Can Donald Trump Stop “Vote by Mail”?

Even though the President has in fact cast his own Florida ballots by mail in 2018, he knows that anything that makes voting easier will increase the November turnout. And anything that increases voter turnout, to him anyway, is likely to open the door to more minority voters to cast ballots, voters who appear to lean towards Democratic candidates. Many red states have figured that if they close polling stations in minority neighborhoods, leaving them easily accessible only in white traditional neighborhoods, this can only work to enhance Republican candidates and issues, especially if the can eliminate “vote by mail,” a highly recommended procedure where health challenges pressure folks not to leave their homes very much.

While it is happening all over the South, one red state can claim the grand prize of voter exclusion: “Last year, Texas led the US south in an unenviable statistic: closing down the most polling stations, making it more difficult for people to vote and arguably benefiting Republicans… The closures could exacerbate Texas’s already chronically low voter turnout rates, to the advantage of incumbent Republicans. Ongoing research by University of Houston political scientists Jeronimo Cortina and Brandon Rottinghaus indicates that people are less likely to vote if they have to travel farther to do so, and the effect is disproportionately greater for some groups of voters, such as Latinos.” Guardian UK, March 2^nd.

If only the GOP could be sure that those minority voters could not take the easy path and vote by mail. “President Trump on Wednesday [5/20] doubled down on his threat to withhold funding from states over plans to allow more voting to be conducted by mail, claiming that mail-in ballots are riddled with ‘tremendous fraud.’… ‘Mail-in ballots are very dangerous. There is tremendous fraud involved and tremendous illegality,’ Trump told reporters during a meeting with Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) and Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (D).

“The president earlier Wednesday [5/20] had threatened to withhold funding from Michigan and Nevada over their election plans, claiming in tweets that the decision by Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) to send applications for absentee ballots to the state’s 7.7 million registered voters was done ‘illegally’ and ‘without authorization.’… Michigan voters, however, passed a ballot measure in 2018 allowing for no-reason absentee voting, and Benson told The New York Times in an interview Wednesday that the decision was ‘completely within my authority.’” TheHill.com, May 21^st.

Further, fraudulent mail voting is simply not statistically relevant: “Amber McReynolds, CEO of the National Vote at Home Institute and Coalition, said fraud with mail or absentee ballots is ‘exceedingly rare.’ She pointed to [the conservative Heritage Foundation’s],own election fraud database, which has documented 206 cases of fraudulent use of absentee ballots since 1991. For the five states that conduct elections entirely by mail, the database has no such cases in Hawaii and Utah, two in Oregon, five in Colorado and six in Washington… ‘There's just no real indication of any kind of widespread or systematic voter fraud,’ said Justin Lee, Utah's director of elections.” RollCall.com, April 16^th.

There is already a flood of vote-by-mail, many states have had that feature for many years. “In states that will likely decide the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump has already lost his newly declared war against voting by mail.

“All six of the swing states that both sides see as the most probable tipping points allow their residents to vote by mail for any reason, and there’s virtually no chance that any of them will retrench their existing laws this year. That means that, however much Trump rages, the legal structure is in place for a mail-voting surge in those decisive states: Florida, North Carolina, and Arizona in the Sun Belt and Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in the Rust Belt…

“That doesn’t mean Trump’s new crusade will have no effect. It’s so far stiffening Republican opposition to plans for furthering expand mail-voting access in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Those proposals include calls from Democrats and election-law reformers to preemptively mail all eligible voters a ballot, as five states do now, or to require all states to allow their residents to vote absentee for any reason. In the 28 states that already allow this ‘no excuse’ absentee balloting, partisan struggles are nevertheless looming over whether to make the voting process easier.

“But experts in voter turnout and mail voting anticipate that however these fights play out, the share of Americans who cast ballots by mail in November may roughly double from the previous presidential election, from just under one-quarter in 2016 to about one-half this year. Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s secretary of state and a Democrat, expressed a broad consensus among local officials when she told me, ‘We will certainly see people voting by mail more than ever before in our state.’

“This shift will create enormous logistical challenges, particularly in states where relatively few people historically have used the option. But contrary to the president’s warnings, the evidence suggests it is unlikely to provide a clear advantage for either party. Using data from the large post-election poll known as the Cooperative Congressional Election Survey, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology political scientist Charles Stewart found that roughly the same share of Republicans and Democrats voted by mail in 2016.” The Atlantic, April 11^th.

Nevertheless, Republicans sure to want to kill anything that enhances vote-by-mail. “A poll of over 1,000 Americans conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research this month found that 83% of those surveyed were at least somewhat worried that easing restrictions in their own communities might lead to new infections.

“A federal judge in Texas cited similar public health concerns on Tuesday when he issued a ruling that would make all of the state’s voters eligible to cast ballots by mail because of the danger of spreading the virus at polling places... But on Wednesday [5/20], a three-judge panel at the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans temporarily blocked the expansion of mail-in voting in Texas, saying the court needs time to review the ruling and consider an appeal by the Texas attorney general.” Los Angeles Times, May 21^st.

But what’s the surest way to make sure that vote by mail will not happen? Shut down the U.S. Postal Service entirely! “The United States Postal Service is set to run out of money by September. The previous round of emergency coronavirus aid did not take the long-beleaguered Postal Service into account. Conservative policymakers have been eyeing the USPS with hungry privatizing chops for a long time, and have been hamstringing it with ridiculous provisions like forcing the USPS to take into account 50 years of pension payments in advance in its budget, which no other corporation or public agency has to do.” Washington Monthly April 20^th. The GOP has refused to include funding the USPS in any of the recent stimuli bills. Trump has suggested that the Post Office just quadruple the cost of shipping packages and jack up the price of stamps by a wide margin. At least that would make Trump-opponent, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, squirm.

