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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on January 25, 2022 at 12:24 am
The United States is now two years into a deadly plague. More than 71.7 million Americans have become infected with COVID-19 and at least 868,000 have died.
Wearing a mask and “social distancing”—keeping at least six feet between yourself and others while in public—have been the Golden Rules urged by public health officials from the pandemic’s start.
And yet vast numbers of Americans still refuse to do either. Just as they refuse to get vaccinated, despite three vaccines now widely available.
Surgical mask
In the early weeks and months of the pandemic, cloth face masks weren’t universally endorsed, even by public health experts.
“One, we didn’t know whether they were actually helpful, and two, there was a lot of concern that if people were using medical masks then people like myself, were not going to have access to them,” said Dr. Craig Spencer, director of global health in emergency medicine at Columbia University Medical Center.
No less an authority than Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, said in March, 2020, that “people should not be walking around with masks.”
Only in early June, 2020, did the World Health Organization (WHO) urge non-healthcare workers to mask up. The WHO advised people to don masks when social distancing was not possible, such as when visiting stores and using public transportation.
According to Dr. Jeremy Faust, the change in attitudes toward masks should be seen as the nature of science, and not as a flaw.
“That is what experts, in fact, do. They don’t just have an opinion and stick to it,” said Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in Boston, Massachusetts. “They actually let their opinions develop and evolve as better information becomes available.”
Only in January, 2022, did the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) urge Americans to wear N95 masks—the most effective ones available.
In 2020, the CDC had urged Americans to not use N95s. The reason: They feared this would create a shortage of these masks for doctors, nurses and paramedics working closely with COVID patients.
N95 mask
Scientists have learned, for example, that COVID-19 can be spread by those who show no symptom of the disease. And mounting evidence has proven that masks are essential for protecting people from the virus.
Coronavirus is spread by respiratory droplets when an infected person coughs, sneezes or talks—especially if large numbers of people are packed indoors. The danger goes up if the talker is shouting or singing loudly.
If not blocked by a face covering, the droplets can travel six to 13 feet, and can remain airborne for hours in some cases.
Researchers at Florida Atlantic University found that some masks were more effective than others. One study showed that well-fitted homemade masks with multiple layers of fabric, as well as off-the-shelf cone style masks, were the most effective in reducing droplet dispersal.
Bandannas turned out to be the least effective in reducing transmission.
Coronavirus
So why do so many Americans refuse to wear a mask?
Start at the top: With Donald Trump, 45th President of the United States.
From the outset, Trump refused to wear a mask in public.
A colossal egotist, Trump is orange-skinned, morbidly obese and lacking a neck. Yet he still thinks of himself as dangerously handsome. And he fears that covering his face would diminish his power and appeal.
“Appearing to play it safe contradicts a core principle of masculinity: show no weakness,” wrote social sciences professor Peter Glick at Scientific American magazine. “Defying experts’ warnings about personal danger signals ‘I’m a tough guy, bring it on.’”
On May 21, 2020, Trump refused to wear a face mask as he toured a Ford facility in Michigan that was manufacturing ventilators and personal protective equipment. This violated the policies of the facility, the governor’s executive order and warnings from the state’s attorney general.
After a three-month nationwide “lockdown,” states began “reopening.” So Trump scheduled his first 2020 re-election rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
It was held on June 20 at the BOK Center. Scientists had learned that Coronavirus is more likely to be transmitted indoors than outdoors, when masses of people are packed together, and when people are loudly talking—or, worse, shouting.
Masks were available for those who wanted them. But Trump made it clear that his supporters shouldn’t wear masks, as a sign of support for him. Photos of the rally show men and women densely packed together, with none of them wearing masks.
A Trump rally
The Tulsa event was followed by another indoor rally in Phoenix on June 23. “Students for Trump” featured a packed crowd, with almost no one wearing masks.
After staging COVID-spreading rallies at Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Phoenix, Arizona, Trump scheduled another one for July 3 at Mount Rushmore, in Keystone, South Dakota.
Such rallies had been put on hold since March, due to the issuing of stay-at-home orders across the country by states’ mayors and governors.
Health experts expressed fears about a large gathering during the Coronavirus pandemic. But South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem said people would “not be social distancing” during the celebration—nor required to wear masks.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on January 24, 2022 at 12:35 am
Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the American Right felt dejected.
Accusing Democrats of being “terrorist-lovers” just hasn’t been as profitable as accusing them of being “Communists.”
Then fate intervened.
The torch had barely gone out at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics when Russian President Vladimir Putin began menacing the Ukraine.
Ukraine vs. Russia
Even while the Olympics played out on television, Ukrainians had rioted in Kiev and evicted their corrupt, luxury-loving president, Victor Yanukovych.
And that didn’t sit well with his “sponsor”—Putin.
Yanukovych had rejected a pending European Union association agreement. He had chosen instead to pursue a Russian loan bailout and closer ties with Russia.
And that had sat well with Putin.
Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Putin had yearned for its reestablishment. He had called that breakup “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century.”
Vladimir Putin
Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Russia has long resisted Ukraine’s move towards European institutions—especially NATO.
So it was almost a certainty that Putin would retaliate.
And since late February, 2014, he began moving Russian troops into Ukraine and its autonomous republic, Crimea. Russia annexed Ukraine’s southern Crimean peninsula and backed separatists who captured large swathes of eastern Ukraine.
On December 3, 2021, the Washington Post reported: “The Kremlin is planning a multi-front offensive as soon as early next year involving up to 175,000 troops” against Ukraine.
And where there is activity by Russians, American Rightists are eager to turn such events to their own political advantage.
Right-wingers such as Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR): ”It is a result of a year of Joe Biden’s impotence and incompetence towards Russia in particular and in foreign policy more generally.”
Cotton had vigorously defended President Donald Trump’s attempted extortion of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the face of Russian aggression.
In July, 2019, Trump told his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to withhold almost $400 million in promised military aid for Ukraine.
Then, on July 25, Trump telephoned Zelensky to “request” a “favor”: Investigate presumed 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who had had business dealings in Ukraine.
