The Circus Is In Town, Send In The Clowns

There are times when the wheels turn silently, in the dark, or behind a wall. There are times when the machinations of power are invisible to the governed, only glimpsed through an article that cannot connect two dots, a single line in a bill that didn’t seem to belong. There are times when America cannot protect itself from itself because it cannot see the enemy.

This is not that time.

The grim numbers from the Coronavirus continue to escalate almost six months after they began. New unemployment by the million-plus is revealed weekly and has begun to once again rise. A promising momentum towards addressing racial inequality has stalled as the Senate adjourns, and municipalities focus on begging budgets reaching into empty pockets. Tens of millions of Americans desperately search for answers to a landlord’s demands, to a bank’s threats, to an empty pantry, and to their children’s care and learning.

Against this intense and fraught backdrop, an election looms less than 100 days from now. As the virus steals another thousand lives every day, the administration has accepted that no help is coming from the medicines, from the economy, or from their record on the issues in a time that will that matter. Faced with the looming loss of their power, they have decided to play the only card that they have left: Fear.

Fear as in televised images of smoke-filled streets and flashing lights. Fear as in references to “others” invading quiet suburbs and demanding… Something. Whatever it is, but doing it loudly, and dangerously. Fear as in the hints of impending chaos and anarchy, even if that chaos is being fomented by the same administration. Fear of the loss of associated power because of the demands of the powerless to share it. Fear of “them”.

The staging of artificially induced conflict on American streets is nothing new. Every generation or two has its own version, a dramatic portrayal of the one thing that strikes horror in too many of us: a change to the status quo. Sometimes it’s a foreign enemy, sometimes it’s a religion or belief, but most often it’s racism that’s called to serve. It’s a simple equation — while you have to actually tell the public what nationality or religion someone is, you simply have to televise a black or brown face to make your message clear. Words are unnecessary; there’s been enough indoctrination to fill in the blanks.

To be clear: to call this a Trumpian strategy is oversimple and wrong. While the President obviously relishes the division and suffering that he causes America, he has no power to orchestrate the national tumult by himself. He needs the daily work of hundreds of his sycophantic allies in his cabinet, in the Senate and House, in the media and throughout his branch of government in order to so flagrantly trash America. All the President can do is be the ringleader, the figure at the teleprompter reading his lines.

The nakedness of their assault on America is breathtaking. The virus that has been mismanaged into an existential crisis? He has hit the trifecta: intentionally delivered by the Chinese, brought over the southern border by illegal Mexicans, spread across the cities by the rioting Black protesters. We’re still waiting for the Muslim connection.

That overwhelming failure of the administration to respond to the pandemic? It’s the scientist’s turn, as the trumpets of propaganda smear the men and women who, before this moment, were the world’s first choice for wisdom and insight over decades and crises. The evisceration of the once-proud CDC before our eyes, the kabuki theater of issuing guidelines and decrying them before their ink dries, the daily shell games of masks and no masks, arenas and distancing, opening and closing… all of it designed to create plausible deniability, no matter how flimsy the cover. The numbers “look bad”? The meaningless volume of still inadequate and ineffective testing is to blame, and by the way, let’s not have those numbers reported anymore, let’s hide them in a different agency. Transparency is the enemy, reality is the danger.

It shouldn’t work. Trump is the lousy ventriloquist whose lips always move. The actors playing federal thugs are wearing mismatched costumes, and everyone has a camera. The somber pictures from hospitals overflowing and first responders clinging to each other for support provide too vivid a contrast to the happy stupid talk and flowing falsehoods. The nation should be disgusted not only by the criminality but that the clowns don’t feel the need to do a better job of hiding their crimes. The 145,000 deaths and collapsed economy should be enough to keep our focus away from the flashing lights and twirling costumes.

It shouldn’t work… but there are some small signs that the indignant rejection of the public isn’t total. There are glimmers of danger that the recycled play of nameless fear and streets on fire is moving the needle, however slightly. If the coming polls show any form of tightening, the hope will stir that one more time, the strings can be pulled and one more election might be stolen by an underserving charlatan and his motley crew.

The solution is as obvious as their play. America needs to grow up and loudly reject the fakery and manipulation. The country needs to rally to the support of the protected protest, and the sincere efforts of our public servant scientists and doctors. The media has to keep its cameras wiped clean and microphones working, and avoid the flagrant distractions being planted in front of them. The political interests need to reckon with the penalty of backing a corrupt loser, and finally, belatedly, move away from the crash scene.

At this moment, we need to embrace the dignity and courage of John Lewis and march for the betterment of our country. We need to let the punches and the slurs bounce off of our shoulders, and wipe the blood from our heads without turning around, without giving up our missions. We need to renounce the shameful circus and side rings and push our real leaders to stay with the hard work of saving lives and recovery.

It is 100 days until we can begin to start again in America, but if we wait until then too many will be lost, too much sacrificed on behalf of a honking car of clowns clinging to a circus about to close. We need to walk out of the tent, and into the cleansing sunshine of a country that has a lot of work to do, and no more time for illusions.

Do We Wish to Live in a Constitutional Democracy?

In the swirling chaos enveloping our country, there is a basic question being posed to America that may not be clearly understood.

Perhaps We Are Too Tired And Have Chosen To Abandon Democracy...

In order to answer that question, we are required to understand the definition of constitutional democracy as envisioned by our founding fathers. In their writings -- the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, and the notes from one to another -- our forefathers imagined a balanced government with different functions and a constantly active interrelationship.

The Executive Branch would set the course for the nation, specifically responsible for foreign relations, the defense of the country, and such commerce as moved interstate or internationally. Congress would directly represent the people's interests by managing the use of their funds, as accumulated through various taxes and fees. The Senate would preside over the systems of laws and policies, a body of what has become 100 minds deliberating over the tools of governance. The Judiciary would be responsible for the enforcement of the laws as enacted, and at the level of the Supreme Court, for the binding interpretation and application of the Constitution and its additions.

Semi-Autonomous States

The Federal government would work in concert with semi-autonomous states, who would largely have control over the health and well-being of their citizens, with a mandate to distribute funds from internal taxation and federal subsidies as it sees fit. The functions of education, law enforcement, health care, and infrastructure were assumed to be within the state's responsibilities.

The trajectory of America is not in this direction today, but away from virtually all of the components envisioned in our foundation.

As America moves ever closer to a form of autocracy, where the President not only establishes by fiat the country's direction but takes on the authority of executing it, without the consent of Congress or the support of the Senate, the question of who we are, and what we wish to be, becomes less academic and more immediate by the day. It promises to become even more relevant in the coming weeks and months, as America deals with a President who has promised to create programs in health care, in law enforcement, in taxation, and in immigration autonomously and independent of either the remainder of the government or the states.

Perhaps this is what America wants. The process of democracy is messy, contentious, and frustrating to listen to or watch in practice. There is undoubtedly a certain attraction to the simplicity of a single person making the decisions, and putting them into practice without apparent limitations or conflicts. Perhaps in the shadow of the angry rising of partisanship, America is choosing to have a new form of government, one where our leader has unbridled power.

Perhaps we are tired of the work of being a democracy, and we simply want to give up and accept someone to make all the decisions for us.

There is, of course, no history of a successful, lasting democracy. All democracies have failed, while monarchies, emperorships, and non-representational forms of government have fared somewhat better. America has always described itself as an experiment, and perhaps that experiment is failing in front of our eyes.

If that is the situation, events that we are witnessing right now will end up proving the failure. Refused cooperation from the military, President Trump has sent an odd assortment of unmarked federal troops -- from immigration, from detention and from whatever other non-military sectors he can muster -- to impose his own version of peacekeeping into the state of Oregon.

Operation of Oregon's Governor

The arrival of this armed and apparently empowered group into the state was without agreement or cooperation of Oregon's governor, mayor, police and congressional duly elected representatives, and the evidence of their actions suggest that they are less than compelled by the constitutional protections of protestors as well since they have operated to collect and question several with limited regards to their individual rights.

As the state has complained, and Congress has demanded a cessation, the President has announced his personal plans to intervene in the internal affairs of multiple other states, ones that he has specified will exclusively be controlled by the opposing political party's members. Having been rebuffed previously by the courts, the President has announced that he interprets their judicial pronouncements as giving him total authority in all matters, an interpretation that few outsides of his own office agree with.

And so, the question is posed to America. Is this blatant conversion of our form of government, an almost instantaneous transition from constitutional democracy to authoritarian regime acceptable? It is possible that we as a country have given up on the idea of democracy, of a government by and for the people, because it is simpler to abdicate that heavy work of participation and allow it to fall on the shoulders of the current President and his cadre of personally installed acolytes.

Defend The Constitution

On the other hand, if we intend to keep this republic and defend our constitution, when will we make that known? When will we stand up and declare our intention to recapture our country, and to refute the relatively bloodless coup that has occurred in front of us in broad daylight, and persists apace?

We have rightfully taken to the street to demand redress for racial injustices, but that demand is toothless if its reforms are up to a singular authority that has demonstrated no interest in the topic. We have worked with state and local authorities to reform the institutions of law enforcement, but that was a waste of time if those authorities are overruled and dismissed. We have accumulated a majority that agrees with the constructive transformation of our institutions, but how does that matter if majority rule is no longer the law of the land?

It is up to the country to make a decision, and waiting for the coming election -- if it is even permitted to occur without internal and foreign interference and corruption -- may make that decision not ours anymore.

Perhaps, just perhaps, the time is right now.

Pulling Together the Fragments, Time to Laser Focus the Power of the Movement

one of the most powerful movements of our lifetime, one that is arguably the most participated in and positively covered, continues to make important arguments for change weeks after it began. A majority of Americans understand and agree with the mandate for action, and the business community has embraced the slogans and symbols, delivering a broad layer of support to the doorstep of the media and the government. The aroused and diverse army has shown that they’re ready and willing to march for the cause.

What that army needs most right now is a map for where to march, and a clearly defined mission.

It is widely accepted that the law enforcement system needs to be re-envisioned, and a hundred conversations about asset allocation have begun… and that’s the problem. Every municipality is operating with a different set of objectives and demands. The federal government is stuck, with a PR version of false change coming from the administration, a slightly better but wholly insufficient Senate bill blocking the more aspirational House proposal, and creating an excuse for gridlock. Early momentum in a number of cities has waned in the absence of external leadership directing willing local governments towards a firm and specific set of responses.

The Leadership of The Black Lives Matter Movement

The time is now for the leadership of the Black Lives Matter movement, their powerful allies, and supportive government sponsors to come together and create a definitive and specific agenda that can be articulated and supported. The entirely well-intentioned public face of BLM is aspirational but in a general, feel-good sense. It needs to bring out a laser or two.

Go to ten enthusiastic, motivated BLM shirt-wearing marchers, and ask them to define the Defund the Police initiative. Ten different answers will emerge, offering a mile wide range from eliminating police departments to improved training and support. Ask the same group their demands for systemic change in criminal justice, and get even less of a response. Watch ten television news shows; check out ten news sites; google ten initiatives being negotiated in ten cities… the differences outweigh the similarities.

The movement leadership understands its objectives. In the police issue, the first charge is to facilitate the reallocation of resources from enforcement to community support, a goal that is broadly supported where it is understood. It is possible to construct targets — levels of per capita community spending, percentages of budgets allocated and resources defined — for municipalities to reach for. It is possible to define functions that should be relieved from police requirements, and the appropriate objectives to the training, practices, and civilian accountability of law enforcement.

Attention of State Versus Local Governments

The movement needs to clarify and articulate the distinctions between those objectives that can be represented nationally, and those that require the attention of state versus local governments. The removal of a barbaric tool like chokeholds from training and practice is fine, but it is superficial… will it be replaced by malevolent officers using their clubs more frequently? The creation of a national “bad cop” listing is a valid and overdue program, but will it create a greater reticence for police acknowledging abuses, in the style of minimum sentences having different impacts on the application of justice? How can positive intentions avoid unintended consequences?

In the business world, the transition from start-up to a functioning company is always complicated. The challenges of creating and establishing an organization are entirely different from the successful operations of a public-facing producer. The leaders of the BLM need and deserve the rallying of professionals in a broad swath of disciplines to their side, to collaborate on the construction of a salient agenda, and to assist in the research and publication of definitive materials for governmental entities that are willing to act.

BLM Leadership

There is hard work to be done, and the way to provide helping hands is to take the opportunity as urgently and seriously as it deserves and to elevate the movement’s output. BLM leadership has delivered the moment and the masses. They have earned the attention and support of the nation. They have broken through in the midst of national calamities to grab the media and win its favor.

Now is the time to convert that energy into action, and the BLM leadership deserves the best minds and experienced advisors aligning behind and alongside it. Without that support, it may well fall short of the outcomes that it deserves.

Tragic Deaths of George Floyd

After an extraordinary run, the protests surrounding the tragic deaths of George Floyd and others appear to be losing their grip on the nightly news. It is inevitable; the bristling energy and shared urgency of any spontaneous movement cannot be maintained forever this straight…, and in 2020 the media has an overwhelming and ever-emerging assortment of shiny new objects to focus its lens on.

This lessening of intensity — while understandable — can easily become problematic, allowing ordinarily reticent participants in government and society to quietly retreat from the difficult challenges of social and systemic change. The protests aligned with the Black Lives Matter movement were so important because they were transformative, altering the American landscape and stunningly changing the all-important polling numbers. The nation, for the first time, professed a real interest in, and nascent commitment to, substantial and meaningful change in areas that were previously considered “black” issues only. Marches were broadly diversified, giving them a broader (and sadly, more marketable) constituency; corporate America hitched up and went along.

