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I’ve heard it said that out of bad, often comes some good.  You know… that “silver lining” thing. 

This global pandemic may just be such a case.  The private sector is doing a lot, going above and beyond, to help keep the larger society afloat.  They are sewing masks and other supplies to help out the medical community.  Yesterday, I saw on TV© where a house painter had a rather large supply of those really good N95 masks that he wanted to donate.  Thank you for your kindness and generosity, sir, whoever you are.  You lift my spirits. :)  Gov. Cuomo of NY also said yesterday that masks that normally cost .85cents ea. are now being charged at $4.ea.  IOW, price gouging.  Yes, I’m talking to you, you bastards, whoever you are. :(

[B/P spiking.  Breathing, breathing.]

[OK, I’m ready again.  Back to this OP.] 

I’ve often thought that maybe one thing that can bring people closer together is a shared working experience and a striving toward common goals.  Since we’d have to start somewhere (here in the U.S.), I had previously advocated for some kind of mandatory community service; say 1-year of paid service after high school.  That would be one way to force an interface between our melting pot of cultural/societal differences.  Anyway…

Though this pandemic sure wouldn’t be my “challenge of choice” as a way to bring us together, that same kind of shared cultural comradely seems to be happening now.  No time for xenophobia or homophobia.  Let’s just “get the job done” and hopefully learn something (a lot!) from it.

This led me to wonder, what kind of “good” is coming out of this very “bad” situation?  I can think of two things at the moment:

-Communities working together (this has a whole subset of activities)

-Future pandemic preparedness (this has a whole subset of activities)

What else?

Are the rich responsible for climate change?

The top 10 percent consumes 20 times more energy than the bottom 10 percent.

Commenters often complain that the root of our problem is overpopulation, and we keep responding with data from a 2015 Oxfam report that concluded that 10 percent of the world's population is responsible for 50 percent of total lifestyle carbon emissions.

Now a new study confirms it, finding "extreme disparity in the use of energy among richer and poorer people - both within countries and between them." Much of the inequality is due to transportation; researchers found that the top ten percent of consumers used 187 times as much vehicle fuel energy as the bottom ten percent, mostly on cars and holidays. According to the study's lead author, Yannick Oswald, quoted in a University of Leeds press release,

Transport-related consumption categories are among the least equal. Without reducing the energy demand of these services, either through frequent-flyer levies, promoting public transport and limiting private vehicle use, or alternative technology such as electric vehicles, the study suggests that as incomes and wealth improve, our fossil fuel consumption in transport will skyrocket.

It's all about the cars and planes; the rich may be heating bigger houses, but that 10 percent only consumes a third of the heating fuels. The study was written before the current crisis which might change a few things, but "the authors warn that without reductions in consumption and significant policy interventions, by 2050 energy footprints could double from what they were in 2011, even if energy efficiency improves." The authors do have some recommendations:

Different categories require different forms of action: energy-intensive consumption, such as flying and driving, which mostly occurs at high-incomes, could be regulated through energy taxes, for instance, while the energy footprint of heating and electricity can be reduced by massive-scale public investment programmes in housing retrofit.

The report is pretty blunt, which is why the BBC provocatively titled their story, Climate change: The rich are to blame, international study finds. It quotes another Professor who says "this study tells relatively wealthy people like us what we don’t want to hear."

The problem with the BBC's title is the definition of "rich". Many tend to think of it as the one percent. But the study talks about the top ten percent. That's almost all of us in developed countries, almost anyone who has a car or takes a vacation or owns a home. Professor Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre gets this:

The climate issue is framed by us high emitters – the politicians, business people, journalists, academics. When we say there’s no appetite for higher taxes on flying, we mean WE don’t want to fly less. The same is true about our cars and the size our homes. We have convinced ourselves that our lives are normal, yet the numbers tell a very different story.