Clearly implied in the call: Produce “dirt” on Biden—or you won’t get the military aid.
All of which overlooks a number of brutal political truths.
First, all great powers have spheres of interest—and jealously guard them.
For the United States, it’s Latin and Central America, as established by the Monroe Doctrine.
And just what is the Monroe Doctrine?
It’s a statement made by President James Monroe in his 1823 annual message to Congress, which warned European powers not to interfere in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere.
It has no legitimacy except the willingness of the United States to use armed force to back it up. When the United States no longer has the will or resources to enforce the Doctrine, it will cease to have meaning.
For the Soviet Union, its spheres of influence include the Ukraine. Long known as “the breadbasket of Russia,” in 2011, it was the world’s third-largest grain exporter.
Russia will no more give up access to that breadbasket than the United States would part with the rich farming states of the Midwest.
Second, spheres of influence often prove disastrous to those smaller countries affected.
Throughout Latin and Central America, the United States remains highly unpopular for its brutal use of “gunboat diplomacy” during the 20th century.
Among those countries invaded or controlled by America: Mexico, Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Columbia, Panama and the Dominican Republic.
The resulting anger has led many Latin and Central Americans to support Communist Cuba, even though its political oppression and economic failure are universally apparent.
Latin and Central America
Similarly, the Soviet Union forced many nations—such as Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia—to submit to the will of Moscow.
The alternative? The threat of Soviet invasion—as occurred in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Third, even “great powers” are not all-powerful.
In 1949, after a long civil war, the forces of Mao Tse-tung defeated the Nationalist armies of Chiang Kai-Shek, who withdrew to Taiwan.
China had never been a territory of the United States. Nor could the United States have prevented Mao from defeating the corrupt, ineptly-led Nationalist forces.
Even so, Republican Senators and Representatives such as Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy eagerly blamed President Harry S. Truman and the Democrats for “losing China.”
The fear of being accused of “losing” another country led Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon to tragically commit the United States to “roll back” Communism in Cuba and Vietnam.
Now Republicans—who claim the United States can’t afford to provide healthcare for its poorest citizens—want to turn the national budget over to the Pentagon.
They want the United States to “intervene” in Ukraine—even though this would mean going to war with the only nuclear power capable of turning America into an atomic graveyard.
Before plunging into conflicts that don’t concern us and where there is absolutely nothing to “win,” Americans would do well to remember the above-stated lessons of history. And to learn from them.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on January 20, 2022 at 12:13 am
In 1959, J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the FBI, declared war on the Mafia.
He set up a Top Hoodlum Program and encouraged his agents to use wiretapping and electronic surveillance (“bugging”) to make up for lost time and Intelligence.
But planting “bugs” demanded illegal trespass into mob hangouts.
Making this even more hazardous: Hoover imposed restrictions on these assignments that could destroy an agent’s professional and personal life.
William E. Roemer, Jr., assigned to the FBI’s Chicago field office, was one of the first agents to volunteer for such duty.
William Roemer
In his memoirs, Man Against the Mob, published in 1989, Roemer laid out the dangers that went with such work:
- If confronted by police or mobsters, agents were to try to escape without being identified.
- If caught by police, agents were not to identify themselves as FBI employees.
- They were to carry no badges, credentials or guns—or anything else connecting themselves with the FBI.
- If they were arrested by police and the truth emerged about their FBI employment, the Bureau would claim they were “rogue agents” acting on their own.
- Such agents were not to refute the FBI’s portrayal of them as “rogues.”
If he had been arrested by the Chicago Police Department and identified as an FBI agent, Roemer would have:
- Been fired as an FBI agent.
- Almost certainly been convicted for at least breaking and entering.
- Disbarred from the legal profession (Roemer was an attorney).
- Perhaps served a prison sentence.
- Been disgraced as a convicted felon.
- Been unable to serve in his chosen profession of law enforcement.
If he had been intercepted by the mobsters, he would have likely been shot.
Given the huge risks involved, many agents, unsurprisingly, shunned “black bag jobs.”
The agents who took them on were so committed to penetrating the Mob that they willingly accepted Hoover’s dictates.
In 1989, Roemer speculated that former Marine Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North had fallen victim to such a “Mission: Impossible” scenario: “The secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions….”
Oliver North’s mugshot
In 1986, President Ronald Reagan’s “arms-for-hostages” deal known as Iran-Contra had been exposed.
To retrieve seven Americans taken hostage in Beirut, Lebanon, Reagan had secretly agreed to sell some of America’s most sophisticated missiles to Iran.
During this operation, several Reagan officials—including North—diverted proceeds from the sale of those missiles to fund Reagan’s illegal war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
In Roemer’s view: North had followed orders from his superiors without question. But when the time came for those superiors to step forward and protect him, they didn’t.
They let him take the fall.
Roemer speculated that North had been led to believe he would be rescued from criminal prosecution. Instead, in 1989, he was convicted for
- Accepting an illegal gratuity;
- Aiding and abetting in the obstruction of a congressional inquiry; and
- Ordering the destruction of documents via his secretary, Fawn Hall.
That is how many employers expect their employees to act: To carry out whatever assignments they are given and take the blame if anything goes wrong.
Take the case of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., the world’s biggest retailer.
In March, 2005, Wal-Mart escaped criminal charges when it agreed to pay $11 million to end a federal probe into its use of illegal aliens as janitors.
Agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided 60 Wal-Mart stores across 21 states in October, 2003. The raids led to the arrest of 245 illegal aliens.
An ICE raid
The illegal aliens had been hired as janitors at Wal-Mart stores.
Many of the employees worked seven days or nights a week without overtime pay or injury compensation. Those who worked nights were often locked in the store until morning.
According to Federal officials, court-authorized wiretaps revealed that Wal-Mart executives knew their subcontractors hired illegal aliens.
Once the raids began, Federal agents invaded the company’s headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, seizing boxes of records from the office of a mid-level executive.
