A Sick Gorilla

I made the following comment on Owen's blog this morning regarding Donald Trump:

To watch Trump turn this thing [Covid-19 crisis] into a personal exercise of ego and imbecility makes me believe we live next door to an egregiously backward nation, one that can no longer command any worldwide respect.

May that contagion never spread.

Clearly, I am not alone in that view. In today's Star, Bruce Arthur offers this observation:

... we don’t have a North American ally anymore .... We have a sick gorilla in a cage, and we have to constantly worry how it might lash out.

... it is obvious to anybody who watches Donald Trump for five minutes that the man is a wicked, lying child who bluffed his way into being in charge of an aircraft carrier, and has no idea what to do now.

The crisis the world today faces puts in stark relief Trump's myriad shortcomings:

The president is in denial, and spends every day going on television performing a grotesque improvisational opera of empty promises, disinformation and blame, while agitating to reopen the country for the sake of the stock market.

Most of us have known for some time, of course, just how toxic, dysfunctional and disabled the United States has become as a consequence of their elevating Trump to the presidency. Unfortunately, there is no inoculation against their folly.

So yes, the United States holding up a shipment of masks at the U.S.-Canada border that was meant for Ontario — a shipment of three million, according to Ontario Premier Doug Ford, of which 500,000 were released as of Monday morning — was a big deal. But it was more than that, too.

Shortages in Ontario hospitals are entering a new stage. Ford claims the province is a week from exhausting its own stores of PPE. On Thursday of last week some hospitals in the GTA started asking employees to save N95 masks, and said they anticipated there would be a way to decontaminate and reuse them.

When you have a system where healthcare and equipment is available to the highest bidder, chaos is inevitable:

In a for-profit medical system, the top employers of ER doctors are groups owned by private-equity companies, including Canada’s Onex. ProPublica reported they are cutting doctor hours, because the demand for non-COVID-19 health care has collapsed, and the revenue isn’t there.

Red states and blue states are getting different amounts of PPE, but it sounds as chaotic as anything. After several shipments of PPE destined for the states were essentially hijacked by the federal government, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker had to go on a stealth mission to China with the owner of the New England Patriots under the guise of a humanitarian mission to secure 1.5 million masks.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported an Illinois official had to race to a McDonald’s rest stop outside Chicago with a $3.4 million (U.S.) cheque to beat out other bidders for N95s. California is putting together a consortium of states to bid collectively. If only there were another way to say “A Consortium of States.”

Every day, as the Covid crisis rolls on, I am deeply, deeply thankful to live in a country with leadership that, while not perfect, has not forgotten the people it serves.

Clearly, the same cannot be said about the rapidly declining, unwinding United States of America.

But What About The Cleaning Bill?

A new protection against Corvid-19 has been found! Rejoice, Brothers and Sisters.



And can I get a big AMEN?

Straight Talk From Italy

Perhaps more people would obey the mandate to self-isolate if more politicians spoke like this:

Opportunities Exist

During this time of crisis, it is easy to forget other, equally vital issues and the fact that the problems we currently confront do not exist in isolation. Climate change and the myriad emergencies it has spawned are not going away. Two letters in the print edition of the Toronto Star suggest that the opportunities presented by Covid-19 should not be ignored:

Fight for the climate, not oil companies

Toronto Star 4 Apr 2020

Many oil and gas companies are suffering because of COVID-19, losing workers and business as the price of oil plunges.

Giving them a bailout package would allow them to recover their losses and help minimize the damage they will incur due to the global pandemic. However, funnelling money into these companies would not be beneficial to our environment in the long run.

The oil and gas industry is responsible for releasing greenhouse gases into our atmosphere, which is a major contribution to climate change. Instead of bailing companies that do more harm than good to our health and environment, the federal government should focus on strengthening our climate action plan.

Canada needs to concentrate on reducing emissions, not helping them grow. The energy sector will improve eventually, but the same cannot be said for our ailing planet, if we continue to put it in the back seat when making financial decisions.

Canada has a choice, and I urge it to make the choice that will lead us to a healthier future.

Azhar Ali, Toronto

Let’s own our oil, or at least shares in Big Oil firms

Toronto Star 4 Apr 2020
I find it heartening that some members of the federal Liberal caucus have dared to question the agenda of Big Oil without being ostracized.

We are hearing about a possible big bailout of the oil industry. I urge the government to do what U.S. president Barack Obama should have done in the big financial meltdown, what Canada ought to have done in the auto industry bailout: Provide a bailout, but take an equity position and corresponding membership on the boards of directors in the industry.

Use the bailout funds to support workers in transition to sustainable jobs, while at the same time winding down the industry in the public interest. Reopen a few mothballed refineries and ensure that an ever-dwindling supply of oil is refined here and used here as we move to electric transportation powered by renewable energy.

The oil industry really ought to pay us for the unbelievable damage it has done to our environment while sucking out the resources.

We know government is ultimately going to pay for its short-sightedness in subsidizing (for years) an industry that was rendering our planet uninhabitable. We are all going to pay.

So let’s face the music now, when Canadians are showing tremendous resilience and willingness to pull together in the face of emergency.

Sue Craig, Toronto

Barbra Streisand's Searingly Accurate Assessment Of Trump

My friend Steve sent me this.

God Or Trump? You Decide

Your Sunday afternoon (rueful) smile.

God only brought one guy back from the dead on Easter. Trump is here to bring back the whole economy on Easter 2020. Enjoy this clip (possibly, like, the best ever), share and be sure to subscribe to Making Podcasts Great Again (@TrumpPod) - new every week! pic.twitter.com/aUifVWRzfh

— J-L Cauvin (@JLCauvin) March 24, 2020

Imagining A New World

Having the underpinnings of our daily lives so radically altered is immensely unsettling. The things we have always taken for granted, be it a daily walk, a quick trip to the store, a handshake with a friend, a rubbing of the eye, all of these and many more now come with the whiff of lethality. The new normal is egregiously abnormal.

We are all in mourning for the routines that until now gave structure to our lives.

But I also know I am but one among many who look for the good that can ultimately emerge from this crisis. The radical, unprecedented and immensely uncomfortable shift in living we are all experiencing has given us the opportunity to reflect on our lives, our values, and our ultimate fate as a society and as a species.

What might have been important to us such a short time ago now seems far less pressing: social status, getting and spending, ideologies that impel us to snipe at our political opponents - none have the urgency they might have held but a few short weeks ago. As Ben Jonson so aptly put it,

"Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."

Assuming we are spared the noose, what is it we want the world to look like when Covid-19 abates?

The Star's Rick Salutin offers his thoughts. Succinctly, he asks a fundamental question:

"Does the economy exist to serve people or vice versa?"

If you choose option 1, you pursue it, closing the economy till the plague passes, or settles into normal patterns, like the flu, which can be handled in normal ways (vaccine, built-up immunity) instead of people bringing out their dead as they did of old.

Another angle: Choose the economy, and — consequently — people die, they’re gone forever. Choose people, and the economy doesn’t die. It gets mothballed, put into a coma, to be revived. People die. Economies, which aren’t alive, can be put on hold, then come “roaring back.”

Because the economy isn’t a living being, you can tuck it away awhile.

In that case, the economy gets subordinated to human well-being. Rent, mortgages, debt are forgiven or delayed though money must still be found for repairs etc. Only governments can finance these dislocations. Private businesses can’t because they’re under constraints like competition.

Where will government find the money? .... Governments always find the money when there’s a war to fight.

I will return to the above question in a moment, but Salutin goes on to talk about this remarkable sight:

A remarkable thing about this debate, or nondebate since leaders have overwhelmingly opted for the people choice, is the range represented. Canadian right wing austerity buffs like Jason Kenney, François Legault and Doug Ford leapt in enthusiastically, alongside Justin Trudeau.

So much for the ideological divide. It is clear that Canadian leaders are opting for the people. But what about each of us and the innate power we have but too frequently fail to recognize? So we return to the writer's question about where government will find the money.

In the short-term, it will obviously borrow it.

Later, opportunists will no doubt try to foist austerity upon us as the price for today's spending. If we let them get away with that, we will have learned nothing from our current circumstances. No, if the world is to have a real rebirth, real, adult and difficult choices have to be made, including serious discussion around that always fraught topic, taxation.

Simply put, when this is over, many of us will have to pay more taxes. There will need to be special levees to reduce the deficit and the debt, because the old saw about growing the economy to pay for programs will not work for a long, long time, if ever again. Now, I am hardly the only one who enjoys a comfortable retirement, and the thought of paying more bothers me not in the least. As well, the corporate tax rate, when things stabilize, will have to be raised. And if there was ever a time for a financial transaction tax, it is now.

The weeks ahead will continue to be a crucible. We have already begun to reappraise our values as we recognize the things that connect us all. We cannot help but grow in appreciation of the people we rely on, be it the grocery clerk, the garbage collector, the pharmacist, the doctors, nurses, the tireless journalists bring us the best information they can. Equally, our empathy cannot help but increase for the more vulnerable among us: the precariously employed, those living from paycheck to paycheck, renters facing eviction, the homeless, those who rely on foodbanks. Platitudinous thoughts and prayers will not cut it. Programs like a basic income will. And we all must be willing to pay for them.

Fate has delivered to us an unprecedented opportunity to change the world's trajectory. But time is short. When Covid-19 abates, will we emerge healed from our petty obsessions and become participants in creating a new world? Or will vital lessons be quickly forgotten and see us return to our old modes of thinking, modes that are directly responsible for the sad state we are in today?

Now is not the time for us to be anything other than apt students.