Happy Anniversary?

It is now a year into the Covid Chronicles, a series I began to note, remind and debate the issues of the day Covid became a lifestyle brand. The sagas of Covid were like a reality Soap Opera, which is fitting since the President at the time was a reality brand in chief. And while that character was sent into retirement in Florida to golf out his days, we still have the originally protagonist – Covid or CoV-19, the Cornonavirus, or as I called it in those days the Coronation Virus as once it deigned you to the court of Corona your life was never to be the same, if you lived. And like British soap – Coronation Street, the Covid Chronicles were born.

So as I look back over the last year, I ask what have we learned? When did we learn it? And what did we do to not repeat it. Well it appears we learned nothing. One of the issues that truly galled me was the issue of testing. We are seeing it again with vaccines with classifications, sub classifications, identity markers and qualifiers that entitle you to get the shot or not and even then it is no guarantee, well other than some City and Government workers, even the retiree-in-chief and his war bride have had theirs which enables them to freely travel and move among the common folk that took to the streets out of love and now rest in prison awaiting the next Q-Message. I assume he won’t be visiting any of them in jail in the near future, I mean jails are Covid central, the new retirement homes when it comes to spreading the virus.

Last year the City Government office parking lot near my home was vacant, not a car to be found, today it is full. We still as city residents do not have full access to varying government services and agencies and that seems to be largely due to us, the great unwashed who are carrying more viral loads than a long haul trucker carries toilet paper. Ah remember the hoarding and hysterical buying of all food, toilet paper, cleaning and cold remedy supplies that we could fit into our hands, cars or have delivered. Today I can walk freely into any CVS and get what I need to wipe my nose, my ass and anything in between. I just can’t get a vaccine.

Then we have the sudden crush of transit passengers from a year when buses, trains, subways and freeways were void of cars. Where the Mayor of New York City stood on a bridge connecting New Jersey to New York with a State Patrol Officer to watch for cross state travelers entering into the area illegally. Well not illegally but forbidden to do so by some vague executive order to demand any out of state traveler to quarantine for 14 days upon arrival. This like testing was of course not anything anyone was doing anything about and those who did found themselves adrift with no contact or legal demands they don’t leave the residency or hotel they were in. Bringing me to the hotel issue. Remember hotels? They are closed and some are open and some took in the homeless and housed them during the early days until people complained and some may never reopen. Those that were open were also supposed to provide shelter to those who either had Covid or were from homes were someone had Covid and they could not self-isolate so they were supposed to check in and have their food, medical needs looked after until they were clear. Some held traveling medical staff and in one case were robbed while being declared a medical hero nightly on the news and on the streets. Remember the horns and waving every night at 7? Yeah, me neither.

Meanwhile essential workers became grocery clerks, UPS drivers and Amazon warehouse workers. And how do we reward them? Well we don’t touch any of it and then we refuse to give them a wage rise or allow them to join a union. Sounds fair. But did you catch Covid? I mean the workers in food processing plants had to work overtime? Remember the great pork shortage? Yeah that led to a rise in prices but not protections. Trickle down much?

Ah remember the Theater? I do and Broadway still sits dark, but it was replaced by Covid Theater. This is the endless cleaning, the temperature checks, the closing of the Subways at night to do special deep cleaning and of course wearing of Masks and other special garments that kept one safe. That medical professionals on the front lines were the ones in need never changed the importance of PPE but the reality is that there was a shortage of body bags that never made the nightly news as that is not good optics. But having coolers and storage units stuffed with bodies was okay. And like vaccines those in the accounting office are finding ways to get the needed shot while others more at risk do not. So much for letting hospitals be in charge. Favoritism much?

And that reminds me of hospitals and their hysteria. The division of medical care never became more clearer with public facilities bursting at the brim and private ones commandeering wealthy benefactors to get needed equipment, requesting a homo-phobic religious group to set up a satellite tent facility in a public park to treat Covid patients and of course the massive discrepancy in treatments, billing and overall care dependent upon your diagnosis or access to insurance and financial support. In the early days it was shove a tube down your throat and hope for the best and that never was the best and in turn many who had Covid were sent home to die. At least they died in dignity as I am not sure being shoved into a plastic tented room with a tube, narcotics and surrounded by those medical heroes, dressed in varying levels of protective gear scared for their own life is comforting or dignified. Is it?

There is one thing Covid did do was expose the ugly underbelly of a medical system so damaged and inconsistent with resources that only a pandemic would enable America to realize how fucked you are when you set foot into a hospital. And the same goes for the warehouses of the old – nursing homes. Remove the Nurse part and you have it half right. Home is debatable, as food, overall facility maintenance and care are vastly different and equally horrific regardless. Hate a family member? Get a Conservatorship (thanks Brittney) and put them in one or send them on a cruise. Either/or they are the death traps of all kinds of disease, Covid is just the current one. Remember Legionaires?

And lastly we have the “experts.” This classification runs large and not in charge. From the early days, the misinformation, the contradictions, the endless moving goal posts and changing tones dependent upon who was holding their daily presser, it became a must watch TV moment to see the face palming, the eye rolling, the art work, the daily threats, numbers and of course the lack of consistency. Nothing says it more when there was little modeling of the same behavior one was expected to follow. And I want to personally thank the aging white dinosaurs of Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci for being the two aging stars competing for air time. It was like Bette Davis and Anne Baxter is All About Eve only less entertaining. I truly believe that those two did more damage then good as their constant contradictions, scolding and refusing to reprimand the Chief of Misinformation only made it worse. Bleach Martini anyone?

As we now see the Supporting Actors coming forward, such as Jay Inslee, largely ignored on the Presidential primary stage now being lauded as the successful Governor of the State who had patient zero in January of 2019 but only to find that taken by once again the Stud of the C, Gavin Newsom, who realized that California had Patient Zero, a woman found dead on her kitchen floor months earlier. No fair, Washington State had a way better spokesperson about Pandemics, Bill Gates. And with that more conspiracy theories and nutfuck bullshit came out of it. A man who could have written a check to pay for all the tests America need. And nothing says crisis more than a white Billionaire. Oh wait we had one – what was his name again, oh yeah Bloomberg. His supporting role in the show about Presidents long forgotten. He has no lines in this new series but one of his co-stars has stepped up, no not her, but Bill DiBlasio. He became a part of the Three Stooges, Cuomo, Murphy of NJ and the whatever the name of Connecticut Governor did on a daily basis, which was defer to Cuomo. DiBlasio did not get the memo but like all supporting actors waiting in the wings, he is getting the last laugh now. Ah Cuomo it is not like you are on TV every day being so sanctimonious with your daily scolding and reprimanding that all of this falls or is that fails because of us. To quote Governor Murhpy, “Don’t be a knucklehead.” Shame you did not follow his advice. Meanwhile Newsom, the Stud of the C, is fighting for his life as they are trying to get him thrown overboard. Things are not looking well for many who took on starring roles in the early days of chaos theory. I mean the biggest star went into early retirement!

We look now to the second tier, those who were desperately seeking Susan or some other relevance across the country and they are still understudies. From Florida, to the Dakotas to Texas, one disaster after another makes us all want to take a trip, even to Mexico. Do I have to quarantine when I get there and when I get back. How long? 14 or 10 days. They changed that didn’t they. The only state that did actually enforce that was Hawaii, easy to do on a fucking island.

And we are all living on our own islands as we wait, and wait again. Not for tests as that is over now. The stations are now gone, replaced by drive up massive vaccine sites. How the tides have turned, the Javitz center once a satellite hospital for the Covid overflow, a site that held a 1000 beds and treated only 400, to the Naval ship, Comfort that treated some patients and sailed away with great fanfare (how much did that cost?) could come back and bring us vaccines or toilet paper. As right now there is a shipping backlog the ports of so much merchandise and materials awaiting delivery they could maybe help. I sure would like that new video game or whatever on backorder you are waiting for from China.

Ah and that brings me to China, home of the Wuhan flu. Between the incompetence of the CDC and lack of engagement from WHO one wonders if we will ever get the truth about Covid and its origin. I recall the early days when we were told it would be fine, the we went on lockdown, we even had a curfew (I love that one the most as the virus doesn’t spread from 8 pm to 5 am), the lack of tests to having to lie to get one (we did learn that this time, LIE) and then lack of info about deaths, to actually what Covid is and how it is transmitted. No not on packages and tactile but in air but the endless debate of how long it lingers and travels has never been resolved; Covid is like the Golden State Killer, he moved throughout most of California and it took a writer to uncover that half the crimes committed were by the same guy! Excellent Detective work by a person who was an amateur detective. Maybe we need less Doctors and more writers to figure this shit out.

We have had two massive riots and oddly both about Democracy. One wanted to remind us that were are one with Civil Rights and Equality at the core the other about democracy and the need to wrap that one up as it was good and all but time to try something new – perhaps a Dictatorship?

