Monthly Archives: March 2020

Fighting the wrong enemy

Posted by on 2020-03-27 No comments

An authoritative critic of the American national security state is Andrew Bacevich, West Point Class of 1969, retired Army Colonel, and historian specializing in international relations, security studies, American foreign policy, and American diplomatic and military history. Bacevich is a Professor Emeritus of International Relations and History at Boston University and President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Bacevich’s essay in TomDispatch yesterday (“America Terrorized”) makes the case that billions, and now trillions, of national treasure have been squandered annually since the 1950’s fighting largely phantom enemies. This may have turned us into a national security juggernaut but our dubious status has cost us our democracy and failed to protect us from all-too-real threats.

Read the whole thing here.

From the 1950s through the 1980s, keeping us safe provided a seemingly adequate justification for maintaining a sprawling military establishment along with a panoply of “intelligence” agencies — the CIA, the DIA, the NRO, the NSA — all engaged in secret activities hidden from public view. From time to time, the scope, prerogatives, and actions of that conglomeration of agencies attracted brief critical attention — the Cuban Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961, the Vietnam War of the 1960s and early 1970s, and the Iran-Contra affair during the presidency of Ronald Reagan being prime examples. Yet at no time did such failures come anywhere close to jeopardizing its existence. […]

Presidents now routinely request and Congress routinely appropriates more than a trillion dollars annually to satisfy the national security state’s supposed needs. Even so, Americans today do not feel safe and, to a degree without precedent, they are being denied the exercise of basic everyday freedoms. Judged by this standard, the apparatus created to keep them safe and free has failed. In the face of a pandemic, nature’s version of an act of true terror, that failure, the consequences of which Americans will suffer through for months to come, should be seen as definitive.

Read the whole thing here.

People or profits

Posted by on 2020-03-24 No comments

The Senate is supposed to reach agreement today on some sort of Coronavirus financial package. There are fundamental disagreements over whether we let families die and slide into even deeper financial ruin while we bail out the travel, hotel, airline, and financial industries; whether we let Trump and Mnuchin access a half trillion dollar slush fund; and what kinds of strings should be attached to corporate bailouts. Both sides have offered their own rescue plans. The Democrat version alone is 1400 pages.

Whether we end up calling it a rescue plan, a stimulus package, a bailout, a lifeline, or a disgrace depends on what we learn later today. Don’t get your hopes up. We live in a county that has always valued the mighty dollar more than human life. Now, this week, today, some are going to face that bitter truth for the first time.

We certainly know what the Republican administration and its Fox News cabinet think. People, at least of the expendable variety, must sacrifice themselve (or have it done to them) through inadequate testing, an absence of virus protection, lack of testing, and privatized healthcare that currently excludes them — just to keep the economy running for the owners.

Three months after the virus was first identified (it’s called COVID-19 because it was discovered in 2019) Americans still have insufficient ventilators, no masks, and almost no testing kits. And there is still no national plan to lock down people at home to minimize fatalities and to keep them financially solvent as the crisis unfolds.

The administration has shown us graphs showing that social distancing may help reduce pressure on hospital admissions. But they haven’t shown us their spreadsheet showing the cost in human lives in one column, and the cost to the economy in another.

Trump failing to keep a safe social distance from Fundamentalists
Trump failing to keep a safe social distance from Fundamentalists

But Republican priorities are pretty clear. What are a few million deaths if casinos can be kept open? Just ask Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, who told FOX News’ Tucker Carlson he’d to worship a golden calf if it saves business — which he confuses for a nation of human beings:

“So, I’m going to be smart, I think all of my fellow grandparents out there are going to be smart. We all wanna live, we wanna live with our grandchildren for as long as we can,” he added. “But the point is, our biggest gift we give to our country and our children and our grandchildren is the legacy of our country.”

Naturally, the President agrees. “Our country wasn’t built to be shut down,” Trump said. “This is not a country that was built for this.”

No, the United States is an all-day-all-night casino in one of Trump’s hotels.

