Saturday Soother – October 30, 2021

The Daily Escape:

A Halloween prayer – photographer unknown. Fear is everywhere in the world. Is there reason for hope?

In comments on Wrongo’s post, “Climate Change Summit, Part II”, blog reader Gloria R. asked for some suggestions about how older people could help with climate change, given that the outcome will only be clear after the elderly are long gone.

Good question. In some ways, climate despair is a new kind of climate denial, blunting the momentum for action, just when we need it most. Despair can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But young people aren’t feeling hopeless. The first truly global social movements dedicated to climate action and climate justice have gained in size and strength, beginning with Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for the Future and spreading to the Sunrise Movement in America and to climate justice movements around the world.

First suggestion: These movements are long on enthusiasm and short of money. Maybe geezers could fund them?

Second, capital continues to leave fossil fuel investments. According to a recent study. this shifting of financial assets could potentially stop the fossil fuel companies from giving lip service to climate change, particularly if they lose political power. Maybe geezers could direct their financial advisors to move their investment $$ away from these big emitters?

Third, state and local governments set building codes and local energy-use regulations. They also set zoning and land use rules. So, maybe geezers could get political on a local level and work to make what we tend to call the “living laboratories for democracy” (state and local governments) havens of better climate policies and practices?

Fourth, some of us don’t have funds to back up our ideals. One thing geezers can do that is costless is to send a letter to their kids about what they did to make sure the future isn’t an environmental wasteland. That’s the premise behind DearTomorrow, a project that’s archiving letters about climate change written by people to their future children, selves, or family. The idea is to foster personal engagement with the problems and solutions to climate change. DearTomorrow asks letter writers to focus on positive themes and why they have hope for future generations. Writing a letter to their future self or loved ones makes it personal.

Fifth, join Elders Climate Action, a group of grandparents who mobilize elders to address climate change. They’re trying to protect the well-being of their grandchildren.

There you go, Gloria (and all geezers), five ideas. There are many, many others.

Finally, the response to the Covid pandemic demonstrated how societies and economies can pivot very quickly in response to a global emergency. The response was far from perfect. The rich countries took care of their own citizens first, and then moved in some cases reluctantly, to help the poor nations. But for the medium-term, we now have a blueprint for the globe working together on a global crisis.

Other reasons for hope:

  1. The global economy is growing faster than global emissions. That means energy efficiency is increasing without any erosion in economic growth. The pandemic slowed this down, but the trend is clear.
  2. Energy efficiency is moving from the margins toward a new normal in the products we use. Think how commonplace LED light bulbs are today.
  3. The price of solar and wind power has plunged, and there’s reason to expect that the cost of energy storage, key to an electric power grid reliant on renewable energy, will decline over time.
  4. The supply of clean energy resources is growing faster than new sources of “dirty” energy. Now, the potential for electric power generated from clean, steady sources is becoming a reality.

That’s Wrongo’s brief take on reasons to be hopeful about our climate future. But that’s no reason to stop the effort to hold corporations and politicians accountable for making climate change a top priority. On Thursday at a House Oversight Committee hearing, four fossil fuel CEOs refused to declare climate change an “existential crisis”, using weasel words to avoid reality. They must be stopped.

Enough for today, it’s time for our Saturday Soother, when we take a brief break from whatever is going on in the Virginia governor’s race and spend a few minutes concentrating on the natural world around us. Here in CT, we’ve seen temperatures in the mid-30s. We’ve started leaf blowing. It will go on until at least the first week of December.

Time to bundle up, grab a comfy chair by a window, and listen to Broken Peach perform a live Halloween version of Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” in zombie makeup. Broken Peach is a cover band from Spain:

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Saturday Soother – June 26, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Low tide, Thumpertown Beach, Cape Cod MA – July 4, 2018 iPhone photo by Wrongo

After Biden and a bipartisan group of US lawmakers announced a deal on infrastructure, it soon became clear that Democrats would only support it if it was passed alongside a big reconciliation bill, something that Wrongo suggested was the only way to play infrastructure with the Republicans.

The American Society of Civil Engineers says that we need to spend $2.59 trillion in the next decade on pure, traditional infrastructure. According to a fact sheet released by the White House, Part 1 includes just $579 billion in new infrastructure spending over the course of five years, with $309 billion going to transportation and $109 billion earmarked for roads, bridges, and other projects.