In this we had a massive scale crash of our economy that exposed more failures of our Government’s, be they federal or state, when Unemployment claims could not get processed. When we issued checks and loans to business and people they came in VISA debit cards that cost more than the money actually provided (I got mine for $53.15, the processing costs for such eat half of that) and the loans to big companies and businesses that were well connected and financially lucrative with a strong balance sheet but then again whose counting? Oh yeah what was that Treasury Secretary’s name.. Mnuchin..a man who made money off junk loans. Makes sense.

And we are here today right now. Right where we were a year ago only now we can go out but why do we? The numbers of injections now sit alongside the amount of positive tests, the death toll and yet they once again fail to actually show that against the total population broken down by age, race and other extraneous information as to where. The same bullshit that they failed to do with Covid as a way of obfuscating the true number of who died, where they died, as well as broken down by age and race. Less is more with Covid and the Less You Know…..

Covid Chronicles – the Doom Loop

When I read the stories of families and individuals who have struggled with long haul Covid, the families who never said good bye to their loved ones and the endless struggles of medical professionals to seek answers and find resolution to the never ending slog of Covid it does not take a village to realize how we need a leader to help us find the ways of building and rebuilding all that is broken.

We have many targets of ire, from the varying Governors who tried to assert leadership and instead contributed to the chaos, the endless parade of Medical Officials who seemingly had no answers, often contradicting themselves and of course the media who seems to grab any brass ring to fill the endless hours of news time with some relevant new spin on Covid. They need a dose of STFU frankly as they seemingly make it worse.

I am going to refer to the lengthy and comprehensive piece in The New Yorker, The Plague Year, by Lawrence Wright. Simply put it is a must read and with it you will see all the mishaps, mistakes and missteps made by varying players in this Covid Theater. And one for the record is Dr. Fauci and the Surgeon General, the Director of the CDC, and the FDA, the Secretary of HHS, as well as Steven Mnuchin who also felt that closing down the country in order to save lives was (I am using my own pun here) overkill. Even Birx who I have nothing but loathing for did at one point argued strongly that he was wrong and how many hundreds of thousands of deaths will it take to alter your negative view. In this data centric world there was none only projections by varying competitive Universities and again this is not that easy to predict. But this is what we were using and all of them or none of them had it right as no one can predict human behavior.

And that is where we are now. We have reached a point like the mass shootings where we no longer feel empathy or are driven by rage to force politicians to enact change and in turn we allow a minority to rule a majority and that is what it was like for me living in Nashville, fighting odds with people uneducated over religious and utterly obsessed with money. Our federal Government reminds me of Tennessee every day, mismanaged, poor communicators and utter liars.

What it takes is patience to read and comprehend both science and math. In the article I found it interesting that Birx and a colleague went on a cross country road trip to varying states to try to cajole and encourage the varying Governors of many States to embrace mask wearing. This of course came AFTER Fauci and the Surgeon General had stated that mask wearing was not necessary. And in the beginning Fauci did not agree that Covid was spread by asymptomatic carriers. Ah the what if’s and if only. This is the Doom Loop: “Our political system is caught in a “doom loop” of partisanship and polarization, as both major parties trade long-term institutional stability for short-term political gain in what they rationalize as a fight for the soul of our country.” And the Covid Task Force was formed and did little as it was where the arguments centered on political capital and tending to a vituperative volatile President versus actually doing what is right for the public and the people. Setting up camps to ensure one’s own position than doing right. The endless doom loop of going nowhere but trapped in a circle of jerks.

The article does have heroes and none of them are the players we see in the news or hear of, a Government employee who ironically was once a reporter. And he had front row to the greatest seat in the theater of the absurd as he watched one moron enter the room only to leave followed by another. Matt Pottinger, the deputy national-security officer whose brother was a Physician in off all places Seattle, a former Marine, who spoke Mandarin and had massive contacts in Asia as the outbreak began. He knew day one we are on ride to hell and while the idiots spun their tops he tried to figure out how and what to do right. And it was at the first meeting with Senators where Fauci and Robert Redfield (CDC) said at the briefing in January ” We are prepared for this.” Lie number one

The irony was that in 2019, the HHS dept. conducted a simulation called, the Crimson Contagion, which is to test the government’s response in a pandemic. It concluded that well you know the answer today. At that time nothing was done to remedy the shortcomings and issues that the test results provided.

But back to heroes who immediately began to do what the do best, dig into research and reaching out to colleagues in the field. One stands out, Dr. Barney S. Graham, the chief architect of the first authorized Covid vaccine. One of his partners in this venture is Jason McLellan who was studying HIV and that began the two to work together on the vaccine that is now being produced by Moderna. Again, if you think these are people on the money train, think again, the U.S. Government funded much of this (well so did Dolly Parton) and they own the patent rights.

Meanwhile the Doom Loop continues with another Oval Office meeting where in January Trump was warned that this was the big one, and told it would be the “biggest national security threat you will ever face.” At that same meeting Fauci said, “It would be unusual for an asymptomatic person to drive the epidemic in a respiratory disorder.” Lie #2.

I call them lies as at this point anyone in science and research should know there are no clear facts, no clear black and whites unless it has been studied, analyzed and verified. At that point in late January there was little to no information about Covid as China was covering its tracks and downplaying it globally while simultaneously locking down and shutting down anyone doing otherwise than keeping quiet. Even at this meeting the Kudlow idiot that Trump has an econ adviser thought it was not serious as apparently the stock market would somehow know this and reflect it. He asked if the money was dumb and then said, “Is everyone asleep at the switch. I have a hard time believing that.” He does not recall that remark. Lie #3

But another crackpot Trump adviser, Peter Navarro was the first to call for borders to be shut, equating it with a black swan event. And he was the odd man out.. not the first time but the first time he was actually right. His posture on this led him to be banned from future meetings. More crimes and misdemeanors follow.

And from this more began to devise the strategy to become what we know now, the quarantine lockdown. And the name, flatten the curve, came when Dr. Markel and a CDC director, Marin Cetron, devised while looking at a mass of Thai noodle takeout. There you go, inspiration in all forms.

By the end of February the reality that the virus was here and moving across the globe and the United States made a sense of urgency that required money, diligence and of course cooperation. Three things that our Government in its current state of the doom loop make such a challenge if not an impossibility. And again of all people Peter Navarro devises a budget for 3 Billion dollars to cover costs of an accelerated vaccine process, PPE equipment and other therapeutics. This passed muster with Secretary Azar but the access to the door via the “acting” chief of staff Mulvaney, was shut upon arrival. He gave an 8 Million pass as enough. And this begins the denial that fuels the jet for Trump to continue to equate Covid with the flu. Lie #4

By March the warnings were out and we know that in some states the emergency bell was ringing but here in New York, Mayor DiBlasio was encouraging people to eat out. Okay, then. Where do you suggest, Bellevue Hospital cafeteria?

The chaos that follows is all part of our current memory and is our recent history which is our current present. The idiocy, the lies presented by Trump alone are in double if not triple digits. His enablers and cult followers have continued to live in the river of denial that they float on the passenger ship to hell. The Governors who cruised their ships into ports of shit and bullshit are still pretending to helm the vessel with no more knowledge or skills that even the most green of Bosun’s on Bravo’s Below Deck possess. The reality is that much of this could have been, should have been, might have been prevented if not reduced had anyone gotten out of the circle of jerks and the doom loop. We can talk about the Nursing Home patients sent back Covid positive to infect others and themselves die, or how about the Veteran Homes such as the one in Massachusetts, so badly understaffed and underfunded, that aging Vets were shoved into single wards, not monitored, isolated nor cared for. Even in New York many patients so overwhelmed the system that one a Broadway director was shoved into a hall, where he soiled himself and was not given food nor water for 12 hours. Maybe he should have gone to the Javitz Center they had all of a 100 folks. Our health care system was as disabled and fractured as the patients they treated.

And here we are a country at risk with a President trying to jigger votes, find conspiracies where there are none and a coalition of Congress men and one idiot woman (from Tennessee, Marsha Blackburn) trying to pander to this pathological liar. Covid is not going away, you cannot swipe right and rid yourself of it. This is the long haul, only without delusions, endless fevers, pain, breathing challenges, it is by far an easier one to truck. We have to wear masks, avoid small congregations and poorly ventilated spaces, such as bars and restaurants. Once again in Nashville, home of morons, I read where they are sure if the Mayor allowed the bars to stay open to 1 a.m that the spread of Covid would be reduced: “I think it was a mistake by the Health Department to not allow bars to stay open until 1 a.m.,” said Barrett Hobbs, chair of Metro’s hospitality recovery committee and owner of several downtown businesses. “The science shows that people gathering in homes is the largest viral spreader.”

Now this moron is well first a Tennessean, second a bar owner and third a white man. The biggest of all the liars in the lying world. For the record guess what? Wrong again.

