Category: reason

From Dr. Peter Bach at StatNews:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made headlines last week when it announced that Covid-19 had reduced the average life expectancy of Americans in 2020 by a full year…. [But t]he pandemic’s appalling toll could not have reduced life span by nearly that much. My own estimate is that when Covid-19’s ravages in 2020 are averaged across the country’s entire population, we each lost about five days of life.

The CDC’s mistake? It calculated life expectancy using an assumption that is assuredly wrong, which yielded a statistic that was certain to be misunderstood….

People understood [the CDC’s report] to mean that Covid-19 had shaved off a year from how long each of us will live on average. That is, after all, how people tend to think of life expectancy. The New York Times characterized the report as “the first full picture of the pandemic’s effect on American expected life spans.”

But wait. Analysts estimate that, on average, a death from Covid-19 robs its victim of around 12 years of life. Approximately 400,000 Americans died Covid-19 in 2020, meaning about 4.8 million years of life collectively vanished. Spread that ghastly number across the U.S. population of 330 million and it comes out to 0.014 years of life lost per person. That’s 5.3 days. There were other excess deaths in 2020, so maybe the answer is seven days lost per person.

No matter how you look at it, the result is a far cry from what the CDC announced.

It’s not that the agency made a math mistake. I checked the calculations myself, and even went over them with one of the CDC analysts. The error was more problematic in my view: The CDC relied on an assumption it had to know was wrong….

Read the whole thing, which strikes me as persuasive; and while I’m far from not an expert on the subject, I ran it by some professors who are much more knowledgeable than I am, and they generally agreed with Dr. Bach’s analysis.

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The U.S launched airstrikes Thursday on two compounds in Syria that were allegedly controlled by Iranian militias. A “handful” of enemy combatants were killed in the attacks, U.S. officials told the press.

Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby confirmed that President Joe Biden ordered the strikes in response to “continuing threats to American and coalition personnel there,” according to The New York Times.

It was feared that the militants were part of a weapons smuggling operation, but the Biden administration also wanted to send a message that this sort of thing would not be tolerated, U.S. officials told CNN.

Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) condemned the airstrikes as a foolish intervention in Syria’s ongoing civil war.

@POTUS dragging the US into Syria’s civil war is a huge mistake. I strongly condemn this foolish military adventurism.

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) February 26, 2021

While Biden is perhaps not the outspoken hawk that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was, he did not exactly run for president as a proponent of a humble foreign policy. Indeed, during his decades in Washington, D.C., Biden has supported all sorts of costly, pointless wars, including those in Iraq and Afghanistan. And while he apparently opposed the Obama administration’s disastrous intervention in Libya, he was unable to convince his boss to listen to him.

Members of Biden’s team certainly had problems with drone strikes when President Donald Trump was the one ordering them. When the Trump administration took out Iranian terrorist Qasem Soleimani, then Sen. Kamala Harris (D–Calif.) panned the move as reckless. In 2017, Jen Psaki—now the White House press secretary—questioned the legal justification for an airstrike on Syria.

Also what is the legal authority for strikes? Assad is a brutal dictator. But Syria is a sovereign country.

— Jen Psaki (@jrpsaki) April 7, 2017

Needless to say, these objections will vanish now that a member of Team Blue is in charge. Consider the evolving positions of the author and liberal political activist Amy Siskind.

Life comes at you fast.

IN OTHER NEWS

In the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election, it seemed as if a civil war was brewing within the Republican Party between a faction loyal to Trump at all costs and a faction desperate to be rid of him. The former is best represented by political figures like Sens. Ted Cruz (R–Texas) and Josh Hawley (R–Mo.), while the latter is exemplified by Rep. Liz Cheney (R–Wy.), who supported the second impeachment of Trump for his role in the Capitol riot.

Though the GOP has morphed into a political organization wholly dedicated to Trump over the past four years, it always seemed possible that defeat would strip him of his hold over the party. President George Bush, after all, commanded little loyalty from the Republican faithful in the wake of his successor’s defeat in 2008; the circumstances were not exactly analogous since it was John McCain and not Bush who lost, but nevertheless most Republicans were eager to distance themselves from Bush.

The horrific spectacle of January 6, when Trump’s bombastic rhetoric and embrace of conspiracy theories resulted in a literal assault on Congress, seemingly gave Trump non-enthusiasts even more ammunition. Trump lost the GOP the House, the Senate, the presidency, as well as its claim to be the party that opposes mob violence.

Last week, Trump released a vicious statement condemning Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) as “a dour, sullen, and unsmiling hack.” If ever there was a time for McConnell to denounce the president, it was now.

But during a Fox News appearance on Thursday night, McConnell was asked whether he would support Trump in 2024—and McConnell said “absolutely.”

Yes, McConnell qualified the statement by noting that he expected a competitive nominating competition, with several Republican senators planning to run. Yes, McConnell pledged to support Trump in the general election, not necessarily as a primary candidate (though it is difficult to imagine, if not impossible, any major Republican figures endorsing a Trump rival over Trump in the primaries). But come on: It’s obvious that if Trump chooses to run in 2024, he is likely to be the nominee, because he still commands the loyalty of a large contingent of GOP voters.

To truly be rid of Trump, GOP leaders would need to take affirmative steps to shun him, at the cost of angering many of their voters in the short term. This is a gamble they are clearly unwilling to take, even as the former president shows nothing but contempt for them.

The Republican Civil War is over before it began. It’s Trump’s party until the bitter end.

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FREE MINDS

Yidong Chen is a remote student at the University of Illinois. He lives with his mother and rarely leaves home because she is at high risk for a negative COVID-19 health outcome.

But the university requires all students to get tested twice a week—even if they live off-campus and have no plans to physically be at the university. Chen had no idea he was violating campus policy in failing to get tested, but was suspended for a year anyway. According to The College Fix:

Chen is an international student, and the finding against him would have resulted in his and his mother’s deportation.

Fortunately for the student, he’s a member of the Graduate Employees’ Organization, which filed a formal grievance against the university. It also launched a petition demanding UI rescind the punishment and change its practices around the communication of COVID-19 protocols to students.

The petition, which is above 37,000 signatures as of Thursday night, accuses the administration of setting nonsensical rules for remote students who are following COVID safety protocols off-campus. The university requires Chen to “increase the risk to himself, his mother, and the campus community.”

The pressure worked and the university readmitted Chen last week, holding his dismissal in “abeyance” as long as he fulfills other requirements, according to Inside Higher Ed. Chen still must kiss the ring by writing two 1,000-word “reflective essays” and completing 25 hours of community service, down from 80 hours in his original punishment.

It’s good that the university ultimately relented, but treating Chen like a rule breaker at all is ridiculous. Colleges shouldn’t apply their COVID-19 rules in knee-jerk fashion.

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FREE MARKETS

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) wants to punish large corporations that don’t pay their workers a $15 minimum wage.

Bernie announces his next move: An amendment to take tax deductions away from large corporations that don't pay above $15-an-hour wages. Wants it IN the reconciliation bill

— Sam Stein (@samstein) February 26, 2021

Not to be outdone:

On next steps for minimum wage from Finance Chair @RonWyden: “I’m looking at a tax penalty for mega-corporations that refuse to pay a living wage.”

— Ashley Schapitl (@AshleySchapitl) February 26, 2021

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QUICK HITS

• It was reported that Mr. Potato Head was going gender-neutral, but all the right-wing opprobrium this news generated was misplaced as the “Mr.” is only being dropped from the brand name and logo. Mr. Potato Head the toy will remain the strong, masculine spud he always was.
• “Unprecedented numbers of students have disappeared during the pandemic.“
• Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s pandemic response is still the “gold standard,” according to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.
• Lost superfans (I am one!) should read this Vulture article on the series finale’s legacy.

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A group of House moderates who voted last June to abolish qualified immunity for cops now want that provision to be modified or removed before Congress proceeds with a recently-revived police reform bill.

The legal doctrine requires that any alleged misconduct be “clearly established” in prior case law if a victim is to sue a public official in federal court. This has protected two cops who stole $225,000 while executing a search warrant, a cop who caused lasting damage to a subdued suspect’s eye after allegedly kneeing him there “20 to 30 times,” two cops who assaulted and arrested a man for the crime of standing outside his own home, a cop who shot a 10-year-old, a cop who shot a 15-year-old, and two cops who unleashed a police canine on a man who had surrendered. The Justice in Policing Act—which was originally unveiled in June 2020 after the police killing of George Floyd and was reintroduced on Wednesday—currently eliminates qualified immunity for law enforcement officers.

As reported by Politico, the antsy legislators are “between six and a dozen Democrats” in vulnerable re-election positions who have “privately argued that passing a partisan bill tanks any real chance at constructive talks with Republicans down the road.” That moderate group also includes Rep. Fred Upton (R–Mich.) and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R–Penn.), the only two sitting GOP congresspeople who voted in support of the bill last June.

The qualified immunity provision will probably be a tough sell for Senate Republicans. Although Democrats control the 50–50 chamber with Vice President Kamala Harris available to break a tie, they will need 60 votes to overcome the legislative filibuster.

But the struggle goes beyond strategic politicking and also reflects a balancing act: support for police reform chafes against support from police unions. Many Democrats who have urged reform still hope to maintain donations and public approval from law enforcement groups.

Josh Gottheimer (D–N.J.) is one of those congressmen. Not long ago, he bragged about receiving a perfect score from the National Association of Police Organizations (NAPO), a coalition of police unions and other related groups. “I will always get the backs of Jersey’s law enforcement, just as they get ours,” he wrote in a May 2020 press release. Though he voted for the Justice in Policing bill in June, he is now leading talks that he hopes will water down the qualified immunity provision.

Rep. Tom O’Halleran (D–Ariz.), a former homicide detective, is in a similar position. “I spent a lot of time out there, and it’s a dangerous environment,” he told Politico. “And I don’t want an officer’s family overly worried. But I also want a mother and father to know that their children are safe on the streets.” He, too, received a 100 percent rating from NAPO. By contrast, former Rep. Justin Amash (L–Mich.), who introduced a separate bill to eradicate qualified immunity for all government officials, received a 31 percent rating.

Neither Gottheimer nor O’Halleran responded to requests for comment.

The bill’s chief sponsor, Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.), is reportedly open to modifications after the measure moves to the Senate, but she insists that this should be where those discussions begin.

“Supporters of the status quo and most prominently the law enforcement lobby have been pretty effective at spreading misinformation about what qualified immunity is so that some people associate it with ‘defund the police,'” says Jay Schweikert, a policy analyst with the Cato Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice. “Some people think that it’s, you know, just protecting really good cops acting reasonably, which, of course, is not what it’s doing.”

Apart from the Justice in Policing Act, Congress saw two bills introduced last year that would have addressed qualified immunity: Amash’s legislation, and a bill introduced by Sen. Mike Braun (R–Ind.) that would have hamstrung the doctrine significantly.

Amash’s legislation eventually made its way to the legislative graveyard that defines Congress, and Braun stepped back from his proposal after receiving backlash from Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who misrepresented the doctrine in just about every way possible.

Even still, Schweikert is optimistic that such an approach is still possible in the future. “There’s a question about whether this would be complete elimination of qualified immunity or an elimination with certain safe harbors, whether it’s going to be limited to law enforcement, law enforcement and correction officers, or everyone,” he says. “But without addressing qualified immunity meaningfully in some way, I don’t think this will move forward.”

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As opponents of Gov. Gavin Newsom come closer to placing a recall on the ballot, some pundits have argued that voters should only boot a sitting politician for grievous misbehavior such as crimes and malfeasance. “Recalls should be reserved for elected officials who are corrupt or extremely incompetent,” as The San Diego Union-Tribune recently opined.

That view is wildly at odds with how Gov. Hiram Johnson—the progressive governor who ushered in our state’s initiative, referendum, and recall process—conceived it. “Suffice it to say, so far as the recall is concerned, did the solution of the matter rest with me, I would apply it to every official,” Johnson said in his first inaugural address in 1911. Yes, he would have applied it to every officeholder.

Sure, our nation’s founders were skeptical of direct democracy given their fear of mob rule. In “Federalist No. 10,” James Madison worried that unchecked democratic passions would “wrest the scepter from reason.” He had a point, but I’ve warmed to California’s system for practical reasons and have edged much closer to Johnson’s position.

While a (small-r) republican system that disperses powers with legislators is best, we’re stuck with reality. California’s poor level of representation and lopsided legislative districts make it tough to provide adequate checks and balances. For instance, each California Assemblymember represents more than 480,000 people—compared to around 3,200 people in New Hampshire. Without direct democracy, our leaders face little pushback.

Recent events highlight what Johnson was saying, especially during the pandemic. The governor has issued more than 400 executive actions on wide-ranging matters without any effective check on his muscle-flexing. The courts have reined in some of these edicts, but the governor continues to issue arbitrary orders that affect our livelihoods and freedoms. They seem based on gut feelings rather than science and he keeps moving the goalposts.

The Legislature has been like a deer in the headlights, standing idle as the governor rules by fiat. The only thing that has grabbed Newsom’s attention has been the steady collection of recall signatures. Recall backers need signatures equal to 12 percent of the votes last cast for that office. They’ve recently surpassed that 1.5-million-vote threshold—but still need around 400,000 more to assure certification. The deadline is March 17.

After the recall gained well-heeled Silicon Valley backers, Newsom relaxed California’s stay-at-home rules. The same “science” that mandated continued lockdowns had changed and “outdoor dining and worship services were OK again, hair and nail salons and other businesses could reopen, and retailers were allowed more shoppers inside,” according to an AP report. The administration even lifted the veil of secrecy from its decision-making.

Republicans pounced on the change of heart. “He is losing political support up and down the state,” said Assemblyman Jim Patterson (R–Fresno). The governor strongly denied that his policy changes had anything to do with the burgeoning campaign, but politicians rarely select a tie without considering its political ramifications. Sadly, the smart money is that the state’s hapless GOP will squander this opportunity.

San Diego’s former Mayor Kevin Faulconer, a fiscally conservative moderate who seems like a good fit for a state with Democratic majorities, has thrown his hat in the ring. He will run a “California comeback” campaign that focuses on the state’s high poverty rates, poor schools, crumbling infrastructure, and debilitating business climate.

But John Cox, who may be on track to become the Harold Stassen of California politics (Google it), has run an ad that attacks Faulconer for some office-space deal in San Diego. Anyone should feel free to run, but Cox garnered only 38 percent in his matchup with Newsom in 2018. You’d think he would tout whatever benefits his candidacy brings to the table, rather than tear down a fellow Republican at this early stage.

The recall ballot contains two separate questions. The first is “yay or nay” on the recall itself and the second is to name a replacement. Voters recalled Gov. Gray Davis in 2003 amidst rolling electricity blackouts, a vehicle-license-fee hike and soaring deficits. The ballot featured 135 candidates, some of whom were unusual (e.g., Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and actor Gary Coleman). Only a handful, though, received a consequential number of votes.

Democrats tried to unify against the recall, but then-Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante entered the race. Obviously, Arnold Schwarzenegger won by a large margin. If another Democrat breaks ranks and pulls a Bustamante and Republicans have a crowded field without a celebrity, California could recall its governor and replace him with someone even further to the left.

I’m still not sure whether Californians who are frustrated with Newsom’s heavy-handed pandemic leadership should strike while the recall is hot—or prepare for the regularly scheduled election. Either way, I agree with Hiram Johnson. Every officeholder should always fear a potential recall—and for any reason that suits the public.

This column was first published in The Orange County Register.

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An old man named Anthony (Anthony Hopkins) has just heard an unfamiliar sound coming from somewhere in his large London apartment. In the living room, he finds a stranger (Mark Gattis) sitting in a chair reading a paper. This man says he is the husband of Anthony’s middle-aged daughter, Anne (Olivia Colman), and that this is actually his apartment. Anthony’s world tilts. “There’s something funny going on,” he says.

Not funny ha-ha, unfortunately. Just moments ago, Anne, who is actually a divorcée, told Anthony she was moving to Paris. “I’ve met someone,” she says. “The rats are leaving the ship,” Anthony replies, with the flashing hostility that has become an abrasive feature of his crumbling personality. “You’re abandoning me,” he says.

The Father is the first film by French playwright Florian Zeller, adapted from his 2012 play in collaboration with the British screenwriter Christopher Hampton. The movie’s muted power lies not just in showing us a man sinking into dementia, but in actually creating a semblance of the garbled world of that affliction so that we feel the same helpless confusion that Anthony does—for instance, when he encounters his daughter’s husband again and sees that he is now a different man (played by Rufus Sewell). There’s also
a lot of agita about the nurses Anne keeps bringing in to look after her fading dad—he doesn’t like any of them. But if Anne is to wrench back control of her life, he’ll have to let go of her. Either that, or die. (He’s 80 years old, only three years younger than Hopkins himself.)

Padding through the apartment one day, Anthony overhears Anne and Paul discussing him. “We have to find another arrangement,” Paul says, in long-simmering frustration. “A nursing home. He’s ill.” Later, approaching Anthony directly, Paul asks, “How long do you intend to hang around?” Observing Anthony awkwardly struggling just to put on a sweater, we realize that, as Paul fears, he could be here for a
relatively long time.

In a 54-year film career, appearing in everything from Spielberg and Woody Allen pictures to Marvel and Michael Bay movies, Anthony Hopkins can only rarely have been as penetratingly effective as he is here. As his character sinks ever deeper into disorientation, Hopkins allows us to experience exactly how that must feel. At some points he erupts into an alarming bonhomie, dancing and singing; at others, he seems almost uninhabited, his eyes dropping to the floor in search of something that’s no longer there. It’s an exhilarating feat of incarnation.

So it’s a great Anthony Hopkins movie—not the first, though, is it? What makes the film such an indelible experience is that everyone else involved in its making (that would include the wonderful Imogen Poots and Olivia Williams) is also working at the top of their talent. Director Zeller maintains a meditative mood through the frankly theatrical use of scaled blue lighting as well as the music—heard through Anthony’s bedroom headphones—of Purcell, Bizet, and Bellini. Especially praiseworthy is Colman, who’s responsible for the movie’s melancholy warmth. She’s dealing with a character that might easily have devolved into cliché misery porn, but she seems uninterested in milking tears. Instead, she makes us see that Anne isn’t just slowly losing her father, she’s also losing any chance of happiness in her own life—a double sadness. It’s nobody’s fault, of course.

(The Father is now playing in theatres in Los Angeles and New York. It will open wider on March 12th, and will be available online, on-demand, on March 26th.)

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Cell phones are convenient devices, handily connecting us with loved ones, paying bills, accessing information—and treacherously reporting on our every move. Worse, even after the Supreme Court weighed in, many government agencies still insist that they have the right to pull up that tracking data to see our whereabouts. It’s increasingly apparent that, if you have your phone in your pocket, you may as well have a GPS beacon strapped to your ankle. If you want anonymity from the government, leave the gadget at home.

That point was illustrated in the wake of the Capitol riot, when the authorities pulled cell phone records to see who was present.

“In the hours and days after the Capitol riot, the FBI relied in some cases on emergency orders that do not require court authorization in order to quickly secure actual communications from people who were identified at the crime scene,” The Intercept reported this week. “Investigators have also relied on data ‘dumps’ from cellphone towers in the area to provide a map of who was there, allowing them to trace call records — but not content — from the phones.”

The data collected by people’s phones and the apps they use, often compiled by marketing firms, is amazingly detailed. An individual “outraged by the events of Jan. 6” supplied data on participants in the day’s events to The New York Times, whose writers were thoroughly creeped out by the information.

“While there were no names or phone numbers in the data, we were once again able to connect dozens of devices to their owners, tying anonymous locations back to names, home addresses, social networks and phone numbers of people in attendance,” Charlie Warzel and Stuart A. Thompson wrote.

Marketing databases have become a favorite resource for government agencies, which purchase the information as an attempted end-run around Fourth Amendment protections. The theory has been that, since the data is “voluntarily” provided to a third party there’s no privacy from the government required.

“The Trump administration has bought access to a commercial database that maps the movements of millions of cellphones in America and is using it for immigration and border enforcement,” The Wall Street Journal reported last year. “The location data is drawn from ordinary cellphone apps, including those for games, weather and e-commerce, for which the user has granted permission to log the phone’s location.”

The FBI also made use of phone location data, which led to a legal challenge that went all the way to the Supreme Court. In Carpenter v. United States (2018) the justices noted that “A majority of the Court has already recognized that individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the whole of their physical movements. Allowing government access to cell-site records … contravenes that expectation.” As a result, the court ruled in the opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, “the Government will generally need a warrant to access CSLI [cell-site location information].”

You’d think that would be the end of it as far as government agencies accessing the location beacon features of cell phones go, but you’d be mistaken. Cell phones track us in two ways: through CSLI generated when phones contact cell towers, and through GPS data collected by the apps installed on phones. CSLI isn’t yet as accurate as GPS location data, but it’s keyed to specific phone numbers, while GPS data is connected to mobile advertising IDs that are, supposedly, anonymous. Since it’s not directly connected to individuals and wasn’t addressed in Carpenter, government agencies maintain they can still gather cell phone GPS data.

“[I]t is our understanding that the Carpenter decision concerned historical Cell Site Location Information which is distinct from the opt-in app data available on the Venntel platform,” the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) recently told the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) in response to a query about the use of commercial databases such as Venntel.

The TIGTA query was prompted by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), after reports of the IRS engaging in warrantless tracking of suspects. Tax collectors, just like the FBI and immigration officials, appreciate the use of third-party location data. The IRS argument didn’t convince the inspector general.

“The Carpenter decision did not directly address the use of GPS data, but future courts may apply the same logic to limit the use of GPS data without a warrant,” the TIGTA letter, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, noted. “Our concern is that the Supreme Court rejected the Government’s argument in Carpenter that CSLI is truly voluntarily provided to the phone carriers. The Court’s rationale was that phone users do not truly voluntarily agree to share the information given the necessity of phones in our society. Courts may apply similar logic to GPS data sold by marketers, particularly if the Government identifies ways to translate the alphanumeric code to identify the phone’s owner or has other means of identifying the phone’s owner.”

That’s a well-placed concern as the report in The New York Times demonstrates. “The supposedly anonymous ID could be matched with other databases containing the same ID, allowing us to add real names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and other information about smartphone owners in seconds,” Warzel and Thompson pointed out.

Advertising IDs can be disabled, theoretically making it harder to track a cell phone through app-gathered GPS data. But CSLI data pinpoints a phone’s location every it pings a tower. That data is now subject to warrant requirements, but it exists—the FBI gathered it after the Capitol riot. And GPS data will continue to be available without a warrant until the courts weigh in on the issue.

That means that anybody who wants to participate in a protest unmonitored, engage in clandestine meetings, or travel untracked has to, at a minimum, leave behind all cell phones and other modern electronic devices connected to their names and identities. A burner phone purchased with cash and free of social media accounts is probably fine, but that’s as far as it goes. The conveniences of the connected modern world come with a steep price: our anonymity.

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