Patrick's Notebook

by Darmi Msarko

Visually, rhetorically, and thematically, this week’s Republican National Convention treated the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as an economic and health problem President Trump had conquered through strong leadership.

There were very few masks in any of the live audiences, including among the 1,500 guests invited to watch Trump’s speech. The White House said “those in close proximity to Trump will be tested,” CNN’s Jim Acosta reported. “But many will not be tested.” And a senior White House official, when asked about the lack of masks and social distancing, told Acosta, “Everybody is going to catch this thing eventually.”

Lots of Americans, of course, have already caught the coronavirus, and one statistic illustrated for many the ongoing toll of COVID-19. “As of tonight, coronavirus has infected nearly six million Americans, with more than 180,000 souls lost,” MSNBC’s Brian Williams noted Thursday night. “It’s worth repeating, more Americans have died from COVID-19 during the four days of this Republican convention than the number of Americans killed on 9/11.” » Read the rest of this entry «

by Boston Globe Editorial Board

The postmaster general has proved himself unfit to serve as the Postal Service chief and has undermined American democracy in the processPostmaster General Louis DeJoy testified during a hearing before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Monday, in Washington. The committee was holding a hearing on “Protecting the Timely Delivery of Mail, Medicine, and Mail-in Ballots.”

With the election less than 70 days away, the United States Postal Service under the Trump administration has failed to assure Americans that their ballots will be counted should they choose to vote by mail. Given that unfortunate reality in an election that will probably have more mail-in ballots than any other national election in the country’s history, it has become clear that Louis DeJoy, in his role as Postmaster General, has only further undermined public confidence in American democracy. In his short tenure, he has proved himself unfit to serve as USPS chief, and he must resign immediately.

Since DeJoy has taken over the post office, the agency has curtailed overtime pay, removed over 600 mail sorting machines, and either locked up or taken out letter collection boxes. These supposedly cost-saving measures have resulted in slowing down mail delivery, potentially disenfranchising voters at a massive scale come November if their mail-in ballots are not processed or delivered on time. While DeJoy has stated that he will suspend any further changes at the Postal Service until after the election, he has refused to undo the damage that has already been done, such as reinstalling any of the dismantled sorting machines. » Read the rest of this entry «

from RawStory.com

New York’s attorney general Letitia James has filed a federal lawsuit challenging changes at the U.S. Postal Service that could impact the November election.

President Donald Trump’s new postmaster general Louis DeJoy has been grilled by lawmakers over recent changes that have resulted in delays and weakened confidence about mail-in voting, and James announced that her office was challenging those new rules, reported CNN.

“This USPS slowdown is nothing more than a voter suppression tactic,” James said in a statement. “Yet, this time, these authoritarian actions are not only jeopardizing our democracy and fundamental right to vote, but the immediate health and financial well-being of Americans across the nation.”

Two other states have challenged USPS operational changes under DeJoy that have disrupted delivery across the country before the election, when more voters than ever are expected to cast absentee or mail-in ballots due to the coronavirus.

James has also filed lawsuits as part of her investigations into the Trump Organization and its dealings.

from Salon.com

The Trump-Putin election scheming is laid out in the Republican-led Intelligence Committee’s 1,000-page report

It’s a red-letter, if sad, day on the hypocrisy beat when after three years a Republican-majority Senate Intelligence Committee comes out with a 1,000-page report finding there was a whole lot of direct contact between the Trump 2016 campaign with Russian intelligence operators.

You know, the opposite of what Donald Trump has argued forcefully over and over again is a hoax.

Even Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the new committee chairman, says while it does not represent “collusion” — a conclusion that prompted Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) to say Rubio was not reading the same report he did — he did acknowledge a whole lot of interaction between Team Trump and Team Russia.

