​Every day something new becomes public about the moral turpitude, cruelty and consequent evil visited upon us by Donald Trump and his administration. One of the latest of such revelations, not very well reported by the media, concerns nursing homes.
 
In 2017, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), headed by Seema Verma, who went on to be one of the more disastrous of Trump appointees (and that took real effort, given the competition), decided to substantially relax the penalties for nursing home safety violations. Until then, fines could range up to $22,320 for each day of non-compliance with a safety regulation. CMS, however, decreed that henceforth it would impose only a one-time fine with a ceiling of $22,320. For the hugely profitable companies that own and run nursing homes, this was the equivalent of a slap on the wrist. After the rule went into effect, nursing home fines for safety violations plummeted.
 
This drastic rule rollback removed any incentive for nursing homes to correct safety problems or move quickly to put coronavirus safety protocols in place. This established the platform for the tragedy that hit their elderly residents when Covid-19 appeared on the scene. Thanks to Trump and Verma, nursing homes were far less safe three years later when Covid appeared. The result: more than 182,000 nursing home residents and staff died from Covid. Had the prior safety rule been in place, it is possible that many of these individuals would still be alive today. They and their grieving families would not have had to suffer.
 
But suffering, we learned, was one of the Trump administration’s bedrock aims, in this case the consequence of hauling in huge campaign donation bucks from nursing homes. The nursing home industry was a big-time donor to Trump’s “America First Action” super PAC. The New York Times reported that one fundraiser alone brought in over $3 million for the super PAC from the nursing home industry. Once again, Trump’s malevolent collection of corrupt characters put the interests of companies ahead of people.
 
Implying that nursing homes need not concern themselves with resident safety was just the beginning. The administration also rescinded a rule that banned binding arbitration agreements between nursing homes and residents and their families that greatly favor the industry. In addition, it proposed watering down a rule that would have enhanced infection control in nursing homes.
 
Verma also often put her self-interest ahead of any concern for either the people CMS is in business to protect or the American taxpayer. She is alleged to have retained a slew of Republican communications consultants in order to enhance her “personal brand” and to have spent $6 million toward that end. Investigations by both congressional Democrats and the Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General appear to support these allegations.
 
The Trump administration’s rampant corruption and utter contempt for taxpayers and for the law, common decency and humanity were on display for four years. The depths of depravity to which it sunk are now cascading into public consciousness. It will be no surprise if there are many more revelations to come about its grift and venality.
 
Dick Hermann
April 30, 2021

​Lost among all the crises we face on the home front—another pandemic surge, vaccination hesitancy, mass shootings, police misconduct, racial injustice, white supremacists, political polarization, voter subversion—it is easy to overlook the fact that we are now fully engaged in a second Cold War, this time with China. Calibrating this relationship and controlling it so that it does not escalate into something much hotter will require the same investment of brainpower, finesse and resources that we devoted so successfully to the 50+ year Cold War against the Soviet Union.
 
That one concluded very well for the United States. It ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union, its break-up into 15 independent successor states, some of which became U.S. allies, the liberation of the captive nations of Eastern Europe, nine of which are now NATO members, new markets for U.S. goods and services, and most important, a reduced, albeit still dangerous, Russia.
 
There is little likelihood that our success in the first Cold War will be repeated in the current conflict. This time the Communist “enemy” is of a very different, much more formidable character.
 
Nevertheless, the new Cold War between China and the U.S. is very much like the old one in its most important feature. Behind all the saber rattling, criticisms about human rights violations and Chinese militarism lurks the real question, the same one that underlay our competition with the Soviet Union: which system—American democratic capitalism or Chinese autocratic capitalism—works best in achieving a nation’s economic goals? It is this question that the rest of the world is asking. And the answer will determine in which direction many of the world’s developing nations decide to go when it comes to aligning with either China or the U.S.
 
When Soviet Party Chairman Nikita Khrushchev pounded his fists and banged his shoe on his desk at the United Nations General Assembly in 1960, shouting “We will bury you!,” his threat came across as mere bloviation. There was no way the Soviet Union’s deeply flawed command economy could possibly ever catch up with, much less exceed, the United States’ capitalist system. A nation that had to marshal people onto sealed trains at gunpoint and transport them back and forth between cities in order to meet its 5-year economic target for railroad passenger trips had no conceivable chance to prevail in the competition for global supremacy.
 
