The View from Right Field

The Donald Trump Default

With all of the difficult issues around today, how long should we shutdown (assuming we should shut down at all), when should we re-open (assuming we should be re-opening), what should we do about China, when is baseball going to start, a lot of people seem to find it great to have Donald Trump around.  Because once he talks or tweets (or whatever else he does), many people know what they believe.  If President Trump says we should do X, then some part of the population will immediately want to do X, while another part of the population will immediately want to not do X.  Obviously, given President Trump’s proclivity to say contradictory things from one day to the next (or even on the same day), this makes it hard for some people, since they have to switch their positions frequently, too.  Either to stay on his side – or on the other side.  But it appears many of them figure that if he can do it, so can they.

First Pibb Zero. Now Diet Rite. This Pandemic Is Getting Personal.

I have tried to be reasonable and understanding about the coronavirus, aka Covid-19, aka “this Pandemic.”  First, they shut down baseball.  Then, our trip to Germany was cancelled.  Next, we couldn’t see our grandson in person.  (FaceTime is great, but playing with the little guy in person is so much better.  You just want to hug him.)  Church services were cancelled.  And not going to our condo in Michigan means we have more time for yard work at home.  I have handled all of these pretty well (though the last one has been making me look forward to rainy days).

But now, it’s just about the last straw.  First it was Pibb Zero.  With Coca Cola deciding to focus on their main brands during the pandemic (because of production and distribution issues, I guess), Pibb Zero has disappeared from the stores.¹ 

China, WHO, and the Next Time

In a conversation with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs last week, former New Zealand Prime Minister and former head of the United Nations Development Programme¹ Helen Clark said that, at the multilateral level, the world has not risen to the challenge of Covid-19.  She noted that, in 2014, the UN Security Council declared a public health emergency with respect to Ebola, but this time, the Security Council has done nothing.  As to why, she says it relates to the toxic nature of international politics.

Which is true.  But it seems to me the reason is more specific than that.  While Donald Trump does not believe in multilateral organizations and is, in my opinion, a terrible president in terms of foreign relations,² the biggest reason there has been no coordinated international action on Covid-19 is simple.  It’s China.  It appears China screwed up big time on Covid-19.  The best information is that Covid-19 started in Wuhan, China.  But for some reason China did not get on top of it right away (or at least didn’t do enough).  There are a number of possible reasons (and there needs to be an investigation), but regardless of the reason(s), at this point it looks like China had a chance to stop or contain this virus before it spread.  But it didn’t, and now it’s killing people all over the world.³  And the problem with a coordinated international response, from China’s part of view, is that part of such a response would be an investigation that would make China’s failings more difficult to hide.

Figure Out How We Will Vote in November – Now!

How are we going to vote in November?  No, not who are we going to vote for.  Rather, what is the actual process of voting going to be?  Wisconsin had a disaster of an election in April.  The Democratic governor said he didn’t have authority to change the election date, but he waited until the week before the election to call the Republican-led legislature into special session – twice.   But the legislature and governor couldn’t agree on anything, and the legislature adjourned.  At that point, on the day before the election, the governor tried to delay in-person voting until June.  Republicans appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which said the governor didn’t have the power to delay the election,¹ so voting went ahead on Tuesday.  At that point, things were so messed up there were only five polling places in the entire city of Milwaukee.  Stupid, just stupid.  (See here and here.)

While we can’t know for sure, there is a fair chance that in-person voting could be a problem for at least a significant portion of the population in November.  But even if it turns out that it isn’t, we need plan ahead.  Something we haven’t been doing, so far.

Less "No" and More Honest Hope

Peggy Noonan wrote an excellent article in Saturday’s The Wall Street Journal on what we need in this coronavirus world we are living in.  Every day brings more bad news.  And instead of our leaders knuckling down and doing their jobs, they spend too much of their time complaining about what other politicians are or aren’t doing.  Instead of talking about how we get out of this, they focus on all the reasons we can’t. 

