Uninvited, Unwanted, Unconstitutional Right-Wing Police State Photo Op

Senator Jeff Merkley

@SenJeffMerkley

.@realDonaldTrump: Get your DHS lackey and uninvited paramilitary actions out of my state. Our communities are not a stage for your twisted reelection campaign.

10:34 AM · Jul 17, 2020

Sometimes it is/was a black sedan. Sometime a van, marked or unmarked. Sometimes the occupants are uniformed, other times without any obvious identification. It could be China (and now Hong Kong), Russia, North Korea, Syria, Turkey, Egypt, Venezuela, Cuba or any other repressive state. An arrest. Person(s) taken, sometimes never found again. Sometimes “questioned” (that does frequently involve torture) and released, sometimes tried in a “court” where the outcome is preordained, sometimes just held indefinitely, sometimes publicly tried. These are the hallmarks of a police state, catering to an autocratic vision with dire consequences for contradicting the state’s official view, often simply the view of the relevant autocrat. 

It does not happen in truly democratic nations. If it were to happen in any nation that claims to have true and free elections (most of the countries named above make that claim even when only one candidate is running), if the judicial system were to condone or be powerless to halt random arrests of dissent voices, then that nation’s claim to being a democracy vaporizes. In the United States, peaceful protestors are protected by the free speech and assembly provisions of the First Amendment in our Constitution’s Bill of Rights, the ban on unreasonable searches and seizure (arrests) in the Fourth Amendment, provisions which apply to federal actions and, by the Fourteen Amendment to all of the state governments as well. So “it” cannot happen here, right? 

Though the November election is months away, Donald Trump is getting hammered in just about any objective poll conducted in recent weeks. His rallies are not even filling their intended venues or are being canceled on “bad weather” pretexts. Increasingly, even GOP loyalists are beginning to distance themselves from his blatantly failed policies, particularly his dangerously inept handling of the pandemic, which steadily worsens despite his fabricated statements to the contrary. Without much in the way of campaigning, “Sleepy Joe” Biden is eating Donald Trump’s lunch. Trump has what he thinks are his “trump cards”: his evangelical base, traditional right-wing law and order believers, conspiracy theorists and white supremacists… many of whom believe in their and/or Trump’s distorted view of the Constitution and its applicability to their view of gun ownership, peaceful protestors, police power and individual rights to be free of government regulation. 

We got a solid glimpse of Trump’s abuse of the Constitution in early June as peaceful protestors were cleared from Lafayette Park by federal Park Police, with US military personnel standing close behind, to enable the President to walk to a nearby church for a photo op (holding a bible outside the church). They used tear gas and “non-lethal” force to accomplish their mission. Trump’s supporters cheered. Constitutional scholars were aghast. Department of Defense and military leaders later pled that they did not know what was about to occur, distancing themselves from this Presidential action. 

One of Trump’s many malignant proclivities is to make up a problem, describe that issue in exaggerated and horrific fighting words, and then set about to solve that non-existent matter applying Trump-style autocratic, ultra-right-wing nationalist militarist forces in open defiance of constitutional rights. In short, flaunting constitutional tradition to cater to that litany of his immutable constituents noted above. 

Trump manufactured a problem in Portland, Oregon, where mostly peaceful protestors were railing against police brutality and endemic racism. By a wave of his magic mouth, labeling these protestors as “violent anarchists” (a Trump favorite expression), he created a justification in ignoring Oregon’s governor, Kate Brown, and Portland’s mayor, Ted Wheeler, who completely disagreed with the President’s assessment. Yet Trump ordered military-style officers from the Department of Homeland Security and its U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency to march in, quell the protestors and protect federal property. July 16th. Tear gas and “non-lethal” rubber bullets flew. Unmarked vans cruised the streets, far from any federal property, arresting protestors on a seemingly random basis. Officers failed to identify themselves to arrestees. 

“U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that its agents had information indicating the person in the video was suspected of assaulting federal agents or destroying federal property… ‘Once CBP agents approached the suspect, a large and violent mob moved toward their location. For everyone’s safety, CBP agents quickly moved the suspect to a safer location,’ the agency said. However, the video shows no mob… 

“Oregon’s Democratic Gov. Kate Brown said Trump is looking for a confrontation in the hopes of winning political points elsewhere and to serve as a distraction from the COVID-19 pandemic, which is causing surging numbers of infections in Oregon and the rest of the nation… Brown’s spokesman, Charles Boyle, said Friday [7/17] that arresting people without probable cause is ‘extraordinarily concerning and a violation of their civil liberties and constitutional rights.’ 

“The ACLU of Oregon said the federal agents appear to be violating citizens’ rights… Usually when we see people in unmarked cars forcibly grab someone off the street, we call it kidnapping,’ said Jann Carson, interim executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon. ‘The actions of the militarized federal officers are flat-out unconstitutional and will not go unanswered.’… Federal officers have charged at least 13 people with crimes related to the protests so far, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported Thursday. Some have been detained by the federal courthouse, which has been the scene of protests. But others were grabbed blocks away. 

“‘This is part of the core media strategy out of Trump’s White House: to use federal troops to bolster his sagging polling data,’ Wheeler said. ‘And it is an absolute abuse of federal law enforcement officials.’… U.S. Atty. Billy J. Williams in Portland said Friday he has requested that the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General investigate the actions of DHS personnel. 

“Oregon’s two senators and two of its House members announced they will also be asking the DHS inspector general, as well as the U.S. Department of Justice, to investigate ‘the unrequested presence and violent actions of federal forces in Portland.’… ‘It’s painfully clear this administration is focused purely on escalating violence without answering my repeated requests for why this expeditionary force is in Portland and under what constitutional authority,’ Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden said… ‘Authoritarian governments, not democratic republics, send unmarked authorities after protesters,’ Democratic U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon said in a tweet.’” Associated Press, July 18th. 

Trump continues to support his fabricated allegations with this July 19th tweet: “We are trying to help Portland, not hurt it. Their leadership has, for months, lost control of the anarchists and agitators. They are missing in action. We must protect Federal property, AND OUR PEOPLE. These were not merely protesters, these are the real deal!” Repeating a lie does not make it true. 

The response: “Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler said President Donald Trump doesn't have a clue about what's going on in his city, adding that the Trump administration's tactics in the area ‘are abhorrent.’… ‘Well, the president has a complete misunderstanding of cause and effect,’ Wheeler said in responding to Trump's Sunday morning tweet [above] about Portland. ‘What's happening here is, we have dozens, if not hundreds of federal troops descending upon our city. And what they're doing is, they are sharply escalating the situation… Their presence here is actually leading to more violence and more vandalism… And it's not helping the situation at all. They're not wanted here. We haven't asked them here. In fact, we want them to leave.’" NBC News, July 19th. 

Given a desperate President with apparently serious and diagnosable psychological issues (according to PhD psychologist and Donald Trump’s niece in her detailed book about the President, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man), his ability to apply fabricated labels and his vision articulated by his own legal counsel in testimony before Congress that Trump is the law, there is a seething darkness to the waning days of Trump’s first term. At no time in American history has there ever been a serious belief that a president just might leave office after the expiration of his term of office. Is the American democracy teetering and beginning to unravel? Can the American democracy even vote itself into an autocracy?

            I’m Peter Dekom, and the danger signs suggest that Trump’s campaign is not a “Transition to Greatness” but a “Transition to a Nationalist Autocracy.”

