Trump Said

                                 Trump Said

"We have the best testing in the world," Trump recently told employees at Owens & Minor Inc. in Allentown, Pa. (Owens and Minor make medical equipment) “Could be that testing’s, frankly, overrated. Maybe it is overrated."

"We have more cases than anybody in the world, but why? Because we do more testing,” Trump said. “When you test, you have a case. When you test you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases. They don’t want to write that. It’s common sense. We test much more."  Yep. Really. That’s what he said. “Very few cases” is represented by more than 86,000 dead out of almost a million and a half cases.

      Rather than just chuck a pile of real data at you, I’ll let the graph above largely speak for itself.  Note that this is an “apples to apples” graph, since the data is presented as “number of tests performed per 1000 population”. This grouping is the usual comparison standard I (and the rest of the world) use - the OECD nations. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development is an intergovernmental economic organization, co-founded with 37 member countries by the US and France, in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade. It is, by far, the most representative standard of comparison for the US vis a vis the world’s similar economies.  

        Obviously, the claim that “We test much more” is, simply put, a lie. The OECD “average” number of people (the red line) tested per 1000 is 22.9. That, I remind you is the average number. Contrary to Trump’s on the spot lie, (he spoke, he lied, it follows as the night does the day) the US is well below the OECD average at 15.6 tests per 1000. Almost as troubling is the statement, “‘They’ don’t want to write that.”  “They”, per Trump have now become anyone who recounts a fact that contradicts a lie such as this. This has become typical of the man whose self- proclaimed “genius” has started to look more and more like the incoherent ramblings of the village imbecile.

And on May 11, we have this whopper:

“Germany and the United States are the two best in deaths per 100,000 people, which, frankly, to me, that's perhaps the most important number there is.”

        Proving the lie here is ridiculously simple. That cesspool of liberal propaganda, Johns Hopkins University has continually tracked such data for months and released this table 3 days after Trump’s statement:

 Data set Johns Hopkins 5/14/2020

Country    case/fatality ratio (%)   deaths per100k

US                    6.1                         25.26

Brazil               6.9                           6.68

Germany          4.5                           9.51

Iran                  6.0                           8.38

Turkey             2.8                           4.87
Russia              0.9                           1.6

Poland             5.0                           2.32

Austria            3.9                           7.08

Sweden           12.3                       34.66

Denmark         4.9                          9.26

Norway           2.8                          4.37

Canada            7.5                        15.09

This data set actually tracks world-wide figures, some are worse, many, including much of Africa, are better, as in fewer deaths per 100,000 cases, which is the basis of the Trump statement.    

       Clearly, while not the worst, the US has more than 2 ½ times as many deaths per 100k as Germany. However, contrary to Trump’s allegation, Denmark, Brazil, Turkey, Austria, Norway, Canada, Iran and Poland also have far fewer. Worth noting here, are the high numbers for Sweden which, alone among the European nations, did not stress social distancing and has paid the price in each “lives lost” statistic.

     Using another and even more “level playing field” statistic, that being the percentage of how many died per diagnosed case, Trump is still wrong. Nine of the eleven representative countries I took from the far larger data sheet, have fewer deaths per case than the US. world-wide the difference is even greater. Trump’s statement implies that we and Germany stand atop the list. Germany has done far better than we, but others have done better than both, while some, such as the UK and Netherlands have had it worse.      

In the realm of what the f**k does he even mean?:

Trump has repeatedly said things like “We're very close to a vaccine.” (this in February) when this was categorically denied by real medical persons, he then had his mouthpieces say that he was actually speaking about an Ebola vaccine. (You know, to combat the current Ebola pandemic?)

More recently, (May 8^th) Trump old reporters he now believes the virus will “go away without a vaccine.” “This is going to go away without a vaccine, it’s gonna go away, and we’re not going to see it again, hopefully, after a period of time.”  He has yet to explain why he believes that, and apparently, he actually doesn’t, since his administration, one week later, launched Operation Warp Speed, aimed at accelerating the production of a vaccine. He loves that “space talk”, huh? I’ll betcha if a lab to actually begin producing a vaccine were built, he’d be there to say “engage!” (deepest apologies to Sir Patrick Stewart.)

In truth (Remember that?), Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading expert on infectious disease, told Fox News COVID-19 was “not going to be over to the point of our being able to not do any mitigation until we have a scientifically sound, safe and effective vaccine.” And here’s the good news if there is any: When asked by a reporter who is in charge of the vaccine operation, Trump said, “honestly, I am.” “I’m really in charge of it,” he said. “I think probably more than anything I’m in charge.” We’re sooo f**ked!

Dismantling of the Pandemic response team as a coequal National Security directorate:

        In 2018 and numerous times since that initial declaration, Trump has disavowed responsibility for his Administration's disbanding of the US Pandemic Response Team headed by Rear Adm. R. Timothy Ziemer in 2018.  First a bit of history: some of it excerpted and abridged from an article in Vanity Fair.

