50 failed states

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke had an op-ed published in the New York Times yesterday.  He says he wants us to run the dang money printer.

States and localities are in desperate need of additional federal intervention before the bulk of the CARES Act funding expires this summer. Budget gaps like the one in New Jersey cannot be closed by austerity alone. Multiply New Jersey’s problems to reflect the experiences of 50 state governments and thousands of local governments and the result, without more help from Congress, could be a significantly worse and protracted recession.

The CARES Act allocated $150 billion to state and local governments. This new aid package must be significantly larger and provide not only assistance for state and local governments but also continued support for the unemployed, investments in public health and aid as needed to stabilize aggregate demand and restore full employment.

As it stands right now, unfortunately, there isn't much to suggest that we're actually going to see the kind of action Bernanke is calling for.  If anything the Trump administration is leaning toward more austerity. Consider the sabotage going on at the Post Office, for example.

The Trump administration has consolidated control over the Postal Service, traditionally an apolitical institution, during the pandemic by making a financial lifeline for the nation’s mail service contingent upon the White House political agenda. President Trump in April called the agency “a joke” and demanded it quadruple package rates before he’d authorize any emergency aid or loans.

The Postal Service’s future needs to be as a low-cost package carrier, industry analysts contend, as parcels make up a growing portion of the agency’s volume and profits, and paper mail volumes continue to decline as coupons and bills increasingly move online. Postal leaders project the agency could run out of money between March and October 2021.

“If this is true, it would be a real concern to customers if service were slowed, especially in light of the fact that the Postal Service may get more rate authority, meaning higher rates, later this year or early next year,” said Art Sackler, manager of the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service, an industry group whose members include Amazon, eBay, Hallmark and other commercial mailers.

“This is framing the U.S. Postal Service, a 245-year-old government agency, and comparing it to its competitors that could conceivably go bankrupt,” said Philip Rubio, a professor of history at North Carolina A&T State University and a former postal worker. “Comparing it to U.S. Steel says exactly that ‘We are a business, not service.’ That’s troubling.”

There are no such thing as public services in the hellworld we've built.  Everything that isn't an all-out grift, just isn't viable.  We've already seen the hostility with which conservatives are attacking public education. This week's threatening demands that schools reopen under dangerous circumstances is only the latest round of that particular gaslighting operation.  Yesterday, Senator Kennedy responded to the pleas for the safety of teachers and students from education professionals by inviting them to "kiss my ass."   Meanwhile, Stephanie Grace picked up on another startling comment from the Vice President during his visit yesterday.

And between congratulating the state for having flattened the curve (before it unflattened) and offering the obligatory paean to LSU football (Coach O was in the house), Pence offered this genuinely shocking statement: “We don’t want CDC guidance to be a reason why people don’t reopen their schools.”

Even if the Centers for Disease Control’s guidance suggests they can’t be reopened safely just yet in some places, and under some circumstances? Really, Mr. VP?

Yes, really, according to the administration’s push to get localities to fall in line with President Donald Trump’s insistence that all is basically well, despite an alarming increase in coronavirus cases in Louisiana and many other states. Pence, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and others said that of course schools would have to be opened safely, but avoided getting into the specifics.

Those specifics, of course, are at the heart of what federal agencies such as the CDC do; assessing risk is a key part of their mission. Does Pence also think we should ignore warnings from the National Hurricane Center if we’d rather not evacuate? Take unproven medications without worrying about side effects? Start smoking, because the Surgeon General can’t tell us what to do?

Apparently, yes, that is precisely the point.  Not only does the Trump administration mean to ignore the advice of CDC, it wants to cut the agency out of the loop entirely.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has ordered hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and send all Covid-19 patient information to a central database in Washington beginning on Wednesday. The move has alarmed health experts who fear the data will be politicized or withheld from the public.

The new instructions were posted recently in a little-noticed document on the Department of Health and Human Services website. From now on, the department — not the C.D.C. — will collect daily reports about the patients that each hospital is treating, the number of available beds and ventilators, and other information vital to tracking the pandemic.

Under the same sort of logic that brought us, "If we didn’t do any testing we would have very few cases,” we now have, if CDC can't give us any advice, then we won't have to follow it.

Yesterday, John Barry wrote that, as cases spike, we are now facing a "second chance" to get the shutdown right.

