Thursday’s Forum
Like every breath you take, another daily forum.
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, April 16, 2020
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81 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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Now we know what it took to get the Republicans to sign off on the stimulus bill: Millionaires to reap 80% of benefit from tax change in US coronavirus stimulus
Because this economic downturn has hit them soooooo hard. Do you know how much it costs to rent a house in the Hamptons???
Profit over people, cost over care: America’s broken healthcare exposed by virus
It’s a feature, not a bug.
Laying off doctors and nurses during a pandemic, yeah, that makes sense!
Choice! It’s all about the right of my employer to choose my healthcare profiteer… I mean “provider”.
HA! The idea of the trump admin reflecting on something other than the image they see in the mirror.
Or in those infamous last words:
Greatest. Healthcare. In. The. World.
@OzarkHillbilly: And when we have a budgetary crisis the solution will be… tax cuts! But worry not, because once the economy starts booming, it will be time for… more tax cuts! It’s like Homer’s toast:
The ungovernable thirst of these parasites will be the death of their host (us).
@Kit: This should help ease your worries over the pandemic of reduced dividends in the stock portfolios of the rich and famous:
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos grows fortune by $24bn amid coronavirus pandemic
“These are the best of times, these are the worst of times, this is the age of wisdom, this is the age of foolishness, it is the epoch of belief, it is the epoch of incredulity, it is the season of light, it is the season of darkness, it is the spring of hope, it is the winter of despair.”
(with all due apologies to Charles)
Veterans Affairs patient deaths from coronavirus have increased five-fold since April 1
Coronavirus is forcing the GOP to (tacitly) admit its ideology is delusional
Luckovich
@Teve: trump is what happen when you don’t kill the rich in their cribs.
NYT: Relying on Science and Politics, Merkel Offers a Cautious Virus Re-entry Plan
A LOT more at the link, and well worth the sacrifice of one of the 5 free articles per month, but reading it makes me sad. All I can think is, “That could have been us, but she was too prepared.”
But that’s not really true is it? We still would have had the batshit crazy Republican party fighting her every step of the way.
@OzarkHillbilly: Seems to me like Bezos grew so wealthy by focusing on growing his company. Amazon doesn’t care about making investors happy by concentrating on the next quarter. I’m not even so sure if he really profits by all this tax-cut nonsense as it looks like his wealth is mostly in Amazon shares, and Amazon has never paid a dividend.
While I mostly like Bezos (even while I’m disgusted by Amazon’s labor practices), I believe that billionaires, by their very existence, are a threat to democracy. After, I don’t know, maybe $20 million, I think that we as a society can say that enough is enough. Or, as the French say: un oeuf est un oeuf.
@Teve:
The GOP could shout that from the rooftops. Doesn’t mean that the guy on the street would stop voting for them, or that the rich would stop funding them, or even that the politicians would stop implementing that ideology. In fact, were they to realize this, they would shout it from the rooftops just to p0wn the libtards. The lesson is: stop engaging with anything that Republicans say in public.
@Kit: Like most wealthy people, Bezos isn’t all bad. But in a sane country, the FEDs would be taking a hard anti-trust look at Amazon.
The party itself isn’t the only part of the conservative movement that is delusional…
Nature abhors a vacuum.
It is amazing that France could punch so far above its weight that Macron could not be accused of being delusional for attempting to move his country into a pre-eminent position of world leadership. But considering that Tiny has rejected the historic US role and would have no followers anyway, Putin is viewed and is a thug and criminal, Xi has no credibility and only inspires trepidation there aren’t many possible leaders left. Boris, LoL. Merkel is constrained by Germany’s insular world view that doesn’t extend beyond the EU.
Of course, Macron could establish himself as the indispensable leader and not get re-elected.
@An Interested Party:
Somebody on Twitter the other day said “so it’s not hate, it’s heritage, Huh? Well in Michigan it’s definitely not heritage so …”
In Germany, neo-Nazis aren’t allowed to fly the swastika, so do you know what they fly instead?