        In mid-March 2014, reports of the first cases of Ebola in Guinea triggered efforts inside the Obama White House to track and contain the spread of the virus, which killed around 50% of the people it infected. While less contagious than  Covid-19, an epidemic, or even pandemic, was considered, at least, possible if the disease weren’t confined to West African.  The Obama administration had created clear protocols and chains of command for these kinds of threats. .  (detailed in the “playbook” Bitch McConnell claims doesn’t exist, but which has been verified) 

        Beth Cameron, a former civil servant who ran the White House’s National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense, and her team, drew up a memo to Susan Rice, the national-security adviser, and Lisa Monaco, the homeland-security adviser, detailing what was then known about the Ebola outbreak. This memo set off a chain of action that immediately went to the Oval Office and then spread through the government. This was considered to be of such significance that it was a separate directorate, administered by specialists in the field  

        In the summer of 2018, on the advice of John Bolton and at the direction of Trump, the team Cameron once ran was one of three directorates merged into one amid an “overhaul and streamlining” of Donald Trump’s National Security Council. The position Monaco previously held, homeland-security adviser, was downgraded, stripped of its authority to convene the cabinet.

                The argument was, essentially, that even though the global health security team was, in fact, disbanded and lowered in authority, a new NSC unit with a combined responsibility for arms control and biodefense was a perfectly adequate replacement. There have been three temporary administrators, since, none with direct access to the President.

        Officials who worked on past crises and experts on pandemic response believe that Trump’s dismissal—and in some aspects, wholesale discarding—of the Obama administration’s preparedness structures and principles, and the current administration’s ideas about government—that states could and should take responsibility, and that business could be more effective than government at solving problems at this scale—have left them dangerously unprepared.

        So now we are faced with Mitch McConnell’s false claims that the Obama administration left “no playbook” (debunked. It is a 69 pager) and the continued refusal of Donald Trump to lead and, as importantly, do what leaders do, which is accept responsibility for his actions. 

       Trump has yet to do this. Throughout this debacle, he has acted a little schizophrenic about his role. On one hand, ever the narcissist, he wants, even demands, the credit when things go right. On the other hand, he furiously attempts to avoid having to take ownership for the outcome of the effort…he wants the credit without accountability. This simply mirrors his entire life.

        Trump recently became irate when confronted, (by a Fox News reporter, no less) with the issue of why the pandemic preparedness and response directorate had been downgraded. After attempting to deflect the question he “punted.”   “What you just said is a false story,” Trump said. 

“This doctor,” he continued, gesturing to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, “knows it better than anybody.”

        Suggesting that Dr. Fauci would back him up on his false claim that the office was not disbanded, was skating on some pretty ice. In testimony to Congress just three weeks ago, the doctor was asked by Rep. Gerald Connolly, a Virginia Democrat, if it had been a mistake “to dismantle the office within the National Security Council charged with global health and security?” Fauci’s, response? "I wouldn't necessarily characterize it as a mistake. I would say we worked very well with that office. It would be nice if the office was still there."

        The downgrading and emasculation of the Global Health and Security directorate also hadn’t passed unnoticed by Democratic leaders:

        The very day the directorate’s downgrade (and accompanying isolation from direct POTUS contact) was announced, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Patty Murray wrote an urgent letter to Trump’s (then) national security adviser, John Bolton, demanding a staff-level briefing on how planning for pandemic response would be carried out without the office. As Warren later explained, Bolton refused to provide the briefing or to answer the six specific questions they asked in writing. (Apparently only Republican Senators merit respect?) This prompted a chilling and prescient response from another source:

  “When the next pandemic occurs (and make no mistake, it will) and the federal government is unable to respond in a coordinated and effective fashion to protect the lives of US citizens and others, this decision by John Bolton and Donald Trump will be the reason,” Stephen Schwartz of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists tweeted on May 10, 2018.  and two years later, here we are!    

        And so it is and so it continues to be.              

Mitch McConnell is a Whining, Lying, Bitch!

        In the continuing effort of the Trump administration to shift blame for their miserable handling of the current pandemic onto someone else, Bitch McConnell has now resorted to time travel. Trump tried it earlier with his claim that “We were left with a bad test.” (the CoVid-19 antigen test). Once it was pointed out that there couldn’t have been any test when Trump ascended to the throne, since the virus wasn’t even discovered yet, ergo no virus, no test, that line of bullshit was discarded.

        McConnell’s latest is even worse, since it is, as is most of what issues from his mouth, a bald-faced lie. McConnell actually complained that Obama didn't leave Trump a “pandemic game plan.” Just like his pimp, Broadway Donnie, and as Trump has done repeatedly during the pandemic, McConnell also laid undeserved blame at Obama's feet.

