Thursday, November 12, 2020

The Biden-Harris Plan for Covid Recovery Is Not the Biden-Harris Plan You Voted For

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The Biden-Harris Covid Advisory Council

by Thomas Neuburger

The new, improved transition version of the [Biden-Harris Covid plan] is so threadbare compared to the extensive, full bore assault campaign version that the shared elements are few and far between.
     —Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism
 

I have remarked privately and worried publicly that Joe Biden's Covid proposals would not pass two critical marks — free treatment for all, and free vaccines for all (see "When Should the War Against Biden's Neoliberalism Begin?").

About the vaccine in particular, I wrote, "It's impossible, on moral or practical grounds, to make the case that during a global pandemic (a) the price should be a multiple of the cost of manufacture; and (b) any user should spend a single dollar to receive it." The same applies to the cost of treatment.

Yet that case looks like it's about to be made, especially about the cost of treatment. Thanks to this excellent examination by Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism, "Quick Comments on the Biden-Harris Covid Plan: Not Much Sizzle and No Steak," we have some insight into the many differences between the Covid plan that was advertised on the campaign website and what's being touted today:

First, this new plan isn’t the same as the one on the Biden campaign site. The campaign version had no mention of contact tracing, while this iteration does. But if you simply skim the campaign version versus the president-presumptive one, you’ll see tons of program proposals from the campaign have vanished, like emergency paid leave (with reimbursements to employers), income support for gig workers whose pay has declined, rental assistance, and support for small businesses.

The campaign plan also had sweeping promises about paying for all Covid treatments, not just testing. For instance, this section, by using the term “balance billing” clearly meant it included hospitalizations and emergency room visits ... There’s not a peep about any of this in the new version. ...

The lack of financial support for workers to stay at home because they are sick, quarantined, or just waiting for test results makes it difficult to treat this scheme as serious. And the failure to even ask for the government to cover all Covid treatment costs, not just the kind that can be administered with a needle means a lot of people who have or think they have Covid won’t seek treatment until they are really really ill, increasing the load on hospitals and producing worse outcomes.

About the cost of drugs, Matt Taibbi caught this clever price positioning by the CEO of Gilead, makers of remdesivir. First, he implied that remdesivir was worth $48,000 per treatment because "earlier hospital discharge would result in hospital savings of approximately $12,000 per patient," which Taibbi takes to mean $12,000 per day multiplied by four, the number of days earlier than normal that remdesivir-treated patients were released on average.

But Gilead, says Taibbi, was inclined to be generous and reduce the price to "a measly $3,120 per patient." Keep that $3,000 per patient number in mind.

About vaccine pricing, I see three ways a Biden-Harris plan might go:

1. The government will provide the vaccine for free to all and buy it at near cost from the manufacturer, saving lots of government money.

2. The government will provide the vaccine for free to all, but reimburse the manufacturer at near-retail prices, spending lots of government money.

3. Vaccine recipients will be charged a co-pay to offset the cost to the government of reimbursing the manufacturer at near-retail prices, spending lots of government money, but less of it. 

Since option one is actually a Sanders plan, I don't hold much hope that it will be chosen. So keep your eye on the amount of money that passes from the government to whichever drug manufacturer hits the jackpot. Billions will be a low estimate. 

More than 300 million people live in the U.S. At "just" $100 per dose, that's $30 billion dollars, not counting redosage income. And why, with a compliant government paying the bill, would the manufacturer stop at $100 per dose? Gilead's CEO counts himself generous for charging a mere $3,000 per patient for remdesivir.

Multiply $3,000, or even $1,000, times 300 million. Jackpot indeed.

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(For those who like my work, I've launched a Substack site. You can get more information here. If you decide to sign up — it's free — my thanks to you!)


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Monday, November 09, 2020

Who Is Michèle Flournoy, Biden's Rumored Pick for Pentagon Chief?

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Michèle Flournoy and Joe Biden (source)

by Thomas Neuburger

Despite all the focus on domestic and economic matters in the current election, foreign policy, never really discussed, should bear at least equal scrutiny.

Will Biden's "defense policy" (quotes because America's defense policy is really a war policy) turn more hawkish than Obama's, thus reflecting the Hillary wing of that cabinet? Or will Biden continue the "no stupid wars" admonition that kept Obama from initiating bloodbaths in Syria and Iran?

Time will tell, of course, but one of the chief indicators will be his pick for Secretary of Defense, the person who will reflect, influence and implement his foreign policy. On that pick, there's almost near consensus — Michèle Flournoy. (See here, here, here and here.)

So who is Michèle Flournoy?

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies, no fans of America's forever war, have written a nice run-down of her history and policy positions, and it's not a pretty one — unless you're a fan of the forever war yourself, in which case you'll find it wonderful to behold. 

Some samples from their article:

 • As assistant secretary of defense for strategy under President Bill Clinton, Flournoy was the principal author of the May 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which laid the ideological foundation for the endless wars that followed. Under “Defense Strategy,” the QDR effectively announced that the United States would no longer be bound by the UN charter’s prohibition against the threat or use of military force. It declared that, “when the interests at stake are vital, …we should do whatever it takes to defend them, including, when necessary, the unilateral use of military power.”

The QDR defined U.S. vital interests to include “preventing the emergence of a hostile regional coalition” anywhere on Earth and “ensuring uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies and strategic resources.”

 • In June 2002, as Bush and his gang threatened aggression against Iraq, Flournoy told The Washington Post that the United States would “need to strike preemptively before a crisis erupts to destroy an adversary’s weapons stockpile” before it “could erect defenses to protect those weapons, or simply disperse them.” When Bush unveiled his official “doctrine of preemption” a few months later, Senator Edward Kennedy wisely condemned it as “unilateralism run amok” and “a call for 21st century American imperialism that no other country can or should accept.

 • Flournoy’s career has been marked by the unethical spinning of revolving doors between the Pentagon, consulting firms helping businesses procure Pentagon contracts, and military-industrial think tanks like the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), which she co-founded in 2007.

 • In 2009, she joined the Obama administration as under secretary of defense for policy, where she helped engineer political and humanitarian disasters in Libya and Syria and a new escalation of the endless war in Afghanistan before resigning in 2012.

 • As Obama’s under secretary of defense for policy, she was a hawkish voice for escalation in Afghanistan and war on Libya. She resigned in February 2012, leaving others to clean up the mess. In February 2013, when Obama brought in Chuck Hagel as a relatively dovish reformer to replace Leon Panetta as defense secretary, right-wing figures opposed to his planned reforms, including Paul Wolfowitz and William Kristol, backed Flournoy as a hawkish alternative.

 • From 2013-2016, she joined Boston Consulting, trading on her Pentagon connections to boost the firm’s military contracts from $1.6 million in 2013 to $32 million in 2016.

 • In 2016, Flournoy was tapped as Hillary Clinton’s choice for secretary of defense, and she co-authored a CNAS report titled “Expanding American Power” with a team of hawks that included former Dick Cheney aide Eric Edelman, PNAC co-founder Robert Kagan and Bush’s National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. 

The report was seen as a view of how Clinton’s foreign policy would differ from Obama’s, with calls for higher military spending, arms shipments to Ukraine, renewed military threats against Iran, more aggressive military action in Syria and Iraq, and further increases to domestic oil and gas production — all of which Trump has adopted.

