THE PROOF IN THE PUDDING OF TRUMP’S CORONA VIRUS RESPONSE

Although President Trump and his administration have not been wrong about everything they have said and done, they’ve been wrong about most things. The ultimate proof is in the results. Although final results aren’t in yet, of course, the results as-of late April are pretty damning: [1]

4% of the world’s population is in the U.S. (330 million)
33% of the world’s COVID-19 cases are in the U.S. (929,000)
25% of the world’s COVID-19 fatalities are in the U.S. (52,500)
The U.S. death rate is 50 times that of Australia and New Zealand (see details below)

I could stop right here, but as long as I’ve started, here are some facts to back up the laying of the blame for these statistics at the feet of Trump and his administration.

In 2018, the Trump administration dissolved the office of pandemic preparedness in the National Security Council and cut funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Those groups would have been the leaders in responding to the pandemic, using a plan (that the Trump administration ignored) prepared after the Ebola crisis in 2014. Trump had been briefed by outgoing Obama administration officials about the plan and its importance, but obviously ignored the briefing and the plan. [2]

If the pandemic response plan had been followed, the federal government would have started getting equipment to doctors in late January or February (rather than late March and April), given that by mid-January intelligence reports were warning of a likely pandemic. On January 18, Health and Human Services Secretary Azar warned Trump of the threat of the corona virus outbreak in Wuhan, China, which had begun in December 2019. As U.S. diplomats were being evacuated from Wuhan, cases of the virus were confirmed in South Korea and the U.S. (on Jan. 22).

The week of January 20^th, South Korea began mass production of test kits for the virus and the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global health emergency, while Trump did nothing. When China locked down Hubei Province (where Wuhan is located), Trump banned entry of foreigners from China but did nothing else.

By February, there were fourteen COVID-19 cases in the U.S. but few test kits for it – and the initial ones from the CDC proved faulty. Trump was actively downplaying the threat, saying things like, “We pretty much shut it down.”

On Feb. 25, the CDC announced that daily life could be seriously disrupted. It noted that containment was not in place, nor was the testing needed to effectively execute it. Meanwhile, Trump called the emerging crisis a hoax by Democrats. With 100 cases in the U.S., Trump declined to declare a national emergency. Testing in South Korea was ramping up 40 times faster than in the U.S.

Trump didn’t declare a national emergency until March 13^th, when there were 1,645 cases in 47 states. [3] Even then, Trump did not take the steps needed to ensure the availability of sufficient test kits and of the equipment needed by hospitals and front-line workers.

In late April, even the military – the defenders of our country – can’t get enough COVID test kits. It is testing 7,000 troops a day and hopes to be able to test 60,000 a day by June – over eight times as many as it can test now. This would allow it to test all military personnel by some time this summer in order to ensure their readiness to fight.

Trump’s daily press briefings are more misinformation than information because he doesn’t attend corona virus task force meetings and doesn’t prepare for the press briefings. The official in charge of the agency working on vaccine development has been fired, apparently for political reasons, and there’s regular speculation on whether Trump will fire the other experts in the federal government who correct his press briefing statements. Trump appears to be detached from reality, indifferent to the suffering, and focused on the well-being of his ego and on his political popularity rather than the well-being of the American public and managing a public health crisis.

In case you’ve been wondering, the course of the pandemic is different with different leadership. In Australia (AU), with a conservative Prime Minister (PM) and states with significant power as in the U.S., there are just a handful of new cases a day, down from hundreds in March, while there are 25,000 – 30,000 new cases a day (and growing) in the U.S. The situation is the same in New Zealand (NZ) with a progressive Prime Minister.

In both Australia and New Zealand, partisanship has been put aside, experts and data are driving the response, and coordination and collaboration are the operating principles. Leaders in both countries responded to their country’s first case (1/25 in AU and 2/28 in NZ) with strong action and clear warnings. In Australia, the PM labeled the outbreak a pandemic on Feb. 27, two weeks before the WHO did and two weeks before the declaration of a national emergency in the U.S. He formed a national taskforce of federal and state leaders who worked together to build hospital capacity and guide the response. In New Zealand, the PM ordered a total lockdown less than one month after the first case. [4]

The results:

Australia (population 25 million): first case Jan. 25
- 6,670 cases (27 per 100,000 people), <1% daily rate of new cases
- 78 deaths (0.3 per 100,000 people)
New Zealand (population 5 million): first case Feb. 28
- 1,456 cases (29 per 100,000 people), <1% daily rate of new cases
- 17 deaths (0.3 per 100,000 people)
United States (population 330 million): first case Jan. 22
- 929,000 cases (282 per 100,000 people), 3.5% daily rate of new cases
- 52,500 deaths (15.9 per 100,000 people)

Leadership does make a difference. The U.S. would better off if Trump would simply get out of the way and let others lead – and had done so three months ago. His “leadership” has done startling harm. Given that the death rate in the U.S. is 50 times that of Australia or New Zealand, it seems safe to say that Trump’s lack of leadership has led to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths.