China is a different adversary altogether. There, while the rest of the Communist bloc self-destructed, the Chinese Politburo saved itself by resorting to a Machiavellian bargain with its people. It largely opened up its economy in return for retaining absolute political power. Moreover, single-party state control enables China to do big things and do them swiftly. China’s rail transportation system, for example, today consists of more than 24,000 miles of high-speed tracks.  The U.S: 34 miles. The rest of the world notices the contrast.
 
And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. China has quietly insinuated itself into the economies of Africa, Latin America and Asia via massive construction projects and economic assistance initiatives. In contrast, Americans, Republicans in particular, complain about and attempt to slash U.S. foreign aid, which is a pittance compared to our new rival for the hearts and minds of the world’s peoples.
 
China is also extending its global reach and influence through its $900 billion “Silk Road Initiative,” a resurrection of sorts of the 2,000-year old trade route that traversed Central Asia and the Middle East, linking China and Europe. This massive economic and building project is designed to tie Central Asia, the Middle East and even Europe closer to China while also demonstrating the superiority of the Chinese approach over the United States. This was given a huge boost by the Trump administration’s self-destructive “America First” (and “Only”) approach to international affairs.
 
Moreover, Trump foolishly opted out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the new trade alliance negotiated by the Obama administration and designed as a counterweight to China in its backyard. By turning his back on the TPP, Trump created a vacuum that China quickly and eagerly filled, ecstatic that the U.S. gifted it such a golden opportunity. Now China is the straw that stirs the Pacific Rim drink, not the U.S. This is already translating into political gains for China at U.S. expense.
 
Barack Obama’s instincts that prompted his “tilt toward Asia” were correct. That far-sighted strategic enterprise was blown up by Donald Trump. It may be too late now to revive it. China’s head-start means that we can only play catch-up, if we are still in the game at all. U.S. political gridlock and extreme polarization make it doubtful that Cold War 2.0 is likely to go the way of its predecessor.
 
Dick Hermann
April 24, 2021

​The “Party of No,” formerly known as Republicans, rejected President Biden’s infrastructure plan (the American Jobs Act) before they even read it. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that there would be “no Republican votes for it” before the ink was dry on the proposal.
 
Their principal objections are that (1) to pay for it (kudos to Biden for wanting to pay for it), the bill would partially roll back Republicans’ sacrosanct 2017 corporate tax rate cut (from 35 percent to 21 percent) to 28 percent, (2) it would balloon the deficit and debt, and (3) they don’t like Biden’s definition of “infrastructure.”
 
Slashing the corporate tax rate cut was premised on the following Republican assurances: (1) It would pay for itself by producing somewhere between 4-6 percent GDP growth, which would send vast new oceans of revenue Washington’s way, which in turn would reduce the debt. Instead, pre-pandemic growth hobbled along at a meager 2 percent and the debt skyrocketed. (2) It would stimulate a huge increase in corporate investment, which would create millions of jobs. Instead, companies used the windfall to buy back their stock and increase share value for their stockholders, more specifically for their C-level executives. No new jobs resulted. (3) It would repatriate corporate earnings from overseas tax havens. It did not do that either. (4) It would make U.S. firms more competitive with their foreign competitors. We’re still waiting for that to happen. There is no evidence at all that, like every Republican tax cut of the past 40 years, all accompanied by similar broken promises, it performed any of these miracles.
 
If the corporate rate were raised to 28 percent, that would still be below the rates of some of our major trading partners, such as Japan, Germany and France. The effective rate (that corporations actually pay) is only 8 percent. The U.S. collects only about a third in corporate taxes compared to its major trading partners.
 
As for worries about the deficit and debt, which I share, it is ironic that Republicans had no concerns about red ink when they rushed to enact the 2017 tax cuts that added $2 trillion to the debt without any plan whatsoever to pay for it.
 