During the 1918 influenza pandemic, almost every city closed down much of its activity. Fear and caring for sick family members did the rest; absenteeism even in war industries exceeded 50 percent and eviscerated the economy. Many cities reopened too soon and had to close a second time — sometimes a third time — and faced intense resistance. But lives were saved.

Had we done it right the first time, we’d be operating at near 100 percent now, schools would be preparing for a nearly normal school year, football teams would be preparing to practice — and tens of thousands of Americans would not have died.

But getting the response "right" this time would require our leaders to take seriously their roles as stewards of public health and safety.  It would mean extending public services rather than gutting them. It would mean protecting teachers rather than bullying them. And it would mean listening to doctors rather than silencing them. The Trump administration is doing none of that.

Worst of all, despite Benrnake's plea, the Congress is no nearer to offering the states the support they will need to see their people through the economic consequences of a second shutdown. In fact, this week, Republicans there are demanding even more austerity measures as unemployment benefits are set to expire. All the conditions are in place to leave us with 50 failed states grappling with an even bigger pandemic come the end of the year.  Barry closes out his article about the second chance by writing, "we won't get a third."  But from the looks of things, we're going to have to at least hope there is a chance number two and half in there somewhere.

They're like teenagers

Trump called Steve Scalise to ask him if he liked Pence without telling him Pence was listening in on three way... or something. I think this was the plot of a DeGrassi episode once.

Unbeknownst to Scalise when told Trump he thought the then-Indiana governor as a "great guy," Pence was secretly on the line, according to a book out this week that has sent tongues wagging among Washington, D.C. insiders and other politics aficionados.

Didn't matter much since everybody likes everybody, I guess. But also they do spend a lot of time and effort worrying about such things.

It's always the kids' fault

Tyler Bridges has an idea to share with you about what people should and shouldn't be protesting.

Pence and Scalise spent more time in a private session with big donors, including oil company owner Phyllis Taylor, oil pipeline owner James Davison, attorney Fred Heebe and businessmen Alan Franco, Joseph Canizaro and Eddie Rispone.

Trump has caused revulsion among many progressives with his polarizing activities and comments. But only a handful of protesters showed up outside the National WWII Museum.

One reason may have been that the group Take 'Em Down NOLA had already scheduled a march at the same time to demand the removal of additional Jim Crow-era statues in the city, and that event’s organizers decided not to cancel it. About 70 people attended that march.

Stupid kids are doing it wrong, I guess. I don't know what proportion of the local press actually blames groups like Take 'em Down for Trump but I'm willing to bet it's pretty high. 

Meanwhile you've got all these fine upstanding oligarchs like Tayor, Heebe, etc. meeting with Pence and the much venerated Steve Scalise in the shadow of the rising Bollinger Canopy of Peace at one of the many cultural non-profit grifting and money laundering centers that dominate the New Orleans political culture. But the real problem here is some people protested some statues. At least that is what's implied.

It's actually worse if you impeach him

This is a separate question from whether or not he ought to be impeached. There's plenty reason to believe any of the many threads of corruption that constantly spool outward from Trump will lead us to that. We're not quite there yet but it's not hard to see. Of course, it will never happen with a GOP Congress but that's a third question already and we really just started this with a notion to consider one.  That question is, after Trump is removed, will it be worse?  Yes it probably will.

A staff member from Trump’s campaign recalls him mocking Pence’s religiosity. He said that, when people met with Trump after stopping by Pence’s office, Trump would ask them, “Did Mike make you pray?” Two sources also recalled Trump needling Pence about his views on abortion and homosexuality. During a meeting with a legal scholar, Trump belittled Pence’s determination to overturn Roe v. Wade. The legal scholar had said that, if the Supreme Court did so, many states would likely legalize abortion on their own. “You see?” Trump asked Pence. “You’ve wasted all this time and energy on it, and it’s not going to end abortion anyway.” When the conversation turned to gay rights, Trump motioned toward Pence and joked, “Don’t ask that guy—he wants to hang them all!”

Mike Pence's Mission Accomplished

After the 2005 flooding of New Orleans, Pence's Republican Study Committee recommended  we privatize the school system. We did that. It also recommended several other things we decided to try such as .

Eliminate any regulatory barriers and other disincentives that block faith-based and other charitable organizations from engaging in the recovery and reconstruction process

Twelve years later, we see how these policy pursuits compound. 