@OzarkHillbilly: In reply:
@Teve: An airplane?
What I don’t understand is: why are those that are aligning with Trump so quick to send Americans to their death?
By restarting the economy, we go from manageable to unmanageable, exacerbated by the fact that there is insufficient testing and no vaccine.
If someone said: “I want every American to hold their breath underwater for 2 minutes and 50 seconds to get to go outside”… and the fact is that some (maybe many!) will be unable and will drown… why in any world would people jump in that pool?
Zombies. Trumpist Zombies.
This seems to be the mindset now:
( source )
Forget ventilators.
Invest in companies that make body bags.
@OzarkHillbilly:
The system is not broken. It is designed to be a profitable business, and it is wildly successful at generating profits.
Do you think Republicans have been calling our health care system the best in the world for no reason? It is the best health care system in the world at generating profits!!!
#WINNING
@OzarkHillbilly: http://www.instantrimshot.com
Fortune:
@Liberal Capitalist: Because Capitalism ™ can not fail, it can only be failed.
@Liberal Capitalist:
Because #1 they don’t care, and #2 they figure that Trump can’t lose. I reckon the right honorable John Kennedy (R-LA) figures that his constituents could die in droves and still comfortably vote for Trump. When you are pro-life, you have to be willing to let grandma take one for the team, especially if it means owning the libs.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl: Touche!
@Teve: 🙂
What America is experiencing today is very much what Americans without health insurance experience when they face a major illness: insufficient care, large bills, bankruptcy, and malaise so strong and pervasive it may as well be doom.
@Kit: That’s really the point to Piketty’s wealth tax. Not revenue, but to keep fortunes from growing faster than GDP and sucking in a greater and greater share of wealth. Which will be used to ratfrack politics to ensure the flow of wealth.
Pundits keep focusing on the voter/populist face of the Republican Party. They don’t talk about the hidden face, the funder/plutocrat face, which is what’s doing all the damage.
In a post today James talks about Trump’s threat to adjourn Congress. Trump isn’t talking about Congress, he wants to adjourn the Senate. His bitch is with Moscow Mitch, who’s ignoring Trump’s appointees to focus on confirming Federalist Society pro-corporate judges. Mitch is doing all he can to suck up to Trump’s base, but if there’s a clash of priorities between what Trump wants and what Koch, Mercer, Adelson, the McMahons, Deripaska, etc., etc. want, Mitch’s duty is clear.
@Liberal Capitalist: “What I don’t understand is: why are those that are aligning with Trump so quick to send Americans to their death?”
Because YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!!!!!!
@Steven L. Taylor:..Like every breath you take, another daily forum
@gVOR08:
I very much agree. And I suspect that next step is for billionaires to decide that they are never as well served as when they serve themselves. I found it discouraging just how much support Bloomberg was able to buy overnight.
Agreed. But plutocrats could not get their message out if outlets like Fox News were not also playing their part. I really have no idea if it’s easier to attack wealth or the sources of propaganda. I fear that both are probably beyond reach.
@Mister Bluster: I was wondering when someone would notice… 😉
From The Guardian: French hospital staff treating coronavirus patients to get €1,500
I wonder if Biden should propose something similar, although perhaps late in the election: bonuses to all those working in lock-down states who had to continue working in public-facing jobs. While it might give off a hint of vote buying, I think those people deserve the money.
@Liberal Capitalist:
Because they don’t consider those potential dead “real Americans” or “important”.
There’s a persistent strain of thought that since those most heavily affected tend to be among groups they don’t care about (liberals/blue states, lower-income, minorities, city-dwellers, medically vulnerable, etc) those deaths are more acceptable. If this was killing off only rural GOP voters or the religious, they wouldn’t be so quick to sacrifice themselves for the Great Stock Market God. However, to many it looks like it’s killing off despised liberals in NYC and efforts to stop it are destroying their personal finances. It seems easy to them to let faceless people suffer to protect their family and themselves, especially if those people are those they hate in the first place.