But there’s a catch. Such a large part of rural America – trump country – relies on the USPS for so very much. Those long, stretched-out country routes aren’t particularly commercially viable for daily FedEx or UPS trucks, and in very isolated communities, those for-profit services don’t even try. There are a lot of small town and country folk who will get seriously angry if the USPS shuts down. The US Mail is one of America’s most beloved institutions. Might not stop Donald Trump, since he believes he has a lock on that rural vote no matter what, and what he really cares about his is own personal reelection. That alone could doom the USPS, unless those GOP House and Senate candidates start worrying that those local voters might have second thoughts about THEM.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and desperation, with dramatically few commitments other than to self-aggrandizement, can lead to the destruction of some of America’s most basic institutions, like the Post Office and democracy.

Death Wish

                                                       VS

The President’s commitment fully to reopen the economy pressed on as he led a White House meeting on May 18^th focused on the restaurant industry, which has been particularly hard hit by preventative measures aimed at limiting virtually the only way COVID-19 is transmitted: close, person-to-person contact. Pretty much ignoring the preconditions and guidelines issued by his own senior White House pandemic team and all the task forces of medical doctors and PhD pandemic experts within the federal bureaucracy, goading gun-toting “open up the economy” protestors on state capitol steps demanding their “constitutional rights” to work and gather freely and without restrictions (there is no such constitutional rights, by the way), Trump wants good economic numbers by the November election and does not believe he can get there unless everybody goes back to work immediately.

After revealing he was taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventative despite obvious risks, he spoke with the restauranteurs to assure them that reopening should restore their revenue flow. When he learned that Los Angeles Country was extending most of its distancing restrictions until August, he was dumfounded. “As confirmed cases of the coronavirus continue to grow in Los Angeles County, Donald Trump today crashed right into the region’s attempt to keep the health crisis under control with language straight out of Charles Bronson.

“‘That’s a death wish,’ snapped the former Celebrity Apprentice host of news from last week that the City of Angels and surrounding region could extend its safer-at-home orders until August. ‘Because there’s death on both sides,’ Trump added after using the same term as the title of Bronson’s 1974 vigilante flick in reference to coronavirus and the battered economy during a roundtable at the White House on Monday [5/18] with restaurant executives…

“‘It’s not just a one-way street,’ Trump went on to say, referring to the ‘mayor’ [which may have also referenced county officials] to the meeting’s participants. ‘And we solved a big problem, but you have to understand the other side of it too. And they don’t understand the other side of it.’” Deadline.com, May 18^th. First, let’s just note that the federal government has the absolute ability to cover financial losses from folks who are unemployed or facing business disaster by reason of the pandemic. It had no problem in 2017 creating a massive tax cut (from 35% to 21%) in corporate taxes that has already begun costs the nation trillions and trillions of dollars of lost tax revenues. This administration is all about the rich. The rest of us have to make the necessary sacrifices… which just might their lives. There actually isn’t a good argument for “the other side of it” if killing tens or even  hundreds of thousands of people bothers you.

“We can’t afford the deficit” is the rallying cry; “it will tank the value of the US dollar!” As the safety nets in Europe kick in, without the need of new legislation, as their universal healthcare systems insure everyone has medical coverage, it’s clear we were no more prepared for the economic side of this disaster any more than we were prepared for the medical realities.

Let’s start with the proposition that since this is a global pandemic, the US is not being disadvantaged by taking care of its own through borrowing. The dollar is no more vulnerable than any other currency, and interest rates are at historical lows. If there were ever a time to incur a deficit, it is now. Even when we find that vaccine (more below on that), the economy will still be in shambles. We are going to need to re-prime that economic pump, maybe with a New Deal approach to bringing the nation back while addressing its massive infrastructure needs.

But here’s what the situation looks like in the harshest light possible. People gasping for breath as lungs fail. Infection rates rising fast. Old folks dying in droves. One uncovered infected person out in the world, on average, infects four others. Some breeze through the infection; others struggle and dying agonizing deaths… or perhaps in an induced coma on a ventilator, from which about half or more never recover. Now we are watching as the virus adapts to children. The United States has more infections and more CV-19 deaths, by a wide margin, than any other nation on earth. We are already watching sharp upward spikes in those numbers within those communities that have re-opened the earliest and the widest. Corpses piling up again as an inevitable second wave – already happening in places like Wuhan where the virus probably originated – kicks in. Hundreds of thousands dead in this country alone. That, Mr Trump, is death… most of which is preventable. In significant part by YOU.

YOU can cover the financial losses with the tools the federal government has at its disposal now. Admittedly, while these efforts would solve lots of the painful part of the economic loss, they are unlikely to kick the stock market back where you want it to be, Mr. Trump; it would just help people cope and live. But “economic death” – a la Trump – is not death. Especially if you have the tools to fund Americans through this pandemic while preventing incredible human suffering of the most physical kind. So I guess your craving for political power will just keep killing.

Yeah, but Peter, the stock market exploded on May 18^th with news of good positive responses to a rising new vaccine effort. Shouldn’t we just get back to normal, knowing that is happening? Not exactly. This is a pretty normal progression in the development of vaccines for any horrific disease. But Michael Hiltzik, writing for the May 19^th Los Angeles Times, brings us back to reality: “Somewhere there are eight individuals [test subjects] who can take pride in having contributed to a nearly 1,000-point leap in the Dow Jones industrial average on Monday, as well as a nearly $5-billion one-day leap in the value of an obscure money-losing biotech company called Moderna Inc.

“Those eight are the subjects whose early results in a preliminary clinical trial of a COVID-19 vaccine were reported by Moderna on Monday morning. The main goal of the trial was to determine if the vaccine made the subjects seriously ill. For these eight, it didn’t; that’s good news. It also produced useful antibodies in those subjects.

“But full results for the other 37 subjects in the Phase 1 trial haven’t been reported. Nor have Moderna’s results been subjected to peer review… Still, the scant data reported by Moderna were enough for investors’ hearts to leap up, as the poet Wordsworth recalled reacting upon beholding a rainbow in the sky. Moderna shares closed Monday at $80 in Nasdaq trading, a gain of $13.31, or nearly 20%.