 Basically, if you look at the OXFAM data, the rich aren't different from you and me, the rich ARE you and me. The really rich are off the scale, but the average American is still emitting more than 15 tonnes of CO2 per capita, and that's from our cars and our vacations and our single-family houses. Of course, at over 50 tonnes, the top ten percent of Americans (those who, according to Investopedia, earn more than $118,400) are looking awfully tasty.

https://www.treehugger.com/economics/are-rich-responsible-climate-change.html

Some Photos from a Walk in the Neighborhood

It's a nice day and we walk on Saturdays and Sundays. We walked the neighborhood today because we haven't done that in a while and our regular walking places are closed to the public.

The San Diego airport is almost deserted - it was so strange and quiet












A WWII  era Navy training ship, USS Recruit, at 
the end of the Nimitz walking bridge

Written In Growing Anger: The Coronavirus Blame Game

The pain is starting

This morning when the radio alarm fired up at 6 am as usual, I listened to stories of Californians who lived on the edge before losing jobs and/or getting evicted from their homes. The state passed a law to block evictions, but it came too late for at least some people. The stories included details of how these people work one, two or three jobs to just barely break even, or for a few, start to put a few dollars in savings. One woman who worked three jobs had accumulated $2,000 in savings. She lost all three jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic and statewide social lockdown here in California. After the $2,000 is gone, she will run out of food and stop paying rent for lack of income. The other stories were equally heart breaking.

This wasn't their fault. They were working hard and trying their best. They were deceived and betrayed by incompetent federal level leadership.

Grossly incompetent leadership claims brilliant competence

A discussion I posed here on March 17, Coronavirus Update 3: We Still Fly Blind, But at Least Trump Seems to be Awake Now, noted that it was on March 16, 2020 that our president appeared to finally take the coronavirus pandemic seriously for the first time. By then, it was too late to proactively respond to the virus. America finally started reacting in serious ways.

As one commenter noted in the discussion here yesterday, Some Personal Thoughts on Various Things, the president fired the head of the US pandemic response team in 2018. She was fired one day after publicly stating that the US was unprepared for a pandemic. In the 5 minute segment below, commentator Fareed Zakaria describes the general level of incompetence of the federal pandemic response. Zakaria mentions the firing of the head of the US pandemic response team.

It is undeniable that Trump fired the head of the US pandemic response unit after she publicly said the US was unprepared for a pandemic. That firing directly reflects Trump’s belief that telling the public inconvenient truths is disloyal and will result in firing the offender. In terms of federal governance, Trump values deceit and blind loyalty far more than he values truth or service to the public interest. There is no other plausible way to see this other than as staggering incompetence by a vindictive, chronic liar president and the team of incompetent enablers he has surrounded himself with.

But to be fair, the president recently trotted a real scientist or two out to speak to the public about the situation based on science and reality instead of self-serving, boastful rhetoric that was previously mostly lies and deceit, e.g., 'this is Obama's fault’, 'we’ve done the best job ever’, etc.

Yesterday’s discussion mentioned that some members of congress from both corrupt parties sold some or most of their stock holding before the stock market crashed in February. They had been warned in secret by the CIA that the coronavirus pandemic would lead to severe economic consequences. The reaction of these fine pillars of the community and members of the US congress? Sell their stock but don't warn the public about what's coming. Again, self-interest trumps the public interest in the now defunct but still corrupt relic called America’s two-party, pay-to-play political system.

One can see why many Americans are not only walking away from both parties. Some are also seriously questioning the merit, or lack thereof, of for-profit capitalism, for-profit governance, a grossly overpriced for-profit health care system, and even democracy itself. Is that reassessment of our situation unfair or unwarranted? I don’t think so.

Also worth noting is the fact that some places such as South Korea were able to deal with the pandemic without the massive economic and social pain and loss that America is going to experience. It if fair to believe that had the federal response been proactive and competent from the beginning, American could have been spared much or most of the pain and loss that is to come.

Apportioning blame

Who, if anyone is to blame? What portion of blame should they get? What is fair and reasonable? Is it counterproductive or stupid to even think about apportioning blame now while the disaster in still unfolding?

