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Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped? Bernie Sanders wants to know who owns America?

#14921 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2020-March-16, 13:47

In today's NYT, Tim Wu asks:

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"As the government considers what we, the public, should do for the airlines, we should ask, Just what have they done for us?"

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The airlines will argue that their ownership structure, cramped seats, high fees and other forms of customer suffering are necessary to keep prices lower. But after the last decade’s mergers, no one should take that argument seriously. As any economist will tell you, in a market with reduced competition, and common ownership, there is limited pressure to reduce prices. Instead, as we’ve seen, the major airlines charge what they can get away with and spend the profit on stock buybacks and other self-serving enterprises.

The question of what the public should demand from an airline bailout raises questions that transcend the business of flying. The next several weeks will leave behind many economic victims, including nearly every provider of in-person services. Many small retailers, restaurants and other businesses, like caterers or fitness instructors, face grim prospects. Yet it is the economy’s big players, like banks and airlines, that are the best at asking for (and getting) government assistance.

During the last economic crisis, we largely let individuals suffer while helping out the big guys, leaving behind deep resentments that still fester. This time around we should start from the bottom instead of the top.

If you lose all hope, you can always find it again -- Richard Ford in The Sportswriter
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#14922 User is offline   johnu 

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Posted 2020-March-16, 19:29

Is there no end to the Manchurian President's incompetence? Don't bother answering, it was a purely rhetorical question.

Experts at the CDC and other health experts have called on self quarantining, limiting groupings to 10 to 50 people depending on who you are talking to.

Travelers Greeted With Hours-Long Airport Lines As Coronavirus Screenings Begin

Posted Image

Does anybody see anything wrong in this photo??? There were reported 6 to 8 hour waits in huge, very close quarter lines to make it through screening. Well done Manchurian President. If there were anybody with the Coronavirus in line, it looks like they could have spread the virus to countless other people in line.
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#14923 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2020-March-16, 21:10

Well, the good news is that the very stable genius may now see his 4% GDP - only as a declining 4% rather than growth.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
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#14924 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2020-March-17, 06:53

re: Tim Wu's question: Just what have they done for us?

Christine Negroni posted a story today about airlines' reluctance to even test a device that uses Ultra Violet C radiation to disinfect an airplane in minutes: https://christineneg...pted-to-ignore/

This is what leadership looks like in the aviation industry. Taking prudent steps to protect public health with an adequate margin of safety? Not their problem.
If you lose all hope, you can always find it again -- Richard Ford in The Sportswriter
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#14925 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2020-March-17, 16:13

Quote

Trump wants to send Americans $1,000 checks to cushion virus economic shock


I don't believe it. I think he's Yanging me off. :o

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
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#14926 User is offline   kenberg 

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Posted 2020-March-17, 19:25

This $1000 idea has possibilities. At first it sounded wrong, but I am re-thinking. We shall see how it goes.
Ken
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#14927 User is offline   thepossum 

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Posted 2020-March-17, 20:12

View Postjohnu, on 2020-March-16, 19:29, said:

Is there no end to the Manchurian President's incompetence? Don't bother answering, it was a purely rhetorical question.

Experts at the CDC and other health experts have called on self quarantining, limiting groupings to 10 to 50 people depending on who you are talking to.

Travelers Greeted With Hours-Long Airport Lines As Coronavirus Screenings Begin

Posted Image

Does anybody see anything wrong in this photo??? There were reported 6 to 8 hour waits in huge, very close quarter lines to make it through screening. Well done Manchurian President. If there were anybody with the Coronavirus in line, it looks like they could have spread the virus to countless other people in line.


Looks as if USA is also going for the herd infection approach
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#14928 User is offline   thepossum 

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Posted 2020-March-17, 20:12

Deleted yet another duplicate post. Some combination of Android OS, chrome browser and web site leading to multiple posts
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#14929 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2020-March-18, 00:21

From Martin Wolfe at FT:

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The pandemic was not unexpected. But reality always differs from expectations. This is not just a threat to health. It may also be a bigger economic threat than the financial crisis of 2008-09. Dealing with it will require strong and intelligent leadership. Central banks have made a good start. The onus now falls on governments. No event better demonstrates why a quality administrative state, led by people able to differentiate experts from charlatans, is so vital to the public.

