Don't Be Afraid To Say Whose Fault This Disaster Is

Yesterday, we saw how impossible it is to not blame Trump for the botched U.S. response to the pandemic. Last week, in an OpEd for the Washington Post, Here’s how to make up for lost time on covid-19, Bill Gates did his best-- which wasn't good enough-- to not point the finger if blame directly at Señor Trumpanzee. "There’s no question the United States missed the opportunity to get ahead of the novel coronavirus," he began what he intended to be a completely positive piece. The United States missed the opportunity? That's because the United States in led by a narcissistic sociopath who is enabled by an entire political party. Nonetheless, Gates urged his readers to think about how "the window for making important decisions hasn’t closed. The choices we and our leaders make now will have an enormous impact on how soon case numbers start to go down, how long the economy remains shut down and how many Americans will have to bury a loved one because of covid-19." Knowing what Trump is, makes that sound like a dire warning if not an actual threat.

Gates offers 3 steps the country needs to take now to pull ourselves out of the hole Trump dug and shoved us into. Problem, of course, is that Trump would be involved in the solution-- something he has steadfastly rejected.

First, we need a consistent nationwide approach to shutting down. Despite urging from public health experts, some states and counties haven’t shut down completely. In some states, beaches are still open; in others, restaurants still serve sit-down meals.

This is a recipe for disaster. Because people can travel freely across state lines, so can the virus. The country’s leaders need to be clear: Shutdown anywhere means shutdown everywhere. Until the case numbers start to go down across America-- which could take 10 weeks or more-- no one can continue business as usual or relax the shutdown. Any confusion about this point will only extend the economic pain, raise the odds that the virus will return, and cause more deaths.

Second, the federal government needs to step up on testing. Far more tests should be made available. We should also aggregate the results so we can quickly identify potential volunteers for clinical trials and know with confidence when it’s time to return to normal. There are good examples to follow: New York state recently expanded its capacity to up to more than 20,000 tests per day.

...Even so, demand for tests will probably exceed the supply for some time, and right now, there’s little rhyme or reason to who gets the few that are available. As a result, we don’t have a good handle on how many cases there are or where the virus is likely headed next, and it will be hard to know if it rebounds later. And because of the backlog of samples, it can take seven days for results to arrive when we need them within 24 hours.

This is why the country needs clear priorities for who is tested. First on the list should be people in essential roles such as health-care workers and first responders, followed by highly symptomatic people who are most at risk of becoming seriously ill and those who are likely to have been exposed.

The same goes for masks and ventilators. Forcing 50 governors to compete for lifesaving equipment-- and hospitals to pay exorbitant prices for it-- only makes matters worse.

Finally, we need a data-based approach to developing treatments and a vaccine. Scientists are working full speed on both; in the meantime, leaders can help by not stoking rumors or panic buying. Long before the drug hydroxychloroquine was approved as an emergency treatment for covid-19, people started hoarding it, making it hard to find for lupus patients who need it to survive.

We should stick with the process that works: Run rapid trials involving various candidates and inform the public when the results are in. Once we have a safe and effective treatment, we’ll need to ensure that the first doses go to the people who need them most.

To bring the disease to an end, we’ll need a safe and effective vaccine. If we do everything right, we could have one in less than 18 months-- about the fastest a vaccine has ever been developed. But creating a vaccine is only half the battle. To protect Americans and people around the world, we’ll need to manufacture billions of doses. (Without a vaccine, developing countries are at even greater risk than wealthy ones, because it’s even harder for them to do physical distancing and shutdowns.)

We can start now by building the facilities where these vaccines will be made. Because many of the top candidates are made using unique equipment, we’ll have to build facilities for each of them, knowing that some won’t get used. Private companies can’t take that kind of risk, but the federal government can.

