Memorial Day 

So this is from a couple of years ago – but it’s more important today than it was even then.  Memorial Day should remember those who served – but also remember those veterans we are losing in overwhelming numbers to the pandemic.  

I don’t remember growing up with any specific “Memorial Day” activities.  My parents were both veterans, unusual for the World War II, “Greatest” generation. Dad was a Warrant Officer, part of the Army finance operations.  My Mom, a British citizen (she never gave it up) was an agent of the Special Operations Executive.  

Memorial Day was many days during the year, with parties in the “living room,” bourbon, scotch, and whiskey in tumblers and cigarettes in the boxes on the table.  The conversation often turned to what they did during the war.  It allowed me to grow up with a special awareness of the impact of World War II; after all, I wouldn’t have been here without it.

My Mom and Dad met in London, a blind date at the Queen’s Brasserie restaurant. (As a child I wasn’t really sure what the Queen’s Brassiere was all about.) He was from Cincinnati, stationed in England waiting for the invasion. She was home in England, back from being behind enemy lines making preparations to invade.  According to them, they fell madly in love at the first dinner and walked the blacked out streets as the bombs fell.  

There wedding was scheduled for June 6, 1944.  In early March they were both notified that they would be unavailable for that date (it turned out to be D-Day) and the wedding was moved up to March 27^th.  Soon after, Dad went to a secure base outside of Southampton to wait, and Mom went back over to France to coordinate with the Maquis.

They both managed to survive the ordeal of the last year of the war.  They came home, back to Cincinnati, with drive and determination to start a family and make their life strong and successful.  Their friends did as well.  Art ended up serving in both World War II and Korea.  Buddy commanded segregated troops before the invasion.  Walter was a prisoner of war.  We grew up with their stories.  

It was never a question about honoring their service.  They knew they had saved the world from Fascism, and we recognized their sacrifices.  They had missing friends, the stories of those who didn’t come home.  My Mom’s fiancé (before my Dad) was one of those.

As I grew up in the throes of the Vietnam War (I was a couple of years too young to go) it was a difficult contrast:  the sacrifice my parents made to “save the world” versus the sacrifice my older friends were being asked to make in Southeast Asia.  And even a more challenging distinction:  being against the war without being against those who fought it.   Memorial Day was difficult.  America didn’t get that part right then, and we still owe those folks now.

Later, as a teacher and coach, I had the privilege and fear of watching many of my students go to serve.  They were in Lebanon when the barracks were bombed, Iraq when the scuds were launched; they served as special operators in Iraq and snipers in Afghanistan.  Today they serve on Navy ships, fly Air Force planes, drive Army tanks and proudly wear Marine dress blues.  They take the lessons of our classroom, and maybe more significantly, the family of our team; and use those early experiences to help keep our country safe.

So it’s Memorial Day.  Today, and most days, I think about the sacrifices of those who have passed, not just the Greatest Generation, but also my friends who served in more recent times.  As the rabid politics of our time cloud the field, there is still one thing that is clear:  remember and honor those who serve.  They’ve earned it.

My Friends 

This is an open letter from here in Central Ohio, to all of my “won’t wear a face mask,” “going to church this morning” friends.  There are a lot you:  I see you in the grocery store, at the restaurant for carryout last night (including the staff) and for sure at the hardware store.  Some of you are uncertain, but many are proudly proving that “you aren’t scared”.  And when I read social media, I hear you over and over again.  

There’s a litany of reasons. 

• “It is all a hoax,” says one far-out idea. 
• Many doctors say facemasks don’t help. 
• Most people who get the virus won’t have a problem, or at least they will survive.  
• And the final reason, more people will be hurt by the economic disaster than are by the virus.

All I can say to all of you is I truly hope you are right.  You better be.

Decision

You see, you’ve decided this for all of us.  The reason that we didn’t have the “curve” at the beginning, overwhelming our hospitals with thousands more, is that we shut down.  You could hear it on Broad street two hundred feet from my house.  On a normal morning, about six, there’s lots of traffic, people heading to work.  But in the shut down, six in the morning sounded like four in the morning.  There were only a few cars headed into town.

You could see it at the grocery store, where folks quickly got what they needed and got out.  And you could see it on the side streets, where the only traffic was the Amazon vans silently slipping in and out of driveways, providing “everything needed” for sheltering at home.

But that’s all done now.  When you wander around our small town, it’s getting right back to “normal”.  Traffic is back up on Broad street.  Folks are acting like “we won”.  And today the President has “ordered” that churches, synagogues and (he could hardly say it) mosques should be open.  It’s his first “national” command, and he probably doesn’t have the authority to do it.  But that doesn’t really matter; he’s told the country it’s OK.  OK to gather in groups, OK to sing together in a room, OK to share the Eucharist.  The President wants us back in our pews.

Science

In a progressively smaller voice, the leading epidemiologists have said:  the virus is still here.  We only stopped if by stopping transmission, but it hasn’t “gone away”.  If we go back to “normal” we will be right back in February and early March.  But that’s not what people want to hear, and it’s certainly not what the President wants us to do.  No, we’ve done “our duty” in March and April; we’ve made our “sacrifice”.  It’s time to get back to work, to life, to normal.   

Back to swimming pools and Little League, back to bars and restaurants.  Hell, Disney World is going to reopen soon.  But none of this is based on “science”; it’s all based on a whole lot of wishing and hoping and “what it should be”.  

Rights

I hope you’re right:  I hope all of this was a hoax.  Except for those 100,000 dead and probably a whole lot more.  We’ve been playing fast and loose with the numbers; figures make Presidents and Governors look bad. 100,000 or more are dead in less than three months.  And that was with all of the protections and protocols that we had in place.

I hope your right, that facemasks won’t make a difference.  Because even if they did, they won’t when you aren’t wearing them.  There are those who say, “Well, if you’re scared, wear it, but don’t make me wear one”.  But, of course, if they work at all, they work by preventing transmission, not reception.  Put simply, it keeps an infected person from spreading the virus, not a non-infected person from getting it.  One person with a facemask isn’t protected.  It’s all of the unknowingly infected people wearing them that prevent the spread.

And I, truly, hope you are right that religious places opening to actual services won’t spread the virus.  Because that is really an awful thought:  folks go to commune with their fellow man and God, only to be struck down by a virus they could have avoided.

Your Choice, Not Mine

I feel like a man driving back from work late on a Friday night.  You know that out there, on the roads, there are people driving home from the bar.  Some are far too drunk to drive, but they’ve made the choice to “make it home”.  They’ve chosen for themselves, but when they swerve into your lane, they’ve made that choice for you too.

So, my mask-less, church going friends, I hope you are right.  If you’re not, then we are going to go through so much more tragedy than we’ve already seen, and so many more are going to die needlessly.  But I know, it’s your rights.  And I know that you are so sure you’re right.

  Right?

Mr. Nix

As a rookie teacher, back in 1978, I was fortunate enough to have an outstanding Principal.   Mr. Pete Nix was an amazing role model:  strong, caring, an administrator who “had your back” but still held you accountable.  Pete taught me a lot, and let me “in” on what it was like to be the head of the high school in a small town.  And, as a proud product of Alabama, Pete had a whole textbook of sayings that summed up almost any situation.  As far as statistics were concerned, Pete would say, “…figures lie, and liars figure”.

I’ve always held that particular saying close.  As education, and many other parts of our computerized and digitized world changed, I keep remembering it.  Figures can be made to back any side, any view.   Numbers can be intimidating, and can seem unalterably correct.  But they often aren’t.

Politics and Numbers

Today, the death toll of COVID-19 crossed the 95,000 mark here in the United States.  We are, by far, the worst hit nation in the world, with more than a quarter of all cases, and all deaths.  But we also know that China, still only claiming 4,634 deaths, may well be doing some figuring, and some lying.  They want to look as if they had everything under control from the beginning.  It’s not even a matter of “fault”, but China clearly didn’t have much control over the virus.  What they did manage to control was the information flow.  We may never know how many died or are dying there.

Politics is driving many of the “numbers” about COVID-19 here in the United States.  Let’s get a couple of points clear. First, everyone wants the economy to “open up”.  The whole storyline damning the Democrats for wanting to keep the nation closed in order to win the November election is, well, Bull.  Democrats are the most likely folks most damaged by the economy being closed, of course they want it re-opened.  

What Democrats Want

But here’s the problem, Democrats are also likely to be the folks employed in the jobs that put them most at risk.  If you can stay home and work from the kitchen table or the couch, you have a lot of control over your risk of exposure to the virus.  But if you drive the city bus, or work at the restaurant, or stand on the line at the meat packing plant, you’ve got to go to work.  You are at risk.  The figures from New York show it, as the percentage of minority deaths soar far above their percentage of the population.  That’s no lie.

No, what Democrats want is the nation to open safely.  Republicans should want it too; after all, if the virus ignites and fills the hospitals, whatever economic (or political) gains from “opening” the economy will be lost.  And, for the President of the United States, facing an election based on his handling of this crisis, so will the election.  

Political Distancing

We have “social distancing” today, but the President has done a different kind of distancing.  He has distanced himself from responsibility for whatever happens in the next few months.  Instead of taking control of the situation on a national basis, as Presidents have done in past crises, Mr. Trump has pushed the “responsibility” to the Governors of the states.  

But once he gave them responsibility, he immediately began to use his “bully pulpit” to demand that they open up their states.  That pressure was inexorable:  since the Federal financial response for individual workers turned out to be pretty anemic, they need the jobs.  So the Governors are stuck:  keep the economy closed and control the virus, open up and risk explosive infection and overwhelmed hospitals.  As far as the President is concerned, opening the economy is “on him,” increases in infection are somebody else’s fault.

The Tests

The biggest failure of the Federal government has been testing.  And today we found out something else:  that while the Administration has absolutely increased testing, we now find that the different tests are all being agglomerated into one figure.

What does all that mean?  So there are two kinds of tests for COVID-19.  One is a viral test:  it detects whether you are suffering from the virus NOW.  It’s the test you need to have if you want to test workers at a plant, or students at a school.  You don’t care whether someone had the virus at one time or another; you want to know whether they are currently infected.

