The Abbreviated Pundit Roundup is a regular feature of Daily Kos.
Before cracking open today’s collection of opinion, you might want to check out this link to Christian Paz’s “unfinished compendium” of All the President’s Lies About the Coronavirus at The Atlantic. It would be a lot easier to come up with a compendium of any truths the man may have inadvertently passed along, but that would leave a lot of ink and pixels without a home.
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David Roberts at Vox writes—At last, a climate policy platform that can unite the left. The factions of the Democratic coalition have come into alignment on climate change:
Over the past few weeks, I have talked to more than a dozen people involved in this extraordinary burst of policy discussion and development. Just about every one of them made a point of commenting on the degree of comity and good faith shown thus far, even across some traditionally tense factional lines.
“Having groups all work together on a national climate policy platform — people from different regions, environmental stressors, gender identities, races — really did help to build alignment and trust,” Lindsay Harper, executive director of the environmental justice group Georgia WAND and co-chair of the US Climate Action Network process, told me.
Because policy development did not begin within a legislative process, it was not bound from the outset by compromise. Thanks in part to the Green New Deal, it began in imagination and aspiration. And it uncovered more and deeper agreement on climate policy than anyone might have predicted a few years ago. Though plenty of issues remain to be addressed, the broad left-of-center appears aligned around rapid decarbonization through stringent sector-specific standards, large-scale public investments, and a commitment to justice (“SIJ,” in my unwieldy acronym).
“After more than 20 years of working in and with the progressive movement, I’m more cynical than most about prospects for unity on the left,” said Jason Walsh, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance. “But I’m increasingly hopeful that we can unify the movement’s factions, and all Democrats, around a policy agenda that frames climate action as industrial policy geared toward rebuilding America’s infrastructure and manufacturing base, with justice and equity baked in rather than an optional ingredient.”
The editorial board at The Economist writes—Countries should seize the moment to flatten the climate curve:
Following the pandemic is like watching the climate crisis with your finger jammed on the fast-forward button. Neither the virus nor greenhouse gases care much for borders, making both scourges global. Both put the poor and vulnerable at greater risk than wealthy elites and demand government action on a scale hardly ever seen in peacetime. And with China’s leadership focused only on its own advantage and America’s as scornful of the World Health Organisation as it is of the Paris climate agreement, neither calamity is getting the co-ordinated international response it deserves.
The two crises do not just resemble each other. They interact. Shutting down swathes of the economy has led to huge cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions. In the first week of April, daily emissions worldwide were 17% below what they were last year. The International Energy Agency expects global industrial greenhouse-gas emissions to be about 8% lower in 2020 than they were in 2019, the largest annual drop since the second world war.
That drop reveals a crucial truth about the climate crisis. It is much too large to be solved by the abandonment of planes, trains and automobiles. Even if people endure huge changes in how they lead their lives, this sad experiment has shown, the world would still have more than 90% of the necessary decarbonisation left to do to get on track for the Paris agreement’s most ambitious goal, of a climate only 1.5°C warmer than it was before the Industrial Revolution.
But [...] the pandemic both reveals the size of the challenge ahead and also creates a unique chance to enact government policies that steer the economy away from carbon at a lower financial, social and political cost than might otherwise have been the case.
Chris Brooks at In These Times writes—The Wealthy Bosses and Right-Wing Ideologues Behind the Rush to “Reopen”:
True to form, the rich are doing everything they can to benefit financially from the crisis—and their work is paying off. The richest 400 Americans were already worth a collective $2.96 trillion last year.
Now many of the super-rich are poised to make even more during the pandemic—like the behemoth Amazon, which is propelling CEO Jeff Bezos even closer to becoming the world’s first trillionaire.
The goal of these powerful actors is twofold: to reopen the economy on their own terms and to capitalize on the economic crisis to push for a long-held wish list of cuts to taxes and government services. They will push for lower taxes and to gut services despite the glaring evidence, revealed by the pandemic, that we need more government, not less.
