The Daily Escape:

American White Pelicans over the Rocky Mountain Front, MT – photo by Jack Bell Photography

(This is the last post by the Wrongologist until Wednesday, June 16^th.)

Felix Salmon at Axios has a disturbing story which says that as much as half of the pandemic’s payments for unemployment claims may have been stolen. Axios quoted Blake Hall, the CEO of ID.me, a fraud prevention service, who said that the US has lost as much as $400 billion to fraudulent claims.

They also quoted Haywood Talcove, CEO of LexisNexis Risk Solutions’ Government business, who told Axios that at least 70% of stolen money ultimately left the country, with much of it ending up in places including China and Nigeria:

“These groups are definitely backed by the state…”

He means foreign powers, not one of our bumbling 50 states whose out-of-date processing systems and limited ability to check for fraud are at the root of the problem.

This isn’t the first reported instance of stimulus money ending up in the wrong hands. Last week, federal authorities announced that Venezuelans living in South Florida and Mexico had stolen over $800,000 in stimulus checks since the start of the pandemic.

Wait, there’s more. On May 28, the US Office of the Inspector General found that $39 billion in unemployment money from the 2020 CARES Act had been wasted, partly due to failures in detecting fraud and improper payments.

While some Democrats are still pushing for more stimulus payments and unemployment benefits beyond what has already been delivered, fraud at this level must be addressed before moving forward.

Biden has already said in a speech that “it makes sense” for unemployment benefits to expire in September, so there should be little reason to move forward with more payments before getting the payments processing in all 50 states audited and fixed.

When the pandemic hit, few states were prepared for the unprecedented wave of unemployment claims they were about to face. It was assumed by politicians and government watchdogs that criminals would make off with at least some of the emergency pandemic relief funds. They knew that some fraud was inevitable but decided that getting the money out to people who needed it was more important than making sure all of the claims were genuine. That gamble didn’t pay off.

Apparently, the scammers steal personal information and use it to file claims while impersonating the claimants. Other groups trick individuals into voluntarily handing over their personal information. Local low-level criminals or “mules”, are given debit cards and asked to withdraw money from stolen accounts via ATMs. That money then gets transferred abroad, often via bitcoin.

Before the pandemic, unemployment claims were far fewer, and generally were paid for much shorter periods of time, so international criminal syndicates didn’t view them as a lucrative target. But after unemployment insurance became an important vehicle  that the US government used to keep the economy afloat, all that changed.

It was a kind of perfect storm: Unemployment payments became big money, and the process was being run by bureaucrats who aren’t as knowledgeable about scams as is private industry. Much like ransom ware, unemployment fraud packages can now be purchased by criminals on the dark web, on a software-as-a-service basis.

And like companies with weak IT departments, states without fraud-detection services are targeted most frequently. Since the start of the pandemic, some states are finally getting more sophisticated about preventing this kind of fraud.

But the taxpayers have lost a huge amount of money, and it’s doubtful that the feds will find these bitcoins lying around to grab and return to the government.

The Daily Escape:

World Trade Center site, NYC, with the Oculus in background – photo by Merrill Dodd

(New columns will be light and variable, as Wrongo and Ms. Right are taking a spur of the moment vacation. Regular programming will resume on April 20, provided the world doesn’t blow up before then.)

A quick note about the Coronavirus. Epidemiologist Elizabeth Jacobs shows us that while we were told by politicians that a strict lockdown to prevent the spread of Covid was causing increased suicides, that’s turned out to be untrue. According to preliminary data from the CDC suicides in the US decreased in 2020.

The fact is that Covid became the third leading cause of death in the US, behind heart disease and cancer, while deaths by suicide went down. Here’s a chart from JAMA:

The US had 2,677 fewer suicide deaths in 2020 than in 2019, a 5.6% decline.

But total deaths increased by 17.7% year over the year, largely driven by Covid. Suicide dropped from the country’s 10th leading cause of death to the 11th.

The data are preliminary and are subject to revision because states are late in reporting.