An effective lockdown could go on for months. The Wuhan lockdown lasted seven weeks, and during the 1918 Spanish Flu public gatherings in the United States were banned in some places for as long as six months. When Hong Kong temporarily suspended its lockdown after a few weeks, it experienced a spike in new infections and was forced to lock down citizens again. So we know that keeping people sheltered in place must go on much longer than just two weeks.

But Trump knows better than the scientists. Appearing to confuse the disease’s incubation period with its duration, Trump thinks everything will be over in a couple of weeks. “America will again, and soon, be open for business.” Anthony Fauci, who is the only person in the entire Trump administration with the guts to disagree with his boss publicly, thinks lockdown measures should be of much longer duration. Trump has acknowledged Fauci’s disagreement, but the very stable genius has decided he knows better than the world’s epidemiologists.

This is the sort of cynical, callous, and criminal disregard for human life we have come to expect from Trump and his bobble-headed sycophants in the new Republican Party — the same people who told Americans with a straight face that a national healthcare plan would create Death Panels to determine who gets life-saving health care, and who must, regretfully of course, die. But now Republicans have outed themselves as the ultimate Death Panel. Money talks, and if protecting the public costs too much, then money says: the public is expendable.

By the end of the day we’ll know if Congress votes for preservation of millions of human lives — or the preservation of Capitalism for a second time in just twelve years.

The world, rebooted

Posted by on 2020-03-22 No comments

There are many things a global pandemic ought to make us see with new eyes — what social animals we really are, for one. Now is a good time for us all to insist that we actually live in a society, not just an economy. I’ve heard from and communicated with my friends and neighbors more these last two weeks than at any other time. When these connections are limited, we feel deeply what we take for granted.

Another is the value of our fellow citizens. In a world where the working class doesn’t get enough respect, maybe now we should recognize there is a whole army of “essential workers” keeping the lights on, the stores open, and infrastructure going. It’s not just first responders and medical caregivers who are the real heroes. We all are. We are all indispensable pieces of a whole.

And maybe, too, we ought to reconsider the purpose of government. Our society is not mere scaffolding for Business and Capital, with government there mainly to collect taxes, enforce property rights, and police city streets. There is an essential role for government to play in keeping citizens safe, healthy, and economically secure.

As companies shed workers and lobby [again] for massive economic bailouts, it should be obvious that the market economy is not a machine designed to look out for anyone’s interests but its own. Conversations about the social safety net, basic income, and a government that defends its people in ways besides building walls and bombs must reshape what kind of society we will live in and the quality of lives its citizens can lead.

That is, once the world has been rebooted.

It’s increasingly clear that we also need to take the risks to human life of environmental change and pandemics much more seriously. Deferring action on climate change for 10-20 more years will lead to the same sort of crisis that deferring action on pandemics has created. Google the 2006 TED Talk on global pandemics by Epidemiologist Dr. Larry Brilliant.

About thirteen minutes into the video Brilliant predicts with uncanny accuracy the pandemic we are experiencing today. And he asks for the world to take action to prevent it from happening. But that TED talk was 14 years ago, and today we can see the result of complacency, denial and inaction.

It may be too much to ask — from a nation that voted for “America First” and which does not believe it is truly a part of a world community, doesn’t fully recognize the UN or the legitimacy of international courts, only briefly joined international environmental accords, and which rejects basic science — that we must participate, if not take a leading role, in an international health plan such as the one Dr. Brilliant suggests. But it would be the smart and right and sane thing to do.

We will soon see if the world is capable of saving itself through solidarity, justice and rationality. Unfortunately, centuries of human history present a strong case against it. But what other choice do we have?

Thank you for your service

Posted by on 2020-03-21 No comments

America loves its men in uniform. Policemen and firefighters who responded to 9/11 in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania were celebrated as heroes, as many of them truly were. A generation later, members of the American military — even those who fought a war in the wrong country without ever questioning it — are given preferential boarding, preferential hiring, healthcare, paid leave, and state and municipal stipends. Laws in some states place a greater value on a policeman’s life than on an ordinary citizen. State and federal laws criminalize false claims of having received military honors. Even among those who question American wars most fiercely you hear the familiar “thank you for your service.”

