"How can the Washington Post say the court decisions on his vaccine or testing mandates were 'out of his control'?"

"Biden and his legal team are supposed to figure out a way to implement his policies that *won’t* get blocked by courts! Those court decisions didn’t happen at random; they happened because judges looked at what the administration did and decided that it didn’t comply with the law."

Writes my son John, at Facebook, commenting on "A year ago, Biden unveiled a 200-page plan to defeat covid. He has struggled to deliver on some key promises" (WaPo).

"Biden and his legal team are supposed to figure out a way to implement his policies that *won’t* get blocked by courts!" — We are all expected to pursue our goals and desires within the limits of the law. But we still can complain about the law that stands in our way and excuse our failure to achieve by pointing at this pesky law.

Sometimes you push the limits of the law and hope to convince judges. With a slightly different configuration of the Supreme Court, the vaccine mandate would have succeeded. Blaming the Court is worth doing to set up judicial appointments as a campaign issue.

And would the implementation of the vaccine mandate have served Biden's interests? Isn't he better off with it failing? He can point to it and say that he tried so hard and not be burdened with the realities of driving so many people out of employment, leaving businesses inadequately staffed, and imposing on the intimate personal bodily autonomy that his Party ordinarily celebrates. 

By the way: "Activists look ahead to what could be the 'last anniversary' for Roe" (NPR).

Speaking of the pending abortion case... did the Texas legislators "figure out a way to implement [their] policies that won’t get blocked by courts"? I'd say they deliberately overreached well-known law because they wanted to convince the Court to change it and, failing that, they wanted political credit for trying.

"It is now indisputable, and almost undisputed, that the year and a quarter of virtual school imposed devastating consequences on the students who endured it."

"Studies have found that virtual school left students nearly half a year behind pace, on average, with the learning loss falling disproportionately on low-income, Latino, and Black students. Perhaps a million students functionally dropped out of school altogether. The social isolation imposed on kids caused a mental health 'state of emergency,' according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. The damage to a generation of children’s social development and educational attainment, and particularly to the social mobility prospects of its most marginalized members, will be irrecoverable. It is nearly as clear that these measures did little to contain the pandemic... Progressives were carried along by two predominant impulses. One was a zero-COVID policy that refused to weigh the trade-off of any measure that could even plausibly claim to suppress the pandemic. The other was deference to teachers unions, who were organizing to keep schools closed. Those strands combined into a refusal to acknowledge the scale or importance of losing in-person learning with a moralistic insistence that anybody who disagreed was callous about death or motivated by greed.... 'Parents who advocated for school reopening were repeatedly demonized on social media as racist and mischaracterized as Trump supporters.'...  Most progressives [now]... just want to quietly move on without anybody admitting anybody did anything wrong."

Writes Jonathan Chait in "School Closures Were a Catastrophic Error. Progressives Still Haven’t Reckoned With It. Sometimes you need to own up to an error so it’s not repeated" (NY Magazine).

"The premise of The Denial of Death is that human civilization is ultimately an elaborate, symbolic defense mechanism against the knowledge of our mortality..."

"... which in turn acts as the emotional and intellectual response to our basic survival mechanism. [Ernest Becker, the author of this Pulitzer Prize-winning 1973 book] argues that a basic duality in human life exists between the physical world of objects and biology, and a symbolic world of human meaning. Thus, since humanity has a dualistic nature consisting of a physical self and a symbolic self, we are able to transcend the dilemma of mortality by focusing our attention mainly on our symbolic selves, i.e. our culturally-based self esteem, which Becker calls 'heroism': a 'defiant creation of meaning' expressing 'the myth of the significance of human life' as compared to other animals.... Humanity's traditional 'hero-systems,' such as religion, are no longer convincing in the age of reason. Becker argues that the loss of religion leaves humanity with impoverished resources for necessary illusions. Science attempts to serve as an immortality project, something that Becker believes it can never do because it is unable to provide agreeable, absolute meanings to human life. The book states that we need new convincing 'illusions' that enable us to feel heroic in ways that are agreeable...."

From the Wikipedia article, "The Denial of Death," a book title that sprang to mind when I saw the news that the U.S. government is going to stop requiring daily reports of the number of Covid deaths.

This is the book Alvy Singer wanted Annie Hall to read:

"The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked the Biden administration from enforcing a vaccine-or-testing mandate for large employers..."

"... dealing a blow to a key element of the White House’s plan to address the pandemic as cases resulting from the Omicron variant are on the rise. But the court allowed a more modest mandate requiring health care workers at facilities receiving federal money to be vaccinated. The vote in the employer mandate case was 6 to 3, with liberal justices in dissent. The vote in the health care case was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh joining the liberal justices to form a majority...."

The NYT reports.

Here are the opinions — NFIB v. OSHA and Biden v. Missouri.

From the OSHA case:

This is no “everyday exercise of federal power.” In re MCP No. 165, 20 F. 4th, at 272 (Sutton, C. J., dissenting). It is instead a significant encroachment into the lives—and health—of a vast number of employees. “We expect Congress to speak clearly when authorizing an agency to exercise powers of vast economic and political significance.” Alabama Assn. of Realtors v. Department of Health and Human Servs., 594 U. S. ___, ___ (2021) (per curiam) (slip op., at 6) (internal quotation marks omitted). There can be little doubt that OSHA’s mandate qualifies as an exercise of such authority. 

