The Coronavirus

[Bob Butler 54]

The parents ought to know better.

[Bob Butler 54]

CNN reports that the Democratic National Convention pushed back to August.

The way people are ignoring the problem, that possibly is not enough.

[David Horn]

(04-02-2020, 12:31 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: CNN reports that the Democratic National Convention pushed back to August.

The way people are ignoring the problem, that possibly is not enough.

Let's ask about the worst case.  The pandemic is still raging, or seesawing through an ongoing pattern of flares-up that are suppressed by stay-at-home orders.  In either case, having a convention is somewhere between ridiculous and insane.  Now what? For that matter, what happens if the remaining primaries are delayed into nonexistence?  And what about the general election?

No good options I can see. Yes, we can have a general election by mail, but I doubt the GOP will go along unless rural areas are being hit hard.  If 2000 and 2016 were minority elections, 2020 might be even worse.  Will the majority electorate stand for that, once the pandemic is under control?

[Bob Butler 54]

It looks like Trump has finally used the Defense Production Act to get materials to build ventilators.  Still nothing on PPE. though a lot of that does not require special materials or parts.

[Bob Butler 54]

(04-02-2020, 01:33 PM)David Horn Wrote: Let's ask about the worst case.  The pandemic is still raging, or seesawing through an ongoing pattern of flares-up that are suppressed by stay-at-home orders.  In either case, having a convention is somewhere between ridiculous and insane.  Now what? For that matter, what happens if the remaining primaries are delayed into nonexistence?  And what about the general election?

No good options I can see. Yes, we can have a general election by mail, but I doubt the GOP will go along unless rural areas are being hit hard.  If 2000 and 2016 were minority elections, 2020 might be even worse.  Will the majority electorate stand for that, once the pandemic is under control?

It isn’t clear that the pandemic will be clearly under control by the general election.  People seem not to be taking it seriously.  

I won’t miss the conventions.  The balloon manufacturers might.  Would the parties hire air time to play reruns of the balloons falling from past conventions?  Things look like Trump vs Biden.  How many people are hoping that Sanders could rally, or a draft Cumo movement could catch?  Could committees write platforms as well as the convention members could?

Democracy would take a hit if the Republicans blocked voting by mail.  Trump won’t care, and would find an excuse if it looks to his advantage to go either way.  People could get mad if he does try to block it, and tend to vote against Trump?  Ballots could be sent by census data or if you are already a registered voter?  If you can’t respond to the census, there would be another way?

[Bob Butler 54]

I just finished my nightly hour of news watching.  Mostly it seems more of the same.  A few of the points that stuck out.

It seems that the hospitals are in as much economic stress as the airlines, restaurants, cruise ships or other indusries that have had to shut down.  It is not a hardship of not being able to do their usual thing, but a hardship of having to do to much.  But even if this hardship is different in nature, the health care industry is still going to need to be bailed out as much as anyone.  They are being asked to do a lot.  They should not be left in financial ruin as a result too.

Rachel Maddow of MSNBC had the mayor of Los Angeles on.  His contribution was primarily that if you wait to do something until it is comfortable, in these times it is too late.  Los Angeles had one of the first stay and home orders and was first in many of the precautions.  Part of this was a personal attitude of the mayor of doing something now, not in a little while, certainly not when everyone agrees.

He also had a new word for people who ignored or bypassed the mandated isolation orders.  He called them 'a-holes'. Is that a technical term that can be officially be used for Trump?

[pbrower2a]

One solution, however temporary, would be to do quick training to get furloughed restaurant and retail workers trained for emergency work as hospital orderlies. Flattening the curve would help.

[pbrower2a]

(04-02-2020, 05:37 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(04-02-2020, 01:33 PM)David Horn Wrote: Let's ask about the worst case.  The pandemic is still raging, or seesawing through an ongoing pattern of flares-up that are suppressed by stay-at-home orders.  In either case, having a convention is somewhere between ridiculous and insane.  Now what? For that matter, what happens if the remaining primaries are delayed into nonexistence?  And what about the general election?

No good options I can see. Yes, we can have a general election by mail, but I doubt the GOP will go along unless rural areas are being hit hard.  If 2000 and 2016 were minority elections, 2020 might be even worse.  Will the majority electorate stand for that, once the pandemic is under control?

It isn’t clear that the pandemic will be clearly under control by the general election.  People seem not to be taking it seriously.  

I won’t miss the conventions.  The balloon manufacturers might.  Would the parties hire air time to play reruns of the balloons falling from past conventions?  Things look like Trump vs Biden.  How many people are hoping that Sanders could rally, or a draft Cuomo movement could catch?  Could committees write platforms as well as the convention members could?

Democracy would take a hit if the Republicans blocked voting by mail.  Trump won’t care, and would find an excuse if it looks to his advantage to go either way.  People could get mad if he does try to block it, and tend to vote against Trump?  Ballots could be sent by census data or if you are already a registered voter?  If you can’t respond to the census, there would be another way?

