Pandemic Pandemonium
Posted on February 28, 2020 by Hayden Keith Monroe
Is a day of reckoning near as Trump’s clown show collides with the coronavirus? It could happen since the American public is about to discover what’s been going on backstage at the circus. The people and, to their discredit, the broadcast media have focused on the daily Trump melodrama with its fake news, made for TV moments, the latest imaginary triumph or plot by the deep state. Government by hoopla and distraction.
Behind the scenes, however, acting on Steve Bannon’s promise to dismantle the administrative state, Trump minions have been systematically hollowing out government for the last three years. Department after department has been downsized. Centuries of expertise in everything from agriculture and the environment to intelligence and diplomacy has ben lost. Programs constructed over decades have fallen to the wrecking ball.
Sometimes the reason given for the cuts has been libertarian loathing of government itself, but Trump being Trump personal pique, animus, vanity and vengeance have also been at play. For example, anything put in place by Obama is sure to be targeted for extinction. And now we have a possible pandemic on our doorstep and Trump’s actions over the last three years have undermined our ability to respond.
When the coronavirus began to generate alarm, Trump’s first impulse given his isolationist fixation was to build a symbolic wall by trying to close the borders to anyone originating in China. Not easy given our economic co-dependence, but now all but impossible as the virus has spread worldwide.
But Trump still clings to the fantasy that we can barricade ourselves from invaders bearing their alien germs. It was with surprising bad grace that he said he had allowed people from the quarantined cruise ship to come home, implying he had to do it since they were Americans but plainly didn’t want to.
The coronavirus puts Trump in a classic double-bind. He wants to barricade the borders and boast we are safe, but he also want to boast about a booming stock market. But the markets depend on a global economy and the virus has lowered output from China, disrupted supply chains, travel and tourism, and presents difficult to calculate future risks. He and happy talking economics flack Larry Kudlow falsely claimed we were “very close to a vaccine,” that the illness was totally under control and our safety was “pretty close to airtight,” but neither Wall Street nor Main Street were buying.
Trump’s ill-informed, ill-prepared press conference only made more obvious the absurdity of the snake oil he was peddling. He kept insisting only a few cases were in America, all originating elsewhere and now all but cured, that a cure was close and everything was under control. Yet, to their credit, the medical and scientific cadre he had assembled alongside him onstage to provide gravitas undercut the hooey, pointing out that spread was inevitable and the creation of a vaccine would take at least a year.
Further undermining his pitch was the fact that simultaneously news arrived that a new case without any connection to foreign travel had emerged in California and Trump’s appointment of Vice President Pence as Virus Czar, clearly teeing him up as the fall guy when things go bad. Nor did it take long.
Less than 24 hours after the show, it was announced chillingly that experts like Anthony Fauci would no longer be able to speak truth to the public without first getting approval from Czar Pence, an edict immediately flauted by a government health sector whistleblower, and the market delivered its snap vote of no confidence in Trump’s assurances by dropping another 1,100 points.
As noted, the crisis response will be less rapid than it would have been prior to Trump due to his own demolition of the needed infrastructure. For instance, the National Security Council under John Bolton eliminated the White House office of bio-threats established under Obama to coordinate response to the Ebola epidemic. At the same time Trump fired the entire pandemic response chain of command at CDC, DHS, and HHS.
Obama demanded $6 billion to fight against Ebola. Trump grudgingly asked for $2.5 billion for pandemic preparedness, 40% of it hijacked from other budget areas. On top of previous cuts to health science programs, Trump’s latest budget seeks to cut CDC by another ten percent, NIH by seven percent, and front line public health workers by 40%.
When asked about this record of cutting vital personnel, Trump said he didn’t like having unneeded people on the payroll. They could always be rehired when needed. But elite biological researchers aren’t comparable to Mar-a-Lago’s illegal immigrant groundskeepers or chambermaids.
Americans worried about the Trump government’s ability to cope with a pandemic aren’t wrong. Sixty percent of chain drugstores are already out of masks. Hundreds of drugs our people depend on daily are manufactured in China and may soon be in short supply. South Korea has tested nearly 40,000 people for coronavirus. So far, America has tested less than 500, in part because a hurried test kit failed to work properly. A Boston hospital requested permission to bypass red tape and use its own tests, and elsewhere localities asked to be able to buy kits from Japan.
Not surprisingly, competently responding to an emergency to protect the safety of 320 million Americans is a problem for leaders who have more interest in their re-election, image, snarky tweets, spin, the Dow, and slashing goverment than in running it.