The question, then, is whether the Act plainly authorizes the Secretary’s mandate. It does not. The Act empowers the Secretary to set workplace safety standards, not broad public health measures. See 29 U. S. C. §655(b) (directing the Secretary to set “occupational safety and health standards” (emphasis added)); §655(c)(1) (authorizing the Secretary to impose emergency temporary standards necessary to protect “employees” from grave danger in the workplace)....

From Biden v. Missouri:

[H]ealthcare facilities that wish to participate in Medicare and Medicaid have always been obligated to satisfy a host of conditions that address the safe and effective provision of healthcare.... [T]he Secretary routinely imposes conditions of participation that relate to the qualifications and duties of healthcare workers themselves.... Of course the vaccine mandate goes further than what the Secretary has done in the past to implement infection control. But he has never had to address an infection problem of this scale and scope before.... Vaccination requirements are a common feature of the provision of healthcare in America: Healthcare workers around the country are ordinarily required to be vaccinated for diseases such as hepatitis B, influenza, and measles, mumps, and rubella....

We accordingly conclude that the Secretary did not exceed his statutory authority in requiring that, in order to remain eligible for Medicare and Medicaid dollars, the facilities covered by the interim rule must ensure that their employees be vaccinated against COVID–19.

From the dissent in the Biden case. This is by Justice Thomas (joined by Justices Alito, Gorsuch, and Barrett):

“We expect Congress to speak clearly when authorizing an agency to exercise powers of vast economic and political significance.” Alabama Assn. of Realtors v. Department of Health and Human Servs., 594 U. S. ___, ___ (2021) (per curiam) (slip op., at 6) (internal quotation marks omitted). And we expect Congress to use “exceedingly clear language if it wishes to significantly alter the balance between state and federal power.” Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). The omnibus rule is undoubtedly significant—it requires millions of healthcare workers to choose between losing their livelihoods and acquiescing to a vaccine they have rejected for months. Vaccine mandates also fall squarely within a State’s police power, see Zucht v. King, 260 U. S. 174, 176 (1922), and, until now, only rarely have been a tool of the Federal Government. If Congress had wanted to grant CMS authority to impose a nationwide vaccine mandate, and consequently alter the state-federal balance, it would have said so clearly. It did not.

"I’m well aware of the stereotypes of white parents choosing the private-school option when the going gets tough at public schools."

"I told myself that prioritizing being a 'good leftist' at the expense of my son’s well-being wasn’t good parenting, but as a red-diaper baby myself, the white guilt dies hard... Sending my kid to private school was accompanied by a lot of angst....  The pandemic, and the school-reopening debate in particular, has thrown me into an ideological mid-life crisis, questioning all my prior political assumptions. I’m still attempting to hold onto the progressive label while calling out the policies I see as antithetical to it, but the longer fellow progressives support new school closures and other policies that restrict kids’ lives in order to allay the anxieties of adults, and have been shown to cause far more harm than benefit, the more alienated I feel."

From "How School Closures Made Me Question My Progressive Politics/I’ve never felt more alienated from the liberal Democratic circles I usually call home" by Rebecca Bodenheimer (Politico).

Trump does a 15-minute interview with NPR.

Full text here. It begins on the subject of covid: 

The vaccines, I recommend taking them, but I think that has to be an individual choice. I mean, it's got to be individual, but I recommend taking them. Many people recommend them. And if some people don't want, they shouldn't have to take them. They can't be mandated, as the expression goes. And I think that's very important. Personally, I feel very comfortable having taken them. I've had absolutely no reverberation....

But then it's all about the 2020 election results, with Trump sticking to his attack on the election and the interviewer, Steve Inskeep, pressuring him until  Trump cuts it off. A few highlights:

Why did Republican officials in Arizona accept the results then?

Because they're RINOs, and frankly, a lot of people are questioning that....
It is not true that there were far more votes than voters [in Philadelphia]. There was an early count. I've noticed you've talked about this in rallies and you've said, reportedly, this is true. I think even you know that that was an early report that was corrected later.

Well, you take a look at it. You take a look at Detroit. In fact, they even had a hard time getting people to sign off on it because it was so out of balance. They called it out of balance. So you take a look at it. You know the real truth, Steve, and this election was a rigged election.

Why is it that you think that the vast majority of your allies in the United States Senate are not standing behind you?...

Because Mitch McConnell is a loser. And frankly, Mitch McConnell, if he were on the other side and if Schumer were put in his position, he would have been fighting this like you've never seen before. He would have been fighting this, because when you look at it, and this is long — is a long way from over.... 

Let me ask you this question. How come Biden couldn't attract 20 people for a crowd? How come when he went to speak in different locations, nobody came to watch, but all of a sudden he got 80 million votes? Nobody believes that, Steve. Nobody believes that.

If you'll forgive me, maybe because the election was about you.... 