The other kind of test is the antibody test.  It detects if you have had the virus at some point in the past.  Perhaps someday, that will give us some information about whether you have some immunity to future infection, and for how long.  We don’t know the answer to that yet, but we need to hope there is some longer-term immunity.  That’s when the whole “herd immunity” idea kicks in, that if enough people are immune, than the virus won’t be able to be as infective.  Then we can isolate the higher risk folks, and let others go back to their lives.

Liars Figure

But if you are a Governor, trying to keep you finger on the pulse of infection in your state, you need the first test.  You need to know if current infections are increasing or not.  Whether folks had the virus in the past, is good information to know, but not directly useful in making immediate decisions for your state.  Sure, they can wait until hospital admissions go up; but that’s a fourteen-day lag.  By the time Governors have that data, it’s late.

The Centers for Disease Control has been taking the numbers from both tests and putting them together.  If Governors depend on those testing numbers to tell them what’s happening, the information from those combined tests doesn’t help.

After all of the political fuss over testing, it shouldn’t be a surprise that CDC is putting out figures that look like they’re testing a whole lot of people.  The President, and the Administration, after neglecting testing for months, turned and made it their biggest talking point.  The CDC needs to “please” their President, and bigger numbers are better.  Two sets of numbers, for each type of tests doesn’t sound as good.  The problem is, those combined numbers won’t help anyone make the difficult decision of  “opening the economy” or not.

Figures lie, and liars figure.

Democrats

So a Facebook friend of mine, of a very conservative and pro-birth persuasion, introduced me to a black woman named Candace Owen.  He posits Ms. Owen as a counter expert to many of the issues we argue about on Facebook, particularly race oriented ones generated from the essays I write here in Trump World.    

To use his words:  “She’s bright and articulate.  She leads a group called Blexit (black exit from the Democrat (sic) Party.”

So before I go any farther, I am going to take a point of privilege here.  I am a Democrat.  My political party is the DEMOCRATIC PARTY, not the Democrat Party.  We Democrats believe in the ideals of the Democratic Party.  There is no “Democrat Party” just as there is no “Republic Party”.  So let’s get past the petty “digs” before we move on.

Ms. Owen, by the way, and many of the Republic(an) members of the House do the same thing.  It must have been a Republic(an) talking point somewhere, but it just makes them sound stupid.  The Republic(an) thing makes me sound stupid too, so I’ll stop.

Our Shared History

Both Ms. Owen and my friend are fixated on the Democratic Party’s role in the Civil War and post-Civil War era.  It’s nothing to be proud of:  Democrats were definitely on the side of slavery, segregation, discrimination, and hate.  By the way, so were many Republicans, though our history has been re-written to say that there was no such thing as discrimination and hate in the North.  Winners get to write the story.  But, common sense tells us that it’s not true:  there are many things done in the past that shame members of both political parties.

But in more recent times, it has been the Democratic Party that has led the movement towards greater Civil Rights.  It was Democratic Presidents, Truman with the desegregation of the military, and Kennedy and Johnson with the passage of the civil rights act of 1964 and the voting rights act of 1965, leading the way.  In fact, the reason why the South has been a solidly Republican voting block since Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, is that many Democrats in the South switched parties when the Democratic Party pushed through desegregation and greater civil rights.  Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, and Trent Lott in the past, and Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana today all started as Democrats, and ended up Republicans.

Racism Today

Ms. Owen, and my friend, both seem to think that racism and white nationalism in the United States aren’t really issues, but are merely “talking-points” for the Democratic Party.   But on a national achievement test given to eighth graders, white students scored 26 points higher, on average, than black students.  Those numbers aren’t much different north or south, Democrat or Republican.  

In the United States the average white family makes $89,632, the average black family $58,985.  Prior to our current COVID-19 disaster, white unemployment was 3%, black unemployment was almost twice that at 5.7%.  

Racism isn’t just an economic phenomenon.  37% of the male population in US prisons is black, while they only represent 12% of the US population.  And of course, there is the ongoing struggle of black people to be treated fairly by various institutions and government entities from education to justice to employment. 

These aren’t Democratic or Republican problems; they are national problems.  The difference in the political parties seems to be that the Democratic Party is interested in closing these gaps, while the Republican Party seems more interested in ignoring them, and focusing on creating greater profit for investors and businesses.  The Republicans are fixated on the old Ronald Reagan trope:  that economic growth at the top will “trickle down” to the bottom.  It hasn’t worked in the thirty-two years since Mr. Reagan left office, but the Republicans are still trying.

Abortion

Oh, and because my pro-birth friend is so definitely fixed on that topic:  yes, there is a much higher rate of abortions in states like New York and Illinois and California.  These are states, controlled by Democrats, who believe women should have a choice about their own bodies.  And yes there are fewer abortions in those states where access has been restricted and more intrusive tests and procedures are mandated.  

In Missouri for example, there is only one clinic available where a woman can even access an abortion.  Those states happen to be states controlled by Republicans.  But to manipulate those “statistics” to claim that Democrats are racists by allowing abortion is just distorting the facts.  The question isn’t about the woman’s race; it’s about the right of that woman to choose.

My friend and I have a fundamental disagreement on this issue, so much so that there is no room for discussion.  And he, like many pro-birth Republicans, is willing to accept all of Donald Trump’s immorality and dereliction of duty, to get one more Supreme Court Justice to overturn Roe v Wade.  

Ms. Owen

So yes, my friend, I really did listen to Ms. Owen’s testimony to Congress.  I have tried to respond to what she asserted, rather than proved.  I did not find her “facts” valid or persuasive.  But I do want you to know, I listened, and while we will continue to disagree, I hope we can also continue to dialog.  Rather than closing doors and hiding behind  ideologies, Americans need to talk.

Smoking Gun

The pivotal evidence in the Republican investigation of the end days of Barack Obama’s Presidency was declassified yesterday.  “Obamagate” they call it.  It’s the “catchphrase” that Trump 2020 campaign and Republican Senator Ron Johnson hopes will match the “Hillary Emails” of 2016 MAGA rally fame. Trump and his fellow travellers tried to build this case of “Deep State Conspiracy” in 2018, now they are back again, just in time for the 2020 election.

Susan Rice was the National Security Advisor to President Obama in those waning days of his term in office.  She wrote a “memo to self” on Inauguration Day, memorializing the national security discussions of the last few weeks.  The national security team, including Obama, Rice, Vice President Biden and FBI Director Jim Comey, were aware of the FBI investigation into the Trump Campaign, titled Crossfire Hurricane.  They were briefed that Russian intelligence had multiple interactions with Trump campaign operatives.  And they knew that it was Russian Intelligence that broke into the Democratic National Committee computers and stole the emails that were dripped out in the last few months of the 2016 election.

Flynn

And now, they had transcripts of Trump’s top national security expert, former Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, discussing foreign policy with the Russian Ambassador, Sergei Kislyak.  They knew that Flynn had asked the Russians not to respond to the Obama Administration actions in response to the Russian hacking, implying that Trump would withdraw the penalties.  Flynn, as former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, knew that Kislyak’s phone was tapped, but had the conversations anyway.  And they also knew that Flynn himself had connections to the Russian and Turkish governments as well.

The Memo

So what did these “nefarious” Democrats do?  Donald Trump has literally accused them of treason, and now, with the release of this email, we have the evidence.  Here’s what Susan Rice “memoed to self” (Fox).

• After a January 5^th Intelligence Community leadership meeting on Russian hacking, there was a brief follow-on conversation.  The President, the Vice President, Rice, Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates were present.
• President Obama began by committing that every aspect be handled “by the book”, and that he was not instructing or initiating anything from law enforcement.
• From a National Security perspective, the President wanted to be sure that as they engaged with the incoming team, that “…we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reasons that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia”.
• Comey affirmed that he is proceeding “by the book” as it relates to law enforcement.
• The FBI Director did have concerns about Flynn who was speaking frequently with Kislyak.  Comey was concerned that Flynn might potentially share sensitive information.  Obama asked if the NCS (National Security Council) should withhold sensitive information from Flynn.  Comey replied, “potentially”.
• Comey added that Flynn had not passed classified information to Kislyak so far, just that that the “level of communication is unusual”.
• Obama asked Comey to inform him of any changes that might effect sharing classified information with the incoming team.
• Comey said he would.

Pop Gun

That’s it – the smoking gun.  Obama, Biden, Rice, Comey and Yates sat around and discussed withholding information from a potential leak to Russian intelligence.  They agreed to “go by the book” and share with the “incoming team” but be aware of any changes that might effect that sharing.

So let’s get this straight.  As Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz found twice, the FBI investigation into the Trump Campaign was “properly predicated”, despite later issues with the Carter Page FISA warrant.  That means it had legitimate reasons to begin.  We now know from the Mueller Report, that there were literally hundreds of contacts between Trump campaign personnel and Russian intelligence.  We also know from the Senate Intelligence Committee Report, that the intelligence community was right.  Russia was playing a significant role in the 2016 campaign, weighing-in to favor Trump.  

We know that Flynn was in consistent communication with the Russian Ambassador.  And we now know that while Flynn was advising Trump, and designated as the incoming National Security Advisor, he was on the payroll of the Turkish government.

Duty

So the President and his close national security team were concerned about Russian influence on the incoming Presidential team.  And they talked about it.  Isn’t that what the President and his team should do?  They were aware of Flynn’s actions, so much so that President Obama warned President-elect Trump about it.  Shouldn’t these folks have acted to protect American interests?  Wasn’t that their job?

If this is “Obamagate”, Trump’s definition of treason and the “Deep State Conspiracy” that Trump 2020 will ride to re-election:  they ain’t got – well – nothing.

Trump might try to turn this into another “lock him up” moment in a rally, but the reality is they should be chanting “Thank You” to Obama and his team for doing their duty for America.

Navajo Nation

The Navajo Nation is the largest Native American reservation in the United States.  It spans over 24,000 square miles across New Mexico, Arizona and Utah, an area larger than West Virginia.  More than 170,000 Navajo live spread out on the high plains and plateaus. 

