The Lives Which Really Matter

It's the dirty little secret of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The ringing declaration of the summer, continuing at lower volume still, is "black lives matter." Black lives should matter, the thinking goes, because white lives already matter.

This view is dangerously mistaken. The saga begins with Covid-19, ironic because the virus disproportionately affects blacks (and Latinos/hispanics) far more than whites. Atul Gawande explains

Many developed countries have met their testing needs, and ready access to speedy tests has been key to containing outbreaks and resuming social and economic activity. Whether you live in England or South Korea, scheduling is straightforward. No doctor’s order is required. Tests, where indicated, are free. And you typically get results within forty-eight hours.

In the USA, however

Appointments can take days, results days more. Most testing in the United States is done by four companies—Quest Diagnostics, LabCorp, BioReference Laboratories, and Sonic Healthcare. Through early August, results routinely took four days or more, making the tests essentially useless. Times improved only when testing volumes declined, because many people gave up on getting tested. The vast majority of infected Americans, including those with symptoms, never get tested. And we have not even reached the fall, when flu season will hit and coronavirus-testing needs and demand are expected to rise substantially. As the saying goes, it’s as messed up as a pile of coat hangers.

This is not the way an exceptional country does things and

Further complicating matters, insurers don’t pay for testing that they don’t consider medically necessary. Yet testing people who don’t have symptoms will be important to getting covid-19 under control....Testing is the only way to know whether a person is potentially contagious and in need of isolation.

What Gawande terms "assurance testing" has been required under special circumstances by four states, at least three European countries, and hospitals in the USA. As he notes, it is required generally by the film and television industry but as he does not, in another industry: professional sports.

Professional athletes generally deserve their salaries because they a) possess unique skills; b) have very short careers; c) work for bosses- the owners- who make a tremendous amount of money from the labor of their employees, the players. In return, compared to the average American, they make a ton of money, in 2017 averaging $7.1 million in the National Basketball Association, $4 million in Major League Baseball, and $2.7 million in the National Football League.  (It is more now throughout the industry.)

So even in the NFL- and accounting for the median being lower than the mean- these guys earn a great deal.  That- and the extreme wealth of the owners and the league- is why professional athletes (and staff) are being tested as is  no one else, whether quarantined or not, health care worker, white or not. From August 30 to September 5, there were 8,349 players and team personnel were given a total of 44, 510 tests.

Approximately 70% of NFL players are black, far lower in MLB (in which there is a disproportionate number of Latinos) and higher in the NBA. Those tests were no less administered to black and and Latinos than to white non-hispanic, colleagues. 

And they are being tested constantly. Surely, it's not because the owners (who control the commissioner's office) are altruistic. It's also not primarily because of the market value of the individual players. In two (baseball and football) of the three (baseball, football, basketball) most popular sports in the USA, the players could take a hike, the owners would replace them, and the league would continue to be very popular, profitable, and successful.

Nevertheless, they are valuable commodities in each league and most are rich, some extraordinarily so. They are tested at rates otherwise unknown in this country- and beyond even advocated by Gawande- for anyone else. They are wealthy and make the bosses even wealthier. They are deemed valuable.

While the wealthy and near-wealthy of professional sports are being tested regularly and often, nearly all other Americans are not. They include the wealthy- but the vast majority of us are middle class, working class, or poor. We are of African, Caribbean, Latin, Pacific Island, Asian, indigenous, European, or other backgrounds.

Our lives are endangered, regardless of our ethnic background, race, or color, in part because of the inadequacies in testing Gawande outlines. In professional sports, a haven of the wealthy, extreme care is taken that lives are not put in danger. There is a moral in that story, but it's not that black lives matter, black lives should matter, or that white lives do matter. In this society in this age, the color that matters most is green.

 

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Joe Biden's Signal

 

 Only five weeks late, Bernie Sanders and Will Bunch have good advice for Joe Biden:

Bernie's right...again https://t.co/UK8MS9BcdZ

— Will Bunch Sign Up For My Newsletter (@Will_Bunch) September 12, 2020

That suggestion should have come before August 11, when the former vice president announced as selection of his running mate the former California Attorney General who in January, 2017

vaguely acknowledged The Intercept’s report about her declining to prosecute Steven Mnuchin’s One West Bank for foreclosure violations in 2013, but offered no explanation.

“It’s a decision my office made,” she said, in response to questions from The Hill shortly after being sworn in as California’s newest U.S. senator.

