Reagan, Trump (and Other Republicans and Conservatives), and COVID-19

Ronald Reagan, as a candidate for president in 1980, kept telling us that government--at least big government--is a bad thing. Government is sprawling, bureaucratic, inefficient, corrupt. And anything that government does can be done better and cheaper by private industry.

And, as president, Reagan put this policy into practice, and cut, defunded, or eliminated many government agencies and programs. (For example, the day of his inauguration he stopped all Department of Energy funding for alternative-energy research, thereby setting back our work on sustainable energy sources by 30 years or more.  This ultimately cost me my job so--disclosure!--okay, maybe here I have an axe to grind.)

Reagan's continued railing against government convinced a lot of people--someone said, "Reagan won that battle"--and has perhaps become the prevailing philosophy in America. Certainly we see it in Trump, who also has been cutting and defunding a lot of government offices and programs. Just as an example, he cut funding to the Centers for Disease Control.

I want to quote a little publication called Catalyst, published by the Union of Concerned Scientists:

In 2014, the Obama administration established an office within the National Security Council to coordinate the federal government's future response to pandemics and provide accountable and organized leadership.

In 2017, the Trump administration abolished this office--and perhaps as a direct result, its response to the coronavirus pandemic was initially haphazard, inept, and lacking in overall accountability. We didn't have a clear sense of who is coordinating federal agencies to address public health and safety. We do have bungled efforts, like the failure to arrange for an adequate supply of testing kits. . . .

Conventional wisdom holds that private markets are the best way to satisfy society's needs, and the role of government should be primarily focused on ensuring that markets work properly. COVID-19 puts the lie to this proposition. When a crisis hits, there is no substitute for effective action directed and mandated by government.  Market signals alone will not ensure that the right people get tested, that emergency hospitals are set up, that ventilator manufacturing is ramped up, and so on.

 Catalyst, Volume 20, Spring 2020, pp. 2, 20

As of a few days ago, the death toll from this virus had surpassed 100,000. I believe that Trump and the philosophy I have cited here are at least partly to blame for these deaths. However much Reagan and other conservatives influenced public thinking and subsequent politics, I strongly believe that, as this article suggests, it's time to say that here we have a real-life situation that shows that this philosophy is flawed.

Republican Lies (In the Manner of One Mr. D. Trump)

Republicans running for election or re-election in next month's election have been getting feedback and even static from their constituents over the issue of whether they want a government-supported health care plan to cover pre-existing conditions.

The Affordable Care Act (so-called Obamacare) provides that the insurance plans offered by private insurers who offer health insurance to individuals under the Act must cover pre-existing conditions. Republicans have tried, sixty times, to repeal Obamacare and replace it with something else. The exact details of the replacement plan have never been made public (as I understand it), but it is widely believed that it would not require coverage of pre-existing conditions.

Now we see that this has become a big issue, and Republicans are getting a lot of pushback over the pre-existing conditions thing. Their response to this, and their campaign strategy? To claim that they support coverage for pre-existing conditions and that the Democrats do not.

If this were true, they would simply need to leave Obamacare alone and not try to repeal it, as they have done 60 times.

Evidently Republican congressional candidates are trying to copy a strategy so often used by Donald Trump, which I think I can describe as "Lie to them and they will believe it, 99% of the time." This cynical approach is based on the belief that the electorate is stupid or at least incapable of critically examining what is told to them. Unfortunately that often seems to be true.

Copyright © 2018.

Republicans: Friend of the Rich, No Friend to Seniors

Today's news says that Mitch McConnell (a Republican senator from Kentucky and the U.S. Senate majority leader) wants to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits. The reason? To alleviate the deficit in the US budget. And the reason for the deficit? Because Donald Trump's (and Republicans') tax cut has benefited corporations and the ultra-wealthy but reduced the government's income (i.e., worsened the budgetary deficit).

McConnell, not unreasonably, feels that the loss of revenue due to the tax cut should be made up somewhere, somehow. But it should be clear to anyone that cutting taxes on the very rich and corporations, if that loss of revenue has to be made up by cutting programs like Medicare and Social Security, is favoring the rich at the expense of the elderly for whom Social Security may be a chief, or only, source of income, and who also greatly benefit from Medicare.

The moral is this: If you are a recipient of Social Security and/or Medicare--or even if you are not but are simply someone other than a member of the "One Percent" (that is, the very richest in our society)--you should not be voting Republican, because you are not voting in accordance with your own interests.

The Republicans have long been the party of and for the rich. For people who have not seen that, it should be more obvious now.