[1] Cohen, M., 4/26/20, “Say it loud, say it clear: Donald Trump needs to resign,” The Boston Globe

[2] Reich, R., 4/16/20, “Trump’s failed coronavirus response,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/coronavirus/trumps-failed-coronavirus-response/)

[3] Trump Administration, 3/13/20, “Proclamation on Declaring a National Emergency Concerning the Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Outbreak,” (https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-declaring-national-emergency-concerning-novel-coronavirus-disease-covid-19-outbreak/)

[4] Cave, D., 4/26/20, “Australia and New Zealand pave the way for virus eradication,” The Boston Globe from the New York Times

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S SWAMP OF CORRUPTION Part 2

The level of corruption – of special interests running our government for their own benefit and of outright self-enrichment by individuals in the Trump administration – is stunning. The American Prospect magazine has begun mapping the Trump Swamp of conflicts of interest and unethical behavior agency by agency. [1] They have created an interactive map of Washington where you can click on an agency’s headquarters building and get highlights of the swamp of corruption at each agency.

Here are some examples of Trump appointees who have on-going conflicts of interest, have oversight of industries they used to work in (and may well work in again), and/or have committed serious ethical violations: [2]

Steve Mnuchin, Secretary of the Treasury, a former Goldman Sachs (GS) partner. His specialty at GS was mortgage securities, which were at the heart of the 2008 economic collapse. He capitalized on the collapse by buying a failing bank and foreclosing on 36,000 homeowners, many of whom were elderly and who had been targeted with high-risk reverse mortgages, supposedly intended to keep them in their homes. Furthermore, he simultaneously collected federal subsidies that were meant to keep people in their homes. At the Treasury, he has weakened regulation of banks and reduced scrutiny of financial activities, which benefits his colleagues still in the financial industry (and to which he will likely return). Under Mnuchin, the Treasury has provided favorable tax rulings for wealthy individuals and businesses, again rewarding his former colleagues. It also put forth tax regulations that were almost identical to those proposed by a group of large corporations. It tweaked the rules for Opportunity Zone tax credits so they would be more available to real estate magnates including Jared Kushner (Trump’s son-in-law), Chris Christie (former Governor of New Jersey), Richard LeFrak (longtime Trump associate in NYC), Anthony Scaramucci (former White House aide), and Michael Milken (longtime Mnuchin friend and convicted junk bond dealer).
Elaine Chao, Secretary of the Department of Transportation (DOT), heiress to a shipping company fortune. While her DOT regulates international shipping, her family runs a huge international shipping business that has ship building done by Chinese government-linked entities, while also getting hundreds of million dollars of loans from them. Numerous actions by Chao and DOT have benefited the family business, including cutting subsidies for competing shippers, public appearances with her father, and a joint trip with him to China to meet with government officials. Until June 2019, she also owned an investment in a manufacturer of road construction materials, an industry very much affected by DOT policies. She sold this investment only when the holding was publicly reported. Kentucky (which her husband, Sen. Mitch McConnell, represents) has seen its transportation projects receive favorable treatment. Kentucky has received at least $78 million in DOT grants, including for a project rejected twice before. A former aide to Sen. McConnell, now a top aide to Chao, provides special attention for Kentucky projects.
Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Commerce, a former private equity manager. His firm paid a $2.3 million fine in 2016 for unethically siphoning $120 million from former associates. Companies his firm controlled found ways to escape obligations to provide workers pensions and health benefits. After he became Secretary, and with his department regulating shipping, he retained ownership in a shipping company with ties to Russian oligarchs and members of Russian President Putin’s family. As Secretary, he personally negotiated a deal to ship liquified natural gas (LNG) to China while his shipping company owned the world’s largest fleet of LNG tankers. Ross has conferred on official business with leaders of government-controlled funds in Qatar, Japan, and Singapore who had invested in his private equity firm. He had official meetings with the CEOs of Chevron and Boeing, while his wife held investments in those corporations of $400,000 and $2 million, respectively.
Betsy DeVos, Secretary of the Department of Education (DOE), rich, major campaign contributor with no expertise in education other than advocacy for charter schools. For numerous top jobs at DOE, she has hired former employees of private, for-profit college companies that had paid fines or signed legal settlements for deceptive advertising. The DOE has maintained the flow of federal funds (via student loans) to for-profit schools with questionable track records, while insisting that students defrauded by private colleges continue to make loan payments. The DOE also effectively stopped the public-service loan forgiveness program, requiring tens of thousands of teachers, nurses, police officers, and others to continue to pay off their student loans. She has done nothing to help ease the $1.5 trillion student debt crisis, despite promises by President Trump to do so.
David Bernhardt, Secretary of the Department of the Interior, former partner in a Denver law and lobbying firm that represented mining, oil, and gas companies. He disclosed 20 separate conflicts of interest, but nonetheless acted at least 25 times to benefit former clients of his law firm. His former law firm has quadrupled its revenue since he became Secretary.
Andrew Wheeler, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, a former lawyer and lobbyist for the coal industry.
Alex Azar, Secretary of Health and Human Services, a former executive of the giant drug corporation, Eli Lilly, where dramatic increases in drug prices were a common practice.

