The Abbreviated Pundit Round-up is a regular feature of Daily Kos.
Andrew Blum at The New Republic writes—Why the U.S. Buys Too Many Missiles and Not Enough Masks:
Earlier this month, the Pentagon inked a contract to pay $818 million to Lockheed for hundreds of new extended-range, air-launched cruise missiles with thousand-pound explosive warheads. By then, Americans had learned that America’s Strategic National Stockpile—the federal emergency medical supply cache, whose annual budget is less than that missile contract—faced critical shortages of ventilators and even N95 respirator masks, which retail (in ordinary times) for 60 to 80 cents.
“How many of the 4,000 nuclear weapons that the United States will spend $50 billion on this year (and next and next and next) would you trade for enough ventilators, masks, ICU beds, and test kits right now?” arms-control expert and former Obama national security aide Jon Wolfsthal had tweeted in late March. It shouldn’t be a purely rhetorical question. The Department of Defense’s budget is three-quarters of a trillion dollars; the rough amount it spent on Lockheed’s cruise missile contract alone “could buy 20,000 high-end ventilators,” as defense technology writer Kelsey Atherton points out.
These arguments are growing in frequency and volume as we confront the macabre ongoing failure of one of the world’s richest societies to provide the simplest protections to its medical workers in a crisis. The argument usually rests on a “return on investment” mindset: We can save many more lives per dollar if those dollars are spent on masks instead of cruise missiles, so why haven’t we?
At The Guardian, James Shaw, New Zealand’s climate minister, The Covid-19 crisis creates a chance to reset economies on a sustainable footing:
In any significant crisis, let alone one as catastrophic as the Covid-19 pandemic, it is an entirely understandable human reflex to want things to “return to normal”, to “go back to the way they were before”.
And, when faced with economic headwinds – in recent decades, the Asian financial crisis, the global financial crisis and, in our own case, the Christchurch earthquakes) successive governments the world over have directed their efforts to meeting public expectation and getting back to business as usual.
Unfortunately, one of the features of business as usual was a highly polluting and ecologically unsustainable economy on a pathway that was locking in catastrophic climate change.
Successive responses to economic crises have seen climate change and the natural environment we depend on for life on Earth as a nice-to-have, something to think about once we’ve got the economy back on track and there’s a bit more money to go round.
This means that action on climate change keeps being deferred, as economic shocks occur on average about every ten years. It also means that, when we do collectively start feeling confident enough to start worrying about climate change again, we find that our economic recovery programmes have locked us back in to the same highly polluting pathway we were on before.
Dr. LeRhonda S. Manigault-Bryant at The New York Times writes—My Mother Is Busy Getting Ready to Die. No insurance. 64 years old. Alone, along with all the other black people at the bottom of the pandemic:
My mother is dying a painful death, and it has everything and nothing to do with Covid-19.
In a piece for The Atlantic detailing the ways in which the coronavirus seems to be hitting black people the hardest, Ibram X. Kendi wrote: “Sometimes racial data tell us something we don’t know. Other times we need racial data to confirm something we already seem to know.” My mother is a living example of what we already know about race, class and suffering.
She is not in an elder-care facility, nor a hospital. She has not been, and most likely will not be, tested for the virus or receive a diagnosis of having it.
Still, hers is the body of all the black people at the bottom of the pandemic. No insurance, though not for lack of trying. Medicaid applications denied for reasons we don’t understand. Inconsistent care at a local public clinic meant hard-to-come-by appointments and checkups only at moments deemed most critical. It wasn’t enough.
Now, she’s dying from end-stage liver disease and kidney failure, diagnosed too late to save her. This has nothing to do with Covid-19.
Kate Aronoff at The New Republic writes—The Urgent Message of Negative Oil Prices. A transition for at-risk fossil-fuel workers has to be at the heart of the next stimulus package:
For the first time ever, oil is trading at negative prices after plummeting sharply yesterday. In other words, because it costs money to store and transport oil, drillers—and, specifically in this case, those of West Texas Intermediate Crude—are now having to pay pipeline and storage companies to take product off their hands, as space for storing excess oil runs out fast. This might be the greatest crisis to face the oil industry since there’s been an oil industry, and no one in power seems to have a plan for what to do about it.
