Tag: Covid-19

Dangerous Fiction

By Stephen Macaulay

“We’re going to win this election in a landslide.”

Yes, you know who said that. But you probably don’t know when he said it: Not before November 3. Not November 3. Not the following several days.

No, Donald Trump said that December 10, 2020, at a Hanukkah event at the White House. 

A landslide.

If that doesn’t scare the hell out of all of the people who continue to carry his water, then there is something wrong with them. Doesn’t reason matter?

This absurdity really needs to stop.

This is dangerous. Dangerous to our democracy. Although House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote in a letter to her Democratic peers that the 126 House Republicans who signed on to the Texas attorney general-led effort to have the Supreme Court reverse the results of the election—which the Court rejected--an action that is tantamount to “subverting the Constitution,” this isn’t something that just Democrats need to take to heart: Anyone who has an American flag flying from their porches need to understand that these efforts to undermine what has been part of the fabric of this country since 1789, when the first presidential election was completed (the election was held from December 15, 1788 to January 10, 1789: were those House Republicans around back then, one wonders how apoplectic they would have been about that) are unacceptable.

Meanwhile, Trump is purportedly working harder than ever on what I would call a Quixotic quest except that it would besmirch Cervantes.

But there are other things going on. For example, on December 10 unemployment numbers for the previous week came in: new claims of 853,000.

And as for the big picture, there were some 19-million unemployment claims (week ending November 21, the most recent figures).

What’s more, what’s worse, is that on December 10 the CDC Tweeted: “As of December 7, national forecasts predict that 12,600 to 23,400 new #COVID19 deaths will be reported during the week ending January 2. These forecasts predict 332,000 to 362,000 total COVID-19 deaths in the United States by January 2.”

So what is the current occupant of the White House doing? Is he talking about the economy? Is he laying out a plan to help reduce the massive unemployment that has been a consequence of COVID-19, the virus that was supposed to have “just disappear[ed]” months ago?

Is he providing the sort of spiritual leadership that has been the role of presidents, to provide solace for the loss of life? Know that on December 10, there were 290,000 Americans who were lost to COVID-19. By December 14, the count had topped 300,000.

And he treats himself like a victim.

There is a lot of talk about the 74-million people who voted for Trump. There is less discussion of the 290,000+ who have died and their families. What has he done, or is he doing, for them?

What seems to be forgotten in all this is that he is operating on our dime. He is working for us. If you were working and spent all of your time pissing and moaning about how you were being overlooked and underappreciated, you’d probably find yourself in the category of the aforementioned unemployed statistics.

You are paid to do your job. If you don’t do it, well, in the words of you know who: “You’re fired!”

He’s not doing his job. He might as well leave right now. Pence hasn’t exactly been overworked the last four years, unless one counts trying to come up with tortured excuses for his boss. And this would provide the opportunity to give Trump a presidential pardon.

Funny thing about all of the talk of pardons. According to "Nolo’s Plain-English Law Dictionary," the definition of pardon is: “To use the executive power of a governor or president to forgive a person charged with a crime or convicted of a crime, thus preventing any prosecution and removing any remaining penalties or punishments.”

Seems like he’s not just doing his job, but perhaps there is more to it. Or maybe that’s less.

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A New Hat For America

By Jim McCraw

While it is maddening to know that President-elect Biden couldn’t get a really good start on 2021 between President Trump’s recalcitrance and COVID-19, there will eventually be a Biden administration, and it will be in trouble up to its hips from Day One.

Herewith, a suggestion for Biden/Harris I believe is important, and eminently doable. As Congress fights over both short- and long-term follow-up bills to the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES), which ends the day after Christmas, I think it might be time for something as ambitious (though relatively easy, considering the big funding levels already proposed) and quick to do as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), circa 1933. Let’s call the new one the American Reconstruction Corps (ARC).

Lord knows there are plenty of skilled and unskilled people out of work.  And there are plenty of American infrastructure projects, largely ignored by the previous administration, that need doing.

Biden is not FDR, and we do not have a modern Robert Moses, the mid-20th Century “master builder” of New York, Long Island, Rochester and Westchester counties (it’s certainly not Donald J. Trump).

We are not Frank Lloyd Wright, the Ford Motor Company Whiz Kids, nor the first seven astronauts. We are just Americans who recognize a need to get a lot of things done by a mass of people willing to work. There has got to be a way to do this.

With widespread distribution of COVID-19 vaccines likely coming with warmer weather next summer, why couldn’t we dispatch squadrons of out-of-work Americans to do road, tunnel and bridge repairs that have been waiting years for funding and final approvals?  And not just men, which is how the original CCC operated. Skilled and unskilled women need work, too. At, say, $20 per hour.

Why not send platoons of the willing into every one of the national parks to do repairs and cleaning?

