America, Coronavirus, History, Public Health, Trump
America Behind the World
by JOHN ADAMS •
Paul Waldman looks at covid-19 cases from Monday, 7.13.20:
Let’s begin with the situation in other countries. Here are new case totals from Monday for a few of our peer countries:
France: 580
UK: 564
Spain: 546
Germany: 365
Canada: 299
Japan: 259
Italy: 200
Australia: 158
South Korea: 52And the United States? 55,300.
These nine advanced countries have saved lives, preserved health, and conserved resources by orders of magnitude more than America. This is easily among the worst public-health failures in our history.
City, Coronavirus, Local Government, Public Health, Radio, University
Radio Interview on UW-Whitewater’s Plans for the Fall
by JOHN ADAMS •
Yesterday, UW-Whitewater’s Chancellor, Dr. Dwight Watson, and Communications Director, Jeff Angileri, gave a radio interview with WCLO about their plans for a fall semester during a pandemic.
The interview is available online as an audio file.
A few remarks:
A College Town. There’s a difference between a town with a college and a college town, where the college significantly affects life in the community. Whitewater is the latter, and to my mind that’s a good environment. There are many happy aspects of living in a college town.
A Pandemic’s Particular Burden on a College Town. When a city is mostly comprised of its college-student population, as Whitewater is, the interaction with students will necessarily become a source of community focus. Whenever a single demographic is large, it draws attention.
Divisions. Unfortunately, the rest of Whitewater has never been of one mind about her college-age demographic – town & gown issues have plagued the city for as long as there has been a relatively large campus.
The UW System. More each year, the direction of individual campuses is set at the System level. Whether Chancellor Watson would have brought his campus back if he had independence one will never know – no UW System chancellor has that level of autonomy.
It’s in this context that UW-Whitewater’s chancellor gave his interview.
Virtual but on Campus. Watson’s right to prioritize safety, and there’s no reason to doubt his sincerity. There is reason, however, to doubt his claim that even virtual learners should be on campus, in dorms. (Audio, 30:00.)
While it’s easy to see how having students on campus makes money for university housing services and private landlords, the claim that UW-Whitewater students would be so distracted at home that they must be on campus is simply incredible. It’s unlikely they’re so attention-challenged as Watson has heard, and if so they are as likely to be distracted by on-campus students and away-from-home activities as by home life.
Relying on Whitewater for Conduct-Monitoring. Success of the UW-Whitewater plan relies, as Watson concedes, on compliance when students leave the campus. (Audio, 33:40.)
Residents in the Whitewater area are regrettably divided on the seriousness of this pandemic, and even whether precautions like masks are necessary. Months after this pandemic began, some residents still insist it’s a hoax, spread false claims about masks, or advance ludicrous, deluded theories that all one needs against the coronavirus is an attitude of defiance.
Every last employee of the City of Whitewater, advancing a science-based view, would yet not be enough to monitor and assure public-health compliance of thousands (students or non-students) during this pandemic. Whitewater is too small, and the obstinacy of some is too great.
It’s a shame – truly – that college-town Whitewater is divided over a matter of basic science, but she is. Too much time this last decade has been spent on grandiose aspirations for Whitewater as “beacon for business and leisure in the state of Wisconsin” (yes, really) and not enough addressing fundamental misconceptions about economics, politics, or even (as it turns out) science.
It’s possible – although greatly improbable – that this pandemic will prove mild in the fall. It’s nearly certain that whatever plans Whitewater’s chancellor advances, he’s doing so in reliance on a broader community that is too small and sadly too divided to assure public-health success.
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 7.15.20
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with afternoon showers and a high of seventy-nine. Sunrise is 5:31 AM and sunset 8:30 PM, for 14h 59m 27s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 26.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Parks & Recreation Board meets via audiovisual conferencing at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1815, Napoleon surrenders aboard HMS Bellerophon.
Recommended for reading in full —
Pema Levy reports Jeff Sessions Ends His Political Career in a Blaze of Racism:
Jeff Sessions’ political career came to an end on Tuesday. Sessions had sought to recapture the Senate seat he held for 20 years before becoming President Donald Trump’s attorney general. In his stead, Alabama Republicans nominated Tommy Tuberville, a former college football coach. The former prosecutor, senator, and attorney general went out the same way he entered the national stage more than three decades ago: in a blaze of racism.
Racism defined Sessions’ entire career, but racism is not what ended it. In fact, it was Trump’s patronage that put Sessions and the white grievance he long embodied at the center of American politics. Sessions’ political career is over now because he realized too late that Trumpism isn’t just about the worldview; it’s also about Trump himself, a cult of loyalty that Sessions ran afoul of before it was clear how easily Trump cast people aside.