Of course, Wal-Mart admitted no wrongdoing in the case. Instead, it blamed its subcontractors for hiring illegal aliens and claiming that Wal-Mart hadn’t been aware of this.
Just as the FBI planned to have its agents take the fall in “black bag” cases, Wal-Mart meant to sacrifice its subcontractors for hiring illegal aliens.
The only reason Wal-Mart couldn’t make this work: The Feds had, for once, treated corporate executives like Mafia leaders and had tapped their phones.
Which holds a lesson for how Federal law enforcement agencies should treat future corporate executives when their companies are found violating the law.
Instead of seeing CEOs as “captains of industry,” a far more realistic approach would be giving this term a new meaning: Corrupt Egotistical Oligarchs.
Their phones should be tapped, their boardrooms and bedrooms bugged, and their closest associates should be given immunity to testify against them.
A smart investigator/prosecutor should always remember:
Widespread illegal and corrupt behavior cannot happen among the employees of a major government agency or private corporation unless:
- Those at the top have ordered it and are profiting from it; or
- Those at the top don’t want to know about it and have taken no steps to prevent or punish it.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on January 19, 2022 at 12:11 am
Recruiters for corporate America routinely claim they’re looking for “a team player.”
This sounds great—as though the corporation is seeking people who will get along with their colleagues and work to achieve a worthwhile objective.
And, at times, that is precisely what is being sought in a potential employee.
But, altogether too often, what the corporation actually means by “a team player” is what the Mafia means by “a real standup guy.”
That is: Someone willing to commit any crime for the organization—and take the fall for its leaders if anything goes wrong.
Consider this classic example from the files of America’s premier law enforcement agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
On November 14, 1957, 70 top Mafia leaders from across the country gathered at the estate of a fellow gangster, Joseph Barbara, in Apalachin, a small village in upstate New York.
The presence of so many cars with out-of-state license plates converging on an isolated mansion caught the attention of Edgar Crosswell, a sergeant in the New York State Police.
Crosswell assembled as many troopers as he could find, set up roadblocks, and swooped down on the estate.
The mobsters, panicked, fled in all directions—many of them into the surrounding woods. Even so, more than 60 underworld bosses were arrested and indicted following the raid.
Perhaps the most significant result of the raid was the effect it had on J. Edgar Hoover, the legendary director of the FBI.
J. Edgar Hoover
Up to that point, Hoover had vigorously and vocally denied the existence of a nationwide Mafia. He had left the pursuit of international narcotics traffickers to his hated rival, Harry Anslinger, director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN).
But he had carefully kept his own agency well out of the war on organized crime. Several theories have been advanced as to why.
- Hoover feared that his agents—-long renowned for their incorruptibility—would fall prey to the bribes of well-heeled mobsters.
- Hoover feared that his allegedly homosexual relationship with his longtime associate director, Clyde Tolson, would be exposed by the Mob. Rumors still persist that mobster Meyer Lansky came into possession of a compromising photo of Hoover and Tolson engaged in flagrante delicto.
- Hoover knew of the ties between moneyed mobsters and their political allies in Congress. And he feared losing the goodwill of his political allies—and ever-larger appropriations for the FBI.
- Hoover preferred flashy, easily-solved cases to those requiring huge investments of manpower and money.
Suddenly, however, ignoring the Mob was no longer possible. The arrests of more than 60 known members of the underworld—in what the news media called “a conclave of crime”—deeply embarrassed Hoover.
How could the FBI have not known about this?
It was all the more embarrassing that while the FBI had virtually nothing in its files on the leading lights of the Mafia, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics had opened its voluminous files to the Senate Labor Rackets Committee.
Heading that committee as chief legal counsel was Robert F. Kennedy—a fierce opponent of organized crime. In 1961, he would become Attorney General of the United States.
So Hoover created the Top Hoodlum Program (THP) to identify and target selected Mafiosi across the country.
Since the FBI had no networks of informants operating within the Mafia, Hoover fell back on a technique he had successfully employed against the Communist Party U.S.A.
He would wiretap the mobsters’ phones and plant electronic microphones (“bugs”) in their meeting places. The information gleamed from these techniques would arm the Bureau with evidence that could be used to strongarm mobsters into “rolling over” on their colleagues in exchange for leniency.
Organization chart of Mafia famiies
Hoover believed he had authority to install wiretaps because more than one Attorney General had authorized their use.
But no Attorney General had given permission to install bugs—which involved breaking into the places where they were to be placed. Such assignments were referred to within the Bureau as “black bag jobs.”
So, in making clear to his agent-force that he wanted an unprecedented war against organized crime, Hoover also made clear the following:
Before agents could install electronic surveillance (an ELSUR, in FBI-speak) devices in Mob hangouts, agents had to first request authority for a survey. This would have to establish:
- That this was truly a strategic location;
- That the agents had a plan of attack that the Bureau could see was logical and potentially successful; and, most importantly of all
- That it could be done without any “embarrassment to the Bureau.”
According to former FBI agent William E. Roemer, Jr., who carried out many of these “black bag” assignments: “The [last requirement] was always Mr. Hoover’s greatest concern: ‘Do the job, by God, but don’t ever let anything happen that might embarrass the Bureau.”
Roemer laid out the dangers of these “penetration” assignments in his autobiography: Romer: Man Against the Mob (1989)
Agents faced not only the threat of arrest by police, but that of death at the hands of the Mob.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on January 18, 2022 at 12:08 am
President Joe Biden faces opposition not only from Republicans but Right-wing Democrats as well.
One of these is West Virginia United States Senator Joe Manchin.
On June 7, 2021, The PBS Newshour examined perhaps the foremost issue of our democracy: The For the People Act.
Since November 3, 2020, when former President Donald Trump lost the Presidential election, he has spread The Big Lie: That the election was “stolen” from him.
On the basis of that lie, Republicans in 47 states have introduced 361 bills to make it harder to vote.
As of June 21, 2021, 17 states enacted 28 new laws that restrict access to the vote.
Among those states affected: Georgia, Iowa, Arkansas and Utah.