 • In 2017, Flournoy and President Barack Obama’s Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken founded their own corporate consulting business, WestExec Advisors, where Flournoy continued to cash in on her contacts by helping companies successfully navigate the complex bureaucracy of winning enormous Pentagon contracts.

(Remember that name, Tony Blinken. He'll turn up again too.)

There's more in the article, but this should be enough. Michèle Flournoy, as Secretary of Defense, will be the hawk from hell that puts a gleam in every war contractor's eye. 

I keep warning that all this killing will come back to us — will blast our malls and movie palaces, our sports arenas and apartment complexes — but warnings like these go well unlistened-to, drowned by the voices of hubris and spread of empire that infuse what passes for minds in the DC world. 

I suspect (with no evidence yet) that on the domestic and economic front, the Biden administration will be a centrist-flavored disaster. But if Michèle Flournoy — or anyone like her — is picked for Secretary of Defense, his foreign policy will be even worse, a banquet of blood and a grave risk to us all.

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(For those who like my work, I'm launching a Substack site. You can get more information at neuburger.substack.com. If you decide to sign up — it's free — my thanks to you!)

   

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Thursday, November 05, 2020

The Next Speaker of the House

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer (Getty Images)

by Thomas Neuburger

A short note to let you know that if Nancy Pelosi doesn't step down as Speaker, it's possible, though not likely, that she'll be challenged when the new House convenes in January. With a smaller majority this time (from 232 to maybe 227), it won't take many of her opponents to be able to gridlock the Speaker's vote until there's a compromise candidate. With a caucus of 227, it would take only 11 members to hold the election hostage. 

But even if that doesn't happen and she retains her position until 2022 when she's promised to retire, the question of the next Democratic caucus leader is an important one. Who that might be is anyone's guess, but most people's money is on Hakeem Jeffries — it's an open secret he's being groomed for the job. (More on Jeffries here.)

Which brings to mind this event from 2012. The fifth-ranking House leadership position was vice-chair of the caucus. Corrupt New Dem Joe Crowley wanted that position, but he was opposed by progressive Barbara Lee. Finally, progressives thought, someone they could support!

But it was not to be. Prior to a vote in the caucus — and likely to prevent one — Lee was talked into resigning (or talked herself into it after counting the votes). Politico put it this way:

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) said Wednesday that she is dropping her leadership bid in what would’ve been the only contested race among House Democrats.

This means Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) [former vice-chair of the New Dem Caucus]  is a sure bet to become the next vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, the fifth-ranking post in leadership. …

Lee, a former chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said she was withdrawing her bid in order to “unify” lawmakers around Crowley. [emphasis added]

No real progressive wants this kind of unity this time around. Jeffries is a Party man, not as corrupt as Crowley, but no AOC either. He'll do what the donors say to do.

Real progressives want people like these deposed, not promoted, even if it means losing this time around to build a base for the fight next time — and even if it means pitting the base against the Establishment the way Keith Ellison's run for DNC Chair roiled the base and riled the leaders.

At some point, a progressive has to fight for the base, against the leadership, and do it openly, even if it exposes Party leaders to (well-deserved) scorn.

If no one on "our" team dares to do that, we've gone nowhere and we're getting nowhere, no matter how many "bold progressives" we send into that pit. 

By the way, if there was any year in which current Party leadership should be challenged, it's this year, after the debacle of this election. Just saying.


(Note: For those who like my work, I'm launching a Substack site. You can get more information here. If you decide to sign up — it's free — my thanks to you!)

  

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Tuesday, November 03, 2020

Election Day Open Thread II

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Thirteen blackbirds waiting for election results

by Thomas Neuburger

By my count we're still several hours away from knowing anything worth hearing about, and as many have pointed out,the evening will go one of two ways — Biden will win the early states (Florida comes to mind) and we can all go home, or this evening will drag out for a week or more. 

Feel free to post your own updates and observations in the comments. 

In the meantime, I've already set my emotional clock to 2021 and the new day that's soon to dawn no matter who takes the White House. Because that new day is likely to have Biden's name on it, I want to offer this, from the same Matt Taibbi piece (paywalled) that Howie quoted earlier. This is his assessment of where we're headed:

The unknown factor is how much more of this lay ahead in a Biden White House. The obvious first concerns would be increased political surveillance, much more aggressive and coordinated propaganda, more McCarthyite manias, and harsher punishments for Assange/Snowden type figures accused of leaking “misinformation” (now re-defined as true adverse information). As a member of the press, the drift toward a Chinese-style digital media landscape, policed by armies of political truth-scorers, probably bothers me more than most, but that’s on the table. There are going to be a lot of people coming back to Washington who are going to insist that something like Trump not be allowed to happen again, even if it means snipping a passage or four out of the Constitution. 

I think Taibbi's right. Two points, and then it's over to you, dear readers.

First, note the Orwellian conflation of "misinformation" with "true adverse information" that can't be allowed to appear before the public. We're already there. From the Washington Post:

We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation — even if they probably aren’t.

Get ready for a whole lot more where that came from, and get ready for Party elites, the self-styled "Democrats," to cheer it on.

Second, what Taibbi accurately called our "imperial government-in-exile" will return to power with a vengeance (the bolded passage above addresses that). That's the correct description, right? — Trump as an interregnum, a Cromwell interruption in the march of kings.

The State, both narrowly and broadly defined, has been out of power, at least at the very top, for the last four years. Think there's a chance in hell of a new Trump getting back in, much less a Sanders (as-was) or an unreconstructed AOC? My cynical self says No, not in the least.

With that sad thought, on to the tubes to witness what unfolds. Comments? Post 'em if you got 'em.

(Note: For those who like my work, I'm launching a Substack site. You can get more information here. If you do decide to sign up — it's free — my thanks to you!)

 

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Monday, November 02, 2020

America's Other Original Sin: 'Preserving the Union'

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by Thomas Neuburger

Almost all of America's ills — but not whole set — stem from a single source, its "original sin" if you will. America's real original sin was not its founding as an elite-dominated republic in the 1780s, but the importation of a large population of African slaves starting in the early 1600s. It's a commonplace to say that if slavery had never touched these shores, we'd be a vastly different nation today. 

But America may have a second original sin, a follow-on, and it's one that may surprise you. Consider this, from the opening of a good piece on the history of the Electoral College by Justin Fox published at Bloomberg:

The Many Unintended Consequences of the Electoral College

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- When it came time in 1787 to set the rules for choosing a president of the U.S., three of the principal authors of the Constitution — James Madison, Gouverneur Morris and James Wilson — argued that the best approach, the one most likely to inspire public confidence and national feeling, would be a nationwide popular vote.

All three also understood the prospects of this happening were, as Wilson put it, “chimerical.” It was obvious the method would instead have to reflect the two great (or awful, if you prefer) compromises hammered out at the Constitutional Convention over political representation. To keep the slave-holding states on board, the delegates had apportioned seats in the House of Representatives on the basis of a population count that considered slaves to be three-fifths of a person. And to assuage the smaller states they had created a Senate with two members per state, regardless of population. [emphasis added]

Consider the next-to-last sentence: "To keep the slave-holding states on board, the delegates had apportioned seats in the House of Representatives on the basis of a population count that considered slaves to be three-fifths of a person."