In his 2015 TED Talk on pandemics (above), Gates said the greatest risk of global catastrophe today looks not like the picture on the left, but the picture on the right:

Gates was on Fox News Sunday yesterday and said that "It is fair to say things won’t go back to truly normal until we have a vaccine that we’ve gotten out to basically the entire world." But what Bill Gates-- and almost anyone else in the ruling class-- will never say, of course, is that the greatest risk of global catastrophe looks like this:

Progressive Democrats have been connecting the dots and have started speaking out loudly-- connecting something else: Trump's gross incompetence with his congressional enablers. For example, Kathy Ellis is running for a Missouri congressional seat held by a Trump stooge, Jason Smith. "So far,"she told us this morning, "Smith's largest contribution to this pandemic has been calling for thoughts and prayers as Missouri's 8th district suffers. With five of the rural hospitals closing in the past six years, and many hospitals struggling to keep their doors open, rural residents are concerned with their ability to access testing and treatment when Coronavirus hits their communities." This week, Kathy joined 21 party leaders, candidates for office, and current elected officials in calling for support for our rural communities in the form of free testing and treatment (and eventual prevention), emergency funding to rural hospitals and community health centers, and the establishment of a health worker fund to protect our frontline workers. "Smith," she concluded, "has only offered his half-hearted concerns via taxpayer-funded political newsletters."

Carole Cadwalladr Kicks Facebook's Ass-- The Petri Dish For Trump

Remember how Trump lied his ass off during the 2016 campaign about the "great healthcare" he would provide if voters elected him? No? You can watch him telling his health care lies here. Look at those morons behind him. Did the campaign rent them from Central Casting? How did he win? How? Yes, Hillary's horrible, and should have never been the nominee-- but not that horrible, not compared to what was then the alternative. I mean, even with the Russians cheating on his behalf-- which the Mueller report has now proven beyond any reasonable doubt-- Trump still got tens of millions of votes. Are there that many people that incredibly stupid? And, by the way, the CBO reported on Thursday that over a million Americans have lost their healthcare insurance since Trump occupied the White House. I wish I could say they're all Trump voters and will be incapacitated and unable to ever vote again. But...

In a Ted Talk this month in the Silicon Valley, U.K. journalist Carole Cadwalladr got into the details of how the Russians managed make sure Britain passed Brexit. As someone who has never looked at a Facebook ad in my life and as someone who thinks Facebook is primarily for pre-teens, it's almost unimaginable that a barrage of misleading Facebook ads targeted at vulnerable Brexit swing voters could have swung an election-- be it for Brexit or in the Trump/Clinton debacle. Cadwalladr called out those who she referred to as the "gods of Silicon Valley"-- the ones at Facebook in particular and by name-- for being on the wrong side of history and asked, ominously, "Are free and fair elections a thing of the past?"

She thinks so. I guess we'll find out next year, won't we? Please don't miss watching the Ted Talk; she's really excellent and enlightening. I mean what do you have better to do? Watch Game of Thrones or something?

Qasim Rashid-- Building Bridges Of Understanding And Tearing Down Walls Of Bigotry-- In A Red Virginia Senate Race

Blue America doesn't endorse many candidates running for state legislatures-- only men and women we feel have the potential to make profound impacts on their state and significantly strengthen the Democrats' congressional bench. Unlike most states, where people will elected their legislatures in 2020, Virginia is electing theirs in 2019-- 8 months from now. Today we decided to endorse progressive activist and attorney Qasim Rashid who is running for a Republican-held seat (SD-28) that snakes along the Potomac River (the Virginia-Maryland border) from Stratford Hall way up to where it turns into Aquia Creek. The northern part of the district, Prince William County, is made up of commuter suburbs west of DC. South of Prince William, the district is composed of Stafford, which provides 51% of the voters, King George, Westmoreland and a tiny bit of Spotsylvania county. SD-28 borders on but doesn't include Frederickburg and Manassas. It leans Republican by about 3 points and 2 years ago went for Gillespie over Northam, 54-45%. In 2016 it voted for Trump 55-39% and in 2012, the district gave Romney a 56-42% win over Obama. The current senator is Republican Richard Stuart and Rashid, a human rights lawyer, former visiting fellow at Harvard University, a current Truman Project National Security Fellow, feels he can beat him in November. We want to help.