Who wins and who loses if the political divide on Covid breaks down — as it seems to be breaking down because of Omicron?

I'm reading "Why More Americans Are Saying They’re ‘Vaxxed and Done’/COVID has always divided Americans. The Omicron wave is even dividing the vaccinated" (The Atlantic).

Some 2022 Democrats are sounding like 2020 Republicans. In spring 2020, many Republicans, including President Donald Trump, insisted that COVID was hardly worse than the flu; that its fatality risk was comparable to an everyday activity, like driving in a car; and that an obsessive focus on cases wouldn’t give an accurate picture of what was going on in the pandemic.

That's not exactly how I remember it (and I watched Trump's Covid show every day). I accept the use of "comparable" but not "hardly worse." But those who loathed Trump agonized over every comparison to the flu because it seemed he wasn't taking things seriously enough. I think he was trying to steel us for the fight and avert panic, but anti-Trump people were already in a panic over Trump and — in that election year — they wanted Trump to fail. So I see why people split politically over something that wasn't inherently political.

In the current Omicron wave, these Republican talking points seem to have mostly come true—for most vaccinated non-senior adults, who are disproportionately Democrats....

You can see right there that the Atlantic writer — Derek Thompson — is going to say that the Democrats have changed their beliefs because the facts have changed. But the political landscape also has changed: The Democrats are in power, they're in charge of the long hard fight, and they're the ones who stand to lose in elections coming up later in the year. That's reason to act like we'll be fine, we can make it. Keep calm and tough it out.

The messiness of Omicron data—record-high cases! but much milder illness!—has deepened our COVID Rashomon, in which different communities are telling themselves different stories about what’s going on, and coming to different conclusions about how to lead their lives. That’s true even within populations that, a year ago, were united in their desire to take the pandemic seriously and were outraged by those who refused to do so....

The article-writer doesn't go anywhere with the political analysis he sets up. He doesn't even see the political question I put in my post title, which I wrote when I was a quarter of the way through his piece. So let me try to answer my own question. 

Here's why the breakdown of the political divide could help Democrats. If fighting Omicron is a losing game, the perception that it's not a fight anymore keeps the Democrats, who are in charge, from looking like losers. If Omicron is accepted — relatively benign, unstoppably fast-moving — then there's less expectation that the government will take forcible actions and displace private decision-making. 

You might think, that's what Democrats do — take forcible actions and displace private decision-making — that's their brand. But they could take forcible actions and displace private decision-making about something other than Covid, something where their failures won't rack up so quickly and obviously.

Enough about politicians. What about ordinary people? What should you do about Omicron and should it have a damned thing to do with politics? Should you keep making demands of other people, or should you look to your own health and the health of your family? If the answer to that question is political — and I'm afraid it is! — then it's time for me to type the last word of this post and hit publish.

"Omicron Makes Biden’s Vaccine Mandates Obsolete/There is no evidence so far that vaccines are reducing infections from the fast-spreading variant."

Commentary by Luc Montagnier and Jed Rubenfeld (in The Wall Street Journal)("Dr. Montagnier was a winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering the human immunodeficiency virus. Mr. Rubenfeld is a constitutional scholar").

It would be irrational, legally indefensible and contrary to the public interest for government to mandate vaccines absent any evidence that the vaccines are effective in stopping the spread of the pathogen they target. Yet that’s exactly what’s happening here.

The government's mandates came out when the concern was Delta, not Omicron, and therefore its "findings are now obsolete."

The Supreme Court held in Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905) that the right to refuse medical treatment could be overcome when society needs to curb the spread of a contagious epidemic. At Friday’s oral argument, all the justices acknowledged that the federal mandates rest on this rationale. 

But mandating a vaccine to stop the spread of a disease requires evidence that the vaccines will prevent infection or transmission (rather than efficacy against severe outcomes like hospitalization or death).... For Omicron, there is as yet no such evidence.

The little data we have suggest the opposite. One preprint study found that after 30 days the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines no longer had any statistically significant positive effect against Omicron infection, and after 90 days, their effect went negative—i.e., vaccinated people were more susceptible to Omicron infection....

According to the CDC, the overwhelming majority of symptomatic U.S. Omicron cases have been mild. The best policy might be to let Omicron run its course while protecting the most vulnerable, naturally immunizing the vast majority against Covid through infection by a relatively benign strain....

It is axiomatic in U.S. law that courts don’t uphold agency directives when the agency has entirely failed to consider facts crucial to the problem....

The WaPo Fact Checker gives Sonia Sotomayor 4 Pinocchios!

She said, "Those numbers show that omicron is as deadly and causes as much serious disease in the unvaccinated as delta did. … We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition and many on ventilators.”

She left some major weasel room: What does "serious" mean? She didn't say 100,000 children were on ventilators, just that "many" were. So I'm surprised Glenn Kessler went the whole 4 Pinocchios on her.

Let's read:

That’s wildly incorrect, assuming she is referring to hospitalizations, given the reference to ventilators. According to HHS data, as of Jan. 8 there are about 5,000 children hospitalized in a pediatric bed, either with suspected covid or a confirmed laboratory test. This figure includes patients in observation beds. So Sotomayor’s number is at least 20 times higher than reality, even before you determine how many are in “serious condition.”