Now consider the American Civil War. That war was a violent and successful attempt, in essence, to also "keep the slave-holding states on board." It stripped them of their slaves, but not their deep history of racial animus, anger, exploitation, constant fear of rebellion. 

What if America's second original sin was this — the attempt to "keep the slave-holding states on board" at all? It wasn't at all a given that it should do this.

What if, in other words, the framers of the Constitution had written rules for only the non-slave states? It's entirely possible that the all of the states north of Maryland would have joined the Union, and left those south of that line to do ... what? Stay separate from each other? Form a proto-Confederacy? 

Who knows what they would have done? And why should we care, given what they've done to us since, from 1789 to today, as part of the "union" we so desperately cared about?

Had they departed the Constitution, or never been folded in, the rest of us would have been rid of them, having never been made to lie with them in the first place. And we certainly would not have had the Electoral College. Madison may well have won.

What If Lincoln Had Just Said, 'Fine, Go Away"?

Consider another juncture in our history when we could have been freed of them. What if Lincoln had not been so hell-bent on "preserving the Union" — had just said, "Let the slave states go and good riddance to them all"? 

By then the slave-induced wounds on the republic had already festered — the compromises that led to war left a mess in the west — but the massive national bloodletting might have been avoided, and the new, non-slave nation of the Northern Union would not have been continuously and politically roiled by the slave-holding South from the day of Emancipation till now. 

We're poisoned today by Lincoln's determination — at least that's one way to look at it.

But What About the Slaves Themselves?

The greatest obstacle to this way of thinking involves the state of the slaves themselves. The benefits of freedom as a result of the Civil War should not be understated or underestimated. It's certain that the history of Africans on this part of the American continent would have been vastly different had they not been freed in 1862. 

It's true that men like Frederick Douglass would still have achieved their greatness — he escaped slavery to Pennsylvania well before the war — but everyone who failed to escape would have remained in the wretched condition she or he was subject to prior to emancipation. So we cannot consider this thought lightly.

Yet we should consider it, at least in an alternative-history sense. What may have happened indeed had the Founders not bent the Constitution to include the slave states? What may have happened had Lincoln not valued union over peace?

In the first case, a number of possibilities present themselves, among them the non-consolidation, at least for a time, of the slaves states into one entity. This would have left each of them vulnerable, considering the smaller size of their individual economies, to shrink even further when the northern industrial powerhouse began to dominate the continent. 

As they watched the Northern Union grow stronger, would the southern states have sought to join with them, their hats in hand? Perhaps some of them might. 

More likely, though, they would eventually have banded together, but as the industrial North became the engine it was to become, even a united Southern Union would have been no match for it in real wealth, and the need to trade with the North would have placed natural restraints on southern power. 

In addition, a look at the history of Haiti is instructive. The Haitian Revolution occurred at the end of the 1790s and concluded in 1804. Would a weakened South have been subject to a similar rebellion, or many of them? If revolts had occurred, the Northern Union (I certainly would hope) would have found it in its interest to stand aside. (If they would actually have stood aside is another matter, but abolitionist voices were strong.)

A war may well have emerged between the Northern Union and the South, caused either by skirmishes launched by separate southern states or by the South itself united. But would it have gone the same as the actual war? It may well have ended earlier. 

In addition, if after the war the Northern Union had not tried to force the slave states back into the fold, the price of victory could simply have been to declare all the South's slaves free, with right of passage and citizenship to the non-slave Northern Union. 

Thus no Reconstruction. The occupying Northern Army could guarantee (to the extent that it could) the safety of every slave who wished to emigrate, then let the slaves states do what they wished to do without more interference, and left. 

The myth of the "war of Northern aggression" would never have been born, since the only way a broad war could have started would be by Southern aggression against its sovereign neighbor to the north.

Food for thought. Life for Africans and their descendants was horrible in the South before the actual Civil War, and after Reconstruction, ended by the corrupt bargain of 1876 (a "third original sin," if you will), life for African descendants became returned to terrible. The South did rise again, with lynchings, poverty, fear and social isolation replacing the slave cabins, whips and guns. 

Not an exact trade — slavery was still far worse — but not a good one either. This new bad life for African descendants lasted at least till the end of Jim Crow, if it ever ended at all.

The New Secessionists

Today many dream of a kind of new secession, one where California and the Pacific states are free of rules imposed by Alabama and Idaho; where Texas doesn't write creationist textbooks for Vermont; and one small-minded, power-hungry conservative from Kentucky can't put gay-hating climate deniers on the Supreme Court for the next four decades, to rule us from the bench.

Was the price of "union" worth it? Do we even have "union" at all, after all that effort and pain? Or would have been better for everyone concerned if the North were rid of the South from the very start?

Food for thought.

 

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Thursday, October 29, 2020

The Problem With This Election, or When Is a Coup a Coup and When Is It Not?

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Headline: "MP claims "judicial coup" overturned Kenya election result; A Kenyan MP has filed a petition calling for the removal of Chief Justice David Maraga" (source)

By Thomas Neuburger

The problem with this election is that it brings to a head the general problem of dealing with Movement Republicans — those whom Paul Krugman in 2003 correctly called "a revolutionary power" — that like all revolutionary powers "does not accept the legitimacy of our current political system" and therefore has no intention of operating within the rules that govern the rest of us. 

They don't want to "work within" the system to reform it, because they don't believe the system should exist. They want to strip it to its bones and rebuild it.

A Revolutionary Power

This perfectly explains Republican Party behavior, from Nixon to Reagan to Bush to Bush-Cheney to McConnell. Nixon's re-election committee believed that the "other side" was so dangerous that anything that prevented a Democratic Party win would be justified — even murder, though I can't now find the John Mitchell quote, spoken under oath, that admits it.

Nixon and Reagan both treated with the enemies of their country — negotiated against their government's peace efforts during wartime — to extend the killing of American soldiers (Nixon) or extend the foreign captivity of American citizens (Reagan) for personal and partisan gain. 

Bush senior was Reagan's point man in Republican pre-election negotiations with the Iranian government to extend the captivity of their hostages, he carried the campaign's promises, made sure the hostages weren't released until after Carter was out of office, then swore an oath he had no intention of upholding — to defend the Constitution.

Cheney attempted, the entire time he was in office, to convert the presidency from an office checked by the other three branches to a "unitary executive" capable of acting close to king-like. He too swore to uphold the Constitution, yet worked his entire professional life to overturn it. His president, Bush junior, instituted the largest mass surveillance regime in American history, a regime that's still with us, and likely killed for good the 14th Amendment in the process.

McConnell's sins you likely know already, the latest being his help in putting Amy Coney Barrett onto the Supreme Court. 

Note this though: His sin is not in supporting Trump's nomination this late in Trump's term of office — Trump had that right just as Obama had the right to nominate Merrick Garland up to the day he left the White House (Ruth Bader Ginsberg publicly concurred). McConnell's sin is in helping put a culturally radical Movement Republican onto the Court, someone who, like the rest of her kind, will work like the devil to turn the country into a place no one but she can live in, then force the rest of the country to live in it anyway.

This is the revolutionary force that confronts us in this election, and the particular problem with this election isn't that they'll be returned to power, but that Trump, their bumbling president, will be retained through anti-constitutional means, the way George W. Bush was "elected" through anti-constitutional means. The Founders in 1789 had no idea that the Supreme Court could select a president; they didn't even countenance the thought that the Supreme Court could invalidate the law (that came in 1805 in a coup of its own by Supreme Court justice John Marshall). 