A central question is how deep and long the health emergency will be. One hope is that locking down countries (as in Spain) or parts of countries (as in China) will eliminate the virus. Yet, even if this proved to be true in some places, it will clearly not be true everywhere. An opposite extreme is that up to 80 per cent of the world’s population could be infected. At a possible mortality rate of 1 per cent, that could mean 60m additional deaths, equivalent to the second world war. This calamity would probably also take time: the Spanish flu of 1918 came in three waves, over a year. Yet it is more likely that this ends up in the middle: the death rate will be lower, but the disease will also not disappear.

If so, the world might not return to pre-crisis behaviour until well into 2021. Younger people might behave normally, sooner. But older ones will not. Moreover, even if a few countries do eliminate the disease, quarantines will be maintained against others. In sum, the impact of the coronavirus is likely to be severe and prolonged. At the very least, policymakers must plan on that.

The pandemic has already squeezed both supply and demand. Lockdowns halt essential supplies and a wide range of purchases, especially entertainment and travel. The result will be a sharp fall in activity in the first half of this year.

Above all, a depression threatens. Many households and businesses are likely to run out of money soon. Even in wealthy countries, a large proportion of the population has next to no cash reserves. The private sector — above all the non-financial corporate sector — has also gorged itself on indebtedness.

So consumer demand will weaken even more. Businesses will go bankrupt. People will refuse to sell to businesses deemed likely to go bankrupt, unless they can offer payment in advance. Doubt about the health of the financial system will re-emerge. There is a risk of a collapse in demand and economic activity that goes far beyond the direct impact of the health emergency.

It will also be particularly hard to contain the spread of disease in countries with limited social insurance and weak social control. This will affect the US above all: many sick people will refuse to go to hospital and will also be forced to work. Social insurance is efficient.

As lenders of last resort, the central banks must ensure liquidity by keeping the cost of borrowing low and financing credit supply, both directly and indirectly. But central banks cannot deliver solvency. They cannot underpin household incomes or insure businesses against this collapse in demand. As borrowers and spenders of last resort, governments can and must do so.

Long-term government debt is so cheap that they need feel no fear of doing so, either: Germany, Japan, France and the UK are now able to borrow for 30 years at a nominal rate of less than 1 per cent, Canada at 1.3 per cent and the US at 1.4 per cent.

This, then, is a time-limited crisis, with economic and health consequences that governments must manage. Domestically, the bare minimum is generous sick pay and unemployment insurance, including to freelance workers, for the period of the crisis. If this is too difficult, governments can just send everybody a cheque.

Yet even this will not be enough if the costs of mass bankruptcy and a depression are to be avoided. Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman of Berkeley argue that: “The most direct way to provide . . . insurance is to have the government act as a buyer of last resort. If the government fully replaces the demand that evaporates, each business can keep paying its workers and maintain its capital stock, as if it was operating . . . as usual.” Anatole Kaletsky of Gavekal has recommended a similar response.

Providing such relief will not create moral hazard. Being helped through a once-in-a-century pandemic will hardly encourage egregious irresponsibility. If businesses have borrowed too much, they will still go bankrupt, in the end.

This plan is far better than loans and loan guarantees, as proposed by the German government. Businesses will take up loans only to ensure their survival through the crisis, not necessarily to pay their workers. Moreover, loans will have to be repaid, creating a burden when the pandemic ends. In this proposed programme, however, payments can be made conditional on keeping workers. The programme will also end naturally, with the pandemic itself. Governments can then impose additional taxes to recoup their outlays.

Maintaining incomes and minimising the long-term costs of collapsing businesses are essential. In addition, within the eurozone it will be essential to help governments whose ability to borrow is limited. Globally, vulnerable emerging countries will also need help managing the health and economic crises. It will be vital, too, to roll back the zero-sum nationalism of today’s policies, which will make it difficult to rebuild a co-operative and healthy global order.

This too shall pass. But it will not do so tomorrow. The pandemic risks creating a depression. Salus rei publicae suprema lex (the safety of the republic is the supreme law). In war, governments spend freely. Now, too, they must mobilise their resources to prevent a disaster. Think big. Act now. Together.

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#14930 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2020-March-18, 13:39

Oh, btw, the US stock market is right back where it was 3 years ago, so we got that going for us. Big hitter, the Don. Long.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
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#14931 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2020-March-18, 13:55

As in it won't be there for long?

Kelly Evans @KellyCNBC said:

J.P. Morgan out with new GDP estimates. (Kids, cover your eyes.)

Q1: -4%
Q2: -14%
Q3: +8%
Q4: +4%

Full year: -1.5% overall.

