Wrongo went to his local power equipment repair place on Saturday. It was the first time he consciously didnât wear a mask in a public setting. Two weeks ago, he went with son Sean to watch a baseball game at Yankee Stadium. While we had seats in the vaccinated section, it was wonderful to be a human among a large gathering of humans, doing very human things.
Connecticut has a new Covid infection rate of less than 2 per 100,000. Our county has zero hospitalized Covid patients and a vaccination rate of more than 70%. Thatâs not true for much of Red America. An MD friend wrote this on her Facebook page: (emphasis by Wrongo)
âEngland just delayed their full re-opening by 4 weeks as Covid cases are rising again even though 80% of adults are vaccinated. 99% of their cases are the Delta variant nowand a vast majority of their new cases are in children and young adults who have not yet been vaccinated. 10% of hospitalized patients with the Covid Delta variant have been fully vaccinated (Pfizer is 96% effective in preventing severe illness w/Delta variant while Astra Zeneca is 92% effective). We are usually about 3-4 weeks behind Europe.â
As the  Delta variant becomes more widespread in the US in the next 4 to 8 weeks, it will be a real challenge for our poorly vaccinated states. No one really knows how to reach those who refuse to get vaccinated. But Wrongo no longer cares what happens to them. If they donât want to take basic health precautions, itâs on them:
If you are fully vaccinated, go outside. Be around other people. Bask in the sun. Draw energy from sunlight and the other people.
The Supremes upheld the ACA for a third time. Not everyone is happy:
Juneteenth is now a national holiday:
We should never underestimate the importance of symbolism. And as symbolic gestures go, who exactly could be insulted by celebrating the emancipation of enslaved people in America? A national holiday might not be as substantial as a voting rights law, but everything doesn’t have to be judged through the same lens.
Putin Summit wasnât fun for somebody:
GOP is not happy with the Summit. They fail to see the irony:
Mt. Rainer from the Whiteriver campground â 2020 Â photo by np2fast
Good morning fellow disease vectors!
Now that Florida and Texas have again closed their bars, youâre probably wondering: âCan Joe Bidenâs lead in the polls get any biggerâ?
Hereâs your answer. On Thursday, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to invalidate the Affordable Care Act. They did this without any plan for replacing it, at what appears to be the height of new cases of the COVID pandemic. From Charlie Pierce:
âImagine, for a moment, youâre a Republican. You already know that your party has hitched its wagon to the biggest ass in the history of American politics, and that he has proceeded to bungle a response to the worst public health crisis in a century, touching off a deep recession in the bargain….Perhaps youâre thinking to yourself this morning, yâknow, maybe this isnât the best historical moment to take healthcare away from tens of millions of Americans.â
Political gurus say that timing is everything.
Trump is doing this despite the fact that 487,000 new people signed up with HealthCare.gov last month after losing their company-provided health insurance coverage because of the pandemic-induced recession. That was an increase of 46% in sign-ups compared to the same month last year.
And Trumpâs trying this stunt in the week when the US hit a new record for the highest daily total of reported COVID-19 cases â more than 45,500! Heâs picked the perfect time to try again to throw an estimated 20 million Americans off of their insurance coverage.
This has been the GOP plan all along: weâre trimming the rolls of people on entitlement programs. Weâre doing it through the courts, through legislation and by allowing the COVID-19 infection to spread.
Itâs no longer clear which is the greater threat to lives in America: The Coronavirus, or Donald Trump.
This should remind all of us that we need to make Medicare for All, or another form of single payer insurance, a top priority after the November election.
âAmazingly, he [Trump] still hasn’t grasped the most basic fact of this [COVID] crisis: to fix the economy we have to get control over the virus. He’s like a child who can’t believe this has happened to him. All his whining & self-pity…his job is to do something about it.”
We desperately need new leadership. Maybe weâll get it next January.
Now itâs time to forget the Sahara Dust storm for a few minutes. You should also ignore the fact that the Dixie Chicks changed their name to âThe Chicksâ. How exactly does THAT rebranding improve our world, or their career?
Time to take our masks off, sit at an appropriate physical distance, and kick back: Itâs time for our Saturday Soother.
Letâs start by brewing up a huge mug of Ethiopia Nano Genji Agaro Gera coffee ($21.00/12oz.) from Sacramento CAâs Temple Coffee roasters. The roaster says you will experience notes of nectarine and apricot with your first sip.
Now find a comfortable lawn chair, and settle in to listen to âSummertimeâ, written by George and Ira Gershwin, and Dubose Edwin Heyward, in 1935. Itâs performed here by George Winston from his album âRestless Windâ:
It was also memorably performed by the late, great Sam Cooke in 1957, released as the B-side on the single of Cookeâs big hit, âYou Send Meâ.
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Two things to address on Monday. Take a look inside the program that separates the families of asylum seekers. The WaPo reports that:
A Honduran father separated from his wife and child suffered a breakdown at a Texas jail and killed himself in a padded cell last month, according to Border Patrol agents and an incident report filed by sheriffâs deputies.
The death of 39 year-old Marco Antonio Muñoz, had not been publicly disclosed by the DHS, and did not appear in any local news accounts. Muñoz was found on the floor of his cell May 13 in a pool of blood with an item of clothing twisted around his neck:
According to Border Patrol agents…Muñoz crossed the Rio Grande with his wife and three-year-old son on May 12 near the tiny town of Granjeno, Texas. The area is a popular crossing point for Central American families and teenagers who turn themselves in to apply for asylum in the United States.