To do so they must get millions of workers to risk their health by returning to work. If workers aren't working, no profits are being generated. And which is more important to the captains of industry?
Virginia Hefferman at Wired writes—Metaphors Matter in a Time of Pandemic. Warfare may be a rousing way to speechify, but it's perilous when used to describe disasters from hurricanes to viral outbreaks:
The image of maces or robots bearing spikes and cracking open our cells does at first conjure a military attack. Indeed Bill Gates has said we ought to have prepared for a pandemic as if for armed conflict. In March, Donald Trump dubbed himself a “wartime president.” More recently, military veterans have urged people enduring the Covid-19 contagion to think like prisoners of war.
But Scott Knowles, a disaster expert who runs the history department at Drexel, is wary of martial language. Warfare may be a rousing way to speechify, he has written, but it's perilous when used to describe disasters from Hurricane Katrina to pandemics. For one, if we're at war, we expect command-and-control rather than the spontaneous volunteerism we've seen with self-isolation and self-quarantine. War rhetoric also suggests that sacrificial casualties ought to be sustained in the name of patriotism. And, finally, it allows for bad or even inhumane decisions excused as a consequence of the “fog of war.”
“We have another set of metaphors at hand,” Knowles told me by email. “They're tailor-made for our moment: the metaphors of science and medicine. Doctors, nurses, and support staff work with urgency, but their goal is life, not death. Their mandate is not to save the nation but rather to support humanity.” The language of instruction, practice, and the “do no harm” principle could have more explanatory and even predictive power than those drawn from war.
Steve Rattner was a counselor to the Treasury secretary in the Obama administration. At The New York Times, he writes—Trump’s Economic Advisers Are Wrong:
Like dutiful soldiers, President Trump’s top economic advisers have been ardently echoing their boss’s optimism about the likelihood of a quick economic snapback, while downplaying the need for another rescue package.
Regrettably, that’s dead wrong on both counts, as even Mr. Trump’s pick to head the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, has countered repeatedly.
Forget a V-shaped recovery, or even a U. Think instead about a backward check mark: an economy that begins to spring upward as Americans return to work but loses momentum well before reaching past levels.
That’s why we urgently require more help from Washington, and particularly, an effort to rebuild America, not just rescue America.
After several years of troop drawdowns, the country is back to waging rather than ending war.
True to precedent, the enemy was unknown to most Americans mere weeks before the conflict began. Only on February 11 did the World Health Organization name the COVID-19 virus now on everybody’s figurative lips. Five weeks later, President Donald J. Trump proclaimed himself a “wartime president.” Soon after came the U.S. Surgeon General’s warning declaring the COVID-19 outbreak a modern Pearl Harbor moment, or a new 9/11.
Metaphors do not just describe reality; they help create it. For years we have seen the casual employment of “war” language in addressing domestic social challenges: the “War on Poverty,” the “War on Drugs,” the “War on Crime.” In every case, the war metaphor diverted attention and resources from the activation of Americans’ diverse talents and energies to the concentration of power and the search for enemies.
We need a different way to name the type of partnership among self-governing citizens, and between them and their governments, that this crisis—and democracy itself—demands: a “we-the-people” partnership for strong, inclusive communities that must take the form of work.
Ben Crump at The Washington Post writes—Another unarmed black person has been killed. It’s no wonder we can’t breathe:
George Floyd’s close-to-last words in life — “I can’t breathe” — capture perfectly how so many black Americans feel in watching the slow, grueling video of his death.
Another black person killed. Another heartbreaking death caught on video — this time with a crowd of witnesses calling for police restraint and pleading with officers to honor their oath and save his life.
Another grieving family. Another hashtag. It’s no wonder we can’t breathe. [...]
To assuage this death and begin the community’s healing, city and police leaders need to look at the culture they’ve created and ask the hard questions: How did our recruitment, our values, our training, our policies and our procedures collectively fail to the extent that four officers inflicted or accepted a fatal civil rights violation? Why did no one speak up despite pleas to save George? Where was the humanity? Where was the ethic to protect and serve?