The hospitalitysector’sprotestsaround the world over bans on their activities, limiting them at best to selling takeaways, contrasts with the scientific evidence: well-meaning restaurant and bar owners insist they have complied scrupulously with health and safety measures, but there is no getting away from the fact that a business where people must remove their masks in order to eat or drink, has increased infection rates.

At the aggregate level, the first study to portray the obvious correlation between restaurant openings and the spread of COVID-19 was published in June by Johns Hopkins University, using data on credit card spending by 30 million customers in the United States and correlating it to the evolution of the pandemic in each state. The relationship was clear: the more spending on restaurants, the greater the number of infections.

That study was followed by another, carried out by Stanford University and published on November 10. Using a very different methodology, the outcome was nevertheless the same: researchers tracked the smartphones of more than 98 million people between March and May, taking into account the number of times their subjects went to restaurants, gyms and hotels, and concluding that if restaurants were authorized to open at full capacity, they would be responsible for more than 600,000 infections in a city like Chicago, and that, in addition, the distribution was irregular and impossible to predict: 10% of the premises were responsible for 85% of the expected infections.

And yesterday I finished an article in the The New York Times Magazine about going forward with College Football and its role of spreading Covid while the same State leaders who were demanding a total lockdown capitulated on this one issue. Mike DeWine of Ohio is perhaps the biggest hypocrite in that crowded field.

They found this: The week the season resumed, the mayors of 11 of the 14 Big Ten cities wrote to the conference expressing their concern that football games would encourage people to congregate. “It’s a normal tradition on game day that you watch with other people,” Dr. Mysheika Roberts, the health commissioner for Columbus, told me. “And we’ve seen our cases go up. Since the first game, our cases have exploded.” When we spoke the week I visited Columbus, Roberts seemed confident that Ohio State’s football players could remain safe. They were motivated by both the carrot of being able to continue playing and the stick of a season potentially shut down if they helped foment an outbreak. She was less optimistic about Buckeye fans around the city and across Ohio. “We’re trying to change the behavior of all those people,” she said. “But what’s their motivation?”

Well it apparently is this….

At halftime, I left Ohio Stadium and headed to a party on West Lane Avenue, a few blocks from campus. By the time I arrived, Fields had thrown for another touchdown; I saw the replay on a television that someone had carried out to the lawn. At the time of the Rutgers game, the incidence of positive tests in Columbus approached 11 percent. Private gatherings were capped at 10 people. But these fans seemed to have created an exemption for themselves. Perhaps 50 people were gathered outside the multiunit brick building, which housed mostly students. Plastic cups of beer were being distributed from a wooden table. Nobody I saw wore a mask.

When Ohio State’s season finally started, several students told me, it was as though the party animals had been released from their cages. Football, said Kaleigh Murphy, a sophomore I talked with, “gave people a reason to get up on a Saturday and go to a frat and start drinking.” For Murphy, part of Ohio State’s allure was the spectacle of a football weekend. During the previous season, her group of friends would gather in the stadium parking lot before home games. Maybe they would eventually go in, maybe they wouldn’t. With no fans permitted this season, they moved their festivities elsewhere. “If people aren’t going to parties,” she said, “they’re at the bars.”

Later that night, I drove to the Short North neighborhood near downtown. At Seesaw, a restaurant and bar on the corner of East First Avenue and High Street, I saw revelers partying as though 2020 had never happened. There were five televisions on the ground floor and more upstairs. The bar was crowded with patrons, one for nearly every seat. Most seemed to be shouting. Two were kissing in a corner. Five were jammed around a table meant for four, playing a drinking game. Only the bartenders wore masks. It was Saturday night. “A football Saturday night,” the bouncer checking IDs at the door said.

Two days later, on Monday, Ohio’s 9,750 new coronavirus cases broke its existing record by more than 1,500. The state’s governor, Mike DeWine, addressed the crisis. He described the virus as a “runaway freight train.” He asked families to scale back their plans for the coming holiday season. Yet in terms of the impact across the state, every Ohio State game might as well have been its own Thanksgiving, just with different catering. DeWine was clearly mindful of the popularity of the Buckeyes among his constituents, which may explain why he wasn’t willing to try to curtail those weekly gatherings. When I asked him about it, his answer was blunt: “I can’t impact who you have over to eat pizza and watch the Ohio State game.”

So you see that all of this blustering and posturing and fear mongering accomplished only so much and we are where we are. We are in a perpetual doom loop. Hunker down as we still have a long winter left.

Let’s Vogue

Well reading Vogue one would never think politics and fashion but these are new times, strange times and well old times as in age.

First up Jane Fonda is back and as feisty as ever as we are now all hauling out the Jane Fonda workout videos for our home fitness regime, but she is also selling sweatsuits (top that Beyonce) for her Fire Drill Fridays and One Fair Wage Campaign.  I bought mine and its tax deductible so go figure but something tells me this will not be popular among the trophy wive set.

But what really stood out was this article on Crazy Dopey Grandpa’s Committee to bring America back or whatever the fuck he is labeling it this week.   But what is hilarious is that half that cohort would be wiped out with one POS test of Corvid.  And the audition of Dopey Ben Carson is laughable as one wonders to this day how he ever got a medical license and again confirms my loathing of the profession overall.  Madonna at this point would be a better addition or Jane Fonda they are just old enough to be on the squad.. oh wait that is Taylor Swift.  I mean the Force and may it be with you!

Guess Who’s on Trump’s Task Force to Reopen America?

By Michelle Ruiz
April 14, 2020
Trump coronavirus task force
VOGUE

Donald Trump’s presidency has been terrifying from its infancy, but it’s all the more so now that he’s created a task force to reopen America in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and packed it not with leading public-health officials or economic experts but a who’s who of clubby cabinet appointees.

According to a Fox News report, the motley crew includes Mark Meadows, Trump’s fourth chief of staff and a climate-science denier; Treasury Secretary and former hedge-fund manager Steven Mnuchin; Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, whose failure to divest his multimillions “keeps ethics watchdogs up at night,” as NPR put it; Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who also happens to be the wife of Trump’s senatorial puppet Mitch McConnell; and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, who generally does not make sense. (Trump refuted a report that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner would be members of the task force, so at least there’s that.)

In an unprecedented situation that demands some of the smartest and most highly specialized minds in the world, Trump just so happened to find them all in his own administration. How convenient—the search must have been exhaustive and taken all of five minutes. Now, never fear, they’re here to save America from a historic economic nosedive, including 17 million unemployed and counting, in the middle of a deadly pandemic. What could possibly go wrong?

The president’s latest collective is notable for who they are but also for who they are not. Not one of them, with the exception of retired neurosurgeon Carson, is a doctor or public-health expert, and that’s who should definitely have a say on when it is safe to begin to reopen the economy in the wake of a pandemic that has killed close to 24,000 people nationwide. But the underrepresentation of medical or health expertise on the task force, the notion that it can plow ahead to economic revival with little regard for science or potential threat to the public, is pure Trump—par for the course from a man who, ignoring all the facts before him, vowed just a few weeks ago that churches would be packed and the nation would be open and “raring to go” by Easter. In another classic Trump move, Carson is believed to be only African American who will be selected for the group, even as data shows the coronavirus is hitting communities of color the hardest.

When the world is crumbling, Trump clearly believes that his inner circle—mostly moneyed white men—is supremely qualified to solve things. Never mind that the first task force to tackle the new coronavirus, led by Vice President Mike Pence, perhaps his chief yes-man, has been woefully, dangerously inadequate. Besides being messy and slow to act, a new NPR investigation showed this week that the administration has largely failed to deliver on the major promises Trump made when he declared a state of emergency in the Rose Garden more than a month ago—no wide-scale drive-thru testing nor a website to help people determine if they need a test. It was often remarked that Trump would run the country like a businessman. But in the time of a global pandemic, it’s just one facet of Trump’s downfall: He continues to operate as if the private sector, including ex-Goldman executives like Mnuchin or steel magnates like Ross, has what it takes to single-handedly save public health.

Notably, Trump failed to tap any governors for the task force either, even as they have been the ones who, in the lack of federal leadership, have stepped up to manage the crisis. As the president blindly asserts his “total authority” to reopen the government—disregarding the 10th Amendment, which reserves states’ rights—coalitions of states on both the East Coast and West Coas have formed to manage the process of getting on a path to a new normal. It’s a telling rebuke, one that sees Trump’s task force for what it is: a new name for a collection of old cronies.

Exhausted Yet?

In trying to find a break from the endless political coverage and the distraction that is holidays I wanted to find a book that was utter gossip about someone dead that I could use to laugh and be amused by, as they like to say, “The rich are different.”  So I had checked out a book about the late Princess Margaret who I thought was the interesting royal of the family of the House of Windsor.  I have read all of 10 pages but from what I have read she was a bitch of high order and until those pesky heirs came along she was second in line to the throne.   Intellect clearly is not a high priority for those in the family and I hope it works out well for Megan as she seems bright and worldly and a breath of fresh air.  But they said that about her also dead Mother-in-Law.  Maybe this weekend I can at least read some more dish and look forward to Netflix next season of The Queen with anticipation of that phase of the royals life.  Why are these people who seem utterly boring also seem fascinating?

