Quid pro quo for ventilators

Trump was impeached for telling the Ukrainians that they could have military aid provided they would dig up dirt on Hunter Biden.  He held up authorized assistance for his own political advantage.  Susan Collins voted not guilty in the trial because she said Trump had learned his lesson.  He learned that he can get away with anything, including a quid pro quo in a pandemic in which thousands have already died.

Trump is holding back coronavirus aid to states where the Governors are not sucking up to him.  He noted at a news conference last week that he had instructed Pence not to call the governors of some states in need of aid.  “I say:  ‘Mike, don’t call the governor of Washington.  You’re wasting your time with him.  Don’t call the woman in Michigan.  [Gov. Gretchen Whitmer]  If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call.’”

On March 24, he said “You want ventilators and masks from the Federal Government’s reserves to treat your citizens.  Well, Governors have to treat me well.  It’s a two-way street.”

When Gov. Newsom of California and Gov. Cuomo of New York said some nice things about him, those statements are already being used in ads.  Other people see a deadly virus threatening us all.  Trump sees a political opportunity.

U.S. Population Growth Slows

The rate of population growth slowed last year to the lowest it’s been since 1919.  We are not the only country where the growth rate is slowing.  In Greece, Germany, Italy, and Spain, deaths exceed births, although immigration keeps populations growing.  In the U.S.deaths now exceed births in about 46 percent of the counties.  Western Pennsylvania is one of the areas of decline; so is much of Appalachia.

Since there are too many people in the world, this is, in my view, a good thing, but it will cause major problems in an economy that depends on constant growth.  

See Sabrina Tavernise, “U./S.Population Grows at Slowest Rate Since 1919, New York Times, (Mar. 26, 2020), p. A24.

Indians and Mexicans

Under the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, all Native people born in the U.S. were considered citizens of the U.S.  The 14th Amendment, of course, had declared all people who were born in the U.S. to be American citizens, but until 1924, this hadn’t applied to American Indians.  

In 1930 the powers that be decided that Mexicans who entered the U.S. illegally might try to pass themselves off as Indians.  To prevent that, the 1930 census introduced as a race the term “Mexicans.”  Then, in 1940, the Census Bureau decided that Mexicans were “White” and should listed as such, so the category of Mexicans disappeared.  

Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, a man who had helped Trump with his various bankruptcies, tried to include a question about citizenship in this year’s census.  (The Census Bureau is located in the Commerce Department.)  This would have depressed the count in heavily Latino areas, reducing the representation of those areas in Congress.  The courts prevented this, but you can see why various groups might be suspicious of census takers.  

The info on past census questions is from Jill Lepore, “But Who’s Counting,” New Yorker, (March 23, 2020), pp. 10-16.

About those checks

We should all be getting checks soon to help jump start the economy.  They will not be signed by the Secretary of the Treasury.  They will be signed by President Trump.  Personally.  

I am ever so grateful.  What a wonderful leader!  What a generous person!  Have we ever had a more thoughtful, caring, and empathetic man in the White House?  He deserves to be beatified.  The man is an absolute saint. 

Also, the Carbon County Democratic Party is about to get a major donation.  Thank you, Mr. President.

Income tax

I am finishing up my income tax return.  Unlike Trump, I don’t cheat.  Unlike Trump, I am willing to make my returns public.  Unlike Trump, I actually pay income tax.  

It bugs me that a whole industry has sprung up to figure out people’s taxes.  If the tax laws were written simply and clearly, anyone who has a calculator and the ability to read should be able to figure out her or his taxes without going to H&R Block or hiring a CPA.  Oh, wait.  I forgot that this is the United States where lobbyists write the tax legislation and deliberately make things complicated.

Regulatory rollbacks continue

Lest you think that the Trump administration is concentrating on the Coronavirus, think again.  Federal employees have been ordered to weaken automobile fuel efficiency standards, loosen controls on toxic ash from coal plants, relax restrictions on mercury emissions, and weaken the consideration of climate change in environmental reviews for most infrastructure projects.  

Employees of the EPA and the Interior Department said that they were told that there would be no “slippage” of the rollbacks, virus or no virus.  So Trump goes on television every night to tell lies and mislead the public about the Coronavirus, but in the meantime the gutting of environmental protections continues.

Of course, you won’t hear about this on Fox.  You won’t hear about it on MSNBC or CNN either. 

Info for this post was taken from Lisa Friedman, “President Presses Forward With Regulatory Rollbacks, New York Times, (March 20, 2020), p. A24.