“One hates to be the bearer of bad news, which in this case means placing Moderna’s announcement in context, but the truth is that Moderna hasn’t announced a vaccine and the path to developing one remains long and tortuous… Whether Moderna’s early trial will result in a vaccine, or when, remains highly uncertain; most drugs that deliver promising Phase 1 clinical trial results end up failing in the final analysis. There’s no reason to expect that this one will necessarily buck the odds. Moderna’s vaccine is one of many being tested.

“Evidence that the trial vaccine produced antibodies in humans that protect against the coronavirus in the lab is encouraging. But it doesn’t yet warrant terming the vaccine a success. Much could go wrong as the drug undergoes broader testing and its actual protective effect is measured. Then there’s the challenge of manufacturing any vaccine that has been approved and distributing it broadly enough to secure widespread immunity…

“Work on possible vaccines is proceeding worldwide at unprecedented speed. In the U.S., the effort is being overseen by the National Institutes of Health, which has created a system allowing research to proceed along several streamlined paths at once.”  There are positive signs all over the place, but we are still looking at sometime next year before it is probably that there will be a widely available CV-19 vaccine.

Personally, I enjoyed reading about this unlikely area of possible progress: “A study published last week [mid-May] in the journal Cell found that antibodies in llamas’ blood could offer a defense against the coronavirus. In addition to larger antibodies like ours, llamas have small ones that can sneak into spaces on viral proteins that are too tiny for human antibodies, helping them to fend off the threat. The hope is that the llama antibodies could help protect humans who have not been infected.” The Guardian UK, May 17^th. Common sense and the realization that man cannot legislate nature need to merge in the hearts and minds of us all.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and there is often a wide gap between what we want to believe and what is real.

When Amateurs Believe They Are Qualified to Interpret the Constitution

The case that has generated a legion of uneducated laymen to tell us that the lockdown and safe distancing rules absolutely violate the First Amendment free assembly guarantees is Ex parte Milligan, 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 2 (1866). The case had absolutely nothing to do with the First Amendment; rather it addressed whether in a national emergency (the Civil War), the federal government could try American citizens in military courts. Abraham Lincoln dealt with Union dissenters by declaring martial law and used that emergency declaration to try such dissenters in military courts. That was the only issue before the court.

Justice David Davis delivered the majority opinion stating that "martial rule can never exist when the courts are open" and confined martial law to areas of "military operations, where war really prevails," adding the possibility when it was a necessity to provide a substitute for a civil authority that had been overthrown. Sorry Abe, back to civilian courts for those dissenters. That case truly does not stand for anything else.

However, some amateur self-proclaimed “experts” in jurisprudence,  amped up with the help of the conspiracy theorists of America, believe that the government cannot order lockdowns, medical masks, safe distancing requirements – which these amateurs believe gives them a First-Amendment-supported blank check to do whatever they please with whomever they choose unless such actions violate legislatively passed criminal statutes.

Here’s the out-of-context, completely inapplicable phrase, from Milligan, they rest their inane assault on reasonable and necessary pandemic preventative measures, exercised by a governmental chief executive (president, governor, mayor, etc.) under duly passed legislative authority:  “Neither the legislature nor any executive or judicial officer may disregard the provisions of the constitution in case of emergency …” In English, the court basically held that neither the executive branch nor Congress could usurp the jurisdiction of the judicial branch. You can find blogs, twitter posts and articles that treat the above quoted phrase as the definitive ban on just about every lockdown or safe distancing ruling issued by any lawful government authority.  It absolutely isn’t.

Like this one, pulled off the Web, that states: “ANYONE who declares the suspension of constitutionally guaranteed rights (to freely travel, peacefully assemble, earn a living, freely worship, etc.) and or attempts to enforce such suspension within 50 independent, sovereign, continental United States of America is making war against our constitution(s), and therefore, we the people. They violate their constitutional oath and, thus, immediately forfeit their office and authority and their proclamations may be disregarded with impunity, and that means ANYONE; even the governor or the President.” Those who feel limited believe dissertations like this are correct, and they are encouraged by a President who tells them to take matters into their own hands and “LIBERATE!” There is almost nothing in the above post that is correct.

Just what we need are individuals, making their own interpretations of the law and believing that they can reasonably act based on their beliefs… without asking a court… completely on their own.  Even Donald Trump can’t do that, although he occasionally thinks he can. And if they can just gather similarly inclined conspiracy theorists to carry enough signs to petition their state government seat – while others do not want to leave homes and incur health risks to show their support for continued restrictions – isn’t that enough to prove they are right? Who needs a court when a mob will do just fine?!

Anyone who has ever walked through a TSA line over a domestic flight knows restrictions on travel exist. March down a city street burning torches screaming to murder blacks and other minorities, a clear incitement to riot, and you know there is no absolute right to assemble in all circumstances. Add trespass laws and the notion that sitting down and blocking all street access to government buildings, impeding traffic in all directions, isn’t legal. Talk to a corner narcotics dealer, and he or she knows they don’t have right to make that living. A grocery cannot sell meat or produce without adhering to sanitation rules. And that’s without a medical emergency that threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans.

Clearly, the Trump administration is not particularly friendly to blue states trying to contain COVID-19 through stringent safe distancing requirements. He wants that pre-election stock market to soar no matter the consequences. On April 25, US Attorney General William Barr circulated this statement through the Department of Justice: “If a state or local ordinance crosses the line from an appropriate exercise of authority to stop the spread of COVID-19 into an overbearing infringement of constitutional and statutory protections, the Department of Justice may have an obligation to address that overreach in federal court." Note that even Barr knows he needs court clarification as he seeks to assert authority he may not be constitutionally authorized to exert. I’m sure he could muster a mob if he wanted to.

