We're Number One!

 

I was reading the other day about a scandal rocking Peru. It involves nearly 500 current and former government officials who used their connections to get Covid vaccine even though they weren’t eligible.

They include a former President, Health Minister and Foreign Minister. At least the health minister apologized in a public letter, calling her decision the worst mistake she ever made. “It won't be enough to ask for forgiveness to all of those I have disappointed," she said.

Meanwhile, in Argentina, the President fired his health minister after learning dozens of officials and their friends had also gotten vaccine shots they didn’t qualify for under the country’s guidelines. Then he released a list naming 70 of them.

Still, the United States is in a good position to claim we are Number One in Covid Vaccine scandals. Give credit to Horry County, South Carolina, where a lot of government officials and their associates jumped the line in front of the county’s elderly.

How many?

Well, the state Department of Health and Environmental Control reported 2,319 people affiliated with Horry County government got the vaccine, and a local CBS affiliate pointed out there were only 2,250 people currently employed by the county.

But, in a larger sense, you could blame a whole lot of Republicans and Democrats on the state and federal levels for creating the unholy mess that is still our national effort to get Covid vaccines out to the general population.

Now it is true that we are doing a lot of things right, and that a lot more people are getting vaccinated against Covid than ever before. The numbers change from week to week, and from people who got their first dose to those fully vaccinated.

Alaska, with just over 13 percent of its population fully vaccinated, has the best record. West Virginia comes in second with 11.5 percent, and New Mexico is third with 11. California, Utah and Iowa are all under 6 per-cent. Don’t look for a simple answer why. It’s really complicated.

But, it also seems as if every state in the Union shares the same big problem. They all have priority lists, all those lists are all different, and all have changed. And, worse of all, they don’t actually mean what you think.

If you are on a priority list, you are supposed to get the vaccine before people who aren’t on it. But, you aren’t supposed to compete with thousands of others who have the same priority.

Now I could be wrong. Somewhere, in some state or county in our vast nation, there could be a health department which has a priority list, strictly follows it, and actually gives the vaccines to the people who need it the most.

Which, of course, is one of the big problems. Figuring out who needs it the most.

In a way, that’s a trick question. There are so many competing needs, so many good reasons to pick one person or one group over another, that it would be hard to find any group of people to make up that kind of list.

But, is it asking too much to try and get a priority list that actually matches the availability of vaccine?

There is enormous political pressure from different groups to get on the priority list, and to be placed in front of others. The elderly, because they are more susceptible and are more likely to die. Police because they are more likely to be exposed while doing vital work. The first responders, who have to bring the sick to hospitals.

But some places originally gave priority status to police and not the ambulance crews. Or to the ambulance crews and not the people who cleaned the ambulances. Or the people who cleaned the ambulances but not the mechanics who had to work on them.

There are stories about every doctor in a hospital getting vaccinated, including doctors who only did on-line treatment or who reviewed X-rays and CT scans remotely.

Teachers, bus drivers, people stocking the shelves in supermarkets - all of them in positions where they could contract or spread Covid. Who goes first?

Well, our politicians - the ones who hire the people who make the lists - had a good idea. Put everyone on the list. Well, not everyone. Just enough so there were five or ten or 20 people for every available dose. There will be more vaccine eventually, and until then, they can go on a waiting list. Hey, what could go wrong?

It sort of reminds me of what happened to the financial markets when the housing market was going up quickly and lots of people were making money buying and selling houses. Others were making more by buying and selling mortgages, and refinancing mortgages, and going to court to sue people who defaulted on their mortgages.

Some traders had a great idea. They put a thousand mortgages into one big financial package, then split it up with the least risky ones sold as a separate financial instrument. It was called a junk bond, for obvious reasons. Paid great interest, carried great risk.

The financial magic came when the best of the worst got a better rating than the worse of the worst. That group was higher rated and cost the most. Buyers got great interest rates and the  bond market was shooting up. Everyone was doing great.

Until the people who couldn’t afford their mortgages in the first place couldn’t find people who would buy their homes. More and more, faster and faster.You might remember the collapse, even though it was way back in 2008.

