Judge Dennis Bailey, who sits on the board of the Weston Bar Association, offered advice to attorneys appearing on zoom: dress appropriately.
One comment that needs sharing and that is the judges would appreciate it if the lawyers and their clients keep in mind these Zoom hearings are just that: hearings. They are not casual phone conversations. It is remarkable how many ATTORNEYS appear inappropriately on camera. We’ve seen many lawyers in casual shirts and blouses, with no concern for ill-grooming, in bedrooms with the master bed in the background, etc. One male lawyer appeared shirtless and one female attorney appeared still in bed, still under the covers. And putting on a beach cover-up won’t cover up you’re poolside in a bathing suit. So, please, if you don’t mind, let’s treat court hearings as court hearings, whether Zooming or not.
Students would be well-served to follow this advice as well.
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Judge James Gray, famous for speaking out against the drug war while serving as an Orange County Superior Court judge in 1992, and who was the vice-presidential nominee on the 2012 Libertarian Party (L.P.) ticket under former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, announced this week that he’s seeking the L.P.’s presidential nod.
When it comes to the general election, Gray says “the situation in our country calls for a third voice,” and promises that a government formed by him and his already-on-board VP pick, Larry Sharpe, will be a “coalition” that tries to ease what he sees as currently untenable levels of cross-partisan hate.
He’d bring together Libertarians and independents, he says, along with Republicans and Democrats who can behave as if they are on board with the Libertarian message of “responsibility, financial and otherwise, and live and let live, don’t tread on me or anybody.” He’d make such Democrats and Republicans involved in his administration try to wrangle their non-L.P. colleagues in line with libertarian executive governance.
But before Gray can fight directly against President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, he’s got to convince a bare majority of the prickly 1,000 or so who tend to make up the Libertarian Party national convention delegate body that he’s right for them. Gray grants that the optics of a third septuagenarian white guy choice for president might not be perfect, and falls back on “merit” over age or gender. He also notes that his VP pick, Sharpe, is African-American, though not chosen for that reason.
Many Libertarians are annoyed with the L.P. nominating former Republicans who are afraid of spooking the horses with Libertarian radicalism. (Gray himself switched to the L.P. after the Patriot Act passed because he “could not as a matter of conscience be part of a party [the Republicans] that made such a direct frontal attack on our civil liberties.”)
While Gray would not specifically discuss any of his current or potential rivals, he says that former Rhode Island senator and governor Lincoln Chafee brought “stature” to the L.P. primary race and that he hopes to bring the same. Chafee dropping out led Gray to jump in. The lack of L.P. candidates with a national profile could see other late-comers join the race, with some looking to former GOP Rep. Justin Amash (I–Mich.), once again publicly mulling over some sort of presidential run.
While other L.P. presidential candidates may be “well-meaning, good people,” Gray says, they don’t all have the kind of professional “background that will galvanize the country into thinking they could be president of the United States.” Someone with the real-world political experience of a Chafee or at least a Gray is a better choice for the L.P. than a Party-only celebrity.
Gray is also not afraid to say that he doesn’t think near-anarchistic anti-state ferocity is what the L.P. needs. He knows many in the party see him as a moderate squish, but “I am me. I am an incrementalist and a pragmatist” in his policy recommendations toward greater freedom.
“The Libertarian Party needs to be in better shape three years from now with its ideals making some progress incrementally” instead of the pursuit of radicalism leaving them “in the same place” next time around but “feeling really good about ourselves” for staying radical. Gray says he’s already hearing from delegates in various states who are pleased he’s now an option.
In general, Gray thinks the Libertarian brand needs more people like him and less emphasis on what he sees as an Ayn Rand-ish “greed is good” or a no-government-at-all “survival of the fittest” vibe, to say nothing of would-be party officials doing a near-naked dance on C-SPAN. He’s used his podcast (“All Rise! The Libertarian Way with Judge Jim Gray”) and a series of books to recast the brand being about “libertarian solutions that are practical, effective, and responsible.”
That said, Gray thinks one could argue the insane behaviors of the two major parties make Libertarians, in reality, the real “mainstream” choice. He fears that an L.P. presidential candidate who spent the next several months “talking radical positions could set back the Party another 10-20 years, to our harm.”
Gray admits that the L.P. might be rightly annoyed with the behavior of past former Republicans it took under its wing, such as former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld. Gray, as Weld’s VP predecessor, had the good grace to make a nominating speech for Weld at the 2016 convention, Gray understands and shares annoyance with how Weld both praised his competitor Hillary Clinton during the race and left the party after promising he was in it for life. “I think he was being selfish,” Gray says, and notes that Weld turning back to the GOP “caused substantial problems for Lincoln Chafee” with the L.P. as a fellow former Republican.
Gray on the Issues
Gray knows COVID-19 is likely going to be the issue of the election season and thinks the current government reaction has been a hideous example of the way cronyism and favoritism infect government attempts to “help the people.” He points to things like Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s “slush fund” and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in Washington, D.C., getting a payoff that not every performing arts space will get.
The government’s failure to prepare for a pandemic in any meaningful way is a sign that a serious regime change is needed, not just shifting back and forth between two parties that both let down the American people. The government’s reaction to its own failures, Gray believes, has been overly punitive and economically ruinous, with forced shutdowns that have “taken away hundreds of thousands of businesses that will probably never come back, taken away 30 million jobs.” That process cannot go on.