Kessler notes the special importance of accuracy for Supreme Court Justices. This isn't a place to show special respect. And her number was "absurdly high." So, "She earns Four Pinocchios."

By the way, Kessler also absolves Justice Gorsuch off the accusation that he got a number absurdly wrong. The official court transcript has him saying: “Flu kills — I believe — hundreds of thousands of people every year.” Kessler listened to the audio verifies that Gorsuch said, “flu kills, I believe, hundreds, thousands of people every year.” Wow. Correct the transcript, people. Or is correcting the transcript a dangerous, endless exercise?

"I’d see the entire city of Newark unemployed before I allowed one single teacher’s aide to die needlessly."

Said John Abeigon, the Newark Teachers Union president, quoted in "As More Teachers’ Unions Push for Remote Schooling, Parents Worry. So Do Democrats. Chicago teachers have voted to go remote. Other unions are agitating for change. For Democrats, who promised to keep schools open, the tensions are a distinctly unwelcome development" (NYT).

Labor officials say that many of their critics are acting in bad faith, exploiting parents’ pandemic-related frustrations to advance longstanding political goals, like discrediting unions and expanding private-school vouchers....

If periods of remote learning this winter hurt the Democratic Party, “that’s a question for the consultants and the brain trusts to figure out,” said Mr. Abeigon, the Newark union president. “But that it’s the right thing to do? There’s no question in my mind.”

You can't open the schools without the teachers, and Democrats can't win without teachers. 

"Historically, and almost definitionally, a gridlocked Congress that cannot pass laws tends to be better for conservative reactionaries than progressive activists."

"Lawmakers also lack the mastery of esoteric issues, say soil runoff, that civil servants can master. When the courts force Congress to expressly decide, usually either nothing happens — or lobbyists sit in the driver’s seat. Pushing decision-making to Congress from the civil service, or what Trump disdainfully called the 'deep state,' is a goal of the conservative legal project shared by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.... The reality is, even if they tried, the Democratic-controlled Congress probably couldn’t cobble together the votes to pass a mandate like OSHA’s. Ten Republicans in the Senate wouldn’t cross over to break a filibuster. Republicans are emboldened because they think opposition to vaccine mandates in the off-year Virginia elections helped win all three statewide races and flip the House of Delegates."

From "How blocking Biden’s vaccine mandate would be a Supreme Court gift to Trump" by James Hohmann (WaPo).

The Biden administration is relying on general language in a statute passed over a half century ago as it tries to do something that we know Congress won't do on its own, even though Congress has been able to see the problem to be solved for at least half a year. The administration's mandate is such an aggressive imposition on people, and the position of Congress is, essentially, to spare us. It looks as though the Supreme Court is about to make Congress's answer — no mandate — the final answer. 

Isn't that the most democratic — small "d" democratic — resolution of the lawmaking conundrum?

"For the fourth day in a row, Wisconsin on Friday recorded a record-breaking number of new COVID-19 cases driven by the highly contagious but milder omicron variant."

"The Wisconsin Department of Health Services reported 12,293 new confirmed cases, the highest single-day case count of the entire pandemic. The previous record was set Thursday when 11,547 new cases were reported.... Friday’s seven-day average was more than double what it was just two weeks ago, the health department said. At 7,637 cases, the average was also the highest of the pandemic. Deaths are lower than they were this time last year, with 12 new COVID-19 deaths reported Friday, according to the department. Last year, 32 new deaths were added on Jan. 7. But the seven-day average for COVID-19 deaths is comparable. Friday’s seven-day average was 20 deaths per day, the health department reported. Last year at this time that number was 22 deaths per day.... The number of ICU patients — 472 — was just shy of the pandemic all-time high of 475 reached on Thursday, according to the association."

The Wisconsin State Journal reports.

The strange case of Grichka and Igor Bogdanoff, who have now both died (of Covid).

 

Here's the NYT obituary for the twins. 

"Conservative Supreme Court justices on Friday appeared skeptical that the Biden administration has legal authority to impose a broad vaccination-or-testing requirement on large employers."

"They seemed more in agreement with private businesses and Republican-led states that such policies need to be approved by Congress or implemented by state governments than a federal agency — in this case, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was among the conservative justices, who make up a majority of the court, to wonder whether Congress had given authority for agencies 'to enact such a broad regulation.' The Biden administration’s solicitor general, Elizabeth B. Prelogar, said Congress had given just such a power for the agency to enact emergency standards to protect workers in the midst of an unprecedented pandemic."

WaPo reports.

I listened to much of the oral argument, and I thought Prelogar was superhumanly great. I don't think I have ever heard someone speak so quickly for so long without sacrificing any lucidity, terseness, or enunciation. Here's her Wikipedia page. I see that she was Miss Idaho in 2004, she's fluent in Russian, and she has sons who are named Blaise and Beckett (which I'm just guessing is a tribute to Blaise Pascal and Samuel Beckett). 