Unfortunately, it is waning too soon. Legislation regarding the reformation of the police systems fell just short of enactment, other than a window dressing proclamation from the White House. State and municipal changes to the allocation of funding and operations of law enforcement are visibly losing steam. Critical conversations on broader issues, such as the Coronavirus’ exposure of the imbalance in health care along racial lines, are entirely absent from the popular discussion.

What is remaining are the few voices that seek to define the movement after the fact. President Trump has perpetuated a mischaracterization of the protests as a violent uprising bent on destruction; some other conservative voices have exploited the vague terminology of the Defund the Police name to denigrate that effort through extremist interpretations. The absence of constructive public pressure on the execution of change could allow the hard-fought moment to silently fade away, while the important story of the movement is eventually co-opted for political purposes.

What is needed now is the promoted distillation of objective, a refined ask that can be directly converted into action. The BLM movement needs to seize back their identity, reignite the newly formed constituency with a renewed purpose, and provide the definitions and applications that the millions who supported it so strongly in the streets can coalesce behind and promote in the halls of Congress and the boardrooms of corporate America.

Every movement finds a point in time when the energy of passion must convert itself into thoughtful and meaningful actions, or find itself co-opted by other forces. The Me Too movement successfully made that transformation; the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements somewhat less so. For the current protests that captured the nation’s imagination, that successfully aligned a majority of America behind it, that time is unquestionably now.

The People Are Not Willing To Be Governed Anymore

In Santa Cruz, California the local government had declared the beaches closed due to the surging numbers of Covid-19 cases. In a state that is struggling with hospitalizations and health care capacities, it seemed a reasonable, perhaps inevitable starting point in dealing with a growing crisis. The municipality promoted the closing and instructed the police to monitor the beaches in order to enforce the action.

At first, the beaches were empty. Little by little, people snuck onto the beaches and reluctantly left once they were confronted… then came back in ever greater numbers. Eventually, the police had to make a decision — to allocate their limited resources to prevent the hordes of determined beachgoers, or to acknowledge that they were unable to both do their regular jobs and play hall monitors. They withdrew.

Law Enforcement

“It’s become impossible for law enforcement to continue to enforce the closures,” Santa Cruz’s health officer, Dr. Gail Newel, said Thursday. “People are not willing to be governed anymore in that regard.” The county had intended to keep the beach restrictions in place until after the July 4th weekend, but efforts to enforce the closure have become increasingly more difficult, Newel said.

Again: “People are not willing to be governed anymore in that regard.”

If there is a tag line to this present surge, a simple definition of why America is the outlier in a world full of success stories in ultimately containing this pandemic, it might well be that simple statement. We refuse to be governed, particularly as it regards our response to this disease. We are the only nation where wearing a mask is a political statement, a question to be answered rather than a simple, logical response. Our government is a mess of contradictory messages, symbols, and accusations. Our media is either impotent or rabble-rousing and vitriolic.

How did we get here, and what does it mean...

To deny that it begins at the top is to suggest that President Trump is irrelevant, or has no impact on those who profess to follow him avidly. It is important to acknowledge that his own government, his appointed task force has issued the specific governance that is being refuted and ignored. It is critical to point out that it has been his own refusal to follow his own rules — or even to suggest that others do so — that is the proffered excuse for so many scofflaws, so much angry confusion.

Ultimately, it is those who are not willing to be governed who are specifically, loudly following their leader. It is not some grassroots movement, some leaderless, organic evolution. It is the fawning acolytes of the President embracing his values, or lack of them. It is visible in the protests on state office steps, where they have waved Trump banners as they demand the removal of limitations. It is manifest in the tweets of support by the President for those who defy the rules that his own government created. This is not news, but it is urgent that we not forget it.

America certainly hasn’t always been this way, In times of crisis, in war and peace, our nation has embraced sacrifice and common cause willingly and enthusiastically. It is decidedly unique to this moment in time that the demonstrable good is defined by our own leadership, and promoted by a section of our media. For those who say that we should not overstate the importance of our President’s rhetoric, this is the counter.

We are where we are. Record numbers of infections escalating to unknowable heights to come. Our largest states hastily retracing their forced and premature steps, trying to put the poisonous toothpaste back in its tube. The repudiation by the European Union, in their statement, that our people are too diseased, too irresponsible for even our precious dollars to be welcome now. America as a pariah state.

We take false comfort in the idea that the daily death totals are “only” in the hundreds now, instead of the thousands, even as we know that those deaths always follow the infections by weeks. That tragedy will come, as will the reports of medical personnel bent over with exhaustion and sorrow as their hospitals are overrun. We know the script, even as we deny its inevitable ending. Our President’s confounding refusal to lead upwards, towards a solution rather than downwards towards a fight, makes this painful replay a foregone conclusion.

At the end of the day, perhaps it is inaccurate to say that people are not willing to be governed. It is more to the point to acknowledge that they are not anarchists, but the governing that they follow is not that of America. It is the solitary ruling of our President, inveighing against the very government that he supposedly heads.

The fight against the clear rule of the nation and its parts is simply this: it is the battle for allegiance to Donald Trump against America. We need to clearly understand that, for what it is, and for what it must never be again.

Dan Patrick on Covid-19: "More Important Things Than Living"

The State of Texas is having a rough go of it lately. After a while of feeling pretty good about itself regarding the virus, the pendulum swung their way and the numbers skyrocketed. Hospitals in Houston and Dallas appear to be filling up, and Governor Abbot has re-shut the bars in an effort to contain the spread.

In the midst of this surge, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick echoed a controversial statement that he’d made back in March, during the early days of the pandemic, and said to Tucker Carlson on Fox:

“and what I said when I was with you that night, there are more important things than living. And that's saving this country for my children and my grandchildren and saving this country for all of us," He went on to say that he didn't want to die but that

"we've got to take some risks and get back in the game and get this country back up and running."

It’s worth examining the levels of stupidity and contrived drama in this statement, and the implications that it came from a high ranking government official.

Mr Patrick, let’s have a chat.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am firmly in the category of virus fodder that you’re referring to. When Covid-19 comes looking for an easy kill, my picture is in it’s iPhone. And yes, just like you, I would gladly take one to save any of my children or grandchild. So we’re clear on that. That said, I’m happy here right now, and those kids are a pretty good reason to keep hanging around.

So, Dan, what is this bargain you’re suggesting? Is one of my kids on a ventilator, and they need my lungs? Gotcha, get the IV ready. Is there an army forming to fight the virus, and they’re taking one person from each family? I’m your huckleberry.

You want us to die so that the economy opens a few weeks earlier? While the infections are still spreading? Before there’s a vaccine, or a treatment, or even a reasonable system for tracing everyone that’s going to get infected by that opening, including my kids?

Are you freaking kidding?

Look, I get it. The economy is in the toilet, and the virus has a grip on the flusher. That’s badly hurting a whole lot of people, so we have to get that dealt with, and now. But hey, our fearless leader just said that we’re doing great there, setting records. Our vice president just said that all fifty states are on target. The stock market is booming, and Kudlow just said that we’re golden again, all's good. Seems like overkill (pun fully intended, Dan) to put us vulnerable sorts in the line of fire just to rush things.

And why is this economic crisis going to take my kids and grandkid, or anyone else’s, anyway? Hunger is a huge problem, housing is entering a crisis, everyone’s looking for work… but that’s temporary. You said so, and frankly, that’s what history tells us. We just have to work together and get through it. We’re lucky though, because we're a rich country. We can just throw some more money out there and take care of everyone. If you’re that worried about the people, and you are not just exploiting our precious families in a shameless, pathetic ploy to get agreement on some policies, then tell your people in Washington to wind up the printing presses again, but this time, give it to American families instead of to the multi-national corporations and banks. Easy.

I mean the last time, you guys made a huge deal about the $1,200 checks that you (eventually) sent out. That was a couple of months ago, and while the $180 billion that got sent out seems like a lot, that was only 6% of the CARES Act. Pretty much a rounding error there, Dan. Another $250 billion went to “small” businesses, and the rest basically went to making the stock market go up quickly.

So, obviously, money is no object… that Mnuchin fellow said that deficits don’t matter and that we shouldn’t worry about them. The guy Powell from the Fed said that he could create as many trillions as he needs to in order to make things go smoothly. If you guys don’t think giving my grandkids a $30 trillion debt to deal with is a problem, I’m pretty sure that a $31 or $32 trillion debt should be just fine. If you guys have been telling us the truth, and money doesn’t matter, a couple of trillions spread around just to the people — say, about $12 - $15,000 ahead — should be more than enough to buy another month or three.

Certainly, nothing worth people dying for. You can save those kids and grandkids with some more money instead of their grandparent’s lives. I’m pretty sure I know how all of them would vote on that. So, pay out everyone to help them wait a little bit more, and leave us grandpa’s around to spoil our kids. Get your act together and make the real opening work, with policies and preparations and testing and tracing and all those good things in place by then. Buy us some more time to get closer to real medical solutions.

Or is there something else that I’m missing? Are you worried that if the economy doesn’t come back fast enough on its own, this Administration might lose in November? That can’t be it… even you wouldn’t suggest that a generation needed to be put at risk, that thousands needed to die unnecessarily, just because of an election, would you Dan? I mean, the whole reason for the sloppy rush and panicking rhetoric couldn’t be for the President’s political benefit… for gosh sakes, you re-opened Texas when you were still a far sight from meeting the President’s own guidelines, and against the begging of his very own scientists and agencies… you obviously didn’t put your entire state at risk just to help re-elect Trump, did you?

Nah, I don’t believe that. Even you wouldn’t trade lives for votes… would you Dan?

Report: Russia Offered Bounties For Taliban Militants To Kill U.S.

Reports from multiple outlets are asserting that Russia — operating through a branch of the GRU, their spy agency — offered Taliban fighters money for the killing of American (and Nato) soldiers in Afghanistan.

To repeat...

Russia offered the Taliban “bounties” to kill American soldiers serving in Afghanistan.

U.S. intelligence is reported to have confirmed this, partly through their interrogations of captured Taliban operatives, and informed President Trump in late March. The same reports then stated that the President was presented with a variety of options for a response, but has not chosen to exercise any of them.

The reports are being provided by a broad swath of media across the ideological spectrum, from N.Y. Times to the Wall Street Journal and overseas. The story broke yesterday (Friday, June 27) and is going national as I write this.

There are stories that are disappointing, curious, provocative. There are times when they provoke academic debate or ideological questioning. Some simply don’t make sense and need public examination and explanations. Not this one, not this time.

This one hit my gut, and I can’t stop the sting.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have two children currently serving in the military. My extraordinary son is a Lieutenant and EDO in the Navy Reserves; his brilliant bride is active duty in the Air Force, a Major and OBGYN physician. They are currently stationed in California, recently returned to this country. They, and my other two amazing children, are the pride of my life. I am not impartial. I am not neutral.

If these reports are true, if they are sufficiently proven, I am not interested in the international ramifications and balances of power. These reports are a direct threat to my children, and to their friends and partners serving in our military. I want scalps, and one of them may well be tinted orange.

Russia is, and has been for decades, an active enemy and a sinister provocateur. That they should promote the killing of American soldiers in a conflict that doesn’t directly involve them is hardly news, and simply one in a series of attempts to create problems and chaos for our country. This accusation is simply a confirmation of who and what they are, not some shocking revelation.

That said, it is a confirmation. It is another in a long line of acknowledgments that Russia is actively seeking to undermine American interests and cause harm to American lives. If we want to close our eyes and pretend that they are simply another competing country on the world stage, this is another light forcing those eyes open, and denying that falsehood.

Given that exposure, the timing and subsequent events are important. There is a very simple sequence here: the President was notified by his intelligence agencies in late March. He did not respond, not even a complaint. He did not choose one of the options given to him for making Russia pay something, for proving that we stand for our troops. In May, the President demanded over the objections of all of our allies, that Putin be re-instated into the now G7. In June, over the objections of many in his own party, President stunningly announced that he intends to substantially reduce the U.S. forces currently stationed in Germany, forces instrumental to restraining Russian adventurism. Again, our allies expressed shock and disapproval.

Putin’s Russia Put a Bounty

And still, no response to the intelligence that Putin’s Russia put a bounty — one that was apparently collected — on the heads of American military serving in Afghanistan. Nothing, except standing up strongly for Putin’s interests against the loudly stated wishes of our allies and his own party.

A bounty that could have potentially been paid for the death of my children. That was paid for the death of someone else’s children.

I need to know that this is either true or not. If it is true, then I don’t care what the strategic or ideological reasons the President has for pandering so obviously to our adversary. I don’t care whether Russia has something over Trump, or whether Trump just wants to curry favor with another dictator. I want him gone, not in November or January, but today. I want him away from any position that allows him to interact with our enemies. I want someone, anyone else serving as the Commander in Chief of my children. I want him gone, now.

This is not political. This is visceral. The President has ultimate control over the lives and safety of two people that mean everything to me. If he isn’t willing to stand up to threats against them, if he can’t muster the strength to punish transgressors, but insists on coddling our enemies and currying favor with their leaders, everyday matters.

Two Parties Splitting America

There are many things that the two parties splitting America should exempt from partisan posturing, but don’t. We are struggling with epic, life, and death battles against the pandemic, and the inexcusable hunger and loss from the economic collapse it caused. The nation has finally risen to demand an end to systemic inequality and racism. These are too great to allow petty partisanship to deprive our citizens of resolution.

But there may be nothing as simply, intrinsically non-partisan as the defense of our military. There are no controversies, no ideologies involved here, just right and wrong… those who choose to serve our nation deserve nothing less from our government. Getting to the bottom of this demands their attention, and their activities once a determination is made. This is not an election issue; who exactly is running on a pro-Putin platform this year, who is advocating for supporting the placement of a bounty on our soldier’s heads?

Aware of the Accusations

The first step has been taken. The nation is now aware of the accusations, and the actions that followed, or more to the point, didn’t. There is any number of important issues being dealt with, and they must continue to be served… but there are tens of thousands of men and women in the offices of our government, and an appropriate number of them can be diverted to this purpose.

We need to know if the reports are true, if the President was, in fact, so informed, and subsequently did not respond, but instead chose to support the Russian leader’s interests even more provocatively.

The serving children of millions of American parents deserve to know that their lives, their safety is not for sale by their Commander in Chief, that the leader of their adversaries is not being promoted by their President. Their parents need to know that the fear already in their hearts is not being amplified by our own nation’s disregard.

The story has broken. Now, it is imperative that it be proven or disproven. There can be no neutral here, no partisan gamesmanship with the investigation… it has to be the protection of our servicemen and women first, period.

Defund the Police - Black Lives Matter

In response to the systemic racism and structural deficiencies of the nation’s police force, the Black Lives Matter Movement has been allied with a parallel movement called “Defund the Police”. Definitions of this slogan have alternatively suggested a range of outcomes from modest adjustments to procedures and training out to the elimination of the police as an agency, without any apparent consensus depending on the constituency.

First and foremost, any tag line that elicits so much confusion, and is applied to such a broad range of outcomes, is essentially useless. Worse still, it precludes adoption or action, since within the confines of its potential meanings are opposing factions and efforts.

What is most troubling of all, is that at its core the ideas that it entails are extraordinarily important and valuable… ideas that, rather than being divisive, have the opportunity to at least begin on common ground.

For many years there has been a clear understanding that we task our police with massive amounts of responsibilities that they neither want nor that they are trained effectively to handle. From domestic disputes to mental health issues, from homelessness to addictions, we have taken advantage of the police department’s omnipresent nature and asked them to be the public presence of the government in all regards. A remnant of the days when the cop on the beat had daily exposure to a very limited group of residents, the evolution of those responsibilities is years overdue for review and adjustment.

In the middle of the extremes for the “Defund the Police” movement is a reasonable and logical starting point: the movement of social responsibilities away from police enforcement (along with the attendant funding), and into the more proficient hands of their related agencies. Reducing the focus of policing to the necessary function of public safety and crime resolution would greatly reduce the number of times that social ills result in criminal charges, a substantial problem particularly in minority neighborhoods and in economically disadvantaged areas where there tends to be a heavy concentration of officers and a chronic underrepresentation of needed services.

The movement of funding from police budgets to social services funding would result in a broad set of benefits and reduce the sometimes oppressive and concentrated presence of force in struggling neighborhoods. It would eliminate a substantial percentage of incarceration that is often the result of police having no alternative response or contribution to the issues that are thrust in front of them. The vast increase in the availability of preventative and supportive measures would in turn reduce the incidences of those social crises and would improve the quality of life in those areas exponentially.

The primary objective should always be to reduce the need for law enforcement as aggressively and creatively as possible. It is impossible for the police force, as presently constituted, to mix that objective with the tools and mandates that they are given.

Coming from that base, one where social services tend to social ills, and law enforcement to the protection of citizens from violence and predation, there would be a clearer path to deeper reforms. The criminalization of social ills and the response to such in the same manner by the same group as predatory criminal activities have failed societies most vulnerable and oppressed, leading to our national epidemic of incarceration and the resultant stigmas, deprivation of opportunity, family deconstruction, and recidivism.

The cycle of systemic racism is inherent within the structure and fiber of the present law enforcement organization and dramatically expanded by a deeply developed lack of trust. As a result of the miscasting of police as social workers and dispute resolution, particularly in minority neighborhoods, that mistrust has been both forced onto the relationship and hardened from both sides over time and with experience. Stripping away the latter from the equation should be helpful in isolating and addressing the substantial and real remaining problems, and offer the possibility of a fresh start to a relationship between law enforcement and the citizenry that has deteriorated beyond redemption.

Commissioner's Statement on the Employment Situation

The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the May unemployment rate improved from April’s 14.7% to 13.3% in May. This improvement suggests that an additional 2.5 million found work in the past month, a decided difference from projections. Like much of what we see these days, the numbers are not quite what they seem… and the idea of the President crowing over an unemployment rate well in excess of any seen in 80 some years is somewhat surreal.

First of all, let’s get rid of one line of argument running around the internet. President Trump did not cause these numbers to be altered; that’s not an opinion, but a fact. The numbers are generated by an agency (the Bureau of Labor Statistics) that is notable for its lack of politicization, comprised of about 2,400 professionals, virtually all of whom have access to the source data. For there to be any interference with the final report, all of them would have to have agreed to silence. No way.

That said, the numbers are likely not what they are reported as. There are several reasons, all of which are substantial.

Quirky Numbers

Within the report, the BLS suggests that they understand that the numbers are understated. The specific term used was “a misclassification error”, which certainly isn’t a positive thing. Aside from the usual yes or no employed or not, there is a fairly unique third category: unemployed who listed their employment status as “other”, neither employed nor other employed, due to the weirdness of the virus. In a normal world, those would have been listed as unemployed, and the unemployment rate would have been about 16.3%. That said, the April numbers included the same error, and would have been about 19.7% instead of the reported 14.7% had all the numbers been reported. If anything, the nominal improvement may have been understated.

The BLS is investigating how to make the numbers more representative, so don’t be surprised if the numbers are substantially revised in the coming days.

The Very Temporary Impact of the PPP

The BLS has no mechanism for determining how many of the newly hired are being paid by their employer to work. That seems an odd statement, but remember that the goal of the Payroll Protection Plan was to compensate employers to retain their workers during the pandemic, providing actual money for the payroll of small companies. That money, without extension, runs out next month as does the need to keep those employees hired in order to not have to repay the loans.

It is important to note that the vast majority of the hires were in the hospitality and restaurant industries; those jobs are (a) typically low wage, and (b) precisely the jobs covered by the PPP. Take away those specific jobs, and the unemployment rate would have been around 20%.

Timing is Everything

The opening of various states in the middle of May is likely to have also altered the numbers; the surveys and analysis is not to the end of the month, but rather key to the middle. The initial binge of hiring that accompanied the opening — and anticipated opening — of much of the country’s businesses likely coincided with the report’s coverage, giving a push to the numbers that mattered.

It is likely that the mid-May period coincided with access by millions of businesses to the funds from the PPP, encouraging them to announce their hires. As noted above, it’s now a question of whether those hires will last beyond the required holding period.

A Particularly Unpleasant Feature of the Numbers

In attempting to celebrate the better than expected top-line numbers, President Trump proclaimed that this was a “great day” for the late George Floyd. Aside from the horrific lack of sensitivity in his statement, there was a particular irony that might have escaped his superficial scan of the numbers. While white employment improved, African-American employment actually worsened, yet another bitter reminder of the divide in so many aspects of American life. Painfully, the hiring came in precisely the fields that hurt the black community disproportionately on the way out; that the initial hires did not follow the same path is inexplicable in any light other than racial. If Mr. Floyd is indeed aware of the results, it would only be with a sad familiarity of the reality.

The bottom line is, as always, the bottom line. The unemployment picture is artificial and temporary; numbers are the product of unprecedented factors that are likely to change overnight. Even with the most generous of readings, the nation’s unemployment is at post-Depression record levels, with little reason to know that they’ll improve any time soon. The hiring to date is tenuous, lower wage and sadly confirming of the racial inequality that we grapple with today; the idea of a celebration is not only premature but almost intentionally ignorant of the national trauma.

Just to Make Things Worse…

Worst of all, the mood in Congress on the superficially good news is completely misguided. Several Conservative voices sounded out immediately, demanding that the economy’s “success” be met with an end to governmental involvement, and a rejection of the stimulus package presently being debated. A part of the false logic being given is the totally irrelevant recovery of the stock market to near-record levels (Please see “The Battle of Wall Street vs Main Street” to understand) to excuse the removal of support just as the country reaches its most critical and fragile moment. This is an act that could easily tip the scales tragically; and as before, in a way disproportionately slanted against those most in need.

A tone-deaf celebration of impossibly bad circumstances. A response to those misleading numbers by removing the support that is intended to bridge the transition to true recovery. A confirmation of the inherent unfairness built into the economy, and a government that is as blind to that unfairness as any institution being protested today.

We need to understand the truth, and to make that understanding loud and clear. Propaganda and magic thinking will be too painful to too many for us to allow it to be the loudest sounds that we hear.

You Cannot Put Out a Fire With Smoke and Mirrors

In every nationally scaled event -- as the protests most assuredly are -- there is a complicated matrix of causes and effects, of victims and victimizers, of economic and political impacts and responses. That is undoubtedly true today, as we see the anger and dismay of so much of the country on the streets and airwaves. What we, as caring and involved Americans, must always try to do is to peel away the distractions, however loud and bright they may appear, and to focus on the critical core.

The streets of America are burning, and someday later we will determine whether those fires were lit by protesters, vandals, or deliberate agents of chaos and discord. The likely answer will be all three, and that will remind us only that it is good and evil in a complex world, and that generalities will almost always be false.

The actions of the police, in lighting this particular match and in their response to the protests, will show some very bad men and women in a brighter light. That is necessary for those few, but the real problem is in the underlying system, not the guilty (or at least, the discovered) individuals. Again, we will discover that there are good and evil people in every profession, and we will be unsurprised.

There are many voices being elevated, magnified by the moment. Some of them are inspiring, insightful, and meaningful... some are inciting, divisive, and crass. From this, we may glean the faces of those who we will follow more closely going forward. We will also note those failing us, those who we must look to reject, rebut, and ignore, and there is some small help in that.

What we have to take from this moment is that every pervasive imbalance, every systemic inequality is destined to break down and fail. The most recent portion of the history of racial inequality in our country belies any happy talk of sufficient progress. It demands that we commit more energy, more clarity, and more specific action to dealing with its legacies.

The pandemic grossly revealed the disparities in health care, wellness, access, and in fairness within our country and economy. These must be addressed as a priority and must be solved. It has shown that the nation relies on a class of forgotten workers that is too often invisible, too easily underpaid, under-protected, and underrepresented, and we can and must change that as well.

For us to ignore the foundational and justifiable elements at the base of the anger and frustration that is spilling out onto the streets is to actively perpetuate them. For us to do nothing of substance, to speak without action, to care and then, after those streets have been cleared, care not, is to intentionally and directly cause what will surely come again tomorrow.

Violent Aspects of Anger Unleashed

In lamenting the violent aspects of anger unleashed, and likely cynically exploited, there is the constant danger that we are distracted from the meaning of millions taking to the streets in the first place. We must fight that temptation with every tool that we have. We must focus on the realities that plague us and the endemic diseases that predate the pandemic.

When a child shows a rash, we put on an ointment... but if we don't treat the underlying cause of the rash, we've failed the child. So it is with our society today, our culture, our laws, and our systems. We see the rash, and we treat is as we are forced to, but we must have a dedication to uncovering its root causes, and to curing what we find. It is always simpler to resolve problems symptomatically, always easier to postpone deeper and more costly treatments, but it always is to the detriment of the patient when we do.

Pandemic and Affiliated Economic Collapse

There is an interesting reveal in the actions of our government to the pandemic and affiliated economic collapse -- the powers that be have had little hesitation in unwrapping trillions of dollars to fix what ails the stock market and our financial institutions, stating over and over again that their capacity to cure them is unlimited. The excuse that solutions to income inequality, disproportionate resources, and opportunities in education, health care, and support for our most vulnerable are too expensive for our country to consider has been exposed as a lie, never again to be taken seriously.

What we care to cure, we can cure... what we need to do, there exist the resources to do them. There are always excuses not to do what is needed, what is right, but in the long arc of truth, we always find them proven false and weak.

We are about to rebuild our economy. We are about to reconstruct a shattered health care system. We are about to deal with the priorities of our newly recognized essential workers as well as our first responders when the states and cities of our country reconcile their broken budgets. We are being forced to do these things.

A Critical Layer of Priority and Recognition

As we address these urgent issues, we can -- we must -- apply a critical layer of priority and recognition that we have a concurrent opportunity and obligation to incorporate our acknowledgment of the unfairness that has never been cured, the division that has never been bridged, in the solutions that we adopt.

As we recover from the tragedies of the moment, what will give the deaths and sufferings of the national cause and value is if the moment is used to make serious and lasting progress on the long and difficult road to equality and balance. Then, and only then, will the deaths of a 100,000 plus to the virus, the struggles for tens of millions to survive the collapse, find meaning. Then, and only then, will the visceral pain and anguish of so much of the country in the latest horrific example of an uninterrupted chain of horrific examples of injustice begin to heal?

The commitment to progress is what must be believably stated now, and systemically pursued, for America be finally become what it has always believed that it is, and what it has the unique capacity to become.

Escalating Cycle of Protest: Death of George Floyd

in an escalating cycle of protest, response, and violence, the nation watches as a major American city ignites. There’s a temptation to conflate the tragic scenes from Minneapolis with the brutal videos of the death of George Floyd, but that’s far too easy and wrong.

In a vacuum, a policeman (or four) committing what appears to be a murder would be cause for national attention and condemnation, and an expectation of a somewhat sensational trial and sentencing… but not a cause for the reciprocal burning of a police station, not the devastation of a neighborhood notable only for its proximity to the event. It is the understanding that the tragedy is not in a vacuum, but the reverse: a confirmation of what has become far too common a pattern, far too familiar a news story, that explains the outcomes.

Let’s start with the givens: the vast majority of police and first responders are good, honest people doing a tough job to the best of their ability. They deserve to be supported and honored. That said, there is a persuasive and important quantity of evidence that systemic racism infects too much of the actions and outcomes of the force’s practices, and Minneapolis has a disproportionate history of inflammatory confirmations.

And so, the death of George Floyd was not in a vacuum. The expectation of a fair trial and sentencing is not a given, because there have been too many prior events where that has not been the case. The protests, most of which have been peaceful and earnest, were intended as a prophylactic, an attempt to ward off the coming of a disease that is familiar and properly feared. It is in the night when the fewer remaining attendees are tilted towards the most extreme, the most aggrieved and reckless, that the conversion to violence has ignited. It was so for the past three nights and may continue both in Minnesota and elsewhere.

And so another city burns and our nation splits even further apart.

That there is a division caused by the trauma of the event is illogical, immoral, and wrong. There are some basic elements that we should all easily agree with and comprehend. Let’s start with the easiest one: that racism has been a national scourge for a few hundred years or more, and still exists in far too great measure despite our professed awareness of its presence.

Do we seriously need to debate this? Probably not, though far too many would argue that the worst of it was resolved in 1965, or with the election of a black man to be president. They miss the point: incremental improvements, while important and necessary, are not cures, nor do they represent the eradication of the disease.

We should be comfortable (or uncomfortable, more appropriately) concurring that the toll of the pandemic and economic crisis has disproportionately prevailed on the minority population. This isn’t subject to an opinion; the numbers are both stark and undeniable. Virtually every painful outcome of the times is grossly magnified when seen through the prism of people of color; from illness and death to unemployment and hunger, to the effects of the closing of our schools, the darker shadings of the calamity are inescapable and revealing. It is not that the disease itself is racist; it is that the generations of underlying inequities and pervasive inequality have consigned too many of our neighbors to a lesser capability of resisting its ravages.

We should easily come together in condemnation of what the videos have forced us to watch. Is there a possibility of some currently unimaginable justification for the apparent murder of Mr. Floyd, the callousness of the officers in ignoring his pleas? Our system of law suggests that we must exhaust that possibility, but reasonable people must all have the same preponderance of opinion. When the police arrive at a murder scene and find one person standing over the corpse with a gun, they arrest that person. So it is here, except for the arrest part.

We can all agree to mourn the loss of Mr. Floyd’s life and share our sincere condolences with those who knew and loved him. Certainly, this needs no further elaboration.

We all agree — or claim to — that the actions of a few should not be credited to the many. Many thousands of Minnesotans protested peacefully; a handful scaled the fences of the police station and ran amuck. It only took a couple of arsonists to light up the cars or buildings even as the shadows of the flames extended over many hundreds of innocent watchers. While we should and must condemn the destruction and threats, we equally should and must be clear that their behavior is an independent choice, not collective blame.

If we agree on those simple and basic premises, then what do we disagree on moving forward?

With those in accord, we can collectively condemn the apparent actions of the police, and the responses of the extreme. We can collectively call for a swift and honest application of our system of justice, a mourning for the victim, and for a rapid de-escalation of the physical violence afflicting the protests, without diminishing the underlying message, value, and appropriateness of the protests themselves.

None of these assertions should be divisive.

And yet.

Even as the young mayor makes the difficult decision that the loss of a building is less than the loss of life, and vacates the police station rather than initiate armed conflict, the president tweets that looters should be shot, and critiques the mayor as weak for his decisions. Even as the elected officials of Minnesota grapple openly with how to respect the justified concerns of their constituency while protecting lives and property, social media roils with calls for heavier armed responses and incites individual vigilantism in the absence of officially sanctioned violence.

The divide widens, the either/or stiffens.

That there is an absence of constructive national leadership, that it is replaced with an urging towards division and confrontation, is so common now as to be sadly assumed. It is our national tragedy and shame and has amplified the impact of virtually all of the problems that have presented themselves without our invitation.

What needs to be shared now, what needs to be broadly spoken about and universally accepted, is that the majority of the country, the majority of all of the people, want better, and are willing to work towards that end. What the media needs to represent is that the many are saddened by the realities of the moment, wish that they were different, take no pleasure in either an unjust history or an inadequate present; the few who feel otherwise are who should be given less of a megaphone and shamed when they use it.

It is not inappropriate that advocates for racial justice make their condemnations as generalities, applying to society as an ideologically homogenous whole. Even if only a small portion of our society is so intensely biased, the pervasive lack of aggressive, consistent condemnation by our current leaders, and the present feeling of entitlement that such views enjoy justifying that perception. It is up to us as a country to first demonstrate that such accusations are not deserved by the majority; until that time arrives, the stigma belongs.

In the pictures of the protests over the past few days, some aspects of the protesters stood out. They were extraordinarily diverse, seemingly representative of Minneapolis as a whole… and they were both young and old, with some families holding banners in the daylight. There is a glimmer of promise in that picture, a realization of a hopeful possibility of a new truth for our country. There is evidence that the present generation is fundamentally improving on its predecessors; that must be celebrated and developed.

If we can focus on what we agree on, what we condemn, and what we want to change, perhaps there will be another (albeit grudging) movement forward for America. If we can encourage our youth to teach and influence their elders, then we can begin to represent a better dynamic.

If we can somehow ignore the executive tweets and just restrain ourselves from shooting our neighbors and families, then maybe we can try to heal ourselves as well as the ones damaged by the day.

Our history has proven that it is difficult, but we must believe that it is not hopeless. We have to learn, we have to work to understand, we have to want collectively to make things better, for us to have a chance.

When Conflicts of Interest are Ridiculous, Are We Really Just Ignoring This?

Let me get this straight… on Friday, President Trump announced that Dr Moncef Slaoui would head the Operation Warp Speed program for the accelerated development of a vaccine. The President described him as

“one of the world's pre-eminent experts on vaccines. “

Dr Slaoui was head of Research and Development for GlaxoSmithKline, a giant global pharmaceutical company. So far, so good… tho I really want to know who in this administration is such a devout Trekkie (see Logo, Space Force).

At the time of his appointment, it was reported that Dr Slaoui had resigned from the board of Moderna, one of the companies working on a vaccine, in order to take the position. It was further reported that Dr Slaoui owned some 155,000 options for Moderna stock, valued then at over $10 million.

Hmmm…

To be clear, options (in this case, “call” options) are instruments that allow the holder to purchase the stock (in this case, Moderna) for a specific price for a specific duration. If the stock price goes up, the options become more valuable… if the price goes down, they could become worthless. That means that Dr. Slaoui will benefit from any rise in the stock price of Moderna, so long as it occurs within the covered period of time. It was not reported how long the options had remaining.

Weekend passes. Monday comes, and Moderna announces that (in simple terms) their version of the vaccine was inordinately successful, having positive results from all 45 cases. The stock soars, gaining 25% in value; Dr Slaoui is up to some $3 million overnight, with far more to come if/when the results are confirmed by next stage testing.

Double hmm…

Let’s assume for the moment that there’s nothing wrong here. Dr Slaoui took the position because he had both the expertise and desire to help. The vaccine that Moderna was working on was no secret, and the favourable results were due to come out at some near point regardless of the good doctor’s personal moves. The country will be deeply grateful for any confirmation of a successful vaccine, and this looks (at least preliminarily) like very good news. Cool!

Here is why perception matters. With Dr Slaoui in position to determine winners and losers in the heated contest to develop, produce and distribute the most important vaccine in generations, how will we trust that those decisions are being made for the benefit of our people, and not the doctor’s wallet? His prior role with Glaxo more than likely resulted in his garnering stock and/or options from that company as well. IF there are two competing vaccines with similar efficacy, will we trust when Moderna’s is selected, and Glaxo is tasked with manufacture and distribution, a contract worth many billions?

Economic Progress

I make no accusations here, and it’s far too early in the process to have any of this be particularly relevant. The point here is this: in one of the most important processes to America and trillions of dollars of economic progress, every step can reasonably now be challenged and doubted, subject to conspiracy theorists and bitter recriminations and PR battles from rival corporations. On the other end, what if Dr Slaoui elects not to use Glaxo because of the appearance of personal conflict… does the nation miss out on the best option because of such a minor issue?

As it often is, the damage from a conflict of interest is not in the actuality. In this case, the country couldn’t care less if the Dr. gets fabulously wealthy, as long as we get the right vaccine at the right price delivered as best as it could be. It is the appearance of a conflict that is corrosive, that complicates issues far greater than personal wealth or outcomes.

Age of Pandemic is Critical

So much of how we react, what we believe in this age of pandemic is critical to the choices that we make as a society, as an economy, as a country. The difference between collective and individual faith in what we are told, and constant questioning and doubt is measured in lives and trillions, as we hesitantly lurch into unknown territory.

The introduction of such obvious conflicts of interest into the very top of the decision-making pyramid is a poison, one which will have a specific and definable impact on the efficacy of the task force that Dr Slaoui has been asked to head. If there is what has become a commonplace lack of transparency and real-time disclosure in the various coming processes, sceptical media elements will be induced to dig harder, and likely promote more speculation and distrust.

Thoughtful and proactive attention to the critical issues of these appearances can allow for a simple resolution. The doctor could have been compensated with however many millions were necessary for exchange for his divestment of any conflicting possessions; offering him $10 million, or $20 million or whatever is a rounding error in our national allocation of funds, and would eliminate entirely all the coming mess. Assuming that his appointment wasn’t a knee jerk, overnight panic decision, then there was a period of vetting that would have determined the existence of those conflicts and allowed for a resolution.

Instead, we have potentially wonderful news that arrives in a silly cloud, with as many question marks as exclamation points. It wasn’t necessary, and it should not be… but once again, here we are.

The False Reality of American Freedom

People who are protesting the continued closure of business in some states and cities are claiming their freedom, their individual rights as being denied them. They gather on the steps of some capital and demand that they are allowed to make the choice of whether or not they want to put themselves in danger, shouting that the government lacks the authority tell them what to do, or how to live. Many are unmasked, huddled together in an act of rebellion, and a few carry long guns in an effort to make some secondary point or association. They offer no particular plan for how to effect their demands, other than an immediate removal of restrictions.

They are, by the very nature of their protests, proving that they need to be ignored… and the attention being paid to them by the media (and by some in office) needs to stop.

The balancing of the economy versus public health is complicated, and there is plenty of room for a meaningful debate. The case of these particular protesters is not complicated at all; they are entirely, unequivocally wrong. Yet, despite the obvious logic of their wrongness, their actions are promoted by the media, acknowledged and even sanctioned by government officials (up to the President), and treated as if they are a meaningful component of the national discourse.

There are things that can be reasonably debated, and then there is general stupidity and irresponsibility. A serious discussion about opening up the country in the midst of a pandemic is based on appreciating the risks and potential outcomes of such a move, and planning on how to deal with it; it is not to pretend that the risks don’t exist. The protesters, implying that their own lives are theirs to do with as they choose, ignore by their actions and their unsupported demands the realities of a highly contagious virus that they can surely spread, and a health care system that will have to deal with their choice by putting first responders in danger.

Even if the government and legal system somehow wanted to say ok, we care not whether you live or die, those same systems could not allow those protesters to bring harm to others by their actions, to endanger their communities and the common resources. There are numerous simple analogies that we accept and understand in everyday life; here’s one:

A man drives up to a bar and quickly begins to drink heavily. After a few shots, the bartender sees that he needs to slow down and cuts him off; the man tells him a story about how hard his day has been, how much he needs to unwind. The bartender refuses, and the man protests loudly, complaining that it’s up to him how much he drinks. The man makes a scene. The bartender calmly tells the man to sit down for a while, hand over his keys, have a couple of cups of coffee on the house, and he’ll call him a cab… if not, he’ll notify the police.

The law makes the bar somewhat responsible for the damage caused by the drunken man and charges him with that control. The bartender knows that if the man leaves the bar in that condition, he’ll threaten the safety of not just himself, but of anyone on the road with him. The man, upset by his circumstances, wants the opportunity to selfishly endanger others and insists on his right to do so.

It’s not complicated.

Those who are protesting the rules by demonstrating their disregard for the safety of themselves and others are disqualifying their argument. Media and officials who elevate their position by sharing it are promoting the idea of specific and identifiable damages to the general population. The exercise of individual rights can not be accepted when they so clearly bring danger and harm to others. It is my right to own a gun… It is not my right to discharge it in a crowded restaurant. The list goes on endlessly.

The response of thinking people should not be to confront the protesters. It should be to confront seemingly neutral media outlets and public officials who promote and advertise their activities and positions. Someone proclaiming a personal grievance without thought or understanding has a limited impact; put that same person on a news show, respond to that person from a podium, and you magnify their dangerous position enormously, bringing legitimacy to it that its intrinsic value would never muster.

In this case, it is fully justifiable and appropriate to “shoot the messenger.” The messenger is the greater danger.