Wait until the blue states start recovering, both in infected cases and economies and COVID-19 becomes a red state focused problem. We’ll see how they feel about letting people die for the economy when it’s not got an “owning the libs” bonus but instead starts killing off most their own voters.
@Kit:
But you repeat yourself.
@An Interested Party:
It doesn’t help that anytime there is a protest like this, they wave guns around.
I also wonder if Glenn Reynolds is going to tweet “run them down” about this protest. Somehow, I doubt it.
@Steven L. Taylor: There have been some themes in all my open fora subtitle for weeks (each week roughly a theme).
@Steven L. Taylor: I hadn’t noticed any day to day relationships in the subheads. I’ll start paying attention now.
@gVOR08: @Kit:
Not sure if Piketty or anyone else makes this argument, but I buried it in one of my comments not long ago.
Risk is fundamental to a free market system. Without it, incentive structures fail. I suspect that an absence of risk distorts prices.*
There is a point of wealth accumulation that market risks disappear.
The nice thing about this argument is that it forces the free market zealots to acknowledge it or they cannot make their “if you tax the rich too much, they will stop producing” nonsense.
–Jay-Z
This is well before Jay made it to 10 figures.
That $30 million number? It’s 289% of the net worth needed to be in the top 1%.
At some point, the marginal utility of another dollar is zero. In fact, there is a point at which marginal utility doesn’t increase even after losing half of your worth several times over. So beyond the negative impact on democratic processes, it undermines the foundation of the system these people claim to defend.
*The price distortion angle just popped into my head while writing, so I have yet to think it through.
@Kurtz: Long ago in Psych 101 a lecturer said that beyond a certain point the money becomes just scoring points in some contest in their heads.
Where’s Joe, he asks.
One of my fears of Biden, would be that he’d conduct his presidential campaign in the same casual manner he approached the primaries. There was an article last week on how Nancy has become the face of the party and counter programming Tiny as much as she can, by showing up on a TV news program every day. Biden needs to be doing that.
@Kurtz: The top tax brackets in the 50s were vastly higher than today, yet mysteriously, nobody talks about the depression that surely caused.
@KM:
Then you’ll hear so many people say “I thought it was fake!” And the question will be what will kill most people: the virus, or the self-administered chloroquine.
@OzarkHillbilly: It started on a whim on 3/30 and then the next two weeks there are two different (but related) themes. A new theme started on the 11th.
@Kurtz:
It would seem that the total wealth socked away offshore is equal to the annual US GNP: $21 trillion. That’s not only an unbelievable sum, I wonder if it can even really be spent.
@Teve
Yeah, we have discussed that before I think. I can’t remember if it was you, but I mentioned that Clinton missed an opportunity in the debate when Trump said the 50s was the last time America was great. The response was turning off the TV.
@Kurtz:
But if wealth were more equitably shared, most people would waste it on food, rent, clothes, schools, transportation, books, music, games, etc., and they’ll spend very little, if anything, on big mansions, yachts, and private jets.
Is that the world you want to live in?
“Invisible Sun” sounds like a good Police song for people stuck indoors all day.
I thought what’s goin’ on? when I saw the sub heads of the Forums day in-day out recently but I wasn’t sure what it was till I saw one fine day* on Tuesday Afternoon.
I have since scrolled down to Thursday, April 9th. That’s as far back as I can see. When I click on Read All Posts the next post I see is January 5th.
*(I was 15 and a sophomore in high school when the Chiffons came out with that tune in 1963.)
Apropos of wealth inequality, it seems likely Lufthansa, Air France, and British airways may retire their A380s rather soon. Demand right now for air travel is dead in most of the world. We’re talking drops of 95% or so. naturally the super-jumbos aren’t flying (only to storage areas).
When the pandemic passes, demand will pick up. but it’s likely to be slow, especially if the recession induced by the outbreak is deep or lasts long (or, gods forbid, both). The A380 is very economical when it’s near to full. it’s very uneconomical when it’s not.