Unemployment rate goes to 6.25% midyear, 5.25% in Dec. 2:15 PM · Mar 18, 2020·Twitter Web App

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#14932 User is offline   kenberg 

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Posted 2020-March-18, 16:11

View PostWinstonm, on 2020-March-18, 13:39, said:

Oh, btw, the US stock market is right back where it was 3 years ago, so we got that going for us. Big hitter, the Don. Long.


I was thinking along those lines, only different. More like "Well, the plunge sounds awful but if I think about it I seem to have about broken even over the last three years. I can live with that. "


I most strongly suggest that Biden not push this as a major part of his campaign.
Ken
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#14933 User is offline   johnu 

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Posted 2020-March-18, 21:03

The Fox News switcheroo on COVID-19: A virus no longer downplayed

Perhaps now is the time for a mandatory quarantine and solitary confinement of Fox Propaganda hosts with no release date determined.

Echoing the Manchurian President comments,

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The top rated mouth on cable TV, Sean Hannity, accused Democrats of "using this virus as a political weapon against the President." Laura Ingraham, on Fox News, called political opp0nents "the pandemic party," adding: "How sick that these people seem almost happiest when we are hurting." It was, said Ingraham, a "great time to fly if not in an at-risk condition."

These idiots have succeeded in making America less safe.

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An NBC-Wall Street Journal poll asked if people about avoiding large gatherings: 61% of Democrats said Yes, just 30% of Republicans. Change or cancel travel plans: 47% of Democrats were ready, only 23% of Republicans. Worries that a family member might catch the coronavirus? 68% of Democrats answered in the affirmative, 40% of Republicans.

A Marist poll for National Public Radio was in the field Friday and Saturday, just as Trump was declaring a state of emergency. It found that the percentage of Americans who felt COVID-19 was a "real threat" had actually declined from mid-February. The percentage of Republicans went down from 72-40%.

The last number is chilling. If you don't think COVID-19 is a threat to you (or anybody really), you aren't going to take any precautions to avoid getting infected or spreading the virus.
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#14934 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2020-March-18, 21:52

The Kudlow Kurse strikes again!


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Larry Kudlow says December jobs report shows ‘there’s no recession in sight’
PUBLISHED FRI, JAN 4 20199:40 AM ESTUPDATED FRI, JAN 4 20191:46 PM EST


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UCLA Anderson Forecast Announces the Arrival of the 2020 Recession in Revision of Forecast Released Earlier in March
Los Angeles (March 16, 2020) -- Revising a forecast published March 12, UCLA Anderson Forecast economists say the U.S. economy has entered a recession, ending the expansion that began in July 2009.


No wonder Don the Con made this guy his numero uno financial wizard.


"an expansion that began in July 2009." 2009? Gee, who was president way back then?
"Arrival of the 2020 recession....ending the expanison...." - Too bad. Must be a lousy president. Wonder who it was?

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
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#14935 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2020-March-19, 05:46

And now for something completely different.

From Merkel's moment by Arne Delfs and Patrick Donahue at Bloomberg:

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When Angela Merkel says it’s serious, Germans know by now that she means it.

Merkel’s speech on the unparalleled threat posed by the coronavirus was the first crisis address to the nation of her more than 14 years in office. How the German public responds to her plea for solidarity will likely determine history’s view of her chancellorship.

Recorded in the Chancellery in central Berlin Wednesday, the camera pointing east toward the Bundestag over what was no-man’s land during the Cold War, Merkel gave an address whose very starkness was underlined by her deadpan delivery. “This is serious,” she said. “Take it seriously.”

In an age of disdain for experts, fake news and the rise of populist leaders with simplistic solutions to complex problems, Merkel’s matter-of-fact, scientist’s approach to problems appears almost a relic of a bygone age. Yet it may prove to be her most important quality in reassuring Germans and persuading them to adhere to strict guidelines meant to halt the spread of Covid-19.

The Corona epidemic marks the first time in more than 70 years of German postwar history when people are confronted with a crisis with the potential to destroy the country’s social fabric. At this critical moment, Merkel appears like a stroke of luck since she is trusted more than any other politician, according to Ulrich Sarcinelli, a political scientist at the University of Koblenz-Landau. Her rational approach seems appropriate in a completely unpredictable situation such as this, he said.

“She is almost acting like a doctor who prescribes her patients medication, but who also makes clear that things will get worse if they don’t take this medication,” Sarcinelli said in a phone interview. “People clearly want a leader with her experience.”