If you're one of the One Percent, I'm actually going to tell you that you should vote Republican; it's in your interests. If you're not, remember that the Republican philosophy is help the rich and screw the poor. And, they have huge amounts of money with which to influence elections. So--support the other side.

Copyright © 2018

Right-Wing Lies about "Obamacare"

I have blogged twice (September 21, 2012 and August 5, 2013) about lies generated by right-wing or conservative commentators, politicians, and bloggers, and spread by emailers who forward e-mails.

Obamacare--that is not the correct term but was originally a derogatory term coined by these right-wing people and now it seems to have stuck as the common term by which to refer to the Affordable Care Act--has been the victim of much misinformation.

Many people may remember Sarah Palin's assertion, quite some time ago, that there would be "death squads" which would decide whether elderly patients would receive treatment or would be allowed to die. I hope that anyone who heard that has since come to understand that there are no such things as these death squads.

More recently, Rush Limbaugh asserted that Obamacare is in effect a massive tax increase. Again, false.

One other assertion is that under the new health care plan, doctors would be obliged to ask patients about their sex lives.

I get very troubled by such deliberate dissemination of lies. If you are a person who always tries to believe the best about people, maybe you believe that these are well-intentioned and that the people who have spread these false ideas had reason to believe they were true. If you are more cynical, then you probably will believe that the people who say these things know they are false and say them anyway.

I think it was Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propoganda, who said that you only have to repeat a lie enough times and people will believe it. Unfortunately, this is true; and as I said in one of my earlier blog postings, people who hear or read these things are not always critical of what they hear and take it as fact and truth.

Truth and Lies on the Internet

The Internet is a wonderful thing, as a source of information, there's no doubt. I personally rely on it for finding out a lot of things via Wikipedia and Google searches: how to do some homeowner-ly task, consumer reviews of products, health information, and much more. And this from someone who has a lifetime habit of turning to books and libraries to find things out.

Unfortunately, the Internet is a two-edged sword. It can also be used to spread incorrect "information."

About a week ago I was reading an article, "Ten Brands that Are Likely to Disappear in 2014," on the financial web site 24/7 Wall Street. This article said that Volvo cars are likely to disappear from the US market next year. I forwarded this information to two friends of mine who own Volvos.

One of those friends got somewhat alarmed and wondered if she should sell her car. The other one took a more critical view of the story and did some research on her own, finding a statement from Volvo's US arm that they have no intention of leaving the US market.

That got me thinking about the fact that you can easily locate contradictory information on the 'Net, and then I had to wonder about what percentage of Internet content might be reliable and what percentage not.

Shortly after that incident I received an email, one of those viral emails that has been forwarded many times before reaching me. The immediate source of this one was an old friend from high school with whom I re-established contact a few years ago. (I could tell a bit about this person that might be interesting but I don't want to get too far off my subject. Suffice it to say here that he is politically conservative whereas he knows, or should know, that I am not.)

This email listed some of the problems that the State of Illinois and the city of Chicago have. The problems are  undeniable but, according to this email, these problems are attributable to Democrats because—as the email asserted numerous times—there are no Republicans in Illinois. This is patently false. It mentioned former Illinois Governor George Ryan as being in prison and implied that this is among the many examples of the things that are wrong with Illinois. This is wrong because Ryan was recently released from prison. More importantly, the email conveniently ignored the fact that Ryan is a Republican.

The City of Chicago has a tradition of  voting Democratic; this long history might deserve comment, but again I don't want to go too far afield. However, the suburban counties that surround Chicago typically are Republican and elect Republicans on both the state and federal levels.

If anyone cares to look at the facts rather than making unfounded assertions, the makeup of the Illinois legislature (General Assembly) is thusly: Senate, 40 Democrats and 19 Republicans. House, 70 Democrats and 47 Republicans. Thus, the Democrats do have a majority in both houses of the Illinois state legislature; but I'd say that's a far cry from there being NO Republicans. The facts for the US Congressmen (Representatives) from Illinois are that there are 12 Democrats and 6 Republicans. In the US Senate, there is one Democratic Senator from Illinois and one Republican.

So—back to the email from my high-school classmate. The person who originated that email had very little regard for facts or truth. And I have found in the past that other emails—also forwarded to me by the same classmate—were also full of exaggerations, half-truths, and out-and-out falsehoods.* At the risk of making a rather sweeping generalization, I'm going to say that those on the Right very often play fast-and-loose with the truth. (I base that assertion partly on the fact that, on matters regarding homosexuality, they have been known to shamelessly promulgate lies.)

I think that those who forward these emails are just as guilty as those who first write them. Unfortunately, every person who receives such an email and believes it and forwards it is doing the world quite a disservice by adding to the general store of incorrect information out there.