There are no applicable cases that prevent states or the federal government from all sorts of emergency measures, from detention to mandating specific health practices. Clearly, nothing to prevent lockdowns and safe distancing within justifiable limits. States have long since held the ability, subject to a due process review for reasonableness with lots of deference to the issuing authority, to declare statewide emergencies that restrict the free movement of their residents and impose safety regulations that apply to everyone. Under the Commerce clause of the US Constitution, the federal government appears, likewise, to have this authority. That due process review is the safety valve, and anyone is free to petition a properly designated court for a ruling.

For all those arrogant self-declared and self-righteous constitutional experts, they probably should consider this very recent CV-19 case: “The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to block enforcement of a Pennsylvania executive order that shuts down businesses if they are not ‘life-sustaining.’… In a May 6 order, the court declined to stay Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s March 19 order, report SCOTUSblog and the Legal Intelligencer.

“A group of businesses had contended that Wolf’s order violated their right to have their property taken from them without due process of law, their right not to have their property taken without just compensation, their right to judicial review, their right to equal protection, and their right to free speech and assembly.” Journal of the American Bar Assn, May 7^th. The court effectively shot down every constitutional argument against such duly authorized lockdowns. A well-armed posse, with indignation and legal ignorance as their real justification, is as un-American as it gets.

The issue is still undergoing refinement in the courts focusing on freedom of religion. There is another case working its way up the appellate ladder (Temple Baptist Church vs City of Greenville in the Federal District Court in Northern Mississippi), dealing with a church’s right to ignore anti-gathering orders, that might temper the above. AG William Barr directed US Department of Justice to file a brief in support of the church, claiming that even in an emergency, governments cannot impose any restrictions on religious gatherings.

However, I suspect that as long as (i) the anti-gathering order was not discriminatory towards religious meetings/services, (ii) there is a local legal basis for the issuance of such orders (e.g., an ordinance, statute or state constitution), (iii) the restrictions were reasonable and a temporary response to a bona fide emergency, and (iv) alternative safe practices exist, such order would likewise apply to religious gatherings. The issue, of course, is not just the danger such gatherings pose to attendees, many of whom truly believe God will protect them, but to those they see and meet in the community later… and to the children they bring with them who cannot make an informed choice.

What we do not get to do is make up what we think the law should be and ignore the relevant rules that are meant to protect more than the individual seeking relief from these safety requirements. We live in a society with a mixture of humanity around us. What one individual does could easily infect and kill others. Selfishness is not a substitute for individual rights and responsibilities.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and the rise of self-righteous and unsubstantiated conspiracy theories has begun to decimate a notion of a nation of laws.

Are We Backing into Universal Healthcare Anyway?

There are two macro-trends in healthcare, both of which began in pre-COVID-19 times, that suggest a rather dramatic unraveling at a grassroots level: the demise of the primary care (family) physician and the slow erosion of hospitals and doctors in smaller, mostly rural communities. COVID-19 just made the whole healthcare erosion process that much worse. At the core of the problem is the fact that hospitals and doctors must earn at least enough money to cover their costs plus a reasonable return. For rural doctors, that would be a living salary. Where the numbers do not sustain a hospital or a medical practice – whether it’s because the community is too spread out or small or perhaps because its residents simply cannot afford healthcare – doctors move and hospitals close.

“It’s a pattern that is likely to play out across the nation as COVID-19 unsettles the precarious finances of hundreds of small rural hospitals. Already, more than 170 have closed in the last 15 years, according to the University of North Carolina’s Rural Health Research Program. Last year, 18 shut down — the most since 2000 — and 12 have closed in the first four months of this year.

“‘It’s hard to envision a scenario in which we do not see a lot more hospitals closing,’ said Alan Morgan, chief executive of the National Rural Health Assn., adding that in February, the nonprofit group identified more than 400 hospitals at risk for closure. ‘Things have only gotten significantly worse.’

“According to a recent report by the American Hospital Assn., hospitals and health systems across the U.S. face unprecedented financial challenges in the coming months, with an estimated loss of more than $200 billion from COVID-19 expenses from March to June… After canceling all outpatient and elective procedures, which account for 70% to 80% of revenue, Morgan said, many hospitals are furloughing and laying off staff. In April, the healthcare sector lost 1.4 million jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, with nearly 135,000 hospital workers laid off across the nation.” Los Angeles Times, May 19^th.

Charity isn’t enough. Hospitals just don’t work well in communities that cannot afford them. Rural doctors are becoming a rare breed too. They cannot sustain a practice where there are either too few patients or no money to pay doctors, both plights in conservative rural communities. Often in red states that have opposed the expansion of Medicaid and made it a point to deny universal healthcare by calling it socialism.

But our healthcare system is also beginning to make doctors even in more financially viable communities worry about their earning power. A whole lot of doctors, traditionally well-paid even where managed care is pushing dollars down, have been fiercely fighting against universal healthcare initiatives that are very likely to impose standardized fees for various procedures. Many, carrying staggering debts associated with getting their doctorates, are forced to work for years at decidedly lower levels of compensation (often well below what is paid to nursing staff) during post-graduation periods labeled as “residencies” and the more senior “fellowships” to qualify for specialization. They are holding out hope for that pot of gold (a bit less of late) that they were promised in medical school. And while they may hate the pharmaceutical and insurance stranglehold on the healthcare sector, they also have recognized that such institutional opposition to universal healthcare has only bolstered their own political preferences against that eventuality. And then came COVID-19.

Many states have banned “non-essential” medical procedures, pushing many specialists out of their normal (and often lucrative) practices. Hospitals lost that business too. Generally, people are also loath to visit any medical office or an ER, for fear that patients with the virus may have been in the same place. Reports that the number of strokes being reported have fallen significantly have led many physicians to fear that people are under-reporting such occurrences to avoid seeing doctors or visiting emergency rooms, filled with COVID-19 victims. COVID-19 is also pulling physicians away from many specialties (where many patients have been told to wait until the crisis passes anyway) into critical care facilities, placing them into harm’s way with inadequate supplies, equipment and personal protection.