Sessions was the first senator to endorse Trump in 2016, and he served as a trusted campaign adviser. The attorney general position was his reward—the zenith of his career where he could finally make his reactionary fever dreams a reality. Sessions got to work rolling back federal oversight of police departments, orchestrating Trump’s family separation policy at the border, targeting sanctuary cities, deporting asylum seekers, and supporting voter suppression schemes.
….
Here lies the political career of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, named for two confederate heroes like his father and grandfather before him—the only monument to the Confederacy that Trump was eager to remove.
Philip Bump writes A month later, Pence’s wildly optimistic view of the pandemic has proved almost entirely wrong:
Even at the time it was written, the fundamental proposition offered by Vice President Pence in his Wall Street Journal piece on June 16 was dubious. No second wave of the coronavirus pandemic was emerging, he wrote — an obviously true claim only because the first wave had not ended.
But that wasn’t Pence’s point. His point was that the numbers showed that the United States had the pandemic well in hand and that there was no reason to believe anything but that things would keep getting better. He dropped a number of data points about case growth, test rates and deaths to reinforce his optimistic point.
Nearly a month later, Pence has been proved wrong in nearly every way on every bit of data he offered. The vice president, as the head of the government’s response to the pandemic, presented a case for his own success that was shown to be inaccurate often only days after his article was published.
Rosie the Riveters of Today are Fighting COVID:
more >>Republicans, Trump
Republican Voters Against Trump: Kevin from Arizona
by JOHN ADAMS •
While not a member of a political party, one can still sympathize with – and support – the many thousands of additional Republicans each day who reject Trumpism.
“…and when you put all that together, I think this is a man who must, must be removed by voters in November from governing our country. Otherwise I do not know what our country will become.”
Check out hundreds of stories of anti-Trump Republican voters at https://rvat.org
If you’d like to tell your story, submit a video at https://rvat.org/tell-your-story
To get involved in the project, go to https://rvat.org/get-involved
To help support their mission, go to https://rvat.org/donate
City, Local Government, Planning
Whitewater Planning Commission, 7.13.20: Almost Normal
by JOHN ADAMS •
Whitewater’s Planning Commission met on Monday evening, 7.13.20. A video of the full meeting is embedded above. (See also, 7.13.20 meeting agenda.)
A few remarks:
Recording. The best record of a meeting is a recording. A recording is more thorough than mere notes (although they must be submitted, too). A recording is, needless to say, far better than an incumbent politician’s summary of a session’s events.
Election of Commission Officers. The meeting began with an election of officers, itself a conventional matter, but also a sign of how few people are willing to serve on the commission. (Item 3, Video 1:12 – 6:57)
A Sensibly Quick Approval. The commission approved an applicant’s ordinary request for lot division without unnecessary or tedious discussion. Simple matters ask for nothing more than simple solutions. (Item 4, Video 6:58 – 13:25.)
A New Sign Ordinance. In the Information Items portion of the meeting, Whitewater’s city planner mentioned the release of an upcoming draft of a proposed sign ordinance. Sign regulations have bedeviled – regrettably, unnecessarily, laughably – this city for years. A simple, plain, accommodating, and intelligible policy would do the city some good (or at least no harm). Regulations on signs don’t make communities richer; communities that are richer tend toward regulations on signs. Wealth shapes expectations. Whitewater is not a wealthy community, and she’ll not lift herself to prosperity by fussing over sign dimensions, etc. (Item 5a, Video 13:43 – 16:36.)
Almost Normal. One can say that this meeting was almost normal, but there’s no normal in conditions of a pandemic. This commission’s meetings are (for now) staying virtual, as they have been for months.
As a record of the meeting, audiovisual conferencing via the web is as accessible afterward as were the city’s cable broadcasts that were afterward uploaded to the web. There are more arguments than that in favor or in opposition to re-opening, but the course of the ongoing pandemic may soon enough settle some if these arguments.
Coronavirus, Covidiocy, Disinformation, Mendacity, Public Health, Trump
Trump’s Excuses as COVID-19 Cases Continued to Rise
by JOHN ADAMS •
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 7.14.20
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of eighty-three. Sunrise is 5:30 AM and sunset 8:31 PM, for 15h 00m 59s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 35.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater School Board’s Policy Review Committee meets via audiovisual conferencing at 9:30 AM.
On this day in 1960, Jane Goodall arrives at the Gombe Stream Reserve in present-day Tanzania to begin her famous study of chimpanzees in the wild.
Recommended for reading in full —
Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes write The Roger Stone Commutation Is Even More Corrupt Than It Seems:
Stone did, indeed, refuse to provide testimony adverse to Trump. And while his precise relationship to WikiLeaks and Assange was never fully explained, he stood trial for lies to Congress denying his efforts to contact WikiLeaks, and for intimidating another witness who could have contradicted those lies. As the judge in Stone’s case put it: “He was prosecuted for covering up for the President.”