Substance over style

A physicist who turned to politics in the turmoil of the collapse of East Germany, rising to become both Germany’s first woman chancellor and its first from the former communist east, Merkel, 65, is an atypical politician. She doesn’t dissemble, she has little desire to influence media narratives, doesn’t use a Twitter account and conveys her messages unadorned. Not for her the kind of soaring rhetoric deployed by Barack Obama or Emmanuel Macron.

But that very solidity and preference for substance over style makes her a good leader to have in this kind of crisis. She is at ease among the statistics, science and medical fact of a pandemic, especially when compared to fellow leaders like U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has a history of being economical with the truth, or President Donald Trump, who favors his own gut instinct over the advice of his staff.

To help her, Merkel has a chief of staff, Helge Braun, who is a trained doctor. During the crisis, she heeds the advice of the Robert Koch Institute, which is leading the scientific fight against the virus.

And yet until just a week ago, the general view was that Merkel was too much in the background. It was a March 11 press conference that brought her to the fore.

Back Seat

Merkel took a back seat in the first phase of the crisis, after Health Minister Jens Spahn announced the beginning of an epidemic on Feb. 26. While acknowledging the critique of Merkel, two people familiar with talks within the party attributed the chancellor’s distance to a distribution of labor with Spahn, whose performance she lauded effusively in a closed door meeting with lawmakers on March 10.

The following day, Merkel appeared with Spahn at a press conference and delivered sobering news to the public. Citing virologists, she said that as many as 70% of Germans could be infected if containment measures aren’t taken.

That moment marked a return to the front line for the chancellor who had seemed distant from domestic politics and only interested in foreign affairs for most of her fourth and final term. Diminished by a historically low election score for her Christian Democratic Union-led bloc in 2017, then a failed attempt to form a three-way coalition with the Greens that was torpedoed by the Free Democrats, Merkel struggled to assert herself at home. Unexplained shivering fits last year led many to write her off.

Merkel’s decision to resign the CDU leadership in 2018 plunged the party into infighting, as battles over its direction in the wake of the refugee crisis of 2015-2016 fueled the far-right’s rise. Germany is still divided over her decision to allow in more than a million refugees, and Merkel’s legacy risked being overshadowed by the arrival in the Bundestag as the largest opposition force of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party, known as the AfD.

Transparency lessons

Merkel has learned from her mistakes during the refugee crisis, when she was criticized for not communicating the reasons for her decisions. She now gives regular updates on the government response to the virus’s march, after her meeting with German state leaders and her video conferences with Group of Seven and EU leaders this week, and as seen by her address to the nation.

Thomas Heilmann, a CDU member of the federal parliament who has known the chancellor since she became party leader two decades ago, cited her strong nerves and ability to keep calm in critical situations as assets in the current crisis, noting that even the AfD’s repeated calls for her resignation have gone silent. She tries to make decisions on the basis of facts and after consulting a number of experts, he said.

“Merkel is somebody who is interested in all aspects of a problem and able to process loads of information,” Heilmann said. “She has a network of people to whom she listens for advice.”

It’s a faculty she’s honed over years of crisis-fighting. Merkel cut her teeth during the global financial crisis of 2008, standing alongside Peer Steinbrueck, her then finance minister - and later, one of several defeated challengers - to guarantee German savers’ bank deposits. In the subsequent economic downturn that was then the worst since the Great Depression, Germany’s export-oriented economic model took a hammering, but she and Germany fought back with a cash for clunkers plan that was widely copied in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Schaeuble overruled

She came into her own during the European sovereign debt crisis that first emerged in Greece in late 2009 and spread throughout the euro area, threatening the entire European project. Opinion remains divided on Germany’s actions to stem the crisis, yet it was Merkel who over-ruled her longstanding finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, to keep Greece in the euro and provided the political will to hold the currency area together.

During those long years of crisis, Merkel dominated both by measure of Germany’s status as Europe’s largest economy but also by her grasp of detail, negotiating ability and sheer doggedness - she is known for her staying power during late night discussions.

Those qualities may yet be called upon again. As a result, her management of the coronavirus crisis
could become the defining moment of her chancellorship.

“If Merkel manages to get Germany through this crisis like in 2008, she’ll appear to many Germans like a saint afterward,” said Heilmann, acknowledging that “it’s way too early to say” how this will pan out.