The Navajo, unlike their neighbors the Hopi and Zuni tribes, often live in isolated homes, tending to herds of sheep and goats.  The sheep provide the wool for their best-known product, the Navajo blankets and rugs.  There are small towns scattered throughout the reservation, but it’s not unusual for tribal members to live hundreds of miles to the nearest urban area.

The Navajo Nation is one of the poorest sections of the United States.  The average annual family income is around $27,000.  Forty percent don’t have electricity, and thirty percent of the homes lack running water or plumbing.  The low incomes and lack of access to medical care means that many suffer from chronic diseases, including diabetes and heart conditions.  

The Diné

The Diné (the people) maintain Navajo traditions through elders, who pass on the history and culture to younger tribal members.  While more than half of the 350,000 Navajo tribal members live off of the reservation, it is the elders living there that keep Navajo life alive.

Life on the reservation today includes trips into “town” to get supplies, particularly water.  And, like many Native American tribes in the United States, alcoholism is a very significant public health concern.  All of this comes together in Gallup, New Mexico, a city of 22,000 just outside the southern border of the Navajo Nation.  Gallup is on a major intersection, where the main east-west route Interstate 40 and north-south route US 491 (previously US 666) cross.  

There are two hospitals located in Gallup, the Rehoboth McKinley Christian Medical Center and the Gallup Indian Medical Center.  There are sixty beds in the hospital, and eight intensive care units.

COVID 19

Gallup seems a long way from the corona-virus crisis.  But I-40 crosses America, from California to North Carolina, and the virus found its way into the town.  As in many other towns in America, the stores, bars, and jails served as hot spots to transmit the virus.  One particular transmission site in Gallup was the self-service water fill-up, where change from the machine passed the virus.  Today, 4071 have COVID-19 on the reservation, and 142 have died.  This week, the Navajo Nation passed New Jersey and New York with the highest per person infection rate.

COVID-19 represents a particular threat to the Navajo.  Not only are medical facilities scarce but also the pre-existing conditions that contribute to the seriousness of infection are present, particularly among the elders of the tribe.  In short, COVID represents not only a threat to people, it poses a threat to the Navajo culture itself.  If it kills the elders, it kills the repository of tribal history and tradition.

Epidemics are not new to the Navajo.  The flu epidemic of 1918-19 killed thousands, and more recently in 1993 the hanta-virus carried by deer mice had a 50% mortality rate.  But COVID-19 has the potential to cause even greater damage. 

The primary health care available in the Navajo Nation is the Indian Health Service, a department of the US Department of Health and Human Services, but their services are spread thin across the wide-ranging reservation.  Some help from other parts of the United States has arrived, including a team of twenty-one doctors and nurses from the University of California-San Francisco.

Doctors without Borders

Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) is the legendary medical team that goes where no one else dares.  They bring medical care to seventy-four different areas of the world, including war zones like Syria, Somalia and Yemen.  MSF often is the only medical care available in war torn and impoverished areas.  They arrive in a crisis, whether it’s the Haitian earthquake, or the war in Afghanistan. 

Their medical personnel risk their own lives in order to help others.  

The American southwest is not a war zone, and few think of the United States as a land of poverty.  But Medicins Sans Frontieres put teams into the Navajo Nation in the past few weeks.  They are familiar with these conditions:  lack of electricity and water, scattered medical services, poverty and difficulty tracking disease and patients.  

They went there for the same reasons they have risked (and lost) their lives all over the world.  To provide a last-chance at medical care, where little or none is available.  As Americans feud among ourselves about whether to “open up” the American economy again versus controlling the virus, it’s easy to overlook what’s happening in the poorer corners of our nation.  So poor, that MSF, dedicated to providing medical care to the poorest and most conflicted, has landed:  here in the United States.

The Apprentice

There’s a reason that The Apprentice, Donald Trump’s successful reality television show, ran for fourteen seasons.  He found a formula that worked, and he repeated it over and over again.  There’s nothing wrong with that, it how success usually works in America.  And when the show started to get a little stale, The Celebrity Apprentice was mixed in.  New, known faces were battling for the “right” to hear the famous line, “You’re Fired!!”

So we shouldn’t be surprised that the Trump 2020 Campaign is using the 2016 playbook to try to win victory.  In 2016 they achieved an improbable win; for those poker players out there they drew to an “inside straight”.  They lost the popular vote by millions of votes, but were able to squeak out a narrow victory in the Electoral College.  We all know the “mantra:” Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and the Trump margins:  Wisconsin 22,748, Michigan 10,704, and Pennsylvania 44,292.  It takes 270 votes to win the Electoral College, Trump earned 278 to Clinton’s 260.  I wrote about these figures in one of the first essays here on Trump World, 77744.

Gy-Nah

Peter Navarro is President Trump’s chief economic advisor.  Navarro has been an “outlier” in American economic thinkers for years, favoring an isolationist and protectionist view reminiscent of 1920’s thought.  He wrote a book in 2011, Death by China, which endeared him to the Trump Campaign.  We all remember the 2016 campaign, and Trump’s continual attacks on China (he pronounced it GY-NAH rhyming with VAGINA).

One of the main strategies of Trump 2020 is to change the conversation.  COVID-19 is not a winning argument for them, the growing death total, nearing 100,000 is unsupportable.  So in typical American political fashion, it’s time to pivot, to change the subject from something Trump can do little about, the virus, to somewhere where he feels he has better credentials, the economy.  So it was no surprise that Peter Navarro was the main spokesman for the Administration this weekend.  He appeared on several of the major news shows on Sunday, including This Week with George Stephanopoulos and Meet the Press.

He spent a lot of interview time dodging questions about the Administration’s response to the crisis.  “I don’t have time to look in the rear-view mirror” was a typical response to questions about past actions.  And in answering questions about whistleblower Dr. Richard Bright’s accusations of Administration neglect of the impending crisis in January and February, Navarro essentially accused the doctor of “desertion under fire” by refusing to accept a demotion and transfer.

Political Equation

Navarro’s message on the virus was clear.  It wasn’t the President’s fault:  the Centers for Disease Control screwed up the tests at the beginning, and besides, it’s no longer COVID-19 or even the Corona-Virus.  No, Navarro has a new name for our current plague:  THE CHINA VIRUS.  Navarro intoned that they started it, lost control of it, and maybe (underscore probably), attacked us with it.  This is step one in Trump 2020’s move to shift blame away from the Administration, and onto someone, anyone else.  And Navarro is the perfect anti-China guy to do it.

So step one:  it’s China’s fault.  Step two is to link Trump’s opponent, Joe Biden, to China.  And it’s not enough to just claim, true or not, that Biden through his Vice Presidency with the Obama Administration, was “soft” on China.  Navarro tried to make a stronger connection, falling back to the ongoing falsehood that Joe’s son, Hunter, made billions of dollars in what must have been illicit deals in China.  The equation they are reaching for:  it’s China’s virus, Biden liked China, his son made money in China:  Biden equals China.

Obamagate

Navarro wasn’t done though.  He went on to put forth the newest Trump 2020 strategy:  that in the weeks between the November 2016 election and January 2017 inauguration, the Obama Administration tried to plant the seeds of Trump’s destruction.  They hypothesize that it was Obama, and of course Biden, who encouraged the Russia investigation by the FBI (even though it was opened in August, far before the election). As their “proof” they are using the supposed “perjury trap” of then National Security Advisor Michael Flynn by FBI agents.  Flynn admittedly lied to the agents about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Kislyak, but now Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr is trying to drop the charges. 

Trump 2020 has a new “catch-phrase”, Obamagate.  But it’s not the former President they’re after, it’s the former Vice President, Joe Biden.  The Trump campaign is trying to put Biden in the same position Hillary Clinton was with her emails.  They are “painting” Biden as corrupt, lowering him to their own standards of behavior.  Then, like they did in 2016, they can say that there is no moral difference between Trump and Biden.  

They can even use their favorite chant at the rallies:  “Lock Him Up!!!”

No Knock Warrants

A “no knock warrant” is a document, issued by a judge, granting authorities the right to enter a home, office, or other establishment without asking permission, and without announcing themselves.  For those TV watchers, the Chicago PD show has at least several examples of “no knock warrants” a week.  It’s when they bring out the massive steel “post pounder” and smash in the door, guns drawn, yelling “Chicago PD!!!”

The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States affirms in part that, “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”.  Generally the only “allowable excuse” for using deadly force is to protect someone’s life.  The law requires that someone retreat rather than use that force.  Some states have modified that interpretation by creating the “castle doctrine”.  The “castle doctrine” makes the assumption that if someone has come into your home, your “castle”, you have the absolute right to defend it, even with deadly force.

And finally there is a “new” interpretation of the use of deadly force in many states, the “stand your ground” rule.  This basically takes the “castle doctrine” right to defend, and applies it to any situation.  “Stand your ground,” states that if you are threatened anywhere you have the right to “stand your ground” with deadly force, and have no obligation to retreat.

A World of Guns

In our modern society, the Second Amendment to the Constitution creates a clear danger.  The nation of 1791, when the Bill of Rights was adopted, had relatively small urban areas, and vast tracts of rural farms and wilderness.  The population of four million was spread out across the new nation.  Only five percent lived in “urban” areas.  Communications was slow, and the threat on the frontier was real.  The ability of the government to protect folks was severely limited:  those settlers had to have a way to protect themselves.  It made sense that they would have weapons, and organize into small “cells” of militia.

The stark contrast to our present society couldn’t be clearer.  We are a nation of three hundred and twenty million.  Seventy-nine percent of our residents describe their neighborhood as urban or suburban, only twenty-one percent live in a rural setting.  In 1791, when a citizen fired a gun, there probably wasn’t anyone around to hear.  In 2020, when a nearby neighbor fired a shotgun, the pellets bounced off of several houses.

But today’s essay isn’t about the flaws in the Second Amendment. 