Conditional citizenship

In an essay in the latest issue of Harper’s Magazine, Laila Lalami discusses how many minority groups in the United States have “conditional citizenship.”  They are not considered to be completely Americans.  If you are an Iranian-American, you can no longer sponsor your mother for a visa; if you are a German-American, you can.  If you are a Libyan-American, you can no longer receive a visit from your grandmother, but an Italian-American can receive a visit from her grandmother in Venice.  If you are a Yemeni-American you can no longer bring your relative here for medical treatment, but a Portuguese-American can bring his relative here from Lisbon.  Those are Trump policies, upheld by the Supreme Court.  

If you are an American Indian, the government can build a pipeline through your reservation in violation of signed treaties.  And now, if you are Chinese-American, you may be spit up or yelled at because of a virus that originated in China.  You are a conditional citizen.  

But if you are a white male, you can say America is “foolish,” “dumb,” and “a laughingstock.”  The United States is “going to hell,” it looks “like a third world country,” it is “an embarrassment.”  You can say all of those things during a presidential campaign and win the presidential election.  Trump, a white guy, said all of those things.  Imagine if Obama had said them. 

Putting the sled away

All winter I’ve had my sled on the front porch and my snow shovel by the back door.  Now the daffodils are blooming, the frogs are hollering, the killdeer is running around the field, and the rhubarb is poking through the ground.  I give up.  Tomorrow I’m putting away the sled and the snow shovel.  This winter was a bust.

What Biden needs to do to win

We can be fairly certain at this point that Biden will be the Democratic nominee.  Sanders is behind in delegates, and there is a very slim chance that he could catch up.  Biden, if he hasn’t yet, needs to worry about next November.  And here are some things he needs to do.

Figure out what to do about Hunter.  Trump was impeached for his illegal efforts to get dirt on Hunter Biden’s activities in the Ukraine.  It is obvious that Hunter would never have been hired bye Burisma were it not that he was Joe’s Biden’s son.  Biden needs to be ready for Trump’s attacks, and he better have some good answers.

Quit running off at the mouth.  By this time Biden should have learned some self-discipline.  If he needs to, have him speak from notes.  The speech after the Florida primary was excellent.  Perhaps it was because it was prepared, and Biden read it. 

Set debate parameters that disadvantage Trump.  I’m not sure what those would be, but clever media people can figure that out.  Trump, for example, should never have been allowed to wander around the stage behind Clinton like he did.  

Quit touching people.  I know that is what Biden does, but it’s creepy and now, perhaps dangerous.

Admit mistakes.  And yes, he has made a few.  Don’t be afraid to say “I’m sorry.  I was wrong about that.”  Don’t be defensive.

Have surrogates attack Trump.  Keep the message on things like climate change, health care improvements, and economic security.  

Price gouging

St. Thomas Aquinas, who thought charging interest on loans was usury, believed there was a just price for goods.  Anything above this just price was considered unChristian and he condemned it.

As the theory of capitalism took hold, the laws of supply and demand came into vogue.  If demand was high, the price wold be raised until the buyers said enough, I’m not paying any more, and the price would stabilize.  When goods were plentiful and exceeded demand, the price would drop.

In times of great economic stress, however, the doctrine of a just price returns.  If you charge ten dollars for a roll of toilet paper because there is a run on toilet paper, that is capitalism at its finest.  If you charge fifty dollars, people will start to use newspapers as toilet paper and the price will stabilize and eventually drop, although we must pity the people who get their news exclusively from the internet.

I am amused at the number of people who decry “price gonging” and want the government to step in to forbid this kind of entrepreneurship.  Many of these same people decry socialism or government interference in the economy.  Make up your mind.

Cutting the links

The New York Times ran an explanation of the importance of “cutting the chain of transmission” of a virus.  The author, Siobhan Roberts, talked to two epidemiologists who drew a “tree diagram.”  Let’s say that on the first day an infected person transmits the virus to two people, and each day for the six days each of those people transmit the virus to another two people 

At the end of six days 64 people will be infected.  Now let’s say on the first day the infected person only transmits to one other person.  That person transmits to two people and so on for the six day period.  At the end of the six days, 32 people will have the disease.  While 32 is a large number, those 32 will be easier to treat than 64 would have been.  And that is why there is all this “social distancing,” stay in place orders, and quarantines.