       "They claim pandemics only happen once every hundred years but what if that's no longer true? We want to be early, ready for the next one, because clearly the Obama administration did not leave to this administration any kind of game plan for something like this," McConnell whined. 

        There are several issues here. Issue one, Trump should have taken office ready to lead and, when appropriate, listen to those who “know stuff” about public health issues such as pandemics when and if the need arose. It did and he largely hasn’t. Barack Obama had no Bush 43 “playbook” for dealing with Ebola, but he has yet to blame his predecessor for that.  

       The second and much more damning reality is that Obama's White House National Security Council categorically did leave the Trump administration a detailed document on how to respond to a pandemic. The document, whose existence was publicly revealed in March, is called the Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents. (a convoluted way to say “Pandemics”).

        At 40 pages plus 29 appendices, the document contains step-by-step advice such as what questions to ask (probably not all that important to Trump who doesn’t listen, ask Dr Fauci), decisions to make, and which federal agencies are responsible for what. It includes sample documents that officials could use for inter-agency meetings. And it explicitly lists novel coronaviruses as one of the kinds of pathogens that could require a major response.

        Departing Obama administration officials also led an in-person pandemic response exercise for senior incoming Trump officials in January 2017 -- as required by a new law on improving presidential transitions that Obama signed in 2016. This mandatory meeting, oddly, was attended by Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and addressed how to deal with a hypothetical flu crisis, among other scenarios. Notably absent were POTUS and VPOTUS.  Another interesting note here: Rick Perry was out of the Trump cabinet before the pandemic, therefore one of those who had been briefed was missing. However, the other Cabinet level attendee, Ms. Chao, is the current Secretary of Transportation and the wife of (wait for it) Mitch McConnell.

         I mention this because McConnell should have known his wife was briefed and aware of the “Playbook” prior to slandering the Obama Administration while lying about its existence.

        Perry’s absence also highlights another Trump characteristic I have detailed earlier, that being that while there has been rapid turnover in this administration (far more days of unfilled cabinet positions than the last 40 years combined) that lack of continuity in the various departments also works against efforts to function as a team, especially when the captain cares only about his poll numbers.   

        What prompted me to single out this particular type of blatant lie (there have been so many) is that it eerily parallels events in the Bush 43 administration.

        Senior Clinton administration officials, called before the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, detailed how they repeatedly warned their Bush administration counterparts in late 2000 that Al Qaeda posed the worst security threat facing the nation. They detailed the presence of a security and terrorism ‘white paper” brief, apparently ignored by those neocons who pulled Bush’s strings.

        They (outgoing Clinton staffers) said the warnings were delivered in urgent post-election intelligence briefings in December 2000 and January 2001 for Condoleezza Rice, who became Mr. Bush's national security adviser; Stephen Hadley, then Ms. Rice's deputy; and Philip D. Zelikow, a member of the Bush transition team, among others. Richard A. Clarke, President Clinton's counterterrorism coordinator, categorically stated that the warning about the Al Qaeda threat could not have been made more bluntly to the incoming Bush officials in intelligence briefings that he led. And yet 9/11 happened.

        It seems that warnings prepared by Democrats, as Rodney Dangerfield would say, “Just don’t get no respect.”

Just Stuff

Just Stuff

There is so much about the current POTUS which makes me want to vomit that I have to back off the political tirades for a bit since I’ve done pretty much nothing but that for some time, soooo….

        I’m really getting over those "sideboard" advertisements that you can’t get rid of unless you “Upgrade to Premium.”  In case you’re wondering, in my case this is primarily an on-line Bridge Game and Microsoft Solitaire games. Apparently, a significant number of persons  play on-line electronic slots, because these make up a large portion of the unwanted interruptions that one has to sit through prior to playing the game one wishes. Playing real slots is a fool’s errand in and of itself, but electronically, on-line? Really?

          The Bridge game ads run in “sidebar" panels the entire time I’m playing. Two in particular are worthy of note simply because….., well, you decide why. 

        One is an advertisement for auto insurance. Not unusual, I suppose, but the two spokespersons they are apparently paying to do the ads are Tonya Harding and Johnny Manziel. Take heart! In the event that you either fail miserably or get caught cheating at your chosen endeavor, there is still some company desperate enough to hire you.

        Another which has no audio, is a picture of what appears to be a raw egg in a small glass. The scrolling text gives the good news: “Top surgeon says do this to empty your bowls every morning!” I refuse to click and read further. As is the case in far too many of these ads, the topic is one which would rightfully be dealt with, if at all, by an internist or nutritionist. The words “top surgeon” are gratuitous and are typical of the genre, which essentially uses catch phrases and words with scientific appeal to gain readers’ attention and prime them for the usually non-science scam to follow.