Regardless, Germany under Merkel is changing already. She has pledged to do whatever is needed to shield Europe’s biggest economy from the virus fallout. She even raised the prospect of joint European bond sales as a potential tool to be deployed, potentially opening the door to Germany underwriting weaker states - a Rubicon she once vowed would not be crossed.

Unlike her fellow leaders, Merkel has no election to fight since she is standing down next year come what may. As she returns to prominence, Friedrich Merz, her long-term antagonist who is challenging to succeed her as chancellor and take the CDU away from her centrist course, has been diagnosed with Covid-19.

With the coronavirus paramount, calls for Merkel to stand down have now evaporated.

“It would just look absurd to call for Merkel’s resignation in this situation,” said Sarcinelli. Nobody is now talking about the power struggle in the CDU, he said. “She’s back in charge.”

If you lose all hope, you can always find it again -- Richard Ford in The Sportswriter
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#14936 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2020-March-19, 05:57

From Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg:

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This morning, I’m sharing a smattering of thoughts — from another day like no other, in a week like no other, in a year like no other.

First, Congress needs to stay in Washington to deal with the coronavirus crisis. Yes, that involves risk for a body with many older members. If any of them don’t like it, they can always resign. But Congress needs to be ready to pass emergency legislation — and to, somehow, hold hearings and otherwise publicize specific problems that need administration action. Congress collectively has an amazing capacity for hearing what’s happening in the nation. That’s an important element of the political system, and it doesn’t depend on face-to-face meetings in lawmakers’ districts, which aren’t going to happen anyway.

The second pandemic bill has finally been signed into law, several days later than it should have been. The next pandemic bill is going to have to be big and unprecedented — and fast — if it’s going to save small businesses across the United States. Everyone is going to try to get their pet ideas included. This is going to be the big test for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and the rest of the leadership of both chambers. They have plenty of experience; they need to get this done.

There are two things I do think need to be in the upcoming “phase three” bill, or the one after that (since we know there will be one after that). First, elections are critical. Congress needs to act now to ensure that the November vote can take place successfully, regardless of the circumstances. That calls for, at the very least, no-excuse absentee voting and mail-in balloting, along with funding for the states to make it happen. And please, let’s get rid of the debt limit once and for all. The last thing the economy will need once it’s coming out of the recession will be worries about immediate austerity, or even worse, a government default. Congress and the president control the budget. Having a superfluous statutory debt limit only makes mischief, not good fiscal policy.

Speaking of the president: He’s finally engaged in the coronavirus battle. Yuval Levin is correct that one of the strengths of the U.S. system is that not everything needs to be directed from the White House, but the actions of the executive branch of the federal government surely do, at least when they need to be closely coordinated. That means Trump has to firmly set in place a chain of command on the coronavirus fight, and back up whoever he puts in control. Instead, there seems to be chaos as usual across the administration, with parallel structures, policy fiefdoms and random presidential interventions. It is not working. Somehow, Trump needs to understand that his presidency, the economy and human lives depend on him fixing this.

And while it’s good that Trump has been taking regular questions from the press during the crisis, it’s time for him to separate himself from the task-force briefings. If he absolutely can’t stand to share the spotlight, he can still make an opening statement, leave, and come back some other time to answer questions. The problem is that as long as the president is in the room, that’s where everyone’s attention is going to be, and not on the nuts and bolts that the staff has to offer.

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#14937 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2020-March-19, 06:02

Janan Ganesh at FT explains why Bernie Sanders may well be declared the victor even as he loses out to Joe Biden; the socialist senator's big-government ideas are being adopted even by his enemies.

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Eight years have passed since Mitt Romney expressed his disappointment with almost half of all Americans. Forty seven per cent are “dependent upon government” — claimed the Republican party’s then presidential nominee, in leaked remarks — and “believe that they are victims”. Among the frills to which they regard themselves “entitled” are medical care, accommodation and food. “You name it,” he said, as though he had just itemised the contents of a prima donna’s rider.

On Monday, Mr Romney urged the government to pay $1,000 to each and every American adult. Besides this helicopter money, the senator wants to help the virus-stricken economy with more paid leave, unemployment insurance and nutritional programmes. The stern budget hawk of yesteryear, for whom the US was a wheezing slacker, ripe for a private-equity turnround, could hardly be more munificent.