Of course we have our own royal “we” in the crazy Trump family.  From the trophy wife to the doting daughter and the dutiful sons it is very Shakespearean in tone down to the off with their heads the daily cry from the King of the family who is more Queen from Alice’s Wonderland that that of the Lear’s. But the descent into madness has found parallels that cannot be ignored.

The week of the House of  Horror of the Christmas decorations (seriously the red trees were one thing but the base of trees and the wreaths made of Be Best pencils was utterly absurd placement promotion that makes one think they believe they are still in Trump Tower and you piss on everything to ensure domination).  Then  the raging raving rambling press briefings en route to the G20 conference only moments later to change course (not the plane but Trump as always) to cancel the love fest he was looking for with Putin.  And all of this the failure to have the annual press Christmas bash makes one wonder if any creature is stirring let alone a mouse in that house.

It is not yet December and yet the chill in the air is that of those who are in a perpetual state of histrionics.  – the White Supremacists, the Media, the Poor White Men and their equally charged up wives, two angry Gay men who felt snubbed by Chelsea Clinton at the Polo Club Bar and decided to support Trump (that redefines bitchy Queen, take that Margaret!) and everyone in Nashville not getting a piece of the Amazon that is not  scheduled for delivery for three years (wow will I still want that when it gets here?).

But the city released the bid yesterday and we found:

Nashville’s initial lure for Amazon’s second headquarters was an annual $500-per-job grant and 50 percent off property taxes for 15 years, according to the original incentive offer released by Metro officials Thursday afternoon.

For 10,000 workers, that would have amounted to a $5 million-a-year payment and a total 15-year cost of $75 million, according to the letter signed by then-Mayor Megan Barry.

In addition, the city pledged a host of other incentives — including fully funding any needed connection to a planned mass transit system. 

The state will also pay $65 million cash and extend $21.7 million in tax breaks. In return, Amazon promised a $230 investment that will add up to $1 billion over 10 years. 

From 50K in jobs to 5K and spread out over 7 years is still the most laughable bullshit I have ever received in my stocking.  But to find out that the city is/was planning to give the $500 per job and build transit for them is sheer hubris and arrogance that boggles the mind.   Again coming off the announcement that the municipal workers will not see raises and that he has no intent of raising property taxes.  So who is doing the math here?  How will any of this be paid for and by whom?

The current Moron I mean Mayor has said nothing about this and has been clear to avoid any further debate about transit  but he had no problem releasing this document he had initially refused to so until the very day the Slattern was on the news talking at a TED X talk for women.  Love the line up one of the women was also on the front page or our local rag as her “acclaimed restaurant” in one of the emerging hoods – The Nations – closed.  Well she is one of three that shut doors in the area over the past year and again this was because the shiny key plan of urban development is missing some essential elements… wages and workers –  who can afford these joints.  But releasing that plan that was originally signed off by the former Slattern comes at an odd time.  Funny last week there was no plan, today a plan.  Why? Well it appears that she is now living her best life, been on the news with a new do and attitude. He must be worried.  Well he is not going to the Christmas Parade tomorrow as Kid Rock is the Grand Marshall. Funny in June he was all excited about that, again did Kid Rock change since then?

Briely is perhaps our worst Politician but that is not saying much.  Given to what I have read about this Amazon ass kiss with that promise to build green space and improve the infrastructure there is little mention of the varying other problems that plague the city – the increasing violence and endless deaths that dominate the news cycle here (we have had several suicide murders and my favorite were rich white people this time irony not covered on the black news Scoop Nashville I guess white lives don’t matter to that racist piece of shit).  Then there is the lack of a safety net and the budget for City Hospital, the scandals in the Building Department, the endless incentives given to developers with no oversight (let alone logic, I call it shiny key planning) and this involved, which also includes safety and building inspections that cannot be performed due to a lack of qualified help.  And lastly the dumpsters aka the schools.  They are a shit fest and as I sit in a classroom without windows, with kids thoroughly disengaged and an internet connection that is so sporadic I wonder what they think they will do with these kids when Amazon does come here?  Hire them as custodians and security guards I guess.

The reality is that the culture here is too ingrained in the people and despite the outsiders arriving at a supposed rate of 100 day they are few and far between the educated elite that Amazon will require to work in this office.  So again by the time they do much will change and of course people will transfer, be hired outside the office and over the next seven years there may well be a push through the local schools to get the grads up to snuff.  Again that is with the next three years to plan and then add and adapt this is possible for numerous students to graduate with the necessary skill set but something tells me few if many will be local.  There is a resignation and what I have come to learn as emmeshment to describe the residents here   And in turn I equate my conversations akin to having one with a fish. The blank staring eyes that cloud over when they blink is something that one finds when you jump deep into the waters here. The poverty, the obsession with money and the church, and lastly the racism that is all ingrained as a cultural dogma has enabled the city to say that they did not need to change at all to attract such white collar workforce as Ernst and Young, Alliance Bernstein and of course Amazon so why would they have to?     Yes indeed they are arrogant here in ways that boggle the mind.

Which for now the largest employer, Vanderbilt, was held in high esteem. It covered all the bases that made this city feel important – a Southern version of an Ivy League School, a coveted football team (the obsession with sports only surpassed with the one over religion) and of course the growing medical facilities that have transformed once dying parts of the city.   Well that may be coming to an end as a Nurse killed someone there.  Funny how this does not surprise me as the hospital had been in the news over their issues with over booking surgery and in turn anesthetizing people but this one is pretty out there.  What was more disturbing was the cover up. Really this is something you choose to hide as if that won’t get out there.  See if they had killed me as I feared they would have succeeded in no one knowing as I have no family. This is just one step removed from Harborview Medical Center in Seattle the trashbag public hospital that has no problem doing just that.  But this is Vanderbilt and yet they are not much better it appears.  But then look at all hospitals they are all shit frankly.

Corporations go with the money. They are here for the tax incentives, the no income tax and of course the cost of living which by their very re-location here means that will now all go away.  It still will be cheaper than New York but this is a town built on tourism and that is not going away so there is only so much draw to this town that one could tolerate and in turn this is still a very red state and getting redder with each passing day. The Plumber Governor is by far more conservative than Haslam and he carries the Religious torch which means he will burn anyone who does not respect Jesus. Then we have our State Legislature that puts the wing into nut and of course Marsha the Trumpologist.  In States that are more progressive and open to alternative lifestyles and religions let alone immigration this is going to bite the white collar classes in their asses.  Again I am leaving in a year and I cannot wait.   Otherwise it is like the Borg you must assimilate in which to survive.

Ignorance must be bliss as knowledge is exhausting. Time for a good book.

I’m Out

That might be the motto of the Trump White House.  It could be a sign off, it could be wave off or it could be a resignation letter and given Trump’s comprehension skills more than sufficient.  And Trump is back to his signature – You’re Fired – with the exodus of Rex Tillerson who never even got the chance to say Adios. This is neither shocking nor unsurprising given what we heard earlier with the Three Amigo pact that once Gary Cohn or Rex Tillerson or General McMasters were fired or quit the other two would follow in support. That did not quite play out as both men remained or sort of did while Trump busily planned their terminations. Yes, McMasters is next of his own volition or not.   Next up who will move the Rook to flank the King?  Oh Trump doesn’t play Chess he is so Checkers.. and to think that was Nixon’s dogs name.  Ah full circle.

The name calling, the pouting, the raging and the rallies are so bizarre that I cannot recall anyone in modern times that was so out there that they actually believed they were of import.  Oh wait.  Take a look at many modern day Dictators and their equivalent and there is little to distinguish the difference.  And you might say Trump doesn’t have a uniform.  Ah yes he does, the ill fitting boxy navy or dark suit and the absurdly long tie with hair that resembles a helmet and a spray on tan you are one step away from any of those we have reviled as Totalitarian.  Even his handshake is a bizarre type of neo-salute.

Living is Nashville I have a newer found respect for stupid.  Seriously when you are stupid you are oblivious to facts and stuff.  You can simply shrug, ignore things that upset you or you can be rich enough to move to a farm in Ohio and shut out the world like the guy I wrote about in the New Hermit.  But the idiocy here takes on a new level when the news here has no news.  We have crime reports, traffic, weather, fire alarms, crime reports and some stuff.  And then buried in there is an expose on lead in the water in the Nashville Public Schools.  Ah its not just Flint just ask Betsy deVos.  Can Betsy find Flint on the map?  Funny she is from Michigan but probably has no clue where it is and would never set foot there like icky bad schools, no how no way!

I am sitting here right now in a shared classroom with the Teacher teaching Social Studies. He is reviewing Greek History and in turn the foundations of Government which came from history.  Aside from the mis-pronunciations and the boring online video lesson that they are reading, the inability to enable discussion and exchange ideas is non-existent.   I am not shocked at any point given what I have seen here as free speech is say what I want you to say and shut up the rest of the time.

Tomorrow is the day that was to acknowledge the Parkland shooting one month ago and have a National Walk Out day to demand gun control.  The focus was on students and schools where they are to walk out of class and have 17 minutes of silence in respect and acknowledgement of the 17 victims of Stoneyman.  If they did all victims of gun violence this year alone we may be up to two hours of silence; As it stands we are at 7000 (not including those killed by Police) killed by guns.   Beyond that gesture any activism or protest on a larger scale seems fairly up to the schools and the communities they exist within.   I respect this as a teachable moment and in turn the idea of what is the fundamental foundation to our Democracy – the right to free speech and to assemble.   I know here that the district has enabled the schools to set up a safe space, the gym or some other internal area which the Students congregate and in turn respect that moment of silence.  They have then a minute to return to class or be marked absent.

What they should be doing is turning this into a discussion about the state of just the schools here and what would they change?  There was another report last night on the crime/traffic/weather report about the lead in the water in the schools here. It is an ongoing serious issue that once again goes utterly ignored.  Some parents in a more “well off” school bought the filter fountains and paid for their installation. The maintenance official was caught on tape discussing how to circumnavigate their filter changes and other demands that will cost the district too much money.  This is budget crunch time with freeze on spending/hiring/traveling. Well other than the Superintendent who went to Seattle with the Rotary Club and the Chamber of Commerce to view the public transit system and in turn do a presentation on retaining talent. This from a district with 40% turnover and currently a major budget and water crisis.  I would love to hear that speech. Coincidence much that Seattle is looking for a Superintendent?  I hope they don’t ask about his concerns regarding health and well being of children or others who work in the schools.  They should ask him about the slop they serve them as well as combine that with the water it explains a few things.

I am so grateful that I am actually at the Dentist tomorrow that regardless I would not have worked.   It snowed enough on Sunday night that they delayed school for two hours and as I was scheduled for an ELL class in a portable that I would have to walk in and out all day to get the few that did show (this cohort is the most challenging for many reasons and the district made that call at  the wee hours so many have to completely change schedules to arrange for transportation or care due to the delay so instead the kids just don’t show)  and sit there all day bored out my skull I thought even for 75 bucks it was not worth it.  I could have, should have but did not.  I have so little commitment to these schools that even some cash cannot motivate me.

And today I am lucky two classes only and little responsibility.  I wish that all schools were like this, well they are but this is an exception as it was designed that way and I did not have to actually make an effort to make it that way. And sitting in this class watching the video and listening to the discussion (by the way the kids don’t have texts they are watching/following the video on their PCs) I see little analysis, critical thinking or engagement about what is a valid present day issue.  All history is both past/present and future.

And here in Tennessee that lives and dies history another story from Radley Balko at The Washington Post on the suppress the facts bill. (I just made that up but there is a point). I love that once again Southern Hypocrisy is always in the background.

I wish I could count the days that remain but I think I am like the former Mayor who is on three years probation. Thankfully I am half way through that time and if I am lucky I may get time off for good behavior.  Then it will be my turn go, “I’m out!”

Thank a Teacher

Teacher Appreciation Week I believe is coming up.  Do I care? Did I ever? No it is just absurd and I am not alone in that thought.

That said the Oscars of Teaching were given and this week the winners were flown to the White House to be honored by the Il Douchebag in Chief and the Secretary of Education who have pledged to utterly destroy public education as we know it.  And given the reception, the war has begun.  Well the American Schools are a part of the “carnage” so in war times do you expect anything else? 

And while I never liked Arnie Duncan, a man whose tenure on the job did little to benefit public education and was truly given the gig as he was the Basketball partner of Obama, so you cannot say that Trump is alone is awarding gigs to buds; however at least Obama knew him and Duncan was sort of kind of connected to Education via working in Charter schools as was his wife, so that alone counts.   But I have connected the link to the Obama Presidency’s same event and see the difference?  Well it was the greatest bestest event ever in the history of the Teacher’s Oscars EVER.  And they give it to black people and everything! 

Is any meeting with Trump normal? No so at least the Teachers were actually not treated any different. Well they didn’t get the greatest chocolate cake ever and maybe that was a good thing because that is usually the aperitif to a bombing. 

Trump’s rather weird meeting with the 2017 Teachers of the Year
By Valerie Strauss  The Washington Post  April 27  2017

It’s a time-honored tradition: U.S. presidents, every year, take some time to meet the 2017 state Teachers of the Year and single out the national winner. But things went a little differently Wednesday when President Trump welcomed this year’s winners to the White House.

Usually, the National Teacher of the Year speaks. This year, that didn’t happen. Usually, the president spends some time talking with the teachers, giving many of them individual attention. That barely happened Wednesday, according to several participants who agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity because they said they fear Trump addressing them on Twitter or press secretary Sean Spicer bringing them up at a daily briefing. Usually family members join the winners to meet the president. This time few were allowed — and relatives of the teachers, some who had traveled at their own expense for many hours to attend, were left to wait in a building near the White House, with, as one said, “no water in the hot rooms.”

Rather than a ceremony in the East Room or the Rose Garden, as past presidents have done, Trump invited the teachers into the Oval Office, where he asked them all to gather around him, standing, while he sat at his desk. In the crowd were first lady Melania Trump, Vice President Pence, second lady Karen Pence and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. It was the first lady’s birthday, and the teachers sang “Happy Birthday” to her.

At one point, one of the state winners, Abdul Wright from Minnesota, asked Trump whether the group could sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” often called the “Black National Anthem.” Trump, according to the Star Tribune, agreed, and thanked Wright for leading the song. Wright was quoted by the newspaper as saying:

“Yesterday superseded politics. Yesterday was about values, yesterday was about the human experience, yesterday was about the human heart. And I think we got caught up in that.”

The White House did not respond to a query about the event.

In the Oval Office, with the teachers and others standing around him, Trump spoke about the teachers and engaged with a few of them (see video above), and briefly singled out the 2017 National Teacher of the Year, Sydney Chaffee, from Codman Academy Charter Public School in Dorchester, Mass. A ninth-grade teacher, she is the first national winner from a charter school in the program’s 65-year history, and the first from Massachusetts. While the other teachers applauded, she accepted a trophy from Trump, who remained seated during the presentation.

Chaffee was not invited to offer remarks.

According to a pool report from White House reporters, Trump said to Chaffee: “That is really something special,” and he thanked the teachers for singing to his wife. He also said, continuing to remain seated, “You’re all great, great teachers,” and “Each of you has dedicated yourself to inspiring young lives and putting our children on a path to happiness and success.”

One teacher began to cry near the end of the event, and she said to Trump, “Sorry, I’m always crying.” He responded: “I’ve had some of the biggest executives in the world, who have been here many times, and I say have you been to the Oval Office? No. They walk into the Oval Office and they start crying. I say, ‘I promise I won’t say to your various stockholders [that they cried].’ ”

Meanwhile, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next door to the White House, were family members of the teachers, most of whom were not allowed into the ceremony, participants said. Chaffee’s husband and young daughter were kept waiting in a hallway before being allowed to enter the Oval Office, according to participants. A state school superintendent had flown to Washington to support the winner of his state, but he wasn’t allowed in either. DeVos met with the family members, some of whom were upset, for pictures, according to several participants.

A parent of one of the teachers said in an email:

“There was no planning, no care, no water in the hot rooms, and no respect for the families…. One state coordinator who had been working on her job since 1999 said it was a disgrace and the most terrible thing she had witnessed.”

The event was obviously different from those put on in recent years by other presidents.

Last year, President Barack Obama hosted a ceremony for the 2016 Teacher of the Year, Jahana Hayes from Waterbury, Conn., in the historic East Room of the White House. Pop-music artist Nate Ruess sang some songs; Hayes stood at the podium with Obama and was tasked with introducing him to the crowd; the president then gave a speech praising the teachers and calling for more federal funding for public education.

Obama then listened to Hayes, a veteran high school history teacher at a high-poverty school, give a speech. She described how her experience as a teen mom who grew up in the projects surrounded by poverty, drugs and violence fueled her passion for teaching.

Obama had significant ceremonies for the Teachers of the Years during his tenure, and Vice President Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, sometimes hosted the teachers in their residence before the White House event.

President George W. Bush spent time with the winning teachers too. In 2004, for example, he hosted the Teachers of the Year at a seated ceremony in the White House Rose Garden, where first lady Laura Bush spoke first and then the president gave a speech, noting:

Every President since Harry Truman has presented this award — Teacher of the Year Award. And there’s a good reason for that. When you’re in the company of some of the nation’s finest citizens, our greatest teachers, you’re in the company of people who give their hearts and their careers to improving the lives of children. You’re in the company of the best of our country.

Bush recognized Teacher of the Year Kathy Mellor from Rhode Island, who then spoke while the two Bushes and the rest of the crowd listened.