To make matters worse, the financial patterns for that “medical canary in the coalmine” – the primary care physician – are beginning to unravel the sustainability of that family practitioner, a cornerstone of American medical care. There are indications that such medical practices just might not survive without the steady income flow that a universal healthcare system might generate. Noam N. Levey, writing for the April 14^th Los Angeles Times, explains:

“Doctor groups and insurers say in [March alone], there’s been a dramatic surge of interest in large-scale changes in the way primary care doctors are paid, an overhaul that policy experts have envisioned for decades… ‘I’m a little amazed,’ said Shawn Martin, vice president of the American Academy of Family Physicians. ‘The sense of urgency and financial instability brought on by the crisis has accelerated ideas that we have been noodling on for years.’

“Driving the urgency is a dramatic drop-off in patient visits to primary care practices over the last month as the coronavirus spread and patients stayed away from the doctor’s office, fearful of getting ill… Primary care doctors have seen a big uptick in telehealth visits — a move widely hailed by public health experts. However, the fees for these services are often lower than for office visits… Many physician practices have seen in-person patient visits drop 50% or even 75%. That has left physicians struggling to stay afloat and forced growing numbers to consider laying off staff or even closing.

“Nearly 8 in 10 primary care clinicians in one recent survey reported their practice is under ‘severe’ or ‘close to severe’ strain because of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus… To deal with that problem, the federal Medicare program and some commercial health plans have begun offering advance payments to medical providers, effectively giving physicians a lump sum based on an estimate of how much they would expect to collect from seeing a normal stream of patients.

“Many experts in the healthcare system see that as a first step toward redefining the traditional office visit, expanding telehealth and abandoning the age-old system of paying doctors for each service they perform… That would mark one of the first clear examples of how the coronavirus outbreak — and the gaps it has exposed — may catalyze profound changes in the healthcare system.” If primary care physicians are gone, people will instead overwhelm hospital emergency room with demands that hospitals are not equipped to handle. We are not remotely prepared for that.

On yet another level, knowing that pandemics are likely to continue (think: COVID-19, SARS, MERS, Ebola, HIV, Zika, H1N1, cholera as the beginning of a chain, exacerbated by climate change), individual insurance carriers, hospitals and even state-supported healthcare exchanges are probably not sufficiently structured or capitalized to handle rolling pandemics. Presently, we’re seeing governments at every level providing financial support gratis. The Army Corps of Engineers was forced to turn large venues into hospitals. Military hospital ships are on each coast. States, and governments are buying medical supplies and equipment to be given to treatment centers all over the United States. Seeds of universal healthcare?

Historically, where there has been a need for risk pooling but a lack of private capacity to provide that support, the government has always stepped in. Flood or earthquake insurance. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation covering most bank failures. The federal Pension Protection Act of 2006 (using the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation) guaranteeing pensions. The Federal Reserve with quantative easing and funneling money into the banking system. Federal bailouts of critical industries. Etc., etc., etc. Isn’t universal healthcare just another form of risk pooling?

Structuring big-ticket healthcare coverage for pandemics – something gathering support on both sides of the aisle in Congress, if implemented – will obviously lay the infrastructure for universal healthcare anyway. Add that to what we are already doing as noted above. And if we do not adopt massive additional federal support for COVID-19 medical costs, the way we have embraced stimulus legislation, there will be two clear losers: those who cannot pay for their healthcare and the entire US economy for the foreseeable future. How we pay doctors, mostly to handle sickness, seems archaic where keeping people healthy on an on-going basis is probably less expensive and more effective. The staggering costs of getting a medical degree also make no sense; it distorts the process from its inception. Six figure student debt is ridiculous.

It’s time for universal healthcare. It’s time for the special interest groups with any vestige of resistance to step aside. Now. Not haphazardly but sustainably. Individual medical costs are not an issue in any other developed country on earth. Funny when you take making a profit out of the equation how reasonable medical costs become and how many people no longer live in fear of medical emergencies or medical bankruptcies.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and when will the obvious ever be more obvious than it is regarding the implementation of universal healthcare here in the United States, just the way it has already been implemented in every other developed nation on earth.

Safety Nets, Testing and Cultural Differences

United Airlines’ pledge to keep middle seats open is now ignored, “hero pay” for grocery and fast food workers is over for too many, forbearance on evictions in some jurisdictions is ending, distancing requirements are increasingly being ignored, unmasked crowds at restaurants and beaches gather and people are going back to work in close proximity. Americans. We hate being told what to do. It may be the only uniform cultural trait we share these days. We are old line ultra-rightwing Christian traditionalists, Buddhists, Catholics, Hindus, Muslims and Jews. Liberals and progressives. Hair-dyed-weird colors edge-testing creatives, skin of black, brown, white, etc. Politics blue, red and purple. Left, right and moderate. Urban and rural. We are everything!

We are, however, still dying and getting infected in record numbers. We’re number one! We’re number one! USA! USA! With less than 5% of the earth’s population we have 25% of all the CV-19 deaths on the planet, with more CV-19 deaths than any nation. We clearly have one of the least effective programs to deal with a pandemic among First and even Second World nations. As states prioritize getting back to work and play (beaches, parks, entertainment venues... and lots of consumer-related business), they are effectively undoing two months of lockdown and safe distancing policies. Not one single state has met the “decline in infection rate” CDC guidelines as a prerequisite to reopening, but virtually all states are sequentially reopening their economies anyway.

The detailed CDC guidelines that the doctors wanted to release for everyday usage was rejected by the White House, and so on May 14^th, a meaningless, watered down (close to useless) set of CDC guidelines, with pictures for the reading-impaired, was released instead. The President is clearly goading scofflaws to ignore continuing safe-distancing guidelines and go back to work or play. The results are obvious. In Orange Country, south of Los Angeles, as the beaches reopened, there was a spike in infections shortly thereafter. The correlation is dead on, but OC officials are saying that they cannot link those new infections to their efforts to reopen the country. Lying and denying are new American cultural values.