Castle Doctrine 

 All of these legal “rights” create a clear conflict:  the authorities can break into a home without permission, and the residents have the legal option to defend themselves.  In many states, Kentucky for example, citizens can “shoot first, and ask questions later”.

Breonna Taylor, a twenty-six year old EMT, was asleep in her apartment with her boyfriend when the Louisville Police Department came through the front door executing a drug warrant.  Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, used his legal weapon to fire at what he thought were “home invaders”.  Walker shot a police officer, and the police fired at least twenty rounds in return.  Walker was unhurt, but Taylor was shot at least eight times in the melee.  She died at the scene.  The police officer was shot in the leg.

It happened at one in the morning on March 13, just as the COVID-19 crisis was breaking.  It’s taken two months for the shootings to percolate up above the COVID news.  Walker remains in jail under attempted murder charges.

Stand Your Ground

It was even earlier, in February that Ahmaud Arbery, a twenty-six year old black man, was jogging through a suburban neighborhood of Brunswick, Georgia.  We now know that Arbery had stopped his run to look into a house under construction, perhaps looking for water, then continued down the road.  The owner of the house was alerted to Arbery by motion sensing cameras, and called a neighbor, Gregory McMichael, a former police officer.  McMichael and his son, Travis, armed themselves and jumped into their pickup truck.  

They drove up to Arbery.  While what was said is unclear, but video of the event shows that Travis, shotgun in hand, confronted Arbery.  Gregory stood in the bed of the truck, seemingly “covering” Travis.  Arbery grabbed for the gun, and was shot and killed on the street.  

The McMichael’s claim they were trying to execute a “citizen’s arrest”.  They also invoke Georgia’s “stand your ground” law, stating that when Arbery went for the shotgun, Travis had the “right” to stand his ground and shoot him.

Black Lives

The fact that both Arbery and Taylor were black is important.  And the fact that both of these cases were buried for months under the weight of COVID-19 makes it worse.  The question many are asking, particularly in the Arbery case, is would this have happened had they been white rather than black.  

A black man defends himself against seeming home invaders.  In that few seconds in the middle of the night, he did exactly what gun rights activists say he should do:  he used his weapon to defend his “castle”.  The result is he is in jail, and his girlfriend, who did not have a gun, is dead.

A black man is running through a neighborhood.  Two white men determine they were going to “enforce” the law, and the result is a black man dead on the street.  The white men stand on their right to “stand their ground”.  

Whatever your “stand” on the Second Amendment, we clearly have a conflict of rights and privileges today.  People on “both sides” can act in ways they think are justified.  But the result of these actions is that two black people are dead.  Perhaps we need to resolve the conflicts in law, but we absolutely need to deal with the ongoing reality:  black people don’t have the “rights”, white people do.

Our World

We are not in a perfect world.  Our world today, with the dark shadow of COVID-19 hanging over everything, is far, far from perfect.  And worse than that, COVID-19 is deceptive.  If there were a hazardous fog, like a chlorine gas leak, we would know what to do.  Or if thick smoke from a nearby fire, or volcanic ash was falling, we would understand.  But it’s not the air, or the earth, that’s threatening.  It’s us.

Humans are the threat. But how big a threat are we?  It’s like that old Amway pitch, circles connecting to circles.  We have our own circle, our immediate household.  But someone has to go to the grocery store, and, unfortunately some have to go to work.  So they create all new circles, circles that include people they don’t even know.  And they bring all the possible infections of all those people back into their own immediate circle.

And who knows who’s infected?  In fact, you may not know that you are infected yourself.  Does someone in your circle have a cold, the flu, a bad hangover?  Or is it COVID-19, and you are now in the fourteen-day incubation window?  And that’s the whole point of wearing protection, facemasks and such, in public.  No one, including yourself, knows.

What We Did

In a perfect world – we would have tested people coming into the country last December. A corona-virus team would have met folks at the airports, identified the infected, and traced all of their contacts.  Blame whoever you want, but we didn’t do that.

In a somewhat less perfect world, we would have done what we did – sheltered in place.  We would have done that to “flatten the curve” in order to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed with COVID patients.  And we did that, in a piecemeal kind of way.  During that time we would have made sure we had all of the equipment, from PPE to ventilators, available.  And again, in a clunky way, we’ve managed to do that as well.

While everyone was at home, we needed to find a way to keep people supported financially.  The $1200 handed out by the Federal government was too little, and for many, too late or not at all.  So for the four to six weeks we “flattened” we also created an enormous economic pressure to get “back out”.  So that didn’t work out very well.

Where We Are

So here we are – under pressure (Bowie song – insert here) and we are opening.  The problem is, while we flattened the curve, we didn’t end the disease.  It’s still out there, just as much as it was in March, and the curve is perfectly capable of spiking again.  So we need to take precautions:  social distance, masks (yes, for you for me, and vice versa) and we need to realize that things ARE NOT BACK TO NORMAL.

And we need to test, and trace, and do the public health things to control the disease.  Those things that we could have done in December and January, but failed to do.  And we need to create a financial safety net for folks who get infected, so they can say to their family and their employers, “I’m not working so I don’t infect others, and we won’t suffer financially”.  Any other alternative puts infected folks out in the work force – something that is unacceptable for ANY disease, much less one as infectious as this one. 

Where We’ll Be

So what if we just ignore all of that, and “go back” to the good old days, two months ago?  COVID-19 doesn’t have a political agenda; it doesn’t favor Biden over Trump.  The virus knows one thing:  how to spread.  So if we don’t do the right thing now, the virus will do its thing.  It will infect many, many more people, and by our own actions we will kill some of them.

And we will be forced to close again, but this time it won’t be as easy.  Before all of this, 40% of Americans couldn’t afford a $400 expense.  While I can’t find a statistic to point you to, I think we can all agree that the percentage is much higher now.  And there seems to be no appetite among some of our leaders to fix the financial problems that face average Americans.  It’s all about “getting open” and “going back to work”.  So the second time, when the Governors (certainly not the President) say, “stay home,” there’s going to be Hell to pay.  

We are making American workers face an impossible choice.  They can work, support their families, and face disease.  Or they can stay home, keep their circle safe and healthy, and face poverty.  

And that’s not a perfect world at all.

A Five-Dollar Word

There is an old Mark Twain saying – never use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent one will do.  I am a believer in that. As an old educator, I’ve sat through far too many conferences when the teachers all used university class “education-ese” to parents and students who, through no fault of their own, just didn’t get it.  

But there is one five-dollar word I love because it’s so descriptive.  It’s the title of this essay:  OBFUSCATION!!  When I used it in an eighth grade class, all of the boys tittered – thinking it was one of “those” words, just because it ends in “ion”.  But it isn’t. Webster defines it as: “to make obscure, throw into shadow”.   Today’s essay has a lesson, and it’s not the definition of obfuscation (there will be no quiz at the end).  It’s about the use of obfuscation as a political tactic and strategy. 

Distracting from Death

It is clear what the crisis in America is today, and it’s not a lack of spelling words.  I’m afraid we are becoming comfortable with 2000 people a day dying from the COVID-19 virus.  The death toll appears nightly on the television screen, much as the “butcher’s bill” of Vietnam appeared in my childhood.  Each night, we see more and more Americans succumbing to the illness.  We hear of those we know, and some we loved, lost to the pandemic.  But it seems to have stopped having the impact it had in those first few weeks, as if the today’s dead aren’t quite as important as those early victims.  

We were over 85,000 dead this morning.  If you’re the sitting President of the United States, intent on winning re-election in less than six months, it’s important to get America’s mind off of death.  We may all want to “open up” and go back to work, but the President NEEDS us to go back to work.  He needs chicken breasts in the supermarket, he needs restaurants open, and he needs the economy moving again.  And he knows that Americans aren’t willing to risk death to do it.  So he has determined to make those deaths “obscure, thrown into the shadow”.  

How can he possibly do that?  What could he possibly say to distract us from death?

Whose Facts

Well, the first thing he can do is get us to question the numbers.  You can see it on social media over and over, from arguments about diagnosis to questions about Medicare reimbursement (“they’ll pay more if it’s Corona-Virus” states one).  And they’ll try to make the death toll statistically insignificant, as if the tiny fraction of Americans dying isn’t really important.  But, of course, it is.  If the 2753 lost on 9-11 are important, if the 58,220 Americans who died in Vietnam are important, then surely our current nightly toll today is.  It’s almost a 9-11 a day.

The second thing is to make the experts, “wrong”.  Sure the President himself says nice things about Dr. Fauci, but his minions, from his son to the talking heads on Fox News, all are attacking him.  And that’s not close to what the “Internet” is doing.  Video after video of obscure “experts” saying that Fauci has got it all wrong appears.  They question his science, his career, and his motivation (they say he’s in league with that arch-villain, Bill Gates). 

So, to paraphrase the words of Donald Trump, don’t believe what you hear or read, believe what I say. 

The President can’t focus on death or fighting the virus. It’s not that he doesn’t know; he can’t have HIS America in mourning.  If it is, then his chances for re-election are non-existent.

Change the Subject

Another word that goes along with obfuscation is distraction (though with nowhere near the value, maybe only worth two dollars).  Lets talk about “Obamagate” whatever the Hell that is.  Let’s makeup an entire conspiracy, led by the now openly critical former President and the 2020 Democratic candidate, Mr. Biden.  Let’s accuse them of treason, even though there is no legal way to commit that crime outside of war.   And if that doesn’t distract you enough, then add in the Attorney General using his power to “pardon” Trump’s allies from their crimes and sentences.  Mike Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Roger Stone:  Trump won’t have to take the “heat” for actually pardoning them.  Bill Barr will abuse his authority as America’s chief law enforcement officer to take care of that light work.

It’s all to distract, to throw into shadow.  Perhaps the Trump campaign thinks we will miss what’s really happening in America.  At least that what they hope: that their obfuscation will be sufficient to cloud our vision, and get him re-elected.

Maybe the eighth grade boys are right.   Maybe obfuscation is a dirty word.

 

Sunshine

Looking out my window this morning, it’s a beautiful day.  We had a frost warning last night, it one of those May’s that I hated as a track coach.  But hopefully last night was the last cold night, it’s going up to the sixties today and the seventies later this week.  Maybe April is done now that we’ve reached the middle of May.