Georgia:
- Bans giving food and water to voters in line;
- Severely restricts mail ballot drop boxes;
- Allows Right-wing groups to challenge the eligibility of an unlimited number of voters; and
- Gives the GOP-controlled legislature sweeping powers over election administration.
Arizona:
- Wants to add new requirements for casting a mail-in ballot and make it harder to receive one.
Florida:
- Intends to ban mail ballot drop boxes.
Michigan:
- Republicans introduced eight bills adding new voter ID requirements for mail voting and forbidding election officials to send out absentee ballot request forms to voters.
Congressional Democrats have countered with the For the People Act. Among its provisions:
- Expand early voting and registration across the country in federal elections;
- Block states from purging their rolls of voters;
- End partisan gerrymandering;
- Force large donors to disclose themselves publicly.
“It is something that is obviously very critical right now,” said PBS Newshour Correspondent Lisa Desjardins. “We see rising in this country both sides talking about democracy and voting rights and what’s happening at this moment.
“[West Virginia United States Senator] Joe Manchin…would be the 50th vote that Democrats would have for this in the Senate. They have 49.
Joe Manchin
“And here’s what he said [on] why he opposed it: ‘I believe that partisan voting legislation will destroy the already weakening binds of our democracy. And for that reason, I will vote against the For the People Act.’
“Notable, he did not have any substantive problems with the bill that he raised. Instead, he said, the issue is there are no Republicans on board.”
Manchin thus ignores the reality that Republicans will never be on board.
“This Manchin decision is a body blow to this legislation. It is not dead yet, but it is in real trouble. It’s unclear if, when [New York Senator] Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader [in the Senate] will bring it back up,” said Desjardins.
Many Democrats and political correspondents have speculated about Manchin’s motives for opposing this legislation.
Some believe he’s a Right-winger in Democrats’ clothing. Others think he wants to increase his clout on behalf of his state, West Virginia.
Manchin’s motives, however, are not important. Eliminating his opposition is.
And the man who has the power to do this is President Joe Biden.
All that he needs to do is invite Manchin into the Oval Office for an off-the-record talk, which could open like this:
“Your state has two Coast Guard military bases. By this time next week, it will have only one—because I’m going to close down the other. You can also forget about those highway-repair projects you’re expecting to start. And I’ve been informed we have far too many post offices in West Virginia, considering its small population….”
Suddenly, Manchin would get the clear message: “Biden is the big dog on this block, not me.”
He would also grasp that his constituents would blame him, not Biden, for the resulting chaos and hardships they face from the upcoming closures.
This is precisely how President Lyndon B. Johnson dealt with Congressional members who dared oppose his prized legislation. And it worked.
Joe Biden has spent 44 years in Washington, D.C.—as a United States Senator from Delaware from 1973 to 2009; and then as Vice President from 2009 to 2017.
But he seems to have never read Niccolo Machiavelli’s famous warning in The Prince:
Niccolo Machiavelli
For how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done, will rather learn to bring about his own ruin rather than his preservation. A man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in everything must inevitably come to grief among so many who are not good.
And therefore it is necessary for a prince, who wishes to maintain himself, to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it, according to the necessity of the case.
Whatever his motives, Manchin is clearly willing to allow Republicans to suppress the voting rights of millions of non-Fascist Americans.
President Joe Biden now faces a moment of crisis: He can fight his enemies with the same ruthless tactics they routinely use–or face disaster.
Republicans are working to corrupt the democratic process to reinstall a proven criminal and traitor in the Oval Office.
This is no time to “fight” a party of Adolf Hitlers with the appeasement tactics of a Neville Chamberlain.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on January 17, 2022 at 12:12 am
Joseph Robinette Biden is fast approaching the one-year anniversary of his Inauguration as the 46th President of the United States.
At 79, he has spent virtually his entire adult life in politics: As a United States Senator from Delaware (1973 – 2009); as Vice President of the United States (2009 – 2017); and now as President.
Yet for all of his decades of political experience, he seems to have never read the works of the man who has been called “the father of modern politics”—Niccolo Machiavelli.
Or, if he has, he has clearly learned nothing from them.
Consider Machiavelli’s advice for well-intentioned people like Biden in his classic work: The Prince:
“A man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in everything must inevitably come to grief among so many who are not good. And therefore it is necessary for a prince, who wishes to maintain himself, to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it, according to the necessity of the case.”
Niccolo Machiavelli
On November 3, 2020, Biden became President-elect of the United States by winning 81,283,495 votes, or 51.4% of the vote, compared to 74,223,755 votes, or 46.9% of the vote cast for President Donald Trump.
In the Electoral College—which actually determines the winner—the results were even more stunning: 306 votes for Biden, compared with 232 for Trump. It takes 270 votes to be declared the victor.
Yet, on December 8, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Missouri United States Senator Roy Blunt joined House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy in blocking a resolution asserting that Joe Biden was the President-elect of the United States.
Mitch McConnell
And for more than a year since the 2020 Presidential election, the vast majority of Republicans have continued to charge that Biden gained office by massive voter fraud—and thus is an illegitimate President.
Yet Biden continues to refer to his sworn enemies as “my Republican friends.”
As Achilles scornfully tells the soon-to-be-doomed Hector in the 2004 movie, “Troy”: “There can be no pacts between wolves and men.”
Joe Biden
Machiavelli’s advice:
From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved than feared, or feared more than loved. The reply is, that one ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved.
For it may be said of men in general that they are ungrateful, voluble, dissemblers, anxious to avoid danger and covetous of gain; as long as you benefit them, they are entirely yours: they offer you their blood, their goods, their life and their children, when the necessity is remote, but when it approaches, they revolt.
And the prince who has relied solely on their words, without making other preparations, is ruined; for the friendship which is gained by purchase and not through grandeur and nobility of spirit is bought but not secured, and at a pinch is not to be expended in your service.
And men have less scruple in offending one who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared; for love is held by a chain of obligations which, men being selfish, is broken whenever it serves their purpose; but fear is maintained by a dread of punishment which never fails.