Ms. Noonan concludes her article with these thoughts:

“I want to get back to the national morale.  All these dreadful economic numbers – you can’t let people sink into defeatism.  You can’t let them think there is no hope, or that things in the future are just going to be bad.  They are Americans, they know how to suffer ….  But they’re like the pioneers, they have to be able to believe while they’re on the long trek that there’s some fertile area around the next bend, or the one after that. …

Bad Sprawl. Good Sprawl.

If we are going to cut our carbon emissions, to save the planet, we are told we need more housing density and more mass transit, and we need fewer single-family homes and fewer automobiles.  But then came Covid-19, and the requirement to socially distance.  Which is really hard in crowded cities and on jammed buses and subways.

If you are an essential worker who has to go to work, what better way to do it than in a car – by yourself.¹  Sheltering at home is easier in a single-family house than a one-bedroom, 600-square-foot apartment (with a couple of roommates).  If you want to take a walk, to get some exercise, what’s better: a neighborhood of houses built on 35- or 50-foot lots or a neighborhood of apartment buildings with 35 floors?

Disappearance of Physical Cash Is Great – Or Is It?

In an opinion piece in yesterday’s Financial Times,¹ Gary Cohn, a former director of the National Economic Council under President Trump, said that, with coins and bills being potential carriers of Covid-19, he has stopped using cash, and he supports the idea of the US Federal Reserve creating “digital dollar accounts and wallets for all citizens.”

Mr. Cohn sees all kinds of advantages to such digital wallets, in addition to those that are Covid-19-related.  Tax-avoiding black-market sales of cannabis could be effectively stopped.  Digital wallets would have made it easier for the government to send stimulus payments directly to individuals.  While Mr. Cohn admits there are privacy implications to the government having access to peoples’ digital wallets, he likes “how much quicker and efficient the tax process could be.”

Bailouts, Turnabouts, Fair Play – And a Progressive State Income Tax

In today’s Chicago Tribune, Eric Zorn supports Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s argument that Illinois should get a bail out from the federal government because, in Governor Pritzker’s words, “we pay more in federal taxes in Illinois than we get back from the federal government.”  Mr. Zorn acknowledges that federal spending is affected by things like higher poverty rates in other states, but eventually he comes back to the view that other states should bail out Illinois “[b]ecause we’ve been bailing them out for years.”

I wonder, though, why we should be looking at this on the basis of state boundaries.  Perhaps we should look at it on a county basis.  Maybe Cook County should get back from the federal government what it pays in. 

Preparing for the “Next” #Coronavirus – Whatever It Is. But Will We?

I was originally going to post about a book that Andrew Krepinevich wrote in 2009: 7 Deadly Scenarios: A Military Futurist Explores War in the 21st Century.  Chapter 3 of the book was entitled “Pandemic.”  While the cause of the pandemic in Mr. Krepinevich’s book was a variation on influenza, instead of a coronavirus, many of the effects were eerily the same:

“The summer movie season has been washed away by the government’s ban on public gatherings.  Meanwhile, baseball … is experiencing a ‘silent season.’  Major league baseball tried for a few days to play televised games in empty stadiums, then cancelled its schedule when several players came down with pandemic influenza ….”¹

“In many parts of the country hospitals are collapsing under the strain, as ever greater numbers of Americans succumb to the virus.”²

“[D]eveloping a vaccine to deal with a novel strain of influenza can take nearly a year.”³

Lots of People Are Working from Home. Why Not Congress?

Business people all over the country are working from home.  With phone calls, email, Zoom meetings, etc., business is being done from Tallahassee to Wenatchee, Austin to Boston.  So why is Congress shut down?  Leaders are passing bills by unanimous consent with just a few members on the floor (and nobody objecting).  What I don’t understand is why Congress can’t work electronically.  The Supreme Court is hearing arguments by phone.  Why can’t Congress do something like that?

Off-site voting may not be allowed under the current rules of the House and Senate, but if that’s so, they need to get together and change the rules – and then go home, if they want to,¹ and start working.  If off-site voting is not be something you want to do forever, then change the rules to allow it for six months, with the old rules coming back into force automatically at the end of the six-month period.