Biden’s plan expands the definition of infrastructure broadly to include “human” infrastructure. Republicans may have an argument that this goes beyond the standard definition. But they cannot, with a straight face, claim that infrastructure does not include essentials like broadband, the expansion of which will disproportionately benefit rural (i.e., Republican) America. Opposing this is irrational. Republicans define infrastructure both more narrowly and more broadly. For them, it means bridges, roads and Trump’s ineffective border wall. Nevertheless, it is still possible that, if Biden were to limit the proposal to the traditional definition of infrastructure and leave his expanded definition for later consideration, he could get some Republican votes.
 
Although they want to protect corporations by championing low tax rates, at the same time Republicans are vilifying companies for criticizing GOP voter suppression efforts (361 bills in 47 states) and warning them to “stay out of politics, except for campaign contributions.”
 
The former pro-business party is apparently unaware that corporations do what is best for their bottom line. Companies condemn voter suppression efforts because that is in line with what their customers want. They naturally focus on the people most likely to buy their products and services, i.e., 18-49 year olds, a demographic that voted overwhelmingly for Democrats in 2020. Whatever happened to the century-old Republican mantra: “Let the markets decide”?
 
The GOP also dismisses polls that show that Americans support Biden’s infrastructure plan by large margins. Republican opposition to infrastructure, like their universal hostility to the Covid relief American Rescue Plan, is a head-scratcher. Aside from its consistency with Trump era callousness, it does not compute as a winning political strategy.
 
Dick Hermann
April 16, 2021

America has lacked a sane, coherent immigration policy since at least the administration of Chester Arthur (1881-85). And his was no great shakes. Presidents since have tried and failed to come up with a workable regime that is a win-win for both Americans and immigrants. While the Biden administration agonizes over what to do about this consistently intractable problem, desperate migrants are piling up at our Southern border and no one has any sensible and humane ideas about how to handle them.
 
This painful situation should not be allowed to continue. It is also politically dangerous for a president and administration that, in contrast to the Trump fiasco, wants to show compassion while also stanching the flood of people frantic to escape grinding poverty and extreme violence and get into the U.S.
 
The problem is best analyzed by breaking it down into its component parts:

1. Addressing the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants, including “Dreamers,” already here.
2. Turning the flood of humanity at the border into an orderly flow.
3. Encouraging would-be immigrants to remain in their countries of origin.
4. Educating Americans on the benefits of immigration.

 
Item (1) is relatively easy to resolve. All that is needed is a reasonable path to citizenship that is not prohibitively lengthy or expensive for applicants. The vast majority of undocumented immigrants are hard-working, tax-paying and dollar-repatriating folks who already add far more to GDP and American society than they cost. Legalizing their status benefits not only them, but also us.
 
Item (2) is tougher. It will require the investment of modest resources to expand the current administrative process by which we decide asylum cases, along with a return to the pre-Trump asylum regime instead of the viciously biased system he put in place to deny asylum to virtually every candidate. In addition, we need to at least triple the number of Immigration Judges and select them on a merit basis akin to the prior Administrative Law Judge selection process that Trump trashed by politicizing it.
 
It also requires raising the refugee ceiling that Trump lowered so that only a handful of qualified applicants could get in annually. Biden has already taken positive steps in this direction.
 
If we want immigrants to remain in Mexico while they wait for the U.S. to process them, we must assist Mexico in humanely caring for and feeding them. FEMA is experienced in setting up the infrastructure necessary to do this.
 
Item (3) requires a three-pronged approach:
 
First, after we have inoculated our population against Covid-19, we should supply vaccines to Central America and temporarily supplement their public health infrastructure to quickly vaccinate their citizens.
 
Second, we should look to the Marshall Plan as a model for Central America. In a remarkably short time, the Plan stabilized and transformed a war-devastated Western Europe burdened with 40 million displaced persons into a thriving economic powerhouse and secure democracies resistant to Communism and eager for American goods and services. The investment was modest given the enormous economic and political returns. Moreover, in an environment conducive to corruption, on-the-ground American management of the investment resulted in negligible graft. Prosperity is the best antidote to emigration. Biden has already pledged $4 billion for something like this. More will be needed. The money invested in the region will more than pay for itself in reduced border security and immigration processing and related costs.
 
Third, the gang violence that drives many migrants to flee is largely fueled by out-of-control drug cartels kept in business by U.S. demand. Our 50-year “War on Drugs” focused on supply interdiction has been a multi-trillion dollar failure. If only a fraction of the resources being wasted in this unwinnable war were redirected to the demand side, the American market that keeps the cartels going would shrink along with the fear that drives migrants northward.
 
Item (4) is the easiest one to implement. American K-12 and college curricula have shrunk history and civics education to bare survival levels. They need to be reinvigorated. Immigration history and immigrants’ contributions to American society, culture and the economy need to be part of these classes.
 
Admittedly, these are ambitious goals, ones that Republicans in terror of Trump’s tantrums will not support. Nevertheless, they are reasonable solutions to a problem that will only escalate if nothing is done. Bundling these proposals into one bill would likely qualify it for the reconciliation process whereby only a simple congressional majority would suffice.
 
Dick Hermann
April 9, 2021

​On March 28th, CNN aired a documentary, "COVID WAR: The Pandemic Doctors Speak Out," in which its medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, interviewed six of the principal physicians who advised and assisted the Trump administration on its pandemic response. Interviewees included five physicians whose names and faces became familiar to us last year—Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx, Robert Redfield, Brett Giroir and Stephen Hahn. This was their opportunity to explain their words and actions during the pandemic and “sanitize” their legacies. Boy, did they take every opportunity to cleanse themselves of the Trump taint.
 
The only one who emerges from the medical sewer into which they meekly followed their bungling boss was Dr. Fauci who, after some early missteps and in sharp contrast to his coronavirus task force colleagues, did not hold back when he disagreed with the lies, misinformation and dangerous inanities about the pandemic that the president spewed forth at his press briefings and rallies. The others stayed silent despite knowing better. Their inexcusable conduct contributed to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens. This was no different than what the German enablers and executioners of the Holocaust argued during the war crimes trials after World War II: “I was only following orders.”
 
If these so-called medical professionals had any integrity, they would have come forward at the time to inform the public that what Trump was perpetrating with his lies about the gravity of the crisis and his blabbering about miracle cures and dangerous “therapies” like ingesting bleach was nonsensical rubbish. Instead, they kept quiet and went along with what amounted to genocide. One hopes this kind of irresponsible behavior is not what doctors learn in medical school.
 
Here is what Dr. Birx said a year ago about Trump: “He’s been so attentive to the scientific literature and the details and the data. I think his ability to analyze and integrate data that comes out of his long history in business has really been a real benefit during these discussions about medical issues.”
 
If you have recuperated from reading this preposterous cheerleading drivel about someone for whom the English language is an insurmountable challenge and who has the attention span of a gnat, here is what Brix now told Sanjay Gupta: “There were about 100,000 deaths that came from that original surge. All of the rest of them, in my mind, could have been mitigated or decreased substantially."
 
Birx is the 2020s reincarnation of Herbert Hoover. Both had triumphant prior careers before everything blew up in their faces. Hoover’s inability to accept the reality of, and respond to, the Great Depression ruined his legacy. Birx’s complicit enabling of Trump, whom she knew was lying and incapable of managing the pandemic, destines her for history’s Hall of Shame.
 
Dr. Redfield was another of Trump’s principal stooges. His departure as head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was greeted by its Atlanta headquarters’ employees as a time for celebration. The rest of these Trump doctors are also not exactly missed by their former agencies.
 
When the time comes for holding the people responsible for this avoidable gargantuan tragedy—and we can hope that must be close at hand—accountability must include not only Trump, but also Deborah Birx and her coronavirus task force associates who were complicit in what amounted to the greatest cover-up in American history. They chose to support a cruel, deranged, narcissistic loser obsessed only with himself over the lives of the American people. When human lives are at stake, hiding the truth is a criminal act.  What Birx and her colleagues did was unforgivable.
 
At a minimum, accountability should ideally include (1) a criminal investigation of Trump and his task force appointees, (2) a civil class action suit by as many survivors of Covid-19 victims against this same group of culprits, and (3) the revocation of the medical licenses of all members of the task force other than Fauci. If they are allowed to continue in the healthcare field, it should be only to empty and clean bedpans.
 
What Trump and his task force did is unforgivable. Anything less than full accountability will only encourage a repeat of this kind of disgraceful behavior.
 
Dick Hermann
April 2, 2021