The list goes on and on and includes many staffers in these and other agencies. Overall, as-of October 2019, less than three years into Trump’s term, there are 281 former lobbyists working in the Trump administration, four times as many as the Obama administration hired in six years.

This is not how a democracy is supposed to operate, let alone our democracy, which is supposed to be the exceptional shining light on the hill. This is how a plutocracy operates – where government is of, by, and for the wealthy.

I urge you to contact your U.S. Representative and Senators to ask them to investigate the conflicts of interest, the self-enrichment, and the ethics of the many members of the Trump administration identified in The American Prospect’s expose. Please ask your Senators to refuse to confirm any Trump appointee with conflicts of interest or histories of unethical behavior. Because of current vacancies and the high level of turnover, additional appointments of senior officials will continue to come before the Senate.

You can find contact information for your US Representative at http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/ and for your US Senators at http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm.

[1] Lardner, J., 4/9/20, “Mapping corruption: Donald Trump’s executive branch,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/power/mapping-corruption-donald-trump-executive-branch/)

[2] Lardner, J., 4/9/20, see above

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S SWAMP OF CORRUPTION

President Trump campaigned on a promise to drain the Washington, D.C., swamp of special interests and insider dealing. This is one promise he clearly hasn’t kept – and probably never meant – although it was good rhetoric for the campaign because many of his potential supporters wanted to hear this. They were working and middle-class people who wanted to see the federal government turned upside down because they had lost their economic security to:

Trade deals that sent their jobs overseas,
Anti-union policies that made it impossible for them to strike or to organize, so their wages stagnated and their overall compensation (including benefits) declined,
Financial policies that let already wealthy executives and stockholders capture the benefits of increased productivity of workers,
A health care system that increased their costs while decreasing coverage,
A retirement system that either abandoned them or shifted investment risk onto their shoulders, and
A government that repeatedly bailed out the financial industry, reduced taxes on huge corporations, and allowed leveraged buyouts and bankruptcies that cut jobs and eliminated retirement benefits.

While these policies were benefiting wealthy corporations and individuals, blue collar and middle-class workers lost their jobs, had mortgages foreclosed on, and saw their credit card balances and their children’s student debt skyrocket. (See this previous post for more detail.)

The American Prospect magazine has begun mapping the Trump Swamp of conflicts of interest and unethical behavior agency by agency. [1] They have created an interactive map of Washington where you can click on an agency’s headquarters building and get highlights of the swamp of corruption at each agency.

The level of corruption – of special interests running our government for their own benefit and the outright self-enrichment by individuals in the Trump administration – is stunning. Much of this flies beneath the radar of all the bluster, lies, and shocking policy proposals the Trump administration throws out daily. It relies on misdirection delivered through words to distract attention from corrupt actions. Our mainstream media is just too focused on the theater of Trump and his minions, and too overwhelmed to report everything that’s being done. And the American public is too distracted – having had its attention diverted from the real action just as a magician does – and too overwhelmed to take it all in.

The personal self-dealing of President Trump is appalling even before one considers what’s going on in executive branch agencies. For example, foreign diplomats and domestic lobbyists are paying untold sums of money to stay in Trump hotels and at Trump resorts. This money is functionally a bribe, buying access, attention, often face-time, and sometimes outright rewards. The President has spent one out of every three days at one of his resorts, giving the resorts free advertising and revenue from the lodging and other expenses of his Secret Service detail and his retinue. The Secret Service, for example, in protecting the President as he golfs, has spent over $500,000 on golf carts alone.