This year, Trump angered many teachers by proposing a 14 percent budget cut to the Education Department. Many also are skeptical of his education secretary, DeVos, a longtime advocate of private school vouchers. During his inaugural address in January, Trump characterized public education as a “system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge.” This system, he said, was part of an “American carnage” that he pledged to stop.

Same Old Same Old

Well as we move towards the 100 day mark we have seen a pattern of the Trump Doctrine emerge:

• Make grandiose promises. Have confusing messages regarding grandiose promises. 
• Have conflicting messenger to deliver equally confusing and conflicting messages. 
• Lay blame on others for their failures of the inability to deliver said grandiose promises. 
• When that again fails find new targets to blame. 
• Never criticize Russia. 
• Deny Facts and blame fake news and in turn quote, cite and source fake news to validate confusing messaging and blame making. 
• Do it all on Twitter.

When I read this I thought this is the drain the swamp portion of the grandiose promises, by putting a kid in charge who has little to no more experience than the big guy, the only difference is that one’s big daddy actually served time. The guardians of the gate are now family members with a vested interest in keeping the family name as clean as possible so that once this foray into Government ends they can go back to their day jobs.

These promises of fixing what is broke has been said repeatedly by many Administrations and then the reality of Governing kicks in. The fiefdoms, the cluster fucks, the cliques and the power brokers all have their own vested interests and they too are conflicting and equally confusing but they have the messaging down to a fine art. Say what the rubes need to hear and say it repeatedly.

60 Minutes did a story last night on Fake News and profiled a strange man with a site that sounded much more like a porn site. What was interesting is  that its author/founder felt proud that he being a Lawyer some how enabled him (in between sex sessions with a male prostitute and dominatrix whose safe word is Hillary) to write whatever shit he made up in his head. Well blood flow in men from the brain drains to the penis as we know pre and post sex so that might explain it. That and the law degree. One thing he did convince me was that people confused about their sexuality and are also Lawyers are angry queens that wield big dicks. One doesn’t need to be both but wow that bar exam shows me that anyone can pass it regardless of what the ABA says. Again read a “blawg” to see how far the idiocy runs in that profession. Fake news or just assholes being assholes. In other words the same old same old.

Re-branding and re-doing what already exists by calling it something else is just that. Yes I see the Tech sectors influence all over this one. Down to the angry queen and he too went to law school, Peter Thiel, irony that he tells people to dump education however… hmm easier to manipulate perhaps?

Trump taps Kushner to lead a SWAT team to fix government with business ideas

By Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker The Washington Post March 26 2017

President Trump plans to unveil a new White House office on Monday with sweeping authority to overhaul the federal bureaucracy and fulfill key campaign promises — such as reforming care for veterans and fighting opioid addiction — by harvesting ideas from the business world and, potentially, privatizing some government functions.

The White House Office of American Innovation, to be led by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, will operate as its own nimble power center within the West Wing and will report directly to Trump. Viewed internally as a SWAT team of strategic consultants, the office will be staffed by former business executives and is designed to infuse fresh thinking into Washington, float above the daily political grind and create a lasting legacy for a president still searching for signature achievements.

“All Americans, regardless of their political views, can recognize that government stagnation has hindered our ability to properly function, often creating widespread congestion and leading to cost overruns and delays,” Trump said in a statement to The Washington Post. “I promised the American people I would produce results, and apply my ‘ahead of schedule, under budget’ mentality to the government.”

In a White House riven at times by disorder and competing factions, the innovation office represents an expansion of Kushner’s already far-reaching influence. The 36-year-old former real estate and media executive will continue to wear many hats, driving foreign and domestic policy as well as decisions on presidential personnel. He also is a shadow diplomat, serving as Trump’s lead adviser on relations with China, Mexico, Canada and the Middle East.

The work of White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon has drawn considerable attention, especially after his call for the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” But Bannon will have no formal role in the innovation office, which Trump advisers described as an incubator of sleek transformation as opposed to deconstruction.

The announcement of the new office comes at a humbling moment for the president, following Friday’s collapse of his first major legislative push — an overhaul of the health-care system, which Trump had championed as a candidate.

Kushner is positioning the new office as “an offensive team” — an aggressive, nonideological ideas factory capable of attracting top talent from both inside and outside of government, and serving as a conduit with the business, philanthropic and academic communities.

“We should have excellence in government,” Kushner said Sunday in an interview in his West Wing office. “The government should be run like a great American company. Our hope is that we can achieve successes and efficiencies for our customers, who are the citizens.”

The innovation office has a particular focus on technology and data, and it is working with such titans as Apple chief executive Tim Cook, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff and Tesla founder and chief executive Elon Musk. The group has already hosted sessions with more than 100 such leaders and government officials.

“There is a need to figure out what policies are adding friction to the system without accompanying it with significant benefits,” said Stephen A. Schwarzman, chief executive of the investment firm Blackstone Group. “It’s easy for the private sector to at least see where the friction is, and to do that very quickly and succinctly.”

Some of the executives involved have criticized some of Trump’s policies, such as his travel ban, but said they are eager to help the administration address chronic problems.

“Obviously it has to be done with corresponding values and principles. We don’t agree on everything,” said Benioff, a Silicon Valley billionaire who raised money for Democrat Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.

But, Benioff added, “I’m hopeful that Jared will be collaborative with our industry in moving this forward. When I talk to him, he does remind me of a lot of the young, scrappy entrepreneurs that I invest in in their 30s.”

Kushner’s ambitions for what the new office can achieve are grand. At least to start, the team plans to focus its attention on reimagining Veterans Affairs; modernizing the technology and data infrastructure of every federal department and agency; remodeling workforce-training programs; and developing “transformative projects” under the banner of Trump’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan, such as providing broadband Internet service to every American.

In some cases, the office could direct that government functions be privatized, or that existing contracts be awarded to new bidders.

The office will also focus on combating opioid abuse, a regular emphasis for Trump on the campaign trail. The president later this week plans to announce an official drug commission devoted to the problem that will be chaired by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R). He has been working informally on the issue for several weeks with Kushner, despite reported tension between the two.

Under President Barack Obama, Trump advisers said scornfully, some business leaders privately dismissed their White House interactions as “NATO” meetings — “No action, talk only” — in which they were “lectured,” without much follow-up.

Andrew Liveris, chairman and chief executive of Dow Chemical, who has had meetings with the two previous administrations, said the environment under Trump is markedly different.

After he left a recent meeting of manufacturing chief executives with Trump, Liveris said, “Rather than entering a vacuum, I’m getting emails from the president’s team, if not every day, then every other day — ‘Here’s what we’re working on.’ ‘We need another meeting.’ ‘Can you get us more input on this?’ ”

Kushner proudly notes that most of the members of his team have little-to-no political experience, hailing instead from the world of business. They include Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council; Chris Liddell, assistant to the president for strategic initiatives; Reed Cordish, assistant to the president for intergovernmental and technology initiatives; Dina Powell, senior counselor to the president for economic initiatives and deputy national security adviser; and Andrew Bremberg, director of the Domestic Policy Council.

Ivanka Trump, the president’s elder daughter and Kushner’s wife, who now does her advocacy work from a West Wing office, will collaborate with the innovation office on issues such as workforce development but will not have an official role, aides said.

Powell, a former Goldman Sachs executive who spent a decade at the firm managing public-private job creation programs, also boasts a government pedigree as a veteran of George W. Bush’s White House and State Department. Bremberg also worked in the Bush administration. But others are political neophytes.

Liddell, who speaks with an accent from his native New Zealand, served as chief financial officer for General Motors, Microsoft and International Paper, as well as in Hollywood for William Morris Endeavor.

“We are part of the White House team, connected with everyone here, but we are not subject to the day-to-day issues, so we can take a more strategic approach to projects,” Liddell said.

Like Kushner, Cordish is the scion of a real estate family — a Baltimore-based conglomerate known for developing casinos and shopping malls. And Cohn, a Democrat who has recently amassed significant clout in the White House, is the hard-charging former president of Goldman Sachs.

Trump’s White House is closely scrutinized for its always-evolving power matrix, and the innovation office represents a victory for Wall Street figures such as Cohn who have sought to moderate Trump’s agenda and project a friendly front to businesses, sometimes in conflict with the more hard-line conservatism championed by Bannon and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus.

The innovation group has been meeting twice a week in Kushner’s office, just a few feet from the Oval Office, largely barren but for a black-and-white photo of his paternal grandparents — both Holocaust survivors — and a marked-up whiteboard more typical of tech start-ups. Kushner takes projects and decisions directly to the president for sign-off, though Trump also directly suggests areas of personal interest.

There could be friction as the group interacts with myriad federal agencies, though the advisers said they did not see themselves as an imperious force dictating changes but rather as a “service organization” offering solutions.

Kushner’s team is being formalized just as the Trump administration is proposing sweeping budget cuts across many departments, and members said they would help find efficiencies.