Thus far, a few of the first A380s have been retired, I think all leased by Singapore Airlines. One was taken by Hi Fly, a wet lease outfit, and has been flying a bit, partly substituting for much smaller 787s grounded by engine issues. The rest have been scrapped for parts. The market for second-hand A380s is not there.
If the three airlines mentioned above do retire their A380 fleets, that means there’ll be a glut in the market. Lessors will surely sell them to anyone offering more than what they can get for spare parts and scrap metal. This may be a big, and rare, opportunity for the .1% to get a really nice private jet.
Sure, a Learjet is nice, and the “business” version of the 737 is luxurious, but imagine a plane large enough to hold a working sauna, showers, a tennis court (you can play while on the ground), and a garage for several cars. This in addition to full-fledged bedrooms, dining rooms, living rooms, movie theater, and a real gourmet galley.
Sure, it’s expensive to operate, but it’s not as though you’re using all those billions of Dollars, Euros, Yen, Pounds, etc. on anything else. And imagine what they will think the true size of your penis is!
We got 12-18 inches of snow last night. It snowed so hard between midnight and 1 am that the anemometer cups on my weather station couldn’t keep the platform cleaned off and got snowed down!
It’s peak calving season out here, a lot of the neighbors lost babies, particularly those bred to Wagyu bulls. They don’t like snow and cold. I am always amazed at how well Angus cattle can take weather like this. Luckily, we are at the tail end of our season and only had one born, to an experienced Momma.
@Mister Bluster:
The site’s archiving has been broken since January. The articles are still there if you go to them directly, but they don’t show up on any of the index pages.
@Stormy Dragon: I had some trouble with it myself at one point but it seems to be working now.
What browswer/OS are you using?
@Stormy Dragon:..The articles are still there if you go to them directly,..
How do you do that?
@Sleeping Dog:
I respectfully disagree. He absolutely should not be on the airwaves every day. He is slowly but surely uniting the factions in the Democratic party and is letting others speak on his behalf when needed. It is smart to let Pelosi be the face of the party right now and Pelosi has the thick skin, patience, and political smarts to handle whatever President Trump throws her way. Biden is being shielded right now and that is exactly what needs to happen.
Anything more aggressive might get picked up by the President and cause him to start talking about Hunder Biden, etc., etc. etc., no need for Biden to make the GOP’s efforts to destroy him any easier that it needs to be.
There is way too much time on the clock before the Nov. elections and it would be easy for the GOP to run with any attack strategy now and throughout the summer which would be disastrous for the Democratic Party.
When the time is right I am sure that Pelosi and others will ease him into the spotlight but now is certainly not the time. Biden is not in a position to improve the federal response to the pandemic so he just needs to sit back and let President Trump throw his daily tantrums for all the nation to see. Folks forget that while a sizeable part of the U.S. does not think his tantrums make him look bad the reality is that much more than just his base is watching him on TV every day and not liking what they see…this will eventually catch up with President Trump.
Biden saturating the airwaves now would just provide President Trump with a huge gift by letting him use Biden as a great means to distract the American public from his incompetent response to getting America back on its feet.
So, again…I will close out this post by reiterating that it would be the biggest self-inflicted error if Biden goes hard against President Trump and the GOP right now…for petes’ sake it is only April, and he has a long summer ahead of him to get through the GOP smear machine relatively unscathed. He needs to keep his powder dry for the moment.
@Steven L. Taylor:
At the moment, Windows 10/Chrome, and as Mr. Bluster says, the “Read All Posts…” and the Category links on the main page have nothing later than January 5 right now.
@Mister Bluster:
google “site:outsidethebeltway.com somethingsomethingsomething”
@Steven L. Taylor:..trouble…
When I click on ARCHIVES in the bar at the top of the page that includes these other buttons:
I go to the Archives page.
Then I scroll down to MONTHLY and the most recent month I see is January 2020.
I can’t find another way to see items newer than January 2020.