While the original CCC troops had uniforms, meals and housing, I humbly suggest self-provided work clothing, bring-your-own meals, work near home, and ARC baseball caps in red, white and blue.

There will be periodic need for FEMA supplies and equipment after summer storms, so why not divert some FEMA funding, vehicles and materiel to help Americans fix the things that are already broken?

Yes, men and women working and sweating in close quarters for eight-hour days may be problematic from a health standpoint, but with masks, distancing and frequent washing and spraying, I think it could work. Let’s get some guys from Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Ford, Google and Tesla to volunteer, put them in a room and see if they can figure this out while Biden and Harris get on with the rest of the recovery.

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Leave it to the Free Market Instead

By Andrew Boyd

I have a B.A, in economics from the University of Maryland, whose only real value is in providing me with the pretext to imagine that I know more about how an economy functions than anyone else. Reagan not-so-famously said that an economist is someone who sees a thing working in practice and wonders if it can be made to work in theory. Food for thought.

Let’s cut the crap here. Government spending and fiscal policy is a really, really, really poor substitute for the allocation of resources by free markets made up of millions of individuals pursuing their own self interests. There are circumstances, be they few, where externalities to free-market mechanics, constrained by constitutionally founded legal principles, provide some rationale for big government intervention and management of resource, such as national security and environmental protection, where the benefits do not accrue to the individual in such a manner that markets can effectively account for the opportunity cost. 

There’s a concept worth ruminating on, opportunity cost, which you might otherwise think of simply as tradeoffs. Everything is thus, and every dollar the government collects and attempts to redistribute wisely, while lacking any real wisdom, is economic drag being traded against some espoused social or political priority that tends toward political cronyism, politicians at large being the most wretched and craven among us. Devils stomping about where angels fear to tread.

All that said, is COVID-19 an externality? Yes. Does it require government intervention? I'd say yes there as well. Now, who gets the money? Everyone in accordance with what they put in, IMHO. Enough of this picking winners and losers, capital vs. labor, essential vs. non-essential. It’s a damned dumpster fire and, oh by the way, immoral. It wasn’t their labor, their ingenuity, their value to society to begin with! Pick a number, they’re equally arbitrary, ratio it according to individuals' or households' federal income tax rate and cut the checks. And then someone grow a pair and own up to the fact that modern monetary policy is a train wreck whose destructive energy just hasn’t made it back to our particular car yet (car being a stand-in for time, here).

None of this is really economic policy, by the way. It’s triage. What we're calling stimulus is more like an economic inertial damper, spreading impact over time to presumably slowing the spread of fear that left unchecked will overwhelm our economic immune system. If we want to talk Supply vs. Demand fiscal policy, we need to decouple the conversation from COVID. They’re apples and oranges. But if I must, I’ll argue it this way: Government, you have no good goddamn idea what you’re doing. Get out of the business of managing the economy. You suck at it, completely. Get off people’s necks and let them pursue what ends seem best to them, with one and only one real caveat -- your rights end at the top of my nose and visa versa.  That’s a little thing called freedom, and it’s so much more delicate a thing than we can possibly fathom.

And, oh yeah, flat tax.

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The Democratic Party Will Not Be a United Dinner Party

By Michelle Naranjo

My grandmother would always make Sunday dinner for my extended family, and she always made sure to cook specific dishes for every member of the family. Fried chicken for me, chicken fried steak for my brother, glazed green beans for my mother, and so on. Weekly, she spent hours in the kitchen, making all of these dishes, and in the end, we all ate together.

The Democratic Party, for the most part, appeared to unify behind Joe Biden for president. But in the days following Nov. 3, 2020, the cracks began to show. It would seem that the party was holding a collective breath to keep up appearances before exhaling the deep-seated division that has been grumbling under the seams for years. 

While former Democratic presidential candidates Michael Bloomberg, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Andrew Yang threw their weight behind the Biden/Harris ticket, hitting campaign rallies (many of which were on Zoom because of concerns about COVID-19), their supporters mostly followed along. They decided that unification mattered, and a career moderate politician was the direction that the Left needed to go to defeat President Trump.

But there are still echoes of “Me! Me! Me! Pick me!”, resounding among the diverse voters.

During an era when people choose to support by how a candidate’s platform appeals to the individual themselves as a voter -- which insinuates more of an emotional commitment to a candidate than one that is pragmatic for the greater good -- it is no surprise that “true feelings” built up to an almost explosive level post-election. 

Add to that equation the Republicans who came into the Biden fold through The Lincoln Project, and the fire gets even more fuel.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the Squad immediately began to criticize the former Republican operatives that founded The Lincoln Project for collecting funds that supported their anti-Trump state-targeted advertising campaigns instead of funding their own Democratic campaigns. Many of The Lincoln Project supporters -- some of whom do not qualify as Republicans but tend to be voters who don’t vote party lines every election -- fought back that The Squad is anti-Semitic because of their human rights for Palestine stance.