“We went and we followed the facts and the evidence, and it’s a decision my office made,” Harris said. “We pursued it just like any other case. We go and we take a case wherever the facts lead us.”

Mnuchin is Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Treasury Department, and served as CEO of OneWest from 2009 to 2015. In an internal memo published on Tuesday by The Intercept, prosecutors at the California attorney general’s office said they had found over a thousand violations of foreclosure laws by his bank during that time, and predicted that further investigation would uncover many thousands more.

But the investigation into what the memo called “widespread misconduct” was closed after Harris’s office declined to file a civil enforcement action against the bank.

Harris’s statement on Tuesday doesn’t explain how involved she was with the decision to not prosecute, or why the decision was made.

That of course is Kamala Harris, whose interest in challenging power and wealth when she had the opportunity in California was far exceeded by her current interest, shared with Joe Biden, of becoming a "first." It may be the first black woman to be the vice presidential nominee of a major party, the first Asian-American woman to be the vice presidential nominee of a major party, or the first to rock out in Chuck Taylor All Stars.

In any case, her nomination certainly is historic, crucial to those who symbols as more important than, say, governance. Moreover, it offers an opportunity to juice black voter turnout, which would have been the case with any of the other black women Biden was considering.

But there probably was no other candidate on Biden's long list of possibilities (each a woman, as he had promised) who would have most dramatically epitomized the candidate's emphasis on appealing to the emerging Democratic demographic: young, educated, affluent, and oh, so hip.

Perhaps "Middle Class Joe" assumed he himself would fill the ticket's need to staunch the flow of working-class and poor whites voting against the Democratic Party.  That would be a dangerous assumption, one arguably held four years ago by Hillary Clinton, who had last been seen in electoral politics wiping the floor with Senator Barack Obama among those voter, when she went on to lose that group to Donald Trump.

Biden could start with with Social Security. The President advocated cutting Social Security benefits back in March, roughly eight months before his order (since derailed) to postpone collection of payroll taxes, which he realized would undermine Social Security.  The former vice president should not simply mention the issue but pound it home.

The nominee could more often address other financial deregulation and other economic matters, not simply patting his back for "Obamacare," which Americans recognize as inadequate, is insufficient.   And if the Democrat believes the pandemic itself will be sufficient, he is apparently fooling himself.

So go at it, Joe, and do your best. And pull it off with a straight face, which will be just a little harder to do since August 11, 2020.

 

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Closed Minds

The signers of the excellent letter published July 7, 2020 in Harper's Magazine believe

This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away.

However, even they probably didn't anticipate this:

David Peterson is an art professor at Skidmore College, a private liberal arts college in Saratoga Springs, New York. In late July, the professor and his wife, Andrea Peterson, attended a "Back the Blue" rally—not as supporters of the cause, they say, but as curious spectators.

"Given the painful events that continue to unfold across this nation, I guess we just felt compelled to see first-hand how all of this was playing out in our own community," he later told the student newspaper.

They stood on the edges of event, watching pro- and anti-law enforcement demonstrators argue with each other. After 20 minutes, the Petersons left to eat dinner.

But unbeknownst to Peterson, the couple's attendance at the rally was noticed. Now Skidmore students are demanding that both Peterson be fired for "engaging in hateful conduct that threatens Black Skidmore students," according to Times-Union columnist Chris Churchill, who wrote about the controversy.

Andrea Peterson is not an employee of the college, according to Churchill.

"The Petersons weren't wearing pro-police T-shirts," notes Churchill. "They weren't carrying a banner, holding a sign or waving a black-and-blue flag. They appear to just be listening. But merely listening to an opinion that some Skidmore students find objectionable is apparently enough to get a professor in hot water."

Students have circulated their demands on social media, and even taped a note to the door of Peterson's classroom advising his students that they are "crossing a campus-wide picket line and breaking the boycott against Professor David Peterson." Peterson has attempted to make it clear that his presence at the rally did not constitute an endorsement of it; this matters very little to the students. An opinion piece in the student newspaper included his explanation, but still accused him of failing to "reconcile with his behavior." That piece also claimed that "there have been many claims of Mr. Peterson making students of color and queer students feel uncomfortable and unheard in his art classes prior to this," but did not elaborate.

"I still have no indication of how [David and Andrea Peterson] plan to take accountability for their actions and make their classrooms a safe space for our communities of color," wrote the student.

The cancel culture critics at Harper's recognized

... it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms.