It is my profession’s crass duty to spot the winners and losers of coronavirus. In the first category, I suggest another septuagenarian senator of New England pedigree. Bernie Sanders will not — and therefore, at 78, will never — be the Democratic nominee for US president. After clinching primaries in Florida and elsewhere on Tuesday, Joe Biden is now less his competitor in that race than a receding speck on the horizon. There is comfort for Mr Sanders, however, in the intellectual co-option of such improbable people as Mr Romney.

In a way that was not true even two weeks ago, US politics now takes place on unambiguously social-democratic terms. A leftward trend that was already in glacial progress (look at public opinion on healthcare, on wealth taxes) has accelerated in an atmosphere of emergency. The crisis has been the making of the Sanders worldview.

Britain is going to fiscal extremes under a Conservative government. France under a supply-sider of a president is doing the same. What makes the US distinct is that its debate does not stop at the near-term propping up of households and business. It touches on larger questions of distribution. Hence Mr Romney’s ideas, which go beyond the usual payroll tax cuts and business loan guarantees of a chamber-of-commerce Republican. In a time of contagion, the case for universal healthcare, at times a fog of detail, has also found painful simplicity: unless everyone has care, no one does. Mr Sanders has lived long enough to see the normalisation of his once-weird views.

We are in the early stages of one of history’s periodic discontinuities in economic thought. The sharpest, perhaps, since the Opec oil crises that elevated the free-marketeers in the 1970s. Readers will suggest the crash in 2008, after which a biography of John Maynard Keynes announced the “return of the master”. Well, it was fleeting. Before long, there were fiscal retrenchments around the western world. In the US, there was the Tea Party movement, the neutering of President Barack Obama by a Republican Congress, and his successor’s raid on the administrative state. The laissez-faire right was not much less ascendant in 2017, say, than in 2007.

This time feels different. For one thing, the stakes are higher. A virus promises a rather worse fate than mere immiseration. Nor can any section of society blame another. There will be no cable television blowhard pinning this on the poor, with their uppity dreams of home-ownership, and no Occupy movement. It is easier, then, to reach agreement, if not consensus, on larger and more active government. Even the left cannot squander this historic opening.

To my knowledge, there is no classical term for the inverse of a Pyrrhic victory: a defeat from which one ends up profiting. The absence is irritating because politics so often throws up events begging to be described as such.

In 1964, Barry Goldwater, with his heresies against the New Deal, suffered a huge loss for the Republicans in the presidential election. Except, in the end, he didn’t. “It just took 16 years to count the votes,” said the columnist George Will, about Ronald Reagan’s win in 1980. His point was that Goldwater’s strident example had inspired the New Right. One-off defeat was a small price for the infusion of radical ideas into the national bloodstream. If anything, the loss gave him a martyr’s glamour.

These may be Mr Sanders’s last days as a contender. Blanch as he might at the comparison, there is something of Goldwater about his career arc. The fringe years, the breakthrough, the electoral ceiling — and the ideological triumph via proxies. If it is his fate to watch the US embrace bigger government, but under the leadership of others, there are worse niches in history. He will not have to wait 16 years to see it.

If you lose all hope, you can always find it again -- Richard Ford in The Sportswriter
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#14938 User is offline   barmar 

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Posted 2020-March-19, 09:41

In this morning's press briefing by Trump, the first thing he said was how the press is much "nicer" because of social distancing -- there aren't as many of them in the press room to give him *****.

It's still all about him.

#14939 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2020-March-19, 09:51

View Postbarmar, on 2020-March-19, 09:41, said:

In this morning's press briefing by Trump, the first thing he said was how the press is much "nicer" because of social distancing -- there aren't as many of them in the press room to give him *****.

It's still all about him.


Wouldn't it be refreshing to see him come out and say, Hey, I'm an idiot and I have no idea what I'm talking about. But you elected me so here we are.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
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#14940 User is offline   kenberg 

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Posted 2020-March-19, 10:07

View Posty66, on 2020-March-19, 06:02, said:

Janan Ganesh at FT explains why Bernie Sanders may well be declared the victor even as he loses out to Joe Biden; the socialist senator's big-government ideas are being adopted even by his enemies.



Interesting but.


Basically, an emergency plan need not lead to a permanent change in the way of thinking.

I particularly like the observation "To my knowledge, there is no classical term for the inverse of a Pyrrhic victory".


I'll be satisfied if, after we get through this, people say "Maybe we really need to listen to experts and more seriously address global warming".


If there is also a stampede toward [adjective of your choice] socialism then so be it, but I sort of doubt it.
Ken
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