Republicans staged a coup once, a real one, and got away with it. I think a great many of them would gladly do it again.

"Fraud" versus Fraud and the Response to Each

What would happen if the electorate chooses Joe Biden? The radical Republican Party would scream "fraud" with every breath to invalidate that choice, then act as if Democratic fraud actually occurred, with all that this implies.

Yet Republicans are committing fraud as we speak. Among other acts, they are using their judicial operatives in the courts, Movement Republicans loyalists, to uphold challenges to Democratic Party voters.

If the unlikely occurs and the election turns on a case in the U.S. Supreme Court — as it did in 2000 — and the Court installs Trump as the winner with a ruling as specious as the 2000 ruling was, Republicans will have done in fact what they falsely accuse Democrats of doing in their dreams — they will have stolen the presidency, twice.

In addition, if Biden wins, it's pretty certain that many MAGA hat Trump supporters will take to the streets, that calls for "resistance" will be many, and the mantra "not my government" will be heard from a great many lips. From the Trump-supporter point of view, a Biden win will look like a coup that literally invalidates the authority of his government and justifies revolt.

But what if Trump wins because the Supreme Court installed him, despite the polling, the invalidation of ballots, the false claims of fraud, and the open and outright corruption of Republican judges? 

In this case, it will not simply appear to be a coup — it will be one in fact. 

How Should Anti-Trump Voters React to a Coup?

If this should occur, how should those who witness it respond? What should the people do if the Court, for a second time, steals the presidency? 

The fact is, they should react exactly as MAGA supporters are going to react if Biden were elected. The pro-Trump side will think it sees a coup, but they will be wrong. If the Court hands the election to Trump in an outright theft, Biden supporters will know they've seen a coup, and they will be right.

And that's the problem with this election. It could all come down to dueling charges of theft, one of them imagined and one of them very real. Will the nation, in rejecting the behavior of the "fake coup" side, reject their only valid response if a real one occurs?

  

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Monday, October 26, 2020

Notes on a World Without Trump

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by Thomas Neuburger

I’m working on a book-length project that includes a look at our soon-to-be post-Trump world. These are preliminary notes for that part of the project.

1. The World Without Trump won’t be a world without Trump. (For the exception, see below.) 

Trump will not go away. He'll persist as a pest that’s driven from the desk but not from the room he’s in. His most likely course of action is to go loudly into that good night, keep frothing and fomenting his base, selling his products and shtick, cashing his cachet as former U.S. president, and roiling the Democrat-controlled government to the greatest extent he can.

Trump will be a thorn in the nation’s side — and a profit center for mainstream media — until he dies, at which point his state funeral will be something indeed to behold. 

Trump will always be with us. I would not underestimate his effect. It will pull any Democratic government to the right for as long as his presence persists and the elite media promotes it.

Exception: The only way this won’t be true is if the Democratic Party cuts a no-prosecution deal with Trump that Democratic state attorneys general decide honor — in which case Trump will go tweetless for the rest of his life. 

If the Democratic Party doesn’t cut a no-prosecution deal with Trump, yet no prosecutions emerge anyway because Democrats continue to be members of the “elites don’t prosecute elites” club, Trump is home free. As I wrote when George H.W. Bush died:

Those who run the world we merely inhabit have nothing but respect for each other. And why not? They may pick each other off from time to time (both Saddam Hussein and Moamar Khaddafi were once in high favor), but over the long haul, keeping each member of the ruling circle in a reverential spotlight keeps them all — keeps the circle itself — in reverence as well. Since the circle operates as a system, the system is honored each time its members, no matter how deadly, are honored. And the system sees that the system is always honored.

If this is true, Trump may continue to be hated (Trump hate is still the Democratic Party brand and the media’s cash cow), but he won’t be prosecuted, for the same reasons that arguable-mass-murderer George W. Bush, who turned Iraq into a slaughterhouse, was never impeached in office, never indicted for war crimes after leaving it, and was eventually reborn and embraced by Democratic elites as one of their own as soon as his sins were safely “misremembered.”

2. The regime of soft censorship that kept Biden’s reputation afloat during the 2020 general election will continue. 

Matt Taibbi has been writing about this subject for a while. For example:

The flow of information in the United States has become so politicized -- bottlenecked by an increasingly brazen union of corporate press and tech platforms -- that it’s become impossible for American audiences to see news about certain topics absent thickets of propagandistic contextualizing. Try to look up anything about Burisma, Joe Biden, or Hunter Biden in English, and you’re likely to be shown a pile of “fact-checks” and explainers ahead of the raw information:

Other true information has been scrubbed or de-ranked, either by platforms or by a confederation of press outlets whose loyalty to the Democratic Party far now overshadows its obligations to inform.

Obviously, Fox is not much better, in terms of its willingness to report negative information about Trump and Republicans, but Fox doesn’t have the reach that this emerging partnership between mass media, law enforcement, and tech platforms does. That group’s reaction to the New York Post story is formalizing a decision to abandon the media’s old true/untrue standard for a different test that involves other, more politicized questions, like provenance and editorial intent.

The post-Trump media world will not, as I see it now, fundamentally alter the pattern it set in the soon-to-pass Never Trump era. Big tech platforms and media will continue to see that their loyalty to leaders of the Democratic Party trumps (to borrow a phrase) their obligation to inform the public. Having gone down the censorship road, what would cause them to turn back, especially if Trump, the expressed source of their concern, continues to bleat, media-enhanced, in the never-ending background?

The truth about Biden’s history is as “nuanced” and troubling as the truth about Trump’s. Having acquired the habit of burying it, why would they dig it back up? 

I would not underestimate the effect of this one either. Obama was protected by being Obama. Biden has been protected by everyone unconnected to Fox News and right-wing media. I expect this to continue — the Biden untouchability effect, if you will — for quite some time.

3. The madness that inflicts both political parties — their use of popular anger around identity and cultural issues to deflect from economic issues — will continue.

Let’s not be confused: The nation desperately needs to have a discussion about identity and cultural issues. Our history of violence, physical and economic, against the (usually impoverished) “other” needs urgent addressing, or the country will simply come apart. But that conversation cannot come as a substitute for addressing the underlying structural economic conditions that maintain our impoverishment. The next Trump rides to power on that wave of silence, just as the last one did.

My cynical self believes that mainstream Democratic power brokers are far less committed to actual identity issues (”Hillary-only feminism” is a prime example; more here and here) than they are committed to keeping their donors happy and thus keeping structural changes off the table. An insincere or semi-sincere commitment to addressing the nation’s real identity and cultural problems serves that purpose perfectly.

The same problem exists on the Republican side. The nation does need a serious discussion about immigration policy. For example, should global corporations be allowed to use the H1B visa program to replace well-paid American workers with lower-wage, imported intellectual workers whose visa status often makes them indentured servants of the corporations that employ them?

Mainstream Republican power brokers, however, are using immigration, as well as other identity issues, to keep race-hate and social anger high among their voting base, thus distracting supporters from the party’s fealty to its donor base. This fealty leads to policies similar to the Democratic Party’s policies — both produce more wealth for the global elites who fund them and less wealth for supporters that keep each party in power.

“Free trade” is a perfect example of a policy with bipartisan elite support, yet is never voluntarily discussed by each party’s movers and shakers. It’s not by accident that only Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump made “free trade” a cornerstone of their 2016 campaigns.