But really, you Covid skeptics and lockdown opponents? Another effort to mislead people. You say the vaccines are bad for you, and so are masks. Lockdowns destroy our economy, and all of these are an assault on personal freedom. And heaven forfend, let’s never speak about vaccine passports.

Does anyone else think that the reason the British variant has become the leading form of Covid infection in the US is because non-compliance with virus prevention techniques by so many Americans has allowed the variants to spread?

Here’s a musical interlude to kick off Wrongo’s extended break, and your weekend: The group Too Much Joy hasn’t released an album since 1996. They never were a big name, and the new album, “Mistakes Were Made”, was crowd-funded, with only 500 copies made. Some say they sound like the Clash fronted by Randy Newman. Here is “Blinding Light of Love”, a cut that is a sarcastic take on the 21^st Century:

See you in 10 days.

The Daily Escape:

Fallen Leaf Lake, near Lake Tahoe, CA – December 2020 photo by MDodd

Here at the Mansion of Wrong, we made it through Christmas with zoom calls and some good cheer. But before the year ends, Wrongo wants to share a few thoughts on what happened in the past week.

First, if anyone other than Trump were president, the White House would have commemorated a difficult holiday season for hundreds of thousands of families grieving from losses due to Covid. There would have been a small moment calling for national unity: A speech, tolling bells, a moment of silence. Anything, to show people that the president gets it, that they aren’t alone. But not this guy.

Second, Trump pardoned four former Blackwater military contractors who killed 14 Iraqis in 2007. All four had been convicted in federal court, one sentenced to life in prison, the other three to 12-15 years.

One terrible thing stands out: Not one Republican in Congress has raised an objection to these pardons of convicted war criminals. This again shows the dishonor and hypocrisy of the American right. Some in the GOP are even calling these criminals “American heroes“, and are actually defending them.

Imagine the GOP’s outrage if a Democratic president did this.

Here we are, watching the rule of law shredded by Trump, who’s hiding behind yet another poorly conceived founding idea in the Constitution. We need to amend the pardon power. OTOH, can we design a system that the GOP won’t corrupt? They systematically misuse all of the levers of government. So perhaps we should do away with “pardons” and leave the president with “clemency”.

Third, as you know, Trump opposes the Covid “relief” bill and wants it to be amended to include a $2,000 check, not a $600 one. Whatever his motives, he’s right about this. The bill is packed with pork, with just a few crumbs for the people. It’s totally inadequate to our current economic circumstances.

Trump’s call for additional stimulus money has split the Republicans into two camps: those who oppose his plan, and those who as always, are simply silent. House Democrats tried to jump on board by offering an amendment to the bill raising the one-time payment to $2,000, but House Republicans blocked it from being taken up.

This does nothing for the people, but Dems get to say that it’s the Republicans’ fault.

Trump seems to want to collaborate with McConnell to sabotage getting a bill that the Dems want. He and McConnell have been batting the Dems back and forth like a badminton bird, while Trump gets to talk about the good stuff he’d like to do for the people.

Finally, are you surprised that the world’s most loathed industry is coming to our rescue with a vaccine? Or, that they did it in record time?

“…before the coronavirus pandemic started, the two best-known faces of the pharmaceutical business were the imprisoned Martin Shkreli and the…opioid makers at Purdue Pharma. The rest of the industry was perhaps best known for the skyrocketing prices of its medicines. In a Gallup Poll of the public’s view of various business sectors, pharma was ranked at the bottom, behind the oil industry, advertising and public relations, and lawyers.”

In a year where almost everything else went wrong, the vaccine development effort was something that mostly went right.

This also highlights just how badly the US screwed up almost everything else the government did to fight the pandemic. If you think that’s wrong, look at these numbers: Nearly one in every 1,000 Americans has died of COVID. CNN reports that the:

“Census Bureau estimates for the last week of December place the US population at around 330,750,000. On Saturday afternoon, the national death toll from Covid-19 reached 331,116.”

Trump is much worse than any of his predecessors, and that’s truly saying something. He will have killed more Americans than were killed in WWII by the time he leaves office.

People need to focus long enough to realize just how evil Trump has been for America.