Back then there were lots of competing mortgages - no down payment, balloon payments so you only paid interest for years (as long as the assessed value of your home remained high enough to cover your debt, just like today’s reverse mortgages) and no-documentation loans. Heck, some deals let you borrow more than your house was worth.

Then the housing market collapsed. So did much of the U.S. economy. It took down a lot of businesses, here and around the world that had invested in the various mortgage schemes.

Sorry to go so far off the point. Which is this - it might be a good idea to inject some reality into our vaccine priority decision making. Or, at least, stop pretending we are doing anything except trying to get credit for creating priority lists that don’t really do much.

How about a national standard that would set a top priority for workers who actually work with Covid patients on a daily basis. Then a lower priority for those who regularly encounter people with Covid - people like police officers who are actually on the streets.

Or, if you don’t like that, how about looking at the data on who is getting the disease and who is in regular contact with them. What do they have in common? Where is the exposure risk?

Oh, that’s right. Let’s give top priority to people who go to annual motorcycle rallies in Sturgis, or CPAC conventions and cheer loudly that they won’t wear masks. Is invading the capital a reason to go on a priority list?

Well, scratch that last one. They were probably anti-vaccers anyway.

Win Some, Lose Some

 As usual, things are changing so fast that the blogs I start to write are obsolete before I finish them. Life is like that.

I started to write about the wreckage that was once the Republican Party, and why it’s important for political parties to actually stand for something, not just pledge allegiance to one person.

I was enjoying a fantasy about replacing the American Flag with a Trump 2020 flag, but, well, too much water had gone under that particular bridge.

Then I started on a blog about the Senate finally seizing its last, best chance to shake off the legacy of Donald Trump - you know, watching Republicans finally get out from their deal with the devil - and you saw what happened there.

Also tried to explain the inevitability of it all, how every political party will win some elections and lose some elections. But I Iooked at the 2020 Congressional vote again and saw the Democrats managed to do both at the same time.

You may have noticed the last four paragraphs you’ve read each contain an old saying, one that has become a cliche. That’s because they still work.

I know some people who need to take powerful drugs to control pain, then taper off and have some really bad side effects. A deal with the devil, they say.

Win some, lose some is so common that people no longer remember when it was first used, although baseball and gambling are the two most likely sources.

Water under the bridge? It seems like just about any position Ted Cruz takes, then changes a few weeks later. That was water under the bridge. To be fair, he has to keep up with the opinions of Donald Trump, which can’t be easy.

Which brings me to my new, mature reflection on the modern GOP, a party that agreed to take in a whole batch of crazies in order to win one last national election. The party is still slowly waking up to the fact that Donald Trump is not really gone, and they may never have the ability to get rid of him and his family. Certainly not when he can raise so much money by just hinting he isn’t through with politics.

And how could that Law and Order party ever give up its support from the Boogaloo Bois, the QAnon believers, the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters or the Wolverine Watchmen?

Well, one more old saying - never say never. Who knows what might happen when some loyal Republican officeholders decide they would like to run for some federal office with more responsibility than being a copy machine?

Now, the final old saying. Win the battle, lose the war. That’s what the Republicans seem to have done. The party took in a lot of Trump’s die-hard supporters - you’ve probably seen them marching and shouting - and it gave them the bump needed for him to win the election four years ago.

But, they also chased away people in the Republican Party who didn’t share their enthusiasm for all things Trumpian. The GOP’s initial response seemed to be “who cares.” Later, it changed to “we don’t want you if you don’t want him.”

So, the support for Trump among registered Republicans has never gone down. In fact, it is bigger than when he started. And, the number of voters in the party keeps shrinking. Which is really bad when you realize how many Republicans are over 65.

You could say the GOP won its battle against Hillary Clinton, and they lost the war - the one for the popular vote, for support among the general public and for a meaningful future roll in our federal government.

Oh, there will still be some victories for them. Nothing in politics is a straight line. Some of Joe Biden’s programs won’t get passed, or get changed so much they will be just a pale shadow of what he wanted.

Some of his judicial appointments won’t get approved. Some of his tax plans won’t pass, either.

You might say he will win some and lose some. Just like every other president the country has had, going back to George Washington, who famously warned our nation not to create political parties for fear it would create divisions in our new nation. He also warned us not to get involved with the affairs in Europe, which lasted for well over a century. World War I marked an end to that idea.