4. As we’ve been promised, “nothing will fundamentally change.”

It’s possible that Biden will prove fundamentally different than his 40-plus-year history of corporate allegiance would imply, that Biden will transform himself and “meet the moment.” Some writers certainly think so, and many of my progressive friends have grown quite hopeful.

Yet as I wrote the last time we took a look ahead, “In none of these cases will much of anything change after the election, at least not once Covid has run most of its course. The need for a radical restructured economy will be waved away — by the corporate Republicans as too much 'government interference'; by corporate Democrats, who control the post-Sanders Party, as 'irresponsible' and 'unaffordable' given the glut of spending on the virus crisis itself. ... Trump, if president, will do what Trump will do, or something worse. The Democrat, if president, will do what the Party always does, serve its donors while trying to placate workers they've abandoned. In neither case will workers see relief.”

Will Biden part the wealthy from their wealth? I just don’t see how, even if he’s magically transformed, Biden becomes Sanders or the next FDR — or if he does, how the Party won't simply block his every move. The Party spent the last 30 years frustrating and defeating progressives at every turn. If Biden becomes one — and though I’d love to see it, I think I’d be a fool to expect it — the Party will simply add him to the list of those whose policies they’ll die trying to defeat.

5. The rebellion against both parties’ corruption will continue as before — or as it would have done had the virus not taken its interrupting course. And as before, the soft censorship mentioned above will consign any real resistance to the crazy bin. 

If past is prologue, resistance not grounded in Party-favored identity issues will be painted as eccentric, or worse, a danger to the republic — with all that implies about populist promises broken, billionaire bailouts purchased and passed, and the clash of the newly-desperate against the muscular force of state and judicial machines, all charged with keeping the “peace” at the expense of progress.

6. Finally, the non-electoral portion of the evening (to steal a line from My Favorite Year) — of our decade-long, confused revolt against those who know better than the people what the people really need — I think that will begin in earnest.

With Sanders gone, or self-exiled, as an “existential threat” to Party elites, there’s no one of his stature to take that place, which leaves the ravaged with no good choice at all. If they choose to act anyway, the corporate state will do what it will do, what entrenched power always does when faced with a rebellion — bring in the thugs, many of whom wear badges. At some point that may not be enough and the nation will break. At another point, it could be way too much and the nation will break again, but in a different way. 

Thus the world without Trump begins to take shape. These are just first thoughts, and they only treat the opening part of the path we're starting on. The rest of that path may be just as predictable, but it’s going to take some time and thought to discern it.

  

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Thursday, October 22, 2020

2020 Could Be the Worst Year for Arctic Ice Ever (and Joe Biden Won't Ban Fracking)

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The Laptev Sea, part of the Arctic Ocean

by Thomas Neuburger

        "Joe Biden will not ban fracking."
        —Kamala Harris, October 7, 2020

This is your friendly, periodic reminder that while Joe Biden dithers about fracking and support for fossil fuel, the planet is changing rapidly as we speak.

How rapidly? The planet is changing so fast that Biden may still be alive when the error of his ways becomes obvious to us all.

2020 Is Looking Like the Worst Year for Arctic Sea Ice Ever

Above is a map of the Laptev Sea, a part of the Arctic Ocean. The Laptev Sea is suffering the same fate as the rest of the Arctic — it's losing its ice at an alarming rate. As you can see from the graph below, 2020 is shaping up to be an unprecedented year — even surpassing in icelessness the previous worst year, 2018, marked in yellow. (Chart courtesy of climatologist Zach Labe.)

The same things is happening in the Siberian Sea (again the previous worst year, 2012, is marked in yellow):


 

This is, of course, a natural result of record high air temperatures over the Arctic:

 

 

Not only is the extent of sea ice rapidly diminishing; the volume of ice — which takes into account its thickness — is also shrinking to a shadow of its former self:


 

Climate Deniers Push Biden to Stay With Fracking for "Strong Environmental" Reasons

While this is going on, Team Biden is being lobbied (or quietly encouraging others to lobby them) to stay the course on fracking because fracking "could actually help the climate." You read that right. As a recent Politico piece argues, "abruptly ending fracking today would make [the] decarbonization process harder, not easier."

The Politico piece is propaganda (of course) written by two men associated with the Breakthrough Institute, an energy company-friendly think tank founded by known climate denier — and Republican-invited witness at the most recent House science hearing — Michael Shellenberger.

A sample from Shellenberger's House testimony: "If the Greenland ice sheet were to completely disintegrate, sea levels would rise by seven meters, but over a 1,000-year period. And for that to happen, temperatures would have to rise far more than anyone imagines." 

No, Mr. Shellenberger; if the Greenland ice sheet were to completely disintegrate — and it's disappearing 600% faster than models have predicted — global sea level would rise by seven meters within a few years or less, not ten centuries. If you fill a bathtub, it doesn't take a week for new water to reach the back. Water doesn't get stuck like that — it flows.

The end of winter Arctic ice is coming. Ten bad years could do it. Joe Biden may even live to see that day, especially if he helps cause it.

 

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Monday, October 19, 2020

Can Hunter Biden Be Both Right and Wrong, Both Innocent and Guilty? Yes He Can.

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The story that started the latest round of madness

 by Thomas Neuburger

If you're confused by the welter of reports around the Hunter Biden-purloined (or forgotten) laptop story, don't be embarrassed. The reporting is not just confusing, but confusingly told. Even if we divide the story into its two major parts — what the Post printed; what Facebook and Twitter did about it — and analyze them separately, things don't become more clear. Large sections of each side's version of each side of the story overlap in confusing and unremarked-on ways. 

In brief, here's what happened as Matt Taibbi describes it:

The “blockbuster” had a controversial provenance. A computer repair shop in Delaware reportedly came to possess a laptop belonging to the younger Biden. According to the Post, it contained a treasure trove of Republican oppo, including videos of the younger Biden smoking crack and having sex, and emails from a Ukrainian businessman pleading with Hunter to use connections to help the corrupt energy firm Burisma escape a shakedown.

Later, the Burisma exec appeared to thank the younger Biden for an introduction to his father. The Post strongly suggested that these emails, in conjunction with the well-known tale of Joe Biden demanding the ouster of then-General Prosecutor Viktor Shokin, represented a misuse of influence.

Soon after the story was published, we were hit with a stunner: two major tech platforms, Twitter and Facebook, took third-world style steps to limit the distribution of the story. Facebook announced that it was slowing the article’s spread on its news feed via a tweet from Andy Stone, a Facebook employee whose previous jobs included handling communications for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and for Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer [...].

That presents the two major pieces: the story in the Post, and the censorship of the story by two social media giants. Most non-right-wing writers, worried about appearing to attack Joe Biden in the run-up to the Most Important Election Ever (and who knows, maybe it is), have focused either on the censorship side of the story, or attributed the Post-published elements — the laptop and what it purports to contain — to Russian interference. (No one in the Biden camp has declared the released emails to be false, for what that's worth.)

But even focusing alone on the censorship side of the story produces confusion. Is what Facebook and Twitter did actual censorship, a traditionally bad thing in the liberal world? Or were they instead refusing to comply with "Russian interference in our election," something called an act of war not too long ago, thus giving their silence resistance-hero status? Even liberal opinion is divided on that one.