2021? – A Vaccine, Now What?

There must be progress in COVID-19 vaccine development beyond the occasional optimistic report from one R&D developer or another. After all, the same Russian hackers who enjoyed themselves disrupting the 2016 election – the APT29 (aka “Cozy Bear”) group – is busy hacking into the computers of pharmaceutical companies working on the solution. They are particularly focused on the US and the UK. What do they know? But let’s assume that somehow, some way, we get there. 

First, there’s timing issue. As Dr. Anthony Fauci has said repeatedly, there is no way to guarantee a viable vaccine within a stated time period, even as he is hopeful that we get there within 12 to 18 months. Certainly not remotely likely, as the President suggests, by the end of the year. It could actually take years. Time includes the period of development and a very important period of testing. Testing for what? If it works? Sure. But for how long? There are at least three reactive variables that need to be present for a shot (pun intended) at an effective preventative. 

What if it works for just 60 or 90 days and wears off? Booster shots? For how long? How many? What if there are dire side effects in a significant number of the inoculated population? What if each dose is prohibitively expensive to produce or if the developer decides to add a huge mark-up to guarantee profits? What if the manufacturing protocols limit how much and how quickly that vaccine can be manufactured? What if the vaccine itself degrades when temperature changes or it is shaken during transport? Or just the passage of time? 

If we do pull off having a viable vaccine even within those 12 to 18 months, that alone would be a record. Vaccines usually take a decade or more from conception, development and testing to being ready for deployment. And if the vaccine isn’t instantly available in the millions of doses needed just here in the United States, who gets if first? Healthcare workers in the front lines? Folks with family members or fellow workers who have tested positive? Will it have any impact on people who have already tested positive? Essential workers? Rich people with good connections for medical care? Pregnant women? Older people and those with specific vulnerabilities? And what if a better vaccine comes along very quickly? Or if the first vaccine is only a partial preventative? 

Viruses are nasty critters with unpredictability build into their genetic model, nature’s design to push a virus to mutate, adapt and find ways to resist containment. “One of our immune system’s main attributes is that it can remember what viruses look like so that our cells know how to fight them off if they infect us again. When we’ve been vaccinated against a pathogen or exposed to it naturally, we usually suffer less severe symptoms, or none at all. 

“In the case of coronavirus, which is believed to have just recently evolved to infect humans, it’s not yet clear if, or for how long, a person who has survived COVID-19 is protected against reinfection. More conclusive antibody research is needed to determine whether those who have already had the virus will need a vaccine, or if those who do get the vaccine will eventually need booster shots as maintenance.” PBS News Hour, July 8th. We might cut back on the testing, but here’s what most vaccines go through: 

“Under normal circumstances, candidate vaccines first go through preclinical trials in which animals like mice or monkeys are inoculated. Researchers then evaluate whether their bodies produced an immune response that would potentially protect against infection in humans, and look for any adverse side effects. 

“After that, successful candidates are eligible to be tested in humans. During the first phase of clinical trials, researchers give the vaccine to a small number of healthy adults to check for safety and immunogenicity, or the vaccine’s ability to prompt its desired immune response. The second phase of this effort, which involves several hundred volunteers, looks for any unwanted side effects and determines what dose produces the most effective immune response. 

“The third and final phase of vaccine testing continues to evaluate safety and effectiveness by inoculating thousands, even tens of thousands, of volunteers and determines how well the vaccine prevents infection while noting any rare side effects associated with it that didn’t become apparent during earlier phases. 

“If all of these steps are successfully completed, researchers can submit their data for review by the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. That division is responsible for approving vaccines, overseeing their production and continuing to monitor them once they’re on the market. Only about 6 percent of candidate vaccines are ever approved for commercial use.” PBS. Tests usually do not include subjects with obvious vulnerabilities, since the test itself might kill or severely injure them. But these just might be the people who need it most. 

Do we begin the manufacturing process during these trials? And if we do, and the trials prove what we’ve manufactured does not work… “The Defense Department, one of the agencies partnering on the Trump administration’s national vaccine development initiative, has said that officials ‘expect to be producing large quantities of vaccines while the clinical trials are still underway,’ so that there is no delay in manufacturing once ‘safety and efficacy have been demonstrated. 

“Operation Warp Speed is aiming to ‘deliver 300 million doses of a safe, effective vaccine’ by January 2021, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. In order to do that, billions of federal dollars are being allocated to scale up manufacturing of a handful of promising candidates before they’re actually authorized for distribution. It’s a financial risk that most private companies would be loath to take, but a necessary gamble for the government in the context of the pandemic.” PBS. Wishful thinking on steroids formulated by bureaucracies that have never supervised such a massive effort? We don’t even have remotely enough glass phials to contain all that vaccine, and no one seems to be addressing that issue at any meaningful level. Back to lovely China? 

We need to keep the virus from replicating or use the body to be fooled into accelerating that replication. Can we coat the virus to prevent it from making contract with vulnerable human cells? Can antibodies simply stop the virus from being able to enter cells in the first place? Or can we teach the human T-cells, etc. to do the trick? 

Here’s where some of the leading candidates sit in the United States (and there are well over a hundred different efforts around the world): “Among the 21 global candidate vaccines currently moving through clinical trials, Operation Warp Speed has begun to single out a handful of contenders by offering them funding, including AstraZeneca, Moderna and Novavax and Johnson & Johnson. The criteria for how those companies were chosen is not fully clear, a concern that lawmakers have pointed out and pushed Trump administration officials for answers.” PBS. 

We have a science-skeptic President who makes unfounded statements all the time, has a proclivity to shoot from the hip and often encourages his constituents to engage in risky behavior that only makes a bad situation that much worse. That’s why the United States, unlike Western Europe, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, etc. (and even China), has the highest CV-19 infection and resulting morality rate on earth. But Donald Trump is pushing his federal agencies to produce… when they just might not be able to do so. For those who prefer to believe that the virus will just burn itself out or that “herd immunity” will eventually render the virus relatively ineffective, there medical experts who tell us that COVID-19 just might not die out without a lot of help from a viable vaccine. 

“Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, estimates that between 5 to 8 percent of the U.S. population has been infected with coronavirus so far. He emphasized during last week’s Senate hearing that it would take several years to achieve herd immunity through natural exposure, hence the urgent need for an effective vaccine… ‘The goal of this vaccine is going to be to keep you out of the hospital and keep you out of the morgue.’” PBS. Trump just stopped Redfield from testifying before Congress! Oh, and herd immunity needs to have reach at least 60% of the population. See my June 13th Are We Just Going to Learn to Live with Massive Death Tolls? blog for more details. 

And finally, as a challenge to effectiveness, what if people just plain won’t accept the vaccine even when it does become available. Could that keep the virus going for a lot longer? “Once a vaccine is finally approved, manufactured and available for widespread distribution, the question then becomes whether individuals and families want to be inoculated. A recent poll from The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs research found that just 49 percent of people in the U.S. plan to actually get an eventual COVID-19 vaccine. 

“The poll also found that 40 percent of Black people and 23 percent of Hispanic people don’t intend to get vaccinated at all. In the case of the Black community, that stance may be in part rooted in general mistrust of the medical establishment. Black Americans have long suffered from lack of access to quality medical care, and even outright abuse at the hands of researchers. 