Funny that somehow “stay at home” isn’t stay “indoors”.  It’s not the outside air that’s a risk, nor the cool green grass.  It’s people that represent a danger, and it’s me that represents a risk to them.  That concept is so much harder than just “hide inside”.

Empty Schools

May is always a busy month in public education.  Kids are finishing up school, teams are finishing up the season, and seniors are graduating.  But it’s a very different world this year.  Kids are still finishing up school, but it’s a cold distant school, reached through a screen and a keyboard.  No one is getting hugs on the last day, pitching notebooks into the school trash on the way out the door.  It’s just a final sign-off, a last Zoom or video.  

I’m not coaching, but if I were this would be an awful, empty year.  Staying close to home I don’t notice it that much, but when I got out, drove by the high school track, I felt the ache of loss that those kids are feeling.  It’s gone, something that can never be made up.  As a coach I always stopped the kids from talking about “next year”.  I’d tell them:  “…There’s no guarantee of next year, no contract with the future that your body and your plans will come true.  Don’t depend on that; go for your goals now”.  I never thought about this scenario though, not for a whole team, a whole class, a whole world.

Here in Pataskala, the adults are doing their best to make graduation something special. There is no way to replace the camaraderie, sitting by your friends through the ritual of the ceremony. This year, they can’t sit by their friends. Some schools fixed on “crossing the stage”, the line used by administrators to push marginal seniors to graduate. But crossing an empty stage, in an empty room, and picking up a loan diploma seems to only emphasize all that’s missing.

New Rituals

But here, the school leaders have taken a different approach.  Graduation day is Saturday May 23^rd.  Thirty school buses will head out, each with a driver, an administrator, and a parade of teachers’ cars behind it.  A bus will go to each of the three hundred senior’s homes and pull up.  The administrator will come out and award a diploma to the appropriately capped and gowned student.  Family, masked and distanced, will get the chance to watch.  Pictures will be taken beside the bus.  As one parent described it, “…we put a kindergartner on a bus in front of our house thirteen years ago, now the bus delivers our graduate back to us”.

The emphasis is on the graduate, not the empty room and stage.  There was some controversy when this was first announced, along with the final statement that there wouldn’t be a traditional graduation.  Some folks lashed out on social media, attacking the school leaders for “letting the kids down”.  But once that first wave of frustration washed through, most of the community got behind the plan.  

The Finish Line

The seniors picked up their caps and gowns at the high school; spaced carefully to keep from any unacceptable gathering.  The Cross Country coaches, good friends of mine, arranged for a special tribute.  A new finish line “arch” was specially ordered.  It’s large enough to drive through, and the seniors literally got to cruise through “the finish” of their high school career.

Twenty-two years from now, will the then-forty year old graduates look back with regrets at the ceremonies they missed?  Of course they will.  But will they also look back at a school and a community that did everything they could to make their “finish” special and unique?  I think so.  

Our COVID world is one full of “no’s”.  NO graduation, NO Fourth of July fireworks, NO swimming pools in the summer, NO concerts or ballgames or track meets.  In our world of “NO”, it’s good that some are making it better; making it special even if it’s very different.  Here in Pataskala, there is at least one “yes”.  The bus will pull up out front, and three hundred kids will graduate, one-by-one.  That’s a big “YES” for them.

Mission Accomplished

It was May 1^st, 2003.  President George W. Bush, a veteran jet pilot in the Vietnam era Air National Guard, landed in an anti-submarine aircraft on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln.  He wasn’t piloting, but he was in a flight suit.  It was scene reminiscent of the 1996 film Independence Day, when that President flew a fighter aircraft attacking the alien invaders.  The cameras “ate up” President Bush, surrounded by flight crews, a natural presence in the military world after 9-11.

Bush later gave a speech about the success of American operations in Iraq.  A banner flew from the bridge of the Lincoln, “Mission Accomplished”.  However, the war in Iraq, the mission supposedly accomplished, would last for another seven years.  Bush never lived down the moniker of “Mission Accomplished” for a war that seemed to have no end.

President Trump gave another public press conference yesterday.  The President, whose attitude against testing for the COVID-19 virus delayed action for months, now surrounded himself with the latest testing equipment.  He lauded the fact that the United States now had tested more people than any nation in the world, perhaps even many of them combined.  Banners were mounted on the White House, “US Number One in Testing”.

The Buck Stops There

Harry Truman had a sign too:  “the buck stops here”.  Donald Trump, in this most important crisis of his Presidency, has spent much time and effort making sure that “the buck” stops almost anywhere else, mostly with the state Governors.  He hid behind a façade of  “Federalism” to avoid demanding that states “close” their economies and “shelter in place”.  It was up to governors to decide.  Some closed their states, Republican and Democrats alike. Ohio, Michigan, Massachusetts, Maryland, Illinois and New York, California and Washington are examples of that. And it was other governors, in Florida and Georgia, Texas and South Dakota, who placed their states in greater jeopardy by refusing to take a stand.

Transition to Greatness

But the one person who dodged “the buck” was Donald Trump.  And it is Donald Trump who now is pressing the “good” governors of both parties, to open their states, ready or not.  Trump didn’t want to close anything, and he won’t “order” anything opened either.  But he’ll make sure the “COVID protestors” feel supported, and he’s pressing business to open.  He claims we are making a “transition to greatness” in reference to his old MAGA slogan, and demands that it’s time to open up.  In reality, the phrase “It’s the economy stupid” is the mantra of the Trump Campaign:  if he can’t make the economy trend upward by Labor Day, he doesn’t think he can be re-elected.  HE needs the economy to re-open, virus ready or not.

To force a re-opening, he’s only supporting plans to finance Americans who are working.  They “one-time IRS payment” of $1200 is long spent by those who lost their jobs.  It’s absolutely a class divide:  if you have the “right” jobs, you can stay at home and work safely from the couch in the living room.  If you have the “essential” jobs, you go out in the world and risk contact with the virus.  And if you have a job where you are at risk, and don’t want to get sick, then you choose:  got to work and get sick, or stay home without pay. 

And for the over 33 million Americans who’ve lost their jobs, the President’s payroll tax cut won’t do them a damn bit of good.  To point out the obvious, payroll tax cuts only help those on a payroll.  Trump is saying to workers the same thing he said to the meat packers:  take the risk and keep your job, don’t take the risk and starve.  

We Have Prevailed

“We Have Prevailed”:  Trump in the press conference floated his newest campaign slogan.  Don’t be surprised to see it echoed over and over in social media,  “We Have Prevailed” over the corona-virus, and “we have prevailed” over those who know that opening the economy will create an unacceptable loss of life.  Even the so-called Presidential plan to re-open has been thrown out the window.  There isn’t a state, even New York; that has achieved the fourteen-day decline in infection rates.  But every one is opening anyway.  The Presidential led pressure is too much.

This press conference, on the heels of the news of high-level White House infections, may be Trump’s “Mission Accomplished”.  It will certainly be the fodder for Biden campaign ads, “We Have Prevailed” backed up by increasing death tolls due to increasing social interaction.  Or maybe it will be more blunt:  “we have prevailed” in killing many more Americans.

All sacrificed so a President can get re-elected.

 

A Polarized Nation

So in my last week of substitute teaching, I have the privilege of presenting the American Civil War.  There is nothing in our history that tested the strength of our commitment to the concept of nationhood, of a Union, and of democracy.  

It began in frustration, as all of the political “tools” of our Republic led to dead ends.  There seemed to be no path to resolution as the Nation was polarized beyond reconciliation.  Every compromise, every agreement was made then broken:  neither side was willing to commit to a mutual solution.  Some even went so far as to propose a war with another power, France, as a “distraction” they could all unite behind.  That didn’t work either.

Civil War

It became almost a joyful release to start the war.  The nation, both sides; rushed to join “in the fun” of dramatic battle.  Soon they discovered the truth of war:  that people die in horrible ways.  The first battle at Bull Run was more two mobs than two armies, and America realized that it would take so much more time and sacrifice then they ever anticipated.

The years of the Civil War served as a revelation of horrors, posing the question:  how much can the people stand.  After the pause to train, there was the growing casualties, the “butcher’s bill” as General Grant would call it.  First there were the small actions, then larger battles around Richmond.  In the spring of the 1862, there was the horror of Shiloh in Tennessee, as thousands died on the grounds around a small church near the woods.

The cost would grow higher.  While Shiloh was bad, 13,000 killed, wounded or missing, the fall of 1862 would be much worse.  In one day in Sharpsburg, Maryland by the Antietam Creek, almost 23,000 were lost.  It seemed like the bottom, the worst. There couldn’t possibly be greater suffering.

Democracy Maintained

But of course, there was.  Only nine months later the same armies met again at a crossroads town in Pennsylvania, Gettysburg.  46,000 were killed wounded, or missing there in three days. And while that should have been the end, it wasn’t.  It would be two more years. The Virginia Overland Campaign of the summer of 1864 cost almost 55,000 casualties.  And the war would grind on.  It would be ten months even more after that until the war would finally end.

In the middle of that last year, the states remaining in the Union held a Presidential election.  The Army, spread far across the rebellious South, was still allowed to vote.  Some came home, some voted by absentee ballot, but all Americans found a way to hold a referendum on Abraham Lincoln, even in the course of horrific battles.  We lost a lot in the Civil War, but we maintained the traditions of our Republic, even in the worst of times.

Our World

That’s something we should remember in our COVID-19 world.  The current “butcher’s bill” for today’s crisis is 1,347,411 Americans “wounded”, and over 80,000 lost.  In the past two months, we have suffered greater losses than Shiloh, Antietam, and Gettysburg combined.  To put it in more “modern” terms, we have suffered nearly twenty-seven 9-11 attacks.  And we have no reason to believe that we are at the “Virginia Overland Campaign”, that we have reached the bottom.  More likely we have only seen our Shiloh, only at the beginning of the cost to be paid for COVID-19.  The difference – we hope a vaccine or a treatment can end the bloodletting, rather than the long bloody slog to “herd immunity”. 