Which brings me to a cultural analysis. In societies used to orderly approaches, or where there is a relatively homogeneous population with clear and unified appreciation of a common threat, which face a common threat, the response to COVID-19 was much more rapid and much more effective than the US’ scattered and delayed effort. There is an equal containment amplifier in countries with higher educational standards, where science and math enjoy elevated status. Most developed countries have one national school district and deploy their educational budgets to create as much equality as possible. Those with higher scientific and mathematical proficiencies prioritize scientific information over political opinions.

The United States has about 13,000 autonomous school districts, and while New York, California, Texas and Florida (representing the Bible Belt, Wall Street and the Silicon Valley) set the tone for text books and curricula, we still have debates about the necessity of teaching creationism (“intelligent design”), avoiding controversial topics involving sex education (despite the fact that abstinence has only occurred recently because of a pandemic!) – denigrating science to “just one theory” to the delight of our global competitors – while bona fide instruction on the how the US political system is really structured is severely lacking.

You can see that as protestors carry signs that their right to work and assemble without protective gear or safe distancing is protected under the Constitution’s due process and free assembly/freedom of religion provisions. Of course, there are constitutional protections, but just like you cannot yell “fire!” in a crowded theater (unless there is a fire) without facing arrest, or tell people to murder and execute others, courts have long accepted that governments may exercise reasonable restrictions (which include lockdown and safe distancing requirements) in obvious emergencies. Not to mention that nowhere in our body of laws is there a provision that allows individuals, without presenting an issue to a court, to impose their own interpretations of the Constitution or duly passed statutes and regulation and act accordingly. More on American iconoclasm later, rebels with or without a cause.

Want some examples based on national traits? Germans (historical Teutonic-values discipline, organization and efficiency), South Koreans (a clear hierarchical social and religious ethic, used to unifying against a common enemy), and Swedes (small and very homogeneous culture used to working together to maximize the total social good) have produced excellent CV-19 containment results. Germans and Koreans nailed down testing early, and the Swedes just imposed their own innate “acting in the best interests of everybody” behavior patterns. We know for sure that without accurate and substantial testing, we are simply not going to understand where out efforts need to change or where they work. We don’t even have a uniform standard for tests, and even those applied to White House staff are notoriously inaccurate.

Where earnings are protected by substantial safety nets (see by May 12^th Safety Nets for a summary of basic European practices), the rush to reopen and drop protective requirements is a whole lot less intense than in the United States, where the federal and state governments had to rush to install fairly ineffective and not-well-thought-out emergency economic stimulus packages to cover what is automatic in most of the European Union. The US efforts clearly were too little too late.

Nations where there are severe political schisms, histories of civil protests and defiance of government, or nations with exceptional heterogeneity, have fared far worse. Think Italy, France, Spain, the UK and, most of all, the United States. Although hugely populated Brazil and Mexico have yet to generate full CV-19 responses, it’s clear they are not doing well. The former’s President Jair Bolsonaro, an open admirer of Donald Trump, is a CV-19 denier even as thousands of bodies pile up in cities and towns all over Brazil with no place to put them. Mexico’s laissez faire President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has a different approach: just lie and tell everyone it is not that bad (sound familiar?):

“The Mexican government is not reporting hundreds, possibly thousands, of deaths from the coronavirus in Mexico City, dismissing anxious officials who have tallied more than three times as many fatalities in the capital than the government publicly acknowledges, according to officials and confidential data.

“The tensions have come to a head in recent weeks, with Mexico City alerting the government to the deaths repeatedly, hoping it will come clean to the public about the true toll of the virus on the nation’s biggest city and, by extension, the country at large.

“But that has not happened. Doctors in overwhelmed hospitals in Mexico City say the reality of the epidemic is being hidden from the country. In some hospitals, patients lie on the floor, splayed on mattresses. Elderly people are propped up on metal chairs because there are not enough beds, while patients are turned away to search for space in less-prepared hospitals. Many die while searching, several doctors said.” New York Times, May 8^th.

On the other side of the Atlantic, in a country that also seems to have defined fractious politics, Trump ally and Conservative UK PM Boris Johnson, himself recently recovered from a near-fatal bout with CV-19, has a renewed respect for the disease but is equally torn by his earlier efforts to minimize its likely deadly impact. In a May 10^th national address (and a sometimes-contradictory address to Parliament the next day), Johnson replaced the “stay at home” mandate with a totally ambiguous “stay alert” admonition instead. Huh? Precisely. The UK has the highest CV-19 death toll in Europe, so, like the United States, they clearly have been doing things completely wrong. That vector does not seem to have changed.

“The reviews from ordinary Britons, together with many commentators and political foes, were scathing… ‘What the hell does ‘stay alert’ mean?’ [British historian Frank] Carlyle said… At 70, Carlyle is a scholar of the Roman Empire who lectured for years at local colleges in Liverpool. But he is best known in the northwestern city — the Beatles’ birthplace and a maritime hub of centuries’ standing — as a radio commentator, tour leader and public speaker… ‘What are we staying alert for?’ he asked in a phone interview. ‘I haven’t a clue, and I’m not a stupid person. It confused me.’

“In his address Sunday [5/10], Johnson said people who cannot work from home should be actively encouraged to return to work, but said staying home was best when possible. He encouraged people to walk or bicycle to work, but also gave his blessing to commuting on public transportation, urging staggered start times and adhering to social distancing practices.

“Face coverings in certain settings were recommended, but not obligatory. School reopenings were mentioned, but on a vague timetable beginning next month. Sporting events might start up again, but it wasn’t clear how. Quarantining of arriving air passengers has been mentioned as a likelihood, but again with no detail on when or how.

“Many people were also left uncertain as to when the new rules were supposed to take effect — Monday [5/11], the day after Johnson’s speech, or later. The government clarified that the intended date was Wednesday [5/13].

“That day, commuters posted images showing crowding on some buses and subway cars on the London Underground, known as the Tube. One Twitter user in the seaside city of Blackpool memorably described her 7 a.m. journey as a ‘covid party bus,’ adding: ‘I’ve never felt so unsafe!’” Los Angeles Times, May 15^th.  But lacking safety nets and a culture that supports mass compliance with scientific logic for the betterment of the nation, Americans have an even more serious disadvantage in getting past COVID-19.