“But in the context of the pandemic, those numbers are troubling, given that Black and Hispanic individuals, in addition to Native people, are four to five times more likely to be hospitalized due to COVID-19 infection. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that ‘long-standing systemic health and social inequities’ are responsible for putting marginalized people at an increased risk of experiencing ‘severe’ illness due to the virus, regardless of age.” PBS. We live in a country where too many selfish people, young and “nothing can hurt me” people, who even reject wearing a mask and social distancing… to save the lives of others. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and I would have a whole lot more confidence if we actually had competent leadership at the top to manage this killer complexity.

A Big Red Flag

"Whoever controls the data is in the driver's seat. They have the power"

Dr. Christopher Ohl, a professor of infectious diseases at Wake Forest Baptist Health in Winston-Salem, North Carolina (to NBC News).

It is an interesting turn of events. We learned that Dr. Anthony Fauci hasn’t briefed the President since early June. It does seem as if medical experts and the hard numbers themselves have become inconvenient truths to the Trump Administration and its unrelenting press to reopen schools, churches, parks and recreation venues and businesses with few if any restrictions. Get the economy whirling so Trump can use that to get reelected. Who cares who dies? 

We just watched as GOP Georgia Governor and Trump supporter, Brian Kemp, issue an executive order (which may or may not be lawful under even Georgia law) that countermanded mask and distancing requirements imposed by the mayors of several of that state’s biggest cities. “Georgia Gov. Brain Kemp is suing the Atlanta City Council and Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms following her efforts to require face masks in public places as the number of COVID-19 cases continues to skyrocket across the nation. 

“The lawsuit, filed Thursday [7/16], asserts that Kemp alone, ‘leads the State of Georgia in its fight against the worldwide novel coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic’ and adds he has the power ‘to suspend municipal orders that are contradictory to any state law or to his executive orders.’" NPR, July 16th. That Georgia is experiencing the largest surge in COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began, out of control, appears to be irrelevant. Oh, this also includes the busiest airport in the United States: Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, a major Delta hub. And all of the nursing homes, where the elderly have been dying from CV-19 in record numbers. 

Indeed, picking apart trusted medical experts seems to be high on the agenda of both the Trump administration and its cronies. “Trump’s trade advisor, Peter Navarro, slammed Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert… Fauci ‘has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on,’ Navarro said in his column in USA Today, which appeared online Tuesday night [7/14].” Los Angeles Times, July 16th. His was not the only White House voice questioning Fauci’s integrity. And while the official White House line on Navarro’s remark states he did not clear his statement through normal White House channels, insiders suggest Navarro was encouraged to issue that statement by the President himself. 

“The attacks are almost certainly counterproductive, said David Axelrod, a former strategist for President Obama… ‘There isn’t anyone in their right mind who would say this is a smart strategy in the middle of an exploding pandemic — ‘Let’s wage war on Tony Fauci!’ ’ Axelrod said. ‘In no rational world does that make sense.’ 

“Fauci maintains a much higher level of public trust than Trump. The latest nationwide poll from Quinnipiac University, released Wednesday, found that by 65% to 26%, voters said they trusted information from Fauci about the coronavirus. Conversely, by 67% to 30%, they said they did not trust information from Trump… Reflecting poll numbers of that sort, some Republicans in Congress have made it clear they don’t support efforts to undermine Fauci, who has served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984.” LA Times. 

There seems to be an increasing “credibility distancing” depending on who dispenses the relevant information about the infection and mortality rates on the novel coronavirus. Politicians and press spin-masters have continuously falling credibility, while educated professionals – epidemiologists and medical doctors (academic and government bureaucrats) – score high. But those damned statistics; they keep reminding everyone how dramatically Trump and friends have failed. If only there were a way to suppress that information, or at least cleanse the results to jibe with Trump’s erroneous projections. Ah, but wait, there just might be. 

What would happen if you simply took away the right of those government bureaucrats, who are legally mandated to provide the best information to the taxpayers that they can, to receive and dispense those numbers in the first place? What if you could divert those numbers to political appointees instead, folks who know how to spin, distort and manipulate instead? Who can decide how (if?) the public should be fully informed? Well, now you can! 

“The Trump administration has taken control of COVID-19 data in the United States, leaving public health experts gravely concerned about whether anyone outside the administration will be able to access the vital information moving forward… Such data is critical for health systems to plan for necessary resources and coordinate efforts, particularly during a pandemic…. ‘I'm concerned that we'll only get what their analyses and conclusions are, and there won't be any way to corroborate it,’ [Infectious disease Professor and Doctor Christopher] Ohl said. 

“Late Tuesday [7/14], a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed that hospitals are now required to submit information on COVID-19 patients directly to HHS, rather than through a longstanding reporting system via the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention… ‘The new faster and complete data system is what our nation needs to defeat the coronavirus and the CDC, an operating division of HHS, will certainly participate in this streamlined all-of-government response,’ said Michael Caputo, HHS' assistant secretary for public affairs. ‘They will simply no longer control it.’ 

“Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the CDC, said Wednesday [7/15] that the agency will still play a role within the new reporting system… Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said: ‘I fully support an effort to try to improve upon existing approaches. That said, I have deep worries about switching it up in the middle of a crisis, particularly if it means sidelining the CDC.’00 PHOTOS 

“José Arrieta, HHS' chief information officer, said the agency is ‘exploring the best way to make this information available to the public,’ but he and Redfield declined to offer a timeline… Nuzzo said: ‘For the data to be valuable, it needs to be trusted. And that's really where transparency comes into play. People have to be able to scrutinize the data to understand the process by which they are generated and be able to see the strengths and weaknesses.’Ohl said the previous reporting system within the CDC, called the National Health Safety Network, has been in operation for years. ‘All of the kinks are worked out,’ he said. ‘It's reliable, sound, unbiased.’… Ohl said such a change is unprecedented, adding, ‘It just doesn't make sense.’” NBC News, July 16th. Makes lots of sense… if your goal is to repress the truth. It’s Mr. Trump’s pandemic now.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and this is Trump on steroids bringing his fact-distortion practices to the most vital information Americans need to survive.

Inconceivable

Gross Domestic Product is the metric most economists use to measure national financial health. It is an aggregated number, pulling all of a nation’s generated revenue into one statistic, where annualized growth is the exemplar of economic success. Excessive wealth at the top with massive contraction below can still generate a positive GDP measurement and reflect growth, rendering the metric a questionable measure of true overall financial health. Generally, “growth” is the underlying driver of economic success to most economists. But growth seems likewise to be driven by greater levels of consumption of resources (some not replenishable) and increases in consumers and productive workers (read: population growth). And if population stabilizes or declines, perhaps our entire notion of economic success is simply going to have to eschew growth as a relevant driving metric. 

Simply, are these metrics of success outmoded in a world of Malthusian population growth (or not; see below), devastating environmental damage from associated pollution and resulting climate change and a roiling sea of sequential epidemics and pandemics impacting human health in ever corner of the world? If Earth currently holds an unsustainable number of people; optimistic views place the number of people currently alive at double what the planet can absorb and hold comfortably. The novel coronavirus seems like one more attempt by nature to “cull the herd.” But there are other signs reversing the current population explosion. 