We asked him how a progressive Democrat, a Bernie supporter, can win in a red-leaning district, especially a progressive Democrat with the name Qasim Rashid. On the phone yesterday he told me when he's canvassing, knocking on doors, if a resident looks confused trying to read his name, he says it's like "awesome" without the first letter. Qasim's guest post is below-- and below that is one of his TED Talks. If you like what he has to say-- or if you've enjoyed his stupendous twitter feed or any of the books he's written, like The Wrong Kind of Muslim, or Extremist: A Response to Geert Wilders & Terrorists Everywhere, or Talk To Me: Changing the Narrative on Race, Religion, and Education, please consider contributing to his campaign by clicking on the ActBlue thermometer for state legislative races on the right.


Why Qasim Rashid?
-by Qasim Rashid, candidate Virginia state Senate

I migrated to the United States with my family in 1987. I didn’t know a word of English or what stood before me. We went through hardship as most families do, but we did not relent. I consider it a blessing that I learned the value of hard work at a young age-- as by 15 I was already working to help make rent for my family. It was also around this time that my brother enlisted in the US Marines. The year was 1997 and while we were proud of him, I’m not ashamed to say I was frightened I might never see him again.

Hind-sight is 20/20 and every day I am more proud that he served our nation and continues to work to improve the lives of veterans. My life turned towards human rights work at an early age. In 2004 when Hurricane Katrina struck-- my brother and I spent the last few hundred dollars we had to skip our college mid-term exams and drive down to Louisiana. We spent two weeks helping hurricane refugees piece together their lives.

In 2007 my life changed once more as I married my wonderful wife, Ayesha. Under her encouragement I applied to and was accepted to the wonderful program at Richmond Law, in Virginia. I earned my law degree from the University of Richmond School of Law, and have built a long track record of serving diverse communities in Virginia. This includes my work to combat domestic and sexual violence against women, uplift the incarcerated through prison chaplaincy, serve my neighbors through blood drives and highway clean ups, and advocate for children's education through various non-profit organizations.

To that end, I channel my passion to serve the marginalized by working with national and international non-profit organizations that advance women's rights, improve water, food, shelter, healthcare, and education access for children living in poverty, and fight to protect the religious freedom for all people. I have written numerous books, given hundreds of interviews, and testified before the US Commission on International Religious Freedom to protect the rights of persecuted religious minorities around the world. Likewise, I have worked with the US Government to improve national security here at home, while upholding the United States Constitution as the supreme law of the land.

In addition to my humanitarian commitments, I work as a consultant to help major organizations, small businesses, and non-profits improve their corporate strategies, messaging, and innovation. I love interfaith dialogue, running marathons, reading, and spending time with my wife and children.

I aspire for a campaign that prioritizes education for all students regardless of economic standing. A campaign that expands healthcare because no one should have to choose between treatment and making rent. A campaign that ratifies the Equal Rights Amendment because it is 2019, and gender equality should have been enshrined in the Constitution centuries ago. A campaign that reforms our criminal justice system and ends the new Jim Crow. 

We have a great deal of work to do, but it begins by removing those from office who serve corporate interests and vain desires. For example, 81% of Virginians support ratifying the ERA-- yet the Virginia legislature comprised mostly of men decided it wasn’t a priority, and refused to vote in favor of ratification. Likewise, finally after a 5 year battle, Virginia expanded Medicaid to include 400,000 new Virginians. Still, for 5 long years, those 400,000 people had to needlessly suffer. Moreover, while Virginia is America’s 9th wealthiest state, we are only 35thin expenditure on students. Virginia spends almost three times as much on an incarcerated inmate per year, than it does on the average student. This is a failing model and will ensure only that we cripple future generations.

As senator I seek to thrive as a public servant by actually serving and listening to the public. I’m not running against the President but for the people of Virginia. This is why the Rashid for VA campaign is powered by super people and mega hearts, not super pacs and mega corps. We welcome your support of our campaign to help ratify the ERA, increase education funding, expand healthcare, and reform criminal justice.

This is our time to build a campaign by, of, and for the people of Virginia and indeed for the benefit of all Americans.

Are you in?


 

Economic Inequality-- Not Just Public Policy... It Starts On A Personal Level

A lot of voters-- voters who don't know rich people, I always thought-- were impressed with Trump's claims that because he was so rich he wouldn't be susceptible to taking bribes and being a crook. Personally, I know lots of rich people so I recognized Trump was lying-- lying egregiously, tricking voters by design.