In the end, the United States is a stubborn country; too are many easily seduced by anyone who will sustain their beliefs no matter how illogical or incorrect. Donald Trump has long since figured out that there are so many in this category that he could build a political base on little else. He brought them out of the woodwork and aggregated their political power. Writing for the May 17^th Los Angeles Times, Doyle McManus shines a bright light on this inherent American strength… and weakness. “To hear public health experts describe it, defeating the coronavirus is a massive but straightforward problem, difficult but not impossible while waiting for a vaccine.

“First, administer tens of millions of tests to find out who has the disease. Then trace all their recent contacts, using a cellphone app that tells the government whom they met. Finally, track down all those people and order them into isolation for 14 days, possibly in a quarantine hotel… Now think about that scenario… In a country where armed men are marching to defend their right not to wear masks, how will intrusive measures like those go down?... Answer: Not easily.

“‘My public health friends are working out brilliant solutions for the technical problems, but they haven’t confronted the challenge of political culture,’ Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry at Stanford’s Medical School, told me… ‘What are we going to do if millions of people refuse to take the tests? What are we going to do if they refuse to isolate themselves or close their businesses?’… He’s right. Our political culture often puts individual rights before communal interests. We’re not obedient people by heritage; the Constitution enshrines our right to rebel…

“But in the face of a pandemic, it gets in the way of protecting the larger community… We’ve already seen widespread protests against the shutdown orders imposed by many governors — protests encouraged, bizarrely, by President Trump, even though the governors are following White House guidelines… There’s been scattered violence by hotheads who refuse shop owners’ requests to wear masks… A security guard at a Family Dollar store in Flint, Mich., was shot and killed after he ordered a maskless customer to leave. A clerk at a Target in Van Nuys ended up with a broken arm after he was slugged by a mask-averse knucklehead.

“Even before widespread contact tracing has begun, some have denounced the idea — especially the proposed phone app — as an unwarranted data grab by Google and Apple… And conspiracy theorists are busy denouncing the pandemic as a hoax cooked up by Bill Gates, the Democratic National Committee, or some other imaginary supervillain.” Perhaps the outcome would be different if the scofflaws and folks who believe passionately in “rights” that simply do not exist were not openly encouraged by the President of the United States. With our President’s rather dramatic lack of concern for much else other than the economy – along with lots of conspiracy-theory-loving followers – we are likely to continue to be the world’s leader in total CV-19 infections and deaths.

Meanwhile, the second wave of CV-19 has already begun. Wuhan is noting rapidly rising new infection rates. Premature reopenings, as noted above in California’s Orange and San Bernardino Counties, Palm Beach Florida, Marshall County Alabama and parts of Texas, are statistically linked. The President tells us to ignore those bogus numbers and get back to work. He’s only a got a few months to restore the stock market before the election… a few thousand additional deaths just cannot be that important. Common sense, where are ye? As McManus warns: “We’re America, and we’re going to do it our way — no matter how long it takes and how many mistakes we choose to make.”

            I’m Peter Dekom, and I am watching a nation of lemmings rush headlong into the sea.

Whatever Netanyahu Says

“This will be the end of the idea of Israel as a Jewish democratic state, and it will be an apartheid state.”

Israel Defense Forces Colonel (retired) Shaul Arieli on the full and permanent annexation of the West Bank by Israel.

In so many ways, Israel is a wild success story. Literally built out of ashes of Auschwitz and its horrific ilk and notwithstanding its litany of short wars with neighboring Arab states, Israel has become a regional powerhouse, with economic, agricultural and technological achievements that vie with any nation on earth for excellence and proficiency. But over the reign of Benjamin “Bibi’ Netanyahu, Israel’s longest running leader, its religious and spiritual commitments to human rights and moral dignity have eroded beyond recognition.

We know about the internal travel restrictions imposed on Palestinians, how Palestinians are subject to searches and pat-downs as the move through the country. Sometimes outright bans on movement. There is a balancing act that has gone on for years, but if you are wondering why Palestinians want their own autonomous nation, consider how hard it is for even those who want to integrate into Israeli mainstream society to get a break.  I’m not talking about the Hamas hardliners, but about ordinary people who just want to be treated equally as human beings. But that is definitely not the story in Israel, a nation that has, under right wing iron-fisted Netanyahu, made life for Israeli citizens of Arab descent impossible to rise to anything above second- or third-class citizens. You only have to look at the numbers.

“37.8% and 72% of male and female [Israeli Palestinian college] graduates, respectively, did not have jobs in 2017; nearly 70% of those who pursued education degrees [are] unemployed.” Times of Israel, 8/12/18.  “The unemployment rate in the Palestinian territories rose to 31.7 percent in Q3 2018. In Gaza, according to the World Bank, 54 percent of the labor force is unemployed. In Israel the unemployment rate is approximately 4 percent.” Times of Israel, 12/3/18. Younger Palestinian children are even denied access to better quality public schools under a two-tiered educational system.

