Sunday’s Forum
The start of another seven days. Have at!
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, April 12, 2020
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34 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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May the Bunny with you!
Tom Nichols has an excellent article in The Atlantic entitled “With Each Briefing, Trump is Making Us Worse People.”
More like ego, informed by ignorance, and fueled by hatred.
How morally bankrupt must one be to abandon children to the fates? Does it infect all of today’s so called “conservatives”?
The Florida headline of the day-
Easter Eggs With Porn Inside Lead to Florida Woman’s Arrest
Today’s number: 20,494
@Bill: She was just trying to “educate people.”
Been up since 4:00 crafting an email to our ICU and OR staff telling them why they will need to use their current PPE indefinitely. We just aren’t seeing new stuff come in anymore. I really can’t bring myself to watch the briefings anymore, but the truth is that on the front lines support from either the federal or private sector is pretty spotty.
Steve
NYT: It’s People People People as Lines Stretch across America:
I admire her courage, even more than I despise those responsible for her need to exercise it.
The New York Times has some incredible reporting on Trump’s utter failure:
He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump’s Failure on the Virus
And a lot of background in this tweet stream from reporter Eric Lipton:
https://twitter.com/EricLiptonNYT/status/1249009586905939968?s=20
This reporting and the Washington Post’s examination of Trump’s 70 days of dithering, minimizing, and lying, provide a very clear picture of one of the worst failings of Presidential leadership in American history.
@Mikey:
Mikey, you know what the response will be. Fake News!
Oh a happier note, last evening I spoke with the eldest of my mother’s surviving sisters. 95 and strong, complaining that she feels like she’s imprisoned at her assisted living, but also feels safe and well cared for. But she misses playing cards.
She was looking forward celebrating Easter with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren via a video conference. If she can figure out how to use the tablet her son dropped off.
It was a nice Easter gift for me.
Woo hoo, the GOP is bailing out Warren Buffett (and many like him). This critique has a bit more force (for me, at least) coming from this particular source, who isn’t any kind of liberal.
@OzarkHillbilly:
And that’s good news, because three weeks ago the projection without extreme countermeasures was 32,000 by today, and 5000+ per day. It’s working, America — don’t quit now.
Boris Johnson has been released from the hospital.
Regarding the discussion yesterday on statistics:
NPR’s On the Media today, during a discussion of COVID19 statistics, noted that the “at home death” rate for New York City (where the paramedics are called to a home where someone is already dead at the time they’re called) is up almost 10 times right now, from a normal rate of 20-25 per day to more than 200 per day.
Virtually none of those deaths end up being counted as COVID19 deaths because the people involved generally weren’t confirmed to have had COVID19 prior to that contact.
@Stormy Dragon:
There was a new item the other day, that the NY health department intends to adjust the death totals to account for untested deaths. It’s simply not a priority now.
The Germans are noticing.
@DrDaveT: I dunno. My priority is to bail out workers – espeically in restaurants, hotels, entertainment, retail, and so on. Having done that, I’m ok with a bailout of the airline industry. We need to have an airline industry.
The choice of making Warren Buffet the villain of that piece seems strange, because most people like Warren Buffet.
@Jay L Gischer:
Of course. And if every existing carrier goes bankrupt over the next year, we will still have an airline industry. There’s nothing magical about these particular companies, or their management. The airports will still be there, the planes will still be there, the skilled workforce will still be there — under new management. I don’t think that would be a bad thing, either in and of itself or as a lesson to other industries.
@Jay L Gischer:
I speculate that this was deliberate, to make the point that even a benevolent multibillionaire is not generally working in the best interests of society as a whole.
The host, who argues that companies that fail should be bailed out by the American taxpayer, is stunned and has a hard time talking.
linky
@Teve:
Veronique de Rugy and Gary Leff make a case for not bailing out the airlines.
@Teve: I had already seen that, but it’s brilliant:
@Sleeping Dog:
That’s important in terms of our ability to review the response to the pandemic after the fact, but in terms of what to do right now, it still means the deaths number is just as hostage to testing as the confirmed cases number, contrary to the “you can’t hide deaths” argument you hear a lot.
Anyone else notice that Boris, the Brexit champion, singled out a nurse from New Zealand and a nurse from Portugal?
Steve
The same people will tell you that billionaires deserve all that money because they’re the ones who took the risks and put it all on the line, and then when risks show up they demand that taxpayers bail them out.
@Teve: This lemon socialism has been going on for awhile now…one wonders how much longer it will go on before people get tired of it and vote for politicians who won’t agree with it anymore…
@Teve: Privatize the gains and socialize the losses. It’s the American way!
Things are finally slowing down at work. Of three ongoing projects, one needs to be finished tomorrow (and it’s almost finished), the other two are due on the 20th. So maybe we can have some people in our very crowded department not come in at least part of the week. My own part I can accomplish largely at home.
Two weeks ago the factory I worked for reduced to 50% time. Most departments went to a “week-on/week-off” schedule rather than a “constant 50%”. This allows people to claim Unemployment for the “week off”.
The first week I was “off”, I put in hours at the grocery store I used to work at. They needed the help, I needed the pay (it was more than I would get from Unemployment), and I wasn’t a burden on the taxpayers.
It’s my “week-off” again, and the grocery store doesn’t need any help. So I’m going to sign up for Unemployment.
… Only to find out that the unemployment website enrollment is only available during business hours.
WTF?!!
I’m going to pour another Absolute Mandarin, warm up a dish of green bean casserole, and go watch a movie. I’ve hit my stupidity limit for the day.
@Mu Yixiao:
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot indeed. That is so…
I feel your pain. I’m not much into white liquors, but if you like the brown ones I recommend a cocktail of rye, Liquor 43, and orange bitters. It’s called a “43 North”, and helps me forget stupidity temporarily.
@OzarkHillbilly: Oh and I just gotta say, F.U.C.K. Y.O.U. to the down voter who thought this 78 yr old woman had not leaned on her walker for near long enough while exercising her constitutional rights.
You are…
Broken.
A piece of shit.
Morally bankrupt.
Etc. Words defy.
@Mu Yixiao: May I suggest heroin? The pain won’t go away, but you won’t care anymore.
@Mu Yixiao:
I’m sorry that happened to you.
Unfortunately, that’s a pretty common experience in our current system. The reason is that most sites were set up to put barriers up for receiving unemployment. Friction was usually intentional and often explained away by things like “we only want to receive applications during business hours so we can easily schedule the interview component and not get too backed up.”
Unfortunately our civic services and technology infrastructure was fundamentally not set up for disasters. And that’s currently hurting a LOT of people. One thing that I hope is that this will be a lesson for people about how much needs to change.
That said, we went through a depression and, within a century, convinced ourselves we didn’t need a robust social safety net. So I’m trying not to get my hopes too up and working to improve things where I can.