Black allies don’t like Pete Buttigieg because of his hiring record. Progressives complained that there wasn’t enough recognition given to women, Black people, the Latinx, and Native American voters in Biden’s success. Moderates Democrats thought that the “abolish the police” slogan lost support for state and local candidates. And progressive parties like the Working Families Party are beginning to run their own candidates, sometimes as Democrats, and increasingly under their own party name.

As Chuck Rocha, a Texas-raised Democratic strategist who runs Nuestro PAC, a super PAC focused on Latino outreach, stated to NBC, “Biden won, and that’s great, but everything underneath Biden was a huge catastrophe.” [https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/huge-catastrophe-democrats-grapple-congressional-state-election-losses-n1248529]

Will Joe Biden be able to pull together all of the disparity, especially when the Democratic party performed so poorly down-ballot? With so many trying to raise their individualized voices, it appears that Biden will have an ongoing struggle with pleasing all of the people all of the time. Is this going to be a family-style dinner with a seat for everyone?

Beyond a strategy to combat the coronavirus and affected economy, Biden’s top initiative is climate change. Despite the currently divided rhetoric about the yet to be announced presidential cabinet, issues like this will be the grounding displays that will surely win some unity. 

Boston Consulting Group (BCG), one of the three largest strategy consulting firms globally, sees Biden as capable of making headway in leading the shift required to address climate change. BCG states, “President-elect Biden campaigned on the most ambitious climate platform of any presidential candidate in history—and he has indicated that his administration will move quickly to pursue that policy. A transition to a low-carbon economy can have enormous benefits for U.S. businesses, creating thousands of jobs across the country while positioning the U.S. to be a driving force and innovation leader both domestically and abroad. Companies that are prepared to participate in the green recovery can reap substantial rewards.” [https://www.bcg.com/publications/2020/new-course-for-climate-in-united-states]

That’s possible only if Biden can successfully and positively affect special interest groups, even those across the aisle, with initiatives that address the plethora of issues at hand.  

Will this stop splinter groups from trying to build a new third party? Or even a fourth and fifth? Unlikely. 

But as a collective restaurant under a President Biden, multiple dinners for the many “party of one” at least gets everyone in the same room. 

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An Agenda for Uncle Joe

By Jim McCraw

Come January, when the 46th president takes office, we have a few words of advice for Uncle Joe. Herewith, assuming a majority in the House, a recommended agenda.

First, bring COVID-19 to a halt by example and by force of will, which President Trump never did. A quick and thorough response may shut down businesses hard in the short-term but will pay off in stemming outbreaks in the U.S. more quickly allowing us to open up again. The new president has to be in charge of this effort, has to wear a mask at every appearance, and has to coerce Americans to socially distance properly. 

If we could get General Motors and Ford Motor Company to build respirators and make masks in a revival of the “Arsenal of Democracy,” why can’t we get Americans to wear masks and avoid crowding in a World War II-era display of patriotic citizenship?  

Next, undo all the harm that Trump did in terms of environmental deregulation. We need, within reasonable limits, to protect our clean water, our clean air, our natural resources, our national parks from commercialization in all its forms. It’s still our country, every cubic inch of it, and we need to protect it.

We need to have a very serious look at our defense spending, which has, over the last 50 years, become a gigantic, self-sustaining pork barrel.  The Defense department and the federal government have presided over a system where communities in every state count on contributing something to the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us of 60 years ago, to the point where defense accounts for almost 60 percent of the federal budget. We already own enough weaponry to dominate every other country on Earth. This is ridiculous.

And, Joe, since you’re a center-left Democrat, why not some policy that would please center-right Republicans? Dismantle the Department of Education, send all those people back to real, productive jobs, and leave education to the states, counties, cities, towns and school systems.

If you have some free time, how about bringing together Treasury and Congress and figure out a new tax system that shuts the hundreds of loopholes in the current system and gives money for nothing to huge corporations.  Be the new Democratic party of smaller, more effective spending and fair taxation.

And have a good look at the Department of Energy, confine its role to the original intent, and let the rest of the 108,000 direct and contract employees go out and compete for real jobs.

Now that you’re in, start talking up term limits.  You may not get re-elected over this, but you will be doing a great service to your country by giving government back to the people and dismantling the Washington oligarchy.  While you’re at it, have a good look at lobbying and the damage it does to the democratic process.

And, as Justice Kavanaugh said, Roe v. Wade is settled law.  Let’s hope the Supreme Court keeps it that way. [McCraw is not interested in having Biden “stack the court” beyond nine justices. -Ed.]