Americans have decided that only a very limited (and mainly weapon-carrying) minority of American “workers” are worthy of our praise. When we attend professional sports events we find them running out on the field in fatigues along with the military flyover. It has become so common for an on-leave service member to surprise his son or daughter at a high school sports event or graduation ceremony that the President of the United States staged one of these heart-warming reunions at his last State of the Union address. Cash and spectacle are rewards for those who do the bidding of the defense industry without asking too many questions.

But America has real heroes — and they have been right under our noses all along.

The global pandemic we find ourselves in today has made it crystal clear that those who continue to deliver the mail, pick up the trash, show up for work at supermarkets, staff the help lines, deliver pizza to the door, care for the sick, keep making meals for school children, look in on their elderly neighbors — we/you are just as integral to the functioning of society as those we have chosen to police us and surround our borders with missiles and barbed wire.

To all Americans now being guided by their better angels, to all who look out for their neighbor, care what kind of world we live in, and to all who put their health on the line during this extraordinary crisis:

Thank you for your service.

ICE detainees worry of being exposed to COVID-19

Posted by on 2020-03-20 No comments

A March 18 complaint from 51 ICE detainees at the Bristol County House of Corrections warns of a potential outbreak of the COVID-19 virus at the Dartmouth, Massachusetts facility because of unhealthy conditions of their confinement. Another 10 detainees did not sign the complaint for fear of retaliation from jail officials, according to a copy of the complaint. Detainees say that at least two potentially infected officers, one who was sent home on March 16, may have exposed an entire wing of ICE detainees to the Coronavirus.

The complaint reads in part:

“The ICE detainees of Unit B of the Bristol Correctional Center, individually and collectively, would like to highlight serious concerns about the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus within the facility of Bristol Correctional Center.

The facility safety conditions and the conditions of its personnel, in light of two recent and separate episodes, have raised the concern into a very serious matter.

Specifically, on March 14, 2020 a Correctional Officer was observed to be symptomatic of the COVID-19 virus during his shift followed by another C.O. on March 16, 2020 that was later on replaced by a colleague.

Two separate and serious episodes recently occurred and have alarmed the entire detainee population of Unit B and prompted a number of detainees to file their own Sick Call / Medical Encounter Request.

Unit B is comprised of sixty-six (66) beds, fifty-seven (57) of them occupied, one of them filled as recently as 24 hours ago…”

The detainees assert that prisoners are held in conditions that almost guarantee that they will become infected: they are housed closer than 6 feet apart; and in groups six times larger than the recommendation of 10 people in proximity at one time.

The complaint asks that detainees be released if they have serious medical conditions or are considered low-risk, or that they be released on bond if they have rescheduled hearings. The complaint also asks that detainees scheduled for deportation be repatriated within five days instead of remaining in dangerous condidtions for an indeterminate period of time.

Copies of the complaint were sent to Immigrations and Custom Enforcement, the Bristol County Sheriff, Correctional Psychiatric Services (the medical vendor), the Massachusetts Department of Health, and the ACLU.

The ICE detainees are appealing to the public for help.

“We are hoping that you will mobilize on our behalf by contacting your local congressman and any and all TV and media outlets. […] We are trapped inside […] and in fear for our lives. Please help!”

Despite prisoner claims that a couple dozen detainees are already showing symptoms of the virus, including coughing, the Sheriff’s media spokesperson, Jonathan Darling, told us on March 20 that there were no illnesses in the ICE wing and that no one was at risk.

Stay safe, stay informed

Posted by on 2020-03-18 No comments

People in the Trump administration like Reagan’s joke: be very afraid when someone says “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” But anyone who remembers government responses to Hurricane Katrina or Hurricane Maria ought to be doubly afraid when it’s a Republican offering the help. Only with the recent appearance of the Trump administration’s apparently only competent public health official, Dr. Anthony Fauci, are we now beginning to get some truth from the White House. There is still a lot of misinformation regarding both the Coronavirus and the government’s response to it.

COVID-19

COVID-19 is the 2019-2022 manifestation of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The virus is most dangerous to people over 70 who are immune-compromised, have existing heart, circulatory, or respiratory problems, and who are habitually exposed to pollutants or do not have reliable medical care. COVID-19 is more deadly than the average flu but nothing like the 1918 Spanish Flu. That said, the 1918 Flu illustrates how a global pandemic unfolds, what helps to save lives, and the sorts of denial and stupidity that kill people.