Hunger in America: People Waiting at Food Banks

In the heart of a depression that has taken 36.5 million people off of the work rolls, against the backdrop of news footage of seemingly endless lines of people waiting at food banks, when we see nightly telethons and charity drives to feed our neighbors, our children, the nation is relatively quiet.

No media outrage. No impassioned calls for change. Just quiet, desperate hunger creeping across America like a punishment, reaching places and households that were often close, but never quite there before.

Food Insecurity

The makers and promoters of the statistics have gotten their marketing all wrong. You hear that “food insecurity” is rising beyond the already unacceptable levels to something approaching apocalyptic, and if you have no history with the phrase, you shrug and move along.  It conveys none of the urgency, the terrible pain that is behind the numbers.

A study by the Hamilton Project of the Brookings Institute defined the problem as follows:

“By the end of April, more than one in five households in the United States, and two in five households with mothers with children 12 and under, were food insecure. In almost one in five households of mothers with children age 12 and under, the children were experiencing food insecurity.”

That seems bad enough, but without knowing what the term food insecurity means, it lacks the gut punch that it deserves. We’re all insecure these days, aren’t we? It’s hard to find the pork chops that we were looking for; will today’s delivery be missing a bunch of items?

This is not that.

To qualify as “food insecure” a family agreed with the statement:

“The food we bought just didn’t last, and we didn’t have enough money to get more.” 

There’s the payoff: they ran out of food, and even if they had access to a store, they simply had no way to buy more. Enter hunger. How about the kids? Here’s the definition of childhood food insecurity:

“The children in my household were not eating enough because we just couldn’t afford enough food”.

We are used to guilt-inducing commercials of third-world children looking bug-eyed into the camera. The survey found that one in five households in America — one in five! — felt compelled to admit to an anonymous questioner that they could not feed their kids what they needed to.

Food insecurity is an institutional definition. It probably made sense when it was created — a definition for people who had periodic access to food, who would get a check at the end of the month, and restart the stretching process. To an academic, sure, it works.

We have hungry children by the tens of millions, and we are quiet about it. We have desperate families searching for food, and we’re not astonished, not hastily revising our internal definition of our country.  We have churches and charities and good men and women hauling boxes of food out to lines of waiting cars they were never meant to serve, and we are somehow unmoved.

Perhaps it is too soon.

A recent poll found that 77% of the unemployed believe that this will all be over soon, that they’ll get their old jobs back as soon as the lockdown is lifted. Maybe we’re not screaming because we think that this will all be over as soon as we simply stop quarantining everyone, let the kids go back to school, and reopen the country. We can handle a week or three of struggling when we know that the cavalry is around the corner. Maybe we simply haven’t accepted what is happening. We’re not suffering, after all, we’re “Transitioning to Greatness”.

And while we’re busy transitioning, our children don’t have enough to eat.

If that’s the case, that we are quiet because we believe that we’re about to be rescued by a resurgent economy and unbridled prosperity, there’s a question that we have to ask:  What if the cavalry doesn’t come, at least not for everyone? At what point will the combination of shattering disappointment, partisan blaming, persistent illness and death force millions of Americans to give up that hope? What then?

The Becker Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago just published a scholarly paper.  In it, they offered a prediction:

We find 3 new hires for every 10 layoffs caused by the shock and estimate that 42 percent of recent layoffs will result in permanent job loss.

Let’s see… 42% of the 36.5 million recent unemployed won’t get rehired, but 77% of the same population believe that relief is imminent. That gap is around 7 million workers, and their families, who are going to be hit with reality just as their unemployment checks wind down. That’s millions of families that will see the cavalry ride into the fort, and fly right on by them out the other side. As they listen to their leaders proclaim the arrival of greatness, how will they react to not being able to provide enough food to their children?

By the time June comes to pass, we will have authorized between $5 and $7 trillion through a variety of federal programs to deal with the impact of the pandemic. The Federal Reserve will have put up another $4 to $6 trillion, or perhaps double that, in fresh, new money to prop up large businesses and banks. The stock market will remain elevated, at prices even its admirers acknowledge are inflated and full.

In that world of gushing money, the federal government denied requests to expand SNAP (food stamps) by 15%. It denied requests to waive the 20-hour work minimum for college students to receive SNAP aid. When a court blocked the start of regulations requiring greater work requirements set to begin this April, the administration went to court to reverse that ruling in spite of the economic contraction, protecting a program estimated to purge 700,000 families from the SNAP rolls. This is how the Department of Agriculture explained their position:

“While we’re currently in a very challenging environment, we do not expect this to last forever,” the department said Wednesday. “America’s best days are ahead, and we must prepare our workforce to rejoin the economy when our nation reopens.”

Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, has noted that he has unlimited trillions in resources at his disposal for the support of the economy. Steven Mnuchin, Secretary of the Treasury, has stated that now is not the time to worry about deficits; historically low-interest rates make them irrelevant, something to be dealt with in the future.

Millions of parents can not afford to buy enough food to feed their families, to satisfy their children. The administration has gone to court to stop a judge’s decision to not take food stamps away from 700,000 families, because “our best days are ahead”. The juxtaposition is deafening.

This is not a partisan issue. This is not a conservative versus liberal issue. This is, pure and simple, a litmus test of our collective humanity, and of our definition of what America is. We will be fairly judged, and should judge ourselves, by our response to this basic assault on our national identity…

Our children don’t have enough to eat.

E Pluribus Duo, Why We Can't Have Nice Things Any More

Months into dealing with a truly global pandemic; deep in the throes of an epic economic crisis; in a moment in history that cries out for a collective resolve and unified, coordinated response, we are the most divided people in our recent history. The single quality that is the key to our success appears not just beyond our grasp but feels as if it no longer exists.

That we are a nation divided is taken for granted. The inspirational moment of an ascendant Barack Obama’s convention speech in 2004 — where he proclaimed that “We are one United States of America” — feels naive and hollow today, as if we’ve grown up and discarded that fairy tale in exchange for a darker, sadder reality. Today, we feel as two species, inhabiting alternate dimensions while sharing one land, a universe where we pass through each other without recognition or affect. The only point of interaction is conflict, the only shared beliefs are in the absolute nature of our own primacy, and the irredeemability of the other.

We are the despair of Darwin, evolving into something that cannot survive rather than yielding to the imagined pull of successful adaptation. How did we get here, and more importantly, how do we find our way out?

Perhaps we have always been destined for this point. Virtually all of our systems, all of our American institutional conceits are based on competition and confrontation, rather than mutuality and cooperation.

The Conflict Between the Plaintiff and Defendant

We call our system of law “adversarial” — rather than a mutual search for truth, it is a conflict between plaintiff and defendant, often with a winner-takes-all outcome. We consider our economy to be Capitalism, a system which relies on unbridled competition in a (theoretically) free marketplace. We select our leaders through a process of contests and eliminations, culminating in a one-on-one brawl for election. For recreation, we watch or participate in sports — gladiatorial engagements based on a physical striving for victory, and all that entails.

The essence, the very nature of our culture and our institutions is grounded in the determination of winners and losers, of rewarded and punished, of haves and have nots. Perhaps we have arrived at the place we were always destined to inhabit, that we have achieved our societal goals… whether or not we realized they were our objective all along.

Perhaps.

There are understandable reasons for our evolution. The systems that we’ve adopted and promoted — adversarial, competitive and determinative — are not inherently wrong or bad, did not demand that we became who we are. There are clear attributes to the striving for success, for the testing of belief in the flames of the crucible, for aggressively advancing our capabilities in exchange for prosperity and recognition. We initiated these processes, these governing ideas, for some good reasons, after all, and we have created a nation that has dominated its time, and systems that are highly emulated around the world. So, why does it hurt so badly, feel so impoverished and bitter today? Why is it failing us now?

There is a clear answer.

The problem is not and has never been, the striving for winning, the maximized effort to succeed and the rewards. The problem is the punishment for losing, the stigmas and the blame, the prejudice and the dehumanization. We did not lose our way when we elevated the victors. We lost our way when we failed to elevate the defeated.

In our system of justice, we have abandoned ideas of rehabilitation, of reconstruction and acceptance of environmental or systemic failure. We incarcerate millions as a mechanism for ignoring them, for removing them from our population. We discard them, reclassify them as something less than human, and then feign surprise when that act of rejection creates recidivism and desperation.

In our system of economics, we have unnecessarily exacerbated income inequality, a system of unshared prosperity that is not relevant to the success of the corporate entity but is the product of unchecked and more importantly, celebrated avarice. In creating celebrity out of vast wealth, we inspired its hoarding and justified its practice without a corresponding societal or economic benefit.

In our system of politics, we have created a priority not for leadership, but of dominance and the revelling in power. The concept of leadership is invested in the motivation of agreement, belief and collective action; that is a difficult assignment, one much harder than simply enacting desired outcomes by force. There is great symbolism in our recent sacrificing of the resources for diplomacy while escalating those for the military, but there is also a very serious and practical related outcome.

Justical System or Ecnomial?

To be very clear: It is not that the system of justice should absolve the guilty. It is not that the system of economics should withhold rewards from the successful. It is not that the system of politics should deny the victorious parties their right to mould the agenda. In a culture based on competition, those are all fully appropriate outcomes, and they are not in and of themselves a bad thing.

It is entirely that, in our present culture and society, we have forgotten that the “losers” in our various systems are as a human, as endowed with rights, and as potentially valuable to our collective society as the winners. We have adopted the demonstrably false concept that only the winners can provide important value. We have mistakenly promoted the belief that to the winner go not just the spoils, but everything.

In a universe where the prizes for winning, and the penalties for losing, are so extreme, is it any wonder that we fight so hard for prominence in everything? Is it a surprise that so much of our media finds profit in pandering to our self-image of partisan rightness? Can we really bemoan an imbalance that is in perfect alignment with our institutional behaviours?

We live in a single dimension, walking together and visible. We rely on the entirety of our society to execute and promote the common good. In creating a chasm between the winners and those who do not win, we cannot expect the subjugated portion to equally take on the heavy yoke of progress. In division, we definitively weaken our nation, and ourselves, and promote our own ultimate failure.

There is one system in our nation, critical to our culture, that — when executed with integrity and faithful to its construct — does not agree with the rest, does not emerge from the same wellspring of competitive values. In our religious beliefs, there are priorities expressed in elevating the less fortunate, in mercy and love for the stranger and the perceived enemy, in aspiration for higher values and the rejection of selfishness. We profess loudly that we are a Judeo-Christian nation — sadly, a boast used to diminish others rather than elevate all — and yet, the core values of those precepts are fully rejected, even vilified, in our actions and practices.

What is the way forward, the path to a constructive, successful society and nation?

The path is not through the denigration of success, but through the thoughtful, intentional elevation of the far greater population that isn’t standing on the top step of a victory platform. It comes in the acknowledgement that the execution of our national progress is only hindered when those that we consider weaker are not included in the effort, and when they are not made stronger so that they can lift a greater share of the load.

It is not a call to abandon our identities or to become homogeneous. Our diversity is a key element in our strength. It is a call to embrace a priority of elevating and respecting all of our shared planet walkers, even as we are victorious in a battle or two over them, even as we (falsely) believe that we have the power not to care.

What we call charity, or entitlements, (or worse) when we promote greater sharing and support must be better understood to be actually selfish, based on a logical desire for our own better lives. The pandemic has shown us how intertwined we are, how the strengths of the forgotten are actually indispensable. The heavy-lift that we face collectively is tangibly lighter the more hands that are lifting, and the stronger that all of those hands are.

If we cannot find the motivation to change through our professed values, or through its base in logic, we should — we must — find the urgency through our own self-interest, our commitment to our own survival and to the future of our children. We must demand the same of those who seek to lead us, those who our collective agreement provides with power and authority.

For whatever reason, from whatever motivation, the answer to what ails us lies in the elevation and success of those who, too often and always wrongly, we consider to be our affliction.

Politicians Use Statistics: The Devil Can Cite Scripture For His Purpose

There is a movement in the administration to challenge the accuracy of the mortality statistics that are commonly used, in an attempt to dilute the political impact being felt from the growing total of COVID-19 deaths. The theory is that if the number is disputed, the criticisms being leveled against the President will be similarly suspect. We’ve covered the misuse and misrepresentation of statistics in several previous blogs and articles, but there are elements to this particular situation that are worth analyzing.

Combination of Differing Standards

To be clear: the mortality number and rate are inherently wrong. A combination of differing standards for associating deaths with the virus on a state by state basis (sometimes from location to location), along with delays in reporting and significant absences in nursing home documentation tells us that whatever the real number is, it won’t be what we read every day in the official statistics. That said, whatever has been reported has been consistent, and changing the methodology at this point in time is likely to fail on a number of levels.

First, if the intent is to reduce the accepted number of fatalities, it is relevant to understand that the actual number of deaths is almost assuredly higher. While there may be some fatalities that have occurred from multiple causes, or from causes other than the virus but mistakenly included in the counts, there are several factors that would suggest that we have been undercounting, perhaps significantly.

Use a Statistical Measure

We have a fairly good idea of how many people have died over this period, regardless of what the cause of death might be. Health professionals use a statistical measure here that is relevant, called excess mortality; this is the difference between recorded deaths and the historical norms for a given period. In both national and more defined areas, the excess mortality is greater than the number of deaths attributed to the Coronavirus, suggesting that at least some portion of the excess can be attributed to the virus. There is virtually no statistical evidence that there has been an over-accounting; if so, then the statistical anomaly would be even further out of whack.