A more Libertarian solution that might resonate with a battered America, Gray thinks, is “treat people like adults, and they will behave like adults by and by.” This might involve tasking government with just trying to disseminate “honest, accurate, timely” information about the pandemic, and allow businesses to make their own decisions about how to intelligently keep social distancing protocols on their property without going out of business. He thinks the government sharing such information widely would also allow knowingly vulnerable populations to self-isolate and encourage others to be especially careful being near them.
In an environment where he had space to focus on other issues, Gray says he’d emphasize budget discipline, cutting or reining back government agencies who have failed to justify their purpose regularly in a sunset law fashion (he singles out the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Department of Education as ones he considers more pernicious than helpful and would like to nix), and says he’d launch a full-court press to give parents more control over how their money is spent on education. Too much of teachers-union controlled education these says “is to the detriment of our children, who are handicapped for the rest of their life” for lack of parental choice and competition in schooling.
Gray also stressed that our overseas interventions are usually not directly vital to our national security and promised that, in a Gray administration, Congress would regain its traditional powers over declaring war. He would also get marijuana out of the legal control of the federal government.
If the Libertarian Party can’t pull off its planned in-person convention in Austin at the end of May—a decision about which he says he has no insight or influence—Gray says he supports some ideas floating around to shift the convention until later in the season, perhaps programmed alongside the existing FreedomFest in Las Vegas that already attracts lots of libertarians. Gray grants the L.P. may start running against certain ballot access laws requiring a named candidate if they delay a choice for too long and risk all-state ballot access.
Some Libertarian Party loyalists have groused online that coming to the game so late is unfair, as Gray didn’t have to/get to do all the state convention meetings and debates the other candidates did. “I agree with them. I do,” Gray admits. But “it’s just the way it happened.”
Whatever problems L.P. activists have with when he entered the race, Gray says he’s confident if those activists see fit to give him and Sharpe the nod, “we will change the history of this country.”
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Judge Dennis Bailey, who sits on the board of the Weston Bar Association, offered advice to attorneys appearing on zoom: dress appropriately.
One comment that needs sharing and that is the judges would appreciate it if the lawyers and their clients keep in mind these Zoom hearings are just that: hearings. They are not casual phone conversations. It is remarkable how many ATTORNEYS appear inappropriately on camera. We’ve seen many lawyers in casual shirts and blouses, with no concern for ill-grooming, in bedrooms with the master bed in the background, etc. One male lawyer appeared shirtless and one female attorney appeared still in bed, still under the covers. And putting on a beach cover-up won’t cover up you’re poolside in a bathing suit. So, please, if you don’t mind, let’s treat court hearings as court hearings, whether Zooming or not.
Students would be well-served to follow this advice as well.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2V7jM0c
via IFTTT
A Virginia evangelical pastor has died after contracting the CCP virus, weeks after holding a packed service in his Richmond church.
Bishop Gerald O. Glenn, 66, founder and pastor of the New Deliverance Evangelistic Church in Chesterfield, died on April 11, the church announced on Easter Sunday.
“It is with an exceedingly sorrowful and heavy heart that I come to you this morning, and regret to inform you, that on last night, April 11 at 9 p.m., our father Bishop Gerald Glenn transitioned from labor to reward,” church member Bryan Nevers announced in a YouTube video.
News of Glenn’s death came a week after the church announced he had tested positive for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus.
His daughter, Mar-Gerie Crawley, told WTVR that he had a pre-existing condition that causes inflammation of the intestines, so she wasn’t too alarmed when he began to display symptoms on April 5.
“He has diverticulitis, so it’s not uncommon for him to get fevers or you know virus or sinus infection,” she said.
His health quickly deteriorated despite receiving medical care in hospital. He soon struggled with his breathing and was put on a ventilator, Crawley said.
Before Glenn was diagnosed with the CCP virus, he held a congregation at the New Deliverance Evangelistic Church on March 22, where he told attendees:
“I firmly believe that God is larger than this dreaded virus.”
The following day, the state banned gatherings of 10 people or more; however, guidelines to practice social distancing had been issued before the ban.
He declared that he would defy the Virginia orders “unless I’m in jail or the hospital,” and he insisted “I am essential. I’m a preacher — I talk to God!”
Glenn’s wife, Marcietia Glenn, three of their children and their son-in-law, have also tested positive for the CCP virus, reported 8News. Two of their daughters and their son-in-law are hospitalized.
“It’s been very hard to go through something like this with the isolation on top of it,” his wife told the news outlet, describing Glenn as a “loving, compassionate, fair man.”
“He just loved people,” she continued. “I believe the Lord gave him that kind of love.”
Crawley is now urging everyone to stay at home.
“It becomes very real to you,” she told WTVR. “I just beg people to understand the severity and the seriousness of this, because people are saying it’s not just about us, it’s about everyone around us.”
More than 23,000 people have died from COVID-19 disease in the United States, and more than 577,000 U.S. residents have tested positive for the CCP virus that causes COVID-19 disease as of Monday afternoon.
“My heart sinks as I learn this morning that Bishop Gerald Glenn, pastor of New Deliverance Evangelistic Church, died yesterday from COVID-19,” Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine (D) said after hearing of Glenn’s death.
“He was a friend and pillar of Richmond faith community. May all do as much for so many.”
Plans for Glenn’s funeral “in the season of social distancing” will be published sometime this week, church elders said.
“The reality is the WHO failed to obtain, vet and share information in a timely fashion,” Trump said Tuesday at a White House press conference.
“The WHO failed in its basic duty and must be held accountable.”
“Tremendous amounts of time” were “lost” due to what Mr Trump called the WHO’s slowness.
Trump is explaining his reasoning at today’s press conference:
Additionally, Trump accused the world body of “mismanaging” and “covering up” the coronavirus, and failing to obatin timely information on the virus, causing a 20-fold increase in deaths around the world:
“So much death was caused by the WHO mistakes…”
Trump criticized the international agency’s response to the outbreak, saying:
“one of the most dangerous and costly decisions from the WHO was its disastrous decision to oppose travel restrictions from China and other nations.”
“Fortunately, I was not convinced and suspended travel from China saving untold numbers of lives,” he said.
Remember Tedros’ warning…
.@WHO Director General Tedros Ghebreyesuson attacks Trump for noting the org bends over backwards to protect China: “Stop pointing fingers” unless you “want more body bags … it’s like playing with fire” pic.twitter.com/mTwFPqpBdE
PresidentTrump said his administration plans to redirect dollars meant for the WHO to work with countries on health issues “in other ways.”
The decision comes after President Trump suggested on Friday that he may place a hold on US funding for the World Health Organization, which has consistently carried water for Beijing during the coronavirus outbreak – insisting that the communist regime had the disease under control, while peddling Chinese propaganda about the transmissibility of the virus.
WHO Director-General Tedros Ahanom Ghebreyesus also opposed Trump’s late-January travel ban, saying “We reiterate our call to all countries not to impose restrictions that unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade. Such restrictions can have the effect of increasing fear and stigma, with little public health benefit.”
The US has contributed approximately $893 million to the WHO’s operations druing the last two years, according to the organization, while China has contributed around $86 million.
After Buying The HY Bond Dip, Howard Marks Slams The Fed’s “Eradication Of Market’s Healthy Fear Of Loss”
A week ago, CNBC and its cohorts in the asset-pimping business crowed loudly that billionaire hedge fund manager Howard Marks had turned bullish.
Entire segments were devoted to his comment that “the risks in the environment are recognized and largely understood,” and that “given these new conditions, I no longer feel defense should be favored;” and why investors should buy the dip because Marks was.
Even more specifically, Marks pointed out that potential returns are rising, citing the typical yield for high-yield bonds rising from 3.5% to about 9%.
However, what was little heard from the asset-gatherers and commission-rakers was his caveat emptor:
“The bottom line for me is I’m not at all troubled saying:
(a) markets may well be considerably lower sometime in the coming months and,
(b) we’re buying today when we find good value,” he wrote.
“I don’t find these statements inconsistent.”
Well, as long as you think so Howard, then that’s good.
We note all this as background for Marks’ latest letter – just seven days after his ‘buy the HY bond market’ – in which he appears to be a little less convicted in his “time to not be defensive” call (or maybe he just feels guilty taking advantage of The Fed’s folly)…
“…my conviction that there’s no ‘informed’ way to choose between the positive and negative scenarios we face today.”
Well that doesn’t sound very bullish?
“What’s the Fed’s purpose in buying non-investment grade debt?”, the co-founder of Oaktree Capital Group wrote in his latest note to clients.
“Does it want to make sure all companies are able to borrow, regardless of their fundamentals? Does it want to protect bondholders from losses, and even mark-to-market declines?”
…are we “in a regulatory wonderland where there’s no pretense that financial statements have to be accurate or current.”
But, as we have indicated numerous times, there is a point at which these things become undesirable and negative consequences outweigh (even well intentioned) benefits.
For example – when The Fed’s actions drive the Junk bond ETF almost 5% above its fair-value…
Even as underlying fundamentals for HY credit are an absolute disaster…
The way Marks sees it, regulators have taken over the role of the free market, protecting investors and companies from the consequences of their actions when they take on too much leverage.
“Most of us believe in the free-market system as the best allocator of resources. Now it seems the government is happy to step in and take the place of private actors.
We have a buyer and lender of last resort, cushioning pain but taking over the role of the free market. When people get the feeling that the government will protect them from unpleasant financial consequences of their actions, it’s called “moral hazard.”
People and institutions are protected from pain, but bad lessons are learned. “
And, reading between Marks’ lines, The Fed just crossed that Maginot Line:
“Markets work best when participants have a healthy fear of loss,” he wrote.
“It shouldn’t be the role of the Fed or the government to eradicate it.”
Leaving the one big question looming over his decision to BTFD in HY last week…
“Who’ll do the buying for the government and make sure the purchase prices aren’t too high and defaulting issuers are avoided (or doesn’t anyone care)?” Marks wrote.
“And why should the SEC provide relief to leveraged investment vehicles?”
Interestingly, as we detailed earlier, there seems to be more than a few “Fed-fighters” who are not buying the invincibility of Powell and his pals as Junk bond ETF shorts near a record high.