         There is also a long and growing list of the “Top surgeon says ‘Remove this food from your diet’” advertisements. Again, the word “surgeon” to get your attention, and then an advertisement completely unrelated to any surgical process. Doctors Phil (not even a credentialed psychologist at present) and Oz are prime examples of the whores currently working this street corner. Of course, we of my generation were treated to “doctors” (who weren’t) in white labs coats shilling for cigarette manufacturers.

        A recent addition to the sidebar school of adverts is the discredited former Faux News talking head, Bill O’Reilly. He has apparently become a financial guru and wants to share his new-found knowledge with all of us….. at a price, of course. One hopes his creds in that field are more legit than his claims to have been an “historian”. This enduring lie grew from the attempts to lend credibility to his ghost written “Killing…whomever”) series of books.

         O’Reilly’s pseudo-credibility is the manufactured result of his having taught 2 years of high school with English out of field as part of that. After two years he left that career to become a professional dissembler. A BA in history and teaching a couple of years of high school is not a substitute for legitimate creds as an “historian”. The extent of Bill O’Reilly’s formal professional credit is a bachelor’s degree in history. Period. I will acknowledge that he did choose wisely, in having selecting Martin Dugard to write most of the “Killing of …” books to which O’Reilly proudly affixes his name in very large print. Apparently, Mr. Dugard, well paid, is content.  

        Another side-bar advertising annoyance is the spate of “for profit” post-secondary schools offering degrees with, what seems to be approaching, zero effort on the part of the student. 

        During the Obama administration, amid burgeoning numbers of both unrecoverable college debt and questionable for-profit colleges, the administration, via the DOE, acted. This decision was fueled by complaints that for-profit colleges lured students with misleading promises, then saddle them with debts they can’t pay back despite their newly granted degrees. Its tool was the Education Department’s long-debated “gainful employment” rule, which required colleges to track their graduates’ performance in the workforce and eventually would cut off funding for career training programs that fall short. Students who attended for-profit colleges filed more than 98 percent of the requests for student loan forgiveness alleging fraud.

        The rule — upheld by a court ruling and going into effect in 2015, aimed to trigger the closure of 1,400 programs that together enrolled an estimated 840,000 students. Ninety-nine percent of those students attended “for-profits.”  Lest one might think this was ill advised, there were such frauds as a Three-Year Doctor of Divinity degree (it usually takes at least seven. and more usually eight, years!). Other scams included hugely inflated employability claims and non-existent actual job placement and high-pressure loan “selling” often at far above market interest rates.

        Another scam is claims of accreditation by mythical organizations with lofty sounding titles. One of the worst was Corinthian, a giant conglomerate of the for-profit college industry. Corinthian, by choice and intent, marketed both vocational and post-secondary programs to single mothers at or below the poverty line. Of course, advice on loan availability was Job One at Corinthian. At the time of is demise, Corinthian was under investigation by various federal agencies, the Department of Education, and 20 different state attorneys general.  Then it said it could not operate for more than a few days without an influx of cash and shut down, stranding students where they were. An uncovering of in-house Corinthian directives and documents revealed a corporate philosophy aimed at specifically targeting “isolated” and “impatient” individuals with “low self-esteem”.

        Sadly, in the first months of the Trump administration, the completely unqualified and enemy of public education, Betsy  Devos, gutted two Obama-era regulations: one that cut off funding to programs that performed poorly, and one that made it easier for students defrauded by a for-profit school to wipe out their loans. She then in a final slap at educational equity, appointed Julian Schmoke Jr., a former for-profit college administrator, to police fraud in the higher education industry. This is analogous to hiring Wile E. Coyote to baby-sit your Roadrunner.

        And that, kids, is about all I can stomach for today.

It's In the Mail

        I love the availability of hard data provided by the Internet. Opinions, not so much. Here are some numbers which should give even the most avid Trump supporter pause.

        Of the 350,000,000 or so of us US citizens,  although estimates vary and real numbers are sparse and changing, by a conservative estimate considering just one  on-line mail order Pharmacy, Express Scripts, close to 1/3 of all of us regularly receive at least one prescription by U.S. Mail (USPS). Moreover, for the majority of those, the drugs are maintenance drugs such as insulin, statins, blood pressure meds, anti-psychotics, allergy meds, anti-virals, etc.  

        This is not an endorsement of Express Scripts, although we (Emily and I and many other retired US Military families) use them. I’m simply using them as an example of the genre. Express Scripts is a wholly owned subsidiary of Cigna, and dispenses medications two ways: The first, through preferred pharmacies, such as CVS, Walgreens, etc. is managed by Express Scripts and generally results is lower than retail costs for “one-off” prescriptions, such as a Z-pack, or other single fill prescriptions. This is primarily because, like all on-line pharmacies they leverage lower prices from manufacturers. Disclaimer: this is not true for Medicare which, by law, pays manufacturers’ asking price.    