Election spending limitation also deserves a hard look now that you’re back in office, and it’s time for a re-write of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold) as a run-around to restore portions of the legislation that were dismantled by the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission.

Oh, and how about taking In God We Trust off the money and "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance?  Trump doesn’t believe in God, so why should the rest of us?

Thanks, Joe.  Appreciate you taking the time to listen.

Jim McCraw is a semi-retired writer and columnist. He has been a resident of The Villages for nearly five years.

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Trump Won’t Celebrate National Pancake Day

By Michelle Naranjo

“Denial is a save now, pay later scheme.”

― Gavin de Becker, "The Gift of Fear"

If you were to look at TikTok, Instagram, or Twitter, you would think it is National Pancake Day. But, alas, it is a passive-aggressive collective statement from sarcastic users to Trump supporters promoting a Million MAGA March, focused on their conclusion that there was widespread voter fraud in the recent presidential election. President Trump keeps claiming there was fraud committed, so they believe it. There are a lot of JPGs and GIFs of pancakes out there.

After 18 failed lawsuits filed in the key states that Trump would have liked to have won, the projected tally is 306 electoral votes for Biden, with Trump receiving 232: Ironically, the exact margin Trump got when he triumphed over Hillary Clinton. Like Biden, she won the popular vote, while Trump didn’t in 2016, or 2020. 

Even as the law firms representing Trump in his court battles to regain electoral votes resign from their duties, Trump has committed to proceed with his desperate battle; most recently, appointing Rudy Giuliani to be in charge of the lawsuits. Both Democratic and Republican election leaders in swings states have stated that there is no evidence. They refuse to follow Trump’s last gasp that he doesn’t have to leave office because they will not change their process for selecting state electors. International election observers also stated that there were no significant irregularities. 

Super Trump supporter Sheldon Adelson’s Nevada newspaper, The Las Vegas Review-Journal, even told the president that it was time to pack his bags, stating, “Mr. Trump lost this election because he ultimately didn’t attract enough votes and failed to win a handful of swing states that broke his way in 2016.”

A group of two-dozen chief officers of major U.S. companies met and determined that should Trump try to prevent a transition to the Biden team, they would consider stopping donations to political action committees and even relocate their corporate headquarters. 

And yet, Trump refuses to concede the election with all of the mounting lack of fraud evidence. This decision not to give in is not denial: He knows that he lost and is acting the sore loser. However, it is a decision that widens the division in the United States and makes the transition of power very difficult for the Biden/Harris team.

If not for the headlines and bizarre tweets proclaiming victory from the accounts of Trump, his children, his press secretary, a few Republican politicians who must have no desire to be re-elected, and a bunch of angry people on Parler, Biden and his team keep marching forward. The week began with a meeting of the president-elect and a Covid-19 response team. Biden may not be getting daily briefings, as is customary by this time post-election, but he is steadfast in getting to Jan. 20, 2021, also known as inauguration day.

The official Biden/Harris Transition Team website has listed the priorities: 

  • Covid-19
  • Economic recovery
  • Racial equity
  • Climate change

Clearly, Biden is determined not to acknowledge the Shrek in the room because that would give it legitimacy. What he is addressing are the issues affecting all Americans. He may not officially take office until Jan. 20, but he is already leading the way. And there will be pancakes.

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”

― Gavin de Becker, "The Gift of Fear"

Naranjo is a freelance writer living in rural Pennsylvania.

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In Search of Free and Fair Elections in Pennsylvania

By Andrew Boyd

Rural Pennsylvania, in the vicinity of Lancaster, was the place of my upbringing, and my parents and grandparents, who, on my mother’s side, were Mennonites of the mostly orthodox variety. It was a generally conservative vibe of the God Bless America, hand over heart, tell the truth, stand up straight, elbows off the table, “yes sir, yes, ma’am” variety.

I watched, then, with special interest the rioting in Lancaster that followed the police shooting back in September. I was encouraged by the response of local authorities in quickly rounding up and charging instigators. It seems law and order still has a foothold someplace, although I’m told by friends who haven’t left that Lancaster, or significant pockets of it, have succumbed to the kind of generalized rot of homelessness, hopelessness, drugs, poverty and cultural nihilism that characterizes far too much of America these days. It’s a really serious and pervasive problem that ought to be the stuff of serious discussion and debate, but what kind of ratings or clicks would that likely generate, right? Moving on. 

It’s hard not to be cynical about a lot of things these days, and where the Pennsylvania vote count is concerned, I think conservatives are justified in at least raising an eyebrow when no less than the state’s Attorney General, Josh Shapiro, asserts a full day before the polls are closed -- if Pennsylvania polls can ever be said to be truly closed -- that “if all the votes are added up in PA, Trump is going to lose.”  Excuse me, what? Reverse political polarities on this one and it’d be the stuff of mainstream media outrage and late-night TV host wet dreams for weeks if not months or years to follow. But down the memory hole it goes. Bye, bye. 