Now, with Trump’s commutation, Stone has received the precise reward Trump dangled at the time his possible testimony was at issue.
“Roger Stone is a victim of the Russia Hoax that the Left and its allies in the media perpetuated for years in an attempt to undermine the Trump Presidency,” the White House said Friday evening. In the White House’s telling, Stone was targeted by out-of-control Mueller prosecutors for mere “process” crimes when their “collusion delusion” fell apart. He was subject to needless humiliation in his arrest, and he did not get a fair trial. “[P]articularly in light of the egregious facts and circumstances surrounding his unfair prosecution, arrest, and trial, the President has determined to commute his sentence. Roger Stone has already suffered greatly. He was treated very unfairly, as were many others in this case. Roger Stone is now a free man!”
Indeed he is. But the story may not be over.
“Time to put Roger Stone in the grand jury to find out what he knows about Trump but would not tell. Commutation can’t stop that,” tweeted Andrew Weissman, one of Mueller’s top prosecutors, following the president’s action.
That’s most unlikely while the Justice Department remains in the hands of Attorney General William Barr. But it’s far from unthinkable should Trump leave office in January. What’s more, the commutation means that the story Mueller tells about potential obstruction vis-a-vis Stone did not end with the activity described by the Mueller report. It is a continuing pattern of conduct up until the present day.
Charles Ornstein and Ash Ngu write No, President Trump, Testing Is Not Causing Case Counts to Rise. The Virus Is Just Spreading Faster:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters on Saturday that testing alone does not account for the increase in COVID-19 cases in his state. “Even with the testing increasing or being flat, the number of people testing positive is accelerating faster than that,” DeSantis said at a briefing at the state Capitol. “You know that’s evidence that there’s transmission within those communities.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott acknowledged Wednesday that the state is experiencing a “massive outbreak” and that additional restrictions may be needed to ensure hospitals don’t become overloaded. On Thursday, he paused the state’s reopening and ordered a halt to elective surgeries in four large counties.
Why Ambulance Rides Are So Expensive In The United States:
more >>Corruption, Crime, Trump
Law and Order
by JOHN ADAMS •
Coronavirus, Covidiocy, Culture, Libertarians, Liberty, Public Health
Individual Responsibility in Conditions of Pandemic
by JOHN ADAMS •
Economist Robert Samuelson, writing Americans are historically unhappy. But there’s a lesson to learn here, observes that
The connecting threads of these pessimistic surveys are the novel coronavirus and its devastating impact on the economy. Nearly everyone is affected in one way or another. There’s a clash between America’s individualistic culture (“You can’t make me wear a mask.”) and the need for a collective response (“If we don’t respond collectively to the pandemic — wearing the masks, practicing social distancing — then the virus will explode and make many more of us worse off.”).
Under the best of conditions, this is not an easy message to convey to the public. We need to surrender some of our individual choice to minimize the damage to us as individuals and as a society. Or, to say the same thing backward, if we insist on maximizing individual choice by refusing to follow the advice of doctors and scientists, then we lose control over our destiny. The resulting sense of helplessness and loss of control are deeply discouraging.
The role for leadership in a situation like this is to persuade most of the public about the nature of the paradox: that we protect individuals better when we act together, rather than asserting an artificial freedom that ultimately harms more of us as individuals. This is, in short, a central reason for having reliable presidential leadership.
Samuelson’s observation about temporary, limited restrictions on individual choice (such as something as easy as wearing a mask, of all things) during a pandemic should not be hard for rational people to accept. Indeed, a libertarian (as I am) should embrace these small-but-helpful restrictions for the sake of the individual movement within marketplace today and for a more readily contained pandemic tomorrow.
Mask-wearing and distancing, as tools of continuing, effective personal transactions, should be obvious, desirable options of first resort. Failing to do so reflects a fundamental ignorance about liberty: all liberty claims involve claims within an ongoing, functioning society; a person alone on a island has no practical liberty claim to make.
Just as people (including libertarians) sensibly wear overcoats in January, they should sensibly wear masks during a pandemic. It’s a sign of debilitating cultural decline that significant numbers within a community cannot see as much.
See also No, Face Coverings Don’t Cause Carbon Dioxide Poisoning. Five Mask Myths Debunked and Coronavirus: ‘Deadly masks’ claims debunked.
City, Local Government, Public Relations
The Declarations of the Moment
by JOHN ADAMS •
When government goes bad – and all human institutions are flawed, and so can & do go bad now and again – its faults are predictable: announcing grandiosely, acting discriminatorily, spending profligately, distributing corruptly, and interfering destructively. (There’s no pleasure in stating the obvious: if government were incapable of these wrongs, then Trump Administration would be far less dangerous.)
At all levels of government, but especially at its local level, the widest range of action is, truly, the simplest action of all, if it should even be an action: mere declaration, mere announcement.