At the end of 2013, Paul Piff, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and Social Behavior at UC Irvine gave the TED talk above, which I urge you to watch. Piff describes his primary academic interest as "how social hierarchy, economic inequality and social class, and social emotion shape relations between individuals and groups." Conclusion seems to be that rich people have a great tendency towards greed, avarice, entitlement, delusion about their own abilities and general sociopathic behavior. I guess it's why the French and Russian revolutions killed so many of them. It's why the year after Piff's TED Talk, billionaire Nick Hanauer warned fellow plutocrats that the pitchforks are coming. "I have," he admitted, "been rewarded obscenely for that with a life that most of you all can't even imagine: multiple homes, a yacht, my own plane, etc., etc., etc." He went on:

But let's be honest: I am not the smartest person you've ever met. I am certainly not the hardest working. I was a mediocre student. I'm not technical at all. I can't write a word of code. Truly, my success is the consequence of spectacular luck, of birth, of circumstance and of timing. But I am actually pretty good at a couple of things. One, I have an unusually high tolerance for risk, and the other is I have a good sense, a good intuition about what will happen in the future, and I think that that intuition about the future is the essence of good entrepreneurship.

So what do I see in our future today, you ask? I see pitchforks, as in angry mobs with pitchforks, because while people like us plutocrats are living beyond the dreams of avarice, the other 99 percent of our fellow citizens are falling farther and farther behind. In 1980, the top one percent of Americans shared about eight percent of national [income], while the bottom 50 percent of Americans shared 18 percent. Thirty years later, today, the top one percent shares over 20 percent of national [income], while the bottom 50 percent of Americans share 12 or 13. If the trend continues, the top one percent will share over 30 percent of national [income] in another 30 years, while the bottom 50 percent of Americans will share just six.

You see, the problem isn't that we have some inequality. Some inequality is necessary for a high-functioning capitalist democracy. The problem is that inequality is at historic highs today and it's getting worse every day. And if wealth, power, and income continue to concentrate at the very tippy top, our society will change from a capitalist democracy to a neo-feudalist rentier society like 18th-century France. That was France before the revolution and the mobs with the pitchforks.

So I have a message for my fellow plutocrats and zillionaires and for anyone who lives in a gated bubble world: Wake up. Wake up. It cannot last. Because if we do not do something to fix the glaring economic inequities in our society, the pitchforks will come for us, for no free and open society can long sustain this kind of rising economic inequality. It has never happened. There are no examples. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state or an uprising. The pitchforks will come for us if we do not address this. It's not a matter of if, it's when. And it will be terrible when they come for everyone, but particularly for people like us plutocrats."

Piff found in his studies the same thing that Hanauer found in his own social observations: "We're at unprecedented levels of economic inequality. What that means is that wealth is not only becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of a select group of individuals, but the American dream is becoming increasingly unattainable for an increasing majority of us. And if it's the case, as we've been finding, that the wealthier you are, the more entitled you feel to that wealth, and the more likely you are to prioritize your own interests above the interests of other people, and be willing to do things to serve that self-interest, well, then, there's no reason to think that those patterns will change. In fact, there's every reason to think that they'll only get worse, and that's what it would look like if things just stayed the same, at the same linear rate, over the next 20 years." Why is that important? He doesn't talk about pitchforks or guillotines or firing squads.

[I]nequality-- economic inequality-- is something we should all be concerned about, and not just because of those at the bottom of the social hierarchy, but because individuals and groups with lots of economic inequality do worse ... not just the people at the bottom, everyone. There's a lot of really compelling research coming out from top labs all over the world, showcasing the range of things that are undermined as economic inequality gets worse. Social mobility, things we really care about, physical health, social trust, all go down as inequality goes up. Similarly, negative things in social collectives and societies, things like obesity, and violence, imprisonment, and punishment, are exacerbated as economic inequality increases. Again, these are outcomes not just experienced by a few, but that resound across all strata of society. Even people at the top experience these outcomes.

So what do we do? This cascade of self-perpetuating, pernicious, negative effects could seem like something that's spun out of control, and there's nothing we can do about it, certainly nothing we as individuals could do. But in fact, we've been finding in our own laboratory research that small psychological interventions, small changes to people's values, small nudges in certain directions, can restore levels of egalitarianism and empathy. For instance, reminding people of the benefits of cooperation or the advantages of community, cause wealthier individuals to be just as egalitarian as poor people.