With that in mind, Biden should go directly after McConnell himself.
Option #1: A May 8, 2018 story in The Dallas Morning News spotlights “How Putin’s Oligarchs Funneled Millions into GOP Campaigns.” In 2016, Len Blavatnik gave $1 million to McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund.
In 2017, Blavatnik gave another $1 million to the fund, and then another $3.5 million to a Political Action Committee associated with McConnell.
A serious investigation by the Justice Department could lead to McConnell’s indictment—for bribery or other campaign finance violations.
Option #2: According to an April 15, 2020 story in Courier: “Here’s How Much McConnell Got From Big Pharma After Nixing a Bill to Lower Drug Prices”:
“Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced in September that he would block any consideration of a bill to lower prescription drug costs. By the end of December, he had raked in more than $50,000 in contributions from political action committees and individuals tied to the pharmaceutical industry.”
McConnell could be investigated—and possibly indicted—for bribery.
Even if McConnell escaped prison, such a prosecution would dramatically inform Republicans that a new era of accountability had arrived.
Option #3: As President, Biden could divert Federal projects from McConnell’s Kentucky—and other Republican states.
President Lyndon Johnson successfully employed this tactic to keep Republican—and Democratic—troublemakers in line. Once they saw projects for roads, post offices and other Federal amenities disappearing from their districts, they quickly got the message as to who was in charge.
Option 4: McConnell has blamed Biden for the slowing COVID-19 vaccination rate among Americans.
Biden could attack Republicans for promoting lies about the safety of COVID vaccines—and for opposing mask and vaccine mandates. He could blame the worsening Omicrom epidemic—and its resulting deaths—on anti-vaxxers, thus putting them and their Republican supporters on the defensive.
Above all, Biden should constantly remember: For Republicans, the mathematics of power come down to this: Who/Whom.
Or: Who can do What to Whom?
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on January 13, 2022 at 12:15 am
Mylan Pharmaceuticals CEO Heather Manchin-Bresch is on a roll.
- The daughter of United States Senator Joe Manchin (R-West Virginia), she has, since 2004, hiked the price of a life-saving EpiPen from $50 to $600 to $700 for a package of two.
- Her own salary has steadily risen more than 600% to $18,509,300 a year.
- The device now accounts for 40% of Mylan’s profits.
But in playing greed-based games with the lives of millions of Americans, Manchin-Bresch, 52, may have put her company—and even herself—in jeopardy.
Heather Manchin-Bresch
EpiPens have been mandatory for public schools in at least 11 states since Congress passed the 2013 School Access to Emergency Epinephrine Act. This occurred after Mylan spent $4 million lobbying Congress.
When the lives of their children are threatened, adults who can stoically accept the inevitability of their own deaths can become dangerously emotional about the fates of their sons or daughters.
As national news media spread the word of Mylan’s unconscionable price increases, American consumers are making their rage increasingly known.
There are three ways this could be expressed: Political, Legal, and Illegal.
Political: Minnesota U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar has called for an official investigation by the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) into the price hikes:
Senator Amy Klobuchar
“I write to request the Federal Trade Commission investigate whether Mylan Pharmaceuticals has violated the antitrust laws regarding the sale of its epinephrine auto-injector, EpiPen. Many Americans, including my own daughter, rely on this life-saving product to treat severe allergic reactions.
“Although the antitrust laws do not prohibit price gouging, regardless of how unseemly it may be, they do prohibit the use of unreasonable restraints of trade to facilitate or protect a price increase.”
Other Senators who have called for hearings include Iowa’s Charles Grassley, Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal and former Democratic presidential contender Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
“I have heard from one father in Iowa who recently purchased a refill of his daughter’s EpiPen prescription. He reported that to fill the prescription, he had to pay over $500 for one EpiPen,” wrote Grassley to Manchin-Bresch. “The high cost has also caused some first responders to consider making their own kits with epinephrine vials and syringes.”
Senator Charles Grassley
“There’s no reason an EpiPen, which costs Mylan just a few dollars to make, should cost families more than $600,” tweeted Sanders on Twitter.
A second expression of political fallout could ultimately be the adoption of a single-payer healthcare system. Under this, a “single-payer” fund, rather than private insurers, pays for healthcare costs. The healthcare delivery system can be private, public or a combination of the two.
Legal: Individual Americans—and/or the U.S. Department of Justice—could file civil lawsuits against Mylan Pharmaceuticals under the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.
Passed by Congress in 1970 to combat the Mafia, its provisions include punishments for extortion. This is defined as “a criminal offense which occurs when a person unlawfully obtains either money, property or services from a person(s), entity, or institution, through coercion.” 
It could be argued that, by holding a near-monopoly over a product that millions of Americans depend on for survival, and raising its price beyond the ability of most Americans to afford it, Mylan has engaged in extortionate practices.
It would not be the first time a David-vs.-Goliath lawsuit prevailed against dismal expectations.
In 1994, amid great pessimism, Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore filed a lawsuit against the tobacco industry. But other states soon followed, ultimately growing to 46.
Their goal: To seek monetary, equitable and injunctive relief under various consumer-protection and anti-trust laws.
The theory underlying these lawsuits: Cigarettes produced by the tobacco industry created health problems among the population, which badly strained the states’ public healthcare systems.
In 1998, the states settled their Medicaid lawsuits against the tobacco industry for recovery of their tobacco-related, health-care costs—amounting to millions of dollars. In return, they exempted the companies from private lawsuits for tobacco-related injuries.
Illegal: At one time, business titans like John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford lived apart from “the common herd.” Americans read about them in newspapers or heard about them on the radio, but had no way of contacting them directly.
If you wanted to “dig up dirt” on any of them, you had to be wealthy enough to hire private detectives–who were probably employed by the same people you wanted to investigate.
But the rise of the Internet—and especially the advent of “people-finder” websites like Instant Checkmate, Intellius and Veromi—has drastically changed all that.