These announcements have significance, but when the government is weak, they’re less significant than when the government is powerful (as is the federal government).
The destructive forces that grip many local communities in the Midwest including Whitewater – stagnation, pandemic, conspiracy theories about the pandemic, recession, racial & ethic biases – have no rhetorical solution.
One could jump quickly at one local declaration or another, but only at the expense of discernment.
Music
Monday Music: Redman, Mehldau, McBride, and Blade, Moe Honk
by JOHN ADAMS •
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 7.13.20
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of eighty-one. Sunrise is 5:29 AM and sunset 8:32 PM, for 15h 02m 28s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 45.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets at 6 PM via audiovisual conferencing.
On this day in 1787, Congress establishes the Northwest Territory, encompassing present day Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, parts of Minnesota, and Wisconsin.
Recommended for reading in full —
Eli Rosenberg reports Workers are pushed to the brink as they continue to wait for delayed unemployment payments:
The issue has spilled back into public view in recent weeks, as thousands of frustrated workers awaiting payments have camped out, sometimes overnight, in front of unemployment offices in states like Oklahoma, Alabama and Kentucky.
The Department of Labor does not track the percentage of unemployment benefits that have been processed, an agency spokeswoman said in an email. The agency did not offer a comment on the issue of delays in processing benefits.
But previously unreleased data compiled by Andrew Stettner, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, illustrates the scope. By the end of May, about 18.8 million out of 33 million claims — 57 percent — had been paid nationwide. That number has steadily improved from 47 percent of paid claims at the end of April and 14 percent at the end of March.
In Wisconsin, where about 13 percent of claims remained unprocessed as of July 7, residents told local reporters that they had waited 10 weeks or longer for their claims to be processed, leaving some on the brink of bankruptcy and eviction. The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development said through a spokesman that the average time from application to payment is 21 days. In Pennsylvania, another 15 percent of claims were still in review as of mid-June.
David Folkenflik reports Fresh Scrutiny For Fox’s Tucker Carlson As Top Writer Quits Over Bigoted Posts:
The revelation that Fox News prime-time star Tucker Carlson’s top writer had posted racist, sexist and homophobic sentiments online for years under a pseudonym has led to renewed scrutiny of Carlson’s own commentaries, which have inspired a series of advertising boycotts.
On Monday, Carlson is set to address the growing controversy, which led to the resignation of the writer, Blake Neff, after questions were raised by CNN’s Oliver Darcy. It also led to a condemnation of Neff’s views by the network’s chief executive.
In an internal memo, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and President and Executive Editor Jay Wallace called the postings “horrific racist, misogynistic and homophobic behavior.” Neff had, among other things, assailed the intelligence of Black Americans, African immigrants and Asian Americans, according to CNN. He also repeatedly demeaned a woman, posting details about her dating life and mocking her on personal terms.
Carlson has publicly cited the importance of the value of Neff’s work on his show and for Carlson’s earlier book. The host has courted criticism repeatedly for severe rhetoric, especially toward people of color, immigrants and women.
Dog Delivers Groceries During COVID-19:
more >>Coronavirus, Covidiocy, Public Health
Brazilian Pres. Bolsonaro defied health guidelines before testing positive for the coronavirus
by JOHN ADAMS •
For months, even as the coronavirus pandemic grew into a debilitating national crisis, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro did everything he could to downplay it. He called on people to return to normal. He waded into crowds of supporters. He repeatedly described it as nothing more than a little flu. Now Brazil is experiencing the world’s second-worst coronavirus outbreak — with 1.8 million infected and 70,000 dead — and one of the latest people to test positive for covid-19 is Bolsonaro himself.
The Washington Post analyzed hundreds of videos and photos of Bolsonaro to retrace his steps in the two weeks before he first reported symptoms on July 5. The visual evidence shows that Bolsonaro not only met with far more people than his official schedule suggests, but that he routinely flouted public health guidelines. He at times wore a mask and maintained a distance of six feet from others. But just as frequently, he met with people without a mask, shook hands and even hugged supporters.
2:18 – June 23: A judge orders Bolsonaro to wear a mask when in public spaces in Brasilia and the surrounding federal district.
4:10 – June 27: Bolsonaro visited the town of Araguari in the state of Minas Gerais. Several photos and videos from the visit show him without a mask interacting with crowds.
5:53 – July 3: One hundred and eight Planalto Palace employees tested positive for the coronavirus, according to Brazil’s General Secretariat.
6:33 – July 4: Bolsonaro attended a July 4 party at the residence of the U.S. ambassador to Brazil. Photos show the two men unmasked, standing shoulder to shoulder.
7:05 – July 7: Bolsonaro held a small news conference to tell the gathered reporters, clustered nearby, that he’d tested positive for the coronavirus. And then he took off his mask.
Bolsonaro is now isolated, but how he got to this point is revealed in the weeks before.