However, on a brighter note, if the Internet is the problem, it can also provide the cure. I'd like to acquaint my readers with two 'Net sites that are dedicated to countering incorrect information that circulates on the 'Net—to setting the facts straight. They are FactCheck.org and Snopes.com.
___________
*I can recall three previous emails that this person forwarded to me. Two of them were anti-Obama and, when I did some checking, they were factually incorrect. The third was anti-Muslim.

I used to berate my students for what I felt was their mindless, mechanical, uncritical note-taking. I said, "My words go into your ear, through your neck and shoulder, down your arm and onto your paper, with no thought involved. I could say 'Black is white' and you would write down 'Black is white.'"

The point of this posting was that we tend not to be critical of what we hear and read. How many people would take the trouble to check on the content of an email they'd received, if they were planning to forward it or even if they were not?

Note added August 18, 2013. Also see my Friday, September 21, 2012 posting, "Lies from the Right, in Your Email Inbox."


Copyright © 2013.

Why More Americans Doubt Global Warming

Money--contributed money, that is--is not only driving American politics but also general American beliefs.

This is an age when corporations and very wealthy individuals can fund PACs (political action committees), Super PACs, and other types of entities that can indirectly support and fund candidates and even remain anonymous while doing so.

These funders generally support Republican candidates because the funders who are individuals have chiefly the objective of keeping taxes on themselves low. If they are corporations they may be concerned with corporate taxes but are perhaps more concerned with avoiding government regulation.

Thus both wealthy individuals and corporations mainly support Republican candidates--89% of corporate campaign spending goes to Republicans—because Republicans support these goals of theirs, and Republican-controlled houses of Congress will vote their way.

Pretty much as an aside, I want to get in the idea that political advertising—that is, campaign ads—make the implicit assertion that government regulations kill jobs. At the very least that is an exaggeration and overgeneralization and oversimplification. But then, whoever said that slogans—of any kind—contain qualifications or any nuances whatsoever?

But it's also alarming that these same monied political interests have been successfully influencing people's beliefs about what should be a matter of science—that is, the reality of global warming and the degree to which it is caused by human actions.

A report by the American Academy of Science said that 98 to 99% of scientists believe that global warming is real and is at least partly caused by human actions such as the burning of fossil fuels. The exact percentage of global warming which is the result of human action is difficult to determine, so there is room for disagreement about that, even among the scientists who accept both the reality of global warming and its causation by increased concentrations of so-called greenhouse gases, most notably carbon dioxide (CO2).

The anti–global warming forces muster scientists who support their position. Sometimes these scientists are of suspect objectivity because they receive funding from the people whose ideas they support. Or they are not experts in the field of climate. They have even taken data and manipulated it. (Example: You can take 10-year periods and show that global temperatures were actually slightly cooler at the end of the period than at the beginning. But if you look at a graph of the longer-term trend, the upward trend in global temperature is unmistakable.)

Their advertising slogans try to convince people that carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere is not harmful. Carbon dioxide is what plants breathe in. (True.) It is "plant food." Okay, you could say that, too; but that does not in any way refute the fact that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. (Another greenhouse gas is methane, which is added to our atmosphere in considerable quantities by our raising animals for food. To put it in everyday terms, methane is cow farts.) Greenhouse gases--just to remind you--trap solar radiation that hits the earth and turn it to heat.

The effect of the millions of dollars which have been spent on a public disinformation campaign is that they have convinced nearly half the American population that global warming is not real and is not a problem and is not anything we need to take action on.

Who is doing this, and why? Naturally we have to look for motivation, for self-interest. For one, the Koch brothers, who are or should be infamous to many Americans as they are huge donors to various right-wing causes. These two hugely wealthy brothers own very extensive oil and gas interests. Therefore, they want  you and me to go on burning fossil fuels—it's money in their pockets—rather than "going green" and developing more wind and solar energy.

And corporate interests don't want to see any regulations on their factories' emissions of CO2. The House passed a plan known as "cap and trade" which would have the effect of a net reduction in CO2 emissions from industrial sources. But these interests, alarmed at their defeat in the House, have ensured that this bill will not pass in the Senate.

Update, November 1, 2012
Here is another example of  money spent to influence public opinion--called public relations--that also has been successful yet detrimental to the general welfare. The sugar industry spent a lot of  money to counteract a bad image that sugar had been getting--particularly its role in causing obesity and chronic diseases such as diabetes. Here is a quotation from an article in Mother Jones:

The [sugar] industry's PR campaign corresponded roughly with a significant rise in Americans' consumption of 'caloric sweeteners,' including table sugar (sucrose) and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). This increase was accompanied, in turn, by a surge in the chronic diseases increasingly linked to sugar. Since 1970, obesity rates in the United States have more than doubled, while the incidence of diabetes has more than tripled.