They now appear prescient- at least in the case of Skidmore- because

Peterson said that most of his students have dropped his classes: Those who think the boycott is ridiculous are afraid to speak up, one student told Churchill. Skidmore's administration defended his free speech rights in a statement, but is nevertheless investigating the accusations of bias in the classroom.

In June I was curious about the speakers and the crowd size of a Black Lives Matter protest and thus observed one from outside of the perimeter of police, there partly in case trouble ensued but mostly for traffic control. The Petersons appear to have done the same thing, although in their case a Blue Lives Matter Matter protest.  Mr. Peterson thus has become the subject of individuals sufficiently privileged as to be intolerant of even the possibility that someone may have a view different  than their own.

Or perhaps they are appalled that individuals may want to learn, find out a little more about an issue then roiling the nation.  And so Mr. Peterson's job and livelihood are endangered, subject to a mob mentality, an ironic effort on the part of individuals who presumably view themselves as progressive or at least acting to secure rights of others.

The signers of the 6/7 letter warned "As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences." Little did they realize that only a few months later there could be dire professional consequences without even a mistake being made.

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Not So Stupid

Among the roughly 60% of us who do not approve of Donald Trump, this is nearly conventional wisdom:

“Why did he sit down for 18 interviews?”

Because he’s a narcissist. Narcissists can’t imagine not being able to charm anyone because look at how delighted they are with themselves! And then all the other person has to do is wait.

So, he did them because he’s stupid.

— Quinn Cummings (@quinncy) September 10, 2020

So conventional, in fact, that former Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri can be seen below maintaining

 Strike two, he sits for eighteen interviews. O.K., who in their right mind who's running for office in a year- within the year- sits for eighteen interviews with a journalist. This is not a smart thing to do. This is beyond folly. This is ultimate stupidity.

 

Donald Trump, that's who.

President Trump may have believed for reasons outlined here by David Frum, that the novel coronavirus would be a thing of the past by Labor Day. If it had, he would have claimed credit for suppression of the virus, boasting "I knew it all along." Trump is a disciple of Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, who conned a lot of people for several decades with his "power of positive thinking," and whose influence in society tragically continues.

Moreover, leaks from the Woodward book came less than a week after the President

confronted a political crisis on Friday that could undercut badly needed support in the military community for his re-election campaign as he sought to dispute a report that he privately referred to American soldiers killed in combat as “losers” and “suckers.”

Mr. Trump, who has long portrayed himself as a champion of the armed forces and has boasted of rebuilding a military depleted after years of overseas wars, came under intense fire from Democrats and other opponents who said a report in The Atlantic demonstrated his actual contempt for those who serve their country in uniform.

Showing actual contempt for American soldiers is a big thing. It's unlikely that it would have seriously damaged Trump's standing with the public or his prospects for a victory in November. However, we don't know that- and now, probably never will.

We're unlikely to know because Woodward's tome drove off the front pages the Atlantic piece, as well as Michael Cohen's book, which hardly had enough time to garner attention.

The timing was propitious for Trump. That may have been dumb luck- or it could have been part of an understanding between author and subject, a matter none of Woodward's journalistic colleagues will directly raise with him. At best, someone will ask Woodward whether the lives of tens of thousands of Americans would have been spared had he not kept his mouth shut for 6-7 months.

When we learned that President Trump stood with John Kelly at the grave of the General's son, complained "what was in it for them" and Kelly refused to corroborate the report, it confirmed what many people already suspected. If credible individuals refuse to stand up and be counted, there will be little impact of Donald Trump's narcissism upon voters.

 

 

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Money Talks. So Do Guns.

It's no coincidence that the per capita incidence of, and death rate from, Covid-19 is higher in the USA than in virtually any developed country.

Some governors, such as the one here in New Jersey, recognized that the novel coronavirus was serious and have taken responsible measures to prevent its spread.  Others, such as Republican governors in Texas, Florida, and perhaps Arizona, have prioritized profits in the short term over public health. And in South Dakota, GOP governor Kristi Noem arguably took the matter to a new low by encouraging a quarter of a million bicyclists to travel to Sturgis and eat and drink themselves to- well, death:

We estimate that over 250,000 of the reported cases between August 2 and September 2 are due to the Sturgis Rally. Roughly 19 percent of the national cases during this time frame. https://t.co/6tCCV6aXYf

— Andrew Friedson (@FriedsonAndrew) September 6, 2020

But no state chief executive was sufficiently focused on September. None imposed a severe lockdown with the express purpose of ensuring (as far as possible) that schools and colleges in the state would be able to open as normal in fall.

Obviously, most of the blame must be attributed to President Trump He continually has downplayed the severity of the virus; stalled on invoking the Defense Production Act: propagated the myth that the economy could flourish only if measures weren't taken against the coronavirus; pressured states to "open up" businesses; discouraged testing by the federal government; competed against states for personal protective equipment; took politics into consideration in distribution of ppe; and in mid-August warned "We’ve got to open up our schools and open up our businesses."

Moreover, in mid-April the President was

demanding state officials "liberate" Minnesota, Michigan, and Virginia amid the coronavirus pandemic, after saying hours earlier it would be up to governors to reopen their states.

The president issued his demands on Twitter on Friday in short tweets as protesters were "massing," as a local television station put it, in front of the official residence of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat. Earlier this week, conservative protesters, many wearing pro-Trump gear, stormed the State Capitol in Lansing, Michigan, to demand leaders there open that state from a "stay-at-home" order.

"I think they'd listen to me. They seem to be protesters that like me and respect this opinion, and my opinion is the same as just about all of the governors," Mr Trump said Thursday night when asked about the open-up protests.

The President's supporters heard the call to take up arms. There were two similar protests in Michigan's state capital. In all three, protesters were armed and in the second

demonstrators entered the Capitol and chanted: "Our House" and "Let Us In" outside of the House chamber against a line of Michigan State Police. Many protesters didn't wear masks or follow social distancing. Some armed demonstrators entered the Senate gallery and stood above lawmakers. At least one lawmaker donned a bulletproof vest.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer at the time maintained "we have legislators who are showing up to work wearing bulletproof vests." She pledged not to be swayed by the demonstrators, but the state did not ban weapons on the premises and no one was arrested.

It strains credulity to believe there weren't governors, Democrats and Republicans alike, who didn't take notice and proceed accordingly. No governor wants to have otherwise (presumably) law-abiding citizens storm her capital and demand action contrary to the public interest.  It is bad publicity and makes it appear that the governor's actions are opposed by a popular majority.

Additionally, police would be called out, at least as a precautionary measure. There might be confrontations which would result in, at best, viral moments and at worst, deaths.

There may be other states in which anti-lockdown protesters were armed. It is hard to determine the extent to which that occurred because contemporaneous news reports generally conflated those protesters with anti-BLM protesters or ignored entirely the issue of whether firearms were present.

However, the armed intimidation continues. Late last month

In Boise, the first day of Idaho's special legislative session erupted into chaos before it began. Dozens of unmasked protesters, some of them armed, shoved their way past state troopers to pack the gallery overlooking the state's House of Representatives.

The clash was a manifestation of the anger and frustration from a vocal minority of far-right Idahoans that has been compounding over the last several months as the state has navigated its reopening amid the pandemic.

To enforce social distancing, the gallery area above the House chamber was restricted with limited seating. But after the confrontation with state troopers, which resulted in the shattering of a glass door, Republican House Speaker Scott Bedke relented and allowed protesters to fill every seat.

Of course he did. They were armed.

Idaho's House Speaker responded as governors across the country have responded.  Firearms have a way of focusing the attention, and state legislators and governors don't want trouble. If that trouble includes gunfire- even if no one is killed- a governor's political career may go up in smoke. Moreover, dead constituents are hard to explain away.

This concern extends to the Police Department, whose members prefer to go home, upright,  at the end of a shift. They would rather live till retirement than to go out as a deceased hero.

However ignorant they appear, right-wing mobs understand this.  They can claim credit as the fatality rates from SARS-CoV-2 continue to mount and their country proves itself morbidly exceptional.

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Near Sighted

Rapidly gaining-in-popularity political scientist has a vivid imagination:

Imagine if instead of living in some fantasy world in which 20-year-old kids practice social distancing for a virus they perceive themselves personally immune from, unis & colleges spent the spring/summer intensely building up their IT/remote learning infrastructures?! https://t.co/UZ4vWSb8R2

— Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer 📈🔭🍌 (@RachelBitecofer) September 8, 2020

This would be a fantasy. Young people not enrolled in college have their own interests and make their own lifestyle choices. So do residential college students, who have decided both to obtain a degree and to make the most out of their situation, which is to congregate with perhaps hundreds of fellow students. Add to this the reality that most young individuals, as with most young individuals throughout history, have a sense, however unrealistic, of their own invulnerability.