That means there needs to be two bills: one, a “hard infrastructure” bill along the lines of the framework agreed on Thursday, and the second, a “broadly defined infrastructure” bill containing the other provisions Biden originally wanted in his big infrastructure bill.

If a bipartisan Part 1 appeases enough moderates of both parties sufficiently to get them not to raise hell over a reconciliation Part 2, then Biden will be acknowledged as better at politics than the pundits.

OTOH, McConnell says Biden can have Part 1 only if he doesn’t ask for Part 2. That sets up the possibility that Democrats must choose between something that’s admittedly terrible, or nothing. Biden says he won’t sign the first unless he is also given the second one to sign, while Pelosi says the first bill won’t pass the House until the reconciliation bill passes the Senate.

As with everything in DC, the usual caveats apply: So. Much. Can. Go. Wrong. The two-track Senate strategy (one bill bipartisan, another through reconciliation) requires extraordinary political deftness, possibly a bridge too far for the craptacular Senate Majority Leader Schumer.

A few words about Part 1 from Common Dreams:

  • Rather than pushing for taxes targeting rich individuals and corporations, a White House fact sheet on the bipartisan package outlines other potential financing sources, from unused Coronavirus funds to reinstating Superfund fees for chemicals.
  • The proposal also relies on public-private partnerships, (P3s), private activity bonds, and asset recycling for infrastructure investment.

When politicians say “asset recycling” they mean the sale or lease of public assets to the private sector so the government can put that money toward new investments. But the devil is in the details, and how we fund new infrastructure can’t be through privatizing our existing infrastructure.

America won’t get a redo once its public infrastructure is privatized.

In some places public/private partnerships can be tolerable. Think rail policy where Amtrak’s funding is contingent on some sort of matching grants for private freight service improvement. This can be better justified as both are connected as part of the same rail network and improvements can be easily tracked.

But elsewhere, it can’t, especially in power and telecom, where P3s only serve to prevent public services from being offered. This sounds like how Philadelphia and other cities sold off infrastructure like parking garages and parking meters. The city derived no recurring income, while private companies collected the monies.

From Benjamin Studebaker:

“In most democracies, a working legislative majority allows the government to pass legislation. In the United States, things don’t work this way….As our problems slowly mount, neither the Democrats or the Republicans are able to experiment with policy solutions. The policies that do get passed are the result of fraught compromises. It’s never clear who is responsible for the policies that issue from the federal government, and every time anything goes wrong every part of the US government passes the buck to every other part.”

The failure to make essential investments in the basic infrastructure of the country is not consistent with having a functioning state. Either the filibuster must go, or the primary system must go. The primary system is here to stay because it is equated with democracy itself in the US. Therefore, sooner or later, the filibuster will go.

So, rather than teasing Americans with the promise of a new Roosevelt administration (in aviator shades), it looks like we’re in for another round of gridlock.

That’s enough politics for this Saturday. It’s time for our Saturday Soother. Wrongo and Ms. Right are spending a few days on Cape Cod, which is always enjoyable. So, before going off to watch another beautiful sunset, let’s take a few minutes to relax and listen to the Second movement (largo) of Dvořák’s “From the New World“, performed here in 1985 by the Vienna Philharmonic, directed by the late Herbert von Karajan:

 

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Monday Wake Up Call – May 24, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Sun, clouds and Saguaros, North Scottsdale AZ – photo by rayredstonemedia61

After three decades of digital technology development, it’s evident that cybersecurity isn’t being adequately ensured by Mr. Market’s “invisible hand.” In remarks at the White House last Thursday, Biden said:

“…private entities are in charge of their own cybersecurity…and we know what they need. They need greater private-sector investment in cybersecurity.”

Wrongo’s last assignment was as CEO for a division of a F500 defense contractor. We were targeted by Chinese and other hackers thousands of times per day. By 2005, the parent company was investing tens of millions annually on cybersecurity. Most non-defense firms have come to investing in cybersecurity slowly and without large funding.

We again became painfully aware of the issue when hackers shut down the Colonial pipeline on Mother’s Day, bringing back gas shortages and long conga lines of cars trying to fill up. We subsequently heard that Colonial paid the hackers $4.4 million in Bitcoin to regain control of their networks.