It’s been this way for a very long time. Looking back at a 2001 Human Rights Watch report: “Nearly one in four of Israel's 1.6 million schoolchildren are educated in a public school system wholly separate from the majority. The children in this parallel school system are Israeli citizens of Palestinian Arab origin. Their schools are a world apart in quality from the public schools serving Israel's majority Jewish population. Often overcrowded and understaffed, poorly built, badly maintained, or simply unavailable, schools for Palestinian Arab children offer fewer facilities and educational opportunities than are offered other Israeli children. This report is about Israel's discrimination against its Palestinian Arab children in guaranteeing the right to education.  “The Israeli government operates two separate school systems, one for Jewish children and one for Palestinian Arab children. Discrimination against Palestinian Arab children colors every aspect of the two systems. Education Ministry authorities have acknowledged that the ministry spends less per student in the Arab system than in the Jewish school system. The majority's schools also receive additional state and state-sponsored private funding for school construction and special programs through other government agencies. The gap is enormous--on every criterion measured by Israeli authorities.” Not much has changed since then. While the rest of the world stands aghast at this purported “democracy,” Donald Trump’s foreign policy has effectively embraced a “whatever Netanyahu wants” mantra. We’ve supported the declaration that Israel is now officially a state where Jews and Judaism have legal priority, where Jewish settlements in West Bank land once reserved for a possible future Palestinian state have exploded, as we moved our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem tanking the purported neutrality of the religiously significant city in favor of just Israel and pretty much abandoned the long-held American support for a two-state solution. These are just some of the steps we’ve to given Jewish Israel evidence of the anti-democratic Netanyahu assault on human rights. This is hardly an anti-Israeli tirade. We need Israel not just as a dependable regional ally, but as a font of technological creativity and innovation. Israel should always be a cherished American ally. My views are also shared by a pretty large constituency of Israeli Jewish voters, many of whom find revulsion in Bibi’s continued leadership position, despite being indicted for corruption by his own judicial system. Unable to win several elections needed to control a coalition to maintain a clear position as Prime Minister, Netanyahu was forced into a spilt-term coalition with his moderate opponent, retired army Gen. Benny Gantz.

Let’s be clear on Trump’s political motivations in all of this. Though he may claim he is in fact courting American Jews, Trump has never been able to assemble anything close to a majority of that community to support him. His real constituency, aided and abetted by Kushner-family ties to Netanyahu, is that most fundamental side of the American evangelical constituency, who believe that a militarily strong Israel will provoke the “war to end all wars” in the Holy Land, one of the required steps to the “rapture,” the end of time/Judgment Day and when all true Christian believers will rise and all others on earth will perish. Apparently, even death to the Kushner clan, which includes his daughter Ivanka now (converted from Christianity to Judaism).

Hard to think of all those seemingly pro-Israeli policies as truly supportive of that Jewish community… when ultimately, under this evangelical vision, all those Jews will die along with all the other non-Christians in the world. Despite all the furor over foreign interference in our elections, there appears to be a tacit agreement that Trump will de facto campaign for Netanyahu – which Bibi uses in Israeli TV and newspaper ads and posters everywhere (an example is pictured above) – and that Netanyahu will make sure that the American evangelical and Jewish communities are unequivocally aware of his support for Trump.

The latest Trump campaign effort to shore up a waning Netanyahu legacy takes the form of a visit to Israel, in the middle of a COVID-19 pandemic, of US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. Just as that severely limited Netanyahu coalition limps forward to take effect. But there is a huge message behind this momentous visit: eliminating all pretense the West Bank could ever be ceded in whole or in part into a Palestinian state.

“To avoid what would have been the fourth national election in a little over a year, Netanyahu and his chief rival, retired army Gen. Benny Gantz, agreed to share power for the next several years. The agreement could clear the way for the new government to extend Israeli sovereignty over large parts of the occupied West Bank, which Palestinians want for a future independent state.

“Israel seized the land during the 1967 Middle East War and proceeded to build scores of Jewish settlements, now housing hundreds of thousands of Israelis. The settlements are widely considered illegal under international law… ‘We’re glad that there is a now fully formed government in Israel,’ Pompeo said ahead of the trip. ‘As for the annexation in the West Bank, the Israelis will ultimately make those decisions.’ [wink, wink, it’s a done deal]

“Many believe annexation will be the final nail in the coffin for the two-state solution, the long-cherished notion that creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel would be the best formula for a peaceful end to one of the most intractable conflicts in the Middle East. It would make it much harder to dismantle some Jewish settlements, as had been envisioned in some past peace plans.

“The Trump administration, reversing decades of U.S. foreign policy, is ready to welcome Israel’s unilateral annexation of the Jewish settlements, despite fierce opposition by Palestinians, senior U.S. officials said. Pompeo’s visit seems designed to give that approval.” Los Angeles Times, May 13^th.  Clearly, Trump has long-since approved this annexation move. “Netanyahu said he would proceed ‘based on the understandings’ he reached with Trump in January during a visit to Washington…

“Annexation would also enrage much of the Arab world, especially neighboring Jordan, one of the few countries in the region that recognizes Israel… Angering his allies, particularly Saudi Arabia, might be problematic for Trump as well, coming just ahead of his own reelection bid…

“Meanwhile, France and other European countries said they planned to protest any annexation moves by Israel. The issue will top the agenda at a virtual meeting of European Union foreign ministers on Friday [5/15] and could include punitive measures such as economic sanctions, Josep Borrell, the head of EU foreign policy, told reporters in Brussels… ‘But it’s important for me, for the European Union, for foreign policy, to know what is the position of the member states with respect to the respect of international law,’ he said.” LA Times, May 14^th.

Pompeo also continues to push an absurd Jared Kushner-designed “peace plan” to raise money to fund improvements in Palestinian areas in exchange for their giving up any notion of a separate state. It was dead even before arrival, as the main vectors of that proposal leaked out before it was announced. There is virtually no support for that proposal anywhere except in Israel and the United States. Effectively, Arabs wondered why local Palestinians would surrender their dignity and take money (not yet committed anyway) to give up their hopes, dreams and freedom.

In my mind’s eye, aside from continuing to isolate the United States from the rest of the world, these moves are only going to result in greater defiance and violence against Israel from Palestinians who feel helpless from the constant erosion of their waning remaining rights. We can expect rising support for a Palestinian insurgency against Israel, and someday, someday, those angry Arab neighbors just might launch a weapon of mass destruction against Israel, which may make more than a few fundamentalist evangelicals cheer, but for which there can be no rational or moral justification.

              I’m Peter Dekom, and discrimination, wishing your peaceful neighbor dead because they don’t share your religious beliefs, and fomenting violence seem somehow worse when the world should be pulling together to fight a horrible pandemic and the unrelenting catastrophes generated by climate change.