It is no too late to stop either Trump or Biden from winning their nominations. Nothing says that the conventions cannot be virtual, as political parties are largely unregulated. Democrats have an edge in technology because Democrats are generally more adept at using it. Figure that much money will be going into personal infrastructure to make possible "virtual" communication because people will want the simulation of face-to-face contact.

Voting by mail or even by internet is technologically possible with existing technology that includes face recognition. Voting by mail seems to have few problems built in. It is easier, more energy-efficient (nobody must drive to the polling place), and unfriendly to voter fraud. What will be more difficult will be canvassing. Dead people voting? In my township the township administrator reads the obituaries in the local newspaper and deletes the local deceased from the voting rolls. (I asked about that after my father died in October 2016; he had been removed, so had an absentee ballot come from him it would have been destroyed. I suspect that much the same is done elsewhere). 

A plague is no more of an excuse for canceling an election than is a Crisis War. Congressional elections proceeded as usual in 1862 and 1942 and Presidential elections  were held on schedule in 1944. The military did what it could to ensure that soldiers and sailors were able to vote in their states' elections if eligible to vote (the voting age was then 21). If Trump tries some stunt to cancel or delay the Presidential election or to declare himself the winner unilaterally, then he will be slapped down.

[pbrower2a]

[Tim Randal Walker]

Washington state will be under lock down for another month-the governor announced yesterday.

[Bob Butler 54]

(04-03-2020, 11:48 AM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: Washington state will be under lock down for another month-the governor announced yesterday.

That would be minimum. Too many people are not embracing the new values, with the result that the economy will be shut down longer.

I am already going stir crazy. Sorry if I am making too many posts, but there is little left to do?

[Bob Butler 54]

The Rachel Maddow show spent the first segment reviewing how Bush 43 appointed a horse expert as head of FEMA, said person did a hell of a job in botching Katrina, and partially as a result Bush 43 ended up on the short list of most people's worst presidents. She went on to say that Trump is spending much more time doing much less with a much higher death count.

Odds of him ending up on the same list?

[David Horn]

(04-02-2020, 05:37 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(04-02-2020, 01:33 PM)David Horn Wrote: Let's ask about the worst case.  The pandemic is still raging, or seesawing through an ongoing pattern of flares-up that are suppressed by stay-at-home orders.  In either case, having a convention is somewhere between ridiculous and insane.  Now what? For that matter, what happens if the remaining primaries are delayed into nonexistence?  And what about the general election?

No good options I can see. Yes, we can have a general election by mail, but I doubt the GOP will go along unless rural areas are being hit hard.  If 2000 and 2016 were minority elections, 2020 might be even worse.  Will the majority electorate stand for that, once the pandemic is under control?

It isn’t clear that the pandemic will be clearly under control by the general election.  People seem not to be taking it seriously.  

I won’t miss the conventions.  The balloon manufacturers might.  Would the parties hire air time to play reruns of the balloons falling from past conventions?  Things look like Trump vs Biden.  How many people are hoping that Sanders could rally, or a draft Cumo movement could catch?  Could committees write platforms as well as the convention members could?

Democracy would take a hit if the Republicans blocked voting by mail.  Trump won’t care, and would find an excuse if it looks to his advantage to go either way.  People could get mad if he does try to block it, and tend to vote against Trump?  Ballots could be sent by census data or if you are already a registered voter?  If you can’t respond to the census, there would be another way?

We're clearly in uncharted waters here.  Trump has dictator-wannabe written all over him.  He has a cadre of hyper-supporters, who seem to believe his every word.  Why wouldn't they march to the polls in the middle to a pandemic to vote for him?  

After this is done, we may have to update the words to I Was Not A Nazi Polka.  Oh yeah -- that's John Denver on the right.

[David Horn]

(04-03-2020, 11:36 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: The Rachel Maddow show spent the first segment reviewing how Bush 43 appointed a horse expert as head of FEMA, said person did a hell of a job in botching Katrina, and partially as a result Bush 43 ended up on the short list of most people's worst presidents.  She went on to say that Trump is spending much more time doing much less with a much higher death count.

Odds of him ending up on the same list?

Bush lacked zealots as followers, and elections were more normal then.  Post-Katrina failure should be a near-prefect model.  I'm not sure it will be.  Trump is a bargain-basement Svengali.  Why that's true I don't know, but it is.  Biden, on the other hand, is about as exciting as oatmeal.  This might actually play 180 degrees out from the model.

[pbrower2a]

(04-04-2020, 09:20 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(04-03-2020, 11:36 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: The Rachel Maddow show spent the first segment reviewing how Bush 43 appointed a horse expert as head of FEMA, said person did a hell of a job in botching Katrina, and partially as a result Bush 43 ended up on the short list of most people's worst presidents.  She went on to say that Trump is spending much more time doing much less with a much higher death count.

Odds of him ending up on the same list?

Bush lacked zealots as followers, and elections were more normal then.  Post-Katrina failure should be a near-prefect model.  I'm not sure it will be.  Trump is a bargain-basement Svengali.  Why that's true I don't know, but it is.  Biden, on the other hand, is about as exciting as oatmeal.  This might actually play 180 degrees out from the model.