Environmental changes reflect depleting agricultural resources. For major developed societies, the cost of living is skyrocketing, making having children an expensive proposition, and the cost of housing in those higher-income nations is putting a lid on the space needed to accommodate more babies. Housing everywhere is getting pricey. In agrarian societies, having children meant labor for the fields. In some societies, having children added to the family labor pool needed to provide economic support. But the biggest factor just might an explosion of women into the work force, many having dramatically time-consuming careers at rapidly rising levels of pay and responsibility. They just do not have the same commitment to having children. 

But dwindling agricultural resources, global conflicts inflicting dire casualties and exploding poverty and starvation and these horrific epidemics and pandemics (SARS, MERS, Ebola, new strains of malaria and dengue fever and the novel coronavirus pandemic) have also aggregated to suppress population growth even in regions with traditionally high birth rates. Is this just another way for nature to “cull the herd”? The numbers of plunging birth rates, all over the world, are stunning. 

So, let’s start with a basic statistical reality: a population remains exactly constant based on an average of 2.1 live births per adult woman. Higher than that and you have natural population growth. Below that number and you have population contraction. While the contraction is greatest in developed nations, we have witnessed a recent reversal in the global trend toward population growth: “Falling fertility rates mean nearly every country could have shrinking populations by the end of the century… And 23 nations - including Spain and Japan - are expected to see their populations halve by 2100… Countries will also age dramatically, with as many people turning 80 as there are being born… The number of over 80-year-olds will soar from 141 million in 2017 to 866 million in 2100.” BBC.com, July 15th. 

Where the population is aging most rapidly, Western Europe and Japan, this means that fewer working adults will be effectively supporting an increasing number of aging retirees (or those simply no longer able to work). Add any increase in life expectancy, and the problem is simply compounded. With the economic disruption and job displacement from man-made causes (conflict, AI-driven automation and robotics) and environmental realities (climate change and pollution), the pressure on younger workers is amplified. Japan is experimenting with geriatric robots (“carebots” as pictured above) to care for the aging and is just beginning to rethink its highly limited immigration policy. Times have changed dramatically since World War II. 

“In 1950, women were having an average of 4.7 children in their lifetime… Researchers at the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation showed the global fertility rate nearly halved to 2.4 in 2017 - and their study, published in the [medical periodical] Lancet, projects it will fall below 1.7 by 2100… 

“Japan's population is projected to fall from a peak of 128 million in 2017 to less than 53 million by the end of the century… Italy is expected to see an equally dramatic population crash from 61 million to 28 million over the same timeframe…. They are two of 23 countries - which also include Spain, Portugal, Thailand and South Korea - expected to see their population more than halve… China, currently the most populous nation in the world, is expected to peak at 1.4 billion in four years time before nearly halving to 732 million by 2100. India will take its place… The UK is predicted to peak at 75 million in 2063, and fall to 71 million by 2100.” BBC.com. 

But for immigration, which the Trump administration seems hell-bent on stopping, the U.S. population growth would have already begun to contract. Within our country, some of the lowest birthrates are among traditional white women. Assuming that immigration returns to normal levels, “The U.S. is projected to have population growth until just after midcentury (364 million people in 2062), followed by a decline of less than 10% to 336 million by 2100, according to the [Lancet] study... The total U.S. fertility rate – which represents the average number of children a woman delivers over her lifetime – is predicted to steadily decline from 1.8 in 2017 to 1.5 in 2100… 

“By 2100, the U.S. is predicted to have the fourth-largest working-age population in the world (around 181 million), after India, Nigeria and China – and immigration will likely sustain the U.S. workforce. However, the researchers warn that U.S. immigration policies have faced a political backlash in recent years, threatening the country's potential to sustain population and economic growth. 

“Worldwide, improvements in access to modern contraception and the education of girls and women are generating widespread, sustained declines in fertility, according to the study. World population will likely peak in 2064 at around 9.7 billion, and then decline to about 8.8 billion by 2100 – about 2 billion lower than some previous estimates.” USA Today, July 14th. What to do? 

“Countries, including the UK, have used migration to boost their population and compensate for falling fertility rates… However, this stops being the answer once nearly every country's population is shrinking… ‘We will go from the period where it's a choice to open borders, or not, to frank competition for migrants, as there won't be enough,’ argues Prof [Christopher] Murray. 

“Some countries have tried policies such as enhanced maternity and paternity leave, free childcare, financial incentives and extra employment rights, but there is no clear answer… Sweden has dragged its fertility rate up from 1.7 to 1.9, but other countries that have put significant effort into tackling the ‘baby bust’ have struggled. Singapore still has a fertility rate of around 1.3. 

“Prof Murray says: "I find people laugh it off; they can't imagine it could be true, they think women will just decide to have more kids… If you can't [find a solution] then eventually the species disappears, but that's a few centuries away.’ 

“The researchers warn against undoing the progress on women's education and access to contraception… Prof Stein Emil Vollset said: ‘Responding to population decline is likely to become an overriding policy concern in many nations, but must not compromise efforts to enhance women's reproductive health or progress on women's rights.’” BBC.com. We’re so used to building social and economic models on growth statistics, but that is about to change. Childcare just might become one of the hottest issues in the coming decades. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and clearly, we are going to have to stop measuring prosperity as a function of growth statistics.

Abdication of Responsibility

Blame and deflect. Withdraw and deny. Brag, take credit and vilify. Shoot from the hip and avoid entrusting experts. Where facts contradict, create “new ones.” Where federal officials voice opposing views, fire them. Do not cloud decisions with preparedness. Give a voice to previously unrepresented anti-democracy extremists. Openly express admiration and connectivity to international autocrats. Where loyalists are convicted of felonious support for “the cause,” pardon them, pressure the DOJ or grant them clemency. Find joy in baiting opponents and sowing irreconcilable divisiveness. Embrace “law and order” to maintain white supremacy. Promise what cannot be delivered; predict what cannot be predicted. Place economic growth as the supreme value above human life itself. Embrace isolationism; decry global realities. 

This is Trump’s America, where democracy and constitutional protections are held in contempt by the President of the United States. Try and sell the message of American values and belief in our traditional values, the basis for the diplomatic connectivity of the United States, to most of the rest of the world in these most difficult times. Stretched thin by a horrible global pandemic, where we are, by comparison, doing far worse than the rest of the world. We are currently the most reviled nation on earth. 

“Entrusted with duties that include extolling democratic values in scores of developing and autocratic countries, [US] career foreign service officers are finding their mission undermined by events back home… ‘It’s absolutely tough to be a diplomat out in the field right now,’ said Barbara Leaf, former U.S. ambassador to the United Arab Emirates who served under Presidents Obama and Trump. 

“Many diplomats say they don’t mind facing criticism about racism in the U.S. because it can open the door to frank discussions with other governments about the need to confront it, including in the United States… But Trump’s threat to unleash the military to ‘dominate’ protesters, Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s characterization of Washington’s streets as a ‘battle space,’ and the deployment of numerous mysterious, unidentified security agents to confront demonstrators conjured images more often associated with authoritarian regimes — the kinds of things American diplomats usually condemn.” Los Angeles Times, June 15th. 

Under Trump, the United States has pulled out of the Iran nuclear accord (which was working), retired from the Paris climate accord, terminated our involvement in the Trans-Pacific trade agreement (which went on, under a different name, without us), cut aid to various UN agencies, most recently the World Health Organization, elevated North Korea’s Kim Jong-un to full-on international status without accomplishing a damned thing, denied every anti-American step supported by Putin’s Russia, betrayed our Kurdish allies who fought by our side in Iraq and even with the trade animosity with China, given President Xi Jinping wink-wink support to send Uighurs to concentration camps and clamp down on protestors in Hong Kong. 