That little bit of saying the quiet part out loud followed a series of judicial rulings that also flew in the face of established PA election law -- the kind made by, you know, lawmakers -- because, you know, COVID; just the latest example of left’s pandemic hypocrisy. Thankfully, we’ve had some more recent state court rulings that lean into established legal doctrine, like the courts aren’t supposed to make the law, meaning questionable ballots are at least sequestered, including those from voters unable to produce identification at the time of their filing. 

That said, I suspect the game is up, and that all of the litigation in the world, legitimate or otherwise, won’t make a difference in the end. And, so be it. Where free and fair elections are concerned, I’m not rooting for either party, or any outcome except that which follows the letter of the law, because, you know, the ends do not justify the means. What an old-fashioned idea that is, right? Blame it on my upbringing, and pass the shoo-fly pie, please.

Boyd is a public relations and communications professional with 30-years experience. He lives with his wife and three daughters in Charlotte, N.C.

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The Beginning is Near

By Michelle Naranjo

There was an election on Tuesday, and it already feels like it was weeks ago. The news cycle seems to have increased momentum at a rate opposite of half-life. A characteristic even more noticeable in 2020. But here we are: stressed, tired, fearful. 

There are protestors outside of the Maricopa County elections Department where ballots are being counted, among other races, for the critical presidential election. Former Vice President Biden is ahead of President Trump in Arizona. The crowd chanting, “Count the vote,” is armed and angry. Their peers in Detroit, Michigan today were chanting, “Stop the vote.” Trump was behind in the count, and they tried to gain access to the inner sanctum where the ballots were to stop the process forcefully. 

Several things happened on Election Day beyond the regular polling: People stood in line for hours in many towns and cities, disinformation flooded social media, and an anonymous robocall went out to over 10 million people, warning them to not go to their polling spots. And still, people flocked to the polls in record numbers while millions of mail-in ballots were already being tallied.

The following day, a record-breaking 100,000-plus people were diagnosed with COVID-19, and President Trump began routinely filing lawsuits against states to stop counting ballots. He had declared victory the previous evening. He never mentioned the rising number of people who had fallen ill. There was no mention of the miracle vaccines that had become his rally cry.

Despite leading in electoral college votes, former Vice President Biden did not proclaim victory, but confidence that the Biden/Harris ticket would prevail after every vote was counted. 

And then his team quietly launched a transition website, BuildBackBetter.com.  

The site is still bare-boned but leads with, “The American people will determine who will serve as the next President of the United States. Votes are still being counted in several states around the country. The crises facing the country are severe — from a pandemic to an economic recession, climate change to racial injustice — and the transition team will continue preparing at full speed so that the Biden-Harris Administration can hit the ground running on Day One. The only link is to a Spanish translation. 

And with that debut, Biden introduced everyone to the possibility of a calmer future. An end to divisiveness came suddenly into sight. 

Naranjo is a freelance writer based in rural Pennsylvania.

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Welcome to Someone’s Ragnarök

First-Person Essay by Nic Woods

UPDATE Nov. 7: Democratic candidate Joe Biden has won the presidential election, after the AP called Pennsylvania for the former vice president over incumbent Donald Trump late Saturday morning. Shortly afterward he also was declared the winner of Nevada, for a 279-214 Electoral College lead.

I went to bed Election Day evening not knowing whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden would be sworn in as our next president Jan. 20 and I write this now not knowing the result, or whether a definitive one exists.

I have yet to face that music. I don’t need flashbacks of 2000. 

The outcome, however, is not central to my message – for many Americans, the outcome is the end of the world as they know it, and they are not fine. 

For them, this is Ragnarök.

Setting the Marvel Cinematic Universe aside as it skews the story, in Norse Mythology, Ragnarök is essentially the culmination of a great battle where certain gods rise, others fall, and a new world resurfaces from the ashes.

But one knows nothing of this new world. The story stops there. Even in the mythology, it is what Donald Rumsfeld would have called an “unknown unknown.”

The important thing is we know it happens. As dramatic an ending as Ragnarök is, we know there is an aftermath. 

This is where we stand currently, and what America becomes going forward depends on how we behave toward each other now. 

Gloating, trolling, and conspiracy theories, I hope, are confined to the trash bin of 2020. They were motivational tools to get people to the polls, perhaps, but they will not help in the aftermath.

For those of us who are angry, determine how to use it creatively, not destructively. Learn from the gods of Asgard where destructive anger leads. Attempt to do better. 

A certain sort of trust in each other, and a knowledge that love of country comes in many guises, needs to be re-established, however difficult that is. 