“The president’s doing what is necessary to have a prudent budget, and that makes an office like this even more vital as we need to get more out of less dollars by doing things smarter, doing things better, and by leaning on the private sector,” Cordish said.

Ginni Rometty, the chairman and chief executive of IBM, said she is encouraged: “Jared is reaching out and listening to leaders from across the business community — not just on day-to-day issues, but on long-term challenges like how to train a modern workforce and how to apply the latest innovations to government operations.”

Trump sees the innovation office as a way to institutionalize what he sometimes did in business, such as helping New York City’s government renovate the floundering Wollman Rink in Central Park, said Hope Hicks, the president’s longtime spokeswoman.

“He recognized where the government has struggled with certain projects and he was someone in the private sector who was able to come in and bring the resources and creativity needed and ultimately execute in an efficient, cost-effective, way,” Hicks said. “In some respects, this is an extension of some of the highlights of the president’s career.”

Whitewashing Begins

 If you recall the story of Tom Sawyer who  tricks a young man into whitewashing a fence that he has to do by upselling the gig. That young man was Huckleberry Finn.  But when many recall the story they confuse the two and who was the original lad with the spin of the brush.  I think that story is very much one akin to our current President.  Who is the one holding the brush versus the one doing the actual work is an interesting  analogy as there seems to be as many as was in Tom’s tale.

But the story marks a mask of intelligence and morality, which Mark Twain was a master of. That component is lacking in the White House, not the intelligence nor the ability to spin,  we know there is no morality (don’t tell Pence), but who is the narrator of the tale in this current Administration?

The declaration by Il Douchebag-in-Chief that Obama wiretapped him starts a fury of coverage, more allegations, demands and everyone dancing as fast as they can to either full tilt boogie or collapse in sweat covering, excusing, explaining or not commenting the moron who Tweets more bullshit than a meth head.

But his own wealth, connections and personal business are doing great! It just took a fake run for President, Russian interference and angry Americans to get that done!  

Then we have the current Secretary’s and not the fun kind from Mad Men although ironically are in fact mad men.  The first is the Denier Professional Lawsuit Filer (you know those people who file lawsuit after lawsuit to get a settlement but it proves nothing), Scott Pruitt.  His current remarks are pay for play but even those in his corner are scratching their heads at his line of bullshit.

As for intelligence, the kind that is about National Security seems to be coming from one source the true President, Steve Bannon, who despite his best attempts to deck the cards in his hand has found himself against a 70 plus year old white figurehead, no not Trump, Dan Coats, the actual nominee of the National Intelligence Agency.   I don’t see anything ending well on this and by this I mean for the safety and security of the United States.

Then Scary Spice, the only thing missing is the wife beater, announces that the C.B.O. the Congressional Budget Office is not a place for accuracy should you need that when Congress implements laws and bills their go to to determine costs and shit.  But then again Trump the master of accounting fraud and duplicity has no respect, none I tell you for said office.  Good to know I am sure President Bannon has Quick Books.

As for Americans becoming intelligent?  Well don’t worry folks not going to happen. 

Meanwhile South Korea is going ballistic and that means literally as North Korea is getting ready for target practice and all while their own domestic scandals and headlines are showing disarray in their Government.

WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks says Trump until he doesn’t.  Well that is one thing true to form when it comes to Trump and his contradictory statements and withdrawals of trust when betrayed.  Well at least they can’t hack his taxes.   But hey Assange is willing to work for food! 

And then there is the Civil War, the new one in Congress, with Congressional Republicans over TrumpCare.  Trump doesn’t want it called that because Obamacare was always a negative pejorative and Trump’s name isn’t?

I am going to let the dust settle about the ACA as frankly it makes me sick and my insurance is actually not ACA compliant so at least one good thing came out of it, the IRS is so underfunded they are not enforcing that element and they can’t audit me anyway!!  And clearly it is taken years for them to do Trump’s so I can see that this is probably for the best.

Trump comes to Nashville next Wednesday and I plan on being safely tucked at home.  The main bus terminal is adjacent to the stadium and even I am going home the long way rather than deal with that. But I have said repeatedly Trump is more Southern than any native; thin skinned, stupid, humorless, defensive, suspicious and bitter are all part of the true recipe of what composes Grits here.

The day is not over and I am sure more insanity and inanity (they seem co-joined at the hip here like Siamese Twins that Ben Carson could not separate if he tried) will occur in the current White House.  There has been a long debate if Trump is a Republican or not.  He is nothing he is a figurehead and the real leader is Steve Bannon and for one who thinks he is a Libertarian he needs to re-think that, he is an Anarchist or do I mean Anti-Christ?

The Whitest House

My family had a significant vegetable garden in our backyard. My Mother was more the flower person and that too was a well kept part of our home, with seasonal blooms and gorgeous perennials that still linger in my fragrance rotation of seasons.

When Michelle Obama took to the role of First Lady she was one of the few that had been a career professional but one who was the larger of the two when it came to income. So to have a modern contemporary woman assume the role of First Lady the transition one would expect to be that of a challenge. But instead Ms. Obama become a Mom-in-chief and in turn assumed the role of many First Ladies by taking on a cause.

I can recall just barely Jackie Kennedy’s role of White House historian and if you have not yet seen the movie Jackie, I so think it eloquently reminds of us the prototype of what became the 20th Century First Lady. The predecessors that followed had all stellar views, Mrs. Johnson was an advocate for beautifying the nation’s cities and highways (“Where flowers bloom, so does hope”). The Highway Beautification Act was informally known as Lady Bird’s Bill.

We then had Pat Nixon who I assumed her role was preserving her sanity but no she too had a cause volunteerism. However I had n recollection that she oversaw the collection of more than 600 pieces of historic art and furnishings for the White House, an acquisition larger than that of any other administration. She was the most traveled First Lady in U.S. history, a record unsurpassed until twenty-five years later; Mrs. Nixon was often referred to Madame Ambassador.

Subsequently Mrs. Carter, both Bushes and of course Hillary Clinton too were significantly engaged in their roles as First Lady with Mrs. Clinton’s being the most political and in turn marginalized women in the “job.”

A great book that describes these families and their roles, duties and lifestyles as residents of the most famous of public houses is The Residence, by Kate Andersen Brower. I found it utterly fascinating as the staff remains in place while the families do not but they manage to accommodate and adjust almost effortlessly to the demands and the demeanor of the first family.

I do think the Obama’s were very much a bookend to the Kennedy’s. The young dynamic family, two small children, with both well educated and sophisticated if not complex in their relationship that marked the beginning of what defined the 60s and a era of change. The Obama’s too by simply being the first Black family with adorable children although older, and the professional achievements over family history made them the epitome of the 21st Century family. They truly represented what we believe in s in fact meritocracy, as both class and race led them to the highest position in the world. And like the Kennedy’s they had the ardent supporters they had their ardent distractors, for different reasons however. I recall the dismay over their faith, their family legacy and the issues of elite and class that dominated their critics. For the Obama’s the issue of race was the primary matter which I suspect contributed to the further isolation and almost diffidence toward the political class by Mr. Obama.

But politics aside, the country always rallies behind the First Lady and family. They are above and beyond the political fray and we take on their causes and matters as a part of our own. But this is the first family (yes low caps) that have not embraced their role in any conventional sense. Melania Trump has elected to remain in the family home in New York with her young son until school concludes, while Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, assuming many of the duties that are often those of the First Lady, but she is also an acting policy adviser, reminding one of another more career oriented First Lady, who ran for the same job her father now holds – Hillary Clinton. (I have joked that she is more like Hillary than we realize including not sleeping with the President.)

The White House functions as a well oiled machine but the role of the lady of the house is one of significance. The décor, the standard functions and daily operation falls into that office. A job unpaid and often underappreciated. The first family pays for many of their own food, functions and other private family responsibilities which many Americans are unaware. Only national or international duties and functions are remanded by the White House budget. So in other words any take out of Trumps favorite fast food is paid for by him or the Russians. Whoever is responsible for his wealth which will regardless grow thanks to his gig in the White House. For the first time in a while will Mr. Trump actually run in the black, an irony that he is following a family whose very identity he questioned because they were black.

So I was surprised to find out that while Trump is busy eradicating any legislation or actions taken by Obama, or truly whitewashing the office, Mrs. Trump is retaining the organic garden installed by Mrs. Obama. That is about the only declaration of substance other than declaring she is against online bullying but I assumed that was directed to her husband in a some passive aggressive manner.

And lastly the issues of fashion and style will of course be the lead story when Mrs. Trump (or if) she moves into the Whtie House. That too has already faced controversy with designers announcing they will not dress her and others simply concerned about the role of American fashion in a White House that again like Mrs. Kennedy 40 years earlier had a primary role. And Mrs. Obama brought that full circle during her time as First Lady.