In flagrant violation of the UK-PRC treaty that gave Hong Kong, a former British Crown Colony, the same legal system and set of rights enjoyed during the British mandate until 2047, Xi has effectively repealed that entire HK legal system, replaced an open and free democracy with direct and harsh autocratic rules from Beijing – without any recourse to HK citizens. He has effectively unilaterally annexed Hong Kong, eliminating the “one nation, two systems” structure that had worked to date. Like most of the rest of the world, Xi views the United States and its ability to lead a global democratic vision as having been reduced to meaninglessness and irrelevancy. Without the slightest fear of US influence, Xi pulled out all the stops. 

We’ve ceded the political and moral high ground, leaving us with our economic power – itself crashing far worse than any other great global economic power under a profound mishandling of the pandemic – as our sole remaining bargaining chip. Even our military, mired in old-world technology which Trump keeps growing, faces China’s naval domination in Asia and Russia’s new hypersonic missiles and smart torpedoes for which we have no defense. If it weren’t for our still massive economic power – which is generating workarounds even among our purported allies in Europe – we would be relegated to influence parallel to that of North Korea. 

To understand how little influence the United States wields against major powers, you only have to look at how Xi is rubbing our face in their total repression of Hong Kong… without the slightest concern of “what the United States might do.” “After less than two weeks under a new national security law enacted by Beijing, Hong Kong residents already feel a curtain of control falling over a city that for so long had been a brash and defiant home to intellectuals, capitalists, artists and pro-democracy activists. 

“Mass protests consumed the semiautonomous former British colony much of last year, escalating as the Hong Kong government gave police free rein and refused protesters’ demands. Now the central Chinese government, empowered by the world’s distraction with the COVID-19 pandemic, is imposing its will to stop what it calls ‘secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces.’ 

“Suddenly, words and even the imagined intent behind them have become crimes… Hundreds of people have been arrested for unlawful assembly since the law came into effect, some charged with violations for carrying items bearing protest slogans and Bible verses. No one knows what is safe. Even the word ‘conscience’ printed on a sticker can get you into trouble in an atmosphere that is scary and increasingly surreal… Art is stripped from walls and books from libraries two weeks after Beijing asserted its power in the city.” Los Angeles Times, July 12th. 

Divided at home, facing an out-of-control explosion of the novel coronavirus, vilified and ignored over most of the earth, the United States and its power just may have been irreparably damaged by a self-aggrandizing tyrant with little concern for facts and unencumbered by competency. Even if Trump fails to achieve a second term, many Americans – and a whole lot of international leaders – believe it is simply too late. What do you think?

            I’m Peter Dekom, and I get tired of trying to explain to my international friends and acquaintances that Trump’s vision of America is a momentary distortion of what most Americans hold dear… at least I hope so.

Trump’s Vision of a Police State

To put it mildly, anger over racial injustice, memorials and symbols supporting those who embraced slavery as a way of life and a litany of unjustified blue on black/brown killings have put so many cities and towns on edge. For the most part, as localities pay attention to the undercurrents of harm and inequality within their own jurisdictions, they are likewise finding their own local solutions, bit by bit. Almost no cities and towns desire or require military-like armed forces from federal agencies to barge in, uninvited, to cater to the selfish political whims and aspirations of a President willing to lie and exaggerate to generate “law and order” votes, an autocrat who constantly threatens to impose his unwanted perspectives on communities that truly want the rising autocratic militancy of a President gone rogue to stay far away from their jurisdictions. No one needs a locally unaccountable federal force to push a bad situation over the edge. 

The hypocrisy of once fervent “states righters” – a bastion of Republican philosophy – embracing an uninvited and locally unwanted national police force to usurp those states’ rights is staggering. Trump threatens and occasionally implements (think peaceful Lafayette Park protesters violently cleared to enable a presidential photo op) to use federal forces, contrary to the wishes of the relevant mayors and governors, to impose his vision of “law and order.” Protecting Confederate symbols and memorials are more important to the President and his cronies than coming to grips with seemingly unending racial injustice. Not only are regular US military troops untrained as police but using such forces violates US law. So, Mr. Trump has opted to insert unwanted federal “police” into volatile local situations where they can only make matters worse. 

The latest effort from President-for-life-wannabe Trump just happened in Portland, Oregon. “Protesters who have clashed with authorities in the Pacific Northwest are not just confronting local police. Some are also facing off against federal officers whose presence reflects President Trump’s decision to make cracking down on ‘violent mayhem’ a federal priority. 

“The Department of Homeland Security has deployed officers in tactical gear from around the country, and from more than half a dozen federal law enforcement agencies and departments, to Portland, Ore., as part of a surge aimed at what a senior official said were people taking advantage of demonstrations over the police killing of George Floyd to engage in violence and vandalism… ‘Once we surged federal law enforcement officers to Portland, the agitators quickly got the message,’ said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing operation. 

“The deployment represents somewhat of a departure for Homeland Security, which was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and is primarily focused on threats from abroad and border security. During the Trump presidency, its focus has been largely on carrying out the president’s tough immigration agenda. Now it is in the role of supporting Trump’s ‘law and order’ campaign, raising questions about whether it is overstepping the duties of local law enforcement… 

“Trump issued an executive order on June 26 to protect monuments after protesters tried to remove or destroy statues they considered racist. He has denounced the Black Lives Matter movement and protests calling for the removal of statues honoring racist figures, associating peaceful protests with the sporadic outbursts of vandalism and theft at some demonstrations. In his July 3 speech at Mt. Rushmore, he referred to ‘the violent mayhem we have seen in the streets of cities that are run by liberal Democrats’ as well as the ‘merciless campaign to wipe out our history.’ 

“Following the executive order, Homeland Security created the Protecting American Communities Task Force and sent officers from Customs and Border Protection and other agencies to Washington, D.C., Seattle and Portland. Others were ready to deploy elsewhere if needed… 

“Portland Deputy Police Chief Chris Davis said his department did not request the assistance and did not coordinate efforts with the federal government during often chaotic clashes that have ranged across several downtown blocks after midnight for weeks… ‘I don’t have authority to order federal officers to do things,’ Davis said. ‘It does complicate things for us.’ 

“The Homeland Security officers’ presence comes at a tense moment for Portland. After Floyd’s death, the city for days saw rallies that attracted thousands of generally peaceful protesters to the downtown area. The police took a ‘mostly hands-off approach’ to those events because they were orderly, Davis said. 

“Trump, speaking at a military base near Miami on Friday [7/10], said Portland officials failed to adequately respond to the protests. ‘It was out of control,’ he said to acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf. ‘The locals couldn’t handle it, and you people are handling it very nicely.’” Los Angeles Times, July 11th. Purposely misusing fighting words and simply lying about the level of violence (where it even exists) does not justify such a dramatic misuse of federal police powers. Particularly when much of the thrust of those protests is a direct political expression of condemnation of Trump himself. 

Threatening to withhold federal funds from school districts unless their school open wide, in the middle of the worst daily increases in COVID-19 infection rates ever, is another example of unwanted federal intrusion in states’ rights. Telling the world that the CDC would revised their unrealistic, “tough and expensive” guidelines for reopening public schools, Trump completely ignored what has now become his personal pandemic. Oh, and even the CDC refused to alter those guidelines. Trump was fuming. So what if another few thousand people would die, the autocrat has spoken.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and this dark period in our history, a time where evil mounted a full-on assault on good (and even against Christian values), could easily be our collective undoing.