No matter how you feel about it, the COVID-19 outbreak provides a blueprint to reestablish that trust, and every American needs to respect it and its science if we want to live together and boost our economy. If the haphazard handling of the coronavirus continues, it will not go away, and the economic and social consequences will extend far longer than any of us want. 

And we know at this point the handling will remain haphazard. There currently is no federal response and we need to figure out for ourselves what to do if there continues to be no federal response.

We also need to learn how to talk about difficult subject matter respectfully. We have all been told that politics and religion should be avoided in polite conversation, but that leaves us with no way to talk about needs to be talked about. We need to figure out how to discuss both while respecting that the other person opinion may differ. 

Finally, we need to stop sorting ourselves into comfort zones. Be uncomfortable – it will not kill you. We will forever be baffled by our fellow Americans if we only choose to live among the one type we understand. 

No matter how you feel right now, it is a new day, and the world didn’t end, but how you shape that new world is, really, up to you. Your beliefs, and your politics, will not save you. 

Please email your comments to editors@thehustings.news

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Debate Audience Wins as Trump and Biden Mind the Mute Button

By Charles Dervarics

Voters claimed at least a small victory Thursday night when the major party presidential candidates had to accept a tool familiar to anyone working in remote video meetings during the pandemic – the all-important mute button.

Both President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden had to follow this new rule, which significantly reduced interruptions during their final debate in Nashville. The president showed occasional frustration at having to wait for an open microphone, but the new guideline kept shouting to a minimum and gave viewers a chance to hear the candidates’ views on key issues.

During the 90-minute debate moderated by NBC’s Kristen Welker, the two candidates sparred over every issue from COVID-19 and race relations to China, North Korea, immigration and climate change.

On COVID-19, Trump laid blame primarily on China and said that “we’re rounding the corner” on the virus with a vaccine announcement likely within weeks. “We can’t close up our nation or we won’t have a nation,” he said. Biden countered that the president’s performance has fallen far short with 220,000 Americans dead from the disease. “Anyone responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States,” he said.

The former vice president also said he planned to implement “Bidencare,” with Affordable Care Act improvements such as lower premiums and drug prices and the ability of low-income individuals to opt into Medicaid. Trump criticized this plan, saying it would lead to socialized medicine and a loss of private insurance for 180 million Americans. 

An extended segment on race relations saw the candidates approach the issue from different directions. Trump touted his administration’s passage of criminal justice reform and more funding for historically Black colleges, saying the Obama-Biden administration failed on these and other issues. “I ran because of you,” he said. “If I thought you did a good job, I would’ve never run.”

For his part, Biden said he regretted past support for minimum sentencing laws and promised to give states $20 billion to eliminate these standards and create drug courts so offenders go to treatment rather than prison. “We should fundamentally change the system, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

Some of the most heated moments came when Trump challenged Biden over alleged misdeeds by his son in gaining international business and whether the former vice president benefitted from deals in China and Ukraine. Biden denied any wrongdoing and the debate turned to Trump’s own international business dealings, bank accounts and unseen tax returns. At one point, Biden turned to the camera and noted that the election is “not about his family or my family. It’s about your family, and your family’s hurting badly.”

With the debates now complete, both candidates head into the final 11 days of campaigning. Nearly 50 million Americans already have cast early votes, with Election Day set for Nov. 3.

Please email your comments to editors@thehustings.news

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While Rome Burns

By Stephen Macaulay

On February 7, 2020, Donald Trump told Bob Woodward of COVID-19, “It goes through the air. That’s always tougher than the touch. You don’t have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus.”

On March 19 Trump told Woodward, “I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

According to reporting by The New York Times, on Feb. 24, hours before Trump tweeted, that COVID-19 was “very much under control,” and that “Stock market starting to look very good to me!”, “senior members of the president’s economic team, privately addressing board members of the conservative Hoover Institution, were less confident.” It seems that Tomas J. Philipson, a senior White House economic advisor, told the group that he couldn’t estimate the economic effects of the COVID.

The Times reporters write, “To some in the group, the implication was that an outbreak could prove worse than Mr. Philipson and other Trump administration advisers were signaling in public at the time.” [Philipson in late June quit his new post as acting chief of the White House Council of Economic Advisors to return to the University of Chicago, two days after Kevin Hassett announced his departure as the council’s chief.]

Apparently this was a three-day affair of getting inside insights into COVID from White House officials.

A hedge fund consultant attended the event of the Hoover board and created a document about it. The Times reporters write, “’What struck me,’ the consultant wrote, was that nearly every official he heard from raised the virus ‘as a point of concern, totally unprovoked.’”

Here’s the thing: the information that the rest of us got from Trump and his minions was “Nothing to see here, move along.”

The information that was given to the Hoover people, which then went to a hedge fund, Appaloosa Management, was far less sanguine.

According to the Times, “legal experts say. . .it is not apparent that any of the communications about the Hoover briefings violated securities laws.”