Of course, Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III also would not put the “collusion” label on myriad interactions with Russians, for different reasons, to avoid a political conclusion. That allowed Trump, Attorney General William P. Barr and supporters of the president, including the convicted Roger Stone and former campaign chair Paul Manafort, to repeat that lack of labeling as a launch point to investigate the investigators. » Read the rest of this entry «

written by Victor Davis Hanson

In a flash, it’s been blown away, revealing the barbarism beneath. The seeds of destruction were planted long agoA protester burns a flag in Portland, Ore., August 1, 2020

Nine months ago, New York was a thriving, though poorly governed, metropolis. It was coasting on the more or less good governance of its prior two mayors and on its ancestral role as the global nexus of finance and capital.

The city is now something out of a postmodern apocalyptic movie, reeling from the effects of a neutron bomb. Ditto in varying degrees Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco — the anti-broken-windows metropolises of America. Walking in San Francisco today reminds me of visiting Old Cairo in 1973, although the latter lacked the needles and feces of the former.

At the present increasing rate of police defunding, homeless encampments, the emptying of jails and prisons, the green-lighting of rioting and vandalism, the flight of the wealthy, the revolutionary change to Skype/Zoom tele-working, and the exodus of upper-middle-class liberal families to safe houses in the New York and New England countryside, once beautiful New York City is in danger of becoming the nation’s aneurysm. That is, after the “recovery,” it and other blue cities may be seen as permanent weak veins and arteries prone to sudden fatal hemorrhaging that could implode at any moment, and thus may become metaphorically tied off, as the country reroutes around them. » Read the rest of this entry «

written by Daniel Lacalle

Misguided lockdowns have destroyed the global economy and the impact is likely to last for years. The fallacy of the “lives or the economy” argument is evident now that we see that countries like Taiwan, South Korea, Austria, Sweden or Holland have been able to preserve the business fabric and the economy while doing a much better job managing the pandemic than countries with severe lockdowns.

One of the most alarming facts about this crisis is the pace at which bankruptcies are rising. Despite an $11 trillion liquidity injection and government aid in 2020, stocks and bonds at all-time highs and sovereign as well as corporate yields at all-time lows, companies are going bust at the fastest pace since the Great Depression. Why? Because a solvency crisis cannot be disguised by liquidity.

Trillions of liquidity are giving investors and governments a false sense of security because yields are low and valuations are high, but it is a mirage driven by central bank purchases that cannot disguise how quickly companies are entering into long-term solvency issues. This is important because soaring bankruptcies and the rise in zombie companies means less employment, less investment and lower growth in the future.

Liquidity only disguises risk, it does not resolve solvency issues driven by collapsing cash flows while costs remain elevated.

According to the FT, large US corporate bankruptcy filings are now running at a record pace and are set to surpass levels reached during the financial crisis in 2009. As of August 17, a record 45 companies each with assets of more than $1bn have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In Germany, about 500,000 companies are considered insolvent and have been zombified by a pointless “insolvency law” that simply extends the pain of businesses that are technically bankrupt. In Spain, the Bank Of Spain alerted that 25% of all companies are on the verge of closing due to insolvency. According to Moody’s estimates, more than 10% of businesses in the leading economies are in severe financial stress, many in technical bankruptcy. » Read the rest of this entry «

written by Thomas Harrington

Ready for another rendition of the “no one could have known” routine made famous by all the self-proclaimed liberals who shamelessly went along with the Neo-Cons planned and lie-supported destruction of the Middle East nearly two decades ago?

As in “no one could have known” that by shutting down life as we know it to focus obsessively on a virus mostly affecting what is still a relatively small number of people at the end of their lives (yes, oh squeamish ones we must summon the courage to talk about Quality Adjusted Life Years when making public policy) we probably would:

1. Cause economic devastation and hence excess deaths, suicides, divorces depressions in much larger numbers than those killed by the virus.

2. Provide an already monopolistic and predatory online retailing establishment with competitive advantages in terms of capital reserves and market share that will make it virtually impossible at any time in the near or medium future for the country’s and the world’s small and even medium-sized businesses to ever catch up to them. And that this will plunge huge sectors of the world-wide economy into serf-like ruin, with all that this portends in terms of additional death and human suffering. » Read the rest of this entry «