Meanwhile we too are asked to judge our government.  Whatever side of our current polarized politics you hold, we must find a way to allow our democracy to survive, and to hold real elections.  The people of Wisconsin showed courage and determination, lining up to vote in a primary held in the middle of an epidemic.  The numbers are vague:  at least sixty-seven voters became infected after the election, but it’s difficult to determine cause and effect.

Come November

There is no reason to believe we will be in any better condition in November than we are now.  Holding a “normal” election, gathering at the polls and lining up to vote, seems an unnecessary risk. But, if necessary, Americans will be courageous.  They will mask and glove themselves and stand in line.  Some will get sick and die because of it, but that same dedication to democracy that lived in 1864 lives today.  

But it is completely unnecessary.  We have multiple ways to safely vote, just as those soldiers fighting far away from home in 1864 did.  This isn’t (or shouldn’t be) a partisan question; it’s simply American tradition.  We must allow Americans to safely vote.  It doesn’t even have to be some complicated electronic computer ballot.  We did it in the Civil War, we can do it today: mail ballots out, and mail them back in.

Barring some miraculous discovery, we have a long way to go in our COVID-19 crisis.  It is easy to become even more isolated and polarized, trapped in our own homes with the bad news constantly droning in the background.  But we have our own duty, as much a duty as those soldiers felt in the spring of 1861.  We have a duty to maintain our democracy, regardless of the roadblocks our partisan legislatures place in our way.  Americans should be able to do it in a protected way, but if not, then we will have to risk becoming a line on “the butcher’s bill”.  

We must do it for our country.

Good Faith

I think most people, regardless of their political views about the President, agree that the COVID-19 crisis puts many Americans’ health at risk.  And, I really believe, in spite of what I read on social media, that most Americans don’t want others to get sick or die.  But, some are desperate:  they are afraid that they won’t get paid, they won’t have a way to buy food for their families, or pay their mortgage, or keep the heat on in the winter or the air in the summer.  

They feel that this crisis makes us choose between personal economic survival and other’s illness and death.  In fact, it’s even worse than that, because they also know that they are risking illness and death for themselves, their families, and their friends.  But they are willing to take that “blind” risk, rather than suffer the more obvious economic catastrophes.

Yesterday I went on a rant about some of this.  Some of my friends (and they still are my friends) are clinging to aberrant scientists, or conspiratorial “insiders”, who are telling them what they want to hear.  They’re told it’s all a lie, a fake crisis to achieve some dark underlying goal.  They reminds me of the anti-industrialism movement of the late 1800’s, where workers took their shoes, called “sabots,” and threw them into the factory machinery.  It’s where we get our current word “sabotage” from, and it was a desperate attempt to stop progress.  It didn’t work then, and I don’t think it will now.

Our Mistakes

There have been many mistakes in this COVID-19 crisis.  We were late, so late, in recognizing the danger that the virus represented.  We didn’t act in a way that secured our country.  The November elections will in part, be all about how that was handled.  We all will get to weigh in then.  But there has also been a failure of imagination, an inability to think beyond our current processes, that has left many Americans in this desperate plight.

Unemployment

Let’s look at our unemployment process.  Here in Ohio, we have a state unemployment compensation agency that in the past processed between 20,000 and 30,000 claims a month.  December 2019 was 29,389.  January 2020 claims were 25,603, February 2020 20,498.  Then the crisis hit:  March 2020 unemployment claims were 540,542.  While final numbers for April aren’t out yet, we know that there were closer to 600,000.

So why is there surprise and consternation that the state is having trouble processing unemployment claims?  A system designed to handle tens of thousands is now trying to deal with hundreds of thousands.  It wasn’t designed for the load, and in this moment of crisis, with offices closed and workers socially distanced, isn’t “scaling up” very well.  The current process might not even be able to handle the volume with a full “scale up”.

Another “idea” is to cut the payroll taxes so that employees have more money.  But the problem isn’t getting money to the employed; it’s about how to get money to those who have lost their jobs because of the crisis.  Cutting taxes on non-existent pay gives you that old equation (and song):  “nothing from nothing leaves nothing”.

PPP

And how about the PPP, the Payroll Protection Plan that was supposed to allow small businesses to keep employees on their payroll, even if the business has to close.  The system is for the business to “borrow” money from the Small Business Administration, and then “if” they use the money to pay employees and essential bills, the loan would be forgiven.

 It’s not about the fact the “small” businesses were defined as having 500 employees or less, and that well financed and funded organizations from the LA Lakers NBA team to Harvard University to Ruth Chris Steakhouse (home of a very expensive flat iron steak) took most of the first $350 billion (the Lakers and Harvard have since returned the money).  It’s that there were so many businesses applying for funds.  Chet’s Auto here in Pataskala, with five employees got in line with everyone else but just like the unemployment process, the system was overwhelmed with the volume.  And the amount of money, including the next $310 billion added in, isn’t even close to covering the need.

Fire Hoses

We tried to use existing systems, unemployment benefits and small business loans, to grease the process of getting money out.  It wasn’t a bad idea in principle. Why establish a whole new structure when one already exists?  But it’s the old fire hose analogy:  you can’t pump more water through a maxed out two-inch hose.  You need a bigger hose.

We have an existing bigger hose.  We even used it for just a moment.  The IRS moves trillions of dollars every year.  They have a vast database of taxpayers.  When we wanted to pump out $1200 per person, the IRS process worked better than anything else.

Listen, we know that health insurance through employment works well for millions of people, but fails millions as well.  The US model of using employment as the sole means of financing people isn’t even perfect in a “perfect world”.  Whatever the Dow Jones Industrial Average was in January, we are in a “perfect world” no longer.  

So let’s take the money that the US Government is going to spend anyway – and skip the middleman.  We have already dropped FOUR TRILLION DOLLARS – ($4,000,000,000,000 – just had to write that down).  And right now, there’s lots of money leaking out the tiny hoses along the way to the people who need it.  We’ve got a direct main line, the tax information.  Let’s use it to establish a national wage until we can open up the nation SAFELY again.   Then more Americans can feel secure about both their economic lives, and their health.  They can take “the risk” of dealing with the virus first.  

And they can stop throwing sabots.

Paul McCartney and Wings – Live and Let Die

Rant

It’s not often (at least, I don’t think it’s often) that I just go off on a rant.  But this is the day, and this essay might be categorized in the “rant” column.  Take it for what it is, but it’s happening.

Yesterday, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, toured a factory in Arizona that makes facemasks.  In the COVID-19 world, they are doing important work:  facemasks help protect people from giving the virus to others, and from getting the virus themselves.  The music playing in the background:  Live and Let Die by Paul McCartney and Wings.  But in what was undoubtedly an intentional act, the President chose not to wear a mask.  And the others around him didn’t either.

It wasn’t that the President was against all protective devices.  He wore the protective eyewear needed in the factory environment.  No, he was simply making a false point about the virus.  He was saying, “It’s over, and facemasks are really not needed”. The theme song was the heavy-handed way of underlining the point:  some will live, some will die, but the country is going to open up, regardless of what Dr. Fauci or the rest of the medical community says.   We don’t even need a Corona-Virus taskforce anymore.

Money

This isn’t about those “workers” who need to get back to their jobs.  There are other ways they could be cared for:  countries all over the world are literally paying folks to stay home to stop the spread of COVID-19.  And it certainly isn’t about “the poor” at all:  the President knows that the death rate among the poor is greater than any other group, and particularly among minorities.  But they are also the most “essential workers” out in the community.  They are already working, and getting sick, and dying at a greater proportion than everyone else.

No, those “poor workers” need to GET BACK TO WORK.  Our meat packing plants have turned into hotbeds of COVID?  Too bad, we are ordering them reopened, ordering those workers back into a viral soup.  If they don’t, then Trump’s voters won’t get their boneless, skinless chicken breasts and 80-20 hamburgers because they won’t be in the stores – and the nation won’t stand for that!

Clock’s Ticking

In what seems like another lifetime, Congressman Doug Collins of Georgia criticized the Democrats of the House for impeaching the President on “…a clock and a calendar,” accusing them of hurrying ahead of the facts.  Well, here’s the real “clock and calendar;” it’s the clock of the crashing economy, and the calendar of the 2020 Presidential election.  

President Trump knows that his only chance of re-election, if there’s any remaining chance at all, is based on the James Carville phrase, “it’s the economy, stupid”.   If Trump can’t show the ‘V’ velocity of economic growth by Labor Day, then he knows the family “party” is over in the White House.  The VIP’s on Jared’s list will lose their “free lunch”.  So people need to get their meat, and workers need to get to work, even if it’s at the risk of their lives.  

This doesn’t impact the “white collar” workers, safely working from the couch at home.  And this doesn’t affect the old retired folks, many Trumpers, hiding away in their retirement homes.  The government will find a way to “fudge” the statistics on deaths in nursing homes, so that we don’t really see the contagion burning through our elderly.  Oh, they died of pneumonia, or heart failure, or old age.  COVID-19, well we didn’t test for that, so we will never know.

Excuses

In fact, while we’re fudging numbers, let’s make sure that no one trusts the facts.  Social media is absolutely stuffed with fake doctors saying fake things about COVID, and Trump sycophants re-tweeting all of that nonsense over and over again.  What’s the old advertising adage, if you hear something five times it’s true?  Trump’s social media strategy will make sure we all hear the lies fifty times.  It doesn’t make it valid, but it does make it even more difficult for the real truth to be heard.

Guess what:  China hid the fact they had a virus.  They didn’t tell the rest of the world that COVID-19 was burning through their population.  They hoarded protective gear, and ventilators, and all the other stuff they needed, and didn’t tell anyone.  And they certainly have lied about the number of fatalities; it’s hard to imagine that China had fewer deaths than New Jersey.