Type “Heather Manchin-Bresch” into the Intellius “Confidential People Finder” subject line, and—for a $20 month’s subscription—you can obtain “some or all of the following”:
- Full Name
- Age and Date of Birth
- Address
- Address History
- Phone Numbers
- Aliases
- Relatives
- Neighbors
- Email Address(es)
- Social Networks
- Property Records
- Marriages & Divorces
- Criminal Records
- Bankruptcies
- Liens
- Judgments
- Lawsuits
It doesn’t take a genius to see how the parent of an allergy-suffering child—desperate to save his son or daughter and enraged at what he believes to be the extortionately high price of EpiPens—might put such information to use.
What is truly astonishing is that, in our publicity-saturated culture, greedy, self-destructive “celebrities” like Heather Manchin-Bresch don’t realize this.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on January 12, 2022 at 12:12 am
More than 500 years ago, Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of modern politics, delivered this sage advice in his political masterwork, The Discourses:
All those who have written upon civil institutions demonstrate…that whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasion for it.
If their evil disposition remains concealed for a time, it must be attributed to some unknown reason; and we must assume that it lacked occasion to show itself. But time, which has been said to be the father of all truth, does not fail to bring it to light.
Niccolo Machiavelli
Unfortunately, it’s advice that members of the United States Congress have blissfully chosen to ignore. By doing so, they have condemned millions of Americans to suffering and death at the hands of greed-based, predatory corporations.
One of these corporations is Mylan Pharmaceuticals.
In 2007, Mylan acquired the patent for the EpiPen, a lifesaving device for anyone allergic to common foods like peanuts, shellfish and eggs. Millions of people with life-threatening allergies depend on the EpiPen for survival.
During an allergy attack, the EpiPen injects an emergency dosage of epinephrine to the user, preventing a possibly fatal reaction, known as anaphylaxis, from occurring.
Between 2007 and 2015, the wholesale price of an EpiPen skyrocketed from $56.64 to $300 to $645 for an EpiPen 2-Pak—an increase of 461%.
It costs about $8 to make such a pack.
According to NBC News, compensation for Mylan CEO Heather Bresch similarly skyrocketed during the same period: From $2,453,456 in 2007 to $18,931,068 in 2015—a 671% raise in eight years.
Bresch is the daughter of West Virginia United States Senator Joe Manchin—who recently killed the chance for passage of President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” bill. Among its benefits:
- Universal preschool
- Free community college
- Lower prescription drug costs
- Expanded Medicare and Medicaid services
- Requiring utility companies to phase in renewable energy to replace fossil fuels.
Manchin—who owns a yacht and drives a Maserati—suggested that parents would use Child Tax Credits to buy drugs.
Manchin-Bresch wasn’t the only one to profit at the expense of the most vulnerable.
Between 2007 and 2015, Mylan’s stock price tripled, going from $13.29 per share in 2007 to a high of $47.59 in 2016. By late August, 2016, Mylan’s stock was hovering around $45.68 per share on the NASDAQ index.
Bloomberg states that the EpiPen now accounts for about 40% of Mylan’s profits.
Ironically, Sheldon Kaplan, the man who invented the now-famous device, never made a dime off it, and died in obscurity.
After working at NASA, Kaplan worked for Survival Technology, Inc., in Bethesda, Maryland.
In 1973, the Defense Department asked him to design a device that could quickly inject an antidote for nerve gas.
Kaplan’s design perfectly fitted this need: When a victim plunged a needle into his thigh, a spring-loaded mechanism shot a needle containing life-saving medicine into his bloodstream.
Kaplan’s invention became known as the ComboPen, and was initially used by the Pentagon before becoming available for use by the general public several years later as the EpiPen.
Kaplan left Survival Technology shortly after creating the ComboPen to become a biochemical engineer. He didn’t follow the success of his invention—and didn’t reap any of the huge financial rewards that it has produced.
That has certainly not been true for Mylan Pharmaceuticals.
After cornering the patent on the EpiPen in 2007, the company has made billions on the life-saving device.
According to Bloomberg, a package of two EpiPens costs $415 in the United States after insurance discounts. The same package in France–which has price controls under socialized medicine–costs $85.
The chief beneficiary of this legalized price-gouging has been Mylan’s CEO, Heather Manchini-Bresch.
Heather Manchin-Bresch
She joined Mylan in 1992 and held various positions within the company. Among these: Its chief lobbyist before Congress.
It was in that capacity that she persuaded Congress to enact a bill requiring all public schools to carry EpiPens for students with food allergies. It was signed into law by President Barack Obama in November, 2013.
Over the next three years, schools nationwide bought EpiPens by the truckload. And Mylan jacked up its prices for the EpiPen every other quarter.
On January 1, 2012, Heather Manchin-Bresch became Mylan’s CEO.
But it wasn’t enough to have a monopoly on a device millions of men, women and children desperately needed. In 2014, true to its “profits-at-any-price” philosophy, Mylan reincorporated in the Netherlands to lower its effective tax rate.
It did so through a corporate accounting trick known as a tax inversion, and thus claiming the status of a foreign-owned corporation although its headquarters remained in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania.
Even her own father, U..S. Senator Joseph Manchin, condemned Mylan’s use of the inversion scheme and said it should be illegal.
But Manchin-Bresch fiercely defended it in an interview with the New York Times: “You can’t maintain competitiveness by staying at a competitive disadvantage. I mean you just can’t.”
No doubt, with her CEO salary of $18,509,300 a year and moneyed ties to high-powered attorneys and influential members of Congress, Bresch thinks herself invulnerable.
But all that could quickly change—if even a small number of her victims become angry enough.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on January 11, 2022 at 12:11 am
Merrick Brian Garland has served as:
- A special assistant to Attorney General Benjamin Civviletti (1979 – 1981).
- Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (1997 – 2021).
- Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (2013 – 2020).
Yet, as United States Attorney General, he is now presiding over the closing days of the American Republic.
On January 6, 2021, President Donald Trump incited a treasonous attack on the United States Capitol Building. There, the United States Senate, with Vice President Mike Pence presiding, would certify states’ Electoral College results of that election.