The pandemic continues to cause shipping problems

The container shipping industry remains in the doldrums thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.  It hammered shipments earlier, as we noted in these pages:  and its ongoing effects are creating long-term problems for shippers and their customers.  GCaptain reports:

From sportswear maker Puma to mall stalwart Gap , many retailers have been forced to reduce or slow down shipments of new merchandise. Civil unrest in the United States has compounded their problems by further clouding the prospect for a recovery in the world’s biggest retail sales market.

Puma’s Chief Executive Bjorn Gulden, for example, said it was managing some of its excess inventory by stowing it on slow-going ships as stores in the United States and Europe tentatively reopen.

However, at the same time, the shipping slowdown has created headaches for those retailers, from Walmart and Amazon to shoe seller Rothy’s, who have never stopped selling products to homebound consumers, ranging from books and shoes to exercise equipment, much of it sold online.

Now those retailers are fighting for space on the fewer, faster-moving ships on the high seas.

. . .

Slower shipping times also means importers can delay payments made on delivery . . . Shereen Zarkani, Maersk’s global head of sales, told Reuters: “One customer told us: If you make my container go around the world a couple of times that would be good.”

. . .

There does not appear to be any let-up in sight for container shipping companies as their retail clients could still be feeling acute financial pain in July, when they begin placing orders for holiday and winter merchandise.

There's more at the link.

I've noticed the effects of shipping disruptions in a number of areas.  For example, there was a particular part I needed in my ongoing efforts to rebuild some older rifles for friends.  I ordered it in mid-April, but found it was out of stock at the time.  The manufacturer was waiting on a couple of injection-molded plastic components from an overseas supplier, which they would then build into the finished product.  Their supplier had the parts, but couldn't find shipping space to send them.  I was notified just this morning that the part I needed is finally in stock, and my order is in the process of being fulfilled.  That's a seven-week wait, for a part that's normally available 24/7/365!  I know I wasn't their only frustrated customer.  It's yet another example of how "just-in-time" manufacturing can grind to a halt if supplies of parts and components don't reach the factory on a regular basis.

The after-effects of the coronavirus pandemic are going to be with us for at least the rest of this year, and probably well into 2022.  Be prepared for that.

Peter

The vulnerable links in our economic chain

In one sense, I suppose we should actually be grateful to the coronavirus pandemic for the way it's highlighted how our economy has been structured around a series of assumptions, which in turn have driven decisions made to implement those assumptions.  The whole house of cards is predicated on nothing disturbing the arrangements thus made.  Throw a wild card into the equation, and massive disruption ensues - and COVID-19 has been one heck of a wild card!

Let me illustrate with a few examples.  Nobody in their right mind would argue that food safety is unimportant.  Upton Sinclair's novel "The Jungle", serialized in 1905 and published in book form the following year, exposed the appalling conditions in Chicago's meat-packing industry, leading to the establishment of what we know today as the Food and Drug Administration.  This regulates the food and drug industries, their methods of production, the safety of their products, etc.  In order to make such control easier, it was advantageous for many smaller plants to be consolidated into fewer, larger ones, so that fewer inspectors could supervise and control processing and production.  Over time, this consolidation increased, particularly as it became more and more expensive to attract and retain sufficient inspectors with the specialized knowledge and qualifications needed to oversee operations.

Today, there are relatively few meat-processing plants, and those that exist tend to be very large.  Cattle, pigs, sheep, poultry, etc. are brought to them over long distances for processing.  When these plants were hit by COVID-19 infections and closed, consumer shortages inevitably resulted, since there was nowhere else to take the animals for processing.  Because they could not be slaughtered, their numbers increased very rapidly, augmented by ongoing production on the "factory farms" that feed animals into the system on a regular basis.  The result has been the euthanasia of literally millions of animals and birds, and the disposal of their carcasses in landfills - even while consumers were having to make do with a more limited selection and lower quantities of meat available in stores.  Farmers and processors have lost tens of millions of dollars, all because the system was set up for massively large-scale processing in relatively few plants.  A more distributed system, with a lot more smaller plants situated closer to the farms, would probably have been less hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic, and supplies would probably have been maintained at a more stable level.

Another example is "just-in-time" manufacturing.  In the name of efficiency and the most productive application of capital, factories have largely been set up to keep minimal stocks of their input components (raw materials, parts, etc.) on hand.  They receive them "just in time" to use them on the production line.  (This has been reinforced by so-called "inventory taxes" levied by some states.  Where these are applied, it actually costs businesses money to keep large stocks of inventory, rather than move it in and out as quickly as possible.)  As a result, the factory-to-consumer pipeline is a high-volume, low-reserve proposition.  Goods move from factory, to distributor, to store, to consumer on a day-by-day basis.  There are no major reserves anywhere, so that a breakdown in that chain of movement inevitably results in shortages downstream of the break within a very short time.  We saw this earlier in the pandemic, where auto factories shut down within a couple of weeks of critical supplies of parts being interrupted.  It's since spread to almost every high-technology industry.