       For repeating drug prescriptions, the afore mentioned “maintenance” drugs, the already reduced price is dramatically lowered if the drugs are delivered from Express Scripts or another on-line pharmacy via US mail. As an example, a three-month supply delivered by mail, usually costs the customer the same as a two-month supply bought over the counter at a traditional pharmacy, consequently, most customers use mail delivery. 

       So, how many prescriptions or customers are we talking about? Express Scripts advertises that they interact with “86 million lives.”   Using the best available numbers for the percentage of us who use mail order delivery for maintenance drugs, that works out to about 17 to 20 million customers! Note, that there are other large mail order pharmacy plans, Humana, CVS Caremark, etc. Also, Amazon is about enter the lists, although they are getting “pushback” from the entrenched companies who don’t want the competition. Meanwhile, 85% of polled Amazon Prime customers have indicated they would use PillPack, the company Amazon has bought.  Combined, it is likely that the total number of Americans receiving some or all of their medications by USPS is already somewhere close to 150,000,000!  

       So what? So, if Donald Trump defunds (and essentially destroys) the US Postal Service as he has indicated he might do) an awful lot of Americans are to be hurt and hurt immediately. Consider that in recent polls related to household concerns over lack of funds, the top three worries are, unexpected medical bills, health insurance deductibles, and prescription drug costs. These are more pressing concerns than, as examples, food, rent, or utility bills.

         Bottom line, defunding the USPS and leaving all mail delivery in private hands is a catastrophically bad idea, just like privatization of Social Security. The things which have continued to hurt the USPS income stream aren’t inefficiency or parcel delivery as much as the steep decline in the amount of first- class mail, which has decreased over 40% from 2000 to 2020. This isn’t the fault of USPS. These are not the results of mismanagement, as Trump would have us believe, either. 

        Two of the principal components of first-class mail are classified (By USPS) as “transactional” (bills and payments) and “correspondence” (inter-household) mail. Both have been hammered, and to great degree, supplanted, by electronic correspondence. Like many households who used to mail bill payments, and other financial transactions, ours is now, and has been for years, all electronic. That’s a lot of 50 cent stamps not used! Similarly, e-mail or Facebook have largely supplanted the personal letter.

       Another issue is the slight decrease in parcel delivery as, FedEx, UPS, and Amazon all now do local deliveries in convenient areas seven days a week. This still leaves the USPS with its mandated “universal service” obligation, which requires USPS to deliver anywhere in the United States, including remote locations that are more expensive and resource-intensive to reach and that other carriers are not obligated to service. 

       Again, not the fault of USPS, but the reflection of a change in the game playing field. Doing the math, without any change to current rates, reveals a simple fix. $5 monthly per US household would work. $5 X 12 months X 128,000,000 US households, all but wipes out the current yearly $8.8 billion operating deficit. Add it to the income tax bill. OR add 15 cents to the cost of first-class mail which last year would have almost exactly erased the operating deficit. If that seems excessive, here’s a comparison. The UK Royal mail cost of sending a first-class letter is currently equivalent to  94.2 cents, and their postal service has a far more densely settled populace than many US states.Better yet, increase the cost to mail commercial advertising (catalogs) and other non-essential mail.

        These are just a couple of quick take suggestions, but Trump’s threat to defund, and essentially do away with, the USPS is a world class bad idea on a par with inhaling Lysol.

Icarus Unhinged

Icarus Unhinged

       Hubris is defined per the OED as “Excessive pride or self-confidence.”  It derives from the Greeks, who actually considered it a crime (if only). Generally, it referred to the attitudes and actions of mortals whose unjustified pride and self-assurance led them to “defy the Gods.”  One of the generally proffered examples of hubris as the Greeks regarded it is the mythical story of Icarus.

        The “moral” of the Icarus legend revolves, not around daring to fly, but around ignoring the warning of his father. His father, Daedalus, was the creator of the Labyrinth, a huge maze located under the court of King Minos of Crete, where the Minotaur, (half-man half-bull, all myth) lived. So that the secrets of design of the Labyrinth be kept, Minos had Daedalus and Icarus imprisoned in a tower above his palace. Daedalus managed to create two sets of wings, made of feathers glued together with wax, for himself and his son. He taught Icarus how to fly and warned him not to fly too high, which would cause the wax to melt.  Icarus, however, overconfident and ego driven, ignored his father's warnings, flying higher and higher, until the wax started melting under the scorching sun. His wings dissolved and he fell into the sea and drowned.  This is also the origin of the old adage. “Pride goeth before a fall.”

       Most of such Greek stories are thinly veiled warnings about the dangers of excessive self-confidence and imagined superiority and their poor outcomes.

       In more recent times there is no shortage of examples of such Narcissism (named for another Greek who loved his image a bit too much).  One such is Herbert Hoover, a decent enough man, but one who believed that he could convince a nation, which was beginning to know better, that the economy was just fine, and his administration and current Republican business favoring policies would “abolish poverty.”   