Here is a link to the full article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/01/big-sugars-sweet-little-l_n_2056731.html
Of course free speech allows lobbying and public relations efforts; and hopefully they are not all evil. But, where they are, the only antidote is public education and public information, and these are usually not supported by the same kind of money.
So in both these cases--climate change and the harmfulness of sugar--the equation is, money to spend (or money spent) = persuasion (public relations) = change in public opinion. In this age of media, persuasion is a vast and very influential industry.


© 2012 by Richard Stein

More Thoughts on the Republican Convention

Once upon a time, party national presidential nominating conventions were interesting, because they genuinely nominated the candidate. The delegates could spread their votes among several competing candidates, often requiring several ballots until one candidate got the required number of votes. Now these votes are merely a formality and a rubber stamp: who the candidate is going to be is known in advance, so there is no longer a real, meaningful ballot.

So to the people, if the whole thing is kind of ho-hum, that's understandable.

However, some interesting things are going on. Ann Romney, wife of Republican nominee Mitt Romney, is to make a speech. Interestingly, they say she was "involved in crafting her speech." [emphasis added] Of course that implies that hers was not the sole role. I wonder who—what media, political, or PR professionals--had the rest of the role in writing her speech.

Also, Mrs. Romney will read her speech from a TelePrompter. So I for one do not expect real and genuine feeling from Mrs. Romney when she tells us what a wonderful man her husband is.

For more on Mrs. Romney, see my March 21, 2012 blog posting, "Mrs. Romney."

This convention is seeing the ultra-wealthy and corporate lobbyists, who pull the strings, fly into Tampa on their private jets. And they are sponsoring—that is, paying for—events for the delegates which include lavish entertainment. Maybe these wealthy donors and lobbyists cannot hide who or what they are; but the news media have been excluded from these events sponsored for the delegates. What are the wealthy sponsors and organizers trying to conceal?

One lobbyist, who was interviewed on camera, said that these donors and lobbyists are going to expect a payback. Just as one example of who we're talking about: the health care industry, which has an interest in what health-care legislation might be passed—or repealed--is represented by such companies as AFLAC and Blue Cross/Blue Shield. The TV news commentator mentioned our country's almost total lack of limitations on political contributions, which of course is the key to the things I'm talking about. The delegates are usually state and national elected politicians, so their votes in their respective legislatures can be bought by these lobbyists.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

Republicans and Their Convention

I was hoping that Hurricane Isaac would completely blow away the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida.

I know that's nasty of me. But consider that the likes of Pat Robertson have tried to blame hurricanes and natural disasters on gays. Supposedly they're God punishing the US for tolerating (?) gays.

So maybe if the supposed wrath of God struck Republicans and conservatives, they'd have to view it in a different way. At least, I'd presume, if they really thought it was God's actions, they'd have to wonder about the particular target God chose.

I want to say one good thing about Reince Priebus (the chairman of the Republican National Committee): He has a cool name. Otherwise, of course, I'd be diametrically opposed to everything he believes and says.

Yesterday the news contained the results of a poll that said that 63% of Americans believe that the Republican party is the party of the wealthy. That's pretty reassuring: the American people either are starting to catch on, or they're a little more savvy than I'd been giving them credit for.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

American Manufacturing: The Picture Is Really Not So Bleak

Republicans and others who wish to impugn President Barack Obama and blame him for everything claim that he is responsible for loss of American jobs, especially manufacturing jobs. We see pictures of shuttered factories and impoverished areas in "Rust Belt" cities, and hear much about the rate of unemployment.

The peak year for employment in American manufacturing was 1979. Jobs declined continually since then—up until 2009, when they actually began to increase--and this turnaround point was, of course, during Obama's presidency.

Not that Obama gets all the credit for any increase, any more than he deserves the blame for 30 years of decline.

But let's look at some facts. The current number manufacturing jobs is quite a bit below its all-time peak; but, on the other hand, the value of American manufacturing has increased.

It's not simply a story of outsourcing of American jobs to China, Mexico, and other countries where labor is cheaper (although I have tended to feel that the American worker has priced himself out of the world labor market). Greater efficiency—automation, use of industrial robots, and so forth—has meant that the production of American factories can be achieved with fewer workers. So, if you want to, blame the robots for declining unemployment in American manufacturing.

But this means that American ingenuity has permitted goods to be produced with less labor—and thus lower labor cost, which of course is important in world competitiveness.

So, the situation of American manufacturing is much more salubrious than some people would have us believe.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein