Saturday Soother – October 22, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Cranberry bog, Yarmouth, MA – October 2022 photo by Jean Burns

Wrongo and Ms. Right are leaving on Sunday for a week in London. We’re arriving there just as the horse race for whoever will become the UK’s next prime minister will be clear to all. We’re expecting it to dominate the British news while we’re there.

On September 10, Wrongo said he wasn’t a fan of the now departed Liz Truss. He also said it was hard to believe her effort to revive the zombie concept that is trickle-down economics would go well with the UK already in a recession. She lasted just 44 days in office. Here’s a hot take from England:

Seems like a lot of turmoil for a small, low growth, densely populated country.

Truss’s sin was simple. Her economic plan was designed to satisfy libertarian think tanks and fans of Ronald Reagan and Margret Thatcher rather than to be something workable. Republicans in America do this kind of thing because we can, since the dollar is the world’s reserve currency. That means we can go almost as far into debt as we want without the markets panicking.

But the UK doesn’t have that luxury. So there’s a limit to how many favors they can do to their own fabulously rich citizens.

The policy that got Truss thrown out of No. 10 Downing Street was a copy of the foundational Republican US domestic agenda, as practiced from Reagan to Trump. That is, cut taxes for the rich and corporations, then hope it eventually creates tax revenue before it forces spending cuts.

And the British financial markets seem to actually care about the well-being of their country’s economy. However, American markets seem to care only about maximizing share prices and the after-tax compensation of top-level executives.

US Conservatives were delighted when Truss became PM. On September 23, Larry Kudlow said on FOX:

“The new British prime minister, Liz Truss, has laid out a terrific supply-side economic growth plan which looks a lot like the basic thrust of Kevin McCarthy’s Commitment to America plan.”

Needless to say, like Truss, Republicans are also willing to do unfunded tax cuts and call it a growth agenda. They’re also willing to fail to extend America’s borrowing limit, in order to make their agenda happen. The GOP would try to hold the Democratic president hostage in order to share some political responsibility for that action, never mind that an American debt default would also hold a gun to the global economy.

That isn’t possible in the country that brought you Maggie Thatcher. They toss out their incompetent supply-siders. The elephant in the room of the UK’s chaos and crisis is 2016’s Brexit. Even though Brexit has brought about low GDP growth, it remains a hard right political project rooted in a mythical British past.

Brexit’s Tory supporters didn’t care about the hard economic evidence that Brexit would be an act of economic self-harm. And the political divisions Brexit caused in the Tory party remain a problem as they now seek to unite behind another sacrificial PM. From David Frum:

“The problem is that you’re not eligible for the captaincy unless you agree it was a brilliant idea to scupper the ship in 2016 – and can convincingly act baffled why it has been sinking ever since,”

If America still has the ability to learn, it would be great if they studied this Tory disaster.

It would be nice if American voters would really punish Republicans when they fuck up and tank the economy again. And not just by electing a Democratic president, as they did in 1992 and 2008 when the economy went south.

OTOH, if anything can get Joe Biden reelected, it’s a Republican-led Congress in 2023 and 2024. They will screw things up just as thoroughly as Liz Truss has screwed the pooch in Britain. Then, we’ll have to see if they’ll ever be blamed for it.

Enough foreign politics for today. It’s time for our Saturday Soother, where we consider raking the leaves that are suddenly carpeting the Fields of Wrong but decide to put it off until we return.

Let’s start by brewing up a big mug of Costa Rica Cerro Dragon Geisha Honey ($12.00/4oz.) from RamsHead Coffee Roasters of Bozeman, Montana. It is said to be an invitingly complex Costa Rica honey-processed cup with notes of tropical fruit, sweet herbs, and crisp cocoa.

Now grab a seat by a south-facing window and listen to Khatia Buniatishvili play Schubert’s “Impromptu No. 3 in G-Flat Major, Op. 90, D. 899”. It isn’t played in front of a live audience, so no coughing, etc.

Schubert wrote eight solo piano pieces called impromptus. An impromptu is a musical work, usually for a solo instrument, in this case, piano. Schubert composed this work the year before he died:

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Monday Wake Up Call – Get Back to Work Edition, May 11, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Pileated Woodpecker chicks – photo by JH Cleary

Americans are starting to peek out of their nests again. Governors have decided, and 30 of them are re-opening their states. Those states are not exclusively Republican; there are a few Democratic states too. The logic behind reopening is that of risk assessment and risk management. Somewhere between prudence and overreaction lies today’s American toxic politics.

We judge risk versus gain for everything, including for other causes of death. We try to model healthy behaviors. Most of us wear seatbelts, most watch our diets, and have stopped smoking years ago.

We also have to judge the risks associated with whether to end, or continue the lockdown. That means deciding which steps to take that will minimize both the spread of the virus, along with minimizing the crushing economic hardship being experienced by many Americans.

Ignore that the government isn’t currently taking care of healthcare and housing if you are unemployed.

The lockdown could go on for much longer if the federal government was willing to underwrite living costs for those who are out of work, until such time as it was safe to go back to work. But they have no intention of doing that.

So, from the Trump perspective, the choice is clear: Businesses need to open and their workers need to go back to work, despite the risks. Their argument is that living with COVID-19 isn’t as risky as it seems. Twenty-two states have had fewer than 100 deaths. So far, only 15 of 50 states have had total deaths for the crisis that are higher than NYC’s current rate of 500 a day. 

The original goal of lockdowns was to keep the health care system from being overwhelmed, and in the largest cities, that risk seems to be behind us. Whether that will be true in rural America where few hospitals operate, remains to be seen. Derek Thompson said in the Atlantic:

“This crisis represents an existential threat to America’s small businesses. Almost half of all job losses in April occurred in leisure and hospitality, where small businesses are overrepresented in companies like restaurants and stores. The decimation of small business would have long-lasting implications. It would destroy jobs that would be unlikely to return quickly, while creating a crisis of long-term unemployment.”

And all of those restaurants, cafés, theaters, community centers, and specialty shops that are part of the local fabric of our towns and villages could be wiped off Main Street. Losing many of them would be an economic tragedy. More from Thompson: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“The virus is real, the hospitalizations are real, the deaths are real, the need for masks and social distancing is real, the threat to millions of restaurants and shops is real, and the incomparable levels of unemployment are real, too. The White House plan to reverse this cavalcade of horrors is to “reopen” the economy. But 20 million Americans just lost their jobs in the past few weeks, not because the government shut down the economy, but because a pandemic scared millions of Americans into staying at home. There is plenty to be wisely afraid of, but Washington thinking that a pandemic economy is like a garage door that it can reopen by pressing a button might be the scariest thing of all.”

No one knows what will happen between now and Election Day. It’s not just a matter of businesses opening up. For people to go back to work, schools must be open, day care must be open, public transportation must be safe, and customers must show up.

Are you up for all of that?

In the Great Depression, we learned that unemployment at today’s scale required massive government intervention to address: Jobs programs, infrastructure investment, and a robust social safety net.

It required an FDR to galvanize the country. Needless to say, neither Trump nor the Republican Party have the desire to provide that leadership. They will be every bit as uncaring and incompetent at rebuilding our economy as they have been at stopping the pandemic.

Time to wake up America! The economy has been opened, and you need to protect yourself whether you’re back to work, or trying to find a new gig. And you know that Trump isn’t going to help you protect yourself and your family, and he’s certainly not going to help you find a new job.

To help you wake up, listen to Guns ‘n Roses cover Paul McCartney’s “Live and Let Die” which played during Trump’s visit to an N95 mask manufacturing plant in Phoenix:

Remember all of this in November.

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

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Can We Get Our Act Together?

The Daily Escape:

Hummingbird with bee balm – 2014 photo by JH Cleary. Hummingbirds arrived on the fields of Wrong yesterday.

When was the last time that America got its act together when it needed to? It’s been a very long time, probably not since WWII, or possibly, during our effort to immunize everyone, once there was a polio vaccine. That’s between 65 and 75 years ago.

We didn’t get our act together during the Vietnam era. We’re reminded of that with yesterday’s 50-year anniversary of the Kent State shooting in 1970, when four unarmed college students were killed by soldiers of the Ohio National Guard. It was a small, but significant tragedy that became a part of a greater national tragedy, the Vietnam War.

We didn’t get our act together after 9/11 when we attacked Afghanistan and Iraq. Like Vietnam, we’ve been losing to people who wear sandals and fight with antique weapons, for 50+ years.

These aren’t the only examples. New Orleans was whacked by Hurricane Katrina, but a week later, survivors were still sitting on roof tops surrounded by floating corpses. Even now, 15 years later, there is still evidence of damaged buildings in the city’s 9th Ward.

We haven’t gotten our act together to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. We’re currently seeing 1,750+ deaths per day. While the death toll is dropping in NYC and NJ, it’s rising pretty much everywhere else.  Here’s a chart showing the growth in cases, not deaths:

The dotted lines are a 7-day moving average, which allows us to see the trends more clearly. Politicians outside of the NY metropolitan area who are busy relaxing restrictions look like they’re simply giving up and pretending it’s over, when it isn’t. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) is dropping requirements that residents wear masks. It is now a “strong suggestion”. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) wants residents to wear masks starting May 11, but will not enforce it.

Getting our act together has never been a feature of America’s Coronavirus fight. A depressing story in the New Yorker, “Seattle’s Leaders Let Scientists Take the Lead. New York’s Did Not”, sheds light on Seattle’s response vs. New York City’s. Although the initial coronavirus outbreaks emerged in both cities at roughly the same time, by the second week of April, Washington State had about one recorded fatality per 14,000 residents. New York’s death rate was nearly six times higher.

The article describes how Seattle’s political leadership followed a tried and tested CDC playbook for epidemics, called the CDC’s Field Epidemiology Manual, which places public health and scientists at the core of the response. New York’s mayor DiBlasio cut NYC’s public heath bureaucrats out of the loop. In early March, both NYC’s mayor and NY’s governor Cuomo were giving speeches de-emphasizing the risks of the pandemic, as the city was announcing its first cases.

This partially explains why Washington State has less than 2% of coronavirus cases in the US, while NY has 27%.

We’re all familiar with the confusion of message and policy sown by Trump as the primary national spokesperson for the pandemic, a person notoriously hostile to science. His team includes Mike Pence, Dr. Fauci from the NIH, Dr. Deborah Brix from the State Department, and Jared Kushner, from the family. With contributions from Mike Pompeo and Steve Mnuchin.

The New Yorker quotes Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security, at Johns Hopkins:

“When there are so many different figures, it can cause real confusion about whom to listen to, or who’s in charge of what….And, if the response becomes political, it’s a disaster, because people won’t know if you are making recommendations based on science or politics…so there’s the risk they’ll start to tune out.”

From the NYT:

“As President Trump presses for states to reopen their economies, his administration is privately projecting a steady rise in the number of coronavirus cases and deaths over the next several weeks. The daily death toll will reach about 3,000 on June 1…nearly double from the current level of about 1,750.”

Math tells us that this will amount to about 81,000 more deaths by then, making the total somewhere around 150,000, assuming that the death rate remains on its current trend.

Should we expect that America will continue to flub it’s response to the pandemic? If so, Aaron Sorkin and Jeff Daniels will have to re-do the famous opening scene from “The Newsroom” where Daniels says “America is not the greatest country in the world anymore”:

Since we haven’t gotten our act together for so long, a failure to control the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic will be depressingly similar to the tragedies of the past.

Failures of leadership, coupled with warring political factions who refuse to work together for a common good.

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Amidst Signs of Political Instability, Congress Goes on Vacation

The Daily Escape:

The Tillamook Rock Lighthouse, Cannon Beach, OR – AKA, the “Terrible Tilly”. The extremely harsh environment has taken its toll: It has been vacant since 1957.

There are two items related to the six-week holiday that Congress is about to take.

First, on July 15th Wrongo warned that House GOP Freedom Caucus leaders Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) were considering articles of impeachment against Deputy Attorney General (and Mueller probe boss) Rod Rosenstein. Wrongo said that Rosenstein was the firewall against Trump’s potential firing of Mueller.

And Reuters reported that on Wednesday, they filed their impeachment articles:

A group of Republican lawmakers on Wednesday introduced articles of impeachment to remove Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, escalating a fight over Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Representatives Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows, who belong to the conservative House Freedom Caucus, joined nine other House members in accusing Rosenstein of hiding investigative information from Congress, failure to comply with congressional subpoenas and other alleged misconduct.

Rosenstein is the one Department of Justice official whose removal could allow Trump and his DOJ buddies to quash the Mueller investigation.

So is this the throw-down that has our democracy hanging in the balance? Maybe, maybe not. The House is scheduled to leave on Thursday for a recess that extends until after Labor Day.

Congress is taking their bi-annual six-week vacation to campaign to keep their jobs. And even when they return, it’s not certain that a Rosenstein impeachment will gain enough traction with Republicans to move forward, since Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) is against it, and AG Jeff Sessions said that Rosenstein has his “complete confidence”.

As it is, the House plans to use a big chunk of September trying to pass more tax cuts. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX) has let it be known that the House will debate three tax cut bills even though they have no chance of being enacted.

But all this gives the House Republicans something to talk about while campaigning back home that isn’t Trump’s dodgy trade deals, or being Putin’s poodle.

After the impeachment articles were filed, Jim Jordan announced that he will run to replace Paul Ryan as Speaker. Jordan desperately needs new things to talk about back home in Ohio. He faces charges that he failed to report sexual abuse that was reported to him as an assistant coach for the Ohio State wrestling team.

Is this anything more than a campaign publicity stunt, or just the latest installment of bad-faith politics by Republicans? We’ll find out in the fall.

The second vacation-related issue is: When does the GOP plan to work on avoiding a government shutdown? Stan Collender, a federal budget analyst that you should follow, says on his blog that the GOP has just 67 days left until the government shuts down again.

And the real number is probably half that if you factor in vacations and weekends. Collender puts the odds of an October 1st shutdown at 60%.

We already know that the House isn’t back until after Labor Day. The Senate will be in town for a while, as Mitch McConnell tries to force a vote on Brett Kavanaugh. Assuming they eventually go home as well, the Senate is very likely to be tied up for days in early September with the Kavanaugh confirmation.

Having a government shutdown in this political environment doesn’t seem like something Republicans will want to face just before the midterms. We can expect them to push things beyond the election with another Continuing Resolution, and a promise to pass spending bills in the lame duck session, should they lose control of either chamber of Congress.

You would think that Congressional Republicans would try to move heaven and earth to avoid a shutdown. But, Freedom Caucus members are quite happy with shutdowns.

They are convinced that shutdowns are good for them. Maybe so, but they aren’t good for America.

We are at an extremely unpredictable and unstable political point in America.

We have a paranoid President who, along with a delusional Congress, are making it impossible to focus on getting things done in DC.

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Some Thoughts on Trump, Putin and the Summit

The Daily Escape:

The North Window, Monument Valley UT – 2016 photo by Dsdugan, CC BY-SA 4.0

(Wrongo and Ms. Right are heading for the hills, literally. We are spending the next few days in the Berkshires with another sub-set of our kids and grandkids. Blogging will be light. Expect the Monday Wake Up on Tuesday, 7/24.)

It’s time for Republicans to take off their MAGA ball caps. Via the WaPo:

Trump on Monday refused to support the collective conclusion of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, saying that Russian President Vladi­mir Putin had given him an “extremely strong and powerful” denial during their private talks here….Trump went on to condemn the expansive federal investigation of Russian interference as “a disaster for our country” and “a total witch hunt,” arguing that the probe, along with “foolish” America policies, had severely impaired relations between the two countries.

It is a good thing for the US president to speak with the Russian President, they should do it face-to-face at least twice a year. We should get Russia back into the G-7 (it used to be the G-8 until Crimea). Wrongo isn’t one of these hardliners who insist on something impossible before a meeting, say having North Korea disarm before talking, or insisting that Putin return Crimea to Ukraine before inviting him back into the G-8.

Wrongo isn’t yet certain how far the Russians went to swing the election. He’s far from sure that the Trumpets played an active role in the Russians’ efforts. Wrongo doesn’t believe Trump’s actions amount to a treasonable offense, and desperately hopes that Democrats steer clear of saying anything like that.

Wrongo DOES know that the Trump/Putin press conference gave Robert Mueller much more job security.

But, we must demand much, much more from Republicans who observed the shit show of a press conference and say that they can do nothing. Politico Playbook got it just right:

REPUBLICANS TO THE WORLD: WHAT DO YOU WANT US TO DO? There was a general consensus in the Capitol yesterday: PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP thoroughly embarrassed the United States standing next to Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN on the world’s biggest stage.