Wake up America! It is probably optimistic to say that we may be back to something approaching a new normal by next Christmas, but let’s hope so.

To help you wake up, listen to Imagine Dragons do a live cover released in December 2020, of “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas”, written in 1942 by Irving Berlin for the film “Holiday Inn”:

The Daily Escape:

Pipestone River and Lake Louise Village, Banff NP, Alberta, CN – 2020 photo by Frank King Photos

Trump will lose in the Electoral College today. But that won’t mean Trump’s attempted coup is over. A group of his most loyal GOP backers in Congress are plotting a final-stage challenge on the floor of the House of Representatives on January 6 to try to reverse Biden’s victory.

The way our election system works is that after the Electoral College meets today, Congress still has to certify the votes that were cast by it. At that time, Congress can in fact, refuse to accept the votes of either individual electors or entire state delegations.

If Congress were to refuse Electoral College votes, then those refused votes aren’t counted, and the candidate who has the majority of the remaining electoral votes becomes president. It isn’t necessary for the winning presidential candidate to get 270 electoral votes to win. That candidate only needs a majority of the electoral votes actually certified by Congress. The process is based on the Twelfth Amendment, but that is ambiguous:

“The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted.”

It does not say what to do if there is a dispute over a state’s electoral voters. In 1887, Congress enacted a statute to address the ambiguity of the Twelfth Amendment; it says that for Congress to refuse to certify any electoral vote, at least one member of the House and one member of the Senate have to lodge a specific objection to the counting of the specific vote(s) in question. If this happens, then the joint session of Congress would be adjourned for two hours, during which time, each legislative body would separately debate the objection(s), and then vote them in or out.

This happened in 2005, after the 2004 election. At that time, it was the Democrats who messed around with what used to be thought of a purely “Ministerial Process”, that is, those formalities that nobody pays much attention to, because no one thought that our representatives would try to game the system.

Back in 2005, Rep Stephanie Tubbs Jones, (D-OH), got Sen Barbara Boxer (D-CA) to agree to join in her objection to the Ohio Electoral College vote. Bush had won Ohio by 118,000 votes over Kerry. While they didn’t want to actually toss Ohio’s EC votes out (since doing so would have flipped the outcome of the election), both Houses adjourned to vote on the objection.

Although the House has 435 seats, ultimately only 31 House members voted to exclude Ohio’s electoral votes, so Tubbs lost. Only Boxer voted to challenge Ohio’s electoral votes in the 100-seat Senate. The final Senate vote was 74-1 (many Democrats abstained), so Bush won.

You’re going to be hearing a lot more about this “Ministerial Process” that will take place on January 6, since many House Republicans are going to object to the certification of a ton of 2020 electoral votes. Luckily, Democratic control of the House should prevent this particular flaw in our electoral system from keeping Trump in office.

The key question is how many Senators will also jump on the Trump Train. If they do, then that requires all the Senate and House Republicans to go on record regarding whether they support Trump’s coup attempt.

So, it’s not over today, and it won’t be over even after the GOP dead-enders in the House and Senate lose their effort to obstruct the election results.

It’s time to wake up America! You no longer have any political norms.

Our political system is devolving. It’s certain that at least a few Republicans will refuse to certify Biden’s win in the Electoral College on January 6.

Imagine if in the not-to-distant future, we have Republicans controlling both Houses. Imagine if they then refuse to certify the election of a Democratic president.

The GOP is no longer a responsible political Party. They’ve become an extremist organization bent on keeping power at all costs. We are witnessing an attempted coup. Just because it won’t succeed doesn’t diminish the importance or the severity of what’s happening. Trump and the GOP are laying the groundwork for authoritarianism in the US.

To help you wake up, listen to this rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”, performed in 2016 by a 1,500 person chorus in Canada. The song is led by Rufus Wainwright. Imagine a world where strangers can come together to make something beautiful:

Happy Sunday! The world headquarters of Wrong has been without power, internet or telecom since last Tuesday, because tropical storm Isais actually did more damage in northwest Connecticut than did the ledgendary storm Sandy.