That doesn’t let Trump off the hook. US Intelligence warned ISRAEL (the nation) about COVID-19 in November 2019 (I25).  You think they didn’t tell their own President?  But it didn’t fit in with the Trump program, he was cutting a “great deal” with China at the time.  Instead of preparing, developing tests, tracking the virus, and keeping it out of the United States, Trump ignored the problem.  Sure he was being impeached.  I guess that the Democrat’s fault, we knew he couldn’t chew gum and walk, that we elected a President with a ten second attention span.   He let COVID in, and we’re suffering for it.

Strategy

So the Trump campaign strategy for 2020 is no longer about Biden and the Ukraine.  It’s not even about Make America Great Again.  It’s all summed up by Paul McCartney’s song:  let the corona-virus spread, as long as the Dow Jones goes back up again.  The brokers will be fine – the “essential workers” and the elderly, well: Live and Let Die.

The Lincoln Memorial

Kent State

Fifty years ago, President Richard Nixon announced an expansion of the Vietnam War.  The President who, two years before ran on a “secret” peace plan, was now expanding the war zone into Cambodia, bombing North Vietnamese bases and supplies.  Reaction on American college campuses was swift and dramatic.  Throughout the nation, students poured onto the campus greens, demanding an end to the war.  

At Kent State University there were days of demonstration.  Ohio’s Governor James Rhoades sent in the National Guard.  It was an odd confrontation, the college kids demanding that the US end the war, and the Guard, many kids the same age as the demonstrators, facing them down.  

The National Guard had tear gas, and they had the shear force of their bodies and equipment.  They established lines to contain and control the demonstrators, and while they took incoming rocks and bottles, they held the line.  But someone in the chain of command ordered live ammunition dispersed among the troops.  And someone else in that chain gave an order to fire.  Twelve students were hit, some not even in the demonstration.  Four were killed.  William Schroeder, on a ROTC Scholarship, was walking between classes.

Unfortunately Kent State wasn’t the only student shootings that month.  Police in Jackson, Mississippi fired shots into a demonstration at Jackson State University.  Two were killed, twelve wounded then.

Nixon Talks

Students marched on Washington, D.C.  Spokesmen for the President, including Vice President Spiro Agnew and Press Secretary Ron Ziegler, derided the demonstrators as “effete snobs” and “lazy elitists”.  But Nixon tried to talk to them.  The demonstrators were on the Mall, by the reflecting pool; the area just at the bottom of the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  Nixon drove the block from the White House, and with Secret Service hovering close by, spent two hours with the demonstrators trying to talk. But there was no healing of wounds.  Nothing changed.

Today’s President 

On Sunday, the current President of the United States used the Memorial to stage a “town hall” with Fox News.  It’s an election year, and while the Memorial is supposed to be “off limits” for these kinds of events, it’s a surprise to no one that the Secretary of the Interior waved the rules, and allowed the President to use it.

It’s a political consultant’s dream; the view of the candidate, sitting in sight of Lincoln.  It doesn’t even take a great “eye” to realize that the “shot” is the “Presidential view” with Lincoln’s statue observing in the background the current leader.  So when the “town hall” was staged literally at Lincoln’s feet, it was just bad staging.

The message that President Trump was attempting to send is obvious.  He is leading a nation in crisis, economically decimated and in literal fear for its life.  Just like Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was re-elected to the Presidency at one of the toughest points in the Civil War.  His phrase at the time was:

 “An old Dutch farmer, who remarked to a companion once that it was not best to swap horses when crossing streams.”

Trump is trying to convince a nation that he is the horse to get us across the stream of the COVID-19 and economic crisis.  That’s why President Lincoln is sitting in the background.

But instead, President Trump took the opportunity to whine:  

“They always said, ‘Lincoln, nobody got treated worse than Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse.”

Lincoln

Of course, Lincoln was assassinated.  Guess Trump can’t top that.

And the President still refuses to take responsibility for the consequences of the crisis.  Instead, he continued his campaign of blaming China.  He even refused to back his own plan for re-opening America, instead saying about demonstrators in many states:

“They just want to go back. You see it every day. You see demonstrations all over the country and those are meaningful demonstrations. It’s big stuff.”

If only the President had looked beyond the Fox interviewers, and read the writing on the wall behind them.  Engraved on the wall are the words of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural speech. Those words helped change Lincoln’s world, and they still apply today.

“With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

We know Abraham Lincoln.  And regardless of the location, we all know:

Donald Trump is no Abraham Lincoln.

Anticipation

Sure it’s Carly Simon – but it really was that ketchup ad – wasn’t it?

The Song                                 The Ad

The Stats

The United States has the highest amount of infections for COVID-19 in the world with over 1.1 million (discounting the numbers that China probably is lying about).  The United States has the highest deaths from COVID-19 (maybe China, again) with over 67,000 lost as of this writing.  And yet, so far, we have dodged the bullet.

Our leading epidemiologists anticipated infections in the 20 million or more range, and deaths at 200,000 or more.  So there are a couple of caveats:  we haven’t tested enough to actually know what the infection rate is, and we only know the cause of death of those tested.  How many passed away in nursing homes, or at home, or from “pneumonia” or other causes that actually died from COVID-19, we really don’t know.

The Heart

But we do know this:  Americans took the recommendations to “socially distance” and “stay at home” to heart.  We did it, we “beat the odds” and actually did more than the epidemiologists ever expected.  Yes, over 30 million Americans filed for unemployment.  Yes, there were toilet paper shortages, and now there is likely to be meat missing in the freezers.  And there is the psychological price we’ve paid for being at home.  It will be interesting to see the number of divorces, and declared alcoholism, that will appear when all this is over.

But May 1^st was the deadline.  The entire last paragraph was written in the “past” tense.  We’ve paid the price, and now we get to fulfill our Anticipation.  Back to the bar, or the beach, or the ballgame.  In our head, it’s over – right?

The Deadline

But nothing has really changed.  COVID-19 is more ubiquitous than ever.  More people have it, and more can spread it, than before St. Patrick’s Day when all of this began.  Sure, for the moment, we “flattened the curve” and prevented the unthinkable:  hospitals so overwhelmed that they allowed some to die so others could live.  The Trump Administration keeps saying it:  “No American died from lack of a ventilator.”  I hope that’s true.

But we really are just in those first few weeks of March again.  If we re-open, go back to the bars and the beaches and the ballparks, the whole thing will start over again.  

The American people are known for their great hearts, and their lack of patience.  We’ve been anticipating “FREEDOM!!!” (Remember that memorable cry from Mel Gibson in Braveheart) and we were promised it, kind of, on May 1^st.  

The Governor

I think Governor DeWine here in Ohio did exactly what he had to do.  He couldn’t have said, back in early March, we’re going to close down Ohio until there’s a vaccine.  That would be maybe a year or more.  He couldn’t even say “June,” we had to wait until the end of April for him to start even hinting at that.  DeWine carefully measured the patience of the people of Ohio, and then made his decision.  It was May 1^st, until April 27^th.  Then, it wasn’t.  

Now he’s slipping a few “freedoms” out there, letting some people go back to work, and opening some stores.  But Mike DeWine knows that nothing has really changed unless the people of Ohio make it change.  And he’s under pressure from “his right”, the social media infused, AR-15 toting folks down at the statehouse, and the more “normal” folks who are looking at paying May bills without May salaries. 

This is where other countries got it right, and the United States didn’t.  Sure, most got $1200 from the IRS last month, but it wasn’t enough, and it doesn’t cover the May bills.  Canada and other countries put much of the workforce on “government salaries” to keep them home.  Here in “good old capitalist” America, we are forcing meat packing workers back into the cauldrons of COVID-19 transmission.  Upton Sinclair would find it oddly familiar.

What’s Next

When faced with the inability to pay for food, or rent, or transportation, many Americans will risk COVID-19. That they are making that choice for themselves is one thing, but the reality is that in doing so they are spreading infection to others.  The attitude seems to be, well, too bad?  We might not be able to “flatten” the next curve.

And Governor DeWine is stuck in the middle.  Much as he wants to mandate wearing facemasks, he backed away from it.  Much as he wants to keep our state buttoned up, he’s got to let some things open.  DeWine knows he’s risking the “bullet” coming back on us, but he doesn’t have a choice. 

 There’s been too much “anticipation”.

Morning Workout

So, I do a workout most mornings.  Since I’m “online teaching”, I time-shift my schedule, doing school work from six to eight, then take an hour to hit the elliptical machine and do some calisthenics.   It’s good to do something to stay in shape, particularly in this time of  “stay-at-home orders”.  

This morning I made sure I was on the elliptical machine when Mika Brezhenski interviewed Joe Biden on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.  This was Biden’s first response to an accusation of sexual assault made by former staffer, Tera Reade.  

Reade was a junior member of Biden’s Senate staff in 1993.  A couple years ago, she claimed that Biden inappropriately touched her hair and shoulder in a Senate hallway during that time.  She readily admits she is unclear on the actual time or date.  Her accusation fits a pattern that other women have said about Biden, that he was a “touchy-feely” man. Biden hugged, patted, and put his hands on shoulders, men as well as women.  Some women complain that they felt that contact was inappropriate, and Biden issued a blanket apology for making them feel uncomfortable.

But two weeks ago, Ms. Reade changed her accusation.  She now says that then-Senator Biden did more than just inappropriately touch her:  that he in fact reached under her clothing and penetrated her with his fingers.  The “inappropriate touching” became sexual assault.  She even went so far as to file a police report with the Washington DC police, even though the statute of limitations has long passed. Oddly, the report does not name Biden, though she later said that it was him (Washington Times).

#METOO

If this were Donald Trump, I would assume that the woman was telling the truth.  It certainly would fit the pattern of dozens of other women who claim the Trump did those kinds of things.  I wouldn’t even wait for any further “evidence” that could exist.  It’s the kind of guy Trump is, from paying-off affairs to the Access Hollywood tape.  Somehow though, Trump has gotten a “pass” from much of the nation for his actions.

But as a Democrat in the third year of the #METOO era, I am in a difficult dilemma.  I believe that there are men who abuse their power and assault women.  I’ve known some men like that, and I’ve supported women who stood up against them.  I was and still am appalled that our politics are so polarized that many of my Republican friends found ways to excuse Mr. Trump’s behavior.  