Ian Volner at Harper’s writes—Grand Designs. Can the affordable-housing movement redeem its past failures?
In those times, the late 1930s, the federal government began taking bold action to build up the stock of affordable housing nationwide. For the next three decades, advocates and other “Housers” like Kelsey had the wind at their backs. But their efforts faltered after the 1960s, casualties of the postwar suburban explosion—itself the product of gargantuan subsidies, albeit indirect ones—and of the troubled legacy of projects like the Sedgwick Houses that the Housers had helped bring into being. The flawed design and problematic management of those looming brick towers, along with racist attitudes about the people living in them, conspired to turn the projects into symbols of decline, crime, and decay. In 1973, President Richard Nixon announced a moratorium on new public-housing construction. As neglect turned into official policy, the very principle upon which the towers were built—that housing represents a fundamental human right—came to seem like a radical, even dangerous, notion. By the 1990s, subsidized housing appeared headed for the political ash heap, an idea whose time had come and gone. “Public housing,” declared presidential candidate Bob Dole, “is one of the last bastions of socialism.”
Yet quietly, largely out of the public eye, a change has been underway. Today, a growing cadre of American designers, developers, and officials is confronting a housing problem that has been steadily mounting in scale. With the onset of our current, virus-induced downturn, that problem now threatens to balloon to proportions not seen since my grandfather’s day—and for the first time since the Nixon freeze, housing advocates and builders may be in a position to do something about it. Arrayed against these new Housers are a host of obstacles, from local opposition to byzantine funding requirements and state-level interference, as well as a presidential administration that offers them little alternative but to face these challenges on their own. The question facing pro-housing forces is a daunting one: not only how to forge a new path for housing amid an escalating financial crisis, but how to avoid repeating the mistakes of my grandfather’s generation.
Graeme Wood at The Atlantic writes—We Don’t Know What’s Behind the COVID-19 Racial Disparity. And That’s a Problem:
COVID-19 is killing black Americans with horrifying precision. Black Americans get the disease at a higher rate than white people do. Retirement homes with black residents become outbreak clusters. Black people die of COVID-19 at a higher rate than white people do—and that rate is even higher than it may seem, according to a study released last week by Yale University’s Cary P. Gross and co-authors. When you account for age—black people are on average younger than white people, and should therefore be expected to die at a lower rate, not a higher one—black mortality is 3.57 times white mortality.
A multiplier of 3.57 is a national shame. After all, the virus knows no race or nationality; it can’t peek at your driver’s license or census form to check whether you are black. Society checks for it, and provides the discrimination on the virus’s behalf. The effects of that discrimination are found in the morgues.
Outrage is warranted. But outrage unaccompanied by analysis is a danger in itself.
Adam Szetela at Jacobin writes—The Ultrarich Don’t Deserve Our Gratitude for Small Acts of Philanthropy:
Pulte is the grandson of William J. Pulte, the billionaire chairman of PulteGroup. This Fortune 500 company is one of the largest home construction companies in the United States. It is known for disastrous working conditions, predatory lending, and homes that fall apart the moment people move in. [...]
Pulte is part of a wave of capitalists who present themselves as people who will solve the problems that capitalism creates. To be sure, these capitalists believe that economic inequality produces some of these problems. But they also believe that economic inequality is the solution to these problems.
For example, Pulte has made clear he believes that progressive taxes interfere with the good that millionaires and billionaires do. Like Mark Zuckerberg, he believes that the rich and their followers “do many things BETTER than government.” Accordingly, the rich should have more money to do what the rich want to do. And what they want to do, according to Pulte, is help the poor. As he puts it, “The more millionaires and billionaires, THE BETTER! JOIN THE LOVE!”