Colleges and universities, in inevitable pursuit of profit, failed (as Bitecofer notes) to build up their information technology and/or remote learning infrastructure. But their failure was not primarily yours.

Most objective individuals, including public officials, knew President Trump was lying when as of mid-May he had said fifteen (15) times that the novel coronavirus would, as he usually put it, "go away."  It was likely that whatever the dampening effect the arrival of warm weather would have on SARS-Cov-2, the air conditioning which would predominate in the summer would push numbers upward.

Then, of course, would come the fall and with it, the arrival of cooler weather and more viruses, yanking the infection rate higher.

Many governors, especially of the Democratic variety, took the pandemic seriously. But no chief executive said what needed to be said. Their constituents could have been told something like 

Summer is coming. If we want schools and colleges to open this fall, we have only one choice. That is to bite the bullet in the summer. Parties, gatherings at beaches- lakes, rivers, the ocean, and elsewhere- athletic events, indoor dining, and all the other things we like to do in the warm weather must be curtailed. Severely. It won't be easy but the alternative is no in-person education in September. And that goes for both children, students who commute to an institution of higher education, and the young adults we parents send off to college.

 

There was not done for varied reasons. One has been virtually, if not totally ignored, but will not be in my next post.

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Con Man Supports Con Man

You may say that Zach Fuentes, who served as Deputy Chief of Staff under John Kelly, is no man's fool. A famous right-wing rag reports

“You can put me on record denying that I spoke with The Atlantic,” Fuentes told Breitbart News on Monday. “I don’t know who the sources are. I did not hear POTUS call anyone losers when I told him about the weather. Honestly, do you think General Kelly would have stood by and let ANYONE call fallen Marines losers?”

He specifically also stated that he believes The Atlantic’s sources “are unlikely first hand accounts.”

“They are conflating those people from something the day after,” Fuentes said....

Every person who was allegedly in the room who has spoken up so far has denied the account of what happened. Fuentes’ denial, reported here exclusive on Breitbart News first, deals another strike against The Atlantic’s credibility.

“I also think any President, regardless of political affiliation, deserves to have candid and private conversations with trusted advisors,” Fuentes added in a text to Breitbart News. “If the President decides to talk about it, that is his right, but generally, I don’t think it is my place to divulge private conversations I’ve had with him.”

That was every person allegedly in the room;. Moreover, no one wants the boss, King of Kings Donald Trump, to believe that he or she is the one who leaked this extremely embarrassing andpotentially damaging story.

However, Fuentes completely gives it away when he adds that he believes "any President deserves to have candid and private conversations" and that it is not his "place to divulge private conversations I've had with him."  He could hardly be any clearer that whatever the President said privately should remain private- and that if he were privy to a private conversation, he would not divulge it. 

There is nothing more impressive than a source who outs himself as an untrustworthy source.

Fuentes' credibility is non-existent, not unlike his integrity.  Over three months ago ProPublica found

A former White House aide won a $3 million federal contract to supply respirator masks to Navajo Nation hospitals in New Mexico and Arizona 11 days after he created a company to sell personal protective equipment in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

You have three guesses- the first two don't count- whom that former White House aide was.  It seems

Zach Fuentes, President Donald Trump’s former deputy chief of staff, secured the deal with the Indian Health Service with limited competitive bidding and no prior federal contracting experience.

The IHS told ProPublica it has found that 247,000 of the masks delivered by Fuentes’ company — at a cost of roughly $800,000 — may be unsuitable for medical use. An additional 130,400, worth about $422,000, are not the type specified in the procurement data, the agency said.

If you're thinking that there is no way Fuentes could possibly have dreamt that the products would be substandard, you'd be interested in knowing

What’s more, the masks Fuentes agreed to provide — Chinese-made KN95s — have come under intense scrutiny from U.S. regulators amid concerns that they offered inadequate protection.

The episode appears emblematic of Kelly's character, for while he was an aide to the Chief of Staff

In December 2018, as Kelly prepared to leave, The New York Times reported that Fuentes had told associates he planned to “hide out” in a vague role at the White House until he qualified for a Coast Guard early retirement program. Fuentes retired in January from the Coast Guard after 15 years of service. He said his retirement was for medical reasons.

Vouching (literally) incredibly for Donald Trump may not be a bad career move.  Throwing stones at a President who, if re-elected, plans to become an emperor would be unwise if you're living in Zach Fuentes' glass house.

 

 

                                             HAPPY LABOR DAY

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