One way to analyze this: In my opinion, the president (1) bears much blame for the failures here. His administration (2) is also partly responsible for being unable to make the president see reality for what it was before it was too late. People should not be left off the hook just because they were hired to be lickspittle yes people unwilling to speak truth to a power who refuses to accept or even hear truth. People who voted for the president in 2016 and still support him (3) cannot be ignored and share some blame. That said but group 3 can be forgiven for not knowing that the president would wind up firing all the competence around him and replacing that with licksptittles. I sure didn’t see that coming in 2016. And what about people who opposed the president from the start and still oppose him (4), e.g., people like me? Group 4 includes some who put corrupt, spineless Trump Party enablers in congress. Congress (5) is not without blame here either. Neither is the hyper-expensive, for-profit US health system (6). Neither is the for-profit US business sector(7). Neither is the heavily tax-sheltered and subsidized American religious sector (8). Neither is everyone else not in groups 1-8, and that includes non-voters (9). Here is blame could be apportioned among those nine groups:

Group 1 - Trump: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60% responsible (the buck stops at the top)
Group 2 - Trump lickspittles: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7% responsible 
Group 3 - Trump voters and supporters:  . . . . . 6% responsible 
Group 4 - Trump opponents: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1% responsible
Group 5 - Congress: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8% responsible
Group 6 - US for-profit health care: . . . . . . . . . 5% responsible
Group 7 - US for-profit business sector: . . . . . . 5% responsible
Group 8 - US religion: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6% responsible
Group 9 - everyone else: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2% responsible 

Is that fair and reasonable?

Is it counterproductive or stupid to even think about apportioning blame now while the disaster in still unfolding?

Can a competent response that is too late negate the earlier failures?

Some Personal Thoughts on Various Things

A water lilly

This virus business uncertainty is personally disorienting to a non-trivial extent. So much is flying under the radar that many things our federal government has done or is doing is getting too little public attention. Much MAGA!! is going on right under our noses.

Small things

A conversation I had with a more informed and intelligent mind than mine a few days ago, told me that the current issue of Car and Driver magazine reports that a 1990s Newt Gingrich law, named to imply that the data of people who give personal information the law states required would protect people's information required to get a driver’s license, actually made it legal to do the opposite. The law was deceptively and intentionally named something like “Protection of Driver’s Privacy Act.” That law claimed to protect the rights of states to sell driver’s personal information to private entities. In fact, what Newt did to us legalized states to sell sells driver personal data to any dirtbag or dipstick on planet Earth. Thank you Newt and 1990s republicans (now Trump Party).

So what? If I recall the conversation correctly, the state of Florida sold Florida driver information for $77 million to whoever Newt’s corrupt law allowed. What is really galling is that the state of California sold California drivers out for a puny $56 million (if my memory of the conversation is good). California sold me out cheap. I want my data back. (But of course, it is too late for that -- it has been resold as many times as there were 3rd party buyers for it)

I greatly prefer to not rely on my memory for any fact assertions in my posts here. I much prefer quote directly from original sources, e.g., the Car and Driver magazine article, but measures to deal with the Trump Virus (the TV) has shut the local Barns & Noble store down. I could not buy the magazine and quote directly from it. The TV is responsible for this weakening of honest communications in American society.

Insider trading by members of congress and white collar crime

Multiple sources report that pillar of the community and valiant patriot Senator Richard Burr (R-NC), chairman of the senate Intelligence Committee, sold about $1 million in stock to avoid the hit the TV has had on the stock market. Burr knew that a major stock market collapse was imminent. The New York Times writes:

“On the morning of Feb. 4, Mr. Burr assembled members of the committee in a secure room on Capitol Hill to hear for the first time from intelligence officials about how foreign powers were responding to what the World Health Organization had days earlier declared a global health emergency.

Their warnings were not highly classified or all that specific, drawn largely from diplomatic wires and publicly reported information, according to three people familiar with them. But at a time when the White House was playing down threats from the virus, intelligence officials from the C.I.A. painted an early picture of the outbreak’s geopolitical implications.

The next day, Feb. 13, Mr. Burr sold off 33 different stock holdings, worth a collective $628,000 to $1.7 million, liquidating a large share of his portfolio.

At least four other senators, as well as about two dozen House lawmakers, also sold some of their financial holdings in the same period. Like Mr. Burr, the other senators said they did nothing wrong and were not acting on information unavailable to the general public.”