Safari/macOS Sierra version 10.12.6
@Stormy Dragon:..somethingsomethingsomething…
In other words I need the title of the item…but I can’t find a list of the titles…
@Stormy Dragon:
Thanks. That was the problem I had (and still have–I just thought it had cleared up). I realized that I got around it by clicking on my name to get my posts, but you are correct about there being a problem. I will let James know.
@Sleeping Dog:
The thing is: that was the concern early in the primaries and was often cited as a reason he would lose. And yet he managed to win and unify the party more quickly than has been the case in a contested primary in some time (certainly moreso than 2008 or 2016). So I am not so sure he is doing the wrong thing at the moment (especially in the context of Covid-19).
Clicking on the “open forum” tag above will also give an archival list of these posts.
On non-pandemic news, Roger Stone has been denied a retrial.
He’ll probably be able to spend his appeal confined at home, though house arrest during a lock down is not exactly arrest, is it?
@Steven L. Taylor:..Clicking on the “open forum” tag above will also give an archival list of these posts.
The most recent that I see is Sat. Jan. 4th 2020.
@Kathy:..
He’ll probably be able to spend his appeal confined at home, though house arrest during a lock down is not exactly arrest, is it?
Pud will let him use the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House.
@Sleeping Dog:
That’s why, in my opinion, he should get that running mate processing going quickly and name someone by June 1st at the latest. VP candidates tend to be the pit bulls in a campaign, and if he picks the right one, they can stir the pot and make things a bit more exciting, while Joe comes off as quiet, sensible, not always eloquent, but trustworthy, and empathic.
It’s going to be very interesting to see how the Democrats, in particular, conduct some kind of convention while adhering to whatever rules remain in place in August. Luckily, with there now being no chance of any ballot beyond the first, it will be easier to do this in a more virtual manner. The hard part will be controlling the news cycle and generating some level of excitement about the process.
@Kathy:
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Thanks! Best laugh I’ve had all day. IMHO, you win the internet today.
Seriously though, you KNOW that some billionaire is going to go there and I look forward to seeing the photos.
Perhaps he’ll tweet “shoot them down”…second amendment solutions, you know…
@Kathy:
At first, I thought, ‘yeah, why not?’ but then I saw your expanded explanation
and I realized how silly I was being. You really have a good feel for explaining social phenomena. You could be a successful blogger if it wasn’t for the fact that you have to earn a living and all that other boring stuff.
@Mister Bluster: Try “site:outsidethebeltway.com openforum”–I’m not sure how useful it will be because the posts are scrambled in order. You might try individual dates or date ranges–“open forum April 12, 2020-April 16, 2o20.”
Soledad O’Brien
@soledadobrien
The media’s framing for the most part is always Trump’s point of view. His words, his thousands of lies, just get repeated over and over, by WH correspondents who think they’re informing us, but actually they’re mostly a bunch of cowed and super-effective propoganda platforms.
7:17 PM · Apr 16, 2020·Twitter for iPhone
If you’re into podcasts and/or The Wire, The Ringer launched “The Wire: Way Down in the Hole.” Jemele Hill and Van Lathan go episode by episode through the series.
If podcasts aren’t your thing, cool. If you haven’t seen The Wire or don’t like it, shame on you. Either go watch it for the first time, or try again.
@Tim:
Actually one was ordered by a Saudi prince (who else?)
I hear he does own a 747, though.
@Mister Bluster:
“somethingsomethingsomething” can be a phrase from the body of the post or even one of the comments.
@Stormy Dragon:
I can also confirm the issue happens on Ubuntu 18.04/Firefox as well
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Blogging would interfere with my pretense at doing my job 🙂
@Kathy: @Tim: it wouldn’t be a regulation tennis court, since the plane’s 23 ft 5 in. wide. 🙂
@Kurtz:..If you haven’t seen The Wire or don’t like it, shame on you.
@OzarkHillbilly:
The key part:
We can’t let the people whose only talent is extracting economic rents suffer.
As Gecko said, “I create nothing. I own.”