Some readings on the virus itself:

Effects and Responses

Poor people suffer the greatest during pandemics and the United States stands alone as a nation without a national health care system or universal health care. Worse, Trump fired government global pandemic experts as soon as he came to office. Why? Well, because if Obama thought taking global pandemics seriously was a good idea, well then, it had to be reversed.

The strategy of “shelter in place” or self-quarantine is designed to slow down the transmission of the disease so that the American healthcare ‘system’ is not overwhelmed by too many hospital admissions. The entire United States has 924,000 hospital beds and only 45,000 acute care beds, so we are going to be in deep shit big trouble if too many people are sick at one time, as happened in China, Iran, and Italy. You can show no symptoms and still be a carrier, so it is important — not just for you — but for your grandparents and elderly friends to note expose them to a virus you don’t even know you are carrying.

The death rate in Italy is extremely high — not because Italy has a national healthcare system — but because the average age in Italy is 10 years greater than in the US; the average age of an Italian COVID-19 fatality is 81. So stay at home if you can. For 97.5% of us the virus is survivable. But for the very sick and very elderly, COVID-19 can be a death sentence.

New York expects the number of Coronavirus cases to peak in 45 days, the White House is saying this first wave of the virus may persist “well into July” and German researchers think that the entire course of the virus might repeat the 1918 pattern, taking possibly two years to die out. In some places school is being cancelled until next August or September. People really need to take this thing seriously and devise ways of staying in touch and checking-in with friends and family — without exposing high-risk people.

This is not a two week event. You are going to be bored and inconvenienced and stressed and freaked out for at least a few months.

Despite the science, there has been plenty of stupidity, especially by those who deny the risk to an aging population or who regard the risks as exaggerated or, worse, a plot to smear the president. There are currently several attempts to develop a vaccine, but it’s going to take at least several months to test and produce large-enough quantities to deal with it.

Legislation

The virus will hurt people’s ability to earn a living, stay in their houses, feed their kids, and has already damaged an economic system that loves corporations but is not structured to help human beings. 63% of all Americans are $500 away from financial ruin, and the Coronavirus is going to take that $500 from most. For this reason Democrats have proposed a bill, H.R.6201, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act.

Families First Coronavirus Response Act

This bill responds to the coronavirus outbreak by providing paid sick leave and free coronavirus testing, expanding food assistance and unemployment benefits, and requiring employers to provide additional protections for health care workers.

Specifically, the bill provides FY2020 supplemental appropriations to the Department of Agriculture (USDA) for nutrition and food assistance programs, including

  • the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC);
  • the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP); and
  • nutrition assistance grants for U.S. territories.

The bill also provides FY2020 appropriations to the Department of Health and Human Services for nutrition programs that assist the elderly.

The supplemental appropriations provided by the bill are designated as emergency spending, which is exempt from discretionary spending limits.

The bill modifies USDA food assistance and nutrition programs to

  • allow certain waivers to requirements for the school meal programs,
  • suspend the work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as the food stamp program), and
  • allow states to request waivers to provide certain emergency SNAP benefits.

In addition, the bill requires the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to issue an emergency temporary standard that requires certain employers to develop and implement a comprehensive infectious disease exposure control plan to protect health care workers.

The bill also includes provisions that

  • establish a federal emergency paid leave benefits program to provide payments to employees taking unpaid leave due to the coronavirus outbreak,
  • expand unemployment benefits and provide grants to states for processing and paying claims,
  • require employers to provide paid sick leave to employees,
  • establish requirements for providing coronavirus diagnostic testing at no cost to consumers,
  • treat personal respiratory protective devices as covered countermeasures that are eligible for certain liability protections, and
  • temporarily increase the Medicaid federal medical assistance percentage (FMAP).

Republicans seem less inclined to help the most vulnerable among us, oppose language in the legislation providing help to single-sex families, generally oppose paid sick leave, and seem to be unduly concerned with the airline and travel industries. Senate Speaker Mitch McConnell has told his GOP friends in the Senate to “gag and vote for it anyway.” But McConnell has not yet convinced them. Negotiations drag on.