The worst leaders have their followers ... evil or gullible. They are good at appealing to the worst in human nature -- greed, cruelty, bigotry, envy, resentment, superstition... and in return they get adulation from people that honest leaders find difficult, if not impossible, to serve. We are better off with bland and boring. Politics is not the right place to go for excitement; leave that to the theater, the concert hall, and the stadium! 

Good leaders try to foster the best in people because such is where one gets genuine and unqualified progress. Good leaders recognize that people aren't going to get out of the government what someone else or they themselves didn't put in. Good leaders know enough to rely upon work, enterprise, learning, and skill development, upon imagination as a means of taking dares with tradition as a safe fallback. Bad ones find pariahs to blame for all that goes wrong, and all too often that means the competent and provident that bad leaders suggest are exploiters.

[Arkarch]

Just the start of an observation

Are some of our modern day "Captains of Industry" Billionaire-heads-of-corps making a play during this coronavirus crisis? I point to two examples - One being Sheldon Adelson, owner of Las Vegas Sands Corp, who notably is protecting the income of his current employees and even the incomes of third-party employers/employees on his properties (news link below). Another Industry Captain (I will hold name in reserve as I am an employee) is also protecting and keeping employees busy. The advantage of such action is those companies are all using this time to work on projects and be ahead of the action when business resumes. This is in contrast to the more stockholder-driven corps that are following the usual furlough and layoff model; and may not be able to respond as well when business resumes. This maps to a repeating cycle that maps to the post-Civil War Captains of Industry as our institutions. Any other Billionaire-run corps keeping their workforce up?

https://vegasinc.lasvegassun.com/busines...orkers-du/

[pbrower2a]

One of the telling marks of a 4T culture in contrast to a 3T culture is that the economic elites start looking at the long term. Obviously America will get out of this plague with its physical infrastructure undamaged, with a consumer-driven economy, the free-enterprise model still largely enshrined (if stripped of 3T cruelty). If a large part of the populace should die, then the main harm to the capitalists will be the disappearance or reduction of economic rents because fewer people will be bidding up the price of real estate to renters, because people will be able to take shorter commutes,  and because fewer people will be competing for the same low-paying jobs. Economic rents are pure profit that do not lead to greater prosperity except for passive investors.

The big negative will be that, at least in the short term, new construction on residential and commercial property will stop after the completion of existing projects.

I once saw the pattern in Greater Detroit, whose population growth seems to have come to a halt around 1970. Taking Michigan 153 west from Dearborn in 2008 I could see development from the 1960's (as I could tell from housing styles) as I went west, and suddenly I started to see property plotted for the next wave of development that never happened. Then came farmland. Then came Ann Arbor. Had Greater Detroit kept growing along Michigan 153 as many other cities did, then Greater Detroit would be extended so far west as to include Ann Arbor.

No viral plague hit Detroit, but the auto industry that once made Detroit the technological and economic equivalent of Silicon Valley in recent years became less important, and much of the auto industry got dispersed to places with lower costs of doing business and of (when Detroit was a giant city, once the fourth-largest in America) living costs.

People are putting off special and even normal delights to reduce their personal and collective risks. As personal and collective dangers merge, then the economic and political ways tend to merge. (I predict that Donald Trump, who has been far behind the curve, will be caught up in failure and will become the scapegoat of history much as Herbert Hoover was for decades). This said, people expect again to watch movies, dine in restaurants, attend cultural and sporting events, visit museums, and go to the beaches again.  But not if one catches COVID-19 and dies of it!

[Warren Dew]

(04-05-2020, 03:26 AM)Arkarch Wrote: Just the start of an observation

Are some of our modern day "Captains of Industry" Billionaire-heads-of-corps making a play during this coronavirus crisis?   I point to two examples - One being Sheldon Adelson, owner of Las Vegas Sands Corp, who notably is protecting the income of his current employees and even the incomes of third-party employers/employees on his properties (news link below).  Another Industry Captain (I will hold name in reserve as I am an employee) is also protecting and keeping employees busy.  The advantage of such action is those companies are all using this time to work on projects and be ahead of the action when business resumes.   This is in contrast to the more stockholder-driven corps that are following the usual furlough and layoff model; and may not be able to respond as well when business resumes.   This maps to a repeating cycle that maps to the post-Civil War Captains of Industry as our institutions.  Any other Billionaire-run corps keeping their workforce up?

https://vegasinc.lasvegassun.com/busines...orkers-du/

Thanks - good observation.  If this is the start of large private corporations destroying public corporations, that could be the destruction of the concentration of power that I'd be looking for to resolve the crisis.

Edit: not seeing how they are using these employees to get a jump on the opposition, other than being in a position to resume operations quickly. Are you seeing something there - where they could move to take out big restaurant chains or something?

[pbrower2a]

Vignettes from one of the greatest TV series ever have something to say about our situation:





If you can't laugh you will cry.

[Bob Butler 54]

Flightradar24 is definitely showing the fewer commercial flights, and it seems to me to be an increase in small private plane flights. If you can afford it, this is one way to keep isolation while moving around.