Trump’s Next Target: Public Primary & Secondary Schools

“If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted and punished… Against every law of society and nature, our children are taught in school to hate their own country and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes but that were villains… The radical view of American history is a web of lies, all perspective is removed, every virtue is obscured, every motive is twisted, every fact is distorted and every flaw is magnified until the history is purged and the record is disfigured beyond all recognition.” 

Donald Trump on American public education, Mt Rushmore, July 3rd

A godless public education is and was an anathema and morally corrupting to a seemingly constant evangelical constituency… where school prayer was banned and evolution was taught without reference to biblical creationism as an equally viable explanation of life. To most Americans, and the US Supreme Court (at least so far), that was an extreme and unsupportable view under the constitutional separate of church and state. There are, however, signs that this once bright line between church and states may be blurring. 

On June 28th, in a 5-4 decision split along ideological lines, the U.S. Supreme Court decided (Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue) that state scholarships for private primary and secondary educations could not exclude support even where religious schools were beneficiaries. “The justices faulted the Montana Supreme Court for voiding a taxpayer program merely because it can be used to fund religious entities, saying such action violates the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protection for the free exercise of religion… ‘A state need not subsidize private education,’ [Chief Justice] Roberts wrote. ‘But once a state decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.’” Reuters, June 30th. 

With approximately 13,000 separate public-school districts across the United States, it’s no surprise that Christian teachings are viewed as a necessary part of a solid, American education, to those in the deepest, reddest and most evangelically dominated states. What was once viewed as a fringe perspective, where Biblical teachings were considered far more important than traditional academic subjects, has gone mainstream under Donald Trump. Where science and history challenged those beliefs, these fringe adherents demanded that these statements that contradicted evangelical views be purged. Mainstream literature, deemed heretical, was also targeted. Their view is now official Trump administration policy. 

If “loving” America means learning sanitized history (where racism just isn’t discussed) and religious substitutes for science and “hating” the United States is evidenced by learning hard facts and empirically supported science, Trump would be correct. Textbooks often delete, distort or otherwise “sanitize” unpleasant aspects of our history, a practice explained in greater detail in my June 15th Living with a Guilty Past blog. And while these anti-education, anti-science antagonists were once considered extremist outsiders, they are now completely supported by the Trump administration, to the exclusion of what used to be the mainstream reverence towards a mastery of “science, reading, writing and arithmetic.” 

It was this way during Trump’s campaign, dramatically reinforced with his appointment of a Secretary of Education with no more than a third-rate bachelor’s business degree from a Michigan Bible college, a fierce critic of public education with no work experience at any educational institution. Betsy DeVos, an heir to the Amway fortune, expresses a powerful belief that Christian values must return to primary and secondary education. Fighting federal funds for all sorts of mainstream educational goals as well as student debt relief authorized by Congress for fraudulent for-profit trade schools, DeVos has become an evangelical darling and a champion of enabling charter and private schools where religious instruction is a priority. 

Valarie Strauss, writing for the July 5th Washington Post, addressing the above Trump quote, states: “We will note that Trump is pushing a view of public education in the country that has long been espoused by many Republicans: that public K-12 schools and institutions of higher education are cauldrons of subversion where teachers mold children into being politically correct leftists. 

“Over recent years, many state legislators have incorporated this line of thinking into their assault on public education and their funding cuts for public colleges and universities. “Meanwhile, Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, has made clear her disdain for public schools, once calling them ‘a dead end’ and making her No. 1 priority the expansion of alternatives to traditional public schools.” Our public schools remain, for the most part, underfunded, a legacy exacerbated by the austerity measures adopted during the Great Recession and mostly not restored. It gets worse. 

Unwilling to fund the massive required costs of retrofitting public schools to make them safe for children in a surging pandemic and “Determined to reopen America’s schools despite coronavirus worries, President Trump threatened Wednesday [7/8] to hold back federal money if school districts don’t bring their students back in the fall [not virtually, in person!]. He complained that his own public health officials’ safety guidelines are impractical and too expensive.” Associated Press, July 8th. On July 4th, he made up a fact, immediately rejected by the head of the FDA, that 99% of CV-19 cases are harmless. Let the children get sick and then carry the disease to their parents and grandparents. 

Our public schools fail on so many levels. By international testing standards (Programme for International Student Assessment), depending on subject matter, our former primacy in global education has fallen to somewhere between 19th to 38th, depending on subject matter. Mediocrity does not produce a high-value, competitive workforce. Bible quoting creationists who eschew scientific method aren’t a competitive threat. China is laughing, Russia is smiling, and much of Europe just looks at the United States in its rear-view mirror. If this malignancy is not corrected, we will watch the United States continue to lose its competitive advantage and plummet its claim to being a global economic leader. China’s new hard patent filings are rising as ours continue to fall. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and if this anti-educational belief continues, Donald Trump will be the principal architect of precisely what will insure we will not “transition to greatness.”

“Hate-Filled, American-Bashing Socialist”

_{Not “Lock her up! Lock her up” but “Send her back! Send her back!”}

For those who look at the above photograph can cannot see the potential of an American patriot, a woman who truly cherishes her American citizenship above all, it’s time to do a “who am I really” second look. Her name is Ilhan Abdullahi Omar. She is a practicing Muslim. She is also a duly elected member of the United States House of representatives, a Democrat who has served on behalf of Minnesota's 5th congressional district since 2019. She is yet one more concrete example of a racist President, making up vituperative “facts” without substance along the way, and those who support his racist views. The Grand Master of fake news. Donald Trump’s foaming hatred of this dark-skinned member of Congress is part of the tsunami of proof to the rest of the world of Trump’s fundamental belief that white supremacy is the proper American way. 

The list of Trump insiders speaking out or writing tell-all books is long and getting longer. The latest insider quote, from Trump’s former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci blasted the President (calling his behavior “ridiculous”) following his July 3rd Mt Rushmore speech, saying: “Just go read transcripts of the speeches he gave over the weekend. It’s literally as if Charles Lindbergh had a baby with Joe McCarthy and that baby was Donald Trump and grew up to become the president of the United States.” The world is watching. 

This is how our ally, the United Kingdom, looking at Congresswoman Omar, sees the President of the - United States of America (BBC.com, July 6th): “President Donald Trump is making Somali-American congresswoman Ilhan Omar one of the bogeywomen of his campaign for re-election to the White House in November - and by proxy her country of birth, Somalia. 

“In his most recent attack, at a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, he tore into the 37-year-old alleging that she wanted to bring the ‘anarchy’ of Somalia to the US… ‘She would like to make the government of our country just like the country from where she came - Somalia. No government, no safety, no police, no nothing, just anarchy. And now, she's telling us how to run our country. No, thank-you.’ 

“Ms Omar, who arrived in the US as a child refugee in 1995, is a congressional representative for Minnesota, which includes the city of Minneapolis where African-American George Floyd was killed by police in May, reigniting Black Lives Matter protests.” A large Somali-American constituency resides in her district. 