This didn’t come out of nowhere. American shale drillers had been gorging on debt since just after the last crash, which landed them low interest rates and cheap, free-flowing credit. Most, though, have never turned a profit. Much of the oil extracted in the United States and that allayed fears of Peak Oil more than a decade ago is far more costly than what’s produced in the Middle East, requiring big up-front investments of capital on wells—in the case of shale—that dry up after a few years. Forty-two exploration and production companies went bankrupt in 2019, representing a total debt load double that of firms that went bust the year before. The famously unprofitable sector was already looking at $24 billion worth of bonds maturing by 2024 and had, for the most part, lost access to Wall Street creditors. Energy markets were already faltering back in January as coronavirus shutdowns ate into usually heavy demand in China, and it hasn’t been a secret that the energy sector carries a corporate debt load higher than any other’s.
For all the primary-season talk about the big, ambitious climate policy that’s needed—namely the Green New Deal—discussion of the festering situation in oil markets has been pretty muted. That’s thanks in part to the mountains of fossil fuel and private utility funding that flows through university climate and energy centers, which constrains the kind of conversations happening in think tanks and academia. The types of experts who end up shaping the climate conversation in Washington and advising Democratic presidential candidates aren’t necessarily shills for the fossil fuel industry but do tend to focus far more on building the stuff we want (clean energy) rather than figuring out how to get rid of what we don’t (fossil fuels). We need to do both.
Farhad Manjoo at The New York Times writes—Two Parents. Two Kids. Two Jobs. No Child Care:
There is much ambient love in my household under lockdown, but I’m sorry to say that at any particular moment there is likely to be a state of war, and the alliances shift more capriciously than those in the Trump administration. Over the weekend, the kids, often fiercely battling each other over increasingly diminished parental attention, unexpectedly banded together and presented us with a written list of demands. We refused to sign; my wife was taken prisoner of war, and the children do not appear to think highly of the laws of conflict. (They let her nap, but only with the lights on.)
Maybe one day we’ll get a kick out of it. For now, we do not.
Yes, I am blessed beyond all measure. My family and I are so far healthy and financially secure. We live in the San Francisco Bay Area, where government has been surprisingly effective and the death toll from the coronavirus minimal. My wife and I both have jobs that can be done mostly from home, and I’ve worked primarily from home for much of my career, so I didn’t even have to adjust. Also, as my parents keep telling everyone they know, my kids happen to be the world’s most perfect children.
And yet, in this fifth week of sheltering in place, I am really starting to wonder how anyone could think this is sustainable.
Attempting to work full time while rooming with, feeding and educating one or more children during the pandemic is not going well — not for me, and not for most people I know.
Dr. Rob Davidson at The Guardian writes—Most doctors don't want to be political activists, but coronavirus forces us to act:
Across America, more and more doctors are proudly working longer shifts, under challenging conditions, in an effort to protect our communities from Covid-19. But we’re also performing a second, unpaid gig not commonly associated with being a physician: entering the arena of media and politics after our shifts end, to publicly advocate for the needs of our patients and fellow health workers.
After long shifts at our hospitals, doctors are now going on social media and speaking to politicians and others with the ability to implement safe policies and practices. In issuing exhortations to the government – institute a national lockdown, expedite production of tests, send ventilators and protective equipment immediately – what drives us is concern for our patients and ourselves. While many of us have political views we’ll express outside of work, we’re used to keeping that part of ourselves walled off when we don our scrubs and lab coats. But because of our growing frustration at the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic that now puts every American at risk, thousands of physicians have become activist doctors.
Michael Harriot at The Root writes— 'Open the Economy' Is the New 'White Lives Matter':
As the number of confirmed U.S. COVID-19 cases approaches 800,000 and the national death toll has eclipsed 42,000, an overwhelmingly white protest movement is taking to the coronavirus-infected streets demanding that governors and state health authorities go against the advice of doctors, scientists and that lady whose scarf game is unmatched and rescind the only effective method of fighting the spread of this global pandemic. Undeterred by widespread death and disease, protesters in Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Michigan, Minnesota, Maryland, New Hampshire, Idaho, Texas and California are pressuring states to remove stay-at-home restrictions because they’d rather see people die than watch their 401Ks decrease in value. [...]