Soon after Muñoz and his family were taken into custody, they arrived at a processing station in nearby McAllen and said they wanted to apply for asylum. Border Patrol agents told the family they would be separated. Thatâs when Muñoz âlost it,â according to one agent…
Unruly detainees are taken to local jails where they can be placed in more secure settings or isolation cells. Border Patrol agents found a vacant cell for Muñoz 40 miles away at the Starr County Jail in Rio Grande City. Muñoz was booked into the jail at 9:40 pm. He remained combative, and was placed in a padded isolation cell. Guards said they checked on Muñoz every 30 minutes, and observed him praying in a corner of his cell the following morning.
A guard who walked by the cell at 9:50 am said he noticed Muñoz laying in the center of the floor, unresponsive and without a pulse. Local sheriffâs deputies recorded the incident as a âsuicide in custody.â But the capper is this remark by an ICE agent: (emphasis by Wrongo)
Another agent familiar with what happened said he couldnât understand why Muñoz âwould choose to separate himself from his family foreverâ by taking his own life.
This assholeâs salary is paid by you and me! Itâs time we see these agents for who they really are.
Second, last week the DOJ filed a brief urging a Texas court to invalidate the Affordable Care Actâs crucial insurance reforms, including the prohibition on refusing to cover people with preexisting conditions. In their complaint, states (including Texas and other red states) point out that since Congress has repealed the penalty for going without insurance, the freestanding requirement to get insurance, which is still on the books, is therefore unconstitutional. And because itâs unconstitutional, the courts must invalidate the entire ACA. From the Incidental Economist:
Thereâs a strong argument to be made in the ACAâs defense. And the Justice Department has had a durable, longstanding, bipartisan commitment to defending the law when non-frivolous arguments can be made in its defense.
If the Justice Department can just throw in the towel whenever a law is challenged in court, it can effectively pick and choose which laws should remain on the books. Thatâs a flagrant violation of the Presidentâs constitutional duty to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. More:
The President has a duty to take care that all the laws are executed, not just the ones he likes. And while there are cases in which the Justice Department has deviated from that principle, they are extremely rare.
The Trump administration has just announced that it doesnât care that a law was passed by Congress and signed into law by the President. All that matters is that it hates the law and has a (weak) argument for casting it aside.
Time to wake up America! There is a revolution underway, and weâre being fed the elephant of authoritarianism one little slice at a time. This time, the revolution is televised every day, but weâre not connecting the dots quickly enough.
To help America wake up, here is Iris DeMent with âLiving in the Wasteland of the Freeâ, from her 1996 album, âThe Way I Shouldâ:
This song is 22 years old, but still rings true. Iris says:Â “The poor have now become the enemy” and “Let’s blame our troubles on the weak ones“.
Today, both are true, and are simply sickening.
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
There will be limited blogging for the next seven days, as the Wrongologist and Ms. Right head to Bermuda.
It was an epic news week, from the killings in Charleston to the ACA decision by the Supreme Court, 6-3, in which Antonin Scalia wrote the 21 page dissent. Then came the Marriage Equality decision. Antonin Scalia wrote another dissent, starting with:
I write separately to call attention to this Courtâs threat to American democracy
Here is the Cliff notes version of both Scalia dissents: âI stole the 2000 election for thisâ??
They shot and missed:
Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press
Republicans secretly happy about SCOTUS decision on ACA:
Marriage equality decision not popular with everyone:
And the Supremes said, âLet them eat cakeâ:
The big change on the Confederate flag doesn’t change much:
A corporatist meme took a face plant this week. Bloomberg Business Week charted CEO pay vs. stock market return, based on data supplied by the executive compensation consultants, Equilar. It shows that there is very little correlation between CEO pay and company performance.
Equilar ranked the salaries of 200 highly paid CEOs against their companyâs stock market return, and the scattering of data looks mostly random, implying that CEO performance appears to have little to do with CEO compensation. The graph plots the relative ranking of 2013 stock market return against the relative ranking of 2013 CEO total compensation. If you go to Bloomberg, the chart below is interactive. You can hover over a dot and see information on the CEO and company.
Bottom line: there’s essentially no link between how well CEOs perform and how well they are paid:
Based on this, it seems that corporate boards are unable to predict how well their chosen CEO candidate will do once on the job, since the trend line, which didnât plot in this screen capture, shows that the correlation is ~1%. That explodes the myth that a primary metric used by company board compensation committees to justify CEO pay is stock market return.
CEO pay isnât the government’s business, but corporate governance is. When governance is based on something other than what shareholders are told, it is worth a look.
In other news, the immigration issue continued, with Texas Governor Perryâs grandstanding. He was joined by many in Congress and in the media, some of whom wanted to be sure that the Texas National Guard was armed against the threat implied by children illegally crossing our border.
Lady Libertyâs meditation on immigration is lost in the noise:
An alternative strategy might build sympathy for the kidsâ plight:
In Obamacare news, courts made two opposite decisions using the same facts:
It was another week of some Advising but very little Consenting:
The loss of MH17 brought no new facts, just grandstanding here as well:
Gaza, along with Ukraine, show how missile use has changed in 45 years:
