Day 40 of Nat'l Emergency: Turning Governors Into Actuaries

One of the benefits of keeping a kosher home is our immunity to product scarcity now that the new coronavirus has temporarily closed down the Smithfield Foods plant in South Dakota that processes five percent of the nation’s pork products. Smithfield meat processing facilities in Missouri and Wisconsin also have been shut down. Another five percent came off line when three JBS meat and pork processing plants shuttered indefinitely because of COVID-19 infestations among workers.

Outside our home I am not strictly kosher, though I try to avoid foods that outright say they are pork or ham. I fudge the truth when it comes to wontons, sweet sausage topping for pizza and the occasional side dish of bacon. Don’t ask me to justify my choices. They cannot be rationalized.

Kosher adherents shouldn’t feel holier-than-thou to pork eaters affected by plant shutdowns. Empire Kosher Poultry closed a Pennsylvania chicken plant because workers have been infected.

One cannot confine blame to the plants, kosher or not, nor the workers. Workers commonly live in perfect breeding grounds for virus transmission—multiple beings to a residence in densely populated areas with less than optimum sanitary conditions. Workers often do not have health insurance nor do they have sufficient cash reserves to stay home from work. No matter how a plant might try to safeguard its employees it is inevitable that contamination will surface at some point, especially since workers cannot maintain safe distances from each other in many facilities.

It can be expected that similar exposures will occur in all types of workplaces across the country if governors lift shelter in place orders to regenerate economic activity, as aggressive protestors have been demanding over the last week, with support from Donald Trump. 

We will be turning governors into actuaries, weighing the number of acceptable deaths against the financial benefit of business as usual. We are pitting love of cold cash against the more-than-common cold. 

In whom shall our governors place their and our trust, in Trump-aligned corporals of industry or in teams of infectious disease epidemiologists who warn that a premature lifting of quarantine measures could boomerang into a second wave of epidemic? 

We already have examples of businesses trumping safety. Car companies and the airline industry in the past dispensed with product recalls for inexpensive individual safety fixes—but costly if done systemwide. They chose to accept some injuries and even fatalities from crashes, and pay out reparations but only if successfully sued. 

They followed what actuaries do—they weigh the financial consequences of risk. In deciding when and how much to reopen their states to commerce, governors will be forced to risk the lives of their respective citizens against the possibility of a resurgence of the pandemic. 

Let’s hope intelligent reason prevails.  

In Case You Didn’t Know: In an example of truth being stranger than fiction, guess who owns Smithfield Foods? The Chinese. Smithfield sold out back in 2013 (https://mol.im/a/8223423). JBS, by the way, is owned by a Brazilian company. 

Spoiler Alert: Lest we forget, in our obsessive-compulsive washing of hands to destroy all germs, it was bacteria that killed the alien invaders in H.G. Wells’ classic “War of the Worlds.”

Common Sense: Aside from respiratory deficiency, does the coronavirus also affect one’s intelligence, at least as it pertains to members of the Trump administration?

An example of brain lock came last week from presidential advisor Kellyanne Conway. She asserted COVID-19 was named thusly after 18 other viruses had been exposed to mankind. Her point was the prior 18 viruses didn’t trigger a pandemic and economic catastrophe so why have we locked down for this viral iteration? 

She was arguing in support of Trump’s push to speedily reopen the country’s slammed economy despite warnings from medical experts of insufficient capacity to safely monitor the spread of the disease.

You can’t fault her for trying, but you can chastise her accuracy. COVID is an acronym for COronaVIrus Disease. The 19 refers to 2019, the year when it was identified. It does not mean there were 18 prior viruses.

All of a sudden Republicans may be seeing the light. They are aghast that a hands-off-business government posture that encouraged profits at all costs including shipping manufacturing jobs overseas while failing to protect American workers was bad policy. Or so it seems if a New York Times Op-Ed from Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida is any indication. Rubio advocates for “rebuilding a more productive and pro-worker economy” (https://nyti.ms/2VITjFw). 