Since former Vice President Joseph Biden had gotten 306 votes compared to 232 for Trump, the outcome was already known. And Trump, who had often “joked” about becoming “President-for-Life,” wanted that verdict overturned.
The Stormtrumpers marched to the United States Capitol—and quickly brushed aside Capitol Police, who made little effort to arrest Only or shoot them.
Only one rioter was shot: Ashli Babbitt, as she climbed through a shattered window in a barricaded door
By comparison: At the battle of the Alamo, 200 Texan defenders killed 600 Mexican attackers.
Stormtrumpers attacking Capitol police
After giving his inflammatory speech, Trump returned to the White House. There he gleefully watched his handiwork on television—and refused to call off his supporters or call the National Guard.
More than three hours passed before police—using riot gear, shields and batons—retook control of the Capitol.
By January 5, 2022, more than 700 Stormtrumpers have been arrested and charged.
- More than 150 defendants have pleaded guilty.
- About one-tenth of these—71—have been sentenced by January 1, 2022.
- The most common charge pleaded to is illegally parading or demonstrating in the Capitol, a misdemeanor.
- Of those who have been sentenced, fewer than half have received prison time.
- The median prison sentence to date is 45 days.
- Another
Yet no major Trump supporter has been arrested, let alone indicted. Such as:
- Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who cried to the demonstrators, “Let’s have trial by combat!”
- Donald Trump, Jr., who, just hours before the Trump mob stormed Congress, threatened Republican lawmakers at a large rally outside the White House: “These guys better fight for Trump. Because if they’re not, guess what? I’m going to be in your backyard in a couple of months!”
- Rep, Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) who incited the Trump crowd with: “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass!”
- Donald Trump. He not only incited his followers to attack the Capitol, he has spent the last six months spreading poisonous lies that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him through “massive” voter fraud. As a result, he continues to undermine the democratic process as he terrorizes the Republican party to stand behind him.
There is a historical precedent for this, and it does not bode well for our Republic.
On November 9, 1923, Nazi Party Fuhrer Adolf Hitler tried to overthrow the government in Munich, Bavaria.
About 2,000 Nazis marched to the center of Munich, where they confronted heavily-armed police. A shootout erupted, killing 16 Nazis and four policemen.
Hitler was injured during the clash, but managed to escape. Two days later, he was arrested and charged with treason.
Put on trial, he found himself treated as a celebrity by a judge sympathetic to Right-wing groups. He was allowed to brutally cross-examine witnesses and even make inflammatory speeches.
At the end of the trial, he was convicted of treason and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.
Serving time in Landsberg Prison, in Bavaria. he wrote his infamous book, Mein Kampf-–“My Struggle.” Part autobiography, part political treatise, it laid out his future plans—including the extermination of the Jews and the conquest of the Soviet Union.
Adolf Hitler leaving Landsberg Prison, December, 20, 1924
Nine months later, he was released on parole—by authorities loyal to the authoritarian Right instead of the newly-created Weimar Republic.
Hitler immediately began rebuilding the shattered Nazi party—and deciding on a new strategy to gain power. Never again would he resort to armed force. He would win office by election—or intrigue.
On January 30, 1933, those intrigues made him Chancellor of Germany.
Writes historian Volker Ullrich, in his monumental 2016 biography, Hitler: Ascent 1889 – 1939: “Historians have perennially tried to answer the question of whether Hitler’s rise to power could have been halted….
“There were repeated opportunities to end Hitler’s run of triumphs. The most obvious one was after the failed Putsch of November 1923. Had the Munich rabble-rouser been forced to serve his full five-year term of imprisonment in Landsberg, it is extremely unlikely that he would have been able to restart his political career.”
Thus, it isn’t just what happens that can influence the course of history. Often, it’s what doesn’t happen that has at least as great a result.
A 10- to 20-year prison sentence for Donald Trump would scuttle his chances for becoming dictator—and send a warning message to other Right-wingers.
The United States Justice Department now faces the same choice faced by the judges of the Weimar Republic: Enforce the law against a ruthless tyrant—or stand by while he mounts a comeback.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on January 10, 2022 at 12:10 am
After graduating from Harvard Law School, Merrick Brian Garland served as a special assistant to Attorney General Benjamin Civviletti from 1979 to 1981.
As a federal prosecutor, he played a leading role in the investigation and prosecution of the Oklahoma City bombers.
He then served as judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (1997 – 2021) and then as Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (2013 – 2020).
In 2016, President Barack Obama nominated him to serve as an associate Justice of the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy created by the death of Antonin Scalia. But Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to hold a hearing or vote on your nomination.
Merrick Garland
Yet, as United States Attorney General, he is now presiding over the closing days of the American Republic.
As the bestselling book, Peril, makes clear:
- There was a detailed plan by Republicans to illegally retain President Donald Trump in office.
- The votes of 81 million Americans who had voted for former Vice President Joseph Biden would have been scrapped in what was intended to be a Right-wing coup.
According to authors Bob Woodward and Robert Costa:
- Attorney John Eastman first proposed the plan to Vice President Mike Pence on January 4 in the Oval Office with Trump in attendance.
- The memo called for throwing out the election results in seven states under the false claim that those states had used alternate electors.
- Eastman’s memo was sent to Senator Mile Lee (R-Utah) and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who served as one of Trump’s attorneys at the time.
- They tried to convince Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) that there was rampant fraud in the 2020 election.
- Both Graham and Lee reportedly argued that the fraud claims had no merit.
On January 6, the United States Senate, with Vice President Mike Pence presiding, would certify states’ Electoral College results of that election.
Since Biden had gotten 306 votes compared to 232 for Trump, the outcome was already known.
On that morning, Trump tried to convince Pence to reject the electoral votes that had been cast for Biden. This would mean flipping the results of the 2020 Presidential election to give him a win.
Pence replied that he lacked the power to overturn those results.
But as Pence went off to the Capitol Building housing the Senate and House of Representatives, Trump had one last card to play.
Mike Pence
For weeks Trump had ordered his legions of Right-wing Stormtrumpers to descend on Washington, D.C. by January 6.