Fresh Food Factor is run by the local chapter of Volunteers of America, a multimillion-dollar Christian ministry that runs halfway houses, shelters, food banks, drug treatment programs and housing projects nationwide, often with government funding. For right-wing champions of charter schools, such as Betsy DeVos, President Trump's controversial education secretary, Fresh Food Factor would be a shining example for the rest of the country: a religious group serving healthy meals at charter schools that chose to partner with a civic-minded contractor. Democrats would be happy to know that the food service helps schools comply with nutrition standards established by Michelle Obama -- standards that the Trump administration recently scaled back.

Despite its parent organization's name, most Fresh Food Factor workers are not volunteers like me. Employees who cook in the warehouse kitchen or serve students in schools receive wages that start at $9 per hour. Some work full-time, but the food service relies on part-time workers and a smattering of volunteers to fill the gaps. Besides managers and truck drivers, most employees are women of color, the workers commonly called "lunch ladies" who are inseparable from mealtime in public schools. As we wrap dozens of veggie eggrolls in sheets of shiny foil, one part-time kitchen employee tells me that she is not scheduled for enough hours to make ends meet and is looking for additional work, a common story in a local economy built on tourism and low-wage service industry jobs

There's a ripple effect at work. First break up the schools and in doing so break the teachers and their union. In the process you've also broken the support staff and their union as well.  You guys know this story by now, right? The ripples go out into the community at large.

The mass teacher dismissal in New Orleans was reflective of a trend that reached far beyond the classroom. Thousands of jobs that supported Black middle-class people vanished at a time when residents were recovering from an unprecedented natural disaster. Some displaced families have still not returned. In the years since, property values in New Orleans have skyrocketed and working-class neighborhoods have become hipster hotspots, putting increasing pressure on lower-income renters in a gentrifying city.

The few stable middle class jobs that remained in the city were gutted and wages and benefits were depressed by the very same forces that caused the cost of living to blow up and out of reach for those left struggling to make ends meet. Meanwhile, who benefits?

Volunteers of America has long been in the "affordable housing" business, using federal housing grants to construct residential buildings for lower-income, disabled and elderly people. The group's neighborhood development subsidiary in New Orleans, which was created specifically to replace housing post-Katrina, is a nonprofit that has its own for-profit subsidiary for building residences to rent out. Robert Silverman, a professor of urban planning at the University at Buffalo who focuses on the nonprofit sector, said for-profit spinoffs of nonprofit housing initiatives are becoming more common, but profit incentives also raise concerns about "mission drift."

Volunteers of America is considered a church, so it does not have to file federal tax returns, and it remains unclear how top administrators and property developers are paid for their work.

"It's kind of a new trend that has been bubbling up over the past six or seven years, where a nonprofit will have a for-profit subsidiary connected to it," Silverman told Truthout. "Different rules and tax laws apply to each, but they use it as another way to generate revenue [for the parent organization]."

Donald Trump landed in Corpus Christi today to say stupid things on TV.  But Mike Pence is expected to head up development of the administration's recovery policy. We'll take Trump's advice and wait until later to hand out the congratulations on that.  

The beginning of the effort

The Vice President had a few things to say on Monday.

Vice President Mike Pence is stressing that the federal government will support Harvey recovery efforts going forward.

In an interview with Houston radio station KTRH Monday morning, Pence said the federal government will make the resources available to see Texas through rescue operations and recovery.

Pence noted that given the “magnitude of the flooding” that “it will be years coming back.”

The vice president stressed that President Donald Trump has been “continuously engaged” on Harvey, noting that it is still the “beginning of the effort.” He said details of Trump’s visit to Texas will be “forthcoming.”

We can't wait to see what that effort looks like once it really gets rolling.  The good news for Pence is, he's probably already got a template to work with.  He helped put it together after Katrina.

At the time Katrina hit New Orleans, Pence was chairman of the powerful and highly ideological Republican Study Committee (RSC), a caucus of conservative lawmakers. On 13 September 2005 – just 15 days after the levees were breached, and with parts of New Orleans still under water – the RSC convened a fateful meeting at the offices of the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC. Under Pence’s leadership, the group came up with a list of “Pro-Free-Market Ideas for Responding to Hurricane Katrina and High Gas Prices” – 32 pseudo-relief policies in all, each one straight out of the disaster capitalism playbook.

Pence's group recommended the suspension of labor laws and environmental standards, a school voucher scheme, as well as a number of tax breaks and "incentives" benefiting the wealthy contractors and developers who turned a city's misery into profit. You know, standard disaster response type stuff. Some of the worst elements of what we still insist on calling the "recovery" of New Orleans after the flood can be traced back to the opportunism expressed in Pence's response plan. The smaller, whiter, tenuous, unsafe, unhealthy, and somehow unaffordable city we've built in the past 12 years owes much to that "pro-market" neoliberal blueprint.