From the New Yorker:

“…we are a country that has seen nearly a thousand reported ransomware attacks on our critical infrastructure since 2013. This includes transportation services, wastewater facilities, communications systems, and hospitals. The average recovery cost of a ransomware attack for businesses is around two million dollars.”

Even though private companies are most vulnerable to counterattacks, they continue to set their own cybersecurity standards largely based on operational and economic priorities, even if their negligence exposes the public to risks. So why won’t companies fix their mess?

Most in the private sector think that cybersecurity regulations will cost too much, which they do not want to pay, or may be incapable of paying. Many in the private sector also consider requirements for better cybersecurity to be yet another form of government regulation.

Mostly, it’s about money and secondarily, about a shortage of IT skills. Some argue that the incentive structure is backwards. Companies often think the costs of adding robust cybersecurity to be higher than their likely losses from a cyber theft. In a way, they are self-insuring, but that ignores the harm to their customers that occurs when personal information is stolen, or when you can’t buy gasoline.

CEOs are concerned primarily with the short-term profits and stock prices of their corporations. Companies have regularly absorbed losses incurred by security breaches, rather than reveal weaknesses in their internal cybersecurity systems, all in the name of protecting management reputations.

In 2015, Obama’s DHS designated dams, defense, agriculture, health care, and twelve other sectors of the economy as “critical infrastructure,” meaning that they:

“…are so vital to the US that their incapacity or destruction would have a debilitating impact on our physical or economic security or public health or safety.”

But while the DHS issued cybersecurity guidelines to those sectors, most companies operating critical infrastructure (like Colonial) are privately owned, and they ignored them. That includes 80% of the energy sector, including pipelines, power generation, and the electricity grid. DHS said in 2015 that those industries needed to develop a common vision and framework to deal with cyber threats.

But corporate America never developed that vision and framework.

In 2019, a European cybersecurity researcher using open-source tools available to anyone, identified and mapped the location of twenty-six thousand industrial-control systems across the US whose internet configurations left them exposed and vulnerable to attack. But you know, they would be prohibitively expensive to fix.

On May 12th, Biden issued an executive order that directed federal agencies and their contractors to abide by a host of stringent new cybersecurity regulations and reporting requirements. The order also required IT service providers and companies that operate industrial-control systems, to inform the government about cybersecurity breaches that could affect American networks.

Biden’s order is a significant workaround for the lack of government control of cybersecurity in the private sector. Many of the cloud services and software packages used by government agencies are also used in the private sector. So, Biden is creating the likelihood that those standards and requirements will be more broadly adopted. That would be similar to auto-emissions standards: When California raised its standards, 12 other states decided to adopt those requirements, and five automakers agreed to design all their new cars to meet them.

Something similar could occur with cybersecurity. Like with Covid, we’re again learning that there’s a very good reason for a robust central government that has the will to write and enforce 21st Century regulations.

Time to wake up America! Corporations aren’t your friends. From sending jobs abroad, to out-of-control share buybacks, to failing to invest in cybersecurity, they need much closer scrutiny. To help you wake up, let’s dust off Depeche Mode with their 1989 hit “Personal Jesus”:

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Monday Wake Up Call – May 10, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Lone Juniper, Black Canyon, Gunnison NP, CO – 2020 photo by Mattbnet

Isn’t it time that corporations paid decent wages?

After the Labor Department released its April jobs report, the US Chamber of Commerce blamed last month’s weak employment growth on the $300 weekly supplemental jobless benefit. They then urged lawmakers to eliminate the enhanced unemployment payments that were extended through early September by Biden’s American Rescue Plan.

This, from the dudes who willingly spend $300 on a lunch.

According to the US Chamber’s analysis, the extra $300 unemployment insurance (UI) benefit results in roughly one in four recipients taking home more pay than they earned working. But, if one in four recipients are making more not working than they did working, that’s not an indictment of $300 a week in UI benefits. It’s an indictment of corporations who pay less-than-living wages.

We could blame Asia for this, or we can blame our managerial and ownership class who engineered the outsourcing deals that made it possible. They built factories in Asia as an economic-production-economic-aggression platform to disintermediate American workers by sending higher wage jobs to lower wage locations in the Far East. And in many cases, the same companies who closed the American plants owned the Asian factories.