This is the kind of solidarity Randy "IronStache" Bryce's campaign-- in fact his whole brand-- is all about. The DCCC is desperate to figure out how to duplicate Bryce's brand. Ben Ray Lujan himself showed up in Racine to see what he could discern. He couldn't discern anything, of course. Bryce has a more powerful brand than any DCCC candidate. He's raising more campaign funds-- from more people-- than any DCCC candidate. Why? Bryce, a union activist, is all about solidarity. The DCCC New Dems and Blue Dogs from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party don't know what solidarity is. They've never felt it, not for a moment in their lives. They won't ever represent us. Randy and candidates like him will represent real people DCCC-New Dem garbage careerist candidates are the enemy of regular people. They stink. Are they better than Republicans? Sure-- more or less. Are they worth a bucket of spit? No? A bucket of piss? No. Should you vote for them? Certainly not in a primary. Against a Republican in November? Make up your own mind about that. I wouldn't. I've never voted for my Blue Dog-New Dem congressman, Adam Schiff, since he was first elected. And I never will. I've never voted for California Senator Dianne Feinstein, not when she ran for the Board of Supervisors, for mayor of San Francisco, for governor or for senator. She represents wealthy special interests, not me and not the issues or values I care about.

There's a reason I asked Kansas Democrat James Thompson to put an exclamation point on the end of this post. This is heavy... and if you find it as compelling as I do, please consider contributing to his campaign at the ActBlue 2018 congressional thermometer on the right.

As someone who was once homeless, I understand better than most the pain and struggle of being truly poor. As I have climbed the ladder of success, I witnessed firsthand that the ladders are not equal; they are not the same for every person. Some are shorter, some are longer, and some don't have a ladder at all, but rather an elevator that only stops at the penthouse. I do not hate the rich. I want to be rich myself. What I find offensive is not the wealth but the greed. The type of greed that pushes people down rather than pulling everyone up. Income inequality is the greatest injustice of our time because it creates so much other injustice in its wake in areas such as criminal justice reform, healthcare, sex trafficking, racism, sexism, employment, campaign finances etc. When our children are sick, should we not be able to get them care? When men and women give of themselves a full days labor for the betterment of our society, should they not enjoy a full days wages that allows them the basic dignity of taking care of themselves and their family. Shouldn't a poor man's vote count just as much as the rich man's?

The true battle for our country's future is not between the left and the right, but between the top and the bottom. Charles Koch is credited with saying "I only want my fair share. ALL OF IT!", which highlights the greed of the privileged princes of Wall Street. Through corporate socialism over the past 40 years, a/k/a "trickle down economics," the billionaire boys club redistributed the wealth of this country to themselves and now use that wealth to pay for the oppression of working people by sewing division and keeping the masses in disarray. The shadow oligarchy controlling this country knows that a populace divided by racism, sexism and xenophobia cannot unite sufficiently to wrest power from them or their puppets in Congress. However, while much of our country's wealth is concentrated in a relative few individuals such as the KOCH brothers, the real power of this country is located in the people, working class people, but only if we unite, for with unity comes great strength and power to demand change.

Consequently, campaign finance reform is probably the most pressing issue confronting Americans in 2018 and 2020. We must fix the system, before we can fix the problems in the system. We must remove the ability of corporations to control our political arenas and representatives by reversing Citizen's United.  We must than ensure that working people are paid a fair days pay for a fair days labor and moving our minimum wages to $15 and adjusting it annually based on inflation.  Next, we must make sure that the product of our labor is no longer amassed by the rich but instead remains with us through a fair and progressive tax policy. Passing a Medicare-for-all policy that at minimum contains a public option, will guarantee working Americans are no longer slaves to the grind simply working for their healthcare and instead are free to move from job to job and maximize the fruit of their labor. Finally, we must guarantee education for all citizens at public universities to remove the anchor of student loans from around the neck of our populace. To "make America great again" we must restore our democracy to one that again enables social mobilization instead of the veiled caste system that we have become. United we stand, divided we fall.