4/14-15/20: Today’s COVID-19 update has it
all, starting with death and economic destruction, which isn’t funny in the
least.
Amidst all the suffering and pain, we have the president proudly
comparing himself to the villainous Captain Bligh. Throw in sex dolls, a
Kellyanne Conway sighting – which in no
way relates to sex dolls – and a lesson
on the Tenth Amendment.
____________________
The powers not delegated to the United States
by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the
States respectively, or to the people.
Tenth Amendment, 1791
____________________
First, the pain: 2,072,269 confirmed cases of the COVID-19 virus,
worldwide. The United States with the most of any nation on earth: 640,185
cases. The U.S. with the highest number of deaths: 28,306.
Grim numbers, growing grimmer.
We also have evidence of avalanching economic damage. The
International Monetary Fund warns that the downturn coming will
be the worst since the Great Depression. Warning lights are blinking across the
board. Retail sales in the U.S. plunged 8.7% in March, the
biggest monthly drop by far, going back to 1967. Bank profits are being hammered,
with JPMorgan Chase down 69% and Wells Fargo 89%. Oil has dropped below $20 a barrel,
good news for drivers if we had anywhere to go. That’s bad news for oil
producing nations like Russia and Saudi Arabia, fracking operators in Eastern
Ohio and Western Pennsylvania, and U.S. workers manning the machinery. The city
government of Tulsa, Oklahoma, an oil town, has had to institute a hiring freeze. Budgets are going
to be busting in cities and towns from Boston to Bakersfield. Tattoo artists
don’t have customers to tattoo. No one wants pet sitters to come to their homes.
Elvis-impersonators, street musicians, and mimes have nowhere to ply their
skills.
Most shocking of all, the sex doll business is deflating. Normally,
you might expect that a company like Silicon Wives would be doing a booming
business, what with millions of lonely guys stuck at home dreaming of silicon
babes. Sadly, China supplies most of the silicon ladies Americans covet for silicon
sex. So even businesses that deal in sex dolls are hurting.
The question is who can save us – if anyone can. And here we have a
Kellyanne Conway sighting.
The president has made no secret of his
desire to reboot the U.S. economy, on or before May 1. Most health
experts, including his own top adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, warn that would be
too soon. But to be fair, not that Trump is ever fair to opponents, he can’t
win. He must choose between the Scylla of deadly virus and the Charybdis of
cratering commerce.
We all know where the president’s true focus
lies. The “jobs report” that consumes him comes out on the night of November 3,
when the votes in the next election are counted. With that report foremost in
mind, Trump is talking more and more about ditching the social distancing and getting
America rolling again.
This is where Kellyanne comes in. “The most important thing to
recognize,” she said on the Fox Business Network yesterday, “is that most
suited, best person to juice the Donald Trump economy is Donald Trump.”
The problem, of course, is that while Trump might want to open
everything back up and start bragging about his job-creating magic again, most
Americans (81% in a poll this week) prefer to keep
social distancing in place, even if it means further damage to the economy. Plus,
there’s that whole Tenth Amendment thing.
*
“The
federal government does not have absolute power.”
WHEN TRUMP insisted during his wild and wooly Monday press
conference that he had “total control” and could order states to open up, even
conservatives realized this was an authoritarian bridge too far. Sen. Marco
Rubio said the final decision would rest with the
governors of the territories and states. Federal guidance might help them
decide, Rubio admitted. “But the Constitution and
common sense dictates these decisions be made at the state level.”
“The federal government does not have absolute
power,” Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming tweeted in response to Trump’s announcement
of “total control.”
Then she quoted the Tenth Amendment, just to help
the orange galoot in the White House figure it out.
Even a staunch proponent of presidential power
like John Yoo, who argued that George W. Bush had the right to torture
terrorist suspects if he wanted, blasted Trump for overreach.
“The federal government does not have that power.
The Constitution’s grant of limited, enumerated powers to the national
government does not include the right to regulate either public health or all
business in the land,” Yoo pointed out. “Our federal system reserves the
leading role over public health to state governors. States possess the ‘police
power’ to regulate virtually all activity within their borders.”
Blown off course by powerful conservative winds, Trump made it
plain he planned to steer a bizarre new course on Tuesday. Inexplicably, he compared
himself, in a tweet, to Captain Bligh:
After what had to be one of the epic presidential temper tantrums
during Monday’s press conference, Trump proved Tuesday that he was no more capable
of introspection than a 239-pound bag of cement. Faced with growing criticism
as the virus spread, as Americans died by the hundreds every day, and the
economy imploded, Trump was implying that he had what the governors needed. He
had the medical supplies, the support personnel, the funds. If people didn’t kiss
his ass and tell him he was the greatest sea captain ever to sail the Seven
Seas – well – it would be,
“So easy.”
To what? To deny them help?
To deny the people of certain states the resources needed to stop the spread of
COVID-19?
This, then, was who this terrible human being really is.
*
A QUICK ROUNDUP OF OTHER important developments: Trump announced
that the U.S. would be halting funding to the World Health
Organization. Typically, we provide between $400 and $500 million annually.
Trump said he was taking this action because the WHO had been “pro-China” in
the way it described the outbreak and had a “role in severely mismanaging and
covering up the spread of the coronavirus.”
In other words, it was the WHO that screwed up.
And China.
Not Trump.
The stock market rose again Tuesday, then fell back Wednesday,
with the Dow Jones settling at 23,504. Economists are offering up all kinds of dire
predictions. A poll of voters under age 45 shows that 20% have
lost jobs, 19% have had hours reduced, and 13% are furloughed. Goldman Sachs has
warned that the economic damage will be four times as great as during the Great
Recession. The headline number for unemployment is expected to hit 15%, and
analysists say, “even this understates the severity of the situation.” Millions
more will give up looking for work.
(The experts predict an “unprecedented” rebound in the second half
of this year. Hopefully, they’re right.)
Meanwhile, you might argue that President Trump has been
provided with a clear case study of what happens when prompt action to arrest the
spread of the virus is not taken. South Dakota has been one of a handful of
states that managed to avoid stay-at-home orders. Now the city of Sioux Falls is
one of the hottest spots in the United States for the spread of the
virus.
According to the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, the
outbreak of COVID-19 that forced closure of the Smithfield Foods pork packing
plant a few days ago has left 518 workers infected. Another 126 infections have
been traced back to the plant. An employee in the electronics department at
Walmart is sick. Two workers at StarMark Cabinetry are ill. That business is closed
for two weeks. An employee at Get-n-Go and another at O’Reilly Auto Parts are ailing.
A daycare worker at Truks-N-Trykes has tested positive, meaning that every other
employee, every member of every other employee’s family, every child who uses
the facility, and every family member of every child at Truks-N-Trykes is now
at risk.
So it goes, day after awful day.