It’s sickening to hear these big business types complain that raising wages will destroy the economy! That’s the same argument which was used in the South against ending slavery (it would hurt the economy).

The US Chamber isn’t alone. South Carolina is cutting off extended unemployment benefits starting on June 30. From the SC governor:

“South Carolina’s businesses have borne the brunt of the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Those businesses that have survived — both large and small, and including those in the hospitality, tourism, manufacturing, and healthcare sectors — now face an unprecedented labor shortage,”

South Carolina’s unemployment rate was 12.8% in April of last year. But this March, it was down to 5.1%, significantly below the 6.1% national rate. Still, these Governors (Montana has done this too) are simply acting as shills on behalf of corporations to force workers back into low wage jobs.

Many studies have shown that the employees of big box stores like Walmart and Target cannot meet their basic economic needs on the money they make at their minimum wage job. Many turn to community social services just to feed their families.

It’s not China (or other Asian countries) that are to blame. We demand ever-lower prices, so something had to give. That something was middle-class American jobs. The American public was never part of the discussion about the pros and cons of offshoring manufacturing to lower wage countries, or how that would both lower costs for goods, but also destroy American jobs.

A lot of the people who now shop at Walmart and Target lost their jobs to Mexico, China, or Bangladesh. At which point, they needed some form of welfare, and/or another part time job at Walmart-type wages. And now that they’re on Walmart wages, Walmart prices are all they can afford.

Time to wake up America! We should be asking how can it be that food banks are overwhelmed while the Dow Jones Industrial Average hits an all-time high? Simply, the stock market isn’t the whole economy. The stock market is about corporate profits, while food banks are about minimum wage jobs and unemployment.

We should be asking: Why do these corporations (the small as well as the large) persist with business models that don’t allow them to pay living wages?

We could also ask whether more red states will try to “solve” the employment problem by hurting the unemployed rather than treating the root cause: paying living wages.

To help you wake up, listen to Rag’n’Bone Man and P!nk on Rag’n’Bone Man’s new release, “Anywhere Away from Here”. We often feature music to have fun with, or to dance to. And then there are tunes like this, music for the heart and soul:

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Nomadland Is Best Picture

The Daily Escape:

Desert Lilies, Desert Lily Preserve, Desert Center, CA – photo by Bob Wick for BLM

The film “Nomadland” won best film, best director, and best actress at this year’s Oscars. Wrongo and Ms. Right kept our tradition, and didn’t watch the Oscars, but we have seen the film twice.

If you haven’t seen it , the film is worth your time. It offers a sympathetic view of what’s happening to the American working class in what’s becoming a de-industrialized America. It shows the hollowing out of middle America, and the growing regional inequality that stems from the US economy being concentrated in fewer and fewer corporate hands, and often, in fewer places.

Our changing economy has left wide swaths of rural America in decay. The movie’s story centers on Fern, an older widow. She worked in the US Gypsum plant in Empire, Nevada until the Great Recession reduced demand for drywall, and thus the mine and the plant were closed.

Once the factory went, so did the town. It became so de-populated that it even lost its zip code. Now, Fern, (played by Frances McDormand), sleeps in an old, converted van and works a seasonal job with one of the few employers left in the area: An Amazon shipping center.

But the film isn’t about Amazon. It’s about coping with downward mobility. Fern travels the southwest mountains, working a variety of gig jobs: In addition to Amazon, she’s kitchen help in a Wall Drug. She works at a beet processing plant throwing cases of beets into a hopper. She helps run a small RV park.

The film avoids clichés about the formerly middle-class, mostly White Americans it depicts. None of them blame Black people or immigrants or the left-wing media for their problems. They simply no longer play by the norms of an economy that ruined their lives.

Ironically, these characters don’t follow the usual White working-class stereotypes. Unlike Trump voters interviewed by the media in diners across America, they don’t turn to racism or blind acceptance of patriotism because of their economic uncertainty. Fern and the rest of the characters in “Nomadland” demonstrate dignity, decency, and stoicism in the face of the structural forces grinding them down. They teach each other how to survive while living off grid. They help each other when the chips are down.