SEN. TOM COTTON (R-ARK.), a reliable Trump ally, criticized the president — albeit not by name. REP. WILL HURD, a Texas Republican who was a covert CIA operative before becoming a politician, told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “I’ve seen Russian intelligence manipulate many people in my career, and I never thought the U.S. president would be one of them.” SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-S.C.), Trump’s golf buddy, even had choice words.

BUT, PRIVATELY, senior-level Republican aides and lawmakers had a second message: WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT US TO DO?

Republicans saying that they have “no idea what more we should be doing” means that they are cowards who are afraid to make the Redcap partisans in their party angry.

Let’s go back a few years. Obama signed the nuclear deal with Iran, effectively ending their nuclear program. Republicans in Congress disrespected the Democratic president’s foreign policy purview, and sent a letter to Iran, saying Obama didn’t know what he was doing. They added that the GOP Congress would unwind the deal as soon as they got the opportunity.

Now, with the GOP in control of the White House and Congress, Trump sells out America to Putin, yet THESE SAME Republicans have no idea what they can do about it.

None. Because, remember, foreign policy is the president’s purview, not theirs. They’re saying: “We’ve tried nothing, and we’re fresh out of ideas!”

They’d better figure something out. What if Dog forbid, Trump gets worse?

The mainstream news outlets are saying that: “Most Republicans condemned Trump’s press conference with Putin“. Next week, it will seem as if Republicans actually stood up to him on Russia.

Even though they’re really standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him.

What Democrats must continue to do is stay on message with voters that Trump is a clear and present danger, and that the GOP won’t do anything about it.

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Feelin’ Great, Because America is Just Great

The Daily Escape:

Via: Naked Capitalism

He said he would make America great again. He was elected on a messianic platform, to reform DC from the outside, to create jobs, to drain the swamp, all while saving the social safety net, and ending our foreign adventures.

He promised all of those things. He actually said he would do them − in many places and at many times, and in differing contexts.

The dissonance should be hitting his supporters very hard about now.

In the nearly six months Donald Trump has been in power, he has accomplished only the dismantling of major parts of Obama’s agenda. For example, the EPA announced that it will delay implementation of an Obama-era chemical safety rule for nearly two years while it reassesses the necessity of the regulation: (parenthesis by the Wrongologist)

(Obama administration) Officials moved to overhaul chemical safety standards after a 2013 explosion at a chemical plant in Texas killed 15 people. Their rule would require companies to better prepare for accidents and expand the EPA’s investigative and auditing powers. 

Trump and Scott Pruitt will MAGA by ensuring more workers die on the job from unsafe working conditions. Of course, like 90% of Trump’s agenda, this is just standard Republicanism.

Couldn’t the GOP just “lead by example” on the whole “getting killed at work” thing?

Just in case anyone is interested, here is a link to the White House’s list of all legislation signed since the Orange Flake took office. If it weren’t for things like approving the name change for an outpatient VA clinic in Pago Pago, his big agenda items like passing a budget, replacing Obamacare, reforming taxes, or rebuilding our infrastructure remain aspirational.

So, where is the plan to make America great? As Derek Thompson said in the Atlantic:

There is no infrastructure plan. Just like there is no White House tax plan. Just like there was no White House health care plan. More than 120 days into Trump’s term in a unified Republican government, Trump’s policy accomplishments have been more in the subtraction category (e.g., stripping away environmental regulations) than addition. The president has signed no major legislation and left significant portions of federal agencies unstaffed, as U.S. courts have blocked what would be his most significant policy achievement, the legally dubious immigration ban.

The simplest summary of White House economic policy to date is four words long: There is no policy.

Republicans are held hostage by campaign promises that they cannot fill. The White House is hostage to the president’s perpetual campaign, a cavalcade of promises divorced from any effort to detail, advocate, or enact major economic legislation.

Trump uses public policy as little more than a photo op, and that isn’t going to make anything great.

Let’s turn to poetry. Lawrence Ferlinghetti turned 98 in March. Here is “Pity the Nation”, a poem he wrote in 2007:

Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.

That was written in 2007 folks.

Here is a video of Ferlinghetti reading “Pity the Nation” in 2007:

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

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