Another epidemic

NBC news tonight reported 185 deaths in the U.S. so far from the coronavirus.  I do not want to minimize that, and I worry that the number will increase way beyond that, but I also would point out that in 2017 (the last year the CDC reported this) the U.S. had approximately 15,000 deaths from guns.  If we include suicides by firearms, the number was more than twice that.  That is also an epidemic that should concern us.

Weird Times

It should have been a normal day.  I pruned an apple tree, burned the branches, fixed the boards on the raised vegetable beds, raked up some chestnut burrs.  We went to a print shop in Allentown, bought Thai take-out, and ate it at Indian Trail Park on picnic tables in the sunlight.

It doesn’t feel normal, though.  We were the only people getting food at the Thai restaurant.  Traffic was light.  People stood apart at the gas station where we get our New York Times.  St Patrick’s Day was yesterday, and I didn’t have a hangover this morning.  Tomorrow is the scheduled opening day at Rita’s in Lehighton, but we won’t be there as usual to register new voters.  There’s no baseball news, no March Madness, no NBA games.  Our neighbors’ kids are home from school.

The sun still comes up.  The chickens are still laying eggs.  It’s just that everything is off kilter.  The only thing that hasn’t changed is that our President is still making stupid statements and remains clueless.  Imagine how reassured we would all be if we were hearing President Obama’s calm voice helping the nation and the rest of the world to get through this.  

ICE arrest at Scranton Hospital

Last week ICE officials arrested a man who had fled from Honduras.  He had been taken to the emergency room of Geisinger Hospital in Scranton after a court appearance.  He had already served six months in an ICE facility.  This was not anything that Geisinger did–the agents had followed him to the hospital and stood outside the door.  The initial arrest took place when he dropped his daughter off at school.

ICE once had a policy of not arresting people in “sensitive” locations like courtrooms and medical facilities.  That policy has been changed.  

I think we all get the message.

Nursing Home Policy

Last summer proposed rule changes in nursing homes to relax the regulations to curb deadly infections among the residents.  Lobbying and campaign contributions from the nursing home industry no doubt had something to do with the move.

Nobody in the administration is mentioning those changes.  Thirteen residents of the Kirkland nursing home in Washington have died from the Coronavirus.

Trump gave himself a “10” for his leadership in this crisis.  One commentator said that was ten out of hundred.

See Jesse Drucker and Jessica Silver-Greenberg, “Regulator Intends To Relax Oversight In Nursing Homes,” New York Times, (Mar. 16, 2020), p. B6

P.S.:  If you want proof of just how serious other countries are taking this pandemic, Ireland has shut down its pubs for at least two weeks.

We're all gonna die!

That is actually true.  200 years from now none of us will be alive, including Putin, Trump, Pence, and Mitch McConnell.  It should be noted, of course, that thousands of us might die earlier than we would have if the Trump administration hadn’t cut funding for the Center for Disease Control or other public health agencies.  Or if Fox News hadn’t downplayed the seriousness of coronavirus.  Or if Rush Limbaugh hadn’t compared the coronavirus to a common cold.  Or if we had test kits available.  Or if we hadn’t had a president who was dumb as a box of rocks.

Speaking of Rush Limbaugh, does he really have lung cancer?  I hear that is no different than a common chest cold.  You can cure it with chicken soup.

Contagion

Ling time readers of this blog probably know that my major source of entertainment is going to the movies.  I was planning to do that tonight (Friday night is “monkey night”), but I learned today that the Mahoning Valley Theater is closed for the next two weeks because of the coronavirus.

I blame Trump.

Anyway, we stayed home and watched a movie from about 2011 called “Contagion.”  Laurence Fishburne plays the head of the CDC.  The movie featured internet scams, problems coordinating government agencies, misinformation, the term “social distancing,” warning about touching faces, and eventual panic.  Pretty much what we are experiencing now, except the the President didn’t make matters worse.  

Spoiler alert:  Gwyneth Paltrow dies in the first five minutes.

Whose fault is the financial meltdown?

The federal government is loaded with obscure agencies that perform vital functions.  We never hear about them, but Steve Bannon would call them “the deep state.”  There is nothing deep about them.  While they may be obscure, eliminating or cutting their personnel generally creates problems.

One such agency is the Office of Financial Research, created during the Obama administration to serve as an early warning system for emerging risks.  

The agency’s staff has been slashed by more than 50 percent since 2017 to 96 employees, and its role has been relegated to largely assisting the Financial Stability Oversight Council, rather than collecting and analyzing data to identify emerging economic threats across financial sectors, according to current and former officials.

“Once Trump took office, every day they have been finding ways to deregulate and weaken the financial regulatory structure,” Mr. Brown [Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio] said in an interview.  “They clearly are not prepared for a financial crisis, no matter what precipitates it.”

I understand that the coronavirus is a terrible blow to the economy.  I also know that actions by the Trump administration have made matters far worse than they would have been under a normal administration.  

Info from this post is taken from Alan Rappeport and Jeanna Smialek, “The Biggest Test Since thew ’08 Crisis,” New York Times, (Mar. 10, 2020), pp. B1, B4.

Geomorphology lesson for the Poconos

The Pocono Mountain Visitors Bureau has erected signs on the Northeast Extension of the Turnpike and several other routes that proclaim “Welcome to the Pocono Mountains.”  While this may be good marketing, visitors might wonder where the mountains are.

What we have is the “Pocono Plateau,” a large flat raised area in Carbon, Monroe, Wayne, and Pike counties in Pennsylvania.  If you are on the Turnpike a few miles north of the Mahoning Interchange, you will drive up a slope that is miles long.  If you are leaving Jim Thorpe on Route 903, you will also travel up a very long incline.  You are going up to the plateau.  You may notice large areas of swampy or boggy areas.  That is because you are in a flat area with really bad drainage.

I think the Pocono Plateau is a fascinating area, full of interesting flora and fauna.  Where it ends, to the east along the Delaware River, you will find a series of spectacular falls as creeks cascade down from the higher elevation.  

I understand that “Welcome to the Pocono Plateau” just doesn’t have the same cachet as “Welcome to the Pocono Mountains.”   I’m just warning you not to be disappointed when you can’t find them.

No "namaste" in Alabama

It’s been said that when you hear a British accent, you automatically add ten points to a person’s IQ, but when you hear an Alabama accent, you automatically deduct ten points.  

That really isn’t fair.  I have relatives in Tuscaloosa, and they are intelligent people who didn’t vote for Trump.

On the other hand, you may actually have to subtract more than ten points from Alabama legislators.  Until this month Alabama had restricted public schools from teaching any kind of yoga.  A bill has now been introduced by a Democrat that would allow local school boards to determine if they want to teach yoga poses and stretches.  However, the poses must have English names.  You can’t chant or use mantras.  You may not use the greeting “namaste.”  

I am not making this up.

Peace Treaty with the Taliban

You do know that we just lost another war.  After years of fighting in Afghanistan the U.S.policy just became one of “cut and run.”  The so-called “peace treaty” with the Taliban is an agreement that the Taliban would reduce violence (which they have already broken) and some vague “benchmarks” contained in “annexes” to the agreements which members of Congress are not allowed to see.  

Bottom line is the U.S. will have no leverage if the Taliban continue to  violate the agreements.  Afghan women have been sold down the river.  Afghan citizens who hoped to live in peace will have their hopes dashed.  And Trump will take credit for removing Americans from Afghanistan.  He won’t take credit for the defeat.  He won’t call it a defeat, but that is what it is.

Does Ted Cruz have coronavirus?

Sen. Ted Cruz has come into contact with a person who has tested positive for the coronavirus, and Cruz announced he will “self-quarantine.”  Since we can’t be exactly sure how long the virus takes to incubate, I’m thinking that self-quarantine should be for months.  

And since he is such good Trump supporter, I think President Trump should visit him to wish him well.

Gerrymandering stopped

No, not in Pennsylvania, although there are bills in both the state House and Senate to turn over redistricting to a nonpartisan citizens’ commission.  The bills have with bipartisan sponsors, but it is difficult to convince a legislature to change the method by which its incumbent members were elected.

That is what makes Virginia’s recent action so amazing.  The State House of Delegates voted 54-46 to place a constitutional amendment on the November ballot to establish an independent commission to draw the legislative maps.  I believe it will pass.

In Missouri, where 60% of the voters backed a constitutional amendment mandating nonpartisan maps, the Republican-controlled legislature is pushing a new amendment that would overturn that vote of the people.

In Pennsylvania, meanwhile, I will be attending a rally in Harrisburg later this month to encourage Pennsylvania legislators to adopt the nonpartisan redistricting commission.  The delegation from this area will also be meeting with our State Senator John Yudichak to thank him for co-sponsoring the legislation.

Just Make Shit Up

When Trump was criticized for testing delays for the coronavirus, he said it was the fault of a federal agency decision under President Obama that had made it harder to carry out widespread testing.

The problem with this was that no one knew what he was talking about.  Nothing like that had happened.  None of it was true.

I am not making this up.  See the article by Peter Baker and Sheila Kaplan, “Under Fire Over Testing Delays, Trump Points a Finger at Obama,”  New York Times, (March 5, 2020), p. A11.  

Eating crow

Where does that expression come from?  In any case a recent post of mine praised California’s early voting and extensive preparation for Super Tuesday.  I wrote too soon.  Evidently hundreds of thousands of people requested early ballots, but then decided to wait.  When they showed up at the polls the polling officials had to check the records to make sure they had not already voted, and amazingly long lines resulted.  

Not only that, but the conservatives columnist Jonah Goldberg made a good point that all of those people who voted early for Buttigieg or Klobuchar or Steyer wasted their votes.  Had they waited, they likely would have switched to Biden, as many voters did in Texas, where Biden won big.  

I’m still impressed with the efforts made by California to make voting easy and convenient, but the state may want to think the long early voting period.

Incidentally, the long lines in Texas were for a different reason.  Texas cut down the number of polling locations in places with large concentrations of minority voters or on college campuses.  That’s called voter suppression.

Super Tuesday analyzed

Every Democratic presidential candidate has flaws, some more than others.  Primary voters and caucus goers seem overwhelmingly to be motivated by which of them can beat Donald Trump.  The other consideration is which candidate can bring in the largest number of House and Senate candidates along with him or her.  

Since the candidates I liked–Klobuchar, Buttigieg, and Yang–have dropped out, the main choice is between Biden and Sanders.  I like Bloomberg and Warren, but neither seems to be exciting much support.  While I think Biden has many flaws (he is sooo old, and he makes sooo many verbal errors, and he has sooo much baggage), he will be less likely to lose moderate states like North Carolina, Michigan, and Ohio.  He is also less likely to hurt Democratic candidates in swing districts, where Sanders would be a drag on their chances.

The idea that Sanders will bring out large numbers of young people to vote for him is a pipe dream.  I am enough of a political scientist to know that young people don’t vote in large numbers.  They never have.  There are many reasons for this, but trust me.  They are not voting in large numbers now, and they won’t in November.

So, bottom line.  Unless something happens today that I don’t anticipate and Warren and Bloomberg get large numbers of delegates, go with Biden.  And please don’t give me the crap about the lesser of two evils is still evil.  Neither Sanders nor Biden are evil.  Both are flawed.  Look at it coldly and rationally.  Who can best beat Trump and let that be how you decide.

Cuccinelli and Goklany

No, these aren’t those two guys from the Ukraine.  They are exhibits #1 and #2 of Trump’s unqualified appointees.

Cuccinelli, in fact, was literally unqualified.  Trump appointed him to head the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, but the appointment violated a federal law on who can fill a cabinet-level position.  The judge who voided the appointment also voided two anti-immigration polices that Cuccinelli, a notorious bigot, had put into place.

Goklany is the deputy secretary in the Department of the Interior appointed by Trump  to be in charge of reviewing the agency’s climate policies.  He has been slipping climate change denying statements into at least nine Department reports so far, including some material that is demonstrably false.  

Gives you lots of confidence in this administration, doesn’t it?

For the full story see Zolan Kanno-Youngs, “Trump Pick Unlawfully Appointed, Judge Rules,”  New York Times, (Mar. 2, 2020) p. A15, and Hiroko Tabuchi, “Climate Denial Infuses Reports At U.S. Agency,” New York Times, (Mar. 2, 2020), pp. A1, A21.

Pete Buttigieg

Buttigieg suspended his campaign tonight.  I watched his speech, and I was struck by how decent both he and the other Democratic candidates are.  Whether left or center, they are all so decent.  They don’t make fun of people, don’t denigrate minority groups, and aren’t in it for the money.  Think of some of the people who have left the race, like Castro or Harris or Steyer or O’Rourke or Booker.  All of them were competent; all were qualified.  Any one of them makes Trump look small, mean, and stupid.

Mayor Pete broke ground with his campaign.  I’ve seen amazing progress in my lifetime, but to someone my age (77), the idea of a gay man with a husband running for President and garnering the support of millions is truly wonderful.  I am often very critical of our country, but in important ways we are so much better than we have ever been.