Today, on the anniversary of the day that set us in motion toward this fate, we look out our windows (we aren't allowed outside) to see conditions reminiscent of, though thankfully not identical to, those of this day in 2005. We look just one state over, though, and find drama and devastation on a scale much more comparable to that in our memory. We also find Mike Pence telling us this is the "beginning of the effort" for recovery there as well.  That is already beginning to look familiar.

Michael Brown is currently on CNBC pushing for flood insurance privatization.

— Niels Lesniewski (@nielslesniewski) August 28, 2017

Also:

As surely as flooding disasters like Hurrricane Harvey are followed by health concerns and homelessness, they’re followed by calls to legalize price-gouging.

And sure enough, the waters were still rising all across the Houston area when the first such calls were heard. They came from conservative economists Tim Worstall of Britain’s Adam Smith Institute, writing in Forbes, and Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute, whose piece appeared on the AEI website and at Newsweek. Both demonstrated the chief flaw of such analyses: They were based on irreproachable textbook economics, and showed no sensitivity whatsoever to how things work on the ground during a major catastrophe.

And this is just the beginning.  No doubt Vice President (for now?) Pence has plenty more in store for the next 12 years or so.

Disaster Capitalism

This is an article published in the Intercept last week by Naomi Klein.

Ten years ago, I published “The Shock Doctrine,” a history of the ways in which crises have been systematically exploited over the last half century to further a radical pro-corporate agenda. The book begins and ends with the response to Hurricane Katrina, because it stands as such a harrowing blueprint for disaster capitalism.

That’s relevant because of the central, if little-recalled role played by the man who is now the U.S. vice president, Mike Pence. At the time Katrina hit New Orleans, Pence was chairman of the powerful and highly ideological Republican Study Committee. On September 13, 2005 — just 14 days after the levees were breached and with parts of New Orleans still underwater — the RSC convened a fateful meeting at the offices of the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.

Under Pence’s leadership, the group came up with a list of “Pro-Free-Market Ideas for Responding to Hurricane Katrina and High Gas Prices” — 32 policies in all, each one straight out of the disaster capitalism playbook.

We are such resilient innovators in New Orleans; always on the cutting edge. Or being cut by it as the case more often has been.   And yet, to hear our local leaders tell it, the past ten years here have been an unmitigated success story.  And sure, the successes they revel in, the dislocation of residents, the privatization of schools, the rampant gentrification have all been big wins for our leaders and their wealthy patrons.  In any case, the city has clearly played a central role in fostering our nation's emerging fascist governing philosophy. 

Anyway here is a statement from MACCNO on the mayor's $40 million French Quarter "security" scheme.

We fail to see what much of this plan has to do with crime reduction at all—rather it looks to be a form of ‘disaster capitalism’, using the fear of crime to force through policies that will be widely unpopular.  We haven’t forgotten, just one year ago, when several businesses used the ‘fear of terrorist attacks’ to justify an attempt to end the 45 year old Royal St. Pedestrian Mall, which would have been devastating to the income of many buskers—some of whom are prominently featured in tourism campaigns.  Despite being included in a ‘safety plan’, we know that limiting amplification by street performers, for instance, will have exactly zero impact on violent crime. 

Today is the last day to vote early

The Louisiana Senate race between Foster Campbell and John Kennedy is the last seat to be decided in the next Congress. It's getting a lot of attention nationwide as frustrated left leaning people all over the country throw money at their angst. 

After making appearances on network news programs and receiving supportive messages from a long roster of celebrities, Louisiana Democrat Foster Campbell has reported collecting $2.5 million in campaign donations between Oct. 20 and Nov. 20 -- more than twice the amount he raised in the entire run-up to the Nov. 8 primary.

A campaign finance report due this week and provided to media by his campaign shows Campbell, who faces Republican John Kennedy in the Dec. 10 runoff for U.S. Senate, still had about $1.4 million in his campaign coffer as of Nov. 20.

Meanwhile Kennedy, still the odds on favorite to win this thing in a walk, has been in Washington where his friend David Vitter has set him up with all the important lobbyists to know. 