On December 20, he had tweeted: “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
In tweets, he promoted the rally again on December 27 and 30, and January 1.
On January 6, Trump appeared at the Ellipse, a 52-acre park south of the White House fence and north of Constitution Avenue and the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
A stage had been set up for him to address tens of thousands of his supporters, who eagerly awaited him.
Trump ordered them to march on the Capitol building to express their anger at the voting process and to intimidate their elected officials to reject the results.
Donald Trump addresses his Stormtrumpers
“All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by a bold and radical left Democrats which is what they are doing and stolen by the fake news media.
“Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore, and that is what this is all about. And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal….
“And after this, we’re going to walk down and I’ll be there with you. We’re going to walk down to the Capitol. And we’re going to cheer on our brave Senators and Congressmen and women and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
“Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated.”
The Stormtrumpers marched to the United States Capitol—and quickly brushed aside Capitol Police.
Capitol Police facing off with Stormtrumpers
Among their outrages:
- Members of the mob attacked police with chemical agents and lead pipes.
- Many of the attackers wore body armor and two-way radio headsets similar to those used by police.
- Many of the lawmakers’ offices were occupied and vandalized—including that of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a favorite Right-wing target.
- Rioters yelled “Hang Mike Pence!” and “Hang Nancy Pelosi”
- Pipe bombs ere found at the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee headquarters offices.
- Some rioters carried Confederate flags or Nazi emblems. Others carried crosses and signs saying, “Jesus Saves” and “Jesus 2020.”
- At least 140 police officers were injured.
- More than $1 million dollars of damage was done to the Capitol building.
- Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) yelled at several fellow Republicans who were challenging President-elect Biden’s electoral votes: “This is what you’ve gotten, guys!”
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WHY SOME PEOPLE WON’T WEAR MASKS: PART ONE (OF THREE)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on January 25, 2022 at 12:24 amThe United States is now two years into a deadly plague. More than 71.7 million Americans have become infected with COVID-19 and at least 868,000 have died.
Wearing a mask and “social distancing”—keeping at least six feet between yourself and others while in public—have been the Golden Rules urged by public health officials from the pandemic’s start.
And yet vast numbers of Americans still refuse to do either. Just as they refuse to get vaccinated, despite three vaccines now widely available.
Surgical mask
In the early weeks and months of the pandemic, cloth face masks weren’t universally endorsed, even by public health experts.
“One, we didn’t know whether they were actually helpful, and two, there was a lot of concern that if people were using medical masks then people like myself, were not going to have access to them,” said Dr. Craig Spencer, director of global health in emergency medicine at Columbia University Medical Center.
No less an authority than Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, said in March, 2020, that “people should not be walking around with masks.”
Only in early June, 2020, did the World Health Organization (WHO) urge non-healthcare workers to mask up. The WHO advised people to don masks when social distancing was not possible, such as when visiting stores and using public transportation.
According to Dr. Jeremy Faust, the change in attitudes toward masks should be seen as the nature of science, and not as a flaw.
“That is what experts, in fact, do. They don’t just have an opinion and stick to it,” said Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in Boston, Massachusetts. “They actually let their opinions develop and evolve as better information becomes available.”
Only in January, 2022, did the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) urge Americans to wear N95 masks—the most effective ones available.
In 2020, the CDC had urged Americans to not use N95s. The reason: They feared this would create a shortage of these masks for doctors, nurses and paramedics working closely with COVID patients.
N95 mask
Scientists have learned, for example, that COVID-19 can be spread by those who show no symptom of the disease. And mounting evidence has proven that masks are essential for protecting people from the virus.
Coronavirus is spread by respiratory droplets when an infected person coughs, sneezes or talks—especially if large numbers of people are packed indoors. The danger goes up if the talker is shouting or singing loudly.
If not blocked by a face covering, the droplets can travel six to 13 feet, and can remain airborne for hours in some cases.
Researchers at Florida Atlantic University found that some masks were more effective than others. One study showed that well-fitted homemade masks with multiple layers of fabric, as well as off-the-shelf cone style masks, were the most effective in reducing droplet dispersal.
Bandannas turned out to be the least effective in reducing transmission.
Coronavirus
So why do so many Americans refuse to wear a mask?
Start at the top: With Donald Trump, 45th President of the United States.
From the outset, Trump refused to wear a mask in public.
A colossal egotist, Trump is orange-skinned, morbidly obese and lacking a neck. Yet he still thinks of himself as dangerously handsome. And he fears that covering his face would diminish his power and appeal.
“Appearing to play it safe contradicts a core principle of masculinity: show no weakness,” wrote social sciences professor Peter Glick at Scientific American magazine. “Defying experts’ warnings about personal danger signals ‘I’m a tough guy, bring it on.’”
On May 21, 2020, Trump refused to wear a face mask as he toured a Ford facility in Michigan that was manufacturing ventilators and personal protective equipment. This violated the policies of the facility, the governor’s executive order and warnings from the state’s attorney general.
After a three-month nationwide “lockdown,” states began “reopening.” So Trump scheduled his first 2020 re-election rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
It was held on June 20 at the BOK Center. Scientists had learned that Coronavirus is more likely to be transmitted indoors than outdoors, when masses of people are packed together, and when people are loudly talking—or, worse, shouting.
Masks were available for those who wanted them. But Trump made it clear that his supporters shouldn’t wear masks, as a sign of support for him. Photos of the rally show men and women densely packed together, with none of them wearing masks.
A Trump rally
The Tulsa event was followed by another indoor rally in Phoenix on June 23. “Students for Trump” featured a packed crowd, with almost no one wearing masks.
After staging COVID-spreading rallies at Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Phoenix, Arizona, Trump scheduled another one for July 3 at Mount Rushmore, in Keystone, South Dakota.
Such rallies had been put on hold since March, due to the issuing of stay-at-home orders across the country by states’ mayors and governors.
Health experts expressed fears about a large gathering during the Coronavirus pandemic. But South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem said people would “not be social distancing” during the celebration—nor required to wear masks.
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