Powerful democratic senator Dianne Feinstein was one of the traders. So were the valiant patriots James Inhofe, R-OK (climate science denier and God believer), Kelly Loeffler, R-GA, and David Perdue, R-GA. All claim innocence. Are they all innocent? Probably not in the spirit of the law, but probably in the letter of the law. The letter of the law requires proof of intent to commit an illegal criminal act beyond a reasonable doubt.

Why do you think that? Good question. Glad you asked. Here’s why: Smart white collar crooks do not leave a paper trail and rely only on trusted people to help them commit their crimes, usually ones bound by secrecy agreements. I've tried to get this point about plausible deniability across before. In the case of Burr, he claims he acted only on publicly available information, but what he was saying in public contradicted what he was saying in private. Absent contrary tangible (paper) or witness evidence, that is enough to get the crook Burr and his corrupt colleagues in congress off the hook.

From what I can tell, proof of intent to commit an illegal insider trading act beyond a reasonable doubt is impossible in about 99.999% of cases. Not 99.9% (one in a thousand). I estimate 99.999% (one in a hundred thousand) inside traders ever get caught. For example, the last time I looked about 15 years ago, the SEC would not even bother to investigate any single trade that netted less than $100,000 per trade. All crooks had to do was break their trades up into $100,000 increments and almost always avoid investigation and even less common prosecution and even less common conviction. Congress makes damn sure that law enforcement is crippled by limited budgets to enforce laws. That congressional anti-rule of law, pro-thief attitude applies in spades to the IRS which is now so crippled in its law enforcement budget that about $600 billion/year in tax cheating is allowed to go unpunished (the net tax gap is a topic for a different discussion).

In other words, congress and especially the Trump Party (formerly the GOP) is pro-crime and pro-theft by certain white-listed segments of society including members of congress, rich people who support Trump and business owners who support Trump.

And there's this: Burr is asking for an ethics investigation. He should. Now that Trump has neutered ethics in government, Burr is about 99.999% certain to be found pristine and good to go. If Burr asked for a DoJ investigation, it is about 99.9999% certain that he would be found pristine and good to go. After all, attorney general Barr works for Trump and Trump wants to protect his Trump Party supporters in congress so Barr will absolve all of them, except maybe Feinstein since she is a stinking democrat.

Miscellaneous

Sean Hannity denied calling coronavirus a hoax nine days after he called coronavirus a hoax. Lying obviously doesn't faze liars. Lying is legal and that is good enough.

The president fired the head of the US pandemic response unit after she stated publicly in 2018 that the US was not prepared for a pandemic. I suspect that once he heard that, coupled with the fact that she was an Obama invention, he flew into a mindless Trump rage and fired all of them. (don't have the link)

As what is probably part of his ongoing disloyalty purge in the federal government, the president has fired the acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Some insiders see it as a purge of career professionals in a function set up after 9/11 to protect the nation from further attacks. This is more evidence that the president takes his orders from Moscow.

Before the virus outbreak, multiple warnings went ignored: “That scenario, code-named “Crimson Contagion” and imagining an influenza pandemic, was simulated by the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services in a series of exercises that ran from last January to August. The simulation’s sobering results — contained in a draft report dated October 2019 that has not previously been reported — drove home just how underfunded, underprepared and uncoordinated the federal government would be for a life-or-death battle with a virus for which no treatment existed.”

Conclusion

Relax. We’re in SNAFU-FUBAR mode. All is well.

Briefly, Some Perspective

Right now, it can seem like the whole world is coming undone. Between killer viruses, despotic leaders, a questionable economy and a climate on tilt it can be hard to stay optimistic about the future.

We're not in a different place than we are usually. Humans have always existed on the precipice of disaster. It's just that usually we don't notice the danger. We only notice it when life thrusts it into stark relief, like right now.

But for all of this, we have two eventualities - move forward or destroy ourselves.

So far, despite our best efforts, we have yet to destroy ourselves.

Instead, we struggle, we rise, and then we do it all over again.

The odds are with humanity. I wouldn't bet against us.