Posted in Uncategorized permalink
Posted on February 28, 2020 by Hayden Keith Monroe
Is a day of reckoning near as Trump’s clown show collides with the coronavirus? It could happen since the American public is about to discover what’s been going on backstage at the circus. The people and, to their discredit, the broadcast media have focused on the daily Trump melodrama with its fake news, made for TV moments, the latest imaginary triumph or plot by the deep state. Government by hoopla and distraction.
Behind the scenes, however, acting on Steve Bannon’s promise to dismantle the administrative state, Trump minions have been systematically hollowing out government for the last three years. Department after department has been downsized. Centuries of expertise in everything from agriculture and the environment to intelligence and diplomacy has ben lost. Programs constructed over decades have fallen to the wrecking ball.
Sometimes the reason given for the cuts has been libertarian loathing of government itself, but Trump being Trump personal pique, animus, vanity and vengeance have also been at play. For example, anything put in place by Obama is sure to be targeted for extinction. And now we have a possible pandemic on our doorstep and Trump’s actions over the last three years have undermined our ability to respond.
When the coronavirus began to generate alarm, Trump’s first impulse given his isolationist fixation was to build a symbolic wall by trying to close the borders to anyone originating in China. Not easy given our economic co-dependence, but now all but impossible as the virus has spread worldwide.
But Trump still clings to the fantasy that we can barricade ourselves from invaders bearing their alien germs. It was with surprising bad grace that he said he had allowed people from the quarantined cruise ship to come home, implying he had to do it since they were Americans but plainly didn’t want to.
The coronavirus puts Trump in a classic double-bind. He wants to barricade the borders and boast we are safe, but he also want to boast about a booming stock market. But the markets depend on a global economy and the virus has lowered output from China, disrupted supply chains, travel and tourism, and presents difficult to calculate future risks. He and happy talking economics flack Larry Kudlow falsely claimed we were “very close to a vaccine,” that the illness was totally under control and our safety was “pretty close to airtight,” but neither Wall Street nor Main Street were buying.
Trump’s ill-informed, ill-prepared press conference only made more obvious the absurdity of the snake oil he was peddling. He kept insisting only a few cases were in America, all originating elsewhere and now all but cured, that a cure was close and everything was under control. Yet, to their credit, the medical and scientific cadre he had assembled alongside him onstage to provide gravitas undercut the hooey, pointing out that spread was inevitable and the creation of a vaccine would take at least a year.
Further undermining his pitch was the fact that simultaneously news arrived that a new case without any connection to foreign travel had emerged in California and Trump’s appointment of Vice President Pence as Virus Czar, clearly teeing him up as the fall guy when things go bad. Nor did it take long.
Less than 24 hours after the show, it was announced chillingly that experts like Anthony Fauci would no longer be able to speak truth to the public without first getting approval from Czar Pence, an edict immediately flauted by a government health sector whistleblower, and the market delivered its snap vote of no confidence in Trump’s assurances by dropping another 1,100 points.
As noted, the crisis response will be less rapid than it would have been prior to Trump due to his own demolition of the needed infrastructure. For instance, the National Security Council under John Bolton eliminated the White House office of bio-threats established under Obama to coordinate response to the Ebola epidemic. At the same time Trump fired the entire pandemic response chain of command at CDC, DHS, and HHS.
Obama demanded $6 billion to fight against Ebola. Trump grudgingly asked for $2.5 billion for pandemic preparedness, 40% of it hijacked from other budget areas. On top of previous cuts to health science programs, Trump’s latest budget seeks to cut CDC by another ten percent, NIH by seven percent, and front line public health workers by 40%.
When asked about this record of cutting vital personnel, Trump said he didn’t like having unneeded people on the payroll. They could always be rehired when needed. But elite biological researchers aren’t comparable to Mar-a-Lago’s illegal immigrant groundskeepers or chambermaids.
Americans worried about the Trump government’s ability to cope with a pandemic aren’t wrong. Sixty percent of chain drugstores are already out of masks. Hundreds of drugs our people depend on daily are manufactured in China and may soon be in short supply. South Korea has tested nearly 40,000 people for coronavirus. So far, America has tested less than 500, in part because a hurried test kit failed to work properly. A Boston hospital requested permission to bypass red tape and use its own tests, and elsewhere localities asked to be able to buy kits from Japan.
Not surprisingly, competently responding to an emergency to protect the safety of 320 million Americans is a problem for leaders who have more interest in their re-election, image, snarky tweets, spin, the Dow, and slashing goverment than in running it.
Posted in Uncategorized permalink
