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Trump has approved a 19 billion dollar farm bill and only 3 billion is being used to provide for food bank purchases to support nutrition during the pandemic due to school closings.  This tragedy, with shortages and destruction of food, is as a result of having 40% of the food chain being broken by the shutdown of the end users.  The mid-west is critical to his re-election.

The problem I see is clear, the demand for the calories and food did not disappear it just moved from restaurants, airlines and hotels to the grocery stores. We are the food supplier to a good part of the world and now, some of the 40%of that food production is interrupted by lack of demand.  Foreign demand is also slowed by the lack of trust in our food supply, coupled with the economic devastation created by the pandemic.  This bailout move will allow the farmers to plow under crops, and allow killing and burying of livestock, not able to be sold in the market at a profit?  Again Trump is buying the mid-west farmers votes by pandering to big agricultural corporations that supply, in some cases, chain restaurants, individual hotel and airlines as their only customer. 

I have also noticed the lack of some foodstuffs on the market shelves and an increase in prices.  The shear lunacy of the Trump bailout is obvious to an economist.  The resources that are being destroyed need only be redirected to a different market.  The farmer, not the government, should adjust to the market.  Those farmers that cannot adjust to the supply chain should parish and not be rewarded.

  The lack of crop diversity is directly related to the death of the small, specialized farmer.  Large farms increase supply and with mechanization and the small farmers lose out.  Of course the large farm specializes and dominates the market.  I question is, will the bailout payouts will go to support foreign farm corporations as it did with the tariff bailout for soy beans?  Oh that’s right, there’s oversight? What’s that?  Where are the Inspectors General? 

During the fog of the pandemic, it would be nice if the Federal Government would recognize the situation and help with the supply chain adjustment instead of trashing the calories, while the food bank lines are measured in miles.

Despite the farm support provided to purchase the election, 30% of the small farmers surveyed in one state said that even with the support, they will fail by year end.  The $16 Billion of the $19 Billion is for loans, not grants at low interest, which only benefits large agribusiness.  The small farmer cannot take on any additional debt and they don’t even apply.

PUSH THE OPENING

The CDC finally, quietly released their guidelines for opening high risk establishments today.  This, while all 50 states have taken off the stay at home guidelines already.  Not all states meet the new opening guidelines.  This, while Florida is manipulating the pandemic data to show they are better off than they actually are.  This is the kind of political manipulation that could cause deaths in a state that has the most nursing homes.  You don’t think the seniors would be concerned?  Is delay in the CDC guidance to be used in the future as an excuse?  Is this a ploy so he can say “look here, we gave the guidance and they did not comply”, we told the states?  Is this backup for an excuse if the second wave does appear?  Republican governors are avoiding reporting cases of the virus by either ignoring the count and not make it public.  Some governors have a 10% threshold of cases in any meat plant, before any cases are counted.  The strategy for a meat packing plant in Weld county is not to test if you have been exposed by anyone at home, in the workplace, and in a car pool.  This, in a plant with 6 deaths thus far.  Trump lies and people die!

IS SUCICIDE A STRATEGY?

Trump is banking on thrashing Obama as a way to paint Biden and associate him with this phony “Obamagate” conspiracy theory.  In a meeting with top republicans in congress, the president raged for two hours, excoriating them for not going after Obama full-throttle.  This, while the pandemic approaches 100,000 deaths, you’d think he would more concerned with the general pandemic and not his campaign?  Is this political success?  Obama syndrome?

This move would fly in the face of no drama Obama being the most admired of the current living presidents.   Is this good strategy or not?  Trashing Hillary the whole time she was Sect of State, worked.  What did Hillary do that was so awful?  She used private email accounts while in the State Department and deleted her personal emails (they had access to them all). And when given access to her server, the only files not accessed were the operating systems and the Apps she used. 

The new Trump strategy seems to be moving out of the science and medicine, sidelining Drs. Brix and Fauci and turning into election mode, with more and more fireworks to irritate and shine the laser away from his failures as a leader.  Imagine if we had gone to war?  I only hope his attention and consentrtion on the ball is better than recent history would suggest.

Now let’s look at Pompeo holding Madison dinners and using a personal email account to gather information on the participants.  These 24 expensive dinners were by invitation only, including republicans in congress, billionaires, and CEO’s and held in the U.S.  It was reported that only 14% of the attendees were involved in foreign affairs.  This combined with Pompeo’s penchant to fly back and forth to Kansas on Government business in a land locked state?  Do you think he may have been doing things for a future election?

The Michigan Secretary of State mailed applications for absentee ballots to all registered voters, which is the law in Michigan.   Trump, offended by the legal act, tweeted about what he thought was an illegal act.  At the same time, he also threatened to cut off funding to the state of Michigan for the pandemic relief.  Trump fears he can’t suppress the vote if the people can vote by mail?  Every citizen of Michigan is eligible to vote by mail, it’s the law.  All mail in ballots are compared to the signature on file and if found no to match, it is investigated.

  Trump is trying to weaponize the pandemic and suppress the vote.  Trump also threatened Nevada, wherein if they continued their pursuit of mail in voting, he would also withhold pandemic disaster relief monies.  Trump has the opinion that the lower the voter turnout the better his party’s chances.  History has shown that this is the clear effect.  The President does not want free and fair elections?  The laser light show continues.  The distractions and deflection show continues, while the death toll reaches close to 100,000 from the virus that could have a much different outcome, with an actual leader in charge!

  A recent pandemic model from Columbia University suggests that significant reductions in both cases and deaths would result, if social distancing was instituted 1 week earlier. The model generated a reduction of 36,000 deaths by May 3^rd,  the  1 week delay would resulted in ½ the deaths.  The Trump delay was at least 3 weeks? I wonder how many lives could have been saved.  Let’s explore, we are 4.3% of the world population and 30% of the cases with the corresponding rate of death per patient being the same. This takes away Trump’s argument that we test more than anyone else and that’s why we have more cases.  Data suggests otherwise.  My model shows his lack of attention cost far more deaths than the estimated 36,000 estimated by the modeling.