That, in turn, has been made worse by the global supply chain.  In the name of saving money on wages, buildings and other production costs, many companies shifted production of their components and finished products to lower-cost countries.  China, in particular, has benefited from this over the past few decades.  When manufacturing in those countries, and/or shipping of their production from source to market, was affected by the pandemic, supplies already on hand dried up fast, leaving chronic shortages that are still plaguing us.  (The availability of personal protective equipment for hospital personnel, such as masks, gloves, gowns, etc., is a well-known example.)

The question now becomes:  should our production and distribution systems, facilities and practices be revised in the light of the pandemic?  This seems like an obvious solution to many people - but it will involve massive expense.  To set up new factories in our own country, and have many smaller facilities rather than fewer, larger ones, and keep reserves of products in case of disruptions . . . we're talking billions, probably trillions of dollars in the short to medium term to accomplish those changes.  They may be desirable, and offer the only practical alternative to what we have at present;  but if we can't afford them, they're going to remain a pipe-dream.  What's more, if private enterprise is expected to accomplish all that on its own, it'll soak up a vast amount of money - something those who own the money will resist, because it'll take profits out of their pockets.  Also, countries where our products are presently made will do everything in their power to keep their factories open.  They may reduce their prices so much that it's uneconomical to make goods anywhere else, or impose economic sanctions to make the cost of moving production much higher than it would otherwise have been.  (China is taking all those steps at present, and being very unpleasant to countries that resist its pressures.)

We're in an "irresistible force meets immovable object" moment here.  What will the outcome be?  Nobody knows right now.  The only thing we can be sure of is that disruptions are likely to continue.

The current shape of our economy has proved to be inadequate to cope with a crisis like the coronavirus pandemic.  We can reshape it to be more flexible and responsive, but only at a very high cost.  Are we willing to pay that, as a society?  Are the owners of current means of production willing to forgo short-term profit to change the way they do business, in the hope of long-term stability of production?  Are our politicians willing to forgo short-term tax money (particularly inventory taxes), and provide tax credits, in order to make it easier and more affordable for businesses to change their methods of production?

Nobody knows the answers to those questions right now.  What we do have is a stark choice between a centrally managed economy (the socialist ideal) and a free-market one, where businesses decide for themselves how to change and the market tells them (by voting with its wallet) whether they've made good choices or bad.  Given government ineptitude in handling the coronavirus pandemic, I know which option I prefer.

What about individuals and families?  Each of us needs to take these things into account in planning for our own future.  We should determine what our "essentials" are - the things that we really need to have on hand to cater for what's important to us.  Examples:

• We need a sound, reliable basic food supply.  It's not a bad idea for every family to have at least one month's food in reserve (what my wife calls a "deep pantry") in case of shortages or emergency.  I prefer a three-month supply, and some people try to keep a year or more's food on hand.
• If we rely on a vehicle for transportation, we should consider keeping basic consumables - oil, brake fluid, transmission fluid, filters, belts, etc. - on hand, so that if there's any disruption in factory supplies, we can keep it operating for at least a few months.  A few tools to allow us to change fluids and do other basic maintenance would not be amiss, either.  Also, we should probably be proactive in changing tires, shock-absorbers, etc. before they actually wear out, so that we can be sure they'll have a reasonable useful life if supplies of replacement components are disrupted.
• If we have particular interests, sports or hobbies, how about keeping enough reserve supplies that we can continue with them during interruptions?  For example, I enjoy the shooting sports.  I've made sure that I have a decent reserve supply of ammunition, so that in a sudden shortage (such as we're currently experiencing, and which looks set fair to continue for at least months, if not years) I can continue to enjoy my hobby.
• What about clothing?  Nobody can stock a complete spare wardrobe, but if you have specific needs - business clothing for office wear, or workshop clothing for blue-collar workers, etc. - there's no harm in keeping a small reserve supply of it, particularly safety gear such as work boots, head and eye protection, and so on.  That way, a shortage of supply won't prevent you working, or be embarrassing if you have to wear visibly old, worn-out clothing.
• We live in an electrically powered world.  How many of our essential items of equipment rely on batteries?  Do we have adequate stocks of spare batteries?  What if we suffer local brownouts or blackouts if the electricity supply is cut off due to a lack of spare parts?  Do we have emergency measures (e.g. battery powered flashlights or lanterns) in place?  What about recharging things like cellphones, tablets, laptop computers, etc.?  A small generator (or, at the very least, a solar charger) might well be regarded as an indispensable accessory today.  If we have well-stocked freezers, it's doubly so.

Those are just a few ideas.  If you have more, please share them with us in Comments.

Peter

The demon of inflation has lost more of the chains holding it back

Demonocracy is known for its graphic illustrations of financial facts and figures that can be so large we simply can't grasp them.  It puts them into visual terms to which we can relate.  For example, here's $1 trillion in $100 bills, stacked up and arranged neatly together alongside objects with which we're familiar (a Boeing 747, an eighteen-wheeler, the White House, etc.) for scale.  Click the image for a larger view.

Demonocracy has used the same technique to visualize the current US stimulus package in response to the coronavirus pandemic.  It's frightening when you realize just how big it is - and understand that the whole thing is based on borrowings and "printed money", generated out of nowhere, with no economic reality to back it up.  Here it is in video form.  I recommend watching it in full-screen mode to get the full impact.