It raises a question - if every President wins some things and loses some others, how do we rate them?

Well, the only Hall of Fame we seem to have for Presidents is in South Dakota. That’s Mount Rushmore, where 60-foot high faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt were carved into the Black Hills between 1927 and 1941.

No face of Kennedy, Reagan, Nixon or Trump, even though that last ex-president thought he should join the group.

There actually may be some other Presidents who deserve to be considered among our greatest and best. You could make a good argument for Roosevelt or Truman or Lyndon Johnson. Throw in Dwight Eisenhower in as well. 

After all, Eisenhower expanded Social Security, quietly opposed Joseph McCarthy, signed the 1957 Civil Rights Act and sent Army troops into Arkansas to integrate schools in Little Rock after federal courts ordered it. And, when his term was over, he went back to his farm in Pennsylvania.

 

You might also create a Hall of Shame wing for past presidents like Herbert Hoover, just like the Baseball Hall of Fame could create a Hall of Shame wing for steroid users and other bad behavior. I could think of another one, too.

Maybe the baseball idea of win some, lose some has to be looked at differently. I think we should be asking “what did you win, and what did you lose?”

Roosevelt gets credit for working to stop Adolph Hitler, and Truman desegregated the armed forces and led the recovery after World War II. You might add stopping Soviet expansion during the Cold War. Johnson gave us the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Trump has managed to make some very rich people a lot richer, by increasing the divide in our country between the rich and poor. Don’t send me nasty notes about how the super-rich earned it by their hard work and inventiveness, unless you first explain how not having to pay taxes qualifies as hard work and inventiveness.

So, let Congress fight over the economic relief and stimulation plan, let Republicans and Democrats fight over political appointments and the Green New Deal, and let weather and international problems and the re-opening of our economy continue to grab our attention.

This blog, at least, should be current for at least a couple of more weeks.

(Footnote - The faces carved on Mt. Rushmore violate a peace treaty with the Lakota Sioux, that promised them undisturbed use and occupation of the Black Hills, which the tribe considers sacred land.

The treaty was broken after gold was discovered and settlers moved in. General William Tecumseh Sherman signed the treaty in 1866.

You know how it goes. Win some, lose some.

Lord knows, I tried

 

When I started blogging, I tried to follow a few simple rules.

I tried not to write about things I don’t know anything about. When I had a strong opinion about something, I tried to back it up with facts. And, when I had written two or three blogs about a single subject, I tried not to do it again for a while so that people wouldn’t get bored.

I tried. Lord knows I tried.

But, the Republicans just won’t stop. They still keep doing the same old things, trying to pretend that there are some magic words that - if they chant them long enough - reality will change.

It must be nice to think you can go to sleep with your computer playing the latest argument about how Donald Trump won the election and that, when you wake up, he will be back in the White House.

Sleep. Dream. Win. Make America Great Again. Build it back better. Oh, wait, that’s the wrong channel.

It doesn’t make much sense to try and catalog all the things that have happened since the election, because the list is endless. Now, to be fair, not all Democrats have covered themselves with glory, and not all Republicans have gone off the rails. Heck, I don’t even know how to rate the press coverage lately. 

Maybe a “B” for some of the national media, maybe a “D” for Facebook. 

Marjorie Taylor Greene is a good example of what has gone wrong with the GOP, and we don’t even know what she did to make up for it. That was explained in a secret meeting.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can look it up. Or, you can just ignore her - you will probably be happier that way.

Now just one more truth about why I haven’t been blogging lately. My son and his wife and children are having some work done on their home, and are living with us. That turned my family of two into a family of seven. So, instead of blogging, I have been running around chasing a three year old, and being chased by her. When her brother gets home from school, there is a chance to play with Lego. If the weather ever gets warm, we can go outside and clean up after my dogs.

Having a good time with kids is an excellent therapy for political obsession.

But, enough of that. Let’s look to the future. I’ll start with some random thoughts and some interesting questions. At least interesting for me.

First is the issue of bipartisanship. You know. Republicans keep criticizing president Biden for not being bipartisan, not cooperating with them, not sharing policy decisions with them.  Essentially they are charging that he is acting just like they did for the past four years.