       Four years later Mr. Hoover had to attempt (an effort at which he failed spectacularly) to explain to a nation, now mired deep in the Great Depression,  why it should reelect him, and continue what he had ballyhooed in 1928 as,  “The policies which have made and will make for the prosperity of our country.” Perhaps if he had been more judicious in his first campaign, if he had made the ordinary speeches of the ordinary candidate, his 1932 explanation of the collapse as “due to inexorable economic forces” might have been more plausible,  But in 1928, locked into defending Republican hands off, free for all, policies in financial sectors  he told voters that. “As never before does the keeping of our economic machine in tune depend on wise policies in the administrative side of government.”

     Mr. Hoover, who in 1928 had denounced his unnamed "opponents"—on ephemeral or non-existent scanty evidence—for plotting to introduce state socialism, (sound familiar yet?) was compelled to ask for reelection in 1932 as a reward for his own success in introducing state socialism. He hoped that the Reconstruction Finance Corporation would prove a brighter star in his crown than the Federal Farm Board had. It didn’t. So, the man who promised the abolition of poverty had to ask for another term of office on the ground that “it might have been worse.”

       General of the US Army (yep five stars!)  Douglas MacArthur is a kind of 20th century Icarus. In 1945, at war’s end, he ranked with some of the greatest generals of all time. His masterly amphibious counterstroke at Inchon in 1950, after the North Koreans had overrun virtually the entire south of the peninsula, is a matchless lesson in boldness and surprise. But then, apparently believing that success, and now believing that anything he did was not only right but destined to succeed, he decided to take on China — and thereby his own president, the determined and moral Harry S. Truman. MacArthur’s “wax” melted, and he was fired. The detailed saga of MacArthur and his downfall should be studied at every war college.

       A more recent and somewhat humorous example of hubris is relatively little known but has left us with another name for the condition. In 1995, a man named McArthur Wheeler read an article about how lemon juice could be used as an invisible ink, not becoming visible until heat was applied. He contemplated said concept and (believe it or not) theorized that if he covered his face with lemon juice, it would be invisible to bank security cameras. No, really, yes, he did!  So, he painted up his face with lemon juice and robbed two banks. Needless to say, he was, in both robberies, photographed very clearly and quickly apprehended. For obvious reasons, the court ordered a psychological evaluation before proceeding to trial. The psychiatrist called in pronounced that Mr. Wheeler was “competent to stand trial but shockingly ignorant.”

       Hearing of this, two other psychologists, Dunning and Kruger by name, (probably after they laughed their asses off) wondered why someone with such a basic lack of knowledge would think that they had a brilliant idea that had never been thought of before.

        To develop some hard data (as much as can be done in psychology, a “soft” science) they designed a study in 1999, using freshman college students, in which they measured their knowledge of a subject.     They then asked respondents to self-assess their own abilities in that subject. What they found was that the less someone knew about a subject, the higher they self-rated their knowledge in that subject! Read that again because it should, by now, sound familiar. They also found that people with little knowledge in a subject area undervalued the knowledge of people who were genuinely knowledgeable in the same subject. They concluded that when someone has a very shallow understanding of something, they are markedly unable to evaluate what they don’t know about it and, similarly, can’t appreciate how much a true expert does know about the subject.

I think it very likely that, in a few years, if you look up “Dunning-Kruger effect” on Wikipedia, you will find the article accompanied by a photo of Donald Trump.

       I’ve written at length about Trump’s lack of understanding about economics. His tariff disaster tells that story. His claim that “Mexico would pay for a wall” is similarly reflective of ignorance in several areas.  That has never however stopped him from grandiose statements reflecting both narcissistic hubris and his raging case of Dunning-Kruger syndrome. Examples (with comments where I feel like it) include:

"I know tech better than anyone."

 Really? Better than Bill Gates? (who he disdains)

"Nobody knows more about taxes than I do."

Except possibly every CPA in America.

"Nobody understands the horror of nuclear more than me."  

There are two former cities in Japan where everybody does, you arrogant asshole!

"Nobody knows more about trade than me."

 Tell the US soybean farmers who are reduced to taking government handouts.

"I know more than the generals on ISIS”

As General Jim Mattis said, “I won my spurs on the battlefield, he won his in a letter from a doctor.”

“Nobody knows jobs like I do!"

I got nuthin’ here.

“You’re going to have a deportation force. And you’re going to do it humanely,"        and: “President Obama has mass deported vast numbers of people — the most ever, and it’s never reported. I think people are going to find that I have not only the best policies, but I will have the biggest heart of anybody.”

Big body parts maybe, heart, nah.

“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”

Three years later:

Climate change is real, but it's "naturally occurring." (current position)

On March 31, 2016, Trump told the Washington Post that the country needed to eliminate the national debt and that he could do it “fairly quickly” without raising taxes.

