Author: Matthew G. Saroff

Not Enough

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No jail time in a settlement with McKinsey and Company for actively aiding Perdue Pharma in maximizing addictions to its opioids.

If there is a case for a corporate death penalty, this is it.

What’s more there should be criminal prosecutions against its executives:

Consulting giant McKinsey & Co. has reached a $573 million settlement with states over its work advising OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP and other drug manufacturers to aggressively market opioid painkillers, according to people familiar with the matter.

The deal, reached with 47 states and the District of Columbia and expected to be publicly announced Thursday, would avert civil lawsuits that attorneys general could bring against McKinsey, the people said. The majority of the money will be paid upfront, with the rest dispensed in four yearly payments starting in 2022.

McKinsey said last week it is cooperating with government agencies on matters related to its past work with opioid manufacturers, as state and local governments sue companies up and down the opioid supply chain. At least 400,000 people have died in the U.S. from overdoses of legal and illegal opioids since 1999, according to federal data.

The consulting firm stopped doing opioid-related work in 2019 and said in December its work for Purdue was intended to support the legal use of opioids and help patients with legitimate medical needs.

That statement from McKinsey is a lie.  They literally suggested that druggists be paid a bonus for overdose deaths to, “Turbocharge sales.” 

Shut them down.

Prop 22 Lawsuit Dismissed by California Supreme Court

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So, it appears that the Gypsy cab companies attempt to strip rights from their workers will proceed as planned.

This sucks: 

The California Supreme Court today shot down the lawsuit filed by a group of rideshare drivers in California and the Service Employees International Union that alleged Proposition 22 violates the state’s constitution.

“We are disappointed in the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear our case, but make no mistake: we are not deterred in our fight to win a livable wage and basic rights,” Hector Castellanos, a plaintiff in the case, said in a statement. “We will consider every option available to protect California workers from attempts by companies like Uber and Lyft to subvert our democracy and attack our rights in order to improve their bottom lines.”

As an aside, now is the time to start getting signatures to repeal the bill. 

The “Gig Economy” companies will have 2 years of showing that their so-called worker protections are a lie, so, unlike Prop 13, getting another bite at the apple is a good thing.

Well, It’s a Start

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The Biden administration has announced that it is reducing support for military operations by the House of Saud in Yemen.

The details are not in yet, but it appears that the scope of this reduction in support is limited.

It would be nice if US administrations didn’t spend their time coddling the incompetent boy prince of the the Riyadh regime:

Joe Biden has announced an end to US support for Saudi-led offensive operations in Yemen, as part of a broad reshaping of American foreign policy.

In his first foreign policy speech as president, Biden signaled that the US would no longer be an unquestioning ally to the Gulf monarchies, announced a more than eightfold increase in the number of refugees the country would accept, and declared that the days of a US president “rolling over” for Vladimir Putin were over.

“America is back,” Biden declared in remarks delivered at the state department, capping a whiplash fortnight of dramatic foreign policy changes since his 20 January inauguration. “Diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign policy.”

Biden said the conflict in Yemen, which has killed more than 100,000 Yemenis and displaced 8 million, had “created a humanitarian and strategic catastrophe”.

“This war has to end,” Biden. “And to underscore our commitment, we’re ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arm sales.”

However, he said the US would continue to provide defensive support to Saudi Arabia against missile and drone attacks from Iranian-backed forces. US forces will also continue operations against al-Qaida in the Arabian peninsula.

There is a whole lot of wiggle room for a whole lot of mischief by the petty Persian Gulf potentiates to continuing to prosecute their war against the people of Yemen.

The distancing of Washington from Riyadh is one of the most conspicuous reversals of Donald Trump’s agenda, but it also marks a break with the policies pursued by Barack Obama, who had backed the Saudi offensive in Yemen, although he later sought to impose constraints on its air war.

A bipartisan majority in Congress had previously voted to cut off support to the Saudi campaign, citing the civilian death toll and the murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. But Trump used his veto to block the move.

The US will also freeze arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and name a special envoy to Yemen, to put more pressure on the Saudis and Emiratis and the Houthi forces they are fighting, to make a lasting peace agreement.

We’ll see how long that lasts.

With Saudi money flooding the lobbying channels inside the Beltway, I expect pushback from the very serious people, and a walk-back from the White House.

Yeah, About that

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This strangest thing about this moment is almost every Dem is acting as if Obama’s first term was a horrible failure but no one wants to explicitly say that. https://t.co/CuyrgEN6XT

— Jon Walker (@JonWalkerDC) February 2, 2021

So, let’s do a rundown of the 2009-10 Obama years and what happened:

  • Democratic Governors, from 29 to 16.
  • Control of state legislatures, and redistricting, from 59% to 31%. (over 1000 state leg seats)
  • Double digit losses in the Senate.
  • Over 5 dozen loses in the House.

Why would even the most psychopathic Democrat, or Jim Manchin (but I repeat myself) want even a small piece of such a disaster?

The answer is that they don’t which indicates that the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) might actually have a small learning curve.

I never believed that I would be able to write that in a non-ironic way.

And the Crazy Gets the Republican Party Sanction

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So, the Republican House Caucus has refused to take actions against Marjorie Taylor Greene for posting death threats to other members of congress, AND asserting that Jewish Space Lasers™ started the California wild fires, AND asserting that the Sandy Hook Elementary and  Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shootings were frauds promulgated by “crisis actors”, AND the whole pedophile lizard alien cannibal thing.

This means that the whole House will be voting to strip her of her committee assignments tomorrow.

The flip side is that the Republican Caucus did not remove Liz Cheney as their #3 for voting to impeach Trump, which I’ll call neutral because any good news for a Cheney is simply not good news ever:

House Republicans voted to keep Rep. Liz Cheney in party leadership despite her harsh criticism of former President Donald Trump, while declining to punish a Trump loyalist who made comments embracing conspiracy theories and political violence.

After a dizzying week of recriminations, both Ms. Cheney, of Wyoming, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) remained within the fold of the House GOP, highlighting Republicans’ efforts at stitching together a still-fractious party.

Facing Democrats’ demands that Mrs. Greene be stripped of her committee assignments, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) condemned her comments but declined to take further steps. With no action from Republicans, Democrats scheduled a full House vote Thursday to remove Mrs. Greene from the education and budget committees.

“Past comments from and endorsed by Marjorie Taylor Greene on school shootings, political violence, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories do not represent the values or beliefs of the House Republican Conference,” Mr. McCarthy said. He said that he stressed in a private meeting with Mrs. Greene on Tuesday night that she must now hold herself to a higher standard as an elected official. He also said that she apologized for her comments during Wednesday’s closed-door party meeting.

At that same gathering, Ms. Cheney defeated a motion from Mr. Trump’s allies to oust her as House GOP conference chairwoman in a 145-61 vote, conducted by secret ballot after hours of intense debate.

………

Mr. McCarthy’s decision to leave Mrs. Greene on committees shifts some of the political heat to Democrats, who will now try to remove her. But it also opens up Mr. McCarthy to frustration among some House Republicans that he hasn’t done more to manage the fallout over Mrs. Greene. Thursday’s vote could also put some House GOP lawmakers in a difficult spot in deciding whether to vote to protect Mrs. Greene from Democratic attempts to punish her, a stance that could be off-putting to donors and voters skeptical of both her and Mr. Trump.

To quote Napoleon, “Never stop your enemy from stepping on his own dick,” I guess.  (It’s a loose translation from the original French)

 Still, this is an unbelievable clusterf%$#.

About F%$#ing Time

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Finally, legislation proposed to reverse the absurd requirement that the US Post Office prefund its pension and benefits for 50 years has a chance to pass the Congress:

This is literally the only reason that the USPS is in dire financial straits, and this been the case for almost 15 years:

A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a bill to ease a major financial burden on the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) by eliminating a requirement that it fund retirement benefits decades ahead of time.

The USPS Fairness Act would do away with a 2006 law that mandated the USPS to form a $72 billion fund to pay for retirement health benefits for over 50 years, a requirement that is not imposed on any other federal agency.

The legislation was introduced in the House by Reps. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), Tom Reed (R-N.Y.), Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Colin Allred (D-Texas) and in the Senate by Sens. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).

“The unreasonable prefunding mandate has threatened the survival of the USPS and placed at risk vital services for the millions who rely on it. The prefunding mandate policy is based on the absurd notion of paying for the retirement funds of people who do not yet, and may not ever, work for the Postal Service,” DeFazio said in a statement.

The introduction of the legislation comes as President Biden faces pressure from the biggest Postal Service union to install new USPS leadership. The department was thrust into the national spotlight late in the Trump administration for changes to mail delivery that critics said would impact the collection of mail-in ballots in a way that would benefit then-President Trump.

A similar bill to the USPS Fairness Act was passed in the House last year but languished in the GOP-controlled Senate.

Here’s hoping that this actually happens.

The original bill was an attempt to privatize the post office as a way of breaking its union, and Donald Trump used the chaos in an attempt to subvert the 2020 election.

This needs to be repealed today.

If He Were Black, They Would Have Already Shot Him Multiple Times

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Instead, it appears that, on the recommendation of an anonymous Kenosha police captain, teen murderer Kyle Rittenhouse and his legal team has been deliberately deceiving the court as to his whereabouts.

Obviously, this from my perspective as a non-lawyer, but this appears to be a BIG no-no for someone who is out on bail:

Prosecutors apparently couldn’t find admitted Kenosha killer Kyle Rittenhouse, so now they are seeking a warrant for his arrest.

On Wednesday, the Kenosha County District Attorney’s office said Rittenhouse had violated the conditions of his release. Prosecutors said they need a new arrest warrant specifically because Rittenhouse failed to inform the court after changing his address. The defense, however, responded by saying they intentionally concealed Rittenhouse’s true whereabouts because a local police captain instructed them to lie about where he was staying.

………

According to the conditions of his bond, Rittenhouse was supposed to relay such a change within 48 hours of moving. The motion asks Judge Bruce E. Schroeder to issue a new arrest warrant and increase Rittenhouse’s bail by $200,000.

………

The Illinois teenager was charged with first-degree intentional homicide, first-degree reckless homicide, attempted homicide, and two additional felonies over the admitted shooting deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber. Rittenhouse also severely wounded Gaige Grosskreutz with a rifle carried across state lines. He further faces one misdemeanor charge of possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under the age of 18. Rittenhouse was 17 at the time of the August shooting and is now 18.

………

In sum, the defense says it intentionally wrote the wrong address on the release papers after being advised to do so by local law enforcement. This, the defense claims, was to protect the location of a “safe house” for Rittenhouse.

The motion notes [emphasis in original]: “Pierce was directly informed by a high-ranking member of the Kenosha Police Department not to provide the address of the Rittenhouse Safe House because of the numerous threats made against Kyle and his family.”

………

“While I was completing this form, I was approached by a Kenosha Police Department Captain, who offered his assistance,” Pierce continued [emphasis in original]. “I asked the Kenosha Police Captain what address to put on the form. The Kenosha Police Captain told me that I ‘absolutely should not‘ provide the address of the physical location of the Rittenhouse Safe House on the form, but to instead provide his home address in Antioch, Illinois.”

There are a couple of points here:

  • What lawyer doesn’t pass this by the f%$#ing judge? (I’m already regretting ending my swearing for February)
  • What cop tells a defendant in a murder trial to lie to the court?

Well, I guess the answers to this question are pretty straightforward, and the expression, “Racist dirtbag,” figures prominently in both.

Rittenhouse needs to spend his pre-trial in jail, and his lawyer should be his cell-mate, at least until he gives up whatever police captain told him to lie to the court.

Linkage

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Leeroy Jenkins!

The Coup in Myanmar

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Yes, the coup was caught on an aerobics video

I’m hoping that there is a way for both sides, a genocidal and dictatorial military and a genocidal Nobel Peace Prize Winner, can both lose as a result of the military seizing power in Myanmar.

Last time around, Aung San Suu Kyi had the support of human rights activists everywhere, but after years of her enthusiastic support for the genocide of the Rohingya, the blush is off the rose.

One hopes that whatever happens, that the end result will be a true multiparty democracy where all of its citizens, including the Rohingya, can fully and freely participate:

Myanmar’s military said Monday that it took control of the country and declared a state of emergency for a year, after detaining civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other leaders of her ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) in a predawn operation, staging a coup against the democratically elected government.

The raids came hours before a new session of parliament was scheduled to open and members who won the November elections were set to take their seats. Suu Kyi’s NLD won those elections in a landslide, capturing 396 out of 476 seats. It was Myanmar’s second democratic election since the country’s fragile transition from military rule to democracy.

………

Several hours after the raids, the military in a television broadcast said that a state of emergency had been declared in Myanmar and that power would be transferred to the commander in chief, Min Aung Hlaing. Myint Swe, a former general and the military-backed vice president, will become the president, the broadcast added.

The sweep also included other prominent democracy activists who have been fighting against military rule for decades, leaders of other political parties and NLD lawmakers, according to social media posts and news reports.

………

Suu Kyi spent 15 years under house arrest before her release in November 2010, and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her resistance to military rule. The military-drafted constitution prevents her from leading Myanmar as president, but she is unequivocally the nation’s leader, revered as a deity, and rules through proxies. The military-drafted constitution also allows the army to step in in a situation that may “disintegrate” the country and national solidarity.

Since taking power, though, she has disappointed old allies in the West, particularly for defending Myanmar — and its military in particular — against charges of genocide over the persecution of the Rohingya ethnic minority. Suu Kyi has in recent years moved closer toward powers such as China and India, and grown increasingly estranged from countries such as the United States and Britain, which once led advocacy efforts to get her released from house arrest.

She is up there with Henry Kissinger, Barack “DronesR Us” Obama, Jimmy “Bought 4 decades of war in Afghanistan” Carter, and Elihu Root (Philippine insurrection) on a list of horrible recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize.

For some reason, I tend to take it personally when people engage in religiously based genocide, and the Junta and Suu Kyi have.

In the Words of Marcel Marceau

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No!

Republicans had a proposition for Joe Biden, a Covid relief package that was clearly inadequate, and Biden gave them a (polite) brush-off.

While Biden might have an honest commitment to bipartisanship, unlike his former boss, he does not see it as an end in itself, nor does he see it as a demonstration of just how awesome he is:

Ten Senate Republicans attempted to sell President Joe Biden Monday night on a coronavirus relief compromise, even as Biden’s own party made plans to leave the GOP in the dust.

In the two-hour meeting, the GOP senators presented their $618 billion counterproposal to Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, and the president described his own $1.9 trillion plan to the senators. They agreed to keep talking, although senators conceded their discussions were just beginning.

………

Biden has spoken frequently of his ability to work with Senate Republicans after his long Senate service, and simply meeting with the group demonstrates his ability to hear his opposition out. But the reality is this: Republicans oppose Biden’s spending plans and are proposing something far smaller.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who helped organize the meeting, praised Biden for hosting GOP senators: “We’re very appreciative that as his first official meeting in the Oval Office that the president chose to spend so much time with us.” But she also acknowledged there wasn’t an explicit breakthrough between sides that are so far apart.

………

Shortly before the meeting, Democratic leaders announced they would begin a process that would allow passage of Biden’s coronavirus stimulus plan without GOP votes, a sign that Democrats have little confidence that a suitable deal can be struck with Republicans. Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), a centrist, said succinctly of the GOP’s plan: “The package has to be bigger than that.”

“This needs to be big enough to get the job done. If we’re having to come back time and time again, I just don’t think that’s good for the economy or for certainty,” Tester said at the Capitol.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced they would continue setting up budget reconciliation this week, which would evade the Senate’s 60-vote requirement. They will pass a budget this week instructing committees to write a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill, which includes items like raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and giving $400 in additional weekly unemployment assistance through September.

“While there were areas of agreement, the President also reiterated his view that Congress must respond boldly and urgently, and noted many areas which the Republican senators’ proposal does not address. He reiterated that while he is hopeful that the Rescue Plan can pass with bipartisan support, a reconciliation package is a path to achieve that end,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said after the meeting.

It’s refreshing that we have a President who does not believe his own PR spin.

We have not had that in at least 20 years.

This is Not a Growing Vibrant Economy

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Over the past 20 years, total employment in the US has grown by 11,767,000.

Over the same 20 years, employment among workers over 6o has increased by 11,879,000.

To put that in perspective, 101% of all the jobs gained in the past 20 years were among people who would have retired if the economy actually worked for people.

This might explain why the economists’ view of our economy, and that of ordinary people diverge so sharply.

To quote Douglas Adams, “This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.” 

What is going on, at least if you don’t buy into the rosy scenario promulgated by the St. Louis Fed, is that older people are working longer, because life has become more more precarious, with the end of defined benefit pensions, Wall Street looting of defined contributions (IRA, 401(K), etc.), and the general fall in wages over the past 45 years.

So people CAN’T retire, and younger workers are finding that the jobs that they would ordinarily get during their careers are not opening up.

It is a recipe for social unrest and extremism, but the green pieces of paper are quite happy:

Total U.S. employment grew by 11,767,000, or 8.5%, in the 20 years ending in December 2020. All that growth—11,879,000, or 101% of the total—was due to increased employment of people age 60 and older. Meanwhile, the net employment change over the past two decades of people ages 16-59 was -112,000 (-1% of the total change), despite this younger group being 3.8 times as large as the older group in December 2000 and still 2.4 times as large in December 2020. (See the figure below above.)

What’s Driving This Outcome

This age-skewed labor-market outcome was the result of two differences between the groups:

  • The older population (60 and older) grew much faster than the younger population (16-59).
  • The employment-to-population (E-P) ratio among those 60 and older increased significantly while the E-P ratio among the younger population declined, on balance.

With the exception of the large decline in the E-P ratio of the younger population, which is difficult to predict in the years ahead, the basic trend of rising employment among older workers is likely to continue for some time for the following reasons:

  • The older population is likely to continue growing faster than the younger group.
  • The E-P ratio of the 60 and older group is likely to increase further as the health and educational attainment of older people continues to improve and the demand for older workers persists.

It’s Give no F%$# February

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In January, I announced that, given the unprecedented events of that month, that I would be eschewing my embargo on profanity for the month.

To be accurate, I have never actually abjured profanity.

In fact, I would argue that my writing has rather more profanity that a lot of people out there, but I bowdlerize my swear words, so instead of the actual words, I will write, f%$#, or sh%#, or c%$#sucker, or motherf%$#er, 

So, it’s back to the f%$#ing, “%$#”s, though I may make actual profanity a January thing.

It has been a liberating experience for me.

I haven’t decided yet.

Trump Writ Small

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I am referring, of course to Andrew “Rat-Faced Andy” Cuomo, the Governor of the great state of New York, who thinks that he is smarter than public health experts, which, among other things, has led to vaccines being thrown out because of fears of draconian fines under Cuomo’s directives:

The deputy commissioner for public health at the New York State Health Department resigned in late summer. Soon after, the director of its bureau of communicable disease control also stepped down. So did the medical director for epidemiology. Last month, the state epidemiologist said she, too, would be leaving.

The drumbeat of high-level departures in the middle of the pandemic came as morale plunged in the Health Department and senior health officials expressed alarm to one another over being sidelined and treated disrespectfully, according to five people with direct experience inside the department.

Their concern had an almost singular focus: Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

Even as the pandemic continues to rage and New York struggles to vaccinate a large and anxious population, Mr. Cuomo has all but declared war on his own public health bureaucracy. The departures have underscored the extent to which pandemic policy has been set by the governor, who with his aides crafted a vaccination program beset by early delays.

The troubled rollout came after Mr. Cuomo declined to use the longstanding vaccination plans that the State Department of Health had developed in recent years in coordination with local health departments. Mr. Cuomo instead adopted an approach that relied on large hospital systems to coordinate vaccinations not only of their own staffs, but also of much of the population.

I’m wondering if there are any major Cuomo donors at the “Large Hospital Systems.”

In recent weeks, the governor has repeatedly made it clear that he believed he had no choice but to seize more control over pandemic policy from state and local public health officials, who he said had no understanding of how to conduct a real-world, large-scale operation like vaccinations. After early problems, in which relatively few doses were being administered, the pace of vaccinations has picked up and New York is now roughly 20th in the nation in percentage of residents who have received at least one vaccine dose.

“When I say ‘experts’ in air quotes, it sounds like I’m saying I don’t really trust the experts,” Mr. Cuomo said at a news conference on Friday, referring to scientific expertise at all levels of government during the pandemic. “Because I don’t. Because I don’t.”

How very Trumpian.

………

In Albany, tensions worsened in recent months as state health officials said they often found out about major changes in pandemic policy only after Mr. Cuomo announced them at news conferences — and then asked them to match their health guidance to the announcements.

That was what happened with the vaccine plan, when state health officials were blindsided by the news that the rollout would be coordinated locally by hospitals.

But it also occurred earlier with revisions in a host of state rules from the fate of indoor dining and businesses like gyms to capacity limits on social gatherings, according to a person with direct experience inside the department.

………

But at least nine senior state health officials have left the department, resigned or retired in recent months. They include Dr. Elizabeth Dufort, the medical director in the division of epidemiology; Dr. Jill Taylor, the head of the renowned Wadsworth laboratory — which has been central to the state’s efforts to detect virus variants — and the executive in charge of health data, according to state records.

Additionally, the Health Department’s No. 2 official left for another job in state government, and another official, who helped oversee contact tracing, is expected to leave the department, also for another state government job.

………

Mr. Cuomo’s handling of the pandemic has come under criticism in recent days after the state attorney general, Letitia James, said his administration had undercounted the tally of Covid-19 deaths of nursing home residents by not publicly disclosing deaths of those residents that occurred at hospitals.

Given just how much of a control freak hizzoner is, this was not an accident.

This is Cuomo playing politics with the numbers, because he went to bat for his nursing home donors to get them immunity from their own malfeasance.

He knows that the horrific death numbers from New York nursing homes, if reported accurately, will be a source of criticism for any future elections.

Current and former health officials agreed to be interviewed about the crisis inside the public health bureaucracy only on condition of anonymity, saying that they feared retaliation for speaking out against the governor.

Also, he’s a vindictive son of a bitch, and managing through fear does not work.

………

The departures came as the state prepared for and then stumbled through the early weeks of its vaccine campaign, in which experts said speed was paramount because of the threat posed by more contagious variants of the coronavirus.

………

………

Mr. Cuomo said his approach had delivered results in New York, including a positivity rate that has been declining after a peak in early January and better vaccination rates. New York saw the worst of the pandemic in the spring, and roughly 43,000 have died, more than in any other state.

………

In the fall, Mr. Cuomo shelved vaccine distribution plans that top state health officials had been drawing up, one person with knowledge of the decision said. The plans had relied in part on years of preparations at the local level — an outgrowth of bioterrorism fears following Sept. 11 — and on experience dispensing vaccine through county health departments during the H1N1 pandemic in 2009.

………

But elements of the state’s approach hindered the rollout, New York City officials contended.

“Extensive red tape and unnecessary rigidity over who we could vaccinate and when — all with the looming threat of millions of dollars in punitive fines — made an extraordinarily difficult task all the more challenging in those first initial weeks of the rollout,” said Avery Cohen, a spokeswoman for Mayor de Blasio.

In his own planning for the vaccine rollout, Mr. Cuomo spoke with hospital executives, outside consultants and a top hospital lobbyist in closed-door meetings. In December, Mr. Cuomo announced that the state would rely on large hospital systems as “hubs” to coordinate vaccinations, not simply for their own staff but also for ordinary New Yorkers.

Again, I gotta figure that the hospital systems are major Cuomo donors.

The state designated as a regional vaccination hub in New York City not the city’s 6,000-person Health Department, but rather the Greater New York Hospital Association, a trade group with a multimillion-dollar lobbying arm that had been a major donor to the governor’s causes.

Ka-ching!

The approach included narrow eligibility rules and suffered from a lack of urgency by some hospitals. That led to fewer doses being administered in the early weeks, followed by abrupt shifts in policy that created a kind of free-for-all among those searching for vaccine appointments, according to interviews with more than two dozen current and former health officials, county leaders, vaccination experts and elected officials.

“The governor’s approach in the beginning seemed to go against the grain in terms of what the philosophy was about how to do this,” said Dr. Isaac Weisfuse, a former deputy commissioner at New York City’s Health Department who often served as an incident commander during emergencies. “It did seem to negate 15 to 20 years of work.”

Sounds like the Donald, doesn’t it?

………

For help in planning the vaccination campaign, the governor turned to consultants from Deloitte and Boston Consulting Group. The in-house lobbyist for New York’s largest hospital system, Northwell Health, had direct involvement in the rollout.

For about a month, starting in mid-October, the Northwell lobbyist, Dennis Whalen, worked from an office inside the State Health Department and helped shape the state’s approach. Mr. Whalen had worked previously as the department’s No. 2 official.

Yeah, Cuomo was rat-f%$#ing the vaccine roll-out to accommodate lobbyists.  Hoocoodanode?

………

Still, Dr. Denis Nash, a professor of epidemiology at the City University of New York and a former senior city health official, said that giving such a large share of doses directly to hospitals meant that the government lost control of the pace of vaccinations during the program’s first month.

“That was the bottleneck,” Dr. Nash said. “To put hospitals in charge of a public health initiative — for which they have no public health mandate, or the skills, experience or perspective to manage one — was a huge mistake, and I have no doubt that’s what introduced the delays.”

This is Cuomo considering his donors, and his ego, before the well being of the people of New York.

I am wrong.  That does not sound like Donald Trump at all.

Not Expecting This from the AEI

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The Numbers


Are Stark

Given that rich Wall Street pigs are a major funding source, I am surprised that the American Enterprise Institute has published a study that the S&P 500 index has out-performed hedge funds by about an factor of five. 

When one considers the fees, 2% of the fund +20% of the gains, it’s clear that, absent possible tax evasion and money laundering, hedge funds are a sucker bet:

In 2007, Warren Buffett entered into a famous bet that an unmanaged, low-cost S&P 500 stock index fund would out-perform an actively-managed group of high-cost hedge funds over the ten-year period from 2008 to 2017, when performance was measured net of fees, costs, and expenses. See previous CD posts about Buffett’s bet here and here. In Warren Buffett’s 2017 annual letter to shareholders (released on February 24, 2018), he summarized the result of his bet in the section “’The Bet’ is Over and Has Delivered an Unforeseen Investment Lesson” as follows:

Last year, at the 90% mark, I gave you a detailed report on a ten-year bet I made on December 19, 2007. Now I have the final tally – and, in several respects, it’s an eye-opener. I made the bet to publicize my conviction that my pick – a virtually cost-free investment in an unmanaged S&P 500 index fund – would, over time, deliver better results than those achieved by most investment professionals, however well-regarded and incentivized those “helpers” may be.

………

Performance comes, performance goes. Fees never falter.

………

A final lesson from our bet: Stick with big, “easy” decisions and eschew activity. During the ten-year bet, the 200-plus hedge-fund managers who were involved almost certainly made tens of thousands of buy and sell decisions. Most of those managers undoubtedly thought hard about their decisions, each of which they believed would prove advantageous. In the process of investing, they studied 10-Ks, interviewed managements, read trade journals and conferred with Wall Street analysts.

………

Repeat: Most investors will get better financial results over time with with low-cost, unmanaged index funds than from high-cost actively managed stock funds and hedge funds run by highly-paid investment professionals, however well-regarded and incentivized those “helpers” may be.

MP: To get started following Warren Buffett’s investment advice, if you haven’t already, you can open an account in the Vanguard 500 Index Fund Admiral Shares with a minimum investment of $3,000 and the expense ratio is almost zero — only 0.04% (1/25th of one percent) or only $4 per year for every $10,000 invested!

I’ve been saying this for years, but I did not expect this from the corporate drones at AEI.

Linkage

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Either Brian Williams is way cooler than his stiff manner implies, or someone in the control room deserves a massive raise.

See the Democratic Party Establishment (There Is No Democratic Party Establishment) Run. Run Democratic Party Establishment (There Is No Democratic Party Establishment), Run. Run, Run, Run

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Outgoing DCCC director joins firm founded by former DCCC director who is partnered with the DCCC’s super PAC. https://t.co/ltpjl1oEHj

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) January 25, 2021

When I talk about the consultancy racket among the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment), this is what I mean.

Read His Lips

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$2000.00 stimulus checks are popular. Their popularity was such, even in Georgia, that it led to the Democrats taking control of the Senate.  (It was a big part of the campaigning for the runoff)

Now, the very serious people are trying to scale back and means test the stimulus to irrelevancy.

It is patently clear that this is bad policy and even worse politics.  It is George H.W. Bush’s no new taxes pledge all over again:

On January 4, Joe Biden made an unequivocal pledge, telling voters that by electing Democrats to Georgia’s senate seats, “you can make an immediate difference in your own lives, the lives of people all across this country because their election will put an end to the block in Washington on that $2,000 stimulus check, that money that will go out the door immediately to people who are in real trouble.”

Now they are counting the $600, so $1400 is the new 2000, saying that it will take months to pass the bill, making overtures to Republicans, etc.

A little more than a decade later, the public option fight should be a harrowing cautionary tale for Biden on both the policy and the politics. He had a front-row seat in watching a bad-faith Republican opposition kill a much-needed initiative, and then use Democrats’ failure to deliver to win at the polls. He of all people should know that this story never ends well.

………

The $2,000 checks initiative does not have to go down the same way the public option went down. The president and congressional Democrats do not have to do what weak-kneed, wimpy Democrats of the past have so often done. They do not have to negotiate against themselves, word-parse their way out of campaign pledges and delude themselves into thinking that Republicans are good-faith legislative partners.

They could instead try to use their election mandate — and the weakened state of the GOP — to demand full survival checks, rather than pretending that bad-faith Republican senators have any standing to make policy arguments.

The “Very Serious People” are going to “reasonable” themselves into losses in 2022 that make the 2010 blood letting look like a walk in the park.

I am Amused

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Given his increasingly erratic behavior, and his reputation for stiffing his lawyers, it comes as no surprise that a majority Trump’s impeachment defense team just quit on him.

I’m wondering if they got fed up over his wish to re-litigate the election, or if he was pushing to testify before the Senate. 

It does not matter, I am amused:

Former President Donald Trump’s five impeachment defense attorneys have left a little more than a week before his trial is set to begin, according to people familiar with the case, amid a disagreement over his legal strategy.

It was a dramatic development in the second impeachment trial for Trump, who has struggled to find lawyers willing to take his case. And now, with legal briefs due next week and a trial set to begin only days later, Trump is clinging to his election fraud charade and suddenly finds himself without legal representation.

Butch Bowers and Deborah Barbier, who were expected to be two of the lead attorneys, are no longer on the team. A source familiar with the changes said it was a mutual decision for both to leave the legal team. As the lead attorney, Bowers assembled the team.

I am amused.

Seeing as How I Mentioned the PRO Act………

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Here is a brief rundown of The PRO Act, which passed the House the last session, and died in the Senate.

The cynic in me believes that if it were not headed to certain death at the hands of Mitch McConnell, it would not have passed the house, because it is an amazingly good bill.

The high points:

  • Expands the definition of employer, to make it more difficult for employers to classify their employees as “Independent Contractors.”
  • Narrows the definition of supervisor who cannot unionize.
  • Increases data reporting requirements for the NLRB.
  • Makes it illegal to threaten to shut down if unionized or to lock out workers.
  • Repeals ban on secondary strikes, secondary boycotts, and jurisdictional strikes.
  • Makes mandatory anti-union meetings illegal.
  • Requires employers to maintain existing working conditions in the event of an impasse. 
  • Sets a strict timeline for employers to negotiate with a union.
  • Allows union members to refuse to handle cargo from other business which are on strike.
  • Makes it illegal to have mandatory arbitration or forbid employees from entering class-action suits.
  • Requires employers to supply names of potential union membership voters.
  • Reduce the restrictions on what constitutes a bargaining unit.
  • Allows the union to specify the type (in person, by mail, etc) and location of a union recognition ballot.
  • Speeds up unionization elections.
  • Increases damages for unfair labor practices.
  • Expands coverage of illegal immigrant workers.
  • Makes NLRB orders self enforcing.  (Don’t have to have a court ruling in addition to the NLRB decision)
  • Creates personal liability for managers and officers who engage in unfair labor practices.
  • Repeals right-to-work laws.

Given that there is actually a chance of this passing with a Democratic Senate this time around, I’m dubious that we will anything as expansive in scope hitting the floor of the house.

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is fine with pro-labor legislation as performative legislation, but as actual law, the Blue Dogs and the New Dems have no interest in offending their corporate masters.