SHARED OPINIONS

The Washington Post opinion article expresses my concerns and should be read to set your mind to a place where facts matter.  The article was penned by Fareed  Zakaria July 9, 2020.

The United States is in a unique position among the world’s most advanced countries. Far from having flattened the Covid-19 curve, it is watching as cases spike in several populous states, and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony S. Fauci is recommending that these places “seriously look at shutting down” their economies again. Meanwhile, in other rich countries — as diverse as Germany,  South Korea, and even Spain and Italy — the number of new cases plummeted months ago and has stayed low. America is still exceptional, but no longer in a good sense.

To understand why this is happening, let’s start by examining something the United States got right: economic stimulus. In March and April, despite the most polarized political climate since the aftermath of the Civil War, Congress provided $2.4 trillion in relief, and the Federal Reserve provided even more. This adds up to about 25 percent of gross domestic product, one of the largest spending efforts in the world. That might explain why the stock market has barely noticed that the economy remains in its worst condition since the Great Depression.

In every other sense, the U.S. government has failed. It’s not just President Trump and the White House, which have done a miserable job bringing coherence to federal agencies and coordinating with the states. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and other arms of the Department of Health and Human Services all failed in their own ways, as did state officials.

Americans accepted extensive lockdowns far more readily than many predicted. But this period of suffering was meant to buy time for the government to set up systems of testing, tracing and isolation so that once the lockdowns ended, people could return to some semblance of normal life, confident their government was monitoring and reacting to new outbreaks. In truth, it squandered the time. Although Trump declared in May, “We’ve prevailed on testing,” his goal of 5 million tests a day, with testing available at every Walmart and CVS, is still just a dream. Most states still don’t have comprehensive testing or contact tracing in place.
     Federal spending as a percentage of GDP is where it was 40 years ago, but that statistic conceals more than it reveals. Spending on entitlement programs — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — has gone up massively as the population ages and health-care costs soar. But most of the agencies of the federal government have been starved of resources while being given more tasks and mandates

Even writing the checks proved hard this time. Countries including Canada and Germany, including sent out funds faster and more directly than the United States, providing quick relief to their citizens, while Americans had to wait anxiously, navigate websites that didn’t work, and apply again and again to get a response.

The number of federal employees is smaller per capita than in the 1950s, despite the fact that real U.S. GDP is seven times larger. The government barely hires new recruits anymore. As a Brookings Institution report notes, “one third [of the federal workforce] will be eligible to retire between now and 2025, and only 6 percent of federal employees are under 30 years old.” For almost half a century, politicians on the right have pursued a strategy of “starving the beast.” Anti-tax campaigner Grover Norquist explained: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” Stephen K. Bannon, the ideologist of the Trump revolution, made clear that his central goal is the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” Guess what? It was already happening.
Winning the fight against covid-19 doesn’t require a huge bureaucratic apparatus. Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea have relatively small governments, measured by government spending as a share of GDP. On the other hand, Denmark, Norway and Germany have also done very well, and they have relatively large states. But in all of those cases, government bureaucracies are well funded, enjoy considerable autonomy, are not burdened with excessive rules and mandates, and recruit intelligent people who are accorded respect for working in the public sector. In the United States, we have a culture set by Ronald Reagan, who, as head of the federal bureaucracy, joked, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’ ”

Covid-19 should be a wake-up call. The United States needs to rebuild its government capacity. The goal is not a big state or a small state but a smart state. For now, what we have is stupid.”

I agree the Republican Party is the party of stupid and it shows daily. If you think Trump has sunk to the lowest of scum he will surprise you with some other repulsive action to take the attention away from Trump bumbling the pandemic response. Fareed’s piece brings to light the obvious problems that will face the future in an honest and factual manner.

TTWOFER TIME FOR TRUMP           

The Economic Times ran an article on July 13^th , which reinforces my theory that Trump is presiding over an economic race to the bottom. The piece is based on Trump’s rules that strips visas from of international students who will be taking on-line only classes.

The article stressed the importance of retaining foreign students and went on to say “Sending Foreign students home from the U.S. is bad for everyone, especially for the U.S.  The net effect of pushing them out will likely be an exodus of academic talent to schools in Europe or elsewhere….it is an intellectual catastrophe of historic proportions with long-term economic ramifications.  

There is the intellectual impact and also the action has an economic component.  The roughly 1 million foreign students in our schools contribute 41 billion dollars to the economy. Another Trump twofer! There are challenges to his orders in court. If this continues and they return to their homelands, it has been described as a catastrophe of historic proportions.

Sixteen states and the District of Colombia joined the Harvard and others law suit taking on the Administrations rules taking away visas. The federal court in Boston is hearing the motions in this case and as of the 15^th, Trump and the administration surrendered and backed down from the order. To cover for this debacle he held a White House Rose Garden campaign rally of epic disfunction. Using every foil and only talking about policy for 6 of the 63 minutes.  The remainder was spent in airing grievances attacking Joe and Hunter Biden. Asking Where’s Hunter? Ok Donald, where is Baron? Was Baron at the launch with the astronauts photo op?  I know I would have liked to have watched. What about the celebration at Mt. Rushmore with all the fireworks where was Baron?

Was it the backlash of states and universities that have whole towns dependent on foreign students?  Was it the monetary loss for these cities and locals?  Did someone finally convince him he is in a race to the bottom?