This may well be the best example of hubris in existence! Later, however the scenario was abandoned and replaced with:

“I think it could be a good time to borrow and pay off debt, borrow debt, make longer-term debt,”

That’s right; replace debt with debt. Sheer genius!

When warned in 2019 that the radically increasing deficit could crash the economy in mid 2020s his response was: “We won’t be here.”

“We’ll have an economy based on wind. I never understood wind. You know, I know windmills very much. I’ve studied it better than anybody. I know it’s very expensive.

“I know windmills very much?”  But what about the noise related cancers? “I never understood wind.” Is that even a real thought or idea? Everything that exists he either knows better than anyone or has studied it more. And yet he spends hours every day watching Fox News.

       There are examples, too numerous, of ways Trump asserts his superior knowledge while true accomplished professionals stand by grimacing. Medicine as relates to the current pandemic has been but the latest topic where Trump makes grandiose pronouncements, denies having said them when they are proven to be ludicrous or simply stupid and blames real news media for reporting these gaffes.

        Finally: Attorney Frank DiPrima, was a close friend of Professor William T. Kelley for 47 years.  “He must have told me 100 times over the course of 30 years,” says DiPrima, who has served as in-house counsel for several entities including the Federal Trade Commission. “I remember the inflection of his voice when he said it: ‘Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had!’” He would say that [Trump] came to Wharton thinking he already knew everything, that he was arrogant, and he wasn’t there to learn.” Kelley, who died in 2011 at age 94, taught marketing at Wharton for 31 years, retiring in 1982.

        Unsurprisingly, disgraced former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who served as Trump’s personal attorney and fixer from 2006 to 2018, said the following about his former boss: “When I say con man, I’m talking about a man who declares himself brilliant but directed me to threaten his high school, his colleges, and the College Board to never release his grades or SAT scores.”

Icarus, we hardly knew you, but then………

The Speech No One Wants to Give

The Speech No One Wants to Give

       “To attain any success, it is quite clear that the Federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it. The political processes of our country are such that if a rule of reason is not applied in this effort, we will lose everything — even to a possible and drastic change in the Constitution. This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon “moderation” in government.

 

       Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things…. a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible, and they are stupid.”

        Sound a bit like AOC speaking?  Perhaps a Socialist candidate? Hardly. This is an excerpt from a letter written by Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, then POTUS, to his brother Edgar. The gap is where he named several names of those he considered “stupid.” The second paragraph reveals how far the modern Republican party has strayed from Ike’s precepts, having become markedly anti-union, and progressive labor legislation, and threatening Social Security. Of course, since many modern Republicans reap the windfall from farm subsidies, they have actually increased (read RED states).

        However, the title of this essay reflects my belief that we should consider and honor the scientific process, by which I mean mathematics, statistics, and demographics. One of the aspects of science which some political conservatives and an even greater percentage of conservative religionists deny, is that as conditions change (read climate change, here, as one example) so should our expectations and actions.

       One such Conservative objection to some change is the fear that doing the right thing isn’t the “right thing’ if it affects business’s bottom line. Another thread is voiced by those who are stuck with a creation “story” which is increasingly revealed as creation “myth” by science. The tragedy here is that as we are seeing as I write, the right salesman with the proper snake oil can, seemingly against all odds, unite these seemingly disparate forces.

        Having said that, it must be noted that one consistent bugaboo, addressed with varying amounts of arm waving and hot air, to some degree by both parties, has been the continually burgeoning federal budget cost share of social welfare programs, especially Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security programs. 

       Much has been written, some of it mine, regarding health care costs and the responsibility for their escalation borne (or which should be borne) by outlandish and extortionary drug pricing by Major Pharma corporations. This isn’t a “fix”, but it would be a hell of a start if Congress had the guts to put lobbyist influence aside and repeal Medicare part D’s prohibition on negotiating drug prices like every private health insurer can and does. That simple action would reduce government drug spending by about $133 billion annually! For comparison, that savings would defray about 30% of the 2020 interest on the national debt. 

       On the other hand, and more directly related to my topic is a set of demographics which requires nothing more than literacy and common sense to interpret. The implications are plain and the “fix” apparent, if unpopular. Obviously, we live longer, and not just a little longer, but almost 15 years longer. Actually, in 1935 when Social Security was incepted, the average life span was 60.7 years of age. This meant that as the creators of the concept enacted it, the odds were that the average worker wouldn’t live to collect a dime!

       Looking at the table yields some fairly simple conclusions, but the “big” one is harder to see.  First: in 1940, Ida May Fuller, became Social Security's first beneficiary. She was exceptional because she had lived longer than the average of her peers.  By 1945, at full wartime productivity, for each SS beneficiary, there were 41.9 workers paying into the system (actually building for a while, an excess, the illusory “trust fund”.) Today’s workers, on the other hand are paying today’s recipients. Yes, they are.