Rubio in the past has said quite a few progressive ideas, but when it has come down to voting he has hewn to the Trump line. 

Flynn Debacle Reveals There's No Security Without a Confirmation Process

The country is nearing completion of a mostly bruising confirmation hearing process for Donald Trump’s cabinet, a prelude to what no doubt will be an even more debilitating and exhaustive fight over the Supreme Court nomination of Neil Gorsuch.

Even before we get to that high drama, we will be engaged in the possible resignation or dismissal dance of Trump’s national security advisor. The choice of retired general Michael Flynn was controversial from the get-go, but it could not be stopped as the position did not require congressional vetting or confirmation. 

But Flynn, whose reputation as a loose cannon preceded his selection, has apparently provided an audible example of his undisciplined howitzer-like disposition. Secret tapes of his conversations with the Russian ambassador prior to Trump taking office reportedly reveal he talked about the possibility of lifting the sanctions President Obama imposed on Russia. It would have been a violation of the Logan Act for a then private citizen Flynn to have done so. Moreover, he denied such conversations to Vice President-elect Mike Pence who proceeded to tell the American public no such dialogue occurred. 

Washington is a city where politics is a blood sport. Any hint of impropriety can, and usually does, mortally damage an official (just ask Hillary Clinton about her email server or Benghazi experience), especially someone entrusted with the nation’s security.

Of course, we’re dealing with Donald Trump here, a man who never likes to retreat, so he may well excuse Flynn’s misconduct as he did last week with Kellyanne Conway’s shilling of his daughter Ivanka’s apparel line on Fox News, a violation of federal law.

Back to the confirmation process. Mostly, so far it has been what might indelicately be called a “circle jerk.” Even Betsy DeVos, who provided eminent evidence that she lacked essential knowledge of the department she would oversee, passed the low hurdle Republicans have set for the people to whom they are willing to commend our nation’s future.

Chalk it up to politics. Get used to it, at least for the next two years, probably four and, god forbid, six or eight.

But as disheartening as the process has been in having a cabinet chosen and consented to by the Senate, at least there was some vetting, some disclosure of the thinking that informs and propels the men and women who will have the president’s trust and ear.

Nothing of that confidence and assurance has been afforded the public for the individual who has Trump’s most immediate access (and I’m not referring to Melania). What do we really know about Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, other than his employment history at Goldman Sachs and most recently the alt-right media site, Breitbart News?

For sheer terror-of-an-answer read the following Huffington Post analysis of Bannon’s apocalyptic thinking. Read it and wonder how it is possible that our laws do not require public inspection of the chief strategist to a president and to anyone named to a president’s National Security Council, as Bannon most recently was. Read it and cower under your blanket: http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5898f02ee4b040613138a951?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Steve+Bannon+Believes+The+Apocalypse+Is+Coming+And+War+Is+Inevitable&utm_content=Steve+Bannon+Believes+The+Apocalypse+Is+Coming+And+War+Is+Inevitable+CID_df955470d3be4aaf6b5fb08f4740df70&utm_source=Email+marketing+software&utm_term=Read+More&

American Values In Death Spiral, An Unintended Consequence Of TrumpAction

Two weeks into the death spiral of our national values, some fears about a Trump presidency have morphed from assumptions to realities.

Donald Trump does not see governing as the give and take of ideas and beliefs. He sees it as a top down hierarchal management system, like a business where the chief executive officer, even in publicly traded companies, has the final say and the minions have to obey his commands or they are shown the door. 

Dissent, even if it is along disputed constitutional grounds, is not tolerated, as acting Attorney General Sally Yates found out Monday night after she questioned the legality of Trump’s temporary ban on entry to the United States from seven mostly Muslim countries.

Trump is used to having his dictates implemented. Government, however, doesn’t always follow a straight path. One wonders how he will react to two Republican women senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, rejecting his nominee for secretary of education. 

Perhaps a clue can be seen in his advocacy of the “nuclear option” to limit filibusters for Supreme Court nominations if Democrats try to foil his pick of Neil M. Gorsuch to fill the seat left vacant a year ago by the death of Antonin Scalia. Trump thought it appropriate to call for Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to “delay, delay, delay” consideration of President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland. But he’s not amenable to similar treatment by Democrats. For Trump all the rules must be tipped in his favor.

Trump’s executive style has not been tempered by years of migrating up the leadership ladder. He doesn’t have a rags to riches story, or even a J. Pierrepont Finch ascent from the mailroom (really the window washer’s perch) to the corner office (for those oblivious to the reference, check out “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”). He was born to power and privilege. As long as he stayed out of prison he was destined to take over his father’s business.

From the start he was an autocrat. He  never had to learn the art of answering to anyone. If he ran into problems financially, he sought bankruptcy protection. If he didn’t want to pay the agreed upon price for a project, he stiffed contractors.  

‘“My sense is that Trump takes no one’s counsel but his own. That’s bad management, period,”’ Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor of organizational behavior at Stanford and the author of “Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don’t,” said in a New York Times article assessing Trump’s first weeks in office. 

Effective leadership “requires an openness to being challenged, and some self-awareness and even humility to acknowledge that there are areas where other people know more than you do. This doesn’t mean decisions are made by consensus. The person at the top makes the decisions, but based on the facts and expertise necessary to make a good decision,” said Jeffrey T. Polzer, professor of human resource management at Harvard Business School. https://nyti.ms/2k3Vj9S

It’s just two weeks. He could shift his management style, though it is highly doubtful. The real damage to America is that he has imbued a meanness of spirit to his dictates. He is not governing for the full population but rather for the minority of voters who he was lucky enough to have live in enough states to provide him an Electoral College victory. 

He is entitled to follow through on many if not all of his campaign pledges. But unlike his spoutings on the hustings, his actions from the Oval Office carry consequences, some of them unintended. TrumpAction after TrumpAction puts people’s lives at risk.

Trump’s advocacy of moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, his acceptance of Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank and a reported interest in withholding funds from the Palestinian Authority released by former Secretary of State John Kerry, no doubt thrilled hard liners in Israel and their American backers. But, individually and collectively, these actions are likely to incite more terrorist attacks within Israel and against Americans domestically and internationally. It won’t be his life sacrificed.

Trump’s passionate desire to rid the world of ISIS and other Islamic terrorists is laudable on its face, but his implementation has been dreadful. His executive order to temporarily ban entry to America from seven predominantly Muslim countries and to indefinitely suspend the relocation of Syrian refugees gives jihadists a public relations coup suggesting the United States is at war with Islam. It also has divided families and failed to recognize the contributions many Muslims made to assist American forces combating terrorists in their native lands. 

His decision to cut off funding for international groups that provide abortions or even advise pregnant women of their right to choose will endanger women’s health. It may very well lead to more at-risk pregnancies and births and more children born into poverty. As The Times stated in a precis of an article on the impact of the funding cut, “Health workers say President Trump’s ban on abortion counseling will hurt even those health services that do not involve abortions.” (https://nyti.ms/2k6EFqI)

Moreover, Trump has indicated he wants to cut back foreign aid that is meant to help the impoverished. America First, after all.

Trump wants to cut all federal funding for Planned Parenthood because it provides abortions and abortion counseling. He ignores the non-abortion related health care Planned Parenthood provides to women which encompasses 97% of the organization’s activities.

Women will have abortions even if Trump is able to reduce the number of legal, medically safe procedures at Planned Parenthood clinics and other registered facilities. Only many of them will not be performed by licensed practitioners in safe environments. Deaths are sure to result. So much for his concern for the sanctity of all life.

Trump’s decision to deny funding to sanctuary cities places more lives at risk as municipal governments have to cut back social services or other programs to compensate for reduced or eliminated federal monies. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti says federal funds, up to $500 million in 2017, are used to protect the port, the airport and to keep homeless veterans off the streets. Without those funds the safety of the rest of the country could be impaired.

His approval of the Standing Rock oil pipeline under the Missouri River imperils the safety of drinking water to millions of downstream residents, not to mention it violates the sanctity of Native American lands. 

Trump appears to be acting as if still in campaign mode. And so does his chief apologist, Kellyanne Conway. When called upon, frequently, to defend her boss, Conway reverts to attack mode, pointing out the flaws in candidate Hillary Clinton or the Obama administration rather than explaining the ramblings and rants of the leader of the free world, at least as now constituted.

Press Secretary Sean Spicer added salt to the wounds of internal dissent when he said those at the State Department who questioned Trump’s immigration ban “should either get with the program or they can go.”

‘“Debate and dissent are essential to reaching any thoughtful outcome,”’ Lindred Greer, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business told The Times. “Comments like Mr. Spicer’s ‘will discourage anyone from speaking up. You end up with group think, an echo chamber where people only say what they think the president wants to hear.’”

Trump and the Truth: Never the Twain Shall Meet

And so it begins. A new president who vowed in his inaugural address to fight for the American people wasted little time embarking on a Twitter war to soothe his ego at not drawing a crowd as large as Barack Obama’s first inauguration. The people’s president has shown his true colors as the me-me-me president. 

And so it begins. Four, maybe even eight, years of living in an alternative universe where facts and realities that do not align with our feckless leader’s views are contradicted by his Twitter feed or removed from public disclosure by cowed government agencies. 

Here’s how Politico reported the Trumpest-in-a-teapot brouhaha on crowd size: 

“A clear signal was sent to federal employees that public dissent would not tolerated after the National Park Service’s Twitter account posted pictures showing the crowd at Trump’s inauguration was far smaller than that which attended Barack Obama’s 2009 swearing-in. A memo was quickly sent that agencies within the Department of the Interior were to cease activity on Twitter. The posts in question were deleted, and the NPS returned to Twitter Saturday with an apology.

‘We regret the mistaken RTs from our account yesterday and look forward to continuing to share the beauty and history of our parks with you,’ the agency said, posting a picture of a buffalo with the message.” (http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/trump-day-two-233966)

What’s next are at least four years of “America First,” an  America in the words of our new president Donald J. Trump, that will buy American made goods and employ Americans first before foreigners. 

I am trying to imagine the euphoria Trumpsters are feeling with the inauguration of The Donald. 

The natural inclination is to compare the ecstasy to that experienced when Obama took the oath of office eight years ago, a time when his supporters felt barriers of inequality would finally be surmounted, prosperity would emerge for all from the financial crisis inherited from Republican mismanagement and benign neglect, and our standing in the world would be restored. 

For sure the Obama years did not reap all that was hoped for. But our country still is the greatest in the world which makes Trump’s slogan—Make America Great Again—a dark, cruel commentary on reality, somewhat softened by the outpouring Saturday of millions who rallied in cities across the country and the world in support of women’s rights. 

Those swing state voters who fervently hope and believe Trump can resurrect factories and their jobs are to be pitied, not chastised, for their ignorance of economic trends and realities. 

Trump is critical of companies that replace factories in the U.S. with plants abroad. But if you believe in capitalism and in the rule of law you must appreciate that Trump is asking corporate executives of public companies to violate their fiduciary responsibilities to maximize the investment of shareholders, a task Trump admitted during the primary season was his primary motivation as a businessman. 

So while he may secure public relations points when some high profile companies keep some jobs in America the trend line will remain tipped toward foreign manufacturing. The public might say they want goods Made in America but if confronted by higher price tags consumers will reject domestic products in favor of merchandise made abroad at a fraction of the labor cost. 

And, since Trump is against a higher minimum wage, he will not make it any easier for workers to afford higher priced American made merchandise.

Trump’s inaugural speech lacked flowery passages. It was meat and potatoes. Nothing wrong with that. Trump campaigned and won on bleak messages, so it would have been out of character for him to turn poetic on his big day. He even showed some decency by abstaining from declaring he would repeal and replace Obamacare, perhaps in deference to the presence of President Obama seated directly to his left. But he did begin the dismantling of the Affordable Care Act by signing an executive order later in the day. How he will manage to replace Obamacare and sustain comparable coverage at a lower price for the more than 20 million Obamacare participants is a challenge I hope he can meet for the sake of all the people he says he cares about.

One can be unhappy with policy decisions on health care, the environment, global alliances and more, but respectful that in a democracy the victor gets to set the agenda. 

However, a much deeper problem is the erosion of truth, the falsification or denial of facts for the purpose of self-aggrandizement, the degradation of opponents, the manipulation of public opinion—all tactics autocrats practice to consolidate power.

They are not an impeachable offenses but they are the very foundation of what may come later. It is like what happens with credit card fraud. First, perpetrators use a stolen card to make a 99 cents charge. If it gets approved and undetected they move on to larger, fraudulent purchases. 

Trump is testing how far he can go in stretching, nay creating, the truth and in painting the media as corrupt and liars. It will not be enough for journalists to call him out. It will not be enough for Democrats to say the emperor has no clothes. Those dissenters are to be expected.

The truth must be defended by Trump’s staff—the Kellyanne Conways, the Sean Spicers who must trot out his absurdities and fabrications—and by vice president Mike Pence and Republican senators and congressmen who should care more about our republic than for the man in the Oval Office. They, after all, took an oath to “support and defend the Constitution.”  

For the last 19 months we have watched as Trump campaigns and now governs. For him it always comes down to size. The size of his hands. The size of his penis. The size of inaugural crowds. 

As Trump himself would tweet, the situation is SO SAD!

Rain or Shine, Donald J. Trump Takes Control Friday

As surely as the sun will rise Friday morning (though rain is in the midday forecast for Washington, D.C.), Donald J. Trump will be sworn in as the 45th president of the United States of America at noon.

Under Trump’s presidency we’re going to see if the government can be run as a business or like a business. There’s a difference. 

To be run as a business requires a balanced budget (even a surplus), which means tough decisions on how revenues are raised and appropriated. The last president to produce a surplus was Bill Clinton. Generally speaking, Republican dogma has called for lower taxes tied to reduced expenditure allocations to social welfare programs. The GOP also advocates diluted, if not eliminated,  protections for consumers, workers, the environment, civil liberties and voting rights.

To run the government like a business implies leeway in strict adherence to capitalism, layering in programs to help the less fortunate and vulnerable. As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in his second inaugural address in 1937, “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

A few months prior, in the acceptance speech for his renomination, FDR said, “Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.” 

Those are compelling thoughts during a time when health care coverage for 20 million people hangs in the balance, when environmental regulations may be stripped away in the name of creating a better business climate, and social service initiatives, such as Medicare and Medicaid, may be severely cut back because Republicans have never been supporters of FDR’s New Deal or Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great Society programs.

Trump can claim he saved jobs at Carrier (700 or 1,100 depending on whom you believe) and 700 more at Ford, both rescues the result of pressuring those companies to jettison projected job relocations to plants in Mexico. Whether you like Trump or not, you’ve got to be happy for those who will continue to receive paychecks.

But Trump’s bully pulpit to end globalization that kills American jobs, coupled with his determination to Make America Great Again, ignores seismic changes occurring throughout the national and international economies. As much as he might want us to return to a simpler time, progress—the future—will not be stopped.

Take, for example, what is happening in the retail industry. More and more sales are transpiring over the Internet. The industry has known for decades that it is overstored. Macy’s is but one of many chains that will shutter stores. It will close 100 of its 730 units and lay off 10,000 workers. Their jobs are not going south or to some other exotic locale. The jobs are lost to cyberspace. 

King-of-electronic-retailing Amazon says it will hire 100,000 workers, an impressive sum, but hardly as many as the workers at brick and mortar retailers dislocated by the emergence of electronic retailing. 