You can see the whole thing as a Web page at this link.  It's even more frightening like that than in a small video window.

Finally, remember that you and I - every single US taxpayer - is on the hook to repay that money, sooner or later.  I don't think that's economically or mathematically feasible, which leaves only two options.  Both may happen, separately or together.

1. The rate of inflation will be deliberately allowed to grow, rendering "current" dollars almost worthless in relation to "historical" dollars.  Old debts can then be repaid with new dollars, a much less painful process.  Unfortunately, that leads to hyperinflation.  Just look what happened to Weimar Germany when it tried to do exactly that to repay war reparations.
   
   
   
   
2. The US government will simply ignore fiscal reality and continue to borrow money to fund its expenditure.  This will see the deficit climb, and climb, and climb, until eventually no-one will buy US bonds or securities any more, because the "debt overhang" has become so great as to threaten the stability of the world's economic system.  At that point, the US government's ability to pay for all its programs will collapse - as will the US dollar as a world reserve currency, and the US economy as a whole.

As I said, the really scary prospect is that we may see both of those things happening simultaneously.  During the previous recession, the Federal Reserve ended up as the largest "buyer" of securities issued by the US Treasury, effectively printing money to pay for printed securities that weren't worth the paper they were printed on.  It's doing the same thing now, as international demand for US securities can't absorb the trillions of dollars required for the current pandemic stimulus package.  The Federal Reserve's balance sheet has grown astronomically over the past couple of months, and the growth shows no signs of slowing down.

There are those who argue that the current situation may lead to deflation, rather than inflation, due to asset prices taking a major hit.  In the short term, they may well be correct.  However, in the long term, the lesson of history is clear.  Dilute the currency in any way (adulterating precious metals with base, or printing money without any economic foundation to support it) and sooner or later, the chickens come home to roost.  Inflation is the inevitable result.

I think we're already seeing some of that affecting the consumer.  Have you noticed food prices lately?  I know they're attributed to market conditions, but I think they also reflect the underlying reality of inflationary pressure on the consumer.  I've demonstrated several times in the past that real consumer inflation, as measured by objective sources such as Shadowstats or the Chapwood Index, has been far higher than official figures.  As Miss D. and I do our shopping every week, we're seeing inflation even higher than that.  Some items' prices have increased by more than 25% since March!

What will dumping an extra few trillion dollars into the economy, money created out of nothing from nowhere, do to the rate of inflation over time?  I think we all know.

Peter

"A Band-Aid on a chest wound"

That's how the Guardian describes the rush by illegal immigrants to get in line for California's handout of taxpayer dollars to them.

Last month, California made headlines when it announced a first-in-the-nation plan to create a $125m coronavirus relief fund for undocumented workers. But its rollout got off to a chaotic start this week, with thousands of calls flooding phone lines, creating huge delays, and so many visitors to the official website that it crashed for hours.

Adding to already overwhelmed telephone systems, the state issued last-minute directives that said callers needed to reach a live person in order to apply for aid.

Nonprofits across the state selected to distribute the money reported huge demand as people rushed to secure a spot for the first-come, first-served program.

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, or Chirla, one of 12 nonprofits tapped by the state to distribute the funds, received more than 1.1m phone calls on day one of the program – 630,000 calls just within the first 90 minutes of opening the hotline.

“We knew the number of applicants would be high, but we were just overwhelmed,” Chirla’s executive director told the New York Times.

Lucas Zucker, the policy and communications director for a nonprofit north-west of Los Angeles that advocates for social and environmental justice, wrote on Twitter that the program’s rocky rollout was predictable.

“Websites and phone lines across the state crashed. Our team saw so much frustration, anger and sadness from folks just trying to feed their kids. The need here is way too large to be met with a one-time disaster relief fund. We’re putting a Band-Aid on an open chest wound,” wrote Zucker.

. . .

Undocumented immigrants make up an estimated 10% of the state’s workforce ... [there are an] estimated 2 million undocumented immigrants living in California.

There's more at the link.

Note the last paragraph cited above.  I daresay the sheer volume of calls demanding a share of that money gives the lie to the 2 million estimate.  (My law enforcement contacts in California privately estimate the number of illegal aliens there to be at least 5 million, possibly more.  They base that on their experience of traffic stops, criminal investigations, and so on.  I believe them.)

Of course, the state of California should not be rewarding illegal aliens for their presence with taxpayer dollars.  That's flatly insane, and can do nothing except encourage further illegal entry (which is probably the point, given the nature and policies of that state's government).  However, this stampede for assistance highlights the economic plight of the marginally employed.  We've already seen that many are apparently returning to Mexico under the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.  They have no jobs there, and Mexico has few (if any) social assistance or entitlement programs to help them.  Those who remain in this country aren't eligible for the federal government's assistance or stimulus package, yet are also at risk of losing their jobs not just temporarily, but in the long term, as the economy contracts.  To say that they're becoming desperate is to put it mildly.