The president and his MAGA lynch mobs argue that America is on the cusp of a crippling recession and widespread unemployment and, according to their calculations, there is only one way to prevent this impending economic crisis:
Kill more black people. [...]
We believe our lives matter and they just say they do. They are chomping at the bits to sacrifice our lives and open up their country because their statement and actions clearly show that, for them, our bodies hold no value.
Graham Steele at The American Prospect writes—A Climate Bailout Is a Big Finance Bailout And now is not the time for either. The Federal Reserve should take note:
Experts have been warning for years about the risks of a growing carbon bubble that, should it pop, would result in stranded assets and job losses across the fossil fuel industry. On Monday, those predictions took a few steps closer to reality. An industry that has been in decline for a decade, for reasons that predate COVID-19, saw the price to purchase a barrel of crude oil drop into negative territory for the first time in history.
In this moment, our climate and economic crises are converging. Although the Federal Reserve has largely disclaimed any role in combating climate change, the oil and gas industry is reportedly now lobbying our nation’s central bank for access to subsidized loans. The Fed has a singular opportunity to be on the right side of history by preventing a climate bailout for the fossil fuel industry, and protecting the economy and our people from climate shocks as we recover from COVID-19.
The Fed has responded to the economic disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic by unleashing “QE infinity,” pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into various financial markets. While it has provided support across a range of business sectors, the central bank should not throw a lifeline to the now-cratering fossil fuel industry. The Federal Reserve has the discretion to limit its lending programs if certain recipients are too risky. The operable provision of law that the Fed is using allows it to lend against collateral that it deems satisfactory, from the perspectives of sound risk management and taxpayer protection. The Fed is also prohibited from supporting companies that are insolvent or likely to become insolvent. Given its discretion, some of the lending constraints that the central bank imposes on itself are actually political, as opposed to legal or financial. In this context, the Fed has a strong justification for using this power to prevent its programs from being a backdoor Big Oil bailout.
At TomDispatch, the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis writes—Inequality and Poverty Were Destroying America Well Before Covid-19:
For decades, both political parties have pushed the narrative that illness, homelessness, poverty, and inequality are minor aberrations in an otherwise healthy society. Even now, as the possibility of a potentially historic depression looms, assurances that the mechanics of our economy are fundamentally strong (and Covid-19 an unexpected fluke) remain commonplace. And yet, while that economy’s productivity has indeed increased strikingly since the 1970s, the gains from it have gone to an increasingly small number of people (and corporations), while real wages have stagnated for the majority of workers. Don’t be fooled. This crisis didn’t start with the coronavirus: our collapsing oil and gas industry, for instance, points to an energy system that was already on the brink and a majority of economists agree that a manufacturing decline had actually begun in August 2019.
It should no longer be possible to ignore the structural crisis of poverty and inequality that has been eating away at American society over these last decades. Historic unemployment numbers in recent weeks only reveal how expendable the majority of workers are in a crunch. This is happening at a moment when it’s ever clearer how many of the most “essential” tasks in our economy are done by the least well-paid workers. The ranks of the poor are widening at a startling clip, as many more of us are now experiencing what dire insecurity feels like in an economy built on non-unionized, low-wage work and part-time jobs.
Rachel Scarborough King at The Nation writes—The Radical Idea That Undergirds Our Postal System Victorian-era postal reform enshrined the principle that all letter writers were equal. Now that principle is under threat:
With Covid-19 confining most Americans to their homes, many of us have become reliant on mail delivery for everything from toiletries to toys for our out-of-school children. Yet, as businesses cut back on advertisements and solicitations, mail volume has dropped by 30 percent compared with this time last year, and the United States Postal Service projects that it will lose $13 billion this fiscal year and $22 billion over the next 18 months. The agency could be financially insolvent by October.