The limitations of the plan are significant. Even thought the Coronavirus is a global pandemic that will last many months, the Families First bill only provides 10 days of paid sick leave — and only if you are employed with a company with 500 or more employees. The estimated cost of the legislation was originally $750 billion but was negotiated down to $104 billion by timid House Democrats. To provide a little context, Professor Deborah Lucas at MIT’s Sloan School estimates the 2008 financial bailout to Wall Street ended up costing taxpayers $498 billion. The Families First bill is an insignificant gesture that is unlikely to help much in a crisis of this magnitude expected to linger for many months.

Trump’s Economic Bailout

Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have unveiled a separate $850 bailout program for business and Wall Street. The plan was first discussed at a private lunch with Senate Republicans and provides help to small businesses, retailers, hotels and the airline industry, as well as more tax breaks. The airline industry alone will receive $50 billion in aid. The rest of America must be happy with a one-time $1000 check and 10 days of sick leave. When you hear “we’re all in this together” realize that some are in this thing more than others.

Other Legislation

There are a few other pieces of legislation: modifications of the War Powers Act to help manufacturers in yet unspecified ways; rulings on tax filings (April 15 is Tax Day); and the invocation of the Stafford Act, which (among other things) authorizes Alex Azar, the secretary of Health and Human Services, to:

  • Waive laws to enable telehealth services, for remote doctor visits and hospital checkins.
  • Waive certain federal licensing requirements so doctors from other states can provide services
  • Waive requirements that critical-access hospitals limit the number of beds to 25 or the length of stay of 96 hours.
  • Waive a requirement for a three-day hospital stay before transfer to a nursing home.
  • Allow hospitals to bring additional physicians on board and obtain additional office space.
  • Waive rules that severely restrict hospital care of patients within the hospital itself, ensuring that the emergency capacity can be enhanced.
Readings

None of this legislation has yet been signed into law. Stay tuned.

More Spackle, please

Posted by on 2020-03-16 No comments

I watched part of the Biden-Bernie debate list night. Whatever anyone thinks about Democratic Centrists or Democratic Socialists, it’s clear that either of these two would take on a global pandemic with smarter people and more compassion and honesty than the present inhabitant of the White House. And while one might be tempted to think that Trump’s failed response to the pandemic might lead his supporters to doubt him even a little, one would be wrong. Read this and this and this and weep for a nation of so many willful idiots.

I have to admit: I couldn’t watch the whole Bernie-Biden debate. It was disappointing that even a crisis of this magnitude couldn’t move Biden to acknowledge that a national healthcare system covering everyone could have been more than handy this week, and that (going forward) it would be the best long-term response to another pandemic. Instead, Biden seemed comfortable with the idea of sitting in the Situation Room managing a one-time crisis. Of course, after that we’d still have a patchwork healthcare “system” that excludes 80 million people — and be waiting for the next national health emergency.

The 63% of all Americans who would be wiped out financially by a $500 emergency are the same ones likely to lose the little they own during this pandemic because their services providing rides, eldercare, serving tables, or running corner stores and restaurants won’t be needed for several months. I didn’t hear any satisfactory explanations last night of how Capitalism and The Market were going to handle the massive financial damage to these vulnerable people.

Our nation of 330 million people has 400 million guns and 924,000 hospital beds and we may soon find ourselves in the same situation as Italy, which announced yesterday that people over 80 might be denied treatment because there are simply not enough ventilators and hospital beds. As schools close due to the virus, we are forced to acknowledge how much we depend on them to provide a safe place and food for millions of children. And until last week I thought Andrew Yang’s universal basic income was a gimmick. I was wrong: COVID-19 is the best argument seen yet for providing financial stability to families — now that we’re way past hypotheticals.

Progressives keep saying government has a role to play in providing a safety net for real people — not just defense contractors, the oil industry and big agriculture. But most Democrats still think the market economy can handle everything. I wonder if the Coronavirus has made anyone rethink this assumption, even a little. No, dear friends, this week has been a wake-up call. We’ve been patching the cracked walls of the house for far too long. Even though the floor has buckled and we can hear the beams snapping while even bigger cracks appear with greater frequency, the only solution we ever come up with is to buy more Spackle.