(Phil Ochs has a now-famous song about "liberals" in the 1960s. Listen again, but instead of his opening line — "I cried when they shot Medgar Evers" — substitute, "I cried when they published her emails.")

The Underlying Story

But let's look at the story itself, again through Matt Taibbi's eyes. (Part of this comes from the piece linked above and part comes from a longer, subscriber-only version of the same piece.)

As Taibbi points out, of those outlets that did cover the underlying story — the supposedly stolen laptop, the supposedly copied drive, the photos and emails it supposedly contained — mostly reported only on its electoral effect and not on the truth or falsity of its allegations. 

Even those who did report on the relations between the Bidens and Burisma did so in a binary, an on-off yes-or-no, way:

  • Did Burisma use Hunter to "bribe" Joe Biden, the Obama administration's point man on Ukraine? Yes or no?
  • Did Joe Biden try to get the Ukrainian investigator fired to help his son escape investigation? Yes or no?

The actual tale may be much more complex and interesting. Here's how Taibbi, who, we must remember, spent many years in Russia and "knows their ways," seems to have pieced it together. 

After a long description (well worth reading) of various machinations by Burisma's founder, a corrupt, former public official named Mykola Zlochevsky and a benefactor during the regime of ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich, Taibbi writes this:

To recap: an oligarch [Zlochevsky] whose company’s wealth was tied to embezzlement and graft was booted from power via revolution in February, 2014, causing his company’s assets to come under fire, both in Ukraine and abroad. With Zlochevsky’s former protector Viktor Yanukovich having fled Ukraine back to Russia, Burisma scrambled to shore up a new power base. Within six weeks of the revolution, the firm brought big names onto its board, including former Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski, Biden, and Devon Archer, pal to Hunter and the college roommate of Christopher Heinz, stepson to John Kerry. They would later add former CIA counter-terrorism chief Cofer Black. [...]

Essentially, a mob enterprise gearing up to defend itself against international lawsuits and seizure orders hired as decorative cover an ex-president of Poland, the son of a sitting U.S. Vice President, and a close family friend and business partner of the son of the American Secretary of State — not exactly subtle, and far beyond nepotism.

The truth of these events, then, is more nuanced — less binary if not less damning — than the black-and-white lens we are offered to view them through:

The Burisma board deals were a protection scheme, funded with stolen money and designed to scare off commercial rivals and would-be regulators alike. Archer and Hunter Biden, even if they never did a minute of work for Burisma, were being paid to provide a criminal enterprise with the appearance of American protection. Similarly, if Joe Biden never actually intervened on behalf of Burisma, Hunter’s presence on Burisma’s board made it possible for anyone to argue that he was.

At best, Biden and Archer were put on Burisma's board to provide Zlochevsky and Burisma protection against their enemies in the new, unfriendly-to-Zlochevsky Ukrainian government. Whether Biden and Archer knew this or not — and how could they not know? what could this free money otherwise be for? — it corrupted them both to take those jobs. 

The Corruption That Shows the Corruption

For them to benefit from these gifts and yet be widely defended for taking them, is one more instance, as anyone with eyes must know, of institutional corruption at its core. Accepting these board positions goes "beyond nepotism," in Taibbi's phrase, to complicity with all the corruption abroad we supposedly abhor — and which we use as a reason to overthrow unfriendly governments. Yet this kind of corruption can never be prosecuted here, because our own corrupt institution — the present American state — has legalized and legitimized it. 

For example, here's Matt Yglesias, a Hunter Biden critic, making the Establishment case for Biden's relationship with Burisma: "The worst you can say about any of this, however, was that Hunter’s position on the board was a standing conflict of interest that should have been avoided. There’s no evidence that Joe did anything wrong, specifically."

That's not the worst you can say. Hunter Biden can be — and likely was — both innocent and guilty simultaneously. He didn't have to be "taking a bribe for Joe" or "just benefiting when he can" to be complicit in, and a beneficiary of, everything that's wrong with the stinking Ukrainian state. That's an overlap of ideas our modern media, and our Trump-obsessed, #BackToBrunch liberal minds, can't seem to fathom. 

I can't wait to see what happens after Biden takes the White House. No one will be going back to brunch.

  

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Thursday, October 08, 2020

Did Donald Trump Know He Was Symptomatic on Monday, September 28?

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Donald Trump starts self-distancing on Monday, September 28

Capitol reporter Jamie Dupree's tweet referencing the Sept. 28 White House event pictured above: "Two days after the crowded Rose Garden announcement for Amy Coney Barrett, the White House was suddenly using separate speaking spots for the President and other speakers."

by Thomas Neuburger

What did Trump know and when did he know it? I think it's almost certain that Trump and at least some on his team knew he was contagious on Monday, Sept 28. From a tweet by Capitol reporter Jamie Dupree:

I keep circling back to my tweets from last Monday. Two days after the crowded Rose Garden announcement for Amy Coney Barrett, the White House was suddenly using separate speaking spots for the President and other speakers.

Consider the image above, taken on Monday, September 28. According to Dupree, this distancing of podiums is new for Trump.

Consider two points. First, September 28 was just two days after:

  • The Saturday Amy Coney Barrett super-spreader event at the Rose Garden, at which Sen. Mike Lee, Sen. Thom Tillis, Chris Christie, Kellyanne Conway, and Fr. John Jenkins appear to have caught the Covid-19 virus;

  • An event in Middleton PA that same Saturday, where Trump was accompanied by, among others, Hope Hicks, who would later test positive.

  • Several sessions of debate prep on Saturday and Sunday with, among others, Chris Christie, now in the ICU, and Bill Stepien, who has since tested positive, were exposed to the virus;

  • A Sunday Gold Star Veterans event at the White House attended by Coast Guard Admiral Charles Ray, who would test positive a week later, as well as by Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Army Gen. James McConville and Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, who are so far negative.

What prompted Trump's sudden Monday morning self-distancing? Did he know he was symptomatic on September 28? If he did, it's likely he was infected before the Coney Barrett event and may even have been mildly symptomatic during it.

Second, after Trump's voluntary self-distancing on Monday, he nonetheless took part in the these events:

  • A Tuesday evening debate with Joe Biden;

  • A Wednesday trip to Duluth Minnesota, on a day that started with Hope Hicks experiencing symptoms of Covid-19 and ended with her self-isolating on the return trip on Air Force One.

  • A Trump fundraising event with supporters on Thursday in Bedminster NJ, which occurred after Hope Hicks announced she had tested positive.

Why did he go on these trips, especially the New Jersey fundraiser, which occurred after Hope Hicks was revealed to have tested positive? 

Did He Know as Early as September 28 That He Was a Carrier?

It's likely that at least a few of his advisors, and if so, his doctor as well, knew Donald Trump was symptomatic on Sunday night or Monday morning of the last week of September, if not sooner. This is not certain, of course; it will remain for forensic analysis of the last two weeks of September — who was in contact with whom? who was symptomatic when? what information was withheld from whom? — for any of this to be known for sure.

It's especially important for the following to be determined:

  • How often was President Trump being tested, and on what days? 
  • When did he become symptomatic? 
  • Whom did he tell, if anyone, that he was experiencing symptoms?

But the facts as stated above are clear, and Trump's change in behavior at the White House event on Sept. 28 seems compelling. If he didn't think he was a risk or at risk, why the change in podium arrangements?