My question - a two parter - is just who is he supposed to co-operate with? Which Republican Party? The one that decided to keep Liz Cheney in her leadership roll in the House of Representatives after she voted to impeach Trump, or the one that solidly supported Marjorie Taylor Greene?

See, it’s a good thing you looked it up. I don’t have to explain it to you.

Now here’s another question. What happens in six months when the whole nation can see the contrast between our current president and the last one. In politics, work on the next election starts the day after the votes are counted.

So, while Democrats have to figure out how to deal with Republicans - and learn who they are - the Republicans have to do the same thing. They have to find candidates. They have to raise money. They have to explain how all those people who stormed Congress in an effort to overthrow the nation’s popular vote weren’t really doing what Donald Trump told them to do.

You know, the guy who promised he would be right there with them. 

“We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” he told the crowd. Then Trump told them “…we’re going to the Capitol, and we’re going to try and give.…we’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don’t need any of our help. We’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country. So let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.”

 You know what happened next.

So, let’s watch the Republican Party try to figure out what they stand for and who their candidates will be. It should tell the nation a lot. Maybe they will even try to come up with a party platform saying what they stand for and where they want to take the country.

Their decision not to have one during the last Presidential election seems, in hindsight, a bad idea. The idea was Donald Trump’s, but I don’t recall him saying that it was a mistake. I don’t recall him ever saying that anything he did was a mistake.

I could be wrong, of course. If I am, that would be my mistake. See how easy it is to say?

So, what else is there to worry about. Let me say it another way - what will I be blogging about next?

Well, there’s the flawed belief that everything will get back to normal once the vaccine is given to everyone. That’s just a few months away. But a lot of the businesses that vanished will never come back, which will leave a lot of people unemployed and a lot of business owners in a very bad place.

The 450,000 dead will still be gone, and a lot of the 26 million people who contracted it may have lingering health problems. Then there are the problems that will shake the real estate market to the core, and the huge disruptions that will follow our nation’s shift away from oil and coal to renewable energy.

That we could stop easily if we don’t make the change. What is there to lose, except maybe New York City and Boston and New Orleans to flooding, half the state of California and most of Florida from rising oceans and wildfires, and the massive disruption when our population shifts out of those places to the rural heartland and starts demanding public transportation, schools and hospitals. Yes, there are costs for staying with oil as a long-term source of power.

Which gets me to my last question of the day. What will the Saudi Royal Family do with its oil?

Now the House of Saud has grown a lot since the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was established in the family’s name in 1932. There are about 15,000 members today, almost none of whom take part in the running of Saudi Arabia.

The net worth of the Royal Family is estimated at about $1.5 trillion - which makes Bill Gates a piker by comparison - and most of that wealth is in its unimaginably vast underground oil reserves.

Which would be fine if the world weren’t moving away from fossil fuels to produce energy. Imagine that every wind farm, every solar panel and every electric car is removing just a bit of the demand for all that Saudi oil.

In 20 or 30 years - maybe more, maybe less - there won’t be much demand for that oil for power plants or gasoline. The world will have more oil reserves than it can possibly use, no matter how many alternate uses there are for it.

So, the Saudis are working hard to convert their oil to money, and to invest it in other things. But, there is so much will money that it can really upset the market. Just how many half-vacant office buildings can they buy up in London and New York and Tokyo? And what happens when they try to sell even a small portion of those vast holdings.

Besides, who can the Saudis trust. Everyone will welcome their investments, but what happens when they try to take their cash out of Russia or Germany? What will get nationalized in Africa or even by the other countries in the Middle East.

They could invest in Russia, of course, but Russia already has oligarchs. In fact, the richest man in Russia today is Vladimir Putin, whose net worth reportedly went from $18.1 billion a year ago to $19.7 billion today, a neat trick on his government salary. He was one of only two of the top ten Russians whose wealth went up this year.

So do the Saudis really want to invest in Russia? In the United States, where the Republicans are split and rioters stormed the Capital?

Somehow, I don’t see them investing heavily in Israel or with the Palestinians. Or even the Chinese.

Enough deep thoughts. I’m going back to playing with the grandkids.