President Donald Trump has insisted that there will be no bailout, falsely claiming that the USPS could cover its costs by raising rates on Amazon, FedEx, and UPS. He appears happy to let the postal service sputter and to favor the long-held conservative dream of privatization.
We have decades’ worth of experience with industries such as phone companies and British rail lines to know that privatization almost never leads to more efficient or affordable service. But we must look earlier to the last major reorganization of postal services—the British and American postal reforms of the 1840s and ’50s—to understand just how crucial a cheap, accessible national mail system is to a modern society. Postal reform institutionalized and enshrined the principle of equal access to the mail, precisely the principle that is now under threat. The Victorian transformation of the post also points to how we can reimagine the USPS so it can face its post-pandemic challenges. We can turn the postal service into an engine of equality.
Ilyse Hogue at Rewire writes—The Right’s Desperate Attempts to Hijack ‘My Body, My Choice’
A viral image swept across Twitter this weekend depicting a young person in Texas protesting the state’s stay-at-home order, which is helping to save lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. The woman held a sign with a familiar phrase to those of us fighting for reproductive freedom: “My Body, My Choice.”
But displayed prominently alongside the line was a crossed-out face mask, the kind that medical experts, state and local officials, and even members of the Trump administration (no thanks to President Trump himself) have resoundingly said should be worn in public to protect our communities against the spread of the coronavirus.
Conservatives’ efforts to co-opt the symbols and language of other movements, often movements they directly oppose, are part of their standard operating procedure. And of course, conservative media jumped right onto the disinformation bandwagon—as they so often do—to push the same faulty message.
It was to be expected. Absent any rational way to justify their actions, the GOP and the radical right simply use a combination of deflection and disinformation to advance their agenda. A core part of that has always been the co-opting of messages and symbols of social justice movements.
Thomas Kennedy at TruthOut writes—The GOP Has Every Reason to Want the US Postal Service to Fail:
Trump’s insistence on a national postal service motivated by profit reveals the conservative mentality at its core. In this ideological framework, everything must operate at a profit or it’s a useless enterprise. However, it’s still worth asking ourselves: Why are Republicans attacking the post office at this specific time?
There has always been an obsession by conservative elements in this country to infringe on our right to an inexpensive, public postal system. Certainly, that is part of the recent attacks being mounted by Trump and his acolytes, but there is something more opportunistic at play.
It is not a coincidence that this is all happening at the same time a highly politicized census count is underway and the coronavirus is reigniting a national conversation on the merits of voting by mail. The census happens every 10 years and is used to allocate vital resources to communities and to determine congressional representation. Republicans have been trying through various means to undermine the count, whether through lack of funding or by inserting a citizenship question that will create fear in immigrant communities and prevent them from participating. If Republicans are successful, the end result will be more power for them through less congressional districts that are more heavily gerrymandered in their favor.
Sarah Lazare at In These Times writes—Koch-Funded Think Tanks Are Lobbying to Send Workers to Their Deaths:
It’s no mystery what will happen if we rush to reopen the economy and send people back to work before epidemiologists say it is safe to do so. A model produced in consultation with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in March projected a worst-case scenario of 1.7 million Americans killed. Another estimate by the Imperial College London put this number at 2.2 million. We know that COVID-19, which has already taken more than 40,000 U.S. lives, is disproportionately killing African Americans. Poor people are already bearing the brunt of this crisis—and will die in even larger numbers if they are prematurely sent back to wait tables and crowd together in warehouses and factories.
Amid this climate, a small army of right-wing think tanks and conservative organizations is cynically invoking the plight of the downtrodden to make the case for swiftly reopening the economy and sending workers into deadly conditions. Some of the organizations beating this drum the loudest—the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity (AFP), and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)—are behind the most anti-worker measures of our times, from the anti-union Janus Supreme Court ruling to the Trump administration’s work requirements for food stamps. As Trump, the GOP, CEOs and now billionaire-backed “protesters” call for the economy to reopen, these think tanks are working fervently behind the scenes, crafting talking points, speaking with legislators and building coalitions aimed at boosting Wall Street’s profits, at the expense of ordinary people.