 

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Monday, October 05, 2020

Chamber of Commerce Quietly Supports a United Government Led by Democrats

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Saagar Enjeti explains the importance of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's quiet decision to back Democratic candidates 

by Thomas Neuburger

One of the more underappreciated pieces of news in a week that exploded with news — leak of Trump's taxes, the presidential debate, the presidential disease — was this, that a long-time strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has resigned over the Chamber's decision to back 23 vulnerable House Democrats and to reduce financial support for Republican senatorial candidates.
From Politico:
Chamber of Commerce and top political strategist part ways amid turmoil

Scott Reed, who had been with the business organization for most of the past decade, said it was shifting toward Democrats. 

Scott Reed, the longtime top political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said Tuesday that he left the organization after a political shift at the business lobbying powerhouse.

The move comes amid mounting fears among Republicans — including many within the organization — that the traditionally conservative Chamber is moving to the left after endorsing roughly two dozen freshman House Democrats for reelection this year.

Reed explained his departure (the Chamber said he was "fired for cause") this way: "I can no longer be part of this institution as it moves left."

Putting aside the dispute over whether Reed left or was fired, there are two explanations for what the Chamber is doing, and they're not the same. Reed says he departed because the Chamber "moved left." The Politico slugline writer says more simply that the Chamber was "shifting toward Democrats." 

Needless to say, "moving left" is not the same as "supporting Democrats."
Ryan Grim, writing at The Intercept, calls the Chamber's transformation a "slow migration of the elite wing of the Republican Party into the Democratic fold." This seems a much better explanation. 

Hedging Their Bets or Trying to Influence the Outcome? 

As Rising's Saagar Enjeti noted in the video above, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which spends $100 million per year, is the largest lobbyist by far in the United States, doling out 30% more money than its nearest competitor. 

In the past, all or almost all of that money went to Republicans — 93%, for example, in 2010. This year the Chamber is not only supporting many more Democrats; it's supporting Democrats in a way that will make a difference in the partisan makeup of Congress. While the Chamber also supports House Republicans, the 29 House freshmen it is backing "are running in some of the most competitive races in the country, including 14 in districts won by President Donald Trump in 2016" according to CNN.

On the Senate side, the Chamber has greatly reduced its spending on vulnerable Republicans, including Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). Politico notes that Reed's decision to resign "was linked to the Chamber’s unwillingness to spend significant money on Senate races in the closing days of the election" and adds that Ms. Collins is receiving "far less money in 2020 than ... in 2014, when [the Chamber] put tens of millions of dollars behind GOP Senate candidates."

Politico has Reed saying the Chamber is "hedging its bets." Voices on the libertarian right are much more virulent, calling this a "betrayal" and abandonment of "free market principles."  At the same time Republican leaders see the Chamber as, in House minority leader Kevin McCarthy's words, "part of this socialist agenda that is driving this country out, and ... fighting the president."

Those are angry, empty words. Biden to Trump at the first debate: "I am not a socialist." Progressives to world: "It's true. He's not. He's a moderate Republican."

Three Conclusions


From all this I think we can draw three conclusions, each leading to a different electoral thought.

First, that Ryan Grim is right when he says the elite wing of the Republican Party is being folded into the Democratic Party — not just in theory, but in practice, in dollars, as well. It's clear that the Chamber and those who give it their money have made the calculation, at least for this presidential cycle, that their interests will be genuinely served by a Biden White House and a unified Democratic Congress. 

In other words, they want a united government controlled by the Democratic Party. They know Trump is going to lose (Trump was scheduled to lose even before the recent Covid incident), and they're working to both maintain a Democratic House majority and to sabotage the current Republican Senate majority.


There's really no other way to read this news. 


Second, as stated above, the Chamber of Commerce and the big-league donors who support it know that a Biden White House and Democratic Congress will further their interest far more than a Trump-led divided or Republican government.


If the Chamber is right, progressives looking to "move Biden left" after the election, have their work cut out for them. The only "moving left" the administration will do is on identity issues. On issues involving money, it will "move left" only at the margins and for show. 


For example, will Biden ban fracking? Of course not; there are too many big-donor dollars (and banking dollars) involved in that industry. For all his recent words, Biden seeks a "middle ground" on climate issues. It's easy to promise carbon-free power by 2035," fifteen years into a future in which he'll be dead.

Finally, Biden will almost certainly be the next president

I mentioned a "Trump-led government" above for a reason. Earlier I wrote ("Civil War? What Civil War?") that almost everyone in the establishment regardless of party, from the military to the national security apparatus to the media to, now, the Chamber of
Commerce, opposes a return of Donald Trump to the White House. While the Chamber's not working directly against him — that would be a bridge too far — they're not help out; in fact, they're working to give him a Congress he can't work with. 

The truth is this: Donald Trump is such a terrible, unpredictable and
embarrassing steward of the American hegemony project that no one with Establishment power wants to see him back. #NeverTrumpers are just a tip of the Republican side of that iceberg. This "betrayal" by the Chamber of Commerce, one of the Republican Party's most stalwart and reliable supporters, strongly supports that contention. 

If this is true, it means I will be proved right in predicting the outcome of the coming election as follows:

  • If Trump wins big, Trump's in.
  • If Biden wins big, Biden's in.
But:
  • If Trump is ahead in a squeaker and it goes to the courts, the Roberts Court will give the win to Biden unless there's no defensible way not to give it to Trump.
  • If Biden is ahead in a squeaker and it goes to the courts, Biden will be handed the White House.
You can bet that if the election is closer than the number of disputed ballots in key electoral-college states, there will be a way to hand the election to whichever candidate the Roberts Court prefers. Will John Roberts, a Republican, give the election to MAGA Republicans or to Chamber Republicans, if he could pick one or the other? John Roberts is a Chamber Republican.

If you're worried about the 2000 election and you fear a Republican Court will back a Republican candidate, consider that George Bush was also the Establishment candidate. This time, the Establishment candidate is the Democrat.


Even if Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed this year, will she really want to oppose John Roberts in her first Supreme Court opinion ever, Roberts who will lead the institution she'll serve for the next 30 years of her life? If course not; there will be plenty of time for Amy Coney Barrett to screw the country later. Roberts will win the discussion, if he wants to, this time around.


Again,
Trump is not the candidate of the oligarchy, of the small clutch of people who actually run the country. Biden is. In any close outcome, he has the edge. Biden will be the next president unless Trump wins by a significant margin — or dies and the rest of the country, including the Chamber of Commerce, falls suddenly in love with Mike Pence.
   

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Thursday, October 01, 2020

When Can We Expect a Working Covid Vaccine?

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From the source: "The figure above includes 10 vaccine candidates already in Phase I, 4 candidates in combined Phase I/II trials, 2 candidates in Phase II and 3Candidates in Phase II/III (Moderna is already for a total of 18 candidates in clinical phases."

by Thomas Neuburger

The fastest vaccine ever developed was the mumps vaccine, and it took four years: "The invention of the modern mumps vaccine is the stuff of medical textbook legend. In 1963, a star researcher at the pharmaceutical company Merck took a swab of his own daughter’s throat to begin cultivating a weakened form of the mumps virus. And just four years later, in record time, Merck licensed Mumpsvax as the world’s first effective vaccine against this common and contagious childhood illness."