George Orwell’s term doublespeak comes to mind. In the case of Pulte and other “socio-capitalists,” giving more money to wealthy people is presented as the best way to help poor people. Indeed, Pulte’s cultish rhetoric is mirrored in his cultish following. His followers regularly refer to him as “Sir.” Even homeless people have posted pictures of him as Iron Man. This cult of worship is compounded by the fact that Pulte requires poor and working-class people to follow him on Twitter. If they do not follow him, they are not eligible for his help.
Alex Shephard at The New Republic writes—Twitter Can’t Rein In Donald Trump:
“President Trump on Tuesday tweeted to his nearly 80 million followers alluding to the repeatedly debunked falsehood that my wife was murdered by her boss, former U.S. Rep. Joe Scarborough,” Timothy Klausutis wrote in a letter sent to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey last week and published by The New York Times. “Please delete those tweets. My wife deserves better.” [...]
Klausutis has a solution, one that is supported by Kara Swisher, who first reported on the letter in the Times: When the president lies and spreads fake news, Twitter should delete the tweets. Twitter, indirectly addressing the backlash that followed Klausutis’s letter, took a different approach, unveiling a new feature that “fact-checks” the president’s tweets and that, unsurprisingly, led to Trump threatening to “close them down.” [...]
Klausutis’s letter highlights a larger problem with coverage of Trump. Although the media has covered Trump’s lurid attacks on Scarborough with appropriate severity, there remains a strong element of political theater to the controversy. Trump rose to prominence in part thanks to Scarborough, whose ratings saw a boost when he featured Trump on his show. Now the two are on the outs. It’s practically a boxing match: Round 4,000 of Trump vs. The Media.
David Dayen at The American Prospect in partnership with The Intercept writes—How the Fed Bailed Out the Investor Class Without Spending a Cent:
- The Federal Reserve announced on March 23 that it would start direct purchases of corporate debt—an unprecedented rescue of corporate America.
- Since then, the stock market has risen over 30 percent, corporate bond funds have recovered, and companies have saved tens of billions in borrowing costs.
- Thanks to this massive government subsidy, large companies like Boeing and Carnival Cruises were able to avoid taking money directly—and sidestep requirements to keep employees on—by instead issuing bonds.
- The Intercept and The American Prospect have identified 49 companies that issued corporate debt since March 23, adding up to hundreds of billions they otherwise couldn’t have secured so cheaply—providing a safety net to the investor class and making a mockery of the alleged virtues of free-market capitalism.
- This sets the stage for companies with functionally no revenue path in the near future to take on mounds of additional debt—and could set the stage for a series of defaults.
Malaika Jabali at The Guardian writes—The coronavirus has laid bare the reality of America's racial caste system:
Centuries of white supremacy have meant that black workers and white ones do not earn the same wages, buy the same types of houses or have the same nest eggs to pass down to their kids. It has meant private acts of racism and government-sanctioned racism, often in tandem. It has meant less access to quality public schools, higher education, or high-paid jobs that require expensive, advanced degrees. It means more grocery stores in affluent white urban neighborhoods, and fewer healthcare services for the black and dispossessed. It means black Americans rely more heavily on public transit, are less able to work from home, and are over-represented in “essential” jobs. It means more exposure to Covid-19. It means 20,000 deaths.
The disproportionate death rates in some states are astounding, with large margins dotted all over the map. In Washington DC, black people are 44% of the population, yet 80% of coronavirus deaths. In South Carolina, they make up 27% of the state and 56% of its deaths. Black people in Michigan and Missouri are 14% and 11% of the population – and 42% and 39% of Covid-19 deaths, respectively.
More studies are necessary to determine the precise cause of these disparities. Public health research has to assess why certain comorbidities, such as hypertension, may be more present in black Americans than other groups, and move past stereotypical assumptions.
The more difficult assessment, however, is what to do in the future, after the worst cases subside and the pandemic wanes. There must be a commitment not to return to normal, with black workers continuing to be the sacrificial lambs of white American liberties and corporate profiteers.