The Record

I reluctantly agreed that Democratic Senator Al Franken resign from the Senate.  Franken too was a “touchy-feely” guy, but worse, a former comedian with photos showing him pretending to commit sexual assault.  It all broke at the height of the Alabama Senate campaign, with Democrat Doug Jones running against a credibly accused child molester, Judge Roy Moore.  The national party had to make a clear demarcation between Moore and Trump-like behavior and what Democrats stand for.  Franken paid the price.

And I also agree that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh got a “pass” for his possible behaviors.  Some credible (and some not so credible) claims were made that he committed sexual assaults.  The critical event of that time weren’t so much the charges, but that there was no real investigation into the women’s claims.  Instead, the FBI was ordered to do a whitewash, and prevented from following up any leads they received.  The Republican Senate made sure that Kavanaugh owed them for a lifetime; in return he received his lifetime appointment to the Court.

The Interview

So here I am, hitting my mileage on the machine, and listening to Joe Biden.  Here are Biden’s bullet points:

• Biden absolutely denies the accusation.  He allowed no “wiggle room”; he didn’t say he “can’t recall”.  Biden said it didn’t happen.
• He asked the Senate Secretary to have the National Archives open his files from the era, looking through all the personnel records to find the complaint she said was made.  The former Vice President is confident there is no such complaint.
• He has asked his staff at the time – no one remembers a complaint.
• He believes that a woman should be heard, and that her complaints should be considered credible.  Then there should be and investigation, and the truth found.  Biden is clear that the truth is that nothing happened.  
• He doesn’t see a contradiction between his stand in the Kavanaugh hearing and his stand today.  He believes that there wasn’t a real investigation of Kavanaugh.
• Biden made it clear he wasn’t questioning Tara Reade’s motives.

There is a “controversy” about Biden’s personal papers, now in possession of the University of Delaware.  Biden donated the papers to be cataloged and kept after his political career was over.  Delaware reasonably thought that would be in 2020, before Biden entered the Presidential campaign.  The “seal” has been extended.  Biden states that the papers contain his personal comments and conversations with world leaders and President Obama.  Legally personnel records cannot be included in those records.

Releasing them would not only hurt a future President Biden in his dealings with other nations, but would be a treasure trove of opposition research for his political enemies.  The records at Delaware are staying sealed. 

My Standard

So do I have a double standard? Well, I have seen and heard the evidence of Trump’s activities.  I have seen the evidence of Roy Moore’s activities.  I saw the pictures of Al Franken.  None of us saw the evidence regarding Kavanaugh; they weren’t allowed to pursue it.  So right now, I’ll listen to what Ms. Reade has to say.  But I’ll need to see more than just a changing story from twenty-seven years ago to believe her.  That’s my standard, and I’m sticking to it.

Truman

It was 1952.  Harry Truman was in the last year of his Presidency, and the United States was bogged down in the Korean War.  Almost 40,000 Americans soldiers were dead in four years on the Korean peninsula, and now the battle had staggered to a stalemate along what would ultimately be the demarcation line between South and North.  The United States was a nation at war, but one undeclared by Congress.

And then the United Steel Workers went on a nationwide strike.  Truman, expecting the kind of dedication and sacrifice that Americans made for so long in World War II, was incensed at both union and management for allowing the impasse.  They refused to reach an agreement.  Truman, with typical decisiveness, decided he’d had enough.  He nationalized the steel industry, ordering workers back to the mills, all under his authority as a President at war.

Overreach

The Supreme Court quickly heard the case,  Youngstown Sheet and Tube v Sawyer.  It might be considered the end of the “New Deal” era in one sense.  After years of increasing Presidential power dealing with the Great Depression, then World War II, and finally the new Cold War era of nuclear threat, the Supreme Court restrained Presidential power.  They ordered that the President’s order be withdrawn.

Truman reluctantly followed the Court’s demand, and the steelworkers went back on strike.  It took fifty more days, and threats by Truman to draft the entire steel industry into the army, to force labor and management to an agreement.

Food Crisis

Last Sunday John Tyson, Chairman of Tyson Foods, placed a full-page advertisement in the New York Times.  He said, in part:

“As pork, beef and chicken plants are being forced to close, even for short periods of time, millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the supply chain. As a result, there will be limited supply of our products available in grocery stores until we are able to reopen our facilities that are currently closed.” (Time).

This ad came on the heels of dramatic closures of food processing plants, many in the Midwest, due to COVID-19.  The “poster” plant was the Smithfield Foods Plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where 350 employees, 10% of the workforce, tested positive for the virus.  The plant was shut down.  It produces 5% of America’s pork  (NPR). 

Other processing plants in the United States followed suit, as testing revealed high rates of infection throughout the industry.  Conditions at the plant, including shoulder-to-shoulder workstations, contribute to the contagion.  

Defense Production Act

The question for President Trump was how to protect the American food supply chain, and how to protect the plant employees.  Yesterday he took action similar to Truman’s order back in 1952.  Trump ordered the plants to re-open, using his authority under the Defense Production Act.  His order emphasized liability protections for management, preventing them from being sued by their workers for getting sick.  But there was little in the order to change the conditions that created the problem in the first place.  The workers are still at risk, and are being placed in an impossible position (WAPO).

Workers face a stark choice:  risk COVID-19 infection by going to work, or stay at home and not get paid.  And the communities surrounding the plants are in a similar position. The plants staying open will get paychecks circulating in town.  But they also risk virus contagion throughout the community.

There is no question that COVID-19 has caused a nationwide emergency.  And there is no question that a threat to the American food supply is a serious problem.  But that problem cannot be resolved by simply throwing the workers back into “the disease” without guaranteeing protections.  

Trump

The powers of the Presidency have vastly increased since 1952.  The Congress, both Democrat and Republican, has consistently turned over what used to be legislative authority to the Executive Branch.  While Truman depended on his war making authority to demand that Youngstown Sheet and Tube reopen, President Trump has more specific powers granted under the Defense Production Act.  

But with those added powers should come added responsibility.  The President needs to do as much to protect the workers in those plants as he does to protect the stockholders from liability.  And if that can’t be done, then America may have to do without their skinless, boneless chicken breasts or pork loins or 80-20 ground beef until those workers can do their work, safely.

 

The Court

The Supreme Court, like every other institution in the United States, is dramatically impacted by the COVID-19 crisis.  Oral arguments, the grist of Supreme Court action, were postponed both in March and April.  The Court is now planning to remotely meet in May, and for the first time in history, allow live voice broadcast of the arguments.  That’s because the Justices are holding arguments by phone (NPR).

Two of the cases the Court will hear are about President Trump’s financial records, and whether Congress has the power to subpoena them.  There is also an additional case, a Grand Jury subpoena of Trump’s records from New York.  All three subpoenas were upheld in the lower Courts.

Traditional Conservatives

Traditionally, American conservatives have been in favor of Congressional oversight of the Executive Branch.  Only a decade ago, Congress demanded that the Executive branch answer to subpoenas investigating the Internal Revenue Service for harassing conservative action committees, the Justice Department for a botched Mexican gun buying investigation, and, of course, the multiple investigations into what happened at Benghazi.  With one notable exception, the Obama administration responded to those actions (Attorney General Eric Holder ultimately refused to release some documents, after testifying three times to the Republican controlled committees).

Now Congress is asking the President to turn over financial records, including his tax returns.  One of those requests, made by the Ways and Means Committee of the Democratically controlled House, cites a Federal law that gives them the power to request any individual tax return, written specifically because of Executive Branch corruption during the Teapot Dome Scandals in the 1920’s.  As was pointed here in Trump World over a year ago, it’s clear law (26 US Code § 6103 (f) (1)).

Traditional conservatives, at home in the Republican Party, have always favored the balancing of Constitutional power. Common sense says then that the conservative majority on the Supreme Court will uphold that balance.  But don’t hold your breath.

Unassailable Power

The majority Justices of the Supreme Court aren’t traditional conservatives.  They have embraced a philosophy that is far from the traditional conservatism of Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan.  They espouse a theory of massive executive authority, granting the President powers and privileges that would have appalled James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, principal authors of the Constitution.  With that, and the clear partisan split of the Court with five Republicans and four Democrats, and it’s possible the President may gain the power to hide his own finances from any investigating eyes.

The Supreme Court may not be the only ones burning their conservative bridges to protect the Trump Presidency.  The leaders of the Republican Party have remained silent during the COVID-19 crisis.  The follies of the Trump daily briefing, from Lysol to Chloroquine, to the President’s claim of “total authority” have all gone on with little Republican comment.  And the Trump Administration’s amazing silence about the achievements of a fellow Republican, Governor Mike DeWine in Ohio, is deafening.

It is all about November.  Given the choice between a Democratic nominee like Joe Biden, or accepting the botched handling of this existential crisis, Republicans are standing silent.   We see it in the information void from Republican Senators, and the ridiculous “principled stands” of Congressman Tom Massie delaying House response (Politico).

Gaslighting

And we also see it in the Trump Administration itself, who have embraced a policy placing responsibility for COVID-19 testing on the states, instead of making it a national priority.  The reason is clear and political:  the tests aren’t available to determine whether to open the economy.  If we wait for testing, then the economy won’t recover in time for the November election, and there will be no path for a Trump re-election.  And even if there were the tests, the results might show that the economy cannot open.  So open the economy and accept the increased deaths and illnesses that may create, in order to win the political argument:  “it’s the economy stupid”.

This plan is backed up by a social media campaign by Trump surrogates, demanding that the economy MUST be reopened now, or America will be ruined.  This triggers millions who fear that the country will never “return to normal”.  That ultimate nightmare somehow makes the potential loss of life more palatable.

The nation is being “gaslighted”.   We are being distracted, not for economic reasons, but political ones.  And it’s not just Trump, it’s all of the other Republicans, from the Supreme Court to the Senate, who are letting him do it.  They have burned their political bridges.  They are risking American lives.   When the “butcher’s bill” is delivered, they will have no place to retreat.