Family members have benefited, too. Perhaps most notably, Ivanka Trump got rare and valuable trademarks from China the same day she dined with China’s leader. Trump’s spokesperson also touted Ivanka’s products in official TV interviews.

In another example of what’s functionally bribery, two large private prison corporations, GEO Group and CoreCivic, after hundreds of thousands of dollars of political spending, have received over $3 billion in payments for their services from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a unit of the federal Department of Homeland Security. Together, they run 41 detention centers that house more than half of ICE detainees. They’re providing these services because the Trump administration has reversed the phaseout of the use of private prisons that was occurring under the Obama administration. The phaseout was happening because of a series of scandals at private prisons including deaths, high suicide rates, substandard medical care, and other malfeasance. (See previous posts here and here for more detail.)

This dramatic reversal of policy by the Trump administration didn’t happen by accident; it happened because of a concerted effort by the private prison corporations through campaign contributions and use of the revolving door. GEO-associated executives and entities gave at least $675,000 to Trump’s campaign and inauguration and other Republican campaigns. GEO hired two former aides to Sen. Sessions, the new Attorney General, as lobbyists. When AG Sessions formally reversed the Obama administration’s phaseout of the use of private prisons, GEO stock had already doubled in value and CoreCivic’s stock was up 140%. As a thank you, the private prison industry gave another $1 million to the Trump campaign. [2]

Payday lenders also functionally bribed the Trump administration to get a reprieve from Obama administration policies, which were working to protect borrowers from usurious fees and interest rates (sometimes over 100% a year when annualized). The payday lending industry donated over $2.2 million to Trump’s campaign and inauguration. The CEO of one large payday lending chain told his peers that the money would buy access to top administration officials and the chair of the Republican National Committee, who could get them an audience with the President.

The change in payday lending oversight policy was facilitated by Trump’s appointment of his top budget official, Mick Mulvaney, to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The appointment process was probably illegal, but the White House Office of Legal Counsel said it was okay in a memo written by a lawyer who had been the lead attorney for a payday lender fighting CFPB regulations. The CFPB dropped that enforcement action after Mulvaney took over.

Trump’s personal corruption is mind boggling, but it is only the tip of the iceberg. The overarching economic philosophy and purpose of the Trump administration has been to handover government regulation and policy making to large corporations, while sending as much as possible of government spending and program operation to them as well in an unprecedented spurt of privatization. As a result, there are numerous issue areas where policies that are widely supported by the public and are clearly in the public interest go nowhere as the corrupt influence of wealthy corporations and individuals blocks them. Instead, policies are often enacted that benefit the self-interests of wealthy corporations and individuals.

Beyond bad policies – ones that are uninformed and dangerous to public health, safety, and well-being – the Trump administration has made no effort to stop its bureaucrats, from Cabinet members on down, from enriching themselves from their work as government employees.

I urge you to visit The American Prospect’s interactive map of Washington and to click on one or more agency’s headquarters building to review highlights of the swamp of corruption at that agency.

In my next post, I will highlight some of the corrupt individuals in the Trump administration and their corrupt actions. I’ll also ask you to contact your elected officials to ask them to crack down on this corruption.

[1] Lardner, J., 4/9/20, “Mapping corruption: Donald Trump’s executive branch,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/power/mapping-corruption-donald-trump-executive-branch/)

[2] Lardner, J., 4/9/20, see above

BIG BUSINESS HAS FAILED US IN THE PANDEMIC

Big businesses and their executives have failed us in the coronavirus pandemic, but nonetheless they are standing at the public trough getting more bailout money than anyone else. This sounds just like what happened in 2008.

Big corporations and their so smart executives didn’t see the business opportunity and respond to the pandemic when it appeared in late 2019 in China. They could and should have seen what was coming and increased the production of ventilators and personal protection equipment (PPE). This was a great opportunity for them to make a profit and garner good publicity but with their short-term, finance-focused mentality, they totally missed the opportunity.

Corporate executives have failed to push back on the Trump administration and the right-wing movement in their disdain for science and expertise. At times, they have promoted it, for example in climate change denial. In the case of the coronavirus, shortly before Trump made his dangerous call for the country to get back to normal by Easter, he had been on a conference call with financial executives who apparently told him that ending social distancing would be good for the financial markets.