Eric Cortellessa at Washington Monthly offers great insight:

“Unlike JD Vance’s flawed Hillbilly Elegy…this film does not blame the victims for their own downward mobility. It doesn’t point to bad habits (drugs and laziness), bad morals (racism and Trumpism), or bad attitudes (toxic masculinity and perverted Christianity). Instead, it shows humble men and women who don’t scapegoat others and who manage to preserve their dignity and, to a large extent, their own personal freedom in the face of systemic forces that are exploiting them.”

Let’s point out that since 1985, the average Wall Street bonus has increased 1,217%, from $13,970 to $184,000 in 2020. If the minimum wage had increased at that rate, it would be $44.12, instead of $7.25. And $7.25 equates to $15,080/year, nowhere near enough to make a payment on the US median home that’s priced at $301,000. It’s not even enough for a tiny dump of a house, like the one Fern left in Empire NV, which probably cost one-third of the median price.

Jessica Bruder, the author of “Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century,” that the movie is based on, wrote over the weekend about her exploration of this growing subculture. Bruder says a scene depicting Fern spending a night in her van when she hears “the knock” is chillingly accurate:

“No overnight parking! You can’t sleep here.”

The knock, Bruder explains, “is a visceral, even existential, threat,” one that nomads try to evade by hiding in plain sight: “Make yourself invisible. Internalize the idea that you’re unwelcome.”

Some places forbid overnight parking. Others outlaw living in a vehicle. Penalties can pile up fast. Unpaid, they can lead to the cruelest punishment of all: Your home gets towed. Failing to pay the impoundment fee means losing your home. Bruder says that people ask her what they can do for the nomads:

“Letting vehicle dwellers exist in peace would be a fine start. Individuals have the power to help. When you see someone living in a car, van, or RV, don’t call the police.”

Wrongo was struck by how the nomads helped each other. In our little New England town, people do the same, they try to help. The bystanders at George Floyd’s murder tried to help prevent Floyd’s death.

The only people who don’t seem to care about helping one another are corporate executives and Republican politicians. How did they get like that?

See the film.

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Saturday Soother – March 27, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Stinson Beach, Marin County, CA – photo by Merrill Dodd

A single-point-of-failure in the global economy failed last week when the Ever Given, one of the world’s largest container ships, ran aground in the Suez Canal shutting down traffic in both directions. It’s now stuck sideways in the Canal.

And the Suez Canal isn’t just any waterway; it links the factories of Asia to the customers of Europe. It’s also a major conduit for crude oil. The WaPo reports that 12% of the world’s cargo travels through the Suez Canal. That this vast flow of cargo could come to a halt because a gust of wind blew a ship off course makes the brittleness of our global system of trade apparent.

That one mishap could spread chaos from Los Angeles to Rotterdam to Shanghai underscores the extent to which commerce today is tightly intertwined with the global supply chain. From the WaPo:

“By Friday, more than 160 ships were anchored in the Mediterranean and the Red seas. Egyptian officials appeared confident the canal could reopen within days, while salvage engineers cautioned that freeing the stuck ship might take weeks.”

A delay of two weeks could strand at sea one-fourth of the supply of containers that would normally be in European ports.

The NYT reports that a surge of Covid-related goods orders for items like exercise equipment has exhausted the supply of available containers at ports in China. The cost of shipping a container from Asia to North America has more than doubled since November. And on the US west coast, container unloading has been slowed as dockworkers and truck drivers were infected with Covid-19 or forced to stay home to attend to children who are out of school.

For decades, economists have lectured us about the virtues of “economic efficiency”. But, as the initially poor response of the global supply chain to the Covid-19 showed, economic resilience is also particularly important. We couldn’t get PPE for essential workers because we followed just-in-time inventory management and relied on China as our primary supplier. We’ve also seen shortages of computer chips for cars.

From the NYT: (brackets by Wrongo)

“It [just-in-time] has also yielded a bonanza for corporate executives and other shareholders: Money not spent filling warehouses with unneeded auto parts is, at least in part, money that can be given to shareholders in the form of dividends.”