We can know from past experience and present reporting by municipalities and health care facilities that there is a substantial delay in the reporting of causes of death, as much as several weeks in some cases. In times when the activity level is beyond normal (an understatement here) the delays can be substantially greater. In prior epidemics, the actual mortality figures were only understood in hindsight, months after the illness had subsided and records from hospitals, morgues, and other sources were able to catch up. There is no historical evidence of counts being revised lower following a subsequent analysis.

We also know from a large sampling that nationally, nursing homes and related facilities form a significant portion of the fatalities, well above their percentage of the general population. Analysis has shown that, of the over 79,000 deaths attributed to the virus overall, about 27,600 (35%) have been confirmed as either patients or staff at facilities of that nature. The mortality rate of seniors, particularly with other factors, is by far the highest of any group; given the estimates of about 150,000 infected patients in those locations, the rate of death is above 18%, and individual facility numbers show even higher rates. During much of the first month where the virus was impactful, these facilities lacked testing capabilities and the capacity to quantify COVID deaths specifically, designating the casualties as respiratory-related fatalities. Since these facilities commonly cremate their deceased, there is no ready opportunity to reclassify those deaths.

Additionally, our present understanding of the symptoms and impacts of the coronavirus continues to evolve. Once thought of as a respiratory ailment, there have been confirmations of it having severe neurological effects, causing kidney failure, blood clotting, and coronary damage. Recently, the CDC had to reissue its list of possible symptoms to used to identify cases; doctors have been expanding their understandings of how the disease infects and kills, to include the broader range of connections and afflictions. It is highly likely that — if we haven’t already — we will soon be expanding the number of patients whose cause of death was Covid-19 well beyond what we thought the virus was responsible for based on further understandings.

As we’ve discussed in previous posts, when confronted with a debate over statistical evidence or the context of its use, it is often worth looking at the related motivations and benefits of one or the other interpretation. In this matter, the motivations are particularly telling.

Receive Additional Funding

To date, the primary suggestion of a reason for over-reporting is a recognition that hospitals receive additional funding for patients that either is infected with or have died of, Covid-19. There is some reason to consider this possibility: under the CARES act and other legislation, hospitals will receive additional funds for uninsured patients where they are diagnosed with the disease. That presents a clear financial motivation for hospitals to count patients suspected, but not confirmed, of having the virus as infected. The issue here is a series of reductions that make the ultimate impact likely to be fairly small.

First of all, in the areas most afflicted such as New York, New Jersey, and other states, hospitals have routinely tested suspected patients since the levels of incoming elevated. Second, the population of deaths include a substantial portion that ended their lives on ventilators, carried as a separate category in the compensation. Third, the primary parties in providing a diagnosis or death certificate receive no financial benefit from designating a patient in one form or another; by the time a hospital administrator is involved, the record has usually been completed. This suggests that while there is a theoretical motivation, it is likely only a factor in a very small minority of cases.

Considerable Motivations

In cases where states are involved in the provision of causes of death to the federal government, there are considerable motivations for less diligent reporting. Governors of either party are under intense scrutiny for their handling of the mitigation process (lockdowns, distancing, masks, etc.), and a common number used in the evaluation is deaths; inflating those numbers are hurtful to their public approval. A good number of the Governors would like to open their states up for business, a primary source of revenues for the state; elevating the counts for cases and particularly deaths would extend the period before they are able to do that.

By that same token, the motivation for the Administration to argue for smaller numbers are obvious and significant. The Administration is — similar to the Governors — likely to be judged on their response and success in containing the virus. Deaths are the most dramatic and impactful of the numbers that will be measured; the greater the mortalities, the less likely that their efforts will be judged favorably. In addition, the President has frequently offered his opinions on what he would consider a successful outcome; as the number of reported deaths reaches and exceeds those totals, his prior statements become available as self-incrimination.

Relying on the CDC for Information

Finally, efforts of the Administration to recast the statistics will likely fail to move the needle of public perception, regardless of their pronouncements. Media sources have become used to acquiring the data that they report from private sources, relying on the CDC for information less frequently than ever before. Any decision by the Administration to change the mechanism will likely be ignored by most of the media, who will continue to report the now well-known figures. The only media likely to alter their reporting would be the most partisan outposts, where the approval of the President’s work is already overwhelmingly positive; neutral or alternatively partisan reporting will not change opinions, merely reinforce the existing perception that the Administration is playing politics with the virus and its effects.

Science, statistical analysis, logic, and historical norms all suggest that whatever numbers we see today will be prove to have been less, not more, than the actual counts. The motivation of the Administration is transparent — it is seeking to reduce the public perception of a critical piece of evidence as to their success in responding to the pandemic, particularly relevant as the election continues to approach.

It seems wise to go with the science, the logic, and the history over the Administration’s wishes to change the conversation. As it often does, an understanding of the underlying particulars and an analysis of motivations reveals a simple equation for knowing what to believe.

The Dangerous and Illegal Merger of Fiscal and Monetary Policy

This article is a companion piece to the Let Me Get This Straight blog of the same name. It goes into much more detail and provides certain source documents that can be researched and aid in understanding. As always, comments are invited and appreciated.  — Gary

In response to the economic crisis born of the pandemic, the Federal Reserve is recreating itself, expanding its involvement from the arcane world of banking and monetary policy into the corporate, municipal, and financial marketplaces. The ramifications of this action — involving potentially trillions of dollars and significant segments of corporate America —  could have long-lasting impacts across all levels of the economy, raising a host of unanswered questions.

You did see the headlines, didn't you?  No?  Missed this major story on the evening news?  Hmm…  Read the debate about the future of our economy, and the redefinition of our markets?

You didn't see the articles, hear the commentary, or watch the anchors try and explain what's happening because they didn't happen. This major shift, an unprecedented grafting of fiscal and monetary policy, was for the most part ignored by the media, but you probably saw its shadow.

Chair of the Federal Reserve

To set the scene: on March 23, as the virus became the focus of our nation, Jerome Powell — Chair of the Federal Reserve —  announced a series of actions that the Federal Reserve was going to take in order to stem the coming collapse of the economy.  in the day's reporting, it appeared like a footnote; the Fed would 'create liquidity' in the financial, corporate, and municipal marketplaces, using as much money and tools as needed to prevent a possible depression.

That day, the Dow had bottomed at a bit over 18,000, down over 11,000 points from its high point just a month prior. The Senate and Congress were locked into a battle over the $2.2 trillion relief package. Projections of massive deaths and overrun hospitals blasted across newspaper headlines. The machinations of the Central Bank was the last thing on anyone's minds… but it should have been a major point of focus.

A quick history

The Federal Reserve was established by an act of Congress in 1913. Established as America's Central Bank, the Fed is empowered to "… promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long term interest rates…", the results of evolution in the purpose that was spelled out in the Federal Reserve Act of 1977, and that remains the Reserve's mandate to this day.

In establishing the Central Bank, then-President Woodrow Wilson put the Fed in charge of a dozen national banks and gave it one superpower — the ability to determine how much money was created, then how much money exists in the economy. By controlling the supply of money, the Central Bank could move interest rates up (to slow an economy growing too fast) or down (to spur economic activity) in the interest of moderating growth and inflation. That control has become infinitely more nuanced and combined with the Federal Reserve's control and supervision of the country's commercial banks, the role of the Fed has become a dominant one in managing the ebb and flow of the U.S. economy. In conjunction with other Central Banks around the world, global economies coordinate and balance influences on their economies; the U.S. Fed is the dominant influence on all of that, and the dollar is officially the world's reserve currency.

The type of control that the Fed historically practices is referred to as monetary policy. The other primary mover of the economy is the government, who — through taxes and spending — exercises a direct impact called fiscal policy. A good definition of the two types of policies can be found here.

Critically, the Fed has historically been fairly autonomous, shielded from political influences as much as practical. Similar to the Supreme Court, Presidents have intentionally refrained from overt interference, preserving the idea that the focus of the Federal Reserve is the long term success of the economy, as opposed to the transient interests of any politician or party. Fiscal policy, on the other hand, is almost entirely political, a constantly changing prerogative of the parties in charge and a challenge that the Fed often has to compensate for, but only from a distance, since it is prohibited from dealing directly with the capital and financial markets.

At least, that's the way it was supposed to be, the way it was designed.

On March 23, the Federal Reserve served notice that it intended to tear down the wall between Fiscal and Monetary policy. Lacking the legal authority to make that crossing, the Fed created what it calls "special purpose vehicles"” entities designed to operate outside of, and in direct contravention to, the restrictions of the Federal Reserve Act. Working directly with Steven Mnuchin and the Treasury Department, Powell established "shell" corporations to purchase and sell corporate instruments, including bonds and ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds); municipal bonds; and a range of small to medium-sized business paper and direct debt.

Since neither the Fed nor the Treasury is empowered to operate these new entities, they were established under the auspices of major commercial financial companies (Black Rock and State Street), with an agreement that the Fed would call all of the shots. The Treasury, using discretionary funds from the CARES Act stimulus package, provided funds to (somewhat) protect the new entities from losses that might occur and the Federal Reserve provided the leverage, initially about $2 trillion in new money, but without any limitation to how high the ultimate total might be.

Chairman Powell Statement

At the same time, Chairman Powell made another bold, and unprecedented statement: he assured the country (and the financial markets) that the Fed stood prepared to commit completely unlimited funds to provide liquidity and support to the credit markets. Just a week or so prior, Powell had set the limit at $700 billion; now he spoke in trillions. Pressed on the issue, he stood firm; there was no limit on how much money the Fed was prepared to commit to the response to the virus. Remember that the Fed indeed controls how much money there is; he was technically correct — he could speak for a literally unlimited amount of funds to be injected into the economy.

The response to Powell's actions and statements was immediate and significant. On March 23, when all of this broke, the stock market had been collapsing, falling from about 29,000 a month prior to around 18,000 on the Dow; within three days from Powell's pronouncements, the market had stopped its free fall, and gained back some 3,000 points. This rise became a downpayment on a rally that has seen the Dow recover another 3,000 points to sit today at 24,000, a level equal to where it sat as recently as January of 2019. Given the knowledge that the stars of fiscal and monetary policy were aligning as a kind of super cavalry, the dire realities of the actual economy took a back seat to the artificial economic standards being proposed.

Fast forward to today.

With the news that the new entities were actually formed and about to move into the markets, the credit markets opened wide. Companies that were unable to secure financing due to credit and viability issues suddenly found lenders happy to help out: Carnival Cruise Lines had been looking for anyone to bail it out, but was able to secure its financing on conventional terms in the new marketplace; Boeing, seemingly headed for a piece of the Treasury's CARES funding, turned up its nose and pulled in $25 billion on much better terms. The corporate bond markets, secure in the knowledge that there would be a new buyer of last resort backstopping their purchases, had one of its largest months in volume in April and seems poised to beat that number soundly in May.

With trillions of dollars arriving from both the federal stimulus program and the Reserve's infinite pockets, the stock and credit markets have reacted with enthusiasm, despite the unavoidable drumbeat of massive unemployment and human tragedy. Financial analysts are already looking past the virus' impact, and speculating optimistically on the rapidity of the economic recovery. The fear of missing out is all the rage, even as companies take the unprecedented step of refusing to offer any guidance on future results.

Struggling companies getting desperately needed funds cheaply. Battered stock markets recovering quickly and steadily. Against the backdrop of so much that's tragic, why shouldn't we celebrate such a seemingly good news story?

We need to take a broader view and understand what has really happened. This is a Faustian bargain, a specific repudiation of the dictates of what was called a free market, a collapse of the system of separation that has been the basis for our economy and markets, and the ramifications of all of this are as important as they are unpredictable. There are very simple, very critical questions to be answered:

Is money — and all of the things that it represents in our economy — real, and if it isn’t, what does that mean?

We assume that money has value. In our everyday lives, we exchange money (in physical or electronic form) for goods and services, and expect to be paid for our own labors in that currency… but what gives money that value? The Federal Reserve has just announced that it can, and will, create as much money as it needs or wants out of thin air, "unlimited" in quantity or timing. In a very basic way of asking the question, if something can be created in unlimited quantities at little or no cost, does that something actually have any real value?

This is a more complicated question than it seems, and one that has a large number of possible answers. Presently, the amount of money in the U.S. (as defined by a measure called M2) is about $17.5 trillion; incredibly, this has more than doubled in the past decade, from about $8.5 trillion in May 2010; it has almost quadrupled since May of 2000, from about $4.5 trillion. In 2020, the increases in the money supply will likely be far greater than any year prior.

To put it in another way, each dollar in the system just 20 years ago has been replaced with four dollars today. That twenty-year has seen a lot of volatility — three major economic crises; a stock market with extraordinary volatility that has gone from 12,000 in 2000, to 8,000, to almost 30,000, back to 18,000, to its present 24,000 — and the immediate future promises much more of the same, but the growth in money supply has been remarkably consistent until just now. We can look at the equation through this prism as well:

Gross Domestic Product

In 2000, the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) — basically, what the country produced — was about $10 trillion. Up until today, the GDP has about doubled to a bit over $20 trillion. So, the stock market and the country's production have generally mirrored each other, while the amount of money in that economy has gone up twice as fast. During the same period, the amount of money that the government owes ("debt") has gone up five times, from $5.67 trillion in 2000 to an estimated $25-28 trillion this year, with the possibility of even more. On the current trajectory, the government could easily add considerably more debt in just this year as it added in the last decade, a period considered historic for its deficits.