Additionally, in a hat-tip to Chamath’s devastating defense of free-market capitalism on CNBC last week, Marks reflects supportively on the natural market way things should go…
“As I wrote in Which Way Now?, I understand they aren’t guilty of having ignored a likely risk. But unlikely (and even unforeseeable) things happen from time to time, and investors and business people have to allow for that possibility and expect to bear the consequences.
In other words, they have to think like the six-foot-tall man hoping to get across the stream that’s five feet deep on average. I see no reason why financiers should be bailed out simply because the event they’re being harmed by was unpredictable.”
Finally, Marks offers his “mystified” artist son-in-law’s perspective for some ‘real world’ thinking about what is happening…
“I don’t get it,” he told me on Saturday.
“The virus is rampant, business is frozen, and the government’s throwing money all over the place, even though tax revenues have to be down. How can the market be rising so strongly?”
The bottom line for us is that this latest move is very much in line with our prior view that investors should not have any doubts about the Fed’s resolve to do whatever it takes to make sure this recession doesn’t turn into a depression. In fact, they now appear to be trying to limit the healthy damage we typically get from a garden variety recession.
As noted in our prior research, we think the nature of this recession–the unprecedented suddenness and trajectory of the contraction centered on a health crisis–has provided absolute cover for policy makers to go well beyond traditional support. As such, the bad actors of the last cycle are getting bailed out, which could ultimately limit the malaise we typically get in a recession. In short, the worst stocks will likely have the biggest recoveries…
However, as Marks warns succinctly,
“in short, it’s my view that if you’re experiencing something that has never been seen before, you simply can’t say you know how it’ll turn out.”
So now you know what to do with all those “strong buy” convictions you hear every hour on business media (and from Kudlow et al.).
Those who are paying close attention to the pandemic may have missed that another potential killer is brewing across the ocean. In Syria today, there is the real and looming threat of a third world war. Not only is Syria fighting Western-backed terrorists on its territory, there are many more players involved on Syrian soil – from the Russians and Iranians to the Americans, Turks, and Israelis and, with the recent Turkish actions, all of those players could very well come to blows.
It’s well-known to geopolitical scholars that the world is already in global conflict. With the United States, NATO, Israel, EU, and the Gulf States loosely united against the “multi-polar” world of Russia, China, Iran and a growing host of “target” nations that prefer the carrot over the stick, the globe is already in a quiet world war, though the major powers have yet to publicly declare it on one another. As it stands currently, the global conflict is more akin to the Cold War where color revolutions and proxy wars are the order of the day. However, the quiet war can only remain quiet for so long, until one side begins to see that it is the inevitable loser. Then the quiet war becomes loud.
When the Western powers initiated the war against Syria in 2011, it was largely expected and intended to go the way of the Libyan disaster that just ended. However, with the unity of Syrian culture, Syrian government leadership and, most importantly, Russia entering into the war on the side of the Syrian government, the quick destruction of the Syrian state has resulted in a nine year war that has seen Syria turn the tide on the largest and most effective military state in the world.
But while Syria has been defeating Western backed terrorists on its own territory, there are a number of players now involved in the country that could very well find themselves in direct confrontation with one another, leading their proxy forces into a larger much more destructive and global war.
Summation of events
After having dispatched troops to the terrorist haven of Idlib, Syria as the Syrian military engaged in a massive push to liberate the region. Turkey has since come to the rescue of the embattled terrorists, launching drone attacks, airstrikes, and ground forces into Syrian territory.
Turkey established a number of “observation points,” that the Syrian military, during the process of liberation early on in the Battle of Idlib, surrounded. The Syrian military did not disturb these posts or harm any Turkish soldiers.
However, that all changed when the Syrian and Russian air forces began bombing terrorist targets. Those airstrikes killed a number of Turkish soldiers who had been embedded with terrorist groups. Turkey then played victim and Erdogan sent more Turkish soldiers and engaged in airstrikes against the Syrian military. Later, another Syrian airstrikes killed yet more Turkish soldiers who were also embedded with terrorists, resulting in a forceful Turkish response of drone attacks and airstrikes and the further progression of Turkish troops onto Syrian soil.
Thus, with Turkey attacking from the North and Israel attacking from the Southwest and, of course, the American troop presence in the Northeast, Syria is now facing a “multi-front war.”
Moscow and Ankara have since agreed upon yet another “ceasefire” agreement in order to stop the erratic and possibly insane Erdogan from pushing forward any further inside Syria and resulting in a full-on direct war between the two. That ceasefire, however, even as I write this article is quickly unraveling as a number of the groups that are a party to it have yet to stop shelling and launching attacks upon the Syrian army and the latter cannot simply sit by while being fired upon by Turkey’s “rebels” nor can it continue to abide attacks by terrorist groups not even included in the ceasefire but who are continually launching attacks as against the SAA as well.
Possibilities – Turkey vs Syria /Israel vs Syria/ Israel vs Iran/ Russia vs Turkey/ US vs Iran/ US vs Syria/ US vs Russia/ WW3
So we now have yet another situation in Syria that could result in a third world war, potentially moving all the way toward a nuclear confrontation between Russia and the United States. This time, there are a number of possibilities that could see the spread of conflict.