Kennedy held two fundraising events in Washington last week. A Nov. 15 luncheon was hosted by the Cornerstone Affairs Group lobbying firm. Three of Cornerstone’s lobbyists were listed as hosts of the event, along with Kirby Political Action Committee – Houston-based Kirby Corp. bills itself as the nation’s premier tank barge operator – and United Egg Producers, an Atlanta-based lobbying firm that represents chicken farmers.

The suggested contribution was $2,500 per political action committee and $1,000 per individual.

Cornerstone, like other lobbying firms, is known for hosting events that can give lobbyists and business interests an entrée if a future issue arises.

“That’s how Washington works,” said Michael Henderson, an LSU professor of communication. “People who want to see certain policies enacted will want access and be connected to people in power. Candidates need resources, and folks are willing to provide those resources. It doesn’t necessarily mean they have John Kennedy in their pocket.”

No, it doesn't necessarily mean they have Kennedy in their pocket, I guess. The Kennedy In Your Pocket novelty key ring is still in production. You know, press a button and Kennedy says something smarm-folksy about guns or weed killer or whatever. Hopefully out by Christmas but they're still figuring out how to fit one button for each of the "400 ways" to cut the state budget.

Meanwhile Vice President Elect Mike Pence is flying in to New Orleans today to raise..um... enthusiasm (?) for Kennedy.   For whatever reason, the Trump-Pence people like to hold rallies at Lakefront Airport.  Trump's campaign event there earlier this year was rather exciting.

Anyway, it sure would have been fun to have a Senate debate or two this week. But, you can see the candidates (particularly Kennedy) have had other stuff to do, apparently. Stephanie Grace thinks we should be insulted.

The final weeks of the Senate race could have featured four separate showdowns between the Republican state treasurer and his runoff opponent, Democratic Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell, but none came to be. Kennedy declined an invitation to appear jointly before the Press Club of Baton Rouge, and three planned television debates were canceled when Kennedy agreed to attend one, Campbell another and negotiations over the third broke down when Kennedy refused to allow a live audience and Campbell refused to proceed without one.

The losers are those voters who still want to get a better sense of the man they'll soon send to Washington. Granted, that's not all of them, or most, or perhaps even more than a small subsample. Those who want to be more engaged, though, deserve more respect and consideration from the candidates than this sad state of affairs suggests.

We agree!  For what it's worth, we did make an effort to rectify this sad state of events by asking both candidates to appear on the fake radio show with us.  Only one response so far, though.

.@HunkerDowncast I would love to be on the podcast! Email press@fostercampbell2016.com to arrange? Thanks.

— Foster Campbell (@CampbellforLa) December 1, 2016

Kennedy still ducking. I wonder if we should call Cornerstone to see if they can help.

Normcore wars

Oh isn't it so quaint how plain and mild the VP candidates are. Except actually both of them are horrible people running on the tickets of indefensible monsters.

While Trump has favored isolationist rhetoric, both  running mates sounded distinctly neocon themes in the context of the Middle East. Lee Fang noted that “Mike Pence broke in a big way with the top of his ticket on foreign policy during the debate, declaring that his administration would be prepared to ‘strike military targets of the Assad regime.'” Zaid Jilani pointed out that Pence and Kaine “surprisingly agreed on establishing ‘safe zones’ in Syria for beleaguered civilians,” while both also “failed to mention the troop commitments such zones would take to defend.”

Kaine and Pence also agreed on some domestic issues. Alice Speri wrote about how they both enthusiastically support community policing because “It sounds great. It means basically nothing.”

We noted that, in a debate that barely focused on the two vice presidential candidates themselves at all, Kaine ended up somehow straddling some wide moral chasms: He repeatedly noted his missionary work in Honduras, while ducking Hillary Clinton’s warm relations with military coup leaders there and their U.S. enablers; he spoke about carrying out executions even though it violated his personal convictions.

Pence probably "won" the debate in the useless, perverted sense that we tend to score such things.  He needled Kaine's dorky, practiced one liners. He lied freely and assuredly while Kaine failed to seriously challenge him.  He even got to ramble on for an extended period about how his faith informs his extremely disturbing anti-abortion rights position  without facing a rebuttal from the compromised and ineffectual Kaine. 

Not that any of this matters. Most people didn't watch. And the thing most people who did even remember about it is a jokey hashtag. America's two dads can now be safely returned to their storage containers. Only a month of this depressing election to go. Hang in there.

Good Night, America!

Don't mind us. Just making it great again.

uhh... pic.twitter.com/cU8T1mRMf5

— BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) July 21, 2016