We live in hateful times with a President who generates political power by accelerating any divide and conquer strategy he can foment, particularly anything that can motivate traditional white traditionalists, especially those embracing white supremacist views. We live in a nation, built by immigrants (the indigenous residents of this land were all “people of color”) and predicated on religious freedom. We transitioned through an ugly path of tearing indigenous peoples from their land and resorting to bringing Africans as forced labor, routinely to be tortured and murdered, sexually humiliated and subject to hopeless and unspeakable cruelty – we call it “slavery” – peoples dragged from their homes in another continent and shipped like cattle across a vast ocean under most horrific conditions. 

As our textbooks have sanitized that era, many still believe in honoring traitors who defied the law, battled in the Civil War (and lost!) to continue enslavement, embracing their statues, symbols of the Confederacy, claiming a right to preserve our “historical heritage.” Germans definitely are not proud of their 20th century enslavement and brutal extermination of Jews and others; Nazi flags, statutes and symbols are banned. So it hard to understand why so many “Americans” do not sympathize with those in our nation who have wanted to remove similar statues and symbols of slavery and their oppression from government buildings. As Trump champions retention of those racist works, knowing how divisive that issue truly is, the white power backlash feels empowered by his vitriol. 

On July 5th, and in apparent retaliation for those who have, lawfully or in defiant passion, have toppled statutes of slave owners and Confederate leaders, “A statue of abolitionist [and escaped slave] Frederick Douglass was ripped from its base in Rochester, N.Y., on the anniversary of one of his most famous speeches, delivered in the city in 1852… To a slave, Douglass said, Independence Day is ‘a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.’” Los Angeles Times, July 6th. White power has spoken. 

Which simply makes Trump’s focus on Ilhan Omar that much more critical. In his sparsely-attended Tulsa rally, “The president described Ms Omar as a ‘hate-filled, American-bashing socialist,’ warning she would have a role in shaping the country if Mr Biden were to win… This is despite the fact that the pair are on opposite ends of the Democratic Party - Ms Omar had been a prominent supporter of Bernie Sanders to win the Democratic ticket..” BBC It’s not as if Ms Omar has been free of controversy, stirring both Democratic and Republican ire challenging American Jewish support for Israel. 

But Somalia, still facing occasional attacks from the locally-hated Al-Shabab Islamic terrorists, is hardly the nation that the President might remember from films about the country. But then, where would he discover what it is like today, since he does not, self-admittedly, read to keep up with current events? Not even his daily intelligence briefing. 

Somalia it is not the anarchic nightmare of a country that President Trump describes. Somalia has changed. Mr Trump has not… “The impressive new National Theatre was unveiled just last week - there are fancy hotels, cafes and beach-side restaurants in Mogadishu and the city even has a literary festival, the annual Mogadishu Book Fair. 

“Hargeisa, capital of the self-declared republic of Somaliland, is one of the most peaceful cities in the Horn of Africa, with libraries, the Hargeisa Cultural Centre while the Hargeisa Book Fair, which has been taking place for more than a decade, draws in thousands every year…. And even though it has not been recognized internationally, Somaliland has held successive free and fair elections, making it the strongest democracy in the Horn of Africa…. 

“Since 9/11 there have been fraught conversations over the place of Muslims in America. Mr Trump often uses anti-Muslim rhetoric in his portrayal of good versus bad migrants, playing into these fears…. For the president, Ms Omar does not fit into his idea of a ‘good migrant’. The proud Hijab-wearing politician fought for her right to wear headwear in the House of Representatives, overturning a 181-year ban.” BBC 

This is the rest of the world looks at the America they once knew, the former leader of the free world and exemplar of equality and democracy, now the poster nation for hateful stereotypes, racism and a President who depends on white power support to garner his political backbone. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and the litany of castigation I get from overseas, including a lot of ex-pats, embarrasses me and for which I have no defense… except a hopeful, “we’re really not like him.”

Canadian Full Employment Act a/k/a Make China Great Again

Half of America’s mega-tech companies were founded by first or second-generation Americans. They have enabled or created millions of jobs. The United States has had the unprecedented and long-standing policy of bringing the brightest young minds on earth, sometimes welcoming them to our greatest universities. China and India have been the greatest source of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) of such students, many already carrying undergraduate STEM degrees, seeking advanced education. And so many of them simply elected to stay in the United States, where their education and brain power have combined to create some of the highest levels of job creation on earth. 

Lots of other highly educated, skilled and experienced workers have been brought to the United States under our H1B visa program to fill the hundreds of thousands of tech jobs that have gone begging for years – American universities just are not pumping out enough qualified graduates and haven’t for years –, where expertise is the key to admission. 85% of H1B requests come from that tech sector. Without accessing the body of experts, the United States opens up the high ground to India and China, where the majority these tech experts come from, and to countries willing to let them immigrate to the West. Particularly Canada. 

Canada, actively recruiting in China and India, has gone out of its way to let these highly-trained experts know that if the cannot find admission to the United States, Canada will do everything in its power to admit STEM-qualified candidates – and their families – to its tech-centric regions. So when Donald Trump, on June 22nd, declared an end to new H1B visas until at least the end of 2020 – ostensibly to open up job opportunities for the 20 million plus of Americans who lost their jobs during this pandemic – India freaked out, China smiled and Canada began cheering loudly. 

Indeed, China was elated that some of its best minds were being excluded from arch-rival America, and India was wondering why, with improving relations with the US, their citizens were being denied access to what had been a long-term mutually beneficial relationship based on this currency of technological excellence. From Google to Amazon to Facebook to Apple to Microsoft and from the US Chamber of Commerce came powerful objections and threats to the Trump administration that his latest immigration policy would force them to move research operations to other nations, particularly Canada. 

While to an undereducated constituency, the notion of shifting those Silicon Valley jobs to the newly unemployed masses might sound good during an election year, the fact is that virtually none of those who lost their jobs by the millions are qualified to take those open positions. Lots of those tech companies were still hiring by the thousands during the pandemic-induced job decline… but only those with the necessary education and experience were being hired. These tech giants couldn’t find enough qualified US-based applicants before the pandemic, and that reality has not changed. If you are tech-qualified and living in the US, you can find a solid-paying job right now! 

Did the President miss the point? Did he mix apples and oranges? “US President Donald Trump’s decision to suspend H-1B visas till the end of the year seems to be based on a misreading of economic data, according to Cato Institute, a Washington DC based think-tank… The presidential proclamation said that over 20 million US workers lost their jobs in key industries where employers are where employers are currently requesting H-1B… workers to fill positions. However, it does not look at specific occupations, which would have been a better approach… 

“‘[E]mployers can’t hire just any worker from an entire industry. They can only hire someone seeking to work in a specific type of job. This confusion between industries and occupations is exceptionally common, but it’s a huge mistake,’ said David Bier, immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity… 

“‘It turns out that from January 2020 to May 2020, total employment increased by about 185,000 in the top 20 H-1B occupations, which account for 85% of all H-1B requests, according to the Current Population Survey,’ said Bier. Meanwhile, the number of unemployed during the same period increased by 94,000, making the difference between the two 9,000… This is substantially different from the 20 million cited by the president. Moreover, unemployment in H-1B occupations was already falling in May to April.” The Economic Times, June 24th. Oh. Could keeping those experts out of the United States actually hurt our post-COVID-19 economic recovery? Obviously, yes! 