Turkey vs Syria – With the Turkish invasion of Syria it stands to reason that both parties will see direct clashes. However, both of these nations have powerful allies and backers – Turkey has the United States, Israel, and NATO (of which it is a member) while Syria has Russia and Iran. While the threat of a Turkish-Syrian clash may be contained in and of itself, any attempt by Syria to defend itself against Turkey, particularly if that response is taken on Turkish territory, could then trigger the “mutual defense” pact of all NATO states, something Turkey has repeatedly attempted to implement. A full NATO response would then see NATO forces facing Russian forces in Syria, at least at first.
Israel vs. Syria – Ever since 2011 when the crisis in Syria began, Israel has not only been supporting terrorists via intelligence, weaponry, and medical treatment, but it has also acted as another wing of al-Qaeda’s air force, routinely bombing Syrian government forces and installations. Over the past few years, Israel has stepped up its attacks until strikes against Iranian, Hezbollah, and Syrian (often whatever target Israel chooses labeled as “Iranian”) are an almost weekly occurrence. Israel, whatever its claims may be, is already at war with Syria. Should there be a Syrian response, however, it is likely that the one-sided US-Israel relationship that allows Israel to fight to the last American will be triggered, bringing in US forces en masse, putting them at risk for a direct confrontation with Russia.
US vs Russia – All the possible scenarios (and there are many more than the two mentioned above, focus around the possibility of American and Russian troops clashing and thus resulting in a wider, third world war. While both Trump and Putin have proven to have cooler heads than many may at first suspect, there are nonetheless instances of brinkmanship that could very well have resulted in a crossing over the line.
In the past several months, Syrian soldiers have turned back illegal American patrols and refused to allow them to pass through Syrian military checkpoints. In response, US forces have turned back Russian patrols and Russians have done likewise. The situations have become increasingly tense, with some unconfirmed reports of a fist-fight breaking out between American and Russian forces. Ironically, this is the first direct clash of the two world powers if the reports are true.
The checkpoint tensions reached a tipping point when the US attempted to pass through a Syrian village and were met with Syrian protesters and rock throwers. American troops responded with gunfire resulting in the death of a Syrian teenager but also in the village engaging the troops in battle. Russian forces quickly intervened to end the fight.
Thus, the world is yet again held hostage to the possibility of global conflagration as a result of Western aims in Syria and an agenda that is attempting to march forward despite credible and capable opposition.
COVID19 and Spanish Flu
These clashes and potential clashes come in the context now of a global pandemic that is being used to justify the shutdown of entire nations and the world economy. There is, of course, precedent when it comes to world war and pandemic.
For instance, the 1918 Spanish Flu that killed millions of people worldwide came on the heels of World War 1 which left many places in the world ravaged with destruction, famine, and vastly reduced living standards. The high use of chemical weapons, particularly those which affect the human immune system,[1] also played a part in the virulent spread of the Spanish Flu. Although many theories have been proposed regarding the source of the pandemic (including the possibility that it was created on a military base in Kansas), it is without a doubt the living conditions of the world that provided a fertile ground for its spread and severity.
With this in mind, however, it is important to take a look at the conditions in which we find ourselves in the present day with respect to pandemics or, at the very least, the possibility of pandemics.
The United States and the world finds itself in an economic depression. For some countries, particularly the United States, living standards have been vastly reduced compared to those which previous generations have experienced. While technology may have advanced, the applications of that technology in most areas other than entertainment have been intentionally withheld from general society.
It is also an unfortunate fact that some parts of the world have never had high living standards to lose. Whenever the West catches a cold, Africa catches pneumonia. The Middle East is in the process of being destroyed and Asia remains a pit of slave labor, crowded living conditions, and inadequate infrastructure.
Regardless of what you might think of the COVID-19 hysteria and the responses to it, it is undeniable that the world is in complete turmoil, a situation in which war and disease are always ready to join hands.
When governments end lockdowns, they must determine what set of rules to impose. For example, governments must decide whether some types of businesses must remain closed, whether the maximum number of people in a gathering must be limited, whether to limit the number of people using mass transit, whether to require people to wear masks, whether to mandate periodic testing, whether and how to enforce quarantine of those who test positive, whether to give greater freedom to those who report positive antibody tests, and so forth. Further, governments must decide how these rules must change should circumstances change, for example if there is a local outbreak. Governments, unfortunately, must make decisions under great uncertainty, and we cannot have much confidence that the political considerations facing leaders will give strong incentives to make decisions that would pass a hypothetical cost-benefit calculus.
One policy option is liberation, not imposing any rules at all. This theory might be justified even given an assumption that social distancing is critical to containing the pandemic. Absent requirements, many individuals will still choose to distance socially, because they do not want to become infected with COVID-19, because they do not want to infect others, and because they prefer not to violate social norms. The international progress in fighting COVID-19 has been impressive, but it is difficult to disaggregate the extent to which success has occurred because of governmentally imposed rules and the extent to which success has occurred because of voluntary compliance. In principle, voluntary social distancing might be optimal or even greater than optimal, especially if social norms are sufficiently powerful. The contrary economic argument would be that voluntary action will be insufficient, because individuals do not fully internalize the costs of their actions on others. This argument seems especially powerful when a single case of COVID-19 transmission may lead to an outbreak affecting many others.