National Geographic agrees: "The mumps vaccine—considered the fastest ever approved—took four years to go from collecting viral samples to licensing a drug in 1967."

Covid vaccine development has already started, obviously, and is racing forward at breakneck speed. Hopes are great that a vaccine will be available by the middle of next year if not sooner.

But consider this, from an excellent summary by immunologist Ignacio Moreno Echanove, of what vaccine development actually entails (italicized emphasis mine):
Regarding clinical trials, Phase I is a safeguard trial done with a few individuals (10-20) to check that the [vaccine] candidate is safe enough for trials with more volunteers. Being in a hurry, some candidates are running directly with so-called Phase I/II trials. So far, such acceleration has not been seen as problematic. So far.

The objective of Phase II (about 100 to few hundreds of subjects) is to characterize the immune response that the vaccine provides and decide if it looks good enough to proceed with Phase III.

Before starting Phase III all considerations about safe manufacturing and scaling up should/must have been settled (I wonder if this was the problem with delays in Moderna vaccine Phase III, but if so, they have just resumed to Phase III).

Phase III (many thousands on subjects, the larger the trial, the shorter the duration, but also depending on the rate of spread when and where the trial starts). Some selection of racial and age cohorts will be necessary given the known information. Phase III is to assess the efficacy of the vaccine, so during Phase III both, placebo and vaccinated subjects, will be naturally challenged in the normal epidemic evolution and tested to see how the vaccine provides immunity/protection against the vaccine. Forced challenging (as in deliberate exposure to Covid-19) has been proposed to accelerate development. ...

Phase IV studies (after approval) are basically safety evaluation studies and should be mandatory for Covid-19 vaccines given the uncertainties mentioned. Pre-exposure cohort studies or secondary attack-rate studies will also be needed given the high attack rate of Covid-19.
"Naturally challenged" means the participant is vaccinated and then exposed to a natural environment in which Covid may be present or absent. "Forced challenging" is far more aggressive. It means deliberately exposing the participants, including those on the placebo arm of a trial, to the virus itself, and therefore, and deliberately, to risk of death.

Of this the writer says, "This proposal is the subject of bioethical questions with no easy answer." Indeed.

The Vaccine-Creation Process

About the timing of deployable vaccine, Echanove notes (bolded emphasis added):
Given that this is a new and rapidly spreading disease, efficacy testing Phase III trials should be large. Somewhere between 10.000-50.000 individuals and the follow-up would take 1-2 years though some conclusions on efficacy might be obtained in about a year. If some kind of protection is seen it is crucial to check the duration. So, if at least a 6-month duration of protection –before and in case a booster vaccination is seen as necessary after 6 months or later– is a pre-requisite for approval this means that first results won’t be seen until about one year after the start of Phase III trials.

Recruiting volunteers, vaccinating them, time to full development of immune response, challenging of subjects through the natural course of the epidemic, more than 6 months monitoring after immune response, and all the work associated mean that 1 year is a bare minimum for results [after the start of large Phase III trials].
One year after Phase III trials starts is the bare minimum for results, and I would consider that optimistic in the extreme. Manufacturing and deploying a safely produced product will add to that estimate.

Given this schedule and given that the furthest-along candidates began Phase III trials this summer, I wouldn't not be optimistic about seeing a deployable vaccine earlier than 2022 — and that's if we get lucky. If undue speed in development results in an ultimately unsafe but deployed product, the entire exercise is set back. 
(Update: But pay attention to news about the Moderna candidate, listed below.)

Which Candidates Are Furthest Along?

How far along are vaccine developers? According to Echanove, these are the candidates furthest along, but they're not necessarily the most promising:

• "The University of Oxford-AstraZeneca candidate (AXD 1222, UK, Adenovirus vector) was first to announce a Phase II/III trial in May 22nd with about 10.000 volunteers in the UK, and including small children/elder cohorts. It is said to be expanded with trials in Brazil, South Africa and the US with now more raging epidemics. It had already showed preclinical results Rhesus macaques and additional preclinical trials are ongoing.

"This project also aims to soon start controversial challenge trials in which healthy participants, vaccinated or not, will be ‘artificially’ challenged with SARS CoV 2. This might accelerate efficiency results but also rises serious concerns about safety issues that could backfire later. Australian commenter Hilda Bastian highlights that this also increases what she calls the “activism risk factor” or vulnerability to deliberate doubt- sowing on vaccines. I strongly recommend reading her posts in full."

"Despite its advanced state of development, this is not a good candidate: "Moreover, given that 3 out of 6 macaques vaccinated with this candidate and then challenged with SARS CoV 2 showed symptoms of respiratory distress one wonders if this could be the best candidate to try forced challenging with human subjects."

• "The Wuhan IBP-Sinopharm CNBG is a 100% public project (China, Inactivated virus) that in June 23rd announced start of Phase III in the UAE, and has undergone mandatory preclinical studies given it contains virus."

• "Similarly, SinoVac Life Sciences (China, inactivated vaccine) has published preclinical results, has ongoing Phase I/II trials and planned to start Phase III in Brazil in July with nearly 9,000 participants according to NIH site for this trial with results expected in October 2021."

• "Moderna candidate (mRNA-1273, US, mRNA vaccine) is set to start Phase III trials on July 27th with 30.000 participants. No preclinical studies done or planned."

• "CasSinoBIO (Ad5-nCoV, China, adenovirus vector) has undergone Phase I/II trials and in 29th June was announced it had received “military specially-needed approval” and this means approval limited to military use in China for at least one year. They announced on July 11th talks for Phase III trials with Brazil, Russia, Chile and KSA and expect to enrol about 40.000 subjects."

• "The Pfizer-BioNtech (BNT 162, Germany, mRNA) candidate has just published Phase I/II results with one of their variant candidates (1b) and has also showed preclinical results. The developers plan to start Phase III later in the summer enrolling about 30.000 subjects in the US. BioNTech CEO believes [t]hat BNT162 could be ready for approval by the end of the year. As I see this, the 6-month protective duration prerequisite could only be fulfilled if Phase I/II subjects are ‘artificially’ challenged later in the year."

While the situation might look promising, it might also only look fast, perhaps dangerously so. The author notes: "One wonders if this is the result of rational thinking or if we are running all candidates into Phase III trials like a run of beheaded chickens. Time will have a say on this."

Trading Lives for Lives?

People are understandably anxious about a vaccine for this global pandemic, just as they were anxious about a vaccine for mumps. Because the death rate from mumps was about 1 in 10,000, that vaccine was developed in an orderly fashion, with all precautions and checks duly observed.

The CDC estimates the death rate from Covid-19 at about 0.2%, or 2 in 1,000 — twenty times the fatality rate of the mumps. That increase increases the call for rapid vaccine development, especially in a globally connected world, a world connected by communications, by interdependence, and by the widespread need for travel.

Will that sense of urgency cause vaccine developers and those charged with approving them to put participants at unnecessary risk in accelerated clinical trials — and then put the first population to receive the manufactured product at further risk — especially since the immunology of this disease is still not well understood?

Will the medical organizations of the world, like WHO and the CDC, be willing to trade the anticipated loss of life due to over-aggressive trials and premature deployment for other, later lives (and political careers) ultimately saved — a kind of trolley-car problem math in which one person's daughter is deliberately endangered so that two or three daughters later may live?

Echoing our writer: Time will surely have a say on this.
 

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