So let’s see: Trump and his people tell you and me that there is no problem; people in the business of using information to buy and sell—and they sold in this case—were given insights that the rest of us would—what?—panic if we knew?

It would be the old case of the rich getting richer if it were also not the case that the sick were getting sicker and the dead, well, dead.

It is somewhat incomprehensible how people who are in the middle class and below think that Trump has any concern for their well-being.

Wall Street is doing great. Main Street has a whole lot of “For Rent” signs—and many more to come.

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Coal, Jobs & Cronies

By Stephen Macaulay

In 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump was barnstorming with a message about coal. 

“Clean coal,” he called it. Which, as is sometimes said, “isn’t a thing,” but we will let that go.

Trump would proclaim: “We’re going to get those miners back to work . . . the miners of West Virginia and Pennsylvania . . . Ohio and all over are going to start to work again, believe me.”

“We’re going to have an amazing mining business.”

They believed him. Trump won West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. And how did those miners do? According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in November 2016 there were 50,400 people employed in the U.S. coal industry.

How did he do? How many of those people did he get back to “an amazing mining business?”

In September 2020, the number of people involved in the coal-mining industry is 44,500. 

Note that this is not a COVID-19 phenomenon. Coal jobs have been on a decline throughout the Trump presidency. What’s more, in October 2019, Murray Energy, the “country’s largest privately held coal miner” filed for Chapter 11 in October 2019, according to NS Energy, which covers the coal industry among other energy-related subjects. It became “the eighth U.S. coal producer to file for bankruptcy in the past year.”

NS Energy noted that company owner Bob Murray “has long advocated for government support for his industry and was a strong critic of the country’s former president Barack Obama, whose time in office he described as ‘eight years of pure hell.’”

“The coal tycoon has long been a supporter of President Donald Trump, and is believed to have played a major role in the reshaping of environmental policies over the past three years… .”

One might change the verb in that statement to “dismantling.” 

Still, that did not seem to work out so well. According to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, renewables, which it defines as “utility-scale solar, wind and hydropower,” is increasingly important. “Renewables have now generated more electricity than coal on 131 days in 2020 — more than three times the 2019 results and with some 80 days left in the year.”

IEEFA concludes, “the data show coal power’s economic viability continuing to shrink … .”

Working people need to take his claims about coal into account when he talks about the jobs he has created and will create. Trump undoubtedly created more wealth for his cronies than for the stalwart men and women who once worked the mines can ever imagine. 

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Trump, China, COVID and the Absence of Leadership

By Stephen Macaulay

Let’s say for the sake of argument that Donald Trump is right, that COVID-19 is the “China virus,” that it was a deliberate release into the world. It seems as though all the Administration has going for it as a reaction was that they “banned” travel from China into the U.S. Which isn’t entirely true. That is, according to the Associated Press, because there was no restriction from the more than 8,000 Chinese and foreign nationals came in to the U.S. during the first three months of the “ban” from the administrative zones of Macau and Hong Kong. In addition to which, more than 27,000 Americans who were in mainland China returned during the first month. So let’s not put too much stock in that claim’s effectiveness.

And it wasn’t until March 11 that Trump banned travel to the U.S. from Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland—a.k.a., the Schengen Area. In making that proclamation, Trump wrote, “The Schengen Area currently has the largest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases outside of the People’s Republic of China.” That’s right—more than a month after the alleged China travel “ban” there were still people coming in from an area where there was apparently the second-largest number of confirmed cases. In addition to which, you’ll note that the U.K. wasn’t on the list. Oops. It made the list on March 14. Diligence.

“[I]t's China's fault, it should have never happened,” Trump said during the presidential debate (and several other times).

But it did happen. And what is he doing about it? Making fanciful claims and maintaining it will go away. As recently as Oct. 10 Trump said from the balcony of the White House in an Evita-like moment, “but it’s going to disappear, it is disappearing.” There are 7.7-million confirmed cases in the U.S. Disappear.

According to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, there have been 4,739 COVID-19 deaths in China. There are 1.393-billion people in China. Let’s say they’re lying. Let’s say there are 10 times as many deaths. 100 times as many deaths. What are we doing? Pretending.

There is the continuing myth of what a great business man Trump is. A myth that is beginning to dissolve as The New York Times reports on his massive losses and looming loans becoming due. According to the Congressional Budget Office, FY 2020 will have a U.S. deficit of $3.13 trillion. That means the U.S. debt is greater than the GDP. The last time this was the case was in 1946. The year after World War II ended.

Most Americans will lose a year of freedom in their lives. Freedom to do what they want. Sure, people cando it. But has been shown that unless people do things like distance and wear masks and practice good hygiene, they can die. But no one thinks they will die. It is someone else. Old people. Obese people. People with an underlying condition. Even though there are people of those characteristics in other countries, the U.S. level of death is dwarfing them. Why? Because the leaders of those countries are leaders.