An alternative to the command-and-control and no-regulation opposites would be to have a market-based system of compliance. The goal would be for third parties like insurance companies to have incentives that would lead them to price insurance in a way that will encourage appropriate precaution and discourage the activities most likely to cause transmission. Suppose (to assume a can opener) that the full COVID-19 transmission graph could be perfectly traced. Now suppose that all businesses may open, subject to purchasing a special type of insurance. Under the market-based system, when someone dies or suffers injury from COVID-19, responsibility would be divided among the covered businesses (if any) at which transmission occurred, and the corresponding insurers would collectively pay a fine to the government, a monetary translation of the loss suffered. Municipalities might themselves be required to purchase insurance to cover transmission in public spaces outside of covered businesses, and individuals might be required to purchase insurance if they wished to host neighbors. The basic insight is that in this hypothetical world, the responsibility for devising rules and deciding on how to relax lockdowns would pass from governments to insurers, and higher-risk activities would carry higher prices. Activities with the highest cost and lowest benefits would shut down altogether. Insurers would have some incentive to conduct statistical studies that would allow them to improve their pricing (though perhaps less incentive than is optimal, given the possibility of free-riding on competitors’ studies). In a highly dynamic environment, insurers would likely enter into relatively short-term contracts, so that they could update prices based on new information.
There are many regulatory contexts that work approximately like this (consider, for example, John Rappaport’s analysis of how insurers effectively regulate the police). But such systems usually arise because there is a perceived need for insurance coverage, not because there is a view that insurers might serve as effective regulators. It seems unlikely that such a system will naturally develop for COVID-19 or, barring a change in legal culture, for future pandemics. We do not impose liability on a business establishment that is a venue where infectious disease transmission takes place, certainly not a strict-liability basis. If such liability existed as a matter of course, then perhaps insurers would take an active role in risk classification here. But it does not, and they do not.
The most obvious practical problem with market-based social distancing regulation then is the can-opener assumption that I made above, that the infection chain can be traced. Can this problem be overcome? In principle, I think that it could be. As part of a test-and-trace program, some reasonable proportion of the public might agree to have their movements traced, with some privacy protection but in a way that permits the government to perform aggregate statistical studies. We might be able to perform statistical studies assessing how individual choices affect the risk of infection. For market-based regulation to work, we need predict only the likelihood that someone becomes infected based on how much time the individual spends in locations insured by different insurance providers. With such a model, statisticians could (pursuant to methods announced in advance) estimate the proportion of COVID-19 costs attributable to each insurer’s insured locations and impose fines on insurers accordingly. These fines could then be redistributed to the government, which in turn might use them to subsidize businesses. Insurers of course would earn profits in such a regime, but they would also be performing the service of risk-classification, with far more powerful incentives than governments have to set appropriate taxes.
This system is likely not politically enactable. Maybe that is in part because I have left many details unspecified, and the devil’s in the details. But the devil will be in the details of just about any other approach as well. Rather, the system is not politically enactable because it’s just not how we generally think about regulation. We generally assume that political actors will regulate directly, rather than relying on actors with strong market incentives to make the appropriate regulatory distinctions. But there are some regulatory areas where market-based mechanisms are common (say, radio frequency allocation and environmental regulation), and an important project is to consider other domains in which market-based mechanisms might operate. Perhaps eventually, market-based regulation will seem less weird and accordingly will become more common.
Still, COVID-19 or other pandemics may be one of the most difficult possible applications of a market-based mechanism. Nonetheless, COVID-19 illustrates a policy process that at its best is only very loosely evidenced-based. In general, market-based regulation may enhance both the collection of evidence and the application of rules based on the presence of risk.
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80% Of Americans Will Wait To Resume Normal Activities After COVID-19 Restrictions Lifted
As the debate rages over when to reopen the country amid the coronavirus pandemic, over 80% of Americans say they would wait to return to normal activities after the government lifts nationwide restrictions designed to slow the spread of the virus, according to a Tuesday poll by Gallup.
In what might disappoint those hoping for an immediate recovery after restrictions are lifted, Gallup found that 71% of respondents would wait and see what happens with the spread of the virusbefore returning to normal activities, while 10% say they would wait indefinitely.
20% said they would resume normal activities immediately.
Along party lines, 31% of Republicans said they would immediately resume normal activities, while 11% of Democrats and 19% of independents said the same.
By age, those aged 18-29 and 50-64 are more likely to return immediately at 25% and 24% respectively, while those aged 30 – 49 were least likely at 16%.
Geographically, 23% of people from small towns and rural areas with lower population density were more likely to say they would immediately return to normal activities vs. 15% of people in large cities and 18% of people in suburbs.
Income and employment status made no difference on respondents’ answers, according to Gallup.
While the country debates when to open up, Dr. Anthony Fauci – who initially said Americans shouldn’t change their behaviors – said on Tuesday that a target date of May 1 may be “overly optimistic” for many parts of the United States, and that critical testing and tracing procedures needed to reopen are not in place.
In Part 1 of this article I pointed out how we have allowed ourselves to be cowed by authoritarian “experts” who have proven to be nothing but incompetent and wrong every step of the way, while the financiers have used the crisis once again to pillage the citizens as they did in 2008/2009.