Once again, we’re learning that the neo-liberal economic solution fails the people. So the economists and the CEOs have gotten it wrong. And the canal blockage, like the PPE shortages, show that they can be spectacularly wrong sometimes. More from the WaPo:

“And the grounding of the Ever Given has exposed how complex ownership structures in global shipping make it difficult to hold anyone accountable: The Ever Given is operated by Taiwan-based shipping company Evergreen Maritime. Evergreen charters the ship from a Japanese firm; a Dubai-based company acts as the agent for the ship in ports; and the ship flies the flag of Panama.”

So, accidents will happen, and they’re nobody’s fault.

The challenges presented by the Suez blockage come directly from the ‘just-in-time’ mantra. While a crisis cannot be predicted, it can be prepared for. Corporations and nations need to stop sticking their head in the sand about long-term planning, and get back to doing what the MBA’s call “resilience planning.”

Resilience planning’s been devalued by our push for short-term profits and stock market gains. If you doubt that, read about the massive cyberhack of US government agencies and major corporations, perhaps the biggest in history, that was discovered in early December by the security firm FireEye. Much of that was preventable by better management and planning.

Globalization isn’t our only problem. Add to it our short-term mindset which, when combined with greed, has endangered America.

It is unclear how long it will take for the Ever Given to be refloated and the flow of the canal traffic can resume. CNN reports that it may be freed over the weekend. But to do that, more than this level of effort will be required:

Credit: Reuters

As the clock ticks, Egypt isn’t collecting tolls for ships’ passage. And many ships, including some operated by Evergreen, have begun to re-route around the Cape of Good Hope. Multiple shipping firms have contacted the US Navy for protection against pirates on their rerouted trip, according to the Financial Times (paywalled).

Enough of the world’s problems for now. It’s time for our Saturday Soother, when we take a break and either watch the Sweet Sixteen if so inclined, or do more spring yardwork, since today is supposed to be the better of the weekend days.

Before pulling on the gloves, let’s take a few moments and listen to “Cloudburst” by George Winston, from his album, “Plains”. The video is of springtime in the northern Idaho plains. It’s a meditation on a few of our feathered friends in spring:

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Corporations, Not Congress, Do The Right Thing

The Daily Escape:

Winter, Stowe VT – photo by John H. Knox

On January 6 2021 America’s professional managerial class felt fear for the first time since WWII. These corporate titans saw our democracy stumble. And they didn’t like it, since they have a vested interest in the US continuing to be a stable democracy. They rely on the rule of law to allow them to operate in a predictable and rational environment. That environment was jeopardized last week.

For the moment, the USA is effectively without a leader. We’ve heard no public briefings from the White House, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, or the Justice Department about what happened on January 6, or what has happened since. We’ve heard only Trump say he isn’t responsible for the attack on the Capitol.

The acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security resigned. The Defense Department is being run by a Trump lackey. Outgoing Secretary of State Pompeo is trying to blow up the entire Biden administration by recognizing the independence of Taiwan.

America is crying out for leadership, and a broad coalition of CEOs stepped up to silence Trump. These CEOs acted faster and more effectively as a check on the president’s power than Congress could, or would. A new overt corporatist political force is emerging, and Facebook (excuse the pun) is its face. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said:

“You cannot call for violence…the risk to our democracy was too big. We felt that we had to take the unprecedented step of an indefinite ban, and I’m glad that we did.”

Twitter followed suit with a permanent Trump ban.

For years, many people, including Trump, have used these platforms to undermine democracy. Since before the November election, they have used these platforms to attempt to nullify the results of the November election, and install Donald Trump as an illegitimate president. From Jonathan Last:

“Had this attempt been successful, it would have been the end of American democracy and, consequently, the failure of the rule of law. This would have had dire consequences for Twitter, Facebook, and every company in America because it would have meant that they were no longer subject to the predictable process of the rule of law, but rather…the pleasure of a strongman.”

Despite the whining on the Right, there is no right of free speech on private platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Google. Those companies built, and now operate their platforms, and they are available to most for free. That doesn’t imply that individuals or corporations must be free to say anything they want while using them.

The people who run Twitter and Facebook are just as qualified to make judgments about what’s useful for a healthy society as any Right Wing politician. Anyone who says that these platform companies must simply let anyone join their platforms, and then allow them to do whatever they want, are simply wrong.

We’ve learned last week that when a sitting president threatens the political stability of the country by inciting an insurrectionist mob that storms the Capitol, corporate America will do everything in its power to restrain him.