The importance of this simple question — does money have any value — is critical to understanding the potential risks and challenges coming in the near future. If money has no value and can be produced at unlimited quantities without impact, then the ballooning debts are irrelevant; the Fed can simply create all the money that is needed to pay off the debt. If money does have some real value, then the unprecedented approaches being taken are going to create massive disruptions when they have to be dealt with in the coming years.

These severe challenges fall into several obvious categories: the assumption of eventually corrosive levels of inflation, the costs of allocating limited federal revenues to the payment of ever-spiraling debt service, the ultimate pressure of constricting the economy when the Fed balances its own books. What is not so obvious, nor as publicly discussed, are the existential questions that today's actions propose.

The perils of "free money" and government protectionism are quite real and knowable.

When a country's currency is untethered to its production, and the Central Bank's printing presses are unconstrained in their production of, and infusion of, new paper into an economy, history is relatively unequivocal. Although there may be minor variations, the impact of the simple mathematics of economics are unavoidable: the devaluation of the currency, the onset of crippling levels of inflation, and the demise of that phase of the national economy, usually accompanied by political upheaval and significant and traumatic pain for the general population.   

The underlying reasons that America has up to now avoided that particular outcome is the subject of considerable controversy and debate. There are a number of theories, including some who consider that the initiation of such inflation has not been avoided, merely postponed… but the laws of economic physics are unlikely to have been abrogated, merely suppressed. The expansion of the money supply to this point in time has been relatively orderly, even if it has been dangerously expansive; the current period that can be categorized by any number of adjectives, but "orderly" is not among them. 

Threat of Hyperinflation

Even before consideration of the existential threat of hyperinflation, the concept of government artificially reducing risk and absolving corporate entities of market consequences is critically important. The assumption of risk by a company (or entity such as a municipality) is a question of efficiency; is the benefit of the risk greater than the potential penalty? In an environment where the consequences are minimized, the incentive for increasing risky behavior is exaggerated. The definition of what is financially prudent is distorted, leading to more extreme outcomes. This might sound somewhat academic, but in the real world, we have recently seen the painful reality:

The period from 2001 through 2007 was marked by the Fed providing extraordinarily easy credit and artificially constrained interest rates, leading to a radical escalation in real estate prices. In the financial crisis of 2007-8, the risk of default appeared to be largely removed from investments in securitized mortgage portfolios through the increased involvement of government-supported enterprise companies (Freddy Mac, Fannie Mae, GNMA, etc.) and by "insurance" programs (through AIG among others). In addition, the market became accustomed to the induced appreciations, presuming an indefinite continuance. 

Mortgage Securities

In response to the expansion in housing values, the mitigation of the risk through government involvement, and the exploding investor demand for the artificially enhanced mortgage securities involved, the standards for mortgage approvals were reduced to virtually none, and financial institutions overloaded their portfolios with that class of securities. When there was a correction in the underlying marketplace, that overweighting caused a global crash that came disturbingly close to unraveling the world's banking system and plunging America (along with everyone else) into a dangerous depression. 

There is a concept called "moral hazard", where the rewarding of bad behaviors are assumed to perpetuate and expand those behaviors. Consider that, prior to the arrival of the pandemic, corporate America was enjoying extraordinary levels of profitability and cash flows. Market valuations were at historic levels; margins and market multiples were elevated. Buttressed by favorable changes to the tax laws, U.S. corporations were considered in prime fiscal condition. Yet, faced with an interruption of their business for what has to date been less than two months, they were assumed to need trillions of dollars in government and Reserve intervention to weather the storm. 

For many companies, the recent prosperity and perceived continuity led to questionable decisions to disperse the proceeds through stock buybacks, industry consolidation, and extraordinary executive compensations; the offset to those commitments was to increase the entities' leverage and take advantage of an accommodating monetary posture, assuming that the future would mirror the most recent past. 

In bailing out those companies, particularly those whose balance sheet led to deeply reduced credit ratings, the next time such prosperity arrives, will the decisions be any more responsible? History, logic, and a basic understanding of human nature all suggest that the same mistakes will proliferate, requiring (likely anticipating) the same resolution. Capitalism is at its heart a balancing act of risk and reward; when the government removes or reduces one side of that equation, the other side reacts. 

Is America a “capitalist” country, and does the concept of a “free market” matter any more?

The United States has long been considered a mixed economy, one that has some aspects of capitalism and some of socialism. The stock market is considered a "free" market, while social programs and subsidies are considered more socialistic. Some interesting notes on capitalist countries, and America in that context, can be found here.

The tug of war between capitalism and socialism is constantly engaged. As a country, commentators profess to value the free market in spaces where competition and innovation are important but gravitate towards socialism when we are worried or unhappy with the results. These conflicting desires create uncertainty in the marketplace, where constituents (companies, investors, analysts, agencies, etc.) need to evaluate the parameters of risk, their expectations for future outcomes, and their interest in participating.

The actions of the Fed in this crisis create a new calculus for that evaluation. As a result of the alliance of the Reserve and the Treasury (and so, the government as a whole); this has never before been so starkly the case, and poses entirely new parameters for consideration. The greatly expanded range of influence, depth, and scope of its involvement, the unrestrained additions to the money supplied into the economy to solve transient problems, combined with the government's now expected and planned for support for struggling entities, suggests that the success and failure of our industries and individual entities is not market-driven, but an artificial construct of Fed, Treasury, and Legislative intent and choice.

It was previously assumed that the more extreme aspects of the "tool kit" of the Federal Reserve were intended as a temporary imposition into the market, something that would be applied in an emergency, then removed in favor of more freedom in the markets. That temporal nature has been disproven over time, and its demise amplified over the past two decades; today, with the establishment of these new joined powers, there is little evidence to support the theory that the government — through its merging of fiscal and monetary programs — intends to give up the controls that it has taken for its own use. The history of our government is quite clear: it constantly accrues and expands its power, but never voluntarily relinquishes it. Equally important, the recent history of the Reserve shows a similar bent, in its consistent and excessive creation of more money, in its expansions into mortgage-backed securities and derivatives, and in the manipulation of its own balance sheet assets.

What does it mean if the government is a key financial partner of corporate interests?

On the last point, consider that in the financial crisis of 2007-8, the Fed expanded its balance sheet from less than $1 trillion to over $2.2 trillion through the purchase of financial assets, injecting those funds into the economy in an arguably successful attempt to stabilize the credit markets.  At the time, then-Chair Bernanke stated that the Fed would repatriate those excess assets as quickly as possible, and in so doing "normalize" the marketplaces. In the subsequent decade, the Fed did not in fact reduce its balance sheet, instead of expanding it to over $4 trillion by January 2020, prior to the virus's impact. The reason given by Bernanke and his successors for the failure to reduce the accrued assets was critical — they considered that the divestment would be disruptive to the marketplaces. The reasons for the extraordinary expansion during a period of consistent economic success are less concrete.

Before proceeding, it's important to be clear about one key fact: while the government controls the disposition of certain monies, it is only the steward for the taxpayers. The government "makes" no money, only ingests and redistributes the funds that it receives from the taxpaying population; when we speak about government assets, they are — for better or worse — the assets of its taxpayers and citizens. The responsibility and mandate of the government are to utilize those assets in the best possible way for the benefit and perpetuation of the country and its people.

$10 Trillion Levels

Once the current programs began, the value of assets owned by the Fed jumped immediately to the present level of over $6.6 trillion that it presently controls; the actions being taken currently will further inflate those numbers, likely to the $10 trillion levels in the coming months. Should the economic impact of the virus continue well into 2021, it is impossible to predict the ultimate level.  Assuming that the protests of the Federal Reserve — that they were unable to unwind the original trillion-plus of acquired assets from 2008 because of potential market disruption during an unprecedented 11 year period of uninterrupted economic progress — are real, how then to consider their ability to return as much as ten times that amount into the uncertain marketplace of the next decade?

If they cannot if they are looking at a future where the Federal Reserve controls many trillions of dollars in corporate assets, then what can we make of our markets? The entirety of the corporate debt market is estimated at approximately $10 trillion; if the Fed holds even a quarter of that paper, and in that number the majority of all investment-grade debt outstanding, what is the relationship between the corporations that have the government as a major stakeholder, and that government? On the other end, how is future legislation informed by the government's self-interest, when hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars are at stake based on the solvency of held corporations? The answers to these questions seem rhetorical, but they are deeply troubling.

The segregation of fiscal and monetary policies and controls, assumed over a century, were designed to limit these possibilities and to make these questions moot to the extent possible. In one fell swoop, the actions of the Fed and the Treasury have opened a Pandora's box of unknowable consequences and pointed the nation towards a new and unchosen form of economy. It has placed the country on this perilous and unpredictable course without informed consent by the nation, without an open discussion of the ramifications and alternatives, and without legislative approval or acknowledgment of the fundamental changes that it has undertaken.

Where does this bring us, and what can be done?

The nation will unquestionably survive the current pandemic (albeit painfully and with great sacrifice and loss) and the economy — with or without the level of intervention currently being applied — would evolve and eventually recover. The challenge that is being framed by the actions of the government (again, through a combined effort of the Reserve, the Treasury, and the Congress) is to understand what the remaining economy will look like, and how it will respond to the best interests of the people and the problems of the future. Without correction, the path we are presently on points to future crises of unknowable depth and duration, fuse lit that leads to a bomb that we don't know the power of. 

Consider the consequences of the following scenario: a federal deficit that creates interest carrying costs beyond the means of the government's ability to reasonably tax; an impending avalanche of new money released into the economy that could dramatically expand the already inflated supplies; a corporate system that is constantly looking to the government for its sustenance and success; a Central Banking system that is internally conflicted by what it sees as best for the country and the preservation of its held assets; a Treasury that is committed to indefinitely maintaining hundreds of billions of risk capital in their joint entities with the Reserve to protect against potentially massive losses.

COVID-19 Crisis

The realities of the COVID-19 crisis are serious and urgent. An aggressive and creative response by the government and by the Reserve was necessary to preclude the worst of the possible outcomes: an out of control depression, the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives. What has emerged, whether by panic or intention, is a solution that goes well beyond the scope of the problem that it addressed?

The Fed and the Treasury have conspired to create a monster, a patchwork aggregate of their respective responsibilities and resources that was never intended to exist. It was created outside of nature and the law, but it is unquestionably about to rise from the laboratory table and do what monsters do. It may well appear to be benign, perhaps even helpful… but we have the ability (and obligation) to see its true nature. In properly recognizing it for what it is, we can prepare for its emergence, and look to find the best way to contain its damage. 

Ultimately, it will be necessary to decide whether to destroy it (if in fact it can be destroyed) or to attempt to reconfigure it into something more appropriate… but regardless of the response, it absolutely cannot be ignored, or given reign to roam free… and most importantly, it should never be allowed to exist again.

Drowning in The Irony: The President Squats Below Abraham Lincoln

President Trump held a televised town hall meeting on the Fox network while sitting in front of the Lincoln Memorial, with the iconic statue of the president as a backdrop. The choice of this particular venue, at a time when the critically divided nation is engaged in a massive, the crisis could not have been more fraught with meaning.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand”

Those words, proclaimed by Abraham Lincoln on June 5, 1858 in an address during his unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate against Stephen A. Douglas, were intentionally reminiscent of a quote from Matthew 12:25 in the King James version of the Bible:

“And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.”

It was an effort by a thoughtful leader to provide a higher calling, a nod to the oft-referenced better angels. Later, the President who so dearly wanted nothing more than to see his fractured country come together would preside over a tragic war that tore that nation apart, before finally unifying it once again 155 years ago on April 9, 1865. Just prior to the end to that war, in his second inaugural address, Lincoln again looked out and called for the coming together of the United States of America:

“…With malice toward none; with charity for all… let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds…”

There is any number of challenges presented to those few who lead America, some subtle and invisible, some in the glare of the planet’s brightest spotlight. These challenges speak to the nation as a whole, calling out to the collective power of the full nation for the authority to lead the country, even the world. Before this President, most of his predecessors understood that solemn responsibility and strived to live up to it by seeking that precious authority.

Former President George W. Bush, having had his own moment of crisis in the 9/11 attacks, knew the present stakes even as President Trump has not appeared to, offering this commentary last week:

"Let us remember how small our differences are in the face of this shared threat. In the final analysis, we are not partisan combatants. We are human beings, equally vulnerable and equally wonderful in the sight of God. We rise or fall together., and we are determined to rise."

In a tweet, President Trump responded to those shared sentiments by criticizing the former president for failing to support him during his impeachment.

The cameras recording President Trump’s town hall must have been positioned near the inscription noting the spot where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on August 28, 1963, addressed the crowds and presented his “I Have a Dream” speech. In that memorable oration, Dr. King pushed the nation toward a spirit of inclusion, a time and place where all of the country’s citizens would be together in equality and purpose. He, like Lincoln, spoke to a divided America; while the division was racial then, and ideological now, the premise transcends the particulars… the United States must be united in order to ultimately succeed. Dr. King understood that the divisions could not sustain, that they needed resolution as he proclaimed “It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment.”

In a tweet and in public, in his own pronouncements and in the ones that he echoes on social media, President Trump stokes the fires of division and confrontation even now, even in these perilous times, urging on protests and provocations. In the interview, one of the hosts — Bret Baier — broached the subject from under Lincoln’s gaze: “Someone from Capitol Hill sent a letter that it’s not the right place, not the right site. But as far as bringing America together, do you think you’re doing that?”