Trump? 

Macaulay is a cultural commentator based in Detroit.

Please email your comments to editors@thehustings.news

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It’s Not the Masks We Reject; It’s the Mandate

By Bryan Williams

Joe Biden is running on a promise to America that he would protect us better from COVID-19 than Trump and his team. He has even gone so far as to say he would implement a national mask mandate. If the past 7 months has shown us anything it’s that Americans really don’t like being told what to do. But we’ve known that forever anyway - I mean a bunch of dudes threw perfectly good tea into Boston Harbor in the 1700s because they didn’t like King George telling them what to do.

We can go back and forth all day, split hairs over when a travel ban from China was put in place until we’re blue in the face, or whether or not President Trump wearing a mask would have made a big difference in the number of deaths related to COVID-19. I have never really given much credence to any of the above, and just go with what I know from my little corner of the world, and yes, I know this is anecdotal.

At the height of the pandemic, I worked in a mental health crisis clinic. We had no employer-provided masks for weeks and the layout of our building made it so social distancing was simply not possible. We also had no limit to the number of people we could admit. Patients we admitted were anyone from anywhere, most of them users of substances that inhaled, ingested, or intravenously injected those illicit substances with other people most assuredly in distances less than 6 feet, and many of them homeless. No one at my clinic in March through May 2020 contracted COVID-19 (my last day there was in May).

Then, in June, my family and I visited my parents (in their 60s) and grandparents (83 and 82) in Northern Nevada. All of us have used our common sense during the pandemic: we’ve worn masks everywhere we go, we socially distance ourselves as much as possible, and we limit our contact with others. Not a single one of us has contracted the coronavirus, and I think it’s because of my family’s common sense, prudence, and overall good health (we don’t smoke, vape or drink alcohol in excess, and we’re not morbidly obese).

What’s my point? I don’t think political leadership has a lot to do with whether or not people begin wearing masks or socially distance themselves more. Now I now work in a hospital, and I am around doctors all day. I cannot begin to tell you how many of them “wear” their mask with their nose still protruding in naked glory. These are men and women that should know better! Joe Biden mandating mask wearing won’t make these doctors pull their mask up over their nose. That old American chestnut -- personal responsibility -- still holds. Please wear a mask, and don’t party, okay? I just don’t want Joe Biden to tell me what to do. Donald J. Trump gets that.

Williams is a mental health professional in California and a former Republican party official.

Please email your comments to editors@thehustings.news

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Pundits on the Left Are Split on the Need for Another Debate

Liberal pundits’ comments …

Record numbers of early voters have already placed ballots. Minds are not being changed. Heels are dug. Further debate evenings are fodder for more reality TV: people have had enough of supporting the networks in the last four years. Advertising stands to lose the most by canceling all debates going forward. Late-to-work election teams are all focused on ballot education, and bracing voters for a probable drawn out result season -- an entirely new version of reality TV. 

--Michelle Naranjo

If the Commission on Presidential Debates cancelled the remaining two presidential debates, the majority of Americans would not be phased out and it would do nothing to change the Nov. 3 result. America is a country in crisis right now and most voters are focused on one thing: surviving the crisis. Not just the public health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, but also the crisis surrounding racial justice that is facing the millions of members of the Black community, the climate change crisis that’s facing the planet and is currently causing disaster-level weather events around the nation, and the economic crisis facing the millions of unemployed Americans that are struggling to pay rent and are facing eviction. Donald J. Trump and Mike Pence showed us everything we needed to see in the first two debates. They offered no substantive or meaningful answers to any of the questions, no specific plans or proposals for addressing these crises, constant lies and misinformation, a refusal to condemn white supremacy, and a refusal to show any serious remorse, or take any personal accountability or ownership, for the administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Unless Donald Trump intends to correct these blunders and outright failures in a future debate, they aren’t worth being had.

--Chase Wheaton

Do we need another debate? That very question presupposes that we had one. We didn’t. What we did was have an embarrassing spectacle of the President of the United States behaving like a petulant, churlish, loud individual and his opponent, a former Vice President of the United States trying to talk over the President and calling him a “clown.” Neither individual would make it out of a high school debate without being removed. Biden was ready to do it again, virtually. Trump wanted no part of it. A claim is that Biden would be “fed” the answers. If you look at the transcripts of the last “debate” you’d see that Trump needed an answer. Or many. His answers were logorrheic covfefe. Trump said he believes that the moderator would cut him off. And that would be bad, why? Forget the side show. It can do nothing but further make people—the world over—shake their head in sad disbelief that this is what the presidency has come to.

--Stephen Macaulay

Please address comments to editors@thehustings.news

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