This week, the tech giants including Facebook, Google, Amazon and Twitter worked in concert to decapitate Trump and the extreme Right.

Other corporations pulled political funding from all legislators who supported overturning the result of November’s free and fair election. Several major companies on Monday said they planned to cut off political donations to the 147 members of Congress who last week voted against certifying the results of the presidential election. Other major corporations said they are suspending all contributions from their political action committees. This is a sign of corporate America’s growing unease with the election falsehoods promoted by Trump, along with the violent attacks he encouraged.

All of this happened before the House could even schedule a vote on impeachment.

It also highlights the inaction by the Senate. For the first time in the last ten presidential transitions, the GOP-led Senate is not confirming Biden cabinet members prior to the inauguration.

There will be no head of the CIA, no Homeland Security secretary, Attorney General, Secretary of State, or Secretary of Health and Human Services when Biden takes office. This, despite being hip deep in a domestic terror attack during a pandemic that’s killed nearly 400,000 Americans.

And everyone should have a problem with the fact that the New England Patriots’ head coach Bill Belichick, by refusing Trump’s offer of a Medal of Freedom, is showing more moral leadership than any Republican Representative or Senator.

Between the demonstrations we saw last summer, through the Georgia Senate runoff election, political activism is on the rise across America. That now includes major corporations.

There will be no going back.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 19, 2020

One week ago, the cumulative US COVID-19 death toll was 15,000. Seven days later, the death toll is now 36,000. That means in a week, about 21,000 Americans have died, a growth rate of 140%. In the past two months, here’s how US coronavirus deaths have grown:

  • Feb 17: 0 deaths
  • March 17: 111 deaths
  • April 17: 36,997 deaths

Although deaths are a lagging indicator for how successful we are in our efforts to contain the Coronavirus, and despite all the happy talk about flattening the curve, this looks like a rocket ship leaving the launch pad.

The Navy has now tested about 94% of the crew on the USS Theodore Roosevelt, the aircraft carrier that was sidelined with a Coronavirus outbreak. As of Friday, 660 crew members (of about 4,865) have now tested positive for Coronavirus.

However, of those 660 who were positive, 60% have not shown any symptoms associated with the illness. This should cause us to question the true rate of infections in the US. The proportion of people who are asymptomatic carriers worldwide remains unknown, but at 60%, the Theodore Roosevelt’s figure is higher than the 25%-50% range Dr. Fauci laid out in early April.

Taking these two data points together, America should proceed carefully as it leaves the lockdown.

On to cartoons. Another day, another spin of the big blame wheel:

With big business, some things never change:

If not his signature, then certainly his fingerprints:

The right’s narrative that can kill:

Individual responsibility has consequences:

John Roberts has to live with his Wisconsin voting decision:

 

 

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Monday Wake Up Call – April 6, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Texas bluebonnets, Round Rock, TX – 2018 photo by dried_fruit

Here are the latest national numbers (which will be out of date by the time you read them). From The COVID Tracking Project: (as of 4/4)

  • Number of daily cases: 305,755, up 33,767 or +12.4% vs. April 3
  • Rate of case increase: 12.4% vs. 13.75% on 4/3 and 15% average for the past week
  • Number of deaths: Total 8,314, up 1,352 vs. April 3
  • Rate of deaths increase 4/4 vs 4/3: 19.4% % vs. 20.4% on 4/3
  • Daily number of tests 4/4 vs. 4/3: 1,623,807, up 226,945 over 4/3
  • Rate of increase in tests: +16.2% vs. previous day

The rates of growth in cases and deaths have begun to slow. In the past week, they are in a decelerating trend, declining by about 1%/day. Testing is growing, which is a very good thing.

Just when you think you can’t get any more cynical about America’s response to the pandemic, we tumble to the fact that about a third of hospital emergency rooms are now staffed by doctors on the payrolls of two physician staffing companies, TeamHealth and Envision Health. They are owned by two Wall Street private equity firms. Envision Healthcare employs 69,000 healthcare workers nationwide while TeamHealth employs 20,000. Private equity firm Blackstone Group owns TeamHealth; Kravis Kohlberg Roberts (KKR) owns Envision. Private equity is the term for a large unregulated pool of money run by financiers who use that money to invest in, lend to, and/or buy companies and restructure them.