“I think we’re winning, very big, and then we had a horrible thing happen. We’re winning bigger than we’ve ever won before. Right? I think that winning ultimately is going to bring this country together. I’m shocked that during a crisis, it would be so partisan.”

There is no room for unity, no bridge ever offered to cross the divide. Another note from the interview:

“The Democrats, the radical left, whatever you want to … would rather see people … I’m going to be very nice. I’m not going to say die. I’m going to say, would rather see people not get well, because they think I’m going to get - I’m going to get credit…”

Dwarfed by the staged proximity to giants, the only President that we have made one nod to his predecessor:

“They always said, Lincoln, nobody had got treated worse than Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse.”

The juxtaposition of the great statue of Abraham Lincoln, towering above the President slouched below him, was too on point to ignore. The crises facing the country are constantly revealing President Trump as someone incapable of rising to the occasion, clearly exposed as inadequate to the task at hand. With thousands dying by the day, with millions out of work and scrambling to survive, with a world desperate for American leadership, we have a president who has constantly proclaimed that the solutions lie not with the collective power of a great nation, but with “him alone”, who is guided not by a higher power, but by his “own guts” and his “great and unmatched wisdom”. He has actively shunned the authority that he cannot bring himself to court, that he cannot win for himself.

Sadly, such is the leadership behind which America faces its difficult challenges.

Making Better Decisions Based on Updated Covid-19 Numbers

We are still being inundated with a host of numbers that may or may not be telling us something important. Painfully, we are being asked to make individual and collective decisions that can easily be life and death, based on what passes for guesses about the underlying indications. This is a quick update to remind us of what we don’t know from the numbers that we see every day and a critical understanding of what we need to know to choose more wisely.

“New Cases”

Reminder — this number is not to be confused with how many people are infected. It is, more exactly, the number of positive tests that have been recorded each day. The actual number of people who have the virus is by definition higher since even with the recent increase in testing only about two percent of the country has been tested. Most estimates have the actual number of infected people at between 3 and 7 times greater than what has been reported.

At present, we are seeing reported cases continue to increase by 30,000 per day, give or take about 10%. This number is somewhat perplexing, given the knowledge that we are testing dramatically more people each day than even a week or two ago. According to the COVID Tracking Project, over the past five days we have issued an average of around 250,000 tests per day while seeing that 30,000 new cases average… but if we go back a couple of weeks to mid-April, we averaged around 150,000 tests while gaining the same 30,000 new cases per day. There are any number of simple explanations, from the different parameters of who gets tested, to the different reporting mechanisms for every state, to the fact that some reporting is about tests, and others relate to patients… so, one infected person being tested repetitively would indicate as if they were several patients. At the end of the day, this number lacks even usefulness for trending purposes because of the constantly changing reporting metrics.

“Deaths”

Reminder — Each state has a unique method for what it considers a virus-related death. Also, a number of states are acknowledging significant delays in reporting, while others are reassessing causes, particularly in nursing homes and other collective residences. Finally, the different reporting agencies use different cut-offs for their calculations — some do it at midnight, some at 4:00 pm, and some at noon — causing differences between reports. That said, the death total may be the closest thing that we have to a useful number in understanding trends.

Deaths are staying relatively stable at about 1,500 to 2,000 per day nationally. As New York has improved, other states have begun to pick up the proverbial slack, with New Jersey recently passing New York in absolute terms. The past three weeks show a slight recent improvement, with last week at 1,805 per day, the week before at 1,930 per day, and the week before that at 1,981 per day… but note that the reduction shown is well less than the improvement in NY, meaning that the rest of the country increased during that period.

“Testing”

Reminder — what constitutes a test is particularly unclear at present. According to the COVID Tracking Project, the definition of a test can vary from a test issued to a test returned, to (infrequently) a patient tested based on who is reporting the number and from what source (public, commercial, CDC, etc.). To make matters worse, the definitions continue to change in process, leading to little value for historical purposes.

Currently, as noted, approximately 250,000 tests per day are being reported. This is a significant increase over the past by any count, and the total of tests registered is now over 7 million since testing began in earnest in mid-March. Again, that total does not mean that 7 million people have been tested, only that there have been 7 million tests… patients who test positive are tested repetitively to assess their status. If we assume that the number of people is 75% of the number of tests — a fully unscientific guess — then we would have tested about 5.25 million people or about 1.6% of the population. It is important to know that most of the government agencies suggest that we would need to test at least five times that number (the 250,000) daily in order to understand the spread of the virus nationally and to support the reopening of some of the economy.

General Notes

What little we can discern from these numbers includes the following:

1. There is no clear direction for the spread of the virus on a national basis. As was the logical outcome, each section in each state is following its own path, and its own schedule for the rise and fall of this first round of the virus. As one area wanes, another surge… the country as whole seeming to be somewhat flat is a misperception; regional evaluations are the critical metric.

2. Based on “death” trends, it appears that the CDC’s initial estimate of 100,000 to 200,000 deaths appears to be a useful range. At present rates, we will pass the 100,000 bottoms of that range around the 20th or 21st of May, no responsible source suggests that the virus will be resolved — either by vaccination or by herd immunity — before sometime next year at the earliest. If the pace remains above 1,500 deaths per day, we’ll hit the upper end of that range — 200,000 — by around August 1st.

3. The rapidity of the virus spread, and the resulting fatalities, is impressive. We have now seen the last 50,000 deaths occur in less than a month; given the delay in deaths from the time of infections, and based on the number of hospitalizations, we will likely see the same number in the same period moving forward.

4. Comparisons to the flu are now — as was obvious before — fully exposed as meaningless. Despite the extreme measures being taken to mitigate this virus, Covid-19 will take about as many lives every three weeks as the flu typically takes in a full year without such measures. That said, a normal flu season beginning this fall will greatly impact the available resources for the virus, which is anticipated to still be around well through that period.

At the end of the day, regardless of their accuracy, the numbers tell only a partial story. As a country, we are not set up to take the draconian steps of some other nations who had more success in curtailing the virus. We could have, should have done better… and we can do better than we’re preparing to do now that our collective patience has waned, and our government has made its intentions clear. The inevitable outcome will be a significant loss of lives in exchange for a possible easing of the economic crisis, with those benefits not assured; what you individually can use an understanding of the numbers for is to make your own decisions about risks and rewards, and to act accordingly.

It is clear that the disease is as lethal as promised, and that it will be around for many months to come. Take care, stay safe, and do your best not to appear on the next of these updates, or to cause even more anguish to our heroic first responders and medical professionals, who sadly have no evident relief in the near future.

If The Words Of Our Leaders Don't Matter, Then Why Are The Streets On Fire?

We live in a painfully divided and partisan time, highlighted by an arguably unprecedented President. In the reactions of President Trump’s supporters to the impact of his escalating, inflammatory public rhetoric, we find a unique challenge to some usually conventional positions. Confronted with accusations of the present danger of the President’s words, some of his most thoughtful supporters argue that it misses the point. They suggest that what he says — while admittedly inelegant and suboptimal — is meaningless, it is only what he does that matters, and that any disagreement not based on specific enacted policies is an ad hominem attack, a criticism based on his personality rather than the facts.

It is an argument unique to this particular president, made necessary by the indefensibility of his frequent pronouncements and transparent falsehoods, and his abject and deliberate absence of constructive leadership. It suggests that the position of President has no more influence over the Nation’s (or World’s) actions and reactions than that of an effective legislator. While I would comfortably argue with his actions as well, it is this argument about the critical importance of his words that I hold can — must — be loudly challenged conceptually and, most frighteningly, may well be disproven again in the months to come at the nation’s painful expense.

At its core, the American form of democracy purports to be representational. The terms of our elected officials are notoriously short — two years for Congress, four for the President, six for the Senate, and various for state and local positions — a conceit intended to create responsiveness on the part of those officials to the will and desires of their constituents. More often than not, the duration of a term is insufficient to reasonably evaluate the impact of the actions of the officeholders; the decision for retaining or dismissing them from office is based on superficial outcomes, argued for projections or the attendant, pervasive propaganda.

As such, the ability of officials to hold power is based on their ability to convince a majority that their priorities and judgment are aligned with that of the voters, a group of enormous variance in sophistication, awareness, and focus. In recent years, the task of reaching across those variances has been deemed too difficult, and the political parties have resorted to broad forms of identity and generalized objectives, distinctions that are often without substance, but lend themselves to sloganeering and bumper sticker ideology.

As an example, ask a hundred self-professed conservatives what they stand for, and they’ll respond reflexively with terms like fiscal responsibility, a smaller, less intrusive government, free markets, and perhaps some social values… then they’ll tell you that they actively support the current administration, who have practiced the absolute opposite. Ask a hundred liberals what they stand for, and… well, the list would be particularly long and often contradictory these days, but it would inevitably include the antithesis of whatever this President purports to stand for.

Wonkish Minority

The reality is that — for all but a tiny, wonkish minority — neither side actually reads, much less understands what the specific legislations are. The great majority of those paying more than passing attention is disinclined to reflect on nuances, preferring to be informed by a combination of the abbreviated national coverage, perhaps flavored by hyper-partisan commentators… and the clips and quotes of the leaders of the party that they follow.

What we as a nation follow, absorb, and react to are the words issued by our various leaders, edited by the media and dispensed repetitively for digestion. It is by those words that we elect our representatives; it is by those words that we form opinions on the policies and pronouncements of the day; it is by those words that we actively support, or object to and work against, the direction that the country is purported to be pointed towards. It is not by the policies themselves, which are only understood from the cliff notes provided by the partisans. It is not by a stated ideology, since the specifics of the ideologies are fuzzy and frequently redirected towards momentary objectives.

It is by the sound bites — carefully crafted, poll-tested, and delivered — that the nation is motivated and triggered. In the final analysis, it is these words (and our predisposition as to how to interpret them) that most often are all that matter.

Perhaps most importantly — how and why it matters today and maybe defining for tomorrow:

The nation, the world, sits on a thousand edges, all razor-sharp, all critical. There is the pandemic, which still has the ability to substantially alter this generation and the U.S. standing in the world. There is the economic crisis, which will likely transform (in presently unknowable ways) the future parameters of our economy, and create critical problems that we will be dominated by tomorrow. There is the potential for a massive reshuffling of the world order, with an opportunistic Russia, an ascendant China (and Africa), a cracking Europe, and a still smoldering the Middle East among other equally dynamic areas. There is the rapidly expanding factor of global climate change, potentially altering the calculus of alliances, power, and economies in ways beyond nationalism. There is the technological revolution, the coming impact of advances in AI, in physics, in the potential manipulation of what makes us human and defines our existence. There are dozens of other major impacts, potential or real, that each could leap up on that list.

The direction that the United States will take — and in so doing, the role that it will play in the leadership of the coming world — will be determined in large part by the nature of our leadership’s responses to those crises. How we handle the next 18 to 24 months will matter exponentially, beginning with the challenges of the management of the virus and the directly related economic issues. If the U.S. fails to properly balance the control of the virus’ impact with the resuscitation of the economy, we will continue our already meaningful withdrawal from the world stage, and preclude the best of the possible solutions for the massive list of pending problems.

It is a fraught time, an important moment in world history and the role of the United States in much of it can be, should be, and likely will be, determinative.

In the immediate moment, we have a deeply hurting and conflicted populace that could easily buckle under the weight of its myriad challenges. When you consider that well more than 30 million people — about 20% of the nation’s entire labor force — have seen their employment changed overnight; when you consider that the nation has been inflamed and driven to partisan excess, a toxic environment where perceived enemies are everywhere; when you consider the seemingly endless lines at food banks, the desperation of a collapse that cut the legs out of those least able to respond across the country; when you consider the enormity of the impending political, economic and legislative decisions… the opportunity for internal conflict, for literal violence in our streets and disruption in our cities on a massive scale is higher than at any time in our lifetimes.

It is with an understanding of what a lit match means to a pool of gasoline, that we must look at the President’s words most critically. The role of leadership in encouraging the nation to unite, to sacrifice, to respect authority, and to trust its dictates (to whatever degree that can be recovered) cannot be overstated. Equally, the potential for leadership to feed division, to elevate the risks of active confrontation, to diminish in a thousand ways the ability of the country to respond to offered solutions and directions, is enormous and critical. It is in that moment, in that context, that we must find the President’s words far more meaningful than his actions, particularly when those words directly contradict and defeat the intentions of his own crafted policies and programs.

Realities Behind the Gamesmanship and Falsehoods

America must reject, loudly and publicly, the failed and politically motivated pronouncements of this administration. The media must, clearly and without bias, help the nation to best understand the realities behind the gamesmanship and falsehoods. The political universe must find room to withstand the artificial pressures of mob rule and govern through these crises for the far greater masses of people who will in fact determine the actual success or failure of the government’s laborers.

There is no more time for watching and equivocation. The nation must pull together, must move toward the best possible solutions as one. We must accept sacrifice and share support for those most affected without hesitation. Whether or not we understand the full magnitude of what is before us, we are being challenged as we have rarely been, and history strongly suggests that the key to our rising up and surviving, even succeeding, will be largely the emerging voices of true leaders and patriots, the words that ultimately resonate and motivate.

Sadly, our current President has failed, and continues to fail, utterly in that regard. He has consistently demonstrated that his intentions and instincts are directly in opposition to the emergence of a united country, and the nation is being deeply endangered by his office. We must find a way to overcome his inadequacy, and to empower leadership that elevates rather than demeans and foments confrontation; it is entirely possible that our futures, and the futures of the coming generations, will depend on it.