Corporate executives – supposedly leaders – have failed to stand up for rational policies and preparedness. In doing so, they have aided and abetted the right-wing anti-government, anti-knowledge, anti-truth movement. By doing everything they can to avoid paying taxes, corporate executives have undermined government capacity to respond to public health crises, among other things.

Lessons that were learned during the Ebola outbreak in 2014 have been ignored and undermined by the Trump administration and its enablers in Congress. They have weakened our public health system and undermined our global health security, including eliminating the key position that coordinates U.S. global health efforts. [1] The Trump administration ignored the plans the Obama administration gave them, developed based on the Ebola outbreak, on how to respond to a public health crisis.

The right-wing movement reflexively opposes government policies and programs, both because it wants unbridled, unregulated opportunities to make profits at any cost to the public good, and because they don’t want to take the chance that any government action would appear to be valuable or successful. They don’t want voters to ever get the sense that government does important things that serve the public interest. [2]

Deregulation, particularly of the financial industry and financial standards, has undermined the financial stability of multiple corporations and industries. There are many financially unstable corporations in the U.S. that are likely to be in or on the brink of bankruptcy without government assistance in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. This is the result of big banks making high-risk loans, vulture capitalists’ leverage buyouts (with high-risk loans), and corporations using virtually all their profits and even borrowed money to buy back stock and pay dividends (which enriches executives and wealthy shareholders). The systematic weakening of the regulation of the big banks since the 2008 crash, including the undermining of the Dodd-Frank law’s financial safeguards put in place after that crash, have contributed significantly to this dangerous situation. [3]

For example, over the last decade the airline industry has spent 96% of the cash generated by profits to buy back its own shares of stock. Therefore, it failed to build a reserve against tough times and is now standing at the public trough asking for a bailout of $50 billion. Coincidentally, the six biggest U.S. airlines spent $47 billion over the last ten years buying their own stock, endangering the financial stability and future of the corporations. [4]

A corporation buying its own stock boosts the price of its shares, which enriches big stockholders and executives. In 2012, for example, the 500 highest paid executives at public U.S. corporations received, on average, $30 million each in compensation with 83% of it based on stock options and stock awards. Therefore, a boost in the price of the corporation’s stock enriches these executives substantially. [5]

Over five decades, corporate executives have outsourced their supply chains to foreign countries, notably China, while ignoring the risks and hidden costs of being dependent on global trade. They did so to increase profits by dramatically reducing labor costs. The coronavirus pandemic has brought the risks and hidden costs of globalization home to roost. Manufacturing operations in China and other countries have shut down due to the pandemic, which has also made the shipping of goods problematic. Foreign governments, especially authoritarian ones like China, are controlling exports, including of critically needed supplies to respond to the pandemic. As a result, corporations dependent on global operations to produce goods for export to and sale in the U.S., don’t have products to sell and consumers can’t get things they need, including critical health care supplies and drugs.

The risks of global supply chains shouldn’t have come as a surprise to smart corporate executives. In the 1930s, when dealing with the Great Depression, economist John Maynard Keynes argued for the globalization of ideas and arts, but the retention at home of the manufacturing of goods. [6]

The bottom line is that corporate executives exacerbated the coronavirus pandemic by:

Failing to respond to the emergence of the coronavirus in a timely and effective manner,
Failing to support preparedness for a public health crisis and a knowledge-based response when the coronavirus hit,
Supporting deregulation of finances that have made their own corporations and our economy more vulnerable to economic stress, and
Outsourcing global supply lines making their own corporations and all of us more vulnerable to disruptions in global trade.

[1] Warren, E., retrieved from the Internet 4/5/20, “Preventing, containing, and treating infectious disease outbreaks at home and abroad,” https://elizabethwarren.com/plans/combating-infectious-disease-outbreaks

[2] Krugman, P., 3/28/20, “COVID-19 brings out all the usual zombies,” The New York Times

[3] Warren, E., retrieved from the Internet on 4/5/20, “My updated plan to address the coronavirus crisis,” https://elizabethwarren.com/plans/updated-plan-address-coronavirus

[4] Van Doorn, P., 3/22/20, “Airlines and Boeing want a bailout – but look how much they’ve spent on stock buybacks,” MarketWatch (https://www.marketwatch.com/story/airlines-and-boeing-want-a-bailout-but-look-how-much-theyve-spent-on-stock-buybacks-2020-03-18)

[5] Lazonick, W., Sept. 2014, “Profits without prosperity,” Harvard Business Review (https://hbr.org/2014/09/profits-without-prosperity)

[6] Prestowitz, C., & Ferry, J., 3/30/20, “The end of the global supply chain,” The Boston Globe