I am unsure what to make out of this new family. They in their own way represent many of the plutocratic class with multiple ex-wives, numerous children from said wives and a current trophy wife of European origin. The only true distinction is the lack of taste in almost all areas – art, fashion, food. I would throw in music there but I doubt Trump ever listens to music, so the stylings of classic musicians that dominated the Kennedy White House or the sounds of Soul and Pop in the Obamas will likely be akin to elevator music, strictly background and invisible.  The Obama’s mark on the White House will not be forgotten despite the resident determined to eradicate it.  But I wonder if we will ever get the stain out of not just that carpet (yes a veiled Clinton joke) after this family finally vacates it.

Charles In Charge

That may be the real de facto leader in the White House as clearly it is not Donald J. Trump.   After reading this article discussing the speech patterns of Alzheimer victims I thought: “I by the grace of God but Trump not so lucky.’  And then I found this article about what defines a CEO in a public vs private business.

I do think that Fran Lebovitz said about Trump: “He is a poor persons idea of what a rich person is like” has validity.  But what she really means: “This is what they think a CEO is”  Most people do not work for a Fortune 500 Company and if they do they are so far down the food chain they don’t even know that they do.   And the myriad of businesses and ownership further confuse those who think they are working for a business when in reality they are working for a private investement company or hedge fund that has multiple investors and are not interested in that businesses singular success.

Then comes the con-in-chief who actually owns and manages very little of his investments. His business is largely licensing with little hands on but very specific guidelines and procedures that secure continuity among the projects so they provide the illusion of Trump without The Trump.

Trumps own ventures have landed him in bankruptcy and civil courts numerous times. And through disclosure and deposition transcripts we learn just how veiled the head that wears the crown is from actually operating the said business.  So I am sure the same philosophy applies to the White House and explains the dissaray as Trump does not have the shield and protection of his family to ensure that exposing the Emperor in his new clothes to the the citizenry does not occur.  But as we learned on Saturday the Emperor’s subjects don’t care one iota.  They are morons and like always likes like, so this is a win-win for the Trump and his kins.

But this article does explain how the concept of CEO – private or public – have very different roles and functions which distinguishes how their respective businesses are run.  This might be why Trump wants to eradicate regulations, they don’t apply to him and regardless they are his kind.  And as they say in West Side Story, stick with your own kind.

Trump wasn’t a real CEO. No wonder his White House is disorganized.
Running a family business isn’t the same as running a public corporation.
By Bert Spector February 21 at 7:00 AM

Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump made much of his business experience, claiming he’s been “creating jobs and rebuilding neighborhoods my entire adult life.”

The fact that he was from the business world rather than a career politician was something that appealed to many of his supporters.

It’s easy to understand the appeal of a president as CEO. The U.S. president is indisputably the chief executive of a massive, complex, global structure known as the federal government. And if the performance of our national economy is vital to the well-being of us all, why not believe that Trump’s experience running a large company equips him to effectively manage a nation?

Instead of a “fine-tuned machine,” however, the opening weeks of the Trump administration have revealed a White House that’s chaotic, disorganized and anything but efficient. Examples include rushed and poorly constructed executive orders, a dysfunctional national security team, and unclear and even contradictory messages emanating from multiple administrative spokesmen, which frequently clash with the tweets of the president himself.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) succinctly summed up the growing sentiment even some Republicans are feeling: “Nobody knows who’s in charge.”

So why the seeming contradiction between his businessman credentials and chaotic governing style?

Well for one thing, Trump wasn’t a genuine CEO. That is, he didn’t run a major public corporation with shareholders and a board of directors that could hold him to account. Instead, he was the head of a family-owned, private web of enterprises. Regardless of the title he gave himself, the position arguably ill-equipped him for the demands of the presidency.

Several years ago, I explored the distinction between public and private companies in detail when the American Bar Association invited me to write about what young corporate lawyers needed to understand about how business works. Based on that research, I want to point to an important set of distinctions between public corporations and private businesses, and what it all means for President Trump.

Public corporations are companies that offer their stock to pretty much anyone via organized exchanges or by some over-the-counter mechanism. To protect investors, the government created the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which imposes an obligation of transparency on public corporations that does not apply to private businesses like the Trump Organization.

The SEC, for example, requires the CEOs of public corporations to make full and public disclosures of their financial positions. Annual 10-K reports, quarterly 10-Q’s and occasional special 8-K’s require disclosure of operating expenses, significant partnerships, liabilities, strategies, risks and plans.

Additionally, an independent firm overseen by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board conducts an audit of these financial statements to ensure thoroughness and accuracy.

Finally, the CEO, along with the chief financial officer, is criminally liable for falsification or manipulation of the company’s reports. Remember the 2001 Enron scandal? CEO Jeffrey Skilling was convicted of conspiracy, fraud and insider trading and initially sentenced to 24 years in prison.

Then there is the matter of internal governance.

The CEO of a public company is subject to an array of constraints and a varying but always substantial degree of oversight. There are boards of directors, of course, that review all major strategic decisions, among other duties. And there are separate committees that assess CEO performance and determine compensation, composed entirely of independent or outside directors without any ongoing involvement in running the business.

Whole categories of CEO decisions, including mergers and acquisitions, changes in the corporation’s charter, and executive compensation packages, are subject to the opinion of shareholders and directors.

In addition, the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act requires — for now — regular nonbinding shareholder votes on the compensation packages of top executives.

And then there’s this critical fact: Well-governed firms tend to outperform poorly governed ones, often dramatically. And that’s because of factors like a strong board of directors, more transparency, a responsiveness to shareholders, thorough and independent audits, and so forth.

None of the obligations listed above applied to Trump, who was owner, chairman and president of the Trump Organization, a family-owned limited liability company (LLC) that has owned and run hundreds of businesses involving real estate, hotels, golf courses, private jet rentals, beauty pageants and even bottled water.

LLCs are specifically designed to offer owners tax advantages, maximum flexibility, and financial and legal protections without either the benefits (such as access to equity capital markets) or the many obligations of a public corporation.

For example, as I noted above, a corporate CEO is required by law to allow scrutiny of the financial consequences of his or her decisions by others. As such, CEOs know the value of having a strong executive team able to serve as a sounding board and participate in key strategic decisions.

Trump, by contrast, as the head of a family business was accountable to no one and reportedly ran his company that way. His executive team comprised his children and people who are loyal to him, and his decision-making authority was unconstrained by any internal governance mechanisms. Decisions concerning what businesses to start or exit, how much money to borrow and at what interest rates, how to market products and services, and how — or even whether — to pay suppliers or treat customers were made centrally and not subject to review

Clearly, this poorly equips Trump to be president and accountable to lawmakers, the courts and ultimately the voters.

Another important aspect of the public corporation is the notion of transparency and the degree to which it enables accountability.

A lack of transparency and reluctance to engage in open disclosure characterized the formulation of Trump’s immigration ban that was quickly overturned in federal court. That same tendency toward secrecy was manifest throughout the campaign, such as when he refused to disclose much about his health (besides this cursory “note”) or release any of his tax returns.

While there’s no law that requires a candidate to divulge either health or tax status, that lack of transparency kept potentially vital information from U.S. voters. And Trump’s continuing lack of transparency as president has kept experts and advisers in the dark, leading to precisely the confusion, mixed messages and dysfunction that have characterized these early weeks. And, of course, this can quickly lead to a continuing erosion of public trust.

Trump, it should be noted, made one stab at a public company: Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts. That was an unmitigated disaster, leading to five separate declarations of bankruptcy before finally going under, all this while other casino companies thrived. Public investors ignored all the signs in favor of the showmanship and glitz of the Trump brand and, as a result, lost millions of dollars. Trump allotted himself a huge salary and bonuses, corporate perks, and special merchandising deals.

What is especially telling about this experience is that, rather than speaking on behalf of fiduciary responsibilities for the best interests of the corporation, Trump noted, “I make great deals for myself.”

There is no need to be overly naive here.

Some CEOs also operate in a highly centralized manner, expecting obedience rather than participation from direct reports. All business executives expect a shared commitment from their employees to their corporate goals and value dependability, cooperation and loyalty from subordinates.

But the involvement of a multiplicity of voices with diverse perspectives and different backgrounds and fields of expertise improves the quality of resulting decisions. Impulsive decision-making by an individual or a small, cloistered group of followers can and often will lead to disastrous results.

Virtually every U.S. president, ranging from the great to the inconsequential and even the disastrous, has emerged from one of two groups: career politicians or generals. So why not a CEO president?

Without question, a background in politics does not guarantee an effective presidency. Abraham Lincoln, the consensus choice among historians for the best president ever, was a career politician, but so was his disastrous successor, Andrew Johnson.

Likewise, we can think of many traits of an effective corporate CEO that could serve a president well: transparency and accountability, responsiveness to internal governance, and commitment to the interest of the overall corporation over and above self-enrichment.

Sadly, that is not Trump’s background. His experience overseeing an interconnected tangle of LLCs and his one disastrous term as CEO of a public corporation suggest a poor background to be chief executive of the United States. As such, “nobody knows who’s in charge” may be the mantra for years to come.