The absurdity of shutting down this country based on academic death models that make economist and climatologist models look highly accurate in comparison, can be seen in the ludicrousness of the following chart. And realize we did this on purpose because of a virus that will kill .018% of the U.S. population. And most of those deaths will occur in several highly dense urban enclaves, with the rest of the country barely affected.
By shutting down the country the government has crushed virtually every business in the country and putting tens of millions out of work, with resulting crash in tax revenues at the Federal, State and Local level. At the same time, Trump and everyone in Congress have become Bernie Sanders socialists, except most of it is corporate socialism. The deficit was already on track to top $1.2 trillion, but with the $2.2 trillion stimulus package, and more to come, the deficit this year and next will approach $3 trillion.
“It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one. Those who have followed the assertive idiot rather than the introspective wise person have passed us some of their genes. This is apparent from a social pathology: psychopaths rally followers.”
– Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
We have allowed ourselves to be led by assertive idiots and permitted psychopaths to dominate the highest levels of government and finance. These are truly evil men with evil intentions. Power, greed and control are what drive these people. During normal times, governors of states are practically figureheads, as all they do is pass more laws and increase your taxes. It’s when we face a man made crisis like we are experiencing today, the true authoritarian nature of these petty tyrants rears its ugly head.
The reprehensible tyrannical mandates and orders being made by mostly Democrat governors across the country is a disgusting display of fascism. Their mandates violate the Constitution, but are being enforced by their police state thug instruments of force. The police will do the bidding of those who pay them, with total disregard for the Constitution or your rights. Freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, and 2nd Amendment rights are being shut-down.
Pastors are being thrown in jail for daring to hold religious services. Governors are threatening religious leaders on the holiest week of the year. Police are citing or arresting citizens for swimming in the ocean, jogging on beaches, playing wiffle ball in a park with their child, daring to get on a bus without a mask, and taking unauthorized drives. Drones are being used by government tools to intimidate and threaten citizens daring to venture out of their homes.
Karens all over the country are reporting their neighbors to the police for exercising in their yards. Google and the other corporate phone companies are doing their Big Brother best to surveille and report the whereabouts of their paying customers to the government. The only difference between our addiction to technology and slavery is that slaves know they are not free. Fauci thinks it would be a good idea that we have papers indicating whether we are immune to the Chinese virus. Gates wants the country shutdown for months, until he can create a vaccine to force upon the entire world. They want to control and monitor our every movement, because they know what’s best for us. Now move along to your assigned pod.
The time is approaching when we will need to separate the wheat from the chaff. This ongoing test of character will reveal the true nature of our political, financial, corporate, religious, and neighborhood leaders. You will be able to determine what type of person they are by whether they are willing to violate moral and ethical codes to achieve their objectives. It is times like these where your true nature is revealed.
So far, virtually every national leader, and most certainly Powell, Mnuchin and Congressional leaders, have failed this test miserably. They have confirmed we are run by one party, beholden to corporate and banking interests, and perfectly willing to destroy the livelihoods of the 99.9% to keep the 0.1% enriched and empowered. The ruling class has violated every moral and ethical code known to man, and will continue to do so until they are stopped through violent means. The chaff will need to burn.
Nothing captures the true nature of our society today better than this screen shot from CNBC. Relentless stock promoter Jim Cramer is celebrating the best week in the stock market since 1938, because the Federal Reserve provided trillions of free money to Wall Street banks, so they could artificially pump stock prices, even though GDP in the 2nd quarter will plunge by 30%, corporate profits will crash, unemployment will soar to 20%, and deficits will skyrocket towards $3 trillion.
This is the disconnect between our financialized economic system, where Wall Street banks will also take advantage of plunging oil prices to syphon up the assets of bankrupt fracking companies for pennies, while 17 million Americans don’t know how they are going to pay the mortgage, rent, utilities, property taxes or food bill next week. Welcome to our dystopian nightmare, brought to you by the corporate globalist fascist party of America.
The actions taken in the last month by your government and the unelected privately owned Federal Reserve have absolutely benefited mega-corporations, Too Big to Trust Wall Street banks, billionaire hedge fund managers, and Deep State authoritarians, while throwing bread crumbs laced with cyanide to small business owners, the working class, and senior citizens. You can be sure Jamie Dimon is still playing tennis while cooped up in his $20 million Park Avenue penthouse. As Leonard Cohen sorrowfully sang: Everybody knows the ship is leaking. Everybody knows the captain lied. The poor stay poor, the rich get rich. That’s how it goes.
Everyone has seen the stories about the majority of American households unable to handle an unforeseen $500 expense. How about both parents losing their jobs because Jamie and his fellow Wall Street shysters needed a manufactured crisis as cover for their criminality. I can picture the .1%ers channeling their best Mr. Potter and calling these people lazy discontented rabble who should have saved for a rainy day, when in reality these globalists shipped their jobs to China and convinced them to load up on debt to keep up with the Joneses.
You have to break a few million eggs to make a $6 trillion bailout omelet for the ruling class. Let them eat food bank scraps after waiting three hours in a modern-day soup line. At least gas is only $2.00 a gallon, which is very concerning to president Trump. Don’t you know poor Exxon Mobil is really struggling to make ends meet at that price?
I, along with many other like minded people in this country, have been stoically living our lives, prudently managing our affairs, working and saving, not being lured into the rigged markets, preparing for the challenges we saw ahead, and viewing everything spewed by politicians or media talking heads as nothing but hot air and propaganda.
