratic Senators to the virus by some rogue Republican staffer. Wow, this could get messy. Reminds me of the old brutal wars that wiped out chunks of the Roman Senate that Turchin related.