Retailing is like the taxi/limousine field affected by Uber and Lyft, like the hotel business assaulted by Airbnb, like the newspaper business devastated first by Craig’s List and then by Web news sites, real and fake—it is being intermediated by technology. No amount of jawboning or handwringing will slow the inevitable adaptation of our  economy. 

Going forward we are also going to see how thick is the Trump straw that stirs the drink, or if Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, in concert or separately, can sway Republican control of the government. Trump’s stated views on a replacement for Obamacare, for example, differ markedly from Ryan’s and McConnell’s. 

In addition, we will wait to see which John McCain will show up for what probably is his last term in the Senate. Will it be the maverick straight shooter who charmed the electorate in the mid-2000s, or the sycophantic senator who clutched Trump’s coattails to win reelection last year?

It’s politics as usual down in the swamp. After campaigning he would drain the swamp Trump is the head of a muck mired in self-aggrandizement, ethical challenges and broken campaign promises. 

Throughout his campaign he railed against the influence of Wall Street and specifically Goldman Sachs. Yet since the election he has proposed filling three key financial spots with men affiliated with Goldman Sachs and is in favor of reducing constraints on the financial community. 

Politics will color our interpretation of events during the next four years. But hard facts will provide an objective report card on Trump’s vow to “make America great again.”

Trump will be judged on the state of the country and the world in 2020, so here are markers, financial and global, we should check in September 2020 against September 2016, with specific attention to results in the four swing states that chose him over Hillary Clinton—Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio:

*Annual domestic economic growth rate

*Size of national debt

*Size of annual deficit 

*Size of trade imbalance

*Small business growth rate overall 

*Small business growth rates in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio

*Level of Dow Jones Industrial Averages 

*Unemployment rate overall

*Unemployment rates in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio

*Black/African-American unemployment rate overall

*Black/African-American unemployment rate (16-19 year olds)

*Labor force participation rate overall

*Labor force participation rate among Black/Afro-Americans

*Jobs created last four years nationally

*Civilian jobs in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio

*Number of manufacturing jobs nationally

*Number of manufacturing jobs Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio

*Average weekly earnings manufacturing jobs

*Number of construction jobs nationally

*Number of construction jobs Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio

*Average weekly earnings construction jobs

*Number of mining/logging/oil/gas jobs nationally

*Number of mining/logging/oil/gas jobs Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio

*Average weekly earnings mining/logging/oil/gas jobs

*Number of federal government jobs

*Number of government jobs nationally

*Number of uninsured for health care

*Average tax bill for middle class family

*Average national price of gallon of regular gasoline

*Inflation rate

*30 year mortgage rate

*Number of homicides

*Number of hate crimes

*Number of people living in poverty

*Number of military personnel in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Germany, Japan, South Korea

*Status of wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan

*Status of Iran nuclear deal

*Level of imports from China

*Status of North Korea

*Status of Israel-Palestinian conflict

*Number of police officers killed nationally

*Number of minorities killed by police

Four years is a long time to wait for results. But they need not be filled with cowering. If you want to see how Trump and his advisors, particularly Kellyanne Conway, can be handled politely but appropriately, watch how Seth Meyers interviewed her last week. It’s a seminar in solid interviewing/reporting all journalists and TV/radio talk show hosts should study and learn from: https://youtu.be/U_dv5qAsJMU

That said, there is reason to not be comfortable after 12:01 pm Friday. Take the time to read Politico’s roundtable discussion with three of Trump’s biographers about what to expect from the new president: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/trump-biographers-presidency-legitimate-214655

If you made it through the depths of that article, you might not be criticized for believing this is a time to worry and fret. But do not despair. For encouragement read David Leonhardt’s analysis of President Obama’s impact and the difficulty Republicans will have in trying to knock down his legacy: https://nyti.ms/2jAji0t

Beyond that, take heart in Orphan Annie’s ballad to FDR: “The sun will come out tomorrow …”