But wait, there’s more. Trump “short-sighted, no compromise and I will do whatever it takes to force my way” is obsessed with totally reopening the economy and every aspect of normal life, denying that the novel coronavirus is a serious threat. On July 4th, Trump told the American people that U.S. was testing too much and falsely asserted that “by so doing, we show cases, 99% of which are totally harmless.” The head of the FDA immediately contradicted him. But Trump was ready to take down foreign college students with visas to study in the United States as leverage if he did not get everyone to reopen everything. 

Ignoring reality and perhaps making future enemies out of clear American friends, “[The] Trump administration issued an order that could force tens of thousands of foreign students to leave the country if their schools hold all classes online.” Remarkably, Trump was able to combine his xenophobic immigration policy, his disdain for higher education and his mythological insistence, completely ignoring statistical reality, that COVID-19 is little more than an inconvenience. 

“Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology have asked a federal court to temporarily block a Trump administration rule that would bar foreign students from remaining in the United States if their universities are not holding in-person classes this fall, Harvard's president said on [July 8th].” Chicago Tribune, July 8th. Wow! Shortsighted, cruel, medically idiotic and completely lacking a shred of empathy. Which other nations are going to attract those exceptional students instead… if courts allow this rule to stand? And who is going to replace the massive infusion of tuition revenues (most of these students are paying full rates) that will vaporize if they leave? 

So Donald Trump, by excluding foreign mega-brains from coming to the United States, is slamming our most productive, job creating tech sector, helping China keep their best and their brightest to compete with us and is literally shifting a large part of the North American technology research and patent creation out of the United States and into Canada with no discernible gain in US-based jobs? Smaaart! But very Trumpian. Do what looks good to your base, ignore reality and lie with zealous misinterpretation of statistics. Optics not substance. Got it! 

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am trying to imagine what four more years of Donald Trump decision-making will do to this country… if it can even stay together.

Why the Surge, Really?

“Because they have failed to make the requested and greatly needed reforms, we will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization and redirecting those funds to other worldwide and deserving urgent public health needs… The world needs answers from China on the virus. We must have transparency.”                            

Donald Trump’s statement on withdrawing the United States from the UN’s World Health Organization on July 7^th.

As one of those older folks with vulnerabilities to infection from the novel coronavirus, I watch the numbers and look at the behavior most likely to subject me to infection. Because my blood type is type A+, I was not heartened by this statistic: “A European study published last month in the New England Journal of Medicine found that people with Type A blood were 45 percent more likely to develop severe COVID-19 requiring oxygen supplementation or a ventilator than people with other blood types and that those with Type O blood were 35 percent less likely. The study involved 1,610 patients with severe COVID-19 and 2,205 control subjects.” NBC News July 7th. 

New York has restricted travelers from 19 states when they arrive to the state, and other regions have imposed similar quarantines: Traveling from California to New Mexico – by train, car or aircraft – welcome to a 14-day quarantine order. While many in deeply red states still resist orders to wear masks, that wall of resistance is crumbling in all but the most diehard Trump-supporting constituencies. The list of subsequently infect world leaders who have marginalized or dismissed the significance of the virus has witnessed two interesting cases: The UK’s Boris Johnson is much more concerned with the outbreak as he himself barely survived a serious bout with the virus, and we are now watching to see if Brazilian strongman, Jair Bolsonaro who tested positive, will develop horrific symptoms as well. 

That we are now experiencing the majority of new infections in the under 45 age group might surprise some of us, but when you see which of the habits of the younger matter, you will understand way. They might feel invincible, although there are mounting fatalities and hospitalizations in this demographic; they are generously able to spread the virus to their older family members… and often do. We’ve learned a lot, and some of the results are not what we expected. The July 7th Los Angeles Times summarizes what we know and what we should do about it: 

“Because the new coronavirus is, well, new, there’s still a lot we don’t know about what makes a situation safe instead of a potential COVID-19 hot spot. But tentative answers are coming in now, sometimes at great human cost. 

“The [Black Lives Matter] protests don’t seem to have caused any major health problems, even though the participants often were in close proximity and were frequently yelling, which increases the exhalation of droplets. Demonstrators in Boston were no more likely to test positive afterward than the city’s population as a whole. The rates of positive tests were similarly low among demonstrators in Minneapolis and Seattle. A national study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that overall, coronavirus rates were no higher in counties that were the sites of large protests than those that saw no demonstrations. 

“These findings are far from definitive, however. In Los Angeles, demonstrators had trouble getting testing appointments, which could mean that some cases are unknown and uncounted; in New York City, city officials instructed contact tracers not to ask people who tested positive whether they had attended protests, as though ignorance was going to make people safer… Massive gatherings still aren’t a good idea — some protesters did in fact become infected — but there’s no indication so far that the protests were super-spreader events. Being outdoors almost certainly helped. 

Instead, the most common sources of recent COVID-19 surges have been some of the smallest venues, especially bars. People there are socializing indoors, often in close proximity, talking loudly to be heard over the chatter, alcohol loosening their sense of caution, their masks coming off as they drink or not worn at all. A single Michigan bar has set the stage for more than 150 COVID-19 cases so far. 

“The long-awaited reopening of indoor restaurants also appears to be a contributor. A J.P. Morgan study found that increases in on-site restaurant spending — not takeout — strongly predicted rising COVID-19 rates over the three weeks that followed… Private get-togethers are repeatedly cited by health officials as problematic. Contact tracing in Sacramento found that the biggest sources of recent spread there were graduation parties, funeral gatherings and the like. Caution falls away when we’re with people who are known, loved and trusted… 

“It would be premature to draw too many lessons from the limited data we have at this point. Still, the lectures given by public health officials appear to have been borne out in key ways. Outdoors is clearly less risky than indoors. Social distancing is needed, as are masks, masks, masks. COVID-19 is apolitical and without judgment; it neither rewards protesters nor punishes people who want a drink and some company. It just follows the laws of science. 

“Those are laws we have to understand much better if reopening — and re-reopening — are to work. People need to know which outings and activities minimize risk while providing a semblance of normal life. Most local beaches were closed for the July 4 weekend, but were those beaches, even if crowded, more dangerous than the block parties or backyard barbecues that replaced them? Is a beach significantly more dangerous if it’s crowded? And is that more or less risky than a visit to a salon or a workout at the gym? Do trendy, open office spaces need to return to high-walled cubicles? People are guessing, and guesswork doesn’t make for good public health policy. 

“That’s where contact tracing comes in. The goal of tracing is to reduce the spread of disease by finding and contacting people who may have been exposed so they can be tested. But it also can provide a mountain of data about the relative safety of different activities and environments, just as it did with the private celebrations in Sacramento. Some tracing exists, but as with many of the nation’s efforts, it is not nearly robust enough. That would take concerted support in terms of money and policy at the federal level, which so far has been missing… The task is monumental and costly. But gaining a better understanding of how the virus is spreading is key to learning how to live with COVID-19 until the disease is tamed.” 

We also need massive doses of common sense, truth and transparency, vastly more PPE supplies, a reprioritizing of human life over earning money (with concomitant government financial support for those impacted), the depolitization of safe distancing/mask wearing and, most of all, for people who think that it is their right to move freely about without masks even in hot spots to accept responsibility for their actions… and their potential to kill or infect others. There is no constitutional right to move through society freely without personal responsibility… or drunk and reckless driving would be legal. We do not need is to avoid coordinating pandemic responses on a global level. Everybody loses when the US leaves the World Health Organization. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and as long as any area of the United States is at risk from unchecked increases in infection rates (36 states as of this writing), we are all at risk!