This means that Wrongo will not be resuming his crummy columns today as originally intended. He is writing this note on his mobile phone with his thumbs, a completely unstainable proposition.

Our incompetent power utility has promised we will return to the 21st century by Wednesday, so please continue to talk among yourselves.

The Daily Escape:

Mt. Fuji Japan, in springtime, with pink phlox in bloom – May 2017 photo by mysuitcasejourneys

It’s finally beginning to sink in just how wretched America’s going to look after the fight against the pandemic over the next month or two.

Our failed response will lead to many more deaths than would happen if we had been prepared. Is this failure caused by incompetence, or something much, much worse? It may not be worth debating, since people will die either way.

Let’s look at a few jaw-dropping examples. The Pentagon has just ordered 100,000 body bags. Sounds as if we really DO know how to do federal procurement, even though the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers is approaching emergency levels. We’re missing PPE because the Trump administration wouldn’t take responsibility for ordering those items centrally, to get the best price and the fastest deliveries.

Worse, Trump repeatedly assured Americans that the government had 10,000 ventilators in reserve to ship to the hardest-hit hospitals when needed. But many of the federal government’s remaining undistributed ventilators are broken! Apparently, 2,109 of them are unavailable because the contract to maintain the government’s stockpile lapsed last summer. Work on repairing them only began in January.

Isn’t cutting through red tape supposed to be a GOP strength? Didn’t they find the time to gut auto emissions just last week? But this $38 million ventilator repair contract simply couldn’t be expedited.

And CNN reports that Trump simply “took a gamble” that warmer weather would cause the virus to dissipate, siding with aides who were pushing back on the dire warnings coming from doctors on the coronavirus task force. Here’s Trump on February 10:

“You know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat…as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April. We’re in great shape though. We have 12 cases — 11 cases, and many of them are in good shape now.”

April is here, and 12 cases have become 214,039. The Coronavirus isn’t going away.

Did Trump just “get it wrong”? Are we looking at incompetence, or an inability to escape the GOP’s worldview about states’ rights?

More: As Abbott Laboratories began shipping its new 5 minute tests, the question of which states should get the new tests became an issue: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“During a Tuesday meeting of the White House coronavirus task force in the Situation Room, Vice President Pence and other officials discussed diverting new tests to areas where there are relatively few cases, according to two individuals familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.”

The final consensus in the meeting seemed to be, “Let’s send it to the South and low density areas.”

Sure, forget about America’s current pandemic hotspots, where the virus has sidelined many first responders and health-care workers. Send the scarce resources to states where Trump can win in November.

That’s more than incompetence, its misappropriation of vital resources and self-dealing. What’s the point of forcing tests on people who think the virus is a hoax? There are plenty of spots clamoring for tests. Supply should follow the demand, unless you’re trolling for votes.

With the shortage of tests, testing has stalled at about 100,000/day, nationally. So long as the virus keeps spreading at a near-exponential rate, we will fall further and further behind, and fail to catch more new infections.

And the longer this continues, the longer it will be until the total lockdowns can be lifted.

The lag in delivering more and faster test results deprives hospitals of workers who could be responding to medical emergencies. It sows uncertainty among hospital officials who must decide what precautions for their staff to take. The competition for the new tests is so intense that governors and mayors are personally calling Abbott executives to try to get deliveries.

We need tens of millions more tests, and tens of millions more masks. The health care workers on the front lines need tens of millions more sets of gowns and gloves.

But this administration can’t seem to do anything that is rational and decent. Through incompetence, greed, and self-interest, they are botching this crisis at every possible point.

The Republicans were able to find $500 billion for Boeing, the airlines, and other large corporations, but just couldn’t see how to find a couple of $ billion to provision the sorely needed tests and PPE for America. Trump has blown every crucial decision he needed to make so far in this crisis.

Wrongo’s message for Republicans: There is something worse than having a Democratic president appoint judges for four years, and that’s having an incompetent in charge of the federal government during a national crisis that is unprecedented in living memory.

The man is beyond infuriating and demoralizing, he’s lethal.