Why the hell don’t we just fix the foundation?

Erasure: a False Narrative

Posted by on 2020-03-11 No comments

One of the justifications that supporters of the Dartmouth mascot give for “defending” it is that choosing something else would result in the “erasure” of Native Americans and Native American history. This is a view echoed by one Dartmouth school committee candidate who wrote on her Facebook page: “Our local Aquinnah Wompanoag [sic] Tribe was up against cancel culture.” The candidate’s other platform? “Helping our schools create and maintain a wholesome, safe, environment, […] get beyond race, […] oppose indoctrinating children […] to think a certain way about controversial topics.”

This is in a town that can’t even agree on the wording of an historical sign near a place where indigenous people were sold into slavery.

Part of the problem is the schools themselves. Dartmouth has a woeful track record of teaching indigenous history. One 2020 high school graduate wrote, “In my four years of being an Indian, I only was exposed to the mascot in connection to the white people wearing the uniforms.” Dartmouth School Superintendent Gifford seemed to confirm this, noting that students are taught indigenous history “primarily” in the 3rd grade. One AP History competition called the “Colonial Real Estate Agency Project” involved students trying to “attract more settlers to your region of the colonies […] persuade your European audience to migrate.”

So if indigenous history is not being taught in the schools, then precisely what history is being erased? Are football teams the only way to remember indigenous people? And if a mascot is a stand-in for history education, what is the mascot actually teaching kids?

There were plenty of answers to these questions at a school committee meeting on March 8th.

Three years ago the Dartmouth School Committee voted 3-2 against holding community hearings on the mascot. But the issue refused to go away, partly because of state legislation to restrict native mascots. So the Committee formed a “Diversity subcommittee” to look at curriculum and they threw in the mascot, which otherwise would have suffocated in the thin air of neglect. March 8th was the subcommittee’s best work.

The leadership of the Aquinnah, pressing hard at both school and town level for exclusive representation on indigenous issues and exclusive control over the “Indian” logo, attacked the subcommittee, calling its members “outsiders,” a view echoed by ultraconservatives both within and close to the leadership. It was only thanks to the Committee chair, Dr. Shannon Jenkins, and other level heads that Wampanoag tribes other than the Aquinnah received invitations to be heard.

And was it ever enlightening.

For years we have heard that the mascot “honors” Native Americans. Pushing back on that narrative, Mashpee Wampanoag members Dawn Blake Souza, Shawna Newcomb, and Brian Weeden; Pokanoket Wampanoag council member Megan Page; and Aquinnah Wampanoag member Brad Lopes explained in thoughtful detail why mascots and symbols — even if historically accurate — harm indigenous people nevertheless.

For years we have heard that no one is offended by mascots, that only “woke” crybabies and “outsiders” want to “cancel” the Dartmouth mascot. There was plenty of testimony on March 8th to lay that one to rest.

And for years we have heard that retiring the mascot would “erase” history — a laughable assertion from folks who refuse to acknowledge real erasure: genocide, ethnic cleansing, and enslavement of indigenous (and other) people, some right in our own backyard.

Brad Lopes, who spoke for Aquinnah members opposing mascots, provided a perfect example of why “erasure” is a demonstrably false narrative:

“Yesterday was the three-year anniversary of the ban of mascots in the state of Maine. And the Wabanaki people are still here. They do not need a mascot to represent them. They do not need a symbol. They do not need an image. They are still here. And their culture and history are brought directly into the classroom because of LD.291, which is a state law that requires schools to teach Wabanaki history. That is how you provide some sort of honor to native peoples, some sort of respect, as you will actually form authentic relationships. […] I would encourage you all to move away from any narratives that have to do with “erasure” […] A symbol is not the solution, education is. This is something I want you all to strongly consider.”

David Ehrens is a Dartmouth resident and one of the founding members of The New Bedford Light. The Light is a nonprofit, non-partisan community news organization, and donors. sponsors and founders do not exercise any influence over content.