I’ve hated the road this country has been on for the last twenty years, but with the actions taken by the Fed and government in the last few weeks, they have pressed down hard on the accelerator as if they want to take the country over the cliff and into the abyss below. What is the end game to these machinations and schemes? Do they have some master plan for a global world order, or are they just arrogant psychopaths flailing about trying to retain their wealth, status and power? Whatever the purpose, it is not going to end well.
I’ve been able to live my life without much interference from the surveillance state until now. When the State purposely destroys the economy, endangering my ability to earn a living, imprisons me in my home with threat of sanctions if I don’t obey, uses technology to monitor my movements, and then throws a couple grand of my own tax money back at me as compensation to shut up and submit to their shitting on my Constitutional rights, I’ve got a problem.
I’m not willing to sacrifice my liberty and freedoms for the safety and security of a corporate fascist oligarchy disguised as a government of the people, by the people and for the people. This farce has gone on for far too long. Once we acquiesce and surrender our liberty, it can never be recovered.
There are millions of well-armed angry Americans trapped in their homes right now. The powers that be have been able to maintain the status quo by providing plentiful manufactured toxic bread products and technological circuses for masses, keeping them sedated with anti-depressants and a myriad of mindless distractions. But, taking away their livelihoods, endangering their ability to put food on the table, requiring papers to travel on the roads, and mandating quarantines and curfews at the point of a gun, are a bridge too far.
Even docile sheep will start to bite if they are starving and cornered. I know many of us feel like we are tilting at windmills, but I believe the evil men who are dictating our fates and imprisoning us in their financialized world of fraud are weaker and more desperate than they appear. At a point in the near future a few heroes will summon the fortitude to push back and ignite the patriotic spirit that founded this country – liberty or death.
“Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost.”
– Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
With all of the incompetence and recklessness of the immense corrupt bureaucracy, ruining our lives, on full display, just as we saw in 2008/2009, what a perfect way to keep movements like the Tea Party and OWS from launching protests across the country – ban all mass gatherings “for our safety”. We know it is really about their safety. It’s almost too seamless.
Imprison people in their own homes, send them a few bucks, and force them to increase their credit card balance from $11,000 to $20,000 at 20% interest, while criminal Wall Street banks get free money from the Fed and greedy mega-corporations get bailed out en masse. The expected reaction from the prisoners is the normal wailing and gnashing of teeth about the injustice of it all, more people going Galt and retreating into their enclaves. Localism is a good thing, but there are authoritarian busybodies and control freaks in every neighborhood, so it is not the answer.
Nassim Taleb is a crotchety son of a bitch who enjoys taking down intellectual yet idiot (IYI) purveyors of bullshit and propaganda. He’s not a nice guy. Nice guys will not fare well during the coming trials and tribulations. His quote below struck a chord with me on multiple levels. Russian Roulette is a perfect analogy for everything happening in the world today. Our political and financial titans have been playing Russian Roulette with reality for decades. When you keep pulling the trigger with no negative consequences, you acquire a numbing sense of security.
Why plan properly for a potential pandemic when we haven’t had a really bad one for over a century? Why worry about debt accumulation when our glorious central bank geniuses can elevate the stock market to new highs by creating more debt and politicians can honor all their empty promises to voters by running multi-trillion-dollar deficits to infinity? Reality is vicious in the end. Our celebrated heroes of finance are going to realize too late; their seemingly low risk games will end with brain matter splattered on the wall. The question is whose brain matter.
“Reality is far more vicious than Russian roulette. First, it delivers the fatal bullet rather infrequently, like a revolver that would have hundreds, even thousands of chambers instead of six. After a few dozen tries, one forgets about the existence of a bullet, under a numbing false sense of security. Second, unlike a well-defined precise game like Russian roulette, where the risks are visible to anyone capable of multiplying and dividing by six, one does not observe the barrel of reality. One is capable of unwittingly playing Russian roulette – and calling it by some alternative “low risk” game.”
– Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
The Russian Roulette analogy triggered another memory from my youth – one of the most iconic scenes in movie history from the Deer Hunter. Walken and De Niro are prisoners in a Vietcong prison camp where the sadistic soldiers force the American prisoners to play Russian Roulette for money. De Niro decides he’d rather die a man than cower under the thumb of his keepers. Knowing the risk is extreme, he demands they put three bullets in the gun, taking a chance he and Walken can pull the trigger with an empty chamber. They show the kind of guts and courage which once permeated this country. After their gamble pays off, De Niro turns the gun on his captors and blows them away in a hail of bullets. Walken can’t stop bashing in the skull of one of the dead sadists.
As the evil sadists running this virtual prison camp inflict more pain and torture upon the American people, reaping all the benefits and heaping all the anguish on our shoulders, some will summon their inner De Niro and Walken, and fight back. How many remains a question. Forcing men to grovel and beg will create a blowback they don’t anticipate. The masses have obeyed and allowed themselves to be led by the ruling class establishment for decades, so those in control have grown supremely confident there is not a bullet in the chamber this time. They run this prison camp and we will do what they say and keep playing their game. Until we don’t.
Those who would give up essential Liberty,
to purchase a little temporary Safety,
deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
– Ben Franklin
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