What does this forbode for social stability?  I don't think it's anything good.  I expect demonstrations, even riots, in California as the illegals demand more sustenance to which they're not legally entitled (at least, not under federal law).  I expect California's government to cave in to their demands, and expend more taxpayer funds on them.  That, in turn, will arouse resentment and anger among taxpayers, who see their money being wasted on those who have no right to it.  I don't think that's going to end well.

Will this have an impact on the November 2020 elections in that state?  Is the special election there earlier this month an early "canary in a coal mine" for a sea change in California politics?  Who knows?  We can but hope . . .

Peter

The coronavirus may damage nature for years to come

Having worked in the Third World (specifically sub-Saharan Africa) for many years, I've been expecting an uptick in human predation on the environment, due to many people being thrown out of work by the coronavirus pandemic and becoming desperate to survive.  It looks like that's already happening worldwide.  The BBC reports:

You might be forgiven for thinking that the global lockdown measures keeping us all at home can only have been good for the environment ... But in the world’s tropical forest regions, it’s another story. Environmental agencies have reported an uptick in deforestation during lockdowns, as well as increases in poaching, animal trafficking and illegal mining worldwide. The trends are alarming, environmental experts say, and could be hard to reverse.

“This narrative of nature having been given a break during Covid, it’s not entirely accurate. It’s accurate in cities and peri-urban areas,” says Sebastian Troeng, executive vice-president of Conservation International. “But unfortunately in the rural areas, the situation is almost the inverse.”

. . .

Brazil and Colombia have seen an uptick in illegal logging and mining; the Philippines has also reported illegal logging and wildlife trafficking; Kenya has reported increased bushmeat and ivory poaching, as well as increases in charcoal production, which has been illegal since 2018; Cambodia has seen an increase in poaching, illegal logging and mining; and similar reports have come from Venezuela and Madagascar.
Concerns have also been raised in Malaysia and Indonesia, which have the highest deforestation rates in South-east Asia, while in Ecuador, indigenous and afro-descendent communities have reported increased illegal mining in the Choco and Amazon rainforests.

There are two main factors that could be driving these trends, says Troeng. The first is criminal groups and opportunists expanding their activities, taking advantage of lockdown and diminished forest monitoring and government presence. The second is that people living in these rural areas are facing increased economic pressures and are forced to rely more heavily on nature for food and income. In some cases, such as Madagascar and Cambodia, there has been a large urban-rural migration as people lose their jobs in the cities or return home to be with their families during quarantine, which has put extra pressure on local environments.

“What worries me is that we’re seeing these emerging trends, and they’re not going to be reversed when Covid measures are lifted because they’re related to economic factors. So my anticipation is that we’re going to have to deal with this for potentially months and years,” says Troeng.

There's more at the link.

In my old African stamping-grounds, this is particularly evident.  When so many people are surviving on the ragged edge of starvation, any added burden like the coronavirus pandemic will drive those barely "making it", now deprived of what little opportunity they had, to turn to anything available - even if that means destroying nature around them.  It's that, or die, as far as they're concerned.  The BBC again:

It isn't just for food or money, either.  Animals that compete with humans for scarce resources will be regarded as a threat, and eliminated on the simple basis of economic competition.  Headlines from Botswana this week bear that out.

Wildlife authorities in Botswana, the country with the world’s biggest elephant population, are seeking an explanation for the death of 56 of the animals in the north west of the country.

Over the past week 12 carcasses were found, adding to the 44 found in a week in March, the environment ministry said in a statement on Tuesday. Tusks hadn’t been removed from the elephants, indicating that they were not the victims of poachers, the department said.

. . .

Elephants have become a political issue in the southern African nation with President Mokgweetsi Masisi last year lifting a hunting ban and saying more needed to be done to stop the 135,000 elephants in the country from damaging crops and occasionally trampling villagers.

Again, more at the link.  Bold, underlined text is my emphasis.

I know that part of the world.  The only income - I repeat, the only income - in the area comes from tourism to the Okavango Delta, one of the greatest game reserves in the world.  It's an almost unbelievably beautiful place, one that I hope to visit again before I die . . . but the people living there must compete with wildlife to survive.  As long as they derive income from tourists, that's not a problem.  Take away the tourists (as has happened over the past couple of months), and it's a different story.  I'm willing to bet that those 56 elephants were probably poisoned, just as poachers in Zimbabwe have used cyanide to poison elephants in nature reserves and steal their tusks.  If it's a question of "we eat our crops, or the elephants eat our crops", the elephants will go to the wall.

Ecological and environmental sensitivity is basically a rich person's prerogative.  Those living on the margins are just trying to stay alive, and they'll do whatever it takes - even if that means destroying the world they live in.  As far as they're concerned, they're living for today.  Tomorrow?  If they live long enough to see tomorrow, they'll worry about it then.

That's already been a death sentence for ecologically sensitive areas and endangered animal (and human) populations all over the world.  It's likely to get worse, more's the pity, because the richer First World is preoccupied right now with economic survival and regrowth.  It doesn't have money to spare to help with Third World problems.

Peter

Quote of the day

From Tamara:

Peter