Wrongo began hearing that despite the urgent pleas from hospitals on the front lines of the COVOID-19 outbreak, nurses and doctors were being taken off schedules in nearby places once “elective” procedures were suspended, as they are at many hospitals and clinics. That means the associated revenues were lost, or at the very least, postponed.

Here’s a report from Yahoo Finance:

“KKR & Co.-backed Envision, which carries over $7 billion of debt amassed through one of the biggest leveraged buyouts in recent years, reported steep drops at its care facilities. In just two weeks, it suffered declines of 65% to 75% in business at its 168 open ambulatory surgical centers, compared to the same period last year, the company said in a private report to investors. About 90 centers are closed.”

Private equity has taken over more and more of hospital staffing, including emergency departments. The legal fig leaf that allows private equity firms like Blackstone and KKR to play doctor is that their deals are structured so that an individual MD or group of MDs is the nominal owner of the specialty practice, even though the business is stripped of its assets. The practices’ operating contracts are widely believed to strip the MDs of any say in management.

Care of the sick is not the mission of these companies; their mission is to make profits for the private equity firms and its investors. In 2018, Paladin Healthcare, an entity owned by private equity baron Joel Freedman, bought Philadelphia’s Hahnemann University Hospital. This hospital served the poor, and Freedman closed it down so he could use the land to build luxury apartments.

When the city recently asked to use the empty hospital as part of its solution for the Coronavirus pandemic, Freedman demanded $1M/month in rent. Overcharging patients and insurance companies for providing urgent and desperately needed emergency medical care is bad enough. But holding a city hostage?

In another example, STAT reports on another private equity firm: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Alteon Health, which employs about 1,700 emergency medicine doctors and other physicians who staff hospital emergency rooms across the country, announced it would suspend paid time off, matching contributions to employees’ 401(K) retirement accounts, and discretionary bonuses in response to the pandemic…The company also said it would reduce some clinicians’ hours to the minimum required to maintain health insurance coverage, and that it would convert some salaried employees to hourly status for “maximum staffing flexibility.”

NY’s Governor Cuomo and others are pleading to have doctors come out of retirement, and here we have skilled doctors who have the training and are being asked to work fewer hours? All of the Republican talk about “choice” and “markets” in healthcare is just self-serving BS that benefits their buddies.

Time to wake up America!

Why do private equity firms continue to benefit from the “carried interest” tax loophole? Shouldn’t they shoulder their part of the financial grief the pandemic is causing to our country?

To help you wake up, here is John Lennon’s 1970 song, “Isolation”. It appeared on John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. It has a whole new meaning in today’s context:

Sample Lyric:

We’re afraid of everyone,

Afraid of the sun.

Isolation

The sun will never disappear,

But the world may not have many years.

Isolation.

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here. 

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – March 22, 2020

We have a ton of cartoons today, so just a brief comment. Neoliberal economics bears a major responsibility for the pathetic pandemic response by our corporations and government. It encourages efficiency over all other aspects of a complex product/service delivery system. We now see that it is fragile, without the resilience necessary to meet surges of demand/need.

Our CEOs and politicians now think only in terms of equilibrium, when equilibrium is the last thing we need in the middle of a runaway exponential disease process like COVID-19.

We’re seeing how difficult it is to source things like gloves, masks and sterile gowns. The delays procuring those items will pale against the delay in sourcing ventilators and ultimately, a vaccine in sufficient doses to truly stem the tide.

One thing to think about is how nations with authoritarian or collectivist societies have responded to the Coronavirus better than those in the west, where we celebrate the individual, occasionally to the detriment of society. Our way works fine when things are good, but not so well when things turn bad.

What would you expect, given an educational system that doesn’t teach people what “exponential” means?

Finally, imagine Trump if he were FDR right after the attack on Pearl Harbor: Standing in front of Congress declaring: “This Japan thing will go away!” On to cartoons.

Whose responsibility is this?

There’s only one real cure for Trump syndrome:

He’ll never have clean hands:

Sadly, it’s not just his hands that don’t measure up:

Sen. Burr and the others can’t explain their actions. They’re guilty:

 

Let all the people keep the checks, but nothing for corporations:

Dem primaries showed us something:

The core problem for Democrats today:

Work from Home withdrawal setting in:

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