        By 1975, because of the increase in recipients and a 7-year increase in longevity, the “workers to recipients” ratio was down to less than 1/3 of the 1945 figure. Meanwhile, the birth rate in the USA had decreased by about a third. The number of retirees reaching eligibility age was still increasing, primarily due to longer life expectancy. As seen in the table, the Social security share of the federal budget was blossoming as well. At this point, another factor came into play, that being the numbers of persons receiving disability or survivor’s benefits from the same pot of cash. Surviving spouse or children coverage was part of the 1935 law, but disability wasn’t covered until 1956. This may seem cynical, but it seems to me that the availability of disability has in many cases created a cottage industry for lawyers willing to arrange it for a slight fee.

       The monster lurking under the bed, however, was the post war “Baby Boom”. From 1945 to 1961, the birth rate in the USA was higher than ever before or since, creating a “bubble” in the progression of population growth. The effects of this bubble have been felt by every industry in America from home building to children’s clothing to insurance to health care, and the list is practically endless.

     Take a child born to Mr. and Mrs. Howard Cunningham in 1948, after Howard returned from his army duties and they settled down. Their son, call him Richie, born in 1948, hit Social Security full retirement age of 67 in 2015, and he’ll draw Social Security, assuming he’s got good genes, for at least another 11 or 12 years. Happy Days, huh? 

       Because the baby boom continued into the early 1960s, and because the birth rate dropped to about half of that of the boom’s peak years, there are now even fewer workers contributing to the payments made to the steadily increasing numbers of boomer retirees planning, like me, to live a lot longer than average.  I’m barely a “pre-boomer, born in 1942. The boomer class of 1955 -1960, when the birth rate per 100 thousand was still over 20, is yet to come. The ‘55s hit in 2022.

  

      So, what? So, the first observation, admittedly in hindsight, is that this issue was completely predictable and avoidable. It was obvious by the numbers between 1945 and 1955. Disability compounded the issue, accounting now, for about 20% of the Social Security payout. What to do?  Let’s first reflect on what could have been done. 

       This trend was obvious at least 70 years ago (1950) and at that time, considering the increased lifespan, a forward thinking Congress (yeah, I’m aware that’s an oxymoron) might have passed legislation raising the full retirement eligibility age by a year each of the following three or four decades. At most, that would now have full retirement at age 69. An accompanying increase for the early retirement age would have also been appropriate. Passing this legislation in 1950 to go into effect in 1960 would have “grandfathered” every worker within ten years of retirement. 

       Had this been done, recognizing that the changes occurring were predictable and irreversible, Social Security would be well and good, As it stands, more than a third of retirees take early Social Security benefits, in many cases because they have prepared for retirement in other ways. In other words, foresight could have “fixed” the problem by 1990. Unfortunately, only a smattering of that philosophy was applied, and that was too late.

  

       What might be done now? (and this is the part that no politician wishes to address, because any real fix will be unpopular in some place.

        First, recognize that any change that doesn’t grandfather persons with current retirement plans is blatantly unfair, so: pick a time certain, say, at least 5 years from enacting of legislation, which raises the full eligibility age to 68.  Also, raise the early retirement age to 65 in, perhaps, just three or 4 years. Additionally, decrease the initial amount of early retirement to encourage individuals to wait. In another five years plan for another bump to age 69 or even 70 for full retirement, while leaving early retirement at 65. Increase the reward for waiting. In a worst-case scenario, require employers to include disability insurance equivalent to Social Security disability as a perk. Also as is intuitively obvious, increase the current percentage of SS deduction from both employee and employer.  
       
 Also, and perhaps more "do-able",  enact realistic legislation defining “disability” in meaningful terms. I’m reminded of the Louisiana mother of four sons, all supposedly mentally unable to hold jobs, but when their disability status was questioned, her rationale was that, “Every young man needs a car.” The literature is rife with well documented claims of disability fraud as well as simple benefit fraud, such as cashing checks of long dead parents

       Explain, in simple English, that by somewhere around 2035 the problem will moderate on its own, as the “Bulge” of the baby boomers pass through the system and on to whatever waits for them. The birthrate began to decrease after a plateau at 1955-57. The class of 1957 would be 81 by that time and total numbers of beneficiaries would be decreasing steadily. And, as an aside, the birthrate decline has nothing to do with Roe v Wade, as some morons like Star Parker have asserted. It is, rather, a decision by married couples to have fewer children.  

 

       Do not, however, like former Congressman Paul Ryan, himself the beneficiary of Social Security survivor’s benefits, address this issue as if the people who depend on it are the ones at fault. Too often this one-dimensional approach, usually including the use of the word “entitlement” somewhere, seems to blame eligible recipients rather than address the issue of Congressional unwillingness to tackle unpopular issues squarely.